The mystery of the love of God, of the God who is Love (1 John 4:8,16), and of the interrelation ... more The mystery of the love of God, of the God who is Love (1 John 4:8,16), and of the interrelation between divine and human love, was a central theme in the theology of two enormous luminaries of the early Christian age, Augustine in the West and Maximus the Confessor in the East. This essay compares them with a view especially to their convergences, beginning with their common hermeneutical claim that the entire content of Scripture is tributary to Christ's double love commandment (Mt 22:37-40), and their common belief that creation itself is the outreach of the inner-Trinitarian love, freely extended to the creature in the gift of existence, and supremely exhibited in the cross of Jesus Christ. Both Augustine and Maximus, moreover, respectively meditated on the affectionate and even "ecstatic" nature of the Creator's gracious love for the creature, reciprocated by the different forms of human love, supremely agapĂȘ-though unlike Augustine in his Confessions, Maximus offers no autobiographical reflection on experiencing this love firsthand. That said, there are important parallels and contrasts in how the two authors project the conversion of human desire in the mystery of deification. The essay gives detailed attention to how both writers analyse unhealthy and healthy self-love, as well as their views on the important role of self-knowledge in the maturing of godly love. It then turns to the complicated dynamics of the "ordering" of love, the love of neighbour (in the context of the love of God), and the difficulties of equal love of all and the love of enemies. The essay concludes by exploring the compatibility of Augustine and Maximus on love as the supreme "theological virtue" (1 Cor 13:13) in its interconnection with faith and hope. I reflect at last on their views of love within the nature/grace dialectic.
St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. By Andrew Louth. [Oxford Ear... more St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. By Andrew Louth. [Oxford Early Christian Studies.] (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Pp. xvii, 327.L45.) This book reminds me of the merchant finding a pearl of great price, and selling everything to possess it. For many years, Professor Louth has dedicated all his spare time and energy to discovering the spirit-the mind and heart, as well as the teaching-of John Damascene. However, unlike the merchant, he has generously placed at the disposal of others this extraordinary "pearl" of Byzantine theology. John is an unusual theologian: clearly very intelligent and well read in his great predecessors, especially the Cappadocians, Ps.-Denys, and Maximus the Confessor. However, he saw his theological work to be mainly that of a transmitter. The role of the speculative theologian, or at least that of the discoverer of new relationships, was not for him. Instead, he tried to be scrupulously careful in exposing the explanation of dogmatic truth that he found in the Fathers. This required sensitivity and firm good sense as he picked his way through the quicksands of both Trinitarian and Christological contoversy. Professor Louth, in one of his best chapters, identifies him as a Chalcedonian, insisting on the two natures, but leaning over backwards to satisfy those devoted to Cyril's formula:"one incarnate nature of God the Word." So John was clearly a Neo-Chalcedonian (or Cyrilline Chalcedonian). This leads, Professor Louth points out (e.g. pp. 162,175), to a notable "asymmetry" in the role of the two natures: the divine nature "does not partake of the passions of the flesh," and while the "nature of the flesh" is "deified," the "nature of the Word" is not "incarnate" (quoting John himself). It is difficult to reconcile this with the Chalcedonian definition with its emphasis on the symmetry between divinity and humanity. But Professor Louth is ready to acknowledge other weaknesses in John's approach, such as his "shrilly supersessionist account of the superiority of Christians over idolatrous Jews" (p. 203, and for other points see pp. 166,170-171,177). In this way he can give a very balanced account of John the theologian. The key to interpreting John is to be found (suggests Professor Louth) in his monastic vocation. Where his personal character emerges is in his sermons, with their almost baroque accumulation of rhetorical imagery (very well presented in a chapter on John the Preacher), and above all in his liturgical hymns, the "canons" as the Greeks call them, which are interspersed in the singing of the divine Office, coming between the biblical canticles. Here also John is drawing on tradition, linking phrases taken from earlier authors (many of which have been identified by the learned Nikodimos, active on Mount Athos in the early nineteenth century). This same devotion to the living reality of God, the Word Incarnate, and the Virgin Mary, probably provided the motive force for the compilation of the dogmatic and polemical works (p. 144). For Professor Louth the structure of John's main work based on the "century"-one hundred chapters-indicates a monastic mould (and indeed many Byzantine spiritual writings take the form of a hundred chapters or aphorisms). He claims that John has to be seen in this context: This, I think, is worth noting: John's The Fountain Head of Knowledge is not really a proto-scholastic summary, as it is often taken to be; rather, it is concerned with shaping and moulding the monastic vocation of its readers, or, more widely, with denning what it is to be a Christian, understood less as a set of beliefs (despite the high doctrinal content) than as a way of life. âŠ
tion. Sidney Griffith looks at six hagiographical accounts of martyrs in the eighth century. Each... more tion. Sidney Griffith looks at six hagiographical accounts of martyrs in the eighth century. Each is connected with monastic traditions; each suggests that Christian communities were using Arabic so effectively that they were converting some Muslims, something not happening where Greek, Syriac, or Coptic were the ecclesiastical languages. The behavior of these martyrs is quite different from the thousands converting to Islam and reflects a ninth-century Melkite view. Only one of the stories seems to be entirely fictional. Benjamin Kedar insists that relations between "Latin and Oriental Christians in the Frankish Levant"(209) from the twelfth through the thirteenth centuries were more open than some have supposed. The Latins not only mixed with the natives; they settled most often in places where there were concentrations of Oriental Christians, whether in Jerusalem and in the countryside. There were clear borrowings of Arabic words by the Franks and ties with Jacobites, Armenians, and Copts as well as Greeks and Melkites. Elchanan Reiner shows a relationship between "different elements of the crucifixion story" as well as "medieval perception and timing of the advent of the Jewish messiah" with "ancient Galilean tradition" from perhaps as early as the second century B.C.E. (268) Every serious historian of early Christianity should know this volume. The questions of religious pluralism are best served when the field at least goes up into the eighth century and thus includes not only Arabic-speaking Christianity responding to Islam but also Chinese-speaking Christianity responding to Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. As this book further shows, Christianity developed rather interestingly in Palestine well into the Middle Ages. Those who rigorously pursue interreligious dialogue among contemporary communities need to learn such history. The multiple approaches of this volume (historical, literary, ethnographic, archaeological) give breadth to discussions of religious relationships. Its look at texts, including hagiography and artifacts seldom observed, changes the picture of religion in Palestine in the fifteen hundred years brought into focus. The descriptions are thick and telling. More research needs to be undertaken in the areas raised here. The fractures of contemporary scholarship allow interesting questions to fall through the cracks. We need Northwest Semitic specialists who will study Gnostic texts and begin to tell us what their best guesses are for why the names of the gods in those ancient cultures reappear with such frequency within Gnostic treatises. The religions that Israel apparently combated not only influenced her but well may have taken on other life in these later features of Palestinian religion. Looking at such relationships can help us see how difficult it is to define any religion as a totally new appearance or to view every element of syncretism as always the worst enemy of religious identity.
This essay explores Augustine's capacity to accommodate a tragic vision of human existence within... more This essay explores Augustine's capacity to accommodate a tragic vision of human existence within his interpretation of the Christian revelation. Broadly speaking, for Augustine, sacred history combines the tragic necessity of self-inflicted human sinfulness with the benevolent necessity of the economy of divine grace. Augustine to some degree admired the pagan tragedians for compelling the attention and emotion of their audiences in confronting the ineluctability of evil (and other tragic themes), but their mimesis ultimately failed since it could not touch the reality conveyed in divine revelation. Two exegetical test cases, the story of Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter (Judges 11) and King Saul's tragic heroics in 1 Samuel, exemplify how Augustine greatly profited from interpreting Scripture through a tragical lens. A whole other dimension of Augustine's tragic vision appears in his attempt â inspired from his own early experience of staged tragedies in Carthage â to reenter ancient philosophical debates on tragedy and mimesis, and to revamp in Christian terms the tragic emotions, especially tragic pity as Christian mercy.
This article explores whether we can speak of an aggregate Christian cosmology or doctrine of cre... more This article explores whether we can speak of an aggregate Christian cosmology or doctrine of creation constructed by the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa. While discouraging the possibility of identifying a perfectly contoured 'system' of Cappadocian cosmology, I argue that there are certain 'first principles' and doctrinal correlates shared by this triumvirate. More helpful is to approach their constructive theology of creation from the standpoint of its basic epistemological protocols of theologia, which lay down the ground rules for Christian language of Creator and creation, and the^ oria, the church's 'sanctified intuition' of the meaning of the world. The^ oria, as 'contemplation' in the broadest sense, enables the Cappadocians to envision the world, through the lens of sacred history, as a theatre of tragedy and beauty, and as the matrix of the triune Creator's aspiration to bring about an ever-renewed creation.
Blowersâs study contextualizes the achievement of a strategically crucial figure in Byzantiumâs t... more Blowersâs study contextualizes the achievement of a strategically crucial figure in Byzantiumâs turbulent seventh century, the monk and theologian Maximus the Confessor (580-662). Building on newer biographical research and a growing international body of scholarship, as well as on fresh examination of his diverse literary corpus, Blowers develops a profile integrating the two principal initiatives of Maximusâs career: first, his reinterpretation of the christocentric economy of creation and salvation as a framework for expounding the spiritual and ascetical life of monastic and non-monastic Christians; and second, his intensifying public involvement in the last phase of the ancient christological debates, the monothelete controversy, wherein Maximus helped lead an East-West coalition against Byzantine imperial attempts doctrinally to limit Jesus Christ to a single (divine) activity and will devoid of properly human volition. Blowers identifies what he terms Maximusâs âcosmo-politeianâ worldview, a contemplative and ascetical vision of the participation of all created beings in the novel politeia, or reordered existence, inaugurated by Christâs ânew theandric energy.â Maximus ultimately insinuated his teaching on the christoformity and cruciformity of the human vocation with his rigorous explication of the precise constitution of Christâs own composite person. In outlining this cosmo-politeian theory, Blowers additionally sets forth a âtheo-dramaticâ reading of Maximus, inspired by Hans Urs von Balthasar, which depicts the motion of creation and history according to the christocentric âplotâ or interplay of divine and creaturely freedoms. Blowers also amplifies how Maximusâs cumulative achievement challenged imperial ideology in the seventh centuryâthe repercussions of which cost him his lifeâand how it generated multiple recontextualizations in the later history of theology.
The mystery of the love of God, of the God who is Love (1 John 4:8,16), and of the interrelation ... more The mystery of the love of God, of the God who is Love (1 John 4:8,16), and of the interrelation between divine and human love, was a central theme in the theology of two enormous luminaries of the early Christian age, Augustine in the West and Maximus the Confessor in the East. This essay compares them with a view especially to their convergences, beginning with their common hermeneutical claim that the entire content of Scripture is tributary to Christ's double love commandment (Mt 22:37-40), and their common belief that creation itself is the outreach of the inner-Trinitarian love, freely extended to the creature in the gift of existence, and supremely exhibited in the cross of Jesus Christ. Both Augustine and Maximus, moreover, respectively meditated on the affectionate and even "ecstatic" nature of the Creator's gracious love for the creature, reciprocated by the different forms of human love, supremely agapĂȘ-though unlike Augustine in his Confessions, Maximus offers no autobiographical reflection on experiencing this love firsthand. That said, there are important parallels and contrasts in how the two authors project the conversion of human desire in the mystery of deification. The essay gives detailed attention to how both writers analyse unhealthy and healthy self-love, as well as their views on the important role of self-knowledge in the maturing of godly love. It then turns to the complicated dynamics of the "ordering" of love, the love of neighbour (in the context of the love of God), and the difficulties of equal love of all and the love of enemies. The essay concludes by exploring the compatibility of Augustine and Maximus on love as the supreme "theological virtue" (1 Cor 13:13) in its interconnection with faith and hope. I reflect at last on their views of love within the nature/grace dialectic.
St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. By Andrew Louth. [Oxford Ear... more St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. By Andrew Louth. [Oxford Early Christian Studies.] (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2002. Pp. xvii, 327.L45.) This book reminds me of the merchant finding a pearl of great price, and selling everything to possess it. For many years, Professor Louth has dedicated all his spare time and energy to discovering the spirit-the mind and heart, as well as the teaching-of John Damascene. However, unlike the merchant, he has generously placed at the disposal of others this extraordinary "pearl" of Byzantine theology. John is an unusual theologian: clearly very intelligent and well read in his great predecessors, especially the Cappadocians, Ps.-Denys, and Maximus the Confessor. However, he saw his theological work to be mainly that of a transmitter. The role of the speculative theologian, or at least that of the discoverer of new relationships, was not for him. Instead, he tried to be scrupulously careful in exposing the explanation of dogmatic truth that he found in the Fathers. This required sensitivity and firm good sense as he picked his way through the quicksands of both Trinitarian and Christological contoversy. Professor Louth, in one of his best chapters, identifies him as a Chalcedonian, insisting on the two natures, but leaning over backwards to satisfy those devoted to Cyril's formula:"one incarnate nature of God the Word." So John was clearly a Neo-Chalcedonian (or Cyrilline Chalcedonian). This leads, Professor Louth points out (e.g. pp. 162,175), to a notable "asymmetry" in the role of the two natures: the divine nature "does not partake of the passions of the flesh," and while the "nature of the flesh" is "deified," the "nature of the Word" is not "incarnate" (quoting John himself). It is difficult to reconcile this with the Chalcedonian definition with its emphasis on the symmetry between divinity and humanity. But Professor Louth is ready to acknowledge other weaknesses in John's approach, such as his "shrilly supersessionist account of the superiority of Christians over idolatrous Jews" (p. 203, and for other points see pp. 166,170-171,177). In this way he can give a very balanced account of John the theologian. The key to interpreting John is to be found (suggests Professor Louth) in his monastic vocation. Where his personal character emerges is in his sermons, with their almost baroque accumulation of rhetorical imagery (very well presented in a chapter on John the Preacher), and above all in his liturgical hymns, the "canons" as the Greeks call them, which are interspersed in the singing of the divine Office, coming between the biblical canticles. Here also John is drawing on tradition, linking phrases taken from earlier authors (many of which have been identified by the learned Nikodimos, active on Mount Athos in the early nineteenth century). This same devotion to the living reality of God, the Word Incarnate, and the Virgin Mary, probably provided the motive force for the compilation of the dogmatic and polemical works (p. 144). For Professor Louth the structure of John's main work based on the "century"-one hundred chapters-indicates a monastic mould (and indeed many Byzantine spiritual writings take the form of a hundred chapters or aphorisms). He claims that John has to be seen in this context: This, I think, is worth noting: John's The Fountain Head of Knowledge is not really a proto-scholastic summary, as it is often taken to be; rather, it is concerned with shaping and moulding the monastic vocation of its readers, or, more widely, with denning what it is to be a Christian, understood less as a set of beliefs (despite the high doctrinal content) than as a way of life. âŠ
tion. Sidney Griffith looks at six hagiographical accounts of martyrs in the eighth century. Each... more tion. Sidney Griffith looks at six hagiographical accounts of martyrs in the eighth century. Each is connected with monastic traditions; each suggests that Christian communities were using Arabic so effectively that they were converting some Muslims, something not happening where Greek, Syriac, or Coptic were the ecclesiastical languages. The behavior of these martyrs is quite different from the thousands converting to Islam and reflects a ninth-century Melkite view. Only one of the stories seems to be entirely fictional. Benjamin Kedar insists that relations between "Latin and Oriental Christians in the Frankish Levant"(209) from the twelfth through the thirteenth centuries were more open than some have supposed. The Latins not only mixed with the natives; they settled most often in places where there were concentrations of Oriental Christians, whether in Jerusalem and in the countryside. There were clear borrowings of Arabic words by the Franks and ties with Jacobites, Armenians, and Copts as well as Greeks and Melkites. Elchanan Reiner shows a relationship between "different elements of the crucifixion story" as well as "medieval perception and timing of the advent of the Jewish messiah" with "ancient Galilean tradition" from perhaps as early as the second century B.C.E. (268) Every serious historian of early Christianity should know this volume. The questions of religious pluralism are best served when the field at least goes up into the eighth century and thus includes not only Arabic-speaking Christianity responding to Islam but also Chinese-speaking Christianity responding to Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. As this book further shows, Christianity developed rather interestingly in Palestine well into the Middle Ages. Those who rigorously pursue interreligious dialogue among contemporary communities need to learn such history. The multiple approaches of this volume (historical, literary, ethnographic, archaeological) give breadth to discussions of religious relationships. Its look at texts, including hagiography and artifacts seldom observed, changes the picture of religion in Palestine in the fifteen hundred years brought into focus. The descriptions are thick and telling. More research needs to be undertaken in the areas raised here. The fractures of contemporary scholarship allow interesting questions to fall through the cracks. We need Northwest Semitic specialists who will study Gnostic texts and begin to tell us what their best guesses are for why the names of the gods in those ancient cultures reappear with such frequency within Gnostic treatises. The religions that Israel apparently combated not only influenced her but well may have taken on other life in these later features of Palestinian religion. Looking at such relationships can help us see how difficult it is to define any religion as a totally new appearance or to view every element of syncretism as always the worst enemy of religious identity.
This essay explores Augustine's capacity to accommodate a tragic vision of human existence within... more This essay explores Augustine's capacity to accommodate a tragic vision of human existence within his interpretation of the Christian revelation. Broadly speaking, for Augustine, sacred history combines the tragic necessity of self-inflicted human sinfulness with the benevolent necessity of the economy of divine grace. Augustine to some degree admired the pagan tragedians for compelling the attention and emotion of their audiences in confronting the ineluctability of evil (and other tragic themes), but their mimesis ultimately failed since it could not touch the reality conveyed in divine revelation. Two exegetical test cases, the story of Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter (Judges 11) and King Saul's tragic heroics in 1 Samuel, exemplify how Augustine greatly profited from interpreting Scripture through a tragical lens. A whole other dimension of Augustine's tragic vision appears in his attempt â inspired from his own early experience of staged tragedies in Carthage â to reenter ancient philosophical debates on tragedy and mimesis, and to revamp in Christian terms the tragic emotions, especially tragic pity as Christian mercy.
This article explores whether we can speak of an aggregate Christian cosmology or doctrine of cre... more This article explores whether we can speak of an aggregate Christian cosmology or doctrine of creation constructed by the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa. While discouraging the possibility of identifying a perfectly contoured 'system' of Cappadocian cosmology, I argue that there are certain 'first principles' and doctrinal correlates shared by this triumvirate. More helpful is to approach their constructive theology of creation from the standpoint of its basic epistemological protocols of theologia, which lay down the ground rules for Christian language of Creator and creation, and the^ oria, the church's 'sanctified intuition' of the meaning of the world. The^ oria, as 'contemplation' in the broadest sense, enables the Cappadocians to envision the world, through the lens of sacred history, as a theatre of tragedy and beauty, and as the matrix of the triune Creator's aspiration to bring about an ever-renewed creation.
Blowersâs study contextualizes the achievement of a strategically crucial figure in Byzantiumâs t... more Blowersâs study contextualizes the achievement of a strategically crucial figure in Byzantiumâs turbulent seventh century, the monk and theologian Maximus the Confessor (580-662). Building on newer biographical research and a growing international body of scholarship, as well as on fresh examination of his diverse literary corpus, Blowers develops a profile integrating the two principal initiatives of Maximusâs career: first, his reinterpretation of the christocentric economy of creation and salvation as a framework for expounding the spiritual and ascetical life of monastic and non-monastic Christians; and second, his intensifying public involvement in the last phase of the ancient christological debates, the monothelete controversy, wherein Maximus helped lead an East-West coalition against Byzantine imperial attempts doctrinally to limit Jesus Christ to a single (divine) activity and will devoid of properly human volition. Blowers identifies what he terms Maximusâs âcosmo-politeianâ worldview, a contemplative and ascetical vision of the participation of all created beings in the novel politeia, or reordered existence, inaugurated by Christâs ânew theandric energy.â Maximus ultimately insinuated his teaching on the christoformity and cruciformity of the human vocation with his rigorous explication of the precise constitution of Christâs own composite person. In outlining this cosmo-politeian theory, Blowers additionally sets forth a âtheo-dramaticâ reading of Maximus, inspired by Hans Urs von Balthasar, which depicts the motion of creation and history according to the christocentric âplotâ or interplay of divine and creaturely freedoms. Blowers also amplifies how Maximusâs cumulative achievement challenged imperial ideology in the seventh centuryâthe repercussions of which cost him his lifeâand how it generated multiple recontextualizations in the later history of theology.
Despite the pervasive early Christian repudiation of pagan theatrical art, especially prior to Co... more Despite the pervasive early Christian repudiation of pagan theatrical art, especially prior to Constantine, this monograph demonstrates the increasing attention of late-ancient Christian authors to the genre of tragedy as a basis to explore the complexities of human finitude, suffering, and mortality in relation to the wisdom, justice, and providence of God. The book argues that various Christian writers, particularly in the post-Constantinian era, were keenly devoted to the mimesis, or imaginative representation , of the tragic dimension of creaturely existence more than with simply mimicking the poetics of the classical tragedians. It analyzes a whole array of hermeneutical, literary, and rhetorical manifestations of "tragical mimesis" in early Christian writing, which, capitalizing on the elements of tragedy already perceptible in biblical revelation, aspired to deepen and edify Christian engagement with multiform evil and with the extreme vicissitudes of historical existence. Christian tragical mimetics included not only interpreting (and often amplifying) the Bible's own tragedies for contemporary audiences, but also developing models of the Christian self as a tragic self, revamping the Christian moral conscience as a tragical conscience, and cultivating a distinctively Christian tragical pathos. The study culminates in an extended consideration of the theological intelligence and accountability of "tragical vision" and tragical mimesis in early Christianity, and the unique role of the theological virtue of hope in its repertoire of tragical emotions. Jacket image: Vittore Carpaccio, c. 1505, The grave preparation of Christ. Peter Horree / Alamy Stock Photo 9 780198 854104
As in contemporary interpretation, even the early commentators on the Pauline Epistles recognized... more As in contemporary interpretation, even the early commentators on the Pauline Epistles recognized that Romans stood above the others as a kind of mature "manifesto" of Paul's overall theology and missionary vision. In Romans, the Apostle's teaching on Christ, creation, salvation (justification, reconciliation, sanctification, adoption, etc.), the law, grace, sin, freedom, human nature, the church, the destiny of Israel, and the mission to the Gentiles all intersect. The epistle is like a prism refracting multiple beams of light and manifold colors which have been variously retrieved and exposited by diligent interpreters throughout the Christian centuries. In probing the history of the interpretation of Romans, which is the theme of this seminar, it is fascinating not only to see the different ways that the letter was interpreted as a whole and in its relation to other biblical texts, but also to identify the ways that particular sections or features of Paul's teaching in the letter came into prominence as addressing the many new issues (theological and otherwise) that arose in distinctive historical and cultural settings.
No single figure from the post-biblical Christian tradition has more profoundly influenced the di... more No single figure from the post-biblical Christian tradition has more profoundly influenced the direction of Western Christian thought than Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Born in Thegaste (in modern Algeria), the son of a Christian mother, Monica, and a pagan (later Christian convert) father, Patricius, Augustine studied grammar (philology & communication) and rhetoric and became a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage, Rome, and Milan. While in North Africa, he had temporarily identified as a Manichaean, but grew disillusioned with its teachings and became, religiously as well as philosophically, a Neoplatonist before committing to Christianity as the fulfillment of his longing. In Milan he was powerfully impacted by the preaching of the bishop Ambrose, who baptized Augustine in 387. Augustine's Christian conversion began, then, largely as a philosophical quest for eternal truth. Upon returning to North Africa, a devout Christian ascetic, he was ordained a priest in Hippo in 391, and because of his exceptional theological prowess, soon became bishop there in 396, the beginning of a long episcopal career that took him into a number of ecclesiastical crises. He wrote his famous Confessions from 397 to 401, the text of which is not only a monumental piece of spiritual autobiography but a powerful theological chronicle of the lifelong pilgrimage of the soul and the learning of the love and grace of God (one of his historic epithets being doctor amoris, "Instructor in Love").
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