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Book Review: By Knowledge & By Love by Michael Sherwin
Michael S. Sherwin, O.P. By Knowledge and By Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005. 270 pp.
While the aftermath of Alasdair Macintyre’s Enlightenment critique and return to the virtue theory of Aristotle and Aquinas has caused a timely and refreshing revitalization that has exploded onto the scene of Catholic moral theology, Protestant ethics, and moral philosophy, by now it has produced different interpretations of the authorities of virtue ethics. It is in the context of an interpretive dispute over the virtue theory of St. Thomas Aquinas that our author, Michael S. Sherwin, enters the fray as a new voice in the conversation. A school of thought within Catholic moral theology that Sherwin calls the “theologians of moral motivation” have appropriated Aquinas’s complex Aristotelian moral theology to give added credibility to their peculiar Rahnerian notions of option fondamentale and transcendental freedom (xix).
In particular, Josef Fuchs and James Keenan have developed the Rahnerian doctrine of transcendental freedom in a way that views the will’s motion in transcendental freedom as antecedent to, or independent of, practical reasoning and objects of choice. Hence a separation is made between one’s goodness (one’s fundamental orientation) and one’s rightness (one’s concrete moral judgments and actions); one’s wrongness in actions therefore may be seen as not necessarily undermining their goodness on the transcendental level (which is more important). Sherwin’s book is nothing short of a penetrating polemic against theologians of moral motivation (Keenan in particular) who claim that such a distinction is implied in Aquinas’s mature thought on the will and charity. The author argues that although there was indeed development in Aquinas’s mature thought, nevertheless there remained in Aquinas a basic continuity on the point in question: knowledge always has a structural priority over the will.
Aquinas held that the intellect has a certain causal priority in the act of specification (specifying the good in particular based on a perceived notion of the good in general) while the will and its appetites for the end have priority of the intellect in the act of exercise (the intellect is moved by the will’s appetites to consider the good and to choose the means for attaining this good). This does not lead to intellectual determinism, however, because the will influences our judgments, how we perceive things and whether we consider one aspect of something over another aspect. Since intellect and will seem to presuppose one another, Aquinas escapes the problematic of an infinite regress by attributing the cause of the will’s and the intellect’s first act to human nature and thus to God. Since voluntary action presupposes rational choice, to choose apart from knowledge of the good is actually a “form of insanity” (100). Sherwin finally shows that for Aquinas, as it is with the intellect and the will in human nature, so it is with faith and charity in the infused virtues. Faith has a similar structural priority over love while love informs all the virtues. Finally Sherwin demonstrates that if charity has its act apart from the intellect’s knowledge, it ceases to be a virtue because it no longer has a recognizable concrete form in an account of human actions—it is not “recognizably human” (224).
The strength of Sherwin’s book is surely his rigorous analysis of Aquinas’s virtue theory (building on Henri Bouillard and Max Seckler) that consequentially yields a more intelligible view of human action that leaves little wanting. His is also more faithful to the Christian tradition’s Augustinian insight that one cannot love what one does not know. The book has a helpful index and contains figures that depict the dynamics and principles of human action. A more believable interpreter of Aquinas, Sherwin’s Aquinas helps us see the folly of spoiling the proper relationship between the intellect and will and between knowledge of God and love.
Bradley R. Cochran
Aquinas the Calvinist (via Eastern Orthodoxy?)
Was Aquinas a Calvinist? Well … sort of. I realize the question is anachronistic, but Aquinas retained the doctrines of grace propogated by Augustine that the Calvinist tradition borrowed from during the Protestant Reformation (e.g. the doctrine of unconditional election, predestination, infallible grace, etc.). There are many qualifications to this claim I do not have time to write about here (perhaps in a future post).
Those who hold a Calvinistic notion of predestination have also been known to hold that nevertheless God desires that all people be saved because Scripture affirms it. For this reason 1 Timothy 2:1-4 also appears to many to be a major stumbling block (read: contradiction) to the entire soteriological system known as Calvinism. How can we say that God desires all people to be saved when we know that ultimately God decides who is and who is not saved, yet does not choose everyone. Does God not always do whatever he desires? Does he not desire that all be saved?
I will now call upon Thomas Aquinas, however, to explain to us why this verse, and God’s desire that all be saved, does not contradict the doctrine of predestination. I will first quote the verse itself, then Aquinas:
First of all I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority. … This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. — 1 Tim 2:3-4 (NASB)
Aquinas thinks that the word “all” in this passage likely means “applying to every class of individuals, not to every individual of each class; in which case they mean that God wills some men of every class and condition to be saved, males and females, Jews and Gentiles, great and small, but not all of every condition” (ST I.19.6.ad.1).
He also offers Damascene’s notion of “the antecedent will of God” which is to be contrasted to “the consequent will” of God. Here the point is this: God’s will considered absolutely entails that all men should be saved, but by adding “some additional circumstances” or “by a consequent consideration” the verdict of God’s will may turn out to be reversed (ST I.19.6.ad.1).
For example, considered absolutely it is good that all men should live and be free, unless or until that one person is considered an extreme danger and menace of society by killing and raping others, in which case a good judge may will him to hang or be thrown in jail rather than live and be free.
Thus it may be said that a just judge will simply the hanging of a murderer, but in a qualified manner he would will him to live … Such a qualified will may be called a willingness rather than an absolute will. Thus it is clear that whatever God simply wills takes place; although what He wills antecedently may not take place. (ST I.19.6.ad.1).
While Damascene refers to “antecedent will” and “consequent will,” Aquinas prefers to speak of the former as “willingness” and the latter as “simple will.” Willingness is what God wills with all things being “equal” (as it were), apart from circumstantial suppositions. Simple will is God’s final will once all circumstantial considerations are in view. Not that Aquinas would imagine that there is ever a time when God’s brain fails to consider something with all its attendant circumstances (God is outside of time and doesn’t have a brain). Rather, this language is metaphorical and taken from human speech. God wills that all be saved in the same way that a judge wills all men to be free and live, although given good reason, this will may be reversed. But this does not destroy the “good will” of the judge; therefore, neither should it cause us to call into question God’s good will to those who are damned.
It is indeed striking to me that I had only been exposed to this kind of reasoning through the Calvinist tradition, yet here Aquinas is found using the same reasoning. But my amazement does not stop there, since Aquinas gets his distinctions from St. John of Damascus (Damascene), a Syrian Christian monk and priest († 676-749) venerated as a Saint in both the Catholic Church and in Eastern Orthodoxy.
Book Review: Holiness and Ministry by Thomas B. Dozeman
Here is a critical book review (in PDF version) I have written of the following book: Thomas B. Dozeman. Holiness and Ministry: A Biblical Theology of Ordination. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Although I try to give credit where credit is due, ultimately I found Dozeman’s biblical theology unsatisfying because of the way he rigidly separates Moses’s priestly and prophetic callings, then fills these artificially reconstructed categories with preconceived ideas about human experience (which ideas he then also reads back into the texts of Torah).
Aquinas’s Posture of Humility to the Tradition
Although one of the chief virtues of Aquinas’s Summa is its careful reason and rational consistency, there do seem to be areas of tension in spite of its exceptional logical rigor. What I mean is this: Thomas has positional tensions, even if they are not necessarily logical tensions. If one wished to be critical she might consider his explicit reasons for his positional posture as itself illogical inasmuch as he might appear to be somewhat arbitrary (although as I will argue in my conclusion, he is not being arbitrary).
I hope to show that Aquinas’s humility to the Tradition did not entail his absolute rejection of propositions contrary to the Tradition. Instead, Aquinas sought to simultaneously defend the Tradition while aiming to parse in what senses contrary claims might also be true. For a brief post, one example will have to suffice from his treatise on Charity (which is love for God as last end).
Proper Objects of Charity: A Positional Tension
Thomas excludes irrational creatures from the list of objects of charity on the basis that they can have no share in the rational life of man, since charity consists in a certain fellowship of life in the enjoyment of God; a life that irrational creatures have no share in. However, Aquinas allows the body to be considered an object of charity even though he does not consider the body as having the capacity of reason.
Although our bodies are unable to enjoy God by knowing and loving Him, yet by the works which we do through the body, we are able to attain to the perfect knowledge of God. Hence from the enjoyment in the soul there overflows a certain happiness into the body, viz., the flush of health and incorruption, as Augustine states (Ep. ad Dioscor. cxvii). Hence, since the body has, in a fashion, a share of happiness, it can be loved with the love of charity. (ST II-II.25.6.ad.2)
Here Aquinas concedes that the body does not know or love, but the person can come to know and love through the deeds of the body. The instrumentality of the body in knowing and loving, then, is his basis for allowing the body to be considered an object of charity. Hence the body, being “used” by the person for serving God, can in this way become an object of charity even though Aquinas does not consider the body to have the capacity of reason, which belongs to the soul.
This is not a logical contradiction, however, since in the same way Aquinas allows for irrational creatures to be objects of charity.
All friendship is based on some fellowship in life; since nothing is so proper to friendship as to live together, as the Philosopher proves (Ethic. viii. 5). Now irrational creatures can have no fellowship in human life which is regulated by reason. Hence friendship with irrational creatures is impossible, except metaphorically speaking. … Nevertheless we can love irrational creatures out of charity, if we regard them as the good things that we desire for others, in so far, to wit, as we wish for their preservation, to God’s honor and man’s use; thus too does God love them out of charity. (ST II-II.25.4)
Thus, while considered from a logical perspective, Aquinas is being quite consistent. For he affirms that in the most proper sense of the term charity, irrational creatures and the human body cannot be charity’s object since they do not posses the life of reason. On the other hand, inasmuch as they are instrumental to charity, being used in service to God, they can be considered the objects of charity.
However, when we consider Aquinas from a positional perspective, he has postured himself contrary to the former position (that irrational creatures can be the objects of charity) and in defense of the latter position (that the human body can be the object of charity). To say it yet another way, although the sense in which irrational creatures and the human body can be considered objects of charity—by reason of their being instrumental to knowing and loving—is the same in both cases, Aquinas postures himself contrary to the former and in defense of the latter in his dialogical structure.
Aquinas’s Posture as Humble, Not Arbitrary
Is this arbitrary? It may seem arbitrary to us, but most likely Aquinas postures himself throughout the Summa in such a way as to be defending what he considers to be the sacred Tradition. Thus, he is trying to give priority to the senses of propositions that he thinks have been intended by the Tradition, while still conceding the same logic when found in other propositions set against the Tradition.
This seems the most satisfying solution to Aquinas’s otherwise arbitrary posture—his posture is one of humility to the Tradition. Irrational creatures can be the objects of charity in some sense, but this isn’t as important to Aquinas as the fact that the deep fellowship we have with God, as creatures made in his image, is not something irrational creatures can have. For the same reason the human body can be considered as not the proper object of charity by reason of its lack of the faculty of reason. But this is not as important to Aquinas as polemicizing against the Manichean pretensions about the body having been created by an evil principle, thus in article five he postures himself as for the human body as a proper object of charity.
Aquinas did not simply reject the truth claim of the Manichean absolutely, however, for he concedes that if we consider the body under the aspect of sin and corruption, it must be loathed as an evil.
Our bodies can be considered in two ways, first, in respect of their nature, secondly, in respect of the corruption of sin and its punishment. Now the nature of our body was created not by an evil principle, as the Manicheans pretend, but by God. Hence we can use it for God’s service, according to Rom. vi. 13: Present … your members as instruments of justice unto God. Consequently, out of the love of charity with which we love God, we ought to love our bodies also; but we ought not to love the evil effects of sin and the corruption of punishment; we ought rather, by the desire of charity, to long for the removal of such things. (ST II-II.25.5)
Aquinas is here trying to both defend the Tradition and also affirm what he sees as the truth in Manicheanism, which often quoted from biblical passages, as in objection 1:
It would seem that a man ought not to love his body out of charity. For we do not love one with whom we are unwilling to associate. But those who have charity shun the society of the body, according to Rom vii. 24: Who shall deliver me from teh body of this death? and Philip. i. 23: Having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. Therefore our bodies are not to be loved out of charity. (ST II-II.25.5.obj.1)
In his response to this objection, Aquinas again draws from his synthetically designed distinction.
The Apostle did not shrink from the society of his body, as regards the nature of the body, in fact in this respect he was loth to be deprived thereof, according to 2 Cor v. 4: We would not be unclothed, but clothed over. He did, however, wish to escape from the taint of concupiscence, which remains in the body, and from the corruption of the body which weighs down the soul, so as to hinder it from seeing God. Hence he says expressly: From the body of this death. (ST II-II.25.5.ad.1)
Conclusion
Are we to loathe the body or to love it? Aquinas says, in a word: both (but in different senses). This way of approaching theology might have its misfortunes (such as technical language and “death by a thousand distinctions”), but it has even more to recommend it. By such a synthetic approach, Aquinas has done what so desperately needs imitating in the church today. He fails to allow heat to block out light. Instead of letting his zeal polarize truth claims by defending the Christian Tradition as “true” and attacking every other proposition that seems to contradict it as absolutely “false” or “unbiblical,” he was instead careful to affirm all truth he could see in the opposing positions set against his Tradition.
In doing so, he let as much light in as possible while maintaining the humility necessary in defending a Tradition. If Thomas were to have been so zealous for the Tradition that he failed to look for the truth in other Traditions (which sometimes involved acknowledgment and affirmation of propositions that seemed to be contrary to it), his theological vision would have been myopic and his Summa would not have the synthetic brilliancy that gives it a great deal of its luster and theological durability.
Protestants especially could learn something from Aquinas’s method of synthesis. It is not by accident that the Catholic Tradition (with Thomas as their leading theologian) has been considered the “both/and” tradition, and Protestants have been considered more of an “either/or” tradition (with Luther and Calvin as the leading theologians). I would consider Thomas’s method especially resourceful for ecumenical dialogue, which requires a similar kind of humility that we find Aquinas striving for in his Summa.
::: What do Catholics Mean by “Infusion”? ::: Thomas Aquinas
Catholics often speak of the “infusion” of grace. Protestants are often allergic to this language, perceiving it to be a threat to the legal status of our justification. But in fact, Protestants also believe in the “infusion” of grace, and some Protestant theologians (read: the brightest ones) are not shy to speak this way (e.g. Jonathan Edwards).
What do Catholics mean when they speak of “infusion”? That’s like asking what Protestants mean when they speak of God’s “giving” grace; it all depends on which Protestant you talk to; there are likely ten different answers for every ten theologians answering. However, a certain continuity can easily be found in the Catholic ways of speaking about “infusion” just as a certain continuity can be found in Protestants who talk about “giving [of grace].”
No theologian influences Catholic ways of theological language more, probably, than St. Thomas Aquinas. What does Aquinas mean when he speaks of “infusion”? For example, Aquinas believes that charity (love for God) is a divine gift of the Holy Spirit that is “infused” into us. What does he mean? Here is a few small excerpts from his writings I believe partly illuminate an answer to this question.
[Charity] is not founded principally on the virtue of a man, but on the goodness of God. ST II-II.23.3.ad.1
Charity is superior to the soul, in as much as it is a participation of the Holy Ghost. ST II-II.23.3.ad.3
The infusion of charity denotes a change to the state of having charity from the state of not having it, so that something must needs come which was not there before. On the other hand, the increase of charity denotes a change to more having from less having, so that there is need, not for anything to be there that was not there before, but for something to be more there that previously was less there. This is what God does when He increases charity, that is He makes it to have a greater hold on the soul, and the likeness of the Holy Ghost to be more perfectly participated by the soul. ST II-II.24.5.ad.3
Here Aquinas distinguishes between infusion and increase. God infuses charity instantaneously (from not having to having is like from not-pregnant to pregnant), and this is different from our increase in charity. Our increase in charity does have a similarity to infusion, however, for according to the Doctor, God is the one who works both in us.
Thomas Aquinas on Theological Virtues: Summa Theologica
I have herein summarized and quoted from articles 1-4 of question 62 “Of the Theological Virtues” in the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. This time I have organized my summaries more in tune with how Aquinas wrote them: 1) the sed contra (some authoritative statement Aquinas usually wishes to defend), 2) the respondeo (Thomas’s way of explaining things) and 3) adversus (Thomas’s responses to various objections). I begin, however, with IN SUM (my summary of Aquinas’s article). All quotations from the Summa are taken from the English Translation, Summa Theologica, trans. the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols., rev. ed. 1948; repr., Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1981.
There Are Theological Virtues (ST I-II.62.1)
IN SUM: Faith, hope and love are properly called theological because: 1) they are not attainable by a human’s natural capacities; 2) they are only attainable through a certain participation in God’s nature; 3) they are infused by God and direct a person sufficiently toward God as the object of supernatural happiness; 4) they are known only through Divine revelation. They are properly called virtues because they are dispositions to that which is according to nature, even if this nature is only attainted through a certain participation in God’s nature.[1]
sed contra. The Divine Law has precepts about the acts of faith, hope and love; the precepts of the Divine Law concern virtue. Therefore, faith, hope, and charity are virtues directing us to God. Therefore they are theological virtues.
respondeo. There is a kind of happiness proportionate to human nature that can be obtained by a person’s natural principles. There is also a happiness “surpassing man’s nature, and which man can obtain by the power of God alone, by a kind of participation of the Godhead, about which it is written (2 Pt 1:4) that by Christ we are made partakers of the Divine Nature” (ST I-II.62.1). Natural principles will not suffice for this latter kind of happiness; God must give “additional principles, whereby he may be directed to supernatural happiness.” These principles are called theological virtues both because they are “infused in us by God alone” and because they direct us “aright” to God as end (i.e. God is their object). Furthermore, they are also called theological because they are only known through Divine revelation.
adversus. A thing may posses something by nature in two ways: 1) by it’s essential nature and 2) by participation. Thus the theological virtue can properly be called “virtues” since they are dispositions of perfect things to that which is best, namely, that which is according to nature, as the Philosopher says. For theological virtues are “proportionate to man in respect of the Nature of which he is made a partaker.” (ST I-II.62.ad.1)
These are called Divine virtues not because God is made virtuous by them, but because God makes us virtues by them and directs us to Himself. (ST I-II.62.ad.2)
Although man is directed to his first beginning and last end by his nature—his reason and will—these natural principles only allow man to attain to happiness in proportion to his nature; they are not sufficiently directed to God in so far as He is the object of supernatural happiness. (ST I-II.62.ad.3)
Theological Virtues are Distinct from Intellectual and Moral Virtues (ST I-II.62.2)
IN SUM: Theological virtues are distinct from moral and intellectual virtues because habits are distinguished by their objects and because whatever surpasses a human’s natural capacities is distinct from that which is attainable according to human nature alone.
sed contra. Whatever surpasses human nature is distinct from whatever is according to that nature.
respondeo. Habits are distinguished by their objects and the object of theological virtues is God Himself, an end that surpasses the knowledge of [unaided] human reason. Moral and intellectual virtues are comprehensible to [unaided] human reason. Therefore the theological virtues are distinct from moral or intellectual virtues.
adversus. Although wisdom is thought to be an intellectual virtue that directs humans to God, wisdom as defined by the Philosopher only considers Divine things insofar as “they are open to the research of human reason. Theological virtue, on the other hand, is about those same things so far as they surpass human reason” (ST I-II.62.2.ad.2).
Augustine defines the cardinal virtues as “the order of love” (ST I-II.62.2.ob.3). If Augustine is to be understood as referring to love “commonly so called, then each virtue is stated to be the order of love, in so far as each cardinal virtue requires ordinate emotions; and love is the root and cause of every emotion, as stated above” (Ibid.). If Augustine is referring to the love of charity, we must take him to mean that “all other virtues depend on charity is some way” (Ibid.). In either case, Augustine does not mean “every other virtue is charity essentially” (Ibid.).
“Though charity is love, yet love is not always charity” (ST I-II.62.2.ad.3).
Faith, Hope, and Charity are Fittingly Reckoned as Theological Virtues (ST I-II.62.3)
IN SUM: Virtues direct a person to an end either with respect to human reason or human will. Faith directs the human intellect to God and hope and charity direct the human will to God. Thus they are fittingly seen as theological virtues and they direct humans “in the same way” as the other virtues.
sed contra. “The Apostle says (1 Cor. Xiii. 13): Now there remain faith, hope, charity, these three.”
respondeo. Theological virtues direct man “in the same way” the other virtues direct man—namely, “in respect of his reason” and “through the rectitude of the will which tends naturally to good as defined by reason” (ST I-II.62.3). First the intellect receives supernatural principles held by a Divine light; these we call “the articles of faith.” Secondly, “the will is directed to this end, both as to the movement of intention … [and this belongs to] hope, and as to a certain spiritual union, whereby the will is, so to speak, transformed into that end—and this belongs to charity” (Ibid.).
adversus. Faith and hope are imperfect inasmuch as “faith is of things unseen, and hope, of things not possessed” and yet “faith and hope in things which are above the capacity of human nature surpass all virtue that is in proportion to man, according to 1 Cor i. 25)” (ST I-II.62.3.ad.2).
There are three theological virtues instead of just two. One might think there need only be one for the intellect and another for the will. However, “two things pertain to the appetite, [namely] movement to the end, and conformity with the end by means of love.” Therefore, with respect to the theological virtues we have one virtue for the intellect (faith) and two for the appetite (hope and charity). (ST I-II.62.3.ad.3).
In the Order of Generation, Faith precedes Hope and Charity (ST I-II.62.4)
IN SUM: With respect to the generation of acts, a person cannot hope in or love something unless she first apprehends it by either the senses or the intellect. Therefore faith, through which a person perceives the supernatural end, must precede hope and love. Nevertheless, it is true that in the order of perfection, charity always precedes faith and hope because faith and hope are “quickened” by charity and thereby receive their perfection as virtues.
sed contra. “The Apostle enumerates them thus (1 Cor. xiii. 13): Now there remain faith, hope, charity.”
respondeo. There is the order of generation and the order of perfection.
In a subject faith must precede hope, and hope charity with respect to their acts (“because habits are all infused together”), “for the movement of the appetite cannot tend to anything, either by hoping or loving, unless that thing be apprehended by the sense or by the intellect” (ST I-II.62.4). By faith the intellect apprehends the object of hope and charity, so it comes first. Likewise a person loves something only if he apprehends it as his good. If a person hopes to obtain this good through another person “for the very reason that a man hopes in someone, he proceeds to love him: so that in the order of generation, hope recedes charity as regards their respective acts” (Ibid.).
“But in order of perfection, charity precedes faith and hope: Because both faith and hope are quickened by charity, and received from charity their full complement as virtues. For thus charity is the mother and the root of all the virtues, inasmuch as it is the form of them all, as we shall state further on” (Ibid.).
“Charity is the mother and the root of all the virtues” (ST I-II.62.4).
adversus. When Augustine says that after believing and loving and doing good works, a person “ends in hoping” (ST I-II.62.4.ob.2), he is referring to hope in the meriting of eternal life, a hope already “quickened by and following charity” (ST I-II.62.4.ad.2).
Love is the principle of all emotions, and hope is a kind of emotion since it is a passion. Thus it might seem that charity, which is love, precedes hope. However, hope can regard its principle object (the good hoped for) or it can regard “the person from whom a man hopes to be able to obtain some good” (ST I-II.62.4.ad.3). With respect to the principle object (the good hoped for) love always precedes hope: “for good is never hoped for unless it be desired and loved” (Ibid.). With respect to the person one hopes in, hope precedes love because it is by reason of hope the person is loved and “from the fact that he loves him, he then hopes all the more in him” (Ibid.). Thus “hope is increased by love” (Ibid.).
[1] This last point is the easiest to call into question: Is Aquinas saying the theological virtues fit Aristotle’s definition because by participation in God’s nature, the Divine nature becomes a part of human nature via participation? If not, he seems to be defining virtues differently from Aristotle by equivocating on the word “nature.” Aristotle did not intend by this word anything other than human nature.
Dumitru Staniloae on The Fall :: Eastern Orthodox Theology
Staniloae, Dumitru. The Experience of God, Vol 1: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God. Reprint, Brookline, Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998.
The Fall
“Goodness, friendship, noble aspirations, the hope for the immortality of the person—all these have remained like the rays of a sun that can never be totally covered over by the fleeting and ultimately rather insubstantial clouds of evil” — Dumitru Staniloae
“God’s grace has been withdrawn … the image of God in man has been weakened. Yet, this image in the human being has not been destroyed totally.” — Dumitru Staniloae
The Primordial State
Staniloae refers to the primordial state of the human. During the primordial state man, after first being created, had to choose to obey God and thereby progress toward deification, or else regress into a state of spiritual weakness. The primordial state of man was the initial state of our first created parents. During this state our first parents were innocent, yet during this time of innocence it was incumbent upon them to choose between good and evil. It appears, then, from Staniloae’s description, that during this primordial state, humans were neutral, having chosen neither good nor evil. Yet neutrality could not last forever, because choosing was inevitable. God breathed “spirit” into man that included a certain “potency” to act by free will (178).
The Tree of Knowledge
A great deal of this chapter revolves around interpreting the meaning of the trees in the Genesis story, especially the forbidden tree, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the creation account (175). Staniloae calls the latter the “tree of consciousness” (178). The Genesis account reads:
The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. … Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying “From any tree of the garden you man eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die. Then the Lord God said, “it is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” –Genesis 2:7-9, 15-18 (NASB)
What is this tree of knowledge? A significant portion of Staniloae’s chapter on the Fall consists of a recounting the interpretation of the Fathers, interweaved with his own comments. It is therefore difficult at times to discern whether Staniloae is summarizing the fathers or adding his own color commentary on the patristic tradition.
St. Maximus the Confessor understood the forbidden tree to represent “the creation of visible things” (175). The dual imagery underscores the dual power of creation—it can either nourish the mind if used for spiritual purposes, or become a teacher of passions by enticing the senses. But if it had such great possibilities for good, why did God forbid it? According to St. Maximus, God desired simply to “postpone” man’s partaking of it until he was able to commune with it enough in grace to habituate himself into a spiritual state where his mind and senses could be “transfigured” and his will free from the passions, a state of deification. Given Staniloae’s quotation of St. Maximus’ interpretation, however, it is hard to understand how God could have postponed his partaking of the visible world on the one hand, while in the mean time Adam “communed” with it by grace. In other words, how is communing with the visible world itself not a “partaking” of the visible world? This same question could be raised of every other interpretation that sees the forbidden tree as the visible world. How could God “postpone” a physical creatures partaking of the physical world?
Nicetas Stethatos thought the tree of knowledge was “sensation applied to the sensible world or to the body” (176). For Stethatos, the danger of becoming unspiritual is avoided so long as man’s senses were guided by the mind. Thus, God wanted his partaking of the tree delayed long enough for man’s faculties to come under the direction of a mind that had become spiritual.
St. Gregory Palamas is “even more precise” according to Staniloae. God wanted to protect the first humans from things pleasant to the senses because they were volitionally vulnerable, “easily displaced toward good or its opposite” (176).
Offering a complementary interpretation of both trees in the Genesis account (the forbidden tree and the tree of life), Gregory of Nyssa understood the tree of life as every experience that advances man toward good, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil as representing every experience that leads man astray by causing him to believe something evil is actually good (179). The forbidden tree is a “mixed tree,” according to Gregory of Nyssa, because in and of itself creation is not evil. Only when creation is crassly enjoyed only by the senses does the human person become passionately inflamed for sensible beauty and pleasure (180). The tree is “mixed,” in other words, because it is a good experienced in a bad way when encountered by the sense-dominated human. It is also mixed because evil always shrouds its true nature by cloaking itself in “some good by which it lures those who are deceived into desiring it” (180). It makes evil seem good by virtue of some good aspect, for nothing is evil in an absolute sense, according to Gregory of Nyssa, but has some good aspect to recommend it (180).
Because the human still has “an indelible remnant of the good within himself,” he “must deceive himself by thinking that the sin he is committing has some justification through good” (181). Yet such justification forces the human to become dishonest with his own conscience and therefore willingly deceived (181). This dishonest justification Staniloae calls “a flimsy bridge” that allows evil to get into a person.
According to Staniloae, evil offers an initial pleasure that has subtle but destructive consequences. This initial pleasure, however, is enough to entice people to become willingly deceived. Evil entices all on its own without the devil, yet the devil’s role is to calm the human soul about the inevitable consequences of evil—“You surely will not die! … You will be like God” (Gen 3:4-5, NASB).
In Staniloae’s synthetic summary, the Fathers understood the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge” as referring to “one and the same world” (179).
Viewed through a mind moved by spirit, that world is the tree of life that puts us in relationship with God; but viewed and made use of through a consciousness that has been detached from the mind moved by spirit, it represents the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which severs man from God. (179).
The tree of life and the tree of knowledge are located at the “same central point” (189).
The meaning might be that one and the same world, when grasped exclusively by means of the senses and by reason placed at the service of the senses, is the source of the good that is not good; whereas, when grasped in its real significance by a reason that sees more deeply and instead places the senses in its own service, it becomes a source of life. (189).
St. Maximus the Confessor understood the forbidden tree to represent “the creation of visible things,” but if this is the interpretation, why would St. Maximus (or any other Father) say that God wanted to “postpone” the forbidden tree?
Causes of the Fall
St. Basil the Great also spoke of the primordial state and emphasized that mankind was not created “intrinsically evil,” but rather chose evil. God created man with free will, for he wanted the human to be strengthened in good “through his own cooperation,” rather than of necessity (177). Staniloae infers that the primordial state must have been abrupt. It didn’t have to be that way, however. If our first parents were simply obedient over a period of time, “they would have begun to be habituated to good” (176). Even then, however, the Fall would not have been impossible, but only “more difficult” (176).
It is important to remember that the human choice of evil was not brought about by any necessity, but by imprudence and lack of effort on the part of the human. Basil blamed the human’s first choice of evil largely on what he called aboulia [lack of wisdom or laziness of the will]. Human complacency was caused by a kind of anthropological spoil: humans had everything readily available to them without first growing spiritually by their efforts to win them. Our first parents preferred to choose the easy enjoyments that required little effort, rather than putting forth the effort to grasp the deeper spiritual enjoyments of the good. They were lazy. Staniloae’s summary here of Basil implies that humans failed to properly prioritize their enjoyments by preferring what was effortlessly at hand over the pursuit of a deeper and deeper enjoyment of the good, an enjoyment that would grow their spiritual strength. As Basil put it, they placed a full belly above spiritual enjoyments. This choice for evil was not of necessity, but rooted in aboulia [lack of wisdom or laziness of the will].
Results of the Fall
Before sin, “no separation existed between creation and the world of the divine energies” (187). Through sin, man was severed from God and introduced into “a state of sin” (192). The Spirit has “withdrawn both from the world and from the human person” (186). We might call this a pneumatological abandonment or divine withdrawal. Sickness and death are something like organic consequences to the withdrawal of the Spirit (191). Corruption of nature and death are brought about by “the impoverishment of the spirit” (197). Thus, the spiritual tragedy of the Fall (moral evil) and the material tragedy of the Fall (evils associated with natural evil) go hand in hand.
As a result of choosing evil the human being experienced interior detachment from God, affirming his autonomy to do as he wishes. This also results in the human’s “selfish confinement within himself” whereby he, presuming to become his own lord, in reality became his own slave (178-179). Staniloae here offers a peculiar way to think about human freedom:
The human person is free only if he is free also from himself for the sake of others, in love, and if he is free for God who is the source of freedom because he is the source of love. (179)
This change is a change of “motion.” Had Adam not sinned but obeyed God, he would have progressed in an ever-increasing motion towards love for God and neighbor where creation would become deified by being “overwhelmed by the divine Spirit” (185). This might be called a pneumatic momentum rooted in the movement of the Spirit. Instead, however, when our first parents chose evil, they set in motion a “decomposition” of creation (185). We might call this a hamartiological momentum rooted in the movement of man’s will toward sin and therefore away from God. Such a destructive momentum would only be reversed by the second Adam, Christ Jesus. Thus, “The return of the human being to communion with God delivers him from eternal death” (187).
As a result of the Fall, humans are now plagued with teleological opacity and epistemological reduction. They have a hard time seeing the ultimate meaning of existence, and their “restricted image of the world” leads to a “restricted knowledge,” for the human person becomes familiar exclusively with the bodily and sensible enjoyments of the world and therefore views the visible world as an “ultimate object possessed of no transparence or mystery that transcends it” (184). This teleological opacity “veils what is most essential in creation” and obtains only a “narrowly rational knowledge of nature and of his fellow humans” (184, 188). This is an epistemological perversion in which man comes to think of the world in almost “exclusively rational” terms (188).
Furthermore, man reduces the world to being “an object of the lower appetites” (191). This tragic reductionism is a basic way of understanding the nature of sin and the state of mankind after the Fall. Living under these conditions is a life lived in a “pseudo-reality” (191). Staniloae links this pseudo-reality with the doctrine of hell. “According to the Christian faith,” claims Staniloae, “the sinners in hell exist in the darkness that lies outside the real world” (190). The sinner becomes so obsessed with herself that she forgets about the rest of the world.
In the state of sin our very being can advance to such a condition of self-centeredness that it almost no longer knows whether creation really exists. Eternal death is the rendering of this state permanent (192).
Not only do humans become alienated from others and the world, but also from themselves:
The conscious creature could no longer understand even himself apart from his blind impulse toward biological satisfactions and began to look upon the spirit within himself as a curiosity, something disruptive of life and contrary to nature, an unnatural excrescence he did not have to take much into account. (198)
Through sin the soul becomes possessed by the lower passions and looses its sensitivity of conscience and also looses its transparency before God and others.
Staniloae is determined to make sure his readers understand that although death and corruption of nature are results of sin, they are not punishments from God. Suffering and death were “in no way” punishments from God to Adam (201).
Adam’s slavery is the natural consequence of his being vanquished; his suffering is the physiological result of the trauma he himself sustained when he turned aside from his path, and death follows upon alienation from God. To regard God as the cause of suffering and death is an essential error, a real affront offered to him. (201).
He considers such a notion “heretical” for it strips the cross of its glorious ring of victory and turns it into “a simple instrument of suffering and of the placating of God’s ‘wrath’” (202). “Neither corruptibility nor death, therefore, are punishments from God; they are instead consequences of our alienation from the source of life” (202). But it does seem, however, that our alienation from the source of life was divinely initiated or results from divine causality because of sin: “God’s grace has been withdrawn” (204). God’s chooses to withdraw his grace because of sin.
The Good in Man and in the World
It is also important that one notice that the Fathers attempted to maintain a certain kind of balance in their post-Fall anthropological outlook, seeing the human as neither fundamentally bad nor wholly good, but in a state of ambivalence. Staniloae stresses that the imago Dei [image of God] was overshadowed by sin, but not “totally erased” (200 cf. 204).
By himself the human person will certainly not be able to conquer the evil that was introduced within him, but neither will the evil do away entirely with the good in the human person. The human person will remain in an ambivalent state. (182).
This state of ambivalence could be thought of as a contradiction of anthropological tendencies. On the one hand, because man is created as spiritual, there is still a natural tendency toward good which evil must deceptively suppress. On the other hand, humans have an opposite tendency toward evil.
Although the world, along with its sensible pleasures, is seen myopically from a sensible perspective, nevertheless, God has ordered creation in such a way that it is capable of being the medium through which he speaks to human persons and initiates a “dialogue” between God and man designed to help man see the higher purpose of the visible world, thereby breaking out of his deficient worldview and uniting reason with love. Through their own efforts and their link with the divine energy, a minority of human beings can even overcome “natural causality itself” (186).
Further complementing this point, St. Basil the Great offers another perspective on the Fall of humanity that Staniloae argues is complementary to St. Gregory of Nyssa’s. Basil stressed that although the fall itself is evil, it brings about good, for evil awakened our first parents to repentance and led them to take action in curbing their fleshly impulses (182). God placed within man the “impulse” to fight against Satan (Gen 3:15). Staniloae also argues that work was given to man as a tool for healing (195). Suffering helps the spiritual development of man “to an even greater extent” (195).
Although man is no longer “completely” in the imago dei due to dark shadow cast by sin, “goodness, friendship, noble aspirations, the hope for the immortality of the person—all these have remained like the rays of a sun that can never be totally covered over by the fleeting and ultimately rather insubstantial clouds of evil” (200). Thus, in spite of the Fall, it appears that Staniloae has a rather optimistic view of human possibilities and considers the evil in the world relatively “insubstantial.” Even suffering and death has become God’s divine pedagogy to grow the spirit of man (202-203). “They are not meant to last forever, but God changes their role so that they become means of healing evil” (202). Staniloae’s comments here make more clear why Eastern theology has always tended to hold open the possibility for inevitable universal salvation.
Knowledge of the Good and Human Communion
There is a heavy polemic on intellectual autonomy and individualism in Staniloae’s discussion of the good. Essentially, Adam wanted to decide for himself what was the good. We might call this a tragic epistemological hubris of autonomy that severed the harmony between man and God by a breach of trust. The good was then accommodated to selfish and sinful interests and pleasures rather than being pursued in loving relationship with others. This propels the human into immense sadness rather than fulfilling her being. “In communion evil is overcome, for communion is a fulfillment of being” (193).
The good, then, has to do with a continual exercise of man’s responsibility toward his fellow humans (193). “Christian faith says that if I take my orientation from my reason only when I am deciding what is good for the other and for myself, then I am using my reason arrogantly and selfishly and am departing from both the true and the good” (193). Love is the source of good and love alone serves what is genuinely good. “The isolated decision made according to a rational norm established by the individual cannot do this,” warns Staniloae (194). In other words, Staniloae sees a connection between love and consulting the reason of others.
I must consult his reason also, for each one sets out from different concrete circumstances and needs, and in any case, the ultimate good is brought to light through dialogue with the other. … I must submit self-centered reason to the good, or to the higher reason found in the communion that grows from love. I must submit reason to love. (194)
The good also consists in meeting one’s duties and responsibilities to nature, not just looking at nature as an object to use for profit. The latter is a “good of a lower kind, fleshly and egoistic” (194). We also must be careful not to base our morality upon the way nature is, for “the good is what ought to be done, not simply what is” (195, italics added). “The good comes to be known only in loving dialogue with other persons, in the curbing of selfishness and pride” (195). In a subject who has become good, the good radiates outwards as a power. It is manifested as love for other persons. But the good shines forth most brightly from the “supreme Personal reality” (195). Through love of God a human becomes like God and humbles himself to love others and consult their reason rather than relying on his isolated insight.
Dumitru Staniloae on Natural Revelation :: Eastern Orthodox Theology
Staniloae, Dumitru. The Experience of God, Vol 1: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God. Reprint, Brookline, Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998.
Natural Revelation
“Meanings are real and man cannot live without them”
–Dumitru Staniloae
“The Orthodox Church makes no separation between natural and supernatural revelation.”
–Dumitru Staniloae
Introduction
Dumitru Staniloae’s Neo-Patristic approach to theology is exemplified in his first chapter on natural revelation. He basically attempts to explore and elucidate what he understands to be the position of St. Maximus. Maximus believed that supernatural/biblical revelation was not essentially different than natural revelation, but only embodied it in historical persons and actions. Staniloae’s task is to explain what he understands this position to entail, and explain the facets of its truth. Ultimately, Staniloae appears to soften Maximus’s stark way of putting it. “This affirmation of Maximos must probably be taken more in the sense that the two revelations are not divorced from one another. Supernatural revelation unfolds and brings forth its fruit within the framework of natural revelation” (1). Confirming this interpretation of Staniloae, in his chapter on Supernatural Revelation, he concedes that without the light of supernatural revelation to accompany natural revelation, “serious obscurities of natural faith in God have occurred” (17).
In his patristic exegesis on natural revelation, although Staniloae quotes most often from St. Maximus, he also quotes from other Fathers of the church. For example, to illustrate St. Maximus’s point that man was made for God as his beginning and goal, he quotes from St. Augustine, who says “Inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te [our heart is restless until it rests in you]” (13). He also quotes Saint Isaak the Syrian who says “faith is higher than knowledge” (13).
Staniloae’s emphasis throughout his treatment of natural revelation is in stark contrast to Protestant theologies that tend to jealously guard a sharp distinction between natural and supernatural revelation while downplaying the former as insufficient for salvation. The point of this comparison is usually to show that natural revelation does not have the same value as supernatural revelation. Maximus said just the opposite. Therefore, Staniloae’s emphasis is on all the ways natural revelation and supernatural revelation overlap and have the same conclusion—that God is our ultimate end, and union with God is our ultimate meaning. Yet in spite of this, Staniloae still concedes that “faith based on natural revelation must be completed by the faith granted us through supernatural revelation” (13). Therefore, although the emphasis in his treatment of natural revelation is very un-Protestant, many of the affirmations of his chapter are nevertheless compatible with Protestant (and Catholic) beliefs about natural revelation.
Summary
The content of natural revelation has to do with man and the cosmos. Staniloae sees the cosmos as rational, and therefore “destined to be known” by man (2). This rational cosmos is understood to be the product of a rational creator being that also sustains its being. The cosmos was created precisely in order that man might come to know it, and that God might carry on a dialogue with man “through its mediation. This fact constitutes the content of natural revelation” (2). It is through natural revelation that God “makes himself known by the very fact that he created the world and man, and stamped on them certain meanings” (12). For Staniloae, natural revelation goes beyond a mere idea of a powerful creator because one of the “meanings” of natural revelation is that “the world has its highest point in the human person who moves toward union with supreme Person as towards his final goal” (12).
There is a certain mutual transformation between the cosmos and man, although the cosmos plays more of a passive role. By intentionally transforming the world to our own advantage, man also transforms himself. The more we know the world, the more we understand ourselves. Yet the world never comes to a point of consciousness of itself—only man. This means the world was created for man, not man for the world.
The inferior chemical, mineral, and organic levels of existence, although they have a rationality, have no purpose within themselves. Their purpose consists in constituting the material condition of man’s existence, and they have no consciousness of this goal of theirs. Within man, however, the order of certain conscious goals is disclosed. … He can project, like a great arch over them all, an ultimate and supreme meaning to existence. In contrast with the levels below him, man does not fulfil the goal of his own existence by serving another level above himself, for in the world no such level as this exists. (5)
The world is intended to be “humanized” and bear man’s “stamp” everywhere (4). If death is the definitive end of a human being, it would appear to Staniloae that humans would only be a “means within an unconscious process of nature” (7). Unless man is seen as the “final eternal purpose” of the cosmos, the world would seem “in its monotony, absurd” (6, 4, italics added). “Human life ended definitively by death destroys any meaning and, therefore, any value of the rationality existing in the world and, indeed, of the world itself” (10).
If man is the purpose of the cosmos, what is the purpose of man? For Staniloae, human consciousness implies a “search for the meaning of our existence,” and the human will desires to live forever (5). We desire most deeply to love and be loved, and we do not wish our quest for this to ever come to an end. These anthropological facets testify to the ultimate teleological function of man—to be in loving relation with an infinite, eternal, conscious Person, or better yet, “a communion of Persons” (6). This kind of relationship fulfills man’s deepest meanings because it provides “the means of an infinite progress in love and knowledge” (6). Man’s meaning must be higher than the monotonous repetition found in nature. “We do not aspire to being swallowed up within some impersonal plan which lies, for a while, at our limited disposal but only so that afterwards we may disappear into it” (8).
Our cruelest grief is the lack of meaning, that is, the lack of an eternal meaning to our life and deeds. The necessity of this meaning is intimately connected to our being. The dogmas of faith respond to this necessity that our being have some sense. Thus they affirm the complete rationality of existence. (10)
Although some would say this order of meanings is merely the product of the human psyche, Staniloae argues that “this order imposes itself on us without our willing it,” instilling these aspirations within us. Without these meanings, the universe is absurd and the rationality of the universe, irrational (11). Without a rationality higher than the rationality of the cosmos, Staniloae argues, rationality itself has no purpose (11).
Much like man is aware of the orders of meaning in the world, so God is aware of “the meaning of existence as a whole” (9). God is the “supreme Personal reality” (9). God created man as a free and conscious person, and does not suppress these facets of man, but rather fosters them. The communion between the human person and this supreme Person, therefore, must be something that still preserves the freedom of the human person.
Only when the rationality of the universe is considered to have its source in a rational person who “makes it serve an eternal dialogue of love with other persons” does rationality acquire its “full meaning” (11). Only through this communion (which is characterized by happiness) can a person’s ultimate “meaning” be “fulfilled,” and this is how deification takes place (11). Man “participates immediately in everything God possess” while nevertheless remaining a creature (11-12). This is a “meaning towards which our being tends” (12). Love between two persons requires that each move toward the other. Thus, in this communion of love between God and man, man moves toward God and God also “descends to be with us” (12). This “development” is eternal, in accord with man’s aspirations (12).
Staniloae makes a distinction between natural revelation and science:
But the meanings of existence, including its final sense, however evident they seem, do not compel the recognition of science in the way that natural phenomena do, for the latter occur in the same fashion repeatedly and can be subjected to experimentation. That is why the firm acceptance of these meaning has the character of faith. (13).
There is a certain paradox here. On the one hand, this is natural revelation that is “self evident,” yet on the other hand, it must be accepted by the human will. Acceptance of the truths of natural revelation, then, presupposes faith (13). The paradox lies in the fact that although acceptance of them depends on an act of faith, the truths themselves are self evident. This is why Saint Isaak the Syrian says “faith is higher than knowledge,” because it involves the domain of human freedom and human spirit.
Orthodox Reflections on Baptism and Grace: A Review of Timothy Ware’s Article
Ware, Timothy. “The Sacrament of Baptism and the Ascetic Life in the Teaching of Mark the Monk.” Studia Patristica 10 (1970), 441—452. You can view this review in PDF format here. (the PDF format allows me to use Greek fonts)
Ware begins his article by lamenting that while sacraments are officially acknowledged as important, they are scarcely treated in modern works on spirituality, or if they are, the sacrament of the Eucharist gets the spotlight while baptism gets only a “passing mention” (441). In contrast, St. Mark the Monk’s theology was dominated by the sacrament of baptism. Forever influencing Orthodoxy, this early ascetic writer became standard reading for the eastern monastic tradition (441, 451). Ware takes a close look at Mark’s doctrine of baptism and compares it to teachings of the Messalians, St. Macarius of Egypt, Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Augustine of Hippo. He highlights two important aspects to St. Mark’s doctrine of baptism: 1) the completeness of baptism, 2) the stages of baptismal grace. His comparison with the teachings of others demonstrates that the Fathers agree with St. Mark that baptismal grace was in some sense complete, but they did not follow Mark’s notion of completeness in which he taught that baptismal grace caused the termination of all sin in the baptized. This was thought to be removed only through growth in the virtues or “ascetic struggles.”
St. Mark’s Doctrine of Baptism
The Completeness of Baptism
First, for St. Mark, baptism is complete or perfect. Not even one’s growth in holiness—what St. Mark calls ascetic struggles—can add anything to the completeness of grace we receive at baptism (442). Such growth would only be a deeper and deeper revelation or manifestation of the grace we received at baptism.
In delineating the completeness of baptismal grace, St. Mark taught that baptism confers purification, liberty, and the divine indwelling. Through purification, baptism cleanses man completely from all sin—original, actual, and personal. There is no “residue” from the sin of Adam for the baptized (443). The liberty that baptism confers is freedom from the inherited inclination towards evil that causes persons to be dominated by their disgraceful passions. This baptismal liberation restores the “fullness and primal integrity of … free will” (443). The baptized can still, however, be “assaulted” by the devil, but this assault is not itself sinful but “simply an inevitable consequence of the fact that man is endowed with free will” (444). Whereas St. Augustine taught that baptism cleansed from the guilt of sin but not all of its evil effects, St. Mark teaches a comprehensive cleansing from both.
The divine indwelling is perhaps the key to understanding why Mark desires to teach that baptismal grace is complete. In baptism, the person baptized gets God. More specifically, Christ and the Holy Spirit descend into the innermost reality of the heart of the baptized (444). If baptismal grace includes God himself—how can anyone add to that?
The Stages of Baptismal Grace
If one receives the completeness of grace at baptism, how would St. Mark account for the various levels of growth in the faith of those who are baptized? Answering this question brings us to St. Mark’s distinction between grace present mystically or secretly and grace experienced clearly or actively. The former is a “seed of perfection” planted within us at our baptism, the latter is the growth of this seed. It is up to the recipient of baptismal grace to cause this seed to grow (445). If the baptized person fails to become more and more aware of her baptismal grace and make the seed of perfection grow, the Spirit will still remain present, but she will not “feel His presence nor become consciously aware of His activity” (445). If the baptized person does not obey the commandments, she also pollutes her baptismal cleansing (446). As Mark puts it: “Holy baptism is perfect, but it does not make perfect him who does not perform the commandments … Faith consists not only in being baptized into Christ but also in performing His commandments” (446).
According to Ware, Mark emphatically denies that anyone could ever merit baptismal grace—baptismal regeneration is a free gift. Repayment is impossible. God does, however, expect us to be fellow-workers with Him, and through such work the baptized “gradually discover the true implications of baptism” (446). The fullness of grace is received in baptism, but the full revelation of that grace awaits the experience of the baptized. One grows in his experience and revelation of grace inasmuch as he keeps the commandments. Also, Mark considers obedience to be a part of faith. He could say things like, “believe sincerely in Him by means of all the commandments” or “faith consists not only in being baptized into Christ but also in performing His commandments” (446, italics added). One also gains assurance that he has received baptismal grace “according to his fulfillment of the commandments” (446).
The peak of the Christian life, then, is not so much when one receives the fullness of grace in baptism. Rather, it is when the baptized come to a conscious experience or immediate awareness or fuller revelation of that grace. “The reality of grace is not simply coterminous with the conscious experience of grace” (447). According to Mark the Monk, no matter how much a Christian fails to experience grace or obey the commandments one’s baptismal consecration could never be completely lost (450).
Comparing St. Mark to Others
There is a strong anti-Messalian polemic at work in Mark’s work De baptismo. The Messalians apparently held that sin is still active after baptism; baptism “profits nothing,” and only ascetic struggles can gradually uproot sin (442). St. Mark’s doctrine is therefore in most obvious contrast to the Messalian position. It is also in contrast to the position of St. Augustine, who held that although baptism removes the guilt of sin, it did not free one from all the effects of sin (444). Anything less than a comprehensive cleansing of sin would have been, for St. Mark, an infringement upon the completeness of baptism.
The point of agreement between St. Mark and the Messalian position is this: the intention of grace (or the “climax of the Christian life”) is for the Christian to reach a conscious experience of grace through obedience to the commandments (447). St. Mark even uses certain phrases associated with the Messalians that Ware argues indicate that he was not wholly unsympathetic to the Messalians’ perspective. Yet the Messalians equated the experience of grace with grace itself, whereas St. Mark argued that the fullness of grace exists in the baptized whether they ever come to a full experience of it or not. This places St. Mark “midway between the ‘mystical materialism’ of the Messalians and the ‘intellectualism’ of Evagrius” (447).
Macarius of Egypt in the Macarian Homilies can also be contrasted with St. Mark’s position, although Ware highlights some similarities as well. The Macarian Homilies have “Messalian affinities” according to Ware, and teach that the Adamic “veil of the passions” is still operative after baptism (449). Baptism certainly does not have the central role in the Macarian Homilies that it plays in St. Mark’s theology. Macarius’ emphasis often lied not in sacramental baptism, but spiritual baptism (449). However, Macarius insists in the Great Letter that the Holy Spirit is given at the moment of sacramental baptism, and he also writes in the New Homilies of Type III about the completeness of the baptismal “talent” (450). Ware concludes from this that the contrast between Macarius and St. Mark is less striking than one would expect (450). Another difference, however, is that whereas Macarius would warn that those who fail to work with the talent given at baptism will be “deprived” of this talent, Ware suspects that St. Mark would have been careful never to write any such thing (450).
Ware also brings to bear some unpublished homilies he has consulted in a manuscript at the Vatican. In these homilies Ware claims Macarius even argues that the baptized are not initially conscious or aware of the presence of the Spirit following their baptism, but over time they gradually become more aware. He refers to this as an “increase” in the Spirit and believes this increase is contingent on one’s progress in the virtues (450). This is strikingly similar to St. Mark’s teachings. Thus me might say that Macarius agrees with Mark that the Spirit constitutes the source of our spiritual life and that we receive this Spirit at the sacrament of baptism—even if we may only become conscious of his presence through a gradual ascetic process of advancing in the virtues. Ware tames his parallels with a sobering critical perspective: it is far from certain which of the Macarian Homilies were actually written by Macarius, and even if he initially wrote them, it is possible they have subsequently undergone revision to conform them to an orthodox sense.
There is also both agreement and disagreement on the doctrine of baptism between St. Mark’s and Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory, like Mark, believes “the spiritual life as a whole is nothing else than the realization of the initial grace of baptism” (448). Unlike Mark, however, Gregory “qualifies” the completeness of baptism by teaching that baptism does not bring a sudden halt to all evil in the person baptized, but “a kind of break in the continuity of evil” (448). Gregory considered it theological error to imagine that “evil vanishes altogether from our nature” after baptism, for such evil is only overcome through ascetic struggle (448). Ware offers a surprising quotation from Gregory in which he boldly states that if after baptism the baptized person’s life does not change into conformity with God’s commandments, such a person is not truly regenerate:
… If, when the washing of baptism is applied to the body, the soul does not cleanse itself from the stains of the passions, but our life after initiation continues to be the same as it was before—then, though it may be a bold thing to say, yet I will say it without shrinking: in such cases the water remains water, since the gift of the Holy Spirit is nowhere manifested in what has taken place. (448)
Here Greogry’s insight is clearly irreconcilable with St. Mark’s position (though Ware calls it a “difference of emphasis”) and “approximates more closely to the Augustinian position” (449). Here he is also joined in this approximation by Diadochus of Photice, who taught that baptism frees from “the defilement of sin” (which Augustine called reatus) but does not remove the Adamic “duality of the will” inherited by all and only removed through ascetic effort (449). Also, as we have seen, the Macarian Homilies also taught something similar about the “veil of passions” that persists after baptism.
Conclusion
Although the whole of St. Mark’s doctrine of baptismal grace is not widely accepted, his influence on subsequent theological development is unmistakable. Ware closes by mentioning his influence upon the Hesychast movement, St. Gregory of Sinai (1255-1346), Kallistos and Ignatios Xanthopoulos (14th century). “The authors take as their starting point and foundation precisely the sacrament of baptism” and consider the goal of the Christian life to return to the perfect grace of received in baptism (451). Ware considers it a pity that St. Mark’s “incoherent yet perceptive work” has not also had a great impact on western writers. The reason why St. Mark would not appeal to many Protestants might be explained in part by the fact that many protestant theologies of grace do not consider sacramental baptism to be cause or timing of regeneration and the divine indwelling, but rather, the moment of faith.
But this does not do away entirely with the sort of questions Mark’s theology raises. Would Protestants consider the grace received at the movement of faith to be in some sense complete? If Augustine (along with Greogry of Nyssa and Diadochus of Photice) was right in teaching that the divine indwelling does not erase all sin, what influence does it have over sin? To what extent does it change the sinner? Furthermore, do Catholic or Protestant theologies ever equate the experience of grace with the presence of grace? How far does the presence of God within overlap with our conscious experience of him? If the Holy Spirit can “increase,” could he also “decrease”? Although the Christian receives the divine indwelling at the moment of regeneration, does the presence of the Spirit within the Christian increase to the degree that she fulfills the commandments or abides in Christ? Likewise, does it decrease according to the same principle when she fails to abide in the commandments? Or, rather, are we to understand the Spirit as always being fully present, but our conscious experience of him as that which fluctuates? If the latter, what are we to think of those who profess faith and are baptized but who never subsequently manifest the presence of the Spirit? Is it safe to say that these questions are worthy of more discussion from western theologians?
Book Review (pt4): The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware: Criticism and Conclusion
The following is part 4 of 4 in my book review of Timothy Ware’s The Orthodox Church, 3rd edition (New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 359 pp. Here I offer a few critical thoughts of my own and a conclusion. Click here for the full review in PDF, click here for the 2-part audio podcast version of my book review. Because the West is so ignorant of Eastern Orthodoxy and because Ware’s book is already a compact summary of Orthodoxy, I trust that these book reviews will be a valuable resource for those who are the slightest interested in Orthodox Christianity.
Criticism
One does not need to read between the lines to see that Ware is not writing as a disinterested observer of The Orthodox Church. His book could be considered an enthusiastic and engaging commendation of Orthodox Christianity to Western Christians. At various points throughout the book, his overview of Orthodoxy comes across as apologetical in tone. I will draw out two examples and give a brief critique of them: 1) his insistence that the Orthodox Church is utterly unique from anything Western and 2) his historical representation of Patriarch Photius.
The Uniqueness of Orthodoxy
Ware wants his readers to see that “Orthodoxy is not just a kind of Roman Catholicism without the Pope,” but distinct from any Western “religious system” (2). To Ware, Protestants and Catholics both have more in common with each other than either of them do with Orthodoxy; they are “two sides of the same [Western] coin” (2). Indeed there appears to be a subtle (but noticeable) pejorative use of the word “Western,” along with the assumption that Western influence spells the degradation of Orthodoxy (see esp. 116-117).
Ware also appears to have been influenced greatly by Alexis Khomiakov (the first “original” Russian theologian) and his insistence that all Western theology “betrays the same fundamental point of view, while Orthodoxy is something entirely distinct” (123, italics added). Ware introduces his readers to Orthodox theology this way:
Christians in the west, both Roman and Reformed, generally start by asking the same questions, although they may disagree about the answers. In Orthodoxy, however, it is not merely the answers that are different—the questions themselves are not the same as in the west. (1)
Ware also emphasizes that the Orthodox Church has never undergone a Reformation or Counter-Reformation like the West, but were only affected by this upheaval in an “oblique” way (1).
As we begin to explore Orthodox theology with Ware, however, it quickly becomes clear that Ware’s claims about the absolute uniqueness of Orthodoxy are exaggerated. For example, thinking of Scripture as existing “within Tradition” and not something entirely distinct from Tradition is one of the ways Catholics have responded to the Protestant position of sola scriptura (196-97). Protestants would likely think of Ware’s argument that “it is from the Church that the Bible ultimately derives its authority” as a “Catholic” argument, along with his argument that “individual readers, however sincere, are in danger of error if they trust their own personal interpretation” (199). Ecumenical Councils are binding to both Catholics and the Orthodox, even if they disagree about what would qualify as an ecumenical council.
Ware assures his readers that Orthodoxy believes the Church should be a Scriptural Church “just as firmly” as Protestants (199). Although the Orthodox (along with Protestants) think Catholic claims of papal authority have resulted in “too great a centralization” in matters of church government, nevertheless, all Catholics and Orthodox alike share in the assumption that the church is to be governed by an authoritative hierarchy (216). The Orthodox Church may very well be much more than simply a kind of Catholic Church without a pope, but in many areas of church government they are similar enough to cause some Protestants to strain to see what major differences there would be if the pope were not in the governing equation.
Nor is this all. Orthodoxy in fact shares many assumptions and questions in common with other Christian traditions. It would appear Ware himself proves by his overview of Orthodox doctrines that much of Orthodox theology is very close (if not the same) as in other Christian traditions. If we are to take Ware as fairly representing the Orthodox position on grace and free-will, it is clear the Orthodox Church falls in the Arminian side of the Arminian-Calvinist debate, for even his way of phrasing the issue bears Arminian assumptions and leaves the “synergy” between God and man ultimately dependent upon the human, for “God knocks, but waits for us to open the door” (222). This is an Arminian notion of synergy that attributes the granting of grace to God and the acceptance of this grace to the human person, whereas Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin all wished to attribute even the acceptance of grace to God’s grace itself. That is, much of Western theology—following Augustine—has thought of the human free-will as the proper object of God’s grace, and thus one of the proper functions of grace is to effectively move the free human will to freely accept salvation. As Aquinas put it:
The justification of the ungodly is brought about by God moving man to justice. For He it is that justifieth the ungodly according to Rom. Iv. 5. Now God moves everything in its own manner, just as we see that in natural things, what is heavy and what is light are moved differently, on account of their diverse natures. Hence He moves man to justice according to the condition of his human nature. But it is man’s proper nature to have free-will. Hence in him who has the use of reason, God’s motion to justice does not take place without a movement of the free-will; but He so infuses the gift of justifying grace that at the same time He moves the free-will to accept the gift of grace.[1]
To present the issue as Ware does—that either one believes in synergy or else that God draws people by “force and violence”—demonstrates Ware’s Arminian notion of free-will (222). This gives the reader the impression that even though the Orthodox Church did not participate actively in the Reformation debates, nevertheless, she not only asks the same sort of questions that the Western traditions have asked, but answers such questions in the same way that many Western theological traditions have answered them. Furthermore, although the Orthodox Church certainly did not participate in the Reformation debates as actively as Protestants and Catholics, they were, however, forced to give their position on many of the fundamental questions that Protestant theologians were raising (see esp. 94-99).
Can we really say that Protestant and Catholic inquiry about papal authority, grace & free-will, the number and nature of the sacraments, the authority of scripture vs. tradition, etc., is fundamentally different than Orthodox inquiry? Are we not asking the same questions? If Protestants and Catholics are not generally asking the same questions asked (or answered) in Orthodox theological inquiry (as Ware claims), how can such Protestants and Catholics ever hope to find answers to their deep theological inquiries in the Orthodoxy tradition? Indeed, why have so many Protestants, for example, converted to Orthodoxy because they have found in Orthodox tradition more satisfying answers in their theological quest? Given the degree of overlap between Western and Eastern theology, Ware’s claim that Orthodoxy does not ask the same questions as other “Western religious systems” and is somehow entirely unique appears to be considerably misleading.
St. Photius The Great
Ware’s picture of Photius is much more flattering than the picture we receive of him in Western historical treatments. Rather than explain to the reader that the “schism of Nicolas” began because the rightful Patriarch of Constantinople (St. Ignatius) was forced to resign through the use of torture after he refused to give communion to the Emperor’s sexually immoral uncle, Ware chooses his words very carefully:
Soon after his accession [Photius] became involved in a dispute with Pope Nicolas I (858-67). The previous Patriarch, St Ignatius, had been exiled by the Emperor and while in exile had resigned under pressure. The supporters of Ignatius, declining to regard this resignation as valid, considered Photius a usurper. When Photius sent a letter to the Pope announcing his accession, Nicolas decided that before recognizing Photius he would look further into the quarrel between the new Patriarch and the Ignatian party. (52-53)
This account does not give consideration to why Pope Nicholas was determined to “investigate” the situation or why Ignatius’s supporters refused to recognize his resignation as valid. It therefore cleverly obscures what many historiographers consider the occasion for the schism. No matter how brilliant of a scholar Photius was (and there is no doubt about his scholarly abilities), the details surrounding his ascension as Patriarch of Constantinople are tainted with questionable politics. Ware, on the other hand, clearly is a great admirer of Photius and delights in painting a flattering picture of him as St. Photius the Great. He borrows Ostrogorsky’s word of praise that Photius was “the most distinguished thinker, the most outstanding politician, and the most skilful diplomat ever to hold office as Patriarch of Constantinople” (52). Perhaps Photius was indeed all these things, but perhaps he was also a very shrewd politician, and perhaps Photius’s to-be-expected Orthodox position on the doctrine of Papal supremacy was not the deepest matter of concern for pope Nicholas.
Conclusion
All in all, Ware’s book is perhaps the most engaging and helpful introduction to Orthodoxy available for the Western world.[2] His enthusiastic tone and apologetical stance, far from making the book less commendable, will actually help the reader better sympathize with his Orthodox perspective. Ware’s occasional explicit criticisms of his own tradition,[3] sensitivity to Western concerns, summaries of why the Filioque could be considered heresy, frequent contrasts between Orthodox positions and Protestant or Catholic positions, all add to the value of his book and give it a delightful pungency. Although his treatment is terse by design, his last chapter, entitled “Further Readings,” conveniently lists numerous sources in topical order for those who wish to do further study. While his introduction to Orthodoxy is enlightening and elegant, much of his analysis is now outdated. One can only hope that soon, following Ware’s example, a more up-to-date treatment of Orthodoxy will replace his now classical introduction.
Bradley R. Cochran
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theophilogue.wordpress.com
[1] Summa Theologica, trans. the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols., rev. ed. (1948; repr., Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1981), I-II.113.3. Furthermore, any movement of the will toward God is “already informed with grace” because it is the result of grace. ST I-II.111.3.
[2] It is considered “a classical presentation of The Orthodox Church ever since it first appeared in 1963.” Edward G. Farrugia, “The Orthodox Church,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 62, no. 2 (1996), 536.
[3] He mentions, for example, that due to the traditional alliance between church and state in many Slavic countries, the Slavs “have often confused the two and have made the Church serve the ends of national politics” (77). Nationalism, in Ware’s book, has been “the bane of Orthodoxy for the last ten centuries” (77).
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