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