August 1, 2008
The goal of the Christian life, according to the Orthodox theological tradition, is theôsis, deification or divinization. This does not mean that the Christian eventually hopes to become God; rather, it means that the Christian strives for an eschatological state in which s/he will finally realize the existence intended by God for the crown of His creation, humanity. One result of this eschatological hope is that the Christian looks not to the past but to the future for meaning. Indeed, our great Saint Maximus the Confessor even taught that the Incarnation of Christ would have occurred even if humanity had not fallen into sin (cf. Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos, p. 80 ff.); for God created out of His unbounded love, wanting, to borrow Plato’s phrase (Timaeus 29e), everything to become as much like Himself as possible. It is not our past, then, that determines our history, but God’s plan for His creation – and this plan involves the full realization of the image and likeness of God in the human person, or, more accurately, in human persons (for we are not destined to become all alike, but to remain in a communion of love, with our identities firmly intact). Having been created in the image of God, we enter into history seeking to actualize the likeness of God within us.
Origen, in Book III of his treatise On First Principles, tells us that the likeness is not something given to us by God straightaway, but rather something we must attain, through our own efforts. Certainly, as Origen puts it elsewhere in that treatise, our efforts are not unaided; God accomplishes the greater part. Yet the little that we, as creatures, are capable of accomplishing must come about through our engagement with history – the continually unfolding history of self, other, and Other (God). At the end of this engagement, God will no longer be Other, His face will no longer be veiled; we will possess both His image and likeness, and will “be one” with Him in an ever-abiding communion of love.
Now it is at this point that Orthodox theologians usually hasten to assure us that the eskhaton will not involve a loss of selfhood, of a personal ego or existential center – despite the fact that the lanugage of many Church Fathers indicate strongly such a loss of self. We are assured that we will continue to be unique, unrepeatable entities – i.e., persons – and that the divine life will be an eternally dynamic experience of love and communion with each other and with God. We are sometimes reminded of the dangers of mysticism, especially the notion of complete absorption into the deity, with the consequent loss of our most precious posession, the mind (nous), the image of God, in a state of unknowing, or of “knowing beyond the mind by knowing nothing,” as Pseudo-Dionysius has put it. Mention is sometimes made of the difference between Orthodox theôsis and ‘pagan’ philosophical (Platonic) henôsis, or unity with the highest principle, with emphasis on the complete ineffability and impersonal nature of Plotinus’ One, for example, as contrasted with the personal God of Christianity, who became man, and shared our life so that we may share His. (Neo)Platonic-style ‘mysticism’ may indeed lead to “the creation of meaninglessness,” as Bishop Athanasius Yevtich, in his book Christ: The Alpha and Omega (Alhambra, CA: Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America 2007, p. 81) has described the complete surrender of the self to the overwhelming otherness of God. But at least these so-called mystics – especially Plotinus – were capable of building a systematic philosophy on the basis of an experience, or at least an intuition, of the single, changeless, and eternal source of all things.
As H. Tristram Englehardt, Jr. has argued recently (“Critical Reflections on Theology’s Handmaid,” in Philosophy and Theology, vol. 18. no. 1, 2006), Orthodox theology is distinctly non-academic, and Orthodoxy in general is rather suspicious of secular philosophy. Since Orthodoxy, according to Englehardt, emphasizes the absolute transcendence of God, considering Him beyond knowledge, any discursive theology or rational speaking about God is considered pointless. God is beyond the grasp of human reason. Indeed, we are God’s creatures, and any knowledge we have of God comes from His Spirit at work in the world. Theology, then, is not, for Orthodox Christians, an academic discipline, but a lifestyle involving prayer, almsgiving, asceticism, worship, etc. Such a lifestyle is considered true theology, for it allows one to remain receptive to the influence of the Holy Spirit. Yet we must remember that the Spirit of God works upon our minds, i.e., the image of God in which we were created. The Church Fathers are unanimous in affirming the mind as the highest part of our being, that which is closest to God. This is why Apollinarianism was so fiercely opposed by the Orthodox Fathers: if Christ did not assume a fully human mind, then the most glorious aspect of our nature remained unsaved. So, if we are to have any knowledge at all of God in this life, even just a tiny glimpse of His majesty, it must come through the exercise of our reason. It seems to me a great conceit for certain Orthodox Christians (or any Christians for that matter) to tut-tut those of us who value hard-core, nose-to-the-grindstone academic, philosophical theology. A true experience of the vastness and beauty of God’s presence is not the sole provenance of the prayerful monk or the pious ascetic. The academic laboring away in his or her study, amidst a pile of recondite tomes, may also achieve a sense of communion with the deity.
So, it makes little sense to value certain applications of the intellect over others, as the Spirit will reward the noble and well-intentioned endeavor. It makes a lot of sense, however, to vigorously oppose those who encourage the Christian to forego the use of intellect, and merely live a life of worshipful quietude, at peace with his or her own ignorance. Living such a life is to allow the image of God to languish, and that is not a good thing. Now it must be admitted that a certain arrogance tends to arise at times among those (this writer not excepted) who devote themselves to the academic style of theology. St. Maximus the Confessor issued the warning most eloquently: “Just as parents have affection for the offspring of their bodies, so also is the mind naturally attached to its own reasonings. And just as to their parents who are emotionally attached the children appear as the fairest and handsomest of all even though in every way they might be the most hideous of all, so it is with the foolish mind” (Chapters on Love 3:58, tr. Berthold). This is quite true; but one must not forget that one of the first fruits of academic discipline is the ability to accept criticism of one’s ideas, mull them over and, if necessary, revise or even reject one’s own views. It’s called peer review … and it’s not something that a monastic ‘theologian’ is normally subjected to.
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August 7, 2008
It is important to understand that all attempts at speaking about God have the effect of dragging God down to earth (metaphorically speaking, of course). God did become man, of course, in the person of Jesus Christ, so that we may become God. St. Gregory the Theologian really put it best: Man and God blended so that I might become God to the extent that He became man (Oration 29:19). St. Gregory affirms that God is the predominant power, as we would expect, being His creatures. Yet the fact remains that we become God, to an extent. This caveat is quite similar to that of Plato in the Theaetetus (176b) when he describes salvation at attaining “likeness to god as far as possible.” Quite simply, for a Christian, it is recognized that the Incarnation involved a voluntary descent of God to a lower nature; indeed, it involved an “emptying” (kenôsis), as St. Paul tells us (Philippians 2:7), of divinity and the assumption of a life antithetical to that of impassible divine nature. We, on the other hand, shall ascend to a higher nature and become God, as far as possible. When Plato gave this caveat, he likely meant (as Eudorus, for example, interpreted him) to the extent that our minds are capable of contemplating divine things. St. Gregory likely meant that we shall become God to the extent that our creaturely nature is capable of partaking of, or participating in, the divine nature (cf. 2 Peter 1:4). As Torstein Theodor Tollefsen explains, in a fine essay on theôsis in St. Gregory Nazianzen (in Børtnes, Hägg (eds.), Gregory of Nazianzus: Images and Reflections, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press 2006), the language of participation is the key to properly understanding the radical concept of “becoming God.” We will not literally become triadic beings; rather, we will participate in the community of shared existence in a manner like unto the Holy Trinity. This is really the summit of theology, as Pseudo-Dionysius expresses so well in his aptly titled treatise De mystica theologia. It is at this point that academic theology must recognize its limit. Discursive knowledge of the life of the Trinity is beyond us. Whatever the eskhaton holds for us … well, we’re just gonna have to wait. This does not, of course, mean that we can’t speculate about the eskhaton; nor does it mean that our speculations will be necessarily pointless or unfounded. “All men by nature desire to know,” Aristotle stated at the beginning of his Metaphysics. And Plato boldly assumed the existence of the Good and the Beautiful, existing in and of itself (Phaedo 100b). The natural desire for empirical knowledge coupled with the faith in a perfect existence, above and beyond this manifestly flawed one in which we presently labor, is the beginning of philosophy; and the crown, the flower of philosophy is theology.
A few words about theology. I’ll start by indicating what theology is not – and for that I’ll summon the aid of St. Irenaeus, whose fear of falling into heresy led him to degrade the inherent powers of the human mind, and to take a decidedly anti-intellectual stance. “It is therefore better and more profitable to belong to the simple and unlettered class, and by means of love to attain to nearness to God, than, by imagining ourselves learned and skilful, to be found [among those who are] blasphemous against their own God, inasmuch as they conjure up another God as the Father” (Against Heresies 2.26.1, tr. ANF 1). So, for Irenaeus, it is better for us to squelch our natural human desire for knowledge, along with the faith that our reasoning can lead us to a glimpse of the “Good beyond Being” (Plato, Republic VI.509b), than to run the noble risk of falling into error regarding the Godhead. Here we encounter the main difference between what I have taken to call the humanism of a true theologian like Origen and the ‘guru mentality’ of a dogmatician like Irenaeus. (By ‘guru mentality’ I mean the surrender of one’s own quest for knowledge or ‘enlightenment’ by deferring to the guidance of a supposedly more experienced teacher.) Origen believed that the human mind is eternally active, and creative, and capable of engaging with God in a mutual co-operation leading to the perfection of the human soul. Irenaeus believed, as did many of his successors (such as St. Maximus), that human ‘perfection’ will consist in a complete submission to God, in which any positive human contribution plays little no part (see, for example, the striking statement of Maximus regarding the replacement of the human ego by the divine presence, in Chapters on Knowledge 2.88, or the self being wholly overcome by the object of its desire, i.e., God, in Ambiguum 7 1073C-D, etc.). The weakness of the fallen human nous is not healed, for Irenaeus, so much as it is defused by the dictatorial power of God.
If, therefore, even with respect to creation, there are some things [the knowledge of] which belongs only to God, and others which come within the range of our own knowledge, what ground is there for complaint, if, in regard to those things which we investigate in the Scriptures (which are throughout spiritual), we are able by the grace of God to explain some of them, while we must leave others in the hands of God, and that not only in the present world, but also in that which is to come, so that God should for ever teach, and man should for ever learn the things taught him by God? (Against Heresies 2.28.3, tr. ANF 1)
The eskhaton, then, for Irenaeus, is an eternal schoolroom, with God as omniscient teacher. How different this is from Origen’s description of the heavenly schoolroom, at the end of Book II of the De Principiis! Origen describes the salvific souls as co-operating with God on a voyage of discovery. As each soul gradually progresses more and more along the path of wisdom, each “feasts upon” the various problems of the meaning and causes of all things. The culinary metaphor is important, for it implies a shared activity: God provides the food, and the soul consumes it, each according to its ability to digest the food. This is an extended metaphor, taken from Hebrews 5:12-14. The more the soul advances in knowledge, the richer the food becomes. Origen is not saying that we will leave our instruction wholly in the hands of God; rather, the salvific soul is described by Origen as literally taking up its instruction with its own hands, i.e., consuming the intellectual food given to the soul by God. In the eskhaton, we will not simply sit in chairs fidgeting before a schoolmaster, but actively participate in a feast of endless accumulation of knowledge. In short, a philosopher’s paradise!
