Schmemann: faith is an exodus from the ego

Faith is always and above all a meeting with the Other, conversion to the Other, the reception of him as “the way, the truth and the life,” love for him and the desire for total unity with him, such that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). And because faith is always directed to the Other, it is man’s exodus from the limits of his “I,” a radical change of his interrelations above all within himself. ... Faith, to the degree that it is indeed faith, cannot but be an inner struggle: “I believe; help my unbelief ...” (Mk 9:24).
—Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist, trans. Paul Kachur (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 144.

Comments

Goodness gracious, the man must have read Barth!
It is remarkable, isn't it, how much this passage sounds like something straight out of the Church Dogmatics?