Father Kimel of Pontifications has alerted me to the following blog articles which provide a rather different Orthodox perspective on the alleged chasm between Greek and Latin understandings of sin and salvation. I doubt that the author, Ephrem Bensusan, a conservative Eastern Orthodox, can be accused of being a “latinophile” or “crypto-Catholic”, although apparently he does not think that Orthodox can so easily dismiss or disqualify theologians or theological statements (especially conciliar ones) on the basis that they are from the “Western captivity” of Orthodox theology in the modern period. I’m sure that there is a real basis to the “pseudomorphosis” argument as proposed by Florovsky; however, in popular (mostly American convert) Eastern Orthodox discourse (e.g. the “Frederica” school of American Orthodoxy), this narrative has become horribly overblown.
Anyhow, without any further ado, here are the articles from Ephrem Bensusan’s Razilazenje:
- Some Patristic Quotations on Divine Justice, Substitution and Propitiation (6/3/2005)
- Original Sin in the Eastern Orthodox Confessions and Catechisms (3/24/2006)
- Vladimir Moss: Is Hell Just? (3/25/2006)
- An Angry and Gentle God in the Hands of Fr Morelli (3/26/2006)
- More Patristic Quotations on Divine Justice, Substitution and Propitiation (3/29/2006)
- Divine Justice, Substitution, and Propitiation in the Eastern Orthodox Confessions and Catechisms (7/2/2006)
- Fr George Mastrantonis on Ancestral Sin (12/6/2006)
- Ancestral vs. Original Sin: A False Dichotomy (12/11/2006)
- Original Sin: The West-Haters Strike Back (12/14/2006)
- Nicholas Cabasilas on Satisfaction (12/19/2006)
- Quotations on Ancestral Sin (12/21/2006)
And on the related topic of the contemporary Orthodox dismissal of the seventeenth century Orthodox confessional statements under the suspicion of “Western captivity”, here’s Bensusan’s take.
Cathedra Unitatis 
CU, thanks so much for these links. I have read just a few of Mr. Benusan’s posts, but I find them fascinating and very encouraging. Will definitely read the rest!
Thanks again!
Diane
This blog has been quiet for a while. I fear I am about to kick up the proverbial hornet’s nest. 🙂 I will try to do so with as much restraint and charity as I can muster.
After reading some of Ephrem Benussan’s excellent, thought-provoking posts, I can’t help concluding what I always conclude in such instances (e.g., in the tollhouses-versus-“soul sleep” debate): Orthodox thought seems rather fluid and unjelled in some rather critical areas where (IMHO) it should be a good deal more crystallized.
I know I will be told that, as a ratiocinative Latin, I simply do not understand the apophatic East. But I think this is a cop-out. Even Maimonides (hardly a legalistic Latin) saw the need for a “Guide for the Perplexed.” On crucial, central questions, one cannot keep the jury out until the Eschaton. Human beings need and want answers, not endless questions. This does not mean we can (let alone should) try to nail down everything. Yes, finally, God is mystery; His ways are not our ways. Nonetheless, His self-revelation in Christ is meaningless if we cannot know anything about Him, about the way He operates, about His plans for His Church and for mankind. It’s mystery, but it’s not all mystery.
Why did Ephrem’s posts get me thinking along these lines? Because they typify what I see in so much intramural Orthodox sparring: dueling interpretations, dueling Scripture and patristics quotes.
Sure, Catholics engage in the same sort of intramural sparring–but (unless they are dissidents) they usually do not disagree fundamentally about the core de fide tenets of the Catholic Faith. They may argue about Limbo (not a defined dogma) but they do not argue about the ordinary necessity of baptsm for salvation (which is de fide Catholic teaching). They may take slightly variant approaches to Original Sin, but they agree that there is such a thing as Original Sin: It is a defined truth of the Faith.
What I’m driving at is that a Magisterium is a darned useful thing to have in a Church, and I really do think Orthodoxy suffers by not having one. Moreover, I have heard this from former Orthodox. One former Orthodox told me that he’d found it impossible to get straight (consistent) answers from his Orthodox mentors on pretty central questions. This left him feeling bewildered, not ravished by Mystery. 😉 Another former Orthodox, now a self-described atheist, complained of the same thing. Perhaps one might argue that these two people had never really mastered the phronema (sp?), but isn’t that a cop-out, too? It sounds a lot like the Calvinist’s retort when his coreligionist “popes”: “He was never really ‘saved’ to begin with.”
I happen to believe that people–East, West, North, and South–need answers. Not answers to absolutely everything, but answers to some of the bigger, more crucial things. The Catholic Magisterium (guided by the Holy Spirit) provides those answers–sufficiently so that we do not have to lob patristic passages at each other in order to defend our divergent views on absolutely central faith issues.
I’m not articulating this well at all, so I fear I’ll be misunderstood. (I’m also late for a meeting, so I have to run–ack!)
Please understand that I am not saying we should erase all mystery. We couldn’t if we wanted to. The most cataphatic Catholic lives with a TON of mystery; that’s just the nature of Christianity.
All I’m saying is that there’s such a thing as too much mystery, too much uncertainty, too much confusion, too much unjelled-ness.
After all, Our Lord did promise that the Holy Spirit would lead His Church into “all truth”–not all confusion and indefiniteness.
Diane –
While I can’t entirely agree with some of your points (or at least the way in which you have phrased them), I can certainly understand where you’re coming from as a Latin Catholic.
The way that an Eastern Orthodox sees his Church from the inside is radically different from the way that a Roman Catholic sees Orthodoxy from the outside. A Greek Orthodox priest friend of mine told me about his recent dinner he and his bishop had with a prominent conservative RC bishop. In the course of conversation, the Orthodox bishop was educating the RC bishop about the intricacies of Orthodox jurisdictionalism around the globe. The Orthodox and Catholics in this particular town have a very cordial relationship, so the RC bishop knew that he would not offend his Orthodox guests by asking, “How on earth do you guys stay together at all?” Well, despite Islamic, militant atheist aggression, and infighting, Orthodoxy has indeed “stayed together” in a remarkable way, and I’m not sure that it can be rationally explained, except by reference to Divine Providence and the mysterious action of the Holy Spirit.
Likewise, the way that a devout Roman Catholic sees his Church is radically different from the way an Eastern Orthodox beholds it from the outside. An Orthodox typically sees a monstrous, monolithic bureaucracy, with the Pope and his minions micromanaging every aspect of the universal Church and constantly issuing decrees and definitions evacuating Christianity of all joy and mystery. Orthodox likewise often cannot understand how the Roman Church continues to exist, and over the centuries plenty of non-Catholics have written obituaries for the institution of the Papacy. And yet, somehow both the Orthodox Churches and the Roman Church continue, by the grace of God and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, ever faithful to the Lord.
That being said, I can agree with the jist of your post. By way of explanation, I will stick my neck out, and hope that my head does not get cut off. 🙂 If I’m really out of line, I hope that my Orthodox friends will reel me in gently.
I have always been very nervous when individual Orthodox begin sentences with “THE Orthodox view is…” “Orthodoxy teaches…” Personally, outside of the Creed and the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, I have never been able to locate this vast repository of official Orthodox views and teachings.
But someone will say that we as Orthodox find a great deal of official teachings in our liturgical life. I have no doubt that this is true, and I think that this is one of the true geniuses of the Eastern Christian tradition (as praised by many Latin Catholics, including the late Pope). But even here there are some ambiguities, such as a fairly significant textual difference between the Greek and Slavonic recensions of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy (proclaimed on the First Sunday of Lent), or the consecration oath of Orthodox bishops-elect. In a few cases, the Byzantine hymnology contains some fairly, er, questionable theological concepts by standards set in other approved Orthodox sources (such as the common troparion for ascetics with its apparent dualistic, gnostic take on “disregarding the flesh” in order “to care instead for the soul, since it is immortal”). And then I have trouble figuring out how exactly the hymnology for Saint Leo or Saint Sylvester of Rome links up with the common Orthodox polemical take on the Petrine ministry of the Roman Church.
And often, when one does find seemingly official Orthodox statements past the era of the Ecumenical Councils, these are rather ambiguous as well. There is some confusion, for instance, about the exact authority of the local Palamite councils of the fourteenth century, or the existence of an “Eighth Ecumenical Council”. I also find it astonishing that the early modern Orthodox councils, symbolical books, or catechisms (as cited by Ephrem Bensusan), regarded as having a great deal of authority in the Orthodox Church by previous generations, have been so casually ignored, dismissed, or even condemned since the advent of the Greek “neo-patristic” or Russian “Paris emigre” schools of contemporary Orthodox theology.
There is often an appeal to a “patristic consensus” but, strangely, this rarely includes the insights of the Latin Fathers. This used to be because of (understandable) ignorance. Photius and Mark of Ephesus never questioned the Orthodoxy or authority of the Latin Fathers, but not having read them, they simply assumed that their writings had been doctored by Latin Catholic apologists. Now that Orthodox theologians know better, there seems to be no choice but to ignore, or in some cases even condemn, the Latin Fathers (e.g. everybody’s favorite scapegoat/whipping-boy, Augustine). In sharp contrast, I find the modern Latin Catholic attempts to integrate the insights of the Greek Fathers and the riches of Eastern Christendom incredibly refreshing. To me, this is authentically “catholic” in every sense of the word. The extreme Orthodox attempts to restrict the expression of the Faith to only the Greek Fathers, or the extreme RC attempts to restrict the expression of the Faith only to Aquinas, seem profoundly un-catholic to me. But that’s just me.
I’m sure that I will be told, “You have a Latin phronema, not an Orthodox one.” Maybe so; in fact, probably so. For the life of me, I don’t really know what to do about that. I’ve never been able to figure it out. I suppose I’m just not one of the gnostic ones (yes, that’s a little unfair, but I often get this impression when speaking to online Orthodox apologists).
Dear CU,
Thank you so much. Now I understand better your mindset and where you are coming from…it helps to understand what you see as weaknesses in Orthodoxy (in spite of its wonderful strengths), and what you see as compelling among the Latins — that is, at least in modern times, an effort to integrate the thinking of East and West.
I have often wondered why you are on this path. Now perhaps I understand a little more. May Christ our God bless his household and somehow make us one again.
CU,
Thanks for the collection. I have read Ephrem’s writings before and have always been favorably impressed with his scholarship.
I also appreciate your response to Diane. The only way to truly know either Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism is from the inside.
As an Orthodox, I will state that Orthodoxy for me baptized paradox in such a way that preserved the awesome mystery of the Faith and provided a doxalogical center for doing the Christian life.
What has always left me cold is a clinical, antiseptic, juridical approach to the Faith that I found all too comon in the West, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.
While we humans do desire answers and information, we need humility, and the Mystery of the faith is meant to crucify our all-too-common tendency to “know” everything.
Should there be a balance? Of course. Should we use our intellect to the best of our abilities? By all means. But, in the end, we must be as Fr. Schemann of blessed memory said homo adorandus – the worshipping man. In other words, I worship, therefore I am.
Please don’t read this as a denial of Ephrem’s work, or as a slight to our Roman Catholic friends. Not at all. But it is meant to say that Orthodoxy has traditionally been more interested in enshrining our faith in our prayer that in the academy.
I pray for our unity as God wills, but not at the expense of ancient treasures either East or West.
As an Orthodox, I will state that Orthodoxy for me baptized paradox in such a way that preserved the awesome mystery of the Faith and provided a doxalogical center for doing the Christian life.
What has always left me cold is a clinical, antiseptic, juridical approach to the Faith that I found all too comon in the West, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.
But it is meant to say that Orthodoxy has traditionally been more interested in enshrining our faith in our prayer that in the academy.
Sigh. With all due respect, Barnabas, but when I read comments like this, I throw up my hands in despair. Will there ever be a meeting of the minds when one side persists in clinging to such wholly erroneous stereotypes?
Do you really think most Catholics experience their faith as something “clinical, juridical, and antiseptic”? If you told this to most Catholics, they would not have a clue what you were talking about. And as for the “academy”–good grief, we are the Church of the poor, the immigrant, the marginalized; how much exposure do you think most of us even have to the Academy?
Particularly in this month of May, when Catholic Marian piety flourishes with such warmth and devotion, your caricature of Catholic spirituality is completely off the mark. I do not know one single Catholic who could relate to it. Truly! I mean, do you think the little Hispanic lady who lights a candle in front of la Guadalupana and mumurs prayers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus represents “the Academy”? If so, you have an odd definition of the Academy. 😉
I assume you converted from a Protestant background. May I ask which sort of Protestantism? ISTM you may be extrapolating too much from your own experience, especially if your background was, say, Calvinist. Catholicism has nothing of that cerebral, ratiocinative aridity you excoriate. Calvinism, perhaps. Catholicism, no. As a Cradle Catholic teethed on Lives of the Saints, Benediction services in dimly lit churches, and popular devotions like Novenas and May processions, I can assure you–you’ve got Catholicism all wrong. We have an immensely rich mystical tradition; a wonderful devotional tradition focused on the “Domestic Church,” the home; and an absolutely central emphasis on prayer, especially the supreme prayer, the Mass, which the Latin Rite celebrates every single day. I could go on and on, but such self-defense scarcely seems necessary. Go to a daily Mass sometime, and talk to one of the regulars there. Or better yet, visit a Perpetual Aoration chapel and talk to one of the adorers. Then come back and tell me that Catholicism is all about “clinical, antiseptic” cerebrality. Oy! 🙂
I suppose your post simply underscores, once again, that it’s impossible to understand any religious tradition from the outside. But that just makes me wonder why, after so positively representing your own tradition, you insist on defining it against mine—grossly caricaturing and misrepresenting mine in the process. Might it not be true that mine is as hard to truly appreciate from the outside as you claim yours is?
For the record, BTW, I think all religious traditions are best appreciated and understood from the inside. This seems blindingly obvious to me, in fact. Each Tuesday night, I attend a ladies’ Bible study at the home of my devout Pentecostal neighbor. As a rsult, I’ve had a pretty heavy-duty total-immersion exposure to Pentecostalism–and believe me, it is just as hard to understand from the outside as Orthodoxy could ever be. Trust me! Orthodoxy does not possess some special secret gnosis that makes it alone inaccessible to outsiders. All religious traditions, even Pentecostalism, can only be truly understood and appreciated from the inside.
Sorry for bluntness, and hope I haven’t offended you. But I do not think it serves any of us well to caricature and distort and misrepresent the other’s tradition.
God bless,
Diane
After posting the above comment, I remembered something. A cyber-acquaintance of mine–a Calvinist turned Pentecostal turned (most recently) Orthodox–once expressed an appreciation of the sheer catholicity of spiritualities available within Catholicism.
He put it this way (reconstructing from memory here): “Catholicism accommodates everything from the sentimental pietism of a Saint Therese of Lisieux to the icy intellectualism of a Ronald Knox.”
That, I submit, is an astute observation.
Catholicism does not try to shoehorn its adherents into one spirituality or one phronema or one whatever. It allows for a diversity of approaches, for a diversity of spiritualities. If you’re the cerebral type, you can feel perfectly at home within Catholicism. If you’re the squishy emotional or pietistic type, you can feel equally at home. If you’re more Martha than Mary–or more Mary than Martha–ditto. If you’re the mystical-shmystical type–same deal. I myself incline toward the pietistic and mystical-shmystical…and I have always felt completely comfortable inside Catholicism, which has treasures galore to offer us pietistic/mystical types.
In fact, I came back to the Church via the writings of a Church-approved mystic, Saint Faustina Kowalska, “the Apostle of Divine Mercy.” I can assure you that “the Academy” had virtually nothing to do with it!
My earliest religious memories are of Benediction services at Saint William’s Church in Dorchester, an inner-city borough of Boston. It was here that I experienced the Numinous–in an atmosphere fragrant with the mingled aroma of incense and candlewax…with sun slanting through the stained glass windows and the choir chanting “Tantum Ergo.” Antiseptic? Hardly!
The Catholic Church, I would suggest, is the Both/And Church par excellence–prescinding from the Incarnation, the ultimate Both/And. 🙂 And because it accommodates Both/And, it accommodates all manner of people with all manner of (legitimate, orthodox) spiritualities. In this, it is truly catholic. And very, very freeing.
God bless,
Diane
diane wrote:
diane wrote:
Maybe he chose to define his faith against diane’s because she first chose to define her faith against Orthodoxy. ;^)
Once one goes beyond saying that the inside of either Orthodoxy or Catholicism is a “mystery” to those outside, such comparisons are inevitable; some will be negative, some positive, and some neutral.
Touche’, Reader. 🙂 You have a point.
But perhaps this will clarify what I see as an essential distinction between my observation and Barnabas’s:
I wasn’t so much comparing Orthodoxy with Catholicism as comparing Orthodox intramural sparring with its Catholic counterpart.
Orthodoxy may be a mystery inaccessible to outsiders…but Orthodox debates on the Internet are open and accessible, there for all to see and appraise.
I may not have expressed myself clearly enough to convey my meaning; I’m not even sure how to put it in words. It’s just that…some of these intramural Orthodox debates remind me of intramural Protestant debates — in that they are trying to hash out (with dueling Scriptures and patristic passages) some very basic Christian questions which the Catholic Magisterium resolved a long time ago.
That is my only point. Catholics do not wrangle over, say, tollhouses versus soul sleep…because our Magisterium teaches very clearly that, after death, we face the Particular Judgment before Christ, whereupon our souls go to either Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory…and then, at the end of all things, there is the General Judgment, whereby our souls are either reunited with our glorified bodies in Heaven or consigned, in de-glorified bodies, so to speak, to Hell.
We may wrangle about how all this can occur in a realm outside time, or about what timelessness even means (as if we could have one blessed clue!). But we do not wrangle (unless we are dissidents defying the Magisterium) about the essential facts, the essential points of the de fide doctrines concerning the Four Last Things.
I think there are some elements of Christian Faith so basic, so critical, so central, and so essential that they really need to be resolved more or less definitively. That is what a living Magisterium is for. The lack of one, I would suggest, is a liability, not an asset.
Sorry if that sounds triumphalistic. I’m just speaking from my perspective, which I admit is (necessarily) biased.
I believe that the toll-house controversy (I have never heard anything in Orthodox circles approximating the Protestant heresy of soul-sleep) approximates, not the basic question of the post-mortem destiny of the soul that seems to me to be just as fixed in East as in the West, though defined differently, but approximates the debate that seems to be reviving in the Catholic Church today on the nature of Purgatory. Of course, Orthodox appeal to mystery when describing the precise way in which our prayers assist the souls in their intermediary state, but honestly I find the doctrine of the treasury of merits and indulgances no less mystifying: it just gives a nice financial and atonement metaphor, but relocates the problem of how everything works and what, precisely, the state is like. This mystery was the only point of disagreement at Florence between East and West: are the flames of Purgatory literal, or figurative? Is it a place of purification and sanctification, or of atonement of temporal punishment? But most importantly, what in the world does it mean, what difference does it make, if there are literal flames or not? I know that I am most certainly displaying my ignorance here of Latin doctrine, but I am expressing my puzzlement at the assertion that Orthodox somehow leave out essential doctrines… I guess the problems of one’s own tradition in large part define what one considers essential in the first place.
Thus, I think we need to distinguish between the ways in which East and West approach dogma. What might seem like an “essential” distinction in the East between essence and energies might seem like a distinciton without a difference to the western prhonema, and vice-versa. What is comfortably implicit in the East, like Mary’s ascension, must be made explicit in the West. Why? Why not? It seems like it depends on your starting point. Even when we as Orthodox have the Chair of Peter restored to us, I am not sure it will honestly make much of a difference. We will be able to act much faster on issues like contraception, which may not be defined for another hundred years by an ecumenical council just as the Trinity took that long for the East to define, but there will still be diversity of phronema, diversity of interpretations of whatever PEter utters. For example, assuming we become one iwth our respective dogmas intact as they stand, we will take a long time to figure out what Vatican I means in our language… it might be self-evident as a Roman Catholic, but that’s because the Pope is Roman Catholic for the time being and everyone in his flock asks the same questions using the same theological language.
Rome does have the charisma of defining doctrine, and we in the East need that. But this charisma, once restored, is not going to look like it does in the Roman Catholic Church because there are differences between us that are compatible and mutually enriching. Roman Catholics need definitions on the Assumptions and other matters because Latin doctrine is underdetermined by Latin worship. That is one of the criticisms of the Western Rite in my church, and I believe that it is misplaced, but it is nonetheless true. Eastern docrine is perhaps overdetermined by our worship. We have more doctrine that we pray than we actually speak. Latin dogmas are useful to us because they illuminate certain aspects of what we believe in our worship, and therefore we need Rome, but we live not on the basis of harvesting propositions from our liturgical texts, but on living out the doctrinal implications of our liturgical texts. As the Apostle John says, we are concerned with practicing the Truth and only afterwards sitting down and drawing doctrinal implications.
Of course, we often miss key doctrines in our liturgy this way, as CU points out. Schmemann himself calls this the distorted refraction of piety on our liturgical and theological practice. We correct these distortions dialectically by examining our theology in light of our liturgy, our liturgy in light of our piety and so on and so on around the circle.
It may seem akward, but is the Roman Catholic Church truly Catholic without us? True, you have pietists and bridal mystics (and those who deplore bridal mysticism and/or pietism) and Benedictines and Ignatian visualization, molinists and THomists and Augustinians and Balthazarians, but I think that the Latins still need our genius for unified worship and spirituality as much we need your genius for a unitary teacher. After all, who in the world will interpret the implications of your well-defined dogmas for the spiritual life, where certainty (not of proposition, but in practice) is equally important?
Well, I am not being coherent here becayse I am trying to expresss something that is very difficult to express. I only feel it as part of the ecclesial culture and phronema of which I am part. I appreciate what you express, and to a degree I agree, or at least empathize with your concerns. But I do not think that the manner in which you framed it is helpful, because you already seem to assume the solution a priori.
Finally, though, I am deeply offended, Diane, that you keep comparing ORthodox to PRotestants. Our debates, which pertain to issues that the particular pieties of each times in which we find ourselves in reference to our unchanging worshipping life are of completely different kinds than PRotestant debates, debates that pertain to different interpretations of texts divorced from the Lex Orandi. Protestants also do not practice, as Orthodox do, the infallibility of the Church (no matter how we define this theologically, the practice is the same), and this alone makes such debates completely different. You also know that Protestantism is itself a continued debate arising from late SCholasticism within Rome that decided to continue outside Rome, whereas Orthodoxy has very different historical concerns. I cannot help but suspect that your comparison of Orthodoxy to Protestantism is nothing more than an Ad Hominem. Why do you feel compelled to make this comparison? Does it make you feel uncomfortable to think that you might need to approach us as equals? If so, why?
Just a quick observation: I used “soul sleep” as shorthand; I do recognize that Fr. Azkoul’s (et al’s) doctrine is much more nuanced than this. Sorry for he confusion…I don’t know a shorthand way of expressing the doctrine that I usually see counterposed to tollhouses in Internet debates.
OC, I am sorry for deeply offending you. I apologize.
Your post is long, and lunch breaks are short. I will read it more fully and comment later, if our gracious host permits. 🙂
Thanks….
Diane
So, Diane, am I safe in concluding that you are a Roman Catholic? 🙂
Seriously, Dinae, I hear you loud and clear that Roman Catholics have mystery and mysticism too. Point well taken.
However, the West has a common theological heritage, and a big part of that heritage is the scholasticism that produced the earth shattering question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
It is also true that Protestantism is the most extreme expression of this rationalistic tendency, but Roman Catholicism is the mother of Protestantism. The seeds of this rationalism were found in Her.
Now, before you go ballistic with the “You Orthodox always bash us poor Roman Catholics” your point concerning the piety of the little Spanish lady is well taken.
However, we are talking about how each particular tradition does theology and the West has tended toward the juridical. This isn’t a slam. It is an observation.
The East has tended toward the doxalogical in doing theology. That’s why we don’t have a lot of pronouncements about this or that dogma. Our theology is done in our worship language for the most part. We are historically reluctant to make a “final” statement about many things outside the Creed.
Is one way better than another? I suppose a case can be made either way, but I think the proper answer would be to insist on a balanced approach.
Suffice it to say, Diane, that I did not mean to suggest that Roman Catholicism has no appreciation for mystery or devotion. Not at all. But I do observe that the way the Roman Catholic Magisterium does theology and the way Orthodoxy does theology is different.
By the way, I was a Pentecostal pastor before I converted to Orthodoxy.
So, Diane, am I safe in concluding that you are a Roman Catholic?
Drat! You found me out!! 😉
Both you and OC make some interesting points, which I will try to address when I have time and energy. But I would observe that (a) the “angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin” thing is an old chestnut, a canard, a stereotype, and (I submit) not a particularly useful one; and (b) I’m not sure Catholicism and Orthodoxy do “do theology” in radically different ways; there are certainly Orthodox theologians (e.g., David Hart) who would dispute this. (The Mystical East has been known to wrangle over one iota, after all. Not that it shouldn’t have–the pope, after all, ratified the conciliar decree re that iota.)
BTW–I was “reverted” by the book Divine Mercy in My Soul by Saint Faustina Kowalska. Next time you are near a Catholic bookstore, why not drop in and peruse this volume? You will find it defies every Mystical-East-versus-Ratiocinative-West stereotype you’ve ever encountered. 🙂
As for paradox: It’s a Catholic specialty. 😀
But more later. Too brain-dead for lucidity now.
God bless,
Diane
P.S. Re your “observation”: It is open to dispute.
God bless,
Diane
Reply to #12:
Could anyone find the text in which the scholastics actually discussed how many angels can dance on the head of a needle?
And while we’re giving credit and blame, since the ice cream cone came from a predominantly Catholic town (St. Louis, Missouri) at the 1904 World’s Fair, I credit Catholicism for the invention of that, too. Or is that a connection that needs to be proven instead of being tossed about, as if correlation proves causation? History just ain’t that clean, brotha’.
Paul,
This isn’t about credit or blame, it is an historical observation.
There is no shame in an historical observation that the scholastic movement was an historical theological movement in the West during a certain period of history.
There is also no shame in the clear observation that there are particular philosophical foundations that can be seen as the underpinnings of such a movement.
There is also no shame in observing the historical and theological consequences of such a movement.
It isn’t about blame at all. The Scholastics, building on the theological works of the great Western Christian Fathers, Augustine, Aquinas, and the like, wrestled with what they believed to be significant questions having to do with the nature of reality in light of the Christian revelation.
One Protestant divine once said that the Reformation was the clash between Augustine’s salvation doctrine and his ecclesiology. That observation has merit, in my opinion.
As for the “angels” comment, the actual argument during the medieval period was how many angels can stand on the point of a pin, but the quote became a popular way to question the seemingly endless arguing between theological philosophers over very obscure issues.
It stemmed from Aquinas’ philosophical writings concerning whether an angel going from point A to point B passes through the subsequent points in between and whether angels could occupy the same place at the same time.
Scholasticism did happen. Good things came from the movement, but maybe some not-so-good things did as well.
Barnabas,
I’m glad you found that internet article that talks about angels dancing on the heads of needles. Now, perhaps, that old rumor that blames scholasticism for “producing” such an earth shattering question will stop being perpetuated.
The question which was actually asked by the scholastics isn’t that bad of a question, for the answer to the question affects the entire way in which immaterial substances are viewed in a particular theology, some answers of which could be heretical. And even lovers of scholasticism admit that there were bad spots in scholasticism. Heck, all my medievalist professors hate Ockham; it’s freely admitted by all of them that bad things came of it. My question is whether the Protestant Reformation can be reduced to such a simplistic analysis.
To reduce the Protestant Reformation to one theological argument (or to only theological arguments, for that matter) ignores the political motivations of a bunch of German monarchs, the invention of the printing press, the initial desires of Luther to stay within the Catholic Church (which somewhat dampens the whole idea that this was all about ecclesiology vs. salvation doctrines), the influence of the Renaissance which gave people the desire to recover the culture that had been lost in the Middle Ages, the fact that his initial condemnations in the 95 theses were nearly exclusively over the abuse of indulgences, and had nothing to do with ecclesiology…to name a few. All of which can be cited as legitimate factors leading up to the Protestant Reformation. To reduce it to an argument over ecclesiology and doctrines of salvation is an oversimplification of history, a criticism many people have towards Orthodox apologists on the internet.
Finally, I can’t figure out how this ‘rationalism’ of which Catholicism supposedly gave to Protestantism is to be defined. Ironically, the prevailing nominalism of late scholasticism and espoused by Luther was a rejection of the “theology-as-a-science” methodology of high scholasticism, and what amounted to a full-fledged retreat into fideism, not rationalism. If by rationalism you mean placing personal authority over that of the Church, then there really is no basis for saying Catholicism is the root of rationalism in that way. So I am at a loss as to what you mean.
Thank you, Mr. Hamilton.
Barnabas, if I may say so, you seem rather confident in your “historical observations.” As Paul notes, history is a lot messier than you seem to acknowledge. And, IMHO, some of your “historical observations” are disputable, to say the least.
As an old historiography professor of mine once said, “History is not Gospel.” That is why historians disagree with each other, sometimes sharply, in their interpretations of the same historical data. 🙂
More later, when I have a moment.
God bless,
Diane
Daer Paul and Diane,
I am torn between wondering why you see my comments as a slam on Catholicism (they are not) and why you feel I have somehow exhausted the reasons for the Reformation in my short comments.
My only point in discussing the Western development of theology was that there is a rationalistic tendency there. This isn’t a critique. It is an observation. Is this observation wrong, incomplete, without mert?
This tendency was clear in the clash of Hellenic and Latin mindsets long before the rise of Christianity. Heck, you can even say it goes back to the clash between Aristole and Plato.
My main point is that there is a difference in emphasis in how both East and West developed their ways of doing theology. This point makes no judgement as to which is better (I will be happy to discuss that as I do have some opinion about that), but is simply an observation.
As with any generalizations, there can, and often are, notible exceptions, but do these exceptions dispute or prove the generalization? What one person calls “oversimplification” another person calls common sense.
I do not dispute that Catholicism maintains mystery. I do not dispute that there were historical, political, and theological reasons for the Protestant Reformation. I do not dispute that Catholicism and Orthodoxy are probably very close on many issues.
What I do dispute is that there are no substantive differences at all.
My comments about the Western (note – not exclusively Roman Catholic) approach to theology and the Eastern approach were meant to illustrate just why these theological traditions have difficulty speaking to each other.
Your reactions to my comments go directly to this point.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, but the issue with angels and pins had them standing on the tip, not dancing.
Barnabas,
But you have yet to answer my question: what do you mean by “rationalism?” My very question shows that I am not getting defensive over some perceived slam on Catholicism: it shows only that I am absolutely clueless as to what you are talking about. If I don’t know what you mean, then how can I even begin to get defensive about it? I therefore can’t even begin to judge whether your claim is wrong, incomplete, or even entirely right.
The term has had half a bazillion uses over the course of the centuries, just like the term ‘essence’. To leave such a broad term without defining makes your observation one without meaning. A word with 100 meanings might as well have no meaning unless the specific meaning is specified.
In his dialogue The Sophist, Plato argues that even the most grievous lies have a shred of truth in them. Being a philosophy student, I’ll tell you that the truth is not found in generalizations. The truth is buried and needs to be coaxed out with careful language and pinpoint precision. The further down the rabbit hole we go, the more complicated things get. Most generalizations just bring us back to the surface level.
And I am well aware that Orthodox and Catholics have different enough theologies that we speak past each other oftentimes. It happened often enough between scholastic philosophers of different philosophical persuasions to argue that such things aren’t common.
Finally, I am now completely lost. As for the angels dancing vs. standing on the heads of pins, you were the one who had the angels dancing in the first place. See your post #12.
And seeing as that final sentence from my interlocutor demonstrates that this argument is going to be about inconsequential quibbles, I’ll take this opportunity to bow out. Anyone who wants the last word may have it.
My comments about the Western (note – not exclusively Roman Catholic) approach to theology and the Eastern approach were meant to illustrate just why these theological traditions have difficulty speaking to each other.
After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands…
Hmmm. Funny. I don’t see anything here about East-versus-West, let alone “East-Is-So-Greatly-Superior-to-West.”
Rather, I see about as handy a definition–and as clear a picture–of the Catholic Church as one is likely to get anywhere.
God bless,
Diane