Oriental Orthodox in Ecumenical Dialogues 1

I. Introduction

In 1995, Pope John Paul II gave bold support for the ecumenical movement.[1] He was quite clear: Christians should strive for unity, not because it was his own personal desire, but because it was Jesus’ will:

Jesus himself, at the hour of his Passion, prayed ‘that they may all be one’ (Jn 7:21). This unity, which the Lord has bestowed on his Church and in which he wishes to embrace all people, is not something added on, but stands at the very heart of Christ’s mission. Nor is it some secondary attribute of the community of his disciples. Rather, it belongs to the very essence of this community. God wills the Church, because he wills unity, and unity is an expression of the whole depth of this agape.[2]

For centuries Christians had read Jesus’ prayer for Christian unity. But, as history shows us, it did not become a motivating factor, and they did not engage it as a matter of praxis. Rivalries for power and dissentions in beliefs quickly formed within the Church. While one might point out the political struggles which helped form great divisions between Christians, and use that to suggest that such division existed because of lone individuals who thirsted for power, this would be a simplified and unjust examination of the situation We must be willing to recognize that good Christians, not seeking glory or power, but seeking truly to understand their faith, did have different views of that faith, and the reasons for these differences are as complex as the personalities involved. As we shall discover, recognizing this very fact has been, and continues to be, one of the fruits of ecumenical dialogue. This is quite noticeable when one examines the division between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian churches.[3]

While it is true that the Council of Ephesus made the first major ecclesial division,[4] there is no doubt that there is something special about Chalcedon, and the division which it created was of a greater nature than what occurred at Ephesus. For those who accepted Chalcedon’s authority, its Christological definition became the normative explanation for how one was to proclaim the personage of Jesus Christ. It was an imperative for them (the Catholic Church and most of the Western tradition, and the Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches) to follow the tenets of Chalcedon: Jesus Christ is the second person of the divine Trinity, fully divine and fully human, indivisibly one in hypostasis and without confusion in his two natures.[5] Those who rejected Chalcedon did so because they understood it as being fundamentally flawed and Nestorian in its content. For over fifteen hundred years, Chalcedon has been a dividing line which neither side has been willing to step beyond.

II Encounters and Dialogues Before 1951

Despite what occurred at Chalcedon, there have been several attempts throughout the years where one side or the other of the Chalcedonian divide tried to find an amicable solution and resolution to their theological conflict. It is also interesting to note that the rupture between the Orthodox and Catholic churches that emerged after Chalcedon helped to create ways by which both the Orthodox and the Catholics were able to enter into dialogue with one or more of the Oriental Orthodox churches.

We can see how this worked out before the modern era by looking at one of the particular Oriental Orthodox Churches: the Armenian Apostolic Church. Catholicos Karekin I’s article “Ecumenical Trends in the Armenian Church,” offers us a great amount of information. In it, he explains that the Armenian Church did not find itself entirely isolated from the rest of the Christian world (and the same can be said about most of the other Oriental Orthodox Churches, to one degree or another).[6] “Despite times of bitter controversy and confrontation, relations were pursued with the Greek and Georgian churches, with the Byzantine patriarchate of Constantinople and with Syriac communities.”[7]

Probably the most interesting example of this can be found during the twelfth century. In 1165, the Armenian Bishop Nerses the Gracious (later, the Armenian primate) had a Christological dialogue with Duke Alexis, a representative of the Byzantine Emperor.[8] Alexis was so impressed of what he heard that he asked for a written exposition and record of their dialogue. Nerses accepted the request, and he wrote what the Armenians call the Pontifical Letter of St Nerses the Gracious. Both the Byzantine Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople were intrigued by the position of Bishop Nerses, and they wanted an active dialogue with the Armenians. They believed it would be possible to bring both churches back into communion with each other. The dialogue went from 1165 through 1179, when it ended at the time of the Emperor’s death. There were many ecumenical advances that foreshadow the trends of modern dialogues. For example, the Armenian and Byzantine churches saw that the Christological caricatures each side had placed against each other had been wrong, and that neither side was heretical.[9]

On the other end of the spectrum, the Western Church actively began a reengagement with the Armenians during the Crusades. There was, as Karekin I points out, a lot of political motivation behind the Armenian dialogue with the West: “[...] the kings and political authorities of Cilician Armenia, for example, encouraged an ecclesiastical rapprochement with the West, in the hope and expectation that Western principalities would thereby extend assistance to support the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia.”[10] Sadly, since the dialogue was mostly politically motivated, and as the political alliance that the Armenians desired did not surface, the dialogues ended up being merely controversial debates on doctrinal and liturgical differences without much success in creating a mutual understanding. Yet, we must remember, as Karekin points out, this does not mean there were not any fruitful aspects to this dialogue. “The exchange [...] became a source of enrichment to the Armenians, especially with regard to science and such arts as literature and manuscript illumination, but also in certain aspects of social life.”[11]

Before entering into the modern era, we should also briefly examine one of the more important ecumenical dialogues of the late medieval era, the Council of Florence in 1438 – 1445. While the dialogue and brief reunion between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches is usually what people are interested about Florence, we must remember that the Oriental Orthodox were also present, although what was said was mostly in a side-dialogue with the Catholic Church.[12] John Meyendorff tell us that despite being a failure, the council itself “is of great theological significance.”[13] Even though the reason for the council could be seen as primarily political, nonetheless there was at the council itself a great and very active dialogue on the disputed questions between the churches. It represented both some of the best and worst approaches to ecumenism. The concessions that were had at the council by each side were many, and allowed for a great diversity of theological thought and liturgical traditions within the Church. The way the agreement had been made, mostly forced upon the East for aid against the Turks, also demonstrates to us that ecumenical unions are not always made for the right reason, nor are they always strong (as the quick demise of the union established at Florence shows).[14] Because of its failure, there is often a hesitancy by Orthodox theologians to believe that the solution to Christian division will be found within a new grand ecumenical council.

Footnotes

[1] Through the publishing of his encyclical Ut Unum Sint.
[2] John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint Of the Holy Father John Paul II On Commitment to Ecumenism. Vatican translation (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1995), paragraph 9.
[3] Those churches which are called the Oriental Orthodox Churches are the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Eritrean Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church, and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church of India.
[4] Those who rejected the Council of Ephesus helped to form the Church of the East.
[5] See Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma. trans. Roy J. Deferrari (London: B. Herder Book Co., 1954), citation 148.
[6] It is true that the closer one of the Oriental Orthodox churches were to a different ecclesiastical community, the more interaction they would have with each other. They would share common regional problems (for example, what to do with Islam) and this would mean they had more reason to interact with each other and to support each other despite their differences.
[7] Catholicos Karekin I, “Ecumenical Trends in the Armenian Church” Ecumenical Review, vol. 51 (January 1999), 31.
[8] Ibid., 33.
[9] “A tacit consensus was actually reached that when the Armenians spoke of ‘one nature’ of Christ [...] they were neither confusing the two natures nor accepted one and rejecting the other [....] Conversely, when the Byzantines spoke of ‘two natures’, they were not separating Christ into two entities.” Ibid., 33.
[10] Ibid., 33.
[11] Ibid., 34.
[12] For example, see Denzinger citations 695 – 702 to read from the Decree for the Armenians.
[13] John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974; second edition, 1983), 109.
[14] Despite its failure, the model established at Florence became the normative way that the Catholic Church interacted with the Eastern and Oriental Churches. “In the course of the last four centuries, in various parts of the East, initiatives were taken within certain churches and impelled by outside elements, to restore communion between the church of the East and the church of the West. These initiatives led to the union of certain communities with the See of Rome, and brought with them, as a consequence, the breaking of communion with their mother churches of the East. This took place not without the interference of extra-ecclesial interests. In this way Oriental Catholic Churches came into being.” Joint International Catholic-Orthodox Commission, “Uniatism, Method of Union of the Past, and the Present Search for Full Communion,” (1993) chap. in The Quest for Unity: Orthodox and Catholics in Dialogue. ed. by John Borelli and John H. Erickson (Crestwood, N.Y.: Saint Vladimir Seminary Press,), paragraph 8.

Analogia...in a nutshell

The question of the analogia entis and analogical language in general is often posed in terms of how God could possibly be thought of as "being" (or "good" or "beautiful," or "wise," etc.). Really that's only part of the question. The real mind-blowing issue that metaphysics raises is: how can WE adequately be thought of as "being?"

"To be" is notionally pretty simple. But when we speak of the being of creatures, we describe things that do not exist by definition. That is, they do not exist simplicter; nowhere in the description of what they are will you find "exists." We are talking about things ontologically composite: because things come to be and pass away, and the world could have kept on going without them existing, what they are is something conceptually (and really) separate from that they are. "Being" said of creatures thus never means "simply to be," because coming to be and passing away is not what we really mean by "being." We always point to a limited instantiation. There is always a qualification.

But how does being come to have this limited sense? Why not imagine something that just plain IS? That fully makes-real what we mean by "to be?" In fact, we can't avoid addressing such a "thing." Because acknowledging that what the things around us are is different from the fact that they are, we implicitly acknowledge that they are created: they are caused to be. They must receive their existence from something outside of themselves (their essence). And after all of the connecting-of-the-dots that St. Thomas does in the first 11 questions of the Prima Pars, we conclude among other things that in order to be the kind of thing that causes the being of all things, this Cause cannot itself be ontologically composite. It cannot receive its existence from something else, for then we would have to look for something else that already was before. In other words, the way that this thing exists is simple.

That would be what all call God (if you hadn't guessed). The fact that He is the First Cause in the order of existence entails that He simply IS. His "whatness" and His "thatness" are identical, and He doesn't "have" Being, Goodness, Wisdom, etc. He just plain IS His Being, Goodness, Wisdom, etc.! God IS in the fullest sense of the word, he fills it out. As it turns out, He is the only "thing" worthy enough to be called being. When we say "He is," we can mean it; and when we say that other things "are," we are always speaking with a kind of inherent blasphemy.

So the question of religious language can be flipped around: acknowledging all this, we are forced to admit that God monopolizes the concept of "being;" so while we may have a word in itself completely adequate to God, we have seemingly evacuated language of the ability to talk about the things around us. Instead of negative theology, we are seemingly forced into a kind of "negative anthropology" (possibly even a "negative physics," and a "negative biology," etc.). How could any human discourse that claims "humans ARE tall/short/bipedal/good-looking/intelligent" or "trees ARE leafy/plants/tall/rooty/" really say anything meaningful if things actually "aren't?"

If we are to talk about our "being," then we do so only with an understanding of how inadequate our use of it is. Our composite nature means two things: 1) we receive our being as a gift, we are caused to exist by something outside of ourselves which simply IS; and 2) we do not exist simply but only in a very qualified, limited sense. These two statements express the same fact in different ways. As caused to be by that which fully IS, we get a limited share in being. The traditional way to say this is that we participate in being. For God to cause something to exist is inherently to give it a limited share, a taste, of what it is for Him to be. To put it technically, efficient causality implies exemplary causality.

It may be more accurate to say that we "have" our existence, rather than that we exist. But the point remains that in actuality, we are more downgrading a divine tongue when we speak ontologically about common things than we are imposing a foreign speech onto something that has nothing to do with "being" when we speak about God.

The primary meaning of the word "Being" is thus cashed out in God. But composite beings don't exist on their own, they only "have being" due to God causing it in them. That means that language of "being" can only be attributed to us in virtue of the causal relationship. There is the famous example of "healthy." We speak to the focal meaning of the word "healthy" when we use it of people (or animals): Joe is healthy because his mind and body are in a certain order. But when we describe medicine as "healthy," or say that our urine is "healthy looking," we aren't speaking in the same sense. We can only attribute "healthy" to things like medicine and urine in virtue of some relationship they have to the primary meaning: medicine causes health in a man, and urine can in cases be a sign of it.

Composite being in its very structure stands to simple Being as effect to Cause. Thus we can only speak of ourselves and other natural things as "being" because they bear an ontological relation to God.

That is one way to go about describing analogy....in a nutshell.

Pax Christi,

Can I Get a Witness?

I'm very slowly making my way through Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapid and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,2006). I still have a ways to go yet, but so far the book is really captivating. The first chapter ("From the Historical Jesus to the Jesus of Testimony") provides a good overview of his project.

Bauckham begins by addressing the relation between the "Historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith;" though this is, in fact, a dichotomy that Bauckham himself denies. For Christians, theology and dogmatic faith have always rested upon a profound trust that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John give us access to the "real" Jesus: Jesus as He existed in history. Yet the quests for the historical Jesus (with their various sequels) have generally operated with a profound distrust of the canonical Gospel accounts. Because of more honed historical methods, the historicity of the Gospels is suddenly challenged: now tangled up in the concerns of later church communities and the countless contaminating influences affecting the authors and their agendas. The Gospels, once transparent windows into the reality of Jesus, are now more like padlocked doors. Their methodological shoddiness masks the truth of Jesus' history more than it illuminates it. The truth of the figure known as Jesus must then be sought behind, rather than in, the Gospels. And the source of Christian faith in such accounts cannot derive from the authority of text or tradition themselves, but only from the reconstruction of the historical figure that the scholar molds, passing the clay through the furnace of methodological skepticism.

But as Bauckham notes, the methodology of the quests can only result in diverse reconstructions, rather than one solid consensus on the person of Jesus. We end up with divergent historical accounts that we can intelligibly call alternative gospels: the good news according to Crossan, Borg, Meier, Wright, Sanders, etc. This is because contra historical positivism, all historiography is inherently a combination of factual data and interpretive construction. It's rather obvious in the case of the Gospels; for as written for the specific purpose of inspiring faith in their subject, they are an apparent collage of theologically interpreted history. While the Gospels are not exactly upfront about their factual errors, the modern scholarly gospels have what seems to be the opposite problem: by continually emphasizing their historical-factual precision, they tend to disguise the dimension of interpretation and intuition in their accounts. They tend to silently presume an Archimedean point of view from which they gaze plainly upon the truth of the past, often ignorant of their own hermeneutical biases. Much like the Enlightenment accounts of pristine universal reason, we often get projects acting as if there is nothing at all in the background, and nothing at all brushed under the rug.

So if all historiography is inherently an amalgam of fact and interpreted meaning, then all historical sources -ancient or modern- should be scrutinized with attention to both dimensions. And that means appraising modern reconstructions with a keen eye to what is presupposed, what conceptions about the world and about truth and even about history itself are informing the historian's work. Modern reconstructions are still profoundly similar to the Gospels, precisely because they are both constructions.

It is then rather easy to see that increased historical knowledge can only complement the Gospel accounts, for which the theological meaning of the facts may be considered more central than the facts themselves. But the crucial question for Bauckham is: can a modern reconstruction ever replace the Gospels? Can a novel attempt to do precisely what the evangelists did, but with new-and-improved historical methods, ever provide the kind of access the the reality of Jesus that the Gospels themselves do in the eyes of Christianity? Can it ever provide the same kind of foundation for dogmatic reflection?

As the path diverges in the theological forest, Bauckham refuses to follow either the way of secularized historiography or a kind of Docetic theology divorced from history. Rather, he sees the paths converging in the historical Jesus through the key category of "eyewitness testimony." The kind of historiography that the Gospels are, he claims, is a testimony that intrinsically calls for trust in its proclamation. The criteria for trusting or distrusting such a history are the same criteria for trusting or distrusting witnesses. The proper response to authentic testimony is trust.

Understood as testimony, the Gospels become a perfectly reliable means of access to the historical Jesus. Testimony, which is in some sense involved in all historical enterprises, provides a way to read the Gospels both historically and theologically without conflict. For testimony unites the reliability of an eyewitness, involved in some measure in the historical events, with the theological interpretation of the events that the eyewitness was in a unique place to provide. So while historiography remains an entangled combination of fact and interpreted meaning, the Gospels are no longer viewed as imposing much later, alien interpretive concerns on events that are factually distant from them. The paradigm for the Gospel stories is now the interpreted factual accounts of the eyewitnesses: or rather, the events as interpreted by those involved in the events themselves. The question can thus be phrased this way: can the factual precision of modern critical methods ever trump the unique interpretive vantage point of the eyewitnesses to Jesus' historical reality and their traditions? Can the meaning provided by a purer collection of historical data ever replace the meaning of the events as seen by those who were part of Jesus' story?

To secure this ideal, Bauckham must argue that the Gospel texts are much closer to stories that the eyewitnesses told than is commonly acknowledged. The editing and layers of interpretation do not obscure their fundamental faithfulness to the stories the eyewitnesses told, not nearly to the extent that most scholars have come to accept as "gospel truth." Bauckham bolsters his account by drawing from ancient Greco-Roman historical methods, in which eyewitness testimony served as the ideal source for writing about the past: participation in the events, and not a sober dispassionate perspective, was cherished above all; for their unique vantage point of interpretation was not considered an obstacle to the meaning of what really happened but rather essential to it. Eyewitnesses were as much interpreters as observers (so why not trust their combination over the research and interpretation of modern alternatives?). If this is the way historical work operated, how events were passed on, then the canonical Jesus was already an interpreted Jesus from the very first telling. Such a paradigm seems to put a grand restriction on the ambitions of modern reconstructions to get back to a Jesus that was unsullied by someone's "perspective" (since ANY material considered by the standards of the time to be reliable history would have been already an interpretation!). Remembering and retelling were themselves hermeneutical acts, and the unique authority eyewitnesses had regarding the meaning of events was key.

Contra form criticism, Bauckham vigorously attacks the notion that the Evangelists were removed from the first-hand accounts of the events by a long process of anonymous transmission of the traditions; arguing rather that the Evangelists were more likely in direct contact with eyewitnesses. Bauckham seems to have exposed a chink in the armor of form criticism by noting that, if they got it right, how then explain the disappearance of the disciples and their stories from the historical map? Are we to believe that the individuals whom Christ chose to carry on his message did not tell their story, did not attract followers who heard them and respected them with the authority of an eyewitness (common to ancient times), and that the way the Christian movement interpreted the life of their founder would be so remarkably detached from the way the very first followers told the tale? It is far more likely, according to Bauckham, that the disciples would have traveled, taught, preached, and told their stories to the communities they founded. And their versions of Jesus' teachings and life story would naturally have taken precedent in the communities over those of followers more historically or geographically removed. In place of "anonymous tradition," the stories were likely attached to specific, personal tradents who became authoritative figures. Further, the Gospels were likely written within living memory of the events they recount, not nearly as separated in time as many scholars assume; probably put in writing so that once the eyewitnesses passed, their stories would not be forgotten or distorted. The accounts of anonymous oral transmission analogous to folklore traditions simply presuppose a patently unrealistic temporal and spatial gulf: communities were not nearly widespread enough and not nearly enough time had passed to be comparable!

Bauckham makes a number of unpopular scholarly claims, ones with a heavy argumentative burden on their shoulders. He spends pretty much the rest of the book providing analysis and historical evidence to back up these claims. Apart from the staggering scope of his project, and the mountain of opposition needed to be scaled, his arguments are eminently convincing. They ring with a certain reasonableness and certainly shatter the presumed hegemony of the modern quests in my mind. Overall, the book has been clear, well-argued, and simply exciting. Bauckham seems to be fighting inch by inch to reclaim a little space, a bit of breathing room, for the fundamental reliability of the Gospels. All while maintaining allegiance to historical-critical standards and theological potency. It is, without doubt, a work to be talked about for some time to come.

For those interested, the latest issue of Nova et Vetera contains a number of essays discussing the book, along with Bauckham's responses.

Pax Christi,

What is the Home in Our Modern World?

The following is written in the spirit of Peter Maurin's Easy Essays, and was inspired by Wendel Berry:
(My apologies for its rather melancholy tone...)

What is the Home in Our Modern World?

Is it a place of instruction,
Where the young mind first
Begins to ask the great questions,
And education, arising in the context
Of parental love, is a joy, a blessing, and a gift?
No, in our modern world, we leave education
To the state-determined specialists whose
Business of “knowledge” can only occur
Within the confines of a sterile, insipid
State-sanctioned classroom, and
Education is little more than
Another joyless commodity,
Bought and sold only
To ensure future
Buying and
Selling.

Is it a place of nourishment,
Where the human body comes
To know itself in its relationship with
The Earth and land that brought forth its
Beautiful fruits from its generous plenitude?
No, in our modern world, we leave nourishment
To the grocer, the restaurateur, the manufacturer
Of foods, whose first interest is not the local,
Nor the individual, but the increase of profit,
Even if that means sacrificing the good of
Local community to expansionism, or
The good of nutrition to the chemical
Preservation of productivity, or
The good of the individual
To the mass anonymity
Of statistical data and
Sample groups.

Is it a place of work, where
The goodness, truth and beauty
Of human activity, ingenuity and
Effort finds fertile soil out of which
An authentic appreciation of the human
Participation in the artistic emergence of
The human family can become visible in all
It glorious, illuminative, redemptive splendor?
No, in our modern world, we leave our “work”
As far away as possible, secluding it and
Our 9 to 5 vestiges in a lifeless cubicle,
Incarcerated within the dungeons of
Corporate palaces, where we labor
Day after day, unhappily slaving
To buy time to get away from
The very work upon which
We have come to depend,
Which has reinvested the
Holiness of Sunday with
Monday’s lonely
Currency.

Is it a place of hospitality,
Where strangers become friends,
And friends become family, where
Comfort is sought in the generous act
Of opening one’s door, one’s pantry, one’s
Very heart to those divine ambassadors left out in the
Cold margins, interrupting the systematic security of civility?
No, in our modern world, we leave “hospitality”
To the soup kitchens, the nursing homes,
The orphanages, the shelters, whose
Generosity has become our most
Efficient security system since
It really shelters us against
All those who would
Threaten our hard-
Earned financial
Security.


So what is the home in our Modern world?
Apparently, it has become a fall out
Shelter, a place to flee from the
Truth of education, the beauty
Of nourishment and the good
Of work, where all of us
Can finally escape from
The divine interruption
Of the marginalized
Poor who threaten
Our secure
Civility.