Orthodox Readings of Augustine

Orthodox Christianity & Contemporary Thought

by George E. Demacopoulos (Editor), Aristotle Papanikolaou, George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou (Editor)

This book not only presents Eastern Orthodox readings of the great Latin theologian, but also demonstrates the very nature of theological consensus in ecumenical dialogue, from a referential starting point of the ancient and great Fathers. This collection exemplifies how, once, the Latin and Byzantine churches, from a deep communion of the faith that transcended linguistic, cultural and intellectual differences, sang from the same page a harmonious song of the beauty of Christ. Contributors are: Lewis Ayres, John Behr, David Bradshaw, Brian E. Daley, George E. Demacopoulos, Elizabeth Fisher, Reinhard Flogaus, Carol Harrison, David Bentley Hart, Joseph T. Lienhard, Andrew Louth, Jean-Luc Marion, Aristotle Papanikolaou, and David Tracy

Genres: Theology, Religion, Philosophy

314 pages, Paperback

First published September 17, 2008

Reviews

[Lancelot Schaubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for Telly's essay. The specific essay taught me a ton about Byzantine history I didn't know and led me down a rabbit hole. If, in the future, someone wants to know where a specific high fantasy series started — the real ignition switch — this is it.

[Allyne · Rating 5 out of 5]

St Augustine, while he has been the most influential theologian in the Christian West (influencing Protestant traditions as well as Catholic), remains a controversial figure in the Christian East. On the whole, I agree with Christos Yannaras, who wrote something to the effect that Augustine is the font of every error and distortion in the life of the Church in the West. While the present volume doesn't completely reverse my view of the Bishop of Hippo, it is helping to nuance that estimation.

The book is a collection of papers given at a conference at Fordham University by a stellar list of Catholic and Orthodox scholars. I have particularly enjoyed the papers by David Bradshaw (the Orthodox author of Aristotle East and West,), David Tracy, and Jean-Luc Marion. The paper by David Bentley Hart was disappointing, and I think Bradshaw gets the best of the argument between them.

I am left believing that Augustine was a great thinker, a great saint, and a theologian who could be brilliant and even brilliantly wrong.

[Jacob Aitken]

The set up of this book was weird. It was published by an Orthodox Seminary, yet most of the authors were Roman Catholics, I think. Most of the authors were quite critical of many Orthodox distinctives. I wonder if the editors/publisher thought all of these things through.



Contents of the book:

Notwithstanding, most of the essays were good. Demacopolas gives an interesting survey of Augustinian studies in the past few centuries. He gives particular notice to the neo-Palamites, noting that they have done the most in framing the Augustinian debate as a fierce East vs. West battle. Interestingly, almost all of the authors in the book, even the pro-Orthodoxy ones, will critique this move of neo-Palamism.



Some of the essays are just weird. Flogaus argues that Palamas was influenced by Augustine. While that's shocking, Flogaus certainly cites his sources and is fairly convincing. Except Flogaus doesn't seem to think that he is actually convincing? It's like "Yeah, Palamas borrowed from St Augustine, but not really." Brian Daley gives an interesting comparison between Maximus and Augustine. While many Westerners (von Balthasar, most notoriously) think there is one pure line of thought from Augustine to Maximus to Aquinas to one's favorite movement today, Daley actually puts the breaks on that reasoning. He does note some similarities between the two authors, but supposes that could simply be the common Catholic consensus of the time, rather than Maximus overtly borrowing ideas from Augustine. Instead, Maximus almost doesn't quote Augustine--if at all--especially in places where it would have been most pertinent had he done so.



Joseph Lienhard discusses Augustine's use of the Cappadocian fathers. It's not clear what Lienhard was actually arguing. I don't remember a specific argument. It is true that Augustine quoted a few of the Cappadocians around a dozen times, but that doesn't prove--nor does Lienhard specifically argue thus--that the Cappadocians were basically Augustinians. I would like to have seen Lienhard specifically interact with Augustine's use of St Basil. Augustine quotes Basil as advocating original sin, which Basil emphatically denies (Hexameron, Homily 2.5; 9.4). ??????????



The main event of the show is the Trinitarian discussions by Ayres, Hart, Behr, Bradshaw, and to a strange degree, Jean-Luc Marion. Ayres writes a fantastic essay, even if I demur at points, arguing for a metaphysics of the Spirit. He makes many outstanding insights, most notably that each act of "sending" is also an act of "revealing" (130). The essence is the Trinity itself (Behr offers a corrective to that essentially true insight). Ayres via Augustine sees the revelation of the Spirit as an invitation to reflect on the Triune economy (143). Nevertheless, I do not find Ayres' filioquist reasoning persuasive simply because such reasoning is convoluted to begin with and can also be used to argue for precisely the opposite conclusion. However, that shouldn't take away from the otherwise brilliance of the essay.



David Bentley Hart argues that the Nicene ontology destoyed the old pagan metaphysics. The Father did not generate the Logos with respect to creation, nor was the Logos's generation a "second moment" of the Real, but the Logos is the reality of God. Hart makes many insightful points to that respect; unfortunately, he tries to take on David Bradshaw. He says that Bradshaw mistranslated and misunderstood Augustine on "intelligibis," making Augustine to say that the mind comprehends the divine nature. Hart says that's not what intelligibis means (never mind that Latin theological dictionaries do render the word in the way that Bradshaw used it). Hart tries to rebut Bradshaw when Bradshaw says that for Gregory of Nyssa the divine names refer to the divine energies primarily, not to the Divine Nature. Yet in the next few sentences Hart admits that for Gregory the divine names refer to how God manifests himself toward us, which is another way of saying they are the divine energies!!!!!!!!



David Bradshaw gives a brief summary of his book Aristotle East and West. He notes that for Augustine, truth is defined as convertible with being, and the more united (unitary?) one is, the more being it has. More importantly, for Augustine God's being is identified with God's will--God's eternal act of willing. The implications are staggering--and which Hart doesn't want to face, given his commitment to Absolute Divine Simplicity: if God's being is necessary and natural, and God's eternal act of willing is identical with God's being, then could God have willed otherwise? If yes, then how does that follow with the identification of being and willing? If no, how is that not a form of Origenism? And putting necessity on God? Hart doesn't really give an answer to this question.



Fr Andrew Louth closes with a gentle reminder that we should read Augustine on the psalms, for in the psalms we hear the voice of Christ speaking to us.

[Paul H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

". . . the drearily predictable alarm and indignation with which traditional Thomists find that Gregory Palamas, transposed into Thomas's Latin, is not a Thomist; the deep and slightly macabre delight with which earnest Palamites discover that Thomas, read through Palamite lenses, proves to be no Palamite; arch dismissals of Eastern understandings of grace as 'Semi-Pelagian' by doctrinaire Augustinians; the reckless intensity with which a particular kind of Orthodox polemicist fixes upon some single principle found somewhere in the Latin theological tradition --- like subsistent relations, or created grace --- violently misinterprets it, and then uses it to diagnose a fundamental deformity in Western theology that must estrange it forever from the wellsprings of Orthodox truth. More terrible yet is the possibility that many of our differences will prove to be only differences of sensibility and language, and not of substance at all. Scholars both Western and Eastern have believed they perceived vast and ultimately unbridgeable fissures between ‘Greek’ and Augustinian thought, but very many of the large and now standard claims are unsustainable in light either of history or of reason."

-- D. B. Hart (p. 193)

[Zachary Waltz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have only read the first essay in which the author tracks the history of the attitude of major Orthodox figures to Augustine throughout the ages. One can almost say that Orthodox theology is shaped by its opposition to Augustine.

[Радостин Марчев]

Прегледах първите 50-ина страници, които могат да се намерят свободно. Ако съдя по тях и по авторите книгата ще си заслужава. Определено съм сериозно заинтересован.