About
September 1, 2007
Hello. My name is Peter Gilbert. This blog is largely an attempt to get some writing done on a book on which I am working, a translation of some of the treatises of John Bekkos, who was Patriarch of Constantinople during the years of the Union of Lyons (1275-1282). Because I agree with many of Bekkos’s views, and because he is not now in a position to write in his own defense, I am attempting to do some of that work on his behalf, by allowing him to speak English.
As for myself, I am 49 years old, single, with degrees from St. John’s College (Annapolis), from Oxford University, and from the Catholic University of America. I taught theology, patristics, and Old Testament for three years at an Orthodox seminary (the Akademi Teologjike-Hieratike «Ngjallja e Krishtit») in Durrës, Albania, and for seven years I taught at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM, which has a great books, interdisciplinary curriculum. In 2001 I published a book of translations of poems by St. Gregory of Nazianzus: it is titled On God and Man, and published by St. Vladimir’s Press. I currently live in New Jersey with my father.
September 27, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Dear Peter,
In the coming weeks and months, I look forward to reading your blog. Like you I am an Orthodox Christian who longs for the reconciliation of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. I wish you well in your scholarly endeavors and ask that God bless you and your work with every good thing.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory
September 28, 2007 at 12:57 am
Peter,
I second Fr. Gregory’s sentiments. I also am Orthodox, and thirst for such conversation.
God bless,
Fr. Isaac
November 3, 2007 at 1:24 am
Peter,
I am a Russian Byzantine Catholic, and am learning a great deal from your work. Keep it up!
W.H.
November 3, 2007 at 5:18 pm
[...] interesting Bekkos posts at Peter Gilbert’s blog De Unione [...]
December 20, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Monsieur Gilbert!
I have been looking for you for several days now, but I was unsuccessful even through St. John’s until I googled ‘Peter Gilbert translation.’ I would like to email you: please tell me how. I hope you are well, but I will spend the next few minutes scouring your blog to see if I can find out on my own. Good to find you!
Chris
January 7, 2008 at 8:23 am
Greetings Peter! Happy Epiphany and a Blessed 2008!
I am a RC priest and I am working on a doctoral thesis on Bekkos, Bessarion, and Byzantine unionism between Lyons II and Florence, and the theoogical (not merely cultural and political) for their lack of success. I am most excited to discover your blog. I read on Wikipedia that someone was working on an English translation of Bekkos and was unable to discover your identity until following a link from Cathedra Unitatis (to whom I express my thanks and renew my esteem!) led me to you at last. I am very keen on contacting you personally in view of what promises to be stimulating exchange and pehaps useful collaboration. No mail address is given here so I rely upon you to contact me using the mail address you now have. Invoking every blesing upon you and your activities.
February 9, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Greetings to all and may God bless you on your endeavours. Forgive what may seem to be an out-of-place intrusion, but I was hoping that someone may assist in shedding some light on a topic of interest. So much is made of the differences between the Greek and Latin views of the Trinity. The Greeks are meant to have stressed the hypostases, wheres the Latins, the essence, Surely this is a gross generalization… surely the Greek Fathers made an issue of the “ousia” as much as Latin Fathers allowed for the “persona”. Can anyone assist with substantiation….
fr. Petros.
February 9, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Dear Fr. Petros,
I agree with you that this is a gross generalization. In part, the generalization was popularized by a late 19th century theologian named Theodore De Régnon, who wrote a multi-volume work titled Études de Théologie Positive sur la Sainte Trinité, which influenced many subsequent writers. There recently has been a lot of movement among scholars to reassess De Régnon’s schematization of the opposition between Greek and Latin thought. Some of this reassessment was published in an issue of the journal Modern Theology a couple of years ago (vol. 18, no. 4, October 2002). An account of some of these recent criticisms of De Régnon’s views has been posted on the internet by Dr. Peter J. Leithart; you will find it at http://www.leithart.com/archives/003378.php.
Matters like divine substance, hypostasis, person, nature, and so on in fact go beyond anybody’s ability to speak fittingly, or anyone’s ability really to understand. You perhaps know the apocryphal story about St. Augustine, how he went down to the beach and, seeing a child scooping up water out of the ocean with a cup, asked him what he was doing. The child told him that he was scooping up the ocean. Augustine told him he couldn’t scoop up the ocean with a little cup, and the child (Jesus) replied to Augustine that no more could Augustine understand the Trinity with the little cup of his mind. St. Gregory the Theologian says that anybody who thinks he understands God shows, by the very fact that he thinks this, that he still lacks understanding. Please pray for me, a sinner.
Peter
February 10, 2008 at 5:09 pm
My friend, thank you for your reply and effort. I appreciate the information. I have been reading extensively on Trinitarian issues with a view to undertaking a Ph.D. I would ideally like to do something that will fascilitate, and contribute to the dialogue between the RCC and the Orthodox Church. My passion is the Trinity, but I fear that the topic my be “overdone”…. Any ideas that may help? It was in these readings that I somehow began to feel uneasy regarding the emphasis given to “differences in views regarding the Trinity”.
I would very much like to explore this further. How could I go-about obtaining the reassesment from the journal, or any other similar material?
February 21, 2008 at 12:35 am
Dear Peter,
I hope you are well. We met at St. John’s when you were teaching there, in ‘98, the year after I graduated.
(I had the surprising discovery in 2002 that you had taught at Shen Vlash and experienced the pyramid-scheme-caused collapse of social order in the nineties. This while speaking with the Hoppes and Veronises in the courtyard of the former, during a two-week visit with my wife Amelia.)
Anyway, I was speaking with Jim Carey over the phone recently and shared with him both my interest in teaching at an institution like St. John’s, with it’s emphasis on primary source texts and shared inquiry, and my desire to serve the Church more directly. (I received my MDiv from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, last May.) He suggested I chat with you, as you may be serving as Dean of a theological school with St. John’s influence and an emphasis on Byzantine theology. I would love hear more about this. If you have an opportunity, please send me a line.
In Christ,
Aaron
ps. I don’t know if this note will get to you this way, but the email address I rec’d from Jim bounced back. Hope to hear from you…
February 23, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Dear Aaron,
I distinctly remember meeting you. It is good to hear from you, and to learn that you know the Veronises and Hoppes.
The college about which Mr. Carey informed you is unfortunately not in existence, and the prospects for its ever coming into existence look increasingly dim. Most of the main movers and shakers who were behind the idea of it are now busy doing other things. I still think that the idea of joining patristic content to a great books, conversational format is essentially a good one; and since with God all things are possible, and God is able to resurrect more weighty things than ideas, I do not want to say that the idea of this college is permanently defunct. But, if your hope is to find employment there, you’ll probably face a very long wait.
One of these days I’ll put something about this college on the blog. Be well.
Peter
March 25, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Aaron,
I am EXTREMLY EXCITED to have found your webswite! I am a layperson living in Chicago. I have been seeking to research the antecedents of the schism and found your site.
Do you have any projection of when your translation of “On the Union and Peace of the Churches of Old and New Rome” might be available? I would love to submit an early order.
Thank you for your work bringing light and understanding to a great divide.
Brandon Meister
Chicago, IL
March 25, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Peter!!! My apologies!
March 26, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Dear Brandon,
Thanks for your encouragement. I really wish I could give you a fixed date for the appearance of this book on John Bekkos. As it is, I cannot. The practical necessities of making a living in the midst of an uncertain economy are starting to weigh on me; I put the Bekkos work aside most of last month in order to compile an index for someone else’s book, and it looks likely that, in the near future, I will get a 9-to-5 job at a bookstore or library to help make ends meet. Although I am committed to finishing the book, my immediate objective is to publish some articles on Bekkos and the Church fathers; that presumably should help me persuade a college or seminary somewhere to employ me as a teacher.
Since you live in the Chicago area, you should get in touch with the people who are trying to start Transfiguration College (see http://www.transfigurationcollege.org/). In particular, talk with John Wiesner. I’ve done a lot of work with him, and he’s a good man.
Peter
December 7, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Dear Peter,
Please send me your email address as soon as you can.
I trust that you are well.
Christian Holland
January 14, 2009 at 10:46 am
Dear Peter,
I am afraid we have lost touch…
today a note on my blog from a
roumanian notes that,as he sees it,
most Eastern Orthodox theologians have
no idea of the unity of Christians
and he cites you as an exception. this
too, but mostly to get back in contact,
leads me here… greetings in the Lord!
+Seraphim
January 19, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Mr. Gilbert:
Please email me your current postal address, as I seem to have lost my address book in the mountains of boxes after my recent move…
My best,
Martha Keen
January 20, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Dear Peter,
could you send me again your email address?
I lost it sadly.
am in russia until feb 2.
hope we could meet
in haste
+Seraphim
March 17, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Greetings Mr. Gilbert,
I am what most would refer to as a “lurker”; while not posting at all, I still rather enjoy the many informative and interesting articles you post for public view. Also, your many translations I have found most useful; I thank you, and not so much because you have done me a favor here; but rather, the pursuit of scholarship itself, thanks you. I eagerly await the publishing of your book on Bekkos, and if I may be so bold as to ask: Is the release of such erudition soon upon us? No need to feel any overwhelming inclination to answer my question here, good sound sholarship takes time, and I am confident that your forthcoming work shall ooze with it.
As a Catholic, I was, however, wondering your thoughts on the Roman Primacy. Do your opinions on this matter carry you farther than some of your Orthodox brethren wish you to go? As it would seem, you’ve encoutered a bit of that already. Ive heard great things about Oliver Clement’s work, in response to JP II’s Ut Unum Sint; I hope to purchase a copy soon. I realise this is a complex question, just wondered some of your thoughts on the topic.
Peace in Christ,
-Veritas
March 17, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Dear Veritas,
Thank you for stopping by and leaving a message. You ask some large and important questions. Concerning the book, its appearance is not yet imminent. There are many reasons for this, and I hope that sloth is not too considerable a part of the explanation. Part of the problem is that I am doing this work by myself, outside of a strictly academic context, and while having to find some way of supporting myself financially. Although I have taken on a job at a bookstore, this is not a real solution to the problem; for one thing, it does not provide enough to live on, for another thing, when I was working there more or less full time I found it impossible to make any progress on Bekkos when coming home exhausted from standing at a cash register most of the day. So, in brief, economic factors are a large part of the delay. Also, about a year ago, I learned that there is another scholar, in Europe, who has now started working on Bekkos; I have been in touch with him by e-mail and telephone, and we have exchanged translations and ideas. By mutual agreement, I am working more on the earlier stuff (things written by Bekkos while he was still Patriarch), while he is working on the later stuff, that is to say, Bekkos’s controversy with Gregory of Cyprus — which is, in certain respects, the more interesting part of Bekkos’s work. To some extent, I think, the discovery that another person is working on the material acted as a large distraction for awhile, and caused a couple of translation projects that I was working on to hang in the air — a translation of Bekkos’s De pace ecclesiastica, a translation of the annotations of Gregory Palamas and Bessarion of Nicaea upon Bekkos’s Epigraphs (where Palamas tries to refute Bekkos and Bessarion, in turn, defends him); also, my translation of the Epigraphs, while complete, is still in real need of revision. Also, this blog, last year, was felt to be a distraction, and I put it aside for a few months.
One recent result of my research on Bekkos is already on this blog, although few people seem to have taken notice of it. One of Bekkos’s closest friends and colleagues was the archdeacon George Metochites; after Bekkos, Metochites, and the archdeacon Constantine Meliteniotes had all been sent into exile, Metochites began writing a three-volume work that has been given the title Historia Dogmatica, the “Dogmatic History.” It is a very important historical source for the whole period of the Union of Lyons and especially for the controversy that followed it, what one scholar has referred to as a period of “Crisis in Byzantium,” when the unionists were ousted and the Orthodox response to Western trinitarian teaching took its most definitive shape. Unfortunately, Metochites’ Greek is very dense; he is by no means easy reading. For this reason, I have been trying to come up with at least a kind of Table of Contents to the work, a kind of map to point myself and others to those places where they are likely to find what they are looking for. Anyway, you might find that of some interest; a link to it is on the sidebar.
As for my thoughts on the Roman Primacy: as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve somewhat studiously been avoiding the question here on this blog, except for various comments here and there. It is, indeed, a very large question. On the whole, as an Orthodox Christian, I try to hold on to some hope that the ongoing dialogue between the Churches will actually agree to something, which would allow communion to be restored. It seems clear to me that those who assert that the position of the Bishop of Rome in the early Church was simply that of a primus inter pares, perhaps on the model of the Archbishop of Canterbury within the Anglican Church, are not being historically truthful. There are many important occasions in the early Church where the Bishop of Rome exercised an effective authority on behalf of the whole Church, acted in a decisive way to uphold the Church’s teaching. And there are important testimonies to the authority of the Roman Church from a number of saints of the Eastern Church; St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Theodore the Studite are two that come to mind. On the other hand, there is also evidence from the early Church of numerous saints finding cause to question Rome’s decisions and policies, or otherwise leading one to think that the way papal authority was conceived of was not quite the way it is currently exercised within the Roman Church’s communion. St. Cyprian’s (and St. Firmilian’s) disagreements with Pope Stephen over the validity of heretical baptism is one example; St. Basil’s unhappiness with Pope Damasus’s approach to the ecclesiastical situation in the East is another. Even in the case of John Bekkos, some people have argued, what one sees is not a simple readiness to take orders from an ecclesiastical superior so much as it is a readiness to see, in the Western tradition, the same basic faith as is present in the Greek Christian tradition. The assumption is that, along with ecclesiastical order, there is also a basic equality in Christ, in this case the equal validity of these two traditions. There were popes at the time of the Union of Lyons who were telling the Greeks to add the Filioque to the Creed and to use unleavened bread in the Eucharist; Bekkos, politely but firmly, told them no. As an Orthodox Christian, while I recognize that the current situation of the Church is abnormal and impaired, the history of the various Eastern Churches in union with Rome does not give me great confidence that that is the way God wills for healing the impairment. I agree, in other words, with the Balamand Declaration: uniatism as a method cannot be the answer the Church seeks for the problem of Christian division. (And that applies also to Orthodox uniatism, i.e., the idea that everything will be back to normal if we promulgate a “Western rite.”) My hope, in short, is that the theological conversation that the Churches are engaged in will be a serious and genuine one, that those engaged in it will realize the responsibility that weighs upon them in the sight of God to seek Christ’s will for his Church, and that it will bear fruit.
Peace be also with you.
Peter
March 18, 2009 at 10:43 am
Dear Peter,
Thank you for your response; your words carry much weight, since you have made clear that you are indeed a busy man; certainly sloth has nothing to do with the delay of your book, of that I am certain. Thanks for the heads up on Metochites; I will certainly check it out when I have a bit more time.(also I am very much interested in the annotations of Palamas and Bessarion here)
As for the Roman Primacy: I can, in large part, agree with you. Seems to me, that many of my Catholic brethren(including many apologists), have forgotten that our Eastern brothers did indeed enjoy their church’s autonomy; that is to say, they, justly, felt themselves a church that could deal with issues themselves, often times without the see of Rome. Nicetas’ words to Anselm in their dialogue come to mind here. However, when real strife struck their churches, from the extant writings of the fathers and clergy, it seems evident that the venerable faithful of the East had no problems with appealing to Rome on major doctrinal issues(and not just in the manner of the Council of Sardica), and even, as Dvornik points out in his ‘Byzantium and the Roman Primacy’, it was also very possible, although rare, for even Constantinople in the 9th Century to make appeals to Rome, even on disciplinary grounds. It seems to me that the notion of the Pentarchy, wherein all patriarchs are of equal status, is something that cannot be too firmly held to. My readings over Nicea II have brought me to that basic conclusion, in the not too distant past. But, allow me to clarify. I also agree with you that Rome’s practice of that Primacy has developed some over the years(and here, surprisingly, I have heard many Catholic apologists assert that it has not), and if we are to be united with our Eastern brethren once again, the Catholic church must realize this, and I think, in large part, it has. One example I may offer is that of Pope St Loe the Great. When sending his Tome to Chalcedon, he did not instruct the council to accept it and be done; rather, he encouraged discussion, and the council itself, discussed Leo’s Tome with those views already seen as orthodox, by way of St. Cyril.
I’ll stop here, as it would seem I’ve begun to ramble, a rather frequent occurence from my end. Suffice it to say, I, too, eagerly await the reconciliation of the Catholic/Orthodx churches; a united communion that can only be achived through the Holy Spirit.
Peace and God bless,
-Veritas
P.S.- One little note, if you’re ever interested in a good balanced acount of the Roman Primacy, you may find Klaus Schatz’s great work ‘Papal Primacy: From its Origins to the Present’ of good use. It really is a good work. Blessings again Peter.
March 18, 2009 at 11:48 am
Hello again Peter,
It just struck me, in the event that I find any information that may seem useful or interesting, is there any possibility in swapping e-mail address’?
Blessings,
-Veritas
October 16, 2009 at 5:50 am
Dear Dr Gilbert,
I would like to be in contact with you outside the blogosphere. I am a scholar in Sweden involved in the Thomas Byzantinus project – working on Thomas of Aquinas-related issues in Byzance (one of my fields of research). You can find me on the homepage of the dept of linguistics and philology at Uppsala university, http://www.lingfil.uu.se. Send me an email.
regards
Denis Searby