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March 2026 Q&A Questions:

00:00 — How do we understand synergia (co-operation with God) alongside akrasia (weakness of will)? If we can do nothing without God, what does it mean to “try harder” vs rely on grace?

20:40 — How should we understand the Eucharist without falling into cannibalism or pantheism? Where is the boundary between participation in God and confusing God with creation?

32:50 — What are the four senses of Scripture (literal, moral, allegorical, typological), and how should they actually be used in practice—especially in personal or group Bible study?

49:50 — If anyone can cooperate with God by choosing the good, why is Jesus necessary for salvation? Does this undermine the need for Christ?

58:40 — Can God violate or change logic (e.g., make contradictions true), or are there real logical limits to divine power?

1:05:40 — How much did nominalism influence the Protestant Reformation and its development? Are different reformers affected in different ways?

1:16:00 — What are the actual differences between Orthodox jurisdictions—are they theological, or mainly administrative, and how are disagreements handled?

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I Want to Contribute

While the following is not technically a letter, it began as one. I was asked my thoughts on the Creation-Evolution Debate, and specifically what the Eastern Church Fathers might offer on this topic. My answer is that they offer quite a lot not found in the present discussion.

What I composed in place of a letter is a script for a video essay, which I plan to further expand into a refereed article and perhaps a short book down the road. Given that the following material was originally written to be read aloud, I have not included my usual footnotes — citations I will be sure to add before refereed publication. But for now, I trust that the theology to which I here refer can be traced to original sources with a survey of my other publications and other Googleable sources.

Be watching for Part 2 next week. In the meantime, enjoy!

Before Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, Victorian society was scandalized in 1844 by an anonymous bestseller that dared suggest that life could arise through natural processes without direct divine miracle.1 The embers of the claim were fanned into flames in 1859 by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The firestorm took centerstage at Oxford the following year in the infamous debate between Thomas Huxley (nicknamed “Darwin’s Bulldog”) and Anglican Bishop Samuel Wilberforce. The Bishop mocked Huxley, asking which side of his family descended from apes, to which Huxley shot back that he would rather be related to apes than to a man who obscures the truth. The clash enfleshed a heated dispute over the origins of life that placed the Bible on one side and science on the other. By the 1920s, this academic debate became a political crusade in the notorious Scopes Trial, challenging a state law that forbade the teaching of evolution in the classroom. The legal fight turned into a media spectacle that birthed a culture war, leaving a clear impression on the public mind: One must choose between science and Christianity, between evolution and creation.

But why do Bible-believing Christians often oppose evolution? Surely an all-powerful Being could create a world that brings about life in the manner Darwin describes. What about the theory is thought to contradict the Bible?

The answer typically focuses on two things. The first is the age of the earth. Any child can read Genesis and see that God creates the cosmos in only six days. On the face of it, then, the Bible teaches that our world is rather young — only 6,000 years old, according to most Young Earth Creationists. Needless to say, there is a sizable gap between this estimate and the estimated 13.8 billion years offered by most Evolutionists. The difference is not just a matter of dates. Evolution requires this vast duration for life to emerge. 6,000 years simply is too short a time. The two stories about our world are thus incompatible.

A second thing that Evolution requires is death. The first two human beings, Adam and Eve, are warned that they will die if they eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Death was evidently not part of the creation from the start but rather, as Saint Paul tells us, entered the world when Adam sinned. But evolution tells a different story, a story about billions of years of life and death, a world red in tooth and claw, not because of sin but because the emergence of life requires these cycles of death. Once again, the two stories are incompatible: One teaches that death is natural, while the other teaches it is unnatural, only entering our world after the moral fall of our First Parents.

Now, plenty of Bible-believing Christians challenge the Young Earth reading. Some highlight that the Hebrew word for “day” (yôm) is not limited to solar days. Others note the parallels with Ancient Near Eastern literature, arguing the story is meant to correct the theology of competing myths, not offer a scientific textbook. Still others highlight the poetic genre of the narrative, which indicates a topical rather than literal structure.

Young Earth Creationists eye such readings with suspicion, however. Why? Because they see these as concessions to the scientific enterprise, one they view as antagonistic to biblical Christianity. The only reason a person would entertain such readings, they argue, is from a desire to exalt science over the Bible. Prior to Darwin, all Christians accepted the obvious biblical teaching that our world is only 6,000 years old.

But is this true? The present discussion about Young Earth Creationism is a largely Protestant one. As such, it tends to read the Bible in isolation, relying on “Scripture alone” rather than on historical Christianity, tradition, or the Fathers of the Church. And even those within the discussion who draw on Church history rarely draw on the Christian East. Most everyone in the debate is from a Western tradition — be it Protestant or Catholic — and therefore speaks from a distinctly Western perspective.

When considering this debate in the light of the Eastern Church Fathers, a very different perspective comes into focus. In what follows, I will scrutinize the above claims by Young Earth Creationism from an Eastern perspective. As we will see, the claims that set the foundations for the Young Earth case prove problematic when read in the light of the Eastern Fathers of the Church. And as we will also see, when these foundations crumble, new possibilities open up, rarely considered within the current debate.

1. DEFINING “DEATH”

Key to the Young Earth case is that death had no place in the world prior to the sin of man. All creatures lived in perfect harmony with one another, free of violence, sorrow, sickness, suffering, and death. The claim, however, contains an ambiguous term, the very term in question — death (thanatos). If we look at the meaning of this word in the Eastern Church Fathers, we find that the word has four possible definitions.

First, the term can refer to decomposition — the process by which an organic body separates into its basic elements. Second, the word can refer to the separation of soul and body — the moment when life departs from a previously animated body. The third meaning is corruption — which is to say any divergence from proper formation, such as an eye losing sight or a limb developing improperly. The fourth meaning is closely related, referring to spiritual corruption — which is what occurs when a rational being chooses to sin and do evil.

Keeping in mind that “death” can indicate any of the above phenomena, we might ask: Were any of these forms of death present before the Fall of man? The answer is yes — three if not all four were present before Adam sinned.

Within the biblical narrative, Adam and Eve are given permission to eat of any seed-bearing plant in the garden. The point may sound mundane, but this permission means that two forms of death were permitted in Eden. As mentioned, one meaning of death is decomposition. The consumption of plants involves breaking down an organic body — de-composing it — which is one of the meanings of death in the Eastern Church Fathers.

The second type of death here permitted is less obvious to a modern reader. But the Eastern Church Fathers, like all ancient thinkers, understood the soul to be the life force of a body. In other words, any living body has a soul. This is not to say that every organism is sentient or rational, but every living body is ensouled, and this includes plants. Hence, we find in the Eastern Fathers references to the phytikos or vegetative soul. Plants, being living organisms, are ensouled bodies. And when they are killed, that life departs. Recall that this is the second meaning of “death” — the departure of a soul from a body. So, in Eden, we find at least two instances of permissible death.

Now, the key word is permissible — or perhaps it would be better to say suitable. The presence of these in Eden indicates that there is nothing unnatural about these modes of plant death. The other two meanings of death, which refer to corruption, are more problematic in the Christian narrative, since these are distortions of creation. Christianity, believing the creation is originally good, teaches that corruption only enters the world when free beings twist or distort creation.

However, we should keep in mind another important feature of the Christian narrative: Man is not the only rational being to sin. According to Christian tradition, a large number of celestial beings, called angels, also sinned and fell. The most notable of these, of course, is The Devil, who appears in the Eden narrative as the Tempter of Eve. The Eastern Church Fathers are not unanimous about precisely when the angels fell, but they are unanimous that the angels fell before the Fall of man. What this means is that spiritual corruption had entered the world before man sinned. For a large portion of the heavenly hosts had rebelled against their Maker, twisting themselves into what is called demons.

As for whether any other modes of corruption may have been present before the Fall of man, we’ll return to later. But for now, the point is this. Young Earth Creationism presumes that no form of death was present or permitted before the Fall of man. Yet, if we consider the various meanings of the word “death” as used by the Eastern Church Fathers, we find that at least three forms of death were in the world prior to man’s Fall — two of these being permissible or suitable, in the case of plant death, and one being a mode of corruption, namely, the Fall of angels.

In this light, whatever Saint Paul means when saying that death entered the world through Adam, he cannot mean this is the first time an organic body became subject to decomposition — plants were already. Nor can he mean this is the first time a soul and body would separate — such also transpired in plant death. Nor can he mean that man was the first creature to choose sin and bring spiritual corruption upon himself — the angels already had. Read in the light of the Eastern Fathers, then, Paul’s words do not require what the Young Earth Creationist presumes.

2. ON ANIMAL DEATH

When considering whether the death of plants might be acceptable in a world void of sin and evil, I presume few are troubled by the suggestion. Rarely does a person think of the death of a plant as evil. But animal death tends to strike a different chord in the human heart. Perhaps the reason is due to the prevalence of animal domestication and anthropomorphism — modern man projecting on irrational animals thoughts and feelings they simply do not have. But whether this unease with animal death is justified or not, there can be no doubt that animal death is more significant than plant death, since animals are sentient and higher in the “Chain of Being,” to use the classical term. So, is it possible that animal death could have been present before the Fall of man? Is it possible to say of animal death the same thing said about plant death, that it was suitable and permitted before the world was corrupted by moral evil?

Perhaps surprisingly, the Eastern Church Fathers give reason to think the answer is yes. Let’s begin with a helpful distinction, not from the Eastern Fathers but from the Latin scholastics. These Latin writers differentiate two terms, privatio (or privation) and negatio (or negation). As mentioned, Christianity understands evil to enter our world as a distortion or corruption of nature. Latin writers referred to this as a privation of some suitable good. An eye, for example, is a seeing organ. If the eye is harmed and loses sight, this is a privation — the loss of a suitable good. The contrast is with a suitable absence. An ear, for example, lacks sight. But the ear is not a seeing organ. So this absence is not a privation but a negation: An ear does not have the good of sight, but it is not made to have this good.

The distinction is useful to the question of animal death. Let’s imagine that animals died prior to the Fall of man. Would this be an evil? To answer the question we must answer whether animals are supposed to be immortal. If the answer is no, then this lack of immortality is not an evil, anymore than an ear lacking sight is an evil. Or put more technically, their lack of immortality would be a negation, not a privation. In this case, animal death, like plant death, would be suitable and permissible before the Fall.

Several claims in the Eastern Church Fathers indicate that animal mortality is perfectly natural. The first is the way these Fathers categorized the creatures God has made. In John of Damascus we find what is sometimes called a “Porphyry Tree,” organizing the things of creation according to dichotomous genera, such as things that are alive and things that are not, things that have bodies and things that do not. One such division that John introduces is the natural division between the mortal and the immortal. And John places animals on the side of things mortal, indicating that animal mortality is suitable to this type of being.

We find something similar in how the Eastern Fathers generally read the making of man in Genesis. The Eastern Fathers commonly read the heavens and the earth, spoken of in the creation story, as representing the mortal (the earth) and the immortal (the heavens). Man, who is taken from the earth but breathed into from heaven, is thus a merger of the two, raising the question: Was man created mortal or immortal? We find this question in Jewish writer, Philo of Alexandria, and it echoes in the Fathers as early as Theophilus of Antioch. What is important for our purposes is that the question presumes that earthly things, in which animals are included, are naturally mortal.

A third consideration appears in Irenaeus, disciple of Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John. Irenaeus explains that animal bodies are not made to live forever, and this is why the human body must be transformed in the resurrection to experience immortality — here drawing on the writings of Saint Paul. The point, again, indicates that immortality is not natural to animals.

Two further Eastern teachings also point in this same direction. The first is the image-likeness distinction, common in these Fathers. The Eastern Fathers of the Church observe that, in Genesis, God sets out to make man in his own image and according to his likeness. He then creates man in his image — likeness is not repeated. They take the omission to be important. The image, these Fathers argue, refers to the rational spirit with its capacities of reason, free will, and communion with things divine. The likeness concerns the active imitation of God — freely using our higher nature to imitate God’s love, kindness, and other attributes, while also communing with God.

The importance of the point here is that these Fathers understand our active participation in God to be the means by which man attains eternal life. A favorite analogy of theirs is the relationship between iron and fire. Iron, when in communion with fire, glows and burns, taking the attributes (or energies) of fire into itself. And so it is with man and God. Man, as an image of God, is made to commune with God and be transformed, taking into himself divine attributes — including the attributes of immortality, incorruptibility, and eternal life.

I mentioned earlier a question about whether Adam was created mortal or immortal. The answer in the Eastern Fathers is neither: He was created potentially mortal and potentially immortal, his will functioning like the fulcrum of a balance scale, choosing whether to live and die like a mortal beast or to commune with God like the angels. The choice goes to the likeness of God. Bearing God’s image, man had the capacity for immortality, but he must actively cultivate this capacity by choosing to commune with God.

The reason I highlight this teaching is this. Notice that, according to this doctrine, Adam was not created immortal — only potentially immortal. In this light, if we ascribe natural immortality to the irrational animals, we elevate the beasts above Adam.

A second teaching of note concerns the reason God created a merger of the heavens and the earth. The Eastern Fathers refer to man as a microcosm, seeing him as a union of everything God has made. But why make such a microcosm? According to these Fathers, the reason is so that man might mediate divine communion to the lower things of nature.

Perhaps an analogy might help. Imagine several musical instruments — a cello, a timpani, and a triangle. Each of these instruments has an innate capacity for music. If a master musician, like Johann Sebastian Bach, were to pick up these instruments, they would become a vehicle for his musical genius. But each instrument has innate limitations. A cello has a greater capacity to participate in Bach’s genius than a timpani or a triangle. However, when a timpani or a triangle is part of an orchestra, it transcends its innate limitations, participating in Bach’s genius to a greater degree than it could otherwise.

This, argue the Eastern Fathers, is why God creates the microcosm of man. Rational spirits, like angels, are naturally God-like, far more capable of communing with God by imitation than a rock or a plant. But when the organic world is merged with an icon of God — as happens in man — then the things of earth are raised up, becoming part of the orchestra that is the human person. In short, man is created to serve as a bridge between God and the lower things of nature, enabling the realm of animals and plants to commune with God in a way they otherwise could not.

Like the image-likeness doctrine, this teaching means that neither plants nor animals are naturally immortal. Lacking the image of God, they have no natural means of partaking of the divine nature and attaining immortality. The creation of man alone is what creates this possibility. But notice that this possibility never came to pass. For man chose to sin, choosing to live and die like the beasts, which means the beasts never crossed this bridge, partaking of immortality. And here, we can understand why Saint Paul tells us that creation groans for the unveiling of the sons of God: For man is the only hope the natural world has to commune with God, and through this communion escape corruption and transcend its innate mortality.

Considering this train of doctrines — from the place of animals in creation to the doctrine of resurrection to the image-likeness distinction to man as microcosm — the Eastern Church Fathers offer ample reason to reject the idea that animals were naturally immortal before the Fall. In this light, the lack of immortality amongst beasts would be a negation, not a privation or corruption: Their lack of immortality is perfectly natural and part of the original created order.

3. ON ANIMAL PREDATION AND DISEASE

The suggestion that animals were mortal before the Fall is one thing, but what about animal predation and disease? Evolutionists do not suggest that animals simply died peacefully due to old age. They claim animals preyed upon one another, killing and eating one another. Paleopathology suggests that animals were subject to cancer, arthritis, and infections. Can such violence and disease really be deemed natural and suitable before the Fall of man?

The most obvious reason to think predation and disease were absent before the sin of Adam is the belief that no creatures died before the Fall. But we have already seen that both plants and animals are naturally mortal — before our First Parents sinned.

Another reason is the presumption that many Westerners share, namely, that Christian hope is about a return to Eden. In other words, many Western Christians believe that Eden represents the paradise lost to which we hope to return in the eschaton. For this reason, things said about the paradise that awaits are presumed to be true about the paradise lost. The visions of the New Heavens and the New Earth in the Bible describe a place with no death, pain, sickness, or sorrow. We also find talk of the wolf laying down with the lamb and the lion eating straw like the ox, indicating the end of animal violence and predation. So, many presume that this picture of what will be is also a picture of what was in Eden.

But is this so? Do these prophecies indicate that animals were free of predation and disease before the Fall of Adam? Drawing again on the Eastern Church Fathers, we have reason to think this may not be the case.

First, recall that man was made in the image of God but not in his likeness. The likeness was something our First Parents had to achieve by freely communing with their Maker, but they chose to reject this path for the life of beasts. In this light, Adam and Eve are not the picture of what man is made to become. They had the potential to become likeness-bearers but never did. The likeness of God first manifests in a human person in the Resurrected Christ. Keeping this in mind, we can see that the Christian narrative is linear, not cyclical. We are not striving to return to Eden but transcend it, attaining something our First Parents never did. And for this reason, we should not presume that the eschatological visions of the New Heavens and the New Earth mirror Eden. More likely, they transcend it.

A similar point appears in the doctrine of man as microcosm, already discussed. Recall the reason for creating this microcosm, according to the Eastern Fathers: The lower things in creation that do not bear the image of God, such as plants and animals, cannot partake of God to the degree a rational spirit can. The union of the heavens and the earth in man is so that earthly things might commune with God to a greater degree than they otherwise could. But just as man never attained the likeness of God, so man never mediated divine life to the lower things of nature. The prophets offer a picture of a New Heavens and New Earth where animals transcend their bestial nature, true, but according to the microcosm doctrine, such transcendence is only possible through man’s own transformation through communion with God — something that never occurred in Eden.

Granting these doctrines, we should expect discontinuity between Eden and the eschaton. Whatever it means for the lower things of creation to transcend their natural state by communion with God is something that has yet to take place. We catch glimpses of it in the aforementioned prophecies, and we see small manifestations of it in the lives of Saints, where plants grow strangely or animals conduct themselves in less bestial ways around holy people. But these small flickers are glimpses of something to come, not of something lost. At creation, they are, after all, referred to as “wild” beasts.2

Now, some may object that there are indeed Eastern Church Fathers who presume that the animals were not carnivorous before the Fall. That’s true. Basil of Caesarea says as much. However, Irenaeus, who also shares this opinion, records an equally important fact: This opinion was not held by all early Christians. Many understood the prophecy about the wolf laying down with the lamb as applying to the eschaton only, not Eden. And others did not take the prophecy to be about animals at all, reading it allegorically as the taming of man’s bestial nature. Thus, while we find this opinion amongst some Church Fathers, we also find testimony that it was neither dogma nor universal.

The sole question, then, is whether animal predation and disease is a corruption of nature or whether these are natural extensions of animal mortality. For my part, I see no problem with the idea that sickness naturally arises in organisms that are destined to die or that predation is natural to an ecosystem of mortal creatures.

But let’s entertain the idea that either disease or predation or both are corruptions of nature. Does this concession require that neither were present before the Fall of man? I don’t think it does, and the reason, once again, is found in the Eastern Fathers of the Church.

When exploring the various meanings of death, I reminded us of an important feature of the Christian narrative: Man is not the first creature to Fall. But why would the Fall of angels be relevant to the animal kingdom? The reason is this. According to Scripture, angels are ministering spirits. What this means, according to the Eastern Fathers, is that they occupy a host of ministering roles within the cosmos — some tending to men, some to nations, others to the elements, and, yes, some are entrusted with the care of animals.

Central to Eastern patristic demonology is that demons strive to distort creation. The most obvious example is the Fall of man, where the Devil sought to lead man into sin and through sin enslave him to corrupt passions and drag him into sickness, sorrow, death, and alienation from God. But the Eastern Fathers do not limit demonic distortions to man. They see such schemes in other aspects of creation also under angelic care, such as in the natural elements. And we might add to this the fact that, according to many Eastern Fathers, these fallen spirits even produced biological abominations, namely, the Nephilim or giants. Such doctrines make it entirely plausible that the demonic corruptions of nature include things in the animal kingdom, at least some of which have been placed in angelic care. The claim is not made directly by the Fathers, but the required premises are all present. Hence, were we to conclude that corruptions of the animal kingdom existed before the Fall of man, I would think it perfectly reasonable to ascribe such malformations to the fallen angels.

Now, as I said, I don’t think it’s obvious that animal sickness or predation is a corruption, given that animals are naturally and suitably mortal. But could one prove that such things are corruptions of the animal world, Eastern Patristic demonology offers an explanation for why such corruptions might appear before the Fall of man.

To be continued in Part 2

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I Want to Contribute

While the following is not technically a letter, it began as one. A dear friend and colleague expressed to me his reservations about the doctrine of eternal generation, specifically his inclination to think that the begotten-not-made distinction is philosophically indefensible. He wanted to know my thoughts on the distinction and whether I think it’s cogent. I began a reply, but that letter quickly morphed into a journal article. Hence, what I sent him was the final manuscript. The piece is now published in Religion Studies, vol. 55 (2019), pp. 503-535. As for whether my friend was persuaded, well, he’s now an Orthodox convert.

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan profession that the Son of God is begotten, not made, offers the uneasy tension that the Son is caused by God but not created by God. This claim was a central point of controversy with both the semi-Arians and the Eunomians/Anomeans in the fourth century. The latter in particular argued that being unoriginate is a central trait of divinity. Or to employ Latin terminology, they maintained that aseitas (self-existence) is an essential property of the divine essence. Building on this point, the Eunomiams argued the following:

1. All that which is begotten is caused.

2. The Son is begotten [of the Father].

3. Therefore, the Son is caused. (1 & 2)

4. All that which exists a se [in itself] is not caused.

5. Therefore, the Son is not that which exists a se. (3 & 4)

6. All that which bears the divine essence is that which exists a se.

7. Therefore, the Son is not that which bears the divine essence. (5 & 6)

For this reason, the Eunomians rejected the pro-Nicene claim that the Son is homoousios with the Father, arguing instead that the Son is of a nature different from and inferior to that of his unoriginate Father.1

Some philosophers of religion today continue to see the begotten-not-made distinction as problematic. Brian Leftow, for example, argues that it is hard to see how a Trinitarianism that ‘entails divine “begetting” can avoid the claim that God creates the Son ex nihilo’.2 Leftow sees only two differences between begetting and creating, namely, eternality and the moral perfection of The Begotten. Yet, Leftow considers this to be ‘an unacceptably low standard of divinity’. To illustrate why, he offers a thought experiment in which God creates a group of angels from eternity who are morally perfect by nature. According to Leftow, all that the pro-Nicenes say of the Son can be said of this angelic horde: They are causally dependent on God; they exist from all eternity; they are morally perfect; and they are even immaterial. Yet, Leftow anticipates that no-one would grant divine status to these angels. But this raises the question: If these angels do not meet the standards of divinity, why does the Nicene Son of God?

In what follows, I look at how the Eastern fathers understand the differences between the begetting of the Son and the making of creatures. I will show, contrary to both ancient and modern critics of the distinction, that the Eastern fathers identify numerous points of difference between begetting and creating, differences that show the distinction to be not only cogent but necessary within their metaphysics.3

My exposition consists of four sections. I dedicate the first three to the metaphysical differences between Eternal Generation (EG) and creation. In section 1, I look at how the Eastern fathers understand the metaphysics of becoming, the role that matter plays in this understanding, and how becoming and matter supply the metaphysical baseline for the distinction between God and creatures generally and EG and creation specifically. As we will see, this metaphysical baseline determines the Eastern apophatic claims about EG. In section 2, I look at the kataphatic claims about EG, focusing on the twin elements of eternality and begetting. We will see how these elements connect with the metaphysics of section 1 and why they must be so paired. In section 3, I look at the modal distinction between EG and creation. We will see that, while no distinction between God and creatures is required in pagan philosophy, Christianity, as articulated by the Eastern fathers, moved decidedly away from pagan modalities, adding a further distinction between EG and creation. In section 4, I return to the Eunomian and Eunomian-style cases noted above. With the metaphysics of sections 1-3 in hand, I identify the flaws in the arguments of both the Eunomians and contemporaries philosophers of like mind. In the end, I demonstrate that there are many robust and defensible differences between EG and creation in Eastern patristic thought and show why these distinctions are indispensible within Eastern pro-Nicene metaphysics.4

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Becoming and the Apophatic Traits of EG

We begin by looking at the basic metaphysical divide between God and creatures articulated by the Eastern pro-Nicenes, which informs the apophatic distinctions between EG and creation. As argued in a series of recent articles, the general consensus of the Eastern Church fathers is that all creatures, including ‘immaterial’ entities, are in some sense corporeal. Not all have density or mass but all have basic materiality.5 This commitment reveals how the Eastern pro-Nicenes understand the metaphysical divide between God and creatures generally.

We see hints of this cosmic materiality in early Christian discussions of the corporeality of angels,6 the corporeality of the soul,7 and the general assertion that to be created is to be corporeal.8 Yet, the point is most clearly seen in the Arian dispute. As is well known, Arius suggested that because the Son is begotten, there was a time when the Son was not (ēn pote ote ouk ēn), namely, the time prior to the Father’s act of begetting. Athanasius argued in reply that if the Son came into being, then the Son is mutable, just like every other creature.9

Athanasius’s anti-Arian polemics make clear that he is not suggesting that all creatures happen to be mutable, even though God could make immutable creatures. Rather, Athanasius thinks it is a metaphysical necessity that every creature qua creature is mutable. His rationale is this. To be created is to come into being; to come into being is to move from non-being into being; and the movement from non-being into being is a mutation. Every creature is therefore mutable because its existence begins with mutation.10

Beneath this argument is the Eastern patristic commitment to moderate realist substance metaphysics. Realism, of course, concerns whether general nouns have any reality outside the abstraction in the mind. For example, we say this object is red and that object is red. Is the common property, red, a single something shared by both objects? Or is redness an invention of the mind as it groups things that appear similar, even though they are disconnected outside the mind? Realism takes the position that the common property is indeed real outside the mind and shared by the various objects that participate in it. In terms of the specific type of realism we find in the Eastern fathers, though we find some commonalities between their views and Plato, they tend towards the account of Aristotle when discussing created substances.11 In Aristotelian moderate realism, forms never exist independently from the subjects of which they are predicated. Form is only concretely real when manifest in matter. ‘Matter’ (hylē), in this context, does not mean atoms or particles, but what Aristotle calls prime matter (hē prōte hylē). Matter in this sense is a substratum of pure potentiality, or non-being (mē on). It has no innate properties of its own but is a blank slate of ontic potential. We might think of prime matter as analogous to a shapeless bit of fabric that receives shape when draped around a solid object. The shape received comes to the fabric from the object it drapes; though the fabric takes on this shape, the shape does not belong to the fabric per se. In the same way, prime matter may receive redness (from the form red) and again lose it; it may receive sphericality (from the form sphere) and again lose it, and so on. In short, prime matter is the receptacle of potential in which forms take up residence and become concretely real.

This moderate realist metaphysic underwrites Athanasius’s anti-Arian polemics. In the moderate realist account, every mutation is either positive (becoming) or negative (corruption). The former consists of the movement from non-being into being, while the latter is the retrograde movement from being back to non-being. Athanasius’s use of this metaphysic is reflected in that, while he speaks of man being created out of nothing (ouch on), he also refers to man’s natural state of non-being (mē einai) from which he first moved into being and to which he may retreat in corruption.12 In other words, in Athanasius we find two teachings on creation that should not be confused. The first is that God created all things, including matter, out of nothing – a teaching contrary to the pagan doctrine that God fashions or crafts the world from pre-existent material. Yet, alongside this is a second teaching, reflected in Athanasius’s use of standard Aristotelian distinction between concrete being (to on) and material potential, or non-being (mē on). To wit, all creatures, when created, receive once-foreign properties, and this reception entails a movement of those properties from non-being into being – that is, it entails the reception of form (being) in a substratum of potential (matter). And it is this second teaching that is central to Athanasius’s anti-Arian polemics.

Athanasius’s argument against Arius, in short, is that if the Son of God was not and then came to be, he is mutable. The case hinges not on the first point about creation out of nothing but on the second: If the Son is a creature that moved from non-being to being, then the Son’s existence began with a movement of material potential into actuality. Any entity that comes to be in such a manner must, therefore, be both hylomorphic – a composite of matter (hylē) and form (morphē) – and mutable, since becoming is a mutation. This reading of Athanasius is confirmed in the fact that Arius feels compelled to state in his defence that he does not believe the Son derives subsistence from matter, indicating that Arius recognizes Athanasius’s moderate realist rationale.13

Athanasius’s objection to Arius was not unique. This objection, with its underlying rationale about the metaphysical entailments of becoming, echoes in other opponents of Arius in his day, such as Alexander of Alexandria; it is reflected in the 325 Nicene Creed, specifically in its anathemas about mutability (treptos / alloiōtos); and it persists among the fathers in disputes to follow – specifically, though not exclusively, in the Cappadocians.14 In this light, it is fair to say that the view that every creature qua creature is both mutable and hylomorphic is part of the pro-Nicene profession of faith in the third and fourth centuries. And rather than this view becoming less pronounced with time, later Eastern fathers are even more explicit that, though they speak of ‘immaterial’ (aulos) creatures, such as angels, this is a statement of relative immateriality; for even these have prime matter, given their movement from non-being into being. As John of Damascus puts it, ‘in comparison with God, who alone is incorporeal, everything proves to be gross [pachu] and material [hylikon]’.15

The relevance of this metaphysic in the current context is that it identifies the most basic difference between things divine and things created: the latter is corporeal, having moved from non-being into being, while the former is not. I will refer to this commitment to creaturely corporeality as ‘Hylomorphic Creationism’ (or HC).

Once we recognize the Eastern patristic commitment to HC, we have the foundation for grasping a variety of metaphysical differences between God and creatures. Six metaphysical necessities, common to all creatures, emerge.16

1. Every creature is mutable. As explained above, in Eastern patristic realism, mutation is either positive (becoming) or negative (corruption). The former consists of the movement from non-being into being, the latter of being back to non-being. As argued against the Arians, becoming is what occurs in every act of creation. Hence, every creature is mutable because every creature begins its existence with a mutation, namely, the movement from non-being into being.

2. Every creature is a matter-form composite. This is a natural extension of the previous point. Because the Eastern fathers understand becoming to be the manifestation of form in matter, any mutable entity must bear both form (i.e., its concrete properties) and matter (i.e., the substratum that receives these properties). Therefore, creatures must be matter-form composites, or hylomorphic entities.

3. Every creature is corruptible. Corruption is the retrograde movement in which form retreats from matter. Rather than a property moving into being, corruption is the retreat from being. On the Eastern patristic account, corruptibility is just as native to creatures as mutability. Recall that prime matter has no properties of its own; it is pure potential. Therefore, no property that takes up residence in matter is essential to it. This is not to say creatures do not have essential properties – every species does. But it is to say that no properties are essential to matter. All properties are foreign properties to prime matter. For this reason, matter may always release the properties it receives. The implication is that every hylomorphic entity is corruptible. For the very material that supplies a creature with the potential to receive properties also retains its potential to release those properties. Or, as some fathers put it, anything that comes from non-being can return to non-being.

4. Every creature is temporal. Because creatures are that which come into being, their temporality is evident in two ways. First, they are subject to the before and after of their making. Second, becoming is itself a sequence of successive change, namely, the change from potential to actual.

5. Every creature is finite. The Eastern fathers assert repeatedly that creatures are finite or circumscribed (perigraptos) but God is uncircumscribed (aperigraptos). The rationale is fourfold, but only three considerations are of importance here. First, they argue the point from temporality. Creatures are circumscribed by the before of their becoming. Second, they argue the point from corporeality: matter is inherently located in space. Third, the fact that creatures bear form also indicates they are finite, since every form constitutes an abstract definition. In Aristotelian logic, this definition is the genus plus the specific difference of the species (e.g., man is a rational [specific difference] animal [genus]). In such definitions, limitations are ascribed. For a definition draws a line around the given type of thing, identifying what properties it has and what properties it has not.

6. Every creature bears a complex nature. What is meant by complex nature is that the essence is not a single form (simple) but is a combination of several forms (complex). Several reasons sit behind this claim, but for our purposes, the argument from accidents will suffice. Every creature invariably has accidental properties. This follows naturally from the necessities of creaturely finitude, temporality, and spatiality. Being located in time, the creature has an accidental temporal location: It came to be at T1 but could have come to be at T2, and it will remain self-same at T3. Likewise, being spatial, the creature has accidents of location: It came to be here, not there, and will remain self-same when moving over there. The necessity of accidents entails that the creature is complex, bearing several formal properties at any given moment.

Now, the Eastern fathers negate every one of these metaphysical necessities in reference to God. Just as mutability and corporeality are fundamental traits of all creatures, so immutability and incorporeality are fundamental traits of divinity. And just as becoming entails a host of other metaphysical necessities common to all creatures, so immutability entails its own metaphysical necessities common to all things divine.

Like Aristotle, the Eastern fathers understand mutability to point beyond itself to an immutable ground of being, and because all creatures are bound by mutability, this ground must be divine. Thus, divinity is characterized first and foremost by immutability. The immutability of things divine is rigorously argued in the Arian dispute, and the entailments of the position are numerous. First, rejection of divine becoming requires that things divine are also eternal, lest there be a time when they were not and then came into being. Second, as we saw above, becoming and corruption are flipsides of the same coin. Hence, in defending divine immutability, the Eastern fathers also defend divine incorruptibility. Third, because divine immutability is per se immutability – the divine cannot change – such immutability entails immateriality. For prime matter is the substratum that makes mutation possible; and thus, God, being immune to mutation, must be truly immaterial in the sense that the divine does not have the material potential for change. Fourth, in rejecting divine mutation, the Eastern fathers also accept divine atemporality, since they link time with successive change or mutation. Fifth, the Eastern fathers are clear that, in negating materiality and temporality, it follows that God is not circumscribed (aperigraptos), since circumscription is a property of material bodies bounded by space and time. And the insistence that God is uncircumscribed entails, sixth, divine omnipresence – since they link accidents of location with bodily finitude. All such claims also point to the conclusion that, seventh, God is eternally complete or perfect (teleios), having no shifting accidents, acquired perfections, or changing properties. Finally, divine immutability and incorruptibility entail, eighth, that God is essentially good, not having but being Good by nature, lest the divine be subject to moral accidents. In sum, divine immutability entails that God is eternal, incorruptible, immaterial, atemporal, infinite, omnipresent, and perfect.

Bringing the metaphysics of God and creatures to bear on the EG-creation distinction, it becomes clear that the distinction is not a vague negation. Instead, the distinction places one set of metaphysical necessities in contrast with a second set. The two sets look as follows. The term creation entails:

(a) God places form in matter, producing a hylomorphic entity.

(b) The hylomorphic entity exists by becoming because, by placing form in matter, God moves non-being into being.

(c) The resulting entity is mutable because it begins its existence with the mutation of non-being into being.

(d) The entity, bearing its properties contingently via their entrance into matter, is of such a kind that it may again lose its properties, or undergo corruption.

(e) The creaturely reception of properties involves before and after, thus producing a temporal entity.

(f) The entity produced, being circumscribed by time and space and bearing form, is finite in nature.

(g) The entity, bearing accidents of time and location, bears a complex nature.

EG negates every one of these points because that which is begotten of God is divine – a point presumed in this section but argued in the next. Thus, the metaphysical entailments of divinity must obtain in reference to The Begotten of God. The Eastern fathers are thus able speak clearly, albeit apophatically, about how EG differs from creation. EG entails:

(a′) EG is not the placement of form in matter, so EG is not the production of a hylomorphic entity that derives existence from matter.

(b′) EG does not involve becoming, or the movement from non-being into being.

(c′) EG is not the production of a mutable entity, as it does not involve becoming.

(d′) EG does not give the divine nature in a way that is subject to loss, or corruption.

(e′) EG is not temporal, involving neither before nor after.

(f′) EG is not the production of a finite entity, involving neither the giving of a circumscribed nature nor the production of a circumscribed entity.

(g′) EG is not bound by space or time and thus involves no temporal or spatial accidents.

The distinction is concisely summarized by Gregory of Nazianzus’s exhortation: ‘cast away your notions of flow and divisions and sections, and your conceptions of immaterial as if it were material birth, and then you may perhaps worthily conceive of the Divine Generation’.17 On an apophatic level, then, we can speak in specific terms about what EG is not. The apophatic claims are specific because the respective claims about creation and divinity are equally specific. Having established strict metaphysical dividing lines between God and creatures, as well as the rationale for the difference, the Eastern fathers have an equally clear rationale for the apophatic dividing line between creating and EG. In the next section, we will look beyond the apophatic specifics of EG to what can be said positively about the doctrine.

The Eternally Begotten Son of God

We saw above the specifics of what Eternal Generation (EG) is not and the rationale for these apophatic claims. But can anything positive be said about EG? The Eastern fathers do offer positive assertions about EG, but before we look at these claims, we must discuss how they understand concept-forming about things divine.

Amid the Eunomian dispute, we find heated disagreement over what can be known of God. The Eunomians sought to exposit the essential properties of the divine essence in defence of their brand of Arianism. In response, the Cappadocian fathers insist that no such exposition is possible, since God’s essence is ‘above intelligence’ (hyper dianoian).18 To see what this means, we must grasp (i) their distinction between noēsis and epinoia and (ii) their insistence that God is hyperousios.

Beginning with (i), noēsis constitutes the direct apprehension of a form. Here we must contrast the realism of these ancient writers with the nominalism of the modern empiricists. In modern empiricism, such as John Locke’s, the object outside the mind is one thing and the mental replica of the object is a second thing. Ancient realists, by contrast, see the properties of an object and the mental abstraction of these properties as isomorphic: the property, or form, in the object and the property apprehended by the mind is the same property. As per realism, a single form can reside in multiple objects. The singularity of the form red, for example, includes not only red in object p and q but also red abstracted in the mind in the act of perception: the red in the object and the red in the mind when perceiving the object is the same property. Such direct apprehension of form constitutes empirical knowledge, or noēsis.

The difficulty is that objects consist of more than just form. There is, for example, the enduring subject that sits beneath these forms (hypostasis), as well as the substratum of matter in which forms come to be. When thinking on such things, the mind finds itself at a loss; it gropes for something in its catalogue of forms but comes up empty. Hence, it must rely on comparisons for understanding. For example, prime matter is like a shapeless bit of fabric that receives shape from objects around which it is draped. But it is unlike fabric insofar as fabric has definite properties, while prime matter has no properties of its own. Such concept-forming is called epinoia.19

The Eastern patristic insistence that God is above intelligence is an assertion that God is never an object of noēsis, nor can he be. This assertion brings us to the second point noted, namely that God is hyperousios. To explain, we will track with Platonism for a moment. In Platonic realism, the forms provide intelligibility to things by grounding both unity (genera and species) and delineation (specific difference). Form thus supplies intelligibility by circumscribing an entity. But, as Aristotle would press, what unifies the forms? Plato and later Platonists locate the answer in The Good. For form not only tells us what a thing is but its quality: good/bad, healthy/unhealthy, well-formed/malformed are qualitative assessments based on likeness or unlikeness to a form. Plato thus sees The Good as the source of being and, not surprisingly, treats The Good interchangeably with God. All of this, however, raises the question: Is The Good, and thus God, merely one of the forms that The Good is meant to explain? An affirmative reply yields an infinite regress: The forms are unified by a common form (viz., The Good), but The Good, being a form, must also share a common property (say, form p) with the other forms; but this common form (form p), itself being a form, must also share a common property (form q) with the rest of the forms, and so on ad infinitum. Therefore, in later Platonic accounts, the answer is No, God transcends form. God is beyond being (epekeina tēs ousias) and The Good is not an intelligible attribute of God (i.e., a form) but something grasped indirectly by the many articulations of goodness in creation.

We find similar accounts amongst the Eastern fathers, who affirm both the existence of archetypal Ideas in the mind of God and God’s transcendence of those Ideas.20 Moreover, though the Eastern fathers identify The Good with God, they resist the notion that God is, or has, a form. Per the metaphysical commitments of the previous section, their insistence on divine immutability entails a rejection of finitude and thus of a circumscribed nature (perigraptos physis) from amongst the forms. Whatever the divine nature is, it must be above form. Hence, God is hyperousios.

When considering divine transcendence, we can see why the Eastern fathers insist that God is beyond intelligence. Noēsis, as an apprehension of form, can never grasp that which has no form. This is true of prime matter, of hypostases, and of the divine essence. The divine essence, being hyperousios, has no defined or delineated content on which our rational faculties might lay hold, such as colour, shape, or numerated appendages. For the Eastern fathers, this means that God cannot be an object of noēsis, since the divine nature is not of such a kind that mind can abstract and circumscribe. All God-talk, therefore, falls to the concept-forming process of epinoia. Such talk is thus either a positive (kataphatic) or negative (apophatic) comparison with that which the mind can grasp.

To be sure, this is not to say God-talk is neither true nor false, according to the Eastern fathers. Analogical language is just as subject to truth and falsehood, accuracy and inaccuracy as univocal language. For example, in the Trinitarian disputes, it is analogical to say that the three persons of the Trinity are like masks, or faces (prosopa), that a single subject wears, as per Sabellianism. This is an analogical claim, but what it says is false. The pro-Nicene formulation is also analogical, namely, the Trinity is three subjects (hypostases) who share a common nature (ousia). The analogical status of the claim is evident in the fact that, if taken univocally, it would indicate that the divine nature is a form (or ousia), which the Eastern fathers deny in their hyperousios (above- or super-form) doctrine. So, as with all comparative theology, there is something true and something false in the claim. The true kataphatic assertion is that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct subjects, and these three are the same type of thing, namely, God. They are not facades or masks; they are not parts of a whole; they are discrete subjects of a common type. To this extent, the kataphatic comparison is true. Yet, equally necessary are the apophatic comparisons, such as these subjects are not materially divided, not distinguished by material accidents, not of a nature from amongst the forms, etc. In other words, the distinctions between God and creatures, discussed in section 1, must be remembered.

We identified above the apophatic assertions of the Eastern pro-Nicenes concerning EG. Yet, there are important kataphatic assertions as well. The first the Eastern fathers derive from the biblical testimonies about Jesus Christ, namely, the Son is God’s only begotten. The title ‘son of God’ may be ascribed analogically to a nation (Matt 2:15) or to a creature, as indicative of adoption (Rom 8:14) or even causal origin (Luke 2:38). Yet, in the case of Jesus Christ, only begotten is added to the term, indicating that Jesus is the only son who is son by begetting. Despite questions by biblical scholars today about the meaning of monogenēs (translated ‘only begotten’),21 its indication of paternal generation that is singular or unique was undisputed amongst the Eastern pro-Nicenes.22 Begetting is thus taken by the fathers to indicate a very specific mode of efficient causality. In the creaturely context, begetting involves one subject causing another subject to exist by the first communicating his nature to the second. Hence, a human father begets a son by communicating his humanity to a second subject in the procreative process. And so it is with the Son of God, according to the Eastern fathers. God the Father causes the Son to exist by communicating in a paternal manner the divine nature to this second subject. This cannot be said of any subject other than the Son. Hence, he is monogenēs.

The term begotten was indeed read analogically by the Eastern fathers. So we find insistence that this begetting does not involve material emission, mutative gestation, and the like.23 In other words, anything we might associate with creaturely procreation that violates (a′)-(g′) should be dispelled from the concept. Yet, the Eastern pro-Nicenes insist that amid these apophatic qualifications we not lose the kataphatic assertions that (i) the Son derives his existence by means of the Father communicating the divine nature to him in a paternal manner, and (ii) the Son of God is unique in this regard. Hence, the Son of God is not an adopted or metaphorical son; he is the Only Begotten Son of God, or the only subject to derive existence by paternal communication of the divine nature. From this point naturally follows the pro-Nicene insistence that the Son is homoousia with God the Father. For begetting is the communication of a common nature from father to son. To quote Basil of Caesarea,

For after saying that the Son was light of light, and begotten of the substance of the Father, but was not made, they went on to add the homoousion, thereby showing that whatever proportion of light any one would attribute in the case of the Father will also obtain in that of the Son. For very light in relation to very light, according to the actual sense of light, will have no variation. Since then the Father is light without beginning, and the Son begotten light, but each of Them light and light; they rightly said ‘of one substance’, in order to set forth the equal dignity of the nature. Things, that have a relation of brotherhood, are not … of one substance; but when both the cause and that which derives its natural existence from the cause are of the same nature, then they are called ‘of one substance’.24

Now, what it looks like for one subject to beget another without material emission, separation, mutation, and the like the Eastern pro-Nicenes admit they have no clear idea. But this should come as no surprise, since both The Begetter and The Begotten are hyperousios and, as such, are beyond the grasp of noēsis. Of metaphysical necessity, the process is ‘above intelligence’. All these Eastern writers can do, therefore, is assert the basics of the comparison that hold, namely, God the Father causes the Son to exist by communicating his divine nature in a paternal manner. Beyond this, the pro-Nicenes can only reassert the apophatic qualifications (a′)-(g′). As Basil continues,

And when we are taught that the Son is of the substance of the Father, begotten and not made, let us not fall into the material sense of the relations. For the substance was not separated from the Father and bestowed on the Son; neither did the substance engender by fluxion, nor yet by shooting forth as plants their fruits. The mode of the divine begetting is ineffable and inconceivable by human thought. It is indeed characteristic of poor and carnal intelligence to compare the things that are eternal with the perishing things of time, and to imagine, that as corporeal things beget, so does God in like manner;….25

Note, however, there is nothing unusual in this conceptual limitation. For such is the case in all theological language. Because God is not one of the forms, our mental concepts of the divine are only ever comparative. In the case of EG, the truth of the positive comparison is from Christ’s own assertions about himself: he is God’s Only Begotten Son (e.g., John 3:16) – along with similar assertions in wisdom literature, psalms, and prophets (e.g., Prov. 8:23, Ps. 109:3 LXX, Wis. 7:22). As for negative comparisons, these merely reiterate the metaphysical differences between God and creatures generally.

Having said this, it should be noted that the apophatic claims (a′)-(g′) yield a second kataphatic assertion about EG, namely, that this begetting is eternal. There are two supporting rationale for the point. The first derives from negations (e′) and (g′), which negate before and after as well as temporal accidents. Both points require a mode of causation that is non-sequential, having neither beginning nor end nor punctuated location in time. Hence, the begetting of the Son of God is an eternal generation. Crucial to understand here, however, is that the eternal in EG is not an assertion that the Son was begotten in the first moment of time or prior to all other things. Either would constitute a temporal location. Eternal, in EG, indicates that this mode of causation – divine begetting – is coterminous with the Only Begotten Son and the Father, who begets him.

To understand the claim, it may help to borrow the mediaeval scholastic distinction between per se and per accidens causes. Imagine two intersecting lines, one that runs horizontal and the other vertical. The horizontal line illustrates a temporal sequence of per accidens causes. For example, I roll a ball; it then bumps another ball, setting it in motion; the second ball then bumps a third ball, and so on. The vertical line, by contrast, illustrates per se causes, or causes stacked one upon another at any given moment. For example, I place my cup into a cup holder in my car; the cause of the cup’s suspension (effect) is the holder; the cause of the holder’s suspension (effect) is the dashboard (cause); the cause of the dashboard’s suspension (effect) is the car frame (cause) to which it is fixed, and so on. If any of the causes in this chain cease, every effect and cause stacked upon it ceases as well. Thus, there is a vertical chain of dependence. Such ongoing dependence is what distinguishes per se causes from per accidens causes. In the created realm, begetting is typically per accidens. A father begets a son at a point in time, and if the begetter then dies, the begotten continues to exist. Yet, this type of causation is possible only because creatures are subject to the types of metaphysical necessities noted in (a)-(g). Divine causation, by contrast, cannot begin, have temporal location, or be subject to successive change, per (e′) and (g′). Hence, what is meant by EG is a per se causal relationship between the Father and the Son. The generation of the Son by the Father is not something that happened at some point in the past; it is eternal in the sense that it is perpetual or coterminous. It is a per se causal relationship between the Father and the Son that was, is, and forever will be.

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We see this point illustrated by the Eastern fathers via the analogical relationship between the sun and its rays. We conceive of the sun along with the rays it emits without interval.26 The analogy is a defence of eternal causation of a per se kind. That is, in the analogy, the cause (the sun) and the effect (its rays) are coterminous with one another. Such is (analogically) the nature of EG, according to the Eastern fathers.

The second rationale for the eternality of the Son’s begetting derives from (b′) and (c′) as well as divine immutability generally, of which (b′) and (c′) are a recapitulation. This rationale for EG relates specifically to how the Eastern fathers understand the respective identities of the divine hypostases, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. While the Eastern pro-Nicenes deny that things divine have changing material accidents, they do not deny divine accidents full stop. Defining accident broadly as any property external to the essence of the subject, the Eastern fathers do ascribe one accident to the Father, one to the Son, and one to the Holy Spirit, respectively, namely, the personal property of being the Father, of being the Son, and of being the Holy Spirit. These are not accidents in the sense of a property or form that is subject to acquisition or loss. Rather, being the Father, being the Son, and being the Holy Spirit constitute the respective (unchanging) idiosyncrasy (idiōtēs) that distinguishes each person from the others. The respective idiosyncrasy is accidental in the sense that it belongs to the subject, not the common essence. Hence each hypostasis has one accident, namely, the idiosyncrasy of being that particular subject.27

Now, the uniqueness of these divine idiosyncrasies is that each is rooted in the particular hypostasis’s relation to another hypostasis. The idiosyncrasy of being the Father is grounded in his begetting of the Son. The Son’s idiosyncrasy of being the Son is grounded in the Father’s paternal generation. As for the Holy Spirit, the causal language of procession is derived from the linguistic connection between breath and spirit. Hence, the Holy Spirit’s idiosyncrasy of being the Spirit of God is grounded in his procession, or spiration, from God the Father.28

The Eastern fathers are well aware that if these idiosyncrasies are subject to change or were not and now are, then the persons themselves would also be subject to change or becoming. Hence, the very same rationale that requires the rejection of Arianism – namely the rejection of becoming in reference to the Son – also requires that the Father never begin to beget the Son or to outbreath the Holy Spirit. As Gregory of Nyssa states in response to the Eunomians, ‘his school must place a definite interval of time between the only begotten and the Father. What I say, then, is this: that this view of theirs will bring us to the conclusion that the Father is not from everlasting, but from a definite point in time’.29

In short, the apophatic rejection of becoming and mutation yields a kataphatic assertion about the eternality of divine causation in the Holy Trinity. To again quote Gregory of Nyssa,

[L]et it suffice on the ground of causation only to conceive of the Father as before the Son; and let not the Father’s life be thought of as a separate and peculiar one before the generation of the Son, lest we should have to admit the idea inevitably associated with this of an interval before the appearance of the Son which measures the life of Him Who begot Him, and then the necessary consequence of this, that a beginning of the Father’s life also must be supposed by virtue of which their fancied interval may be stayed in its upward advance so as to set a limit and a beginning to this previous life of the Father as well: let it suffice for us, when we confess the ‘coming from Him,’ to admit also, bold as it may seem the ‘living along with Him;’ for we are led by the written oracles to such a belief. For we have been taught by Wisdom to contemplate the brightness of the everlasting light in, and together with, the very everlastingness of that primal light, joining in one idea the brightness and its cause, and admitting no priority.30

In sum, we find in the Eastern pro-Nicenes not only apophatic assertions about EG but kataphatic assertions as well. In the title only begotten, we arrive at a specific mode of efficient causality – namely, the cause of the Son is the Father communicating the divine nature in a paternal manner – and discover that the Son is singularly unique in this regard. We also find the rationale for what must be removed from the analogy of begetting, as per the metaphysics of section 1. Yet, in the combining of these positive and negative claims, we discover why EG must be eternal and what precisely this eternality means, namely, a per se causal relationship between Father and Son. In the next section, we will look at one final set of claims concerning EG, which go to the modal status of this divine causation.

Eternal Generation, Creation, and Modality

The last of the distinctions we will consider between Eternal Generation (EG) and creation is the respective modalities of the two causations, namely, EG is modally necessary while creation is modally contingent. The point may sound unextraordinary – of course things divine are modally necessary while things created are modally contingent. However, the point was not obvious in the ancient world. While both Plato and Aristotle ascribe will (boulēsis) to God, it is not clear that such will involves contrary choice. In NeoPlatonism, The One emanates the world involuntarily.31 And because all that issues from The One emanates without contrary choice, it seems that the hypothetical necessity is unavoidable: if God exists, then so does the world that issues from God. Here, the distribution axiom comes into play, according to which if modal necessity is assigned to a hypothetical, then the modal necessity distributes to both the antecedent and the consequent: □(p→q)→(□p→□q).32 In the hypothetical conjoining of The One and the world, the modal necessity ascribed to the cause (The One) is distributed to the effect (the world). A similar issue emerges in Aristotle’s account. Aristotle’s Movent (or immutable mover) does not choose to make the world; in fact, a common reading of Aristotle is that God does not even think on the world he produces. The Movent does not choose to bring creatures into being; it is the nature of the Movent to perpetually cause mutable entities to come into being. Hence, for Aristotle, the world is eternal and coterminous with the Movent that moves it. The very same modal claim noted in reference to NeoPlatonism could thus be argued for Aristotle as well.

The Eastern Church fathers make a decisive break with this pagan trajectory, insisting on the contingency of creation in contrast with the modal necessity of things divine. Numerous arguments appear in the Eastern fathers in defence of the point. Yet, all the arguments boil down to a defence of divine contrary choice. Some make an argument from perfections, namely, God cannot give free choice if this is a power that he lacks.33 This case parallels very closely the Eastern patristic insistence that the image of God consists of both reason and free choice, or self-determination (to autexousion), and thus the Archetype (God) must have freedom as imaged in man.34 Others make the argument that divine freedom is prime facie, given that God clearly has capacities that he does not at every moment exercise, such as the capacity to destroy the world, and must therefore operate by contrary choice.35 Still others make an argument from evil, namely, if God operates without free choice, then all things are fated; if all things are fated, then God is the cause of evil; God, being Good, cannot be the cause of evil; therefore, all things are not fated, so God operates by free choice.36 Regardless of whether one concedes these arguments, the point remains: the Eastern fathers are committed to divine freedom and with this to the contingency of creation.

Now, the contingency of creatures is straightforwardly established by divine freedom. Granting, as the Eastern fathers do, that God has libertarian capacities of choice, then the creation of the world and other aspects of providence are of such a kind that they could be otherwise, since creation is a free articulation of the divine will.37 The more difficult point to establish is the modal necessity of EG. Two challenges present themselves. The first challenge is this. Some wrongly take the Eastern fathers to suggest that EG is involuntary. Yet, the Eastern fathers are clear that EG is a product of the will of the Father, not an involuntary emanation.38 This insistence raises the question of whether the very same argument for the contingency of creation can be applied to EG. Assuming this challenge can be overcome, the second difficult is this. If EG can be shown to be modally necessary, does it follow that the Father necessarily generates this Son? If the eternal generation of a Son is necessary but the Father could generate a different Son, then ‘our’ Son’s existence is still modally contingent, even though EG is modally necessary.

To the first problem, as noted above, the Eastern fathers deny that EG is an involuntary emanation by the Father. Yet, at the same time, they refuse the Arian notion that the Son is contingently generated, such that the Son might not have been. The via media they defend is what we might call a ‘natural’ or ‘fitting’ volition. Athanasius draws a comparison with operations of divine goodness: ‘For it is the same as saying, “The Father might not have been good”. And as the Father is always good by nature, so He is always generative by nature’.39 Clearly, Athanasius does not intend ‘by nature’ to refer to the divine essence common to the hypostases, since generating the Son is the idiosyncrasy that distinguishes Father from Son and Holy Spirit.40 Nature here refers to the idiosyncratic nature (idiōtēs) of the Father. The point that the Father is generative by nature is crucial. For, as Athanasius points out, ‘to counsel and choose implies an inclination two ways’ (to bouleuesthai kai prophairesthai eis hekatera tēn rhopēn echei), which is precisely why, though God is free in how he articulates his goodness, there is no inclination to be not good and thus no counsel or choosing involved in whether to do good.41 So it is with EG. Because the very identity of the Father is rooted in him being generative, there is no counsel involved in whether to generate a Son who is the exact likeness of his glory. To beget is the idiosyncratic nature of the Father – something that cannot be said of the Father as creator of all things, for example.

The strong claim that to beget is the nature of the Father conjoins the Father’s immutability and modality with EG. Because the Father’s personhood is rooted in EG, his immutability requires that EG is equally immutable, lest the Father be subject to contrarieties. In other words, though the Eastern fathers introduce contrary choice and contingency into God’s acts of creation and providence, their notion of fitting volition in reference to EG moves closer to the talk of divine will in Plato and Aristotle, noted above.42 The Father’s act of EG admits no contrary choice; hence, it is modally necessary, and this necessity distributes to EG, as per the distribution axiom: the Father and EG are conjoined, so the modal necessity of the Father distributes evenly to EG.

This brings us to the second challenge, however. The connection between the personhood of the Father and EG only requires that the Father is generative. Nothing in the argument so far seems to require that the Father generates this Son of God. Might the Father have eternally generated Son1, Son2, or Son3 and still been the Father? If so, which Son to beget would still be subject to counsel and choice, and thus the existence of ‘our’ Son of God would be contingent. To this point, two responses may be offered. The first simply reverses the argument. Just as the personhood of the Father is rooted in his being Father to the Son, so the singularly unique property of ‘our’ Son of God is that he is the Only Begotten of the Father; the relationship is symmetrical. If the Father begets a Son, then the Son he begets will be the Son he has in fact begotten. For the identity of the Son is his being begotten of the Father before all worlds. Or, to use Leibniz’s indiscernibility of identicals, there is no way to distinguish The Only Begotten Son from a second Only Begotten Son when being The Only Begotten Son is the sum total of the personal properties of the subject.

Perhaps one could reply, however, that the Father could have begotten multiple Sons, and in this case, none of the Sons begotten would be The Only Begotten Son of God. To this rebuttal, two points arise, one focused on the nature of begetting and the other on the nature of the Father. First, given the nature of what begetting is, this mode of efficient cause requires continuity in formal cause between the begetter and the begotten. In the case of God, the divine nature communicated by the begetter is immutable. Hence, the suggestion that God might pick amongst various Sons (Sons that are contingent, since they may or may not exist, depending on divine choice) creates an impossible hypothetical: to wit, the Father might beget (i.e., communicate his immutable nature to) a contingent (i.e., mutable) subject. On this basis alone, the Eastern fathers could reject the hypothetical as incoherent. But a second rebuttal also emerges. Whatever the reason God begets only one Son, to ascribe counsel and choice to this begetting not only makes the existence of the Son contingent and thus mutable, it also makes the Father contingent and mutable, as discussed in the previous point. Another way of putting this is that the Eastern fathers understand the begetting of the Son to be what we might call an internal (as opposed to external) relation – that is, a relation that is essential to the identity of the subject. Granting the point, were the Father to generate a set of Sons in place of The Only Begotten, the Father’s own identity would also be different. A simple modus tollens suffices to rebut the conclusion: the Eastern fathers reject the mutability of the Father and thus reject the antecedent in the hypothetical that he might beget a Son other than The Only Begotten. In other words, because our Father is conjoined with our Son by hypothetical necessity (ourFather→ourSon), when modal necessity is ascribed to our Father, modal necessity distributes to our Son as well (□thisFather→□thisSon); and because granting the possibility of more Sons would make our Son modally contingent and thus require modal contingency of our Father, the Eastern fathers can reject the proposal on the basis of the modal necessity of the Father. While the Eastern fathers may refrain from speculating as to why it is impossible that the Father beget more than one Son – or, perhaps more accurately, why there is no contrary inclination in the Father that would require counsel – they can, at the very least, reject this possibility on the grounds that it would result in ascribing mutability to the immutable Father. The reciprocal immutability of Father and Son, then, makes secure the modal necessity of EG in all its specifics.

Ambiguity and Errors in Eunomian and Eunomian-Style Arguments

With the metaphysical distinctions between EG and creation before us, we return to the Eunomian and Eunomian-style arguments identified in the above introduction. Beginning with the contemporary case of Leftow, we noted that Leftow sees only two differences between begetting and creating, namely, eternality and the moral perfection of The Begotten. Yet, Leftow considers this to be ‘an unacceptably low standard of divinity’,43 illustrating the point via a thought experiment in which God creates from eternity a group of morally perfect angels who meet these same standards: they are causally dependent on God; they exist from eternity; they are morally perfect; and they are immaterial. While Leftow’s case may have initial plausibility, in the light of the foregoing, it proves to be a very superficial understanding of the EG-creation distinction. Leftow evidently has little grasp of the underlying metaphysics of the Eastern fathers. Thus, the EG doctrine, in Leftow’s hands, becomes painfully thin once detached from its metaphysical commitments and has little to protect it when run through the analytic machinery of contemporary philosophy of religion. Yet, as we have seen, the pro-Nicene profession of EG generally and of the EG-creation distinction specifically is not metaphysically neutral but metaphysically committed, and robustly so. When we recognize this fact, there emerges a long list of distinctions between EG and creation, contra Leftow’s claim, as well as an underlying metaphysical rationale that informs these distinctions.

The first and most important distinction between The Begotten and Leftow’s angels is also the most obvious, though it must be said: Leftow’s angels bear the nature angel, while The Begotten bears the nature God. As we saw in section 2, the very assertion that the Son is begotten entails that God the Father gives his own nature to the Son in a paternal manner. This cannot be said of angels – regardless of their moral qualities or when God makes them. God causes angels to exist by endowing them with a nature foreign to his own, a nature that is not divine. From this first and most important distinction, all subsequent distinctions flow.

Because Leftow’s angels bear the nature angel, rather than the nature God, they are creatures that are subject to the metaphysical necessities, identified in section 1, that bind all creatures. The specifics of their creation, therefore, contrasts with EG at seven points already identified in the contrast between (a)-(g) and (a′)-(g′). To avoid redundancy, I will not here reiterate these distinctions. However, it is worth noting that the metaphysical differences between God and creatures indicate that the Eastern pro-Nicenes would reject Leftow’s hypothetical angels as metaphysically impossible. For amongst the metaphysical necessities the Eastern fathers ascribe to creatures is that they are temporal (as opposed to eternal), corruptible (as opposed to incorruptible, or essentially good), and at some level material (as opposed to truly immaterial, as God alone is). Hence, Leftow’s thought experiment posits a set of hypothetical creatures the very concept of which the Eastern fathers would reject as metaphysical non-sense. The point is demonstrated by the fact that Arius himself, at later stages of the Arian dispute, sought to modify his own position by arguing that, though the Son is created, he is created immutable.44 This maneuver was of no help to Arius, however, since the pro-Nicenes took Arius to be asserting a metaphysical impossibility. To wit, because creation entails becoming, the suggestion of an immutable creature suggests a contradiction, namely, a mutable entity that is not-mutable.45 Like later mediaeval realists, the pro-Nicene realist commitments led the pro-Nicenes to reject such contradictions as non-sensical fictions that are beyond the bounds of omnipotence.46 Hence, just as they rejected Arius’s proposal of an immutable creature, so they would reject as metaphysical fiction Leftow’s proposal of a horde of immutable, immaterial, and incorruptible angels.

Of course, the contrast between (a)-(g) and (a′)-(g′) is not the only metaphysical differences that can be noted. As we saw in section 2, EG, when combined with (e′) and (g′), point to an eternal mode of causation that, not only reflects (a′)-(g′), but entails an eternal per se causal relationship between the begetting Father and the Begotten Son, something that cannot be said of the relationship between God and any creature. Moreover, as we saw in section 3, there is a clear modal distinction between the only begotten Son and creatures, namely, that the former is modally necessary, while the latter are modally contingent. In sum, Leftow’s claim that there is little to nothing to distinguish EG from creation unravels under scrutiny.

What of the Eunomian case against EG, however? As noted at the opening of this essay, the Eunomians argue that being unoriginate is essential to divinity and place being caused, or being originate, in contradistinction to being unoriginate. Hence, by affirming causality (viz., EG) in reference to the Son, the pro-Nicenes must deny the divinity of the Son. The case breaks down as follows:

1. All that which is begotten is caused.

2. The Son is begotten.

3. Therefore, the Son is caused. (1 & 2)

4. All that which is caused is not unoriginate.

5. Therefore, the Son is not unoriginate. (3 & 4)

6. All that which is God is unoriginate.

7. Therefore, the Son is not God. (5 & 6)47

The pro-Nicenes identify two ambiguous terms in this line of argument. The first ambiguous term is unoriginate. This term can be read as deriving existence from no cause whatever or it can be read as not created. If read in the latter sense, the pro-Nicenes affirm 6, All that which is God is that which is not created. So it is in their own position. Neither the Father nor the Son is created, per the metaphysics of section 1 above. Yet, if read in the former sense, as deriving existence from no cause whatever, then the pro-Nicenes reject the point, since the Son is caused by the Father. To quote, Gregory of Nyssa,

[W]hen the question [of whether the Son is unoriginate] is about ‘origin’ in its other meanings (since any creature or time or order has an origin), then we attribute the being superior to origin to the Son as well, and we believe that that whereby all things were made is beyond the origin of creation, and the idea of time, and the sequence of order. So, He, Who on the ground of His subsistence is not without an origin, possessed in every other view an undoubted unoriginateness; and while the Father is unoriginate and ungenerate, the Son is unoriginate in the way we have said, though not ungenerate.48

The second ambiguous term in the argument is God. In both biblical and Eastern patristic literature, this term may refer to either the subject, God the Father, or to the divine nature. If God is taken in the former sense, the argument is both valid and sound, according to the pro-Nicenes. But the case is also irrelevant to Arianism. Taken in this way, the argument shows only that the Son is not the Father. The pro-Nicenes agree: ‘for Sabellius has no ground for confusion of the individuality of each Person, when the Only begotten has so distinctly marked Himself off from the Father in his words, ‘I and my Father’;…’.49

The argument works as a defence of Arianism if and only if the term God is read as a reference to the divine nature (i.e., that which is God means that which is divine). If God is read this way, the argument is a valid proof of Arianism, but the pro-Nicenes then reject 6 and thus dismiss the case as unsound. The pro-Nicene rejection of 6 is based on their moderate realist commitments, according to which the locus of existence that gives concrete reality to any nature is the subject in which that nature subsists, and the divine nature is no exception. This gets to the heart of the distinction between the pro-Nicenes and the Eunomians (as well as Arians generally). The Eunomian case places the principle of existence in nature rather than subject. In other words, the Eunomian instinct is that existence is accidental to created natures but essential to the divine nature. Hence, any subject having the divine nature has existence by virtue of being divine. The Eastern fathers, being moderate realists, reject the point. Existence is never a property of natures. Existence is only ever located in subjects that give concrete reality to natures.50 How a subject comes to be (efficient cause) often varies. – Bob is son of Bill, but Joe is son of John; or this oak tree grew from an acorn that fell to the ground, while that one from an acorn that was planted. – But this how is external to the nature that determines what the subject is (formal cause). To quote Gregory of Nyssa,

In our view, the ‘native dignity’ of God consists in godhead itself, wisdom, power, goodness, judgement, justice, strength, mercy, truth, creativeness, domination, invisibility, everlastingness, and every other quality named in the inspired writings to magnify his glory; and we affirm that every one of them is properly and inalienably found in the Son, recognizing differences only in respect of unoriginateness…. When, for instance, this word [unoriginate] has meaning of ‘deriving existence from no cause whatever’, then we confess that it is peculiar to the Father….51

None of this is to say there are no modal difference between divine subjects and created subjects. As shown in section 3, the Eastern fathers maintain that divine subjects are modally necessary, while created subjects are modally contingent; as shown in section 2, causation of a divine subject must be eternal and per se; and, as shown in section 1, divine causation is incompatible with metaphysical traits of creatures. Yet, as the Eastern fathers also show, all of the above points are compatible with causation, so long as that causation is not creation in the sense of (a)-(g).

Now, perhaps the objector is still inclined to think that if a subject is divine, then that subject should not have an efficient cause. To this, two points are crucial. The first is a reiteration of the previous one: the Eastern fathers insist that a category error is at work, namely, the confusing of efficient and formal causality. Formal cause determines what a thing is; efficient cause determines how it is. As the Eastern fathers points out, there is no contradiction in affirming continuity of formal cause amid various efficient causes. To again quote Gregory of Nyssa,

The first man, and the man born from him, received their being in a different way; the latter by copulation, the former from the molding of Christ Himself; and yet, though they are thus believed to be two, they are inseparable in the definition of their being…. [I]t is because the one and the other was a man that the two have the same definition of being; each was mortal, reasoning, capable of intuition and of science. If, then, the idea of humanity in Adam and Abel does not vary with the difference of their origin, neither the order nor the manner of their coming into existence making any difference in their nature, which is the same in both, … what necessity is there that against the divine nature we should admit this strange thought?52

The Eastern pro-Nicenes insist that what makes a subject divine is that it has the divine nature (formal cause). It is a ‘strange thought’ that something external to this nature, namely, the idiosyncratic efficient cause of the subject, should determine what the subject is. The one exception, of course, is the efficient cause known as begetting, since this involves the communication of nature from one subject to another and thus entails continuity of nature between begetter and begotten. To once again quote Gregory, ‘Having heard of the Father and Son from the Truth, we are taught in those two subjects the oneness of their nature; their natural relation to each other expressed by those names indicates that nature…’.53 The only reason to conclude that the divine nature is incompatible with a subject that has an efficient cause full stop is if efficient causality itself were somehow incompatible with the attributes of the nature communicated. But having shown that divine attributes are compatible with eternal, per se causality, the Eastern fathers have no reason to accept the claim. And because these same writers accept the testimony of Christ that he is begotten but of the same nature of the Father – a claim that more easily fits their moderate realist metaphysics of formal and efficient causality – they have positive reason to reject the counter claim as a simple category error.

The second, equally important consideration is this. If the objector’s instinct is that things divine must derive existence from no cause whatever, this instinct is not only incompatible with EG but with the subject-nature (hypostasis-ousia) distinction of Nicene Trinitarianism generally. For locating the principle of existence in the divine nature itself, rather than the respective subjects having it, does not suffice to show that things divine derive existence from no cause whatever. To the contrary, were we to affirm the existence of three divine subjects but deny that any of the subjects causes the others, all three subjects would still have an efficient cause, namely, the divine nature itself. Rather than satisfying the instinct to remove efficient causality from things divine, this alternative expands the problem for the objector. For rather than two of three divine subjects having an efficient cause, this ‘solution’ suggests that all three subjects have a common efficient cause, namely, the divine nature they share. Therefore, the only way to avoid the problem of efficient causality (if it is rightly labeled a problem) is not to reject EG but to reject the subject-nature distinction of the Nicene faith. Yet, without a defence of the legitimacy of this metaphysical instinct, the Eastern fathers have no reason to embrace this instinct contrary to the faith of Nicea.

We have seen that the distinctions between EG and creation are anything but vague in Eastern patristic thought. Having supplied a very specific understanding of the metaphysics of becoming and why divinity is incompatible with it, the Eastern fathers are able to supply a very precise set of apophatic claims regarding EG. And building on the biblical language of begetting, they add to these negative claims a clear set of positive assertions about EG, concerning begetting and eternality. Combined with these positive and negative assertions, we found an added layer of modal distinction between created subjects and divine subjects, which stands out as unique in the ancient world. And by bringing these metaphysics to bear on Eunomian and Eunomian-style arguments, we were able to identify precisely what the Eastern fathers see as the ambiguities and errors in the case against EG. In the end, the Eastern fathers prove to have a very clear and defensible understanding of EG that is not so easily dismissed on grounds of vagueness or indefensibility, as some have suggested. The differences they identify between the begetting of the Son and the making of creatures are not only robust and defensible but prove indispensable within Eastern pro-Nicene metaphysics.

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This is part 2 from a live talk I gave to the Antiochian Men’s Group. If you haven’t yet, please read part 1.

Suffering. A word near to those who choose to rise early on a Saturday to hear a theological lecture.

Thank you for being here. And thank you to the Antiochian Men’s Group for the invitation.

Those who read my work or listen to my podcast know that I tend to speak on matters of theology and metaphysics, readily confessing that I am no one’s priest. I am a scholar who works in areas of philosophy and historical theology. None of that changes here this morning. I am a layman of the Orthodox Church. I say this because I have chosen to include in this morning’s talks lessons about suffering and its spiritual benefit. The lessons I offer carry no spiritual authority over any of you. I offer them not as a spiritual athlete who has excelled in transformation. Rather, I offer them as a layman and a fellow Orthodox Christian, hobbling on the road to salvation.

Before I begin, allow me to provide a road map for this morning’s talk. We’ll begin by looking at what the Eastern fathers of the Church tell us about the nature of man, our creation, our corruption, and our correction.

I provide this backdrop for two reasons. The first is because the majority, if not the totality, of us are Westerners. Whether we know it or not, we have been shaped by Western thinking. And much of Western thought about the nature of man is contrary to the teachings of the Eastern fathers. Hence, it’s important to correct these lenses as part of our ongoing catechesis and repentance.

The second reason is that it provides the abstract reasons why suffering is indispensable to the remaking of man, which is to say, to our salvation. Such is part 1 of this talk.

After providing the abstract reasons for the importance of suffering, I’ll turn, in part 2, to the enfleshed reality, offering to you, dear listeners, lessons from my own life that have taught me in very tangible ways the wisdom behind so many words of the Saints about pain. So with that, let’s begin.

Part 1: The Making, Corruption, and Remaking of Man

Part 2. Six Lessons Learned through Suffering

In recent years, I have been forced to learn the lessons about suffering in a more personal way than I ever thought possible. A little more than four years ago, my wife of twenty-one years and I divorced. That event and the events to follow were and remain the most painful experiences of my life.

I do not speak publicly about my divorce, today being a singularly rare exception. I realize that the mere mention of divorce is uncomfortable, people being unsure what to say or how to conduct themselves, and rest assured the topic is no more comfortable for me either. But my hope is that bringing into the light the lessons learned might offer something redemptive. God has unquestionably used this most tragic of events for my own refinement, and perhaps by sharing those lessons with you, even more good might come.

Allow me to speak candidly. Divorce is hell. Even if justified, it is a death that never offers a final rattle. Ripping apart two who have been one flesh, watching someone you built a life with become a stranger is one of the most painful things imaginable.Observing the impact on the children, wondering how their futures might have been different weighs heavy on the mind and the conscience. Grief is constant, often overwhelming.

Added to all this are the social dimensions. Divorce is extremely isolating. The topic is uncomfortable. People don’t know how to talk about it, so they don’t. In my own case, no one in my family called to see how I was doing for six months after the divorce. And I still have family members who have never broached the topic.

Family, friends, and communities often have a strange sense that they must choose sides. We can no longer be friends with both. Or worse, we need to assign blame and determine who is the villain and who is the victim, so we know who to comfort and who to shun. And so, the fracture in the family, which is palpable and painful, like a broken limb, spreads to every facet of life.

In these dynamics, I’ve learned first hand why the Bible speaks so harshly about judging others, about gossip, and about slander, naming gossips amongst those in the lake of fire and warning that God will measure it back to you the degree to which you judge another. Such sentiments seem harsh until you are on the receiving end.

I recall a story of a woman who went to a priest-monk for confession, and she confessed that she had gossiped. The monk told her to take a pillow up to the top of the mountain, rip it open, and cast the feathers about. She did, and when she returned, he instructed her to now gather all of the feathers. Her face grew long at the instruction: That’s impossible, she replied. And the monk agreed. Noting that so it is with gossip.

I have witnessed firsthand how far-flung gossip can spread, how this vice, deemed damnable by sacred Scripture, is a socially acceptable sin against a great many Christian communities. I have marveled at hearing what people “know,” which they do not, and speak so freely and fervently about.

I share all of this as context for the lessons I have learned from these cruel masters, lessons for which I’m exceedingly grateful. But before I offer these, allow me one word of advice, or better, a plea.

Be the exception. If you know someone has been divorced, do not avoid them or the awkward topic. Ask them how they are doing, often. Do not judge or presume you know the person or what happened. More importantly, remember that you are not their judge, and thus there is no need for you to know nor place blame. God has not entrusted to you the task of judging them. Do not shun either side but show compassion to both. Embrace the children who are the victims of such a tragedy. Do not gossip. Do not claim to know. Do the one thing you are called to do, which is love your neighbor, to care for those who have been beaten by robbers (that is the devil and his minions) and left for dead. And bid others to do the same, doing your part to halt judgment, gossip, slander, and divisions. For the cancers of judgment, of gossip, of slander, of choosing sides and the rest are a cancer no less diabolic in their effects, on the broken family and their community, as the divorce itself.

Having said this, I acknowledge that the fallout described seems almost inevitable, even when there are those who model the exception. So, to one like myself, who finds himself in such throes, what is he to do?

Every bit of sound wisdom I have found in navigating this question over the last four-plus years has been found in sacred Scripture and its echoes in the Saints of the Orthodox Church and the monks of Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, who have walked through these years with me. So, allow me to offer six brief lessons learned through suffering, and then we can rest.

Lesson 1: Do not return evil for evil, but to repay evil with good, including the good of prayer. On the one hand, this is a familiar teaching. The temptation, however, is to see it merely as a command, a way of conducting ourselves we are instructed to do by our Lord. And it is indeed that. But I have come to see something more in this.

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February 2026 Q&A Questions:

00:00:29 — What advice would you have for someone who wants to live like a philosopher—think like one, act like one, and live their life like one?

00:16:20 — Does color exist in the dark? (A question relating to something Fr. Stephen De Young discussed on the Lord of Spirits podcast.)

00:27:53 — What do you mean by saying that time is a creature (and not just an emergent, relational phenomenon)? A discussion about time and eternity in Western thought.

00:43:22 — Continued: So God is pre-eternal? How does God relate to time?

00:47:15 — Is the idea of God being in the “static now” related to apophatic thinking?

00:55:40 — Regarding mind, heart, thumos (the “spirited” part of the soul—the seat of anger, pride, courage, and the drive for recognition), and appetite—how much of that framework is useful for us today, and how much of it is wrong or distracting? Discussing ideas of C.S. Lewis and Plato and how they relate to the Church Fathers.

01:06:42 — Please clarify the distinction between Eastern and Western conceptions of the Fall.

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I Want to Contribute

This is part 1 from a live talk I gave to the Antiochian Men’s Group. Please come back next week for part 2.

Suffering. A word near to those who choose to rise early on a Saturday to hear a theological lecture.

Thank you for being here. And thank you to the Antiochian Men’s Group for the invitation.

Those who read my work or listen to my podcast know that I tend to speak on matters of theology and metaphysics, readily confessing that I am no one’s priest. I am a scholar who works in areas of philosophy and historical theology. None of that changes here this morning. I am a layman of the Orthodox Church. I say this because I have chosen to include in this morning’s talks lessons about suffering and its spiritual benefit. The lessons I offer carry no spiritual authority over any of you. I offer them not as a spiritual athlete who has excelled in transformation. Rather, I offer them as a layman and a fellow Orthodox Christian, hobbling on the road to salvation.

Before I begin, allow me to provide a road map for this morning’s talk. We’ll begin by looking at what the Eastern fathers of the Church tell us about the nature of man, our creation, our corruption, and our correction.

I provide this backdrop for two reasons. The first is because the majority, if not the totality, of us are Westerners. Whether we know it or not, we have been shaped by Western thinking. And much of Western thought about the nature of man is contrary to the teachings of the Eastern fathers. Hence, it’s important to correct these lenses as part of our ongoing catechesis and repentance.

The second reason is that it provides the abstract reasons why suffering is indispensable to the remaking of man, which is to say, to our salvation. Such is part 1 of this talk.

After providing the abstract reasons for the importance of suffering, I’ll turn, in part 2, to the enfleshed reality, offering to you, dear listeners, lessons from my own life that have taught me in very tangible ways the wisdom behind so many words of the Saints about pain. So with that, let’s begin.

Part 1: The Making, Corruption, and Remaking of Man

For most of us in the West, the anthropology with which we are most familiar is one born out of the Pelagian Dispute, an early Latin controversy that definitively shaped both Roman Catholic and Protestant theology. We need not delve into the details of the dispute. For our purposes, let the familiar results suffice:

Man is born into this world sinful. He bears the stain of his forefather, Adam, and every deed of his own is tainted by sin. He can do nothing to remedy his condition, and not even his best efforts to do good are pleasing to God. In a word, he is born into this world damnable, and he heaps damnable deeds atop this condition with his every breath. His condition is one destined to stand before his divine Judge, his condemnation certain, his damnation inevitable. His sole hope is that God has mercy upon him. Yet, he cannot evoke such mercy, since even his pleas for help come from damnable lips, tainted by the condition he inherited from birth. So, if God shows mercy and provides aid, we should marvel. As for the nature of this aid — what is called “grace” — its kind and effects are disputed amongst Catholics and Protestants, but what is undisputed is that it is supernatural. Nature, of which man is part, can do nothing pleasing to its Maker of its own accord. So if anything good is to come of us, it must come by miracle, something transcendent invading our natural condition.

The tale of man, as told by the Eastern fathers, is notably different from the picture just painted. Let’s begin with the making of man, as told by these fathers of the Church. Within the Genesis story, we find talk of the heavens and the earth, and within this telling, the heavens are the realm of things immortal, while the earth is the realm of things mortal. And bridging this gap, we find man: a creature taken from the earth but breathed into from heaven.

Now, this merger of heaven and earth raised a question in the minds of those in the East, first in Jewish writer, Philo of Alexandria, and then in the Eastern Church fathers after him: Was man created mortal or immortal? Their answer was uniform: neither. Man was made potentially mortal and potentially immortal, his will functioning like the fulcrum of a balance scale, choosing whether to live and die like the beasts or to live the life of angels.

This choice goes to a second critical feature of the story that is recognized by all fathers of the East. When deciding to create man, God says, “Let us make man in our own image and according to our likeness.” And after these words, God creates man in his own image, likeness is not repeated.

The Eastern fathers take this omission to be important. The image, they teach, concerns our higher nature or spirit, which is rational, free, and capable of communing with God. The likeness of God concerns our active imitation of God by which we come to commune with him and be transformed. Such is the reason Adam was made in the image of God but not his likeness. For the likeness is active, born from choice; Adam must choose to cooperate. But we know the story: he chose poorly.

Now, before discussing the effects of this choice, let’s say a bit more about this communion by imitation, the sort of communion meant to give rise to the divine likeness.

When considering the nature of God expressed in his operations, we might think of words like love, justice, mercy, compassion, longsuffering, and so on. Such attributes are impossible for a rock or plant or dog, but not for a man. We, too, are capable of such operations. And when we imitate God in these ways, we also participate in God.

The point is alien to the Western mind. Something like virtue is thought of as a purely natural activity: Aristotle tells us it is the acquisition of habit by a repetition of will, and the sentiment echoes in Latin Christians, like Thomas Aquinas. But the Eastern fathers do not see such activity as natural. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, speaks of Christ as Virtue. Hence, when one acquires virtue, he participates in Christ.

The most common analogy for explaining such participation, in both the Eastern fathers themselves and in contemporary writers on their thought, is the analogy of iron and fire. Fire expresses its nature by operations of heating and lighting. And iron, when communing with fire, comes to glow and burn. The iron remains iron, but something of the nature of fire has taken up residence within it. And so it is with our participation in God, according to the Eastern fathers. We, as images of God, are made to commune with God, and through that communion be transformed, bearing in our person things divine. When we imitate God, displaying these attributes on a small scale, something of God is resident in us.

We catch the clearest glimpse of this in the person of the Resurrected Christ, the first manifestation of man, bearing both the image and likeness. Here, we see not only the perfection of virtue, but also immortality and incorruption in one who radiates the glory of God.

And such is the promise of the gospel. In the gospel, Christ offers to us eternal life. While many tend to think of this as mere longevity, worked upon us like a divine magic trick, we should notice a small statement from Saint Paul to Timothy: God alone is immortal. Yet, this very same Paul says, in his discourse on resurrection, that we must put off mortality for immortality. The two statements point to a truth stated plainly by Saint Peter: We escape the corruption that has come upon the world by partaking of the divine nature. Or as Christ himself says to his hearers in the Gospel of John, The Father has given it to me to have life in myself, but you will not come to me to have life. The life Christ offers is the very life of God. Our hope, the hope of the gospel, is that we might partake of God and be transformed by bearing in our person something of the divine nature. Such is the destiny of man.

But here, we see a critical difference between the Christian East and the Christian West. Notice that, on this understanding, the reason we are capable of communion with God is because we are divine image bearers. Yes, the results of such communion are supernatural, giving rise to divine attributes in our person. But our access to God’s supernature is perfectly natural.

And just as importantly, the Fall does not rob us of this access. You and I now, despite the Fall and the corruption of our nature, continue to bear God’s image. The redemptive work of God in Christ, which we will talk about in a moment, is understood by the Eastern fathers as the restoration of our nature, an unearthing of something already within us.

Saint Antony the Great tells us that the soul is twisted, but if one untwists the soul, it does what it is made to do, deify the person. Gregory of Nyssa reads the parable of the lost coin as a picture of the work of Christ. You know the story. A woman has a coin of inestimable value, which gets lost in her cluttered house. So she cleans the entire house in order to find the coin and then throws a party to celebrate. The house, says Gregory, is man. The coin is the image of God within man. The clutter that hides the coin is the passions. The woman is Christ, who clears away the passions, unearths the coin, and celebrates with the angels.

Gregory has already thrust us into the topic of Christ’s redemptive work, so let’s talk about the corruption that has set in as a result of the Fall and Christ’s undoing of corruption in the Incarnation.

The simplest way to understand the corruption of our nature, as taught by the Eastern fathers, is as an inversion. As noted, we are composed of things earthly and things heavenly, of a spiritual nature and an animal nature. And just as wisdom bids that in a relationship between a man and his horse that the man steer, so Wisdom herself bids man that his higher nature govern, order, and care for the lower.

But having chosen the life of beasts, we find this arrangement inverted. Our animal passions hold unnatural sway over our rational spirit, pulling us toward the things that animals desire, food, sex, ease, and the avoidance of death. Yet, our rational spirit retains its memory that it is made for more. So we find ourselves discontent, longing for something higher, though we often know not what. And should we strive for something higher, such as the virtuous life, we find ourselves crying out with Saint Paul: I know the things I ought to do, but I do not do them, and the things I will not, I do. In this famous passage from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, we find the clearest description of our Fallen condition, a war between the spirit and the flesh. Now, translations often mislead readers to think of this as a spiritual war between the “sin nature” and the Holy Spirit. But the Greek is clear. Paul speaks here of the flesh and its passions. And the spirit that it wars against is our rational self, which is why he uses spirit (pneuma) interchangeably with mind (nous). The picture is of a rational mind enslaved to the passions of its lower nature, impotent to cast them off for the life of angels.

Into this condition steps the Son of God, our Maker. Before saying more on this, allow a word on something, once again, rather notable in the Eastern tale. Unlike in the West, where God has no obligation to rescue humanity and his aid is arbitrary in the true sense (bare choice) because he has no obligation to us and we have no claim to help, in the Eastern fathers we find something very different. Athanasius tells us it would be unworthy of God to allow demonic schemes to thwart his intent for creation. And when speaking about divine providence, these fathers state something extraordinary: God can do nothing but will the good of a creature. Such is his nature. Hence, far from seeing man as a damned mass, which the divine Judge must decide whether to cast into Hell or show mercy to some, the Eastern fathers offer a very different picture of God. Seeing his creation corrupted and sick, the Maker himself enters the cancerous organ in order to drive away its disease, instill divine life within it, and nurture it back to health, so that this good infection (as C. S. Lewis calls it) might spread to the whole of man, and from man to the cosmos.

Now, I promised in my opening that this glimpse into the creation, corruption, and correction of man would offer insight into why suffering is indispensable to our salvation. Before delivering on this promise, allow me one further observation from the Eastern fathers, not about man per se, but about creatures generally.

Every creature is a being in process. The point becomes evident in the Arian dispute, the first dispute to give rise to an Ecumenical Council, namely, the Council of Nicea and the first draft of the Nicene Creed.

Well known enough is the heresy of Arius that occasioned the dispute. According to Arius, there was a time when the Son of God was not, or did not exist. In a word, Arius argued that the Son of God was a creature. And amid this dispute, the pro-Nicenes make abundantly clear the ramifications of this claim. Athanasius, Alexander of Alexandria, and the Council itself explain that if the Son came into being then he is changeable, corruptible, morally turnable, and so on. The charges brought to line the Eastern patristic understanding of creatures generally.

And central to this understanding is that every creature moves from non-being into being, or put more colloquially, from potentially something to actually something. The Greek word is alloiōtos: we are changeable or can become something else. In other words, every creature is developmental. We begin in a seedling state, develop into infancy, to adolescence, and on to adulthood. And even when we are formed bodily, we continue to develop in other ways, intellectually, musically, artistically, morally, spiritually. In such developments, we become something we previously were not. Such is the mark of creatures.

The point brings us back to a distinction noted earlier: God made man in his own image, but not (yet) according to his likeness. Why? The reason is this. The likeness of God is something that requires cooperation. Recall that we participate in God and come to bear his likeness by imitating him. God can create an image-bearer, but to bring about his likeness in that image-bearer, the creature itself must cooperate, freely choosing to imitate its Maker.

The need to cooperate and freely choose the Good is not a post-Fall phenomenon. Such was required of Adam, and it continues to be required of us. And on the heels of this truth enters suffering.

Unlike our First Father, we are corrupt, a sick and dying organ within the cosmos. And the path to health is painful.

We see the pattern first laid bare in the person of Christ. Here, our Maker chooses to become a creature, for our sake, joining himself to the cancerous organ. In this union, his divine life drives away the cancer, restoring the organ to health. And yet, according to the Eastern fathers, the remaking of man is not complete until Christ’s Resurrection. He suffers temptation; he suffers grief and sorrow; his soul recoils from his impending death, as all animals do. This is why Maximus the Confessor says the cross is the definitive defeat of the passions. For every passion cries out, give me this or die, or take this from me or I die. But in embracing the will of God even unto death on a cross, Christ puts to death the passions by his own death. And as John Behr, commenting on Saint Ignatius, explains, his cry, “It is finished,” is a proclamation that what is finished is the remaking of man. And when he bursts forth from the tomb, having carried his immortal life into Hades, undoing death, he rises as our archetype: Man, bearing the image and likeness of God, immortal, incorruptible, fully formed and alive.

But notice that the path to this formation involved pain. Temptation. Grief. Sorrow. Suffering. Even death. And the call of Christ assures us that if we, too, wish to live, then we too must die: “Take up your cross and follow me. Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will keep it.”

On this Eastern telling, the gospel is not about absolution before a future Judge, or about supernatural aid to earn merits in his sight, or about unmerited favor despite our sinfulness. God loves us and can do no other. He wills our good and can do no other. He readily forgives and can do no other. But such is not the good news. The good news is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Our Maker has put the cancer of our world into remission. And if we join ourselves to him, imitating this death by turning and returning and returning the soul back to God, despite the assailing passions and countless failings, that good infection, that life and healing can come to us as well. But as in all things creaturely, it is a thing of process. And as with all processes that involve the rational soul, such a process requires choice, repetition, and struggle. But because the sufferings of Christ have redeemed suffering itself, such struggle is redemptive. “I have told you these things, so that you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world.”

To be continued…

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A presbyterian minister, “Raleigh St. Clair,” who heard me on a popular radio show, wrote to me concerning iconography. Following this initial reply (which I will post to substack at some point), he wrote with a new question concerning the Eucharist. As the opening of this letter explains, I had resolved that I would not reply to the second email, having already devoted plenty of time to the first. However, after reading “Raleigh’s” question, I saw he was asking about a rather obscure dispute between the Lutherans and the Reformed which I find particularly interesting, given the ways in which it highlights critical differences between Chritsianity East and West. Hence, I could not resist. Please subscribe and support my work.

Dear “Raleigh,”

I had resolved, before reading your email, that I was not going to answer any more questions, since I presently don’t have time for such lengthy emails. But then I read your question, and I can’t resist! Although, please, for the sake of my work schedule, don’t ask any further questions after this one.

By way of prelude, the reason I couldn’t resist is that the specific aspect of the Eucharist discussion you raised — the dispute between the Lutherans, on the one hand, and the Reformed, Zwinglian, and Catholics, on the other — I find fascinating. (And, from what I can tell, very few people are aware of the dispute, hence my surprise at you mentioning it.) What I find particularly interesting is that both sides are correct in their accusations. The Lutherans accuse their opponents of falling into Nestorianism with their rejection of the communication of attributes. On this point, the Lutherans are correct; the stance is Nestorian and thus heretical. Their opponents, however, insist that the Lutherans have fallen into a form of monophysitism by suggesting that features of the divine essence mingle with Christ’s humanity. This charge is also correct. Both sides espouse something heretical, and both sides rightly diagnose the errors of the other. No side holds the Orthodox position.

What the dispute illustrates so well is the importance of a distinction, critical throughout the Eastern Church fathers and the Ecumenical Councils (not to mention the NT), that the West lost, namely, the distinction between God’s essence and his energies. The result for Western theology and philosophy was both pervasive and catastrophic, in my assessment. The Lutherans sensed the deficiency, and they noticed in Cyril of Alexandria what appeared to be a remedy. However, not understanding Eastern theology generally or the essence-energies distinction particularly, their use of Cyril fell into a form of monophysitism. Nonetheless, they were correct to see in their opponents, who rejected their efforts, a form of Nestorianism.

So, with that teaser, allow me to backtrack. I’ll begin with the Western medieval discussion of the Eucharist. When I spoke on the show about the West being interested in the mechanics of the Eucharist, I meant that the Western “models” were interested in the mechanics of how precisely bread and wine become body and blood. Notice that in the medieval discussion, the idea that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ is a given. The worries about “bread worship,” for example, are post-Reformation phenomena. Hence, all three medieval models presume that Christ’s body and blood are somehow localized in the Eucharist. The question is How?

The models, as you probably know, were transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and real presence. The first two are the most metaphysical in nature. Transubstantiation was based on a medieval use of Aristotelian physics. In particular, Aristotelian physics distinguishes “form” from “matter.” Matter, in this context, does not refer to wood or stone or flesh; it refers to an amorphous substratum that has (or more accurately, is) the potential to be something. We might think of it as a shapeless bit of fabric that is potentially spherical, if wrapped around a sphere, or cubical, if wrapped around a cube. Form, by contrast, refers to the nature a thing has. The abstract definitions by which we identify objects (e.g., circle, sphere, cat, human) are forms. The basic theory is that these abstract natures become concretely real when manifest in matter. What we call “becoming” or “generation” is a process in which matter receives form. When this happens, matter’s potential to be something transitions from potentially something (e.g., potentially a cat) to actually something (e.g., actually a cat), form manifesting within matter. To again use our fabric analogy, the phenomenon is akin to our fabric being wrapped around a ball. When this happens, the fabric’s potential to be spherical becomes concretely actual.

Now, the medievals added to this the idea that certain types of matter have greater affinity for some forms than others. For example, they presumed that the air in the room is an ethereal type of matter, since it carries the form of light when a light source is present. However, the moment we remove the light source, the light dissipates. Hence, the affinity of air for light is very low, since it releases light immediately when the source of the form is removed. By contrast, if we boil water and then remove from the pot the fire that heated the water, the water remains hot. Hence, the reasoning went, the material of water has a high affinity for heat, since it retains the form of heat for a long time. (This theory was, incidentally, the basis for alchemy and the hope that one might find a type of matter that has a high affinity for the form gold, for example.)

Bringing all of this to bear on the Eucharist gets you the medieval theory of transubstantiation. The theory, in short, was that God removes the form bread from the host and replaces it with the form body. Likewise, God removes the form wine and replaces it with the form blood. This is why the theory is named transubstantiation: it is a change in substance, or form.Yet, so the argument goes, the type of matter that houses bread and the type of matter that houses wine both have a high affinity for these forms. Hence, the remnant of the form lingers, tricking the senses, just as heat lingers in water after the flame is removed. This is what is typically meant when advocates of the theory say that the form has changed but the accidents trick the senses.

Consubstantiation, by contrast, rejected the idea that the bread and the wine cease to be bread and wine. Rather than relying on the theory of material affinity, the view accepts that the original forms, bread and wine, remain but another is added, body and blood.

Real presence was the third medieval theory. This was the least metaphysical of the three, since it did not draw on form-matter metaphysics. Instead, it took a simpler route of claiming that Christ himself is somehow truly present in the Eucharist. The theory offered no metaphysical explanation as to the mechanics of how God makes this so.

While all three positions were viable Roman Catholic positions in the medieval era, in the wake of the Reformation, the Catholic Church officially adopted transubstantiation at the Council of Trent. The Lutherans adopted real presence (not consubstantiation, as many mistakenly suggest). Yet, two new positions emerged. The one position, the Zwinglian view, takes a memorialist stance on the Eucharist, something that had never been espoused before in Church history. The second is the Reformed position of spiritual ascent. The position aimed at retaining a high view of the Eucharist as a means of real spiritual communion with Christ, while sidestepping what the Reformed perceived as an idolatrous tendency toward “bread worship,” reflected in the Catholic veneration of the changed elements. The theory held, as you likely know, that rather than Christ descending to be localized in the elements, the believer is raised up to Christ in order to partake of Christ spiritually.

Now, the dispute you referenced was that the Lutheran view developed beyond the medieval theory of real presence to add a communication of attributes. They saw in the NT teachings about Christ and the Eucharist commitments that seemed to require divine traits of Christ’s humanity. As a result, they argued that some attributes of Christ’s divine nature must be communicated to his human nature — insisting, however, that this communication of attributes is unique to Christ’s humanity, due to the Incarnation; such attributes are not communicable to the general human population. The Lutherans appealed to Cyril of Alexandria, in particular, who seemed to argue exactly that: Christ’s divine attributes are communicated to his humanity in the Incarnation.

The difficulty for the Lutherans was that, in a Western context, “attribute,” especially when used in reference to God, refers to the essential properties of the divine nature. Think of it this way. Four-sided is an essential property, or attribute, of the nature square. Now, in the case of a square, we could identify accidental properties of a particular square (e.g., This square is blue) as attributes — that is, as properties attributable to that square. But in Western theology, from the time of Augustine forward, God was seen as “absolutely simple essence” (summa simplex essentia). Hence, God has no accidents. Any divine attribute is necessarily an essential property of the divine nature. So, in suggesting that the divine attributes are communicated to Christ’s humanity, it seems the Lutherans are claiming that the divine essence mingles with Christ’s human nature, or essence, which would indeed be a form of monophysitism: i.e., Christ not only has two natures, but these natures mingle together, or are confused, in the union of the two. The opponents of the Lutherans rightly pointed out this fact.

Yet, the Lutherans saw in Cyril an insistence that there is some communication of attributes in Christ. And they were correct! (However, “attribute” means something different in the Eastern fathers than in the West, a point I will get to shortly, but the Lutherans did not know this.) Hence, they fired back that it was Nestorian to insulate the natures one from another and deny a communication of attributes. And the Lutherans were correct on this point; such a position is indeed Nestorian and thus heretical.

So, with these positions on the table, what are we to make of the discussion in the light of the Eastern Church fathers and, more specifically, the seven Ecumenical Councils of the first eight centuries? Afterall, you are correct to say that we should look at these issues in light of Chalcedonian Christology, if you are using “Chalcedonian Christology” as a catchall term for a proper understanding of Christ and the Trinity as articulated and defended throughout the first eight centuries. Looked at in this way, the question is really twofold: What did we receive from the first? (This question and its answer is always at the center of the Ecumenical Councils.) And what does this deposit of faith tell us about the Eucharist? But before looking at the Eastern Church fathers and what insights they might offer, allow me to first make some comments on these Western theories.

I’ll begin with transubstantiation and consubstantiation. The term, transubstantiation, has some precedent in the Church fathers. The word metastoicheioo, literally “trans-element,”appears in several fathers (e.g., Anastasius of Sinai, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus), though typically in reference to the change that occurs in the resurrection body when it puts off corruption for incorruption. However, Gregory of Nyssa does use it in his Great Catechism to refer to the change that occurs in the Eucharist. However, he never fleshes out the metaphysics of the term. The term simply indicates a metamorphosis has occurred. So we can see an affirmation of metamorphosis of the elements in Gregory, but one can hardly draw from this the specifics of the medieval theory. I actually think the consistent use of the term to refer to the metamorphosis of the resurrection body offers some clearer insight on the topic than any comparison with the medieval theories, but I will return to this point later. For now, let’s simply consider transubstantiation on its own terms.

Putting on my metaphysician’s hat for a moment, the main problem with transubstantiation, which applies to consubstantiation as well, is this. “Form” refers to a universal or a generic. That is to say, when speaking about the form of circle, for example, we are speaking about the abstract nature identified by the definition: i.e., A two-dimensional geometric shape with a flowing circumference in which all points are an equal distance from a common center. Form does not refer to any specific circle. When espousing that what occurs in the Eucharist, then, is a change in form, a very real problem emerges: The change makes the bread and wine generic body and blood, not Christ’s body and blood. The Eastern fathers are quite clear that, as John of Damascus puts it, flesh and blood are not life-giving; it is Christ’s flesh and blood that is life-giving.

One could attempt to sidestep this problem by espousing a “tropes” theory of form. That is to say, when the form manifests in matter, it is somehow particularized or individuated, so that my humanity (form1) is not identical with your humanity (form2). Some medieval writers did espouse this view, and so, one could contend that the change in form in the elements is not to body and blood generic but to Christ’s particularized forms of body and blood.

The problems with this solution, however, are twofold.

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“Pagoda,” a Presbyterian minister, wrote to me after hearing me on a popular radio show and reading my article on John of Damascus. Though belonging to an iconoclast tradition, “Pagoda” had rediscovered his love of Byzantine art. Despite having profound spiritual experiences beholding such images, “Pagoda” could not shake his training that such images are impermissible. He asked me specifically about objections he had read, suggesting that Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and the Synod of Elvira all opposed icons — the implication being that the iconodule position is a late development, divergent from the earliest Christian practices. Below is my reply.

Dear “Pagoda,”

Thanks for your email. I’m glad you enjoyed the interview and the article. Allow me to take your questions in reverse order, starting with the supposed evidence of early iconoclasm in the Christian Church.

I admit that I’m not accustomed to Irenaeus or Ephiphanius being raised as patristic support for iconoclasm. The more common go-to’s, in my experience, are Clements of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen. I’ll throw these on the list as well, just in case you come across them in your investigation of this topic.

I’ll begin with my standard three. Clement, Tertullian, and Origen are inherently problematic points of appeal because none are considered to be fathers of the Church. Their teachings are understood to include heretical ideas, divergent from the faith once given over to the Saints. Tertullian, in particular, outright apostatized, embracing the heretical sect known as Montanism. Origen, though not a heretic in the formal sense, nonetheless did propagate ideas that were later condemned as heretical at Constantinople II, once those ideas spread via later “Origenists” (e.g., Philoxenus of Mabbug and Stephen bar Sudaili, being two 5th century examples). Many of Origen’s problematic ideas reflect his seemingly negative view of the flesh and of matter generally. Though not fully Gnostic or Manicheistic, these views indicate at the very least Platonic sympathies that problematize matter in a way that is out of step with the Christian tradition. (Origen was trained in philosophy by Ammonius Saccas, the famous Platonist who also trained the NeoPlatonist Plotinus.) This problematized view of matter comes through in, not only Origen’s iconoclast tendencies, but also in later Origenist iconoclasts, such as Evagrius Pontus, who believed spiritual ascent requires leaving behind all images — including mental images — as we pursue The One, who is “beyond being” and thus beyond all limitations of the kinds that images represent. While aspects of this view resonate in the Eastern fathers, specifically their talk of ascent into the dark cloud of unknowing, such a sentiment unqualified (i.e., tempered by the other aspects of Christian mysticism) has greater resemblance to Middle and NeoPlatonism, which is out of step with more traditional Christian position that the things God makes are to be “clear and spotless mirrors, reflecting the glow of primordial light and indeed of God himself” (Pseudo-Dionysius, De coelesti hierarchia, 2 (PG 3.121b); see also Gregory of Nyssa, De beatitudinibus (PG 44.1272c)).

As for Clement of Alexandria, while we might expect that Clement, also a student of Platonism, might echo Origen’s iconoclast sentiments, the appeal to him is unwarranted. The passage to which iconoclasts appeal concerns pagan idolatry, evident in the fact that Clement goes on to explain which images should be used on seals, for example (Paedagogus, 1.3 (PG 8.633)).

Now, concerning Irenaeus and Eiphanius, the citation you provide for the latter (i.e., ANF vol. 1, p. 351) is not in fact of Epiphanius, so I can’t check it; the location is for Irenaeus, which is good, since the citation of Irenaeus you provide is incorrect. The passage in question is from chapter 25, section 6, book 1, not chapter 26. The passage does not offer as much as an iconoclast might hope. Irenaeus simply describes certain facts about the group in question, as he often does in this treatise. In this case, he is discussing the Carpocrates, who “style themselves Gnostics.” When describing their doctrines, he does mention that they have images, some paintings and others not (presumably statues); they claim that Pilot commissioned a statue of Christ; and they set their images up amongst images of other philosophers (i.e., Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, et al.). There is no obvious value judgment in the description. The one apparent condemnation, which can be seen as such because it styles their customs as those of the “Gentiles” — presumably branding these practices as pagan, as opposed to Jewish or Christian — is that they “crown” these statues and have “other modes of honoring” them “after the same manner of the Gentiles.” This is all Irenaeus has to say on the matter. Nothing in the passage indicates that images per se are impermissible. The tacit critique appears to be of a form of syncretism — characteristic of the Gnostics and other mystery cults — where the images and statues are not only made, but incorporated into the annals of pagan figures and, in this case, honored in odd ways, such as crowning them and whatever other “modes of honoring” the Gentiles might do with idols. To take from this a blanket prohibition on images or to conflate such odd practices with Christian icondule veneration is a stretch, to say the least.

Now, regarding the Synod of Elvira, allow me to first offer an aside concerning synods. The Church did not presume that every synod was somehow infallible. Quite the contrary, local synods were subject to scrutiny and could, and often were, overturned by greater authorities. The ecumenical councils both ratify and reject local synods. Therefore, simply because a practice or a belief was advocated in a certain city at a certain time, this hardly constitutes proof that the Church as a whole embraced this perspective.

Nonetheless, let’s consider canon 36 of the Synod of Elvira and whether it in fact advocates iconoclasm. The iconoclast reading of the canon is problematic. The reason is the specificity of the canon. The canon does not prohibit images in a blanket sense; it prohibits monumental paintings on structural walls. The specificity is noteworthy, given the widespread use of images on sarcophagi, for example. Moreover, the specificity of the prohibition leaves open the door to paintings on non-structural walls — a strange oversight, if the concern is images per se. In this light, the canon is arguably a proof of early iconodulism, not iconoclasm. That is to say, in anticipation of the Diocletian persecution, to which this canon is a precursor, the worry is about the immobility of sacred images, which makes them susceptible to desecration, since they cannot be moved or hidden (see Hefele, History des Conciles [Paris, 1970], vol. I, part I, p. 240).

Before closing out our look at evidence of early Christian iconoclasm, allow me to add one more voice, that of Eusebius of Caesarea. Like Tertullian, Origen, and Clement, Eusebius needs to be taken with a grain of salt. He was, afterall, an Arian sympathizer. Eusebius, like Tertullian and Origen, opposed images. However, his testimony on the point is particularly important because, in his lament, he admits that the iconodule practices are widespread and go back to the first century. He speaks about the many icons of Christ, Peter, and Paul that have been “preserved up to the present time.” Moreover, before leveling this complaint, he goes to great lengths describing a statue of Christ in the city of Paneas (Caesarea Philippi) that was erected by the woman with an issue of blood who was healed by Christ (Matt 9:20-3, et al.) (History of the Church, 7.18 (PG 20:680)). Therefore, while Eusebius disapproves of the practice, he admits the point, critical to the iconodules, that they are part of “tradition” (paradosis) — or that which has been handed down from ancient times to the present. (Note that this is far from the only image that, according to tradition, is traceable to the first century. Others include Saint Luke’s icon of Mary and the infant Christ, which was sent to Theophilus with Luke’s writings, as well as the icon made without hands by Christ, which was sent by Christ himself to Abgar, ruler of Edessa in Syria, to heal him of leprosy.)

All of this goes to a broader point concerning the Eastern Church fathers and the perspective of the Orthodox Church, which I think needs to be wrestled with when looking at this topic — and other topics as well.

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I published this lecture a couple of months back in parts, but I wanted to post the full version here—especially for new subscribers who might have missed it.

This is the first lecture from The East-West Series, a 25-lecture exploration of the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. I’m currently crowdfunding to complete production of the full series, which is scheduled to launch Summer 2026.

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ON CHRISTIANITY EAST & WEST

Lecture 1

The modern religious landscape has recently been host to a rather surprising trend: Westerners, both young and old, have grown increasingly interested in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Following a notable exodus from religion nearly a decade ago, many are now returning to religion, and Eastern Orthodoxy — an ancient but notably small tradition within the United States — is one of the havens to which religious pilgrims have turned. But despite the allure of the Christian East, many find the differences between Eastern and Western Christianity to be unclear. The uninitiated sense that a great many differences exist, brushing against examples both in print and online, but inquirers often struggle to pinpoint the exact nature of these differences and what it all means.

One might expect that the most natural starting point is to ask a native member of the Orthodox Church. However, those who have known only Eastern Christianity often struggle to explain its doctrines to the Western mind. Why? Simply put, Eastern and Western Christianity share a common vocabulary, born from common Scriptures, and even a common Creed (the Nicene Creed). Yet, how these traditions understand this common vocabulary is worlds apart. Therefore, the Eastern Christian often fails to understand the questions being asked by a Western Christian, and the Western Christian is no better equipped to understand the answers offered by the East. For these Western questions are informed by a very specific history, with very specific concerns, that inform very specific understandings of the Christian faith and its vocabulary.

In short, the two parties often talk past one another. What is needed is a translator, one who not only understands Eastern Orthodoxy but also the Western mind — its history, the presuppositions and concerns born from this history, and the resulting vocabulary. Only by understanding such things, can one translate the Eastern doctrines into terms that make sense to the Western mind. Such translation work is the goal of the present series.

Those familiar with my scholarship and my podcast know that my studies took me down a long, winding road through the history of ideas. Over the course of nearly two decades, I devoted myself to the Western Christian tradition, studying the early Latin fathers, Augustine of Hippo, and both medieval and post-Reformation scholasticism. The result was a firm grasp on the historical development of both Roman Catholic and Protestant theology. In addition, these studies of Western thought carried me beyond the Reformation into the waters of Modern philosophy, where I devoted myself to figures whose ideas have shaped our contemporary culture, including modern Christianity in the West. Yet, as those familiar with my story also know, my studies ultimately led me, not to the halls of Latin Christianity, but to the Eastern Orthodox Church. The very translation work described above is the task to which I have devoted the last eighteen years.

In this series, I hope to offer a guide for the perplexed, serving as the very type of translator described above, one who can help demystify the differences between the Christian East and the Christian West. So, over the course of the next twenty four lectures, I will be your guide as we tour the roads that divide the East from the West.

Before surveying the content of this series, I think it worth commenting on several trends that occasion the creation of this series. The first has already been noted, namely, the growing interest in Orthodox Christianity throughout the Western world. But to this I would add two additional observations about Orthodox inquirers.

The first addition is that Orthodox inquirers often feel torn between Roman Catholicism, on the one hand, and Eastern Orthodoxy, on the other. Such inquirers have already written off Protestant Christianity, and thus find themselves on a quest for the original or true Church — a quest that leads them to his fork in the road. Without any judgment or criticism of those who have felt this inner tension, I admit that I find it peculiar. For, as we will see in this series, Orthodoxy and Catholicism are worlds apart, theologically speaking. I can understand the tension if one’s primary worry is to discern which one is the keeper of the Apostolic faith — very well. But I can’t help but wonder if the tension is indicative of something else.

Often, newcomers to Orthodox Christianity will presume that it has more in common with Catholicism than with Protestantism, since the two have a certain superficial resemblance — vestments, candles, liturgy. But the reality is that Catholicism and Protestantism have far more in common with one another than either has in common with Orthodoxy. The reason is obvious enough from a strictly historical perspective. Protestant Christianity arose as a protest against Roman corruption, and this protest was championed by Roman Catholic theologians. The presumptions of the Reformers are inherently Catholic. The disputes are thus “in house,” as it were — Latin Christians disputing nuances of Latin Christianity.

Hence, when a Latin Christian turns to the Orthodox and asks where he stands on such disputes, the Orthodox Christian can hardly answer. For the dispute is born out of a theology wholly alien to Eastern Christianity. In truth, the Orthodox Christian has no stance on the dispute because he shares none of its premises. His theology is wholly other. For this reason, it’s a fool’s errand to look at Western taxonomies about sin or salvation or baptism or predestination and ask which one is the position of the Orthodox. For these taxonomies are the outgrowth of a uniquely Western discussion, reflective of uniquely Latin presumptions and a uniquely Latin understanding of the Christian faith — an understanding the Orthodox do not share. So, Orthodoxy can no more be placed into one of these Western boxes than a round peg in a square hole. To truly understand the differences between East and West, then, we must dig down to the very foundations, since the root differences are anything but superficial.

A second observation I would add is this. Those drawn to the Orthodox Church come from all backgrounds and for a host of reasons — some due to theology, others history, others liturgy, others art, and others from a search for meaning. Rarely does an inquiry not find something that raises questions, concerns, or confusion. For those from Protestant backgrounds, especially, the list is often predictable — Mary, icons, prayer to Saints. But despite whatever questions might hang in the air, many inquirers find themselves drawn to the Church, despite such questions — as if their heart longs to enter, but their head holds them back. The result can sometimes be a form of unintentional syncretism. What I mean is this.

Often, inquirers are so eager to enter the doors of the Orthodox Church, they focus their questions strictly on those areas that strike them as peculiar or obviously different from their present way of thinking. The tacit presumption is that the other areas of their theology or worldview must be aligned with Orthodox Christianity. But given the vast differences between East and West, this is rarely true. Hence, many converts retain a great deal of Western theology, under the presumption it is perfectly Orthodox, only trading out a few fixtures here and there for an Eastern alternative. The result is a peculiar hybrid of Eastern and Western Christianity — something unintentionally syncretistic, which is neither here nor there.

What is needed is for the convert to continue to turn over the soil of his worldview, cultivating a fully Orthodox mind. But as noted, the syncretism here described is unintentional. Most converts have no idea they retain Western ideas that are alien to their newfound Orthodox faith. Hence, to turn over the soil thoroughly, they require a guide to help reveal the remnants of their Latin Christianity and to see how these remnants are incompatible with their commitment to Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Such is the purpose of this series: To offer a guide to those curious about the differences between the Christian East and the Christian West, to offer a deeper sense of the differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and to help the Eastern convert continue his efforts to more fully appropriate an Orthodox mind.

When considering the numerous differences between the Christian East and the Christian West, I think it fair to identify these core differences as traceable to four main areas: The doctrine of God, the understanding of God-world interaction (or what is called “providence”), anthropology or the nature of man, and salvation or the Christian gospel.

The idea that the Christian East and the Christian West differ on the doctrine of God may come as a surprise, since they share a common Creed — the Nicene Creed. But as we will see, these two traditions harbor significant and often irreconcilable differences on the matter. Within the Latin West, a particular brand of “divine simplicity” is first planted by Augustine of Hippo and then grows into full bloom in Anselm of Canterbury and the medieval scholastics after him. This doctrine affects how Augustine and Latin writers after him use the word “God” (deus), how they understand the Trinity, how they interpret the divine attributes, and a host of other things. Truthfully, the cascading effect can hardly be overstated. And yet, as we will see, the doctrine of simplicity that proves fateful for the Latin West — along with its reverberations throughout the doctrine of God — is wholly alien to the Eastern Church fathers. As a result, a great chasm emerges between how the East and the West understand divine simplicity, the divine attributes, and even the Trinity itself. So, despite a common Creed and an overlapping vocabulary that gives the impression of common doctrines, the resulting teachings about God are vastly different.

These differences in the doctrine of God naturally unfurl into differences about God-world interaction — or what is called “providence.” The understanding of God that follows from the Latin view of simplicity naturally raises a host of questions about divine knowledge, divine freedom, and divine causality: How is it that a God of this sort can create, know, and care for our world? Perhaps the best way to understand medieval scholasticism is as a manifold wrestling with these very questions. The various answers explored by the Latin scholastics would go on to shape not only Catholic thought, but also Protestant thought and even the philosophical thought of the Enlightenment — a shape that still lingers in the minds of most Westerners today, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Yet, once again, the Western presumptions that underwrite this discussion are wholly alien to the thought of the Eastern Church fathers. And for this reason, we find in the Christian East a very different perspective on divine knowledge and divine freedom, on how God both cares for and interacts with the world, on his immanence and relationship to creatures, and even his relationship to time itself.

The contrast between how the East and West see man is no less stark than the contrast in the doctrine of God. Within the Latin West, the Pelagian dispute marks a defining moment in how Augustine of Hippo and Latin writers after him come to see the nature of man, of sin, and of grace. From this point onward, Pelagianism becomes a redline that none might cross without charge of heresy. The result definitively shapes Western thinking about the natural world, about the nature and effects of the Fall, and the nature of the grace required to remedy these effects. And the results, in turn, shape Latin thinking about man’s relationship to God and God’s dealings with man. Once again, however, this uniquely Latin discussion is alien to Eastern Christianity. The Eastern Church fathers harbor a very different perspective on the nature of man, which, in turn, leads to a very different perspective on the natural world, on the nature of the Fall and its effects, on the nature of grace, and all of this offers a very different picture of man’s relationship to God and God’s dealings with man than what we find in the Latin West.

To no surprise, the Latin convictions about the nature of man definitively color the Western understanding of the Christian gospel. The human condition is marked primarily by moral guilt and impending future judgment, with the redemptive work of God in Christ offering to humanity absolution and grace, defined either as supernatural aid to enable man to perform deeds that have merit before God (Roman Catholic) or unmerited favor that places one in favorable standing with God despite his moral guilt (Protestant). But in either case, the human condition, the nature of divine grace, and the redlines first defined by the Pelagian dispute are common across Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant. Yet, much like the Latin understanding of man, the Latin view of the gospel is entirely alien to the Christian East. The root of the human condition, the remedy offered by the gospel, and the nature of divine grace are entirely different within Eastern Christianity — so much so that the disputes of the West make little sense to the Eastern mind.

Within this series, we will explore not only these four central differences, but how these roots differences concerning the nature of God, of providence, of man, and salvation play out in related doctrines of atonement, predestination, even ecclesiology and liturgy. The format for this series is simple. Each topic will be divided into two lectures, one on the Christian West, providing the framework with which most listeners are familiar, and then a second lecture that contrasts the Latin view with the lesser-known position of the Christian East. The topics we cover will unfold as follows. We will begin with anthropology, looking at two perspectives on the nature of man. We will then turn to the doctrine of God, with emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity. From here, we will turn to providence, exploring how these two traditions understand God and world to relate to one another. With this, we will turn to a trio of topics concerning the gospel, namely, the Incarnation, the nature of atonement, and the understanding of salvation. Following this trio, we will look at the respective understandings of Mary, of predestination, of ecclesiology or the nature of the Church, of divine revelation, of iconography, and of liturgy. The result will be twenty four lectures, covering these twelve topics.

Concerning the tone of this series, I have already mentioned that I’m an Eastern Orthodox Christian, this being the result of my journey through the history of ideas. This series, however, is not an Eastern Orthodox apologetic. My training and scholarship is in the history of ideas and historical theology. While my scholarly conclusions are in keeping with the Orthodox Church, I speak neither as a representative of Orthodoxy (I am not) nor as an Orthodox polemicist or apologist. I speak as both a philosopher and historical theologian, who strives to speak fairly and accurately about the history of ideas. My aim is to accurately represent both East and West, without telling you, dear listener, which tradition you should side with.

Now, on this point, a word should be said about the central claim of this series, namely, that there is a theological divide between East and West. The point was common amongst the generation of Russian scholars whose ranks include Vladimir Lossky, Georges Florovsky, and Alexander Schmemann. These figures, and others of their ilk, were part of the generation expelled from Russia after the 1917 Revolution. Their movement to the West awakened them to (what they considered to be) a theological crisis that had been building for centuries within the Russian and Greek theological academies. In a word, they witnessed a crisis of syncretism, where Orthodox scholars were toying with Western ideas from Latin scholasticism, the Enlightenment, and both Roman Catholic and Protestant theology — the results being a “Western captivity” of the Orthodox Church. Lossky, Florovsky, and others saw these theologies as notably divergent from the pure Orthodox faith and thus took great pains to purge Orthodoxy of Western innovations, which required them to articulate in no uncertain terms the differences between the Christian East and the Christian West.

In recent years, however, this claim has become unfashionable in some academic and ecumenical circles. A number of scholars have grown critical of the view as unduly dichotomous, and the presumption about advocates of the divide is that their view is the product of outdated scholarship. However, such is not the source of my convictions.

Roughly the first two decades of my scholarship on the history of ideas was devoted to the history of Western thought. My research program began with Augustine of Hippo, recognizing him as the fountainhead of both Catholic and Protestant theology, and then spidered out from his work backwards into his pagan antecedents and forwards into his medieval, post-Reformation, and Modern recipients. My goals were purely historical, striving to understand the developments of Western thought generally and of Christianity specifically. Only at the twilight of this program did I stumble upon the Eastern Church fathers.

What first captured my attention about these thinkers was how alien their thought was to all of Latin theology. I knew I didn’t fully grasp what I was reading, but what I could see quite plainly was that Eastern patristic thought stood entirely outside of every Western system I had studied. This fact is what led me to delve deeply into these fathers with one simple goal — to understand. But the more I understood, the more I saw the vast differences between East and West. In short, my conviction that there is a great chasm between Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity was born from my study of the primary sources. I would only later discover writers like Lossky and others who concurred with my findings. But neither these scholars nor any contemporary Orthodox literature played a role in shaping my conviction about the East-West divide. For this reason, I simply cannot entertain the suggestion that the view is based on dated scholarship. For my own conviction was born, not from secondary literature, but from decades of studying the primary sources.

The natural question, of course, is why, if the divide is real, do some scholars oppose the claim? In reply, I see several factors at play, each of which takes aim at the same essential feature of the East-West dichotomy. That feature is this. All recognize that Western theology proliferates into a host of opposing theological systems, beginning in the medieval period and expanding exponentially with the Reformation — systems that ultimately give rise to opposing churches and denominations. But advocates of the East-West dichotomy see theological cohesion in the Christian East. In other words, the Christian West shares a handful of basic commitments about the nature of God, man, sin, and salvation, but they are divided on the theological specifics of their ramifications. In the Christian East, by contrast, there is both agreement on the commitments of Christianity and on the specifics of its doctrine, offering a cohesive theology and practice. The belief that the Eastern Church fathers stand in agreement, speaking with a single mind about a common faith is the claim that many oppose. Now, the natural question is why? Why would one oppose the claim that the Eastern fathers are in general agreement on matters of Christian doctrine?

The first explanation concerns the nature of contemporary scholarship. The modern academy thrives on specialization. Very few scholars today are what are pejoratively termed “generalists,” one who looks at the whole of the history of ideas. Instead, scholars are encouraged to specialize on a specific figure and even a specific aspect of that figure’s thought. The natural result is hyper-specialization with focus on minutia. Such granular work tends to amplify differences, even where no substantive difference exists. For example, a patrologist (one who specializes in the Church fathers) may spy a difference between Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus on the ὑπόστασις doctrine — this being the Greek word translated “person” in reference to the Trinity. Why? Because Gregory of Nazianzus continues to use the word πρόσωπον (a word used by the Sabellians) when speaking about the Trinity, while Gregory of Nyssa abandons the term. Now, the observation is true — one of the Gregories rejects the word πρόσωπον with prejudice, while the other does not. But equally important is that Gregory of Nazianzus only ever uses πρόσωπον in conjunction with ὑπόστασις, so that his meaning is clear: He is not using the word in the Sabellian sense. The difference is one of linguistic caution, but it hardly constitutes a substantive difference in doctrine. Yet, such pedantry is the very thing that academic articles are made of — granular scholarship that amplifies subtlety and minutia that is often lost in larger surveys of ideas.

On this scholarly trend, I would say two things. The first is that it naturally leads scholars to prefer less cohesive perspectives. When one has devoted his life to memorizing every contour of every word uttered by a certain figure, the idiosyncrasies of that figure are naturally amplified in his mind, making it much easier to see that figure’s idiosyncrasies relative to the rest of the history of ideas. But the amplification is often a distortive myopia, producing greater difference in the mind of the specialist than really exists.

The second point I would add is this. While such minutia may appear to indicate a deeper grasp on the history of ideas, the opposite often occurs. Here’s why. Consider, for example, Epistle 38 in Basil of Caesarea’s corpus. This letter, which is the first to expound in detail the ὑπόστασις doctrine, is often attributed to Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa. Most any article that cites the letter today likely notes the Gregorian attribution, and cites an article by Reinhold Hübner. Now, Hübner’s case is based on the presumption that Gregory of Nyssa has an Aristotelian view of substance, while his brother, Basil, has a Stoic view of substance. Since Epistle 38 presumes an Aristotelian view, the letter must belong to Gregory, not Basil. For my part, I disagree with Hübner’s assessment, but that’s neither here nor there. The more important point is this. You can find scholarly articles that attack an Aristelian reading of Epistle 38 but begin by citing Hübner for Gregorian authorship. The result is a contradiction. Now, why would a scholar make such a mistake? Simply put, the author probably has not read Hübner. He has simply conceded the majority opinion on Gregorian authorship. While this may appear to be laziness, it’s really a practicality. Hyper-specialization hinders a scholar’s ability to master things outside his specialization — there are, after all, only so many hours in the day. Shortcuts are inevitable and reliance on the state of scholarship in other areas is necessary. But what this means is that the specialists are not necessarily moving in a cohesive direction. Their work is compartmentalized, and their conclusions may well contradict one another. So, rather than specialization moving us toward a clearer picture of the history of ideas, the result is often the opposite: The broader understanding of the history of ideas is lost behind a cloud of fragmented and disjointed scholarly pedantry.

This trend in modern scholarship, I believe, is one explanation for why some scholars resist the type of East-West divide discussed by Lossky, Florovsky, Schmemann, and others. Specialists see it as too simplistic. Why? Because their hyper-specialization and granular focus leads them to deny any sense of cohesion across the Eastern Church fathers, seeing only idiosyncrasies and thus fragmentation. Yet, the claim of Lossky and other advocates of the East-West divide is quite the opposite: Despite idiosyncrasies and varied nuances, there is cohesion to Eastern patristic thought throughout the first millennium. Yes, we can find idiosyncrasies in these fathers. Yes, we find varied theological opinions on topics tangential to the Apostolic Faith. But in the essentials of the faith, we find cohesion across Eastern patristic thought.

To be sure, this is not to say that we do not find developments in Eastern patristic language — we certainly do. As we will see in the lectures on the Trinity, the language surrounding three persons and one essence develops over time. Such as the reason we find artifacts of the development of language like the aforementioned difference between the Gregories about whether to retain or wholly abandon a word tainted by the heretics. But the conviction of scholars like myself is that these developments are not changes in doctrine but linguistic refinements to help clarify the substance that is already present.

Now, as I said, my own study of the primary sources is what opened my eyes to the East-West divide, and it’s also what convinced me of the cohesion of thought in the Eastern Church fathers. But rather than appealing to my own assessment, allow me to appeal to another’s — to John of Damascus. John is an eighth-century Church father, who played a critical role within the iconoclast controversy that led to the Seventh Ecumenical Council. John produced two works worth noting in the present context. The first is The Fount of Knowledge, or his philosophical chapters. The second is On the Orthodox Faith — or An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. What is particularly notable about these works is that, in them, John records the consensus of the Eastern fathers before him, seeking to add nothing of his own thought. The Fount of Knowledge is essentially a patristic encyclopedia, explaining the meaning of terms as used by the fathers before him. On the Orthodox Faith moves systematically through the doctrines of the Christian faith, offering the consensus of the Eastern fathers on each topic. Such works indicate that John, himself a Church father, believes the Eastern fathers of the first eight centuries share consensus on terms, concepts, and doctrines of the Christian faith. — And to be sure, John is aware of varied opinions on specific questions, noting where opinions are several, but sees none of these as indicative of a substantive difference. — I point this out for one simple reason. The opinion of Lossky and others, like myself, that the Eastern Church fathers are of one mind on the essentials of the Christian faith is an opinion shared by one of the most important Church fathers of the eighth century. The consensus we see he sees as well — while standing much closer to the events, texts, and figures in question. So, for my part, I gladly cast my lot with John of Damascus over any contemporary scholar who might say otherwise.

A second explanation for the resistance, I believe, is its implications for other traditions. I trust it’s no secret that the Orthodox Church claims to be the True Church, established by Christ and his Apostles, and the keeper of the Apostolic Faith. Part of this claim is that the understanding of the Christian faith found in the Eastern Church fathers is present in the first century, indicating its Apostolic nature, and that this understanding was, in turn, handed down from one generation to the next, faithfully preserved by the Eastern fathers and the Ecumenical Councils. If the claim is true that these fathers and the Councils with them harbor a cohesive view of the Christian faith throughout the first millennium, then the claim that this understanding of Christianity is the Apostolic Faith becomes immediately plausible, if not likely.

For the Protestant, who harbors a very different picture of the Christian faith, the ramifications are unsettling. For this would seem to indicate that their view of Christianity is a later development, divergent from the faith of the Apostles and their Scriptures. Likewise, the ramifications are no less unsettling for the Roman Catholic. For if the development of Western theology is not only fragmented but developmental and at odds with the faith we find in the Eastern fathers, then the claim that Rome is the keeper of the Apostolic Faith, likewise, becomes suspect. Hence, there is good reason why Protestant and Catholic apologists attack the cohesion of Eastern patristic theology.

To catalogue and rebut the Protestant and Catholic polemics against Eastern Orthodoxy is beyond both the nature and scope of this series. But allow me a word about some general contours of these polemics.

Protestant attempts to chip away at the East-West dichotomy tend to search the Eastern fathers in an effort to find proof-texts for Protestant doctrines. For example, Protestant theology often harbors a very specific understanding of the atonement, which we will discuss in later lectures. Protestant apologists will, thus, search Eastern patristic texts in an effort to find passages that appear resonant with this doctrine, disputing the Eastern Orthodox reading of her own fathers. As will become evident in the lectures on atonement, however, such efforts display a superficial understanding of patristic literature. The Protestant takes for granted his definition of words like “sin” or “wrath” or “mediator” and imposes these meanings on the Eastern fathers, oblivious to the fact that these fathers have a very different lexicon. In addition, the Protestant is typically ignorant of other aspects of Eastern patristic thought, such as its view of providence, which make the proposed reading of these fathers impossible. In other words, the passages are stripped from the broader context of patristic theology. While rebutting such readings is not the concern of this series, the lectures to follow invariably shed light on why such polemics are problematic.

Perhaps surprisingly, I find something similar at work in Roman Catholic polemics. For example, when discussing the filioque — that is, whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (the Orthodox view) or from the Father and the Son (the Catholic view) — Catholic apologists will often catalogue passages from the Eastern fathers that speak about the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son as proof of the Catholic position. But such polemics fail to recognize the more fundamental disagreements about the doctrine of God and the Trinity that precede this question. Without acknowledging these more basic differences, the very same passage that requires dual procession from the Roman Catholic view is utterly irrelevant to the question for the Eastern Orthodox reader. Once again, while rebutting such readings is not the concern of these lectures, the sorts of fundamental differences to which I here refer will become evident throughout this series.

A second thing I would point out about Roman Catholic polemics is this. I often see within Catholic apologetics two claims that are at odds with one another. The first, as mentioned, is the insistence that there is no consensus in the Eastern Church fathers on the Apostolic Faith. Hence, the Orthodox claim to be the keepers of this faith is false. The second claim that is no less prominent is this: The Eastern Church fathers are in consensus on all of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. I raise this, not to voice cynicism (though I am cynical about such polemics), but to point out a scholarly trend that I find problematic, namely, the effort of some to Latinize the Eastern fathers. Such trends are sometimes subtle, such as misleading translations of Eastern patristic works, and sometimes not so subtle, such as scholarly works aimed at rereading Eastern fathers through a Latin lens. Suffice it to say that while I understand the impulse of such work, I think it a distortion of what we, in point of fact, find in the writings of the Eastern Church fathers.

Now, before we dive into the meat of this series, I want to first define some terms and concepts that will appear frequently throughout. Let’s begin with the terms East and West. If you know your Roman history you know there came a point when Rome had spread across the known world, and worries emerged about destabilization due to its vast span. So, in 293 A.D., Diocletian established the tetrarchy, which functionally divided the empire in half, East and West, each with its own rulers. Each half would later come to have two distinct capitals, Constantinople, established by Constantine (in the East), and Rome (the traditional, though not always functional, capital in the West). The regional and political divide also corresponded to a linguistic divide. The West largely spoke Latin, while the East spoke Greek — along with other languages, such as Syriac and Coptic. So, when we speak about Eastern and Western Christianity, we are referring to this regional and linguistic divine within the Roman Empire: That is to say, Christianity as it developed in the Latin West as contrasted with Christianity as developed in the East. This is why some speak about the Latin Church fathers (in the West) and the Greek Church fathers (in the East). The problem, of course, is that the East spoke more than just Greek — hence, my preference for the term “Eastern Church fathers.”

Now, this brushes against another term: What is meant by the term “Church father”? The way I’ll be using the term in this series is specifically for those writers of the first millennium who are significant to the formulation of the theology of the Church. The most obvious representatives are those figures (later deemed Saints) who played a part in putting down an ecumenical heresy. For example, the first major ecumenical heresy was Arianism, named for Arius of Alexandria, which argued that the Son of God is not divine but a creature. The position was opposed by Athanasius (amongst others), whose stance was vindicated at the Council of Nicea, leading to the first draft of the Nicene Creed. Athanasius and other defenders of the Apostolic faith — such as the Cappadocians, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus — are obvious examples of Church fathers.

However, the early Church also includes amongst its fathers Saints who played no part in quelling a heresy but nonetheless were beacons of lived Christianity. The Desert Fathers are the most obvious example. These fathers are so named because they retreated to the desert in order to put to death the passions, embodying renunciation of the world, the mortification of the passions, and complete devotion to God in ceaseless prayer. Yes, such monastics would, from time to time, find themselves pulled from their caves to aid in putting to death a heresy, but such was not required for these to be deemed fathers of the Church. Hence, the annals of the Church fathers is not limited to those apologists and theologians who championed orthodoxy over heresy, but includes those Saints who championed orthodoxy by way of their Saintly example.

Two brief asides on the Church fathers are worth noting before we continue. The first is that the Orthodox Church does not limit the fathers of the Church to the first millennium. However, as an academic convention of those who study the fathers, such a cutoff is often used — hence the use of the term in this series. A second aside concerns a string of words you might periodically hear in this series, namely, “patrology,” “patristics,” or “patristic thought.” Patrology, and its cognates, refers to the formal study of the Church fathers — derived from the Latin for father, pater, which mirrors the Greek, pateros (πατέρος).

Now, outside of these Church fathers, we have authors who occupy a middle space, figures we might label early Christian “writers” instead of fathers. Clement of Alexandria is a good example. Clement is neither a heretic nor is he a canonized Saint, typically counted amongst the Church fathers. Yet, he’s a figure of great significance. Why? Because his writings preserve a great deal of early Christian thought and practice. Hence, his writings offer an important and reliable testimony to early Christianity, even if his own thoughts are not treated with the same level of authority as the fathers of the Church. Other anonymous works could also be placed in this category, such as the Protoevangelium of James or the Gospel of Nicodemus, works that are neither authoritative nor heretical, but are examples of early Christian literature, which preserve early Christian traditions.

One figure within this middle space that merits a word all his own is Origen of Alexandria. Origen was a brilliant Christian writer and apologist, whose influence is significant. Yet, even his admirers admit that Origen toyed with ideas that were heterodox, at best, and heretical, at worst. Hence, his legacy is mixed. The great fathers, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, assembled the Philokalia of Origen, a collection of approved passages from his writings, because of their value. Yet, Origen’s teachings also bore bad fruit, yielding a host of “Origenists” who espoused doctrines that the Church would condemn as heretical at Constantinople II. To be sure, Origen himself was not a heretic, since the poisonous fruit that grew out of his works would not be condemned until long after his repose. Nonetheless, his writings occupy a peculiar middle ground of being undeniably important, while also requiring a great deal of discernment, given the mixed bag of his legacy.

Now, since the word “heretic” has now emerged, it seems suitable to address the term. Some tend to use words like “orthodoxy” and “heresy” to mean “I strongly agree” and “I strongly disagree” or “I think that’s biblical” and “I think that’s unbiblical.” In this series, however, I’ll be using these words in a more technical sense. The word “heresy” comes from the Greek word for choice, hairesis (αἵρεσις). The word choice is important. The term does not merely indicate an incorrect idea, but rather a false teaching that the Church has identified as contrary to the faith of the Apostles and yet is chosen nonetheless. This is why I say Origen is not a heretic. He toyed with ideas that would be deemed contrary to the faith and condemned as heresy — a warning to any who might choose such doctrines. But Origen himself never faced such a choice; only his later followers did.

As for the term “orthodoxy,” the word indicates right belief or judgment. Hence, the contrast between heresy and orthodoxy is the contrast between right belief and the choice to embrace falsehood. My use of these terms within this series will be strictly historical. Arianism, for example, claims that the Son of God is not divine but a creature. The teaching was condemned as heresy at Nicea, the First Ecumenical Council — and Arius was thus condemned as a heretic. The position of Athanasius, which the council upheld, is thus the orthodox position — which is to say, the position Nicea determines and proclaims to be the faith of the Apostles. Such statements are historical facts, regardless of what one personally believes. This historical sense of these terms will be the sense used throughout this series.

Of course, “Orthodoxy” can also be used in reference to Eastern Orthodox Christianity or the Eastern Orthodox Church. However, I will rarely speak about the teachings of the Orthodox Church. In this series, my Eastward focus will be on the teachings of the Eastern fathers. Yes, such teachings are advocated by the Orthodox Church, but my discussion of Eastern Christianity is patristic in orientation. To avoid confusion, then, I will avoid the term Orthodoxy, in this ecclesial sense, referring instead to Eastern Orthodoxy or Eastern Christianity or the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Before moving on, a word should be said about what the Christian East refers to as theologoumenon (θεολογούμενον). This term refers to ideas that are neither orthodox nor heretical, representing instead a permissible theological opinion. Important to recognize is that the Church fathers are not always uniform in their thinking. By way of example, can fallen angels repent? Restricting the question to the Eastern fathers, the clear majority think No. But we do find exceptions. Nemesius of Emesa believes they could have repented for a season, but that window is now closed. Pseudo-Dionysius thinks corruption can never be permanent, since it is a divergence from proper formation; as such, it has no end at which it aims and in which it might rest. And St. Isaac the Syrian not only believes fallen angels can repent but will one day repent. Now, there are boundaries established by the Ecumenical Councils that restrict what one might say on this topic. But within these boundaries, we find a spectrum of positions, all permissible. Hence, not every teaching falls to either orthodoxy or heresy; some fall in a middle space of permissible opinion — which is to say, an opinion that avoids heresy and is compatible with but not required by the Apostolic faith. Such is theologoumenon.

Now, my mention of the Ecumenical Councils brings us to a further term in need of explanation. Throughout the history of the Church, gatherings of deacons, presbyters (or priests), and episcopates (or bishops) were common. We see this as early as the book of Acts with the Apostolic council in Jerusalem, which adjudicates whether gentile converts should abide by Jewish Law. Such an assembly was common in the early Church — regional clergy gathering to adjudicate a theological issue or provide spiritual guidance. But the Ecumenical Councils were unique. These gatherings were so named because they concern the “whole house” (οἰκουμενικός) — that is, the members of the worldwide Church.

These Ecumenical Councils were occasioned by controversies about the Apostolic faith that grew to such influence that they required a gathering of the entire Church — clergy from East and West — to adjudicate the matter. The first of these was occasioned by the Arian dispute, previously mentioned, which led to the Council of Nicea (in 325 A.D.). Despite the decision of the council, the controversy did not die and new versions of Arianism continued to arise in its wake, leading to the next Ecumenical Council, the Council of Constantinople (in 381 A.D.). Seven such gatherings occurred within the first millennium of the Church, prior to the Great Schism between East and West. Hence, when speaking about the Ecumenical Councils in this series, I’ll be referring to these seven gatherings.

Now, I mentioned the Great Schism, which we’ll return to momentarily. But first, three points of note are worth mentioning about these seven assemblies. The first concerns the unique authority of these councils. Local and regional councils were not deemed binding for the entire Church. Some local councils would be ratified and accepted by the Ecumenical Councils, but often, local or regional decisions would be overturned. In other words, local judgments were subordinate to the judgment of the whole house.

A second point concerns how the Ecumenical Councils themselves were understood. Councils were never treated as a formula for infallible judgment, as if a certain number of clergy gathered in one place yields unimpeachable truth. As Georges Florovsky points out, the Ecumenical Councils were seen as charismatic events, having to do with moments in which God led his Church in all truth, as Christ promised to do, preserving the Apostolic faith. And truth be told, looking at the history of the Councils, you can see why: Often, the colluding political and clerical powers look as if they might win the day against the Apostolic faith, only to see the faith of the fathers prove victorious by what can only be deemed a work of providence.

A third point concerns the Apostolic faith itself. Neither the Church fathers nor the Ecumenical Councils see themselves as theological inventors or innovators. The controversies that occasion the Councils are never treated as new questions in need of fresh theological insights. Instead, the question of the Councils is always, What did we receive? When considering, for example, the dispute between Arius and Athanasius over whether the Son of God is divine or created, the question concerns the Apostolic faith: Who accurately represents the faith we received, Arius or Athanasius? And this is why the proclamation of the Councils is always: This is the faith of the Apostles; this is the faith of the fathers. The concern is “tradition” in the true sense of the Greek word παράδοσις, meaning something handed down from one generation to the next — in this case, the faith once given over to the Saints, to quote St. Jude.

Allow me two additional terms before turning to the Great Schism. Often, theologians will speak about “Nicene Trinitarianism” and “Chalcedonian Christology.” These terms are shorthand for the orthodox understanding of the Trinity and of Christology. We’ll delve into the specifics of these doctrines in later lectures, but for now, let it suffice that Nicea and Chalcedon are two of the Ecumenical Councils. The Council of Nicea, already mentioned, affirms that the Son of God is divine, being of the same nature as God the Father. This council also occasioned the first draft of the Nicene Creed. The Creed would later be expanded into the form said today (minus the filioque) at the Council of Constantinople, which not only affirmed the divinity of Christ but also codified the Trinitarian formula of three persons of one essence. Hence, “Nicene Trinitarianism” is shorthand for the orthodox understanding of the Trinity, memorialized in the Nicene Creed.

Chalcedonian Christology is named for the fourth ecumenical council, Chalcedon, which offers the most complete formulation of the Incarnation. Put simply, Christ is fully God and fully human, and these two natures are unconfused in one person. To be sure, the doctrines of Trinity and Christology are addressed in all Seven Councils: Nicene Trinitarianism is not limited to the declarations of Nicea, nor is Chalcedonian Christology restricted to the proclamations of Chalcedon. Rather, as I said, these terms are shorthand for the orthodox understanding of the Trinity and Christology, which are fleshed out in all Seven Councils, along with the writings of the fathers.

Now, I mentioned the Great Schism. This term refers to the rift between the Eastern and the Western Churches, when the regional and linguistic divide became a formal break in communion between the two. This schism is typically dated to 1054 A.D., marking the end of the unity of the Church in the first millennium. The labels “Eastern Orthodoxy” and “Roman Catholicism” thus signify this divide: Eastern Orthodoxy being the churches of the East, while Roman Catholicism is the church of West.

Worth noting is that the 1054 schism was not immediately viewed as definitive; both East and West harbored hope for reconciliation. The solidifying blow came later with the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 A.D. The Eastern Roman Empire had requested military aid from the West against the invading Ottomans, but instead of receiving help, the Western forces of the Fourth Crusade invaded and sacked the Eastern capital. This betrayal effectively destroyed any remaining optimism for mending the relationship between the two churches.

While there were both political and theological favors in the divide, our concern in this series is the theological side. The most famous theological point of contention is the filioque — mentioned earlier. This Latin term translates to “and the Son,” a clause the Western Church added to the Nicene Creed in reference to the Holy Spirit’s procession. In other words, the Western Church now proclaimed that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father [and the Son] (filioque),” while the East maintained the original text — “who proceeds from the Father.”

The problem with the addition was twofold. First, the Eastern Church rejected the claim, believing dual procession to be theologically false. But the second problem was no less important. The Pope of Rome did not have unilateral authority to alter the Creed of the Church. Historically, the five great papal seats (sometimes called “the Pentarchy”) were considered equals, and the authority for defining universal doctrine resided in the Ecumenical Councils, not in any single bishop, such as the Pope of Rome. The Roman Pope’s act of changing the Creed signified an assertion of supremacy over the other patriarchates, an assertion the Eastern Churches rejected as contrary to the established tradition and structure of the Church. Hence, even if the filioque were true (which the East denied), its unilateral addition by a single pontiff would be no less theologically problematic.

The above discussion requires a word about the terms “papal” or “pontiff” or “pope.” The term papal derives from the Latin papa, which means “tutor” in classical Latin. Within medieval Latin, however, the word comes to signify a bishop, and specifically the bishop of Rome. For this reason, most who hear the word today think of Roman Catholicism and the bishop or “Pope” of Rome. What far fewer realize, however, is that the Pope of Rome was one of five Popes within the early Church. These five Popes or Patriarchates (as called in the East) formed the Pentarchy, the five primary seats of episcopal authority within the ancient Christian Church. The Roman Patriarchate was the sole Patriarchate in the Western half of the Empire, while the other four Patriarchates resided in the East.

These five seats of episcopal authority were first established by the Apostles themselves in Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. The significance of these places is obvious. Rome was the traditional capital of the Western Empire, while Constantinople would later be established as the capital in the East. Jerusalem had obvious spiritual significance. Antioch was the first place where Christ’s followers were called Christians. And Alexandria was the intellectual heart of the Hellenistic world for both philosophy and theology. But more important than all of this was the fact that the Apostles themselves established these seats of episcopal authority. According to tradition, both Rome and Antioch were established by Peter. Constantinople was established by Andrew. Jerusalem was established by James, and Alexandria by Mark. Hence, the Pentarchy refers to these five Apostolic seats of episcopal authority. And amongst these five, the respective capitals of East and West — Rome and Constantinople — came to be held in highest esteem.

Now, as noted, the Pope of Rome was the sole Apostolic seat in the West. Hence, when the Great Schism between East and West occurs, the West proceeds with only a single Patriarchate with claim to Apostolic succession, which is why Westerners think solely of Rome when calling to mind the succession of Apostolic authority. Yet, the Patriarchate of Rome is only one of many ancient seats, all of which continue to this day.

The point brings us to the concept of Apostolic Succession. The concept, in short, is that Christ gave to his Apostles unique authority to build his Church, not only preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments, but also establishing the authorities of the visible Church — ordaining bishops, priests, and deacons. The aforementioned five seats were seen as representative of this Apostolic authority. Hence, those bishops chosen to occupy these seats were seen as successors to the Apostles, occupying a unique position of authority over the Church — hence, Apostolic Succession. The doctrine is an ancient one. We see, for example, that Irenaeus of Lyons (the disciple of Polycarp who was the disciple of the Apostle John) recounts the unbroken chain of episcopal authority from the Apostles to those bishops who occupy their seat in his own day.

Important to understand is that Apostolic Succession was never understood in a strictly administrative sense. Rather, the doctrine was inherently Incarnational. We will explore the point at greater length in our lectures on ecclesiology. But suffice it to say here that the early Christian understood the work of Christ as ontological in nature. The Son of God took on flesh for the purpose of healing our nature by placing it in communion with his divinity. The purpose of the Church is to spread that healing throughout the world. Such healing is not disembodied, as if it were a mere idea. Rather, much like the way Christ heals our nature by union with it, or heals the leper by touching his flesh, so the Church is an organism, spread by union with Christ. Christ does not simply declare his Apostles to be administrative representatives. Instead, he breathes on them, giving them a share of his power, his grace, and his Spirit. And these unite others to Christ by burying them in baptism, by eating and drinking of his life-giving flesh and blood. And likewise, ordination — the establishment of clergy empowered to administer these incarnate realities — are ordained by the laying on of hands, giving to them a share of this same authority and grace. Apostolic Succession, then, was not seen as a mere matter of governance, but as a spiritual reality: The authority and grace of Christ being transferred to his Apostles and from his Apostles to others, as his Church spreads like a living organism throughout space and time. Unless one understands this incarnate understanding of the Church, he can’t understand the doctrine.

Now, since we’ve touched on the concept of an episcopate (or bishop), let’s briefly discuss the structure of the Christian Church in the first millennium. We see there a common structure, characterized by three clerical ranks: bishops (or episcopates), priests (or presbyters), and deacons. Within this structure, Christ is the head of the Church, and the bishop is the earthly representative of Christ upon the earth. The bishop ordains priests and deacons, who are extensions of the bishop — these being his hands, as it were, ministering to the people. The priest tends to the sacramental, theological, and pastoral needs of the people, while the deacons assist the priest in the liturgy and the bishop in tending to the administrative and charitable needs of the people. Such are the basics of the bishop-priest-deacon structure of the Church.

This structure is still visible today in Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Anglicanism. But the question, of course, is when this structure emerged? Was this structure present during the Apostolic era? Or was it a later invention? While this basic structure is present from the start, there are developments in both terminology and logistics of governance over time. Let’s begin with the terminological developments.

Early on, in both the New Testament and in the Apostolic fathers (which is to say, those fathers who knew the Apostles), we find that the Greek term for “priest” (πρεσβύτερος) is applied to both priests and bishops. We can see this, for example, in the writings of Paul as well as in Ignatius of Antioch. The fact has led some to suggest that there was no difference between bishops and priests in the early Church. But the conclusion is fallacious. Yes, both bishops and priests were presbyters, but not all presbyters were bishops, or episcopates (ἐπίσκοποι). The reason is that bishops had the power to ordain, elevating a person to the status of priest or deacon. This unique authority thus differentiated non-ordaining presbyters from ordaining presbyters — which is to say, priests from bishops — while also creating a natural hierarchy.

Later, for the sake of clarity, the terms would become more rigid in their application. But important to understand is that this development in language was not a shift in theology. The language of the early Church changes often in an effort to clarify some aspect of its lived faith. We’ll see this when discussing the Trinity, for example. Prior to the Council of Constantinople, the Greek terms translated “persons” and “essence” did not carry the meaning assigned by the Church fathers. But because of confusion in the wake of the Council of Nicea, the Church fathers saw a need to differentiate two Greek words that were previously synonyms for the sole purpose of clarifying this doctrine. And this is far from the only example from the first millennium. So it is with the terms bishop and priest. The linguistic refinement is meant to more plainly differentiate those who could ordain from those who could not, along with the hierarchy this difference signifies. But this difference was already present in the Church.

Now, where we do find development is in the matter of episcopal jurisdictions. From the start, ordaining bishops had care over the clergy they ordained and thus over the communities in their care. But we must remember that the earliest days of Christianity were lived in hiding, which meant that episcopal jurisdictions were often small, overseeing a cloistered and persecuted community. As Christianity grew and became more public, we find commensurate growth of episcopal jurisdictions with more formalized governance.

The natural structure of the Church is that Christ is its head, with the Patriarchates serving as successors to his Apostles — these overseeing the largest jurisdictions. And within these jurisdictions, we find bishops, ordained by the Patriarchates and are subordinate to them, each one overseeing his own smaller jurisdiction. These sub-jurisdictions were typically over a major town or “mother city” (μητρόπολις). Hence, these bishops were Metropolitans (μητροπολίτης), or citizens of a metropolis. These Metropolitan bishops were overseers of the clergy and churches in that specific city, and the scope of their authority was generally determined by the civil borders of the day. Notice that within this structure, there is no single head over the Church other than Christ. Each episcopate is entrusted with a jurisdiction — the Patriarchtes holding care over the broadest regions, which contain various cities whose care is entrusted to a Metropolitan, under whom are various priests and deacons.

Before we close this introductory lecture, a final word is in order about the confession in the Nicene Creed that we believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We have already touched on the early Christian understanding of the Apostolic nature of the Church. But a word should be said about the word “catholic” (καθολικός). For most today, the term Catholic calls to mind the Roman Catholic Church. But such is not the meaning in the Creed. The word καθολικός comes from the Greek words κατά and ὅλος — that is, concerning the whole. The term indicates both that the Church is one, but also that the faith that the Church received and preserves is whole and complete, lacking nothing. Such is the conviction, already discussed, of the Ecumenical Councils, whose sole question is “What did we receive?” For the faith they received lacks nothing. The question, of course, is what is this faith? And as we will see in the lectures to follow, the Christian East and Christian West offer very different answers.

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Fervent followers may be aware that I have an unfinished series on predestination published here on Substack. While I assure you, the final installment will indeed be published, here is a teaser to tide you over. You don’t need to read parts 1 through 3 to enjoy this piece, but in case you’re interested, here they are.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Dear “Eli,”

Thank you for your kind remarks about my work. I do plan to post part 4, but it is stuck in the queue behind other things.

By way of preview, I’ll say this about the Eastern fathers. I’ll begin by saying you find several things that are not particularly surprising. First, you find them using “predetermination” or “predestination” or “foreordination” in reference to God’s selection of a person for a task, such as a prophetic role or David for kingship, or for his selection of a people, like Israel. Here, the term simply indicates God foreordaining according to his foreknowledge a delegate for a role or task he wishes someone to do.

Second, you find remarks similar to what you find in the pre-Augustine Latin writers, namely, that election is based on a dynamic interplay between the creature’s responsiveness to God and God’s active work of redemption toward all creatures. To wit, salvation is synergistic in nature, resulting from the gracious work of God toward the creature and the creature’s cooperation. If you look in my earlier letter on predestination or my letter on free will, I mention that the Eastern fathers often use agricultural metaphors, in echo of Christ. For example, the sun shines on all soil without bias, and good soil flourishes while bad soil withers and cracks. They see something similar in the salvific interplay between God and creatures. God has a singular movement toward his creatures. God wills their good and his dealings with man are universally aimed at our salvation, but the effect that his operations have on us varies depending on our condition. God treats Pharaoh and Moses identically -- presenting himself to them, declaring himself to be God, demonstrating it by miracle, and making a demand. Moses, being good soil, flourishes into a Saint. Pharaoh, being proud and thinking himself a god, hardens and cracks. The difference is found in the recipient, not in the disposition of God. God being Good wills the good, and thus the salvation, of all, taking no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

Of course, there is the difference that the Latin writers think in judicial terms, speaking of the merits of one before God and the demerits of another before God, and thus think of grace in terms of mercy and aid in doing good. The Eastern fathers, by contrast, understand grace to be divine energy, the processions of the divine nature that we imbibe through Christ and the Holy Spirit through repentance and cooperation with God, the result of which is theosis, or deification. Hence, in the Latin West, grace is an effect upon the creature, whereas in the East, grace is God’s own energies at work in the creature. This is why the Latin West speaks of created grace while the East speaks of uncreated grace. (I trust I don’t need to explain the essence-energies distinction or theosis if you’re a regular reader of Theological Letters, since these topics come up often. But if you’re unfamiliar, let me know, and I’ll point you in the right direction.)

The more novel and fascinating feature of the Eastern patristic view of predestination concerns the doctrine of the logoi. By way of context, the Eastern fathers (and the Latin fathers) were realists. That is, they believe the “universals” that the mind identifies by genus, species, and common properties are real outside of the mind; they are not mental fictions. Like the Platonists and the Alexandrian Jews before them, they believe that God has archetypal Ideas of these structures, which our minds, as images of God, recognize. Hence, we know what a circle is by reference to the divine Idea of a circle, and we judge this particular circle good because it closely approximates that archetype and that circle as bad because it diverges from that same archetype.

However, the Eastern fathers take an additional step in their brand of realism that the pagans do not, and the Eastern fathers do so because of the doctrines of Trinity and Christology. To wit, they explore the concept of the particular subject or “person” (though I don’t care for this as a translation of hypostasis, but for more on this, see my various writings on the Trinity). In other words, the pagans focused largely on the phenomenon of universals but had given little thought to the enduring subject who has or participates in those universals. Yet, the Christians, recognizing that the Trinity is beyond both matter and form and yet consists of three subjects, and also recognizing that there is only one subject who has the natures of God and of man in the Incarnation, were forced to grapple with the question: What is the enduring subject? From this question emerged the doctrine of the hypostasis. That is, every nature is a mere abstraction and has no stability, or stasis, unless made concrete and stable within a subject, or hypostasis. (For a full treatment, see my article on the metaphysical idealism of the Eastern fathers.)

The importance of this insight is that the subject is not an illusion or a phenomenological byproduct. It is not a transient accident of matter or an artificial fantasm produced by an idiosyncratic cluster of properties. Rather, the subject is its own enduring reality, a substance beneath the universals and who gives stability, reality, and concrete existence to those universals. (Again, see my article on their metaphysical idealism.)

The importance of the point emerges when considering the doctrine of creation out of nothing. Unlike the pagans, the Christians insist that all that exists is created by God. Because the subject is its own substantial reality, that means that each particular subject, too, is created by God. And here we arrive at the doctrine of the logoi.

While the Eastern fathers do refer to divine ideas or concepts or thoughts about the things God intends to make, thereby echoing the Platonists and Alexandrian Jews, they also speak about the “words” (logoi) of God, harkening to the Genesis account. (This, too, I discuss in that piece on the metaphysical idealism of the Eastern fathers.) These logoi exist within the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, as God’s designs for the world laid bare in his Wisdom before the world existed. (Though the language here may be novel, the concept is not. The Platonists are known for talking about the archetypal Ideas within the divine Nous, or mind, and in Alexandrian Judaism, Philo of Alexandria talks about God having archetypal Ideas about his designs for the cosmos, which are within the divine Logos, a sentiment echoed by Origen as well as by Augustine in the Latin West. But amongst the Eastern fathers, the term logoi is used in place of ideas to wed the concept more closely to Genesis, where God has a concept of what to make and then speaks it into being, scattering those words into matter.) Now, unlike in the pagan conceptions of creation, where the divine Ideas include only generics -- generic man, generic dog, generic plants -- the Eastern fathers conclude that God’s Ideas or words, logoi, must include the particular subjects he intends to make -- not just man, but Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Seth, etc. Hence, while God has a design of man in the generic (a rational animal who is bipedal, etc.), God speaks into being particular subjects who have human nature.

The importance of this doctrine is that God’s designs include an archetype of what each one of us is made to become, our idyllic self -- you and I as Saints. This divine design, your logos, resides in the Logos, along with all of God’s designs for the cosmos. This, say the Eastern fathers, is your predestined end. In Christ, you are predestined to become that.

Here, however, is a further twist. This predestined end is not causally efficacious. In other words, though you are predestined to that end, that predestination does not guarantee you reach that end. Rather, this predetermined archetype serves as the measure of whether your self-determination is good and in keeping with your logos, as foreordained by God, or whether your self-determination is corrupt, moving contrary to your predetermined end -- very much like the way a circle is judged good or bad by its archetype in the divine mind. Such self-determination is what Maximos the Confessor refers to as your tropos, or mode of being. Our tropos, or movement toward or away from God, determines whether we are shaping ourselves in accord with well-being or retreat into self-corruption.

Such an understanding informs a number of interpretive moves by the Eastern fathers. When Christ tells the wicked to depart because he never knew them, the Eastern fathers understand that to say, I do not recognize you. Whatever you have made yourself into, it is not the creature I set out to make. Such is also the importance of Paul’s word order, namely, that those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ; the inverse is not true, namely, that those he predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ he foreknew. For all are predestined to this end, but not all are foreknown, as indicated by the parable of the sheep and the goats where the wicked, as wicked, are not known by him. Such is also important to Ephesians, where Paul’s hearers are predestined in Christ and through Christ. In the causal reading, where predestination merely means a causal decree to become something, you can strike all statements about in and through Christ and the sentences mean the same thing, but Paul reiterates this over and over.

Such an outlook is also why the Eastern fathers focus so heavily on two further statements of Paul. First, God is not a respecter of persons. They plainly think that arbitrary salvation and damnation would be unjust and incompatible with the divine nature (see Origen’s On Prayer and other comments in the Philokalia of Origen, edited by Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus). But they also see it as incompatible with Paul’s claim that God is not a respecter of persons -- that is, he does not show favoritism, a fact that is an extension of his justice. Rather, God favors the righteous because they are righteous and disfavors the wicked because they are wicked. (See, for example, Cyril of Alexandria’s comments on John, the Apostle whom Christ loved, being favored because of his unique virtue precisely because Christ cannot favor arbitrarily.) Second, they also see in Paul’s words to Timothy the exhortation to cleanse yourself and make yourself a vessel worthy of God, indicating that whether we are vessels of wrath or mercy is determined by our worth, which is in our power -- again, think of the soil metaphor.

Well, you nearly have the whole of part 4 here! Be watching for the more expansive version on my Substack. I hope that helps.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jacobs

Don’t forget to pre-order the East-West series at the lowest possible price. I sincerely appreciate the support in this effort.

I'm In

You've already sold me

Now I’ll hand the keyboard over to Dr. Joiner. Enjoy!

Dr. James Joiner is a Teaching Professor of Philosophy at Northern Arizona University and serves as a bioethicist for Northern Arizona Healthcare. His award-winning teaching and research span philosophy of religion, medieval thought, and bioethics. He brings philosophical rigor and a passion for questions of human flourishing to every discussion.

The fourth-century philosopher and theologian Augustine of Hippo once observed that people traveled to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars—and yet they passed by themselves without ever wondering.

This new course on the philosophy and psychology of mind takes that challenge seriously. This spring, Dr. Adam Dell and I will co-teach a course that investigates two foundational questions: What is a human being? And how do human beings flourish?

I’m currently a professor of philosophy at Northern Arizona University, where I specialize in the philosophy of religion and bioethics. I also work as a bioethicist for a regional medical center, where I direct clinical ethics consultation, ethics training, and policy analysis.

Years of teaching at the university have introduced me to countless students who started out in psychology seeking two things: to understand themselves and others, and secondly, to discover how to help people. Unfortunately, they came away extraordinarily dismayed because they did not gain insight into either of those areas. This course aims to rectify that deficiency.

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Part One: Theories of Human Nature

The first half examines the major theories of human nature. Questions include: What constitutes a human being? Are human beings biological machines or advanced apes? Are we spirits chained to the material world? Are we bundles of energy transferred from organism to organism? Are we embodied souls, or something else?

What is consciousness? And what, if anything, distinguishes us from everything else—from other animals to, say, artificial intelligence?

Do human persons possess free will? Genuine volitional capacities? Or are we simply the determined outcome of forces beyond our control?

A striking pair of real events illustrates the stakes and the conundrums surrounding these questions. A couple of years ago, I read about two unrelated incidents that happened in the very same location on the very same day. It was at a hotel, and a young woman—mother of two, I believe—checked herself into the hotel and went up to her room and tragically ended her own life.

But she did leave behind a note, and it said, quote: “Don’t cry for me because I’m not even human.”

As the story came out, she had been involved in an illicit affair that had just been exposed, and presumably she was looking at the fallout of her decisions and how it would destroy her own family. Yet in the face of that, she ended her own life with the question on the front of her mind that she saw herself as somehow subhuman, having subjected herself to her baser instincts.

Now, at that very same hotel, on the very same day, there was a seminar going on. And in that seminar, there were about 100 people who had come to listen to a guru giving self-help advice, chanting together in unison a refrain that they said over and over again. They repeated the phrase: “I am God. I am God.”

What caught my attention about these two separate, unrelated instances is that they both centered around a kind of confusion about what it means to be a human being. Of course, in the tragic case of this young wife, she saw herself as somehow subhuman. And yet with the seminar, they were attempting to see themselves in some way as superhuman. Both of these represent distortions in how we understand ourselves.

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Part Two: Human Flourishing

In the second half of this course, we will be led by Dr. Adam Dell, and it will address issues of trauma, healing, resilience, well-being, and the conditions that support and promote human flourishing. What causes deep trauma, and what pathways lead out from it? What is genuine happiness, and how can it be cultivated?

Dr. Adam Dell is a board-certified clinical psychologist and director of psychotherapy at Michiana Neuroscience, previously serving as an officer and therapist in the United States Air Force and as director of emotional well-being at the Notre Dame Wellness Center.

Together, we will integrate philosophy and psychology to explore one of the most consequential questions anyone can ask: What does it mean to be human? And how do we truly live well?

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You've already sold me

Enroll in the Class

Now I’ll hand the keyboard over to Dr. Dell. Enjoy!

Dr. Dell is a board-certified clinical psychologist with over twenty years of clinical experience, a former United States Air Force medic and active-duty psychologist, former Director of Emotional Wellbeing at the University of Notre Dame, and a current instructor in the Trauma Certification Program at Wheaton College. Across military, medical, academic, and clinical contexts, his work has consistently centered on the assessment and treatment of trauma and its effects on the human person.

This essay accompanies a course I will be teaching with Dr. James Joiner on myprofer.com. My portion of the class examines the relationship between trauma and the nature of the human person. Our first class meets on Tuesday, February 10, from 6:00–8:30 PM (Central Time) and will convene live via Zoom under the course designation PHI/PSY 140. The course brings together clinicians, students, and scholars to examine both Philosophical Anthropology and Psychological Traumatology.

The study of psychological trauma offers a uniquely clarifying lens through which to examine fundamental questions of anthropology: What is a human being? How do persons relate to threat, meaning, memory, embodiment, and relationship across time? Trauma is not merely an abnormal psychological event affecting a subset of individuals; rather, it exposes core features of human functioning—our vulnerability, relationality, neurobiological plasticity, and meaning-making capacities. Examining trauma therefore reveals not only how humans suffer, but how they adapt, resist, fragment, and ultimately strive toward integration and healing.

This essay outlines the ways in which trauma, as formally defined within the DSM-5-TR, illuminates essential realities about the human condition across the lifespan. Drawing on epidemiological data from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) and the American Psychological Association (APA), and integrating representative theories of personality, I argue that trauma research functions as a kind of anthropological stress test, exposing what is most fundamental about human beings under conditions of threat.

Defining Trauma: DSM-5-TR and the Human Encounter with Threat

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR) defines trauma exposure as direct or indirect exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence. This includes direct experience, witnessing, learning of trauma to close others, or repeated exposure to aversive details of traumatic events. Disorders such as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are characterized by symptom clusters involving intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity.

Anthropologically, this definition highlights several core realities about human beings. First, humans are meaning-oriented organisms: traumatic stress is not defined solely by the objective event, but by the subjective appraisal of threat, helplessness, and violation. Second, memory is not a neutral recording device. Traumatic memory is often fragmented, state-dependent, and somatically encoded, revealing that human cognition is inseparable from affective and bodily processes. Third, trauma underscores the fundamentally relational nature of the human person—both in how trauma is often inflicted through relational betrayal, and in how recovery is powerfully shaped by relational safety.

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Epidemiology of Trauma Across the Lifespan

Epidemiological data consistently demonstrate that trauma exposure is common rather than exceptional. The ISTSS and APA report that a majority of adults worldwide will experience at least several potentially traumatic events in their lifetime. Prevalence rates vary by region, gender, socioeconomic status, and exposure to conflict or disaster, but trauma is a ubiquitous human experience.

Childhood trauma is particularly significant because it occurs during periods of rapid neurodevelopment, identity formation, and attachment consolidation. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)—including abuse, neglect, household dysfunction, and community violence—are associated with increased risk for mood disorders, substance use disorders, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune conditions, and reduced life expectancy. These findings reveal the profound developmental plasticity of human beings, as well as the enduring imprint of early relational environments.

In adulthood, trauma exposure continues through interpersonal violence, accidents, medical trauma, military combat, and collective traumas such as pandemics and natural disasters. Later-life trauma, including illness, loss, and cognitive decline, further demonstrates that vulnerability to threat persists across the lifespan, while also highlighting the role of accumulated resilience, meaning-making, and social support.

Trauma and the Lifespan: Continuity and Change

From an anthropological perspective, trauma reveals that the human person is both historically continuous and dynamically adaptive. Early trauma can shape stress-response systems, attachment patterns, and core beliefs about safety and worth. Yet longitudinal research also demonstrates variability in outcomes, with many individuals showing resilience or posttraumatic growth.

This dialectic—between vulnerability and adaptability—suggests that human beings are not fixed entities but developmental processes. Trauma impacts neural circuitry, particularly in systems governing threat detection (amygdala), contextual memory (hippocampus), and executive regulation (prefrontal cortex). At the same time, neuroplasticity allows for reorganization in response to corrective experiences, therapy, and relational repair.

Personality Theories and Trauma: Windows into the Human Condition

Psychodynamic Perspectives

Psychodynamic theories view trauma as overwhelming affect that cannot be adequately integrated into existing psychic structures. From this perspective, trauma reveals the defensive architecture of the human mind—repression, dissociation, projection—as adaptive responses to intolerable experience. Object relations and attachment-based models emphasize how early trauma disrupts internalized relational templates, shaping expectations of self and other across the lifespan.

Humanistic and Existential Perspectives

Humanistic theories frame trauma as a violation of core needs for safety, autonomy, and meaning. Carl Rogers emphasized conditions of worth and the self-concept, while existential thinkers such as Viktor Frankl focused on meaning in the face of suffering. Trauma exposes the human struggle to maintain coherence, dignity, and purpose under extreme conditions.

Cognitive Theories

Cognitive models conceptualize trauma in terms of disrupted belief systems about safety, trust, power, esteem, and intimacy. Traumatic experiences shatter assumptive worlds, leading to maladaptive appraisals and persistent threat perception.

Behavioral Perspectives

Behavioral theories focus on conditioning processes, avoidance, and reinforcement. Trauma reveals how fear responses become generalized and how avoidance, while initially protective, restricts functioning over time.

Neurobiological Perspectives

Neurobiological models frame trauma as dysregulation of stress-response systems, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and autonomic nervous system. Trauma research demonstrates that psychological experiences can produce measurable changes in brain structure, immune functioning, and epigenetic expression.

Trait and Personality Structure Theories

Trait theories examine how stable personality characteristics—such as neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness—interact with trauma exposure to influence outcomes. Trauma highlights both stability and malleability in personality functioning, showing that traits can moderate risk while also shifting in response to extreme stress.

Trauma, Anthropology, and Moral Meaning

Beyond symptomatology, trauma raises profound moral and anthropological questions. It confronts clinicians and communities with realities of injustice, violence, and human-inflicted harm. Trauma exposes the ethical dimension of human life: the capacity to wound and to heal, to betray and to protect.

In a 2025 book I co-authored titled Freedom to Heal, I argue that recovery from trauma is not merely symptom amelioration but the restoration of agency, relational capacity, and moral meaning. Healing involves reclaiming authorship over one’s story and re-entering the world of shared human vulnerability with wisdom rather than fear.

Conclusion

The examination of trauma reveals essential truths about the human person. Humans are meaning-making, relational, embodied, and developmentally dynamic beings whose deepest vulnerabilities coexist with remarkable adaptive capacities. Trauma research functions as applied anthropology, illuminating how persons respond when their most basic assumptions about safety, trust, and identity are threatened.

Across theories of personality and stages of the lifespan, trauma underscores a central paradox of human existence: we are fragile, yet resilient; shaped by our histories, yet capable of transformation. To study trauma, therefore, is not only to study pathology, but to encounter the contours of what it means to be human.

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References

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). DSM-5-TR: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). American Psychiatric Publishing.

American Psychological Association. (2017). Clinical practice guideline for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). American Psychological Association.

American Psychological Association. (2023). Trauma. In APA Dictionary of Psychology. American Psychological Association.

Brewin, C. R., Andrews, B., & Valentine, J. D. (2000). Meta-analysis of risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder in trauma-exposed adults. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 68(5), 748–766.

Kolb, B., & Gibb, R. (2011). Brain plasticity and behaviour in the developing brain. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 20(4), 265–276.

McEwen, B. S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: Central role of the brain. Physiological Reviews, 87(3), 873–904.

Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2013). Motivational interviewing: Helping people change (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.

Schultz, T., Estabrook, H., & Dell, A. D. (2025). Freedom to Heal: A Christian clinician’s guide to treating child sexual abuse. IVP Academic.

Shalev, A. Y., Ankri, Y., Israeli-Shalev, Y., Peleg, T., Adessky, R., & Freedman, S. (2012).

Prevention of posttraumatic stress disorder by early treatment: Results from the Jerusalem

Trauma Outreach and Prevention study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 69(2), 166–176.

Southwick, S. M., Bonanno, G. A., Masten, A. S., Panter-Brick, C., & Yehuda, R. (2014). Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges: Interdisciplinary perspectives. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 5(1).

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

Widiger, T. A., & Costa, P. T. (2013). Personality disorders and the five-factor model of personality (3rd ed.). American Psychological Association.

Yehuda, R., & McFarlane, A. C. (1995). Conflict between current knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder and its original conceptual basis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 152(12), 1705–1713.

I'm In

Question 1

00:04:00 - The Secular vs. Sacred Distinction - I have been wrestling with the term “the secular” or the notion of the secular in recent years. I’ve thought of it as kind of incoherent—that there was no really true secular because all things are interconnected with your worldview. However, I’m reading Timothy Ware’s introduction to Eastern Christianity, and one thing that was interesting to me is he used the term “secular” pretty definitively, or at least he used it to make some points as he was talking about Byzantium and things like that. So I wondered if you could give any insight to just the notion of secular and how it may have evolved, especially in our modern age where secular is supposedly completely distinct from religion?

Question 2

00:28:44 - Ugliness and Evil in Art - My question is about aesthetics. Since you’re an artist and a philosopher and a filmmaker, I think it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on what is the role of the portrayal of ugliness and evil in art? Because I think it definitely seems evident that there is a role. On the one hand, you have stories like Oedipus or King Lear—tragedy. And then another style of that is something like Dracula, which is really horrifying and grotesque, but that’s also a very deeply Christian novel. But obviously, I think we can also agree that there’s a kind of portrayal of ugliness that is quite poor. I would think of maybe David Lynch or in a very different style, like Quentin Tarantino. I think there’s a way in which ugliness can be damaging to the soul and a way in which it can be beneficial to the soul. How do you discern between good and bad in this respect?

Question 3

00:52:33 - What Grounds Epistemology? - My question is related to epistemology. As I’m encountering your content and discovering this world of realism and how it connects with Christianity and orthodoxy, and as I’m encountering even with the book club and in the recent podcast, you talked about how the ancients understood things—not in terms of “it’s Plato’s idea” or “this person’s idea,” but they were concerned with whether it’s true or not. I’m coming into this place of feeling like I have some way of measuring things and getting to the truth. But I think in a lot of my conversations I’m sidestepping something that I don’t really know. Do you have any suggestions or thoughts on what grounds epistemology?

Question 4

01:12:32 - Augustine’s Trinitarian Framework - My question is related to your East-West series. I know you’ve talked a little bit about Augustine, and you’ve talked a lot about Augustine being kind of the fountainhead of Western theology. My question is specifically about his Trinitarian framework. I know that Augustine is determined to try and create a Nicene Trinitarianism, but my question is exactly how successful is he? Because obviously we know he admits that he doesn’t know Greek, and at one point in De Trinitate he says, “You know, the Greeks make this distinction between ousia and hypostasis, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I’m just wondering, because I have a gut sense that it’s different than Nicaea, but I can’t effectively articulate how it’s different.

Question 5

01:27:38 - God’s Ideas and Particulars - In the idealism of the Eastern Church Fathers, it is the hypostasis that exists in themselves and gives concrete existence to the form. And then we have God’s ideas, and God has ideas because both are things that he makes, and the ideas are archetypes of what he intends to create. So do we have the same relation in God’s ideas with the particulars giving ground to the universal like we do in the images?

Question 6

01:34:07 - Overcoming Skepticism as a Christian - Are you familiar with Dr. Zachary Porky? He has this great little book called Journey to Reality. He does the catechism stuff at Trenum’s church in Riverside, California. The book is on the difference between a secular and sacramental worldview, and it has been just mind-blowing. He talks about the secular being marked by a separation between the material and the spiritual. Hearing you talk about all the realism and nominalism has been another eye-opening thing for me. I do think I can trust my faculties. So I’m a recovering nominalist, but one of the things I’m still struggling with is just the skepticism. I’m coming to understand that the Christian life is not primarily intellectual with a focus on the merely observable, which is what I’ve been taught my whole life, but that it’s participatory and that the physical participates in the spiritual through the sacraments and through embodied life in the church. That has been so freeing to me. But now I’m kind of going, okay, how do I shed the skepticism that comes from being formed in a secular materialist culture? Besides participating in the church and the sacraments, I just kind of feel right now like skepticism is the bouncer at the door of the church that won’t let me into the fullness of the faith, if you will. So besides those things I’ve mentioned, I’m just curious your wisdom and counsel on how to shed so much of this stuff.

Question 7

01:48:21 - Astrology, Planets, and the Apostles - My question is about image and likeness. I know you wrote an article on this recently in relation to iconography. When it comes to likeness and the name being a likeness, I’m thinking of the pagan gods and their association with the planets and the days of the week, and the fact that we continue to use them in the context of both the planets and the days of the week. I’m not going to call myself a recovering astrologer—I’ve ceased practicing astrology as I’ve joined the Orthodox Church—but I’m continuing to weed through a host of concerns in this respect. I’m quite familiar with a lot of the polemics against astrology, and one of the primary points being determinism or fate relative to free will. I’m about to be taking a class with a guy named Joshua Sturgill, who’s offering a class on the symbolic world. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts. One thing that I’ve been investigating is the association of the 12 apostles with the 12 signs of the Zodiac. It’s most evident in the four gospel writers and their association with the four beasts of the apocalypse, which are associated with the four fixed signs of the Zodiac. There is a tradition—it tends to be more on the Gnostic side of Christianity—where the apostles replace the signs of the Zodiac. I’m curious if you have a more general sense of Eastern fathers or more contemporary writers who can address some of these questions that I have.

Question 8

02:04:07 - Evolution and Orthodox Christianity - My question was about evolution. I became a Christian only a couple of years ago, and before that I was very much into scientism and the scientific world. One of the people that convinced me to start thinking about faith and Christianity was Ian McGilchrist. One of the things he spoke about was Henri Bergson and his idea of creative evolution—the idea that over time, evolution wasn’t a random process but was rather toward a telos or purpose, which was the production of humanity. That kind of opened my eyes and convinced me of the Christian faith and the idea of being made in the image of God, all the way to the incarnation and Christ. So I was going to an Anglican church, and then I came across some of your work and people like Father John Barron and other philosophers talking about monarchical Trinitarianism, and I thought I should become Orthodox. So I went over to the Orthodox Church—a Greek parish—and the first thing they asked me was, “Do you believe in evolution?” I think there was something Father Seraphim Rose wrote about death and how it came in. I found this quote from Gregory of Nyssa’s commentary on Genesis where he seems to be saying that if you go along the great chain of being, these things are instantiated temporally, progressively. So what are your thoughts on this?

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I Want to Contribute

“Dusty” wrote to me with an objection to icons that he heard in a Presbyterian Sunday School class. The minister insisted that icons are a violation of the second commandment. “Dusty,” having read my article on John of Damascus, offered replies in line with John’s case. The minister replied by saying that we don’t know what Christ looked like, so images of Christ are not in fact of Christ. He drew the comparison with carrying around a photo of a woman to whom I’m not married and telling people she’s my wife. “Dusty” thought on the reply and, days later, realized that this objection does not address the points he was raising (i.e., the Incarnation means the Son of God is now visible). Nonetheless, “Dusty” was curious what I would say to the objection, despite it missing the point. Below is my reply.

Dear “Dusty,”

Thanks for your email and for your kind remarks on my article about John of Damascus. I’m glad you found it helpful!

In answer to your question, I would offer just a few points. The first is that you are correct, the minister’s reply indeed sidesteps the question you asked. His strategy is what, in logic, is called a red herring, which is a logical fallacy. The term refers to an old practice of dragging a herring across a path when training hunting dogs. The test was to see if the dog could keep focused on the scent it was supposed to be tracking or whether it would get distracted by the smell of the fish. (Whether this practice is apocryphal or not, I don’t know, but that’s the supposed background of the term.) The original question you asked was whether an image of Christ violates the second commandment. The minister’s retort raises an entirely different question, namely, whether an image that is not of Christ but is viewed as such violates the commandment. These are two different issues.

I won’t rehash the case in favor of icons. Since you’ve read my piece on John of Damascus, you’ve read my overview of John’s defense of icons. Assuming I’ve read you correctly, the new challenge this minister is raising is this: We do not know what Christ looked like, so any image we make of him will not be of him but of some imaginary figure whom we call Christ; hence the image will still be idolatrous, since it will not in fact be an image of the Incarnate Son of God but of our imaginary Christ.

The key presumptions of this objection are two: (1) We do not know what Christ looked like, and (2) an image is an image of someone if and only if it accurately resembles them. Let’s start with the second point.

I find the claim to be an interesting one, primarily because it raises a host of fascinating issues about image-archetype relations, a topic that I think is underexplored but is rich with philosophical importance.1 Rather than beginning with representational images — that is, 2D or 3D attempts to capture the person’s likeness — I’d like to start with non-representational representations. To wit, names and symbols.

I want to start here for two reasons. The first is that, from what I can tell, the image-archetype connection that is central to the iconodule position also applies to names and symbols. Second, if I am correct on this, names and symbols provide an obvious counterpoint to presumption (2). For they demonstrate that the archetype-image connection need not be based on an accurate representation of the archetype’s appearance.

By way of review, you’ll recall from my article that John presumes a connection between the image and its archetype, and I discuss the background of this claim. In Plato, we see a discussion of the difference between non-substantial images (e.g., shadows), on the one hand, and substantial images (e.g., a reflection), on the other. When considering the nature of a substantial image, Plato notices that an essential feature of an image is that it is referential: It is the image of (name the archetype). Hence, there is an essential connection between an image and that which it images. Admittedly, the relationship is one sided; the image is dependent upon its archetype, not vice versa, but there is an essential connection between the two nonetheless. If memory serves, I also note in that article that this connection is recognized in the Old Testament itself. The exposition of the second commandment in Deuteronomy (here using the Septuagint, as the fathers did) does not use the word “idol” (eidōlo) but “likeness” (homoiōma). And the evident concern of the passage is that, because God is invisible and thus has no likeness, to worship the likeness of another is to fall into idolatry, offering worship not to your God but to the archetype of the likeness you make — be a celestial body, an animal, or a man. Hence, the notion of a connection between image and archetype is something that seems to be presumed in the OT prohibitions on idolatry.

Images, however, are not the only thing for which the OT presumes such a connection. Names seem to also display the same type of connection. That is to say, the very same connection between a likeness and the one who it is like seems to apply to names as well. A name, like a likeness, is essentially referential, being the name of something. Georges Berguer has made the case that, amongst ancient religions generally, names were seen as an image or replica of sorts, substantially distinct from that which they name but nonetheless connected to the archetype — very much in line with the image-archetype connection. We can see this theme throughout the Old Testament in both positive and negative ways. In the positive sense, if the name of God is invoked upon a country or person, then that place or person belongs to Yahweh; the name itself creates a connection with God, whose name is upon that person or place (e.g., Gen 48:16; Dt 28:10; Am 9:12). In the negative sense, we see this in the OT prohibitions on the names of the “gods.” The Israelites are strictly warned by God not to invoke the names of other gods, not even uttering their names (e.g., Ex 23:13).

Symbols provide yet another ancient example of a visual indicator of a being who is not represented according to likeness. We might think, for example, of the Ankh, for the goddess Isis, or the scarab, which symbolized not only recreation or resurrection but also the god Khepri. In neither case is the god depicted. Nonetheless, the symbol is an indicator of that god. And just as the OT prohibits the utterance of the names of the god, it also prohibits the use of such symbols in its prohibitions on talacements and magic (Lev 19:26; 20:27).

As an aside, I think it is worth noting that there is a growing body of literature on demonology in the Ancient Near East generally and the Old Testament specifically. In the light of such scholarship, it seems increasingly clear that the OT names a great many demons and tends to see the gods, not as imaginative figments of human invention, but as fallen angels. Hence, the concern about using their names, their symbols, and their images is because these names, symbols, and images are connected to real beings.

Lest I get into a tangent on demonology, which is always a tempting tangent for me, I’ll return to my main point. The minister’s presumption (2) seems to be problematic in the light of ancient names and symbols. For the presumption is that the connection between image and archetype is based on or contingent upon accurate visual representation. Hence, if the portrayal of Christ is inaccurate in its representation, then it is not an image of Christ. But the fact that names and symbols have an image-archetype connection and yet have no representation of likeness whatsoever seems to problematize this presumption.

Now, perhaps one could reply that once a visual representation of one’s appearance enters the equation, resemblance now matters. Perhaps images or likenesses, being representations of the person’s appearance, require accuracy to qualify as an image of that person. Let’s consider this possibility.

I’m not certain such a view would be so easily granted in the ancient world. We certainly have examples of sculptures, especially amongst the Greeks, which were evidently attempting to capture an accurate likeness of the individual they were imaging — or, at least, the skillfulness and precision of the sculptures we have would lead me to believe this. However, such efforts at accuracy were far from uniform across the ancient world or in ancient iconography. Think, for example, of ancient Egypt. Egyptian statues of Pharaohs were often reused, removing the name of the previous Pharaoh and inscribing the name of the new Pharaoh. When considering the rather basic relief sculptures of the ancient Pharaohs, we can see why. The physical representation was often (though not in all cases) extremely basic, looking generically human, with the defining characteristics being only the royal dress of the figure. The inscribed name was what one looked to for identification (or perhaps the event depicted), not the resemblance of the figure to the person it represented. In this way, such ancient icons sit somewhere between a representation in the contemporary realist sense and a symbol. Such icons certainly offer a representation of the person, but the representation is very basic — male, bearded, Egyptian, royal, and so forth. Hence, in these icons, we see an image of an individual but the designation as such is clearly not based on an accurate representation of the person’s physical features.

I find this precedent noteworthy because of its parallels with Byzantine iconography. Notice that ancient Christian iconography, especially in the Christian East, shows greater affinity for this symbolic representation than for either classical Greek sculpture or the later Renaissance realism of the Christian West. Many Byzantine icons look very similar in appearance, precisely because the representation of the individuals represented is very generic. Clearly, we have contemporary icons that aim at greater representational accuracy, and we see more realist traditions emerge in Russia and Romania, for example, but this is more of an exception than the norm in the history of iconography. Moreover, we see the ancient practice noted above (i.e., the naming of the individual depicted) in early Christian iconography. The name or initials of the Saint is written on the icon; the event depicted is named, and so on — a practice that continues to the present in Eastern Christianity. From what I can tell, in some cases, we really do not know what a given Saint looked like; we merely have an account of the life of that Saint, and from that we can gather some very generic points about gender, race, likely hair style or garments. Hence, the iconography itself is nearly symbolic in representation, with the written name indicating who is imaged. My point, in short, is that the idea that an image of someone must be an accurate representation of their physical characteristics to serve as an image seems contrary to these ancient sensibilities, both pagan and Christian.

I dare say that, while this ancient sensibility may seem alien to us, I am not sure that it really is. Consider a child’s drawing. We often see drawings of a family — a mom, a dad, a child — that has little representational accuracy. Perhaps it is nothing more than a set of stick figures. Or for the gifted child, we’re impressed that the people depicted have a body shape more closely approximating a human form. When shown the drawing and told that it is mom, dad, and Sally, we accept it as just that, an image of Sally with her mom and dad. In fact, many a drawing comes to mind that have these figures labeled, with “mom” written above mom, “dad” above dad, and so on. In many ways, these drawings are contemporary relatives of ancient images that offer very generic representations, accompanied by names to identify who is imaged. Are these drawings not of mom and dad? I’m inclined to think they are, in fact, drawings of mom and dad.

This consideration brings another point to mind. We tend to speak about good and bad representations. One might say, not to Sally, of course, but outside of her presence, that her representation of mom and dad is not very good. Here, I cannot help but think of Plato. Critical to Plato’s philosophy is the insight that we universally assess material objects as good or bad, well-formed or malformed. That object is a bad circle, for example. But bad in comparison with what? Plato’s theory of Forms is based, in part, on the recognition that we have in our mind an immaterial, ideal archetype against which we compare the material representation. The comparison itself is thus (essentially) relational: This is a bad circle (image) in comparison with the Idea of Circle (archetype). In a similar way, our talk of Sally’s (hypothetical) drawing as a bad drawing is an assessment of its representational accuracy. Her drawing looks nothing like mom or dad. But in saying this, we are still acknowledging a connection between the image and that which it images. It is indeed an image of mom and dad, but it is a bad image because of how divergent it is from its archetype. In order for this assessment to make sense, we must admit the connection between the image and its archetype. In other words, the connection is presumed despite the inaccuracy.

Here, I think we can see a tacit third presumption under the objection. To wit, it takes a binary approach to representation: The likeness is either accurate or it is no likeness at all. However, such an assumption is evidently false, since we speak of good and bad representations all the time, as in the case of Sally’s drawing. Poor representation does not undermine the fact that it is a representation nonetheless.

Before moving on to presumption (1), allow me to offer a word on the minister’s hypothetical: i.e., I carry around a photo of a woman who is not my wife and claim that it is my wife. The problem with this hypothetical is that it fails to accurately represent the objection. The religious equivalent of this is not that one has an icon of Christ that is a poor representation of his physical appearance. Instead, it would be that I have an icon of someone who is not Christ — say, the god Isis — and I say it is an image of Christ. Such a scenario would wade into the waters of idolatry. In fact, it seems to be the very concern expressed in Deuteronomy: i.e., because your God is invisible and has no likeness, any likeness you make will belong to someone or something that is not your God. But this is not the objection the minister raised. The objection was not that the icons of Christ are of a man or a deity other than Christ; the objection was that they were likely inaccurate representations. To modify the hypothetical to be apt, then, it would need to be something like this. I, as an artist, create a portrait of my wife. I carry a print of it in my wallet. When I show it to people, I tell them it’s a portrait of my wife, but I admit it’s not very good (i.e., it doesn’t look much like her). Would that mean the portrait is not of my wife? No. It is a portrait of her. It’s just not a very good one. Reframed in this way, we can see that the objection fails. The image is still an image of her, regardless of whether it is good or bad, well done or poorly done.

Having looked at presumption (2), and tacit presumption (3), let’s consider presumption (1). Is it true that our representations of Christ are inaccurate? I trust the foregoing shows that this question has little significance to the iconodule issue. But let’s consider it nonetheless.

I have no doubt that some icons are inaccurate, at the very least because the innumerable images of Christ throughout history vary considerably from one to another. But can we say with certainty that all are? According to tradition, and written record, we have plenty of images that date back to the time of Christ. Saint Luke, we are told, produced one of the earliest icons of Mary, the Theotokos, with the infant Christ and gifted the image to Theophilos, recipient of the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Eusebius of Caesarea, who was no fan of icons, complains of the vast number of images of Christ and the Saints that came down to the present day, indicating that the creation of images goes back to an even more ancient time. In fact, Eusebius goes into great detail describing a sculpture of Christ in Caesarea Philippi that was commissioned by the woman with an issue of blood who was healed by Christ. One further story worth noting is of the icon made without hands. So the story goes, Abgar, a ruler of Edessa in Syria, had leprosy and heard of a healer, Jesus of Nazareth. (On the plausibility of word reaching Edessa, consider Matt 4:24.) Abgar sent an artist to Christ to paint an image of him, but Christ instead sent the artist back with a cloth on which Christ made an impression of his face — hence, an icon made without hands. Abgar was healed in its presence, and Thaddeus was sent to baptize him, along with all in Edessa. Abgar placed the icon over the city gate, and there is an entire history of how it was lost, rediscovered, and lost again.

Such accounts as these give us reason to think that some of the earliest images of Christ were based on firsthand accounts — and in the case of the icon without hands, firsthand impressions. As argued above, the accuracy of the images of Christ seems immaterial to whether they are in fact icons of him. Nonetheless, the presumption that they are inaccurate seems to be baseless. The claim would seem to require either knowledge of what Christ did in fact look like, so that the images could be shown to be inaccurate by comparison, or certainty that no images were based on firsthand accounts. I presume the former is not being claimed, so the latter must be the working premise. But as the above accounts indicate, the premise is far from certain.

I hope that helps.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jacobs

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JOHN OF DAMASCUS AND HIS DEFENSE OF ICONS

Synopsis

I examine John of Damascus’ defense of icons, upheld at the Council of Nicea II (AD 787). John argues that the making and honoring of images of Christ and the saints are in keeping with Scripture and tradition. Contrary to the view that the second commandment prohibits images, John argues that a proper understanding of the commandment shows it is a prohibition on the worship of creatures. Because the context of the commandment is that God is unseen, so no image of him is possible, the question emerges whether something has changed for those who confess that the Son of God has taken on flesh. John argues that the Incarnation not only makes images of the Son permissible but raises the question of whether resistance to such images indicates a faulty Christology. As for the honoring of images, John shows that Scripture, though prohibiting worship of creatures, approves the honoring of people, places, and things. But more profoundly, John highlights that the Eastern church fathers understand the Incarnation to bring human nature, and through it the world, into communion with the divine nature. This communion makes it possible for a creature to serve as a conduit for divine energy and grace. John argues that such conduits are rightly honored, not as God, but as creatures in whom God’s energy and grace reside. This view carried the day at Nicea II as a faithful representation of the teachings of the apostles and the fathers and remains the view and practice of the Eastern church to this day.

John of Damascus is best known for his defense of icons in the eighth century, which won the day at the Council of Nicea II (AD 787), the last of the seven ecumenical councils. The dispute concerned icons, or images, and the Eastern Christian practice of not only making images of Christ and the saints but of venerating them — kissing them, prostrating before them, censing them (2.10; 3.9). The iconoclasts (breakers of icons) opposed such practices as idolatrous. The spark that ignited the controversy was the Arab–Byzantine wars. Emperor Leo III issued a series of edicts (726–29) outlawing icons in fear that mounting losses to the Muslims were due to the idolatry of the iconodules (servants of icons). Iconoclasm continued under Constantine V (741–75), and though condemned at Nicea II, it reemerged under Emperor Leo V, bringing a second period of iconoclasm (814–42). The restoration of the icons would be championed by Empress Theodora after the death of her husband, Emperor Theophilus — himself an iconoclast.

The central question John deals with is whether iconodulism is in keeping with Scripture and tradition. Concerning the latter, one of John’s great contributions to patristic literature is his work as a systematizer of the Eastern church fathers. The consistent aim of his works is summed up well in his Dialectica: “I shall add nothing of my own, but shall gather together into one those things which have been worked out by the most eminent of teachers and make a compendium of them.” John’s defense of icons is no different. He penned three treatises in defense of icons, and in each, he catalogues quotes from the fathers to demonstrate an unbroken chain of iconodulism in the church (1.23–67; 2.24-66; 3.13–138), a chain John suggests is based on oral tradition passed down by the apostles (2 Thess. 2:15) (1.23; 2.16; 3.11).

Even with the endorsement of the fathers, however, do the iconodule practices run afoul of Scripture? The most obvious challenge is the second commandment: “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the likeness [homoiōma] of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not venerate [proskynēseis] them, nor worship [latreusēis] them” (Exod. 20:4–5 LXX). On the surface, this commandment appears to prohibit the making of images. But John argues that this is a superficial reading. For God commands the making of images for the tabernacle — images of things in heaven and on earth (Exod. 25:17–21; 26:1, 31; 36:33) (1.16, 20; 2.9, 15; 3.9). But if the commandment does not prohibit images, what does it prohibit? Moses records its rationale in Deuteronomy 4:12–19:

And the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire. You heard a voice, but you saw not any likeness [homoiōma], only a voice. And he showed you his covenant, which he commanded you to do, and the ten words that he wrote in two tablets of stone….You saw no likeness in the day that the Lord God spoke to you in Horeb from the midst of the fire: Lest perhaps being deceived you might make a carved likeness, any kind of image [eikona], the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beasts that are upon the earth, the likeness of birds that fly under heaven, the likeness of creeping things that move on the earth, the likeness of fish that abide in the waters under the earth: Lest perhaps lifting up your eyes to heaven, seeing the sun and the moon, and all the heavenly bodies, you go astray and worship [latreusēis] them, and serve them, which the Lord your God created for the service of all the nations, that are under heaven. (Emphasis added.)

The refrain that contextualizes the prohibition is you heard a voice but saw no likeness. The danger warned against is worship of what is seen — male or female, beasts, birds, creeping things, fish, or celestial bodies. In other words, God is invisible and uncircumscribed, evident in the experience at Horeb (1.15–6; 2.8; 3.7). Every image of visible and circumscribed entities will invariably bear the likeness of a creature, and the worship thereof will be worship of the creation, not the Creator. This, says John, is what the commandment prohibits, the worship of nature and demons (1.26; 3.7–8), errors into which the devil led mankind (2.1–4).

Such an explanation brings us to the crux of the matter. Divinity has taken on flesh. If the commandment prohibits images of the divine because God is unseen, does the Incarnation of the Son change this fact? John contrasts the prohibition in Deuteronomy with the words of the apostle John: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). To be sure, John of Damascus’ Trinitarianism distinguishes without confusion the Father from the Son. Though they share a common divine nature (ousia), they are discrete subjects (hypostases). Hence, John insists that images of the Father, who is not incarnate, still violate the commandment (1.4; 2.5; 3.2, 8). But, as John points out, the gospel proclaims that the Son took on flesh, color, and shape. As Paul declares, Jesus is the icon of the invisible God (Col. 1:15) (2.5; 3.2, 12). Hence, an image of the Son is now possible.

John contends that efforts to evade this conclusion invariably slip into heresy (2.2–6; 3.1–3). One could, of course, deny the divinity of Christ, as did the Arians, and thereby deny that icons of Jesus are icons of the divine. Such a claim would be heretical, but the iconoclasts do not make this mistake. They oppose images of Christ because they affirm His divinity (1.4–5; 2.4, 7; 3.2, 4, 6–7). Granting Christ’s divinity, one must cordon off His flesh from His person in order to say His icon is not of the Son. This road has a ditch on either side. The one side slips off into Manicheism, which denies the Incarnation as an illusion because matter is evil and cannot share in Christ’s person (1.16; 2.10, 13, 16). The other side slips into Nestorianism, which teaches that Christ has two natures and is two persons (prosopa), one divine and one human, fused together in the Incarnation (2.2). Both errors are contrary to the faith, which professes that Christ is only one person (hypostasis), the Only-Begotten Son of God, who has the same nature as the Father, and who took on human nature for our salvation (2.2–3). John writes,

I venerate together with the King and God the purple robe of his body, not as a garment, nor as a fourth person….For the nature of the flesh did not become divinity, but as the Word became flesh immutably, remaining what it was, so also the flesh became the Word without losing what it was, being rather made equal to the Word hypostatically. Therefore I am emboldened to depict the invisible God, not as invisible, but as he became visible for our sake, by participation in flesh and blood. I do not depict the invisible divinity, but I depict God made visible in the flesh. (3.6)

John sees no way of opposing images of Christ without denying the faith (2.6).

Even if the making of images generally, and of Christ specifically, is permissible, given the Incarnation, what about venerating images? John’s defense is threefold.

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These are transcripts from a spoken lecture. The audio is attached to this lesson. If there is any confusion from reading the transcript, please refer to the audio for clarification.

LECTURE 2

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE EASTERN CHURCH

We’re jumping into our first session on this series, which is about the Gospel according to the Eastern Church Fathers. I mentioned previously that the term “the gospel” is used frequently by Christians. But what is meant by that term, what the gospel is thought to be, varies depending on whether you’re a Protestant or a Catholic or Orthodox. And so in order to understand the Eastern Church Fathers, where I’d really like to begin is understanding the Gospel according to these Fathers.

The way I want to approach this is less by starting with the fathers themselves and what they have to say, and instead focusing on a biblical doctrine. My own spiritual journey led me to Orthodoxy, and the journey of studying religion and philosophy and eventually led to my discovery of the Eastern Church Fathers. There’s a doctrine in the scriptures, in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, in Jewish tradition, outside of the scriptures of resurrection, namely, the doctrine of resurrection to judgment. And when I studied that doctrine, prior to ever encountering the Eastern Church Fathers, it was actually that doctrine and the anomalies about it, the strange threads that emerged in looking at it, which first awakened me to something that’s happening in the scriptures in this doctrine, something that at the time of studying it, I saw as nothing more than just contradictions in the Bible, in Jewish tradition, until the church fathers gave me tools to resolve those contradictions.

And so it’s really with this biblical doctrine that I want to focus as a way in. Because what we’ll see is certain threads in the New Testament, in statements by Paul, for example, that make very little sense unless you read them with the Eastern Church Fathers. And then when you bring the Eastern Church Fathers into the conversation, what you see is that those threads begin to make sense. In fact, I would suggest that the biblical teachings about resurrection and specifically, the teachings of the New Testament do not make sense unless you read them the way the Eastern Church fathers do. And so this is where I want to start. I want to start there and specifically with this question: What is the faith of Abraham? St. Paul tells us that we’re of the faith of Abraham. So what is that faith?

Western vs. Eastern Views of the Gospel

Before jumping into answering that question and this doctrine of resurrection, I want to start by quickly laying out what I see as a simple and quick, easy way to differentiate the western view from the eastern view of the gospel more generally.

In the West, there is a tendency, and this emerges very early on in the Latin West, to see God as a lawgiver. First and foremost, he is a judge. He is someone who gives laws, who commands and then judges you for how you behave. And thus, when talking about the gospel, usually the answer to what is the Gospel begins with a problem and a solution. And the problem, of course, is that we’re law breakers. God has given commandments. He’s told us to do certain things. He’s set a very high bar, and we have not met that bar. And so when we stand before this judge, we face a problem of condemnation. And so the gospel really focuses on our predicament before a future judge, future judgment, post mortem, post death. Accountability to our judge is really the problem that the gospel is meant to remedy. And so then this is where Christ, where Jesus and the Incarnation enters in as a judicial solution.

I will say that Protestants and Catholics obviously disagree about how Jesus remedies that solution. In a Protestant context, Jesus ends up taking our punishment on himself. He also produces merits before God, and then somehow there is a transaction that occurs where our demerits, the things that we would be judged and condemned for before God, end up being transferred to Christ. And since he’s been punished for those, we’re off the hook. And then also because he is righteous, good, upright, pleasing to God, his merits end up being credited to us. And so this is where Catholics refer to this in polemical terms as a “legal fiction.” This is what the gospel is, that God is willing to enact a legal fiction based on your faith, whereas the Catholics, on the other hand, believe that there’s something a little more substantive happening in terms of, yes, there is forgiveness of sins that comes through Christ, but Christ in the work that he’s done, affords an opportunity for grace, which, in the Catholic context, means assistance in doing good deeds. And so even though salvation is by grace, what that grace does, that assistance from God does, is it allows us to do meritorious deeds before God, so that we are judged righteous, not as a legal fiction—a judge saying we are good and upright and righteous when we are not as in Protestantism—but instead that we actually are righteous because Christ has helped make us righteous.

Now, as I said, this is something that is pervasive in the Latin West. You begin to see early on contrast between the way Alexandrian Christians versus Latin Western Christians talk about certain doctrines. For example, when talking about whether there’s any sort of post mortem correction to the soul, where you find mention of that in Alexandrian Christians, you find it referred to as a fatherly chastising or healing or correction of the soul. It has a sort of therapeutic tone to it, whereas when you see somebody like Tertullian talking about this, he talks about the devil and prison and a pound of flesh and those sorts of things, where it’s very sort of punitive and judicial in nature. So that change in culture, that difference in culture, you see in the ways of thinking about this very early on.

I’d mentioned that Augustine and Augustine of Hippo’s ways of thinking about things specifically solidified some of these doctrines. And certainly this is true within the Latin west. So Augustine is the one who really introduces in a much more formal way than we had ever seen before in the Latin West, a doctrine of merits and demerits.

In Augustine’s early thinking, Augustine is wrestling with this question of, what does it mean for a person to be righteous or just. And the reason he’s asking the question of “just” is because in the Latin Vulgate, the term for righteousness is translated into justice, or justitia. And justitia in Latin means to render to each its due. So if you’re due punishment, I give you punishment. If you’re due praise, I give you praise; reward, I give you reward. So that’s what justice refers to.

And so Augustine when asking this question, “Well, what does it mean to be just?” His answer is, it means you render to each its due. Now, how this plays out in Augustine’s thinking is he recognizes that when we face choices, oftentimes our choices mean that we have two competing desires, and we have to pick one over the other. So I’ll give an example. Let’s say I’m sitting in this chair and I’m relaxing, and I’m enjoying relaxation right now, but I think I should really go exercise. I should go for a run right now. Okay, those two things are incompatible. I have to either elevate the good of relaxation over exercise and pick that—pick to sit here and enjoy relaxation and not exercise—or I have to abandon relaxation in order to exercise.

And so this is what Augustine calls the “order of loves.” The reason he calls it order of loves is because he presumes that we have an internal desire or affection or love for things that are good. And so relaxation appeals to me. It is a good. I have a certain love for it. Exercise and physical health, also being a good, I have a certain affection or love for that. But every choice then reflects a hierarchy of competing goods. And so what Augustine presumes here is he presumes that there actually are, in reality, certain goods that are superior to others.

When I make a choice to either relax or exercise that choice may be right or it may be wrong. Let’s say that in reality, exercise is the greater good, but I choose relaxation. Then my order of loves is out of step with reality. I have elevated one good above another, but in reality, the order of goods is different—that would be unjust, because my order of loves is out of step with the order of reality.

So Augustine comes to the conclusion that a person’s inner loves and how they are ordered, the hierarchy of their inner loves is what determines whether they are just or unjust. And of course, Augustine would say that the greatest good of all is the love of God. And so this is the one that must be at the top. So the just man, if we look into his chest and we see his order of loves, we’ll see that God is at the top. And then we’ll see all of reality ordered accordingly, angels, humans, cats, dogs, and then all the other things that appeal to us, food and love and all these sorts of things, and they will reflect reality. They will mirror and parallel reality entirely.

Now, Augustine, early on in his theology, he asked the question, what do I do if I look inside and I determine that I am unjust, my orders of loves are unjust? Let’s say I love food more than exercise, and I should love exercise more than food. Well, Augustine says in book one of On Free Choice, well, you will to fix it, just make a choice and reorder those loves. So that’s the early Augustine.

But what happens is a controversy emerges in Augustine’s world, and this is, incidentally, how a lot of Augustine’s theology is shaped, and a lot of Christian theology generally is shaped—a controversy emerges, a heretic emerges, a question is posed, and suddenly there’s a realization that something needs to be made clear. Now I would say, in Augustine’s case, his theology often changes, and this would be one such example of it changing in the face of controversy.

So Pelagius, if you’ve ever heard of Pelagianism, is someone who emerged in opposition to Augustine. Now, as an aside, Pelagius actually is not the real problem early on, it’s actually Celestius, who is a follower of Pelagius, and Celestius wanted to be elevated. He wanted to be ordained. And so this is what prompts a letter that points out a series of his teachings that are really problematic. And incidentally, Celestius’ teachings were problematic—he taught things that were clearly contrary to Christianity. But this is what begins the Pelagian controversy.

And in this controversy, what emerges is really the question of, what does it mean that we are saved by grace? Because if justice is something we can just will, then if I find that I am just and I stand before God and I am judged to be just, then in what sense is my justice a grace from God? And that’s the new question that emerges in the face of the Pelagian controversy that becomes central to how Augustine begins to think.

And how Augustine begins to answer this question, in this context of these order of affections and order of loves and merits and demerits, is this: he concludes that maybe the order of loves that we have is not something that we can just fix. The way this develops for Augustine is, he suggests that, in a fallen state, after Adam and Eve have corrupted our species, we have disordered love. So inevitably, even though maybe some of our loves are in a proper arrangement, we have disordered loves. They are out of whack. They don’t match up with reality, and certainly we don’t have a natural love for God above all other things. And so the result is that our deeds are inherently unjust in character, and for that reason, they produce demerits before God, things that at some point we will be held accountable for.

Incidentally, this is what gives rise to Augustine’s notion of the necessity of sin. Augustine presumes that everything we do is sinful. Now he doesn’t mean—and this would be a great misunderstanding—he doesn’t mean that you necessarily steal rather than not steal, or you necessarily commit adultery rather than not commit adultery, or you necessarily murder rather than not murder. What he means is, even when we obey the law, we choose to not murder rather than murder, we choose to not commit adultery rather than commit adultery, we choose to not steal rather than steal—the act itself comes from disordered loves, and therefore it still is sin. It still has demerits before God. So even when we obey the law, we are sinning. According to Augustine, this is the necessity of sin.

And the question becomes, how do you fix that? And this is where Augustine introduces a doctrine later called by the Council of Trent “prevenient Grace,” where what the Holy Spirit does is the Holy Spirit comes in and fixes that order of loves, and fixing that order of loves, now you can obey the law in a way that is meritorious, that’s from a proper order of loves. And so this is how Augustine tries to balance it. If I obey the law out of my own strength without any grace, then it will be demeritorious and not praiseworthy. I will be condemned for it. It will be sin. But if the Holy Spirit comes in and fixes the order of loves and now I obey the law, it will produce merits, and it will be righteous and just. And this is how the work of Christ ends up allowing us, enabling us, by grace, to do meritorious deeds.

Now he also, very critically and importantly to Western theology, introduced a doctrine where he didn’t want to leave any room for the Pelagians. So the question was, well, what about Adam and Eve? Is this just that we need grace because of the fall, but we didn’t need grace when we were in the garden? And Augustine’s answer is no, Adam too, needed grace. And his notion here is that what Adam had is something called original righteousness. And original righteousness means that grace that keeps the order of loves in check was there and given to Adam from the start, and that that’s why it would have been easy for Adam to obey and to produce merits. But had Adam not fallen and produced merits and been just, it still would have been of grace.

Now the reason this is critical, and we’ll see this in later talks when we start to talk about anthropology and the difference between East and West, is because this really establishes what’s called a nature-grace divide, where nature can’t be pleasing to God, and it always needs grace, even before the fall.

But nonetheless, this is where you get this concept of merits and demerits. And of course, Protestantism doesn’t abandon that notion of merits and demerits. It just disputes the idea that after the fall we produce meritorious deeds. It suggests that Christ produced merits, and Christ gives those merits to us, and he took on our demerits and he was punished.

So all of this provides the Western framework where the Western framework of the gospel is really about God as a law giver. God is a future judge. Us as law breakers, us as people who face a future judgment, and that’s the predicament, us as people who innately are incapable of being just, God who somehow makes us just, either by crediting that to us or by enabling us to do meritorious deeds. And about the gospel, about our future predicament, which is about merits and demerits before a future judge. That’s really what the gospel is, what Christianity is, according to the Latin West.

Now, for the Eastern Church Fathers, things are very different. In the Eastern Church Fathers, you don’t see a concept of merits and demerits the way you see it in Augustine. Future judgment is far less about weighing good and bad deeds, or something like that. Future judgment has more to do with testing the sort of quality of the soul.

Here’s the shorthand of what we’re going to see unfold for the Eastern fathers: when they look at God, God is first and foremost, the giver of being, He who calls being into existence and gives life. God is primarily providential, and Providence in the eastern fathers means that he wills the good of the creature. And the good here refers to proper formation. So the good of an eye is to see. Blindness is an evil to the eye.

So God is primarily the source of life and the one who nurtures beings toward the good, toward proper formation. But free creatures must participate in their own formation. That’s what free will means, or free choice means in the Greek context. I mean self-determination, or self-authority is actually what the word is derived from. So this sort of self-determination. And so even though God can call free beings into existence, we must participate in his providential coaxing toward good. And for that reason, what happens is that free creatures, like angels and like humans, can choose to turn away from the good and bring destruction upon ourselves.

And in this sense, destruction and death and corruption is not a judicial punishment. It’s actually something that is inevitable. It’s like a principle of physics. When you turn away from the source of life and goodness, you inevitably begin to erode and to die. And as we’ll see, whatever God imposes on us, the way the Eastern fathers understand God introducing death, or more accurately, dissolution, to the body of Adam is ultimately redemptive. God never ceases to be providential toward his creatures. Everything is aimed at restoring and continuing the providential care and bringing us back to life into our goodness.

And ultimately the incarnation is about the author of life himself entering our corrupted state in order to heal it and restore it. And Christianity is about inviting us into that hospital in order to experience that therapeutic healing and restoration in order to complete the creation of man and restore us to our proper good that was intended from the first. That’s really the picture of Christianity and of the Gospel according to the eastern fathers.

The Doctrine of Resurrection

Now we’re going to flesh that out and explain that over the course of several sessions here. So let’s begin with this question of resurrection, the doctrine of resurrection. And as I said, the question, what is the faith of Abraham?

Now, when I used to teach, I’ve taught in several different schools, and some have been Christian and some have not been but when I would teach in a Christian context, and specifically a Protestant or an evangelical context, and I would get to this topic, one of the questions I would always ask my students is, what does resurrection do? The resurrection of Christ. Christ is raised from the dead. We celebrate it on Easter or Pascha, if you’re going to use what the Orthodox Christians call it. He’s raised on Pascha. What does that do?

Well, my students would usually give me one of three answers. It tells us that God accepted his sacrifice on the cross—that was one answer. It proves that Jesus is who he said he is—that was another answer. It shows us what we’ll one day experience.

Now, what I would always point out to them is that all of these answers are about telling, proving or showing, and my question is, what does it do? What does it do for you? And they seem to be at a loss in order to answer that question.

So I had set up a new problem and say, let me ask you this, see your understanding of the gospel again. Keep in mind, this is a Protestant and evangelical context. Your understanding of the Gospel is that you have a judicial predicament. You have certain sins that a judge will one day condemn. Jesus is punished for those sins, and that gets you off the hook. So let me ask you this: if the punishment that gets you off the hook is accomplished at the cross, then would you be saved if God just left Christ’s body in the grave?

And as my students thought about that, it seemed to make sense, right? The gospel has to do with my sins. What gets me off the hook is that Christ was punished for those sins. That was done at Golgotha, so I guess I’d still be saved even if he was left in the grave. So I do a survey. How many people raise your hands? How many folks think you would still be saved if he left them in the grave? And usually, half the students were persuaded. They’d raise their hands.

Now I would point out to them that there’s at least one theologian I know of, Paul Tillich, who would agree with them and doesn’t think that the historical resurrection really has any bearing on that. But there’s another theologian, a Jewish theologian, who strongly disagrees. His name is St. Paul, who tells us that if Christ has not been raised, we’re still in our sins. You are not saved, and we, of all people, are to be most pitied.

But the question is still there, why? What does it do for you? What does Christ’s resurrection do for you? And I think this is the real question. This is the real question that when we answer this, we begin to step into the waters of the Eastern Church Fathers. We begin to see the gospel in a way that moves us much closer to understanding where the Eastern Church Fathers are coming from.

So as we begin to look at this question, I want to start by reading a passage from St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, chapter four, verses 16 to 22, and I probably modify a few words in here as we go, in keeping with the original Greek:

“Therefore, it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, I have made you a father of many nations in the presence of him whom he believed God, who crafts life for the dead and who calls non-being as being, who contrary to hope, in hope, believed so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, so shall your descendants be and not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead since he was about 100 years old and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and being fully convinced that what He had promised, he was able to perform. And therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

Now in this passage, one of the things that we see come up again and again and again is that Abraham believed God in the face of death. He considered the deadness of his own body. He was as good as dead. Paul tells us he considered the deadness of Sarah’s womb, and his faith was in God, who crafts life for the dead, or who is the life crafter.

So there’s a clear connection here between what Paul is saying about God. He is the life crafter. He calls the non-being as being, which, incidentally, these are technical terms that are often lost in translation. But this has to do with God calling things into existence. He calls the non-being as being. This has to do with creation and bringing things into existence and bringing them to life that previously did not exist, and his trust is in that God, the giver of life, the source of life, and his trust is in him in the face of death. That’s really the contrast.

And also, what we also see here is that there is some rabbinic background regarding how the rabbis had interpreted Abraham’s faith about Isaac, because one of the troubling questions we often face, which might be a little more troubling to us than it was for many ancient peoples, was the question of, why on earth would you ever sacrifice your son? That seems, quite frankly, evil. And so why are you listening to any spirit who’s telling you to do that sort of thing in the first place?

But how the rabbis had understood Abraham’s faith, and we see this actually alluded to in the book of Hebrews, in Hebrews 11:17, is that they had presumed that Abraham believed that God would reanimate Isaac, that he would raise him from the dead. Because the real question that Abraham faced was not so much, why would God ask me to do this? The real question was, how is it that God is going to bring about a nation through Isaac when he’s dead? That’s the real question, because he has a promise from God, and this command seems to overtly contradict that promise.

And so the way the rabbis had interpreted that is that Abraham must have believed that he was going to offer a sacrifice, and then God would reanimate his son, that he would raise him from the dead and then proceed to bring about this nation.

So all of this is connected. What you begin to see is that Abraham’s faith is a faith in resurrection. Abraham’s faith is that God who brings about things that live, that calls the non-being into being, who is the crafter of life will raise his son from the dead. That’s what Abraham’s faith is, and that’s what Paul is identifying as the faith of Abraham.

So what does that mean? What does it mean to have faith in God and in resurrection, in the promise of resurrection, in the hope of resurrection from God, the life crafter?

Three Key Questions About Resurrection

Now I mentioned that there are certain threads about resurrection in the New Testament that begin to raise important questions and force us to think beyond just a simple reanimation idea, something that really goes beyond just the idea that what resurrection is, is you were dead and now you come back to life.

There’s three questions that I think we should ask in order to guide this exploration:

1. According to the Scriptures, who is resurrected?

2. What is resurrection?

3. Having answered the second question, how is that accomplished?

So these three questions will guide us, and as we’ll see, I think it will illuminate for us the doctrine of resurrection in the New Testament, and begin to press us toward some ideas that we really see as central to the Gospel according to the Eastern Church Fathers.

Who Is Resurrected?

So let’s begin with the first: who is resurrected?

In terms of resurrection, the doctrine of resurrection, we find anticipations of this doctrine prior to the New Testament. We see it in the Old Testament. In the book of Daniel, for example, there is a prophecy about God calling people back from the dust, calling people from the dead in order to give account. The Book of Isaiah also talks about this future Day of Judgment, where the Archangel Michael is involved in calling the dead back to life, and we see them being brought forth for judgment.

The Book of Wisdom also, while not canonical outside of Orthodox circles, was certainly canonical according to the eastern fathers, also anticipates this resurrection. And in Second Maccabees 2, we see this hope of resurrection amongst the faithful Jews. In Second Maccabees 7:9 what we see is a mother and her son being martyred for their Jewish faith. And there’s a clear anticipation of a future resurrection for the righteous.

We also see this, even in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The belief is echoed there. And also Josephus, the Jewish historian, in his dissertation on Hades, when he talks about the dead being ushered into the realm of the dead, he anticipates a future day of judgment.

And the common traits across all of these—what we see in the biblical passages, what we see in the Dead Sea Scrolls, what we see in Josephus—is that there’s really four components of this doctrine prior to the New Testament:

1. The dead will be reanimated, that somehow souls and bodies will be reunited, or at the very least, those who are dead will come back to life.

2. Those who are brought back will be judged in the flesh. And this is the important part of reanimation. You can only be judged in the flesh if you get your flesh back after death, so they will be judged in the flesh for the deeds that they did in the flesh.

3. Those who are righteous will be rewarded for their righteousness, and those who are wicked will be punished for their wickedness.

4. The righteous will shine like the sun, or they’ll shine like the stars of heaven. This is something that we see anticipated in certain Old Testament passages. We see it in Second Maccabees and that hope of resurrection.
   

So what is that all about? What is this hope that somehow the righteous will not only be rewarded, but they will shine? They will radiate some kind of light.

In the New Testament, we find the doctrine really develops and what all of this means becomes much clearer. So the first thing I just want to say is that in the New Testament, all these threads are echoed. It’s echoed in the New Testament that the dead will be raised, that they will be judged, that the righteous are rewarded, the wicked are punished, and even the shining aspect that I’d mentioned takes on new meaning and life in the light of the New Testament.

Just an example from the Gospel of John. This is from John 5:28-29: “The hour is coming when all who are in the graves will hear His voice, referring to the Son of Man, Christ, and will come out and those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.”

So right there we see this echoing of these early themes. The dead being called out. And here they are being called out by the Son of God. And the righteous and the wicked will experience two different things. One is the resurrection of life, and one is the resurrection of condemnation. And this is based on having done good or having done evil. So we see that echo in the New Testament.

Now we could just stop there. And a lot of people do. They presume that what resurrection is, if you ask them, “What is resurrection?” they’d say, “Well, it’s you’re reanimated. Your soul is put back into your body, and then you’re brought forth for judgment.” That’s pretty much all they think about the doctrine of resurrection.

But this is really a superficial reading, and the reason this is a superficial reading is because if we press it with certain questions, we begin to see that there are certain inconsistencies or problems that begin to emerge.

So I want to note three statements from Paul that if we look at them carefully and we press them, we press this basic understanding of resurrection with these statements from Paul, we realize there are certain problems that begin to emerge, and as we press them with these statements, what we’ll begin to see is that there’s good reason to think that not everyone is resurrected.

Here’s the first statement. This is from Romans 6:9 Paul says: “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him.”

If resurrection is just reanimation, you died and now you’re brought back to life, is it true that you’ll never die again? Is Lazarus still with us in the flesh? There have been plenty of people prior to Christ who were raised. Lazarus is one such person. We also have the widow’s son. We have people that Elijah brought back to life. Are they still with us? And if the answer is no, if Lazarus, having been raised, died again, then what Paul seems to say here is evidently false.

Paul is saying that, having been raised, you can’t die, but if Lazarus died, then Paul’s wrong. So is Paul saying something that’s false, something that’s contradictory, something that’s incoherent? How are we to make sense of what Paul’s saying there?

Let me read to you, just in case you’re wondering, “Well, maybe Lazarus is lurking around someplace.” According to tradition, that’s not true. This is Methodius writing in the third century. He says, “The son of the widow of Sarepta and the son of the Shunamite and Lazarus, we must say, they rose to die again.” So according to tradition, no, they’re not lingering about. And so they evidently were raised only to die again. And Methodius is not the only one who states this.

So the question is, if you’re going to affirm that Lazarus rose to die again, then must you say that Paul is incorrect, that he’s saying something false in the book of Romans? It seems that neither is desirable. We don’t want to say that Lazarus is still about, but we also don’t want to say that Paul is incorrect.

So what is going on here? It seems, and we’ll see this play out, that what’s critical to understand is that there’s something categorically different about what Christ experiences in resurrection. It seems that in order to interpret Paul in a way that makes sense, we must say that what Christ experienced, Christ’s resurrection is categorically different than what Lazarus experienced. But what is that difference?

Here’s a second statement from Saint Paul. This one is from First Corinthians 15. So this is First Corinthians 15 verses 20 to 23 Paul says, “But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection for the dead. For as in Adam, all died, even so in Christ, all shall be made alive.”

Here, Paul identifies Christ as the first fruits of resurrection. Another question emerges: if first fruits means that he really is the first to be raised, what are we to make of Lazarus? What are we to make of the widow’s son? In what sense is Paul right in saying that Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection, if others have been raised likewise?

And again, what seems to emerge here is the only way to make sense of Paul, and what he’s saying is to suggest that something categorically different happened in Christ, that what Lazarus experienced is actually not resurrection. But again, we’re faced with this question, then, what is it? What is it that Christ experienced that’s different than what Lazarus experienced? I thought Lazarus was resurrected, wasn’t he? Perhaps he wasn’t.

This is not the only place where Paul says this. He echoes this sentiment in Colossians 1:17-18, where Christ is the first born from the dead. Again, in what sense is he first born from the dead if others have been resurrected? And again, it seems to be that what we must suggest is that no one, in order to make sense of what Paul is saying, no one prior to Christ’s resurrection experienced resurrection. They experienced something different.

Third statement from Paul. This one’s from his epistle to the Philippians. This is Philippians 3:10-11: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of His suffering by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

Now again, if we look at the Old Testament statements, and even many of the New Testament statements that state quite clearly, everyone righteous and wicked, everyone who’s ever walked the face of the earth will be reanimated and brought forth, will be raised and brought forth for judgment—what point is there in saying that I hope that I may attain to the resurrection? Isn’t it guaranteed? There’s no hiding from the resurrection. I might not want to stand judgment, but there’s no getting out of it. Everybody’s going to experience it.

So in what sense, why hope for something, speak in a conditional that you may experience that something, if it’s inevitable? Shouldn’t Paul say something more like, “Well, I hope to be judged righteous at the resurrection,” because obviously we’re all going to be raised? The only way again that this makes sense is if resurrection refers to something that only the righteous experience.

Once again, it seems that there must be a difference between what Lazarus experienced and Christ’s experience, and here we have to expand that and say Paul is hoping to attain something that is unique to the righteous, that perhaps the wicked don’t actually experience resurrection. They may be raised, but it’s not resurrection.

So this begins to press us in this question. We have two options here. The one option is that we either say that Paul is stating all sorts of things that make no sense whatsoever, and it’s all false. Now I know we don’t want to do that, so the alternative is to say that there is a difference between being raised and being resurrected.

Being resurrected is something that Christ was the first to experience. Lazarus didn’t, nor did anybody else who was raised, and resurrection is something that only the righteous experience. The wicked are raised, but they’re not resurrected. But in order to make that sort of statement, we have to draw a distinction. And what sort of distinction can we draw? Can we draw one? Is there biblical justification for drawing one?

Now, obviously, I think the statements of Paul are biblical justification enough to start to draw a distinction. But does Scripture give us any insight into what that difference is, the difference between reanimation, raising and resurrection?

Well, we can already by looking at the Gospel of John and looking back at this statement from Christ, we can already see that the New Testament itself draws a distinction between two types of resurrection or two types of raising. So in the statement I read from Christ, “the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and will come out those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.”

Notice that Paul in his letter to the Philippians, when he talks about hoping to attain the resurrection from the dead, it is not just resurrection, it’s resurrection from the dead, just as here, Christ distinguishes one type of resurrection from another, resurrection of life from resurrection of condemnation. There are two different things happening here that Christ is referring to, and so perhaps what we have happening in Paul is that Paul is talking about hoping to attain the resurrection from the dead, is talking about a very specific experience that only the righteous experience.

We also see the same sort of thing, not only in Paul and his differentiation, but also in the book of Revelation. The Book of Revelation itself distinguishes the first resurrection, which it says those who experience that are immune to death from later resurrections. So scripture, again, consistently distinguishes two types of experience, one type of resurrection that’s unique to Christ and then to the righteous, from reanimation by people like Lazarus and resurrection of the kind that the wicked experience of future judgments. So these are two different things.

And as we can see in the book of Revelation, that second resurrection comes with an experience of a second death, which is what the book of Revelation refers to in Revelation 21:8. And incidentally, it’s noteworthy that the second resurrection in Revelation actually omits the word anastasis, the word for resurrection.

Also, it’s interesting to note that in early Christian iconography, you’ll notice that in icons, the Christians often wrote on the icons what they are. This one is the crucifixion. This one is the ascension. This one’s the resurrection. On the icon of the raising of Lazarus, it is not the anastasis of Lazarus. It’s not the resurrection of Lazarus. It’s the egersis, the raising of Lazarus. They do not refer to it as the resurrection of Lazarus, because there’s an understanding in the Christian east that Lazarus did not experience the resurrection from the dead, or the resurrection of life. He was raised, brought back to life only to die again. And that is something that is not true of resurrection, in the proper sense, of what Christ experienced.

What Is Resurrection?

So this leaves us with this question, what is resurrection? So that’s the second question I had asked. I said that we would look at three questions. And the first question is, who is resurrected? And apparently the answer is resurrection in the proper sense, the sense in which Christ experienced the resurrection, the answer is that Christ is the first to be resurrected. The people prior to Christ, such as Lazarus and others, were not resurrected, and in the future, the righteous will also experience the resurrection in the sense of Christ, but the wicked will not. They will be raised, but they will not experience resurrection. So who experiences it? Not everyone, the righteous experience it.

So what is it? This brings us to our second question. What is resurrection? That was the second question I mentioned. But what we begin to see is that there are certain unique traits to it. So if we follow these patterns throughout Scripture, what we begin to see is, one that I’ve already mentioned, it is something that is unique to the righteous. We have no instance in the scriptures, where the wicked are said to be resurrected in the sense of what Christ experienced. They experienced a resurrection of condemnation, a resurrection of judgment, or something like that. But that’s a categorically different thing. So when we’re talking about resurrection in the sense of what Christ experienced and the righteous experience, it’s unique to the righteous. No wicked person can experience it.

A second trait that emerges with it is immunity to death. So this was the first statement we saw from Paul in Romans 6:9 where he talked about Christ having been raised, can’t die. It’s not that he says having been raised, he won’t die. Says having been raised, he can’t die. He is immune to death. And the same thing is said about the righteous in Revelation 2:6 so in the book of Revelation, when it talks about that first resurrection, and blessed are those who experience that death has no authority over them. It has no dominion over them anymore.

So immunity to death, not just that you happen to live forever, but immunity to death, is a second key characteristic of resurrection proper, and this is categorically unlike raising where you can die again. Incidentally, we raise people all the time. We talk about near death experiences, where someone dies in a hospital, and near death experience actually is inaccurate. They are dead, and we’ve developed enough technology that we’re able to bring them back if they haven’t been dead for too long, and voila, they come back only to die again. That is not resurrection. They have not been resurrected because they are not immune to death.

Now Paul fleshes this out even further in First Corinthians 15. This is really the place where we get the most thorough statements from Paul in terms of this aspect of resurrection, this immunity to death. I’ll be reading verses 35 to 51 here:

“But someone will say, how are the dead raised? And with what body do they come? Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be but mere grain, perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he pleases and to each seed its own body, all flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another fish and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies, but the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars. For one star differs from another star in glory.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption. It is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being, and the last Adam became a LIFE GIVING SPIRIT. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth and made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust. And as is the heavenly man, so are also those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. Now this, I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.”

Now in this passage, Paul gives us a number of insights into what resurrection is, but the consistent theme is that what resurrection is is a metamorphosis. It is a transformation. Paul’s entire point, when he talks about not all bodies being the same, and the glory of one differing from the glory of the other, is to differentiate types of body, types of element, the terrestrial, from the celestial, and to suggest that the body as it is raised in the resurrection, it is metamorphosized from one type to another type.

Now it is the same body. This is important to understand resurrection and reincarnation are different things. Reincarnation would be that the soul moves from this body to a different body. Resurrection is that this body is brought back to life and changed. It’s metamorphosized.

So what is that metamorphosis? He tells us precisely what it is: we put off death and we put on no death. We put off corruption and we put on incorruption. The terms here being thanatos and athanasia, putting off death for no death, immunity to death. And same with phthora, which is corruption.

So these terms have a broad meaning within the ancient world. Corruption, phthora, has to do with any sort of erosion or dying. So we might think of it this way. The very simple sense is think of a seed. When a seed is planted and it begins to grow, this is what’s called generation or becoming. This is actually what this movement from non-being into being. I’d read that passage where Paul talks about God being, the one who calls the non-being is being. In technical philosophy, in the ancient world, that movement of a seed, from seed form into fully gestated, fully formed thing is a movement from non-being to being. When a human moves from that small seedling form into fully formed that’s a movement from non-being into being. This is called generation, or becoming.

The opposite of that is what phthora is. So any point at which it moves forward, the plant grows, and then it begins to erode and deteriorate and die. That erosion, deterioration and death is phthora. The entire process is phthora. It’s not just the final end point. If along the way, it’s corrupted meaning, rather than being properly formed, it diverges and begins to get warped or twisted in some way that’s unnatural. That’s also phthora. So phthora refers to any divergence from proper formation.

So I’d mentioned the Eastern fathers understand God to be primarily providential. Meaning, what he does is he doesn’t just call things into being, but he ushers them and cares for them and make sure that they end up fully formed. But with free beings, we can diverge. We have some control in that process, and we can choose to go off in paths that are not proper formation. And that’s phthora. It’s not just the sense of our heart stops and the soul leaves the body. That’s certainly death, but death and phthora in the Eastern Church Fathers and in the New Testament means much more than that. It’s any distortion, corruption. It’s a deformity in my limb. It’s illness, it’s mental disorders, it’s sin, in the sense of moral transgression, and yes, it is also the gradual erosion and dissolution of my body. All of that is corruption, divergence from proper formation, divergence from our teleology, our telos, our proper end or formation.

And what Paul is telling us is that even though we currently are in bodies that are susceptible to that right, we are susceptible to divergence. We’re susceptible to sinning. We’re susceptible to sickness and to disease. We’re susceptible to aging, erosion, death. What happens in the resurrection is that is put off. The body is metamorphosized in such a way that that’s no longer possible. It’s not just that it doesn’t happen is that the body is immune to it. That is really what we’re talking about when we’re talking about resurrection.

How Is Resurrection Accomplished?

Now this brings us to a very strange question. How is this accomplished? A reason I say that’s strange is because the temptation might be to just say, well, it’s God. He works miracles. He can do whatever he wants. He’s God. But Paul actually answers this question for us, and his answer is critical to how the Eastern Church Fathers understand the gospel generally, and resurrection in particular. And incidentally, Paul’s not the only one who answers this.

So let’s look at one more anomaly in what Paul says, one more statement that seems to make no sense whatsoever. This is from First Timothy 6:6: “It is He, God alone who has immortality.”

Now, hold on, Paul, I thought you just said that we put off death for no death or immortality. I thought the gospel of Christ offers to us immortality. Is that not true? I mean, you just said that God alone is immortal. So how are we to reconcile this?

And this brings us to the last question concerning resurrection. How is this accomplished? If it is a categorical metamorphosis of our being, such that we are immune to death, immune to corruption, how is that accomplished? And the clue is actually in that statement by Paul, God alone is immortal.

It’s important to understand that, according to Paul, according to Greek philosophy, according to the Scriptures, all creatures are actually inherently corruptible. Just being a creature something that moves into being—you did not exist and you were called into being, just like that seed that moves into the form of a plant—that makes you changeable. And that’s actually quintessentially how, when you identify what is the central feature of a creature, according to the Eastern Church Fathers, that we change. That’s the one characteristics that’s consistent across all creatures: we change.

But the problem with being a changeable being means that we can change for the worse. Not all change is good, and we can move and change in ways that are bad, that are corrupt. And so if we are going to escape this one type of negative change, phthora, corruption, how is this accomplished?

And the answer is right there in Paul, God alone is immortal. There’s only one being, if that’s even the right term, that is immune to death and immune to corruption, and it is God. And so this brings us to a critical doctrine, which is the doctrine that we somehow can participate in God’s own immortality.

So let me read to you Second Peter 1:4: “His (that is God’s) divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, so that through them, you may escape corruption (that’s that term, again) that is in the world and may become partakers of the divine nature.”

Here, Peter tells us quite plainly, how do you escape corruption? You escape corruption by partaking of the divine nature. So Paul told us that what resurrection is is the putting off of corruption for incorruption, the putting off of death for no death. And Paul hinted how that happens, because he says God is the only one who’s immortal. And Peter says it explicitly, you escape corruption by partaking of the divine nature.

And that right there is the central notion of the gospel, according to the eastern fathers, that God alone is immortal, that God alone has life. Christ, incidentally, says this in John 5. He says quite clearly that the Father has life in himself, and he’s given it to me to have life in myself. This referring to His eternal generation, his begetting, the father giving him his own nature from eternity, which we’ll talk about when we get to the Ecumenical Councils. But then he says, “but you refuse to come to me to have life.”

Christ is very clear that when he offers them, you and me, eternal life, what he’s offering them is the life of the father that’s in him, and if you come to Him, He can give you that life. So scripture never talks about immortality or incorruption as a magic trick where God just says, “See, you’re corrupt, voila, you’re incorrupt,” or “you’re subject to death. Voila, now no death instead.”

The way scripture and then the fathers talk about it is that the only way for a creature to transcend the creature’s own changeability, corruptibility, susceptibility to death is to participate in the only nature that is immune to those things. That nature is God’s. That is the way in which you escape death. That is how you put off corruption for incorruption. That is how resurrection is accomplished.

So now let’s come full circle again. When we read Paul telling us that we are of the faith of Abraham, and that what Abraham’s faith is, is that he looked to God, who calls being out of non-being, who crafts life, and he looked at his own death and the deadness of Sarah’s womb, and he trusted God to raise his son from the dead, were he to sacrifice him—what is Paul talking about?

He’s talking about a faith in resurrection. He’s talking about a faith that we believe that having been subject to death and corruption, God is able to raise us from the dead, not as a magic trick, but because He offers us a means and an opportunity of participating in his own nature, partaking of his own nature. That’s what the offer of the gospel is: a union with Christ so that we can partake of the divine nature, so that we can escape death and corruption and ultimately attain to the resurrection of the dead. That’s the gospel.

Now, I had said I don’t think the New Testament makes sense unless you read it in that light, and it doesn’t make sense for the reasons that I pointed out. Many of the statements in the New Testament become incoherent or false unless you read it in that light. But that is how the Eastern fathers read it, and that is central to their understanding of the Gospel itself.

So as we continue on here and we talk about this, we’ll dive deeper into what they have to say, in particular about this doctrine, about participation in the divine nature, about something called Theosis, deification, being made by grace, what God is by nature, by partaking of the divine nature. But that is central to how they understand the incarnation, the gospel and Christianity generally, so we’ll talk about that more next time.

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I Want to Contribute

Hi, “Margaret,”

As promised, I did some research on celibacy and ordination in the Christian East. Below are my findings. I hope it helps! I apologize if this is more info than you want. But, for future reference, this is what you get if you ask me to look into something. Be warned.

Before I get into the research itself, I think a preliminary word is in order. The objection you shared last night (from your friend) was that clergy celibacy is “not biblical.” This notorious turn of phrase by protestants typically goes under defined. There are two questions to consider when asking whether a practice is “unbiblical”: Does the Bible mention it? Does the Bible oppose it? If we break these into a truth table, four logical possibilities emerge: (1) The Bible mentions it and the Bible opposes it (yes, yes). (2) The Bible does not mention it and the Bible does not opposed it (no, no). (3) The Bible mentions it but the Bible does not oppose it (yes, no). (4) The Bible does not mention it but the Bible opposes it (no, yes). So, which of these possibilities is meant when saying that this or that is unbiblical?

The first option is the strongest possible meaning of unbiblical. The Bible identifies this practice and the Bible prohibits or opposes it. For a rather easy example, the Bible mentions murder and the Bible opposes or condemns murder. So, I think we can grant the appropriateness of calling murder an unbiblical practice.

The second possibility is tougher. When the Bible neither mentions something nor opposes it, what are we to make of whether it is biblical? Often protestants will refer to something as unbiblical that falls into this second category, but the case is weak. The Bible does not mention television or cars or air conditioning. So is the use of these technologies unbiblical? Most protestants would say No. But the very same line of reasoning is sometimes employed against other supposedly “unbiblical” practices in Catholicism or Orthodoxy — that is, practices to which there is no obvious reference nor opposition in the Bible. The argument is ex silentio (out of silence). Consistency typically falls by the wayside in this use of the term unbiblical. For some folks want to employ this standard in the religious realm, limiting religious practices to what is explicitly stated and endorsed in the Bible (practices unstated are unbiblical). But no one (or virtually no one) employs such a standard in non-religious life, shunning television, air conditioning, cars, or the like. Therefore, the “unbiblical” card, when used in this way, tends to lend itself to great inconsistency and say far more about the person’s personal beliefs than about the Bible.

The third possibility — the Bible mentions it but does not oppose it — may seem strange as a mode of opposition, but it happens. For example, we find virtually no references to gluttony in the Bible, except that Christ is accused of being a glutton (Matt 11:19; Luke 7:34). So, does this mean that deeming gluttony to be sin, as Christianity traditionally has, is unbiblical? After all, Christ mentions gluttony but offers no teaching on it. The passage demonstrates that the Jews believed gluttony was a sin — hence the accusation — but there is no obvious biblical endorsement or condemnation of this belief. So what are we to make of gluttony? Should we accept the broader Jewish ethic that the Bible acknowledges but makes no apparent judgment about? Or does the Bible’s silence constitute a judgment, offering us an indifferent shrug about gluttony? It’s a tough question to answer. For it goes to the question of whether the Bible offers instruction about how to handle topics on which the Bible offers no instruction. We’ll come back to this issue in a moment.

The fourth possibility is the most odd, namely, that the Bible does not mention something but opposes it. It may sound like this is a mere logical possibility required by the truth table, but a nonsensical one. Not so. This logical possibility goes to issues of inference or entailment. For example, I mentioned the television issue. Some folks might try to pull into a discussion about television the claim that we are supposed to think on things that are good, right, and profitable (Phil 4:8). Okay, well, that passage does not speak directly to entertainment; it is a more general principle about objects of meditation. So the application to television is indirect. It’s an inference. What are we to make of this application? Is the application biblical? Or is the generic instruction alone (i.e., in an extremely restricted sense) biblical?

Let me do a parallel example for the Christian East. Is facing East when we pray, as the Orthodox do, biblical? The biblical rationale is that Christ taught that as light shines in the East and is seen in the West, so it will be with the coming of the Son of Man (Matt 24:27). This passage was understood in the ancient Church quite literally as teaching that Christ will appear in the Eastern sky, though he will be visible in the West as well. Hence, in anticipation of his return, Orthodox Christians pray facing East, so that, should he return, we are facing him when he appears. Is this a biblical practice? Well, if you dispute the reading of the passage, then we have only silence on the matter (option 2), which again raises the question of whether silence indicates disapproval. But what if we grant the reading of the passage? In this case, the passage only teaches that Christ will appear in the East. What are we to make of the instruction that we ought to be facing him when he appears? There’s no direct biblical support for this particular practice as such. We are instructed to be watchful for his coming, as the wise virgins were (Matt 25:1-13). We are told to honor the Lord our God (Luke 4:8), and cultural beliefs about showing respect or honor would indicate that we ought not turn our back toward him. But on the whole, the practice is a matter of inference from several biblical teachings. So, how do we rank this is the biblical-unbiblical scale?

And what of entailments, which also fall to this fourth possibility? For example, I mentioned gluttony. There is no clear teaching on gluttony itself, but there is very clear teaching that the Holy Spirit teaches us to say No to the passions, exercising self-control, and it is because of the passions that death entered the world (e.g., Titus 2:11-12). Clearly, gluttony is a passionate activity (in the ancient sense of the term), so while gluttony is not named and condemned, its root (viz., the passions) is, and the practice of saying No to that root is endorsed. Does that suffice to make the prohibition on gluttony biblical? It certainly appears to be an entailment of the biblical teachings, even if not stated directly. So, gluttony, biblical or unbiblical?

Such is the thorny issue of the turn of phrase, That is unbiblical. When someone levels this objection, it is important to decipher what he means. And the fact of the matter is, most who use this turn of phrase do not themselves know what they mean by it.

Now, let’s point out one feature of the turn of phrase that is no doubt present in common protestant use, namely, the belief in sola scriptura. Most protestants use this phrase because they measure all doctrine by the Bible alone — or so they say. Yet, we must ask whether this underlying commitment itself is biblical. The answer is No in the strongest sense, namely, that the practice is in direct contradiction to a biblical teaching. St. Paul is very clear that the Thessalonians are to abide by whatever he taught them, whether by word of mouth or by epistle (2 Thess 2:15). In other words, the instructions of the apostles were binding before being written down, and even what was never written was still binding in New Testament Christianity. Therefore, the limiting of apostolic teachings to what is written only is itself an unbiblical practice in the strongest sense of the term unbiblical — a practice identified and opposed (option 1).

Incidentally, the Eastern Church fathers are very clear on the point. I will quote my patron Saint, Basil of Caesarea:

Of the dogmas and preachings preserved in the Church, some we have from the written teaching, others we received from the tradition of the Apostles, handed down to us in secret, both of them having the same force for piety. No one who has the least experience of the laws of the Church will object to these, for if we try to dismiss that which is unwritten among the customs as of no great authority, then without noticing it we shall damage the Gospel. (Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 27.66)

In this light, the Orthodox should never use either “biblical” or “unbiblical” in the sense derived from sola scriptura. Our teachings are apostolic. Some are explicitly stated in the Bible; others are handed down orally and are not in the Bible, though they are nonetheless compatible with or complimentary to or entailments of what is in the Bible (e.g., facing East when we pray). Biblical in an Orthodox sense may mean the former; it may mean the latter.1

In addition, we also believe in the economy of the Church. That is to say, when an issue arises that the Bible does not offer clear instruction on, the Church is in a position to determine the best practice based on what has been handed down. And this, too, we see as biblical, precisely because the apostles offered such instruction throughout their own epistles; they held councils; and they placed others in leadership roles as clergy. Such ecclesial economy is reflected in our canon law, a straight rod meant for measuring best practice.

So, when it comes to clergy celibacy, we face the question of whether it is biblical or unbiblical and what is meant by this phrase. Given that we have biblical evidence of St. Peter being married prior to his ministry (Matthew 8:14–15; Mark 1:29–31; and Luke 4:38–41), and St. Paul insists that no one be elevated to bishop unless he is the husband of only one wife (i.e., is not a polygamist) (I Tim 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6), we know it is biblical — identified and permitted — that married folk be elevated to clergy. Opposition to this practice would be unbiblical. Now, what we do not have is biblical evidence for post-ordained marriage. Here, there is silence Hence, this particular issue falls into that odd category of neither acknowledged nor addressed (option 2). So, what do we find as far as Church practice and canon law on the topic?

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Question 1

00:01:36 - I’ve been reading Maximus the Confessor’s “On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ” and I’m loving it - it’s very clear and concise. The only thing left ambiguous is the distinction he makes about the body and soul. In Ambiguum 7 and 8, he discusses the body before the fall (pre-fall) versus after the fall (post-fall). He says man is the union of body and soul, but he seems to make a distinction between pre-fall and post-fall. Can you help clarify what he’s saying about this? Also, there’s a passage where he uses the word “satisfaction” - can you help me understand it without the lens of substitutionary atonement?

Question 2

00:21:17 - I have a question about John Zizioulas. He writes that the Cappadocian Fathers had to reinvent a new primary concept that wasn’t existent in Greek thought - the concept of the person - in order to define the Trinity. I’m curious how this primary concept was not existent or was ambiguous in previous Greek thought with Plato and Aristotle. Could you comment on that?

Question 3

00:35:10 - I’ve been thinking about Gregory of Nyssa’s statement that the whole body of humanity, or the whole of humanity, is the body of Christ. In Western (especially evangelical) theology, “Body of Christ” is used exclusively to denote those who’ve expressed faith in Christ. But I’ve been reading that this isn’t universal in the West - Karl Barth and T.F. Torrance, going back to Athanasius, see the whole of humanity in union with Christ because of the vicarious humanity of Christ. I’d love you to talk about how Paul uses “in Christ,” especially in Ephesians and Colossians, which on surface reading would suggest this is an exclusive group. Yet the understanding of Christ being creator and sustainer must put the whole of humanity in some form of union with Him.

Question 4

00:52:47 - For 2026 I’m planning on reading through all of Plato and Aristotle. I already have some good translations from Hackett. Do you have any other advice on how to read these first philosophers?

Question 5

00:58:43 - I recently read your article on idealism in the Church Fathers, and I also recently read Berkeley’s “Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous.” You make a side comment about how some people interpret Gregory of Nyssa as being an idealist, and you say that’s nonsense. I actually know someone who defends that interpretation. I’m curious what you think of Berkeley and idealism. Reading the three dialogues, I found some of his arguments pretty compelling, but I can think of a couple objections. Part of the problem is that he appears to be working with a different definition of matter compared to classical philosophers - he imagines matter as this inert stuff that’s out there. But if we take a more Aristotelian definition of matter as the potential to be something, then Berkeley’s idealism kind of makes more sense to me. As Christians, do we actually believe there’s this thing independent of mind that’s just sitting there? What would you think of these ideas?

Question 6

01:16:30 - I have a question about our modern condition and pluralism. You’ve done work on the Nous, and I think there’s somewhat of a pluralist spirit in that experimentation (you can correct me if that’s wrong). But my question is more about the academic side of pluralism. I think recently in Orthodoxy we’ve seen some pluralist thinking starting to come up, especially on Substack. I used to be more pluralistic myself - I was heavily influenced by Kenneth Rose’s book “Pluralism: The Religion of the Future.” What I wanted to pose to you was a problem: I used to look at the world’s religions and see a sage here and a sage there - both geniuses, both good people, both pursuing truth. If I imagine myself being born in their conditions with all the contingencies, I don’t see myself escaping that religion to go to a different one. When you multiply that by all the world’s religions, you’re left with epistemic paralysis. How would you escape that epistemic paralysis? And if you’d like to share your comments about pluralism in general, I’d like to hear that.

Question 7

01:51:18 - This is a History of Ideas question. You’ve said in your class that the empiricist movement was largely a backlash against the scholastics’ beloved Aristotle. Where did the backlash against Aristotelian philosophy come from? I understand the backlash against scholastic method, but not Aristotelian philosophy in general.

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I Want to Contribute

Dear “Margot,”

Your question about free will is a good one, and the answer is not at all obvious.1 The Eastern fathers are attuned to the issue you raise and answer it rather directly, but many philosophers of religion today do not notice the issue.

I published an article on this topic some time back, noting this as a rather significant blind spot in the modern free will defense: The defense often defines free will in a manner that requires the possibility of evil, but it never contemplates the fact that, according to Christian tradition, God is free but is not susceptible to evil. Any adequate free will defense, then, must account for why freedom entails the possibility of evil in creatures but not in God.2

Be warned, the article is a scholarly one, so it might be more technical than you’d like. If, however, you’re feeling ambitious, here’s a link: “Created Corruptible, Raised Incorruptible: The Significance of Hylomorphic Creationism to the Free Will Defense.”

That article aside, allow me to offer a brief summary of the answer.

Let’s begin with free will. It would be a mistake to define free will as the power to do good or evil, even though this is often how people define the term. Free will in the Eastern fathers (and other ancients) is the power of self-determination — literally, self authority or power (αὐτεξουσία).3 Unlike a plant or irrational animal that inevitably develops and operates in a manner reflective of its nature, a free creature has the strange capacity to choose how to express its nature. Whatever choices one makes are anything but inevitable.

Now, this brings us to the second thing to keep in mind, namely, that self-determination paired with creatureliness is what opens the door to evil. The reason is that a creature is inherently developmental, moving from incomplete to complete, or from imperfection to perfection,4 or from non-being into being.

This definition of creatureliness becomes apparent in the Arian dispute,5 and you can here it echo in the divine liturgy and other Eastern rites: God calls all things from non-being into being. Non-being, in this context, refers to potential — specifically the potential of matter to be any number of things. Every creature is a being who once did not exist but whose existence was possible, and God called that possible being into existence. When God creates, a possible being moves from non-being (or bare possibility) into being (concrete reality).

For this reason, every creature is transitional. Plants move from seedling to sapling. Animals move from fetus to infant to adult. With moral and spiritual beings, this development necessarily involves acts of will, since moral properties are only possible for beings who know what they ought to do and have the ability to do or not do. (The point is evident in the fact that every moral defense makes the appeal that I didn’t know or I couldn’t help it: If both knowing and ability apply, then moral properties adhere.) So, while a body might develop without choice, simply unfolding in accord with its nature, in order for a moral and spiritual being to develop, it must freely act in accord with its good.

This, incidentally, is critical to the image-likeness distinction in the Eastern fathers. They notice that, in Genesis, God sets out to make man in his own image and according to his likeness, but he then makes man in his own image — likeness is not repeated (cf. Gen 1:26-7). And what follows is a command and a moral test. The image of God, according to these fathers, is the rational spirit, which makes man capable of imitating God and partaking of his nature, but the likeness is his active imitation and participation in the divine nature — something that can only come about by choice. In a word, the likeness of God requires that man cooperate.6

Now, add to this that man is a creature. What this means is that he begins both incomplete and susceptible to development and change, this being the very nature of creatureliness.7 Such changeability means that man’s self-determination directs his formation: He can either direct his development in accord with his good (toward proper formation) or contrary to it (producing a malformity). In other words, self-determination (or free will) is not what opens the door to evil but self-determination paired with the pliability of creatureliness is what opens this door.

This is why God, who is not developmental, who does not come into being, but has always been perfectly what he is, can be free or self-determining without the possibility of evil. Divine self-determination does not facilitate God becoming something else, attaining or achieving some perfection he lacks. Rather, being perfect and fully what he is, God’s self-determination is only ever a free expression of his nature, of what he is already. His freedom expresses his already realized Goodness, Justice, Love, and so on.

Make no mistake, there is freedom in the expression. There are countless ways to show love, for example. So God’s demonstrations of his love are not inevitable but free. That God’s deeds always express is love is inevitable, but the particulars are not.

Now, this point helps clarify why freedom does not necessitate evil. But it still leaves unanswered how a creature might hope to attain sinlessness. For the real problem — one to which the Eastern fathers are attuned and which we have already touched on above — is that creatures are inherently susceptible to change. The Greek word is alloiótēs (ἀλλοιότης), which means to become something else. The very fact that we move into being and are material in nature means, according to the Eastern fathers, that we are innately susceptible to becoming different than we are presently.8 How, then, can we hope to reach a point of stasis, where we not only attain virtue but attain it in a manner such that we are no longer susceptible to falling?

I suppose we could split the question and first ask whether the Eastern fathers do, in fact, believe the Saints are immune to falling in the age to come. The answer is yes. The Origenists entertained the idea of the world falling, returning to God, and falling again, and the view was deemed heretical.9

So, if the Saints cannot fall in the age to come, what is the basis for such hope?

You asked whether the answer might be the removal of free will. Thankfully, the answer is no. In fact, the Eastern fathers would deem the suggestion impossible in two regards. The first is that it is essential to the nature of man that we have free will, this being innate to our rational nature. Hence, any talk of removing free will while still having a human lands in contradiction on par with removing one side of a square while still having a square.

The second regard concerns providence itself. The Eastern fathers understand God’s providential goodness to mean that he moves all things toward their good. Hence, even when permitting or sending an evil, these are only ever instrumental means of directing the creation toward its proper formation. Such is the nature of divine Goodness — God can do none other. For this reason, to remove the will of man would be to violate the order of nature, operating contrary to man’s natural good — akin to removing sight from an eye. But this is contrary to the very nature of God, making the suggestion impossible. Hence, the restoration of man in the age to come must preserve free will, not violate it.

What, then, is the solution? The answer, in a word, is deification.

I’m sure, as an Orthodox convert, you’ve heard of this doctrine — that the Eastern fathers believe that we can partake of the divine nature and “become God.” Shocking though the phrase may be, they do not mean, of course, that man can become a fourth member of the Trinity. A creature can never become God in that sense, a point that is painfully obvious in the Arian dispute.10 Instead, the Eastern fathers see it as analogous to iron becoming enflamed through communion with fire.

Imagine iron being placed in fire to the point that it glows and burns, even when removed from the flames. The iron remains iron, but it now bears within its person, as it were, something from the pyrotic — its operative powers or energies of heating and lighting. So it is with our communion with God.11

The hope of the gospel is that we can partake of the divine nature, and through that partaking, we can be healed — healed of death, healed of corruption, and made holy. Notice, however, that the New Testament is very clear that the things offered to us in the gospel are uniquely divine. We’re offered immortality, but Paul is clear that God alone is immortal (1 Tim 6:16). In other words, the eternal life offered to us in the gospel is God’s own life. This is also clear in the gospel of John, where Christ says the Father has life in himself and he has given it to the Son to have life in himself (Jn 5:26), but he chastises his hearers who won’t come to him to have life (Jn 5:40) — the life of the Father being the life that is in Christ which he offers to us. Similarly, when we read Paul’s discourse about resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, we find that it is more than reanimation; it is a metamorphosis, putting off death for immortality (which we have already noted to be divine in nature) and a putting off of corruption for incorruption.12 And Peter tells us plainly how such incorruption is possible: We escape the corruption that has come upon the world by partaking of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4).

Now, keep in mind that corruption means any malformity, any twisting of a nature — like blindness to the eye. In the case of free creatures, sin and wickedness is a corruption, a misuse of self-determination that moves us away from our good. So, here, in the words of Peter, we find the remedy: We can escape the corruption of our misuse of freedom by partaking of the divine nature.

To put this in the terms of the Eastern Church fathers, the question you’re asking is how we can hope to become atreptos (ἄτρεπτος) — which means unturnable in goodness? Their answer is that we become unturnable by partaking of the only unturnable nature, namely, God’s own. God is unturnably Good, and we can only attain such untrunability by partaking of his nature. In other words, just as we attain immortality by partaking of God’s immortality, so we attain moral and spiritual unturnability by partaking of God’s unturnable Goodness.13

In sum, the healing offered to us in the gospel is meant to do its work until both our body and soul is fully healed and energized by God. And in that healing and energizing, our soul finally reaches a state of holiness and perfection in which we attain incorruption, no longer susceptible to change for ill. We retain our freedom, but like God’s own freedom, such self-determination, in this sanctified state, is only ever the free expression of our perfected nature, freely determining how to love God and neighbor, no longer susceptible to malformation and corruption.

I hope that helps!

Sincerely,
Dr. Jacobs

P.S. For a further exploration of some of these points, you may want to check out my trio of letters on anthropology and deification, along with my letter on resurrection and deification.14

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