The Invention of "Classical Theism" (My Abridged Thesis Part Six): East Within West Within East
More than just affecting a general
theological or theoretical environment of historiography, these same shifts
have certain strands that interweave into Eastern theology’s own
self-understanding, which can often reinforce the tendencies above not just
through the de Regnón paradigm, but also in equally tangible (and often more
surprising) sociological lines. These then often play back into forms of
Western theology already affected by these same shifts, ironically now when
Western theologians in their self-flagellating moments “turn to the East”
(specifically understood as juxtaposed to Western sensibilities) for certain
specific “cures” outside “infected” Western theological lines. It comes as a
bit of a surprise, then, when certain forms of this “Eastern turn” can be shown
to have themselves already been shaped in part by a post-nominalist legacy.
The sad state of revolutions in Russia
around the turn of the twentieth-century had caused a great diaspora, including
many Russian “émigré theologians” as their exilic status was rather
euphemistically called, who ended up in Paris.[1] Dislocated, these Parisian exiles associated
with what came to be known as the “neo-Patristic” synthesis—with Fr. Georges
Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky as its two most notable proponents—sought in
Patristic theology not just a chance to regain cultural identity in a time of
exodus, but also to help slough off what Florovsky called the “pseudomorphosis”
of Russian religious consciousness by its “Babylonian captivity” in the West.[2] Especially with the work of Vladimir Lossky
who went on to be influential in the so-called Trinitarian renaissance, the De
Regnón paradigm was adopted—with its apparent separation of East and West—as a
helpful supplement to such ends. Lossky
combined this “Eastern” emphasis of the Persons with an emphasis on Dionysian
apophaticism to counter what he saw as Thomistic rationalism, and created the
distinctive character of his most well known and beautiful work, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church—the
copious footnotes citing de Regnón in the French quite curiously not surviving
its edited translation into English.[3]
Along with Marion’s note on the subtle neo-Thomist translations of Augustine in
the English world we will see in the next chapter, here too English speaking
theology is secretly encoded by neo-Thomistic appropriation of de Regnón,
ironically now through the work of an Eastern Orthodox theologian often
polemically disposed to “Western” theology conceived along neo-Thomistic lines.
Yet, not only did Lossky adopt the
neo-Thomist interpretation of De Regnón to counter
neo-Thomist interpretations of the Western tradition by emphasizing Eastern
trinitarianism, his adoption of pseudo-Dionysius itself parallels its similar
rise and use in the French Catholicism of Lossky’s new environment. It was not just Lossky’s opposition to
neo-Thomism that was itself reflective of his immediate Catholic cohorts—not
least his doctoral advisor Etienne Gilson, and others associated with the nouvelle theologie like de Lubac. The specific form this took in utilizing
Dionysius as a fulcrum as well has its own Western flavoring.[4] The Neo-Patristic synthesis, then, in this
specific instance adopted a particular Western
historiographical tradition, and did not seem to notice either that this was
not representative of the Classical tradition it presumed to critique, or that
many of its Western contemporaries were often critiquing the same false
historiographical consciousness that had perversely affected the optics to view
the early theological history of the West.[5] To add a final layer of historical irony to
this period, if the narrative of Michael Allen Gillespie is to be believed,
Voluntarist theology mediated through the German Idealism of Fichte and
Romanticism, found itself at the heart Russian Nihilism. As such it became the theoretical backbone to
the revolutionary political upheavals that dislocated the Parisian émigrés westward,
and drove them to search for an Eastern identity in part by an interpretation
of the de Regnón paradigm, itself harrowed (though much less literally) by
nominalist, voluntarist, and univocal mutations of a later Western tradition.[6]
Another, similar search for Eastern identity,
occurred amongst the famous and highly influential so-called “class of the
1960’s” in Greece.[7] When the Greek state was founded in the
1830’s after 400 years under Ottoman Turk rule, theological curricula amongst
the new Greek Universities was nearly non-existent, and so Western models were
imported into seminaries as a convenient option. A period of dry-academic scholasticism
(including, as it happens, widespread neo-Thomistic influence) followed from
these importations, however.[8] The class of the 1960’s—including such
notables as John Romanides, Christos Yannaras, and John Zizioulas—much as the
Russian émigré theologians before them, turned to the Greek Fathers not just
for the sake of identity, but also to solidify a sense of rebellion against the
lifeless coda of the neo-Scholastic syllabi they had been subjected to. Indeed Romanides’ doctoral advisor was the
neo-Patristic theologian Georges Florovsky—under whom Zizioulas studied as
well—so the parallel between the Parisian exiles and the Greek class of the
60’s is more than a mere analogy.[9]
Once again—especially with Zizioulas as
we saw earlier—the neo-Thomist understanding of the de Regnón paradigm—and so
Aquinas, Augustine, and Western theism— was incorporated along the lines of
this search for Eastern identity. This
became reinforced in particular by Martin Heidegger’s narrative of the
onto-theological constitution of Western metaphysics, in particular with the work
of Yannaris.[10] Thus a triple irony: the Greeks utilized a
paradigm formulated by a French Jesuit, misunderstood through neo-Thomism, and
now reinforced by a narrative of Western metaphysics framed by a German
philosopher (himself heavily influenced both by Scotus, and Heidegger’s own rejection of the neo-Thomism he was
schooled in),[11]
in order to bolster a sense of Eastern identity. The upshot of this, before we turn to the
last chapter, is that in all of these cases theological interpretation is occurring
within a sort of invisible horizon of thought accepted as true, but perhaps
much more questionable than it prima
facie appears to be. The Russian
émigrés and the Greek school were rebelling against—not classical western
theism with an apparent proclivity for modalism, philosophical rationalism,
abstraction from scripture, aloofness, or of oppressive power—but a particular construct that has an identifiable
history arising much later than Augustine and Aquinas themselves. This is not, of course, to say that if they
knew of Augustine and Thomas as they actually are, they would embrace their
thought on these counts with open arms.
Nor is it to claim that these misunderstandings had catastrophic and
system wide effects on these movements.
Not at all—they remain vital programs in the history (and future) of
theology.
It is to point out, rather, that what
they were de facto rejecting in these
particular instances often resembled revisions that do not speak to the heart
of Augustine and Aquinas, but subvert them.
This reaches a certain critical mass in the Greek class of the 1960’s,
and from there-on to the Trinitarian Renaissance, especially through the work
of Zizioulas. Indeed as Aristotle
Papanikolau and George Demacopolous point out,[12]
systemic Eastern critique of Augustine regarding his supposed Trinitarian differences from the East
did not truly solidify as a fulcrum of thought until the “Class of the 1960’s,”
where the insight that the de Regnón paradigm and something akin to the
undesirable post-nominalist, or neo-Thomist rationalist vision of God could
reinforce one another as the fulcrum for a—now outright explicit—critique of
the West. Even when those like Lossky,
Florovsky, and others in the neo-Patristic synthesis held to de Regnón
regarding distinctives, on this count (putting aside others like the perennial
Eastern suspicion of Augustine’s concept of original sin) it was never
emphasized as a focal detriment, even if certain themes later to be solidified
by Zizioulas or Yannaras lingered in the background. Yet, with Romanides for example, he
“extend[ed] Lossky’s critique of scholasticism back to Augustine, to whom he
attributes its foundations.”[13] Again, innumerable other factors were in
play—not least of which was the fact Romanides and Yannaras, for example, as
card-carrying neo-Palamites, read Augustine through such lenses and, to no
surprise, were loath to find Augustine was no Palamite. Yet this itself should not overshadow the
role that the post-nominalist Western theological imagination, including its
specific permutations in rationalist Protestant and neo-Thomist theology in
particular, played in forming a springboard that these other factors played off
of.
It
should be noted again, as well, that this neo-Thomistic picture is precisely
the same tableu that Rahner in many ways rebelled against, and as such is a
history latent in his famous Trinitarian “Rule” which has been so influential.
Rahner’s “Rule,” when proposed as a specific counter-mandate to the
post-nominalist and neo-Scholastic rationalism(s) that are elided in their
specific and parochial contexts as being authentic if lamentable culminations
of the tradition, can only serve as an “overcorrection” to this simultaneously aloof
yet tyrannical God now identified with the terms and concepts used in
Augustine’s arguments. Such an
identification both narrows the spectrum of contemporary options, and has a
retroactive effect on how the tradition itself is read as manifesting within
the Rule’s spectrum.[14] In this sense it is no surprise that Rahner’s
Rule so often tends toward readings that “immanentize” God by translating the
economy of God’s revelation so closely (univocally?) back into God himself—this
is precisely what one would expect would happen when the Rule was formulated to
counter-ballast a distant and abstract God seen as the legacy of Western
thought. It seems given the influence of
Rahner, Zizioulas, and others, an entire theological climate in the Trinitarian
renaissance has been created that is subtly inscribed, with a variety of
effects, by post-nominalism by way of neo-Thomism and a (newly annexed
neo-Thomist version of) de Regnón.
[1] Michael Plekon, “The Russian Religious Revival and Its
Theological Legacy,” in in Mary Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Theology
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 203, cautions, however, that we
must not overemphasize this East/West clash so that we overlook that renewals
in Eastern thought were already happening pre-Revolution and encounter with the
West.
[2] Andrew Louth, “The Patristic Revival and Its Protagonists,”
Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Theology,
188.; Cf. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “Florovsky’s Neopatristic Synthesis and the Future
Ways of Orthodox Theology,” in George E. Demacopolous and Aristotle
Papanikolau, eds., Orthodox Constructions
of the West (New York: Fordham University, 2013), 102-125.
[3] Michel René Barnes, “De Régnon Reconsidered,” in Augustinian Studies, 26:2 (1995), 51-79.
[4] Cf. the wonderful essay by Sarah Coakley, “Eastern
‘Mystical Theology’ or Western ‘Nouvelle Theologie,’? On the Comparative
Reception of Dionysius the Areopagite in Lossky and de Lubac,” in George E.
Demacopolous and Aristotle Papanikolau, eds., Orthodox Constructions of the West (New York: Fordham University,
2013), 125-142.; cf. 130-131: “The
notion of the West that Lossky then puts forth as the unacceptable alternative
to his Eastern view, is— I would suggest— equally revealing of his own Western,
Parisian context of the 1930s and ’40s. For it is hard, again, to read this
anti-Western polemic without at least some echoes of the emerging Catholic
resistance in France to rigidly rationalistic readings of Thomas and to the
myth of a pure nature that could exercise itself in the pre-revelatory building
of philosophical foundations for faith.”
Here embedded in Coakley’s quote are both the concepts of “rigidly
rationalist” readings of Thomas, foundationalist philosophy, and “pure nature.” All are code-words for post-nominalist
readings of Aquinas and Augustine, as we have seen we at different levels
inscripted in neo-Thomism. Cf. Paul
Gavrilyuk, “The Reception of Dionysius in 20th Century Eastern
Orthodoxy,” Modern Theology 24:4
(October, 2008): 707-724; cf. 714: “It appears that Eastern Orthodox
theologians are fighting the ‘misguided West’ with ammunition borrowed from the
enemy.”
[5] This must be nuanced—Lossky did later in his career know
full well the difference between Aquinas and later “school” neo-Thomism. Cf. Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being With God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and
Divine-Human Communion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2007),
169n.82: “It is important to note that Lossky’s review [Sobornost {1950}: 295-297] of E.L. Mascall’s Existence and Analogy contains a rare praise of Aquinas: ‘Indeed,
since the publication of the latest books of M. Etienne Gilson, there can be no
doubt about the authentic Thomism of S. Thomas and his immediate predecessors,
a thought rich with new perspectives which the philosophical herd, giving in to
the natural tendency of the human understanding, was not slow in conceptualizing,
and changing into school Thomism, a severe and abstract doctrine, because it
has been detached from its real source of power.’ Lossky knew the difference between the
thought of Aquinas and neo-Thomism, and his main contention was with neo-Thomists
of his time … The review also indicates a willingness to see a possible rapprochement between Gilsonian Thomism
and his own Palamism … This small but significant review clearly evinces
recognition on Lossky’s part of the affinities between Aquinas and Palamas, a
point that is completely absent in his extant works.”
[6] Cf. Michael Allen Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995), 135-174.; cf. 174: “The Russian revolution has been called the god that
failed. This mistaken conclusion is the
consequence of a fundamental misunderstanding of the theological and
metaphysical essence of the revolutionary movement in Russia. The Russian revolution is in fact the story
of the god who triumphed, but this god was not the god of light who inhabits
cities of aluminum and glass, but a dark god of negation who lives within the
secret souls of the Bazarovs and the Rakhmetovs of the world, and enters into
actuality in the form of Nechaev, Lenin, and Stalin. What we discover in the afterglow of this
great event is that the fire the new Prometheus brings down to earth is not the
hearth flame that is the center of the home but a conflagration that consumes
civilization. The fiery heart of Blake’s
demonic destroyer when liberated from its animalistic shell does not assume
symmetry and humanity of its own but remains the formless force of chaos, an
essentially negative will. At the end of
modernity, the dark God of nominalism
appears enthroned within the bastion of reason as the grim lord of Stalin’s
universal terror” [Emphasis added].
[7] Athanasios N. Papathanasiou, “Some Key Themes and Figures
in Greek Theological Thought,” in The
Cambridge Companion to Orthodoxy, 218-232.
[8] Pantelis Kalaitzidis “The Image of the West in Contemporary
Greek Theology” in Orthodox Constructions
of the West, 142ff.
[9] Ibid., 144. For the influence of Lossky on Greek theology
(which was mixed), cf. Aristotle Papanikolau, “Personhood and its Exponents in
Twentieth-Century Orthodox Theology,” Cambridge
Companion to Orthodoxy, 232-245.
[10] Basilio Petra, “Christos Yannaras and the Idea of Dysis” in
Orthodox Constructions of the West,
161ff. Zizioulas intends to distance
himself from this appropriation by Yannaras.
Cf. Being as Communion, 45n.40.
Nonetheless it is questionable how far he actually does this.; On
“Onto-Theology” cf. See: Merold Westphal, Overcoming
Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith (n.l.: Fordham
University Press, 2001).
[11] Cf. S.J. McGrath, The
Early Heidegger and Medieval Philosophy: Phenomenology for the Godforsaken (New
York: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 88-120, 208-257. For example 13-15: “The context of the young
Heidegger’s turn to Luther was the reactionary neo-Scholasticism of early
twentieth-century Catholic theology. Leo
XIII’s 1870 encyclical Aeterni Patris declared
Thomas Aquinas the philosopher for
the Catholic Church. Pius X’s 1907
encyclical Pascendi foreclosed as
‘modernism’ most efforts to integrate the insights of modern philosophy,
science, and historiography into Catholic theology … It seemed to the young
Heidegger that the Catholic hierarchy was dictating in advance what must be
true and false for philosophy … The neo-Scholasticism inspired by the
Counter-Reformation, the political revolutions of the nineteenth century, and
the papal pronouncements of the early twentieth century was rigid,
formulaic…This textbook scholasticism [Heidegger rejected] was the same monster
against which both Bernard Lonergan and Karl Rahner railed … Heidegger’s
difficulties with neo-Scholasticism would quickly deepen into an objection to
medieval philosophy itself … Heidegger’s [philosophy] is intended to break with
every medieval ontology [so understood].”
And cf. 91: “Heidegger has no sympathy for the Thomist analogia entis. His decisive departure from Scotus, the
rejection of an infinite mode of being, does not break with the Scotist project
of maintaining a univocal notion of being.”
It should be noted McGrath argues that Heidegger’s critique grew beyond
this origin, however, and cannot be limited to an instance of mere misunderstanding. Cf. Kerr, After
Aquinas, 89: “When Heidegger rejected the exposition of the distinction
between essence and existence that he found in contemporary neo-Thomism,
however, he did so, according to Balthasar, on the ground that essence was
conceived by these Thomists as something to which existence might or might not
be related. These neo-Thomists had,
however, misrepresented Thomas.”
[12] Aristotle Papanikolau and George E. Demacopolous,
“Augustine and The Orthodox: The ‘West’ in the East,” in Orthodox Readings of Augustine, 11-41.
[13] Ibid., 29.
[14] That Rahner’s Rule itself is ambiguous has already been
stated; that it also, as an axiom, is too limited to read the complexities of
the tradition cf. Drayton Brenner, “Augustine
and Karl Rahner on the Relationship between the Immanent and the Economic
Trinity,” International Journal of
Systematic Theology vol.9 no.1 (2007): 24-39; and especially see Philip
Gabriel Renczes, “The Scope of Rahner’s Fundamental Axiom in the Patristic
Perspective: A Dialogue of Systematic and Historical Theology,” in Rethinking Trinitarian Theology.
Comments