A postscript

I wish to acknowledge publicly that my language towards Photios Jones in the exchange over my last post was intemperate and uncalled-for. I do not presume to know who is saved and who is damned; that is a judgment which belongs only to the Lord Jesus Christ to make. If I in fact believed that Mr. Jones were eternally reprobate, I would not pray for him, as I have done and shall continue to do. I do strongly reject his ecclesiastical position; but it may well be that the Lord will account him a more righteous man than myself. If he is in schism, it is possible that I am as well, and with less justification.

For some time now, I have come to think that Rome’s claims to Petrine authority are essentially legitimate. I also think that the Orthodox Church is a true Church, and in many ways preserves more of genuine Christian life and piety than I am able to perceive elsewhere. It has nurtured my life in Christ, and I am unwilling to leave it for something that I would only perceive as a pale substitute and that might leave me feeling spiritually lost. Such a position might be condemned as cowardly and hypocritical and inconsistent, and in fact is condemned as such by Photios Jones, and probably by others; but I hope that, at least, I have been up-front about it. I would like to see a union between the Churches, in truth and peace; I do not want to see a union that results in reducing the Orthodox Church to something it is not. I have thought that the approach John Bekkos took to this issue centuries ago deserves, at least, to be understood, and perhaps to be emulated.

Last year, around this time, I discontinued this blog for a period of several months; the thought has occurred now to do the same, or to hang it up altogether. I need to get a real job, and to finish this book on Bekkos; the discussions which I have had with Photios Jones, although they make for good spectator sport, are soul-destroying, and are largely a distraction from my real work. I will probably take some time off from the blog during the coming weeks; there is much sorting out of things I need to do. I ask the readers’ prayers.

St. Cyril on divine simplicity

In the discussion to a recent post (The debate on Bekkos’s Epigraphs), some skepticism has been expressed concerning an identification, made by theologians like Thomas Aquinas and Bessarion of Nicaea, between God’s will and God’s being. For this reason, I thought I would present here a couple of passages which show St. Cyril of Alexandria asserting this very identification; i.e., he explicitly states that God is whatever he has, and that will and being in God are the same. A strong view of divine simplicity is traditional Christian theology, not a medieval, Latin invention or a Platonizing corruption.

---

St. Cyril of Alexandria, Dialogues on the Trinity (Ad Hermiam), book V; SC 237 (de Durand, ed.), p. 290; PG 75, 945 C.

Hermias. And how, they say, is the divine simple if, in existence on the one hand and in will on the other, it is conceived of separately? For then it would be composite and as though it existed, in a way, out of parts that had come together into a closer unity.	Β. Καὶ πῶς ἂν εἴη τὸ θεῖον ἁπλοῦν εἰ καὶ ἐν ὑπάρξει νοοῖτο, φησί, καὶ ἐν θελήσει διωρισμένους; Σύνθετον γὰρ ἤδη καὶ οἱονεί πως ἐκ μερῶν εἱς ἓν τὸ ἀρτίως ἔχον συνδεδραμηκότοιν.
Cyril. Therefore, since, in your view, the divine is simple and exists above all composition (and this view of yours is correct), his will is nothing other than he himself. And if someone says “will,” he indicates the nature of God the Father.	Α. Οὐκοῦν, ἐπειδήπερ ἁπλοῦν τὸ θεῖον καὶ ἄμεινον ἢ κατὰ σύνθεσιν εἶναί σοι δοκεῖ (δοκεῖ δὲ ὀρθῶς), οὐχ ἑτέρα παρ᾽ αὐτὸ εἴη ἂν ἡ βούλησις αὐτοῦ. Θέλησιν δέ τις εἰπών, τὴν τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ Πατρὸς κατεσήμηνε φύσιν.
Hermias. So it would appear.	Β. Ἔοικεν.

* * *

St. Cyril, Dialogues on the Trinity, book VII; SC 246 (de Durand, ed.), pp. 200-202; PG 75, 1109 B-C.

Cyril. How then can that by which and in which God accomplishes his operations with regard to the creation and makes himself known as Creator of all things be a creature, subject to becoming? For perhaps it is already time for us to make this claim. If they pretend that such is the state of things, they will be obliged, even unwillingly, to confess the created character of the divine energy. And what is the consequence? An odious blasphemy, opinions opposed to good sense, good for bringing an accusation of the height of stupidity. For if one is not too poorly endowed with the decency which befits wise men, one will say that the divine being is properly and primarily simple and incomposite; one will not, dear friend, venture to think that it is composed out of nature and energy, as though, in the case of the divine, these are naturally other; one will believe that it exists as entirely one thing with all that it substantially possesses. Thus, if anyone says that his energy, that is, his Spirit, is something created and made, even while it belongs to him in a proper sense, then the Deity, surely, will be a creature, given that his operation is no other thing than he himself. Isn’t the claim abominable and hateful, and one which has a great tendency towards practical impiety?

Α. Πῶς οὖν ἄρα τὸ δι᾽ οὗ καὶ ἐν ῷ Θεὸς ἐνεργὸς περὶ τὴν κτίσιν καὶ τῶν ὅλων ὁρᾶται δημιουργὸς γενητὸν ἂν εἴη καὶ ἐκτισμένον; Ὥρα γὰρ ἤδη πως ἡμᾶς εἰπεῖν ὡς, εἴπερ ὧδε ἔχειν ἐροῦσι τὸ χρῆμα, κτιστὴν εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ τὴν ἐνέργειαν καὶ οὐχ ἑκόντες ὁμολογήσουσι. Καὶ τί τὸ ἐντεῦθεν; Θεομισὴς δυσφημία, παίμφημοι δόξαι, καὶ τῆς εἰς ἄκρον ἡκούσης ἀμαθίας ἐγκλήματα. Ἐρεῖ γάρ, οἶμαι, τὶς τῆς ἀνδράσι πρεπούσης σοφοῖς εὐκοσμίας ἠφειδηκὼς ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀσύνθετον κυρίως τε καὶ πρώτως τὸ Θεῖον, ὦ τᾶν, οὐκ ἐκ φύσεως καὶ ἐνεργείας ὡς παρ᾽ αὐτὸ φυσικῶς ἑτέρας συντεθεῖσθαι νοούμενον, ἀλλ᾽ ἕν τι τὸ σύμπαν ὑπάρχειν μεθ᾽ ὧν ἂν οὐσιωδῶς ἔχοι πεπιστευμένον. Οὐκοῦν εἰ λέγοιτο κτιστὴν καὶ πεποιημένην τὴν ἐνέργειαν ἔχειν, ἰδίαν οὖσαν αὐτοῦ, τουτέστι τὸ Πνεῦμα, καὶ αὐτό που πάντως ἔσται κτιστόν, ἐπεὶ μὴ ἕτερόν τι παρ᾽ αὐτὸ τὸ ἐνεργὲς αὐτοῦ. Ἆρ᾽ οὐ στυγητὸς καὶ ἀπεχθὴς ὁ λόγος, καὶ πολὺ διανενευκὼς εἰς τὸ πεποιῆσθαι δυσσεβῶς;

A visit to Brooklyn

Near Prospect Park in Brooklyn is a place I have often visited, and which I visited again some weeks ago on my way back to New Jersey at the end of a brief trip to Long Island: the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Since my return to the Northeast in 2005 after seven years of teaching in New Mexico, I have probably spent more time at this garden than at any other place in New York City, with the possible exception of the New York Public Library; at one point I contemplated moving to Brooklyn and taking a job there, which I have not done and probably shall not do, chiefly because my horticultural skills are nonexistent. But this has not prevented me from enjoying the garden; and since it was a bright spring day, and my birthday was approaching, and I had not been to the garden in some time, I made a point of stopping there.

The scriptures, of course, speak of the first man as a gardener, someone whose original task was “to dress and keep” the garden in which he had been put (Gen 2:15) — more literally, “to work it and to keep it,” לעבדה ולשמרה, le-ovdha ve-le-shomrha, LXX ἐργάζεσθαι αὐτὸν καὶ φυλάσσειν. The same verb עבד occurs, for the first time in the Bible, at v. 5 of the same chapter, where it says that “there was not a man to till [to work, le-avod] the ground”; man is there presented as a being whose essential activity, as his name adam suggests, is to work the ground, ha-adamah, to get it to do the thing it is meant to do, i.e., produce beautiful and healthful plants. From the verb עבד is derived the feminine abstract noun עבודה avodah, “service,” which, in the Septuagint, usually gets translated by the Greek word λειτουργία, from which we get the English word “liturgy.” So it might be inferred that liturgical prayer is itself a form of gardening, a working of the ground of the heart, although, admittedly, such an inference would not hold up in a book of logic.

St. Gregory the Theologian, in his poem On the Soul, interprets man’s original employment as a gardener in a particular way. The poem speaks of God having created man to be a being partaking in both the material and the spiritual worlds, a being of a mixed constitution who, because of this dual nature, exhibits a longing directed towards both heaven and earth. Having given man this evenly balanced nature, God also gave him an internal law, and placed him “in the vales of an ever-verdant paradise, … observing which direction he’d incline” (Poem 1.1.8, De anima, vv. 101-103; PG 37, 454). As for the paradisiacal garden, Gregory says, “it is the heavenly life, it seems to me. So this is where he placed him, to be a farmer, cultivating his words,” λόγων δρηστῆρα γεωργόν (ibid., vv. 105-106). The word δρηστῆρα, in one sense, implies that Adam was placed in the garden to be a doer of God’s words, to live a life of practical virtue. But I have translated it as “cultivating” God’s words, his λόγοι, in keeping with what St. Gregory states in his Oration 38.12 (PG 36, 324B): Adam was placed in paradise “to till the immortal plants, by which is perhaps meant the Divine Conceptions (θείων ἐννοιῶν), both the simpler and the more perfect.” Man’s original, Edenic activity was, on St. Gregory’s view, to contemplate the divine reasons of things, and, by perceiving them, to catch a reflection of the glory of God.

Perhaps it was this original Adamic task that drew me to the garden in Brooklyn on that bright afternoon some weeks ago, although I confess that, in recent months, my ability to perceive the divine reasons of things has been very sporadic and limited. Perhaps I have had too many other things on my mind to fulfill that Adamic task in the proper way.

I stayed at the garden only about an hour and a half, having arrived there in the middle of the afternoon and not wanting to get caught in rush-hour traffic. In driving there, I passed by various examples of New York life and death: vast marble cemeteries; some Hispanic men playing baseball; a car with a bumper-sticker that read “Islam is the answer”; a Torah scholar, gaunt, black-clad, with a long black beard, looking strangely other-worldly, sitting on a park bench in front of a yeshiva.

At the garden, I bought three cheap books (two on recycling and one on composting), had lunch (a bowl of split-pea soup), and then walked around, observing the plants and the people. The boughs of a dark Canadian hemlock hung down over the walkway: a beautiful tree, but poisonous (remember Socrates). Two women in the rose garden wore hats that reminded me of those seen in photographs from my grandmother’s day. Mothers pushed their baby-carriages and talked on their cellphones. I stopped for awhile at the Japanese pond, one of the most beautiful spots in the garden, a place where people invariably take pictures and have their picture taken; a wooden, covered shelter there extends over the water, from which one can gaze down upon the goldfish swimming below, which gather when they see a tourist, knowing from experience that tourists frequently ignore the sign that tells them not to feed the fish. Some visitors there were speaking Modern Greek; a Spanish woman, who pronounced her “c”s as “th”s, was telling her young daughter, in Spanish, to behave.

I also took a walk through the “Shakespeare Garden,” a small enclosure that apparently contains specimens of all the flowers mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays. It was in that garden, some two decades ago, that I bumped into the elder sister of a friend of mine from college. Elaine Gluckman always impressed me as a kind and gentle person, a sort of Leah to her sister’s Rachel. She told me there, with evident joy, about her upcoming marriage. About a year later I learned that she had died in childbirth; her son survived, and has been raised by his father. Perhaps she was actually the Rachel (cf. Gen. 35:16-20).

There are many things I do not understand. Perhaps the greatest attraction of a botanical garden is that plants do not say anything. They challenge one’s assumption that all of life is susceptible to analysis and explanation. If one is to perceive the λόγοι of plants, their speech, in which they declare their nature and show the divine glory, one clearly has to go about it in a different way than is usually done in this world of instant information and constant self-assertion. One has to learn great patience, something I still lack.

God willing, at some point I will attain that necessary patience and humility, so as to perceive God’s reasons, and God’s glory, in plants and people. For the present, much of what I ought to understand seems strange and inexplicable.

The debate on Bekkos’s Epigraphs

Gregory Palamas, Antepigraphae, with rebuttals by Bessarion of Nicaea

Translated from the text in Hugo Laemmer, ed., Scriptorum Graeciae Orthodoxae Bibliotheca Selecta, tomus primus (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1866), pp. 445-483.

The following comments by Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) and Bessarion of Nicaea (1403-1472) on John Bekkos’s first Epigraph were written something like a hundred years apart; Palamas wrote his criticism of Bekkos in the 1340s; Bessarion, most likely, wrote his defense of him in the 1440s, sometime after the Council of Florence. Bekkos put together his patristic dossier, the Epigraphs, in the mid-1270s. The three texts are often printed together; I have tried to do something like that here with the present translations, by providing a hypertext link. Note that I have only provided a translation here for the first of Bekkos’s thirteen Epigraphs, and the discussion connected with it; there are twelve more. But these three documents will, I hope, suffice as a brief introduction to the debate.

---

Palamas: Refutation of Bekkos’s first Epigraph

When, in theology, “from” and “through” are equivalent with each other, they indicate neither division nor difference in the Holy Trinity, but rather the Trinity’s unity and invariability which is according to nature and oneness of will; for from this it is shown that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of one and the same nature, and power, and energy, and will. But he who has here copied down the sayings of the saints, and thus prefaces them, attempts to demonstrate, wickedly and impiously, the difference of the divine hypostases through the equivalence of such prepositions and because the Holy Spirit, one of the three hypostases worthy of worship, has existence from two hypostases, and from each of them in a different way. Plainly, therefore, the statements of the saints are, in themselves, pious and good; but they are taken in a wicked and impious manner by the man who has collected them and introduced them here.

But that this preposition “through,” when it has the same force as “from,” indicates the union and inalterableness in everything, the divine Maximus shows clearly concerning certain people who were saying that the Spirit is from the Son, when, writing to Marinus, he demonstrated that they were not making the Son out to be a cause: “for they know one cause of the Son and Spirit, the Father; but so that they might show the coming forth through him, and might make clear by this the coherence and the inalterableness of the substance.” Therefore it is clear from this that this Bekkos takes such statements in an impious way; for he attempts to infer from these things, not the coherence and inalterableness of the hypostases, but their difference. Nor does he believe Basil the Great. For, in one of the chapters of his book to Amphilochius, he says, “The fact that the Father creates through the Son neither constitutes the Father’s creating as imperfect, nor does it signify the Son’s activity as inefficacious; but it shows forth the united character of their will. Thus, the expression ‘through the Son’ involves an acknowledgment of the primary cause; it is not assumed as an accusation against the creative cause.” He, therefore, who says that the Spirit comes forth from the Son and through the Son according to the bestowal and common counsel of the Father and the Son shows this rightly; for it is the good pleasure of the Father and the Son, and, with the common good pleasure of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is supplied to those who are worthy. But these Latinophrones, inferring in their drunkenmindedness that “through the Son” and “from the Son” indicate existence, impiously construe the Holy Spirit to exist necessarily as a work and creature of good pleasure and of will, but not as the fruit of the divine nature; for, according to the holy Damascene, the creation is a work of the divine will, but the Godhead is not, God forbid. For neither, again, are the preeternal and everlasting begetting and procession, according to him, of the divine will, but of the divine nature.

---

Bessarion, archbishop of Nicaea, against Palamas’s arguments against Bekkos

This fine gentleman is completely unable to look square in the face of these texts which affirm the Holy Spirit to be from the Son and to proceed from the Father through the Son, nor at what has been inferred from them. How could he, given that they are so many and of such clear truth? Wrongly and without any reason he gets stuck on the equivalence of “through” and “from”; and by constructing his refutation out of insults, he thinks that he has done something to the purpose, when all he has done is to give a “wicked and impious” interpretation of the mind of the saints, and to malign the wise man who collected these sayings and affixed to them their inscriptions. But, as for rendering a reason for what he says, of this he is incapable.

But, although he recognizes that, when the word “through” is equivalent to “from” in matters of theology, it makes known the union and invariableness and unanimity which are found in the Holy Trinity, he supposes that this word “through” cannot apply, in this sense, to the procession from the Father through the Son. Or else he presumes that we think the word does apply in this sense, but not for aforesaid reason, but, instead, to introduce discrimination and division and opposition and disharmony. From the things he says, it is pretty clear that that is what he thinks; or rather, he plainly states that he shows us, in this way, to hold the view that the Spirit has existence from the two hypostases, Father and Son, in different ways. I don’t know where and when he has heard this thing said, “in different ways.” (This is how he thinks he can attack us in theology.) But perhaps he thinks this thing himself, when he says that the world exists from the Father through the Son. For I fail to see the reason why, in the case of the creation, the word “through,” which carries the same force as “from,” exhibits the persons’ identity while at the same time manifesting their distinction — for this is something he himself will not deny — yet in the case of the Spirit the term indicates otherness and distinction, purely and simply.

And he lacks all shame when, in opposition to himself, he produces Basil the Great testifying that the expression “through the Son” involves an acknowledgment of the initial cause. But as for us, we most definitely affirm that the Holy Spirit possesses existence from these two hypostases, the Father and the Son. For nothing operates, except insofar as it is particular and individual; and, in respect of this, the Father and the Son are two. But that the Holy Spirit comes forth from them in different ways, this we will not admit, so long as we hear the saints calling the Spirit the “natural energy” of the Son, just as he is the energy of the Father. And by all means we believe that there is one energy of the Father and the Son; otherwise, he who says that the world exists from the Father and the Son and the Spirit — or, from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit — would not say that it has been created from the three hypostases in a single way; rather, he might well say that it has been created [in different] manners by each of the three.

But if he wonders why, if the term “through” makes known their identity and oneness of will, we wish to show through this term that the Son is cause of the Holy Spirit’s existence, let him first wonder at himself, why, when he says that the world has come to be through the Son, he then supposes the Son to be the cause of the world’s production, in view of the meaning of this word “through” — or else let him say that the Son is not cause of the things that are, and let one bad error cure another.

But then he brings in the testimony of the divine Maximus, a testimony without any bearing upon the subject at hand. For we, too, might say that the term “through” makes known the unity and the invariableness of the substance of the Father and the Son. For we know that a certain order and relationship is shown, and rightly shown, through the term “through,” which is the grounds for which the term is spoken, in addition to the grounds for which we use the term “from.” Now this very thing, the identity and invariableness, is the cause, both of the Son’s sharing this ability with the Father, and of the Spirit’s coming-forth through him. For according to the divine Cyril it is from both, i.e., from the Father through the Son — and according to this same Maximus, it is from the Father and the Son, and so accordingly from the Father through the Son — that the Spirit proceeds, that is, has existence [huparxis]. For he himself would say that “to proceed” means “to have existence,” and especially according to those who choose to apply this word for the existence of the Spirit. But if the teacher [i.e., Maximus] says he does not make the Son, but the Father, to be the Spirit’s cause, you would not be surprised if you would bear in mind the Greek language, and what it is that this language customarily means when it employs this word “cause.” For, plainly, it is the initial and primary cause and fountain and root of each thing which is chiefly called its “cause”; and that only the Father exists as such a cause, who would dispute? And this is clear from the following consideration: no mature Christian would deny that both the Son and the Spirit exist as cause of the creation. But Gregory the Theologian says:

“God subsists in three who are Supreme: in the Cause and the Creator and the Perfecter — I mean, in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Spirit.”

But when you hear that the Father is the primary cause, do not then suppose that even those who do not wish to do so say that the Son puts forth the Spirit differently, because he is not the primary cause: for this is something that applies also in the case of the creation, and, absolutely, of all things which the Son possesses. For, although the Son is not the primary cause of the creation, nevertheless — if in fact all things that the Father possesses in a paternal, uncaused way the Son possesses in a caused way and filially— he himself is cause, and, together with the Father, one cause of the things that are; and the term “through” makes known his sameness and oneness of will, no less than it shows the distinction of the persons.

But as to what he says, that we say that the Spirit is a work of divine will and therefore a creature, because we present to the mind the identity of will, I cannot tell if anyone other than himself would be persuaded by this. For if he thinks that, because the word “through” indicates will, the Spirit will be inferred to be a creature, why will the Spirit not be rather a divine nature, and glorified by us, because the word “through” presents to the mind the identity of substance? And indeed, the expression, which he has taken from the great Maximus, teaches us to show rather their substantial identity; for he says, “so that they may exhibit before the mind the coherence and the invariability of the substance.” And even if “through” only showed the identity of their will, even in this case nothing absurd would follow, when it is understood that, in God, will and substance are the same. For no one would not agree that this power is more simple and higher than all others. And who does not know that every power so far is accounted the greater, by the degree to which it is simpler and higher? And from this, also, it follows that the will of God, in relation to the Son and the Spirit, has the character of nature, while, in relation to the creation, it has the character of will. For it is evident that every will, and the divine will itself, stands, as nature, in relation to an end, willing it in a definite way, just as nature also tends towards a single, definite thing which is proper to it. But the end of the willing of God the Father is the Son and the Spirit: towards these, as nature, it is necessarily directed. But, in the case of those things which exist in relation to the end, and especially those things without which the end can be reached, such as are the creatures (for these contribute nothing either to the being of God or to God’s being better), towards these the will is directed, not in a defined way, and for this reason it has, in this case, the status of will: for it can both will these things and not will them. Thus, both the things said by Damascene are preserved, and we are free from all accusation, and the argument against us states nothing necessary. Thus, in thinking that he says something, he ends up speaking against himself.

Nadal Cañellas on Meyendorff

The following passage is translated from Juan Nadal Cañellas, La résistance d’Akindynos à Grégoire Palamas. Enquête historique, avec traduction et commentaire de quatre traités édités récemment. Volume 2: Commentaire historique. (Leuven 2006), pp. 93-96. Nadal Cañellas’s book gives an historical introduction to his translation of Gregory Akindynos’s four Apodictic Treatises against Gregory Palamas (the Greek text of which he also edited, Corpus Christianorum series graeca, vol. 31). The book, a work of great erudition, deserves to be better known in the English-speaking world. Nadal Cañellas frequently takes issue with the late Archpriest John Meyendorff’s reading of the Palamite controversy; the following paragraphs are presented as a brief specimen of his argumentation.

For many authors, the climactic moment of opposition between the humanists and those who have come to be called hesychasts coincides with the polemics surrounding Gregory Palamas. The person who insisted most strongly upon this opposition, presenting it as two permanently irreconcilable positions, was Fr. John Meyendorff. His intention was clear: to reassert the value of the theology of Gregory Palamas, the inheritor and possessor, in his view, of the great spiritual values of the Christian East, faced with what Meyendorff at least took to be the rational, nominalist, paganizing thought of the Byzantine humanists, precursors of a laicizing thought which, in the West, led to the Italian renaissance:

“Byzantine humanism, if it had been free to develop, would probably have carried Byzantine culture in the same direction as that followed by Italian and thereafter all Western culture. It was the fate of this humanism to nourish the Renaissance in Italy, but, at Byzantium, to run up against the fierce opposition of the monks.” [1] “Moreover, Byzantine humanism was not completely drowned under the Palamite waves, and it was able to produce in the fifteenth century such an astonishing phenomenon as the neo-paganism of Gemisthos Plethon. Nevertheless, there were at stake principles already heralding the advent of the modern world in the dispute between Barlaam and Palamas, and, very often, it was those principles which divided the supporters of Palamism from his adversaries. The humanists, in fact, started from the assumption of a sort of autonomy for human reason, and its independence in relation to a God whom they conceived as some impenetrable and inaccessible Essence. The union of God and man, realized once for all in the person of Christ, and divine action, effective and real, among humanity regenerated by baptism, played no decisive part in their thought. The hesychasts, [on the other hand,] were defending a conception of Christianity inherited from the Fathers, which left no form of human activity outside the sphere of God’s action. The idea of a complete ‘collaboration’ (συνεργία) between these two activities was indeed the special message of Palamism.” [2]

While we do not disregard the real conflict between the two spiritualities in question, we nevertheless do not believe that such categorical assertions can command assent. We are convinced that the truth obliges us to differentiate shades of meaning. Once again, it is Fr. Meyendorff who asserts:

“Akindynos’s letters give us a vivid picture of the … adversaries of Palamism; … none of them was a Latinophron, still less a Byzantine Thomist. As we shall show later, they were recruited partly from the advocates of profane humanism, and partly from the defenders of a Byzantine neo-scholasticism; for the latter every living expression and every dynamic thought, even if it had a solid Patristic basis, was suspect of heresy. Barlaam and Akindynos were very characteristic representatives of these two attitudes.” [3]

Many authors have taken an interest in the Palamite dispute and have spoken about it without having gained a deep acquaintance with it; on this unstable basis, Meyendorff’s apodictic assertions have seemed to carry considerable authority. It is nevertheless dangerous to speak ex cathedra when one’s assertions cannot be sustained in the light of the facts. For Meyendorff, for example, the humanists’ characteristic trait, as we have just heard him say, was to start from “the assumption of a sort of autonomy for human reason, and its independence in relation to a God whom they conceived as some impenetrable and inaccessible Essence” [4]; “the union of God and man, realized once for all in the person of Christ, … played no decisive part in their thought.” [5] One may ask if traits such as these truly characterize Akindynos or even Barlaam. How well-founded, in fact, are Palamas’s accusations against them, and Meyendorff’s more recent ones, which charge them with being quintessential representatives of these attitudes?

Antonio Fyrigos, in the introduction to his edition of Barlaam’s Letters to Palamas, already noted that there are prejudices that are difficult to overturn. [6] It does not seem possible to affirm, purely and simply, that Barlaam placed reason above revelation or that he accorded more authority to pagan authors than to the Fathers of the Church. It was Palamas who said this, and it was a calumny; Barlaam, in reply, wrote to him:

“The wrongs of which you accuse me, most unjustly — and I fail to understand how your priestly soul was able to contrive such things against a Christian and a friend — are the following: while, for my own part, I spoke about divine things with all devotion, veneration, and godly fear, as befits all those who know themselves, and while, in particular, all things I spoke concerning demonstration were spoken in defense of the Fathers, since I found it hard to bear if anyone placed a higher value on demonstrations than on [the Fathers’] words, you, for your part, interpreted my whole discourse as though, having premised a comparison between our holy Fathers and the philosophers and asked which of them one ought to follow, I had preferred to devote my mind to the pagans, whereas you had thought it necessary that argument be made on behalf of the Fathers, giving the view that one must hold to them more than to anyone else. And, because of these things, on the one hand you place me among the ranks of the pagans whom you condemn, on the other hand you represent me as being opposed to those Fathers for whom you claim to fight, and you make pretense of being moved with divine zeal to anger for their sake, as though they had been injured by me. Having interpreted in this way my whole discourse, from start to finish, as far as in you lay you removed from me all possibility of appearing a pious man. For all those who have been won over to an opinion of your righteousness, when they read your letter and have not yet bothered to examine my own writings, will be led to believe deplorable things about me as far as concerns my faith. In fact, even now, upon my arrival in Thessalonica, I have found no small number who, upon your word, have been persuaded to condemn me as an enemy of religion.” [7] “In saying these things, you are well aware that all those who, in the future, will read your treatise will have of me the idea that this Italian Barlaam was an oddball who, pretending to believe in the Christian doctrines, was in reality a pure pagan, since he considered the thesis of the Greeks concerning the indemonstrability of the divine as more devout and pious than the view of its demonstrability maintained by the Fathers.” [8]

Barlaam can hardly be accused of profane humanism or of rationalism and neo-scholasticism; Akindynos and the Princess Irene-Eulogia and, in turn, their disciples and all those who were unwilling to accept Palamas’s doctrines were even less deserving of this accusation.

NOTES

[1] J. Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, 2nd ed. (Crestwood, NY, 1974), p. 27.

[2] Ibid.; translation slightly revised.

[3] Op. cit., p. 48.

[4] Op. cit., p. 27.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “In fact the greatness of Gregory Palamas creates, for someone who would approach questions concerning Barlaam, prejudices against the Calabrian philosopher, which only now are beginning to be overcome through objective research. Among these prejudices, one of the most undying ones holds that Barlaam was an odd personality who, preferring the pagan philosophers to the Fathers of the Church, fell into a radical agnosticism.” A. Fyrigos, ed., Barlaam Calabro: Epistole a Palamas (Rome 1975), p. v.

[7] Second Letter to Palamas, 24; Fyrigos, Epistole a Palamas, 124, 501 – 126, 520.

[8] Ibid., 27; Fyrigos, Epistole a Palamas, 132, 602-607.

A prayer of Moses

Psalm 90

 תפלה למשׁה אישׁ־האלהים א‍דני מעון אתה היית לנו בדר ודר׃
בטרם ׀ הרים ילדו ותחולל ארץ ותבל ומעולם עד־עולם אתה אל׃
תשׁב אנושׁ עד־דכא ותאמר שׁובו בני־אדם׃
כי אלף שׁנים בעיניך כיום אתמול כי יעבר ואשׁמורה בלילה׃
זרמתם שׁנה יהיו בבקר כחציר יחלף׃
בבקר יציץ וחלף לערב ימולל ויבשׁ׃
כי־כלינו באפך ובחמתך נבהלנו׃
[שׁת כ] (שׁתה ק) עונתינו לנגדך עלמנו למאור פניך׃
כי כל־ימינו פנו בעברתך כלינו שׁנינו כמו־הגה׃
ימי־שׁנותינו בהם שׁבעים שׁנה ואם בגבורת ׀ שׁמונים שׁנה ורהבם עמל ואון כי־גז חישׁ ונעפה׃
מי־יודע עז אפך וכיראתך עברתך׃
למנות ימינו כן הודע ונבא לבב חכמה׃
שׁובה יהוה עד־מתי והנחם על־עבדיך׃
שׂבענו בבקר חסדך ונרננה ונשׂמחה בכל־ימינו׃
שׂמחנו כימות עניתנו שׁנות ראינו רעה׃
יראה אל־עבדיך פעלך והדרך על־בניהם׃
ויהי ׀ נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשׂה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשׂה ידינו כוננהו׃

Προσευχὴ τοῦ Μωυσῆ ἀνθρώπου τοῦ θεοῦ

Κύριε, καταφυγὴ ἐγενήθης ἡμῖν ἐν γενεᾷ καὶ γενεᾷ·
πρὸ τοῦ ὄρη γενηθῆναι
καὶ πλασθῆναι τὴν γῆν καὶ τὴν οἰκουμένην
καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ αἰῶνος ἕως τοῦ αἰῶνος σὺ εἶ.
μὴ ἀποστρέψης ἄνθρωπον εἰς ταπείνωσιν·
καὶ εἶπας Ἐπιστρέψατε, υἱοὶ ἀνθρώπων.
ὅτι χίλια ἔτη ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς σου
ὡς ἡ ἡμέρα ἡ ἐχθές, ἥτις διῆλθεν,
καὶ φυλακὴ ἐν νυκτί.
τὰ ἐξουδενώματα αὐτῶν ἔτη ἔσονται.
τὸ πρωὶ ὡσεὶ χλόη παρέλθοι,
τὸ πρωὶ ἀνθήσαι καὶ παρέλθοι.
τὸ ἑσπέρας ἀποπέσοι, σκληρυνθείη καὶ ξηρανθείη.
ὅτι ἐξελίπομεν ἐν τῇ ὀργῇ σου
καὶ ἐν τῷ θυμῷ σου ἐταράχθημεν.
ἔθου τὰς ἀνομίας ἡμῶν ἐνώπιόν σου·
ὁ αἰὼν ἡμῶν εἰς φωτισμὸν τοῦ προσώπου σου.
ὅτι πᾶσαι αἱ ἡμέραι ἡμῶν ἐξέλιπον,
καὶ ἐν τῇ ὀργῇ σου ἐξελίπομεν·
τὰ ἔτη ἡμῶν ὡς ἀράχνην ἐμελέτων.
αἱ ἡμέραι τῶν ἐτῶν ἡμῶν, ἐν αὐτοῖς ἑβδομήκοντα ἔτη,
ἐὰν δὲ ἐν δυναστείαις, ὀγδοήκοντα ἔτη,
καὶ τὸ πλεῖον αὐτῶν κόπος καὶ πόνος·
ὅτι ἐπῆλθεν πραΰτης ἐφ᾽ ἡμᾶς, καὶ παιδευθησόμεθα.
τίς γινώσκει τὸ κράτος τῆς ὀργῆς σου
καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ φόβου σου τὸν θυμόν σου;
ἐξαριθμήσασθαι τὴν δεξιάν σου οὕτως γνώρισον
καὶ τοὺς πεπεδημένους τῇ καρδίᾳ ἐν σοφίᾳ.
ἐπίστρεψον, κύριε· ἕως πότε;
καὶ παρακλήθητι ἐπὶ τοῖς δούλοις σου.
ἐνεπλήσθημεν τὸ πρωὶ τοῦ ἐλέους σου
καὶ ἠγαλλιασάμεθα καὶ εὐφράνθημεν
ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἡμέραις ἡμῶν·
εὐφράνθημεν ἀνθ᾽ ὧν ἡμερῶν ἐταπείνωσας ἡμᾶς,
ἐτῶν, ὧν εἴδομεν κακά.
καὶ ἰδὲ ἐπὶ τοὺς δούλους σου καὶ τὰ ἔργα σου
καὶ ὀδήγησον τοὺς υἱοὺς αὐτῶν,
καὶ ἔστω ἡ λαμπρότης κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν ἐφ᾽ ἡμᾶς,
καὶ τὰ ἔργα τῶν χειρῶν ἡμῶν κατεύθυνον ἐφ᾽ ἡμᾶς.

Oratio Moysi, hominis Dei.

Domine, refugium factus es nobis
A generatione in generationem.
Priusquam montes fierent,
Aut formaretur terra et orbis,
A saeculo et usque in saeculum tu es Deus.
Ne avertas hominem in humilitatem;
Et dixisti: Convertimini, filii hominum.
Quoniam mille anni ante oculos tuos
Tanquam dies hesterna quae praeteriit,
Et custodie in nocte;
Quae pro nihilo habentur eorum anni erunt.
Mane sicut herba transeat;
Mane floreat, et transeat;
Vespere decidat, induret, et arescat.
Quia defecimus in ira tua,
Et in furore tuo turbati sumus.
Posuisti iniquitates nostras in conspectu tuo,
Saeculum nostrum in illuminatione vultus tui.
Quoniam omnes dies nostri defecerunt;
Et in ira tua defecimus.
Anni nostri sicut aranea meditabuntur;
Dies annorum nostrorum in ipsis septuaginta anni.
Si autem in potentatibus octoginta anni,
Et amplius eorum labor et dolor;
Quoniam supervenit mansuetudo, et corripiemur.
Quis novit potestatem irae tuae,
Et prae timore tuo iram tuam dinumerare?
Dexteram tuam sic notam fac,
Et eruditos corde in sapientia.
Convertere, Domine; usquequo?
Et deprecabilis esto super servos tuos.
Repleti sumus mane misericordia tua;
Et exsultavimus, et delectati sumus omnibus diebus nostris.
Laetati sumus pro diebus quibus nos humiliasti,
Annis quibus vidimus mala.
Respice in servos tuos et in opera tua,
Et dirige filios eorum.
Et sit splendor Domini Dei nostri super nos;
Et opera manuum nostrarum dirige super nos,
Et opus manuum nostrarum dirige.

A Prayer of Moses the man of God.

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
Thou turnest man to destruction;
And sayest, Return, ye children of men.
For a thousand years in thy sight
Are but as yesterday when it is past,
And as a watch in the night.
Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep:
In the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up;
In the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
For we are consumed by thine anger,
And by thy wrath are we troubled.
Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,
Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath:
We spend our years as a tale that is told.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
Yet is their strength labour and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Who knoweth the power of thine anger?
Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
So teach us to number our days,
That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Return, O Lord, how long?
And let it repent thee concerning thy servants.
O satisfy us early with thy mercy;
That we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,
And the years wherein we have seen evil.
Let thy work appear unto thy servants,
And thy glory unto their children.
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:
And establish thou the work of our hands upon us;
Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

James chapter 3

Given some things I wrote today to Photios Jones on another post on this blog, I realize now, to my sorrow, that this is another text upon which I need to meditate, for my own good.

My brethren, be not many masters [i.e., don't all of you try to be teachers], knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body. Behold, we put bits in the horses’ mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth. Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

Aristotle on Youth and Old Age

A week from tomorrow I will turn fifty. So far, I haven’t made any particular arrangements as to how to celebrate my birthday. The idea has been floating in my head to call some old friends and have them drop by the house, but so far I haven’t acted on that idea. Perhaps it’s a worry about spending money; perhaps it’s a realization that not many people would come.

Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, Book II, chapters 12-13, gives a notable description of the characters of the young and the old. Since the jubilee year is often seen as a milestone, a point at which youth is definitely over and old age is definitely fast approaching, it might be worth my while to reprint Aristotle’s reflections upon these two human states, for my own benefit if for no one else’s.

“Let us now consider the various types of human character, in relation to the emotions and moral qualities, showing how they correspond to our various ages and fortunes. By emotions I mean anger, desire, and the like; these we have discussed already. By moral qualities I mean virtues and vices; these also have been discussed already, as well as the various things that various types of men tend to will and to do. By ages I mean youth, the prime of life, and old age. By fortune I mean birth, wealth, power, and their opposites—in fact, good fortune and ill fortune.

“To begin with the Youthful type of character. Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they show absence of self-control. They are changeable and fickle in their desires, which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep-rooted, and are like sick people’s attacks of hunger and thirst. They are hot-tempered and quick-tempered, and apt to give way to their anger; bad temper often gets the better of them, for owing to their love of honor they cannot bear being slighted, and are indignant if they imagine themselves unfairly treated. While they love honor, they love victory still more; for youth is eager for superiority over others, and victory is one form of this. They love both more than they love money, which indeed they love very little, not having yet learnt what it means to be without it—this is the point of Pittacus’ remark about Amphiaraus. They look at the good side rather than the bad, not having yet witnessed many instances of wickedness. They trust others readily, because they have not yet often been cheated. They are sanguine; nature warms their blood as though with excess of wine; and besides that, they have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spend not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward. They are easily cheated, owing to the sanguine disposition just mentioned. Their hot tempers and hopeful dispositions make them more courageous than older men are; the hot temper prevents fear, and the hopeful disposition creates confidence; we cannot feel fear so long as we are feeling angry, and any expectation of good makes us confident. They are shy, accepting the rules of society in which they have been trained, and not yet believing in any other standard of honor. They have exalted notions, because they have not yet been humbled by life or learnt its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things—and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones; their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it; this, in fact, is why they overdo everything. If they do wrong to others, it is because they mean to insult them, not to do them actual harm. They are ready to pity others, because they think every one an honest man, or anyhow better than he is; they judge their neighbor by their own harmless natures, and so cannot think he deserves to be treated in that way. They are fond of fun and therefore witty, wit being well-bred insolence.

“Such, then, is the character of the Young. The character of the Elderly Men—men who are past their prime—may be said to be formed for the most part of elements that are the contrary of all these. They have lived many years; they have often been taken in, and often made mistakes; and life on the whole is a bad business. The result is that they are sure about nothing and under-do everything. They ‘think’, but they never ‘know’; and because of their hesitation they always add a ‘possibly’ or a ‘perhaps’, putting everything this way and nothing positively. They are cynical; that is, they tend to put the worse construction on everything. Further, their experience makes them distrustful and therefore suspicious of evil. Consequently they neither love warmly nor hate bitterly, but following the hint of Bias they love as though they will some day hate and hate as though they will some day love. They are small-minded, because they have been humbled by life: their desires are set upon nothing more exalted or unusual than what will help them to keep alive. They are not generous, because money is one of the things they must have, and at the same time their experience has taught them how hard it is to get and how easy to lose. They are cowardly, and are always anticipating danger; unlike that of the young, who are warm-blooded, their temperament is chilly; old age has paved the way for cowardice; fear is, in fact, a form of chill. They love life; and all the more when their last day has come, because the object of all desire is something we have not got, and also because we desire most strongly that which we need most urgently. They are too fond of themselves; this is one form that small-mindedness takes. Because of this, they guide their lives too much by considerations of what is useful and too little by what is noble—for the useful is what is good for oneself, and the noble what is good absolutely. They are not shy, but shameless rather; caring less for what is noble than for what is useful, they feel contempt for what people may think of them. They lack confidence in the future; partly through experience—for most things go wrong, or anyhow turn out worse than one expects; and partly because of their cowardice. They live by memory rather than by hope; for what is left to them of life is but little as compared with the long past; and hope is of the future, memory of the past. This, again, is the cause of their loquacity; they are continually talking of the past, because they enjoy remembering it. Their fits of anger are sudden but feeble. Their sensual passions have either altogether gone or have lost their vigor: consequently they do not feel their passions much, and their actions are inspired less by what they do feel than by the love of gain. Hence men at this time of life are often supposed to have a self-controlled character; the fact is that their passions have slackened, and they are slaves to the love of gain. They guide their lives by reasoning more than by moral feeling; reasoning being directed to utility and moral feeling to moral goodness. If they wrong others, they mean to injure them, not to insult them. Old men feel pity, as well as young men, but not for the same reason. Young men feel it out of kindness; old men out of weakness, imagining that anything that befalls anyone else might easily happen to them, which, as we saw, is a thought that excites pity. Hence they are querulous, and not disposed to jesting or laughter—the love of laughter being the very opposite of querulousness.

“Such are the characters of Young Men and Elderly Men. People always think well of speeches adapted to, and reflecting, their own character: and we can now see how to compose our speeches so as to adapt both them and ourselves to our audiences.”

Translation by W. Rhys Roberts; cited from Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York, 1941), pp. 1403-1406.

Work on St. Maximus

Since Easter, I have been busy working for a woman who has finished a translation of a work by St. Maximus the Confessor, and who plans to publish it; I have been hired to check the translation. It probably is best not to mention the name of the woman or of the work. I have been finding the text (mostly a series of biblical and patristic comments) extremely interesting, although the translation has needed a lot of correction, and Maximus’s Greek is notoriously difficult. The work makes clear Maximus’s deep indebtedness to the Greek philosophical tradition, showing the very subtle ways in which he integrates that tradition with Christian theology and with a reading of Scripture. For instance, in his understanding of spiritual progress, he continually draws upon the distinction between ethics, natural philosophy, and theology (ontology) that Aristotle had made some eight or nine centuries earlier. Natural philosophy corresponds to a specific stage in spiritual life: in one place Maximus says that, although we were created so that we should start with the cause of all things and descend from there to understand things of experience in the light of their cause, we became entranced by the things of sense perception and took them as ends in themselves, as things no longer implying a reference to their transcendent source. What Maximus calls “natural contemplation,” φυσικὴ θεωρία, is the process of raising up the mind, through the things of sense perception, to their cause; it is a way restoring to the senses their right use.

In one difficult passage I was reading yesterday, Maximus considers a text from St. Gregory the Theologian, which asks how a word is begotten in one mind and yet begets a word in another mind. Maximus approaches the question, first by noting that only God is perfectly free and simple; everything else, having its being from God, exists as a combination of essence and quality (or potentiality, or accident). Then Maximus seems to speak of mind as, in some sense, unbegotten (or ungenerated) and, in another sense, as begetting itself, or begetting a word in itself; the passage is sufficiently obscure that the editor proposes an alternative reading for part of the text. But it occurred to me, in reading it, that what Maximus may be speaking about in the passage is what Aristotle called “active” and “passive” mind. In De anima, III.5, Aristotle distinguishes a sense in which mind creates the forms from a sense in which mind receives the forms of things. I have never been entirely sure what Aristotle means by this distinction — it is at least clear that Aristotle does not mean that the perceptual world depends upon human subjectivity for its reality* — but it does seem to me that that is the thought that St. Gregory’s question has raised in St. Maximus’s mind.

Anyway, if I have not been posting much to this blog, it is because I am supposed to be getting this work done by the end of April, i.e., in two or three days, and I still have a long way to go.

---

*My guess is that what Aristotle means is that the common intelligibility of things, and the common intelligibility of language, implies a transcendent source, something actively making the world intelligible.

Christ is Risen

Music by William Billings. Set to paschal hymn by Peter Gilbert.