Paul Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky, and Alasdair MacIntyre Meet in a Bar....

I'm in Boston this weekend at the annual conference of the Orthodox Theological Society of America. I was asked to come to give a response to Paul Gavrilyuk's excellent and important new book Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance.

I've taken the liberty of posting below the comments that I shall be making this weekend as one of the respondents to the book:
 
A Response to Paul Gavrilyuk, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (OUP, 2014)

Delivered 24 October 2014 at the Orthodox Theological Society of America’s Annual Conference,

Holy Cross College, Brookline, MA

Adam A.J. DeVille, Ph.D.[1]

Introduction:

            I’m delighted to be asked to take part in this symposium, especially with such distinguished fellow panelists. I’m delighted, moreover, because it gave me an opportunity to read a book I have wanted to read for most of this year. Fr. Michael Plekon read and reviewed Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance for the upcoming fall issue of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, of which I am editor, and when he sent me his review in the spring of this year, I was immediately jealous and annoyed with myself that I did not first read the book before sending it to him for review! It sounded utterly fascinating, and indeed it is. Reading Gavrilyuk’s study took me back more than a decade to one of my doctoral courses at the Sheptytsky Institute in Ottawa that was devoted entirely to the thought of Florovsky, to whom I still turn in small ways on a regular basis as in, e.g., having my graduate students read his essay, “St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers.”[2]

In what follows, I shall proceed by way of three sections. First I begin with some brief laudatory comments. Second, I note several areas where I would like to hear further from the author. And in the third and longest section, I suggest an alternate way of conceiving of Florovsky’s problematic and unsatisfactory notions of the “pseudomorphosis” and “Western captivity” of Orthodoxy, which I draw from the landmark work of the leading moral philosopher of our time, Alasdair MacIntyre.

Laudations:

            This is a crisply written book that brings together wide-ranging discussions—history, philosophy, Russian culture and politics both pre- and post-Bolshevik, and of course theology in the context of Florovsky’s life. It cannot have been easy, it would seem to me, to maintain such an even-handed tone throughout for it seems Florovsky was an infuriating person both in some of his arguments and then, as the author painfully records, particularly in his rather ruinous trail of thwarted personal and institutional relations across Europe and North America. Put more simply, it would have been both easy and understandable for the author to offer polemical and simplistic rejoinders to the polemics and dubious theoretical generalizations of Florovsky, but those were all avoided and the book is much the better for it. There were many moments in reading this book when I was little short of staggered and sorely vexed by what Florovsky had to say but in almost all those cases, the author had gotten in ahead of me to at least mention, and often share, many of the concerns I had. This is neither a “take-down” nor a pious hagiography, but intellectual history and biography of the best sort, allowing us to see the man in full. If, as Cardinal Newman famously said, the danger of hagiography is that it reduces complex people and their messy lives to mere “clothes racks for virtues,” we can be grateful to the author that he avoided that danger and allowed us to see everything Florovsky “wore,” winsomely captured in the beret and cassock on the front cover!

For Further Elaboration:

            There were, if I may so say, a number of lapidary formulations in this book that were tantalizingly under-developed. If time permits, I should like to hear even just a bit more from the author when he says, but does not really develop, such things as:

• Florovsky viewed American pragmatism as preferable to European rationalism (65)? Why?

• To “reclaim its true identity, Russia had to recover its Byzantine cultural roots” (66). Did Florovsky ever specify what such roots consisted of, and whether such a process of recovery was even possible?

• All of medieval Russia was “monolithic” and “united by the common religious ideal of Eastern Orthodoxy” (73). Did Florovsky ever document this claim with serious evidence? (I’m far from an expert in medieval Russian history, but what I have read would suggest that this is too simplistic and neat a claim.)

• It’s possible “to ‘enter’ the mind of the Fathers through ‘ecclesial experience’” (91)? To channel Alasdair MacIntyre here (about whom much more below): Whose ecclesia? Which experience?[3] And what about F’s famous aversion to mystical/spiritual experiences?

• It has, it seems to me, become a deplorably common habit in Orthodox apologetics (especially on-line) to constantly recycle fourth-hand stereotypes and calumnies against Anselm, and I’ve long wondered where this got started. Nobody, of course, ever bothers to cite sources, least of all primary texts, but perhaps Florovsky is the originator of this, given the discussion that starts on p.154 (and esp. the article cited there in footnote 81)?

• Florovsky “was more receptive to the thought of Augustine, especially his ecclesiology” (239). Why was he more receptive—especially when considered against the rather tenuous (if not hostile) relationship most of 20^th-century Orthodoxy seems to have had towards Augustine, at least until recently?[4] 

• Vatican Expansionist Policy (70-71): this discussion was, I thought, rather too brief and overlooked some important recent scholarship. Through frightfully ungenerous and shamefully triumphalistic in its “soteriological exclusivism,” (Waclaw Hryniewicz), Catholic policy in this period was not nearly as monolithic or almost “monstrous” as Florovsky seemed to think. There are several studies that would have been welcome here, as they add important distinction and nuance, and would be pivotal for later changes at the Second Vatican Council.[5]

• F “assumed that nothing good whatsoever could come to Russia (more precisely, to Ukraine) from adopting the Jesuit educational paradigms” (180). Why? What was so problematic about the Jesuit paradigm that Florovsky could be so flippantly dismissive of it?

Pseudomorphosis and Western Captivity or Epistemological Crisis?

            Let me come to what I regard as the most central arguments for which Florovsky is best known, arguments which, more than a decade after I first encountered them, seem to me far less clear or convincing than they once did. In what Paul Gavrilyuk writes, I take the following to be the central statement of the problem:

Crucial for understanding Florovsky’s analysis of the western influences in Russian intellectual history was the concept of pseudomorphosis, which he adopted from Oswald Spengler…..Florovsky was familiar with the concept of pseudomorphosis both in the broad culturological sense proposed by Spengler and in a related sense to denote the process of Orthodox theology’s succumbing to the western influences and the consequent alienation of theological thought from the life and worship of the Orthodox Church (pp.178-79).

From here, G narrates “a history of Russian theology as a drama in three acts” (179ff):

•  Prelude: from 988 until 16^th century: crisis of Russian Byzantinism as a departure from the Fathers
•  First Act: 16^th century Kiev: “acute Latinization” under Mohyla. 
•  Second Act: Peter the Great’s Protestant pseudomorphosis 
•  Interlude: heroic struggles of the 19^th century under Filaret to shake off the West and reintroduce patristics into seminary curricula 
•  Final Act: Soloviev and Renaissance bring in German Idealism, the “most damaging western influence” (182). 

My questions here are not dissimilar to those above and are two-fold: what is the evidence for all this? And: is such a theory of captivity and pseudomorphosis not too neat by half? That is, does it not grossly oversimplify what I suspect to be rather more complicated history? To be clear: I’m not saying Florovsky is entirely wrong. There is clear evidence of Western influence on Orthodoxy in each of the three periods noted above (as Ukrainian Catholics know only too well!). My central rejoinder to Florovsky would be: you bemoan Western influence as deleterious, and see the entire process in negative, passive terms.  I, however, would like to suggest the process was, in part, a sign of life and vitality as two traditions encountered one another. The process of pseudomorphosis was not all bad. I am not being Pollyannaish here; nor am I defending (much less trumpeting) the Jesuits or “the West”; nor am I denying that there were problems in what they did, and in the Orthodox tradition that encountered “the West.” What I am suggesting is that the Spenglerian categories are, as least as Florovsky used them, unhelpful insofar as they seem far too unilateral and negative, and allow Orthodoxy to portray itself in grossly unflattering light.[6] These categories obscure more than they reveal. I want to suggest an alternate way of conceiving of the encounter between Orthodoxy and “the West.”

I was glad to see that the author here argues, rightly in my view, that Florovsky is to be faulted for “rarely taking the trouble to explain how precisely a given ‘western influence’ actually distorts the Orthodox teaching. Cultural morphology is particularly ill-suited for making normative theological truth-claims” (189).[7] If Florovsky’s theory and use of cultural morphology are not helpful, then perhaps we may think instead in the terms of the history of philosophy. Here I draw on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, widely recognized as the most important and influential moral philosopher of the post-war period. I shall use MacIntyre to illustrate my rejoinder above. Rather like Florovsky, MacIntyre’s work as a philosopher is deeply embedded within a thick historicist narrative.[8] In what follows, I want to draw on an important essay of MacIntyre to see if Florovsky’s dubious ideas of “captivity” and “pseudomorphosis” can be more firmly situated on more intellectually defensible ground.

            In a 1977 essay “Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science”[9] MacIntyre begins to sketch out what happens to various narrative traditions diversely conceived as they encounter one another in literature, science, and philosophy. MacIntyre says that we all face epistemological crises on a regular basis, in ways large and small as rival traditions of interpretation raise troubling questions in what we assumed were settled narratives: “Every tradition therefore is always in danger of lapsing into incoherence and when a tradition does so lapse it sometimes can only be recovered by a revolutionary reconstitution.”[10] He begins with homely examples: a happily married husband returns home one day to find out his wife has left and is filing for divorce; or a seemingly respected and appreciated employee arrives at work one day to find out she has been given the sack. In cases such as these, what the man thought he knew about himself, his wife, and his marriage is revealed to be faulty; and what the woman thought about her employment and employer are similarly revealed to be mistaken in crucial aspects. Both the man and the woman thus enter into an epistemological crisis, one sign of which, MacIntyre says, is “that its accustomed ways for relating seems and is begin to break down.”[11]

When faced with a breakdown, whether on a personal-domestic level or on a scientific or philosophical level (MacIntyre references people like Galileo and Copernicus here), the newly crumbling narrative tradition—whether of my marital life or of cosmological history—is forced to choose one of three paths. In essence, the crumbling tradition can collapse and disappear into total defeat; it can resist the new knowledge as far as possible and thereby disappear into ever-increasing irrelevancy and obscurantism; or it can begin the process of discerning where it may well have been mistaken in the past, what it needs to survive in the present, and what the rival narrative newly emerging will offer to the tradition to allow it to survive into the future, albeit in a newly reconstituted way. As MacIntyre puts it:

The criterion of a successful theory is that it enables us to understand its predecessors in a newly intelligible way. It, at one and the same time, enables us to understand precisely why its predecessors have to be rejected or modified and also why, without and before its illumination, past theory could have remained credible. It introduces new standards for evaluating the past. It recasts the narrative which constitutes the continuous reconstruction of the scientific tradition.[12]

In a moment, I shall attempt something of a recasting of the narrative told by Florovsky in an effort to reconstruct it in light of what we now know about the history of Eastern and Western Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In order to do that—to construct a theory capable of withstanding the upheaval of various epistemological crises—MacIntyre says that the crucial thing is to offer a capacious and verifiable historical narrative subject to ongoing correction and revision. [13] He argues that “the best account that can be given of why some scientific theories are superior to others presupposes the possibility of constructing an intelligible dramatic narrative which can claim historical truth and in which such theories are the subject of successive episodes.”[14] Failing to do this will leave us in one of two dead-ends: “It is only when theories are located in history, when we view the demands for justification in highly particular contexts of a historical kind, that we are freed from either dogmatism or capitulation to skepticism.”[15]

            Florovsky, I would submit, tended towards a pejorative “dogmatism” in his narrative of the captivity and pseudomorphosis of the Orthodox tradition, and one is tempted to respond with a perhaps all-pervasive and corrosive skepticism of his entire work. But neither is helpful or just. If, as MacIntyre says, one sign of a healthful theory is its capacity for on-going revision and correction—its ability, that is, to stand upright between the peaks of dogmatism and skepticism—how are we to analyze Florvsky’s theory of captivity and pseudomorphosis? In F’s hands, the theory does not seem especially open to correction or regular revision, and on that ground alone is suspect. But there are other reasons for suspecting it as well.

Following MacIntyre’s third way out of an epistemological crisis, can we not see the various encounters between Orthodoxy and “the West” as having been “resolved,” in the main, through changes that, far from being purely those of decline or artificially imposed change on a helpless Orthodox victim, were in fact, to some limited extent, far messier and more multilateral, and saw Orthodoxy emerge afterwards in different form, but still very much alive and recognizably distinct from the West? To hear Florovsky tell it, Orthodoxy was virtually a corpse which her Western masters forcibly redressed with the latest fashionable outfits from London or Paris or Milan without Russian resistance or response.[16] But surely this view of Orthodox passivity or, worse, “captivity” is (to put it mildly) de trop. Not all Orthodox were incapable of acting and re-acting to Western developments. Some, in fact, took very robust and courageous steps towards resolving the crisis as in, e.g., the bold actions of the Orthodox bishops at the Union of Brest.[17] You may disagree—as doubtless Florovsky did—with that precise reaction, but at least they were still acting! In its various encounters with “the West,” Orthodoxy did not collapse and disappear—whether under Mohyla, Peter the Great, or German Idealism. It emerged different, to be sure—on this nobody can gainsay Florovsky—but the idea that it was somehow totally “captured” and forced to endure an artificial or corrupting “pseudomorphosis” simply strains credulity  and I would lay it aside as a failed theory for at least three additional reasons.

First, as Gavrilyuk recognizes (see p. 189), Florovsky has simply failed to provide enough proof for a conviction. F’s sweeping generalizations—whether through sloppiness, indolence, or malice—are sophomoric and insufficiently substantiated with serious evidence.  Nobody looks good here. The Orthodox East is made out to be some sickly and helpless victim beset upon by some rapacious and ravishing thug from the West.

Second, these ideas of captivity and pseudomorphosis presuppose some pristine past untouched by anyone who is not a pure laine Russian working in some hermetically sealed “Russian culture” (or, worse, “Eastern Christianity”) in which no “Western” ideas or influences may be found. I do not believe that any such cultures exist, least of all in Europe; just as I do not believe any church is ever totally isolated from influences from other churches—nor should be! Here I would follow MacIntyre and suggest that Florovsky is an acutely modern man insofar as he has failed to appreciate precisely the extent to which he is himself a creature of the very traditions and cultures whose existence he disputes! As Gavrilyuk very nicely puts it: “It is ironic that the self-appointed guardian of the western corruption of Orthodox theology would succumb to the most fundamental form of westernization by choosing English over his mother tongue as his primary medium of scholarly expression” (199)![18]

Third, I would suggest to Florovsky—and here is where I think MacIntyre’s account of an epistemological crisis far more helpful because it recognizes mutual agency and mutual responsibility for change over against Spengler’s idea of captivity, implying as it does that the “captive” is always totally helpless, always a victim: Orthodoxy did make certain choices and did decide to act in certain ways when confronted with rival traditions—whether the bolder actions at Brest or through the Kiev Mohyla Academy, or in other ways. In responding in diverse ways, the Orthodox were not being passive captives jerry-rigging a pseudomorphosis: they were resolving an epistemological crisis as best as they could in their time and place, adopting some new ideas, adapting others, rejecting still others. Whatever else you may say of Mohyla, given his vast industry he cannot be accused of being merely passive and helpless according to at least three recent scholarly studies.[19] Also important here is Metropolitan Filaret who, by Florovsky’s own admission, took the initiative to restore patristic study to seminary curricula in Russia in the 1840s (p.182)!

Here I will go out on a limb and suggest speculatively that Filaret and the Russian seminaries were, in fact, ahead of the West, actively leading the West (rather than being led by them) in recovering the study of the Fathers—a process that would take at least two more generations in the West. Though I am not expert in the history of Western seminary curricula and so cannot say for certain that the Fathers were never studied, there was, from what I have seen, scant attention paid to them (which is true even today in some places). In proof of this, consider the reception of Cardinal Newman into the Catholic Church in October 1845: he had been immersed in patristics as an Oxford Anglican for much of the first half of his life, and it was precisely this immersion in the Fathers, rather than the scholastics, that made him suspect from 1845 until at least 1878 when Pope Leo XIII made him a cardinal. Newman deplored the West’s fortress mentality, coining the phrase—long before Churchill used it in 1946—about an “iron curtain” that descended over Catholicism after Trent, cutting off very nearly the whole of the first millennium and imprisoning Catholicism in stultified scholastic categories, cut off from her vital patristic heritage.[20]

Consider, moreover, the work of such towering figures as Yves Congar and others in the ressourcement movement who recovered the study of the Fathers in the West only in the interwar period of the twentieth century.[21] The idea that Orthodoxy is only ever led by the West or captured by it, rather than at least some of the time showing the way, is thus, I would submit, a thesis very much in need of revision in light of these two examples.[22] To be sure, the West has often had the upper-hand, but I do not think that one can say that Orthodoxy is only ever acted upon, captured even, or forced to endure a “pseudomorphosis.” History, including Christian history, is much messier than that, and it is to Paul Gavrilyuk’s great credit that he has helped us appreciate that with renewed depth in his splendid book.

---

[1] Associate professor and chairman of the Dept. of Theology-Philosophy, University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, IN; and editor Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. adeville@sf.edu.

[2] I have them read this alongside similar arguments, on the Catholic side, from Hans Urs von Balthasar in his 1939 essay “Patristik, Scholastik, und Wir,” published in English in 1997 in Communio as “The Fathers, the Scholastics, and Ourselves.”

[3] Cf. MacIntyre’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (UND Press, 1988).

[4] Cf. Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos, eds., Orthodox Readings of Augustine (SVS Press, 2008).

[5] Cf., inter alia, Léon Tretjakewitsch’s book Bishop Michel d'Herbigny SJ and Russia: A pre-ecumenical approach to Christian unity (Augustinus Verlag, 1990); Raymond Loonbeek et Jacques Mortiau, Un pionnier, Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873-1960). Liturgie et Unité des chrétiens, 2 vol. (Chevetogne, 2001); and then the life and writings of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church, who tried to work within the straitened approach of his time but with more generosity and sensitivity than many in Rome would evidence, especially in Sheptytsky’s relationship to his erstwhile spiritual son, Lev Gillet. Peter Galadza and I collaborated on Sheptytsky’s correspondence in Unité en division: Les lettres de Lev Gillet (“Un moine de l’Eglise d’Orient”) à Andrei Cheptytsky – 1921-1929 (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2009). For an Orthodox appreciation of Sheptytsky’s ecumenical and ecclesiological efforts, see Ihor George Kutash, “Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky: A Pioneer of the Sister Churches Model of Church Unity?” and Archbishop Vsevelod, “Metropolitan Andrei and the Orthodox,” both in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 43-45 (2002-2004):31-40 and 41-56 respectively.

[6] The portrait that emerges through Florovsky’s hands is that Orthodoxy never has moral agency: always acted upon, never actor; always victim, never vanquisher. It is a thoroughly unattractive portrait.

[7] Moreover, my fellow Ukrainian Catholics may be infuriated to find that I agree with Met. Hilarion Alfeyev in this one instance as recorded by the author when the former rightly “points out that not every instance of western influences led to a pseudomorphosis” (255).

[8] That is evident in one of his early books A Short History of Ethics (Macmillan, 1966) and then his most famous book After Virtue (UND Press, 1981).

[9] The essay was first published in The Monist 60 (1977): 453-472, from which I shall quote; and later reprinted in Idem, The Tasks of Philosophy: Volume 1: Selected Essays, vol. I (Cambridge UP, 2006).

[10] Ibid., 461.

[11] Ibid., 459.

[12] Ibid., 460.

[13] In this light, I am wondering, given a considerable number of new books in Russian history and theology published in the last two decades, what the historical picture as it is now emerging would have to say to and about Florovsky’s historical narrative of unilateral decline. Surely there would have to be significant revision in his thesis? I have in mind here such books as those by John and Carol Garrard; Judith Deutsch Kornblatt; Johannes M. Oravecz; Thomas Bremer; Antoine Arjakovsky; and others.

[14] MacIntyre, “Epistemological Crises,” 470.

[15] Ibid., 471.

[16] If Orthodoxy was indeed so moribund, then Florovsky fails to answer a very serious question. If “Russia’s adoption of Byzantine Christianity did little to stimulate the philosophical activity in the country” (180) and if, later under Mohyla, Peter the Great, and German Idealism, Orthodoxy is similarly portrayed as being passive and helpless—too weak to do much of anything—then what are we to infer about the state of Russian culture, whether in the tenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, or subsequent centuries? Must we not at least consider the possibility that Russian culture was not, in fact, a terribly strong, vital, robust creature but instead some sickly, underdeveloped creature at least partially responsible for its own poor state of health?

[17] The crucial study here is Borys Gudziak, Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies) (Harvard, 1999). Whatever one thinks of Brest and the phenomenon of “uniatism,” the union was one attempt at resolving an epistemological crisis, and arguably it was a relatively successful resolution following MacIntyre’s third path—adapt and emerge in a different form. In saying this, I reject, as I do above, the unproven idea that Orthodoxy was purely a victim at Brest of Polish-Lithuanian-Jesuitical-papist power ploys.

[18] MacIntyre is even more acid in dismissing modern men, especially intellectuals, as being quintessentially blind and yet endlessly acclaiming their own ability to see—they cannot see the traditions they come out of because they are too busy denying that they are part of a tradition, that is, of modern Enlightenment liberalism. See After Virtue, 96.

[19] There are at least three recent studies that complicate the picture of Mohyla as a mindless Latinizer living under Uniate hegemony: Marcus Plested’s recent book Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford, 2012) makes it clear that the Kiev Academy under Mohyla “cannot be written off as a corruption of Orthodoxy.” (See my interview with the author where he makes that claim here: http://easternchristianbooks.blogspot.com/2013/02/marcus-plested-on-orthodoxy-and-aquinas.html.) Second, see Ronald Popivchak, “The Life and Times of Peter Mohyla, Metropolitan of Kiev,” Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 43-45 (2002-2004): 339-360; and finally Peter Galadza, “An Analysis of the Mohyla Kiev Liturgicon of 1639,” [in Ukrainian] in Leiturgiarion: The Service Book of the Divine Liturgy Published at the Monastery of the Caves, Kiev, 1639 [facsimile edition] (Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 1996), 1-22.

[20] Benjamin King’s 2009 book, in the same Oxford series of Gavrilyuk’s, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in Nineteenth-Century England, nicely documents this, as did earlier studies in the 1970s by the Oratorian C.S. Dessain and, more recently, the Greek Orthodox scholar George Dion Dragas, who has shown that Newman was the only nineteenth century Western theologian translated into Greek in his own day.

[21] See, inter alia, Gabriel Flynn and Paul Murray, Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology (Oxford, 2014).

[22] Others could be multiplied here, beginning, as Robert Taft has shown, with Orthodox influence on Catholic liturgical revision; and Orthodox influence—especially in the person of Afanasiev—on Catholic ecclesiology in Vatican II’s Lumen gentium.

Hesychasm and Iconography

Students like to think they have caught their professors in a contradiction: "Yes, but last week you said X. So how do you reconcile that with today's Y?" This happened to me recently with a student wanting to know why it is the Christian East places such emphasis on the use of icons in prayer and liturgy, on the one hand, and yet in the hesychastic tradition speaks of acquiring communion with God via "imageless contemplation" on the other. Surely, my student alleged, there must be a contradiction here. I did not and do not think that is the case and a new book helps us to see why: Anita Strezova, Hesychasm and Art: The Appearance of New Iconographic Trends in Byzantine and Slavic Lands in the 14th and 15th Centuries (ANU Press, 2014),

About this book we are told:

Although many of the iconographic traditions in Byzantine art formed in the early centuries of Christianity, they were not petrified within a time warp. Subtle changes and refinements in Byzantine theology did find reflection in changes to the iconographic and stylistic conventions of Byzantine art. This is a brilliant and innovative book in which Dr Anita Strezova argues that a religious movement called Hesychasm, especially as espoused by the great Athonite monk St Gregory Palamas, had a profound impact on the iconography and style of Byzantine art, including that of the Slav diaspora, of the late Byzantine period. While many have been attracted to speculate on such a connection, none until now has embarked on proving such a nexus. The main stumbling blocks have included the need for a comprehensive knowledge of Byzantine theology; a training in art history, especially iconological, semiotic and formalist methodologies; extensive fieldwork in Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Turkey and Russia, and a working knowledge of Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Latin as well as several modern European languages, French, German, Russian and Italian. These are some of the skills which Dr Strezova has brought to her topic (Professor Sasha Grishin AM, FAHA Adjunct Professor of Art History School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics The Australian National University),

Sainthood and Race

Eastern Christians, perhaps more than their Western brethren in some ways, struggle, as is commonplace, with questions of ethnicity, nationalism, and related problems. Do those struggles extend even to the dead and long departed? I'm not entirely convinced that they do insofar as a figure such as Francis of Assisi or Seraphim of Sarov or Mary of Egypt have long transcended Umbrian or Russian or Egyptian categories to achieve global devotion. But a new book raises intriguing questions about race and saints: Molly Bassett and Vincent Lloyd, eds. Sainthood and Race: Marked Flesh, Holy Flesh (Routledge, 29014), 232pp.

Eastern Christians will be especially interested in ch.7 which treats Coptic realities. About this book the publisher tells us:

In popular imagination, saints exhibit the best characteristics of humanity, universally recognizable but condensed and embodied in an individual. Recent scholarship has asked an array of questions concerning the historical and social contexts of sainthood, and opened new approaches to its study. What happens when the category of sainthood is interrogated and inflected by the problematic category of race?

Sainthood and Race: Marked Flesh, Holy Flesh explores this complicated relationship by examining two distinct characteristics of the saint’s body: the historicized, marked flesh and the universal, holy flesh. The essays in this volume comment on this tension between particularity and universality by combining both theoretical and ethnographic studies of saints and race across a wide range of subjects within the humanities. Additionally, the book’s group of emerging and established religion scholars enhances this discussion of sainthood and race by integrating topics such as gender, community, and colonialism across a variety of historical, geographical, and religious contexts. This volume raises provocative questions for scholars and students interested in the intersection of religion and race today.

Discovering the Trinity in Disability

My friends, the lovely newlyweds Tom and Annette Hrywna, came to town recently (much as Her Majesty occasionally leaves London on a tour from the imperial capital to the lesser provinces) spreading connubial bliss and bringing with them a large box of new books that had been accumulating at the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies in Ottawa. Among the choice selections that came to me, having previously escaped my attention, was Myroslaw Tataryn and Maria Truchan-Tataryn, Discovering Trinity in Disability: A Theology for Embracing Difference (Novalis/Orbis, 2013), 144pp.

For those who don't know, Fr. Myroslaw is a Ukrainian Greco-Catholic priest and scholar. He is the author of important scholarly studies such as Augustine and Russian Orthodoxy as well as editor of such collections as Windows to the East.

This current book is co-authored with his wife, a fellow academic and mother. I hope to interview them both in the coming weeks.

About this book the publisher tells us:

From the gospels it would appear that the disabled have a special claim on Jesus love and attention. And yet this does not appear to be the case in the church. Drawing on scripture, theology, and the personal experience of their daughter s severe disability, the authors explore the theological meaning of disability and the special insights it afford into the mystery of God's Trinitarian being (God as an inclusive community).

Changing Religious Movements in Local and Global Perspective

For nearly two decades now we have been regularly hearing about the likely impact of "globalization" on everything from economies to churches, and it is indeed true that much has changed, not least thanks to technology that can bring, say, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or ISIS in Iraq, to much greater attention to a housewife in Boise than previously. Scholars continue to study the interplay between local actors and a global stage, as in this recent book which looks at Orthodox, Islamic, and other religious traditions: Robert W. Hefner et al, eds., Religions in Movement: The Local and the Global in Contemporary Faith Traditions (Routledge, 2013), 330pp.

About this book we are told:

There has long been a debate about implications of globalization for the survival of the world of sovereign nation-states, and the role of nationalism as both an agent of and a response to globalization. In contrast, until recently there has been much less debate about the fate of religion. ‘Globalization’ has been viewed as part of the rationalization process, which has already relegated religion to the dustbin of history, just as it threatens the nation, as the world moves toward a cosmopolitan ethics and politics. The chapters in this book, however, make the case for the salience and resilience of religion, often in conjunction with nationalism, in the contemporary world in several ways.
This bookhighlights the diverse ways in which religions first and foremost make use of the traditional power and communication channels available to them, like strategies of conversion, the preservation of traditional value systems, and the intertwining of religious and political power. Nevertheless, challenged by a more culturally and religiously diversified societies and by the growth of new religious sects, contemporary religions are also forced to let go of these well known strategies of preservation and formulate new ways of establishing their position in local contexts. This collection of essays by established and emerging scholars brings together theory-driven and empirically-based research and case-studies about the global and bottom-up strategies of religions and religious traditions in Europe and beyond to rethink their positions in their local communities and in the world.

The publisher also gives us the table of contents. Eastern Christians will be especially interested in chapters 2, 4, and 5:

General Introduction Sara Mels and Christiane Timmerman
PART 1: Global Perspectives on Religion and Politics 1. Introduction: Global Perspectives on Religion and Politics John Hutchinson 2. Islam, Politics and Globalisation: What are the Issues and Outcomes? Jeffrey Haynes 3. The Paradox of Globalisation: Quakers, Religious NGOs and the United Nations Jeremy Carrette 4. European Secularity and Religious Modernity in Russia and Eastern Europe: Focus on Orthodox Christianity Inna Naletova 5. The Orthodox Tradition in a Globalising World: The Case of the Romanian Orthodox Church Suna Gülfer Ihlamur-Öner 6. Good Muslims, Good Chinese: State Modernization Policies, Globalisation of Religious Networks and the Changing Hui Ethno-Religious Identification Maja Veselič 7. When National Histories and Colonial Myths Meet: ‘Histoire Croisée’ and Memory of the Moroccan-Berber Cultural Movement in the Netherlands Norah Karrouche 8. Self-Sacrifice and Martyrdom in Terrorism: Political and Religious Motives Francesco Marone

PART 2: Varieties of Religious Globalization 9. Introduction: Varieties of Religious Globalization Robert W. Hefner 10. Religion in the Contemporary Globalized World: Construction, Migration, Challenge, Diversity Peter Beyer 11. Voluntarism: Niche Markets Created by a Fissile Transnational Faith David Martin 12. Women perform ʾIjtihād: Hibridity as Creative Space for Interpretation of Islam Els Vanderwaeren 13. Processes of Localised and Globalised Islam Among Young Muslims in Berlin Synnøve Bendixsen 14. Towards Cultural Translation: Rethinking the Dynamics of Religious Pluralism and Globalization Through the Sathya Sai Movement Tulasi Srinivas 15. Ghanaian Films and Chiefs as Indicators of Religious Change Among the Akan in Kumasi and Its Migrants in Southeast Amsterdam Louise Müller

If I Dream of Byzantium Am I Really Dreaming of Deflowering My Sister?

More than twenty years ago now, I thought seriously about becoming a traditional, five-times-a-week-on-the-couch psychoanalyst--traditional in method, if not entirely in theory. By that I mean that I shared Christopher Lasch's judgment that Freud, in attending to phenomena in the individual psyche in a clinical setting, gave us often startling and brilliant insights of singular and lasting value; but the Freud of wide-ranging cultural theories (think Moses and Monotheism, Totem and Taboo or The Future of an Illusion or, more widely,  Civilization and Its Discontents) was completely out of his depth and can be safely ignored.

Thus, in broader matters I could never identify completely with Freud, and aligned myself (as noted previously) with other "neo-Freudian" figures such as the late Nina Coltart, author of the delightful collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Nevertheless, Freud's classical, and much abused and much mocked text The Interpretation of Dreams, remains very valuable in some ways. It came back to mind (!) tonight in reading of a new book released just last week: Christine Angelidi and George Calofonos, eds., Dreaming in Byzantium and Beyond (Ashgate, 2014), 232pp.

About this book we are told:

Although the actual dreaming experience of the Byzantines lies beyond our reach, the remarkable number of dream narratives in the surviving sources of the period attests to the cardinal function of dreams as vehicles of meaning, and thus affords modern scholars access to the wider cultural fabric of symbolic representations of the Byzantine world. Whether recounting real or invented dreams, the narratives serve various purposes, such as political and religious agendas, personal aspirations or simply an author's display of literary skill. It is only in recent years that Byzantine dreaming has attracted scholarly attention, and important publications have suggested the way in which Byzantines reshaped ancient interpretative models and applied new perceptions to the functions of dreams. This book - the first collection of studies on Byzantine dreams to be published - aims to demonstrate further the importance of closely examining dreams in Byzantium in their wider historical and cultural, as well as narrative, context. Linked by this common thread, the essays offer insights into the function of dreams in hagiography, historiography, rhetoric, epistolography, and romance. They explore gender and erotic aspects of dreams; they examine cross-cultural facets of dreaming, provide new readings, and contextualize specific cases; they also look at the Greco-Roman background and Islamic influences of Byzantine dreams and their Christianization. The volume provides a broad variety of perspectives, including those of psychoanalysis and anthropology.

The Christian East and West as Seen in Three Extraordinary Women

I am very happy to be involved in a conference planned for May 2015 on the life and work of Dorothy Day, details of which may be had here. She was an extraordinary woman in herself, but what especially fascinates me is how much her life seems to run not only in roughly chronological parallel with two other of her contemporaries from the Christian East, viz., Catherine de Hueck Doherty and Mother Maria Skobtsova, but how her life and theirs ended up doing so much good in such strikingly similar ways. All three were different in their origins--Day as an American Episcopalian who became Roman Catholic, Doherty as Russian Orthodox who wound up in the Catholic Church in Canada, and Skobtsova as an early atheist who became Orthodox in France--but united in their strong pursuit of God and defense of God's beloved poor and suffering people.

One of the people coming to the conference to give a paper is the priest Robert Wild, author of the book Comrades Stumbling Along: The Friendship of Catherine de Hueck Doherty and Dorothy Day as Revealed Through Their Letters (Alba House, 2009), 173pp. His collection of their correspondence draws out some of the parallels between Day and Doherty, the latter of whom began life as a Russian Orthodox Christian of minor, pre-revolutionary nobility before ending her life married to a Melkite Greek Catholic priest and living a very simple, quasi-monastic life in a small town in eastern Ontario at Madonna House, which she helped to found.

Doherty's life has been explored in a number of books, including this collection edited by the Jesuit David Mecconi, Catherine de Hueck Doherty: Essential Writings as well as They Called Her the Baroness: The Life of Catherine De Hueck Doherty.

Mother Maria, who is perhaps more alike in her early life to Day than Doherty, has been getting more attention since her canonization by the Ecumenical Patriarch a decade ago now. Her life can be read about in such books as Mother Maria Skobtsova: Essential Writings  as well as Jim Forrest's book, aimed especially at children: Silent as a Stone: Mother Maria of Paris and the Trash Can Rescue.

All three women deserve continued exploration and study, and anyone willing to put a paper together on such parallels and connections would be most welcome to submit such a proposal to our conference here. 

Put Not Your Trust in Princes, E.g.#159,614,287

We are mere weeks away from mid-term elections in the US, but also many, many weeks into the Russian-Ukrainian conflict during which, inter alia, I have heard from Christian friends waxing romantic about the supposed "traditional" "Christian values" being exhibited by and under the influence of Vladimr Putin. In the US, as NPR was reporting earlier this week as I was driving home, there are GOP politicians who, running for re-election next month, have not yet figured out how to appeal to the fear of Christians that social mores have changed with regard to same-sex "marriage," but how, also, to appeal to the more liberal voters who are glad that such mores have changed or been set aside by various judicial fiats of late. What is the so-called conservative voter and politician to do? Perhaps John Anderson's newly published book will help us: Conservative Christian Politics in Russia and the United States: Dreaming of Christian Nations (Routledge 2014), 206pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This book explores the politics of conservative Christian churches and social movements in Russia and the United States, focusing on their similar concerns but very different modes of political engagement.
Whilst secularisation continues to chip away at religious adherence and practice in Europe, religion is often, quite rightly, seen as an influential force in the politics of the United States, and, more questionably, as a significant influence in contemporary Russia. This book looks at the broad social movement making up the US Christian Right and the profoundly hierarchical leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church as socially conservative actors, and some of the ways they have engaged in contemporary politics. Both are seeking to halt the perceived drift towards a more secular political order; both face significant challenges in handling the consequences of secularism, pluralism and liberal individualism; and both believe that their nations can only be great if they remain true to their religious heritage. In exploring their experience, the book focuses on shared and different elements in their diagnosis of what is wrong with their societies and how this affects their policy intervention over issues such as religious and ethnic belonging, sexual orientation and education.
Drawing on political, sociological and religious studies, this work will be a useful reference for students and scholars of religion and politics, Russian politics and American politics.

Trashing Heretics on Twitter and Facebook

Perhaps it is from a painfully personal awareness of the power of Twitter or Facebook to destroy reputations in a gratuitous and unjust fashion based as often as not on one's "friends" or those to whom one links or fails to link, but my students seem especially fascinated and engaged when I talk about how many early Christians--Origen of Alexandria or Evagrius of Pontus, to name perhaps the most prominent--could have been invoked, or alternately celebrated or trashed, often posthumously, on the basis of hearsay, the types of friends they kept or failed to keep, or the posthumous antics of their so-called friends and disciples invoking the master's name to promote various ideas and causes. To my mind, one of the clearest examples of this is Evagrius of Pontus, who has been under such a "glare of unwelcome light" (Anthony Blanche) and has been treated in lurid and hostile terms with what seems to me very thinly sourced and very ambiguous "evidence." Fortunately, Evagrius has come in for a wholly welcome re-examination by Augustine Casiday, as noted here in my interview with him. Now a new book looks at the whole phenomenon of how people were trashed with the label of "heretic": Geoffrey S. Smith, Guilt by Association: Heresy Catalogues in Early Christianity (Oxford UP, 2014), 216pp.

About this book we are told:

Few literary innovations have exercised as much influence upon Christian attitudes toward internal diversity as has the practice of organizing the names and alleged misdeeds of rival teachers into heresy catalogues. For two millennia, followers of Jesus have employed the heresy catalogue as a powerful weapon in internal struggles for legitimacy, authority, and supremacy. Despite its enduring popularity and influence within the Christian tradition, the heresy catalogue remains an underappreciated polemical genre among historians of early Christianity.Guilt by Association explores the creation, publication, and circulation of heresy catalogues by second- and early third-century Christians. Polemicists made use of these religious blacklists, which include the names of heretical teachers along with summaries of their unsavory doctrines and nefarious misdeeds, in order to discredit opponents and advocate their expulsion from the "authentic" Christianity community. The heresy catalogue proved to be especially effective because it not only recast rival teachers as menacing adversaries, but also reinforced such characterizations by organizing otherwise unaffiliated teachers into coherent intellectual, social, and scholastic communities that are established and sustained by demonic powers. Geoffrey Smith focuses especially on the earliest Christian heresy catalogues, including those found within the works of Justin, Irenaeus, and Hegesippus, to shed new light upon the complex process through which early Christianity took shape.

Jerusalem Churches in the Round

Set for release at the very end of this year is a new book in the prestigious Oxford Studies in Byzantium authored by Vered Shalev-Hurvitz, Holy Sites Encircled (Oxford UP, 2014), 520pp.

About this book we are told:

The round and octagonal churches of Jerusalem were the earliest of their kind. Powerful, monumental structures, recalling imperial mausolea and temples, they enshrined the holiest sites of Christianity. Constantine himself ordered the building of the first ones immediately after the council of Nicaea (325), his main objective being the authentication of Jesus's existence in Jerusalem in accordance with the council's resolutions, but the sites he chose in Palestine also obliterated reminiscences of Jewish or Pagan domination. Holy Sites Encircled demonstrates that all four concentric churches of Jerusalem encircled new holy sites exclusively relating to the corporeal existence of Jesus or Mary, and that they were self-contained, and apse-less because the liturgy, including the Mass, was performed from the venerated centre. Offering intimate concentric spaces, as well as perpetual processions around these sites, they promoted the development of new feasts, shaping the city's liturgy and that of the whole Christian world. They were found especially suitable to compete with former religious landmarks and therefore many of their descendants outside Jerusalem were cathedrals. This volume begins with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which replaced a pagan temple in Jerusalem city centre, and concludes with the Dome of the Rock, a unique Muslim structure, which was built by the Ummayads on the very site of the ruined Jewish Temple on Mount Moriah, using the concentric architecture of Jerusalem to establish their new authority. Illustrating how architectural form links together culture, politics, and society it explores the perceptions and architectural models that shaped these unusual churches and their impact, in both ideas and design, on future architecture.

The Fascinating and Maddening Georges Florovsky

I was asked to go to Brookline later this month to Holy Cross College, the site of this year's meeting of the Orthodox Theological Society of America. OTSA asked me to be on a panel as one of the respondents to Paul Gavrilyuk's new book, Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaisance (Oxford UP, 2014), 320pp.

I will not repeat here everything of what I have said in my written remarks prepared for the panel, but let me instead note some of the strengths of this book, and some of the curiosities of the man portrayed in it.

It is, first of all, a wonderfully cogent book. Its tone and balance are striking, and the author is greatly to be commended here for avoiding any kind of polemics in response to some of Florovsky's more outrageous claims. I first studied Florovsky in a doctoral course more than ten years ago now, and I came greatly to respect him. I still do in some ways, and thus, almost every semester, I have my students read his essay "St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers" (which they read alongside a Catholic treatment of many of the same issues, viz., Hans Urs von Balthasar's 1939 essay, translated into English only in 1997 as "The Fathers, the Scholastics, and Ourselves.") But reading Gavrilyuk's book made me re-think much of what Florovsky wrote, which now seems to me far less credible than I once thought. I think perhaps I was taken in by the force of Florovsky's rhetoric rather than the quality of his evidence, which today seems to me much more dubious.

Gavrilyuk's book is neither a “take-down” nor a pious hagiography, but intellectual history and biography of the best sort, allowing us to see the man in full. If, as Cardinal Newman famously said, the danger of hagiography is that it reduces complex people and their messy lives to mere “clothes racks for virtues,” we can be grateful to the author that he avoided that danger and allowed us to see everything Florovsky wore, winsomely captured in the--if you will--"bespoke" beret and rather déshabillé cassock on the front cover!

Florovsky was indeed a complex man, and it seems very clear that he rather sharply embodied something attributed to Cyrano de Bergerac, who said that he sought always "to stand, not so high perhaps, but always alone." Florovsky was forever breaking with his colleagues in Paris, New York, Princeton, and elsewhere. He seems almost driven towards a destruction of relationships and a refusal of any party line. It remains a mystery to me, given this track record, that he was so regularly invited to WCC and other ecumenical events over the years.

Florovsky, of course, is best known for his idea of a "neo-patristic synthesis," which is of value, but only to a limited degree, and in the wrong hands subject to abuse and distortion. His other big idea was that Orthodoxy was victimized by a "Western captivity" that corrupted it through a "pseudomorphosis." For lengthy reasons I shall argue later in the month, I think both claims now have to be very sharply revised not only because the evidence Florovsky adduces is so thin but also because there is now a good deal of other evidence to be considered that complicates the picture. Moreover, the image that Florovsky conveys here is a thoroughly unattractive one. In his caricatures, nobody looks good: Orthodoxy is always a victim, weak, helpless, supine before the rapacious and ravishing Western brute. Whom does that accurately or fairly describe--on either side? How do such characterizations help East or West, singly or together?

After the conference, perhaps I'll be able to post my thoughts in full. But in the meantime, this is a splendid book for all sorts of reasons, and anyone interested in not only Florovsky but Russian and more broadly Orthodox history in Europe and North America in the last century, and in the current one, will not want to be without Gavrilyuk's carefully researched and painstakingly argued scholarly work without which no credible future discussion of its subject will be possible.

Sanctify Them in the Truth

As I noted almost three years ago now, we have seen an explosion of books in the last decade devoted to the topic of theosis, otherwise known in English as divinization or deification (and I tell my students to pay special attention to the spelling of that latter term as a few of them turn in essays with it rendered as defecation!). Set for December release is a wide-ranging collection devoted to exploration of the idea of "sanctification," that is, how do we become holy and thus like God? Edited by Kelly M. Kapic, the book is Sanctification: Explorations in Theology and Practice (IVP, 2014), 300pp.

About this book we are told:

Often treated like the younger sibling in theology, the doctrine of sanctification has spent the last few decades waiting not-so-patiently behind those doctrines viewed as more senior. With so much recent interest in ideas like election and justification, the question of holiness can often seem to be of secondary importance, and widespread misunderstanding of sanctification as moralism or undue human effort further impedes thoughtful engagement. But what if we have missed the boat on what sanctification really means for today's believer? The essays in this volume, which come out of a recent Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference, address this dilemma through biblical, historical, dogmatic and pastoral explorations. The contributors sink their teeth into positions like the "works" mentality or "justification by faith alone" and posit stronger biblical views of grace and holiness, considering key topics such as the image of God, perfection, union with Christ, Christian ethics and suffering. Eschewing any attempt to produce a unified proposal, the essays included here instead offer resources to stimulate an informed discussion within both church and academy. Contributors include:

• Henri Blocher
• Julie Canlis
• Ivor Davidson
• James Eglinton
• Brannon Ellis
• Michael Horton
• Kelly M. Kapic
• Richard Lints
• Bruce McCormack
• Peter Moore (whose chapter focuses on the great Eastern Father John Chrysostom)
• Oliver O’Donovan
• Derek Tidball

How Did the Fathers Talk about God?

It is a striking sign of the times when I receive in my mail this week the most recent catalogue from one of the leading evangelical publishers in the anglophone world, and it comes with Byzantine iconography splashed all over the cover. Evangelicals have been "discovering" the East, and the Fathers, for the better part of three decades now. Set for release early in January of next year is a new book by Mark Sheridan, Language for God in Patristic Tradition: Wrestling with Biblical Anthropomorphism (IVP, 2015), 256pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Criticism of myth in the Bible is not a modern problem. Its roots go back to the earliest Christian theologians, and before them, to ancient Greek and Jewish thinkers. The dilemma posed by texts that ascribe human characteristics and emotions to the divine is a perennial problem, and we have much to learn from the ancient attempts to address it. Mark Sheridan provides a theological and historical analysis of the patristic interpretation of Scripture’s anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language for God. Rather than reject the Bible as mere stories, ancient Jewish and Christian theologians read these texts allegorically or theologically in order to discover the truth contained within them. They recognized that an edifying and appropriate interpretation of these stories required that one start from the understanding that "God is not a human being" (Num 23:19). Sheridan brings the patristic tradition into conversation with modern interpreters to show the abiding significance of its theological interpretation for today. Language for God in Patristic Tradition is a landmark resource for students of ancient Christian theology. Wide-ranging in scope and accessible in its analysis, it demonstrates that those engaged in theological interpretation of Scripture have much to gain from studying their forebears in the faith.

Byzantium and the Crusades

Next month will give us fresh opportunity to deepen our knowledge of the Crusades, those events, as I have so often remarked, which are, more than anything in Christian history, subject to such gross distortion and tendentious abuse. Thus in November we shall have the second edition of Jonathan Harris' important book Byzantium and The Crusades: Second Edition (Bloomsbury, 2014), 288pp. About this book the publisher tells us:

This new edition of Byzantium and the Crusades provides a fully-revised and updated version of Jonathan Harris's landmark text in the field of Byzantine and crusader history.
The book offers a chronological exploration of Byzantium and the outlook of its rulers during the time of the Crusades. It argues the distinct view, with regards to Byzantine interaction with Western Europe, the Crusades and the crusader states, that one of the main keys to these interactions can be found in the nature of the Byzantine empire and the ideology which underpinned it, rather than in any generalised hostility between the peoples.
Taking recent scholarship into account, this new edition includes an updated notes section and bibliography, as well as the following significant new additions to the text:
- New material on the role of religious differences after 1100
- A detailed discussion of economic, social and religious changes that took place in twelfth-century Byzantine relations with the west
- In-depth coverage of Byzantium and the Crusades during the thirteenth century
- New maps, illustrations, genealogical tables and a timeline of key dates
Byzantium and the Crusades is an important contribution to the historiography by a major scholar in the field that should be read by anyone interested in Byzantine and crusader history.

Popes Ancient and Modern

If you've read my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity (and really: why would you not have read it already, and sent copies to all your friends and family?) you will see in there a discussion of how much the papacy has changed over the years, not least in the last century alone. Think what you want about it, the office has demonstrated remarkable flexibility in various periods, and continues to do so under Pope Francis. That flexibility is very important for those hoping for continued reform of the office so that, as the late Pope John Paul II prayed in 1995, it may again be an instrument of unity for Eastern and Western Christians alike.

There is much of papal history that we are learning about anew, realizing that the received mythologies of both East and West continue to need significant revision. Recent books such as George Demacopoulos' study, The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity and Susan Wessel, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome have been very helpful and important here.

In December, in time for Christmas presents, two new books will be released devoted to popes in late antiquity and in the twentieth century. The first of these will be John Moorhead, The Popes and the Church of Rome in Late Antiquity (Routledge, 2014), 384pp.

About this book we are told:

In the past few decades there has been an explosion of interest in the period of late antiquity. Rather than being viewed within a paradigm of the fall of the Roman Empire, these centuries have come to be seen as a time of immense creativity and significance in western history. Popes and the Church of Rome in Late Antiquity places the history of the papacy in a broader context, by comparing Rome with other major sees to show how it differed from these, evaluating developments beyond Rome which created openings for the extension of papal authority.
Closer to home, the book considers the ability of the Roman church to gain access to wealth, retain it in difficult times, and disburse it in ways that enhanced its authority. Author John Moorhead evaluates patterns in the recruitment of popes and what these suggest about the background of those who came to papal office. Structured around a narrative of the papacy’s history from the accession of Leo the Great to the death of Zacharias II, the book does more than tell what happened between these years, applying new approaches in intellectual, cultural, and social history to provide a uniquely deep and holistic study of the period.

The second book set for December release is John Pollard,The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914-1958 (Oxford UP, 2014), 576pp.

Pollard is the author of the invaluable (and often amusing) study, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican, 1850-1950 (Cambridge, 2008). In this new book of his, we are told:

The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914-1958 examines the most momentous years in papal history. Popes Benedict XV (1914-1922), Pius XI (1922-1939), and Pius XII (1939-1958) faced the challenges of two world wars and the Cold War, and threats posed by totalitarian dictatorships like Italian Fascism, German National Socialism, and Communism in Russia and China. The wars imposed enormous strains upon the unity of Catholics and the hostility of the totalitarian regimes to Catholicism lead to the Church facing persecution and martyrdom on a scale similar to that experienced under the Roman Empire and following the French Revolution.

At the same time, these were years of growth, development, and success for the papacy. Benedict healed the wounds left by the 'modernist' witch hunt of his predecessor and re-established the papacy as an influence in international affairs through his peace diplomacy during the First World War. Pius XI resolved the 'Roman Question' with Italy and put papal finances on a sounder footing. He also helped reconcile the Catholic Church and science by establishing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and took the first steps to move the Church away from entrenched anti-Semitism. Pius XI continued his predecessor's policy of the 'indigenisation' of the missionary churches in preparation for de-colonisation. Pius XII fully embraced the media and other means of publicity, and with his infallible promulgation of the Assumption in 1950, he took papal absolutism and centralism to such heights that he has been called the 'last real pope'. Ironically, he also prepared the way for the Second Vatican Council.

Where's the Bird?

Oftentimes in that rarefied and fanciful hothouse of Western-Rite Orthodoxy, one sometimes finds, amidst much liturgical bricolage, an "epiclesis" jerry-rigged onto some Western eucharistic anaphora or other. This is usually based on the ironically Western concern with certain formula that must be uttered for a sacrament to be validly "confected." Eastern Christians who have been misled into believing that an anaphora is not "valid" if it lacks an epiclesis thus feel the need to tack one on to Western prayers they have appropriated unto themselves. More amusingly still, some of them claim that the West once had an epiclesis until it "dropped out," much like those towering theological giants at Charlemagne's court insisted, with no evidence whatsoever, that the filioque was in the original draft of the creed from Nicaea until it, too, somehow mysteriously "dropped out." (The always witty and erudite Fr. John Hunwicke has discussed these silly ideas over the years.)

The concept and role of an epiclesis comes up for renewed study in a recent book: Anne McGowan, Eucharistic Epicleses, Ancient and Modern (Liturgical Press, 2014), 312pp. About this book the publisher tells us:

The past several decades have witnessed a shift in the approach to the Spirit. Since the mid 1960s, scholarly attention has been focused on the role of the Holy Spirit in the modern — and now increasingly postmodern and ‘post-Christian’ — world:  first, there has been a resurgence of interest in the pneumatology of past eras; second, studies of the Spirit from a Pentecostal and Charismatic perspective have entered the mainstream of contemporary theological discussion and scholarship;  third, interest in the Spirit has intersected with feminist, liberationist, ecological, global and interfaith concerns, among others, to produce a multitude of new constructive theological proposals in which the Spirit plays a prominent part.

Now it is time to give attention to the liturgical role of the Spirit and the study of worship as a site of the Spirit’s presence and work — an approach that is thoroughly and expertly discussed in Eucharistic Epicleses.