Great Article
By Thomas Kania
Highlighted, reader-friendlier version is on this site: http://www.catholica.com.au/andrewstake2/105_ak_161208.php
Different approaches to theology in the West and the East…
In an address delivered at Christ Church, Oxford, in 2008, Cardinal Walter Kaspar made the claim that what the Orthodox Churches require is an Enlightenment similar to that experienced in the Christian West, in order for the Christian Churches of the East to rid themselves of pervading elements of superstition. Sadly, Cardinal Kaspar never followed up this remark by specifying exact examples of what elements of Orthodox practice constituted in his mind, 'superstition'; however he did comment within near the same breath that Eastern Christian liturgical practice was in the main too archaic and time consuming.
Vladimir Lossky in his text, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1998), expanded on what he perceived to be the fundamental precept for the study of Theology in the Eastern Christian tradition. According to Lossky, apophatic or negative theology is at the heart of the theological tradition of the Eastern Church. The Greek Fathers of the Church, such as Gregory of Nazaianzen and Gregory of Nyssa described God as being ineffable, and as such, that which could be said of God was but a mere fragment of what remained unknown and un-said. It was therefore critical for the theologian of the East to allow for a God within the liturgical, intellectual and personal spiritual life, Who was not so much a Being to be rationalized or fathomed, as a Divinity to be acknowledged, worshipped and experienced.
Lossky writes: "Negative theology is not merely a theory of ecstasy. It is an expression of that fundamental attitude which transforms the whole of theology into a contemplation of the mysteries of revelation. It is not a branch of theology, a chapter, or an inevitable introduction on the incomprehensibility of God from which one passes unruffled to a doctrinal exposition in the usual terminology of human reason and philosophy in general. Apophaticism teaches us to see above all negative meaning in the dogmas of the Church: it forbids us to follow natural ways of thought and to form concepts which would usurp the place of spiritual realities. For Christianity is not a philosophical school for speculating about abstract concepts, but is essentially a communion with the living God. That is why, despite all their philosophical learning and natural bent towards speculation, the Fathers of the eastern tradition in remaining faithful to the apophatic principle of theology, never allowed their thought to cross the threshold of mystery …That is also why there is no philosophy more or less Christian. Plato is not more Christian than Aristotle. The question of the relation between theology and philosophy has never arisen in the East". (Lossky, 1998, p. 42)
For a western theologian such as Walter Cardinal Kaspar, shrouds of mystery as Lossky alluded to, can in part be seen as a smoke-screen, an excuse for apparent intellectual stagnation — a breeding ground for 'superstition'. A descendant of the European enlightenment, Kaspar's term of reference would rest firmly on a cataphatic tradition that had been transformed over the centuries through the Scholastic tradition, and its dichotomy of theology and philosophy as distinct subjects; as well as the Scientific Revolution, and the subsequent debates between Faith and Reason, and Religion and Science. Lossky is correct in stating that in the Christian East these 'enlightenment' debates have never taken place — for in the case of Philosophy and Theology, both subjects are unified in the Eastern mind, by their common search for Truth; and in the case of Faith and Reason, Faith provides Reason — with an intellectual rationale to Love the Divine; Reason provides Faith — with a passionate thirst for knowing the Divine Object of desire. Clement of Alexandria would write of the Word of God and the Word's influence on the symbiotic life of Faith and Reason, by saying: "For the gates of the Word are gates of Reason, and they open by the key of Faith". (Tollinton, 1914, II, p. 307)
Moreover the apophatic grounding of Eastern theology, secures the position of Science not as an enemy of theology but as a significant element of a vaster panorama; for no matter how large the gamut of scientific exploration — that which remains incomprehensible to the human mind is still vastly superior to the published limits of human discovery. Tollinton when analysing the theology of Clement of Alexandria would also sum-up the Eastern mind: "He [Clement] refuses, for example, to separate Religion and Philosophy, Faith and Knowledge, Thought and Action. For Clement, each term demands the other. The distinctions are recognised, but the synthesis counts for more". (Tollinton, 1914, II, P.232) It is synthesis that the Eastern mind strives to attain, a unity of thought mirroring the unity in diversity of the Holy Trinity.
Apothatic Theology not the sole domain of the Christian East…
As an important aside, it would be too simplistic to state that apophatic theology is the sole domain of the Christian East. Importantly many Catholic mystics of the West speak in similar terms of God as do the apophatic theologians of the East. These mystical theologians, such as Meister Eckhart, are however all disciples of Pseudo-Dionysius. The Franciscan, St. Bonaventure, as but one example, reads almost like a Greek, when he writes in Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, warning of intellectual arrogance, a form of theologizing that rests on the unbridled use of reason — reason exercised without 'kenosis'. As Bonaventure notes: "reading without repentance, knowledge without devotion, research without the impulse of wonder, prudence without the ability to surrender to joy, action divorced from religion, learning sundered from love, intelligence without humility, study unsustained by divine grace, thought without the wisdom inspired by God". (Bonaventure, Prologus, 4: Opera Omnia, 1891, Vol. V, 296) One cannot aspire to writing the Truth, if one has from the outset a total disregard for the Word of God; elements of Truth will appear, for the mind bears the thumbprint of the Creator upon it, but as Bonaventure notes — the beginning of all Wisdom lies in God; and the getting of this Wisdom lies in a total self-emptying on the part of the theologian. Hence in the East, sophiology and 'kenosis' are married concepts.
Further, 'kenosis' is in the East a stop-valve concept in order for theological speculation to work firmly within the parameters of dogma. As Christ accepted the will of his Father in the Garden of Gesthemane, so too the theologians of the East accept the authority of the Church, and the teachings of the Fathers that have preceded them; not with a blind deference, but with a love and humility that acknowledges that they, the theologian, are a part of a Divine Conversation that cannot be revolted against no matter how gifted the individual intellect may be. In the East, contemporary theologians speculate about how the human being can be transformed into God, and not whether Jesus of Nazareth was God and Man, or whether St. Joseph was the biological father of Christ. The latter debates were carried out in previous centuries by the Fathers when they fought against the early heresies that confronted the Church. Within the context of the Eastern liturgy, hymns and chants recollect: St. Basil the Great, John of Damascus, Andrew of Crete, Gregory of Nazianzen, John Chrysostom and a host of other theologians who built a foundation of core teachings which the contemporary Eastern theologian knows now to be certain. The recitation of the names and teachings of these Fathers within the liturgical context, helps remind those who pray exactly what it is that we believe as Christians. This is not 'superstition' but an acceptance of the power of the Holy Spirit within the Church; as well as an engendering of personal context on the part of the Faithful, within the dynamic life of the Church — each of us being an integral part of a much larger picture. The Ukrainian Catholic sophiologist, Metropolitan Andrii Sheptyts'kyi, for all his intellectual and spiritual brilliance, would encapsulate this Eastern acceptance of all that has gone before in the phrase: "Maybe I am mistaken. It may be that my own love, or my love for my own, puts mirages before my eyes. Still, I think that […] I would always choose to be a wise beggar rather than a foolish tsar…". (Chirovsky, 1992, p. 45)
Such dichotomies that are widely discussed today in western theological circles, such as the difference between a person's religion and a person's spirituality, are also misleading when placed in the light of Eastern theology. Whereas the individual has a spirit that pre-exists the understanding of religion, both spirit and formal religion are inextricably intertwined as religion provides the individual with Divine ladders so as to ascend unto God.
As Lossky writes: "Far from being mutually opposed, theology and mysticism support and complete each other. One is impossible without the other. If the mystical experience is a personal working out of the content of the common faith, theology is an expression, for the profit of all, of that which can be experienced by everyone. Outside the truth kept by the whole Church personal experience would be deprived of all certainty, of all objectivity. It would be a mingling of truth and of falsehood, of reality and of illusion: 'mysticism' in the bad sense of the word. On the other hand, the teaching of the Church would have no hold on souls if it did not in some degree express an inner experience of truth, granted in different measure to each one of the faithful. There is, therefore, no Christian mysticism without theology; but, above all, there is no theology without mysticism". (Lossky, 1998, pp. 8-9) Therefore it is incorrect to say that in the East there is a latent anti-intellectualism, but it does mean that the desire to know God in the East, is always secondary to the experience of God: an experience that takes place primarily through prayer, through the Holy Mysteries, and through the Divine Liturgy. Theological enquiry is thus a part of the larger journey of the spirit up Mt. Sinai.
It should therefore be seen as impossible in the East for Theology to be studied and taught without an active Faith dimension on behalf of the theologian. The art of Theology requires of the theologian the journey of the mind into God. In short the art of theology is the art of love — a phrase that echoes Jean Gerson's definition of mysticism. By selflessly searching in a knowledge of God — one invariably, according to Eastern tradition, comes to an enhanced awareness of self. St. Gregory of Nazianzus would say of this beautifully: "In this way, one is — and one is always becoming — a spotless mirror of God and divine things, assimilating light to light, and adding clarity to indistinct beginnings, until we come to the source of the light that radiates in this world and lays hold of our blessed end, where mirrors are dissolved in true reality". (Gregory of Nazianzen, Oration 20)
However askance one might view the connection between theology and mysticism in the West — there is in the East, no separation between the study of the Divine and the passionate longing of the soul to be transformed in to God. This can be seen as the definitive marque of Eastern theology. This said, Ambrose of Milan was none the less vocal in his belief that theology cannot be studied without an integration of heart and mind. Perhaps what has been amputated for many theologians in the West, post-Enlightenment, is a sense of the Sacred, a sense of a personal relationship between God and man; a case of theology losing the affective element. This 'surgery' was perhaps conducted in order for the theologian of the West, not to be seen as a student of 'superstition', a student of the Old Faith, but a creature of reason over faith, a creature quite willing to stoop downward and to affirm the existence of the visible, but a student now too reticent to climb the mountain in order to be immersed in the Divine Darkness; perhaps out of fear for not being able to see any longer with one's eyes — or out of fear of losing grasp of the concrete.
In any event walking into the Divine Darkness requires that the theologian no longer see with the eyes — but instead look deeply with one's Spirit into the Unknown, a God shrouded in a tent of Darkness. As Sheptyt'skyi concludes: "It seems that all the Apostles at times purposely spoke darkly; the goal of such unclarity, when it is dictated by the will of the writer, and not by the loftiness of the subject, is to sharpen the will of the listeners, to force them into labour, searching, prayer, in order to overcome this difficulty … Thus, of all the images by which God represented to human beings His nature, darkness, the cloud which filled Solomon's temple, which appeared also at Christ's Transfiguration, is perhaps the most true and most perfect, for it expresses that holy unknowing which is the most perfect knowledge of the Godhead. The more one knows God, the more he is conscious of that endless abyss of unapproachable light". (Chirovsky, 1992, pp. 67 – 68)
Thomas Kania is a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall at the University of Oxford. He is currently on sabbatical from his position as Director of Spirituality at Aquinas Collhttp://www.iconmovies.com/home.htmlege, Manning. Prior to this appointment at Aquinas Dr. Kania was a lecturer for the School of Religious Education at the University of Notre Dame Australia as well as for the Catholic Institute of Western Australia at Edith Cowan and Curtin Universities. Dr. Kania belongs to the Ukrainian Church and is interested in ecumenical issues as well as contemporary problems facing religious educators.
Highlighted, reader-friendlier version is on this site: http://www.catholica.com.au/andrewstake2/105_ak_161208.php
Different approaches to theology in the West and the East…
In an address delivered at Christ Church, Oxford, in 2008, Cardinal Walter Kaspar made the claim that what the Orthodox Churches require is an Enlightenment similar to that experienced in the Christian West, in order for the Christian Churches of the East to rid themselves of pervading elements of superstition. Sadly, Cardinal Kaspar never followed up this remark by specifying exact examples of what elements of Orthodox practice constituted in his mind, 'superstition'; however he did comment within near the same breath that Eastern Christian liturgical practice was in the main too archaic and time consuming.
Vladimir Lossky in his text, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1998), expanded on what he perceived to be the fundamental precept for the study of Theology in the Eastern Christian tradition. According to Lossky, apophatic or negative theology is at the heart of the theological tradition of the Eastern Church. The Greek Fathers of the Church, such as Gregory of Nazaianzen and Gregory of Nyssa described God as being ineffable, and as such, that which could be said of God was but a mere fragment of what remained unknown and un-said. It was therefore critical for the theologian of the East to allow for a God within the liturgical, intellectual and personal spiritual life, Who was not so much a Being to be rationalized or fathomed, as a Divinity to be acknowledged, worshipped and experienced.
Lossky writes: "Negative theology is not merely a theory of ecstasy. It is an expression of that fundamental attitude which transforms the whole of theology into a contemplation of the mysteries of revelation. It is not a branch of theology, a chapter, or an inevitable introduction on the incomprehensibility of God from which one passes unruffled to a doctrinal exposition in the usual terminology of human reason and philosophy in general. Apophaticism teaches us to see above all negative meaning in the dogmas of the Church: it forbids us to follow natural ways of thought and to form concepts which would usurp the place of spiritual realities. For Christianity is not a philosophical school for speculating about abstract concepts, but is essentially a communion with the living God. That is why, despite all their philosophical learning and natural bent towards speculation, the Fathers of the eastern tradition in remaining faithful to the apophatic principle of theology, never allowed their thought to cross the threshold of mystery …That is also why there is no philosophy more or less Christian. Plato is not more Christian than Aristotle. The question of the relation between theology and philosophy has never arisen in the East". (Lossky, 1998, p. 42)
For a western theologian such as Walter Cardinal Kaspar, shrouds of mystery as Lossky alluded to, can in part be seen as a smoke-screen, an excuse for apparent intellectual stagnation — a breeding ground for 'superstition'. A descendant of the European enlightenment, Kaspar's term of reference would rest firmly on a cataphatic tradition that had been transformed over the centuries through the Scholastic tradition, and its dichotomy of theology and philosophy as distinct subjects; as well as the Scientific Revolution, and the subsequent debates between Faith and Reason, and Religion and Science. Lossky is correct in stating that in the Christian East these 'enlightenment' debates have never taken place — for in the case of Philosophy and Theology, both subjects are unified in the Eastern mind, by their common search for Truth; and in the case of Faith and Reason, Faith provides Reason — with an intellectual rationale to Love the Divine; Reason provides Faith — with a passionate thirst for knowing the Divine Object of desire. Clement of Alexandria would write of the Word of God and the Word's influence on the symbiotic life of Faith and Reason, by saying: "For the gates of the Word are gates of Reason, and they open by the key of Faith". (Tollinton, 1914, II, p. 307)
Moreover the apophatic grounding of Eastern theology, secures the position of Science not as an enemy of theology but as a significant element of a vaster panorama; for no matter how large the gamut of scientific exploration — that which remains incomprehensible to the human mind is still vastly superior to the published limits of human discovery. Tollinton when analysing the theology of Clement of Alexandria would also sum-up the Eastern mind: "He [Clement] refuses, for example, to separate Religion and Philosophy, Faith and Knowledge, Thought and Action. For Clement, each term demands the other. The distinctions are recognised, but the synthesis counts for more". (Tollinton, 1914, II, P.232) It is synthesis that the Eastern mind strives to attain, a unity of thought mirroring the unity in diversity of the Holy Trinity.
Apothatic Theology not the sole domain of the Christian East…
As an important aside, it would be too simplistic to state that apophatic theology is the sole domain of the Christian East. Importantly many Catholic mystics of the West speak in similar terms of God as do the apophatic theologians of the East. These mystical theologians, such as Meister Eckhart, are however all disciples of Pseudo-Dionysius. The Franciscan, St. Bonaventure, as but one example, reads almost like a Greek, when he writes in Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, warning of intellectual arrogance, a form of theologizing that rests on the unbridled use of reason — reason exercised without 'kenosis'. As Bonaventure notes: "reading without repentance, knowledge without devotion, research without the impulse of wonder, prudence without the ability to surrender to joy, action divorced from religion, learning sundered from love, intelligence without humility, study unsustained by divine grace, thought without the wisdom inspired by God". (Bonaventure, Prologus, 4: Opera Omnia, 1891, Vol. V, 296) One cannot aspire to writing the Truth, if one has from the outset a total disregard for the Word of God; elements of Truth will appear, for the mind bears the thumbprint of the Creator upon it, but as Bonaventure notes — the beginning of all Wisdom lies in God; and the getting of this Wisdom lies in a total self-emptying on the part of the theologian. Hence in the East, sophiology and 'kenosis' are married concepts.
Further, 'kenosis' is in the East a stop-valve concept in order for theological speculation to work firmly within the parameters of dogma. As Christ accepted the will of his Father in the Garden of Gesthemane, so too the theologians of the East accept the authority of the Church, and the teachings of the Fathers that have preceded them; not with a blind deference, but with a love and humility that acknowledges that they, the theologian, are a part of a Divine Conversation that cannot be revolted against no matter how gifted the individual intellect may be. In the East, contemporary theologians speculate about how the human being can be transformed into God, and not whether Jesus of Nazareth was God and Man, or whether St. Joseph was the biological father of Christ. The latter debates were carried out in previous centuries by the Fathers when they fought against the early heresies that confronted the Church. Within the context of the Eastern liturgy, hymns and chants recollect: St. Basil the Great, John of Damascus, Andrew of Crete, Gregory of Nazianzen, John Chrysostom and a host of other theologians who built a foundation of core teachings which the contemporary Eastern theologian knows now to be certain. The recitation of the names and teachings of these Fathers within the liturgical context, helps remind those who pray exactly what it is that we believe as Christians. This is not 'superstition' but an acceptance of the power of the Holy Spirit within the Church; as well as an engendering of personal context on the part of the Faithful, within the dynamic life of the Church — each of us being an integral part of a much larger picture. The Ukrainian Catholic sophiologist, Metropolitan Andrii Sheptyts'kyi, for all his intellectual and spiritual brilliance, would encapsulate this Eastern acceptance of all that has gone before in the phrase: "Maybe I am mistaken. It may be that my own love, or my love for my own, puts mirages before my eyes. Still, I think that […] I would always choose to be a wise beggar rather than a foolish tsar…". (Chirovsky, 1992, p. 45)
Such dichotomies that are widely discussed today in western theological circles, such as the difference between a person's religion and a person's spirituality, are also misleading when placed in the light of Eastern theology. Whereas the individual has a spirit that pre-exists the understanding of religion, both spirit and formal religion are inextricably intertwined as religion provides the individual with Divine ladders so as to ascend unto God.
As Lossky writes: "Far from being mutually opposed, theology and mysticism support and complete each other. One is impossible without the other. If the mystical experience is a personal working out of the content of the common faith, theology is an expression, for the profit of all, of that which can be experienced by everyone. Outside the truth kept by the whole Church personal experience would be deprived of all certainty, of all objectivity. It would be a mingling of truth and of falsehood, of reality and of illusion: 'mysticism' in the bad sense of the word. On the other hand, the teaching of the Church would have no hold on souls if it did not in some degree express an inner experience of truth, granted in different measure to each one of the faithful. There is, therefore, no Christian mysticism without theology; but, above all, there is no theology without mysticism". (Lossky, 1998, pp. 8-9) Therefore it is incorrect to say that in the East there is a latent anti-intellectualism, but it does mean that the desire to know God in the East, is always secondary to the experience of God: an experience that takes place primarily through prayer, through the Holy Mysteries, and through the Divine Liturgy. Theological enquiry is thus a part of the larger journey of the spirit up Mt. Sinai.
It should therefore be seen as impossible in the East for Theology to be studied and taught without an active Faith dimension on behalf of the theologian. The art of Theology requires of the theologian the journey of the mind into God. In short the art of theology is the art of love — a phrase that echoes Jean Gerson's definition of mysticism. By selflessly searching in a knowledge of God — one invariably, according to Eastern tradition, comes to an enhanced awareness of self. St. Gregory of Nazianzus would say of this beautifully: "In this way, one is — and one is always becoming — a spotless mirror of God and divine things, assimilating light to light, and adding clarity to indistinct beginnings, until we come to the source of the light that radiates in this world and lays hold of our blessed end, where mirrors are dissolved in true reality". (Gregory of Nazianzen, Oration 20)
However askance one might view the connection between theology and mysticism in the West — there is in the East, no separation between the study of the Divine and the passionate longing of the soul to be transformed in to God. This can be seen as the definitive marque of Eastern theology. This said, Ambrose of Milan was none the less vocal in his belief that theology cannot be studied without an integration of heart and mind. Perhaps what has been amputated for many theologians in the West, post-Enlightenment, is a sense of the Sacred, a sense of a personal relationship between God and man; a case of theology losing the affective element. This 'surgery' was perhaps conducted in order for the theologian of the West, not to be seen as a student of 'superstition', a student of the Old Faith, but a creature of reason over faith, a creature quite willing to stoop downward and to affirm the existence of the visible, but a student now too reticent to climb the mountain in order to be immersed in the Divine Darkness; perhaps out of fear for not being able to see any longer with one's eyes — or out of fear of losing grasp of the concrete.
In any event walking into the Divine Darkness requires that the theologian no longer see with the eyes — but instead look deeply with one's Spirit into the Unknown, a God shrouded in a tent of Darkness. As Sheptyt'skyi concludes: "It seems that all the Apostles at times purposely spoke darkly; the goal of such unclarity, when it is dictated by the will of the writer, and not by the loftiness of the subject, is to sharpen the will of the listeners, to force them into labour, searching, prayer, in order to overcome this difficulty … Thus, of all the images by which God represented to human beings His nature, darkness, the cloud which filled Solomon's temple, which appeared also at Christ's Transfiguration, is perhaps the most true and most perfect, for it expresses that holy unknowing which is the most perfect knowledge of the Godhead. The more one knows God, the more he is conscious of that endless abyss of unapproachable light". (Chirovsky, 1992, pp. 67 – 68)
Thomas Kania is a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall at the University of Oxford. He is currently on sabbatical from his position as Director of Spirituality at Aquinas Collhttp://www.iconmovies.com/home.htmlege, Manning. Prior to this appointment at Aquinas Dr. Kania was a lecturer for the School of Religious Education at the University of Notre Dame Australia as well as for the Catholic Institute of Western Australia at Edith Cowan and Curtin Universities. Dr. Kania belongs to the Ukrainian Church and is interested in ecumenical issues as well as contemporary problems facing religious educators.
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