Irish Theological Quarterly

http://itq.sagepub.com Theology East and West: Difference and Harmony

Lawrence Cross Irish Theological Quarterly 2006; 71; 67 DOI: 10.1177/0021140006072569 The online version of this article can be found at: http://itq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/71/1-2/67

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Irish Theological Quarterly 71 (2006) 6776 2006 Irish Theological Quarterly Sage Publications [www.sagepublications.com] DOI: 10.1177/0021140006072569

Theology East and West: Difference and Harmony

Lawrence Cross
The difference in style and temperament in the way Eastern and Western theologians approach their common subject, already evident in Patristic times, became very marked after the 12th century with the rise of scholasticism in the West. Today both are challenged by the newly emerging theological paradigm. Theologians of both traditions are called to engage in a new patristic enterprise, namely to search together for ways of expressing the mystery of redemption which can once again engage our contemporaries in the age of postmodernity.

1. Differences

n the earliest centuries of the Christian era, the term theology still carried the rather pejorative sense employed by Plato to describe mythic religion, or the cultic proclamation through which the myths describing divine reality are passed on. Christians began to appropriate the term from the third century in the writings of Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth.1 In this first age, theology is used primarily to refer to proclamation, confession or doxology with regard to God. It is God-talk in the literal sense, while oikonomia is knowledge and teaching about the events of salvation.2 Although the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches arise from the same early Christian world, the Eastern Orthodox approach to theology has remained closer to this Patristic tradition. Theology is experiential rather than intellectual, flowing into the realm of the mystical. Wary of speculation and rationalism, Orthodox theology is strongly apophatic. As Konrad Raiser has observed, its appropriate setting is the monastic community.3 Though patristic in its roots, Latin theology, by way of contrast, has been shaped in the medieval period largely by the university and by the reception of Aristotelian philosophy in the West, particularly in the work
1. For Origen, see Contra Celsum, Patrologia Graeca, 11, 908B, and for Eusebius, De laudibus Constantini, ibid., 20, 1393D. 2. Konrad Raiser, Theology in the Ecumenical Movement, in Nicholas Lossky et al. (eds), Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991), 992. 3. Ibid., 993. 67

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of St Thomas Aquinas.4 For the Latins, theology tends to be the methodical exposition of revealed truth in which philosophical categories are utilized to unfold the sacred doctrine. Theology and the magisterium of the Church are closely linked. In the West the approach has been rather more cataphatic. Western theology, in its most formative phase, was influenced by the speculations of St Augustine on Gods salvific plan for the rehabilitation of mankind. Likewise, the Wests approach to Trinity contains a tension between St Augustines philosophical essentialism, his personalism, and the Churchs religious experience.5 The first element in Augustines thought, the preoccupation with the Fall and the condition of the first parents, approached the question of grace by treating it as an intermediate quality which ensures or restores a right relationship between man and God. The second element, the tension between philosophical essentialism and the personalism of religious experience, produced the conclusion that the ultimate and perfect blessedness consists in the vision of the divine essence itself. This position cannot be reconciled with Greek thought and fails to account for the apparent ability of the creature to conceive of the Inconceivable. The Eastern style of theology is grounded upon the Greek Fathers for whom the beginning, the of St John and of Genesis, is the eternal God existing in three hypostases, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Consequently, Eastern-style theology begins, not with questions concerning the unity of God, the Treatise on God of scholasticism, but with the revelation of the Trinity of persons, and specifically with the incarnation of the Divine Son of God.6 God himself, however, remains invisible, ineffable, inconceivable, in unutterable glory, even as God is known in His energies by which man is made a participant in Gods Trinitarian life. In Eastern thought, grace restores the original beauty of the divine image in man. It brings about deification or , which is a vital assimilation into Trinitarian life, not a mere formal likeness. At this point, we should underline the fact that Eastern and Western approaches are styles of theology, and as such are optional, just as long as they do not contradict the revealed data of faith upon which both rest. For all the fascinating similarities and differences between East and West, we only have time to isolate one factor which illustrates the difference between the Greek and Latin approaches to theology which gave rise to specific difficulties in mutual understanding: the different way each tradition employed philosophical resources in the formulation of theology. While
4. St Thomas debt to Pseudo-Dionysius and John Damascene also demonstrates the continuing influence of the Eastern Fathers on Western theology. 5. Michael A. Fahey and John Meyendorff, Trinitarian Theology East and West (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1977), 36. 6. George Barrois, Two Styles of Theology and Spirituality, St Vladimirs Theological Quarterly, 26/2 (1982): 90.

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both Eastern and Western theology rest upon scriptural and philosophical authorities, Eastern theology had the advantage of connaturality of language and culture with the Septuagint and with the Greek Fathers, through whom it also laid claim to the doctrines of Plato and the concrete analyses of Aristotle, both encountered as a living philosophy.7 Though it energetically put them to good use, the West, by contrast, encountered Plato and Aristotle not as living philosophy, but in a more academic mode and the theologian in the West was for too long a dialectician, endeavouring to persuade through argument and reason. The Eastern model of theology, discursive (particularly in liturgy) and Patristic, seeks to attract rather than persuade. As Bulgakov put it, Orthodoxy does not persuade or try to compel; it charms and attracts.8 By early modern times, there was a distinct temperamental difference discernible between Western and Eastern theology, as events in the mid-fifteenth century will illustrate. In his magisterial study of the Council of Florence (143945), Joseph Gill SJ noted the aversive reactions of the Greeks and the other Orthodox to the frequent use of syllogistic reasoning in the Latins arguments and presentations.9 For example, Archbishop Isidore of Kiev and all Russia, noting the frequent Latin use of syllogisms, went on to say, regretfully, that such reasoning deepened the schism and has made the disagreement greater and stronger.10 George Scholarius, appointed by the emperor as a member of the Greek delegation and later the first Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople under Ottoman rule, voiced the Greek fear when he declared, I know that you, O Greeks, in matters of this sort have no confidence in proofs from reason but consider them suspect and misleading; much more then will you both keep clear of syllogising per impossibile and be on your guard against others who do that.11 Bessarion of Nicaea concurred: It was not syllogisms or probabilities or arguments that convinced me, but the bare words of the Fathers.12 But the most spirited and vivid reaction to the Latins syllogizing and their appeals to philosophical authorities came from one of the Georgian envoys to the council. The Great Ecclesiarches, Silvester Syropoulus, recorded his response when the Latin, Montenero, appealed to the authority of Aristotle. The Georgian exclaimed,
7. Ibid., 97. 8. Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, in N. Zernov and J. Pain (eds), A Bulgakov Anthology (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1976), 131. 9. Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 2278. 10. Cod. Vat. Gr. 706, 12r22r. 11. Means to obtain religious peace, Schol. 1, 355. 12. De Spiritus Sancti Processione: Ad Alexium Lascarin Philantropinum, PG 161, 360B.

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What about Aristotle, Aristotle? A fig for your fine Aristotle. And when I (Syropoulus) by word and gesture asked: What is fine? The Georgian replied St Peter, St Paul, St Basil, Gregory the Theologian; a fig for your Aristotle, Aristotle.13 The voice of that unnamed Georgian is still echoing loudly in the halls of contemporary Orthodox theology. As the remarks at Florence illustrate, Latins and Greeks do not undertake the theological task in the same way. The difference was notable more than 650 years ago. While the difference is real, one also suspects that many of the historically acrimonious exchanges between the theologians and controversialists of East and West are not at all due to different methodologies, but are really symptoms of rabies theologorum, a phenomenon whereby ideological religious controversy, however caused, has disturbed popular emotion and has entered into the ecclesial bloodstream, to an extent greater than even political or aesthetic differences.14 2. Theological Paradigms We can begin our discussion of the possibilities of convergence between the way in which Latins and Greeks undertake the theological task with an intuition expressed by George Tavard in 1980.15 Noting that the Christian past has given rise to four principal and successive kinds of theology, fides quaerens anagogiam, fides quaerens analogiam, fides quaerens historiam and fides quaerens rationem humanam,16 and to periods that we can roughly describe as Patristic, Medieval, Byzantine, Reformation and Early Modern, Tavard declares that there is a general feeling today that theology is on the verge of a new age. He is not sure of its exact trajectory into the future, but he believes that theology is moving to new ground and there is a diffuse feeling that something has ended.17 For a figure such as Paul Tillich, it is the Protestant era that has passed. For those influenced by Vatican II, it is the thought and temper of the Counter-Reformation that have passed away. The question arises, to what
13. Syr. x, 12, 270. 14. Hans Kng, Paradigm Change in Theology: A Proposal for Discussion, in Hans Kng and David Tracey (eds), Paradigm Change in Theology: A Symposium for the Future (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 4. 15. George Tavard, The Bi-lateral Dialogues: Searching for Language, One in Christ 16 (1980): 223. 16. For the four principal and successive kinds of theology from the Christian past, or more accurately, the four ways of interpreting the Scriptures, see Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, Vol 1: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Mark Sebanc (Grand Rapids, IL: Eerdmans, 1998). De Lubac believes that St Augustines categories, literal, allegorical, moral and analogical, in contrast to those of Origen, derive from incarnational semiotics and a Pauline teleology, grounded in the Apostolic preaching itself. He concluded that What we have here is a theory that, even in its very form, owes everything to this Christian faith, and that, in its content, seeks to give it expression, 225. 17. Tavard, The Bi-lateral Dialogues, 22.

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extent will the Churches of the East share in the new theological future? Have their theologians relinquished anything to the past so that they also might participate in the coming theological future? Paradoxically, for the Churches of the Orthodox East, the opportunity has arisen to free themselves from what they dubbed their Babylonish captivity18 to the ways of Western theology and to return to the sources and ways of their own tradition. Consequently, we should ask whether the Churches of the Greek East and Catholic West are on the verge of the same new theological age, or whether they are passing each other as they go in different directions, between a speculative post-modern future and traditional Patristic past. We do not believe that this is the case, but much more work is ahead of us before we can establish the fact that both East and West are on the brink of a new theological future in which each will exercise its gifts and insights in a complementary way so as to contribute to the formation of a new theological paradigm at the service of the modern world. 3. Dialogue and Contemporary Theological Categories From its inception in the late 1950s, the Dialogue of Love, a continuing informal and occasional dialogical encounter between the Roman Catholic Church and the cumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, has developed a pattern of encounters over the years, such as the exchanges on the feasts of the Apostles, St Andrew and Sts Peter and Paul, in which certain key theological themes and ideas have emerged. These are a study in themselves which we cannot pursue here, but it is clear that the partners in the Dialogue really have not stopped to ask if there is any specific methodological pattern to its less formal theologizing. Though it is certainly not the most important aspect in its development, an attention to methodological issues is largely missing from the Dialogue of Love.19 And since there is the traditional
18. Originally given as a talk to the First Conference of Orthodox Theologians in America in 1966, Fr Alexander Schmemanns essay, The Task of Orthodox Theology Today, is one of the most vigorous expositions of the pastoraltheological situation confronting the Orthodox Churches. In many places in his writings he mentions the idea of Babylonish captivity, meaning the subjection of Orthodox theology to the theological methods and systems of the West. This began in the years following the fall of the City and the subjection of the Orthodox nations to Turkish domination. The same idea looms large in the writing of Fr Dimitru Staniloae. See A. Schmemann, Church, World, Mission (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1979), 11728. For a discussion of this period, see Bishop Kallistos Wares Eustratios Argenti: A Study of the Greek Church under Turkish Rule (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964). The Orthodox knew that their own theology was now strongly influenced by the thought-forms and terminology of Latin scholasticism, but expressed their sense of captivity by a fiercely polemical stance towards Catholicism throughout the seventeenth century. See Bishop Kallistos Ware, Orthodox and Catholics in the Seventeenth Century: Schism or Intercommunion? in D. Baker (ed.), Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, Studies in Church History X), 259. 19. What is surprising is that this is also true of the formal theological dialogue, whose documents tend to be composed in a kind of Patristic speak rather than in the tones of a recognizably more modern and ecumenical mode.

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suspicion of excessive system in theology on the part of the Orthodox, which surfaces quite often in the course of the Dialogue of Love,20 we should give some attention to the important distinction between the positive and normative phases of theology, because the positive phase provokes the Orthodox dislike of syllogizing and is identified with Western theology. The East seems most comfortable with the normative phase. Here we turn to Bernard Lonergan for some assistance in describing the general modern theological method in which many theologians in the West would recognize their theatre of activity.21 He has isolated eight functional specialities. The first four specialities constitute what is called the positive phase of theology, which is characterized by empirical studies designed to recover and appraise the past. The elements in the positive phase are Research, Interpretation, History and Dialectics. Lonergans second four specialities constitute what is called the normative phase of theology, which focuses upon an appropriation of the past in the present for the sake of the future. The elements in the normative phase are Foundations, Doctrines, Systematics and Communications. For Lonergan, the hinge upon which the two phases swing is conversion. The relationship of these phases is important for theology generally, and for ecumenical dialogue in particular. There has already been much discussion as to whether the empirical phase should be governed by the normative. We in our turn must ask whether it would be wrong to engage in a theological process, such as ecumenical dialogue, where the normative phase controlled the empirical or positive phase. We must ask if this is what is being proposed in the frequent appeals, by both partners in the Dialogue of Love, to the time of the undivided Church, to the Fathers, to Tradition, or to normative Scripture? Are such appeals suggesting that doctrine should act as a guiding norm to the empirical investigations of research, interpretation, history and dialectic? We must ask if this represents an unwarranted interference by theologys normative phase in the work conducted within theologys positive phase. However, it would seem from certain hints in the course of the Dialogue that the empirical investigations of theologys positive phase do not rest on doctrine. For example, while the participants in the Dialogue look forward to the beginning of the formal Theological Dialogue, they expect that, as part of its method, the tools of the empirical positive phase would be brought to bear to clarify and establish the elements of the common faith of the Churches. Lonergans method, in this case the functional specialities, is useful for sorting out the question of doctrinal development and the dynamics of a
20. Patriarch Dimitrios much quoted declamation is one of the best-known examples the heart of theology. of the admonition to step beyond system into the communion at Q, , , . . Patriarch Dimitrios (30.11.74), to Fr Pierre Duprey. 21. Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), 12544.

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process of dialogue. One can be sympathetic to the claim that doctrinal development consists of making explicit what is implicit in revelation. However, to maintain this, also in the context of a dialogue, one must indicate the way in which this occurs, which is to say, the making explicit of that which is implicit. We should note here that the problem of the relationship between the positive and the normative phases is far from resolved in the wider theological community of the Western (Latin) Church. One illustration will have to suffice. This identical problem, for example, emerged in an address by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on modern critical historical scholarship.22 He identifies as a central problem the need to find a better synthesis between historical and theological methods, between higher criticism and Church doctrine. Furthermore, a truly pervasive understanding of this whole problem has yet to be found which takes into account both the undeniable insights uncovered by historical method, while at the same time overcoming its limitations. Ratzinger does not offer the required better synthesis, though he offers some elements of such a synthesis. Indeed, he claims that the work of a whole generation is necessary to achieve such a thing. In the end he appears to be caught between his dissatisfaction with the diversity of exegetical results, many of which seem to challenge accepted doctrines, and his realization that the era of dogmatic control of such empirical research is now at an end, for the Latin Church at least. We suspect that many, the Eastern Orthodox included, strongly object to the separation of the two phases of theology, the empirical phase and the normative phase, in the same way and for the same reasons they object to the separation of theology from the Church by means of a pseudo-scientification. As Staniloae has argued, tradition in the Orthodox Church is a lived experience of one and the same relationship with Christ in the time of the Apostles Church and tradition, considered as the revelation of Christ lived in an uninterrupted way by the Church, constitute a whole.23 Or as Nicholas Lossky insists, the theologian cannot be a private thinker who works out a system in the solitude of his study. Theology and the theologian must be grounded in the community of the Church and share in its experience of life in Christ. Likewise, the task of formulas is simply to redirect people towards the mystery.24 In short, contemporary Orthodox theologians, employing certain creative Western theological insights,
22. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Foundations and Approaches to Biblical Exegesis, Origins, Feb. 11 (1988) 17, no. 35. 23. Dimitru Staniloae, The Orthodox Conception of Tradition and the Development of Doctrine, Sobornost, Series 5, No. 9 (1969): 6534. 24. Nicholas Lossky, Orthodoxy and Ecumenism, One in Christ 17 (1981): 145, 144.

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propose to take our understanding of the theological process to another level. This will certainly be grounded upon the sole criterion of God himself, which is faithful to Revelation and to the Fathers as read in the Church, but which is also strangely modern, even post-modern. The problem of the relationship of positive and normative phases in theology is an offshoot of those historical developments in Western theology already alluded to. Under the sheer weight of excessive system inherited from the Middle Ages, something essential was being asphyxiated. As Gabriel Daly has observed, there is also circumstantial irony in the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has come to belated and reluctant terms with secular culture just at the moment when that culture is undergoing a major crisis of its own.25 The enmity of modernist and integralist continues to scandalize ecclesial life in the West and to cripple theology in its pursuit of its own wholeness. Behind the problem of the relationship of positive and normative phases in theology is the modernists legitimate suspicion of system and the integralists fear that science will undermine dogma. It would indeed be tragic if the hostile Orthodox critic was right in claiming that Roman Catholicism, tormented by a deep internal split, is held together only by an excessive exercise of authority and by a tight administrative cast.26 4. Theological Crisis and the Patristic Note of the Church In diagnosing the deep-seated reasons for the crisis in theology, Orthodox commentators would attribute it to the denial of the Patristic note in the life of the Church, and to a departure from the Patristic nature of theology. In Eastern terms, the loss of the Patristic note of theology is the same thing as a denial of human experience and affectivity; as neglect of the real life of the Church and her practical needs. Nor is the Patristic note of the Church and its theology a merely imitative attachment to the Fathers. They are not advocating turning theology into a system of thought, or a dogmatism embedded in the past. From this position, says Nicholas Lossky, fidelity to the Fathers tends to degenerate into bondage to formulas.27 Finding the Patristic note in the Church means to reappropriate the spirit of the Fathers; to aim our theological effort at the real Church
25. Gabriel Daly, O.S.A., Transcendence and Immanence: A Study in Catholic Modernism and Integralism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 230. 26. Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1984), 99. 27. Lossky, Orthodoxy and Ecumenism, 144.

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and at real man in the Church.28 Doing theology in the spirit of the Fathers begins with a deep evaluation and critique of that contemporary culture in which the believer is immersed. Like the Fathers, a renewed theology must dare to use fearlessly all the intellectual and cultural materials that will assist in this task. It is deeply ironical to realize that the French philosopher Lucien Laberthonnire, and with him the Fathers, would have been treated with deep suspicion by Roman theology for asking the one question that matters; And if there is something divine in humanity, under what conditions and in what manner is it to be found there?29 This is precisely the question that has been lost to sight. The Greek term is being used in two senses in the following paragraphs. In the first sense in which it will be used, means favoured time, the special opportunity for a longed-for development to occur. In the second sense it means that opportune moment in time when persons truly meet, an encounter. As Dimitru Staniloae has observed (following Emil Brunner), there is a strong tendency in philosophy to transform the world of God, of which the Bible speaks, into Platos world of ideas, into the ontology of timeless being. The symbolism of personalism and of happenings in time is replaced by that of the impersonal, of the It and of timelessness. The symbolism of time (within which the appears) and personality is replaced by the symbolism of space and things.30 Unrebuked, these philosophies and theories produce a change in the meaning of even the basic Christian terms and concepts. Schmemann insists that this can be challenged only by an exorcism of culture, such as the Fathers undertook, a liberating reconstruction of the words, concepts and symbols of the theological language itself. Once more a thinker like Mikhail Bakhtin, supported by theologians like Staniloae on the Orthodox side, shows the way through the problem of the relationship of the positive and normative phases in theology and identifies the kind of theology that the Dialogue of Love expresses. In an article written as long ago as 1969, Staniloae welcomed the newly emerging theological paradigm and offered a way to harmonize the relationship of the positive and normative phases. First, he saw the role of the new expressions in thought and culture to be a means for the human mind to see the amazing meaning and importance of the words and formulas of Scripture and Tradition with new eyes. Their novelty was not to be feared, but valued precisely because of its ability to stimulate and to awaken.
28. Schmemann, Church, World, Mission, 121. 29. Daly, Transcendence and Immanence, 231, citing Laberthonnires Le Ralisme chrtien et lidalisme grec (Paris, 1904), 244. 30. Dimitru Staniloae, Theology and the Church, trans. Robert Barringer (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1980), 152, citing Emil Brunners Dogmatics. Vol. III. The Christian Doctrine of the Church: Faith and the Consummation (London: Macmillan, 1962), 4046.

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5. Liberty in Tradition In Staniloaes view, things have got to such a pass that the Churches cannot be content with merely an exterior renewal, or with an aggiornamento of language. Noting that it is impossible to separate language and content in as clear a way as that, he asserted that if you use new expressions, you throw new light on to the content expressed. This is a true intellectual in the first sense, a special opportunity for a longedfor development to occur, because, by these new expressions, the human mind also wishes to make clear certain vital sides or aspects implied in the divine revelation, elements insufficiently brought to light by the ancient formulas, and apt to reply to new questions raised by the human spirit.31 But even if these new expressions can represent more than simple alternatives in relation to earlier verbal formulae, for Staniloae they cannot contradict the words and formulas of the first Tradition, which in essence and general content expresses fully the mystery of redemption. It is here that he touches on the relationship of the positive and normative phases in theology. The fact that the new expressions do not contradict the initial formulas must be the criterion of their acceptability. If the results of the use of new expressions are not accepted officially by the Church, they have the non-obligatory character of theologoumena, and the Christian is free to hold them. Staniloae also loosens the rigid relationship between positive and normative when he observes that the course of human life, and Christian humanity in particular, advances in a most uneven fashion over halts and setbacks, taking many temporary deviations on to wrong roads, dark sides in this journey towards the light. The spiritual path of mankind, with the aid of God, records an advance only in its major outlines. If one were to develop a myopic view of the Christian theological enterprise, obsessed with the claims and relationships of the theological specialities, one would miss the freeing realization that many of the historic ways of expressing the mystery of redemption, such as the work of certain theologians of the scholastic or more recent periods, belong to these deviations and setbacks. This is why it is not right to hold on to all the ways of expressing the mystery of redemption which have developed in the course of history. In fact, liberty and choice are vital elements in the theological process. LAWRENCE CROSS, Senior Lecturer, School of Theology (Victoria), Australian Catholic University, ABN 15 050 192 660, 115. Victoria Parade, Fitzroy, Victoria 3065, Australia. 1.cross@patrick.acu.edu.au
31. Staniloae, The Orthodox Conception of Tradition and the Development of Doctrine, 660.

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