Peaks head back in

[Macarius]

Hello? Hi. How's it going?

 

[ArmyMatt]

haha, great to see you again man. place just hasn't been the same.

how is St Vlad's/life after St Vlad's?

 

[rusmeister]

Hey, Mac! Same as usual. Small talk, hairy ticks....

 

[Macarius]

haha, great to see you again man. place just hasn't been the same.

Seems quiet around here. Not as many inquirers coming through. Fewer regulars. I've been around a fair bit during the last year+ (two years?), even without posting much, and it seems like the board has shifted a bit further to the right wing of the church. Might just be my impression though.

how is St Vlad's/life after St Vlad's?

I would describe myself as "in recovery."

Life's not so bad right now. Sun's out. World Cup's going. Had a tasty burger for dinner. Christ is Risen and God is Good. Things could definitely be a lot worse.

 

[Macarius]

Hey, Mac! Same as usual. Small talk, hairy ticks....

Is it the hairy ticks making the small talk or the small talk making the fuzzy parasites?

 

[rusmeister]

Both, I suppose.

It's nice to see you! Don't let it go to your head, but I appreciate your theological insights. Me, I'm into apologetics, theology isn't my strong suit, and so I just go with "when in doubt, I am wrong and the Church (its consensus over space and time, of course) is right." As long as our intellectual fascinations are submitted to that, it should keep us out of trouble. But the balance, being complementary, is good.

Oh yeah, by the way, I should probably "complement" you on your spelling in the thread title.

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

Inego Montoya, "The Princess Bride"

 

[Knee V]

Greetings, good sir. You are missed around here.

 

[prodromos]

Oh yeah, by the way, I should probably "complement" you on your spelling in the thread title.

I didn't want to say anything, but I was wondering where "Peaks Head" was located and why it had ever been "out"

 

[Dorothea]

Hey, Macarius! Great to see you again!

 

[Macarius]

Both, I suppose.

It's nice to see you! Don't let it go to your head, but I appreciate your theological insights. Me, I'm into apologetics, theology isn't my strong suit,

That (apologetics) was actually my entry point into theology and history; I have difficulty separating them since what one is defending (apologetics) depends on an accurate understanding of what to defend (theology) which depends on not only knowledge of the phenomena of church history but also an ability to interpret that history (historical theology) as Tradition.

and so I just go with "when in doubt, I am wrong and the Church (its consensus over space and time, of course) is right."

I certainly do wish to submit my mind to our Lord in His Church, and firmly believe the Eastern Orthodox Church to be that Church and therefore the location in which I seek to submit myself; I am increasingly suspicious, though, of the Florovsky-style mid-20th century "neo-patristic synthesis" as a model for understanding how to access the Church's theology. I don't think it sufficiently accounts for all the datum of Orthodox history and, because of its synthetic approach, I actually think it ends up distorting the writings of the saints (including icons, liturgies, etc.) by "flattening" them into a series of theological proof-texts or propositions - this tends towards a system similar to low-church protestant prooftexting of Scripture, but with a more loosely defined canon of "ECF's" and the additional safety valve that if you don't like what a given ECF (or several!) say, well, they're fallible.

Basically, Florovsky and the whole neo-patristic synthesis is an adaptation of 1930's Phenomenological Hermeneutics (Husserl). There's a reason it didn't really appear before Florovsky - people in the 1600's and 1300's weren't "doing" the neo-patristic synthesis method of Orthodox theology.

Problem for us is that 99% of the parish-level theology we read or encounter today (which claims, rather straightforwardly, to "be" the teaching of the Church) is built off of the presuppositions of the neo-patristic synthesis. If we recognize that the neo-patristic synthesis, and Florovsky, are historically contextualized and therefore not synonymous with Orthodox Dogmatics, then the question of what, precisely, the Church teaches becomes far more complex and problematic.

I have an idea I'm toying with that I think might resolve that problem, but I don't know if it is sufficiently worked out well enough to give it a run-out. Though, admittedly, an open forum like this would be a good place to give it a first test run.

As long as our intellectual fascinations are submitted to that, it should keep us out of trouble. But the balance, being complementary, is good.

Sure! I like being complementary and complimentary. My absence really was about me and not about you. I have passions; they flare up. Being immersed in a highly pressurized seminary environment wasn't helping matters.

Oh yeah, by the way, I should probably "complement" you on your spelling in the thread title.

I suppose as a linguistic descriptivist that I should say "if you understood me, then the spelling was 'correct'" but, nonetheless, I thank you four yore incite.

In Christ,
Macarius

 

[Macarius]

Hey, Macarius! Great to see you again!

Howdy! I understand you're at Holy Cross now? How's that going?

 

[Macarius]

Greetings, good sir. You are missed around here.

Well thank you. And a hearty greetings to you as well. We'll see how this goes, but hopefully I can be "back."

 

[Macarius]

I didn't want to say anything, but I was wondering where "Peaks Head" was located and why it had ever been "out"

I find it entirely fitting that having now some three Masters degrees I still made that mistake.

 

[rusmeister]

I find it entirely fitting that having now some three Masters degrees I still made that mistake.

I tell my pupils (yes, I think that the better word, philosophically) they should grovel when they make such errors. Oh, and since visual demonstration is a big part of my teaching, I do like Gollum from LOTR. It's fun.

So some groveling would be appropriate...

 

[rusmeister]

That (apologetics) was actually my entry point into theology and history; I have difficulty separating them since what one is defending (apologetics) depends on an accurate understanding of what to defend (theology) which depends on not only knowledge of the phenomena of church history but also an ability to interpret that history (historical theology) as Tradition.



I certainly do wish to submit my mind to our Lord in His Church, and firmly believe the Eastern Orthodox Church to be that Church and therefore the location in which I seek to submit myself; I am increasingly suspicious, though, of the Florovsky-style mid-20th century "neo-patristic synthesis" as a model for understanding how to access the Church's theology. I don't think it sufficiently accounts for all the datum of Orthodox history and, because of its synthetic approach, I actually think it ends up distorting the writings of the saints (including icons, liturgies, etc.) by "flattening" them into a series of theological proof-texts or propositions - this tends towards a system similar to low-church protestant prooftexting of Scripture, but with a more loosely defined canon of "ECF's" and the additional safety valve that if you don't like what a given ECF (or several!) say, well, they're fallible.

Basically, Florovsky and the whole neo-patristic synthesis is an adaptation of 1930's Phenomenological Hermeneutics (Husserl). There's a reason it didn't really appear before Florovsky - people in the 1600's and 1300's weren't "doing" the neo-patristic synthesis method of Orthodox theology.

Problem for us is that 99% of the parish-level theology we read or encounter today (which claims, rather straightforwardly, to "be" the teaching of the Church) is built off of the presuppositions of the neo-patristic synthesis. If we recognize that the neo-patristic synthesis, and Florovsky, are historically contextualized and therefore not synonymous with Orthodox Dogmatics, then the question of what, precisely, the Church teaches becomes far more complex and problematic.

I have an idea I'm toying with that I think might resolve that problem, but I don't know if it is sufficiently worked out well enough to give it a run-out. Though, admittedly, an open forum like this would be a good place to give it a first test run.



Sure! I like being complementary and complimentary. My absence really was about me and not about you. I have passions; they flare up. Being immersed in a highly pressurized seminary environment wasn't helping matters.



I suppose as a linguistic descriptivist that I should say "if you understood me, then the spelling was 'correct'" but, nonetheless, I thank you four yore incite.

In Christ,
Macarius

I get everything you're saying, even though I'm not familiar with the details of the given schools of thought, and I totally agree that people can and do twist quotes of given fathers to come up with what they think to be the teachings.

There IS a really simple test for some things, though it requires a broad familiarity with literature and history, and preferably of a traditionally Orthodox nation as well as the US or England's, and that test is to ask what was held practically all of the time in those nations. While you may not get fine theological points this way, you can get a lot of broad ones, and moral teachings will be obvious. Deviant sexual activity is an obvious one. There really IS a rule, a line from which wrong ideas and actions really deviate. In other words, to refer not only to what individuals in the Church said, but what the varying populaces held in common as true over time. Divorce has really always been uncool, for example, and something very much to be avoided, and our time is a glaring exception to the rest of Christian history. Some of us ARE divorced, but we need to admit that it is a real fall from how we ought to be as Christians. When I look at ECF commentary, I find them to be in line with the general attitude and atmosphere of both the Christian East and West, and this confirms the consensus. (That's why Chesterton is right and his (gradual) conversion to the RCC is irrelevant to that - and I would add that, in reflecting that, we can dispense with any charges of being merely "a man of his time", or as you put it, being "historically contextualized".

Not that I'm trying to start a debate on that here; what I'm saying is that there are broader considerations than only the intellectual voices of the Church, even the ECF's, let alone Florovsky, Meyendorf and so on. And that some things really ARE simple.

You may begin to see that between the schools of simplicity and complexity, I lean toward simplicity wherever possible and applicable. I think over-intellectualizing to be as real a danger as provincial ignorance. It's no doubt good to know all of the preparatory prayers for the Eucharist by heart, but they all come down to a heartfelt "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!"

That reminds me of an anecdote...

 

[Dorothea]

Howdy! I understand you're at Holy Cross now? How's that going?

It's been an adjustment. Long and hard first year, but was told that's normal as it takes the first year for seminarians and their families to settle in and acclimate. We're doing well. How's your family? What are your plans now that I've read you've finished up at St. Vlad's?

 

[Macarius]

I get everything you're saying, even though I'm not familiar with the details of the given schools of thought, and I totally agree that people can and do twist quotes of given fathers to come up with what they think to be the teachings.

I think I'm speaking more broadly than the obvious examples, though. I'm increasingly convinced that the very mode of thought itself which undergirds much of 20th c. Orthodox systematic theology (and its derivatives, including what we tend to find in internet Orthodoxy like TAW or other places), is itself deeply flawed and not really in keeping with the very theology of the figures it purports to imitate.

In trying to imitate them synthetically as a unity or collective, to encounter a deeper mind of the Church "behind" the phenomena of their individual writings - a mind which is timeless, essential, and on some level knowable (even if only intuitively and imperfectly) - this is Husserl's phenomenology. Husserl applied it in the 1930's to literature / art and authorial intent; Florovsky picked it up (either intentionally or not) and applied it to the phenomena of Orthodox history (artifacts from tradition) and the Mind of the Church. The "canonical" sources of tradition (saints writings, icons, liturgy, conciliar decrees, etc.) functioned like the art or literature; the Mind of the Church like the "author" whose intent the interpreter (the modern theology) sought after.

But Florovsky, like other essentialists, didn't know what to do with non-conforming artifacts, so he rather invented the idea of the "Latin Captivity" to explain away the awkward Orthodox Tradition of the 15th through 19th centuries, before the "recovery" of the "real" Orthodox voice by the Neo-Patristic Synthesis in the 20th century. We parrot this line of thought rather automatically today, and it would have been unthinkable to Orthodox thinkers during the so-called "Latin Captivity" (or, for that matter, Orthodox thinkers of the Late Byzantine period, or any other period other than Florovsky's).

And what you say next, for that matter, confirms how deeply these ideas now exist within Orthodox theology...

There IS a really simple test for some things, though it requires a broad familiarity with literature and history, and preferably of a traditionally Orthodox nation as well as the US or England's, and that test is to ask what was held practically all of the time in those nations.

I think, given a fallen world, that this isn't a good test. What people have considered True or Moral does not seem like a good starting point for asking what they ought to consider True or Moral.

It's the naturalist fallacy, in short. Stating what is does not confirm what ought to be.

This can also be demonstrated historically, since there are plenty of examples of seismic shift in human behavior or belief (e.g. the movement from hunter-gatherer to husbandry to neolithic economic systems). There's good evidence from times when those lifestyles lived side by side (e.g. early urban society through mid 1st millenium BC) that the different groups very much did moralize about their behaviors. Semi-nomadic groups regarded the city-dwellers as immoral liberals for abandoning what had "always" been the proper way of life of human beings, and viewed agriculture as a human attempt to supplant God's proper order. Note the story of Cain and Abel, where one offers grain and the other offers sheep, and the one offering grain is refused and goes on (after committing murder) to become the father of city dwellers and urbanites. There's actually several more OT examples, but that one always seems so striking to me.

The Luddite argument against industrialization runs along a similar vein. It is true that until the time of industrialization, there was not industrialization. It does not follow that industrialization is de-facto evil or ungodly, and ought to be resisted.

There are also examples of changing cosmologies, changing anthropologies, changing soteriologies, changing theologies, changing epistemologies, changing scriptural hermeneutics, changing understandings of biology and physics, changing understandings of the relationship of the phenomena (biology and physics) to the epiphenomena (anthropology and cosmology) or even which one IS the phenomena and the epiphenomena. There's a good case to make that we've reversed everything today so that we imagine the biological or physical to be the stable reality (the phenomena) which then needs interpretation (epiphenomena), when there's really solid evidence that the ancient and late-antique societies (Grecco-Roman, including deep into the era of Orthodox Christianity) had it the other way around: the social order (anthropology, cosmology) was the stable phenomena and the physical world (including biology) was diversely "invented" as an interpretation of (and justification for) that existing reality of social and cosmological order.

We lost that sense of social-cosmic stability when we realized that it's a genuine fantasy (at least on the level of anthropology). Social order changes continuously. So when that became apparent (around modernity), ethicists, theologians, and philosophers shifted from interpreting human biology according to the needs of the social order and instead began to try to justify the social order according to the "inherent" qualities of human biology.

That's where you get the attempt to justify things like white supremacy through biology. Europeans clearly had superior economies and technologies; so if that were to be maintained then it MUST be an epiphenomenon that rested on a biological inherency - a phenomenon. The interpreted ethical "norm" that white (males) should hold the highest place in the world order must be based on scientifically valid biology.

The ancients would have gone the other way. They would have literally made up the "biology" to justify the social order. That's how you get Romans (or Greeks) variously describing those they conquer as biologically less manly than them (since they were capable of being conquered - of having their lands militarily penetrated like effeminates).

Again, though, if the social order is inherent (and biology conforms to it), then we have zero explanation for the high degree of changeability in social orders. Romans no longer control the European economy, nor do Greeks. Whites no longer have a massive technological and economic edge. Nor did they have ANY edge whatsoever during the 1100's AD, or the 500's BC, or several of any other centuries one wishes to pick.

But once one asserts that biology is stable and must give rise to a proper social order, then one begins to realize just how "made up" the biological explanations were and how hollow they sound. There is no inherent advantage in being "white" that makes one a superior administrator or some such nonsense. The social order had other, non-biological, causes (namely geography - basically, luck). Because of that, no social order (of the sort that imperialists wanted to justify) could be predicated on biology OR social reality. Social realities change, and biology didn't in fact support their program. Hence you get the push towards racial equality in the 19th through 21st century and beyond.

I'm picking "race" as the exemplar because I feel it is an area we are more likely to agree. That is, I've never heard you assert that one race is superior to another or any such thing, so it seems a safe "premise one" from which to begin.

TO SUMMARIZE: key ethical norms, AND their underlying justifications, can and do change over time. The mere fact that such-and-such norm has not yet undergone such a change does not mean the underlying justifications have not changed (they have; our anthropology, even in Orthodoxy, is radically different from the anthropology of early Christianity). Further, it does not mean that such-and-such norm or belief will not change in the future.

Predicating truth claims (ethical or not) on "non-variability" - on the stability of a belief over time - is therefore fallacious.

At most, I'd be (and am) quite willing to say that an old or long-held cultural norm is best approached with reverence and caution, since there is likely a good reason it has endured so well.

While you may not get fine theological points this way, you can get a lot of broad ones, and moral teachings will be obvious.

I think if you limit yourself to JUST Orthodox "cultures" and within those cultures JUST "canonical" sources (e.g. saints), you'll get Florovsky's Neo-Patristic Synthesis method. If you don't make those limitations, you'll get chaos, because human society is just that diverse.

Deviant sexual activity is an obvious one. There really IS a rule, a line from which wrong ideas and actions really deviate.

Um... nope. Sorry. That's one of the ones that has changed the most over time. Better to pick something like "murder is evil" or "honor your father and mother." But there are polygamist cultures and monogamous cultures, cultures that celebrate pederasty and cultures that condemn it, cultures that morally justify rape and cultures that condemn it, cultures that permit divorce and cultures that deny it entirely, and just about everything in between. There are cultures that allow or celebrate male-male intercourse and one's that allow or celebrate female-female intercourse. And the cultures that I'm thinking of in these examples would likely surprise even someone as historically educated as yourself. I struggle to think of a single sexual norm that is universal to all cultures across all times.

Even when I limit myself to Christian cultures, and even to Orthodox Christian cultures (though the degree and type of variance obviously goes down the more one limits one's sources, since numerically there is less that can vary and cultural proximity increases the likelihood of stability).

In other words, to refer not only to what individuals in the Church said, but what the varying populaces held in common as true over time. Divorce has really always been uncool, for example, and something very much to be avoided, and our time is a glaring exception to the rest of Christian history.

They were debating it in Jesus' own time, and it remained controversial in the 10th c. Byzantine court when the emperor wanted to remarry a third time, and it remained controversial for Henry VIII (who saw it as a matter of national security / stability). Our time has its own distinctiveness, but no - Roman Law was actually pretty liberal with respect to divorce (since marriage was a contract and could be dissolved as easily).

I'd grant you that most "canonical" Christian sources would say that divorce is less than ideal - but to what degree, and how to respond to it, varies considerably. Further, the selection of the canonical sources is ex-post-facto. Finally, your point was about culture broadly-speaking as a source of natural law, and that frankly just doesn't work (at least not with divorce).

When I look at ECF commentary, I find them to be in line with the general attitude and atmosphere of both the Christian East and West, and this confirms the consensus.

This is where you start sounding more significantly "neo-patristic" or "phenomenological." How do you know or come to understand what you here call the "ECF"s, the "general attitude and atmosphere" (mind / essence) of the Christian "East" and "West"? Where are those categories coming from? How did you arrive at them or derive them?

Even just speaking of "the ECF's" is problematic, because it assumes consensus / synthesis as part of (in the particular case of our conversation here) an attempt to justify consensus / synthesis.

And the attempt to preserve that synthesis or consensus, to defend that essence / mind behind a given phenomenon (e.g. Melito's Paschal Homily), inherently invites anachronism and distortion, as one is already looking at the phenomena with the assumption of synthetic possibilities - and not just possibilities, but realities. The synthesis is assumed, then found in the evidence, and this (circularly) confirms the synthesis, and then any discordant evidence is in some way dismissed (e.g. Latin Captivity, the errors of an individual saint, our fallen world poking through, the unknowability of the Mind we seek, etc.) so that the circularly justified and already assumed synthesis can be preserved.

What I find deeply ironic is that I don't see much evidence of this synthetic methodology in precisely the sources from which we seek the synthesis. There's a reason the 19th and 20th century had to "invent" Orthodox systematic theology.

(That's why Chesterton is right and his (gradual) conversion to the RCC is irrelevant to that - and I would add that, in reflecting that, we can dispense with any charges of being merely "a man of his time", or as you put it, being "historically contextualized".

It is literally impossible for a person to be anything other than a historically contextualized human. Unless you'd like to claim that Chesterton is Godlike in being beyond time and infinite in his knowledge. If he is finite in his knowledge, then the extent and reach of his knowledge is contextualized to what was available to him in his culture and historical locality. If he is "within" time rather than beyond it, then he is subject to change and inconsistency, and the forces which worked on him to produce that change would be determined by the time period in which he lived.

Not that I'm trying to start a debate on that here; what I'm saying is that there are broader considerations than only the intellectual voices of the Church, even the ECF's, let alone Florovsky, Meyendorf and so on. And that some things really ARE simple.

One is Simple: God. Everything else (really, every "thing" since God is not a thing) is inherently complex. We are ignorant, finite beings bound by subjective perspectives, biases, etc. There is nothing simple about Orthodox history, nor Orthodox faith. This may be my own personal problem, but to me simplicity is the temptation towards idolatry - towards something I can wrap my head around and control. I think you're right that complexity can also be a cover for idolatry - a cover for obfuscating the manipulation of verbal symbols (words) in an attempt to control the world. Sometimes, philosophers and witch doctors aren't that different, in this respect.

I think over-intellectualizing to be as real a danger as provincial ignorance.

The only danger in over-intellectualizing is if it is not accompanied by ascesis, prayer, and sacrament. That is, the exemplary Cappadocian fathers (all educated at the best facilities in the ancient world and thoroughly invested in academics for their entire life), St Photius of Constantinople, St Maximus the Confessor, and even St Gregory Palamas (among many, many others) show a long and vibrant allowance for the absolute pinnacle of intellect within even the most venerable canonical sources of Orthodox theology. Nyssa's Life of Moses does a nice job of pulling Moses as an OT exemplar of someone who combined the best of intellectual pursuits with an ascetic life of mystical prayer.

There is absolutely nothing under-intellectualized about Nyssa's Contra Eunomium or Maximus's Ambigua. They utilized the best available philosophical and literary tools in addressing the problems of their day. So did Florovsky, for that matter. But the tools have continued to change (we are no longer neo-Platonists like those of Nyssa's time, nor Husserl-Phenomenologists like Florovsky's time).

In Christ,
Macarius

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

Gurney takes eight Tylenol after reading Mac's post....grabs theological dictionary 38 times, nearly passes out, prepares for Rus to grab some Chesterton quotes and reload....

 

[RobNJ]

Gurney takes eight Tylenol after reading Mac's post....grabs theological dictionary 38 times, nearly passes out, prepares for Rus to grab some Chesterton quotes and reload....

*grabs some popcorn & sits down by Gurney*

 

[Macarius]

I should perhaps lay my cards on the table, however embryonic the idea may be (so I reserve the right to change my mind on this). I increasingly believe that True Orthodox is actually pluralistic Orthodoxy - I don't think Orthodoxy is contained in the proper articulation of doctrine alongside the performance of liturgy and ascesis (Creed, Worship, Spirituality).

Instead, I think Orthodoxy - and theology in general - is an interpretive activity communally engaged and constrained. It has more in common with a book club than with a scholar's classroom (though both are extremely poor analogies).

The text in question, though, is literally everything. We cannot separate our use of language, our interpretation of the world, our encounter with the things of the world - these are immediate and inseparable. To see something is to think about it and categorize it. The brain literally cannot see without interpreting, nor can it interpret without the schematics and frameworks for interpretation which is has built up gradually over time from infancy.

So all encounter is interpretive. This includes the encounter with the Divine Liturgy, the Scriptures, the Church; but it also includes my encounter with my comfy reading chair, the hug I give my child, seeing a sunset, or reacting to news on CNN. Everything is interpreted. Everything. Yes - even what I'm writing now (which is why misunderstanding is impossible).

Yes, that means words do not have singular nor stable meanings. Words are, in fact, quite detached from the essence of the thing they refer to. They are symbols, and symbols are fungible / interchangeable / changeable. Words are, in short, metaphors. The function by making a referential claim, but can't ever quite live up to the claim. When I say "tree" the image that pops into your head is different from the image that pops into mine, no matter how closely related those images might be.

So what am I driving at? Everything needs to be interpreted, from the simplest words and encounters to the most complex. From the way one says "hello!" to one's neighbor to the highest theology of the Liturgy.

Orthodoxy is the interpretive key that unlocks the universe. Or rather, Christ is that key (and this I assert without warrant - I simply believe this to be so and the rest of how I reason rests on it and it alone; it is my first premise, if you will).

Everything else just flows out from that. But HOW it flows out - in what WAY it flows out - and how it OUGHT to flow out - that is entirely changeable as time shifts and new contexts arise.

To me, if I were to attempt any kind of synthesis with Orthodox tradition, this is the one I would forward. Every generation of Orthodox Christians has attempted to interpret their inherited framework such that it should accord with Christ.

Thus, we may speak of the first generation of Christians as doing this with their inherited Judaism, and subsequent generations with Middle Platonism and (later) Neo-Platonism, with inherited schools of rhetoric (Second Sophist) and inherited understandings of politics (Roman Imperialism) and anthropology (Single-Sex Primal Androgyny), etc.

From early Judaism through Platonism, Byzantine Imperial Ideology, Scholasticism, Latin Captivity (Confessional theologies and Counter Reformation tendencies), Romanticism, Hegelian Philosophy, Husserl Phenomenology, Heidegerian Phenomenology, etc... Always Orthodoxy has adopted these modes of thought and, using their categories, artifacts, tools, etc., interpreted the world in accordance with Christ.

The problem is that this produces varied interpretations. The Trinitarian theology of Irenaeus of Lyons is distinct from that of Gregory of Nyssa and yet both are quite a bit more distinct from that of Zizoulas - and these are all Orthodox sources! And the Trinity is the most fundamental of our beliefs! This is the Creed at its heart.

But Irenaeus and Nyssa and Zizoulas respond to different times and different contexts. And there ISN'T some ghost of a "real" doctrine of the Trinity behind them that we can sort of quasi discern through synthetic reasoning. Irenaeus and Nyssa and Zizoulas say different things - sometimes fundamentally opposed things - but they also say True things, even though they say opposed things.

Irenaeus reasons his way through the Trinity using the categories of Middle Platonic mediation (just like the Gnostics did, for that matter), and some handy anthropomorphic metaphor (also like the Gnostics).

Nyssa uses Neo-Platonic categories (e.g. ideals as summative concepts encapsulating whole realities), but also a heavy does of Rhetoric and Language Theory in his refutation of Eunomius.

Zizoulas uses... I don't know - categories of modern personhood? He posits the Trinity as a communion of love between freely loving persons - basically, a model of consent-based interpersonal love that entirely (100%) depends on modern concepts of human psychology, consent, and personal identity. Totally different from Nyssa and Irenaeus, but totally Orthodox.

And this means they can all say the formula of the Creed (or, in Irenaues' case, something very close to it), but mean rather different things by that forumla. So the formula doesn't provide a "sure footing" for identifying the essence (the Mind of the Church) behind their ideas.

Like all things, the Creed must be interpreted.

Each era has, though, a counterbalancing tendency to view the interpretive project of the prior era as somehow definitive and therefore immutable. In other words, in each generation you have progressive Orthodox Christians and conservative Orthodox Christians. I don't mean "progressive" here in the sense that one generation's synthesis is inherently a step forward from the prior generation's - I don't buy the myth of progress on that level. Generations are just different, not better or worse.

I mean "progressive" (or liberal) in the sense of willing to call into question the underlying assumptions of the prior generation on the basis of changes in culture, philosophy, or other field (e.g. medicine and biology have radically changed the way we see the human person, especially the mind). I mean "conservative" only in the sense of resisting that desire to call those things into question.

Athanasius and Nyssa were, frankly, liberals of their day. In Athanasius' case, quite an obnoxious one. So was Photius of Constantinople, for that matter. In contrast, Theodore the Studite and John of Damascus were conservatives (the iconoclasts tended to have more of the academics). So it isn't like I'm saying "yay" to one group and "boo" to another. There are degrees of liberalism, also. Irenaeus was certainly more liberal theologically than Justin Martyr (who was pretty darned liberal in comparison to, say, the Epistle of Barnabas or Quartodecimens like Melito of Sardis), but Irenaeus was less liberal than the more adventurous Gnostics. Though in some ways, by today's standards, Irenaeus was MORE liberal than the Gnostics (who tended to preserve a bit more of their inherited anthropology, which Irenaeus challenged).

But straight down into the late Byzantine period and beyond you had people pushing Orthodoxy to interpret itself within its new realities (e.g. Moscow as third Rome type stuff, which is pretty liberal if you think about it in its time period), and those who pulled back.

The nice thing is that this pattern holds EVEN for the data that Florovsky and a lot of today's Orthodox systematics rejects. The whole confessional conflict of the 17th century makes a ton of sense. So does the Latin Captivity - where Orthodoxy took its intellectual and cultural context and made it Orthodox. That the theology of the Latin Captivity is seemingly at odds with or uneasy next to the theology of Irenaues and Nyssa is immaterial UNLESS we want them all to somehow (ultimately) say the same thing - that is, if we want a synthesis.

If we abandon a synthesis in favor of pluralism (of a symphony of diverse voices singing in harmony with Christ but each with their own note), then the diversity of the Latin Captivity next to Gregory of Nyssa does not produce dread in us but joy at the Spirit's activity in ALL Orthodox history.

Theology becomes something un-tamable, like a good book. We must continually return to it and re-envision it because we, in our fallibility, continually change and need to be re-integrated into it.

So when someone tells me that "X" should be excluded from the church I am deeply, deeply suspicious of the basis of that claim. Far too often, dogmatic maximalism ("fundamentalism") seems to be the root - if I can just collect enough witnesses from history to perspective "Y" in conflict with perspective "X" then I can say that "Y" IS Orthodox and "X" IS not.

But that isn't how the fathers reasoned - they openly and creatively used their context to produce varied and distinctive theologies. They were, in short, DYNAMIC (especially the earlier ones - the earlier you go, the more dynamic they appear).

About the only thing that seems consistently excluded are: a) those who exclude themselves, and b) those who interpret the phenomena of the world according to a different starting point (e.g. "not Christ" but, say "Torah" or "Mohammed").

In short, what Orthodoxy did with the Judaic Scriptures (interpreting them Christologically), and Neo-Platonism (interpreting it Christologically), and Roman Imperialism (interpreting it Christologically), and Scholasticism, and, and, and, etc. right on down to Florovsky interpreting Phenomenology "Christologically" (so to speak) - this is what I want us to do today EVEN IF it means rejecting the systematic theologies of the past century because those theologies, however normative they claim to be, are historically contextualized and merely one episode in a very long chain of Orthodoxy's attempt to interpret the world according to Christ.

What do I mean by "today"? Well, that would force us to ask what the prevailing perspectives are which we find challenging, and what the phenomena are that we find troubling. These are what invite theological creativity today. Our continuity with the tradition is not in repeating the norms of the past, but rather in imitating their dynamic interpretive creativity.

It is easier to discuss this in the specific context of a particular thing. EG) ethical norms for human behavior are based on our understanding of the human body (or, conversely, we may "invent" a narrative of how our body works in order to use that narrative to explain a given ethical norm). However, BOTH the ethical norms AND narrative of how our body works have changed (culturally speaking) over time. So things are morally permissible in today's society that would have been condemned in the past and vice-versa: we also condemn things today that were permissible in the past. Further, this shift in normative behavior interacts with how we understand the human body and human person, and this understanding likewise changes over time.

Our task, though, is in the context of today's understanding of the body. That's the material we have to work into conformity with Christ. Merely "returning" to the understanding of the body from the late second century doesn't work. You can find attempts at this, and it frankly requires a lot of unsatisfactory mental gymnastics even to get there and then, once there, it tends to sit uneasily. We don't REALLY think (today) that, for example, lesbians can grow male equipment from being too masculine (Clement of Alexandria did, as did many of his peers) or that the "heat" of male seed determines the genital anatomy of the offspring, or etc. etc. Seriously, ancient medicine had some really silly ideas.

Plus, basically none of these ideas are inherently Christian. They predate Christianity, by a far distance in most cases.

So mere return - a neo-patristic synthesis - doesn't suffice. Cannot suffice. If the ancient Christians under the guidance of the Holy Spirit could take the material of their ungodly culture and conform it to Christ then that is likewise what we must do.

Dynamic, Pluralistic, Orthodoxy.