May 12, 2009
“The Gnostic appeal to a secret tradition embodied in its own Gospels or modifications of the existing Christian gospels thus highlights the situation of the “Two Churches within One Institution” Model, for the Gnostic “tradition” is esoteric, and can only be arrived at by initiation into methods known to the Gnostic. The situation is all too similar to the claims of much modern textual criticism, which asserts the right of its own scholarly elite to modify the text of Scripture, or in actual fact, to reject the ecclesiastical texts, in favor of its own highly questionable conjectures and reconstructions of the “original autographs”. Seen in this light, the Gnostic is little more than a second century textual critical peritus, and the modern textual critic as little more than a nineteenth or twentieth century Gnostic.”
…
“Specifically, by the latter part of the second century, when the orthodox insisted upon “one God,” they simultaneously validated the system of governance in which the church is ruled by “one bishop.” Gnostic modification of monotheism was taken—and perhaps intended—as an attack upon that system. For when gnostic and orthodox Christians discussed the nature of God, they were at the same time debating the issue of spiritual authority. Thus, even the idea of apostolic succession is transformed in the hands of some Gnostic systems who claimed succession from different teachers, who form, according to Ptolemy, “an esoteric supplement to the canonical collection of Jesus’ words.” Bodily resurrection, apostolic succession, and the canonical and textual form of the Scriptures form a continuous strand of orthodox response to Gnosticism, as Gnosticism forms a continuous and total program of assault on each of these. For both the Gnostic and the Orthodox, to imperial any of these elements was to imperial them all. Again, the implications for the modern situation are dire, for faced as we are with Churches and hierarchies that all too quickly are abandoning versions of Scripture based upon some form of the Majority Text—the received ecclesiastical text underlying most versions of Scripture, in favor of versions based on critical constructions of what scholars think the early text to have been, constructions themselves based upon manuscripts in many cases of known Gnostic or heretic pedigree, the implication for apostolic succession is enormous.”
…
“[W]hen St. Irenaeus emphasizes the recapitulation of all things in Christ, including all stages of human nature, he is stating more than just Christological doctrine. The unity of the Godhead and the inclusion of all of humanity in the effects of the Incarnation are double blows against the Gnostic proliferation of deities and authorities; his understanding of recapitulation is also a statement of ecclesiastical polity. There are, indeed, he acknowledges, two traditions, but only one derives from the Apostles; the other derives from Simon Magus and ultimately from Satan. The importance of this will be lost unless restated in modern higher critical terms: the distinction of two kinds of tradition as regards doctrine, polity, and canonical Scripture means that any attempt to deal with early manuscripts of Scripture as an indistinct mass, without regarde to doctrinal content, is, from the orthodox Christian perspective, impossible, since it does not account for the historical fact of the existence of different kinds of tradition from the beginning.”
-God, History, and Dialectic: The Theological Foundations of the Two Europes and Their Cultural Consequences, +Photius Farrell
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Farrell, Gnosticism, Recapitulation, Scripture | 
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Posted by photios
May 6, 2009
Fr. Jean Miguel Garrigues has an interesting article on Latin Trinitarianism relative to the Filioque. Here are some sections that I thought expressed well a major problem. Hat Tip to Bekkos.
The Arian crisis and the reaction of the orthodox fathers would not fundamentally change the Latin theology of the procession. In the East, Arianism, in its radical version with Eunomius, in fact quickly situated its denial of trinitarian consubstantiality on the metaphysical level of the Godhead; marked by Neoplatonic theories of hierarchical participation, Eunomius postulated that any multiplicity of divine persons could only be possible under the form of subordinated participation. That obliged the Cappadocian fathers to confess in God one principle of personal multiplicity, irreducible to any order of essence: the hypostasis. In the East, the natural theology of Eunomius obliged the Cappadocian fathers to profess, in all its irreducibility, an authentic theologia of the Living and Threefold God distinguished from all order of essence, even from that of the economy. But at the same moment the Latin fathers were running up against a more unpolished, less metaphysical Arianism, which was content to deny the divinity of Jesus and of the Spirit in considering them concretely in their economic mission upon the earth. For the Latin fathers, therefore, it was not an issue of defending the possibility of a plurality of persons within a unique divine essence, but of showing that the consubstantial procession of the Son and of the Spirit was prolonged even at the point where they “left the Father” in order to come on their mission into the world. Not needing to confront Eunomius’s philosophical Arianism, the Latin fathers were able to continue their deepening trinitarian reflection in continuity with the economic theology of their third century predecessors. For them, it was a matter of showing that the mission of the Son and of the Spirit “outside the Father” is rooted in the order of their consubstantial procession from him, an order which is revealed in the economy. In this task, they were aided by an assimilation of vocabulary between the verbs proerkhomai (Jn 8:42) and ekporeusthai (Jn 15:26) — the most ancient translations of the Gospels and, following them, St. Jerome’s Vulgate translate these two different Greek verbs by a single Latin verb: procedere…
St. Hilary, nevertheless, influenced by the Eastern notion of ekporeusis (he wrote book VIII of De Trinitate in exile in the East) presents a distinction between the procession of the Spirit from the Father (Jn 15:26) and his reception of divinity in the Son who holds this from the Father (Jn 16:14-15). Evidently reserving the verb procedere (in the sense of ekporeusthai) to signify the relation of the Holy Spirit with the Father alone, he nevertheless sees the Holy Spirit as a manifestation of the full trinitarian consubstantiality which he receives from the Father and the Son:
“‘All that the Father has is mine; that is why I told you, “The Spirit will receive from what is mine and will announce it to you” (Jn 16:15). He receives, then, from the Son, he who is sent by him and who proceeds from the Father. And I ask if it is the same thing to receive from the Son and to proceed from the Father. If one thinks there is a difference between receiving from the Son and proceeding from the Father, it is certain, contrariwise, that it is one and the same thing to receive from the Son and to receive from the Father…” (De Trinitate, VIII, 20; PL 10, 251A).
Leaving open the possibility of a specific sense of the procession of the Holy Spirit as ekporeusis from the unique personal principle of the Father, St. Hilary directs his attention above all to the Spirit’s reception of divinity from the Father and the Son. Under this more scriptural term of “reception,” he takes up again, as his own, all the teaching of early Latin tradition concerning the Holy Spirit’s consubstantial procession as seal of the divine plenitude.
“The Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, and the Holy Spirit receives from both of them (accipiat ab utroque), given the fact that the Spirit expresses the inviolable unity of this Holy Trinity” (PL 10, 656B).
Unfortunately, St. Hilary’s distinction between procession and reception was too hesitant to have had a decisive influence upon a Latin tradition which, for more than a century, had already fixed the sense of processio as derivation of the triune consubstantiality from the paternal source. It was seen above that St. Ambrose of Milan took up again St. Hilary’s accepit ab utroque (receives from both) in formulating this as a Patre et Filio procedit (proceeds from the Father and the Son)…
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15 Comments | 
Augustine, Filioque, Person and Nature, Trinity | 
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Posted by Perry Robinson
April 27, 2009
“As with St. Ireneaus, there is an ecclesiological and sacramental dimension to the doctrine of Recapitulation. Baptism is an essential component of the mystery and for the spiritual life, since the believer must recapitulate that which Christ Himself fulfilled and repeated in His own Recapitulation. As was the case with Sts. Ireneaus and Athanasius, one cannot separate the divine and invisible nature and therefore one cannot separate water and the Spirit into two separate baptisms or events, as this would be a kind of sacramental Nestorianism.
Ftnt. 37 This point cannot be lingered over too long, since many Evangelical Christians make just such a separation. For the Fathers, such a separation always indicates a distorted and incorrect understanding of the Incarnation. It is on the christological basis of recapitulation that infants are baptized, since not to baptize them until they reach the ‘age of reason’ or ‘accountability’ implies that communion between God and man is impossible at this stage of life. If this principle were pressed into the Incarnatin itself, it would mean that Christ only became God subsequently to His conception. Likewise, the Church’s condemnation of abortion is rooted in the recapitulational principle, since this stage of human life was united indivisibly and unconfusedly with God the Word. It is therefore contradictory to maintain at one and the same time that infants cannot be baptized, and yet to argue against abortion on the basis of an abstract principle of the ’sanctity of life’ divorced from its Christological basis.“
Joseph P. Farrell, Introduction, The Disputation with Pyrrus of our Father among the Saints Maximus the Confessor, p. xvi.
57 Comments | 
Christology, Farrell, Maximus the Confessor, Nestorianism, Person and Nature, Recapitulation, The Incarnation | 
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Posted by Perry Robinson
April 17, 2009
“He who clothed Himself with light as with a garment, stood naked at the judgment; and received blows on His Cheeks from the hands which He had fashioned. When the lawless people nailed the Lord of glory to the Cross, then the veil of the temple was rent, and the sun went dark, unable to endure the spectacle of God blasphemed, before Whom all the universe trembles. Him let us worship.
10th Antiphon
2 Comments | Atonement | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
April 12, 2009
Turretinfanhas taken some shots at some Catholic apologist regarding icons and John of Damascus. I don’t know this particular Catholic apologist andI am not particularly interested to know or how legitimate his particular arguments may or may not be. What I do find worth noting is Turretinfan’s arguments defending the heresy of iconoclasm by proping up the iconoclast council of Hieria(754) as somehow out manning John of Damascus. As an aside, I highly recommend Amrosios Giakalis’, Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Revised Ed.Brill, 2005. It is a very short book and quite expensive, but it is probably one of the best pieces of secondary literature I have to date come across. It is a good one stop shopping point for reading on the subject. What follows are some of my notes.
Eucharist as the only acceptable form or figure. What is at play here is the notion of a figure. Christ uses lots of images for himself in the Gospels-Vine, lamb, Son, etc. so strictly speaking the Eucharist isn’t the only acceptable image. What is important though is the notion of a figure that the iconoclasts are using. They are averse to any created “shape” and it is precisely because they take the Eucharist to transcend shape or created form that they deem it acceptable. Read the rest of this entry »
24 Comments | Calvinism, Christology, Church Fathers, Essence/Energies, Gnosticism, Icons, Nestorianism, Origen, Person and Nature, Platonism, The Incarnation, Theophany, Theosis/Deification | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
April 9, 2009
Protestants of the Classical Reformation variety think of Augustine as their historical anchor. When responding to the objection that such and so doctrine was unknown prior to the Reformation, the first name to fall off their lips is Augustine. Such is not the case with justification. Augustine didn’t adhere to the doctrine of Sola Fide.
To be clear, the doctrine is quite specific. Sola Fide is the idea that faith as a virtue is worthless in and of itself before God. It cannot please God, but what it can do is function as a conduit for the transfer of moral credit. Faith then is the means or the highway by which moral credit travels from Christ to me and my demerit travels to Christ. The respective merit and demerit are extrinsically applied and related to their subjects. That means that the merit applied to me is not grounded in my character, actions or nature or my demerit in the person or natures of Christ. This is because my character, actions or nature cannot produce moral credit that is complete and at best only partial. But justification is glossed as an all or nothing deal so that divine justice requires a complete righteousness. So I cannot participate in my own justification. Hence Christ’s righteousness that he merits during his earthly sojourn is applied to me as a label. I am classed as righteous even though I am not so. And because it is complete, justification and its merit cannot increase or decrease.
This merit it should be noted is earned by Christ. It is not the righteousness Christ has by virtue of being the divine person he is. The relation qua righteousness or rather the material relation between Christ and the sinner is therefore contingent. It may be an eternally planned for righteousness or justice, but it is not an eternal righteousness. In this sense this merited righteousness is a created grace and as such it is appropriate to human nature that was created intrinsically righteous or with natural grace. The righteousness on the schema of Sola Fide then that is applied forensically or taxonomically to me is a created intermediary between me and God. That in sum is the doctrine. And that doctrine is taken by Protestantism to be the Gospel so that if one rejects that idea, one is rejecting the Gospel.
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82 Comments | Augustine, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Predestination | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
April 7, 2009
“A third simile of the ancient church is that of the soul united with its body. Justin gave this to the ancient church even before it was used by his age. Athanasius explains it this way: ‘Just as a rational soul and the flesh make up one man, so God and man are the one Christ.’ And Cyril in his Conciliar Epistle says ‘The Logos made a habitation for Himself in the assume nature in the same way that the soul of man is believed to have its own body.’ Augustine says of this simile: ‘Although it does not correspond perfectly, yet it is a good simile, excellent for explaining a matter which is difficult but necessary for our understanding; for it uses things which are easy and familiar to our minds.’ And from this figure we have come to use as equivalents the terms essence, nature or person (υποστασις or υφισταμενον) with reference to the incarnation of Christ.”
Martin Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 90.
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14 Comments | Lutheranism, Person and Nature, The Incarnation | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
March 29, 2009
Then the saint mentioned how the synod convened in Rome by the blessed Pope Martin had condemned the Monothelites, to which Bishop Theodosius responded, “It is the Emperor’s summons that gives authority to a council.”
“If that were so, the Orthodox faith would have long since come to an end,” said Maximus. “Recall the councils summoned by imperial decree to proclaim that the Son of God is not of the same essence as God the Father. The first was held in Tyre, the second in Antioch, the third in Seleucia, the fourth in Constantinople under Eudoxius the Arian, the fifth in Nicaea, and the sixth in Sirmium. Considerably later, a seventh false council took place in Ephesus, at which Dioscorus presided. All these synods were convened by imperial decree, but were rejected and anathematized, since they endorsed godless doctrines. On what grounds, I would like to know, do you accept the council which condemned and anathematized Paul of Samosata? Gregory the Wonder-worker presided over that council, and its resolutions were confirmed by Dionysius, Pope of Rome, and Dionysius of Alexandria. No Emperor convoked it, but it is unassailable and irrefutable. The Orthodox Church recognizes as true and holy precisely those synods that proclaimed true dogmas. Your holiness knows that the canons require that local councils be held twice yearly in every Christian land for the defense of our saving faith and for administrative purposes; however, they say nothing about imperial decrees.”
45 Comments | Church Fathers, Eastern Orthodox, Maximus, Maximus the Confessor | Permalink
Posted by NeoChalcedonian
March 10, 2009
Prosblogion is a blog for the philosophy of religion, written by philosophy profs and grad students. The discussion is always sufficient to give the average person a mental nose bleed. Fairly recently, a post engaged Alvin Platninga’s curent endorsement of a Felix Culpa type theodicy/defense after a long personal history of advocating a free will defense. What was interesting about the discussion was that you had all of the basic ingredients of the Origenist dialectic-freedom, foreknowledge, universalism, supralapsarianism, impeccability, Hickian soul making, etc. This I suspect is due to a few major defects in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.
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18 Comments | Absolute Divine Simplicity, Atonement, Contemporary Philosophy, Free Will, Maximus the Confessor, Origen, Predestination, The Problem of Evil | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
March 8, 2009
I wrote this a long time ago, before this blog existed when I was writing on Kimel’s Pontificationsblog. I get requests for it and it is easier to just post it than to send out emails over and over again. Since it was originally a blog post, I have cleaned it up a bit and made it more or less a stand alone piece.
Anglicans in Exile
As a former Anglican myself I can sympathize with the troubles of my former brethren. On the one hand they do not see any good reason to abandon the tradition as it was handed on to them. Their problem is that they seem to be forced to leave the communion, but not the tradition that they are in. It is this loyalty that keeps them in place. Certainly loyalty has its limits and there is eventually a point where someone has to jump ship. I agree with many people who have already articulated the idea that going to Rome the eternal city (because after all, there’s always Rome!) because of problems in Anglicanism seems less than justified. By the same token I would agree with them that going to Constantinople for the same reason also lacks justification on that basis alone. But still, there is the pressing reality of what is going on in ECUSA and even in England. These are something like William James’ “forced decisions.” One doesn’t have eternity (let alone the brains) to study through all of the issues completely and yet one is compelled to make some decision. You have to dosomething. If Anglicanism does recover, it looks like things are going to get worse before they get better, at least in the long run. As an Anglican I never found a move to either body justified on strictly the basis of the quackadoxy of Spong or other individuals. What one needs is a positive reason that will tip the scale in favor of one body or another. And a positive reason that also cuts against Anglicanism would be even better since it would motivate one to leave Anglicanism for some other reason other than the presence of quackadoxy. Such a reason would allay the fears that one is being disloyal.
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56 Comments | Absolute Divine Simplicity, Anglican, Conversions to Orthodoxy, Essence/Energies, Free Will, Maximus the Confessor, Monothelitism, Palamas, Papacy, Predestination, Synergy, The Problem of Evil, Trinity | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson
