Download PDF | Alexis Torrance, Symeōn A. Paschalidēs - Personhood in the Byzantine Christian tradition early, medieval, and modern perspectives-Routledge (2018).
213 Pages
Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition
Bringing together international scholars from across a range of linked disciplines to examine the concept of the person in the Greek Christian East, Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition stretches in its scope from the New Testament to contemporary debates surrounding personhood in Eastern Orthodoxy. Attention is paid to a number of pertinent areas that have not hitherto received the scholarly attention they deserve, such as Byzantine hymnography and iconology, the work of early miaphysite thinkers, and the relevance of late Byzantine figures to the discussion. Similarly, certain long-standing debates surrounding the question are revisited or reframed, whether regarding the concept of the person in Maximus the Confessor, or with contributions that bring patristic and modern Orthodox theology into dialogue with a variety of contemporary currents in philosophy, moral psychology, and political science.
In opening up new avenues of inquiry, or revisiting old avenues in new ways, this volume brings forward an important and ongoing discussion regarding concepts of personhood in the Byzantine Christian tradition and beyond, and provides a key stimulus for further work in this field.
Alexis Torrance is Archbishop Demetrios College Chair of Byzantine Theology and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Theology and the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame.
Symeon Paschalidis is Professor of Patristics and Hagiography in the Faculty of Theology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Director of the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies in Thessaloniki.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all those who helped bring this volume to fruition. In the first instance, we are grateful to the 13 contributors to this volume, whose patience was often tried by us, but never shaken. The work of volume editing is often likened to the thankless task of herding cats, but in this case, it proved a joy. We are likewise grateful to the staff at Routledge, in particular Jack Boothroyd, who was invaluable at shepherding us through the publication process. Several of the contributions to this volume were initially given at a conference held in Thessaloniki in May 2014. We are grateful for the various financial and institutional support that helped make that conference possible, including a European Union grant via Greece’s National Strategic Reference Framework, the support of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki, and a grant from the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius.
Alexis Torrance and Symeon Paschalidis December 7, 2017
Contributors
Nikolaos Asproulis is Deputy Director of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies (Volos, Greece) and Lecturer at the Post-Graduate Program of Orthodox Theology, School of Humanities, Hellenic Open University (Greece).
Paul M. Blowers is the Dean E. Walker Professor of Church History in the Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan College, Tennessee. He is a scholar of Greek and Byzantine patristics and has published extensively on Maximus the Confessor.
Matthew C. Briel is Assistant Professor of Theology at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Marie-Héléne Congourdeau, chercheur honoraire au CNRS and membre associé de 'UMR 8167 Orient Méditerranée (Monde byzantin), College de France, Paris. She is presently working on a biography of Nicolas Cabasilas.
Mary B. Cunningham is Honorary Associate Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham. She has published books and articles on the role of the Virgin Mary in Byzantine and modern Orthodox Christian tradition, as well as on subjects relating to Byzantine preaching, hagiography, and liturgy.
Evan Freeman is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University and a lecturer in Liturgical Art at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary.
Demetrios Harper is Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Theology, Religion, and Philosophy at the University of Winchester and Assistant Editor of Analogia: The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies.
Christos Karakolis is Associate Professor of New Testament at the Department of Theology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece and Research Fellow of the Department for Old and New Testament Studies at the University of the Free State, South Africa.
Jean-Claude Larchet is a retired professeur des universités based in Strasbourg. He is a scholar of patristic and Orthodox theology of international renown.
Nicholas Loudovikos is Professor of Dogmatics and Chair of the Department of Theological and Pastoral Studies at the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, and is Senior Editor of Analogia: The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies.
Damaskinos (Olkinuora) is a member of the monastic brotherhood of the Holy Monastery of Xenophontos, Mount Athos, and serves as University Teacher of Systematic Theology and Patristics at the University of Eastern Finland. His research concentrates mainly on middle Byzantine hymnography and homiletics, as well as the veneration of the Theotokos.
Symeon Paschalidis is Professor of Patristics and Hagiography in the Faculty of Theology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Director of the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies in Thessaloniki.
Nicolas Prevelakis is Lecturer on social studies at Harvard University. He is also Assistant Director of Curricular Development of Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies. His teaching and research interests include Eastern Christianity, the history of moral and political philosophy, and the interconnection between modern nationalism and religion.
Alexis Torrance is Archbishop Demetrios College Chair of Byzantine Theology and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Theology and the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame.
Johannes Zachhuber is Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Theology at Trinity College, Oxford.
Introduction
Alexis Torrance and Symeon Paschalidis
Theological reflection on the notion of personhood has from the first Christian centuries played a central role in the articulation of Christian doctrine, particularly in expressions of Trinitarian and Christological dogma. How doctrinal formulations regarding the persons of the Trinity or the person of Christ relate to the understanding of human personhood in the history of Christian thought, however, is a topic that has provoked much scholarly debate. The contention, in particular, that Byzantine Christianity developed a fully formed concept of the person (human and divine) that largely matches, and at times corrects, notions of personhood worked out by modern thought — a view most influentially elaborated by the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan John Zizioulas — is by turns celebrated and condemned.
Among the chief hampers to progress in this debate is the often narrow range of texts and contexts under discussion. If Byzantine Christianity does indeed offer important insights into an understanding of personhood, the debate should not simply hang on a few select passages from the Cappadocian Fathers or Maximus the Confessor (as is often done). The debate needs widening, and in order to make fresh advances on this crucial topic, new tactics are needed. Rather than dwell exclusively on terminological markers (such as the Greek words hypostasis and prosopon) and their meaning in the sources, such an approach needs to be combined with a broader and more widely focused enterprise, one that is not limited to dogmatic formulas and their conceptual content, but includes reflections on the human person arising from other sources, whether liturgical, hagiographic, iconographic, homiletic, ascetic, and so on. This is the gap that the current volume seeks to fill. By offering focused treatments of different aspects of the question of personhood in specific yet diverse figures, texts, and contexts across early, medieval, and modern Byzantine Christianity, this collection opens up distinct new avenues of research into the theological and anthropological concepts of personhood, thereby contributing not simply to the historical study of personhood in the Byzantine Christian past, but likewise to broader live discussions of personhood and its meaning.
The contributions that make up this volume grew out of a conference held in Thessaloniki in May 2014. They have been divided roughly into chronological order in four sections, ranging from the early Christian period to contemporary Orthodox Christian debates. This reflects the desire of the editors to highlight the importance of taking a “long view” of Byzantine Christian tradition — a tradition that theologically speaking is neither coextensive with, nor circumscribed by, the historical existence of the Byzantine Empire.
As with any such endeavor, no claim to providing a comprehensive or exhaustive treatment of the subject at hand is being made. This volume does not set out to offer a sweeping narrative arc regarding personhood in Byzantine theology, nor do the editors consider themselves to be “taking sides” in the various debates surrounding the theology of personhood that continue to cause controversy in modern Orthodox theology. It is not, that is, a partisan book, even if some of its contributors may identify themselves with one or another side in the debates. That said, certain accents of the volume are by design, such as the wide spread of subjects broached and methodologies employed, as well as the relatively minor attention paid to some figures so amply discussed elsewhere, such as the Cappadocian Fathers. This collection is an attempt, in short, to give fresh and deeper texture to discussions of personhood, not only as these relate to the Byzantine theological tradition but also in the wider context of efforts to come to grips with the psychological, sociological, historical, political, philosophical, and theological meaning of the person.
Summary of contents
The first section of the volume places the reader at the scriptural source of Christian theology in the person and letters of St. Paul. While admittedly preByzantine, Paul serves as a non-negotiable basis for subsequent Byzantine Christian thought. The presence of this chapter serves a double purpose: first to emphasize the roots of the Byzantine Christian tradition within the New Testament itself and second as a kind of articulation of the need for biblical scholarship and Orthodox theology, so often alienated from one another, to interact. Christos Karakolis, a scholar of the New Testament, rises to the occasion by turning our attention to the interdependent categories of personal relationship and imitation in the letters of Paul. The key, claims Karakolis, and one that has direct bearing on our understanding of personhood, is that because of the strong imitative dimension inherent in the concept of positive personal relationships, there cannot be for Paul a strong notion of “personhood” that is not also conditioned on the level of behavior and virtue. The central texts for Karakolis in this regard are the series of admonitions from Paul to imitate him, even as he imitates Christ (e.g., 1 Cor 11:1), which he exegetes with skill and insight.
We move from Paul to Greek patristic and ascetic theology in the chapter by Paul M. Blowers, specifically on the concept of emotional "scripts" and personal moral identity. Drawing on work done in the social science and classics fields on moral psychology and identity theory, Blowers shows, in a clear and constructive way, how the questions and concerns raised in these fields find specific and potentially fruitful answers in early Christian reflection on the content, role, and destiny of the emotions and the “moral self.” The chapter proves a particularly helpful transition from the chapter on Paul, dealing as he does with questions of ethics and virtue in Irenaeus and Origen through to the Cappadocians and Evagrius, with a concluding nod to Maximus the Confessor. The scope of the texts discussed allows Blowers to give us a convincing sense of the establishment of “the integrated moral self” as a kind of model for anthropological discourse in early Byzantine theology. Blowers laments that the richness of this tradition would no doubt be unwelcome in secular social and humane sciences, yet holds it up as offering a serious and potentially fertile solution to many of the problems that currently plague these fields.
Turning from questions of moral identity to dogmatic concerns, Johannes Zachhuber discusses the theology of two figures not usually associated with the Byzantine theological tradition: the miaphysites Severus of Antioch (465—538) and John Philoponus (490—570). While the miaphysite position was not ultimately adopted in the Byzantine Empire, it is often forgotten that the initial debates over miaphysite doctrine were internal to Byzantium and conducted, for the most part, in Greek (1.e., not along strictly “ethnic” or “linguistic” lines as is often imagined). Thus, at least from the historical point of view, the thought of Severus and Philoponus constitute a legitimate “Byzantine” perspective worth exploring.
Zachhuber brings both of these figures into dialogue with the ontology of the Cappadocian Fathers. In the first case, he suggests that Severus “inverts” this ontology, which in turn “led him to an unprecedented emphasis on the unity and individuality of the hypostasis as the unique existential expression of being (physis).” In the second case, he demonstrates that Philoponus goes much further than Severus, denying the possibility of any concept of “universal nature” or essence in his concern to safeguard the primacy of the particular nature or hypostasis. Zachhuber emphasizes the importance of considering miaphysite discussions in broader engagements with the concept of personhood.
Jean-Claude Larchet opens the second section dealing with early to middle Byzantine theology. This chapter, dedicated to the meaning of the terms hypostasis, person (zpdowzov), and individual (&rouov) in the work of St. Maximus the Confessor (died 662), is invaluable, gathering together as it does a huge sample of texts in which Maximus uses these terms and discusses their meaning. Larchet further links his discussion to the Cappadocian Fathers that preceded and St. John of Damascus who followed. He makes it clear that he approaches his topic as a careful reader of the texts rather than as a proponent of either personalist or antipersonalist theories. The results are thus more of a philological rather than a theological nature, although this does not prevent him from weighing in (perhaps too harshly some might say) on the positions of prominent Orthodox personalists, Zizioulas in particular. His overall contention 1s that while personalism has tended to oppose “person” and/or “hypostasis” to “individual,” these terms are used virtually interchangeably in Maximus.
The next two chapters, somewhat fittingly for the early to middle Byzantine period, are concerned with the Byzantine hymnographic and homiletic traditions. Mary B. Cunningham removes us from the realm of terminological debate and puts us at the feet of the Theotokos, Mary the Mother of God. From a consideration of the person of Mary herself as a place of meeting between God and man, heaven and earth, she expertly introduces the reader to the poetic and typological imagery of the Byzantine liturgical tradition that conveys Mary to the audience as the picture of saintly human life. The dramatic hymnographic and homiletic retelling of Mary's joys and griefs so deftly summarized by Cunningham serve, she argues, both to introduce the person of Mary herself to the listeners, bringing them into intimate personal contact with her, but likewise to speak symbolically of the ongoing task of relating to God and so becoming also, in some sense, a personal bearer of God.
Damaskinos (Olkinuora) of Xenophontos likewise looks closely at hymnography, in particular at the kontakia of St. Romanos the Melodist (490—556) and several canons of the ninth century. His interest is in the rhetorical device of personification and how its use differs in the hymns from a straightforward concept of prosopopoeia. This comes about from its wider application, looked at in turn under the headings 1) nature and places, 2) Hades and Death, 3) female virtues, and 4) typological images. Olkinuora shows not only the pervasiveness of personification as a literary device in Byzantine hymnography, but also its frequent deployment in underscoring the hymnography's central theological message. This is a new contribution to the field and one that holds promise as a fresh avenue in studying the concept of personhood in Byzantine thought.
Moving from the middle to the late Byzantine period, Demetrios Harper treats us to a chapter on St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). Any volume promising a multiplicity of perspectives from the Byzantine Christian tradition would be incomplete without a contribution on Palamas, and Harper provides us with a particularly pertinent discussion of the great hesychast's anthropology. In doing so, he argues that Palamas's approach to the human being is deeply indebted to, and dependent on, that of his monastic forbear St. Maximus the Confessor. He makes creative, and perhaps at first counterintuitive, use of the category of “consubstantiality" to describe Palamas's approach to human personhood, understanding it in the sense that Palamas, like Maximus before him, envisages the inner consubstantiality of the human soul and body (a veritable *microcosm") as constitutive of what it means to be a human person. Based on hesychast principles, Palamas sets out a vision of the eschatological destiny of the human person that fully affirms the nature of the person, composed of soul and body.
Harper's insistence on the theological importance of life *in the body" is echoed, in a certain way, by Marie-Héléne Congourdeau in her close historiographic telling of the life of St. Nicholas Cabasilas (1322—a. 1392). As a historian, Congourdeau makes use ofthe prosopographical approach in historiography as a means of shedding light not so much on the “concept of personhood” in abstracto, but on the dense and interconnected web of personal relationships that makes up the historical dimension of the person. Her masterful command of the sources related to Nicholas Cabasilas (on whom she is possibly the world's foremost authority) yields a “hagiography” of a special kind. She narrows in on the central importance of the city of Thessaloniki in the formation and development of Cabasilas, thereby raising larger questions regarding the ties between place and person. She likewise shows that the many complex historical dimensions of his life help us better understand his theological priorities and concerns, thereby indirectly cautioning all who would extrapolate elaborate theories of personhood from the Byzantine tradition without paying due attention to historical context.
Our last chapter in the section on late Byzantium concerns the pivotal figure of Gennadios Scholarios (1400-1473), the first patriarch of Constantinople following the fall of the city in 1453. Matthew C. Briel offers us a tantalizing look at Scholarios’s approach to the vexed philosophical and theological question of the relationship between freedom, necessity, and laws of nature (found in his lengthy On Providence in Five Tracts) — an issue at the heart of much discussion of personhood. The impetus for Scholarios’s discussion is spawned, Briel argues, from Gemistos Pletho’s tract On Fate, which put forward a strongly deterministic view of the world and of providence. Scholarios rejected such determinism, working instead with foundations laid in the earlier Byzantine theological tradition (particular by St. John Damascene), which insisted on the coexistence of divine and human freedom and a level of synergy in the working of good (the working of evil had only human rather than divine will to blame). Particularly interesting is his deployment of the Christological language of cvvzpéyetv (running together or concurrence) to describe the coexistence of divine and human action. We eagerly await the publication of Briel's larger project of translation and commentary on these important texts.
The final section of the volume brings us to the modern period. If Orthodox systematic theology is most widely known for its approach to the concept of the person (combined with the doctrine of essence-energies and “Eucharistic ecclesiology”), Orthodoxy as a whole is known to the larger world (if at all) not so much because of this, but by virtue of the Byzantine icon. The relationship between icon and person is crucial yet understudied. The study by Evan Freeman does the field an immense service by highlighting divergent interpretations of icons in Byzantium and the twentieth century, demonstrating the strikingly dissonant implications these differing views have not only for understanding 1cons but also for understanding Christian anthropology more broadly. In particular, Freeman shows that the harnessing of theories of abstraction and non-naturalism in modern art by influential theorists of the icon, such as Florensky, Trubetskoy, and Ouspensky, led to a hyperspiritualized if not entirely disembodied notion of what the “true” icon was depicting. This is put in sharp contrast to the overriding “incarnational” concern in Byzantine defenses of the icon that emphasized the “embodied" and historical basis for having icons in the first place rather than any overly spiritualized sense of depicting non-natural, even “disembodied,” holy figures.
From predominantly Russian discussions of the icon, we turn to the complex and little studied figure of Nikos Nissiotis (1925-1986), a Greek Orthodox theologian and philosopher, and an important forerunner to the personalism of the likes of Christos Yannaras and Metropolitan John Zizioulas. Nikolaos Asproulis provides us with a helpful overview of Nissiotis, showing us the personalist concerns of his work already embedded in his doctoral thesis of 1956 on “Existentialism and Christian Faith.” Nissiotis proves to be an important piece in the “puzzle” of modern Orthodox personalism, and Asproulis serves us well in calling our attention to his thought, together with several of its nuances vis-à-vis the thought of Yannaras and Zizioulas.
Our penultimate chapter introduces the important yet neglected voice of political science to the discourse on personhood in Orthodox theology. Nicolas Prevelakis sketches out some of the ways political scientists have linked theological differences between East and West with the political behavior of Orthodoxmajority countries. A significant example by Julia Kristeva 1s discussed, in which she associates Orthodox conceptions of the Holy Trinity with a penchant for permissiveness, violence, and even totalitarianism in the midst of the Yugoslav War. However wrongheaded if not outright bizarre these claims may be, Prevelakis gives due warning of their influence in political science. Having alerted readers to this trend, he discusses the work of Christos Yannaras and Aristotle Papanikolaou on the issue of human rights. While both authors share similar conceptions of personhood, they interestingly draw from it rather different political conclusions.
The final chapter of the volume brings us to the realm of contemporary Orthodox systematic theology, in this case a theology in wide-ranging dialogue with important thought currents in the social sciences, psychology, and philosophy. Nicholas Loudovikos here serves by turns as a defender and critic of Orthodox personalism, appreciating the way it connects Christology and Trinitarian theology to discussions of the human person but attacking its deprecation of the concepts of nature, essence, and consubstantiality. In an attempt to capture, in a positive manner, the meaning of the person in Byzantine theology, Loudovikos proposes the notion of “free natural dialogical reciprocity,” which points to the "reciprocal intergivenness" between persons. With this basis, he further offers important connections and correctives such an approach to personhood yields when placed in dialogue with the fields of depth psychology and phenomenology.
Conclusion
As the above summary indicates, research and reflection on the concept of personhood in the Byzantine theological tradition continues to flourish in a variety of disciplines and with a range of methodologies, not all of which sit neatly or squarely within the field of *Orthodox personalism" narrowly construed. If that field is to develop further, we suggest that it include the kind of work represented in these pages. That the Byzantine Christian tradition — from its earliest to its latest instantiations — has much to say about the themes and topics that occupy the modern search for the meaning of personhood should not be in doubt. But the precise source or form of those insights may not always be obvious or straightforward. We hope that readers discover, as the editors have done, some of the many scholarly and theological insights and surprises contained herein.
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