Orthodox Dogmatics leads to violence?

Dr. Peter Gilbert has responded to my post about Anastasius the Librarian here. He closed the combox so this is my final response to him:

Peter,

 

Let me be honest and frank here, I really don’t see a lot of familiarity with my thesis or Dr. Farrell’s thesis in what you write. I think you’re informed sensibilities are making much more than what I really am and you confuse my competitive edge and spirit with aggression. Really, the most that you confessed to have read is Farrell’s translation to Photios’ Mystagogy, which was his point of view at the time. Not that the later works would be a repudiation of this work, but there is some refinement, especially when one considers Dr. Farrell’s interpretive grid (we all have them).

 

“When I say that this is an ideology, I mean that it is maintained only through a kind of willful disregard of Christian history.”

 

What do you mean by this? Do you think Augustine holds to a Neoplatonic view of divine simplicity or not? I think that he does. A.H. Armstrong thinks so. In fact, many scholars think so. Where do you think I learned it from? A non-historical reading of Church History? Of course not, and neither did Farrell. Because of that, we have a reasoned basis to think so. Even someone like Gilson says, that Augustine made his “philosophical first principle one… with his religious first principle”(Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy, p. 41) and that his notion of divine being was ultimately greek and pagan. Was Gilson wrong to think this or perhaps you think that elements of pagan notions of deity really are compatible? Perhaps they are, but I think otherwise. I think the Orthodox Church thinks otherwise.

 

“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.”

 

Of course not, nobody is claiming it to be so. What we believe to be the case is that there is a general confusion after the Apologists and Origen in which philosophy and theology and their relationship is fundamentally confused at times, and even so in many Orthodox Fathers. That is, there are movements towards and away from Hellenization up until the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Even after St. Justinian condemned Origenists and closed the Academy, these ideas still did not go away and sometimes these views never go away. So when one stands in the place of say a John Bekkos and attempts to read History without the awareness of these movements, one can be easily confused on what exactly is Orthodox. Compare Newman’s understanding to Joseph Farrell’s understanding of the Nicene crisis and Pre-Nicene theologians. I find Joseph’s account far superior as an explanatory model of why there were so many different views of Christ the Logos; he amplified some of the intuitive insights of Johannes Quasten in giving them real explanatory power where Quasten still seemed dumbfounded (as was I for many years) though spot on. Nicea to Constantinople III 879/880 (and on) is a purification of Theology and its autonomous divorce from philosophy as a handmaiden. St. Photios the Great’s Triadology is a long drawn out purification and retrospect of what all the heresies have in common: the confusion between Person and Nature.

 

I don’t know why you want to pick on St. Augustine or make him out to be my demon. I think a theologian like St. Justin Martyr’s Logos theology was wrong and was a stepping stone to Origen and then later the Nicene Crisis. What this means is that error, even extreme error, doesn’t exclude someone from being a Holy Man or even a Father. What constitutes heresy is a willful dogmatic posture towards the Church, which none of these men had. *In of themselves*, St. Justin’s speculations or Augustine’s speculations are quite healthy and good. I wish people felt the desire to speculate and felt more free to do so and that they would state that they are doing so when they are performing it. You want me to embrace the Fathers in some kind of doctrinal purity that fundamentally doesn’t exist, I’m quite happy excepting them warts and all (and leaving their warts at the door of dogmatics), and recognizing that some Fathers have more warts than others.

 

“Theoretically and rhetorically, the ideology of those who gave fuel to the Bosnian war.”

 

Again, how is this so? I mean why would you think a commitment to truth and that there has been those that are true and that there has been those that are wrong constitute violence. There is not a thing violent about my claim. What you say here could be predicated of any exclusive truth claim. C’mon.

 

Photios

The Condemnation of John Beccus

Exposition of the Tomus of Faith Against Beccus

From Aristeides Papadakis: Crisis in Byzantium: The Filioque Controversy in the Patriarchate of Gregory II of Cyprus (1283-1289)

 By the most holy and ecumenical patriarch, Lord Gregory of Cyprus, who was attacked by certain individuals, and for whom this vigorous reply was given. The disturbance and storm, which occurred in the Church a short while ago, had, as it were, for its father and leader, the Adversary himself, who is forever stricken with envy of man’s salvation, and who is always seeking to do that which would prevent it. Even so, he also had individuals who, although they were, at first, not the major leaders at fault, but only worked as so many servants and instruments, by preference, did for the disturbance whatever he wanted done. But, since from the beginning, the union [of 1274], the certain harmless accommodation, and the alleged benefit to us were not, in reality, what they claimed, their actual intention was made clear by their actions. And this was proposed as a bait, drawing men’s souls to that which was hidden; it was, further, proposed with promises, with the most terrible imprecations, and with solemn oaths, to the effect that they had nothing else in mind other than that which these very things signified — harmlessness, safety, that is, irreproachability. Shortly afterward, however, these imprecations and oaths were forgotten, as if they had been made for some purpose other than that for which they were intended. And the union and accommodation, and their hitherto seemingly important undertaking, are, as it were, cast down, while the words and the deeds of evil are raised up. And someone This “someone” is clearly John Beccus. The account here is historically accurate, and refers to the fact that initially the Union of Lyons, as sponsored by Michael VIII, was grounded on the principle οίκονομία. However, Beccus’ attempt to justify the Filioque theologically, shortly after his accession, transferred the issue from the plane of accommodation to that of theology. What was being threatened was the integrity of Byzantine theological tradition and custom, which Michael had promised to retain undisturbed. dares to declare in our midst that the Spirit also proceeds from the Son, just as it does, indeed, from the Father, and that the only-begotten Son — like the Father, who begets the Son — is its cause. This, then, is how the disturbance begins, how the great struggle against the Church is rekindled.

Almost everyone knows (there is no need to explain it again) that this alien doctrine, which disturbed us lately, was not a recent development, but had its genesis with others, not with us. All the same, it was brought here like a foreign plague, and flourished for quite some time. And it was John Beccus who gave it the strength to grow so much and he accepted it and became the suitable ground, as it were, for its growth; and he nourished it, in my opinion, from the rivers of evil and lawlessness, or, as he falsely said, from Holy Scriptures, interpreting it wrongly, spreading babble from there, and committing sacrilege, while, at the same time robbing the meaning of Scripture, and the sense of those who listened superficially or of those who had an eye on his wealth. Yet, this evil man was almost in his eighth Beccus’ patriarchate: 26 May 1275 to 26 December 1282. year of office and residence in this city; for this is how long he had been established on the patriarchal throne, the prize for a bad crop. And all this time God allowed the Church to suffer and endure the worst because of the multitude of the sins of everyone, by which we alone provoke the anger of Him who is without passion.

Mike Liccione’s filioque doctrine…Orthodox?

Mike Liccione has posted his latest installment of our on going dialogue on the filioque doctrine. You can find it here. Mike has, what is in my opinion a very unique understanding of the filioque. Well, laying aside the problems that Orthodoxy has with natural theology, divine simplicity (which is based on natural theology), and theological method (ordo theologiae), I think he comes the closest to an Orthodox standing on the procession of the Holy Spirit. Why is it unique? I believe Mike has such a commitment to the Monarchy of the Father that I find him transcending both the Carolingian and Scholastic understanding. Carolingian doctrine saw the procession of the Spirit moving in a straight line like the following:

 Father —–> Son ——> Holy Spirit

The taxical order of the persons seems hardened in this view. That is, the Father is the principle without principle (or Uncaused Cause) and the Son as the principle with principle (a Mediated or Caused-Cause). The Monarchy  is viewed as a straight line Monarchy. Thomas Aquinas, though holding to the “one principle” doctrine, affirms this too when he states:

“But if we consider the persons themselves spirating, then, as the Holy Ghost proceeds both from the Father and from the Son, the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father immediately, as from Him, and mediately, as from the Son” ST Ia Q.36A.3

St. Photios the Great’s criticism of this view is that the Holy Spirit lacks a property that is common to the Father and Son, thus, either the Spirit is also the cause of Himself or He must Cause another divine person ad infinitum. The former he called Semi-Sebellianism and the latter He expressed as polytheism. The Latins on this question later at Lyon and Florence confessed that the Spirit does not come forth from two principles but in fact One principle and spiration when the document states:

“In the name of the holy Trinity, Father, Son and holy Spirit, we define, with the approval of this holy universal council of Florence, that the following truth of faith shall be believed and accepted by all Christians and thus shall all profess it: that the holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son, and has his essence and his subsistent being from the Father together with the Son, and proceeds from both eternally as from one principle and a single spiration. We declare that when holy doctors and fathers say that the holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, this bears the sense that thereby also the Son should be signified, according to the Greeks indeed as cause, and according to the Latins as principle of the subsistence of the holy Spirit, just like the Father.”

The use of Maximus the Confessor’s writing on the filioque at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1439)

 

Dr. Siecienski’s dissertation is available for purchase at the link below:

http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=06-21-2013&FMT=7&DID=1068258181&RQT=309&attempt=1&cfc=1

Steven Todd Kaster

The Naked Book

 

Michael Patton has begun a series defending  Sola Scriptura. Instead of clogging up his blog with my long comments, I have made them into a post here.

If Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith, who is the judge that is to apply the rule? And what authority does such a judge possess? It seems to me that Sola Scriptura includes the thesis of the right of private judgment, namely that every believer can make normatively binding judgments and that only a believer can make judgments that are binding upon his or her conscience. Further, if as Michael writes that advocates of Sola Scriptura hold that there were two sources of authority for the first say 400 years of the church, the one being tradition which was a summary, albeit a fallible one, of what was written by Scripture and accepted by the universal church, where is such a summary to be found? What document is a token of this summary? And what constitutes the “universal church?” Where is there an example of the “universal church” in the first four hundred years? If Protestants walked into that church, would they recognize it as their own in polity, worship, etc.? I don’t think so.

If Scripture during this period was in the process of being “recognized” doesn’t this imply that Scripture itself wasn’t part of the faith universally recognized? If so, this would imply that the church for the first four hundred years, not to mention afterwards, didn’t believe in Sola Scriptura. I am not clear why “word of mouth” is reliable in the first hundred years of the church, but not afterwards. Sure verbal communication can be corrupted, but so can texts. (Que the Gnostics) And I am not sure why one would think that the “word of mouth” apostolic kergyma became “increasingly obscure and unreliable.” Is it so in Ireneaus of Lyon by 180? What examples are sufficient to generate that idea? Further, it too often seems to be the case that these models always appeal to some kind of apostasy and yet the church seemed to do an adequate job with issues much more sophisticated as with Christology and the Trinity. Therefore isn’t this an a forteriori reason for thinking that the church was reliable in “word of mouth” teaching during the same period? St. Basil seems to think so during the period of canonization that Michael notes. And if tradition is becoming obscure in this period, doesn’t this undermine the reliability of Gospel authorship since no Greek manuscript prior to 200 of the Gospels has a traditional designation?

And isn’t the question, with what authority did the church “recognize” inspired works? Appealing to “recognition” only moves the question, it doesn’t answer it.

And Patton seems to give away the farm when he seemingly admits that the apostolic teaching was passed on both in scripture and via tradition for the first 400 years. If this is so, why jettison what had been apostolically instituted practice and belief? It seems far too convenient. If the rule of faith was transmitted via tradition, this seems to falsify Sola Scriptura, namely that Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith. Of course, Patton will argue that tradition wasn’t infallible but I don’t think this helps. First, if the latter wasn’t infallible, why think that the former is, if infallibility isn’t a necessary condition for reliably transmitting the apostolic teaching? If the rule of faith can be fallible, why think that Scripture must be? On the other hand, if tradition is unreliable, this undermines the belief that Scripture is infallible since it is by those very means that Scripture was transmitted, identified and the basis upon which textual corrections we made against various heretical readings. Added to this is the fact that various councils claim for themselves divine inspiration. But even if these things can be gotten around, it would still be the case admittedly that the rule of faith for the first four hundred years wasn’t only Scripture and wasn’t only infallible and that would be sufficient to falsify Sola Scriptura.

Frankish Penance

We’ll see if the ever so secular Turkish state follows through.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aIVjG6_WWybQ&refer=germany

A Deformed Christ

For those of you who don’t know there has been a controversy among the Reformed (like, when isn’t there some new dire threat to “the gospel?” among the Reformed) surrounding OT professor at Westminster Seminary Peter Enns. It seems the axe is laid at the root in terms of his stay there unfortunately.

Enn’s bookis in part concerning how to think about the inspiration of the Bible, particularly the OT using Christology as a grid. Enns maintains that the proper relationship between the divine and the human in the OT is not one of a subordinating relationship. This has obvious cross-over significance to much of what we write about here concerning St. Maximus and his refutation of Monotheletism and Monoenergism. And for those of you thinking about the relation of the OT accounts and surrounding cultures and inspiration, Enns I think is on the right track and worth reading. Even if I don’t agree with everything he has to say, the progromatic nature of his book and the project itself is worthwhile and helpful.

I have been contributing to a largely Reformed discussion of Enns over at Green Baggins. Some of Enns’ responses to various critics can be seen here, here, hereand here.

Ping-Pong!

Take a look at the numbered propositions below.

1. God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally in the sense that he sincerely wills or desires the redemption of each one of them.

2. Because no one can finally defeat God’s redemptive love or resist it forever, God will triumph in the end and successfully accomplish the redemption of everyone whose redemption he sincerely wills or desires.

3. Some human sinners will never be redeemed but will instead be separated from God forever.

(The three statements are taken from Universal Salvation?: The Current Debate, p. 7

If 1 and 2 are true, then one could reason that 3 is false. Therefore Actual Universalism is true.

If 1 and 3 are true, then one could reason that 2 is false. Therefore Hypothetical Universalism (Arminianism)is true.

If 2 and 3 are true, then one could reason that 1 is false. Therefore Calvinism (Representative Universalism) is true.

Here I think that one can see the dialectic of many debates in the history of western theology. I think all three can be true. Of course, I gloss redemption more widely than Universalists, Arminians and Calvinists, who tend to gloss it much more narrowly so as to mean the appropriate moral and doxastic disposition of individual persons or conflate the redemption of human nature with the redemption of the person.

If redemption means something like, God saves all humans from the effects of sin, namely annihilation, giving them immortality, then all three can be true. For the wicked persist forever because they have a share in Christ’s immortality, which is why they are raised up as well. So if we think of redemption in a wide sense referring to immorality of created natures and more narrowly in terms of personal salvation in terms of the appropriate moral and doxastic dispositions, the problems disolve.

But advocates of all three positions I suppose will point out that the three propositions can’t all be true if we don’t equivocate on the meaning of redemption. If we take redemption in the wide sense, the real problem is 3. Suppose 3 is true. ( I think it is.) If these people aren’t redeemed why are they existing at all? 3 I think contains an ambiguity since I think it employs the wide meaning of redemption while being inconsistent with a narrow meaning of redemption (if it is) used in 1 and 2.

Of course, we could say something similar about 1 and 2. Do 1 and 2 use redemption in the wide sense or narrow sense? If only the narrow sense, then you are either going to be a Universalist or a Calvinist. If on the other hand, we take 1 and 2 in the wide sense and 3 in the narrow sense, there is no inconsistency, with the added benefit of no Universalism or Calvinism.

But what about Arminianism? Instead of unraviling the confusion, Arminianism moves it to the realm of the hypothetical which indicates to me that it still accepts the implicit confusion. Arminians accept that redemption is to be taken in the narrow sense in all three propositions, which is why it rejects 2.

The point is not to demonstrate that each of these views are false (they are), but to note their mutual dependence and similarity. They actually agree on fundamental principles, they simply take them in different directions. 1 and 2, but not 3, 2 and 3 but not 1, and so on. In history this dialectical wheel keeps on turning.

Eternal Love, Eternal Freedom

Here is a reply I have written to Paul Manata of Triablogue fame conerning free will and moral impeccability. Some of you might find the original exchange linked above helpful to get a sense of the conversation.

Paul,

 Please excuse the tardiness of my reply to you. With end of the semester duties and fighting off pneumonia now for the last two weeks I have had to put all things internet related to one side.

 I agree that Hasker believes a lot of other things, many of them I do not. Let me be clear, I have zero sympathy with his Open Theism. You are right to write that you are entitled to bring out implications, but the questions I had were concerning how you got those implications from the text cited. I took Hasker to be arguing that a necessary condition for genuine love was a lack of sufficient antecedent conditions, which is why he is focusing on sourcehood. We can look at the person affected by the potion or the person given the potion but I think the result will be the same. That is just to say that Hasker’s example is intuitive purchase. In imaginative cases I think it would be right to think that without the potion the person giving it would be fearful of losing the “love” that he had. Why? Because the potion was the source and without it, there wouldn’t be love present. This shows I think what Hasker wants it to show, namely that sourcehood is a necessary condition on freedom. This leaves untouched I think your concern. Hasker isn’t attacking the claim that an unfailable love is genuine love, but rather that a love brought about by sufficient antecedent conditions isn’t a genuine love. One can have the first without the second and Hasker has written as much elsewhere. And Hasker is not alone in thinking that one can have an unfailable outcome without determinism. If you don’t think so, then Frankfurt cases go out the window since they would then, as Widerker, Kane and Co. have argued, presuppose determinism.

I don’t know the inner workings of Hasker’s mind on Trinitarianism, but on a traditional model, the Father, Son and Spirit don’t have different wills, but only one so I don’t know how it would be possible for the Son to will for the Father to give up his nature. Your model presupposes a heterodox view of the will as hypostatic that I don’t think that even Hasker to my knowledge endorses.

My comments about time weren’t pedantic. What they point out is that the example as you frame it is ill framed. And lots of people believe that God is timeless, but that doesn’t tell me much since there are a variety of theories on divine timelessness. Furthermore, the point was to drive the question about the coherence of libertarianism further into the doctrine of God, which is where you took it, rather than looking at it within a temporal box.

3 Problems of Divine Simplicity?

It’s amazing the amount of energy and time very intelligent people spend on doing “theology” “without Christ”. If it were me, I’d change the article to read “3 Problems of divine simplicity without Christ.” I’ve always wondered when these philosophers would ever consider the Incarnation and how this absolutely simple substance (or relation or whatever) can have an enhypostatic human nature. And I just had to chuckle somewhat at the “traditional part of Christianity” montra. I shake my head wondering if someday these folks will ever wake up and make life a little easier on them with a wholesale rejection of the doctrine in the first place. It’s not a part of the authentic Tradition and never was.