Best Books Read in 2019

Over at Catholic World Report is the annual, and very popular, series of posts from contributors on the books they most enjoyed in 2019. The terms do not require that the book be published in 2019, but merely that you have read and enjoyed a given book in that year. As readers of this lowly blog will of course know, there are plenty of other books I have read this year, but we were limited to 600 words. My list is here.

Since we were limited to 600 words, I thought I'd expand on that list a bit here, linking you to some of the interviews I did with authors on my list, and to longer discussion on here of some of those books.

Cynthia Haven’s very interesting biography, Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard. I started a discussion of the book (here) back in January when I get back from Romania.

Serhiy Plokhy, as I said at CWR, is one of those historians one must always read if one has any interest in East-Slavic history. I've read a couple of his other books (some noted here), and this year got around to reading his Yalta: The Price of Peace, which is a superb.

Given the complexity of the issues, and the fact the war was still raging, the temptation in writing such a book must surely have been to make it six times as long, dragging in all sorts of related and obviously important issues. But it's a masterfully restrained work, looking at the week-long conference with just enough detail to give context and shrewd analysis and then letting the reader go, confident in the knowledge that a billion other books have been written on everything leading up to February 1945, and a billion more on the aftermath. It remains true that it takes much more discipline to write a relatively short book like this than a big sprawling one.

Adam Phillips is always worth reading, including, this year, his aphoristic On Flirtation: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Uncommitted Life. I posted some of the choicest of those aphorisms here.

If you go here, you will see some of the thoughts I wrote up after reading Guy Beiner’s Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster. As noted, this is a dense but deeply fascinating book for all sorts of reasons, not least its singular insights into the complex processes of repressing and remembering our conflicts.

This year I read the second installment in David Kynaston's superlative series: Family Britain 1951-1957. On last year’s list, I recommended the predecessor volume, Austerity Britain 1945-1951, which I wrote about in some detail here. So this year I read the 1950s volume, which is equally marvelous for the same reasons as I discussed last year.

In 2020, I will get around to reading the next installment, Modernity Britain: 1957-1962. What is especially noteworthy and masterful in both volumes so far is the author's deft handling of huge quantities of data from Mass Observation, Gallup, and other then-new social surveying agencies almost punch-drunk polling people on myriad issues in diverse forms.

My friend Bill Mills was interviewed here discussing his very honest, moving, and funny book about the realities of parish life: Losing My Religion: A Memoir of Faith and Finding. For those of you with married clergy in your life, you need to send them this book.

Will 2020 finally see the election of a party and candidate that will allow the United States to join the mid-20th century? Will Bernie Sanders be our Aneurin Bevan, the fiery Labour cabinet minister in Atlee's 1945 government and the politician who brought about Britain's National Health Service in 1948? This year I read (and here discussed) John Campbell’s Aneurin Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism, whose off-putting title did not spoil what was a surprisingly enjoyable study of the great Welsh leader.

A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop by Rembert Weakland. This was, as I discussed here in some detail, an unexpectedly fascinating and important book, whatever the sins and scandals of the author, now well into his 90s.

The priest Christiaan Kappes is a dynamo of a scholar whose newest book, The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence, is an exhilarating ride. He was interviewed here.

Apart from his decision about nuclear weapons, there are some impressive virtues in Harry Truman, perhaps foremost among them the fact it never occurred to him to swan about the world after 1953 collecting huge fees for vomiting up canned speeches and intolerable banalities to big banks and other mercenaries. I have read previous works about him, including David McCullough's biography. So this past June after a dear friend, a retired history teacher, died, and we inherited her library, I found therein Margaret Truman’s 1973 book Harry S. Truman, which is part memoir and part family biography.

I also inherited Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which apparently played a part in the 2012 Spielberg film, Lincoln, starring Daniel Day Lewis. I watched the film with my kids on Netflix in October, and found it a captivating performance by Lewis.

This led me to pick up the Goodwin book and to find it quite enjoyable in its own way. Indeed, parts of it are just riveting, which I have never before been able to say about 19th-century American history. Perhaps--though this remains to be seen--this book will be the beginning of the end of my total lack of interest in 19th-century American politics and especially the Civil War. Other wars--the Crimean, certainly, along with the First and Second World Wars, on which I have often commented on here--continue to fascinate me even after two decades of reading about them regularly. But for some reason the Civil War has seemed too provincial, too uncomplicated, to attract much interest. Perhaps that will change.

I have previously drawn attention to Pia Sophia Chaudhari's new book, Dynamis of Healing: Patristic Theology and the Psyche. I am reviewing it for an academic journal so cannot say much about it here other than it is a very impressive book which I warmly commend to all with interest in patristic theology (especially Maximus the Confessor, to whom I have drawn a good bit of attention on here over the last decade) and depth psychology. Among this book's several virtues is one in particular: it reminds me that I have sometimes too facilely and snobbishly dismissed Jung in the past in favour of our father among the saints, Sigmund of Vienna. (I made some atoning gestures for past sins against Jung here, where I went on to praise him as more enlightened than Freud on at least one key issue.)

The book is also very rightly and closely in dialogue with two of the most interesting and important object-relations analysts to come out of Britain: W.R.D. Fairbairn, and Harry Guntrip, whom I briefly discussed here. Both of them wrote with great insights into the schizoid personality type, Fairbairn in his groundbreaking 1940 essay republished in Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality; and Guntrip in Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations, and the Self.

Juan-David Nasio, Psychoanalysis and Repetition: Why Do We Keep Making the Same Mistakes? This is a very short book that packs a tremendous number of insights into its relatively few pages. I discussed it at some length here.

Christiaan Kappes on the Epiclesis Debate at Florence

The author of this most impressive new book is, indeed, an impressive fellow, both in writing and in person, where he wears his considerable learning lightly and cheerfully.

His is the kind of book you buy not just to support good scholarship and not just because you are interested in history, ecumenism, and theology, but also because you are, naturellement, the sort of person who luxuriates in the kind of rich footnotes this volume has aplenty, and the kind of even richer historical narratives it sets forth while simultaneously challenging, untwisting, and revising earlier narratives which were often entangled with and corrupted by apologetic agendas. Meet the priest and scholar Christiaan Kappes, author of the fascinating new book The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence, just released from the University of Notre Dame Press (2019), xxii + 418pp.

Following my usual practice, I sent him some questions about the book, and here are his thoughts.

AD: Tell us a bit about your background

CK: I've been a priest since 2002 and have had the fortune of serving in a variety of different apostolates, both pastoral and academic. My bishops have assigned me to work in Ecuador, Mexico, the Vatican, and Greece. These last several years I've spent my time as the academic dean of Ss Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary, which is a theological graduate school offering two kinds of Master degrees in theology to about 35 students who are mainly Eastern Christians, though we do have other denominations and ritual churches represented.

AD: When we were last met together on here, it was to discuss your book on the Immaculate Conception. Are there connections between that book and your new one? 

Hmmm...On the thematic level there is practically no overlap.

While (surprisingly) the conception by the Theotokos of Jesus in utero is the major analogy among pre-Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers of both Greekdom and Latindom for talking about the manner or process to analogize Eucharistic change, this analogy is based upon the Holy Spirit changing the substance of an ovum (in today’s language) into an hypostasis or new personal-substance. So, as the Spirit changed ovum-into-person miraculously, Greek and Latin Fathers explained that the Spirit changed an item from a bread-substance or wine-substance into an hypostasis (without getting to detailed into the classification and modality of this change), Jesus Christ. So, the process of Mary's conception within the womb of Anna is fairly irrelevant to these kinds of analogies.

On the other hand, the historical timing of the epiclesis debate between Greeks and Latins (1390s-1439) nearly coincides with the first known Greek awareness of the question of Mary's status in grace at her conception (c. 1343), where Dominicans were notable in the East for trying to convince Orthodox, just as other Latins, that Aquinas was correct so that Mary was born with some sort of lack of grace, or taint, otherwise referred to as original sin. Even so, there is no reason or occasion in the present monograph to go into the Immaculate Conception at Florence, even if it was the talk of the town since the rebellious and contemporary Latin Council of Basil (opposing Florence) declared about this time that Mary was immaculately conceived, which annoyed not a few Dominicans present and representing Pope Eugene IV at his council (which sat successively at the cities of Ferrara and Florence, Italy).
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AD: More generally, can you tell us what led to the writing of The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence?

CK: Two young scholars Charles Yost and Nicholas Kamas (both of whom have recently graduated from Notre Dame) were kind enough to extend an invite to me to participate in a Notre-Dame (IN) sponsored session at the Congress of Medieval Studies (held every year in Kalamazoo, MI). The theme of that particular session was on Eucharistic controversies of the period. As such, I took some odds and ends that I had begun to notice in Mark of Ephesus's works and compiled them into a paper. Afterwards, I was so impressed by what I found that I was excited to keep researching in order to share with a wider audience my findings.

AD: Not all of our readers will know what your title refers to. Could you give us a one-sentence summary of what the "epiclesis debate" was about, and a summary of the significance of Florence, too? 

CK: The title refers to a long-standing disagreement between churches of the Eastern Orthodox communion with the Roman Catholic Church over the moment of the Eucharistic prayer when the bread is changed into the body and wine is changed into the blood of Christ. Secondly, in a sentence, the Council of Florence was the last bilateral attempt of the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Roman Catholic church to overcome major areas of doctrinal differences that kept them out of Eucharistic communion with one another.

AD: Immediately in your introduction we're off to the races in which we find the conventional narratives seriously complicated if not overturned. Thus we hear, e.g., of radical differences within and among Greek and Dominican scholars, not least over the roles played by Palamas and Palamite thought, whose influence, you say, has been overlooked. Why the neglect, and why is it important to bring this to the surface? 

CK: First of all, all the documents of the Council of Florence were only completely published in 1976 with the publishing of the Slavonic Acts of the Council. What is more the documents and records of Palamism had only begun to be investigated with a certain degree of scientific accuracy starting in the 1910s and a complete edition of all the actors from Palamas until Florence is still yet to be published (though we are getting much much closer!). Finally, in addition to the important lack of documentation, there was the problem of the methodological divide between traditional Roman Catholic theologians (systematicians/dogmaticians) and historical theologians (also medievalists); the former naturally feel the onus to believe that past polemical narrative of past scholars and churchmen somehow carry on the correct spirit of looking at history and theology that requires no or very little nuance for a contemporary church, while the latter began to spend their time mythbusting the Neo-Thomistic (late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century) narrative of a purported dominance, unity, and internal coherence of Thomistic and Dominican thought during the whole of the middle ages and renaissance until modernity. These narratives –even if the best Neo-Scholastics were always aware of the intramural debates among their own for centuries – were only beginning to fall apart in the 1960s (as far as the publication of academic challenges to such commonplace meta-narratives goes).

AD: Your book, noting the "grossly skewed portrait" that has been common among Catholics considering Mark of Ephesus, gives us a very different picture of him, especially in chs. 2 and 3. Give us a thumb-nail sketch of how you see him and how he has been used and abused by modern Catholics and Orthodox apologists. 

CK: Given the stakes and the perspectives of the time, it would have been quite unusual, perhaps just short of impossible, for popes, cardinals, and theologians to objectively engage Mark when so much of what the papalists were doing at Florence was vested in opposing anti-papal Conciliarists in nearby Basel, who were contesting the pope's claims to supreme jurisdiction and his claims to a rather vague doctrinal immunity in contrast to that any other clergyman in the church.

Understandably, any jot or tittle whereby Mark was perceived in a western politico-religious context to contribute to this political opposition of princes and prelates against the pope was an immediate threat to the politico-religious order that was desired by pope and papalists. Here, people and God are, as per usual, subjected to political and cultural expediencies. In fact, Mark of Ephesus was never canonically disciplined by any "uniate" Constantinopolitan authority, nor by a decree by a pope of Rome. Yet, he has been the object of constant invective over the centuries principally for undermining a triumphalistic narrative of Florence. Yet, Mark's communion of Orthodox churchmen only begged to renegotiate Florence and enter into new discussions toward a lasting union by means of a new conjoint council (hardly the actions of a schismatic). Of course, his Holy Synaxis (or group of friends) was rejected after the emperor solemnly declared the union of Florence in 1452 after papal threats to withhold military aid.

I do not wish to demonize these characters responsible for this programme, but rather underline that--like the lessons learned by Dvornik's immortal book on the Photian Schism rehabilitating Photius (it would seem) for ever--Renaissance literature provided an imaginative construct for demonizing Eugenicus that remained in full force well after Dvornik's challenge to sectarian scholars to exercise tolerance, fairness, and non-partisanship.

Joseph Gill's The Council of Florence is a sad tribute to once celebrated intolerance of Petit, Grumel, and Jugie (even while I admit all their merits when speaking on many a topic not related to Mark Eugenicus). Perhaps dreams and images of world peace, religious unity, or even Roman Catholic hegemony, seemed especially by these authors to be symbolically frustrated by Mark (thus meriting their animus). Take a look at the constant barrage of scholarly quotations up to and beyond the turning point in Dvornik. L. Petit referred to Mark thus:

“Every man of good faith would agree on it [previously mentioned: Mark’s hardline, savage hatred of the Council]. For Mark’s part, if his kind of argument seems insidious –nay, even serious– the lion’s share of his arguments are of an astonishingly puerile nature […] Incidentally, he passes over his adversaries [in an apologetic letter]: all these things, from the point of view of this intransigent fanatic, constitute a series of unpardonable misleading comments […] The attack directed against the august assembly [of Florence] by the archbishop of Ephesus was rude, impassioned, hateful”[1] V. Grumel writes:“The Archbishop of Ephesus is far from giving us the impression of being a great genius. He had the appearance of impotence to elevate his thought above the manner of existence of created things […] This metaphysical impotence grants nothing honorific to this ‘hero of Orthodoxy’.”[2].

Again Martin Jugie wrote: “Note, after the separation [of Greeks and Latins], the Latins always appealed to the Greeks by employing the authority of the Greek Fathers. All the same (just as Mark Eugenicus himself had done at the Council on this score), the Greeks were either entirely ignorant of the Latin Fathers, or contended babylike that Latin works were corrupted by the Latins themselves”[3].

Finally, in a style entirely bereft of the spirit of Dvornik, Gill writes:

“In the meetings about Purgatory, conciliatory at the beginning, Mark hardened in his opposition the more he went on […] Quite arbitrarily, he treated the Constantinopolitan Creed as if it were the original Nicene […] Mark was impervious to argument […] Mark’s obstinacy would not have mattered so much if all the Greek prelates, or the most of them, had been of a high intellectual calibre […] He had the strength of character to follow a single-minded, indeed a narrow-minded, purpose at any cost.”[4]

Elsewhere, Gill remarks sarcastically: “Mark of Ephesus, it is true, was unpersuaded [by the Latins], indeed, if anything, more than ever confirmed in his belief of the unassailability of the Greek position, convinced by his own eloquence.”[5]

Perhaps, at the opposite end, Mark is imagined by eighteenth-century Orthodox authors to be a symbol of burgeoning Greek self-identity, styling him the Anti-Papas who single-handedly defeated empires and popes and saw the Greek Church as the only society or organization in which Greeks under the Turkish yoke could preserve their national/ethnic identity. In stark contrast to the original office (akolouthy) written by Mark's sibling in the fifteenth century for his sanctification, the eighteenth-century liturgical office written by Nikodemos Hagioritis speaks of Mark's trampling on tiaras and, effectively, of him overturning papal government. The style of the akolouthy is completely absorbed in Greek politico-religious aspirations of the period.

In reality, Mark was above all a Palamite monk who wanted solitude and who had no desire to go to Florence because he would be taken out of monastic retreat. Because he was devoted to his ordaining patriarch Joseph II (the alleged uniate) and because the emperor pressured him, he caved to their demands and represented his church as the emperor’s personal champion. He prepared for the Council by reading Latin-Scholastic literature, including Aquinas and Scotus, and used creatively some of their ideas for his positive writings, though tending to be cautious toward Aquinas overall.


Mark mainly citing Duns Scotus as a foil to Aquinas on religious questions, where Franciscans and Greeks agreed, but Dominicans dissented. Mark loved Renaissance art – writing a treatise in praise of what he saw in Italy – he spent money on Augustine’s works in Italy, whom he quoted more than any other Eastern theologian up to this point in Orthodox history for dogma.

He initially complimented the theological dialogue with Latins at the council and praised their acuity but ultimately was brought to frustration and turned against the council after a series of shenanigans at Florence, where thin-skinned clerics were trying to control each and every word that he uttered during the council and prevent him in numerous ways from discussing anything from Ecumenical Councils’ canons to finishing his speeches by raucous interruptions. He bore solemnly and politely each and every interruption until the filioque debates, whereupon a single Latin theologian was entrusted to speak on behalf of all of Latindom but who used neither Aquinas’s nor anybody else’s discernible argument for the filioque but instead employed a hodgepodge series of texts including a subordinationist text of Ps.-Basil’s Contre Eunomium. This finally exasperated the patience of Mark. He then retreated from the council, for which absence his serious health issues provided him a legitimate excuse in the eyes of his emperor.

AD: You document the relative neglect of Mark's role in the epiclesis debate, saying that to the extent modern Orthodoxy pays him any attention it is for his "theological conclusions" rather than his "method" (37). I confess that mention of theological method is often a trigger for me, awakening immediate overpowering fatigue from having been forced as an undergraduate to slog my way through Lonergan on method! Tell us why attending to Mark's method is in fact important.  

Yes, I’m with you, for I studied at the shrine to Lonerganian studies (Seton Hall). I must confess that I did not leave Seton Hall carrying any amulets with Lonergan’s name etched on them!

The method whereby Mark arrived at his conclusions--by which he also objected to Latins--included ranking of theological authorities by their intrinsic merit, denying a priori any per se infallibility of saints’ writings, and arguing that human reason needed to enter into the debates. One instance would be with the appeals by Latins to the visions of their saints of purgatorial fire. Among other things, he demanded a philosophical explanation on how material fire affected a non-material entity, the soul (alleged by Thomists to contain no material at all). Secondly, he argued that one cannot move from the topical and local experience of saints, to generalize dogma for the whole church based upon mystical visions that are in no wise found in anyone else’s legitimate tradition. This kind of discussion was jolting for the Latins, who begged Mark to stop saying the saints aren’t per se infallible! Who’s the rationalist in this vignette?

AD: Following on from this, you note (p.187) that part of Mark's objection in the end to Florence came from its failure (in Mark's eyes) to follow the reforming work and theology of the "Photian Council of 879-80." What was so important about that earlier council? Was his view of its significance shared by others at Florence?  

The Photian Council was conjoint; all major patriarchates (including popes) officially signed and sealed the decrees. What is more, under the next pope, John VIII, the cancellation of a first or former (anti-)Photian synod (870) was declared cancelled and Pope John’s decrees or decretal entered into Latin canonical collections (e.g. St. Ivo of Chartres) until it was superseded by Gratian’s canons called the Decretum (c. 1150), but which was devoid of references to the 880 synod.

The cooperation between Rome and Constantinople and the admission of the Greek righteousness on the question of the filioque by Rome itself needed to be acknowledged in Mark’s mind before any move forward toward union could happen. After all, the council of 880 called itself and was canonized as “ecumenical.” Due to Latins trusting a Greek-convert as their posthumous expert or peritus on these canons, Manuel Kalekas’s works--celebrated at the time--convinced the Latins to dismiss out of hand the validity of the acts of this council, preventing introduction of its acts at Florence.

AD: Another figure of whom we get a very different portrait from your work is Torquemada. Give us a sketch of him and his importance to these debates. 

Torquemada was styled a genius by Roman apologists, of course, since he was allegedly Neo-Thomist and due to the fact that he (after Florence) was to coin the first acceptable notion of papal infallibility. Historiography during the ultramontane period of Roman Catholic history apotheosized Torquemada for all but making the pope’s favorite color dogmatic…

In reality, Torquemada was a professional, rather cold, and faithful Dominican who was somewhat eclectic like many Dominicans of the day. He was not a papal absolutist but (in comparison to ultramontanes) a rather weak if not heretical (vis-à-vis Vatican I) papalist.

What is more, he was not a really good philosopher and Thomas Izbicki has shown in his monograph on Torquemada that he had a number of limitations in his understanding of canon law at the time of Ferrara-Florence. Among the Dominicans, he was certainly no slouch, but much of his energy and ire was being directed at Franciscan theology during his career; specifically he tried to get Franciscans condemned by an ecumenical council for believing in the Immaculate Conception.

I have found too that his methods were not faithful to Thomas Aquinas when he thought that he would fare better in forensic debate by saying something other than the Common Doctor or Angelic Doctor on the question. Furthermore – to no fault of his own – he was forced to invent an entire theology of the Eucharist and an anti-epiclesis theology against Greek dogmatics and liturgy in the space of about three days. I show that he simply cut and pasted what he could hastily put together at the Dominican convent in town and that the quality of the document reflects the urgency, his unreasonable timetable, and his lack of knowledge of Greek liturgy and Fathers (not to mention some of the Latin Fathers).

AD: At the end of chapter 8 we are confronted with several papal documents treating issues of the sacraments, and note that their "peculiar definitions were capable of being reformulated" (p. 221). At the end of ch. 9, you note that we see such a reformulation, building on Mark of Ephesus, in the revisions to the Catechism of the Catholic Church to take account of the role of the epiclesis. Does the Catholic Church need to make some kind of official recognition of Mark's role and even his sainthood, both as an ecumenical gesture to the East but also as a way of correcting the sometimes shoddy and tendentious ways in which he was used and abused by such Catholics as Louis Petit and Martin Jugie? 

It is a strange and entirely delicious question! Already so-called uniates or Melkite Catholics can be found with icons of Mark even in their churches.

What is most amusing is that St. Pius X sent the Melkites a rather nasty circular letter in the 1900s telling them to stop repeating and teaching what was essentially Mark of Ephesus’s position on the epiclesis! The fact is, however, that only historiographers and individual theologians have condemned Mark as a heretic. There is not a single canonical sentence, East or West, ever issued against him. Mark, as an editor of the acts and decrees of no less than three ecumenical councils, correctly told Pope Eugene at the end of Florence that his refusal to sign the document called “the definition” was in fact – in our language – the refusal to sign a “joint theological declaration.” Mark’s canonical point was that the entire Florentine council never officially impugned the doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Churches on any dogmatic subject (remember that the minutes of Ecumenical Councils are not its canons or decrees).

Secondly, Florence issued no canons or decrees, nor did it attach to its acts any anathemas. So, given the reality of this, Mark asked how can Pope Eugene legally condemn him for not signing a joint declaration that has no disciplinary measures attached to it for not signing? What is more, since this style of council simply tried to declare that Greeks and Latins mean the same thing, Mark protested that for Latins Mark was already orthodox. Mark simply disagreed that the Latins were canonically correct in their assertion of unilateral powers to change ecumenical canons without consulting any other church and that the Greek word “through the Spirit” did mean the same thing as the Latin “from the Spirit” as the insufficiently-Thomist theologian at Florence had attempted to argue in his debate with Mark.

Allowing the Eastern Catholic Churches to add an appendix to their Menaion (along with the existing one of Palamas who wrote two treatises against the Dominican position on the Holy Spirit) is to me a fine way to express the reality of Mark. He certainly has nothing standing in the way of his local cultus. His canonical status in the Catholic Church is higher than Blessed Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and any other host of theologians with a messy but nonetheless Catholic identity. His sanctity is due, I think, to his sincerity and ascetical life that was unencumbered by the political machinations on both sides of the Adriatic at his time. He desired a lasting union not a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

AD: As an overall comment on the book, and much of your work more generally, is it fair to say (as David Bentley Hart did in an essay more than a decade ago now) that much of Christian division turns on, and is propagated still by, bad history, making careful and painstaking scholarly works as your own all the more important? 

Yes, I must agree. I spend so much time in manuscripts and critical editions of the primary texts and the sources used by the Medievals for their own arguments that it becomes a sad story for me. If they worked sometimes sincerely but were disadvantaged by a limited access to authentic sources, we poor contemporary Christians have at our fingertips the largest database in the history of Christianity and we come to the same conclusions with entirely different evidence.

We can see how much of theological fluff and theological opinion that was once upon a time asserted as dogma for cultural, ethnic, and political reasons, is clearly non-essential and yet our modern and even (shockingly) contemporary theologians (some of whom are good linguists and philologists) cling in an infantile manner to old narratives, by and large, written by non-saints and non-magisterial authors but which give the individual ego a feeling of belonging to a club with no cultural, linguistic, or ethnic membership with a single defect.

The psychological need for every personal or corporate action and personage of note in one’s church to perfectly contribute to a narrative of superiority or institutional infallibility is placing a ton of weight on every notable-historical member in one communion of churches that s/he will never be able to bear. Sinners sin and their post-lapsarian ignorance plays itself out like anybody else. Fairness, tolerance, and truthfulness, as the aims of a theologians with the largest database in world history, could have already resulted in solving the lion’s share of problems by now. However, on the bright side, look at the good accomplished by just one Dvornik and but one Taft. I’m hopeful that there are many, many more of these to come to overcome this silly-ongoing dialectic of otherness and opposition.

AD: Having finished the book, what other projects are you at work on now? 

I am working on a similar project with regard to the Filioque (to show how the Latin multiple-personality syndrome of filioquism, each of which personalities had little in common with each other but all iterations of the theory simply contributed to the fact that Greeks must be the bad guys). Of course, on the other side, I’m working on Mark of Ephesus’s and Gennadius Scholarius’s agreement with some aspects of the Latins’ position on “from the Son” gleaned from Palamas’s Apodictic Treatises on the Holy Spirit; wherein we see a perfectly coherent sense of “from the Son” that was even admitted at times (but sidelined at others) in the progression of thought by Aquinas. The irrational hatred of any mention of the Son in regard to immanent Trinity and his “essential” role (versus personal role) in production of the Son is fanatically opposed by anti-intellectual Orthodox without realizing that this position was endorse by Palamas, Eugenicus, and Scholarius.

The net result is that Aquinas’s theological opinion (though valid for Catholics of today) is one hypothesis, a drop in an historical sea and can be read in two different ways; one that is the majority reading of today and is unacceptable to Greeks; the other that is entirely in line with Palamas but that is unlikely to get a hearing from Dominicans, since it dares to agree with inimical Franciscan readings of Augustine’s Trinitarian productions that de-emphasize Aquinas’s famous Anselmian development of relations in favor of Augustine’s theory of psychological productions (more than mere metaphor) so that the Trinity is principally about a producing-person (viz., the Father) not about relating (with no real reason to rank the Father as first in a taxis or mere relatedness between three items). Anyway, this narrative already encountered stiff opposition from Dominicans against Franciscans (and nowadays medievalists) but that doesn’t make it any less valid.

In other news, I’m trying to put the finishing touches on my PhD thesis, written under Archbishop Elpidoforos of America, which outlines the Palamite background to the debates at Florence that resulted in the essence-energies research by Scholarios post-Florence and his publication of three separate treatise on the question.

AD: Sum up your hopes for the book, and who should read it.

I would hope that both Catholic theologians knowledgeable of Scholasticism and Orthodox theologians knowledgeable of patristics or Palamism can each appreciate the in-depth research into every source used by both Eugenicus and Torquemada and that each can agree that too many human elements intervened into what ought to have been serene and bilateral series of studies at Florence in order to come up with a truly bilateral agreement.

The lesson I hope that all readers might draw from the study is humility with regard to what we think we know and how much evidence we think we have for our positions and summarizing the positions of our church. Without interlocutors to talk us down from our Ivory Towers (which I am blessed to have at our Seminary) we are all potentially liable, due to pride and prejudice, to fall into the same unchristian temptations as Mark’s interlocutors at Florence who prevented the realization of a lasting union of minds and hearts that Mark desired at the onset of the Council. While Mark’s reputation will likely require decades to rehabilitate – given the quantity of anti-Eugenican literature in nineteenth and twentieth centuries – I hope ultimately that a modicum of respect and of admiration may be in store for Mark, the result of an open-minded reading of the monograph, no matter the theological perspective with which the reader may enter into my text.

The Florentine Fate of the Epiclesis (Updated)

Given the sheer volume of books emerging today, it is hard to maintain excitement for a lot of them, but there are some coming along to which I am greatly looking forward as much for the topic as for the author, and one such book, just released, is The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), 380pp., by Christiaan Kappes, whom I previously interviewed about his groundbreaking and revealing work on the Immaculate Conception. I've been on panels with him, and read some of his other articles, and both he and them are always dynamite, so we have every reason to look forward with delight to this new book. I am also in contact with him about a blog interview, to which he's agreed. So I hope to be able to run that in the coming weeks.

The council of Ferrara-Florence has not occasioned a lot of recent scholarship, which is curious if it is indeed the last "council of union" between East and West. Cambridge University Press, back in 2011, sent me a republished copy of Joseph Gill's 1959 study, but apart from that I have not seen a lot. So this book will be welcome for more than one reason.

Before reading the publisher's blurb, listen to what one widely respected scholar, no stranger to this blog, says about this forthcoming book:

“In this book Christiaan Kappes lays before the reader the genesis of an important, albeit often neglected, ecumenical stumbling block. Although the filioque, papacy, and azymes are traditionally considered the three great causes of the Catholic-Orthodox split, for many today the epiclesis debate remains a significant unresolved issue dividing the two churches. By detailing the theology, setting, and personalities of the first stage of that debate, along with the translation of relevant texts, Kappes has indeed provided an invaluable service to all liturgists, ecumenists, and interested historians of dogma.” --A. Edward Siecienski, Clement and Helen Pappas Endowed Professor of Byzantine Civilization and Religion, Stockton University.

And from the publisher we learn this:

The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence is the first in-depth investigation into both the Greek and the Latin sides of the debate about the moment of eucharistic transubstantiation at the Council of Florence. Christiaan Kappes examines the life and times of the central figures of the debate, Mark Eugenicus and John Torquemada, and assesses their doctrinal authority. Kappes presents a patristic and Scholastic analysis of Torquemada’s Florentine writings, revealing heretofore-unknown features of the debate and the full background to its treatises. The most important feature of the investigation involves Eugenicus. Kappes investigates his theological method and sources for the first time to give an accurate appraisal of the strength of Mark’s theological positions in the context of his own time and contemporary methods. The investigation into both traditions allows for an informed evaluation of more recent developments in the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church in light of these historical sources. Kappes provides a historically contextual and contemporary proposal for solutions to the former impasse in light of the principles rediscovered within Eugenicus’s works. This monograph speaks to contemporary theological debates surrounding transubstantiation and related theological matters, and provides a historical framework to understand these debates. The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence will interest specialists in theology, especially those with a background in and familiarity with the council and related historical themes, and is essential for any ecumenical library.

Inventing Gregory Palamas

I just received in the mail Oxford University Press's catalogue of forthcoming works. As always, there are lots of interesting books in the works, but none more so, it seems to me, than this book, not due out for nearly a year, but well worth the wait both because of the author (who is a widely respected translator and author of many books) and especially the timeliness of the topic: Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age by Norman Russell (OUP, 2019).

For those who have followed Orthodox constructions of identity in the West in the last three decades, as well as Orthodox apologetics, the figure of Gregory Palamas looms large, almost always as a cipher and a rock against whom the horrors of (inter alia) Thomism, rationalism, and scholasticism can be dashed to pieces in triumphalist fashion. But that narrative construction, always shaky at best as far as real scholars were concerned, really began to fall apart when Christiaan Kappes (interviewed here) published his book on the Immaculate Conception; and when, a few months later, Marcus Plested published his book on Orthodox Readings of Aquinas. Both showed that Palamas was far from the anti-Western figure he had been made out to be; both showed that he engaged, often quite positively, with Thomism and other Western schools of thought. (For an interview with, engagement of, and lecture by Plested, go here and follow the links.)

To be fair, it is not only Orthodox apologists who got into this act. As Russell's forthcoming book notes, a key figure in Western distortions of Eastern thought, a key figure in Western polemics and triumphalism of an equally repellent variety, is Martin Jugie, who had an obvious hatred of Palamas and did everything he could to poison Western Catholicism against him. As Jaroslav Pelikan once archly said of Jugie, his tragedy was that he knew so much but understood so little.

Jugie and others figure prominently in Russell's forthcoming book, for which the publisher has given us this table of contents:

List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I THE HISTORICAL RECEPTION OF PALAMITE THEOLOGY
1. The Orthodox Struggle to Assimilate Palamite Thinking
2. Martin Jugie and the invention of Palamism
3. John Meyendorff's Response to Jugie
4. New Directions since Meyendorff
Part II RAISING THE LARGER QUESTIONS
5. What Does Doctrinal Development Mean?
6. How is a Participatory Understanding of the Divine Mystery to be Attained?
7. What is the Reality of Divine-Human Communion?
8. Could Palamas Become 'the Inheritance of all Christians'?
Bibliography

And this description:

The fourteenth-century Greek hesychast and controversialist, Gregory Palamas, has been so successfully cast as 'the other' in Western theological discourse that it can be difficult to gain a sympathetic hearing for him. In the first part of this book, Norman Russell traces the historical reception of Palamite thought in Orthodoxy and in the West, and investigates how 'Palamism' was constructed in the early twentieth century by both Western and Eastern theologians (principally Martin Jugie and John Meyendorff) for polemical or apologetic purposes. Russell argues that we need to go behind these ideological constructions in order to gain a true perception of the teaching of Gregory Palamas. In his recent survey of Palamite scholarship, Robert Sinkewicz noted that it is now time to raise the larger questions. The second part of the book attempts to do this, following the contours of Palamas' thinking in three areas: his relationship to tradition, his philosophy, and his theology. Russell shows that Palamite thought, when freed of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, has the potential to enrich our understanding of divine-human communion. This study contributes to the changing paradigm of scholarship on Palamas, nudging it towards the point at which Palamite thought can be used fruitfully by contemporary Western and Eastern theologians without the need to subscribe to what has been regarded as 'Palamism'.

When the book is published next year, I will have more to say about it then. 

The Immaculate Conception and the East

Today for Latin Catholics is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Here in the United States, it is the country's patronal feast. I take the liberty of directing you to the interview I did earlier this year with the priest and scholar Christiaan Kappes about his new book, The Immaculate Conception: Why Thomas Aquinas Denied, While John Duns Scotus, Gregory Palamas, & Mark Eugenicus Professed the Absolute Immaculate Existence of Mary.

The Immaculate Conception's Roots in Byzantine Theology

In some circles both Orthodox and Protestant, the modern Marian definitions dogmatically promulgated by the popes of Rome in 1854 and 1950 are thought to be problematic. I have never once found the theology behind either definition to be remotely problematic because of ample precedent in the hymnody of the East and the theology of the early Church in not only the West but especially the East. (One can, however, raise the problem of whether these needed to be defined when they were, and whether the pope of Rome has the authority to do so. But those are quite separate discussions.) Of the two definitions, the Immaculate Conception from 1854 is more often held up by certain Orthodox apologists as being questionable for its reliance on, as is regularly said, an Augustinian doctrine of original sin totally at odds, we are led to believe, with Eastern theology.

Those arguments are going to have to be revised in light of the most recent and impressive scholarship, some of which is contained in a compelling new historical work just published by Christiaan Kappes: The Immaculate Conception: Why Thomas Aquinas Denied, While John Duns Scotus, Gregory Palamas, and Mark Eugenicus Professed the Absolute Immaculate Existence of Mary (Academy of the Immaculate Press, 2014), xx+252pp. 

I recently made contact with Fr. Christiaan, whose related scholarly work on such figures as Mark Eugenicus ("of Ephesus") is featured in part in an essay in the spring issue of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies (details here).  We had a chance for an interview to discuss his new book. Here are his thoughts.

AD: Tell us a bit about your background:

First, let me say, I am overjoyed with your interest in the book and must thank Dr. Daniel Galadza (Vienna) for putting us into contact, without whose communication we may have never crossed paths. 

I am a Latin rite Roman Catholic priest. I have had various priestly assignments (e.g., in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, in Guadalajara, Mexico). Before I began to know and appreciate Orthodoxy, I was studying Scholastic philosophy and liturgiology in Rome from 2006 to 2009. Before moving to Greece in 2008, eventually finding myself under the direction of Metropolitan Elpidophoros Lambriniadis, my aspirations were merely to learn and repeat traditional neo-Thomist talking points (I distinguish those from the real Thomas Aquinas). 

Later, upon studying in Italy under wonderful Dominicans (for example, Walter Senner, OP [formerly on the Leonine Commission]), I viewed Aquinas with an historical and contextual eye. However, even before then, many unanswered questions prevented me from adopting his “system.” I found myself often siding with John Duns Scotus. So, I sought out the renowned Bonaventuran and Scotist scholar, Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, FI. I am grateful to him for allowing me to sit at his feet and hear not a few satisfactory explanations to questions I had about metaphysics. I could have never guessed that this would lead to me embrace the Greek patristic tradition--until I encountered two famous Orthodox theologians, namely, Gennadios Scholarios and Gregory Palamas. Upon reading their work, I found it strange that they seemed to be saying very similar things to Scotus, whose views were allegedly “modern” according to several contemporary scholars. Simultaneously, I was exploring Byzantine Scholasticism and contacted Dr. Athanasia Glycofrydi-Leontsini at the University of Athens. She was very generous with her time and showed me her work on the Greek edition of the Summa Theologiae, translated by Demetrius Cydones (c. 1358). My professor, Fr. Charles Morerod, OP, (now Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg, whose books on ecumenism, Adam, you have reviewed in the past!) further encouraged my study of Byzantine Scholasticism. He eventually recommended me for a scholarship in Greece for this end. It was there that I met Bishop Kyrillos Katerelos, who urged me to finish my doctorate in Liturgy at Sant’Anselmo in Rome. Bishop Kyrillos helped me to go to Thessaloniki to study the relation betweeen Byzantine Scholasticism and Palamism. There, at Aristotle University, despite his numerous burdens, Metropolitan Elpidophoros kindly agreed to guide my thesis intending to exonerate Gennadios Scholarius from unfair neo-Thomistic evaluations stemming from the dissertation of Sebastian Guichardan in the 1930s. I still hope to finish this thesis.

AD: What led you to write this book?

Early in 2012, in appreciation of Fr. Peter’s guidance in my studies, I asked him if there was something I could do to help the Franciscan mission of promoting Mary’s role in the economy of salvation. Fr. Peter suggested to me a contribution that would comprise a chapter within a collection of essays in a Marian series that he had recently inaugurated for Academy of the Immaculate Press. I suggested studying a very odd reference to Mary within the metaphysical and trinitarian treatise of Mark of Ephesus, The First Antirrhetic against Manuel Kalekas (scripsit 1430s). Mark but once referred to Mary in this moderately sized work. When he spoke of the Theotokos, he referred to her as the “prokathartheisa” or “prepurified” virgin. I was driven mad by the fact that no scholars seemed to understand this sobriquet, which Mark mentioned as something obvious to the eyes of his Byzantine reader. So, Fr. Peter and I agreed that I’d make my “small” contribution on this topic. As it turned out, a vast world of Palamite, and even patristic, Mariology opened up to me that seemed to have no terminus until I arrived at Gregory Nazianzen. This necessitate a full monograph on the subject.

AD: The preface to your book notes that "one particular title of Mary, Prepurified,common in the East from earliest times, [was] a synonym for Immaculate Conception" (xvi). Tell us a bit more about what your research has uncovered as to the meaning, history, and usage of "prepurified." 

First, Adam, I think it is important to emphasis the superior richness of this Greek title in Palamite thought. Whereas “Immaculate Conception” is a laser focus on a biological point of time in Mary’s life in utero, “prepurified” denotes something temporally expansive –in fact, timeless as we shall see. Latin theologians initially focused on justifying Mary’s privileged grace at her physical conception, gradually relating this privilege to subsequent events of her life and death. They also moved backwards in time until arriving at moment of creation and the prior contingent choice of Mary’s privilege within the divine mind. Hence, Orthodox might be surprised to know that “Immaculate Conception” is employed in the Franciscan school as something that refers to more than just that moment of physical conception.  

Diversely, Palamites saw the Incarnation during Mary’s “prepurification” at the Annuciation as the optic through which all of Mary’s other historico-liturgical feasts could be understood. Since Jesus and Mary were “purified” in some manner in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2: 22), in Christology and Mariology, purification (counterintuitively) primarily came to mean (with Nazianzen and his followers): (a.) external glory as a sign of predestination (b.) and internal grace so intense that only a perfect human nature participated it. In Mary’s case (unlike Jesus) she was also called “pre”-purified, which points out her moments of grace and glory before the historico-liturgical event of the Annuciation. Now, if we think of pre-Incarnational Marian feasts of the Byzantine liturgical calendar (e.g., Conception, Birth, and Presentation of Mary), one of those feasts happens to be the conception of St. Ann. Hence, as one of several pre-Incarnational events in the life of Mary, her conception also ranks as an event where this totally pure and perfect instance of human nature was granted unequalled participation in the divine energies.

A last point is in order. Following Maximus the Confessor’s sense of predestination and predetermination, Palamites saw the plan of Mary’s grace and glory as preselected along with the Incarnate Christ prior to any other temporal being or creation itself was selected in the contingent order. The Theotokos is the highest thought in the eternal divine mind before any actually created being was made in time. This does not threaten the sovereignty of Christ, for “Theotokos” only derives meaning from the fact that Mary bears something, namely, the Incarnate Word.

In conclusion, the similarity between the Latin doctrine and the Greek doctrine does not lie in the method, neither is there direct, nor indirect influence of the Latin thinking upon Palamism. Instead, Palamism takes the patristic and liturgical tradition of Byzantium and sees every instance of visible divine intervention in the lives of Jesus and Mary as a manifestation of predestined and peculiar moments of participation in the divine energies for the human natures of Jesus and Mary. Palamas even went so far to argue that the mystery of the Resurrection was a feast where Mary was first witness of the divine light, wherein she was purified to see the Lord in his glory. Palamas is truly a genius in this respect, for without doing violence to the biblical narrative, he sees the Resurrection as a moment of glory shared between Jesus and Mary as is ought. Truly, Palamas represents the apex of Byzantine Mariology!

So, the Latin “Immaculate Conception” coincides with one of the many graceful and miraculous moments in the life of Jesus and Mary, but should not be isolated from the series of salvific events along the course of her life (including her mental conception before creation within the divine mind).

You note that several classically "Eastern" theologians (Sts. Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory Palamas, Mark Eugenicus) are absolutely central to your argument. Tell us a bit about each of them. Your research, it seems to me, has uncovered very different, much fuller understandings of each--especially Palamas and Eugenicus--that seem to be at odds with the figures one often finds portrayed in popular Orthodox apologetics. Aren't Palamas, and especially Eugenicus, supposedly hostile to Latin theology ("scholasticism" above all) while being the great defenders of Orthodoxy since Ferrara-Florence?

Thanks for this question. I have found Nazianzen to be grappling with how to make sense of Jesus’ (and Mary’s) purification in the temple. Gregory seems to have actually suggested a “Copernican revolution” in theological wordview. We use “purification” primarily to clean something soiled. For Nazianzen, the primary meaning of purification derives from meditation on Christ’s experiences of being “purified.” Whether in the temple or at his baptism, we must take the “dove’s-eye-view” of purification, i.e., from the Spirit’s perspective. The Spirit descends not to take away sin but to add grace and glory. Furthemore, Jesus and Mary were conjointly purified within the temple, so each experienced a manifestiation of grace and glory according to the capacities of their respective natures.

Gregory Palamas never lost sight of this sense of purification that was handed down by St. Sophronius of Jerusalem and St. John Damascene. Since the tradition was monastic, it is all the more appropriate that it was absorbed and exalted in Palamas. Naturally, Mark of Ephesus devotedly followed his “master” Palamas. For this reason, Mark applied his very profound understanding of predestination and predetermination in the divine mind to Mary’s role in the economy of salvation. He came up with a flawless summary of Maximus’ sense of the primacy of the Incarnation and linked it to the Theotokos.

Finally, with respect to Palamas’ and Mark’s opposition to Latin theology, I think that it is safe to say that Palamite theology clearly adopted select points from Augustine (true for both Palamas and Mark). Factually, Mark employed select arguments from Aquinas to bolster his apologetics on certain topics (e.g., proofs for the reasonability of the resurrection of the body). We find in both authors an openmindedness toward Latin sources. This does not negate the fact that both opposed exchanging the Greek patristic heritage and traditional tenents for Latin peculiarities. Mark used extreme caution and held numerous reservations about Aquinas. Frankly, Mark correctly assessed and unabashedly opposed Thomistic theology’s approach to a “distinction of reason” within the Godhead. I wish that there was a middle way to resolve the differences but I find no reason to believe that Dominicans and Palamites misunderstood each other on the question of the divine essence-energies, even if numerous historical misunderstandings about the Filioque existed.

You speak at one point of the "interplay between the Byzantino-Palamite and Immaculitist-Scotistic Tradition." These are not terms, I admit, that I expected to see brought together! And yet you show evidence of the "astonishingly compatible" Mariologies of Palamas, Eugenicus, and Scotus even while noting in your conclusion that we need more research to demonstrate "Latin-Greek intellectual interchange (or lack thereof) in the 15th century" (195). Who else is doing that kind of research and intellectual genealogy today? What other projects have you worked on in this regard? 

Your astonishment is well-founded, Adam. Generally speaking, since the late nineteenth century until after the Second Vatican Council (1965), neo-Thomism reigned supreme and unfortunately led to a sort of “mathematization” of theology. Authors who did not attempt to uphold mainline interpretation of Aquinas and subject the theological tradition to agreement with this caricaturized “Thomism” were typically persecuted in the Latin Church. In this environment, it was difficult for Franciscans to publish anything that might be interpreted as a “slight” to the au courant interpretation of the Angelic Doctor.  However, there has been some gradually increasing interest in Franciscan theology and Mariology. I wonder if the post-conciliar collapse of Mariology (with its slow recovery), and perhaps undue caution toward Mariology among modern Orthodox (after the Immaculate Conception and Assumption dogmas), have retarded studies in this field. I myself only stumbled across this because of the Palamite essence-energies question. I have found only seminal interest on this subject in the works of Martin Jugie and other Mariologists from the early and mid-twentieth century.

AD: A few years ago I reviewed a new translation of the Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov's book about the Theotokos, The Burning Bush: On the Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God, and in there he spends a great deal of time on the Immaculate Conception, saying bluntly at one point that “the Catholic dogma is an incorrect expression of a correct idea about the personal sinlessness of the Mother of God.” Bulgakov objects for three reasons, the most serious being that if the Theotokos has neither original nor personal sin, then she would not suffer the effect of sin, viz., death, and thus she would be something other than a human being. What are your thoughts and what do you think the Fathers and Doctors you survey would say were they somehow able to debate Bulgakov?

I think that we must take Orthodox concerns seriously. I think your question is framed correctly. We must look to the Fathers for a solution. Although I would insist that Bulgakov’s conclusion falls outside of the patristic lineage leading to the Palamite synthesis, I must acknowledge that scholarship still affirms that Chrysostom held a theologoumenon that coincided with Bulgakov’s thoughts on Mary. If I were to use Mark of Ephesus’ mode of reading the Fathers, however, I would emphasize that Mark believed that no particular Father was inerrant (adiaptôtos). He looked at the whole of the received tradition of the canons, Fathers, and liturgy together. For this reason, I think that Mark’s patristico-liturgical arguments convince far more than Bulgakov’s “reasonings.” If we agree with Bulgakov’s premises, then we will undoubtedly arrive at his conclusions. However, this is precisely what I sought to leave behind when I abandoned neo-Thomism.

What role does St. Augustine of Hippo play in this debate, both about the prepurified/Immacuate mother of God and about ideas of original sin?

Excellent question! Though overly zealous apologists in Orthodoxy sometimes overemphasize the question of Original Sin, I sympathize on two points. First, Augustine’s physicalist theory of traducianism is to be rejected entirely. Indeed, some papal pronouncements of the first millennium use Augustine’s language of “ancestral guilt.” Also, St. Fulgentius of Ruspe (translated into Greek under as a pseudepigraphal work of Augustine) repeated this harsh “guilt centered” theory. The closest Greek Father to Augustine’s theory, Maximus the Confessor, recognizes Adam’s guilt (i.e., an interiorly personal and moral defect), but does not employ this concept to the children of Adam. They are subject to an extrinsic “curse” and various corollary effects thereof. However, there is no transmission of an intrinsic “guilt,” justifying our designation as “children of wrath.”

In my upcoming monograph on the Mariology of Gennadius Scholarius, I will show that Scholarius unfortunately adopted this language of “guilt” common to Aquinas and Augustine. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be too harsh on Scholarius, for I have already cited Macarius Makrês in my present monograph as the likely the inspiration for Scholarius sense of “ancestral guilt.” Scholarius’ short-lived instructor Macarius (perhaps influenced by Aquinas) probably taught Scholarius this terminology. Mark of Ephesus called a Macarius, nonetheless, “a champion of Orthodoxy.”

Yet, I have found no evidence that Mark ever weighed in on Augustinian Original Sin. I suspect that Mark simply followed the extrinsic “curse” doctrine of Maximus. In my upcoming monograph on Scholarius, I hope to show where Palamas textually cited Augustine for “Original Sin.” However, even if Palamas relied on an Augustinian work for his relevant discussion, Palamas systematically changed Augustine’s term “guilt” and replaced it with the vocabulary of Maximus the Confessor. For this reason, Mark was all the more unlikely influenced by Augustine’s doctrine of “guilt,” for Mark was typically under the spell of Palamas.

Lastly, Orthodox are not incorrect to criticize Aquinas’ use of this language of guilt. Nonetheless, I think that--even if Aquinas is inconsistent in the Summa Theologiae with the meaning of this term--Thomas is not committed to a litteral intrinsic sense of “guilt” in all men, and usually supports the notion of a privation of grace. From the citations in my present monograph, the Franciscan tradition clearly focuses on Original Sin as a privation of grace in the will. Still, even the Franciscans did not always rid themselves of the confusing guiltladen terminology, to which the primary referent is typically some real intrinsic defect. For this reason I think it is wrong to simply dismiss Orthodox criticisms grosso modo.

One of Bulgakov's other objections (and it is, I must admit, a question I have myself never found a good answer to) is that dogmatic definitions were once thought to be a stern necessity finally resorted to only in cases of major crisis--a widespread outbreak of heresy, say. But there seems to have been no crisis, no heresy, in the mid-19th century. So how, then, are we to understand Pope Pius IX in 1854 promulgating, as Bulgakov puts it,  “dogmatic laws where life does not in the least require them”?

Well, Adam, my knee-jerk response is to start using Scholastic parsing. For example, just because something manifests a new manner of operating does not call into question the virtual reality of the power within the agent. Doxa tô Theô, logical parsing need not have the last word. Adam, you have already drawn attention to Benedict XVI’s reflection (pace Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity) on the necessity to reassess the manner in which papal primacy has been exercised in recent centuries. I agree with your hints and suggestions and only add that we need to explore the Council of Florence’s original decree of papal primacy, which explicitly guarded and preserved all the canonical and traditional rights and privileges of the other four Patriarchates. Nowadays, we like to concentrate on what the Papacy’s raw power (posse) can do instead of what it ought to do in charity and justice (decet). I myself am at a loss to give historical precedents for unilateral pontifical acts in more recent centuries. Still, I need to study the question more.

Sum up what your hopes are for this book.

I sincerely hope Catholics will be inspired to use the common Greek patristic language and Palamite tradition to speak of Mary. The effect of this common language should make the Immaculate Conception a question of emphasis, since differences prove to be methodological. I hope Orthodox see that the real commonalities between the scotistic and Palamite approaches do not threaten Greek-patristic and contemporary Orthodox emphasis on the fact that Mary underwent physical death. Yet, we should not forget that the reasonings behind the necessity of Mary’s death rank for both sides as a theologoumena.

What projects--books, articles--are you at work on now?

Currently, I am finishing a monograph to resolve the question of the epiclesis debate between Byzantine and Latin theology based upon Mark of Ephesus´ libellus on the question at Florence. Surprisingly, Latin treatment of the question did not accurately cite or even recognize the historical sources to resolve the question. I believe Mark´s liturgiology will resolve the question definitively. Secondly, I am hoping to gradually finish the monograph on the Mariology of Gennadius Scholarius next year. Lastly, I am still attempting to complete my thesis on the essence-energies question in the Palamite metaphysics of Gennadius Scholarius by the end of the year. As far as articles go, the next issue of Missio Immaculatae 10.3 (2014), reveals the patristic and liturgical foundations in the East and West for Palamas’ convinction that Mary was first witness of the Resurrection.