Saint Thomas & Scholasticism, a Legacy of Orthodox Christianity

Underneath the glow of candles lit before icons of the Pantokrator and the Theotokos and the sweet scent of incense a current runs in Greek Christianity that says "We have never changed or thought about anything, ever." One deacon told a very confused congregation "We don't write things down, we just do what the people before us did," a remark which only further befuddled the befuddled. Any contrast with Latin Christianity draws buzz words like "legalism", "Aristotle", "juridical", "original", "mystical", "pastoral", and "the Fathers". What the faithful do not often hear is that Scholasticism and the forces behind it are as much or more integral to Orthodox Christianity than the writings of St. Symeon the New Theologian or Palamas.

A "Scholastic" is a "school man", a variation of the word schola, school in Latin. Schools were not centers of textbook reading, flag saluting, and learning how not to offend men in dresses in prior ages. A schola, East and West, was a center of instruction through dialogue and disputation, a system of purely Greek invention, one founded on Socrates' smart aleck ways and more coherently developed in the Dialogues of his student, Plato. Dialogue proved a useful oral tool in directing conversation to concentrate on crystallizing certain points of inquiry, in finding the finer points of a thing; similarly, dialogue was a useful written tool in answering objections as a point developed and in keeping the reader's interest rather than lugubriously lecturing him like a hipster, post-modern bore. Even when Plato waned in popularity his teaching methods remained in vogue in Orthodox and Latin culture until the end of the Middle Ages.

For as much grief as modern Orthodox writers give Augustine for his reliance on Plato and the Doctor Angelicus for his extensive use of Aristotle, Greek Christian history is plentiful with more notable example of applying the language of popular philosophy to contemporary theology and binding it upon future generations. The definition of a matter of theology in the language of philosophy is not a wholesale baptism of whatever that particular Greek said, merely that certain concepts were found useful to explain a certain elements of Christian truth for all time. In defense of ICEL's caterwauling over the translation of "consubstantial" in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the idea of substance very much belongs to Greek philosophy and not to any familiar thought in the last few centuries. Far from excusing our ignorance of "substance"—or prosopon in the case of Trinitarian theology—the Church is obligated to teach us about God using these very fitting terms. 

Similarly, the "legalistic" and exacting approach of Aquinas and the Schoolmen survives today only in courtrooms, yet for centuries was the acceptable means of settling a matter. When Leo III, Leo V, and Michael III stripped the holy images from the churches of Constantinople and rendered the Hagia Sophia as barren and dull as a Dallas church, Saint John of Damascus did not throw up his hands in objection and exclaim "We've always venerated icons! But why is a mystery, so let us do it and not discuss it!" In his third treatise against the iconoclasts, John taxonomizes numerous levels of veneration and their related sub-types:

1. Veneration due to God, of which there are
1. Worship
2. Wonderment
3. Gratitude
4. Petition
5. Repentance
1. Repentance out of love
2. Repentance out of fear for loss of love
3. Repentance out of fear for punishment
2. Veneration of persons or things through which God has worked
3. Veneration due to things dedicated to God
4. Veneration of types of God
5. Veneration of God in other human beings
6. Veneration of authority that comes from God
7. Veneration of benefactors

In a like manner, Saint John examines specific ways in which something can be an image:

1. A natural image, like God the Son is an image of God the Father
2. A prophetic image of what is to come
3. An imitation
4. A Scriptural type
5. A type of an event
6. A memory

After a resurgence of iconoclasm in his own time, Saint Theodore the Studite got in touch with his inner-Plato and wrote a lengthy dialogue pitting the "Orthodox" against the hopeless "Heretic". Contemporaries would have read the names as the "True Worshiper" and "The One Who Chooses". Like the ancient Greeks Theodore uses his protagonist to propose his doctrine and the counterpart to present objections as each brick of teaching builds a wall of belief. 

During the same era the Roman Church produced relatively few notable theologians and no worthwhile movements of thought. Perhaps more genuinely in line with what modern would-be Hesychasts present Greek Christianity to be, the Romans did little else than what was given to them because much of their intellectual inheritance had been lost in the years following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The odd notable writer like Saint Gregory the Great or Saint Bede the Venerable relied heavily on Scripture for his terms and monasticism for his outlook.

"Do you like the Pope?"
"No."
"Great! You're in charge."

Amid disputes from the Greeks against the Spanish introduction of the Filioque and the "Azymites", as well as from Latins against the deteriorating relationship with the papacy, a renewed interest in theology emerged during Palaiologan Byzantium that did not preclude the Schoolmen. If anything the introduction of Saint Thomas Aquinas' writings shocked the Greek intellectual world. The Summa was probably first translated from Latin to Greek by Maximus Planudes in the early 14th century and quickly gained a following. Opinions of Aquinas and the established Latin theological traditions of Scholasticism and Scotism enjoyed a popularity irrespective of one's opinion of the Filioque, unleavened bread, and the pope. "As a star of the West, [Saint Thomas] illumined the Church of Christ" in the words of hymnographer Janus Plousiadenos (thanks, Marko!). Basilios Bessarion may not have been an outright Thomist, but Scholasticism certainly influenced his speculative theology. Among opponents of Rome, Mark of Ephesus (accomplished in many things and remembered only for giving Rome the middle finger on the eve of Byzantium's fall) criticized Aquinas' rejection of the Immaculate Conception from Scotistic grounds. 

Gennadius Scholarius recanted of his Scholasticism after leaving the Council of Florence without voting on any propositions to lead the separatist party back home. Yet, before Florence he sang Aquinas' praises:

"Would O excellent Thomas that you had not been born in the West. Then you would not have needed to defend the deviations of the Church there.... You would have been as perfect in theology as you are in ethics."

According to Hugh Barbour O. Praem, Palamite emperor John VI took an interest in Thomas and patronized Demetrios Kydones' translation of the Summa contra gentiles. Two other opponents of the Florentine Union quoted Aquinas' arguments for the Incarnation and consecrated virginity word for word and without attribution; these two opponents, Makarios Makres and Joseph Bryennios, were cited as examples of fidelity to Orthodox tradition in a letter of Athonites monks against the ecumenism of the Greek patriarch.

Why were Palaiologan Orthodox so fond of Saint Thomas when their descendants today are not? It seems likely that, aside from where Thomas "needed to defend the deviations" of Rome, the Greeks perceived him as one of the highest expressions of their own approach to theology, to argument, and to reasoning. There was no antithetical relationship between reason and mysticism, between logic and tradition; there was only truth and falsehood, and Aquinas enunciated the former more eloquently and with greater edification than any other writer centuries forward or backward, East or West; his imitators were less successful.

A separate Scholastic tradition would develop in Russia, firmly separated from Rome and independent of Constantinople after the events of 1453. Russia lacked an indigenous theological tradition, relying instead on sparsely available translations of Greek writers. There was a need for stability in both church and state which the Scholastic method supplied. Today some writers consider these centuries as the "Western Captivity of Orthodoxy."

Now that we have seen Greek Christianity's well rooted similarities to Latin Scholasticism and their amenable history with Saint Thomas, the question remains why Aquinas has fallen out of favor and into disrepute with Orthodox theologians. The answer is simple: because Orthodox Christianity, not unlike modern Roman Catholic theology, is under the intellectual domain of a small clique of thinkers who do not represent their tradition in its entirety. I will close with a quote from Patrick Reardon, a priest of the Antiochian Orthodox Church:

“What almost always passes for ‘Orthodox theology’ among English-speaking Orthodox these days is actually just a branch of the larger Orthodox picture. Indeed, it tends sometimes to be rather sectarian.

"The Orthodox Church is an ancient castle, as it were, of which only two or three rooms have been much in use since about 1920. These two or three rooms were furnished by the Russian émigrés in Paris between the two World Wars. This furniture is heavily neo-Palamite and anti-Scholastic. It relies heavily on the Cappadocians, Maximus, and Gregory Palamas (who are good folks, or course). Anything that does not fit comfortably into that model is dismissed as “Western” and even non-Orthodox.

"Consequently, one will look in vain in that theology for any significant contribution from the Alexandrians, chiefly Cyril, and that major Antiochian, Chrysostom. When these are quoted, it is usually some incidental point on which they can afford to be quoted.

"Now I submit that any ‘Orthodox’ theology that has so little use for the two major figures from Antioch and Alexandria is giving something less than the whole picture.

"Likewise, this popular neo-Palamite brand of Orthodoxy, though it quotes Damascene when it is convenient, never really engages Damascene’’s manifestly ‘Scholastic’ approach to theology.

"Much less does it have any use for the other early Scholastic theologians, such as Theodore the Studite and Euthymus Zygabenus. There is no recognition that Scholasticism was born in the East, not the West, and that only the rise of the Turk kept it from flourishing in the East.

"There is also no explicit recognition that the defining pattern of Orthodox Christology was formulated in the West before Chalcedon. Pope Leo’s distinctions are already very clear in Augustine decades before Chalcedon. Yet, Orthodox treatises on the history of Christology regularly ignore Augustine. 

"Augustine tends to be classified as a ‘Scholastic,’ which he most certainly was not.
But Western and Scholastic are bad words with these folks.

"In fact, however, Augustine and the Scholastics represent only other rooms in the larger castle.

"For this reason I urge you, as you can, to read in the Orthodox sources that tend to get skipped in what currently passes for ‘Orthodoxy.’ For my part, I believe the Russian émigré theology from Paris, which seems profoundly reactionary and anti-Western, is an inadequate instrument for the evangelization of this country and the world. I say this while gladly recognizing my own debt to Russian émigré theology.”

Lesser Known Fathers VII: St. Theodore the Studite on Icons

source: orthodoxwiki.org

For those of us on the Gregorian calendar this past Sunday was the Sunday of the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council in the Byzantine rite. This Council once and for all condemned iconoclasm and affirmed the right and necessary place of holy images in the Divine worship. Unfortunately the circumstances surrounding the iconoclasm controversy would eventually lead to the Photian schism, the effects of which continue to our present time.

We have already covered the writing of St. John of Damascus on the Holy Icons, but the significance of the Seventh Ecumenical Council and the celebration of its Fathers this week inspired the Rad Trad to examine briefly the writings of St. Theodore the Studite on the matter, perhaps the last major writer concerning the icon controversy. Theodore was born in 759 and raised for a bureaucratic career, but diverged from the set path and joined his uncle Plato's monastery. Circumstances brought Theodore to Studios monastery in Constantinople. Emperor Constantine VI exiled Theodore for opposing his divorce and re-marriage, holding that an emperor had not the competence to override the decisions of the Church concerning marriage. The next emperor, Michael II, permitted Theodore a partial return from exile, but would not permit the Saint to enter the Byzantine capital. Theodore died on November 11, 826, the day before his current feast.

For practical purposes, this post will be shorter than previous installments of the Lesser Known Fathers series, given that much of what St. Theodore says has already been said by St. John of Damascus.

Studios monastery
source: wikipedia.org

First, Theodore refutes the common objection that the creation and veneration of icons violates the second commandment, which prohibits the worship of images and idols. Not all images are made equal. The commandment against the fashioning and veneration of idols and images does not equate with images as the Christian is acquainted with them. Theodore establishes that the veneration of an image or icon for the Christian is actually veneration of the prototype of the image through veneration of a replica. The attention and worship is directed toward the prototype, be it God, a mystery, an angel, or a saint. The Christian does not glorify and give honor to a plank of wood or smudges of paint. His devotion seeks the original through the copy.

This contrasts with the second commandment because, when considered in context, the second commandment has little application in the realm of icons. The Jews were forbidden images, more or less, because no one had "seen God at any time" prior to the coming of the Second Person of the Trinity (John 1:18). Without any comprehension of God in a form discernible to human beings the veneration of images would eventually slip into idolatry, the worship of images as though those images were gods in themselves. Even during Old Testament times God exempted the Jews from this commandment under His Divine providence. For example, God explicitly commanded the Israelites to fashion two cherubim, forming the "Glory Seat" on the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 25:18). Similarly, He demanded the same Israelites create a bronze serpent which healed snake bitten persons (Numbers 21:8). Given the proper intention and disposition, God is glorified in the veneration of holy icons and images.

This gives way to the second, and far more interesting, aspect of the iconoclast controversy: how an image relates to its original, its prototype. St. John of Damascus briefly touches upon this topic in his third discourse, but does not delve. St. Theodore does.

An image can be venerated as a proximate to the original because the original is intelligible to those who offer it their honor. The iconoclasts, among whom Orthodox translator Catherine Roth nearly counts St. Gregory of Rome, insisted that icons were ill-suited for Divine worship because God cannot be circumscribed to human understanding and human reason. Man cannot know God.

St. Theodore constructs a dialogue between an iconophile and an iconoclast—who he plainly calls the "orthodox" and the "heretic" respectively—in his second treatise in order to set up an explanation for how mankind can know God. He quotes St. Gregory of Nazianzus in saying Christ is God "Circumscribed in the body, uncircumscribed in the spirit (Treatise 2.1, Gregory ep. 101). Similarly those who respected the image of the Byzantine emperor did so because they knew the emperor to be a flesh-and-blood person who could be seen with human eyes (Treatise 2.28).

Is there not a circumscription to the risen Christ? Eastern, and Western, theology holds that Christ's resurrected body was a renewed, transformed one, so glorious and different that it was unrecognized by the Lord's own disciples (St. Mary Magdalen at the tomb) or even by His Apostles (on the road to Emaus). This body could appear and disappear at whim. Surely the resurrected Lord's image should not be venerated (Treatise 2.41-47), but rather treated with the same alien respect as the Jews treated God, in their vague understanding, in the Old Testament. No! This same Christ walked and talked and ate as His Apostles and as He Himself did prior to His Passion. Even the risen Christ is very knowable through the human senses.

Given that the common objectors to images, be it iconography or Roman statues, are protestants in our day, one argument of the iconoclasts is amusing: "'We grant,' the heretics say, 'that Christ may be represented, but only according to the holy words which we have received from God Himself; for He said, 'Do this in remembrance of me,' obviously implying that He cannot be represented otherwise than by being remembered. Only this image is true and this act of depiction sacred'" (Treatise 1.10). Effectively, iconoclasts believed the Eucharist to be the only viable depiction of Christ because the gifts on the altar are Christ. Of course, Theodore rebuts, the Eucharist is the most fitting remembrance of Christ, but an image need not be of the same essence as the original, as the Eucharist is of Jesus (1.10-11).

One last point of interest is the Cross. Some apparently worried that veneration of the mysteries of Christ and of the saints would detract from veneration of the Cross (1.15), which is done at the end of Divine Liturgy. Of course there is a limited amount of wood from the True Cross to venerate, so the faithful adore fabricated crosses. If this is acceptable, why would icons not be? Christ hallowed the cross by making it worthy of His passion. Is not the same true of His other mysteries?

We are beginning to see that written theology has progressed beyond the first millennium and the Fathers. Yet these men and their writings remain singularly important, not just for tracing what the "early Church" (as though it is not the same as today's Church) believed, but how the Church believed. The average quasi-secular person today, when he walks into a parish to observe a Mass, is not going to ask about Aquinas' concept of form-matter-intent for the Sacraments. He is going to ask more basic questions: does God exist? Why worship Him? How does He matter to you? Why do you Catholics do what you do? The writings of the Fathers are more instinctive and accessible for the layman.

Some time in the next week I hope to put up a post on five random Sunday Masses from the Parisian Missal and a review of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Brideshead, Revisited

source: NYTimes.com

This week the Rad Trad intends to publish the next posts in two series, the Lesser Known Fathers and the examination of the French usages of the Roman rite. The Lesser Known Fathers will delve into St. Theodore the Studite's defense of holy icons, which builds on the solid foundation of St. John of Damascus' earlier writings on the same subject. In the series on French liturgy we shall have an overview of the Holy Week and Pascha Sunday Masses in the Parisian Missal. Stay tuned.

 

The Rad Trad is also re-reading Evelyn Waugh's nostalgic classic Brideshead Revisited. Doubtless, many readers are familiar with this prosaic masterpiece, which weaves a personal narrative and a long ago social setting into a story of God's grace. The brand of post-modern literature, to which most of us were exposed by our universities, lacks the aesthetic verbosity of Waugh, whose style re-fashions settings and moods on paper. The Word of God was spoken and the world came to be. The word of Waugh was written and an embracing reflection comes about. Waugh describes the Oxford of 1923 in the second paragraph of the first chapter:

"Oxford—now submerged and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse, so quickly have the waters come flooding in—Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her gray springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days—such as that day—when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamor."

Oxford devolved into a destination for upper-middleclass American tourists long before J.K. Rowling's harebrained, hackneyed Harry Potter stories. Whilst a student there the Rad Trad enjoyed deceiving fellow Americans on holiday. With one exception, they always enquired as to where the nearest Harry Potter attraction could be found: the library (Bodleian library), the dining hall (Christ Church College), the hallways (Theology faculty), and whatever else they could want. The Rad Trad obliged their requests, with either a heavily affected Yorkshire or Oxonian accent—depending on his mood. Often, after carrying down the High Street toward their destination, these poor site-seekers would chirp within the Rad Trad's earshot "Ooooh Jawhnny, don't you just love that English accent" or "Wasn't that a fancy voice" or even "I could just listen to British people talk all day." The bars are the only other form of entertainment in Oxford.

 

There is also an amusing description of the family house's chapel, 19th century art nouveau kitsch:

"The whole interior had been gutted, elaborately refurnished and redecorated in the arts-and-crafts style of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Angels in printed cotton smocks, rambler-roses, flower-spangled meadows, frisking lambs, texts in Celtic script, saints in armor, covered the walls in an intricate pattern of clear, bright colors. There was a triptych of pale oak, carved so as to give it the peculiar property of seeming to have been molded in Plasticine. The sanctuary lamp and all the metal furniture were of bronze, hand-beaten to the patina of a pockmarked skin; the altar steps had a carpet of grass-green and gold daisies."

 

Brideshead has developed a modern following focused on the sexual tension between its two main male characters, Charles Ryder and Lord Sebastian Flyte. These modern pseudo-aesthetes usually neglect or deride the main theme of the book, God's grace, or the various characters who act of God's instruments—Cordelia and Lady Marchmain. Others who understand and appreciate the theme often cite Sebastian and Cordelia as the good souls of the novel and ignore Lady Marchmain. A letter by Waugh to A.D. Peters, published in the back of the Back Bay Books edition, sheds some light on the matter:

"Yes, Lady Marchmain is an enigma. I hoped the last conversation with Cordelia gave a theological clue. The whole thing is steeped in theology, but I begin to agree that theologians won't recognize it.... I am steaming ahead with the novel. It is becoming painfully erotic."

A review might be forthcoming.