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.

On the Origins of Eastern Christian Mysticism

Released in late August is a book that may be too expensive and "academic" for some, but for scholars in the field looks to be substantial: Origins of Eastern Christian Mysticism: AD 330-1022 by Theodore Sabo (Peter Lang, 2019), 252pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Origins of Eastern Christian Mysticism asserts that the thinkers between Basil of Caesarea and Symeon the New Theologian were important mainly for their role in the formation of Hesychasm, a fourteenth-century mystical movement in the Eastern church. The book surveys previous research on Proto-Hesychasm and sets forth eight Hesychastic trends in its practitioners: monasticism, dark and light mysticism, and an emphasis on the heart, theōsis, the humanity of Christ, penthos, and unceasing prayer.

Theodore Sabo integrates detailed and carefully researched accounts of the lives and thought of the foundational figures of Hesychasm into a compelling narrative of the movement’s origins. The Cappadocian fathers established monasticism as the predominant milieu of Proto-Hesychasm and emphasized both theōsis and dark mysticism. Dark mysticism would come into conflict with the light mysticism of their contemporary Pseudo-Macarius, but both currents would be passed on to the Hesychasts. Macarius was a seminal figure within Proto-Hesychasm, responsible for its stress on light mysticism and heart mysticism. Hesychasm itself, the author contends, emerged from two main Proto-Hesychast fonts, the philosophical (represented by such figures as Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor) and the ascetic (the realm of figures like John Climacus and Isaac of Nineveh). The former school transmitted to Hesychasm a virtually unacknowledged Platonism; the latter contributed to Hesychasm’s preoccupation with theōsis, penthos, and unceasing prayer, albeit from a solely monastic perspective. Finally, Symeon the New Theologian emerged as the redoubtable successor to these schools, unifying their distinct traditions in his philosophical approach.

While previous scholarship has documented the connections between Proto-Hesychasm and Hesychasm, Origins of Eastern Christian Mysticism is unique in its treatment of the Proto-Hesychasts as a distinguishable group, and as direct instigators of Hesychasm. This provocative study should be of interest to students and scholars of the late antique history of the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as to contemporary theologians steeped in the Eastern mystical tradition.

Capitalistic Colonizing of the Christian Mind

Patrick Deneen's new book has been attracting a lot of attention as have other authors in the past few years who cheer the rise of an anti-liberal movement and speculate on what might replace it. But the problems with such exercises are very serious indeed. Alasdair MacIntyre himself is perhaps aware of those problems more than just about anybody else, and because of that is extremely reluctant blithely to prescribe solutions even after thinking about these issues for more than half a century. But the great man's reticence has not at all stopped those rushing to bury modern liberalism with puerile glee (e.g., some pamphleteer called Rod Dreher) even as they have not the slightest interest in the hard work of coming up with answers as to what we do in the chaotic aftermath--never mind in the much longer term. This essay disabuses such people of their apocalypticism on the cheap, and is worth your time, not least for insights such as this: "Liberal capitalism concludes with a march of destruction through the human psyche itself."

The author's point is born out by several recent and important books, some previously noted on here under the suspect category of "spirituality," which, as I have remarked elsewhere, doesn't exist until and unless you have a market economy interested in such a thing, at which point it becomes just another commodity.

Other books showing the colonizing of the mind by capitalism must include the deeply rewarding work of Todd McGowan, whom I discussed here in detail. He is also the author of Capitalism and Desire: the Psychic Cost of Free Markets, which I have ordered and hope to begin reading as soon as the semester is over. 

Bruce Rogers-Vaughn's Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age, published in late 2016, is a very useful attempt to look at the problems of capitalism through the seasoned eyes of a minister and therapist steeped in pastoral theology and aware of the practical and psychological issues among the people he works with and their very real and increasing suffering.

J. Carrette and R. King are the authors of Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion which is useful in showing how popular appeals to "Buddhism" and "mindfulness" have been little more than capitalist projects in disguise.

Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power  by Byung-Chul Han was released last Christmas, and is on my list to read, as is the forthcoming book by Benjamin Fong, Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism.

About the former book the publisher tells us this:

Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower, has discovered the productive force of the psyche. In the course of discussing all the facets of neoliberal psychopolitics fueling our contemporary crisis of freedom, Han elaborates an analytical framework that provides an original theory of Big Data and a lucid phenomenology of emotion. But this provocative essay proposes counter models too, presenting a wealth of ideas and surprising alternatives at every turn.

And about the latter we are told the following by the publisher:

The first philosophers of the Frankfurt School famously turned to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud to supplement their Marxist analyses of ideological subjectification. Since the collapse of their proposed "marriage of Marx and Freud," psychology and social theory have grown apart to the impoverishment of both. Returning to this union, Benjamin Y. Fong reconstructs the psychoanalytic "foundation stone" of critical theory in an effort to once again think together the possibility of psychic and social transformation.

Drawing on the work of Hans Loewald and Jacques Lacan, Fong complicates the famous antagonism between Eros and the death drive in reference to a third term: the woefully undertheorized drive to mastery. Rejuvenating Freudian metapsychology through the lens of this pivotal concept, he then provides fresh perspective on Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse's critiques of psychic life under the influence of modern cultural and technological change. The result is a novel vision of critical theory that rearticulates the nature of subjection in late capitalism and renews an old project of resistance.

After Dying in Byzantium, Where Does Your Soul Go?

If you hang around any Orthodox blogs or apologetics sites, you'll soon come across heated discussion about "toll-houses" and related matters trying to figure out the soul's fate post-mortem. The scholar Stephen Shoemaker, whom I have interviewed on here in the past in connection with his other works, has an excellent essay here.

Shoemaker's essay references, inter alia, recent works on the topic, including a book released just this spring:  Death and the Afterlife in Byzantium: The Fate of the Soul in Theology, Literature, and Art 
by Vasileios Marinis (Cambridge UP, 2017), 214pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

For all their reputed and professed preoccupation with the afterlife, the Byzantines had no systematic conception of the fate of the soul between death and the Last Judgement. Death and the Afterlife in Byzantium marries for the first time liturgical, theological, literary, and material evidence to investigate a fundamental question: what did the Byzantines believe happened after death? This interdisciplinary study provides an in-depth analysis and synthesis of hagiography, theological treatises, apocryphal texts, liturgical services, as well as images of the fate of the soul in manuscript and monumental decoration. It also places the imagery of the afterlife, both literary and artistic, within the context of Byzantine culture, spirituality, and soteriology. The book intends to be the definitive study on concepts of the afterlife in Byzantium, and its interdisciplinary structure will appeal to students and specialists from a variety of areas in medieval studies.

Wounded by Love

Earlier this month  I drew attention to another book published by Denise Harvey Publishers, a book that came back to mind in a conversation with Fr John Jillions. We were together at the Eleanor Malburg Eastern Churches Seminar in Cleveland in October, and in the course of his presentation he mentioned--having lived in Greece for part of the time he was doing his doctorate at Thessaloniki--this book as being one of the most spiritually profound works he has read: Wounded by Love: The Life and Wisdom of Saint Porphyrios (2012), 268pp.

About this book the publisher (who gives some excerpts here) tells us:

Saint Porphyrios, a Greek monk and priest who died in 1991, stands in the long tradition of charismatic spiritual guides in the Eastern Church which continues from the apostolic age down to figures such as Saint Seraphim of Sarov and Staretz Silouan in modern times. In this book he tells the story of his life and, in simple, deeply reflected and profoundly wise words, he expounds the Christian faith for today.

The vibrant personality of Saint Porphyrios at all times shines through his words with great transparency and charm. In his introduction to the Greek edition Bishop Irenaeus of Chania writes: 'The words of blessed Elder Porphyrios are the words of a holy Father, of a man with the gift of clear sight, who was ever retiring, humble, simple and ardent and whose life was a true and authentic witness to Christ, to His truth and to His joy. Through his presence, love, prayer, counsel and guidance he supported an untold number of people in the difficult hours of illness, mourning, pain, loss of faith and death. He is a god-bearing Father of our days, a true priest and teacher who in his ascetic way fell in love with Christ and faithfully served his fellow man.'

This book was compiled after Saint Porphyrios's death from an archive of notes and recordings of his reminiscences, conversations and words of guidance, and was first published in Greek in 2003. Since its publication in English in 2005 it has been reprinted seven times, most recently in 2015.

Michael Plekon on the Sacramentality of the World

It has always been a pleasure to interview Michael Plekon over the years about his many books. Less than a year ago we were talking about his then-new book, Uncommon Prayer: Prayer in Everyday Experience. In addition to books he has authored, he has also edited and translated a number of them, as I have noted on here over the years.

And now we have another one, just released in March: The World as Sacrament: An Ecumenical Path toward a Worldly Spirituality (Liturgical Press, 2017), 272pp. As in the past, I sent him some questions for an interview, and here are his thoughts.

AD: It's been less than a year since we last spoke on here about your award-winning book, Uncommon Prayer. Are there any connections between that book and The World as Sacrament?

MP: Yes, as I look back over what I have written, the threads and connections are clear to me, maybe more in hindsight. Both Uncommon Prayer and The World as Sacrament try to get us out of church buildings, out of the rites we revere, even out of the liturgical texts and scriptures and into the world of God’s creation and redemption. It is not at all a slight to the specifically religious contexts of prayer and of the spiritual life but a quest for these—as the scriptures and rites themselves intend—in the everyday lives we all know. As Barbara Brown Taylor put it in the title of her fine book, it’s a search for “an altar in the world.”

As I look back further, this was also the intent in looking at less than obvious “hidden” forms of holiness, also in the effort, as Dorothy Day said, to see “saints as they really are.” For me, the attempt to refocus ourselves on the ordinary, this-worldly life is to very much follow the lead of the New Testament: farmers, fishermen, shepherds, bakers, and tax collectors, along with cooks and weavers are where the treasures of the kingdom of heaven are found.

AD: As you know, the language of "the world" and "ecumenical" from your subtitle are red flags to some today in the Church, especially the Christian East. Were you at all concerned about that?

But both “world” and oikumene have solid histories in the Christian legacy. Even the anti-materialism of some strains of ascetic and philosophical thought cannot suffocate the world, and I mean the public world of work, politics, family, and friendships. In the Hebrew Bible and later in the NT, we are urged to welcome the stranger, to respect the one who is different—Samaritan, the immigrant, those in need, widows, orphans, the sick and imprisoned, the poor. We even are instructed to love the enemy.

The current disdain for others who confess Jesus as Lord but who are not within our ecclesial orbit, whether Orthodox, Catholic, or evangelical, needs to be seriously challenged. I for one am appalled by fellow Christians who can only describe other Christians as “heretics” or “schismatics.” Besides, there is a great deal of evidence that great writers and saints, like Basil the Great, urged the “orthodox” to reach out and re-establish communion with the separated. Disunity was for him the greater scandal and sin. So I am glad to include in this new volume Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant writers, just as I included writers of no particular denomination or church home in Uncommon Prayer. What they all share is a love for God and deep longing to live according to God’s grace. Marilynne Robinson is especially powerful in bringing the parables of Jesus to life again in the small Iowa town of Gilead, in her trilogy of books about two clergy families in that hamlet.

AD: And yet, this language is not your own: you explicitly draw on "The World as Sacrament," an essay by one of the most beloved and widely respected Orthodox thinkers of the last century, Alexander Schmemann, published nearly 40 years ago now. Who are some of the other important Orthodox thinkers who feature in this book? 

MP: I think those I chose are only a small selection of wonderful figures. To most readers, they will not be familiar but it was the suggestion of Hans Christofferson, director at Liturgical Press, to listen to an ecumenical array of writers, allowing readers to learn about some who would be new. Thus I chose Lev Gillet, the Benedictine priest-monk who out of love for the Eastern Church moved first to the Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Studite monastery, and who later was received into the Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Evlogy of the Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church in Western Europe. Under his pen-name, “A monk of the Eastern Church,” he was widely read particularly in France, Great Britain and Lebanon back in the 50s and 60s. He was chaplain at Mother Maria Skobtsova’s hostel on rue de Lourmel in Paris, then later at St. Basil’s House in London, and a widely traveled retreat master, spiritual counselor, and street pastor.

I also included Mother Maria Skobtsova, canonized with her companions in 2004, for her efforts to save the targets of Nazi annihilation: Jews and Communists, members of the Resistance, and others.

Another modern martyr I picked was Father Alexander Men, probably the most well known TV religious personality in post-Soviet Russia. He became a victim of the religious right for his ecumenical openness and openness to the West.

To many a brilliant scholar but diminutive personality, Nicholas Afanasiev, the noted NT and canon law specialist, was another choice. His insistence on the original non-hierarchical but conciliar and eucharistic shape of the church makes him an especially important voice today. Vatican II listened to him!

Two other close friends of Fr. Lev Gillet, lay theologians Elisabeth Behr-Sigel and Paul Evdokimov, were the other Orthodox figures I selected. Elisabeth concerned herself with the status of women in the church, this part of a deeper concern for the life of holiness in every nook and cranny of everyday existence. Similarly, Evdokimov focused on marriage as the sacrament of love as well as the “interior monasticism,” his way of arguing that holiness was universal, all of us called to be saints. From Dostoevesky and existentialist literature he emphasized the path to God as one through all the beauty and mess of life in modern society.

AD: And the West? You draw on Catholic and Protestant figures as well. What are some of the things that unite some of these diverse figures in your view? 

MP: Whether we talk of renowned figures such as Thomas Merton or Marilynne Robinson, Richard Rohr or Joan Chittister, Kathleen Norris or Barbara Brown Taylor, all have become spiritual teachers because of their honesty and, I think, their realism in talking of the life with God. No convenient, trendy pieties from these writers! And they do not shy away from what is messy and painful in life. The life with God very much includes suffering and emptiness. What is more, they see the stage of everyday life as where God encounters us, and remains with us.

AD: One of those figures from the modern West is Thomas Merton. A student of mine this semester has been reading him for the first time and finding a great deal of wisdom before some of my student's friends tried to warn him off Merton, saying he was "unsound." Give us your sense of why Merton remains such an important figure nearly 50 years after his death.

MP: It’s sad that for such a recognized and substantial figure like Merton, disagreement with his stances on civil rights and war and the inability to accept his criticism of the church result in a verdict like “unsound,” a judgment he is not “authentically Catholic.” But then, consider the list of others who would deserve similar rejection: Dorothy Day, the Berrigans, Oscar Romero, Gustavo Gutiérrez, yes, and Papa Francesco himself, since he has been personally responsible for the rehabilitation of many. He mentioned Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton along with Abraham Lincoln as important American spiritual leaders when he addressed Congress a few years ago. You don’t need me to remind you that the “culture wars” conflict has found its way not only into debate on social issues but into liturgy and spirituality.

AD: Your introduction speaks of men and women "looking for God in everyday experience." And at the same time your epilogue notes the attractiveness to some of an "extreme world-denying vision" (p.250-51). This seems to be a difficult tension to negotiate--to be in the world but not of it. How do the figures in your book help negotiate this tension? 

MP: These two poles are there all the way through the history of the Christian tradition. Diarmaid MacCulloch documented that in his wonderful Christianity, The First 3000 Years not long ago. I think the experience of early Christians is telling, and this is the case whether one looks at the desert mothers and fathers or even the members of early communities. Their cultural roots, both in Judaism and in Hellenism, gave them respect for the need to stand against the culture, society, the empire even, while at the same time being active participants in the life of the community. As I see it, the real distortion comes when we are told that everything here in this world and life is merely a training ground, only distractions, with the afterlife, the other world, being our destiny, being what really counts. Nowhere, and I do mean nowhere, in either the Hebrew Bible or the NT can you find this vision!

Amy-Jill Levine, the Orthodox Jew who is a NT specialist at Vanderbilt, has emphasized this in many books, especially Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi.  And this is why the NT is full of women baking, farmers plowing and seeding fields, others out fishing, craftspeople and tax collectors and teachers plying their trades in so many parables and metaphors. Jesus goes apart to commune with his Father but what he leaves his disciples is the everyday work of mercy, grace put into practice. If we really believe in the Incarnation, then our faith, our spiritual lives, are not like a spaceship evacuation to a better life on another planet. Detachment and distancing from what we do not like or agree with, as in Dreher’s “Benedict option,” is really not an option for followers of Jesus. Benedict of Norcia would agree, I am quite sure.

AD: Is it just my own take, or does it seem today that more and more people in the Church seem to think we have to go searching for God in an exotic monastery and not, say, in cleaning up after Grandma's colostomy bag broke, or going about my workaday routine? Do we disdain the quotidian and thus fail to see God at His most "mundane" as it were?

MP: Having some experience in monastic life—with the Carmelites—the motto of the friar orders rings true for me: contemplata aliis tradere. We are to share the gifts we receive in prayer and contemplation with others. We are to spread the mercy and the grace. It is attractive to retreat to a quiet monastic guest house, follow the prayer of the hours with the monastics, eat in silence in the refectory, stroll the grounds, smell the incense. But let me tell you, this is a selective experience, one which we control and which spares us sponge bathing an elderly monk or nun, battling a sink of greasy pots and pans—vessels which, it must be noted, Benedict said were as holy as the chalice and paten on the altar.

AD: Both your prologue and epilogue work in autobiographical perspectives, and being a great lover of biographical studies as well as memoirs and diaries, I naturally read these first. I'm especially taken by your epilogue, "Learning to be a Pastor." May and June are often traditionally ordination months, and so I'm wondering, after decades in pastoral ministry, first in the Lutheran and now the Orthodox Church, what would you tell upcoming ordinands to expect as they set out on pastoral ministry?

MP: I follow, in various venues, ongoing reporting on seminaries and the training of future pastors and then what happens to people newly ordained. After five years, three out of five new pastors have left parish ministry, or never entered it, choosing specialized ministries in chaplaincy, counseling, teaching. Many of the reflections in The Church Has Left the Building express the challenges, both the hope and frustrations, pastors experience today in parishes. There is no doubt—and the leaders of church bodies have to get real about it—that the model of parish life and thus of pastoral ministry that we’ve pursued for over a thousand years is gone. Only a few exceptions--urban parishes with substantial endowments, and some fascinating experiments in reinvention and redefinition--show vitality. I don’t mean to sound arrogant here. I have spent almost 35 years as a pastor in fairly ordinary parishes, all of which are challenged and shrinking because of demographic changes that have nothing whatsoever to do with belief. Any pastor who thinks that simply doing what he/she has done for the last millennium or more is in delusion. Reading the NT would be a first therapy.

Some find a resistance and detachment on the part of Eastern Church clergy attractive, a negation of nasty secular, corrupt culture and society and adherence to paradisic liturgy: you know, all those icons glowing from the candles, the smoke of the incense, the “mystical” chant. Some even think if the chant were in languages one could not understand, it’s all the better. Close the holy doors, pull the curtain, lose yourself in the other-worldly. Well I know what Papa Francesco, whose Vatican basilicas are pretty smokey and bedecked with frescoes, would say. I also know what some of my beloved teacher and writers like Gillet, Evdokimov, Afansiev, Schmemann, Skobtsova--all faithful members of the Eastern Church-- would say. Afanasiev in particular said the tinkle of the bells on the bishop’s sakkos, the eagle rugs thrown on the floor for him to stand upon, the endless chants that he should live forever (or at least for "many years"): these are what remains of the Byzantine Empire and its court, imperial props that John Chrysostom and Basil the Great knew nothing of, and which are the most "this-worldly" conceivable!

Mother Maria said the people gathered for the Eucharist and also in line to get a bowl of soup and chunk of bread are the “living icons” just as much as those on the walls and screen incensed by the deacon in the services. Schmemann celebrated the conciliar shape of the church which has, as his teacher Afanasiev said, place for all, from bishop to small child. But he also called the obsession with ecclesiastical headwear and clothes a “vaudeville of klobuks,” a circus of obsession with trappings. And Paul Evdokimov’s son, Fr. Michel, an emeritus professor and pastor, once told me as we put our cassocks on, “This riassa can be worn too much and badly, and do much wrong,” though that was hardly the purpose of it. So if I were to say anything to newly ordained people, I would say bless me, pray for me, be merciful, be merciful, and be merciful some more. Listen to the people. Listen to the your neighborhood. Listen to the world of work and play going on around you everyday. Maybe you should be, like the apostles, a “worker pastor” with a “day job” like them and countless other pastors for centuries.

AD: You've seen many changes in your pastoral life, some of them discussed in another of your recent books, The Church Has Left the Building. Any prognostications about what changes are still to come in the life of parishes today in North America? 

MP: Ah, every wonderful question you ask leads to another. Funny you should ask about changes in parish life, for I have started work on a book I am tentatively calling Community as Church. By this I mean that I am looking for people outside the institutional churches looking for fellowship, sharing, meaning, God. I have met a couple whose potluck get-togethers are not just 30-somethings commiserating about drooling infants and exhausting toddlers and constant pressure at work but also in the exchange, discovering communion with each other, things to live for, support on the way.

As well, however, I have come across pastors trying new, different things. Right in my own backyard in the Hudson Valley, for example, a UMC pastor and friend, Wongee Joh, leads a cooperative of four parishes seeking to find new ways of being church in the future. All these were small-town congregations but now because cars have made the towns mere minutes away from each other, the duplication of Methodist parishes is redundant. The annual NY Conference—what we would call a diocese—is urging the parishes to find ways to pray and work together and use the resources they still have wisely. But for many, the heartbreak of no longer having Sunday services where Grandpa and Grandma once sang and prayed looms large.

Another friend, Presbyterian pastor David Frost, himself a PK, was asked by members of his dad’s former parish, an historic, 200+ year-old congregation, to try to keep it going, maybe revive it. The regional body, the presbytery, agreed, even accepting that this parish could not be expected to behave as ordinary ones do. They would share with the larger church financially as they were able, but also not be bailed out by them. Almost ten years later, miraculously, as David says, there still is a community, praying together on Sundays, staffing a thrift shop and food pantry, even being home to street folk from the village of Patterson NY.

One more example. A former parishioner from the first parish I served, also a former student in the diaconal training course we sponsored over 20 years ago, is now pastor of an old Swedish Lutheran parish, Gustavus Adolphus (GA), on 22nd Street in Manhattan, literally on the campus of my school Baruch Colllege-CUNY. The parish was about to close when he arrived, after a too-long pastorate of almost 50 years. Miraculously, as Chris Mietlowski also describes it, GA has become a “destination” parish. I was amazed when he told me that only he and his wife live in the neighborhood, in the rectory next door. All those who have come to the parish are from elsewhere, from all the boroughs, even a few from across the river in NJ. They come because of the liturgy, the preaching, his pastoral leadership and care, but as he notes, mostly because they find God and community with each other and then turn this into neighborhood outreach: early childhood education, food pantry, but also importantly, doing the works of mercy in their own neighborhoods and homes and jobs elsewhere! Yes, there is much to be concerned about as parish numbers shrink, and deaneries and dioceses decrease. Not a week goes by that I do not see and collect an article on a parish reinventing itself, a parish dying, closing only to rise again in a new congregational start in the same location. The church will remain, but not as we’ve known it.

AD: Your epilogue took me back to some part-time work I did in a nursing home in Ottawa in the 1990s as a volunteer in the pastoral care department where I learned, as you so winsomely describe, that some of the shut-ins you visited were unexpectedly "absolute gifts of grace to me." Isn't that one of the hidden paradoxes of such "work"--that far from being a tedious chore in which you minister to someone, they often end up ministering to you, offering you unexpected gifts?

MP: I get the sense, especially for the last few years now, that we are more the recipients of mercy and grace than we could imagine or hope for. Maybe it’s one of the many experiences of “aging” for me. Whether in my home parish or in others I visit when away, I am struck by how much more we are given within the community of faith, no matter how little or great our levels of contribution may be. Behind both Uncommon Prayer and The World as Sacrament is a realization many great spiritual teachers have had, from the first centuries on down. Weeding the garden, putting together a meal, cleaning up—all these seemingly mundane, meaningless tasks are opening to communion with God and with each other.

The prayers in our prayer/liturgy books are beautiful. Those that come in work, in happiness, in love, in being forgiven, are powerful prayers as well. This we hear from lots of voices. I hear it almost weekly from Papa Francesco. But as I worked through Kate Hennessey’s riveting memoir of her grandmother, Dorothy Day and Dorothy’s only child, Tama, Kate’s mom, I heard the gifts of mercy and grace given over and over again in the lives of those women. And, as I have said, I have heard it and tried to communicate it from Mary Oliver, Mary Karr, Barbara Brown Taylor, Merton and Rohr and Schmemann and Skobtsova and so many others.

AD: The prologue and epilogue build on some autobiographical material in other books. Now that you are about to retire from CUNY, can we expect a full-blown set of memoirs? If not, what might you be working on instead--any future projects we should keep an eye out for? 

MP: Years ago, my very brilliant and even more outspoken daughter Hannah tore into me for not telling my story in a chapter in Saints As They Really Are, about my years in the Carmelites. “You keep talking about other people, describing things like a professor, objectively, in the third person. This is about YOU, Dad! Where is your heart, your feelings, your voice.” Anyone with daughters will immediately get this. It made for a much better chapter and encouraged me to start putting autobiographical/memoir material in other chapters in my books.


But as master memoirists like Patricia Hampl and Mary Karr say, memoirs read easily but are very difficult to craft. I hear the anti-ecumenical buzz in my own church body. I see with pain no sensitivity to the reality of faith in other communities on the part of younger clergy—they’re all “heretics.” I think the account of how I was raised in the faith that I did in the prologue explains my ecumenical commitment. I know others have opened and grown from such ecumenical sharing and there is no future for us without it.

I have said plenty about what I was given and how much I learned years ago, as a young pastor. If what I saw and was gifted with can encourage a reader, then I have kept the giving going and alive.

On Failing to Understand and Appreciate Marx and Freud

I have a long review essay coming out at Catholic World Report discussing Alasdair MacIntyre's latest book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative. (A clear understanding of MacIntyre is more important than ever thanks to his having been traduced by a certain blogger hawking dégonflé tracts to fund his oyster habit while prattling fatuously about asceticism.) It is an extraordinary book for a man fast closing in on 90, showing that he has lost none of his formidable powers of synthesis and reason.

I will not repeat here what I shall say there, but let me at least note a few other things about that book and in particular two of the controversial "masters of suspicion" it treats, viz., Freud and Marx.

This latest book of MacIntyre's is in some ways a return to some of his earliest writings about Marx, as captured in, e.g., Marxism and Christianity. That title was a re-working of his earlier Marxism: An Interpretation, which is very hard to come by now.

Helpfully, however, many of MacIntyre's most recondite writings about Marx have been reprinted in a collection that got almost no attention, but without which Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity will be much harder for readers to comprehend: Alasdair MacIntyre's Engagement with Marxism: Selected Writings, 1953-1974, edited by Paul Blackledge.

That collection contains riches beyond counting. Part of its value comes from the fascinating glimpses it gives one into postwar British politics of the left, of socialist and Marxist parties and debates in which MacIntyre was heavily and intimately involved for some time before coming gradually to find himself estranged by and from those groups both politically and philosophically.

This new book is also a return to Freud, about whom MacIntyre published his first book in the 1950s when he was still in his 20s and a newly minted lecturer looking at the philosophy of psychology and of Freudian psychoanalysis in particular. That book, The Unconscious: A Conceptual Analysis was reprinted in 2004. In both this first book of his, and now his latest, MacIntyre does not hesitate to recognize both the problems of certain strands of psychoanalytic thought, but also the "greatness" of Freud.

What makes Freud useful for MacIntyre is his unparalleled insight into the nature of our desires, and how we fail to be good reasoners when our desires go astray or are corrupted by unconscious trauma; and what makes Marx still so important and useful is that he continues to offer those willing to listen a very powerful critique of how capitalism subtly exploits and fuels those desires Freud recognized.

It is, alas, a staple of too much cheap and grubby Christian apologetics for a century and more now to run down Freud and Marx alike without ever having seriously read either man in the original (or a scholarly translation) and to treat both as the greatest threat ever faced by Christianity. I count myself fortunate to have been introduced, as an undergraduate in psychology in Ottawa in the early 1990s, to the original writings of both Freud and Jung (and others in that first generation around Vienna) in several classes, including especially a class on psychoanalysis and religion taught by a professor who was himself a Christian and not threatened by what psychoanalysis had to offer.

That education allowed me not to assume "straightforward antagonism" between Freud and Christianity--whereas, MacIntyre says, such antagonism is too often assumed by too many Christians with regard to both Freud (and Marx). I have myself, in a very modest way, been trying on here (and elsewhere earlier in my life) to suggest certain areas where psychoanalytic thought and theology are simpatico as seen, e.g., in the work of the contemporary analyst Adam Phillips, who, like MacIntyre, comes out of the British left. In Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, in fact, MacIntyre confesses a debt to Phillips and the latter's biography of D.W. Winnicott, the pioneering English psychoanalyst who did so much to help us understand the mother-child relationship.

Those assuming Freudian-Marxist antagonism do a deep disservice not just to them both but also to Christianity, which has a great deal in common with both men and some (not all) of their ideas, and could be strengthened by a closer alliance with them. Alas, too many people are unwilling to hear this, let alone entertain such an alliance, and usually for one of two reasons: either because they rely on fourth-hand hearsay about what Marx and Freud actually said--a treatment that invariably turns either man into a comic-opera grotesque--or because they fail to appreciate the force of the maxim abusus non tollit usum.

Merely because Marxist thought was abused by and in "Kruschev Enterprises Inc." (one of MacIntyre's several sarcastic names for the Soviet Union) is no reason to write him off; that applies equally to Freud and whatever uses and abuses have been committed in his name. In his refusal to write either man off, and in his willingness, now in his late 80s, to confess that we still need to learn much from Freud and Marx (especially the Marx of the 1840s and his Theses on Feuerbach), MacIntyre is a superlative example of a consummate Catholic thinker who finds good wherever he can, regardless of its provenance and without regard for the fashionable prejudices that have been wreathed about either man for far too long thanks to the "spiritual-industrial complex."

Some of my students next fall will be looking critically at that spiritual-industrial complex and how deeply corrosive and corrupting it is of Christianity from within. And perhaps the weakest point of entry for the kind of commodification of Christianity that Marx foresaw is in the realm we label "spirituality," a term which drips with a repulsive bourgeois self-regard masking little more than straight-up narcissism the perfect companion to which, of course, is the purchase of this book or that program or some other commodity (a "Benedict option," say). In this task we will be aided by reading, inter alia, Vincent Miller's welcome and important book, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture, which I commend to your attention.

Where is the Kindness We Seek? (I)

In his letter to the church in Galatia, St. Paul famously lists the fruits of the Holy Spirit, one of which is kindness. Kindness is treated in another book by Adam Philips, the English literary scholar and psychoanalyst whose other very valuable books I have discussed here and here as part of an ongoing if ad hoc series of reflections reconsidering the relationship between Christianity and psychoanalysis.

This latest book to be considered is co-authored with the historian Barbara Taylor. On Kindness is a short book centred around the question: if kindness if the thing we most wish to see in, and receive from, other people, why do we stint so much when it comes to practicing it ourselves? How can we hope for something in others when we are so unsure of offering it ourselves?

As I make my way through this book, I shall have more to say on it.

Continues. 

Ascetic Psychology and Physical Practices for Lent

Just in time as we all enter the ascetical contest of the Great Fast this year is a recent collection in an on-going series from Peeters: D.T. Bradshaw, ed., The Spiritual Tradition in Eastern Christianity: Ascetic Psychology, Mystical Experience, and Physical Practices

A very detailed PDF, giving the table of contents, is here.

The publisher tells us The Spiritual Tradition in Eastern Christianity:

is a comprehensive survey of the means, goals, and motivations of the ascetic life as represented in texts spanning the fourth and the nineteenth century. Contemporary examples are also included. The main themes are the dynamics of the soul, the disabling effects of the passions, mental and physical ascetism, the desirable condition of dispassion, and the experience of deification. A variety of topics are addressed, including hesychast prayer, religious weeping, the spiritual senses, dream interpretation, luminous visions, the holy 'fool', ascetic demonology, and pain in ascetic practice. Typical ascetic and mystical experiences are interpreted from the psychological and the neuroscientific perspective. Comparative analyses based on Sufism, Vedantic mysticism, and especially early Buddhist psychology highlight distinctive features of the Christian ascetic life. Major figures such as Evagrius Ponticus, Maximos the Confessor, Isaac the Syrian, and Symeon the New Theologian receive extensive individual consideration.

Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Direction

As I've had occasion on here to note several times, there grew up in certain Eastern Christian circles a deep suspicion of modern psychology. Some of that may be justified; some of it is part of a broader anti-intellectualism and anti-Westernism; and some of it is certainly unjust and founded on little more than ignorance and fear.

At the same time, of course, there has long been an anti-"religious" sentiment running through Freudian thought, though that has never troubled me for I have long adhered to the assessment of (if memory serves....) Christopher Lasch, who seems to have said that as a clinician Freud gave us startling, original, and useful insights; but as a cultural theorist he was totally out of his depth. Just so.

Among Christians who wanted to engage rather than dismiss psychoanalytic thought (and, let it be noted, there are many more "schools" than the Freudian, most of them at least a little less dismissive of religious traditions), Western Christians have a longer tradition of attempting to engage Freud and the psychoanalytic tradition, an engagement that continues in a book I recently noted on here, Marcus Pound's Theology, Psychoanalysis and Trauma.

That engagement continues apace, as seen in this forthcoming paperback edition by Peter Tyler,The Pursuit of the Soul: Psychoanalysis, Soul-making and the Christian Tradition (T&T Clark, 2016), 208pp.

As the publisher tells us: 

One of the most striking features of contemporary psychology is the return of language of the 'soul' in contemporary discourse. In this original analysis Dr Peter Tyler investigates the origins and use of 'soul-language' in the Christian tradition before turning his attention to the evolution and preoccupations of modern psychoanalysis. In his forensic examination he explores the dynamics of psychoanalysis as a 'tool to rediscover the soul' of the 21st century seeker. Central to his book is the perceived clash between analysis and the spiritual tradition. His uncompromising conclusion is that the dialogue of the two in our present time will have far-reaching repercussions for church, society and future human well-being.

Rediscovering Spiritual Riches in the East

Evangelicals coming into Orthodoxy, or being interested in her traditions, are not new, though some commentators have recently suggested that the movement is on the wane. Nevertheless, later this summer will see a new book by a major evangelical publisher that shows interest in Orthodox spirituality: James Googin, ed., Reading the Christian Spiritual Classics: A Guide for Evangelicals (IVP, July 2013), 340pp.

About this book we are told:

Ever since Richard Foster wrote Celebration of Discipline in 1978, evangelicals have hungered for a deeper and more historic spirituality. Many have come to discover the wealth of spiritual insight available in the Desert Fathers, the medieval mystics, German Pietism and other traditions. While these classics have been a source of life-changing renewal for many, still others are wary of these texts and the foreign theological traditions from which they come. The essays in this volume provide a guide for evangelicals to read the Christian spiritual classics. The contributions fall into four sections. The first three answer the big questions: why should we read the spiritual classics, what are these classics and how should we read them? The last section brings these questions together into a brief reading guide for each of the major traditions. Each essay not only explores the historical and theological context, but also expounds the appropriate hermeneutical framework and the significance for the church today. Together these essays provide a comprehensive and charitable introduction to the spiritual classics, suitable for both those who already embrace them and those who remain concerned and cautious. Whether you are a newcomer to historic spirituality or a seasoned reader looking to go deeper, you will find this volume to be a reliable resource for years to come.

Chapter 8, by James Payton Jr., is entitled "Reading Orthodox Spirituality." Payton is the author of the 2007 book, which I reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, entitled Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition.

Chapter 10, by Michael Glerup, is entitled "The Church Fathers and Mothers."

Christian Spirituality Differently Understood

Who among us is not tired of that trite and tedious phrase about being "spiritual but not religious"? Spirituality today seems to suffer from overuse, misunderstanding, and narcissism. Along comes a new book that may help correct some of those problems: Bruce Demarest, ed., Four Views on Christian Spirituality (Zondervan, 2012), 240pp.

About this book, which contains a chapter "Orthodox Spirituality: A Quest for Transfigured Humanity" by Bradley Nassif, the publisher tells us:

Amid a culture that is both fascinated by spirituality and inundated by a dizzying variety of options for pursuing it, many Christians long for a deeper, more historically rooted spiritual life. In Four Views on Christian Spirituality, general editor Bruce Demarest presents an invaluable resource for study and comparison of the major Christian perspectives on spiritual formation. Contributors' chapters on Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Liberal Protestantism, collected side-by-side, easily allow for the beliefs and emphases of the viewpoints to be thoughtfully considered---all in pursuit of greater understanding and spiritual growth. The four viewpoints are given equal opportunity in the hands of the following capable scholars, and each proponent's chapter is followed by responses from the other three. * Brad Nassif (Eastern Orthodoxy) * Scott Hahn (Roman Catholicism) * Evan Howard (Evangelicalism) * Joe Driskill (Liberal Protestantism) In the end, an increased familiarity with each of the different schools of Christian thought will aid readers seeking spiritual transformation for themselves, their family members, and their churches.

Christian Spirituality: A Quiz

Which is the more tiresome and fatuous phrase:
(a) I'm not really religious, but I am spiritual
(b) I'm spiritual, but I'm not into organized religion
(c) Jesus: Yes! Church: No
(d) All of the above.

The correct answer, of course, is (d), and the penalty for failing the exam is a mandatory reading of a new book by Kyriacos Markides that may help us turn back the flood of narcissistic nonsense spewed today in the name of "spirituality": Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality (Image Books, 2012), 336pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us

In Inner River, Kyriacos Markides—scholar, researcher, author, and pilgrim—takes us on a thrilling quest into the heart of Christian spirituality and mankind’s desire for a transcendent experience of God. From Maine’s rugged shores to a Cypriot monastery to Greece’s remote Mt. Athos and, ultimately, to an Egyptian desert, Markides encounters a diverse cast of characters that allows him to explore the worlds of the natural and the supernatural, of religion and spirit, and of the seen and the unseen. Inner River will appeal to a wide range of readers, from Christians seeking insights into their religion and its various expressions to scholars interested in learning more about the mystical way of life and wisdom that have been preserved in the heart of Orthodox spirituality. Perhaps most important, however, is the bridge it offers contemporary readers to a Christian life that is balanced between the worldly and the spiritual.

Markides is the author of several other similar works, including the highly regarded book The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality as well as Gifts of the Desert: The Forgotten Path of Christian Spirituality. 

An Interview with John McGuckin

To know the work of the Orthodox priest and scholar John McGuckin is at once to ask: does he ever sleep? The answer to that must surely be no! Author of an acclaimed intellectual biography of St Gregory of Nazianzus and study of St. Cyril of Alexandria, of liturgical works, books of poetry, reference books on Origen and the Fathers generally, introductory texts on Byzantine spirituality, and much else besides, he has gone from strength to strength in the past two years with several major works, all discussed previously on here. I've had a chance to catch up with him and ask him about some of his recent publications as well as current and upcoming projects. Here are his thoughts:

AD: Tell us a bit about your background, including, if you will, what it is like teaching at two institutions and your directorship of the Sophia Institute. What is the Institute trying to accomplish?

I am a Romanian Orthodox Priest, of Anglo-Irish descent, husband, father of three, grandfather of six, currently working in a small parish in Manhattan and also hold down the position of Nielsen Chair (i.e. professorship) in Early Church History at Union Theological Seminary, and the Chair in Byzantine Christian Studies in Columbia University. I write a lot; and in my spare time I….come to think of it I have no spare time. 

The joy of  being involved in two very different  institutions is sometimes muted by the necessity of having to attend two sets of faculty meetings!  But Union is an old Ivy League school of theological studies that has traditionally invested much in early Christian theology. Schaff, our early leader of History here (older than Oxford’s Church History department by the way), sponsored the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Church series, for example; and was instrumental in a very important 19^th century reference set called the ‘Creeds of Christendom.’ Columbia is another old Ivy League school stressing more the phenomenology of religions (under which rubric Christianity  has a large role and voice). 

The different strands to my life, of course, are all interwoven. The theological task is  the chief coloration of my priestly service to the Church. Living in both worlds of Academy and Ekklesia is interesting--  but no more strange than most men and women will experience in the  contemporary world where multiple identities and roles often overlap, and sometimes ‘grind’ against one another. I have long held it necessary to bring critical historical scholarship to the illumination of  deep truths. I have never thought the  critical method to be its own justification, or that scholarship is self-justifying. It has inherent values (whatever one calls them – truth, qualitative difference, illumination, wisdom). One ends up as a ‘theologian’ (or at least a philosophe) in the Academy even if one is not specifically treating the  religious thought of the ancients. That or dilettantism are our choices. On the other side of the coin,  ecclesiastical  life and culture without the winnowing and aerating properties of the life of the mind, and the  currents of  broader culture, can all too easily become stifling and oppressive. They might not like each another; but they need one another.

AD: We seem to be living in a time when scholarship, at long last, is beginning to realize that "Christian" approaches to law and politics, in so far as they treat the East at all, must move beyond tiresome notions of "Caesaropapism." (I'm thinking here, e.g., of the recent three-volume collection, one volume of which was The Teachings of Modern Orthodox Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature.) Where does your own forthcoming book, Ascent of Christian Law: Patristic and Byzantine Formulations of a New Civilization take the scholarly debate? What drew you to work on that topic? Why do you think there remains a very high level of interest today in studies on all aspects of Byzantium?

I agree with you about scholarship needing to renew itself. It can start by reviewing  the many clichéd presuppositions and short-cuts it clings to in lieu of addressing the primary sources. Our recent times have seen a great revival of interest in Byzantine studies, and more generally the  culture of patristic thought, and the life and culture of the Churches of the East.  When one looks at the majority of texts dealing with, let’s say, Eastern Christian religious culture,  from an earlier academic age, however, one is too often appalled by the undigested level of prejudices, false informations, and plain silliness one finds. One of the worst examples of all, I would suggest, is Donald Attwater’s books on the Eastern Churches. But even sharper scholars like Dvornik had an awful lot of silly things to say about the analysis of Byzantine subtleties of theology and politeia. His term "caesaropapism" has had a detrimental effect. So much of western scholarly attitudes to Byzantium up to the late 20^th century were full of prejudices distilled from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. They are often blind to the real balances and subtleties that a close reading of the primary texts reveal. But you know what they say: “Why let the facts stand in the way of a good theory?"

My recent book on  Ascent of Christian Law: Patristic and Byzantine Formulations of a New Civilization was written because I wanted to study and learn about an issue

where I could find very little extant literature to guide me. I don’t mean that there aren’t a bundle of books on canon law, or on Roman civil law – but rather that I could not find much to help me with a big question: What did Christianity do in its passage through the first millennium in consciously building a civilisation with its own stamp upon it? Law was surely in the heads and minds of the Christians from the times of avoiding Nero’s secret police to the legal scholastics of Justinian’s court. Christianity has invested so much in law, both civilly and ecclesiastically; and yet has always avoided the turn into becoming a religion of the law (be it Torah or Sharia) which other religious systems have chosen. My book therefore, is not so much a review of Byzantine canon law, or the Justinianic Code, as much as it is a question about principles of culture and polity-building at the heart of historical Christianity. I hope it will have much to say to a wide body of readers and theorists who might like to take a fresh look at the way so many areas (take Europe as an example) have advanced theories of human rights as a way forward to a secular paradise; yet in the  process have divorced their understanding of human rights from the sense of divinely graced anthropology by which Christianity first advanced the notion of the special dignity of  humankind. We now postulate  elevated rights for  humanity without any sense of a workable philosophical or metaphysical grounding to the theory: and we sit and wonder why the century that saw the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was also the century that reinvented slavery, and brought back genocide to the body politic.

AD:  Not a lot of academics get a chance to work on the production of a movie or documentary, but you did exactly that in Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer. Tell us about the process of producing the movie, and the traveling it involved.

Having completed the film, eight years after we initiated it, I can now appreciate why so few academics want to be involved in this genre. It was so much work; travelling, writing and rewriting scripts, hauling equipment up mountains, moving  a team by plane and bus from America to Egypt, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. Of course now that the film is completed it is clear that it has a charm of its own and will have a life of its own, reaching into homes on TV screens and  computer monitors where an academic work of mine, for example, would never appear.  The film is a visual study of several famous monasteries (including Sinai, St. Antony’s, and Sergei Posad) where we went as film-makers and just made the simple request of the ancient Orthodox pilgrims: ‘Abba, give me a word.’ We asked the senior monastics of each place (including several convents)  to tell us something about their practice of the Jesus Prayer. We think the film gives a little window, often in an intriguing way, into Orthodox monastic life and the hesychastic tradition of the Jesus Prayer.

AD: The Jesus Prayer and the practice of Hesychasm both seem today to be attracting a great deal of attention if the number of recent books is anything to go by. What do you think might explain this interest, including from non-Orthodox? What have been the reactions so far to the movie and book?

The very few secular critics who have noticed the film have tended not to like it. The general gist was that it ‘Did not tell me anything new;’ which surprised yet heartened me that so many  of them were already experts in hesychastic prayer. Who would have thought it?  


The larger number of Orthodox and Catholic faithful who have seen it and have responded back to us are almost  all singing from the same hymn sheet: they found it charming, restful and reverent, a feast for the eye and the heart, and so on. So it seems to have greatly pleased those who were, perhaps, more likely to have found it pleasing. I suppose we did a good service for exposing more of the hidden world of Orthodox monasticism to a larger audience. But I think this is the kind of film that will work better for the heart than the head ( which is after all a good thing for a hesychastic piece is it not?). 

The more I go on in life the more depth I discover in this simplest of all prayer forms – known as the Jesus Prayer. I have been working recently, academically, in researching Byzantine mystical ideas of cognition change. A recent article of mine in the St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly looks at the states of soul-cognition in Elias Ekdikos, a major figure of the Great Church in Constantinople at the end of the first millennium. He shows, quite clearly, how advanced studies in cognitive changes (the theory of human consciousness) were part and parcel of what we today would call 'Byzantine spirituality.’ For many generations, of course, spirituality and  human culture, let alone the human sciences, have been artificially divided (this domain church; this domain culture; this domain critical thought, and so on). But it strikes me that in their  simplest of meditative techniques on the nature of the Holy Name, the  precise idea of rising up (from material consciousness, to intellective consciousness, to mystical awareness) is ever at the heart of what the hesychastic tradition is all about; and the literature on the Prayer speaks of this incessantly in the language of the ‘descent of the Nous into the heart.’ These are all deep things, difficult to talk about, of course. But when they are practised one sees it instinctively because (as Orthodox theology consistently says) these things are archetypal in the structure of the heart and soul of human beings (drop a cat--it will always land on its feet).  This is why many outsiders find the fire in the Orthodox spiritual traditions, while  many Orthodox remain unaware of their own treasures (because of over-familiarity?).

AD: Much of the movie saw you visiting or describing many venerable monasteries around the world, including some quite famous. But monasticism seems to struggle in North America--we have no equivalent of Athos, Sinai, the Kievan Caves, Trinity Sergius Lavra, etc. Why do you think that is?

The Kievan Caves Lavra can give an example to suggest an answer to your question. I could deduce the same thing from the monasteries of most other Orthodox countries I have visited.  Under the Soviets the Lavra was part destroyed, and more or less wholly turned over to be a museum. The monks, as you know, were thrown out. The religious memory of the place was desecrated and ridiculed. When I visited it in 1991 a tiny group of monastics had been allowed back and were inhabiting a small skete on the site, alongside many resentfully hostile government employees trying to run the site as a cash-making tourist enterprise.  

When we went back for the film, the site was more or less under the control of the Church (except for the main church). At its center was the archbishop’s administration for Ukraine, and the national seminary; but also a newly re-founded set of male and female monastic communities.  The latter were struggling to establish their typikon: a word which means not just the rule of life they should follow (how much prayer, how much study, what type of ministry etc) but also what ethos the community will manifest. It is easy to print out the typikon if it is simply the day’s schedule. It is by no means easy to “establish” the typikon in the sense of building up the spiritual ethos of a place. One needs to  have the stones and lanes of the monastery ‘prayed over’ for a long time. One needs monastics who have been themselves rebuilt by the grace of God over time. Such a  vested place is recognisable by the charisms and graces of men and women who have been rendered luminous by the Spirit: but it also an issue of having experienced and gracious pneumatikoi or startsi (spiritual elders) who can oversee the life of  these houses, nurture their members, direct and shape them over decades, and pass on the care of the houses to disciples who maintain the self-same ethos. 

America is good at building the plant for monasteries, in some cases; but it has difficulties in establishing the tradition of elders. It is still (in its head anyway) a new and ‘frontier civilization.’ The sense of quiet alignment with ancient wisdoms and old obediences does not come naturally to it. It is more Teddy Roosevelt than Paisy Velichovsky. That is why I think America still has some way to go to find itself as a monastically-graced land. It is not enough to don the klobuk and  behave as if the tsar might drop in one day. One needs to pass through the fires of God’s pitiful mercy in oneself, and emerge as someone who would like to build a shelter in the wilderness for the comfort of the poor passerby.

AD: In addition to these two major projects, you've also overseen something (to my mind) even grander, viz., the The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity published this year in 2 volumes by Wiley-Blackwell. Tell us about the Encyclopedia, and the process of producing such a massive work.

The old adage says : ‘Never work with animals or children.’ I would add a line – ‘Or  with Encylopedias of Orthodoxy.’  It was, actually, great fun to do. And I can say that now that it is all over and done with. I had a team of young and enthusiastic assistant editors to cheer things on. We had the inestimable privilege of working with so many splendid  international Orthodox intellectuals (for almost all the entries were by Orthodox people with doctoral level qualifications). It heartened me to see how greatly the Orthodox world has repaired its levels of education so devastated by oppressive forces over the previous century.  Almost all English-language reference works on Orthodoxy, if I may exaggerate only a tiny degree, have been written about the Orthodox by outsiders, who have had varying degrees of patience with us, or understanding of us.  This is the first  really large-scale work that looks at us from the inside: tells the story in our own words.  

The Moscow Patriarchate is currently bringing out a mammoth Russian language version--but they are still only up to 'A,' I believe. Even when this finally emerges in the light, nevertheless, ours will not be pushed aside; but I hope it will remain as an enduring monument because our work takes the highest levels of contemporary critical scholarship and analytical refinement, and allies it with a sense of reverence and delight in the affairs and culture of our Church. Ours also might “just fit” in a book bag. Theirs will need a truck to move it around!

AD: One of the many charms of the Encyclopedia was the inclusion of copies of beautiful icons produced by your wife, Eileen. Is she a full-time iconographer? Where did she study?

Yes, you are right. I did not realize this until I actually saw the book physically in hand, when Blackwells sent me a boxed set: but how beautiful a thing it is to hold and smell (I like smelling books!). It is charming. The production costs were mounting of course, and although the publishers wanted  illustrations they could not stretch to many colored ones. So I had to reach out to another charmer, my wife Eileen, who is a very successful professional iconographer, and I had to go playing my sad violin so she would let me use her images to  demonstrate Orthodox iconography. This was no difficult task. Even though I may be biased, of course, I find her work ‘commanding’ among the many splendid new iconographers we have in our time. She, for me, is a buoyant example of some of the best things going out there internationally. So I was  blessed to be able to include her work. 

People can see a fuller range here. She studied as a fine-arts student (landscape painter) at Newcastle University in England, and went on to  have a full career as an educationalist. When we moved to America in 1997,  and I took up my academic appointment here, she retired early from academia and took up her painting again (which had been a leisure-hours activity all those years). She opened up ‘The Icon Studio’ in New York and has never since been without a list of advance commissions. She absorbed the techniques of icon painting in many places: studios in Athens and the Islands, and some ateliers in Romania. Her color palette is radiant. Her line is very pure and refined. Enough already--you might think I had a special affection for the woman!

AD: Wiley-Blackwell also brought out your own The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to its History, Doctrine, and Spiritual Culture, the latest in a considerable number of introductions to, dictionaries of, surveys covering Eastern Christianity. Why do you think we are seeing such an upsurge in major publications on Eastern Christianity today by major publishers--Wiley, Oxford, Routledge, Cambridge, Columbia, and others? Has the world--or at least the academic world--finally "discovered" the East?

Well, Wiley Blackwell is graced to have at the helm of its religion publishing list a very wonderful person called Rebecca Harkin. She is consummately professional, but also has a finely discerning eye. And, though I should not put thoughts in her head or words in her mouth, I think she saw in the traditions of the Orthodox church a fountain of real-world Christian wisdom that was both grounded and mystical at one and the same moment, and which could  be of great utility to the large numbers of intelligent Christians out there today who are ‘like sheep without a shepherd.’ It was Rebecca who came to me and pushed me to compose both these very large works. I (of course) like my Orthodox Church book.  I tried to make it always faithful to the Orthodox tradition in all respects. But I also wanted, all the way through it, to talk about the “real world.”   So it speaks of war, and human grief, and sexuality, and corporate greed in the market place; as well as speaking about the Virgin-Theotokos, the angels, the liturgy and sacraments.  That is my real world, you see: the juxtaposition of the 7^th age of the unrealised hopes of humanity, with the glimmering light already breaking through of the 8^th age of the Kingdom.

AD: What projects are you at work on currently?

My immediate problem is how to get through to the end of this period of Lent without staining my teeth dark brown with un-milked coffee. This is a recurring project: something of the level of what the ancients would call an aporia: roughly translatable as: Solve that one if you can!  In terms of literature I am resting my steaming head on the table at present and glad to see the release in 2012 of Prayer Book of the Early Christians

as well as The Ascent of Christian Law (SVS Press), and later in the year also the  issuing of a set of studies I have introduced and edited from a number of young scholars, titled The Concept of Beauty in Patristic and Byzantine Theology. The publisher for this is not yet settled. Make me an offer someone out there? This last book looks at the tradition in Platonic philosophy of the ‘Ascent to Transcendent Beauty’ (see the priestess Diotima’s wonderful speech in the Symposium). The Byzantine church Fathers take and adapt this theme to make it a magnificent set of reflections on the  beauty of the divine transcendent.  I think this will itself be a beautiful book, as well as a deeply instructive one. I have composed for it the Introduction on the nature of beauty as a transcendental in patristic thought; as well as an article in the  main body of the book on the manner in which St. Maximus the Confessor deals with the  idea. Other chapters deal with Plato himself, with Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Niketas Stethatos and others. I like offering patristic books which are dealing with real theology, real philosophy – full of substance not merely dead and deadly exercises in academic exactitudes; and thus as dry as dust. The great Fathers of the Church were radiant mystagogues in many cases. Many of their works still leap with the  power of the Spirit. Many  modern theologians have habitually dismissed them as theologians dead and gone, who have nothing to say to the world. This is the mistake of those who have never really read them. For us Orthodox, they are our living treasure. The lights are still on in the house. 

When my head stops steaming, I am turning my mind for the latter part of 2012, towards two projects on my open list. The first is the contract  I have with IVP Academic publishers to offer them, some time before 2014, a large  text book on the history of the Christian Church in the first millennium. It is going (tentatively) to be entitled The Cross Ascendant.    I am also starting a project I have long desired to do: a translation of the Hymns of Divine Eros of St. Symeon the New Theologian, which will itself be hymnal (poetic) in character and will reflect in English blank verse the varying metric rhythms of the poetic originals. I have lived on and off with St. Symeon for most of my scholarly life, since the day he found me as a 23-year-old know-it-all in a library in Durham. And I want to render his  magnum opus   in a version which will show what a master he was in both doctrine and poetry. Just talking about it makes me want to go and smell the Greek originals again! 

So I’m off – and thank you for your kindness is asking about my work.