Is Orthodoxy Neo-Platonic?
A Response to the Credenda Agenda
by Dr. Thomas Mether
The following is part of an extensive joint response to the Protestant Reformed
journal Credenda Agenda. An entire issue of this journal was devoted to a
critique of Orthodox Christianity. The author is addressing the article entitled
"Salvation by Plotinus"
When Eastern Orthodoxy speaks of salvation, it speaks of deification, a notion drawn
from a long development of Eastern/Hellenistic theological reflection.
This is a main and lead assertion. Notice it is not backed up by any support. It does
not acknowledge the plurality of Hellenistic trends in religious thought nor identify
specifically which alleged pagan trends spoke of deification: Middle Platonism?,
Hellenistic Mystery Religions?, Stoicism?, Pyrrhic Skepticism?, Cynics?, Hermeticism?, or
Neo-Platonism?. Plotinus is the one they identify, but the ones that had any influence
were the Syriac school of Imblichus, the Pergamen school of Julian the Apostate and
Sallustius who the Cappadocians criticized and which was itself a Christian influenced
school despite it being anti-Christian, the Athenian school of Proclus, and then the only
Neoplatonic school that there is any record of Christian and Neo-platonic interaction was
the Alexandrian one and from it and Philo comes the raw material for the Christological
and Trinitarian formulations I would assume is common ground to Orthodox and Calvinists.
This main claim is also historically false in light of any pagan tradition. At most, you
were already divine and just forgot you were because of falling into this body coming out
of the Orphic tradition, gnostic tradition, or Platonic strains.
In Eastern understanding, deification is the process in which humans gradually become
metaphysically (i.e., in their being) united, intermingled, permeated with the attributes,
the non-essential being, the energies, of God.
Inaccurate misrepresentation and oversimplification. The only union between humans and
God is that we are united as one flesh to the body (church) of Christs human nature
and it is only indirectly through his hypostasis that divinizes his human nature are we
deified. We are thereby enabled to move from the Image to the Likeness of the Trinitarian
life as Church. As communion, the Church is really that which becomes the Likeness of God.
Then
Perhaps because of the initial distastefulness of such claims, the Eastern Orthodox are
quick to qualify them.
Loaded statement. Serves no function except to bias or further bias reader. To
compensate, I suggest a corresponding sentence be put in the rebuttal article. In fact, to
really give it an effective one-two and undercut punch, I would tie it to their later
claim that deification omits the need for the cross in some type of sentence incorporating
Calvinist predestination such as: "Perhaps because of the initial moral
distastefulness of such Calvinist concepts as predestination, which effectively omits the
decisiveness of the power of the Cross, the Calvinists.....(something)"
Then they state something that I may be showing my ignorance of Calvinists on.
To begin, we must become substantially, metaphysically united to Christ in His humanity
through baptism.
Question: dont Calvinists believe this too?
Self-Conscious Synthesis with Paganism: Eastern Orthodox historical discussions often
praise the early churchs opposition to Platonism as found in thinkers like Origen.
But, in discussing deification, they seem to have little difficulty in embracing the pagan
philosophy of Plotinus (205-270 A.D.), the primary systematizer of Neo-Platonism.
There are so many factual things wrong with this claim, which by vague generalities
gets to rely on ambiguity of what actual relations existed or did not exist. There is no
motif of deification in Plotinus and notice they give no citation from the Enneads as
standard academic practice would require. Vague of who, specifically, embraces Plotinian
philosophy in their talk of deification. There is no naming names or giving of dates or
sources. For example, did St. Maximos, father of Byzantine theology quote Plotinus? As it
happens, he did twice. He refers to Ennead I.2, 1:118 and IV. 3, 1:134. Neither has
anything to do with deification. So, who did? They state but without support. By the way,
Calvin quotes atheists so I guess his theology is contaminated by them. Anyway, another
academically questionable tactic for a claim that has no support.
Eastern Orthodox thinkers at times insist that they have purged neo-Platonism from
their thinking by slight changes in Plotinuss system.
This is an elaboration and variation on the original unsupported assertion with one
difference. Which Eastern Orthodox thinkers when literally claim that "they have
purged neo-Platonism from their thinking by slight changes in Plotinuss
system." No names named. And it ignores the very important distinction of ousia
and hypostasis. If one looks at number of citations, the Fathers actually quote
Aristotle more than Plotinus or the Platonists. Aristotle is a common conceptual framework
to Orthodox and Calvinist theology. Much of the Fathers Platonist vocabulary comes from
Origens attack on Celsus or from Pseudo-Denis whose neo-Platonism is Syriac, not
Plotinean. Nicene vocabulary is a critical re-construction of Origens conceptual
vocabulary. This is inherited by both Orthodox and Calvinists. And where Orthodox
Trinitarian theology departs from the west, it is more Biblical than the wests!
Consider.
Towards late antiquity, two words were in philosophical use which meant substance or
substantive being. s Aristotle put it, being can be said in many ways or there are many
meanings of Being. He isolated and identified Being according to the different categories
of which substance (ousia) was the most fundamental, Being as act and potency, Being as
true, and Being as contingent as opposed to necessary/essential. There has been on and off
again the debate over the question of whether this listing of the meanings of Being is
complete. We will return to that in a bit. The Byzantine answer was it was incomplete.
As indicated, there were two words used for substantive being in late classical
philosophy. The first was Aristotles ousia. The second was hypostasis from Stoic
origins. But they each developed a meaning that made them not exactly synonymous. Ousia
increasingly came to mean a substance/thing to the extent it was a kind of substance/thing
or a thing of a typical nature or essence. Hypostasis increasingly came to mean a
substantive mode of existence in its unique and distinctive particularity and
individuality.
Into this context comes the tradition of Judaism. Philo uses these distinctions to
suggest that the personal God of Israel is a uniquely distinctive and singular reality or
hypostasis in contrast to the impersonal thought thinking itself thing (ousia) of
Aristotle. One branch of Middle Platonism picks this up and God and souls become hypostases
while impersonal things, including cups, chairs, etc., become ousias. The other
branch of Middle Platonism represented by Numenius of Apamea pushes the God as impersonal
monad and ousia interpretation which nevertheless reinforces the ousia =
non-personal substance/thing of a typical kind and hypostasis = personal
substance of a uniquely and distinctive individual (usually God as person).
We have here the elements of a conceptual revolution in ancient philosophy and
religion. It was the characteristic trait of ancient philosophy, religion, and humanism
that the individual was not valued in and of itself in its particularity but only as an
paradigmatic instance of a universal ideal type. Person was just an epiphenomenal mask. By
contrast, as Tillich brings out, even the post-Christian humanism of the modern world is
Judeo-Christian to the extent the unrepeatable individual per se is valued in and
of itself. The roots of this contrast is in the Trinitarian controversy and the debt the
parties owed to Philo and Origen.
Consider, the Christological controversy was settled in terms of ousia (homoousia)
as the substantive divinity of both the Father and Christ. They are of one essence. Now,
in the Trinitarian controversy, given the pre-history of the words ousia and hypostasis
and given that ousia was implied already in the omoousia solution to the
christological issue and finally given that the conventional and more common word for
person (prosopon) had no ontological weight given its epiphenomenal connotation,
the Church Fathers chose hypostasis to designate God in his distinctive,
unrepeatable, and individual personalities in all their distinctive particularity because
it had ontological and substantive weightpersonhood was
ontologically ultimate. They feared that the use of prosopon would convey a modalist or
Sabellian message which would be a subordination of persons to impersonal ousia.
And this is what the Latin and Calvinist west, even as early as in Augustines time,
did not understand and confessed it did not understand. As Fr. Theodore Regnon, S.J. put
it, "Latin philosophy (Christian theology) considers the nature in itself first and
proceeds to the agent; Greek philosophy (Christian theology) considers the agent first and
passes through it to find the nature. The Latins think of personality as a mode of nature;
the Greeks think of nature as the content of the person. The western lack of understanding
of what the Greek Fathers had accomplished in the nature of the distinction and relations
of priority within it between ousia and hypostases led to a certain re-paganization of
Trinitarian thought in which the philosophical essentialism of an unreformed ousiological
metaphysics engenders the accent to fall on the divine unity in the west."
Now the so-called "monarchia of the Father" in eastern Trinitarian theology
means person trumps impersonal thing. Even the divine ousia exists because the
Father is the PERSONAL source of the communion of divine hypostases that is the ousia.
The west tends to take it the other way around, beginning with ousia, and thus,
from an eastern perspective, betrays the very essence of the meaning of the Trinity as
interpersonality as ultimate reality. With the influx of insufficiently re-constructed
philosophical concepts in the west, you get the re-paganization of Christian theology in
the west as instanced by debates over Gods foreknowledge of future contingents,
whether it is matter or form of an ousia/substantial thing that individuates (and
individuates both things and persons), and so on. The west was captured by an ousiological
metaphysics. This metaphysics held western theology in captivity. It is in its nominalist
form coming from William Occam that we find it still in captivity in the Calvinists
even having the very question of whether God knows future contingents in light of
predestination, and time. This was a metaphysics, St. Maximos the Confessor points out,
that saw time as an enemy and thus sought that stable enduring thing through change that
thereby is the most fundamental kind of being. Thus, that kind of perdurance was dubbed
with the past participle he says. In essence, what is called by contemporary philosophers
"the metaphysics of presence" according to Maximos is really the metaphysics of
the past, as fully complete and determinate, used paradigmatically to colonize all the
other temporal modes of present and future. The present is the predestined creature of the
past both in Calvin and Newton. The essentialism downgrades accidental being or
sumbebekos. Now sumbebekos as accidental being was also not well understood in the west.
It is not being that exists in another like a form of being found within one of the
predicate categories. It designates the happenstantial, the contingently situational so it
is not precisely necessary-essential that my wife has auburn hair; that she has this hair
color is accidental in the sense of sumbebekos, it is fortuitous in the sense
that her hair could have indifferently been auburn or not auburn but it is necessary that
it have some color. This kind of accidental being can be found in every category. Thus, in
the pagan Greek view, that a human is this or that individual is accidental but it is
necessary that a human be somebody. The distinction then between accidental being in the
sense of sumbebekos from an accident-predicate is that the accidental being is
the contingent or fortuitious actuality according to every necessary category. So,
accidental being in this sense is the contingent affection or actual constellation or
situation or event that takes place according to the necessity of different categories. On
the Orthodox reading, this sumbebekos is really Gods governance or the concrete
realization of Gods purpose in time. To downgrade it is a spiritually sick symptom
of the religiosity of sarx that finds time to be a corrosive force that bears no faith or
hope. Thus, accidental being just as the unique particularity of persons and the future,
is downgraded in pagan metaphysics in favor of fully determinate being-essences (the dead,
fully completed and determinate and deterministic past idealized as enduring presence) or
ousiological being for the paradigmatic past participle. It was not till Scotus developed
his concept of haecceity and the individuals will did you find the beginning of the
overturn of a ousiological metaphysics in western Christian theology. Maximos pointed out
the original meaning of sumbebekos was not negative as it as in pagan philosophical
theology but was positive. It meant the adventurous and creative way things are
"brought together." So, in Orthodox theology coming from Maximos, the pagan
agenda to make (persons and) reality in its concreteness, in all its contingency,
fortuity, distinctiveness, and unique unrepeatibility unreal in favor of impersonal,
universal, and necessary is set on its head. Thus, sumbebekos, as very purposeful
counterpoint in Byzantine theology, is the creative way (Logos) that God brings
all things together (sumbebekos) in the existential fullness of their realization
(uparktikos) of his eikonomia. This lead Maximos to revolutionize
Aristotles categorical analysis of Being in one of its meanings. But to back up a
bit. Now, the Cappadocians start to make systematic use of these terms ousia and
hypostasis to build the foundations of eastern theology. But it is St. Maximos the
Confessor who really completes this task and thus is called the father of Byzantine
theology. This takes us back to the question of whether the meanings of Being given by
Aristotle are an exhaustive list. For Maximos states:
It is no accident, or rather, is foreordained blind inspiration
that the Stagirite spoke both worse and better than he meant. For when he says that
indeed the inquiry or perplexity concerning what being (on) is, in early times and
now and always, is just this: what is substance (ousia) (Meta Z 1.5,
1028b). he begs the question by his reduction of the problem of Being to that of one
kind of substantial being. For the categorial determinations of the meanings of Being that
have their focus or reference to a more fundamental kind of being are multiple. For as
Tradition has taught us to see, there is another substantive mode of existing which is
that of the personal mode of existence. The logos was in our tongue but we could not see.
There are hypostases that are a personal mode of existence (tropos hyparxeos)
that is the referent or fundamental kind of being that has characteristic manners or modes
(tropoi) of being as modifications of the first-personal to be (eimi)
that is the voluntary (thelesis) analogue to ousiological energeia and that can
existentially realize (uparktikos) itself contranaturally, naturally, or
supranaturally with their respective vices and virtues.
So, for example, (remember Byzantium did not go through a dark ages like the west did.
It maintained high literacy, even in Latin {because of their fierce pride in being
descendents of the Romans, even military communiquées to the Romanians, for example, were
in Latin until 1081} classics were studied and known through the schools, and it had
almost all the classical and patristic works of antiquity, in sharp contrast to the west,
and thus, was the source, usually still unacknowledged in western secondary literature, of
the Greek texts being translated by such as Moerbeke in the time of Aquinas down to the
Renaissance when refugees from Byzantium brought texts, like the Dialogues of Plato, to
Ficino), the question of individuation was never posed within the new metaphysical
framework of Byzantine theology as a choice of the essence or matter of an ousia. Human
existence is comprised of human nature (ousia), with its matter and form, as a
species principle of nature (logos physeos) that is individuated by the personal
mode of existence (tropos hyparxeos) of the hypostasis. But Orthodoxy has a
developmental view. Even if there had been no fall, Adam would have still had to evolve
from the Image into the Likeness through the Incarnation (anselmian theory is wrong on the
eastern view if purpose of Incarnation was just to correct the fall because Church is the
goal as the Body of Christ) in a process called theosis (deification) in synergy with the
divine Energies. While in principle it is the hypostasis that individuates, instead of one
of the metaphysical elements of the human ousia, it is the process of theosis that is the
actual process of individuating the one becoming a person in the fulness of the Likeness
of the interpersonality of the Trinitarian life. So, see, the east is in a very different
conceptual universe, metaphysically, than the west and which the west has not appreciated
as yet in its attempts to grasp eastern theology/metaphysics. So, Thomist and Calvinist
discussions seem, from an Orthodox perspective to, too uncritically inherit a pagan
concept without sufficient critical reflection on the legacy of its pre-Christian meaning
and implications. The on-going issue of the relation of Greek philosophy and Orthodox
theological expression is an issue for any properly responsible theology that has to be
methodologically fastidious about the concepts it uses and/ or may read into Scripture.
Proof of this, at least in the case of Thomas and Calvin, is the very need to be concerned
about whether or not God knows individual souls, particulars, or future contingents. The
Orthodox understanding is that the pagan concept of divine immutability was an allergic
reaction to time and contingency that needed to find a time-proof foundation of necessity
for religious reassurance. Time was the evil Kronos who ate its children. So, the concept
is symptomatic of a spiritual sickness of the religiosity of sarx (which in Orthodoxy is
not "flesh," but deathliness, related to sarcophagus, it is the opposite of
spirit, it is de-spiritedness that emotionally believes in death more than God despite
what the head believes). Pagan philosophical theology sought a predestinied necessity in a
time-proof order or an anti-time God. Since everything human is temporal, one gets the
unknown God because God is what anything temporal-mortal is not.
Using a Biblical base to modify Greek pagan concepts, divine immutability in Orthodoxy
is Gods loyalty to his promise (his Word, his Church) to his (Church designed)
creatures. It is the immutability of his commitment through and outside of time. It is the
basis of the fact that economia was the telos, and thus, foundation of the creation.
Church is the fulfillment of covenant. Covenant is the inner purpose for creation.
Creation is the outer staging for the inner purpose. So, the Church, as Body of Christ, is
the fruit from which the tree that bore it, the cosmos, was itself borne and born, as St.
Diadochus of Gaza puts it. Gods immutability is that he is agape, essentially and
contingently, immutably a sharer of Person with Persons, uncreate or create. Time has no
nature apart from this agenda, and thus, is nothing in relation to it, and thus, is not an
obstacle or issue for or about divine immutability unlike the unregenerate paganism of the
insufficiently methologically critical Calvinism.
We derive our reconstructed metaphysics and cosmology from dogmatics. It was the
Catholic and Protestant west that tried, especially after Aquinas, to mix and match. Only
Luther showed some sophistication in these matters. But Calvins Institutes depends
on un-re-examined concepts from the western philosophical-theological tradition. By the
way, Barths discussion of Calvin is an effective deconstruction and expose of
Calvins non-Christian philosophical legacies, including the neo-Platonic concepts in
Calvinist theology. Anyway, I hope this shows just how minute the fine-tooth combing of
Greek concepts in order to serve Christian theology was.
Christs substitutionary sacrifice, the hallmark of Christian faith, plays
no central role. Though some Eastern Orthodox texts on salvation give lip-service to the
atonement, one searches in vain for serious Eastern explanations of justification,
atonement, propitiation, etc.
They seem to have no idea that this is Anselms idea in origin, that Calvinism
inherits that notion from men, and that it was debated in the west from the middle ages
down to the present. So, instead of presenting what the Orthodox view is and then
criticizing it, which would be the intellectually honest thing to do, they confess they
cant find their own calvinism in Orthodoxy, and thus, Orthodoxy is flawed. This is
question-begging strawman with a burden of proof twist. It is question-begging because, in
effect, they ask "where is your Calvinism." Typically, strawman is the distorted
representation of a position in order to make it weaker to attack it. Here they cant
find the Orthodox position because they were looking for Calvinism. Thus, this strawman
tactic has a new twist in that it does not so much present an overly simplistic picture of
their opponents view as not present it at all. It is burdern of proof of a strange sort
because it is imputed to be our fault and a flaw with Orthodoxy that they did not find our
position because they were looking for their own. Such overlapping fallacious thinking
suggests this crowd is just plain confused.
+ + +
More thoughts. Another line to effectively counter both the
imputation that we are closet Neo-Platonists is to point out the VERY PERSONAL nature of
contemplative knowledge in Orthodoxy. The reason why gnosis replaces episteme as
the highest value or kind of theoria ties is that it is a personal relationship.
This would then tie into the hypostasis vs ousia theme. Then, it should be brought out in
connection with the centrality of the Beatitudes and the dual structure of of them in
light of the paradigmatic dual structure of "Forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive those who trespass against us and the constant God and neighbor theme (so as you
have down it to the least of these, Servant who was forgiven his debt he owed of 10,000
talents but would not forgive a much smaller debt) that the quality of ones relation
to God is intrinsically tied to the quality of ones relation to neighbor. Then use
these connections as a contrast of Orthodox spirituality to pagan Neo-Platonisms
impersonalism and ultimate aethicalism (if reality is supremely impersonal, ethics,
personality, and interpersonal relationships are epiphenomena to be transcended in pagan
view. By contrast, God is Trinity, Christianity is THE personal and interpersonal religion
par excellance, or better, CHURCH) to refute their attempt to identify the two. In
this, emphasize that Trinity and Scripture requires a strong ecclesiologya weakness
in post-Reformed Protestant thought which is docetic in its ecclesiologybecause the
primary framework of the agape relation to neighbor is Church-building either through
missions to bring them in or edification to build them up within the Body of Christ. In
the original sources, even Luther does not use the construction "the Christian
religion" or "Christianity is a religion" even though you will find
"the religion (synonymous with piety) of Christians" because even for him
Christianity = Church. It is Calvin where this equation is loosened, and thus,
ecclesiology becomes very weakened.
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