Before we jump in just a reminder that I’m producing The East-West Series, a comprehensive 25-lecture exploration of the theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. We’re crowdfunding to complete production. Pre-order for the lowest price this series will ever be. Learn more at theeastwestseries.com.

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June 2026 Q&A Questions:

00:00 - Welcome / Announcements and managing podcast formats

01:11 - The Pledge of Allegiance, John Locke, and the ambiguity of modernist theology and rights

23:54 - Discord in civilization: Comparing the historical peaks of Western art and music against Eastern philosophy and theology

48:10 - The “Can those outside the Church be saved?” debate: Culpability, divine judgment, and responding to contemporary Protestant critiques

1:07:19 - Looking at Plato: The tripartite soul, creation out of nothing, and the immortality of the soul in Patristic contexts

1:14:20 - David Bentley Hart and the Essence-Energies Distinction: Epistemology, Latin Scholastic trajectories, and St. Basil

The next subscriber Q&A is on July 25, Sat, at 10 AM CT. The Zoom link will be emailed to subscribers.

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One more thing: I’m producing The East-West Series, a comprehensive 25-lecture exploration of the theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. We’re crowdfunding to complete production — watch the trailer and learn more at theeastwestseries.com.

Can God make a rock so large that he cannot lift it? This may sound like a joke, but it is actually a profound question because it asks whether the concept of an all-powerful being—God—makes logical sense or reduces to nonsense. The question accomplishes this by creating a conundrum. On the one hand, if God is all-powerful, one ought to be able to affirm any task asked of him: “Yes, he can do that; he is God, and he is all-powerful.” Therefore, if asked whether he can make such a rock, the answer should be yes. On the other hand, affirming this creates a logical trap, for it simultaneously posits something else he cannot do: namely, lift the rock. Is there an answer to this sort of question? Indeed, there is. The answer is no. To understand how we arrive at that answer, we must examine the term in question: omnipotent.

Many people, upon hearing questions like “Can God make a square circle?” or “Can he make free creatures that are not free?”, instinctively think that because he is God, he can do anything. To them, the proposition is irrelevant; God can accomplish anything one might suggest. This is what they assume omnipotence means. However, classical Christianity does not define omnipotence in this way. Omnipotence does not simply mean that God can perform whatever action might be described by a random string of words. What, then, does it mean? While omnipotence does mean that God can do anything, this position includes the qualification that not every combination of words actually describes a “thing.” In other words, contradictions are contradictions, even for God.

Realism, Nominalism, and the Order of Reality

To understand where this concept originates, we must explore a philosophical position known as realism.1 Realism centers on a fundamental observation: every rational being, from the moment a child begins to speak, reasons in terms of groups. We think in terms of genera (animal), species (dog), and common properties (bipedal). As Porphyry summarizes the question of realism, we must ask whether genera and species exist in themselves or reside in mere concepts alone.2 We all do it, but why? The realist answers that the mind does this because these groups are real; they reflect the actual structure of reality.

The alternative to this view suggests that the world is not inherently structured. Instead, reality is merely chaotic matter in motion, lacking inherent organization because organization requires a mind. Therefore, these groups and structures are not features of reality itself; they are efforts of the human mind to organize its experiences. They are simply names or mental fictions invented to categorize the external world. If one argues that logic, mathematics, and rational structures are mere mental fictions, that person is a nominalist—derived from the Latin nomen, meaning name. They believe these categories are just names projected onto reality, not reflections of reality itself.

Christianity has historically aligned with the realist tradition. Realism appears very early in pagan philosophy, with initial forms emerging among the Pythagoreans, such as Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 495 BC). The most prominent forms of realism are found in Plato (c. 428–348 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC). Plato argued that our world is a material copy of an ideal world constructed of perfect archetypes or forms.3 This is known as extreme realism, as it posits that these structures not only are real but comprise an independent realm. In contrast, the moderate realism of Aristotle argues that these structures are real but exist immanently within matter, providing structure much like DNA drives the development of an organism.4 Between these two, Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists argued that archetypal blueprints pre-exist the world within the mind of God, who then imparts this structure to matter. This hybrid of Platonic and Aristotelian thought represents the realist tradition to which early Christians belonged.

This alignment is unsurprising, as most ancient thinkers who believed in providence—the idea that the world originates from a divine mind—tended to be realists. The providentialist position asserts that mind precedes matter, and this mind (God) produces the material world. Therefore, the rational structures we observe in the world are simply reflections of the divine mind that gave rise to them. When our minds examine the world, we recognize these inherent patterns and structures.

This view contrasts sharply with the Epicureans, who were early materialists. They believed reality consisted solely of chaotic matter in motion, with mind emerging as a secondary byproduct that invents fictions to project onto this chaos. These early proto-nominalists were fundamentally opposed to the Christian providentialists. Christian realism was uniquely informed by the biblical text. For example, in the book of Genesis, God says, “Let us make,” and then names the things he intends to create before they exist (Gen 1:26). Early interpreters naturally asked what God was referring to, concluding that he must possess an idea of what he intends to make. Thus, Alexandrian Jewish thinkers like Philo of Alexandria5 and Christian theologians like Origen of Alexandria6 utilized analogies comparing God to an architect holding a blueprint before building a city. Being rational, God possesses archetypal ideas (logoi) that serve as the blueprint for creation. He creates matter and imparts structure to it—a structure reflective of those divine ideas.

The significance of this realist commitment is that if logic reveals the order of reality itself, then a logical contradiction—something that is logically nonsense—is not merely impossible in the realm of human thought; it is impossible per se. Contradictions are not just contradictions for human beings; they are contradictions inherently. Put more strongly, contradictions are contradictions even for God.

Historically, certain thinkers have been uncomfortable with this conclusion. This tension emerged clearly in late medieval scholasticism. It was relatively standard in earlier scholasticism to assert that whatever implies contradiction is beyond the bounds of omnipotence. However, later figures like William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347) bristled at the notion that God “cannot” do something. They pietistically pushed back against realism, suggesting that these rational structures and contradictions apply only to us, not to God, who transcends such limitations. Consequently, they advocated nominalism, arguing that logic and reason are merely human inventions for organizing experience, rather than indicators of reality itself.7

The Arian Dispute and Metaphysical Necessity

This nominalist position was innovative relative to Christian history and was frequently viewed with suspicion, often bordering on heresy. Realism was not merely a popular philosophical preference among early Christians; it was foundational to their understanding of core Christian doctrines. This is most evident in the Arian dispute, an early ecumenical crisis that necessitated the Council of Nicaea to adjudicate the boundaries of the received faith.

Arius of Alexandria (c. 256–336 AD) taught that the Son of God is a creature. According to Arius, God the Father existed alone before deciding to have a Son, leading him to create a godlike being called, by analogy, the Son of God. The telltale sign of Arianism was the phrase “there was when he was not,” asserting a time when the Son did not exist.8 This dispute, which produced the first draft of the Nicene Creed, demonstrates that early Christians viewed realism as a confessional element of Christianity.

When Arius espoused his heresy, the pro-Nicenes—defenders of traditional orthodoxy such as Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373 AD) and Alexander of Alexandria (d. 326 AD)—responded by pointing out the logical entailments of Arius’s claim. They argued that if the Son is created, he is necessarily changeable, corruptible, and only accidentally good.9 These charges reflect a realist conviction: the fathers were not suggesting that creatures happen to be changeable, but that it is a metaphysical necessity.10 To be created is to be mutable; not even God can create a second God. They argued that these traits are necessary logical entailments of creaturehood, and this structure of reality applies even to God.

This point was solidified when Arius attempted to modify his position. To counter the charge of mutability, Arius suggested that God created the Son unlike other creatures, making him unchangeable and immutable.11 The pro-Nicene response was that such a proposition is not just false; it is nonsense.12 Eastern Christian hymnody praises Athanasius for refuting the “heretical nonsense” of Arius. Why did they view it as nonsense? They recognized an inherent contradiction: to be created is to come into being, which is the very definition of change.13 One becomes something they previously were not. For Arius to claim that God causes something to come into being, yet that thing is entirely unchangeable, is a formal contradiction. The response was that not even God can do that; not even God can create a second God. The Nicene discussion demonstrates a firm commitment to the idea that contradictions are contradictions even for God.

Nonsense Remains Nonsense Even for God

Some may still bristle at the phrase “God cannot,” feeling that it undermines divine omnipotence. The common pietistic instinct is to assert that God can do anything, including making free creatures that are not free or creating square circles. However, examining this impulse requires asking a few fundamental questions.

First, can God lie? A Bible-believing Christian will recall the Epistle of James, which states that God cannot lie (cf. Jas 1:17; Titus 1:2; Heb 6:18). Is James speaking blasphemy, or is it true that lying is logically and fundamentally incompatible with the nature of God?

Second, can God simply stop existing? The immediate theological inclination is to say no, God cannot cease to exist. By affirming this, one is acknowledging that there is something about the nature of God that entails existence, making non-existence completely incompatible with his nature.

Third, can God create a second God? As demonstrated by the pro-Nicenes in the Arian dispute, being created and being God are fundamentally incompatible concepts. Not even God can create a second God. These instincts—recognizing that God and lying, being created and being God, or God and non-existence are contradictory—are realist instincts. They affirm that certain concepts cannot be combined because they contradict each other inherently.

If one still feels uncomfortable saying “God cannot” make a free creature that is not free, or a square circle, it likely stems from a misunderstanding of what is actually being said. When people hear that God cannot make a free creature that is not free, they imagine an exceedingly complex or bizarre entity that is simply beyond God’s power to produce. This misrepresents the classical Christian position on omnipotence.

The limitation being indicted is not God’s power, but the coherence of the language being used. To say that God can do something requires presenting an actual “something.” Stringing together incompatible words does not create a meaningful proposition. The phrase “a free creature that is not free” is not a description of a difficult task; it is a nonsensical linguistic absurdity. It is an empty noise. The same applies to a “square circle.” As Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) explicitly stated, whatever implies contradiction is beyond even omnipotence.14 Similarly, C.S. Lewis noted that nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk about God.15 Prefixing a meaningless phrase with “God can” does not suddenly endow it with meaning. The string of words does not rise to the level of a “thing”.

Therefore, when evaluating whether God can make free creatures that are not free, or square circles, or a rock too heavy to lift, the key is not to question God’s power. The necessary scrutiny is whether the proposition describes a coherent concept. When a formal contradiction is identified, it becomes clear that the proposal does not rise to the level of a “thing.” God cannot do it, not because the task is too difficult, but because it is a string of meaningless words.

When asked if God can make free creatures that are not free, the contradiction is obvious: one has combined “A” and “not A.” What about a square circle? One is asking if God can make a two-dimensional shape with a flowing circumference where all points are equidistant from the center, yet simultaneously possessing four sides of equal length and four right angles. The words are understandable individually, but combined, they are nonsense. Consequently, the question of whether God can make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it is equally flawed. It asks whether a being whose power cannot be exceeded can create an object that exceeds his power. Because this is a formal contradiction, the answer is no. A coherent task has not been proposed in the first place. You haven’t given God anything to do.

One more thing: I’m producing The East-West Series, a comprehensive 25-lecture exploration of the theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. We’re crowdfunding to complete production — watch the trailer and learn more at theeastwestseries.com.

Is the world God’s body? Those who answer in the affirmative are called pantheists. The term derives from two Greek words, pan and theos, meaning “all is God”. In this view, the world, universe, or cosmos is a giant divine organism, and human beings are essentially cells within God’s body. A closely related position, panentheism, posits that all is in God. This view shares a certain resonance with pantheism. The panentheist argues that some part of the world is divine—usually the soul—while maintaining that the world is also more than that; there is a component of the world that is not God, just as God is more than merely the world.

The present inquiry concerns whether the Eastern Church fathers are, in fact, either pantheists or panentheists. This question arises because several contemporary thinkers have argued that the Eastern fathers are panentheists. Such a characterization is ultimately incorrect. While it is understandable why one might draw this conclusion, it remains misleading.

Before examining the reasons for this, it is necessary to establish the standard taxonomy in the philosophy of religion regarding God-and-world relations. Traditionally, there are three options. The first is theism, wherein God and the world are two completely different substances. The world is not God, and God is not the world. The second option is pantheism, which collapses God and the world into one and the same thing. The third is panentheism, which posits that some part of the world is God, but not all of the world is God, and God is more than just the world. These three models present a complete distinction, a complete collapse, and a middle way that suggests a certain amount of overlap without a complete division or collapse.

Why, then, might one suggest that the Eastern fathers are panentheists? The rationale becomes apparent in Kallistos Ware’s contribution to Philip Clayton’s book on the topic.1 Clayton, a philosopher of religion, is a prominent advocate of panentheism. His iteration of the doctrine is born largely out of his anthropology of emergentism—the idea that the soul emerges out of the body. He seeks to apply an analogous framework to God-world relations. This project aims to reconcile science and religion, constructing a theology more sympathetic to scientific impulses. In an edited volume gathering advocates of panentheism, one of the contributors was Kallistos Ware. Ware, a metropolitan within the Eastern Christian Church, is a scholar who is generally excellent regarding historical theology and church history. However, when traversing the waters of philosophy, his conclusions become less reliable. The present topic serves as one such example.

The Essence-Energies Distinction

Ware defends his position by appealing to a pervasive distinction in the Eastern Church fathers between God’s essence and God’s energies. This distinction traces its origins to Aristotle (384–322 BC). Aristotle coined the term energeia, the closest equivalent to “energies,” to describe God’s perfect type of activity, distinguishing it from God’s essence.2 In the context of his unmoved mover—the one who does not change but causes all change in the world—Aristotle drew a distinction between energeia (energy) and kinesis (motion). Motion represents imperfect activity, which is incomplete and can be abandoned. For example, the act of building a house can be abandoned at any point, rendering it an incomplete activity. This contrasts with the act of seeing, which is instantaneous and complete. Aristotle separated these two types of activity to insist that God operates in a perfect, complete manner. The main trait of his unmoved mover is immunity to the progress, change, or development that creatures undergo.

A being of this nature must act perfectly and completely at any given moment. Aristotle’s term energeiadifferentiates this perfect activity from incomplete or imperfect activity. This terminology was adopted in Alexandrian Judaism because it accurately identified God’s perfect manner of acting. However, Alexandrian Jewish thinkers—specifically Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC – c. 50 AD)—drew a distinction absent in Aristotle. Philo distinguished between the essence of a thing (what it is) and the operative powers or energies that exude from that essence.3 While Aristotle recognized this distinction in creatures, he did not apply it to God. In fact, he explicitly stated that God’s essence is energeia.4 Philo, conversely, insisted that this distinction must be maintained within the divine nature.

Philo derived this from the narrative of Moses, wherein Moses asks God to “show me your glory”. God responds peculiarly: “You cannot see my face, for no man can see me and live, but I will show you my back” (Exod 33:18-23). He places Moses in the cleft of the rock, covers him, and says, “I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back when I pass by.” This narrative presents a difficulty if one maintains that God is incorporeal, as Philo does. He takes the traditional view that God is an omnipresent spirit. The theological question, then, is what is meant by the face versus the back. Philo suggests the “face” refers to the essence of God—what God is in and of himself—which is transcendent and inaccessible directly.5 To look upon it would bring death. Yet, Philo acknowledges that God speaks to prophets, that there are theophanies, that the divine glory manifests, and that God offers miracles and revelation. The question remains as to what precisely comes down to humanity—which is in some ways God, yet leaves God’s face beyond our grasp. This is where Philo draws the distinction between the nature or essence of God and the operative powers or energies that exude from God to interact with creation.6

A helpful analogy is that of a creative genius, such as the musicality of Johann Sebastian Bach. If one were told of Bach’s musical genius without having heard his compositions, the claim remains abstract. One cannot physically observe his musicality; it is an intangible quality cultivated within his being. To understand this genius, one must hear him compose or play. Where that musical genius is articulated outwardly, we begin to grasp what resides within him. The essence-energies distinction operates similarly. What God is in and of himself cannot be peered at directly. Yet who and what God is becomes clear as he operates toward the world, revealing his creativity, providence, goodness, and justice. These operations communicate truths about the divine nature.

An additional feature of this distinction critical to the present conversation is the idea that, in some cases, these energies are communicable to something else. A favored analogy in ancient writers, specifically the Eastern Church fathers, is that of iron and fire. When iron is placed into a blazing inferno, it eventually begins to glow and burn. Upon removal, it remains glowing red and is capable of burning other objects. This illustrates that the operative powers of fire—heating and lighting—have been transferred to the iron. While the iron remains iron, it possesses something of the nature of fire within it, namely, its energies or operative powers.7 They have been communicated to it.

These are the two critical distinctions Alexandrian Jews added to the discussion. First, God consists of both essence and energies; though his essence is unapproachable, he is known through the energies that descend to creation. Second, energies are communicable from one substance to another, much like the energies of fire transferring to iron. In a spiritual context, this explains the ancient understanding of demoniacs—individuals who communed with demons and were consequently energized by them. They obtained hidden knowledge, possessed superhuman strength, or exhibited phenomena like levitation. Rather than viewing this mechanically—where a demon merely whispers in an ear or physically lifts a person—they viewed it energetically, akin to fire taking up residence within iron. The energies or operative powers of the demon energize the individual through their participation in the demonic nature.

This paradigm also applies to participation in things holy. When discussing holy individuals or angels, their miraculous power—which is inherently good—results from communing with God. The good angels are energized by God and can, in turn, energize other things. The prophet is not merely hearing a divine whisper but is actively energized by God, serving as a conduit. Returning to the iron metaphor, if the iron is shaped into a branding iron, heated, and applied to a cow, the cow is burned by the fire via the iron. The branding iron acts as a conduit carrying the fire to the subject. Similarly, holy angels and prophets carry the operative powers of God within them to minister to people. They act as conduits for the divine energies.

This concept is pervasive within the New Testament. St. Paul frequently employs this distinction. In translation, Paul’s use of energeia is often obscured, yet he uses it extensively. Many terms translated as “work” (ergon) in Pauline epistles are, in fact, derivatives of energeia. When Paul states, “It is not I who work, but God who works in me,” he is declaring that it is God who energizes him.

In other words, he is describing something synergistic. Paul does not claim God is performing the work in his absence; rather, the miraculous deeds he accomplishes are the result of him being energized by God. He applies this to others as well. Regarding Peter, he notes that the same God who energizes him for ministry to the Gentiles energizes Peter for ministry to the Jews (Gal 2:8). He tells the Thessalonians they are co-workers with God (synergos): their energy and God’s energy uniting in a single act, analogous to the branding iron (1 Thess 3:2). He also references this in a darker context, stating that the children of wrath are energized by the devil (Eph 2:1-3).

The Greek Church fathers, for whom the Greek language was native and who were well-versed in Alexandrian and Aristotelian thought, readily recognized this framework. When they read the theology of the apostles, the essence-energies distinction in writers like Paul was abundantly clear. Consequently, the essence-energies distinction is crucial for understanding Eastern patristic thought.

The Gospel of Healing and the Divine Energies

While this distinction permeates Eastern Christian thinking in numerous ways, it is most central to their understanding of the Christian gospel. They viewed humanity as a broken, sick, and dying species resulting from the sins of Adam and Eve. The Christian gospel is fundamentally therapeutic, aimed at providing health, wholeness, and restoration to a sick and dying species.

According to the Eastern fathers, this healing is accomplished through the incarnation. The fall broke the bridge between humanity and the immortal life of God—the immortal life here being the divine energies. Throughout the Gospels, Christ offers eternal life. Yet St. Paul states that God alone is immortal (1 Tim 6:16). This presents an apparent paradox if Christ offers the gift of immortality, especially when Paul also claims that in the resurrection from the dead, we put off death for immortality (1 Cor 15:53-54).

These seemingly contradictory claims are reconciled by St. Peter, who writes that we escape the corruption in the world by partaking of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). The Eastern fathers understand the immortality, incorruption, and eternal life offered by Christ not merely as an extension of biological longevity. Instead, what is offered in the gospel is the very life of God. God possesses a quality of life native only to himself. He desires creatures to commune with and participate in that life. This only occurs by union with him, as this life is not native to any creature. This is why Christ states in the Gospel of John, “The Father has life in himself, and he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:26). The life offered is the very life of God. The only way to escape corruption and death is to commune with the only incorruptible, immortal nature, which is God’s own.

This communion occurs through the divine energies. In the Eastern patristic understanding of the gospel, the fall crippled humanity’s ability to commune with God. We are a dying species aware we are made for more, yet incapable of bridging the gap. The healing occurs as the Son of God, who possesses the immortal life of God within himself, becomes human. He enters the cancerous organ of the cosmos—humanity—and in doing so, drives away its corruption and death. Just as Christ reaches out his immaculate hand to cleanse a leper in the Gospels, driving away the disease, the incarnation does the same for the human species. The immortal and incorrupt Son of God enters our dying species, driving away corruption and restoring us.

This is necessary because, as Gregory of Nazianzus notes, that which is not assumed is not healed.8 Christ must take on the entirety of human nature—body and soul—in order to heal it. Through the incarnation and the restoration of human nature, the bridge between God and man is rebuilt, allowing us to enter into communion with God, partake of the divine nature, and begin the process of healing. This therapeutic process spans a believer’s life and culminates in the resurrection of the dead.

The Eastern fathers genuinely believe humanity can commune with God. Just as iron communes with fire and takes on its operative powers, humans can commune with God such that the divine energies take up residence within them. This communion is the very purpose for which humanity was originally created. The fall broke this communion, and the incarnation serves to restore it, enabling humanity to partake of the divine nature as originally intended.

Panentheism vs. Participation

Why detail this process of communion? Because that type of participation is the sort of thing Kallistos Ware rightly recognizes as present within the Eastern fathers, leading him to claim they must be panentheists. Noting the intersection and overlap between God and creatures, wherein the porous creature is susceptible to communion with the divine energies, he categorizes this as panentheism. While this sentiment highlights an important point, it remains misleading.

Labeling the Eastern fathers as theists risks implying a strict dichotomy between God and the world, suggesting they exist on completely separate planes. It is accurate that the Eastern fathers reject such a rigid separation; they view the cosmos and its creatures as porous. This undergirds their theology of relics and holy places—the belief that creatures are indeed porous and made to commune with God.

The defining question of panentheism, however, is not whether the creature is porous and can participate in God. The distinction between theism, pantheism, and panentheism centers on whether some part of creation is God. On this point, the Eastern fathers are absolutely clear. The clearest illustration of this is the Arian dispute. Arianism, an early Christian heresy that occasioned the Council of Nicaea and prompted the first draft of the Nicene Creed, argued that the Son of God—Jesus Christ—is a creature. According to Arius, God the Father is the true God, and he created the Son as a godlike creature. Thus, the hallmark of Arianism was the phrase “there was when he was not,” asserting a time before the Son’s creation.9

Within this dispute, the dividing line between God and creatures is unmistakable. Pro-Nicene figures like Athanasius of Alexandria and Alexander of Alexandria argued that if the Son is a creature, he must bear all the traits of creatures: coming into being, mutability, and corruptibility.10 They posited a strict dichotomy: creatures are inherently developmental entities subject to metaphysical necessities, while God is none of those things. When Arius attempted to qualify his position by suggesting God created the Son as an immutable creature, the Eastern fathers dismissed it as nonsense.11 A creature cannot be immutable; God cannot create a second God.

This strict dichotomy asserts an absolute distinction in substance. God is one way, and creatures are another. These two substances do not overlap. Therefore, the Eastern fathers are unequivocally theists regarding whether any part of the world is part of God. The answer is no. Creatures are of a completely different kind than God.

Ware correctly notes that creatures are porous, making them susceptible to God’s energies—not to his essence, which would make creatures members of the Holy Trinity—but to God’s energies, which come down to us and pervade us. This interpenetration allows for participation in the divine. While Ware is right to emphasize this participation, it is not panentheism.

Ultimately, a new term is likely required. If the aim is to describe a theology that holds to strict substantial theism while affirming that porous creatures can commune with, participate in, and be transformed by partaking of the divine nature, this represents a fourth category distinct from theism, pantheism, and panentheism. While the exact terminology remains elusive—perhaps “pan-energism”—it is clear that a fourth category is necessary. Identifying this dynamic as panentheism is inaccurate. Whatever term best describes this reality, it is certainly not panentheism.

One more thing: I’m producing The East-West Series, a comprehensive 25-lecture exploration of the theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. We’re crowdfunding to complete production — watch the trailer and learn more at theeastwestseries.com.

Do all dogs go to heaven? It might sound like a joke, but it is a rather interesting question because it asks whether or not irrational animals are the sort of beings who are made to just come into existence, live, and then die and cease to be, or whether they, like man, have some sort of hope of immortality.

The biblical text is somewhat ambiguous on this topic. If we look at Ecclesiastes, for example, it asks who is to say whether the breath or the soul of a beast goes up or whether it goes back down into the earth (Eccl 3:21). The Bible does not offer a clear answer. The Eastern Church fathers, that is the fathers of the Christian East, are also somewhat ambiguous on this question. However, if we pay careful attention to their thought, we start to approach what might be an answer.

Before addressing animal immortality, let us talk about our main term: death, and animal death in particular. If we follow the writings of the Eastern fathers and examine the ways in which they talk about death, we see that the word “death” has at least four possible uses or definitions. The first one is simple decomposition. That is, if you are talking about an organic body which is complex and has parts, it is composed. Those parts can separate, and it can decompose. Decomposition is one possible meaning of death.1

A second possible meaning is that a soul departs from a body. A body which is animated suddenly ceases to be animated because the life force within it leaves. That is the second possible definition.

The third definition is what we might call corruption. Here, the focus is on some sort of divergence from the order of nature. Consider the eye, for example. It is a seeing organ, a bodily organ made to see. If something happens to it—if it gets scratched, for example—and it now has trouble seeing, that is a corruption. It is a distortion of nature, a divergence from proper formation. That is your third possible definition.

The fourth is closely related. In the example of the eye, the subject is a bodily organ and bodily formation. When speaking of spiritual and moral beings, beings like humans or angels, you are talking about beings who are created in order to become virtuous. That is their proper formation. When such a being freely chooses to become wicked or to sin, this produces a moral or a spiritual corruption, a divergence from proper formation. That moral or spiritual corruption is our fourth definition of death.

These are the four possible uses of the word death: decomposition, separation of a soul from a body, corruption, and moral or spiritual corruption.2 When talking about animal death, for example, we need to ask a basic question: Are all forms of death unnatural?

The reason this is an important question from a Christian perspective is that Christianity has always held that death is something that enters the world through sin. This is unique relative to other pagan philosophies. The pagan philosophies tended to explain evil through two principles, what is called some type of metaphysical dualism. This could be the idea that you have some sort of good principle like spirituality or—if you are Plato (c. 428–348 BC)—the Forms, and then you have a second pesky principle that ends up distorting and dragging things down. That was typically matter. Alternatively, you could have two gods or two principles. If you are Empedocles (c. 494–434 BC), for example, you believe that there is one deity called Love and another called Strife, and they are at perpetual war with each other. Love ends up bringing things into harmony, and then Strife sets in and disorders the order of nature, resulting in all sorts of distortions and corruptions. Amongst the pagans, there was a tendency to see the cosmic order as consisting of two principles, one which is good and one which is evil, existing in perpetual conflict. That conflict is how we explain the fact that the world consists of both good things and bad things, things that are properly formed and things that are malformed.

In Christianity, however, there is the unique doctrine of the fall. This is the idea that the world is originally created good and properly formed. There is no corruption within the world. But free beings, man and angels, introduce into the cosmos some sort of distortion or corruption that then proliferates from them to the rest of the world. That is unique. The question we have to ask when it comes to death is whether all forms of death are part of that proliferation of corruption. Are they all unnatural? We can then return to the question of whether animal death in particular is unnatural, whether that is a corruption.

If we look at the biblical text, we see hints that at least two forms of death were natural and permissible prior to the fall of man. Within the Eden narrative, Adam and Eve are told that they can eat from any seedbearing plant in the garden (Gen 1:29). This little detail might seem rather mundane, but what it tells us is that two forms of death were present and permitted within Eden. In other words, they were natural before the fall. What are they? The first is decomposition. As I said, this is the first definition of death. Inevitably, if you are going to eat something, this involves the breaking down of an organic body. Decomposition, at least of plants, was permitted within Eden.

The second, probably less obvious point is that the second definition of death is also present in this permission given by God. That is the separation of a soul from a body. Many today tend to think of the soul as the mind, and that is largely a product of modernity. People like René Descartes (1596–1650) tended to think of the soul as the thinking part of you, producing this notion of two types of substances: thinking substance, which is mind or soul, and extended substance, which is body. But within the ancient world, the soul was the life force of a body.3 Any body that is alive has a soul, and the Eastern Church fathers share this view. We can find within them—for example, John of Damascus (c. 675–749 AD)—references to the phytikon soul, that is, the vegetative soul.4 A plant, being a living body, is actually an ensouled body. It is something that has a soul. This does not mean that it is rational, sentient, or a thinking being, but it does mean it is a living being. When it is killed and broken apart, like it would be when it is eaten, you are separating the life of that body from that body.

Within Eden, we find two forms of permissible death: decomposition and the separation of a soul from a body. In this case, these permissible or natural forms of death apply to plants. The question we face here is what of animals? Is it possible that animal death too may have been permitted prior to the fall? Could it be that the death of animals is actually perfectly natural?

Privation, Negation, and Animal Mortality

Another way of framing the question would be to borrow a pair of terms from the medieval scholastics in the Latin West. The terms I am about to use are from the Latin West, but conceptually you can find them in the Christian East, and this is the distinction between privatio and negatio, or privation and negation.5 What is this distinction? I used the injury of an eye as an example of corruption. An eye, which is a seeing organ, suddenly has trouble seeing. That would be a privation, some sort of distortion of the order of nature. In other words, seeing is a good that an eye should have. If we have damaged it such that it is deprived of that, that is a privation.6 Let us contrast this with your ear. Your ear also lacks sight, but that is not actually a privation. Why? Because the ear is a hearing organ, not a seeing organ. It is not actually made to see things. This would just be a negation. Yes, sight is a good that it lacks, but it is not supposed to have it in the first place.

This concept is useful. Essentially, we have established that yes, plants lack immortality. They are naturally mortal. But that is not a privation. That is a negation. Plants are not supposed to be immortal. There is nothing distorted about the idea that they die. The natural question we face then is whether or not animal death is a privation, some sort of distortion of nature that sets in with the fall, or whether it is a negation and animals are not supposed to be immortal.

Several points within the Eastern Church fathers point in the direction that perhaps animals are not created to be immortal, or at least not naturally immortal. We see this in at least two areas. The first appears in the comments by Irenaeus (c. 130–202 AD), an early Christian Church father who talks about the doctrine of resurrection. When talking about the doctrine of resurrection, drawing specifically on St. Paul and his comments in 1 Corinthians 15, Irenaeus points out that the animal body of man needs to be transfigured or transformed by communion with the divine nature in order to be capable of immortality.7 In other words, what Irenaeus says in this passage is that organic animal bodies are actually not naturally suited to immortality. That is why some sort of transformation of man in the resurrection from the dead, which St. Paul talks about, is necessary for us to attain immortality. That very fact, even though Irenaeus is talking about the resurrection, is a concession that animal bodies are not naturally suited to immortality,8 that they are naturally mortal.

There is a second area where we can see hints of this within the Eastern Church fathers. Within the book of Genesis, if you are familiar with the narrative, man is made when God reaches down from heaven and takes from the dust of the earth, and then he breathes into that dust from heaven, and we get this hybrid of heaven and earth which is called man, as man becomes a living soul (Gen 2:7). Within the Genesis creation account, earthly things are associated with mortal things. That is why death is always referred to as returning to the earth. It refers to the things that come from the earth and return to it. That is the mortal realm. The heavenly realm, conversely, tended to be associated with celestial beings and immortality.

Part of the question that emerges—and this question actually emerges prior to Christianity in Alexandrian Judaism and is then echoed very early on by the Eastern Christians—is this: When you take something from the realm of the mortals and you merge it with something from the celestial or the immortal realm, what do you have? Is that something mortal or is it immortal? The very fact that this question is asked by people like Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC–50 AD) and then echoed by Eastern Church fathers like Theophilus of Antioch (c. 120–190 AD) or Nemesius of Emesa (fl. c. 390 AD) tells you that these Eastern writers think of things that are from the earth, like the beasts, as naturally mortal.

The answer to this question is equally interesting. The consensus that we find in Philo9 also echoes in Theophilus10 and in Nemesius of Emesa.11 The answer is that man was created neither. Rather, man was created potentially mortal and potentially immortal with his free will functioning like the fulcrum of a balance scale,12 deciding whether he is going to live and die like the beasts or live the life of angels. This not only confirms the fact that these Eastern writers tend to think of the animal realm as naturally mortal, but it also tells you this: If man is not naturally immortal, then to say that the beasts are naturally immortal is actually to elevate them above Adam, which of course the Eastern fathers would never do.

All of this points in the direction of the conclusion that animal death is perfectly natural. Put otherwise, the fact that animals are not naturally immortal is a negation, not a privation. It is perfectly suitable that they lack immortality because they are not actually made to be immortal. Is that then our conclusion? Is the answer to our question just that animals are naturally mortal and they are made to come into being, to live, and to die, and that is the end of them? Not quite.

The Microcosm and the Eighth Day of Creation

However, several other doctrines in the Eastern Church fathers are worth considering when looking at this topic.

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One more thing: I’m producing The East-West Series, a comprehensive 25-lecture exploration of the theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. We’re crowdfunding to complete production — watch the trailer and learn more at theeastwestseries.com.

I Want to Contribute

Why do Christians worship on Sunday rather than Saturday, like the Jews did before them?

If you’re very online, you’ve probably heard a rumor that this change is a pagan capitulation. In other words, at some point within Christianity, specifically due to the conversion of Emperor Constantine (272-337 AD), Christianity began to engage in various forms of syncretism, merging elements of paganism with Christianity. The result was a distorted hybrid as opposed to pure Christianity.

The case runs something like this when applied to Sunday worship. Early Christianity — namely, Jesus and the Apostles — worshiped on Saturday because they were Jews, and that’s when Jews went to synagogue or the Temple. Thus, early Christian worship was on Saturday. But in the 4th century, there arose a pagan emperor named Constantine, who converted to Christianity. But his conversion is dubious — motivated by political or pragmatic reasons — and following this dubious conversion, Constantine began to mingle his paganism, which still lurked in the shadows, with his newfound religion, Christianity. In a word, he engaged in a form of pagan syncretism that give rise to Roman Catholicism as we know it today.

One of these syncretisms is the movement of worship from Saturday to Sunday. Constantine doesn’t do this to honor Christ. Rather, what this veils is his honor of the pagan sun god, Sol Invictus, to whom he was previously devoted. How do we know this? Because we know exactly when Constantine decreed that all of Rome is to take a day of rest, and he says exactly why: to honor the venerable day of the sun. Hence, we see here the real reason for the day of rest on Sunday, namely, to honor the sun god.1

This decree is later solidified within Christianity as this syncretism spreads with the blending of pagan politics and the Christian Church at the Council of Laodicea in 364 AD. At that council, we see a clear mandate: Christians are no longer to worship on the Jewish Sabbath. They are supposed to worship on Sunday. And here we are today, still commemorating the pagan day of worship on Sunday rather than the Saturday Sabbath.

Such is the case. Is it true?

There are certain things about this narrative that are true. What are they? Yes, there is an emperor named Constantine who, in the 4th century, converted from paganism to Christianity. That’s a well-known fact.

As for the sincerity of his conversion, I’m not going to debate that here because it’s immaterial to the question at hand for reasons that we’ll see shortly. Suffice it to say that Orthodox Christians, like myself, look at Constantine and his life and think there’s good reason to believe his conversion and his faith were sincere.2 Certainly, the Christians of the day believed the same. But as I said, the question is immaterial to the matter of Sunday worship.

Bracketing the question of whether Constantine was a good guy or a bad guy, and whether his faith was authentic or not, let’s instead look at whether it’s true that Constantine issues an edict in 321 that moves Christian worship from Saturday to Sunday. We can see plainly the answer is No.

Evaluating the Claim: New Testament and Early Christian Testimony

We already begin to see in the book of Acts (20:7) and in 1 Corinthians (16:2) signs that Christians had started to gather on the Lord’s Day, which was the first day of the week, which is to say Sunday.

In addition to this New Testament testimony that Christians were beginning to gather on Sunday, we also find the testimony of the Ante-Nicene fathers. Who are the Ante-Nicene fathers, and why are they relevant? They’re relevant because “ante” doesn’t mean against Nicene or Nicaea. Instead, ante (in Latin) means before Nicaea. Nicene or Nicaea refers to the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, the ecumenical councils of the first millennium were gatherings of the entire Church, with representatives from the Christian East and West, meant to adjudicate a question of theology about the faith handed down by the Apostles.

When talking about the Ante-Nicene fathers, then, we’re talking about fathers who are before the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea (325 AD). In other words, the very early fathers, many of whom are called “Apostolic Fathers,” because they knew the Apostles. When we look at an Apostolic father like Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–108 AD), who was a bishop in the early Church, we find additional testimony (well before Constantine) that Christians worship on the Lord’s Day, echoing the New Testament testimony.3 And Ignatius is far from the only such testimony. We could add others, such as Justin Martyr (c. 100–165 AD).4

Part of the question here is why was there a movement from gathering on the Sabbath Saturday to the Lord’s Day and worshiping on Sunday? Was it pagan capitulation? Perhaps people like Ignatius and Justin were deeply rooted in their paganism that even though they had embraced this new religion, they couldn’t quite shed that pagan skin they wore beforehand. Candidly, it’s unlikely if you actually read the lives of these Saints.

Whenever I discuss this question of whether there is some sort of syncretism between Christianity and paganism — when I would teach historical theology, for example — one of the places I would begin to set the tone is by reading to my students the account of the martyrdom of Justin Martyr. (If you haven’t read it, it’s well worth reading.) Why would I do this? I’ll tell the story and then explain why.

Justin and a group of Christians are brought before the prefect of Rome, Rusticus, to be interrogated. While Justin is being interrogated, he admits that he was a student of philosophy and had studied all the major schools of pagan thought. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that Christianity is the true philosophy. Rusticus gets pointed: “You’re a Christian then.” Justin replies plainly, “Yes, I am a Christian.” The Christians with him say the same. The prefect decides to cut to the chase. He tells Justin that what he must do is offer sacrifice to the gods, and then he’ll let them go. But Justin says quite plainly, “No right-thinking person falls away from piety to impiety.”5 All of his companions say the same.

The prefect gets more pointed and says, “Now you do know if that’s your final answer, I’m going to torture you without mercy.” He says, “Yes, I know.” And they say, “Yes, we know.” “Is that your final answer?” “Yes, that’s the final answer,” saying plainly, “Do what you will, for we are Christians, and do not sacrifice to idols.”6 The results? They’re all tortured and martyred at the hands of the prefect.

Why would I share this story as a way of setting up the question about pagan syncretism? The reason is this. Whenever someone begins to paint a narrative that says, “I know that we have certain figures like Justin Martyr who profess to be Christians, but if we look at their thought, we see they’re clinging to their old paganism. And so, they’re trying to find a way of merging their new life as a Christian with their old life as a pagan.” In other words, it’s an indictment. Somebody like Justin would be mortified at the suggestion that he was somehow hanging on to falsehoods from his former pagan life. But when you read the account of his martyrdom, it becomes unlikely that that accusation holds water.

What about St. Ignatius? He was a bishop, so perhaps he was drunk with power, wanting to impose his will, talking about the importance of bishops within the ancient world and with that, of course, imposing certain pagan commitments, like Sunday worship. Here’s the problem. If you the letters of St. Ignatius, some are written on the road to him being taken to the coliseum to be fed to lions. Needless to say, if you’re about to be martyred, the last thing on your mind is how to solidify earthly power. When you read the words of Ignatius, it’s exceedingly clear he has no intention of escaping this fate. Quite the contrary, he desires to be food for lions. He writes to his readers — to his flock — and says, “Suffer me not to die,” by which he means do not rescue me from this fate so that I might go on living on this earth, “but let me live,” by which he means be made food for lions.7 He explains that when he is conformed to the sufferings of the Son of God, he will find in that paradise that awaits on the other side that he has become fully human.8 Those aren’t exactly the words of someone who’s thinking about worldly power or how to hold on to pagan trappings.

The reason I bring these stories up is that the narrative that suggests that figures like Ignatius and Justin are merely clinging to their old pagan commitments simply isn’t plausible when you look at the lives of these men. This fact paired with the New Testament testimony creates significant problems for the narrative that Sunday worship is somehow a Constantinian invention.

If paganism isn’t the motive for moving the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday, what is the reason? Surely, there must be an explanation. And there is — and a good one.

Before we get there, however, I want to say a couple of things about Constantine’s edict in 321 AD about a day of rest on the venerable day of the sun. It’s true that Constantine issued the edict, and it’s entirely possible that what Constantine is doing with that edict is providing cover for the Christians who were supposed to try, if at all possible, to avoid work on Sunday. Such is the sort of thing stated at the Council of Laodicea in 364 (in canon 29): if you can avoid work, you should. But why doesn’t Constantine simply tell the pagan empire that they should take the Lord’s Day and not work? The reason is simple: it’s a pagan empire. Keep in mind that Christianity was not just broadly persecuted, but considered largely illegal up until 313 AD, when the Edict of Milan legalized it, giving it sanction. The edict didn’t make the Roman Empire Christian, of course; it simply ensured that Christianity is tolerated. But to the broader empire, Christianity remained a minority religion that was only recently tolerated. To tell the pagan empire to take the Lord’s Day off wouldn’t mean anything. Hence, Constantine refers to Sunday as the venerable day of the sun, which is the day his pagan hearers would have recognized.

Notice that the edict doesn’t say one is to venerate the sun. It simply identifies the day of the week with a term the pagan hearers would have recognized. To turn this into a declaration that Christians worship on Sunday because it is the day of the sun is a notable distortion. As we have seen, the Christians were already worshiping on Sunday, long before Constantine.

The True Reason: The Eighth Day of Creation

All of this brings us back to the question at hand. If not paganism, then why did the Christians begin to worship on Sunday rather than on Saturday? To understand what we find within the Eastern Church fathers, we have to consider the doctrine of the Eighth Day of Creation. What is this?

Within the Genesis creation account, we find something interesting. If we attend to the days of creation, most are familiar with the fact that when reading Genesis, certain things are made on Day One and then on Day Two and so on, until reaching the Sabbath rest on Day Seven, when God rests from all of his work. One of the details that is oftentimes missed by contemporary readers, but not by the Eastern fathers, is that each day of creation has a beginning and an end, a morning and an evening, except one of them: the Seventh Day. Why is this significant? It’s significant because what this signals to the Eastern Fathers is that what follows in human history from that point forward are the events of the Seventh Day. In other words, human history unfolds as part of the creation narrative. Not until later do we encounter the Eighth Day of the creation story.

So, what is that Eighth Day? To see the answer, we have to look at another aspect of the creation story, which concerns the making of man and the significance of the making of man to the Eighth Day of creation. There is another detail that the Eastern Fathers notice within the creation account, specifically the creation of man. Within the making of man, God says explicitly, “Let us make man in our own image and according to our own likeness” (Gen 1:26). He then goes on and makes man in his own image. Likeness isn’t repeated.

The Eastern fathers tend to see something significant in this omission. The significance is this. The image of God—if we trace that phrase throughout the Eastern fathers—has largely to do with the nature of man. Specifically, the fact that we are rational, that we are free, that we have the capacity to commune with God, that we’re spiritual beings who have a soul that is invisible and immaterial. They name all of these as ways we image God. But notice that all of them have to do with the nature of man—that we by nature are rational, free, and so on.9 The likeness, by contrast, has to do with active attributes of God.10 What do I mean? Consider this. When it comes to our talk of what God is like, terms like the following unfold: God is merciful or he is loving or he is kind or he is just. Those sorts of attributes within the Eastern fathers are identified as activities, things that God does. In other words, the Eastern Fathers understand the nature of God to be beyond our grasp, and yet we come to understand the divine nature as God operates, as his operative powers are expressed and come down to us, as Basil of Caesarea (330–379 AD) puts it.11 This is sometimes referred to as the distinction between God’s essence and his energies.12

Why do I bring this up? I bring it up because this is critical to understanding how the Eastern Fathers understand the difference between God’s image and his likeness.13 As I said, the image of God has to do with our bare nature, the fact that we are rational, the fact that we are free, the fact that we are spiritual. The likeness of God, by contrast, has to do with the active imitation of God by which we come to commune with and participate in God. The likeness of God concerns our active expression of our reason, our will, our spirituality in ways that mirror God, where we show forth or articulate that image-bearing nature in love, in justice, in mercy, and in these ways become co-workers with God, cooperating with God and communing with these same attributes that exude from him.14

When the Eastern fathers look at this distinction, what they see in the Genesis story is that the making of man is incomplete within the narrative. God makes man in his own image and with the intent of us bearing the likeness of God. The likeness, being communion by active imitation of God, is something that we must freely cooperate in and bring about. In other words, man must cooperate in the completion of his own making. If you’re familiar with your Bible, you know how the narrative goes. Does man cooperate? No. Rather than continuing in obedience to God and being conformed to God’s likeness, man retreats into sin and vice. Far from bearing the likeness of God, we very much obscure and hide the image of God that is within us.

The reason this is important is because this sets the context for how the Eastern Fathers understand the nature of the Christian gospel and specifically what Christ is doing in the incarnation. In the incarnation, what these fathers understand to take place is that the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the one who has the life of God within himself because he’s of the same nature as his Father, joins himself with human nature. In joining himself with human nature, he drives out the corruption and energizes it. He heals it. He restores it.15 The relevance of this is that what the Eastern Fathers see happening in the incarnation is not some sort of remedy to a judicial predicament. What they see is that the Creator God, the second person of the Trinity, is completing the making of man from within man.

If you look at the work of John Behr (e.g., in The Mystery of Christ), drawing specifically on Ignatius of Antioch, he makes the case that when Christ says, “It is finished” (John 19:30), what is finished is the making of man. What the second person of the Trinity is doing in the incarnation is exactly that. In the incarnation, he is unearthing that image of God that had been buried underneath passions and corruption and healing that nature, and then through his energetic activity, his obedience to the Father through his martyrdom and all the rest, is remaking man and bringing about the likeness of God within humanity. That is the thing finally completed in his martyrdom.16

This is why the Eastern Fathers understand his Resurrection is the dawn of the Eighth Day of creation. With the making of man complete, what we see in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the dawn of the Eighth Day, when all things are being made new. His Resurrection is the new reality that all of creation is being brought into; that is the Good News and the work of redemption that is supposed to spread through all of creation.

For that reason, we find the Eastern Fathers talking about the Eighth Day of creation as the Lord’s Day or the Day of Resurrection. We can see this in figures like Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373 AD), for example,17 as well as in early Christian literature, like the Epistle of Barnabas (c. 70–132 AD), where the Day of Resurrection marks the dawn of the new creation.18 And just as the Sabbath was a commemoration of one particular day within the creation story, so Sunday worship, the Lord’s Day, is a commemoration of the next day within the unfolding narrative. On Saturday, the Jews had celebrated God’s day of rest, the Seventh Day. The Christians, seeing the dawn of the Eighth Day in the Resurrection of Christ, come to celebrate that new day of creation, the day that we are now in—the Eighth Day of creation.

You can hear this if you attend an Eastern Orthodox Church and listen to the hymnody during Holy Week, where you will hear mention of not only the Day of Resurrection but also of the Eighth Day of creation.

Such is the background of things like the Council of Laodicea as well. If you look at the canon where Sunday worship is discussed (canon 29), it refers to the celebration of the Sabbath as Judaizing, and bids Christians to instead worship on the Lord’s Day. Why? Because, like all things within early Christianity, there was a recognition that the Jewish law—the customs, circumcision, and things like this—were shadows of realities that were to come. Once that reality shows up, you cease to practice the shadows—this being St. Paul’s point in his letters to the Galatians and Colossians (Gal 4:10; Col 2:16-17). The shadow has served its purpose, and we now have the substance, which is Christ. Whenever that substance is abandoned in order to hold onto the shadow, one is engaged in what, first, Paul and then later Christians identified as Judaizing. In other words, clinging to the old ceremonial law as opposed to abiding by the substance that is here, which is Christ. And this is precisely what we find in the Council of Laodicea: you’re not to stop work on Saturday and celebrate the Jewish Sabbath, but instead, you are to celebrate the Lord’s Day, the Day of Resurrection—and if you can avoid work on that day, you should.

That is why Christians worship on Sunday rather than on Saturday. No, it’s not because of paganism.

Before we jump in just a reminder that I’m producing The East-West Series, a comprehensive 25-lecture exploration of the theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. We’re crowdfunding to complete production. Pre-order for the lowest price this series will ever be. Learn more at theeastwestseries.com.

I'm In

Breakwater Festival 2026 | June 19th - 21st | London, England

I am pleased to announce that I will be speaking at the Breakwater Festival which will take place from 19th - 21st June in London. The Breakwater Festival is an annual 3-day Estuary gathering designed to bring our online conversations offline and into the real world. As online discourse becomes ever more polarizing, the Estuary movement also aims to offer a respite from the turbulence and create spaces for meaningful conversation, collective sense-making, and lasting connection rooted in local communities.

The theme of this year’s festival is Cross Pollination: Conversing Across Religious Lines. At this festival, we will explore the dynamics which unfold when beliefs encounter diversity. In an increasingly pluralistic world, how should we approach religious questions across difference? Does exchange strengthen and deepen what we hold sacred or introduce tensions that diminish it?

We often talk about these questions online and I hope you will join me along with many other interesting speakers in person. Grab the Early Bird tickets while they’re available.

Learn more at thebreakwaternetwork.com | See the schedule | Buy tickets

Join me

May 2026 Q&A Questions:

00:00 - Announcements / Turning East 2 and website updates
02:29 - Can theology be done without philosophy?
10:08 - Discovering the Church Fathers and questioning Western views of sin and salvation
20:13 - How does Christ’s death “undo” the law of death in St. Athanasius?
38:49 - Romans 8:8 — Can those “in the flesh” please God?
47:21 - Comparing Eastern and Western views of sin, grace, and free will

The next subscriber Q&A is on June 17, Wed, at 7 PM CT. The Zoom link will be emailed to subscribers.

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I Want to Contribute

The following is not a letter but some research that I never got around to publishing. Common amongst contemporary “Calvinists” is the view that those whom God has predestined to salvation also persevere in the faith. That is to say, having been predestined to be saved, God brings them to faith and does so in such a way that they persevere to the end. On this view, it is impossible that one might come to saving faith, then fall away from faith and be damned. For this reason, contemporary “Calvinists” tend to see New Testament warnings to not fall away as “problem passages” (i.e., passages that appear to run counter to their doctrine and must therefore be explained in a way that coheres with the doctrine of predestination so understood). The most common approach to such passages today is something like the following. Paul assures his readers that they have been saved, but he places this statement in the conditional, indicating that if they fall away, they have believed in vain (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:2). Many “Calvinists” read such passages as applying a conditional to Paul’s understanding of the reader’s faith — they have believed and are saved, unless they fall away; in which case, their faith was not genuine, and they were never saved. I am no “Calvinist” nor am I Reformed. Nonetheless, from a purely historical perspective, I find it intriguing that the contemporary approach to such problem passages by contemporary “Calvinists” is divergent from Calvin’s own view. In what follows, I offer part 2 of a three part look at what Calvin has to say about such passages and highlight the differences between his approach and the more contemporary approach.

Calvin on the Phenomenon of Temporary Faith

What is the cause of temporary faith in Calvin’s view? He is quite clear that the will of man is so thoroughly corrupt as to be incapable of choosing the good on its own. As he puts it in the Institutes, “Because of the bondage of sin by which the will is held bound, it cannot move toward good, much less apply itself thereto; for a movement of this sort is the beginning of conversion to God.”1 Yet, if Simon was genuinely inclined toward Christ so as to “willingly enlist under him,”2 was this not a movement toward the good? How is this possible if Simon is a reprobate? Calvin’s answer differentiates Simon’s contribution to the event from God’s contribution.

Beginning with Simon’s contribution, Calvin affirms that Simon willfully participated in temporary submission to Christ. As mentioned earlier, Calvin speaks of Simon as willingly enlisting himself under Christ, “for when he was convicted he gave Christ his hand in earnest.”3 But Calvin also blames Simon for withholding his heart from Christ during this time of transitory faith: “And yet [Simon] giveth not himself over sincerely to Christ.”4 In this sense, Simon is ultimately credited with the faulty nature of his faith and its eventual falter—though he willingly gave himself over to Christ, it was Simon who withheld his heart and refused “the denial of himself.”5

Nevertheless, Calvin does not attribute the whole of the matter to Simon. For even a faulty faith in Christ is a good that comes from God alone. As Calvin puts it, “it is the Lord who pierces the ears, (Psalm 40:7) and that no man obtains or accomplishes this by his own industry.”6 Calvin’s talk of Simon’s transient conversion describes it as a winning over, overcoming, or overwhelming. As for the means for achieving this overwhelming, Calvin highlights both the preaching of the gospel by Philip—“the very doctrine which is contained in his word shall purchase authority for itself”7—and the miracles that accompanied the message—“there was also another prick whereby they were pricked forward, and that was miracles.”8 In these testimonies, we find the instruments for the winning over of Simon. Calvin writes, “conquered by the majesty of the gospel, he showed a certain sort of faith, and thus recognized Christ to be the author of life and salvation.”9 And again, Simon was “enforced to give glory to the true miracles.”10 Language of winning over is common to Calvin’s talk of temporary faith. We find similar language in Calvin’s comments on Psalm 106, for example, which recounts the temporary faith of the Israelites who, after witnessing God’s miracles and “believing,” eventually abandoned their faith. Calvin speaks of these temporary believers as “being convinced by such indubitable testimony,” and being “Overpowered by the grandeur of God’s works.”11

For Simon and these Israelites, their temporary faith arose in response to the work of the word and the Spirit; yet, this work was a “lower” work of the Spirit when compared with the work of regeneration. What these reprobates experienced was a winning over to the truth by the miraculous works of God, but this winning over did accompany regeneration. Simon, therefore, “had not tasted the first principles of godliness.”12 His experience was a genuine experience of illumination by the Spirit and tasting of divine grace, despite this taste falling short of regeneration.

In his treatment of Hebrews 6:4, Calvin reiterates the point: “He calls it illumination a tasting of the heavenly gift; … He calls it participation of the Spirit; … He calls it a tasting of the good word of God; … And lastly, he calls it a tasting of the powers of the world to come.”13 Such language, when applied to the apostate, raises the question for Calvin, “how can it be that he who has once made such a progress should afterwards fall away?”14 Calvin answers, “That God indeed favors none but the elect alone with the Spirit of regeneration.”15 What we see, then, is Calvin’s willingness to affirm the work of the Spirit in those who fall away; their final reprobation is no reason to deny God’s work in transient faith: “But I cannot admit that all this is any reason why [God] should not grant the reprobate also some taste of his grace, why he should not irradiate their minds with some sparks of his light, why he should not give them some perception of his goodness, and in some sort engrave his word on their hearts.”16

Here, we can see how Calvin couples Simon’s subtle “hypocrisy” and the divine act of illumination. Simon’s experience of divine illumination was sufficient to prompt a superficial belief, but it was insufficient for the transformation of his will. His belief was genuine and genuinely brought about by the Spirit, but in his lack of regeneration, his depravity was equally genuine: “it appeareth that he is a profane man, and such as had not tasted the first principles of godliness; for he is touched with no desire of God’s glory.”17 Calvin sees Simon’s lack of concern for God’s glory in his attempt to purchase the Holy Spirit. This failing, thinks Calvin, was a manifestation of vain ambition. It demonstrates, to Calvin’s mind, that Simon merely saw the apostolic powers as superior to his own magic; hence, his submission to Christ was driven by vain glory and greed: “For that ambition which was hidden before breaketh out now, when as he desireth to be equal with the apostles. This is now one vice; another is, because while he thinketh that the grace of God is to be sold, he will get some greedy gain thereby.”18

Calvin offers a similar narrative in his comments on Psalm 106. After making clear that the Israelites had been won over by the power of God, Calvin writes,

… [T]hey yet instantly resumed their wonted disposition of mind, and began to rebel against God, as if they had never beheld his wonderful works…. Overpowered by the grandeur of God’s works, they were, he says, in spite of themselves, compelled to believe in God, and give glory to him, and thus the criminality of their rebellion was increased; because, although their stubbornness was overcome, yet they immediately relapsed into their former state of unbelief.19

In short, Calvin takes the falling away of the apostate to demonstration, not a disingenuous experience, but an insufficient experience: They were never regenerated. And without a transformed will, apostasy is inevitable.

What we are left with is the conclusion that the reprobate is won over to transient faith by the power of God—Simon is forced to glorify the works of the Spirit; yet, the sin that follows in apostasy is not the work of God in a direct sense. Simon willed his own demise. Put otherwise, God is the efficient cause of faith, while Simon is the deficient cause of apostasy. Of course, for Calvin, without the work of regeneration, Simon can do no other. Man sins out of necessity. For without regeneration, “the will is held bound, it cannot move toward good, much less apply itself thereto.”20 This necessity should not be taken to mean that Simon did not will his demise, however. Calvin is quite clear on this point, “For man, when he gave himself over to this necessity, was not deprived of will.”21 Indeed, the will is an inalienable feature, or essential property, of humanity—“to will is of man.”22 The Fall does not deprive man of the faculty of will, but it does deprive man of a good will. Thus, while the power of choice remains within us, excluded from that power is the choice to change our corrupt condition. Hence, fallen man is given over to the necessity of evil: “to will ill, [is] of a corrupt nature.”23

Now, it is important to note Calvin’s distinction between the necessity of sin that follows from the Fall and compulsion. According to Calvin, we sin out of necessity—apart from regeneration, we are incapable of raising our affections to God—but this does not mean that we sin out of compulsion. The sins we commit, we choose.24 We are bound to will in accord with, what Calvin calls, our “corrupt affections.”25 Here we see a certain form of compatibilism emerge. Though our will is crippled by the Fall, resulting in a narrowed spectrum of choice, our choosing is still free because we choose in accord with our desires.26 For Calvin, we voluntarily follow our corrupt affections, but our choosing is free: “For that which is voluntary is also free.”27 In short, “man, as he was corrupted by the Fall, sinned willingly, not unwillingly or by compulsion; by the most eager inclination of his heart.”28

In light of this nuance, however, we might wonder in what sense Simon was forced to glorify the miracles of God, and whether this forcing is an exception to Calvin’s general rule that the will is not moved by compulsion.

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Before we jump in just a reminder that I’m producing The East-West Series, a comprehensive 25-lecture exploration of the theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. We’re crowdfunding to complete production. Pre-order for the lowest price this series will ever be. Learn more at theeastwestseries.com.

I'm In

Breakwater Festival 2026 | June 19th - 21st | London, England

I am pleased to announce that I will be speaking at the Breakwater Festival which will take place from 19th - 21st June in London. The Breakwater Festival is an annual 3-day Estuary gathering designed to bring our online conversations offline and into the real world. As online discourse becomes ever more polarizing, the Estuary movement also aims to offer a respite from the turbulence and create spaces for meaningful conversation, collective sense-making, and lasting connection rooted in local communities.

The theme of this year’s festival is Cross Pollination: Conversing Across Religious Lines. At this festival, we will explore the dynamics which unfold when beliefs encounter diversity. In an increasingly pluralistic world, how should we approach religious questions across difference? Does exchange strengthen and deepen what we hold sacred or introduce tensions that diminish it?

We often talk about these questions online and I hope you will join me along with many other interesting speakers in person. Grab the Early Bird tickets while they’re available.

Learn more at thebreakwaternetwork.com | See the schedule | Buy tickets

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April 2026 Q&A Questions:

00:00 - Start

00:55 - How can I get better at analyzing arguments and staying calm like a philosopher?

09:43 - Follow-up: How should I read good thinkers, and who do you recommend?

14:50 - Is there an East/Orthodox version of the complementarianism vs. egalitarianism debate?

23:05 - What do the Eastern Fathers say about truth, goodness, and beauty?

33:50 - How do “image” and “likeness” work in Romans 8:3 and Philippians 2:7?

50:55 - Is union with Christ complete in baptism while deification still admits degrees?

55:30 - Where does John Zizioulas fit within Orthodox theology?

01:07:45 - Is the “fear of God” in Scripture describing a numinous experience?

01:11:50 - Did you get connected with Fr. Raphael Daly?

01:12:25 - How do all your platforms and subscriptions fit together?

01:19:20 - What is the format of the East-West series?

01:27:55 - How does the East-West lecture series differ from the live course/Q&A format?

The next subscriber Q&A will be May 23, Saturday, 10 am CT.

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The following is not a letter but some research that I never got around to publishing. Common amongst contemporary “Calvinists”1 is the view that those whom God has predestined to salvation also persevere in the faith. That is to say, having been predestined to be saved, God brings them to faith and does so in such a way that they persevere to the end. On this view, it is impossible that one might come to saving faith, then fall away from faith and be damned. For this reason, contemporary “Calvinists” tend to see New Testament warnings to not fall away as “problem passages” (i.e., passages that appear to run counter to their doctrine and must therefore be explained in a way that coheres with the doctrine of predestination so understood). The most common approach to such passages today is something like the following. Paul assures his readers that they have been saved, but he places this statement in the conditional, indicating that if they fall away, they have believed in vain (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:2). Many “Calvinists” read such passages as applying a conditional to Paul’s understanding of the reader’s faith — they have believed and are saved, unless they fall away; in which case, their faith was not genuine, and they were never saved.2 I am no “Calvinist” nor am I Reformed. Nonetheless, from a purely historical perspective, I find it intriguing that the contemporary approach to such problem passages by contemporary “Calvinists” is divergent from Calvin’s own view. In what follows, I look at what Calvin has to say about such passages and highlight the differences between his approach and the more contemporary approach.

A mere perusal of John Calvin’s works is needed to see that he understands faith as “the principal work of the Holy Spirit”; or put another way, “faith itself has no other source than the Spirit.”3 He calls faith “a supernatural gift,” which is given to “those who would otherwise remain in unbelief…. For light would be given the sightless in vain had that Spirit of discernment not opened the eyes of the mind.”4 Calvin understands this spiritual atrophy to extend to the entire man. It’s not merely saving faith that stands beyond the reach of man’s will but even the most basic aspirations to do good. Thus, following his defense in the Institutes of the pervasive effects of original sin, he writes, “we have sufficiently proved that man is so held captive by the yoke of sin that he can of his own nature neither aspire to good through resolve nor struggle after it through effort.”5 This aspect of Calvin’s theology is well known.

In his commentary on the book of Acts, however, Calvin makes a statement that may be surprising, given this view of faith. In reference to Simon Magus, Calvin writes, “I am not of their mind who think that [Simon] made only a semblance of faith, seeing he did not believe. Luke saith plainly that he believed.”6 Such a statement seems, on first blush, contrary to what one would expect from Calvin, given his doctrine of perseverance. For in saying this, Calvin concedes the genuineness of Simon’s temporary faith. This concession raises a number of questions. Four stand out:

1. What is Calvin’s understanding of the apostate and the apparent temporary faith manifest in such persons?

2. If such persons are reprobates, how does Calvin explain the phenomenon of temporary faith, given the unregenerate person’s utter inability to do good, yet less confess Christ?

3. If 1 and 2 lead to the conclusion that temporary faith is peculiar to the reprobate, what does Calvin see as the purpose of biblical warnings to the elect against apostasy?

4. How does Calvin see the reality of temporary faith affecting the elects’ assurance of salvation and final perseverance?

These questions point to a lacuna in the study of Calvin’s thought. David Foxgrover has dealt with the fourth of these questions.7 And in drawing out the problematic relationship between temporary faith and the assurance of salvation, Foxgrover provides a good overview of temporary faith in Calvin’s work. Yet, aside from Foxgrover’s essay, little has been done on Calvin’s view of apostasy or the questions surrounding it.8 Much can be found on the so-called “Calvinist” doctrine, perseverance of the saints, but treatments of this topic rarely focus on Calvin’s thought with special care and hardly ever deal with the phenomenon of temporary faith.9 In what follows, I will begin by answering the first of the three questions mentioned above, which have gone largely unaddressed in the scholarship: What is Calvin’s understanding of temporary faith? How is the phenomenon of temporary faith possible in Calvin’s thought? What, for Calvin, is the purpose of biblical warnings against apostasy? Because of the work already done by Foxgrover, I will not concern myself with the question of the relationship between the assurance of salvation and temporary faith.

1. Calvin on Temporary Faith

In Acts 8:4-24, we find the story of Simon Magus, who, after believing the gospel and being baptized (8:13), committed the blasphemy of seeking to purchase the Holy Spirit from the apostles (8:18-19). In response, the apostle Peter pronounced a curse upon Simon (8:20); and thenceforth, Simon would be known as the token apostate of the early Church.10 While one might expect Calvin to view Simon’s confession of Christ as a false show of belief, given that true faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit to only the elect, on his view, Calvin’s conclusion is not so stark. He makes plain that he is not inclined to dismiss Simon’s faith due to the unbelief that follows, but takes Luke at his word: “Luke saith plainly that [Simon] believed.”11

The first question this raises is whether Calvin thinks it is genuinely possible for one to truly partake of Christ for a time and then fall away. Or put another way, can the reprobate be grafted into Christ by faith only to be cut off and cast away through unbelief and a lack of perseverance? A survey of Calvin’s comments on related passages would indicate that Calvin does not think this is possible. In 1 John 2:19, the apostle indicates that those who “went out from” the elect were never truly members of the invisible Church. In commenting on this passage, Calvin states,

By saying, They went out from us, he means that they had previously occupied a place in the Church, and were counted among the number of the godly. He, however, denies that they were of them, though they had assumed the name of believers, as chaff though mixed with wheat on the same floor cannot yet be deemed wheat.12

And again, “[John] plainly declares that those who fell away had never been members of the Church.”13 Equally pointed are Calvin’s comments on the metaphor of the vine and the branches. Calvin makes quite clear that he reads this metaphor, not as indicating that the elect can fall away, but as indicating that those who are cut off never truly believed: “Not that it ever happens that any one of the elect is dried up, but because there are many hypocrites who, in outward appearance, flourish and are green for a time, but who afterwards … show the very opposite of that which the Lord expects and demands from his people.”14

Such comments are in keeping with what is expected from Calvin on the topic of apostasy. But what are we to make of Calvin’s affirmation of Simon Magus’ belief? Perhaps the best clue comes amid Calvin’s comments on Acts 8:13. There, he states, “there is some mean between faith and mere dissimulation.”15 This comment brings to light a point found elsewhere in Calvin’s writings, namely, that there are varying degrees of belief, not all of which save. In the Institutes, Calvin submits, “there is only one kind of faith among the pious.”16 Nevertheless, he thinks it true that “there are diverse forms of faith,” some of which are rightly titled “faith” and even constitute a certain type of “knowledge of God … among the impious,” even though these forms of faith and types of knowledge do not save.17

Calvin lays out two forms of impious faith. First, he suggests that basic belief in the existence of God and even Bible history is a faith of sorts: “most people believe that there is a God, and they consider that the gospel history and the remaining parts of Scripture are true.”18 Second, there are those who go beyond a general belief in God and the Bible, and respond to the commands of Scripture: “they do not utterly neglect [God’s] precepts, and are somewhat moved by his threats and promises.”19 To such responses, the title “faith” is ascribed. Now, this title, Calvin admits, is a “misapplication,” if taken to indicate that these deficient forms of faith are equal to the faith that saves. Those manifesting these lesser faiths only “pretend a certain show of obedience,” whereas faith in its proper sense goes beyond both of these superficial beliefs to an inward submission to God.20 Calvin, nevertheless, thinks the term “faith” may still be applied to reprobate belief, so long as the distinction between temporary faith and true faith is kept in mind.21 There is, then, a sense in which Simon truly believed, even though he did not believe unto salvation—his was the faith of “hypocrites.”

But here we face the question raised by Foxgrover: “if Simon did not pretend in words to have a faith which was not in his heart, why does Calvin suggest that Simon is a hypocrite?”22

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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.

In part 1, I discuss the various meanings of death in the Eastern Church Fathers, along with the prospect that plant and animal death preceded the Fall of man, as did animal disease and predation. If you have yet to read Part 1, you may want to do so. Enjoy!

Part 1

4. ON “DAYS”

Even granting all that we’ve said — that plants and animals are naturally mortal, that animal predation and disease may be no less natural, and that if corruption were found before man, this could be the work of demons — we still face a massive gap between the biblical narrative and the narrative of science: The one teaches the cosmos began 13.8 billion years ago, while the other suggests only 6,000 years have passed since the dawn of creation. Even if Christianity, as understood by the Eastern Fathers, could agree with science about the state of the biological world before man, the difference on the age of the earth remains an unbridgeable gap.

But do the Eastern Fathers of the Church require a Young Earth position? Once again, these Fathers open to us some surprising alternatives.

Before addressing the days of Genesis, let’s begin with the notably nuanced view of time that we find in the Christian East. Common in many Western Christians is the presumption that time is the realm of creatures and God exists “outside of time” — in what is called eternity. Eternity is imagined as a static “now” that has always been and always will be and sees all things at once — the unchanging, unshifting gaze of Heaven. There are historical reasons why so many in the West think like this. But our concern is not with this common assumption but with the alternative found in the Eastern Church Fathers.

In these Fathers, we find reference to both time (chronos) and eternity (aion). But the Eastern Fathers understand these as two different ways of experiencing reality. Time is a mode of existence native to organisms, while eternity is a mode of existence native to spirits. But neither time nor eternity is native to God. Instead, the Eastern Fathers speak about God as “pre-eternal” (proaionios). So what does this mean? What is time and eternity? And how can God be pre-eternal?

Let’s start with time. According to the Eastern Fathers, time is a creature — a position notably unique relative to the pagans, amongst whom Plato alone thought there was a start to time.

As for eternity, these Fathers see this mode of existence as an extension of God. Recall the analogy of iron and fire used to explain the way a creature communes with God, taking something divine into itself, akin to the way iron takes something of fire into itself. These communicable attributes are what these Fathers call divine “energies,” and eternity is thought to be one such energy. According to the Christian East, creatures can participate in the energy named “eternity.” Angels, for example, are said to be eternal. But these Fathers do not mean that angels have always existed. Nor do they mean that angels exist outside of time in a static now. Rather, angels participate in a uniquely spiritual mode of existence that moves differently from time and runs parallel to it.

God’s own time — what the Eastern Fathers refer to as aidiotes — transcends even the spiritual mode of existence called eternity. For though eternity is a divine energy, originating from God, he existed prior to such acts. Hence, he is the pre-eternal God.

Now, notice that I said about eternity that this spiritual mode of existence “moves differently.” Importantly, eternity is not static, on the Eastern view, but dynamic. Angels are active beings who did not exist and then came into being, who do one thing and then another, who move from one place to the next. The mode of movement is different from an organism, but it is movement nonetheless. Hence, the Eastern Fathers speak about successive ages in eternity, speaking about the sequence from one age to the next, or “from ages to ages” — a phrase that appears often in Eastern liturgy and hymnody — “age” (or aion) being the word translated “eternity.”

The importance of the point here is that the Eastern Church Fathers give reason to think that the “days” of Genesis are divine days or ages. The first, most obvious reason is that there is no sun until the third day of creation, as John of Damascus points out — a natural problem for reading the days of Genesis as solar days. This fact paired with another points toward these “days” being divine in nature, namely, the story of Genesis is a story about divine activity. Recall that eternity or ages are exactly that, God’s own spiritual mode of divine activity.

In the context of his observation about the absence of the sun, John of Damascus, a very important Eastern Father, makes the following analogy: As days are to time, so ages are to eternity. In other words, Genesis is describing God’s energetic act of making the world, which is described successively, one age after the next. Hence, the beginning and end or morning and evening of these days are the beginning and end of divine days, which we call ages.

The same point appears in Irenaeus, though approached from a different angle. Irenaeus observes that God says to Adam that the day he eats of the Tree he will die. So, Irenaeus asks, why does Adam not die within twenty-four hours? His answer appeals to the Psalmist, who says that, for God, a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day — notably the only Psalm attributed to Moses, who, according to tradition, authored Genesis. In other words, divine time is not like human time. And the warning to Adam, like the creation story itself, is not speaking from a human perspective about solar days but from the divine perspective about divine days. So, Irenaeus argues, Adam could live a thousand years and the warning would still prove true.

Now, one might object: Why speak to a creature about days in this fashion? Why warn that Adam will die on that day, if the day is an age that may last a millennium or more in creaturely terms? And the same could be said about Genesis more broadly. Why speak in what appears to be plain language, employing terms like “day one” and “morning” and “evening” if the intent is age? Why obscure the real meaning?

The question is a good one, and it highlights the theological importance the Eastern Fathers see in the chosen language of Scripture. The Christian East — especially those from Alexandria — see Scripture as doing this sort of thing often, using language that on the face of it seems plain but if pressed becomes confused and problematic. They believe these oddities are intentional, meant to lead the reader to ask questions that uncover the deeper meaning of the text — a deeper meaning that the text itself supplies, if scrutinized. So, in the case of Genesis, what is the deeper meaning of its talk of “days”?

We’ve already touched on a couple of textual clues that these days are not solar, namely, the absence of the sun until day three, the fact that the story is one of divine work, not human work, and that Adam does not die within the same solar day but lives for 930 years after his Fall. But a further textual clue highlights the theological importance of all this: Every day within the creation narrative contains a morning and an evening, a beginning and an end, except the seventh day. The Eastern Fathers of the Church see something significant here: The history to follow occurs within the seventh day of creation. In other words, the story to follow — the tale of human history — is still part of the creation myth.

This belief is what forms the basis for the doctrine of the Eighth Day of Creation within the Christian East. And this doctrine brings together a number of points already discussed.

Recall the Eastern Patristic understanding of the image-likeness distinction in Genesis. In this reading, the making of man is incomplete in the creation story. God creates man in his image and with the intent of man bearing his likeness. But because the likeness of God is something that man must cooperate in bringing about, the Fall leaves man incomplete — not yet fully human. The death that takes hold of Adam on the Seventh Day of Creation is a death we are all living out right now. All of this provides context for how the Eastern Church Fathers understand the Christian gospel.

For contrast, Western Christianity tends to speak about the Christian gospel in legal terms. God is a moral law giver and judge. Man’s predicament is that he is a moral law breaker, who will be condemned at the Final Judgment. The gospel is about absolution of guilt and the securing of a right standing before our divine judge.

The Christian East, by contrast, understands Christianity in more therapeutic terms. The human condition is that we are sick, living and dying like beasts when we were made for something more. The gospel is that our Maker saw our cancerous condition, and rather than leaving us to die, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, took on flesh, becoming one of us — the Creator himself becoming a creature. The purpose of this union? To heal us, placing his own divine Life into our dying species, healing humanity from within. In a word, Christ came to complete the making of man, restoring the image of God and bringing about the divine likeness. John Behr has argued, by drawing on Ignatius of Antioch, that this is the very meaning of Christ’s final words on the cross, “It is finished.” What is finished is the creation of man. And in the Resurrected Christ, the cosmos saw, for the first time, man as he was made to be. And all of mankind is invited to participate in this restoration.

The importance of this narrative for our purposes is that, in Eastern Christian thought, the resurrection of Christ marks the dawn of the Eighth Day of Creation. This is the very reason the early Christians ceased to gather on the Sabbath and instead gathered on the Lord’s Day — Sunday. For Sunday marks the day of resurrection, the dawn of the New Creation. To quote Athanasius, “The Sabbath was the end of the first creation; the Lord’s day was the beginning of the second, in which he renewed and restored the old.”1 Returning to Irenaeus’ comments on Adam, Irenaeus tells us that Adam and Christ died on the same day. By this, he does not mean the same day of the week. Rather, he means the same day of creation — the Seventh Day. And Christ rose from the dead, ushering the Eighth Day of Creation. In other words, Irenaeus understands the Seventh Day of the creation myth to stretch from the sin of Adam to the Resurrection of Christ.

Now, it would be a mistake to presume that divine days can be measured by human time, as if the Psalmist is offering a formula: 1,000 solar years equals one divine day or that Irenaeus’ point about Adam means a divine day equals however many thousands of years stretch between Adam and Christ. The point, instead, is this. Based on the teachings of the Eastern Fathers about the Seventh and Eighth Days of Creation, we have good reason to reject the idea that Genesis is describing six solar days. To the contrary, six ages have passed between the dawn of creation and the creation of Adam. How much human time has passed over these ages is unclear. But should the answer prove to be millions or even billions of solar years, I see nothing problematic in the claim, given what we find in the Eastern Church Fathers.

5. THE RAMIFICATIONS

To be clear, none of what I’ve said is to claim that the Eastern Church Fathers teach that the earth is exceedingly old. Many (seem to) presume the earth is young. Several presume that animals were tame before the Fall. Some presume animals did not die before the Fall, despite their mortality, because so little time had passed before the sin of Adam. But such presumptions — as we saw in Irenaeus’ testimony about animal predation — were neither universal nor dogma amongst the early Christians.

In Eastern Christianity, these things are what are called theologoumenon, a word indicating a theological opinion. In other words, while the Eastern Church Fathers agree on the essentials of the Christian faith — things articulated and defended in the Seven Ecumenical Councils, for example — the Eastern Church acknowledges that there are areas outside these essentials that are grey, topics that the Eastern Fathers are not unanimous about, each offering a different opinion, all of which are acceptably Orthodox. When Irenaeus acknowledges that not all believe that animals were tame before the Fall, he acknowledges that this is a matter of opinion, not dogma.

What is dogma, however, are the doctrines on which all of the above points have been built: The understandings of death, the Fall of angels which precedes the Fall of man, the image-likeness distinction and the man-as-microcosm doctrine, immortality as a divine energy that comes only by communion with God, the ramifications for animal and plant mortality, the Incarnation as the unmaking and remaking of man, the successive ages of the cosmos, and the Resurrection of Christ as the dawn of the Eighth Day of Creation. Far from requiring Young Earth Creationism, such doctrines, as we have seen, open the door for the very possibilities that most Young Earth Creationists wish to dismiss.

I suppose I should add one further point of indispensable dogma. The Eastern Church Fathers are committed to providence. To the extent that the Creation-Evolution Debate asks whether the world is created, ordered, guided, and cared for by a divine Creator or whether it is the product of unguided processes, the Eastern Fathers are most certainly committed to the creationist position. When addressing scientific theories about the formation of the world, Basil of Caesarea comments that, whatever theory might capture one’s imagination, the thing that must always be remembered is that God is its Maker.

5. ON EVOLUTION

Speaking of scientific theories, a careful listener will notice that I have yet to say anything about the theory of evolution itself. To this point, I have only shown that certain necessary conditions for the theory are compatible with the teachings of the Eastern Church Fathers — namely, a vast span of time, animal and plant death, as well as predation and disease.

I expect that most will presume this means I’m an advocate of the theory. I am not. I, personally, do not believe in macro evolution. My reasons, however, are scientific and philosophical in nature. None are born from a conflict between the theory and Eastern Patristic theology.

Quite the contrary, as already seen, the necessary conditions for the theory can easily be defended from Eastern dogma. And I would add that there are aspects of Eastern Patristic Thought that fit quite nicely with evolution. Two doctrines come to mind.

The first is one we’ve already discussed — that man is a microcosm of all that God has made. The core conviction here is that all of organic life emerges from a common source — in Genesis, the earth; in pagan thought, the elements. The Eastern Fathers believe that the stuff of the plant and animal worlds is part of man, and these are joined with something celestial or spiritual in man, making him a small cosmos — a union of everything in creation.

The second doctrine is the Eastern Patristic view that the world is a single organism. As Athanasius puts it, God makes only one creature — the cosmos. The Eastern Fathers are clear, of course, that there is a difference between dogs and cats, flowers and trees, humans and angels. But every creature is part of the one creature that God has made, the world — like cells in a body.

When these two doctrines are combined, they sometimes give rise to a cosmic story that may sound familiar: Gregory of Nyssa, for example, describes the unfolding of the Chain of Being like the unfolding of a single cosmic organism, the elements organizing to create lower life-forms, and soon, life becomes increasingly complex, moving through plants, then animals, until arriving at man. Man’s body bears aspects of the vegetative and animal kingdoms whose unfolding gave rise to his body. But man bears something unique: The image of God, which cannot be found in the lower things of creation — his mind a special creation, gifted to him by his Maker whose image he bears.

For my part, I hear resonance with such a vision when listening to the scientists speak about the story of our world — about its emergence from a single point, its fine tuning that gives rise to both order and then life, first in lower forms and then evolving with increasing complexity until, in the final stages of its development, there emerges man. Viewed from a certain perspective, the scientific tale reads like a scientific translation of the story told by Gregory of Nyssa.

Having said this, I think there is a reason to question the theory from an Eastern perspective. To see why, let’s consider my philosophical reasons for opposing the theory.

The root of my opposition is this. I’m a realist. The term doesn’t refer to whether I’m pessimistic or optimistic. Rather, in philosophy, there is a question about why the mind thinks as it does. You and I and every other person looks at the world and sees structures — genera, species, commonalities. The question of realism is: Why does the mind do this? Does the mind think in these ways because that’s the way the world is? Or is the world more accurately chaotic matter in motion, and in our effort to organize our experience, we project on the world order that’s not really there?

If you say that the mind sees the world in this orderly way because the world is this way, then you’re a realist. If, however, you say such order is a mental fiction, just a series of names made up to organize our experience, then you’re a nominalist — from the Latin nomen, or name.

I myself am a committed realist. For my part, I don’t believe that reason or logic or math function without realism, all of these being based on the very sort of groups realism presumes to be real. And to this list, I would add science. I believe that scientific induction, too, requires realism.

The problem, however, is that macro evolution of the kind presumed by the theory of evolution is, in my assessment, incompatible with realism. Allow me to briefly explain.

Realists will often talk about two types of properties, essential and accidental. Essential properties are indispensable to the thing in question. Accidental properties are not. For example, essential to a square is that it has four sides, four right angles, and its sides are equal length. Without such properties, we don’t have a square. But how big the square is, where the square is located, or what color it is are all accidental — squares can be all sorts of sizes, colors, and places. Notice also that accidents have no bearing on the nature of the thing. If you draw a square in blue in a computer program and then change the color to green, the change has no bearing on the squareness.

The relevance to evolution is that the theory, put in these terms, claims that compounding changes in accidents bring about a change in essence. But the claim is incoherent. By definition, accidents have no effect on the essence of the thing.

A further problem is this. Let’s imagine a creature of a certain kind — call it a “homanidib.” This critter is tailless. But one homanidib suffers a mutation on its backside, a growth of extra tissue. This homanidib soon has offspring and passes along this growth. In some of his offspring, the growth is exaggerated, larger than in their forefather. From one generation to the next, the exaggeration increases, and eventually, the size and weight of this growth proves advantageous, helping with balance and agility, conducive to survival. In a word, the growth develops into a tail. As a result, tailed homanidibs outlive tailless homanidibs.

This simple story is meant to capture the essence of Darwinian macroevolution: Random mutation perpetuated by survival. But here emerges the problem from a realist perspective: Is the mutation a tail or not? The gradual nature of the narrative helps hide this question, introducing a growth, which is not a tail, and a long span of gradual change, so that we miss the sleight of hand when this growth becomes a tail.

The problem is that there is no middle between not-a-tail and tail. The distinction is binary: Either this added flesh is a tail or it is not. Despite the narrative painting a picture of gradual change, there still must be a punctuated shift: A tailless species birthed a tailed species. If true, then we have punctuated evolution — one species birthing another, like a chicken laying an egg from which a lizard emerges. Punctuated evolution was a theory circulated in the past, but it fell out of favor for gradual evolution. But if the realist is right, then the gradual change described in our homanidib story only hides the punctuated reality: At some point, a tailless species birthed a tailed species.

Now, I see two possible replies. The first objects that I’ve used a line-drawing fallacy: Because we can’t pinpoint when facial hair becomes a beard, there is no difference between the two. However, the classical realist has an answer, and it goes to the difference between potentiality and actuality, or the possible and the real. Unlike some ancient thinkers, who tended to draw a strict dichotomy between the real and nothing, most realists — drawing on Aristotle — use a threefold distinction between something, nothing, and potentially something. We might think of it this way. I have the potential to get stronger, a potential I could bring about by exercise. This potential strength is more than nothing, but it’s less than actual strength, representing an ontological middle.

This distinction is meant to explain transitions into being. A human fetus develops the way it does because the nature implanted in matter is human. If it develops normally, it will develop two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes, and so on. The coding, so to speak, is already in matter: Matter is simply catching up to what’s implanted inside it. Applied to a tail — since this was our example — the transition from nub to tail is not a change from not-tail to tail. The nature driving the development is tailed. The stages of development are just the material unfolding of a tailed nature, making what is implicitly present explicit.

The reason this explanation is not available to the evolutionist is that his theory is meant to explain the development of the tail by random, unguided mutations. Hence, his story is not about the developmental stages of a tail. His story is about a growth that becomes a tail millions of years later. In short, he insists there is a change in nature: The tailless becomes tailed.

The second response is to deny realism. In this solution, we say that “tail” is just a name that we assign to certain appendages. In this explanation, there is no difference between a random growth and a tail. We simply assign the name “growth” to one and “tail” to another, but these distinctions are not real. In reality, there is no difference between a growth and a tail.

This reply would solve the need for punctuated evolution. But in the process, it also undermines all scientific induction on which the theory of evolution is based. Here’s how.

In formal logic, there is a distinction between four types of claims — A claims, E claims, I claims, and O claims. Two of these are absolute and two are more circumspect. A and E claims are absolute, declaring either that All p is q (A claim) or No p is q (E claim). I and O claims are more circumspect, declaring only that Some p is q (I claim) or Some p is not-q (O claim). These claims tell us something about valid and invalid induction. We can validly move from an all claim to a some claim. For example, if I know that all dogs are quadruped, then I can infer that some dogs are quadruped. But the opposite doesn’t work. If I look into the street and see that some cars are blue, I can’t infer that all cars are blue. Such an inference would be fallacious — and false.

But here’s the problem. Science only deals in samples. Scientists never study every member of a species. No examination of an element or cell or proton is ever a study of the whole. It is only ever a sample. Yet, science wishes to move from the sample to the whole, telling us truths that hold about every instance of this element or cell or proton.

I don’t say this to undermine scientific induction. I’m pro science and its induction. However, I am so because I’m a realist.

As a realist, what I believe scientific induction is really doing is examining members of a species in order to discern what traits are common and thus essential to the species. From this perspective, the inference is not inferring that some protons are this way, therefore all are. Rather, the inference is that this trait looks to be common and essential to the species. Therefore, we can expect that every member of the species has this property — just as every square has four sides.

Assuming I’m correct that valid scientific induction requires realism, the evolutionist faces a problem. If the theory of gradual, macro evolution requires that we reject realism, then the theory simultaneously undermines scientific induction. And in doing so, it undercuts the very evidence used in its defense. In a word, the theory becomes self-referentially incoherent.

In this light, let’s return to the first solution I offered: Perhaps the development of a tail is not a punctuated shift from tailless to tailed. Perhaps tailed is already part of the underlying nature, and the developmental process is merely the unfolding of a nature already coded in matter — akin to DNA driving forward the development of an organism by cell division.

Entertaining this explanation, let’s imagine a different picture of evolution. Let’s imagine, not that our world is unguided, chaotic matter, randomly mutating. Let’s imagine instead that our world is a single cosmic organism. And let’s imagine that the whole of the Chain of Being — of planets and stars, of plants and animals — is coded into matter from the start, like a fertilized embryo. And let’s also imagine that the developmental process over billions of years is the cosmic version of an embryo becoming an infant, then an adolescent, and then an adult. In this vision, the unfolding of the cosmos is not happenstance. The unfolding is the slow cell division of an organism until all that is implicit becomes explicit.

Such a vision is one that I, as a realist, could embrace. And such a vision is very much in keeping with the types of descriptions found in Gregory of Nyssa. But such a vision is not the theory of evolution as described today. The theory as described by most tends to reject realism for nominalism and in doing so, as I’ve argued, falls into self-referential incoherence.

Now, why is this relevant to an Eastern assessment of evolution? The answer is this. The Eastern Church Fathers are committed realists. I don’t simply mean we find this theological opinion. Rather, as I’ve argued at length in my publications and podcast, realism is integral to the confessional commitments of the Eastern Fathers about the Trinity, Christology, and even salvation. Therefore, if my assessment is correct, and the theory of evolution articulated by most today is incompatible with realism, then it is equally incompatible with the Eastern Fathers of the Church.

CONCLUSION

In summary, the Eastern Patristic tradition provides a framework that challenges the premises often assumed in the Creation-Evolution Debate. Their more nuanced view of death, their understanding of the image-likeness distinction, and their man-as-microcosm doctrine all open the door to the idea that both animal and plant death is natural or suitable before the Fall of man, even opening the possibility that animal predation and disease appeared before mankind. Paired with the doctrines of the Eighth Day of Creation and divine days being successive ages, we discover a host of possibilities utterly contrary to the presumptions of most Young Earth Creationists — possibilities that are perfectly compatible with the core commitments of evolution.

However, a fundamental incompatibility remains between the philosophical underpinnings of Eastern Patristic Thought and macroevolution. The Eastern tradition is deeply rooted in philosophical realism, which presents serious challenges to the theory of graduated macroevolution, as articulated by most evolutionists today. Thus, while the Eastern perspective is comfortable with a vast timeline and a developing “cosmic organism” from which emerges every form of life now populating our world, it maintains that the order and natures found within this timeline are the result of divine providence, not random mutation, and thus the manifest order we now observe in our world is part of the original “coding,” as it were, that gave rise to our world from the first.

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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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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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If this work resonates with you, I hope you’ll consider backing the project. Supporter tiers start at the lowest price the series will ever be offered, and go up to tiers that include live Q&A sessions, a 14-week live course, and private calls with me.

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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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Greetings subscribers! I want to take this opportunity to commend to you an upcoming class, team-taught by Dr. Adam Dell, a board-certified clinical psychologist with vast expertise in trauma and emotional wellbeing, and Dr. James Joiner, a brilliant philosopher and one of the most gifted teachers I have ever had the privilege to observe. This rare opportunity features interdisciplinary dialogue between psychology and philosophy at the highest level — itself a rarity — while delving into profound questions about the human person, such as questions about free will, the soul, what it means to be human, and how such questions inform our understanding of human flourishing and equip us to face and overcome life’s struggles. Whether taking the course for credit (the class is accredited) or for audit, this class is an unparalleled chance to learn at the feet of these two exceptional scholars. I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone and everyone. Scroll to the bottom for enrollment details.

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If your interest in the course is piqued but you need a taste, here’s a recording of the first lecture. In this session, we explore the fundamental questions that have captivated philosophers, psychologists, and thinkers throughout history: What is a human being? What’s wrong with us? How can we be fixed? Who am I? A class for people wrestling with life’s biggest questions, this lecture will offers a roadmap for thinking about humanity’s greatest mysteries (and our own).

Lecture 1: A Philosopher’s Guide to the Human Condition (and how you can use that to start a cult)

Note: Each class will typically be 2.5 hours. We cut the first hour of introductions to get to the meat of the first lecture.

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.

Dr. Adam Dell is a board-certified clinical psychologist and Director of Psychotherapy at Michiana Neuroscience. Former USAF officer and Notre Dame Wellness Center director, he brings extensive clinical experience in trauma treatment, evidence-based therapy, and the intersection of spirituality and psychological healing.

To register:

• Visit: https://myprofer.com/

• Click “Join as a student”

• Fill out registration

• Verify your email

• Navigate to “Course Registration” in the side menu

• Find 180 Introduction to Philosophy

  • Auditors can register immediately

  • For college credit, fill out the long form and wait for approval before registration

• Pay in one payment (or split it into four with PayPal)

• Registration closes Tuesday, February 24

Enroll in the Class