Authenticity, Power, and Hobbits

Authenticity, Power, and Hobbits

Thoughts on Two Prominent Frenchman, and Bilbo Baggins

This odd set of musings is based on some side reading I have been doing on the subject of some prominent French left-wing philosophers guided by the critical essays of Sir Roger Scruton. The latter is a British philosopher, whose works I highly recommend, in the tradition of British Burkean conservatism. He is a brilliant analyst of the moderns and an excellent literary critic, with his main concerns being Kant, conservative ethics, and aesthetics. He is not typical in that he is not simply a laissez-fair capitalist and Christian moralizer, but rather he is concerned with the conservation of functional institutions which preserve the liberties and benefits which have made what can generally be called the West a generally good place to live. He has the air common to many of the great twentieth century British writers, a strong sense of home, a love of rustic living, and a keen aesthetic sense. His critique of the thinkers of what he calls the "New Left" is very thoughtful, and he is very keen both to give his intellectual opponents the benefit of the doubt concerning any planned malice,and to acknowledge their merits where they lie.

With this in mind, it has been interesting to read his critique of the twentieth century French giants Sartre1 and Foucault2. I personally have only a slight experience with the former and none with the latter, so my comments here are largely a reflection on the ideas exposed by Scruton.

In describing these two thinkers it has been interesting to see how Scruton intertwines their works with their lives. This important aspect of a thinker, his own behavior, relationships, and deeds, is not often enough discussed when dealing with the merits and origins of their ideas. Sartre, for instance, enamoured as he was by the French decadents like Baudelaire3 and Flaubert4, lived out many of their ideas, but to a new peak of expression because of his philosophical leanings. He lived a life of sexual extravagance, and won fame and notoriety in Parisian high society out of keeping with his professed and doggedly maintained Marxism. Likewise Foucault, a homosexual who frequented sado-masochist clubs, lived a life of licentiousness while also conceiving of his work as a great stand for liberty from oppression. These ideas and life-styles ought to seem familiar to anyone who has contact with current academia and the so-called "millenial" generation, and I presume a similar feeling exists in the now maturing generation.

A large part of the appeal of Sartre, Foucault, and their school is the way in which they adopted and individualized the Marxist class struggle. They were able to transmute this struggle against the "bourgeoisie" into a struggle against "bourgeois" morals and the structures of authority. Sartre in particular seems to have built up a notion of "authenticity" which centers on the liberation of the self from the other. This other is defined in the terms of conformity. Obviously in context of a Marxist system of thought this produces contradictory notions. Identification with the proletariat as class while also seeking to be authentic as identified against a "totalizing" moral and societal are inherently opposed notions. Scruton significantly notes that this is above all, in his estimation, a fiction made for the self, an internal almost mystical conviction being set up against the conventional. There is in the background a longing for truth, but the desire to arrive at a personal and entirely unique and unconditioned notion of reality and the truth thwarts its real pursuit: if it is enduring and external it looks too much like the much hated "other". This leads someone like Sartre to a constantly negative appraisal of the world. The French intellectual sneer is by now a caricature, but it is much involved in this attitude. Scruton puts it well when he notes, "since he has no values, [the gauchiste or leftist]'s thought and action can be given only a negative guarantee. He must fortify his position by unmasking the deceptions of others.5" This "unmasking" takes the form of the constant withering critique, the continual prying for the "real" motives, the "catch" in every deal.

Foucault follows up on this tendency. His contribution to the history of philosophy is his dubious contention that all human relations and the very language that enshrines those relations are relations of power. He has difficultly perceiving any reality beyond power, and that power itself is apparently ill defined. His history books are scathing condemnations of asylums, hospitals, and prisons, all of which impose the power structures of the so-called "classical", or pre-French revolution, and bourgeois social orders. He views the madman as someone with a truth which cannot be captured in speech, and therefore beyond the reach of bourgeois reason. This particular notion has begun showing itself in the current (2018) debates surrounding mental illness, physical health, and law. There is almost hanging in the air the threat, because of the fear of offense, of the repudiation of diagnosis, treatment, and the functioning of justice. It is from Foucault these, and all relativist modern notions, draw at least a portion of their origin. This suspicion all human structures as being somehow the support structures of tyranny corrupt much of our modern discourse, and indeed Scruton notes that, "paranoia is no more than localized relativism- a specific and focused manifestation of the desire that reality be subservient to thought, that the other have an identity entirely determined by one's own response to him." It is the authentic self's response to what Foucault calls the "gaze" of the other. One senses perhaps a repressed feeling of shame or conscience, but that may perhaps be going too far. Regardless the other is certainly a condemnatory and oppressive figure in this framework to anyone cultivating a sense of authenticity as defined by Sartre and further added to by Foucault.

In the lifestyle and thought of both these figures, the notions of authenticity in distinction with the other and the hidden relations of oppressive power at work in all human institutions, we sense also in their lifestyle and sentiments a love for the transgressive. This love has deep roots in French thoughts, but we shall concern ourselves here only with the decadents. The poetry of Baudelaire and the novels of Flaubert present a love for the real, but it is tainted by the movement towards pleasure and a certain sardonic cynicism towards convention. This is certainly true of the work of our two philosophers. Their work is in many ways the systematization of the "poetic" or image based insights of the decadent writers of the 19th century. The identification of someone like Foucault with the madman, the diseased, the criminal, identifying them as the victims of oppression and a system in which they don't fit, seems airily unreal, the musing of someone far removed from the realities of disease and crime. Similarly Sartre's identification with the poor, despite the poor's general lack of identification with him and their suffering under the former's cherished Marxist ideals, is especially odd considering his popularity in Paris's social high life and his constant presence in the cafes and salons of the Paris elite. It is symptomatic of what the Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho calls cognitive parallax; their manner of living contradicts their ideas and their very assumptions render their theories untenable.6

These thinkers, my intuition tells me, deep down wanted a great adventure out of their lives, a heroic struggle against evil and oppression, to be fighting for the freedom of the masses. They found themselves in our own disenchanted age with no dragons to fight or evil kings to cast down. They were faced with the much more banal enemy of the bourgeois businessman and bureaucrat, who funnily enough was often happy enough to support his own critics. Scruton notes that the middle and upper classes of modernity "extol the gauchiste as the absolver of his corrupted conscience. The gauchiste therefore becomes the redeemer of the class whose illusions he has been appointed to unmask." By his transgressions, his attempted courageous stand against the world, he has come to be "born aloft on the shoulders of the bourgeoisie whose habits he tramples, and to enjoy again the aristocrat's place in the sun." He has not achieved what he desired and his transgression becomes bitter to him. Sartre ended his life, contrary to his own perception of himself, as a French institution. Foucault died of AIDS, receiving hospital care, ironically in a former asylum he had critiqued. Scruton notes that at the end of Foucault's life, he had begun, while writing his history of sexuality starting from the ancient world, to be changed by his studies and his illness. He discovered no ancients believed pleasure to be the most important element of sexual relations, and he began to see the importance of the family. Scruton ends his chapter on these two intellectuals by saying, "I was constantly drawn to the thought that Foucault's belligerent leftism was not a criticism of reality, but a defence against it, a refusal to recognize that, for all its defects, normality is all the we have."

This last insight, in addition to a familiarity with the Marxist project, leads me to my own principle thoughts on this subject. The longing for adventure amidst the disenchanted world is deep. We have a lack of the transcendent in our modern western societies, a lack of that which makes a simple spring of water a holy well, or a ring of toadstools into a fairy ring. These are small superstitious examples, but they are emblematic of a worldview that accepts the entrance of the light of eternity into modern life, of something that gives the deeds of each man or woman an eternal significance. What we have instead is our view of progress, of either advancing or regressing humanity. This is a wearying task, because one is constantly being buffeted by the winds of time, and inevitably your own work becomes the dross to be purified by a later generation. Veneration for you and your deeds is conditional to its continued utility toward forward movement. And the vast mechanization, the great isolation of the modern city and the great invisible expanse of the internet, makes one feel lost. These French intellectuals show the struggle in modernity for heroism, but their notion of the hero rejects all that is small and familiar for the vague and undefined future, for the ever delayed day of fulfillment in full authenticity when the intellectual will finally be reunited with the renewed and authentic humanity and cease his lonely wandering.

In the last moments of this post I would like to integrate the small figure of Bilbo Baggins, and his similarly unprepossessing creator J.R.R. Tolkien. I mentioned earlier that the English writers of the twentieth century have had a talent for bringing out simple pleasures and the rustic life. Nowhere is this more evident than in The Hobbit. Bilbo Baggins's story is the story of someone swept into the extraordinary and the uncomfortable. His only thought during the dangers? Bacon and eggs, and the kettle singing! His horizons are opened in the course of his travel, such that in the later novels he can desire mountains and travel, yet it is his grounding in the ordinary joys that makes him appreciate his experiences. Bilbo's travels help him gain an appreciation for the normal that he took for granted in his former life, they made him, as we see in the Fellowship of the Ring more generous and hospitable. His encounter with the world, with want and terror, gave him a part in the final end of physical evil in Middle-Earth, by his finding of the Ring of power. Tolkien's love of the homely is fascinating in parallel with his equally strong sense of adventure and romance. It is perhaps unsurprising in a man who had really known want and terror in the trenches of the First World War. But perhaps more important, he was bequeathed by his Catholic faith with the knowledge of all classical Christians; that ordinary things are the vehicle for the extraordinary. The transcendent works through what looks meager. Bread becomes the bread of angels, a virgin's womb is made wider than heaven, the Son of Man slays death and reveals Himself to be the Son of God. Bilbo is an example of this, one of the smallest and least remarkable persons who becomes the instrument of victory over evil. The adventure of this life is not to be found in the trangressive authenticity and Utopian dreams of the melancholy French philosophers. It is to be found in being small, loving the normal things which are constantly under threat, and being ready when called upon to defend them.

1. Jean-Paul Sartre is a well known philosopher often associated with existentialism and Marxism, his most well know work is probably Being and Nothing, and many have heard his terse maxim, "Hell is other people."
2. Michel Foucault is famous for his theories of power and he is immensely influential in the modern social sciences.
3. Charles Baudelaire is famous for his poetry, especially the book Fleurs de Mal. I also highly recommend this First Things article on the decadent poets, "The Cursed Poets and their Gods"
4. Gustave Flaubert was a novelist, particularly famous for subverting the moralizing and activist trend of French literature, his most famous works being a Sentimental Education and Madame Bovarie
5. All quotations in this text are from chapter four of Scruton's Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left. I have the kindle version and so cannot supply page numbers.
6. Olavo de Carvalho is a Brazilian philosopher, particularly critical of Marxist thought. In this instance I'm referencing one of his ideas, an explanation of which may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y_SQBdVHQk&t=6s

Tradition in St. John of Damascus,Knowledge and Truth

This is part of three of my essay on the worldview of John of Damascus.

 The Damascene on Knowledge and Truth

In this vein we shall turn to our primary subject, the prefatory letter and introductory chapters of the Dialectica. In these texts we recieve a sense of how the Damascene conceives his task. Fr. Florovsky has described the Damascene's thought well when he describes it as a “dogmatic code”.1 To understand this code we shall first discuss the saint's conception of knowledge. In the first chapter of the Dialectica, he declares, “Nothing is more estimable than knowledge, for knowledge is the light of the rational soul,” and he goes on to clarify what he means by knowledge by defining it as “ the true knowledge of things which are.”2 We are not however immediately capable of all knowing. In order to discern truth from falsehood it becomes necessary to have a teacher, and to be taught by, “the Teacher in whom there is no falsehood” who speaks with “the voice of Him who is the wisdom and power of God the Father,” who alone is infallible. So knowledge, for the Damascene, is trained in us by listening to the Word of God, Who reveals the mysteries of God, man, and the world to us, and by this knowledge we become filled with light.

In addition to this light of knowledge however, the Damascene reveals another prerequisite to true knowledge, to the perception of the surpassing light. This is purity of heart. “Let us approach” he proclaims, “with attention and in all sincerity, and  proceed without letting the spiritual eye of our soul be dulled by passions,...”3 Our soul must be pure in order to perceive the light and goodness of the Truth. The saint references the Lord's own saying, “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matt 6:23) If the mind, which is the eye of soul, be filled with the darkness of sin, how can it be relied upon to see? So the saint makes clear the ascetic prerequisites to the work of knowledge, especially since all Truth is God's own. He also makes reference to this when he discusses his reluctance to undertake his work on the Fount of Knowledge, comparing himself to Moses, who feared to speak to the people, “then how am I, who am defiled and stained with every sort of sin,... and who have purified neither my mind nor my understanding that they may serve as a mirror of God and His divine reflections...?”4 While this is, of course, tropaic rhetoric, he utilizes this device in order to show the seriousness of that task he has undertaken; "to be a mirror of divine truth, to reflect the light of the Godhead."5 He is stating his weakness in order not to lead his reader into thinking his reflection is a perfect one, and further to confirm in his audience the necessity of the “mirror” being clean in order to reflect the divine light. In the light of both his idea of knowledge and of the necessity of purity, we can examine his program.

We have observed above that this program is made the most explicit in the Prefatory Letter to Cosmas, bishop of Maïuma. The passage in question is as follows:

"First of all I shall set forth the best contributions of the philosophers of the Greeks, because whatever there is of good has been given to men from above by God,... If however there is anything that is contrary to the truth, then it is a dark invention of the deceit of Satan and a fiction of the mind of an evil spirit,... In imitation of the method of the bee, I shall make my composition from those things which are conformable with the truth and from our enemies themselves gather the fruit of salvation. But all this is worthless and falsely labeled as knowledge I shall reject. Then, next, after this, I shall set forth in order the absurdities of the heresies hated of God, so that by recognizing the lie we may more closely follow the truth. Then, with God's help and by His grace I shall expose the truth- that truth which destroys deceit and puts falsehood to flight and which, as with golden fringes, has been embellished and adorned by the sayings of the divinely inspired prophets, and the divinely taught fishermen, and the God-bearing shepherds and teachers- that truth, the glory of which flashes out from within to brighten with its radiance, when they encounter it, them that are duly purified and rid of troublesome speculations. However as I have said, I shall add nothing of my own, but gather together into one those things which have been worked out by the most eminent of teachers and make a compendium of them..."6

There are several points that should be emphasized at the outset. First, the saint's notion of truth is, like his idea of knowledge, external “coming from above”. Second that he views this truth as having an absolute character, indeed a personal one, being coterminous with God Himself, as he displays in calling heresy “hated of God,” and error an “invention of the mind of an evil spirit,” and which is implicit when he describes truth as making the pure radiant.  This is further emphasized in the Dialectica when the saint makes Christ necessary as the teacher of truth to the, as yet feeble, mind.7 Third, we see that he chooses his material in such a way that it is “conformable to the truth,” and that he aims to show the lies of heresy to “ more closely follow the truth.” Lastly we should notice that this truth, revealed from God, has been “embellished”, or elucidated and clarified, by those who have lived holy lives. These persons are closely associated with the writers of the sacred scriptures. He enumerates the prophets and fishermen, the writers of the Old and New Testaments, and he adds to their number the later shepherds and teachers, the saintly bishops and theologians. So we see he aims at applying a consistent standard, namely conformity to a received external truth which is absolute and personal, to all information from the outside, the works of the philosophers and human reason. This standard is received by purifying oneself and listening closely to the divinely inspired teachers in scripture and the fathers, but foremost by being instructed by God Himself. This is how he means to supply “nothing of [his] own” while still enumerating those “things which are”. Having discussed the method, it is important next to see it in action in how the Damascene treats his sources.

1. Florovsky, Fr. Georges Vasilievich. The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century. Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987. Ch.7
2. John of Damascus. Saint John of Damascus, Writings. Translated by Frederic H. Chase, Jr. Vol. XXXVII. Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1970. Pg. 7
3.John of Damascus, Writings Pg. 8
4. John of Damascus, Writings pg. 4
5. This is known as the modesty trope, in which the author downplays his own skill. This writer does not believe this to mean the saint was speaking "rhetorically" in the negative sense. St. John likely believed in his own insufficiency as well as writing it according to to the rules of style. The saintly men of times past felt that, even in their deficiency, they could, and indeed were bound, to contribute what they had in order to be good stewards of the talents given them. In the opinion of this writer it is unhelpful to read the Holy Fathers as if, because they write according to convention, that they therefore lack sincerity in their writing.
6. Emphases my own, John of Damascus, Writings pgs. 5-6
7. John of Damascus, Writings pg. 8

The Beauty of Orthodoxy, Devotion to the Mother of God

This is the script for a lecture I delivered at a student conference held recently in honor of the completion of this year's course on the Mother of God in Orthodox Theology and Devotion, taught by the inestimably great Fr. Maximos Constas.

Apse Mosaic of the Mother of God in Haghia Sophia, Istanbul

The Beauty of Orthodoxy

Devotion to the Mother of God in the Homilies of Photius

For some two decades following the resounding defeat of iconoclasm, Haghia Sophia, the greatest church of Christendom lay unadorned, the marks of the epoch making struggle against iconoclasm still evident. And so the occasion of the unveiling of a newly installed icon of the Mother of God was bound to be one of pomp. As it was the event was even more replete with symbolism; it occurred on Holy Saturday in 867, immediately after the reception of a large group of heretics, in the presence of the heirs of the very emperors who had destroyed and profaned the icons. This triumph was personal for the reigning Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Photius, a great scholar, statesman, and churchman. As a pious Christian and student of the Fathers he shared in the joy of the victory of Orthodoxy. As a hierarch it was a seminal achievement of his patriarchate. As a son, it was the vindication of the sufferings of his own parents, martyred under the iconoclast emperors. This was a victory both for the Church as society, and for its individual faithful. The Iconoclast controversy was an attack on the pious devotions of the Church, the veneration of relics, the saints, and images all inter-connected in the controversy. It was in this light that many of the defenders of Icons chose as their specific focus to compose homilies on the Mother of God. She was, and had been for some time, a central figure in the history of dogma, and the iconodules rightly pointed out the consequences of the incarnation of Christ for Christian art, that the Mother of God makes her son visible to us by His putting on of her flesh, and in consequence making Him depictable. Beyond this dogmatic consideration though more was at stake: the Theotokos is our intercessor, and the example and image by which we draw closer to God, an image of a humanity perfected by God, making her, in eternal relation to Her Son, the symbol and seal of Orthodoxy, both in dogma and in piety. Photius speaks about the Mother of God in exactly such a way in his homilies. She is the subject of several of his homilies, both directly and indirectly. We shall speak about three of those homilies: Homily V On the Annunciation,  Homily IV On the Departure of the Russians, and Homily VII On An Image of the Mother of God. Through Photius's descriptions of the Mother of God we shall see the multi-faceted content of devotion to the Mother of God at the beginning of what has been called the Byzantine Renaissance; or the Second Byzantine Golden Age.

We shall begin with Homily V, On the Annunciation. The Annunciation was a favorite subject for the iconodule writers, and we find it discussed in homiletic series by St. Andrew of Crete and St. Germanos of Constantinople among others. The feast gives an opportunity for the speaker to discuss Mary in two capacities; her dogmatic relationship to Christ and her role as an example for the faithful. In this homily, we can see how Photius, a consummate educator, accomplishes both goals. 

Photius uses several different modes of speaking, giving a panegyric, and an explanation of the Mother of God's dogmatic role. However the piece really shines in the extended invented dialogue between the Theotokos and the Archangel Gabriel. It is an example of ethopoiisis, or character study, used to excellent effect in this text. The dialogue envisions Gabriel, the angelic herald, as an earthly ambassador treating with the Virgin. She does not immediately accept, but in her Photius offers an example of discernment; she questions the angel as to how the miracle can happen to her, saying, “she was troubled, but she did not turn away; she was troubled but she cast in her mind inquiring into the manner of [Gabriel's] salutation, yet perceiving that its cause escaped understanding.” The virgin is here depicted as an example of prudent wisdom, neither refusing outright, nor accepting without reflection. She shows the discernment that Eve, our foremother, lacked when she listened to the serpent. For this reason she is “seized by a prudent fear, and amazed by the strangeness,” of what she is hearing.

The angel here responds by stating the mystery is greater than he, the messenger, knows, and that also, “the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. It is that which shall teach thee... it shall interpret how thou shalt conceive...” He does not end here however. He references the old testament as a proof; “if thou wishest to accept credence of my tidings by means of examples, inferring great things from small ones, and confirming the things to come by things past, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son in the same manner as Aaron's rod,...” he goes on to mention Gideon's fleece which was bedewed while the ground remained dry, and the bush that Moses saw burning but unconsumed, referring these to the Theotokos. These references serve to show the people also how they might know, and inquire into truth, by trust in the Holy Spirit and by searching the Divine Scriptures. This trust is given its final example, the example set to mold the believer in the pattern of the Virgin's assent, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be to me according to they word.”

Homily 5 ends in a series of familiar refrains: “‘Hail much-graced one, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.’” By praises like these, reminiscent of the Akathist hymn, the patriarch invites the people to join in the angel's praises as he concludes his homily. In the spirit of the praise and supplication of the Mother of God we move to Homily 4, on the Departure of the Russians.

In this homily we see, par excellence, the Mother of God's role as intercessor. This homily and its immediate predecessor were delivered at the time of the unexpected invasion of Constantinople by the Russians, a hitherto “unknown tribe of barbarians.” Photius speaks in both homilies of the damage being done by the rampaging horde; their devastation of the suburbs of Constantinople, and he informs his flock that this has come because of their sinfulness and lack of purity in life. Even after the retreat, he begins by again recounting, in this homily, how the sins of the people have brought on this sudden onslaught. He sees these events in the light of Scriptural history: the barbarians are a scourge sent from God.

In the midst of this deserved suffering, Photius brings to light God's mercy. And how has this mercy come to the people? Through their benefactress. Having admitted their sins, and, “at the time when, denuded of all help, and deprived of human alliance, we were spiritually led on by holding fast to our hopes in the Mother of the Word, our God, urging her to implore her Son, invoking her for her protection as an impregnable wall for us, begging her to break the boldness of the barbarians, her to crush their insolence, her to defend the despairing people and fight for her own flock.” The people of the city, with the patriarch, carried the sacred relic of the robe of the Theotokos about the city walls, and the Patriarch exults in the miraculous garment saying, “It embraced the walls, and the foes inexplicably showed their backs; the city put it around itself and the camp of the enemy was broken as at a signal; the city bedecked itself with it, and the enemy were deprived of the hopes which bore them on.” Above all he praises her as the intercessor whose words availed to save them, and moved her Son to accept the people’s repentance, “we offered freely our prayers and performed the litany, thereupon with ineffable compassion she spoke out in motherly intercession: God was moved, His anger was averted, and the Lord took pity on His inheritance”. It is by the prayers of the Lord's mother that the city was saved, in the mind of Photius. This is not merely to be taken as some sort of pious trope either. The depth of feeling, the tender relief of the Patriarch and his flock and their gratitude towards the Theotokos is an essential and unavoidable element of the tradition of the Orthodox Church. She is a pillar by which the faithful stand and come closer to Christ. We have seen how the Mother of God helps to shape our behavior by conforming to her example, how she is our help in trials, lastly we shall see how she, beyond being a dogmatic symbol, embodies Orthodoxy in her own beauty, shown forth in her Icon.

In Homily 17, we return to where we started; the unveiling of an image of the Virgin in Hagia Sophia. The Patriarch describes this event as the triumph of Orthodoxy, and the plunge of all the heresies of ancient times up to the recent iconoclasm into the abyss. Yet what is most interesting for our purposes in this homily is the constant interplay between three features; the physical building, the spiritual Church, and the image of the virgin. This is unsurprising given the Iconodules emphasis on the real relationship between the image, the physical icon, and its prototype; the reality which the image depicts.

He says of the image that, “[w]ith such a welcome does the representation of the Virgin's form cheer us, inviting us to draw not from a bowl of wine,but from a fair spectacle, by which the rational part of our soul, being watered through our bodily eyes, and given eyesight in its growth towards the divine love of  Orthodoxy, puts forth in the way of fruit the most exact vision of truth. Thus even in her images does the Virgin's grace delight, comfort, and strengthen us!” Her very image strengthens us, heals us, both feeds and increases our perception of Orthodoxy, and is like strong drink, the very gladness of our faith. He says of the image that its silence is not inactive, “neither is the fairness of her form derivatory, but rather it is the real archetype.” He contrasts the wholesomeness of our Lady's direct presence to the unclean attacks of the iconoclasst on the physical building. Here we see Haghia Sophia, and our Lady's icon in particular, become a cipher, a stand in for Holy Orthodoxy. The scars born by the building are her scars, and the scars of the faithful. The blemishes are her blemishes, and that of all the church. Likewise in the restoration, Orthodoxy is cleansed, the ornaments in the Church restored, and our Lady's image returns. He uses here allusions to the Song of Solomon, “All fair is my companion, and there is no spot in her” and likewise to Psalm 44, “the queen stood by on thy right hand, clothed in vesture wrought with gold, and arrayed in diverse colors.” These two texts of the Old testament each have a double significance. They are both read in the Orthodox tradition as pertaining to the Church as a whole, but also in specific to the Mother of God. So Photius is not altogether exaggerating, or at least is not egregious in exaggerating, when he declares that this day of the unveiling is “the beginning and day of Orthodoxy.”

We see then how fitting, from her deeds, and her goodness towards us, and how even by her very image the Theotokos is for us indispensable. For the faithful Orthodox how we perceive the Mother of God is caught up in our very conception of what it means to be faithful to God. She, as the Bride of God par exellence, is the image of the Church herself as God's bride. And because she is what we are to be, she stands for us, who stand with her in the Church, our hope and our intercessor, a pledge of the heights attainable by those who, in the Lord's words, “hear the word of God and keep it.” 

Note: the essay focuses on the Mother of God's role in Orthodox devotion and less on her role in dogmatic theology. Suffice it to say, I take for granted the position of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. The Mother of God is a guarantor of the Lord Jesus Christ's humanity; by her birth-giving He is fully man, by her virginity He is truly God. The Lord is of two natures, divine and human, perfectly both, without confusion or separation, united in a single hypostasis (self-existing person). The Son exists eternally united to the Father and the Spirit in the Godhead, but the Word has in the latter days become flesh, through her whose womb has become "wider than the heavens". Likewise this leads to the other base assumption of this lecture; that she is worthy of honor. She has a relationship to God closer than all humanity, for God chose her, as the pinnacle of the human race, to be His mother according to the flesh. No other human being has been so favored, nor shall they be.

Tradition in St. John of Damascus, The Fount of Knowledge

This is the second in my series on the worldview of St. John of Damascus.

The Fount of Knowledge: Text and Structure

Before beginning our discussion on St. John's worldview, it would first be prudent to give an account of our primary text. The Fount of Knowledge has a long and varied history of transmission by manuscript. The prefatory letter, which we will be examining extensively, indicates the following form, in which it is often known today: Philosophical Chapters or Dialectica, On Heresies, and the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. However, these have been received variously, with most manuscripts only containing the preface, the Dialectica in one of two recensions, and the Exposition, with the On Heresies as a kind of appendix, if included at all. Only one manuscript preserves the text as we have received it. In his research of all of the above, the scholar Andrew Louth has been led to two conclusions which we shall follow in this paper; 1) that the Fount of Knowledge is one of the Damascene's later works, left unfinished at his repose, and 2) that the tripartite form in which it has been constructed is the saint's mature intention. Louth cites in defense of his argument the prefatory letter itself, chapter 2 of the longer recension of the Dialectica's reference to the text as a “compendium of all knowledge”, the unfinished character of this recension, and the varied manuscript tradition itself as pointing to these conclusions. These seem likely, and so I will be following Louth in this essay, namely that St. John intended the text in more less the same form as we now have it, but that it was unfinished at the time of the saint's repose.1

To return to the structure, the text as described by St. John is composed of three unequal parts; the Dialectica, the On Heresies, and the Exact Exposition. The first part is that which is derived from the dialectical, or rhetorical works of Aristotle and consists almost wholly of material from the Categories, with large supplements from later commentaries like the Eisagoge of Porphyry.2 This material is supplemented in a few key places with terms of importance for Christian theology, namely ousia or essence, hypostasis or self-existent person, prosopon or person as manifest in personality,  physis or nature, enhypostaton or self-existence, and anhypostaton or non-self-existence. Otherwise the saint largely adapts pagan material.3

The On Heresies is a list of errors, in which are included various forms of paganism, the philosophical schools, sects of Judaism, the various Christian heresies proper, Manichaeism and Islam. The latter two, along with Messalianism, a somewhat nebulous constellation of monastic errors, receive especially thorough treatment, and it is worth noting the saint also wrote separate apologetic texts against them.4 Much of this work seems to be lifted from other collections of heresies, in particular the Panarion of Epiphanios of Salamis.5 His selection though is characteristic of his views in general; namely that he has a broad view of “heresy” which is largely oriented toward error per se without the more modern connotation of being divergent opinions within a single religious grouping. In terms of the world-view of the Damascene, this means that error takes on a much broader lens, referring to all incorrect metaphysical and mystical perceptions of the universe. We shall examine this in more detail below in that section dedicated to pagan learning. Suffice it for now to remark that this makes St. John's position vis-a-vis other religions, Christians heresies, and intellectual schools fundamentally related to his Christian worldview.

It is in the last section, the Exact Exposition, that this view is most evident in terms of the selection and arrangement of material. The text has been arranged into four books by J.P. Migne in Patrologia Graeca,6 which modern editions follow. They contain a heterogeneous mix of material, consisting of Christian theology, natural science, and religious customary. Roughly speaking, while all four contain scriptural and theological content, they can be characterized as follows: the first deals directly with the nature of the Triune God, the second with natural science, cosmology, and anthropology, the third with Christology, and the last with Christian practices. This mixture fulfills the Damascene's promise in the Dialectica to give an account of all knowledge. Moreover I would contend this mixture not accidental. Structurally much of the text, by topic, seems to me to follow the Nicene Creed, beginning in book one with the One God in Three Persons, moving to “All things visible and invisible” in book two, then to Christology in book three, covering all the historical sections of the Creed and their implications, and ending with baptism, custom, and the eschaton, or end of the world, in book four.7 This said, this observation must be made with reservations, chiefly, that some elements are lacking. There is for instance no section dedicated to the Church in book four, as observed by Fr. Georges Florovsky. The latter further comments that the material is unevenly collected, and that the longest portion is Christological, in which he “senses that these were urgent and disturbing topics only recently.”8  Thus gaps are likely accounted for by their relatively low degree of controversy. There is also, perhaps, the chance that these sections were not completed by the saint before his repose, but here I am merely speculating, and the evidence from the saint's other apologetic works does not incline heavily towards this view.9 In either case, the material is meticulous in its composition, and displays, as we shall see presently, the same investigative method throughout; a consistent worldview.

1  Louth, Andrew. St John Damascene: tradition and originality in Byzantine theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pgs. 31-37

2 Porphyry was a disciple of the Neoplatonist Plotinus, who compiled the works of his master, and in addition wrote a very famous commentary on Aristotle's categories.

3 Louth 38-43

4 Louth 61-83

5 Louth 56-60

6 Patrologia Graeca, and its companion series Patrologia Latina, are comprehensive collections of the Church Fathers compiled by the French monk J.P. Migne, who arranged and edited the material.

7 It is worth noting other, more recent Orthodox dogmatic texts have substantively followed this structure, to greater or lesser degrees, cf. Fr. Michael Pomazansky's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology and Fr. Dumitru Staniloae's six volume The Experience of God, the former of which is particularly recommended by this author.

8 Fr. Georges Vasilievich. The Byzantine Fathers of the Sixth to Eighth Century. Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987. Ch.7

9 Namely his works on Islam, Iconoclasm, Manichaeism, and the Messalians, see Louth, Ch. 5

Tradition in St. John of Damascus, Introduction

I will be posting in several parts an essay I wrote on the topic of tradition as a key to understanding the way St. John of Damascus orders information. I think his method has value for us as well, and so I present it here.

Contextuality and Tradition

St. John of Damascus makes an exceedingly bold claim in the very beginning of his master-work, the Fount of Knowledge. In the prefatory letter, and repeated in the second chapter of the work, he claims that he has sought in writing to add nothing of his own, but rather that he is merely transmitting what has been found and confirmed to be true.1 This claim has been examined with great scrutiny by scholars2, who argue either that he is successful, and therefore unoriginal with the implication that this is a defect, or unsuccessful on various levels, and therefore dishonest and working towards an agenda. Andrew Louth in his book makes a nuanced argument, attempting to show both the saint's originality and his traditionalism. Regardless, St. John of Damascus's claim is central to any appraisal of his work, and will be the central issue of this paper.

 There is a tendency to view St. John, like many Fathers and ancient theologians, as being contextual, or men of their times. What is meant by this is, of course, varied. In the most charitable of senses it means to say that the author wrote within the problems and concerns of their day, which is obvious. In others it can be used to dismiss their concerns and ideas as irrelevant to contemporary problems. Yet in our discussion of this, or any author, there are issues beyond the “contextuality” which ought to be considered. Firstly there is the practical intent any author presents in writing their text; namely they seek to overcome either distance in place or time, or both. In our particular case, seeing as St. John has said of himself that he desires to “set down concisely... every sort of knowledge”3, his work is clearly meant to have an enduring character. Further St. John's claim reveals another facet of his direct intent, namely, that he at least claims that he wishes to be the exponent not of his own ideas, but of those passed on to him and, more to the point, of those ideas which are true. 

Therefore the claim St. John makes in the Fount of Knowledge is not an idle one, and I contend it consists fundamentally in the attitude he takes towards his sources, and towards questions of truth.  His terminology may be innovative or traditional, and his ideas may be expressed in chains of quotations or in unique formulations, yet these forms are not our primary concern. They are ancillary, in some sense, to the project. St. John of Damascus aims to provide a “compendium of all knowledge”, a knowledge which he claims is concerning “things which are as such”, those things that are real. His methods of ascertaining these things, then, are likewise important, and will substantively provide clarity on what St. John means by his claim to “unoriginality”.

St. John is operating within a framework that has an absolute criterion by which all other things must be seen. This criterion is the very revelation of the Word of God, at work throughout nature and at all times in history, and made explicit in the last times by the manifestion of the Son of God in the flesh. A more recent saint of the Orthodox Church, the late Archimandrite Justin Popovic, has put it very succinctly in one of his essays: “ Only in the wondrous person of the God-Man Christ has all the eternal Truth been revealed without remnant. The problem of truth was solved by the appearance of absolute divine Truth within the confines of human nature.”4 This truth revealed in human nature is the measure by which all truth is judged in the Christian Orthodox framework, and it is manifestly at work in St. John's ajudication of the various forms of knowledge. He says this himself when he says that we are in need of a teacher, “ so, let us approach that Teacher in whom there is no falsehood and who is the truth. Christ is the subsistent wisdom and truth and in Him are all the hidden treasures of knowledge.”5 He goes on to elaborate that all scripture is illumined by Him, and how this knowledge is the key to “the things which are”. Scripture itself teaches us this, in its revelatory way. For who else could enlighten us to the nature of the universe in all its aspects than He by whom all knowledge is disclosed, the Pre-eternal Word? For St. John the Evangelist says in his gospel, “ all things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:3)6” St. Justin Popovic commenting on this says, “[a] certain divine understanding and relevance has been poured over all matter- poured by the Lord Christ Himself, as the eternal Logos of God... The “logos-ness” and logicalness of this world, and of all that is created, becomes obvious only in the light of the incarnate Logos of God.”7 It is this knowledge, that our own feeble creaturely knowledge can only be on sure footing when illumined by He who alone is not creaturely and who can alone look at our world objectively, that St. John of Damascus adheres to, and it is in reference to this that he claims to say nothing of his own.

And so St. John, in accordance with his words, operates with a higher standard governing what he teaches. He cannot seek originality in the sense of something “new”, for he confesses that there is only one new thing, the incarnation, “the newest of all new things,.. [f]or what is greater than for God to become man?”8 St. John of Damascus passes on not only information, but a tradition and a hermeneutical key, a way of viewing reality. So for the Damascene there is a scale of things known, one which provides the light to know the others, and the others on which the light shines. This is laid out in his prefatory letter and in the first chapters of the Fount of Knowledge in the form of a scale of authority and knowledge; from the revelation of God, to the continuation of that revelation in Holy Tradition, to natural theology and the works of the wordly wise.

1 John of Damascus. Saint John of Damascus, Writings. Translated by Frederic H. Chase, Jr. Vol. XXXVII. Washington, D.C.: CUA Press, 1970. pgs. 6, 10
2 For instance it is a focal point to the discussion in Andrew Louth's book on the Damascene; Louth, Andrew. St John Damascene: tradition and originality in Byzantine theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
3 John of Damascus, Writings pg. 10

4 Popović, Justin. Man and the God-man. Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2009. Pg. 24

5 John of Damascus, Writings pg. 8

6 Popović pg.  25

7 John of Damascus, Writings pg. 269