An article about Eastern Orthodox theology

[Bill McEnaney]

Years ago, after I read this shocking article, I e-mailed my friend James Likoudis, a Greek Orthodox convert to Catholicism, to ask whether he agreed with the author's criticisms. Since he thought most of them were accurate, I wish another expert in that theology would share some thoughts about the article. Being a Catholic, I disagree with some Greek Orthodox doctrines. But I've always been taught that Catholic and Greek Orthodox theologies had much in common.

Christian Order - Read - Features - April 2007

 

[GreekOrthodox]

Now you understand just a part of the division between us. It runs FAR deeper due to the history and divergence of our theology over the centuries. Also the RCC seems to treat the East as a church in schism. Technically, we find the west not to be in schism, but in heresy.

One thing is that he picks two of the most complex theologians out of 20th century and says "THIS is Eastern Orthodox theology". This is like handing Summa Theologica to someone and saying THIS is Roman Catholic thought with no context to what Aquinas was writing about. Lossky was writing a theological treatise to other theologians, not to the general public. We certainly dont use Lossky's book for Bible studies, just as you wouldnt use Aquinas five proofs and then try to discuss them in reference to Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God.

FYI, its a very one sided article with lots of cherry-picking of quotes of Lossky and Meyendorff without context and I LOVE how he immediately says

"It is, of course, always possible to distort a writer’s thought by taking quotations out of context. We will therefore be discussing their full meaning in relationship to Eastern theology and spirituality as we proceed in our discussion."

He barely touches on anything. I wrote a 10 page paper on just a few paragraphs on Lossky's work in seminary and he wants to sum up Lossky's 300 page book in an outline???

For example, I have NO idea where he gets his information on this statement:
"The human mind can never, even with the assistance of God’s grace, know anything positive about God’s ultimate being and essence."

Eastern Orthodox do use cataphatic theology but it has its limit. We have to use both, positive and negative, as we can only understand the ineffable nature of God in what He has revealed to us. We say that God is eternal, but do we REALLY understand what eternal means? If we did, we'd be God.

His section on "Aversion to St. Thomas" is laughable. As for the EO, "violating those truths which are contained in the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilo", the creation ex nihilo is implied in the Nicene creed! ... CREATOR of heaven and earth...

Sorry if I get a little uptight here, but this article is just so badly written and so sparse that it is little more than a one page straw man that it begs to be kicked over.

 

[Bill McEnaney]

GreekOrthodox, years ago, I earned my first degree at a two-year, quintessentially American, career-oriented college, where education was a means, not an end. Nobody saw the wide, systematic perspective that kind of education would have given us.

St. Thomas's thought is systematic enough that it's hard to write a book about any one aspect of it. To understand his metaphysics, say, you need to interpret it with plenty of context because it relates intimately to many, many other parts of his thought.

Larson seems to have torn some Eastern Orthodox thought from a huge context. During a lecture about the Emergent Church movement, a very dangerous movement, I think, Dr. D.A. Carson convinced me that, although everybody sees the world some perspective or other, we can know how things actually are in the world. We can have justified true beliefs that conform to reality. But we can't see anything from God's perspective, because He's all-knowing and we're not that way. For St. Thomas, we can get genuine knowledge about God and His eternality. The trouble is that, He differs radically enough from us that we need to know analogically about Him when we know anything about Him. You shouldn't sum up something in a paragraph when you need a whole article just to try to scratch the tiniest part of the surface. Larson has been missing the Eastern Orthodox forest because he's been staring at a baby termite on a seedling.

What do you mean by "schism?" For a Catholic, a schismatic is one who rejects the papacy in itself and a heretic is someone who denies a dogma or doubts it obstinately. From our perspective the Eastern Orthodox are in both heresy and schism, in heresy because they reject papal infallibility and in schism because they reject papal primacy. For us, the Pope is not the first among equals. We believe that he's the visible head of the only Church that Christ founded. He's also a monarch like the vice-president of a company where Christ is the president. The rites in the Catholic Church, Roman, Ukrainian, Maronite, and so forth are parts of the one Church, not autocephalus Churches.

In Thomistic thought, by the way, "eternity" and "timelessness" seem to be synonyms of each other. Someone timeless is unchanging, unchangeable, and simple, where being simple means having no parts of any kind.