04.30.09
Jurisdictionalism in the 1960’s
From Eugene Rose’s Chronicle in 1964:
We must become, in some way and to some measure, a meeting place for all Orthodox who wish to remain faithful to the true Church, so that there can be in some fashion a united testimony of true Orthodoxy, and a communion of the faithful remnant of all Orthodox peoples.
The form this communion might take seems rather indefinite as yet. It will not be ‘Pan-Orthodoxy,’ an indiscriminate mixing and Americanization of Orthodox nationalities; that is the death of Orthodoxy. An ‘American Church’ is not what is needed; for Americans are only one of the peoples called to witness Orthodox Truth. Probably no formal organization at all is needed; but somehow there must be contact between the faithful remnant of all Orthodox peoples, in order to give us strength to withstand the battles and temptations that are to come.” (Father Seraphim Rose, His Life and Works, p. 288,9)
Yet at the same time, Archbishop John Maximovitch of San Francisco was working for an independent, national Church in France,
Archbishop John [who in 1957 became Bishop of Western Europe] succeeded in convincing his chief hierarch in the Russian Church Abroad, Metropolitan Anastassy, of the importance of the reestablishment of local Western Churches, regenerated from ancient, indigenous Orthodox Christian roots, more ancient than those of the Russian Church herself. Desiring to give the French Church some level of autonomy, he asked that this Church be placed directly under the Metropolitan rather than under the existing Diocese of Western Europe; and the Metropolitan agreed. In an ordinance Archbishop John wrote:
The administration of said Church will be in all ways independent of that of the Diocese of Western Europe, at the head of which I have been placed. The two administrations will each have their own autonomous interior life, without admixture, united in the same Faith and in one same chief hierarch.
[...] On October 22, 1964, Metropolitan Anastassy declared to Fr. Eugraph [whom Archbishop John later consecrated as Bishop amidst much opposition after Metropolitan Anastassy died], the Russian Church Abroad is not creating a new diocese, nor even a new ecclesiastical province. It signals that it has the honor of becoming the source of a new Church and of taking part inthe renaissance of the ancient Orthodox Church of France.”
[...] In spite of the concerns that Bishop Jean-Nectaire’s consecration [Fr. Eugraph's new title, named after the two brand-newly canonized Saints, John of Kronstadt and Nectarios] had aroused, it was an exciting period for the church in San Francisco. The Russians there had not even heard of St. Germain, let alone the long-buried, ancient rite that he had helped compile. (p. 310,11)
From Orthodoxwiki,
“History of the restoration of The Divine Liturgy according to St Germanus of Paris
Prior to its restoration by the French Church, the Gallican liturgy had been reconstructed by Father Pierre Lebrun of the Oratory (1661-1729), Father Vladimir Guettée (1816-1892), and the Abbbé Louis Marie Olivier Duchesne (1843-1922). After the formation of the Orthodox Church of France in 1936, the priest Evgraph Kovalevsky, later Bishop Jean of Saint-Denis, set about restoring the Gallican rite for use by the French Church. The principal documents he used that had been unavailable to his predecessors were two letters ascribed to St Germanus of Paris (496-576) that describe the liturgy in sixth-century Paris. Kovalevsky drew on the writings of numerous Gallican saints of the same era that provide information on Gallican liturgical practice, as well as extant missals, sacramentaries, lectionaries, and antiphonaries. The restored liturgy has gone through several editions (1956, 1968, 1973, 1975, and 1998). Some Orthodox outside of the French Church circulated rumors that the liturgy was simply a product of Kovalevsky’s imagination. In response to this, Archbishop John Maximovitch chaired a special liturgical commission that studied the liturgy word by word, comparing it to the original sources. The 1961 report of the commission declared the liturgy to be authentic. It was approved for use by the Church of Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the Church of Romania, and the Church of Serbia.
St John of Shanghai celebrating the restored Gallican liturgy in Paris
Present use
In addition to the parishes of the Orthodox Church of France, of the Orthodox Church of the Gauls, and the French Orthodox Church, St Germanus is also used by a number of parishes that were formerly with the French Church but which are now part of the Church of Romania and the Church of Alexandria (Coptic), and some which are in dialogue with the Church of Serbia.”
*****
Another note on Archbishop John’s wishes in America, right before Archbishop John died, he asked Eugene, who he had just tonsured a Reader, to become a priest-monk and to begin serving Divine Liturgy in English at the new Cathedral in San Francisco. Eugene said he had more secluded monastic aspirations. Another Priest was appointed to begin every other week English services, in which Eugene and Gleb served as choir. (p. 318, 319)
Too much to read, too little time
I’ve finally experienced my first reading of David B. Hart, The Laughter of the – Philosophers, from First Things, Jan. 2005. Indirect h/t to Gabriel.
Wow.
I like reading modern voices who talk about past writers. I haven’t ended up reading that much of the people they talk about, yet, but somehow I want the secondary reflections first. I suppose I don’t want to just walk up to these historic figures without the proper introduction.
I’ve picked up Father Seraphim Rose’s Life and Writings again. I’m on page 304 and want to finish it. I’m not sure what I’ll read after that. I ordered Cavarnos’ book on philosophy referenced below, as well as Crime and Punishment and the Idiot, but now I want to read some of the people Dr. Hart references. My eyes are bigger than my stomach.
04.29.09
Good, Peace-Inducing News
It may be apparent that I got irritated reading the John Scottus Eriugena book. This morning I took Felix Culpa’s suggestion to watch Dr. David Bradshaw’s lecture on The Divine Energies in Eastern Orthodoxy (I couldn’t open the essays with my Mac). The lecture in Part 1 goes to about 70 minutes in, now I’m listening to the Q&A. He nicely shows what Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Sts. Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, the Cappadocian Fathers, and, very briefly in the Q&A, Eriugena, whose writings were condemned, and St. Dionysius, meant by energies and essence. He is not as uptight about the ones who disagree with the further defined explanation of St. Gregory Palamas as I, and he’s wanting to get along with the Cambridge audience who disagrees more than I, so he makes some concessions about St. Palamas leaving a few loose ends. Perhaps he even tidies them up for him. He approaches it as they west is missing out on fuller revelation, and I’m fine with that.
John Scottus Eriugena, the last.
I have now completed half the book, and that is probably as far as I will go. John Scottus Eriugena, istm, has come up with a syncretic hybrid of eastern and western theology and ancient philosophy. None of the sources would recognize their work in what he came up with. Carabine even admits, “Of course, Eriugena’s thought was not simply a reproduction of what he had encountered in his reading of the fathers of East and West; rather, he molded their theology into his own to reveal a new pattern of thought in relation to an understanding of the transcendence and immanence of God.” (p. 45) I probably should have stopped reading right there. Innovation is definitely rejected by traditional, St. Vincent’s Rule, theologians.
Most of his ideas conform more with Platonic ideas of Absolute Divine Simplicity, which can be traced in western theology, not eastern, where everything emanates from the One, dialectically diverges, and then returns to the One. While this can sound similar to St. Maximus’ doctrine of Recapitulation, it differs in several ways (I quote St. Maximus extensively in the Categories bearing his name, “Recapitulation”, and the book, The Cosmic Mystery of Christ). Eriugena’s view of God, the source of all, is taken from numeric, Pythagorian ideas of the “Monad” (p. 32). Then it gets weird – meaning I’ve not read anything like it from any Church Father, not that I’m that well-read.
Eriugena presents us with a wonderfully different slant on this familiar understanding. Strictly speaking, God is uncreated, yet in the act of creating, God creates God’s self.
[...] The simultaneous timeless and time-bound character of creation depends on the fact that all things were created in the Word by God at the same time because God could not have existed before God created. (p.34)
Further, he does not have a concept of essence and energy, or a distinction between created and uncreated, but everything is God’s essence, as in ADS, and will return again, I suppose, to “n0-thing”ness.
God is both maker of all things and is made in all things (P.I454C; III 650C-D) (p.37)
He gives a nod to St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Dionysius in some of his descriptions of God being beyond being and in all things (p.38), but I do not believe that when they wrote before the 5th Century that the distinctions between essence and energies where formally categorized. Therefore “nature” and “essence” were sometimes used when later “energies” would be used to denote distinction between God, creation, and participation by grace. St. Maximus’ writings should have cleared that up for the 9th century Eriugena.
This seems like Total Depravity, “The fifth mode concerns human nature itself, which, through the fall from paradise, lost its divine image, its true being, and can, therefore, be said not to be. When human nature is restored through the grace of God, it is reestablished in its image and begins to be.” (p. 40)
This next premise seems to deny the activity of God in making Himself known through His uncreated energies, “Thus the logic of negative theology becomes clear: God, as the essence of all, is known only from created things, but this is knowledge not of what God is but simply that God is. Given the primary understanding that the ousia of any thing is unknowable, it stands to reason that the essence of all things is unknowable since that very essence is God.” (p. 42)
At least she’s honest, “While it is certain that he took much from Gregory of Nyssa and the Pseudo-Dionysius [btw, there is some controversy as to St. Dionysius's identity and his neoplatonism], Eriugena’s own unique perspective can be seen in his continual straining toward that which is truly no thing.” (p. 42,3) He does seem to have a very negative opinion of God.
More weirdness,
God can be known as creator but remains unknowable as uncreated, even to God’s self, a theme I discuss hereafter. (p.45)
I believe this next part describes his slant on what is known as “natural theology”, “According to Eriugena, creation is the fundamental starting point for any attempt to understand divine reality (Romans 1:20), and it constitutes the one great mystery that focuses his thought as he attempts to set down, in an orderly fashion, sure definitions and right knowledge of the things that are.” (p. 46)
This segues into what seems to me to be a heretical view of the Trinity, “all things are at the same time eternal and are made in the Word: eternal things are made and made things are eternal (P.III 646C). [...] God is the Maker of all things and is made in all things; and when He is looked for above all things He is found in no essence (P.III 683A). (p.48)
Not understanding participation by grace through God’s energies also gets him into trouble here, “Creation is not something apart from God [though he says it does exist on a different ontological level], but is, as I will show, the ontological participation of the creature in God. In this sense we can say that creation is already God, already deified because its very identity is God.”
But it is his explanation of the Trinity that makes me put the book down. Again it is admitted,
“Although Eriugena relies heavily [?] on the patristic sources of both East and West (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine feature most in Eriugena’s reviews of previous exegeses of the text of Genesis 1), Eriugena’s own ideas are clearly seen in realtion to the mysterious nature of the creative activity of the triune divine nature.” (p. 50,1)
It is not clear if he believes that the Son is a distinct person, or if He has always existed, I don’t think he does on either count, at least not in the traditional sense:
God the Father before the secular ages (began), brought forth His Word, in Whom and through Whom He created in their full perfection the primordial causes of all natures (P. II 560A-B). The Word, therrefore is the principle through whom the father “speaks” the creation of all things (P. III 642B) and is the first principle of divisoria running through all things that they may be OP.III 642D), just as the Word is also the first principle of resolutiva (P. II 526B-C). In this sense, the logical method of dialectic – division and resolution [ADS]- is prefigured in the activity of the Word itself. However, Eriugena is very clear that the causal activity of the Trinity does not imply that the Trinity is one and one and one; rather, it is a simple and indivisible one, multiple in power, not in number (P.III 687C-D). (p.53)
I have seen John Scottus Eriugena’s name mentioned in lists with many of the early Greek Church Fathers, all thrown together under the label, Neoplatonism. While some of the concepts may share similar descriptions, I do not believe that the contexts or basic conclusions are the same at all. I do not believe these men belong together in the same grouping, especially since Eriugena, who lived 500 years later, had access to the decisions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils who clarified the Church’s position on these matters based on evidence of where heretical views lead. John Scottus Eriugena is an innovative Maverick.
04.28.09
Dialectical Repainting
Another theme in this book is in the use of “authority”. Yesterday’s post brought out the authority of Scriptures. Today it seems to be Sts.Dionysius vs. Augustine, though Eriugena seems to be ecumenically against the word “versus”. I surmise that ecumenism is a form of dialectic, where a diluted compromise is reached, instead of the form where the biggest and strongest crushes the weakest.
In the Periphysion, one of the most perplexing of these concerns the nature of the beatific vision, for not only do the authorities ([Sts.] Augustine and Dionysius) come into conflict over this most difficult question, but contradictory texts in the scriptures themselves force the exegete to maneuver very skilfully in order to adjudicate among the various texts and interpretations. The scriptural conflict concerns 1Corinthians 13:12 and 1 Timothy 6:16; shall we see God “face to face” or shall the inaccessible light of God be forever obscured to human intellects? This example of the confusing variations of color in the feather of the peacock is one of the many conflicts Eriugena confronts in his writings, and I discuss this particular point in chapter 7. It is in “solving” such conflicts that his exegetical skills can be appreciated as both diplomatic and respectful. Of course, Eriugena does not struggle alone in the search for a correct understanding of the texts of the scriptures: he enlists the support of the fathers, many of whom had already grappled with the same questions. According to Contreni, Carolingian commentators “plucked flowers from fields to compose a rich bouquet…. In the process they defined a new kind of exegesis,” one that concentrated on the texts themselves as complementary to the authority of the fathers.18
This seems less dialectical of either sort, and more of a live and let live approach.
The study of the scriptures in the quest for spiritual meaning, therefore, is guided not only by the authority of the fathers but also by reason, which “finds it sweeter to exercise her skill in the hidden straits of the ocean of divinity than idly to bask in smooth and open waters where she cannot display her power” (P.IV 744A). Eriugena conveys a sense of the excitement about the journey to be undertaken through the vast seas of the scriptures, and we are never in any doubt that his ship will reach a safe harbor because reason acts as his guide. [...] However, the toil of human reason to come to a correct understanding of the sacred texts has been made more difficult because of the damage sustained by reason through the fall. Through the transgression of Adam and Eve, reason must work doubly hard, through sorrow and hard labor, to come to a proper understanding of all that is related in the book of the scriptures and in the book of nature (P.IV 855A-B). (p.19)
It seems her confidence in Eriugena’s reason is too sure in light of the last sentence, not that it is impossible for a human to come up with true conclusions, since we are graced with reason.
It has often been stated that what we find in Eriugena’s work is a constant battle between Augustine and [St.] Dionysius, broadly understood as West versus East.24 [...] Eriugena often takes the side of a Greek father in preference to the authority of Augustine and at times not without what some scholars would regard as a slight on Augustine. Even though Eriugena may have understood the authority of Augustine in much the same light as he regarded the authority of scriptures, that is, capable of many readings, at times he takes tremendous liberties with Augustinian texts, and he sometimes misinterprets Augustine with the aim of bringing his thought into line with the great Eastern authorities (sometimes Eriugena says that Augustine does not mean what he says). In this sense, Eriugena does not abide by his self-imposed stricture not to adjudicate between the fathers but to acknowledge their views with piety and reverence and select that which most accords with the meaning of the scriptures (P…). He also notes that the opinions of the fathers can be especially helpful for those untrained in reason and more amenable to authority (P…). Even though true authorities come from the same source, the wisdom of God (P…), conflict can still arise. Interestingly, when Eriugena finds disagreement between authorities, he is generally anxious to explain the reason. For example, with regard to Basil of Caeserea’s view that the soul of animals die with the death of their bodies (not a view he will subscribe to), Eriugena explains that Basil simply meant to illustrate for simple people the fact that a base life can lead to the loss of soul (P…).
This seems a little manipulative, presumptuous, disingenuous and condescending, but the next part redeems him,
It is, however, still generally believed that despite the very powerful and formative influence of Augustine, Eriugena was more Greek than Latin in his approach to created reality and its relationship with divine reality. The Greek coloring of Eriugena’s thought, however, is not simply a veneer on a Latin base coat; Eriugena genuinely sided with the Greek fathers on many important issues. [...] Eriugena’s anthropology, more specifically his conception of the whole of humanity as in the image of God eventually to be restored to its divine exemplar, is more obviously Greek than Latin in its theocentric character. The concept of deification, which Eriugena notes is more difficult for the Latins (with the exception of Ambrose), is a very powerful Greek thematic in thePeriphyseon, which he tries to reconcile with Latin authorities on the subject. [...] In conclusion, while one can say that while Eriugena was constantly working to bring his various sources into agreement, one must also remember that for him all authority was human authority and must, therefore, conform to reason. (p.21,22)
He indeed had a hard job on his hands. This has done nothing to convince me that east vs west is not apples vs. oranges. Eriugena rightly prefers apples, so he tries to color his oranges red. I have much faith that Eastern authority is true and trustworthy, and does not require such mental gymnastics, which I agree with Eriugena, western theology does. I grew up with Western thought and language, so I appreciate the eastern correction to specific western sources, such as perhaps Drs. Bradshaw and Cavarnos provide.
I also believe that eventually a person can achieve enough healing and correction that they can perhaps redeem certain parts of unorthodox theology, philosophy, music, literature, and art, or at least know how to sift through it. I’m still in the detox stages though.
04.27.09
Stoicism and Romanticism
Aaron’s post on Romanticism has inspired me to go ahead and put down my thoughts after also reading a previous post of his in which The Ocholophobist commented that he has been told that Orthodoxy is closer to Stoicism than Neoplatonism, which influenced my thoughts while watching Enchanted with my daughters yesterday.
The Wikipedia page on Stoicism shows me some similarities and differences with how I view Orthodoxy. While I think we need to learn non-reaction to temptations that cause us to respond in a negatively passionate manner, we should not be apathetic to the point that Marcus Aurelius can be taken in these quotes,
- “How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life!” (xii.13)
- “Outward things cannot touch the soul, not in the least degree; nor have they admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul; but the soul turns and moves itself alone.” (iv.3)
If we cut ourselves off to any reaction at all, we will not experience the Fruits of the Spirit, which seem positive emotions or feelings. But love, peace and joy are deeper and more abiding than excitement, fun, exhilaration, and the like, not that there is absolutely no place for these either. Perhaps there is even room for righteous indignation and anger, but it seems to me most of us feel this way when really we are exhibiting panic, feeling threatened, and have lack of faith.
Now to Enchanted. In this third viewing, I categorized Robert’s stoic stance against Romanticism as based on disappointment and hurt. He tried to close himself off from believing in being “in love” because his previous experience seemed to negate that it was “true”, since his wife left. Prince Edward believes in romance for romance’s sake and consistently acts in a romantic way, regardless of his circumstances. He is noble, and in a sense apathetic to his environment since it doesn’t impact his actions at all. Until he sees that Giselle is romantically attached to Robert, and then he merely shifts his romanticism to the next available person. Both of these men are faithful, solid, and trustworthy as they will not let feelings (Robert) or circumstances (Edward) shift them from their course of commitment to the agreeing female. This puts the catalyst for change squarely on the shoulders of the girl, Giselle. But before I shift to her, I’ll say that Robert is not able to squelch his reborn romantic feelings for her, though he is determined not to act on them until given permission.
Giselle starts out as Edward in following the prescribed rules for consistent, emotional romanticism. She is sort of like the innocent, inexperienced Eve who drops into an already fallen world. She adapts however. The scene where she starts to fall for Robert is when he comes out in his bathrobe, revealing his hairy chest. At first this isn’t what affects her, but his insistence that falling in love after just one day is unrealistic. She becomes angry for the first time – a negative emotion. And this makes her happy. It is after this that she notices Robert’s chest and has a lustful feelings for him. I do not like that these negative emotions/passions of anger and lust comprise her awakening. Nevertheless this unromantic person becomes the object of her affections, while the romantic person suddenly becomes boring. She convinces Prince Edward to go out on a date with her, and all of the sudden, now that he’s come to the end of his quest for her, he becomes childish and dumb. She tries to start interesting conversations, but he doesn’t know how to have any. She makes a justifiable comment when she says that she has begun to enjoy thinking and so she doesn’t want to leave the real world. Edward’s not interested in that. But he redeems himself at the ball when he notices that Giselle is not happy with him and sees that she loves Robert so he gives permission, as does Robert’s fiancee, and then Prince Edward nobly picks up the slack with the latter, who is happy to go to go back to feeling, romance world with him.
So apparently Giselle and Robert have both thoughts and feelings together. This would have seemed selfish, but they make up for it by putting his daughter first, and enjoying it. It is the three-ness that redeems the movie to me. But before they get to that point, the dangers of their romantic view point to Aaron’s quote from Sir Isaiah Berlin. This occurs at the ball when the unhappy Giselle somewhat knowingly takes the poison apple from the witch which will take her pain away. The hopes attached to romantic fulfillment are so captivating and seemingly essential, that when they are disappointed, life is not worth living. These two extremes are what has lead me to believe that Romanticism is poison. Loving God’s creation is gravy, it is not life. Life is loving God, and Romanticism shift this view away from Him in very competing and destructive ways. The pull is so very strong, that one has to completely deny it and exert 100% of one’s energy away from it by substituting those dreamy urges for what seems like cold, hard prayer. But once prayer is entered into, God will show us something different. We must work to maintain our focus on this different type of relationship, and not allow ourselves to be drawn back into the dreamy beauty of that promised, warm, lovely world. This is why I need the Church services as often as possible. The Church and her sacraments successfully compete with other addictions, though the process may be slow and incomplete until that final day. I’ll end with Aaron’s quote,
Romanticism is the primitive, the untutored, it is youth, the exuberant sense of life of the natural man, but it is also pallor, fever, disease, decadence, the maladie du siècle, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the Dance of Death, indeed Death itself. It is Shelley’s dome of many-coloured glass, and it is also his white radiance of eternity. It is the confused teeming fullness and richness of life, Fülle des Lebens, inexhaustible multiplicity, turbulence, violence, conflict, chaos, but also it is peace, oneness with the great ‘I Am’, harmony with the natural order, the music of the spheres, dissolution in the eternal all-containing spirit. It is the strange, the exotic, the grotesque, the mysterious, the supernatural, ruins, moonlight, enchanted castles, hunting horns, elves, giants, griffins, falling water, the old mill on the Floss, darkness and the powers of darkness, phantoms, vampires, nameless terror, the irrational, the unutterable. Also it is the familiar, the sense of one’s unique tradition, joy in the smiling aspect of everyday nature, and the accustomed sights and sounds of contented, simple, rural folk—the sane and happy wisdom of rosy-cheeked sons of the soil. It is the ancient, the historic, it is Gothic cathedrals, mists of antiquity, ancient roots and the old order with its unanalysable qualities, its profound but inexpressible loyalties, the impalpable, the imponderable. Also it is the pursuit of novelty, revolutionary change, concern with the fleeting present, desire to live in the moment, rejection of knowledge, past and future, the pastoral idyll of happy innocence, joy in the passing instant, a sense of timelessness. It is nostalgia, it is reverie, it is intoxicating dreams, it is sweet melancholy and bitter melancholy, solitude, the sufferings of exile, the sense of alienation, roaming in remote places, especially the East, and in remote times, especially the Middle Ages. But also it is happy co-operation in a common creative effort, the sense of forming part of a Church, a class, a party, a tradition, a great and all-containing symmetrical hierarchy, knights and retainers, the ranks of the Church, organic social ties, mystic unity, one faith, one land, one blood, ‘la terre et les morts’, as Barrès said, the great society of the dead and the living and the yet unborn. It is the the Toryism of Scott and Southey and Wordsworth, and it is the radicalism of Shelley, Büchner and Stendhal. It is Chateaubriand’s aesthetic medievalism, and it is Michelet’s loathing of the Middle Ages. It is Carlyle’s worship of authority, and Hugo’s hatred of authority. It is extreme nature mysticism, and extreme anti-naturalist aestheticism. It is energy, force, will, life étalage du moi; it is also self-torture, self-annihilation, suicide. It is the primitive, the unsophisticated, the bosom of nature, green fields, cow-bells, murmuring brooks, the infinite blue sky. No less, however, it is also dandyism, the desire to dress up, red waistcoats, green wigs, blue hair which the followers of people like Gérard de Nerval wore in Paris at a certain period. It is the lobster which Nerval led about on a string in the streets of Paris. It is wild exhibitionism, eccentricity, it is the battle of Ernani, it is ennui, it is taedium vitae, it is the death of Sardanopolis, whether painted by Delacroix, or written about by Berlioz or Byron. It is the convulsion of great empires, wars, slaughter and the crashing of worlds. It is the romantic hero—the rebel, l’homme fatal, the damned soul, the Corsairs, Manfreds, Giaours, Laras, Cains, all the population of Byron’s heroic poems. It is Melmoth, it is Jean Sbogar, all the outcasts and Ishmaels as well as the golden-hearted courtesans and the noble-hearted convicts of nineteenth-century fiction. It is drinking out of the human skull, it is Berlioz who said he wanted to climb Vesuvius in order to commune with a kindred soul. It is Satanic revels, cynical irony, diabolical laughter, black heroes, but also Blake’s vision of God and his angels, the great Christian society, the eternal order, and ‘the starry heavens which can scarce express the infinite and eternal of the Christian soul’. It is, in short, unity and multiplicity. It is fidelity to the particular, in the paintings of nature for example, and also mysterious tantalising vagueness of outline. It is beauty and ugliness. It is art for art’s sake, and art as an instrument of social salvation. It is strength and weakness, individualism and collectivism, purity and corruption, revolution and reaction, peace and war, love of life and love of death.
What Is Truth?
Despite Ms. Carabine’s too general characterization of the eastern Fathers as Neoplatonists, and too informal treatment of Saints, I believe her to be intellectually honest and discerning in mapping out distinctions between the east and west during the 9th Century, so far in her book on John Scottus Eriugena.
I suppose my over-arching question in reading this book is what is the role of reason when forming a Christian view of the Cosmos. The west criticizes the east for being too mystical, and the east criticizes the west for relying too much on human reason. Here are some passages in which Eriugena’s method is discussed,
In the Periphyseon, undoubtedly Eriugena’s greatest work, we find him turning to many sources in the search for the truth of reality, but his fundamental source is the [S]criptures, one of the great Carolingian preoccupations. However, studying the sacred texts was not simply academic study like any other, for an intellectual understanding alone was not sufficient; as a foundation for a particular way of life, study of the scriptures meant that wisdom involved both intellectual and spiritual progress.
[...] The four levels of the intelligible world of the scriptures correspond to the four interrelated levels of the sensible world: historical, literal, ethical, and theological (Hom. XIV 291B-C and P.V IOIOB). The theological level is, of course, the supreme level of contemplation of the divine nature. However, for Eriugena scriptural texts cannot be studied in isolation at whatever level; reason is an indispensable aid in determining the true meaning of the sacred texts, “we must follow reason which investigates the truth of things” (P.I 509A), but the scriptures remain the ultimate guide to truth (P.V IOIOB-C) According to Eriugena’s understanding, if reason and the sacred texts appear to come into conflict, that is because scripture uses allegories when speaking of God in order that the human mind can more easily understand divine reality from the things it knows (P.I 509A).
This to me hints at the western notion of analogy in seeking to know a beyond-knowing God.
Eriugena’s continual warnings against believing the words of the scriptures only in their literal sense, demonstrates his skepticism about language, which ultimately results in his preference for negative theology. [...] Eriugena’s prohibition here has recourse to [St.] Dionysius, who also admonished that we should not say anything about God except that which has been revealed n the scriptures: “For as there is not place in which it is more proper to seek Thee than in Thy words, so there is no place where Thou art more clearly discovered than in Thy words” (P.V. IOIC). “More clearly discovered than in Thy words” – this is not entirely true because the apparent conflict between reason and the scriptures is not the only conflict brought into focus by Eriugena. The sacred texts themselves contain many contradictory texts with which the exegete is forced to deal in the journey toward the truth about human and divne reality. (p.18)
It seems that Eriugena is trying to work out his Sola Scriptura technique, though he is more open than modern Sola Scripturists to peripheral, be they “secular” or the writings of the Saints of the Church. I think the Orthodox would agree with this approach to Scriptures. However I sense a divergence already in his approach to reason, not just to analogeia entis which I mention above. He is coming at it from a lone-ranger point of view. His trinitarian input of Scripture – Fathers – Secular/Nature is all sorted out by his own reason. He is the final authority.
While the Orthodox believe that God reveals Himself through Scripture, the Fathers, and Nature, the final authority on “what is truth?” is the Church. It gets messy if you try to describe how to resolve differences between the Fathers, and for those who don’t believe that the Eastern Orthodox Church is the fulness of the Truth revealed, and who communes with the Truth in oneness and unity, perhaps(?) it cannot be proven in a way that will relieve all doubts of bias, special pleading and partiality, but many have believed it anyway and converted, including me. But I used to be a lone ranger, so I sympathize with Mr. Eriugena, though my perspective was much narrower than his before I converted to Orthodoxy.
The next section describes what incredibly hard work it is to come up with the truth by yourself.
04.24.09
Eriugena and St. Dionysius
John Scottus Eriugena cont.
The Pseudo-Dionysius was most likely a Syrian monk of the late fifth century.12 His works display the obvious influence of the late Neoplatonism of Proclus (410-85), but for whatever reason, the author assumed the identity of St. Paul’s Athenian convert (Acts 17:22-34). (p.16)
See the Wikipedia article linked above to see that his Neoplatonism isn’t so easily attributed.
Aside from the strong Proclean influence, the earlier fathers of the Eastern church also find an echo in the Pseudo-Dionysius, especially Gregory of Nyssa. The themes contained in the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius, which will later find a place in Eriugena’s massive summa of reality, include the unknowable nature of God, the roles of negative and positive theology, the themes of procession and return and hierarchy, and the importance of the scriptures (for Di0nysius, the scriptures had represented “sacred veils” around the divine). For Dionysius, the Augustinian concordance of true religion and true philosophy is expressed as philosophy being the same wisdom as that sought by St. Paul. Although there are many thematic similarities between the Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena, the focus of the two theologians was not the same, as I will show later. One further important work of Eriugena closely related to the Dionysian corpus is his Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, in which he sets out his own understanding of that important, difficult work.15 (p.17)
It seems that Eriugena set about bringing in eastern thought into his own cosmic view. It sort of reminds me of the Emergent Church movement, a little of this, a little of that. If there wasn’t an Orthodox Church to go to, which after Charlemagne (who was instrumental in the Nicene Creed being changed in the west) it seems there wasn’t anymore, I would go to Eriugena’s Church or an Emergent Church that at least had icons of true Saints. I believe the Eastern Church preserved and maintained the true and full way to believe and think about God, but I’ll wait and see what Eriugena came up with independently.
As the first centuries after Christ rolled on, teachings from Saints like Maximus can be said to reflect the teachings of earlier Saints like Gregory of Nyssa, but I do not see the same type of synthesis with other views that is being brought out regarding Eriugena. It is said that the early Church Fathers were in theosis and received revelation, as well as the teachings that had been passed down to them. They were able to discern truth and error in philosophical thought through personal knowledge of God, with their minds engaged. As far as development goes, the language about God may be seen to have developed, but I do not believe the content did. St. Maximus knew the same God the same way St. Paul did, and after reading St. Maximus one may read St. Paul differently, but I think it is with the original intent.
I also currently believe that St. Augustine synthesized other philosophical views with what he received, which may have given John Scottus Eriugena and later western philosopher/theologians permission to do the same.
Abiding Love
Now that Brothers Karamazov has had time to settle, I think that this last book of Dostoevsky, being a tribute to Alyosha who represents Dostoevsky’s own son who passed away, is about hoping in the continuance of souls in heaven and the final resurrection. This is not a stretch as the very last part of the book is devoted to it. Alyosha, with heaven’s eyes, looks at the unfaithfulness of his brothers’ hearts, but does not believe that is the real them. It grieves him, but he does not condemn them or give up on them. He is the model of 1 Corinthians 13,
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5 does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6 does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part; 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. 11 When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 13 But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
04.23.09
Eriugena on Predestination and Dialectics
“Eriugena’s view, as he sets it out in the rather hastily written treatise On Predestination, is that because God is simple and unchangeable, there can be nothing at all that can be predestined.11 Eriugena explains God’s predestination as God’s knowledge of the primordial causes. God cannot predestine the human will and people are blessed or punished because of their own free will. Since the free will of human beings can be misused, sins must be the fault of individuals. Sin and evil, and the fact that some souls are damned, cannot imply a change in God or a defect in God’s power; if we accept the view of Gottschalk, God is responsible for sin and evil. Eriugena’s way out of this difficult position is based on the Neoplatonic idea that God as good is simply existence and, therefore, the opposite of non-being. Evil and sin are negations that do not, in fact, exist and cannot be caused by God. Thus, God cannot predestine any soul to damnation; rather, human sinfulness creates its own hell. As I show in chapter 4, in the Periphyseon Eriugena argues that lack of knowledge in God is not a defect; in fact, nothing in God (wisdom, power, being, or the ability to predestine) can be understood, precisely because God’s essence is simple and unchangeable. Therefore, Eriugena concludes, salvation is open to all, a theme I discuss in relation to his conception of the final return in Periphyseon V. In addition to the arguments based on the dialectical understanding of being and non-being and the unity of God’s nature, Eriugena also invokes the principles of negative theology in his answer to Gottschalk’s heresy. Foreknowledge and predestination imply temporal notions in God, who transcends time. Since God is simple and unchanging, ideas, signs, and language cannot properly signify the divine nature (On Predestination IX. 308B).12″
I agree with this description of human free will, but I think he misses the mark somewhat with predestination and God’s simplicity. As I tried to explain St. Maximus in yesterday’s comments (Aaron has a better description here), each part of God’s creation is predestined in that it springs from at least one of the many logoi in Christ, which are like the dna in seeds. Many things can happen to a tree, but if it remains in health, it will be in essence a particular type of tree, but with distinctions that make it differ from all other trees, even of the same species. I don’t believe each tree has a determined course, but each can participate in God’s will, sometimes with the intervention of man in cutting it down and reshaping it. It is the will of God for certain principles of virtue to saturate the process of managing a tree, which is also discussed in Aaron’s post.
Regarding God’s simplicity, I sense that where he goes off the mark is in putting essence before person. God is a person who foreknows and acts. How His transcending time works into this is beyond me, maybe it’s through the Incarnation that He, meaning the Father through the Son, by the Holy Spirit, enters time. God is too bound, abstract, and nebulous if you put His essence first as is described above. Not that He is ever unloving, unwise, lacks power (though sometimes He may choose to lay it down). As far as the “dialectic” between being and non-being, it has been said that being is a verb, and so God isn’t being, that is putting activity first instead of the correct order of person -> activity -> essence, but I haven’t worked being-ness all out yet, not that I can. Still I think that dilutes the above stated dialectic somewhat. There is too much dialectic in western thought with associated diminishing hierarchies and the marginalization, or annihilation or consumption of supposedly weaker things. Along with the simple view of God’s being is His goodness. I think the eastern view is that His goodness is an activity/attribute/energy, not His essence. It is something He does, not is. He could be said to be simple in that He always chooses to do good, and so that is why we can say He is good. Her explanation of Eriugena implies that sin and evil is the opposite of God, based on the misunderstanding of Absolute Divine Simplicity (which is explained better at Energetic Procession, check the categories), but with Person first, sin and evil are the opposite of what God does. His will is involved with this model, which makes Him more dynamic in my view.
I am examining a less dialectical approach to the dialectical west by reading this book. I’ll say this book is not the opposite of truth, but as we all aim for the bull’s eye, we should seek clarification of its nature. Falsehood is a warped version (which supports the above idea that it doesn’t exist, or at least is substanceless) not the opposite of the truth.
Speaking of dialectic, continued from above,
“This was, in brief, the case Eriugena presented to Hincmar for scrutiny. However, since Eriugena had denied the possibility of the pedestination fo the elect to eternal bliss, he had committed the sin of contradiction the great Augustine; for this reason Hincmar ultimately rejected the treatise. But a more serious issue was the invocation of the philosophical (and secular) principles of dialectic; in fact, Prudentius later rebuked Eriugena for using non-Christian sources and arguments in his refutation of Gottschalk’s heresy. The dialectical approach to a theological question (an approach Eriugena was to use to great effect in the Periphyseon), resulted in the rejection of the work by Hincmar, Predentius, and Florus as “sophistry,” and the treatise was eventually condemned at the council of Valence in 855 and at Langres in 859. [...] Surprisingly, Eriugena did not suffer [persecution], and his future was much brighter, most likely because he was protected by Charles.
With regard to the predestination controversy, perhaps the one major point that demands further discussion is the fact tha both Gottschalk and Erigena claimed to be clarifying the ideas of Augustine himself. It would appear that, like the sacred texts, the writings of Augustine were open to manifold interpretations, a view that brings into question the use of the authority of Augustine. In the case of the predestination debate, Eriugena’s practical application of the Augustinian dictum that true philosophy is true religion had disastrous consequences. Theology (the study of the scriptures and the fathers) was neither ready nor willing to admit the secular science of dialectic into its privileged arena. Yet Eriugena’s endeavors in relation to the quesiton of predestination showed very clearly that the authority of Augustine could be questioned; as Jaroslav Pelikan observes, “the Augustinian synthesis” with which the previous centuries had been comfortable was now called into question.13 In this sense, Eriugena’s treatise On Predestination prefigures one recurring characteristic one finds in the Periphyseon: the reconciliation of the many authorities who influenced one of the greatest philosophical minds of the ninth century.”
I’m not sure exactly how she’s applying the term “secular science of dialectic” in this passage and will wait for further examples. It seems to me Eriugena’s conclusions were closer to Orthodoxy than his opponent’s, and I don’t know if he was trying to independently synthesize what he’d learned from the east with the west. Orthodox are more kindred to Wesley than Calvin, but perhaps close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, or is that too dialectical?
