ROAD TO EMMAUS ROAD TO EMMAUS

A JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX FAITH AND CULTURE A JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX FAITH AND CULTURE

Vol. VIII, No.2 Spring 2007 (#29)

“T WO OF THEM WENT THAT

SAME DAY TO A VILLAGE CALLED EMMAUS ...

AND WHILE THEY COMMUNED TOGETHER AND

REASONED , J ESUS HIMSELF DREW NEAR ,

AND WENT WITH THEM .”

LUKE 24: 13-15

THE ALASKAN ORTHODOX LITERARY THE ORTHODOX WORLDVIEW AND

RESURRECTION C.S. LEWIS (PART II)

THE ANGELS OF AKUN NOTES ON THE JESUS PRAYER

NORTHERN CLIMES:
FATHER JOHN VENIAMINOV’S AKUN DIARY
In the place where I labored, the people make very good
Christians. Frankly speaking, it is there that I learned
the meaning of true Christian consolation.

ARCHIMANDRITE INNOCENT VENIAMINOV,

in response to the inquiry of Russian Emperor
Nicholas I as to how the native peoples of
Alaska received the Orthodox faith.
 International Editor: Mother Nectaria McLees

ROAD TO EMMAUS
U.S. Editor: Todd Richard Betts
Russian Co-Editor: Inna Belov A JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX FAITH AND CULTURE
Production Manager: Bruce Petersen
Subscriptions: Elisabeth Litster
Art Direction and Layout: Bruce Petersen
Public Relations: Stephen Litster
International Liaison: Kate McCaffery Vol. VIII, No. 2 Spring 2007 (#29)
Shipping: Elisabeth Litster

Staff Correspondents:
Greece - Nicholas Karellos
Western Europe - Thomas Hulbert
CONTENTS
Serbia and Great Britain - Xenia Murray

SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE

Road to Emmaus 3 THE ALASKAN ORTHODOX LITERARY RESURRECTION
P.O. Box 16021
Toronto Reader Michael Ivanovich highlights the diverse native
Portland, OR 97292-0021 USA
cultures and languages of Orthodox Alaska, and his Canadian
Call toll-free (USA) 1-866-783-6628
9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. (U.S.A.) parish’s efforts to make the Alaskan Orthodox literary heritage
Pacific Standard Time accessible to Orthodox everywhere.
Monday-Friday
E-mail: emmausjournal@juno.com
Web: www.roadtoemmaus.net 22 THE ANGELS OF AKUN
Published quarterly.
Letters from young Russian missionary and future saint, Fr. John
$25/year, single issue $7.
(U.S. check or money order, Veniaminov, on his encounter with Ivan Smirennikov, an Aleutian
or by credit card on our website) Orthodox native who was taught by angels..
International subscriptions:
Canada add $5/year for shipping.

38 NORTHERN CLIMES: FATHER JOHN VENIAMINOV’S AKUN DIARY

Outside North America add $15/year shipping.
Send International Money Order payable in U.S. dollars
(available from post offices world-wide) Excerpts from Fr. John’s pastoral visit to a small group of Aleutian
or subscribe by credit card on our website.
Wholesale and library rates available upon request.
islands.
EDITORIAL OFFICE
Valaam Society of America Russian Mission 44 THE ORTHODOX WORLDVIEW AND C.S. LEWIS (PART II)
#10 Bolshaya Pereyaslavskaya, kv. 124
Moscow, Russia 129110 Shine As the Sun: C.S. Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification
PUBLISHER Chris Jensen on Lewis’s closeness to the deeper reaches of Orthodox
Christ the Saviour Orthodox Brotherhood
1516 N. Delaware St.
spirituality, and why many consider him an “anonymous Orthodox.”
Indianapolis, Indiana, 46202 USA How did this Anglican writer get so much, so right?
ISSN 1544-4856

Printed in USA. 68 NOTES ON THE JESUS PRAYER

© Road to Emmaus. All rights reserved.
Moscow’s Fr. Artemy Vladimirov offers short, engaging observations
Front Cover: ??? on the prayer of the heart for those of us who haven’t quite mastered
Inside Front Cover: ???
Inside Back Cover: ???
this traditional Orthodox practice.
 THE ALASKAN
ORTHODOX
LITERARY
RESURRECTION
A Tradition of Linguistic Diversity
in Orthodox Alaska
Road to Emmaus interviews Reader Mikhail Ivanovich, spokesman for the online native
Alaskan linguistic project of All Saints of North America Church in Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada. Currently working as a UNIX support specialist, Mikhail’s favorite job was as a truck
driver for an Italian bakery. His consuming interests are mountain trekking and tracking
down old Orthodox manuscripts.

RTE: Mikhail, will you please tell us about the Alaskan native language project
and how it developed?

MIKHAIL: First, I’d like to thank you and the staff of Road to Emmaus for
your interest and enthusiasm for the “Alaskan Orthodox texts” project.
We’ve received an outpouring of goodwill and support
from around the world: Alaska, Finland, Russia,
Latvia, Hong Kong ... we thank God everyday for the
encouragement it has provided us and for the growing
worldwide audience who are learning about our
Orthodox brethren in Alaska.
Father Geoffrey Korz, the rector of All Saints of Official ‘emblem’ of
North America Orthodox Church in Hamilton, the historic Alaskan
Orthodox Texts project.
Ontario, Canada is the spiritual head of this effort,
while my wife and I have been blessed to research and publish the original
Alaskan language texts. I’m of mixed Mediterranean & Eastern European
background, and only came to Orthodox Christianity in my mid-twenties, as

3
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29) THE ALASKAN ORTHODOX LITERARY RESURRECTION

did my wife who is of Chinese heritage. I currently serve as a church reader in which were still being used. They had been printed in the late 1800’s, under
Toronto. Some people say that Toronto is the most multicultural city in the the influence of St. Innocent’s mission. How were you able to track down
world, and I think that has had a great influence on my love of languages these sources?
and travel. Before coming to Orthodox Christianity, I had the opportunity
MIKHAIL: I looked on the internet, and found many Orthodox sites in
to travel and live in Russia, Finland, Greenland, and Canada’s Arctic terri-
Russian, Serbian, Greek, Albanian, even Orthodox Brazilian Portuguese-
tory of Nunavut. Part of my experiences in Russia and Finland were key to
language sites, but nothing in the Alaskan languages. Everyone seemed to
my conversion to Orthodoxy, while my time spent in the Arctic regions of
know about the Alaskan native translation work, but nobody on the internet
Greenland and Canada engendered a love and passion for the north.
seemed to know where these texts were. After reading about the courageous
One day, in the winter of 2005, I was visiting Father Geoffrey in Hamilton
contemporary struggles of the Church in Alaska (as discussed on www.out-
(about an hour’s drive west of Toronto), and knowing my love of historic
reachalaska.org/history.html), I prayed to St. Herman to help me, according
books and the Arctic, he gave me a book called Alaskan Missionary
to God’s will, to see what could be done to assist Alaska. His Grace Bishop
Spirituality by Orthodox author Father Michael Oleksa. The book is essen-
Seraphim of Ottawa and Canada (Orthodox
tially a collection of documents, letters, and
Church in America), gave his blessing for this
journal entries – translated into English – of
project, and off I went into the unknown.
the most well-known people associated with
At this point, a stroke of inspiration appeared
the Orthodox Christian mission to Alaska in the
out of nowhere, and using the internet, I found
1800’s ... this would include St. Herman of
a treasure trove of rare Alaskan Orthodox texts
Alaska, St. Innocent Veniaminov, St. Jacob
scattered around various repositories through-
Netsvetov, and others. This collection and the
out the United States. Many of these hadn’t
excellent commentary discuss the efforts of the
seen the light of day since the early 1900’s.
mission to reach the native peoples in their own
Through the dedicated work of many people
languages, to baptize their venerable cultures
(especially the staff at the Alaska State Library
into their natural fulfillment in Orthodox
Historical Collection), I was able to obtain
Christianity.
copies of the texts, and set to work typing them
Anyone who reads the life stories of St.
out. However, I soon ran into the difficulty of Title page of a bilingual Alaskan
Original Aleut-language Innocent and St. Jacob is sure to learn about
Holy Gospel of St. Matthew trying to typeset Old Slavonic-looking letters Aglemiut-Russian prayerbook
their heroic exploits and their incredible trans-
translated by St. Innocent which were especially invented by the mission- published in 1896.
Veniaminov and St. Jacob lation work into the native languages of Alaska.
aries for the Alaskan languages (particularly, PM 2455.Z71 D6 1901
Netsvetov. In fact, in everything I read about these saints, it
Alaska State Library, Alaskana Collection,

Aleut and Kodiak Alutiiq).

is obvious that their work in Alaska paralleled that of Sts. Cyril and
Methodius in evangelizing the Slavic peoples. We all know of the rich
Slavonic literary legacy of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, but where, I wondered,
was the physical evidence for the work of Sts. Innocent and Jacob in Alaska?
RTE:Years ago, I asked this same question of Kodiak natives, and they told
me that they knew of nothing except some very old Slavonic-Aleut service
books that existed in tatters in small churches in the Aleutian islands, and
After more prayers to St. Herman for God’s help, it appeared possible to
come up with a scheme of creating “font composites” by super-imposing exist-
ing computer fonts on top of each other so as to create the necessary charac-
ters. The technical details aren’t that interesting, but the fact is that the Lord
provided the right answers at the right time. However, many of the copies I
was working from were difficult to read as the originals had decomposed
somewhat, and in many places were completely unreadable. What to do?

4 5
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
Dictionaries for these languages weren’t readily available, and certainly
not in the 1800’s Cyrillic alphabet (since all Alaskan languages converted to
the Latin-based, English-type alphabet by the 1970’s). I called the Russian
Orthodox Diocese of Alaska, and they directed me to Father Paul Merculief,
a fluently-speaking Aleut archpriest and foremost linguist. To my amaze-
ment, he had a nearly complete library of Alaskan Orthodox texts, but had
met with little success in typing them out due to the “font composite”
problem I mentioned earlier (i.e. the use of
specialized characters that didn’t exist in any
other languages).
This was a match made in heaven. With his
linguistic expertise, my experience with com-
puters, and many long-distance phone calls,
we were able to transcribe the complete set
of all known Orthodox texts in the Aleut,
Kodiak Alutiiq, Tlingit, and Yup’ik languages.
These texts are currently available at:
www.asna.ca/alaska. Through the course of
this project, my wife learned how to type
"Collection of Church Hymns
and Prayers" in the Aglemiut- Cyrillic in one day without any prior knowl-
Kuskokwim dialect published edge, (a miracle in itself), which greatly helped
in 1896.
the digital production of the texts. Father
Michael Oleksa (the author of the book Alaskan Missionary Spirituality
that had inspired this work) also sent Yup’ik-language materials for
transcription — work that had begun 30 years ago, but is only now entering
the electronic age.
We’ve had much assistance along the way: historians, scholars, archivists,
Alaskan native peoples, and the prayers and support of His Grace Bishop
Nikolai of Sitka, Anchorage & Alaska (OCA), which has been a constant
source of encouragement for us.
Very recently, the Lord blessed us with another cache of handwritten
manuscripts which had never been published. Although many of these are
in very bad shape for transcription, some of the better surviving texts are
now being prepared for publication for the very first time. One of these is an
Aleut-language sermon handwritten by St. Jacob Netsvetov himself, as well
as translations of the Holy Gospels and Catechisms. To look upon the words
of St. Jacob’s ornate calligraphy, to touch his handwriting, is to touch a holy
6 7
TITLE
relic. It is a blessing which we are not worthy of, but have been mercifully
allowed to behold. If God wills, many of these should be available on-line at
www.asna.ca/alaska in the years to come.
RTE: Your experience is very close to that of Fr. Elie Khalife, who is locating
and cataloguing the manuscripts of the Antiochian Orthodox Patriarchate
that have been scattered around Europe. I remember him saying that
Horologions and Psalters are the most used books in existence. They were
read page by page at every service, every day, for centuries, and that in
working with them you know that you are
touching books through which thousands of
people have sanctified their lives. Saints
have used them or even written them.* As
you say, these truly are relics.
MIKHAIL: It’s interesting you should men-
tion that. Fr. Geoffrey and I were just dis-
cussing this idea during a road-trip to a
monastery we took last month. For me, it is
all a matter of love for God in His Saints.
Before I became Orthodox I had an icono-
clastic fear of icons and relics of any kind.
Icon of St. Jacob holding a
Yet, once, a number of years ago, on a very translation of Matthew 28:20 in
rough flight over the mountains of Bolivia, I both cyrillic Aleut and English.
found myself kissing a wallet-picture of my Photo courtesy Orthodox Church in America
beloved who later became my wife. Why? It was a way of expressing love.
This was not idolatry. Kissing the photo of my beloved, I thought, “If I never
see you again in person, I will treasure these few moments I have to see a
photo of your smiling face.” Love, that was all.
In a similar manner, if we have the diary of a loved one who has departed
this life, would we not kiss this diary? Would we not hold it tenderly, read it
with attention, and restore it, so as to preserve the memory of the one who
wrote it? If we love the saints, especially the holy ones who have walked
among us in our lands, would we not similarly wish to preserve and beautify
their labours of love for the Lord? At the feast of Pascha, we sing “Christ is
risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the
* Fr. Elia Khalife, Antioch’s Golden Hoard: The Chalcedonian Orthodox Manuscript Treasury, Road to
Emmaus, Vol. VI, No. 3 (Issue #22), Summer 2005.
Caption?
tombs bestowing life.” The saints are alive in Christ, though we do not
usually see them (although this is sometimes granted by God) — why then we
would refuse to show them our love? The restoration of holy writings,
like the making of icons, is a form of prayer with which we, the Orthodox
faithful, connect with those who have “fought the good fight” and “entered
into the joy of our Lord.”
Manuscripts, and other holy relics, are the physical proof that a saint lived
with us, worked among us. My greatest fear was that someday someone
might say, “I don’t believe that the Orthodox Christians showed love for the
native Alaskan languages and cultures. Show me proof!” And we would have
nothing to show ... Now we may face those who accuse the Orthodox, and
say, “Look, and be silent, here is your proof!” Actually this is a present reality
... anyone can do an Internet search and find various bitter, hateful writings
aimed against the history of indigenous Orthodoxy in Alaska. Now, the voice
of indigenous Alaskan Orthodoxy cannot be ignored. The proof is in print,
and it is there for all to see, thanks to God.
8 9
Caption?
RTE: One of the revelations in reading native Alaskan Orthodox history such
as Alaskan Missionary Spirituality, or From Mask to Icon: Transforma-
tion in the Arctic, is how Orthodoxy was very much initially embraced and
then kept alive by the native peoples, sometimes without seeing a priest
for years. Twenty years ago, I remember Aleuts from Kodiak simply saying,
“To be native is to be Orthodox.”
MIKHAIL: Yes, indeed. Fr. Michael Oleksa goes into great detail about this in
his book Orthodox Alaska — how many elements of the pre-Christian
Alaskan worldview were not abolished, but rather fulfilled in Orthodox
Christianity. A number of themes such as cyclic time and symbol as expres-
sions of true reality, show direct parallels.
An example given in Orthodox Alaska is that of a group of hunters in
kayaks trying to catch a giant whale, upon which they depend for food and
life. Armed only with harpoons, the hunters realize that they have no chance
of bringing down this powerful whale who could either:
a) crush them, or b) swim away. Only by voluntary self-sacrifice does the
Caption?
whale allow itself to be caught. This worldview contains a glimpse of
Christ’s voluntary self-surrender in the garden of Gethsemane.
Another example cited is that of the role of the pre-Christian shaman,
which could only be assumed by one who had undergone a ritual death and
re-birth, someone who had gone to the land of spirits and returned. Alaskan
peoples could very clearly grasp the truth of Christ’s necessary death,
descent into Hades, and resurrection for the salvation and transformation
of their souls. Without baptism, as participation in Christ’s death and
resurrection, humans would be separated from the fullness of reality.
The pre-Christian Alaskan worldview was maximalist in its view of ritual
action participating in the eternally-significant events of “those days” when
the condition of man was less fragmented, less broken. Ritual actions upon
leaving/entering one’s home and the layout of traditional native dwellings,
strive to re-present the cosmos in microcosm. Similarly, in Orthodoxy,
our making the sign of the cross, our liturgical blessings of water, wine and
oil, Church architecture, iconography — everything we do is a means of
harmonizing and directing our heart toward God in Christ. In Orthodoxy,
10
Caption?
there is no artificial separation between spiritual vs. physical, faith vs.
works. Everything we do, everything we are, is, in the Patristic understand-
ing, a holistic unity of body, soul and spirit.
When Christians affirm that Holy Communion is the true body and true
blood of Christ — a yrue re-presentation of the Last Supper — the Alaskan
worldview would say, “Of course it is! How could it be any different?” The
events of nearly 2,000 years ago are made present in its fullness in every
Divine Liturgy. These are things that the faithful Alaskan Orthodox know
experientially, but something which many learned scholars and academics
fail to understand. But then, such wisdom was given to the simple fisherman
— the Holy Apostles, and not to the wise of this world. (Acts 2-5, I Cor:1)
Historically, the monks of the original Valaam mission to Kodiak in 1794
defended, with their lives, the indigenous Alaskans from the greedy prac-
tices of the government fur-trading monopoly. They fought for full-citizen-
ship rights and dignity for the native peoples. St. Herman had to flee Kodiak
for Spruce Island because of threats against his life by the fur-trading
management. To this day, the local residents of Kodiak refer to St. Herman
11
Caption?
as their beloved “Apa” (grandfather), who “comforted them with earthly
sustenance and with words of eternal life,” (as we read in the Akathist to
St. Herman of Alaska).
The saints of the Alaskan mission saw the image of God in everyone;
they lived the fullness of the Gospel. They had a real love and respect for the
people they ministered to. St. Innocent, like St. Nicholas of Japan, spent his
first years learning the language and culture of the people among whom he
was living. His preaching was one of true dialogue without compromising
the truths of Orthodox Christianity, yet sensitive to the needs and cultural
expression of these truths in the local setting. Baptism and reception into
Church life was strictly allowed only by free-choice, without monetary or
other worldly incentives. Teaching was done in local languages, and leader-
ship of the Church was quickly assumed by the local inhabitants. Initially,
since there were so few clergy spread over such a vast territory, the faithful
conducted abbreviated Reader/Typica services, learning the church hymns
by heart. By necessity, each family had to become a church. Whenever
clergy would arrive, they would find entire communities already baptized,
12
Caption?
requiring the priest to only chrismate them. Most of the Alaskan Orthodox
manuscript legacy is from native clergy who rose to prominence after the
1830s, after St. Innocent Veniaminov and St. Jacob Netsvetov, the first
priest of Aleut ancestry.
In fact, it is interesting to note that the majority of Tlingit, from southeast
Alaska, became Orthodox only after the sale of Alaska to the U.S. in 1867 —
so it had nothing to do with Russian colonial interests, as some might
say. In fact, the Tlingit had every economic and social incentive to join
heterodox confessions rather than Orthodoxy, except for one little thing.
Whereas the heterodox sought to deny Tlingit language and culture, the
Orthodox affirmed it. Even after the 1917 Russian Revolution which brought
jurisdictional chaos to Orthodoxy in America, the Alaskan Orthodox Church
grew because it was not an ethnic extension of a faraway place, it was the
local Church.
RTE:Wonderful! How many languages and dialects are there in the native
Orthodox population, and how many people still speak those languages?
13
Caption?
MIKHAIL: That’s a very good question. I cannot claim to be a scholar, but I
can answer based on my experience with the texts, and having worked with
the wonderful priests of the Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska who
provided their expertise.
Numerically, the largest contingent of Native Alaskan speakers are the
Yup’ik people, who number around 20,000 people, of whom 13,000 speak
the language across various dialects. The Alutiiq (known as Kodiak-Aleut in
Russian America) number around 3000, of whom 500-1000 still speak the
language. Aleuts are divided linguistically into the Atkan and Eastern
dialectal variants. The total population of the Aleut people is given as 3000,
with the vast majority being of Eastern-Aleut background. The Atkan-
dialect of Aleut has approximately 60-80 fluent speakers, whereas the
Eastern-Aleut dialect has about 300 fluent speakers. St. Innocent focused
his efforts in writing for the Eastern-Aleut, while St. Jacob concentrated on
developing the Atkan-Aleut and Yup’ik languages. The Tlingit population is
estimated at around 17,000, of whom 500 are fluent in the language. The
bulk of Tlingit literature was developed in Sitka by Reader Ivan Nadezhdin
14
Caption?
in the 1850’s, and by Fr. Vladimir Donskoi and Michael Sinkiel in the
1890’s. The Tanaina of central Alaska number around 1000, with 100 fluent
native-language speakers. In all cases, many more people understand the
language, but do not speak it.
The Native-languages all had a thriving press and literature through the
1800’s under the auspices of the Orthodox Church. However, in the late
1890’s and early 1900’s, the Protestant missions of Sheldon Jackson had a
disastrous effect on native language vitality, and were clearly aimed at
ripping out the roots of the Native Alaskan Orthodox cultures. Stories of
faithful Aleut Orthodox being chained to the floors of their own homes by
U.S. Territorial agents for speaking their language and courageously refus-
ing to hand over their children to the Protestant boarding schools break the
heart. Our native Alaskan Orthodox brothers were first-class confessors for
their Holy Orthodox faith. They are heroes and defenders of Orthodox
Christianity. In the midst of the turmoil of American “English-only”
language policy throughout much of the 20th century, the native languages
declined greatly. Much of the work of Sts. Innocent and Jacob was
15
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
destroyed, but not completely. What we are seeing today is a veritable res-
urrection of our Alaskan brothers’ texts, their languages, their authentical-
ly Orthodox cultures. Their sacrifice is chronicled in such books as Alaskan
Missionary Spirituality and Orthodox Alaska by Fr. Michael Oleksa.
RTE: Sadly, the mistreatment went on well into the latter half of the 20th cen-
tury. The Russian Orthodox priests who remained after the United States
acquired Alaska had little influence to protect the native Orthodox, and even
less after the 1917 Russian Revolution. I remember an Aleut Orthodox man
who said that, as late as the 1960’s, when he was a young boy at school, the
use of native language was still forbidden. If you were heard speaking it, a
derogatory, humiliating sign was placed around your neck, which you wore
until you heard another child speaking “native,” when you could pass the
sign on to him. The child
wearing the sign at the end
of the day was beaten by the
principal.
MIKHAIL: It is unthinkable
that this type of mistreat-
ment happened at all!
In speaking with one priest
in Alaska, all he said was
Paul Swetzof, Father Peter Kashevarof, and Nicolai
Merculief. The date is unknown but is circa early that the people of the gen-
1900's.
eration born before 1970
still bear many scars from
Photo courtesy Stephanie Lestenkof Mandregan of St. Paul Island, Alaska.
that period, and that linguistic revival will have to come from the youth.
It’s happening slowly, but now it is critically important to document those
living links with the grandparents’ generation to preserve the true pronun-
ciation of the various languages and dialects.
RTE:I’ve heard it said that the native Alaskan languages are considered
among the most difficult in the world to learn. Is this true, and why?
MIKHAIL: I guess that depends on who you ask! My wife thinks Chinese is
easy, given as it is her first language! However, it is true that Alaskan native
languages are very difficult to learn — very complex and highly developed.
These languages typically have a very rich and complex phonological
16
TITLE
system, with many sounds that are difficult for Indo-European language
speakers to pronounce. Nouns and verbs have intricate case-based systems
for declension and agreement with prefix, infix and suffix endings adjoined
to them.
Practically, I found Eastern-Aleut to be the easiest to work with, followed
by Atkan-Aleut. Conjugation of Aleut verbs, word-length and prepositional
usage tended to show closer similarity of structure to Russian than any other
Alaskan native language. The Alutiiq (Kodiak-Aleut) and Yup’ik languages
bear many similarities with each other, but were more difficult with their
extensive use of diacritical (accented) Cyrillic. In addition, Yup’ik is a poly-
synthetic language which means that it has very long words that correspond
to nearly-complete sentences. Each word corresponds to a densely-packed
arrangement of thoughts and grammar which are
held together in the one word. Every nuance of time,
state, etc. tends to be reflected and compounded,
which leads to a very logical, but lengthy composi-
tion of letters.
One example is from the Resurrection Kontakion
of the 1st Tone. In English the first sentence is: “As
God, Thou didst rise from the tomb in glory, raising
the world with Thyself.” In Yup’ik, the first sentence
reads: “Agayutngucirpetun unguilriaten qungugnek Father Michael Lestenkof
nanraumalriami, unguiqen ella malikluku.” was a tireless worker for
the Lord who kept alive
The Tlingit texts were the most difficult of all, the flame of Aleut lan-
probably due to the language’s very technical guage and Orthodoxy
until his death in 2003
phonology and pronunciation. It is also a tonal at the age of 89.
language, which means that a word may have various Photo courtesy Stephanie
meanings despite being spelled the same way, Lestenkof Mandregan of
depending on the pitch of the speaker in pronouncing
St. Paul Island, Alaska.
the word. Chinese is also a tonal language. An example of the difficulty of
tonal languages is that the Chinese (Cantonese) word “siu gai yik” can mean
“BBQ chicken wings” or “small chicken wings” depending on the tone of the
word “siu”. Most times at the Chinese supermarket, I end up asking for small
chicken wings, and the nice shopkeeper smiles at me, because he really
knows that I want large BBQ chicken wings (not small chicken wings!). I just
can’t “sing” the word properly. This idea of tonality applies to Tlingit as well.
Unfortunately, the old Cyrillic alphabet for Tlingit didn’t represent tonality
17
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
very well. These are just personal reflections, though, and I would defer to
the opinion of the many native Alaskan Orthodox priests with regard to this
question.
RTE: Could you enlarge now on the translating work of St. Herman,
St. Innocent, and St. Jacob Netsvetov? We think of them as saints and
missionaries, but most of us know little about their linguistic work.
MIKHAIL: St. Herman, as one of the original members of the Valaam
mission to Russian America in 1794, was something of a pioneer in the field
of Alutiiq (Kodiak-Aleut) with Hieromonk Gideon. Together, at the mission
school in Kodiak, they worked on a translation of the Lord’s Prayer and
began compiling the first dictionary of the Alutiiq language. One of
St. Herman’s disciples, Father Constantine Larianov, later compiled an
Alutiiq prayerbook which exists in manuscript form in the Alaskan Russian
Church archives of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
St. Innocent Veniaminov is rightly regarded as the giant among early
translators in the Native Alaskan languages. From the time of his arrival in
Unalaska (Dutch Harbor, Alaska) in 1824, St. Innocent dedicated himself to
the process of acquiring the language and culture of the Aleut people.
As early as 1828, he set to work on translations of the Holy Gospels, but
much of this early work was spoiled by errors in typesetting the text back in
Russia. In 1833, St. Innocent wrote his famous Aleut-language work,
Indication of the Pathway to the Kingdom of Heaven, which became an
instant classic. In 1840, when he returned to Russia, St. Innocent personal-
ly supervised the printing of his texts: The Holy Gospel According to
St. Matthew, the Paschal readings, a lengthy Primer/Catechism, and the
Indication treatise. Most of these texts were edited by Ivan Pan’kov,
a Tigalda chief and friend of St. Innocent, and were annotated with foot-
notes in the Atkan-Aleut dialect by St. Jacob Netsvetov. However,
St. Innocent’s work wasn’t confined to Aleut, but also included Tlingit and
Alutiiq. A comprehensive dictionary of Tlingit and Alutiiq was printed
in 1846.
St. Innocent’s approach to language and inculturation of the Gospel was
fully rooted in the Orthodox tradition, but it was a novelty among all other
faith traditions. Rather than demand the use of a specific language for
enforced religious indoctrination, Eastern Orthodox Christians have more
18
TITLE
often tried to sanctify a culture and its language — to bring out that which
already contains the “seed of the Word” (spermatikos logos), and to encour-
age the native expression of the good news of Christ. This has been
the experience of the Byzantine commonwealth, the African, Slavic,
Georgian, Finnic, Japanese, and Siberian peoples as well. This is the gift of
Pentecost that the Orthodox have shared. St. Innocent was heir to this
glorious tradition and proved faithful to his calling.
RTE: Yes. And St. Jacob Netsvetov?
MIKHAIL: St. Jacob Netsvetov was born of a Russian father and Aleut mother
on St. George Island in the Pribilofs, and was fully bilingual. All early Atkan
dialect texts from before 1850 are the work of St. Jacob; his monumental
dictionary still exists in manuscript form in the Alaskan Russian Church
archives. Rather than create separate translations of St. Innocent’s texts into
the Atkan-dialect of Aleut, he sought to unify the dialects by incorporating
footnotes for those words which were markedly different from the Eastern
dialect. His greatest glory in the Aleut literary tradition, however, is probably
his mentorship of Fathers Laurence Salamatov and Innocent Shayashnikov
who later produced volumes of church texts in the Aleut language. Fr.
Laurence Salamatov produced Atkan translations of the Holy Gospels and
Catechisms in the 1860’s, while Fr. Innocent Shayashnikov would go on to
complete all four Holy Gospels, the Acts of the Holy Apostles, a manuscript
prayerbook and a Catechism in Eastern-Aleut. His work was last printed
in 1903, and served the Aleut faithful for over 100 years until the recent
electronic re-publication of their texts on www.asna.ca/alaska. The disciples
of St. Jacob learned well from their teacher, and their work nourished
generations of Aleut Orthodox.
But the story doesn’t end there for St. Jacob. After a series of tragedies
including the death of his wife and the burning of his house, he felt that he
should become a monastic. However, the hand of God led him to minister to
the interior of Alaska beginning in 1844, where he learned new languages
and preached in the languages of the Kuskokwim region. Drawing upon
St. Jacob’s work, Fr. Zachary Bel’kov compiled two prayerbooks, which were
later published by the Diocese of Alaska in 1896. These two texts remained
as the sole published inheritance of St. Jacob’s flock until 1974, when a
new Yup’ik language Hymnal was produced (and later revised in 2002)
by Fathers Martin Nicolai, Michael Oleksa, and Phillip Alexie.
19
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29) THE ALASKAN ORTHODOX LITERARY RESURRECTION

This may seem like a dry re-collection of dates and events, but what I find RESOURCES ON NATIVE ALASKAN ORTHODOXY:

most incredible about these dates and names, is that from the efforts of two BOOKS
men — St. Innocent and St. Jacob — they gave Native Alaskans a literary
tradition which was embraced and further developed by the Native
St. Innocent: Apostle to America
by Paul D. Garrett - published 1979, SVS Press
Alaskans themselves. The works of Fathers Laurence Salamatov, Innocent www.svspress.com/product_info.php?products_id=3170

Shayashnikov and Zachary Bel’kov are a testament to this. There were other
Currently available from SVS Press

authors, too, such as Readers Andrei Lodochnikov and Leonty Sivtsov who Alaskan Missionary Spirituality

produced ecclesiastical and popular works in Aleut. The Aleut, Yup’ik,

by Fr. Michael Oleksa - published 1987, Paulist Press

Tlingit and other peoples paid for the printing of their own texts, and it was
www.amazon.com/dp/0809103869/

they who maintained the oral tradition of their church hymns.

Out of print, used copies available online.

It was also the native peoples themselves who kept the Orthodox flame
Orthodox Alaska: A Theology of Mission

alive in the face of American assimilationist pressure in the 20th century.

by Fr. Michael Oleksa - published 1992, SVS Press
www.svspress.com/product_info.php?products_id=200
Much like Sts. Cyril and Methodius, the work of Sts. Innocent and Jacob Currently available from SVS Press.

planted the seeds of an authentically local Orthodox Church. When Journals of the Priest Ioann Veniaminov in Alaska, 1826 to 1836
misguided people speak of Christianity as a foreign culture-destroying by St. Innocent (Veniaminov), tr. Jerome Kisslinger - published 1993, Univ. of Alaska Press

element, etc., this is completely false in the context of Alaskan Orthodoxy.

www.uaf.edu/uapress/book/displaysingle.html?id=7

Such popular thinking in the media is at best a misguided perception;

Currently available from Univ. of Alaska Press

at worst, it’s an outright lie. The Orthodox Church in Alaska — its faithful,
Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity Through Two Centuries

its priests, its stewards — is an organic, integral part of the fabric of the
by Sergei Kan - published 1999, University of Washington Press
www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/KANMEM.html
First-Nations, the native peoples, and of all peoples of Alaska. Currently available from Univ. of Washington Press.

Please pray to God for His continued blessing to be upon this project. Through Orthodox Eyes: Russian Missionary Narratives of Travels to the Dena’ina and Ahtna,
Please pray for the eternal salvation of our souls, and for all Orthodox 1850s-1930s

Christians in Alaska.
by Andrei A. Znamenski - published 2003, University of Alaska Press
www.uaf.edu/uapress/book/displaysingle.html?id=13

RTE: Amen.
Currently available from Univ. of Alaska Press.

From Mask to Icon: Transformation in the Arctic

by S.A. Mousalimas - published 2004, Holy Cross Orthodox Press
www.store.holycrossbookstore.com/1885652631.html
Currently available from Holy Cross Orthodox Bookstore.

WEBSITES:

Russian Orthodox Diocese of Alaska: www.dioceseofalaska.org

Alaskan Orthodox Texts – Aleut, Alutiiq, Tlingit, Yup’ik: www.asna.ca/alaska

The North Star - official publication of the Diocese of Alaska:

www.oca.org/DOC-PUB-NS.asp?SearchYear=&SID=34

St. Herman Theological Seminary: www.sthermanseminary.org

Outreach Alaska: www.outreachalaska.org

Rossia Inc. - Russian Orthodox Sacred Sites in Alaska: www.rossialaska.org

The Russian Church & Native Alaskan Cultures: www.loc.gov/exhibits/russian

20 21
(U.S. Library of Congress exhibit)
 THE ANGE L S OF AKUN
W hen Archbishop Innocent Veniaminov’s future biographer, Ivan
Bursakov, lamented the loss of the hierarch’s archives in a fire at the
Yakutsk monastery, the archbishop replied, “At any rate, they would have all
burned with the earth at the apocalypse.” The disappointed Bursakov was
not put off, however, and by the end of the 19th century had collected copies
of the archbishop’s letters and writings totaling nearly three thousand
pages, to which we owe the following remarkable account.
St. Innocent of Moscow and Alaska (1797-1879) born Ivan (John) Popov-
Veniaminov in Irkutsk, Russia, spent over thirty years in Alaska, first as a
missionary priest and later as Bishop of Kamchatka and the Kuril and
Aleutian Islands. In 1867 he was named Metropolitan of Moscow, and
served as the first hierarch of the Russian Church until his repose. Buried in
Holy Dormition Cathedral at Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra near Moscow,
he was canonized a saint in 1977 by the Moscow Patriarchate.
Rightly, St. Innocent is often called a “renaissance man.” A zealous and
effective missionary, he was also an able scholar, linguist, and administra-
tor. He trained missionary-priests, organized and taught in primary and
secondary schools, learned several languages and six Alaskan dialects, and
(at first together with his translator, Ivan Pan’kov, an Aleut chief) devised
alphabets, dictionaries, and grammars to translate the Holy Scriptures
and church services, that native peoples might read and write their own
languages. One of Alaska’s first ethnographers and naturalists, his extensive
cultural, geographical, botanical, and zoological observations, as well as his
22
major pastoral works are still in print.1 A married priest with six children,
he was also an accomplished woodworker who crafted furniture, clocks, and
hand and barrel organs, and aided in the construction of several churches,
including St. Michael’s Cathedral in Sitka. In his early years as bishop, he
was one of only four priests ministering to ten thousand Orthodox
Christians in the Alaskan territories.
His three decades as an Alaskan missionary were extraordinary. In one
fourteen-month period of visits to outlying parishes, he covered almost fif-
teen thousand miles on foot and horseback, by boat, dogsled, reindeer and
sleigh, frequently spending nights in the open in below-zero temperatures,
lacking even the fuel to heat his food. As one writer notes, “His physical
exploits alone, in traveling through the territories of his diocese by dog-sled
across great expanses or in a one-man kayak through rough freezing waters,
reveal something of his faith, courage, and inner stamina.”
One of the most striking events of his early years as a young missionary
priest was Fr. John’s astonishing meeting with an elderly Aleut on a mis-
sionary journey to the island of Akun. Many of Akun’s villagers had been
baptized thirty years earlier by Hieromonk Makary, one of the original
Valaam Monastery monk-missionaries. Hindered, however, as Fr. John
explains, by the lack of a fluent translator, Fr. Makary had only given a
1 Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska Region and An Indication of the Pathway Into the Kingdom of
Heaven remain in print in English. Besides Fr. John’s Full Orthodox Catechism in the Aleut language and
translation of the Gospel, his Aleut Grammar and Aleut-Russian Vocabulary were awarded a prize by the
Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences in 1836.
23
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
rudimentary explanation of the faith, and reposed before he could return.
When Fr. John arrived in 1828 he was told of a series of miraculous events
that had sustained the faith of these local Christians, which he reported first
to his archbishop, Michael of Irkutsk2, and later, in a less formal retelling to
the Holy Synod.3 Here begins his report to the Synod:
In April 1828, during Great Lent, I went for the first time to the island of
Akun4 to visit the Aleuts. Approaching the island, I saw them all standing on
the beach, dressed as if for a celebration, and when I stepped ashore, they
joyfully rushed to greet me. When I asked why they were so festively
dressed, they answered, “Because we knew that you had set out and would
arrive today, we, in great joy, have come down to the shore to meet you.”
“Who told you that I would come today, and how do you know that I am Fr.
John?” “Our shaman (sorcerer), old Ivan Smirennikov, told us, and
described you just as we see you now.”
I found this rather strange and astonishing, but I didn’t give their words
much attention and set about instructing them on how to prepare for Holy
Communion. The old shaman, too, came to me, expressing his desire to
prepare for Communion. He attended the services very diligently, but I still
did not give him any special attention, and after serving him the Holy
Mysteries, let him go. However, to my great surprise, after taking Holy
Communion, he went to his toion [chief] and expressed his dissatisfaction
with me because I hadn’t asked him at confession why the Aleuts call him a
shaman. He found it very unpleasant to be called “shaman” by his own
people, whereas in fact he was not. The toion informed me of old
Smirennikov’s discontent, and I immediately sent for him, that we might
clarify the situation.
Those I had sent for him were still on the way when they met Smirennikov
coming towards them. He said, “I know that the priest Father John is
2 Archbishop Michael II (Byrudov) of Irkutsk. Consecrated archbishop on 22 August 1826, reposed 5 June
1830.
3 There are several versions of this incident by Fr. John: the letter written in June, 1828 to Archbishop
Michael of Irkutsk, a Tobolsk copy of which was translated into English by Lydia T. Black; a later and less
formal report to the Synod (quoted at length in the present article) and possibly delivered verbally on his
visit to St. Petersburg in 1839; and a version of the letter to the archbishop quoted in Barsukov’s Life (see
below), identical to the Tobolsk copy translated by L. T. Black but with small additions that do not appear
in other copies. These additions are noted in this article’s footnotes.
4 According to Fr. John’s diary, he arrived on Akun on 12 April (Julian Calendar) 1828, leaving on 24 April.
His talk with Smirennikov was on the evening of 23 April.
THE ANGELS OF AKUN
calling me, and I am coming to him.” I began to question him in detail about
his life, and when I asked if he could read, he answered that, although he
could not, he knew the prayers and the Gospels. I then asked him to explain
how he knew me, how he had been able to describe my appearance to his
people, and how he had learned that on a certain day I was to come to teach
them to pray. The old man answered that two friends had told him about it.
“Who are these two friends of yours?” I asked. “They are white people,” the
old man replied. “They also told me that in the future you will send your
family home by the coast, and you yourself shall sail by water to the great
man (the Tsar) and speak with him.5 ” “Where are these friends of yours,
the white people, and what are they like?” I asked him. “They live nearby in
the mountains and they visit me every day.” “And when did they first come
to you?” In reply, he told me a wonderful story.
Soon after he was baptized by Hieromonk Makary, there appeared to him,
unseen by anyone else, first one spirit, and then a second, in human form,
white-faced and clothed in white garments that, according to his descrip-
tion, looked like deacon’s vestments trimmed with rose-colored bands. They
told him that God had sent them to instruct, teach, and protect him.
For thirty years, they had appeared to him almost daily in the daytime or
late afternoon, but never at night. They instructed him in Christian teaching
and in the mysteries of the Faith; also, they rendered him help in illnesses,
and at his request, others (though rarely)6. They always responded to his
appeals saying, “We will ask God and if He gives his blessing, we will fulfill
this.” Sometimes they informed him of what was happening in other places;
very seldom they told him the future, and always with the remark, “If God
wills to disclose it,” meaning that they did this not through their own power,
but by the power of God Almighty.
Although the teaching of these spirits seemed to be the doctrine of the
Orthodox Church, I, knowing that the demons also believe and tremble,
wondered if this wasn’t a shrewd and subtle trap of the evil one, and asked
5 Ten years later, in 1838, Fr. John did indeed send his family home across the Bering Sea, up the coast to
Okhotsk, then overland to Irkutsk. In November of 1838 to June 1839, Fr. John himself embarked on a voy-
age half-way around the world, sailing from Sitka to St. Petersburg around the Cape of Good Hope on the
Russian ship Nicholas I, in order to report directly to the Synod and the Russian government about condi-
tions in Russian Alaska. After the sudden death of his wife Catherine, Fr. John made arrangements for his
children in Irkutsk, and the following year took monastic vows with the name Innocent. It was as
Archimandrite Innocent that he was granted an audience with Tsar Nicholas I (as Smirennikov had proph-
esied), and at the Tsar’s expressed wish was consecrated bishop.
6 In an almost identical version of the letter, published in Barsukov’s Life, four years after St. Innocent’s
repose, the angels rendered assistance “in case of illness or extreme lack of food.”
25
 THE ANGELS OF AKUN

him how the spirits taught him to pray – to themselves or to God, and how
they taught him to live with others. He replied that they taught him to pray
with the spirit and the heart and sometimes prayed with him for a long time.
They taught him to practice all of the Christian virtues (which he described
to me in detail), and that above all, they advised to observe faithfulness and
purity, both within and outside of marriage. Moreover, they taught him
virtuous behavior and rituals, such as how to make the sign of the Cross,
that we should never begin to do anything without asking God’s blessing,
that we should not eat early in the morning, that many families should not
live together, and the like.7
Then I asked if they had appeared to him that same day after Communion,
and if they had told him to heed what I said. He answered that they had
appeared both after confession and after Communion, saying that he should
not tell the sins he had already confessed to anyone else, that right after
Communion he should not eat foods rich in fat, and that he should attend to
my teaching. They had even appeared to him that day on the way to me and
told him why I was calling him, and that he should tell me everything with-
out fear because nothing bad would befall him.
Then I inquired what he felt when they appeared to him – joy or sorrow?
In their presence, he said, he felt pangs of conscience if he had done some-
thing wrong, but at other times he did not feel any fear. As many people
considered him a shaman, and he was unwilling to be thus treated, he
repeatedly asked them to depart from him. However, the spirits’ reply was
that they were not demons and were not allowed to leave him. When he
asked why they never appeared to other people, they said that such was the
command they had been given.
To make certain that his guides had indeed appeared, I asked him if I
could possibly see and speak with them. He answered that he didn’t know
and would have to ask them. Indeed, he returned within an hour saying that
they had replied, “What more does he want to know about us? Does he still
consider us to be demons? All right, let him see us and talk to us if he wishes.”
They then said something favorable about me, but so that it will not be taken
as vanity on my part, I will keep silent about this.
Then something inexplicable happened inside of me. I was seized with a
feeling of fear and overwhelming humility. “Indeed,” I thought, “What if I

7 In Barsukov’s version is added, “… not to eat fish and animals that have just been killed and are still warm
and not to eat some birds and animal-plants [zoophytes, such as jellyfish and sea anemones –ed.] at all, etc.”

27
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)

see these angels, and they confirm all that the old man has said? How can I
appear before them? Sinful that I am, I am unworthy of speaking to them,
and it would be pride and presumption on my part if I dared to go to them.
Meeting angels might make me too proud of my faith, or think too highly of
myself.” So I, the unworthy one, finally decided not to go to them. I gave
some preliminary instructions as to these events, both to Smirennikov and
to his Aleut people, and told them that they should no longer call
Smirennikov a shaman.”8
In his more formal letter to Archbishop Michael, Fr. John also describes
two miracles that happened through the prayers of Smirennikov and an
instance of foreknowledge:

1. The wife of the toion of the village Artelnovskoye, one Fedor Zhirov,
on October of 1825 was caught in a fox trap, and her leg was badly
hurt. There were no means to help her, and she was expected to die
momentarily. The trap hit her at the kneecap by all three iron teeth,
about two vershok [1.75 inches] in length. Her kinsmen secretly
asked the said old man Smirennikov to cure her. After thinking the
matter over, he said that the patient will be well by morning. And,
indeed, the woman rose in the morning from her deathbed, and is
even now entirely well, not suffering any pain.

2. In the winter of the same year, 1825, the inhabitants of Akun suffered
great lack of food, and some of them asked Smirennikov to pray for a
whale to be washed ashore. After a short time the old man instructed
the people to go to a certain place, where they indeed found a fresh
whale carcass – precisely in the spot designated.

3. Last fall I planned to visit Akun, but because of the arrival of state
ships from Russia, I had to postpone the trip. Yet, the Akun people

8 Fr. John’s instructions to Smirennikov are given at slightly greater length in the Tobolsk copy of Fr. John’s
formal letter to Archbishop Michael of Irkutsk: …Therefore, in order not to weaken (among the people) the
faith and hope in the One Omniscient God, I, until I receive instruction from Your Grace, determined to ren-
der the following decision: I see that the spirits which appear to thee are not demons and therefore I instruct
thee to listen to their teachings and instructions, as long as these do not contradict the teachings I deliver in
the assembly; just tell those who ask your advice about the future and request your help to address them-
selves directly to God, as He is common Father to all. I do not forbid thee to cure the sick, but ask thee to
tell those thou curest that thou doest so not by thy own powers, but by the power of God and to instruct them
to pray diligently and thank the Sole God. I do not forbid thee to teach either, but only instruct thee to con-
fine this teaching to the minors. [At this point, Barsukov’s version adds, ‘…As for the future, do not say a
word about it to anyone, even to me.’] I told the other Aleuts who were present not to call him a Shaman,
not to ask him for favors, but to ask God.”

28
 THE ANGELS OF AKUN

sent an escort and all expected my arrival. Only Smirennikov boldly

asserted that I would not come that fall, but should be expected next
spring. And so it happened, contrary winds did not permit my depar-
ture, then the cold weather set in, and I was forced to delay my visit
until spring.

There are many additional instances which prove his gift of clairvoyance,
but I shall omit them here.
Fr. John continues his evaluation, “It is possible to suppose that this man
has heard from me or from someone else the teaching of our faith that he
recounted, and only for effect or out of vanity invented the appearance of the
spirits. Yet, I must state that Aleuts do not fall prey to pride, vanity, and
empty bragging….”
After enumerating scriptural events he had left out of his preaching,
“for the sake of brevity and to avoid complications,” Fr. John comments that
Smirennikov, “told me these stories in detail… He himself is illiterate and
does not know any Russian; therefore he could not have read about it… and
there is no one from whom Smirennikov could have learned in the matters
of Church teaching… [Ivan Pan’kov, as the villagers witnessed, had never
spoken to him, and hearing others call him a shaman, discouraged them
from doing so also.] Moreover, the freedom, fearlessness and even pleasure
of his discourse, and above all his clean manner of life, convinced me and
confirmed me in the conviction that the spirits which appear to this old man
(if they appear) are not demons. Demons may sometimes assume the image
of Angels of Light, but never for the purpose of instruction, teaching and sal-
vation of human beings, but always for their perdition. As the tree of evil
cannot bear the fruit of good, these spirits must be the servants sent to those
who seek salvation.”
Fr. John again explains to the archbishop why he himself did not dare to
go to see the bright spirits who appeared to Smirennikov, “ …There was no
need for me to meet them. Why should I want to see them personally when
their teaching is Christian teaching? Out of curiosity, to learn who they are?”
For this I should ask the blessing of my Archbishop, to avoid the pitfall of
error, should I meet those spirits...”
He ends his letter to the Archbishop with the words: “In reporting to you,
Your Grace, I deemed it necessary to ask Ivan Pan’kov, who translated my
words and those of …Smirennikov, to sign this statement in witness of the

31
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)

truth of my story and the correctness of his translation. I also requested him
to keep this matter secret for the time being. I beg Your Grace to let me
know if my decision was right, and if there is any need for me to meet with
the spirits which appear to the old man, and if so, what precautions I should
take. If I erred, forgive me.9

Signed: Your Grace’s Priest John Veniaminov, of the Church of Ascension

in Unalashka, June 1828

Signed: below by interpreter Pan’kov as follows:

To the truth of the words of Priest John Veniaminov and the accuracy of
translation of the words of the old man Ivan Smirennikov attests Tigal’da
Toion Ivan Pan’kov

True copy of the original, Tobol’sk, 5 November 1829

Fr. John’s concern about the reception of the report if it were to be gen-
erally known is reflected in an unpublished letter to Archbishop Michael on
July 20, 1828, “…The description of my talk with the Aleut Smirennikov
enclosed here is not an official report. I might have never reported this
event that seems so strange to me if I didn’t rely completely upon your
fatherly mercy to me. Reading the account, someone may think that, at the
least, I am not alien to superstition and empty holiness. But I have the
honour of reporting to your Eminence that everything put down here is
true, and I obediently ask your forgiveness if I was not right in doing this…10
In his reply to Fr. John,11 Archbishop Michael commends his reasoning,
but nevertheless blesses him to meet the mysterious heaven-dwellers:
…True, this event is most rare and unheard of in our times. Therefore
I thought it necessary to impart it, if not to all of my acquaintances,
9 Barsukov’s version adds: “Your Eminence, merciful Archpastor! Having put down the facts you see above,
I beg you to give me your …archpastoral instruction and permission: if I was right in this matter and, if I can
and need, if the old man is still alive, to meet and talk with the spirits that appear to him and if so, what pre-
cautions I should take.”

10 Quoted as an unpublished letter in Tom II, Prilozheniye k rabote: “Svyatitel Moskovskii Innokentii
Veniaminov i ego epistolyarnoye naslediye...” (Volume II. Supplement to the Thesis, “Holy Hierarch
Innocent Veniaminov (1797-1879) and his Epistolatory Heritage, a course paper by fourth year student Job
Zamborsky, Russian Church History Department, Leningrad Orthodox Spiritual Academy (1980). (From
the collection of the Moscow Patriarchal Synodal Library, Andreevsky Monastery, Moscow.)

11 Quoted in Met. Vladimir of Tashkent and Central Asia. (see footnote 4)

32
 THE ANGELS OF AKUN

to those distinguished in mind and heart, in whom it evoked a

particular zeal to further hear any extraordinary event that may
befall your Smirennikov during this year, as well as in the future…

I will tell you, without flattery either to your face or behind your back,
that you, not allowing curiosity to prevail over your faith, are to be
more commended than all those who, like the Holy Apostle Thomas,
subject the objects of faith to sensible perception. Nevertheless, as
Thomas’ disbelief is called good in our church hymns, my desire is,
as well as many others’, that for the sake of yet greater glory of our
righteous faith, you should resolve (provided that old Smirennikov is
still alive) to meet and speak with the spirits that appear to him.
No greater caution is required than your pure faith and the prayer
of the heart: only keep in mind the Lord’s Prayer during this meeting,
and say it together with the spirits. As for your conversation with
them, it should be solely concerned with the future of your parish-
ioners, the new Aleut converts. Whatever good you desire for them,
ask this of God. For the clever, this will suffice.

Inform me by letter at a time convenient to yourself, or in person

at our future meeting, of whatever God, through the gift of His Christ,
grants you to learn. Invoking God’s blessing upon you, I ever remain,
your well-wishing servant.

+Michael, Archbishop of Irkutsk

But the angels sent to the old Aleut did not reveal themselves to human
curiosity, however pious. In his next visit to the island of Akun, Fr. John
learned that Smirennikov had reposed.
A final fitting comment on the occurrence comes from an acquaintance of
St. Innocent, Andrew Muravev: “One scarcely knows at which to be amazed –
the miraculous gifts of the old Aleut or the humility of the missionary who
in patience is denied a singular opportunity to satisfy his obviously holy
curiosity in such an unusual matter, simply in order not to transgress the
commandment of obedience. The old man’s premature death, however,

35
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29) THE ANGELS OF AKUN

vindicated his actions by showing clearly that these revelations had been SOURCES
necessary for himself, his family, and his people only for as long as the
1. With the exception of Fr. John’s letter to Archbishop Michael of Irkutsk
Aleutian Islands remained spiritually neglected. Now, however, by the
(see below), the translations in this article are by Inna Belov and M.
grace of God, people have come to work towards their salvation, and the
Nectaria McLees. The report to the Synod and Archbishop Michael’s
heavenly guides concealed themselves once again.” Nevertheless, “It is
written answer to Fr. John’s letter was translated from: Vladimir,
comforting to read about such miraculous Divine Providence towards…
Metropolitan of Tashkent and Central Asia, Slova v dni pamyati osobo
sons of Adam who, though forgotten by the world, were not forgotten by
pochitayemikh svyatikh (Words on the Feast Days of Particularly
Providence, but because human means were lacking, were fed through the
Venerated Saints, Book III ). In Russian:
faith of one of their elders upon the saving faith.”12
http://www.pravoslavie.uz/Vladika/Books/Slovo3/18Innokentiy.htm

2. “Letter from Rev. Priest John Veniaminov to Archbishop Michael of

Irkutsk,” 5 November, 1829, translated by Lydia T. Black in “Ivan
Pankor, Architect of Aleut Literacy,” Orthodox Alaska, #8, 1978. With
grateful acknowledgement to Professor Black for permission to cite her
translation of the letter throughout this article (also reprinted in
Alaskan Missionary Spirituality, Paulist Press, 1987). [Note from RtE
Editor: The original letter to Archbishop Michael II of Irkutsk was writ-
ten in June of 1828, two months after the incident. The date of 5
November, 1829 assigned to the letter in Alaskan Missionary
Spirituality refers to the date the letter was hand-copied in Tobolsk.]

4. Details of the letter to Archbishop Michael of Irkutsk as published in

Ivan Barsukov’s initial biography: Innokentii, mitropolit Moskovskii i
Kolomenskii, po ego sochineniyam, pis’mam i rasskazam sovremen-
nikov (Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna. His Writings,
Letters and Stories Told by his Contemporaries.) Moscow, Synodal
Printing House, 1883. (From the collection of the Moscow Patriarchal
Synodal Library, Andreevsky Monastery, Moscow, Russia.)

5. Fr. John’s unpublished letter to Archbishop Michael II of Irkutsk on

July 20, 1828 was translated from: Zamorsky, Job, Tom II, Prilozheniye
k rabote: “Svyatitel Moskovskii Innokentii Veniaminov i ego epistol-
yarnoye naslediye...” (Volume II. Supplement to the Thesis, Holy
Hierarch Innocent Veniaminov (1797-1879) and his Epistolatory
Heritage, by Job Zamborsky, Leningrad Orthodox Spiritual Academy,
1980. (From the collection of the Moscow Patriarchal Synodal Library,
Andreevsky Monastery, Moscow.)
12 Quoted in Garrett, Paul D. St. Innocent, Apostle to America., SVS Press, Crestwood, N.Y., 1979, pg. 85

36 37
 AKUN DIARY

12. Thurs. morn. At 9 o’clock, setting out in a three-holed baidarka

[kayak], accompanied by four smaller double-holed –
crossed three straits between the islands, at 8 o’clock
arrived safely at the village Artelenovskoye on Akun
Island, lying not less than 120 versts north-east of
Unalashka.X Beyond the islands of Unalgoi and
Akustan, leaving the former behind on the right and
the latter on the left,
I saw neither big waves nor opposing currents,
only small ones from a light head wind.

13 Fri. 10, 11 The inhabitants of all three villages of Akun

and 12 had come together and were waiting for me. I
gathered them in the tent to instruct them at
length through my translator Ivan Pan’kovXX –

NORTHERN
the toion of the island of Tigalda.

CLIMES:
In the afternoon I visited people’s homes,
finding them rather clean.

FR. JOHN
14 Sat. Chrismated 46 people of both genders and
different ages,
heard confessions of 53 people from the

VENIAMINOV’S
other two villages,
leaving the inhabitants of this village to confess on

AKUN DIARY
my way back; as for children under 9, I only
instructed them.

15 Sun. 6. 7. After reading the rule, I served Liturgy in the tent

and gave Communion to everyone, including
Excerpts from Fr. John’s pastoral visit to 15 minors.
Akun, Tigalda, Avotonok, and Akutan Islands

X Judging from when the baidarka left, it can cover 10 versts [about 10 kilometers] per hour and even
more with a favorable current.

XX He is a type of administrator here.

38 39
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29) AKUN DIARY

At 8 o’clock I set out in an 8-oar baidarka, and (except 2 couples for whom it was
in bright, quiet weather and in 4.5 hours arrived impossibleXX) married.
safely at the island of Tigalda, a village lying
in the north-east of the island, 18 Wed. morn At 5 o’clock set out with a quiet 2 degrees
at a distance of not less than 65 versts from the afternoon wind from of frost
main village of Akun. Crossed three windy Tigalda back to Akun. Arrived at
straits (especially the last one), without 10 o’clock at Avatonok Island, lying
the slightest trouble close to Akun and Tigalda. Came ashore
because the sea was perfectly quiet and still. near a village in the north, having safely
sailed at least 45 versts along the Derben Strait.
16 Mon. 8, 9 Gathering all the local people and 1.5 degrees
and 10 those from theisland of Umnaka XXX of frost in the 11, 12 Gathering the local people in the tent,
(about 15 versts from here) into the morning. I instructed them at length through the same
tent, I instructed them at length translator, Pan’kov, in the afternoon chrismated
through the same translator, Pan’kov – 16 people and served 5 marriages. After the vigil
the toion. heard 14 confessions and instructed the minors
instead of confessing.
11. 12. Chrismated 37 people of both genders and
different ages. 19 Thurs. 6, 7 After reading the rule, I served Liturgy 1.5 degrees
in the tent, gaveHoly Communion of frost
5 - 10 Served vespers and matins in the stockade,X to all who had confessed and also
hearing confessions of 43 people… and instructing the minors – 30 people.
the minors in lieu of confession.
Now all of the local people have been chrismated,
17 Tues. 9, 10 After reading the rule I served Liturgy 2 degrees have confessed, received the Holy Mysteries, and
in the tent and gave of frost been married.
Communion to those who confessed
and the minors – 63 people. At 8 o’clock set out to Akun Found
against a quiet wind a baidarka
5. Served 9 marriages and visited people’s here that
rather clean homes. across Avataninsky strait…. had come
Was in a no small danger the day
At this time, the local people have all been before to
chrismated, confessed, received the Holy Mysteries when water began pouring into pick me up.
the baidarka; arrived at 11 back
XXX They have moved here this spring because life there was difficult.
XX One because he was unwilling to take a blind wife with her children, and the other because his wife
X Strong north wind did not allow us to put up tents. was ill. [Trans. note: The first was possibly living with the woman, but unwilling to wed.]

40 41
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29) AKUN DIARY

at the main village of Akun, who is considered to be a sorcerer here:

Artelenovskoye.
20 Fri. Due to a strong wind it was impossible
to put up a tent.
21 Sat. 6, 7 Served the vigil, listened to confessions
8, 9 of 29 local people
22 Sun. 7, 8, 9 After reading the rule I served Liturgy
in the tent and gave Communion to those
who had confessed and the minors.
Afterwards served a moleben to
St. Alexandra instead of yesterday because
the wind didn’t allow tents to be put up.
11, 12 Served 12 marriages
Now all the local people have been anointed,
have confessed, received the Holy Mysteries and
been married (except one old woman who
wasn’t here).
but I found quite the contrary. (And to
prove this I enclose my talk with him).
24. Tues. morn. At 5 o’clock I set out in a 16-oar canoe which
had been sent
from the harbor to pick me up, stopping on
the way at the island of Akutan, in Golovskoye,
a village in the north. There are only 5 people
living here.
Translated by Inna Belov and M. Nectaria McLees from the diary of Fr.
John Venaiminov, in Volume II. Supplement to the Thesis, “Holy Hierarch
Innocent Veniaminov (1797-1879) and his Epistolatory Heritage” by Job
Zamborsky, Leningrad Orthodox Spiritual Academy (1980). (From the
collection of the Moscow Patriarchal Synodal Library, Andreevsky
Monastery, Moscow.)

23 Fri. Wanted to visit and instruct the

above-mentioned old woman
in a village about 10 versts from here,
when a sudden illness in translator Pan’kov’s
foot prevented this. The Aleuts willingly
volunteered to bring her here.

5 They brought her, and after a short instructionX

I heard her confession and served her Communion.

In the evening I had a talk with one of

the local old men called Ivan Smirennikov

X I could hardly give her the necessary knowledge because of her very old age.

42 43
 W hen C.S. Lewis was president of the Socratic Club at Oxford University
in the 1940s and 1950s, he liked to feature weekly discussions on
“repellent doctrines.” By this, he meant Christian teachings that were hard
for modern people to swallow—on topics like hierarchy, miracles, or pain.
The Socratic Club was an open forum for discussing intellectual difficulties
related to the faith. Under Lewis, it became one of the best-attended societies
in Oxford. It welcomed agnostics and nonbelievers, which was apt considering
that Lewis (1898-1963) once passed through the grip of atheism before find-
ing the robust and articulate Christian faith that would make him one of
the best-selling religious authors of the twentieth century. Lewis came
to realize that many of the doctrines that once repelled him in fact conveyed
life-giving truths. These truths, he thought, were the ones modern people

SHINE AS
most needed to know but were least likely to recognize. “If our religion is
something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements
in it which seem puzzling or repellent,” he wrote. “The new truth which

THE SUN:
you do not know and which you need must, in the very nature of things,
be hidden precisely in the doctrines you least like and least understand.”1

C.S. LEWIS AND

Any list of repellent doctrines, in Lewis’s day or in ours, would include the
doctrine of deification. Largely unknown to modern Christians, deification
(or theosis) has been described by Professor Georgios Mantzaridis of

THE DOCTRINE
the University of Thessalonki as the deepest longing of man and the
ultimate goal of existence, while Fr. Kiprian Kern calls it the religious
ideal of Eastern Orthodoxy.2 Deification teaches that salvation is not just an

OF DEIFICATION
Friend of Road to Emmaus, Chris Jensen, first presented this luminous essay at the 2005
C.S. Lewis Summer Institute at Oxford University. We are very pleased to offer it here,
adapted for our readers as Part II of “The Orthodox Worldview and C.S. Lewis.”
It is a serious thing to live in a society of
possible gods and goddesses.
from The Weight of Glory
intellectual consent to an idea, not just an external or ethical imitation of
Christ. Neither is it a solitary path to individual bliss. Rather, deification
expresses human salvation as an inward process of transformation experi-
enced within the life of the Church and leading to mystical union with God.
As St. Basil put it, man is nothing less than a creature that has received the
order to become god.
This might sound puzzling or even heretical to some, but it certainly didn’t
to C.S. Lewis — at least not to the Lewis of the 1940s and beyond when he
was leading the Socratic Club and producing many of his greatest writings
in which deification shines forth as one of his central convictions.
In Mere Christianity, for example, he argues that the whole purpose of
Christianity is to turn people into what he variously calls “new men,” “little
Christs,” “Sons of God” — and “gods and goddesses.” In his wartime sermon
“The Weight of Glory,” Lewis says, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of

45
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most unin-
teresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw
it now, you would be tempted to worship.”
Lewis was a professor of medieval and renaissance literature by trade.
A self-described ordinary layman of the Anglican Church, he made no claims
to be a systematic or academic theologian. But he was a reader of immense
range and appetite who encountered the concept of deification in St.
Athanasius’s classic On the Incarnation as well as in Pseudo-Dionysius,
Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, and George Macdonald, to name a few.
In his writings, Lewis expressed the idea of deification in scriptural terms
(being “in Christ,” becoming “new creatures,” sharing in the “glory of God”)
as well as in figures (dances, fountains, marriages, winged horses, statues-
come-to-life). All attest to Lewis’s abiding belief in the transforming power of
divine love. Significantly, rather than Lewis
the scholar or rationalist, it was Lewis the
poet, Lewis the Romantic, and Lewis the
imaginative writer who was most sensitive
to this idea’s power. In this, he was kindred
to the mystical and monastic tradition of
the Christian East, where the doctrine of
deification is taught to this day and where
Chris Jensen on the ..... theology remains more poetic than propo-
sitional, more experiential than systematic.
Given the obscurity of this doctrine in
our times, perhaps it’s no surprise that scholars of C.S. Lewis have given
scant attention to the importance of deification for Lewis or to its place
within the larger constellation of his ideas including myth, longing, temp-
tation, or the sacramental life. This is unfortunate, because it is a key that
unlocks much of his life and thought. To study it not only promises to bring
us nearer to the heart of Lewis, but also to explain why many in the
Orthodox Church, including Bishop Kallistos Ware, consider him a trusted
literary companion and embrace him as an “anonymous Orthodox.”3
God In and Out
Some of the perplexity over the doctrine of deification comes from it being
confused with variations in different religions. At the outset, then,
46
SHINE AS THE SUN
it should be said that deification does not mean the actualization or realization
of a person’s latent divinity (a belief which is less Christian than monistic or
pantheistic). Nor does it mean that human beings eventually will evolve into
something essentially equal to God. Despite his poetic bent, Lewis didn’t
follow the path of Emerson or others who blurred dogmatic boundaries by
confusing God and creation or by teaching that human beings are naturally
divine. Only God is essentially perfect, immortal, transcendent, and uncre-
ated. Lewis was always clear on the difference between creature and Creator
– an irreducible ontological difference. This distinction is captured in the
memorable phrase of Rudolph Otto, a writer to whom Lewis often referred,
that God is “wholly other.”
Deification, in Orthodox Christian terms, has been described by the
patristic scholar Archbishop Basil Krivocheine as:
the state of man’s total transformation, effected by the Holy
Spirit, when man observes the commandments of God, acquires the
evangelical virtues and shares in the sufferings of Christ. The Holy
Spirit then gives man a divine intelligence and incorruptibility. Man
does not receive a new soul, but the Holy Spirit unites essentially
with the whole man, body and soul. He makes of him a son of God,
a god by adoption, though man does not cease being a man, a simple
creature, even when he clearly sees the Father. He may be called
man and god at the same time. While affirming the possibility of ...
deification even in this life ... its fullness belongs only to the
eschatological infinite ... Divinization will always remain an
awesome mystery, surpassing all human understanding and
unobserved by most people.4
Lewis’s vision of deification is consonant with this. Stressing the bound-
aries between God and creation, Lewis once said that he saw human destiny
not as the transformation into angels nor the absorption into Deity
but rather as the fulfilling of humanity, in which human beings will become
“like God ... [but] with the likeness proper to men.”5 Deified human beings
forever remain human while at the same time sharing in divine grace or
energy, like iron in the fire shares the properties of flame but doesn’t cease
to be iron. Human beings won’t melt into an impersonal God like a salt
statue tossed into the ocean, or become new and independent divine beings
47
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29) SHINE AS THE SUN

in a type of polytheistic evolution. Hence Lewis can’t be categorized with Deification as Glory
Neoplatonists, Hindus, Mormons, or any number of mystics who seemed to
Others have rejected the doctrine of deification on grounds that it is
lose sight of the essential distinction between God and humankind.
nonbiblical, such as scholars who dismiss it as a vague platonizing form of
If the doctrine of deification requires an understanding of God’s transcen-
pantheism that betrayed the original understanding of salvation in favor of
dence, it equally depends upon the notion of His immanence. This holds that
Graeco-Roman paganism.9 While it’s true that the term theosis was adopted
creation, although distinct from God, is penetrated by divine energy and
by early Christians from the lexicon of Neoplatonism, it’s also evident that it
wisdom. As Lewis once put it, in speaking of the theology of the sixteenth-
became standard in Christian theology and spirituality precisely because it
century Anglican writer Richard Hooker, “God is unspeakably transcendent;
was seen as expressing the genuine Biblical eschatological hope of personal
but also unspeakably immanent.” Centuries earlier, St. Athanasius made the
and organic union with God. This hope is that humans, in the words of
point this way: God is in everything through His love, but outside of every-
2 Peter 1:4, could become partakers of the divine nature. The theme is basic
thing by His nature. We’re told by Lewis’s biographer that the most precious
to the Gospel of John with its motif of abiding or dwelling, a book where
moments in life to Lewis were when he was aware of the spiritual quality of
we find Jesus quoting Psalm 82 (“I said, You are gods...”). Further, the
material things, of the “infusion of the supernatural into the workaday
epistles of St. Paul teem with a mystical vision of life in Christ, of renewal in
world.”6 An analogy to this is found in Lewis’s land of Narnia, where trees
the likeness of God, and of transformation into the
dance, rivers teem with nymphs, birds carry messages, and stars are glitter-
image of God. In fact, Lewis tells us that it was the
ing people with long hair like burning silver. Narnia’s enchantment suggests
very language of Scripture that forced him to take
a point about our world that Lewis made later in his book Letters to
seriously the idea of deification.
Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. “All is holy and ‘big with God’ ... and every bush
He explains this in his 1941 sermon, “The Weight
(could we but perceive it) a Burning Bush.”7 Some have suggested that
of Glory,” which was preached to one of the largest
because this sort of understanding of God’s immanence has been neglected
modern crowds ever to assemble at the Church of
in much modern theology, deification has fallen into the background.
St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford. In the address,
But not so in Lewis. In Mere Christianity, Lewis speaks of humans
he equates salvation with the Biblical term glory.
making direct contact with the uncreated spiritual life of God (which he
This word, significantly, often is used in the patris-
terms Zoe, as opposed to the created and natural life, Bios). This divine and
tic tradition to denote deification. For example,
eternal life is how believers share in the transforming power of Christ.
St. Maximus the Confessor defined deification as the work of divine grace by
Lewis calls it a communicable energy that can be spread into the depths of
which human nature is so transformed that it “shines forth with a supernat-
a person. Importantly, instead of seeing divine grace as something external
ural light and is transported above its own limits by a superabundance of
like paint that is applied to a person’s surface, Lewis says it’s like “a dye or
glory.”10 In Lewis’s sermon — its title alludes to 2 Cor. 4:17-18 — he says that
stain that which soaks right through.” Its goal is not to produce better
at first he failed to find much immediate appeal in the glory imagery of white
human beings, but to generate a new kind of creature altogether.8 This line
robes, thrones, or splendor like the sun and stars, all of which he found in
of thought suggests that Lewis grasped the distinction made in the
the writings of the New Testament and other early Christian sources. In this
Christian East since the time of St. Basil between God’s essence,
sense, deification was initially repellent to Lewis. He was put off by the
which remains beyond human reach or comprehension, and God’s energies
term’s twin connotations of fame and luminosity. If glory meant fame, he
(variously known as grace, providence, love, glory, and light) which allow
observed, this seemed to be a competitive passion or a desire to be better
one to make direct contact with God.
known than others. And if it meant luminosity, “Who wishes to become a
kind of living electric light bulb?”11 To him, the first seemed wicked and the

48 49
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
second ridiculous. Misgivings aside, Lewis eventually came to understand the
imagery and to believe that deification did indeed carry both connotations —
luminosity in the sense of a glorious transformation of human persons by
divine grace into new creatures, and fame in the sense of a personal
encounter with God in which approbation and acceptance were the blessed
hallmarks.
One of Lewis’s favorite ways to describe this divine acceptance was
through the image of the dance, a figure that hints at heaven’s order and
sanctity as well as its frolic and festivity. Lewis claimed that one of the most
important differences between Christianity and all other religions is
that the Trinitarian God is not a static thing, not even a single person,
but “a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life … Almost, if you will not think me
irreverent, a kind of dance.”12 Such an analogy calls to mind early theolo-
gians who described the dynamic exchange of love in God as perichoresis
(meaning a dance or indwelling, from which we get our word choreography).
As John Meyendorff has explained, “Deification
or theosis of the Greek fathers is an acceptance
of human persons within a divine life, which
already is itself a fellowship of love between
three co-eternal Persons, welcoming humanity
within their mutuality.”13 Such divine welcome is
what Lewis has in mind when he says that,
“Some day, God willing, we shall get in.”14
The sermon is remarkable, too, for its
presentation of Lewis’s cherished theory of Joy
or Sehnsucht (also known as longing, desire,
or nostalgia). The importance of this theory for Lewis can hardly be
overstated. “In a sense,” he wrote in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy,
“the central story of my life is about nothing else.”15 The theory holds that
human beings are conscious of a desire or longing that no natural happiness
will satisfy. Joy, then, is the fleeting, sweetly painful experience of longing
for divine or numinous beauty — an elusive experience which often departs
as quickly as it arrives. From his youth, Lewis had many experiences like
this and later read about them in writers like Richard Hooker. According to
Lewis, these longings are often evoked by nostalgic memories, encounters
with nature, or certain books or music. All of these are merely vehicles of
something transcendent; the danger is that human beings will errantly seek
50
SHINE AS THE SUN
a sort of infinite satisfaction in such finite things: “They are not the thing
itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a
tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”16
Ideally, such experiences will keep us seeking something more, like “some
vague picnicker’s hankering for a ‘better’ place.”17
The doctrine of deification is the capstone to Lewis’s theory of Joy insofar
as it offers an explanation of how that old ache of longing will be filled:
“There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.”18 In The
Problem of Pain, Lewis wrote that our destiny in life is either to be like God
— or to be miserable. There is no middle way. “If we will not learn to eat the
only food that the universe grows ... then we must starve eternally.”19
In describing this longing, he says,
We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is
bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into
words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive
it into ourselves, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air
and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves —
that, though we cannot, yet these projections can enjoy the beauty,
grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets
tell us such lovely falsehoods ... We cannot mingle with the splendors
we see ... [But] some day, God willing, we shall get in.20
Deification, then, is bound up with Lewis’s abiding appreciation of myth
and poetry. Although Lewis’s love for myth is most often remembered in
terms of how he saw pagan myths prefiguring the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ (e.g., Balder, Adonis, or Bacchus, the myths which later became
“fact” in the Second Person of the Trinity), it’s equally true that Lewis saw in
mythology a type of our resurrected life as well. Human participation in
God, Lewis says, is something that the poets and the mythologies know all
about.21 In “The Weight of Glory,” we are told that one of the reasons Lewis
placed such a high value on myth and poetry was because he saw in them an
intimation of our divine destiny. In the lovely falsehoods told in countless
stories and poems, humans get married to gods, or west winds blow right
into human souls. These may be false as history, but they may be quite near
the truth as prophecy insofar as one day humans may pass beyond nature
into the source of beauty and power itself, eating at the tree of life and drink-
ing from the fountain of joy. This poetic and mythical radiance resting on
51
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
Christian theology is something that Lewis cherished. Just as Lewis
said that the old myth of the dying God who finally “came down from the
heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history,”22 so too, we might
say, the corresponding myths of godlike men and women will one day
ascend from the earth of legend into the reality of paradise.
Big Medicine
The concept of deification has challenged those who are accustomed to
thinking of salvation as a once-for-all-time decision or as divine pardon in
which God overturns our guilty verdict and lets us off the hook. As Vladimir
Lossky has observed, a treatise of St. Anselm of Canterbury called Cur Deus
Homo (completed in Italy in 1098 AD) deeply colored popular Western
notions of salvation by presenting the idea of redemption in isolation from
the rest of Christ’s life and work.23 By so doing, the main focus of salvation
became the cross and passion, where Christ is seen to have effected a
change in the Father’s attitude toward fallen men. Oddly, this forensic
model suggests that an angry God needs to be cured rather than sinful or
mortal human beings. Salvation as deification, in contrast, accents human
healing and transformation, looking to the Cross but additionally to the
Resurrection, the Ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. The impli-
cations here are significant. To see salvation as Lewis did — as infusion by
divine energy leading to deification, and not merely a juridical transaction
or pardon — means that the Christian life is more than merely accepting an
idea, more than merely an external moral imitation of Christ. A genuine life
in Christ becomes a possibility. In Mere Christianity, Lewis explained that
when Christians speak of being “in Christ” or of Christ being “in them,”
this ought to mean more than just thinking about Christ or copying Him.
It should mean that Christ is actually operating through them.24
But exactly how does Christ operate? Or how does one acquire the Christ-
life within? Lewis answers that this process, which leads to deification,
isn’t a matter of exceptional experience reserved for some special few
mystics, but rather the calling of all the baptized within the context of the
sacramental life of the Church. Bishop Kallistos Ware once wrote, “If some-
one asks ‘How can I become god?’ the answer is very simple: go to church,
receive the sacraments regularly, pray to God ‘in spirit and truth,’ read the
52
SHINE AS THE SUN
Gospels, follow the commandments.”25 Similarly, in Mere Christianity,
Lewis asserts that the three main channels are baptism, belief, and
Holy Communion. Lewis says he never would have guessed these could
convey spiritual life but for that matter, he wouldn’t have expected ordinary
biological life to be reproduced in the way that it is, either. He calls the
spreading of divine life the process of “good infection,” a phrase which
nicely captures the internal aspect of deification:
Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of
infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire:
if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy,
power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into,
the thing that has them ... They are a great fountain of energy
and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close
to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.26
Lewis thought that because men and women
are physical beings, God uses material things
(water, bread, wine) to infuse them with divine
grace. In Christianity — which he says is “almost
the only one of the great religions which thor-
oughly approves of the body” — the body as well
as the soul participate in the spiritual life, and
one day the rapture of the saved soul will flow
over into the glorified body.27 That God’s glory
is in some sense communicable to physical
beings is suggested by the face of Moses, whose skin shone after he met with
God (Exodus 34:29), or by St. Paul’s handkerchiefs and aprons, which healed
the sick and drove away demons (Acts 19:12). For Lewis, deification won’t
destroy the human body but fulfill and resurrect it. In Christianity, the body
is not to be dismissed as an inferior prison-house of the soul as it might be in
Plato or in streams of gnostic thought — including contemporary varieties of
gnosticism such as one evangelical strand that some observers see as dualis-
tic at the core.28 In Lewis’s view, it is not God but the devil who despises
matter and resents the mingling of spiritual things with “dirt and slime.”29
Speaking of human embodiment, Lewis says that although we may not be
able to conceive exactly what we will be in the next life, “we may be sure that
we shall be more, not less, than we were on earth.”30
53
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
Lewis took seriously the food of immortality of the Eucharist (John 6:48-
57). For him, Holy Communion was not only a symbol or metaphor of union
with God but a genuine and concrete way to receive the good infection of
divine grace and to participate in the life of God. Like many of Lewis’s most
cherished Christian beliefs, however, this one was an acquired taste. His
biographer George Sayer says that when Lewis first returned to the church
in the early 1930s following his conversion, Lewis took a rather limited view
of Holy Communion. At this point, he received it only on great holidays. But
by the early 1940s — about the same time he began meeting his spiritual
director regularly for confession and counsel — Lewis began to perceive the
sacrament differently and began to receive it weekly. Finally he developed a
great reverence for the mystery of the Eucharist.31 In Letters to Malcolm,
which was published the year of his death, Lewis spoke of Holy Communion
as an experience where the veil between the worlds gets thin. “Here a hand
from the hidden country touches not only my soul but my body ... Here is
big medicine and strong magic ... [and] I should define magic in this sense
as ‘objective efficacy which cannot be fur-
ther analyzed.’”32 For Lewis, this qualified
sense of ‘magic’ carried the positive conno-
tation of mystery.
Lewis was reluctant to try to explain
the mystery. He regretted that precise dog-
matic definitions had been made on this
subject in the West (in part because he
thought they led to divisions among
Christians). He once said that he was glad that Jesus Christ said, “Take,
eat,” rather than “Take, understand.” Although Lewis didn’t embrace the
medieval formula of transubstantiation he did accept the doctrine of real
presence as articulated by Anglicans like Lancelot Andrewes. In his
reticence to take this mystery out of its holy context and to regard it as an
object among objects, he echoed the concern of Wordsworth, who once
warned that we murder by dissecting. Or, as Lewis once wrote, “It is like
taking a red coal out of the fire to examine it: it becomes a dead coal.”33
In light of that analogy, it’s instructive to remember the passage from
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the children meet a venerable Old
Man living near the world’s end, a retired star named Ramandu. Every
morning, Ramandu is brought a fire-berry from the valleys in the sun by a
54
SHINE AS THE SUN
bird. The fire-berries — little coals which are too bright to look at — will take
away a little of the Old Man’s age until he becomes young as a newborn child
and rises again at the earth’s eastern rim to join the great dance. In this we
find echoes not only of Elijah’s miraculous sustenance by the ravens who
carried him bread and meat during his sojourn in the desert (I Kings 17),
but also of the vision of Isaiah who saw the Lord of Hosts on a throne in
the temple attended by Seraphim singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Isaiah 6),
one of whom took a live coal from the altar with tongs and brought it to the
prophet’s lips and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips, and your
iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven.”
In our day, Lewis’s stress on the importance of Holy Communion might
seem odd, at least in those Christian communities that celebrate the
Eucharist infrequently or express its importance in terms of how it affects
God rather than how it transforms us.34 But Lewis was adamant that eternal
life must be spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but also by
bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion. He insisted that Christianity
“is not merely the spreading of an idea ... [because] God never meant man
to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things
like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather
crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter.
He invented it.”35
Flip Side of Incarnation
One of the best-known lines from patristic literature on the topic of deifi-
cation comes from chapter 54 of St. Athanasius’s classic On the Incarnation:
“God assumed humanity that we might become God.” When Lewis wrote an
introduction to a new translation of this work made by his friend and
longtime pen pal, the Anglican nun Sister Penelope, he praised
St. Athanasius for “a very great book ... a picture of the Tree of Life ... sappy
and golden ... [and] full of buoyancy and confidence.”36 In the book, deifica-
tion is understood more broadly in the context of the renewal of all creation
undertaken by the Word of God. Athanasius observes that the divine task of
making all things new belongs to the same divine person through whom all
things were made to begin with; hence there is a consistency between
creation and salvation. Jesus Christ, as the Father’s divine agent, saw our
55
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
sorry state after the Fall and stooped low to assume flesh in order to banish
death and to begin the process of reversing the ills of corruption, mortality,
pain, and sin – in short, to re-create the world.
According to Athanasius, Adam and Eve were by grace “as God” (Psalm
82:6) in Paradise in that they shared in divine life and were incorrupt and
immortal. Church Fathers commonly express this by reference to Genesis
1:26, speaking of man and woman created in the image of God and with the
possibility of attaining to the likeness of God. Their state of incorruption
was lost after the Fall and exile from Eden. Deification, then, is the summit
of a gradual process by which human beings are reintegrated into the life of
God, beginning with the restoration of God’s image through baptism and
continuing with purification of the heart and illumination by divine grace.
This process reorders the powers of the human soul and restores the state
of paradise inwardly while leading finally to the new paradise beyond this
world. Orthodox describe this process as the Threefold Way, indicating that
the soul must progress through three stages in order to reach the fullness
of participation in God: first, purification or catharsis, in which the heart
and mind are purified of egotistical passions and addictions; second, illu-
mination or photisis, the enlightenment of the soul, a state that Adam and
Eve enjoyed in Eden; third, theosis or deification, which is the ineffable
union of the soul with God. Even at this lofty summit, we’re told that the
state of perfection is relative and not absolute; it is dynamic not static,
forever ascending ‘from glory to glory’ (II Cor. 3:18). In the words of
St. Gregory of Nyssa, “True perfection never stands still but ever grows
toward the better.”37 This notion of epektasis, of eternal life as unending
infinite progress, is found in Church Fathers like St. Irenaeus and
St. Maximos the Confessor and is echoed memorably by Lewis himself in
the final passage of the The Last Battle.
It is significant that Athanasius’s famous quote comes in a book about the
Incarnation, since deification has been described as the “flip side” of
Incarnation.38 It might be said that Lewis’s belief in deification can be seen
as an index of just how seriously he took the doctrine of the Incarnation.
Lewis seemed to understand the Orthodox view that the Incarnation not
only revealed the incarnate God but also the transcendent man.39 Lewis
once wrote, “The Incarnation worked ‘not by the conversion of the Godhead
into flesh, but by the taking of the manhood into God.’ ... Humanity, still
remaining itself, is not merely counted as, but veritably drawn into, Deity.”40
56
SHINE AS THE SUN
In patristic terms, what Lewis describes as the “taking of the manhood
into God” is the deification of human nature achieved in Christ. In other
words, as a result of the Incarnation, the first fruits of our substance
were deified and a new root was created for accessing divine life and incor-
ruptibility.41 However, the deification of all human nature in Christ — the
so-called physical view of deification in Orthodoxy — doesn’t automatically
guarantee the deification of every human person. At birth, human beings
are still linked to the old root of Adam, with its death and decay and dark-
ened soul. The task of every person, then, is to grow the new root of Christ
by free, personal participation in God’s divine grace, and to put the old root
to death through faith, repentance, and following Christ’s commandments.
Vladimir Lossky helpfully points out that the primary role of Jesus Christ
was the redemption of human nature, while the Holy Spirit’s primary role is
the deification of human persons in Christ.42
One way to express this, using the notion of
image and likeness, is that Jesus Christ
achieved the objective dimension of our salva-
tion (our redemption) by bestowing upon our
human nature His own glory and immortality;
thus when we participate in Christ’s death and
resurrection in the sacrament of Baptism, this
image of God in our nature is restored.
However, as St. Diodochos points out in
the Philokalia, there remains a further subjec-
tive dimension to salvation, in which as persons we become transformed
into the likeness of God: “His likeness is granted only to those who through
great love have brought their own freedom in subjection to God.”43 Lewis
himself captures both the objective and subjective dimensions of salvation
when he writes, “The business of becoming a son of God, of being turned
from a created thing to a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary
biological life into timeless ‘spiritual’ life, has been done for us. Humanity
is already ‘saved’ in principle. We individuals have to appropriate that
salvation.”44
57
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
If We Let Him
This appropriation of salvation, this bringing of our human freedom into
subjection to God, naturally requires our cooperation. Therefore, deifica-
tion hinges upon human free will. For Lewis, human freedom was a bedrock
belief, fundamental to the idea of what it means to be created in the image
of God and essential to the possibility of genuine love. This finds expression
in The Magician’s Nephew at the creation of Narnia, where Aslan says in a
strong and happy voice, “Creatures, I give you yourselves.”45 Lewis thought
that all humans beings had been given this same gift. Writes Lewis,
You must realize from the outset that the goal towards which [God]
is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the
whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you
to that goal ... If we let Him — for we can prevent Him, if we choose —
He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess,
a dazzling, radiant immortal creature, pulsating
all through with such energy and joy and
wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine.46
Lewis’s doctrine of synergy was akin to the
model of St. Paul, who said we are to be fellow-
workers (synergoi) with God (I Cor. 3:9). This
interaction of divine grace and human will was
described memorably by a monk of the Eastern
Church as “the cooperation of two unequal, but
equally necessary forces.”47 For his part, Lewis
once described this paradox as follows: “I don’t
mean that I can therefore, as they say, ‘sit back.’ What God does for us,
He does in us. The process of doing it will appear to me (and not falsely) to
be the daily or hourly repeated exercises of my own will.”48
Nowhere is the struggle to submit one’s will to God more evident than in
the arena of prayer, the spiritual discipline most basic and essential in the
ascent toward God. Lewis often stressed that prayer takes work and that it’s
a duty, sometimes even an irksome and frustrating one, because human life
is not yet perfect and our prayers are often impeded by distractions from
within and without. We must pray, even when we don’t want to — only in
heaven will perfect prayer be possible and will there be no need for “ought.”
58
C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Church
C.S. Lewis’s belief in the doctrine of deification — as well as his apophatic sense of God’s
hiddenness, his teachings on Christ and the Trinity, and his understanding of creation and
personhood — make a strong case for his “anonymous Orthodoxy.” So observes Kallistos
Ware in the essay “God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity” in The Pilgrim’s
Guide: C.S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. But what was Lewis’s direct experience of the
Orthodox Church?
First of all, Lewis knew of the Russian Orthodox tradition via his friendship with professor
Nicholas Zernov in Oxford. That Lewis attended at least one Orthodox service in England is
confirmed by a letter of 13 March 1956 found in Letters of C.S. Lewis, in which Lewis wrote,
“My model here is the behaviour of the congregation at a ‘Russian Orthodox’ service, where
some sit, some lie on their faces, some stand, some kneel, some walk about, and no one
takes the slightest idea of what anyone else is doing. That is good sense, good manners, and
good Christianity.”
Andrew Walker, in his essay “Under the Russian Cross” in A Christian for All Christians:
Essays in Honour of C.S. Lewis, observes that Lewis’s friendship with Zernov and his wife,
Militza, lasted from the 1940s until Lewis’s death in 1963. Writes Walker, “Militza Zernov told
me, ‘We have certainly talked with C.S. Lewis (we are calling him Jack) about the Orthodox
Church. He was deeply interested in it.’ ” Nicholas Zernov was able to involve Lewis in a
number of activities, including presenting at least two papers to the society of St. Alban and
St. Sergius. One paper by Lewis, intriguingly entitled, “A Toy, an Icon, and a Work of Art,” has
apparently been lost. Another paper presented by Lewis to this society in 1945 has been pub-
lished in The Weight of Glory under the title “Membership.”
A few years before his death, Lewis was able to visit Greece for the first time. His biog-
rapher, George Sayer, writes that Lewis was moved by his visit to a Greek Orthodox cathe-
dral in Rhodes during Pascha in 1960, where, with his ailing wife, Joy, he attended part of
the Paschal service as well as an Orthodox wedding. In Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis, Sayer
writes, “Whenever the subject came up between us, [Lewis] said that he preferred the
Orthodox liturgy to either the Catholic or Protestant liturgies. He was also impressed by the
Greek Orthodox priests, whose faces, he thought, looked more spiritual than those of most
Catholic or Protestant clergy.”
Perhaps, then, it was fitting that his friends the Zernovs brought an Orthodox cross made
of white flowers to Lewis’s funeral in November 1963, under which Lewis was buried at the
cemetery of his Anglican parish at Headington.
59
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29) SHINE AS THE SUN

Lewis regularly prayed from the Book of Psalms (likely praying through all world, because he is its guardian and master; he is saved, not apart from
150 Psalms each month) and from the Book of Common Prayer because he others, but with the rest of the Christian family, as one of its members.”55
thought written or “ready-made prayers” handed down by the Church kept
him in touch with sound doctrine and kept him from sliding so easily into
the phantom called “my religion.”49 Lewis would often spend an hour or Horror to Ourselves
more doing his evening prayers, integrating his prayer with the reading
Our participation in the divine energies not only helps to restore
of Scripture. Lewis stressed the obligation to pray for others including our
the knowledge of God that was lost in the Fall, but also increases our
enemies (he prayed for Hitler and Stalin). He knew that human beings were
self-knowledge, hence leading to ever-increasing humility and repentance.
not mere spirits and that it mattered what body position they took in
So thought Lewis, who held that the closer one drew to the light of God, the
prayer, and what they ate or drank beforehand: “They are animals and ...
more perfect one became and the more clearly one’s sins and imperfections
whatever their bodies do affects their souls.”50 The connection between the
were illumined. For example, we might point to the
physical and the spiritual was driven home to Lewis when he added the dis-
protagonist Orual, the Queen of Glome, in Lewis’s
cipline of fasting to his habit of prayer, finding relief from obsessive sins.51
masterful Till We Have Faces. Near her life’s end, she
The hard work of prayer made a difference in his life that others could
looks back over the passing of years and comments,
notice. George Sayer, a friend and former pupil who knew him for twenty-
“It was like being with child, but reverse; the thing I
nine years, said, “It was hard to be much in Lewis’s company without
carried in me grew slowly smaller and less alive.”56 This
being aware of his goodness, even holiness. It was nourished by prayer —
thing was her ego.
he meditated daily on verses from the New Testament — by his openness
Lewis insisted that we are “creatures whose charac-
to mystical experience, and his habit of communing with nature.”52
ter must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is,
Along with his private prayer, Lewis also attended daily Matins before his
when we really see it, a horror to ourselves ... I notice
work day started. He understood the necessity for corporate expressions of
that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of
faith, and explains his view in the essay “Membership,” which Lewis read in
that fact.”57 In these terms, no one can dismiss deifica-
1945 to the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, a group that was
tion as wishful thinking, escapism, or self-adoration;
co-founded by Lewis’s friend Nicholas Zernov, an Orthodox Christian who
in fact, Lewis believed that even glorified human beings remained conscious
sought to bring eastern and western Christians together.53 In the essay,
of their sin, and that perfected humility called for continual repentance.
Lewis insists that the Christian is called not to collectivism nor to individu-
In The Problem of Pain, Lewis suggests
alism but to membership in the mystical body. Deification, therefore,
can’t be properly construed as a solitary trip to individual bliss, but rather a It may be that salvation consists not in the canceling of these eternal
corporate undertaking in Christ in which “everything that is joined to the moments [of sin] but in the perfected humility that bears the shame
immortal head will share His immortality.”54 Zernov himself, formerly the forever, rejoicing in the occasion which it furnished to God’s compas-
Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies at Oxford University (a post sion and glad that it should be common knowledge to the universe.
later held by Bishop Kallistos Ware), develops the same theme in his 1942 Perhaps in that eternal moment St. Peter — he will forgive me if I’m
book The Church of the Eastern Christians. Zernov explains that the East wrong — forever denies his Master ...Perhaps the lost are those who
does not think about salvation in terms of the individual soul returning to dare not go to such a public place. Of course I do not know that this
its maker so much as the process of transfiguration of the whole cosmos: is true; but I think the possibility is worth keeping in mind.58
“The East is clear that salvation for an individual means to become part of Given this, it should be no surprise that Lewis came to see the practice of
the redeemed community ... Man is saved not from the world but with the confessing sin as central to the Christian life — although it took him nearly

60 61
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
a decade after his conversion to find out a person to whom he could confess.
This man was Fr. Walter Adams, an Anglican monk who was 71 years old
when Lewis first went to him in Oct. 1940 when Lewis was 42. Fr. Walter
belonged to the Church of England’s Society of St. John the Evangelist,
popularly known as the Cowley Fathers. Lewis called him his “confessor
and ... Father in Christ” and Lewis met with him weekly for twelve years
until Fr. Walter’s death in 1952.59 Shortly before his first appointment with
this priest, Lewis wrote to Sr. Penelope with concerns that many Orthodox
converts could appreciate,
I am going to my first confession next week, wh[ich] will seem odd
to you, but I wasn’t brought up with that sort of thing. It’s an odd
experience. The decision to do so was one of the hardest I have ever
made: but now I am committed (by dint of posting the letter before
I had time to change my mind) I began to be afraid of the opposite
extreme — afraid that I am merely indulging in an orgy of Egoism.
Shortly afterward, a relieved Lewis wrote another letter to Sr. Penelope
explaining that he successfully had passed through the wall of fire and
found himself alive and well. The “orgy of Egoism turns out, like all enemy
propaganda, to have just a grain of truth in it, but I have no doubt that the
proper method of dealing with that is to continue the practice, as I intend
to do.”60 Years later, when a female correspondent asked Lewis why she
couldn’t simply confess her sins to a friend or a neighbor, Lewis assured her
that she could. But, he continued, the advantage with the priest was that he
held a special office appointed by God for this and that everything spoken
would be kept in sacred silence. While Lewis valued the counsel and advice
he received from his spiritual father, he thought the most crucial thing
was that the confessor is the representative of the Lord and declares His
forgiveness while holding one accountable for repentance.61
Happiness Transposed
Such, then, is Lewis’s vision of deification. If it remains puzzling to some,
it may be positively attractive to others in an age when the Christian life
has often been understood in abstract and privatized terms, and when
traditional religious practices have been dismissed by many as impediments
62
SHINE AS THE SUN
to genuine spirituality. On the contrary, Lewis shows us that salvation is not
just an idea but something to be done, and he points to the efficacy of spiri-
tual direction, corporate prayer, confession, and Holy Communion. Such
practices are the hallmarks of the mystical theology at the heart of ancient
Christianity which — in its Orthodox fullness — offers the means to deifica-
tion and perfect communion with God. As one hieromonk has written, “It is
only because the churches do not know about or make use of these means
that our young people are searching elsewhere.”62
The doctrine of deification has further piquancy in an era when human
hopes for bliss and longevity are increasingly placed on the shoulders of
cyberspace, biotechnology, or psychotropic drugs. Lewis reminds us that our
pursuit of happiness is in accord with the fundamental pattern of reality; our
pursuit of happiness is indeed blessed by God, provided that it is transposed
into the key of another world. Thus Lewis both validates and redirects our
perennial yen for perfection. Only beyond the shadowlands of this life, Lewis
says, will our deepest longings be fulfilled. Only in the eternal dawn will we
meet Glory face-to-face on that day when we are to shine as the sun.63
Finally, Lewis’s doctrine of deification reminds us that we must not expect
the path to perfection to be painless. The cross, he says, comes before the
crown. Acquiring the life of Christ is a process that will be long and in parts
painful, and we shouldn’t be surprised if we are in for a rough time as we
journey through the Lenten lands of earthly life. The reason? God will use
every means possible to lift us to a higher level. “It seems to us
all unnecessary,” he writes, “but that is because we have not yet had the
slightest notion of the tremendous thing that He means to make of us.”64
Those who aspire to such heights are offered this advice in Lewis’s last
sermon, which he preached in January 1956 at Magdalene College in
Cambridge, “Our morning prayer should be that in the Imitation: Da hodie
perfecte incipere — grant me to make an unflawed beginning to day, for I
have done nothing yet.”65
Chris Jensen teaches English at a community college in Portland,
Oregon, where he lives with his wife and four children and serves as a
reader at the Church of the Annunciation (OCA). He first encountered
C.S. Lewis more than 20 years ago when a college professor assigned
63
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29)
“The Discarded Image” in a course on medieval literature at the
University of California, Davis. Today he counts Lewis as one of his most
important literary mentors. For several years he taught a college seminar
course on C.S. Lewis and he traveled in 2005 to Oxford University to
present a paper on Lewis at the C.S. Lewis Summer Institute, from which
this essay is adapted.
1 “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Touchstone, 1975), p. 31; and
“Christian Apologetics” in God in the Dock (Eerdmans, 1997), p. 91.
2 Kern qtd. in Georgios Mantzaridis, The Deification of Man: St. Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox
Tradition, (St. Vladimir’s, 1984), p. 12. Although deification is basic to Orthodox theology, Mantzaridis
notes that the doctrine of deification sometimes has been neglected in modern Orthodox parish life. One
Protestant scholar has observed that deification is “practically unknown to the majority of Christians (and
even many theologians) in the West.” See Robert W. Rakestraw, “Becoming Like God: An Evangelical
Doctrine of Theosis,” in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 40/2 (June 1997), p. 257.
3 Kallistos Ware, “God of the Fathers: C.S. Lewis and Eastern Christianity,” The Pilgrim’s Guide: C.S. Lewis
and the Art of Witness, (Eerdmans, 1998), p. 55ff.
4 Archbishop Basil Krivocheine, In the Light of Christ: St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022), (St.
Vladimir’s, 1986), p. 389.
5 C.S. Lewis, “Transposition,” The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Touchstone, 1975), p. 84.
6 Sayer, Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis (Crossway Books, 1988), p. 327. On the notion of immanence, Lewis was
influenced by George MacDonald, whose Phantastes struck a deep chord with Lewis as a teenager during a
period of intellectual skepticism. Speaking of MacDonald, Lewis once observed, “The quality which had
enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, the mag-
ical, terrifying, and ecstatic reality in which we all live” (qtd. in David C. Downing, Into the Region of Awe:
Mysticism in C.S. Lewis, (InterVarsity, 2005), p. 39).
7 C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, (Harcourt, 1963), p. 75.
8 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Touchstone, 1996), p. 170, 183.
9 The Orthodox scholar John Meyendorff, in “Theosis in the Eastern Christian Tradition,” in Christian
Spirituality III (Crossroad, 1989), p. 470-71, defends deification as a “Christocentric and eschatological con-
cept expressed in Platonic language but basically independent of philosophical speculation ... It reflects the
experience of Christ’s divinity.” Some of the negative assessment of deification in the past century took its
cue from the Protestant church historian Adolph Harnack who sought an idealized Semitic Christianity
without Hellenic influence. Yet certain Protestant writers have come to the defense of deification in recent
years, including F.W. Norris, in “Deification: Consensual and Cogent,” in the Scottish Journal of Theology
49/4 (1996), who dismisses Harnack as poorly read on this point and sees these charges as false. Norris, who
also finds examples of deification in Anabaptist writers, says “deification should be viewed by Protestants
not as an oddity of Orthodox theology but as an ecumenical consensus, a catholic teaching of the Church,
best preserved and developed by the Orthodox.” A.N. Williams, in The Ground of Union: Deification in
Aquinas and Palamas, (Oxford, 1999), p. 174, argues that “The West has no grounds for rejecting deifica-
tion, not only because it can be found in Aquinas but also because it figures extensively in the patristic cor-
pus and derives ultimately from scripture.” However, some contemporary writers continue to question what
they call the “slender Biblical support” for deification, such as Daniel B. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox
Christianity: A Western Perspective (Baker, 1994), p. 158.
10 Qtd. in Leech, Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality, p. 258.
11 C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” p. 33.
64
12 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 152. The fact that Lewis uses dance imagery so often at the ends of his
works (e.g., The Problem of Pain, Perelandra) further accents its teleological significance.
13 John Meyendorff, “Theosis in the Eastern Christian Tradition,” Christian Spirituality III (Crossroad,
1989), p. 475.
14 C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” p. 37.
15 C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, (Harcourt, 1955), p. 17. The theory is also cen-
tral to Lewis’s autobiographical account The Pilgrim’s Regress.
16 C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” p. 29.
17 C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, p. 49.
18 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 153.
19 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (HarperCollins, 2001), p. 47.
20 C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” p. 37.
21 Ibid.
22 C.S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, (Eerdmans, 1970),
p. 66.
23 Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, (St. Vladimir’s, 1974), pp. 97ff.
24 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 65.
25 Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, New Ed., (Penguin, 1997), p. 236.
26 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 153.
27 Ibid., p. 92, and “The Weight of Glory” in The Weight of Glory, p. 38.
28 Harold Bloom, in The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (Simon &
Schuster, 1992), argues that the American religion is gnosticism and that, perhaps unwittingly, many
American Christians are closer to the ancient gnostics than to early Christians: “The American Christ is more
an American than he is Christ.” The term is broad, but generally gnosticism suggests a religious outlook that
tends to see ignorance as the fundamental human problem rather than sin and hence stresses the acquisi-
tion of special knowledge; it tends to downplay the role of community and holds that there is no higher
authority than the private individual; it tends to see external or objective expressions of religion—like con-
ventional church affiliation, creeds, dogmas, etc.—as unnecessary or as a genuine impediment to true spiri-
tuality; it tends to be dualistic in stressing the purity of spiritual things and the inherent badness of matter;
it tends to stress fate over human choice and free will; and it often holds that human beings have a spark of
divinity within themselves independent of the body and soul. Bloom argues that this “American Religion” is
the result of revising traditional religion into a faith that better fits the national temperament, aspirations,
and anxieties. Significantly, C.S. Lewis can be seen as anti-gnostic on every count.
29 C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, pp. 158, 17.
30 C.S. Lewis, “Transposition,” The Weight of Glory, p. 86.
31 Dorsett, Seeking the Secret Place, p. 83.
32 C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, p. 103.
33 C.S. Lewis, Letters To Malcolm, p.105.
34 For example, Kimon H. Sargeant, in Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in a
Nontraditional Way, (Rutgers, 2000), notes that in the burgeoning “seeker church” movement in the United
States connected with the Willow Creek Association, fewer than one in ten assemblies offers communion
every week, while most celebrate communion monthly or quarterly. In this setting, communion (rather than
being seen as an objective contact with God) is often conceived as a symbolic gesture or one that promotes
65
Road to Emmaus Vol. VIII, No. 2 (#29) SHINE AS THE SUN

feelings of personal well-being that come from knowing that one is making God happy. For example, Bill 60 Ibid.
Hybels, a pastor at Willow Creek, said in one of his messages that, “If you make a covenant with the Lord
[to take communion], I think you’re going to sense smiles from Heaven; I think God’s going to say ‘That 61 Ibid.
means a lot to me; your covenant moves me. Thanks for caring enough about me to remember me once a 62 Hieromonk Damascene, “The Sunrise of the East: From Eastern Religions to Eastern Orthodoxy,” The
month’” (qtd. in Sargeant, p. 72). The emphasis is thus placed upon change in God rather than change in Orthodox Word (No. 190, 1996), p. 210.
human persons, creating an interesting parallel to forensic notions of redemption in which God is affected
by the passion more than human nature itself. 63 C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” p. 37.

35 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 65. Some contemporary Protestant writers who are attracted to the idea 64 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 176.
of deification have not yet understood the sacramental life as essential in the way that Lewis did. For exam-
65 C.S. Lewis, “A Slip of the Tongue,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, p. 142.
ple, one who defends deification nonetheless argues that a “weakness” of traditional deification doctrine is
“a heavy emphasis upon the sacraments as the primary means of theosis” (Rakestraw, p. 267).

36 C.S. Lewis, “Introduction,” St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, (St. Vladimir’s, 1996), p. 9.

37 Qtd. in George S. Gabriel, Mary: The Untrodden Portal of God, (Zephyr, 2005), p. 30

38 Urban T. Holmes, A History of Christian Spirituality, qtd. in Leech, Experiencing God: Theology as
Spirituality, p. 258.

39 “He alone is known in two essences: as incarnate God and transcendent man” (The Octoechos, Orthodox
Sunday Matins, Tone IV, Ode IV).

40 C.S. Lewis, “Transposition,” The Weight of Glory, p. 87.

41 Mantzaridis, The Deification of Man, p. 30.

42 Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, p. 109.

43 “On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination,” Philokalia, p. 253.

44 Mere Christianity, p. 157

45 C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, p. 140.

46 Mere Christianity, p. 174, 176. See also chapter 13 in The Great Divorce, where Lewis calls freedom a
“deeper truth” than universalism and predestination.

47 Ware, The Orthodox Church, p. 222.

48 “A Slip of the Tongue,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, p. 142.

49 Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, (Harcourt, 1963), p. 12. Also, Dorsett, in Seeking the Secret Place,
explores Lewis’s prayer life particularly in chapters 2 and 3.

50 C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, p. 25.

51 See Dorsett, Seeking the Secret Place, p. 102, and Sayer, Jack, p. 417.

52 Sayer, Jack, p. 416.

53 Andrew Walker, “Under the Russian Cross: A Research Note on C.S. Lewis and the Eastern Orthodox
Church,” A Christian for All Christians, (Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), p. 65.

54 C.S. Lewis, “Membership,” in The Weight of Glory, p. 130.

55 Nicolas Zernov, The Church of the Eastern Christians, (Macmillan, 1942), p. 54

56 C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces, (Harcourt, 1957), p. 226.

57 C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, p. 62.

58 Ibid., p. 55

59 Dorsett, Seeking the Secret Place, pp. 86-88.

66 67

NOTES ON THE
JESUS PRAYER
Warm, succinct suggestions on making the prayer of the heart
come alive from Moscow pastor, Fr. Artemy Vladimirov.
W
e very much pity those Orthodox Christians who think that the best
rest for their exhausted soul is to watch television news. This isn’t a
bad thing, perhaps, but it’s a dead thing. You may spend all of the earthly
time you have been allotted with such distractions, but you will never be at
peace. If you want to calm your mind and ease your heart, try calling instead
on the most holy name of Jesus Christ, without haste and with only one
intent: to attract His attention and repent of your sins.
To stand before the face of God, to cleanse your heart and sanctify the
space of your life by invoking His name, this is your aim. We don’t know
how God cleanses our heart by His name, but we believe that He does so in
a supernatural way. In saying the Jesus Prayer, it is not so important
whether you are “a monk or a drunk,” but you are to be very steadfast,
attentive, humble, mild, and concentrated.
Try taking a walk for ten minutes as you invoke His miracle-working
name, and you will see spiritual profit. Begin in a simple, humble manner,
“Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.” You may even do this
somewhat mechanically, knowing that this tradition has been sanctified by
generations of saints, but as you walk and pray, try not to think of anything
else. Just walk in the presence of God.
In these ten minutes, you will find that your fevered mind is soothed, that
the noisy bazaar of your thoughts has become light, clear, and direct, and that
68
N O T E S O N T H E J E S U S P R AY E R
your heart has begun to say other prayers in a manner that satisfies you. You
pray, you breathe, you speak to God; you are not just repeating empty words.
What does it mean to have your mind in your heart? It means that you are
to control your feelings. You are not to admit invaders into your heart, but
are to check your heart with your mind, to observe everything that takes
place there. To have your mind in your heart is exactly what our Lord pre-
scribes to us in His commandment: When thou prayest, enter into thy clos-
et, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret…”.
What does it mean to shut the door? It means to banish every earthly image
or passion with the concentration of your mind and will. When we pray we
should not admit feelings of lust or open our hearts to the snake of irritation;
we are to rid ourselves of everything that is unpleasant. To have your mind
in your heart is to control the space of your heart. It is the kingdom of God
Almighty and of nothing else.
If you make progress in this humble prayer, you will begin to understand
that this commandment is very complete. Your heart will be filled with a
spiritual warmth that embraces the center of your feelings. You will come to
understand what attentive prayer is, and that your heart has been created
for ceaseless prayer. Ceaseless prayer is not a perpetual repetition of this or
that word or phrase. The Holy Fathers say that it is the feeling of your heart.
Just as you view the objects of this world with open eyes, so your heart,
warmed by prayer to God, will partake of the spiritual world. This will be
due, not to your piety, but to God’s grace. Unceasing prayer may have no
words, but you will walk and sleep in the presence of God.
69
 See what milestones you may
have missed along the road.
Now you can order any back issue you
may have missed by mail or online.
For a complete description of articles visit our website. WINTER 2007 FALL 2006 SUMMER 2006 SPRING 2006
ISSUE No. 25
ISSUE No. 28 ISSUE No. 27 ISSUE No. 26
Back issues: $7 plus shipping
The Orthodox Worldview Songs of Freedom: Life on The Golden Horn: A City of Saints:
To Subscribe/Order by Mail: Please send check or money order in the enclosed ordering envelope, or in a and C. S. Lewis (Part I) A Rastafari Road to Memories of Greek The Forgotten Reliquaries
separate envelope to: Road to Emmaus , P.O. Box 16021, Portland, Oregon , 97292-0021 Orthodoxy Constantinople, of Paris
Celtomania In 1948 to 1963
International Subscriptions by Mail: Please send an International Money Order, Eastern Siberia Nativity Address Holy France:
by Haile Selassie I, Hymns and Laments on The Pilgrim’s Road
payable in U.S. dollars (available from post offices world-wide). Blessed Matrona of Moscow: Emperor of Ethiopia the Fall of Constantinople
Saint and Wonderworker Perspective and Grace:
To Subscribe/Order Online: www.roadtoemmaus.net 31st and Troost: Interfaith Dialogue: Painting The Likeness of
Answered Prayers at From Dividing Line An Orthodox Witness Christ
NOTE: We are unable to take credit card orders over the phone. St. Matrona’s to Gathering Place
If you wish to subscribe by credit card, please do so on our website. The Apples of Transfiguration “Can These Bones Live?”
Christmas in the Camp
Questions/Comments? Call us at: 1-866-783-6628 (M-F, 9:00AM - 8:00PM, PST)

WINTER 2006 FALL 2005 SPRING 2005 SPRING 2005 WINTER 2005 FALL 2004 SUMMER 2004 SPRING 2004
ISSUE No. 24 ISSUE No. 23 ISSUE No. 21 ISSUE No. 21 ISSUE No. 20 ISSUE No. 19 ISSUE No. 18 ISSUE No. 17

Souls In Motion: The Spiritual
Life of Teenagers
Double Faith, Dostoyesvsky
and Bulgakov
Children Behind Bars:
A Voice for Greece’s
Juvenile Offenders
Anton Chekov: “The Student”
The Looking Glass:
Perpectives on The
Teenage Years
Everything In Love: The
Making Of A Missionary
The Pearl of Great Price:
Resurrecting Orthodoxy
in China
“I Was Born In An Orthodox
World…”– Early Memories of
a Chinese Christian
The Nativity Sermon of
St. John Chrysostom
From Jainism to Orthodoxy:
An Indian Passage
Witness For An Apostle:
Evidence of St. Thomas
in India
The Indian Verses of St.
Ephrem the Syrian
The Village Church of
Yegorievka: Part I
From Jainism to Orthodoxy: Eternal Questions: The Astonishing Missionary We Are Going to Live in The Golden Thread of Faith:
An Indian Passage On Heaven and Hell Journeys of The Apostle Paradise: Orthodoxy in Mental Illness and the Soul
Andrew the Congo
Witness For An Apostle: The Pearl George, Nadezhda, Tatiana,
Evidence of St. Thomas St. Andrew and The Letters From An Apostle: The Sergei, and Michael
in India Christ, The Medicine of Life: Miraculous Isle of Valaam Inner World of
The Syriac Fathers On The Columba Goes East
Fr. Cosmas of Zaire
The Indian Verses of St. Lord’s Descent Into Hell Old Valaam:
Ephrem the Syrian St. Andrew’s Legacy, The Last Priest of Caesarea Cadam in Ryazan
St. Milos and A Contemporary
The Village Church of The Pascha Egg Ascension
Photomontage
Yegorievka: Part I
Heaven, A Cave:
Christmas in Bethlehem
 WINTER 2004
ISSUE No. 16
Daughter of Eagles
Albanian Diary:
Ten Days in Shqiperia
Strength in Numbers
Orthodox Roots,
Bektashi Neighbors
WINTER 2002
ISSUE No. 8
The Stone in the Blender:
Orthodox Greece and
Contemporary Europe
The Marvelous History of
the Holy Cross
Together out of Time: Mosaics
in Moscow
A Siberian Grandmother
on Confession
FALL 2003
ISSUE No. 15
Brittany’s Celtic Past
Tro Breizh: A Pilgrimage to
the Seven Saints of Brittany
Corsican Root and Branch
Global Perceptions and Local
Relations: Pitfalls in
Christian-Muslim Dialogue
FALL 2001
ISSUE No. 7
St. Nicholas Monastery and
the Island of the Winds
The Obedience of Love:
An Interview with Sister
Gavrilia
Letters from a Village
Matushka
Orthodox World View:
Questions from Readers
SUMMER 2003
ISSUE No. 14
Diveyevo: A Pilgrim’s
Chronicle
An Album of Old Sarov and
Diveyevo
1991: The Return of St.
Seraphim’s Relics to Diveyevo
St. Seraphim’s Canonization
and the Russian Royal Family
at Sarov
SORRY,
OUT OF
PRINT.
SUMMER 2001
ISSUE No. 6
Orthodoxy in Indonesia: An
Interview with Archimandrite
Daniel Bambang Dwi Byantoro
Orthodox Mission Profile:
Archimandrite Daniel Byantoro
and the Indonesian Mission
The Prophet and the Pasha:
Saint Cosmas of Aitolia and
Ali Pasha, the Lion of Ioannina
The Age of Wood
Survey of Orthodox Christians
SPRING 2003
ISSUE No. 13
Beyond the Great Wall:
Orthodoxy In China
The Lotus Cross
The Ikon in the Home
The Lightness of Being
(Orthodox)
SPRING 2001
ISSUE No. 5
My Work with English-
Speaking Converts (Part III)
From Moscow to Lindisfarne:
A Pilgrimage to the West
Contemporary Voices for
Celtic Christianity
Saints Alive! (The Bits the
Hagiographers Left Out)
WINTER 2003
ISSUE No. 12
The Bones of Contention
Forgive Us, Merciful Lord
Living Theology in
Thessalonica
Father Chariton
WINTER 2001
ISSUE No. 4
Petersburg’s Street Kids Find
a Home
Ephraim of Nea Makri:
A Saint for Troubled Youth
My Work with English-speak-
ing Converts (Part II)
FALL 2002
ISSUE No. 11
To Be and Not To Seem:
My Mother-in-law, Grand
Duchess Olga Alexandrovna
1919: A Refugee Christmas
The Kaaba and Jacob’s Pillow
The Christmas Vigil
FALL 2000
ISSUE No. 3
Russian Pickwickians:
Dickens from an Orthodox
Vantage
My Work with English-
Speaking Converts
We are Once Again a People
Christ Visits a Muzhik
SUMMER 2002
ISSUE No. 10
Embracing Spring:
The Christopolous Family
Of Ioannina
Icon Of Great Joy:
The Tinos Mother Of God
Bishop Kallistos Ware On
Personhood, The Philokalia,
And The Jesus Prayer
Pilgrimage Morning
Moscow Pastors On Children,
The Church, And Free Will
SUMMER 2000
ISSUE No. 2
Orthodox Missionary
Outreach: Foma:
A Magazine for Doubters
Excerpts from Foma:
So, Why is Confession
Necessary?
The House Blessing
What Have I Done?
The Christian Parthenon
and St. Paul
SPRING 2002
ISSUE No. 9
The Stone In The Blender:
Orthodox Greece And
Contemporary Europe,
Part II
Saints Alive! (The Bits the
Hagiographers Left Out)
G.K. Chesterton In Russia
Is Chesterton Worth Reading?
Singled Out: A Survey of
Orthodox Christians
SORRY,
OUT OF
PRINT.
SPRING 2000
ISSUE No. 1
Fire from Heaven: Holy
Saturday at the Lord’s Tomb
Teaching Our Children to
Pray: Reflections of a
Young Mother
From America to Russia:
The Myrrh-Streaming Icon
of Tsar Nicholas II