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.

Human Rights in Egypt, Israel, and India

All three countries treated in this book have very old and very significant Eastern Christian populations that have, in at least one case (Egypt) been badly treated for much of their history: Yuksel Sezgin, Human Rights under State-Enforced Religious Family Laws in Israel, Egypt and India (Cambridge UP, 2013), 322pp.


About this book we are told:

About one-third of the world's population currently lives under pluri-legal systems where governments hold individuals subject to the purview of ethno-religious rather than national norms in respect to family law. How does the state-enforcement of these religious family laws impact fundamental rights and liberties? What resistance strategies do people employ in order to overcome the disabilities and limitations these religious laws impose upon their rights? Based on archival research, court observations and interviews with individuals from three countries, Yüksel Sezgin shows that governments have often intervened in order to impress a particular image of subjectivity upon a society, while people have constantly challenged the interpretive monopoly of courts and state-sanctioned religious institutions, re-negotiated their rights and duties under the law, and changed the system from within. He also identifies key lessons and best practices for the integration of universal human rights principles into religious legal systems.

Experiencing Byzantium

Recently released by Ashgate, as the eighteenth volume of their series Publications of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, is a collection of essays edited by Claire Nesbitt and Mark Johnson: Experiencing Byzantium: Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011 (Ashgate, 2013), 390pp. This volume contains some well-known name in Orthodox theology as well as Byzantine studies. About this book we are told:

From the reception of imperial ekphraseis in Hagia Sophia to the sounds and smells of the back streets of Constantinople, the sensory perception of Byzantium is an area that lends itself perfectly to an investigation into the experience of the Byzantine world. The theme of experience embraces all aspects of Byzantine studies and the Experiencing Byzantium symposium brought together archaeologists, architects, art historians, historians, musicians and theologians in a common quest to step across the line that divides how we understand and experience the Byzantine world and how the Byzantines themselves perceived the sensual aspects of their empire and also their faith, spirituality, identity and the nature of ‘being’ in Byzantium.

The papers in this volume derive from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held for the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies by the University of Newcastle and University of Durham, at Newcastle upon Tyne in April 2011. They are written by a group of international scholars who have crossed disciplinary boundaries to approach an understanding of experience in the Byzantine world.

Contents: Editors' preface; Experiencing Byzantium, Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson; Section I Experiencing Art: Things: art and experience in Byzantium, Liz James; Repetition and replication: sacred and secular patterned textiles, Warren T. Woodfin. Section II Experiencing Faith: Experiencing the sacred, Béatrice Caseau; Experiencing the liturgy in Byzantium, Andrew Louth; Different approaches to an early Byzantine monument: Procopius and Ibn Battuta on the church of St John at Ephesos, Nikolas Karydis. Section III Experiencing Landscape: Locating Byzantine monasteries. Spatial considerations and strategies in the rural landscape, Nikolas Bakirtzis; Experiencing politiko: new methodologies for analysing the landscape of a rural Byzantine society, Katie Green; Processing emotion: litanies in Byzantine Constantinople, Vicky Manolopoulou. Section IV Experiencing Ritual: The cross of light: experiencing divine presence in Byzantine Syria, Heather Hunter-Crawley; Experiencing mid-Byzantine mortuary practice: shrouding the dead, Sophie V. Moore. Section V Experiencing Self: How Icelanders experienced Byzantium, real and imagined, Scott Ashley; Experiencing physical beauty in Byzantium: the body and the ideal, Myrto Hatzaki; Experiencing self: how mid-Byzantine historians presented their experience, Dion C. Smythe. Section VI Experiencing Stories: Experiencing the Byzantine text, experiencing the Byzantine tent, Margaret Mullett; Sensing ascension in early Byzantium, Georgia Frank; From Earth to Heaven: the changing musical soundscape of Byzantine liturgy, Alexander Lingas; Index.

The Orthodox Church in the Arab World: An Interview

Last night I was editing a couple of article on Louis Massignon and his influence on Vatican II's understanding of Islam and the Catholic Church's relationship to Muslims. His understanding of not just Islam but also of Arab Christianity was often met with blind incomprehension on the part of not a few: What do you mean 'Arab Christians'? All Arabs are Muslims!

Even today, more than a half-century after Massignon's death, and with all the well-publicized turmoil in the Middle East, and significant advances in Eastern Christian scholarship, many people today--especially it seems North American Christians--still have no idea that Christianity has been present in the Arab peninsula since early in the first millennium. A wonderful new collection will surely go a long way in helping to remedy this ignorance: Samuel Noble and Alexander Treiger, eds., The Orthodox Church in the Arab World, 700 - 1700: An Anthology of Sources (Northern Illinois University Press, 2014), 355pp.

About this book, helpfully available in both an affordable paperback and even more affordable Kindle edition, the publisher tells us:

Arabic was among the first languages in which the Gospel was preached. The Book of Acts mentions Arabs as being present at the first Pentecost in Jerusalem, where they heard the Christian message in their native tongue. Christian literature in Arabic is at least 1,300 years old, the oldest surviving texts dating from the 8th century. Pre-modern Arab Christian literature embraces such diverse genres as Arabic translations of the Bible and the Church Fathers, biblical commentaries, lives of the saints, theological and polemical treatises, devotional poetry, philosophy, medicine, and history. Yet in the Western historiography of Christianity, the Arab Christian Middle East is treated only peripherally, if at all.

The first of its kind, this anthology makes accessible in English representative selections from major Arab Christian works written between the 8th and 18th centuries. The translations are idiomatic while preserving the character of the original. The popular assumption is that in the wake of the Islamic conquests, Christianity abandoned the Middle East to flourish elsewhere, leaving its original heartland devoid of an indigenous Christian presence. Until now, several of these important texts have remained unpublished or unavailable in English. Translated by leading scholars, these texts represent the major genres of Orthodox literature in Arabic. Noble and Treiger provide an introduction that helps form a comprehensive history of Christians within the Muslim world. The collection marks an important contribution to the history of medieval Christianity and the history of the medieval Near East.

I asked the editors for an interview, and here they are:
 

Tell us about your backgrounds.

Alexander Treiger

AT: I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia (then, of course, Leningrad, USSR) in 1975, studied Arabic, Islam, and Eastern Christianity in Jerusalem and at Yale, and am currently employed as associate professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I teach courses on the Abrahamic religions. I’m also an Orthodox Christian deacon, serving at the St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Church (OCA) in Halifax.

SN: My undergraduate degree was in linguistics from the University of Georgia. After that I did a master’s degree in Middle East Studies at the American University of Beirut and while living there I was received into the Orthodox Church. Currently I’m ABD in Islamic Studies at Yale, where Sasha and I met in 2005.

Samuel Noble

What led to putting this collection together?

SN: We felt a very real need for a book like this to exist. Many people—including more than a few specialists in Orthodox Christianity—have a false notion that Christianity disappeared in the Middle East with the coming of Islam and that even if there were a few Christians here or there, they did little that was noteworthy for the wider Christian world. There’s also another common misconception that Arabic only very recently came into use in the Orthodox Church, when in fact it has been a language of Orthodox Christian liturgy and literature for longer even than Slavonic. So, what we wanted to do was to provide a way that people who aren’t specialists in Arabic might be able to access this centuries-old tradition.

AT: I agree. The Arab Christian tradition remains largely unknown to the general public, and even many scholars of Orthodox Christianity are unfamiliar with it. The history of the Church in Byzantium, the Slavic lands, and Europe has been extensively researched. But what about those Christians who are direct descendants of the communities established by the apostles in Christianity’s very birthplace and ancient heartland—the Middle East? Sadly, their history is known only to a handful of specialists. It is to make their rich and unduly neglected heritage accessible to the wider public that we decided, back in 2009, to put this volume together. I am very pleased that after five years of extremely hard work—the contributors’, the publisher’s, and our own—this volume has finally seen light.

Your introduction notes that “in the Western historiography of Christianity, the Arab Christian Middle East is treated only peripherally, if at all.” This, you note, is a common problem even among scholars of Eastern Christianity. Why do you think that is?

AT: In part, the pervasive misidentification of Arabic and the Middle East exclusively with Islam is to blame. Most scholars of Christianity tend to “write off” the Middle East after the Muslim conquest, because they imagine—needless to say, incorrectly—that in the seventh century Islam simply replaced Christianity in this region. For that same reason, scholars of Christianity do not consider it necessary to learn Arabic, failing to realize that Arabic—much like Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, or Slavonic—is an essential language for the history of the Church.

Another reason for this neglect is the equally pervasive Eurocentrism: the spread of Christianity westward is treated with the utmost attention, while its continuous flourishing in the place of its origin and remarkable spread eastward (in the seventh century Christianity reached as far East as China!) is regarded as an unimportant side story. The study of Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, and other linguistic and cultural variations of Eastern Christianity has also suffered tremendously from this kind of Eurocentric bias.

SN: I think that to some degree the existence of Middle Eastern—and particularly Arab—Christianity is inconvenient for a lot of lazy narratives of Christian history. It does not fit comfortably with popular notions of Christendom, in the sense of Christianity as tied to a particular European cultural-political sphere. It complicates narratives of Christian-Muslim relations, making monochrome images of convivencia or dhimmitude impossible. The fact that the three fifths of the ancient pentarchy—Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—lived most of their history under Muslim rule and were speaking Arabic makes it much harder to center Orthodoxy’s story as being synonymous with the story of the Byzantine Empire…. and so on. So, in a way, dealing with the reality of Arab Christianity requires historians to do more work and step out of their comfort zones.

AT: I would add that it’s equally true for Middle Eastern history. There too it’s convenient to disregard Middle Eastern Christians and other non-Muslim communities. Most histories of the Middle East make practically no attempt to do justice to the experience of non-Muslim communities. (Moshe Gil’s A History of Palestine, 634-1099 is one notable exception.) Once, however, you take into account non-Muslim historical sources and their experience and try to integrate accounts of the various communities into a single picture, things inevitably become more complicated—but ultimately much more rewarding.

You noted that apart from Sidney Griffith’s 2008 book The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam not much else is available yet in English on Arab Christians. And yet, in the next sentence (p. 5) you speak of “hopeful signs for the future.” What gives you hope?

SN: Interest in Arabic Christianity seems to be growing slowly but noticeably, to some degree riding the coattails of growing interest in Eastern Christianity in general and the need to better understand Muslim-Christian relations. A lingering problem, however, is the lack of a real academic home—is it a subfield of Islamic Studies? Church History? Byzantine or Syriac Studies? This is an issue that will continue to be a problem for some time, especially in terms of which conferences and journals should host scholars of Arabic Christianity.

Another factor that is having a positive influence on Arabic Christian studies (as well as Syriac and other fields) is the revolution caused by the digitization of manuscripts. Projects like the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in Collegeville, MN, and the Saint Joseph of Damascus Manuscript Conservation Center at Balamand Monastery in Lebanon mean that pre-modern Arabic Christian texts are more easily and widely available than they have ever been in history—and scholars seeking to produce editions of texts are significantly less hindered by trouble obtaining access to manuscripts. Materials, access to which less than a century ago required scholars to travel great distances and suffer many hardships can now be simply stored on my laptop to browse at leisure. So this means that now the harvest is great but the laborers few.

AT: I should add that there is now also an excellent mailing list and online forum for scholars of Arab Christianity: the North American Society for Christian Arabic Studies (NASCAS), which currently has more than 250 participants worldwide. While previously scholars of Arab Christianity had been working in relative isolation from one another, NASCAS has allowed them to communicate more freely and intensively, to ask each other questions, exchange ideas, etc. This has had, I think, a galvanizing effect on the entire field. Additionally, NASCAS has attracted a fair number of graduate students working in neighboring fields—Islamic Studies, Syriac Studies, Byzantine Studies, and others. They are becoming aware of and interested in what we do. This way, the study of Arab Christianity is getting much-needed publicity—an important step towards eventual institutionalization within western academia.

I was staggered by your noting that “close to 90 percent of the vast corpus of Arab Christian literature has not yet been edited or translated, let alone adequately studied.” What explains such an enormous neglect? It seems to me that it must be more than the difficulty of learning Arabic (which I tried a few years ago and gave up!). Are there other factors explaining this neglect?

AT: Once again, this boils down to the common misperception that Arabic is somehow an exclusively “Islamic” language. As a result, students of Classical Arabic, of which there are of course many, gravitate towards Islamic Studies simply by default, often unaware that non-Muslims (Christians, Jews, and others) have used Arabic as extensively and for as long as Muslims, and even longer. Besides, serious study of Arab Christianity requires familiarity with the Christian tradition (Christian theology, Church councils, liturgy, canon law, etc.). Nowadays, as church attendance in the West declines, these skills are harder to come by, while those westerners who do have them rarely know Arabic.

An additional factor is that Middle Eastern Christians today wield little political power. Lebanon is the only notable exception, but even there the political impact of Christian communities is in decline. All other things being equal, most people, quite naturally perhaps, tend to disregard and downplay those communities that are relatively politically insignificant, and focus instead on those that influence (or are perceived as influencing) world affairs. One can’t blame them, of course. After all, this is where the majority of jobs are. Education always depends on market forces that dictate which things are “worth” studying and which aren’t. Some fields, while intrinsically no less important than others, suffer as a result.

Apart from your own work, are there others—individual scholars, perhaps, or academic centres—where some of this work of editing and translating is now being started or continued?

SN: In North America, Christian Arabic studies have been centered at the Catholic University of America, where Fr Sidney Griffith has trained an entire generation of specialists in the field. In Europe and the Middle East, Fr Samir Khalil has had a similar role, simultaneously at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut.

AT: I have already mentioned NASCAS. There are more and more people taking interest in Arab Christianity. Gradually, this kind of interest and awareness will hopefully become more “mainstream” in western academia. We need of course additional efforts aimed at institutionalization—such as establishing a journal for Arab Christian Studies and a regular academic conference in North America (there is currently only one conference on Christian Arabic in Europe, meeting every four years). Most importantly, scholars working in the field need to do more to establish stronger connections with Arabic-speaking Christian communities both in the Middle East and in the diaspora. Only by joining forces will we be able to carry out the task of editing, translating, and studying the unduly neglected heritage of Arabic-speaking Middle Eastern Christianity. We are very fortunate that Arabic-speaking Orthodox Christians are quite supportive of our scholarly efforts. It is particularly significant in this connection that His Eminence Metropolitan Ephrem Kyriakos of Tripoli in Lebanon has written a foreword to our Anthology, stressing its importance for the study of the Orthodox Christian heritage in the Middle East.

You note (p. 9) that “in the wake of Chalcedon, the Miaphysite church proved to be extremely successful among the Arabs” and you also speak of the “appeal that Christianity held even for the Arabs of Mecca.” What factors help us to understand that appeal and its success?

SN: A good place to start in looking into the appeal of the Miaphysite cause for people along the Byzantine-Persian borderlands is Volker Menze’s book Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church. However, the intricate web of theology, ideology, and culture that led to the success of Miaphysite missionaries around the Byzantine periphery is very complicated and needs a great deal more research. We know, for example, that Justinian himself (and even more so his wife Theodora) promoted Miaphysite missionary activities among pagans in Asia Minor and Nubia. One should also not discount the more intangible factor of missionary zeal on the part of Miaphysites who undertook missions among the Arabs apparently of their own initiative. However, prior to the coming of Islam, the Christological identities of the various communities had not yet completely solidified, and political loyalty to the empire and opposition to Chalcedon were by no means yet mutually exclusive. So in a sense, adopting a Miaphysite theology could also be a way for a group to take a bit of distance from Byzantine authority while still remaining broadly within the Byzantine (as opposed to Persian) sphere. Of course, those Arabs within the Persian sphere of influence in what is now southern Iraq and the Gulf region belonged to the Church of the East and in many parts of Arabia, especially Yemen, there was missionary competition between Miaphysites and the Church of the East.

In terms of the appeal of Christianity in general to the pagan Arabs of Late Antiquity, this is a bit of a no-brainer. Christianity was the vehicle for the creation and transmission of high culture—it meant not only importing a deeply meaningful and immediate narrative of salvation, but also the possibility of creating a literary language and opening up to the religious and intellectual currents of the wider Near East and Mediterranean. In the period between Christ and Muhammad, Christianity was able to create new literary cultures among speakers of Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Caucasian Albanian, etc… Arabic, being a culture that placed much higher value on orality than writing, was slower to develop a Christian literature in the vernacular, but this process had begun in earnest in the century prior to Muhammad at the latest, and was especially helped along by the Arabs’ exceedingly great respect for the ascetics of the Syrian desert.

AT: I would also recommend reading Greg Fisher’s recent book Between Empires: Arabs, Romans, and Sasanians in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2011). All these different factors for the spread of Christianity among the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period are admirably presented there.

It’s often assumed, as you note, that following Islamic conquests of Christians in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the seventh century that Christians basically disappeared, or were otherwise reduced to dhimmis. But you note that with the rise of Baghdad as the new capital of the caliphate “Christians of all communities were able to maintain a significant degree of social prestige” and set about, inter alia, translating many Greek and Syriac works into Arabic. What explains this change of status for the Christians, and this burgeoning interest in having philosophical and scientific works rendered into Arabic?

AT: While it is true that non-Muslims in traditional Muslim societies held a subordinate status (as, in fact, non-Christians did in traditional Christian societies at the same time), in practice their conditions varied depending on the time and place, the social and political circumstances, and the good will of the rulers. It is thus important not to generalize, but to consider each society on a case-by-case basis. In the Abbasid capital Baghdad, for example, the status of Christians was relatively high, and most of the restrictions imposed on the dhimmis seem not to have been regularly enforced (the reign of the caliph al-Mutawakkil in the mid-ninth century being a notable exception).

The Muslim writer al-Jahiz even complains that Christians in Baghdad “have stopped wearing their belts [a legal requirement for the Christians], while others wear them beneath their clothes; many of the powerful people among them refrain from paying the poll tax, jizya [imposed on non-Muslims], and although they have the means refuse to give it. They insult those who insult them, and hit those who hit them. And why should they not do this or even more, when our judges, or the majority, consider the blood of a patriarch, metropolitan or bishop to be equivalent to the blood of Ja‘far, Ali, Abbas or Hamza [typical Muslim names]?” (trans. David Thomas). In other words, al-Jahiz complains that Muslim courts treated Christians as being equal (or semi-equal) to the Muslims and allowed them to get away with non-compliance to legal restrictions imposed on dhimmis. It was also at this time also that Christian scholars—under powerful Muslim patronage—played a prominent role in translating Greek and Syriac philosophical and scientific works into Arabic.

SN: One major reason for Christians’ high social status in the first few centuries of Muslim rule was that they had skills and education that were in high demand. For the first century of Muslim rule in the Middle East, the language of bureaucracy in Syria and Egypt was Greek, and since only Christians had Greek education they were able to maintain their social position by continuing to hold secretarial positions. The family of St. John of Damascus is illustrative of this pattern, as they had held administrative positions under the Byzantines and continued to do so under the Umayyad Caliphate. Similarly, because of very long traditions of monastic education and of translation from Greek into Syriac (a language very similar to Arabic), Christians were very well positioned to dominate the field of translating Greek and Syriac into Arabic—that is, to be the intermediary by which Arabic culture “caught up,” so to speak, with the intellectual currents of the Mediterranean world. Of course, it should be remembered that Christians were not merely translators, but often were philosophers and physicians in their own right.

At the same time you note that Arabic seems in this period and context to have started to emerge as a liturgical and theological language for Christians. Why? Was it for business purposes? As a means of conversing with, and ultimately converting, Muslims? As an expression of a newly self-confident Arab Christian community increasingly comfortable in its own identity?

SN: The first Christians to start regularly using Arabic as their liturgical and theological language were the Orthodox of Palestine, and while it would be rash to offer any sure explanation for this, we can maybe identify a few possible contributing factors. For one thing, the linguistic situation in Palestine prior to Islam seems to have been conducive to a transition to Arabic. Before the Arab conquest, Greek was the predominant local liturgical and literary language, due to the international character of the monasteries and the importance of pilgrimage to the liturgical life of the Holy Land. It does not seem, however, to have been the language of daily life for very many people at all, nor was it the marker of a particular ethnic identity, even as it was a marker of elite status. Most local people would have spoken a dialect of Aramaic whose literary form, called Christian Palestinian Aramaic, only gained moderate traction as a vehicle for biblical and patristic translations. It seems that in general, translations of biblical lessons and homilies for the locals’ understanding were done on the fly, like the earliest Jewish targumim. So, with the Arab conquest there was initially a period where Greek was maintained as the Umayyad Caliphate’s language of administration, and in fact this period up through the middle of the eighth century saw a great number of new liturgical and theological works being written in Greek in Palestinian monasteries—St. John of Damascus, of course, is the most famous example of this. During St. John’s lifetime, however, the language of administration switched over to Arabic and so there ceased to be much of an incentive for laypeople to cultivate knowledge of Greek. This coincided with a change in the makeup of the Palestinian monasteries—Sidney Griffith has shown that by the early ninth century all the Palestinian monks whose background we know came from within Muslim territory and would have been Arabic or Aramaic speakers, while before this these monasteries had been home to monks from throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. So it probably made a great deal of practical sense for Christians in Palestine who would’ve almost all spoken Aramaic but who are starting to slowly transition to Arabic in daily life to switch their literary and liturgical language from Greek, which fewer and fewer people understood, to the new prestige language of Arabic, which in any case was far more similar to their native language. In this regard, it’s also worth noting that Aramaic-speaking Christians who used Syriac as their liturgical language—including Chalcedonian Orthodox in Northern Syria and Mount Lebanon—were much slower to transition into Arabic, perhaps because their spoken and liturgical languages were very similar if not the same. In fact, Syriac only completely died out in favor of Arabic as a liturgical language in parts of the Patriarchate of Antioch in the eighteenth century.

Engagement with Islam—which in this early context largely means defending Christian doctrine against Islamic criticisms—and the bolstering of a Palestinian Christian identity do seem to be a major factor in the adoption of Arabic as the chief language of theology for Orthodox Christians. As a literary language, Arabic could be said to have been born with the Qur’an and indeed, we find that the first Christian theological works—such as the Apology for the Christian Faith, extracts of which are translated in the Anthology by Mark Swanson—are already imbued with Qur’anic allusions and turns of phrase, even as they seek to dissuade Christians from conversion to Islam or even from associating too much with Muslims. This challenge of expressing Christianity in the language of Islam is one of the characteristic features of Arabic Christian literature, from its very beginnings to our own day.

At the end of your conclusion, you note that “as the texts assembled in this anthology show, the unique witness of the Orthodox Church in the Arab lands holds important lessons for us today.” Which lessons do you think are most important?

AT: Most importantly, the texts assembled in our Anthology show that Christianity belongs to the Middle East; that it is, at heart, an indigenous Middle Eastern religion, no less than Islam. This has important repercussions for how we are to understand both Christianity and the Middle East. As regards Christianity, we ought to let go of the narrowly Eurocentric view of its history and look at how Christianity has been practiced for two millennia in the place of its origin. As regards the Middle East, we ought to start seeing this region for the religiously, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse place that it is and has always been.

Another aspect that our Anthology helps shed light on is the high degree of flexibility and adaptability of Orthodox Christianity to a wide range of social and cultural situations. With the exception of Arab Christian writers living in Antioch under Byzantine rule (969-1084), such as the deacon, theologian, and translator Abdallah ibn al-Fadl, all the authors represented in our Anthology lived under Muslim domination. Unlike in Byzantium or Russia, in the Middle East after the seventh century Orthodox Christianity was not in a position of power. Nonetheless, these Arab Christian writers expressed their faith with conviction and in doing so succeeded in overcoming formidable social and cultural challenges, such as articulating the Gospel in the language of the Qur’an.

SN: I think that in order to have a fully-rounded picture of the history and the breadth of Orthodox Christian theology and culture it’s absolutely necessary to understand its Arab dimension. But to point to a couple more concrete things that can be learned from Arab Orthodox literature, I would say that, first of all, this literature is essential for understanding how Orthodox Christianity has traditionally interacted with Islam and Muslims, both theologically and culturally.

Moreover, this literature offers further angles for understanding the Fathers since much of Arabic Orthodox literature follows closely in the footsteps of Sts. John of Damascus and Anastasius the Sinaite and engages with earlier patristic writings.

Also, it is completely impossible to understand the history of relations between the Orthodox, the non-Chalcedonians, and the Church of the East without familiarity with Christian literature written in Arabic, since the vast bulk of literature wherein members of these communities discussed Christology—generally very eirenically, even if strong differences and incompatibilities between their respective theologies were often seen to exist—is in Arabic, using a terminology that developed in Arabic.

Sum up what you hope the book does and who should read it.

SN: What we hoped to achieve with this volume is to give a comprehensive introduction to the first millennium of Arabic-speaking Orthodox Christianity. We feel that the translated texts give a good representative taste of the main genres and themes of Arab Orthodox literature and we have also provided a detailed bibliography and notes for further exploring this literature in English and other western languages. So we hope that this book will succeed in making Arab Orthodox materials more accessible both to people interested in related fields—Orthodox theology, Muslim-Christian relations, Byzantine history, Islamic history, etc.—and to English-speaking Christians whose roots, whether by ancestry or conversion, are in the Middle East.

AT: The volume is suitable for anyone interested in the history of the Church or in the Middle East. It is also, I think, quite suitable for course adoption in seminars on Eastern Christianity, Muslim-Christian relations, and so on. The volume opens a window onto a virtually unknown world. Every reader will be richly rewarded.

Finally, tell us what you both are at work on next—another book jointly authored? Individual research projects?

AT: My main focus is the study of the Arabic translations of the Church Fathers, of which there are hundreds and hundreds, virtually all of them unedited and unstudied. I’m also preparing a complete edition and English translation of The Noetic Paradise—the eighth-century patristic masterpiece, originally written in Greek in Palestine but preserved only in Arabic, a few sections of which have already been translated in chapter 8 of our Anthology. Besides, Sam and I are working jointly on an edition and English translation of Abdallah ibn al-Fadl’s major work, The Book of Benefit. This will complement Sam’s translations of two of Ibn al-Fadl’s theological works in chapter 7 and our joint article, published in 2011, containing an edition and English translation of another important text by this author.

SN: In addition to the project on Abdallah ibn al-Fadl that Sasha mentioned, I’m currently working with my wife, Brittany Pheiffer Noble, to translate Constantin Panchenko’s history of Middle Eastern Orthodoxy under the Ottomans, Ближневосточное Православие под османским владычеством. Первые три столетия 1516–1831 (Near Eastern Orthodoxy under Ottoman Rule: The First Three Centuries 1516-1831). Panchenko’s book is by far the most exhaustive study of Middle Eastern Orthodoxy during that period. In many ways it complements our Anthology by bringing the story up to the beginning of the modern era.

The Moscow Council of 1917

The University of Notre Dame Press sent me their Fall 2014 catalogue last week, and there are a number of noteworthy books in there, beginning with a translation of an important study I read in French nearly a decade ago now: Hyacinthe Destivelle, The Moscow Council (1917–1918): The Creation of the Conciliar Institutions of the Russian Orthodox Church, trans. Jerry Ryan, ed. Michael Plekon and Vitaly Permiakov (UND Press, November 2014), 488pp.

About this book the publisher tell us:

By the early twentieth century, a genuine renaissance of religious thought and a desire for ecclesial reform were emerging in the Russian Orthodox Church. With the end of tsarist rule and widespread dissatisfaction with government control of all aspects of church life, conditions were ripe for the Moscow Council of 1917–1918 to come into being.

The council was a major event in the history of the Orthodox
Church. After years of struggle for reform against political and ecclesiastical resistance, the bishops, clergy, monastics, and laity who formed the Moscow Council were able to listen to one other and make sweeping decisions intended to renew the Russian Orthodox Church. Council members sought change in every imaginable area—from seminaries and monasteries, to parishes and schools, to the place of women in church life and governance. Like Vatican II, the Moscow Council emphasized the mission of the church in and to the world. Destivelle’s study not only discusses the council and its resolutions but also provides the historical, political, social, and cultural context that preceded the council. In the only comprehensive and probing account of the council, he discusses its procedures and achievements, augmented by substantial appendices of translated conciliar documents. Tragically, due to the Revolution, the council’s decisions could not be implemented to the extent its members hoped. Despite current trends in the Russian church away from the Moscow Council’s vision, the council’s accomplishments remain as models for renewal in the Eastern churches.

Tolstoy and his Disciples

Pre-revolutionary Russian history, as an article we published in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies about a decade ago now revealed, was rather more dynamic on questions of socio-economic reform than the usual picture of complete stagnation and aristocratic repression one often hears about. One person involved in stirring things up was the celebrated novelist Leo Tolstoy, about whom a new study has just been published this year: Charlotte Alston, Tolstoy and his Disciples: The History of a Radical International Movement (I.B. Taurus, 2014), 288pp.

About this book we are told:

As the vast empire of Imperial Russia struggled with the emancipation of the serfs after 1861 and creeped inexorably towards revolution, Leo Tolstoy underwent what he termed a 'spiritual awakening'. Advocating an extreme internationalism and the principles of non-violence, Tolstoy inspired a legion of followers who formed thousands of cooperatives and collective farms across Russia and Europe. These disciples had a major impact: in revolutionary Russia, these 'Tolstoyans' were seen as a threat to the Bolsheviks, and Lenin singled them out for repression. Decades later, Mahatma Gandhi would cite the movement as an inspiration for his campaign of peaceful resistance against the British Empire. Here, Charlotte Alston provides the first in-depth historical account of this remarkable phenomenon and its impact on European and Russian history, providing an important re-assessment of Tolstoy's impact on the political history of the modern world.