Ah, the East…
by modestinus
I was flipping through the online preview pages of Oxford University Press’ forthcoming Orthodox Readings of Aquinas the other day and noticed in the Introduction a brief account from a contemporary Greek Orthodox scholar of the “nature” of Orthodox theology from the 14th C. onward. In essence, he decries “Palamism” and its legacy as world-denying, neo-Platonic rubbish that has had a sour legacy in not only Greece, but the Orthodox world writ large (which, I presume, just means the Slavic Orthodox world – which, to be a fair, is pretty large). The preview was cut off before I could get a full sense of the criticism, though I suppose it aligns well with other “impressions” of Orthodoxy theology’s mystical exoticism. The critic even intimated that “Palaism” was not only a blight for Orthodox theology, but a blight on the entire socio-intellectual outlook of Eastern Europe’s Orthodox. Maybe. That seems a bit much, though perhaps no more than the usual grab-bag of Orthodox critiques of “Latin theology.” Remember folks, according to David Bradshaw, St. Thomas’ apparent failure to understand a derivative Aristotelian concept that had been filtered through centuries of neo-Platonic commentary is the reason we got shafted with Nietzsche.
There is a part of me that wants to summarize (contemporary?) Orthodox readings of Aquinas with one word: Childish. But, of course, that accusation could be extended to most Orthodox readings of any Catholic theology that was penned after 1054. (Oh, heck, it could be extended to most Orthodox readings of St. Augustine, too.) Catholic (even Protestant) readings of Orthodox thought has been, to put it mildly, exponentially more sympathetic. Part of that could be attribute to the apparent “openness” of “the West” to other modes of thought. Part of it could just as easily be attributed to the near-constant boredom of Western Christian intellectual circles with their own tradition(s). The Christian East appears new and exciting, and nobody has promoted the “newness” and “excitingness” of Eastern theology more than the Orthodox themselves. When something doesn’t appear to follow in it, well, it’s “mystical.” When a Western Christian questions the premises of this-or-that mode of Eastern thought, they’re just stuck in “Latin rationalism”; they’ll never understand how 1,000 prostrations on an empty stomach can properly short circuit the brain in order to make it open to divine emanations (or what most scientists would call “hallucinations”).
I jest, but only a bit. The mystical-theological nature of Eastern Christian thought is oftentimes overstated to the point where it becomes like shooting fish in a barrel to poke fun at it. At the same time, the “anti-mystical” nature of Western Christian theology is itself overstated to the point where it seems that some believe Aquinas thought you could get the whole of Christian revelation from reading Aristotle carefully. No, no, no. The problem with writing about something like Orthodoxy and Aquinas is that it’s more likely than not to yield a historical account of an entire society’s gross misreading of a single man in order to maintain an ecclesial-cultural prejudice rather than offering some fresh insight on the Dumb Ox’s corpus. Like it or not, Orthoox, by and large, do not seriously engage with Western Christian theology, whether medieval or modern. Yes, there have been points in (ever distant) history where Orthodox have “misappropriated” or “been taken captive” by Western theology, but that’s not exactly the same thing.
A new article in this month’s issue of First Things, “The Orthodox Renaissance,” attempts to make the case that (Western) Orthodoxy is entering something akin to the “Silver Age” of late 19th/early 20th C. of Russian religious thought (Bulgakov, Florensky, Soloviev, and other likeminded “heretics”). In some ways it’s a strange piece. To the best of my knowledge neither the aforementioned David Bradshaw nor Fr. John Behr are featured in the piece (though, naturally, David B. Hart is). Moreover, the article makes much of Orthodoxy’s “privieleged” minority status in the American theological academy, as if being a novelty is a badge of pride. From where I sit, I think the Orthodox will have truly “arrived” in theological circles which they finally managed to irk someone (or, say, an entire confession) enough to get the house brought down on them. We’re still a generation (or more) away from that, I think. Right now the Catholics are under marching orders to play nice and the Protestants, as the piece points out, seem thrilled that they have someone new to play with who isn’t simultaneously their sworn enemy (or so they think). It all makes for great fun at dissertation defenses and conference soirees, but where is it all headed? Or, to put it another way, what good is an “Orthodox renaissance” when the people who are primarily paying attention to it are non-Orthodox? Say what you will about someone like Fr. Alexander Schmemann or, to a more limited extent, John Meyendorff, but they at least wrote for an educated Orthodox laity who were otherwise unconcerned with academic esoterica. A lot of Orthodox have read For the Life of the World. Few have ever touched The Beauty of the Infinite.
First?
I am amazed there are no other comments for this provocative post.
Except from moi, and I have nothing to say except to offer general agreement.
Meh. It’s more of an expression of the blog owner’s mood than something that can really be responded to. I kind of thought that the First Things article was silly, more a kind of selective name-dropping than anything else. On the other hand, there are now more than in the past good institutional homes for people working on Orthodox topics in Theology, Religious Studies, and History departments, most notably at Fordham and Marquette. In addition to that, there’s things like Fr John McGuckin’s Sophia Institute, based out of Union Theological/Colombia and the Florovsky Society at Princeton. So, institutional spaces for Orthodox outside the seminaries have really opened up in recent years. There’s also now a greater variety of places to publish, outside of Orthodox presses– both Fordham and Northern Illinois university presses have started Orthodox series in the past couple years, aside from the variety of presses that publish on patristics.
But, I think you miss the point of all this, and of academic endeavors in general, if you think it’s a problem that this type of activity isn’t being popularly read by the man in the pew. Academic discourse is specialized, and really it needs to be tested, processed, and then repackaged before it makes it to a popular audience. Ideally, such a process acts as a crap filter, but in general academic works are usually deliberately specialized, since there’s no such thing as scholarship without serious attention to detail. Alexander Golitzen’s book “Et Introibo ad Altare Dei” is one of the best pieces of ‘Orthodox’ scholarship of the past 20 years, but there’s a reason it’s not flying off the bookshelves.
Beyond that, none of the Orthodox scholars and grad students I know of my generation are particularly interested in being in-house Orthodox scholars. There’s really no need for that and being closed-off academically leads to poor scholarship. The first book with my name on it was co-authored with a Presbyterian and a Muslim and published by a Jesuit press. This kind of cooperation and collegiality is an undeniably good thing and leads to better scholarship.
In this vein, I’m convinced that the general focus in Orthodox scholarship over the next generation will be to broaden scope of how we see the tradition and to highlight the diversity within it. The Plested book is self-consciously written in order to do exactly this, but I think it will generally be a part of a wider trend. To mix metaphors, there’s a lot of low-hanging sacred cows to slay, but naturally, it will take some time for this to reach the level of popular apologetic.
My point wasn’t to attack the idea of academic Orthodox theology in the abstract, though I do question the whole relevancy of something being “uniquely Orthodox” when, like I said, all of the focus and attention is going to be paid by non-Orthodox. (And I am limiting this to theology, not attendant disciplines like Biblical studies, historical research, philology, etc.). I mean, heck, if some Catholics come along and appropriate/study/commentate on the theology of, say, Sergius Bulgakov (and some, like Frs. Aidan Nichols and T. Allan Smith, have begun to do that), is it still “Orthodox theology”? Or does one then claim that Bulgakov wasn’t a “real Orthodox theologian” and so it doesn’t matter anyway? It seems to me that Orthodox are more concerned about confessional purity than either Catholics or Protestants, but as the FT piece acknowledges, that may be less of an issue in the future given the influx of convert theologians.
Still, like I noted in the post, I think the only thing to be learned so far from this alleged “renaissance” is that the Orthodox are a borderline irrelevant minority; their “exoticism” spares them the shellacking that most other professional theologians receive from their peers on a regular basis. That’s probably not a good thing because there’s a risk of breeding complacency into the whole endeavor or leaving the door open for sloppiness. I would certainly be very interested to see Orthodox theologians with some sophistication when it comes to Western theology (of any register) engage that theology in a fair (but not uncritical) manner. There have been some steps in that direction, sure, but how does one really measure success? I suppose when Western theologians start citing Orthodox theologians to prove their own points. I’m not sure.
Well, you have to take into account that virtually all Orthodox academic writing on theological topics in the Anglosphere is done in the mode of intellectual history. Which is something I don’t see changing any time soon. In that regard, Orthodox writers are commonly cited by everyone.
…their “exoticism” spares them the shellacking that most other professional theologians receive from their peers on a regular basis.
Interesting. I think Orthodox exoticism spares the Orthodox a lot of things, actually. A friend of mine is a graduate of Bob Jones University. He told me once that the Bob Jonesites don’t usually train their polemical guns on the Orthodox (who do have a presence in Greenville, SC, complete with annual food festival). Why not? Because the Orthodox are exotic, mysterious, and, above all, Not Papist. Even virulently anti-Catholic fundies give them a pass. LOL. Must be nice.
Aquinas has been critiqued enough by the West (Catholic and Protestant), the Orthodox don’t really need to get all that involved. I think toleration can be given for the fact that one sees Orthodox doing what they’ve done for centuries with Western-focused issues and personages: borrowing arguments from all sides, as it suited the one arguing. So, one finds ham-fisted arguments for/against Aquinas, subtle arguments for/against Aquinas, and none of it really matters because its about something quite apart from Orthodox theology per se.
I read a review of some Orthodox views on such things that pointed to the fact that many have realized how cool it is to slay the sacred cows of pop-Orthodox apology. Wow, Ancient Faith Radio is no more objective than EWTN?! Really? Say it ain’t so.
The strongest critique of Aquinas was his own critique at the end of his life before he went silent: “All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.”
It’s all part of the larger reflection going on. Everyone knows there’s something different about East and West, one can point to this or that example as the font of that difference, but there are always counter-examples such as Byzantine authors quoting Aquinas, and there are complicating factors surrounding non-theological issues, as well as “childish” swipes at the other side’s supposedly intractable deficiencies (legalism, intellectualism, and military/political aggression for the West; nationalism, mysticism, ignorance, and grudge-holding for the East). No one has really boiled it all down except in pop apologetics, but the search for such a baseline, intellectual explanation for this real if ill-defined difference may itself be a relic of a past time. It’s also true that Orthodoxy has for most of its history been more concerned with the pastoral, liturgical, and monastic/spiritual than it has been the intellectual. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing given the fashions intellectual and academic pursuits almost inevitably fall prey to – or at least given the fact that new information and texts always arise, new challenges, new ideas are always calling into question the particulars invovled in intellectual reflection. Staying out of those arguments in a “Magesterial” sort of way while allowing private, even influential and authoritative discussion and proclamation has probably kept Orthodoxy from having to deal with the sorts of disconnects one finds between newer and older Catholic or Protestant formulations of faith and practice, which were presumably unchanging and at least quite close to infallible.
“has probably kept Orthodoxy from having to deal with the sorts of disconnects one finds between newer and older Catholic or Protestant formulations of faith and practice, which were presumably unchanging and at least quite close to infallible”
But Orthodoxy has those very same sorts of disconnects. It has its own fundamentalisms, it has trad cultures that are a virtual mimesis of Catholic trad cultures, it has it’s equivalent of Mainline liberalism (and one sees this not just in Europe and the U.S. but within national Church structures like Greece and Russia, wherein all these camps are present). These different camps in Orthodoxy routinely speak “magisterially” – declaring their own positions to be the true Orthodox ones and declaring those of their ideological opponents as deficient or heretical or lacking phrenoma, etc.
The emphasis of the “pastoral” seems to be just as easy an avenue to create these disconnects as an emphasis in intellectualisms. Many of the disconnects within contemporary Orthodoxy are based upon pastoral cults (either individuals or a group ethos, say like St. Vlads in the 70s, or your typical ethnic GOArch priest today).
You are correct. I was speaking more of the truly Magesterial statements one might find in Protestant confessional documents of the 16-17th Centuries or in pre-20th Century papal and conciliar RC documents when compared with more recents, equally Magesterial documents of official teaching. Orthodoxy’s reticence to dogmatize and systematize its teaching and practice has saved it from the kind of need for aggiornamento and ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ that has been needed in both the Protestant and Catholic worlds – due to the volume of documents produced proclaiming the unchanging truth of a denomination, which later turned out to be fad, fashion, or historically contingent. Orthodoxy faces and has faced such traditionalisms (e.g., Russian Old Believers), but these teachings were never allowed to move into the realm of the essential or infallible, they were always held as some form of theologoumena (even if widely, but locally held as essential and infallible). This is one of the benefits of the decentralized, slow moving ‘system’ of Orthodoxy – the inability to overreach, primarily through its inability to even simply reach much of the time.
Yeah, fair enough. But even there you have a de facto difference among those camps of what constitutes Orthodox dogma (or the application of dogma in matters deemed essential). When trads condemn “panecumenists” they assert dogmatic differences. And when an SVS prof comes to the defense of Orthodox ecumenists he asserts that those trads have essentially added to the dogmas of the Orthodox Church.
And aside from dogma there are a host of things which comprise a religious ethos which create an existential disconnect no less strong than dogma proper does/can. If a woman converts in a parish wherein she is told to cover her head and wear long skirts and obey her husband and not commune when menstruating and not give it up to her husband on fast days and days before communion (or with any intent other than procreation or in any position other than missionary) and to confess weekly and to always wear her baptismal cross, and to name her firstborn Barsanuphius, and the like, and then, after ten years in that parish, she moves to a place wherein the only parish has a Presbytera who is a yoga instructor and no women wear headscarves, and women do wear pants and sleeveless shirts to church, and the priest encourages her to use the pill after noting that she has had 8 kids in 11 years of marriage, and she is encouraged to approach marriage as an equal partnership, and she is offered a slot doing the epistle readings, and she now hears the New Revised Standard version instead of a variant on the KJV at church, and she is told to only worry about meat during fasts and not to worry about that much, and she is encouraged to attend with the parish a Catholic-Orthodox prayer service, well, she might very well think the has changed religions, and she might think that with no less existential gravity than the SSPX fellow who walks into a Novus Ordo at a college run by the Sisters of St. Joseph.
An important difference, too, is the lack of an official catechism of any kind in Orthodoxy as a whole….
Is that a bug or a feature? I would respectfully submit that it’s a bug. As Maimonides recognized, human beings need a guide to the confused. Otherwise, they remain…confused.
If the early Christians had been as “apophatic” as today’s mystical convert Orthodox, they would never have held the Councils of Nicaea, Chalcedon, and Ephesus. You don’t fight to the death over one iota if defined dogma and clear catechesis do not matter.
Lack of a comprehensive catechism is not the same as lacking any dogma, teaching, authoritative texts or Tradition at all.
Also – the “All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me” quote is a complicated one in context, and one with a rather muddy history in recent generations. Prot and Catholic liberals love that quote, and more recently Orthodox have used it in a similar fashion – to essentially dismiss everything the man uttered or wrote prior to that brief statement.
It would be good to keep in mind that many saints have essentially stated the same thing, including no shortage of Orthodox saints and elders (I can’t count how many times I’ve read an Orthodox elder talking about how damaging it is to speak to speak as an authority about the spiritual life, in the context of said elder speaking as an authority about the spiritual life) – even the desert fathers had to use words to condemn the use of words.
A couple of years ago I contacted some professional thomist friends and gave them the litany of common contemporary Orthodox arguments against Catholic scholasticism and Catholic positions deemed to be influenced by scholastic and/or Aristotelian thought. After having spent years prior as a public Orthodox bitch against Catholicism and promoter of that sort of polemics, in reading the responses I got from thomist friends and acquaintances, I became convinced that none of the Orthodox sources I had relied on in my polemics (Bradshaw, certain online Orthodox “intellectuals,” etc.) are competent when it comes to Thomas and thomism.
For those of us who are mere mortals in the intellectual life, I cannot recommend highly enough Josef Pieper’s The Silence of St. Thomas ( http://www.amazon.com/Silence-St-Thomas-Josef-Pieper/dp/1890318787 ). I wish that all Orthodox inclined to bitch about Aquinas would read it. It leaves the reader with a picture of St. Thomas and his negative theology (which was there from the beginning) which, I think, is quite amenable to many strains of contemporary Orthodox thought.
i don’t disagree with you on any of this. However, Aquinas and Anselm and Augustine are used as proxies more than anything else. Heck, Calvin is often lumped in there along with more modern academic critics of Christianity, which is the tip-off that what is being critiqued is less then particulars of any of their thought or theology than it is a way of speaking, writing, and thinking about matters divine. There’s a different way or mind, and while that’s an easy cop-out (and tactic in competitive apologetics and sheep-stealing) it’s also got the benefit of being true, at least based on my own experience moving from a particular Protestant way of thinkig about God and Church to an Orthodox way, and from the Orthodox way in which I thought of such things as a younger man to how I think of them today 13+ years later. Orthodoxy, the original post-modernism.
An important difference, too, is the lack of an official catechism of any kind in Orthodoxy as a whole, as well as a lack of “confessional” documents. There is a profusion of such documents in the non-Orthodox world. This points to a difference in how churches view such writings, and they provide a context to any of the silences a few of their leading lights may retire to. Perhaps they ended up writing their treatises so late into the night forgetting to eat that they finally succumbed to the hallucinations that are the basis of most religious thought and experience, or that’s what I gathered from watching the “X Files” and its ilk of pop-scientism and religious skepticism (guess it works well when critiquing Eastern Orthodox navel-gazers, too.)
“It’s also true that Orthodoxy has for most of its history been more concerned with the pastoral, liturgical, and monastic/spiritual than it has been the intellectual.”
Other than to some degree in Russia and to a lesser degree in the Greco-Balkan world under the Turkocratia, I don’t see this as really being the case at all. One could plausibly state that no one school of intellectual activity ever dominated for long, and that there was always a diversity of institutional venues for Orthodox intellectual life, formal and informal, lay and monastic. One could even plausibly contrast this diversity with the trend towards regularizing theological-philosophical instruction in the Latin world from the 12th century on. The fact that proper universities only developed in the Orthodox world at a late date and under western influence is important.
It is true that more purely philosophical texts are translated into English less and in general play less of a role in Orthodox self-understanding in the past century or so. A lot of this also has to do with which texts were selected for printing in the 18th and 19th centuries. Byzantine philosophy is still a somewhat undeveloped field, but that’s changing, and this in turn is widening our perspective on the history of Orthodox theology.
Around Orthodoxy’s southern edges, both the Arabic and Georgian theological literature overwhelmingly emphasizes a kind of engagement with neo-Platonic Aristotelianism that would not seem odd to Aquinas, Maimonides, or Avicenna. I actually know of no monastic or ascetical texts composed by Orthodox originally in Arabic, despite the intense Arabic-language intellectual activity at Mar Saba, Sinai, and the Black Mountain between the 8th and 14th centuries.
But this is in keeping with the general trend in Greek theology from Chalcedon to 1453. Although they might not want to be grouped together, both Plested and Bradshaw do a good job of illustrating that it’s much more productive (and much more in keeping with the long sweep of Orthodox tradition) to examine actual -philosophical- differences with the Latin tradition than to resort to ‘us = mystical/liturgical/pastoral; them = rational/Aristotelian/legal’.
I guess your comment that “The fact that proper universities only developed in the Orthodox world at a late date” is what i was at least pointing at, together with the more limited institutional capability of the Orthodox under Muslim influence at least in more recent years. It seems that while there is a great deal of scholarship and intellectual activity one can point to in Orthodoxy over the centuries, after the patristic age there seemed very little in the way of avenues for that scholarship and reflection to work its way into the Church at large – whether beyond the capitals, the upper episcopacy, certain academies, etc. or because of a lack of monastic sribes and then a lack of printing capabilities. Together with the influence of Universities in teh West there also seems to have been a lack of formalized seminary education in great swaths of Orthodoxy as well as perhaps stronger but definitely later monastic influences on the East, it seems almost inevitable that Orthodoxy would have ended up being less academically, intellectually oriented and influenced, at least on balance, when compared to the West.
Even today, I can tell you I was taught a great deal more theology as theology in the tiny Protestant sect of my youth than I ever have been as a normal part of being taught “what it means to be Orthodox”. Anything I picked up in this vein in Orthodoxy is because I actively sought to pick up what had been left haphazardly forgotten in dark corner of the parishes I was a member of. It’s not even that big a part of what most priests (and most priests are not the actively partisan on such matters) present as the essence of Orthodoxy, especially not most cradle priests. When pressed, they’ll come out with something about why Orthodoxy is right vis a vis RCs or Protestants, but it never claims to get at the core and it never really moves all that much beyond what most people sort of agree is the core difference even if it’s not yet been fully baked as a academically air-tight apologia and manifesto – which I’m not sure most Orthodox who aren’t primarily angry nationalists are all that interested in defining anyway, yes, even clergy and probably especially most bishops.
Well, there are lots of proto-universities, especially prior to the Turks, even if there was no regularized curriculum that would unite them into a single Orthodox line of thought. State support for higher studies in Constantinople existed from the 5th century, starting with the Pandidakterion, and going up to 1453. I’ve done a little work on the schools set up in Antioch by the patriarch Christopher (d. 967), which would be hugely influential for Arab Orthodox. In Georgia there are major philosophical academies at Iqalto and Gelati in the 12th and 13th centuries. This is in addition to classical-style private tutoring and monastic instruction. A friend of mine currently has a grant to work out how monastic philosophical instruction in Syria influenced the development of Islamic philosophy.
It’s very much the vicissitudes of printing, barbarian invasion, and being too culturally, politically and ecclesially, diverse for systematization of instruction to ever take place. The same reasons are why the writings of major philosophical theologians like Abdallah ibn al-Fadl and Davit Iqaltoeli remain in manuscript– even if it’s sometimes in early 20th century manuscripts! So, the peculiarities of the past 200 years and the deep anti-intellectualism of the Russians need not (and should not) determine Orthodox self-understanding in the 21st century.
While there’s not necessarily common body of philosophical propositions that Orthodox have to sign up for, there is a common corpus of fathers who have been studied and commented upon, and it’s really engaging with this tradition- both the fathers and the commentaries– that forms the core of traditional Orthodox intellectual activity. I’d personally see the Orthodox academic preference for writing historical theology to be a continuation of this commentary tradition.
“I can tell you I was taught a great deal more theology as theology in the tiny Protestant sect of my youth than I ever have been as a normal part of being taught “what it means to be Orthodox”. Anything I picked up in this vein in Orthodoxy is because I actively sought to pick up what had been left haphazardly forgotten in dark corner of the parishes I was a member of.”
I think that this has a lot more to do with the fact that you were highly confessional and theology intense WELS and then converted to a religion (especially on the East Coast where you got invested) which de facto acts like Mainline Prot in an American context, much like mainstream Catholicism has behaved like Mainline Prot, when it comes to catechesis in the last generation+.
Though the caricature is the convert who was always theologically addicted, I know any number of people who converted to Orthodoxy (especially those coming in from the mid 90s to mid 00s) from Evangelicalism and Catholicism who will tell you that their old communion didn’t teach them anything – it wasn’t until Orthodoxy that they started reading theology and being seriously catechized. When I used to teach catechism and adult ed classes in Orthodox parishes it was clear to me that well over 90% of the folks there had virtually no catechesis from their prior confessions/communions. In some cases, I had to teach them what they used to believe before I could teach them what they now believed. I went to a Young Adults program years ago in which the Orthodox priest was trying to explain the theologies of different Christian groups (a different one each week), and it struck me that in that group of 30+ not a single one of them knew a damn thing about either the confession they had come from, or the confession their parents had come from in the events their parents were the reason they were Orthodox. I’d bet my firstborn that typically 60+% of American converts to Orthodoxy under the age of 40 couldn’t tell you five basic tenets of their former faith if tested. American converts to Orthodoxy tend to be more theologically addicted and intellectual than what one finds in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and because Orthodox parishes are often small it can feel like it is easier to find the theo-nerds, but there is a quiet majority of theological illiterates among converts whose first real encounter reading theology happens in an Orthodox context.
This experience isn’t unique to the U.S. The Moscow Patriachate has all manner of official writings which are catechetical in nature, and half of Orthodoxy is under the MP. The MP has publicly recognized the fact that there was very poor catechesis of all those Russians that got baptized in the 90s (and then stopped going to church more than once a year), and they have developed several programs to address that problem. In Russia you will find some parishes that eschew such programism and coherent catechesis, but you will find some that will embrace it. That, it seems to me, is no different generally than what one will find in Catholic parishes in Poland, or Reformed parishes in Switzerland, or Lutheran parishes in Sweden. I think that the idea that Orthodoxy by nature eschews catechetical ordos is part of that contemporary mythos of Orthodoxy as paleo-pomo, I don’t think that mythos has much bearing in actually existing Orthodoxy contra actually existing Catholicism or actually existing Protestantism, generally speaking.
In my opinion in each of the major communions and confessions most people don’t give much thought to theology or catechesis, and those communions and confessions make some efforts to combat this, which they only ever partially “succeed” in, and which will always be unevenly implemented. We can point to the fact that the RCC has a universal catechism, but that certainly doesn’t mean a universal appropriation of that catechism. We can point to the fact that Orthodoxy doesn’t have a pan Orthodox catechism, but we can point to official catechetical documents of the Russians Orthodox Church, and show that these operate in essentially the same way the CCC operates in the RCC. Plenty of little Polish boys have also never heard “what it means to be Catholic” but this doesn’t really tell us anything integral about Catholicism. If next year all the Orthodox bishops and Patriarchs agree to publish a universal catechism for all Orthodox in the world, and they devote a great deal of time and effort promoting it, it could very well be that the parishes that you didn’t find “the meaning to Orthodoxy” in still won’t have a didactic catechetical ethos. Old, traditional, human institutions are complex that way. In the end most people don’t convert for reasons other than aesthetics or sex (spouse or girlfriend, etc.) or feelgoodism or social engagement, and for those that do convert for reasons of intellect, there are and always have been coherent (or meant to be coherent) catechetical didactic answers to the meaning of the Church. This is as true in Orthodoxy as it is in Catholicism.
Sometimes I think that the “anti-rational” and/or anti- theologoumena, and/or anti-development of doctrine, and/or anti-scholastic rhetorical postures in contemporary Orthodoxy have more to do with a lack of respect of certain interlocutors (or potential interlocutors) and their traditions than anything else. It’s that type of dismissal which doesn’t feel the need to learn and substantially invest itself in what is being dismissed. Perhaps there is some laziness, and that particular type of intellectual laziness wherein one doesn’t want to do something because one is not really competent to do it, at hand here as well.
The worthwhile potential of the Plested book, in my mind, is that, so far as I can tell and from what I hear, it seeks to actually reflect a real knowledge of thomistic and scholastic thought and to begin to outline an understanding of the relationship of that line of thought and Palamite thinking. I’m told by folks who know him that Plested is the man for this task and will do so seriously and fairly, without setting up boogeymen for the sake of easy target making. If that is true, I find that commendable, and refreshing.
The all too common tendency to dismiss the critique of one’s religion/philosophy/politics/economics/etc. by one who does not share said view and therefore displays a decided lack of understanding of said view based on their misunderstanding of point A, subpoint B, as noted by C and interpreted correctly by D also comes into play.
That is, Plested is the man for the job because he was trained as a Catholic cleric and had the requisite interest in the subject to dive deeply into it. It’s basically the reason why converts from one faith to Orthodoxy are the best ‘interpreters’ and ‘explainers’ of Orthodoxy for those still in those other faiths. There is a certain accent, way of thinking, idiomatic speech, and details that are at the fingertips of a true believer that are never that way for those on the outside. That’s a long way of saying that Orthodox aren’t particularly interested in Augustine, Ans elm, Aquinas, et al when they read it and don’t really recognize much from similar readings of their own fathers, so they disengage and focus on broader points of difference or similarity. That’s understandable. I’m sure many a RC does the same with Palamas, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, as many post-VII RCs do with pre-VII writings, as many Catholics do with old time Protestant works, as modernist Protestants do with Fundamentalists, etc. and vice versa.
With regard to Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, I would venture to say that the vast, vast, vast majority of academic essays and dissertations on those men in the last 50 years have been done by Catholics. I would bet more Protestants have done academic work on Origen than Orthodox have. Part of that is the relative size of those communions/confessions.
Palamas, I don’t know, but I do know that Plested isn’t the first to write about Orthodox scholasticism and the Orthodox reception of scholasticism. Fr. Hugh Barbour, a Norbertine Catholic priest, wrote a dissertation turned book on the subject and he is recognized as an expert on Byzantine scholasticism. Plested footnotes Barbour in several pages in Orthodox Readings of Aquinas, and to my knowledge Barbour’s was the first book in English on the subject of the Orthodox reception of scholastic thought.
I think that there has been a great deal of academic interest in Orthodoxy on the part of Anglicans and Catholics in the last three generations, exponentially more interest than Orthodox have shown toward Catholic or Prot thought, until very recently anyway. I don’t think Orthodoxy has any notable scholar whose writing conveys an understanding of Catholic theology as well as Aidan Nichols writings reflect his superb understanding of Orthodox theology, though that may now be changing, and I hope it is. Part of this is the peculiar intellectual/anti-intellectual chauvinism that has been popular in Orthodoxy, part of it has to do with the isolation of so much of Orthodoxy in the 20th century. I hope that Plested is a sign of more of this sort of thing to come, and a change in the Orthodox winds. But the realist in me suspects that anglo-Orthodox intellectuals will have virtually no effect on the overall theological and intellectual directions worldwide Orthodoxy, and in particular the Moscow Patriachate, goes. I doubt they will even be successful in their obvious goal of countering the neo-Palamism so popular among the Greeks, at least in terms of countering it in Greek Orthodox intellectual circles. Oh well. Worth a try anyway.
The all too common tendency to dismiss the critique of one’s religion/philosophy/politics/economics/etc. by one who does not share said view and therefore displays a decided lack of understanding of said view based on their misunderstanding of point A, subpoint B, as noted by C and interpreted correctly by D also comes into play.
You really do embrace the pomo, don’t you? OrthoBaldwin as OrthoDerrida – I can dig it. Surely you then accept that your dismissal of that dismissal on the grounds of recognizing an “all too common” rhetorical sequence is itself a common parlor trick?
Call me crazy, the archasshole Mark Lilla turned me off Derrida years ago (and in more recent years one of my attractions to Marxist thought is that it tends to hate pomo with a holy hate as well), but I still have the gall to believe that at some point, beyond all the rhetorical power plays and tricks of rhetorical hand, it is possible that, Aquinas wrote these words down back in the day, and they actually mean something, and one can actually be wrong in asserting what they mean, and one can actually be correct in asserting what they mean, and despite all the muddle and mess of allegiances, it is possible that someone could say – “hey, that critique of thomism does not accurately address the actual beliefs/teachings of Thomas (or of thomists, whatever), and here is why” and that person could, actually, in time and space, be asserting something which is, ahem, get ready for this, true.
It’s more that true believers find every little idiosyncratic nuance of their worldview and guiding lights absolutely necessary and essential so if you don’t acknowledge and are fully conversant with every jot and tittle the assumption is that you can’t possibly know what said guiding light was trying to get at and therefore are incapable of making an informed critique. Any true believer believes, which is the problem of looking to true believers for an objective review of whether another understands their true belief or has a valid criticism of said true belief. It’s the trick DBH plays: use enough big words and reference enough obscure facts and people and no one can really counter you without doing a lot of work one just doesn’t care enough to do. I hold that it is possible to have an informed enough opinion on the practical veracity of just about anything without having done post-doctoral work on the subject – especially when it comes to matters that assume some mass audience such as religion or politics or any belief system.
Of course, opinions are like assholes…
Of course, my intellectual agnosticism on such things isn’t meant as proof all are wrong or that all are not right, it’s simply an acknowledgment that at a certain point we make a call on such things based on less than universal knowledge of the subject at hand, without encyclopedic knowledge of all competing claims and related subjects. I don’t see a problem with this as long as one acknowledges we’re talking about best guesses with the information available (and the amount of time one is willing to invest). Such is the amateur’s way, I’m sure things are different in the academy, at least to an extent (though I’m specialization is having its way there, too).
I’m not sure how much value there is to trying to determine the value (aside from being one good-but-dry read in a world full of such) of reading Aquinas for Orthodox non-specialists.
You know, BP is TAing for Lilla in the Spring. Every story I’ve heard about him makes it clear that I wouldn’t make it through a dinner with him without punches being thrown. She barely did once.
In terms of texts having a real, specific meaning that the author really truly intended, you don’t have to depend on Derrida to know that, while theoretically possible, that’s not usually how texts work. In honor of Derrida, we can take the example of the Dionysian Corpus. Istvan Perczel has recently come up with pretty compelling evidence that these texts were composed by an associate of Theodoret intent on advocating Nestorian Christology. Now, of course the original intent of the text isn’t that helpful for anyone, but seen through a series of hyper-interpretive lenses, starting with John of Scythopolis and including both Maximus the Confessor and Aquinas, it becomes a highly useful text, and one where the interpretations are more interesting than what the author had in mind… I think this is just an extreme example of how all religious texts, maybe especially scripture, have worked in the Christian tradition.
Eh, but does one have to know every jot and title of the Thomistic corpus to critique it? Sure, there are still plenty of nuances (and nuances of nuances) that Thomists (and non-Thomists) of various stripes slay trees over in academic journals, but the main thrust of his thought — including the particulars that Orthodox tend to disagree with (or, at least, assume they disagree with) — are intelligible enough to most educated people, particularly ones who are supposed to be competent in Christian theology (which, if you’re a theologian worth your salt, also means being conversant in philosophy). But even if the Orthodox could take down Aquinas (and they haven’t and, in my view, can’t), that doesn’t vindicate the Orthodox claims against Rome — most of which, mind you, rest on ecclesial-cultural differences that have, after centuries of separation, received a mountain of ex post theological justifications (some more plausible than others).
I’m incredulous toward the view that an Orthodox Christian picking up, say, Thomas or St. Anselm would, unless colored by serious prejudice, read it and go, “Oh this is so foreign to me…” Sure, it’s foreign if your idea of “Orthodox theology” is the unctuous dribble that gets filtered through Athonite monks with a 6th grade education, but — language barriers aside — if you sat, say, the Cappadocians in a room with any representative sample of medical Scholastic Doctors, do you really think they would be talking past each other? Presumably they would have more in common in terms of theological grammar, philosophical learning, and worldview than most contemporary Orthodox living in the U.S. think they have in common with most Catholics living in the U.S. Or must I truly believe (and I don’t want to…) that Orthodox are of such a clouded mindset and so fundamentally incapable of rational understanding that picking up a treatise of Anselm (translated into English, of course) is like being told to decipher Klingon burial rituals? Come on. I want to give the Orthodox more credit than that, but it’s hard when the Orthodox constantly default to this scaredy-cat posture when it comes to any theology written in a logical, coherent manner.
It’s more that true believers find every little idiosyncratic nuance of their worldview and guiding lights absolutely necessary and essential so if you don’t acknowledge and are fully conversant with every jot and tittle the assumption is that you can’t possibly know what said guiding light was trying to get at and therefore are incapable of making an informed critique.
That’s a broad brush and a truism that could be used to dismiss anyone who shows any hint of ideological allegiance.
Look, I’m not a thomist and I don’t have a dog to fight in any battle between thomists and their haters, generally speaking. I admit that I think neo-palamism is intellectually thin and now tied to some pretty misleading and misinformed polemics. But I don’t think this gloss of yours applies to what I wrote earlier. The thomists I asked about certain anti-Catholic arguments common in contemporary Orthodox polemics could give a flying fuck about Orthodox apologists. It’s the furthest thing from their radar, in terms of where they want to do their rhetorical work or who they want to engage. They answered my questions, often with a surprised “Orthodox today actually peddle that? Why?” None of them were aware of contemporary Orthodox polemical points against Catholicism (and scholasticism in particular), and none of them seemed to care, other than to view it as quirky trivia. None of them showed any sign of taking offense at what I was reporting to them. Certainly none of them showed offence because some pontificating dipshit out there doesn’t know detailed aspects of thomistic lines of thoughts – these people have TVs and go shopping and fill their cars with gas sometimes – they know that angry wanna-be demigod idiots are everywhere.
My motivation in going to them was that I realized that I had, at a point in the past, embraced neo-palamism without ever using some of the thomist contacts I had made back at Loomes and asking them if these arguments / polemical points on things like absolute divine simplicity, created vs. uncreated grace, Bradshaw’s thesis on energeia etc., were sound. In the end I realized that I didn’t have the faculties to make a really informed decision in those debates, but I had sufficient faculty to discern that the contemporary neo-Palamites, including Bradshaw and Romanides, hadn’t really ever (or yet in Bradshaw’s case) engaged thomism or Catholic scholastic thought, and that there were reasons to call into question their actual ability to maneuver in the thomistic corpus, and thus to question their ability to critique scholastic thought in the sweeping way that the do (Romanides and followers explicitly, Bradshaw with more reserve). I think that the bulk of the appropriation of neo-Palamite thought in contemporary Orthodox thought rhetoric much rests on tropes. This isn’t to say there could not be a serious Palamite revival, but it hasn’t happened yet.
There are a hell of a lot of diverse people out there in thomist philosphical circles, not all of them Catholics. The fellows I contacted displayed no interest in debating Orthodox. I think you may be applying Clark Carlton & FM-G & Catholic Answers and Scott Hahn polemical postures too widely.
Samn!, OK, fair point, so allow me to insert the caveat that given that size of the thomistic corpus, and given the relatively large amount of textual information we have regarding Thomas and his interlocutors and his sources and how he appropriated his sources and so on and so forth, we can assert that his words mean something (and by meaning I include but do not exclusively limit myself to author intent), and that some assertions regarding the meaning of his words are correct, and others are incorrect. If we feel more comfortable, I can change to plausible and implausible. But surely you believe that there are incorrect assertions regarding the meaning (author’s and in terms of actually existed history of reception) of those texts of that associate of Theodoret.
I mean, if I get all John Allegro on you and assert that those texts by that associate of Theodoret are cryptic manuals on the growing and use of hallucinogenic mushrooms which were believed to insure one would be taken up into the sacred asteroid upon death, I would be wrong, would I not?
Well, I’ll say that there are more and less plausible readings of texts. But the plausibility of a giving reading of a text is conditioned by all kinds of factors. That, and in some circumstances a wildly or even deliberately off-the-mark reading of a text is the most productive one– examples of this include John of Scythopolis’ foundational glosses on the Dionysian Corpus, modern liberal readings of the Qur’an, and whatever I think the lyrics to “Blinded by the Light” are as opposed to whatever Bruce Springsteen actually wrote.
In any case, there are an awful lot of Aquinases out there on the market, and which ones I’d personally be interested in buy into have little to do with how close they relate to the author’s actual thinking. On the other hand, if I wanted to write a (desperately needed) study on Avicenna’s influence on Aquinas, I would have to use hermeneutical techniques aimed at trying to get at what he was thinking as he wrote, but this would only be of indirect value for Christian life. I.e., understanding Thomas or any other author correctly might not necessarily improve one’s understanding of Christian truth and there are cases where misunderstanding him might bring one closer to truth. In any case, if against all good sense one decides to go into theological-historical polemic, the target always has to be an interpretive tradition, not what a given author might’ve been thinking, though there are conceivably cases where the two are identical.
Regarding Palamism, I think what’s going to happen is that people are going to realize it’s going to be much more interesting to tackle his thought without setting things up as some kind of battle royale with Thomism. Also, unlike Modestinus, I don’t think most people know enough Late Antique and medieval philosophy to really understand a lot of the Fathers and Scholastics. This includes a fair number of scholars who specialize in them,
I think most attacks against Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, even ‘scholasticism’ are primarily examples of synecdoche – using part of something to refer to the whole thing or a specific class of thing is used to refer to a larger, more general class. The three mentioned above, or the scholastic ‘movement’ are used as ciphers, proxies, bywords for a larger ‘something’ that we all know is different between the West and the various Easts involved, but that no one has really been able to pin down in a pithy, succinct way – because, in fact, the record is not pithy, succinct and clear cut on either side. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using ciphers as ciphers, one just needs to remember that’s all they are, and the men and the issues involved are far more complex than the bumper sticker would have us believe.
It’s obvious to me that Rome and Orthodoxy are both ‘Church’, but estranged. One side or the other is ‘wrong’ on a few issues, but a whole host of things would get chalked up to matters of adiaphora were those core issues to be really and truly resolved (i.e., primacy and the filioque). Of course, I don’t think those issues will be resolved any time soon, so I’m fine accepting that if we agree we’re already in communion, if not visibly, yet. If not, well, then it’s good whichever one is right is not in communion with the other, still.
Well, I reckon I simply have too different an understanding of how texts and language work to really have a fruitful discussion here… And Hebrew was used to express thought very similar to Thomas’ in the Hebrew versions of Maimonides. Language expresses what speakers’ circumstances need expressed.
In any case, none of my argument had to do with Palamism… In other forums I’ve mentioned to Owen my distaste for 20th century neo-
Samn!, yeah, yeah, yeah, all that. But complexity does not epistemological anarchy make. There are a number of Aquinases out there, but nobody who is seriously learned regarding the Thomistic corpus takes the Radical Orthodox Aquinas seriously, at least not in its more distinctive aspects, and they provide reasons for this which make the Radical Orthodox Aquinas (with a few minor points of exception) radically implausible.
And at the level I’m talking about the author intent vs. reception distinction doesn’t matter. The neo-Palamites don’t understand any plausible Thomas or the reception of Thomas’ texts. When Dispensationalists take cut and pasted patristic texts and use them to argue for dispensationalist beliefs among many of the fathers, we can assert truthfully that with regard to most of those fathers we have ample reason to hold that there is no possible way that the fathers in question held soteriological and eschatological beliefs at all consistent with modern dispensationalism, and we can assert that the traditions of interpreting those fathers, all of those traditions, are not substantially congruous with modern dispensationalism. It is my assertion that the usual neo-palamite take on Aquinas, from Romanides onward, is such that we might with some confidence say that they misread all plausible Thomases (I think that there are only a few plausible Thomases, and the main difference between them has to do with how one reads Thomas on nature), and that they do not exhibit sufficient knowledge of the traditions of Aquinas text reception to consider them qualified to make generalizations regarding “scholasticism” or “rationalism” in the RCC. But that is my amateur opinion using what limited faculties I have available to me, after weighing various texts with what faculties I have, etc.
Well, the number one determining factor as to if a reading of a text is plausible is whether or not you can enough of your target audience to go along with you about it. And this is the reason that you could say that most Orthodox polemical readings of Aquinas aren’t plausible– it doesn’t meaningfully address the understanding of the people they’re trying to convince.
Well Samn!, that falls right down to Derridian levels. Essentially then, in light of a previous conversation we had on this blog, we cannot speak of any particular racist policy or racist language as being unequivocally racist and reflecting an objective and verifiable position and posture towards demographic segments of humanity. The designation ‘racist’ is then just one interpretation of an undefinable set of human behaviors, collective and individual, with fluid parameters. There is no act, and no language, in a precisely accounted for context even, which we can say is absolutely racist. It is simply a matter of dominant interpretive orientations, and a term of convenience used to relate our own antipathies.
Of course I believe that the term racist can merely be used in such a manner, freewheeling and as a power tool between competing interpretive traditions. But I also believe that the term racist can be used as an unequivocally accurate descriptor of certain human positions/postures. I think that to deny this is to slip into pomo epistemological anarchy, wherein all human discourse is relegated to nothing more than aesthetic posturing. In which case, fuck all, you are Orthodox cuz you like it, Modestinus is Catholic cuz he likes it, and I’m going to go solicit a couple of midget lesbian strippers for a night of debauchery in which I will declare myself to be the reincarnation of both Buddha and Lord Salisbury, and given my propensity to bullshit online, I assure you I will be able to spin it such that I get at least three people to believe my new religion, which is all I need in terms of a target audience sizable enough for me to get my nut.
This is almost the inverse of the argument I have from when I drink with CUNY anthropologists who are materialist to the point of finding my studying texts to be a waste of time.
I would say that a racist statement is racist because of the particular way it fits into its social context and the results it has for the particular people it is directed towards. I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as meaning, just that meaning happens through complex interactions within communities, and that authorial intent is one of the less interesting elements of those interactions. This is why certain kinds of speech and things like dressing in blackface are racist, even if the person doing it is too clueless to realize that.
Religious and metaphysical texts are especially stark examples of this because, except for maybe the Book of Mormon, they’re not really falsifiable. Add to this the fact that within religious communities they hold authority (again think of the example of the Dionysian Corpus’ historical authority), and you have a particular sort of problem, in terms of evaluating truth claims and you have unique exegetical methods that are used for interpreting them– often methods that preserve the letter while profoundly changing the meaning. If you say that the truth of the text lies in the author’s intent, this is placing authority in the person of the author in a way that I’m not really ready to do. I suppose some kinds of Catholics do do this with the person of Thomas and some kinds of Orthodox do this with all kinds of folks.
To take another example, it seems rather implausible that Isaiah and the authors of the Psalms knew that certain things they wrote were prophecies of Christ. In fact, certain of these prophecies appear to result, not from the precise text inked by the original author, but from the contingencies of editing, textual transmission, and translation. To my mind, this not not negate the fact that these statements are prophecies. This is because, at least for Catholic or Orthodox Christians, truth is ecclesial rather than textual. That is, the true meaning of a text is determined by the way the text is used within a presumably theanthropic community.
It seems to me that you are collapsing a number of interpretive issues into one meta-problem where the answer is always, “It’s complicated.” There have been, through the centuries, many Aquinases, i.e., interpretations of Aquinas as theologian, philosopher, Saint, etc. Most (though not all) of these interpretive traditions believe they have found the “true Aquinas,” though few (that I know of) accept the entire corpus Thomisticum as 100% true. Regardless, the plurality of interpretive traditions does not eliminate the possibility that one of these traditions (or some combination of them) actually captures the true Aquinas, i.e., Thomas Aquinas as he understood himself. As Owen noted, some interpretations are more plausible than others; some are easily falsified because they rely on errant readings; and others may always remain open for debate because Thomas, being a man, didn’t write perfectly. Moreover, he wrote a great deal, and it’s not inconceivable that there are errors, omissions, and contradictions within his extant works. Perhaps he changed his mind from time to time. Perhaps he found a better way to make a particular theological point. But so what? It doesn’t eliminate the fact that we can still have access to his thought, his arguments, his theological positions, etc.
All of that aside, the most relevant theological issue for the Catholic Church is the reception of the corpus Thomisticum in an ecclesial context. Thomas is the “Angelic Doctor,” but he is not the “Errorless One.” To use one frequently cited example, Aquinas’ theology does not support the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. But so what? That’s really not relevant to the Church, though it is, I suppose, relevant to some Orthodox and Protestant naysayers who assume — wrongly — that everything which poured out of Thomas’ mouth has been dogmatized. Scholars of various stripes can invest their energies in going on about Aquinas’ views on the Immaculate Conception, but it’s a meaningless debate as far as the Church is concerned because the dogma will not change. It cannot change. So, to recover the “true Aquinas” on this front at least is to recover something of historical interest at best; it has no relevance for the life of the Church or the Catholic Faith.
But I guess this is just a repeat of my general contention that the endless academic pursuit of the “real [insert theologian here]” or “true [insert confessional position here]” is, more likely than not, a waste of time. Very contemporary persons with very contemporary outlooks want their ecclesial haunt to look very contemporary. The idea, which germinated in the 19th C., is that if one combs through the historical record they can “coincidentally” find support, through various readings, for that contemporary ecclesial haunt; they just have to find the “true teaching” of so-and-so, etc. Fine, but at that point all one is doing is creating a new church of one’s own artificial design based on what is almost invariably a selective reading of the historical record (and when it’s not selective, it’s exotic — such as recovering the texts of a handful of ancient Christian writers who exerted only a passing (or perhaps no) influence on some segment of the historical Church). Again, as an academic exercise, I find this perfectly intelligible; as an ecclesially relevant engagement that is meant to somehow “renew” or “strengthen” the Church, I’m incredulous.
The answer is always, ‘It’s always complicated.’
But, I’m also just taking a slightly more pomo way of saying the same thing that you said, which is that only the ecclesial context matters. Of course, not being Catholic or of your temperament, I’m committed to believing that ecclesial contexts for theology are generally much more like broad conversations than bullet-point propositions.
In terms of renewal through textual recovery, the dissemination of the Philokalia in the 18th century is exactly the kind of renewal you’re incredulous about, but there are many smaller examples– Ephrem the Syrian being declared a Doctor of the Church in 1920 (oddly enough, well before there were available printed editions of most of his texts) might be another…
Samn!,
just that meaning happens through complex interactions within communities
That’s just tautology, and you’re being wily.
Take the Psalter then. Because of the variances in the source texts, and the philological complexities of Greek and Biblical Hebrew relative to modern European languages, and because of the relative lack of supporting textual and historical data, the parameters of plausible interpretations of the Psalms are much wider, than, say, the plausible interpretations of an H.L. Mencken essay. So what? I can still assert without equivocation that the Psalter is not an instruction manual on how to build spaceships. I can still assert without equivocation that the Psalter is a religious text.
Different rhetorical styles and formulations allow for different levels of logical equivocation regarding meaning. Poetry, for instance, often allows for a wide range of plausible interpretation, and the process of writing poetry involves intellectual processes that involve the creation of meaning(s) that can deviate from authorial intent even at the moment of the writing. When dealing with complex constructions of metaphor and making use of complex literary techniques, it is quite possible for there to be observable and logically verifiable meanings in a text which the author doesn’t even “catch” as the text is being written. Further, changes in reception context can result in changes in true meanings of poetic texts in a manner that, say, is not the case with an auto repair manual. This can sometimes be a result of astute intuitive powers on the part of the writer, but it can often just be a result of luck (or the divine, if you will). As my long time readers know, I read Auden’s For The Time Being every Christmas, and there are passages there which speak quite directly to socio-cultural realities which only occurred in explicit fashion after Auden’s death. It could be that the genius saw the handwriting on the wall. It could also be that the particular use of metaphor and literary technique Auden was using just happened to correspond to later reality (or different receptive context) out of sheer happenstance. But I can still say that there are “correct” interpretations of For The Time Being, and that there are incorrect ones. More specifically, there may be a range of plausible interpretations that are potentially correct, and most critics will make this clear when offering an interpretation or criticizing an interpretation. But when reading analysis of Auden, critics sometimes make mistakes, and offer interpretations which can be refuted because of some aspect of the text which they had overlooked or somesuch, and in those cases their peers usually bring the hammer down upon them.
When we get to Aquinas we are dealing with texts, and the interpretation of those texts, that are quite different from the Psalter or the writings of some associate of Theodoret . We have, relatively speaking, much greater “data” concerning the sources used, other texts interacted with, the history of Thomas andand his engagements with interlocutors and the social and intellectual circumstances which created the context for those engagements, and Latin is a language which is more precise (or shall we say, less philologically malleable) than Biblical Hebrew or patristic Greek or Syriac or Arabic, etc. As well, the rhetorical method and technique employed by Thomas is far more didactic, more direct, more systematic, more self-referencing in terms of offering interpretation of itself, more explicitly deductive, and so forth than early patristic texts or the Psalter.
Thus the parameters for plausible correct interpretations of Thomistic texts are far more narrow than the parameters for plausible correct interpretations of the Psalter, or Paradise Lost or <The Tempest of The Last Temptation of Christ or whathaveyou. And for the vast, vast majority of the Thomistic corpus, there is no debate whatsoever regarding the meaning of the text – it has as tight as plausible interpretive parameters as possible.
And that brings us back to where we started. There are many things that Thomists disagree on with regard to the interpretation of Thomas (we are talking about a corpus of vast size, after all), but with regard to those issues relevant to the common (following neo-Palamite) contemporary Orthodox criticisms of scholastic theology and points of difference between Orthodoxy and the RCC pertinent to scholastic theology, I tentatively believe (because this is based on a few extended conversations and there has not yet been serious published work done on it) that the view of persons who have a substantial command of the Thomistic corpus (including non-Catholics), is that the neo-Palamite interpretation of Thomas on these issues is outside what we are calling plausible parameters.
And because the plausible parameters of the Thomistic texts in question are so tight (relatively speaking), I believe that persons with a command of the Thomistic corpus and all the philological, theological, philosophical, and historical aspects within and related to those texts have the verifiable ability to assert confidently that the neo-Palamite interpretation of Thomas is, unequivocally wrong, if it is unequivocally wrong, and I suspect within the limits of my own faculties that it is.
Well, the notion that Latin is a more precise language than others is the linguistic equivalent of phrenology. Likewise, there are major lacunae in our understanding of Thomas’ immediate intellectual context– historically poor knowledge of Arabic philosophy means that we have poor knowledge of his interaction with Averroes, Avicenna, and Latin versions
of Greek texts derived from Arabic.
I think our disagreement here is about how closed texts work.
I’m happy to follow everyone’s favorite Italian atheist Thomist and state that closed texts are inherently more open to (wonderfully) perverse readings, relative to the author’s intent, than are open texts. As with Superman, so too with the Summa.
The reason that there is a relatively narrow range of extant interpretations of Aquinas’ corpus is not due to some kind of magical clarity, but rather to the material and institutional circumstances of its transmission. Which is why neo-Palamite polemics against Thomism fail– they fail to engage the extant interperative tradition. One of the upshots to renewed interest in Byzantine Thomism is that it highlights a kind of road not taken in building an alternative interpretive tradition, especially when we look at the members of the Palamite faction who were using Thomas…
So are you suggesting that if we had a better understanding of the Latin reception of Avicenna, we’d find out that Thomas was, indeed, in agreement with Palamas all along?
There’s a point when the whole, “We need more…” discussion becomes stretched into tracking down historical trivia. If the Summa was loaded with “inside baseball” on Arabic philosophy and, further, if knowing that philosophy provides the only hermeneutical key to the text, then yes I would agree with you. But it seems to me that getting a firmer grasp of Thomas’ grasp on Avicenna would supply us with little more than a few “ah-ha…” moments, such as, “Oh that’s where he got that argument from…” or “That’s what he’s referencing there…” Is that really going to revolutionize our understanding of Thomas or, to get more on point, revolutionize the way the Church has received, internalized, and built upon the writings of Thomas? Somehow I doubt that.
Oh please, Samn!, you’re grasping here. “precise” might not be the precise word but we both know that the sorts of texts Thomas produces simply could not have been produced in biblical hebrew, and for reasons of linguistic structure, not just historical and social factors.
And we can completely set aside all questions of Thomas’ relationship to Arabic philosophy in order to assert without equivocation what Thomas believed about a host of issues.
That said relationship involves lacunae does not then leave us in a state where the plausible parameters of the meanings of most of Thomas’ texts are thus wide open. A few of his texts may have parameters moderately widened because of that lacunae. The ins and outs of the Arab question have much more to do with how and how not he arrived at positions than the question of what positions he positively held. Regardless of the philological role of the The Commentator and other Arabs in the formation of Aquinas’ thoughts, the positive assertions made by Aquinas are almost always clear, and rarely in dispute when considering the bulk of the text. Take the Treatise on Law, which is certainly a region of the Summa wherein Arab influence is potentially pertinent, while the 20th century had a plethora of debates about Thomas on natural law, those debates only concerned a tiny portion of the overall treatise (the vast majority of it is not a matter of any dispute – less of it today than ever) and where there is dispute the parameters of plausible meaning are fairly constrained, especially if we are comparing Thomas to something like the Psalter, and in almost every case I am aware of the one side typically says of the other “I can see how he got his reading, but…” I just finished reading the work of no less an aggressive old order (ish) thomist than Steven Long on natura pura, and almost every time he offers a critique of neo-thomist positions he begins with “well, I can see how this fellow read the text and interpreted from x to y, but here is how that is wrong.” What I am suggesting, per suggestion to me, of neo-Palamite critiques of Thomas is a level of incompetence with the Thomistic corpus that even that generosity in critique is not possible. To put it crassly, the neo-Palamites might as well argue that Thomas was writing an instruction manual on building spaceships, or at least that is my suspicion, given my limited faculties, of course. This is likely one reason why contemporary thomists won’t ever seriously go after neo-Palamite positions – for the same reason that historical critics & other biblical studies heavyweights didn’t spend much academic time going after Allegro and his thesis that the Gospel accounts were written by a group of people who had done hallucinogenic mushrooms together – there’s just nothing to go after there.
On closed texts, I think I’m about old enough, or at least have spent enough decades reading literary criticism, to say that Roland Barthes was a fucking intellectual fraud and imbecile in tweed who peddled horseshit to new left ignoramuses caught up in all the affect of the French 60s and 70s.
“So are you suggesting that if we had a better understanding of the Latin reception of Avicenna, we’d find out that Thomas was, indeed, in agreement with Palamas all along?”
Uh no…. Very often Thomas’ reading Avicenna explains where he diverges from earlier patristic and Aristotelian tradition. I mean, the essence/existence distinction and “common nature” are pretty central ideas that we can’t understand without understanding how Thomas read Avicenna…
@psiosifson wrote: Lack of a comprehensive catechism is not the same as lacking any dogma, teaching, authoritative texts or Tradition at all.
Of course it’s not, and I would never be so naive as to suggest otherwise. But, when someone touts the lack of a catechism as a badge of honor (as you seemed to be doing; correct me if I’m mistaken), I think it’s safe to assume that Said Someone is implying that a comprehensive authoritative “guide to the perplexed” is a Bad Thing. Or an Inferior-to-the-Mystical-East Kinda Thing.
And, in fact, in my own experience, if I ask three different Orthodox “What’s the Orthodox position on such-and-such?” I get three different answers. And I’m not talking about speculative matters or theological trivia; I’m talking about fairly crucial and central matters of faith and morals; e.g., “What happens to us after we die?” or “What’s the Orthodox position on abortion?”
I anticipate that you will counter that similar confusion reigns among the Catholic Faithful. But there’s a crucial difference. The orthodox Catholic can simply haul out the Catechism, point to the relevant passage, and say, “THIS is the Official Position.” The Orthodox, by contrast, must resort to reciting a litany of canons, Scripture citations, patristic texts, hierarchical writings, and theologians’ opinions…which another Orthodox could just as easily refute with his/her own list of canons, Bible verses, patristic quotes, etc. etc. etc.
All I’m saying is: Cataphasis has its uses. Just ask the Fathers of Nicaea.
That’s because Orthodox think that if you’re an adult, you can figure out out the answer yourself. The references are there, if you need them, but really, think for yourself.
evagrius, if you can figure it all out for yourself, why do three different Orthodox give me three different answers about some pretty crucial, basic stuff?
Maimonides was right. People need a guide to the perplexed. That doesn’t mean they are non-adults. It just means they realize their limitations.
When was the last time you tried to put together some complex electronic toy without consulting the instructions? (Oh wait…you’re a guy…scratch that. I bet you never ask for directions when you get lost, either. LOL.)
Anyhoo…Jesus established a Teaching Authority. He promised to guide His Church into “all truth.” Take it up with Him.
Moreover…good grief. Do you really expect people to sift through reams of canons and patristic texts and whatnot every time they need an answer to a thorny theological question? That’s not treating people as adults. It’s treating them as wonks. Wonks with a lot of time on their hands.
If your m.o. really is Orthodox SOP, then no wonder there’s so much theological ignorance in the Old Country. Who has time to do all this wonky research every time a doctrinal issue arises? Sheesh.
Evagrius wrote:
“That’s because Orthodox think that if you’re an adult, you can figure out out the answer yourself.”
No, that is unnecessarily insulting to Roman Catholics and, therefore, uncharitable. It is because we are attempting to describe the ineffable and Orthodox do not accept that we can describe so much beyond the Creed with such certainty as Roman Catholics claim. With our limited human comprehension, we cannot always specify what is definitely right, but we can usually set boundaries or “limit the field” with regard to possibilities by specifying what is definitely wrong.
Farging, thank you so very much for your irenical response. Of course, Catholics believe the same thing. As Newman famously said, “No doctrine is defined till it is violated.”
But, with all due respect, doesn’t this beg the question, “Why the Creed, then?” Isn’t the Trinity ineffable? Isn’t the Hypostatic Union ineffable? It seems to me some pretty precise theologizing went into the creedal formulations. If the Nicene Fathers had been as big on apophasis as [some of] today’s Orthodox, would we even have the Creed?
Theological questions did not cease to arise after the close of the seventh ecumenical council. When urgent questions arise, they need to be answered. No, not with definitions that exhaust the ineffable. That’s impossible anyway. But they do need to be addressed with answers that elucidate the revealed truths of the ancient Deposit of Faith while excluding dangerous falsehoods. The purpose, as always, is protection of the faithful. The Nicene Fathers would have understood perfectly.
Diane,
Obviously, I disagree and, equally obviously, such discussions go nowhere at this time. However, we do know with certainty that these matters will be cleared up at the Second Coming. So, in charity, let us agree to disagree until then. Er…unless of course Evagrius successfully leads us benighted ones into all truth during this his current “incarnation.”
What I mean about “think for yoursel” is really very simple. Basically, just go to Liturgy, pray and fast when you can, read some solid theological writings, ( basically patristics in small chunks- modern theologians are fine but need discretion), avoid useless arguments and realize that one’s little pea brain can’t even comprehend how one breathes, let alone think.
I would put in more in terms of freedom and relationship rather than in terms of facts and dogmas needing assent. There is obviously a dogmatic component to Orthodoxy, as well, as Diane pointed out, but in the East there is a more pronounced reticence to define and dogmatize, to universally proclaim and systematize for the Church on the full range of possible topics a religion might. Local churches have, of course, individual saints and clerics have, etc. The Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church is an example, as is the Exposition of St. John of Damscus, as are the Catechisms of St. Philaret of Moscow, as are the ‘confessional’ documents the Orthodox tried to compose in the style of 16th century Protestant and RC works of the same kind. But none of these have ‘ecumenical’, universal, Church-wide authority for the Orthodox. There are fences, but the fences are not the farm, so to speak. There’s a lot of room for reflection, for personal or local creativity, etc. but, ironically, this ends up leading to a pretty thoroughgoing conservatism in the main – with creativity on the edges bubbling up and being either incorporated (Palamas, Symeon the New Theologian, the reflection on icons, etc.) or not (sophiology, scholasticism and other western influences) – or not fully.
LOL, farging. I am a big believer in agreeing to disagree.
Evagrius: How does your “thinking for oneself” prescription address questions such as “Is in vitro fertilization morally acceptable?” This is a question that would (I presume) never have crossed the Fathers’ minds. Yet it’s a very live question for, say, an infertile couple.
Do you acknowledge no place for a living Teaching Authority within the Church? Do we figure everything out for ourselves with the help of research? Why, then, did Jesus say that the Holy Spirit would lead the Church into “all truth”? Did He set a time limit on this? Did He say that, after the conclusion of II Nicaea or the close of the patristic age, the Holy Spirit would cease to operate in this way within the Church? If so, I must have missed this Dominical statement.
Also, dumb question, but if we are supposed to be all grown-uppy about this thinking-for-ourselves stuff, then why did Jesus say, “You must become as little children”? Do children not learn from those who are wiser than they? Is this not one of the hallmarks of spiritual childhood? (NOT childishness, but childlikeness…big difference.)
Also, one further point: Getting back to the “All we need is the Creed” stuff: How does this differ from the position of the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or Methodists? I have heard members of all three denoms say precisely the same thing — especially the Piskies and Methies. So, how does Orthodoxy differ from, say, Methodism in this regard?
There’s a difference between only needing the Creed for dogma and only needing the Creed as the supposed sum of all that’s necessary. Orthodoxy wouldn’t ever limit itself to the Creed, anyway, though it’s seen as a handy summary of what we believe the Bible and the Ecumenical Councils and the rest of Holy Tradition teaches. Just because it hasn’t been dogmatized doesn’t mean it isn’t important, and just because it hasn’t been dogmatized doesn’t mean it’s simply theologoumena or optional.
Just because it hasn’t been dogmatized doesn’t mean it isn’t important, and just because it hasn’t been dogmatized doesn’t mean it’s simply theologoumena or optional.
Fine. But this still sounds exactly like the sort of thing a Methodist or (especially) an Episcopalian would say. So, again, how does it distinguish the Orthodox approach from the Piskie approach?
Plus, it still doesn’t help the person who faces a new and unprecedented situation (such as the possibility of human cloning or artificial insemination) and wants to know whether it’s right or wrong, true or false. Neither the Creed nor the Fathers nor the canons nor the earliest Councils say Word One about such a question.
Again…you say the Creed is all that’s necessary for dogma, but…on what authority do you say this? Who says the Creed is all that’s necessary for for dogma? Has an ecumenical council ever declared, “The Creed is all that’s necessary for dogma”? And, heck, when you think of it, WHY would the Creed be all that’s necessary for dogma? Why? Why were the Councils of Chalcedon, Ephesus, and II Nicaea held, if the Creed was all that was necessary for dogma? And why would we expect people to stop expecting dogmatic definitions once the Creed had been formulated? Or even once the seventh ecumenical council had concluded? Thorny, intractable questions kept arising over the centuries; wouldn’t people naturally expect definitive answers to such questions, just as they had in earlier centuries? Why should such an expectation suddenly become unreasonable? Why was it OK for a fourth-century Christian to ask such questions but not for a 14th-century or 19th-century Christian to do so?
Where does Jesus ever say, “You won’t need any more of that ‘all truth’ stuff once you formulate a Creed”? Again, as I asked above, where does He ever specify a time limit for the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the Church “into all truth”? Where does He remotely indicate that, at a certain point, all dogmatic definitions are closed? WHY would that even be the case? Why would there be some artificial date beyond which no more dogmatic definitions can be issued? Where does Jesus, where do the Fathers, where do the ecumenical councils, ever state: “Beyond such-and-such a date, no more dogmatic definitions can be issued?”
As Catholics we believe that the Deposit of Faith was closed with the death of the last apostle. But that does not mean it cannot be elucidated by subsequent generations. This process is illustrated by the Councils and the Creedal formulations, which are classic examples of Development of Doctrine in Action. I do not see ANY indication that the process simply stopped, ceased, went kaput, either after I Nicaea or after II Nicaea or at any other purely artificial point.
Diane,
I recommend you see films of the Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu, ( his “Tokyo Story” is the best-known.
They portray a certain “childlikeness”. It’s the best one I’ve seen in films.
They’re not “Christian” films but are spiritual in a deep and profound way.
Nice discussion.
I’m inclined to think that Orthodox theology still has to work out its self-conception with regards to its own history.
Historical scholarship is now showing how much more varied and diversified orthodox theology was, much to the chagrin of converts who wish a pure orthodoxy from the apostolic age on down, ( a la Romanides who gives me dyspepsia), (for example, I’m reading a book arguing that the real Cassian is someone other than the chap who came to France from Egypt).
The anachronistic imposition of “Palamism” on the history of Orthodox theology does it no service. Why not acknowledge that Palamas, like Aquinas, created a new theological synthesis that’s faithful to tradition but articulates it in a creative fashion. And why remain repeating Palamas, ( without understanding him really), in response to current question?
By the way, I find the characterization of the East as “mystical” and therefore not rational or logical as absurd as the notion that the West is not mystical but logical and rational. There’s quite a bit of good basic logic in Palamas, logic that hints at even a kind of meta-logic a la Nagarjuna. And , of course, one can easily point to Meister Eckhardt who was rigorously logical and scholastic while advocating quite interesting notions about “mystical experience”..
The problem is basically too many “small minds” crowding out more interesting ones.
And then, there is the phenomenon of people asking to be told what to think and how to act. Owen’s example of the convert Orthodox church is exactly that…any regular “ethnic” Orthodox church doesn’t fit that description by a long shot…you’ll find the same in Catholic or Protestan churches…it’s all a matter of discretio.
Orthodoxy requires, at a certain level, the ability to think for oneself. Catholicism does that too, at least from Vat II onwards, ( despite the Vatican’s attempt to regress). I suppose Protestants have been doing this also, despite the attempts of certain groups to create a Vatican type mentality.
Admittedly, both my imaginary parishes represented extremes, so to speak. But every one of the “items” listed, in both of the imaginary parishes mentioned, I have encountered within American Orthodoxy, most of them more than a few times.
I agree with you. I now live in Hamilton, Ontario. It’s the old “steel-town” of Canada that provided for the industrial core of auto manufacturing etc;. It’s therefore also an immigrant town full of Eastern Europeans, Slavs, Italians, Greeks etc; and therefore full of Orthodox churches which, unfortunately, are still steeped in the traditional languages, ( Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian etc;).
Tough for an English speaking Orthodox. The only English language Orthodox church is exactly what you describe. My wife and I went to one of their services- women with babushka scarves on one side, men on the other, fixation on prostrations, horribly chanted psalms etc;. We finally found an English speaking church, ( Antiochan), that’s pan-Orthodox, multi-ethnic etc; and has a priest that’s actually quite nice with a wife that’s clearly her own person and kids that are normal and polite, ( Canadians are always polite but it’s nice to see the kids following the tradition).
Something interesting that’s somewhat germanne to this;
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12115-012-9551-y?LI=true#page-1
On Origen and Gregory of Nyssa;
Tzamalikos has written two books on Origen that seek to upend the commonly received opinion about him. Tzamalikos argues that Origen wasn’t as “Hellenistic” as supposed but quite another type of thinker presaging notions about space, time and relativity..
Mark Edwards has made similar points showing how Origen was to a great degree anti-Platonic..
On Gregory, an interesting work is Cosmic Man by Mar Gregorios from India. It certainly is a different view of Gregory. Of course, Mar Gregorios is quite a refreshing voice sine he’s neither “Eastern” nor “Western” in the commonly accepted terms.
Has anyone here looked as Susanna Elm’s new book Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church (UC Press)? I think more scholarship in this vein could illuminate a discussion like this. In Elm’s treatment, even the notion of theosis has political origins (which is not to say that she has an entirely reductive reading of this spiritual principle). Elm demonstrates that what we often take to be definitive of a tradition is really created out of a dynamic collision of two or more paradigms. Mark Edwards has also demonstrated that orthodox Christianity has its origins in gnosticism, a term which is only retroactively demonized as something foreign. We may, at times, have simply to acknowledge that there is no there there: essentialist definitions of either Orthodoxy or RC are blind to history. A more interesting question does emerge though: what patterns of intellectual evolution are you more prone to accept? If the past, or a church, or a corpus of texts, or a lineage of thinkers, or strain of monastic thought, or a strain of intellectual history is in effect prismatic, how does this problematize our conceptions of belief? Many individuals, from many different cultural contexts, are searching for a narrative that affords coherence and comprehensive scope to the varied history of the world. Neat packages are easy to carry, but one looks ridiculous claiming that you can pull an elephant-sized object out of a tiny box (my summary for simplistic readings of history). It is often said that the Devil is in the details, but what if the Divine is too? Or rather, what if the Devil is in grand narratives and God is in the details? (So to speak). Meaning is always constructed, and never found. Every reading of church history is interpretative, and this does not admit easy or simplistic manners of conceptualizing history.
From where I sit, the Catholic Church — more than the Orthodox — eschews an essentialist definition if by “essentialism” you mean a neatly packaged conceptualization that knows no tensions, contradictions, fluctuations, etc. (Yes, I understand that this is a very “non-trad” position to take; so sue me.) This is not quite the same as saying I buy into the “many Catholicisims” approach even though, as an empirical matter, I have to accept that there many conceptions of Catholicism roaming around out there — some more heretical than others. What I mean is that is that a Church which embraces the full spectrum of historic Christianity, from West to East, has to accept that there are going to be tensions within it; unresolved differences; complications both liturgical and theological; and so forth. And that’s fine. Moreover, the last thing combing the historical record is going to do is reveal a “pure Catholicism” in a pristine age, or even a “pure Church.” That doesn’t mean there weren’t (and aren’t still) boundaries of orthodoxy that must be followed. But at the end of the day there are going to be open, fluctuating elements within the Church that are bound to shift from time to time. Why this is a “big deal” to some is quite beyond me.
I find, among the Orthodox at least, an almost pathological desire for an “essential Orthodoxy” or, similarly, a “true Orthodoxy” stripped of all contradictions, accretions, historical accidents, etc. But that’s never going to happen unless one wants to rip down 2,000 years of history and build up something new on the imaginative learnings of “experts” (and yes, there are those who would love to see this). But to be fair, I will admit that there are Orthodox who have a good grasp of the plurality of its own existence and the fact there is no “one Orthodoxy” out there (a fact that is probably easier to accept in a confederate church like the Orthodox than it is in the allegedly “monolithic” Roman Church). Distressingly, too often an “essential Orthodoxy” is one which is divested of anything that might connect it with “the West” even though, as many scholars have pointed out, the ecclesial “East” and “West” are, at the end of the day, part of the same over-arching “West”; the attempt to “orientalize” the Orthodox to the point where they become wholly exotic is a polemical trick more than an actual fact.
Wow. So many incisive insights packed into one comment…bravo, and thank you.
Mod,
I completely agree with you. I find the propensity to use the tensions within the Church (past or present) and the multifaceted nature of theological speculation through time as evidence for pluralism or liberalism to be facile and ultimately vacuous. Mark Edwards, in his very insightful book Catholicity and Heresy in the Early Church, delineates the complex matrix out of which orthodox Christianity emerged, highlighting in passing that there were always tensions within Christianity. But, he hastens to add, what distinguished Christianity from the second century on was its perpetual and enduring insistence that (even between warring parties) _someone_ had the authority to speak definitively for all. It was this universal purview that gave Christianity its persuasive power. Elm addresses the two competing paradigms of universalism (Pagan Rome and Christian Rome) in her book. Christianity could never be conducive to democratic polity because every single one of its early exponents (from Marcionites, Vanentinians, to Arians and Nestorians) declared that one body had the power to speak for the whole. In this light, Catholicism emerges as the only single force that maintained this logic successfully (all others be damned).
Well, it has to be among “some Orthodox’ but not all.
It’s becoming clear, even with and actually because of, Orthodox historical scholars, that “Orthodoxy” is a rather nebulous concept, just like “Catholicism”.
There is no “essential’ core to either one, if that core means some verbal, written source.
However, I do think that there is a core but it’s not one that has any provenance, nor genealogy, and it’s quite simply that of those who experience, in this earthly life,some inkling of the Divine…and it has no stupid limits such as ecclesial boundaries.
Owen wrote (way up above; the “reply” function in WordPress doth sucketh): …it is possible that, Aquinas wrote these words down back in the day, and they actually mean something, and one can actually be wrong in asserting what they mean, and one can actually be correct in asserting what they mean….
Yeah, that’s where I part company with the pomo crowd.
Off-topic, but this reminds me of something my Romantic Poetry professor said once, way back in the day. He told us that he gave us a lot of latitude in interpreting the poems we were discussing, but, he concluded, “Some interpretations are just wrong.” And believe me, if you’d heard some of the interpretations the students in that class were offering, you’d know exactly what he meant.
Some interpretations are just, well, wrong.
I remember my father sitting me on his knee reading me poems when I was in the 3rd and 4th grade. Mostly 19th century American poetry. I will never forget one of the earliest of those sessions – with him reading Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain! and asking me, at 7 or 8 years old, what the poem meant, me giving a literal interpretation of the poem, him correcting me, and then the shock, wonder, and awe I felt at the epiphany that words could have a clear meaning behind their superficial presentation, and that this meaning could be discerned.
You have an amazing father! I am envious.
My dad is the Italian Ralph Kramden. OK, I’m being unfair. That reminds me that I need to call him….
OK, I have now read all the comments in the Owen-Samn-Modestinus sub-thread, and I an simply overwhelmed. Y’all are so freaking smart. This is way above my pay grade but quite fascinating. And of course I agree with Owen, who I think is making some incredibly persuasive points (she said sycophantically).
I’m going down here.
Samn!,
The reason that there is a relatively narrow range of extant interpretations of Aquinas’ corpus is not due to some kind of magical clarity, but rather to the material and institutional circumstances of its transmission. Which is why neo-Palamite polemics against Thomism fail– they fail to engage the extant interperative tradition.
When you say, “the reason” you can’t possibly mean, “the only reason” or even “the dominant reason to the extent that any meaning logically derivative from the text itself (facilitated by sufficient knowledge of terms/concepts and historical contexts) doesn’t matter.” Because then you are denying faculties that you yourself regularly must use to make assertions regarding texts. You made assertions regarding the texts of the associate of Theodoret. We know that there have been throughout history readings of texts which have been later revealed to have been incorrect reading. It is hypothetically possible that I could create a substantially sized interpretive tradition which reads the associate of Theodoret as writing a cryptic sex manual for transgendered bricklayers. You would then assert that we have evidence enough, both in the text and in extra textual sources, to determine that this is wrong, would you not? Surely then there are some things which can be said of Thomistic texts which are clearly wrong in light of the text and its context. And you say that you believe in a meaning that stands beyond interpretive politics, but you keep insisting that interpretive politics is the key here. Must I always believe that 2+2=4 means that when I add two items to another two items I have 4 items only because of the interpretive tradition which taught me such? As I have asserted above, literature gets much more complicated than this – it can have many meanings, it can even have contradictory meanings and paradoxical tensions within a given text, but the vast bulk of Thomistic literature ain’t that. It is much more like an advanced form of 2+2=4. That isn’t to say that it is therefore true, advanced 2+2=4isms may very well not be a truthful way of expressing theological positions, but it is to say that the interpretation of 2+2=4isms is going to generally be a lot more straightforward than the interpretation of other rhetorical techniques. Which speaks to the whole point of scholastic theology – it seeks clarity in rhetorical formation and logical expression, and to a large degree, it succeeds.
One of the upshots to renewed interest in Byzantine Thomism is that it highlights a kind of road not taken in building an alternative interpretive tradition, especially when we look at the members of the Palamite faction who were using Thomas…
Agreed, to the extent that it continues to be done by people whose interpretation of Thomas finds some rational basis in the Thomistic corpus, It seems obvious from the work of people like Fr. Barbour, and, I gather, from Plested, that there were a number of Palamites that took little issue with Thomas and scholasticism, and some which were quite enthusiastic about it. This would seem to point to the potential conclusion that the metanarrative of the neo-palamites concerning the radical contradiction and otherness between scholasticism and palamite thought is a construct that is not required by either scholastic theology or palamite theology as they operated in the periods of their prime, so to speak. This would then be consistent with those 20th century Western writers who have argued that the contrast between scholastic and palamite thought is contrived and has no basis in the texts themselves, or in the early interpretive traditions.
And to make myself clear, I am not trying to be an apologist for scholastic theology here. I am certain that by the time the manualist tradition came into play, scholastic theology (or what was left of it) was spiritually dead, and had decayed in the rot of overconfidence and a hyper, almost fundamentalist didacticism, turning the theological arts into extreme banality. I am only arguing that the interpretation of scholastic thought and Thomas, on the whole, given caveats, and famous debates notwithstanding, is among the easiest of interpretation to rationally verify.
Of course. Just as Palamas is. He is quite the logician, but it takes a bit of thinking to figure that he is and, as a logician he is on the same ground as Aquinas…and also someone like Nagarjuna.
I really don’t quite understand why there’s so much intellectual energy expended on their difference considering how similar their opponents were.
Yeah, I’m not particularly arguing against scholasticism as such, as it seems kind of nonsensical to do so. If anything, one of my ongoing projects is to remind people how central (a certain reading of) Aristotle is to the history of Orthodox theology. Nor am I particularly wedded to neo-Palamism, even if I think on some points it has good insights and even have draft translations of the first couple chapters of Staniloae’s monograph on Palamas sitting around.
On the other hand, when I read Thomas, I tend to read him through the lens of people he was reading that I’m more closely familiar with– particularly John of Damascus and Avicenna– and in this light he tends to come across alternately as wildly trippy or tediously run-of-the-mill. Part of this is that he was often working from inaccurate Latin translations of Greek and Arabic, and part is his own originality– that is to say, Thomas’ own method for reading the texts he considered authoritative is itself evidence of the positive creative power of accidentally or deliberately misreading (relative to authorial intent) a text. Here it’s important to distinguish this type of misreading from misreading in order to make a straw man for polemics. One is right at the core of the entire history of the transmission and interpretation of texts. The other is just being an asshole.
Aside from my epistemological concerns, one of the reasons I’m emphasizing the centrality of interpretive tradition in understanding Aquinas is that it’s not so hard to come up with alternative ways of reading him, some of which would be more in line with the way he himself read the texts he used- even those he considered to be authoritative. There are specific cultural and material reasons that led to his being read in a way that limits the range of interpretations of his writings– much of this has to do with what it meant for a text to be authoritative within the context of a medieval university and the nature of treating something as a textbook.
I think you’re trying to make me out as more of the (dark scary) 1990′s postmodernist than I am, since that sort of thing went out of fashion before my time in any case. I don’t have the patience to work through Derrida (especially if the little bear from the youtube video is right and I have to understand Sein und Zeit first), but I do think anyone who works with text should memorize Saussure’s Cours and as much Peirce as they can handle. In any case, almost all my post-secondary education has been a mix of empiricist linguistics and Kaiser-helmet philology. Which is why I loathe both Chomsky and Strauss but am willing to take practical insights from poststructuralism when it resonates with the practical experience of working with texts.
So, I don’t think that we exist in a world of complete epistemological anarchy, and I’m comfortable with 2+2 = 4, I’m also aware that every communicative act is a kind of skidding over the surface of an abyss and that meaning is always negotiated multilaterally and within a specific context.
All this comes from the fact that I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to determine what some author or another was really getting at, and so I’m especially sensitive to the difficulties and imprecision involved in this, as well as to the fact that authorial intent is only of academic interest in the first place.
I apologize if I was unfair in assuming so, but yes, reading your comments seemed to me to be a time machine back to the 90s. But I’m willing to accept that there may be substantial differences between your posture and that of 90s poststructuralism.
My principal intellectual mentor during my formative years (aside from my father) was a disciple of Eugene Nida, and you may infer from this how I might approach Saussure.
Thanks for a very stimulating conversation.
I was talking to hubby last night about all this Mystical-Apophatic-East stuff. He said, “I wonder whether that’s the Russian influence. Traditionally the Greeks have been ratiocinative as hell.”
LOL.
No Perhaps the ouzo has effect. But your husband should know about the Neo Platononists.