Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache
Sydney College of Divinity, Australia
Sydney College of Divinity, Australia
To Paul, who stirred my interest in the matters discussed here I remember reading, many years ago, a very popular Romanian short story, Election of an Abbess,
by Damian Stănoiu.
At the forefront of the story were the human, all
too human politics, intrigues, plots, hatred, betrayals, and other such
dubious virtues exhibited by the dwellers of a large nunnery during an
election campaign. At some point in the story, the author changed the
angle—from the complex interactions between the nuns caught in the game
of thrones to the devils which piled up on a nearby hill, reduced to
spectators unable to cause more havoc than the nuns themselves did. This
is how the Orthodox Commonwealth, which travels toward the Holy and
Great Council, must currently look to the invisible hordes piling up on
the hills… Why should the enemy stir us against one another when we do
it so well ourselves? How could the devil divide further what is already
divided? The fact of the matter is that instead of looking at the
greater good, namely, the beginning of serious talks about the
challenges confronting the Church in our age, the Orthodox seek more and
more pretexts to postpone the encounter—from the game of thrones to
human, all too human, passions.
My intention is not to review the whole
pre-conciliar pandemonium. Until a few days ago, when the friend to whom
I dedicate this essay brought me up to date, I have not been even aware
of it. Given his questions and my own concerns, in what follows I refer
to one of the most recent episodes of this pitiful saga, namely, the
declaration of Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, of 25 May 2016, gone
viral on the world wide web. More specifically, and without discussing
either his anachronistic notion regarding the supposedly ecumenical
practice of pre-conciliar consultation or his hierarchical dismissal of
the teachers of theology, herein I consider his renewed attack on the
terminology of personhood and modern Orthodox personology. In short,
Metropolitan Vlachos labels the contemporary discourse on personhood as
theological poison, a doctrinal error, a theological deviation and a
misinterpretation of the teaching of the Fathers, urging the abandonment
of the term person in favour of the term man/human being.
The attack contains the outrageous statement that the theology of
personhood, with its trademark, the freedom of personal will as distinct
from the necessary character of the natural will, annihilates the
Trinitarian God. To make his plea weightier, the Metropolitan
concatenates some impressive names—from Aquinas to Kant and
Hegel—cultural trends and ideologies—from scholasticism to socialism—and
events—such as the recent tripartite communique in Mytilene and the
upcoming Holy and Great Council. There is not much a willing reader can
make out of this tirade. How are all these related? How can the Mytilene
declaration on the challenges of this day and age, including the
humanitarian crises unfolding under our very eyes, bear on the
contemporary Orthodox theology of the person? How do, both the Mytilene
declaration and the other items mentioned by the Metropolitan, bear on
the Holy and Great Council? But enough said with reference to the
inconsistencies of his discourse.
Turning to more serious matters, I begin
by considering the reasons behind the Metropolitan’s very colourful
invectives related to the Orthodox theology of the person and his
exhortation to abandon the vocabulary of person.
Before anything though, I have to point
out that, alongside the Metropolitan’s dislike for modern Orthodox
personology, behind his opposition one can discern the assumption that
theology is reducible to a useless, repetitive academic exercise. It
seems that for him Orthodox theology must be satisfied with reciting
some well-rehearsed lines of basic catechism—a view which any student of
the Fathers may readily liken to the handbookish opinions of the
notorious ex-metropolitan Stephen of Nicomedia about the ‘innovations’
of St Symeon the New Theologian or, earlier, the criticisms levelled by
‘traditionalists’ at St Basil the Great’s unusual Homilies on the Hexaemeron.
By opposing the language of personhood as theologically valid,
Metropolitan Vlachos denies contemporary theology its task to convey the
wisdom of the ecclesial tradition in ways that take in consideration
our current circumstances and reach out to audiences of today. In so
doing, he omits the call and task of theology to engage the world in a
missionary fashion—by bridging the Gospel and the culture of any time
and place so that the minds and lives shaped by certain cultural
frameworks be more receptive to the ecclesial tradition. Among other
directions in contemporary theology, this, precisely, is what modern
Orthodox personalists undertake, namely, to work according to the
paradigm of the Logos incarnate and so flesh out the Gospel by the means
of contemporary culture. Much like in the first centuries of
Christianity, when our ancestors had to adopt notions and terms relevant
to their cultural contexts in order to successfully promote the Gospel
in the midst of a hostile society, contemporary Orthodox theologians,
struggling to make an impact on this brave new world of ours have to
explore appropriate ways to do so as efficiently as in the past. There
is nothing new, methodologically speaking, in the current efforts to
make the message of tradition heard and appreciated in the language of
the person—at least not for a diligent, honest and God-fearing
researcher of the Fathers of old. They, the saints of old, have done the
same when, in their attempts to promote the Christian ethos and
lifestyle in the language of ecclesia or leitourgia,
adopted these very words from the pre-Christian culture. They, the
saints of old, have done the same when they adopted the term philosophia
to designate the Christian lifestyle, particularly the monastic
experience. The reader knows that the list could continue indefinitely. I
will mention here only the fact that personological vocabulary—hypostasis (the person in its ontological dimension), prosopon (the person in its relational dimension), nous
(the person in its thinking and contemplative dimension) etc—was
borrowed and refashioned by the saints of old from the classical
culture. Contemporary personalists tread therefore the path of
tradition, some of them, like Vladimir Lossky, Panayiotis Nellas and
Father Dumitru Stăniloae, having even walked the path of holiness in the
footsteps of the saints of old. Theology cannot be reduced to lecture
room speculations. Its task is as sacred, apostolic, necessary and
ecclesially relevant as any other undertaking of God’s
people—irrespective of the weaknesses of either those who serve it or
their output. This is the light in which should be assessed the efforts
of the most illustrious Orthodox theologians of modern times, as long as
the Church is the living body of Christ in which all the members,
organs and cells have a function to perform.
Orthodoxy is not a matter of changing
some words by other words. Orthodoxy is not logomachy. There are no
Orthodox words. All the words can be used either the wrong way or the
good way, this is the lesson of the Fathers. The latter have led the way
by adopting the strangest words and ideas from the culture of their
times, converting them into channels for the communication of the
Gospel. They have called the human person, alongside anthropos, in many other ways, including zoon logikon (rational animal, e.g. St Cyril of Alexandria, St Gregory Palamas) and zoon theoumenon
(deified animal, e.g. St Gregory the Theologian, St Nicholas
Cabasilas). And if one makes the effort to look at the vocabulary of
Orthodoxy in other languages than Greek, more surprises will become
apparent. Whereas both the Metropolitan and anyone else could simply
avoid this vocabulary in their sermons, the terminology of prosopon
and the construal of a person-centred theological anthropology—rooted
in the wisdom of the saints of old—proves to be what Orthodoxy needs
today to communicate its message to our contemporaries. Both the
terminology of the person and its theological articulations are an
effective missionary and pastoral tool. The numerous conversions to
Orthodoxy in lands where the Orthodox are in minority, particularly
among Western intellectuals, should be largely credited to the efforts
of the Orthodox theologians who have walked with—and like—the Fathers,
inspiredly presenting to the world our tradition’s call to the human
person to embrace a noble life of wholeness and holiness. We should not
fear the words and ideas of our time, the way the Fathers of old have
not feared the words and ideas of their times. Instead, we should work
on these ideas and words to transform them into means for the conveyance
of the ecclesial wisdom to the world.
Looking again at the Metropolitan’s
statements, together with the conviction that his Trinitarian God is an
ideological construct that is threatened (literally, destroyed) by a
certain theological discourse, the reader may discern there the echo of a
tenet he proposed elsewhere—namely, that if there was a Byzantine
theology of the person it would have derived from a Christological, not
Trinitarian foundation. For him, a personology rooted in Trinitarian
theology is inconceivable. Two points on this. First, it is true that
Byzantine personology was refined by St Cyril of Alexandria through the
latter’s remaking of the Cappadocian notion of hypostasis, a
process which continued with the contributions of the so-called
neo-Chalcedonians, particularly St Maximus the Confessor and St John
Damascene. That said, at least Letter 38 in the corpus of St Basil the
Great outlined the theology of the person within a clear Trinitarian
context. Second, the distinction between Christological and Trinitarian
doctrines is a modern construct of foreign origin that, largely,
illustrates the heterodox representation of Christ as not quite “one of
the Holy Trinity.” Within the ecclesial tradition, any Christological
theology is Trinitarian and any Trinitarian theology is Christological.
There is no Orthodox reflection on personhood that is deprived of either
Trinitarian or Christological connotations. The opposition of the
Metropolitan to contemporary person-centred theology has no traditional
ground and seems to depend on foreign ways of thinking.
But the problems related to the
Metropolitan’s anti-personalist assertions are even more serious than
that. Borrowing from the Western reinterpretation of tradition by
Jean-Claude Larchet, the Metropolitan presents a simplified version of
the views of the latter’s substantialism or naturalism and rejects the
Orthodox person-centred discourse on a Trinitarian and an
anthropological level. If I read correctly his statements—particularly
his appraisal of the person as no more than an individual specimen of a
nature—together with Larchet he would consider the person an attribute
or phenomenon of nature, whether divine or human. This is typical for a
pre-Christian understanding of the person as individual subordinated to
nature’s determinism, an understanding which in modern secular culture
has taken the form of naturalism. For instance, in the name of nature or
one’s genetic makeup currently many vices, sins and crimes tend to be
easily justified given the general perception that one cannot fight his
or her nature. In Trinitarian terms, the reduction of the person to
nature was condemned by the ancient Church as Sabellianism, a heresy
according to which the divine persons were manifestations of God’s
substance. A Christological assessment conduces to identical outcomes.
When looked at from the viewpoint of Christology, the substantialist
position corresponds to monophysitism. By monophysitism the Byzantines understood the representation of Christ only in terms of nature (physis monon)
and the rejection of the richer vocabulary of the Cappadocian Fathers,
St Cyril of Alexandria and others, which approached the mystery of
Christ in various ways and by using terms which are foundational for the
Orthodox theology of the person. I would say that the current opponents
to Orthodox personalism in the name of ancient substantialism are by
all intents and purposes monophysites, without the term having a bearing on non-Chalcedonian Christology.
Granted, in its subtler versions, as
posited by Larchet and other scholars, this reductionist naturalism
takes the form of an opposition to what the proponents see as the
separation of person from nature in the discourse of many Orthodox
personalists, from Vladimir Lossky to Panayiotis Nellas and from Father
Dumitru Stăniloae to Christos Yannaras and Metropolitan John Zizioulas. I
am not convinced that any of the above Orthodox thinkers have in fact
contemplated a separation. Their views can be summarised in the tenet
that for Christian anthropology, with its Trinitarian and Christological
foundations, human mystery cannot be reduced to the determinism which
characterises our nature and that all our existential decisions—virtuous
or sinful, dispassionate or vicious, theocentric or autonomous—are made
on the level of personhood. This tenet is the actual point contested by
Metropolitan Vlachos. According to him, the notions of “human person,”
“nature’s necessity” and “will and freedom of the person” contradict
Orthodox theology which, in his views, would assert nature’s goodness
and the fact that human nature does not know necessity; furthermore,
that (free) will is nature’s desire, not an aptitude of the person. This
is the context within which the Metropolitan outrageously affirms that
“the link between will and person destroys the Trinitarian God by
introducing tritheism.” These are very serious assertions which would
require a more detailed analysis than the points outlined below.
Nevertheless, given the pressures of these days even the following brief
observations could be of some use.
Before any further comment, I have to
emphasise that the statements of Metropolitan Vlachos should not come as
a surprise to anyone still attached to what many illustrious Orthodox
theologians of last century have referred to as the Babylonian captivity
of Orthodox theology to foreign, Western medieval ways of thinking. A
diligent reader will find a striking overlap between the Metropolitan’s
statements and that alienated form of thinking—indeed a scholasticising
pseudomorphosis of Orthodox theology—for which human mystery was
reducible to a simplistic psychosomatic schema and which replaced the
doctrine of supernatural deification by the view that holiness is
attainable within the boundaries of nature. The same is true for the
origin of this entire debate, which can be drawn back to the attack of
Savvas Agouridis on modern Orthodox personalism, launched in 1990, from a
thoroughly nontraditional angle, deprived of liturgical, philokalic and
patristic sensitivity. But let me address several punctual matters
which the Metropolitan seems to be unaware of, albeit his commitment to
tradition.
He opposes what he calls the separation
of person and nature. I reiterate my suspicion that modern Orthodox
personalism does not entail a literal separation. Distinction is not
separation. I propose that what modern personalists posit is a
distinction between person and nature as different orders pertaining to
the human mystery, not their separation. This distinction has taken
various forms in the past, from the classical soul and body construct to
St Gregory of Nyssa’s refusal to reduce
what-is-in-the-image-of-God-within-us to our psychosomatic nature etc.
This distinction indeed entails person’s inbuilt capacity to transcend
its nature—specifically the fallen nature which we all inherit through
birth—and so escape genetic conditioning. This capacity makes possible
one’s embracing sinful life. How would one account for sin if sin is
determined by one’s nature? The same capacity makes possible also
asceticism and the ascetic transformation of one’s being. This is how an
Egyptian young woman, Mary, has chosen debauchery at first and then has
become, through determination and ascesis, St Mary the Egyptian. Nature
does not make sinners and saints. This is, furthermore, how from St
Silouan’s “sinful dust” one becomes “without beginning and without
end”—as St Maximus the Confessor and St Gregory Palamas affirmed—through
uncreated participation in the divine life, without the created being
transformed into uncreated. It is not the dust of the earth that is
deified. What is deified is what-is-in-the-image-of-God-within-us. And
this is how “the Word of God [who] is whole, complete essence [i.e.
nature], for He is God, and whole, undiminished hypostasis [i.e.
person], for He is Son, ... became the seed of His own flesh, and ...
the hypostasis of two natures” (trans. Nicholas Constas, slightly
altered) as St Maximus articulated the mystery of the
hypostatic/personal event of the incarnation. Whereas the distinction
between person and nature facilitates our perception of the incarnation,
ascesis and deification, the monophysite denial of their distinction
(by overemphasising person’s dependence on nature) makes these
impossible to articulate in an Orthodox manner.
Metropolitan Vlachos is of the opinion,
which derives from his naturalism or monophysitism (as defined above),
that will belongs to nature and that there is no will of the person.
Ecclesial tradition stands in firm and consistent opposition to his
views. St Paul spoke to the Romans about the conflict of the “law of the
mind” and the “law of the body.” Yes, he did not use the words person and nature,
but one cannot expect that from a first century Christian anyhow.
Nevertheless, is not his a distinction between personal freedom and
natural determinism? In the Byzantine era, St Maximus and St John
Damascene spoke of two different kinds of will within the human being:
one physical and one gnomic (St Maximus) or physical instinct, θέλησις,
and personal will, βουλή (St John). In his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,
St John went as far as to point out that the natural will or instinct
does not deserve the designation of will because it is conditioned and
not free. Putting aside any irreverent thought about how things occur
within the Trinitarian God, it results that what makes possible good
behaviour/transformation and misbehaviour/deformation on a human level
is not the natural will/energy; it is the personal will/energy. No one
is either virtuous or sinful by nature. The distinction between natural
will and personal will entails a distinction between nature and person,
albeit the saints of old may not have felt the need to emphasise it in
those days.
Metropolitan Vlachos, finally, attempts
to bring theodicy to bear on his crusade against modern Orthodox
personology by asserting that “the link between nature and necessity
blames God for the creation of man” and that nature is good. Necessity,
as a trait of nature, is neither good nor evil. Necessity, however
worded, is part and parcel of nature on all the levels of the visible
creation—human, biological and cosmic. Cosmically, necessity manifests
itself in the purposeful dynamism of the universe which moves towards
higher states of complex unity. Biologically, necessity pushes all life
forms to survive and multiply. On a human level, given our biological
side, necessity is obvious in the instincts of survival and
reproduction. Necessity is not evil even though necessity has nothing
free about it, as St John Damascene stated. Not even our fallen
condition from the paradisal goodness (an aspect ignored in the
statements of the Metropolitan) causes natural necessity to be evil. We
are not evil because we have to eat. And we do not eat because we want;
it is because we must. This natural conditioning made St Antony deplore
the moments when he had to submit to the necessities of nature—at least
according to the narrative of his life by St Athanasius the Great. Thus,
it is not up to our nature or natural will or instinct to postpone
eating for instance; by nature, we have to eat when we are hungry. There
is something else within us, however, another level of the human
reality—call it person, mind, spirit, soul or anything else—which is
irreducible to nature, its necessity, its conditioning and instincts. At
that other level can a decision be made to eat more than needed or to
fast, to eat when we are hungry or to delay surrendering to necessity.
At that other level the potential of nature, its very instincts and
energies, can be well-used or misused—and that is the real problem.
Thus, it is neither the association of will with person nor the
association of nature with necessity which are blameful. It is the
sinful misuse of our potential that is blameful. A true theodicy, the
way we see in the Fathers of old, points to sin as blameful, not to any
representation of human reality in terms of person, will and nature—or
any other terms.
Therefore, when taking position either
pro or contra the terminology of personhood and the person-centred
character of Orthodox theology, there are many more aspects which should
be considered than just to maintain faithfulness to some phraseology.
Talking theology and conveying the message of the ecclesial
tradition—these are not a matter of finding better words. Orthodoxy is
not logomachy. And whilst the debate around the implications of modern
Orthodox person-centred theology is quite welcome when there is nothing
pressing upon our shoulders, the anti-personalist crusade of
Metropolitan Vlachos is as out of place these days, when the Orthodox
endeavour to walk together towards the Holy and Great Council, as all
the other attempts to sabotage this goal—attempts which cannot avoid
being likened to a “game of thrones” and suspected as betraying “human,
all too human” passions. These attempts to sabotage the Council remind
me of a saying of a contemporary Romanian elder, Father Arsenie
Papacioc, of blessed memory. During a talk on the spiritual warfare, he
conveyed that at times the strategy of the enemy takes the form of an
encouragement to wait, wait, wait, postpone, delay, leave it for some
other time… Let the Churches meet! Let their hierarchs meet, so that
they put a beginning to further and richer conversations—rather than not
meet and postpone everything forever because of words or games of
thrones or human, all too human passions. Then will the Churches
rejoice, when looking down from the tops of the mountains, at the havoc
of the world.