Cops and Robbers in Ephesus

As I have been noting on here for a decade now as each volume rolls out, anglophone Christians owe a debt of gratitude to Liverpool University Press for their invaluable series devoted to translations of conciliar texts. The latest, just released in paperback, is The Council of Ephesus of 431: Documents and Proceedings by Richard Price with Introduction and Notes by Thomas Graumann.

About this the publisher tells us this:

The First Council of Ephesus (431) was the climax of the so-called Nestorian Controversy. Convoked by the emperor Theodosius II to restore peace to the Church, it immediately divided into two rival councils, both meeting at Ephesus. Attempts by the emperor's representatives to get the bishops on both sides to meet together had no success, and after four months the council was dissolved without having ever properly met. But a number of decrees by the larger of the two rival councils, in particular the condemnation of Nestorius of Constantinople, were subsequently accepted as the valid decrees of the 'ecumenical council of Ephesus'. The documentation, consisting of conciliar proceedings, letters and other documents, provides information not only about events in Ephesus itself, but also about lobbying and public demonstrations in Constantinople. There is no episode in late Roman history where we are so well informed about how politics were conducted in the imperial capital. This makes the Acts a document of first importance for the history of the Later Roman Empire as well for that of the Church.

God and Christ in Irenaeus

Books about Irenaeus have continued steadily to emerge over the last two decades, and I have tried to keep abreast of them on here. In February, we had another: God and Christ in Irenaeus by Anthony Briggman (Oxford UP, 2019), 256pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

For too long certain scholars have been content to portray Irenaeus of Lyons as a well-meaning churchman but incompetent theologian. By offering a careful reading of Irenaeus' polemical and constructive arguments, God and Christ in Irenaeus contradicts these claims by showing that he was highly educated, trained in the rhetorical arts, aware of general philosophical positions, and able to use both rhetorical and philosophical theories and methods in his argumentation. Moreover, the theological account laid down by his pen was original and sophisticated, supremely so for one of the second century.

In contrast to readings that minimize the metaphysical dimension of Irenaeus' theology, Anthony Briggman establishes as pillars of Irenaeus' polemical argumentation and constructive theology his conception of the divine being as infinite and simple, the reciprocal immanence of the Word-Son and God the Father, divine generation, the union of the divine Word-Son and human nature in the person of Christ, and the revelatory activity of the infinite and incomprehensible Word-Son, amongst other features of his theology. Briggman offers a fundamentally new understanding of Irenaeus and his thought.

Why Study the Past?

To my horror, my students have often complained in my courses on the history of interactions between Eastern Christians and Muslims that "there's too much history" in the books we read. That, however, is, I'm relieved to note, a complaint that usually comes about one-third, or no more than one-half, of the way through the semester. By the time we get to the end of the semester, they note, with a charming mixture of relief and chagrin, that the history has been well worth it to understand the whole picture we are looking at in 2018.

I do not know what history they are learning, or what they are learning about historiography, if anything, in their prior schooling. But it seems universally to be appallingly thin stuff if my posing random questions of them, and being met with utterly blank stares, is any indication. I mean by this what I regard as the basic understanding of any moderately schooled and sensate person: e.g., when was the First World War? If such general history escapes them, Christian history does so a fortiori. But here ignorance is combined with disbelief and disdain: whadday mean they punched each other up at Nicaea over doctrine, or the churches divided bitterly after Chalcedon? Nobody understands that stuff and nobody cares! 

This is just a preface to say that I'm glad to see, from the fall 2018 catalogue Eerdmans sent me last week, that they are bringing out a new edition of Rowan Williams' welcome book, Why Study the Past: the Quest for the Historical Church. Williams, of course, is not just the retired archbishop of Canterbury, but one of the United Kingdom's leading scholars of the Christian East (and much else), and has been for decades, author of, inter alia, books on icons, Dostoevsky, and much else besides.

You can, for the time being, find inexpensive copies of the 2005 edition of Why Study the Past here. The description has not changed:

The well-worn saying about being condemned to repeat the history we do not know applies to church history as much as to any other kind. But how are Christians supposed to discern what lessons from history need to be learned?

In this small but thoughtful volume, respected theologian and churchman Rowan Williams opens up a theological approach to history, an approach that is both nonpartisan and relevant to the church's present needs. As he reflects on how we consider the past in general, Williams suggests that how we consider church history in particular remains important not so much for winning arguments as for clarifying who we are as time-bound human beings. Good history is a moral affair, he advises, because it opens up a point of reference that is distinct from us yet not wholly alien. The past can then enable us to think with more varied and resourceful analogies about our identity in the often confusing present.

Fearful of My Food

As the pre-Christmas fast begins to wind down, and we prepare for the feast, I've just come across a new book that raises interesting questions, some of which I examined here before. The relationship between food and feasting today has become a fraught one, alas--even for Christians. Parish potlucks used to be a lot of fun, but now for many they are occasions for anxiety--will there be gluten? what about Joey's peanut allergy? is there high fructose corn syrup in that? Too many of us are "fearful of my joy" based on the constant bombardment about fads, diets, health crazes, and the results of science which change at a pace and in a manner many find bewildering and thus fit to be dismissed. Certainly our over-investment in and credulity in the face of claims that "a study found" X, Y, or Z about coffee or red meat deserves all the mocking Neil Postman can bring in his Technopoly. 

Concerns about food and its potential to form us for good or ill are not new ones, as anyone with passing familiarity with the New Testament can tell you--or, now with early Christian history, as well, so well told in John Penniman's Raised on Christian Milk: Food and Formation of the Soul in Early Christianity (Yale UP, 2017), 352pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

A fascinating new study of the symbolic power of food and its role in forming kinship bonds and religious identity in early Christianity

Scholar of religion John Penniman considers the symbolic importance of food in the early Roman world in an engaging and original new study that demonstrates how “eating well” was a pervasive idea that served diverse theories of growth, education, and religious identity. Penniman places early Christian discussion of food in its moral, medical, legal, and social contexts, revealing how nourishment, especially breast milk, was invested with the power to transfer characteristics, improve intellect, and strengthen kinship bonds.

Did Early Martyrs Feel or Deny Their Pain?

The University of California Press, which has a number of series publishing works about early and Eastern Christian history, inter alia, has just sent me an intriguing new study by L.S. Cobb, Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts (UC Press, 2016), 264pp.

Amidst much chatter recently about the dim future of the Church in the West, and the various forms of "persecution" that are coming, this book raises an important question about how to respond to any form of "persecution," violent and otherwise, and where power ultimately lies.

The key question, in the words of the publisher's blurb, is this:

Does martyrdom hurt? The obvious answer to this question is “yes.” L. Stephanie Cobb, asserts, however, that early Christian martyr texts respond to this question with an emphatic “no!” Divine Deliverance examines the original martyr texts of the second through fifth centuries, concluding that these narratives in fact seek to demonstrate the Christian martyrs’ imperviousness to pain. For these martyrs, God was present with, and within, the martyrs, delivering them from pain. These martyrs’ claims not to feel pain define and redefine Christianity in the ancient world: whereas Christians did not deny the reality of their subjection to state violence, they argued that they were not ultimately vulnerable to its painful effects.

The Path of Christianity

I just received the 2017 catalogue for InterVarsity Academic Press, and among its many offerings is a massive book set for release in late spring by a prolific and respected Orthodox priest and academic, John McGuckin, The Path of Christianity: the First Thousand Years (IVP, 2017), 1280pp. Many of McGuckin's previous books and chapters have been noted on here, and I interviewed him in 2012 about some of them.

About this book the publisher tells us:

John Anthony McGuckin, one of the world's leading scholars of ancient Christianity, has synthesized a lifetime of work to produce the most comprehensive and accessible history of the Christian movement during its first thousand years. The Path of Christianity takes readers on a journey from the period immediately after the composition of the Gospels, through the building of the earliest Christian structures in polity and doctrine, to the dawning of the medieval Christian establishment. McGuckin explores Eastern and Western developments simultaneously, covering grand intellectual movements and local affairs in both epic scope and fine detail.

The Path of Christianity is divided into two parts of twelve chapters each. Part one treats the first millennium of Christianity in linear sequence, from the second to the eleventh centuries. In addition to covering key theologians and conciliar decisions, McGuckin surveys topics like Christian persecution, early monasticism, the global scope of ancient Christianity, and the formation of Christian liturgy. Part two examines key themes and ideas, including biblical interpretation, war and violence, hymnography, the role of women, attitudes to wealth, and early Christian views about slavery and sexuality. McGuckin gives the reader a sense of the real condition of early Christian life, not simply what the literate few had to say. Written for student and scholar alike, The Path of Christianity is a lively, readable, and masterful account of ancient Christian history, destined to be the standard for years to come.

Passion and Compassion in Early Christianity

When it first appeared in 2008, I read with great interest Susan Wessel's fascinating and important study, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome. Among other things, it sheds important light on Leo's role in the Council of Chalcedon, including its famous controverted 28th canon about patriarchal jurisdictions and so-called Roman pre-eminence. Wessel's considerable achievement was to show that Leo--pace later Eastern fears--was not engaged in a campaign of self-aggrandizement at the expense of the East. In fact, both Rome and Constantinople misunderstood the motives and actions of each other when, in fact, it seems they were both concerned about maintaining ecclesial affairs in their own spheres "decently and in good order," without trying to one-up each other.

Now we have another book from Wessel, published just this summer: Passion and Compassion in Early Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2016), 290pp.

The publisher, who has made this book available both in print and in a Kindle format, tells us the following about the book:

This book examines how the early Christian elite articulated and cultivated the affective dimensions of compassion in a Roman world that promoted emotional tranquillity as the path to human flourishing. Drawing upon a wide range of early Christians from both east and west, Wessel situates each author in the broader cultural and intellectual context. The reader is introduced to the diverse conditions in which Christians felt and were urged to feel compassion in exemplary ways, and in which warnings were sounded against the possibilities for distortion and exploitation. Wessel argues that the early Christians developed literary methods and rhetorical techniques to bring about appropriate emotional responses to human suffering. Their success in this regard marks the beginning of affective compassion as a Christian virtue. Comparison with early modern and contemporary philosophers and ethicists further demonstrates the intrinsic worth of the early Christian understanding of compassion.

We are also given the table of contents here and an excerpt here.

An Interview with George Demacopoulos on Gregory the Great

As I noted last June, when notice of this book's publication was posted, we have been living in a time of increasing scholarship focusing on the diverse figures occupying, diverse theological understandings of, and diverse practices emanating from, the bishopric of Rome in the first millennium, a focus which was called for in part by the modern Orthodox-Catholic dialogue and the recent popes of Rome themselves, including John Paul II, on whose request I have had a few things to say. The more we learn of this period the more we find that it fits easily and neatly into nobody's imagined reconstructions of the past, especially hardcore triumphalistic apologists in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

One of those prominent figures contributing to this scholarship is the Orthodox George Demacopoulos of Fordham University, author of several recent studies, including The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity, which I favorably reviewed elsewhere.

Along with Aristotle Papanikalaou, also of Fordham's theology department and its Orthodox Christian Studies Centre, Demacopoulos is editor of the invaluable scholarly collection Orthodox Constructions of the West (Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought, which I discussed on here in three parts.

His new book returns to some earlier work he did on St. Gregory the Great, including a translation, The Book of Pastoral Rule: St. Gregory the Great, part of the Popular Patristics Series of St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Demacopoulos's first book, Five Models of Spiritual Direction in the Early Church, also featured a chapter on Gregory the Great, to whom he returns in his newest book, published this year: Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor, and First Man of Rome (UND Press, 2015), 240pp. I sent him some questions to interview him about this newest book, and here are his thoughts:

AD: Tell us about your background, and what led you to this book:

George E. Demacopoulos: 15 years ago, I wrote my dissertation at UNC-CH on Gregory the Great's approach to spiritual direction, arguing that he attempted to bring to the broader Christian world the technologies of pastoral care then operative in ascetic communities.  At the time, Robert Markus has recently published his excellent biography of Gregory and my dissertation advisor wisely recommended that I look in a different direction when turning the dissertation into a book. So, for my first monograph, I put the questions about spiritual direction that I had for Gregory to a broader set of early Christian authors.

My second book continued to work in Gregory's world (the late-ancient papacy) but, again, examined one facet of his thought (the link between St. Peter and the papacy) that also captivated other late ancient authors.

So, in some sense, I have been thinking about this current book for nearly fifteen years, but it was only recently that I felt ready to attempt what I believe is a new approach to the so-called "two Gregorys"--the ascetic contemplative and the shrewd administrator.

AD: As you may know, the popes of Rome for 20 years now have been calling for more scholarship on the papacy in the first millennium--and the official international Orthodox-Catholic dialogue hsa done likewise. Do you see both your recent book, The Invention of Peter, and now this one on Gregory the Great as part of this trajectory of 'ecumenical scholarship' as it were?

GED: With regard to ecumenical engagement via historical study--Yes, I do see this as part of that broader project.  Not so much because I expect to strike the perfect cord between Orthodox and Roman Catholics but because I believe that the Orthodox have great deal to learn from figures like St. Gregory and because the Orthodox desperately need a little more nuance and sophistication in their understanding of the development of the papacy and the ways in which the papacy was understood by early Christians east of the Adriatic.

AD: Your introduction (p.5) speaks of a topic I've recently become preoccupied with: the role of 'editorial erasure...in the shaping of ecclesiastical memory.' Is that a significant factor in assessing Gregory's pontificate?

GED: In some sense, it is hard to know how much editorial erasure took place--we don't have much evidence of things that once existed and no longer do.  But it is really important for historians to be ever conscious of the fact that we have limited access to the figures of pre-modernity and that we are very much beholden to the editors and copyists, whatever theological or ideological biases, who preserved our records.

AD: A key theme throughout your work is the influence of Gregory's ascetic theology on the rest of his life and work. Tell us a bit more about that theology and its importance.

GED: What I find so intriguing about Gregory's ascetic theology was that it was somewhat unique of major late-ancient thinkers.  Whereas most ascetic theologians understood the summit of the Christian experience to be a kind of mystical encounter or union with the divine (one that typically required renunciation), Gregory speaks of the summit of the Christian life being achieved only when the ascetic forsakes the spiritual joys of contemplation for the benefit of others.  In Gregory, we find someone who genuinely sees perfection in service, rather than in ascetic isolation. But this perfection is always an asceticism of a particular kind.

AD: As you know, sometimes polemical treatments (whether Protestant or Orthodox) of the papacy view it as one long campaign of self-aggrandizement motivated by what Augustine famously called "libido dominandi." Yet you note (p.43) that in Gregory there is little evidence of one seeking gratuitously to expand Roman claims. Moreover, in the famous dispute with John the Faster over the title "ecumenical" and elsewhere, Gregory, as you note, is at pains to stress Peter's faults and flaws, which strikes me as a singular and rather odd strategy, at least in the eyes of modern papal apologetics. Why would Gregory have done that--rather than, say, play up Peter as "prince of the apostles"?

Yes, Gregory is the only late-ancient pope who even addresses with any significance Peter's flaws. And, for Gregory, these are the keys to Peter (pardon the pun).  Unlike Leo or Gelasius, Gregory has very little interest in asserting papal privilege on the basis of Peter (though he will of course defend Roman claims, but he doesn't attempt to extend those in any way). Gregory is deeply committed to a theology of spiritual direction, of spiritual reform, and of emphasizing the importance of humility in the Christian leader.  For all of these reasons, Peter, in Gregory's hands, is a model of repentance, of humility, and of spiritual growth after failure. That's why he emphasizes the flaws.

AD: Looking at him in the eyes of contemporary scholarship and churchmanship, as well as ecumenically, what do you see as Gregory's legacy today?

GED: Gregory is clear bridge between east and west and between late-antiquity and the middle ages. He was a man who longed for retreat and contemplation but felt moved to action for the benefit of others.

AD: Having finished Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor, and First Man of Rome, what are you at work on now? What's the next project?

GED: I recently received a Carpenter Foundation Grant, which allows for a year-long sabbatical beginning next month.  The first book project will apply the resources of post-colonial critique to the study of Orthodox identity narratives in the wake of the Crusades.  I don't think I will get to a second project in that time frame, but the next one (which I've started to write a few articles about) explores the theology of violence in early Byzantine hymnography.

Does Heaven Smell Better than Hell?

I remember once attending a very spikey (did only Canadian Anglicans use that odd term to describe the highest of high-church Anglo-Catholic liturgics?) Evensong and Benediction presided over by the local bishop who said of St. Barnabas in Ottawa and its lavish use of incense "At least here you know you are in a church thanks to the smell," a reference, I thought, to the often indistinguishable modern, purpose-built churches of cinder block that look like some hideous hybrid between an office block and a Soviet hydro station, lacking any distinguishing signs or smells of divine worship. (Speaking of which, as a would-be collector of incense, I found this website has fantastically fast service and a wonderfully wide collection of some really delightful and outstanding incense.)

The role of smell has fascinated me for a long time. In the 1990s I did extensive traveling (five of seven continents, as it turned out) and I remember being on an ecumenical trip thousands of miles from home and going for an evening stroll with some of my colleagues. Some smell or other in the wind instantly transported me back home and evoked still-sore memories of a girl I had then been dating until recently.

Why does the olfactory sense have such power? That question came up in a book whose hardback version has been out for nearly a decade, and was very favorably reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. Now the University of California Press tells me a more affordable paperback version is forthcoming this September of a fascinating book from the Orthodox scholar Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (U Cal Press, 2015), 448pp.

About this book we are told:

This book explores the role of bodily, sensory experience in early Christianity (first – seventh centuries AD) by focusing on the importance of smell in ancient Mediterranean culture. Following its legalization in the fourth century Roman Empire, Christianity cultivated a dramatically flourishing devotional piety, in which the bodily senses were utilized as crucial instruments of human-divine interaction. Rich olfactory practices developed as part of this shift, with lavish uses of incense, holy oils, and other sacred scents. At the same time, Christians showed profound interest in what smells could mean. How could the experience of smell be construed in revelatory terms? What specifically could it convey? How and what could be known through smell? Scenting Salvation argues that ancient Christians used olfactory experience for purposes of a distinctive religious epistemology: formulating knowledge of the divine in order to yield, in turn, a particular human identity.

Using a wide array of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources, Susan Ashbrook Harvey examines the ancient understanding of smell through religious rituals, liturgical practices, mystagogical commentaries, literary imagery, homiletic conventions; scientific, medical, and cosmological models; ascetic disciplines, theological discourse, and eschatological expectations. In the process, she argues for a richer appreciation of ancient notions of embodiment, and of the roles the body might serve in religion.