Dr Peter Gilbert, of De unione ecclesiarum (one of a few blogs by an Orthodox Christian I can bear to read) has just posted the text of a lecture he recently gave to the Youngstown, Ohio chapter of the Society of St John Chrysostom. Please leave any comments you have at Dr Gilbert’s blog.

I will only reproduce here a quote of St Gregory the Theologian, which seems to sum up so well the history of theological wrangling between Greek and Latin Christianity:

Others, mutually divided, drive East and West
into confusion, and God has abandoned them to their flesh,
for which they make war, giving their name and their allegiance to others:
my god’s Paul, yours is Peter, his is Apollos.
But Christ is pierced with nails to no purpose.
For it’s not from Christ that we’re called, but from men,
we who possess his honor by hands and by blood.
So much have our eyes been clouded over by a love
of vain glory, or gain, or by bitter envy,
pining away, rejoicing in evil: these have a well-earned misery.
And the pretext is the Trinity, but the reality is faithless hate.
Each is two-faced, a wolf concealed against the sheep,
and a brass pot hiding a nasty food for the children.

[Poem 2.1.13, To the Bishops, vv. 151-163; PG 37, 1239-1240]

From my favorite Orthodox blog, Prof. Peter Gilbert’s De Unione Ecclesiarum –

I finally have some good news to report. Today I received an e-mail from the Managing Editor of the journal Communio, informing me that the Summer 2009 issue is now, at last, in print, and that they have decided to feature my article on “John Bekkos as a Reader of the Fathers” on their website. A link to the website, showing the contents of their current issue, is http://www.communio-icr.com/latest.htm; a permanent link to the article, in PDF format, is http://www.communio-icr.com/articles/PDF/gilbert36-2.pdf

A few choice bits from the article, emphasis mine (but please read the whole thing before commenting) –

John Bekkos, who served as Patriarch of Constantinople during the years of the Union of Lyons (1275–1282) and who not merely accepted that union as a practical political necessity but defended it on the grounds of its theological truth, is not a popular man in much of the Christian East; many people view him as a traitor to Orthodoxy. He earns this reputation by virtue of having defended the view that the Latin doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit, the teaching that the Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son as from a single principle, is reconcilable and compatible with Greek patristic tradition.

… How far John Bekkos did or did not convert to Catholicism is a legitimate question; but it is not the question I chiefly wish to ask in this paper. I mention it here merely to give one specimen of new thinking about John Bekkos, thinking that presents some hope that long-entrenched views about him—the automatic assumption of his estrangement from the mind and heart of Orthodoxy—might be due for reassessment. Bekkos is increasingly being recognized as an early practitioner of what is now called “ecumenism.” The word “ecumenism” did not exist in Bekkos’s day, and it may be doubted whether he would have looked favorably on all modern varieties of it—whatever people may say about him, John Bekkos was not a doctrinal relativist—but that Bekkos was, in some sense, a thirteenth-century Orthodox ecumenist can hardly be denied. What is vital to note is that Bekkos consciously modeled his “ecumenism” upon the practice of the fathers of the Church. He saw the effort to move beyond verbal differences to a recognition of fundamental doctrinal agreement, where such agreement in truth existed, as an essential part of the fathers’ theological work. Christian faith is, in the final analysis, a faith not in words, but in things—and intellectual effort is sometimes needed to get beyond mere words to the realities that words signify. The fathers were willing to engage in that intellectual effort in order to preserve the unity of the Church; Bekkos saw himself as following in their footsteps.

… I would contend that his reading of the fathers of the Church provides real insight into what the fathers, or some of them at least, were saying. To dismiss John Bekkos as an “anthologist,” a man who “juggles texts” or collects them mechanically without any genuine insight into their meaning, is to perpetrate a gross misrepresentation. Bekkos was a theologian; and his continuing ecumenical significance has to be based on the very real possibility that some of his readings of the patristic evidence are true.

The central part of the present article attempts to substantiate the claim that Bekkos’s patristic interpretation is an insightful one, that is, that he sees important aspects of the fathers’ teaching that others have missed. In particular, I shall argue (a) that Bekkos rediscovers something that may be called “Old Nicene” theology, (b) that, in line with this theology, Bekkos identifies a certain “logic” to the way the fathers speak about divine substance, (c) that crucial to Bekkos’s understanding of the trinitarian doctrine of the fathers is a recognition of what I would call “referential causality,” and (d) that, contrary to the claims of some, the reliability of most of Bekkos’s patristic citations is not in doubt, and that, for those texts whose genuineness is in doubt, there is reason to think that at least some of them are authentic.

… Whether or not one calls John Bekkos’s change of mind regarding the orthodoxy of the Latin Church a “conversion,” it seems undeniable that John Bekkos did, in fact, change his mind about the orthodoxy of the Latin Church as a result of the things he read while in prison in 1273 and immediately after his release from jail—basically, as a result of an intense study of the Greek Church fathers and of the interpretations of the fathers given by men like Niketas of Maroneia and Nikephoros Blemmydes. After publicly stating that the Latins were heretics, he came to see them as orthodox Christians, differing from Christians of the Greek Church, not in the essentials of their belief, but in the manner in which the one, common faith was expressed.

… John Bekkos was not a juggler of texts or an anthologist, but a man who was concerned to state the logical coherence of traditional Christian belief in the Trinity, and to state it in such a way as to show that the insights of the Latin and Greek Christian traditions are ultimately harmonious. He saw, and I think saw correctly, that the Filioque debate had deep historical roots; this debate arose out of earlier misunderstandings concerning person and substance in God. Bekkos sees Photius and Gregory of Cyprus as teaching, not Cappadocian theology pure and simple, but a kind of neo-Cappadocianism that, by radicalizing the person/substance distinction through logical premises which the Cappadocians themselves do not state, draws from this distinction consequences which the Cappadocians themselves do not draw. They could not have drawn these consequences, because to do so would have disallowed much of their own stated thought; they would not have done so, because they recognized that those who spoke differently than they did nevertheless shared with them one faith.
The Cappadocians practiced a kind of ecumenism; John Bekkos, in his role as bishop and teacher, thinks that he is authorized and obliged to do the same in the circumstances of his own time. The Cappadocians, in their day, articulated the mystery of the Trinity in a way that differed, in some significant respects, from the way St. Athanasius or St. Epiphanius or Pope St. Damasus articulated it; yet the Cappadocians strove to maintain communion with St. Athanasius and St. Epiphanius and Pope St. Damasus. Similarly, St. Maximus, in his day, recognized that the Latin-speaking Church articulated the mystery of the Holy Spirit’s procession in a way that differed from the way most Greek-speaking Christians did; yet he strove to maintain the bonds of communion, and said that he had never known the fathers to disagree with each other in thought, even though, very often, they disagree with one another verbally. John Bekkos thinks that reasons of Christian truth and love oblige him to imitate these holy men.

… Trinitarian language becomes meaningless if it loses its concrete moorings in the revelation of God in Christ. John Bekkos understood that, as there is no approaching the Father except through the Son, so there is no knowing the Holy Spirit’s eternal relation to the Father except, implicitly or explicitly, through the Son. The Spirit does not lead to the Father except through the Son, nor does the Spirit come forth from the Father to us except through the Son. When theologians deny a mediation of divine being, when they confidently assert an ontology that makes the Son’s mediation of the Spirit’s ousia impossible, one must ask how they have acquired this mystical knowledge of the Father that shunts the Son off to the side.

John Bekkos did not shunt off the Son. He worshiped God the Logos, and logic played a role in how he worshiped him. He had no use for a “spirituality” that was not true rationality, just as he had no use for any new Spirit who is not through the Son. He was a diligent, painstaking researcher who cared about fact, because he cared about truth; but he did not worship the status quo. Pachymeres and others testify to Bekkos’s faith that, even if his own generation failed to appreciate what he had tried to do, future generations would understand. Time may yet prove him right.

September 16, 2009

Dear brothers and sisters,

Today we pause to reflect on the figure of the Eastern monk Symeon the New Theologian, whose writings exercised a noteworthy influence on the theology and spirituality of the East, in particular, regarding the experience of mystical union with God.

Symeon the New Theologian was born in 949 in Galatia, in Paphlagonia (Asia Minor), of a noble provincial family. While still young, he went to Constantinople to undertake studies and enter the emperor’s service. However, he felt little attracted to the civil career before him and, under the influence of the interior illuminations he was experiencing, he looked for a person who would direct him through his moment of doubts and perplexities, and who would help him progress on the way to union with God.

He found this spiritual guide in Symeon the Pious (Eulabes), a simple monk of the Studion monastery in Constantinople, who gave him to read the treatise “The Spiritual Law of Mark the Monk.” In this text, Symeon the New Theologian found a teaching that impressed him very much: “If you seek spiritual healing,” he read there, “be attentive to your conscience. Do all that it tells you and you will find what is useful to you.” From that moment — he himself says — he never again lay down without asking if his conscience had something for which to reproach him.

Symeon entered the Studion monastery, where, however, his mystical experiences and his extraordinary devotion toward the spiritual father caused him difficulty. He transferred to the small convent of St. Mammas, also in Constantinople, where, after three years, he became director –  the higumeno. There he pursued an intense search of spiritual union with Christ, which conferred on him great authority.

It is interesting to note that he was given there the name of “New Theologian,” notwithstanding the fact that tradition reserved the title of “Theologian” to two personalities: John the Evangelist and Gregory of Nazianzen. He suffered misunderstandings and exile, but was restored by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Sergius II.

Symeon the New Theologian spent the last phase of his life in the monastery of St. Macrina, where he wrote the greater part of his works, becoming ever more famous for his teachings and miracles. He died on March 12, 1022.

His best known disciple, Nicetas Stathos, who compiled and re-copied Symeon’s writings, prepared a posthumous edition, followed by a biography. Symeon’s work includes nine volumes, which are divided in theological, gnostic and practical chapters, three volumes of catechesis addressed to monks, two volumes of theological and ethical treatises, and a volume of hymns. Nor should we forget his numerous letters. All these works have found an important place in the Eastern monastic tradition down to our day.

Symeon focuses his reflection on the presence of the Holy Spirit in those who are baptized and on the awareness they must have of this spiritual reality. Christian life — he stresses — is intimate and personal communion with God; divine grace illumines the believer’s heart and leads him to the mystical vision of the Lord. In this line, Symeon the New Theologian insists on the fact that true knowledge of God stems from a journey of interior purification, which begins with conversion of heart, thanks to the strength of faith and love; passes through profound repentance and sincere sorrow for one’s sins; and arrives at union with Christ, source of joy and peace, invaded by the light of his presence in us. For Symeon, such an experience of divine grace is not an exceptional gift for some mystics, but the fruit of baptism in the life of every seriously committed faithful — a point on which to reflect, dear brothers and sisters!

This holy Eastern monk calls us all to attention to the spiritual life, to the hidden presence of God in us, to honesty of conscience and purification, to conversion of heart, so that the Holy Spirit will be present in us and guide us. If in fact we are justly preoccupied about taking care of our physical growth, it is even more important not to neglect our interior growth, which consists in knowledge of God, in true knowledge, not only taken from books, but interior, and in communion with God, to experience his help at all times and in every circumstance.

Basically, this is what Symeon describes when he recounts his own mystical experience. Already as a youth, before entering the monastery, while prolonging his prayer at home one night, invoking God’s help to struggle against temptations, he saw the room filled with light. When he later entered the monastery, he was given spiritual books to instruct himself, but the readings did not give him the peace he was looking for. He felt — he recounts — like a poor little bird without wings. He accepted this situation with humility, did not rebel, and then the visions of light began to multiply again. Wishing to be certain of their authenticity, Symeon asked Christ directly: “Lord, are you yourself really here?” He felt resonate in his heart an affirmative answer and was greatly consoled. “That was, Lord,” he wrote later, “the first time you judged me, prodigal son, worthy to hear your voice.” However, this revelation did not leave him totally at peace either. He even wondered if that experience should not be considered an illusion.

Finally, one day an essential event occurred for his mystical experience. He began to feel like “a poor man who loves his brothers” (ptochos philadelphos). He saw around him many enemies that wanted to set snares for him and harm him but despite this he felt in himself an intense movement of love for them. How to explain this? Obviously, such love could not come from himself, but must spring from another source. Symeon understood that it came from Christ present in him and all was clarified for him: He had the sure proof that the source of love in him was the presence of Christ and that to have in oneself a love that goes beyond one’s personal intentions indicates that the source of love is within. Thus, on one hand, we can say that, without a certain openness to love, Christ does not enter in us, but, on the other, Christ becomes the source of love and transforms us.

Dear friends, this experience is very important for us, today, to find the criteria that will indicate to us if we are really close to God, if God exists and lives in us. God’s love grows in us if we are really united to him in prayer and in listening to his word, with openness of heart. Only divine love makes us open our hearts to others and makes us sensitive to their needs, making us regard everyone as brothers and sisters and inviting us to respond with love to hatred, and with forgiveness to offense.

Reflecting on the figure of Symeon the New Theologian, we can still find a further element of his spirituality. In the path of ascetic life proposed and followed by him, the intense attention and concentration of the monk on the interior experience confers on the spiritual father of the monastery an essential importance. The young Symeon himself, as has been said, had found a spiritual director who greatly helped him and for whom he had very great esteem, so much so that, after his death, he also accorded him public veneration.

And I would like to say that this invitation continues to be valid for all — priests, consecrated persons and laypeople — and especially for young people — to take recourse to the counsels of a good spiritual father, capable of accompanying each one in profound knowledge of oneself, and leading one to union with the Lord, so that one’s life is increasingly conformed to the Gospel. We always need a guide, dialogue, to go to the Lord. We cannot do it with our reflections alone. And this is also the meaning of the ecclesiality of our faith, of finding this guide.

Thus, to conclude, we can summarize the teaching and mystical experience of Symeon the New Theologian: In his incessant search for God, even in the difficulties he met and the criticism made of him, he, in a word, allowed himself to be guided by love. He was able to live personally and to teach his monks that what is essential for every disciple of Jesus is to grow in love and so we grow in knowledge of Christ himself, to be able to say with St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

From Fr Pat’s Pastoral Ponderings, June 28, 2009:

Saint Anselm, as we have seen, begins his reflections on soteriology—the theology of salvation—by addressing the question: What is sin? This he identifies as the affront to the honor of God. He then goes on to inquire: What is required to satisfy the offended honor of God. This move from apologetics to theology is known as St. Anselm’s “theory of satisfaction.”

In the history of the theology of salvation, few developments have been more significant than the introduction of “satisfaction” as a category of study. Few likewise, I believe, have proved more troubling.

I concede that some notion of satisfaction was always implicit when Christians thought about “being saved.” That is to say, the very concept of salvation carries with it, at least tacitly, the question, “What was required for us to be saved?”

In fact, that question was raised explicitly in the great Christological controversies of the early Church. For example, a major premise of the orthodox faith affirmed, “Whatever was not assumed was not healed.” This thesis declared that God’s Son, in the Incarnation, took on our full humanity, not selected parts of it. In other words, only the Word’s full assumption of our human nature could satisfy what was needed for human beings to be saved.

This principle, enunciated explicitly at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, was later applied to the question of Christ’s human will by the Third Council of Constantinople in 670. According to this latter council, the work of salvation required a complete agreement of the divine and human wills in Christ. Hence, said the council, a full human will in Christ was required for our salvation. Nothing less would satisfy.

The new component in St. Anselm’s soteriology seems to be this: He introduces the idea that some aspect of God required “satisfaction” by the work of Christ. Specifically, it was the offended honor of God. This was the “debt” that only God’s Son could pay.

I have long suspected that Anselm’s inspiration for this theory may have been a Resurrection chant entitled the Praeconium Paschale. Our earliest extant copy of this text, commonly called (from its first word) the Exultet, is contained in “The Bobbio Missal,” the seventh century manuscript of a Gallican sacramentary. This beautiful and venerable text, which may have been composed two centuries earlier, refers to the salvific work of Christ, “who for us remitted to the eternal Father the debt of Adam”—qui pro nobis aetero Patri Adae debitum solvit.

Although I am familiar with no earlier liturgical text in which the work of salvation was so described, another liturgical hymn, roughly contemporary to “The Bobbio Missal,” spoke of Christ’s work as the remission of a debt, This akathist of Sergius of Constantinople (a monothelite, alas) described Christ as “He that remits the debt of all men”—Ho panton chreolytes ton anthropon (Hymnus Acathistus 266).

This image of a “debt” owed to God is, of course, perfectly biblical. Jesus spoke of God as “a certain creditor who had two debtors” (Luke 7:41). He described the judgment of God as the summoning of the master’s debtors (16:1-12). In the Bible, however, and as understood by the Church Fathers (for instance, Hippolytus, Psalm Titles 4, and Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 110.3), these texts refer to the mercy of God and to man’s obligation to imitate that mercy. The image was not used in reference to the work of Christ.

It is generally conceded that St. Anselm was the first to think of the burden of sin as a “debt of honor”: Hunc honorem debitum qui Deo non reddit, aufert Deo quod suum est, et Deum exhonorat, et hoc est peccare—”He that does not render to God this honor that is His debt, takes away from God that which is His, and dishonors God, and this is to sin” (Cur Deus Homo 11). And nothing, he went on, “is less tolerable in the order of things than that the creature should take away this debt of honor [debitum honorem] to the Creator, and not render what he owes” (op. cit. 13).

Anselm does not, strictly speaking, find salvation’s “necessity” in God’s will, nor in man. He finds it, rather, in what he calls “the order of things”—in rerum ordine. His references to the Creator and the creature indicate that he means, by this, the order of Creation. Salvation must rectify a problem in the created order.

From Fr Pat’s Pastoral Ponderings, July 26, 2009:

St Nicholas Cabasilas, after elaborating the tripartite structure of soteriology in his comments on the Sacrament of Chrismation, comes to the third and supreme sacrament of Christian Initiation, the Holy Eucharist (The Life in Christ 4.1-2).

Unlike Baptism and Chrismation, Nicholas says, this third initiation rite is repeated for the faithful during the course of their Christian life: “It helps the initiate after their Initiation, when the ray of light derived from the Sacred Mysteries must be revived after being obscured by the darkness of sins. To revive those that fade away and die because of their sins is the work of the Sacred Table alone” (4.3). Our habits of sin make reception of the Holy Eucharist a lifelong necessity.

We all continue to fall, Nicholas explains, nor can we, solely by our own efforts, be reconciled to God. In this respect, he quotes Romans 2:23—”You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law?” Nicholas Cabasilas thus—and as though out of the blue—introduces the theme central to the soteriology of St. Anselm: God’s offended honor.

Indeed, Nicholas goes on to explain this point, in lines that are nearly Greek translations from Anselm’s Latin. He speaks of Christ, who “alone was able to render all honor [timen] due to the One who begot Him and make satisfaction [apologesthasthai] for that which was taken away, achieving the former by His life and the latter by His death. To outweigh the injury which we had committed, He introduced the death He died on the Cross unto the Father’s glory, thereby making abundant satisfaction for the debt of honor we owed [opheilometha timen] by reason of our sins” (4.4).

Nicholas is clearly reliant here on Anselm, and it seems important to remark on this reliance. In fact, throughout his treatise on the Incarnation—Cur Deus Homo? —Anselm treats many of the same soteriological themes as Cabasilas and the Church Fathers: The integrity of two natures in Christ (2.7) and the unity of His person (2.9), the freedom of Christ’s will in the Passion (1.8; 2.17), man’s destiny to beatitude (2.1), and the final grace of the bodily resurrection (2.3). Although the soteriology of Anselm seems rather thin beside that of Cabasilas, the latter theologian detects no heresy in it, and, when it suits his purpose, he does not hesitate to incorporate Anselm’s thought into his own reflections.

As we noted above, Nicholas uses Anselm’s “satisfaction theory” in his discussion of the Holy Eucharist. The body of Christ received in the Holy Communion, Nicholas affirms, is the same body in which the Savior “made satisfaction for our sins”: It sweat blood in the agony, received lashes upon the back, was pierced with nails. It is to this very body, which “became the treasury of the fullness of the Godhead,” that the believer is united in the Eucharist (The Life in Christ 4.5).

Although there is also the sacrament (mysterion) of confession which, “when men repent of their sins and confess them to the priests, delivers them from every punishment of God the Judge,” yet even this sacrament is inadequate without participation in the Lord’s table. This is why, says Nicholas, we are to approach that table “frequently,” inasmuch as “it is the only remedy against sin.”

All righteousness before God, Nicholas reminds us, comes through the immolated body of Christ. Human righteousness counts for nothing. “But once men are united to Christ’s flesh and blood by partaking of them, immediately the greatest benefits ensue: the forgiveness of sins and the inheritance of the Kingdom, which are the fruits of Christ’s righteousness.”

In the Holy Eucharist, he goes on, we receive the whole Christ, everything that was assumed in the Incarnation, “soul, mind, will, everything that is human.” These God’s Son took on “in order to be united to the whole of our nature in order to penetrate us and assimilate us into Himself by totally uniting what is proper to Him with what is proper to us.”

“Thus, it is clear,” says Nicholas, “that God infuses Himself into us and mingles Himself with us, changing and transforming us into Him,” as “when iron is united to fire and thereby takes on the properties of fire” (4.6). For Cabasilas the Eucharist extends to men the salvation effected in the Incarnation, on the Cross, and in the Resurrection.

Note: Father Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor of All Saints’ Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois.

A reader sent me this very interesting question for discussion (and, by the way, you can now send questions or comments to eirenikonblog at me.com):

… I was hoping to use this forum to moot an issue that has troubled me relating to the transmission of the Petrine function in the early Church.  It involves Clement’s letter to the Corinthians.  I have always had difficulty with the traditional Catholic portrayal of the transmission as flowing seamlessly from Peter to Linus and their successors as president of the apostolic see down to our time.  How could Linus have exercised the Petrine function (as Catholics understand it) of leadership within the universal Church while many of the apostles remained alive, indeed while Paul himself was not only present in Rome but actually writing from Rome to other churches from the capital (in a classic demonstration of Petrine leadership)?  Surely this is only a role that could have been assumed by the bishop of Rome once the apostles had all died.  This is why the traditional dating of Clement’s letter made sense to me as by the mid to late 90s, John would have either passed on or been sent on the exile that Tradition links with his martyrdom.  If, as Dr Tighe and the current Pope seem to prefer, the letter is to be ascribed to the mid 70s, why would Clement be intervening in Corinth at all when the Apostle John himself could do so with greater ease (being closer at Ephesus) and with so much greater authority?  Indeed, it is only the context of John absence or indisposition that Clement’s authoritative language and intervention makes any sense.  Such an understanding of transmission (from the apostles as a whole and not just from Peter) to the Church of Rome would seem to explain satisfactorily from the Catholic point of view the otherwise embarrassing absence of demonstrable exercise of Petrine leadership by any Roman bishop between Peter and Clement.  An earlier dating of the letter, while consonant with the traditional Catholic view of the chronological assumption of the Petrine role by Peter’s immediate episcopal successors, strikes me as deeply problematic ecclesiologically.

N.B. If I remember correctly, Dr Tighe argues on the basis of George Edmundson’s The Church of Rome in the First Century (the 1913 Bampton Lectures) (available online here). Also, I am not sure that the current Pope argues for the early date of Clement’s letter. Here, in his March 7, 2007 address on Clement of Rome, he seems to accept the later date of Clement’s letter, “immediately after the year 96.” Perhaps the younger Ratzinger argued differently?

… [T]he reading of history that you have taken on from Joseph Farrell, that I think constitutes an ideology, in fact resembles, theoretically and rhetorically, the ideology of those who gave fuel to the Bosnian war. It presents a discourse wherein the West is conceived to have fallen from divine grace, and the chief villain of the story is St. Augustine. It is to his “dialectic” of divine simplicity, which you see as fundamentally akin to that of Eunomius, that you ascribe the manifold problems of the West. It may well be that you accord Augustine some credit as an honest Christian; but his thinking you consistently represent as heresy, “Sabellianism” or “Semi-Sabellianism.” When I say that this is an ideology, I mean that it is maintained only through a kind of willful disregard of Christian history. It presents a caricature view of both the West and the East, a caricature that arises from an impatience with looking at facts. Neither the East, nor certainly the West, was ever as monolithically Photian in its understanding of the trinitarian mystery as you make it out to be. That is one of the things, in writing this blog, that I have tried to show.

That impatience with looking at facts has serious consequences for Christian relations. The West is asked to renounce its own past, to take on a view of God that never really belonged to it. I do think that this is a kind of destruction of memory, implicitly a kind of violence, and that the West rightly rejects such a demand. And I know that theoretical violence often issues in the physical kind.

This is not to say that the West never perpetrated violence on the East, both theoretical and physical. And it is right that the theoretical and physical causes of violence be acknowledged and renounced on both sides. But my consistent claim throughout this blog has been that people like the Cappadocians, St. Athanasius, St. Maximus, and other fathers of the Church were constantly aware of the dangers of Christian misunderstanding, dangers of violence, and that they sought to obviate those dangers by perceiving, if at all possible, the underlying commonality of doctrine when there was a verbal disagreement. I think that that is what St. Maximus does in his Letter to Marinus. And I am pretty certain that the underlying commonality of doctrine St. Maximus defends in that letter allows for the orthodoxy of St. Augustine’s teaching on the Holy Trinity, in spite of what is said by Anastasius the Librarian.

In short, I think that Bekkos is a better reader of the patristic evidence than Photius is. It may be that you think such an acknowledgment is inconsistent with belonging to the Orthodox Church. Perhaps you are right; God is judge. But I have a great hesitation to leave Orthodox discourse entirely in the hands of those who are impatient with fact, and who thereby disallow the possibility of any Christian reconciliation from the outset …

– Peter Gilbert

Update (6/30/2008) – A new post at De unione ecclesiarum: “On exclusive truth-claims; or, What I Believe”

(Apologies for the cheesy title.)

Recently on some of my favorite blogs, there have been some excellent rebuttals to Orthodox contentions about the Filioque clause and the Procession of the Holy Spirit.

First, Sacramentum Vitae’s Dr Michael Liccione (a veteran of irenic, scholarly, substantive online Catholic-Orthodox debate) has added a new installment to an ever-growing series of posts on the Filioque. As always, the gigantic ensuing combox discussions are well worth following. Also, by popular demand, Dr Liccione has added a separate blog category for discussion of the Filioque, as of today containing 13 posts.

Second, Dr Scott Carson of An Examined Life has posted a lengthy reflection on the Filioque debate currently going on at Sacramentum Vitae. Dr Carson’s past posts dealing with the topic are also well worth studying (see especially here).

Third, Brandon, at the philosophy blog Siris, has another reflection on the ongoing debate at Sacramentum Vitae. Brandon’s previous posts on the topic may be read through here.

Fourth, Jonathan Prejean at Crimson Catholic has posted “A Filioque Footnote” to the Sacramentum Vitae, debate, concerning a Catholic patristic scholar’s take on Gregory of Nyssa’s use of the phrase dia tou yiou (“through the Son”).

Finally (last but not least), Dr Peter Gilbert at De unione ecclesiarum has a very interesting post which is more up my alley, as a very lazy amateur who enjoys studying history more than theology or philosophy. The post concerns Anastasius Bibliothecarius (“the Librarian”) – a very colorful ninth-century member (and perhaps antipope) of the Roman Church – and his apparently Greek-friendly (even Photian) interpretation of Maximus the Confessor’s defense of Latin understandings of the Spirit’s Procession (be sure to read Dr Gilbert’s earlier post on that here).

Update (6/25) – And yet another lengthy post from Dr Liccione, “Creedal Amplification”. Our cup runneth over!

Update (6/28) – Wei-Hsien Wan at Torn Notebook has a great new post on the Filioque debates from the perspective of a “bystander” (which I consider myself to be as well). The post ends with some extremely wise advice from Saint Ephrem Syrus:

Father, Son and Holy Spirit can be reached only by Their names;
do no look further, to Their persons, just meditate on Their names.
If you investigate the person of God, you will perish,
but if you believe in the name, you will live.
Let the name of the Father be a boundary to you,
do not cross it and investigate His nature;
let the name of the Son be a wall to you,
do not cross it and investigate His birth from the Father;
let the name of the Spirit be a fence for you,
do not enter inside for the purpose of prying into Him.
(Memra on Faith 4:129-40)

A. St. Leger Westall, “The Fathers Gave Rome the Primacy”, The Dublin Review, CXXXII (January-April 1903), pp. 101-114.

The famous xxviii. Canon of Chalcedon has been for many centuries a favourite authority among all those who, whether in the East or in England, are anxious to find support in primitive times for their rejection of the Petrine prerogatives of the Holy See. To a serious student of history, however, it seems an act of no small temerity in an opponent of the Papal claims to appeal to any episode in the history of this Council, for at no period of the Church’s existence is the universal recognition of the Pope’s supremacy more clear. The correspondence of St. Leo with St. Flavian, with the heretic Eutyches, with the Eastern and Western Emperors, and the Empress Pulcheria; the famous letter of St. Peter Chrysologus to Eutyches, the letters of St. Leo to the Council, the attitude of his legates there, the enthusiastic reception by the Council of his epistle to Flavian, the terms of the sentence of deposition on the Alexandrian Patriarch Dioscorus, the Acta of the Council, and its conciliar letters to Pope Leo and the Emperor Marcian, with the correspondence that followed – all these form a testimony to the universal belief in the jus divinum of the Papal supremacy so overwhelming in its force, that it is a matter of amazement that any candid mind should entertain a doubt as to the sentiments of the Church in that age. 

But though we have all this, yet, in the opinion of Anglican writers, we ought “to think we have nothing when we see Mardochai the Jew sitting before the King’s gate” – when, that is, the xxviii. canon of the Council tells another story. Even those writers who admit that the canon, having been rejected by the West, has no legal validity as an Ecumenical law, appeal to its as evidence that, in the opinion of a large assembly of bishops, the ecclesiastical pre-eminence of Rome was due only to her secular greatness; and further, that Pope Leo himself, while rejecting the canon, did not deny this assertion. “The Fathers,” says the canon, “properly gave the primacy (hoi pateres eikotes apodedokasi ta presbeia) to the throne of the elder Rome because that was the Imperial City.” The Papal primacy, it is argued, is here based merely upon ecclesiastical consent, and is due to the civil greatness of the capital. This contention has been overthrown, times out of number, by Catholic writers who have shown without difficulty, from the documents already mentioned, how clearly expressed was the belief of the Council in the Petrine prerogatives of the Pope. Even so sturdy an Anglican as the late Canon Bright readily admits (Hist. Ch., p. 414) that “the Council repeatedly refers to the connection of Rome with St. Peter,” and that “the civil greatness of Rome was only one cause of her ecclesiastical precedency.” 

It appears to the present writer that, whatever arriere pensee may have been in the minds of Anatolius, the Archbishop of Constantinople, and some of the courtier-bishops who were concerned with him in drawing up the canon, it was most certainly intended to bear an acceptable interpretation to the Pope, St. Leo. Everything depended on their being able to secure his assent to the canon – this they themselves declare – and it is, therefore, certain that they would not have done anything which must inevitably defeat their purpose. Viewed in this light, it is highly significant that the idea expressed in the famous sentence, “hoi pateres apodedokasi k.t.l.,” and to some extent even the wording of that sentence, is that of the Pope St. Leo himself. Shortly and somewhat vaguely it conveyed the Pope’s own well-known teaching as expounded by him in language of great eloquence and beauty a short time before the meeting of the Council. The sentence, therefore, is not only patient of a Catholic interpretation, but, when all the circumstances of the case are considered, could not have been intended by its authors to suggest anything else to the mind of the Pope.

Before dealing with this point, a brief statement of the difficulties attending any other interpretation of this part of the canon is necessary.

The usual Anglican and Greek Orthodox interpretation of the canon is that the Roman primacy was the gift either of the Nicene Fathers or the Fathers generally, and was a matter of mere ecclesiastical arrangement, and not, as Rome teaches, an inheritance from St. Peter. To this view there are four main objections, each one of which appears to be fatal, and in the cumulative force are so beyond all contradiction. First, the statement, thus interpreted is historically false. Secondly, it expressly contradicts the other explicit statements of the council, and renders its letter to Leo absolutely meaningless. Thirdly, the authors of the canon would have defeated their own purpose, for they would have knowingly and wilfully made it impossible for the Pope to ratify the canon, and their success depended, as they themselves assert, on gaining his assent. Fourthly, it makes the attitude of the Pope towards the canon inexplicable. Although one of the strongest champions of the Petrine claims of his see that history can produce, he betrays from the first to last no consciousness that this crucial statement affected, or was meant to affect, the privileges of his chair as the “Cathedra Petri.”

It is impossible within the limits of a short essay to elaborate the argument. It must suffice to illustrate the objections just recited if we indicate briefly the reasons which support them, and which appear to make a Catholic interpretation of the famous words of the canon the only one that does not directly conflict with the admitted facts of the case.

The Council committed itself in precise and definite terms to the belief that the Pope was the inheritor of the privileges of St. Peter, and head of the Church by Divine right. Passing by the well-known and significant cry of the assembled Fathers on hearing the Pope’s letter to Flavian, “Peter hath spoken by Leo (dia Leontos),” let us turn to the sentence of deposition pronounced by the Papal legate on Dioscorus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, and subscribed by every bishop at the council: “Wherefore the most holy and blessed Leo, Archbishop of the great and elder Rome, by us (his legates) and this present most holy Council (di himon kai tes parouses hagiotates sunodou), in union with the thrice-blessed and all-honoured apostle Peter, who is the Rock and support (petra kai krepis) of the Catholic Church and the foundation (ho themelios) of the orthodox faith, has deprived (egumnosen, Leon being the subject) him of his episcopate, etc.” We are reminded of the preamble of an English Act of Parliament: “Be it enacted by the King’s most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent” of his Parliament. 

Again, in the Council’s letter to Leo (we quote the Latin version since Leo himself, being unfamiliar with Greek, probably used the Latin copy), the Pope is termed “vocis beati Petri omnibus constitutus interpres” – “appointed for all men the interpreter of the voice of Blessed Peter”; once more, “ipsum cui vineae custodia a Salvatore commissa est” – “the very one to whom the care of the vine has been committed by the Saviour” (a clear declaration of the jus divinum); “te qui corpus ecclesiae unire festinas” (spoudazo is the Greek verb). He has presided over the council as “head over the members”; he is its “caput” (kephale) and “summitas” (koryphe) – “head and crown.” He is “sanctissime et beatissimae Pater,” not “frater” as the two Anglican archbishops, differing from a General Council, thought fit to term the thirteenth Leo. They definitely give a Catholic rendering to the canon by telling the Pope that the canon means “post vestram sanctissimam et apostolicam sedem primatum habere Constantinopolitanam sedem, quae secunda est ordinata” – “that the see of Constantinople shall have the primacy after your most holy and Apostolic See, and is constituted the second.” The letter of the same Council to the Eastern Emperor Marcian is equally significant; he and the Empress are exhorted to support the Council, assembled at their instance, “in strongly asserting the teaching of the See of Peter” (tes Petrou kathedras bebaiountes to kerygma). This must suffice in regard to the Council’s belief in the Petrine prerogatives of the Pope, for to give a complete idea of the strength of the argument would require the transcription of the entire documents. The words of the canon, therefore, cannot be interpreted by any reasonable critic as contradicting these solemn and categorical statements.

Secondly, the canon was drawn up not as an independent act of the bishops, but for the very purpose of gaining the Pope’s acceptance, which was most earnestly and respectfully solicited. They have given this honour to Constantinople, so they tell the Pope, “as proceeding first of all from your Holiness, knowing that all the good that happens to children is set down to the account of their parents. As we have left the decision to the head (kephale, caput), let the head (koryphe, summitas) do its part to the children … In order that you may know that we have done nothing for the sake of favouritism or enmity, but by divine guidance, we have, in proof of our sincerity, left the entire force of our acts to you for your confirmation and acceptance” (”ut autem sciatis quia nihil gratiae causa aut offensionis effecimus, sed nutu divino gubernati, omnem vobis gestorum vim insinuavimus, ad comprobationem nostrae sinceritatis, et ad eorum quae a nobis gesta sunt firmitatem et consonantiam”). The bishops could not possibly have addressed the Pope in these terms if the canon had possessed in their estimation an anti-Petrine significance. They knew that they were addressing the strongest, most clear-sighted, and most uncompromising man then in the world, and they could not have expected him to give the assent they desiderated to words which in any way conflicted with his most cherished convictions. Furthermore, Anatolius, the occupant of the See of Constantinople, was so eager to induce the Pope to confirm the canon, that he wrote a letter to Leo, in addition to the conciliar letter, in which he said that “the Apostolic throne has for a long time cared for the throne of Constantinople and has granted it undrudging assistance of its own,” “that the See of Constantinople has for its father your own Apostolic See,” and that “the Council and himself had sent him that decree for his assent and confirmation (synainesin kai bebaioteta).”

Thirdly, not only was the canon drawn up for the Pope’s acceptance, but his ratification was absolutely necessary. This is proved both by the passages already cited and by the subsequent history. The Council, the Emperor Marcian, and Anatolius all implore the Pope to assent to the canon. Anatolius, in a subsequent letter, submits to the Pope’s refusal, and once more observed “that the whole force and confirmation of what was done had been reserved for the authority of His Holiness,” (”gestorum vis omnis et confirmatio auctoritati vestrae beatitudinis reservata”). Assuredly the Pope was not intended to read in the words a meaning which would have rendered his consent impossible.

I have just begun listening to Bishop Hilarion’s talk at the recent SVS conference. He makes reference to the (in)famous Canon 28 of Chalcedon, and gives the standard Orthodox (and generally non-/anti-Roman) interpretation of it: that it ascribes the origin of Old Rome’s primacy not to the will of Christ or succession from the Apostle Peter, but to the will of “the Fathers” based on purely political or historical considerations. In other words, here we have what Fr Francis Dvornik called the Byzantine East’s “principle of accommodation” triumphing over Rome’s (and, to a lesser extent, Alexandria’s and Antioch’s) “principle of apostolicity.” This is why (so the standard account continues) Pope Leo so strenuously objected to it, and the Roman Church never received the Canon.

I am immediately reminded of a very interesting, and very old, article from the Dublin Review contesting the standard reading of Canon 28. The article was suggested to me by Dr William Tighe back at Cathedra Unitatis, where I posted the article in five parts. I would like to re-post the article here at Eirenikon. Look for A. St. Leger Westall’s article “The Fathers Gave Rome the Primacy” later today. The article is a tad polemical for a blog called Eirenikon, but I think Westall’s fascinating argument should be heard.

The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies

“Overcoming the Schism,” Chicago, May 8-10, 1998

THE SCHISM: GROUNDS FOR DIVISION, GROUNDS FOR UNITY
“A LATIN’S LAMENTATION OVER GENNADIOS SCHOLARIOS”
Fr. Hugh Barbour, O. Praem.

In August of 1994, I was happy to be one of the many Latin clerics who over the years, in divisa or in borghese, have made a pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain of Athos, the Garden of the Mother of God. On the feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration I was able to set foot on that peninsula where souls and bodies hidden from the world, but known to God and His angels, share still in the bright glory of that mystery narrated in the Holy Gospels. I made this pilgrimage with the blessing of my abbot after attending an international meeting of some clergy. On Athos I expected to be refreshed and edified, and I was, after having had to breathe deeply the “schismatic” atmosphere of a sadly typical postconciliar gathering of ecclesiastics, some of whom were merely juridically Roman Catholic, for whom God and the things of God could scarcely be said to hold the primacy, and the Pope not at all.

In a shop by the docks at the little western port of the Mountain I found a postcard representation of an icon depicting a touching and curious scene: “The Lamentation over Constantine Palaiologos” written at the Old Calendarist hesychasterion of the Mother of God of the Myrtle Tree in Attica. In the icon the emperor reposes on a bier with a candle as two women mourn on either side, one kneeling, written as “Orthodoxy” and the other, “Hellas”, standing with her hand to her mouth in a gesture of reverence, calling to mind the original sense of the imperial Roman adoratio. A touching scene, I say, because it brings to mind the magnificent “courage born of despair,” as even the malicious Gibbon puts it, with which the last of the Roman emperors died leading the defense of his New Rome, yet still a curious one, since this Constantine XII died in communion with the see of Old Rome, having received the Eucharistic viaticum on the morning of the halosis at a uniate liturgy, the last to be served in the Church of Holy Wisdom.

Even more curious was the figure “Hellas” for nothing could be less Byzantine, less Orthodox, less imperial, than the use of this term to name the nation of Greek-speaking Romaioi. To Orthodox Byzantium “hellenic” meant secular, pagan, something worse than heterodox, to be anathematized in the synodikon on the first Sunday of Great Lent. At the time of the fall of the City a “hellene” was one who exceeded even the utilitarian impiety of the Florentine latinophrones by promoting the Florentine Platonic revival.

The figure of Orthodoxy, undoubtedly the most important in the image, was in very strange company indeed, with anomalies more than anachronistic. That this icon was the work of Old Calendarists who clearly intended it to be the expression of a rigorously Orthodox historical sensibility indicates a fact, more relevant than ever, which those of us – inter quos ego – who sympathize with the zealots, Catholic and Orthodox, must keep in mind. It is this: We must be vigilant to ensure that in our understanding and defense of right belief and right worship we do not adopt the ideological preoccupations of political and philosophical movements, sometimes those of our friends and allies, which are foreign to our faith and its tradition, lest we undermine the very thing we are striving to preserve. We must examine carefully the understanding and instincts of the best representatives of our twin tradition, Eastern and Western, especially at the points in history when they are explicitly opposing each other or together combating the same contemporary errors. The happy result of this can be a genuine ecumenism, an ecumenism of the “anti-ecumenical,” innocent of ideology or indifferentism. Dom Gerard Calvet, abbot of the traditional Benedictine abbey of the Madeleine, Le Barroux in Provence has said: “The true ecumenism is that of Tradition… the more I deepen my understanding of Tradition, the more I rediscover other men.” [1]

After the pilgrimage to the Holy Mountain, I went to Serres in Macedonia near the Bulgarian border, to the monastery of the Holy Forerunner, to the tomb of Gennadios Scholarios, first Patriarch of Constantinople under Turkish domination, to pay a debt of gratitude to him by praying for the repose of his soul, just having completed in 1993 a study of his thought for a doctorate at a Roman university. The monastery which was the place of his retirement, from which he hoped (and hopes still!) to rise in the parousia, is now flourishing after many years without a monastic community. There are nuns there, the spiritual daughters of the great Father Ephraim, abbot of Philotheou on Athos, who has founded a number of observant communities in Greece and most recently in Arizona at a desert town ominously – for the Orthodox at least – named Florence.

Two kind nuns accompanied me to the katholikon where they were amazed and a bit reluctant to see me venerate the relics of the monastery, and stood by with a certain sceptical vigilance as I prayed a rosary more romano at the epitaph of the patriarch, one on each side, as I knelt there. They simply did not know what to expect from a Latin priest, but they were willing and charitable enough in their watchfulness. Here was another touching and curious scene. Yet it was a scene more truly indicative of the state of things past and present and future than that written on the postcard icon. This was a living icon of the clarity about Tradition just commended, with the tense, but kind-hearted akrivia which ought to characterize the relations between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. No one of us had made a compromise, but something true had really brought us together.

The nuns represented the living tradition of Orthodoxy, the kneeling priest, the faith of the Roman Catholic Thomist. What did the patriarch lying in death, surrounded by his modern mourners represent? We will now see. The rest of my conference will draw out the implications of this brief act of piety on behalf of the departed patriarch. Let it be a kind of historical-theological “Lamentation over Gennadios Scholarios,” a threnos which may not only move us at the thought of the beauty and the possibilities that once were, but also shed light on our duties at the present hour.

Gennadios Scholarios was the handpicked successor of St. Mark of Ephesus as leader of the zealot opposition to the union council of Florence, at which they had both assisted. When the union decree of the council was promulgated by the emperor Constantine and the papal legate Cardinal Isidore of Kiev in Hagia Sophia in December 1452, just six months before the fall of the City, Gennadios published the following proclamation on the door of his cell in the monastery of Charsianeites nearby: “O miserable Romans, why will you abandon the truth; and why instead of confiding in God will you put your trust in the Italians? In losing your faith you will lose your city. Have mercy on me O Lord! I protest in your presence that I am innocent of the crime. O miserable Romans, consider, pause, and repent. At the same moment you renounce the religion of your fathers, by embracing impiety you submit to a foreign servitude.” Later, after the fall of the City, Mehmet II brought Gennadios back from captivity to make him the patriarch of the Romans and the first ethnarch of the Greek-speaking Christians under the Turcocracy. Gennadios resigned in 1457 to go to Vatopedi on Athos, and was brought back again in 1462, and then resigned definitively in 1464 and went into retirement at the monastery of the Forerunner in Serres. There he continued a theological and philosophical production which had characterized his whole life since the conclusion of the Council of Florence. [2] He reposed in the Lord sometime the in the year 1472.

Surely Gennadios professed an Orthodoxy of the utmost purity, and possessed an anti-Latin animus firm enough to make him doctrinally acceptable to the saintly arch-zealot Mark of Ephesus and politically acceptible to the wily Sultan. One would expect his writings to reflect this. On examining them, then, one can only be struck with amazement to see that he is an enthusiastic follower and translator of St. Thomas Aquinas. Western Scholasticism is supposed to be the bane of both the ecumenically-minded and traditionalist Orthodox today, one of the only points they share in common. There is barely a point of heterodox Latin theology or liturgy which the zealots do not either trace to it or determine as its cause. There is barely an aspect of traditional Orthodox practice that the modernists want to change in favor of restoring and updating, in which they do not see some Latinizing scholastic or even – perish the thought – Augustinian influence. Both lament the influence of Latin scholasticism on some of the standard Orthodox theological manuals and catechisms in use until recently in Greece and in Slavic countries. Scholasticism, synonymous it would seem with rationalism, and the cause of secularism, is pernicious and fundamentally unorthodox, a foreign influence, an aberration. But let us hear what Gennadios, the patriarch, patriot, and anti-Latin zealot has to say in the preface to his summaries- of all things-the two Summae of St. Thomas Aquinas:

“The present book is a summary of two books, on of that against the Gentiles, or those heresies which oppose the truth, the other the first part of the Summa Theologiae of which there are three parts. We have taken up the labor of such a summary on account of our great love for these two books. We have put these things together which we had written out before our captivity, and later rediscovered in the diaspora. Since they are in no wise of an easily transportable size on account of the breadth and size of the chapters and questions, and of the fullness of the precise arguments contained in them, and since this our unfortunate life after our national disaster lavishes on us wanderings and distasteful goings and comings, and being unable to carry about so great a weight of books, of necessity and for no other ambition we have made a project of this summary so that it can suffice for us and for anyone else who is well versed in them, in place of the complete books. The author of these books is a Latin by birth and so he adheres to the dogma of that church as an inheritance; this is only human. But he is a wise man, and is inferior to none of those who are perfect in wisdom among men. He wrote most especially as a commentator of Aristotelian philosophy, and of the Old and New Testaments. Most of the principal conclusions of both Sacred Theology and philosophy are seen in his books, almost all of which we have studied, both the few which were translated by others into the Greek language, and their Latin originals, some of which we ourselves have translated into our own tongue. (But alas! All our labor was in vain, for we were about to suffer along with the fatherland which perished on account of our wickedness, the divine mercy being unable to hold out any longer against the divine justice.) In all the aforesaid areas this wise man is most excellent, as the best interpreter and synthesizer in those matters in which his church agrees with ours. In those things wherein that church and he differ from us-they are few in number-namely on the procession of the Holy Spirit and the divine essence and energies, in these not only do we observe the dogma of our fatherland, but we have even fought for it in many books. Our zeal even to the shedding of blood for our dogmas is evident to all men, both friends and enemies, and the whole world is filled with the books we have produced against those who deny them. Glory be to God in all things!” [3]

In a later summary of the Prima secundae of the Summa Theologiae, completed while in retirement at Serres, Gennadios sums up his attitude to the Angelic Doctor: “Would O excellent Thomas that you had not been born in the West. Then you would not have needed to defend the deviations of the church there…you would have been as perfect in theology as you are in ethics.” [4]

Gennadios’ Thomism is not a sort of hapax in Orthodox thought, We are not dealing here with the idiosyncrasy of one thinker. He represents an already longstanding late Byzantine tradition of admiration and judicious use of Aquinas’ works by theologians and apostles of the first rank. The emperor-monk John VI Joasaph Kantakuzenos, a fervent Palamite, in fact the imperial vindicator of the doctrine of Palamas, was a monk of the Charsianeites monastery where Gennadios was to enter almost a century later. As emperor he had sponsored the translation of Thomas’ Summa contra gentiles by Demetrios Kydones, and he used this very translation to refute the latinizing doctrine of Demetrios’ own brother Prochoros who was also a Thomist. Both the latinophron and the Palamite zealot appealed to the teaching of Aquinas. Gennadios’ two teachers, also monks of the monastery of Charsianeites, Joseph Bryennios and Makarios Makres, whom the Orthodox venerate as blessed, used the writings of St. Thomas in their dialogue treatises against the Muslims, taking arguments verbatim, but without attribution, from the Contra gentiles in defense of the incarnation and of consecrated virginity. Bryennios, an anti-unionist missionary in Crete, and Makres were the most vigorous of opponents to union with Rome. In 1964 when the monks of Athos made a proclamation against the ecumenism of Patriarch Athenagoras, they used the words of Bryennios, the accomplished Latinist and admirer and student of St. Thomas Aquinas, as the peroration of their ardent declaration against uniatism: “We will never renounce you, beloved Orthodoxy! We will never betray you O Reverence of the Fathers! We will never abandon you Mother Piety! In you we were born, in you do we live, in you we shall repose. And if the times demand we will die a thousand times for you.” [5]

The Christian use of Aristotle, the use of demonstrative argumentation in theology was practically identical with Orthodox Byzantine theology, even, or rather especially, as practiced by the mystics. When St. Mark of Ephesus reminisces in his deathbed speech to Gennadios, the very one in which he confers on him the onus of leading the fight against the union of Florence, and nostalgically reminds him of the days when he taught him about the different uses of modal propositions in argumentation, he is fully in the line of St. Maximos Confessor and St. Gregory Palamas, with the Kabasilas brothers, with the Patriarch Photios, St. John Damascene and the whole of Orthodox tradition. [6] Aquinas was recognized as eminently compatible with this tradition, its use of authority and logical discourse, and so there was every reason for even those most jealous of doctrinal purity to make use of him.

Another set of facts illustrates our point dramatically. At the end of Byzantine history there was a fierce polemic in which both Orthodox zealots and uniate Roman converts were allied and fervent participants. The Platonic doctrine of Gemistos Plethon, whom Cosimo de Medici had invited to speak in his circle during the time of the council of Florence, and at which conference Gennadios assisted, called for a restoration of paganism. The Thomists among the Greeks, both uniate and Orthodox ,began an attack on what they perceived to be a conspiracy for the subversion of Christendom by the Platonizing humanists. Their plot was not to undermine the faith directly, but to undermine it by attacking Aristotelian philosophy. Gennadios wrote copiously against the profane Hellenism of Plethon, and dedicated his works in defense of Aristotle to his teacher Mark of Ephesus. The uniate George Trapezountios hoped to convert Mehmet II after the fall of Constantinople to Christianity and Aristotelianism, and thus see the restored Roman emperor use his power to crush, not Orthodoxy, but the Platonic conspiracy. In a discourse presented to the Sultan while on a mission from Pius II , Trapezountios recommends that he consult Gennadios on these points as a learned and reliable guide. [7]

So why is it that the difference between the Latin scholastic tradition and the Eastern Orthodox tradition are seen today to be so irreducible, and precisely on account of their Latin-ness or Eastern-ness? Why is it that contemporary Orthodox thinkers as diverse as Meyendorff and Cavarnos insist that the best of Orthodox tradition is inherently unscholastic and Platonic? I will offer only one of the several possible reasons, but the one which is the most dangerous to the faith and practice of Catholics and Orthodox alike, and it is nothing less than the adoption of an anti-scholasticism inspired not by Platonism, but by modern ideologies, which imprison the faith in their categories. This will lead us to an appreciation of just what will serve us best to overcome the schism in a way which is truly Orthodox and Catholic and so endowed with the supernatural power of the true faith, which is the victory which the apostle tells us overcomes the world. [8]

The world, whether working in the church or outside it, inspired by the “philosophies of suspicion” as Pope John Paul II calls them, with the esoteric gnosis of dialectical historicism, wants to reduce the faith to some contingent fact of history determined by irreducible elements of race, language, political or economic forces, in other words to one ideology among others, not capable of fulfilling the doctrinal standard of St. Vincent of Lerins quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, or of the First Vatican Council that the dogmas of the faith are held in every age in eodem sensu et significatu. For if there is a Byzantine outlook or a Latin one which determines dogma itself, if there is any human criterion which is the most formal explanation of the faith and practice of the Church , and not the fact of God revealing the faith “once for all delivered to the saints,” and the human mind able to give its reasonable assent, then the faith is simply one stage in a dialectical progress which leaves it outmoded, and doctrinal differences are simply irreducible antitheses ready to be resolved into a higher synthesis which makes their truth or falsehood irrelevant. St. Pius X was nothing less than a prophet when he taught at the beginning of this century that scholasticism was the fortress of defence which maintains the integrity of doctrine in the face of modernist historicism, and that there is no clearer sign of the presence of this error than disdain for the traditional use of philosophy in the Church. We must beware. If one is Catholic or Orthodox solely because he is determined by certain cultural, ethnic and political forces, then when these forces are judged by the mighty of this world, within the church or without, to have fulfilled their purpose in the movement of perpetual progress, toward universal democratic capitalism for example, or renewal and updating, he must obediently give up the faith. What was once a tool in the process becomes its obstacle and so écraser l’infame becomes the motto of the lodge, seminar, or cabinet room. This happened to the Gallican French, is happening in the Irish republic and Poland now, as it has happened in Greece, and will happen in Russia, in Serbia and in Croatia. It also will happen here when the time comes when being a Catholic or Orthodox believer will not be able to be a profession of a “mere Christianity” which protects with its “family values” the rapaciousness of the elite few and so escapes their persecution. In the modern world, nationalist or statist romanticisms, inspiring as they may seem, carry in themselves the seeds of their own undoing.

Gennadios Scholarios was not Orthodox because that religion was the genius and defense of the Greek people, but rather he loved his nation because he was Orthodox, preferring its fall to its defection in its faith. He was Orthodox and so a patriot, because he heeded the injunction of of Moses to honor His father and mother and of St. Peter to love the brethren, to fear God, and honor the emperor. The Croatian and Serb and American must do the same. Countless pious Orthodox and Catholics have died and are dying in our dying century as victims of the arrangements of others who are the enemies of the faith and homeland of any man on any side. During the First World War the Pope of Rome, like a new Judas Maccabeus, took the vigorously supernatural initiative of giving to every Catholic priest the privilege of offering the sacrifice of the Mass twice more than the usual once on All Souls’ Day for the repose of all the departed of both sides in the immense conflict.

Our century has only confirmed the urgency of his insight. Perhaps that is where we must begin an ecumenism of the anti-ecumenical, simply by praying for the dead. As Lance tells the wavering modernist priest in Walker Percy’s novel: “So you pray for the dead. You know, something has changed in you.” He who is in the world does not understand, or rather understands and hates such a scene as our little lamentation over Gennadios Scholarios in August of 1994. The nuns and I could not both be in the right about the primacy of Rome, but we were united by the truth which was in us, some aspect of it at least, and which was in the life of one man, and by our prayers, stands ready to be revealed at the last day.

In the meantime, though, the thought of St. Thomas is a rich and fruitful source of theological wisdom which I invite the Orthodox to study as belonging to them as surely as it belonged to Gennadios Scholarios, Joseph Bryennios, and Makarios Makres. They will thus give evidence that they understand that our differences are truly dogmatic and divine in origin and not ideological or ethnic, and they will provide themselves with a sure bulwark against the theological modernism which has already devastated the Latin church and has made great inroads in their own.

In order to bear this point out, I offer the Orthodox the same prophecy which Monsignor Romano Guardini addressed to Roman Catholics shortly after the Second World War in his work The End of the Modern World. He says:

“The cultural deposit preserved by the Church thus far will not be able to endure against he general decay of tradition. Even when it does endure it will be shaken and threatened on all sides. Dogma in its very nature, however, surmounts the march of time because it is rooted in eternity, and we can surmise that the character and conduct of coming Christian life will reveal itself especially through its old dogmatic roots. Christianity will once again need to prove itself as a faith which is not self-evident; it will be forced to distinguish itself more sharply from a dominant non-Christian ethos. At that juncture the theological significance of dogma will begin a fresh advance; similarly will its practical and existential significance increase. I need not say that I imply no “modernization” here, no weakening of the content and effectiveness of Christian dogma, rather I emphasize its absoluteness, its unconditional demands and affirmations. These will be accentuated.”

Before I conclude I will give an example of how the insights of St. Thomas can be in such deep harmony with Orthodoxy. In the Summa contra gentiles, in chapter 42 of the first book, St. Thomas demonstrates that there is only one God. At the end of the chapter, as is his method, he indicates the errors which the truth expounded contradicts. There he makes the illuminating observation that the truth that there is only one God is not contradicted so much by polytheism as by dualism. The polytheist, he says, usually holds that there is one supreme God from whom the others derive, and with whom he shares his power of wisdom, happiness, and the governance of the world. This manner of speaking is found frequently in Sacred Scripture, Thomas points out, where the holy angels and even men are called gods, in Psalms 81 and 85, and in many other places besides, since God does in fact share his knowledge, felicity, and power with his creatures. This is indeed the reason why creatures point to the unique existence of God, because they are secondary, but real causes dependent on the first cause. The dualist holds the greater error, that there are first principles which are irreducible. Later on in chapter 69 of Book III Aquinas uses an uncustomary severity characterizing as “ridiculous” the abuse of monotheism by the denying of the reality of secondary causality in order to exalt the omnipotence of God.

This insight, of the importance of secondary causes, is the key to an Orthodoxy of the concrete order, and it distinguishes it from Islam and Protestantism with their exaggerated monotheism, and from esoteric philosophical ideologies with their relativistic perpetual dialectic of opposites. The sacraments, the liturgy of the church, the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the veneration of icons and relics, the invocation of the Mother of God, the angels, and saints, ascetical practices, all are secondary causes whereby the divine grace and power of God One in the Holy Trinity are bestowed on the faithful. This is why the controversies over the holy images, the sign of the cross, the azymes, the calendar, are not in themselves absurd. The Orthodox Christian is intensely aware of the efficacy of secondary causes in the obtaining of supernatural goods. We have already indicated one such practice rooted in the doctrine of secondary causality, prayer for the departed. The ecumenism of the anti-ecumenical can continue on this level, by exalting the use of holy things and saving them from profanation, and sharing them with each other to the limited, but still considerable extent that doctrinal fidelity will allow. A popular song sung by the enslaved Orthodox after the fall of Constantinople shows the “ecumenical” power of this Thomistic insight into secondary causality:

“They took the City, they took her: they took Thessalonica:

They took even Saint Sophia, they took the great monastery,

which had three hundred semantra and seventy-two bells:

Every bell had a priest, and every priest a deacon.

In the Great Church where the holy gifts were revealed, the King of all,

there came to them a voice from heaven, from the mouth of the angels:

‘Leave off your psalter, put away the holy gifts.

Send word to the land of the Franks to come and take them:

Let them come and take the golden cross and the holy gospel,

and the holy table, lest it be profaned.’

And when Our Lady heard this, the icons wept:

‘Be still dear Mistress, do not weep, do not cry:

Again with the years, with time, again this place will be yours.’”

The ultimate overcoming of the schism is an eschatological fact, but still an historical one. It will happen, nolumus, volumus, if what we believe is true. The lamenting icons do not lie, not the ones in the Great Church, not even the one I bought on Athos, in spite of its ideological confusion. The use of holy persons, times, places, and things leads us here and now to that eternal City where the faithful departed of the Old and the New and the Third Rome hope to go, as we remember them. From their place they remind us in the words of the Purgatorio:

Qui sarai tu poco tempo silvano;

E sarai meco, sanza fine, cive

Di quella Roma onde Cristo è romano. [9]

FOOTNOTES

[1] Dom Gerard Calvet, Régard sur la Chrétienté (Le Barroux 1982) 27.

[2] His opera omnia were produced in a critical edition sponsored by the Augustinians of the Assumption. Oeuvres complètes de Georges Scholarios, ed. Petit, Sidéridès, Jugie (Paris 1928-1936).

[3] ibid., vol V, 1. (translation ours).

[4] ibid., vol VI, 1 (translation ours).

[5] Alexander Kalomiros, Against False Union, trans. George Gabriel (Seattle 1967) 101-105.

[6] For an overview of Byzantine Orthodox Aristotelianism see my The Byzantine Thomism of Gennadios Scholarios (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1993) 13-39.

[7] On this too little studied point see E. Garin, “Il Platonismo come ideologia della sovversione di Europa: la polemica anti-platonica di Giorgio Trapezunzio,” Studia Humanitatis: Ernesto Grassi zum 70 Geburtstag (Munich 1973) 113-120.

[8] Cf. I John 5:4.

[9] Canto xxxii, 100-102.

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