The Contribution of Eastern Christendom to the Development of a Theology of the Environment

Reviewed by: Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought by Torstein Theodor Tollefsen Lucian Turcescu Torstein Theodor Tollefsen Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought Oxford Early Christian Studies Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2012 Pp. ix + 229. $125.00. The present volume is a study of the concepts of activity (energeia) and participation in late antique and early Christian thought with the aim of showing that Gregory Palamas was a traditional thinker and no innovator in the Byzantine tradition. Tollefsen, a philosophy professor interested in the philosophy of the Greek church fathers within the period of 300–900, does not want to engage in the Palamitic debate per se. Instead, in six of the book’s eight chapters, he explores the concepts of activity and participation in non-Christian thought (Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus), two of the Cappadocian fathers (Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa), pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and Maximus the Confessor. Only in the seventh chapter does he deal with Gregory Palamas proper. Chapter Three deals with the Trinitarian generation as the internal activity of the godhead, while Chapters Four and Five deal with two examples of external activities of the godhead—cosmology and incarnation, respectively. The concepts of participation and activity go back to the Neoplatonic and early Christian idea that lower strata of being depend on higher principles, in the sense that these same lower levels are constituted by some kind of participation in these higher principles. While this sounds like abstract philosophy, Orthodox Christianity has developed a practical understanding of this in its doctrine of salvation that is conceived as deification (theosis)—that is, participation in God and becoming godlike. The most well-known expression of this doctrine is encountered in the theology of Gregory Palamas (14th century), who provided a defense of the hesychast practice of participation in God’s uncreated divine energies (or activities). Tollefsen contends that the modern reception of the controversial distinction between God’s uncreated essence, the divine activity, and participation tended “to blur the fact that the distinction and relationship between such concepts … originally belonged to a central philosophical consideration partly developed to highlight the relationship between higher and lower reality, God and what comes ‘after’ God; originally in pagan thought and later in Christian thought” (3). [End Page 133] Going into individual details about the arguments of this book is too complex a task for a book review. But we should note, for example, that Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor share Plotinus’s view of participation, according to which an intelligible principle is received by “a power of the activity ad extra of the principle that is made present according to the receptive capacity of the recipient” (31). Also, while engaging some of the older research on participation, the book is conversant with some of the newer research and complements the latter with serious analysis. In regard to cosmology as an external activity of the godhead, both Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus hold similar views that God, like an artist who left his stamp on his work, has left his stamp on his work, the cosmos, and we may observe the ineffable wisdom of God in the orderly arrangement of the world. Unlike Aristotle, however, for whom the human activity of building has no existence beyond the completion of the structure built (perhaps with the exception of a few outcomes), for Maximus and Gregory, the wisdom and goodness observed in the cosmos are not just the stamp left by the artist, but testify to the permanent and sustaining presence of God in the world. When it comes to Gregory Palamas, Tollefsen argues that his thinking with regards to the philosophical ideas of essence, activity, and participation are in line with those of Gregory of Nyssa, pseudo-Dionysius, and Maximus. Unlike his predecessors, however, who used those concepts without being too concerned that they would be misunderstood, Palamas saw himself attempted to explain them using the difference between essence and activity, a vocabulary which was not easily accepted during his time and by his adversaries. While the book is complex (and I must admit a few times even unclear) and...

Reviewed by: From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith by Louis Markos Mark Mattes From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith. By Louis Markos. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2021. xvi + 234 pp. This book seeks to show the impact that Plato has had on the Christian faith. It is written by an English professor at Houston Baptist University. The first six chapters interpret Plato's essential writings and the next six show his influence on Christian thinkers: Origen of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Palamas, Augustine, Boethius, Dante, Erasmus, Descartes, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and C. S. Lewis. This book offers no direct ties between Plato and Luther. That said, the book is valuable because it makes a strong case for how Christianity has been deeply influenced by Plato and that this has led both to Christian humanism and a Christian approach to the liberal arts. Markos knows how to hook his readers: he sees modern and contemporary philosophy prefigured in the Sophists, antagonists of Plato's mentor, Socrates. For example, the sophist Thrasymachus, an interlocuter with Socrates in the Republic, is akin to Nietzsche (29). Interestingly, against the ancient view that "humans are the measure of all things," Plato proposes instead that God is (91). Also, in the Timaeus, similar to the Bible, but unlike all other ancient views, God predates matter (102). In the same writing, Plato portrays a cosmology not like the Gnostics, often thought to be Plato's heirs. Instead, for Plato, God created the world good and the material world is no product of a Fall of spiritual reality into material things (107). Strangely, Christians may even see the suffering Christ as prefigured in Plato's exaltation of the righteous person who would rather suffer wrong, even being impaled, than prosper at others' expense as the evil would do (127). While Markos looks to Erasmus as Plato's voice in the Reformation, it would be interesting to examine just how Platonic Luther's and Calvin's views of participation in Christ are or are not. Given the case Markos has built for similarities between Plato and Christianity, the biggest difference between the two for the Reformers would be that human sinfulness is a result not of a lack of knowledge, which Plato teaches, but instead a misuse of the will, that is, [End Page 337] its revolt against God's will. In spite of Markos' failure to bring the Reformers and Plato into conversation, this book is valuable for understanding Christianity's role in the liberal arts. Mark Mattes Grand View University Des Moines, Iowa Copyright © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

The representation of Sophia – personified God’s Wisdom, based on the text of old-testament Sapiental Books, took quite an important place in the spiritual culture of Byzantium. What should be noted is the Empire inhabitants’ striving to identify Wisdom with one of the persons of Trinity. A vast majority of the Church Fathers and later East Christian thinkers inclined towards christological interpretation of Sophian images. The Second Hypostasis – the Word Incarnate, was identified with Sophia by Justin Martyr, Athenagoras of Athens, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Methodius of Olympus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrus, Anastasius of Sinai, Patriarch Germanus of Constantinople, St. Theodore of Stoudios, Symeon the Metaphrast, St. Simeon the New Theologian, and Philotheos Kokkinos – author of three extensive educational works devoted to Sapiental metaphors, presented in the Book of Proverbs. Several other apologists preferred to identify God’s Wisdom with the Holy Spirit (Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Paul of Samosata). At the same time in the Byzantine theology emerged a completely abstract interpretation of Sophia, based on the views of Saint Basil the Great, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor. Its highlight was to be a theory, proposed by Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century, according to which Sophia should be understood primarily as one of the uncreated energies of God.

According to orthodox Christianity, God is a Trinity of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Traditionally, the Father is in some sense the source of the other two persons; the Son and the Holy Spirit are said to proceed from him. Central to all understandings of this doctrine is that the claim that there are three divine persons does not entail the further claim that there are three Gods. Not surprisingly, this doctrine has caused theologians some difficulty. Eastern Christianity, taking its cue from the great Cappadocian fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus), has tended to emphasize what are sometimes known as ‘‘social’’ models of the Trinity. The divine persons on this view are something like three individuals living in indivisible community with each other. The West, following Augustine, has tended to see the three persons as something like three ways in which the one divine essence exists. On this admittedly rough analysis, the difficulty faced by those theologians who prefer social models of the Trinity is avoiding tritheism; the problem for the more ‘‘Augustinian’’ theologians is avoiding modalism, the belief that the three persons are just modes of divine self-presentation to us.

Gregory of Nazianzus has long been regarded as the premier teacher on the Holy Trinity in Eastern Christianity. Yet, ironically, for over a century historians and theologians have neglected his work in favor of his fellow Cappadocians Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, while Gregory has long been overshadowed in the West by Augustine. Christopher Beeley's groundbreaking study—the first comprehensive treatment in modern scholarship—examines Gregory's Trinitarian doctrine within the full range of his theological and practical vision. Following an introductory orientation to Gregory's life and theological works, the book traces Gregory's Trinitarian doctrine through a wide range of concerns, from biblical interpretation and language theory to the practicalities of Christian worship, asceticism, and pastoral ministry. It highlights the soteriological nature of Gregory's doctrine, which seamlessly integrates what have more recently been distinguished as dogmatic and ascetical, or doxological and systematic, theology. Unique among modern studies, this book examines Gregory's doctrine across his entire corpus of orations, poems, and letters, giving special attention to its highly rhetorical and contextualized form. It offers new insights in many areas and a major reinterpretation of the famous Theological Orations and Christological epistles (Ep. 101‐102, 202). By comparing Gregory's work with that of his great master, Origen, his Eastern contemporaries, and his Western counterpart, Augustine, the book shows Gregory to be the most outstanding example of the Origenist Trinitarian tradition of fourth‐century Asia Minor. Gregory offered the most powerful and comprehensive Trinitarian doctrine of his age from a distinctively Eastern point of view, largely independent of the work of Athanasius, while also representing the interests of Damasus of Rome and the Italian bishops as the leading pro‐Nicene theologian at the heart of the Eastern empire—a fact which sharply qualifies the long‐accepted dominance of the Athanasian‐Western paradigm as the normative standard for Trinitarian orthodoxy. Long eclipsed in twentieth‐century scholarship, Gregory's doctrine is now brought into full view as the major Greek authority on the Trinity and one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church.

It has rarely been recognized that the Christian writers of the first millennium pursued an ambitious and exciting philosophical project alongside their engagement in the doctrinal controversies of their age. This book offers for the first time a full analysis of this Patristic philosophy. It shows how it took its distinctive shape in the late fourth century and gives an account of its subsequent development until the time of John of Damascus. The book falls into three main parts. The first of them starts from an analysis of the philosophical project underlying the teaching of the Cappadocian fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. This philosophy, arguably the first distinctively Christian theory of being, soon becomes near-universally shared in Eastern Christianity. A few decades after the Cappadocians, all sides in the early Christological controversy take its fundamental tenets for granted. Its application to the Christological problem thus appeared inevitable. Yet it created substantial conceptual problems. Parts II and III of the book describe in detail how these problems led to a series of increasingly radical modifications of the Cappadocian philosophy. The chapters of Part II are dedicated to the miaphysite opponents of the Council of Chalcedon, while Part III discusses the defenders of the Council from the early sixth to the eighth centuries. Through this overview, the book reveals this period as one of remarkable philosophical creativity, fecundity, and innovation.

Clement's discussion of the despoliation of Egypt is a reprise of what we have encountered in Philo's Life of Moses. Clement's attraction to Philo is based on the combination of factors he found linked together there: both brilliance in biblical exegesis and maturity of philosophical reasoning. Ambrose, in De Abraham 2.9.63 applies the allegory of the despoliation of Egypt to the soul's relation to the incorporeality of the resurrected body. Gregory of Nazianzus' Paschal sermon employs a 'just wage' traditional interpretation not specifically to justify God but to, based on the allegory, exhort his readers to plunder the intellectual wealth of their culture. Gregory of Nyssa's the Life of Moses is generally believed to be the most thorough and developed presentation of his spiritual teachings. Ephrem's Commentary on Exodus displays little interest in the spoliatio motif, and makes almost no comment on most of the passages dealing with it.Keywords:Clement; Egypt; Ephrem; exodus; Gregory of Nazianzus; Gregory of Nyssa; Moses; patristic texts; Philo

Gregory Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa between them composed three orations on love of the destitute poor: Nazianzen's Oration 14, Peri philoptōchias and Nyssen's On love of the poor 1 and 2 (De beneficentia and In illud: quatenus uni ex his fecistis mihi fecistis). All three situate leprosy as the most extreme, and therefore paradigmatic, form of poverty as a basis for exhorting Christians to the practice of love. Those suffering from leprosy were stigmatised and excluded from society even by Christians, yet the Gregories exhort them to serve Christ by serving them, supporting pastoral entreaty with theological argument. This paper aims to introduce these orations to those unfamiliar with them and contribute new insights to those who already know them. After situating them in their historical context I summarise each then comment on their content, highlighting Nazianzen's reconfiguration of classical motifs in the service of a revisionist social policy and Christian anthropology rooted in the imago Dei and Nyssen's recourse to ascetic theory with marked similarities to that of Egyptian desert asceticism as taught by Evagrius. This paper's discussion of these prophetic orations will contribute to knowledge of them and by extension of the two Gregories.

The article examines how the Aristotelian paradigm of participation works in Gregory of Nyssa’s and Gregory of Palamas’ teachings. Gregory of Nyssa uses this paradigm while developing his teaching on human nature as a monad in the treatise “To Ablabius” and relies in this regard on the “Isagoga” by Porphyry. This version of the Aristotelian paradigm of participation, which is present in Porphyry and Gregory of Nyssa, includes, first, the discourse of the participation of hypostases in their own essence, and, second, the discourse of divisibility of the participating whereas the participated remains indivisible. Gregory Palamas also uses the Aristotelian paradigm of participation in his argumentation on nonparticibility of the divine essence, and, as I suggest in the article, borrows it from Gregory of Nyssa. At the same time, Palamas transforms this discourse and associates the category of divisibility with the situation of participation as such, so that the participated appears divisible. This allows him to assert that in God the energies are participable and not the Divine essence.

The Cappadocians are three fathers of the early Christian church named for the region of Cappadocia, namely Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa. In what follows, we will look at three themes that are central to the Cappadocian philosophy of religion: (i) God calls beings out of nonbeing; (ii) the enemy of creatures is corruption; and (iii) God gives to others that which belongs to him alone. As we will see, these three points, taken together, bring to light the metaphysical foundations of the Cappadocian understanding of Christianity specifically and of the cosmos generally.

Book Review: Inner Animalities: Theology and the End of the Human

Apollinarius of Laodicea argued that the divine wisdom, in Christ, took the place of a human reason, and so that the human Christ has existed eternally, as part of the Logos’s person. So even the humanity of Christ is in some sense divine, for the Apollinarians, and we are transformed by imitating him or being sacramentally united with him. Against this view, Gregory of Nazianzus came to insist that Christ must have a complete and authentic humanity if he is our savior; his must be a “double” reality, in which creator and creature are mingled” in the actions and consciousness of a single agent. Gregory of Nyssa also emphasized the need for Christ to be fully human if he is to save us. He suggested that human nature is gradually being transformed by the divine qualities Jesus brings into the world. Human changeability is the condition of salvation.

Gregory of Nyssa was not so extensive a writer of letters as either his brother Basil or his namesake of Nazianzus. In Pasquali's collection they are only 30 in number. Even so, perhaps because of their relative paucity, they have already provoked recent translations into French and German, namely Pierre Maraval's Sources chrétiennes edition of 1990 and the annotated translation by Doerte Teske of 1997. The most important point on which Silvas differs from the previous two translations is that before she gets to work on the Pasquali collection of 30 letters she provides two preludes in the shape of the letters of the other two Cappadocians to Gregory of Nyssa. The letters above all of Basil illustrate the rather low opinion Basil had of his younger brother's political ability. The other important feature of this collection is that Silvas offers as a sort of postlude to the traditional 30 letters, what she terms a supplementary collection of seven letters. Most stimulating is number 31, entitled the Canonical Letter to Letoius, Bishop of Melitene, which treats the important subject of how to deal with those guilty of serious sins. The final letter, number 37, is a somewhat grovelling letter to the Great Emperor, presumably Theodosius, whose proclamation as Augustus of the East on 19 January 379 rather rules out the possibility of Basil being the author, Basil having died at the very latest on 1 January of the same year. Stylistic considerations above all suggest that Gregory of Nyssa not Gregory of Nazianzus was the author.

While the early Christian Church demonstrates a deep desire to relieve physical suffering, the Greco-Roman world in which it developed lacked the same impetus to respond to human need, especially in the context of epidemic or communicable disease. Christianity's dedication to health care, and its belief that assisting the sick constituted an absolute obligation, distinguished early Christianity from its contemporary cultural milieu which regularly ignored and excluded the sick. The novelty of the Christian approach to healing can be traced to the early church's unique recognition of human need. This vision of human need, which ultimately replaced the secular Greco-Roman emphasis on reciprocal philanthropy and providing assistance only to the worthy, is clearly exemplified in the life of Christ, in responses to plague and in the writings of John Chrysostom and the Cappadocian Fathers Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. An analysis of these sources demonstrates that the early Christian Church viewed the sick not only as persons to be assisted insofar as they shared a common human nature but also individuals necessary for the salvation of the broader community as a whole. The early church's emphasis on reciprocal interdependence between healthy and sick eliminated the boundaries traditionally established between these two groups and transformed long-standing notions of contagious disease. Ultimately, the development of these attitudes toward the sick originates in a deeper truth which underlies the Christian healthcare tradition both in the ancient world and in the modern era: humanity's profound and mutual need of God, before whom all are spiritually ill.

This chapter deals with Gregory Palamas' reception of the Latin West. Taking his evident use of Augustine as a starting point, it argues for the existence of an Orthodox interpretation of procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son in Gregory — and not only in respect of temporal procession. This constructive approach to the filioque question reveals an instinctive solidarity between Gregory and the Latin theological tradition, as also evidenced by his understanding of the divine wisdom. Palamas' deep roots in the Byzantine scholastic tradition underpin his defence of the place of rightly-ordered reason on theology, an approach that aligns him far more closely with Thomas than with the anti-rational discourse of many of his opponents. Attention is also given to Palamas' connections with and irenic approach to the Latins of his own time — an approach analogous to that of Aquinas. The chapter questions the prevalent assumption in modern theology (Eastern and Western alike) that Palamas and Aquinas may be taken as opposing archetypes of their respective traditions. In fact, the commonalities between these two theologians are more evident that their differences and this helps explain the capacity of so many committed Palamites to welcome and make use of Aquinas in the last years of the Byzantine Empire.