Plested on Sophiology

If you don't know the works of Marcus Plested, you need to remedy that immediately. I've interviewed him on here and discussed some of his other landmark works. 

Coming out the end of June is his latest book, Wisdom in Christian Tradition:The Patristic Roots of Modern Russian Sophiology (Oxford University Press, 2022), 288pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Following a survey of the biblical and classical background, Wisdom in Christian Tradition offers a detailed exploration of the theme of wisdom in patristic, Byzantine, and medieval theology, up to and including Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas in Greek East and Latin West, respectively. Three principal levels of Christian wisdom discourse are distinguished: wisdom as human attainment, wisdom as divine gift, and wisdom as an attribute or quality of God. This journey through Wisdom in Christian Tradition is undertaken in conversation with modern Russian Sophiology, one of the most popular and widely discussed theological movements of our time. Sophiology is characterized by the idea of a primal pre-principle of divineâhuman unity (âSophiaâ) manifest in both uncreated and created forms and constituting the very foundation of all that is. Sophiology is a complex phenomenon with multiple sources and inspirations, very much including the Church Fathers. Indeed, fidelity to patristic tradition was to become an ever-increasing feature of its self-understanding and self-articulation, above all in the work of its greatest exponent, Fr Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944). This âunmodern turnâ (as it is here christened) to patristic sources has, however, long been fiercely contested. This book is the first to evaluate thoroughly the nature and substance of Sophiologyâs claim to patristic continuity. The final chapter offers a radical re-thinking of Sophiology in line with patristic tradition. This constructive proposal maintains Sophiologyâs most distinctive insights and most pertinent applications while divesting it of some its more problematic elements.

Palamite Anthropology

The rediscovery of Palamas in the contemporary period is one that must be regarded with some ambivalence insofar as he has often been used to posit certain polemical and apologetical positions by some Orthodox vis-à-vis the Catholic Church, and vice versa. Nevertheless, interest in him remains high, and we have a recent book that adds to it: Alexandros Chouliaras,

The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body (Brepols, 2020), XVI+243 pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

How are we to regard our body? As a prison, an enemy, or, maybe, an ally? Is it something bad that needs to be humiliated and extinguished, or should one see it as a huge blessing, that deserves attention and care? Is the body an impediment to human experience of God? Or, rather, does the body have a crucial role in this very experience? Alexandros Chouliaras’ book The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: the Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body argues that the fourteenth-century monk, theologian, and bishop Gregory Palamas has interesting and persuasive answers to offer to all these questions, and that his anthropology has a great deal to offer to Christian life and theology today.

Amongst this book’s contributions are these: for Palamas, the human is superior to the angels concerning the image of God for specific reasons, all linked to his corporeality. Secondly, the spiritual senses refer not only to the soul, but also to the body. However, in Paradise the body will be absorbed by the spirit, and acquire a totally spiritual aspect. But this does not at all entail a devaluing of the body. On the contrary, St Gregory ascribes a high value to the human body. Finally, central to Palamas’ theology is a strong emphasis on the human potentiality for union with God, theosis: that is, the passage from　image　to　likeness. And herein lies, perhaps, his most important gift to the anthropological concerns of our epoch.

Alexandros Chouliaras, post-doctoral researcher at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Theology, holds a PhD in Theology from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Religion and Theology, under the direction of Professors Andrew Louth and John Behr. Some of his texts have been presented in international theological conferences and published in peer-reviewed academic journals. He serves as a parish priest in Athens, Greece (Metropolis of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki), where he lives with his wife and their four children.

To Attain the Full Stature of the Perfect Christ

Strolling through the Oxford University Press of forthcoming publications is always a delight, but never more so than when espying names of friends and colleagues, as here: Human Perfection in Byzantine Theology: Attaining the Fullness of Christ by Alexis Torrance  (Oxford UP, December 2020, 256pp.)

Alexis and I gave papers at the Eighth Day Institute in Kansas just over a year ago--though it now feels like another aeon in a distant galaxy far, far away! If you don't know the lovely people of the Institute, and the unique and hopeful and admirable work they are doing--built around that fantastic bookstore--then stop at once and go here.

I've written to Alexis asking for an interview upon publication of his book, about which the publisher tells us this:

To what kind of existence does Christ call us? Christian theology has from its inception posited a powerful vision of humanity's ultimate and eternal fulfilment through the person and work of Jesus Christ. How precisely to understand and approach the human perfection to which the Christian is summoned is a question that has vexed the minds of many and diverse theologians.

Orthodox Christian theology is notable for its consistent interest in this question, and over the last century has offered to the West a wealth of theological insight on the matter, drawn both from the resources of its Byzantine theological heritage as well as its living interaction with Western theological and philosophical currents. In this regard, the important themes of personhood, deification, epektasis, apophaticism, and divine energies have been elaborated with much success by Orthodox theologians; but not without controversy.

Human Perfection in Byzantine Theology addresses the question of human perfection in Orthodox theology via a retrieval of the sources, examining in turn the thought of leading representatives of the Byzantine theological tradition: St Maximus the Confessor, St Theodore the Studite, St Symeon the New Theologian, and St Gregory Palamas. The overarching argument of this study is that in order to present an Orthodox Christian understanding of human perfection which remains true to its Byzantine inheritance, supreme emphasis must be placed on the doctrine of Christ, especially on the significance and import of Christ's humanity. The intention of this work is thus to keep the creative approach to human destiny in Orthodox theology firmly moored to its theological past.

Matthew Briel on Greek Thomists

I think I first met our author, Matthew Briel, at a lovely conference at the University of Saint Thomas in the Twin Cities in July 2017, devoted to questions of reception history in theology. I gave a paper on the usefulness of forgetting, drawing on numerous books I have discussed on here since 2016. My paper had a lovely and thrilling response from Sarah Coakley.

Since then, Matthew has finished his doctoral work, found a job, and published his dissertation as A Greek Thomist: Providence in Gennadios Scholarios. Following my usual practice, I e-mailed him some questions about his background and new book. Here are his thoughts.

AD: Tell us about your background

MB: I am a Catholic layman originally from Minnesota but now an Assistant Professor of Theology at Assumption University in Worcester, Massachusetts. My undergraduate degree in philosophy and an MTS in theology are from Notre Dame and it was there that my basic view of the world through a Thomistic and Newmanian lens was confirmed. John Henry Newman, in particular, has affected my view of history and epistemology.

After a year of teaching in a Catholic high school I did a three-year MA in Classics at the University of Minnesota which strengthened my Latin, gave me my Greek, and provided a broad introduction to classical literature. It also prepared me for the academy by exposing me to critical theory. I then entered Fordham’s doctoral program to study with George Demacopoulos. This was my introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy and Byzantine theology.

AD: What led to the writing of A Greek Thomist: Providence in Gennadios Scholarios?

MB: As an MA student I read Aristotle in Greek for the first time and found myself again attracted to his basic worldview with its primacy of the particular and his, to me, mostly convincing metaphysics and ethics. I was reminded of my basically Thomistic orientation and wondered if there was a way that I could incorporate Thomas into my studies but at the same time had begun the MA in order to learn Greek to work in the Greek Orthodox theological tradition. When I learned about Greek Thomism I was committed.

I began my doctoral work by writing a seminar paper on Demetrios Kydones, the first Orthodox thinker to read Thomas with care. I came to the conclusion that Kydones wasn’t a genius and looked to so if there might be someone else. I then stumbled across Scholarios, became convinced of his towering intellect, and began working on him.

My beginning in Scholarios was a tutorial with a Thomist, Franklin Harkins, at Fordham. I would come with translations of Scholarios to our meetings and we would discuss them, identifying Thomas’ influence. After that I worked carefully with George Demacopoulos to develop a framework and to place Scholarios in the Orthodox theological tradition.

AD: Tell us a bit about your titular character and why he’s important

MB: Born around 1400 in Constantinople, Scholarios became a teacher of philosophy in his 20s. He learned Latin well early in his life and read voraciously in Latin and Greek philosophy and theology. Really the breadth of his knowledge of both theological traditions is breathtaking. By his late 20s Scholarios became convinced that Latin scholasticism, and Aquinas in particular, not only had developed and refined classical Greek philosophy, especially in logic, but that Aquinas had profound insight into the Greek Fathers, surpassing even Byzantine understanding of the Greek fathers.

Scholarios remained an unmarried lay scholar (a bachelor-don) and developed a reputation for his profound learning. As a result, he was brought to the Council of Florence in 1438 as one of three lay theological advisors to the Orthodox delegation. At this point Scholarios was very much in favor of reunion with Rome. At the same time, Scholarios was committed to a reunion established on dogmatic grounds rather than a political compromise. Returning to Constantinople in 1439, Scholarios, under the influence of his teacher Mark of Ephesus (the hero who resisted reunion on the grounds of compromised dogma), grew increasingly anti-union. Scholarios took monastic vows in his late 40s and grew increasingly frustrated with the imperial uniate position. He became the leader of the anti-union party.

After the fall of the City in 1453, Mehmed the Conqueror chose Scholarios to be patriarch in large part due to his resistance to Rome. Scholarios remained in this position for two years until he retired first to Mt. Athos and then to the manuscript- rich Monastery of the Forerunner outside of Serres in Northern Greece.

As the first patriarch of Constantinople after its fall in 1453, Scholarios laid the groundwork for the relationship of Orthodox Christians with their Muslim conquerors for the next several centuries. Serving as both ecclesial and secular ruler of the Rum Millet (Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire), Scholarios provided sophisticated defenses of Christianity to his new Muslim rulers, worked to provide places of worship for Christians, and helped to establish a place for Christians in Ottoman society.

Scholarios is perhaps more remarkable as a theologian. Among other things, he offered the first Orthodox account of transubstantiation. This was to have a long afterlife in the Orthodox theological tradition. Then there’s his reconciliation of the Palamite distinction between the divine essence and energies with the Catholic understanding of divine simplicity. His pastoral work and application of economy is a forerunner to contemporary Orthodox practice. Finally, of course, there is his account of divine providence, the subject of the book, which had a profound effect on later Orthodox theology.

AD: Your book is, as we say today, at the intersection of several phenomena: Greek Orthodox thought and Thomism, Aristotelian philosophy and theology, a Turkish Islamic context at the end of the East-Roman Empire, inter alia. What were some of the surprises you found in examining these intersections?

MB: I was surprised by the fierce debate about providence between fifteenth-century Greek theologians (including the pagan Pletho) and its parallel in discussion on the ground, so to say. There are reports of popular opinions in contemporary historians as well as a cache of letters written in simple Greek that evince a great concern with providence. Novel accounts of fate/determinism and a conception of a random universe were also circulating. It was in this context that Scholarios worked. He attempted to respond both to a popular decline in belief in providence (in part influenced indirectly by higher levels of discourse and the fall of the Byzantine Empire) and the ideas of scholars.

Pletho, too, was a surprise to me. Perhaps the greatest mind of the later Byzantine Empire, Pletho was a convinced pagan (and possibly theurgist) who was highly critical of Aristotle, whose language and concepts undergird traditional Byzantine theology, and instead preferred Plato. Pletho’s pamphlet, On the Differences between Plato and Aristotle, caused quite a stir in the mid-15th century in both Italy and the Byzantine Empire. Scholarios responded to this pamphlet with a text that presents Aristotle, without change, as compatible with Christianity. In his response, Pletho easily demolished Scholarios’ arguments and pressed him to reconsider Aristotle’s compatibility with the Christian understanding of God and the universe. Scholarios realized that Aristotle had to be transformed if he was to be used in Christian dogmatics and he did just that, largely, but not simply, following the path established by Aquinas. Scholarios’ teaching on providence became the consensus position among later Orthodox theologians and it is in part due to Pletho’s intervention. In this way a revival of paganism at the end of the Byzantine Empire led to an important development in Orthodox doctrine.

AD: Marcus Plested (interviewed here), who has endorsed your book and is the author of an earlier and similar work on Orthodox Readings of Aquinas, has helped to break down some of the assumptions and stereotypes about Latin scholasticism and Greek patristics. Does your book continue that process, differ from it, or add to it?

Plested’s book draws attention for the first time to the massive influence, both negative and positive, that Aquinas has had on Orthodox theology. There was a good sized body of literature on the Byzantine reception of Aquinas in various languages since the turn of the twentieth century. Plested brings that literature together into a coherent narrative, arguing that Orthodoxy has in the past and continues today to have something to learn from Aquinas.

At the same time this engagement with Aquinas has been and must be a critical reception. This is an important challenge to Orthodox theology which has, since the middle of the twentieth century, tended to rest content with eschewing Latin theology by reducing it to a caricature and proceeding to reject it. Plested demonstrates that this approach is in fact not the historical road of Orthodoxy and shouldn’t be the approach today.

Plested’s book gives a fair amount of attention to Scholarios and holds him up as a model for rapprochement with Aquinas in particular and with Western theology in general. Scholarios knew Aquinas deeply, recognized his genius and his mastery of the Greek patristic tradition and learned from him. Indeed, Scholarios drew upon Aquinas in his own theology. But this was not a passive reception. Instead Scholarios drew attention to Aquinas’ errors while praising him.

I focused on Scholarios because, like Plested, I am convinced that he is a model of Orthodox engagement with Aquinas. My book furthers Plested’s argument about Aquinas and Orthodox doctrine. Like Plested, I also engage the Greek patristic tradition that formed Scholarios and present Aquinas as a valid interpreter of that tradition. Because Plested’s book covers so much territory, he didn’t have the space to develop why Scholarios is a model for Orthodox theology. By focusing on him, my book is able to do this.

AD: As we learn more about the previously unknown or ignored connections between Latin and Greek Christian thought in this period, you are very clear in your introduction that the result of such an encounter does not necessarily entail “captivity” (Florovsky) or the creation of a tertium quid, but can result in “a healthy development of the Orthodox theological tradition” (p.4), referencing Newman. But I thought “development” was an impermissible category in Orthodox thought—certainly I recall Andrew Louth and others saying that as recently as 2006? Tell us more about how you understand development in the context of Scholarios.


MB: Yes, I should have clarified this in the book. My sense of Louth’s chapter in Jaroslav Pelikan’s Festschrift is that his criticism of the idea of the development of doctrine is a criticism of it as it is conceived of by modern western theologians, and not as it was understood by Newman. Although Louth presents an analysis of Newman in this chapter, he simply gets him wrong. Louth’s concern is: “if development means that there is an historical advance in Christian understanding of the faith deeper or more profound than that of the Fathers, at least in principle, then such a notion of development cannot be accepted as a category of Orthodox theology” (55).

Newman wholeheartedly agrees with Louth and I would argue that such a conception of development cannot be accepted as a category of Catholic theology either. For Newman it is not a question of the depth of understanding but rather a question of making precise and making implicit knowledge (which is real and more fundamental knowledge) explicit.

In the case of Scholarios’ understanding of providence, there existed a tension between strains of theology in the Orthodox tradition. Some fathers tended towards emphasizing human freedom and muting divine agency and predetermination, while others stressed the predetermination of events and only falteringly accounted for human freedom. The sense of the Church was that both must be true. Scholarios provided the vocabulary and framework for giving an account of this mystery but it was a mystery that was already understood, if only implicitly. Scholarios does not reflect on his achievement in his Tracts on Providence but he is aware that it is a new solution. He might not even go so far as to call his theology a development, as Palamas calls the essence-energy distinction, and he certainly wouldn’t be so bold as to describe it as knowledge disclosed by the Holy Spirit after the time of the Apostles, as Gregory Nazianzen does when reflecting on the doctrine of the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

AD: I had an “ah-ha!” moment as soon as you mentioned (p.5) the name of the rather infamous Martin Jugie, who seems to be an expert in prejudicing the reception and ruining the reputations of several figures between East and West, including Scholarios. Tell us about Jugie’s role here.

Jugie is a fascinating and important figure and we are all indebted to him. Without him we’d only have a tenth of the works of Scholarios in print instead of nearly the whole corpus. His mastery of Byzantine and modern Orthodox theology (in both Greek and Russian) was unparalleled and his body of work is lasting, if problematic.

Jugie understood himself to be a faithful son of the Church, and the approach of the Catholic Church towards ecumenism in the early twentieth century was, in large part, to bring Protestants and Orthodox into submission to Rome. The Catholic Church was not to learn from her separated brothers, but rather to make clear their errors and convince them of the truth. In addition to the lack of charity and the naïve epistemology that this entails (if I simply provide cogent arguments, you will be converted), this led, I think, Jugie to exaggerate what he considered to be errors of Eastern Orthodoxy. Thus, the essence-energies distinction was not simply a misconstrual of the divine simplicity, but it was even close to polytheism. The approach was not fraternal engagement, but more of a debate such as we see in news programs today in which you try to score points rather than actually communicate. This, of course, was almost completely ineffective in bringing Orthodox Christians to the Catholic Church.

By exaggerating the theological positions of Byzantine theologians, Jugie prompted a distancing of Orthodox and Catholic theologians. Orthodox theologians such as Vladimir Lossky responded to Jugie’s articles by accepting the dichotomy presented but arguing for the Orthodox position. Thus, it seems to me, Jugie was a catalyst for many Orthodox theologians in the 20th century to think that the Palamite essence-energies distinction was simply incompatible with Roman Catholic doctrine.

AD: You use a helpful Russian architectural metaphor to explain what Scholarios did, saying it’s more akin to the building of the Kremlin Church of the Dormition than that of St. Petersburgh’s Cathedral of St. Isaac. Unpack that a bit for those not familiar with the history of those buildings.

I’m glad to hear that you found it helpful. In the fifteenth century Grand Duke Ivan III of Moscow decided to build the largest church in his realm in the Kremlin. He first hired local architects but their building collapsed after two years of construction. Frustrated by undaunted, Ivan hired an Italian, Aristotle Fioravanti to build his Church of the Dormition. Fioravanti introduced several internal structural modifications that had been recently developed in Italy. In addition to laying a much deeper foundation and driving oaks into that foundation for stability, he also designed lightweight but hardened bricks for construction and employed iron tie-rods for the vaults. Finally, he used groin vaults and transverse arches to support the massive dome, giving the interior a light and airy feel. While the church’s bones were derived from Italian Renaissance technology, the appearance of the church was fully in the Russian Orthodox Tradition. It still stands today.

Three hundred years later the French architect August Montferrand was hired to build the largest Orthodox church in the world, St. Isaacs in St. Petersburg. When standing in St. Isaacs the worshipper today might think that he is in St. Peter’s in Rome. The form is entirely western.

I think that these two churches embody two different ways for Orthodox to make use of western forms. In the Church of the Dormition, western technology is used to serve an Orthodox form and remains subservient to Orthodox traditions. In St. Isaac’s the western form takes over. Instead of playing a subsidiary role, Latin traditions replace Orthodox traditions.

I used this to illustrate two different ways for Orthodox to encounter and profit from Latin traditions. I argue in the course of the book that although Scholarios uses Aquinas to great advantage, he ultimately brings Aquinas in as a servant of the Orthodox theological tradition.

AD: One of my undergraduate professors in moral theology used to insist that “there is no more abused phrase in modern Catholicism than ‘Divine Providence wills that…’.” Tell us how you understand Providence, and what Scholarios brings to that discussion, and why that discussion was so central, as you say in your second chapter, after 1458.

MB: I wonder if your professor was especially concerned with attempts to make sense of particular events?

AD: Yes, exactly!

MB: At any rate, that statement seems on the surface to ignore human interaction with providence and our ability to participate in or reject God’s actions in our life and the world. We learn from the book of Job that any attempt to explain tragedy is a mistake. Really, we don’t know.

I think that God is involved in and foreknows everything that happens in this world. But God doesn’t will everything that happens. With the Greek patristic tradition, starting with Origen and culminating in John of Damascus, I believe that we can, and often do, refuse to participate in God’s plan for our lives. This has real consequences and, in a sense, frustrates God’s plan. In a mysterious way God foreknows all of our actions and their ramifications because he lives outside of time: “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8, cf. Psalm 90:4).

Scholarios, following Aquinas, provides a metaphysical account of this absolute divine providence and full human freedom with his use of the analogy of being. The foundation of this metaphysics is the conception of God as perfectly simple, in which his essence is his existence, while creatures’ essences are not their existence and so derive their existence from being itself, God. In this metaphysics, God, as being (but beyond being) is the primary agent in any action, including existence. Creatures, however, can determine the direction of those actions as true secondary agents. Human beings can choose by free will how to participate in God as being.

An immediate problem arises for Palamites (and Scholarios considered the Palamite distinction between divine essence and energies to be settled Orthodox doctrine after the fourteenth century councils). Scholarios understands the distinction to be neither a mere notional one (and therefore not grounded in reality) nor a real distinction. Instead, drawing on and changing Duns Scotus’ understanding of a notional distinction with a basis in reality, Scholarios provides a Palamite account of divine simplicity that can be the ground of an analogy of being. Furthermore, Scholarios uses the language of Maximus Confessor to see how this relationship of God and creation is played out, especially in the area of providence. In doing so, I am convinced that Scholarios uses Latin theologies in order to grow the Orthodox tradition in an organic way. The tree remains faithful to the Orthodox tradition, but it uses Catholic fertilizer.

Byzantium experienced nearly every conceivable disaster in its last century. Plagues, besieged cities, loss of life and territory, betrayal of the Latins and the collapse of churches led many Orthodox to wonder if God had abandoned him. At the same time, old pagan conceptions of the lack of intelligibility in the universe as well as the predetermination of all events to the exclusion of free will surfaced. With the collapse of their 2100-year-old republic (going back to ancient Rome) and 1100 years as a Christian people, many Christians started to wonder if God weren’t actually favoring their Muslim conquerors. Could Islam be the true religion? Many did convert, including some philosophers (George Amiroutzes, for instance) and those who remained Christian began to have doubts about how God could be acting in their world. Scholarios began to see that while his tradition clearly maintained the two poles of divine omnipotence and human freedom, a more convincing account of these antinomies must be found.

AD: You note that Origen, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus are all significant figures in the Greek and Byzantine tradition of thought on Providence. You note later in your book that the Damascene is especially important as an interlocutor for Aquinas in the latter’s modification of a theology of providence. This modification, you say, comes to be pivotal for both East and West. This sounds like Aquinas can no longer be ostracized by the East to some cordon sanitaire of scholasticism but stands as an integral figure in Eastern thought itself and its development?

MB: I think that you’re right. Many Orthodox theologians in the centuries after Scholarios accepted his account of providence and his interpretation of John of Damascus. By the nineteenth century the Athenian dogmaticians took this position as well, especially the last great Athenian dogmatician, Panagiotis Trembelas. Now, this school has been largely abandoned (although the Volos academy has recently put together a fine volume on Trembelas), nevertheless it seems to be a settled issue that God has full foreknowledge of all creaturely events, is active in those events, and that human beings are free.

John of Damascus was a slight scandal to Andrew Louth in his excellent book on him because he limits God’s participation to good actions and excludes them from bad actions. John seems to be on to something in that God abhors sin and cannot participate in it. But John misses that God, as being (or beyond being) must underly every creaturely action.  It seems to me, then, that the Aquinas’ conclusion has been accepted as a given by the Orthodox tradition, but his interpretation of the Damascene has been forgotten. I think that remembering this intervention of Aquinas’ in the Orthodox theological tradition is just what you say: Aquinas is integral to the development of Eastern Christian thought. Here too, I should have been more explicit in my book. But I hope that it’s a conclusion that the reader will draw. I’m glad that you saw this.

AD: Sum up your hopes for the book, and who especially would benefit from reading it.

My audience includes a number of groups. I think that Thomists with wide visions would be interested in it, but more importantly I hope that Orthodox theologians will read it. My goal in writing it was that by understanding the important and lasting contribution that Aquinas made to their tradition, they will both be open to engaging Aquinas and to other contributions from the West. The important thing about this story is that Scholarios integrates Aquinas into the Greek theological tradition.

In the worst way this can be understood as spoiling the Egyptians, but in a better light it might be thought of as a cooperative, fraternal search for the truth. This would be rejected if Scholarios simply allowed Aquinas’ framework and categories to determine his thought, but his critical reception of Aquinas and use in developing the Orthodox tradition, I hope, would be of interest to Orthodox theologians. It may even provide a model for how to think about engaging Catholic theology while remaining faithfully Orthodox. In this way, the main goal of the book is ecumenical.

A final group is Byzantinists. This book may be of interest to them for a few reasons. The first couple of chapters provide a window into the late Byzantine experience that has not been given before. Byzantinists interested in intellectual history might also be interested in the cultural and intellectual exchanges at the end of the Empire. Finally, I give a new account of an aspect of Pletho’s activities and account of Aristotle.

My hope is that some MA courses and several PhD seminars might use the book. The first review of the book was by Jude Dougherty, an emeritus professor from CUA and was written for a broader audience. It is probably wishful thinking but perhaps some educated general readers will come across it and find it of interest.

AD: Having finished A Greek Thomist: Providence in Gennadios Scholarios, what are you at work on now?

You know I’ve been searching for a few years on what to work on next. I’ve given a few papers on Photios and on method in Catholic historical theology. I’ve not gotten around to publishing them but hope to. My first false start was a project on Byzantine scriptural exegesis. After working in that area for a couple of years I realized that I simply didn’t find Byzantine exegesis gripping in any way and so cut of my research after writing on Photios.

One of the great needs of the field is translation, really into any western language but especially English. With that in mind I am directing my energies to two book-length projects. The first is the translation with heavy annotation of Scholarios’ five tracts on providence. This would be a nice pair to my book and would indeed go beyond it in that my book only addresses the first tract.

The second project would be a presentation and study of the metaphysical theological tradition in Byzantium. Much attention has been paid to ascetic and mystical texts in Byzantium, but few have engaged the rich (and rather difficult) philosophical theology of Byzantium. I intend to begin this volume with Dionysios and end with Scholarios, with a chapter devoted to each figure. I would hope to cover ten figures, about one per century. The first three figures are Dionysios, Maximos Confessor and John of Damascus. Those waters are familiar but after that the seas are largely unchartered. I would hope to conclude each chapter with a translation of 2,000-3,000 words as well as, perhaps, an annotated bibliography. I would hope to create an argument in the course of the book for scholars to engage while also writing a book that would be helpful and interesting to MA students. The translations and bibliography could be especially helpful to students.

Gregory Palamas and Islam

The fact that yesterday, on the Gregorian paschalion, was the second Sunday of Lent when Gregory Palamas is commemorated, and this coming Sunday the same feast of the same figure for those on the Julian paschalion, means that the father of hesychasm will be on a lot of minds this week. What better time to draw your attention to a book set for release next month by the widely respected scholar and theological translator Norman Russell, Gregory Palamas: The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam (Liverpool University Press, April 2020), 544pp.

Published as part of the Translated Texts for Byzantinists series of LUP, this collection, the publisher tells us, offers

--the first English translation of a dozen key texts by or relating to Gregory Palamas;
--fascinating first-hand accounts of fourteenth-century Christian debates with Muslim scholars;
--first English translation of all the Synodal Tomoi issued in defence of the hesychasts;
--detailed exposition of the historical context of a theological controversy that is still alive today.

Gregory Palamas, a monk of Mount Athos and metropolitan of Thessalonike from 1347 to 1357, was a leading fourteenth-century Byzantine intellectual. He was the chief spokesman for the hesychasts in the controversy bearing that name, which began when a charge of heresy was laid against him in 1340 and ended with his proclamation as a saint in 1368. Although excellent English translations of some of Palamas' theological writings are available, very few texts relating to his historical role have yet been translated. This book contains the first English translation of the contemporary Life of Palamas by Philotheos Kokkinos, which is our principal source of biographical information on him. Also translated into English for the first time are the Synodal Tomoi from 1341 to 1368, which chart the progress of the hesychast controversy from the viewpoint of the victors, together with the corpus of material relating to Palamas' year of captivity among the Turks, which offers a unique insight into conditions for Christians and Muslims in the early Ottoman emirate. The translations, all of which are based on critical texts, are preceded by introductions which set Palamas in his historical context and propose some changes to the conventional chronology of his life.

Inventing Gregory Palamas

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

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

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

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

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

And this description:

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

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

Marcus Plested on East-West Estrangement

Marcus Plested's splendid study, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas, which I discussed here, and whom I interviewed here, came back to mind tonight as a friend sent me a link to a lecture that Plested gave on East-West estrangement, and the role of Aquinas and Palamas, this May in Moscow:

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.