Category Archives: Jaroslav Pelikan

On The Digital Christian Polemicists

Posted on by

In light of the internet, I thought the following from Jarslov Pelikan, on the matter of ‘polemics’ would be apropos to highlight. He writes:

There were still versions of the “domino theory,” which cautioned that indifference or the leas concession on any point of doctrine could lead to a toleration of the most extreme excesses, but such an admonition that “fundamental truth cannot be ignored except at the cost of salvation” was often accompanied by the acknowledgement that this did not apply to “secondary elements of fundamental doctrine,” nor to the nonfundamental doctrines. Jonathan Edwards could speak of “zeal” expressed in “vigorous opposition” as “the fervor of this flame [of love],” but he cautioned that it was directed “against things, and not persons,” a distinction that was not always easy to observe amid such “zeal.” A theologian with “a contentious nature” could easily abuse doctrinal polemics for self-aggrandizement. Even those who urged the necessity of polemics added that the pulpit was no place for scholastic controversies about obscure theological points. It was, a professor of theology declared in his inaugural lecture of 1696, “the task of the theologian not only to confirm true doctrine, but to refute errors that are opposed to the truth, above all if they are dangerous and pernicious”; but he went on to urge that in polemics the theologian must strive to do justice to the opposing position, not to caricature it, because “nothing should be imputed to someone that he does not acknowledge in deed or in word.”[1]

The temptation for the theologian, the Christian to fall off into the pit of “polemicistry,” is always as near as the sarx (‘flesh’). Our frames remain but dust, but God’s mercy is ever present to buoy us upon his holy breath beyond such vitrolituous downfalls. The human heart homo incurvatus in se has always already been bent upon self-congratulation and elevation. But the cross of Christ contradicts such antics. Thus, the Christian life, existence, is one marked by living in the midst of this battle between the flesh and the Spirit; even, ironically, when the Christian is attempting to present and discuss theology about our blessed Lord.

The internet only amplifies the putrefied heart to the grandiose heights of self-exaltation and muse. It siren calls, even the Christian in step with the Spirit, to toot one’s own horn behind the surliness of the digital confessional; as in a mockery of the holy habitation of the communio sanctorum. May Christ have mercy upon us, the rascally lot we are.

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700) (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 57.

The Arminians Versus the Calvinists: Human Freedom and Divine Sovereignty in Combine

Posted on by

The battle of the Arminians and Calvinists continues on ad infinitum; indeed, in different expressions and levels of discourse. Nonetheless, the gruel continues unabated. Ironically, and historically, the Arminians, particularly, Arminius himself, weren’t outwith, but within the Reformed halo. As is commonly understood, Arminius was intent on engaging with the theological-anthropological conundrum of human freedom vis-à-vis God’s ostensible sovereignty (as the Calvinists were wont to press in their own stylized way). It wasn’t, of course, that Arminius was attempting to undercut the Calvinist notion that God is sovereign—God forbid it!—but instead, he was challenging the character and way of God’s sovereignty related to human freedom. Jaroslav Pelikan offers nice coverage on this:

The most controversial attempt at such an elucidation within the Reformed communion was the one associated with the names of Jacob Arminius and Simon Episcopius, which eventually challenged openly the central affirmations of the Calvinistic doctrine itself. Arminian acquired its own confessional status in the Remonstrance of 1610 and then, after the Synod of Dort, in the Remonstrant Confession of 1621/22. Reiterating and developing many of the objections to predestinarianism that had already been current during Calvin’s lifetime, the Arminian and Remonstrant protest focused on the problem of will: of the human will as responsible for conduct and therefore in some genuine sense free of “fatalistic necessity”; and of the divine will as addressed to all and therefore in some genuine sense universal, but also as free of sin and evil and free coercion, since such freedom was “the perfection of the [divine] will.” Calvin’s “fictitious fate of predestination” was “hostile to religion” because it managed to undercut both the free will of God and the free will of man. Against “the iron and fatalistic necessity of the Stoics, Manicheans, and Predestinarians,” as well as against the “blind chance” of the Epicureans, stood the biblical doctrine of “the providence of God in the world, which rules everything in a wise, holy and just manner.” The providence of God, which followed immediately upon creation and which extended also to the work of redemption, was universal in scope, pertaining to “this entire universe and especially to man,” as an expression of “the wisdom, justice, and equity of God.” These divine attributes of wisdom, justice, and equity, as disclosed in providence, meant that God was free from “any internal necessity of his own nature or of any external power of some other force”; therefore it was Arminian and Remonstrant doctrine, no less than it was Calvinist doctrine, that God did foreknow future contingents and that he was free “to dispose for his creatures whatever he wills,” death or life, command or prohibition.

It was likewise Remonstrant doctrine, no less than Calvinist, that the grace of God, defined as “undeserved and unmerited favor,” was, as the Remonstrance put it, “the beginning, the progress, and the completion of all good.” But that did not mean that grace was “irresistible.” The analogy, drawn by Augustine and after him by Calvin, between God’s call to faith and the summons to resurrection addressed by Christ, irresistibly, to a dead body, was fallacious. For “those whom God calls to faith, he calls seriously”; if it were impossible to resist the grace of God, his offer of “a reward for Christian virtue” and his threat of punishment for immorality would both be vain. On the other hand, the distinction between what God willed and what God permitted, which Calvin had dismissed as a “falsehood” and an “evasion,” was essential to prevent “the overthrow of all religion”: divine permission did not imply that “it is not possible for anything but disobedience to follow,” but rather that “man can be disobedient, yet only if he so wills.” Therefore God permitted evil not because he will it, but to leave man free. And, contrary to Calvin’s theory, it was similarly “with the permission of God and in accordance with his just judgment,” but by their own action, that the hearts of sinners were “hardened.” Hardening, also in the case of the Jews, was a divine “declaration,” not the initiative of a divine “action.”[1]

A rather succinct presentation of the primary theme[s] present between the Remonstrants and the Calvinists.

I would suggest there is a better way. It is unnecessary to place humanity and God and God and humanity into either the Arminian or Calvinist combine. All that is required to overcome such enmity is to think the relationship between God-humanity through the singular personalis (person) of Jesus Christ. Both God’s downward movement to humanity and humanity’s upward movement to God can be understood from within this miraculous nexus. When election, predestination, human freedom vis-à-vis Divine freedom/sovereignty, so on and so forth becomes the ambit by which such loci is imagined, the Gordian knot of inimical theofare, as that obtains between the “Arminians and Calvinists,” is once and for all cut through.

Pax mundi theologica obtenta est.

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300—1700), Volume 4 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 233–34.

A Theology of the Cross Contra Metaphysics

Posted on by

What role should metaphysics play towards developing a Christian theology? How many speculations added together equal a composite picture of a simple God? If God’s face (prosopon) is in the cradle of the philosophers; if their respective machinations and categories become the womb within which the Theanthropos (Godman) is gestated; how might we be sure that we are in fact encountering the living God at all; that is, in the face of Jesus Christ? Can the metaphysics, torn out of the vestiges of the created order, be deployed in an effort to grammarize God in intelligible ways for us? Or maybe there is a better way; an “evangelized metaphysic?”

Conversely, the Christian doesn’t come to the faith of a metaphysical actual being of pure act (actus purus); a monad, as it were. The Christian, the non-Christian on the street is encountered by the man cloaked in the veil of the flesh of a despised man; a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. This doesn’t cohere well with a God of the Metaphysics. But the so-called ‘Great Tradition’ says that the metaphysical god is the only God that might give us the goods in regard to having a point of intelligible and meaningful contact with Godness. Is this so? The Dominical teaching and life of Jesus Christ deposited for us in the New Testament says otherwise, I would contend; and so, would, Dr. Martin (Luther). Note Jaroslav Pelikan’s thinking with reference to Luther’s theologia crucis:

The Theology of the Cross

Although Luther himself never wrote a full-length exposition of his entire theology and, even when he undertook “to confess [his] faith before God and all the world, point by point,” did not present a system so much as a series of statements, he did find a term to characterize his system of thought. Contrasting, the theologian falsely so called, “who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things that have actually happened,” with the authentic theologian, “who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross,” he labeled the first system “a theology of glory” and the second “a theology of the cross,” or, in the phrase of Hugh Latimer, “that religion that has the cross annexed to it.”

 At the basis of the theology of the cross was the proposition that “God can be found only in suffering and the cross,” so that “he who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering.” In a similar vein the early Melanchthon declared that “to know Christ is to know his benefits.” The polemical target of both these propositions was a theological method that the authors attributed to scholasticism, which treated the truths of the Christian faith as objects of intellectual curiosity without reference to the cross and the benefits of Christ. Specifically, the dogmas of the Trinity and the person of Christ were not an exercise in logical inquiry or metaphysical speculation. Luther ridiculed the scholastics for investigating the relation between the two natures of Christ and branded such investigation as “sophistic.” “What difference does that make to me?” he continued. “That he is man and God by nature, that he has for his own self; but that he has exercised his office and poured out his love, becoming my Savior and Redeemer—that happens for my consolation and benefit.” For, as Luther said in a sermon on 1525, Christ was not called “Christ” because he had two natures, but because of his office as Savior. And Melanchthon attacked the scholastics for “obscuring the glory and the benefits of Christ” despite the formal correctness of their doctrine about the person of Christ.[1]

Far from having a diminished view of Christ’s person, christologically, Luther had an elevated view in the sense that he understood that the value of Christ for the world, the primacy of Christ for all of life, was that He was God for us in the very face of a man. It is here, in the kerygma (the announcement of the Good News) where the wisdom and knowledge of God is on display for all of humanity; for whomever will. This knowledge of God is not an abstract, speculative foment by which the theologian reasons their way back to the Actual Infinite. Nein, for Luther, the Christian God is fulsome for the ‘beggars all.’

In light of the above, would you continue to maintain that the God of the metaphysicians is really the God Self-revealed for the world in Jesus Christ? Or would you agree with me that some abstractions, with reference to truly knowing God, only lead us full circle back to the prying imaginations of sinful man; into things that such imaginations have no real access to?

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300—1700), Volume 4 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 155–56.

The Mediatrix Between the World and Jesus, The Blessed Virgin Mary

Posted on by

The mediatrix theory of the Virgin Mary being a co-mediator with Jesus between God and humanity (i.e., Mary→Jesus→Father) has a very early pedigree in the Latin or Western Catholic church. Jaroslav Pelikan makes clear that someone like Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471), a middle medieval Catholic mystic, became a popularizer of the Marian mediatrix theory. He wrote and spoke in ways that had appeal to the masses. As Protestant Christians we shirk, we shrink back at such thinking, in regard to the Mariocentrism present within the Catholic mind; as we should (biblically). Even so, it remains the case that within Catholicism the cult of Mariology remains a radically present reality for the Church’s faithful. Pelikan writes,

The absolute necessity for a qualitative distinction between Christ and Mary served as a restraint on a tendency that had already become visible in the attribution to her of the title “mediatrix,” which during this period found an eloquent spokesman in Thomas à Kempis. He called Mary “the expiator of all the sins I have committed” and “my only hope”; it was through her mediation that all mercy was granted, and through her intercession that all prayers were heard. Although Christ in his final hours of need had not sought her solace, mortals were to do so. Therefore, he said, “do not seek only Jesus,” but “Jesus at your right hand and Mary at your left.” Various titles, prerogatives, functions, and scriptural passages that had originally belonged to Christ were now by extension being “transferred” to Mary. One of the most important proof texts in the early debates over the Trinity had been Proverbs 8:22–31, who designation of personified Wisdom as supreme among God’s creatures had been a crux for orthodox doctrine; but now this passage was a reference to Mary, who was the crown of creation. Transposing the words of John 3:16, a thirteenth-century theologian could say: “Mary so loved the world, that is, sinners, that she gave her only Son for the salvation of the world.” The words of Matthew 20:28 about Christ’s giving his life for the redemption of many pertained also to Mary as, for that matter, christological proof texts such as Philippians 2:5–11, Hebrews 1:1–2, and even Matthew 11:27, pertained to Francis.

Nor was it only the function of Christ that Mary took over, but after his ascension into heaven “the Virgin remains on earth, and, together with the Holy Spirit as Comforter and Teacher, she herself becomes the comforter and teacher of the disciples.” She had been the teacher of Joseph about the details of the incarnation; and at the crucifixion, when all the disciples wavered in their faith, she alone had been “the total church and the total faith of the Christian church.”[1]

The Protestant might wonder how anyone could ever arrive at this type of Mariological doctrina. This has to do with a theory of authority and ecclesiology. Catholics, of course, maintain that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true and visible body of Christ on earth, and the Pope as her vicar. Obversely, as Protestants, it is maintained that Christ alone, along with his incarnate and glorified body, has taken His bride, His Church with Him to the right hand of the Father. The Catholic maintains, in keeping with their notion that the Catholic church is the prolongation of the incarnation on earth, that the Church receives supplemental revelation as that is provided for by the Pope’s ex cathedra representation of Christ (and Mary, for that matter) on earth. And so, Scripture is not the only or primary source of authority for the development of Catholic doctrine. Contrariwise, since the Protestant maintains that Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father, along with His body, the Church, it is the case that Holy Scripture becomes the primary witness or attestation for the Church’s reality as it instrumentally serves as the ordained spectacles by which the Holy Church encounters her authority and head in Jesus Christ (viz. in a radical theology of the Word).

There are other developments that have led to the Mariology of the Roman Catholic church (and more recent). But the primary vector that allows for it is the space the Papacy provides for the ‘development of doctrine’ (that goes beyond Scripture, which the Catholic might soften by saying: ‘in a supplemental way’). Mary for the Catholic mediates for the sinner between herself and Christ (the judge), and the Christ for us before the Father. For the Catholic, Mary becomes the lynchpin between heaven and earth, as Pelikan so perceptively noticed for us. The centraldogma, it could be said, for the Roman Catholic church, is the primacy of Mary rather than the primacy of Christ. Is this to overstate things? I don’t really think so.

5 For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time, 7 for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle—I am speaking the truth in Christ and not lying—a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. –1 Timothy 2:5–7

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300—1700), Volume 4 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 40.

Maximus and the Damascene Against Dualisms and the New Age

Posted on by

Au contraire! John of Damascus, Maximus the Confessor et al. countered the persistence of the dualists into their own time; indeed, as they stood as Christian theologians of the East in the 7th and 8th centuries. For Augustine, in his pagan days, he partook of an early dualistic religion, known as Manicheanism. This type of dualism, indeed, as it was imbibed by the Gnostics, and even some so-called Christian Gnostics, gained a foothold into the life of the Church, the world, that would perdure even into our present in the 21st century. For the Confessor and the Damascene, they were fighting some heir-apparents of the earlier formed Manicheanism and Gnosticism simpliciter. In their day, respectively, these folks were identified as the Paulicians, and latterly (after Maximus and John), the Bogomils. In nuce, these dualistic systems attempted to identify two competing principles within the world, within the principle of all reality; such that, when applied to God, they saw Light versus Darkness as two equidistant primordial combatants. As a result, they posited two principles largess, rather than just the one that Christian trinitarian monotheism thought from. Even so, these heretical dualistic groups had enough purchase among the people, that people like Maximus, in his respective time, and John of Damascus in his, felt the need to counter them through Christian and biblical theological reasoning (which also entailed some metaphysics).

Jaroslav Pelikan describes the competition this way:

While maintaining against Judaism that the Shema did not preclude the doctrine of the Trinity, but rather, when correctly understood, included it, orthodox Christian monotheism simultaneously opposed any effort to modify the singleness of the divine nature through the introduction of a double principle [ἀρχή]. The Trinity did not imply any compromise in the fundamental axiom that the divine principle was one, and in opposition to the Filioque this axiom was reinforced. To the dualists the orthodox declared: “For our part, we do not follow your godless ways, nor do we say that there are two principles which are to be separated according to location. But, declaring that there is one Creator of all things and a single principle of all things, we affirm the dogma . . . of the Father and the Son.” “The confession of two principles, an evil god and a good one” was understood by the orthodox to be the “first article” of the Paulician creed, taken over from the Manicheans. From the Manicheans and Paulicians the notion of a multiple principle had in turn been taken over by later dualist groups, particularly the Bogomils. Biblical justification for it was found in such passages as Matthew 7:18, which said that there were two different sources for the two different kinds of deeds, or 2 Corinthians 4:3–4, which spoke of “the god of this world.” Replying to such exegesis, the orthodox produced biblical evidence that the very rejection of the authority of God by the world was evidence for one principle rather than two; for Christ “came to his own home, and his own people received him not.”

                Although in later theologians the proof from Scripture took a more prominent role, in the polemics of John of Damascus such proof was heavily reinforced by logic and metaphysics. When the Manicheans contended that the two principles “have absolutely nothing in common,” he replied that if they both existed, they had to have at least existence in common. By their very use of the term “principle,” the Manicheans contradicted their own dualism, for a principle had to be single. As in mathematics the unit was the principle of every number, so it was in metaphysics. If there was an individual principle for each existing thing, then these many principles had in turn to have a single principle behind them. Otherwise there would not be only the two principles of God and matter, as the dualists taught, but a plurality of them throughout the universe. Not only was this an absurdity on the face of it, but it negated the meaning of the word “principle.” Good and evil were not to be explained on the basis of a dual principle, but rather “the good is both the principle and the goal of all things, even of those things that are evil.”[1]

Okay, that is all well and interesting. But what I want to do with this is to attempt to identify how this type of dualism is presently present within the 21st century world, whether that be in the sacred or secular.

My simple observation is this (and this is for Christian consumption, primarily): The devil himself loves nothing more than leading people into the delusion that in fact he is equiprimordial with the living and triune God. He likes to lead his kingdom of darkness, and even us Christians who are still, in principle, in it (but not of it), into the fantasy that his powers of darkness represent a real-life contradiction of God’s life and Light. It is easy, in our bodies of death as we are, to give into this satanic delusion; indeed, even as Christians. In this current world of chaos and disorder it might in fact appear that the devil and minions have an upper hand on God’s economy in the world in Jesus Christ. But just as the Paulicians and Bogomils logic of antiChrist proportions were defeated, indeed, imploded, by folks like Maximus and John of Damascus, in their own respective ways, that same theo-logic applies against the inherent dualisms of our day in the 21st century.

Hence, there is no absolute dualism between the living God, and the minions of darkness. As the Apostle Paul triumphantly declares: “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him” (Colossians 2:13–15). Jesus as the Theanthropos came and destroyed, not an abstract evil, but a concrete one as that has polluted the human being, from the inside/out. Even though evil and sin remain consequential things in this ‘evil age,’ they eschatologically have already been put to death by the Godman, Jesus Christ. He currently is reigning at the Right Hand of the Father, which so contraposes the so called god of darkness, that the apparent war can be said to have never even really gotten off of the ground for the satanic horde’s parasitic “nothingness” economy.

And so, our Lord, contra the dualistic-delusion exhorts: “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world (John 16:33).” He has not left us as orphans, or as defeated ones. What can death do to us? The same thing it did to Jesus. Though we die, yet shall we live. The forces of this current world order have been defeated; death has been put to death; the scourge of sin has lost its power; and we in fact are the victorious ones as we stand in the Victor of God’s grace for the world in Jesus Christ. This doesn’t necessarily make our daily lives easier, per se, but it does let us know that even though we might feel like we are drowning in the scuz of this world system, even within our own bodies of death, we know as Christians that the power of God, the Gospel funds our lives in Christ by the Holy Spirit, to the point that we can stand in victory. Even if such victory, to the dark-system, looks like defeat (like weakness and foolishness).

Dualism is a wicked evil in our world. Most Westerners are caught in its clutches by their submission to New Age theatrics and demonism (this is ironic because New Ageism is based broadly in Eastern monism—I need to flesh this out more fully since New Age ostensibly denies dualisms::I don’t think they actually achieve that though). But as we have already visited, these types of dualistic movements have been present throughout the world order since at least Genesis 3. And yet, even before these fake-power-plays came into existence in the natural world order, God had already pre-destined Himself to be for the world, to not be God without, but with us in Jesus Christ. The Enemy, the darkness has never had an eschatological chance in hell to get beyond the boundary of hell God had always already determined for it in His free life as the Deus incarnandus (the God to be incarnate).

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600—1700), Volume 2 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), 219–20.

Maximus the Confessor, Cyril of Alexander, and the East are not with Leighton Flowers on Freewill

Posted on by

In some of my more recent posts I have been engaging with a guy named, Leighton Flowers; and his ‘Provisionism.’ I have attempted to show how his position fits into, what historically, is understood as semi-Pelagianism. I still think that’s the case. In this post I want to get into a distinction that Flowers likes to appeal to himself; he likes to align his position with the pre-Nicene church fathers, with particular reference to what he takes to be their understanding of “freewill.” Mind you, Flowers isn’t really all that concerned with whether or not he can find historical catholic precedent for his soteriological view or not; but when debating Calvinists like, James White, or Lutherans like, Jordan Cooper—people who have been similarly framing Flowers’ position as semi-Pelagian—Flowers, in counter to their Augustinianism, which he takes to be a species, categorically, of Manicheanism, will attempt to find counter voices in the primitivism of said proto eastern church fathers. He believes that his understanding of freewill in salvation aligns with their respective understandings; particularly as that would stand in contrast to the mature Augustine’s doctrine of predestination/election and “determinism.” In this post I simply want to say to Leighton: not so fast! I will do that by way of reference to Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition: Vol 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700), and his brief sketch of Augustine’s position in contrast to Maximus the Confessor’s. By this simple reference my hope will be to alert the reader to the fact that Flower’s attempt to appeal to the eastern understanding of “freewill” in salvation is equivocal; particularly because the eastern Church has a robust Christological condition underwriting the way they think humanity vis-à-vis freewill in salvation. Further, in my attempt, I will also refer to some of Cyril of Alexander’s thinking with hopes of fortifying what we find out about Maximus’s thinking.

Pelikan writes:

No less striking was the contrast between the Augustinian tradition and the Greek tradition in the understanding of grace and salvation. An epitome of the contrast is the formula of Maximus: “Our salvation finally depends on our own will.” For “one could not conceive a system of thought more different from Western Augustinianism; and yet Maximus is in no way a Pelagian.” This is because the dichotomy represented by the antithesis between Pelagianism and Augustinianism was not a part of Maximus’s thought. Instead, “his doctrine of salvation is based on the idea of participation and of communion that excludes neither grace nor freedom but supposes their union and collaboration, which were re-established once and for all in the incarnate Word and his two wills.” Even though the century following the death of Augustine saw his predestinarianism attacked by his critics and mollified by his disciples, the Augustinian understanding of original son and of grace continued to shape Western theology. Eastern theology, on the other hand, continued to emphasize, with Maximus, that divine sonship was a gift of God and an achievement of man, and neither of these without the other. Such diametrically opposed interpretations of the very hear of the Christian gospel would almost inevitably come to blows when the ecclesiastical situation had shifted and all the other doctrinal differences that we have been examining became matters of open controversy. Nevertheless, over the centuries of the controversy, it was neither in the doctrine of grace nor even in the doctrine of the church that East and West came into dogmatic conflict most frequently, but in a doctrine on which, supposedly, not only East and West, but even Nestorians and Monophysites, were all agreed: the dogma of the Trinity.[1]

On the face of things, it might sound like Flowers is onto something, in regard to the idea of freewill, as that is ostensibly operative in Maximus’s and the East’s soteriology. But what Maximus has, and Flowers doesn’t, is a soteriology grounded in a robust understanding of Christology and our participation in His humanity as the ground and frame of reference wherein we have capacity to finally say yes to God. In other words, following Athanasius et al. the east understands that apart from union with Christ, by way of His hypostatic union with us, the person, in and of themselves, does not have the capacity to say yes to God. In other words, the east has a heavy doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ operative in their soteriological understanding; so heavy that they referred to their soteriological doctrina as theosis. Flowers doesn’t have this doctrine funding his conception of soteriology, which again, is why he is left open to the charge of forwarding semi-Pelagianism.

To help further fortify this thinking on participatio Christi in the eastern understanding of salvation, let’s turn to Donald Fairbairn’s discussion on union with Christ in the soteriology of Cyril of Alexandria (another eastern father). This passage from Fairbairn is rather lengthy, and you’ll notice that he has a dialogue between Protestants, Orthodox, and Roman Catholics in mind, but I think the whole context helps to grant greater insight into just what Cyril’s union with Christ and/or doctrine of the vicarious humanity of Christ was all about. Fairbairn doesn’t get into the how of union with Christ in Cyril’s theology, but he does point out that for Cyril it is the indicative of being in union with Christ wherein the person has the capacity to be for God and not against Him. This is what Flowers doesn’t have in his soteriological conception, and again, why his view easily falls prey to the charge of semi-Pelagianism. Here is Fairbairn:

From what I have written, it is clear that there are important similarities and differences between Cyril’s understanding of justification and that of Protestantism. Cyril repeatedly writes of the believer’s righteousness as one that is given by another, by Christ, from the outside. This emphasis on Christ as the source of the Christian’s righteousness is similar to the Protestant understanding of the passive nature of the Christian’s righteousness. Cyril, as much as Luther or any Protestant subsequently, sees the righteousness or holiness of the Christian as that which belongs to Christ and which Christ actively grants to the believer, who passively receives it through faith and grace. But as we have seen, there are also differences between Cyril and many classical Protestant writers. Cyril does not adopt a forensic framework as the dominant aspect of his soteriology. He does not distinguish justification and sanctification to any great degree at all. And he certainly does not make justification the central idea of his soteriology. Thus, Cyril stands as a caution against the potential dangers of a theology that is too exclusively forensic or makes the justification/sanctification distinction too sharply.

When one examines Cyril’s relation to modern Eastern Orthodoxy, we find that there are also similarities and differences. The participatory nature of salvation shines very clearly in both Cyril and modern Orthodoxy. But on the other hand, two things about Cyril’s understanding of participation stand in partial contrast to some expressions of modern Orthodoxy. First, the basis for Cyril’s understanding of participation is not the qualities of God (whether they be the energies, as in later Palamite theology; qualities such as incorruption and immortality that dominate the attention of many Greek patristic writers; or even qualities like righteousness and holiness on which this article has focused), but the person of Christ. For Cyril, participation is at heart personal. We become righteous when we are personally united to the one who is righteous, to Christ. (Notice again that this exactly parallels the fact that we become sons of God when we are united to Christ, the true Son.) Second, the very fact that participation is at heart personal means that it is not fundamentally gradual or progressive. The outworkings of union with Christ are indeed gradual, but union with Christ himself, effected in baptism at the very beginning of Christian life, lies at the heart of Cyril’s concept of participation. To say this even more directly, for Cyril even deification is primarily the present state of the believer, rather than the culmination of a process, and his teaching on justification undergirds this fact.

At this point, readers from both Protestant and Orthodox traditions may object that their tradition does in fact emphasize personal union with Christ. This is true. There are some – perhaps many – voices within both traditions that possess such an emphasis. But my point is that in both Protestantism and Orthodoxy, the centrality of personal union with Christ tends to be obscured by these other emphases: forensic justification in Protestantism and a more mystical and/or progressive approach to union with God in Orthodoxy. I ask my readers to recognize these tendencies, even though the mistakes to which they can lead are sometimes successfully avoided.

With that caveat registered, I suggest that as one looks at these two sets of similarities and differences between Cyril on one hand and either Protestantism or Orthodoxy on the other, they expose a false dichotomy that has perhaps hindered dialogue between the two groups. Protestants, schooled in on-going disputes with Roman Catholicism, are often quick to point out the difference between imputed righteousness and imparted or infused righteousness, and the classical Protestant concept of justification is closely tied to the first of these, in opposition to the second. It seems to me, though, that Protestants sometimes extend this dichotomy into an opposition between imputed righteousness and participatory righteousness, thus unhelpfully applying concepts borrowed from anti-Catholic polemic to anti-Orthodox polemic. (Whether those concepts are appropriate even in dialogue with Roman Catholics is another question, but one I will not address here.) I believe Cyril’s thought demonstrates that this is a false dichotomy. Instead, Cyril teaches us that participatory righteousness – or better, our participation in the one who is himself righteous – is the very heart of imputed righteousness. To say this in Protestant terms, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the Christian when the Christian is united to Christ, who is the righteous one. But to say the same thing in Orthodox terms, participation in Christ, because it is a personal participation granted to the believer at the beginning of Christian life, implies that his righteousness becomes ours.

As a result, I suggest that a deeper consideration of Cyril’s doctrine of justification can both challenge Protestants and the Orthodox, and help to uncover latent common ground between them. Protestants need to recognize that justification is not merely or even mainly transactional, but primarily personal and organic. We are united to Christ as a person, and as a result, his righteousness is imputed to us. The forensic crediting of righteousness grows out of the personal union. At the same time, the Orthodox need to recognize that the gradual process of deification (even the continual reception of life-giving grace through the Eucharist, one of Cyril’s greatest emphases) is grounded in an initial personal union with Christ, and thus, both righteousness and deification are at heart gifts that Christ gives us when he gives himself to us. Perhaps both Protestants and Orthodox can then recognize that as Christians, we are righteous, holy, and even divine, because – and only because – we are in Christ. And if we are righteous, holy, and divine in Christ, then throughout Christian life we will progressively become more and more who we already are.[2]

Lengthy, I know; but necessary to provide the whole context. These are details that Flowers never addresses when he almost casually refers to the eastern fathers and their conception of salvation and freewill. Their idea of freedom isn’t like Flowers’ understanding, which sounds more like libertarian free agency; their conception is drenched in a robust doctrine of participation with Christ (Calvin’s doctrine of unio cum Christo and duplex gratia actually sounds much more akin to someone like Cyril than what we find in Flowers’ naked conception of human freedom in the soteriological package).

Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m spending so much time with Flowers on these things. He has already doubled down over and over again on the idea that his position is not semi-Pelagian; but he dupes himself. My goal with this post was simply (in a bloggy way) to take away Flowers’ easy appeal to the eastern fathers, as if they stand with him contra, Augustine. They do stand against Augustine, but not in the way that Flowers does. Flowers, unfortunately, is more in the camp of Pelagius himself, and someone, early, like John Cassian. Pax Vobis

 

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: Vol. 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 182-83.

[2] Donald Fairbairn, “Justification in St. Cyril of Alexandria, With Some Implications for Ecumenical Dialogue,”Participatio Vol. 4 (2013): 142-44.