Early Christian Biblical Interpretation

Are there many phrases that quicken and gladden the bibliophile's impecunious heart like "new in paperback"? That will indeed soon be the case for an impressive, but hitherto expensive, collection, The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, eds., Paul M. Blowers and Peter W Martens (Oxford UP, February 2022), 784pp. The eager reader will note the presence in this book of numerous Eastern Orthodox contributors. About this collection we are further told this by the publishers:

The Bible was the essence of virtually every aspect of the life of the early churches. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation explores a wide array of themes related to the reception, canonization, interpretation, uses, and legacies of the Bible in early Christianity. Each section contains overviews and cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of the field.

Part One examines the material text transmitted, translated, and invested with authority, and the very conceptualization of sacred Scripture as God's word for the church. Part Two looks at the culture and disciplines or science of interpretation in representative exegetical traditions. Part Three addresses the diverse literary and non-literary modes of interpretation, while Part Four canvasses the communal background and foreground of early Christian interpretation, where the Bible was paramount in shaping normative Christian identity. Part Five assesses the determinative role of the Bible in major developments and theological controversies in the life of the churches. Part Six returns to interpretation proper and samples how certain abiding motifs from within scriptural revelation were treated by major Christian expositors.

The overall history of biblical interpretation has itself now become the subject of a growing scholarship and the final part skilfully examines how early Christian exegesis was retrieved and critically evaluated in later periods of church history. Taken together, the chapters provide nuanced paths of introduction for students and scholars from a wide spectrum of academic fields, including classics, biblical studies, the general history of interpretation, the social and cultural history of late ancient and early medieval Christianity, historical theology, and systematic and contextual theology. Readers will be oriented to the major resources for, and issues in, the critical study of early Christian biblical interpretation.

Islam and Christianity: Politics and Scriptures

The new Paulist Press catalogue landed here the other day and there I spied a new book that will be of interest to those who want to explore both the similarities and the differences in Islam and Christianity: Christopher Frechette, How the Qur'an Interprets the Bible (Paulist, 2020), 208pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Non-Muslims are often surprised to learn that the Qur'an relates episodes and events from the lives of multiple characters who are also found in the biblical text. While the ways the two traditions present these stories often have much in common, they are never identical. Sometimes the Qur'an includes elements or themes that are not present in the biblical account. Such details point to ways in which the Qur an interprets prior traditions, and such interpretations are similar to how Jewish and Christian Scriptures also interpret prior traditions. Focusing on the lives and roles of a number of well-known characters, this introductory book explores and compares the interpretive dimensions of Islamic, Jewish, and Christians Scriptures.

Sins of the Turkish Fathers

I recently noted yet another publication devoted to the long-term psychological effects of the Armenian Genocide. And then Herder and Herder, now published by Crossroad, sent me their newest catalogue in which we find a book released this year: The Sins of the Fathers: Turkish Denialism and the Armenian Genocide by Siobhan Nash-Marshall  (Crossroad, 2018), 256pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

We hear much talk today about post-truth. Journalists and intellectuals describe it as a shocking new phenomenon caused by recent electoral campaigns. They point to contemporary political statements as horrendous post-truths. Nothing is more misleading. ‘Historical engineering’ is not a new phenomenon. Nor are the events to which journalists point as exemplary instances of ‘post-truth’ particularly poignant. ‘Historical engineering’ is the intellectual twin of ‘social engineering’ and has been taking place on increasingly large scales since the dawn of the modern world. It is a consequence of the premises, methods, and ambitions of modern philosophy. This book is the first part of a trilogy – The Betrayal of Philosophy – that concerns the roots of the post-truth phenomenon. Its intent is to provide the philosophical world with a phantasm in which it can see not just the what of ‘historical engineering,’ but the why: to show the flaws of modern philosophy itself. The phantasm regards the most successful modern project of historical and social engineering: the Armenian Genocide. It includes both Turkey’s ‘historical engineering’ – its official policy of genocide negation – and the massive late Ottoman project of social and territorial engineering which led to the murder of the first Christian nation: Armenia.

Schmemann and Ricoeur

I'm delighted to see a paperback version of Brian Butcher's book appearing in February: Liturgical Theology after Schmemann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur (Fordham University Press, 2018), 360pp. Brian and I started in the doctoral program together at the Sheptytsky Institute when it was then (2002) based at Saint Paul University in Ottawa (prior to its move to the University of Toronto last summer).

About this book, which was Brian's doctoral dissertation, the publisher tells us the following:

While only rarely reflecting explicitly on liturgy, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) gave sustained attention to several themes pertinent to the interpretation of worship, including metaphor, narrative, subjectivity, and memory. Inspired by his well-known aphorism, “The symbol gives rise to thought,” Liturgical Theology after Schmemann offers an original exploration of the symbolic world of the Byzantine Rite, culminating in a Ricoeurian analysis of its Theophany “Great Blessing of Water.” 

The book examines two fundamental questions: 1) what are the implications of the philosopher’s oeuvre for liturgical theology at large? and (2) how does the adoption of a Ricoeurian hermeneutic shape the study of a particular rite? Taking the seminal legacy of Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983) as its point of departure, Butcher contributes to the renewal of contemporary Eastern Christian thought and ritual practice by engaging a spectrum of current theological and philosophical conversations.

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.

Bible Wars!

One of the most wonderfully provocative (there are many) of Stanley Hauerwas's books that I read a long time ago was his Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America, which begins by saying that no Bibles should be left lying about for untrained people to pick up and attempt to read for themselves. Hauerwas says nobody--not kids at their confirmation or graduation, not adults in church--should be able to just pick up a Bible and decide for himself what it means. We are all too corrupted by the reading habits of modernity to be able to do that and we need to submit to the Church to learn how to live in peace with one another before opening the Scriptures together under the authority of the Church.

That book came back to me in reading of a forthcoming study later this spring: Stephen Batalden, Russian Bible Wars: Modern Scriptural Translation and Cultural Authority (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 360pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Although biblical texts were known in Church Slavonic as early as the ninth century, translation of the Bible into Russian came about only in the nineteenth century. Modern scriptural translation generated major religious and cultural conflict within the Russian Orthodox church. The resulting divisions left church authority particularly vulnerable to political pressures exerted upon it in the twentieth century. Russian Bible Wars illuminates the fundamental issues of authority that have divided modern Russian religious culture. Set within the theoretical debate over secularization, the volume clarifies why the Russian Bible was issued relatively late and amidst great controversy. Stephen Batalden's study traces the development of biblical translation into Russian and of the 'Bible wars' that then occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Russia. The annotated bibliography of the Russian Bible identifies the different editions and their publication history.

Religion in the Thought of Mikhail Bakhtin

I recall clearly that when I began my undergraduate education in the 1990s, many academics in the humanities, especially English and psychology departments, were talking extensively about the hermeneutic potential of Mikhail Bakhtin. I read a bit of him in a fascinating course on psychoanalysis and literature in which we read some Russian writers, including Anton Chekhov, whose powerful and poignant short stories I have never forgotten. Since the 90s I have not heard Bakhtin discussed so much, and even when he was, I do not recall a great deal of attention being paid to his Russian Orthodox context. Along comes a new study of his thought that might reverse that: Hilary Bagshaw, Religion in the Thought of Mikhail Bakhtin: Reason and Faith (Ashgate, 2013), 176pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This book examines the significance of religion in the work of the twentieth century philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, Exploring Bakhtin's contribution to debates on methodology in the study of religion, this book argues that his use of religious terminology is derived from his source material in philosophy of religion and not from his confessional commitment to Russian Orthodox Christianity. Critiquing Gavin Flood's important work Beyond Phenomenology, Hilary Bagshaw explains how Bakhtin's work on 'outsideness' presents invaluable insights for scholars of religion, particularly pertinent to the contemporary insider/outsider debate.

John O'Malley on Councils and Popes

Those of you in northern Indiana, western Ohio, southern Michigan, or anywhere beyond who want to come to the University of Saint Francis in Ft. Wayne on Friday night will be able to hear a man whom many consider the premiere historian of the Catholic Church in our time:  the Jesuit historian John O'Malley of Georgetown University. The lecture begins at 7pm, and promises to be the highlight of our series of lectures commemorating the anniversary of Vatican II. (Further details of his lecture are in this PDF.)

From his Georgetown faculty page, we learn that he is a prolific and award-winning author recognized as such all over the globe:

John O’Malley’s specialty is the religious culture of early modern Europe, especially Italy. He has received best-book prizes from the American Historical Association, the American Philosophical Society, the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, and from the Alpha Sigma Nu franternity. His best known books are The First Jesuits (Harvard University Press, 1993), which has been translated into ten languages, and What Happened at Vatican II (Harvard, 2008). He has edited or co-edited a number of volumes....

John O’Malley has lectured widely in North America and Europe to both professional and general audiences. He has held a number of fellowships, from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and other academic organizations. He is past president of the Renaissance Society of America and of the American Catholic Historical Association. In 1995 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1997 to the American Philosophical Society, and in 2001 to the Accademia di san Carlo, Ambrosian Library, Milan, Italy. He holds the Johannes Quasten Medal from The Catholic University of America for distinguished achievement in Religious Studies, and he holds a number of honorary degrees. In 2002 he received the lifetime achievement award from the Society for Italian Historical Studies and in 2005 the corresponding award from the Renaissance Society of America. He is a Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Society of Jesus.

O'Malley is the author of several books, but will be in town in part to talk about his two most recent, both devoted to landmark councils of the Western Church, both of which have anniversaries this year: Trent: What Happened at the Council, which concluded 450 years ago this year; and of course What Happened at Vatican II, from 1962-65. Both of those councils had, of course, huge and dramatic consequences not only for the Catholic Church, but especially her relations with the Christian East. In the aftermath of Trent, and the creation of O'Malley's own Jesuit order, the Catholic Church rebounded in Eastern Europe and began, through a long, complicated process--best recounted in Boris Gudziak's splendid book, discussed here--what some Orthodox Christians see as improper incursions into what we today call Ukraine and Russia--and further East, also, creating problems for Orthodox Christians in places such as India and Ethiopia. If Trent seems--in the eyes of some--to have begun the dolorous process and period of "uniatism," creating such problems between East and West, particularly in areas under Hapsburg domination such as Galicia, then Vatican II undeniably and dramatically began to repair those relations and to allow East and West to begin the "dialogue of love" that has drawn both closer together.

Equally one can see a similar progression in Jesuit history and historiography, as O'Malley's celebrated confrere, Robert Taft, has noted: early Jesuits writing on and about Eastern Christianity tended to do so tendentiously with the prejudices of a high Tridentine triumphalism and aggressive apologetics (and often aggressive politics--which everyone in that period undertook: Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox powers all over Europe); but later Jesuits, including those like Taft, O'Malley, Juan Mateos, Michael Fahey, Samir Khalil Samir, and others in our time (especially those associated with the Pontifical Oriental Institute) have been utterly invaluable in narrating objectively and fairly Eastern Christian history, Catholic-Orthodox history and relations, Orthodox-Muslim relations, and much else besides. Some might chafe at having Orthodox history told by Catholics, but show me where the comparable Orthodox scholars are. In point of fact, if it is genuine history and not what Taft calls "confessional propaganda," then the ecclesial affiliation of the historian should matter very little if at all. And that is what these Jesuits--and others--are especially good at: telling history without regard for whose ox gets gored, or whose cause promoted. (For this reason, someone like Robert Taft was given the rare distinction of double-pectoral insignia by no less a figure than the Ecumenical Patriarch himself, who recognized that Taft had done work of signal service to liturgiology and Orthodoxy more widely. Many Orthodox themselves, when Taft was still teaching in Rome, went to him to do their doctorates because they knew he was the world's specialist on Byzantine liturgical history.)

For this reason also, however, some have cast suspicions on O'Malley for not promoting robustly enough the currently favored interpretations about Vatican II (Trent seems sufficiently distant and obscure that nobody cares much about it anymore). Though it makes me nearly comatose whenever I hear this debate starting up again, Catholics have for years been banging on about a "hermeneutics of continuity" vs. a "hermeneutics of rupture" in understanding Vatican II. As I noted here, in discussing Congar's history of ecclesiology and his diaries of Vatican II, it seems to me highly problematic that apologists for Vatican II want to insist that everything done by the council and in its aftermath was good and in impeccable continuity with previous practice and teaching, and no suspicion about the council can ever be raised. What a lot of nonsense that is. Though one needn't subscribe to the views of such as the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a group I find risible and repellent on most matters, one can nonetheless sympathize with their difficulty in reconciling what the council taught with what previous popes, for example, taught on certain questions not least because earlier papal (and even conciliar) teaching and practice was, in some instances, explicitly abandoned at Vatican II or otherwise greatly changed. 

One can, moreover, join with them in recognizing that not everything to come out of Vatican II succeeded. This is not and need not be a "controversial" position but an entirely human recognition of the vicissitudes of history and the complexities of any human gathering. Anybody who knows anything about any council of the Church--local, regional, or ecumenical; Eastern or Western--knows that some councils succeed, some fail (e.g., Ferrara-Florence), and most only succeed partially (Nicaea I was partially successful in dealing with Arianism, but Constantinople I was also required to deal with the heresy). Even the current pope has admitted that not all councils are successful, and that parts of Vatican II could not be counted an unmitigated success. Why can we not be honest about this? Why do apologists continue with their ham-fisted insistence that Vatican II really changed nothing that went before when it's manifestly obvious that it did? While major dogma (a category many people are likely unable to differentiate sufficiently from lesser matters, thus leading to the impression on the part of some Catholics that Vatican II basically created an entirely new Church--new Mass, new married diaconate, new liturgical rites and languages, etc.) may have been untouched, many other important matters did in fact change, and for the better--the Catholic Church's relationship with Israel, Islam, and the Christian East being the three greatest of those highly welcome changes, alongside new understandings of human rights, including religious freedom and Church-state relations.

Part of the answer to this question about why we cannot honestly admit to certain changes lies, I think, in what John Allen discusses so insightfully in his book All the Pope's Men: The Inside Story of How the Vatican Really Thinks. There Allen notes how much of Vatican thinking is governed by Italian cultural codes in which la bella figura must be maintained at all times in the face of any change, good or bad. The important thing is to look lovely and undisturbed. One mustn't startle the horses. (As the fictional Prime Minister Jim Hacker puts it in the hilarious British comedy Yes, Prime Minister, when he's asked to appoint a bishop in the Church of England, the Church "mustn't look political" even when it is.)

O'Malley has himself told the history of the popes in another recent book, which I reviewed elsewhere: A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present. This is a very solid, reliable, even-handed telling of the history of the longest continual office of governance in the Western world and its colorful incumbents. It is difficult to compress 2000 years of history into one book, but O'Malley has managed that in a way that is both erudite and accessible. About this book the publisher tells us: 

A History of the Popes tells the story of the oldest living institution in the Western world—the papacy. From its origins in Saint Peter, Jesus' chief disciple, through Pope Benedict XVI today, the popes have been key players in virtually all of the great dramas of the western world in the last two thousand years. Acclaimed church historian John W. O'Malley's engaging narrative examines the 265 individuals who have claimed to be Peter's successors. Rather than describe each pope one by one, the book focuses on the popes that shaped pivotal moments in both church and world history. The author does not shy away from controversies in the church, and includes legends like Pope Joan and a comprehensive list of popes and antipopes to help readers get a full picture of the papacy. This simultaneously reverent yet critical book will appeal to readers interested in both religion and history as it chronicles the saints and sinners who have led the Roman Catholic Church over the past 2000 years.

Greek Scriptures and Greek Fathers

Hendrickson Publishers continues to publish numerous reference books of interest to readers of the Septuagint and the Greek Fathers. Among those they have recently sent me include Rodney A. Whitacre, A Patristic Greek Reader.

More recently I have received Gary Alan Chamberlain, The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon (2011), 304pp. About this book the publisher tells us:

For New Testament students and scholars who want to fully exegete the Septuagint, this lexicon will be a welcome addition to their libraries. Used in conjunction with the New Testament (NT) lexicon they already possess, The Greek of the Septuagint: A Supplemental Lexicon will bridge the gap with additional information that's needed to translate the Septuagint. While those who have learned the Greek of the New Testament possess the grammatical skills necessary to read Septuagint Greek, the vocabulary found in the Septuagint differs sufficiently from both that found in the NT and that found in Classical Greek, so that a specialized lexicon is not just of great help, but essential.

Finally, Maurice Robinson and Mark House have edited a revised and updated edition of their Analytical Lexicon of New Testament Greek (2012), 506pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The Analytical Lexicon of New Testament Greek is an invaluable resource for the study of the Greek New Testament. Based on a completely updated and corrected computer database, this new edition provides a detailed grammatical analysis (parsing) of each Greek word in the New Testament- information essential for correct translation and interpretation. A host of additional features make the Analytical Lexicon an essential addition to the library of any biblical student or scholar

Interpreting the Bible in Late Antiquity

As I noted before, conflicts over interpretation of Scripture are very commonplace at any point in Christian history.  A new book takes us back to some very early debates over how to understand Scripture, and the regional differences in those understandings: Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity: the Alexandria Commentary Tradition between Rome and Baghdad, eds., Josef Lössl and John W. Watt (Ashgate, 2011, 360pp).

About this book, the publisher tells us the following, supplying also the contents:

This book brings together sixteen studies by internationally renowned scholars on the origins and early development of the Latin and Syriac biblical and philosophical commentary traditions. It casts light on the work of the founder of philosophical biblical commentary, Origen of Alexandria, and traces the developments of fourth- and fifth-century Latin commentary techniques in writers such as Marius Victorinus, Jerome and Boethius. The focus then moves east, to the beginnings of Syriac philosophical commentary and its relationship to theology in the works of Sergius of Reshaina, Probus and Paul the Persian, and the influence of this continuing tradition in the East up to the Arabic writings of al-Farabi. There are also chapters on the practice of teaching Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy in fifth-century Alexandria, on contemporaneous developments among Byzantine thinkers, and on the connections in Latin and Syriac traditions between translation (from Greek) and commentary.

With its enormous breadth and the groundbreaking originality of its contributions, this volume is an indispensable resource not only for specialists, but also for all students and scholars interested in late-antique intellectual history, especially the practice of teaching and studying philosophy, the philosophical exegesis of the Bible, and the role of commentary in the post-Hellenistic world as far as the classical renaissance in Islam.

Contents: Introduction, Josef Lössl and John Watt.Part 1 Alexandria to Rome: Origen: exegesis and philosophy in early Christian Alexandria, Alfons Fürst; Prologue topics and translation problems in Latin commentaries on Paul, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe; Ambrosiaster's method of interpretation in the Questions on the Old and New Testament, Marie-Pierre Bussières; Philosophical exegesis in Marius Victorinus' Commentaries on Paul, Stephen Cooper; Jerome's Pauline commentaries between East and West: tradition and innovation in the Commentary on Galatians, Andrew Cain; The Bible and Aristotle in the controversy between Augustine and Julian of Aeclanum, Josef Lössl; Boethius as a translator and Aristotelian commentator, Sten Ebbesen.

Part 2 Alexandria to Baghdad: Translating the personal aspect of late Platonism in the commentary tradition, Edward Watts; Aristotelianism and the disintegration of the late Antique theological discourse, Dirk Krausmüller; Sergius of Reshaina as translator: the case of the De Mundo, Adam McCollum; Sergius of Reshaina and pseudo-Dionysius: a dialectical fidelity, Emiliano Fiori; The commentator Probus: problems of date and identity, Sebastian Brock; Du commentaire à la reconstruction: Paul le Perse interprète d'Aristote (sur une lecture du Peri Hermeneias, à propos des modes et des adverbes selon Paul, Ammonius et Boèce), Henri Hugonnard-Roche; The genesis and development of a logical lexicon in the Syriac tradition, Daniel King; From Sergius to Matta: Aristotle and pseudo-Dionysius in Syriac tradition, John Watt; Al-Farabi's arguments for the eternity of the world and the contingency of natural phenomena, Philippe Vallat; Bibliography; Indexes.

Author Interview: Fr. Oliver Herbel

Earlier I drew attention to the recent publication of a new book by the American priest and historian Oliver Herbel. I interviewed him about his new book, and here are his thoughts:

AD: Tell us a bit about your background, including your other writing projects, blog, and work on American Orthodox history. 

My background is fairly “ecumenical.”  I was baptized as a Lutheran and also later confirmed as a Lutheran.  At times, we attended a Methodist parish and in high school I attended a Presbyterian parish.  In college, I met my future wife, who was Lutheran, and we began attending church together.  I graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN, went on to earn an MA in the history of Christianity from Luther Seminary, an M.Div. from St. Vladimir’s Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Saint Louis University (SLU).  I was not church-shopping outside of the Lutheran church, but I learned about Orthodoxy from professors at Concordia College and became Orthodox while yet a student at Luther Seminary. 

At SLU, I initially was interested in the early church period but developed a strong interest in American Christianity.  I have published articles on both early church and Byzantine topics as well as American topics.  I currently have a couple of forthcoming book chapters on American Orthodoxy.  I am writing an article on the Federated Orthodox Greek Catholic Primary Jurisdictions in America, a 1942-1943 predecessor to SCOBA; and editing my dissertation with the intention of publishing an edited version as a book.  I am also editing some research notes on iconography that I have had to gather over the years for various speaking engagements and class lectures, with the intention of publishing a book geared toward a more “popular” audience.  I also have some other future projects in mind, but they will remain on the back burner for some time, I’m afraid. 


I am involved with the Orthodox History blog. That is the website for the Society for Orthodox Christian History in the Americas (SOCHA).  Matthew Namee and others do much of the writing on that site, though.  My main efforts with SOCHA involve the academic end such as the symposium we held this fall or the establishment of a peer-reviewed electronic journal. I did have a blog for a while that concentrated on historical theology, but it took too much time.  I do keep up a parish blog, which this is much less involved.

AD: Your publisher's blurb notes that Serapion of Thmuis has remained in "relative obscurity." How is it, then, that you first found out about him and were drawn to write about him?

I first learned of St. Sarapion in a liturgical theology class at St. Vladimir’s Seminary.  His euchologion, or collection of prayers, has been studied and I was intrigued by them.  For example, in the Eucharist and at Baptism, rather than praying for the Holy Spirit’s descent, the Word of God was asked to descend.  I looked into him a little more and learned that St. Antony the Great willed one of his two cloaks to Sarapion.  The other he had willed to St. Athanasios the Great.  St. Athanasios’ letters to a “Sarapion” were, in fact, written to this same Sarapion and this led me to research whether any of Sarapion’s own writings were still extant.  Some are: two complete letters, a treatise against Manichaeans, and a letter partially preserved, written to Antony’s disciples.  

There are also a few quotes (from sources no longer extant) found in the works of others.  The partially preserved letter had been translated into French, which I think most English readers can quickly learn to read, but the two complete letters remained only in Greek and the treatise was in Greek and German.  By this point, I was curious about this “mystery saint,” if you will, and the secondary literature only piqued my interest.  There seemed to be some disagreement on whether his biblical interpretation was “Alexandrian” (allegorical) or “Antiochene” (tending toward typology and literalism).  I was also fascinated by his connection to the monks of the desert (one of his extant letters is addressed to a group of such monks) and intrigued by his notion of Hades/hell as a place of purgation, or education.  Once I started translating him, I also quickly realized just how indebted to Stoicism he had been.  Of course, all early church fathers were so indebted, but Sarapion especially so.

AD: For whom did you write the book--did you have a particular audience in mind?

The book is, admittedly, primarily for an academic audience.  The first part of the book consists of an introduction to Sarapion’s thought, focusing on his biblical interpretation and use of Stoic philosophy.  I also argue for the authenticity of Sarapion’s authorship of the Letter to the Monks.  Klaus Fitschen, the only the other contemporary scholar to have devoted a book-length manuscript to Sarapion, argued against Sarapion’s authorship of the letter, but for reasons I give in the book, I think we would do well to follow the manuscript tradition in accepting Sarapion’s authorship.  The second portion of the book consists of Sarapion’s own writings—the two letters and the treatise.  The treatise itself is the sort of writing that will tend to interest scholars primarily as it’s an extended theological argument and not a spiritual reflection of the kind that would garner a large popular readership today.  All that said, my choir director read through the book I donated to our parish and he found some portions of the treatise to be well worth the read.  So, I really do think anyone who is theologically informed would get something out of the book. 

AD: As I have noted before, there seems to be a very great interest in the Desert Fathers and Mothers today if the number of recent books is anything to go by. Why do you think that is? What wisdom do figures like Serapion and others in the desert have that people are looking for today?

I think there are many reasons people today are interested in the Desert Fathers.  I think some people hearken back to them in a nostalgic/romantic sort of way—as though they represent some lost time of real, vital spirituality and spiritual warfare.  Others, I believe, see the Desert Fathers as representing a real spirituality not in a nostalgic sort of way, but rather in a timeless way.  Such people see the Desert Fathers as being applicable even in today’s setting, despite the radically divergent historical contexts.  

Of course, there are also those who simply find many of the stories wild and fantastic, and many stories are, but I think most people fall into one of the first two categories, at least from what I can tell.  Personally, I think there is much that is yet relevant.  In St. Sarapion’s case, I think his view of hell is one that will be thought-provoking, especially in light of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (which has caused a stir amongst Evangelicals) or even Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective by Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev.  Additionally, Sarapion’s writings are important for studying early Christian biblical interpretation—for noting how the “Scriptures” meant what we call “the Old Testament” and how the Trinitarian Christian message was found to be present within those Scriptures.  I also believe there is much practical wisdom, even though the writings I translated are not “sayings” from St. Sarapion.  For example, his emphasis on free will and his reminder that Christians are not dualists.  I even find his Letter to the Monks to be important as a reminder that the prayers of our monastics have cosmological significance—the ongoing cycle of prayers help sustain the universe.

AD: Are there things in Serapion's Pastoral Letters that you would recommend to pastors to read today? Are there things you would not recommend? 

I think both of Sarapion’s letters are worthy pastoral reading.  The Letter to the Monks is a praise of the monastic life and a reminder of the ascetic devotion to which monastics are called as well as a reminder of the power of prayer.  I also think that many of things for which Sarapion praises the monks may be adopted by all Christians.  The Letter to Bishop Eudoxios is a reminder that we should not let our bouts with illnesses get us down but we should remember that we have our hope in God no matter how dire our circumstances.  
There is nothing I would not recommend that pastors read today, because I think pastors should be grounded in the fathers of the church and certainly shouldn’t be reading only what they happen to like in a particular father. This does not mean, however, that everything he wrote can have a direct application today.  For example, at one point in his Letter to the Monks, Sarapion wrote an aside describing how complicated and bad and pathetic things can be for one who has chosen to raise a family in the world.  Without a context permeated by Christianized Stoicism, this can be a difficult passage to accept and I do not find it readily applicable to the average parishioner in America.  A heightened view of a single, chaste, monastic life has roots in St. Paul’s writings and continues on down throughout church history but most Americans live in cities and towns with families in a culture that presumes family life is the norm and is a good thing.  Whether St. Sarapion would have written or spoken otherwise for Christians living in Thmuis, the city in which he was the bishop, we may never know, but I suspect he did.  I think this example I’ve chosen to highlight can serve as a reminder to keep in mind a writing’s context when assessing applicability to contemporary life. 

AD: Were there any surprises as you were writing--unexpected discoveries, developments you were not expecting?

His extended discussion of the Book of Judith in his Against the Manichaeans caught me off guard.  I knew it was read by Christians, of course, as it is scripture, but hadn’t run across a lengthy discussion of that book in a theological treatise before.  I also found myself becoming sympathetic to Sarapion’s view of hell and how he grounded that view in free will.  Prior to translating his treatise, I did not have any sympathy toward that view, which I would now call “purgative inclusivism.”  What changed my perception was a realization that Sarapion’s position could not be reduced to mere “Origenism,” and, more importantly, that his view was grounded in a dual belief in God’s unrelenting mercy and humanity’s capacity for free will even after the fall.  Finally, I was surprised at how Sarapion’s biblical interpretation fit so well with some central themes found in Fr. John Behr’s The Way to Nicaea. Sarapion post-dates the second century, but there are some real parallels between how St. Irenaeus responds to Valentinianism and how Sarapion responds to Manichaeism.

AD: The Manicheans continue to provoke interest today among some, especially those for whom "heresy" seems but an expression of a "will to power" over ideological enemies. Remind us who the Manicheans were in Serapion's context and why he opposed them. 

The Manichaeans were a real threat to the existence of the Church at that time.  Mani was the third-century founder of the religion and seems to have been raised as a member of some sort of Gnostic sect.  Mani’s dualistic tendencies resonated with many and his belief that some are the elect and that such elect lived a hyper-ascetic form of life enabled Manichaeans to infiltrate Christian monasteries at the time.  Manichaeism taught that the cosmos was filled with trapped portions of light from the good kingdom, which the evil kingdom had trapped in matter. Jesus was a savior figure for Manichaeism but in the sense of being sent to inform people of this trapped light. I suppose one could argue for a Nietzschean (“will to power”) interpretation of how Christianity came to view and defeat Manichaeism.  Some pieces of history would fit such an interpretation.  Manichaeism becomes outlawed within the Byzantine Empire because it was viewed as a “Persian” religion, and indeed, a Persian religion directly antagonistic toward Christianity.  

Also, one might view treatises such as Sarapion’s treatise or the slightly earlier pastoral letter against Manichaeism by Patriarch Theonas of Alexandria as examples of the church exerting a will to power over the Manichaeans.  I think that interpretation does an injustice to the actual difficulties on the ground, however.  Such letters and treatises were written in order to present real arguments in a lively and complicated theological context.  Furthermore, Sarapion’s biblical interpretation proves to be so consistent with the general Christian response to Gnosticism and Marcionism that I think it’s much more accurate to read Sarapion’s treatise as continuing a tradition of biblical interpretation rather than seeing it simply as an expression of exerting power.  Related to this, incidentally, is the generally accepted practice amongst scholars to call Gnostics and even Manichaeans “Christians,” a phenomenon to which I do respond in my introduction.  I honestly think the contemporary fascination with Gnostic Christianity has to do with a desire by some to find some romantic, nostalgic form of tolerant, enlightened Christianity.  For others, I think the fascination exists because defending Gnosticism can be a means of attacking the current expressions of Christianity.  If one removes these two motivations, one greatly narrows the number of people interested in Gnosticism.

AD: Conflicts over biblical interpretation are as old as Christianity itself. Your book examines Serapion's biblical hermeneutics. Does he offer us any hermeneutical guidance today?

I think Sarapion’s biblical interpreation is a reminder that we Orthodox (and frankly, all Christians) need to make sure we side-step the whole parameters of biblical interpretation that were solidified in the late nineteenth century between liberal scholarly uses of the various critical methods on the one hand or a dogged insistence upon a particular literal reading on the other.  Those parameters inevitably lead to things like the Scopes Monkey Trial.  We can, should, and must do better than that.  Indeed, the same kind of Christocentric, Trinitarian reading of the Scriptures that St. Sarapion performed may be found throughout Eastern Christian hymnography. 

AD: Sum up briefly for us what the main contents and arguments of the book.

The Introduction discusses Sarapion’s historical context, his hermeneutics in the treatise (with sub sections describing the Stoic elements, the Christocentric dimension, and free will), and the two letters, with discussions of the concept of suffering, the hermeneutics in the letters, and an argument for Sarapion’s authorship of the Letter to the Monks.  A translation of those writings, a select bibliography, and an index conclude the book. 

That Bloody Fig Tree and Those Damned Pharisees

Bernard Lonergan, whose turgid and rather Teutonic prose I had to plow through once in attempting to read his massively prolix Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, says in there somewhere that we are mistaken if we think that the process of understanding a difficult matter (I think he uses physics as an example) consists in simply "taking a good look" at what he calls the "already-out-there-now-real." Nowhere is that insight more important to remember than when it comes to reading Scripture. How often have we all had the experience of suffering through some hermeneutically ham-fisted dolt proof-texting an issue about which he knows less than nothing--an experience by no means confined to Christian scriptures, but also a problem, on an often larger and more lethal scale, when it comes to understanding the Quran. For Christians like that, I always prescribe a mandatory reading of Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America. There, with his characteristic swashbuckling style, Hauerwas demonstrates that he is the one for whom Kierkegaard called:

a reformation which did away with the Bible would now be just as valid as Luther’s doing away with the Pope.... [N]o one any longer reads the Bible humanly. As a result it does immeasurable harm.... The Bible Societies, those vapid caricatures...which like all companies only work with money and are just as mundanely interested in spreading the Bible as other companies in their enterprises: the Bible Societies have done immeasurable harm. Christendom has long been in need of a hero who, in fear and trembling before God, had the courage to forbid people to read the Bible (The Journals of Kierkegaard). 

Hauerwas does indeed call for the Bible to be forbidden to people:

Most North American Christians assume that they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. North American Christians are trained to believe that they are capable of reading the Bible without spiritual and moral transformation. They read the Bible not as Christians, not as a people set apart, but as democratic citizens who think their “common sense” is sufficient to “understanding” the Scripture. They feel no need to stand under a truthful community to be told how to read. Instead they assume that they have all the “religious experience” necessary to know what the Bible is about (Unleashing the Scripture). 

Hauerwas then goes on to insist that nobody can be trusted to read the Bible until they have undergone the hard askesis of being divested of the habits of mind of late modernity and learned instead to discipline themselves in and under the authority of the Church as a community of character made up of resident aliens.

All this is just a long-winded introduction to a new book that treats those passages in the New Testament rightly called the "difficult sayings" of Jesus Christ, which people often interpret at their peril: Daniel Fanous, Taught by God: Making Sense of the Difficult Sayings of Jesus (Orthodox Research Institute, 2010), 260pp.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

Few would dispute that the sayings of Jesus were and are important. But though important, these very same sayings are difficult at best and incomprehensible at worst. Sayings like, "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence," or, "I did not come to bring peace but a sword," have confused readers of the Gospels for thousands of years. Others such as, "My Father is greater than I," and, "My God why have You forsaken Me?" have sparked theological infernos that have plagued Christianity from its beginnings. From the greatest theologians to the smallest child, the same question is always asked: What did Jesus really mean? In considering only the most difficult of the sayings of Jesus, Taught by God brings together the academic rigour of modern biblical scholarship and the profound wisdom of the early Church Fathers in a unique, lively, and dramatic synthesis.

I hope to interview the author of this book in the new year.  

Greek Patristic and Orthodox Interpretations of Romans

Great are the numbers of commentaries on Romans by prominent theologians ancient and modern. But in the modern period, Eastern studies of this text are not as numerous nor as prominent as, e.g., Karl Barth's famous studies of this text.  Early next year a new collection will help to fill in this gap: Daniel Patte and Christine Kelly, eds., Greek Patristic and Eastern Orthodox Interpretations of Romans (Romans Through History & Culture) (T&T Clark/Continuum, 2012), 224pp.

About this book, the publisher says:

This collection of essays integrates scholarly and scriptural interpretations, Eastern Orthodox biblical scholarship, together with biblical interpretations throughout church history. Unlike the Western interpretations that read Romans in terms of theological anthropology, the Greek Fathers do not presuppose such a concept and therefore each of the articles in this volume invites Western scholars and students to re-read Paul's letter with new eyes: with a greater sensitivity to the nuances of the Greek text; with an openness to envision what Paul is saying from very different theological and hermeneutical perspectives; and with the awareness that the Greek Fathers addressed particular contextual issues of their time.

The publisher has also helpfully provides us a detailed table of contents: 

• Introduction/Vasile Mihoc, Facultatea de Teologie 'Andrei Saguna', Sibiu, Romania. 
• Basic Principles of Orthodox Biblical Hermeneutics as Rooted in the Greek Fathers' Interpretation/Daniel Patte, Vanderbilt University. 
• How the Essays in this Volume Complement Each Other/Matthew W. Bates, University of Notre Dame. 
• Prosopographic Exegesis and Narrative Logic: Paul, Origen, and Theodoret of Cyrus on Psalm 69:22-23/Steven DiMattei, University of Houston. 
• Adam, an Image of the Future Economy: Romans 5:14 in the Context of Irenaeus' Christological Exegesis of Genesis 1:26/Archbishop Demetrios [Trakatellis], Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America. 
• "Being Transformed": Chrysostom's Exegesis of the Epistle to the Romans/Vasile Mihoc, Theological School Sibiu. 
• St. Paul and the Jews in John Chrysostom's Commentary on Romans 9-11/George Kalantzis, Wheaton College. 
• The Voice So Dear to Me: Themes From Romans in Theodore, Chrysostom, and Theodoret/Bruce Lowe, Macquarie University-Sydney. 
• What Does Proecho Really Echo in Romans 3.9? Re-evaluating Arethas & Photius' 9th-10th Century Greek Interpretations/Stelian Tofana, Babes Bolayi University. 
• The Interdependency between Destiny, Humankind and Creation According to Rom. 8:18-23: An Orthodox-Patristic Perspective/Conclusion/Daniel Patte, Vanderbilt University. 
• Some of the Theological/Hermeneutical, Contextual, and Analytical/Textual Choices Made by Greek Fathers and Eastern Orthodox Interpreters of Romans
• Biographies of contributors
• Indices

Nonsense on Stilts

This is a book so inexorably committed to proving its prejudices correct, and so completely immune to any evidence to the contrary, that only that most fatuous of creatures, an American politician-bureaucrat, could have produced it. Normally such a book would be best passed over in silence but because it has already generated considerable publicity, and because it gives so much attention to Eastern Christianity, critical scrutiny must be paid to  

Graham E. Fuller, A World Without Islam (Little, Brown & Co., 2010), 328pp.


The author embodies something the great moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre noted thirty years ago: modernity is the period par excellence when blind "experts" acclaim their own ability to see. Fuller thinks he has seen a great deal of history of the relations between Eastern Christians and Muslims, and of the wider Eastern and Western Christian relationship. But only a tiny portion of this book can be seen as history in any serious sense of the word. This book is, rather, a exercise of fantasy in which the author asks:

if there had never been an Islam, if a Prophet Muhammad had never emerged from the deserts of Arabia, if there had been no saga of the spread of Islam across vast parts of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, wouldn't the relationship between the West and the Middle East today be entirely different? No, I argue, it might actually be quite similar to what we see today (4).

This book, then, is an exercise of the author's imagination ("this book is an argument, not a narrative" and an "hypothetical argument" at that [15; his emphasis]) in which he claims, moreover, that "there are excellent grounds for imagining that Orthodox Christianity today could have served as a religious and ideological springboard for crystallizing the grievances of the Middle East against the West" (12-13). Thus do we see revealed at the outset Fuller's plaidoyer that he will press relentlessly for the rest of the book: Islam is not and never has been the problem, and he defends it in all the usual ways one finds among today's bien-pensants.

There are two major types of problem with this book: factual and methodological. Both are present in such abundance that I fail to see how this book was subjected to any kind of editorial review, least of all by competent scholars. It would be tedious to list all the problems with this book, so I will confine myself to the first eight (of fourteen) chapters, for here we have the author's treatment of Christian history in general, and of Eastern Christianity in particular.

Let us begin with the methodological problems. The first concerns Fuller's methods of research--or, rather, lack thereof. Fuller, who presents himself--on the front and back covers--as some kind of expert (the "former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, a former senior political scientist at RAND, and a current adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University") insouciantly tells us he couldn't be bothered to do any actual research for his book:

this is a book about ideas and alternative ways of thinking about them. I have not attempted to "prove" or to document an alternative history....The arguments in this book are based on my own thinking...over a very long period of time....I have turned to mainstream reference materials primarily for dates, for refining my memory, and for additional details pertinent to this alternative reading of East-West conflict, which diminishes the centrality of religion per se--as opposed to so many other formative factors in history. In this case, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Encyclopedia of Islam, and the ever-sharpening online resource Wikipedia have been helpful in establishing some general details of events (p.307). 

This would be unobjectionable if indeed Fuller had confined himself simply to a speculative exercise. Then we could have enjoyed his opéra bouffe--a harmless and amusing means to wile away an afternoon before getting back to the real world.  But Fuller, instead of proffering a little light fantasy, leapt furiously into the fray of history, presenting more than half of his text not as a "what if" but as a "what happened," that is, an ostensibly truthful, factual, accurate retelling of early Christian and later Christian-Muslim history as well as Eastern Christianity in its pre-modern and modern forms. Fuller has, as far as I can tell, no scholarly background in Christianity, least of all Eastern Christianity, nor any serious training as an historian. In fact, I find no evidence whatsoever that he holds a doctorate in any discipline, has ever held a serious academic post, or has ever published in serious scholarly journals or by serious scholarly presses.

His lack of credentials are not, however,  the real issue. In fact, too many people have too much faith in them. (Churchill, who never went to university, wrote very important and influential multi-volume histories of both World War I and II.) If Fuller wants to play at being an historian, then let us pay him the respect of evaluating his work on such terms.

Lesser men, trying to tell an enormously complex bi-millennial history when faced with so many glaring gaps in their knowledge, might, at the very least, have bestirred themselves to read even a few standard scholarly works on Eastern Christianity, Eastern Christian history, early Christian history, Orthodoxy, the Byzantine State and Empire, Christian history, Christian doctrinal debates, the ecumenical councils, the formation of the creeds, the events leading to the East-West schism, the rise and many transformations in the long history of the papacy, Eastern Christianity's encounter with Islam and its resulting diminishment and relegation to dhimmi status, the Crusades and their uses and abuses, and dozens and dozens of similar books on related matters relevant to his thesis, but not Fuller. All he needs is merely to "refine his memory." But how can one refine memories of what one neither knew nor understood in the first place?  

In addition to ignoring enormous bodies of scholarly literature, Fuller insists on seeing everything through an utterly simplistic, reductionistic lens of power. In an age where humanities departments regularly pay obeisance to Nietzsche (however misunderstood) and Foucault (however absurd), this should not surprise us. Thus, for Fuller, "most of what passes for 'religious issues' are not truly about religion at all" (17): "In the end I hope to persuade the reader that the present crisis of East-West relations, or between the West and 'Islam,' has really very little to do with religion and everything to do with political and cultural frictions, interest, rivalries, and clashes" (16). A little later on, he insists that "in the case of the Middle East and its religions, it is not the theology that really represents the source of conflict" (37). Fuller is undoubtedly right to note that there are other factors--political, cultural, geographical, economic--at work in various conflicts, ancient and modern, in the area, but to quarantine theology the way he does, and to refuse to consider theological arguments at all, is grossly irresponsible. He simply refuses to consider  that--as the old saw has it--if you spend an hour discussing politics in the Middle East, you have ipso facto just spent sixty minutes discussing religion. Why should this be so hard to perceive? Why should Fuller work so tirelessly to deny this? Why must he endlessly insist that theological questions--above all Christian theological questions (for Islamic theology, replete with many quotes from the Quran, is always treated respectfully)--are all "arcane" or "unbelievably arcane" (73)? For Fuller, all theological questions are to be seen "strictly as a prerogative of power" (39; his emphasis). This allows him to begin rhyming off a list of jaw-dropping factual errors such as:

• "church and state in Christianity have been far more closely tied over most of Christian history than was ever the case in Islam" (41; his emphasis). 
• nobody who had any grasp of Christian history, East or West, would ever say this, but what is truly astonishing is just how vast and deep Fuller's ignorance of Islam is here. As Bernard Lewis (whom Fuller mentions once, only to dismiss him by means of his favorite sneer: "neoconservative") has shown not only in his most recent book but over his lifetime of scholarship, "church and state" are not merely "closely tied" in Islam: they are fused as one. 
• the very notion of a separation between church and state is an inherently Christian one coming from no less a figure than Jesus Christ Himself. 
• Fuller asserts that with the legalization of Christianity, "doctrine was now to fall directly under state control" (45), allowing the emperors to determine "orthodoxy" or "heresy."
• While this myth of imperial control has certainly been popular, it was long ago debunked by the historian Francis Dvornik in his "Emperors, Popes, and General Councils," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 6 (1951): 1-23; and more generally in his books on the councils and the papacy. Basing himself on the 1931 study of Constantine by N.H. Baynes, Dvornik showed convincingly that Constantine was not a power-mad despot simply using Christianity to advance his own agenda but a sincerely convicted believer concerned about truth (a notion utterly foreign to Fuller). Dvornik--and others since then--further showed that Constantine, and the other emperors, never had the kind of power to dictate doctrine that many have falsely attributed to them. Caesaropapism, in a word, is bunk.
• Repeatedly Fuller claims, without, of course, the slightest hint of evidence, that the Christological controversies of the early Church, especially those arising out of Chalcedon, are still "without consensus and still roil the ranks of Christianity" (47). More strongly still he later insists that "debate over Christ's true nature could never, and has never, been fully laid to rest in any kind of Christian consensus" (56). This is just silly. Chalcedon generated considerable consensus from which there has been very little deviation down to the present day. And even the divide occasioned by Chalcedon was never as wide as many imagined and has largely been overcome in our day, leaving almost all Christians on the same page Christologically.
• Anachronisms abound in this book. E.g., he asserts that the split of 1054 was motivated because "the Orthodox Church also rejected the 'new' Roman concepts of the Immaculate Conception of Mary" (73). That Latin doctrine was not even on the radar, let alone discussed and formally promulgated for another 800 years. 
• his treatment of Orthodoxy in the Ottoman empire (p.74) totally overlooks the millet system even though there is a Wikipedia entry on it....
• his treatment of the papacy links that institution's development to early Christological debates, claiming that "the doctrinal struggle over Jesus's nature...lay at the very foundation of the pope's claim to power. If Jesus was solely Divine [sic] in nature, then how could the pope legitimately claim to be the 'vicar of Christ'?" (83). I've written and especially read acres of papal history--silly and serious--and much else on the office, and not even the silliest and most jejune of commentators has ever come close to making a claim this absurd.
• he claims that "in 2001, Pope John Paul II expressed his sorrow to the Orthodox Church [for the Fourth Crusade] in his first visit to Orthodox territory, in Romania" (106). But the pope went to Romania in 1999. And the papal apology for the harm of the Crusades came in May 2001 in Athens, Greece. This is grade-school stuff. Does Little, Brown no longer employ fact-checkers or copy editors--or anyone capable of calling up the Vatican website to verify a few things?
• his treatment of the Nikonian reforms in Russia (p.123) shows no understanding whatsoever of the issues involved, which he treats, predictably, as nothing more or other than state politics.

I could go on and on, but let me end with my two favorite side-splitting howlers:

• "the West allowed musical instruments in the rites of Western churches, supplanting the strict Gregorian plainsong chants of the Eastern rite. In architecture, the West abandoned the traditional domed Orthodox church design--later absorbed into the design of many Muslim mosques--and adopted what was seen in Orthodox eyes to be the seemingly 'harsher and sharper' lines of Gothic architecture" (157; my emphasis). 
• Is this for real? There are are so many errors here one scarcely knows where to begin....
• But the absolute best line in the book is the author's claim, in discussing the controversy, since 1991, over Eastern Catholics in Ukraine: this Fuller describes as "the bitter so-called Uniate controversy, still ongoing, between Catholicism and Orthodoxy over who should control the Nestorian and Monophysite [sic] churches in Ukraine and Belorussia" (160; my emphasis). 

This, as Jesuit casuists of the old school used to say, is but the most egregious example of "invincible ignorance." And to think that this is the kind of "expert" "intelligence" the CIA was receiving!  I should consider hiring myself out to them.