Someone sent me a link to the "Ad Orientem" blog yesterday, which I'd never visited before. I saw the article you're discussing here. I almost left a comment there, but I decided not to, since I wasn't sure I'd drop by there again; and perhaps it's a bit pedantic -- but here it is; and it actually refers to the bit you excerpted above.
It doesn't say much for this man's reading comprehension skills if he's been reading till his eyes were about to pop out (I think elsewhere he says he was at it for a decade) and the example he comes up with is Leo the Great. Of all the great Fathers he could have chosen he picks the one who offers not a scintilla of support for his case. Rather, if Leo could have been brought per impossibile to read the Vatican I doctrinal definitions he would have been amazed at their limited nature and restricted scope. Leo himself taught that the Bishop of Rome alone among bishops derives his authority directly from St. Peter, that the Bishop of Rome can overrule ant bishop, group of bishops or synod of bishops, that the decrees and definitions of ecumenical councils have no force or effect until confirmed by the Bishop of Rome and that thre Bishop of Rome as the "indignus heres beati Petri," the (personally, morally, ethically and meritoriously) "unworthy heir of Blessed Peter" inherits in full the unbounded juridical authority that Christ (in Leo's view) conferred on Peter, and on Peter alone, among the apostles.
See *The Life and Times of Leo the Great* by Trevor Jalland (1940) -- Jalland was an English Anglo-Catholic clergyman and academic and the latter part of his book consists of translations from Leo's letters and sermons which make his views on the subject quite clear -- and "Leo I and the Theme of Papal Primacy* by Walter Ullmann, *Journal of Theological Studies*, N.S., XI (1960), pp. 25-51 for full, perfect and sufficient proof of this. One might also read the more polemical, but still useful, "The Fathers Gave Rome the Primacy" by A. St. Leger Westall, *The Dublin Review*, CXXXII (January-April 1903), pp. 100-114.
By the way, Mike, a package I sent you in early September (at the "new address" you had earlier given me) has just been returned to me as "moved -- undeliverable." It seems that it was sent from that first address to another address and then returned to me. So where are you?
"Who, exactly, speaks for the Church AS A WHOLE?"
Is this a loaded question?
William:
I'm tempted to say that answering my question with that question is a way of avoiding giving an answer, but I'll try to respond to what I can only surmise is your concern.
When I've posed my question to Orthodox in the past, they usually respond by rejecting the question. And within their ecclesiological paradigm, that's a natural attitude to take. For if authority in the Church is what most Orthodox say it is, then there's no need for any one person to speak for the Church as a whole, and hence there's no advantage in maintaining that there is such a person. But that doesn't get us very far; for of course the question at issue is precisely which ecclesiology to adhere to, and the criteria for comparing and assessing them cannot be fairly adduced by assuming the truth of one ecclesiology over the other.
If one wants to discuss such matters in the context of theological opinion, as distinct from the assent of faith, then there's no substitute for coming up with criteria that reasonable people can accept with assuming the truth of one side of this. So, with that in mind, I think my question is fair to raise.
Best,
Mike
Christology and Triadology are the proper starting points of theology and supply us with the categories employed in ecclesiology. The local Church is not an "arm" or a "leg" of the "whole Church" defined as the sum of local
Churches, rather the local Church at each temporal location is the whole Church or whole body of Christ. The Bishop of each Church speaks for that Church, which is the whole catholic Church. In your shema we need an absolutely simple principle of authority to have unity or to reach binding decisions. I think your question and justification for Papal Primacy as understood by RC theology begins with a definition of the Church and principles of reasoning supplied by natural theology, rather than Triadology and Christology.
Even if we affirmed RC ecclesiology, the question for us would ultimately be, "Does this minister have apostolic sucession and is he in communion with and under the Pope?"
So you would agree that your question is not a deal-breaker and is only as legitimate as the ecclesiology is presupposes?
I am not saying that I know everything or that I have the answers to all of your questions, but is there something besides the Papacy that provides ultimate vindication or makes the case for Catholicism? If we agree that most ecclesiological questions are loaded and question begging, could we look elsewhere?
William:
"The Bishop of each Church speaks for that Church, which is the whole catholic Church."
By strict inference, this implies that the bishop of each church speaks for the whole Catholic Church. But bishops have been known to disagree. If bishops disagree, and each bishop speaks for the whole Church, then the whole Church is contradicting itself.
Again, on your supposition, each of the Arian bishops spoke for the whole Church. But an ecumenical council of bishops condemned Arianism. Ergo, the Church has contradicted itself again.
Is this really a tenable view?
Good article, Michael, as always.
It appears that John is appealing to a form of the Vincentian Canon by which to judge proposed developments of doctrine. Thus he suggests that Leo the Great would have anathematized the papal dogmas of the First Vatican Council. (As Dr Tighe notes, John's choice of Leo was probalby the worst possible choice. Leo mightly have jumped on the Vaticna I bandwagon.) But let us assume the Leo would have rejected the Vatican I decrees. This establishes very little, if anything.
Put oneself in the mid second century and you told folks about the dogmatic claim of 1 Constantinople (381) that the Holy Spirit is truly and fully divine, a person in the community of the Holy Trinity. I daresay that many folks might have dismissed this "new" belief as heresy. As Dom Gregory Dix writes:
'It was neither Scripture nor Tradition which imposed the dogma of 381, defined by the most thinly attended and least unanimous of all the assemblies which rank as General Councils, but the living magisterium of the Church of that age. And upon that basis only it is accepted today. That the full doctrine of the Spirit’s Godhead was then believed in some sense “everywhere” we may hope, though the evidence is not reassuring. That it had “always” been believed by some we may suppose, though the evidence is at least defective. That it had previously been believed “by all” is demonstrably untrue. An enormous catena can be formed of ante-Nicene writers from St. Clement of Rome in the first century onwards who are either Macedonian Subordinationists or who definitely make the Holy Ghost a creature. One would have hard work to find one ante-Nicene writer who consistently teaches the full Constantinopolitan doctrine–apart from the Montanist Tertullian!'
The Vincentian canon is useless because at no point can we can that we live in a time where there will be no more doctrinal developments. Folks seem to forget how radical the homoousion was in the 4th century. Athanasius was seen by many as an innovator.
Folks need to read Newman's *Essay on the Development of Doctrine* very slowly and carefully. It was save a ot of future headaches.
Dr. Tighe,
First permit me to say that being slammed by someone of your stature is something of an honor and my hat size has increased notably. Your deduction is largely accurate. I have no formal theological training whatsoever. Theology is to me a hobby that I acquired largely as a consequence of and in tandem with my spiritual journey. My field is history, of which more shortly.
Regarding Leo for my choice of examples in my less than scholarly post, I can only plead that the example was generic. I would have substituted almost any of the popes up probably the last century or so of the first millennium. I was not using Leo as an example based on his particular writings, but rather as a convenient name that popped into my head when trying to point to the sensus fidei of the undivided Church. (I think Leo got in my post because I had recently finished rereading his Tome.) In hindsight it was a poor choice for all of the reasons you noted and a few others that have occurred to me since. In my future selection of names I will have to be more careful. Having said that, your responding quotes make some excellent points, though I am not sure that Leo would have felt the decrees of Vatican I confining. This brings me to Michael’s question and long post.
Michael,
Thank you for you very kind words. I also appreciate your thoughtful comments on my most recent post over at Ad Orientem. I hope to hear from some others. Now to the subject at hand…
As always you make a very powerful argument for doctrinal development. However as I noted above, my field is more history than theology. Thus I rarely approach doctrinal development as though it occurred in an historical vacuum. When examining the development in the Latin understanding of the Petrine ministry I find that they often seem to be at least partially in response to socio-political conditions then in existence. Now this is not in and of itself a bad thing. It can be perfectly legitimate that a given situation might suddenly bring a certain truth into sharper focus. It is also completely legitimate for existing circumstances to influence church discipline.
Indeed I have occasionally irritated some of my co-religionists, by noting that some aspects of the growth of papal power were not only legitimate but almost impossible to conceive of not having occurred. The situation in the West following the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire was one of near complete chaos. The Church at the time represented almost the only remaining institution that had any sort of unifying effect in Western Europe. Thus it was natural and to a degree even necessary for the See of Rome to step into the void left by the fall of the Empire. This was especially so as the various barbarian tribes were converted. The West, lacking the stabilizing influence of the Imperial Government present in the East, had a totally different situation to deal with. In the East the emperor was often at leas
ARGGGHHHH I hate word limits!
Ok I will try this again and break my post into several installments. I am going to post the whole thing on Ad Orientem for those who want to read it unbroken.
Dr. Tighe,
First permit me to say that being slammed by someone of your stature is something of an honor and my hat size has increased notably. Your deduction is largely accurate. I have no formal theological training whatsoever. Theology is to me a hobby that I acquired largely as a consequence of and in tandem with my spiritual journey. My field is history, of which more shortly.
Regarding Leo for my choice of examples in my less than scholarly post, I can only plead that the example was generic. I would have substituted almost any of the popes up probably the last century or so of the first millennium. I was not using Leo as an example based on his particular writings, but rather as a convenient name that popped into my head when trying to point to the sensus fidei of the undivided Church. (I think Leo got in my post because I had recently finished rereading his Tome.) In hindsight it was a poor choice for all of the reasons you noted and a few others that have occurred to me since. In my future selection of names I will have to be more careful. Having said that, your responding quotes make some excellent points, though I am not sure that Leo would have felt the decrees of Vatican I confining. This brings me to Michael’s question and long post.
Michael,
Thank you for you very kind words. I also appreciate your thoughtful comments on my most recent post over at Ad Orientem. I hope to hear from some others. Now to the subject at hand…
As always you make a very powerful argument for doctrinal development. However as I noted above, my field is more history than theology. Thus I rarely approach doctrinal development as though it occurred in an historical vacuum. When examining the development in the Latin understanding of the Petrine ministry I find that they often seem to be at least partially in response to socio-political conditions then in existence. Now this is not in and of itself a bad thing. It can be perfectly legitimate that a given situation might suddenly bring a certain truth into sharper focus. It is also completely legitimate for existing circumstances to influence church discipline.
Indeed I have occasionally irritated some of my co-religionists, by noting that some aspects of the growth of papal power were not only legitimate but almost impossible to conceive of not having occurred. The situation in the West following the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire was one of near complete chaos. The Church at the time represented almost the only remaining institution that had any sort of unifying effect in Western Europe. Thus it was natural and to a degree even necessary for the See of Rome to step into the void left by the fall of the Empire. This was especially so as the various barbarian tribes were converted. The West, lacking the stabilizing influence of the Imperial Government present in the East, had a totally different situation to deal with. In the East the emperor was often at least as powerful (and sometimes more so) than the Patriarchs and took a direct hand in the governance of The Church. There was an absolute union of church and state. But just as important, there was only one state to deal with. While a general union of church and state developed in the west over the centuries it was a fragmented one. The political balkanization of Western Europe had far reaching consequences for the church there. Cont...
Up to a point I think that a certain centralization of administrative power in the Roman See was needed, probably far more than most of my fellow Orthodox would be comfortable with admitting to. But I am referring to the disciplinary ecclesiology of the Latin Church as distinct from its doctrinal claims. At the risk of sounding Protestant (even a stopped clock is right twice a day) a strong argument could be made that the gradually increased involvement of the papacy in secular politics produced an increasing need to justify its position in the world. This lent itself to the medieval doctrinal development of the papal powers culminating in the High Middle Ages with Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctum.
Now a converse argument could also be made to the effect that the socio political conditions in the East retarded legitimate doctrinal development in that half of The Church. The Eastern Churches by and large have existed within the framework of the Roman Empire (Eastern) or under the yoke of non-Christian rulers up until very nearly modern times (the Russian Church being the obvious exception). This would have negated the circumstances that provoked much of the doctrinal development witnessed in the Latin Church especially in the medieval period.
All of which brings us back to the central question of your erudite post. How does one discern legitimate doctrinal development from illegitimate development or as you politely framed it “addition to the deposit of the faith?” Cont...
Once again I turn to history. Here I look for signs which to me would render a given example of doctrinal development suspect. The big red flag for me is the following question. Has the modern church effectively abandoned its earlier position or reversed itself? In several areas I again would argue a strong case can be made that the Roman Church has indeed come very close to reversing previously held positions or simply abandoning them. Some examples would include usury, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, religious liberty (Vat II), limbo, capital punishment, and torture (the topic of several of your recent fascinating posts). I actually concur with the development of doctrine on the death penalty so that’s probably a poor example. But the others are all cases where a prima facie case can be made that there has been a substantive reversal or abandonment of previously held doctrine. All of these subjects are ones on which the Roman Catholic Church had very clear and to the minds of most people firmly set doctrinal statements of belief which have seen very dramatic changes.
In general I am not aware of any corresponding examples (at least none as glaring) that exist in Orthodoxy. And yes, all of the above examples can and have been explained by the advocates of doctrinal development. But I often find those explanations tortured and… I hate to use this term… legalistic. Some doctrinal development is probably unavoidable. But radical development which some might term revolutionary is suspect. This coupled with the frequency with which the Roman Catholic Church is “developing” its doctrine all combined to add to my already considerable discomfort with Catholic doctrinal development post first millennium.
Again defenders of DD might point out that it’s easy to criticize such when your faith remains frozen in the 9th century. But the reply could be made that doctrinal development might not be quite as common or necessary if there were not such an urgent need to have an explanation or doctrine about everything. Yes we Orthodox do suffer from the lack of a clearly defined final authority. Although I think you made a pretty good list of things we look for, the two big ones being an Ecumenical Council and acceptance by the church as a whole. Doctrinal development in the East is far slower as a result of our ecclesiology. It also tends to be less rigid in some respects. The very nature of The Church makes quick judgments on doctrinal matters difficult almost to the point of impossible. To be certain, that’s a double edged sword. But if it’s a really serious subject of contention then the issue will still be around in a hundred years and it might take that long to reach a consensus on it.
Further it is worth noting that really serious theological arguments, the kind that provoke schisms, have been almost completely absent from Orthodoxy since the split with Rome. Yes we have schisms. But they are mostly jurisdictional and juridical squabbles. For the most part the faith is settled. The one possible exception could arguably be the Old Believers of Russia. But even there I would argue that was much more about an abuse of power in imposing church disciplines which were alien to the local people.
I could go on, but I have covered what I really wanted to and this has already reached three pages on MS Word. That’s long enough for a comment I think. In closing I wish to say that I am in absolute agreement with the closing paragraph of your article. One can not prove or disprove either Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. And like you I never seriously considered Protestantism which I found historically bankrupt. The same “assiduous prayer and integrity” which lead me to Orthodoxy has kept you in Rome. In the end we must do what we believe to be right according to those lights that God gives us by which we discern right from wrong. More than that is not possible and all we can do is commend our miserable and unworthy souls to the mercy of God.
As always typos etc… mea culpa.
ICXC
John
"Folks need to read Newman's *Essay on the Development of Doctrine* very slowly and carefully. It was save a ot of future headaches."
Boy, I'll second that, Fr Kimel! I'm starting to think that until a given interlocutor can show himself to have done so--and to be frank, few if any of the people I've debated online on relevant issues have so shown themselves--any efforts at dialogue on these matters are pretty much useless. Defending the *actual Catholic notion* of development of doctrine to most Orthodox or Protestants is like defending scholastic theology to people who are convinced it's all about angels on the heads of pins (a notion which could only endure in a state of complete ignorance of what the theologians actually said and thought about), or talking about the value of the middle ages in general to people who are convinced that everyone before Columbus thought it was a heresy to suggest the world wasn't flat (whereas of course the roundness of the world was common knowledge to non-barbarians since the ancient Greeks at least). You can't talk to these people until their fundamental errors are cleared up.
I feel obliged to say that my last post was in no way meant specifically to refer to John's immediately preceding string of posts, which was not up while I was writing mine, but was only a general observation based on past experience.
I hate the word limits too. The other day I lost half a post and didn't notice--didn't go back to reread--for about a day and a half, at which point I didn't care to try and reproduce it, and so I dropped out of the rest of the thread. O well.
Al,
Thanks for the suggestion. I am not nearly as familiar with Newman as I would like. And one could add about a dozen other names to that list as well. My reading time is limited and I have a list of works I want to get to that I should finish sometime before my 80th birthday. I am setting some aside though to hit up Newman's essay.
ICXC
John
1. Dr. Tighe, your point is well taken, but must you be insulting?
2. That said, I do think it is problematic for Orthodox that the popes from at least Damasus onward (Innocent, Gelasius, etc.) considered themselves as having a kind of plenitude of Peter's power and responsibilities. I am torn between thinking these popes mistook the canons of Sardica for the canons of Nicea and extrapolated their authority too far, or on the other hand thinking that maybe the Catholic Church is correct.
Yet it is also true that, if the bishops of Rome had a high view of themselves, this didn't seem to play out as much in the East, unless the emperor stepped in to impose it, e.g., Oath of Hormisdas. Perhaps the Orthodox would say that papal supreme jurisdiction was a mistaken Western development not fully accepted by the East?
I'd love an Orthodox response to the issue of those fourth and fifth century popes of Rome.
By the way, I believe I gathered my notion of the popes mistaking the canons of Sardica as Nicean from Robert Eno. Alas I don't have the resources, time, or skill in the original languages to know if that idea is correct.
Let me begin by saying that I believe there is a symmetry between ecclesiological structure and the practice of the christian life in both the Catholicism and Orthodoxy. I think the discussion of the nature of the differences between these two cannot proceed without recognizing this integration in each. Let me add also that the historical record of shrinkage in belief through the current day seems to suggest problems with each model, and that efforts to prove each other right or wrong do not constitute a discussion and are thus less than fruitless.
To venture an overbroad generalization and vastly simplify for the sake of contrasting two systems and capsulize Catholicism and Orthodoxy, I see Catholicism as specifying a fairly rigid and detailed notions of the christian life, and that coupled with the realities of the world, there is a necessity for development and adaptation of these notions as the circumstances and details of modern life evolve into new challenges. In the West, the Church has adapted to this challenge through centrailization of the decision and control structures. The Papacy is central and necessary in this function.
By contrast, the Orthodox view of life seems to be more fluid in dealing with changes in the circumstances of our individual failures, but matches this with a rigidity in terms of how these standards are set by reliance on the traditions. Accordingly, the Orthodox life does not entail a necessity for change and adaptation on the scale precedented in the West and has no developed bureacracy for regulating the life other than the traditional priesthood and monasteries. The richness of the traditions, its breadth and the challenges successfully navigated in the past suggest this has as much validity as the Roman model.
Of course there are exceptions and more to each of these generalizations that would show that Orthodoxy develops doctrine and that Catholicism doesn’t. Let me simply say that I will grant these cases and more….but suggest that I find it hard to suggest that this changes the philosophical differences in approach to belief of the adherents.
My personal perspective is that it is because of these differences that Catholics who insist on the importance of the papacy and its central authority fail to persuade Orthodox. Similarly, the Orthodox insistence on reception or tradition exclusively seem inadequate to the Catholic.
Were we to judge the merits of each system on the basis of today’s current low ebb of belief in christianity in general, we would candidly judge both a failure. Catholicism has lost the West over and over through Reformation, Nationalism, Materialism and Secularism to a point where Benedict is right to call for reconversion. Similarly, Orthodoxy has lost at least as much through conquest of Islam, the Communists, and others – perhaps even in truth it might be said that it lost Rome as well.
A better day will come but only if we can candidly address the circumstances – an
Ah, the cut-off. To finish:
A better day will come but only if we can candidly address the circumstances – and as Mike points out – rightly view them in their whole rather than solely in their parts. This is to say that I believe the beginning of virtue in this is not where each Church is right as that seems to lead to an inability to address each other, but to begin to identify where each may need the other’s help.
Just a thought.
Yes, yes, yes - Newman is the key to interpreting the DD gnosis. Only those who have read Essay on D of D slowly and carefully can enter properly into a conversation on Development in the RCC. I must not be among the elect then. I have read Essay on D of D, and An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, and five or six other Newman works and a couple of Newman biographies (all of that adds up to me being a Newman novice, which I fully admit), though apparently I have not read them slowly or carefully enough, because after reading them I was more inclined to believe that Orthodoxy was true than before I had read them. I have always sensed a certain affectation in Newman, and a certain sense that here is a man who had to come up with a working theory that would get him from point A to point B in an intellectually respectable manner. I have never known quite how to diagnose Newman until recently, when I read Fr. Louth's reference to Newman's work as Romanticism.
Newman aside, it almost has to be considered romantic to call, say, the VatI teaching of the jurisdictional and judicial total authority of the papacy a result of doctrinal development, when VatI says of itself (Session 4, Chapter 1):
"And it was to Peter alone that Jesus, after his resurrection, confided the jurisdiction of supreme pastor and ruler of his whole fold, saying: 'Feed my lambs, feed my sheep.' To this absolutely manifest teaching of the sacred scriptures, as it has always been understood by the catholic church, are clearly opposed the distorted opinions of those who misrepresent the form of government which Christ the lord established in his church, and deny that Peter, in preference to the rest of the apostles, taken singly or collectively, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction.”
Yes, I know, one can nuance one’s way out of phrases such as “absolutely manifest” and “it has always been understood,” with various DD interpretive maneuvers. Add to that the fact that I have been told that I am not in a position to interpret VatI texts because I do not engage in a “hermeneutic of trust,” and I have to again bow out. Lord forbid that I might bring up the notion that the fathers of VatI seem to be using language which avoids nuance, and clearly states that a conviction that they were affirming as a matter of required dogma that which the catholic church has always clearly taught, but that does not matter. What they meant is not the truth, it is what the Church now teaches that the texts mean that is the truth, or something to that effect. After a couple of years discussing this with you all, it is clear to me that in the current doctrinal milieu of RCism a pope is very much needed. When doctrine develops, but even more important than that when the interpretation of prior doctrine is up for change, some living human being has to be available for final arbitration.
All that said, I appreciate Mike’s essay very much, and I think he
is spot on with regard to a number of issues. Though neither of us, I imagine, wants to attach ourselves too strongly to paradigm theory with regard to the Church, I do think that we are dealing with two radically different paradigms here. The arguments that I use within an Orthodox context and from an Orthodox perspective to attack RCism simply do not work within the RC paradigm, and vice versa. Those who must choose between RCism and EOy are in quite a difficult situation. Personally, I have read only a very few conversion stories of folks who seemed like they would have been a better fit (on a surface level) in the other communion. Most people head toward that communion, that paradigm if you will, which most suits their own personality. Even when they say that they strongly considered the other communion, they almost always seem to go toward that communion which corresponds to their own temperament, or liturgical loves, or vague dogmatic concerns, or need for authority, or need for community of a certain type, etc. To say this is not to assert relativism. God is dealing with free persons. For instance, I can’t tell you how many times I have heard former Protestants who tell me that they converted to RCism instead of EOy because EO seem insular and in particular do not engage in missions, while the RCC is a missional church. The first few times this happened I tried to inform my convert to RC friend regarding Orthodox missions in Alaska, and Japan, and Africa, and Latin America, and even that the Chinese Stock Exchange is housed in a former Orthodox Church, let alone the re-evangelization of eastern Europe and the Orthodox missions to Islamic peoples. But when I have done this I get that look that tells me, “I have already made my paradigm commitments, so leave well enough alone,” and that is exactly what I do now, except in that rare instance when someone actually asks me about Orthodoxy and missions.
Lastly, whatever we might speculate the majority of Christians may have believed with regard to a given matter of dogma at a given time, or how they would have reacted to a later articulation of that dogma, we can still believe that the church has always taught the Tradition. The Church has always believed that Christ was God and Man, and the Church has always been Trinitarian. To assert otherwise is to give credit to the gates of hell where credit is not due. I appeal to the work of Fr. John Behr. Perhaps readers will find the Chapter I, “The Tradition and Canon of the Gospel According to the Scriptures” which is in “Formation of Christian Theology Volume 1: The Way to Nicaea” a helpful guide for understanding how the Tradition was (and is) passed on. I recommend all of Behr’s series. It is worthy to note that when the fathers argued for the truth of a given dogma, they argued that the given dogma is what the apostles and prior fathers had taught, much like the fathers of VatI argued, rightly or wrongly, for their understand
...understanding of the papacy.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the speed and quality of the comments so far. I don't have time to respond to each right now, so I'll start with William, whom I had addressed with my previous comment.
William:
I'm less struck by the content of your reply to my previous comment than by your method. You start by asserting what you take to be the Orthodox ecclesiological paradigm; you then characterize what you take to be the Catholic ecclesiological paradigm; and you conclude by comparing the former favorably with the latter. That whole procedure does exactly what I had said begs the question. One cannot, without begging the question, criticize one paradigm by criteria that are only normative if the truth of the other be taken for granted.
But in point of fact, you don't get either the Orthodox or the Catholic EP quite right. Your account of the OEP falls victim to Robert Kovacs' criticism, and for that very reason can't be a fair, accurate account of the OEP. Your account of the Catholic OP echoes Perry Robinson, who calls the CEP one of "absolute simplicity", thus assuming that supreme papal juridiction is understood in contradistinction to, and hence adduced instead of, local episcopal jurisdiction. But even a cursory read of Lumen Gentium shows that characterization to be false. The CEP adduces papal jurisdiction as something in addition to, and hence in the service of, local episcopal jurisdiction. Your bit about absolute simplicity is just a slogan derived from another debate that Perry and others, including yours truly, have been carrying on in the realm of natural theology.
As always, I find the biggest battle here to be simply getting people to understand what the Catholic Church actually teaches, as opposed to what polemical anti-Catholic apologetics would have her teaching.
I'll get to the other comments, especially John's, tonight. I have to go back to work now.
Best,
Mike
ochlophobist on Newman:
"apparently I have not read them slowly or carefully enough, because after reading them I was more inclined to believe that Orthodoxy was true than before I had read them."
Nobody's saying that you have to agree with Newman in order to have understood him or his position; it's just that most people I've argued with on this subject in fact have not understood his position, which is the one most thoughtful Catholics seem to have taken in the last century--if you have understood it, great. We can actually talk.
"I have always sensed a certain affectation in Newman, and a certain sense that here is a man who had to come up with a working theory that would get him from point A to point B in an intellectually respectable manner."
I don't get it. What do you mean by "affectation"? What's wrong with wanting to come up with an intellectually respectable theory before changing your mind? Isn't this what any thinker does? Is this one of those Orthodox things where in order for your complaint to make any sense I have to have a notion of the relation of faith and reason that is, I beg your pardon, just looney?
"I've already explained why, in the final analysis, I stand where I do. And I have other reasons there's no time to delve into here."
Hi, Mike.
Do you have a post/article that explains why you stand where you stand? If not, can you please tell me which articles you have written that sum it up? I haven't been able to find anything of yours that's roughly equivalent to the Pontificator's "My Road to Rome" article.
Thanks.
PT
A couple of comments:
MER, you are right; I was unnecessarily harsh in my comments about John of *Ad Orientem.* It was only after writing them that I visited his blog (for the first time) and commented more temperately there. This morning, I went back to his blog and expressed my sorrow for my initial remarks.
As to your statement that perhaps "these popes mistook the canons of Sardica for the canons of Nicaea and extrapolated their authority too far" this seems to me to be unlikely. Not that the papacy didn't use the canons of Sardica when they thought them useful, but one can set against that the statement of the Roman Synod of 381 that the See of Rome owed its privileges to no synod, no canons but to the sucession of its bishops from St. Peter, upon whom Christ conferred the rule and governance of the Church. The papacy may have been mistaken in its claims about its unique status, the extent of its authority and the source from whence it dervied, but it was clear about it at least from the time of Pope Damasus onwards; and in St. Leo (as Walter Ullmann, the great medievalist and historian of papal law and ideology made clear in both the article I cited and his works on the papacy) the full foundations of the claim to plenitudo potestatis were complete; and Leo's rescripts and sermons were excerpted extensively by all of the high-papalist theoreticians and canonists of the Middle Ages and beyond.
And to John of Ad Orientem I would make one further reply: I don't think that Leo is in any way unrepresentative in his views of the popes of the first milennium, or, if he is unrepresentative, it is only in the clarity of his expression of these views, the forcefulness and consiostency of his expression of them, and the favorable historical and political circumstances for their expression in which he lived. John goes on to suggest that he might have substituted for Leo "almost any of the popes up probably [to] the last century or so of the first milennium." In all honesty, I don't find this much more satisfactory, since I can't imagine any pope who was not a non-entity (like so many of the disgraceful and scandalous popes of the period ca. 890-960 and again 990-1046) who would suit the bill. Damasus (366-384)? Gelasius (492-496)? Hormisdas (514-523)? The pathetic Vigilius (537-555)? Gregory the Great (590-604)? Martin (549-553)? Agatho (678-681)? Gregory II (715-731)? Gregory III (731-741)? Hadrian I (772-795)? Leo III (795-816)? Nicholas I (858-867)? Hadrian II (867-872)? John VIII (872-882)? This is a pretty comprehensive "honor roll" of the popes from Damasus onwards, and I can't think of any of them who might make even an initial cut of "popes who might have deemed Vatican I heretical" save perhaps for Gregory the Great and John VIII; and I would include them for more detailed later assessment only because of their mildness of character and pastoral focus (in the case of Gregory) and their sincere willi
ngness (in the case of John VIII) to live in peace and harmony with Constantinople and its Patriarch, Photius the Great, rather than in any expectation that I would find them dioverging form the self-understanding of the nature of the authority of the Apostolic See (or The Apostolic See) and its source which had become customary there long before the lifetimes of either one of them. Still, opinion is no substitute for study, and if you should undertake such investigations I would be interested to learn your conclusions.
Michael S.,
1. Talk. We can certainly exchange niceties and have a civil discourse. But it seems that often enough the conversation degenerates. Aside from personal matters of rudeness and shallow attempts at polemics, allow me to posit one opinion as to why this degeneration of conversation might be so common. When someone adheres to a model of knowledge that is progressive, even evolutionary, if I might use that term (J.M. Cameron admitted that “there is perhaps some resemblance between the role of Essay [on the DofCD] in theology and that of The Origin of Species in biology,” and that Newman’s Essay “has often been considered an anticipation of the evolutionary hypothesis, applied to the history of theology” which may explain why Alfred North Whitehead stated that the Essay so influenced his thought), then such a person is always going to believe upon encountering another person who disagrees with them that the other person's thought is immature (in the sense that it has been cut off from proper evolutionary development), is incomplete (in the sense that it is not genetically connected to the correct organism of thought development, the proper intellectual gene pool, if you will), or is simply an example of childish willfulness. Thus if I disagree with Newman, then it must be because I don't properly understand Newman, or because of some spiritual flaw on my part. The developmental system would seem to demand that one draw these conclusions. Those of us who do not believe in evolutionary models of the development of human thought are not required to assume the ignorance or incorrigibility of those who disagree with us. Some honest, brilliant, well informed, and well intended people are simply wrong. And some of them are wrong not because they got sidetracked somewhere off the great chain of development, but simply because, having thoroughly evaluated all possible options, they chose the wrong one. I honor those who disagree with me by simply telling them that I think that they are wrong. And I think that all of the education of minds and reformation of characters in the world is not going to prevent some people from simply being wrong. Two people who each think that the other is simply wrong can have a meaningful conversation. Two people, one of whom thinks that the other's thought is undeveloped, while the other thinks that his interlocutor is simply wrong, can only have a dialogue in which the former party condescends to the latter party, while the latter party soon realizes that what is taking place is not really a conversation, but a teaching session of sorts. This is my take on the rhetorical dilemma. I would love to hear your assessment of the same situation.
2. affectation -
I’ll go with: "conspicuous artificiality of manner or appearance" and add to that a rhetorical exaggeration in which an enormous amount of oft-times complex metaphors are used, and the sense of a strained gravitas, a sort of rhetorical commo
...commodification of profundity. Then again, I feel this way about most 19th century English religious writers. That Newman was the best of them and that I have read more of Newman than any of the others is probably why I associate Newman with the terms that I do.
“What's wrong with wanting to come up with an intellectually respectable theory before changing your mind?”
First of all the desire to come up with an intellectually respectable theory is the desire to have some sort of more or less original line of thought. And there should be nothing original about one’s conversion. Second, the theory is then the first principle, not the conversion. Such a notion is foreign to the Christian understanding of conversion. We have all used such theories to get from point A to point B before. And a number of us have used such theories in our own processes of conversion. But when we are finally converted (which may or may not happen in this life) we will see that the theory was limited in scope and only offered a transitory intellectual maneuver which allowed us to get to the place wherein we could actually convert. To suggest that an individual need for peculiar theoretical formulations is normative, or to suggest that a custom made theory (whether custom made by an individual person or an individual age) is intrinsic to conversion is dangerous. To say otherwise is to essentially state that one comes to Christianity (in the RCC, or the EOC, what have you) on one’s own terms. The cross applies to the intellect as well. To say this is not anti-intellectual, it is to simply acknowledge the boundaries placed on personal intellectual pursuits within the realm of conversion.
“Is this one of those Orthodox things where in order for your complaint to make any sense I have to have a notion of the relation of faith and reason that is, I beg your pardon, just looney?”
Pardon granted. Look, I know that you have encountered a fair amount of Orthodox crackpots on the internet. We have no shortage of them on all sides. I hope that I am not one of them on my better days. I actually agree with Newman that the gentleman “knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits…” (-from the famous passage in The Idea of a University, Discourse VIII, 10), I would simply locate the weaknesses and strengths of human reason in different places than does Newman, and probably you as well. Some good resources on the Orthodox understanding of the relationship between faith and reason are out there to be read. I would suggest staring with Andrew Louth’s book "St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology", especially Part II, Faith and Logic, with chapters entitled “Settling the Terms,” “Defining Error,” and “Defining the Faith.” I also constantly recommend David Bradshaw’s "Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom."
Warmest regards,
Owen
Ochlophobist,
Thanks for expressing some of what I have tended to feel about Newman. I have been reading/rereading at Al’s suggestion his Essay on DD. And I will make a few comments.
All,
First it is clearly aimed at Protestants. In the opening paragraph of section 1 chapter 5 he references the body of doctrine known at this day by the name of Catholic, and professed substantially both by Eastern and Western Christendom. Although he uses many of the controversies of the early church as his examples, the objects of the essay are the refutation of Protestant heresy and the defense of what he perceives as the legitimate Doctrinal Development of the Roman Catholic Church. Secondly I find many of his works (this one included) tend to have the flavor of a juridical opinion being handed down from the Court of Appeals. (Clearly I am acquiring an Orthodox phronema at least in regards to my distaste for legalism.)
Thirdly (and I say this with some trepidation since I know that Newman was one of the principle lights which guided Al to Rome)... The criteria (in so far as I grasp it) that he sets for legitimate DD strikes me as being applicable to an extremely wide range of things. Using it one could legitimize the radical reinterpretation of almost anything that now or in the past has seemed to the church to be settled doctrine. I refer the reader to the examples which I posted in my reply to Mike. Even Al Kimel, who has been quite devastating in his critiques of the defenders of Limbo, seems to concede in his latest essay on the subject that the existence of Limbo was the consistent dogmatic teaching of the church. I want to be clear that I totally agree with Al in his condemnation of Limbo for almost all of the reasons he sets out in his essays and also because I deeply believe that Blessed Augustine was flatly wrong in his understanding of sin and grace (topics for another day). But on one crucial point I do not agree. What is going on here is not doctrinal development. It’s doctrinal about face.
One of the sources that Mike listed for doctrinal authority in Orthodoxy is acceptance by the Church as a whole. If that criteria is legitimate (and I believe it is when in conjunction with some of the other examples he cited) then the Latin Church has a problem. The Orthodox might look at the current controversy thusly… Clearly Limbo enjoyed more or less universal acceptance as a dogma of the church for many centuries. This logically means either that the church erred in its sensus fidei or that it is erring now in its repudiation of an accepted dogma. Either way you slice it you come up with error. I have read (and am rereading Newman) the defenses of doctrinal development posted by Mike and Al, and by and large I remain respectfully unconvinced. It just strikes me as a great deal of reinventing the wheel.
In closing, I would pose a question to my Roman brothers and sisters… Yes it’s true the Orthodox were somewhat
In closing, I would pose a question to my Roman brothers and sisters… Yes it’s true the Orthodox were somewhat isolated from the goings on in Western Europe. But the East was not free of turmoil. And the ecclesiology of Orthodoxy should logically lend itself to all kinds of problems which one typically sees in Protestantism. After all we are a collection of independent churches with no central administration and as Mike pointed out no clearly defined final doctrinal authority. So my question is this… How has Orthodoxy enjoyed almost a thousand years of relative freedom from the sorts of theological controversies which have engulfed the Western Church?
ICXC
John
Dr. Tighe,
Thank you again for your comments here and on A/O. You beat me to the punch on Gregory the Great whom I was just about to roll out with a mighty "AH HA!" Of John VIII I plead complete ignorance, but I will be investigating.
As for your apology, none is required. I am reminded of the story of the peasant standing in the middle of the village road when the King's hunting party came riding through. "Out of the way knave!" he yelled at the peasant. After the man scrambled to the side of the road his friend saw him beaming with pleasure. "Why are you so happy?" he asked. To which the peasant replied "Didn't you see that? The king spoke to me!" 
Yours
John
Since it is thrown out that objectors fro the East simply do not grasp what the Catholic Church teaches, it would be helpful for a clear articulation of what it teaches concerning the development of doctrine. Please do not cite Newman as that is not necessarily what the Catholic Church officially teaches and hence won't necessarily and sufficiently pick out the concept in question.
Moreover, the term development of doctrine is being used so widely here that it is hard to see what wouldn't count as a development. In which case it is hard to see what work the term is being put to.
It also seems to me for example that the rejection of circumcision for the gentiles was not a development but an abrogation (Heb 7:18-19). Not all change will fall under the concept in question. Just because the Orthodox are committed to the idea that some change has taken place in the Economia, Idon't see how this implies or entails development.
I'd add on with respect to Serdica that this, if anything, probably illustrates that Nicaea itself was viewed in the West and something that derived its authority from Western consent, rather than being independently binding of its own force. It falls into the pattern that Rome always viewed itself as an autonomous judge of the Christian faith, at least never in need of being judged by any other, even if not always explicitly standing in judgment over others.
In some ways, I think viewing Nicaea as authoritative abstracted from the West's authority is itself begging the question. It is also worth knowing that even in the East, Nicaea was not viewed by most of the various Arian groups as being binding apart from the sense in which they had consented for it to be binding. This is why Athanasius not only affirmed Nicaea but also rejected several later creeds that could have been used to interpret Nicaea in what we would anachronistically call a "non-Nicene" manner ("Nicene" referring to the victorious view post-Constantinople, from which a number of bishops actually AT Nicaea would have dissented). The "authority" of Nicaea is in some sense a historical interpolation, as there were numerous views at the time of what that authority actually was.
That actually fits rather nicely into Michael's larger point. The view of Nicaea's authority clearly developed from what it was at the time, so what are we to make of the fact that numerous bishops at Nicaea would have taken back their signatures had they known what Nicaea would mean in later years? What are we to make of the fact that many of these people effectively signed under mental reservation because the Emperor was demanding peace in the Church? Certainly, these end up being questions of authority, and indeed, questions of LEGAL authority, because these are precisely the sorts of questions that law analyzes (e.g., identifying the normative force of textual documents produced by collective process). Such questions of authority are inherently "legalistic," and to pretend that one side is "legalistic" while the other is not sounds just like the Protestants who claim that their theology is "Biblical" rather than "philosophical." Of course, such Protestants are absolutely doing "philosophy," but the pretense that they aren't simply means that they are doing it blindly and unthinkingly.
To some extent, I suppose I can't help but taking umbrage at "legalistic" being used as a swear word, but I think it also happens to fall in with Michael's point that a simple refusal to deal with a substantive question of authority doesn't mean that you aren't giving an answer, at least implicitly. This sort of unconscious appeal to Nicaea and the like is precisely this sort of blind and unthinking approach to authority that seems to be endemic in the Byzantine approach, and not merely from the time it was "frozen" ca. the 9th century. It is one thing to say that question
It is one thing to say that questions of authority are avoidable, but it is another thing entirely to choose an approach for dealing with them that draws anachronistic conclusions without justification. Given the choice, I would much prefer to have a legal system that is theologically justified rather than to sustain the pretense that one can function without one. That is, incidentally, one area of Romanides's analysis that I found fatally weak, i.e., relying on Constantine's rather peculiar notion of his obligation to treat synodal pronouncements as Roman law without any substantial theological consideration of church-state relations to actually justify the position. In good Byzantine fashion, it simply takes what people did as normative evidence of what should be done.
Also,
If I recall, Michael posits different sources for the Orthodox in terms of ultimate authority. It might be helpful to put aside the assumption that "ultimate" implies "singular." I see no reason why it need to. The same Trinity is operative in all of them.
I see no reason why there can't be conditions for recognizing this or that patristic statement as legitimate just as Catholics do with statements of the Popes. 2nd Nicea for example gives the conditions for a legitimate council.
Second, true enough that a plurality of bishops can disagree, but so can a plurality of Popes. Is it up to the pope to decide when and if he is teaching heresy or no?
As for example of Arian bishops speaking for the whole church, this turns on a confusion between the power of the bishop and the personal employment of it. I don't see why one can't hold to the idea on the one hand that all bishops speak for the church whole and entire and also think that not all bishops employ episcopal power when they speak.
And I don't see any incompatibility between those ideas and the idea that all bishops both individually and collectively can speak for the one church, just as each of the divine persons is deity, and each of the divine energies is deity, and there is a perfect empirichoresis or interpenetration without reduction in both cases.
From what I recall, Satis Cognitum is even more explicit on the Papal claims not being a development, but clearly taught from "day one."
Lastly,
Michael, what follows from my reading of the Vat 1 is not necessarily that I am misreading them,, but that I am reading them as being inconsistent with Lumen Gentium, of which I have read. That is, sure, my reading may not be plausibly compatible with what the Catholic church teaches NOW, but it seems comical to say that how the Latin's understood the Papacy for a very long time was what was articulated much later in Lumen Gentium. That is how honest and sincere Catholic theologians of ages past, and even Popes, understood it. My reading is just more "traditional" and I think consistent with the begining principle sof Catholic theology> This is just to sa that I think that Lumen Gentium seems inconsistent with other core Catholic theological views.
But of course when you have a dialetical system that never stops "developing" where the new (the current pope) always defines what is legitimate, it is obvious that older readings will have to be judged as mistaken. Every past evil will turn out to be a genuine good for the present. What we need to know then is whether such a system as a whole is true.
It is hard for me to sincerely see how tradition is not much more than the matter that the dialectical processes uses as it progresses. The notion of tradition as preservation necessarily seems to take a back seat to "development." I don't think Paul needed Plato-we need fathers, not developers.
I think a slow and carefull reading needs to be done of Dostoyvsky's The Grand Inquisitor here in light of the discussion of "development."
Jonathan,
If your way of reading Nicea were right, it seems to leave unexplained why Rome appealed to the canons of Sardica as having ecumenical wiehgt, that is beyond their own jurisdiction and then when it was shown that those canons lacked it, they rescinded their claim. I don’t understand how that plays into the idea of Rome always viewing itself as an autonomous judge of the Christian faith.
The "authority" of Nicaea is in some sense a historical interpolation, as there were numerous views at the time of what that authority actually was.
If the authority of Nicea is an historical interpolation since there was a plurality of views at the time of what that authority was, I can’t see why this doesn’t apply to all claims of authority for there is always a plurality of views of what any given authority constitutes. It seems to me far more helpful to look for principles used by parties as to what made this or that view of its authority correct and normative. Certainly Athanasius and others had reasons for thinking that it was authoritative and what that authority constituted.
If we restrict the authority of Nicea to exactly that authority of those bishops assembled, why would we need to worry about those bishops hesitating about how it would be viewed later, unless of course we think that there is a difference between to the two. Certainly Cyril and the Chalcedonian Fathers at least appear to think of them as the same.
It would take me hours to read what's transpired since I left my last comment; my GPA is on the chopping block as it is, I'm out.
Geesh, you guys *really, really* need a forum set up to discuss these issues. I would sign up immediately, for these combox doo-hickies just don't do this type of discussion justice.
"As always, I find the biggest battle here to be simply getting people to understand what the Catholic Church actually teaches, as opposed to what polemical anti-Catholic apologetics would have her teaching."
My conception of Catholic ecclesiology was heavily influenced by the popular Catholic apologetics I crammed into my head with when I was 15, Dave Armstrong helped cure me of the Romophobia instilled in me from earlier years. I've barely read any Orthodox critiques of Catholic ecclesiology, most of what I've read on Orthodox ecclesiology was written by Zizioulas and Florovsky. I'm still working on Newman. I read about 2-3 hours a day so I am able to cover an awful lot of ground from month to month; I don't remember showing you the list of books I've read or was garnering information from but I'd be happy to take a look at whatever books you think are worth my time.
Have to get verbose to fill in some detail here...
If your way of reading Nicea were right, it seems to leave unexplained why Rome appealed to the canons of Sardica as having ecumenical wiehgt, that is beyond their own jurisdiction and then when it was shown that those canons lacked it, they rescinded their claim.
If you're trying to explain to someone that he previously conceded something that he did not, in demonstrable fact, concede, then it doesn't make any sense to continue to assert the claim.
I don’t understand how that plays into the idea of Rome always viewing itself as an autonomous judge of the Christian faith.
The evidence is mostly the sheer lack of concern for canonical niceties on this point. Finding out that Rome had been using Serdican rather than Nicene canons didn't inspire any substantial doubt in Rome about its own orthodoxy, after all.
If the authority of Nicea is an historical interpolation since there was a plurality of views at the time of what that authority was, I can’t see why this doesn’t apply to all claims of authority for there is always a plurality of views of what any given authority constitutes.
Of course. Jurisprudential systems are created to deal with such eventualities (in some sense, even in response to them).
It seems to me far more helpful to look for principles used by parties as to what made this or that view of its authority correct and normative. Certainly Athanasius and others had reasons for thinking that it was authoritative and what that authority constituted.
Of course. The "others" are particularly interesting to my way of thinking, including several popes, as well as Marcellus of Ancyra. It seems relatively clear to me that Rome, Milan, and Alexandria had some different ideas on that subject, but what I would view broadly as Nicene orthodoxy allowed considerable consensus on the topic of authority. They don't seem to invest a great deal of confidence in authority per se so much as authority rightly exercised in the context of procedural and evidential fairness (see, e.g., Zozimus on Pelagius). Many of those same considerations appear to have carried through by canonists and theologians well past the Middle Ages in the West.
By contrast, the "Arian" groups tended to function with a much more primitive concept of authority that really was more along the lines of "if the synod says it, it's law" or viewing bishops as periti, in the sense of technical experts given special knowledge by God whose opinions can't be gainsaid (Constantine and Constantius both had much the same idea in that regard).
That's why, by my judgment at least, the Roman view and the Alexandrian view both were more responsive to popular piety. I think it also explains a great deal about Vigilius's response to Justinian and why the effort to court the Monophysites fell so flat as a general matter. Trying to get too abstract about "p
Trying to get too abstract about "principles" misses the entire thrust of concreteness in this concept of authority. It strikes me as a judicial system primarily for the vindication of charges against people, in which "innocent until proven guilty" prevails. It disfavors posthumous condemnations (no point) and allows condemnations even of those who do not necessarily fall into theological error (see, e.g., Honorius, John Chrysostom). There's a strong element of "faith in the system" and "rule of law," ingrained from being closer to the heart of the old Roman Senate.
If we restrict the authority of Nicea to exactly that authority of those bishops assembled, why would we need to worry about those bishops hesitating about how it would be viewed later, unless of course we think that there is a difference between to the two.
Even if you restricted the authority to exactly that authority of the assembled bishops, the individual bishops could still be concerned with misrepresentations about what they themselves had said. Moreover, they knew that the imperial muscle would be flexed to enforce this statement. Neither situation requires anything other than an ordinary interest in self-preservation to provoke a negative response to later misuse of the statement.
Certainly Cyril and the Chalcedonian Fathers at least appear to think of them as the same.
I wouldn't think that Cyril would agree with this. Certainly, he had a great deal of personal conviction in Athanasius's holiness, but he certainly understood the necessity of proper procedure and right conduct. His management of Ephesus shows that clearly (e.g., obtaining the deposition of Nestorius by Rome before the council to put himself in position for the presider, getting the letters of convocation read by a clever ruse before John of Antioch arrived, sending the decrees of the council along with a defense before the Antiochenes held their own council, etc.). I would actually point to Hosius, Athanasius, Marcellus, Julius, Liberius, Damasus, Peter (of Alexandria), Cyril, and Leo as being the chief proponents of the attitude that I am describing. I certainly do NOT think that Cyril was relying on his status as an "illuminary" (if indeed he even thought of himself as one) as the basis of his authority. I think he actually had faith in the judicial procedure; witness his belief that the condemnation of John Chrysostom at the Synod of the Oak was correct. I think the East more or less lost touch with that element of its heritage with the resurgence of the Constantinian model under Justinian and never quite got it back. From then on, Byzantine and Western models of authority diverged.
Great post, Mike. I have a similar discussion on the continuity of the Church's authority at my blog right now: Link.
Well, I've just got back from work and am overwhelmed by how the discussion has mushroomed. I need at least an hour to sort it all out and economize my replies; I've barely had time to scan it. Alas, my CL meeting is less than an hour from now, and I'm not quite prepared even for it.
I'm going to try to do all this justice ASAP. In the meantime, thanks to all for the elegance and depth of discussion. I feel like I'm listening to a faculty seminar at some institution where I'd love to teach!
Best,
Mike
1. I'm not so sure the Christians of Jerusalem would have ruled out "Theotokos" as a proper title. Doesn't Paul say of Christ that "all things were created through him and for him", and that he existed "in the form of God" and didn't grasp his equality with God? Don't the Gospels quote as words of our Lord statements like, "One greater than the Temple is here", "I say unto you", and baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"? Didn't Thomas call Jesus "My Lord and my God" after the resurrection? These are all first century realizations.
2. What do Ochlophobist, John, Jonathan, Photios, et al think of the claims of Damasus, Leo, Innocent, Gelasius, etc. as to their plenitude of power based on Petrine succession? These were all pre-schism saints. Did they just misunderstand their role, or am I missing something?
3. Dr. Tighe, didn't Gregory the Great (Dialogist) say that there was "one see of Peter" in Rome, Alexandria and Antioch? BTW, I think you are brilliant.
May Christ our God bless us.
Perry Robinson:
"...Michael posits different sources for the Orthodox in terms of ultimate authority. It might be helpful to put aside the assumption that 'ultimate' implies 'singular.' I see no reason why it need to. The same Trinity is operative in all of them."
It is not only not helpful to deny the singularity or unity of what is ultimate, it is false. It is a principle of metaphysics that the plurality involved in any order is reduced to a first which is one. Thus one of Aquinas' arguments proving that there is only one God is as follows:
"For all things that exist are seen to be ordered to each other since some serve others. But things that are diverse do not harmonize in the same order, unless they are ordered thereto by one. For many are reduced into one order by one better than by many: because one is the "per se" cause of one, and many are only the accidental cause of one, inasmuch as they are in some way one. Since therefore what is first is most perfect, and is so "per se" and not accidentally, it must be that the first which reduces all into one order should be only one" (ST I, 11, 3; cf. ibid., 47, 3).
And again, "We must of necessity say that the world is governed by one. For since the end of the government of the world is that which is essentially good, which is the greatest good; the government of the world must be the best kind of government. Now the best government is the government by one. The reason of this is that government is nothing but the directing of the things governed to the end; which consists in some good. But unity belongs to the idea of goodness, as Boethius proves (De Consol. iii, 11) from this, that, as all things desire good, so do they desire unity; without which they would cease to exist. For a thing so far exists as it is one. Whence we observe that things resist division, as far as they can; and the dissolution of a thing arises from defect therein. Therefore the intention of a ruler over a multitude is unity, or peace. Now the proper cause of unity is one. For it is clear that several cannot be the cause of unity or concord, except so far as they are united. Furthermore, what is one in itself is a more apt and a better cause of unity than several things united. Therefore a multitude is better governed by one than by several" (I, 103, 3).
Thus the plurality of creatures is reduced to a unitary cause, the divine essence (monotheism). No doubt the Trinity is involved in every operation ad extra, but this is only by virtue of the single shared essence, for the Trinity is not a plurality of gods. Moreover, in the Trinity itself we observe order relations such that only one Person, that of the Father, does not proceed from another, but is that from which the others proceed.
"...true enough that a plurality of bishops can disagree, but so can a plurality of Popes."
First as to the synchronic case, it should be obvious that during any single Pope's reign, there is no other Pope simultaneously reigning who can disagree with him. There can of course be a rival "antipope," but that is preeminently a question of which of the rivals has been duly elected according to canon law, and is not a matter of two or three legitimate "popes" disagreeing over doctrine. As for the diachronic case, it is of course the Catholic faith that two Popes of different eras can never contradict each other when speaking infallibly according to the well-known conditions set down by Vatican I.
The basis of that belief is the ultimate source of the charism, the omniscient God who as the First Truth can neither deceive nor be deceived and therefore cannot contradict himself. Since this is a matter of faith it can never be conclusively demonstrated by reason alone, as Dr. Liccione constantly and rightly reminds us. It can only be shown to be reasonable in the sense that it can be shown not to contradict reason and can be supported by merely probable arguments showing its appropriateness to the matter at hand, in this case the need for a final arbiter to resolve disputes and thus preserve the unity of the Church. One could also make the argument from scripture based on Luke 22:32 (see below).
"Is it up to the pope to decide when and if he is teaching heresy or no?"
This is a related but distinct question, an interesting one in the light of the charge of the radical traditionalists that the more recent Popes (as well as Vatican II) have taught heresy. First, is it possible that a Pope teach heresy? The Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine (B), among others, has discussed this in relation to the question of whether or not a Pope can be deposed in his De Romano Pontifice.
He considers five opinions: (1) "God would never allow a Pope to fall into heresy." This is supported by Luke 22, 32: "But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren." But B cites the case of Honorius as possibly to the contrary, so he regards this opinion as only probable. (2) He passes over this as abandoned by all. (3) "Even if he falls into notorious heresy, the pope will never lose his pontificate." B calls this opinion improbable. (4) "The heretical pope would lose effectively his pontificate only upon an official declaration of heresy." This opinion was held by Cajetan and Suarez, but is not accepted by B. You can find his discussion of this opinion in detail at http://www.fisheaters.com/
bellar...bellarmine.html
It boils down to the fact that there is no one on earth above the Pope by whom he could be deposed (thus rejecting Conciliarism). (5) "If he was to fall into a manifest heresy, the pope would ipso facto lose his pontificate". This opinion B regards as the most probable, and accordingly he adopts it as his own. It is the equivalent of latae sententiae in current canon law.
The reasoning is that a formal heretic automatically incurs excommunication, and so is no longer a member of the Church, but only a member of the Church can be Pope, therefore this (former) Pope is no longer Pope. In effect he has deposed himself, so to speak.
Of course, Bellarmine is writing in the 16th century, long before Vatican II. Today the common opinion of theologians is that the Pope cannot teach heresy while speaking ex cathedra, etc. according to the conditions of Vatican I and/or the first two categories outlined in then Cardinal Ratzinger's Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei. With respect to the third category (theologoumena), the Pope could presumably be in error, but not all error is heresy (though all heresy is error). One must be careful here to give consideration to the "theological note" with which a doctrine is proposed (this applies to councils as well). See Ott, pp. 9-10 on grades of certainty and theological censures. Moreover, the Pope's private opinions are not infallible and could conceivably be heretical.
"As for example of (sic) Arian bishops speaking for the whole church, this turns on a confusion between the power of the bishop and the personal employment of it. I don't see why one can't hold to the idea on the one hand that all bishops speak for the church whole and entire and also think that not all bishops employ episcopal power when they speak."
I accept the distinction between a power and the use of that power (it is similar, I take it, to the public vs. private opinions of the Pope), but this does not avoid the possibility of a contradiction in the very use. It would be quite a stretch, e.g., to say that the decrees of a heretical synod were not intended as an exercise or use of episcopal power. Abuses of power do occur.
"And I don't see any incompatibility between those ideas and the idea that all bishops both individually and collectively can speak for the one church, just as each of the divine persons is deity, and each of the divine energies is deity, and there is a perfect empirichoresis or interpenetration without reduction in both cases."
In the Catholic view of collegiality, bishops in ecumenical council can so speak who are in union with the Pope not only juridically but doctrinally, and thus the necessary unity is preserved in principle. If there is no Pope, there is no such guarantee. The Pope is the only bishop who can individually speak for the whole Church. In a sense, that is the whole raison d'etre of his office. Look at it this way: are the Catholic bishops validly ordained, i.e. true bishops, including even the Pope? Then when any one of them asserts the filioque, he speaks for the whole Church? Then why do you not accept it?
As for the argument based on empirichoresis, you yourself have cited Aquinas as giving a "nice explanation" of this concept (http://www.wincom.net/~mcunning/sov2.html), which Aquinas explains as follows:
"There are three points of consideration as regards the Father and the Son; the essence, the relation and the origin; and according to each the Son and the Father are in each other. The Father is in the Son by His essence, forasmuch as the Father is His own essence and communicates His essence to the Son not by any change on His part.
Hence it follows that as the Father's essence is in the Son, the Father Himself is in the Son; likewise, since the Son is His own essence, it follows that He Himself is in the Father in Whom is His essence.... It is also manifest that as regards the relations, each of two relative opposites is in the concept of the other. Regarding origin also, it is clear that the procession of the intelligible word [the Son] is not outside the intellect, inasmuch as it remains in the utterer of the word [the Father]. What also is uttered by the word is therein contained. And the same applies to the Holy Ghost." (ST I, 42, 5)
Your analogy between this mutual indwelling of the Trinity and the bishops does not hold. For the Divine Persons are consubstantial, whereas the persons of the bishops are not. And the Divine Persons are correlative (and subsisting relations), whereas the persons of the bishops (subsisting substances) are not. And finally, one bishop is not a word uttered in the intellect of another bishop. Empirichoresis or the mutual indwelling is a unique feature of the Divine Persons, and is inapplicable to the human persons of the bishops, except of course in the sense that the Trinity dwells in any Christian in a state of grace.
These were all pre-schism saints. Did they just misunderstand their role, or am I missing something?
Personally, I think people make far too much of the fact of resistance to Rome's claims without sufficiently analyzing whether that resistance was right or justified. Then, as now, popes often excused such resistance in the interest of diplomacy, but I see no case in which resistance to Rome was reasonably normative in all of church history. I find it a bit odd that the Eastern saints were always the one who went to Rome for vindications (Athanasius, Cyril, Maximus), while the notorious heretics practically prided themselves on disputes with Rome (Nestorius being a glaring example).
Ochlophobist (Owen),
I greatly enjoyed reading your posts in this thread, and found them very informative.
You may want to read Fr. Florovsky's article entitled "Revelation, Philosophy, and Theology" (i.e., if you have not already read it), because it is helpful in explaining why the East rejects the modern theory of doctrinal development. A pdf file of Fr. Florovsky's article is available at the website below:
http://www.jbburnett.com/resourc...rev-phl-
thl.pdf
God bless,
Todd
Gentlemen:
I agree with Rusty's observation that the setting of a combox can't quite do justice to a discussion of this depth and sophistication. So rather than lengthen this combox further, I shall create a new post based on Al's new post over at Pontifications. My own post will include a few remarks in reply to comments made here.
Robert Kovacs,
Just as an FYI…I'm not sure if you know it or not, but you are quoting texts from Aquinas that not only do we not share as first principles with you, but even worse we believe as the basis of the problem for Rome's theology. For our thoughts on the filioque, try my paper on Gregory of Nyssa: 'Breaking from the Dialectical Method: The Trinitarian Structure of Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium.'
You must understand that when we Orthodox talk about monotheism we are not talking about a divine essence (which doesn't exist in abstraction anyways), but as the Creed says: "I believe in ONE GOD, the FATHER ALMIGHTY..." Aquinas, proofs for the existence of God, is no God at all, or no God in particular, hence, Lossky's comments of a 'God-in-general' theology because it considers a simple essence and predicates attributes of it prior and before considering persons. At that point in the ordo theologiae, prior to considering persons, you are in agreement with the Good of Plato and the One of Plotinus. For us, Christianity is a clean break--right from the get-go--from Hellenism, that is there is no Thesis/Anti-Thesis/Synthesis between the Bible and the Philosophers. For an Orthodox, there is only one way to consider natural theology, and that's horizontal, (not vertical, where we consider proofs for a simple essence in which [I]ts attributes need to be considered), i.e. THIS God [Christ], working with THESE people, doing THESE things: Christ's Recapitulatory Economy of working with the Patriarchs and Prophets to become Incarnate and conquer death: Salvation History from Adam to the Eschaton. cont...
We start with the absolutely unique, particular, and specific, and then we consider general categories of operations and nature in which we make conclusions about those particulars based on the type of acts being done. This is the theology of Sts. Irenaeus and Ambrose, which in their thinking is quite Hebrew and not dialectical and Hellenistic. The Hypostasis of Christ is the key to unlocking all that can be said about God or man, and it is how these men exegete the scriptures. When these authors use Hellenistic terms, they empty them of their Hellenistic conception and meaning, and the term takes on a new Christian meaning and context (e.g. homoousion) reverse gnostic style. Whereas the gnostic tactic was to take old Christian terms and give them a new meaning from Hellenistic philosophical concepts (e.g. Bad Bad Augustine saying a [Christian] divine hypostasis is a subsisting relation), a clever method of subversion, even if unintentional.
Photios
MER,
What are my feelings on pre-schism Saints that hold to the papal theory, albeit in a material form? Even if such a thing is demonstrable--but just to grant the point for the sake of entertaining the thought--error even extreme error doesn’t nullify one’s holiness as a Saint and being a part of the Roman Orthodoxy’s oikonomia of worship and service. I draw a distinction between heresy (the “stuff” that is in error) and a heretic (one that manifests error in personal obstinate form in the face of an Orthodox bishop or ecclesiastical synod, or one being condemned as a heretic after death, e.g. Origen, Honorius). I treat someone like Gelasius or St. Leo I claims of supreme authority above conciliarism in a similar sense in which I view St. Justin Martyr’s Hellenizing tendencies. St. Justin’s method and Trinitarian theology are in error. The patristic ordo laid down by Irenaeus becomes abandoned until restored by Athanasius. What is interesting to note is that in Gelasius there is a text that says the powers of the papacy are analogous to the Godhead (i.e. the divine essence)! Contra Mike Liccione, here you have a witness of natural theology and the papacy playing out. The papacy (the one bishop) standing over against the many bishops in a similar manner that the SINGLE, absolutely divine essence is in a relation opposition to the MANY divine attributes that could be considered. cont...
Another growing tendency is that Rome was the center for the cure of the sickness of religion (to use Romanides language) and keeping everything from falling apart since it was the West who is responsible for the first movement AWAY from Hellenization (thank you Irenaeus, Hippolytus of Rome, and in some regards Tertullian for teaching us how to do theology). What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens? Nothin’, unless reconstructed so that Hellenistic conceptions are divorced from the use of Hellenistic terms and supplied with new [Christian] content (enter Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan doctrine). I believe this is why many Eastern heroes appealed to Rome, since Rome was anti-gnostic to the core. It is only when Nicholas I creates a marriage between those papal claims and the filioque doctrine (the new Augustinian Hellenization) that a problem occurs. The East triumphed in a long divorce from Hellenism as we celebrate on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, and was quite sensitive to ever go back. The Nicholatian schism, contra Divornik, was corrected by St. Photios the Great.
Photios
"One cannot, without begging the question, criticize one paradigm by criteria that are only normative if the truth of the other be taken for granted."
I feel I must clarify my statement. When we convert and put our faith in Christ, then we must renounce and turn from the epistemological atheism and idolatry (rationalism, empiricism) that characterized our former way of life. Christ himself is the beginning and end of our knowledge of God and man. My main point was that your ecclesiology did not reflect that because its ontological categories and definitions were supplied by natural theology rather than Christology and Triadology.
Christology is the proper starting point, end and foundation of Christian theology. Who Christ is and the implications of that are what determine the doctrine of God, man, salvation, and the Church, which is the Body of Christ. Christ himself is the key to and cornerstone of our knowledge of God (theology proper), man (anthropology) and the world (cosmology.) Fallen man, subject to death, sin and corruption, cannot provide the definitive basis of or the appropriate context within which to ascertain that which is essential to the definition of the human creature; neither can the fallen world reveal to us what are the true ends, proper operations and relations of things within the created world, both are only capable of pointing us to their respective need of renewal and restoration. There is no (epistemic, rational) access to the Trinitarian God or the true definition of man apart from Christ; there is no "God-in-general" the nature of which is subject to the categories of being and human reason or the nature of which can be made intelligible via unaided philosophical speculation. Triadology and Christology, not natural theology, must be our starting-point and supply us with the categories employed in every other area of theology; any other starting point or first principle will lead to problematic conclusions and have heretical implications; I believe that this demonstrates why Catholicism and Protestantism are two sides of the same coin methodologically and what separates them both from Orthodoxy.
The most important question, the very first question that we must answer is this: Who is Christ?
"...you are quoting texts from Aquinas that not only do we not share as first principles with you...."
The text on empirichoresis was quoted by Perry himself on another site and characterized as one of the "nice explanations" of this concept. As for the other texts, I did not quote them as authorities, but for the sake of the arguments they embody for the singularity of ultimates. You have not specifically addressed any of these arguments. In fact, you fail to address the central point at issue, which is whether every individual bishop speaks for the whole Church.
"For our thoughts on the filioque, try my paper...."
Again, the filioque was only mentioned as an instance of an ad hominem argument against the affirmative response to the central question, not as something to be argued in this thread on its own merits.
Your post, as far as I can see, attempts only one argument, and that by way of allusion to Lossky: "Aquinas, proofs for the existence of God, is no God at all, or no God in particular, hence, Lossky's comments of a 'God-in-general' theology because it considers a simple essence and predicates attributes of it prior and before considering persons."
This is a grammatical and semantic nightmare, as can be seen if we parse "proofs...is no God." And how can Aquinas be accused of a "God-in-general" theology when he explicitly states that God is not in a genus?
As for the rest of your post, I would only make three observations. First, you seem to have uncritically adopted Harnack's thesis that Christianity was corrupted by catholicism when it "hellenized" it. Accordingly you assert your preference for a "Hebrew" theology. But as our current Pope has pointed out, this "hellenization" already began to take place in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament and in the Greek translation of the Septuagint; moreover, the entire New Testament as we have it is not in Hebrew but in Greek. And I think that "Bad Bad" Augustine, who wrote that he found the Logos in Platonism but not that the Logos became flesh, would be surprised to find himself characterized as a Gnostic (and with regard to Gnosticism, of course, Harnack's thesis makes sense).
Secondly, you seem to have confused natural and supernatural theology when you argue that the former can only be based in Christology. Christology proceeds from faith, but natural theology proceeds from reason.
Finally, your preference for an inductive historical methodology is just that, a preference. There is no necessary conflict between a philosophical method and the historical method, for they complement one another nicely. It is not a question of "either-or" but of "both-and." The same Augustine who wrote a treatise on the Trinity wrote the City of God which, if I am not mistake, has something to do with salvation history.
The three preceding posts, I neglected to mention, are directed to Photios Jones.
Typo: The last sentence should have "if I am not mistaken."
The most important question, the very first question that we must answer is this: Who is Christ?
Agreed. The most important question that you must answer is this: Why does there have to be one preferred method to answer the very first question? You obviously can't use the answer to the question to answer the question in the first place; that is viciously circular.
What I would like to see is someone making a rigorous case for Hellenizing in the West or the Latin method "starting with attributes of the essence." I know of volumes that contradict those theses; I know of none that maintain them convincingly. I am unconvinced even by Catholics who take that position, so it's not as if I'm simply being partial: I do not believe that the case can actually be made. It looks to me like a classic case of scholars following previous work with insufficient critical attention.
"Why does there have to be one preferred method to answer the very first question?"
The rationalist, empiricist, naturalist, Neo-Platonist etc. all must receive Christ by faith (as a child), not according to or under the metaphysical principles of their philosophies.
Faith in Christ follows repentence which I explained involves the renunciation of the epistemological idolatry and Pelagianism (rationalism and empiricism) of our past.
How does the Monologium not vindicate Daniel's understanding of Western methodology? God is first understood or approached as an impersonal essence or being (rather than first and foremost as a *person*) and then the Divine "attributes" are understood and defined according to the principles of natural theology (or according to the metaphysics of whatever philosophy one happens to adhere to.) There will be as many different conceptions of theology proper as there are philosophies to condition natural theology.
I may be out of order, but I have been struck my something in the discussion of Vatican I and infalliblity. It is clear that before Vatican I this doctrine was actively opposed in England, at least, since the famous Irish catechism (Keenan's) says papal infallibility is a "Protestant invention; it is no article of the Catholic faith." So, earlier in the 19th century this was not a Catholic doctrine, at least not everywhere. Now when questions about its development come up, everyone is referred to Newman's "Development" as the last word on the topic. But I find this very odd for several reasons: 1) Why is the work of an English Protestant cited to justify this Catholic doctrine? 2) Why are there not a large number of justifications from Catholics before Vatican I? If this idea of development of dogma was such a basic concept of Catholicism, it seems as if it should have been defended extensively by Catholics. But Newman's work smacks of a Protestant trying to find a justification for entering the Catholic Church despite his doubts about its doctrinal soundness. It seems to me that the actual Catholic teaching tended more toward what it practically is today: the Catholic faith is what the Pope says it is and no justification is needed beyond that. (Please do not respond by comparing me to Jack Chick; that is not an answer, but only a put-down.)
"...all must receive Christ by faith (as a child), not according to or under the metaphysical principles of their philosophies."
No one denies that we must receive Christ by faith, with the trust and humility of a child, but this need not be with a childish intellect as faith seeks understanding ("When I became a man I put away the things of a child...."). Recall the faith of Chalcedon: "We confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation. The distinction between natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person (prosopon) and one hypostasis."
Natures, hypostasis, union, distinction, etc. are all metaphysical concepts, are they not, just as was the "consubstantial" of Nicaea? Do you accuse the Church Fathers of "epistemological idolatry"?
As for the choice of method, Garrigou-Lagrange, in his commentary on the Prima Pars of the Summa, says the following:
"The Greek Fathers and theologians, when explaining this mystery [of the Trinity], generally began with the Trinity of persons as explicitly revealed in the New Testament, rather than with the unity of nature. The Latins, on the other hand, especially after the time of St. Augustine, generally started with the unity of nature, as stated in the tract on the one God, and went on to the Trinity of persons. Thus the two groups began from either extreme of the mystery and proceeded to the other and therefore they were met with opposing difficulties: the Greeks found difficulty in safeguarding the unity of nature, and the Latins had to be careful to safeguard those things which are proper to the persons."
Different methods, different difficulties. I see no reason to assert that one is superior to the other. What matters is that both methods conclude with a full statement of the mystery of the Trinity: three divine Persons in one divine nature. Why accuse the West of "rationalism" (the denial of faith)? We do not accuse the Greek Fathers of "fideism," though your own apparent rejection of Western methodology comes perilously close to that position. "Rationalism" does not consist in being rational, which is after all part of what it is to be human, but in using reason in opposition to faith, as though only the conclusions of unaided reason are to be accepted.
The rationalist, empiricist, naturalist, Neo-Platonist etc. all must receive Christ by faith (as a child), not according to or under the metaphysical principles of their philosophies.
Faith in Christ follows repentence which I explained involves the renunciation of the epistemological idolatry and Pelagianism (rationalism and empiricism) of our past.
I have no idea what you mean by "repentance" or "epistemological idolatry" or "rationalism" or "empiricism" or "metaphysical principles" or "faith (as a child)" or "philosophies" in the context you are using them, and I just can't see any good purpose in having a discussion in which the words aren't communicating a thing to me. I've had the same problem for a LONG time regarding the concept of "ordo theologiae" and "Hellenization," neither one of which I've been able to map to any sort of actual content, apart from some vague sense of "starting from the essence" as opposed to "starting from the person," whatever that means.
I certainly don't think that Anselm's project was anything like what you attribute to him, particularly if you are following the "perfect being" theologians in construing it as some sort of specification of the divine essence. Dr. Liccione has given a good explanation on what Anselm's actual project appears to have been:
http://mliccione.blogspot.com/20...l-
argument.html
But the point is that it doesn't vindicate Daniel's point either way, because first, it isn't clear enough what the "ordo theologiae" actually IS to know whether it qualifies, and second, there hasn't been any kind of rigorous demonstration that whatever evil consequences are being asserted are actually entailed in doing "natural theology" as opposed to the "patristic ordo," whatever those things mean. The whole discussion suffers from terminal vagueness at this point.
Kovacs,
I know that "rationalism" is not simply "being rational." I have in mind a specific theory of epistemology; my primary focus is what constitutes justified belief and how beliefs are to be formed or related to evidence. I think the Fathers were more "rational" than their opponents but I deny that they were rationalists. The point is that Triadology is not to be set atop or grounded in a non-Christian cosmology.
Doctrinal development is in my view strictly terminological; the apostolic deposit remains the same. The Fathers employed pagan terminology but that was not (ideally) a capitulation of revelation to philosophy. I don't think that one has to be an idiot to attain theosis or be a good theologian, I don't know what I said that could have given that impression but I will take responsibility if my statements were ambigious and vague.
(cont.) I think the distinction between the Greek and "Latin" Fathers is somewhat mistaken. (Winks to Daniel Jones who is familiar with "Charlemagne's Lie.") The Garrigou-Lagrange quote is wrong because the presupposes and implications of the different methodologies is simply ignored and played down. Apophatic and Natural theology do have diametrically opposed implications and the validity of one methodology implies the invalidity of the other.
Good point, Father SJ.
Apophatic and Natural theology do have diametrically opposed implications and the validity of one methodology implies the invalidity of the other.
This is the sort of sloganeering that I find entirely unhelpful. What is "apophatic theology?" What is "natural theology?" How are you mapping these to positions of Christian authors in the past?
Jonathan,
I am inclined to agree with you. If you click on Ballow's link you will see that he calls himself "Mr. Jargon." He is aptly named (cryptic winks to Jonathan who recognizes "ismitisism" when he sees it).
Prejean,
Short Answer:
Natural Theology- Monologium
Apophatic Theology- Contra Eunomium
Is there a metaphysical similarity or what is the difference between our respective knowledge of the created and uncreated? I would say both constitute different answers to the question.
I was named "Mr. Jargon" by an English teacher before I read anything serious about theology or philosophy; we had taken up two periods debating over whether or not there were an infinite amount of objects in the universe.
Is there a metaphysical similarity or what is the difference between our respective knowledge of the created and uncreated?
That's a fine question to ask, but I fail to see how works written centuries apart are supposed to introduce any clarity as to the answer. The entire problem is that the terms needs to be defined as concepts clearly so that we can actually map what they said onto those concepts. I haven't seen it done yet, and it isn't for lack of trying. The attempts that I have seen to do so have been insufficiently detailed to justify the conclusions (i.e., the conclusions turn on an resolved point of ambiguity that isn't addressed).
For a great description of apophatic theology see here:
http://thatisnotmyblog.blogspot....-
apophatic.html
I especially like his definition of the "Dopeler Effect."
I especially like his definition of the "Dopeler Effect."
LOL! That was absolutely perfect! It's a bit like my personal definition of "liberalism," i.e., "The ability of smart people by sheer confidence in their own intellect to convince themselves of something that is obviously untrue." See also "Marxism," "feminism," "objectivism," "empiricism," etc., etc.
Quite honestly, that's been my assessment of the whole anti-Western Orthodox movement for some time: a large collection of extremely intelligent people who have managed to outsmart themselves.
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