Studia Patristica - Papers Presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2019: From the Fifth Century ... Controversy (26) (Studia Patristica, 129) 9789042947863, 9789042947870, 9042947861

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STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXXIX

Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019 Edited by MARKUS VINZENT Volume 26:

From the Fifth Century Onwards (Greek Writers) Following the Holy Fathers: Patristic Sources in the Palamite Controversy (Edited by TIKHON ALEXANDER PINO)

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2021

STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXXIX

STUDIA PATRISTICA Editor: Markus VINZENT, King’s College London, UK and Max Weber Centre, University of Erfurt, Germany

Board of Directors (2019): Carol HARRISON, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK Mark EDWARDS, Professor of Early Christian Studies, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK Neil MCLYNN, University Lecturer in Later Roman History, Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, UK Philip BOOTH, A.G. Leventis Associate Professor in Eastern Christianity, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK Sophie LUNN-ROCKLIFFE, Lecturer in Patristics, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, UK Morwenna LUDLOW, Professor, Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, UK Ioannis PAPADOGIANNAKIS, Senior Lecturer in Patristics, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, UK Markus VINZENT, Professor of the History of Theology, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, UK Josef LÖSSL, Professor of Historical Theology and Intellectual History, School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, UK Lewis AYRES, Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology, Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, UK John BEHR, Regius Chair in Humanity, The School of Divinity, History, Philosophy & Art History, University of Aberdeen, UK Anthony DUPONT, Research Professor in Christian Antiquity, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium Patricia CINER (as president of AIEP), Professor, Universidad de San Juan-Universidad Católica de Cuyo, Argentina Clayton JEFFORD (as president of NAPS), Professor of Scripture, Seminary and School of Theology, Saint Meinrad, IN, USA

STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXXIX

Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019 Edited by MARKUS VINZENT Volume 26:

From the Fifth Century Onwards (Greek Writers) Following the Holy Fathers: Patristic Sources in the Palamite Controversy (Edited by TIKHON ALEXANDER PINO)

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2021

© Peeters Publishers — Louvain — Belgium 2021 All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form. D/2021/0602/163 ISBN: 978-90-429-4786-3 eISBN: 978-90-429-4787-0 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in Belgium by Peeters, Leuven

Table of Contents

FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY ONWARDS (GREEK WRITERS) Maria Panagia MIOLA Basil of Seleucia’s Homilia in Iob (CPG 6667) and its Depiction of the Voice..............................................................................................

3

Cornelis HOOGERWERF Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Interpretation of the Birth Announcements of Ishmael and Isaac (Genesis 16 and 18) and its Reception in EastSyriac and Greek Sources ...................................................................

9

Ashish J. NAIDU Adam-Christ Typology in Cyril of Alexandria and John Chrysostom

21

Alexey STRELTSOV The Impassible Passion: Cyril’s Unitive Christology at the Crossroads between Christian Tradition and Plotinus’ Psychology .....................

29

Shawn J. WILHITE ‘Was it Not the Only Begotten that was Speaking Long Ago’: Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis in his Commentary on Hebrews (Heb. 1:1-2) .........................................................................................

39

Brad BOSWELL Goats, Gods, and the Mystery of Christ: Exegesis and Narrative Conflict between Julian and Cyril ......................................................

51

Andrew MERCER Salvation and the Soul of Christ in Cyril of Alexandria ....................

69

Michael C. MAGREE Surpassing Mere Logomachy: Cyril and Theodoret on the Third and Fourth Anathemas ...............................................................................

75

Georgios SISKOS Fundamental Differences on Christological Expressions of St Cyril of Alexandria and Severus of Antioch ...............................................

83

Veronica M. TIERNEY The Gift of the Holy Spirit: Pledge and Fulfillment in Cyril of Alexandria ........................................................................................... 101

VI

Table of Contents

Carlos Marcelo SINGH MESCONI Diadochus of Photike and the Discernment of Spirits ....................... 109 Alberto NIGRA John of Scythopolis as a Precursor of John Damascene in the Theological Development towards Trinitarian Perichoresis: A Hypothesis 121 Alexandru A. BARNA The Gnoseological Function of σύμβολον in Dionysius the Areopagite ................................................................................................... 133 Michael MUTHREICH Some Remarks on the Arabic Epistula ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli .................................................................. 145 Bradley K. STORIN Monastic Identity and Violence in Callinicus’ Vita Hypatii .............. 155 Simon Samuel FORD Confronting Cyprian: Anti-Rigorism in the Letters of Severus of Antioch ................................................................................................ 167 Yuichi TSUNODA Composite Nature without Particularities: Leontius of Byzantium’s Understanding of Severus of Antioch’s Miaphysite Christology ...... 183 Teodor TĂBUȘ The Imperial Reception of Cyrilian Christology in the 6th Century on the Basis of the Theological Writings of Justinian I .......................... 195 Maxim VENETSKOV Reading Traditions of the Ladder of John Sinaites According to the Manuscript Marks................................................................................ 207 Paul M. BLOWERS The Vanity of Human Life in the Poetry of George of Pisidia. Echoes of Patristic Lament .............................................................................. 229 FOLLOWING THE HOLY FATHERS: PATRISTIC SOURCES IN THE PALAMITE CONTROVERSY (edited by Tikhon Alexander PINO) Tikhon Alexander PINO Introduction ......................................................................................... 239

Table of Contents

VII

Christiaan KAPPES Gregory Palamas’ Defense of Theology as Ἐπιστήμη: Historical Background and Sources ..................................................................... 243 Alexandros CHOULIARAS Αἴσθησις νοερὰ καὶ θεία (Intellectual and Divine Perception): A Major Notion in St Gregory Palamas’ Anthropology .................... 271 Jane SLOAN PETERS Gregory Palamas’ Debt to Maximus the Confessor’s Dyenergist Christology .......................................................................................... 289 Dmitry BIRIUKOV The Topic of the Divine Energies as Accidents in the Palamite Doctrine: Its Meaning, Historical Context, Including that of the Teaching about the Nature of Theological Language ........................................ 305 Alessia BROMBIN Historia brevis to Anne of Savoy: An Attempt to Rediscovering the Role of David Dishypatos on the Hesychast’s Controversy .............. 317 Andreas ZACHARIOU The Church Fathers in Gregory Acindynos’ Theological Conception: The Interpretation of the Term μεῖζον ............................................... 329 Petros N. TOULIS Reception and Interpretation of the Patristic Tradition in Theophanes of Nicaea’s Works ............................................................................... 341

Abbreviations AA.SS AAWG.PH AB AC ACL ACO ACW AHDLMA AJAH AJP AKK AKPAW ALMA ALW AnalBoll ANCL ANF ANRW AnSt AnThA APOT AR ARW ASS AThANT Aug AugSt AW AZ BA BAC BASOR BDAG BEHE BETL BGL BHG BHL

see ASS. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen Philologisch-historische Klasse, Göttingen. Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels. Antike und Christentum, ed. F.J. Dölger, Münster. Antiquité classique, Louvain. Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, ed. E. Schwartz, Berlin. Ancient Christian Writers, ed. J. Quasten and J.C. Plumpe, Westminster (Md.)/London. Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, Paris. American Journal of Ancient History, Cambridge, Mass. American Journal of Philology, Baltimore. Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht, Mainz. Abhandlungen der königlichen Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin. Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin du Cange), Paris/Brussels. Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, Regensburg. Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Buffalo/New York. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed H. Temporini et al., Berlin. Anatolian Studies, London. Année théologique augustinienne, Paris. Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, ed. R.E. Charles, Oxford. Archivum Romanicum, Florence. Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, Berlin/Leipzig. Acta Sanctorum, ed. the Bollandists, Brussels. Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments, Zürich. Augustinianum, Rome. Augustinian Studies, Villanova (USA). Athanasius Werke, ed. H.-G. Opitz et al., Berlin. Archäologische Zeitung, Berlin. Bibliothèque augustinienne, Paris. Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, New Haven, Conn. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd edn F.W. Danker, Chicago. Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Paris. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, Louvain. Benediktinisches Geistesleben, St. Ottilien. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, Brussels. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina Antiquae et Mediae Aetatis, Brussels.

X BHO BHTh BJ BJRULM BKV BKV2 BKV3 BLE BoJ BS BSL BWAT Byz BZ BZNW CAr CBQ CChr.CM CChr.SA CChr.SG CChr.SL CH CIL CP(h) CPG CPL CQ CR CSCO

CSEL CSHB CTh CUF CW DAC

Abbreviations

Bibliotheca Hagiographica Orientalis, Brussels. Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, Tübingen. Bursians Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Leipzig. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, ed. F.X. Reithmayr and V. Thalhofer, Kempten. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, ed. O. Bardenhewer, Th. Schermann, and C. Weyman, Kempten/Munich. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter. Zweite Reihe, ed. O. Bardenhewer, J. Zellinger, and J. Martin, Munich. Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, Toulouse. Bonner Jahrbücher, Bonn. Bibliotheca sacra, London. Bolletino di studi latini, Naples. Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten Testament, Leipzig/Stuttgart. Byzantion, Leuven. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Leipzig. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Berlin. Cahiers Archéologique, Paris. Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Washington. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, Turnhout/Paris. Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum, Turnhout/Paris. Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca, Turnhout/Paris. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Turnhout/Paris. Church History, Chicago. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin. Classical Philology, Chicago. Clavis Patrum Graecorum, ed. M. Geerard, vols. I-VI, Turnhout. Clavis Patrum Latinorum (SE 3), ed. E. Dekkers and A. Gaar, Turnhout. Classical Quarterly, London/Oxford. The Classical Review, London/Oxford. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Louvain. Aeth = Scriptores Aethiopici Ar = Scriptores Arabici Arm = Scriptores Armeniaci Copt = Scriptores Coptici Iber = Scriptores Iberici Syr = Scriptores Syri Subs = Subsidia Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, Bonn. Collectanea Theologica, Lvov. Collection des Universités de France publiée sous le patronage de l’Association Guillaume Budé, Paris. Catholic World, New York. Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, ed. J. Hastings, Edinburgh.

Abbreviations

DACL DAL DB DBS DCB DHGE Did DOP DOS DR DS DSp DTC EA ECatt ECQ EE EECh EKK EH EO EtByz ETL EWNT ExpT FC FGH FKDG FRL FS FThSt FTS FZThPh GCS GDV GLNT GNO GRBS

XI

see DAL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol, H. Leclercq, Paris. Dictionnaire de la Bible, Paris. Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément, Paris. Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects, and Doctrines, ed. W. Smith and H. Wace, 4 vols, London. Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique, ed. A. Baudrillart, Paris. Didaskalia, Lisbon. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Cambridge, Mass., subsequently Washington, D.C. Dumbarton Oaks Studies, Cambridge, Mass., subsequently Washington, D.C. Downside Review, Stratton on the Fosse, Bath. H.J. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, ed., Enchiridion Symbolorum, Barcelona/Freiburg i.B./Rome. Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, ed. M. Viller, S.J., and others, Paris. Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. A. Vacant, E. Mangenot, and E. Amann, Paris. Études augustiniennes, Paris. Enciclopedia Cattolica, Rome. Eastern Churches Quarterly, Ramsgate. Estudios eclesiasticos, Madrid. Encyclopedia of the Early Church, ed. A. Di Berardino, Cambridge. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Neukirchen. Enchiridion Fontium Historiae Ecclesiasticae Antiquae, ed. Ueding-Kirch, 6th ed., Barcelona. Échos d’Orient, Paris. Études Byzantines, Paris. Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, Louvain. Exegetisches Wörterbuch zum NT, ed. H.R. Balz et al., Stuttgart. The Expository Times, Edinburgh. The Fathers of the Church, New York. Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Berlin. Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, Göttingen. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, Göttingen. Festschrift. Freiburger theologische Studien, Freiburg i.B. Frankfurter theologische Studien, Frankfurt a.M. Freiburger Zeitschrift für Theologie und Philosophie, Freiburg/Switzerland. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller, Leipzig/Berlin. Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, Stuttgart. Grande Lessico del Nuovo Testamento, Genoa. Gregorii Nysseni Opera, Leiden. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, Mass.

XII GWV HbNT HDR HJG HKG HNT HO HSCP HTR HTS HZ ICC ILCV ILS J(b)AC JBL JdI JECS JEH JJS JLH JPTh JQR JRS JSJ JSOR JTS KAV KeTh KJ(b) LCL LNPF L(O)F LSJ LThK LXX MA MAMA Mansi MBTh

Abbreviations

Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Offenburg. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament. Tübingen. Harvard Dissertations in Religion, Missoula. Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft, successively Munich, Cologne and Munich/Freiburg i.B. Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, Tübingen. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, Tübingen. Handbuch der Orientalistik, Leiden. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Theological Review, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Theological Studies, Cambridge, Mass. Historische Zeitschrift, Munich/Berlin. The International Critical Commentary of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, Edinburgh. Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, ed. E. Diehl, Berlin. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. H. Dessau, Berlin. Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Münster. Journal of Biblical Literature, Philadelphia, Pa., then various places. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Berlin. Journal of Early Christian Studies, Baltimore. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, London. Journal of Jewish Studies, London. Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie, Kassel. Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie, Leipzig/Freiburg i.B. Jewish Quarterly Review, Philadelphia. Journal of Roman Studies, London. Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period, Leiden. Journal of the Society of Oriental Research, Chicago. Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford. Kommentar zu den apostolischen Vätern, Göttingen. Kerk en Theologie, ’s Gravenhage. Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Gütersloh. The Loeb Classical Library, London/Cambridge, Mass. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace, Buffalo/New York. Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Oxford. H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, new (9th) edn H.S. Jones, Oxford. Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, Freiburg i.B. Septuagint. Moyen-Âge, Brussels. Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, London. J.D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Florence, 1759-1798. Reprint and continuation: Paris/Leipzig, 1901-1927. Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie, Münster.

Abbreviations

MCom MGH ML MPG MSR MThZ Mus NA28 NGWG NH(M)S NIV NKJV NovTest NPNF NRSV NRTh NTA NT.S NTS NTTSD OBO OCA OCP OECS OLA OLP Or OrChr OrSyr PG PGL PL PLRE PLS PO PRE PS PTA PThR PTS PW QLP QuLi RAC RACh

XIII

Miscelanea Comillas, Comillas/Santander. Monumenta germaniae historica. Hanover/Berlin. Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Louvain. See PG. Mélanges de science religieuse, Lille. Münchener theologische Zeitschrift, Munich. Le Muséon, Louvain. Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th edition, Stuttgart. Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Nag Hammadi (and Manichaean) Studies, Leiden. New International Version. New King James Version. Novum Testamentum, Leiden. See LNPF. New Revised Standard Version. Nouvelle Revue Théologique, Tournai/Louvain/Paris. Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen, Münster. Novum Testamentum Supplements, Leiden. New Testament Studies, Cambridge/Washington. New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents, Leiden/Boston. Orbis biblicus et orientalis, Freiburg, Switz., then Louvain. Orientalia Christiana Analecta, Rome. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Rome. Oxford Early Christian Studies, Oxford. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, Louvain. Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, Louvain. Orientalia. Commentarii editi a Pontificio Instituto Biblico, Rome. Oriens Christianus, Leipzig, then Wiesbaden. L’Orient Syrien, Paris. Migne, Patrologia, series graeca. A Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed. G.L. Lampe, Oxford. Migne, Patrologia, series latina. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, ed. A.H.M. Jones et al., Cambridge. Migne, Patrologia, series latina. Supplementum ed. A. Hamman. Patrologia Orientalis, Paris. Paulys Realenzyklopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft, Stuttgart. Patrologia Syriaca, Paris. Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen, Bonn. Princeton Theological Review, Princeton. Patristische Texte und Studien, Berlin. Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. G. Wissowa, Stuttgart. Questions liturgiques et paroissiales, Louvain. Questions liturgiques, Louvain. Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, Rome. Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, Stuttgart.

XIV RAM RAug RBen RB(ibl) RE

Abbreviations

Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, Paris. Recherches Augustiniennes, Paris. Revue Bénédictine, Maredsous. Revue biblique, Paris. Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, founded by J.J. Herzog, 3e ed. A. Hauck, Leipzig. REA(ug) Revue des études Augustiniennes, Paris. REB Revue des études byzantines, Paris. RED Rerum ecclesiasticarum documenta, Rome. RÉL Revue des études latines, Paris. REG Revue des études grecques, Paris. RevSR Revue des sciences religieuses, Strasbourg. RevThom Revue thomiste, Toulouse. RFIC Rivista di filologia e d’istruzione classica, Turin. RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Gunkel-Zscharnack, Tübingen RHE Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, Louvain. RhMus Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Bonn. RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions, Paris. RHT Revue d’Histoire des Textes, Paris. RMAL Revue du Moyen-Âge Latin, Paris. ROC Revue de l’Orient chrétien, Paris. RPh Revue de philologie, Paris. RQ Römische Quartalschrift, Freiburg i.B. RQH Revue des questions historiques, Paris. RSLR Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, Florence. RSPT, RSPh Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, Paris. RSR Recherches de science religieuse, Paris. RTAM Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, Louvain. RthL Revue théologique de Louvain, Louvain. RTM Rivista di teologia morale, Bologna. Sal Salesianum, Roma. SBA Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft, Basel. SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien, Stuttgart. ScEc Sciences ecclésiastiques, Bruges. SCh, SC Sources chrétiennes, Paris. SD Studies and Documents, ed. K. Lake and S. Lake. London/Philadelphia. SE Sacris Erudiri, Bruges. SDHI Studia et documenta historiae et iuris, Roma. SH Subsidia Hagiographica, Brussels. SHA Scriptores Historiae Augustae. SJMS Speculum. Journal of Mediaeval Studies, Cambridge, Mass. SM Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige, Munich. SO Symbolae Osloenses, Oslo. SP Studia Patristica, successively Berlin, Kalamazoo, Leuven. SPM Stromata Patristica et Mediaevalia, ed. C. Mohrmann and J. Quasten, Utrecht.

Abbreviations

SQ SQAW SSL StudMed SVigChr SVF TDNT TE ThGl ThJ ThLZ ThPh ThQ ThR ThWAT ThWNT ThZ TLG TP TRE TS TThZ TU USQR VC VetChr VT WBC WUNT WZKM YUP ZAC ZAM ZAW ZDPV ZKG ZKTh ZNW ZRG ZThK

XV

Sammlung ausgewählter Quellenschriften zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, Tübingen. Schriften und Quellen der Alten Welt, Berlin. Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, Louvain. Studi Medievali, Turin. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, Leiden. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. J. von Arnim, Leipzig. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Mich. Teologia espiritual, Valencia. Theologie und Glaube, Paderborn. Theologische Jahrbücher, Leipzig. Theologische Literaturzeitung, Leipzig. Theologie und Philosophie, Freiburg i.B. Theologische Quartalschrift, Tübingen. Theologische Rundschau, Tübingen. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament, Stuttgart. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, Stuttgart. Theologische Zeitschrift, Basel. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Lancaster, Pa. Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Berlin. Theological Studies, New York and various places; now Washington, DC. Trierer theologische Zeitschrift, Trier. Texte und Untersuchungen, Leipzig/Berlin. Union Seminary Quarterly Review, New York. Vigiliae Christianae, Amsterdam. Vetera Christianorum, Bari (Italy). Vetus Testamentum, Leiden. Word Biblical Commentary, Waco. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, Tübingen. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vienna. Yale University Press, New Haven. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, Berlin. Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystik, Innsbruck, then Würzburg. Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Giessen, then Berlin. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, Leipzig. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Gotha, then Stuttgart. Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, Vienna. Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, Giessen, then Berlin. Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Weimar. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, Tübingen.

FROM THE FIFTH CENTURY ONWARDS (GREEK WRITERS)

Basil of Seleucia’s Homilia in Iob (CPG 6667) and its Depiction of the Voice* Maria Panagia MIOLA, Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome, Italy

ABSTRACT This article discusses an exegetical homily on the Book of Job, In Iob (CPG 6667; Vat. gr. 1587), written by Basil of Seleucia, a relatively understudied fifth-century bishop who played an active role in the Council of Chalcedon. After proposing the authenticity of the homily through stylistic analysis, the article considers Basil’s treatment of Job within the context of the Antiochene tradition (John Chrysostom, Theodoret of Cyrus, Severian of Gabala), and evaluates some of the themes that characterize Basil’s interpretation, such as the instrumentality of nature and of the voice in the struggle of the just.

Basil of Seleucia’s relatively unexplored homily on the Book of Job offers significant examples of the author’s style and contributes to his favored themes of nature and the voice. The text’s current state1 bids us to confront the status of its authenticity, even if cursorily. Externally, Basil’s name is found in all manuscripts containing the text.2 The author’s pen is not only baroque, as is proper to his taste, but abounds with all his favorite literary techniques: thick hyperbole, ethopoeia, tricolon, with an acute phonetic sensibility that runs from alliteration to concinnitas to the rhythms of Meyer’s law. These correspond to the findings of Friedrich Fenner’s monograph dedicated entirely to Basil’s rhetoric.3 As Michel Aubineau remarks, one of the few editors of Basil’s works, ‘all fifth century Christian authors make recourse to these literary devices, but no one uses or abuses them with the prodigality of Basil of Seleucia’.4 * I am grateful to Dr. Sever J. Voicu for his suggestions and revisions of this article, and in particular for a helpful discussion on commonalities (here referenced in note 14). 1 Johannes M. Tevel drafted an edition of the homily as part of his doctoral work, but did not choose to recognize it within his own subsequently published inventory of Basil’s homilies. For the edition, see Johannes M. Tevel, ‘BHGa939p: Een Preek op Job van Basilius van Seleucië’, diss. (Amsterdam, 1983); for the inventory, see id., De preken van Basilius van Seleucië. Handschriftelijke overlevering; Editie van vier preken, diss. (Utrecht, 1990), 98-9. 2 Manuscripts include: Thessalonicensis Vlatadon 6, ff. 160r-165r, 10th cent., Vaticanus graecus 1587, ff. 251v-256r, a. 1389; Parisinus graecus 3100, ff. 4r-11r, 17th cent. 3 See Friedrich Fenner, De Basilio Seleuciensi quaestiones selectae (Marburg, 1912). 4 See Michel Aubineau, Homélies Pascales, SC 187 (Paris, 1972), 193.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 3-8. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

M.P. MIOLA

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In addition, the sermon has one of his typical doxological formulas, covers the average length of the other homilies, and treats biblical quotations in his usual discreet manner. Moreover, it espouses a doctrine in keeping with his particular variant in the Antiochene tradition. Furthermore, a few characteristically Basilian phrases corroborate: the opening reference to ‘crowning [Job] in the theatre of the world’,5 an expression that Basil favors for the Church,6 and the discussion of harvesting ‘grapes of nature’ (βότρυες τῆς φύσεως).7 As a final touch, there is a pervasive discussion of nature and voice; notably frequent topics in Basil’s work. To summarize the narrative, the homily opens with a metaphor comparing the statues of war monuments erected by rulers to the figures of the saints whom God ordains as examples in Scripture. Basil introduces Job as a ‘statue of patience’,8 and proceeds to narrate the series of trials that befall him, gruesomely ravaging everything from his wealth, health, and his children. Job still continues to praise God. Hypothetical speeches appear throughout, in particular, the dialogue between God and the devil, and between Job and his wife, who tempts him to capitulate. Job instead rebukes his wife and defends his resolution to remain faithful. The homily ends with a tribute to the example of Job, who was great in prosperity but all the greater in suffering. The homily thus addresses only the first two chapters of forty-two in the Scriptural book. With respect to other authors, Basil’s sermon shows similarities both exegetical and literary. For Basil and other Antiochenes like Chrysostom, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Severian of Gabala,9 Job is never a typos of Christ or of the Church. Instead, he represents a model of righteousness, especially for his patience.10 Both Severian and Basil compare Job’s wife with Eve the temptress, especially in her question, ‘How long will you last?’ (Job 2:9).11 They also avoid Vlat. 6, f. 160v, col. a, ll. 14-6: ἐν τῷ τῆς οἰκουμένης στεφανώσας θεάτρῳ. Basil shows a particular preference for ‘theater’ (θέατρον) as a designation of the Church to characterize its spiritual as well as its worldly or universal nature; see or. 7, 178, l. 1; In Dauidem IV (CPG 6656.17), PG 85, 225, l. 22; Tu es qui venturus (CPG 6656.34), PG 85, 369, l. 41; Laz. (CPG 6663), 170, sec. 1, ll. 1-2; ibid., ll. 2-3; ibid., ll. 3-4; ibid., 171, sec. 2, l. 12. Richard Bishop considers the expression, τῆς ἐκκλησίας τὰ πνευματικὰ θέατρα, ‘spiritual theater of the Church’ (PG 85, 100, ll. 4-5), a definitive criterion in support of Basilian authorship; see R. Bishop, ‘Homilia in Pentecosten (CPG 6665): A Sermon of Basil of Seleucia’, Sacris Erudiri 52 (2013), 124 n. 11, 126. 7 See Vlat. 6, f. 162v, col. b, ll. 22-7. 8 See Vlat. 6, f. 160v, col. a, ll. 18-9. 9 For Severian’s homilies see Juditha J. Oosterhuis-den Otter, Four Pseudo-Chrysostomian Homilies on Job (CPG 4564, BHG 939d-g). Transmission, Critical Edition, and Translation, diss. (Amsterdam, 2015). 10 See Jean-Noël Guinot, ‘Regard sur l’utilisation du “Livre de Job” dans l’œuvre de Théodoret de Cyr’, in Pierre Maraval (ed.), Le Livre de Job chez les Pères, CBP 5 (Strasbourg, 1996), 111-40. 11 Cf. Sev. Gab., Hom. in Iob II (CPG 4564.3): 250, ll. 251-9; Bas. Sel., Vlat. 6, f. 163v, col. b, l. 26 – f. 164r, col. a, l. 11. 5 6

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potentially blasphemous phrases, as when Job curses the day of his birth (cf. Job 3:3), and relatively few biblical quotations are cited or treated. Basil’s sermon also shares common literary themes with the same exegetes: Chrysostom, Theodoret, Severian of Gabala, as well as several ps.-Chrysostomic texts, Hom. in Iob: CPG 4564.1; De eleemoysna: CPG 4618, and In Iob et in Abraham: CPG 4999. These texts characterize Job so frequently as γενναῖος, ‘noble’ or ‘valiant’ that the term functions like a Homeric epithet. To show his constancy, Basil joins the other authors in portraying him as an athlete, a statue, a rock, a tower, or as a warrior; often also, ‘adamant’ (ἀδάμας), or ‘steely’ (ἀδαμάντινος).12 The exegetes do not intend to celebrate a stoic resignation, but rather, Job’s act of faith in God the Lord; hence the most frequent verse quoted, Job 1:21: The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Most of the exegetes take care to explain the reason that God allows him to be tested: not, of course, because he did not know his valor, but quite the reverse. As Basil repeats, it is because God is so sure of his bravery, that he thus delivers him to the trial. This explanation in light of the divine pedagogy safeguards God’s omniscience. Other similarities found among Basil and other exegetes include the depictions of the devil and his manner of casting afflictions. They frequently portray the devil’s provocations as daggers or arrows shot at his victim, colorfully developing the single Scriptural reference to arrows in Job 6:4: For the arrows of the Almighty are in my body; their venom drinks my blood. The verse is not explicitly quoted in Basil’s homily, but it probably serves as his inspiration.13 Latching onto a universal metaphor for calamities, the arrow motif appears as a common exegetical approach to Job.14 Here, the authors compare Job’s afflictions to arrows that come swiftly, suddenly, successively, and deeply; the devil acts as Archer, who shoots with particular vehemence or greed,15 emptying out all the arrows from his quiver to target the victim. Both Basil and Severian develop the metaphor further, depicting Job as not merely receiving the arrows, but also as returning them, using his suffering as arrows in a counterattack against the devil, which eventually win him the game.

12 See Bas. Sel., Vlat. 6, f. 162r, col. b, l. 28 – f. 162v, col. a, l. 4: ποῖος ἀδάμας οὐκ ἂν ἐκάμφθη τοιούτοις πάθεσι; ποία πέτρα τοιούτοις οὐκ ἐσαλεύετο κύμασι; ποῖον τεῖχος τοσούτοις οὐ κατέπιπτε μηχανήμασι; ποία ναῦς τοιούτοις χειμῶσιν οὐκ ἐποντίζετο; 13 See Vlat. 6, f. 161r, col. b, l. 29 – 161v, col. a, l. 6; Vlat. 06, f. 160v, col. a, ll. 12-8. 14 See Ps.-Bas. C., Hom. in Ps. 37 (CPG 2836.37): PG 30, 88, ll. 32-5; Sev. Gab., Hom. in Iob II (CPG 4564.3): 244, ll. 158-9; Ps.-Chrys., Hom. in Iob I (CPG 4564.1): 218, ll. 132-52; Ps.-Chrys., De eleemosyna: PG 60, 707, ll. 44-6. 15 See Bas. Sel., In Iob, Vlat. 6, f. 163r, col. b, ll. 11-3; Sev. Gab., Hom. in Iob II (CPG 4564.3): 244, lines 160-1; Chrys., Com. in Iob 2.3g: Kommentar zu Hiob, ed. Ursula Hagedorn and Dieter Hagedorn, PTS 35 (Berlin, 1990), 35, lines 16-7.

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Basil’s sermon also bears witness to another pattern in literary discourse, the shared characterization between Job and Abraham.16 The same series of descriptions used in this sermon recur in Basil’s homily on Abraham (or. 7), and in many other works of other authors: the image of a memorial stele, the statue of patience, the trust of God in his athlete, the insatiable force that attacks him, the temptations that fall like waves upon an immovable rock. There is a kind of literary conflation of the two biblical figures to express the pedagogy of God who most tests those whom he most trusts. Basil offers a more original contribution by developing two significant themes: nature and the voice. The devil besieges Job’s human nature, with its attendant weaknesses: ‘he attacks his nature and lights the flames of the heart, so that he might inflame Job with the fire of his nature’.17 While he is a human being by nature, he prevails over his nature by his faith; while the devil ‘stripped the grapes of nature pitiably, but he did not bring the grapevine of faith to ruin’.18 On one side of the battle, the voice is used for evil. Basil describes the devil’s provocation, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing?’ (Job 1:9) as boastful talk; the rebuke is not so much in what the devil does but in what he so slanderously says.19 The ‘compassionate voice’ of Job’s wife is as poisonous as Eve’s tongue, which as Basil says, is lent to Job’s wife in order to trap him. His wife’s malicious counsel comes by mouth; and Basil notes that she in turn tempts him to err by mouth by pressuring him to ‘speak a word against the Lord and die’ (Job 2:9). In tandem, as Basil illustrates, Job’s defense likewise comes by mouth. When he cannot bear the blow of his wife’s voice, which hits him like a wound in the soul, he begins to counter her with speech. Here comes a reproachful speech crafted for Job that directly notes the inimitable power of speech: ‘And should I now say one word to the Lord and die? (Job 2:9) Oh grievous speech, oh troublesome tongue, oh mouth that pierces me more sharply than the devil’s daggers! Oh counsel comparable to a sleet of daggers’.20 While his flesh is under fire, one organ remains in health: his voice. When Satan smites him with boils, Job retaliates with the daggers of his hymns: ‘he flogged his flogger with hymns of divine praise’.21 Here the power of the voice 16

For more exegetical examples of associating the two biblical figures, see Gr. Nyss., Pulch.: 467, l. 22 – 472, l. 18; Chrys., Laz. 5.5: PG 48, 1024, l. 20 – 1026, l. 32; Chrys., hom. in Ps. 48:17 1.4: PG 55, 505, l. 43 – 506, l. 15; Ps.-Chrys, De eleemosyna: PG 60, 707, l. 36 – 708, l. 64. 17 Vlat. 6, f. 161v, col. b, ll. 2-22: καὶ τῆς φύσεως ἅπτεται καὶ τὴν φλόγα τῶν σπλάγχνων ἀνάπτει, ἵνα καὶ τῷ τῆς φύσεως πυρὶ τὸν Ἰὼβ πυρπολήσῃ. 18 Vlat. 6, f. 162v, col. b, ll. 22-7: ἐτρύγησεν ἐλεεινῶς τοὺς βότρυας τῆς φύσεως, ἀλλὰ τὴν τῆς πίστεως οὐκ ἐλυμήνατο ἄμπελον. 19 See Vlat. 6, f. 163r, col. b, ll. 2-5: Ἀφεῖλες τὴν κτῆσιν καὶ οὐ συναφεῖλες τὴν πίστιν· ποῦ σου τῶν λόγων ὁ κόμπος; 20 Vlat. 6, f. 164v, col. a, l. 30 – col. b, l. 5: καὶ νῦν εἴπω τι ῥῆμα πρὸς κύριον (Job 2:9); ὢ φωνῆς βαρείας· ὢ γλώττης ἀνιαρᾶς· ὢ στόματος πικρότερά με τοξεύσαντος τῶν διαβολικῶν βελῶν· ὢ συμβουλῆς νιφάδα βελῶν μιμησαμένης. 21 Vlat. 6, f. 163v, col. b, ll. 6-8: ἐμάστιζε τὸν μαστίζοντα ταῖς εἰς θεὸν εὐφημίαις.

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in song conquers all other weakness, human and demonic. When his children are killed, Basil observes that such tragedies did not bring Job to ingratitude, nor defeat his tongue that was occupied in praising the Creator. For the exegete, the man’s greatest retaliation against the devil is a voice that worships. Having expressed how the voice operates for evil and for good, Basil ends the sermon by showing its surpassing quality for the good. He concludes as with a tribute to the voice itself: ‘But the voice of the righteous is a law of patience; the speech of the just is consolation in suffering; the word of the blameless (cf. Job 1:1) is a teaching of piety’.22 The power Basil grants to the voice clearly shows his preference for it as nature’s instrument of choice. Whence is his fascination derived? Our sermon provides a clue. When God grants the devil permission to tempt Job but on the condition to spare his life, Basil paraphrases God’s thought: ‘That is, keep my combatant safe, and consider the method (that you shall use), lest you bind his free will with madness. Keep his mind unforced; do not constrain his tongue’.23 While the voice is a physical attribute, Basil invests it with spiritual value: because it pronounces one’s thoughts, it expresses reason, and because it articulates one’s decisions, it communicates free will. Basil has the voice act as a mediator between man’s physical and the spiritual faculties. In a sense, the voice incarnates the immaterial faculties of the human soul. In many other homilies, Basil demonstrates how the voice of God is salvific. For example, in the Homily on Lazarus, the voice’s power prompts with such immediacy that Lazarus leaps to his feet before the phrase finishes its uttering. In his In Adam II, it is the voice that calls Adam and saves him from eternal death. In the homily In Elisaeum et in Sunamitidem, Basil explains that when the Lord ordered, ‘Young man, I tell you, arise!’ he added the ‘you’, because otherwise the power of the Savior’s voice would have efficaciously raised all the dead.24 The voice of God is, then, certainly salvific; and man’s voice is analogously salvific, by participation. This, I contend, is the sense of ‘do not constrain his tongue’: not that Job should have been somehow psychologically forced to submission, as some have argued,25 but that he exercise the spiritual faculties 22 Vlat. 6, f. 164v, col. b, ll. 22-8: νόμος ὑπομονῆς ἡ τοῦ δικαίου φωνή· παραμυθία παθῶν τοῦ δικαίου τὰ ῥήματα· εὐσεβείας παίδευσις ὁ τοῦ ἀμέμπτου λόγος. 23 Vlat. 6, f. 163v, col. a, ll. 7-14: σῶόν μοι τήρει τὸν ἀθλητὴν καὶ θεώρει τὴν τέχνην, μὴ δεσμεύσῃς παρανοίᾳ τὸ αὐτεξούσιον, ἀβίαστον τήρει τὴν γνώμην, μὴ βιάζου τὴν γλῶσσαν. 24 See Homily on Lazarus: Mary Cunningham (ed.), ‘Basil of Seleucia’s Homily on Lazarus: a new edition’, AB 104 (1986), 176, ll. 7-9; or. 3.3: PG 85, 60, ll. 36-7; or. 10.2: PG 85, 145, ll. 46-7. 25 See Claude de Rohan-Chabot’s article, the only published treatment of the homily to date: ‘Exégèse de Job 2:6 dans une homélie inédite de Basile de Séleucie’, SP 18.2 (1983), 197-202. The scholar bypasses Basil’s theological treatment of Job’s trial with a psychoanalytical reading directed at the exegete and concludes that Basil, having fallen prey to brainwashing, consequently depicted Job in the same state.

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that make him most fully human, the capacity to praise the Lord, and by so doing, win by ‘flogging the flogger with hymns of praise’. While all else should fail, his voice ultimately gains him eternal victory. As Basil closes the sermon, he exclaims, ‘oh voice, that interweaves victory crowns, oh voice, that lifts us up to heaven, oh voice that engenders many champions’.26 The voice of Basil of Seleucia is perhaps worth a hearing once in awhile.

26 Vlat. 6, f. 164v, col. b, l. 33 – f. 165r, col. a, l. 5: ὦ φωνὴ στεφάνων πλοκή, ὦ φωνὴ πρὸς οὐρανὸν ἀναφέρουσα, ὦ φωνὴ πολλοὺς ἀθλητὰς ἀποτίκτουσα.

Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Interpretation of the Birth Announcements of Ishmael and Isaac (Genesis 16 and 18) and its Reception in East-Syriac and Greek Sources1 Cornelis HOOGERWERF, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT Only one of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentaries on the Greek Old Testament has survived in a complete form in the original Greek. The other commentaries can be reconstructed partially on the basis of fragments, quotations, and paraphrases in various sources and languages. As a result, we have a fragmentary view of Theodore’s hermeneutics of the Old Testament in his actual exegesis. The reception of Theodore’s commentaries in the East-Syriac tradition, compared with the Greek tradition after Theodore, may help to attain a richer picture of his exegesis and of his handling of the relationship between the Old and the New Testament. This article will present an example from Genesis, where Theodore’s influence is certain, but his actual commentary (almost) lost. The investigation of the various commentaries shows that the apostle Paul’s use of the Old Testament was forged into an authoritative model with which the Jewish Scriptures could be interpreted in unity with the New Testament without falling into the pitfall of ‘pagan’, allegorical exegesis.

I. Introduction The study of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s interpretation of the Old Testament is hampered by the fact that only one of his commentaries – the Commentary on the Twelve Prophets – has survived in what is likely its complete form in the original Greek. The textual basis of the Commentary on the Twelve Prophets is therefore relatively unproblematic, but of the other commentaries Theodore presumably produced only three have survived with a considerable amount of text. Most well-known is the Commentary on the Psalms, which has survived partially in Greek fragments, partially in a fifth-century Latin translation, and partially in a Syriac translation. The Commentary on Ecclesiastes is accessible through the Syriac translation, the manuscript of which covers the 1 Research for this article has taken place in the context of the research project ‘Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Pauline commentaries: A reappraisal on the basis of newly-discovered Syriac sources’, directed by Hagit Amirav (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 9-20. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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first seven chapters of the book. The Commentary on the Creation (Ἑρμηνεία τῆς κτίσεως, CPG 3827), an interpretation of Genesis, can be reconstructed to a certain extent – especially in the case of the first chapters of Genesis – on the basis of fragments and excerpts in a wide array of sources in Latin, Greek, and Syriac. The consequence of this state of affairs is that our knowledge of Theodore’s writings is limited, and likewise our comprehension of Theodore’s biblical interpretation and his hermeneutics of the Old Testament. We would like to know, for instance, how his rejection of allegorical interpretation and his reading of the apostle Paul’s allegorical interpretation in the Epistle to the Galatians worked out in his actual exegesis of the stories about Hagar and Sarah. The surviving Greek excerpts from Theodore’s commentary are not helpful here.2 It is, however, possible to explore how the recipients of Theodore’s exegesis in the Greek and the East-Syriac tradition interpreted these chapters of Genesis, which at least yields a picture of what various exegeses in the spirit of Theodore would look like. Perhaps it is even possible to draw conclusions about the content of Theodore’s commentary. The extensive reception of Theodore’s commentaries in the East-Syriac tradition may help to attain a richer image of his exegesis and of his handling of the relationship between the Old and the New Testament than would be possible on the basis of the extant sources that can be attributed to Theodore himself. The extent to which elements in the EastSyriac sources can be traced back to Theodore will be evaluated on the basis of source-critical investigation of the Syriac sources, comparison with relevant sources in the Greek tradition, and exploration of similar exegetical elements in Theodore’s extant work.3 The present article focuses on the interpretation of Genesis 16 and 18, the birth anouncements of a son to Hagar and Abraham respectively. I will investigate the commentaries of four East-Syriac authors: Išo‘dad of Merv,4 Išo‘ bar Nun5 (both ninth century), Theodore bar Koni6 (late eighth century), and, somewhat earlier, the author of the Commentary on Genesis to Exodus 9:32 2 See La chaîne sur la Genèse: Édition intégrale, ed. Françoise Petit, TEG 1-4 (Leuven, 19911996), and Collectio Coisliniana in Genesim, ed. Françoise Petit, CChr.SG 15 (Turnhout, 1986). 3 See for this method also Cornelis Hoogerwerf, ‘Historische versus allegorische uitleg in de inleiding van Išo‘dad van Mervs commentaar op de Psalmen: Vertaling en bronkritische analyse’, NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion 73 (2019), 283-97. 4 Commentaire d’Išo‘dad de Merv sur l’Ancien Testament, vol. 1: Genèse, ed. J.-M. Vosté and C. Van den Eynde, CSCO 126 (Leuven, 1950); Commentaire d’Išo‘dad de Merv sur l’Ancien Testament, vol. 1: Genèse, trans. Ceslas Van den Eynde, CSCO 156 (Leuven, 1955). 5 The Selected Questions of Ishō bar Nūn on the Pentateuch: Edited and Translated from MS Cambridge Add. 2017: With a Study of the Relationship of Ishō῾dādh of Merv, Theodore bar Kōnī and Ishō bar Nūn on Genesis, ed. Ernest G. Clarke, SPB 5 (Leiden, 1962). 6 Theodore bar Koni, Scholion [Liber Scholiorum], ed. Addai Scher, CSCO 55 (Paris, 1910); Theodore bar Koni, Livre des scolies (recension de Séert), vol. 1: Mimrè 1-5, trans. Robert Hespel and René Draguet, CSCO 431 (Leuven, 1981).

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in manuscript (olim) Diyarbakır 227 (early eighth century). To the last commentary I will refer as the Diyarbakır Commentary. In view of the numerous instances where the interpretation of these authors can be shown to derive directly or indirectly from Theodore of Mopsuestia, there are ample grounds for thinking that this could also be the case where the traces are less obvious. The four Syriac authors mentioned above all had access to one or more earlier Syriac sources that are otherwise unknown. In other words, the interpretations offered by them without explicit attribution are often much more ancient than the time in which they wrote their commentaries. One example will illustrate this. In the Diyarbakır Commentary at Genesis 18:2 the author makes a comparison between the apparition of the angel to Hagar and the apparition of the Lord himself to Abraham. And at Genesis 22, the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, the author of the Diyarbakır Commentary inserts a small excursus on the revelation to Abraham of the two worlds and the two Testaments. The two Testaments are prefigured in his two sons, and also in the two sacrifices Abraham had to perform: the first in Genesis 15 concerning the first Testament, and the second in Genesis 22 concerning the second Testament. This exegetical pattern, in which Genesis 16 and 18, and 15 and 22, are combined and contrasted, is also present in a treatise of the sixth-century author Cyrus of Edessa.8 This takes us back to the sixth-century East-Syriac school tradition. Is it possible to go even further back? In the Greek tradition a fifth-century writing offers an intriguing parallel. The Introduction to the Divine Scriptures, an exegetical handbook of a certain Adrian that to a great extent is derived from Theodore of Mopsuestia’s hermeneutics, combines Genesis 15 and 22 as two examples of prophecy of the future through deeds, the first concerning the history of Israel, the second concerning Christ.9 This collocation, the interpretation it provides and the context in which it figures all amount to the assessment that this passage in Adrian’s Introduction to the Divine Scriptures is a parallel in the Greek tradition, independent from the East-Syriac school tradition. The common source might very well be the work of Theodore of Mopuestia.10

7 Le commentaire sur Genèse–Exode 9,32 du manuscrit (olim) Diyarbakır 22, ed. and trans. Lucas Van Rompay, CSCO 483-484 (Leuven, 1986). 8 Cyrus of Edessa, Explanation of the Passion 7,5-6, in Six Explanations of the Liturgical Feasts by Cyrus of Edessa, an East Syrian Theologian of the Mid Sixth Century, ed. and trans. William F. Macomber, CSCO 355-356 (Leuven, 1974). 9 Adrian, Introduction to the Divine Scriptures 74,3,3, in Adrian’s Introduction to the Divine Scriptures: An Antiochene Handbook for Scriptural Interpretation, ed. Peter W. Martens (Oxford, 2017). 10 The parallel might be considered even stronger when it is taken into account that Cosmas Indicopleustes’s treatment of Abraham contains similarities with both Adrian’s treatise and the the Diyarbakır commentary, see Cosmas Indicopleustes, Topographia Christiana V 102, ed. Wanda Wolska-Conus, SC 159 (Paris, 1970).

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II. The Birth Announcements of Ishmael and Isaac Let us now turn from this general exegetical pattern to some of the details of the East-Syriac commentaries at Genesis 16 and 18, in order to find out if there are more elements that can plausibly be traced back to Theodore. Luckily we can also invoke one of the Greek recipients of Theodore’s Commentary on Creation, namely Theodoret of Cyrus. In Theodoret’s Questions on Genesis, question two is concerned with the fact that angels did not appear to humans in the beginning of the Bible – the same issue as the one addressed in the Syriac commentaries. Theoderet’s answer comprises three parts. The first part is about why God did not communicate with people through angels until Hagar, the second is about why the first angel appeared precisely to Hagar, and the third is about the created nature of the angels.11 The combination of two or three of these parts also occurs in the Syriac commentaries in the same context of the first apparition to Hagar. Theodoret’s first answer to the question why angels did not engage with humans in the first part of the biblical story runs as follows: The people who were receiving the Law had no firm and stable basis; after all, immediately after many ineffable marvels, they hailed the image of the calf as a god. So if those people could so easily regard the likenesses of cattle as gods, what would they not have done, if they had acquired knowledge of powers of an invisible nature? This is why, up to the time of Abraham, a fully mature man, the God of the universe never communicated with the people of olden times by means of an angel.12

Theodoret’s answer is somewhat confusing. It is clear enough that the answer is that angels did not appear to prevent idolatry, but he speaks first about the instability of the people of Israel who received the law, and then about the people up to the time of Abraham who were not mature enough. This situation can be explained by the fact that the first half of this excerpt has a close parallel in John Chrysostom’s Homilies on Genesis,13 and that the second half is based on a different exegesis which, as will become clear, probably was present in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Commentary on Creation. Theodoret’s point that God did not want to communicate through angels so as to prevent that things would go wrong, is also made by Išo‘dad of Merv and Theodore bar Koni, which are usually assumed to have used a common source: Also, because Satan had dared to deceive the Adamites and he had made them revolt against the creator, [God] had forbidden to the angels to appear to humans. When they performed the service of sustaining the living beings, the angels were in fear of the 11 Theodoret of Cyrus, Quaestiones in Genesim 2, in The Questions on the Ocateuch, vol. 1: On Genesis and Exodus, ed. John F. Petruccione and trans. Robert C. Hill, LEC 1 (Washington, DC, 2007). 12 Ibid., trans. R.C. Hill, 9, 11. 13 John Chrysostom, In Genesim sermo 1,2, ed. Laurence Brottier, SC 433 (Paris, 1998), 148-53; see also id., In Genesim homilia 2,2, ed. Bern. de Montfaucon, PG 53, 29.

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sentence (ëÚêòÎòs = ἀπόφασις) pronounced against the devil, and because they observed the prohibition they did not engage with the saints.14

Theodoret formulates the idea from the viewpoint of the danger of idolatry, whereas the common source of Išo‘dad of Merv and Theodore bar Koni formulates it from the viewpoint of God’s prohibition in the aftermath of the fall and the angels’ fear of the sentence pronounced against the devil. Both aspects are present in what Theodore of Mopsuestia actually wrote about the sentence of the devil at Genesis 3:14, which can be reconstructed as follows: Procopius of Gaza15

The Diyarbakır Commentary, supplemented with Išo‘dad of Merv16

Therefore, although [God] could have done the [same] now, he understandably passed by it, since the Adamites did not know the one who deceived [them] and it was not profitable for them at this moment to learn about another invisible thing, so that they, accustomed just to him alone, would see only the God and Lord of all things. When he seems to avenge himself upon the snake, he refers enigmatically (ὑπαινίττεται) to the evils that will surround the devil.

[Diy] He speaks [to the tempter] by means of the personification of the snake, by which the Adamites thought to have been deceived. [IM] But he hid the identity of the devil, so that the error of polytheism would not spread over the earth. [Diy] Now the words ‘from all the wild animals’ seem to be the curse of the serpent, but [they are] a figure (À¾ćáò) of the fall of Satan from the fellowship of his companions.

Here Theodore says that God did not think it wise to reveal to humans that the snake actually was used by an invisible being. They should instead become accustomed first to the one God, and so be prevented to fall into the error of polytheism. This interpretation fits in seemlessly with the prohibition of the angels to appear to humans and with God’s concern for the prevention of idolatry. Apart from these considerations one has to take into account that Theodore already paid a great deal of attention to the nature and the position of angels in the introduction of his commentary. It is therefore very likely that Theodoret and the common source of Išo‘dad of Merv and Theodore bar Koni reflect what Theodore of Mopsuestia had to offer regarding this topic in his commentary on Genesis. The Diyarbakır commentary, more or less followed by Išo‘dad of Merv, remarks: ‘Now, because Hagar was a maidservant and angels are servants, 14 Išo‘dad of Merv at Gen. 16:7 (CSCO 126, 156.9-14); parallel in Theodore bar Koni, Scholion II 125 (CSCO 55, 122.14-22). Note that ἀπόφασις is a favourite word of Theodore. 15 Procopius of Gaza, Eclogarum in libros historicos Veteris Testamenti epitome at Gen. 3,14(-15): 35-40, ed. Karin Metzler, GCS.NF 22 (Berlin, 2015). 16 Diyarbakır Commentary at Gen. 3:14 (CSCO 483, 42.9-13), parallel in Išo‘dad of Merv at Gen. 3:14 (CSCO 126, 86.18-23).

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aptly (ĀÙ¾ćäÑà) he appeared to her first, as [beings] who are also are subjected to the servitude of the law of God and serve his will’.17 Theodoret of Cyrus, in his Questions on Genesis, makes exactly the same observation: ‘The divinely inspired Moses first made mention of an angel in the case of Hagar, and rightly so (μάλα εἰκότως); … it was … entirely appropriate (μάλα προσφόρως) for the God of the universe to employ an angel to call to mind slavery’.18 For Theodore of Mopsuestia, the ministering function of the angels was an important theological point. Hebrews 1:14 is probably the most frequently cited text by Theodore19, in which text the author (according to Theodore: Paul) says: ‘Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?’ The parallel between Theodoret and the Syriac sources may be explained by their dependence on Theodore of Mopsuestia. Moreover, the Syriac commentaries, as well as Theodoret of Cyrus, connect the idea of the servanthood of the angel and of Hagar to Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. There, Paul interprets Hagar, the maidservant, as a type of the old covenant and associates angels to the servitude of the law (Gal. 3:19; 4:22-5). Especially the close agreement between the Diyarbakır Commentary and Theodoret’s answer suggest a literary relationship: Diyarbakır Commentary20

Išo‘dad of Merv21

Theodoret of Cyrus22

Hagar, who was a maidservant and gave birth to a servant, she, with her son, represents a likeness of the [Old] Testament and those who

To a maidservant, because Hagar is a type of the servitude of the law, just as Sarah too is a type of the future covenant, the one ‘of Mount

Hagar was a type of the old covenant. According to the holy apostle, ‘Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to the present

17 Diyarbakır Commentary at Gen. 16:7 (CSCO 483, 75.21-4), adopted by Išo‘dad of Merv at Gen. 16:7 (CSCO 126, 156.6-8). 18 Theodoret of Cyrus, Quaestiones in Genesim 2 (LEC 1, trans. R.C. Hill, slightly adapted). 19 For example in the Commentary on the Creation in the fragment from manuscript B.M. Add. 17217, fol. 26b, ed. Ed. Sachau, Theodori Mopsuesteni Fragmenta Syriaca: E codicibus Musei Britannici Nitriacis (Leipzig, 1869), and in the Collectio Coisliniana in Genesim 71 (CChr.SG 15); Commentary on the Twelve Prophets at Zech. 1:8-11, ed. H.N. Sprenger, Theodori Mopsuesteni commentarius in XII prophetas: Einleitung und Ausgabe, Göttinger Orientforschungen 5,1 (Wiesbaden, 1977); Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Gospel of John at John 1:1 and 15:26, ed. J.-M. Vosté, Theodori Mopsuesteni Commentarius in Evangelium Iohannis Apostoli, CSCO 115-6 (Paris, 1940); id., Commentary on Blessed Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians at Eph. 1:10, ed. Henri B. Swete, Theodori episcopi Mopsuesteni in Epistolas b. Pauli commentarii: The Latin Version with the Greek Fragments (Cambridge, 1880-1882), see also Rowan A. Greer, The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul, SBLWGRW 26 (Atlanta, GA, 2010). 20 Diyarbakır Commentary at Gen. 18:2 (CSCO 483, 77.25-78.4), adopted by Išo‘dad of Merv at Gen. 16:7 (CSCO 126, 155.23-6). 21 Išo‘dad of Merv at Gen. 16:7 (CSCO 126, 156.3-8), parallel in Theodore bar Koni, Scholion II 125 (CSCO 55, 122.7-14), and in Išo‘ bar Nun, Selected Questions on the Pentateuch (SPB 5, 32 and fol. 14v:12-4). 22 Theodoret of Cyrus, Quaestiones in Genesim 2 (LEC 1, trans. R.C. Hill, slightly adapted).

Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Interpretation of the Birth Announcements

have received it. It is appro- Sinai’, the other ‘of Jerusapriate that an angel, who is a lem, the free one’ – thus the servant, had been announcer apostle (Gal. 4:24-6). of the birth of the [child] that was conceived, because also the Old Testament, when it was given, was given through angels.

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Jerusalem’ (Gal. 4:25). So, as the Law was given through angels – ‘It was ordained through angels by a mediator’ (Gal. 3:19); and again, ‘If the message declared through angels was valid’ (Heb. 2:2) – it was also entirely appropriate for the God of the universe to employ an angel to call to mind slavery and to foretell the fate of the child that was to be born (Gen. 16:7-12).

The connecting node is most likely Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentary on Genesis. This hypothesis can be corroborated by the works of Theodore himself, especially his commentaries on the epistles of Paul. More than once Theodore makes the connection between the law, angels, and their ministering role, and he connects Galatians 3:19 with Hebrews 2:2, just as Theodoret does.23 As one would expect, in his comments on Galatians 4 he interprets Hagar as a type of the old covenant. One of his remarks is remarkably close to the first sentence of the quotation from the Diyarbakır Commentary above: ‘[Paul] said that those who live their lives under that testament are its sons. And he rightly said that it “is in slavery with its sons”. For the character of the testament is certainly recognized in those who have received it’.24 In the Syriac commentaries, Genesis 16 and 18 are connected by contrast and comparison. Genesis 16, the apparition of the ministering angel to the maidservant Hagar, paves the way for Genesis 18, the apparition of the Lord himself to Abraham, in whose offspring the Son would dwell. Theodore bar Koni writes: It was not as if she was more righteous than everyone, but because after a short while the Lord of the angels would appear to Abraham in order to give him the promise about the one who would be taken from his progeny for being a temple and a dwelling of his divinity. It is beautiful that he first paved the way to the revelation by an ambassador of the angels.25 23 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Blessed Paul’s Letter to the Galatians at Gal. 3:19; id., Commentary on Blessed Paul’s Letter to the Colossians at Col. 2:18 (ed. H.B. Swete and SBLWGRW 26); id., Commentary on Blessed Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews at Heb. 2:2, ed. Karl Staab, Pauluskommentare aus der griechischen Kirche: Aus Katenenhandschriften gesammelt und herausgegeben, NTAbh 15 (Münster, 1984 [reprint of 1933]). 24 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Galatians at Gal. 4:25 (ed. H.B. Swete and SBLWGRW 26, trans. R.A. Greer, 125). 25 Theodore bar Koni, Scholion II 125 (CSCO 55, 122.1-7); parallel in Išo‘dad of Merv at Gen. 16:7 (CSCO 126, 155.18-23).

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The Diyarbakır Commentary states: … it is appropriate that an angel … had been announcer …, because also the Old Testament … was given through angels, but that here the Lord himself appeared, and by his revelation he made promises to them about the birth of Isaac, because also the Son-Lord, when he dwelled in her [read: him] who was from Abraham, established the testament of the resurrection while it not yet existed, just as Isaac, who was not yet conceived.26

The Diyarbakır Commentary makes a comparison between the angelic company of God before the birth by grace of Isaac and the angelic company of God the Son before his establishment of the testament of the resurrection. What happens here is that the events of Genesis 16 and 18 are interpreted with the help of a biblical theology that is spun out of the passages in the epistles attributed to Paul that deal with Abraham and Isaac, Hagar and Sarah, Christ and the angels, that is, Galatians 3 and 4 and Hebrews 1, 2, and 11. When we place these excerpts from the Syriac commentaries next to the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia, we can observe several conceptual and terminological similarities. In Theodore’s commentary on Hebrews 2:2, for instance, he stresses the difference between the letter and the commandments on the one side, and salvation and spiritual gifts on the other side, and the difference between angels on the one side, and the Lord on the other side: He shows also by their concrete realities how much the difference is regarding those, having said ‘word’ there, ‘salvation’ here. For since in the first case there was only the gift of commandments, but in the second case there is also the grace of the Sprit and the forgiveness of sins and the announcement of the kingdom of heaven and the promise of immortality. He says therefore rightly ‘so great’, showing by that qualification its greatness. And there it is given ‘through the angels’, but here ‘through the Lord’.27

Exactly this approach of contrast and comparison was, according to Theodore, Paul’s method of interpretation in Galatians 4 in the allegory of Hagar and Sarah. Theodore identifies Paul’s ‘allegorical interpretation’ as the rhetorical method of syncrisis (σύγκρισις), a technique in which Theodore was trained during his study with Libanius.28 In the Syriac commentaries at Genesis 16 and 18 we can see how this approach is turned into a method of interpretation, how contrasts and interpretative patterns from the epistles attributed to Paul are made operational to give new meaning to various aspects of the narratives in Genesis. 26 Diyarbakır Commentary at Gen. 18:2 (CSCO 483, 78.2-8), adopted by Išo‘dad of Merv at Gen. 16:7 (CSCO 126, 155.25-8). 27 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Hebrews at Heb. 2:2 (NTAbh 15, 203). 28 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Galatians at Gal. 4:24 (ed. H.B. Swete, I 79, and SBLWGRW 26, 120). For Libanius and syncrisis, see Craig A. Gibson, Libanius’s Progymnasmata: Model Exercises in Greek Prose Composition and Rhetoric, SBLWGRW 27 (Atlanta, GA, 2008), 321-54.

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The Diyarbakır Commentary uses the term ‘testament of the resurrection’ for the new testament established by the Son’s resurrection. This constitutes another terminological and conceptual similarity with Theodore, according to whom the resurrection is the main act of all the works of Christ. Theodore connects the resurrection to Isaac, not only because of the sacrifice in Genesis 22, but als because of his birth, for Isaac ‘was born beyond all hope and beyond the order of nature. … [This] birth by grace … is fulfilled in those who by grace hope beyond all hope for that birth [of the resurrection]. … But we who hold fast to our attainment of the testament of the resurrection shall all be sons’.29 Finally, the Diyarbakır commentary makes a connection between the two angels that accompanied the Lord in Genesis 18, and the angels that accompanied the Lord during his ministry on earth: ‘Accompanying him were two angels, showing that those angels also would accompany our Lord during his whole dispensation [on earth]’.30 This is yet another way of how this apparition to Abraham foreshadows the New Testament. The same idea appears in a somewhat more elaborated way in a parallel comment of Theodore bar Koni and Išo‘dad of Merv, of which Theodore bar Koni offers the most details: The two angels appeared with [God] not only for honouring him and so that we see that ‘they are ministering spirits’ (Heb. 1:14), but it also alluded to what would happen during his life-giving dispensation, namely that they would accompany him from the time of his conception and birth until his ascension. And they appeared in human form, … so that they would not seem terrifying and unbelievable, and secondly because later it would be in the same human form that they would appear, at the resurrection to the women and at the ascension to his disciples.31

In comparison to the Diyarbakır Commentary Theodore bar Koni adds that the human form in which the the angels appeared also belongs to the allusion to the incarnation, apart from the fact that appearing in human form was convenient for the occasion. The examples mentioned by Theodore bar Koni are the apparition to the women at the tomb and the two angels that appear as two men to the disciples at the ascension. Exactly the same two examples are used by Theodore of Mopsuestia himself in the Commentary on the Twelve Prophets in order to show that angels usually appear in the form of humans when they wish to communicate something: [I]n appearing to people … angels normally take the form of human beings, this being suited to the witnesses and those receiving instruction. You could find this happening no less in the New Testament as well: in describing the events of the resurrection of Christ the Lord, the divine Scripture says an angel was seen rolling back the stone, and 29 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Galatians at Gal. 4:22-4, 27 (ed. H.B. Swete and SBLWGRW 26, trans. R.A. Greer, 113, 121, 127). 30 Diyarbakır Commentary at Gen. 18:2 (CSCO 483, 78.8-10). 31 Theodore bar Koni, Scholion II 133 (CSCO 55, 128.2-12); parallel in Išo‘dad of Merv at Gen. 18:2 (CSCO 126, 159.4-14).

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then describes what it was like and how it appeared. ‘Its form was like lightning and its clothes white as snow’ (Matt. 28:2-3), it says. And after the ascension of the Lord into heaven, when the disciples were gaping at the novelty of what happened, ‘Lo’, it says, ‘two men stood by in white clothing’ (Acts 1:10-1): they were angels instructing them in how they should interpret the events.32

A similar series of appearances returns at least twice elsewhere in Theodore’s work, including the two examples of the apparitions at the resurrection and the ascension.33 There the focus is on the service of the angels towards the Son, a key issue for Theodore of Mopsuestia’s christology, which is strongly connected with his reading of Hebrews 1 and 2. Moreover, earlier in the commentary on Genesis Theodore had asserted on the basis of Hebrews 1:14 and Matthew 4:11 (the conclusion of the episode of the temptation of Jesus) that the angels serve God’s will and naturally served Christ when he was on earth: ‘All things work diligently for our salvation following orders from above, as the blessed Paul says: “All the spirits of God are ministers and are sent for our sake, who will possess life” (Heb. 1:14). … The holy Spirit said … about them: “they served” (Matt. 4:11), because … they beautifully performed their service to [Christ] according to the divine orders’.34 Thus, the interpretation of the angels in the Diyarbakır Commentary and in the common source of Theodore bar Koni and Išo‘dad of Merv has strong parallels in the work of Theodore of Mopsuestia, even in the Commentary on the Creation itself.

III. Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Exegesis of Genesis 16 and 18 What has our survey of the East-Syriac commentaries and their Greek parallels delivered? I think that we have – indirectly – attained a richer image of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s exegesis. In general, the Diyarbakır Commentary and the commentaries of Išo‘ bar Nun, Theodore bar Koni and Išo‘dad of Merv often can be shown to be derived from the commentaries of Theodore of Mopsuestia when the latter commentaries are still available. It is reasonable to suppose that this is also regularly the case when direct evidence of what 32 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets at Zech. 1:8-11, trans. Robert C. Hill, FC 108 (Washington, DC, 2004), 331. 33 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Catechetical Homilies 15,21, ed. Raymond Tonneau and Robert Devreesse, Les homélies catéchétique de Théodore de Mopsueste, Sudi e Testi 145 (Vatican City, 1949); id., Commentary on John at John 1:51 (CSCO 115). See also id., On the Incarnation 12 (ed. H.B. Swete, II 304-5). In The blashpemies of Diodore, Theodore, and the impious Nestorius (Cod. Add. 12156), BT 31 in John Behr, The Case against Diodore and Theodore: Texts and their Contexts (New York, 2011), 216-7 the Syriac translation of the same text is attributed to the Commentary on Hebrews. 34 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on the Creation in the fragment from manuscript B.M. Add. 17217, fol. 26b, ed. Ed. Sachau.

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Theodore wrote is lacking. In our case, the close parallels of the Syriac sources with Theodoret’s Questions on Genesis are a strong indication of dependence on Theodore of Mopsuestia. Moreover, the East-Syriac commentaries show a great terminological and conceptual similarity to what we find elsewhere in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s work. The building blocks for the particular interpretation of Genesis 16 and 18 set out above are available in his work. The penchant for contrast and comparison between the two worlds, the two testaments, the two sons, and the two appearances seems to bear the fingerprints of Theodore of Mopsuestia. The same is true for the obsession with angels that is so clearly present in the sources. On the other hand, it should be clear that it is hardly possible to reconstruct the very text of Theodore’s commentary. Only where Theodoret of Cyrus and the Syriac sources are very close to each other, or where there are clear parallels in Theodore’s own work, we can surmise that Theodore wrote something similar. It can also not be excluded that the Syriac commentaries convey later exegetical developments, be it in the spirit of Theodore. So, while we should steer clear of the Scylla of neglecting the Syriac reception of Theodore, we should also avoid the Charybdis of tracing back too much material to Theodore. If we suppose that the East-Syriac commentaries indeed reflect themes and exegetical patterns that Theodore of Mopsuestia used in his interpretation of Genesis 16 and 18, what does that say about his hermeneutics and his actual exegesis of these narratives?35 The explanation that angels did not appear to humans until Abraham to prevent confusion among them is a typical Antiochene, that is, historical-pedagogical, explanation (compare the parallel but slightly different take of Chrysostom). The explanation of the fact that an angel appeared to Hagar the maidservant, and the Lord himself, accompanied by two angels, to Abraham, the father of Isaac and of the human nature of the Son, comprises an intricate web of interpretations of the details of the narrative deriving from what is said in the letters attributed to Paul, especially Galatians 3 and 4 and Hebrews 1 and 2. In the sources discussed above the events are interpreted as history, but at the same time the particular details of the events play a role on a higher level as indications of the history of salvation as a whole. This higher level in no way infringes upon the events themselves, nor breaks up the narrative, but emanates from the history itself and places it in a much broader perspective. One could ask if the characters in the stories of Gen. 16 and 18 were, in Theodore’s view, aware of the deeper meaning of how the events unfolded. 35 The principles adduced in the following discussion are primarily based on what Theodore puts forward in his Commentary on Galations at Gal. 4:24, in the preface to the commentary on Psalm 118(119), Syriac fragment II 3, ed. and trans. Lucas Van Rompay, Théodore de Mopsueste. Fragments syriaques du Commentaire des Psaumes (Psaume 118 et Psaumes 138-148), CSCO 435436 (Leuven, 1982), and in the preface to the Commentary on Jonah.

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To be sure, Abraham expected the Messiah and also understood the deeper meaning of the sacrafice of Isaac. So perhaps Theodore would grant Abraham also the capacity to fathom all the hints that were present in the events. On the other hand, Theodore presents these kind of hints as enigma’s, that were at best veiled allusions to how the things would turn out in the New Testament and that can be understood on the basis of the authority of the Lord, Paul, and the other apostles reveal in the New Testament. Theodore could have argued that Hagar and Abraham profited from how the events unfolded, also when they were not fully aware of the deeper meaning. In the case of Genesis 16 and 18 the sources are silent on this matter, so we can only make informed guesses. In Theodore’s conviction, the Old Testament history contains patterns that prepare the events of the New Testament. He sees a vast difference between the Old and the New Testament, but the interpretation of Genesis 16 and 18 shows that he read the Old Testament history as a part of God’s history with humankind. It is possible to see this exegesis as a specimen of allegorical interpretation in the Pauline sense, which entails, according to Theodore, syncrisis: contrast and comparison between the two Testaments that are both part of God’s plan, without in any way diminishing the historicity of the narratives or the profitability for the people of ancient times, which was, according to Theodore, characteristic for pagan allegorical interpretation. To accomplish his interpretation, Theodore developed Paul’s interpretation of the events in Genesis further on the basis of a particular theological synthesis that made ample use of the handling of the Jewish Scriptures and of theological patterns in the epistles attributed to Paul.

Adam-Christ Typology in Cyril of Alexandria and John Chrysostom Ashish J. NAIDU, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, La Mirada, CA, USA

ABSTRACT The biblical narrative of the baptism of Jesus posed a theological conundrum to the early church: how can Jesus the Lord ‘receive’ the Spirit at his baptism and why does he need to be baptized? Some scholars have persuasively shown how Cyril of Alexandria resolves this tension by invoking the theme of kenosis and using Adamic typology. However, scholars have largely marginalized John Chrysostom’s perspective on this thorny subject. I will examine Chrysostom’s treatment of this topic in Matthew and in his Baptismal Instructions against the background of Cyril’s perspective. I hope to show that although Chrysostom employs classical pedagogical methods and rhetorical devices, deeper concerns shape his reading of the texts. Careful examination of the words in scripture must in turn be complemented with precision in spiritual and moral application. The goal of Christian paideia in the early church was to persuade individuals to follow Christ’s example, and be united to his virtuous life. It is therefore not surprising that although both Chrysostom and Cyril belong to two different traditions and interpret the baptism of Jesus differently, their soteriological and sacramental views overlap significantly.

Introduction Robert Wilken has drawn attention to the fact that the narrative account of the baptism of Jesus posed a challenge to the early church.1 The conundrum of how is it that Jesus the Lord can receive the Spirit was a difficult one to get around, and needed to be answered satisfactorily. If Christ received the Spirit, does it mean that he was inferior to the Father and therefore needed to be sanctified?2 Reviewing Cyril of Alexandria’s interpretation of John 1:32-3, Wilken observes that Cyril broached this theologically delicate issue by employing the AdamChrist typology. Cyril maintained that Christ was both one with the Father and yet true man. It was as man, Cyril argued, that Christ was able to receive the 1 For further treatment of this topic, see Ashish J. Naidu, Transformed in Christ: Christology and the Christian Life in John Chrysostom (Eugene, 2012). 2 Robert L. Wilken, ‘Exegesis and the History of Theology: Reflections on Adam-Christ Typology in Cyril of Alexandria’, CH 35 (1966), 137-56.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 21-28. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Spirit at his baptism. The main point of Cyril’s argument is that the first Adam did not preserve the grace that was given to him by God. Therefore, God the Father sent the second Adam, his own Son, in the likeness of man in every way – except without sin. Just as through the disobedience of the first Adam humanity was subject to divine wrath, the obedience of the second Adam reversed the curse. After the incarnation, Christ as the one who knew no sin, received the Spirit from the Father, thus restoring to human nature the grace that had been lost in the Fall. The reception of the Spirit by the second Adam therefore transforms and renews humanity, providing a new beginning. Cyril remarks: But when the Word of God became Man, He received the Spirit from the Father as one of us, (not receiving ought for Himself individually, for He was the Giver of the Spirit); but that He Who knew no sin, might, by receiving It as Man, preserve It to our nature, and might again root in us the grace which had left us. For this reason, I deem, it was that the holy Baptist profitably added, I saw the Spirit descending from Heaven, and It abode upon Him. For It had fled from us by reason of sin, but He Who knew no sin, became as one of us, that the Spirit might be accustomed to abide in us, having no occasion of departure or withdrawal in Him.3

Contra Wilken, Lawrence Welch notes that Cyril’s usage of the Adamic typology had a christological rationale: Cyril employed the seemingly paradoxical Adamic typology mainly to insist on the historical unity of the one Christ. The reception of the Spirit by Christ, Welch adds, is closely related to Cyril’s emphasis on the kenosis, a theme that he invokes four times in interpretation of this passage (John 1:32-3). He maintains that Cyril was keen on showing that the Son who emptied himself is the selfsame second Adam who receives the Spirit not because he was sinful, but because he was in the ‘condition’ of sinful flesh. He concludes that Cyril’s kenotic language and use of Adamic typology influence one another in the sense that kenosis is used to explain the historical events in the life of Christ, the second Adam. Conversely, the second Adam, who in the condition of fallen humanity needs the Spirit, is always spoken of as one and the same Christ.4 Adam-Christ Motif in Cyril and Chrysostom John Chrysostom deals with the topic of the baptism of Jesus (as mentioned in Matt. 3:13-7), specifically in his twelfth homily on the Gospel of Matthew.5 3 Cyril, Commentary on John, 1:41-2, ed. P.E. Pusey, Commentarii in Johannem, 1.184 (Oxford, 1872). 4 Lawrence J. Welch, Christology and Eucharist in the Early Thought of Cyril of Alexandria (San Francisco, 1994), 66-7. 5 See John Chrysostom, Homily 12, in Matthew, ed. Philip Schaff, NPNF 10 (Grand Rapids, 1975), 75-9; S. Iohannis Chrystostomi opera omnia, PG 57, 201-8.

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Chrysostom’s interpretation of the topic has soteriological overtones akin to Cyril’s view. Both stress the incarnational aspects of Christ the eternal Son in regard to his baptism: Cyril employs Adamic typology and kenotic language to explain the reception of the Spirit, while Chrysostom highlights the condescension of Christ in the incarnation and his willingness to be baptized in fulfillment of the law for the redemption of humanity. Without specifically deploying a typology, Chrysostom also makes reference to the transgression of Adam and Christ’s reversal thereof. The first Adam incurred through his disobedience the wrath of God; the second Adam delivered humanity from its curse through his obedience. Adam had paradise for his share and lost it through sin, but Christ has now made the baptized joint heirs with him, restoring the possibility of that privilege once again.6 Whereas Cyril highlights the reception of the Spirit by Christ, Chrysostom focuses on the act of baptism by underscoring Christ’s claim that he did so to fulfill the law of God at all points. For Cyril, Christ as man received the Spirit to refashion humanity; for Chrysostom, Christ as man had to fulfill the law and be baptized. The main difference between Cyril and Chrysostom’s interpretation is that Cyril acknowledges and explains why Christ ‘received’ the Spirit at his baptism, whereas Chrysostom views the descent of the Spirit as an announcement and a witness to his identity and not as a ‘reception’. Chrysostom’s initial focus is directed to the paradox of the eternal Son who humbles himself and submits to baptism. He observes: With the servants the Lord, with the criminals, the Judge, comes to be baptized. But do not be troubled; for in these humiliations His exaltation does most shine forth. For He who vouchsafed to be borne so long in a Virgin’s womb, and from there to take our nature, and to suffer all the rest which He suffered; why do you marvel if He vouchsafed to be baptized, and to come with the rest to His servant. For the amazement lay in that one thing, that being God, He would be made Man; but the rest after this all follows in course of reason.7

Chrysostom views the obedience of Christ as being central to his mission of fulfilling the law at all points and dismissing the condemnation that held sway over fallen humanity. The judge of all sinners himself condescended to be baptized and thereby secured a pardon for all.8 Christ was baptized not because he needed to receive the Spirit as man, but to reverse the curse of sin by being obedient to the law. Chrysostom uses the title ‘Judge’ twice in this homily to emphasize the divinity of Christ and to dispel the idea that he was baptized for 6 ‘For if he who had paradise for his portion, for one disobedience underwent such dreadful things after his honor; we, who have received Heaven, and are become joint heirs with the Only Begotten, what excuse shall we have, for running to the serpent after the dove?’ Ibid., NPNF 10, 78. 7 Ibid., NPNF 10, 76 [PG 57, 202]. 8 For an in-depth treatment of sugkatabasis in Chrysostom, see David Rylaarsdam, John Chrysostom on Divine Pedagogy (Oxford, 2014).

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the remission of sins, since he himself will judge all sinners. Christ satisfied the law of God at all points by fulfilling the commandments; thus, he has done away with the curse of the transgression. The obedient Son overruled the curse written against humanity; this was the main purpose of the incarnation.9 Moreover, Chrysostom observes that the reason the heavens opened and the Spirit descended in the likeness of a dove along with the voice, was to ‘proclaim the dignity of the Only Begotten’ and to show us that the Spirit likewise comes to those who are baptized. Chrysostom does not employ language suggesting any ‘reception’ of the Spirit by Christ. For him, the descent of the Spirit in the form of a dove served only to point out the one whom the voice called ‘my beloved Son’.10 Chrysostom affirms that the Holy Spirit comes to the catechumen at baptism just like He did at Christ’s baptism. The difference being that at the baptism of Christ the Spirit descended to point out the Saviour; at the baptism of the Christian the Spirit descends to convey adoption into the family of God, ‘the greatest mark of dignity’. The Spirit’s action here causes the faithful to become the ‘sons of God’.11 So Chrysostom’s understanding of the baptism of Christ has both soteriological and sacramental implications for the Christian. The Son of God condescended to be baptized as part of his redeeming mission, and makes the faithful worthy to receive the grace of the Spirit, who renews and refashions the baptized to become like Christ. Here soteriological and sacramental dimensions of the baptism of Christ are inseparably connected. The work of the Holy Spirit is highlighted in the process of adoption, whereby the faithful are conformed to the likeness of Christ at baptism.12 Commenting on John 1:12 – ‘To as many as received Him he gave them power of becoming sons of God’ – Chrysostom asserts: Such is the power of faith in Him; such the greatness of His grace. And even as the element of fire, having come in contact with ore from mines, forthwith makes the ore true gold; so also, and even more, does baptism make those who have been washed in it golden instead of earthy, since the Spirit at that time falls like fire on our souls, both burning away ‘the likeness of the earthy’, and restoring ‘the likeness of the heavenly’, freshly formed and shining, gleaming as if from the smelting furnace.13

Through the mediation of the Holy Spirit, Christ makes the faithful the children of God by replacing the ‘likeness of the earthy’ with the ‘likeness of the 9

Chrysostom, Matthew, ed. Schaff, NPNF 10, 76-7 [PG 57, 203-5]. Ibid. 11 Ibid. [PG 49, 363-72]. 12 Chrysostom, Homily 12, in Matthew, ed. Schaff, NPNF 10, 77-8 [PG 57, 205-6]. 13 Chrysostom, Homily 10, in John, ed. T.A. Goggin, FC 33 (Washington, DC, 1957), 100; [PG 59, 76]. Elsewhere Chrysostom associates the remission and the sacramental cleansing of sins with the conferral of filial adoption: ‘For where remission of sins is there is sonship. Even so at least we are able to call God Father until we have washed away our sins in the pool of the sacred water.’ Chrysostom, Homily on the Paralytic Let Down through the Roof, ed. Schaff, NPNF 9, 217 [PG 51, 58]. 10

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heavenly.’14 Unlike the baptism of John, which does not possess the power either to remit sin or to renew the individual, the grace of Christ has inaugurated a new way of life by making the baptized the children of God: Because henceforth He leads us away from the old to the new way of life, both opening to us the gates on high, and sending down His Spirit from thence to call us to our country there; and not merely to call us, but also with the greatest mark of dignity. For He hath not made us angels and archangels, but He has caused us to become ‘sons of God’, and ‘beloved’, and so He draws us on towards that portion of ours.15

As Cyril later would, Chrysostom views the baptism of Christ as a reversal of the Fall and understands it to be integrally related to the incarnation and atonement. Through baptism the subjects of divine wrath become the children of God. The dominant thrust of both Cyril’s and Chrysostom’s views on the sacramental benefits obtained by Christ through his baptism are, in the final analysis, parallel with one another and both are deeply linked to their incarnational theology. Cyril observes: ‘For he sends in our likeness his own Son who is by nature without alteration or change and not knowing sin in any way, that is by the disobedience of the first we became subject to divine wrath, so through the obedience of the second, we might both escape the curse and the evils from it might come to nought.’16 And Chrysostom has Christ say: ‘Because I have come to do away the curse that is appointed for the transgression of the law. I must therefore fulfill it all, and having delivered you from its condemnation, in this way to bring it to an end. It is proper for me therefore to fulfill the whole law, by the same rule that it becomes me to do away the curse that is written against you in the law: this being the very purpose of my assuming flesh, and coming here.’17 Cyril’s view tends to stress the ontological transformation rooted in Christ’s baptism, while Chrysostom underscores the functional and moral requirements to which the incarnate Son subjected himself for the redemption of humanity. Broadly speaking, both developed similar soteriological and sacramental conclusions from their understanding of the baptism of Christ. Through sinful disobedience fallen humanity lost fellowship with God, marring his image and likeness, and leading to corruption and death. Through the incarnation and the life of obedience (even that of baptism and the cross) Christ humbled himself and, as human, fulfilled all the requirements of the law. He reversed the disastrous effects of fall, thus conferring the grace of the Holy Spirit, who renews and refashions the believer into a new creation at baptism. Although Chrysostom speaks of other sacramental benefits of baptism, this concept is integral to his understanding of the Christian life. 14 15 16 17

See Homily 78, in John, ed. Goggin, FC 41, 346-7 [PG 59, 424]. Chrysostom, Homily 12, in Matthew, ed. Schaff, NPNF 10, 76 [PG 57, 206]. Cyril, Commentary on John 1:42 [Pusey, 1.182-3]. Chrysostom, Homily 12, in Matthew, ed. Schaff, NPNF 10, 76 [PG 57, 203].

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Christian Baptism and the Renewal of the Divine Image In Chrysostom’s view the conferral of the gift of adoption and the conforming of the faithful to the likeness of Christ are one and the same, and the sacrament of baptism is the means through which this is actualized. To be made a child of God is to be conformed to Christ’s likeness and thus be renewed in the image of God. Consequently, to be sacramentally renewed in the divine image is to become by grace what Christ is by nature.18 The Christian’s identification and union with Christ at baptism initiates a new life with its unique privilege: the heavenly kinship of adoption. This spiritual regeneration has implications for the Christian life because a genuine change has occurred.19 Chrysostom illustrates this regeneration through the use of different metaphors. Employing the spiritual birth imagery, Chrysostom distinguishes sharply between the earthly birth according to the flesh and the heavenly birth according to the Spirit. The individual who has not been born of water and the Spirit has not yet received the renewal of the divine image, which Chrysostom sometimes refers to as the ‘the image of sonship’20 or the ‘Master’s stamp’21 or the ‘the royal stamp’.22 He understands baptism as bringing a radical change in the life of the faithful, comparing it with the first creation and contrasting it with the eschatological implications of this spiritual birth. In the former creation humanity was made in the ‘image of God,’ but now (at baptism) humanity is made ‘one with God Himself’.23 Here Chrysostom emphatically relates the restoration of the divine image in the neophyte with divine fellowship, a condition from which fallen humanity had departed and can now be restored through the work of the Spirit at baptism.24 Adhering to the common practice of catechetical instructions drawn from the creation account of Genesis, he alludes to the events from the primeval prologue in reference to the life sustaining features of water and the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing about this change in the baptized, ‘as the womb is to the embryo, so the water is to the believer, since he is formed and shaped in the water’.25 The sacramental context of baptism is the means of this spiritual birth, for the one who is baptized is born of the Spirit and has experienced a new birth in conformity to Christ because the ‘image of sonship’ has been impressed in this process.26 18

Chrysostom, Homily 15, in Romans, ed. Schaff, NPNF 11, 453 [PG 60, 541]. Chrysostom, Homily 10, in John, ed. Goggin, FC 33, 101 [PG 59, 76]. 20 Ibid. 21 Chrysostom, Homily 25, in John, ed. Goggin, FC 33, 243; [PG 59, 148]. 22 Chrysostom, Homily 10, in John, ed. Goggin, FC 33, 100; [PG 59, 75]. 23 Chrysostom, Homily 25, in John, ed. Goggin, FC 33, 245; [PG 59, 150]. 24 Chrysostom, Homily 8, in Genesis, ed. R.C. Hill, FC 74 (Washington, DC, 1999), 110 [PG 53, 72-3]. See also, Homily 10, in Genesis, ed. R.C. Hill, FC 74, 133 [PG 53, 85]. 25 Chrysostom, Homily 26, in John, ed. Goggin, FC 33, 251 [PG 59, 153]. 26 Chrysostom, Homily 10, in John, ed. Goggin, FC 33, 100 [PG 59, 76]. 19

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This is central to Chrysostom’s sacramental understanding of baptism. The inner change and renewal of the image of God in the Christian at baptism, to a large extent, underpins Chrysostom’s preaching on the Christian life. This thought is echoed in his Baptismal Instructions. In his catechetical homilies, Chrysostom often quotes 2Corinthians 5:17 (‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come’) as a reminder of the gift of transformation that the catechumen has received at baptism.27 The soul is purified like a stained statue of gold that has been smelted and refined again.28 Chrysostom describes various sacramental benefits of baptism, the common theme is that of restoration and renewal wrought through Christ, who is the source of grace.29 To be renewed in the image of God, in Chrysostom’s view, is to enjoy by grace the privilege of divine fellowship that belongs to the Son by nature. To be conformed to the likeness of Christ is to be restored in the divine image. The conferral of adoption at baptism inaugurates a new way of life, because the Christian by definition is Christ-like.30 In keeping with his emphasis on the practical implications of this renewal for the Christian life, Chrysostom observes, ‘Do you see how a new creation has truly taken place? The grace of God has entered these souls and molded them anew, reformed them, and made them different from what they were.’31 In Chrysostom’s thought doctrinal teaching and praxis are intertwined: the evidence of the restoration and renewal of human nature is reflected in the moral and virtuous life of the Christian.32 The starting point for the Christian 27 Chrysostom’s Fourth Instruction addressed to the neophytes is based on 2Cor. 5:17. See Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions 4.1-33, ed. Paul W. Harkins, ACW 31 (Mahwah, 1963), 66-78. As a mystagogue, Chrysostom makes reference to 2Cor. 5:17 about nine times, more than any other passage in his catechetical instructions. 28 ‘So, too, God takes this nature of ours when it is rusted with the rust of sin, when our faults have covered it with abundant soot, and when it has destroyed the beauty He put into it in the beginning, and he smelts it anew. He plunges it into the waters as into the smelting furnace, renewed like newly-molded vessels, to rival the rays of the sun with our brightness. He has broken the old man to pieces but has produced a new man who shines brighter than the old.’ Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions 9.22, ed. Harkins, ACW 31, 139. 29 Chrysostom describes about ten benefits (or ‘the graces’) of baptism in his address to the neophytes. Contrasting their former condition with the blessings received at baptism, he declares, ‘Before yesterday you were captives, but now you are free and citizens of the Church; lately you lived in the shame of your sins, but now you live in freedom and justice. You are not only free, but also holy; not only holy, but also just; not only just, but also sons; not only sons, but also heirs; not only heirs, but also brothers of Christ; not only brothers of Christ, but also joint heirs; not only joint heirs, but also members; not only members, but also the temple; not only the temple, but also instruments of the Spirit.’ See Baptismal Instructions 3.5, ed. Harkins, ACW 31, 57. 30 See Iain Torrance, ‘God the Physician: Ecclesiology, Sin, and Forgiveness in the Preaching of St. John Chrysostom’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 44 (1999), 163-76. 31 Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions 4.14, ed. Harkins, ACW 31, 72. 32 Chrysostom, Homily 28, in John, ed. Goggin, FC 33, 273 [PG 59, 164]. For an overview of Chrysostom’s understanding of the church and salvation, see J. Korbacher, Ausserhalb der Kirche kein Heil? (Munich, 1963), 122.

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life is firmly grounded in the restorative ministry of Christ. The consequences of the fall have been overturned, mortality and corruption have been reversed, and through sacramental participation in Christ, humanity can enjoy fellowship with God again. Conclusion In Chrysostom one sees elements of both Alexandrian and Antiochene traditions. The unitive aspects of his Christology, which are foundational to his soteriological thought, are consistent with the thought of Athanasius and later Alexandrians like Cyril. Given that Cyril was present at Chrysostom’s deposition at the Synod of the Oak (where the grounds for his deposition were disciplinary and not doctrinal), and the fact that he eventually restored Chrysostom’s name to the liturgical diptychs, one can speculate that it was possible that he might have been acquainted with some of the works of the bishop of Constantinople. The infrastructure of their christological and soteriological thought is parallel at many points. The focus of Chrysostom’s christological picture is on one subject: the Logos-Son who partook of flesh and entered brotherhood with us in order to restore our fellowship with God. The reversal of the corruption of sin required God’s personal presence in this world for humanity to be redeemed. God had to become human in order that humanity might enjoy divine fellowship. This foundational idea associated mainly with the Alexandrian tradition shapes Chrysostom’s picture of Christ. His sacramental thought, which is not far removed from his christological thought, also bears resemblance to the Alexandrian tradition. The inner renewal and the conformation of the baptized to the divine image, and their enjoying the privilege of divine communion through their sacramentally mediated union with Christ, are integral elements of Chrysostom’s thought and reflect the participatory nature of his theology. The role of Scripture in the church and the Christian faith as it was enshrined in the Creeds, were common motifs shared by the Alexandrians and the Antiochenes. The hermeneutic methodology might have differed superficially, but the approximation of scriptural authority and the core tradition remained the same foundationally. These two branches of the early church shared much in common. Consequently, their status as two opposing or rival schools of thought must not be exaggerated. Chrysostom’s Christology can be cited as evidence that these two parallel traditions overlapped, lending support to the view that there was concordance in patristic thought in the later decades of the fourth and early fifth centuries.

The Impassible Passion: Cyril’s Unitive Christology at the Crossroads between Christian Tradition and Plotinus’ Psychology Alexey STRELTSOV, Novosibirsk, Russia

ABSTRACT While ancient Greek philosophical theology firmly held to the notion of the impassibility of God, Christian thought had to accommodate it to the Nicene confession that the divine Son of God ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’. I suggest that the unitive Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, with its claim that the incarnate Word suffered impassibly, built on preceding theological tradition (Gregory Thaumaturgus and Athanasius of Alexandria being its most clear representatives), but at the same time represented a conceptual reworking of the paradigm of psychology of Plotinus (continued in the works of Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus) with its understanding of the character of impassibility of the soul in its union with the body. According to Plotinus, Enn. III 6, the soul is engulfed by the passions without being really affected by them (at least in the way the ensouled body is). For Cyril this translated into a remark about the Word ‘tasting death in the flesh’ in his notoriously contested 12th anathema. Consequently, I find it helpful neither downplaying the rational component of the thought of Cyril (as if he only followed the Biblical narrative ignoring the paradoxical character of his claims), nor postulating his uncritical dependency on non-Christian philosophical theology. Compared to his Antiochene critics (Nestorius, Theodoritus, later representatives of Nestorianism) who remained to a great extent within a framework of Platonic philosophical theology concerning the concept of divine impassibility, Cyril built a bridge toward a more Incarnational view by interweaving points of Neoplatonic psychology within his Christological discourse.

The patristic discourse of the ‘impassible suffering’ continues to draw the attention of the students of texts of Late Antiquity. Cyril of Alexandria famously asserted that the divine Logos ‘suffered impassibly’ (ἀπαθῶς ἔπαθεν, patiebatur impassibiliter).1 A number of critics both ancient and modern have found this phrase to be nonsensical, that is, meaningless albeit being an eye catching expression, suitable for gaining a rhetorical victory in the 5th-century Christological 1 Philip E. Pusey, Sancti Patris nostri Cyrilli arch. Al. XII Capitum Explanatio, XII Capitum Defensio utraque, Scholia de Incarnatione Unigeniti (Oxford, 1875), 574. See also John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 23 (Leiden, 1994), 308, 332-3, 335.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 29-38. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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controversy yet incapable of rational reconstruction. Thus, Theodoret called this language an ‘absurd riddle’ and even claimed rhetorically that ‘no one has ever heard of impassible suffering’.2 Nestorius avoids this language and if mentioning it en passé, clearly understands by it the human man passible ‘in whom the impassible’ God existed rather than applying this terminology to the single subject.3 Likewise, among modern authors one encounters an opinion that Cyril’s ‘logic fails’ and ‘his continuing search for a rational solution’ ended in an ‘ultimate failure’,4 to quote just one example. Was Cyril’s solution rational and, if so, was it faithful to Christian theology? If we were to look for the concept of the ‘impassible suffering’ in ancient philosophy, we would immediately find that it is absent in the philosophical theology of Antiquity: the so called God of the Philosophers is completely impassible,5 that is, no passion of any kind, so common for the deities of mythology, may be attributed to him. However, this concept is present in the psychology of Plotinus with Plotinus discussing ramifications of the realm of contact between the intelligible and the sensible world. As early as 1951 Chadwick has observed the similarity of language between Plotinus and Cyril,6 followed by Young7 and a few others, however, no detailed analysis has been offered to date, at least as far as I am aware, of the specific nature of this connection. While Christianity strove in the religious and cultural milieu of the Mediterranean world of Late Antiquity, it also exhibited marked differences from the other religious traditions due to its peculiar emphasis on Incarnation, that is, the role of the body in the matter of divine revelation. Concerning the topic at hand this difference transpires in numerous theopaschite formulas where the language of ‘impassible suffering’, however unsophisticated as compared to the one of Cyril, nevertheless, was present beginning from the canonical documents of the New Testament.8 2 Theodoret of Cyrus. Eranistes. Critical Text and Prolegomena, ed. Gerard. P. Ettlinger (London, 1975), 218. 3 Nestorius. The Bazaar of Heracleides, trans. G.R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson (Oxford, 1925), 237. 4 Joseph M. Hallman, ‘The Seed of Fire: Divine Suffering in the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople’, JECS 5 (1997), 360-91, 384. 5 E.g., Arist. Metaph. XII 7 1072b-1073α, ΧΙΙ 9 1074b; S.E. P. 1.162. See Herbert Frohnhofen, APATHEIA TOU THEOU. Über die Affektlosigkeit Gottes in der griechischen Antike und bei den griechischsprachigen Kirchenvätern bis zu Gregorios Thaumaturgos, Europäische Hochschulschriften: Reihe 23, Theologie 318 (Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York, Paris, 1987), 61-90, for a diachronical survey of the concept. 6 Henry Chadwick, ‘Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy’, JTS NS 2 (1951), 145-64, 162. 7 Frances M. Young, ‘A Reconsideration of Alexandrian Christology’, JEH 22 (1971), 103-14, 112. 8 See Werner Elert, ‘Die Theopaschitische Formel’, Theologische Literaturzeitung 4/5 (1950), 195-206, 195-6, for a possible though certainly incomplete list of references.

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In this way the question that I’m trying to resolve cannot be reduced to an analysis of the nature and extent of dependency of Cyril upon Plotinus and Neoplatonic philosophy. It is rather an attempt to understand how these two principal sources of Cyril’s Christology (that is, philosophical tradition epitomized in Middle- and Neoplatonic philosophy on the one hand and the early Biblical and patristic evidence on the other hand) come together in Cyril’s formula of ‘impassible suffering’. My goal is not to bring some new evidence to light but rather to attempt to offer a balanced interpretation of the evidence already available. I further argue that attempts to understand what was the distinctive role of the Christological discourse of ‘impassible suffering’ are hindered somewhat by the biased inputs of the participants of the modern debate within the realm of philosophical theology between the passibilists and the impassibilists. I contend that this is a ‘false lead’. Proponents on both sides tend to use dogmatic arguments rather than historical-philosophical points and so are inclined to suit Cyril’s texts to validate their cause by setting Cyril within a certain philosophical framework of divine (im)passibility. I am trying rather to understand what Cyril actually did when he used his seemingly paradoxical language. Let us move now to consider the character of impassibility of the soul in the philosophy of Plotinus and his successors. I will limit myself to the most pertinent part of Plotinus’ corpus, which are the first five chapters of Enn. III 6, ‘On the Impassibility of the Bodiless’. It is in these chapters that Plotinus discusses how the soul may retain its impassibility even within the union with the body, while further on in the treatise he moves to a related yet the different topic of the impassivity of matter. I view the concept of ‘impassible passion’ as a key one for deciphering the inner logic of this part of the treatise. Plotinus works out his solution by building upon an Aristotelian position as reflected in De anima (that is, his famous dictum of the soul as entelechy of the body) as well as distancing himself from this position, but also in view of the Stoic monistic view of the soul, which presupposes the soul being subject to passions. Accordingly, Plotinus offers a critique of both of these positions. III 6.1.1-5. Τὰς αἰσθήσεις οὐ πάθη λέγοντες εἶναι, ἐνεργείας δὲ περὶ παθήματα καὶ κρίσεις, τῶν μὲν παθῶν περὶ ἄλλο γινομένων, οἷον τὸ σῶμα φέρε τὸ τοιόνδε, τῆς δὲ κρίσεως περὶ τὴν ψυχήν, οὐ τῆς κρίσεως πάθους οὔσης.9

Plotinus begins with his assertion that sense-perception (αἴσθησις) is not a ‘passion’ but rather an activity (ἐνέργεια) and a judgment (κρίσις) concerning the impression (πάθημα).10 That is, the same act occurring in the human being 9 Plotinus Ennead III, ed. G.P. Goold, tr. A.H. Armstrong, LCL 442 (Cambridge, London, 1993), 210. 10 πάθημα is not to be confused with πάθη as ‘passion’. It would be better to render two words differently unlike done by Armstrong in Plotinus Ennead III, 211.

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transpires as the passion in case of the ensouled body yet as energeia in case of the soul. The ‘judgement’ of the soul is not temporarily divided from senseperception, sensation, there is not even a logical sequence, but rather the same event transpiring with the living being is bodily perceived as passion, but on the level of the soul it is as energeia. The main sentence containing verbatim the concept of ‘impassible passion’ is found further in chapter one of Enn. III 6: III 6.1.33-37. Ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον λόγους ἀλόγους καὶ ἀπαθῆ πάθη δεῖ ἐπιγίγνεσθαι αὐτῇ οἴεσθαι, καὶ ταῦτα τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν σωμάτων μετενηνεγμένα ἀντικειμένως ληπτέον ἕκαστα καὶ κατ’ ἀναλογίαν μετενηνεγμένα, καὶ ἔχουσαν οὐκ ἔχειν καὶ πάσχουσαν οὐ πάσχειν. Rather we should envisage that irrational reasonings or impassible passions supervene on [the soul]. We should consider that each of these experiences, which are transferred from the bodily sphere, is transferred in an opposite sense and by analogy only, and that the soul possesses without really possessing, and is affected without really being affected.11

This statement is based on the underlining chiastic structure: (A) ἀπαθῆ (A*) πάθη (B*) πάσχουσαν (B) οὐ πάσχειν. This chiasm emphasizes that the seeming passion of the soul is illusory, although the body A*B* incorporated in the soul and common with it is truly subjected to passions. The soul AB that encompasses the body is impassible. The rhetorical effect is also built on the word-play of two phrases (λόγους ἀλόγους καὶ ἀπαθῆ πάθη) which express the same concept although in the opposite sense (the soul being rational and impassible, the ensouled body the opposite). Heating and cooling of bodies, which Plotinus further discusses, serve as the perfect example of this difference: the soul ‘actively’ perceives what happens with its body yet is not affected by it. While passion comes from the outside, the noetic activity of the soul is born in the sensing subject.12 Unlike the Stoics who had a bodily understanding of the soul and so had no problem with it being directly subject to passions, Plotinus has to explain how the lower part of the soul (τὸ παθητικόν) that ignites passions but is not engulfed by them, may be the ground of vices yet remain impassible. To do this, Plotinus uses the 11 Plotinus Ennead III.6 On the Impassivity of the Bodiless, tr. and com. Barry Fleet (Oxford, 1995), 5. 12 R.A.H. King, Aristotle and Plotinus on Memory, Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie 94 (Berlin, 2009), 109.

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terminology of ‘appropriation’ (οἰκειώσις) and ‘alienation’ (ἀλλοτριώσις) to distinguish between the bodily affections and sense-perception of the soul.13 It is in this context that Plotinus speaks of the ‘impassible passion’ of the soul. Although the language of impassible passion seems paradoxical, it has a rational explanation within the system of Plotinus. The referents of the two parts of the phrase ‘impassible passion’ are different: accordingly the soul and the ensouled body. The soul appropriates the passions of the body, because this is its own body, yet it remains impassible, because it is impassible by its nature as a bodiless thing. Recently Noble convincingly argued that according to Plotinus, the soul is impassible in that sense in which the body is passible.14 That is, Plotinus excludes the passion in the bodily sense from being attributed to the soul. The soul experiences no affection from any extrinsic motion, which does not negate a possibility of the intrinsic motion, which is not a passion.15 Thus, we can summarize two features of Enn. III 6 that would figure prominently in Cyril’s Christology: the impassible passion and appropriation. The soul appropriates the passions of the body but is not affected by them. The ‘impassible passions’ intervene upon the soul yet the soul remains impassible. Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus, summarises the ideas of Plotinus in his Sentences. The questions of union of soul and body and the dilemma of impassibility vs. passions are closely intertwined (Sent. 7). There remains the principal difference between the soul and the body due to their respective natures: There is a difference between the passions of the bodies and those of the bodiless things. The passion of bodies consists of change. On the contrary, the passions and appropriations of the soul are activities that have nothing in common with the cooling or heating up of the bodies.16

Following Plotinus, Porphyry says in Sent. 8 that ‘those [incorporeal beings] that impinge on matter and bodies, though in themselves impassible allow the subjects in which they reside to be affected’.17 The younger contemporary of Porphyry, Iamblichus, modifies the teaching of both Plotinus and Porphyry to some extent by introducing the concept of the ‘pure souls’ (De an. 28). Thus, whatever Plotinus attibutes to the soul per se, Iamblichus reserves for the ‘pure souls’ (De an. 30) while maintaining that the soul sent to the body for its own correction ‘is not impassible’ (οὐκ ἀπαθής, De an. 29). 13

Plotinus Ennead III (1993), 212. Christopher Isaac Noble, Plotinus’ Unaffectable Soul, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 51 (Oxford, 2016), 231-81, 267, 271. 15 Ibid. 243. 16 Porphyry’s Launching Points to the Realm of Mind. An Introduction to the Neoplatonic Philosophy of Plotinus, trans. Kenneth S. Guthrie (Grand Rapids, 1988), 35. 17 Ibid. 35-6. 14

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Unlike Iamblichus, however, the last great Neoplatonic philosopher of Late Antiquity, Proclus, returns to the concepts of Plotinus. It is of great interest how he says that the bodiless agents though impassible in themselves, nevertheless can be acted upon by virtue of their union with the body (πάσχει δὲ καὶ τὸ ἀσώματον διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸ σῶμα κοινωνίαν) (Theol. 80).18 Thus the conceptual scheme of Late Antiquity can not be reduced to division between a completely impassible God and gods on the one hand and the passible beings on the other hand. The third paradigm is characteristic of the Neoplatonic psychology where the soul may be described as going through the ‘impassible passions’ while remaining impassible. It is this linguistic paradigm that was carried by Cyril to the Christian discourse and applied by him to a different framework. There is a sense of incommensurability between ancient philosophical theology and Christian theology in view of the Incarnation within the latter, but it is not equally so in the case of Neoplatonic psychology and Christology, because of an overlap that makes the dialogue possible. Nevertheless, literary evidence suggests it was hardly the case that Cyril of Alexandria took an alien language and ‘Christianised’ it. Cyril of Alexandria had venerable predecessors also within the Christian tradition itself insofar as it relates to the language of the ‘impassible passion’ however imprecise it was at its early stages (that is, poetic and hymnic rather than strictly doctrinal). While the list of primitive theopaschite formulas may be quite long, starting with Melito of Sardis19 offering some of the more striking formulations of the early ‘impassible passion’ language, it was Ad Theopompum attributed however correctly to Gregory Thaumaturgus that perhaps came closest to Cyril in the pre-Nicene or early Nicene time. To be sure, this treatise dealt with theology rather than Christology, strictly speaking, nevertheless, the claim of the impassible God suffering passions is repeated throughout the work. Thus, the author of Ad Theopompum says expressly that ‘God submitted himself to Passion even though God is by nature impassible’.20 And, of course, it is fairly well known 18

Proclus. The Elements of Theology, trans., intr. and com. E.R. Dodds (Oxford, 1963), 77. R.M. Hübner notes close textual similarity between famous theopashite passages of Melito and fragments attributed to his contemporary Noetus of Smyrna, an early monarchian writer, and concludes that is was the case of dependency of the former on the latter rather than Melito influencing Noetus or both of them relying on some common source. See Reinhard M. Hübner mit einem Beitrag von Markus Vinzent, Der Paradox Eine. Antignostischer Monarchianismus im zweiten Jahrhundert, Supplements to Vigilae Christianae 50 (Leiden, Boston, Köln, 1999), 16-9. Reflection on the complicated history of these early formulas clearly lies outside the scope of this article: it is sufficient to observe that such language was implemented by the writers who came to be regarded as dogmatically orthodox (e.g., Melito being one of the most respected bishops of his time, R.M. Hübner, Der Paradox Eine [1999], 29) as viewed through the lens of subsequent tradition. 20 St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. Life and Works, trans. Michael Slusser, FC 98 (Washington, DC, 1998), 154. 19

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that Ad Epictetum of Athanasius as well as works of Gregory of Nazianzus would come as more direct predecessors of the language and theological accents of Cyril. It is this usage of language within the Christological controversy, however, along with his continuous address to the analogy of the soul-body union that marks Cyril’s contribution and shows that he advanced beyond his predecessors. Thus, Cyril in the early stage of his career still continued the fight against Arianism.21 It was when he moved to the more distinct Christological mode with the Nicene position being firmly established that this discourse acquired a new significance. Along with that it is worth noting that Cyril also employs the lexical paradigm of the ‘impassible suffering’ outside of a polemical context. In other words, Cyril did not develop this language over time as a reaction to what he viewed as a divisive Christology of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Rather, it was already present in his works – both exegetical and dogmatic – before the controversy with Nestorius. There were shifts as over time Cyril developed a greater sophistication in his language. And once the controversy started, he held to this language (including its theopaschite elements) even in the midst of the pressure from the Eastern theologians and was not ready to give it up for utilitarian purposes. In an approach to Cyril’s legacy, and here I particularly have in mind his concept of the ‘impassible suffering’ readers of his texts are in danger to fall into one of two extremes. One is to view him as a largely erratic and irrational thinker unable to think coherently and arrive at inevitable (presumably, passibilist) conclusions on the basis of his formulations. Another extreme would be to view him as a creator of Christian philosophy of Incarnation, which was not sufficiently appreciated by the previous generations of scholars. However, it is much more productive to view Cyril as a theologian who was familiar with basic elements of philosophy of his day and was able to use and accommodate its principles to suit his own dogmatic needs without venturing into the realm of philosophy as such. In a recent book of Trostyanskiy on Cyril’s metaphysics of the Incarnation22 he finds the soul-body paradigm inadequate for expressing Cyril’s Christology 21 The case of Cyril’s familiarity with Plotinus and the Neoplatonic tradition is easier to establish in such earlier writings than in his subsequent purely Christological ones. Thus, Moreschini adduces evidence that Cyril draws from Plotinus’ thought while discussing both divine Persons individually and the Trinity at large; see Claudio Moreschini, ‘Una Definizione della Trinità nel Contra Iulianum di Cirillo di Alessandria’, in Claudio Moreschini and Giovanni Menestrina (eds), Lingua e teologia nel Christianesimo Greco. Atti del convegno tenuto a Trento l’11-12 dicembre 1997 (Brescia, 1999), 259-66. 22 Sergey Trostyanskiy, St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Metaphysics of the Incarnation, Studies in Church History 14 (New York, 2016).

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and suggests that at the core of Cyril’s theology lies the second hypothesis of Plato’s Parmenides. Without addressing wider ramifications of Trostyansky’s reconstruction, I find his solution unconvincing insofar as it touches upon the concept of the ‘impassible passion’. Trostyanskiy ventures to say that ‘this is perhaps the extension of the deductions of being in motion and at rest’.23 In the Parmenides ‘contradictory conclusions are … placed together’, although, as Trostyanskiy admits, ‘they are not fused into one notion’.24 I do not find it helpful to concentrate on so distant possible precursor of the concept of the ‘impassible passion’ as the second hypothesis of the Parmenides. Plato speaks neither about a ‘moving rest’ nor (especially) about an ‘impassible suffering’. It is precisely Plotinus who utilizes an expression of impassible suffering in the psychological parts of his Enneads. I find it problematic both to ignore such a link where it seems obvious and to try to locate it in the much earlier source where to do that one has to engage in significant speculative efforts. Perhaps the possible rancor between Trostyanskiy’s unwillingness to view the concept of the ‘impassible suffering’ in light of the body-soul union of a Neoplatonic philosophy and what I am trying to bring to light here lies in recognizing the limitations of Plotinus’ psychology to explain the event of the Incarnation in the Christian sense. It would not be difficult to agree with Trostyanskiy’s assertion that ‘the Incarnational terms in Cyril as modeled wholly upon the conception of the union of soul and body, should be rejected’.25 However, nobody claims that Cyril mechanically transferred this concept from Neoplatonism to Christian theology. In this sense the language itself of the ‘anthropological model’, perhaps, does not accurately reflect what Cyril is doing.26 Cyril operates with the soul-body union as an analogy, a simile, and an image of the Incarnation. An analogy does not presuppose an exactness by definition. It is instructive that Cyril addresses the analogy of the body-soul connection more than any other image.27 In using such imagery Cyril is driven more by practical concerns than any attempts of a philosophy-like system-building, which is especially evident in his discussion in Nest. 5 of the souls of the martyrs staying impassible amidst the sufferings of their own bodies.28 23

Ibid. 246. Ibid. 248. 25 Ibid. 193. 26 Weindandy considers Cyril to be an exception to the otherwise normative model of patristic Christology: Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.V., Cap., Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN, 2000), 183. 27 See especially Steven A. McKinion, Words, Imagery, and the Mystery of Christ. A Reconstruction of Cyril of Alexandria’s Christology, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 55 (Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2000), 188-224. 28 ACO I.1.6, 100. See Hans von Loon, The Dyophisite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 96 (Leiden, Boston, 2009), 366-9 for a description of the wider context of this discussion. 24

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Yet the main evidence, perhaps, is to be found in the Scholia on the Incarnation.29 Discussing this analogy at length, in Schol. 8 Cyril explains how in the Incarnation the body suffers bodily, the soul suffers psychologically, so to speak, in feeling or sharing in the affects of the body, but God incarnate is impassibly aware of what happens to his body and soul. In her analysis of the text, Boulnois mentions an apophatic manner of the union of both the soul and body and even to a greater extent of Word and the flesh, which exceeds human understanding, but at the same time the first union has for Cyril an illustrative virtue to help comprehend the relationship of the Word to the passions.30 Concurring with Boulnois, I would like at the same time to take it a step further and suggest that such move of impassibility from the soul to God is in the foundation of a conceptual turn that Cyril undertakes when using the linguistic paradigm of the ‘impassible passion’ to uphold a unitive Christology against what he sees as a fatal division of Christ by Nestorius. The common ground between Plotinus and Neoplatonism and Cyril of Alexandria thus includes the statement that the Logos ‘suffered impassibly’ as well as the language of ‘appropriation’. In both conceptual schemes the impassible passion applies to the one composite being, with the soul or God being aware of the passion of the body or body and soul combined. Along with obvious similarities some noteworthy differences also present themselves further delineating the essence of Cyril’s ‘conceptual turn’: 1. Hierarchically these unions are very different, more ‘disparate’ in case of Cyril’s take on the Incarnation than in the case of the body/soul union. While two adjacent realities come together in the Neoplatonic universe, the soul being the lowest being of the intelligible realm, in case of Cyril it is God the Word and the ‘flesh’ (that includes the reasonable soul). 2. Unlike soul and body being parts of the human person as whole, in case of the Incarnation God the Word may not be viewed as partial or incomplete.31 3. Plotinus considers the cause of passions to lie within the lower soul, although the soul remains impassible. While for Cyril bodily and psychological passions come from the outside with God remaining impassible, God’s love may be said to be the cause of the Incarnation and subsequent suffering of the Incarnate. 4. In Plotinus the union is temporary, in Cyril it is indissoluble. Moreover, according to Cyril, the body itself becomes impassible (through communicatio idiomatum) as a result of the union. 29 P.E. Pusey, S. P. N. Cyrilli arch. Al. XII Capitum Explanatio, XII Capitum Defensio utraque, Scholia de Incarnatione Unigeniti (Oxford, 1875), 512. 30 M.-O. Boulnois, ‘Le modèle de l’union de l’âme et du corps dans la controverse nestorienne sur l’union des deux natures dans le Christ’, Annuaire EPHE, Sciences religieuses 118 (20092010), 157-75, 168. 31 Cyrille d’Alexandrie. Deux dialogues Christologiques, trans. G.M. de Durand, SC 97 (Paris, 1964), 226.

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Perhaps, it is in the most radical assertions of Cyril such as his 12th anathema with its claim that God the Word ‘tasted death by the flesh’ (τὸν τοῦ θεοῦ λόγον … θανάτου γευσάμενον σαρκί)32 that show forth the true character of his concept. It is not simply the impassibility of the second person of the Trinity that Cyril seeks to uphold amidst the sufferings of Jesus but the ‘impassible suffering’ of God as single subject in his incarnation: this theopaschite element is essential for understanding the doctrine of Cyril. Let me conclude with one example. Earlier I said that the theopaschite language was used throughout the Christian tradition as reflected in the Johannine texts. Thus, Theodore of Mopsuestia was puzzled by John 3:16, which is obvious from his sincere amusement: ‘How then did he say, he gave his Only Begotten Son? For it is obvious that the Godhead cannot suffer; nevertheless they [divinity and humanity] are one through their conjunction. Therefore, even though the other suffers, the whole is attributed to the divinity’.33 Cyril of Alexandria, on the contrary, appeals to this text in his mature work Quod unus sit Christus precisely to confront his Antiochene opponents who think ‘that to have to say that the same one suffers and does not suffer (καὶ παθεῖν καὶ μὴ παθεῖν) makes it seem like a fairy tale (τερατολογία)’.34 Thus, according to Cyril, ‘It was the Only Begotten Son of God who has destroyed the dominion of death; not a different son joined to him in a relationship to mediate this economy, but he himself, personally. He confirms this when he says: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his Only Begotten Son so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life’.35 Here we have this Neoplatonic concept of the ‘impassible suffering’ firmly put to service to Christian theology set in Johannine terms.

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ACO I.1.1, 42. Theodore of Mopsuestia. Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Marco Conti, ed. Joel C. Elowski (Downers Grove, IL, 2010), 34. 34 St Cyril of Alexandria. On the Unity of Christ, trans. John A. McGuckin (Crestwood, NY, 1995), 117 (= SC 97, 474). 35 St Cyril of Alexandria. On the Unity of Christ (1995), 120 (= SC 97, 480-2). 33

‘Was it Not the Only Begotten that was Speaking Long Ago’: Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis in his Commentary on Hebrews (Heb. 1:1-2) Shawn J. WILHITE, Durham University, Durham, UK and California Baptist University, Riverside, USA

ABSTRACT In this article, I will explore Cyril of Alexandria’s Trinitarian exegesis, particularly from his Commentary on Hebrews (Heb. 1:1-2) – currently, this commentary remains untranslated into English. These two sections highlight how Cyril’s Christology informs his hermeneutical presuppositions and theological exegesis of Heb 1:1-2. I will argue that for Cyril, an exposition of Heb. 1:1-2 and the use of Scripture remain inherently Christological, and more specifically, a focus upon the Son’s economy with the flesh. Cyril’s hermeneutical practices and theological exegesis is aimed at and informed by a two-nature Christology. My research will build upon Christological and hermeneutical Cyrilline scholarship and a special focus upon the following scholars engaged in Cyril’s reading of Hebrews: Rowan Greer, Frances Young, P.M. Parvis, J. Lebon, and Matthew Crawford. This argument will progress in three different stages. First, I will offer a brief historical introduction to Cyril’s Commentary on Hebrews. Second, I will display cursory research on Partitive exegesis in Cyrilline studies, followed by a cursory definition of partitive exegesis. Third, I will examine Cyril’s scriptural exegesis of Heb. 1:1-2.

1. Thesis In this article, I describe Cyril of Alexandria’s partitive reading strategy in his commentary on Hebrews. As Cyril’s Christological exegesis remains thoroughly tied to particular theological commitments such as Trinitarian relations, inseparable activities, eternal generation of the Son, an Adamic typology, and the economy of the flesh, I will specifically highlight how Cyril reads in his Commentary on Hebrews 1:1-2 and how he discusses the two properties of the single Son. As Cyril’s argument unfolds, a mutual relationship emerges whereby Cyril’s theological paradigm and Cyril’s exegetical grammar mutually serve the other. In his Commentary on Hebrews in particular, Cyril’s Trinitarian pro-Nicene exegesis displays several Christological exegetical moves that include typological readings (from types and shadows),

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 39-49. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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prosopological intra-Trinitarian dialogue, and partitive readings of the Scriptures.1 Cyril’s partitive reading strategy assumes a few items. At the most basic level, a partitive reading considers the two natures of the Son – that is, the Son as divine and the Son as human – and the exegetical moves to draw out the theologia of the Son. More specific to my thesis, Cyril’s partitive patterns in this section of his commentary assume the eternal, divine, and immutable theologia of the Son; the temporal and mutable human theologia of the incarnate Son; and the economy of the flesh. So, for Cyril’s theological paradigm, he assumes pro-Nicene Trinitarian categories and a Christological structure, assuming the theologia and economy (oikonomia) with the flesh of a two-natured Son. 2. Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on Hebrews Many of Cyril’s exegetical works on the New Testament are either lost or incomplete. For Cyril’s Commentary on Hebrews, we have P.E. Pusey’s edition.2 This edition includes minimal Syriac and Latin fragments that include commentary and homilies.3 Pusey’s Greek edition includes fragmentary commentary of Heb. 1:1-13:16, often in catena form.4 Some commentary sections are longer, as is the case for Hebrews 1. While the Nestorian controversies may 1 While Lewis Ayres delimits the phrase ‘pro-Nicene’ to the Trinitarian theologies between 360-380, I affirm that Cyril fits with the trajectories of pro-Nicene thought. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford, 2004), 236-40; Matthew R. Crawford, Cyril of Alexandria’s Trinitarian Theology of Scripture, OECS (Oxford, 2014). I depend quite generously upon both Madison Pierce and Matthew Bates for my discussion of prosoponic readings. Madison Pierce, Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Recontextualization of Spoken Quotations in Scripture (Cambridge, 2020); Matthew W. Bates, The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation: The Center of Paul’s Method of Scripture Interpretation (Waco, TX, 2012); Matthew W. Bates, The Birth of the Trinity: Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament and Early Christian Interpretations of the Old Testament (Oxford, 2015). On partitive scriptural exegesis, see the following: John Behr, The Nicene Faith, vol. 1 of Formation of Christian Theology (Crestwood, NY, 2004), 15-21; Lars Koen, ‘Partitive Exegesis in Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John’, SP 25 (1993), 115-21. 2 P.E. Pusey (ed.), Sancti patris nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi Alexandrini in D. Joannis evangelium, vol. III (Oxford, 1872). 3 Pusey, III 424-40. 4 The portion of the commentary under investigation includes the following comment in Pusey’s edition (Pusey, III 362): ‘These pieces are drawn in part from the Niketes (Heracleensis metropolitan) Catena from the fragment editions of St Cyril having been learned in Maius in Bibl. Nov. Patrum iii. 107-127 (the Book that is used in the library of Ambrose of Milan…).’ Codex Coislin 204, a Catena of Nicetas, was also published in 1843 by Cramer (J.A. Cramer, Catenae Graecorum Patrum in Novum Testamentum 6-7 [Oxford, 1838, 1844]). Also see Karl Staab, Die Pauluskatenen (Rome, 1926), 53-70.

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unfold as early as 428, some of Cyril’s comments within Commentary on Hebrews demonstrate awareness of a Nestorian controversy, thereby suggesting a date ca. 428-432 AD.5 Daniel Keating briefly lists the available works of Cyril and places them in somewhat chronological order. While he situates the commentary within a post-Nestorian era, he minimally comments about the dating of the Hebrews commentary: ‘The Homilies on Luke and the Commentary on Hebrews show clear marks of the Nestorian controversy, and so should be assigned to the post-Nestorian era.’6 Paul Parvis, moreover, engages this very question. And, my argument assumes the essential findings of Parvis’s research. A statement in a letter by Alexander of Hierapolis, a Nestorian bishop, serves as a terminus ante quem, who refers to Cyril’s commentary twice (A.C.O. i. 4. 98-9) and even calls Cyril a heretic for upholding a two-nature Christology.7 Parvis suggests that an exact terminus post quem proves more challenging to establish.8 According to Henry Chadwick, Cyril’s use of ‘hypostatic union’ associates him with the Nestorian controversy because this phrase ‘occurs in none of Cyril’s exegetical works with the exception of the commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews.’9 As Parvis regards, ‘the Commentary must have been written after the outbreak of the Nestorian controversy’ and ‘must fall within a period of, say, five years, with 428 and 432 as outside limits.’10 3. Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological and partitive exegesis Cyril’s Trinitarian and two-nature Christology intrinsically joins together his exegetical practices and theological reasoning. Both a priori theological commitments and exegetical practices mutually inform one another. Lewis Ayres too mentions these patterns in pro-Nicene theologians when he notes, ‘Some of the themes of this reappraisal (i.e., Nicaea and Its Legacy) help us to see how early Christian exegetical practice shapes modes of theological rationality apparent in the period’s controversies.’11 5 P.M. Parvis, ‘The Commentary on Hebrews and the Contra Theodorum of Cyril of Alexandria’, JTS 26 (1975), 415-9, 418. 6 Daniel A. Keating, ‘Divinization in Cyril: The Appropriation of Divine Life’, in The Theology of St Cyril of Alexandria: A Critical Appreciation, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy and Daniel A. Keating (London, 2003), 17. 7 P.M. Parvis, ‘Commentary on Hebrews and the Contra Theodorum’ (1975), 417. 8 Ibid. 417. 9 Henry Chadwick, ‘Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy’, JTS (1951), 146. 10 P.M. Parvis, ‘Commentary on Hebrews and the Contra Theodorum’ (1975), 417, 418. 11 L. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy (2004), 32.

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Early Christian scholars still have room to advance and discuss the framework and paradigms of partitive scriptural exegesis. The following questions come to the fore: how does this reading strategy fit within the whole of proNicene Christological exegesis,12 how do partitive readings relate to the reading culture of the fourth- and fifth-century Christians,13 and, especially for Cyril, how do Cyril’s Christology and partitive readings relate? Within more recent Cyrilline scholarship, Lars Keon, Daniel Keating, MarieOdile Boulnois, and Matthew Crawford briefly mention these reading habits in Cyril’s literature.14 In The Saving Passion, Lars Keon briefly explores Cyril’s partitive readings in the Gospel of John. Maurice Wiles calls this reading practice ‘two-nature exegesis’,15 whereas Keon chooses to name this same pattern partitive exegesis.16 According to Keating, Cyril presents a two-fold sense when reading Scripture: literal and spiritual.17 This binary distinction needs far more nuance than a mere literal and spiritual sense. As Keating nascently describes partitive exegesis, he distinguishes the spiritual readings that point to the divinity of Jesus. ‘The spiritual sense comprehends divine teaching (τὰ θεῖα δόγματα) and the mysteries (τὰ μυστήρια) of the faith, and especially those aspects of the gospels that pertain to and reveal the divinity of Christ.’18 John Behr tentatively defines partitive exegesis that distinguishes between the theological categories and exegetical practices of initial pro-Nicene and non-Nicene thinkers. The issue between the Nicenes and the non-Nicenes is a matter of exegesis. Both sides took Scripture as speaking of Christ. The non-Nicenes, however, insisted on an absolutely univocal exegesis, which applied all scriptural affirmations in a unitary fashion 12 While Kyle Hughes focuses on pre-Nicene prosoponic readings, this project is helpful to consider for future projects on scriptural exegesis. A companion volume could explore partitive scriptural exegesis prior to the Athanasian heritage. Kyle R. Hughes, The Trinitarian Testimony of the Spirit: Prosopological Exegesis and the Development of Pre-Nicene Pneumatology, SVigChr 147 (Leiden, 2018). 13 The following two sources would initiate readers to begin answering how late antique reading culture serves as a larger framework to describe early Christian scriptural exegesis. Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and Its Humanist Reception (New Haven, CT, 1997); Martin Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: “Grammatica” and Literary Theory, 350-1100 (Cambridge, 1994). 14 L. Koen, ‘Partitive Exegesis in Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John’; Marie-Odile Boulnois, Le paradoxe trinitaire chez Cyrille d’Alexandrie: Herméneutique, analyses philosophiques et argumentation théologique, Collection de Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 143 (Paris, 1994); M.R. Crawford, Cyril of Alexandria’s Trinitarian Theology of Scripture (2014). 15 Maurice F. Wiles, The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church (Cambridge, 1960), 137-8. 16 Lars Koen, The Saving Passion: Incarnational and Soteriological Thought in Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John, Studia Dotrinae Christianae Upsaliensia 31 (Stockholm, 1991), 25. 17 D.A. Keating, ‘Divinization in Cyril: The Appropriation of Divine Life’ (2003), 15. 18 Ibid. 15-6.

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to one subject, who thus turns out to be a demi-god, neither fully divine nor fully human – created but not as one of the creatures. And, at least in the modern reading of this, this demi-god is a temporal being, with his own history – the ‘preincarnate Logos’ who eventually, as one phrase in his existence, animates a body, becoming the man Jesus Christ. For the Nicenes, on the other hand, Scripture speaks throughout of Christ, but the Christ of the kerygma, the crucified and exalted Lord, and speaks of him in a twofold fashion, demanding in turn a ‘partitive’ exegesis, some things are said of him as divine and other things are said of him as human – yet referring to the same Christ throughout. Seen in this way, the conflict turns upon two different ways of conceptualizing the identity of Christ.19

As Behr defines, a primary difference between pro-Nicene and non-Nicene is a matter of partitive or univocal Christological readings. Additionally, partitive exegesis exclusively reflects a mode of Christological exegesis about the two natures of the Son. Boulnois, and more briefly Crawford, have discussed Cyril’s practices more recently within Cyrilline literature. Crawford, in particular, notes two occurrences where Cyril brings together theologia and oikonomia as a kind of exegetical rule. In Thesaurus X (PG 75, 121),20 the distinction between theologia and oikonomia ‘functions primarily as a sort of exegetical rule, providing a way of distinguishing the passages that speak of Christ as God and those that refer to him only by virtue of his assumption of flesh.’21 Building from Boulnois and Crawford, I suggest that Cyril’s partitive exegesis assumes the Son’s theologia and oikonomia of the flesh. The phrase ‘economy of the flesh’ occurs with relative frequency to suggest the Son’s activities during the incarnation. It serves as a way to distinguish the seasons of the Son: Son eternal and Son incarnate. Cyril’s partitive readings assume the theologia of a two-natured Son and the oikonomia of the Son. In this way and in particular to his Commentary on Hebrews, Cyril’s scriptural exegesis will distinguish between the Son as divine or the Son as human during the incarnation as a single subject (theologia of the Son) and the economic activities of the incarnated Son that derive from these two natures (oikonomia of the Son). 19

John Behr, The Nicene Faith (2004), 14. Cyril of Alexandria, Thes. X (PG 75, 121; trans. M.R. Crawford, Cyril of Alexandria’s Trinitarian Theology of Scripture [2014], 13): ‘Therefore at each time and for each subject matter let that which is fitting be maintained. On the one hand, let the discourse of theology (τῆς θεολογίας ὁ λόγος) be meditated upon, not all as having to do with those [passages] in which he appears spreading as a man, but as having to do with the fact that he is from the Father, as Son and as God. On the other hand, it is to be ascribed to the economy with the flesh (τῇ οἰκονομίᾳ τῇ μετὰ σαρκός) when he now and then says something that is not fitting to the bare divinity considered in itself. Therefore when he, as a man, says that he is not good in the way that the Father is good, this should be referred rather to the economy with the flesh, and should have nothing to do with the substance of God the Son.’ 21 M.R. Crawford, Cyril of Alexandria’s Trinitarian Theology of Scripture (2014), 13-4; Marie-Odile Boulnois, Le paradoxe trinitaire chez Cyrille d’Alexandrie (1994), 502-3. 20

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4. Cyril’s partitive exegesis in Commentary on Hebrews 1.1-2 (a) The Mutual Tension of a Two-Nature Christology On multiple occasions in Heb. 1:1-2, Cyril holds together the two natures of the Son in mutual tension.22 As he addresses one particular nature, Cyril will be sure to include the other nature. For example, while the Son is the divine begotten Word, Cyril will mention something related to his human nature – or vice versa. In a tongue-in-cheek fashion, Cyril’s arguments reflect an inseparable two-nature theologia of the Son. In other words, as one nature is brought to the fore, Cyril will likewise include the other nature. In the first lengthier section where Cyril models this pattern, Cyril presents a partitive reading of a small phrase in Heb. 1:2: ‘in these last days to us through the Son’. He uses the Philippian hymn as a lens, he points to Psalm 2 and to John 1 to display one particular nature, and he hints at a pro-Nicene X of X Christology. As Cyril mentions Heb. 1:2, he alludes to the Philippian Hymn as an exegetical control. The being of God is known as Emmanuel, and also having been begotten by humanity with us, the Word from God, he is recognized as a free man in the form of a slave. He confesses the fullness of the one emptying himself for us, who was gazing upon the glory of the exalted one, having seated himself for us unto humility.23

While being the Word from God, the Son was begotten by humanity, assumed the form of a slave, emptied himself for humanity, and exalted back to glory for humanity. Next, Cyril joins together Psalm 2 with John 1 to narrate the incarnation. As Cyril moves from the co-eternal Son to the human Son, he will mention both natures concerning one another. Cyril comments, ‘And the Son, indeed then, being by nature and co-eternal with the Father when he endured through of the holy Virgin and the birth according to the flesh for us.’24 The Son is co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father, yet he is brought forth as a human by the Virgin. Cyril quotes Psalm 2:7, John 1:11, and Psalm 2:6 in successive order. He uses these three texts to convey a narrative to display how the Son speaks to us. The Father says to the Son, ‘Today, I have begotten you’, to refer to the incarnation of the Son. Quoting the Gospel of John, Cyril provides the announcement of the Son to humanity: ‘For John has born witness 22 See Greer’s volume that highlights how early Christians interpreted the book of Hebrews. Also, the introductory chapters to Laansma and Treier further attend to the use of Hebrews in early Christian writings. Rowan A. Greer, The Captain of Our Salvation: A Study in the Patristic Exegesis of Hebrews (Tübingen, 1973); Jon C. Laansma and Daniel J. Treier (eds), Christology, Hermeneutics and Hebrews: Profiles from the History of Interpretation (London, 2012). 23 Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 364-5). 24 Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 365).

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concerning him that “he came unto his own” (John 1:11) saying his own is the world.’ And then, the Father says, ‘I have placed a king’ on the earth.25 Even as this string of texts conveys a particular narrative of the incarnation, Cyril displays the tension and presence of the two natures. Cyril next alludes to a mutually present two-nature pro-Nicene Christology. The Son, as he writes, is X of X. It is evident that he is of God and the Father. As he holds up these things, in order that being made into a son as a human, and yet according to nature existing as God, he may pioneer by himself in the human nature the participation of sonship, and he may summon those subjected to the tyranny of sin into the kingdom of heaven.26

The Son derives his origin from the Father, upholds all things, begotten as a human, exists as God, and appears as a human. This back-and-forth between the two natures displays the simultaneous expression of the two natures within a single subject. ‘For he was manifest to us, not that he was at all times the Begotten in himself, for he is also filled with the nature of God. He altogether lacks nothing, he possesses much in abundance since the entire good creation.’27 He was not always in the human begotten form, for he is also filled with the Father’s nature. As the extant fragment of Heb. 1:1-2 concludes, Cyril includes a line of reasoning about the constant divine nature during the Son’s incarnation. After arguing for the economy of the flesh along with the eternally begotten Son, Cyril links three texts together to display the divine theologia of the Son. Heb. 13:8, John 8:58, and John 1:15 are used in consecutive order as prooftexts for the divine theologia during the incarnation. For it is written, ‘Christ Jesus yesterday and today [is] the same and for eternity’ (Heb. 13:8). Because also having appeared in the flesh, he confirmed to himself the former as in the divine nature, he will confirm saying to the Jews, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am’ (John 8:58). The divine John the evangelist also said, ‘The one coming after me ranks above me because he was before me’ (John 1:15). For Christ is enriched in all things and pre-eminent.28

The Son’s experiences and economy of the flesh are an addition to the eternal nature. In this way, Cyril can say that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and for eternity. For, the divine theologia remains immutable. Cyril uses both Johannine texts as proof-texts to describe the pre-immanent and superior Son. All three of these proof-texts highlight the constant divine theologia even during his incarnation.

25 26 27 28

Cyril, Cyril, Cyril, Cyril,

Comm. Comm. Comm. Comm.

Heb. 1.1-2 Heb. 1.1-2 Heb. 1.1-2 Heb. 1.1-2

(Pusey, (Pusey, (Pusey, (Pusey,

III III III III

365). 365). 365). 367).

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Cyril also attributes the divine name, ‘Angel of Great Council’, from Isa. 9:6 to describe the incarnated Son’s activity. In the incarnation of the Son, the Father is made visible to us. For, he is the Only Begotten, and he is not of some other flesh. For, God, being in the flesh, begot a human while remaining God. For, he made the secret will of God the Father visible to us. Similarly: ‘and his name will be called ‘the Angel of Great Counsel’ (Isa. 9:6).29

In making this argument, Cyril upholds the two natures of the Son to be simultaneously concerning the other. As born of a human, he remained God. And in remaining God, the Son made the secret will of God visible to humanity. (b) The ‘Season’ of the Flesh Heb. 1:2 provides the very resources for Cyril to affirm the seasonal positions of the Son. Cyril raises a possible interpretive quandary for Heb. 1:2. Thusly, for us to consider that the divine Paul, being convinced, produced out of necessity the [saying] ‘through whom also you made the world’ (Heb. 1:2), then how can this also be true? For if the holy Virgin had brought Emmanuel into the world in the last seasons of the age, how can he say that the ages were made by him?30

How can the Son be the means by which the world was created and also be brought forth in the last season of the age? To remedy his own question, Cyril provides a line of theological reasoning that simultaneously upholds the begotten nature of the Son and the economy of the flesh. In this way, the Son is begotten of the Father before all time, and the Son in the final season is brought forth by a woman in the economy of the flesh. ‘For the Word having been begotten from the God the Father before all time and season, is said to have been born “upon these last days” fleshly from a woman.’31 Therefore, these seasonal categories offer a small framework for Cyril to speak of the single Son manifested in two different ways. Cyril continues to address the dual natures of the Son as they pertain to the two different seasons: the Son as Word and the Son according to the economy. Even in the last days during the economy of the flesh, the Son will commit no wrong so as not to act contrary to his divine nature. He will completely commit no wrong regarding the ancient ways of godliness, he who has the more recent economy according to nature, nor will he destroy the splendorous

29 30 31

Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 364). Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 366). Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 366-7).

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things belonging to his nature, the former things of his substance. For it is written, ‘Christ Jesus yesterday and today [is] the same and for eternity’ (Heb. 13:8).32

In this last season of the flesh, the Son does not forgo all that he was. In other words, the Son still maintains his divine properties during the economy of the flesh. The human season does not divest the Son of his former substance. For, Cyril appeals to Heb. 13:8 to maintain a consistent and eternal begotten nature of the Son. Earlier in his argument, Cyril presents a prosoponic reading of Ps. 2:7 to note the ‘season’ of the flesh. As the author of Hebrews already provides a general prosoponic reading of Hebrews 1 and the Psalmic catena,33 Cyril uses the present resources to convey intra-Trinitarian dialogue. In Heb. 1:5, the Father never spoke and applied Ps. 2:7 (‘For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”?’) to the angels but to the Son. As Cyril explains: And the Son, indeed then, being by nature and co-eternal with the Father when he endured through of the holy Virgin and the birth according to the flesh for us, as being carried up unto the origin of sonship he said through David, ‘The Lord said to me, “You are my Son, Today I have begotten you”’ (Ps. 2:7). For this very reason, the day of the season being put to place according to each, and it has come about that the flesh produced the manifestation – the Lord existing in the nature entirely.34

Cyril attributes Ps. 2:7 to the Father’s voice addressing the Son to highlight the season of the incarnation. This intra-Trinitarian dialogue situates the Father’s address to the ‘season’ about the flesh. And yet, before underscoring the season of the flesh, Cyril maintains the dual and simultaneous two natures of the Son. The Son is ‘by nature’ and ‘co-eternal’ with the Father, and the Son was brought forth by the Virgin as the origin of sonship. This Virgin birth signals the ‘today’ of the Father’s bringing forth of the Son in the season of the flesh. And now, in the days and season of the flesh, the Son is presented entirely in both of his natures. (c) The Economy of the Flesh and the Speaking Activity Cyril uses the available resources in Heb. 1:1 to address the Triune inseparable activity and to describe the Son who speaks. Even though Heb. 1:1-2 presents the Father as the primary agent of speaking through the agency of the Son,35 Cyril presents the primary agency of the Son who speaks and the secondary agency of the Father who speaks ‘in the Son’. Cyril begins his commentary 32 33 34 35

Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 367). See Pierce, Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews (2020). Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 365). Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary (Louisville, KY, 2006), 64-5.

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explanation with the phrase from Heb. 1:1 ‘“speaking to the fathers through the prophets” Κεφ. α´’.36 In the primitive days, God has spoken by the Spirit and through the prophetic mouths of the saints. The Monogenes Son speaks long ago through the Spirit. By introducing these three persons earlier within his argument, Cyril provides a Trinitarian framework for this particular activity. Was it not, then, the Only Begotten that was speaking long ago through the Holy Spirit to the ancients? It says ‘In many ways’, to represent allegorically urging on worship and the great mystery of his own incarnation.37

The phrase ‘in many ways’ conveys the multi-form way (or to present allegorically; διαμορφοῦσθαι)38 in which the begotten Son has been speaking about the mystery of the incarnation. Cyril uses two proof-texts to suggest the Son as the primary speaking agent and to display the mystery of the incarnation. Quoting Ho. 12:10 and Isa. 52:6-7, Cyril places the agency of speaking upon the lips of the Son. ‘“I increase vision and I am fashioned by the hands of the prophets” (Hos. 12:10) and again “I am he, the one speaking, as the hour upon the mountains as feet announcing the sound of peace, announcing goodness” (Isa. 52:6-7).’39 Cyril argues that it has always been the Son who speaks, but he no longer needs a prophetic mediator now that he has been incarnated. ‘For, at the consummation of the ages, the Son, himself, has spoken to us through himself. No longer intervening as a mediator of the prophet and voice of the saints, but through himself and for us the Begotten one rendered the words for us.’40 The incarnation of the Son is the direct means through which the Son speaks and he no longer requires a prophetic intermediary to speak on his behalf. As Cyril concludes this theological reasoning, he displays how the Son as the eternally Begotten and in the incarnation visibly displays the voice of the Father. To say ‘in the Son’, we say the Father, not as through some special person through having one’s place in the middle and not transmitting one’s own message to you, but rather words from another – but with his own voice the one through the body of the one speaking to you, the Son.41

To say ‘in the Son’, Cyril presents the scriptural language to convey the Father who speaks. So, while in the incarnation, remaining God, the Son speaks. The Son conveys the hidden secrets of the Father made visible in his incarnation.

36 37 38 39 40 41

Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 363). Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 364). G.L. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961), s.v. διαμορφόω 2. Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 364). Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 364). Cyril, Comm. Heb. 1.1-2 (Pusey, III 364).

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5. Conclusion By way of conclusion, Cyril presents his patterns of a partitive reading of Heb. 1:1-2 and at times prosopological readings already patterned in the Psalmic catenae in Hebrews 1. Heb. 1:1-2 are the resources that Cyril draws from, even though the Philippian hymn and several Psalms serve as proof-texts. In the case of the Philippian hymn, Cyril ventures towards a set of exegetical rules. With all these reading strategies and the use of particular proof-texts, Cyril assumes a two-nature single Son in his scriptural exegesis. Thus, Cyril’s partitive exegesis does not remain tethered to Nestorian concerns but displays a sensitivity to the immutability of the eternal divine nature in the human Son.

Goats, Gods, and the Mystery of Christ: Exegesis and Narrative Conflict between Julian and Cyril Brad BOSWELL, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

ABSTRACT When Julian the Apostate set out to undermine Christianity in his polemical Against the Galileans, one of his most powerful weapons was his intimate knowledge of Christian Scripture. He deployed this familiarity regularly, and many of his exegetical arguments were meant to show that Christians were not faithful to the teachings of Moses. One such argument centers on the two goats of Leviticus 16 where Julian discovers yet another Mosaic ritual that Christians do not observe. Julian also discovers in this passage evidence that Moses commanded sacrifices that were consonant with Hellenic teaching about the gods. When Cyril of Alexandria responded to Julian some sixty years later in Against Julian, one of his tasks was to show in exegetical detail how Christians were in fact faithful to the writings of Moses. This task included exegesis of Leviticus 16 which, Cyril argued, had to be understood in light of the mystery of Christ. A curious feature of these rivaling interpretations is the way that an ambiguous Greek term within Leviticus 16 centers both Julian’s and Cyril’s interpretations. This term, ἀποπομπαῖος, was in fact a neologism, coined by the Septuagint translators. Though ἀποπομπαῖος (and its equally ambiguous underlying Hebrew term, Azazel) has long bedeviled modern scholars, Julian and Cyril each confidently built interpretations of the goats of Leviticus 16 on the ambiguous term. This article questions what grounds those confident interpretations and argues that the answer lies in understanding Julian’s and Cyril’s broader engagement as narrative conflict. The narrative backdrops to their traditions provided resources for interpreting Moses and ἀποπομπαῖος. But different narratives – each trying to coopt the episodes of the other’s narrative – yielded different interpretations.

Emperor Julian ‘the Apostate’ thought that Moses was ‘his man’ – a genuine, if relatively insignificant, Hellenic-style legislator and sage. Moses wasn’t as impressive as Plato or Pythagoras; his philosophical vision was as localized as was his lasting influence in the known world. But still, in Julian’s arguments, by Hellenic standards Moses displayed a decent measure of wisdom and leadership among the Hebrews. Moses was, furthermore, at his best when teaching how to carry out religious rituals – and, animal sacrifice in particular, as becomes clear in Julian’s polemical treatise against Christians, Against the Galileans. As I’ll turn to momentarily, Julian took the opening ritual of Leviticus 16 as

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 51-67. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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one of many instances where Moses laudably delivered, as Julian says, ‘precise laws for worship’ (fr. 58).1 Sixty years after Julian died, when Cyril of Alexandria composed his refutation to Against the Galileans, one of his primary tasks was to rebut Julian’s coopting interpretation of Moses. To do so, he had to undermine Julian’s reading of Moses as a Hellenic-style leader, and he had to present a re-fortified Christian reading of Moses. Cyril’s Against Julian is full of these maneuvers, including for Julian’s treatment of the two goats of Leviticus 16. Julian’s and Cyril’s rival interpretations of Moses’s instructions in Leviticus are illuminating – the details of their exegeses reveal two careful and creative readers. Particularly interesting is how the word which centers each of their interpretations, ἀποπομπαῖος, creates a wedge of ambiguity which both leverage towards radically different readings. Furthermore, the way they derive meaning from the ambiguity provides wider insight into the kind of intellectual conflict that obtains between them, a late pagan intellectual and a Christian bishop. Thanks to the ambiguity of this curious term ἀποπομπαῖος we can see with enhanced clarity what is more obscure at other points: that is, we can see that the disagreement between them is fundamentally one of ‘narrative conflict’, which I’ll say more about later. I’m not the first to think that this skirmish over Leviticus 16 illuminates much larger features about the conflict between Julian and Cyril. Christoph Riedweg – whose longsuffering work was integral for the publication of the recent critical edition of Against Julian2 and the resultant growth in scholarly interest – has already offered one analysis of Julian’s and Cyril’s differing treatments of Leviticus 16.3 I largely concur with his descriptive treatment of Julian’s and Cyril’s interpretations. However, he draws rather different larger conclusions about exegesis and intellectual conflict. For now I merely flag that the point I would like to dispute lies at the level of what we can learn about exegesis and intellectual conflict from this particular instance of interpretation between Julian and Cyril. Those larger questions can only be posed after examining the relevant details of the particular case – first, those of Leviticus 16 itself, then of Julian’s interpretation, and finally of Cyril’s rebuttal and counter-exegesis. * 1

The standard edition of Against the Galileans is that of Emanuela Masarrachia, Guiliano Imperatore: Contra Galilaeos, Introduzione, Testo Critico e Traduzione (Rome, 1990). My references to fragments of Against the Galileans follow her numbering. 2 Kyrill von Alexandrien: Gegen Julian, ed. Christoph Riedweg, Wolfram Kinzig and Thomas Brüggemann, 2 vol., GCS NF 20-1 (Berlin, Boston, 2016-2017). 3 Christoph Riedweg, ‘Exegese als Kampfmittel in der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Heiden und Christen: Zum „Sündenbock“ von Lev 16 bei Julian und Kyrill von Alexandrien’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum / Journal of Ancient Christianity 16 (2012), 439-76.

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Let’s look first at Leviticus 16:7-104: 7 καὶ λήμψεται τοὺς δύο χιμάρους καὶ στήσει αὐτοὺς ἔναντι κυρίου παρὰ τὴν θύραν τῆς σκηνῆς τοῦ μαρτυρίου· 8 καὶ ἐπιθήσει Ααρων ἐπὶ τοὺς δύο χιμάρους κλῆρον ἕνα τῷ κυρίῳ καὶ κλῆρον ἕνα τῷ ἀποπομπαίῳ. 9 καὶ προσάξει Ααρων τὸν χίμαρον, ἐφ᾽ ὃν ἐπῆλθεν ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸν ὁ κλῆρος τῷ κυρίῳ, καὶ προσοίσει περὶ ἁμαρτίας· 10 καὶ τὸν χίμαρον, ἐφ᾽ ὃν ἐπῆλθεν ἐπ᾽ αὐτὸν ὁ κλῆρος τοῦ ἀποπομπαίου, στήσει αὐτὸν ζῶντα ἔναντι κυρίου τοῦ ἐξιλάσασθαι ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῦ ὥστε ἀποστεῖλαι αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν ἀποπομπήν· ἀφήσει αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν ἔρημον.

7 And he [Aaron] shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the door of the tent of witness, 8 and Aaron shall place on the two goats one designation5 τῷ κυρίῳ, and one designation τῷ ἀποπομπαίῳ. 9 And Aaron shall present the goat on which the designation τῷ κυρίῳ came and he shall offer it for sin. 10 And the goat on which the designation τοῦ ἀποπομπαίου came, this one he shall set alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, to send it away εἰς τὴν ἀποπομπήν – he shall let it go into the wilderness.

A central difficulty with interpreting this passage centers on the neologism ἀποπομπαῖος, in verses 8 and 10 (and the related ἀποπομπή in verse 106). The fault for this ambiguity does not lie solely with the LXX translators – the Hebrew word which ἀποπομπαῖος renders (‫עזאזל‬, often transliterated and vocalized as Azazel) is itself ambiguous. It occurs in this one passage in the Hebrew Bible and then a few times in the Qumranic literature with different connotations.7 The LXX translators coined ἀποπομπαῖος for its occurrence here in Leviticus 16. Theories about what the Hebrew Azazel means vary: from it being the proper name of a personal being; to it being an etymological mashup of the words for ‘goat’ (ez) and ‘to go away’ (zal), such that Azazel becomes the descriptive name for one of the goats, roughly equivalent to the English word ‘scapegoat’.8 The LXX translators seem to have been after something between 4

The English is the NETS translation, with modifications. The normal translation of κλῆρος is ‘lot’. However, Cyril’s reading of this passage depends on a slightly different interpretation of κλῆρος, which I’ve tried to leave open with the translation ‘designation’. 6 Though ἀποπομπή is not a new word, it occurs only here in the LXX, and only three or four times (according to the TLG) before the LXX translation was made. 7 It occurs in the Ages of Creation (4Q180), Enocha–c (4Q201, 202, 204), Enoch Giantsa (4Q203), and Temple Scrolla (11Q19). In these passages Azazel is the proper name of the leader of those angels that sinned and fell away. See Alexander Maurer, ‘Azazel’, in Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam (eds), Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford, 2008); and Bernd Janowski, ‘Azazel’, in Karel van der Toorn and Bob Becking (eds), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1999), 128-31. For a brief study of the places that Azazel (or at least very close variations) appear in ancient literature, see also Lester L. Grabbe, ‘The Scapegoat Tradition: A Study in Early Jewish Interpretation’, Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 18 (1987), 152-67. 8 For several different ways of construing the etymology, see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus, 3 vol., Anchor Bible 3 (New York, 1991), I 1020-1. 5

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these two possibilities when they coined ἀποπομπαῖος. Corresponding to the latter option, they created a word that, etymologically, includes the notion of being sent (ἀποπομπαῖος is built off of the root πεμπώ, ‘to send’). But, a difficulty with this option is that there is nothing, etymologically-speaking, that indicates that they intended the word ἀποπομπαῖος to label one of the goats itself, meaning the ez portion of this break-down of Azazel is not incorporated. Corresponding to the first of the two options, another possibility is that the ἀποπομπαῖος is not itself one of the goats, and is rather another being, parallel to τῷ κυρίῳ, ‘the Lord’. The parallel grammatical structure of verse 8 supports this possibility: one goat is designated τῷ κυρίῳ, ‘for the Lord’, and one is designated τῷ ἀποπομπαίῳ, ‘for the ἀποπομπαῖος’. However, this grammatical parallelism fails to obtain in verses 9-10, where the first designation is, again, τῷ κυρίῳ (in the dative), but the second designation is τοῦ ἀποπομπαίου (now genitive). The Hebrew underlying each instance of ἀποπομπαῖος in verses 8 and 10 is exactly the same (‫לעזאזל‬, ‘for Azazel’), so the LXX translators presumably wanted to indicate something when they rendered it in Greek with a dative in verse 8 and a genitive in verse 10. Furthermore, they used a different, though very close, word (with the preposition εἰς) in verse 10 – ἀποπομπή – where the underlying Hebrew is, again, the same.9 I’ve yet to see a modern solution that adequately accounts for all of the peculiar linguistic details at play with the term ἀποπομπαῖος in Leviticus 16. This neologism from LXX Leviticus 16 is quite ambiguous, and though that ambiguity can be somewhat limited through philological analysis, the question cannot ultimately be solved through such measures – or at least it has not yet been solved in this way. The ambiguity of the word endures, and it makes much of the ritual as a whole ambiguous. * This ineluctable puzzle did not, however, prevent at least two late ancient interpreters (Julian and Cyril) from confidently incorporating Leviticus 16 into their tradition, which raises the question: what grounds their confident interpretations?10 To answer that question, we must first see how they actually interpret the passage. 9 The same Hebrew also occurs in verse 26 (which does not factor into Julian’s or Cyril’s interpretation), where it is rendered in the LXX with εἰς ἄφεσιν. 10 A third late ancient community that incorporated this passage into their tradition is, of course, that of the Jewish community portrayed in the Mishna tractate Yoma (though their interpretation had to work with the Hebrew term Azazel, not the Greek term ἀποπομπαῖος). For a reconstruction of this practice as outlined in Yoma, see L. Grabbe, ‘The Scapegoat Tradition: A Study in Early Jewish Interpretation’ (1987), 158-9. Daniel Stökl interprets the complex ritual as centering two movements, built on the two goats: the goat to be sacrificed anchored a ‘centripetal’ movement, while the goat on which was laid the sins of the whole people, to be sent into the desert, anchored a ‘centrifugal’ movement. The first goat was sacrificed before the tabernacle,

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As part of his religious reforms, Julian ‘the Apostate’ composed an antiChristian treatise in 363, shortly before departing on his fatal Persian campaign. Julian’s core charge in this treatise, Against the Galileans, was that Christians – ‘Galileans’ – were double apostates: first from Hellenism, to the Hebrew tradition; and, second, from the Hebrews as they innovated their own perverse tradition. Julian treats Leviticus 16 within a long section where he is illustrating the Christians’ departure from the Hebrew tradition by showing how they follow neither the practices nor the teachings of Moses. Julian knew that the plausibility of Christianity depended on its claim to continuity with Moses, and it was this continuity that he strove to sever – or, if not to ‘sever’, then at least to reconfigure. Julian’s actual argument is that true faithfulness to Moses would in fact lead right back to the practices and teachings of Julian’s Hellenic tradition. Within this general argument about Christians failing to follow Moses, Julian introduces Leviticus 16 which shows, he claims, that Moses was well aware of and even esteemed the ‘methods of sacrificing’ found among the Hellenes (fr. 71). Julian offers Leviticus 16 as a straightforward example of his claim about Moses’s Hellenic-friendly sacrificial laws. In this fragment, Julian offers a single introductory sentence and then quotes directly from Leviticus 16:5-8, 15, and 16, and he paraphrases briefly from verse 10. His introductory statement contains the key move: he says, ‘Listen, now, to all that [Moses] says about the ἀποτρόπαιοι’ (fr. 70). As Cyril will adamantly point out, Julian has used a term that is not in the scriptural passage (i.e., ἀποτρόπαιος) in order to help interpret that passage, and specifically to help interpret the ambiguous term ἀποπομπαίος. Though ἀποτρόπαιος itself is a word with many valences,11 Julian invokes a distinct usage as a substantive, referring to divine beings who avert evil. We might translate Julian’s introductory statement as directing a reader’s attention to what Moses says about the ‘apotropaic beings’, or even (to stretch it a bit) to what Moses says about ‘evil-diverting gods’.12 With the reader thus primed, and its blood taken into the holy of holies, and the second goat was led into the desert by a designated person and pushed off a cliff. As will become clear, it is important (in light of Julian’s and Cyril’s interpretations) to note that in this construal each ‘movement’ has reference to the one God. D. Stökl, ‘The Christian Exegesis of the Scapegoat between Jews and Pagans’, in Albert I. Baumgarten (ed.), Sacrifice in Religious Experience (Boston, 2002), 207-32, 208-10. 11 See C. Riedweg, ‘Exegese als Kampfmittel’ (2012), 449-54 for more information on ‘ἀποτρόπαιος’. The most consequential flexibility of the term lies in the fact that it can have different meanings with respect to evil: it can refer to something that repels evil, or to something that is repulsive because it is itself evil. 12 Marie-Odile Boulnois pointed out to me that Julian could be referring to apotropaic sacrifices (not beings), which is also a possible interpretation. Just before introducing fr. 70, Cyril says that Julian had listed several kinds of sacrifices from Moses’s writing (9.13), and commentary from Julian on ‘apotropaic’ sacrifices could naturally follow. However, Julian also likes to find hints in Moses’s texts that he was aware of many gods (see fr. 6, where Julian takes Moses’s God as only the ‘shaper of the underlying matter’, who received materials to work with from other

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Julian quotes from Leviticus, having lit a fuse that will lead directly to the ambiguous word ἀποπομπαῖος and that will undercut, he hopes, any kind of Christian monotheistic interpretation of Moses’s ritual instruction. With Julian’s introductory comment and larger argumentative backdrop in mind, Leviticus 16 gains some possible clarity. Verse 8, again, reads: ‘Aaron shall place on the two goats one designation τῷ κυρίῳ, and one designation τῷ ἀποπομπαίῳ’. Based on Julian’s subtle equation of ἀποπομπαῖος and ἀποτρόπαιος, this verse explains that one goat is designated ‘for the Lord’ and one ‘for the evil-averting being’. One goat, that is, is for the κύριος of Israel, whom Julian portrays elsewhere as simply a localized god charged with governing the small Hebrew nation;13 the second goat is for another divine being who probably dwells on the borderlands of the people in the desert, perhaps protecting their outer boundaries from malevolent forces or disposing of evil accumulated within the community.14 Much more could be said about this passage, but the foregoing adequately sketches one option for understanding what an ἀποπομπαῖος is. For Julian, who is confident that Moses gave laws that are perfectly consonant with Hellenic customs, an ἀποπομπαῖος is but one of the many divine beings in the complex neoplatonic divine hierarchy. In a display of his Hellenic way of thinking and legislating, Moses gave sacrificial laws that correspond to this back-story of a cosmos full of gods, spirits, daemons, etc. He ‘knew the methods of sacrificing’ (fr. 71). Unsurprisingly, Cyril of Alexandria will have none of Julian’s creative interpretation. In his response to fr. 70 in Against Julian 9.15-21, Cyril offers a counter-explanation which, like Julian’s interpretation, centers and builds on the ambiguity of ἀποπομπαῖος. Before providing his own interpretation of Leviticus 16, Cyril first points out that Julian’s mistake is, at one level, that of failing to note that this sacrificial ritual might be a ‘riddle’ or a ‘symbol’ and that there might be more to it than first meets the eye. He briefly detours through the ways that even within Julian’s tradition wise people recognize that beings; see also below about fr. 27 wherein Julian takes God’s comment in Genesis 11:7, ‘Let us…’, as indicating a plurality of gods). Interpreting ἀποτρόπαιοι as ‘evil-averting gods’ fits this pattern. Whatever the case, either interpretation serves the same purpose with respect to the ambiguous term, ἀποπομπαῖος. For Boulnois’ treatment of Cyril’s response about Leviticus 16, see ‘Étude du Contre Julien (IX, 13-20) de Cyrille d’Alexandrie: le conflit pagano-chrétien sur l’interprétation du « bouc émissaire », l’originalité et la postérité de la lecture cyrillienne’, Annuaire de l’École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences religieuses 126 (2019), 223-37. 13 See Against the Galileans fr. 28. This actually raises a slightly more complicated question (about why, according to Julian, Moses sometimes seems to conflate the highest god with the local, ethnarch god of the Hebrews). But that complication has no bearing on fr. 70 and Leviticus 16. 14 To a reader familiar with the whole of Leviticus 16 and sympathetic to Julian’s interpretive drift, the second possibility might be verified by 16:21-2, where Aaron is commanded to place the misdeeds of the community on the second goat and to send it into the desert.

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many laws, aphorisms, and rituals have a symbolic quality (9.15.10-16.26). Julian, Cyril argues, is too obtuse for such interpretive finesse, even though a good Hellene should know to look for something under the surface. Cyril then explains how Leviticus 16 should be read, namely in light of the ‘mystery of Christ’ that is ‘imprinted in the words enigmatically’. To find this deeper meaning, Cyril explains, one has to refine the ‘materiality of the narrative’ (Τὸ … τῆς ἱστορίας πάχος).15 For the process of refining Leviticus 16, Cyril turns to Paul’s statement about Christ in Philippians 2:5-8, and he emphasizes Paul’s dual presentation of Christ who, first, was incomparably superior to all things; but who, second, nevertheless ‘emptied himself’ to the point of death. Cyril suggests that this passage uncovers the meaning of the ritual in Leviticus 16, explaining: ‘For “two” goats are taken … since instead it was necessary for him to be seen both [as] sacrificed for us and dying according to the flesh on the one hand, and as living according to the spirit, on the other hand’. The twofold-ness of Christ illuminates the two goats in Leviticus 16, one of which is τῷ κυρίῳ and the other of which is τῷ ἀποπομπαίῳ. Like several ancient Greek grammarians,16 Cyril suggests that the κλῆροι mentioned in Leviticus 16:8-10 are actually ‘names’ (ὀνόματα) for the goats,17 and he says that the name given to the first goat is ‘the lord’, and the name given to the second goat is ‘the ἀποπομπαῖος’ – perhaps ‘the Sent Away’. The first name indicates the ‘lordly’ status of Christ who, despite that lordly status, was slaughtered. And, the second name indicates the fact that Christ was removed – ‘Sent Away’ – from death through the resurrection. Christ himself, then, is both: the κύριος who was slaughtered for sins, like the first goat; but also the ἀποπομπαῖος – not in the sense of the English word ‘scapegoat’, but, as Cyril says, as ‘one who was sent away (ἀποπεμπόμενος) from the slaughter’ (9.18.16) as he showed himself stronger than death in the resurrection. Cyril also offers a second possible interpretation in 9.19, building again on Scriptural (especially Pauline) linguistic patterns. In this second interpretation, the slaughtered goat stands for Christ, and the ἀποπομπαῖος goat stands for all humans.18 Again, the etymology of ἀποπομπαῖος is the key: Christ as the first 15

9.17.2-5. Cyril’s interpretation occurs throughout 9.17-20. Matthew Crawford discovered this occasional identification of κλῆροι with ὀνόματα among Greek grammarians. See Philoxenus, fr. 117 Theodoridis; Orion, Etymologicum s.v. κλῆρος; Etymologicum gudianum s.v. κλῆρος; Etymologicum Magnum s.v. κλῆρος. See Crawford’s and Aaron Johnson’s forthcoming translation of Against Julian. 17 Cyril says: ‘“Κλῆροι” δὲ καὶ ὀνόματα τοῖς τράγοις…’ (9.18.11-2). 18 In Cyril’s scriptural reasoning, the identification in 2Cor. 5:21 of Jesus with sin itself is central, as is the identification in Hos. 4:8 of sin offerings (especially sacrificial goats, says Cyril) with sins themselves. Cyril thus can identify Jesus as a goat by connecting scriptural linguistic dots: via Paul he identifies Jesus with sin itself, which in turn can (via Hosea) be represented by a sacrifice offered for sin, which sacrifice is in fact often a goat. Jesus’s identification as one goat alongside a second goat representing all humanity shows how Jesus ‘appeared to us in a form like 16

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goat is slaughtered on behalf of humanity, and the other goat who was ‘sent out (ἐξεπέμπετο) from the slaughter’ (9.20.9) is those who are rescued by Christ’s sacrifice. Redeemed humans, says Cyril, became the ἀποπομπαῑοι when Christ sent them away from death and corruption (9.20.46). Cyril has much more to say about Leviticus 16, but this should illuminate at least the basic contours of how he rebuts Julian’s interpretation and, relying on the ambiguous word ἀποπομπαῖος, confidently offers an alternative explanation of the passage. * What should we make of this bit of rival exegesis? As I stressed at the outset, it is incredibly difficult to make sense of the word ἀποπομπαῖος. But now we’ve seen how at least two interpreters center this term in their respective arguments. How can we make sense of these confident interpretations? Christoph Riedweg (with whom my account thus far largely agrees19) has offered one suggestion, and it places hermeneutic method at the center of the explanation. In Riedweg’s account, the dispute between Julian and Cyril over Leviticus 16 exemplifies how disputants in philosophical conflict from late antiquity will often insist that their adversary can only read their authoritative texts literally. At the same time, each disputant will reserve to their own tradition the methods of reading a text allegorically when difficulties arise. After all, Riedweg suggests, every corpus of authoritative texts eventually says something out of fashion with dominant philosophical commitments. In those situations, allegorical interpretation was a ‘Zaubermittel’ – a ‘magical cure’ – for resolving the problem of how an authoritative text could say something that seems flat-out wrong. But, in situations of conflict between traditions, this cure was polemically reserved only for one’s own texts.20

ours, and “was reckoned with the lawless” (cf. Is. 53:12), and according to the meaning of the law-embedded enigmas became … a goat among goats’ (9.19.35-8). 19 Riedweg does seem to think that philological and historical research dispels somewhat more of the ambiguity surrounding ἀποπομπαῖος than I do – he thinks that, at least when the term was coined, the ritualistic background of its word family would have made it fairly clear that ‘ἀποπομπαίος’ was meant to refer to some agent who actively removes evil (see ‘Exegese als Kampfmittel’ [2012], 454-60, especially 455-6 and 458). This conclusion agrees, more or less, with Julian (though without the extensive neoplatonic back-story), and it accords with the grammatical parallelism of verse 8 (τῷ κυρίῳ and τῷ ἀποπομπαίῳ). However, also like Julian (who leaves out verses 9-10 in his excerpt in Against the Galileans), in this article Riedweg does not give an account of how such an interpretation of ἀποπομπαῖος makes sense of the lack of grammatical parallelism in verses 9-10 (τῷ κυρίῳ and τοῦ ἀποπομπαίου). The LXX translators could have used the dative τῷ ἀποπομπαίῳ in verse 10 if they wanted it to clearly refer to an agent, parallel to ‘τῷ κυρίῳ’, who removes evil, but they did not do so (even though the underlying Hebrew, as I mentioned above, is the same in verses 8 and 10). Ambiguity endures. 20 See C. Riedweg, ‘Exegese als Kampfmittel’ (2012), 442-4 and his conclusion at 476.

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This explanation might account for certain details of Julian’s and Cyril’s arguments about Leviticus 16. We could call Julian’s reading ‘literal’. And, it’s possible (though unlikely) that Julian might have stipulated (in a non-extant portion of Against the Galileans) that Christians weren’t allowed to resort to allegorical readings, as Riedweg speculates.21 It’s also true that Cyril’s counterinterpretation of Leviticus 16 is, loosely speaking, ‘allegorical’, and that elsewhere in his refutation Cyril does read many of Julian’s perhaps-embarrassing authoritative texts in a straightforward, or ‘literal’, way when Julian himself would have preferred an ‘allegorical’ reading. Still, there are problems with this explanation, and there are problems more generally with centering hermeneutical method as the governing criterion for an explanation. First, by slotting Cyril’s and Julian’s interpretations into ‘allegorical’ and ‘literal’ readings we move too quickly beyond the question of what an ἀποπομπαῖος actually is. In other words, it’s still not at all clear to me what the ‘literal’ meaning of ἀποπομπαῖος is, and hence what a ‘literal’ interpretation of Leviticus 16 would precisely be. In fact, in some ways, both Julian and Cyril interpret this term very ‘literally’: Julian connects it to ἀποτρόπαιος, which has strong semantic resonances; and Cyril’s interpretation comes from a careful etymological reading of ἀποπομπαῖος, built on how something is ‘sent’ (-πομπ-) ‘away’ (ἀπο-). The rivaling interpretations are so interesting, in part, because it’s just not clear what the literal meanings of certain details of Leviticus 16 even are. Second, and perhaps most importantly, Riedweg’s explanation implicitly critiques these exegetes as inconsistent and arbitrary in their polemical maneuvering. In his account, the hermeneutic rule that they employ cannot be consistently applied to all the parties involved, and it amounts to little more than arbitrary stipulations, as unprincipled ‘weaponry’ (his article title is, after all, ‘Exegese als Kampfmittel…’). It may be the case, of course, that Julian and Cyril were arbitrary and unprincipled in their polemical engagements. However, an illuminating account of their exegetical strategies that reads ‘with’ the exegetes’ own commitments is preferable to one that fails to consider how an internally consistent exegetical program might produce the results that we find in Against the Galileans and in Against Julian. I’ll offer an account along these more charitable lines shortly. The third and final problem with Riedweg’s conclusion is more prosaic but can also be illustrated more concretely: his explanation fails to account for many of the other exegetical disputes between Against the Galileans and Against Julian. There is very little evidence that either Julian or Cyril tried to bluntly pre-determine their opponents’ reading methods to hostile purpose, and if we look at their respective texts more broadly, Riedweg’s general explanation about how polemical exegesis proceeds simply doesn’t hold up. 21

Ibid. 460.

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For the sake of space, I’ll only offer one counterexample of another exegetical dispute that does not conform to Riedweg’s suggestion. This dispute revolves around the story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11. Julian’s treatment of Cyril’s authoritative text is, if anything closer to ‘allegorical’, while Cyril’s treatment is closer to ‘literal’ – though, as will become clear, this example also shows problems with centering the interpretive options of ‘literal’ and ‘allegorical’. This example is also illustrative because in the course of the argument Cyril gives a non-literal interpretation to one of Julian’s authoritative texts in order to save it from appearing nonsensical. In other words, this example counters Riedweg’s general account of exegesis in polemics in almost every respect. Julian treats the Tower of Babel in frs. 23, 24, and 27, all contained in book 4 of Cyril’s Against Julian. These fragments are part of a larger argument in which he compares and contrasts Hebrew and Hellenic teachings about ‘the nations’, which is itself part of an even larger project of comparing and contrasting Hebrew and Hellenic teachings writ large.22 It is important to note that Julian’s general strategy seems to be to prove that Moses’s teachings are generally correct, though limited in their scope. In the fragments surrounding his treatment of Genesis 11, Julian defends his neoplatonic account of a hierarchy of divinities by pointing out how the diversity of features among humans is explained by the diversity of ruling divinities. In his account, these ‘ethnarch gods’ were each assigned a nation which they rule ‘in a way conforming to themselves’ (οἰκείως ἑαυτῷ) (fr. 21). The various characteristics among the gods thus produce differences in all kinds of human customs and laws (frs. 22, 26), and even in their bodies (fr. 26). Julian introduces Moses’s account of the differentiation of languages as a (partial) contrast to his own Hellenic and maximal explanation for the many kinds of differences evident among the nations. Moses’s story about the tower at Babel is, he says, ‘entirely mythic (κομιδῇ μυθώδη)’ (fr. 23). How, Julian asks, could Christians believe the account in Genesis 11 while, at the same time, disbelieving the Hellenic account of the Aloadai giants who (as recorded in Homer’s Odyssey and elsewhere) tried to stack up mountains on one another so that they could storm Mount Olympus? He proceeds to explain how a straightforward (we could say ‘literal’) reading of Moses’s account is unbelievable: even were we to grant perfect cooperation among a monolingual humanity, Julian says, there could never be enough bricks to reach the moon, let alone the heavens, the stated objective of the people of Babel. So far, this might seem to support Riedweg’s suggestion that one exegete (Julian) forces a literal reading on his opponent’s authoritative text (Genesis). 22 Julian outlines his argumentative plan in fr. 3, where he states that this compare/contrast program will be the second stage of the argument. The comparison of what Hebrews and Hellenes teach about the nations begins in fr. 19, which follows on his similar comparing and contrasting of teachings on cosmogony in roughly frs. 6-19 (excepting 7 and 11).

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However, as I argue in more detail elsewhere,23 by calling Moses’s text ‘mythic’, Julian actually signals that he thinks truth lies concealed within Moses’s text. He does not fully explain what content a mythic (we might say ‘allegorical’) interpretation yields, but he does provide hints. In fr. 27 he draws attention to the fact that, according to Moses, God says ‘Let us go down’ to confuse the language (Gen. 11:7). Julian explains that, though Moses does not say who went down with God, ‘it is quite clear (εὔδηλον) that he understood those who went down with him to resemble him (παραπλησίους)’, i.e., that they are other divinities. Julian takes this as evidence that Moses illustrates, albeit in a limited fashion, the larger pattern that Julian has already explained for his neoplatonic theology: just as the diversity of human features writ large are caused by a variety of ruling agents, so with Moses the diversity of languages was caused by a variety of divine beings at Babel. Julian thus eschews a literal reading of Genesis 11 as impossible and offers, instead, an interpretation that is perhaps loosely ‘allegorical’, and he seems to do so to save Moses’s text from looking irredeemably ridiculous. But ‘allegorical’ may not even be the best description; it is probably better described simply as an interpretation that uncovers what the author has intentionally hidden – before explaining the passage’s real import, Julian claims that Moses ‘knowingly veiled (ἐπεκάλυπτε … εἰδώς)’ the matter. How does Cyril treat his own authoritative text? By Riedweg’s suggestion, he should have provided an allegorical interpretation to avoid the problems that Julian levied. If anything, however, he doubles down on a literal reading. Cyril explains in Against Julian 4.31 that God confused the language of the people at Babel because they were toiling in vain, and by halting the construction project God thus helped them. Cyril notices that the prior plot point in the narrative of Genesis was the flood that covered the whole earth. With this in mind, he suggests that the tower project at Babel was the people’s attempt to create a refuge in case God were to send another flood. Cyril explains that such an endeavor was not only impious (the people thought they were smart enough to escape God’s power) – it was also unnecessary, since God had sworn to never destroy the earth again by a flood. God thus mixed up the languages so they could not waste their energy on a wicked and useless project. To Julian’s suggestion that building a tower into heaven would be impossible, Cyril simply explains that this is ‘hyperbolic’ (ὑπερβολικῷ) speech, and it is in fact the ‘custom’ (ἔθος) of Scripture to speak this way.24 To illustrate this custom of scriptural speech, he cites from Psalm 106(107):23-6 where sailors who are caught in a storm are said to ‘ascend to the heavens (ἕως τῶν οὐρανῶν) and 23 Brad Boswell, ‘Moses the Hellenic Sage: Re-reading Julian’s Against the Galileans’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 30 (forthcoming 2022). 24 For a brief treatment of Cyril’s use of ὑπερβολή, see Alexander Kerrigan, St. Cyril of Alexandria: Interpreter of the Old Testament (Rome, 1952), 80-1.

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descend to the depths’ (4.32.1-11). This passage, of course, does not mean that sailors actually make it to the heavens on stormy waves; they are only carried very high. Cyril’s response is thus in some sense ‘literal’: he grounds the interpretation of Genesis 11 in the larger sweep of the (literal?) narrative of Genesis. But his explanation of ‘hyperbolic’ language is hard to categorize with a simple ‘literal’ versus ‘allegorical’ rubric. ‘Grammatical’ or ‘rhetorical’ would probably work better.25 Of further interest is how Cyril briefly comments on the Aloadai giants. By Riedweg’s conclusion about polemical exegesis, he should have insisted on a ‘literal’ reading of this Homeric passage, and that literal reading should have undercut Julian. Instead, Cyril claims that Homer’s language is (like Moses’s) ‘hyperbolic’. He explains that Homer is speaking about ‘hot-headed and arrogant’ youths who, as a sign of their vanity, ‘raised their eyes to heaven’. So, says Cyril, when these youths are said to try to stack up mountains and make ‘heaven’ ‘accessible’, Homer is simply speaking ‘hyperbolically’ (ὑπερβολικῶς) about their vanity (4.32.12-26). As with Cyril’s treatment of the language of Genesis 11, it is hard to classify his explanation of the Aloadai as ‘literal’ or ‘allegorical’. Whatever, the case, Cyril’s point is the opposite of what Riedweg suggests we should find (i.e., that Cyril is reading Julian’s own text literally to produce results that are problematic for Julian). Rather, in this case Cyril offers an interpretation of Homer that saves him from being liable to criticism of poetic excess or folly. I could give further examples, but this exegetical skirmish around Genesis 11 should be adequate to cast doubt on Riedweg’s general conclusion about exegesis between different traditions.26 It is true that there are several other examples of Cyril resorting to non-literal interpretations of his own texts to rebut accusations from Julian,27 but there are also several exegetical arguments wherein 25 It’s also noteworthy that Cyril, like Julian, invests the plural ‘Let us go down…’ of Genesis 11:7 with meaning. In one sense, he and Julian both deploy the same method of close reading and discover the same grammatical oddity of a switch between singular and plural subjects. But Cyril explains it quite differently: ‘Moses knew the sacred and one nature of divinity in a holy Trinity. It was for this reason that he used in one place the singular, and in another place the plural’. Cyril furthermore confirms that this is a Mosaic pattern of speech by comparing it to Genesis 1:26: ‘Let us [plural] make man according to our image [singular]’ (4.44.25-8). The plural thus indicates for Cyril the three members of the Trinity rather than several gods. There are thus a variety of interpretive tools at play between Julian’s and Cyril’s exegeses, and they even sometimes deploy the same tools for the same passages, though to different ends. 26 The next clearest example is actually within the argument over Leviticus 16. As I mentioned already, Cyril’s first response to Julian’s comments on Leviticus 16 is to suggest that Julian’s own tradition has examples of riddles and enigmas, a fact which should have prepared Julian to interpret Leviticus 16 enigmatically. In other words, far from proscribing non-literal reading strategies for Julian’s authoritative texts, Cyril himself introduces several examples of Hellenic texts and sayings that require non-literal interpretation. 27 Against Julian 9.32-47 contains several examples of Cyril applying non-literal (he doesn’t call them ‘allegorical’, but they would fit the category as Riedweg uses it) interpretive methods to different parts of Moses’s texts.

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Julian and Cyril offer different versions of a straightforward or literal interpretation.28 If there is a general conclusion to be drawn from the dueling exegeses of Leviticus 16, and if that conclusion is to also explain the other exegetical skirmishes of Against the Galileans and Against Julian, it will have to proceed by some way other than using hermeneutical method as its central criterion. Cyril and Julian both use a variety of interpretive methods across their own and their opponent’s authoritative texts. The more fruitful question is what governs the deployment of those methods and, more importantly, for what larger interpretive goals they are deployed. * Like Riedweg, I do think Julian’s and Cyril’s treatments of Leviticus 16 are indicative of a more general exegetical pattern, but I also think that their treatments of the ἀποπομπαῖος can be explained in a way that helps make sense of the other exegetical disputes throughout their texts. Furthermore, I think an explanation can be provided which presumes that Julian’s and Cyril’s interpretive methods were informed not by exegetical double standards but by concern for demonstrating a consistent way of reasoning about and living in the cosmos. In short, Julian and Cyril were engaged in ‘narrative conflict’, a concept I loosely derive from Alasdair MacIntyre’s analysis of conflict between traditions. In MacIntyre’s account, something like a narrative backdrop frames and informs the patterns of living and reasoning in a given tradition of life and thought. When some traditions come into intellectual conflict, he explains, they do not share enough rational standards by which to adjudicate their disagreements, and in such cases intellectual conflict will sometimes arise at the level of the narrative backdrop. In this kind of conflict MacIntyre suggests that ‘that narrative prevails over its rivals which is able to include its rivals within it’, which includes the attempt to ‘retell their stories as episodes within its story’.29 28 Genesis 6:1-4 centers one such argument. In fr. 67 Julian comments on Moses’s description of the ‘sons of God’ and ‘daughters of men’ coming together and producing ‘giants’. He suggests that the ‘sons of God’ must be angels and, in fact, gods, since their union with humans produced ‘giants’. Cyril’s counter-explanation in Against Julian 9.11-2 deploys the same two reading strategies that he used for with Genesis 11: he appeals to the ‘custom’ of Scripture (which regularly uses the term ‘giants’ to refer to savage men), and he situates the specific episode in the larger narrative of Genesis. According to Cyril, the ‘daughters of men’ are the wicked descendants of Cain, and the ‘sons of God’ are the righteous descendants of Seth (whose genealogies are recorded in Genesis 4 and 5, respectively); these two lines of descent mixed, and their offspring were ‘giants’, culminating in the near-universal wickedness of humanity (which prompts the flood, right after Genesis 6:1-4). Cyril thus interprets Genesis 6:1-4 as the hinge in the narrative between the preceding genealogies and the subsequent flood narrative. Neither Julian’s nor Cyril’s interpretation are ‘allegorical’. Both are perhaps ‘literal’ in the sense that they make claims about a historical reality depicted in Genesis 6:1-4. They simply differ on what that historical reality actually is. 29 Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (South Bend, IN, 1991), 81. My framing is also informed by Kavin Rowe, who

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This, generally, is what is occurring in Julian’s and Cyril’s exegetical disagreement over Leviticus 16: Moses and his ritual law are an ‘episode’ that both Julian and Cyril are trying to tell as, respectively, a characteristically Hellenic and a characteristically Christian ‘episode’. This ‘narrative conflict’ framework explains the larger conflict as well as how Julian and Cyril confidently interpret ἀποπομπαῖος in Leviticus 16. Neither reads the passage in a vacuum (of course), but each brings assumptions about the text, and those assumptions – entwined within their tradition-constitutive narratives – ground their interpretive confidence. That’s my general theory, at least. We need to see how it works in its particulars next. In the barest form of its relevant details, Julian’s narrative backdrop begins with the neo-Platonic one, the ‘common king and father of all things’ (fr. 20), as he calls it. This common king is the source of a cosmos densely-packed with spiritual agents of varying power, characteristics, and roles. As I noted above, these ‘ethnarch’ gods rule over their appointed nation with a subordinate divine bureaucracy of sorts, and their individual characteristics determine the unique differences of each nation. In Julian’s Hellenic narrative, the ancient Hebrew people were one nation within this expansive, cosmic hierarchy, and Moses was clearly their chief legislator and founding figure. As I’ve mentioned already, for Julian, Moses attained some success in philosophical speculation, and he also received laws from the Hebrews’s ethnarch god, the κύριος. That philosophical speculation and those laws are uniquely Hebrew, in one sense; but more generally they are obviously consonant with Hellenic thought and practice. The apparent monotheistic and even proto-Christian teachings that seem to be in Moses stem from the fact that later generations distorted Moses’s teachings and even corrupted his very texts.30 With this ‘back-story’ in mind, it becomes clear how Julian confidently discovered the meaning of ἀποπομπαῖος. He read Leviticus looking for evidence of Moses’s awareness of the Neoplaontic hierarchy of divinities and the accompanying ritual laws, and he found just such evidence in Leviticus 16 where Moses commands one goat to be sent to the local ethnarch god of the Jews, the κύριος, and the other to be sent to another member of the governing spiritual bureaucracy off in the desert. This being, the ἀποπομπαῖος, is an apotropaic being, quite literally, and Julian discerns this against the backdrop of his tradition’s narrative. This interpretation of Leviticus 16 is, indeed, ‘literal’, but it is Julian’s larger narrative about Moses’s place in the cosmos that shows him further developed MacIntyre’s arguments for One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions (New Haven, CT, 2016), in which see chapter 7, ‘Can We Compare?’ and especially 199-205. 30 See fr. 34 for Ezra’s rewriting of at least parts of Moses’s texts. See fr. 58 for mention of the ἐπιγινομένοι (‘those who came after’ Moses) and the prophets who distorted Moses’s teachings (fr. 79 also uses ἐπιγινομένοι to describe a different set of people who ‘came after’ founding figures and distorted the original teaching).

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that he needs to interpret Moses’s sacrificial prescriptions ‘literally’. With this background in mind, it makes perfectly good sense to read Moses’s laws as straightforward, literal commands for how a people should interact with their ruling gods. Cyril, too, has a way of resolving the ambiguity of Leviticus. The derivation of his exegetical explanation, as with Julian’s, becomes clear in light of the narrative backdrop of his tradition. His narrative is well known, since it is the dominant Christian position of his day, in its general contours. What bears emphasizing is the fact that Cyril, working from the transformative vantage point of the aftermath of Jesus’ ministry, thought that the laws of the Hebrew Scriptures are in fact ‘but a shadow of the good things to come’ (Heb. 10:1).31 The Mosaic law’s worship that is rooted to a particular place and to materialistic rituals was always intended to be temporary and to lead towards a worship that is ‘in spirit and in truth’ (Jn. 4:24)32 – and, all of this has been made clear in the ‘mystery of Christ’. When Cyril read Leviticus 16, then, he was looking for how the details about the promised Christ were foreshadowed in the details of the ritual. He was inclined, in other words, to see a μυστήριον in the text. That mystery, ‘sketched (σκιαγραφούμενον) in the two goats’ (9.18.1-2), was illuminated in Christ, and that illumination initiated the uncovering of a ‘second narrative’ upon a rereading of the Old Testament law, to use David Steinmetz’s phrase.33 Cyril thus noted that there were two goats and further noted that many biblical presentations of Jesus give a twofold account of him, as a character who died and came back to life, as both a man and God. Though I skipped over these details earlier, in his response to Julian Cyril also tracked how numerous details about Moses’s levitical ritual connect in a systematic and orderly way to various features of Christ’s life and death, to his ministry, to the work of his apostles, and so forth.34 All these commitments were connected to Cyril’s larger narrative of a Triune, creative God, and of this God’s continual rectifying of human sins throughout history. This narrative tells of a salvation which had to be revealed gradually, in shadows and enigmas, due to God’s willingness to

31 Lee Blackburn has called attention to ‘the especially heavy shadow that the Epistle to the Hebrews casts over Cyril’s treatment of the Mosaic cult. Although Cyril occasionally quotes particular verses from Hebrews, it is the epistle’s grounding of the claim of the superiority of Christ’s priestly work to the rites of the levitical priesthood in a figural reading of the tabernacle cult that most decisively shaped Cyril’s approach’. See ‘The Mystery of the Synagogue: Cyril of Alexandria on the Law of Moses’ (PhD diss, University of Notre Dame, 2010), 57-8. 32 See ch. 4 of Robert L. Wilken’s Judaism and the Early Christian Mind (New Haven, CT, 1971) on the centrality of John 4:24 for Cyril’s interpretation of the Old Testament and Judaism. 33 David C. Steinmetz, ‘Uncovering a Second Narrative: Detective Fiction and the Construction of Historical Method’, in Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (eds), The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI, 2003), 54-65. 34 See 9.18.20-43.

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accommodate the epistemically weak state of his people.35 All these commitments were fundamental in Cyril’s interpretation of Leviticus 16 and the ἀποπομπαίος. As with Julian, it was Cyril’s larger narrative that shows him how to read the Mosaic law. The ‘narrative conflict’ rubric also explains other exegetical disputes throughout Against the Galileans and Against Julian, even disputes wherein Julian and Cyril employ interpretive methods other than those they used for Leviticus 16. As already noted, Julian suggests that Moses ‘veiled’ something within Genesis 11 on the Tower of Babel. Since in Julian’s narrative Moses is a sage-like character with accurate (but limited) insight about divine matters, Julian would expect to find glimpses of wisdom hidden in his texts – such as an awareness that a multiplicity of divine causes are required to produce a multiplicity of human features.36 Julian’s narrative about Moses explains that some of his texts are myths (like Genesis 11) which require a certain kind of interpretation, and that some of his texts are straightforward laws from an ethnarch god (like in Leviticus 16), which require another kind of interpretation. Cyril similarly works within a narrative that takes some of Moses’s texts to be straightforward history (like the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11) and explains some to be enigmas (like Moses’s law in general and Leviticus 16 in particular). Furthermore, much of Cyril’s first book of Against Julian is a hermeneutical narrative explaining how Hellenic authors are full of error but still contain glimpses of truth (which they found directly and indirectly from Moses’s texts). Cyril explains that Homer specifically may have too much ‘fondness for myths’ (τὸ φιλόμυθον), but ‘we still will find that he was not entirely ignorant of the truth’ (1.37.1-2) – a general stance that undergirds his interpretation of Homer’s account of the Aloadai giants. * Labeling the disagreement that obtains between Julian and Cyril as ‘narrative conflict’ thus provides better resources for explaining their various interpretive decisions than does Riedweg’s treatment of exegesis as arbitrarily-deployed rhetorical weaponry. Furthermore, this explanation shows how both Julian and Cyril were endeavoring to reason from and about texts (their own and their rival’s) in a way that was consistent within their larger patterns of thought. They were, of course, interested in winning disputes, but in this debate they did not advance or presume arbitrary exegetical mandates against their opponents. 35 The theme of gradual revelation is scattered throughout Against Julian. See 4.15-8 and 9.25-31 for Cyril’s systematic account of how the Mosaic law fit into this accommodating scheme. 36 Julian might furthermore expect Moses to hide this nugget of theological wisdom. He explains appropriate myth-making in detail in Oration 7, including the rationale for hiding truths within myths so as to not ‘sully’ lofty truths with ‘unclean’ ears (see 216C especially, and 206C-D for the explanation that early myths were written for people not yet ready for the straightforward truth).

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They may have sometimes read their opponent’s texts in ways that their opponents would not have agreed to, but each of them had reasons for doing so that were justifiable – at least by standards derived from their own tradition’s narrative and mode of reasoning. Tracing those larger interpretive standards in detail for each disputant would be a much larger project. But, at the very least, we can see from the rival accounts of the ambiguous term ἀποπομπαῖος how the exegetical strategies used by Julian and Cyril for Leviticus 16 were governed. Whether Moses’s goats were seen to reveal something about the gods or to foreshadow the mystery of Christ depended on Julian’s and Cyril’s traditional narratives and their connected forms of textual reasoning.

Salvation and the Soul of Christ in Cyril of Alexandria Andrew MERCER, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA

ABSTRACT Henry Chadwick once claimed that ‘Cyril [of Alexandria] has nothing to say about the part played by Christ’s soul in the Passion’, and others have made similar observations regarding the inattention given to the soul in Cyril’s Christology. Against these claims, I will argue in this article that Cyril’s entire vision of the economy of salvation hinges on the fact that the Logos assumed ensouled flesh. I will focus on Cyril’s early writings, since it has been recognized that Cyril became more explicit about Christ’s soul after his dispute with Nestorius came to fore. The works I will use to prove my thesis are Cyril’s early Festal Letters, written between 414 and 427. The letters naturally bear recurring themes related to the Passion of Christ. Cyril follows his predecessor Athanasius, I argue, in seeing the primary purpose of the incarnation as making it possible for the Logos to taste death on behalf of humanity, in order to undue the corruptive effects of sin, the chief of which is death itself. Cyril held the standard view of death as the separation of soul and body, and thus the event of Christ’s death only makes sense for him if Christ had a real human soul. I will conclude by offering an explanation of why Cyril may not have spent much time expounding the extent to which Christ’s soul suffered or did not suffer in the Passion, since this has also contributed to the debate over Cyril’s Christological psychology.

Since the middle of the last century, one of the consistent critiques of the christology of Cyril of Alexandria has been that he either failed to recognize the significance of Christ’s human soul or that, recognizing it, he failed to offer an adequate explanation of the significance of Christ’s human soul. At best, Cyril affirmed the necessity of Christ having a rational soul from an early date but simply focused his attention elsewhere. At worst, the archbishop was basically ignorant of the error of Apollinarius and unwittingly inherited the same assumption until, quite embarrassingly, his ignorance was made public during the Nestorian controversy.1 Frances Young helpfully lays out the variety of 1 Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol 1. (Atlanta, 1975), 414-5. ‘The younger Cyril of Alexandria, bishop since 412, seems to know nothing of the whole christological controversy between the time of Athanasius and his own… If we examine the characteristics of the christology of the earlier works of Cyril, we find nothing but Athanasius. The whole controversy with Apollinarianism waged by Antiochenes, Cappadocians and even by the Alexandrians themselves seems to have passed without leaving any trace on his theology.’

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views at play here. She writes: ‘It has been commonly accepted that Cyril’s position belongs to the Word-flesh tradition of Alexandria, and that he never really makes the soul of Christ a “theological factor” in his Christology. Some have suggested that Cyril is incapable of doing real justice to the humanity of Christ, and his rejection of Apollinarianism is merely superficial. Nevertheless, alerted to the condemnation of Apollinarius, he did consistently explain σάρξ (flesh) as meaning a human being with a soul and a mind, and some have argued that the complete humanity of Christ is an indispensable element in his soteriological thought’.2 From what I gather, what is typically meant by making the soul a ‘theological factor’ is either assigning it an active role in the life of the Incarnate Word, particularly through suffering in the passion, or emphasizing its mediating position between the assumed material body and the divine person who assumed it. Regarding the former, the view held by some is that the human soul of Christ is entirely passive for Cyril, at least in his early years, and this view is sometimes shared even by those who seek to defend the importance of the soul in Cyril’s christology.3 While these somewhat negative appraisals of Cyril’s teaching on the humanity of Christ continue to be in circulation, in recent decades there has also risen a fairly substantive body of work aiming to counter these narratives. The works of Richard Norris, Lawrence Welch, Bernard Meunier, Steven McKinion, John McGuckin, and Paul Gavrilyuk – to name a few – at a minimum have dispelled the ideas that Cyril knew and said nothing of Christ’s soul before the Nestorian controversy and that the question of Christ’s soul was unimportant to his overall christological narrative. That Christ possessed a rational soul in Cyril’s early writings and that his integral humanity was necessary for salvation for Cyril is now difficult to deny. In this brief presentation, I have two goals: 1) to contribute to these corrective accounts by showing that Cyril’s vision of the passion of Christ only makes sense in light of Christ’s possession of a rational soul, and 2) to offer some explanation as to why Cyril does not elaborate more than he does on the specific part played by Christ’s soul in the narrative of Christ’s life. In pursuing both goals I will focus almost entirely on the works of Cyril generally agreed on by scholars to have been composed before the Nestorian controversy, since this is the period in which Cyril’s christological psychology is often viewed as lacking to varying degrees of severity. When possible, I will highlight texts from the annual letters written by the patriarch of Alexandria to announce the date of Easter, since these can be dated with relative certainty. To begin with, several important elements are found in Cyril’s Paschal letter for the year 420. First, he identifies an interpretive principle that is found in works throughout his corpus, namely that the word σάρξ ‘flesh’ refers to the whole human nature, not merely the material aspect. In this case, he is speaking 2 3

Frances Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, 2010), 316. Steven McKinion, Words, Imagery, and the Mystery of Christ (Leiden, Boston, 2000), 175.

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of the Johannine phrase ‘the Word became flesh’, but elsewhere Cyril admits that he adopts the same habit in his own manner of speech. Herman Diepen appears to be the first to have pointed this out and Welch’s work removes any doubt that whenever Cyril speaks of Christ’s flesh, he is likely referring to his complete humanity.4 Second, Cyril specifically correlates the rational soul ψυχὴν λογικήν of Christ with his body. ‘For God the Word did indeed dwell as in his own temple, the body assumed from a woman, which has the rational soul. But he transforms what was assumed into his own glory’.5 The significance of Cyril’s admission that the rational soul of Christ was glorified will be discussed further on. Here I simply note his profession of the rational soul of Christ well before he was accused of espousing the view of Apollinarius. Finally, in his eighth Paschal letter Cyril makes clear that he follows Athanasius in believing the primary motive for the Word becoming flesh was to conquer death on behalf of the human race. ‘For we were all in Christ, inasmuch as he became a human being without sin: “And he took for himself the descendants of Abraham”, as it is written, in order that “having been made like his brothers and sisters in every respect”, he might conquer death when he became a human being. For this is the whole purpose of the economy of the Incarnation’.6 It is important to reiterate exactly what Cyril is saying here. He is claiming that the principal reason for the Logos becoming human was to die as a human and on behalf of all humanity in order to defeat the power death had over it. This is rather basic, but provides a foundation from which to reason about the role played by Christ’s soul in Cyril’s thought. In his letter for the year 423 he repeats a similar idea. After once again proclaiming the humanity of Christ to be complete or perfect, he goes on to say: ‘But he, although he was by nature life, allowed his flesh to suffer death for us in the economy “that he might be Lord of the dead and of the living”, as is written. For, having descended into hell, preached to the spirits there, opened the ever-locked gates to those below, and emptying the insatiable recesses of death, he revived on the third day’.7 As it relates to the question at hand, it should be asked how Cyril understands Christ’s descent into hell. Specifically, was any aspect of Christ’s humanity involved in this? If he did not envision it being the human soul of Christ that made the ‘descent’ then he would have to be interpreted as believing it was simply the divine Word, without the cooperation of his now dead flesh, somehow communicating to the souls of the departed. 4

Herman Diepen, Aux origines de l’anthropologie de saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie (Paris, 1957), 37. Lawrence Welch, ‘Logos-Sarx? Sarx and the Soul of Christ in the Early Thought of Cyril of Alexandria’, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38 (1994), 271-92. Welch also notes that this is one way in which Cyril makes a genuine advance beyond Athanasius. 5 FL 8.6; translated by Philip Amidon, St. Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letters 1-12 (Washington, 2009), 152. 6 FL 8.6; trans. Amidon, 153. 7 FL 11.8; trans. Amidon, 214.

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Luckily, Cyril elsewhere explains more explicitly that it was the soul of Christ that made its way down to hell. ‘What is so paradoxical and universally astonishing is that a body that is naturally corruptible should rise again (for it belonged to the incorruptible Word), while a [human] soul, after being allotted the task of joining with the Word in a unity, descended into Hades and also, by making use of a power and authority that is proper to God, showed himself to the spirits there’.8 The mission, so to speak, of the soul of Christ between crucifixion and resurrection, surely reveals that it at least has an active part to play in the passion narrative, even if it be a minor part. In other Paschal letters composed before 428, Cyril repeats the theme mentioned above, that the purpose of the Word’s becoming human was to enable him to subject himself to death in order to free the rest of humanity from its grip. In his early writings in general he makes much of the idea of Christ as the Second Adam, bearing and undoing the consequences of the sin of the first Adam so as to provide humanity with a second beginning, a regeneration. One of the keys to Cyril’s soteriological vision is that Christ is born, lives, dies, and rises as one of us and for our sake. In his thirteenth Paschal letter he writes: ‘He sent to us from heaven the only-begotten God the Word … in order that, being made like his brothers in everything, he might put to death sin in the flesh, and, having filled nature with spiritual strength through himself and in himself, might refashion it to what it was of old, might render it impregnable to sin, and might ready it to become superior to destruction and corruption’.9 Another common way Cyril speaks of the death of Christ, in the same letter and in other early works such as his commentary on Isaiah, is as the offering up of his soul.10 The Incarnate Word gave up his soul as an exchange ἀντάλλαγμα to rescue from the devil’s power all the nations of the world. Based on the evidence given here, which is just a portion of what can be found in the massive amount of writing he completed before becoming embroiled in the Nestorian controversy, we can see how Cyril’s vision of the passion – and therefore also his more comprehensive vision of God’s saving work in general – only makes sense if the human nature the Logos assumed was complete, body and soul. Put simply, human death itself just is the separation of body and soul, so any talk of Christ giving up his soul, of Christ becoming human in order to die and rise again as a human being, or of Christ as a new head of the human race, would be absurd if his humanity was lacking its highest and most distinctive part. There is no dying apart from a prior union of body 8 De recta fide ad imperatorem 22; translated by Daniel King, St. Cyril of Alexandria: Three Christological Treatises (Washington, 2014), 57. 9 FL 13.1; translated by Philip Amidon, St. Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letters 13-30 (Washington, 2013), 4. 10 FL 13.3; trans. Amidon, 9. In Is. 45.8-9; English translation by Robert C. Hill, vol. 3 (Brookline, 2008), 125.

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and soul, and there is no self-sacrificial death apart from a prior union of body and rational soul. Therefore, inasmuch as the self-sacrificial death of Christ as a human and on behalf of humanity is indispensable in Cyril’s soteriology (for us and for our salvation), then just as much is the presence of a rational soul in Christ indispensable in his christology. With that said, it is certainly true that Cyril does not transfer his belief in the necessity of Christ’s complete humanity into elaborations of the specifically psychological character of the life and passion of Christ, and more often than not the soul of Christ appears passive in his writings. This, I think, can be explained by the fact that he viewed the human soul of Christ as being perfected by virtue of its union with the divine Word. Even in his early works, Cyril admitted the presence of weaknesses in Christ’s soul. In Glaphyra 9, for example, he says: ‘For before the precious cross, he is said to have hungered, to have grown weary from journeys, to have experienced sorrow, and then to have endured death’.11 And his commentary on the words of Jesus in John 12:27 – ‘Now my soul is troubled’ – are even more revealing in this regard. Cyril sees the necessity of Christ’s experience of the so-called natural passions, however he is quick to point out that Christ experienced such passions in a sinless way and that they were quickly subdued. In other words, Christ was completely in control of himself, precisely because his human soul was in no way tainted by sin. A perfected human soul, one that is immoveable in the good and entirely given over to love of the highest good, appears passive because it has then become a sort of conduit for divine life. It wills what God wills, so it becomes an instrument of God.12 But the appearance of passivity here is deceptive. The perfected soul does not serve as an instrument of God because it has lost its agency, its freedom of will. Rather, it loves God absolutely and so wills what God wills consciously and with the full force or its will. So Cyril says in his Paschal letter for the year 426: ‘I would say that the health of the soul, and the incomparable sobriety of a mind looking to be firm, consist in bringing the mind to a longing for virtue, in considering sin an impure corruption, and beyond this in desiring tenaciously to be vanquished by love for God’.13 The human soul of Christ was vanquished by love for God, and precisely because of this it served as an active – not a passive – instrument of God.

11 Glaph. 9.3; translated by Nicholas Lunn, St. Cyril of Alexandria: Glaphyra on the Pentateuch, vol. 2 (Washington, 2019), 76. 12 See the description in Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7 (1088A-D), for a later account of the ‘passivity’ of the deified soul. 13 FL 14.2; trans. Amidon, 20.

Surpassing Mere Logomachy: Cyril and Theodoret on the Third and Fourth Anathemas Michael C. MAGREE, S.J., Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

ABSTRACT To avoid erroneous evaluations of ancient debates, it is necessary to note the particulars of the arguments in order to see just where the disagreements lay. In the case of Theodoret of Cyrus’ and Cyril of Alexandria’s debates about the twelve anathemas, the exchanges about Philippians 2:5-11 show that each recognized points of agreement in their common opposition to non-Nicene theologies and, more precisely, in their common acceptance both of the Word’s consubstantiality with the Father and of the Word’s consequent immutability and omniscience. Each bishop attempted to use these principles to argue for their respective differing claims about the Word enfleshed. Theodoret said that the union of humanity and divinity cannot be called natural, because this would obscure the distinction of these natures and would make the union involuntary. Cyril had used just such a distinction of nature and will, but he then had to clarify how it applied. Theodoret argued that consubstantiality means that the Word cannot be ignorant, and therefore Jesus Christ can only be ignorant insofar as he is the human subject of ignorance. Cyril said that a true union must entail the ability to say that the incarnate Word is the subject of ignorance, while not ignorant in itself. Cyril’s repetition of the claim that ‘the same one can both suffer and not suffer’ in his later Quod Unus Sit Christus showed that Theodoret’s attack on this point hit on a claim that Cyril could recognize as difficult to accept.

I The Defense of the 12 Anathemas against Theodoret arises from the response to Cyril’s third letter.1 Cyril had appended twelve anathemas to that letter, anathemas that immediately generated passionate objections from many bishops, and in the months late in 430 and early in 431 Cyril wrote extensive responses to 1 The Defense is in the Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum (hereafter ACO), edited by Eduard Schwartz (Berlin, 1928), 1.1.6:107-16 as Cyrilli apologia XII capitulorum contra Theodoretum, but it is listed in the Clavis patrum graecorum as Apologia XII anathematismorum contra Theodoretum. For the third letter against Nestorius there are two critical texts listed as (Ep. 17) Ad Nestorium, the first in ACO, edited by Eduard Schwartz (Berlin, 1927), 1.1.1:33-42, and then in Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters, translated and edited by Lionel R. Wickham (Oxford, 1983), 12-33.

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these objections.2 The specific work I want to consider here, Defense of the 12 Anathemas against Theodoret, is similar to other examples of polemical literature which attempt to controvert the writings of an opponent by means of extensive quotation followed by refutation.3 The literary genre does not ensure that a constructive argument is the result, but in this work, it is demonstrable that both bishops are in vituperative but thoughtful debate. The themes of the arguments are similar to ones in other works surrounding the controversy. The discussions concern phrases of Cyril’s such as ‘according to the hypostasis’,4 ‘natural union’,5 and topics such as the subject that undergoes the incarnation and the status of Christ’s knowledge. Yet the discussions display not only content but form: one can see not only what but how Cyril and Theodoret argued against one another. In examining the details of these arguments in their very form, I want to question the contention, expressed by Henry Chadwick in an important article, that the fifth-century debates about Christology were in the first place ‘logomachies’, that is, not debates touching the actual points of difference but a wrangling about words to no productive end.6 If it is a question of Cyril’s and Theodoret’s motivations, a question of whether or not they genuinely want to understand the opponent, it is difficult to prove conclusively from the text. If it is a question, however, of whether or not they did in fact understand the opponent’s interpretation, not merely at a surface level but at the level of the presuppositions behind it, this I believe can be shown particularly vividly in the way that Cyril and Theodoret employ and interpret Philippians 2:5-11. Through debating this passage, they come to greater clarity about the nature of their disagreement and about the expression of their own positions. The best exchanges on Philippians 2:5-11 happen in the course of discussing the third and fourth anathemas, and I will concentrate on these.

II The third anathema concerns Cyril’s requirement that one must see the union of divinity and humanity in Christ as a ‘natural union’. Theodoret’s basic objection 2 John McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (Crestwood, NY, 2004), 44-50. 3 See earlier examples such as the use of quotation in Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarium, ed. Fredericus Mueller, in Gregorii Nysseni Opera Dogmatica Minora, Pars I (Leiden, 1958), 131-233. There is still no good summary of ancient polemical genres. An introduction that highlights the basic points is Wolfgang Speyer, ‘Polemics’, Brill’s New Pauly, 15 vol. (Leiden, 2006-2011), XI 455. 4 ACO 1.1.6:114. 5 ACO 1.1.6:116. 6 H. Chadwick, ‘Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy’, The Journal of Theological Studies 2 (1951), 145-64, 145.

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to ‘natural union’ is carried over from his replies to the first and second Anathemas. Theodoret contends that Cyril must mean by ‘natural union’ a mixture of divinity and humanity, which would reduce the divinity (by making God mutable) and dehumanize the humanity (by taking away human rationality).7 In his reply to the third anathema Theodoret goes further, however, and especially challenges Cyril on the basis of principles on which Theodoret thinks they can both agree. For example, Theodoret says that calling the union in Christ a ‘natural union’ would seem to make the union involuntary. Cyril has used a similar distinction in his own resistance to Arianism: he claims that the self-emptying of Christ is voluntary and does not have to do with being (ousia).8 Theodoret then turns this understanding of ‘natural’ against Cyril by first saying, ‘Nature is something necessary and involuntary; for example, I say, we are hungry naturally, and do not feel this by choice’.9 If this is the definition of ‘natural’, then there are many scripture passages that Theodoret believes will not allow Christians to see the union as a natural one. Chief among these passages is Philippians 2:5-11: ‘“He emptied himself” indicates something voluntary’.10 Theodoret turns to the exegesis of ‘he emptied himself’ in particular in this polemical work against Cyril’s anathemas. In Theodoret’s own commentary on the letter to the Philippians, he does not comment at all on the phrase ‘he emptied himself’, but rather focuses on the clauses immediately before and after that one.11 One explanation may be that in fact the theology of self-emptying simply was not of much interest in itself among those shaped by the work of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia.12 I find the hesitation around single-subject Christology to be characteristic of Diodore, Theodore, Nestorius, and, at times, Theodoret, and this is reflected in their lack of interest in theology of kenosis. The fact that Theodoret in this work addresses kenosis directly and attempts to use it to prove his own point against Cyril provides 7 Accusation of ‘mixture’: Theodoret of Cyrus, ACO 1.1.6:118.2: τὴν κρᾶσιν ... δι᾽ ἑτέρων ὀνομάτων, ‘a mixture ... in different words’, And concerning the mixture altering the complete natures: ACO 1.1.6:114.15-6: ἀνάγκη γὰρ τῆι κράσει ἀκουθῆσαι τὴν σύγχυσιν· εἰσιοῦσα δὲ ἡ σύγχυσις ἀφαιρεῖται τὴν ἑκάστης φύσεως ἰδιότητα, ‘For it is necessary that confusion results from mixture. Confusion enters and removes a proper characteristic from each nature’. 8 Cyril of Alexandria, De sancta trinitate dialogi vii, edited by G.M. Durand, SC 231, 237, 246 (Paris, 1976-1978), V 583.37-584.6. 9 ἡ γὰρ φύσις ἀναγκαστικόν τί ἐστιν καὶ ἀβούλητον χρῆμα, οἷόν τι λέγω, φυσικῶς πεινῶμεν, οὐ γνώμηι τοῦτο πάσχοντες, ἀλλὰ ἀνάγκηι. Theodoret quoted in Cyril of Alexandria, Apologia XII capitulorum, ACO 1.1.6:116.19-21. Translations are mine unless noted otherwise. 10 τὸ δὲ ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν τὸ ἐθελούσιον δείκνυσιν. ACO 1.1.6.117.3-8. 11 Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentarius in Omnes Beati Pauli Epistolas, edited by C. Marriott and Philip Edward Pusey, 2 vol. (Oxford, 1852-1870), II 51-5. 12 Donald Fairbairn, ‘The Puzzle of Theodoret’s Christology: A Modest Suggestion’, Journal of Theological Studies 58 (2007), 100-33, 132.

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another indication that Theodoret is conscious of and responding to the exegetical discourse of Cyril. Cyril rejects the idea that this interpretation of Christ’s self-emptying precludes calling the incarnation a ‘natural union’. He agrees with Theodoret that the self-emptying is voluntary, but he believes that Theodoret’s mistake is to reduce artificially the meanings that ‘natural’ can have. Cyril says: ‘For is it not true that man is rational with respect to nature? Therefore is he rational involuntarily or under necessity? What else? Tell me, is the God of all things not also God according to nature? Is he not according to nature just, good, life, light, wisdom and power? Therefore, is he himself also what he is involuntarily and as if by necessity?’13 The word ‘natural’, for Cyril, has its primary meaning in defining a property as belonging to a nature, and it only consignifies something involuntary depending on the kind of thing of which it is predicated. Cyril offers some synonyms to provide the sense in which he means that the union in Christ is ‘natural’: ‘… that is, [the union is] true, and free from change, and is in every way an unconfused convergence of hypostases…’14 He continues, ‘... so that if we think the hypostases are united and the Word has become human and been enfleshed, thus in some way we seem to call the union natural, which rejects a union that is not true or relative’.15 A number of words recur here that are themes throughout Cyril’s defense of his twelve Anathemas. Cyril frequently employs the word ἀληθής, ‘true’ or ‘genuine’. He uses it twice here in these lines to say that by ‘natural’ he simply meant that the union was ‘true’. If it were not a ‘true’ or ‘natural’ union Cyril thinks that the union would be ‘changeable’ or would involve a ‘confusion of hypostases’ or would mean that it is σχετική, ‘relative’. ‘Relative’ designates a union that would be in one of the categories πρός τι, such as time, place, habit, relation, action, passion. So here in the defense of the third Anathema, Cyril returns to reclaim ‘self-emptying’ from Theodoret’s use of it: ‘“He has emptied himself” not involuntarily, but as a voluntary agent the only-begotten became a human, and it is not the case that, as you say, he took a man, bestowed on him a relative connection, and crowned him with the grace of sonship in the way God does with us’.16

13

Cyril of Alexandria, Apologia XII capitulorum, ACO 1.1.6.119.12-5. … τουτέστιν ἀληθῆ, καὶ τροπῆς ἐλευθέραν καὶ ἀσύγχυτον παντελῶς τῶν ὑποστάσεων σύνοδον… ACO 1.1.6.119.19-20. 15 ὥστε κἂν νοῶμεν ἡνῶσθαι τὰς ὑποστάσεις ἐνανθρωπῆσαί τε καὶ σαρκωθῆναι τὸν λόγον καὶ δοκῆι πως κατὰ τοῦτο φυσικὴ λέγεσθαι παρ’ ἡμῶν ἡ ἕνωσις, τὴν οὐκ ἀληθῆ τε καὶ σχετικὴν ἐκβάλλουσα… ACO 1.1.6.119.24-120.3. 16 κεκένωκεν ἑαυτὸν οὐκ ἀβουλήτως, ἀλλ’ ἐθελοντὴς ὁ μονογενὴς γέγονεν ἄνθρωπος καὶ οὐχ ὡς σὺ φής, ἀνέλαβεν ἄνθρωπον, σχετικὴν αὐτῶι δωρούμενος τὴν συνάφειαν καὶ τῆι τῆς υἱότητος χάριτι στεφανῶν καθάπερ ἡμᾶς. ACO 1.1.6.119.22-4. 14

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III The fourth anathema adds another dimension to the discussion of what Cyril and Theodoret mean when they disagree on the question of a union ‘according to the hypostasis’. Here the two writers are invoking a number of passages from scripture in which the primary question is about the subject of the verbs. Who is speaking? To whom does something happen? Theodoret invokes the numerous passages in which Christ distinguishes what he knows from what the Father knows. Theodoret knows that he and Cyril, as good Nicenes, cannot accept that the Word, consubstantial with the Father, does not know something that the Father knows. Theodoret says: ‘But he has the knowledge of the Father, being the undiminished image of the Father. Therefore the ignorance belongs not to the Word of God but to the form of a slave, which knew as much about the time as the indwelling Godhead revealed’.17 Theodoret is saying that in the face of this problem about knowledge, one has to put a division somewhere. The non-Nicene policy is to divide the Father and the Son, such that the Son does not know what the Father knows. If that possibility, however, is taken away for Nicene reasons, one is left with two more options. One option is to say that the ‘forms’ or natures constitute distinct subjects of predication. The Word of God knows but the ‘form of a servant’ does not know. This makes them parallel concepts, alternative and exclusive subjects.18 Yet one can say instead that there is one who both knows and does not know. Theodoret thinks this last option would introduce some sort of confusion or incoherence into the Word, as Theodoret says: ‘For either the truth is telling a lie, or it is not rightly called truth, since it contains something of the opposite’.19 Theodoret returns repeatedly to force the choice: either the Word knows or does not know. This knowledge directly maps onto the being of the Word: if he knows, he is God, if he is ignorant, he is human. Cyril deliberately contradicts Theodoret on this point. He says: ‘And if he is one and the same because of the fact of the true union, and if he is not one thing and another distinctly and part by part, then both to know and, indeed, ἀλλ’ ἔχει τοῦ πατρὸς τὴν γνῶσιν, ὡς εἰκὼν ἀπαράλλακτος, οὐκ ἄρα τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου ἡ ἄγνοια, ἀλλὰ τῆς τοῦ δούλου μορφῆς τῆς τοσαῦτα κατ’ ἐκεῖνο τοῦ καιροῦ γινωσκούσης ὅσα ἡ ἐνοικοῦσα θεότης ἀπεκάλυψεν. ACO 1.1.6:121.27-122.3. Of course Theodoret is presuming that consubstantiality and identity of knowledge must go together. How this premise should be defended is another question. 18 Note the parallelism from the quotation quoted immediately above: οὐκ ἄρα τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου ἡ ἄγνοια, ἀλλὰ τῆς τοῦ δούλου μορφῆς, ‘the ignorance belongs not to the Word of God but to the form of a slave’. The form of a slave is the subject of ‘knowing’: τῆς τοῦ δούλου μορφῆς τῆς τοσαῦτα κατ’ ἐκεῖνο τοῦ καιροῦ γινωσκούσης ὅσα ἡ ἐνοικοῦσα θεότης ἀπεκάλυψεν ‘the form of a slave which knew as much about the time as the indwelling Godhead revealed’. Ibid. 19 ἤ γὰρ ἡ ἀλήθεια ψεύδεται ἢ οὐκ ἂν εἰκότως ἀλήθεια κληθείη, ἡ ἔχουσά τι τῶν ἐναντίων. ACO 1.1.6:121.24-5. 17

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seeming not to know, belong to him completely’.20 The crucial passage that Cyril uses to defend such a claim is Philippians 2:5-11, and the point is that there is only one subject of the verb ‘emptying’ that makes sense of the passage, and that is the Word. Cyril introduces his own version of a forced choice. There are only two options for the subject of ‘he emptied himself’. Either it is the Word or it is the ‘form of a slave’. Cyril says: ‘I want to know, however, to whom he thinks the self-emptying belongs, and who it is who suffers this willingly. For if, on the one hand, as they say, it is the form of a slave or the one from the seed of David, how or in what way has he been emptied, if he has been assumed by God?’21 In other words, the following clause, ‘he took the form of a slave’ is predicated of the same subject as the preceding clause, ‘he emptied himself’. If the ‘form of a slave’ is the subject of one, he is the subject of both, thus ‘the form of a slave took the form of a slave’, and that is ridiculous. Thus, Cyril presents the other option: But if the very Word being in the form and equality with God the Father is said to empty himself, again how and in what way has he been emptied, if he always avoided the emptying? For God the Word who does not know how to suffer change, the emptying is to act and to speak whatever belongs to humanity because of the economic convergence with the flesh.22

For Cyril, what is implied by the self-emptying is the Word’s acceptance of everything that belongs to the human, including ignorance. To deny ignorance of the Word and to attribute it to some other subject is to make the notion of ‘emptying’ empty. This conviction on Cyril’s part points the way to some of his most selfconsciously paradoxical statements. In a later work, the Quod unus sit Christus, Cyril appears to oppose the principle of non-contradiction. He notes that one of the strongest critiques from his opponents is their questioning that the Word of God can be the subject of suffering. ‘They [his opponents] claim that to have to say that the same one suffers and does not suffer is fitting for a fairy tale [τερατολογία], and really tips toward being unconvincing’.23 The ‘fairy tale’ καὶ εἴπερ ἐστὶν εἷς τε καὶ ὁ αὐτὸς διὰ τὸ τῆς ἀληθοῦς ἑνώσεως χρῆμα καὶ οὐχ ἕτερος καὶ ἕτερος διηιρημένως τε καὶ ἀνὰ μέρος, αὐτοῦ πάντως ἔσται καὶ τὸ εἰδέναι καὶ μέντοι καὶ τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι δοκεῖν. ACO 1.6.124.18-22. 21 ζητῶ δὲ τὴν κένωσιν τίνος ἂν γενέσθαι νοοῖτο καὶ τίς ὁ τοῦτο παθὼν ἑκουσίως. εἰ μὲν γάρ, ὡς αὐτοί φασιν, ἡ τοῦ δούλου μορφὴ ἤτοι τὸ ἐκ σπέρματος τοῦ Δαυίδ, πῶς ἢ τίνα κεκένωται τρόπον, εἰ προσελήφθη παρὰ θεοῦ; ACO 1.1.6.125.15-8. 22 εἰ δὲ αὐτὸς ὁ ἐν μορφῆι καὶ ἰσότητι τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ πατρὸς ὑπάρχων λόγος ἑαυτὸν κενῶσαι λέγεται, πῶς δὴ πάλιν ἢ τίνα κεκένωται τρόπον, εἰ παραιτοῖτο τὴν κένωσιν; κένωσις δὲ τῶι θεῶι λόγωι παθεῖν οὐκ εἰδότι τὴν τροπὴν τὸ δρᾶσαί τι καὶ εἰπεῖν τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων διὰ τὴν πρὸς σάρκα σύνοδον οἰκονομικήν. ACO 1.1.6.125.18-21. 23 Ἀλλ’ ἐοικέναι φασὶ τερατολογίᾳ, καὶ ἀπονεῦσαι λίαν εἰς τὸ ἀπιθάνως ἔχον τὸ χρῆναι λέγειν τὸν αὐτὸν καὶ παθεῖν καὶ μὴ παθεῖν. Cyril of Alexandria, Quod unus sit Christus, 766.13-7. 20

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points to the apparent conflict with the principle of non-contradiction. Though Theodoret is not mentioned by name in this other work, the critique echoes his words in the section of his reply to the fourth anathema: it is just not rational to say that the same one would both know and not know.24 Cyril is conscious that this is a huge obstacle to his claim, but he also feels that something about this assertion is essential to the Christian notion of salvation. He says that the claim that it is the Word who has chosen to make suffering his own, ‘this fact was salvific for the entire world’.25 To preserve this ‘fact’, Cyril attempts to introduce a distinction. There is a difference between divinity, which is the proper nature of the Word, and humanity, which the Word makes his own. The Word can only suffer in the flesh, but that flesh is his own, and thus the suffering is his own (αὐτοῦ). This language of possession, ownership, being the subject, all forms the language that Cyril uses throughout On the Unity of Christ. The work does not use the phrase καθ᾽ ὑπόστασιν or transfer the language of hypostasis from trinitarian theology to christology. What Cyril does instead is to employ non-technical trinitarian language, the language of the Word of God, and add the language of ownership and being the subject. He thus claims that the Word of God must be one who can be said not to suffer, and yet also, in making human nature his own, he can be said to suffer.

IV In this short communication I have pointed to a set of passages in the Defense of the 12 Anathemas against Theodoret, passages that show Cyril and Theodoret engaging with the particular details of the opponent’s arguments. Theodoret uses Cyril’s own opposition of nature and will against him. Cyril responds with a distinction about the nature of God that Theodoret must accept. Theodoret presses Cyril to follow the logic of the pro-Nicene argument that the Word is equal in nature to the Father and knows everything the Father knows. Theodoret is reaching to find common ground, from which he can leverage an argument that if scripture says that Jesus does not know something, then the subject of that ignorance cannot be the Word. Cyril responds by going straight to the heart of Theodoret’s objection. Cyril accepts the Nicene claim about the omniscience of the Word, but he responds to Theodoret by accepting what Theodoret will not, namely that it is possible to say that the same subject both knows and 24 Quoted above: ‘For either the truth is telling a lie, or it is not rightly called truth, since it contains something of the opposite’, ἢ γὰρ ἡ ἀλήθεια ψεύδεται ἢ οὐκ ἂν εἰκότως ἀλήθεια κληθείη, ἡ ἔχουσά τι τῶν ἐναντίων. Cyril of Alexandria, Apologia XII capitulorum, ACO 1.1.6:121.24-5. 25 Ἀλλ’ ἦν, ὦ γενναῖε, τὸ χρῆμα σωτήριον τῷ κόσμῳ παντί. Cyril of Alexandria, Quod unus sit Christus, 766.30.

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does not know. Cyril shows the enduring impact of this argument: he returns in Quod Unus Sit Christus to acknowledge that this can sound like a ‘fairy-tale’, to posit such an apparent contradiction. If one would take as a basic criterion of logomachy that a wrangling about words does not display any appreciation for the logic of the other side’s arguments nor of their presuppositions, it seems on the face of it that Cyril and Theodoret easily surpass such a standard. Whether one is convinced by their arguments is of course another matter.

Fundamental Differences on Christological Expressions of St Cyril of Alexandria and Severus of Antioch Georgios SISKOS, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

ABSTRACT Severus’ Christology manifests a verbal affinity with the expressions of St Cyril, whereas its notional content shows a decisive departure from St Cyril. Firstly, St Cyril, from the Formula of Reunion 433 onwards, explicitly accepted the Antiochian division of scriptural sayings into the manhood and the divinity of Christ, without necessarily supposing that this would lead to the division of Christ. Severus considered the Formula of Reunion as St Cyril’s condescension to prattling children and constructed a chain of argumentation as to why an attribution of scriptural sayings to the divinity and humanity of Christ leads inevitably to the division of Christ. Secondly, St Cyril’s concept of division of Christ’s natures in theory alone did not signify fictional fantasy, but a real distinction, which does not result in a real division. Severus’ fundamental axiom, that for a thing to exist in reality it has to be self-subsistent, namely, have a hypostasis of its own, led him to consider St Cyril’s distinction of divinity and humanity in theory alone as synonymous with the fictional fantasy of a mind imagining the existence of two hypostases and natures in Christ, which never exist as such in reality. Thirdly, Cyril used the expression ‘two hypostases, two natures’ to describe Christ’s natures, because he never thought of them as necessarily self-subsistent, which inevitably leads to an actual division. Severus, by furnishing self-subsistency as the only reality, eliminated deliberately every verbal and notional duality in Christ. The paper explores Severus’ notional alteration of Cyril’s Christological expression.

1. Severus’ concept of nature and hypostasis as the ground of his Christological hermeneutics Severus identifies the Chalcedonian tradition with the Nestorian faith and he bases the complete rejection of both upon a concrete understanding of nature and hypostasis supported by numerous sayings of St Cyril. For Severus, nature and hypostasis always signify a concrete, independent, individual reality of an existing thing. From such a definition of nature and hypostasis derives the assertion that every Chalcedonian confession of one hypostasis in two natures is utter nonsense or deception, because two natures means inevitably two hypostases. A nature cannot be an underlying reality of a thing without being an individual, independent hypostasis. Nature as a general signification can

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 83-99. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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only mean the concrete plural number of individuals which belong to the same natural class. St Cyril confronting Nestorius, who applied exactly the same definitions of nature and hypostasis long before Severus, focused on refuting the division promoted by Nestorius, which was an inevitable result of considering Christ as two concrete realities, two natures and hypostases, two individuals independent of each other. Still, St Cyril never said or implied that two natures and hypostases necessarily mean two independent realities, as both Nestorius and Severus took as the cornerstone of their Christological confession. For them this was totally necessary, because for a nature to exist it must necessarily have its own hypostasis. 2. Duality of natures as a definite state of division in Christ according to Severus St Cyril confronting Nestorius rejects two independent agents in a union of conjunction, namely the man Jesus and God the Word. St Cyril rejects a concept of two ‘who’s’ (Jesus and God the Word separately) not a concept of two ‘what’s’ (humanity and divinity in the Incarnated Word): How, then, do you assert that that Word who is from God was united to what was from the seed of David, if you have ascribed priesthood only to the one who is from the seed of David? For if the union is truly a union, there are not two entities at all, but Christ is known as one and sole, out of the two (natures). Therefore it is clear that they hypocritically declare that they acknowledge the union, since they are willing to delude the minds of those who are more simple, but themselves regard the conjunction (of the two natures) as external and in appearance, a conjunction which we ourselves copy when we are shown as being partakers of his divine nature through the Spirit.1

In this passage of St Cyril quoted by Severus, the Alexandrian bishop rejects the assignment of priesthood only to the seed of David, which inevitable leads to the division of Christ, because it manifests two separate agents. St Cyril refers to God the Word as a who and to His humanity as a what. The ‘two entities’ of the passage do not refer to the natures of humanity and divinity, but to the separate agents, the seed of David and God the Word. Severus, on the other hand, focuses on the expression of St Cyril ‘as one and sole’ in order to eliminate any notion of duality. Severus considers it impossible for a ‘what’ of a nature not to have its own exclusive corresponding ‘who’, and that is the reason for rejecting the natures in Christ: For the phrase ‘out of two natures’ in fact denies that they are two, and demonstrates that he himself is one through composition, and that those things out of which he was compounded as the same Lord did not cease to exist because they were joined together 1 Ad Nephalium, Or. II, CSCO 64, 13-4. Trans. in Pauline Allen and Charles Thomas Robert Hayward, Severus of Antioch (London, New York, 2004), 61.

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without confusion; and that same one continues firm and unshaken after the sublime union. That formula, however, which is expressed as ‘two (natures) after the union’ is one of those things which have no substance: for if two persisted, they would not be united, since union is that which erases duality … I maintain that the hypostatic union does not admit of division into two.2

Severus identifies absolutely the ‘what is’ of a nature with the ‘who is’ of the subject, because for Severus it is logically impossible for a nature to exist without its exclusive agent: ‘It is plain to all those who are even moderately educated and learned in the dogmas of orthodoxy that it is in the nature of a contradiction to say concerning the one Christ that on the one hand there are two natures, but on the other one hypostasis. For the person who speaks of ‘one hypostasis’ necessarily affirms one nature as well.’3 St Cyril does not identify difference with division when it comes about from the two natures in Christ. Still, he rejects division that comes from the treatment of humanity and divinity as different agents. The confession of one Christ abolishes two agents, not two natures. That is the reason why St Cyril does not explicitly reject two natures after the union in general: Cease to sever the natures after the union: for that one thing and another is the Divine Nature and the nature of man it will be fit to know, and needful I deem to those who are sound in mind (for they are parted one from another by incomparable differences), but in regard to Christ the Saviour of us all, do thou having brought them together into union true and of Person, reject severance, for thus wilt thou confess one Christ and Son and Lord.4

Severus, posing his fundamental axiom that every nature should have a hypostasis of its own, namely an independent agent, is interpreting St Cyril’s words as a definite abolition of any kind of duality in natures: The teacher cries aloud: ‘Cease from dividing the natures after the union!’ However, this command that we should not divide the natures does not mean that we should affirm (as you yourselves affirm) that the two natures are united; but it means this – that we should affirm one incarnate nature, as he himself (Cyril) says. For he declares as follows…: ‘So just as everything is spoken of the one person – for one nature is recognized as existing after the union, namely that of the Word incarnate.5

Theodoret of Cyrus commenting on the third anathema of St Cyril against those who divide the hypostases after the union, explicitly states that the patriarch of Alexandria accepts two natures, hypostases undivided after the union. 2 Ad Nephalium, Or. II, CSCO 64, 12. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 60-1. 3 Ad Nephalium, II, CSCO 64, 16. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 63. 4 St Cyril of Alexandria, Five-book contradiction of the blasphemies of Nestorius, Tome 2, §8, Five Tomes Against Nestorius, A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church: anterior to the division of the East and West 47 (London, Oxford, Cambridge, 1881), 66. 5 Ad Nephalium, II, CSCO 64, 20-1. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 65.

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The problem for Theodoret is that two natures, hypostases cannot be undivided in a natural union as St Cyril stated: The apprehension then of the union implies previous apprehension of the division. How then can he say that the hypostases or natures ought not to be divided? He knows all the while that the hypostasis of God the Word was perfect before the ages; and that the form of the servant which was assumed by It was perfect; and this is the reason why he said hypostases and not hypostasis.6

Theodoret’s argument is exactly the same with Severus’, because either two natures or either two hypostases after the union must necessarily mean division. On the contrary, for St Cyril the problem is not the two natures which he occasionally calls hypostases after the union7, but the division of those into two separate agents. The critical terms here are the terms ἰδίαι (or ἰδικῶς) τε καὶ ἀνὰ μέρος (each separately and apart from other).8 St Cyril writes addressing Nestorius: Thou hast laboured in vain, in bearing away each separately and apart from other, severing into hypostases and persons, completely, not in the mere knowledge that the nature of flesh is other than the Divine Nature.9 But when the hypostases, as you say, have been severed into two and are conceived of as existing separately and apart, how will there be a coalescence in one Person…?10 We must not then sever the One Lord Jesus Christ into Man separately and into God separately, but we say that Jesus Christ is One and the Same, yet knowing the distinction of the Natures and keeping them unconfused with one another.11

In St Cyril’s texts there are instances where the term hypostasis is equated with nature. When St Cyril speaks about the hypostases of Christ the term signifies natures as underlying realities having only one agent namely God the Word: For God the Word was united to the holy Flesh … And that the Natures or Hypostases have remained unconfused.12 6 Theodoret Cyrus, Counter-Statements, in Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (eds), A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Vol. 3 (New York, Oxford, London, 1892), 27. 7 Martin Jugie, ‘La terminologie christologique de saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie’, Échos d’Orient 15 (1912), 22. 8 See also Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1, From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451), 2nd rev. ed. (London, 1975), 479. 9 St Cyril of Alexandria, Five-book contradiction of the blasphemies of Nestorius, Tome 3, §5, A library (1881), 117. Greek text ACO 1.1.6, p. 72.3-4. 10 St Cyril of Alexandria, Five-book contradiction of the blasphemies of Nestorius, Tome 3, §6, A library (1881), 119. Greek text ACO 1.1.6, p. 73.4-6. 11 St Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia on the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten, 13, A library (1881), 201. 12 St Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia on the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten, 11, A library (1881), 196.

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Conversely the third anathema against Nestorius focuses on the division of natures as separate agents and St Cyril uses the term hypostases: ‘If any one severs the Hypostases of the One Christ after the Union, connecting them with only a connection of dignity or authority or sway, and not rather with a concurrence unto Unity of Nature, be he anathema.’13 St Cyril insists on the undivided natures after the union which he occasionally names hypostases, instead of abolition of the duality of natures in the union14. St Cyril does not presuppose that by necessity every nature exists separately. Joseph van den Dries remarks that ‘the φύσεις are the object of the division and not the subjects which divide.’15 There are other instances where the term hypostasis is equated with prosoponperson. When St Cyril identifies hypostases with prosopa-persons the term signifies the agent or the acting subject. St Cyril always rejects a union of different agents and in this case, he uses the terms hypostases and prosopa-persons interchangeably: Why then dost thou feign that thou art right in the Faith, saying that One is Christ Jesus the Lord, and then, severing into two persons and hypostases the One, dishonourest the mode of the True Union through which the Christ is One and Alone, and unlearnedly callest equality of honour connection?16 Therefore … he severs again into distinct hypostases and into two Persons, the Word from forth God the Father and him whom himself has just introduced to us as a God-bearing man, if so be that one and apart by himself is he that suffered, and another he that quickeneth.17

There are also other times where the three terms hypostasis, nature, prosopon stand together. In this case the nature, hypostasis, prosopon signifies the one agent, i.e., the acting subject. Therefore, St Cyril already presupposes two natures or hypostases united in the one acting subject: When the mind is investigating the co-existing things from which one person, one nature that is one hypostasis is constituted by nature, then the mind brings forth the co-existence (of things in the composition), which equals the proposition ‘with’ (along with its significance) and holds firm its signification. That is the way by which the one (nature and hypostasis and person) exists as one according to composition and (the mind) does not divide the two things (from which the one nature and hypostasis and person is composed). 13

St Cyril of Alexandria, The Twelve Chapters, 3, A library (1881), xi. Martin Jugie, ‘La terminologie’ (1912), 20. 15 Joseph van den Dries, The Formula of Saint Cyril of Alexandria Μία φύσις τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου σεσαρκωμένη (Rome, 1939), 94. Also in Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria (Leiden, Boston, 2009), 233. 16 St Cyril of Alexandria, Five-book contradiction of the blasphemies of Nestorius, Tome 2, §1, A library (1881), 46. Greek text ACO 1.1.6, p. 34.37-9. 17 St Cyril of Alexandria, Five-book contradiction of the blasphemies of Nestorius, Tome 3, §2, A library (1881), 95. Greek text ACO 1.1.6, p. 60.31-4. 14

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But when from the beginning hypostases are being divided into two and (additionally) we must consider each one of them apart from the other and (in that case) the proposition ‘with’ signifies things according to separate individuality, then two or more things are not considered one according to composition.18

This axiom of Severus’ that every nature should have a hypostasis of its own, namely an independent agent, is fundamental in order for someone to understand the anti-Chalcedonian use of the Cyrillian formula ‘one nature of God the Word Incarnated’. For Severus the number one refers to the one nature of Incarnated Word and erases any kind of duality: But it is well known that the word “incarnate” indicates composition, and one hypostasis from two, and removes distinction of the hypostases and natures. For we have already quoted that in That Christ is One, holy Cyril said as follows: “It is not the case that in everything and from every respect only what is simple and of one species is called ‘one’, but those things as well which are composed from two or more and of different species. For so those who are skilled in these matters think is right”.19

St Cyril, on the contrary, uses the formula to establish through the arithmetical number “one” the singularity of the one agent in Christ (namely God the Word), and to testify through the adjective “incarnate” to the existence of the human nature of God the Word: Truly and actually one Son, he cannot be divided into two persons or sons but remains One… “One” is a term applied properly not only to basic single elements but to such composite entities as man compounded of soul and body. Soul and body are different kinds of thing and are not mutually consubstantial; yet united they constitute man’s single nature despite the fact that the difference in nature of the elements brought into unity is present in the composite condition … to state that he is incarnate gives completely adequate expression to the fact that he has become man.20

The mystery of union for St Cyril denies the division of the natures, as they could exist as mutually independent agents, whereas for Severus the mystery of union denies the duality of natures as existing things, because a nature exists only as having its exclusive agent: For in a duality everything is cut at the same time, and reduced to a diversity which is divided and cut in everything, whether you speak of activities or properties. For when we denounce the division (resulting from) a duality of natures after the union … we say what is indisputably the case, namely that duality is cutting and division. For “If the union is true, they are not two in any way, but one Christ is understood from two”, as holy Cyril said when he was writing in reply to evil Theodoret’s complaints against 18

Cyrilli apologia XII Capitolorul contra Orientales, 8, ACO 1.1.7, p. 50.5-11. Iain Robert Torrance, Christology after Chalcedon: Severus of Antioch and Sergius the Monophysite (Norwich, 1988), 190. 20 Second Letter to Succensus, Lionel. R. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria Select Letters (Oxford, 1983), 87-8. 19

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the Chapters. And he sent the same thing to Succensus, thus: (CYRIL): “So that the two should henceforth be no longer two, but through the two one living thing has been completed”.21

St Cyril immediately above in the same letter admits the existence of two natures in Christ remaining always undivided: ‘There is no bar to saying that he suffered in the manhood’s nature. If that is true, must we not be conceding that two natures exist inseparably after the union? With the result that if you quote “Christ therefore having suffered for us in flesh” your meaning is the same as if you had said “Christ having suffered for us in our nature”.’22 The body-soul paradigm clarifies the argument of St Cyril in the First Letter to Succensus: ‘We are composed out of soul and body and observe two different natures, the body’s and the soul’s; yet the pair yields a single united human being, and composition out of two natures does not turn the one man into two men but, as I said, produces a single man a composite of soul and body.’23 3. Composite Nature in Severus and St Cyril Severus defines composite nature as deriving from the union of two or more natures, but once the union is acknowledged the natures cease to exist as natures, because if they continue to exist as natures, the union will not be a real union, but a mere conjunction, brotherhood or friendship between two different agents: For those hypostases or natures, being in composition without diminution, and not existing separately and in individual existence, make up one person of one Lord and Christ and Son, and one incarnate nature and hypostasis of the Word. From what has been stated the doctor teaches that the peculiarity of the natural union is that the hypostases are in composition and are perfect without diminution, but refuse to continue an individual existence so as to be numbered as two, and to have its own person impressed upon each of them, which a conjunction in honour cannot possibly do. It is plain therefore that the natures or hypostases, if they are not combined in one in hypostatic union without confusion, do not make up one Christ and Son and Lord, and one incarnate nature of the Word and one person.24

The argument of Severus is clear. 1. One nature means by necessity one hypostasis. 2. Two natures mean by necessity two hypostases. 3. There is the case of the composite nature from two natures, where the natures do not exist as two. 4. Two means a division by necessity. Later, Severus will add that the 21

I.R. Torrance, Christology (1988), 160. Ibid. 23 L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983), 77. 24 Ernest Walter Brooks, A Collection of Letters of Severus of Antioch from Numerous Syriac Manuscripts, PO 12, F. 2 (Paris, 1919), XV, To Thomas His Syncellus, 210-1. 22

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natures exist in composition only as natural qualities, but not as natures. Nature by definition means individual existence, and that is the reason for its ceasing to exist in the composition. Severus says that two equals division in any case, because two means two individual existences in any case. Despite the definite argumentation of Severus, Robert Victor Sellers, without offering any evidence, claimed that Severus holds an undeveloped theory of enhypostasia.25 Nikolai A. Zabolotsky made the same assumption, also without offering any textual evidence.26 Roberta C. Chesnut introduced the theory that Severus distinguishes between self-subsistent hypostasis as God the Word and non-self-subsistent hypostasis as the humanity of the Incarnated Word.27 The anti-Chalcedonian patriarch would never have accepted such an argumentation, because ‘it is in the nature of a contradiction to say concerning the one Christ that on the one hand there are two natures, but on the other one hypostasis. For the person who speaks of ‘one hypostasis’ necessarily affirms one nature as well’, and ‘if we speak of two natures after the union, which necessarily exist in singleness and separately, as if divided into duality, but united by a conjunction or brotherhood (if we ought to call such a thing unity), the notion of difference reaches to the extent of division.’28 Therefore, for Severus every nature – in order to exist – has to be self-subsistent. The composite nature denies the self-subsistencies of the natures that constitute the composite nature, because if the natures remain as self-subsistent then there cannot be any real union at all, but only division. I.R. Torrance, continues the argument of R.C. Chesnut, introducing the concept of enhypostasy in Severus: ‘We see that in the union of the incarnation, the humanity, though real and in its particularity, is now “owned”, not independent. Its integrity is preserved, but its independence is not.’29 Still, for Severus integrity equals independence. A nature or hypostasis by necessity exists in singleness and separately, and that is precisely the reason which he fabricates the concept of composite nature in order to speak about different qualities without their respective natures and hypostases. I.R. Torrance, introduces the theory that The concept of a particularity, which expressed the integrity of a thing, without implying its independence … we see that the concept of particularity allows Severus to affirm that this is a union in which difference is intrinsic: God the Word remains God the Word, and the humanity remains humanity, yet they are one. This … explains the stress upon integrity of being in the concept of a particularity. But what about the stress upon a denial of an implication of independence? Here we see the role of the concept of 25 Robert Victor Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon: A Historical and Doctrinal Survey (London, 1961), 319, n. 4. 26 Nikolai A. Zabolotsky, ‘The Christology of Severus of Antioch’, Ekklesiasiastikos Pharos 58 (1976), 357-86. 27 Roberta C. Chesnut, Three Monophysite Christologies: Severus of Antioch, Philoxenus of Mabbug and Jacob of Sarug (Oxford, 1976), 9-10. 28 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1919), X, To Eleusinius, 201. 29 I.R. Torrance, Christology (1988), 82.

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possession. God the Word is the subject, and he makes the humanity his own. Because it is owned, it is not independent or divided.30

The only evidence that I.R. Torrance offers is about the Word making the humanity his own. Still, this is a Cyrillian concept repeated verbally by Severus, which cannot be used to support the supposed non-independent and particular nature of humanity. For Severus, as stated above, ‘the particularity is that which is expressed in natural characteristics.’ The particularity lies in natural qualities, but for the whole common Christian tradition a quality derives from an underlying nature. Severus introduces qualities without their underlying natures exactly in order to avoid Nestorianism, which speaks about two natures and hypostases along with their respective qualities. Severus understands this contradiction, which is why he characterizes the union as a “peculiarity … that the hypostases are in composition and are perfect … but refuse to continue an individual existence so as to be numbered as two.” Since natural quality derives from an underlying nature it is definitely peculiar to have natural qualities without their underlying natures. John Behr offers a parallel interpretation of the composite nature in Severus: A human being, as a “composite hypostasis”, or alternatively a “composite nature”, is the result of the union of two individuated ousiai, and as such can be described as being “from two natures” or “from two hypostases”. But as these two ousiai are individuated together, through the same union, resulting in one and the same prosopon, a human being cannot be said to be “in two natures” or “hypostases”. This, for Severus, is the essential characteristic of the hypostatic or natural union … A natural or hypostatic union of two natures or hypostases results in a composite nature or hypostasis, with its prosopon; although the individuated ousiai remain undiminished and fully real, they can no longer be counted as two – they only exist in the one unity.31

J. Behr seems to bypass that for Severus two individuated ousiai in the union or after the union always equal division. Therefore, the two individuated ousiai in the composite nature cease to exist as individuated ousiai, but it is Severus who teaches that the only real thing is an individuated ousia either simple or composite. Therefore the individuated ousiai exist in the composition only as natural qualities, but by no means as the individuated ousiai of those qualities, because this would equal division. Two cannot exist in any kind or form. If the two individuated ousiai could actually exist in one thing, Severus would never have found it contradictory and deceptive to speak about two natures in one hypostasis. J. Behr takes literally the affirmation of Severus that the hypostases are in composition and are perfect without diminution, but such a thing for Severus means only existing as a difference in natural qualities without their respective natures. 30

Ibid. 86. John Behr, ‘Severus of Antioch: Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Perspectives’, St. Nersess Theological Review 3 (1998), 23-35, also in https://orthodoxjointcommission.wordpress.com/2013/ 12/14/severus-of-antioch-eastern-and-oriental-orthodox-perspectives/ 31

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The composite nature is always accompanied by the expression ‘from two natures’, which verifies the difference of the things of which it is composed and simultaneously denies any kind of duality of natures after the oneness of the union.32 Nature by definition means an independent agent, so in order for two natures to exist in a composition as union it is necessary for them to cease to exist independently, that is, as natures: ‘If we dissolve the formula “from which” by declaring two natures after the inexpressible union, we import natures which subsist separately and apart; then no longer are found “one thing” and “another thing” from which exist one nature and hypostasis of the Son who was incarnate and made man, but one being and another being, God and man, who are separate as regards hypostases.’33 The great antichalcedonian scholar V.C. Samuel explicitly rejected the possibility of enhypostasy in Severus, i.e., a supposed particular second nature which is not independent, because a non-selfsubsistent nature is not a real one. He writes: According to the Antiochenes, Christ’s human nature was a human hypostasis. For the non-Chalcedonians also the human nature in the phrase “of two natures” was a hypostasis … The Grammarian and Leontius, on the contrary, took the human nature as human ousia but not human hypostasis. The theory of enhypostasia was, in that context, indispensable to express the fact that Jesus Christ lived as a man of flesh and blood in a world of concrete existence. However, Leontius achieved this goal by reducing the hypostatic nature of the manhood to a secondary level of importance. It is most certain, therefore, that, had Theodoret and other Antiochenes been given an exclusive choice between the Christology of Severus and that of Leontius, they would definitely have cast their lot with the former and not with the latter.34

Here V.C. Samuel repeats exactly the critique of the Antiochean thought against the Chalcedonian Definition of one hypostasis in two natures. Both Nestorians and antichalcedonians criticized Chalcedon because it is impossible for someone to confess two natures and not two hypostases as well. Leontius of Byzantium describes the exact position of Antiochene critique, either Nestorian or antichalcedonian alike towards the Chalcedonian Definition: For they say [Nestorians and antichalcedonians]: “If you say there are two natures in the one Christ, and if there is no such thing as an anhypostatic nature, then there would be two hypostases also.35

32

Ad Nephalium, II, CSCO 64, 12. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 60. E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1919), XI, To Eleusinius, 206. 33 Contra Impium Grammaticum, Or. III. 13, CSCO 45, 225. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 80. 34 Vilakuvel Cherian Samuel, The Council of Chalcedon and the Christology of Severus of Antioch, PhD Thesis (Yale University, 1957), 445-6. 35 Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, in Brian E. Daley (ed.), Leontius of Byzantium Complete Works, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford, 2017), 131.

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In the passage where Leontius introduces the enhypostaton theory, he explains why according to the chalcedonian view both Nestorians and antichalcedonians are wrong. According to Leontius, both of them are wrong because they reject enhypostaton on the grounds that it is impossible for a nature not to be selfsubsistent if it is a real one: He then who says, “There is no such thing as an anhypostatic nature”; speaks truly; but he does not draw a correct conclusion when he argues from its being not-anhypostatic to its being an hypostasis.36

V.C. Samuel further comments that it is impossible for the humanity of Christ to be a nature in the abstract as in the case of Leontius or St John the Damascene. For the humanity of Christ to be real it has to be hypostatic, i.e., self-subsistent, which is contrary to enhypostaton. The humanity of Christ in order to be real it has to bear a hypostasis of its own: Here again, the question which we want to raise is: Was the human nature hypostatic, or was it merely manhood in the abstract? If the second alternative is what the Damascene wants really to press, his emphasis on deification of Christ’s manhood has a particular force which Severus and the non-Chalcedonian side would not admit. It would mean, for instance, that the manhood consisting of a human body endowed with a rational and intelligent soul, since it was only nature in the abstract needed a subject to express its properties and faculties. If it is asserted that this subject was God the Son, it follows that everything human in Christ was expressed divinely, but the things divine were not expressed humanly. Can a position like this claim to be orthodox?37

The difficulty of V.C. Samuel in accepting the humanity of Christ as expressed by the enhypostaton in Damascene’s exposition is exactly a repetition of Severus’ objection to accept as real anything that is not self-subsistent: The Damascene admits the expression “composite person” and “composite hypostasis” with reference to Christ, but he does not spell out what he means by it. For Severus as we have seen, the expression means that the one hypostasis of Christ had been formed by the concurrence of the Godhead of the Son and of the manhood which became individuated in the union. In this way the latter conserves the hypostatic character of the manhood as well as the possibility of the human expression of the divine faculties and properties along with a divine expression of the human faculties and properties for us to perceive in our contemplation. If John of Damascus does not safeguard this principle, he cannot have affirmed a real human expression in the one Christ. This indeed is a very serious point of difference between both sides, and we believe that the position conserved by Severus cannot be ignored here in preference for the Damascene’s teaching.38

36

Ibid. 133-5. V.C. Samuel, The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined, Oriental Orthodox Library II (Kent, 2005), 294. 38 Ibid. 298-9. 37

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V.C. Samuel reproduces accurately the position of Severus: a) He accepts the reality of humanity and divinity of Christ only as hypostatic, i.e., each one bearing a hypostasis of its own, b) conversely, he criticizes the Damascene as Severus criticized John the Grammarian about accepting the humanity of Christ without bearing a hypostasis of its own, c) he eliminates duality by accepting the two self-subsistent hypostases only according to epinoia in the one composite nature and hypostasis of Christ. St Cyril never used the terminology of a composite nature or hypostasis to Christ, but, referring to humanity and divinity of Christ, he used the example of the human being as composite in order to illustrate the coinherence in one thing of two different natures, namely body and soul. Contrary to Severus, who denied the natures as such in the composition, St Cyril explicitly spoke about the coexistence of the two natures in the composition without necessarily meaning two men, that is two agents: There are two united natures but one Christ … the Word of God become man and incarnate. May we illustrate the case from the composition which renders us human beings? We are composed out of soul and body and observe two different natures, the body’s and the soul’s; yet the pair yields a single united human being, and composition out of two natures does not turn the one man into two men but, as I said, produces a single man a composite of soul and body.39

St Cyril puts forward the expression ‘from two natures’ in order to establish the humanity and the divinity of Christ as undivided existing natures of the Incarnated Word: ‘If we repudiate the fact that the one and unique Christ is from two different natures, existing, as he does, indivisible after the union, opponents of orthodoxy will ask how he could have been made man or appropriated any flesh if the entirety is a single nature.’40 Severus repeats the same expression in order to abolish the existence of humanity and divinity as natures of Christ: ‘We must confess the one our Lord Jesus Christ, out of two natures … for duality is a dissolver of unity … For he who has been united is fixedly one, and does not become again two.’41 Duality of natures would have meant a necessary, inevitable division into the man Jesus and God the Word: ‘But if we speak of two natures after the union, which necessarily exist in singleness and separately … the notion of difference reaches to the extent of division.’42 A definition of nature as an underlying reality of a thing, without this meaning necessarily an independent agent for each natural thing, is nonsensical for 39

First Letter to Succensus, L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983), 77. First Letter to Succensus, L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983), 77. 41 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1919), XVIII, To the monks at Tufa, 212. The view of I.R. Torrance, Christology (1988), 135, that Severus holds “a concept of limited duality, which did not imply the independence of the constituent natures” cannot be supported by the evidence. 42 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1919), X, To Eleusinius, 201. 40

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Severus: ‘It is plain to all those who are even moderately educated and learned in the dogmas of orthodoxy that it is in the nature of a contradiction to say concerning the one Christ that on the one hand there are two natures, but on the other one hypostasis. For the person who speaks of “one hypostasis” necessarily affirms one nature as well.’43 The Chalcedonian formula of one hypostasis in two natures, meaning one agent of two different things, namely humanity and divinity of Christ, was considered a deception and a departure from the truth: ‘Thus it is clear that those who were at Chalcedon, when they promoted the dogma that Christ is in two natures, threw in for us the term “one hypostasis” to lead to deception. For if there is one hypostasis, there is, in short, also one nature.’44 For Severus, if a nature signifies a generality or the underlying reality of all individuals belonging to a certain class, then the term nature must include the sum of the individuals of the class. In the case of Christ, as one hypostasis in two natures, that would have meant that the sum of individuals of the Godhead was incarnated in the sum of individuals of the humanity, which is absurd: But the very men who blasphemously call the one Christ two natures use the name ‘nature’ in place of ‘individual designation’, saying that the Word of God is one nature, and the man as they say from Mary another. For they do not reach such a height of fatuity as to say that they are using the name ‘natures’ in place of ‘general designation’, I mean in the same sense as essence: for, if the Holy Trinity is one nature, and all mankind one nature, in the same sense as anything which is shown to be so on this principle, the Holy Trinity will be found (to say a very absurd thing) to have become incarnate in all mankind, that is the human race.45

4. Distinction of natures in Christ by St Cyril and Severus For Severus, since a composite nature as a whole denies the individual existence of its parts, the recognition of the natures that constitute the composite nature and hypostasis happens only as fictional fantasy created by the human mind. The mind fantasizes that the individual natures exist, but once the mind conceives the oneness of composite nature then the individual natures cease to exist even in the state of imagination: If one considers those things out of which Christ exists or is naturally composed – as is possible in this matter also through acute contemplation alone and as is lawful to see with the eyes of the mind and by means of reason – he will perceive and gather the difference of the entities which have been assembled together. He sees the natural essence of the two natures and hypostases; and when, at the same time, he is enlightened by the power of the union and finds that those particular subsistencies do not even subsist in composition, but perfectly form one hypostasis and one nature of the Word 43 44 45

Ad Nephalium, II, CSCO 64, 16. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 63. Ad Nephalium, II, CSCO 64, 19. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 64. E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1919), VI, To Maron, 197-8.

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incarnate, he cannot affirm that those things which are seen by contemplation are two in hypostasis.46

This kind of intellectual recognition is far different from St Cyril’s usage of mental recognition of the undivided natures in Christ. For St Cyril, the natures of Christ are being distinguished in the intellect, but remain undivided in reality, without ceasing to exist either in reality or in the imagination, as in the case of Severus: ‘Accordingly when the mode of the incarnation is the object of curiosity the human mind is bound to observe two things joined together in union with each other mysteriously and without merger, yet it in no way divides what are united but believes and firmly accepts that the product of both elements is one God, Son, Christ and Lord.’47 Severus, due to his fundamental axiom that for a nature to exist it has to have an exclusive agent, reads such passages as meaning that the one nature resulting from the union of two natures erases any kind of duality of natures, because any kind of duality after the union would have meant division into two agents.48 The literal difference from St Cyril is obvious when St Cyril actually affirms two undivided natures after the union: ‘There is no bar to saying that he suffered in the manhood’s nature. If that is true, must we not be conceding that two natures exist inseparably after the union?’49 Hans van Loon answering to the Severan interpretation of St Cyril by Joseph Lebon writes: Lebon … asks the rhetorical question: If the Nestorian affirmation of two natures seems to Cyril to be the division of Christ into two distinct individuals, should one not say that, in his eyes, the term φύσις has, in christology, the sense of something that exists separately and independently? My answer to this question, however, is: Not necessarily so … Cyril objects to separating the natures, while he acknowledges the real distinction of the natures, also after the union. This argumentation is not new; already John the Grammarian used it against the Miaphysites of his time.50

5. The assignment of natural characteristics in humanity and divinity of Christ according to St Cyril and Severus The Formula of Reunion of 433 states: ‘As for the terms used about the Lord in the Gospels and apostolic writings, we recognize that theologians “treat some as shared because they refer to one person, some they refer separately to 46 Contra Impium Grammaticum, II. 22, CSCO 58, 187. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 86-7. 47 To Acacius of Melitene, L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983), 51. 48 Contra Impium Grammaticum, III. 12, CSCO 45, 227. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 81. 49 Second Letter to Succensus, L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983), 93. 50 H. van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology (2009), 225.

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two natures, traditionally teaching the application of the divine terms to Christ’s Godhead,” the lowly to his manhood.’51 St Cyril embraced the whole argumentation and terminology, because he was certain that it did not imply any kind of division of Christ into two different agents. In the letter to Acacius, St Cyril explains that the assignment of natural characteristics to each nature, which basically means the acceptance of two natures in Christ after the union as well, does not necessarily mean a division of Christ into two agents as long as the natures are not taken in mutual isolation as separate individuals: ‘The Easterns … distinguish the terms not as I have said, by dividing the one Son and Lord into two, but by ascribing some terms to his Godhead, some in turn to his manhood; nevertheless all belong to one.’52 This is an admission which does not embrace the axiom of every existing nature having an exclusive agent. Severus believed that St Cyril was pretending, in order to achieve the Reunion with the Easterners along with the condemnation of Nestorius. 53 Severus, relying upon the reference of St Cyril to the different natural qualities, establishes the difference of the two natures in Christ. Whereas the natures of Christ cease to exist as natures, because the contrary would have meant division of Christ, still the difference of humanity and divinity is manifested through the different natural qualities of the one composite nature and hypostasis of Christ: We therefore anathematize not those who confess the properties of the natures of which the one Christ consists, but those who separate the properties, and apportion them to each nature apart. When the one Christ has once been divided (and he is divided by the fact that they speak of two natures after the union), with the natures which have been cut asunder into a duality and separated into a distinct diversity go the operations and properties…54

Severus’ confession of humanity and divinity of Christ is a confession of different natural qualities without the existence of their corresponding natures: ‘It is not confessing the particularity of the natures from which Emmanuel comes that we avoid, so long as we maintain the unity without confusion (the particularity is that which is expressed in natural characteristics), but distributing and dividing the properties to each of the natures.’55 The assignment of natural properties to each nature, that St Cyril embraced as an orthodox way of confession for the Antiochenes as a consequence of the Formula of Reunion (431) marks the strongest difference between the Alexandrian saint and the anti-Chalcedonian patriarch. Here again St Cyril rejects the division of the natural properties into two different agents. He does not reject 51

Formula of Reunion, L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983), 222. Letter to Acacius of Melitene, L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983), 57. 53 Philalethes, Florilegium, 8, CSCO 68, 199-200. Trans. in P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus (2004), 72. 54 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1919), I, To Oecumenius the Count, 179-80. 55 E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1919), III, To Oecumenius the Count, 194. 52

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the Antiochene assignment of the natural properties to their respective natures as long as this means one agent and not the division into two agents: The Antiochene brethren, on the other hand, taking the recognized elements of Christ at the level only of mere ideas, have mentioned a difference of natures, because, as I have said, Godhead and manhood are not the same thing in quality of nature, yet they do declare there is one Son and Christ and Lord, and, since he is actually one in reality, that his person too is one; by no manner of means do they divide what are in union nor do they accept the physical division of that proponent of pitiful ingenuities. They maintain that it is only the terms applied to the Lord which are divided; they do not mean that some of these apply to a Son in isolation, the Word of God, some again to a different woman-born son, but instead that some apply to his Godhead some to his manhood.56

Hans van Loon concludes: ‘All along, Cyril distributed Christ’s sayings, properties and actions over his divinity and his humanity. The fourth anathema does not reject their distribution over two natural sources within the one and undivided Christ, but their attribution to two separate beings.’57 Since Severus identifies the ‘what’ of a thing (its nature) with the ‘who’ (its agent), he selects the Cyrillian passages which show the exchange of natural properties in the one hypostasis of God the Word (communicatio idiomatum) in order to prove that the natural properties that belong to the humanity and the divinity should be assigned exclusively to the one composite nature and hypostasis of Christ. The one agent of St Cyril is interpreted by Severus as the arithmetically one nature and one hypostasis which are never two in any way. That means, the other way around, that to assign the properties to the two natures as their underlying realities is the same as two agents having their exclusive properties: It belongs therefore to those who part the one Christ into two natures and dissolve the unity to say, “For each of the natures preserves its property unimpaired”. But those who believe that, after God the Word had been hypostatically united to flesh that possessed an intelligent soul, he performed all his own acts in it, and changed it not into his nature (far be it!), but into his glory and operation, no longer seek the things that manifestly belong to the flesh without diminution, to which flesh the things that manifestly belong by nature to the Godhead have come to belong by reason of the union. But, if they senselessly divide it from God the Word by speaking of two natures after the union, it then walks in its own ways following its nature, and preserves its properties undiminished on the principle of the impious men. But these things are not so (how could they be?), but indeed very different: for union rejects division, as the holy Cyril said: “For, though it is said that he hungered and thirsted, and slept and grew weary after a journey, and wept and feared, these things did not happen to him just as they do to us in accordance with compulsory ordinances of nature; but he himself voluntarily

56 57

Letter to Acacius of Melitene, L.R. Wickham, Cyril (1983), 53. H. van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology (2009), 580.

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permitted his flesh to walk according to the laws of nature, for he sometimes allowed it even to undergo its own passions”.58

I.R. Torrance59 does not seem to realize the strategy of Severus in order to overcome his apparent contradiction with St Cyril, who was actually speaking about the distribution of the properties to their respective natures from 433 onwards. Severus had chosen carefully the Cyrillian passages referring to the exchange of properties in the person of the Incarnated Word to counterbalance the Cyrillian distribution of the properties to their respective natures. With this material Severus could establish the denial of the distribution of the natural properties to their natures. If one forgets that Severus wants to abolish duality by any means, then it is easy to think that Severus speaks about enhypostatized humanity, or as I.R. Torrance puts it ‘a personalizing union’.60 On this point, Severus’ strategy is not a mere ‘discontinuity’61 with St Cyril, but a deliberate misinterpretation.

58 59 60 61

E.W. Brooks, A Collection (1919), I, To Oecumenius the Count, 184-5. I.R. Torrance, Christology (1988), 86. Ibid. 125. Ibid. 121.

The Gift of the Holy Spirit: Pledge and Fulfillment in Cyril of Alexandria Veronica M. TIERNEY, Woonsocket, RI, USA

ABSTRACT Cyril of Alexandria’s idiosyncratic view of the creation of human beings asserts that the imago Dei is extrinsic, a gift located within the divine inbreathing in Gen. 2:7. This assertion is necessary in Cyril’s account of the fall as the loss of that divine gift, because only that which is extrinsic or ‘not rooted’ in nature can be lost. Cyril’s account of humanity’s creation, fall, restoration, and ultimate glorification has been described as a narrative of the gift, loss, and return of the Holy Spirit. And yet, there has remained unresolved the question that, if the gift of the Holy Spirit could be lost in Eden, what prevents it from being lost ever again? What accounts for the seeming inadequacy of the first gift relative to the second? Relying primarily on Cyril’s Festal Letters and Commentary on John, the article will argue that Cyril does, in fact, offer a compelling answer to these questions. He appeals to the gift of the Holy Spirit as pledge (ἀρραβών; 2Cor. 1:21-2 and 5:5 and Eph. 1:13-4), and frequently connects this idea with the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30), to explain how the Holy Spirit is given provisionally in both the original creation and the new creation of the resurrection, only to be given in full after the general resurrection and final judgment.

Introduction Cyril of Alexandria explains the fall of humanity into sin through his idiosyncratic view of the image of God. Cyril grounds this view in Gen. 2:7, where God creates the first human being, full and complete, and then breathes into his nostrils.1 Cyril chastises those who teach that this inbreathing represents the creation of the soul and thus the completion of the human person. Instead, he identifies the inbreathing as the gift of the Holy Spirit and thus of the image of God.2 It is critical to Cyril’s interpretation that this gift be given after, and therefore apart from, God’s creation of the first human being. Cyril is thus able to distinguish between humanity’s own proper nature and the graces given to humanity by God. Cyril holds that only those things that are extrinsic to nature 1

Marie-Odile Boulnois, ‘Le soufflé et l’Esprit: Exégèses patristiques de l’insufflation originelle de Gn 2, 7 en lien avec celle de Jn 20, 22’, Recherches augustiniennes 24 (1989), 3-37, 30. 2 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 9.1.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 101-108. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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can be lost.3 His account of the fall, then, traces humanity’s creation, reception of the extrinsic gift of the Holy Spirit, and then subsequent flight of the Holy Spirit from humanity as the consequence of the first transgression. The restoration of fallen humanity is begun at the baptism of Jesus, where the Holy Spirit both descended and remained on him because of his sinlessness. Cyril insists that John the Evangelist stresses that the Spirit remained on him in order to highlight the permanence of the Spirit’s presence, in contrast to the temporary indwelling of the Holy Spirit in Adam, in John the Baptist, and in the prophets.4 Brian Daley identifies the return of the Holy Spirit to humanity at the baptism of Jesus as representing ‘the beginning of its renewal’.5 After the resurrection, Christ gives the Holy Spirit to his disciples when he breathes on them, invoking the imagery of Gen. 2:7 (John 20:22). And then finally, after his ascension into heaven, Christ sends the Holy Spirit to the community at large at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). Nevertheless, these gifts of the Holy Spirit to the disciples and to the wider Church mark a new beginning of the Spirit’s presence in the restored humanity; such gifts will find their consummation only at the Last Day. The problem of the lost gift The problem raised by this narrative of the economy of salvation in terms of the gift, loss, and restoration of the Holy Spirit is that it inadequately accounts for the distinction between the gift in creation and the gift in the resurrection. Why might the first be lost at all? And what prevents the second from suffering the same fate? Indeed, such concern is raised by Cyril’s interlocutors in his Doctrinal Questions and Answers, who worry that the soul’s advancement to its future state implies the possibility of falling back again.6 Daniel Keating writes: ‘By breathing the Spirit on the disciples (and so on us all), Christ restores the original, supernatural state of the human race, except now with unshakeable stability and greater dignity. It is clear that Cyril teaches a genuine gain in Christ over what we had in Adam; it is less clear what precisely that gain consists in.’7 What follows is my attempt to lay out Cyril’s understanding of that genuine gain in Christ, and to argue that there is, in fact, an ultimate and irrevocable gain to be had at the final judgment and the resurrection of the righteous.

3

Cyril, Commentary on John 1.8. Cyril, Commentary on John 2.1, 4.4. 5 Brian E. Daley, ‘The Fullness of the Saving God: Cyril of Alexandria on the Holy Spirit’, in The Theology of St Cyril of Alexandria (London, 2003), 113-48, 136. 6 Cyril of Alexandria, ‘Doctrinal Questions and Answers’, in Lionel R. Wickham (ed. and trans.), Select Letters (Oxford, 1983), 180-213, 199-201. 7 Daniel A. Keating, The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford, 2004), 201-2. 4

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Cyril’s solution For Cyril, the ascension of Christ into heaven is the culmination of the whole economy; the descent of the divine Word into the human condition was, in fact, for the sake of the ascent of the human community up to the divine condition. Cyril is very careful to say that this ascent is utterly impossible for any creature to accomplish on its own: ‘We will find, however, that the power to ascend to the glory of the creator of all belongs to none of the creatures. No originate being will be God by nature, nor will the slave have equal honor with the Lord, sitting and ruling with him.’8 The possibility of human ascent into heaven, of becoming ‘gods and sons of God’ (Ps. 82:6, paraphrase), is entirely dependent upon the will of God and the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit. By his personal and bodily entry into heaven, Christ reveals that the human telos is nothing less than our own entry into heaven. Furthermore, his gift of the Holy Spirit, first to the disciples in the locked room on Easter evening, and then broadly to believers on the day of Pentecost, is understood in terms of a pledge (ὁ ἀρραβών).9 That gift is a partial one, a token of a greater gift yet to come. And finally, Christ’s enthronement at the right hand of the Father reveals that humanity was created in order to exercise dominion with Christ over all of creation. This idea of the Holy Spirit being given as a first installment, deposit, or pledge of something more yet to come appears in 2Corinthians 1:21-2 and 5:5, and in Ephesians 1:13-4.10 Cyril’s first three Festal Letters include brief references to the gift of the Holy Spirit in anticipation of the fulfillment of future benefit: ‘And as a sort of pledge to us of the future hope, he bestowed the Spirit, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit”’11 and, ‘He raised up the temple of himself in three days … having endowed those on earth with a share in the Spirit 8

Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 5.4; Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, ed. Joel C. Elowsky, trans. David R. Maxwell, 2 vol. (Downers Grove, IL, 2013-2015), I 333; Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii in Joannem, in Sancti Patris Nostri Cyrilli Archiepiscopi Alexandrini [opera], ed. P.E. Pusey, 7 vol. (Brussels, 1965), II 16, τὸ γεμὴν εἰς τοῦ τὰ πάντα πεποιηκότος ἀναβαίνειν δύνασθαι δόξαν οὐδενὶ τῶν κτισμάτων προσὸν εὑρήσομεν· οὐ γὰρ ἔσται τι τῶν γεγονότων φύσει Θεὸς, οὐδ’ ἰσότιμον ἔσται τῷ Δεσπότῃ τὸ δοῦλον, σύνεδρόν τε καὶ συμβασιλεῦον αὐτῷ. 9 It is quite curious that the only use of this term in the entire LXX appears in the story of Tamar and Judah (Gen. 38), where Tamar demands a pledge from Judah so that he will return with the promised payment. 10 2Cor. 1:21-2, NRSV: ‘But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, by putting his seal on us and giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment (ἀρραβῶνα)’; 2Cor. 5:5, NRSV: ‘He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee (ἀρραβῶνα)’; and, Eph. 1:13-4, NRSV: ‘In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge (ἀρραβών) of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory’. 11 Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letter 1.6; Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letters 1-12, trans. Philip R. Amidon and ed. John J. O’Keefe, Fathers of the Church 118 (Washington, DC, 2009),

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as a pledge of grace’12 and, ‘He also destroyed the power of death, having placed in us the Holy Spirit as our earnest of future hope, the pledge of the good things we expect.’13 In the first instance, Cyril differentiates between those who will be raised to eternal life and those who will be raised to condemnation: ‘Those who have gone to their rest with faith in Christ and who have received the first installment of the Spirit during their life in the flesh will obtain the most perfect grace and will be changed to the glory that will be given by God.’14 And in the second instance, Cyril writes of the benefit, not only of receiving the pledge, but also of keeping it (this is exactly what Adam had been unable to do): ‘And since they have kept the “deposit of the Spirit” intact, they will be with [Christ] and behold his God-befitting beauty without hindrance.’15 These references to the Holy Spirit as a pledge use the same phrasing as 2Corinthians 1:21-2 and 5:5. Cyril’s use of Ephesians 1:13-4 is slightly less precise, but evokes baptismal imagery and grace: ‘Once we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and have the pledge of grace in our mind, our hearts are protected in that we have been “clothed with power from on high”.’16 In his summary of the structure of these concluding proclamations of the Christian kerygma, Bernard Meunier refers to the gift of the Holy Spirit only in general terms; he does not include reference to the Holy Spirit being given specifically as pledge, despite the fact that the example he uses (from Festal Letter 4) to illustrate Cyril’s structure includes the phrase ‘putting in us the Holy Spirit as a pledge of the hope to come’.17

51; Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Lettres festales I (I-VI), SC 372 (Paris, 1991), 184: ἀρραβῶνα δὲ ὥσπερ ἡμῖν τῆς μελλούσης ἐλπίδος τὸ Πνεῦμα χαρίζεται, λέγων· «Λάβετε Πνεῦμα ἅγιον». 12 Cyril, Festal Letter 2.8; Cyril, Festal Letters 1-12 (2009), 67; Cyrille, Lettres festales I (1991), 232: τριήμερον μὲν ἀνίστησι τὸν ἑαυτοῦ ναόν … τὸν ἀρραβῶνα τῆς χάριτος τοῖς ἐπὶ γῆς δωρησάμενος τὴν τοῦ Πνεύματος μετουσίαν. 13 Cyril, Festal Letter 4.6; Cyril, Festal Letters 1-12 (2009), 81; Cyrille, Lettres festales I (1991), 272: Ἔλυσε καὶ τοῦ θανάτου τὸ κράτος, ἀρραβῶνα μὲν τῆς μελλούσης ἐλπίδος θεὶς ἐν ἡμῖν τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον, ἐνέχυρόν τε τῶν προσδοκωμένων ἀγαθῶν. 14 Cyril, Commentary on John 6.1; Cyril, Commentary on John (trans. Maxwell), II 61; Cyril, Commentarii in Joannem (1965), II 220: οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν πίστει τῇ εἰς Χριστὸν ἀναπαυσάμενοι, καὶ τὸν ἀῤῥαβῶνα τοῦ Πνεύματος κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν τῆς μετὰ σώματος ζωῆς κομισάμενοι τελεωτάτην ἐναποκομιοῦται τὴν χάριν, καὶ ἀλλαγήσονται πρὸς δόξαν κομιζόμενοι τὴν παρὰ Θεοῦ. 15 Cyril, Commentary on John 9.1; Cyril, Commentary on John (trans. Maxwell), II 183; Cyril, Commentarii in Joannem (1965), II 475: καὶ τὸν ἀῤῥαβῶνα τοῦ Πνεύματος ἀσινῆ τηρήσαντες, συνόντες δὲ δηλονότι, καὶ τὸ θεοπρεπὲς αὐτοῦ κατόψονται κάλλος ἀδιακωλύτως· 16 Cyril, Commentary on John 11.12; Cyril, Commentary on John (trans. Maxwell), II 309; Cyril, Commentarii in Joannem (1965), III 9: οἱ γὰρ ἅπαξ κατασφραγισθέντες τῷ Ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι καὶ τὸν ἀῤῥαβῶνα τῆς χάριτος ἔχοντες εἰς νοῦν, πεπυργωμένην ἔχουσι τὴν καρδίαν, ἅτε δὴ καὶ ἐνδυσάμενοι τὴν ἐξ ὕψους δύναμιν. 17 Bernard Meunier, Le Christ de Cyrille d’Alexandrie: L’humanité, le salut et la question monophysite (Paris, 1997), 19: ‘en mettant en nous commes arrhes de l’espérance à venir l’Esprit-Saint’. SC offers arrhes as the French translation of ἀρραβῶνα (SC 372, 272-3).

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Cyril’s repeated reference to these three Scriptural sources sets him apart from his theological predecessors in Alexandria, Athanasius and Didymus the Blind. In their respective works of pneumatology, the Letters to Serapion and On the Holy Spirit, neither of them treats the notion of pledge at all. The closest either of them comes to citing any of the three passages where the term ἀρραβών appears is Ephesians 1:13; Athanasius does not include verse 14 at all,18 while Didymus cites it once, and then only as the completion of the sentence begun in verse 13.19 Both authors focus on the action of the Holy Spirit in sealing believers. Neither Athanasius nor Didymus makes any reference to either of the passages from 2Corinthians. Cyril’s Commentary on John is where we find fuller treatments of the pledge of the Holy Spirit and its eschatological fulfillment. This concept of pledge and fulfillment accounts for the simultaneous presence and work of the Holy Spirit in believers, and the reality that believers do not yet participate fully in the divine stability necessary to preclude our falling once again into sin. Cyril understands the gift of the Holy Spirit to be central to the whole economy, that the Holy Spirit is given first as a pledge or deposit (ἀρραβών), and that such a gift is therefore provisional. What one does with that deposit during one’s lifetime is a basis for judgment, just as the more general assessment of one’s actions for good or ill. In this way, the Genesis story of the first couple and their loss of the deposit through their transgression of the divine command provides both an origin story of human fallenness and subjection to sin, death, and the devil, as well as a glimpse into what lies ahead. In the final judgment, only those who have received and preserved the deposit they have been given will enjoy the fullness of what that deposit represents. That fullness is participation in the divine life and eternal fellowship with the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. This ‘perfect participation in the Spirit … is not common to all, but it is “more” than life and is classified as being beyond what is common to all. It will be ascribed only to those who are justified by faith in Christ’.20 What is common to all is only the restoration to life in the general resurrection at the last day due to the universal nature of Christ’s victory over death. The idea that the Holy Spirit is given in some provisional sense, as a deposit or first installment, and will ultimately be given fully is suggested in Cyril’s treatment of the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30): ‘For when we keep 18 Athanasius of Alexandria, Letters to Serapion 1.23.5 and 2.12.2; Athanasius of Alexandria, Letters to Serapion, in Mark DelCogliano, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz and Lewis Ayers (eds and trans.), Works on the Spirit, Popular Patristics Series 43 (Yonkers, NY, 2011), Kindle edition, Loc 1981, 2587. 19 Didymus the Blind, On the Holy Spirit 20; Didymus the Blind, ‘On the Holy Spirit’, in Mark DelCogliano et al., Works on the Spirit (2011), Loc 3433. 20 Cyril, Commentary on John 6.1; Commentary on John (trans. Maxwell), II 61; Cyril, Commentarii in Joannem (1965), II 220: τὴν τελεωτάτην τοῦ Πνεύματος μέθεξιν … οὐκέτι πᾶσι κοινόν, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τῇ ζωῇ περιττὸν καὶ ὡς ἐν τάξει πλείονος τοῦ κοινῇ πᾶσιν ὑπάρξαντος, μόνοις ἀπονεμηθήσεται τοῖς διὰ πίστεως τῆς εἰς Χριστὸν δεδικαιωμένοις·

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ourselves free of fault and stain, and with perfect purity practice the way of life pleasing to God, we will fittingly hear the words addressed to honest slaves: “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your Lord”.’21 The two servants’ faithfulness over the talents with which they had been entrusted represents the faithfulness of the Christian over the deposit of the Spirit, whereas the third servant’s choice to bury the talent in the ground represents the rejection or spurning of the gift. The reward of ‘much’ in response to one’s behavior toward ‘little’ is a dynamic parallel to the fulfillment of the promise of which the deposit serves as a pledge. To reinforce this idea that the gift of the Holy Spirit remains fundamentally provisional, Cyril combines the image of the vine and branches (John 15:1-2) with the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30). He refers to the Holy Spirit as the ‘life-giving sap’ that flows from the vine to the branches, enabling them to produce the fruit of good works. But if we inhibit the flow of the Spirit, we become like the servant who buried the talent in the ground. Our branches are cut off, just as the talent was taken away from that servant. In both images, the result is the loss of the Holy Spirit. Cyril explains that what we do with the gift of the Spirit is liable to judgment.22 At the close of the parable of the talents, Jesus says, ‘For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away’ (Matt. 25:29, NRSV). This conclusion, when interpreted according to Cyril’s understanding of the provisional nature of the gift of the Holy Spirit as pledge, would suggest that, even though the Holy Spirit becomes accustomed to dwell in human nature by virtue of Christ’s reception at baptism, nevertheless, the gift is not yet made permanent in individual human beings. Athanasius may offer a general basis for Cyril’s discussion of the loss of the Holy Spirit when he argues for the way in which creatures participate in the uncreated Holy Spirit. If they can begin to participate, then it is also possible that ‘they can fall away from the one in whom they participate’.23 And Didymus may also lay some groundwork for Cyril’s assertion of this pledge-fulness dynamic by writing about variation in degrees of participation and communion in the Spirit.24 And yet, 21 Cyril, Festal Letter 21.2; Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letters 13-30, trans. Philip R. Amidon and ed. John J. O’Keefe, Fathers of the Church 127 (Washington, DC, 2013), 111; Cyril of Alexandria, Homiliae paschales 21.2 (PG 77, 852D-853A): Ὅταν γὰρ ἑαυτοὺς ἀμώμους καὶ ἀσπίλους τηρήσωμεν, καὶ τὴν ἀρέσκουσαν Θεῷ πολιτείαν πανάγνως ἀσκήσωμεν, ὡς γνήσιοι δοῦλοι προσφόρως ἀκουσόμεθα· «Εὖ, δοῦλε ἀγαθὲ καὶ πιστὲ, ἐπὶ ὀλίγα ἦς πιστός, ἐπὶ πολλῶν σε καταστήσω, εἴσελθε εἰς τὴν χαρὰν τοῦ Κυρίου σου». 22 Cyril, Commentary on John 10.2; Cyril, Commentary on John (trans. Maxwell), II 217; Cyril, Commentarii in Joannem (1965), II 548-9. 23 Athanasius, Letters to Serapion 1.27.1; M. DelCogliano et al., Works on the Spirit (2011), Loc 2103. 24 Didymus, On the Holy Spirit 28 and 36; M. DelCogliano et al., Works on the Spirit (2011), Loc 3483 and 3541.

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what Cyril presents, with his use of the language of pledge coupled with the parable of the talents, has no clear antecedent in either Athanasius or Didymus. In fact, the parable is entirely absent from their works of pneumatology. At his baptism, Christ received the Holy Spirit on behalf of all human nature. This return of the Holy Spirit represents a new beginning of creation, insofar as nature enjoyed the presence of the Holy Spirit. What seems to be important at the level of nature is that, in Christ, the Holy Spirit became ‘accustomed to remain in us, since the Spirit finds no reason in him for leaving or shrinking back’.25 Whereas one of the consequences of Adam and Eve’s transgression was the flight of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the loss of the Spirit’s stabilizing and strengthening power, Christ’s own sinlessness ensures that the Holy Spirit will forever have a home in humanity. Cyril cites Joel 2:28, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh’, to indicate what is universal about the restoration of the Holy Spirit to all of human nature. But he goes on to explain that ‘each person becomes a partial cause of obtaining the God-given blessing or of not getting it at all. Some people do not purify their mind with all goodness, but they love to dwell in the evils of the world. They remain without a share of divine grace, and they will not see Christ in themselves, since they have a heart that is devoid of the Holy Spirit.’26 Cyril explains that ‘Those who have gone to their rest with faith in Christ and who have received the first installment (τὸν ἀρραβῶνα) of the Spirit during their life in the flesh will obtain the most perfect grace and will be changed to the glory that will be given by God.’27 This change refers to ‘the solidification and permanence of their bodies, since corruption has been destroyed and death has fallen into death’.28 The reward, then, is bestowed on some, rather than all, and amounts to the fullest participation in the divine life, or, in the language of the parable of the talents, entry into the joy of the Lord. This participation includes the benefit of eternal stability at all levels of human existence: ontological, insofar as we will never cease to exist, and 25 Cyril, Commentary on John 2.1; Cyril, Commentary on John (trans. Maxwell), I 82; Cyril, Commentarii in Joannem (1965), I 184: ἵνα προσεθισθῇ τὸ Πνεῦμα μένειν ἐν ἡμῖν, ἀφορμὴν οὐκ ἔχον ἀναχωρήσεως ἢ ὑποστολῆς ἐν αὐτῷ. 26 Cyril, Commentary on John 9.1; Cyril, Commentary on John (trans. Maxwell), II 182; Cyril, Commentarii in Joannem (1965), II 473: ἕκαστος γεμὴν ἑαυτῷ παραίτιος γίνεται τοῦ κεκτῆσθαι τὸ θεόσδοτον ἀγαθόν, ἢ καὶ μηδόλως ἑλεῖν. οἱ μὲν γὰρ διὰ πάσης ἐπιεικείας τὸν οἰκεῖον ἀποκαθαίροντες νοῦν οὐδαμῶς, ἐμφιλοχωροῦντες δὲ λίαν τοῖς ἐν κόσμῳ κακοῖς, ἀμέτοχοι τῆς θείας ἀπομενοῦσι χάριτος, οὐκ ὄψονται Χριστὸν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς, ἐρήμην τοῦ Πνεύματος ἔχοντες τὴν καρδίαν. 27 Cyril, Commentary on John 6.1; Cyril, Commentary on John (trans. Maxwell), II 61; Cyril, Commentarii in Joannem (1965), II 221: οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἐν πίστει τῇ εἰς Χριστὸν ἀναπαυσάμενοι, καὶ τὸν ἀῤῥαβῶνα τοῦ Πνεύματος κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν τῆς μετὰ σώματος ζωῆς κομισάμενοι τελεωτάτην ἐναποκομιοῦται τὴν χάριν, καὶ ἀλλαγήσονται πρὸς δόξαν κομιζόμενοι τὴν παρὰ Θεοῦ. 28 Cyril, Commentary on John 3.4; Cyril, Commentary on John (trans. Maxwell), I 178; Cyril, Commentarii in Joannem (1965), I 399: τῆς τῶν σωμάτων συμπήξεώς τε καὶ διαμονῆς, λελυμένης δηλονότι τῆς φθορᾶς, καὶ τοῦ θανάτου πεσόντος εἰς θάνατον.

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natural, insofar as our bodies and souls will be perfectly ordered and at peace with one another. Conclusion Cyril had interpreted the image of God as the Holy Spirit who came to dwell in the first human being when God breathed into his nostrils (Gen. 2:7). As a consequence of the first transgression, the Holy Spirit fled from human nature and returned only at the baptism of Jesus, where it remained because of his sinlessness. After the resurrection, Christ gives the Holy Spirit to his disciples when he breathes on them, and then to the broader community at Pentecost. In Christian baptism, Christ gives the Holy Spirit to the new believers as a pledge of full and permanent sharing in divine life in the heavenly Jerusalem. The Christian faith and life should be understood as the means by which we keep and preserve this treasured gift. As in the parable of the talents, those servants who care wisely for a portion of their master’s wealth are rewarded with a larger share. The gift of the Holy Spirit as pledge is intended to bring about fruitfulness and is the principle of growth in faith and virtue. The role of the Holy Spirit is to effect participation in the divine life. Again, as in the parable of the talents, at the final judgment, Christ will assess what we have done with our deposit. Those who have freely chosen to preserve and nurture the gift will receive the fullness of that union with God of which the gift was a pledge. Conversely, those who refused or neglected or rejected the gift will have even that token taken away from them. Only once the final judgment is accomplished will the righteous enter forever into the joy of their master (Matt. 25:21). Cyril wants no one to be ‘ignorant of the grace to be granted to man’s nature after its return of life from the dead… If we lead holy lives now that we have the pledge of the Spirit, what shall we be when we receive its fullness? Where there is a filling with the Spirit, there must be a security of mind and a stability of heart which looks toward goodness and the pure vision of God’.29 Cyril’s exposition of the gift of the Holy Spirit as pledge, interpreted through the parable of the talents, accounts for both the present provisional character and the eschatological fullness of our participation in the Holy Spirit, and thus represents a unique pneumatological contribution.

29 Cyril, Doctrinal Questions and Answers 5; Cyril, De Dogmatum Solutione: Οἱ ταῦτα διενθυμούμενοι, ἀγνοεῖν ἐοίκασι τὴν δοθησομένην χάριν τῇ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου φύσει μετὰ τὴν ἐκ νεκρῶν ἀναβίωσιν … εἰ γὰρ νῦν τὸν ἀρραβῶνα τοῦ Πνεύματος ἔχοντες ἁγίως πολιτευόμεθα, τίνες ἐσόμεθα λαβόντες τὸ πλῆρες; ὅπου δὲ πλήρωσις Πνεύματος, ἐκεῖ που πάντως καὶ ἀσφάλεια νοῦ καὶ καρδίας ἑδραιότης, τῆς ὁρώσης εἰς τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ εἰς ἀκραιφνῆ θεοπτίαν.

Diadochus of Photike and the Discernment of Spirits Carlos Marcelo SINGH MESCONI, Salta, Argentina

ABSTRACT I will present the concept of the ‘discernment of spirits’, according to Diadochus of Photike, as a complex and transcendent concept. Therefore, I will follow an itinerary based on the fundamental work of the author of the One hundred practical texts of perception and spiritual discernment, highlighting some key topics such as contemplation (θεωρία), discerning (διακρίνω), experience (πεῖρα) and charity (ἀγάπη). The discernment presented as θεωρία implies from its very conception an attitude of humility, a fundamental disposition in front of the Holy Trinity. After this main issue, I will add the image of ‘fighting’, which warns about the difficulties, tensions and commitments which take place in the act of discernment. The subject of this action (sometimes called ‘fighter’) is not alone, thus the grace sustains him, and ‘consolation’ (παράκλησις) and ‘pedagogical desolation’ (παιδευτικὴ παραχώρησις) forge their path towards perfection. In this experience, it is remarkable to say, that the Holy Spirit has a central role: he assumes a dynamic quality by guiding an ‘unerring’ (ἀπλανῶς) discernment, that is to say that it gives infallibility and stability. Therefore, the pneumatological aspect is decisive to better understand the concept of διάκρισις, involving wisdom and knowledge, which come from the Paraclete. Characterized of a positive view of human capacities, the author indicates the possibility to ‘advance’ (προκόπτω) in the experience of discernment. Simultaneously it is correct to empathize that πεῖρα also means a proof, which carries a challenge and a tension as well. In any case, advancing into this experience is a cause of hope.

Concerning the author’s life, the majority of scholars agrees that in fact there are too few sources to rebuild a possible biography. We may consider as most likely that Diadochus was born around the year 400, probably in current Greece, and died in the year 486.1 There are records of his participation in Chalcedon’s Council (451).2 From ancient sources, it is noteworthy to quote Victor de Vita, 1

See Édouard des Places, ‘Introduction’, in Diadoque de Photicé, Œuvres spirituelles, ed. É. des Places, SC 5bis (Paris, 1943), 9. His presentation is developed by the following categories: l’évêque, le polémiste et le maitre spirituel. It is also recommended to consult É. des Places, ‘Diadoque de Photicé’, in Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique 3 (Paris, 1957), 81734; Marcel Viller, Diadoque de Photiké. La Spiritualité des premiers siècles chrétiens (Paris, 1930), 129-30. 2 See Friedrich Dörr, ‘Diadochus von Photike und die Messalianer. Ein Kampf zwischen wahrer und falscher Mystik im fünften Jahrhundert’, Freiburger Theologische Studien 47 (1937), 1-9, 1.

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who refers to the blessed Diadochus, by saying that his numerous works are like brilliant stars dedicated to the catholic faith.3 Regarding his education,4 there is a notable influence from Evagrius of Pontus, and Diadochus benefited from a complete monastic instruction.5 As a ‘pious bishop’6 of Photice in Epiro, his identity as a spiritual master became even more evident. Diadochus inherited the monastic tradition of the first centuries, and could certainly be recognized as one of the starters of the Byzantine spiritual literature.7 As a polemicist, he answered to the Monophysites (Ascention’s homily) and the Messalians (One hundred practical texts). His work One hundred practical texts8 belongs to the centuria genre, born in a monastic framework, and properly introduced by Evagrius of Pontus. The number ‘one hundred’ could be associated with perfection, or could simply play a practical role helping its memorization. Several precedents could be discovered in the Apothegmata of the desert Fathers.9 3 See Victor de Vita, Histoire de la persécution vandale en Afrique, ed. Serge Lancel (Paris, 2002), 2, 95. Concerning the reference of beato Diadoco, it is well accepted that it refers to Diadochus of Photike, so Marrou, des Places, and Courtois. See Henri-Irénée Marrou, ‘Diadoque de Photike et Victor de Vita’, Revue des Études anciennes 45 (1943), 225-32, 229; É. des Places, ‘Introduction’ (1943), 10. 4 About Diadochus’ formation and influences, Cayré affirms: ‘On peut repprocher de l’œuvre de Diadoque les Apophthegmes dont il s’est inspiré. Il a utilisé pour son œuvre les écrits des Pères Cappadociens, notamment de saint Grégoire de Nazianze, mais il a aussi puisé à pleines mains à d’autres sources, surtout à la spiritualité monastique’. Fulbert Cayré, ‘Diadoque de Photicé’, in Patrologie et histoire de la théologie 1 (Paris, 1953), 892-6, 895. 5 To look into the monachism of the 5th century, see Antoine Guillaumont, Aux origines du monachisme chrétien: pour une phénoménologie du monachisme. Esquisse d’une phénoménologie du monachisme (Bellefontaine, 1979), 228-39. Dilley offers a study of late monachism, assimilating an anthropologic view with cognitive disciplines, as meditation and prayer. See Paul Dilley, Monasteries and the Care of Souls in Late Antique Christianity. Cognition and Discipline (Cambridge, 2017), 299-327. 6 ‘Des frommen Bischofs’: F. Dörr, ‘Diadochus von Photike und die Messalianer’ (1937), 135-9, 139. 7 See Rosa Maria Parrinello, ‘Tecnica e carisma. Il discernimento tra radici pagane e tradizione cristiana: Diadoco di Fotica e Giovanni Climaco’, Rivista di storia del cristianesimo 6 (2009), 99-120, 109. 8 I will follow the critical edition: Diadoque de Photicé, Œuvres spirituelles, ed. É. des Places (1943). The translations into English are taken from: Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts of Perception and Spiritual Discernment, trans. Janet Elaine Rutherford (Belfast, 2000). Other translations: Diadoco de Fótice, Obras completas, trans. Pablo Argárate (Madrid, 1999); Diadochus von Photike, Gespür für Gott. Hundert Kapitel über die christliche Vollkommenheit, trans. Karl Suso Frank (Freiburg, 2015); Diadoco di Fotica, Cento considerazioni sulla fede, trans. Vincenzo Messana (Roma, 1978); Diadoque de Photicé, La perfection spirituelle, trans. MarieHélène Congourdeau (Paris, 1990); Following the Footsteps of the Invisible. The Complete Works of Diadochus of Photikë, trans. Cliff Ermatinger (Collegeville, MN, 2010). To examine the history of the text, it is suggested to consult É. des Places, ‘Introduction’ (1943), 68-77. Also id., ‘La tradition manuscrite des «Cent chapitres» de Diadoque de Photicé’, Revue des Études Grecques 70 (1957), 376-80. 9 See V. Messana, ‘Introduzione’ (1978), 14-5. Also see Andreas Wollbold, ‘Einführung’, in Maximus Confessor, Capita theologica et oeconomica = Zwei Centurien über die Gotteserkenntnis,

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About the contemporary studies on Diadochus, we find different approaches, which creates a complex status quaestionis.10 To understand how scholarly opinions are divided, I summarise the key points of interpretation as follows: dialectical, antithetical, and synthetic stages. Thus, there is a dialectical interpretation, expressed through the continuous tension between Diadochus and the Messalians.11 An other point of view is the antithetical one, which accuses Diadochus of being a Messalian.12 In the last decades there are some studies characterized by a synthetic view: Diadochus is considered to be the paradigm of a creative synthesis of the spiritual traditions of Evagrius and PseudoMacarius.13 In reference to the concept of discernment in Diadochus, although a particular section (chapters 26 to 35) relates to this topic in One hundred practical texts,14 implicit or explicit allusions can be acknowledged throughout the whole work. Thus, discernment should be studied not as an isolated term, but in a suitable dialogue with the corpus of the author – the central purpose of this article –, and with other spiritual traditions as well.15

ed. A. Wollbold (Freiburg, 2016), 30; A. Guillaumont, ‘Les Képhalaia Gnostica d’Évagre le Pontique’, Patristica Sorbonensia 5 (1962), 15-46, 18-9. Concerning the genre of the Apophtegmata Patrum, it is suggested to consult Jean-Claude Guy, ‘Introduction’, in Les Apophtegmes des Pères, ed. J.C. Guy, SC 387 (Paris, 1993), 18-23. 10 É. des Places, ‘Un père grec du Vᵉ siècle’, Revue d’études anciennes 45 (1943), 61-80. See also Vincent Desprez, ‘Diadoque de Photicé et le Pseudo-Macaire, un état des questions’, in Universum Hagiographicum, Mémorial R.P. Michel van Esbroeck s.j. (Piscataway, 2009), 11435. 11 In 1937, Dörr proposed a ‘fight’ (Kampf) between the false and true mystic. Cf. F. Dörr, ‘Diadochus von Photike und die Messalianer’ (1937), 10-5. 12 In 1941, Dörries associated Diadochus with the messalianism, by identifying him as a disciple of the Pseudo-Macarius. He verified this conclusion in 1966. Cf. Hermann Dörries, Wort und Stunde, Gesammelte Studien zur Kirchengeschichte des vierten Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1966), 352-422. In 1970, É. des Places answered to Dörries, pointing out the oposition between Diadochus and mesalianism. Cf. É. des Places, ‘Diadoque de Photicé et le Messalianisme’, in Kyriakon, Festschrift für J. Quasten, vol. 2 (Münster, 1970), 591-5. 13 In 2004, M. Plested presented an organic synthesis, focused on Pseudo-Macarius, and analysed the connexion of different authors which share the same tradition of the oriental spirituality. Cf. Marcus Plested, The Macarian Legacy (Oxford, 2004), 133-75, 174. 14 See Cent. 26-35 (SC 97, 16-105, 6). The section of discernment goes from chapter 26 to 35 (One hundred practical texts), and there is also a supplementary part about visions and dreams (36-40), and about the psychology of temptation (75-89). See Joseph Lienhard, ‘Discernment of spirits in the early church’, Theological Studies 41 (1980), 505-29, 523. 15 We find an excellent example of this integral approach, in the study of Rich, where his main topic is the analysis of διάκρισις in the Apophtegmata Patrum, but through an ample perspective, including Evagrius and John Cassian. Cf. Antony D. Rich, Discernment in the Desert Fathers: Διάκρισις in the Life and Thought of Early Egyptian Monasticism (Milton Keynes, 2007), 123-229. It is also inspiring the study of Crislip: arround the concept of acedia in Evagrius, he involves different monastics traditions, and finishes introducing a comparation of acedia and anomie, considering an interdisciplinary dialogue. Cf. Andrew Crislip, ‘The Sin of Sloth or the Illness of the Demons? The Demon of Acedia in Early Christian Monasticism’, HTR 98 (2005), 143-69.

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1. Contemplation and discernment of spirits ‘Contemplation’ (ἡ θεωρία) is an essential component of discernment. It consists in observing, and is considered also as a gift of knowledge.16 Indeed, it is interesting to see how ‘contemplation’ (ἡ θεωρία) is especially linked to ‘theology’ (ἡ θεολογία), the ‘real contemplation’.17 In fact, this noetic dimension is immersed within a practical one: Spiritual expression fully convinces the intellectual sense, for it is borne from God by an activity of love; and so our unaccused intellect stands firm in the movements of divine converse (τῆς θεολογίας).18

In the one hand, a causal relationship between the ‘intellectual’ (νοερός) sense and the activity or ‘energy’ (ἡ ἐνέργεια) of love19 can be found; on the other hand, the author speaks of ‘standing’ (διαμένω) in the movements of theology. Thus, there is a downward process from God, passing through the divine converse up to the activity of love. In the following text, the author emphasises the same concepts: All the free gifts of our God are exceedingly beautiful, and causative of all goodness, but nothing so kindles and moves the heart into the love of his excellence as divine converse (ἡ θεολογία).20

Noting the mystical aspect, Diadochus inserts an image from the nuptial context: theology ‘guides to the wedding’ (ἡ νυμφαγωγία) with God.21 From 16 We are in front of a fundamental concept, fruitfully developed along the whole work. See Cent. 9 (SC 5bis, 88.13-4). The knowledge comes through prayer, see Cent. 9 (SC 5bis, 88.24). 17 There are numerous quotations of ‘theology’: Cent. 7 (SC 5bis, 87.12); 66 (SC 5bis, 127.1); 67 (SC 5bis, 127.13); 68 (SC 5bis, 128.8); 69 (SC 5bis, 129.13); 71 (SC 5bis, 130.14). Argárate analyses the concept of theology linked to glory, therefore the angels are properly ‘the theologians’, that behold permanently the glory of God. See Pablo Argárate, ‘La luz de tu Rostro: Teología de la “Gloria” en Diadoco de Fótice’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 65 (1999), 257-78, 272. Theology is a gift that embraces the intellect of human beings with the light of a transforming fire, so theology joins the soul to the Logos, in unbreakable communion. See Theodoritus Polyzogopoulos, ‘The Anthropology of Diadochus of Photice’, Theologia 56 (1985), 174-221, 197. J.E. Rutherford points out the originality of Diadochus’ theology. See J.E. Rutherford, ‘Sealed with the likeness of God: Christ as Logos in Diadochos of Photike’, in Thomas Finan and Vincent Twomey (eds), Studies in Patristic Christology (Dublin, 1998), 67-83, 79-80. 18 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 18. 19 Messana examines the context of the spirituality of monasticism to explain the characteristics of Diadochus, especially about the insistence of charity. See V. Messana, ‘Diadocho di Fotica e la cultura cristiana in Epiro nel V secolo’, Augustinianum 19 (1979), 151-66, 163. 20 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 90. 21 See Cent. 67 (SC 5bis, 128.3). Argárate introduces ἡ νυμφαγωγία as central for Diadochus’ theological conception. Through this category he gives a formidable presentation of the main themes of spiritual theology, underpinning that theology is particularly mystic. See P. Argárate, Ἡ θεία νυμφαγωγός. La teología espiritual de Diadoco de Fótice’, Nicolaus 25 (1998), 109-62.

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now on, we can consider the depth of discernment, which exceeds a moral context, until we arrive at a theological one. Continuing with ‘contemplation’ (ἡ θεωρία), in chapter 26 the author adverts about the tricks from the enemy that threatens the ‘contemplative’22 intellect, by establishing that it is not infallible.23 In chapter 75, the action of the Holy Spirit is suggested in this matter: (…) so that the contemplative part of our soul might above all remain always clear for our unerring assault on divine contemplations, seeing the things of light in an air of light; for this is the light of true perception.24

Light and contemplation, two aspects of theory, associates a passive dimension ‒ ‘remain’ (διαμένω) ‒ and a dynamic dimension ‒ ‘assault’ (ἐπιβάλλω) ‒ to divine contemplation. Therefore, we can underline the permanence in the ‘air of light’ (διαφανής) and the dedication to divine contemplation with a quite impressive scope: progress from ‘unerring’ (ἀπλανῶς) to get the ‘true’ (ἀληθινός) perception. So far, we have focused on the relationship between contemplation and theology in the context of discernment. Now we will study the dynamic concept of discernment itself. Chapter 26 is actually a preamble to the particular section relative to discernment: Those who contend must always keep the reason undisturbed, so that the intellect, discerning the imaginings which spread into the reason, both lays aside the beautiful imaginings which are sent from God in the treasuries of the recollection, and casts sinister demoniacal imaginings out of the storehouses of its nature.25

We can appreciate a dynamic conception of discernment, shown by the combination of those who contend, the treasuries and the imaginings; so ‘discerning’ (διακρίνω) appears as a catalyst, as a key that gives sense to all the different elements that seem to be disconnected. Discernment is linked to an individual or a subject: the ‘intellect’ (ὁ νοῦς), which depends on those who contend. The finality ‘so’ (ἵνα) refers to the discernment of good and bad thoughts. Concerning this teleology, other verbs preparing and clarifying its sense can be found. On one side, there is the necessity of ‘keeping’ (φυλάττω), or taking care of thoughts. This action shows the quality of the spiritual fighters, and so it is right to observe a military expression of ‘being on guard’, to be a sentinel, which, in the mystical context is understood as monitoring or heeding. On the other side, the adverb ‘always’ (ἀεί) alerts for the necessity of a permanent 22 23 24 25

Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 35. However, we should not forget that the objective of the intellect is to discern without error. Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 101. Ibid. 35.

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vigilance. In a nutshell, discernment requires attention and lucidity in order to reach its target. Discerning also requires the vigour of the fighter who resists and keeps his own intellect from any intrusion from the enemy. This can be compared to the strength and perspicacity of the sailor that protects his vessel from the risk of sinking. These deep challenges point out the necessity of a community, as it can be inferred from the concept of ‘those who contend’.26 Let us consider the expression ‘undisturbed’ (ἀκύμαντος) or ‘smooth sea’. The sense is to be protected. The ocean, which usually represents the power of evil, provides an opposite meaning in this context: the image of a smooth sea, one without waves. Other actions guide discernment to its fulfilment: ‘are sent’ (ἐναποτίθεμαι) and ‘casts’ (ἀπορρίπτω); both verbs are coordinated in a conjunctive way. They depend on the intellect (ὁ νοῦς), which should receive the good thoughts and reject the bad ones. So, those who ‘are sent’27 contrast with the action of casting or rejecting. The intellect puts those good thoughts, sent from God to the ‘treasuries’ (τὸ ταμιεῖον) of the recollection, or rather, of ‘the memory’ (ἡ μνήμη). This image of treasuries underlines the capacity of our memory, symbolizing the dimensions of a workshop. Another entry of τὸ ταμιεῖον is ‘treasuries’, an element that – metaphorically – suggests the value of good thoughts, which can be kept as a legacy for subsistence or as the demonstration of the richness or power of an administration. 2. Discerning the good from the bad In Chapter 30, referring to the consolation of the Holy Spirit, a very relevant aspect of discernment is explained: The sense of the intellect is the precise taste of things discerned. For in the way that in times of health we discern the good from the foul unerringly with our body’s tasting sense, and reach for the best things, so our intellect, whenever it also begins to be moved strongly in much freedom from care, is able to sense divine consolation abundantly (…).28

The sense of the intellect is recognized as the heart of discernment, but we should pay attention to a new aspect: the sense of our ‘body’s tasting’ (γεῦσις). 26 This verb derives from ‘to fight’ (ἀγωνίζομαι), it is indeed a frequent metaphor, which represents the addressees of the work: the ascetics. According to One Hundred Practical Texts there are anchorites, coenobites, and those who although living in the city observe continence, see Cent. 53. On this threefold order of ascetics, see V. Messana, ‘Diadocho di Fotica e la cultura’ (1979), 162. 27 The verb ἐναποτίθηται is conjunctive passive of ἐναποτίθεμαι. 28 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 42.

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Although discernment means ‘to distinguish’ (διακρίνω), it not only refers to thoughts, but also to ‘the good’ (τὰ καλὰ) from the ‘foul’ (τὸ φαῦλον). The link with the body is highlighted by ‘reaching’ (ὀρέγω) the best or the ‘useful thing’ (χρηστός). That the appetite ‘moved strongly’ (ὀρεγόμεθα) relates to the act of discernment. We are ready to add two qualitative aspects of the discernment’s operation: it is ‘unerringly’ and happens in ‘the times of health’. Unerringly or to be ‘infallible’ (ἀπλανής) indicates something stable as well. Hence, the subject who discerns has the capacity of reaching the good, and therefore the truth, and consequently it cannot be mistaken. We have mentioned also the time of health. The presence of ὁ καιρός can mean a suitable time of ‘health’ (ἡ ὑγίειας), and makes us consider that discerning requires a capacity of rational exercise.29 Concerning ‘health’ (ἡ ὑγίειας), it is understood as an allusion to the healthy sense, i.e. being without any illness which could hinder the necessary capacities to discern; an integral and basic health, that enables to distinguish the good from the bad, and more, to wish for the best.30 In chapter 27, in proposing the soul’s analogy, the author says that ‘(…) whenever they – our eyes – are healthy, are able to see all things even the mosquitoes or gnats which fly in the air’.31 According to this comparison, health is understood as an optimal visual capacity, and so, seeing everything means considering the whole realm of reality. If we continue with this metaphor, it is possible to infer that illness is indeed to have a partial view, and to reduce the horizon to a single part of it. Diadochus explains the allegory of sick eyes in the same chapter 27,32 by suggesting two pathology: tumours in the eye and the eye being blind, when small things cannot be perceived, and man becomes blind because of his love to the world. In this way, it is convenient to recall the concept of worldliness: ‘The soul which is not released from worldly cares will neither love God genuinely nor loathe the devil adequately, since it simply has a cumbersome veil’.33 There is a distinction between worldly ‘care’ (φροντίζω) that is not able to ‘genuinely’ (γνησίως) love God, from another type of ‘preoccupation’ (μέριμνα) that could become a torment, because man does not loathe the devil adequately. Therefore, illness has to do with discernment and attacks the visual capacity, to precisely observe the whole situation, to look with love, free from the worldly preoccupations that makes the soul blind by scrolling away a ‘veil’ 29

For example, to discern in the suitable time what to say or do, and not annoying the brethren. See V. Messana, ‘Diadocho di Fotica e la cultura’ (1979), 157. 30 In order to highlight the health’s aspect, Messana explains: ‘La centuria infatti è soprattutto una rassegna terapeutica di medicine preventive’, V. Messana, ‘Diadocho di Fotica e la cultura’ (1979), 165. 31 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 36. 32 See Cent. 27 (SC 5bis, 98.14-22). 33 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 30.

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(κάλυμμα) of mediocrity. Being healthy is the state of a subject who beholds the whole reality, taking into account the details as well as procuring a worldly detachment, that is indeed a condition for genuine love. Alluding to infallibility, we would like to focus on the following definition: ‘Light of true perception is to discern good from bad unerringly’.34 There is a harmonic equation for this proposition: it is necessary to fight and defeat the error to obtain a true perception, thanks to the discernment of good from bad. Therefore, it is legitimate to wonder how this distinction is possible. In this chapter, we will find some clues to answer this question: For then the path of righteousness, leading the intellect away to the sun of righteousness (see Mal. 3:20) introduces it into a boundless illumination of perception as it then seeks love with boldness.35

Distinguishing good from bad belongs to a process, the path of ‘justice’ (ἡ δικαιοσύνη), and continues with the image of the light and incorporates the fountain of luminosity: ‘the sun’ (ὁ ἥλιος) of justice, which causes the ‘illumination’ (ὁ φωτισμός) of the intellect. Such a metaphor allows us to recognize the theological aspect of discernment, which looks for the good as a participation in divine holiness. There is an interesting mention of love and ‘boldness’ (παρρησία), which has an evidently biblical root, and refers to audacity, or filial confidence.36 Indeed, it is a dynamic concept attached to the search of love, and therefore it becomes a quality of a process. 3. The discernment’s experience Chapter 31, dedicated to the Holy Spirit’s consolation and to Satan’s tricks, ends as follows: ‘And so the intellect, recognizing the deception of the evil one precisely, advances further into the experience of discernment’.37 Actually, 34 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 74. Φῶς ἐστι γνώσεως ἀληθινῆς τὸ διακρίνειν ἀπταίστως τὸ καλὸν ἐκ τοῦ κακοῦ, Cent. 6 (SC 5bis, 87.2-3). Dörr recognizes here a polemical motivation, by answering the Messalians, which conceived of the divine light as a sensible one. See F. Dörr, ‘Diadochus von Photike und die Messalianer’ (1937), 96, n. 1. Argárate names the reflection of Diadochus a ‘theology of the light’. See P. Argárate, ‘La Luz de tu Rostro’ (1999), 260. Rutherford affirms that ‘the light’ always recalls the prologue of John. See J.E. Rutherford, ‘Commentary’, in Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 162. 35 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 17. 36 See Lev. 26:13; Jb. 27:10; Prov. 1:20; 10:10; 13:5. See also: παρρησία, -ας in Johan Lust and Erik Eynikel, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (Stuttgart, 2003), 929. 37 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 42. Ὅθεν ἐπιγινώσκων ὁ νοῦς τὴν ἀπάτην ἀκριβῶς τοῦ πονηροῦ πλέον εἰς τὴν πεῖραν προκόπτει τῆς διακρίσεως, Cent. 31 (SC 5bis, 101.23-5). The main aspect of the spiritual life is ‘experience’ (‘Erlebnis’). See Günter Switek, ‘Discretio spirituum. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte

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‘recognizing’ (ἐπιγιγνώσκω) the deception of evil belongs to the intellect, which is fundamental here when considering the art of discerning, and naturally it could rightly be connected to the action of distinguishing the good from the bad. It should also be considered that ‘recognizing’ must be done in a precise (ἀκριβῶς)38 way. Here another quality is found which links together infallibility and healthy, as part of the complex dispositions for discernment. We will recall the attention to the very outset in One Hundred Practical Texts, precisely in the Proemium: Words of judgment and spiritual discernment of Diadochos bishop of Photike in Epiros. Through what sort of perception it is necessary to be guided by the Lord to arrive at that perfection which has been shown to us; so that each of us who accord with the pattern of the liberating parable may bring to fruition the seed of the Logos (see Matt. 13:18-23).39

The scope of these λόγοι is obvious: judgment and spiritual discernment. Both nominalized forms depend on the same verb: to separate (κρίνω), which in the case of discernment is compounded with the preposition διά, underlying the fact of ‘separation’ (ἡ διάκρισις). Let us consider the ‘spiritual’ (πνευματικῆς) topic, that is a quality linked to knowledge made possible when one is ‘guided’ (ὁδηγέω) by the Lord, and directed to ‘perfection’ (ἡ τελειότης). This goal refers to the ‘fruition’ (καρποφορέω) of the seed of the Logos. The biblical image is pretty eloquent, and is connected to the ‘liberating’ (ἐλευθερική) parable (see Matt. 13:18-23). The analogy could be the following one: as the seed releases a potential of life, which was enclosed in them, so that the man, when guided by the Lord, can flourish and releases its potential of charity.

4. Other obstacles to bear in mind In section 1, some first obstacles about discernment were pointed out, such us preoccupation, worldly attachment, etc., but I would like to further evaluate other risks. In chapter 6 one reads: der Spiritualität’, Theologie und Philosophie 47 (1972), 36-76, 51-2. To look into the ‘experience’ (ἡ πεῖρα), in Ps.-Macarius, it is suggested to consult chapter 4, ‘A Greek vocabulary of Christian experience’, in Columba Stewart, Working the Earth of the Heart: The Messalian Controversy in History, Texts and Language to AD 431 (Oxford, 1991), 96-168. The insistence on ‘experience’ is mostly linked to its rational aspect and could be considered an answer against the Messalianism, which used to emphasize its charismatic role. See M.R. Parrinello, Tecnica e carisma (2009), 112. 38 In chapter 27, we find the same quality: Ὀλίγων ἐστὶ λίαν πάντα τὰ οἰκεῖα ἀκριβῶς ἐπιγινώσκειν πταίσματα, Cent. 27 (SC 5bis, 98.10-1). 39 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 14.

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So one must, with a temper free from anger, seize what is righteous from those who have the effrontery to insult it. For the zeal of piety demonstrates victory not by hating but by refuting.40

As a mystical master the author warns us about anger and hatred, which are impulses found in human nature, and which frequently blur the vision of reality, and so become obstacles to a right discernment. Diadochus urges that it is imperative to seize what is righteous from those who have the effrontery to insult it, to keep ‘the righteous’ (τὸ δίκαιον). The way to preserve the righteous is not by hating, but by refuting, hence, Diadochus refers to an intellective capacity again. We have just mentioned some attitudes that obscure the vision and prevent from practising a suitable discernment like anger and hatred. There are also some other tricks that come directly from the evil, and confuse the discerning subject, for example the rationale of perception teaches us that there are two kinds of evil spirits; for some of them are (as it were) more rarefied, but others are more material. Thus the more rarefied make war on the soul, while the others are wont to take the flesh captive through certain heady consolations.41

We find the usual metaphorical language of war and fighters. Hence, the demons can trick, but with a decisive influence in the intellect, in fact they fight and enslave it. Concerning the trick, one reads: Accordingly when we are inflamed into the soul-type passions (and particularly into presumption, which is the mother of all ills) by the demons which crowd in the soul, it is especially in considering the destruction of our body that we shame the pretension of affection for glory.42

The action of the demons is described through the verbs ‘inflame’ (ἐκπυρόω) and bothered or ‘crowd’ (διοχλέω). However, when it is referred to the Holy Spirit, by describing the love that comes from the Paraclete, there is the image of burning, but by using another verb ἐκκαίω,43 so with perspicacity he invites us to distinguish two actions in contrast. According to the concept of rarefied spirits, ‘the presumption’ (ἡ οἴησις) is presented as the ‘mother’ (μήτηρ) of all ‘ills’ (κακῶν), a final definition to recognize the tricks.44

40

Ibid. 17. Ibid. 132. 42 Ibid. 133. 43 Ibid. 47. 44 It is suitable to consider the warning about visions, especially 36-40. Diadochus explains that ἐπειδὴ νῦν διὰ πίστεως καὶ οὐ διὰ εἴδους περιπατοῦμεν, Cent. 36 (SC 5bis, 105.11-3). In this theme, there is also a polemical background: Diadochus speaks against the Messalians, which granted a remarkable place to visions. 41

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5. Definitive teleology of discernment: perfect love Before the conclusion, let us mention a last key concept: love (or charity). Diadochus presents charity as a principle for discernment synergically linked to faith and hope.45 Here, our itinerary comes to a crucial step, to which the previous concepts may be linked. From this privileged point, it will be possible to behold the whole preceding way. Whoever loves God both believes genuinely and fulfils the works of faith devoutly. But whoever believes only and is not in a state of love does not have even that faith which he seems to have; for he believes levity glory (cf. 2Cor. 4:17) levity of intellect, not being activated by the gravity of the glory of love. Therefore faith activated through love (Gal. 5:6) is the pinnacle of the virtues.46

Charity completes faith and provides perfection and integrity for the discerning subject.47 There is a deep connection between the love towards God and the love towards the neighbour. In this sense, Argárate explains that the glory of God is well manifested in the ministry of compassion with our suffering fellows.48 Thus, the real love cannot signify an evasion to the painful reality of the others, but it is engaged with the mystery of mercy. 6. Conclusion To summarise, some fundamental notions related to the discernment of spirits were introduced, a notion that certainly influenced later mysticism.49 45 Joest refers to God’s love as follows: ‘Anfang und Ende des geistlichen Weges: die Liebe Gottes’. Christoph Joest, ‘Gott lieben in voller Empfindung des Herzens: Diadochos von Photike und seine Lehre der Unterscheidung’, Ostkirchliche Studien 41 (1992), 149-86, 184. 46 Trans. J.E. Rutherford, Diadochus of Photike, One Hundred Practical Texts (2000), 31. 47 Špidlík associates the charity to martyrdom, as a sign of the Holy Spirit. See Tomáš Špidlík, La spititualité de l’Orient chrétien (Roma, 1978), 53-84, 79-80. 48 See P. Argárate, ‘La luz de tu Rostro’ (1999), 269. 49 The influence of Diadochus on Eugene of Cartago and Victor de Vita may be assumed: see H.I. Marrou, ‘Diadoque de Photike’ (1943), 225-32. Also, Maximus the Confessor: É. des Places, ‘Maxime le Confesseur et Diadoque de Photicé’, in Felix Heinzer and Christoph von Schönborn (eds), Maximus Confessor: Actes du Symposium sur Maxime le Confesseur, Fribourg, 2-5 septembre 1980 (Fribourg, 1982), 29-35; Philipp Renczes, Agire di Dio e libertà dell’uomo. Ricerche sull’antropologia teologica di san Massimo il Confessore (Roma, 2014), 89-115, 93; George Berthold, ‘Christian Life and Praxis: The Centuries on Love’, in Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, 2015), 296-308, 296; R.M. Parrinello, ‘Introduzione’, in Massimo il Confessore, Mistagogia (Milano, 2016), 34-5. Argárate indicates the influence upon the Hesychasts of the 14th century. See P. Argárate, ‘Ἡ θεία νυμφαγωγός La teología espiritual’ (1998), 117. About a possible influence in Ignace of Loyola, see J.T. Lienhard, ‘Discernment of spirits’ (1980), 524. Also S. Frank, ‘Einführung’, in Diadochus von Photike (2015), 41.

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I proposed an introductory comprehension of the concepts of ‘contemplation’ and ‘theology’. In this way, it is obvious that discernment is a rational operation, conceived in ‘theory’ and especially manifested through charity, as an expression of the practical sphere. Discernment presented as contemplation naturally implies an attitude of humility before the Holy Trinity. Emphasis on fight is frequent, containing both difficulties and involvements required to properly discern. Nevertheless, this is not the only requirement, for grace and consolation from the Holy Spirit are also necessary.

John of Scythopolis as a Precursor of John Damascene in the Theological Development towards Trinitarian Perichoresis: A Hypothesis Alberto NIGRA, Facoltà Teologica dell’Italia Settentrionale, Torino, Italy

ABSTRACT John of Scythopolis, the first scholiast of the Corpus Dionysiacum, played a role in the Christological debates that took place after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and contributed in an original way to the development of Christological dogma in preparation for the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. Yet, John was not only a Neo-Chalcedonian theologian, but in his Scholia to the Areopagite he also deals with Trinitarian theology. Among his original contributions in commenting on this aspect in Pseudo-Dionysius’s thought, the Scythopolitan interprets the ‘mutual interpenetration’ of Trinitarian hypostases – expressed by such formulations as ἐν ἀλλήλαις / ἐν ἀλλήλοις (DN II, 4; MT III) –, by introducing the verb χωρέω and the substantive χώρησις. Moreover, John connects this ‘mutual interpenetration’, which in the Areopagite is fundamentally ‘static’, with a certain idea of ‘movement’ (δοκεῖ κινεῖσθαι) of the divine nature. In this way, while he uses neither the compound noun περιχώρησις nor the corresponding verb περιχωρέω, and although he does not connect Trinitarian meaning of perichoresis with its Christological use, the Scythopolitan may be considered part of the history of the development of this theological doctrine, which has its roots in the Cappadocians’ Trinitarian thought and its classical demonstration in John Damascene’s writings.

Introduction John of Scythopolis was the first scholiast of the Corpus Dionysiacum and a renowned theologian in the first half of the sixth century.1 His reputation is mostly related to the Christological controversies that took place after the Council of Chalcedon in 451: he was a Neo-Chalcedonian theologian and contributed in an original way to the development of Christological dogma in preparation for the Second Council of Constantinople in 553.2 However, in his 1 For a reconstruction of a biographical profile of John of Scythopolis and a presentation of the criteria for the attribution to him of many Scholia to the Areopagite included in PG 4, see Alberto Nigra, Il pensiero cristologico-trinitario di Giovanni di Scitopoli. Tra neocalcedonismo e prima recezione del Corpus Dionysiacum, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 156 (Roma, Lugano, 2019), 19-115. 2 For a presentation of John of Scythopolis’s Christological thought, see Charles Moeller, ‘Le chalcédonisme et le néochalcédonisme en Orient de 451 à la fin du VIe siècle’, in Alois Grillmeier

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 121-131. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Scholia to Pseudo-Dionysius the Scythopolitan deals also with Trinitarian theology and offers some original contributions in commenting on this aspect in the Areopagite’s thought.3 Among these contributions, John of Scythopolis interprets Dionysian ‘mutual interpenetration’ of Trinitarian hypostases in a sense which could have someway anticipated John Damascene’s doctrine of Trinitarian perichoresis and he may therefore be included in the history of the development of this theological topic. We will first present the Areopagite’s doctrine and its interpretation in John Damascene’s writings and then identify a possible crossing point in the Scythopolitan’s Scholia on the Corpus Dionysiacum. The ‘Mutual Interpenetration’ of Trinitarian Hypostases in Corpus Dioysiacum In DN II, 4-64 Pseudo-Dionysius articulates his Trinitarian thought around the notions of ἕνωσις and διάκρισις.5 While he generally connects these notions to the Neoplatonic – and especially Proclian – ‘moments’ of μονή and πρόοδος to explain the relationship between the One (God) and the many (the world),6 the and Heinrich Bacht (eds), Das Konzil von Chalkedon. Geschichte und Gegenwart. Band I (Würzburg, 1951), 637-720, 674-5; Siegfrid Helmer, Der Neuchalkedonismus: Geschichte, Berechtigung und Bedeutung eines dogmengeschichtlichen Begriffs (Bonn, 1962), 177-82; Patrick T.R. Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451-553), Studies in the History of Christian Thought 20 (Leiden, 1979), 112-5; Lorenzo Perrone, La chiesa di Palestina e le controversie cristologiche, dal concilio di Efeso (431) al secondo concilio di Costantinopoli (553), Testi e ricerche di scienze religiose 18 (Brescia, 1980), 245-9; Paul Rorem, ‘The Doctrinal Concerns of the First Dionysian Scholiast, John of Scythopolis’, in Ysabel de Andia (ed.), Denys l’Aréopagite et sa postérité en Orient et en Occident. Actes du Colloque International – Paris, 21-24 septembre 1994, Collection des Études Augustiniennes – Série Antiquité 151 (Paris, 1997), 187-200, 187-95; Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, ‘John of Scythopolis on Apollinarian Christology and the Pseudo-Areopagite’s True Identity’, Church History 62 (1993), 469-82; eid., John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus. Annotating the Areopagite, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 1998), 72-82; Alois Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche. Band 2/3: Die Kirchen von Jerusalem und Antiochien nach 451 bis 600, ed. Theresia Hainthaler (Freiburg, Basel, Wien, 2002), 163-8; Carlo dell’Osso, Cristo e Logos. Il calcedonismo del VI secolo in Oriente, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 118 (Roma, 20122), 73-88; A. Nigra, Il pensiero cristologico-trinitario di Giovanni di Scitopoli (2019), 267-367. 3 Among the few studies on the Scythopolitan’s Trinitarian thought, see P. Rorem and J.C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus (1998), 67-71; A. Nigra, Il pensiero cristologico-trinitario di Giovanni di Scitopoli (2019), 369-410. 4 In this article I will adopt the following abbreviations for the works of Pseudo-Dionysius: DN = De divinis nominibus; MT = De mystica theologia. Correspondingly, these are the abbreviations used for John of Scythopolis’s Scholia: SchDN = Scholia in librum De divinis nominibus; SchMT = Scholia in librum De mystica theologia; SchEp. = Scholia in Epistolas S. Dionysii Areopagitae. 5 See Corpus Dionysiacum I [henceforth CD I], ed. Beate R. Suchla, PTS 33 (Berlin, Boston, 1990), 126.3-130.13. 6 For a presentation of Dionysian thought about the Neoplatonic triad μονή-πρόοδος-ἐπιστροφή and the internal structure of DN II, 4-6 between ἕνωσις and διάκρισις, see A. Nigra, Il pensiero cristologico-trinitario di Giovanni di Scitopoli (2019), 141-6, 154-8, with further bibliography.

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Areopagite prefers not to use the term πρόοδος as a synonym of διάκρισις in an intra-Trinitarian context, so as to avoid a subordinationist interpretation of the ‘distinction’ between Trinitarian hypostases.7 To illustrate the simultaneous union (ἕνωσις) and distinction (διάκρισις) of the three divine hypostases, Dionysius introduces rather the example of ‘lamp lights’: [Scil. ἡνωμένον μέν ἐστι τῇ ἑναρχικῇ τριάδι καὶ κοινὸν] ἡ ἐν ἀλλήλαις, εἰ οὕτω χρὴ φάναι, τῶν ἑναρχικῶν ὑποστάσεων μονὴ καὶ ἵδρυσις ὁλικῶς ὑπερενωμένη καὶ οὐδενὶ μέρει συγκεχυμένη, καθάπερ φῶτα λαμπτήρων, ἵνα αἰσθητοῖς καὶ οἰκείοις χρήσωμαι παραδείγμασιν, ὄντα ἐν οἴκῳ ἑνὶ καὶ ὅλα ἐν ἀλλήλοις ὅλοις ἐστὶ καὶ ἀκριβῆ τὴν ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων ἰδικῶς ὑφισταμένην ἔχει διάκρισιν ἡνωμένα τῇ διακρίσει καὶ τῇ ἑνώσει διακεκριμένα.8 [Scil. United and common to the Trinity principle of unity is] the abiding and stability of the hypostases principles of unity – if so it must be said – one in the other, entirely over-united and in no part confounded, just as lamp lights – to use sensitive and familiar examples –, being in one house, are whole one in the other whole and keep accurate the distinction that subsists based on mutual properties, being united in distinction and distinct in union.

Some scholars have tried to identify the possible sources of this example, whether they be Neoplatonic or Patristic.9 Regardless, we recognize that the Areopagite makes two statements: negatively, the union of the three hypostases is ‘in no part confounded’ (οὐδενὶ μέρει συγκεχυμένη);10 positively, they are ‘one in the other’ (ἐν ἀλλήλαις) and ‘united in distinction and distinct in union’ (ἡνωμένα τῇ διακρίσει καὶ τῇ ἑνώσει διακεκριμένα).11 Instead, John of Scythopolis uses the term πρόοδος to indicate the Trinitarian ‘processions’ of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: see SchDN 196, 1 B, Corpus Dionysiacum IV/1 [henceforth CD IV/1], ed. Beate R. Suchla, PTS 62, 134.17-9; ibid., 221, 1α A (CD IV/1, 177.1-178.15). 8 DN II, 4 (CD I, 127.2-7 [126.14-5]). Here and afterwards I use my own translations from Greek. 9 Ysabel de Andia, Henosis. L’union à Dieu chez Denys l’Aréopagite, Philosophia antiqua 71 (Leiden, New York, Köln, 1996), 53-5 identifies as source of this example of lamps a passage of Proclus’ Commentary on Timaeus: see Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timaeum Commentaria III, ed. Ernestus Diehl, Bibliotheca Teubneriana II (Lipsiae, 1904), 254.13-31. On the other side, Ernesto S. Mainoldi, ‘La ricezione della rivoluzione ontologica dei Padri cappadoci: la triadologia dello pseudo-Dionigi Areopagita e i suoi obiettivi’, in Claudio Moreschini (ed.), Trinità in relazione. Percorsi di ontologia trinitaria dai Padri della Chiesa all’Idealismo tedesco, Theánthropos 2 Testi e studi sul cristianesimo antico (Panzano in Chianti, 2015), 167-78, 176 quotes Oration 39, 11 of Gregory of Nazianzus: see Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 38-41, ed. Claudio Moreschini and Paul Gallay, SC 358 (Paris, 1990), 170.11-172.18; it could also be mentioned Gregory of Nyssa, De Spiritu Sancto adversus Macedonianos 6: see Gregorii Nysseni Opera III/1. Opera dogmatica minora, ed. Friedrich Müller (Leiden, 1958), 93,3-14. It would be indeed more correct to recognize a plurality of possible contributions to Dionysian theological texts, without necessarily having the pretension to identify a single source. 10 DN II, 4 (CD I, 127.4); in ibid. II, 5 (CD I, 128.9-10) Pseudo-Dionysius says that they are united ‘without mixing or confusion’ (ἀμιγῶς καὶ ἀσυγχύτως). 11 Ibid. II, 4 (CD I, 127.2, 7). Salvatore Lilla, ‘Terminologia trinitaria nello Pseudo-Dionigi l’Areopagita. Suoi antecedenti e sua influenza sugli autori successivi’, Augustinianum 13 (1973), 609-23, 609-10 identifies the origin of this expression in Gregory of Nyssa’s Ad Petrum fratrem 7

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We can therefore speak of an ‘unconfused (ἀσυγχύτως) interpenetration (ἐν ἀλλήλαις)’ between the hypostases. De Andia connects this Dionysian doctrine to the Proclian theory of Henads,12 while Brons calls it ‘Perichorese’.13 I would prefer not to use this denomination within the Trinitarian thought of the Areopagite. In fact, it is true that – as we shall see – even from this PseudoDionysian passage John Damascene will first introduce the term περιχώρησις in a Trinitarian sense and it is true that for the Areopagite – as for the Damascene – the hypostases interpenetrate one in other without confusion and without giving rise to a superior form of impersonal unity.14 Nevertheless, in addition to the lack of the term περιχώρησις in the Corpus Dionysiacum, we can notice that for the Areopagite the ‘interpenetration’ between Trinitarian hypostases assumes an unmistakably static character, which is witnessed by the prevailing interest in an ‘abiding and stability’ (μονὴ καὶ ἵδρυσις)15 of the hypostases and in wholeness (ὅλα ἐν ἀλλήλοις ὅλοις)16 of this ‘interpenetration’. In this way, it seems to be a simple explanation of the simultaneous union and distinction within the fundamental divine union, which has its roots in the Cappadocians’ Trinitarian thought17 and implicitly opposes Sabellianism,18 but does not pretend to have any further theological implications in the Corpus Dionysiacum. This interpretation could be confirmed by the fact that Pseudo-Dionysius does not use such expressions in any passage of DN I-II – in which he presents de differentia essentiae et hypostaseos [= Basil, Epistle 38] 4: see Basilio di Cesarea, Le lettere. I, ed. Marcella Forlin Patrucco, Corona Patrum 11 (Torino, 1983), 186.69-75. For possible Neoplatonic sources, see instead Y. de Andia, Henosis (1996), 50-6. 12 See Y. de Andia, Henosis (1996), 52, with the quotation in particular of Proclus’s Commentaria in Parmenidem VI, 1048: see Procli in Platonis Parmenidem Commentaria, ed. Carlos Steel, Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis (Oxonii, 2009), III 13.9-14. 13 See for example Bernhard Brons, Gott und die Seienden. Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von neuplatonischer Metaphysik und christlicher Tradition bei Dionysius Areopagita, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 28 (Göttingen, 1976), 92. Y. de Andia, Henosis (1996), 44, while acknowledging the lack of the term περιχώρησις from Corpus Dionysiacum, confirms Brons’s interpretation. 14 This is true at least in the hypothesis of an identification between the transcendent One and the Trinity in Corpus Dionysiacum; for this debate and the proposal of a Trinitarian reading of Corpus Dionysiacum, see A. Nigra, Il pensiero cristologico-trinitario di Giovanni di Scitopoli (2019), 159-64, with further bibliography. 15 DN II, 4 (CD I, 127.3). 16 This expression (see ibid., CD I, 127.6) is in itself referred to the ‘lamp lights’, but, because of the comparison, can also be applied to Trinitarian hypostases. 17 For a presentation of this aspect in the Cappadocians’ thought as an anticipation of the doctrine of Trinitarian perichoresis, see John N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London, 19602), 264; Maria S. Troiano, ‘Il concetto di perichoresis in Gregorio di Nissa’, Studi storicoreligiosi 2 (1978), 81-92, 84-92; Daniel F. Stramara Jr., ‘Gregory of Nyssa’s Terminology for Trinitarian Perichoresis’, Vigiliae Christianae 52 (1998), 257-63. 18 For the probable anti-Sabellian, as well as anti-Arian, purpose in Corpus Dionysiacum, see A. Nigra, Il pensiero cristologico-trinitario di Giovanni di Scitopoli (2019), 176-7.

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more widely his Trinitarian thought –, but only in the synthesis of the Theological Representations (Θεολογικαὶ ὑποτυπώσεις) in MT III, when he says that the hypostases ‘have remained inseparable from the coeternal abiding in it and in themselves and in each other’ (τῆς ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ ἐν ἑαυτοῖς καὶ ἐν ἀλλήλοις συναϊδίου […] μονῆς ἀπομεμένηκεν ἀνεκφοίτητα).19 This synthesis is probably fictitious. In fact, the Areopagite presents the Θεολογικαὶ ὑποτυπώσεις as a previous work of affirmative theology, written by him even before the De divinis nominibus.20 Nevertheless, we do not have the text of this work, nor any quotations of it in John of Scythopolis or in other ancient authors.21 It is therefore probable that the Theological Representations are not a lost writing of Corpus Dionysiacum, but a fictitious work, never written and mentioned only to confirm the ‘Dionysian fiction’.22 In any case, the passage of MT III – the only other reference to ‘mutual interpenetration’ in Corpus Dionysiacum – corroborates the impression that the Areopagite introduces this doctrine as a simple explanation of the simultaneous union and distinction in God the Trinity, without any further theological implications. The Interpretation of ‘Mutual Interpenetration’ as ‘Perichoresis’ in John Damascene As is well known, John Damascene first introduces the term περιχώρησις in a Trinitarian sense and elaborates the classic doctrine of Trinitarian perichoresis.23 He is in fact the first witness of it, since the Pseudo-Cyrillian De Trinitate – which contains this terminology and doctrine –24 should probably be attributed to Joseph the Philosopher, a Byzantine scholar of 14th century influenced 19 See MT III Corpus Dionysiacum II [henceforth CD II], eds. Günter Heil and Adolf M. Ritter, PTS 67 (Berlin, Boston 2012), 146.4-7: πῶς ἐκ τοῦ ἀΰλου καὶ ἀμεροῦς ἀγαθοῦ τὰ ἐγκάρδια τῆς ἀγαθότητος ἐξέφυ φῶτα καὶ τῆς ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ ἐν ἑαυτοῖς καὶ ἐν ἀλλήλοις συναϊδίου τῇ ἀναβλαστήσει μονῆς ἀπομεμένηκεν ἀνεκφοίτητα. 20 The title of this work is quoted in several passages of DN: see DN I, 1 (CD I, 107.1); I, 5 (CD I, 116.7); II, 1 (CD I, 122.11); II, 3 (CD I, 125.13-4); II, 7 (CD I, 130.15); XI, 5 (CD I, 221.11). 21 The only references to the Θεολογικαὶ ὑποτυπώσεις among the authentic Scholia of John of Scythopolis are connected to the synthesis contained in MT III and do not quote any passage or even chapter of them: see SchMT 424, 3 C-425 A; 425, 8 C. 22 For this debate, see A. Nigra, Il pensiero cristologico-trinitario di Giovanni di Scitopoli (2019), 135-9, with further bibliography. 23 See August Deneffe, ‘Perichoresis, circumincessio, circuminsessio. Eine terminologische Untersuchung’, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 47 (1923), 497-532, 506; for a history of the term περιχώρησις, even in its Christological meaning, see ibid. 498-509; see also Leonard Prestige, ‘Περιχωρέω and περιχώρησις in the Fathers’, The Journal of Theological Studies 29 (1928), 242-52; more recently, see Slobodan Stamatović, ‘The Meaning of Perichoresis’, Open Theology 2 (2016), 303-23; Riccardo Paltrinieri, ‘La reciproca «pericoresi». Uno studio sullo sviluppo del termine’, PATH 16 (2017), 341-62. 24 See PG 77, 1120-73.

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by John of Damascus, and not to an anonymous author of the seventh century, which would have been a source of the Damascene himself.25 We can notice some characteristics of Trinitarian perichoresis in John of Damascus from a text in which, while listing the properties of divine nature, he literally quotes the Areopagite, but goes beyond his doctrine of ‘unconfused interpenetration’:26 ῾Η ἐν ἀλλήλαις τῶν ὑποστάσεων μονή τε καὶ ἵδρυσις· ἀδιάστατοι γὰρ αὗται καὶ ἀνεκφοίτητοι ἀλλήλων εἰσὶν ἀσύγχυτον ἔχουσαι τὴν ἐν ἀλλήλαις περιχώρησιν, οὐχ ὥστε συναλείφεσθαι ἢ συγχεῖσθαι, ἀλλ’ ὥστε ἔχεσθαι ἀλλήλων. Υἱὸς γὰρ ἐν Πατρὶ καὶ Πνεύματι, καὶ Πνεῦμα ἐν Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ, καὶ Πατὴρ ἐν Υἱῷ καὶ Πνεύματι, μηδεμιᾶς γινομένης συναλοιφῆς ἢ συμφύρσεως ἢ συγχύσεως. Καὶ τὸ ἓν καὶ ταὐτὸν τῆς κινήσεως· ἓν γὰρ ἔξαλμα καὶ μία κίνησις τῶν τριῶν ὑποστάσεων, ὅπερ ἐπὶ τῆς κτιστῆς φύσεως θεωρηθῆναι ἀδύνατον.27 ‘The abiding and stability of the hypostases one in the other’ (DN II, 4): these are indeed unextended and inseparable one from the other, since they have the perichoresis one in the other unconfused, not so as to be mingled or confounded, but so to belong to each other. In fact, the Son is in the Father and the Spirit, the Spirit in the Father and the Son, the Father in the Son and the Spirit, without any commixture or mingling or confusion. And one and the same thing about the movement: one is the burst indeed and one the movement of the three hypostases, which is impossible to contemplate concerning created nature.

For the Damascene, Trinitarian perichoresis does not only imply an ‘unconfusion’ in the union between the hypostases, but presents at least three other characteristics: 1. It also implies a ‘belonging to each other’ (ἔχεσθαι ἀλλήλων) of the hypostases:28 we can find some trace of this aspect in the Cappadocians’ Trinitarian thought.29 25 See Vassa S. Kontouma-Conticello, ‘Pseudo-Cyril’s «De SS. Trinitate»: A Compilation of Joseph the Philosopher’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 61 (1995), 117-29, confirmed by Andrew Louth, St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (Oxford, 2002), 87-8. For a dating of this work to 7th century, followed by many scholars, see instead Bernard Fraigneau-Julien, ‘Un traité anonyme de la Sainte Trinité attribué à saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie’, Recherches de Science Religieuse 49 (1961), 386-405, 400-2: years 657-681. 26 For a presentation of John’s use of his sources on Trinitarian perichoresis, see Scott Ables, ‘Did John of Damascus Modify His Sources in the Expositio Fidei?’, SP 68 (2013), 355-61: the author points out John’s originality compared to the sources used by him. 27 Expositio fidei 14 [I, 14], Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos II, ed. Bonifatius Kotter, PTS 12 (Berlin, 1973), 42.11-8. In De fide orthodoxa (Expositio fidei) Trinitarian perichoresis occurs in other three passages: see ibid. 8 [I, 8] (PTS 12, 29.261-5), with reference to Arius and Sabellius; ibid. 49 [III, 5] (PTS 12, 118.7): ἐν ἀλλήλαις ἀσυγχύτως περιχωρούσας [scil. Trinitarian hypostases] ἐπιστάμεθα; ibid. 91 [IV, 18] (PTS 12, 212.11-6). 28 Ibid. 14 [I, 14] (PTS 12, 42.13-4): οὐχ ὥστε συναλείφεσθαι ἢ συγχεῖσθαι, ἀλλ’ ὥστε ἔχεσθαι ἀλλήλων. 29 See for example Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31, 14: Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 27-31, ed. Paul Gallay, SC 250 (Paris, 20062), 302.7-9: ἀμέριστος ἐν μεμερισμένοις, εἰ δεῖ

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2. Furthermore, it is explicitly connected to Christological ‘perichoresis’, that is to an ‘interpenetration’ of the two natures in Christ:30 this doctrine was introduced by Gregory of Nazianzus in an anti-Apollinarian context31 and developed by Maximus the Confessor with the application to the two ἐνέργειαι in Christ.32 3. Finally, it seems to suggest in some way a certain ‘dynamism’ in Trinitarian life, even starting from the etymology of the term περιχώρησις itself:33 John of Damascus speaks of a ‘one movement’ (μία κίνησις) in the Trinity, connected to perichoresis,34 which overcomes the static character of the συντόμως εἰπεῖν, ἡ θεότης· καὶ οἷον ἐν ἡλίοις τρισὶν ἐχομένοις ἀλλήλων, μία τοῦ φωτὸς σύγκρασις, quoted in Expositio fidei 8 [I, 8] (PTS 12, 29.265-7), with minor differences. 30 See John Damascene’s De fide contra Nestorianos 36, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos IV, ed. Bonifatius Kotter, PTS 22 (Berlin, New York, 1981), 249.1-4: ῞Ωσπερ ἐπὶ τῆς ἁγίας Τριάδος αἱ τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις διὰ τὴν φυσικὴν ταυτότητα καὶ τὴν ἐν ἀλλήλαις περιχώρησιν εἷς Θεός εἰσί τε καὶ λέγονται, οὕτως ἐπὶ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν ᾽Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ αἱ δύο φύσεις διὰ τὴν ὑποστατικὴν ταυτότητα καὶ τὴν ἐν ἀλλήλαις περιχώρησιν εἷς Υἱός εἰσι; see also id., De natura composita 4 (PTS 22, 412.10-413.21). For a possible derivation of Trinitarian perichoresis in John of Damascus from Christological debates after Chalcedon, see Charles C. Twombly, Perichoresis and Personhood. God, Christ, and Salvation in John of Damascus, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 216 (Eugene, OR, 2015), 9-11; 40-6; I think that this explication of the origin of the doctrine of Trinitarian perichoresis – which could explain the use of the term περιχώρησις itself – should be integrated with the reference to the development of its notion in a proper Trinitarian context. 31 See for example Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101, 31: Grégoire de Nazianze, Lettres théologiques, ed. Paul Gallay, SC 208 (Paris, 19982), 48: κιρναμένων ὥσπερ τῶν φύσεων, οὕτω δὴ καὶ τῶν κλήσεων καὶ περιχωρουσῶν εἰς ἀλλήλας τῷ λόγῳ τῆς συμφυΐας. 32 See for example Maximus Confessor, Ambigua ad Thomam 5: Ambigua ad Thomam una cum Epistula secunda ad eundem, ed. Bart Janssens, CChr.SG 48 (Turnhout, Leuven, 2002), 29.200-33.271, in particular 30.218-20: καταλλήλῳ κλήσει τοῦ διττοῦ τὴν φύσιν Χριστοῦ τὴν διττὴν παραδηλοῦντος ἐνέργειαν; id., Opuscula [῎Ισον ἐπιστολῆς γενομένης πρὸς τὸν ἁγιώτατον ἐπίσκοπον κύριον Νίκανδρον περὶ τῶν δύο ἐν Χριστῷ ἐνεργειῶν], PG 91, 100B-101A, in particular 100C: ῾Η γὰρ θεανδρικὴ τῆς θείας ὁμοῦ καὶ ἀνδρικῆς ἐνεργείας ὑπάρχει περίληψις. Κατάλληλον γὰρ ὁ διδάσκαλος ἐπινοήσας φωνήν, ἑκατέραν, ὡς ἔφην, τῇ προφορᾷ συλλαμβάνουσαν, καὶ ταύτην μοναδικῶς ἐκφωνήσας, τὴν διπλῆν, τοῦ διπλοῦ τὴν φύσιν, ἐνέργειαν περιφραστικῶς παρεδήλωσεν; see also ibid. [Περὶ θελημάτων δύο τοῦ ἑνὸς Χριστοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν], PG 91, 189C-192A, with the famous comparison of the red-hot sword to express the perichoresis of the natures and the ἐνέργειαι in Christ. 33 The verb περιχωρέω and the noun περιχώρησις contain in themselves a certain idea of movement: see Henry G. Liddell, Robert Scott and Henry S. Jones (eds), A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 19969), 1394: the two first meanings of περιχωρέω are ‘go round’ and ‘rotate’. Obviously, we do not intend to endorse any false etymology of the term περιχώρησις from the verb περιχορεύω (‘to dance round’), but only to underline some dynamic element, at least potentially inherent to the concept of Trinitarian perichoresis; moreover, this dynamic element seems to be pointed out even by the Latin translation circumincessio, that is alternative to a more static circuminsessio; for a presentation of the use of the two terms in medieval Latin theology, see A. Deneffe, ‘Perichoresis, circumincessio, circuminsessio’ (1923), 509-32. 34 See Expositio fidei 14 [I, 14] (PTS 12, 42.16-8): Καὶ τὸ ἓν καὶ ταὐτὸν τῆς κινήσεως· ἓν γὰρ ἔξαλμα καὶ μία κίνησις τῶν τριῶν ὑποστάσεων, ὅπερ ἐπὶ τῆς κτιστῆς φύσεως θεωρηθῆναι ἀδύνατον.

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Dionysian ‘mutual interpenetration’ of the hypostases. Although the Damascene continues to use exclusively the expression ἐν ἀλλήλαις – while in Christological context different prepositions are used (ἐν, εἰς, διά) –,35 we can confirm a certain ‘dynamism’ in Trinitarian perichoresis, since such expression is problably preferred to εἰς ἀλλήλας to avoid Sabellian risk of an ‘exchange of hypostases’, and thus of a ‘confusion’.36 This doctrine of John Damascene could have been someway anticipated by John of Scythopolis, in at least one of its characteristics. A Possible Crossing Point in John of Scythopolis’s Scholia to the Areopagite In his Scholia on the Corpus Dionysiacum John of Scythopolis illustrates the simultaneous union and distinction of the three divine hypostases through the revival of the Areopagite’s doctrine concerning their ‘mutual interpenetration’ (ἐν ἀλλήλαις), which does not imply any ‘confusion’ (σύγχυσις). Yet, John takes this doctrine in an original way, in at least four aspects. First, in SchDN 216, 10γ37 he tries to found it biblically in its aspect of ‘abiding and stability’ (μονὴ καὶ ἵδρυσις), through explicit appeal to Jn. 14:10-1 (‘I am in the Father and the Father is in me’)38 about the relationship between the Father and the Son and through a generic reference to Pauline literature regarding the Holy Spirit.39 Also in this case, the Scythopolitan probably intends to shift the reader’s attention from a possible Neoplatonic source of the 35 See in this sense A. Deneffe, ‘Perichoresis, circumincessio, circuminsessio’ (1923), 507: from such consideration he tends to exclude also in John of Damascus, such as in Pseudo-Dionysius, any ‘dynamic’ dimension of Trinitarian perichoresis. In general, there are some scholars that from here completely reject the idea of a dynamic aspect of the perichoresis in the Greek Fathers: see for example Bertrand de Margerie, La Trinité chrétienne dans l’histoire, Théologie Historique 31 (Paris, 1975), 249-50, n. 84. 36 See for example Nicephorus Constantinopolitanus, Epistula ad Leonem III papam, PG 100, 184D: οὔτε τῶν θεαρχικῶν ὑποστάσεων μεταπιπτουσῶν καὶ περιχωρουσῶν εἰς ἀλλήλας […], πόρρω γὰρ ἀποπεμπέσθω καὶ ἀπελαυνέσθω ἡ τοῦ ματαιόφρονος Σαβελλίου ἀπατητικὴ σύγχυσις. 37 See SchDN 217 D-220 A [216, 10γ] (CD IV/1, 175.52b-2): Σημείωσαι τὸ ἐν ἀλλήλαις εἶναι κατά τινα μονὴν καὶ ἵδρυσιν τὰς θείας ὑποστάσεις ὡς τό· ᾽Εγὼ ἐν τῷ Πατρὶ καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοί. Οὕτω καὶ περὶ τοῦ ῾Αγίου Πνεύματος ὁ ᾽Απόστολος φησίν. This scholion comments DN II, 4 (CD I, 127.2-7), reported above; the terms taken from that passage are here written in italics, as also afterwards. 38 See also Jn. 10:38; 14:20; 17:21. 39 The biblical reference is not clear: B.R. Suchla (see CD IV/1, 175) refers to 2Cor. 3:17, while P. Rorem and J. C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus (1998), 196 to Rom. 8:9; nevertheless, both scriptural passages do not concern an ‘interpenetration’ between the Holy Spirit and the other Trinitarian hypostases; rather, the Scythopolitan intends here probably to refer generically to the Pauline pneumatological thought, which presents the Holy Spirit in close connection with the Father and the Son.

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Areopagite’s doctrine,40 while rather emphasizing its consonance with some scriptural texts.41 Secondly, in SchDN 220, 3α42 John seems to go beyond Dionysius’s intentions – and perhaps to misrepresent them, more or less deliberately – concerning the interpretation of the expression ὑπερουράνια φῶτα (‘supercelestial lights’) and their ‘being united to each other’ (ἑνοῦσθαι ἀλλήλαις). In the Corpus Dionysiacum the expression ὑπερουράνια φῶτα means the Trinitarian hypostases,43 while for the Scythopolitan it is also referred to ‘souls’ (ψυχαί) and ‘intellects’ (νόες). In this sense, he seems to affirm also the involvement of souls and intellects in God’s ‘superunited union’ (ὑπερηνωμένη ἔνωσις), and thus in the ‘mutual interpenetration’ of the Trinitarian hypostases. Thirdly, John uses the verb χωρέω and the substantive χώρησις in an original way. Dionysius uses the verb χωρέω to comment Heb. 4:12 concerning God’s ‘penetration’ through every being (διὰ πάντων),44 while the expression ἐν ἀλλήλοις / δι’ ἀλλήλων χώρησις is used twice in De divinis nominibus, to indicate the ‘mutual penetration’ between beings proceeding from the One,45 and the Scythopolitan interprets it in this sense in the corresponding scholia.46 40 We can remember that, according to Y. de Andia, Henosis (1996), 52, this Pseudo-Dionysian doctrine should be connected to the Proclian theory of Henads. 41 For other examples of this comment strategy in John’s Scholia, see Pietro Podolak, ‘Giovanni di Scitopoli interprete del Corpus Dionysiacum’, Augustinianum 47 (2007), 335-86, 355-9; see also P. Rorem and J.C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus (1998), 51-2. 42 See SchDN 220, 3α C-D (CD IV/1, 176.39-177.46a): καὶ τὰς ψυχὰς καὶ τοὺς νόας ἅπαντας ὑπερουράνια φῶτα καλεῖ καί φησιν ἑνοῦσθαι τὰς ζώσας οὐσίας ταύτας ἁπάσας, ὡς εἴρηται ἐν τῷ παραδείγματι τῶν ἐν οἴκῳ τινὶ πολλῶν λαμπτήρων, ἀλλήλαις ἀμιγῶς τε καὶ ἀσυγχύτως θεοειδεῖς τε οὔσας καὶ μετεχούσας ἀναλόγως ἑαυταῖς τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑπερηνωμένης ἑνώσεως. 43 See DN II, 4 (CD I, 128.3-7). 44 See ibid. IX, 3 (CD I, 209.2-5): Οὕτως οὖν ἐπὶ Θεοῦ τὸ σμικρὸν ἐκληπτέον ὡς ἐπὶ πάντα καὶ διὰ πάντων ἀνεμποδίστως χωροῦν καὶ ἐνεργοῦν καὶ διϊκνούμενον ἄχρι μερισμοῦ ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος [var. πνεύματος], ἁρμῶν τε καὶ μυελῶν καὶ ἐννοιῶν καρδίας (Heb. 4:12); see also ibid. VII, 4 (CD I, 198.23-199.2): διὰ πάντων χωρεῖ [scil. Λόγος] διϊκνούμενος, ὡς τὰ λόγιά φησιν, ἄχρι τοῦ πάντων τέλους, καὶ πρό γε τούτων. Among John’s comments, see respectively SchDN 372, 2 B (CD IV/1, 397.17-9): Τὸ ὑπεροξύρροπον τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ ἀσώματα [var. σώματα] χωρήσεως ἐντεῦθεν δηλοῦται, τὸ γὰρ διικνεῖσθαι τὸν Θεὸν ἄχρι μερισμοῦ ψυχῆς καὶ πνεύματος (Heb. 4:12); ibid. 353, 3 B (CD IV/1, 373.23-7): λέγει δὲ αὐτὸν Λόγον καὶ ὡς διὰ πάντων χωροῦντα ἀκωλύτως καὶ πάντα περιιόντα, καὶ μέχρι τῶν ἐσχάτων, ὡς καὶ ἐν τῇ Πρὸς ῾Εβραίους· Ζῶν γὰρ ὁ Λόγος καὶ ἐνεργὴς (Heb. 4:12) καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. 45 See DN IV, 2 (CD I, 144.18-9): ᾽Εκεῖθεν αὐταῖς [scil. ‘the rays of entire Goodness’: τὰς τῆς ὅλης ἀγαθότητος ἀκτῖνας (ibid. IV, 1, CD I, 144.5)] αἱ ὑπερκόσμιοι τάξεις, αἱ πρὸς ἑαυτὰς ἑνώσεις, αἱ ἐν ἀλλήλαις χωρήσεις, αἱ ἀσύγχυτοι διακρίσεις; ibid. IX, 10 (CD I, 214.2-3): ἰσουργεῖ [scil. God] τὴν δι’ ἀλλήλων ἁπάντων ὁμοίαν χώρησιν. 46 See SchDN 241, 4 A (CD IV/1, 212.11-4): Σημείωσαι τὰ περὶ ἀγγέλων, καὶ ὅτι τὰ ἄϋλα καὶ ἐν ἀλλήλοις χωρεῖ ἀσυγχύτως καὶ ἀποχωρεῖ, καὶ οἱονεὶ βαθμοὶ καὶ τάξεις εἰσὶν πρῶται καὶ δεύτεραι; ibid. 384, 4 B (CD IV/1, 414.22-5): ῾Ομοία χώρησις δι’ ἀλλήλων καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν στοιχείων· ἡ γὰρ ἐπ’ ἴσης κρᾶσις τούτων καὶ τὸ μὴ ὑπερταλαντεύειν ἐν τοῖς συγκρίμασι τὰς γενέσεις τοῦ κόσμου ποιεῖ.

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Whatever the origin of this vocabulary,47 in two other comments he extends it also to the relationships between Trinitarian hypostases. Indirectly, in SchDN 220, 3β he states that ‘incorporeal beings’ (τὰ ἀσώματα) – that is, ‘souls’ and ‘intellects’ –, to whom the unions analogous to the divine refer, ‘penetrate one through the other without confusion’ (δι’ ἀλλήλων ἀσυγχύτως χωρεῖ).48 We can assume from here that the union between the Trinitarian hypostases is similar. To confirm this inference, we can also consider the final section of SchMT 424, 3, in which the Scythopolitan explicitly speaks of a ‘mutual penetration’ (ἐν ἀλλήλοις χώρησις) between the Trinitarian hypostases: Καὶ [scil. τὸ εἰδέναι] πῶς ἐν τῷ Πατρί, καὶ ἐν αὐτοῖς, καὶ ἐν ἀλλήλοις, ὁ Υἱός, καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα συναϊδίως καὶ ἀσχίστως καὶ ἀδιαιρέτως ἐν μονῇ εἰσιν ἀνεκφοιτήτῳ. Δεῖ δὲ εἰδέναι, ὅτι μονὴ καὶ στάσις ταὐτόν εἰσι· κίνησις δὲ ἕτερόν ἐστι τῆς μονῆς. Φησὶν οὖν ὅτι, καὶ ἐν μονῇ ἀκινήτῳ ἀεὶ οὖσα ἡ θεία φύσις, δοκεῖ κινεῖσθαι ἐν τῇ ἐν ἀλλήλοις χωρήσει.49 And [to know] how the Son and the Spirit are in an inseparable abiding in the Father and in themselves and one in the other in a coeternal and inseparable and indivisible way. And we need to know that abiding and rest are the same thing; and that movement is other than abiding. He says therefore that divine nature, despite always being in motionless abiding, seems to be moved in a penetration one in the other.

Finally, John introduces some ideas of movement into Dionysian doctrine of ‘mutual interpenetration’ of Trinitarian hypostases. In both these passages the verb χωρέω and the substantive χώρησις bring with them the implication of a certain ‘dynamism’ in Trinitarian life, and not only of a ‘co-extensiveness’ of the hypostases.50 In particular, the second text explicitly connects ‘mutual penetration’ (ἐν ἀλλήλοις χώρησις) with a certain ‘movement’ (κινεῖσθαι). Obviously, the reference to the Neoplatonic system underlying the Corpus Dionysiacum – which absolutizes the element of ‘abiding’ (μονή) as characteristic of the divine – forcibly keeps the doctrine of the ‘mutual interpenetration’ of the hypostases at a purely static level in the Areopagite and at the same time makes it difficult also for John to introduce a certain ‘dynamism’ in Trinitarian life. In fact, he 47

Pseudo-Dionysius might have assumed such expressions from the Stoic lexicon and transposed them from the exclusive reference to bodies (σώματα) to the consideration of incorporeal beings (ἀσώματα / ἀΰλα): for a summary of Stoic doctrine of κρᾶσις between bodies, that ‘penetrate one through the other’ (σῶμα διὰ σώματος χωρεῖ), see R. Paltrinieri, ‘La reciproca «pericoresi»’ (2017), 348-50, with the quotation of some Stoic fragments; see also Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers. Vol. I (Cambridge, 1956), 419-21. 48 See SchDN 220, 3β D (CD IV/1, 177.46b-7): ῞Αστινας δὲ ἑνώσεις δηλονότι ἐπὶ τὰ ἀσώματα, ἃ καὶ δι’ ἀλλήλων ἀσυγχύτως χωρεῖ. 49 SchMT 424, 3 D-425 A. I set in italics the words taken from the commented Dionysian text: MT III (CD II, 146.4-7), quoted above. 50 These are the two main meanings of the verb χωρέω with intransitive value: see Geoffrey W.H. Lampe (ed.), A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 199512), 1536-7, which are respectively connected to the idea of movement and to that of extension.

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has to present the movement of mutual χώρησις of the hypostases almost as a simple appearance, or rather like a hypothesis of his own (δοκεῖ κινεῖσθαι).51 We can therefore conclude that the Scythopolitan does not use the compound noun περιχώρησις nor the corresponding verb περιχωρέω and he does not connect this ‘mutual interpenetration’ of Trinitarian hypostases with the respective theory applied to the two natures in Christ.52 Nevertheless, he may be considered part of the history of the doctrine of Trinitarian perichoresis. Indeed, despite the limited extension of his texts dedicated to this question, John of Scythopolis’s Scholia could have been – at least at the level of hypothesis – a possible crossing point in the development of this theological doctrine. By introducing the vocabulary of χωρέω / χώρησις in a Trinitarian context and by inserting a certain ‘dynamism’ in Trinitarian life, he might have been a source of John Damascene – together with Maximus the Confessor, concerning connections with Christological ‘perichoresis’ – towards his classic demonstration of this Trinitarian topic.

51 In addition to the Areopagite’s Neoplatonic system, also the metaphysical setting of John itself – that is partially dependent on Aristotelian theory of the ‘unmoved mover’ – may have produced difficulties in speaking of a proper κίνησις at a Trinitarian level. 52 Indeed, among the Scholia published in PG 4, only SchEp. 533, 3 B-D, lines 1-17 refers to Christological ‘perichoresis’: ῞Οθεν θαυμαστῶς ὁ θεῖος Γρηγόριος ὁ θεολόγος φησί, κιρναμένων ὥσπερ τῶν φύσεων, οὕτω δὴ καὶ τῶν κλήσεων καὶ περιχωρουσῶν εἰς ἀλλήλας τῷ λόγῳ τῆς συμφυΐας, with quotation from Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101, 31 (SC 208, 48). Yet, this passage must be attributed to Maximus the Confessor, not only because of its absence from Syriac text, but also because of internal criteria: see A. Nigra, Il pensiero cristologico-trinitario di Giovanni di Scitopoli (2019), 114, 302-3.

The Gnoseological Function of σύμβολον in Dionysius the Areopagite Alexandru A. BARNA, Bucharest, Romania

ABSTRACT The text presents some aspects on the way Dionysius the Areopagite uses symbol (σύμβολον), not merely as a liturgical instrument, but more as a gnoseological category. As several scholars have analyzed the link between symbol and mystery or symbol and ontology, I develop in this article the link between symbol and gnoseology, in order to propose a content of Dionysius’ ‘symbolic theology’, which is mentioned several times in the Corpus Dionysiacum. From this perspective, symbol, as it is used and linked with other mystical and gnoseological concepts, such as μυστήριον or θεωρία, can be also understood as an instrument that reveals a special theological content a Christian needs to access, a sort of personal dynamic knowledge revealed through the mysteries of the Church. A comparative analysis of the contexts and meanings of σύμβολον in Neoplatonic representative literature and in the Corpus follows an interrogation on the sources and nature of the symbolic theology, announced as the title of the unknown treatise Symbolic Theology and widely present within the Corpus, even not directly expressed or deciphered. Several terms related to the biblical and liturgical Dionysian symbols that are used in the Corpus reveal a special semantic field, which involves a gnoseological function that can be attributed to the theological content correspondent to those symbols. I propose the idea that the meanings of symbols, as are used by Dionysius, represent a path to distinguish in his works a theology of revelation. A special relation between gnoseology and ontology in Dionysius is questioned in the final part of the paper, but the conclusion focuses on the fact that the gnoseological function of symbol is better anchored in the use and nature of those Dionysian symbols.

The unknown author of the Corpus Dionysiacum (hereinafter CD) uses the word symbol (σύμβολον) in large amounts of contexts and numbers, approximately sixty-four times, as one may conclude that this term represents an important concept in the theology of the author or in the philosophical architecture of his texts. I want to emphasize here several senses we discover in the CD attributed to σύμβολον, in order to support the interpretation of σύμβολον as a gnoseological or revelational tool within Dionysius’ mystagogical theology. Previous scholars concentrated on σύμβολον from different perspectives (see mainly the pioneering work of Paul Rorem,1 on the unity and relation between 1 Paul Rorem, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols within the Pseudo-Dionysian Synthesis (Toronto, 1980).

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 133-143. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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biblical and liturgical symbols; and then Ysabel de Andia,2 on the relation between σύμβολον and mystery, or, John Zizioulas,3 on the relation between σύμβολον and ontology). This legacy of σύμβολον in Modern research on Dionysius has already proved that it has a central mystagogical relevance. Dionysian σύμβολον is situated at the crossroad of different realities: the cultural, philosophical and religious heritages of Late Antiquity, and the biblical (in an astonishing harmony with later dogmatic developments, from both Syriac and Calcedonian perspectives) and Christian liturgical experiences. Examining σύμβολον as a Dionysian concept confirms that a holistic manner of interpreting the Corpus, expressed previously by scholars as Alexander Golitzin4 and Andrew Louth,5 is appropriate in relation with the nature of the Corpus and with its theological and philosophical goals. In the following lines, I try to seek and to interlink the content of this concept and to present it in accordance with what is already assumed to be the distinct and coherent Dionysian synthesis or – as it has been named – the Dionysian mystagogy, even if until now scholars debate – and they will not stop soon – on the nature (philosophical or theological) or on the doctrinal color (Chalcedonian, Origenist, Monophysite, ‘Crypto-Pagan’, etc.) of this unique patristic project. Σύμβολον has been in the center of several attempts to reactivate contemporary theological mystagogy (see the works of Jean Borella),6 as σύμβολον is to be considered to have a special relevance to the ontological and gnoseological contemporary empiric crisis. I follow those contemporary attempts, but I focus on and I let myself inspired by Dionysius’ writings. From my Dionysian reading experience, I see a possibility to express the senses of Dionysian symbols as gnoseological tools which receive revelational content inside liturgical or mystical experiences. This idea is not new: Paul Rorem’s work has concluded that Christian symbolism, whether ritual acts or scriptural language in general, is a divine self-revelation which proceeds ‘down’ into the human categories of thought and sense perception. I want to go further and to see if this self-revelation made possible by σύμβολον can be integrated in a larger, both from philosophical and Christian perspective, as an alternative to other gnoseological and spiritual instruments that different traditions have canonized (lectio divina, mystagogical experience, hesychast prayer, etc.). In the first part of my demonstration, I want to search a plausible answer related to why Dionysius entitled his unknown treatise Symbolic Theology (hereinafter 2

Ysabel de Andia, ‘Symbole et mystère selon Denys l’Aréopagite’, in ead., Denys l’Aréopagite. Tradition et métamorphoses (Paris, 2006), 59-94. 3 John Zizioulas, ‘Symbolism and Realism in Orthodox Worship’, Sourozh 79 (2000), 2-17. 4 Alexander Golitzin, Mystagogy. A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, ed. Bogdan G. Bucur, Cistercian Studies Series 250 (Collegeville, 2013). 5 Andrew Louth, Denys the Areopagite (London, 1989). 6 Jean Borella, Lumières de la théologie mystique (Laussanne, 2002), 92-103 ; id., ‘The Essence of the Symbol’, in G. John Champoux (ed.), The Secret of the Christian Way. A Contemplative Ascent Through the Writings of Jean Borella (New York, 2001), 55-70.

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ST). This text which Dionysius mentions several times in the Corpus7 actually involves a literal specific Dionysian invention, as previous similar formulas of conceptual associations between σύμβολον and θεολογία are, based on my knowledge, not to be found earlier in other Greek patristic authors. Even if we can talk about a possible history of σύμβολον before Dionysius (with powerful Alexandrian traces), the question is what was the reason for which the symbol received a theological character in the Corpus. Or, how can we explain the association of two Neoplatonic and Christian concepts, symbol and theology, as title of a mystagogical and exegetical project. What kind of specific meanings those words might have in Neoplatonic influenced Christian mediums? The question here is not if the work ST actually existed, but what was the role it played when mentioned within the Corpus,8 and if a theology that defines itself as symbolic has a role in those hierarchy of theologies (formula suggested by Y. de Andia):9 symbolic (naming divine by material), cataphatic (naming divine by noetic), apophatic (abandon of both material and noetic, or bypassing both material and noetic).10 This hierarchy of theologies is to be confirmed in DN,11 where the difference between figures and forms that are associated with sensible symbols and divine names is obvious. The final fragment from DN12 conceptually shows that there is a difference between names and symbols, as names are powers, processions (πρόοδος), and symbols are material elements that relate to God: organs, parts, conditions, moments, acts, etc., which, I add, may be associated, in gnoseological context, with the idea of an instrument, of a mystagogical tool. The dimension suggested for the text of ST13 in relation with the known dimensions of DN and The Mystical Theology (hereinafter MT) evokes a similar pyramidal hierarchy. Symbolic theology is at the basis of the gnostic evolution, suggested by CD and implied by its mystagogy. It uses sensible support for growing in experience and knowledge. I say that within Dionysian synthesis, σύμβολον carries a deeper role than just a simple decorative or secondary role, as it completes other theological concepts or structures as ἱεραρχία or θεωρία, or as it is partially exposed, from the title of the unknown treatise ST, as a correlative theological concept. And 7

The Divine Names (hereinafter DN) 1, 8, Corpus Dionysiacum I, Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. De Divinis Nominibus, ed. Beate Regina Suchla, Patristische Texte und Studien (hereinafter PTS) 33 (Berlin, 1990), 121; DN 4, 4 (PTS 33, 149); The Mystical Theology (hereinafter MT) 3, Corpus Dionysiacum II, Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. De Coelesti Hierarchia, De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, De Mystica Theologia, Epistulae, ed. Günter Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter, PTS 36 (Berlin, 1991), 146; The Celestial Hierarchy (hereinafter CH) 15, 6 (PTS 36, 56); Letters (hereinafter Ep.) 9, 1 (PTS 36, 193). 8 Gioacchino Curiello, ‘Pseudo-Dionysius and Damascius: An Impossible Identification’, Dionysius 31 (2013), 101-16, 106. 9 Y. de Andia, ‘Symbole et mystère’ (2006), 92. 10 MT 3 (PTS 36, 146-7). 11 DN 9, 5 (PTS 33, 211). 12 Ibid. 13, 4 (PTS 33, 231). 13 MT 3 (PTS 36, 147).

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this is because Dionysian corporeal symbol is a place, a word, an act, an object, a gesture, an image that helps the believer to enter a special state. In The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (hereinafter EH), σύμβολον is used for constructing the inner logical architecture of the text, mostly in relation with Dionysian cosmological system, based on ἱεραρχία, and his spiritual view, based on θεωρία. It is in fact an element that resolves the equation between the seen and the unseen, between the reality that can be commonly perceived and the divine realities that reveal themselves in a mystagogical, uncommon, context. Σύμβολον saves the use and the role of created elements, and deep more, of the material ones, in deciphering a spiritual or noetical encounter with God or with divine rays. Symbols are mediating realities, as ST focuses mainly on material to express or to open a non-material experience. In HC 15, 614 the four materials are mentioned as support for the author’s symbolic exegesis. In Ep. 9, 115 we are allowed to find out about the contents of ST, which consist in explaining difficult passages, meaning the symbols of the Scriptures. Therefore, it opens a possible understanding of ST as exegetical experience. István Perczel confirms that corporeal symbols are mediating tools between law hierarchy16 and ecclesiastic hierarchy, as θεωρία mediates between ecclesiastic hierarchy and the celestial one.17 Focusing on the history of σύμβολον as a philosophical concept, should we discover that it is also a mediating tool between Neoplatonism and the Dionysian Christian project. Dionysius did not ignore the previous non-Christian literature available on σύμβολον. An allusion in EH 2, 3, 1 suspects a symbolic tradition different from what is normally understood in the CD as hierarchical tradition: ‘Even if it had no other and more sacred meaning, this tradition of things performed symbolically (symbolic tradition) would, in my opinion have nothing profane about it, for what it teaches is a holy way of life and in cleansing of the whole body by water it proposes a complete purification of an evil way of life’.18 Symbols have a career in Neoplatonism, even corporeal or material referenced images are not generally developed because of the so-called central hierarchies of being that involve the primacy of intelligible over the sensible. But material symbols are used to transmit doctrines,19 and, generally speaking, they have a 14

CH 15, 6 (PTS 36, 56). Ep. 9, 1 (PTS 36, 193). 16 CH 2, 1 (PTS 36, 69). 17 István Perczel, ‘Dionysius the Areopagite’, in Ken Parry (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics (Oxford, 2015), 217. 18 EH 2, 3, 1 (PTS 36, 73-2), English translation by Colm Luibheid, Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works (New York, 1987), 204. If not mentioned otherwise, I use this reference for English translations of the complete works of Dionysius. For the same mention of the ‘tradition of symbols’, see EH 2, 3, 5 (PTS 36, 76), EH 4, 3, 10 (PTS 36, 102). 19 Proclus, Theologia platonica 1, 2, Proclus. Théologie platonicienne, ed. Henri Dominique Saffrey and L.G. Westering, 6 vol. (Paris, 1968), I 9. 15

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role in revelation. A history of σύβολον in Neoplatonism is still vague and it requires a fine readjustment of its role from a secondary to a central concept. Technically speaking, σύμβολον is a Neoplatonic invented conceptual instrument, used before in common language for its relational function, but used as a concept in philosophy for its power to exceed the limits of discursive philosophy. The vague sources of philosophical σύμβολον are to be found in The Chaldean Oracles and in Corpus Hermeticum, yet the first conceptual developments are to be rediscovered in the soft debate between Porphyry (Letter to Anibo) and Iamblichus (De mysteriis) on the role of σύμβολον. Prophyry’s thesis is that symbolic rites may give the philosopher an improper access and control over the powers of Gods.20 The main argument of Iamblichus over Porphyry on symbols resides in their irrational aspect. As irrational, they do not belong to man, but are ‘theurgical’ (lit., works of Gods), working by themselves beyond the limited powers of human gnoseology. The history of Neoplatonic σύμβολον is part of the development of religious character of those mainly Eastern Neoplatonic schools which have accelerated the discourse on irrational, mystical, trans-intellectual philosophy. Theurgy is a crossroad between human irrational activity – much more inspired, and hence more poetical and metaphorical – and the divine procession or providence activity, meeting humans where they cannot rise by themselves, i.e. above reason, only through symbols.21 Iamblichus speaks about acts not to be divulged and beyond all conception (ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν νόησιν) or about the ‘power of unutterable symbols’ (συμβόλων ἀφθέγκτων δύναμις), and ‘symbols themselves, by themselves, perform their appropriate work, and ineffable power of the gods, to whom these symbols relate, itself recognizes the proper images of itself, not through being aroused by our thought’.22 This self-activity of the σύμβολον provides a specific sympathy (συμπαθεία), which permits the minister to participate in divine activity. Because of this sympathy, in Iamblichus’ most developed views, Neoplatonic symbols offer a cosmological development for the inner rite, which celebrates higher knowledge. Symbols are divine seeds inoculated in cosmos by the Demiurge, set higher than the rationality of man, but below the status of Gods.23 Symbols have their hierarchical functionality. We see first the natural elements, then the biological, then the music, then the names, and afterwards the highest, which are mathematics and numbers. A Pythagorean 20 Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon and Jackson P. Hershbell, ‘Introduction’, in Iamblichus, De mysteriis (Atlanta, 2003), 26-7. 21 Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford, 2004), 43. 22 Iamblichus, De mysteriis 2, 11, Jamblique. Les mystères d’Égypte, ed. Édouard des Places (Paris, 1966), 115. 23 Tomasz Stępień, ‘The Understanding of Symbols and Their Role in the Ascent of the Soul to God in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Nicholas of Cusa’, Roczniki Filozoficzne 2 (2005), 85-103, 88-9. See, also, Proclus, Theologia platonica 5, 4, Proclus. Théologie (Paris, 1987), V 20.

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traceable source of the symbolism of numbers is to be confirmed in this hierarchy of symbols, revealing into Neoplatonism the divine principles organizing the universe and the fact that the cult, the rite and the symbols are part of a higher revelation, that philosophy, through discursive and intellectual activity, cannot offer.24 Regarding symbols, Proclus is a much more sober philosopher. In Proclus images are equivalent to the transmission of a special content with symbols and symbols have the same instrumental use as myths have.25 In Proclus, mainly in Theologia platonica, symbols are improper tools for describing Gods or evoking theology, but are proper for philosophical use: For that mythological mode which indicates divine concerns through conjecture is ancient, concealing truth under a multitude of veils, and proceeding in a manner similar to nature, which extends sensible figments of intelligibles, material, of immaterial, partible, of impartible natures and images, and things which have a false being, of things perfectly true. But Plato rejects the more tragical mode of the mythologizing of the ancient poets, who thought proper to establish an arcane theology respecting Gods, and on this account devised wanderings, sections, battles, lacerations, rapes and adulteries of the Gods, and many other symbols of the truth about divine nature, which theology conceals, this mode he rejects…26

Still, there is a sense using symbols as they still have a specific power to reveal divinity. ‘And as the theurgic art through certain symbols calls forth the exuberant and unenvying goodness of the Gods into illumination of artificial statues, thus also the intellectual science of divine concerns, by the compositions and divisions of sounds, unfolds the occult essence of Gods’.27 We understand Proclus’ view on σύμβολον if we have a deeper view on the relation between poetry and philosophy,28 which resembles Dionysian relation between liturgy and theology. Proclus says that ‘every thing therefore, entering into the ineffable of its own nature, finds there the symbol of father of all’.29 Symbols in Proclus are revealed by the ‘rumors of theologists’.30 Symbols require superior connectivity; even they suppose bonding and material limitations.31 Generally speaking, Proclus continues a cosmological approach on symbols, those being often described in association with cosmogonical actions, structures of heavens, interventions of Gods related to the organization of the world, regarding the reinterpreted classical Platonic cosmological schemas. 24

T. Stępień, ‘The understanding’ (2005), 89-90. Proclus, Theologia platonica 1, 2 (Paris, 1968), I 20; 5, 3 (Paris, 1987), V 18. 26 Id., Theologia platonica 1, 4 (Paris, 1968), I 21, English translation by Thomas Taylor, The Theology of Plato (Shepton Mallet, 1995), 61. 27 Id., Theologia platonica 1, 29 (Paris, 1968), I 124, English translation (1995), 125. 28 Radek Chlup, Proclus. An introduction (Cambridge, 2012), 195. 29 Proclus, Theologia platonica 2, 8 (Paris, 1974), II 56, English translation (1995), 161. 30 Id., Theologia platonica 5, 24 (Paris, 1987), V 91, English translation (1995), 357. 31 Id. Theologia platonica 5, 34 (Paris, 1987), V 125, English translation (1995), 379. 25

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The Neoplatonic sources of Dionysius – mainly Proclus – keep a fine balance between worlds, the unseen and the seen, intelligible and sensible, counterbalancing the Platonic legacy of radical transcendence of intelligible and the functions corporeal symbols receive. When we approach Dionysius we first see that there has been operated a fine change from understanding the Plotinus’ non-positive or neutral principle of the sensible world,32 into a positive principle of the material world, available in the approaching concepts as knowledge, experience, inter-relation or communion. Dionysian symbol is a tool that permits transforming the inherited Neoplatonic theurgy in Christian hierarchy and – I conclude – is a result of adapting Neoplatonism revelational schemas to a much more concrete reality of incarnation of God in flesh, present corporally in Church. Normally, God does not concretely reside in material, but through Incarnation, He does, and this assumption changes the way we approach material in relation with God. For this reason, a symbol is curently named ‘saint’ (ἱερός)33 or ‘holiest’ (θειότατον)34 or ‘revered’ (σεβάσμιος).35 At Dionysius the unity of liturgical σύμβολον (acts, words, gestures, rites, prayers, materials used in Church, etc.), on the one hand, and the theological σύμβολον, on the other hand (biblical or philosophical expressions regarding God) becomes clearer than in other traditions. Or, Liturgy and Bible receive the same theological exegesis based on the principles we could have been reading in ST, which breathe throughout the entire corpus. In the entire last chapter of CH, Dionysius uses symbols as material interfaces for a large number of corporeal names or material biblical expressions related to angels, but the exegesis of those names and expressions show that material is only a step in the knowledge, and that those symbols never rest limited on this level. They pass on deciphering the unseen reality through the seen and represent means of direct experience, used as a stimulating factor. Dionysius refers to a symbolic hierarchy, and, in extenso, church becomes symbolic: ‘our own hierarchy is itself symbolical and adapted to what we are’.36 In EH 1, 4, Dionysius says that the divine hierarchy is based on ‘variety and abundance of composite symbols’,37 relating hierarchy to Scripture, and Scripture to symbols. In relation with the function of the sensible and corporeal elements of the Church, which become an instrument for a specific revelation, the nature of ecclesiastic hierarchy becomes symbolic. Consequentially, regarding the angels, their hierarchy would be noetic, for the revelational function of their noetic experiences. The revelational character of both hierarchies is evident 32 33 34 35 36 37

Frederick Copleston, History of Philosophy, 5 (New York, 1993), 470. EH 7, 3, 8 (PTS 36, 129); EH 7, 3, 3 (PTS 36, 124). EH 5, 1, 5 (PTS 36, 107). Ibid. EH 1, 5 (PTS 36, 68). EH 1, 4 (PTS 36, 67).

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here. In EH 2 we are noticed that symbolic hierarchy has a gnoseological function, based on contemplation (θεωρία) and reflections (εἴσοπτρον): ‘This sacrament symbolizing the sacred divine birth has nothing unfitting or profane in its perceptible images. Rather, it reflects the enigmas of a contemplative process (θεωρία) worthy of God, and it does so by way of natural reflections suited to human intellect’.38 Θεογενεσία is here the image of having God born within humans through sacraments that overuse materials as symbols. We find at Dionysius the same Neoplatonic idea that σύμβολον is originated in God, similarly to θεουργία (work of God). Iamblichus focused on theurgy, as a way Gods interfere human experience. Dionysian symbol is part of God’s plan for the both sensitive and intelligible worlds, meaning humans, otherwise the knowledge or the union with God without his intervention would be impossible. God is the active element of this double-sense relation: symbols are active because God is present and active in those biblical and liturgical symbols. Dionysian understanding of hierarchy, not only regarding a strict humaninspired vertical hierarchy, but also a hierarchy penetrated by the quotidian dynamics of purification and knowledge, inserts σύμβολον in a trajectory which implies a gradually development from symbol to icon, to the caused ones, to the celebrated one who is seen. This schema (symbol, icon, cause, and subject) is transformed by completion of the spiritual dynamics that hierarchy and liturgy offer into a superior one, passing from archesymbol, to archetype, to the unique cause, and finally to the unseen and mystery. In this schema, σύμβολον is not less true only because it is a symbol. It has a gnoseological or revelation function because of the unitary relationship between symbol and the symbolized, creation and Creator, the caused and the cause. It is not only the minimal beginning of a gnoseological schema, but the key entering it. At Dionysius we can see a much more evident distinction, but yet not definitive, between signs and symbols. Symbol is a sign that you can participate or penetrate in. Symbols become narrations of direct experiences, a synonym for practical participation. The Neoplatonic legacy on σύμβολον supposed a practical character, but Christian liturgy, because of its public character and transparency, implies a much more involved and practical character, even if the hidden (mystagogical) aspect is kept all along the CD. This is why σύμβολον is expressed in CD as a paradoxical experience beyond activity, even if it is a practical activity. It implies both activity and resting, movement and pause, not by contrary, but by transcending. This transcending is explained by the content of the symbol: We use whatever appropriate symbols we can for the things of God. With these analogies we are raised upward toward the truth of the mind’s vision, a truth which is simple 38

EH 2, 3, 1 (PTS 36, 73).

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and one. We leave behind us all our notions of the divine. We call a halt to the activities of our minds and, to the extent that is proper, we approach the ray which transcends being.39

In Dionysius, σύμβολον operates beyond the dominating distinction between affirmative and negative, or practical and contemplative. It is a form of mystagogical theology,40 which adds to those distinctions the empirical character or a practical approach. Dionysian symbol is a theoretical (not in modern sense, but in its Ancient meaning of contemplation) and an empirical event. It allows the participant to celebrate distinctions, to enter the dynamics of contemplation, to see for himself, to unify himself with the reality theoretically described, i.e. in contemplation, by the mystagogue. This is why in CD, apophatism is not only the opposition to cataphatism, but a theology of experience beyond affirmative and negative. In this context, I say that σύμβολον is a key concept which contributes to this kind of dominating empiric character of Dionysian synthesis. Σύμβολον might be the specific ‘name’ of the Dionysian theology of experience. Cosmological approach on Dionysian σύμβολον convey mainly on the legacy of Neoplatonism in Dionysius. Still, the main difference, which emerges throughout the entire Corpus, is the change of accent from the cosmological structure to the source of the structure. Generally speaking, this change of accent is to be understood as an exegetical conversion from Neoplatonic texts to Neoplatonic inspired Christian writings. The world is not the supreme reality, but a symbol of another one. Dumitru Stăniloae, in his comentaries on the Corpus, refers to the cosmological character of the symbolon regarding two perspectives: (1) the dynamics of creation towards God (in this sense, the world is a ‘symbol’ of God), and (2) the fact that world is not a final reality, but a symbol, corporeal link to another one.41 From this perspective, the body of Jesus Christ, in Eucharist, is a symbol for God himself, at the highest level of the possibility to relate man to God himself. And the created world responses to this relation by being elevated as a ‘symbol’, on different degrees, by the body of Jesus, celebrated ‘symbolically’ in Eucharist. Dionysius often refers to the eucharistical sacraments as symbols.42 Σύμβολον intermediates as the hierarch is the only one to contemplate directly, the others contemplate through σύμβολον. This is why, in Dionysius, σύμβολον refers to a function that resides in knowledge, not in a special superior essence. Σύμβολον is not about a parallel reality to ours, but is about a way to know and to touch the superior reality. In Dionysius it is not completely evident that σύμβολον has a special ontological character,

39

DN 1, 4 (PTS 33, 115). The expression belongs to Charles-André Bernard, ‘Les formes de la Théologie chez Denys l’Aréopagite’, Gregorianum 59 (1978), 39-69. 41 Dumitru Stăniloae, Sfântul Dionisie Areopagitul. Opere complete (Bucharest, 1996), 128-9. 42 EH 3, 2 (PTS 36, 81). 40

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but its function is better concentrated on the relation on which σύμβολον operates, and, as we can further see, on its gnoseological content. The gnoseological vocabulary on symbolon is obvious in several Dionysian passages: Symbol is lesson (συμβολικὴ διδασκαλία) therefore sacredly leads the one who is baptized into the mystery that by his triple immersion and emersion he imitates, as far as the imitation of God is possible to men, the divine death of one who has three days and nights in the tomb.43 Now every sacred apparition and every sacred work of God can be represented in the hierarchy’s array of symbols, and it is appropriate to recall here that hymn revealed by God to the prophets, for it teaches us in clear and holy fashion that the generous gifts of the divinity deserve to receive sacred praises.44

The reason one may not access the knowledge involved by the symbol is not the symbol itself, but the spiritual level, meaning that sin represents a factor which, regarding symbol, suppresses the advance in knowledge: But this fragrance does not spread in a similar way to those to a lowlier plane. Furthermore, to avoid all profanation at the hands of those who do not live in conformity to God, the secret beholders of what is conceptual conceal the ointment under enigmatic folds (ὑπὸ πτερωτοῖς αἰνίγμασι συγκαλύπτεται)45 enigmas which are not without value for the well-disposed members of the lower orders because they lift these members up, as they deserve.46

The Ep. 9 represents a key for understanding the gnoseological function of Dionysian σύμβολον. This is why so many continue to be unbelieving in the presence of the explanations of the divine mysteries, for we contemplate them solely by the way of the perceptible symbols attached to them. What is necessary is to uncover them, to see them in their naked purity. By contemplating them in this manner we can revere that ‘source of life’ flowing into itself. We see it remaining within itself, a unique and simple power, source of its own movement and activity, which is never failing and which is the knowledge of all knowledge (γνῶσιν πασῶν γνώσεων ὑπάρχουσαν) by virtue of its own perpetual self-contemplation (ἀεὶ δι’ ἑαυτῆς ἑαυτὴν θεωμένην).47

Those deep correspondences between the biblical and the liturgical symbols confirm the necessity to stress even more the revelational function of the liturgical ones, which, in Dionysian perspective, are not to be understood as simple decorative items of spiritual life, or practical historical evolutions of prayer experiences, but tools for entering, by contemplation, ‘the knowledge of 43 44 45 46 47

EH 2, 3, 7 (PTS 36, 78). EH 4, 3, 12 (PTS 36, 103-4). αἰνίγμα is also to be considered here having the sense of symbol, figure, type. EH 4, 3, 2 (PTS 36, 97). Ep. 9, 1 (PTS 36, 193-4).

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all knowledge’. ‘Their rites are images of the power of the divinity, by which the hierarchs perfect (ἀποτελειοῦσαι) the holiest of symbols and all the sacred ranks’.48 The main question regarding the gnoseological function of symbolon is what kind of content does Dionysian σύμβολον offers? When we read the texts related to symbols, we see without exception the fact that σύμβολον is linked with a different type of transformation or mystical experience. As a special expression of the conclusive wide spread understanding of gnosis from Platonic and Neoplatonic milieus, we see in Dionysius that gnosis, through σύμβολον, transforms the celebrant. The way he read this story of inner transformation is, though, fascinating. Another conclusion regarding the function of σύμβολον in Dionysius is about the link between ontology and gnosis, which is extremely tight. Generally, the texts condition the acquisition of the gnostic content to a special status (e.g. the condition for purification is mandatory) or condition or rank (e.g. the hierarch is the one to mediate). The parallel between knowledge and purification permits a Christian type of Gnosticism anchored in Church’s ascetics, valorizing a liturgical tradition with support the force Neoplatonic concepts have to offer. The reality of σύμβολον implies a sort of intermediary ontology within visible and invisible. A symbolic ontology is conceptually feasible regarding the Dionysian synthesis, as being symbolic it does not make it less real or less true. Being symbolic involves the knowledge of a difference between inferior and superior levels of realities. But still the evidence of an ontological character of Dionysian symbol is not completely evident in the conceptual architecture of Dionysian synthesis. Nevertheless, a symbolic gnoseology is better anchored in the goal of the Dionysian writing, as symbol is not a decoration, but an instrument to access a superior content. The sources of the CD, Neoplatonic and Christian, outline together the role of an assumed balanced σύμβολον (Jamblichus excepted) within man’s ascension to superior realities. Dionysius only projects it in a Christian liturgical orchestration which becomes the practical scenario in a world of active symbols, meaning in the Church.

48

EH 5, 3, 5 (PTS 36, 107).

Some Remarks on the Arabic Epistula ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli Michael MUTHREICH, Göttingen, Germany

ABSTRACT The Epistula ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli (hereafter: Epistula) ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite can be found in a lot of manuscripts and in translations into almost all classical languages of Christianity, excepting only Coptic. Curiously though, the Epistula’s supposed Greek original has not yet come to light. Thus the question arises whether there have ever been Greek or Coptic versions at all even if, due to general considerations, it is highly unlikely though that there should not have been such versions. Regarding the Arabic tradition at any rate, more than fortyfive manuscripts are extant, with the oldest dating back to the 12th century. Despite the closeness of the Arabic translation to the Epistula’s Syriac text, and despite variants within the Arabic textual tradition itself, some common peculiarities of the Arabic version hint at the fact that the Arabic translator may have had a Greek or even a Coptic Vorlage. With regard to reconstructing the Epistula’s original text, of which we do not have discovered a Greek or Coptic version up to now, it therefore makes sense to have a closer look at the Arabic tradition. The article aims at providing arguments for the likeliness of a Greek or Coptic Vorlage for the Arabic, through both semantic and textual analyses.

1. A Short Description of the Epistula The Epistula ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli (CPG1 6631) is not a long text. It does not take up more than between five to eight manuscript pages of regular size. It is a letter of consolation (at least this is what it is most often called2) allegedly sent by Dionysius the Areopagite to 1 Mauritius Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum III: A Cyrillo Alexandro ad Iohannem Damascenum (Turnhout, 2003), 275. 2 Thus for instance by Uri János, Bibliothecae Bodleianae codicum manuscriptorum orientalium videlicet Hebraicorum, Chaldaicorum, Syriacorum, Aethiopicorum, Arabicorum, Persicorum, Turcicorum Copticorumque Catalogus Pars Prima (Oxford, 1787), 46; Georg Graf, ‘Katalog christlich-arabischer Handschriften in Jerusalem I, Die arabischen Handschriften des melkitischen Seminars St. Anna der Weissen Väter’, Oriens christianus 4.1 (1914), 108; Paul Sbath, Bibliothèque de Manuscrits Paul Sbath, tom. I (Cairo, 1928), 202, and others. The Epistula is not unambiguous as far as its text type is concerned. It can be found even in homiletic collections:

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Timothy, the disciple of St Paul. In it, Dionysius praises St. Paul and tells Timothy that he witnessed St Paul’s martyrdom in Rome himself, including the surrounding events and circumstances (as an aside, the story of St. Paul’s martyrdom as told in the Epistula is by and large in accordance with the apocryphal Martyrdom of the blessed apostle Paul as told in Pseudo Linus3 [Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina 6570]). The text is extant in a lot of manuscripts in many different languages, such as Armenian, Ge‘ez, Georgian, Latin, Syriac, even Early New High German.4 Strangely though, given the fact that the Epistula’s original version, its archetype, likely was in Greek, no Greek or Coptic manuscript of this text is extant.

2. The Arabic Manuscripts There are more than forty-five manuscripts in Arabic: quite a substantial number for such a small text. Only the Latin tradition is broader and more prolific, as it comprises more than one hundred manuscripts, without even taking into account the excerpts of the Epistula that we find in the ʻGolden Legendʼ (Legenda Aurea), authored by Jacobus da Varagine. If we consider this collection of saints’ lives as well, we get an idea of how popular the text was in the Latin West. The oldest Arabic manuscript dates back to the 12th century, which is quite early. This manuscript comes from Mount Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery: Arabic 539. Outside the Arabic tradition, the absolutely oldest known manuscripts containing the Epistula are a Syriac one from the 9th century, now kept in the Vatican Library (Syriac 123, ff. 198v-204v), and four Georgian manuscripts from the 9th and 10th centuries (Mt. Athos: Georg. 8, ff. 57v-64r and Georg. 25, ff. 207v-214r; Korneli Kekelidze National Center of Manuscripts in Tbilisi: A-19 f. 93v-94v and A-95 ff. 646r-651v).5 The Epistula in Arabic is mainly found in three sorts of collections: a) in homiletic collections (about one quarter of all manuscripts); b) together with See Michael Muthreich, ʻPreliminary Remarks on Dionysius Areopagita in the Arabic Homiletic Traditionʼ, in Jost Gippert and Caroline Macé (eds), Homiletic Collections in Greek and Oriental Manuscripts, Manuscript Cultures 13 (Hamburg, 2019), 123-45. 3 It is an abridged version though. See Richard A. Lipsius and Maximilianus Bonnet, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (Leipzig, 1891), 23-44 and Michael Muthreich, ʻDifferent accounts of the Martyrdom of St. Paul and their significance for the “Epistola ad s. Timotheum de passione apostolorum Petri et Pauli” ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagiteʼ, SP 100 (2020), 263-72. 4 See Robert Priebsch, Deutsche Handschriften in England, Zweiter Band: Das British Museum (Erlangen, 1901), 136-7 (Ms. 159 i.e. Add. 15690). 5 See Caroline Macé and Michael Muthreich, ʻLatin and Oriental translations of the Epistola de morte apostolorum attributed to Dionysius the Areopagiteʼ, in Dan Batovici and Madalina Toca (eds), Caught in Translation (Leiden, 2020), 9-34.

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the epistles of St Paul (as prescript or as postscript); c) in collections of saints’ lives or martyrdoms, also in synaxaria. The text was well known to, and used by, Melkites as well as Monophysites. Curiously and by contrast, it was unknown to, or at least not used by, Nestorians.6 2.1. Analysed Arabic Manuscripts I did not look at all known Arabic manuscripts, but limited my examination to twenty of them, which amounts to almost fifty per cent. They are identified in the following list: Manuscript 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

7

[Watson] Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ar. Christ. Uri 104, 2 Beirut, Bibliothèque Orientale, Cod. 510 [61] Beirut, Bibliothèque Orientale, Cod. 511 Beirut, Bibliothèque Orientale, Cod. 512 Diyarbakir, Meryem Ana Kilisesi, Cod. [HMML DIYR 00322] 322 Göttingen, Universitätsbibliothek, Arab. 104 Göttingen, Universitätsbibliothek, Arab. 105 Wādī an-Natrūn, Egypt, Monastery of Saint Macarius, Cod. 434 Birmingham, Mingana Collection, Ar. Christ. 92 [87b] Birmingham, Mingana Collection, Mingana Syr. 461 Paris Bibliothèque Nationale, Ar. 4771 Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery, Ar. 405 Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery, Ar. 475 Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery, Ar. 448 Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery, Ar. 482 Sinai, St Catherine’s Monastery, Ar. 539 Jerusalem, St Mark’s Monastery, no 199B, 53 [Dolabany 199, 53] Jerusalem, St Mark’s Monastery, MS 263 Tripoli, Lebanon, Balamand Monastery, MS 119

Siglum W BU104 B510 B511 B512 D322 G104 G105 M434 Ma92 Ms461 P4771 S405 S475 S448 S482 S539 SM53 SM263 TB119

The oldest Arabic Epistula manuscript appears in this list as its item no 17 (S539). The list’s no 1 is not a manuscript but an edition-cum-translation of the 6 See Anton Baumstark, Die Petrus- und Paulusacten in der literarischen Überlieferung der syrischen Kirche (Leipzig, 1902), 36. 7 W. Scott Watson, ʻAn Arabic Version of the Epistle of Dionysius the Areopagite to Timothyʼ, The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature 16 (1899-1900), 225-41.

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Arabic Epistula, prepared by Watson.8 Watson’s textual basis was a manuscript he obtained in Syria, and on which he provides as he says. He gives the following information: ʻTo the material for the critical study of this epistle I now add a hitherto unprinted Arabic translation that appears not only to have been made directly from the lost original, although already interpolated, Greek text, but also to show that an Arabic form lies back of three, if not all, of the other versions.2 It is from a manuscript obtained by me in Syria that, though without a date, is probably of the seventeenth century.3 The document is reproduced with literal exactness; …ʼ9

In his footnote 2, Watson explains that he intends to prepare a paper on the mentioned subject in the future. Footnote 3 then goes on to describe the manuscript: ʻThe manuscript consists of twelve leaves of paper 71⁄8 × 5 inches in size. Pp. 2-22 are occupied by the present text, the other three pages being blank except that p. 23 bears the words ‫الخط يبقا زمان َا مديد َا وصاحب الخط تحت الارض مدفون يا قاري )اذ(كرني بدعاك‬ “The writing remains a long time and the writer is buried under the earth; O reader, remember me in thy prayer.” (The letters inclosed in brackets and the three similarly treated in the main text have been lost through injury to the manuscript.) All the writing, including the few corrections, is from one hand.ʼ10

In another footnote, (no 4) Watson further says: ʻThe title is in red ink. Many red dots are scattered through the text, as though to punctuate it, but I have omitted them because of the arbitrary way in which they were placed.ʼ11

Watson is the first and so far still the only researcher who made the Arabic version known to the public. 2.2. Stemmatic Chart If we look at the manuscripts, we can right away divide them into two groups. This is due to a very obvious misunderstanding or misreading at the beginning of the Epistula that is found in members of the B group. At the very beginning of the Epistula, we usually find some words of praise for Timothy; then, after a ʻRejoice,ʼ St Paul is praised. Group B manuscripts though attribute all praises to Timothy, until the phrase ʻI mean the sea of wisdomʼ:

8

Ibid. 226-36. Ibid. 225-6. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 226. 9

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Group A W12 with G104/G105 and P4771

Group B B510

‫للتلميذ الإلهي والابن الروحاني وتلميذ الإله ووريثه‬ ‫ومكمل مشيئته والمصطبر على شدائده والعالي‬ ‫على كل مذابح والمثاني المعلم المحق والأب‬ ‫الروحاني ثيموثاوس من ديونيسوس‬

‫ خادم الاله‬. ‫التلميذ الروحاني والابن الخاصي‬ ‫ من‬. ‫والمصطبر على الشدائد والأتعاب ثيموثاوس‬ ‫أخيه في السرائر الالهية ورفيقه في المنح‬ ‫المسيحية ديونيسيوس‬

‫الآن افرح لأن ذلك الابس الإله والمصلوب‬ ‫للمسيح والمألوم معه وآلة خدمته الروحانية بحر‬ ... ‫الحكم‬

‫افرح الان وابتهج ايها التلميذ المألوم مع سيده‬ ‫ أعني بحر الحكم‬. ‫والمجتهد في خدمته ومشيئته‬ ...

ʻTo the divine disciple, the spiritual son, the disciple of (the) God and his inheritor, the finisher of his will, the one who patiently bears his hardships, the one who is above all praise and glorification, the true teacher and the spiritual father Timothy, from Dionysius. Rejoice now: he who was clothed with God, who was crucified with Christ and suffered with him, and (who was) the spiritual vessel of his service, the sea of wisdom…ʼ

ʻ(To) the spiritual disciple and special son, servant of God and patiently bearing the hardships and afflictions, Timothy. (A letter) from his brother in the divine mysteries and his companion in the Christian graces (namely) Dionysius. Rejoice and exult, O disciple, who has suffered with his Lord, and who has striven in his service and in his will: I mean the sea of wisdom…ʼ

The manuscripts listed above fall into the two groups as follows:

12

Group A

Group B

W B512 BU104 D322 G104 G105 M434 Ms461 P4771 S448 S405 S475 S482 S539 SM263

B511 B510 Ma92 TB119

W omits ʻand (who was) the spiritual vessel of his service, the sea of wisdom…ʼ.

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Group A can be subdivided again into two subgroups, based on a reading difficult to makes sense of even in the Syriac version. In this phrase, St Paul is said to be a body that combines (or embraces, or unites) the countries. That is what the group A.1 reads too, quite in accordance with the Syriac, which has ? ʻbody of the countriesʼ (À{sx¿ćäýÎÅ). Group A.2 by contrast tries to repair the sentence to make better sense of it, and says that Paul is the body with/without blemish instead. (The variant ʻwithout blemishʼ was, by the way, the one adopted by the Ethiopic translator.) Group A.1

Group A.2

‫الجسم الذي ضم البلدان‬ (‫الجسم بالأعراض )أو بلا أعراض‬ (al-ğismu ’llaḏī ḍamma ’l-buldān) (al-ğismu bi ’l-’a‛rāḍ [’au bilā ’a‛rāḍ]) ʻthe body with (without) blemishʼ ʻthe body which “combines” the countriesʼ WB512 S405 [S448] S475 [S482?] S539 Ms461 D322 SM263

BU104 G104 G105 P4771

Finally, group A.1 can be divided one more time into two sub-units. This can be done on the basis of another quite difficult phrase of the text that was misunderstood or interpreted in the Arabic version to make more sense. It is said that the souls of the dead, especially those of the deceased saints, can see and hear and perceive everything after death ʻexcept the wordʼ (‫)سواء الكلام‬. What is meant, and found in the manuscripts of subgroup A.1.1, is that ʻthey cannot speak to us anymoreʼ. Subgroup A.1.2 by contrast interprets things differently and says ʻand they understand the wordʼ (‫)وتفهم الكلام‬. The group A.1.1 manuscripts here are in accordance with the Syriac and Armenian Epistula versions. Group A.1.1

Group A.1.2

(siwā’a ’l-kalām) ‫سواء الكلام‬ ʻexcept the wordʼ

(wa tafhamu ’l-kalām) ‫وتفهم الكلام‬ ʻand they (the souls) understand the wordʼ

W B512 Ms461 S405 S475 S539

D322 S448 S482 SM263

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To summarize, we can assume that group A.1.1 is closest to the archetype, whereas group B is a version with quite a lot of variants due to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. It is the group which shows the greatest distance from the supposed archetype. The following stemmatic chart is to be used with some caution, however, because the dependence shown in its left arm is not securely proven. Ω Group A.1.1 Group A.1.2

Group A.2

S448 S482 Group B

3. Possible Hints at a Greek or Coptic Vorlage Let us now turn to the question of what the Vorlage of the Arabic Epistula was. There is only one manuscript which was translated from a Syriac Vorlage, namely, Jerusalem, St Mark 199B, 53. We know this for certain because its colophon explicitly tells us so. In addition, a look at this Arabic translation shows that it really is very close to the Syriac text. Strangely, though, this translation differs from the one usually found in Arabic Epistula texts. Therefore, if there is an Arabic translation from a Syriac Vorlage which differs from the default Arabic translation found in all other manuscripts, we have to conclude that the default Arabic version has another Vorlage. This other Vorlage can only be a Greek or Coptic one, as all the other Christian Oriental Epistula versions can be excluded to have had this role for one reason or another. First, the Ethiopian Epistula was itself translated from Arabic.13 Second, the Armenian Epistula differs from the Syriac and the Arabic versions in a number of crucial respects.14 Third, the Georgian and Latin versions are a special cases: They are different 13 See Siegbert Uhlig (ed.), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Volume 2 [D-Ha] (Wiesbaden, 2005), 1049, and Michael Muthreich, ʻBemerkungen zur arabischen und äthiopischen Fassung der „Epistula de morte apostolorum Petri et Pauli“ (zugeschrieben dem Dionysius Areopagita)ʼ, in Bogoljub Šijaković (ed.), Philotheos 13 (Beograd, 2013), 166-75. 14 For instance, the ʻbody of the countriesʼ of the Syriac version mentioned above is rendered as ʻresearcher of the universeʼ in Armenian. See C. Macé and M. Muthreich, ʻLatin and Oriental translationsʼ (2020).

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from all the other versions and form a group of their own.15 In fact, they are so different that we even have to assume two recensions of the Epistula, with the one echoed in the Georgian and the Latin versions likely being a metaphrastic recension.16 Against this background, we can safely exclude the Georgian and Latin versions from comparison here. 3.1. Manuscript Jerusalem, St Mark 199B, 53 The manuscript Jerusalem: St Mark 199b, 53 (no 38, 53 Baumstark17) contains a collection of saints’ lives. It is a Garshuni manuscript, that is, Arabic in language but written in Serto (the West-Syriac writing system). The manuscript goes back to the year 1734 and was translated from a Syriac witness dated 1179. The Epistula is found on folia 415v-417v [Macomber 420b-422b].18 3.2. ʻRejoiceʼ (‫)افرح‬ In addition to the sketched general considerations, a concrete linguistic indicator for a Greek or Coptic vorlage is the word ʻRejoiceʼ (‫)افرح‬. The Epistula begins with the following words19: ʻTo the godly disciple and spiritual son, [then we find some phrases praising Timothy] Timothy, from Dionysius.ʼ ‫للتلميذ الإلهي والابن الروحاني ]…[ ثيموثاوس من ديونيسوس‬

ʻNow (I) rejoice that that one clothed with God … departed unto Christʼ (the three dots signal the omission of a long passage in which St Paul is praised). ‫الان افرح لأن ذلك الابس الإله … انصرف إلى المسيح‬

Now, how should we read Arabic ‫افرح‬, as ʻI rejoiceʼ or as the masc. sg. imperative ʻRejoiceʼ? Watson reads ʻI rejoiceʼ but since the text is not vocalized both interpretations are possible here. Alternative ʻRejoice!ʼ, the imperative, historically is actually correct, as evidenced by other manuscripts that add ʻoh disciple who suffered with his teacher!ʼ after ʻrejoiceʼ20. In terms of overall meaning however, it is quite strange for Dionysius to start a letter of consolation to Timothy with a sentence like ʻRejoice, because your beloved teacher is dead now!ʼ What was the likely genesis of this text? 15

See ibid. I owe this insight to Ekkehard Mühlenberg. 17 See Georg Graf and Adolf Rücker, ʻDie literarischen Handschriften des jakobitischen Markusklosters in Jerusalemʼ, in Anton Baumstark (ed.), Oriens christianus 3 (Leipzig, 1913), 311-27, 319. 18 For further information see Filoksinus Y. Dolabany, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in St. Mark’s Monastery (Aleppo, Damaskus, 1994), 397-405; William F. Macomber [et al.], Final Inventory of the Microfilmed Manuscripts of the St. Mark’s Convent Jerusalem (Provo, UT, 1995), 16. 19 The translation is taken from W.S. Watson, An Arabic Version (1899-1900), 236-7. 20 See B510, B511, S482. 16

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Comparing the Arabic to the Syriac, it is easy to see that both have almost the same text. Both versions say: ʻTo the godly disciple and spiritual son, […] Timothyʼ but in Syriac Dionysius goes on to give greetings to Timothy, whereas in the Arabic these greetings are missing, curiously. Arabic

Syriac

‫للتلميذ الإلهي والابن الروحاني … ثيموثاوس من‬ ‫ديونيسوس‬

: ¿ÚçÐ{ÁüÂ{¿ÙÍàsÁËÚäàĀà †ÎÚéÎæÎÙx …†sĀäÚÔà …

‫الان افرح لأن ذلك الابس الإله‬

ÀÍà¾ćàÿÚÃà{z .åáý

ʻTo the godly disciple and spiritual son, […] Timothy, from Dionysius Now rejoice because that one clothed with God…ʼ

ʻTo the godly disciple and spiritual son, […] Timothy, Dionysius (says) Greetings. That one clothed with God…ʼ

In Arabic, ʻRejoiceʼ takes the place of the greetings. Yet since Syriac greetings make much more sense, I wonder: Did the Arabic translator perhaps misunderstand Greek or Coptic greeting ʻχαῖρεʼ because ʻχαίρωʼ essentially means ʻto rejoiceʼ? If so, the Arabic translator must have worked from a Greek or Coptic vorlage. He would not have misunderstood the Syriac greetings in this way because, as ʻshlōmʼ (åáý), it is very close to the Arabic ʻsalāmʼ (‫)سلام‬. 3.3. ʻDestroyer of Babylonian Idolsʼ (‫)الحاطم للأصنام البابلية‬ Another indicator of a Greek or Coptic vorlage for the Arabic Epistula may lie in its characterization of St Paul as ʻthe destroyer of Babylonian idolsʼ.21 In the Syriac parallel by contrast, St Paul is a ʻdiamond crushing and smashing Ÿ Ÿ Ÿ The ? the images of sinʼ (ÀĀÚÔÐx¿ćäàøàü Āã{ûÑ ýxëãxs{ z). term ʻBabylonianʼ comes quite unexpected here and is, in fact, not found in any other translation of the Epistula (not even all Arabic translations have it22). Against this background, it is my hypothesis that Greek ʻβέβηλοςʼ (unholy, unclean) which sounds very much like ʻBabylonianʼ (in Arabic: ʻbābiliyaʼ, ‫)بابلية‬, lies behind the Arabic translation, and that therefore the original meant to characterize St Paul as a ʻdestroyer of unclean or false idolsʼ here. So, we now have, in my view, three strong indicators that point to a Greek or Coptic vorlage of the Arabic text.

21

ʻBabylonianʼ is found in S448, S482, BU104, P4771 and G104. W, G105, B510 and B511 for example do not show the word ʻBabylonianʼ. W for instance rather reads ‫ الحجر الألمس المبعد والحاطم الخطايا‬ʻthe diamond removing far off and crushing sinsʼ, see W.S. Watson, An Arabic Version (1899-1900), 236. 22

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4. Conclusion To summarize, my conclusions are as follows: A) It is very likely that the Arabic translation was made from a Greek or even a Coptic Vorlage. This is because of the fact that the Arabic and the Syriac versions are quite close to each other. They both may represent the archetype of the Epistula much better than the other translations, such as the Latin, Armenian, etc. But since we have two different Arabic translations, one of them from a Syriac Vorlage, it is a plausible hypothesis to assume a Greek or Coptic Vorlage for the other translation. Likely misunderstandings of Greek words such as χαῖρε as ‘rejoice!’, and others, then are strong pieces of evidence to confirm this hypothesis or indicators for a Greek or Coptic Vorlage. B) The Arabic and the Syriac translations – as has been said – are likely to be closest to the supposed Greek archetype, because they stand together against different variants in the other translations – even against the Armenian one which is generally quite close to the Syriac. C) The Arabic version was used in the Copto-Arabic Church as well as in the Syriac-Arabic Church. Even if the Syriac Church had a Syriac text, no need was felt to replace the existent Arabic text with one closer to the Syriac version. There is only one manuscript proving that Syrians made a translation on the basis of the Syriac text. But it was produced quite late and it was not widely used. So, in the concerned Christian communities the other Arabic translation – the one we said was presumably made from a Greek or Coptic Vorlage – was considered an appropriate, authentic translation of the text.

Monastic Identity and Violence in Callinicus’ Vita Hypatii Bradley K. STORIN, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

ABSTRACT Callinicus’ Vita Hypatii is a little-studied fifth-century hagiography that traces the radicalization of a monk and draws attention to the role that confrontation and hostility play in his monastic life. Conflict with local pagans, bishops, demon-affected individuals, and imperial officials dominates the narrative. In the midst of such stories, Hypatius gives a brief sermon proclaiming that violent monks (βιασταί) will inherit the kingdom of God. Violence performed with an eye toward making conversions is certainly presented in a favorable light, but so too is violence enacted against non-Christians for a righteous cause, without the specter of conversions to Christianity. Such acts of violence, the hagiography declares, is ‘the work of God’. Unlike other early Christian rationalizations of violence that argue for tolerating but not repeating past acts of violence (e.g. Ambrose and the Callinicum synagogue), and unlike other well-known accounts of physical violence against the bodies and sacred sites of perceived religious adversaries, Callinicus’ Hypatius inscribes a violent and confrontational disposition at the center of monastic identity, demonstrated in its most distilled form in the person of the monk. The text proffers a model of holiness based, in large part, on an individual’s willingness to compel change in religious identity and landscape through sheer force. This vita, then, provides a model of sanctity built on enforcement of doctrinal purity, destruction of pagan cult objects and worship places, and rooting out lax members of the clergy.

A little over halfway through Callinicus’ fifth-century Vita Hypatii, an episodic hagiography that tracks the career, deeds, and teachings of the monk who founded a monastery in an abandoned church complex just south of Constantinople, the reader finds the holy Hypatius wandering through the forests of Bithynia, hunting down vestiges of traditional religion that still remain in remote pockets around the seemingly Christianized imperial capital. In response to reports that such-and-such a tree was being used in the service of traditional (i.e. pagan) religious worship, Hypatius would lead a band of disciples out to chop it down and burn the wood. This activity, Callinicus notes, exemplified Hypatius’ ‘zeal for God’ and with it, ‘they finally became Christians’.1 The 1

Callinicus, V. Hyp. 30.1 (ed. G.J.M. Bartelink, Callinicos. Vie d’Hypatios, SC 177 [Paris, 1971], 200). Bartelink renders the plural subject of χριστιανοὶ γεγόνασιν as ‘les gens’ [of Bithynia] which is not inconceivable, but because Hypatius and his monks are the only human beings

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marriage of violence and identity becomes starker in the short exhortatory speech that Hypatius delivers immediately after the description of the treeburning: Children, focus on the work of God lest I become irritated. For in my irritation, I don’t see my prayer as pure. Likewise, it’s good to have a little affliction so that we know that we are human sinners, just as the apostle says, ‘A thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, so that I would be afflicted lest I become arrogant’ [2Cor. 12:7]. From the point when God ordered me to guide you, his flock, he set over me a punishment if I failed to preach the gospel and teach you the path of God. Indeed, I’m careful not to get rebuked like Eli, because he did not penalize for the purpose of correction his own sons, the priests Ophni and Phineas, and with them he received wrath. For the apostle said, ‘Rebuke, penalize, exhort’ [2Tim. 4:2], and, ‘One who loves his son will discipline him’ [Heb. 12:6; Prov. 3:12]. As for you, children, hasten to erect virtue while God furnishes you with grace and endurance; when your heart is unwilling, throttle it with violence for a good purpose, ‘in all endurance and patience’ [Col. 1:11]. ‘Abstain from every form of wickedness; testing all things, hold fast to the good’ [1Thess. 5:21-2, but reversed]. ‘For you need endurance, so that, when you perform the Lord’s will, you preserve the promise’ [Heb. 10:36]. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to the violent, and the violent seize it [see Matt. 11:12].2

Hypatius’ monastic practice, it turns out, is ruthless: he demands that monks choke out any internal hesitation about fully embodying zeal for God and holds out the kingdom of heaven to those who perform it outwardly as βιασταί.3 This term is significant here: βία and its cognates rarely if ever designate the use of legitimate force.4 It is a ubiquitously negative term that connotes extraordinary, unjust, and violative force. Yet, in this vita, Callinicus appropriates the term for the embodiment of sanctity itself – his subject Hypatius, the monk who, in directly mentioned in this section, I suspect that they are the ones who ‘finally became Christian’ after destruction of sacred sites. That is, the performance of violent opposition to non-Christian modes of worship produces authentic Christian identity. 2 Callinicus, V. Hyp. 30.4-12 (SC 177, 202-4). 3 Hypatius’s climactic declaration that the kingdom of God belongs to the violent enlists and revises Matt. 11:12 to encourage unflagging zeal. The gospel text reads thus: ‘From the days of John the Baptist up till now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent plunder it’ (ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν βιάζεται καὶ βιασταὶ ἁρπάζουσιν αὐτήν) (my trans.). Jesus’ declaration links John with the kingdom and his imprisonment (and eventual execution) with the violence imposed upon it. Callinicus has Hypatius alter the sense of the verse entirely: ‘the kingdom of heaven belongs to the violent’ (Βιαστῶν γάρ ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία οὐρανῶν) – it no longer suffers violence, which necessarily alters the valence of the next verb – ‘and the violent seize it’ (καὶ βιασταἰ ἁρπάζουσιν αὐτήν). Now the violent are the true heirs of the kingdom of heaven rather than its antagonists. 4 To give the reader a better sense of the word, Plutarch and other writers contrast βία with πείθω, ‘persuasion’ or ‘rhetoric’. See Megan Foley, ‘Peitho and Bia: The Force of Language’, Symploke 20 (2012), 173-81; Ari Bryen, Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation, Empire and After (Philadelphia, 2013), 55, who notes that, in papyrological evidence, the term always refers to unjust damage done to property.

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the name of Christian purity, violates social decorum (sometimes in spite of the protests of sympathizer and antagonist alike!) in ways that frequently result in personal harm, death, horror, torture, and destruction of property. The central question that this essay addresses is this: Why does Callinicus find this term and a broader understanding of sanctified violence to be a useful tool with which to convey monastic piety and sanctity?5 What does violence accomplish for the protagonist, or what new realities does it enact? How does its embodiment and performance benefit Hypatius and the other monks? Such queries gain sharper relief when positioned against the text’s geographical and chronological provenance (i.e. near the imperial capital in the middle of the fifth century): Why does Callinicus feel that monastic violence is necessary within a ‘Christianized’ Roman Empire, within a region situated so close to the major center of Christian imperial power? This essay follows in the train of recent scholarship that directs the critical gaze on to the performance of violence in diverse linguistic, literary, regional, social, and cultural contexts, and away from essentializing characterizations of late antique Christianity as fundamentally irenic or violent.6 The evidence from late antiquity – be it textual, archaeological, or epigraphic – better suits analyses of the purpose and meaning of religious violence (whether actually performed in the past or represented in literary narratives) within local situations, with reference to the broader cultural patterns or ideological currents to which violence constituted a meaningful response. This essay, then, focuses on the contours of monastic violence in Callinicus’ fifth-century Vita Hypatii and 5 For violence as meaning-making and goal-oriented, see the foundational piece by Natalie Zea Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France’, Past & Present 59 (1973), 51-91; also, Michael Champion and Lara O’Sullivan, ‘“War is the Father and King of All”: Discourses, Experiences, and Theories of Hellenistic Violence’, in Michael Champion and Lara O’Sullivan (eds), Cultural Perspectives of Violence in the Hellenistic World (New York, 2017), 7-8. On violence as communication, see Clifford Ando, ‘Religion and Violence in Late Roman North Africa’, Journal of Late Antiquity 6 (2013), 197-202. 6 See, for instance, Ellen Muehlberger, Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and Its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity (New York, 2019), 183-216; Wendy Mayer, ‘Re-theorizing Religious Conflict: Early Christianity to Late Antiquity and Beyond’, in ead. and Chris L. de Wet (eds), Reconceiving Religious Conflict: New Views from the Formative Centuries of Christianity (London, New York, 2018), 3-29; Mar Marcos, ‘Religious Violence and Hagiography in Late Antiquity’, Numen 62 (2015), 169-96; Cam Grey, ‘Shock, Horror, or Same Old Same Old? Everyday Violence in Augustine’s Africa’, Journal of Late Antiquity 6 (2013), 216-32; Thomas Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam, Divinations: Re-reading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, 2009). For scholarship that charts Christianity as endemically violent, or attempts to determine whether Christin violence increased in the wake of Constantine, see Michael Gaddis, There is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 39 (Berkeley, 2005); H.A. Drake, ‘Lambs into Lions: Explaining Early Christian Intolerance’, Past & Present 153 (1996), 3-36; Neil McLynn, ‘Christian Controversy and Violence in the Fourth Century’, Kodai 3 (1992), 15-44.

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argues that Callinicus scripts Hypatius and his fellow βιασταί to be the embodiment of a confrontational zeal that targets non- and insufficiently-Christian modes of worship and ways of life, one designed for readers to emulate in their own pursuit of holiness.7 The end to which this zeal drives, though, is not the conversion of non-Christians, or demonstrations of divine power through the destruction of temples, or the elucidation of typological connections between biblical figures and the saint – features that abound within contemporary hagiographies.8 Rather, the significance of Hypatius’ violence moves beyond the iconoclasm of tree-felling, as will be discussed below, and signals support for a large-scale program of cultural purification to be enacted in Bithynia and Thrace. As the text itself states, Hypatius was ‘a physician given by God to this region’9 and violence against property, traditions, and even human life was but a tool to extirpate spiritually cancerous elements from the regions surrounding his monastery. Because the text is not widely discussed in scholarship, a brief introduction is in order.10 The prologue declares its provenance: an unnamed person received the vita from the third abbot of the monastery that Hypatius founded, who himself had received it from Callinicus, who was the monastery’s second abbot, one of Hypatius’ original disciples, and the hagiography’s author. Issues of manuscript transmission notwithstanding, the modern reader stands three steps removed from Hypatius’ deeds and words as recounted in the text, and two steps removed from the supposed author’s work. Gerhard Bartelink, the text’s most recent editor, suggests that it was written between 447 and 450, 7

See Callinicus, V. Hyp. prol.6-8 (SC 177, 68-70), quoted below. The scholarly literature is immense. For starting-points, see Susan Ashbrook Harvey, ‘Martyr Passions and Hagiography’, in Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2008), 603-27; Alice-Mary Talbot, ‘Hagiography’, in Elizabeth Jeffries with John Haldon and Robin Cormack (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies (Oxford, 2008), 862-71; Marc van Uytfanghe, ‘L’origine et les ingrédients du discours hagiographique’, Sacris erudiri 50 (2011), 35-70; Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of a Christian Discourse, Sather Classical Lecture Series 55 (Berkeley, 1991), 141-52. On the relationship between hagiographer and reading audience, see Claudia Rapp, ‘Storytelling as Spiritual Communication in Early Greek Hagiography: The Use of Diegesis’, JECS 6 (1998), 432-48. For a survey of the history of scholarship, see Stephanos Efthymiadis, ‘Introduction’, in Stephanos Efthymiadis (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography (Burlington, 2011), 1-14; Bernard Flusin, ‘L’hagiographie byzantine et la recherche : tendances actuelles’, in Antonio Rigo (ed.), Byzantine Hagiography: Texts, Themes, and Projects, Byzantios: Studies in Byzantine History and Civilization 13 (Turnhout, 2018), 1-18. 9 Callinicus, V. Hyp. 44.37 (SC 177, 268). 10 For a social historical analysis of the text, see Jaclyn Maxwell, ‘Social Interactions in a Rural Monastery: Scholars, Peasants, Monks, and More in the Life of Hypatius’, in Jamie Kreiner and Helmut Reimitz (eds), Motions of Late Antiquity: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Society in Honor of Peter Brown, Celama 20 (Turnhout, 2016), 89-106. For the Vita Hypatii in its literary and geographical context, see Stephanos Efthymiadis, with Vincent Déroche, ‘Greek Hagiography in Late Antiquity (Fourth-Seventh Centuries)’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography (2011), 56-8. 8

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which seems reasonable if ultimately uncertain.11 The vita is a fairly conventional example of late antique Greek hagiography and, in fact, relies on the famous Life of Antony as a model of structure, tenor, and phrasing.12 Based on evidence internal to the narrative, Hypatius would have lived from 366 to 446 and would have, along with two companions, set up their community some three miles south of Chalcedon around 400 in the otherwise unoccupied apostolic church-cum-martyrium, palace, and monastery built by the imperial official Rufinus.13 During the early years of Hypatius’ residence here, the site hosted the Synod of the Oak, an event that ultimately deposed John Chrysostom, although Hypatius was personally absent during the trial.14 Two of the Egyptian monks known as the Tall Brothers – Ammonius and Dioscorus – died during their stay and their remains were installed within the church.15 Despite the strong attestation for activity at the site during the early decades of the fifth century, no other source mentions Hypatius but this would make sense if the monks had not fully renovated the monastery until 434, as Bartelink supposes.16 In total, Hypatius would have led the monastic community at the so-called Rufinianae for forty years. Callinicus explicitly calls attention to what he hopes the reader will take away from the hagiography. In Hypatius’ career, deeds, teachings, and conduct, one will find a model to use in their own cultivation of piety, as he tells us in the prologue: We and all who are lovers of Christ, anyone who has gleaned benefit, will glorify God and honor the saints. Zealous in virtue [Gal. 4:18], we will hasten to imitate them so that we might be identified as co-heirs [cf. Rom. 8:7] in eternal life, when the righteous shall shine like the sun [Matt. 13:43], in accordance with what has been written, ‘Imitate their faith as you contemplate the outcome of their life’ [Heb. 13:7]. When need be, he was even forced to admonish his own disciples for their own good; he would always say to them, ‘Children, if I were a smith or a carpenter, wouldn’t you imitate me to learn the craft? So too now, become like me; learn fear of the Lord and how God becomes satisfied’.17 11 See Bartelink, Callinicos. Vie d’Hypatios (1971), 11-2. For a sixth-century date, see T.D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen, 2010), 246-8. 12 See Bartelink, Callinicos. Vie d’Hypatios (1971), 33-8. Much of the homiletic material within the Vita Hypatii corresponds with the homilies of Pseudo-Macarius, for which see G.J.M. Bartelink, ‘Text Parallels between the Vita Hypatii of Callinicus and the Pseudo-Macariana’, VC 22 (1968), 128-36. 13 A figure well attested in the historical record; see ‘Flavius Rufinus 18’ in A.H.M. Jones, J.R. Martindale and J. Morris (eds), Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Volume I. A.D. 260395 (Cambridge, 1971), 778-81. 14 See Sozomen, H.e. 8.17. Callinicus does mention John’s approbation of Hypatius at V. Hyp. 11.5-7 (SC 177, 112). 15 Palladius, H. Laus. 11; Socrates, H.e. 6.17. 16 The completion may have been facilitated by the cubicularius Urbicus’s gift; see Callinicus, V. Hyp. 12.13 (SC 177, 120). 17 Callinicus, V. Hyp. prol.6-8 (SC 177, 68-70). The audience for this exhortation were, of course, the disciples within the narrative, but by extension later monks at the Rufinianae and

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The vita, then, provides a roadmap to sanctity, and while this is certainly not unusual for late antique hagiographies to portray saints with this end in mind, the contours of that sanctity in Callinicus’ work are distinctive. Hypatius’ sanctity stands on the erection and maintenance of firm boundaries of identity, community, and geography. The authentic Hypatian monk will police these boundaries by confronting adversaries or lukewarm co-religionists, with violence if necessary, while enlisting others to do the same. The contours of Hypatius’ violent sanctity are combatting heresy, eliminating the regional practice of magic and traditional worship, and finally rebuking those clergy members who do not share his sectarian worldview. Heresy is hardly the text’s primary focus, but it does manifest in the person of Bishop Nestorius of Constantinople (428-431), from whom Hypatius sought to distance himself several times over.18 Before Nestorius had even arrived in Constantinople, Hypatius had received a revelation about the bishop’s short tenure, which led to some epistolary exchanges that can only be characterized as hostile. Shortly after learning that Nestorius had ‘uttered unutterable things about the Lord’,19 Hypatius removed his name from his church’s liturgical diptychs, which had the effect of not combatting heresy so much as keeping its deleterious effects at bay so that the integrity of the Rufinianae would not be compromised. Hypatius’ foresight received divine confirmation when he had another vision shortly before the Council of Ephesus in 431 in which an angel told the apostle John to tell Emperor Theodosius to execute judgment against Nestorius. In a later section, Hypatius links the possible return of Nestorius from exile with the eschatological appearance of the Antichrist.20 By mentioning Nestorius and Hypatius’ reaction to him, the text historicizes its subject within contemporary debates about Christological orthodoxy while also revealing the monk’s basic character: Hypatius tolerates no fuzziness in communal boundaries. The orthodox church must be preserved with whatever cultural tools are available (liturgical celebration, eschatological discourse, pedagogy). As other scholars have noted, ideological confrontation, iconoclasm, threats of violence, performances of violence, and a willingness to subject oneself to acts of violence by other agents cast as (potentially) wicked and demonic indicate attendees of festivals celebrating the saint. For examples of hagiographical didacticism, see Rowan Williams, ‘Troubled Breasts: The Holy Body in Hagiography’, in Jan W. Drijvers and J.W. Watt (eds), Portraits of Spiritual Authority (Leiden, 1999), 74-7; Samuel Rubenson, ‘Philosophy and Simplicity: The Problem of Classical Education in Early Christian Biography’, in Tomas Hägg and Philip Rousseau (eds), Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 31 (Berkeley, 2000), 110-39. For links between Christian hagiography and classical biography vis-à-vis pedagogy, see Marc van Uytfanghe, ‘La biographie classique et l’hagiographie chrétienne antique’, Hagiographica 12 (2005), 223-48. 18 His dealings with Nestorius are narrated at Callinicus, V. Hyp. 32.1-12 (SC 177, 208-14). 19 Callinicus, V. Hyp. 32.10 (SC 177, 212). 20 This is a synopsis of Callinicus, V. Hyp. 32.1-20 (SC 177, 208-14).

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a narrative concern for purity of space and location.21 Hypatius’ vigilance over geographical purity emerges viscerally in the danger he poses to any non-Christian worship. Regional veneration of the goddess Artemis spurs Hypatius from the kind of discursive confrontation he had vis-à-vis Nestorius and to another kind of confrontation – physical. We should recall that, immediately before Hypatius’ declaration that the kingdom of God belongs to the violent with which this essay opened, Hypatius and his monks had been cutting down and burning sacred trees in Bithynia.22 If such activity produced conversions to Christianity, or even better, to the ascetic life, then good! Violence in this vita, however, does not peg its effectiveness or value to its ability to create conversions. Rather, it is a tool of extermination, of eliminating cultural contagion.23 A similar logic is operative in an episode with a smelly man from Antioch who claimed that he wanted to convert to Christianity. Hypatius realized that the source of the odor was a rag tied around the man’s waist, which the man reluctantly acknowledged ‘was from Artemis’.24 Hypatius ordered it burned, but rather than catching flame, it transformed into a sphere, which Hypatius and his fellow monks subsequently stomped to smithereens. They then collected all the dust, mixed it with dirt, and dumped it into the latrine. But after the monks demanded that the man bring them his other religious objects, he snuck away. It is not the man or his religious conversion that serves as the narrative focal point of the episode, but rather the destruction of the Artemis-object that threatened the purity of the monastic church where it was discovered. Later in the hagiography, Callinicus pits Hypatius directly against the goddess herself. While inspecting the monastic communities throughout Bithynia, Hypatius passed by an Artemis-procession along the Rhebas river and then even passed by the goddess herself: ‘A woman, tall as ten men, came from a distance to meet him. While spinning, she was walking and feeding the pigs’. The showdown between the two is relatively anticlimactic but its significance is clear: ‘As soon as he saw her, he sealed himself at once and stood praying to God. Immediately, she became invisible and the pigs fled with a great whoosh’.25 In a similar fashion as the episode of the rag-turned-sphere, the point is not that conversions were produced as the result of Hypatius’ actions, or even that the 21 See David Frankfurter, ‘Iconoclasm and Christianization in Late Antique Egypt: Christian Treatment of Space and Image’, in Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel and Ulrich Gotter (eds), From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 163 (Leiden, 2008), 135-59. In a helpful survey, Marcos, ‘Religious Violence and Hagiography’ (2015), 169-96, posits iconoclasm as a tropic feature of late antique hagiography. 22 Callinicus, V. Hyp. 30.1 (SC 177, 200). 23 In this respect, the Vita Hypatii parallels the Vita Barsaumae; see Volker Menze, ‘The Dark Side of Holiness: Barsauma the “Roasted” and the Invention of a Jewish Jerusalem’, in J. Kreiner and H. Reimitz, Motions of Late Antiquity (2016), 231-47. 24 Callinicus, V. Hyp. 43.5 (SC 177, 258). 25 Callinicus, V. Hyp. 45.6-7 (SC 177, 270-2).

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goddess was destroyed and her veneration eliminated. In fact, the text explicitly says that Artemis simply went away, not that she was vanquished or annihilated. As an embodiment of local holiness that polices rural and wild territories, Hypatius’ person, in and of itself, is apotropaic, warding off spiritual forces whose presence threatens regional purity. The vita also positions Hypatius in something of a prophetic role, whose vocalized threats deliver the wrath of God to offenders. First is the episode of the house with forty men living together. One of them, a certain Elpidius, wanted to convert to Christianity and so abstained from offering sacrifice with the rest of the group. The thirty-nine others pummeled him and tossed him out. Hypatius brought Elpidius to the monastery, nursed his wounds, and guided his conversion into the monastic life. The story does not end there, for Hypatius then demands that the assailants make their own conversions: ‘Repent and become Christians!’ he threatens, ‘If you don’t, God’s wrath will quickly overtake you!’26 The men refused, and within one year all were dead. The vita notes that some died from ‘a demon of bitter death’ while others ‘disintegrated’, and that the house itself ‘vanished, as if no one ever lived there’ at all.27 The episode produced but a single conversion (that of the man whose wounds prompted the prophetic curse), despite Hypatius holding out an opportunity for repentance, which was of course rejected. A second episode works similarly. Hypatius feigns enthusiasm at learning how a practitioner of divination performs his craft, which results in the man admitting in a letter that he indeed practices divination. Hypatius responds by imprisoning the man for a long time, declaring, ‘So, it is through you, therefore, that Satan teaches human beings to worship idols? Believe it: you are not to leave here lest Satan destroy souls through you. Even though I’ve locked you in a cell, I’m providing you with bread for the rest of your life’.28 It is only after much persistence that nearby presbyters persuade Hypatius to release him on the condition that the man sign a written oath that he would not practice divination and that the presbyters would monitor the man.29 Then, the text notes, the man ‘died soon thereafter’.30 Each act of violence here – forced imprisonment and a threat-curse that results in more than three dozen deaths – produces not mass conversions but a region sanitized of religious contagions. The cultural dominance that Hypatius seeks to construct targets not only alternative modes of worship but also moral and ethical impurity. On a few occasions, the text suggests that Hypatius’ threat-violence could be checked should its potential targets confess their sins, but confessions never come and 26 27 28 29 30

Callinicus, Callinicus, Callinicus, Callinicus, Callinicus,

V. V. V. V. V.

Hyp. Hyp. Hyp. Hyp. Hyp.

43.20 (SC 177, 262). 43.22-3 (SC 177, 262). 43.13 (SC 177, 260). 43.14 (SC 177, 260). 43.15 (SC 177, 260).

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Hypatius’ violence ensues. After failing to heal a beachball-sized growth on the head of a horse-groomer’s servant, Hypatius suspected that the servant was concealing some secret from him, so he asked the servant to make a full confession of sins. The servant denied the need to do so, which prompted a night-time visit to Hypatius by demons who wanted to rat the man out for a litany of sins.31 The next day, Hypatius confronted the servant and a death-sentence was pronounced: the servant would die in three days’ time, which is precisely what happened. Another episode involves Count Elpidius (a different Elpidius than the one we encountered earlier), whose pains Hypatius could not heal at first try. Hypatius learned that Elpidius had concealed the fact that he had made his wealth by sinfully exploiting his workers. And so, yet again, Hypatius issues a death-sentence, and within three days, Elpidius was screaming out, at the moment of his death, ‘Where are you, Abba Hypatius?’ The episode concludes with Callinicus’ reflection that, ‘If the saint uttered something, it immediately came to pass’.32 Here the author embraces his subject’s responsibility for the violence and loss of life, tacitly acknowledging that maintaining a sacred community required the elimination of anyone with secret moral shortcomings. One final story, bizarre in its unresolved details and tangents, illustrates the text’s understanding of violence as a tool of purifying retribution.33 In the company of a boy, a magician arrived at a small monastic community three miles down the road from the Rufinianae under the pretense of becoming a monk. The mere presence of the boy tormented all the monks there, not least of all their abbot Eumathius, a ‘wonderful man and filled with God’s love’.34 At any rate, the magician beat the boy badly with a rod for an undescribed mistake (perhaps the act of tormenting the monks), leaving the child blood-covered. When Hypatius arrived, he immediately picked the rod up and bludgeoned the magician, who then escalated his conflict by saying, ‘Within one week, I will have to exact my vengeance on you’.35 Indeed, the magician sent four demons to attack Hypatius, but with the help of an angel, he dispatched them back against the magician. The result is horrific: ‘Swiftly he [the magician] was overcome [by the demons] and began to mercilessly devour his own tongue and hands’.36 The monks were understandably shocked and sent word to Hypatius: ‘He is eating himself up and he invoked your name! Deign to come and pray on his behalf!’ Hypatius, however, allowed the self-consumption to continue for a length of time as a form of punishment. Once the demons had been sent away, the man ‘was unable to stand due to the extreme nature of the 31 32 33 34 35 36

Callinicus, Callinicus, Callinicus, Callinicus, Callinicus, Callinicus,

V. V. V. V. V. V.

Hyp. Hyp. Hyp. Hyp. Hyp. Hyp.

28.11 (SC 177, 186-8). 44.18-9 (SC 177, 264). 28.14 (SC 177, 188). 28.15 (SC 177, 188). 28.18 (SC 177, 188). 28.23 (SC 177, 190).

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mistreatment’, but eventually he regained his health and went away, at which ‘the brothers who were rescued from that affliction gave thanks to God’.37 What happens to the man or his child afterward is not narrated. Rather, the episode’s resolution comes in Callinicus’ stating that Hypatius liberated the monks from the danger posed by the boy’s presence.38 The layers of violence at work in the narrative deserve some consideration: the boy’s emotional violence against Eumathius and his monks leads to a second act of violence (the magician beating the boy), which leads to a third in Hypatius’ authentic retributive violence against the man by bludgeoning him with the very rod that he used to beat the child, which leads to a fourth act of (attempted) violence in the man’s dispatch of demons against Hypatius, which finally leads to the fifth one, Hypatius’ performance of spiritual jujitsu in sending the demons back against the magician and causing him to self-consume. The point of this story, it seems, is to show how retaliatory violence stamps out looming impurity, both in the form of the man’s non-Christian magic and in the form of the boy’s torment of the monks. These stories of violence against magic and Artemis-veneration should be read in light of its broader emphasis on sectarian rigor and in light of Hypatius’ indefatigable resistance to moral laxity, especially that which comes from Christian clergy members. In fact, most of the clergy members in the narrative have little to recommend them as beacons of spiritual rigor. As a young man, Hypatius knew of only ‘sluggish’39 clergy roaming the countryside of his native Phrygia; in Thrace, he began his monastic career cultivating his disgust at clergy who ‘[drank] wine with their daytime meals’, who would ‘fall over sideways’ and ‘act wantonly in a drunken stupor, as tends to happen in the country’.40 The text repeatedly casts as Hypatius’ foils those clergy members who did not share his sectarian worldview or embody moral integrity to the extent that he did. His confrontations with accommodationist clergy and Christian officials swiftly turned into opportunities for martyrdom. For instance, at the news of the prefect Leontius’ plans to revive the Olympic contests at Chalcedon, Hypatius ‘expressed so extreme an outpouring of zeal that he moaned, wept, shouted up to God, and said, “My Lord, does this mean that, while I live, idolatry should flourish? Don’t allow it, Master!” And immediately he said to the brothers, “If anyone is too scared to die on Christ’s account, then don’t come with me”’.41 With twenty monks in tow, Hypatius confronted Bishop Eulalius of Chalcedon: 37

Callinicus, V. Hyp. 28.30 (SC 177, 192). On the presence of children in monasteries, see Caroline T. Schroeder, ‘Queer Eye for the Ascetic Guy? Homoeroticism, Children, and the Making of Monks in Late Antique Egypt’, JAAR 77 (2009), 333-47. 39 Callinicus, V. Hyp. 1.4 (SC 177, 74). 40 Callinicus, V. Hyp. 2.100 (SC 177, 80). 41 Callinicus, V. Hyp. 33.2-3 (SC 177, 216). 38

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‘I heard about this, and I know that idolatry is on the verge of abutting us and God’s holy church at the Olympic games. I’ve decided to die in the theater rather than allow this to happen’.42 Hypatius’ confrontation with Eulalius promises to produce one of two acceptable results: either the prefect will cancel his plans to revive the games (thus purifying the region of the idolatrous contagion), or imperial officials will wreak violence against Hypatius and thus making him a martyr. Bishop Eulalius, however, responded with an assertion of administrative privilege and thus escalated the conflict: At this, the bishop stood up and said to him, ‘You’d prefer to simply die, even though no one is compelling us to sacrifice? You’re a monk: sit down and shut up. This matter rests with me’. But [Hypatius] responded, ‘Since the matter rests with you and you don’t care, and since I’m watching [both] the Master being dishonored by those who would try these things and the Christian people going about in ignorance and committing idolatry, I’ve come to testify to Your Holiness that tomorrow, when the prefect takes his seat, I will have to enter with a crowd of monks and pull the prefect down from on high. That’s how I will die on Christ’s account rather than allow this to happen while I live’.43

The potential showdown between Hypatius and the prefect Leontius never happened because the latter discovered the former’s plans and did not wish to engage in open conflict with the monks, but the episode illustrates not only the saint’s zealous refusal to allow any cultural opportunity for idolatry, but also squarely pits two visions of Christianity against each other – the accommodationist brand to which Eulalius subscribed, which allowed room for non-Christian events within a Christian culture, and the sectarian brand to which Hypatius subscribed, which saw those events as contagions threatening regional purity. That Leontius withdraws at Hypatius’ threat, and that Eulalius, in the end, ‘paid him the utmost honor and showed him respect almost like that to a father’, reveals which Christian worldview the text endorses.44 This same bishop Eulalius, it should be noted, previously expressed annoyance at Hypatius for removing Nestorius’ name from the liturgical diptychs. In other words, Hypatius’ leeriness of Eulalius connects several thematic threads that run throughout the vita – intolerance of regional heresy, paganism, and Christian accommodation of either. To conclude, then, Callinicus portrays Hypatius as an enforcer of Christian cultural hegemony, who treats the geographical boundaries of Christian culture as firm and impenetrable. Any threat of infiltration by, negotiation with, or accommodation to perceived non-Christian elements requires an adamant response that often includes the performance, or threat, of physical violence. Of course, much of Hypatius’ enforcement is couched in cosmological terms, 42 43 44

Callinicus, V. Hyp. 33.5 (SC 177, 216). Callinicus, V. Hyp. 33.6-8 (SC 177, 216-8). Callinicus, V. Hyp. 33.13 (SC 177, 218).

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of God’s agent acting in opposition to Satan’s agents: the narrative links Satan and his demons with traditional religious worship, Nestorius with the Antichrist, and lax clergy with a willingness to abide evil. Protecting the spotlessness of Christian culture in this region, by any means necessary, is the monastic ideal laid out in this text; indeed, ascetic discipline and contemplation are preliminary levels of training, whereas the advanced discipline manifests in confrontation and a willingness to be martyred. The true monk, to return to Hypatius’ exhortation with which this essay began, is the βιαστής, the violent enactor of Christian hegemony and the wandering embodiment of apotropaic power. What distinguishes, I think, this hagiography from others in which the late antique protagonist is violent (think Porphyry of Gaza or Macarius of Tkow), or from retrospective rationalizations of violence as legitimate force (think Ambrose on the destruction of the synagogue and Valentinian church at Callinicum, or Shenoute on his bugbear Gesios, or Severus on the conversion of the Jews and destruction of the synagogue at Minorca), is the proactive model of sanctity it offers. Hypatius acts out a script designed to be performed again and again by his audience of readers and listeners, a script for piety that is neither gentle nor contemplative nor eremitic nor passive, but rough and sectarian and confrontational. The point, it seems, is to activate and militarize the readership by holding up Hypatius as engaged in a continuous process of Christianizing Bithynia and Thrace and then vigilantly guarding over his work, by rooting out demons that operate within people, such as accommodationist clergy, monks who are covertly magicians, or episcopal heretics, or practices like traditional acts of religious worship or divination practices.

Confronting Cyprian: Anti-Rigorism in the Letters of Severus of Antioch Simon Samuel FORD, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

ABSTRACT The period between 475 and the mid-sixth century witnessed the flourishing of rigorist sentiments among the anti-Chalcedonian communities in the patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem. Although little direct evidence survives for the specific claims made by individual rigorists, the movement appears to have been unified in its demand for the reconsecration – either by re-baptism and re-ordination or chrismation – of converts from the Chalcedonian church. However, despite both the persistence and diverse popularity of rigorist sects, by the beginning of the sixth century, these demands for the repetition of the sacraments were firmly opposed by the members of the anti-Chalcedonian episcopate under the patriarch Severus of Antioch. Exploring this understudied debate within the anti-Chalcedonian movement, this paper examines the anti-rigorist positions articulated by Severus, in a series of letters written between 489 and 527.

At the beginning of the sixth century, the anti-Chalcedonian movement in the patriarchal dioceses of Antioch, Constantinople, and Alexandria was divided to various degrees over the question of how to receive converts, who had previously communicated with the Council of Chalcedonian. With the election the staunchly anti-rigorist Severus to the patriarchal throne of Antioch, on 16 November 512, the normative position of the official church within the diocese became to receive converts in penance, following their production of a written confession and anathema of the council, but without reconsecration – either in the form of re-baptism and re-ordination or via chrismation.1 This position, however, which might be seen implicitly to recognize the sacramental efficacy of the Chalcedonian priests, at least with respect to performance of the central rites of ordination and baptism, nonetheless stood in sharp tension both with contemporary confessional polemics as well with as the eucharistic ecclesiology of antiChalcedonian theologians, like John of Tella/Constantina. Equally, as has been recently and effectively demonstrated by Y. Moss, the penitential formula advocated by Severus represented a departure from the substantive body of earlier 1

F. Alpi, La route royale: Sévère d’Antioche et les églises d’Orient (Beirut, 2009), 48-9; and Y. Moss, Incorruptible Bodies: Christology, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity (Oakland, CA, 2016), 64.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 167-181. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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canon law and ecclesiastical regulations, which had variously required the reconsecration of Christian heretics; these, notably, included those determinations promulgated by the third-century martyr-bishop, Cyprian of Carthage, who had emphatically denied any sacramental efficacy to rites performed outside of the orthodox church.2 In addition to what appears to have been widespread and largely latent rigorism, the movement in the fifth and sixth centuries also spawned a number of distinct rigorist sects. Representing the radical fringe of the anti-Chalcedonian movement in the dioceses of Oriens, Asiana, and Pontus, these sects were frequently, though by no means exclusively, associated with the phenomenon of pseudo-episcopacy – i.e., the pretention by a member of the laity or clergy, absent ordination, of the dignity and duties of the episcopate. All but endemic to the movement, these soi-disant bishops appear to have flourished in the institutional vacuums created by the periodic suppression of the anti-Chalcedonian bishops during the late fifth century. Nevertheless, the apogee of these rigorists sects appears to have come in the period following re-assertion of imperial Chalcedonianism in 518-522, when they began to competed directly with the exiled members of the Severan episcopate for legitimacy and support within anti-Chalcedonian communities of the patriarchate.3 Nevertheless, in letters written between ca. 489 and ca. 538, Severus emerges as a stalwart champion of a moderate anti-rigorism. A capable rhetorician and theologian, the preserved correspondence well demonstrates the argumentative acumen of the patriarch in constructing coherent legal and ecclesiological defense of his principles, that without denying the pious and orthodox intent of earlier rigorist legislation nonetheless asserted its supersession by later anti-rigorist statutes. At the same time, the letters also serve to demonstrate the practical application and development of his penitential framework, as Severus sought to adapt to shifting politics of the empire and the anti-Chalcedonian movement. Apologia pro actis Timothei Although ultimately rooted in a diverse set of ecclesiological and canon legal traditions, which had evolved over the course of the third and fourth centuries, the sixth-century debate surrounding sacramental rigorism and the treatment of Chalcedonian converts developed both its general contours as well as in a 2

Y. Moss, Incorruptible Bodies (2016), 64-9. Severus of Antioch, SL = The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, in four volumes (London, 1902-1904), I 60, II 3, IV 3, V 1-15, and IX 1; and id., CL = A Collection of Letters of Severus of Antioch from Numerous Syriac Manuscripts, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, PO 12.2 and 14.1 (Paris, 1919-1920), XXXIV. 3

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number of its particulars from the events surrounding the turbulent patriarchate of Timothy II of Alexandria, also known as Timothy Aelurus, 457-477.4 The confessional successor to the staunch Cyrillian Dioscorus of Alexandria, who had been deposed at the Council of Chalcedon, Timothy Aelurus was ordained following the murder of the pro-Chalcedonian patriarch Proterius by a group of soldiers, in 457.5 Following a brief period of occupancy, Timothy Aelurus was banished and replaced on the patriarchal throne by the pro-Chalcedonian Timothy III Salophaciolus, 460-475. Exiled first to Paphlagonian Gangra, in 460 to 464/465, Timothy Aelurus was then sent to the Crimean city of Chersonesus, until his restoration to the patriarchal throne in 475. Throughout this period, though particularly during the first phase of his banishment, Timothy II Aelurus remained actively involved in the administration of the anti-Chalcedonian communities within his former patriarchate.6 Of particular salience to the present discussion are a series of letters addressed to various anti-Chalcedonian communities in Alexandria, Egypt, the Thebaid, and the Pentapolis, which were written from his exile in Gangra. In them, the patriarch laid out a procedural formula for the reception of both lay and clerical converts from the council.7 Writing to the orthodox clergy, ascetics, and laity in Alexandria, regarding the excommunication of the heretical bishop Isaiah of Hermopolis and the presbyter Theophilus, Timothy II Aelurus propounded a formula for the reception of Chalcedonian clergy, according to which they were to be admitted in penance and restored to the service of their existing rank following a year of instruction.8 The same formula is repeated in a roughly contemporaneous letter to the Thebaid, the Pentapolis, and Egypt, with the addition of the requirement that they produce a written anathema of the council and Tome of Leo.9 The same letter provides for the apparently immediate reception of lay converts into communion, upon their anathematization of those who hold and propound heretical beliefs.10 Although this formula was ultimately to become the normative position of the Severan-Jacobite church, its promulgation proved to be almost immediately divisive within the fractious anti-Chalcedonian movement of the mid-fifth century.

4

Y. Moss, Incorruptible Bodies (2016), 65-7. R.Y. Ebied and L.R. Wickham, ‘A Collection of Unpublished Syriac Letters of Timothy Aelurus’, Journal of Theological Studies, N.S. 21 (1970), 326-8. 6 R.Y. Ebied and L.R. Wickham, ‘A Collection of Unpublished Syriac Letters of Timothy Aelurus’ (1970), 326-8; and S.J. Davis, The Early Coptic Papacy: the Egyptian Church and Its Leadership in Late Antiquity (Cairo, 2004), 91-3. 7 Timothy Aelurus, Syriac Letters, ed. and tr. R.Y. Ebied and L.R. Wickham, ‘A Collection of Unpublished Syriac Letters of Timothy Aelurus’ (1970), II and IV; and ibid. 330-1. 8 Timothy Aelurus, Syriac Letters, II. 9 Timothy Aelurus, Syriac Letters, IV, p. 341. 10 Timothy Aelurus, Syriac Letters, IV. 5

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While sacramental rigorism appears to have been endemic to a diverse range of hardline anti-Chalcedonian groups, which flourished variously throughout the period, a specific opposition to the formula proposed by Timothy Aelurus seems initially to have coalesced in the monastic circles in Palaestinia I. According to a later account by Severus, an ascetic follower of the prominent archimandrite, Abba Romanus, named Cassian, led a breakaway faction of anti-Chalcedonian monastics, who insisted upon the re-baptism of Chalcedonian converts.11 More enduring, however, appears to have been the influence of Theodotus of Jappa. Among the members of the Palaestinian episcopate ordained by the anti-Chalcedonian usurper patriarch Theodosius of Jerusalem, 451-453, Theodotus broke from the communion the newly restored Alexandrine patriarch in 475, becoming the focus of a rigorist sect, referred to in the sources alternatively as the Re-anointers or Anachristo-Novatians, which advocated for the reconsecration of Chalcedonian converts through chrismation.12 Although the progress of the controversy is difficult to trace with accuracy in the period after 477, there is nonetheless some limited evidence that the position articulated by Theodotus continued to attract at least some nominal adherence throughout the initial decades of the sixth century.13 However, regardless of whether the labelled Re-anointers continued to constitute a coherent, unitary sect or merely a heresiographic construct, there is nonetheless ample evidence from the preserved letters of Severus that opposition to both the Alexandrian patriarch and his penitential formula persisted throughout the first three decades of the sixth century. As a result, Severus was obliged throughout the period covered by his extant correspondence to mount a repeated apologia for the person and legacy of Timothy Aelurus. In letters pertaining to a variety of topics, Severus routinely depicted the Alexandrian as a pillar and martyr of the orthodox faith, who had suffered exile and persecution.14 Concomitant and often simultaneous with this, he proffered a sustained defense of Timothy’s authority and rectitude as a canonist and of the validity of his reception forumla.15 While most of the surviving correspondence on the reception of Chalcedonian converts derives from the period after 512, there is nonetheless some evidence to suggest that Severus had already begun to coalesce an important 11

Severus of Antioch, SL, V 6; and Y. Moss, Incorruptible Bodies (2016), 67-9. Severus of Antioch, SL, I 60, V 6 and 14, and IX 1; id., CL, XXXIV; pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor, Chronicle, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, Historia ecclesiastica Zachariae rhetori vulgo adscripta, CSCO 83, 84, 87 and 88 (Paris, Louvain, 1919-1953), V 5; Evagrius Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, ed. J. Bidez and L. Parmentier (London, 1898), III 6; E. Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950), 248-53; and Y. Moss, Incorruptible Bodies (2016), 68-9. 13 Severus of Antioch, SL, I 60, V 6, and IX 1. 14 Severus of Antioch, SL, I 1, 49 and 60, II 3, IV 3, V 1, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14 and 15, and VIII.5; and id., CL, XXXIV, XLII, and XLIV. 15 Severus of Antioch, SL, I 60, II 3, and V 1, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14 and 15. 12

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core of his thought and argumentation on the subject, in the period well before his election to the patriarchate. In a letter composed prior to 508, Severus responded to a missive from the tribune John, whom the text accuses of having ‘presumed to open a blaspheming mouth against the saint and archbishop, Timothy’.16 Although an evident anti-Chalcedonian, the tribune appears to have denounced the Alexandrian patriarch both for having received the clergy ordained by Proterius in penance, without a re-anointing or repetition of the sacraments, following their anathematization in writing of their former heresy, and for having contradicting himself in doing so. In confutation of the first claim, Severus adduced the example of the patriarch Meletius of Antioch, 360381, who despite having been ordained by Arians had nonetheless subsequently become a champion and undergone persecution on behalf of Nicene orthodoxy – having been received by no lesser a figure than Basil of Caesarea: For now have you not heard that Meletius the archbishop of Alexandria, [who] was ordained by the Arians and who afterwards showed himself [to be] a tested combatant on behalf of orthodoxy, so that he was thought to be worthy to suffer many things and to weave the crown of martyrdom? What then? Did those who received him then and revered him with myriad praises – one among whom was Basil the Great – also praise and receive the one who ordained him, when he was holding the [opinions] of the Arians? No, they rightly rejecting him as one who remained in the snares of Arius, though they marveled at Meletius as having extirpated the dregs of heresy through repentance and striven on behalf of orthodoxy.17

Repeated elsewhere in Severus’ own epistolary corpus and echoed in a letter written Philoxenus of Mabbug, in 519-523, the reception of Meletius appears to have provided a common precedent for anti-rigorists within the anti-Chalcedonian movement of the fifth and early sixth centuries, to whom it seems to have offered an example of incontestable orthodoxy, uncomplicated by perceptions of the more recent past.18 Within immediate context of his letter to the 16 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 1, p. 310; E.W. Brooks, The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, vol. II.II (London, 1904), 275; J.R. Martindale, Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire: Volume A.D. 395-527 (Cambridge, 1980), 605; P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch (New York, 2004), 5-11; and F. Alpi, La route royale: Sévère d’Antioche et les églises d’Orient (2009), 41-4. 17 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 1, pp. 310-1; cf. Socrates of Constantinople, Ecclesiastical History, ed. G.C. Hansen, GCS.NF 1 (1995, Berlin), II 43 and 44, III 9 and 25, IV 1, 2, 26, and V 3, 5 and 9; Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and tr. G.C. Hansen, Fontes Christiani 73.1-4 (Turnhout, 2004), IV 25 and 28, V 13, VI 4 and 9, and VII 3, 7 and 10; Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Ecclesiastical History, ed. L. Parmentier and G.C. Hansen, GCS.NF 5 (Berlin, 1998), II 27, III 2 and 10, IV 12, V 3, 4, 7, 8, 23 and 27; id., Letters, ed. and tr. Y. Azéma, in four volumes (Paris, 1955-1998), CXLV and CXLVI; W.A. Jurgens, ‘A Letter of Meletius of Antioch’, The Harvard Theological Review 53 (1960), 251-60; and G. Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest (Princeton, 1961), 369-419. 18 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 6; Philoxenus of Mabbug, Letter on Ecclesiastical Affairs to Simeon, Archimandrite of Teleda, ed. and tr. J. Lebon, ‘Textes inédits de Philoxène de Mabboug’,

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tribune John, it further allowed him to assert a distinction between receiving the convert – his baptism and ordination – and receiving either his former heresy or the heretics who had preformed them. This, in effect, allowed Severus to distance the pre-existing sacramental status of the convert from heretical sacraments in general. In response to the second claim that Timothy Aelurus had engaged in hypocrisy by advocating the penitential reception of pro-Chalcedonian clergy after initially rejecting it, Severus first argued that alterability of opinion in response to pragmatic necessity was not only judicious practice, but one with good apostolic presidence. Citing Acts 10:28 and 15:8, he contended that the apostle Peter had demonstrated a similar changeability of thought and praxis by first refusing the gospel to gentiles.19 Likewise, Paul of Tarsus – according to a homily by John Chrysostom, quoted at length in the letter – altered his proscriptions in seemingly contradictory ways by variously dismissing and advocating for the retention of Jewish law with respect to sacrifice and circumcision. This apostolic exemplar John, using a metaphor to which Severus would subsequently appear with intermittent frequency among his later anti-rigorist compositions, compared his change of opinion to a good physician who adjusts his treatment in accordance the particularities of the individual illness. Although the methods changed in each case, both apostolic and medical, the homilist asserted that the underlying goal remained nonetheless consistent – the salvation of the person or the health of the patient upon whom they were practiced.20 Drawing upon this latter claim, Severus then articulated a further legal and ecclesiological defense of Timothy Aelurus as a legitimate emanation of the pre-existing canon law tradition. Central to this argument was the claim that every orthodox bishop formed part of a single, unitary episcopal polity, constituted by their shared faith: I account that all bishops who are throughout the world, who are bound together with one another in the orthodox faith and fortified in unity, are one, since all of them hold one model of the great God and our savior Jesus Christ.21

This ecclesiastical framework, in turn, permitted Severus to assert both a synchronic as well as a diachronic unity among the teachings of the episcopal fathers. Since all orthodox bishops were one, so too were their prescriptions. Taken diachronically, this proposition allowed Severus to assert a historical Le Muséon 43 (1930), frag. I and II; ibid. 167-74; and A. de Halleux, Philoxène de Mabbog: sa vie, ses écrits, sa théologie (Louvain, 1963), 222. 19 The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, in four volumes (1902-1904), II.II, p. 277 n. 1. 20 The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, in four volumes (1902-1904), II.II, p. 279 n. 1; cf. John Chrysostom, De laudibus sancti Pauli apostoli homilia V, PG 49.2, 498. 21 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 1, p. 314.

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continuum uniting the earlier canons evidently cited by his rigorist opponents – including, most notably, those pronounced by Cyprian of Carthage – and the rules outlined by Timothy Aelurus, through a process of legislative evolution: In like manner, therefore, when Cyprian in Africa with a synod under him said that all those who have been baptized by a heresy merit the laver of regeneration anew, as though had not been baptized, but were baptized from the beginning. At last, however, [when] the thought of Sextus of Rome, Dionysius of Alexandria, and the others prevailed, so that those baptized in the name of the three hypostases – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – should not be baptized anew, no one of sound mind said that those pious bishops contradicted themselves, but that through later consideration they chose a better and more canonical course. Thus, also the holy Timothy initially, on account of the shamelessness and impenitent hearts of the Proterians and the zeal of the orthodox people of Alexandria, said that he would not receive those who were ordained by those who are opposed, when they had canonically repented and he had lawfully accepted them, he was not shown to contradict to himself, but instead very consistent, since he said those things on account of the zeal of the believes. However, he permitted the canons to prevail and received those who repented according to the conclusions of the fathers, and again by signing an encyclical he was united to all the bishop who were in the world. Since these things, even if they appear contradictory to many, nevertheless their one purpose is the the salvation of those who have perished, and that on account of unmeasured zeal those who have stood upright should desert the royal road and should turn aside towards that which is further to the right.22

Moreover, the historical sequence of this argument also suggested an implicit progression from rigorism towards moderation, from the undifferentiated treatment of heretics towards a more differentiated approach. As a result, the antirigorism of Timothy Aelurus, and by extension Severus, could be represented as constituting neither an innovation nor an aberration, but the culmination of a process of collective deliberation. Although sometimes without specific reference to this ecclesiological schema, the same essential narrative of legal-historical progression from archaic rigorism towards contemporary forbearance appears in a number of letters written after the period after 512. Elaborated with specific reference to canon 19 of Nicaea and canon 7 of Laodicea, which had respectively required the re-baptism and re-ordination of Paulianists and allowed for the reception of Novatian, Photinian, and Quartodeciman converts without reconsecration, versions of it thus occurred in an epistolary treatise against the Re-anointers, composed between 513 and 518, and a letter to the Carian presbyters and archimandrites, Photius and Andrew, after his exile.23 At roughly the same time, the patriarch elsewhere made a more explicit argument for the supersession of the canon of Cyprian of Cathage by subsequent legislation. In a letter likewise written from his exile to the orthodox 22

Severus of Antioch, SL, V 1, pp. 314-5. Severus of Antioch, SL, I 60 and V 6; and W. Bright, Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils (Oxford, 1882), 65-72. 23

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community of Emesa, Severus insisted that ‘with ecclesiastical regulations, those that were diligently crafted at a later time in the churches give no place to those of ancient date’.24 Hence, he argued that, although Cyprian and the African synod under him had required the re-baptism of all heretics regardless of the nature of their deviance, the more recent and universally accepted canons issued, inter alia, by the Council of Nicaea distinguished between heresies, so that anyone who insisted upon the indiscriminate reconsecration should fall under canonical proscription.25

Those Things Which are to the Right There is significantly more evidence from the period of Severus’ patriarchate, 512-518, which marked the apogee of a sustained, though often fluctuating, campaign by anti-Chalcedonians within the diocese.26 Addressed to a variety of ecclesiastical and monastic correspondents, the anti-rigorists writings from these years overwhelmingly reflect a series of pragmatic issues surrounding the reception of individual Chalcedonian converts.27 Among the problems facing Severus, along with other anti-Chalcedonian bishops in Oriens, at the time of his accession, were a shortage of qualified anti-Chalcedonian clergy as well as the need to reconcile those who had been ordained and baptized under pro-Chalcedonain bishops.28 In consequence, most – though by no means all – of the relevant epistles composed during this period are essentially procedural in character and serve well to illustrate the practical articulation and application of the patriarch’s anti-rigorist principles, with respect to specific groups and individuals. Thus, in letters addressed variously to the Cilician presbyter Theotecnus and the metropolitan Dionysius of Tarsus, respectively, Severus treated the case of the ascetic and presbyter Mark, who had previously vacillated, converting and lasping between confessions, but who was nonetheless preferred to become archimandrite of his monastery. Although expressing various reservations, the patriarch nevertheless argued that neither recurrent lapses were obstacle to 24

Severus of Antioch, SL, II 3, p. 326. Severus of Antioch, SL, II 3. 26 P. Charanis, Church and State in the Later Roman Empire: the Religious Policy of Anastasius the First, 491-518, second edition (Thessalonica, 1974), 57-77; F. Alpi, La route royale: Sévère d’Antioche et les églises d’Orient (2009), 44-52; and D.A. Michelson, The Practical Christology of Philoxenos of Mabbug (Oxford, 2014), 9-15. 27 Severus of Antioch, SL, IV 3 and V 2-7. 28 P. Van Nuffelen and A. Hilkens, ‘Recruitment and Conflict in Sixth-Century Antioch: a Micro-Study of Select Letters 6,1,5 of Severus of Antioch’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum/ Journal of Ancient Christianity 17 (2013), 560-75; D.A. Michelson, The Practical Christology of Philoxenos of Mabbug (2014), 33-60; and Y. Moss, Incorruptible Bodies (2016), 64-5s. 25

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penitential reception of the convert nor necessarily to his advance to abbotship.29 Even so, Severus acknowledged clear limits to canonical clemency. In a letter written in ca. 515-518, he reprimanded Dionysius of Tarsus for having received his suffragan bishop Indacus of Corycus, when the latter had not provided an orthodox confession.30 During this period, the patriarch propounded the principal that the penitential formula for the reception of Chalcedonian converts applied not only to individuals, but might in some sense also function en masse in the establishment of ecclesiastical union. At a synod convoked in Antioch shortly after his election in the spring of 513 – and perhaps again at a synod Tyre, in 514 –, Severus succeeded in establishing an anathematization of Chalcedon and an acceptance of the Henotikon as prerequisites for communion with patriarchal church of Antioch.31 The practical implications of this may be seen to play out in a series of letters pertaining to a largely failed effort by the episcopates of Cappadocia I and II to enter into communion with the patriarchates of Antioch and Alexandria, then held by Severus and the anti-Chalcedonian patriarch, Dioscorus II of Alexandria, 516-517. In a letter addressed to the Dioscorus II, Severus wrote his Egyptian colleague regarding a petition made by the metropolitan Soteric of Caesarea in the name of the bishops of his province as well as those of Cappadocia II. According to the missive, the Anatolian bishops had sought communion with the two anti-Chalcedonian patriarchs – having apparently proffered a written confession as well as an anathematization of the council, the Tome of Leo, and those who confess two natures following the union. Citing the formula put forward by Timothy Aelurus, Severus appealed to Dioscorus for his advice and authorization, noting that the Alexandrian had already communicated with the metropolitan Castor of Perga, in Pamphylia. Although there is thus no suggestion that Dioscorus should have baulked at the mode of reception, nevertheless Severus appears to have had some reticence about the union, seemingly alluding to possibility that Soteric and his suffragans had not completely removed themselves the communion of heretics.32 In a near contemporary letter to scholasticus Hippocrates of Alexandria, Severus explained that, while he had received the 29

Severus of Antioch, SL, V 4-5. Severus of Antioch, SL, V 7; The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, in four volumes (1902-1904), II.II, p. 318; and E. Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem’ (1951), 47-8. 31 E. Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem’ (1951), 15-8; F. Alpi, La route royale: Sévère d’Antioche et les église d’Orient (2009), I 49; and Y. Moss, Incorruptible Bodies (2016), 64; n.b., A. de Halleux, Philoxène de Mabbog (1963), 77-85, has argued strenuously against the evidence for the synod Tyre. 32 Severus of Antioch, SL, IV 3; The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, in four volumes (1902-1904), II.II, p. 257; id., ‘A Collection of Letters of Severus of Antioch, from Numerous Syriac Manuscripts (Letters I to LXI)’, PO 12.2, 201 n. 1; E. Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem’ 30

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bishops Eleusinius of Sasima and Proclus of Coloneia – both in Cappadocia II – without significant reservation, he had spurned the communion of Soteric.33 Nowhere is it precisely stipulated in either letter. However, the allusion in the letter to the patriarch Dioscorus II to the determinations of Timothy Aelurus, as well as Severus’ more general position, suggest that notwithstanding the particular failings of Soteric and his suffragans the patriarch was, in principal at least, prepared to receive the petitioners as a group, based upon their production of a written confession and anathema of Chalcedon. This is further demonstrated by the subsequent reception of the bishops Proclus and Eleusinius. Equally, in addition to representing their own interests, the bishops who had approached Severus stood at the head of churches, whose communion depended upon them – so that to receive them was not only to communicate with them as individuals, but through them to communicate with the laity and clergy whose communion they mediated. Receiving the False and Imperfect The expulsion of its episcopate in the patriarchate, between 518 and 522, far from fostering unity within the anti-Chalcedonian movement, appears instead to have given rise to a new wave of rigorism, including a series of charismatic pseudo-episcopal sects. In particular, the Zakaites are known to have advocated reconsecration through re-baptism and re-ordination, while the followers of the pseudo-bishop Gregory of Pontus required re-chrismation.34 However, beyond these radical and seemingly marginal groups, Severus also faced internal dissent within his own episcopate regarding the duration of penance to be assigned to Chalcedonian converts, as at least some members of his own party sought to impose penance well in excess of the formula set down by Timothy Aelurus. While there is no indication that these bishops sought the reconsecration of converts from the council, their more extreme position appears nonetheless to have troubled the patriarch as well as other moderate members of the episcopate, propelling the patriarch to articulate an increasingly ambitious series of arguments in defense of the necessity and efficacy of the penitential reception Chalcedonian converts. (1951), 108-17 and 132; and S.J. Davis, The Early Coptic Papacy: the Egyptian Church and Its Leadership in Late Antiquity (2004), 97-8. 33 Severus of Antioch, CL, XLVI; and E. Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem’ (1951), 114-6; n.b., the same epistle appears to suggest the existence of a similar union with the episcopate Armenia, ibid. 117-9. Nevertheless, Soteric is the addressee of two further letters – Severus of Antioch, CL, XLV and CXVIII. 34 Severus of Antioch, SL, I 60, II 3, V 8-15, and IX 1; id., CL, XXXIV; Michael the Syrian, Chronicle, ed. and tr. J.-B. Chabot, in five volumes (Paris, 1899-1924), IX 30; E. Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem’ (1951), 105-7.

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In a letter composed sometime between 538 and 542, the anti-Chalcedonian bishop Thomas of Germanica responded to a question from the presbyter and archimandrite Elias of the Brothers on the Tur Mardin, regarding the reception of clerical converts. Referring to and predicating his rulings upon an earlier correspondence with the patriarch Severus – which may be dated with absolute certainty to the period between ca. 520 and 535, which seems likely to have taken place prior to 525 –, Thomas instructed the archimandrite that those who had lapsed into communion with the imperial church might be restored to their ministry following one year of penance, during which time they would nonetheless retain the dignity and trappings of their rank. On the other hand, those clergy who had received ordination from a pro-Chalcedonian bishop were to be received in penance for two years before being permitted to officiate or serve in the ministry.35 Both the approximate date and contents of this earlier correspondence between Thomas and Severus are further confirmed by a contemporary letter addressed to the bishop by Constantine of Laodicea and Antonius of Beroea/Aleppo, who wrote to affirm the determinations of the patriarch on behalf of the exiled anti-Chalcedonian episcopate then in Alexandria.36 Whether this articulation of a fixed scheme for the reception of heretic clergy constituted a change in the legal thinking of the patriarch, following his exile, or as seems more likely simply its codification is not entirely certain. There is, nonetheless, some evidence to suggest that the ruling was precipitated by a disagreement among the anti-Chalcedonian bishops still resident in Oriens. In another missive written in 538-542 and addressed to the presbyter John, archimandrite of the monastery of Beth Mar Eusebius in the Village of Bartho’ in the Chora of Apamea, the bishop of Germanica again referred to his earlier correspondence with Severus. According to the letter, Thomas had been prompted to solicit patriarchal adjudication as the result of a dispute with the prolific bishop-ordainer John of Constantina/Tella. A correspondent and confessional ally of the patriarch and a hero of the later Severan-Jacobite hagiographic tradition, credited with the virtual reformation of an autonomous anti-Chalcedonian clergy in the diocese after 522, Thomas nonetheless accused John of imposing unduly harsh penalties on Chalcedonian converts – allowing them to minister in the priesthood only after period of four years of penance.37 35 BM Add. MS 12,155, fol. 89a-b; BM Add. MS 14,532, fol. 140b-141a; and S.S. Ford, ‘Ordination and Episcopacy in the Severan-Jacobite Church, AD 518-c. 588’, D.Phil. thesis (University of Oxford, 2016), 308-17. 36 BM Add. MS 14,532, fol. 145a-b; and S.S. Ford, ‘Ordination and Episcopacy in the SeveranJacobite Church, AD 518-c. 588’ (2016), 333-9. 37 Harvard Syr. MS 22, fol. 15a-b; BM Add. MS 14,532, fol. 142a-143a; and S.S. Ford, ‘Ordination and Episcopacy in the Severan-Jacobite Church, AD 518-c. 588’ (2016), 319-29; regarding the life and career of John of Tella, see, Severus of Antioch, SL, V 14 and 15; Elias, Vita Iohannis episcopi Tellae, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, CSCO 7 and 8 (Paris, 1907); John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, PO 17, 18, 19 (Paris, 1923-1926),

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Although without direct reference to his correspondence with Thomas of Germanica, the same dispute concerning the treatment of clerical converts appears to lie behind a pair of roughly contemporary letters addressed by Severus to two groups of anti-Chalcedonian bishops resident in Oriens, sometime between ca. 521 and ca. 527.38 While modern scholarship has generally analyzed the missives for the evidence which they offer regarding the emergence of a system of extra-territorial ordinations within the exiled anti-Chalcedonian church, its incorporation in section five of the thematically organized Sixth Book of the Select Letters suggests that by at least the seventh century it was regarded as pertaining principally to the reception of Chalcedonian converts.39 In a letter addressed to the bishops John of Constantina/Tella, Philoxenus of Doliche, and Thomas of Dara, then assembled on the Tur Marde, Severus responded to the an apparent question from his correspondents regarding the reception of those baptized by a pro-Chalcedonian priest, directing them to his earlier epistolary treatise against those who advocated re-anointing such converts.40 The patriarch, however, then proceeded to admonish the bishops to conform to the formula for the penitential reception of dyophysite clergy, which he averred to have been established already in 431 by the Council of Ephesus I. According to Severus, the bishops gathered in Ephesus had received the Lydian presbyter Charisius – whom the patriarch erroneously identified as an acolyte of Theodore of Mopsuestia – with ‘philanthropy’, and by implication without undue severity of penance:

XXIV, 311-24; V.L. Menze, ‘The Regula ad Diaconos: John of Tella, his Eucharistic Ecclesiology and the Establishment of an Ecclesiastical Hierarchy in Exile’, Oriens Chistianus 90 (2006), 44-90; id., Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church (Oxford, 2008), 175-86; and V. Menze and Y. Akalın, John of Tella’s Profession of Faith: the Legacy of a Sixth-Century Syrian Orthodox Bishop (Piscataway, NJ, 2009), 7-18. 38 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 14-5; The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, in four volumes (1902-1904), II.II, pp. 345 and 350; F. Alpi, La route royale: Sévère d’Antioche et les églises d’Orient (2009), I 72-3; n.b., although V.L. Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church (2008), 127-8, 146 n. 7, and 153, has argued for a more precise dating of these letter to period prior 525, based on the apparent reference in SL, V 15 to the bishops having departed from the Tur Marde as well as the relationship between the missives and SL, I 59 – which appears to predate the expulsion of the non-conforming monasteries in the dioceses between 525 and 531, pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor, Chronicle, VIII 5. The evidence here is circumstantial. If accepted, however, it would provide plausible grounds for dating the above mentioned correspondence between the patriarch Severus and Thomas of Germanica. Regarding the identity of the bishops named in the letters, see E. Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem’ (1951), 51-2, 72-3 and 103-4; and V.L. Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church (2008), 153. 39 Severus of Antioch, SL, V, p. 310: ‘Fifth section. Concerning those clergy and laymen who turn from the heretics’; regarding the organization and translation of the Sixth Book of the Select Letters, see, The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, in four volumes (1902-1904), II.I, pp. ix-xi. 40 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 6 and 14.

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Now, however, I thus also tell your sanctity in a few words a thing that is not unknown to it – [viz.,] that the holy and ecumenical synod that was assembled at Ephesus and performed the deposition of Nestorius, who raised the heresy of this dyophysite manworship higher, when a certain presbyter, Charisius, had come from the province of the Lydians, who enrolled the house of his fathers at Philadelphia, along with many others who had were carried off to the false worship of that heresy, when he held out petitions to it and unrolled a demonstration that had previously been fashioned by the impious Theodore of Mopsuestia, and it [i.e., the synod] received him and deemed him worthy of philanthropy, while it did not proclaimed anything canonically concerning the chrism or concerning anything else of this kind, but it lawfully judged that it was right for them to renounce in writing that heresy and condemn it by an anathema, and thus to be received and become part in the sheepfold of Christ.41

Here, Severus echoed a persistent refrain within his anti-rigorist writings, reasoning that since the bishops had not promulgated a separate canon to govern such conversions, in future, that the act constituted the expressed will of the council, and thus stood as a effective precedent for the lawful treatment of clerical converts from Chalcedon. To deviate from this precedent, he argued, even in the ostensible service of greater rectitude, was therefore to deviate and err – a contention which he underscored, as he had elsewhere, through an allusion to Deuteronomy 2:27: ‘since to remove in any matter whatsoever the regulations that our fathers established is altogether unlawful, even if one is seduced by opinions that are thought to be more to the right’.42 A similar set of concerns are also evident in a contemporaneous letter from the patriarch to the bishops Sergius of Cyrrhus and Marion of Sura.43 Both men were longstanding allies of Severus, who had attended his ordination to the patriarchate and had subsequently followed him into exile, in ca. 519.44 Accordingly, the patriarch had sent his letter replying to the bishops on the Tur Marde first to Sergius and Marion in order to solicit their judgement and, one supposes, their support in the affair. The epistle, however, suggests that the bishops had retained rather than forwarding the letter and had, moreover, themselves begun to impose a period of penitence upon lay converts from Chalcedon, contrary to the formula established by Timothy Aelurus – and endorsed by Severus.45 41 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 14, pp. 391-2; cf. ibid. V 6. With respect to the case of the presbyter Charisius of Philadelphia and the sixth session of Ephesius I, see W. Bright, Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils (1882), 115-8; and W. Smith and H. Wace, A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines: Being a Continuation of ‘The Dictionary of the Bible’ (Boston, 1877), 701-2; and F.J. Badcock, ‘The Old Roman Creed’, Journal of Theological Studies, Old Series, volume XXIII, Issue 92 (1922), 368-9. 42 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 14, p. 393; cf. id., SL, I 3, 23, 27 and 57, II 3, V 1, 3, 6, 8, 11 and 15, IX 3, and X 5; and id., CL, XXXV. 43 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 15. 44 Severus of Antioch, Allocution, ed. and tr. M.A. Kugener, ‘Allocution prononcée par Sévère après son élévation sur le trône patriarcal d’Antioche’, Oriens Christianus 2 (1902), 265-76; ibid. 278-280 and 282; and E. Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem’ (1951), 68-71. 45 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 15.

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In response to this latter development, the patriarch tendered a dual defense of moderation, predicated upon both pragmatic and sacramental considerations. First, although acceding in principal to his correspondents apparent demands that lay converts be received in penitence in order to promote a sense of reverence among those who turned to the orthodox faith, Severus nonetheless argued strenuously against the imposition of too lengthy a period penance, on the ground that it might serve to dissuade conversion.46 Second, he contended that the formula established at Ephesus for the reception of those baptized by Nestorians and subsequently expanded by Timothy Aelurus ought in any case to be maintained, so that there should be no question of the re-baptism or anointing.47 Severus further justified this by asserting the spiritual sufficiency of the anathema pronounced by the convert. Citing the admonition to the Peter in Matthew 16:19, he constructing an effective parity between the seal of baptism and that conferred through the enunciation of the anathema prescribed by an orthodox bishop: No one, however, is so outside the sacerdotal teachings of orthodoxy so as to not call the baptism that is given by any heresy imperfect and false, but those who know this look to the regulations of the holy fathers and consider that it is right that ministry should be in proportion to the quality of the heresy, and that the defilement should be expiated and absolved either by another baptism or by chrism or by an anathema of the heresy and by the judgement and reception of the orthodox bishops. For the word of those who officiate in orthodox manner, whatever it may be, shall also gather the treatment and the grace of the Spirit, since the word of the one who perfects the baptism and causes the Spirit to descend upon the water, on account of the one who philanthropically made us to share in the power with those who crawl upon the earth. Like this, since He cleanses the laver of the water through his word, according to what Paul says in the letter to the Ephesians, so too the word of the one who anoints is mingled with the chrism, and brings the ministry and introduces the grace of the Spirit. In this manner too is an anathema of heresy, when it is enjoined upon those who condemn them by the suggestion of orthodox high-priests and appointed by them, even entrance to the holy of holies performed according to the judgement of those who receive them brings remedy to the ulcerous and causes the pure and sincere grace of the Spirit to shine invisibly upon those who have been received.48

This representation of the anathema as a sacrament, effectuated by the presence of the Spirit through sacerdotal mediation of the orthodox officiant, allowed Severus to effectively obviate any need for reconsecration. Instead, the arguing that as a sort of verbal chrismation the rite more than aboundable for the perfection and reception of converts. 46

Severus of Antioch, SL, V 15. Severus of Antioch, SL, V 15; here, The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the Syriac Version of Athanasius of Nisibis, ed. and tr. E.W. Brooks, in four volumes (1902-1904), II.II, p. 352 n. 3, is almost certainly correct in suggesting that this is an allusion to the reception of the presbyter Charisius of Philadelphia, adduced elsewhere by the patriarch in SL, V 6 and 14. 48 Severus of Antioch, SL, V 15, pp. 397-9. 47

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Conclusions The last of his securely datable correspondence on the subject, the letters addressed to the exiled bishops in Oriens may be seen to be a clear continuation and development of the patriarch’s earlier anti-rigorist writings, both in their determinations and rhetorical construction. Characterized by their use of biblical and scriptural exempla as well as a historicized construction of canon law, they follow the discursive pattern evident already in Severus’ letter to John the Tribune. Additionally, the epistles seem to mark, or at least to have preceded, a persuasive victory of the patriarch. In a canon collection plausibly dated by A. Vööbus to ca. 532-534, the exiled bishops, then in Oriens, adopted the penitential formula so assiduously advanced by Severus as the basis for two canons on the reception of heretics. Although the precise identities of the promulgators are not given in the collection, they would presumably have included John of Constantina/Tella, Thomas of Dara, Sergius of Cyrrhus, and Marion of Soura.49 Even so, however, the episode also serves to illustrate well the persistent problems facing Severus in his attempt to rally a durable consensus within the antiChalcedonian communion regarding the practice of receiving Chalcedonian converts. Although there is no indication of any subsequent debate within the surviving episcopate, both letters written by Thomas of Germanica, in 538-542, to the archimandrites Elias and John as well as a contemporary letter composed by John of Hephaestopolis, in 538-541, provide ample evidence of the persistence of questions within the larger movement in the years following death of the patriarch, in 538.50

49

‘Chapters Which Were Written from the East’, 21 and 25; A. Vööbus, Syrische Kanonessammlungen: Ein Beitrag zur Quellenkunde, in two volumes (Louvain, 1970), I.a., pp. 167-75; depending on the precise date, Philoxenus of Doliche is known to have defected to the imperial church following a colloquy with pro-Chalcedonian bishops in Constantinople, in 532; S.P. Brock, ‘The Orthodox-Oriental Orthodox Conversations of 532’, Apostolos Varnavas 41 (1980), 219-28; and id., ‘The Conversations with the Syrian Orthodox under Justinian (532)’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 47 (1981), 87-121. 50 Paris MS Syriaque 62, fol. 242a-243a, which contains a set of contemporary canons for the penitential reception of Chalcedonian clergy, addressed as an encyclical in the names of the patriarchs Theodosius of Alexandria and Anthimus of Constantinople and the metropolitan Constantine of Laodicea to the anti-Chalcedonian archimandrites in Oriens; A. Vööbus, Syrische Kanonessammlungen: Ein Beitrag zur Quellenkunde, in two volumes (1970), I.a, pp. 175-80; and S.S. Ford, ‘Ordination and Episcopacy in the Severan-Jacobite Church, AD 518-c. 588’ (2016), 340-5.

Composite Nature without Particularities: Leontius of Byzantium’s Understanding of Severus of Antioch’s Miaphysite Christology Yuichi TSUNODA, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT This article elucidates how Leontius of Byzantium (ca. 485-ca. 543) understood the composite nature (physis), which is the fundamental concept in Severus of Antioch’s (ca. 465-538) Miaphysite Christology. First, Severus of Antioch understood the Incarnation as the process of the dynamic economic activity of the divine Logos, which makes the humanity its own. Severus held that Christ is the one composite nature as the incarnate Logos, which possesses the humanity. The composite nature comprises two particularities, namely the divine particularities and the human particularities. The divine particularities contain the divine properties and the human particularities include the human properties. The notion ‘particularity’ indicates the integrity of entity and the intrinsic otherness. In the single nature of the incarnate Logos, the otherness of the divinity and the humanity continues and thus the two particularities remain without any confusion. Second, Leontius of Byzantium interpreted Severus’ Christology from his perspective of the hypostatic union. Severus held that the two properties indicate the two particularities. By way of contrast, Leontius thought the two properties should indicate their underlying realities, namely the two distinct natures. He did not recognize the entities of two particularities and so he did not recognize any real distinction of the divinity and the humanity in the one composite nature. Consequently, without considering the two particularities, he understood that there is a confusion of the divinity and the humanity in the composite nature of Severus’ Christology.

Preface This article elucidates how Leontius of Byzantium (ca. 485-ca. 543) understood the composite nature (physis) which is the fundamental concept in the Miaphysite Christology of Severus of Antioch (ca. 465-538). Leontius of Byzantium held the hypostatic union, which is comprised of the two natures (physeis) in the one hypostasis of the Logos. He applied the fundamental concepts of Cappadocian trinitarian theology to Christology and made a clear distinction of hypostasis and nature in the hypostatic union. Moreover, he observed the relationship between hypostasis and nature by

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 183-193. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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introducing the distinction of hypostasis and enypostaton into the hypostatic union.1 From the perspective of the hypostatic union, he interpreted Severus’ Miaphysite Christology. First, I elucidate the fundamental structure of the composite nature in Severus’ Miaphysite Christology. Second, I explain Leontius’ view of the structure of the hypostatic union and how he understood Severus’ one composite nature of the incarnate Logos. 1. The Miaphysite Christology of Severus of Antioch 1.1. The One Composite Nature of the Incarnate Logos In this chapter, I explore the structure of the composite nature in Severus’ Miaphysite Christology. Severus of Antioch understood the Incarnation as the process of the dynamic economic activity of the divine Logos, which makes the humanity its own. Severus held that Christ is the one composite nature as the incarnate Logos, which possesses the humanity.2 In Severus’ Miaphysite Christology, it is important to see the process of how the Logos comes to possess the humanity and constitute the one composite nature. What is the meaning of the one composite nature? In Severus’ Miaphysite view of the relationship between the divine nature and the human nature in Christ, the one nature of the incarnate Logos is ‘out of two natures which possess integrity’, and is not ‘in two natures’ after the union.3 In this case, the phrase ‘out of two natures’ indicates that Christ is ‘one through composition’ and so the divinity and the humanity ‘did not cease to exist because they were joined together without confusion’.4 There is the one nature and hypostasis of the incarnate Logos, which makes the composite union. In this case, Severus recognized that the one nature of the incarnate Logos is equivalent to the one hypostasis of the incarnate Logos, which means the individual concrete reality. 1 In my view, Leontius of Byzantium was a Chalcedonian theologian, who defended the hypostatic union of Christ against the Miaphysite Christology, Nestorian Christology, and Aphthartodocetism. This view comes from Brian Daley’s understanding of Leontius of Byzantium. He held that Leontius of Byzantium was not an Origenist theologian, but a Chalcedonian theologian. From this perspective, Daley criticized David Evans’ Origenist understanding of Leontius of Byzantium. See Brian E. Daley, ‘The Origenism of Leontius of Byzantium’, JTS 27 (1976), 333-69; David Beecher Evans, Leontius of Byzantium: An Origenist Christology (Washington, 1970), 84-146. 2 Severus stated that there is the ‘composed Emmanuel’ in the indivisible union, which is out of divinity and humanity. See Severus of Antioch, Orationes ad Nephalium, ed. Joseph Lebon, in Orationes ad Nephalium, eiusdem ac Sergii Grammatici Epistulae mutuae, vol. 1, Textus, vol. 2 Versio, CSCO 119-20, Syr 64-5 (Leuven, 1949), 10-21. The English translation (hereafter cited in brackets) comes from Pauline Allen and C.T. Robert Hayward, Severus of Antioch, The Early Church Fathers (London, New York, 2004), 66. 3 Ibid. 10-21 [59-60]. 4 Ibid. 10-21 [60].

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According to Severus, Cyril of Alexandria (376-444) held that the term ‘one’ is used not only for ‘those which are simple by nature’, but also for ‘what has been brought together according to a synthesis (composition)’.5 This view influenced Severus, and he stated that there is the one composite nature in Christ. Furthermore, Severus held that one can recognize the incarnate Logos as being one by means of ‘contemplation’ and perceive the distinction between divinity and humanity by ‘contemplation’, ‘thought’,6 and ‘theoretical distinction’.7 1.2. The Two Particularities in the One Nature of the Incarnate Logos In Severus’ Miaphysite Christology, the divine particularities and the human particularities exist in the single composite nature of the incarnate Logos. Severus held that particularity implies ‘the otherness of natures of those things which have come together to union’, and ‘the difference (lies) in natural quality’.8 The divine nature and the human nature come together and constitute the one composite nature of the incarnate Logos, which comprises two particularities. The two particularities show the otherness of the natural qualities of the divinity and the humanity. Severus stated that the natural quality is ‘the principle of how (a thing) is’, and ‘how they are’.9 He held that the notion of natural quality came from Cyril of Alexandria’s Christology. Cyril allowed that ‘there is a great difference or distinction between humanity and divinity’. The reason is that the humanity and the divinity ‘are seen to be other (hetera), according to the mode of how they are (kata ge ton toū pōs einai logon)’ and ‘they are not like each other in anything’.10 In this context, Severus held that Christ consists of ‘the difference’ 5 Cyril of Alexandria, Epist. 46, PG 77, 241B-C. The English translation comes from Cyril of Alexandria, Letters 1-50, trans. John I. McEnerney, FC 76 (Washington, DC, 1987), 201. 6 Severus of Antioch, Liber contra impium Grammaticum, ed. Joseph Lebon, CSCO 93, Syr 45 (Paris, Leuven, 1933), 218-28. The English translation (hereafter cited in brackets) comes from P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch (2004), 79. 7 Ibid. 218-28 [81]. 8 Severus of Antioch, Letter I of Severus, in Iain R. Torrance, The Correspondence of Severus and Sergius (Piscataway, NJ, 2011), 10-1. According to Iain R. Torance, Syriac words, ‘ÀĀÚáÙx’ and ‘ÎÚáÙx’ are used for translation of Greek words, ‘hē idiotēs’, ‘ta idia’, ‘to idiom’, ‘ta idiomata’, and Latin word, ‘proprietas’. First, when the word, ‘ÀĀÚáÙx’ is used in plural, it means ‘properties’ in the context of a discussion of the communication of idioms in Christology. Second, when the word, ‘ÀĀÚáÙx’ is used for the definitional sense, it is translated as ‘property’, or ‘peculiarity’. For example, ‘Who does not know that the faculty of laughter is the property of man’. Third, the word ‘ÀĀÚáÙx’ means ‘particularity’, which Severus developed from Cyril. ‘Particularity’ indicates ‘the integrity of being of a particular thing’. As an example, Torrance states that ‘flesh is flesh, and is not stone, simply for the reason that it is flesh’. See Iain R. Torrance, Christology after Chalcedon: Severus of Antioch and Sergius the Monophysite (Norwich, 1988), 27-9. 9 Severus of Antioch, Letter I of Severus, in I.R. Torrance, The Correspondence (2011), 14-5. 10 Cyril of Alexandria, Adversus Nestorii Blasphemias, PG 76, 85A-B. The English translation comes from I.R. Torrance, The Correspondence (2011), 14-5.

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and ‘the otherness’ of the divine particularities and the human particularities. Each particularity exists independently in its natural quality.11 Severus held that natural quality ‘inheres in the nature which constitutes the difference of the essence; and the difference of the quality represents the inequality of the genus of the divinity and the genus of the humanity’.12 2. Leontius of Byzantium’s Understanding of the Composite Nature in Severus’ Christology 2.1. Leontius’ Distinction between Hypostasis and Enypostaton In this chapter, I deal with the structure of the hypostatic union in Leontius of Byzantium’s Christology and how he understood Severus’ one composite nature of the incarnate Logos. Leontius introduced the distinction between hypostasis and enhypostatos into Christology. He used the notion ‘to enypostaton’, which is equivalent to enhypostatos as a Christological term.13 In Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, he explained the meanings of hypostasis and enypostaton. In his view, hypostasis means the individual concrete being (‘the individual’ [ton tina]) and indicates ‘the person by means of peculiar characteristics’.14 This means that hypostasis has its hypostatic properties and by its hypostatic properties one can distinguish one hypostasis from other hypostaseis. Enypostaton signifies the essence (ousia), which is not accident in another being.15 In the history of interpretation of enypostaton, Friedrich Loofs held that Leontius’ enypostaton indicates how the human nature of Christ subsists in the hypostasis of the divine Logos (en tō logō hypostēnai).16 This view influenced many theologians in the 19th and 20th centuries.17 However, Brian 11

Severus of Antioch, Letter I of Severus, in I.R. Torrance, The Correspondence (2011), 14-5. Severus of Antioch, Adversus apologiam Iuliani, ed. Robert Hespel, in La polémique antijulianiste IIB, CSCO 301, Syr 126 (Louvain, 1964), 279-85. The English translation comes from P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch (2004), 103. 13 Alois Grillmeier explained the source of the notion enhypostatos in Christology after the Council of Chalcedon, see Alois Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1979), vol. II/2, 207. 14 Leontius of Byzantium, Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos (herafter CNE), PG 86, 1277C-D [133 in translation]. The English translations of Leontius of Byzantium come from the edition Leontius of Byzantium, Complete Works, ed. Brian E. Daley, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford, 2017), and are cited in brackets. 15 Ibid. PG 86, 1277C-D [133]. 16 Friedrich Loofs, Leontius von Byzanz und die gleichnamigen Schriftsteller der griechischen Kirche, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 3/1-2 (Leipzig, 1887), 65. The phrase ‘en tō logo hypostēnai’ comes from the following text. Leontius of Byzantium, Epilyseis, PG 86, 1944C [306]. 17 ‘Introduction’ by Brian Daley, in Leontius of Byzantium, Complete Works (2017), 73-4. 12

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Daley criticized this view and stated that ‘en’ in enypostaton does not mean ‘“hypostatized in”, but “hypostatic”, “concretely instanced”, and ‘individually realized’. The reason is that ‘en’ is ‘simply the opposite of the Greek “alpha privative”’.18 In my view, enypostaton is an individual and concrete essence in its relationship with hypostasis. One can clearly distinguish enypostaton from hypostasis in its ontological status because enypostaton can be an individualized concrete essence or nature in the internal relationship with hypostasis. The relationship between enypostaton and hypostasis has two aspects. First, there is the relationship between the human nature and the hypostasis of the Logos. The human nature is enypostaton (individual concrete reality) in the relationship with the hypostatic properties of the hypostasis of the Logos. Second, there is the relationship between the human nature and the divine nature, which are sustained by the hypostasis of the Logos. The distinction of the two natures is realized by the natural properties of the divine nature of the Logos. The two natures are enypostaton and have the mutual communication in the single hypostasis of the Logos. 2.2. Leontius’ Definitions of Hypostasis and Nature in the Hypostatic Union Leontius of Byzantium introduced the Cappadocian distinction of the hypostatic properties and the natural properties into Christology in order to make a clear distinction of hypostasis and nature (physis) in the hypostatic union. In the trinitarian theology of Basil of Caesarea (ca. 330-379), the hypostatic properties indicate the properties of each hypostasis in the Trinity. For example, the hypostatic properties of the Father are begetting the Son and sending the Holy Spirit through the Son. The hypostatic properties of the Son signify that He is begotten by the Father and through Him the Father sends the Holy Spirit. The hypostatic properties of the Holy Spirit indicate that the Spirit is sent by the Father through the Son. Moreover, the natural properties indicate the properties of the single divine nature of the Trinity. For example, God is uncreated and unfathomable. The natural properties of the Trinity are shared by the three hypostaseis as their common characteristics.19 Leontius introduced the Cappadocian definitions of hypostasis and nature into the structure of the hypostatic union of Christ. Leontios explicated the definitions of hypostasis and nature. He stated that ‘the nature of every hypostasis is understood to be given in the common definition, such as its being fiery, or airy, or earthy or watery, or rational, or non-rational, or living, or non-living, or perceptible, or intelligible’. Those essential qualities ‘express the nature of the subject’ and ‘which marks off each thing individually, characterizes the 18 19

Ibid. 73. Basil of Caesarea, Epist. 38, PG 32, 329C-329D, 332A.

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hypostasis of a thing’.20 Each single object has ‘a common nature, according to its common species’, and ‘a proper hypostasis, which distinguishes what is proper in it from what is common by defining marks and characteristics’.21 In this view, Leontius can distinguish hypostasis from nature in the hypostatic union and avoid the Miaphysite view of hypostasis, which is identified with nature. In Epaporemata, Leontius also introduced the distinction of hypostatic properties and natural properties into the understanding of the structure of the Incarnation in relationship with the structure of the Trinity. According to him, the hypostasis of the Logos ‘is joined to the flesh’ by its hypostatic properties, which separate him from the Father. Thus, the Logos is not distinguished from the flesh by its hypostatic properties.22 In contrast, the Logos is joined to the Father in the same divine nature of the Trinity by its natural properties. At the same time, by his natural properties Christ experiences ‘difference from the flesh’.23 To sum up, the hypostatic properties of the hypostasis of the Logos become the principle of the union with the human nature (flesh) in the Incarnation even though the hypostatic properties of the Logos are the principle of distinction from the Father in the Trinity. In contrast, the natural properties of the Logos become the principle of distinction between the divine nature and the human nature in the hypostasis in the Incarnation even though the natural properties of the Logos are the principle of union with the Father in the Trinity. 2.3. Leontius’ View of the Composite Nature in Severus’ Christology Leontius criticized Severus’ view of the composite nature in Christ. Leontius held that ‘the same thing will be one and two, one by union and two in its natures’ in the hypostatic union of Christ.24 Otherwise, ‘the same thing will be 20

Leontius of Byzantium, Epilyseis, PG 86, 1928C [285]. Ibid. PG 86, 1928C [287]. In Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, there is another explanation of nature and hypostasis by Leontius. He stated that nature (physis) ‘admits of the predication of being’ (ton tou einai logon) and hypostasis admits of ‘being by oneself’ (ton tou kath’heauton einai). Moreover, nature signifies “the character of genus” (eidous logon) and “something universal” (katholikou pragmatos charaktēra). By way of contrast, hypostasis indicates ‘individual identity’ (tou tinos esti) and ‘distinguishes the particular from the general’ (tou koinou to idion apodiastelletai). Leontius held that ‘things sharing the same essence are said to be of one nature, and things whose structure of being is common’. Moreover, he held that hypostaseis are ‘either things which share a nature but differ in number, or things which are put together from different natures, but which share reciprocally in a common being’. Leontius of Byzantium, CNE, PG 86, 1280A-B [135]. 22 Leontius of Byzantium, Epilyseis, PG 86, 1909CD [327]. 23 Ibid. Leontius observed the distinction between hypostasis and nature in Christology from the perspective of the two relationships (scheseis) between the Logos and the Father. See Brian E. Daley, ‘“A Richer Union”: Leontius of Byzantium and the Relationship of Human and Divine in Christ’, SP 24 (1993), 239-65, 252. 24 Leontius of Byzantium, CNE, PG 86, 1293A [157]. 21

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in the same respect of one substance and of more than one, one nature and not one nature’.25 In Leontius’ view, the one nature introduced a confusion ‘by the identity of the composite nature’ (en tō tautō tēs synthetou physeōs). It cannot signify ‘either of the unified natures after union’.26 In Leontius’ understanding, Severus proclaimed ‘the difference and the properties’ of ‘corruptible and incorruptible’, but he did not ‘predicate them of underlying realities’ and refused to confess two natures.27 However, we can ask why Leontius found the confusion of divinity and humanity in the composite nature even though Severus emphasized the distinction of both realities. In my view, there are three reasons for Leontius’ interpretation of the composite nature. First, Leontius made a distinction between ‘the nature of union’ and ‘the nature of what is compounded’ in the structure of the hypostatic union. He held that ‘the nature of the composite being is not the same as the nature of what is compounded. Just as the nature of a bond is not the same as the nature of the things bound together, but the nature of the bond is one thing’,28 and ‘the nature of the composite and of union is not the same as the nature of what is compounded and united’.29 In the structure of the hypostatic union, ‘the nature of union’ is related to the hypostasis of the Logos, which makes the human nature enypostaton and is united with the enhypostatized (individualized concrete) human nature.30 ‘The nature of what is compounded’ is related to the mutual relationship between the two distinct natures, which are enypostaton in the hypostasis of the Logos. Second, Leontius did not recognize the entities of the two particularities in the composite nature. In Severus’ Christology, the composite nature is comprised of the two properties, which are realized as the two particularities. They have their distinction on the conceptual level. In contrast, Leontius thought that the two properties should indicate their underlying realities, namely the two 25

Ibid. Ibid. PG 86, 1293B [157]. 27 Leontius of Byzantium, Contra Aphthartodocetas (hereafter CA), PG 86, 1320A [341]. 28 Leontius of Byzantium, Epilyseis, PG 86, 1925C [283]. 29 Ibid. In Leontius’ view, ‘one nature of Christ, and that a composite one’ in the Miaphysite Christology has to ‘mean either [the nature] of the composition, or of the objects compounded, or the product of both’. First, if the one nature of Christ means the composition, it should indicate ‘the definition of union, not of what is united’. Second, if the one nature of Christ means ‘the objects compounded into the whole Christ’, there will be the two entities because ‘neither of them changes and is transformed to the nature and peculiar quality of what is joined to it’, but preserves the difference between them in the union. Third, if the one nature of Christ means ‘the product’, it should indicate ‘the hypostasis rather than the nature of Christ’. The reason is that ‘the nature of Christ cannot be of one nature with the nature of the Father in the same way as it is one with the nature of his mother, nor in the same way [one] with the nature of his mother as it is with the nature of the Father’. Ibid. PG 86, 1925C, 1928A [285]. 30 In this context, ‘enhypostatized’ means the nature which becomes enypostaton (individual concrete reality) in the hypostasis of the Logos. 26

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distinct natures.31 Leontius did not recognize the entities of two particularities and so he did not recognize any real distinction of the divinity and the humanity in the one composite nature. In my view, the reason is that he did not find the integrality and the otherness of the natural qualities of divinity and humanity, which express the two particularities in the composite nature in Severus’ Christology. Consequently, because he did not consider the two particularities, he recognized the confusion of the divinity and the humanity in the composite nature. Third, Leontius opposed the Miaphysite view of the distinction of divinity and humanity in Christ only on the conceptual level.32 He questioned the Miaphysite theologians, ‘How then, can you recognize the [two] natures “purely on the conceptual level”, when they are recognized also in actuality?’33 In his view, ‘to recognize the natures “purely on the conceptual level”’ makes the two natures ‘non-existent and non-essential, or else confused and obliterated’.34 Consequently, Leontius held that ‘conceptual division would not be possible at all, if the objects being conceived did not exist in actuality, albeit together and in the same subject’.35 2.4. The Manner of Union and the Structure of Nature Leontius held that one should consider Christological argument ‘in the manner of union’ (tropos tēs henōseōs), but not in ‘the structure of nature’ (logos tēs physeōs).36 He stated that ‘the mode of union rather than the structure of nature contains the great mystery of religion’ and one is ‘free from having to investigate the nature of what is united and what is fully realized in them’. The manner of union itself makes one Christ.37 Leontius stated that one can distinguish the manner of union itself from the structure of nature. 31

Leontius of Byzantium, CA, PG 86, 1320A [341]. Leontius presented the two types of conception. The first type of conception is ‘a sort of additional thought or reflection, which explains[unfolds] and clarifies the general, unarticulated insight and knowledge’. In my understanding, one can hold this type of conception when one tries to clarify the structure of natures (physeis). According to Leontius, if one recognizes the two natures in this type of conception, one defines Christ as ‘a collection of propositions rather than a convergence of natures’ because this is ‘the kind of nature possessed by objects of purely conceptual contemplation’. The second type of conception is ‘the creation of thought, which weaves together perception and imagination to produce, from real beings, what has never been and suppose them to exist’. In my understanding, one holds this type of conception when one creates perceptions and imaginations, which depends on existing beings, possibly existing beings, and non-existing beings. If one recognizes the two nature in this type of conception, one has filled one’s reasoning ‘with neither things nor propositions, but with false and empty fiction’. Leontius of Byzantium, Epilyseis, PG 86, 1932A-D [289-91]. 33 Ibid. PG 86, 1932D [291]. 34 Ibid. PG 86, 1932D [293]. 35 Ibid. PG 86, 1937C [299]. 36 Ibid. PG 86, 1937D, 1940A [301]. 37 Ibid. PG 86, 1944C-D [307]. 32

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What is the fundamental difference between the structure of nature and the manner of union in the hypostatic union? In my view, in Severus’ Miaphysite Christology, the Incarnation is the process in which the Logos makes the humanity its own. When the Logos possessed the humanity, one can recognize the divine particularities and the human particularities in the incarnate Logos. These two particularities exist without any confusion. In this case, one can observe the structure of nature and see how the two particularities (natural qualities) exist in the one composite nature of the incarnate Logos. By way of contrast, in Leontius’ Christology, the Incarnation is the instantaneous event, in which the Logos assumes the humanity. In my view, one can see the manner of union in two aspects. First, the manner of union indicates how the hypostasis of the Logos makes the human nature enypostaton and how the hypostasis of the Logos has its union with the human nature. As I already stated, in his view, the hypostatic properties of the hypostasis of the Logos are the principle of the union with the human nature. Second, the manner of union indicates the manner of the relationship between the human nature and the divine nature, which are both enypostaton in the hypostasis of the Logos. In Leontius’ Christology, the natural properties of the divine nature of the Logos become the principle of the distinction between the divine nature and the human nature in the incarnate Logos. In the natural properties of the divine nature of the Logos, one can find the distinction between the human nature and the divine nature, which are both enypostaton. In the mutual relationship of these enhypostatized natures, Leontius recognized ‘the substantial, concrete union of essences’ (hē kai’ ousian te kai ousiōdēs kai enypostatos henōsis) in the one hypostasis.38 In my understanding of Leontius, the substantial union of essences signifies the union of the two enhypostatized natures (essences), which are sustained by the single hypostasis of the Logos. Therefore, in my view, the manner of union has its dynamic activities. When the hypostasis of the Logos unites itself with the human nature in its hypostatic properties, one can see how the Logos makes the human nature enypostaton. Moreover, when the hypostasis of the Logos reveals its divine nature in its natural properties, it makes the divine nature enypostaton. The enhypostatized divine nature is distinguished from the enhypostatized human nature. In this case, one can recognize the distinction and the mutual relationship of the two enhypostatized natures in the Logos. This is the content of substantial, concrete (enypostatos) union of essences.39 38

Leontius of Byzantium, CNE, PG 86, 1300A [165]. Alois Grillmeier finds Leontius’ view of the composite union (synthetos henōsis) in the phrase, ‘the essential relationships of things which belong to different species’ (ousiōdeis tōn heteroeidōn scheseis). See A. Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus (1979), vol. II/2, 218. Leontius of Byzantium, CNE, PG 86, 1304A [171]. 39

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Conclusion This article has explored how Leontius of Byzantium understood the composite nature in Severus of Antioch’s Miaphysite Christology. Leontius held that the confusion of divinity and humanity exists in the one composite nature of Christ, even though Severus made the distinction between the two particularities in the composite nature on the conceptual level. In my view, the reasons for Leontius’ understanding of Severus’ single composite nature are as follows. First, Leontius made a distinction between ‘the nature of union’ and ‘the nature of what is compounded’in the structure of hypostatic union. In the structure of the hypostatic union, one can recognize ‘the nature of union’ between the enhypostatized human nature and the hypostasis of the Logos in its hypostatic properties. On the other hand, one can recognize ‘the nature of what is compounded’ in the mutual relationship between the enhypostatized human nature and the enhypostatized divine nature in the Logos in its natural properties. In this context, he criticized Severus’ composite nature because Severus identified the nature of union with the nature of what is compounded in his Miaphysite Christology. With the distinction between the nature of union and the nature of what is compounded, Leontius also made a clear distinction between the manner of union and the structure of nature. In Severus’ Miaphysite Christology, the Incarnation is the dynamic process in which the Logos makes the humanity its own. When the Logos possessed the humanity, one can see the union of the divine particularities and the human particularities without any confusion. Thus, Severus investigated the structure of nature and observed how the two particularities (natural qualities) remain in the single composite nature of the incarnate Logos. By way of contrast, in Leontius’ Christology, the Incarnation is the instantaneous event, in which the hypostasis of the Logos assumes the human nature. In my view, the manner of union indicates the two aspects, namely the aspect of the hypostatic properties of the Logos, and the aspect of the natural properties of the Logos. In the aspect of the hypostatic properties of the Logos, the hypostatic properties of the hypostasis of the Logos are the principle of the union with the human nature. Thus, the hypostasis of the Logos is united with the human nature and makes the human nature enypostaton. On the other hand, in the aspect of the natural properties of the Logos, when the hypostasis of the Logos reveals its divine nature in its natural qualities, one can clearly distinguish the divine nature from the human nature in the incarnate Logos. Moreover, one can recognize the mutual relationships between the two natures, which are enypostaton in the hypostasis of the Logos. Therefore, from these two aspects, the manner of union signifies the dynamic relationships between hypostasis and nature. Second, Leontius did not acknowledge the entities of the two particularities in the composite nature. In Severus’ Christology, the composite nature is

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comprised of the two properties, which are realized as the two particularities. The two particularities express the integrity and the otherness of the natural qualities of divinity and humanity. They have their distinction on the conceptual level. By way of contrast, Leontius thought that the two properties have to indicate their underlying realities, namely the two distinct natures. In my view, Leontius did not recognize the entities of the divine particularities and the human particularities, which are distinct realities because of the integrity and the otherness of the natural qualities of divinity and humanity. Consequently, Leontius could not consider the two particularities and recognized the confusion of the divinity and the humanity in the composite nature. Third, Leontius criticized the Miaphysite view of the distinction of divinity and humanity in Christ only on the conceptual level. The Miaphysite distinction between the divinity and the humanity purely on the conceptual level leads the two natures to non-existent and non-essential realities, or confused realities. Therefore, the distinction only on the conceptual level can never exist in the incarnate Logos.

The Imperial Reception of Cyrilian Christology in the 6th Century on the Basis of the Theological Writings of Justinian I Teodor TĂBUȘ, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

ABSTRACT Justinian I’s rule (527-565) was an essential period with regard to the turbulent reception of the definiton of Chalcedon (451) in the Eastern part of the Imperium Romanum. One has disregarded the fact that the same ruling period of Justinian was also pivotal for the imperial reception of the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria and his key Christological terminology, such as καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἕνωσιν etc., which was not found in the definition of Chalcedon, nor in Zenon’s Henoticon (482). In addition, Cyril was the common church father in the East, bringing together the chalcedonians and anti-chalcedonians, that is, the supporters of Severus of Alexandria in the 6th century. The only thing dividing them was the interpretation and reception of Cyril’s Christology and his terms. Thus, Justinian undertook a theological program of ‘genuine’ clarification of Cyrilian Christology, by issuing short edicts of faith, such as those in Codex Justinianus (CI I 1,5-8), and also by writing, mostly after 536, complex theological works. My contribution focuses on the reason, the manner and the extent to which Justinian could defend and promote the ‘whole’ Cyrillian Christology, especially in the Eastern Roman Empire. I would like to suggest that the aim of his edicts of faith and theological writings was the unification of the East, which was theologically divided because of the reception and interpretation of Cyril’s Christology, thus demonstrating that Cyril’s Christology and terminology were, in fact, in perfect accord and harmony with the Chalcedonian terminology and definition.

1. Preliminaries After the experience with the Scythian monks in 518-519, and particularly after the failure of the Constantinopolitan Home Synod (ἐνδημοῦσα σύνοδος) in 536, Justinian recognized de facto that it was essential not only to find an adequate solution for the proper and sound reception of the Chalcedonian definition which had divided the imperial church as never before after 451, but also, to have an integral and unreserved reception of Cyril of Alexandria’s Christology and its correct interpretation.1 This is a unique and original feature 1 More about Cyril of Alexandria and his Christology and its interpretation see John A. McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy. The Christological

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 195-205. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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in an emperor, who gets directly involved in the christological disputes of the 6th century through imperial ecclesiastical legislation, as well as through his own theological writings, and not through court theologians, as mediators. Justinian understood unequivocally that without a reception of the two Christological visions, namely Cyrilian and Chalcedonian, mirrored and assumed by the person of the Emperor himself, as well as a harmonization of the nuances and specific terms of the two Christologies, no viable and complete unity could be achieved from an ecclesiastical-political and dogmatic perspective, not just within the Western part, but especially the Eastern part of the Empire. The originality of Justinian’s actions and writings lies in the very fact that, unlike Emperor Zenon (474-491) or Anastasius I (491-518) who, through their actions and edicts of faith, had excluded both the Chalcedonian definition, as well as its advocates, and equally favoured only the Cyrilian Christology in Severus of Antioch’s interpretation, he tackles the dogmatic-theological problems in integrative and harmonizing terms, rather than mutual exclusion of the two Christological visions. This aspect is particularly reflected in all his theological writings. The noveltly of Justinian’s approach also lies in the fact that he himself in his writings attempts to clarify the primary meaning of certain Cyrillian phrases and expressions, thus offering a rectification of Severus of Antioch’s interpretation of the Cyrilian Christology. In doing so Justinian, as Emperor, was actually pursuing a very important double aim: a) the first aim was to provide a very valid interpretation of Chalcedon, making use of the Cyrilian terms and phrases, reiterating and acknowledging them, while at the same time clarifying, as Patrick Gray once affirmed, ʻthat in itself it [Chalcedon] is authentically Cyrilian when properly understood (despite some of its terminology)’ [...] and that Cyril, in his turn, if he was correctly received, interpreted and understood, would actually be ʻauthentically Chalcedonian’.2

Controversy. Its History, Theology, and Texts, SVigChr. 23 (Leiden, 1994); Thomas G. Weinandy and Daniel A. Keating (eds), The Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria. A Critical Appreciation (London, 2003); Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, SVigChr. 96 (Leiden, 2009); Daniel Keating, The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford, 2004); Edward R. Hardy, ʻCyrillus von Alexandrien (ca. 380-444)’, TRE VIII (1981), 254-60; Anton Rehrman, Die Christologie des hl. Cyrillus von Alexandrien (Hildesheim, 1902); Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, The Early Church Fathers (London, 2000); Sergey Trostyanskiy, ʻReexamining Cyril of Alexandria’s Theory of the Incarnate Union’, in John F. Finamore and Tomáš Nejeschleba (eds), Platonism and its Legacy. Selected Papers from the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies (Lydney, 2019), 225-42; Frances M. Young, ʻA Reconsideration of Alexandrian Christology’, JEH 22 (1971), 103-14; Steven A. McKinion, Words, Imagery & the Mystery of Christ. A Reconstruction of Alexandria’s Christology, SVigChr. 55 (Leiden, 2000). 2 Patrick T.R. Gray, The Defence of Chalcedon in the East (451-553), Studies in the History of Christian Thought 20 (Leiden, 1979), 166.

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b) the second aim, inferred from the first aim, was to win back the antiChalcedonians, that is, particularly the adherents of Severus of Antioch in the 6th century.3 Acknowledging these very Christological disputes between the supporters of Chalcedon and those of Severus of Antioch, but also hopping to preserve the unity of the imperial church in the East, thus avoiding the split of the Severian followers of the Mia-Physite formula and also the emergence of a solid independent Mia-Physite church structure apart from the imperial Chalcedonian church, Justinian sought vigorously to find not just a minimalistic, but also very sound and efficient common ground between both groups, not merely politically and ecclesiastically, but most importantly, from the Christological teaching perspective. To this end, Cyril of Alexandria and his Christology were the ideal solution. Cyril was the common Church Father in the East, bringing together the Chalcedonians and the Severian Mia-Physites. Both parties were de facto adherents of Cyril of Alexandria: the Chalcedonians were followers of Cyril and his ‘selected’ Christology, as the synodal Fathers had performed at Chalcedon. They did not see any contradiction between Cyril and Chalcedon; rather, Cyril and his Christology had been confirmed at Chalcedon, being inherent to it, and the Mia-Physite adherents of Severus were the followers of the ‘whole’ Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, as this Christology was encapsulated too in his Third Letter to Nestorius along with the Twelve Anathematisms.

3

Like Philoxenus of Mabbug and others, such as John of Tella or Jacob of Serugh, Severus of Antioch (512-538) was the most ardent interpreter and promotor of the main Cyrilian christological statments, which he interpreted in the most extreme manner, which not even Cyril of Alexandria himself had intended. For more about Severus, but also about his fellows, see Pauline Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch, The Early Church Fathers (London, 2004); Iain R. Torrance, ʻSeverus von Antiochien (ca. 456-538)’, TRE 31 (2000), 184-6; Peter Bruns, ʻSeverus von Antiochien’, LACL (Freiburg, 31998), 636-7; Alois Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche: Die Kirche von Konstantinopel im 6. Jahrhundert, Vol. 2/2 (Freiburg, 1989), 17-183; André de Halleux, ʻPhiloxenus von Mabbug (ca. 450-523)’, TRE 26 (1996) 57680; Theresia Hainthaler, ʻPhiloxenus’, in Wassilios Klein (ed.), Syrische Kirchenväter (Stuttgart, 2004), 180-90; Peter Bruns, ʻPhiloxenus von Mabbug’, LACL (Freiburg, 31998), 577-8; Tanios Bou Mansour, ʻDie Christologie des Philoxenus von Mabbug’, in Alois Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche: Die Kirchen von Jerusalem und Antiochien nach 451 bis 600, Vol. 2/3 (Freiburg, 2002), 500-69; Wolfgang Hage, ʻJakob von Sarug (ca. 450-520/21)’, TRE 16 (1987), 470-4; Peter Bruns, ʻJakobus von Sarug’, LACL (Freiburg, 31998), 370-1; Volker Menze, ʻJacob of Sarug, John of Tella and Paul of Edessa: Ecclesiastical politics in Osrhoene 519-522’, in George A. Kiraz (ed.), Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock, Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 3 (Piscataway, NJ, 2008), 421-38; Volker Menze and Kutlu Akalin, John of Tella’s Profession of Faith: The Legacy of a Sixth-Century Syrian Orthodox Bishop, Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 25 (Piscataway, NJ, 2009); Tanios Bou Mansour, ʻDie Christologie des Jakob von Sarug’, in A. Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus, Vol. 2/3 (2002), 449-99; Roberta C. Chesnut, Three Monophysite Christologies: Severus of Antioch, Philoxenus of Mabbug, and Jacob of Sarug (Oxford, 1976).

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The only thing dividing them was not just disagreements with each other in their hermeneutics of Cyril, as Hovorun suggests,4 but the proper interpretation and reception of Cyril’s ‘whole’ Christology and his terms. Thus, to solve this matter, Justinian undertook and sponsored a gradual theological program of ʻgenuine’ clarification of Cyrilian Christology. 2. Justinian’s Christological works for the implementation of his theological program In the first stage, between 527-533/34, Justinian issued short edicts of faith, such as those in Codex Justinianus (CI I 1,5-8). He issued the first one when he became emperor on 1 April 527; the other three were composed and issued in 533, on different days/months, namely: The Edict of Faith Ad populos on 15 March 533 AD, and the other two, which are drafted rather in the form of letters and which do not differ very much content wise, are: the Edict of Faith Ad Epiphanium on 26 March 533 AD, and The Edict of Faith Ad Joanneum II. Papam on 6 June 533 AD.5 In the second phase, especially after the failure of the Constantinopolitan Home Synod (ἐνδημοῦσα σύνοδος) in 536,6 when Severus – along with others: Anthimus, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Peter of the Apamea and the monch Zoara – had been condemned and anathematized, followed by the issuance of an imperial order of condemnation on 6 August 536,7 Justinian composed a series of very significant theological treatises within a decade from 543 to 553, which best reflected his theological program not only for the clarification of the Chalcedonian definition as it was accepted, but also, as stated above, for a ʻgenuine’ clarification of Cyrilian Christology.8 4 Cyril Hovorun, ʻOne Composite Christ: Oneness and Duality of Jesus in the Byzantine Christology’, in Theresia Hainthaler et al. (eds), Jesus der Christus im Glaube der einen Kirche: Christologie – Kirchen des Ostens – Ökumenische Dialoge (Freiburg, 2019), 236-47, 236. 5 For more on this, see Teodor Tăbuș, ʻThe Orthodoxy of Emperor Justinian’s Christian Faith as a Matter of Roman Law (CJ I,1,5-8)’, SP 92 (2017), 411-21. 6 See more in Jakob Speigl, ‘Die Synode von 536 in Konstantinopel’, OS 43 (1994), 105-53; Christian Lange, Mia Energeia. Untersuchungen zur Einigungspolitik des Kaisers Heraclius und des Patriarchen Sergius von Constantinople, STAC 66 (Tübingen, 2012), 339-64; A. Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus, Vol. 2/2 (1989), 363-72; Fergus Millar, ‘Rome, Constantinople and the Near Eastern Church under Justinian: Two Synods of C.E. 536’, JRS 98 (2008), 62-82; Hartmut Leppin, Justinian. Das christliche Experiment (Stuttgart, 2011), 187-9, 379. 7 Constitutio sacra Iustiniani Imperatoris contra Anthimum, Severum, Petrum et Zoaram, also known as Novela 42. See ACO III 119.26-123.15; See, also, Rudolf Schoell and Guilelmus Kroll (eds), Corpus Juris Civilis: Novellae, Nov. 42, Vol. III (Berlin, 1895), 263.26-269.4; Mario Amelotti and Livia Migliardi Zingale, Scritti teologici ed ecclesiastici di Giustiniano, Legum Iustiniani Imperatoris Vocabularium III (Milano, 1977), 45-55. See, also, the translation by Fred H. Blume (accessed 10/01/2020). 8 ‘[…] we would expect in these treaties an emphasis on the common ground between the two sides, and a claim that Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians shared the same faith but expressed

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By this, Justinian sought to illustrate very clearly to everyone that ultimately, between the ‘whole’ Christology of Cyril and the vocabulary of the Chalcedonian definition of faith there was no contradiction, at least not Christological in essence, provided that Cyril was correctly understood and interpreted. His most important works are: a) Contra monophysitas, written to some monks of Alexandria around 542/43.9 These had previously been Miaphysites, however, through Zoilos, a former pro-Chalcedonian Palestinian monk elected Patriarch of Alexandria in 540, they returned to the Chalcedonian imperial Church. This work is a truly doctrinal treatise, in which Justinian praises them for their courage to become Chalcedonians unreservedly, and instructs them towards the correct understanding of the Chalcedonian definition of faith. b) Epistula contra tria capitula, written most probably after 544/545.10 These were: 1) the person and the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia (†428); 2) the writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus against Cyrill of Alexandria, especially those in 430; 3) the Letter to Mari the Persian to Ibas of Edessa, written in 433/434. All these were accused of Nestorianism, a heresy which had in turn been condemned both at the first council of Ephesus (431) and at Chalcedon (451).11 Justinian viewed their condemnation as a forestalling of a further restoration of Nestorianism.12 In fact, as Prof. Price once stated, this signified ʻa way of expressing fidelity to the memory of Nestorius chief opponent, Cyril of Alexandria, and to his teaching that in Christ, Godhead and manhood come together in a “hypostatic” or real union’.13 c) Edictum rectae fidei.14 Written in 551, two years before the Fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 553, this edict comprised not only a it in different terminology. To some extent this was indeed the emperor’s massage, in his exposition of Chalcedon in terms of the strongly Cyrillian Christology that he shared with the miaphysites. But far from trying to blur the distinction between dyophysitism and miaphysitism, he showed a constant concern to reassert it’, Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553: With Related Texts on the Three Chapters Controversy, Vol. I, TTH 51 (Liverpool, 2012), 22. 9 Emperor Justinian, Contra monophysitas, in Eduard Schwartz (ed.), Drei dogmatische Schriften Justinians, ABAW.PH 18 (München, 1939), 6-44; For the translation see Kenneth Paul Wesche, On the Person of Christ: The Christology of Emperor Justinian (Crestwood, NY, 1991), 23-107; See, also, Jeffrey Lee Macdonald, The Christological Works of Justinian. Unpublished doctoral thesis (Washington, DC, 1995), 24-188. 10 Emperor Justinian, Epistula contra tria capitula, in E. Schwartz (ed.), Drei dogmatische Schriften (1939), 45-69; For the translation see K.P. Wesche, On the Person of Christ (1991), 109-58. 11 For more on this, see R. Price, The Acts (2012), I 76-98; A. Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus, Vol. 2/2 (1989), 431-84. See, also, Celia Chazelle and Catherine Cubitt (eds), The Crisis of the Oikoumene: The Three Chapters and the Failed Quest for Unity in the Sixth-Century Mediterranean (Turnhout, 2007). 12 R. Price, The Acts (2012), I 7,8, 192; 17, 197. 13 R. Price, The Acts (2012), I 59. 14 Emperor Justinian, Edictum rectae fidei, in E. Schwartz (ed.), Drei dogmatische Schriften (1939), 71-111; Further abbr.: Justinian, Edictum. For the translation see K.P. Wesche, On the

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confession of faith by Justinian, but also 13 Anathematisms, in some way following the model of Cyril’s 12 Anathematisms. The second part of the edict resumed the matter of the three chapters, which would eventually be condemned at the fifth ecumenical council, too.15 3. Justinian’s main Christological themes in accord with Cyril’s Christological thinking In the works mentioned above, four Christological themes can be recognized, which Justinian treats in extenso, as the most significant and representative ones. At the same time, these are best synthesized in his Anathematisms in Confessio rectae fidei, as well as in Against the Monophysites. 1. The first theme concerns the Cyrilian terminology or expressions καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἕνωσιν and ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτόν. For instance, the phrase καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἕνωσιν was not found in the definition of Chalcedon,16 nor in Zenon’s Henoticon (482),17 or also in his first Edict of faith from 527.18 Instead, in his other edicts of faith in 533 and theological writings, this phrase exists.19 However, in all his other works, this phrase is very often used, together with the phrase ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτόν. The latter, one and the same, can be found both in Chalcedon and in Henotikon. Justinian’s view on the hypostatic union is best synthesized in anathematism four in Confessio Rectae fidei.20 Person of Christ (1991), 159-98; R. Price, The Acts (2012), I 122-59; See also J.L. Macdonald, The Christological Works (1995), 189-255. 15 The issue of the three chapters had become very problematic, which, in fact, started in the spring of 532 during the Constantinopolitan colloquium. Justinian did not forget this episode. His urge to condemn the three chapters proved actually that this was an important component of his theological programme of clarification and complete reception of Cyrilian Christology, especially after 536. See note 11. 16 See Definitio fidei, in Norman P. Tanner S.J. (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Nicaea I to Lateran V, vol. 1 (London, 1990), 83-7; Further abbr.: CODengl. 17 Evagrius Scholasticus, Historia ecclesiastica – Kirchengeschichte, trans. by Adelheid Hübner, FC 57/1 (Washington, 2007), 358-65; Further abbr.: Evagrius Scholasticus, HE; See also the English translation by Michael Whitby, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, TTH 33 (Liverpool, 2000), 147-9. 18 Codex Justinianus, ed. by Paul Krüger, Vol. II (Berlin, 1892), I 1,5, 6-7; See, also, Bruce W. Frier (ed.), The Codex of Justinian: A new annotated translation, with parallel Latin and Greek text based on a translation by Justice Fred H. Blume, Vol. I (Cambridge, 2016), 18-21. 19 See for example The Edicts of Faith Ad populos from 15 March 533 AD, Ad Epiphanium from 26 March 533 AD, and Ad Joanneum II. Papam von 6 June 533 AD. CJ I 1,6-8, in Krüger (1892), 7-12; See, also, F.H. Blume, The Codex of Justinian (2016), 20-41. 20 A very good analysis of it and a comparison with the anathematism given at the Fifth Ecumenical Council, see Florian Bruckmann, ‘ἕνωσις καθ’ ὑπόστασιν. Die ersten zehn Anathematismen des fünften ökumenischen Konzils (Konstantinopel 553) als Dokument neuchalkedonischer Theologie’, AHC 36,1/2 (2004), 1-167, 93-167.

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Justinian states: Εἴ τις λέγει κατὰ χάριν ἢ κατ’ ἐνέργειαν ἢ κατ’ ἀξίαν ἢ κατ’ ἰσοτιμίαν ἢ κατ’ αὐθεντίαν ἢ ἀναφορὰν ἢ σχέσιν ἢ δύναμιν τὴν ἕνωσιν τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου πρὸς ἄνθρωπον γεγενῆσθαι ἢ καθ’ ὁμωνυμίαν, καθ’ ἣν οἱ Νεστοριανοὶ καὶ τὸν θεὸν λόγον Χριστὸν καλοῦντες καὶ τὸν ἄνθρωπον κεχωρισμένως Χριστὸν ὀνομάζοντες κατὰ μόνην τὴν προσηγορίαν ἕνα Χριστὸν λέγουσιν, ἢ εἴ τις λέγει κατ’ εὐδοκίαν τὴν ἕνωσιν γεγενῆσθαι, καθὼς Θεόδωρος ὁ αἱρετικὸς αὐταῖς λέξεσι λέγει, ὡς ἀρεσθέντος τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου τῶι ἀνθρώπωι ἀπὸ τοῦ εὖ καὶ καλὰ δόξαι αὐτῶι περὶ αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ καθ’ ὑπόστασιν τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου πρὸς τὴν σάρκα ἐψυχωμένην ψυχῆι λογικῆι καὶ νοερᾶι τὴν ἕνωσιν ὁμολογεῖ καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μίαν αὐτοῦ τὴν ὑπόστασιν σύνθετον, ὁ τοιοῦτος ἀνάθεμα ἔστω.21 Concerning the Cyrilian expressions καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἕνωσιν and ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτόν, Justinian in his writings synonimously uses other similar phrases, such as εἷς σύνθετος Χριστός22 or μία ὑπόστασις σύνθετος in response to the Mia-Physite formula μία φύσις σύνθετος or μία φύσις Θεοῦ Λόγου σεσαρκωμένη, which would, in fact, emphasize, their value and clearly highlight the hypostatic union of Christ, God’s Logos.23 Justinian further states that: ἐπὶ γὰρ τοῦ κατὰ Χριστὸν μυστηρίου ἡ κατὰ σύνθεσιν ἕνωσις τὴν σύγχυσιν καὶ διαίρεσιν ἀποβάλλεται, καὶ φυλάττει μὲν τὴν ἑκατέρας φύσεως ἰδιότητα, μίαν δὲ ὑπόστασιν ἤτοι πρόσωπον τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου καὶ μετὰ τῆς σαρκὸς δείκνυσι καὶ ἔστιν εἷς καὶ ὁ αὐτὸς τέλειος ἐν θεότητι καὶ τέλειος ἐν ἀνθρωπότητι, οὐχ ὡς ἐν δυσὶν ὑποστάσεσιν ἤγουν προσώποις, ἀλλ’ ἐν θείαι φύσει καὶ ἀνθρωπίνηι γνωριζόμενος, ἵν’ εἷς ἦι τὰ ἑκάτερα, τέλειος θεὸς καὶ τέλειος ἄνθρωπος, ὁ αὐτὸς ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, ὁ εἷς τῆς ἁγίας τριάδος συνδοξαζόμενος τῶι πατρὶ καὶ τῶι ἁγίωι πνεύματι.24 21 Justinian, Edictum, ed. E. Schwartz (1939), Greek text: 90.29-36; Latin text: 91.29-37; trans. by R. Price, The Acts (2012), I 144: ʻIf anyone says it was according to grace or operation or merit or equal honour or authority or reference or relation or power that the union of God the Word with man took place, or according to homonymy, by which the Nestorians, by calling God the Word “Christ” and separately calling the man “Christ”, say there is one Christ in name alone, or if anyone says that the union took place according to good pleasure, as the heretic Theodore states in these very words, namely that God the Word was satisfied with the man as a result of having an excellent opinion of him, but does not profess that the union of God the Word with the flesh ensouled by a rational and intelligent soul was hypostatic and that as a result his composite hypostasis is one, let him be anathema’. See, also, K.P. Wesche, On the Person of Christ (1991), 182. 22 Obviously, this phrase was not used only by Justinian in his writings. Even before him, the Scytian monk Johannes Maxentius used it in his theological writings. 23 More about these Christological formulae, see by C. Hovorun, One Composite Christ (2019), 236-47. 24 Justinian, Edictum, ed. E. Schwartz (1939), Greek text: 76.32-8; Latin text: 77.34-40; trans. by R. Price, The Acts (2012), I 133-4: ʻFor as regards the mystery of Christ the union by composition excludes both merger and division, and protects the specific character of each nature, and presents one hypostatis or person of God the Word even with the flesh; he is one and the same, complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, not as in two hypostases or persons but acknowledged in both divine and human nature (so that both may be one), complete God and

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2. The second main theme for Justinian is the correct interpretation of the formula μία φύσις τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκωμένη – One incarnated nature of the God Word –, correlated with the correct interpretation and simultaneous use of the phrases ἐκ δύο φύσεων/ex duabus naturis and ἐν δύο φύσεσιν/ in duabus naturis as coexisting in one ὑπόστασις or πρόσωπον. These issues were raised both by the Scythian monks in their writings25 as well as within Collatio cum Severianis in 532.26 For example, Justinian, in the ninth anathematism, which is almost identical and corresponds with Canon 8 of the Fifth Ecumenical Council,27 states: Εἴ τις λέγων μίαν φύσιν τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκωμένην οὐχ οὕτως αὐτὸ ἐκλαμβάνει ὡς ὅτι ἐκ τῆς θείας φύσεως καὶ τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης εἷς Χριστὸς ἀπετελέσθη ὁμοούσιος τῶι πατρὶ κατὰ τὴν θεότητα καὶ ὁμοούσιος ἡμῖν ὁ αὐτὸς κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρωπότητα, ἀλλ’ ὅτι τῆς θεότητος καὶ τῆς σαρκὸς τοῦ Χριστοῦ μία φύσις ἤτοι οὐσία ἀπετελέσθη κατὰ τὴν Ἀπολιναρίου καὶ Εὐτυχοῦς κακοπιστίαν, ὁ τοιοῦτος ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. ἐφίσης γὰρ καὶ τοὺς ἀνὰ μέρος διαιροῦντας ἤτοι τέμνοντας καὶ τοὺς συγχέοντας τὸ τῆς θείας οἰκονομίας μυστήριον τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἀποστρέφεται καὶ ἀναθεματίζει ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία’.28

Beside genuine key Christological phrases by Cyril, such as καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἕνωσιν, at the centre of Severus’s Christology lied the most striking formula μία φύσις τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκωμένη. This formula was in fact of Apollinarist origin.29 However, Cyril, because he was without doubt convinced that complete man, the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, glorified as one of the holy Trinity together with the Father and the Holy Spirit’. See, also, K.P. Wesche, On the Person of Christ (1991), 168. 25 ACO IV 2, 3-62. See, also, Eduard Schwartz, De monachis Scythicis, in ACO IV 2, I-XIII; François Glorie, ‘Prolegomena’, in CCh.SL 85A (Turnhout, 1978), XXIII-XLI; John Anthony McGuckin, ‘The “Theopaschite Confession” (Text and Historical Context). A study in the Cyrilinian re-interpretation of Chalcedon’, JEH 35 (1984), 239-55. Berthold Altaner, ʻBeiträge zum Schrifttum der „Skythischen“ (gothischen) Mönche: Quellenkritische und literarhistorische Untersuchungen’, HJ 72 (1953), 568-81. 26 More about see in Jakob Speigl, ‘Das Religionsgespräch mit den severianischen Bischöfen in Konstantinopel im Jahre 532’, AHC 16 (1984), 264-85; Sebastian Brock, ‘The Conversations with die Syrian Orthodox under Justinian (532)’, OCP 47 (1981), 87-121; C. Lange, Mia Energeia (2012), 292-314; A. Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus, Vol. 2/2 (1989), 244-62, 361-3. 27 For an analysis and comparison between them see F. Bruckmann, ‘ἕνωσις καθ’ ὑπόστασιν’ (2004), 36/2, 259-388, 307-28. 28 Justinian, Edictum, ed. E. Schwartz (1939), Greek text: 92.17-23; Latin text: 93.17-23. trans. by R. Price, The Acts (2012), I 145: ʻIf anyone saying “one incarnate nature of God the Word” takes it to mean not that from the divine and the human natures one Christ was constituted, consubstantial with the Father in respect of the Godhead and the same consubstantial with us in respect of the manhood, but that the Godhead and the flesh of Christ constituted one nature in accordance with the false belief of Apollinarius and Eutyches, let him be anathema. For both those who divide or cleave into parts and those who merge the mystery of the divine dispensation of Christ are equally rejected and anathematized by the catholic church’. See, also, K.P. Wesche, On the Person of Christ (1991), 183. 29 More about Severus’ Christology see R.C. Chesnut, Three Monophysite Christologies (1976), 9-56; P. Allen and C.T.R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch (2004), 34-8.

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this formula belonged to and originated from the pro-Nicene Alexandrian bishop Athanasius the Great (296/298-373), had initially used and interpreted it in his Christological debates with Nestorius, with a view to refuting the latter’s Christological model of the division of the two natures of Christ and highlighting the real subject of incarnation and the single subjectivity and oneness of Christ.30 To Cyril (but also to Chalcedon or Justinian), He was one and the same Christ, Emmanuel, the Son of God and the λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ (the God Logos), the second Hypostasis of the Trinity, whose divinity and humanity were not flawed or fused together, as Apollinarius thought, or divided without a real connection between them, or at most, united only by virtue of grace and dignity, as Nestorius advocated.31 Severus, however, unlike Cyril, understood and interpreted the ‘Cyrilian’ Mia-physis formula also as one σύνθετος φύσις of Christ, God the Logos, while at the same time admitting the uniqueness and oneness of Christ as being out of or from two natures, and not in two natures existing in one hypostasis or Prosopon. Mostly, Severus made use of this ‘Cyrilian’ Mia-Physis formula with a view to refuting as radically as possible the very essence of the Chalcedonian definition of faith, namely the formula εἰς πρόσωπον καὶ μία ὑπόστασις, δύο φύσεις (ἐν δύο φύσεσιν / the two natures subsisted in Christ) of the one and the same Son, the Only-Begotten, the God Logos, the Kyrios Jesus Christ (ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν υἱὸν καὶ μονογενῆ, θεὸν λόγον, κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν), united in him without confusion / ἀσυγχύτως (unconfusedly), without conversion or change / ἀτρέπτως, without division / ἀδιαιρέτως (indivisibly), without separation / ἀχωρίστως (inseparably).32 However, for example, three out of these four descriptive nouns derive from Cyril’s writings which he used to illustrate the ineffable manner of the unity between divinity and humanity in Christ, the God Logos.33 3. The third theme concerns the correct use and interpretation of the anthropological model of union between the soul and the body and their existence, which practically forms the human nature, comprised of soul and flesh.34 This anthropological model had been rather moderately used by Cyril in his dispute with Nestorius with regard to the manner of union between divinity and humanity in the one and unique person/hypostasis of Jesus Christ, the God Logos.35 The same Cyrilian anthropological model had been used and interpreted 30 More about Cyril’s Christology see in J.A. McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria (1994), 175-226. 31 See Cyrilli epistula altera ad Nestorium, in CODengl., 40-4; See, also, Cyrilli epistula tertia ad Nestorium, in CODengl., 50-61; J.A. McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria (1994), 262-75; Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology (2009), 326-34; 479-94. 32 Definitio fidei of Chalcedon, in CODengl., 83-7. 33 See note 31. 34 See more in J.L. Macdonald, The Christological Works (1995), 73-4; 80-104; 200-14. 35 See note 31.

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in an extreme manner by the Mia-Physite Severians in the 6th century, with a view to defining in stark contrast to the Chalcedonian Dyophisitism the one composite nature of Christ, God’s Logos, as existing out of (ex) divinity and humanity. In his Christological works, however, Justinian adopts a critical stance, disagreeing with the interpretation put forward by the Miaphysites. Very likely, Justinian was aware of the dangerous imperfection of this anthropological model of expressing in an ambiguous manner the union between the two natures of Christ, the Logos of God.36 The fourth theme is related to the propriety of the theopaschite language, through which Justinian, for example, makes direct reference to the adequate and reasonable understanding of Cyril’s anathematism 12.37 For example, in anathematism sixth in Confessio rectae fidei, which is identical with Canon 10 of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, Justinian stated the following: Εἴ τις οὐχ ὁμολογεῖ τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον σαρκὶ κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν χριστὸν θεὸν εἶναι ἀληθινὸν καὶ κύριον τῆς δόξης καὶ ἕνα τῆς ἁγίας τριάδος, ὁ τοιοῦτος ἀνάθεμα ἔστω.38 In other words, the Only Begotten Son of God, True God of True God, was made flesh and became man, suffered for us on the cross under Pontius Pilate, and so forth. The miracles and the sufferings belong to the one and the same, which He willingly suffered in the flesh. And the Trinity remained a Trinity, although one person/hypostasis of the Trinity of God, the Word (the Logos) became flesh, and so on. Some of these Christological statements were found almost identical in Zenon’s Henotikon.39 The same thoughts also appeared in the Severian Miaphysites bishops’ plerophoria.40 These doctrinal Christological statements were submitted by them first to emperor Justinian and then to the Chalcedonian bishops in the spring of 532 as a basis of discussion regarding 36

See, also, R. Price, The Acts (2012), 125. See Cyrilli epistula altera ad Nestorium, in CODengl., 42.20-43.3; See, also, Cyrilli epistula tertia ad Nestorium, in CODengl., 53.32-54.16; 61.17-22. Similar expressions can be found in Justinian’s edicts of faith in his Codex such as, in Ad populos (CJ I 1,6 [Krüger, 7, right column): ἑνὸς καὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ τά τε θαύματα καὶ τὰ πάθη, ἅπερ ἑκουσίως ὑπέμεινεν σαρκί, γινώσκοντες […]. See, also, CJ I 1,5 (ibid. 6, right column); CJ I 1,7 (ibid. 9, left column); CJ I 1,8 (ibid. 11, left column). 38 Justinian, Edictum, ed. E. Schwartz (1939), Greek text: 92.6-7; Latin text: 93.6-7; trans. by R. Price, The Acts (2012), I 144: ʻIf anyone does not profess that our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified in the flesh, is true God and Lord of glory and one of the holy Trinity, let him be anathema’. See, also, K.P. Wesche, On the Person of Christ (1991), 182. For an analysis and comparison between the anathematism sixth and the Canon 10 of the Fifth Ecumenical Council see F. Bruckmann, ‘ἕνωσις καθ’ ὑπόστασιν’ (2004), 36/2, 334-64. 39 See note 17. 40 See Ps.-Zachariae Rhetor HE IX 15, 189.30-196.4; For English translation see W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History of the Church in the fifth and sixth Centuries (Cambridge, 1972), 362-6. See, also, Geoffrey Greatrex et al., The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor Church and War in Late Antiquity: Church and War in Late Antiquity, TTH 55 (Liverpool 2011), 346-53; Michael the Syrian, Chronicle IX 22 (ed. by Chabot, II 196203). See, also, Jakob Speigl, ʻDas Religionsgespräch’ (1964), 268. 37

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their faith, when they had been invited by Justinian to participate in a theological colloquium in Constantinople. The cardinal aim of this consultation was the reunion of both sides after the disruptions caused by the Chalcedonian definition in the imperial church. 4. Conclusion In his theological works, Justinian seeks the explanation and reception not of the ‘selected’, as the synodal Fathers at Chalcedon in 451 had done, but of the ‘whole’ Christology of Cyril of Alexandria along with his key Christological terminology and statements, as comprised also in his Third Letter to Nestorius containing the Twelve Anathematisms or in other works by him like ʻOn the Unity of Christ’. By supporting a gradual theological program of clarification of the ‘whole’ Cyrilian Christology, Justinian also aimed at correcting the adherents of Severus, who were using the same arguments to refute and condemn Chalcedon, interpreting Cyril in an exclusivist manner. According to Justinian, the ‘whole’ Cyril was in full accord with the Chalcedonian Christology, and not in total disaccord, as they were interpreting him. Cyril was the most common authoritative church father both for the pro-Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites at the beginning of the 6th century, that is, their connector and common theological basis. However, instead of uniting them, Cyril’s Christology rather divided them, leading even to the establishment of another church in the Roman Empire, which was contrary to Justinian’s wish, such as the Syriac Orthodox Church. Last but not least, Justinian further wanted to prove that his theological program was faithful not just to Cyril’s Christology alone, but also to his exegesis of the Christological statements of the Nicene Creed, and consequently, faithful to the Nicaean Creed itself.

Reading Traditions of the Ladder of John Sinaites According to the Manuscript Marks Maxim VENETSKOV, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

ABSTRACT A large number of Greek manuscripts of the Ladder, the ascetic treatise written by John hegumen of Sinai in the seventh century, provide specific information on how the text was read in the Byzantine and post-Byzantine traditions from the 14th century. The Synaxarion written in the 11th-12th centuries at the monastery of the Mother of God Evergetis, prescribes the reading of the Ladder, with some other ascetic treatises, during Lent. In several codices of the writing of Climacus there are found various reading marks or notations (especialy στάσεις and ὧραι) which attest to many monastic practices of the continuous reading aloud of the full text of the Ladder. An important number of codices were read in pericopes, performed in the course of the Offices of Terce, Sext and Nones, and extending from Monday to Friday during the first six weeks of Lent. In some other manuscripts, which include reading marks, it is not possible to determine the process of readings of the Ladder. The tradition of reading the Ladder at the refectory of the monasteries on Mount Athos and Sinai continues to the present day.

The ascetic work called Κλίμαξ, Scala or Ladder, written in the seventh century by John Climacus, hegumen of the monastery on Mount Sinai, was transmitted in about 500 Greek manuscripts from the 8th to the 19th centuries.1 Such a number of codices shows that Climacus was one of the most widely read ascetic writers in Byzantine and post-Byzantine monasteries. But how was the Ladder read? A review of the entire manuscript corpus would go beyond the scope of this article; of the 350 studied codices more than 70 include various marks testifying to a reading in pericopes, at least one in five manuscripts of the transmitted corpus.2 However, the analysis of selected manuscripts shows the diversities and similarities of reading traditions of Climacus’ treatise. 1 According to the last count, the full text of the Ladder, excluding cases of mutilation, is transmitted in about 460 codices (including the paraphrase of the Ladder of the 15th-16th centuries). 23 fragments (folios or notebooks) of the Ladder are also preserved; and otherwise, another 100 manuscripts include extracts from the Ladder and over 150 other manuscripts contain quotes from John Climacus. 2 Nancy Ševčenko has already discovered the presence of reading marks in some codices of the Ladder: Athen. EBE 2466 and Benaki TA 66, Xenoph. 2, Coisl. 88, Patm. 121, 122 and Princeton

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 207-228. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Reading marks In the margins of the manuscripts of the Ladder we can read the indications στάσ(ις),3 which specify the place in the text (sometimes marked by a cross4 or by an asterisk5) where it is necessary to stop and restart reading. Margins often contain more developed reading indications: the Hours Terce, Sexte, Nones (ὧραι γ΄, ς΄, θ΄), as well as the days (from Monday to Friday) and weeks of Lent (from the first to the sixth).6 The marks can be reduced to simple circles or crosses.7 In manuscripts prior to the 14th century, the reading marks were added by later hands (it seems, mostly from the 15th-16th centuries). Nevertheless, for the marks in the form of circles and crosses, it is difficult to determine their dating.8 The oldest witness in which the reading marks are from the same hand as the main text is Athen. EBE 2466, copied by the monk Callistos in October 1342. This codex is particularly valuable because the copyist provides the rule of use of these marks: ‘Note, you who want to read this work during the divine assemblies of the Hours in the holy church of God: where the reader finds in the margins a στάσις drawn in red ink, he stops reading; in the same way, the one who begins, he makes the beginning of the reading from this moment…’9 Garrett 16. Cf. N.P. Ševčenko, ‘Monastic challenges: some illustrated manuscripts of the Heavenly Ladder’, in C. Hourihane (ed.), Byzantine Art: Recent Studies (Princeton, 2009), 62. 3 For example, Athen. Benaki TA 66; Sabait. 363, 364; S. Sepul. 21; Coisl. 88; Paris. gr. 865, 1068 and 1070. The words στάσ(ις) are inscribed in circles in Princeton Garrett 16 and Sabait. 175. 4 Cf. Sabait. 363; Paris. gr. 1068. 5 Cf. S. Sepul. 21. 6 For example, Esphigm. 2 (60); Meg. Laur. B 101; Xenoph. 2; Vatop. 349; Leim. 201; Patm. 121, 122, 124; Sinai. gr. 419. The indications of Hours are preceded by marks στάσ(ις) in Vatop. 348 and Sinai. gr. 420. Sometimes, the references of Hours do not appear, but only the days and weeks of Lent: Athen. EBE 2466; Vatop. 367; Paris. suppl. gr. 1279 and Sinai. gr. 416 (with fragment of this codex: Petrop. gr. 86). 7 In the margins of the codex Lond. Add. 39610, there are double circles (with a point inside) which undoubtedly indicate the reading marks (the word στάσις has been inscribed in two circles: ff. 171v, 174v). The double circles with the numbers are presented in margins of the codex Plut. 7.17. The margins of the Plut. 7.20 probably contain reading marks: there are the crosses inscribed in circles which refer to the passages marked by four points (in red ink). 8 The circles are present in the codex Lond. Add. 39610, from the 11th century, and the crosses appear in the Plut. 7.20, from the 12th century. 9 Cf. Athen. EBE 2466, a. 1342, f. 1v: Ὁρᾶτε οἱ ἀναγινώσκειν μέλλοντες ἐν τῇ πτυκτίδι ταύτῃ ἐν ταῖς τῶν ὡρῶν θείαις συνάξεσι τῆς ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐκκλησίας· καὶ ἔνθα ἂν εὑρήσεις ὁ ἀναγινώσκων ἔξω ἐν τοῖς μετωπίοις δι’ ἐρυθρῶν γραμμάτων τό, στάσις, ἐκεῖ καὶ αὐτὸς τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν στῆξον, καὶ περαιτέρω μὴ πρόβαινε· ὁμοίως καὶ ὁ τῆς ἀναγνώσεως μέλλων ἄρχεσθαι ἀπ’ ἐκείνου τοῦ στίγματος, τὴν ἀρχὴν ποιείτω τῆς ἀναγνώσεως· καὶ οὕτως πάλιν ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις ἐρυθροῖς γράμμασι καταπαυέσθω καὶ αὐτὸς τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν· εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα γράμματα ἐγράφησάν τε καὶ ἐσημειώθησαν.

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Reading practices The earliest textual source providing information about the reading practice of the Ladder is the Synaxarion (or Typicon), written in the 11th-12th century, at the monastery of the Mother of God Evergetis. In the notice on Tuesday of the first week of Lent,10 this Synaxarion prescribed reading Climacus, from the first step of the Ladder, in the office of Prime, as well as during meals.11 The same Synaxarion also prescribed reading the Catecheses of Theodore Studites during the Prime on three days (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday);12 four other days (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) are reserved for reading Climacus;13 during the Terce, Sexte and Nones should be read Ephrem the Syrian.14 The ascetic authors who are to be read during Lent, are mentioned by a posterior hand in the margins of one codex of the Ladder, Petrop. gr. 207, from the 12th c.: as this note indicates, the Ladder is to be read during the Hours, including Nones, but only during the first week of Lent; however, in τὸ κατανυκτικόν15 of all Lent, until Friday of the sixth week, it is prescribed to hear the readings of The Lausiac History and Saint Ephrem.16 In the codex Petrop. gr. 207, there are no reading marks. According to the Synaxarion of Evergetis, Climacus was therefore to be read 23 times (6 weeks, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, but from the Tuesday of the 1st week) during the Prime, which was celebrated at the end 10 Cf. R.H. Jordan, The Synaxarion of the Monastery of the Theotokos Evergetis (March-August, The Movable Cycle) [BBTT 6.6 (2005)], Day T.13, p. 368. See also: A.A. Dmitriewski, [Opisanie liturgiceskih rukopisej] Description of liturgical manuscripts (Kiev, 1895), vol. 1, 516-7. In the current state of research, no mention of the readings of Climacus has been found in other Synaxaria. 11 … ἀπὸ τῆς σήμερον γὰρ ἀρχόμεθα ἀναγινώσκειν τὸν ἅγιον Ἰωάννην τῆς Κλίμακος ἀρχόμενοι ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου αὐτοῦ λόγου, εἰς τὴν πρώτην δὲ ὥραν μόνον καὶ εἰς τὴν τράπεζαν … (Synaxarion…, Day T.13, p. 368.16-8; see also: T.17, p. 378.26-380.1; T.19, p. 388.8-9; T.24, p. 392.7-8; T.26, p. 398.23-400.1; T.33, p. 412.1-2). 12 In fact, in the Little Catecheses of Theodore Studite we can find several marks of liturgical readings: ‘les 73 premières pièces portent des lemmes qui précisent le jour, ou au moins la période, où la catéchèse devra être lue, tandis que les 61 catéchèses qui suivent ne présentent aucun lemme’, cf. J. Leroy, Études sur les Grandes Cathéchèses de s. Théodore Studite’. Édition par O. Delouis avec la participation de S.J. Voicu, SeT 456 (Rome, 2008), 66. 13 … ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ εἰς τὴν πρώτην ὥραν τετράδι καὶ παρασκευῇ καὶ κυριακῇ ἀνὰ πᾶσαν τὴν τεσσαρακοστὴν ἀναγινώσκει ὁ προεστὼς τὰς Κατηχήσεις τοῦ ἁγίου Θεοδώρου τοῦ Στυδίτου, τὰς δὲ λοιπὰς ἡμέρας εἰς τὴν πρώτην ὥραν ἐκ τοῦ Κλίμακος (Synaxarion…, Day T.13, p. 368.20-4). 14 … τὰς δὲ λοιπὰς ὥρας, ἤγουν γʹ ϛʹ καὶ θʹ, ἀναγινώσκομεν τὸν ἅγιον Ἐφραίμ (Synaxarion …, Day T.13, p. 368.18-9). 15 It is difficult to know at which exact office the readings took place: during Sunday Vespers, Psalter or other offices throughout the period of Lent. 16 Cf. Petrop. gr. 207, f. 1r: ἄρχετ(αι) δὲ ἀπὸ τῆ(ς) β΄ τῆς α΄-ης ἑβδομάδος καὶ ἀναγινώσκετ(αι) εἰς τὰς ὥρας τῆς α΄-ης ἑβδομάδος καὶ εἰς τὴν θ΄ ἕως τῆς παρασκευῆς τοῦ ἁγίου Θεοδώρου μόνον· εἰς δὲ τὸ κατανυκτικὸν τῆς μ΄ (= Τεσσαρακοστῆς) ὅλης καὶ σχολάζει καὶ τὸ Λαυσαϊκὸν καὶ ὁ ἅγιος Ἐφραὶμ ἕως τῆς παρασκευῆς τοῦ Λαζάρου (copyist errors have been corrected).

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of the Matins in the church and not in the cells (where the other Hours took place).17 Climacus was also read during meals in Lent, but it is difficult to define the number of readings: Lent lasts forty days, but on Saturdays and Sundays the monks have two meals not considered as Lent, so, it is difficult to determine if the Ladder was read twice or not at all on weekends. The Synaxarion also specifies the volume of readings: about two folios.18 We note in fact that some pericopes in the manuscripts extend over about two folios,19 but the divisions of reading passages are not often identical inside the same manuscript.20 Moreover, the size of manuscripts with reading marks is very variable: from 32 × 22 cm (written area: 23,5 × 7 mm, 2 col., 35 lines)21 to 16 × 11 cm (written area: 11 × 9 cm, 23 lines).22 In the manuscript corpus, the text of the Ladder is divided in different ways. The readings start with the introductory texts of the Ladder (Preface, Index, Prologus,23 Vita of John Climacus and Correspondence between John of Raithou and John Climacus24), or, less often, at the first step of the Ladder;25 most of the time, the pericopes end at the final piece of the book, the speech Ad pastorem, or, rarely, before, at the 30th step of the Ladder.26 There are also several manuscripts where the readings marks have been added in a fragmentary manner.27 Reading divisions The number of pericopes varies depending on the codex: there are between 51 and 100 reading marks, sometimes numbered. We have identified different 17 … ἡ πρώτη ὥρα τρίψαλμος σὺν τῷ ὄρθρῳ, ἡ ἀπὸ τῆς εὐχῆς ἀνάγνωσις ἐκ τοῦ Κλίμακος· αἱ λοιπαὶ ὧραι ἐν τοῖς κελλίοις (cf. Synaxarion…, Day T.17, p. 378.26-380.2). 18 … ἐκ τοῦ Κλίμακος ὡσεὶ φύλλα βʹ (cf. Synaxarion…, Day T.13, p. 368.23-4). 19 The late copyist in Paris. gr. 1160, with reading marks, specifies that it is necessary to read two folios per pericope: … ἀνάγνωθι φύλλα β΄ εἰς τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν (f. 1v). 20 In the Athen. EBE 308, the pericopes range from 4 to 7 folios; in the Sinai. gr. 425, the divisions are presented between 1 f. and 3,5 ff.; but in Sabait. 363 readings marks almost always appear on every third folio. 21 Paris. gr. 1259, a. 1516. 22 Paris. gr. 1160. 23 The readings rarely cover all introductory pieces, including Preface, Index and Prologus (cf. Vatop. 349; Paris. gr. 1070). 24 As the order of the introductory pieces of the Ladder differs from one manuscript to another, cf. M. Venetskov, ‘La rédaction des pièces-annexes de l’Échelle de Jean du Sinaï : de la Lettre de Jean de Raïthou à la Table retrograde’, Medioevo Greco 19 (2019), 229-31, the pericopes start at different pieces. In two related manuscripts, Coisl. 88 and Paris. gr. 870, the first στάσις appears in the middle of the Vita of Climacus. 25 S. Sepul. 21; Patm. 121, 122, 124; Petrop. gr. 102. 26 Cf. Paris. gr. 1068; Sinai. gr. 425, 426, 428; Petrop. gr. 102. 27 For example, Athen. EBE 309, ff. 46r, 49v; Athen. EBE 2316, ff. 94r, 118r; Ambros. M 45 sup. (511), ff. 23r, 27r.

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numbers of pericopes (51, 56, 58, 70, 81, 90 στάσεις),28 which do not allow us to know at which office and on which days the Ladder was read. Nevertheless, by applying the rule of the Evergetis’ Synaxarion (23 readings during Prime and some readings during Lent meals), it can be assumed that the pericopes correspond to some reading practices at the offices of Hours and in refectories during Lent. As for the reading practice of the Ladder in 60 pericopes, it is explained in a rule left by a copyist of the 15th-16th century at the end of the Sinai. gr. 416: we learn that 60 readings take place during six weeks of Lent in the offices of Terce and Sexte, before entering the Holy Week, which is reserved for the reading of Gospels;29 in the margins of this codex, the στάσεις are numbered from 1 to 10 and the number of the week is placed at the beginning of each group of ten.30 The reading of the Ladder in 84 pericopes, according to a large group of manuscripts,31 is clarified by the marks themselves. In fact, they indicate the Hours (Terce, Sexte and Nones), days and weeks of Lent. Thus, the Ladder was read only during the offices of Hours and not during meals: from Monday to Friday through the six weeks of Lent, at three offices (Terce, Sexte and Nones) from Monday to Thursday and at two offices (Terce and Nones32) on Friday. So, according to the marks in the manuscripts, reading of Climacus begins from Monday of the first week of Lent and not from Tuesday, as the Evergetis Synaxarion indicates. Some manuscripts have a little fewer than 84 pericopes;33 or a little more.34 28 – 51 pericopes: Paris. gr. 865 (numbered στάσεις); – 56 pericopes: Paris. gr. 872 (numbered στάσεις); – 58 pericopes: Sabait. 363 (inc. mut., numbered only up to 8); – 70 pericopes: in Paris. gr. 1160 (the first στάσις refers to the passage of the 1st step: εἰ οὐ πᾶς ὁ βαπτιζόμενος… PG 88, 636C:11); – 81 pericopes are attested in: Cantabr. BU Dd.3.50 (inc. mut., στάσεις numbered from 31), Plut. 7.17 (81 numbers are inscribed in the circles) and S. Sepul. 21 (not numbered); despite the same number of reading marks, the distribution of pericopes is not identical in these codices; – 90 pericopes are read in Paris. gr. 1070 (the στάσεις are placed at the end of readings). 29 Cf. Sinai. gr. 416, f. 84r: ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ βίβλῳ τοῦ θείου καὶ ἱεροῦ Κλήμακος ὑπάρχουν εἰς αὐτὴν φύλλα ριε΄· ὀφεί(λει) δὲ ἵνα ἀναγινώσκεται ἐν πάσῃ τῇ ἁγίᾳ Τεσσαρακοστῇ ἐν ἑβδομάδαις ἕξ, ὅτι ἐν τῇ ἑβδόμῃ ἀναγινώσκεται τὸ θεῖον καὶ ἱερὸν Εὐαγγέλιον· ἐν ἑκάστῃ ἐβδομάδι ἡμέρες ε΄, εἰς ὥρες β΄· γ΄, ς΄, ἐν πάσῃ ἀναγνώσει φύλλα β΄ ταῖς ε΄ ἑβδομάδαις, ἐν δὲ τῇ ς΄ ἑβδομάδᾳ ἐν πάσῃ ἀναγνώσει φύλλα δύο καὶ ἥμισον (copyist errors have been corrected). 30 Cf. the pericopes in the Paris. suppl. gr. 1279 (des. mut. in the text Ad pastorem). Moreover, 60 numbered στάσεις are found in Paris. gr. 1065 (in the last codex, the marks are placed at the end of readings). 31 Cf. Athen. EBE 2466; Xenoph. 2; Vatop. 349, 367; Leim. 221; Patm. 121, 122, 124; Coisl. 88; Paris. gr. 870; Sinai. gr. 420, 425, 426, 428. 32 Terce and Sexte in Sinai. gr. 420. 33 There are 79 pericopes in Esphigm. 2, where the reading of the Ladder stops on Wednesday of the sixth week of Lent. 34 There are 87 pericopes in Sinai. gr. 419 and 1691 (they indicate three readings instead of two on Fridays, but the reading of the Ladder, including Ad pastorem, stops on Thursday of the

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Even though the manuscripts contain 84 pericopes, these have not been copied from one manuscript to another (with some exceptions in the twin manuscripts35). At the same time, there are places, most often at the beginning of steps, where the reading marks of the majority of manuscripts coincide. Often, the length of pericope varies by a few sentences or paragraphs, but the reading units always have a coherent meaning.36 Reading-aloud tests show that the duration of each pericope (with division in 84 stops) is about 5-10 minutes. At the end of this article, there is a comparative table of the distributions of the 84 readings marks in three selected manuscripts. Finally, the manuscript Sabait. 364 divides the Ladder into 100 pericopes, the last 19 including strangely the exegetical scholia collected at the end of the codex: the intention of the copyist was perhaps to reach the perfect number. Conclusion The study of the reading marks in the marginalia leads us to affirm that the Ladder was not limited to a reading in the cells, but was integrated into the liturgical cycle of Lent in Byzantine and post-Byzantine monasteries.37 The Ladder is a text organized around the symbolic image of the ascetic ascent to perfection, and Lent is the time par excellence of the spiritual battle between virtues and vices. As each day of Lent leads the ascetic towards the mystical Easter, every step of the Ladder brings the monk up to the summit where Christ-Love stands. Thus, Lent is punctuated by the readings of Climacus, and the image of the Ladder illustrates the spiritual progression of Lent. Although the reading marks are valuable, they do not allow us to attach diverse reading practices to specific monasteries. We can only note that many codices containing reading marks are currently preserved in monastic libraries;38 several other manuscripts with reading clues contain possession notes describing their belonging to monasteries.39 sixth week of Lent); the divisions into pericopes are often identical, but sometimes differ by a few sentences. 35 Coisl. 88 and Paris. gr. 870; Sinai. gr. 428 (a. 1650) and 426 (a. 1653). 36 In the Sinai. gr. 419, the reading marks can sometimes divide the text in the middle of the paragraph and so may show up as a warning to the reader that he is preparing to stop reading. 37 According to other traditions (cf. A.A. Dmitriewski, [Bogoslujenie v Russkoj Tcerkvi v XVI veke] Liturgical office in the Russian Church in the 16th c. [Kazan, 1884], vol. 1, 205), these are the Gospels that are read at the offices of the Hours during the sixth week of Lent or only three first days of the Holy Week. The reading of the Ladder during Lent in the monastic refectory is a tradition that continues nowadays at Sinai and Athos. 38 These are the collections of the monasteries in Athos, Leimonos, Mar Saba, Meteora, Patmos and Sinai. 39 For example, the codex Lond. Add. 39610 belonged to the Megisti Lavra (f. 223r); the Athen. EBE 2466 belonged to the St John Prodromos monastery of Serres; the Paris. gr. 1073

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It also appears difficult to establish correspondences between the marks of manuscripts and the indications of the Evergetis Synaxarion. Finally, due to the relatively late appearance of reading marks in manuscripts, there is no information on the divisions the text of the Ladder was read by before the mid-fourteenth century.

belonged to the Kykkos monastery in Cyprus (ff. 1r, 207r). The manuscript Paris. gr. 1259, with the indications of ὧραι, the days and weeks of Lent, was copied in 1516 at the monastery of the Theotokos Barnakoba (f. 345r) and belonged to the monastery of St Anastasia the Pharmakolitria (f. 1r). The codices Princeton Garrett 16 and Prag. XXV C 24, which contain στάσεις, most likely belonged to the Kosinitza monastery.

M. VENETSKOV

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Comparative table of 84 reading marks divided on the codices: Athen. EBE 2466 (A2466), Sinai. gr. 420 (S420) and Vatop. 349 (V349)40 First week of Lent (Prolegomena-step 4): Monday (Prolegomena-step 1) 1. Terce A2466

V349

S420

ed. Sophronios, p. 6

PG 88, 624A:1

PG 88, 596A:1

Beginning of the Prologus

Beginning of the Epistula of John of Raithou

Beginning of the Vita of John Climacus

A2466

V349

S420

ed. Sophronios, p. 8

PG 88, 629C:7

PG 88, 624A:1

Vita: ποῦ θήσω ἐν τῇ παρούσῃ

Beginning of the Prologus

Beginning of the Epistula of John of Raithou

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 624A:1

cf. PG 88, 600B:11

PG 88, 632A:3

2. Sexte

3. Nones

Beginning of the Epistula Vita: τί ἔτι λοιπὸν τὸ τῆς of John of Raithou ὀγδόης ἔπαθλον

Beginning of the 1st step of the Ladder

Tuesday (step 1) 4. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 632A:3

PG 88, 633C:8

st

Step 1: πάντες οἱ τὰ τοῦ βίου προθύμως

Beginning of the 1 step of the Ladder

40 The references to the incipits of reading passages correspond to the edition of Mattheus Rader, a. 1633 (= PG 88); in some cases, the passages refer to the edition of the Athonite monk Sophronios, a. 1883 (‘cf.’: text in the codex is different from that in the editions). In bold are shown the reading divisions which are identical to two or three manuscripts. We note that a lot of pericopes in A2466 are identical to those in Vatop. 367; several pericopes in S420 (especially in the beginning) are identical to those in Sinai. gr. 428 (a. 1650) and 426 (a. 1653).

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Reading Traditions of the Ladder of John Sinaites

5. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 636B:1

PG 88, 636C:3

cf. PG 88, 637A:2

Step 1: βίας ἀληθῶς

γινωσκέτωσαν πάντες

ὁπόταν ψυχὴ ἑαυτήν

6. Nones A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 640C:1

cf. PG 88, 640B:3

Step 1: ἤκουσα τινῶν ἐν κόσμῳ

δυνατὸν μὲν καὶ δεδεμένον

Wednesday (steps 2-3/2) 7. Terce A2466

V349

S420

cf. PG 88, 656A:9

PG 88, 653B:7

Step 2: ἀκούσωμεν τοῦ Κυρίου

Beginning of the 2nd step

8. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 664D:9

PG 88, 664A:13

PG 88, 656D:11

Step 3: ὁ ξενιτεύσας διὰ τὸν Κύριον

Beginning of the 3rd step

Step 2: στενὴν ὁδὸν ἐμφανίσει

9. Nones A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 669B:1

cf. PG 88, 668A:4

PG 88, 664D:12

Beginning of the step 3/2 concerning dreams

Step 3: πόθος Κυρίου ἀπέσβεσεν

Step 3: ἐξορίζεται ἀκουσίως Εὖα

Thursday (steps 3-4) 10. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 680D:11

PG 88, 677C:2

PG 88, 668B:15

Step 4: ἀνάγκη πᾶσα τοὺς βουλομένους

Beginning of the 4th step

Step 3: ἀπόκρυπτε εὐγένειαν καὶ εὐδοξίαν

M. VENETSKOV

216 11. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 685A:10

PG 88, 681B:14

PG 88, 677C:2

Step 4: εἶδον ἐγὼ παρὰ τοῖς ὁσίοις

φοβερόν που παραγενόμενος

Beginning of the 4th step

12. Nones A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 689C:9

PG 88, 685C:1

PG 88, 681A:10

Step 4: ἠρώτησα ἔτι περιόντα

οὐ σιωπήσω ὑμῖν φράσαι

ὅπλον μὲν οἱ πατέρες

Friday (step 4) 13. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 693C:4

PG 88, 689C:9

PG 88, 684D:1

Step 4: ἀκούσωμεν σοφίαν Θεοῦ

ἠρώτησα ἔτι περιόντα

δεύτερον δέ, ἐπειδή τινας

14.

Nones A2466

Sexte V349

41

cf. PG 88, 700A:8

Step 4: ἐκίνησά ποτε περὶ ἡσυχίας

S420

PG 88, 693C:4

PG 88, 689A:1

ἀκούσωμεν σοφίαν Θεοῦ

τὶς ἀνὴρ Ἰσίδωρος τοὔνομα

Second week of Lent (steps 4-6): Monday (step 4) 15. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 704A:11

PG 88, 697B:12

cf. PG 88, 692C:3

Step 4: τόπος μὲν ἦν ἀπὸ σημείου

μὴ στερῆσαι με Κύριος

κυρίως ὁ δίκαιος οἷος

41

Ed. Sophronios, p. 37, ch. 30.

Reading Traditions of the Ladder of John Sinaites

217

16. Sexte A2466 PG 88, 708B:10 Step 4: εἶδον ὑπηκόους εὐκατανύκτους

V349 PG 88, 701B:9 ἐν τῇ εὐχῇ πολλάκις

S420 PG 88, 696B:1 ἀδικῶ πάντας τοὺς ζηλωτάς

V349 PG 88, 705B:8 εἴτις τὸ ἑαυτοῦ συνειδός

S420 cf. PG 88, 700B:5 τὶς δὲ τῶν ἀειμνήστων

17. Nones A2466 PG 88, 712D:6 Step 4: πάσῃ νήψει νήψωμεν

Tuesday (step 4) 18. Terce A2466 PG 88, 716D:3 Step 4: Κύριος μὲν σοφοῖ

V349 PG 88, 709B:6 μὴ ἀπαξιώσῃς ὡς Θεῷ

S420 PG 88, 704A:11 τόπος μὲν ἦν ἀπὸ σημείου

V349 PG 88, 713B:3 πίνε προθύμως μυκτηρισμόν

S420 PG 88, 708A:7 οὐκ οἶδεν ἡσυχαστής

V349 PG 88, 717A:11 αἱ μὲν ὕβρεις καὶ ἐξουδενώσεις

S420 PG 88, 709D:14 μὴ φεῦγε χεῖρας

19. Sexte A2466 cf. PG 88, 721A:8 Step 4: ἐμαθήτευσε φησί τις ἕτερος 20. Nones A2466 cf. PG 88, 725C:11 Step 4: ἔστω σοι περὶ τὸ λάγνον

Wednesday (steps 4-5) 21. Terce A2466 PG 88, 765C:5 Step 5: εἶδον ἐγὼ ἐκεῖ τινάς

V349 cf. PG 88, 721A:8 Step 4: ἐμαθήτευσε φησί τις ἕτερος

S420 PG 88, 713D:12 Step 4: μὴ ἀθύμει κλεπτόμενος

M. VENETSKOV

218 22. Sexte A2466 cf. PG 88, 769C:9 Step 5: οἷα δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἀλλήλους

V349 S420 cf. PG 88, 724D:10 PG 88, 717D:2 Step 4: ὅταν ὀνειδιζόμενος Step 4: ὑπακοὴ γάρ ἐστιν ἢ κατακραζόμενος ὑποκρίσεως

23. Nones A2466 cf. PG 88, 773C:11 Step 5: ἐμνήσθημεν ἀρετῶν ἀρχαίων

V349 PG 88, 764B:2 Beginning of the 5th step

S420 cf. PG 88, 721D:7 Step 4: τούτῳ ὡς ἦν ἐν τῇ μονῇ

Thursday (steps 4-7) 24. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 777D:13

non hab. PG 88; cf. 768B:7

cf. PG 88, 725D:14

Step 5: πρὸ μὲν τοῦ πτώματος

Step 5: ἦν ἐκεῖ ἀληθῶς, ὦ φίλοι

Step 4: μὴ θαμβήσω ἐφ’ ᾧ μέλλω λέγειν

25. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 796C:5

cf. PG 88, 772B:2

PG 88, 765C:5

Step 6: διηγήσατό μοί ποτε

Step 5: ἐδυσώπουν πολλάκις ἐκεῖνον

Step 5: εἶδον ἐγὼ ἐκεῖ τινάς

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 804C:1

PG 88, 777A:3

PG 88, 769C:4

Step 7: ἀνατυπῶν ἐν ἑαυτῷ μὴ παύσῃ

Step 5: εἶδον ἀκαθάρτους ψυχάς

Step 5: ἐκείνων γὰρ μὴ ἐγγιζόντων

26. Nones

Friday (steps 5-7) 27. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 808B:10

PG 88, 793B:5

PG 88, 773B:13

Step 7: ὁ περὶ τῶν δακρύων λόγος

Beginning of the 6th step

Step 5: ψυχὴ γὰρ παρρησίας προτέρας

219

Reading Traditions of the Ladder of John Sinaites

28.

Nones

Sexte

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 812A:12

cf. PG 88, 797B:2

cf. PG 88, 777B:13

Step 7: Στέφανός τις οἰκῶν ἐνταῦθα

Step 6: ὥσπερ τὴν ἄβυσσον ἀπέραντον

Step 5: ἄλλη ἡ τῶν πενθούντων

Third week of Lent (steps 6-15): Monday (steps 6-8) 29. Terce A2466

V349

S420

cf. PG 88, 813C:8

PG 88, 805B:15

PG 88, 793B:5

Step 7: ἐν ἀρχαῖς μὲν εὐθὺς γνωρίζων

Step 7: πεισάτω σε πρὸς ἐργασίαν

Beginning of the 6th step

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 828D:9

PG 88, 809B:3

cf. PG 88, 797B:2

Step 8: ἔστι κίνησις μύλου

Step 7: εἶδον ἐγὼ προσαίτας

Step 6: ὥσπερ τὴν ἄβυσσον ἀπέραντον

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 832B:15

PG 88, 813A:1

PG 88, 805A:12

Step 8: χαλεπὸν μὲν τὸν τῆς καρδίας ὀφθαλμόν

Step 7: ὥσπερ χήρα τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδρα

Step 7: γέννημα ἐννοιῶν, δάκρυον

30. Sexte

31. Nones

Tuesday (steps 7-13) 32. Terce A2466 PG 88, 840D:5 Beginning of the 9th step

V349 PG 88, 828B:11 Beginning of the 8th step

S420 PG 88, 809B:3 Step 7: εἶδον ἐγὼ προσαίτας

M. VENETSKOV

220 33. Sexte A2466 PG 88, 848B:3 Step 10: ἀκούσατέ μου, ἀκούσατε

V349 cf. PG 88, 832C:12 Step 8: ἐπισκεψώμεθα καὶ ἐν τοῖς πολλοῖς

S420 PG 88, 813A:13 Step 7: διηγήσατό μοι τις τούτου

V349 cf. PG 88, 841C:4 Step 9: γραφικὸς ὑφηγητὴς ὁ μνησίκακος

S420 PG 88, 828B:11 Beginning of the 8th step

34. Nones A2466 PG 88, 857D:4 Beginning of the 13th step

Wednesday (steps 8-14) 35. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 864B:12

PG 88, 852A:5

cf. PG 88, 832D:10

Beginning of the 14th step

Beginning of the 11th step

Step 8: ἀρχὴ μὲν τῆς μακαρίας ἀνεξικακίας

V349

S420

36. Sexte A2466 PG 88, 868A:3

PG 88, 857D:4

PG 88, 841B:3

Step 14: ὁ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ θεραπεύων γαστέρα

Beginning of the 13th step

Step 9: ὁ παύσας ὀργήν, ἀνεῖλε μνησικακίαν

V349

S420

37. Nones A2466 cf. PG 88, 869C:1

PG 88, 864D:10

cf. PG 88, 848A:11

Step 14: λέγε ἡμῖν, ὦ πάντων

Step 14: ἐχθραίνει πολλάκις κενοδοξία

Step 10: ἀλλότριον τὸ πῦρ ὕδατος

Thursday (steps 12-15) 38. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 881B:5

cf. PG 88, 868C:1

PG 88, 853D:11

Step 15: ὁ μὲν εὐχῇ τὸν κύνα ἀπωθούμενος

Step 14: γίνωσκε ὅτι πολλάκις

Beginning of the 12th step

221

Reading Traditions of the Ladder of John Sinaites

39. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

cf. PG 88, 885B:1

PG 88, 880B:12

PG 88, 864B:12

Step 15: εἴθισται τῷ δαίμονι καὶ μᾶλλον

Beginning of the Prooimion Beginning of the 14th step of the 15th step

40. Nones A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 889A:15

PG 88, 884B:7

PG 88, 868B:2

Step 15: γνωστικός με ἀνὴρ φοβερόν

Step 15: ἔστιν ἐν τοῖς ἡδυπαθέσιν

Step 14: μαλασσόμενοι ἀσκοί

Friday (step 15) 41. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 892C:9

PG 88, 888C:7

PG 88, 880B:12

Step 15: παράδοξόν μοί τις καὶ ἀκρότατον

Step 15: ὁ μετὰ γαστριμαργίας καὶ κόρου

Beginning of the Prooimion of the 15th step

42.

Nones A2466

Sexte V349

S420

PG 88, 896C:7

PG 88, 892C:6

PG 88, 884C:14

Step 15: πολλὴν περὶ ἡμᾶς

τὸ αὐτὸ πτῶμα πολλάκις

τοῦ μὲν προειρημένου πολέμου

Fourth week of Lent (steps 15-25): Monday (steps 15-18) 43. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 900C:1

PG 88, 896C:11

PG 88, 889A:7

Step 15: συνέρχεται τοῖς μήπω κεκτημένοις

ἄλλο προσβολή, καὶ ἄλλο συνδυασμός

φεύγει ἄγκιστρον ἰχθύς

M. VENETSKOV

222 44. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 924C:7

PG 88, 900B:12

PG 88, 893A:11

Beginning of the 16th step

Step 15: ἐπιτηρεῖ καὶ αὐτὸς οὗτος ὁ δαίμων

Step 15: πολεμοῦσιν ἡσυχαστῇ χαλεπῶς

V349

S420

45. Nones A2466 PG 88, 932B:2

PG 88, 924C:7

th

th

Beginning of the 18 step Beginning of the 16 step

PG 88, 897B:4 Step 15: ἔστι παρὰ τοῖς ἀκριβεστάτοις

Tuesday (steps 15-22) 46. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 933A:7

PG 88, 901A:9

Step 18: ἑώρακα ἐγὼ τοιούτους

Step 15: πάντες μὲν οἱ δαίμονες

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 940D:9

PG 88, 940B:6

PG 88, 937A:3 th

Beginning of the 19 step

47. Sexte

Step 20: μοναχὸς ἄγρυπνος

PG 88, 928B:9

th

Beginning of the 20 step Beginning of the 17th step

48. Nones A2466

V349 cf. PG 88, 948D:9 Beginning of the 22th step

S420 PG 88, 933A:7 Step 18: ἑώρακα ἐγὼ τοιούτους

Wednesday (steps 20-23) 49. Terce A2466 PG 88, 952C:2 Step 22: κοσμικῶν ἐπιδημίας προλαμβάνει

V349 PG 88, 952D:3 Step 22: κενοδοξία ἀντὶ τιμῆς

S420 PG 88, 940B:6 Beginning of the 20th step

Reading Traditions of the Ladder of John Sinaites

223

50. Sexte A2466 PG 88, 956A:3 Step 22: ἔστι δόξα ἐκ Κυρίου

V349 S420 cf. PG 88, 965B:4 cf. PG 88, 948D:9 Beginning of the 23th step Beginning of the 22th step

51. Nones A2466 PG 88, 968B:2 Step 23: ἀδελφὸν ὑπερηφανευόμενον γέρων

V349 PG 88, 976B:3 Beginning of the step on blasphemous thoughts

S420 PG 88, 953A:13 Step 22: εἶδον τινὰς ἐργασίας

Thursday (steps 23-25) 52. Terce A2466 V349 S420 PG 88, 976B:3 PG 88, 980C:4 cf. PG 88, 965B:4 Beginning of the step on Beginning of the 24th step Beginning of the 23th step blasphemous thoughts 53. Sexte A2466 V349 S420 PG 88, 980C:4 PG 88, 988A:8 PG 88, 976B:3 Beginning of the 24th step Beginning of the 25th step Beginning of the step on blasphemous thoughts 54. Nones A2466 PG 88, 988A:8 Beginning of the 25th step

V349 PG 88, 992A:14 Step 25: τέλος μὲν νόμου

S420 PG 88, 980C:4 Beginning of the 24th step

Friday (step 25) 55. Terce A2466 cf. PG 88, 989D:1 Step 25: μετάνοια μεμεριμνημένη

V349 cf. PG 88, 996A:1 Step 25: ἄλλα τὰ τῷ μεγάλῳ κτήτορι

S420 PG 88, 988A:8 Beginning of the 25th step

M. VENETSKOV

224 56.

Nones

Sexte

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 993B:15

PG 88, 1000A:5

PG 88, 992C:2

Step 25: τινὶ τῶν ἐπὶ τὴν μακαρίαν

κέκτηται ὁ τῆς ὁσίας ταύτης

μοναχὸς ταπεινόφρων οὐ πολυπραγμονήσει

Fifth week of Lent (steps 25-27): Monday (steps 25-26) 57. Terce A2466

V349

PG 88, 997A:2

PG 88, 1013A:1

S420 PG 88, 996B:9

Step 25: ὁπόταν τινὰ ἴδῃς Beginning of the 26th step

Step 25: ἀδύνατον ἐκ χιόνος

58. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1000C:14

cf. PG 88, 1017A:3

PG 88, 1000C:4

Step 25: ὁ παρὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἀξίαν

Step 26: γνώριμα καθεστήκασι πᾶσι

Step 25: σκόλοψ γὰρ καὶ βάρος

59. Nones A2466

S420

V349

PG 88, 1013A:1

PG 88, 1021A:3 Step 26: εἰ ἄρα ἐμοὶ πείθεσθε

th

Beginning of the 26 step Tuesday (step 26) 60. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1016B:8

PG 88, 1024D:13

PG 88, 1017A:10

Step 26: εἰ μὲν ἐκ προγεγενημένων

πάντα ἡμῖν τὰ συμβαίνοντα

ἀρίστη πᾶσιν ἀλφάβητος αὕτη

61. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

cf. PG 88, 1020B:14

PG 88, 1028C:5

PG 88, 1021B:6

Step 26: εἶδον ἱατρὸν ἀφυῆ

ἔγνων ἐγὼ τὸν τῆς γαστριμαργίας δαίμονα

ἱδρῶτι μᾶλλον καὶ μὴ ψιλῷ λόγῳ

225

Reading Traditions of the Ladder of John Sinaites

62. Nones A2466

V349

S420

cf. PG 88, 1021D:7

PG 88, 1032C:10

PG 88, 1025C:2

Step 26: ὁ γέλως, ὁ ἄκαιρος

τινὲς πρὸ τῶν καμάτων

μὴ λυπηθῶμεν αἰτούμενοι

Wednesday (step 26) 63. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1025C:10

PG 88, 1056D:6

PG 88, 1029C:15

Step 26: ὅτι μὲν ἀναχωροῦσιν οἱ δαίμονες

Beginning of the step 26/2

Step 26: ὥσπερ οἱ τῇ αἰσθήσει τῆς ὀσφρήσεως

64. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1029B:7

PG 88, 1060D:6

PG 88, 1033D:4

Step 26: ἄλλο φυλακὴ λογισμῶν

Step 26/2: ἄλογος λίαν ὁ ὑπὲρ φύσιν

Step 26: εἰ οὐδὲν τῷ ἀΰλῳ φύσει

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1033A:6

cf. PG 88, 1065A:1

PG 88, 1060B:7

Step 26: τύπος σοι καὶ κανὼν ἔστω

Step 26/2: εἴ τις σῶμα ἅγνον βούλεται

Step 26/2: ἀπήλλακται εὐθὴς καρδία

65. Nones

Thursday (step 26) 66. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1056D:6

cf. PG 88, 1068C:3

PG 88, 1064C:2

Beginning of the step 26/2

Step 26/2: μὴ θέλε πικρὸς εἶναι δικαστής

Step 26/2: ἠτιμάσθη ποτέ τις τῶν ἀδελφῶν

A2466

V349

S420

cf. PG 88, 1060C:15

PG 88, 1072C:3

PG 88, 1068C:9

Step 26/2: ἐν τοῖς ἡμῖν κακοθελῶς

ἐρευνητέον, πῶς ἀσώματος

κακὸν μὲν ὁ Θεὸς οὔτε πεποίηκεν

67. Sexte

M. VENETSKOV

226 68. Nones A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1064B:8

PG 88, 1084B:12

cf. PG 88, 1073A:7

Step 26/2: κατὰ δύο τρόπους πάντες

Beginning of the step 26/3, recapitulatio

Step 26/2: τῶν οὐκ ἐνδεχομένων ἐστίν

Friday (steps 26-27) 69. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1068A:9

PG 88, 1088C:1

PG 88, 1085D:2

Step 26/2: τάξιν μὲν καὶ ἀρχήν

Step 26/3: ὥσπερ οἱ λεγόμενοι καρκίνοι

Step 26/3: ὥσπερ πένητες θησαυρούς

70.

Nones A2466

Sexte V349

S420

PG 88, 1069D:6

PG 88, 1096C:6

Step 26/2: πολλάκις οἱ δαίμονες τὰ κουφότερα

Beginning of the 27th step

Sixth week of Lent (step 26-Ad pastorem): Monday (steps 26-27) 71. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1073C:4

PG 88, 1100B:7

PG 88, 1100D:2

Step 26/2: διακρίσει πολλῇ χρησώμεθα

Step 27: καθεζόμενος ἐφ’ ὕψους τήρει

Step 27: ἡσυχαστής ἐστιν ὁ οὕτως

72. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1088C:1

PG 88, 1105D:3

cf. PG 88, 1108C:13

Step 26/3: ὥσπερ οἱ λεγόμενοι καρκίνοι

Step 27/2: εἰσὶ ῥᾴθυμοι ψυχαί

Step 27/2: ὕδατος μὴ ὄντος ἐν πηγῇ

V349

S420

73. Nones A2466 PG 88, 1097B:7

PG 88, 1109C:11

PG 88, 1113B:7

Step 27: ἀρχὴ μὲν ἡσυχίας τὸ ἀποσείεσθαι

Step 27/2: χαλεπὸν τὸν τῆς μεσημβρίας

Step 27/2: πίστεως μήτηρ μόχθος

227

Reading Traditions of the Ladder of John Sinaites

Tuesday (step 28) 74. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1105D:3

PG 88, 1113C:3

PG 88, 1129A:4

Step 27/2: εἰσὶ ῥᾴθυμοι ψυχαί

Step 27/2: ἀτενίζει μὲν κατάκριτος

Beginning of the 28th step

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1112C:15

PG 88, 1129A:4

75. Sexte

PG 88, 1133A:13

Beginning of the 28 step

Step 28: ἄλλο ῥύπος προσευχῆς

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1129A:4

cf. PG 88, 1133B:10

PG 88, 1137A:5

Beginning of the 28th step

πάντες μέν, ἐπὶ πλεῖον δέ

πῦρ μὲν ἐπιδημῆσαν ἐν καρδίᾳ

Step 27/2: ὑπογραμμός σοι ἔστω προσευχῆς

th

76. Nones

Wednesday (steps 29-30) 77. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1133C:3

PG 88, 1137D:2

PG 88, 1148A:9

Step 28: ἀναστὰς ἐκ φιλοκοσμίας

Step 28: ἔστι κατὰ τὸν ἐπὶ γῆς βασιλέα

Beginning of the 29th step

V349

S420

78. Sexte A2466 PG 88, 1148A:9

PG 88, 1149B:7

PG 88, 1153D:4

Beginning of the 29th step

Step 29: εἰ τοῦτο εἶδος ἀπωλείας

Beginning of the 30th step42

A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1153D:4

PG 88, 1156D:8

79. Nones

Beginning of the 30th step Step 30: σημειωτέον σοι, ὦ πισυνέ 42

PG 88, 1157B:8 οἱ τοιοῦτον ἰσάγγελον κατειληφότες

The ‘στάσις’ is found in front of the concluding sentence of the 29th step.

M. VENETSKOV

228

Thursday (Ad pastorem) 80. Terce A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1165A:1 Beginning of the Ad pastorem43 81. Sexte A2466

V349

S420

PG 88, 1180B:2

PG 88, 1180A:4

PG 88, 1173A:6

Ad pastorem: εἴ τις ἰδίᾳ ἐλεγχόμενος

ἔστι φύσις, ἵν’ οὕτως εἴπω

εἶδον ἵππον ἔτι μικρόν

V349

S420

82. Nones A2466 PG 88, 1189C:1

PG 88, 1189A:9

PG 88, 1188A:5

Ad pastorem: εἰσί τινες ὑπὲρ τὴν ἑαυτῶν δύναμιν

τινὲς τὸ τῆς ἀναδοχῆς κρῖμα

ἔχε τὸν Θεὸν καὶ αὐτός

Friday (Ad pastorem) 83. Terce A2466

V349

S420

cf. PG 88, 1196B:5

cf. PG 88, 1193D:7

Ad pastorem: ἐὰν προγνώσεως μετέχωμεν

πρόσεχε τοίνυν, ὦ πισύνιε

Nones

Sexte

84. A2466

S420

V349

PG 88, 1201B:6

PG 88, 1201C:2

Ad pastorem: ἐγὼ δέ, ὦ πατέρων πάτερ

ψυχὴ διὰ καθαρότητος

43 The ‘στάσις’ appears twice: at the end of the Epilogus and at the beginning of the Ad pastorem.

The Vanity of Human Life in the Poetry of George of Pisidia. Echoes of Patristic Lament Paul M. BLOWERS, Milligan University, Elizabethton, TN, USA

ABSTRACT Besides works of imperial panegyric, the Byzantine court poet George of Pisidia composed two deeply contemplative poems on the vanity of creaturely existence, On the Vanity of Life and On Human Life. Mary Whitby has uncovered many classical topoi, allusions and reinventions within these pieces, especially in On Human Life. My essay will instead investigate these works in terms of their recovery and reworking of themes from Greek patristic literature of lament over the fallen and stunted condition of humanity, themes richly informed by biblical imagery of the vanity of creation (Ps. 103:14-5; Qoheleth; Rom. 8:19-23; 1Peter 1:24 et al.). Certain patristic parallels were noted in the eighteenth-century edition of George’s works by Giuseppe Querci (in PG 92), but Whitby herself has only briefly touched on them. Beyond more commonplace motifs like the transitoriness of bodily life and the futility of human striving apart from God, George elicits knowledge of some quite specific themes in the Cappadocian Fathers, John Chrysostom and other sources, also themes found in George’s contemporary Maximus the Confessor. These include, among others, the dialectical tension between dignity and degradation of the human body, the precariousness of human passibility (liability to passions), the phenomenon of ‘Fortune’ and the image of human existence as a game or stage-play. These will be my special focus, and the essay will conclude by reflecting on how George’s severity and sobriety in these poems addressed the unique chemistry of religion and world affairs in seventh-century Byzantium.

In the opening of his sobering poem On the Vanity of Life, George of Pisidia beseeches the God who opened the mouth of Balaam’s ass (Num. 22:28) to open the gates of his own clouded reasoning and to raise him beyond the passions that impede his speech.1 It is a strange allusion, it would seem, coming from the panegyrist of the Emperor Heraclius in seventh-century Byzantium, whose verses, by imperial commission, were intended to solicit impeccable confidence and to lift public spirits in the face of the uncertainties of the times. Instead, this poem, and George’s other dirge entitled On Human Life – both of them 1 De vanitate vitae, ll. 1-2 (ed. Giuseppe Querci, PG 92, 1581A); reprinted in Luigi Tartaglia (ed.), Carmi di Giorgio di Pisidia (Turin, 1997), 428. Elsewhere too, George refers to his own impairments of speech: Hexaemeron, ll. 5-23, Greek text ed. Fabrizio Gonnelli, Giorgio di Pisidia: Esamerone (Pisa, 1998), 116.

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best dated, it seems, within his mature career2 – have puzzled interpreters by their stark contrast with his larger corpus, so much of it devoted to aggrandizing Heraclius’s heroics against the Persians. In contrast with his panegyrics, where George holds up the Emperor’s military and political exploits as signs of the inbreaking of a veritable ‘new creation’,3 a fresh and enduring stability benefiting the entire world with Constantinople at its center, this pair of poems has George posing himself both as a philosophical ascetic striving to overcome his own passions and limitations, and as a Qoheleth-figure pronouncing on the general futility of human affairs. In one of the few studies of these dirges, Mary Whitby has attended to George’s characteristically rich deployment of Greek classical imagery and to the influences of his Byzantine forbears Nonnus and Paul the Silentiary.4 Here I will pursue a different tack and propose that these hexameter elegies also deeply resonate a particular style of rhetorical and tragical lament, which had its inspiration principally in the two Cappadocian Gregories. Indeed, the oldest manuscript of George’s dirges includes them with a miscellaneous collection of Gregory Nazianzen’s poems.5 A whole set of Nazianzen’s own melancholy compositions provided a worthy template for George’s doleful pair. George, like Gregory, plays the ascetical poet, albeit on a much more modest scale since self-reference is much more subtle and restricted in his poetry than in Gregory’s. Both authors, for example, confess to using their poetic meters to curb their own ἀμετρία, or lack of ascetical regimen. Says George: ‘I am writing myself into my verses (ἐμμέτρως) so far as I can, wherefore having suffered an excess (ἀμετρίας) of passions, I remain my own scribe and accuser’.6 Already, Gregory similarly confesses, ‘I put something of my own struggles into verse’, hoping among other things to ‘restrain my own lack of measure (άμετρία)’.7 Like Gregory, George throws himself on the example of his pious biblical and ecclesiastical predecessors (the ‘God-seeing Fathers’) and on the mercies of

2 James Howard-Johnston dates them to the late 620s or early 630s in his Witnesses to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century (Oxford, 2010), 25. 3 Hexaemeron, ll. 1720-91 (Gonnelli, 232-8); cf. Heraclias (a panegyric), pt. 1, ll. 71-84, Greek text ed. Agostino Pertusi, Giorgio di Pisidia Poemi, I. Panegirici Epici (Murnau, 1959), 243-4. 4 ‘A Learned Spiritual Ladder? Toward an Interpretation of George of Pisidia’s Hexameter Poem On Human Life’, in Konstantinos Spanoudakis (ed.), Nonnus of Panopolis in Context (Berlin, 2014), 435-57. 5 Monac. gr. 416 (13th century), as examined by Fabrizio Gonnelli in his critical edition, ‘Il De vita humana di Giorgio Pisida’, Bollettino dei classici ser. 3, vol. 12 (1991), 118-38. The connection with Nazianzen is noted very briefly by M. Whitby, ‘A Learned Spiritual Ladder?’ (2014), 455. 6 De vanitate vitae, ll. 6-8 (PG 92, 1581A). 7 In suos versos (Poema 2.1.39), ll. 1-37, quoted at ll. 24, 35, in Gregory of Nazianzus: Autobiographical Poems, Greek text with Eng. trans. Carolinne White (Cambridge, 1996), 2-5.

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God to describe human life as it nakedly is.8 Gregory, moreover, confessed that his poetic verses were potentially articulate and consoling, like a pleasing medicine (φάρμακον) or paregoric (παρηγόρημα) especially for his younger and more impressionable readers,9 but also capable – God forbid – of doing more damage than good. ‘As for me’, he writes, ‘my aim is to speak the truth and I worry whether things are as I say they are, or not. For my path leads along a precipice, and to fall from it is undoubtedly to fall down to the gates of hell’.10 So too George expresses a mixture of confidence in and distrust of his own poetry as he aspires to expose the fleeting vanity and pride of human life, leaning on God as the ‘fervent spring of my verses’ who holds in check his own deep-seated passions as he writes.11 Both George and Gregory are hyperconscious that their writing negotiates the tightrope between aspiring to a godly glory and succumbing to purely worldly hubris. Composing verse and brandishing rhetorical skill could all too easily, in their judgment, become self-serving and self-defeating. Going forward, I detect three overlapping thematic constellations in George’s elegies that exemplify and amplify the Cappadocian mode of rhetorical lament. First is the reflection that human nature, purely on its own terms, is virtual nothingness, and ontologically poverty-stricken apart from a constantly sustaining divine grace. The segment of George’s On the Vanity of Life that was mistakenly inserted into Gregory’s corpus paints a stark picture of humans as little more than animated dust, slime destined to resolve again into dust, bodies swaddled in soil, tossed by the wind upwardly toward worldly acclaim only to be brought low again by their earthen constitution.12 George had a whole stock of images of vanity from which to draw in both the Cappadocian Gregories, as in one of Nazianzen’s epitaphs where he mixes biblical, classical, and self-generated images, calling everything dust, ash returning to itself (cf. Gen. 3:19), a fog, a storm. All things flow by utterly in vain, says Gregory. The tomb awaits its due; we are but withering grass (cf. Ps. 102:15, LXX; 1Peter 1:2413); happiness is non-existent (ἀνύπαρκτος); our tracks leave no permanent trace.14 George knows Nazianzen’s well-worn metaphor, a classical one favored by Seneca among others,15 and cherished too by George’s contemporary Maximus the Confessor, of life as a raging river current or sea’s undertow propelling him 8

De vanitate vitae, ll. 3-40 (PG 92, 1581A-1584A). In suos versus, ll. 39-40, 55 (White, 4, 5). 10 De vita sua (Poema 2.1.11), ll. 1246-9, ed. Christoph Jungck, De vita sua: Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar (Heidelberg, 1974), text reproduced in White, 102; her translation. 11 De vanitate vitae, ll. 30-40 (PG 92, 1584A). 12 De vanitate vitae, ll. 41-52 (PG 92, 1584A-1585A). 13 George too deploys the biblical image of humans as withering grass or fading sprout: De vita vanitate, ll. 86-8 (PG 92, 1588A). 14 Gregory, Epitaphium 129 (in Paulum), ll. 5-14, 36-9 (PG 38, 79A-80A, 81A). 15 Ep. 58.22-3 (LCL 75, 400-3). 9

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relentlessly into an unstable future and fragmenting his sense of a secure self16 – a potent image not incompatible with Augustine’s notion of the radical distention of the soul in time (Confessions, Book 11). To be sure, some of these images of human vanity, especially the biblically inspired ones, were relatively common in patristic rhetoric and theology. But for George, the Cappadocians doubtless remained his richest resource. The same holds true for a second constellation of images in his elegies that centers on human life as blatantly superficial theatrics, constantly mixing elements of tragedy and dark comedy. Gregory Nazianzen’s orations and poetry were brimming with images of life as a bitter stage play. Gregory, for instance, depicts his deceased brother Caesarius as having virtuously played out (ὑποκρινόμενος) his role as a Christian on the fleeting, secular stage of professional service as a physician in the court of the Emperor Julian,17 whose rule was itself a very bad play full of tragic and comic elements.18 In his autobiographical verse, Nazianzen routinely postures himself as dramaturge and actor, tragedian and tragic hero, all in one. His ordination, his entanglements with Maximus the Cynic and other fiascos of his episcopacy and brief patriarchate in Constantinople, his struggle with his own pride and a whirlwind of other emotions, are tragedy ever laced with sickening comical elements, satire, and parody.19 He is his own friend and enemy, sage and fool. It is a curious dramatic mix indeed. Though Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa both regularly vilify human addiction to the putative power of Fortune and fiercely defend divine providence,20 they occasionally do so by flirting with Lady Luck rhetorically, in a bid to dramatize its seductive appeal while simultaneously dismissing it as a dangerous aberration. This is especially true of Gregory Nazianzen, who loves to wax eloquent on the ‘twists of fortune’ and ‘vicissitudes’ (στροφαἰ) that have marked so much of his career.21 Meanwhile, needless to say, there is hardly a shortage in the two Gregories of images of the chequered plot of the human stage play, including 16 Cf. George of Pisidia, De vanitate vitae, l. 106 (PG 92, 1589A); De vita humana, ll. 10-2 (Gonnelli, 123-4); Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 14.30 (PG 35, 897B); De vitae itineribus (Poema 1.2.16), l. 24 (PG 37, 780A); De humana natura (Poema 1.2.14), ll. 25-8 (PG 37, 757); In laudem virginitatis (Poema 1.2.1), l. 286 (PG 37, 544A); De exterioris hominis vilitate (Poema 1.2.15), ll. 55, 135- 6 (PG 37, 770A, 776A). See also Maximus, Amb. 8 (PG 91, 1101Dff.), commenting on Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 14.30. 17 Oratio 7.9 (SC 405, 202). 18 Orationes 4.3, 78, 112-3, 114 (SC 309, 88-90, 200, 268-70); Or. 5.18 (SC 309, 328). 19 For examples and details in Gregory works, see my Visions and Faces of the Tragic: The Mimesis of Tragedy and the Folly of Salvation in Early Christian Literature, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2020), 107-18. 20 Cf. Nazianzen’s poem De providentia, Greek text ed. Claudio Moreschini, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: Poemata arcana (Oxford, 1997), 22-6; Gregory of Nyssa, Contra fatum (GNO III/2, 31-63). 21 E.g. see De vita sua, l. 18 (White, 10, 11); ibid., ll. 330-4, 361, 1945 (White, 34, 35, 36, 37, 152, 153). See also P.M. Blowers, Visions and Faces of the Tragic (2020), 240-8.

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the farce of worldly security in the form of wealth, health, fame, social and professional connections, the ‘tragedy and comedy’ of marriage and children, and the like.22 The Cappadocian goal was to portray the perilous balance between the ‘chaos’ (τὸ ἄτακτον)23 of historical human existence and the gracious work of God to bring about a new creation precisely from that disorder. Lament and gratitude were of a rhetorical piece. George effectively takes up this rhetorical mantle in his own poetry. Humans exist as vain and fragile creatures while also, paradoxically, being graced by their Creator with a unique status and vocation. The dirt-formed human being, enlivened solely by the image of God, writes George, ‘peers out, as if from an abyss, decrying earthly tragedies and bewailing the fact that life appears to be a mere jest’.24 ‘Who, upon watching from the depths of the heart the spectacle of this ignominious life, would not put an end to this game (παίγνιον) by lamenting and laughing at the same time?’25 For George, life’s sad chemistry of tragedy and comedy especially manifests itself in the fact that human beings are at once passive pawns in a play of cosmic forces beyond their control and active players on the world stage making fools of themselves in striving after an ever elusive grandiosity. They repeatedly invest their faith in Fortune (Τύχη), who, like a seductive dancer and would-be paramour, is only too happy to oblige them in chasing shadows.26 In one evocative passage, George rebukes those (presumably many) human fools who play along with Lady Luck in her dangerous masquerade: Cease your vaunting in destruction-bringing pride, its bulk precipitate, its throne of slipperiness. Seeing Fortune’s flux, cut the adverse streams, laughing through tears at the runaway roll of the human vortex, where with twisting paths just as they came into being from earth, men enter again their mother earth, forgetful of their birth, as if they were forever.27

This whole fiasco is a stupid and arrogant human ploy to be in command, to control the circumstances of life, and George appeals to the tender mercies of his venerable Muse, the Theotokos, the New Eve, who put off the Old Eve’s human pretentiousness once for all: 22 For a summation of the vagaries of life, see Gregory Nazianzen’s Querela de suis calamitatibus (PG 37, 1271A-1279A). Particularly on the ‘tragedy and comedy’ of marriage and family, see Nazianzen, Oratio 37.9 (SC 318, 290); De vitae itineribus (Poema 1.2.16), ll. 15-6 (PG 37, 779A); and Gregory of Nyssa, De virginitate 3 (GNO VIII/1, 257-61). 23 Oratio 14.30 (PG 35, 897B). 24 De vanitate vitae, ll. 54-6 (PG 92, 1585A); cf. De vita humana, ll. 1-4 (Gonnelli, 123). 25 De vanitate vitae, ll. 89-91 (PG 92, 1588A). 26 De vanitate vitae, ll. 172-86 (PG 92, 1594A-1595A). 27 De vita humana, ll. 8-14 (Gonnelli, 123-4), trans. M. Whitby, ‘A Learned Spiritual Ladder?’ (2014), 439.

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Tell me, queen, life’s shadowy dreams: for often fatuous man slumbering in vain illusion did sleep captivate with fantasy of dominance – put under him an army and, gathering unstable wealth, prevailed on him to yield a sceptre in his pauper’s hands, extending o’er his brows an insubstantial splendour. But for him who vainly beguiles a mind diffused o’er his limbs the daybreak bird holds out a hateful dawn; Hence for me the shadowy glitter of a life that loves play seems but a stage impression, as when other men being mocked by turn and mocking in rounded theatres seated on a throne a man with ridiculous face resplendent in improvised cloak, yet mocked because he thought to hide poverty with wealth not his. Him laughter shaped wearing the mantle of life prosperous and high-headed only while he sat presenting in play life’s splendour, but he took pleasure in an empty throne…28

A third and final constellation of George’s poetic images, again inspired by the two Gregories, describes the human pursuit of false glory as at bottom an unrelenting battle with the passions and with recurring illusions of grandeur.29 Echoing Gregory of Nyssa’s thick description of the ‘tunics of skin’, the garments superadded to human nature by the Creator after the Fall (Gen. 3:21), which epitomize for Nyssen the perennial human liability to the passions,30 George singles out pride as the most enduring tunic, the costume that cloaks us all the way to the door of hell31 (even though Nyssen himself had suggested envy as the deadliest vice32). George, moreover, closely follows the characteristic Cappadocian pattern of rhetorically aligning the natural bipolar structure of the human microcosm – intellectual soul and passible body – with the inexorable existential competition between dual human proclivities: heavenly versus earthly, angelic versus bestial. Like Nyssen, who imagines vice as a deliberate assimilation to irrational animals, and who recalls the pagan figure of the minotaur, a human body with a bull’s head, as symbolizing the warped scenario in which irrational passions lord over the whole embodied person,33 George reintroduces the minotaur, trapped according to Greek mythology in a hapless labyrinth, as a worthy icon of the disordered state of human life in the 28 De vita humana, ll. 59-75 (Gonnelli, 128-9), trans. M. Whitby, ‘A Learned Spiritual Ladder?’ (2014), 440; for Whitby’s illuminating commentary on this passage, see ibid. 442. 29 On the fantasy of dreams and illusions of grandeur, see George’s De vanitate vitae, ll. 106-27 (PG 92, 1589A-1596A). 30 Cf. De anima et resurrectione (GNO III/3, 113-4); Oratio catechetica (GNO III/4, 29-3); De mortuis (GNO IX/1, 53.9-56.7); Oratio funebris in Meletium episcopum (GNO IX, 454). 31 De vanitate vitae, ll. 243-6 (PG 92, 1599A). 32 De vita Moysis II (GNO VII/1, 122-3). 33 De perfectione (GNO VIII/1, 178-9).

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wake of the Fall.34 But again following Nyssen, George looks to christen Plato’s image of the reasoning mind as the charioteer who restrains and retrains the passion-inducing drives of desire and ire, thus enabling real order to obtain in the human constitution and vocation.35 George’s treatment of the ascetical struggle with the passions similarly picks up on familiar Cappadocian paradoxes. The mind, summoned to scale the heavenly heights, can nonetheless undermine itself with pride and fall precipitously into the abyss; only rigorous self-knowledge, and humbly looking down to the fact that one is, at bottom, nothing (μηδέν) and purely contingent, enables one to progress upwards to a transcending honor.36 Such a person becomes like Peter, boosted by Christ in the storm at sea, able to stand firmly and confidently precisely on the unstable abyss (Matt. 14:28ff.).37 The imagery here has clear parallels in George’s Hexaemeron, and it is not surprising the two dirges found themselves included with this much longer work in the manuscript tradition. In fact, the commonalities in the three poems provide a clue to how George bridged imperial panegyrics and philosophical asceticism. For example, in encouraging healthy self-knowledge, both the elegy On Human Life and the Hexaemeron hold forth expositions of the wonders of created human nature, the latter setting this in the context of the marvels of the larger creation, the creation that Heraclius, as deliverer of the world’ (κοσμορύστης),38 was ostensibly furnishing with new stability. But even in the Hexaemeron, George occasionally holds up the paradox that the ontological fragility of the cosmos is of a piece with the absolute and eternal stability of its Creator. Its foundation is ‘noplace’ (μηδαμοῦ) as such because the Creator himself is nowhere (οὐδαμοῦ),39 defying spatial location or containment. The Creator is himself the ‘foundationless foundation’ (βάθρον ἀστήρικτον).40 Meanwhile, human subjects, in aspiring to fathom the fathomless, are under constant threat of demonic distraction unless they exercise contemplative and practical virtues.41 The rhetorical mode of lamentation thus reappears in the Hexaemeron, but principally as George’s confession that all humans beings are at an apophatic loss to reach the essence of the Creator and therefore incessantly struggle to know the mysterious depths even of creation itself. Here, as in his two poetic elegies, George mimics Gregory Nazianzen and places himself at the threshold of these verses, holding himself 34 De vanitate vitae, ll. 57-79 (PG 92, 1586A-1587A); De vita humana, ll. 18-22 (Gonnelli, 124-5). 35 De vanitate vitae, ll. 253-62 (PG 92, 1600A); cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione (GNO III/1, 33-4, 37). For the original image, see Plato’s Phaedrus 246A-254E. 36 De vanitate vitae, ll. 143-72 (PG 92, 1591A-1594A). 37 De vita humana, ll. 81-3 (Gonnelli, 129-30). 38 Hexaemeron, l. 1800 (Gonnelli, 238). 39 Hexaemeron, ll. 85-8, 1648-64 (Gonnelli, 122, 228-30). 40 Hexaemeron, ll. 103-4 (Gonnelli, 122). 41 Hexaemeron, ll. 734-58 (Gonnelli, 165-6).

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accountable to his sobering admonitions. But it is plausible, even likely I believe, that he is also soliciting Heraclius and the Patriarch Sergius, both of whom are addressed in his Hexaemeron as captains of the imperial ‘new creation’ so-called, to model the disciplines that George commends. His ‘learned spiritual ladder’, as Mary Whitby aptly calls it,42 was valid for Emperor and Patriarch as well as for his lowly self and for all Christians devoted to the ineffable Creator. Even the Emperor and Patriarch were being cautioned in these presumably late poems of George, so different in tenor from his earlier panegyrics, that, as both Qoheleth and the Apostle Paul had prophetically intimated in Scripture (cf. Eccl. 1:2ff.; Rom. 8:19-23), much vulnerability and vanity (ματαιότης) still lay just beneath the surface of the creation that Byzantium was claiming to renew and perpetuate.

42

See M. Whitby, ‘A Learned Spiritual Ladder?’ (2014), esp. 456-7.

FOLLOWING THE HOLY FATHERS: PATRISTIC SOURCES IN THE PALAMITE CONTROVERSY

edited by Tikhon Alexander PINO

Introduction Tikhon Alexander PINO, The Pappas Patristic Institute, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, MA, USA

Enthusiasm for the theology of St Gregory Palamas has not waned since he first became a household name in the twentieth century. Indeed, interest in Palamas, and in those topics especially associated with his name, has only grown since the days of Vladimir Lossky, John Meyendorff, and the Neo-Palamite renaissance. Not only have the themes of participation, deification, and hesychasm become standard topics in academic and ecumenical theology, but the bibliography on Palamas himself, and the essence-energies distinction in particular, has continued to proliferate over the past decades.1 Yet the explosion of interest in Palamism, and the propagation of reflection and discussion on his theology, has not always been matched by a proportionate expansion of research into the primary sources of the period, whether of the writings of Palamas himself or of his various supporters and opponents in the fourteenth century.2 The papers that follow aim to fill this gap by offering detailed studies of the actual texts and authors of the hesychast controversy, with particular attention to the reception of patristic theology in the Late Byzantine period. They aim to deepen our understanding not only of the theology of St Gregory Palamas, but of the Palamite controversy as a whole. They offer a wide panorama of the fourteenth-century debates over the question of God’s essence and energies, from the onset of the controversy between Palamas and Barlaam to the condemnation of Prochoros Kydones in 1368. They include forays into the writings of anti-Palamite authors as well as of the collaborators and heirs of Palamas in the fourteenth century. The resulting picture is a much a wider perspective on the theological debates surrounding the essence-energies distinction than one is accustomed to.3 The authors who have contributed to the studies below are 1 For a recent overview, see Mikonja Knežević, Gregory Palamas (1296-1357): Bibliography, Библиографија српске теологије 7 (Belgrade, 2012). 2 There has not, for example, been a single monograph dedicated to examining the essenceenergies distinction in toto in the writings of Palamas since the publication of his complete edited corpus. I have tried to remedy this with my Being and Naming God: Essence and Energies in St. Gregory Palamas (Doctoral Dissertation, Marquette University, 2021). 3 On the need for such studies, see Antonio Rigo, ‘Premessa’, in id., Gregorio Palamas e oltre: Studi e documenti sulle controversie teologiche del XIV secolo bizantino (Florence, 2004), viii. Cf. T. Pino, ‘Beyond Neo-Palamism: Interpreting the Legacy of St. Gregory Palamas’, Analogia 3 (2017), 53-73.

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not content simply to offer discussions and reflections on the essence-energies distinction, or on the figures who espoused it or attacked it. Rather, they offer indepth analysis and scholarship on the texts of the Palamite controversy itself and the figures who shaped Late Byzantine theology in the Middle Palaiologan period. In an article on theology as episteme in Palamas, Christiaan Kappes explores some of the neglected sources of Palamas’ doctrine of theology as a ‘science’ in the Aristotelian sense. Kappes looks at the debates between Barlaam and Palamas alongside developments in the Scholastic world, and contemporary Dominican theology in particular, offering an extensive analysis of the medieval debates over theologia. Ultimately, the focus of Kappes’ study is the liturgical background and resonances of Palamas’ language of theology as contemplation or vision. The result is an eminently useful study not only for understanding the wider intersection of Greek and Latin theology in the late medieval period, but for better understanding the hymnographical context of Palamite discourse as a means of receiving the Church Fathers and the Greek theological tradition in the hesychast controversy. The contribution of Fr Alexandros Chouliaras, stemming from his work on the anthropology of St Gregory Palamas,4 examines the concept of ‘intellectual sensation’, both in the Triads and other hesychast writings. Looking at the patristic background of this language, Chouliaras examines the apparent contradiction of combining bodily and spiritual categories, which leads him to explore the relationship between the corporeal and spiritual in the thought of Palamas. Chouliaras’ study clarifies a great deal about the role of the nous or intellect in hesychast anthropology and spiritual experience, not only fitting the Palamite view of the body and spiritual senses into the context of its patristic sources, but also grounding the vision of the uncreated light in the ascetical theology of hesychast practice and theory. In her own study of the patristic legacy in Palamas, Jane Sloan Peters sets out to determine to what extent the writings of Palamas make use of the dyenergist Christology of St Maximos the Confessor, centering especially on the Dionysian language of ‘theandric energy’. This article provides readers with an overview of a difficult topic that not only lay at the very center of the Monothelite controversy, but which also has implications for the reception of Chalcedonian theology in the early Byzantine period. Peters traces the echoes of Maximos’ Christology in different writings of Palamas while also explicating the dependence of the essence-energies distinction on seventh-century theologies of Christ’s two operations. Her contributions ultimately open the discussion of how these various strains of the tradition are received, specifically as they relate to the doctrine of deification. 4

Alexandros Chouliaras, The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body, Explorations in Early and Medieval Theology 38 (Turnhout, 2020).

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In his study of the divine energies as ‘accidents’, Dmitry Biriukov enters deeply into the controversy between Palamas and Akindynos. Going beyond the One Hundred and Fifty Chapters and other more popular texts to explore the Antirrhetics against Akindynos and other writings of the hesychast controversy, as well as the writings of Akindynos himself, Biriukov uncovers the background, context, and implications of the debates over theological language in the late Byzantine period. The resulting study is one that better allows us to understand not only the patristic sources of Palamas and his opponents, but some neglected details of the Palamite controversy itself and the actual terms of the debate between Palamas and Akindynos. Biriukov’s study also features comments on the lesser-known but important figure of David Dishypatos, a contemporary supporter of Palamas and a significant actor in the broader history of the controversy over God’s essence and energies. Biriukov’s article is complemented by the work of Alessia Brombin, whose study of the Historia brevis of David Dishypatos, which constitutes his response to the inquiries of the Empress Anna, forms an important part of the Palamite controversy as it unfolded in the 1340s. This topic once again grants us greater access into the debate with Akindynos, in particular, whose theology stimulated the majority of Palamas’ writings and helped set in motion the most turbulent period of the hesychast controversy. Brombin’s work will acquaint readers with the relevant bibliography on the Historia brevis and provide a useful introduction to this key text of one of Palamas’ contemporary supporters. Going even further into the theology of Gregory Akindynos is the valuable work of Andreas Zachariou. Zachariou, who specializes in the study of Akindynos and has produced a monograph, in Greek, on his theological method,5 here introduces the reader to the debates within the Palamite controversy over the ‘subordination’ of the divine energies to the transcendent essence of God and their ‘causation’ thereby. His article is thus concerned with the term ‘greater’ as it is used in patristic and Byzantine theology, particularly with regard to the historical application of John 14:28. This is an aspect of the essenceenergies controversy, especially as it continues debates of the Middle Byzantine period, that is too often neglected in the study of St Gregory Palamas. Finally, the work of Petros Toulis examines the writings of Theophanes of Nicaea (d. 1381), another important Palamite author best known for his epistolary exchange with the Latin Paul of Smyrna in the era dominated not by Palamas and his immediate opponents, but by the Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos, the Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos, and the anti-Palamite Prochoros Kydones. Toulis explores the Orations on the Light of Thabor in particular, drawing out Theophanes’ reliance on the Church Fathers and concepts found Andreas Zachariou, Η θεολογική γνωσιολογία του Γρηγορίου Ακινδύνου: Προσέγγιση στη διαμόρφωση και την απόπειρα πατερικής κατοχύρωσης των θεολογικών του αντιλήψεων (Athens, 2018). 5

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in St Maximos the Confessor. While expounding on Theophanes’ views as they relate to the revelation of God, the Transfiguration, and the Eucharist, Toulis argues that Theophanes’ intent was, above all, to justify the Tomos of 1368 in defense of Palamas against his posthumous opponents. All together, the studies that follow present a substantive introduction to a wide range of themes in the Palamite controversy, from its beginnings in the epistemological debates between Palamas and Barlaam until its final years, culminating in the official canonization of Palamas and the explusion of his enemies from the Orthodox Church. As the study of Palamite theology continues to grow and expand, the scholarly world stands in need of more such studies, which will penetrate into the actual writings of Palamite and anti-Palamite authors alike, drawing out the background, context, and details of the hesychast controversy on the basis of the texts and primary sources of the period.

Gregory Palamas’ Defense of Theology as Ἐπιστήμη: Historical Background and Sources Christiaan KAPPES, Ss Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

ABSTRACT This study highlights more unusual cases where Byzantine liturgical sources, such as in the Menaion and homiletic material of Fathers, are essential to understand certain notions of Palamas’ theoptic and epoptic ideas. The vocabulary and central themes of divine vision and participation in the divine energies are often found in Byzantine hymnody describing such experiences of divine light by the apostles and other saints. In some cases, Palamas’ formulations are closest to literature of a liturgical vs. dogmatic character. Furthermore, certain Palamite values, such as the presumed infallibility of patristic axioms (e.g., Basil the Great’s teaching on the Holy Spirit) build on liturgical assertions of the saint’s authority in doctrinal matters. Palamas’ combination of liturgical sources for his logical arguments on behalf of the apodeictic syllogism within an Aristotelian typology will be explored. This will lead to the conclusion that Palamas was very much influenced by contemporary Scholastic views and opinions on theology as a science and on the nature of the beatific vision. However, his own theory combined a natural epistemological skepticism with a divine illumination theory that distinguishes him from both Medieval Latin and Barlaamian positions on the scientific status of theology.

This article takes its point of departure from Antonis Fyrigos’ evaluation of Gregory Palamas to be the first Byzantine author to propose a theory of syllogistic theology, as if it qualified as an Aristotelian science of theological premises that proceed to infallible and dogmatic conclusions; alleged to be quite foreign to either Hellenic or Byzantine theological methodologies of the past.1 I will highlight some heretofore uncited texts that plausibly contributed to Palamas’ theological vision and, to a great extent, justified his embrace of scientific theology. My method will be as follows: First I will supplement the running historical narrative surrounding the Barlaam-Palamas debate, in order to connect Barlaam and Palamas genetically to contemporary Dominican-Scholastic discussions in Constantinople that help account for Palamas’ reflections on and reactions to Barlaam’s rejection of scientific theology (allegedly enjoying 1

Antonis Fyrigos, ‘Gregorio Palamas e il “palamismo”’, Eastern Theological Journal 2 (2015),

208.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 243-270. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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intrinsic infallibility), as well as to Barlaam’s demotion of syllogistic theology (i.e., premises based upon philosophical or unilateral authorities) to merely dialectical or probable theology (or, as in section 1, infra, to a scientia largo dicta where both Greeks and Latins admit axioms from an inspired source). Palamas’ concerns will be shown to fit perfectly into context of Latino-Scholastic thirteenth- and fourteenth-century discussions on scientific theology, where both syllogistic and experiential justifications were being proposed, whereby the visio beata in via in a cognizing subject provides self-evident principles syllogizable into infallible theological conclusions. To bolster his ostensibly original position, Palamas made recourse to patristic and liturgical texts to justify incorporation of the syllogistic method into Byzantine theology. Palamas’ theory of syllogistic theology is contained in his third polemical work (following his two earliest polemical works on the Holy Spirit), entitled: Epistula 1 ad Akindynum.2 In the prior months of 1334, Palamas’ knowledge of Latin theology had first been drawn from informants present in Constantinople during Barlaam’s debates with Latins and from citations within Barlaam’s earliest Latin treatise.3

1. The Remote Latino-Scholastic Background to the Barlaam-Palamas Debate Palamas would hardly have invented a full-blown theory of syllogistic theology without precedent but in response to a problem. Of course, he was susceptible to environmental conditions in the development of his theory, whether amenable or polemical to his own ideas. I shall propose that Palamas’ remote and proximate Latino-Scholastic contexts account for the framework within which he developed a scientific theory of theology in Byzantium. But, lacking access to Latino-Scholastic works in Greek, Palamas managed to exploit patristic homiletic sources in combination with other liturgical texts to defend an Aristotelian-qualified and beatific science of theology partially in sync and partially at odds with his Latin contemporaries. Of course, Aquinas’ theory of syllogistic science, as mediated him by Dominicans through Barlaam, proffered the occasion for Palamas to take up his own position on the question. In 1334, a central point of departure for Dominican-Barlaamian debates in Constantinople lay in the claims of Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) who had argued 2 Gregory Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, in Panagiotis Christou (ed.), Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ συγγράμματα, vol. 1 (Thessaloniki, 2010), 203-19. For dating of this work to June-July, 1334, see Antonis Fyrigos, Barlaam Calabro Opere contro i latini: Introduzione, storia dei testi, edizione critica, traduzione e indici, vol. 1, Studi e Testi 347 (Rome, 1998), 227, 229. 3 Antonis Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica alla polemica esicastica (con un’edizione critica delle Epistole di Barlaam), Medioevo 11 (Rome, 2005), 73-5.

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that theology qualifies, in light of Aristotle, as a proper science. In short, Aquinas had explicitly distinguished sciences that ‘proceed from the natural light of the intellect’,4 like geometry, arithmetic, and suchlike, versus sciences that presuppose already evident propositions from scientific-syllogistic conclusions drawn from a higher science, as with music. For instance, the musician accepts the scientific demonstrations or conclusions of the mathematician, as if said conclusions provide evident propositions without needing to verify both these per se nota premises and their conclusions prior to employing such. For example, if numbers are demonstrated to be quantities, then the musician assumes the fact that each number in a key signature represents a certain quantity in relation to another. This so-called subalternate science of music is key for Aquinas’ argument that the viator in statu isto can properly practice theology as science by way of analogy (as music to geometry, so theologia nostra to theologia beatorum). In the analogical argument, the saints in heaven enjoy scientific knowledge that qualifies under Aristotle’s classical condition for a science; namely: (1.) the object contemplation must be eternal, (2.) the object understood must be evident per se, (3.) the knower must subjectively have certitude, (4.) proposition must be formulable that can be syllogized to infallibly true conclusions.5 All these conditions allegedly apply to the blessed in heaven who intellectually hold a perfect theology in patria. However, humans in statu isto have only access to the science of the blessed as revealed to them in Scripture (except perhaps prophets or saints whose prophecy or visio beata is in via). Like musicians, Christian theologians are alleged to use the principles and conclusions of such a higher science of the blessed in order to syllogize on earth. Objectively, then, their syllogisms are theologically certain, leading to valid conclusions, which are per se dogmatic, as developed out of the aforesaid evident propositions from theology in patria.6 Although Aquinas’ ST is today central, his Scriptum on the Sentences was a principal text for Dominican studia and for university students who prioritized comments directly related to distinctions within Lombard’s Sentences. Aquinas’ Scriptum made the rather important distinction (not in ST) that a subalternate science is inferior to its higher science ‘by reason of its mode of knowing (modus cognoscendi)’.7 The 4

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (= ST), 1.1.2, responsum. For a discussion of Aristotle’s Analytica Posteriora (71b-5b) et alia in Palamas’s theory of science, see Stavros Yangazoglou, ‘Philosophy and Theology: The Demonstrative Method in the Theology of Saint Gregory Palamas’, The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41 (1996), 9; Richard Swinburne, ‘Gregory Palamas and Our Knowledge of God’, Studia Humana 3 (2014), 4; Constantinos Athanasopoulos, ‘Demonstration (ἀπόδειξις) and Its Problems for St. Gregory Palamas: Some Neglected Aristotelian Aspects of St. Gregory Palamas’ Philosophy and Theology’, in Mikonja Knežević (ed.), The Ways of Byzantine Philosophy (Alhambra, CA, 2015), 361-72. 6 Mikołaj Olszewski, Dominican Theology at the Crossroads: Critical Edition and Study of the Prologues to the Commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences by James of Metz and Hervaeus Natalis, Archa verbi: Subsidia 2 (Münster, 2010), 170. 7 Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum, prologue, 3.2.2. 5

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pilgrim in via envisioned by Thomas does not allegedly possess the beatific science of God (i.e., divine self-knowledge), nor does the viator possess the mode of knowing God of beati. Now, God’s self-knowledge constitutes the highest theology and its subalternate is mediated by the blessed to the viator by propositions of faith. Still, contextually, this subalternate science of theology is superior to sciences possessed by members of the arts faculty in Paris, who might wish philosophy (with its self-evident principles) to be highest (e.g., metaphysics).8 Since the natural light of reason is unable to demonstrate from its first principles the truths of revelation, as Aquinas asserts, it must be relegated to a lower science, as a subject for study, even if the mode of knowing its own principles derives from self-evidence.9 Aquinas’ theory of theology as syllogistic science caused quite a stir in the Dominican and larger academic communities. For now, it is worthwhile mentioning that Aquinas never perfectly integrated his theory into his exegesis of St Paul’s possession of the visio beata in via: I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I […] was caught up to the third heaven – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I […] was caught up into paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such […] I will boast […] But I refrain […] even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh […] (2Cor. 12:1-7)10

In order to maintain theology in via as a subalternate science, should Aquinas deny St Paul’s experience to be the visio beata as reserved for Christians in patria? Like his contemporaries (e.g., Bonaventure), Aquinas clearly affirmed no less than six times that Paul experienced the visio beata in via of the divine essence and theologized in this regard. This opens the possibility that theology can be a pilgrim science (like Paul), both beatific and Aristotelian. Yet, the threat of this thirteenth-century Pauline topos provoked rejection of Paul’s (and others’) beatific experiences, ostensibly in order to thwart putative errors of the Greeks who were using Paul’s experience of visio in via as a proof text to defend Hesychastic claims about an experiential theology based upon visio beata in via. I now provide the main example of Aquinas’ opinion: The human mind is divinely enraptured (rapitur) for a divine truth to be contemplated in three ways: (1.) with the result that it contemplates it through certain imaginary similitudes. And such was the excess of mind that fell upon Peter. (2.) with the result that it contemplates the divine truth through intelligible effects, just as was the excess of David who says: ‘In my excess, I said, every man is a liar’ [LXX Ps. 115:2]. (3.) with the result that it contemplates it in its essence. And such was the rapture (raptus) of 8

ST 1.1.5.2, and ibid., ad 2. M. Olszewski, Dominican Theology (2010), 170-1. 10 See the NRSV for this translation. All translations are my own unless referenced otherwise (which may be adjusted). 9

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Paul and even of Moses. It is fittingly enough, for as Moses was the first doctor of the Jews, so in this way was Paul the first doctor of the gentiles.11

Aquinas elsewhere discusses the nature of Paul’s vision but his use of Vulgate/LXX Ps. 115:2 will be important since Palamas himself exegetes this passage in support of syllogistic theology.12 Aquinas presupposed that people had the beatific vision and theologized therefrom in via. However, how can one reconcile Aquinas’ presupposition that only the blessed in patria have access to scientific theology with this claim? The initial problem turns on the following: (1.) Since Aristotle did not address souls cognizing outside of their bodies, is the material condition of a human soul immaterial to possessing the visio beata for scientific ratiocinations, such as producing the definition of a triangle, or (2.) Should vision be classified differently from a science, since it is not naturally acquired even if by nature the soul is disposed toward the beatific vision in this life?13 These sorts of questions were to be raised in posterior Scholastic debates. Lastly, I note the prominence of LXX Ps. 115 to suggest that David enjoyed a middle vision, between that of Peter (Acts 10:9-16) and Paul’s ecstasies. This Psalm will strangely resurface in Palamite discussions, as a central text of reflection for the nature of ecstasy, for which Palamas and Palamites will argue contrary to Aquinas’ position that David’s experience, in LXX Ps. 115, as well as Moses’ and Paul’s, qualify as beatifying. In this vein, the Dominicans in Constantinople argued scientific theology under the aegis of a burgeoning commentary tradition on Thomistic themes of scientific wisdom and ecstatic revelation to the saints in via. In fact controversies were raging within the Dominican studia prior to Richard of England’s and Francesco da Camerino’s arrival at the Capital (1333/1334) to debate the filioque. The first major figure, whom I’ll mention, to inspire advanced discussions of Aquinas’ theory of scientific theology is John Quidort (1292-6). This Dominican champion of Thomas’ theory can be classified (in his opposition to the illuminationist theologian Henry of Ghent) a rationalist relative to Henry of Ghent’s (d. 1293) famous theory of a lumen medium or supernatural light that was given to the theologian to ensure him scientific infallibility in his theologizing.14 This middle light ultimately failed to find general acceptance among theologians of the Latin universities. However, it forms a propitious background for Palamas’ own development of an apologetic whereby Hesychastic theologians are asserted to possess a superior vision of the objects of faith by virtue of their seeing a divine light. Palamas’ divine light is Tabor-light and is clearly 11

ST 2/2.175.3, ad 1. ST 2/2.175.1, argumentum 2; 2/2.175.1 sed contra; ST 2/2.175.1, corpus; ST 2/2.175.1, ad 2; ST 2/2.175.3, ad 1; De veritate 13.2, sed contra; De veritate 13.2, corpus. 13 For this debate between John Quidort and Henry of Ghent, see M. Olszewski, Dominican Theology (2010), 260-1. 14 M. Olszewski, Dominican Theology (2010), 257. 12

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the light of the visio beata in via (though never of the divine essentia). It is nonetheless of the essentialia that are co-infinites in the divine essence that admit of contemplation by the saints (and Hesychasts). This goes well beyond Henry of Ghent’s lumen medium but is within the line of theology in reaction thereto, flowing from Scotus’ Propositio famosa/vulgata. If fourteenth-century Dominican culture tended to back away from Aquinas’ commitment to the strictly scientific status of theology, arguing only its claim to being a subaltern science largo dicta, Scotus developed Aquinas’ theory by connecting theologia in via precisely with Bonaventure’s and Aquinas’ convictions that visio beata in via meets each and every condition of propter quid (a priori) science as strictly proposed by Aristotle.15 Like Dominicans of the period, Scotus proposed his theory in the prologue of his commentary on Lombard’s Sentences.16 The marvelous innovation in the propositio famosa was to suppose a kind of theologia de necessariis (whether in the divine or created minds) by looking at the structure of divine being. Since excrescences or attributes of the deity logically derive from what is demonstrable about the existent essence of the godhead, then the propositions formed about the structure of divine being enjoy scientific certitude, whether these are looked at by God epoptically (considering his own attributes), or by a creature (contemplating the implications of God being such and such a kind of being).17 This led to Scotus’ controversial introduction of arguments in favor of distinctions between and among persons and attributes within the divine essence prior to the consideration of any created mind or the positing of formal distinctions in the divine essence.18 This theology reached its culmination in François Meyronnes (d. 1328), who places us in the midst of Dominican-Franciscan controversies raging at Avignon in the 1320s on this and the beatific vision (which had the greatest connection to and most representatives of the Greek East, even more than Cyprus!).19 Of course, Richard of England and Francesco da Camerino represented Avignon before the Byzantine court. Even if Meyronnes’ texts were not available in Byzantium in 1334, Meyronnes was taken up and excerpts from his works were cited to defend Palamism by the Palamite theologian Gennadius Scholarius (1392-1472).20 Again, Palamas falls neatly into the line of thinkers 15 See Stephen Dumont, ‘The Propositio Famosa Scoti: Duns Scotus and Ockham on the Possibility of a Science of Theology’, Dialogue 31 (1992), 415. 16 Ibid. 416. 17 Ibid. 417. 18 Ibid. 420-1. 19 See François Meyronnes, 1Sent, d. 4, q.3, and d. 13, q. 1 (Venice, 1520), folio 30, 65. 20 See Ibid. 1Sent. d. 8, q. 2, articles 1-2, folio 44. Compare George-Gennadios Scholarios and Armandus of Bellovisu, Traduction et commentaire de l’opuscule de saint Thomas d’Aquin: ‘De Ente et Essentia’, in Martin Jugie (ed.), Œuvres complètes de Gennade Scholarios, vol. 6 (Paris, 1933), 280, lines 15-53. Nota bene, Scholarios hints about his introduction of Meyronnes doctrines into the text on ibid. 180, lines 30-5, where he named Francis Meyronnes as surpassing Aquinas in some doctrinal matters.

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who had to confront both extremes of a controversy between and among Dominicans and Franciscans (inter alios) on whether a truly scientific theology exists and whether such need be beatific for the viator. Scotus – as per usual – complicated matters: On one hand, God can infuse non-beatific and yet abstractive knowledge of items in divinis by means of a light in the human intellect of the wayfarer; thus, scientific theology. On the other hand, Scotus embraced a theory of intuitive cognition of the presence of an object (not mediated by an abstractive concept). He also held that the pilgrim can only experience in via this intuitive aspect of the beatific vision. In short, his theory admitted Paul’s vision was beatifying, insofar as it was a direct and immediate experience of divine presence in anima. Yet, the theological propositions of Paul cannot be derived from this experience (for he couldn’t utter words about them!), but from a concomitant non-beatifying infusion of abstractions (composable into propositions). Paul had truly evident scientific premises for an infallibly revealed theology.21 Although first developed in a more a posteriori form in 1302, Scotus subsequently developed a propter quid or a priori proof that propositions expressing an essential, and thus logical, order can be indifferent to either finite or infinite beings. These common natures (potentially finite or infinite), with their intrinsic order of both nature and concepts, ensure a universal understanding of relations between essence and attributes of any individuals (finite or infinite) in the real order, including God’s mode of existence.22 The most important application of Scotus’ development of the propositio famosa, as the remote context for Palamas’ theory of experiential theology, is in its ability to justify the mind’s capacity to have a vision of God (for Scotus, of the divine essence), wherein the intellect can distinguish a real order of subject and predicate, essence and attribute, in view of the naked divine essence. Becoming aware of some Latin positions on scientific theology in the 1330s, Palamas (mutatis mutandis) would have only rejected direct vision per essentiam, while accepting an experiential theology distinguishing essential attributes from an undefinable subject, understanding essentially ordered relations to one another by vision – despite the intellect’s inability to conceptualize the divine essence – as justifiable. Palamas fell very much into a species of illuminationism by his description of the Hesychastic practitioner as a true theologian. Yet, on the question of a subalternate science of theology, Palamas will be shown (section 3) to fit squarely into Quidort’s line of discussion in response to Henry of Ghent in Palamas’ Epistula 1 ad Akindynum. Therein, after affirming the possibility of syllogistic and apodictic theology, Palamas immediately turns against natural theologies that start from ens mobile or abstractions and propositions that are based upon perceptions provided by material beings. This echoes an initial 21 22

S. Dumont, ‘The Propositio Famosa Scoti’ (1992), 416. Ibid. 419.

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concession of Quidort, who admits that philosophical theology, it is true, based upon ‘the defective beings of movement and prime matter make them difficult to know with certainty.’23 Still, Quidort ultimately claims that a valid science of Physica can be formed from the universal principles derived from cognizing such beings. Less optimistically, Palamas wrote against Aristotelian Physica thus: So, then, for Hellenes, theology is probable argumentation, for which reason every apparently theological syllogism is a dialectical syllogism for these same pagan Greeks; a plausible syllogism from probable premises, i.e., a persuasive syllogism from persuasive premises. For they neither know anything certain about God, nor anything immovable [viz., they speculate on ens mobile]: ‘Yet, they were made vain in their reasonings’ (Rom. 1:21). By contrast, we do not set out on the act of theologizing from plausible principles, but we unchangeably hold, regarding the aforesaid principles, that they are taught by God. So, how will we not assert such a syllogism apodictic, but merely dialectical?24

Palamas ultimately falls outside of the late-thirteenth positions like that of Quidort on the reliability of universals abstracted from matter for demonstration but will be shown to be much closer to positions developed in the early-fourteenth century. Naturally, Palamas (like many Greek theologians) would have rejected Quidort’s claim that the human intellect can know God per essentiam scientifically.25 Finally, in Palamas’ citation from Rom. 1:21, to speak about demonstrating the existence of God, he claims that Hellenic (qua Aristotelian) theology is merely about probable being given the unknowability (scientifically) of entia mobilia, while the premises of revealed theology are exactly the opposite. In fact, Quidort’s own reflections on pagan versus revealed science can be summed up as follows: ‘Quidort says that although both theology and philosophy consider God, they do it in different ways. Philosophy assumes the knowledge about creatures and from that proceeds to the knowledge of God, while theology operates vice versa.’26 Mutatis mutandis (concerning ens mobile), Palamas’ position might as well be that of a Parisian master who doubts the human mind’s ability to know or to abstract (contra Aristotle) essences or grasp universals in anima from substances or ens commune (which same position, e.g., was sometimes defended by Aquinas and ex professo by Duns Scotus)!27 In fact, in section 2, Palamas’ literary source will be proven to be far more antirealist than any of these aforementioned. 23

M. Olszewski, Dominican Theology (2010), 257. Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Akindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 213, lines 2-10. 25 M. Olszewski, Dominican Theology (2010), 257. For his theory of the intellectual capacity of the mind to see the ‘nude divine essence’ of the deity, see D. Jean and P. Muller, ‘Les critiques de la thèse de Jean Quidort sur la beatitude formelle’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 15 (1948), 152-70. 26 M. Olszewski, Dominican Theology (2010), 257. 27 See Giorgio Pini, ‘Scotus on Knowing and Naming Natural Kinds’, History of Philosophy Quarterly 26 (2009), 255-68. 24

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The chain of discussion, from the time of Quidort’s straightforward promotion of Aquinas’ position, extended to William Peter of Godino (ca. 1300), James of Metz (ca. 1301-1304), Hervaeus Natalis (1302-1311), John of Naples (ca. 1309), and James of Thérines (1308). While each aforementioned writer developed Aquinas’ thought along different lines (sometimes critically engaging it), only Aquinas’ Summa contra Gentiles (trans. 1354) was ever translated into Greek on the question of scientific theology during Palamas’ lifetime. Prior to this Greek translation, similarly controversial material was introduced into Greek Cyprus, a hotbed of unionism due to Latin political hegemony. Cypriots were, consequently, subjected to Latin preoccupations about theological science and its relation to the beatific vision, especially by the arrival of the controversialist magister Raymond Bequini, OP, who was a resident-bishop on the island of Cyprus (1326-8) until he died.28 Bequini’s extant works concentrated on the two very relevant topics discussed explicitly by both Barlaam and Palamas in 1334; namely, Aquinas’ syllogistic theology as a subalternate science and the beatific vision in via.29 Obviously, these were to become the very concerns between Barlaam and Palamas immediately following the former’s debates with Latins in 1334. Bequini’s position about theology strikingly follows that of his Dominican predecessor, Hervaeus Natalis,30 whose opinion became normative among fourteenth-century Dominicans (in opposition to Quidort and – reportedly – Richard of England and Francesco da Camerino).31 Bequini wrote: I reckon that […] since theology in via is not properly called (proprie dicta) and taken to be a science, because its principles, namely the articles of faith, are not held to be evident, therefore it is impossible for it to be properly a subalternate science, because what is not a science is not a subalternate science [….] Nor do I think that Brother Thomas felt [such] […] but rather he meant science in a general way (largo modo).32

Secondly, Bequini’s position on the beatific vision in statu isto emphasized Aquinas’ conclusions that the human intellect has as its primary object the essences of beings, not primarily being as such (and, by implication, excludes God’s being).33 Hence, the beatific vision in via must be reducible to created and infused species in the human intellect, which is clearly in opposition to ST 2/2.175.3, ad 1 (supra), where Moses and Paul are supposed by Aquinas to 28 William Duba, ‘The Afterlife in Medieval Frankish Cyprus’, Epetirida 26 (2000), 179-83; id., Seeing God: Theology, Beatitude and Cognition in the Thirteenth Century, Ph.D. thesis (University of Iowa, 2006), 258. 29 W. Duba, ‘The Afterlife’ (2006), 349-50. 30 M. Olszewski, Dominican Theology (2010), 279-91. 31 Henry Donneaud, ‘La théologie comme science chez Capreolus’, in Guy Bedouelle, Romano Cessario and Kevin White (eds), Jean Capreolus en son temps (1380-1444) (Paris, 1997), 110. 32 Raymund Bequini, Correctorium Petri Aureoli (MS Avignon, B.M. 314, folio 42a), as partially excerpted and transcribed by Duba, Seeing God (2006), 348. 33 W. Duba, Seeing God (2006), 349-50.

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view the naked divine essence in this life. Bequini discussed Aquinas’ idea that Jesus’ and Paul’s intellects (2Cor 12:1-10) enjoyed ecstasy of the visio beata in via.34 Bequini, however, attenuated Aquinas’ doctrine to say that a composite human nature in via is, unlike the blessed, typically impeded from having a totally intellective cognition of the divine essence (despite these two examples). Such was the position of the pars maior of Dominicans of the period. The wider context of this disputed question includes Pope John XXII (scripsit 1326), who wrote to Bequini condemning the visio beata in via, which was apparently provoked by Eastern Christians (Greeks, Jacobite, and Nestorians) in Cyprus, to whom Bequini was sent to return them to the Roman obedience.35 This event was shortly followed by the cause célèbre of Pope John claiming (1331-2) that the beatific vision was not even experienced by disembodied souls until the resurrection.36 In the meantime, the Franciscan Peter Aureole (d. 1322) and his contemporary Dominican opponent, Bequini, rejected theology as an Aristotelian science (proprie dicta), since the propositions of faith were not per se nota (as, for example, ‘a whole is per se greater than its part’). Also, like Aureole, Bequini made pointed distinctions about natural versus revealed theology, whereby he stated that one can demonstrate scientifically (via philosophical theology) that, for instance, ‘God is infinite’. But, in Franciscan fashion (regarding the filioque), he notes in revealed theology: ‘Sometimes, however, [theology] proceeds to a [syllogistic] conclusion needing to be believed, concerning which it has not yet been determined what must be held, as when it is asked, “Whether the Holy Spirit would be distinguished from the Son, if it were not to proceed from him?” However, sometimes it proceeds to a conclusion already believed and determined by faith.’37 Now, Bequini likewise asserts that: ‘Knowing the divine essence by a proper and distinct cognition is different from knowing something about the divine essence by a proper and distinct cognition. The first is not naturally possible in via but the second certainly is possible and de facto occurs […]’ (italics mine).38 Again, in 1334, Palamas takes up this very topic with interest when speaking of the alleged possibility of a vision of 34

Raymund Bequini, Quaestiones (MS Avignon, B.M. 314, f. 3ra-b), as excerpted and translated in W. Duba, Seeing God (2006), 350. 35 W. Duba, Seeing God (2006), 351. NB, a problem occurs in Dominican tradition, since ST 2/2.1.5 clearly argues that both faith and knowledge, in as much as they touch upon the same object, cannot be simultaneously possessed as two contemporaneous habitus in the same human intellect. 36 His agreement with essence of the reportedly Greek position lasted until his death. For doubts about his reported retraction, see Michael Woodward, ‘Preface to the critical edition of De vision divinae essentiae’, Franciscan Studies 63 (2005), 326. 37 Peter Auriol, Scriptum super primum Sententiarum, vol. 1, ed. Eligius Buytaert (St. Bonaventure, NY, 1952), 154 (1.1, prologue, 1.2, para 75). 38 Raymundus Bequini, Quaestions (Avignon, B.M. 314, f. 3ra), as transcribed and translated in W. Duba, Seeing God (2006), 349-50.

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God’s essence (simpliciter), which Palamas absolutely rejected. Yet, scientifically theological knowledge about God is possible by demonstration in terms reminiscent of the prevenient Aureole-Bequini discussions, where Palamas writes: It has been recognized and agreed upon by all that ‘God is perfect’ and that [thereby] ‘he is not irrational’, from which [premises] he is shown to be one but not only one [but more things]. So, as we are saying that ‘God is perfect’, that [thereby] ‘the perfect is one’, et alia,39 and as we are rationally proving, in a serial way, the remaining qualities of his in accordance with the Fathers,40 by way of qualifying in what sense the perfect is one, if one of those persons who are ignorant of the theory of demonstration raises the objection that ‘there cannot be demonstration with regard to singular beings’, I will immediately reply to him that it is true that such a demonstration is admittedly not universal (indeed, how could it be universal, since it is applied to non-universals?), but it nevertheless constitutes an infallible demonstration, because this demonstration is really necessary and without fallacy even when applied to singular beings, and even more so in the cases of singular beings.41

Palamas’ supposition that propositions from Christian revelation enjoy greater scientific certitude, being taught by God, than axioms of Aristotle’s Physica sounds normal within the history of Medieval philosophy. This mode of considering contemporary theological questions is typical of Paris and Oxford, even if virtually unknown to coeval Byzantines prior to the fourteenth century. Palamas was merely limited in developing his theory by access to purely Byzantine theologians and scholiasts, suggesting a dearth of Scholastic resources, as cited by Barlaam, to cite against Barlaam. Yet, Palamas clearly understood the broad terms of the ongoing Scholastic debate; whether revealed theology can be reducible to a dialectical exercise of arguing opinions, or can it be defended as a scientific enterprise of greater intrinsic certitude and dignity than Hellenic sciences like Physica.

39 This is taken Gregory of Nyssa’s Oratio Catechetica, as identified by John Demetracopoulos, Νικολάου Καβάσιλα κατὰ Πύρρωνος: Πλατωνικὸς φιλοσκεπτικισμὸς καὶ ἀριστοτελικὸς αντισκεπτικισμὸς στὴ βυζαντινὴ διανόηση τοῦ 14ου αἰῶνα (Athens, 1999), 180158, 189178. 40 Commenting on Gregory Nyssa, John of Damascus and Zygabenus are here the sources of Palamas’s doctrine that the Deus trinus is a demonstrabile, as discovered in J. Demetracopoulos, Νικολάου Καβάσιλα (1999), 180158, 189178. 41 This citation is from John Philoponus’ discussion of whether singular beings, such as the sun or the moon, can be ‘scientifically’ known of, in view of the Aristotelian tenet that ‘there is no knowledge of singular things.’ Palamas’ discussion of the possibility of demonstrating things regarding singular beings (e.g., the sun: there is only one sun), in spite of the fact that general terms are necessary for constructing syllogisms, directly derives from John Philoponus’s commentary on Aristotle’s Analytica Posteriora as investigated by John Demetracopoulos, ‘The Reception of Xenophanes’ B34 in Heathen and Christian Antiquity and its Sequel in Byzantine Thought’, in Alison Frazier and Patrick Nold (eds), Essays in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Turnhout, 2015), 385480.

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2. The Immediate Latino-Scholastic Background of the Barlaam-Palamas Conflict Pope John XXII infamously deviated from academic orthodoxy on the question of the beatific vision via a series of 1331-2 sermons. This scandal, known to all Christendom, immediately preceded Barlaam’s and Palamas’ own protracted debates on the matter, which were hardly in dissimilar terms. One of the pope’s major theological supporters was Gerald Odonis (scripsit 1333), OFM, who had been recently elected as the minister general of the Franciscan Order, only to be denounced for heresy – along with Pope John XXII – by his Franciscan predecessor. Odonis subsequently caused universal consternation in Latindom by attempting to defend John XXII through arguing for his innovation of a middle vision of the blessed (inferior to the beatific vision after the final judgment), which in fact substantially differed from Pope John’s authentic position.42 While Odonis’ complicated position on the beatific vision of separated souls and composite persons after the resurrection does not directly concern this paper, Odonis also held for the existence of a scientific knowledge of theology in the soul constituting cases of what might be termed an imperfectly beatific vision as the proper human end in this life, exemplified by St Paul of Tarsus and St Stephen Protomartyr who had both seen ‘the glory of the Lord’. Odonis’ phraseology, examples, and argument find a unique Greek reverberation and a first-known echo among Byzantine theologians in the works of Palamas and, at that, within a year of the worldwide controversy of the question of the visio beata in via coming to a head by the condemnation of Odonis on 17 December 1333.43 I note that Palamas subsequently discussed in a similar manner a central passage taken up by Odonis: As the Gloss says: ‘Certain among the elect detained here in this life, after the eye of the heart has been cleansed (oculo cordis mundato),44 have merited to see the glory (videre gloriam) of God’, just like here Stephen and Paul were taken to the third heaven by rapture. Therefore, it obviously appears according to authoritative premises that the saints of God and the prophets have seen God through a mirror (per speculum).45 And, consequently, the entire principal conclusion shows all that follows, either by a divinely infused species, or by a specially formed species with respect to the aforesaid; namely, since theologically the vision of the divine essence via many forms (which holy man 42 William Duba, ‘The Beatific Vision in the Sentences Commentary of Gerald Odonis’, Vivarium 47 (2009), 350. 43 See Paul and Stephen’s theological visions coupled in Gregory Palamas, Ἀντιρριτικος 2, in Panagiotis Christou (ed.), Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ συγγράμματα, vol. 3 (Thessalonica, 1970), 133, lines 10-23. 44 For the assertion that photophanic beatitude experienced by ‘the clean of heart seeing God’ is productive of their scientific knowledge, see Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 216, lines 8-10. 45 For an appeal to the mirror in scientific theology, see Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 219, lines 15-24.

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– sages and prophets – do have and have had in this life) is doctrinally the proximate end; just like the nobler speculation that a theologian can have in this life.46

Palamas, in these years, was innovatively focusing his point of departure with Barlaam on the same passages. The most prominent example is as follows, which is in mocking response to Barlaam’s position that the light seen by the mind (and eyes) of the saints in via is effectively a created species: Are you [Barlaam] really prepared to believe and argue that all of this is but a mere creature: “the divinity which obliquely showed itself on the mountain” and the hidden, inaccessible light that pertains to it, i.e., the glory of God, the kingdom unleashed at that time in power, i.e., appeared in order to bestow to those who were looking at this, power in order to enable the see the invisible things?47

Subsequently, the universal focus on St Paul’s experience of theology in the beatific vision continued to be a hot topic at Avignon (prompted by the original beatific vision controversy). For example, it was William FitzRalph’s focus (1337-43), who prepared a response to controversies on so-called Armenian questions for Clement VI (regn. 1342-52), who exhaustively discussed Paul’s rapture in dialogue with the theological problems prompted by Henry of Ghent.48 FitzRalph was also influenced by Barlaam’s discussions on similar topics at the papal court at Avignon.49 Palamas’ focus was much the same as the Latins, even if in reaction to Barlaam’s doctrine on the nature of theology and the kinds of evidence to be imputed to theological propositions of saints. In this same vein, FitzRalph took his point of departure from Parisian and Avignon discussions of the beatific vision and had to contend with two extremes: On one hand, St Paul (and his lot) could not preserve the habitus of faith about ordinary articles of faith after experiencing them as evident in the beatific vision; on the other hand, some say that faith and scientific knowledge of the same object can exist in the intellect at the same time. Here, the two major authorities were Henry of Ghent and his typical opponent Duns Scotus. As it turns out, FitzRalph rejected them both and held that faith and knowledge can exist on the same article of faith with the result that Paul’s vision was both rapture and scientific knowledge, but without cancelling the virtue of faith. Scotus, as treated by FitzRalph, wanted to distinguish the objects known in the articles of faith from divinely infused species (that were scientific by virtue of saints seeing God’s essence in via), as opposed to revealed articles of faith held upon the basis of their harmony with a posteriori perceptions of the world ad 46 Gerard Odonis, De multiformi visione dei, in Christian Trottman, Guiral Ot: La vision de Dieu aux multiples formes (Paris, 2001), 128. 47 Palamas, Ἀντιρριτικος 2, ed. Christou (1970), 133, lines 14-7. 48 William Duba, ‘Conversion, Vision and Faith in the Life and Works of Richard FitzRalph’, in Michaele Dunne and Simon Nolan (eds), Richard FitzRalph: His Life, Times, and Thought (Dublin, 2013), 104-5. 49 W. Duba, ‘Conversion, Vision and Faith’ (2013), 108.

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extra. To the extent that the former propositions do not overlap with the latter, St Paul needed to maintain faith on those notions. Diversely, Henry of Ghent held that both faith and knowledge could exist in a human subject on the same article of faith. For his part, Palamas early on stated that faith was known scientifically by the saints; this perfectly aligns with the overall tenor and conclusion of FitzRalph’s disquisition; namely, St Paul had both faith and science about what supernatural items he saw in vision in via. I will discuss Palamas’ likely source texts to justify his conclusion below (section 3). However, Palamas did not seem to have access to translations of Latin materials on the topic but responded to contemporary Barlaamian and Scholastic positions by utilizing Byzantine liturgical texts that assumed: (1.) What was held by faith could simultaneously be known scientifically, and (2.) that Paul and the saints are commonly believed to have these sorts of experiences. We’ve seen, thus far, that both the status of theology as a science and the wayfarer’s access to the beatific vision were contested issues within the Dominican order and between and among Dominicans, Franciscans, and so-called Augustinians (inter alios) in the thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries. Palamas’ immediate context augured a continuation of these debates, just as in the subjected church of Cyprus and capital of Constantinople. First of all, I turn to Cyprus and the vociferous anti-Palamite George Lapithes (who explicitly translated and mimicked Latino-Scholastic treatises)50 but who had been early on in contact with Barlaam, since at least 1334, to whom Lapithes had earlier addressed an important series of inquiries leading to Barlaam to respond with his Solutions later in that same year.51 Lapithes, a Latinizing-Orthodox (à la scholastique) and anti-Palamite figure lacks any substantive biography so that only the most general facts about his flourishing years are attested. As an Orthodox in Latin-subjugated Cyprus, he was in perfect position, early in 1334 (if not before), to intimate the substance of his regular Cypriot debates with the Latins (including his employment of syllogistics in theological debate and the Cypriot controversies over the beatific vision), in both Latin and in Greek, to his correspondent Barlaam.52 As Alexis Torrance provisionally concluded, Cyprus was ‘a haven for anti-Palamism’.53 The aforementioned Bequini had only died in 1428 on Cyprus so that Lapithes would have certainly been aware of Bequini’s positions on both theology and the beatific vision, for he lived near to and frequented the local court of the sovereign Hugh IV Lusignan (1324-59).54 I note, too, that the ruling archbishop 50

Jean Darrouzès, ‘Textes Synodaux Chypriotes’, Revue des Études Byzantines 37 (1979),

40-5. 51 Robert Sinkewicz, ‘The Solutions Addressed to George Lapithes by Barlaam the Calabrian and Their Philosophical Context’, Mediaeval Studies 43 (1981), 151-3. 52 See W. Duba, Seeing God (2006), 351-60. 53 Alexis Torrance, ‘Receiving Palamas: The Case of Cyprus, 1345-1371’, Analogia 4 (2018), 122. 54 R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Solutions’ (1981), 153.

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of Cyprus during Lapithes’ years of activity, Elias of Nabinaux, eventually gathered Jacobites, Armenians, Maronites, Nestorians, and unionist-Greeks to sign solemnly a profession of faith that included providing them a copy of Benedict XII’s Benedictus Deus. Therein, all oriental Christians were effectively bound under obedience to reject a number of doctrines dear to Palamites: (1.) the possession of the beatific vision on earth, (2.) the qualitative difference between the soul resting in peace before the resurrection and the full possession of the beatific vision after the resurrection, (3.) and the assertion that the divine essence can be seen.55 Such events can hardly be coincidental; these were shortly followed by Barlaam’s first visit to the papal court of Avignon in 1339. Turning to Barlaam, Constantinos Palaiologos has recently shown that the origin of several of Barlaam’s citations from Augustine (and others) actually derive from florilegia first gathered in Lombard’s Sentences.56 This Greek translation of Lombard’s Sentences, as known to Barlaam, was apparently also utilized by Nicholas Kabasilas and Symeon of Thessalonica.57 Even if this new evidence results in only a handful of new examples of Latin works among Barlaam’s otherwise almost entirely Greek sources, this slightly strengthens the force of Palamas’ claim that Barlaam was under the influence of Latin literature, although I have not found evidence that Palamas also knew about Barlaam’s correspondences with Latinizing Lapithes. While we can locate Barlaam in Thessalonica as early as 1325, Lapithes appears on the scene of history only in the 1330s. Fyrigos has convincingly argued for dating Barlaam’s reply to Lapithes to September/October 1334. Given this timing, it is entirely possible that Lapithes had sent his initial inquiry to Barlaam in June/July 1334, if not before the Barlaam-Palamas conflict even broke out (by means of Palamas’ Epistula 1 ad Akindynum). The plausibly anterior or contemporary dating of Lapithes’ correspondences is important since we already have Lapithes and Barlaam discussing epistemological questions related to Aristotelian science in Barlaam’s reply or Solutions, wherein he summarizes the theory of Aristotelian science in clear terms of a concept that is clearly evident and which is productive of a habitus (ἕξις), for which geometry and its theorems are an ideal example. Of course, ratiocination toward syllogistic conclusions is part and parcel of such a discussion.58 However, Barlaam is explicit with Lapithes that Aristotle’s 55

W. Duba, Seeing God (2006), 351-2. Konstantinos Palaiologos, ‘The Use of Latin Theological Sources in Matthaos Blastares’ Treatise On the Error of the Latins’, Nicolaus 40 (2013), 60-2. 57 For the date of his arrival, see A. Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica (2005), 162, and for evidence of the Sentences in the above-mentioned Orthodox writers, see Christiaan Kappes, ‘A New Narrative for the Reception of Seven Sacraments into Orthodoxy: Peter Lombard’s Sentences Nicholas Cabasilas and Symeon of Thessalonica and the Utilization of John Duns Scotus by the Holy Synaxis’, Nova et Vetera (English) 15 (2017), 479-501. 58 Barlaam, Solutions, ed. Robert Sinkewicz, Medieval Studies 43 (1981), 211-2. 56

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scientific principles, at best, are relegated to his sciences about naturalia. Contradictions that might arise between Aristotelian science and theology (on divine matters, as it would appear) are, in Barlaam’s works, occasions for the theologian to abandon Aristotelian science.59 In such a scenario, Barlaam explicitly endorses prioritizing Scripture and Fathers over the scientifically evident (premises [?] and) conclusions. Nonetheless, at least once in his works, Barlaam supposes that contradictions between propter quid science and the non-scientific discipline of theology are not in reality objective problems but due exclusively to the weakness of the human intellect.60 In part, Barlaam began his conflict with Palamas in opposition to the claim that Hesychastic practice led to infused knowledge or the beatific vision in via (whereas Barlaam supposed that only the divine essence could be beatifying but is inaccessible, while the saints see only inferior images thereof).61 This was discussed after Barlaam’s Dominican interlocutors had apparently proposed essentially John Quidort’s literal interpretation of Aquinas on the existence of a scientific and subalternate science of the blessed (viz., theology). Accordingly, Barlaam had been confronted by Dominicans who (predictably) presented neither Henry of Ghent’s nor Duns Scotus’ more innovative arguments in support of scientific theology as visio beata in via. The Dominicans could have only conceivably presented the burgeoning interpretation of Aquinas by Hervaeus Natalis (viz., theology is a science largo dicta), or by John Quidort. Everything in Barlaam’s reaction to the Dominicans at Constantinople points to them following the Dominican line of Quidort (viz., theologia stricte dicta) on the topic of scientific theology. Hence, it is to Quidortian-Dominicans that Barlaam reacted by a Hervaean rebuttal and it is to both Quidortian-Dominicans and to a Hervaean Barlaam that Palamas reacted. Palamas agreed with Barlaam that the Latin syllogisms drawn from metaphysics on behalf of the filioque were not apodictic. Clearly, Latins founded some of their axioms outside of the Fathers and upon the premises of Aquinas.62 However, Palamas rejected Barlaam’s reasoned out objection as summarized by Fyrigos: [Barlaam:] The character of these [Aristotelian] syllogisms is to demonstrate all of what is able to be established by the human intellect from first principles and axioms that are by nature (physei) prior to and causal of their conclusions and are properties of the object being proven. Now, since all that concerns God transcends our intellect and does so in the highest anterior grade, from this it follows that apodictic syllogisms are unable to be formulated in the theological ambit.63

59 60 61 62 63

Ibid. 163. Ibid. 163. A. Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica (2005), 84-5, 90. Ibid. 76-8. Ibid. 78.

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Palamas’ first point of departure is from the Πανοπλία δογματική of Euthymios Zigabenus.64 In this text, Palamas knows a claim that the Fathers had endorsed apodictic demonstrations of the Christian faith.65 In his earliest epistle, Palamas distinguished the demonstrability of things like the existence of God, God’s personal existence, and other such attributes, from apodictic demonstration of the mode of production for the Son and the Spirit. However, this was merely citing a trope known to the Latins as well, for it derives from a universally known pericope within John Damascene’s discussion of the production of the Word and Spirit in the De fide orthodoxa. Despite Damascenian claims that such explanations and arguments are not apodictic, Damascene had nonetheless expended considerable efforts to provide explanations and proof texts for said productions. Next, I turn to the state of the question on Palamas’ theory of the existence of a theological science. First of all, Fyrigos rightly emphasizes that Palamas does not follow the traditionally logical presentation of Analytica Posteriora, whereby Palamas does not speak of something necessary in terms of a perfectly definable noetic object (e.g., triangle), which is eternal (neither coming to be nor passing a way), understood with natural clarity (its definition is evident to reason), and immutable in its definition, whose terms can be used as the middle term in a validly apodictic syllogism. For example, if all triangles consist of three intersecting lines that form three angles whose total adds up to 180 degrees, and if all such three-angled items are geometric figures, then all triangles are geometric figures. We notice that the object here is purely universal and lacks any existential commitment on the part of the logician or scientist. For his part, Palamas notes that a strict analogy of this method can be formed by reference to God, so that if someone were to say ‘God is x’, and ‘x is y’, then ‘God is y’, such that this would be scientifically concluded. Comparatively, Scotus had much earlier argued for a theologia de necessariis, whereby an exact parallel exists between God and truths discovered in certain natures according to analytic thought. In short, the relations discoverable analytically between certain natures and their necessary attributes are in sync or parallel with God and his attributes, insofar as these two objects of analysis fall under the same concept whereby such attributes analytically belong to their subject. However, this is not at all Palamas’ point (viz., he is not proposing a metaphysical theology in league with contemporary Latins). Rather, as Fyrigos notes: The apodictic knowledge culminates in the theological ambit, according to Palamas, in a communion and immediate relation with God. This is the prerogative of the ‘purified in heart’, who know ‘through intellectual illumination (διὰ νοερᾶς φωτοφανείας)’ having come upon them: not only ‘that God exists’, but additionally ‘the kind of light that he 64 65

Euthymios Zigabenus, Orthodoxae fidei dogmatica panoplia (PG 130, 49A). A. Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica (2005), 79.

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is’, and even more so that he is ‘source of the intellectual and immaterial light (πηγὴ φωτός. νοεροῦ τε καὶ ἀύλου).’66

Barlaam concedes that revealed truths are de facto ‘more credible than every demonstration’. He admitted that syllogisms may even be formulated in theology and that the ‘pure of heart’ possess a superior knowledge of God than others.67 However, a crucial summary of Barlaam by Fyrigos follows, where Barlaam falls into line with thinkers like Hervaeus: ‘Barlaam sustains that demonstration can be understood in a general sense (κοινῶς = largo) and in its proper sense (ἰδίως = stricte).’68 As if in a summary of Hervaeaus, Barlaam only conceded that theology was a science in the second or improper sense of the word. This looks very much like Barlaam had opposed his Dominican opponents in Constantinople by agreement with the pars maior of Dominicans of the period. Consequently, Barlaam allowed and practiced syllogistic argumentation with the Latins, but did not consider this truly scientific. Furthermore, in the manner as a Parisian magister, theological premises do not rely on the prior principles of some other science (e.g., metaphysics), but upon Scripture and Fathers.69 Applying the quasi-Hervaean sense of syllogistic theology largo, Barlaam stated: ‘Every declaration pronounced by the venerable Fathers concerning the divinity will have for us the same efficacity of a principle, as a universal notion and axiom for one who practices geometry.’70 Then, exactly as one would expect in the wider context of the time, Barlaam seemingly opposes Palamas for elevating conclusions of patristically-based syllogism to γνῶσις, since what is scientifically understood (τὸ ἐπίστασθαι) cannot be what is an object of faith (τὸ πιστεύειν).71 As we have seen, all these preoccupations surround the classical debate between so-called Augustinians (Bonaventure and Henry of Ghent) – who held for the compossibility of faith and knowledge of the same object – and incompatibilists (Aquinas, Scotus) who held that knowledge of an objective truth excluded faith. Palamas, as Fyrigos has shown, can be contrasted on this last point to Barlaam, where Palamas’ notion of the divine light seen by the saints is mystical and pertains to items coessential to the divine essence without loss of faith, while Barlaam 66

Ibid. 82. Ibid. 84. 68 Ibid. 85. I note that Fyrigos’s publications have, so far, never compared Barlaam or Palamas to their fourteenth-century Latin context. Consequently, the coincidence between Barlaam and Latin theories of theological science is unsurprising, if newly discovered. See also Katerina Ierodiakonou, ‘The Anti-Logical Movement in the Fourteenth Century’, in Katerina Ierodiakonou (ed.), Byzantine Philosophy and Its Ancient Sources (Oxford, 2003), 231. 69 A. Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica (2005), 87. 70 Barlaam, Epistle 1, in Antonis Fyrigos (ed.), Dalla controversia palamitica (2005), 37, lines 344-9. Cf. Palamas, Epistula 1, ed. Christou (2010), 241, line 28-242, line 2. 71 A. Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica (2005), 88. 67

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embraces a degraded sort of saintly vision, whereby the saints see in species that are somehow superior to those of ordinary citizens of the world.72 So far, Palamas has been shown to have generally downgraded the value of sense perception and the universals that are said to be abstracted thereby. In addition, Palamas adamantly defended syllogistic theology, as if it were an Aristotelian-based science (subalternate for the non-visionary and the highest science for the visionary). Of course, this contrast requires explanation. The key, as both Fyrigos and John Demetracopoulos have shown, lies in Palamas’ anti-rationalism. This does not actually affect Palamas’ commitment to scientific theology, since the source of his scientific universals, particulars, and the synthetic propositions drawn therefrom, is experience of divine light (not sense perception) that emanates from the divinity.73 Using such axioms, despite his Dionysian apophaticism, Palamas admits Aristotelian syllogisms may assist a human to understand something of God’s attributes.74 As Demetracopoulos has already uncovered and exegeted in Palamas’ works, it is sense perception and passions that effectively downgrade reason in statu isto, while the Hesychast is one who prioritizes the ecstatic or enthusiastic contemplation of the divine light leading monks and faithful to truths higher than the results of ratiocination.75 Palamas’ Epistula 1 ad Akindynum has already been noted for its interest in the filioque question, in such a manner that an apodictic demonstration of the Orthodox position of the procession of the Spirit is possible.76 Of course, the logical and metaphysical necessity of the filioque in metaphysical reasoning was one of the principal issues between Dominicans and Franciscans of the day.77 Be that as it may, Palamas’ theory has been judged as wanting by both Fyrigos and Ierodiakonou (vis-à-vis Aristotle). Ierodiakonou asserts the following technical errors in Palamas’ theorizing, if compared to the Corpus Aristotelicum: (1.) Palamas assumes that an impression (φαντασία) is involved only in syllogisms that concern universals, but not about syllogisms concerning God. Ierodiakonou compares De anima (432a8-14) to Palamas’ assertion noting that all thinking requires impressions.78 72

Ibid. 91. Despite problems of accurate description of Barlaam’s sources and conflation of apophaticism with Palamas’s epoptic theology, Palamas’s affirmation of syllogism, as derived from mystical knowledge, is accurately noted by S. Yangazoglou, ‘Philosophy and Theology’, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41 (1996), 7-9, 11, 14. 74 K. Ierodiakonou, ‘The Anti-Logical Movement’ (2003), 228. 75 John Demetracopoulos, ‘Thomas Aquinas’ Impact on Late Byzantine Theology and Philosophy: The Issues of Method or “Modus Sciendi” and “Dignitas Hominis”’, in Andreas Speer and Phillip Steinkrüger (eds), Knotenpunkt Byzanz: Wissensformen und culturelle Wechselbeziehungen (Berlin, 2012), 387-91. 76 K. Ierodiakonou, ‘The Anti-Logical Movement’ (2003), 227. 77 See Russell Friedman, Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University: The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian Theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans 1250-1350, vol. 1 (Leiden, 2013), 322-47, 395-447. 78 K. Ierodiakonou, ‘The Anti-Logical Movement’ (2003), 234. 73

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(2.) Palamas expresses skepticism about the capacity to abstract the universal in anima from particular substances, unless one knows somehow all particulars falling under the universal.79 Ierodiakonou notes that Analytica Posteriora (88a11-17; 09a28-30) does not hold universalia in res to depend on knowing all particulars of a species. (3.) Palamas argues that because Aristotle claims there is no demonstration of perishable things (entia mobilia), then only God can be demonstrated. This seems to call into question the status of universals and quantitative abstraction in mathematics as eternal.80

Constantinos Athanasopoulos attempted to defend Palamas from these first two accusations. First, Athanasopoulos argues that two separate conceptualizations of Aristotle’s god versus Palamas’ God mute Ierodiakonou’s criticism.81 In answer, Palamas’ Ps.-Dionysian commitment to the divine essence (versus divine attributes) do make a proper concept drawn from senses impossible. Yet, neither is Aristotle’s god (νόησις νοήσεως) self-evident. I note that Palamas’ divine light is accessible, evident, eternal, and the source of the theological propositions of the saints but is not abstractive knowledge. A problem occurs, however: Does not the limited number of wayfarers to whom these principles are evident undermine Aristotle’s notion of an evident object providing infallible knowledge? Contextually, the infused universale in anima was already being argued in Latindom to produce knowledge enough to supply premises for a scientific syllogism and such does not originate from a sense impression. Similar to contemporary Latins, Aristotle was forcibly being read by Palamas through the human phenomenon of the visio beata in via. Once this vision was granted as possible, then as an experiential fact among Latin or Greek mystics (ab esse ad posse valet illatio), it was simply read back into the Corpus Aristotelicum. The result was that humans have access to a divine object of contemplation that is itself a subject possessing essential and eternal attributes. Secondly, Athanasopoulos attempts to mitigate Ierodiakonou’s criticism of Palamas’ skepticism by noting and elaborating on the fact that Aristotle appeals to a process like induction by which the universal in anima is abstracted, which serves as the subject for all its essential predicates that can be synthesized into premises leading to a syllogistic conclusion.82 The discussion here turns on Aristotle’s optimism in abstracting the true essence from an individual member of a species. I have already mentioned the contentiousness of this optimistic epistemology, especially after Scotus’ critiques in the fourteenth century. While Palamas is in no way dependent on Latin literature in his assertions, it is nonetheless the case that his reflections once again mirror related discussions of fourteenth-century universitarian culture. The monolingual Palamas was very much aware of the oral discussions with the Dominicans (if not others) and, in 79 80 81 82

Ibid. Ibid. C. Athanasopoulos, ‘Demonstration’ (2015), 370-1. Ibid. 371-2. Cf. R. Swinburne, ‘Gregory Palamas’ (2014), 6.

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response, used sources at hand to supply an answer in terms not too dissimilar from his contemporaries. However, importantly, Palamas develops his skepticism out of his first point mentioned by Ierodiakonou; namely, universals supplied by God are not subject to the same skeptical problems of whether the universale in anima is representative of the individuals said to fall under its definition. Likewise, Scholastics like Scotus illustrated this famously by noting that if one could verify the universale in anima by means of individuals, then how would one ever make the mistake that the Eucharist is merely bread and not truly the body and blood of Christ? After all, by faith, its substance is ‘x’ and should be understood as ‘x’ essence, but all humans experience it as essence ‘y’ such that none of the individual instances of Christ’s substance present correspond with the naturally abstracted essence of bread. Finally, Athanasopoulos does not defend Palamas from Ierodiakonou’s third critique of Palamas’ alleged Aristotelianism, where Palamas asserts that God is uniquely demonstrable but that all perishable things are not demonstrable. Neither Ierodiakonou, nor Athanasopoulos, address the source for Palamas’ assertion. Here, Palamas is ostensibly employing the Corpus Hermeticum (just as he was later to use in his Triads as noted by Demetracopoulos), as a philosophic source on the issue of alleged knowledge derived from φαντασία. Unlike the detailed discussion of these matters in authors like Scotus, Palamas’ putative ‘obscurantism’ and anti-rationalism is merely a summary defense of Hesychasm against its opponents.83 In this case, as Fyrigos has noted in Palamas’ Epistula 1 ad Akindynum, Palamas switches the object of Aristotle’s analysis in Analytica Posteriora from the logical and epistemological of truth and knowledge to the real or ontological order. In this, Palamas insisted that God is first known (πρότερον) and only he can be truthfully known among all beings, for he alone contains eternal truths in the universe. This is probably a reformulation of Hermes Trismegistos: Hermes: Of truth, o Tat, it is not possible that man […] should speak with any confidence. But as far as it is possible, and just, I say, that truth is only the eternal (αἰδίοις) bodies, whose very bodies be also true. The fire is fire itself only, and nothing else; the earth is earth itself and nothing else; [et al] […] And if at the beginning our [human] constitution had not truth, how could men either see the truth, or speak it, or only understand (νοήσει) it, except God will it? All things therefore upon earth, o Tat, are not truth, but imitations of the truth, and yet not all things neither, for they are but few that are so. But the other things are falsehood and deceit, o Tat, and opinions (δόξαι) like the images (εἰκόνες) of the fantasy (φαντασία) or appearance. And when the fantasy hath an influence from above, then it is an imitation of truth but without that operation (ἐνεργείας) from above, it is left a lie. [….] 83 See J. Demetracopoulos, ‘Thomas Aquinas’ Impact on Late Byzantine Theology and Philosophy’ (2012), 387-8. Demetracopoulos philologically compares Triads 1.3.45 and Homily 53, sections 8, 33, and 38, to the Corpus Hermeticum, 4.4-5, and 10.24. The result suggests years of dependence by Palamas on Hermetic ideas in defense of Hesychasm.

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Tat: Is truth therefore upon earth, of Father? Hermes: […] Truth indeed is nowhere at all upon earth, for it cannot be generated or made. But concerning the truth, it may be that some men, to whom God will give the theo-visionary power (θεοπτικὴν δύναμιν), may understand it. So that unto the mind and reason, there is nothing true indeed upon earth … But do thou understand the true (νόει ἀληθές τι) to be that which abides the same (μένον), and is eternal (ἀίδιον), but man is not ever, therefore not true, but man is a certain appearance … And perishability (φθορᾷ) hath laid hold of all things on the earth.84

Without identifying Palamas’ source text, Ierodiakonou is puzzled how Palamas can fail to mention the presumptive eternity and necessity of species, genera, and mathematical entities.85 I note that Hermes concentrates on the non-eternal ontic weakness of hylomorphic beings as the key to their falsity (as opposed to God and eternal beings) in perception. This coincides with Palamas’ own individual points in refuting Barlaam.86 Ierodiakonou notes that Palamas does not further elaborate on his skepticism in his epistle. However, granted Palamas’ established use of the epoptic and theurgic Corpus Hermeticum, one has easily located his very critique of universalia in res levelled at entia mobilia, i.e., items devoid of truly eternal universals or intelligible particularity in them (given their inherent instability). Alternatively, a divine illumination theory participates the human mind in the divine light of eternal truth of god. Philosophers mired in Physica and Metaphysica have only dubiously understood true metaphysical realities, but God alone (and his eternal productions) are ontically true, in the relevant Hermetic sense, but to the effect that, in Palamas’ writings, sages are inferior to the theoptic Hesychasts who see universals from eternal objects of contemplation.87 To a limited extent, Palamas’ source of theology parallels the theology in the propositio famosa of Scotus; namely, a scientific theology is possible under Aristotelian gnoseological conditions, if the Christian should have a vision of the divine attributes or light of God (wherein, both logical concepts and metaphysical realties are known). However, whereas 84 Max Müller (ed.), Corpus Hermeticum (London, 1884), 100-3. For the Greek text, see Arthur Nock (ed.), Corpus Hermeticum XIII-XVIII: Asclepius, vol. 2 (Paris, 1973), frag. 2A. 85 Palamas later dismisses the celebrated status of mathematics and other eternal sciences in his Triads, as analyzed in Patrícia Calvário, ‘Bounds of Reason in the Knowledge of God: Gregory Palamas’ Criticism of Greek Philosophy’, Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 73 (2017), 783-92. 86 See Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 213, lines 26-7, where the argument begins by asserting, ontically (versus the first principles of logic [e.g., identity]): ‘nothing is prior to God’. Thus, he is analogous in the real order to the first principle of identity in the logical order. Ibid. 214, lines 8-13, summates Corpus Hermeticum (frag. 2a), where all four perishable elements are listed, as well as beings of generation and corruption. Palamas condenses a similar list of contingent beings from which no truth can be obtained. 87 The putatively proto-Hesychast Mary of Nazareth is explicitly described in Hermetic terms as discovered in J. Demetracopoulos, ‘Thomas Aquinas’ Impact on Late Byzantine Theology and Philosophy’ (2012), 389-90, and Christiaan Kappes, ‘The Doctrine of the Theotokos in Gregorios Palamas’, in Chris Maunder (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Mary (Oxford, 2019), 177-8.

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Scotus was at pains to distinguish a natural science of metaphysical theology from the less-than-scientific discipline of sacra doctrina, and both of these from this scientia beata in via, Palamas gave only a passing nod to metaphysical theology while simultaneously adopting a position rather close to Quidortian literalism by his general concession to syllogize axioms of Scripture and saints in line with ST 1.1.2 (against Barlaam). Effectively, Palamas endorsed a kind of hybrid theory whereby both the revealed Scriptural authors and Fathers (who were ‘pure in heart’) possess scientific certitude of axioms out of their own experiential theology of light in via.88 The non-beatific theologian may employ said revelation and Fathers in his inferior state by applying the saints’ god-inspired axioms as objectively more evident premises than geometric propositions that are knowable by all rational beings.89 Next, a living beatific theologian (e.g., Hesychast) may even see this divine light (viz., the source of such axioms) and presumably syllogize by apparent self-evident principles. This is unlike the non-beatific theologian who, like Aquinas’ subalternate science, uses faith alone, being devoid of experiential and scientific knowledge to confirm propositions of faith. 3. The Patristic and Liturgical Sources for Palamas’ Scientific Theology Palamas was possibly behind (if not the very compiler) of patristic excerpta used to address the problem of syllogisms in theology.90 Fyrigos has already underlined Barlaam’s first reactionary epistle to Palamas, wherein he conscientiously reproduced Palamas’ citation from Basil Magnus of Caesarea on LXX Ps. 115 concerning syllogisms.91 The context for its inclusion into a Palamite collection of florilegia suggests its utility for Neilos Kabasilas and Philotheos Kokkinos in their opposition to Nikephoros Gregoras ca. 1352.92 Sampling its so-called anti-logical excerpts (e.g., Vat. gr. 704, folio 303v, 11-4), one excerpt from Basil particularly addresses arguments repeated in Palamas’ Epistula 1 ad Akindynum by distinguishing Christian-syllogistic theology from ἡ ἐκ τῶν ὑστέρων πιθανολογία classically associated with Aristotelian Physica (and, for Palamas, Metaphysica).93 Basil’s commentary on the Psalms starts his relevant disquisition on LXX Ps. 115:2 (which same Psalm verse Aquinas employed, 88

S. Yangazoglou, ‘Philosophy and Theology’ (1996), 9, 11, 14. For a similar analysis, see R. Swinburne, ‘Gregory Palamas’ (2014), 9-10. 90 See Vat. gr. 705, folios 300-3v. 91 A. Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica (2005), 222, 410. 92 For a thorough study of the florilegium, see Basil Markesinis, ‘Un florilège composé pour la défense du tome du concile de 1351’, in Antoon Schoors and Peter Van Deun (eds), Philohistôr: Miscellanea in honorem Caroli Laga septuagenarii (Leuven, 1994), 469-93. 93 For Palamas’s identification of apodictic syllogism (like Basil) with πιθανολογία (in the same terms), see Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 213, lines 4-5, 217, line 18. 89

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supra section 1, in his theory of intelligible forms implanted in the soul by a vision of God in via). Both Basil and Aquinas interpret David to be in ecstasy discovering humanly acquired knowledge to be false in comparison to humans with divine vision. Alternatively, Basil provides for a scientific theology available to the Christians in statu isto: Let faith (πίστις) have priority as to what we say about God: Faith not apodictic demonstration (ἀπόδειξις), faith that is above all logical methods (ὑπὲρ τὰς λογικὰς μεθόδους), which draws the soul into assent (εἰς συγκατάθεσιν ἕλκουσα) [given by the mind to its perceptions]; faith, not by rigorous geometric syllogisms (γεωμετρικαῖς ἀνάγκαις), but faith with its necessary propositions conceived from the energy of the Holy Spirit.’94

For Palamas, Basil was complimentary to Hermes Trismegistos’ aforestated idea that ‘energy’ from on high is necessary for any truth among perishable beings, but Basil additionally defended the scientific method of using the syllogistic figure within theology. In addition to Hermes’ claim, as utilized by Palamas, that God alone (an eternal entity) is knowable (versus ens mobile) in his eternal energies, Basil rhetorically (versus logically) argued by enthymeme in his homily that some ‘see’ the ‘energy’ of the Spirit, i.e., the miraculous (θαῦμα), who experience necessary realities (τὰ ἀναγκαῖα) – which function as scientific premises demanding assent (εἰς συγκατάθεσιν) – versus the philosophical premises in physics. The miraculous experience of Jesus’ Spirit allows the formation of framed premises (προτάσεων πλοκαί) forcing a necessary conclusion (συμπέρασμα), drawn out of what is mystically and evidently seen (ἐναργῶς ὁρώμενον).95 After this rhetorical argument for mystical science, Basil attacked technical demonstrations via syllogizing (λογικὰς μεθόδους) from merely probable a posteriori abstractions that cannot compare with stronger evidence (ἐναργεῖ) revealed in the Spirit unto ‘the simple hearted’ (viz., Palamas’ ‘pure of heart who see God’). While Palamas repeated this exact criticism against Hellenes, he also applied it similarly to Latins’ use of non-patristic (quoad Graecos) texts and authorities for their theological debates with Greeks.96 Next, in technical language, Basil analogized the premises of revealed theology to Aristotelian science, which moves the mind from indemonstrables (ἀναπόδεικτοι) – as if logical principles (λογικὰς ἀρχάς) governing mathematics, geometry, and medicine – to scientific conclusions. Revealed theology – whose propositions specify objects of faith, even if not miraculously experienced by the theologian who is theologizing – is syllogized via principles of revelation without the subject attempting to experience pridefully the essence of God beyond human 94

Basil, Homilia in Psalmum 115, 104 (PG 30, 104B-105A). Compare this to Palamas’s argument for the superior premises and universals revealed to the saints to constitute a higher science in Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 214-5. 96 Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 206 (4.20-5). 95

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capacity.97 Basil’s full period anticipates several ideas in Palamas’ own more systematic theory of theology as an experiential and a syllogistic science. Palamas simply developed the anti-realist sentiments, vocabulary, and ontological (versus logical) focus that he likely found in the Greek Corpus Hermeticum, to argue for the impossibility of a theologia de necessariis based upon abstractions from ens mobile and to endorse Basil’s purely experiential but nonetheless quasi-scientific theology. Finally, in addition to Palamas’ exact parallels to Basil on Ps. 115:2, both Palamas and Basil focus the force of their attack on πιθανολογία, betraying an inherent skepticism about any truly scientific knowledge to be syllogized starting from perceptions supplied by ens mobile. Palamas’ prioritization of Basil was entirely supported by the liturgy, which seems to reverberate the commentary attributed to Basil in Ps. 115:2.98 Christou’s edition correctly identified Basil’s work On the Holy Spirit as Palamas’ source for Basilian claims of apodictic demonstrability of the trinitarian communion in one nature, the production of creatures, and its eternal productions. However, there are also other unidentified allusions that fit very well the Basilian comments on LXX Ps. 115; namely, that one can take the inspired premises of saints and deduce from these premises conclusions.99 Contextually, Basil was already celebrated by Byzantines as a theological ‘scientist’ in liturgical texts, as στιχηρά from vespers of his feast: O, you whose name means ‘King’, when you, o Father, had pastured the royal priesthood (Christ’s holy people) by philosophy and science (φιλοσοφίᾳ καὶ ἐπιστήμῃ), then the reigning king over all decorated you with a diadem, o ‘King’ of the kingdom […] enlighten our souls (φωτίσαι τὰς ψυχὰς ἡμῶν).100

Clearly, Basil’s festal singers beseech him to infuse science into the singers while they see light from the setting sun shining on the altar at dusk. Again, looking at one of the καθίσματα of the feast, we read: ‘Having thrown down gloomy heresies, by virtue of divine words (τῇ δυνάμει τῶν λόγων τῶν θεϊκῶν), you have submerged the insolences of Arius, since you have proclaimed to mortals that the Spirit is God!’ One should not underestimate the effect of physical light beaming into the church windows in streams during the singing of these hymns for dramatic effect, not to mention the motif of Arianism and Macedonianism levelled against the Latins for allegedly disobeying Basil.101 97 Compare Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 211-2; R. Swinburne, ‘Gregory Palamas’ (2014), 8. 98 See Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 210 (7.2-6), 211 (8.20-6). 99 Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 211 (8.23-5). 100 Bartholomaios Koutloumousianou (ed.), Μηναῖον τοῦ Ἰανουαρίου περιέχον ἄπασαν τὴν ἀνήκουσαν αὐτῷ ἀκολουθίαν, 11th ed. (Venice, 1889), 2. 101 Elsewhere, Palamas explicitly citated the Akathist to argue for noetic grace infused after praise of the Theotokos that excels the logic and wisdom of the philosophers. See C. Kappes, ‘The Doctrine of the Theotokos’ (2019), 176.

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Palamas treated Basil’s premises as infallible with respect to the Holy Spirit; after all Basil’s liturgical akolouthy designated his doctrine as ‘your godinspired teaching.’102 It is precisely Basil’s theovision or theoptic wisdom (σοφίας θεοπτικῶς ἐξαντλήσας) that has been planted into the hearts (τῶν πιστῶν τὰς καρδίας) of the faithful according to another στιχολογία.103 I recall that, in the context of the fourteenth-century exposition Odonis (cf., supra, section 1), one of Jesus’ beatitudes had already become central to Latin discussions related to this topic divine vision: ‘Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God’ (Matt. 5:8). Odonis used this locus theologicus, to the consternation of all Latindom, to argue for infused scientific knowledge in via. In a related context, Dominicans in Constantinople had apparently discussed a number of these themes with Barlaam openly, which were subsequently shared orally with Palamas. Within this context, Palamas may have been prompted to invoke this beatitudinal topos, applying it to the Hesychasts or saints seeing the divine energies to know a beatifying theology, simultaneously possessed along with their faith.104 Palamas explicitly associated Basil’s theology with a mystagogical understanding of ‘the pure in heart’, as in the Triads (1.3.29): ‘Basil the Great says that pure in heart, during the dominical theophany in the flesh, “saw without ceasing this enlightening power from the worshipped body”.’105 Given the purely oral account to Palamas of the Dominican-Barlaamian discussions in Constantinople, Palamas lacked Latino-Scholastic texts to quote as sources for the debate and, thus, made recourse to Byzantine-Greek sources to address the theological axioms in play. In this, he proved his exceptional memory and creativity when pressed to respond so quickly. Finally, Palamas also objected to Barlaam’s familiar doctrine (among LatinoScholastics) that scientific knowledge of an object excludes faith. Palamas argued briefly this point by analogy saying: ‘For just as sensation does not need logical evidence in the things under sense, so neither, too, does faith in such matters demonstration.’106 While Palamas believes that, in spite of the human mind’s inability to understand well some issues like the mode of procession of the Spirit (repeating John Damascene), he nonetheless reaffirms that faith can coexist in the subject who knows the same truth scientifically. Palamas writes: ‘We hold some other doctrines scientifically through faith (διὰ πίστεως ἐπιστημόνως ἔχομεν).’107 To emphasize that this is not an obiter dictum, Palamas again repeated the point at the end of his epistle: ‘We ourselves hold [theological truths] scientifically through faith. Indeed, on this account, we don’t believe Μηναῖον τοῦ Ἰανουαρίου, 2. Ibid. 4. 104 Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 415, lines 7-9. 105 Gregory Palamas, Triads, I.3.29 in John Meyendorff (ed.), Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ Συγγράμματα, vol. 1 (Thessaloniki, 2010), 440, lines 13-6. 106 Palamas, Epistula 1 ad Acindynum, ed. Christou (2010), 212, lines 11-3. 107 Ibid. 212, line 11. 102 103

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everything by demonstrations and we don’t think that the mystery of faith should be rendered into an object of logical scrutiny…’.108 For all Palamas’ insistence on the phrase as if it were an axiom, it is practically unknown in the whole of Greek literature. However, looking to the akolouthy of a very popular saint of the time, one can find a near-match in all the vocabulary and themes taken up by Palamas, as if it were so obvious: ‘You [St Epistimi], o blessed in God, sought scientifically (ἐπιστημόνως) the height of desires, the source of all goods, You were illumined (καταυγασθεῖσα) in soul by rays of light (ταῖς λαμπρότησι) and in reasoning (διάνοιαν).’109 The fictional life of ‘St Science (Ἐπιστήμη)’ was most likely taken at face value by Palamas, but its wordplay provided foundation for combining science with faith by supernatural vision as the source of all godly knowledge.110 Later, in the akolouthy, it reads: ‘O Science (Ἐπιστήμη) … after you were researching scientifically the faith (ἐπιστημόνως τὴν πίστιν), you ran to Christ, i.e. to his [scientific] theory (ἐπίγνωσιν); that is when you ran across his divine gift.’111 Once again, the context for Byzantines’ interest and concern for such a syllogistic theory is restricted to the period of Scholastic missionary activity in Byzantium from the early fourteenth century. Palamas may not have had the resources that Barlaam did (e.g., Aquinas’ ST) in Latin to formulate an opinion about contemporary theological debates at Constantinople, but he diligently searched for texts universally accepted as loci theologici by his readers in service of his position. In this section, we saw that Basil’s liturgical homily on the Psalms and the liturgical offices of St Basil and St Epistimi provided Palamas enough materials to supply for the lacunae in Byzantine theological treatises devoid of axiological accounts of scientific theology. Conclusions Gregory Palamas properly fits into the line of discussions and the themes of debate among Latins in the fourteenth century. He must have learned quite a lot from discussions with Latins about theology and the beatific vision, both/ either prior to writing his two λόγοι αποδεικτικοί in 1334, and/or from his informers coming from Constantinople who repeated the substance of the Dominican-Barlaamian debates. Palamas’ principal concerns in his first three apologetic works in 1334 were simply occasioned, even conditioned, by his 108

Ibid. 218, lines 27-8. B. Koutloumousianou (ed.), Μηναῖον τοῦ Νοεμβρίου (1889), 29. 110 For the history and popularity of St Epistimi in late Byzantium, see Stratis Papaioannou, Christian Novels from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 45 (London, 2017), xix-xxi. 111 B. Koutloumousianou, Μηναῖον τοῦ Νοεμβρίου (1889), 30. 109

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knowledge of Latin theology and of Barlaam’s engagement therewith. Palamas curiously concentrated on LXX Ps. 115:2, as did Barlaam, for theories on the status of both infused and scientific theology. This is very plausibly due to Dominicans alerting both Greek authors (whether directly or indirectly) about Aquinas’ theory of infused theological axioms in 1334. In contrast to Latins and Barlaam, however, Palamas elevated both Peter’s and Stephen’s visions to being beatific, in league with that of St Paul. While Palamas’ own theory seems to be clearly developed from Basil Magnus of Caesarea’s commitment to a syllogistic methodology in theology by recourse to revelation and the gifts of the Spirit in the soul, Palamas developed Basil’s own anti-rationalistic tendencies toward universals abstracted from material objects as an authority for supposing that infallible truths about God and the universe are available exclusively by direct vision. He did so by adjusting what he understood of Latin theories of syllogistic theology, occasioning him to develop a theory of ontic truth in God alone and his energies, as developed out of Hermetic literature. Looking at all these sources and how they are used, one can easily see that Palamas’ theory would have indeed allowed for a scientific-theological dialogue with Latins (as Palamas himself claims to be possible against Barlaam) based upon mutually acknowledged biblical and patristic premises (whether putatively scientific or quasi-scientific) for apodictic argumentation. Despite this fact, Palamas would clearly not have included works like the Summa contra Gentiles (i.e., putative πιθανολογία or a posteriori natural theology) a place at the table of the sacred science of theology.112

112 I would like to thank Dr. Garrett Smith (Bonn) for his suggested corrections on Latin Scholasticism that have improved the quality of this article.

Αἴσθησις νοερὰ καὶ θεία (Intellectual and Divine Perception): A Major Notion in St Gregory Palamas’ Anthropology Alexandros CHOULIARAS, Athens, Greece

ABSTRACT There are some aspects of St Gregory Palamas’ anthropology which await an in-depth examination and analysis. One of them is his notion αἴσθησις νοερὰ καὶ θεία (intellectual and divine perception). Our article is an effort to fill this gap. What is the background of this notion? Does it have a patristic precedent or is it of Palamas’ coinage? Why the term νοερά (intellectual) and why αἴσθησις (perception)? Aren’t they, somehow, contradictory? What are the eyes of the soul and the experience of God? How can the coordination of the physical and the spiritual senses be made? The article shows that the αἴσθησις νοερά combines in itself both the spiritual and the bodily: although it is beyond natural sense-perception (αἴσθησις), it touches both the soul and the body. However, the latter has to be transformed so that it may participate in the spiritual realities. Moreover, the paper stresses the central place that ‘experience’ (πείρα) has in the spiritual struggle, according to Palamas: it is this experience – which is different from discursive reasoning (διάνοια), the power of thinking – that permits man to discern the reality of his communion with the divine life, that he sees God and not a lesser light or trick of the evil one. Furthermore, Palamas speaks about the coordination of the physical and the spiritual senses, as well as the ‘implanted’ (ἐγγεγενημένην) spiritual power in the eyes of those who see the divine light. Finally, the presuppositions of seeing the light are mentioned: ascesis, detachment, and purification of the heart.

The theology of the spiritual senses is found in many ecclesiastical writers, as well as in later, and even contemporary, theologians.1 It is an effort to explain in words how man is able to perceive God, to sense the divinity, and through which faculties this is achieved. In the words of Nicholas Gendle, ‘in the course of spiritual maturation, the soul must develop faculties analogous to the sense organs of the body, with which to perceive and discern the things of God…’2 Moreover, it is a topic that has recently attracted a lot of scholarly attention.3 1 I am grateful to Revd Prof. Andrew Louth and Archim. Dr Maximos Constas for having read earlier drafts of this paper and providing their important remarks. Of course, for all possible shortcomings, the author alone is responsible. 2 Nicholas Gendle, Gregory Palamas. The Triads, edited with an introduction by John Meyendorff, Preface by Jaroslav Pelikan (Mahwah, NJ, 1983), 120 n. 33. 3 For a general overview of the idea of the spiritual senses in the Christian tradition, see Mariette Canévet, ‘Sens spirituel’, in DS [Marcel Viller et al. (eds), Dictionnaire de Spiritualité

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 271-287. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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As far as Palamas is concerned, it could be said that there has not been a comprehensive study that analyses in depth his teaching on the spiritual senses. However, some important attempts have been made.4 Our article is an effort to fill this gap, by studying a most important notion in Palamas’ theology of the spiritual senses, namely αἴσθησις νοερά (intellectual perception). 1. Inner or Intellectual Illumination a. Introduction It is known that for Palamas divine illumination is superior to human knowledge. As he argues, ‘the illumination (φωτισμός) of God, born in us, does [not] provide only knowledge or virtue’. It is something beyond these, for it is ‘light intellectual, truly divine, different from knowledge and virtue’.5 ascétique et mystique. Doctrine et histoire, 17 vols. (Paris, 1937-95)], vol. 14 (1990), 598-617. Ead., Le discernement spirituel à travers les âges, Épiphanie (Paris, 2014). Gordon Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages (New York, London, 2002). Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (eds), The Spiritual Senses. Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge, 2012). In this last book an extensive relevant bibliography is found (perhaps the fullest and most updated so far), on p. 291-308. There are also some studies dedicated to specific theologians; see, e.g., Boyd Taylor Coolman, Knowing God by Experience. The Spiritual Senses in the Theology of William of Auxerre (Washington, DC, 2004). Mark J. McInroy, Balthasar on the ‘Spiritual Senses’: Perceiving Splendour, Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology (New York, 2014). 4 First, John Meyendorff treated this topic at some points in his seminal study Introduction à l’étude de Grégoire Palamas, Patristica Sorbonensia 3 (Paris, 1959). See mainly p. 205-20 and 231-47. In the partial English trans. of this work by George Lawrence [A Study of Gregory Palamas (New York, 19742; 1st ed. 1964)], see mainly p. 142-56 and 162-78. Several important thoughts about Palamas’ spiritual senses may be also found in John Romanides, Ρωμαῖοι ἤ Ρωμηοί Πατέρες τῆς Ἐκκλησίας. Τόμος Ι. Γρηγορίου Παλαμᾶ ἔργα 1: Ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἱερῶς Ἡσυχαζόντων Τριάς Α΄, trans. (Modern Greek) D.D. Kontostergiou (Thessaloniki, 1991), 51-194. In a very important article in 1999, Robert Sinkewicz approached the concept of the spiritual senses in Palamas’ First Triad: ‘The Concept of Spiritual Perception in Gregory Palamas’ First Triad in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts’, Christianskij Vostok n.s. 1 (1999), 374-90. In particular, Sinkewicz is here based, almost exclusively, on Triad 1,3. He visited this topic again three years later, i.e. in 2002, in his ‘Gregory Palamas’ [in Carmelo Giuseppe Conticello and Vassa Conticello (eds), La théologie byzantine et sa tradition, vol. 2 (XIIIe-XIXe s.) (Turnhout, 2002), 131-88 (see, mainly, p. 155-61)], but he there seems just to summarize the findings of his previous article. About ten years later, Torstein Tollefsen touched the issue of perception of the divine in Palamas: see chapter 7 (‘The Theology of St Gregory Palamas’) in his Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought, Oxford Early Christian Studies (New York, 2012), 185-206; mainly section ‘B. The Light of Mount Tabor’, p. 201-6. Moreover, for a short sketch of Palamas’ spiritual perception theology, see the very interesting article of Marcus Plested, ‘The Spiritual Senses: Monastic and Theological’, in Knowing Bodies, Passionate Souls: Sense Perceptions in Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia 9 (Washington, DC, 2017), 301-2 (at 311-2). 5 Tr. (= Triads) 1,3,40.8-13, 451 (197.14-20): … ἔστιν ἄρα καὶ φῶς νοερὸν ἀληθὲς θεϊκὸν παρὰ τὴν ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν γνῶσιν ἕτερον. As far as Palamas’ Triads (Ὑπὲρ τῶν ἱερῶς ἡσυχαζόντων/

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And he adds: ‘This light, which enlightens towards truth (τὸ δὲ φωτιστικὸν πρὸς ἀλήθειαν τοῦτο φῶς) both the angels and those humans who have become equal to the angels (ἰσαγγέλων ἀνθρώπων), is God Himself’. Moreover, God ‘is truly a secret (ἀπόρρητον) light, and is seen as light (καὶ ὡς φῶς ὁρᾶται), and renders those pure in heart light; therefore He is called light’.6 But Palamas wonders what exactly we should call this power of man to be united with God. In his words, ‘what then shall we call this power which is an activity neither of the senses (μήτ’ αἴσθησις) nor of the intellect (μήθ’ ὅλως νόησις)?’ The best answer he finds is what Solomon had many centuries before him provided, in the Old Testament: ‘a perception [or: sensation] intellectual and divine’ (αἴσθησιν δηλονότι νοερὰν καὶ θείαν).7 By using these two adjectives, Palamas continues, one understands that this power is neither perception (αἴσθησις), nor intellection (νόησις), ‘for neither is the activity of the intelligence a sensation, nor that of the senses an intellection’. Therefore, the νοερὰ αἴσθησις is something different.8 Or, perhaps, one could call this power ‘union’, but not ‘knowledge’ (ἕνωσιν ἀλλ’ οὐχί γνῶσιν). To support his position, Palamas presents an argument of St Dionysios: ‘One should realize … that our intellect possesses both an intellectual power (δύναμιν εἰς τὸ νοεῖν) which permits it to see intelligible things (τὰ νοητά), and also the union (or: a capacity for that union; τὴν δὲ ἕνωσιν), that transcends the nature of the intellect, by which it is attached to the things that transcend it [viz. the intellect] (or: that are beyond it; τὰ ἐπέκεινα ἑαυτοῦ)’.9 Through this passage St Gregory wants to stress two facts. First, there are two faculties in the human intellect: the power of intellection (which is related to dianoia, intelligence), and the power for ‘super-intellectual union’ Pro hesychastis) are concerned, we first refer to Christou’s ed. [i.e. in Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ Συγγράμματα (= ΠΣ) [Gregory Palamas’ Writings], ed. Panagiotis K. Christou et al. (critical edition), vol. 1 (Thessaloniki, 1962, 19882 and 20103)], and then, in parentheses, to Meyendorff’s one [Grégoire Palamas. Défense des saints hésychastes, ed. John Meyendorff, introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense. Études et documents 30-31 (Louvain, 1973² [1959])]. English translation of a number of extracts (but often with some problems) by N. Gendle, The Triads (1983). 6 Tr. 1,3,40.14-8, 451 (197.22-6). 7 Tr. 1,3,20.21-4, 430 (153.4-7), trans. N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 37 (modified). 8 Tr. 1,3,20.24-7, 430 (153.7-11), trans. N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 37: Τῇ γὰρ ἀμφοτέρων συζυγίᾳ πείθει τὸν ἀκούοντα μηδέτερον νομίσαι ταύτην, μήτ’ αἴσθησιν, μήτε νόησιν∙ οὔτε γὰρ ἡ νόησις αἴσθησίς ποτε, οὔθ’ ἡ αἴσθησις νόησις∙ οὐκοῦν ἡ νοερὰ αἴσθησις ἄλλο παρ’ ἑκάτερον αὐτῶν. 9 Tr. 1,3,20, 430.27-431.5 (153.11-6), trans. N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 37 (modified): Δέον … εἰδέναι τὸν καθ’ ἡμᾶς νοῦν, τὴν μὲν ἔχειν δύναμιν εἰς τὸ νοεῖν, δι’ ἧς τὰ νοητὰ βλέπει, τὴν δὲ ἕνωσιν ὑπεραίρουσαν τὴν τοῦ νοῦ φύσιν, δι’ ἧς συνάπτεται πρὸς τὰ ἐπέκεινα ἑαυτοῦ. See Dionysios the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, VII.1, ed. Beate Regina Suchla, Corpus Dionysicacum I: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. De Divinis Nominibus, PTS 33 (Berlin, New York, 1990), 194.10-2 (PG 3, 865C).

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(ἕνωσις).10 Second, union with God – and, by extension, the νοερὰ αἴσθησις – is something that transcends human knowledge and intelligence. As Sinkewicz explains, ‘the human intellect has a capacity to think, through which it looks on conceptual things, and a unity which transcends the nature of the intellect, through which it is joined to things beyond itself’.11 But, a question arises here: what is the background of the ‘intellectual perception’? Is it to be found in the previous tradition, or is it of Palamas’ coinage? b. The Background Let us now examine the term αἴσθησις νοερά in a deeper way. This tradition goes back probably at least to Origen of Alexandria. Origen indeed discusses often the subject of the spiritual senses in his oeuvre.12 Among others, he uses the phrase αἴσθησιν θείαν εὑρήσεις, which he ascribes to Solomon, the author of the book of Proverbs.13 It should be noted that when Palamas introduces the term αἴσθησις νοερὰ καὶ θεία, he also ascribes it to Solomon.14 Hence Palamas most likely had in mind the aforementioned passage of Origen. The latter used this expression (αἴσθησιν θείαν εὑρήσεις) perhaps through a combination of Prov. 2:5 (ἐπίγνωσιν Θεοῦ εὑρήσεις), and Prov. 5:2 (αἴσθησιν ἐμῶν χειλέων).15 Moreover, Origen states that there is an analogy between the physical and spiritual senses.16 This analogy was accepted by later Fathers, such as

10

R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 380. R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 380 (slightly modified; Sinkewicz writes ‘mind’ instead of ‘intellect’). This point probably reminds us of the neo-Platonist Proclos; I owe this remark to Revd Prof. Andrew Louth. For an interesting approach of the intellectual perception as Dionysian unity, see p. 380-2 of the aforementioned article of Sinkewicz. 12 For the relevant bibliography regarding the spiritual senses according to Origen, see mainly Karl Rahner, ‘Le début d’une doctrine des cinq sens spirituels chez Origène’, Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 13 (1932), 113-45 [English trans.: ‘The “Spiritual Senses” According to Origen’, in Theological Investigations, vol. xvi, trans. David Morland (New York, 1979), 81-103]. John M. Dillon, ‘Aisthêsis Noêtê: A Doctrine of Spiritual Senses in Origen and in Plotinus’, in A. Caquot, M. Hadas-Lebel and J. Riaud (eds), Hellenica et Judaica: Hommage à Valentin Nikiprowetzky, Collection de la Revue des Études Juives 3 (Leuven, Paris, 1986), 443-55. Gordon Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages, Studies in Medieval History and Culture 14 (New York, London, 2002), 17-35. The most recent approach seems to be that of Mark J. McInroy, ‘Origen of Alexandria’, in P.L. Gavrilyuk and S. Coakley (eds), The Spiritual Senses (2012), 20-35. Here McInroy provides an interesting reassessment of some established opinions in scholarship, regarding the Origenian spiritual senses. 13 See Origen, Contra Celsum, I.48 (PG 11, 749AB); VII.34 (PG 11, 1469B). The phrase sensum divinum is also found in Origen’s De principiis, I.1.9 (PG 11, 129C); IV.37 (PG 11, 414A). 14 Tr. 1,3,20.21-4, 430 (153.4-7): … ὡς ὁ ὑπὲρ πάντας τοὺς πρὸ αὐτοῦ σεσοφισμένος Σολομών. 15 P. Christou, ΠΣ 1 (20103), 430 n. 2. 16 See, e.g., Contra Celsum, I.48 (PG 11, 749AD). 11

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St Gregory of Nyssa, St Diadochos of Photiki, St John of the Ladder17 etc.18 For instance, St Gregory of Nyssa uses the aforementioned passage of Prov. 5:2, in the context of a discussion of the spiritual senses, in a classical passage of his first homily on the Song of Songs.19 c. Why the Term νοερά (Intellectual)? In Tr. 1,3,33 Palamas explains why the perception of the ‘ineffable divine goods’ is called intellectual (νοερά). He presents four important reasons. In the first place, it is beyond natural sense-perception (αἴσθησις), namely, it transcends natural senses.20 Second, the intellect is the faculty which first receives the divine goods.21 Therefore, it is correct to argue that ‘Palamas defines the intellect as the primary locus of the faculty of spiritual perception’,22 or that ‘the intellect is the primary locus for the activity of grace’.23 Third, our intellect is elevated towards the First Intellect (i.e. God) and, according to its own measure (or: capacity/progress) has communion with God. Palamas adds here a crucial qualification: due to the elevation of our intellect, the body – since it is united with it – is also transformed into a more divine state (πρὸς τὸ θειότερον μετασκευάζεται). Here St Gregory speaks about the transformation of the human person, and he adds that the transformation of the body is effected through the intellect: δι’ αὐτοῦ. Moreover, Palamas continues by saying that this transformation is a prologue, and a symbol, of ‘the absorption (κατάποσιν)24 of the body by the Spirit’ in the age to come.25 This St John the Sinaite uses the phrase αἴσθησις νοερά. See, e.g., his Ladder 26, PG 88, 1020A: Νοῦς νοερὸς πάντως καὶ νοερὰν αἴσθησιν περιβέβληται, ἣν ἐν ἡμῖν καὶ οὐκ ἐν ἡμῖν οὖσαν ἐκζητοῦντες μὴ παυσώμεθα. Palamas mentions this passage in Tr. 1,2,4.9-11, 397 (83.8-10). Let us note that Migne, in his edition, writes ἵν᾿, whereas Christou and Meyendorff ἥν. It seems that their choice is the correct one. 18 Christou, ΠΣ 1, 430 n. 2. 19 Gregory of Nyssa, In Cantica Canticorum Homilia I, PG 44, 780C. See J. Meyendorff, Défense (1973²), 152 n. 1. For the teaching of St Gregory of Nyssa on the spiritual senses, see S. Coakley, ‘Gregory of Nyssa’, in P.L. Gavrilyuk and S. Coakley (eds), The Spiritual Senses (2012), 36-55. 20 Tr. 1,3,33.20-1, 444 (183.14-5): διά τε τὸ ὑπὲρ αἴσθησιν εἶναι ταῦτα φυσικήν. 21 Tr. 1,3,33.21-2, 444 (183.15-6): διὰ τὸ πρώτως τὸν νοῦν εἶναι τούτων δεκτικόν. 22 R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 378 (slightly modified for reasons of consistency; Sinkewicz writes ‘mind’ instead of ‘intellect’). 23 R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 386 (again with a slight modification, since Sinkewicz prefers ‘mind’ instead of ‘intellect’). 24 This language is probably influenced by 1Cor. 15:54 (ὅταν δὲ τὸ φθαρτὸν τοῦτο ἐνδύσηται ἀφθαρσίαν καὶ τὸ θνητὸν τοῦτο ἐνδύσηται ἀθανασίαν, τότε γενήσεται ὁ λόγος ὁ γεγραμμένος· κατεπόθη ὁ θάνατος εἰς νῖκος). For this remark I am grateful to Fr Maximos Constas. 25 Tr. 1,3,33.22-6, 444 (183.16-21): … καὶ διὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸν πρῶτον νοῦν ἀνάτασιν τοῦ ἡμετέρου νοῦ οὗ κατὰ τὸ ἐγχωροῦν μεταλαγχάνων θείως, αὐτὸς τε καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ τὸ συνημμένον σῶμα πρὸς τὸ θειότερον μετασκευάζεται, δεικνὺς ἐντεῦθεν καὶ προοιμιαζόμενος τὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος ἐπὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰῶνος τῆς σαρκός κατάποσιν. 17

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‘absorption of the body’ is indeed a very central notion in Palamas’ mind.26 It has an eschatological hue, which, however, sheds light also to contemporary Christian life. And, fourth, a last reason: ‘it is not the eyes of the body, but the eyes of the soul, that receive the Spirit’s power of seeing these things’.27 For all these reasons, ‘we call this power intellectual (νοεράν), even though it is supra-intellectual’.28 But now a second question arises: why is this power also called αἴσθησις (perception)? d. Why αἴσθησις (Perception)? First of all, St Gregory argues that the giving of God’s mysterious grace is called one of the following: ‘a) contemplation (θεωρία), which the fathers call ‘exceptionally true’ (ἐξαιρέτως ἀληθής), b) the activity that the prayer transmits to the heart, c) the spiritual warmth and pleasure that derives from this activity [i.e. (b)], and d) the joyful tear that grace gives’.29 Palamas adds that ‘The causes of all these are mainly apprehended through intellectual perception (νοερᾷ … αἰσθήσει)’.30 And he hastens to explain why he uses the term αἰσθήσει. He gives two reasons: a) First, for ‘the manifest nature and clarity of the apprehension, its complete inerrancy and freedom from images of the object formed in the mind’ [or: ‘because this perception is manifest and clear, totally void of error and alien to imagination’].31 That is, when man undergoes intellectual perception, then he knows exactly that he has sensed something important. As Sinkewicz explains, ‘In spiritual perception there is an unmediated apprehension of the object. There is a direct contact with reality as in sense 26 The transformation of the body has a long history in Christian thought. See, e.g., Philippians 3:20-1: 20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21 He will transform the body of our humiliation [Or: our humble bodies] that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself (emphases added). Unfortunately, we cannot examine the transformation of the body according to Palamas in the context of this article; this would require an ad hoc essay. 27 Tr. 1,3,33.26-8, 444 (183.21-3): Οὐ γὰρ οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ τοῦ σώματος, ἀλλ’ οἱ τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν ὁρῶσαν ταῦτα δύναμιν τοῦ Πνεύματος λαμβάνουσι. About the ‘eyes of the soul’, see below. 28 Tr. 1,3,33.28-9, 444 (183.23-4): διὰ ταῦτα νοερὰν αὐτὴν καλοῦμεν, ὑπὲρ νοερὰν οὖσαν. 29 Tr. 1,3,31.1-4, 442 (177.20-3): Τοιοῦτον γάρ τί ἐστι καὶ ἡ ‘ἐξαιρέτως ἀληθὴς’ ὑπὸ τῶν πατέρων ὀνομαζομένη θεωρία καὶ ἡ τῆς εὐχῆς ἐγκάρδιος ἐνέργεια καὶ ἡ ἐξ αὐτῆς πνευματικὴ θέρμη τε καὶ ἡδονὴ καὶ τὸ ἐκ τῆς χάριτος θυμήρες δάκρυον. As P. Christou, ΠΣ 1 (20103), 442 notes, one finds the connection between spiritual warmth, pleasure, and tears, often in the texts of the ascetical writers. E.g., see Diadochos of Photiki, Capita 73, ed. Édouard des Places, SJ, Diadoque de Photicé, Œuvres Spirituelles. Introduction, Texte critique, Traduction et notes, SC 5bis (Paris, 1955), 132. 30 Tr. 1,3,31.4-5, 442 (177.23-4): Τὰ γὰρ τούτων αἴτια νοερᾷ κυρίως καταλαμβάνεται αἰσθήσει. 31 Tr. 1,3,31.5-6, 442 (177.24-179.1) [trans. R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 385]: Λέγω δὲ αἰσθήσει, διὰ τὸ τρανὸν καὶ ἐναργὲς καὶ ἀπλανὲς πάντῃ καὶ ἀφάνταστον τῆς καταλήψεως…

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perception’;32 b) Moreover, because ‘the human body itself also participates in the grace that operates through the intellect’.33 In addition, as Sinkewicz summarizes the above, intellectual perception ‘can be said to have a sensible aspect in two senses: first of all … [it] has a certain analogy in natural sense perception; and secondly, there are sensible effects of grace’.34 The latter is a most crucial point for the Palamite teaching on the spiritual senses: the body does have a role in spiritual perception.35 St Gregory continues arguing that the body ‘is reformed according to this grace [which is active in accordance with the intellect] and receives, itself, a certain sense (συναίσθησιν) of the mystery hidden in the soul’.36 In addition, if some spectators see with their physical eyes the persons who undergo this mystery and possess grace, then the body (of the latter) communicates to the former ‘a certain perception of what these persons undergo᾿.37 Palamas, referring to 1Cor. 13:12,38 writes: ‘What then? Shall we not see in the age to come the invisible face to face, as it is written? Therefore, receiving now the pledge [or: the first-fruits] and prelude of this (vision), those who are purified in their hearts see the intellectual form (of God) that is coming to be in them [or: that is born within them] and which is invisible to the (physical) senses’.39 The intellect is ‘an immaterial nature’, and ‘a light relative’ to God, 32

R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 385. Tr. 1,3,31.7-8, 442 (179.1-2): … καὶ πρὸς τούτοις ὅτι καὶ τὸ σῶμα μεταλαμβάνει πως τῆς κατὰ νοῦν ἐνεργουμένης χάριτος… 34 R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 385. 35 This topic requires a detailed analysis, which cannot be done in the current article. 36 Tr. 1,3,31.8-10, 442 (179.3-4): … καὶ μεταρρυθμίζεται πρὸς ταύτην καὶ λαμβάνει τινὰ συναίσθησιν αὐτὸ τοῦ κατὰ ψυχὴν ἀπορρήτου μυστηρίου… 37 Tr. 1,3,31.10-2, 442 (179.4-7): … καὶ τοῖς ἔξωθεν αἰσθητῶς κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν ἐκεῖνον βλέπουσι τοὺς κεκτημένους αἴσθησιν τινὰ παρέχει τῶν ἐν αὐτοῖς ἐνεργουμένων. 38 ‘For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood’. 39 Tr. 1,3,39.22-6, 449 (195.1-5): Τί δέ; Οὐ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον ἐπὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰῶνος ὀψόμεθα τόν ἀόρατον κατὰ τὸ γεγραμμένον; Οὐκοῦν καὶ νῦν τούτου λαμβάνοντες τὸν ἀρραβῶνά τε καὶ τὸ προοίμιον οἱ κεκαθαρμένοι τὴν καρδίαν ὁρῶσι τὴν αὐτοῖς ἐγγινομένην νοερὰν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀόρατον αἰσθήσει μόρφωσιν. We are based here on the translation of Christou: Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ Ἅπαντα τὰ Ἔργα [Gregory Palamas: The Complete Works], ed. Panagiotis K. Christou et al., introduction, text, translation (in modern Greek), commentary, vol. 2, Ἕλληνες Πατέρες τῆς Ἐκκλησίας [Greek Fathers of the Church] [ΕΠΕ] 54 (Thessaloniki, 1982), 231. Another rendering of this passage could be suggested, given the fact that Palamas, in his Tr. 1,3, speaks very often about a) man’s capability to ‘sense’ the divine, and b) the human body’s crucial role in this process (see his νοερὰ αἴσθησις): ‘… those who are purified in their hearts see in a sensible way (αἰσθήσει) his [i.e. God’s] intellectual and invisible form that is coming to be in them [or: that is born within them]’ (italics added). This is the translation that Meyendorff provides (‘Ceux qui ont le cœur purifié reçoivent donc dès maintenant le gage et le prélude et en voient sensiblement la figure intellectuelle et invisible qui se trouve à l’intérieur d’eux-mêmes’ [italics added]). However, the rendering of Christou seems to me more valid from a philological (namely, grammatical and syntactical) point of view. 33

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who is the superior light. Moreover, through pure and true prayer the intellect is ‘totally elevated towards the real light’, without turning back.40 Then, the intellect, ‘illumined by this first light Itself as the angels do [or: in a manner appropriate to the angels]41, is already transformed in such a way as to acquire angelic dignity’. Palamas continues arguing that in such a case the intellect ‘is shown as being in itself through communion what the archetype is by cause’.42 In addition, the intellect ‘manifests in itself the splendour of this hidden beauty, and the resplendent and unapproachable dawn’.43 This is what David was referring to, when he wrote ‘And let the splendour of the Lord our God be upon us’.44 Palamas explains that David wrote this line ‘intellectually sensing in himself’ (νοερῶς αἰσθόμενος ἐν ἑαυτῷ), namely through his faculty of intellectual perception.45 2. Seeing the Divine Light a. The Eyes of the Soul and the Experience of God As explained thus far, intellectual perception is a notion that touches both the human soul and the body. Palamas clarifies that the activity of this power is in no way material or bodily, as he claims the opponents of the hesychasts believed. On the contrary, it is ‘spiritual and secret’.46 Hence while Palamas does indeed accept the sensible character (or, better, aspect/effect) of divine grace, he strongly rejects the idea that divine grace is a sensible reality, namely that the divine activities are corporeal.47 But how, then, is one able to recognize the mysteries in which a Christian may participate? This is done through ‘the experience of the eyes of the soul’.48 Tr. 1,3,39, 449.26-450.3 (195.6-11): Φύσις γὰρ ὢν ἄϋλος ὁ νοῦς καὶ φῶς συγγενές, εἰ χρὴ λέγειν, τῷ πρώτῳ καὶ ἀνωτάτῳ καὶ μεθεκτῷ πᾶσι καὶ ἀπολελυμένῳ τοῦ παντὸς φωτί, καὶ διὰ τῆς πρὸς τὸ ὄντως φῶς ὁλικῆς ἀνατάσεως, τῇ ἀΰλῳ καὶ ἀδιαλείπτῳ καὶ ἀπειλικρινημένῃ προσευχῇ, πρὸς αὐτὸν τὸν Θεὸν ἀνεπιστρόφως ἀνανεύσας… 41 This point resembles Gregory the Theologian, Oratio 40, 5, PG 36, 364B. 42 Tr. 1,3,39.3-6, 450 (195.11-4): … καὶ οὕτω πρὸς ἀγγελικὴν ἤδη μετασκευασθεὶς ἀξίαν, ἀγγελοπρεπῶς ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ πρώτου φωτὸς καταλαμφθείς, αὐτὸ φαίνεται κατὰ μέθεξιν, ὃ τὸ ἀρχέτυπον κατ’ αἰτίαν ἐστί… See Maximos, Epistle 6, 5, PG 91, 429AB. Dionysios, De Divinis Nominibus, II, 6, ed. Suchla, PTS 33 (1990), 129-30. 43 Tr. 1,3,39.6-7, 450 (195.14-6): … καὶ δι’ ἑαυτοῦ φαίνει τοῦ κρυφίου κάλλους ἐκείνου τὴν ὡραιότητα καὶ τὴν φανοτάτην καὶ ἀπρόσιτον αὐγήν… 44 Ps. 89:17: καὶ ἔστω ἡ λαμπρότης Κυρίου τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν ἐφ᾿ ἡμᾶς… 45 Tr. 1,3,39.8-10, 450 (195.16-9). 46 Tr. 1,3,34, 444.30-445.5 (183.25-32): … τοῦ μὴ προσύλους καὶ σωματικὰς οἴεσθαι τὰς πνευματικὰς καὶ ἀπορρήτους ἐνεργείας ταύτας… 47 R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 386. 48 Tr. 1,3,34.12-4, 445 (185.8-10): … εἴσῃ αὐτῇ πείρᾳ τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς ὀφθαλμῶν οἵων ἀγαθῶν καὶ μυστηρίων ψυχαὶ χριστιανῶν κἀνταῦθα κοινωνεῖν δύνανται. 40

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And what exactly are the ‘eyes of the soul’ (ὀφθαλμοὶ ψυχῆς), and the ‘experience’ (πείρα) they provide? Are they perhaps to be identified with the human mind or reason (διάνοια)? Palamas is totally negative towards such an interpretation. He explains that διάνοια exercises its faculties both on intellectual and on sensible things: it makes both of them comprehensible through intellection.49 He provides two examples to clarify this point. First, he argues, if you bring to mind a city (εἰ διανοῇ περὶ αυτῆς), without having already seen it, then you have not personally ‘experienced’ this city just because you have thought about it (οὐ τῷ διανοεῖσθαι ταύτην ἐν πείρᾳ γέγονας αὐτῆς). The same may be implied as far as knowledge of God and the divine realities is concerned: ‘you have not experienced them [only] by the fact that you have thought or theologized about them’.50 Second, as far as gold is concerned, ‘unless you sensibly (αἰσθητῶς) acquire it, and sensibly have it in your hands, and sensibly see it, even if you bring ten thousand times (μυριάκις) to your mind the concept of gold’, then you do not possess gold in reality. Of note is the triple use of the adverb ‘sensibly’ (αἰσθητῶς): experience (πείρα) of God is a kind of sensing. In a similar way, as with gold, ‘even if you think ten thousand times of the divine treasures, unless you suffer [or: experience] the divine realities, or see through the intellectual eyes, which are beyond intellection, then [in fact] you do not see, nor have, nor possess something of the divine realities’.51 It should be underlined that St Gregory uses the word ‘possess’ (κέκτησαι): through the spiritual senses man comes to a real knowledge of God, a real sensing of the divine. Therefore, it could be said that man ‘possesses’ God. Palamas clarifies the reason that he uses the term ‘intellectual eyes’ (νοεροῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς), ‘for it is in them that the power of the Spirit is implanted, through which [power] those things are seen’. However, the vision of the divine light is beyond the intellectual eyes themselves.52 As Christou correctly notes, here Palamas draws a clear distinction between theoptia, i.e. vision of God, and theologia, i.e. speaking and writing about God;53 what, in contemporary terms one would call ‘empirical’ (experiential) and ‘academic’ theology respectively. However, it is very interesting that Palamas in 49 Tr. 1,3,34.16-7, 445 (185.12-3): Αὕτη γὰρ καὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ καὶ τὰ νοερὰ ἐπίσης διανοητὰ δι’ ἑαυτῆς ποιεῖ. 50 Tr. 1,3,34.17-21, 445 (185.14-7): … οὐ τῷ διανοεῖσθαι ταῦτα καὶ θεολογεῖν ἐν πείρᾳ τούτων γίνῃ. 51 Tr. 1,3,34.21-7, 445 (185.17-24): Καὶ καθάπερ χρυσόν, εἰ μὴ αἰσθητῶς κτήσῃ καὶ αἰσθητῶς ἔχεις ταῖν χεροῖν καὶ αἰσθητῶς ὁρᾷς … κἂν μυριάκις περὶ τῶν θείων θησαυρῶν διανοήσῃ, μὴ πάθῃς δὲ τὰ θεῖα, μηδὲ ἴδῃς τοῖς νοεροῖς καὶ ὑπεράνω τῆς διανοίας ὀφθαλμοῖς, οὔτε ὁρᾷς, οὔτε ἔχεις, οὔτε κέκτησαί τι τῶν θείων ἀληθῶς. 52 Tr. 1,3,34.27-30, 445 (185.24-7): Νοεροῖς δὲ εἶπον ὀφθαλμοῖς, ὡς αὐτοῖς ἐγγινομένης τῆς τοῦ Πνεύματος δυνάμεως, δι’ ἧς ὁρᾶται ταῦτα, ἐπεὶ καὶ ὑπὲρ τοὺς νοεροὺς ὀφθαλμούς ἐστι τὸ πανίερον ἐκεῖνο θέαμα τοῦ θειοτάτου καὶ ὑπερφαοῦς φωτός. 53 P. Christou, ΠΣ 1 (20103), 445. Palamas clearly makes the same distinction also in Tr. 1,3,42.

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no way discards theologizing (or academic theology); he totally accepts it, to the extent that it has as its aim the vision of the divine light, theosis. b. The Coordination of the Physical and the Spiritual Senses A very important parameter of intellectual perception for Palamas is the fact that, in some way, the physical and the spiritual senses cooperate. Let us look at his relevant teaching. First, he argues that ‘The intellect naturally perceives one light, and sense perception another’. These two ‘lights’ are different. Sense perception ‘perceives a sensible light which manifests sensible things as sensible’.54 In other words, one needs a sensible light, so as to be able to see. On the other hand, the light of the intellect is ‘the knowledge inherent in thoughts’.55 Therefore, ‘sight and intellect do not perceive the same light; rather, each of them operates according to its own nature and upon those things which are according to its nature’.56 Nevertheless, there is a point that somehow these two faculties seem to meet each other, and, in a way, ‘coordinate’ with one other. This happens when man receives the ineffable grace of God. As Palamas writes, ‘when those deemed worthy enjoy a share of spiritual and supernatural grace, they see both with their sense perception and their intellect the realities that transcend any sense perception and any intellect’.57 Palamas makes reference here to St Gregory the Theologian, so as to show that this whole situation is a mystery and cannot be adequately explained by the human mind: ‘God alone knows, and those who are acted upon in such a way’.58 54 Tomos (= Hagioretic Tome or Tomos of the Holy Mountain), 6, ed. Vasileios Pseftogas, ΠΣ 2 (Thessaloniki, 1966 [20102]), 575.25-576.2, trans. R. Sinkewicz, ‘Gregory Palamas’, in Carmelo Giuseppe Conticello and Vassa Conticello (eds), La théologie byzantine et sa tradition, vol. 2 (XIIIe-XIXe s.) (Turnhout, 2002), 187: Ἄλλου μὲν φωτὸς ὁ νοῦς, ἑτέρου δὲ ἡ αἴσθησις ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι πέφυκεν∙ ἡ μὲν γὰρ αἰσθητοῦ καὶ τὰ αἰσθητά, ᾗ αἰσθητά, δεικνύντος… 55 Tomos, 6.2-3, ΠΣ 2, 576, trans. R. Sinkewicz, ‘Gregory Palamas’ (2002), 187: τοῦ δὲ νοῦ φῶς ἐστιν ἡ ἐν νοήμασι κειμένη γνῶσις. This reminds us of that ‘knowledge which is always coexistent with the intellect’, which Palamas mentions in his Capita 150, in particular Ch. 35.14-6, ed. R. Sinkewicz, Saint Gregory Palamas. The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, Critical Edition, Translation and Study, Studies and Texts 83 (Toronto, 1988), 120: ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν ἐμφύτως ἡμῖν, ἐξ οὗ γεγόναμεν παρὰ τοῦ κτίσαντος ἡμᾶς κατ᾿ εἰκόνα οἰκείαν, ἐναποκείμενον τῷ νῷ λόγον, τὴν ἀεὶ συνυπάρχουσαν αὐτῷ γνώσιν. 56 Tomos, 6.3-6, ΠΣ 2, 576, trans. R. Sinkewicz, ‘Gregory Palamas’ (2002), 187: Οὐ τοῦ αὐτοῦ τοίνυν φωτὸς ὄψις τε καὶ νοῦς ἀντιλαμβάνεσθαι πεφύκασιν, ἀλλὰ μέχρις ἂν κατ᾿ οἰκείαν φύσιν καὶ ἐν τοῖς κατὰ φύσιν ἐνεργῇ ἑκάτερον αὐτῶν. 57 Tomos, 6.6-8, ΠΣ 2, 576, trans. R. Sinkewicz, ‘Gregory Palamas’ (2002), 187: Ὅταν δὲ πνευματικῆς καὶ ὑπερφυοῦς εὐμοιρήσωσι χάριτός τε καὶ δυνάμεως αἰσθήσει τε καὶ νῷ, τὰ ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν αἴσθησιν καὶ πάντα νοῦν οἱ κατηξιωμένοι βλέπουσιν… 58 Tomos, 6.9-10, ΠΣ 2, 576, trans. R. Sinkewicz, ‘Gregory Palamas’ (2002), 187. See Gregory of Nazianzus, Hom. 28, Περὶ Θεολογίας (De theologia; Second Theological Oration), 19, PG 36, 52B: ἀλλ᾿ οἶδεν ὁ τῶν προφητῶν Θεός, καὶ οἱ τὰ τοιαῦτα ἐνεργούμενοι.

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Furthermore, speaking about the activation of intellectual perception, Palamas makes in his Triads an interesting distinction between knowledge and light. He gives the following example: when fire is covered by a material which is not transparent, then it may warm this material, but not illumine it. In the same way, when the intellect is covered by the passions, it may provide knowledge, but not light.59 Now St Gregory tries to explain how the νοερὰ αἴσθησις may be activated. Initially he argues that the intellect is, on the one hand, light. This light may be contemplated (θεωρητόν) through itself, the intellect.60 On the other hand, the intellect is also a contemplative faculty (θεωρητικόν), for it is ‘the eye of the soul’.61 This is most probably drawn from St John Damascene, who writes that ‘as is the eye for the body, in the same way is the intellect for the soul’.62 Palamas explains these statements through the following. In order for a human person to see through his physical eyes, it is necessary that an external light shines upon his eyes: for our vision to be activated, we need light. In the same way, ‘the intellect, in which there is intellectual perception, cannot see and actualize itself, unless the divine light illumines the intellect’.63 Additionally, Palamas clarifies this point further: ‘Just as physical vision, when it is active, becomes itself light and is commingled with light and, first of all, sees this light poured over all the objects that it sees, so too, in the same manner, the intellect, when it fully actualizes its intellectual perception, becomes itself totally like light, and is with the light, and together with this light it clearly sees the light…’64 Moreover, this takes place ‘in a way superior not only to the bodily senses, but also to everything that is known to us, and, simply, (superior) to all beings’.65 As Sinkewicz notices, here ‘the Platonic principle 59 Tr. 1,3,9.18-21, 418 (127.1-5): Ὥσπερ δὲ τὸ πῦρ, ἂν ἐπικαλυφθῇ δι᾿ ὕλης οὐ διαφανοῦς, θερμαίνειν μὲν αὐτὴν δύναται, φωτίζειν δὲ οὐχί, οὕτω καὶ ὁ νοῦς, ὅταν ἐπικείμενον ἔχῃ τὸ ζοφώδες κάλυμμα τῶν πονηρῶν παθῶν, γνῶσιν μὲν παρέχει δύναιτ᾿ ἄν, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχὶ καὶ φῶς. 60 Tr. 1,3,9.21-3, 418 (127.5-6): … μὴ μόνον φῶς ἐστιν ὁ νοῦς νῷ θεωρητόν, εἰ καὶ ἔσχατον τῶν τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον ὁρωμένων… 61 Tr. 1,3,9.23-4, 418 (127.6-7): … ἀλλὰ καὶ θεωρητικόν, οἷον ὀφθαλμὸς ὑπάρχων τῆς ψυχῆς… 62 John Damascene, Expositio Fidei [Ἔκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως; On the Orthodox Faith], 26.48-9, ed. P. Bonifatius Kotter, OSB, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, 2, Expositio fidei, PTS 12 (Berlin, 1973), 77: ὥσπερ γὰρ ὀφθαλμὸς ἐν σώματι, οὕτως ἐν ψυχῇ νοῦς. 63 Tr. 1,3,9.25-8, 418 (127.8-12): … ὥσπερ ἡ κατ’ αἴσθησιν ὅψις οὐκ ἂν ἐνεργείᾳ γίγνοιτο, μὴ ἔξωθεν ἐπιλάμψαντος αὐτῇ φωτός, οὕτω καὶ ὁ νοῦς οὐκ ἂν ᾗ νοερὰν ἔχων αἴσθησιν ὁρώῃ καὶ καθ’ ἑαυτὸν ἐνεργείᾳ γίγνοιτο, μὴ τοῦ θείου περιλάμψαντος αὐτὸν φωτός. 64 Tr. 1,3,9, 418.28-419.4 (127.12-8): Ὥσπερ δὲ ἡ ὄψις, ὅταν ἐνεργῇ, φῶς αὐτή τε γίνεται καὶ μετὰ τοῦ φωτὸς συγγίνεται καὶ τοῦτ’ αὐτὸ πρῶτον ὁρᾷ τὸ φῶς πᾶσι τοῖς ὁρωμένοις περικεχυμένον, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον καὶ ὁ νοῦς, ἡνίκ’ ἂν εἰς ἐντελέχειαν ἀφίκοιτο τῆς νοερᾶς αἰσθήσεως, αὐτὸς ὅλος οἷον φῶς ἐστι καὶ μετὰ τοῦ φωτός ἐστι καὶ σὺν τῷ φωτὶ γνωστῶς ὁρᾷ τὸ φῶς… 65 Tr. 1,3,9.4-5, 419 (127.18-20): … οὐχ ὑπὲρ τὰς σωματικὰς αἰσθήσεις μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὑπὲρ πᾶν ὅ τι τῶν ἡμῖν γνωρίμων καὶ ἁπλῶς τῶν ὄντων πάντων.

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that like can only be known by like’ may be found. Thus, the intellect may see the light, because the former is also light. In this way, a great likeness between God and the intellect is affirmed.66 Furthermore, Palamas speaks about the ‘implanted’ (ἐγγεγενημένην) spiritual power in the eyes of those who see the divine light.67 In addition, he tries again to make a parallelism between physical and spiritual vision. In the first case, when the ‘light’ that is in the eye is united to the sunrays, then it becomes fully actual light (φῶς ἐντελεχείᾳ γίνεται), and thus the eye ‘sees the sensible things’.68 Probably Palamas implies here that in the eye there is the power/ potentiality to see the light, but this power needs to be activated from an exterior factor, namely from the light that comes from the sun.69 Maybe this is the reason why he chooses to use the word ἐντελεχείᾳ. As is well-known, ἐντελέχεια has the meaning of ‘full, complete reality’, as opposed to δύναμις, which describes the potentiality.70 In the same way, the intellect, ‘when it becomes one spirit with the Lord’ (1Cor. 6:17), ‘then it clearly sees the things of the spirit’.71 However, even in this situation God remains invisible in a mysterious manner that the human mind cannot interpret. Man does not see God in His totality, but sees to the extent that he has made himself receptive of the Holy Spirit’s power.72 Again here the essence/activities distinction is found, even in latent form: man does not see the essence of God, but only His activities, and those according to man’s own progress, to the degree of his own synergy. Worth noting here is that elsewhere St Gregory argues that the divine activities are ‘between’ man and God, something like an intermediary between creature and the Creator: ‘… how is it possible that the participable entity [i.e. the divine activity] is not between (μεταξύ) the participants and the imparticipable super-essentiality?’73 66

R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 386. Tr. 1,3,17.1-3, 427 (145.4-6): … τὴν ἐγγεγενημένην πνευματικὴν δύναμιν τοῖς ὄμμασιν αὐτῶν. 68 Tr. 1,3,17.10-2, 427 (145.14-6): … ἡ ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς αὐγή, ἑνωθεῖσα ταῖς ἡλιακαῖς αὐγαῖς, φῶς ἐντελεχείᾳ γίνεται καὶ οὕτως ὁρᾷ τὰ αἰσθητά. 69 This reference to ‘the radiance in the eyes’ could be taken as an allusion to the theory of vision Plato puts forward in the Timaeus, in which the eye has an inner radiance that reaches out and coalesces with the light coming from the object. For this remark, I am grateful to Prof. David Bradshaw. 70 See Liddel-Scott, Lexicon, 575 (s.v. ἐντελέχεια). 71 Tr. 1,3,17.12-4, 427 (145.16-8): … οὕτω τὰ πνευματικὰ τρανῶς ὁρᾷ. 72 Tr. 1,3,17.14-20, 427 (145.18-25): Μένει δ᾿ ὅμως καὶ ἐκεῖ τρόπον ἕτερον, ὑψηλότερον ἢ κατὰ τοὺς χαμερπεῖς λογισμοὺς τῶν τοῖς πνευματικοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἀντιλέγειν ἐγχειρούντων, ἀόρατος ὁ δεσπότης∙ οὐ γὰρ ἑώρακέ ποτέ τις τὸ πᾶν τῆς καλλονῆς ἐκείνης …οὐδὲ γὰρ ὅσον ἐστὶν ἐκεῖνο, ἀλλὰ καθόσον ἑαυτὸν ἐποίησε δεκτικὸν τῆς τοῦ θείου Πνεύματος δυνάμεως, κατὰ τοσοῦτο βλέπει. 73 Tr. 3,2,24.17-9, 675 (685.21-3): … πῶς οὐ μεταξὺ τῶν μετεχόντων καὶ τῆς ἀμεθέκτου ὑπερουσιότητος ἡ μεθεκτὴ ὀντότης; It should be noted here that many religious and philosophical systems are concerned with how to bring in contact the Creator with the creatures, and 67

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Consequently, Palamas argues that the divine light has a similar role as physical light. In order for man to see the things around him, belonging to created reality, he first needs the presence of physical light. In the same way, man needs the presence of God’s uncreated light, in order to see the divine realities. Thus, it could be argued that here ‘the divine Light is not the object but the means of vision and in this role it retains a pneumatological function’.74 This means that, through the divine light, the Holy Spirit illumines man. Furthermore, as Palamas states elsewhere, this light is ‘the gracious [or: delightful] and holy vision of the stainless souls and intellects’, namely the angels. ‘Without it, even the intellect could not see, even with its intellectual perception, when united to those beyond it, despite the fact that the intellect disposes the faculty of intellectual perception, just as the eye of the body cannot see without physical light’.75 Accordingly, Sinkewicz is correct in arguing that ‘This would indicate that spiritual perception is a potentiality or capacity within the soul or intellect, which is actualized by the presence of the divine Light’.76 Trying to support the aforementioned arguments, Palamas says that true knowledge could be called ‘light’ (φῶς). He is based on the words of St Paul: ‘For it is God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ’ (2Cor. 4:6). Dionysios calls this light νοητόν (intelligible),77 whereas Macarios calls it νοερόν (intellectual).78 It is noteworthy that in this passage, some words below, Macarios also refers to the αἴσθησις νοερά explicitly.79 break the existing, between them, gap. For a relevant article, with special mention to the sophiological controversy in twentieth-century Russian thought, and particularly between Fr Sergii Bulgakov and Fr Georges Florovsky, see Andrew Louth, ‘Theology of the “in-between”’, Communio Viatorum 55.3 (2013), 223-36. 74 R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 378. 75 Tr. 1,3,46.7-10, 458 (211.26-9): … ψυχῶν δὲ καὶ νόων ἀσπίλων εὔχαρι καὶ ἱερὸν θέαμα, οὗ χωρὶς οὐδ’ ἂν νοῦς ᾗ νοερὰν ἔχων αἴσθησιν ὁρῴη, τοῖς ὑπὲρ ἑαυτὸν ἑνούμενος, καθάπερ οὐδὲ ὀφθαλμὸς σώματος τοῦ κατ’ αἴσθησιν φωτὸς χωρίς. 76 R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 381 (slightly modified; Sinkewicz writes ‘mind’ instead of ‘intellect’). 77 Tr. 1,3,3.24-6, 411 (111.14-7): … καὶ ὁ μέγας Διονύσιος, «ἡ τοῦ νοητοῦ», φησί, «φωτὸς παρουσία ἑνωτικὴ τῶν φωτιζομένων ἐστίν, εἰς μίαν καὶ ἀληθῆ συνάγουσα γνῶσιν». For the exact form of Dionysios’ text, which is a little bit different, see the critical ed.: De Divinis Nominibus IV. 6.9-10, ed. Suchla, PTS 33 (1990), 150: οὕτως ἡ τοῦ νοητοῦ φωτὸς παρουσία συναγωγὸς καὶ ἑνωτικὴ τῶν φωτιζομένων ἐστί… 78 See Macarios, Homily 2, 10,5.24-6, in Sermones 64 (collectio B), ed. Heinz Berthold, Makarios/Symeon Reden und Briefe, GCS 55 (Berlin, 1973), I, 20: ἐκ τῆς ἐνεργείας οὖν γνώσῃ τὸ ἐλλαμφθὲν εἰς τὴν ψυχὴν σου νοερὸν φῶς, εἰ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐστὶν, ἢ τοῦ σατανᾶ ἐστιν. 79 Macarios, Homily 2, 10,5.26-7 and 2-3, ed. H. Berthold, GCS 55 (Berlin, 1973), I, 20 and 21 respectively (italics added): ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτὴ ἡ ψυχὴ ἐὰν ἔχη διάκρισιν, εὐθέως ἐκ τῆς νοερᾶς αἰσθήσεως γινώσκει τὴν διαφοράν … οὕτως ἡ ψυχὴ ἐκ τῆς αἰσθήσεως τῆς νοερᾶς καὶ τῆς ἐνεργείας γνωρίζει τὰ τοῦ πνεύματος χαρίσματα καὶ τὰ τοῦ σατανᾶ φαντάσματα.

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Palamas again refers to Macarios. The latter called ‘immortality’ (ἀθανασία) the glory that shone upon Moses’ face.80 Palamas comments that this occurred despite the fact that Moses’ face was mortal.81 For St Gregory this is a reference to the αἴσθησις νοερά. According to him, Macarios argued two things: a) as the bodily eyes see the sensible Sun, in a similar way the faithful see the intellectual light (τὸ νοερὸν φῶς) through the eyes of the soul (διὰ τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς ὀφθαλμῶν); and b) this light (i.e. the νοερόν) ‘will be manifested and scattered’ on our bodies, in the age to come, and it will ‘beautify’ them (ὅ κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν τῆς ἀναστάσεως προκύψαν καὶ ἐπιχυθὲν τοῖς σώμασιν ὡραϊσμένα καὶ ταῦτα δείξει τῷ αἰωνίῳ φωτί).82 However, in this point, an important issue comes up: are there any specific presuppositions for the vision of the divine light? c. Ascesis, Detachment, Purification: The Presuppositions of Seeing the Light Palamas believes that there are undoubtedly presuppositions for a person to see the light. Above all, in order for a person to attain the vision of the divine light it is necessary to have ‘the powers of the soul gathered together as far as possible, and to have made sober the guarding of the reasoning (διανοίας)’.83 This person initially lives ‘meditating in his intellect what is according to nature and pleasing to God’, and then surpasses himself and receives the Holy Spirit, ‘which knows what is God’s as the human spirit (knows) what is within’.84 St Gregory supports that the faithful who see the divine light ‘receive spiritual eyes and have the mind of Christ (see 1Cor. 2:16); through them [i.e. these eyes] they see the Invisible, and conceive (νοοῦσι) the Inconceivable’.85 ‘For God is not invisible in himself, but (is invisible) to those who conceive 80 See Exodus 34:29: ‘When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tables of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God’. 81 Tr. 1,3,3.5-6, 412 (111.24-6): … εἰ καὶ τῷ θνητῷ περιήστραψε προσώπῳ τότε… 82 Tr. 1,3,3.6-12, 412 (111.26-113.5). Palamas presents these two arguments as a part of a single Macarian treatise. However, it seems that he has borrowed them from different texts of Macarios. Indicatively, for the first argument see Homily 34.2-6, in Ὁμιλίαι Πνευματικαὶ [Homiliae Spirituale 50], ed. Hermann Dörries, Erich Klostermann and Matthias Kroeger, Die 50 geistlichen Homilien des Makarios, PTS 4 (Berlin, 1964), 260, and for the second see Homily 2 (Aus Typus III), 1, in Sermones 1-22, 24-27, ed. Erich Klostermann and Heinz Berthold, Neue Homilien des Makarius/Symeon, I, Aus Typus III, Texte und Untersuchungen 72 (Berlin, 1961), 7.11-6. 83 Tr. 1,3,16.10-2, 426 (143.15-7): … καὶ τὰς τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις ὡς ἐνὸν συναθροίσας καὶ νηφάλιον ἐπιστήσας τὴν τῆς διανοίας ἐπισκοπήν… 84 Tr. 1,3,16.12-5, 426 (143.17-20): … πρῶτον μὲν ἐν τοῖς κατὰ φύσιν καὶ θεαρέστοις διαζῇ κατὰ νοῦν θεωρήμασιν, εἶθ’ ἑαυτὸν ὑπεραναβὰς ἐν ἑαυτῷ λάβοι τὸ ἐκ Θεοῦ Πνεῦμα, ὃ οἶδε τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ ὡς τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ… See 1Cor. 2:11. 85 Tr. 1,3,16.23-5, 426 (143.29-31): Πνευματικοὺς γὰρ λαμβάνουσιν οὗτοι ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ νοῦν ἔχουσι Χριστοῦ, δι’ ὧν καὶ βλέπουσι τὸν ἀόρατον καὶ νοοῦσι τὸν ἀπερινόητον.

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and see through created and physical eyes’.86 That is, if one wants to see God, one has to remove himself from a worldly way of living and thinking. This of course does not mean for Palamas that one has to necessarily become a hesychast, but that one has to live spiritually, pursuing the virtues and avoiding sin. In addition, Palamas wonders: ‘Would not God evidently communicate the contemplation of His grace to those whom He has joined Himself as a governing (or: authoritative) member?’87 Therefore the invisible God becomes visible to the persons that are truly connected with Christ and those who correctly follow Him. Moreover, Palamas argues that the vision of the divine light is not a natural property of humans; it is not something that all humans are able to do at all times as a faculty deriving from human nature.88 However, ‘[h]e who does not see understands that he is himself incapable of vision because not perfectly conformed to the Spirit by a total purification, and not because of any limitation in the Object of vision’.89 In other words, it is not the case that God may not be seen at all, but that man has not been totally purified. The basic prerequisite for seeing the light is that one has to have conformed himself to the Spirit through purification. As Sinkewicz explains, ‘although the faculty of spiritual perception exists potentially in each person, it is often obscured by sin, the veil of darkness or the dark veil of the evil passions. Purification is then necessary before one becomes receptive to the power of the Spirit’.90 But how does man know when he truly sees the light? Palamas gives an interesting answer: ‘… when the vision comes to him, the recipient knows well that it is that light, even though he sees but dimly…’ And he knows that ‘from the impassible joy akin to the vision which he experiences, from the peace which fills his intellect, and the fire of love for God which burns in him’.91 In other words, man knows that he sees the light from the effects that he observes in his existence, namely joy, peace, burning love within him etc. Or, to put it another way, one knows that he sees the light by feeling his spiritual senses ‘activated’ and manifested in himself. 86 Tr. 1,3,16.25-7, 426 (143.31-145.1): … οὐ γὰρ ἑαυτῷ ἀόρατός ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς διὰ κτιστῶν καὶ φυσικῶν ὀφθαλμῶν καὶ λογισμῶν νοοῦσι καὶ ὁρῶσιν. 87 Tr. 1,3,16.27-9, 426 (145.1-3): Οἷς δ’ ὁ Θεὸς ἑαυτὸν ἐνήρμοσεν ὡς μέλος ἡγεμονικόν, πῶς οὐχὶ δι’ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τὴν τῆς ἑαυτοῦ χάριτος ἐμφανῶς παράσχοι θεωρίαν; 88 Tr. 1,3,22.6-7, 433 (157.9-18): Πάντοτε δ’ ἑνὶ ἢ πᾶσι τὸ ἄπειρον τοῦτο οὐχ ὁρᾶται. See N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 123 n. 44. 89 Tr. 1,3,22.7-9, 433 (157.18-21), trans. N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 39: Ὁ δὲ μὴ ὁρῶν συνίησιν ὡς αὐτὸς ὁρᾶν ἀδυνατεῖ μὴ τελείως δι’ ἐντελεστέρας καθαρότητος ἐναρμοσθεῖς τῷ Πνεύματι, ἀλλ’ οὐχὶ τὸ ὁρώμενον λαμβάνει πέρας. 90 R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 379. 91 Tr. 1,3,22.9-13, 433 (157.21-5), trans. N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 39: Ὅτε τοίνυν τὰ τῆς θεωρίας ὑποβέβηκεν, ἐκ τῆς πηγαζομένης ὁμοίας ἀπαθοῦς τῷ ὁρῶντι θυμηδίας καὶ γαλήνης νοερᾶς καὶ τοῦ ἀνακαιομένου πυρὸς τῆς πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν ἀγάπης, ἀκριβῶς οἶδεν ὁ ὁρῶν ὅτι τοῦτό ἐστιν ἐκεῖνο τὸ φῶς, εἰ καὶ ἀμυδρότερον ὁρᾷ.

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Moreover, man receives the vision of light ‘in proportion to his practice of what is pleasing to God, his avoidance of all that is not, his assiduity in prayer, and the longing of his entire soul for God’.92 In this way man is always ‘being borne on to further progress and experiencing even more resplendent contemplation’.93 Finally, man ‘understands then that his vision is infinite because it is a vision of the Infinite, and because he does not see the limit of that brilliance; but, all the more, he sees how feeble is his capacity to receive the light’.94 Palamas insists that in order for man to see the divine light, he has to overcome all human pleasures and be totally given over to God, through obedience to his spiritual guides.95 Thus, the hesychast, ‘is, so to speak, captured by this love (i.e. for God)’.96 Elsewhere he maintains that one who abandons earthly goods does this ‘looking towards the hope of theosis’.97 Man examines all his actions and thoughts to see whether they pull him down to earth, or they help him achieve this life which is ‘superior to all these, and really intellectual, and unmixed with earthly things’.98 Elsewhere Palamas writes that the ascetic, through detachment from earthly matters, ‘attaches his intellect to the uninterrupted prayer to God, and, through it (i.e. prayer) becomes totally of himself’. Then he finds ‘the ascent to the heavens (ἄνοδον εἰς οὐρανοὺς εὑρίσκει)’, and ‘the impalpable darkness (τὸν ἀναφῆ τῆς κρυφιομύστου σιγῆς, ὡς ἄν τις εἴποι γνόφον)᾿.99 In this situation ‘man has totally gone out of himself, and is entirely given to God’. Moreover, Tr. 1,3,22.14-6, 433 (157.25-159.1), trans. N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 39: … καὶ κατ᾿ ἀναλογίαν δὲ τῆς θεαρέστου πράξεως, τῆς τε τῶν ἄλλων πάντων ἀποχῆς καὶ τῆς προσοχῆς τῆς προσευχῆς καὶ τῆς πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν ἐκ ψυχῆς ὅλης ἀνανεύσεως… 93 Tr. 1,3,22.16-7, 433 (159.1-2), trans. N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 39: … ἐπὶ τὰ πρόσω φερόμενος ἀεὶ καὶ διαυγεστέρας πειρώμενος τῆς θεωρίας. See the interesting comment of N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 123 n. 45: ‘Palamas here takes up another leading theme of Gregory of Nyssa: epektasis, the inexhaustible character of the vision of God as rooted in the infinite nature of the Divine. Even in the Age to Come, there can be no end to the good things that God has to reveal; so the soul is always in via, always moving on᾿. 94 Tr. 1,3,22.17-20, 433 (159.3-6), trans. N. Gendle, The Triads (1983), 39: … κἀντεῦθεν τὸ ἄπειρον συνίησιν τοῦ ὁρωμένου ὅτι ἄπειρον καὶ τῆς μὲν λαμπρότητος ἐκείνου πέρας οὐχ ὁρᾷ, τῆς δ’ ἑαυτοῦ πρὸς φωτοληψίαν ἐπιτηδειότητος ἐπὶ μᾶλλον ὁρᾷ τὸ ἀδρανές. 95 Tr. 1,3,44, 455.28-456.10 (207.13-26): … Ὁ τῇ τῶν χρημάτων κτήσει καὶ τῇ τῶν ἀνθρώπων δόξῃ καὶ τῇ τῶν σωμάτων ἡδονῇ διὰ τὴν εὐαγγελικὴν ἀποταξάμενος ζωὴν καὶ δι᾿ ὑποταγῆς τῶν ἐν τῇ κατὰ Χριστὸν ἡλικίᾳ προηκόντων τὴν ἀποταγὴν ταύτην βεβαιώσας, ὁρᾷ ἐν ἑαυτῷ σφοδρότερον ἀνακαιόμενον τὸν ἀπαθῆ καὶ ἱερὸν καὶ θεῖον ἔρωτα καὶ Θεὸν ὑπερφυῶς ποθεῖ καὶ τὴν ὑπερκόσμιον πρὸς τοῦτον ἕνωσιν. 96 R. Sinkewicz, ‘The Concept’ (1999), 379. 97 Tr. 1,3,52.18-21, 462 (221.20-3): … πρὸς τὴν ἐλπίδα τῆς θεώσεως βλέπων… 98 Tr. 1,3,44.10-26, 456 (207.26-209.12): … τὴν ὑπὲρ ταῦτα καὶ ὄντως νοερὰν ζητεῖ καὶ τῶν κάτω ἀμιγῆ ζωήν… 99 Tr. 1,3,46, 457.26-458.2 (211.12-20): … συνάπτει τὸν νοῦν τῇ ἀδιαλείπτῳ πρὸς Θεὸν εὐχῇ, καὶ δι’ αὐτῆς ἑαυτοῦ ὅλος γεγονώς… 92

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‘man sees the glory of God and contemplates divine light’. But this light ‘is very little subject to the senses, inasmuch as they are indeed senses’.100 But what if one falls into delusion? How may one know whether he sees the divine light indeed, or something else, a demonic imitation of that light? Palamas answers that man should be united to the Church and to the saints, as well as closely following the words and directions of the Fathers.101 Thereby he will avoid the aforementioned danger. 3. Concluding Remarks In our article the αἴσθησις νοερά (intellectual perception) was examined. As shown, this notion combines in itself both the spiritual and the bodily. In other words, although it is beyond natural sense-perception (αἴσθησις), it touches both the soul and the body. However, the latter has to be transformed so that it may participate in the spiritual realities. Furthermore, as demonstrated, St Gregory stresses the central place that ‘experience’ (πείρα) has in the spiritual struggle: it is this experience – which is different from reasoning (διάνοια), the power of thinking – that permits man to discern the reality of his communion with the divine life, that he sees God and not a lesser light or trick of the evil one. Moreover, Palamas speaks about the coordination of the physical and the spiritual senses, as well as the ‘implanted’ (ἐγγεγενημένην) spiritual power in the eyes of those who see the divine light. Finally, the presuppositions of seeing the light were mentioned: ascesis, detachment, and purification of the heart. However, some crucial questions need to be further examined: how is it possible for man to see the divine light and be united with God? What is the basic requirement, and through which ‘process’ is this vision and union attained?102 What place exactly has the human body in Palamas’ theology of the spiritual senses? But a detailed examination of the aforementioned questions would require a special study.

100 Tr. 1,3,46.5-7, 458 (211.24-6): Ὅλος δ’ οὕτως ἑαυτοῦ ἐκστὰς καὶ ὅλος γενόμενος Θεοῦ, δόξαν ὁρᾷ Θεοῦ καὶ φῶς ἐποπτεύει θεῖον, ἥκιστα αἰσθήσει ᾗ αἰσθήσει ὑποπίπτον. 101 Palamas discusses this subject in, e.g., Tr. 1,3,48-9. 102 Palamas would answer, through ecstasis, a ‘going out’ of one’s self.

Gregory Palamas’ Debt to Maximus the Confessor’s Dyenergist Christology Jane SLOAN PETERS, Marquette University, New York, NY, USA

ABSTRACT John Meyendorff claims that ‘it is only within the perspective of the Maximian doctrine of the two energies or wills of Christ that it is possible to understand the terminology of St. Gregory Palamas’. While scholarship on the Christological controversies prior to the Sixth Ecumenical Council tends to focus on the question of Christ’s wills, the Confessor’s early articulation of Christ’s two energies contains important aspects of his Christology that inform Palamas’ thought. This article establishes Palamas’ indebtedness to Maximus the Confessor’s dyenergist Christology, particularly his treatment of Dionysius’ term ‘new theandric energy’ in Ambiguum 5. Maximus’ efforts to clarify the Dionysian phrase in light of Chalcedon result in a Christology in which the human energy of Christ mediates the concealment and disclosure of the divine energy; Christ ‘worked wonders in a human way, and suffered in a divine way’. This paradigm becomes important for Maximus’ descriptions of deification, such that the saints’ mode of acting reflects Christ’s mode of theandric activity. Gregory Palamas profited from Maximus’ work on this topic as he articulated the essence-energies distinction and the deified life of the hesychast in the Triads.

Introduction John Meyendorff claims that ‘it is only within the perspective of the Maximian doctrine of the two energies or wills of Christ that it is possible to understand the terminology of St Gregory Palamas’.1 Indeed, Constantinople 1351 regarded Palamas’ thought on the divine energies as an ἀνάπτυξις, an unfolding or flowering, of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.2 In light of Meyendorff’s claim, this article proposes Palamas’ reliance on Maximus the Confessor’s dyenergist Christology, particularly his treatment in Ambiguum 5 of Dionysius’ term, ‘new theandric energy’, καινὴν τὴν θεανδρικὴν ἐνέργειαν.3 While the 1

John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwod, NY, 1975), 203. Ibid. 3 Scholarship on this term is light. One exception is Cyril Hovorun’s Will, Action and Freedom: Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century (Leiden, 2008), in which Hovorun treats the question of Christ’s energies in great detail. Hovorun writes: ‘Only Maximus applied penetrating analysis to deepen common understanding of the notion [of energy], whereas other 2

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seventh-century debates shifted quickly from the question of energies to the question of wills, to disregard The Confessor’s early articulation of Christ’s two energies is to neglect important aspects of his Christology that both deepened his own theology of deification and informed Palamas’ thought during the hesychast controversy.4 In the first half of this article, I review Maximus’ understanding of the term ‘theandric energy’ outlined in Ambiguum 5, and explore how Maximus’ description of Christ’s theandric activity informs his theology of deification. In the second half of the article, I review the aspects of Maximus’ dyenergist Christology that are foundational to Palamas’ Triads. Specifically, Palamas has recourse to dyenergist Christology to refute Barlaam’s claim that grace is something created, and he articulates the life and activity of the saint in a way that resonates with Maximus’ ‘theandric vision’ of the saint. ‘Theandric Energy’ in Maximus the Confessor Pseudo-Dionysius introduces the phrase ‘theandric energy’ in his Fourth Letter to Gaius, in which the Aereopagite writes that Christ, by virtue of his Incarnation, acts with a ‘new theandric energy’, καινὴν τὴν θεανδρικὴν ἐνέργειαν.5 Certain copies of the Fourth Letter read ‘one theandric energy’ (μία θεανδρικὴ ἐνέργεια), and miaphysite theologians, for example, Cyrus of Alexandria, claimed this phrase for their cause.6 The Pact of Union (June 633) polemicists, both Monenergists and Dyenergists, used it as if they already agreed about the meaning of energeia. It is even more puzzling given that the controversy proceeded against a background of boosted interest in Aristotelian categories of logic, which in turn were chiefly induced by the Christological controversies of the period’ (108). 4 The majority of the debate leading up to the Sixth Ecumenical Council focused on Christ’s two wills, and scholarship tends to skirt the history of this contentious term or treat it as an inconvenience. Demetrios Bathrellos omits Maximus’ teaching on Christ’s energies in his work The Byzantine Christ (Oxford, 2004), writing, ‘their theological import is not particularly significant’ since the controversy was primarily one of wills (7). See also Bathrellos’ suggestion that Maximus would have taken this language less seriously had he known Dionysius the Aereopagite’s pseudonymous identity. ‘Maximus attempted to interpret the “new theandric energy” of Pseudo-Dionysius in a manner that would render it compatible with Chalcedonian dyoenergite orthodoxy, and, given that he probably did not know that Pseudo-Dionysius was merely pseudo-Dionysius, this task must have been for him quite onerous’ (195). See also Paul Blowers comment in Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, 2016) that Maximus gave the phrase a ‘strikingly positive interpretation’ (44). 5 ‘Christ was neither human nor nonhuman: although humanly born he was far superior to man, and being above men he yet truly did become man. Furthermore, it was not by virtue of being God that he did divine things, not by virtue of being a man that he did what was human, but rather, by virtue of being God-made-man he accomplished something new in our midst – the activity of the God-man’ (PG 3, 1072), Colm Luibhéid, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, 1987), 265. 6 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. II (Chicago, 1971), 65.

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reconciled the Alexandrian monophysites to the Church of Constantinople under the banner of the ‘one theandric energy’ of Dionysius.7 Maximus’ mentor Sophronius voiced concern with this agreement, but was prevented from opposing it explicitly when Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, issued the Psephos, a document that forbade public reference to the number of Christ’s energies.8 Maximus’ Ambiguum 5 comes from the period prior to Sophronius’ death and Sergius’ Ecthesis, which proclaimed one will and one energy (638).9 In it, The Confessor argues that Christ must possess two energies, for this follows logically from Christ’s possession of a divine and human nature.10 In order to remain faithful to the Chalcedonian confession of Christ’s two full natures, we must accept that every nature has an energy. Further, an energy is the means by which a nature is observed and known. The two energies in Christ, Maximus contends, are the manner by which we affirm the natures that correspond to them.11 He puts it thus: ‘How will he be God by nature and man by nature without possessing completely what belongs to each nature in its natural constitution? ... How, I say, can these constitutive elements be confirmed if they are devoid of their natural motion and activity?’12 Maximus thus rejects the phrase ‘one’ theandric energy: One energy corresponds to one nature, not one hypostasis. Yet Maximus does not reject speaking of theandric energy in the singular sense; he sees the singularity not as a numeric value, but as an expression of the union of two energies. As with the hypostatic union, ‘the union, by excluding division, does not impair the distinction’.13 Rather, the union brings about a new mode (τρόπος) of action in which divine and human energies interact in 7 This is the first located instance of the phrase μία θεανδρικὴ ἐνέργεια. See C. Hovorun, Will, Action, Freedom (2008), 111-20. 8 D. Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ (2004), 64. Sophronius’ synodical epistle suggests that he favors the position that every nature must have an energy. See Francis Murphy and Polycarp Sherwood, Constantinople II et Constantinople III (Paris, 1974), 220. Constantinople 680-681 references Sophronius’ claim that theandric energy was a composition of Christ’s divine and human energies, C. Hovorun, Will, Action, Freedom (2008), 114-5. 9 M. Jankowiak and P. Booth suggest 634 or 635. See Marek Jankowiak and Phil Booth, ‘A New Date-List of the Works of Maximus the Confessor’, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, ed. Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil (Oxford, 2015), 19-83. 10 Fr. Maximos Constas, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua (Cambridge, 2014), 5.11, 1052B. 11 Ibid. 5.2. Describing the fullness of Christ’s human nature, Maximus writes: ‘The only valid proof that this “essence” is present in its “entirety”, moreover, is its natural constitutive power, which one would not be mistaken in calling a “natural energy”, properly and primarily characteristic of the nature in question, since it is the most generic motion constitutive of a species, and contains every property that naturally belongs to the essence apart from which there is only nonbeing’ (Amb. 5.2, 1048A). 12 Ibid. 5.12, 1052D. 13 Ibid. 1056D.

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a single subject. Much like the name ‘Christ’ or the term ‘Word Incarnate’, this activity may be referred to in the singular, as ‘theandric’. Maximus writes: Because his divine energy was humanized through its ineffable union with the natural energy of the flesh, He completed the plan of salvation on our behalf in a ‘theandric’ manner, which means that ... his life among us was such that the divine and human energy coincided in a single identity.14

Maximus then explains what it means to call this theandric energy ‘new’. His interpretation follows the Cyrilline logic of the communication of idioms. In terms of energy, each energy retains the characteristics proper to its corresponding nature, but both divine and human energies undergo a change in mode.15 Christ’s human energy, though properly passive, enacts divine things, such as walking on water, while divine energy works ‘through the operations of a passible flesh’.16 Theandric energy, then, is not a composite of divine and human energies, nor a third species of energy.17 Because energy corresponds to nature, not hypostasis, theandric energy refers to the two energies of the two natures joined in the hypostasis of the Logos. It is the manner of manifestation of Christ’s activity that makes this term properly singular.18 In light of this, Maximus can ‘heighten the paradox of the communication of properties’,19 to use Pelikan’s terminology, and claim rather astonishing descriptions of the works of Christ. ‘Being God He worked wonders in a human way, for they were accomplished through naturally passible flesh. Being man He experienced the sufferings of human nature, but in a divine way, for they unfolded at the command of his sovereign will. Or rather, both were done in a theandric way, since He is God and man at the same time’.20 One of the closing paragraphs of Ambiguum 5 nicely sums up the duality of natures and the exchange of operations in the unified action of Christ: Let us then understand the ‘theandric energy’ in a way that it has been interpreted. For the Word made flesh actively ‘lived’ out this energy ‘among us’ not for Himself but for our sake, and He renews our nature by means of things beyond nature. One’s way of life is lived in accordance with the law of nature, and since the Lord is double in nature, it is fitting that His life is lived in accordance with both divine and human 14

Ibid. 1056BC Tropos, as opposed to logos. 16 Antoine Lévy, Le créé et l’incréé: Maxime le Confesseur et Thomas d’Aquin: Aux sources de la querelle Palamienne (Paris, 2006), 331. 17 Amb. 5.21, 1057A. 18 A. Lévy, Le créé et l’incréé (2006), 320. For this reason, we must reject any efforts to speak of Christ’s ‘theandric nature’, such as those undertaken by David Coffey in his article, ‘The Theandric Nature of Christ’, Theological Studies 60 (1999), 405-31. 19 J. Pelikan, Christian Tradition (1971), 83. 20 Amb 5.26, PG 1060B: … ἀνθρωπίνως Θεὸς ὢν ἐνήργει τὰ θαύματα, διὰ σαρκὸς φύσει παθητῆς συμπληρούμενα καὶ θεïκῶς ἄνθρωπος ὢν διεξῄει τὰ πάθη τὴς φύσεως κατ᾽ ἐξουσίαν ἐπιτελούμενα θεïκήν - ἄμφω δὲ μᾶλλον θεανδρικῶς, ὡς θεὸς ὁμοῦ καὶ ἄνθρωπος ὤν. 15

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laws, indissolubly united without confusion. This life is also ‘new’, not simply because it is strange and astounding to those on earth, and without precedent in the nature of beings, but because it constitutes the form of the new energy lived out by Him. Perhaps he who conceived of the appropriate designation for this mystery called it ‘theandric’ so that he might show forth the mode of exchange of the natural properties inherent in the ineffable union – which makes whatever naturally belongs to each part of Christ interchangeable with the other – without changing or confusing either part with the other on the level of their natural principles.21

Dionysius’ phrase, then, when understood in light of Chalcedonian Christology, leads to a deeper appreciation of the mode of enactment of Christ’s divine and human energies. As Blowers explains, ‘this formula ... did not nullify dual divine and human energies in Christ; rather, it was a circumlocution (περίφρασις) intended to express the novel insinuation of divine and human energies/wills operating to one and the same purpose. It bespoke the “mode of exchange of the natural properties inherent in the ineffable union”, and thus was another way of expressing how Christ did human things divinely and divine things humanly’.22 Maximus’ language reflects earlier Christological formulations such as ‘One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh’ and draws on the longstanding tradition of using paradoxical language to describe the mystery of the Incarnation.23 To illustrate this, consider the healing of the blind man in John 9, in which Christ restores a man’s sight with a mixture of clay and spittle. An accurate statement of the communication of idioms would be, ‘One of the Trinity touched the eyes of the blind man’. Yet if the communicatio idiomatum is applied to the energies, one may claim that One of the Trinity healed with a human touch. The activity proper to the divine energeia, healing, joins indissolubly with the activity proper to the human energeia, touch.24 Christ’s life was replete with events such as these, in which divine and human natures work not simply alongside each other, but in communication with each other in the one subject, the Word made flesh. We may think of the term theandric energy, then, as an intensification of the paradox of the communication of idioms.25 In grappling with this 21

Ibid. 5.24, PG 1057C-1060A. P. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World (Oxford, 2016), 151. 23 See, for example, Gregory Nazianzen’s Oration 37.1-3: ‘The uncontained now moves from place to place. ... The One who exists beyond time has come to exist under time ... The invisible One has become visible’. And Oration 45.28-9, ‘What we needed was an incarnate God, a God put to death, so that we might live’. For these references, I am grateful to Christopher A. Beeley, Christ and Human Flourishing in Patristic Theology, December, 2014, http://faith.yale.edu/sites/default/ files/beeley_christ_and_human_flourishing_in_patristic_theology_-_final.pdf, Accessed July 2019. 24 As A. Lévy puts it: ‘Si l’homme guérit miraculeusement par la puissance de Dieu qui est en lui, Dieu guérit naturellement par la puissance humaine du toucher qu’il a assumée (Le créé et l’incréé [2006], 332). 25 However, to pluralize the term as ‘theandric energies’ is not consistent with Chalcedonian Christology. At best, it insufficiently accounts for the unity of action in Christ after the manner of the Tome of Leo’s assertion that each nature wills and works what is proper to it, D. Bathrellos, 22

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term, Maximus did not strike out on a new theological path; rather, he enfolded it in a preexisting vision shaped by Chalcedonian Christology. Maximus’ interpretation of theandric energy involves a new mode, a synergy in which human energy willingly yields to and participates in the work of the divine energy in the person of Christ. It means no more, nor less, than the blind man’s report that ‘a man called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes with it, and said to me, “away with thee to the pool of Siloam and wash there”. So I went there, and washed, and recovered my sight’ (John 9:11).26 Theandric Energy and Deification for Maximus John Meyendorff acknowledges the importance of Christ’s two energies to the Confessor’s description of theosis. Deification is grounded in the hypostatic union which makes it possible for human persons to share in the divine energy by grace, in a manner analogous to the exchange of operations in Christ: The man Jesus is God hypostatically, and, therefore, in Him there is a ‘communication’ (perichoresis-circumincessio) of the ‘energies’ divine and human. This ‘communication’ also reaches those who are ‘in Christ’. But they, of course, are human hypostases and are united to God not hypostatically but only ‘by grace’ or ‘by energy’ ... It is not through his own activity or ‘energy’ that man can be deified – this would be Pelagianism – but by divine ‘energy’, to which his human activity is ‘obedient’; between the two there is a ‘synergy’, of which the relation of the two energies in Christ is the ontological basis.27

Parsing Christ’s energies, then, results in a clearer understanding of the ontological basis of deification; a saint participates synergistically, ‘by grace or by energy’, in God. Critical to Maximus’s position is the claim that Christ’s theandric activity is ‘for our sake;’ humans are able to share in this new mode of activity, for the activity proper to human nature has taken on a new mode for those who live in Christ. Blowers points out that this inaugurates ‘a deified mode of the natures of rational creatures, since deification signifies a boundless eschatological horizon of transformation’.28 This is not a novel concept, but a deepening of Maximus’s understanding of deification. In a well-known passage from Ambiguum 7, written Byzantine Christ (2004), 8. By contrast, Maximus writes that Christ performs the activities proper to each nature as a single subject (Amb. 5.12). At worst, the assertion of two ‘theandric energies’ is quasi-Nestorian, for it suggests Christ’s activities are divisible, as though the Incarnate Word could perform an action simply with the divine energy or the human energy, departing from the indissoluble unity of natures in the Word’s hypostasis. 26 For another example of theandric activity, see the description of Christ walking on water in Amb 5.7, 1049B-1049C. 27 D. Bathrellos, Byzantine Theology (2004), 164. 28 P. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor (2016), 129.

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several years before Ambiguum 5, Maximus describes deification in terms of a renewal of the human mode of activity. Maximus conceives of the fall, redemption, and deification in terms of human nature’s changing tropoi. In Ambiguum 5, the controversial Dionysian phrase pushes him to grapple more deeply with the language of logos and tropos, with the implication that Christ’s new mode of activity is available to all humans, and imitable by the saints.29 Through the precedent of Christ’s theandric activity, the activity proper to human nature is elevated in its mode, or tropos. This preserves the original integrity of created human nature while making a new way of life possible.30 Blowers points out the purchase of this conceptual paradigm: ‘Beyond its properly christological significance ... the new “theandric activity” represents to Maximus the Creator-Christ’s prerogative in opening up new possibilities for created nature. Christ’s lived politeia presupposes his authority to work through the “law of nature” on behalf of all creatures’.31 As Maximus grapples with Dionysius’ phrase in light of Chalcedonian logic, the implications of that logic unfold. This unified activity of Christ, in which the human activity willingly submits to and mediates the divine activity, constitutes a new mode of activity. Thus, Christ lived out his theandric energy ‘not for Himself but for our sake’,32 and inaugurating a new theandric mode of activity in his person renews the human mode of action, enabling the synergy Meyendorff spoke of in the passage above. This new mystery is expressed in Christ’s working of human and divine works in a new and wondrous way: One could say, then, that he experienced suffering in a divine way, since it was voluntary (and He was not mere man); and that He worked miracles in a human way, since they were accomplished through the flesh (for he was not naked God). Therefore His sufferings are wondrous, for they have been renewed by the natural divine power of the one who suffered. So too are His wonders wedded to passibility, for they were completed by the naturally passible power of the flesh of the one who worked them. Knowing this, the teacher [Dionysius] said … ‘He lived his life among us according to a certain new theandric energy’.33

Christ’s mode of theandric activity, then, brings about seeming impossibilities according to the typical order of nature. Saints do not become God by nature, but through Christ. This fits with Maximus’ vision of deification in (the 29

Amb. 7.38, 1097C. See also Ambiguum 10. I agree with Paul Blowers, who writes that ‘Christ’s theandric person is not only the intersection of theologia and oikonomia, and of uncreated and created nature, but also the fulcrum of Maximus’ entire doctrine of salvation and deification’, P. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor (2016), 155. While Blowers’ treatment of the term ‘theandric’ here extends beyond the term theandric energy, Maximus’ treatment of the Dionysian phrase is a critical part of this Christology. 31 P. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor (2016), 132. 32 Amb. 5.24, 1057C. 33 Amb. 5.18, 1056AB. 30

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earlier) Ambiguum 7, where he writes that the saint ‘is and is called God’ by grace in a ‘beautiful exchange’ that ‘renders God man by reason of the divinization of man, and man God by reason of the Incarnation of God’.34 Maximus’ description of the saints reflects not only the Chalcedonian logic of the communication of idioms, but also the ‘heightening of the paradox’ in that logic brought about by the discussion of theandric energy: As Christ’s divine activity is made known in human activity, the saints bear witness to the divine life through their human lives. While Ambiguum 5 suggests this on a theoretical level, Maximus’s correspondence offers practical examples of how this might bear out: In Letter to Thomas (ca. 634), the Confessor depicts Christ’s intimacy with Gregory Nazianzen and Dionysius: Christ ‘became the soul of their souls, manifest to all through all their deeds, words, and thoughts, by which one is persuaded that the passages cited hereinafter were authored, not by them, but by Christ, who by grace has exchanged places with them’.35 In his Letter 2 to John Cubicularius (ca. 633), he writes: ‘Your virtue also makes God condescend to be human, by your assumption, so far as is possible for humans, of divine properties’.36 These are not mere platitudes; they incorporate a dyenergist Christology to describe how humans show forth properties that surpass human nature. While the saint cannot possess a ‘theandric energy’ in the same manner as the enfleshed Logos, the saint’s life is a ‘beautiful exchange’ of divine and human properties, and an imitation of the theandric mode of action inaugurated by the God-man.37 Bathrellos writes that Maximus used the communication of idioms in the dyothelite controversy to attribute particular acts of willing to Christ’s human will; ‘In so doing, Maximus not only protected the integrity and authenticity of the humanity of Christ, but also made it possible to regard the human history of Jesus as recapitulating and rewriting our history, not as a history of human rebellion against God but as a history of loving obedience’.38 In Ambiguum 5, Maximus accomplishes something similar on the level of energeia; his enfolding of the term ‘theandric energy’ within the Chalcedonian logic of the communication of idioms makes it possible to parse Jesus’ activity in a theandric mode. Christ’s theandric activity recapitulates and refashions history from acts of rebellion to acts of synergy. Dionysius’ phrase, far from being a dismissible or inconvenient aspect of the Christological debates, compelled Maximus to engage with difficult questions of authentic humanity and divinity, their unity and duality.

34

Amb. 7.22, 1084C. Amb. Th. Prologue, 1032A. 36 Andrew Louth, Letter Two, in Maximus the Confessor (London, 1996), 85. 37 For more on the relationship of hagiography and the ascetic life to the seventh-century Christological controversies, particularly in the works of Maximus the Confessor, Sophronius, and John Moschus, see Phil Booth, A Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity (Berkeley, CA, 2014). 38 D. Bathrellos, Byzantine Christ (2004), 173. 35

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Gregory Palamas The debate regarding theandric energy is part of the theological history with which Gregory Palamas is acquainted. But does it have any purchase in his theology? At first glance, it seems not. He never cites Ambiguum 5 in the Triads.39 There are, however, glimpses of this heritage in Palamas’ works. He uses the term ‘theandric energy’ twice in his homilies.40 In Homily 41, he names ‘the consequences of [Christ’s] activity as God and man (τῆς θεανδρικῆς ἐνεργείας)’ among the ‘prerequisites of our salvation’.41 Homily 46 references the ‘lifegiving theandric energy of Christ’ (τὴν θεανδρικὴν τοῦ Χριστοῦ ζωοποιὸν ἐνέργειαν).42 In Homily 4, Palamas lists Christ’s θεανδρικὴ πολιτεία43 as one of the essential components of the economy of salvation.44 The concurrence of these words is generally scarce; I located fifteen instances, the first from the sixth century. Maximus’ Ambiguum 5 includes them,45 as well as Constantinople III’s proclamation of Christ’s two wills.46 With these three references, as well as occurrences in the work of Damascene47 and in several Greek hymns,48 we can 39 In fact, nothing of the Ambigua to Thomas appears in the Triads, according to Meyendorff’s critical edition: Gregory Palamas and John Meyendorff, Défense des Saints Hésychastes (Louvain, 1959). 40 Homily 16 refers to the ‘theandric soul’ of Christ, θεανδρικὴν ψυχήν, which baited and fooled the devil. The phrase ‘theandric economy’, θεανδρικὴν οἰκονομίαν, occurs in Homilies 30, 59, and 60. Palamas also uses the questionable phrase ‘theandric hypostasis’ several times (Hom. 57, 58). Homily 58 on the Nativity contains one curious instance of the term. There Palamas writes that Christ is not merely spiritual, nor merely flesh, but ‘God and flesh mingled unconfusedly by the divine Mind to form the existence of one theandric hypostasis, μιᾶς θεανδρικῆς ὑποστάσεως, who entered the Virgin’s womb for a time’. See Christopher Veniamin, The Homilies of St. Gregory Palamas, 2 vol. (South Canaan, PA, 2004). 41 Homily 41.11. 42 Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (University of California, 2014), http://stephanus.tlg.uci.edu, accessed November 2016. 43 Blowers is helpful in unpacking the term politeia. He writes: ‘In early Christian usage, politeia typically denoted the Christian way of life or moral-spiritual regimen. It could indicate Christian moral discipline over against pagan, or the rigorous vocation of the monastic life. Dionysius said that Christ had ‘fashioned the way of life’ (πεπολιτευμένος) of the ‘new theandric energy’ in his incarnation, and that Scripture had revealed the ‘divinely delivered and theo-mimetic regimens of life’ (θεοπαραδότους καὶ θεομιμήτους πολιτείας) appropriate to Christ’s disciples’, P. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor (2016), 132. 44 Homily 4.12: Οὐχ οὗτος δὲ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡ θεία καὶ ἀπόρρητος κένωσις, ἡ θεανδρικὴ πολιτεία, τὰ σωτήρια πάθη, τὰ μυστήρια πάντα… 45 Amb. 5.24: ‘Let us then understand the “theandric energy” in the way that it has been interpreted. For the Word made flesh actively “lived” (πολιτευσάμενος) out this energy “among us” not for himself but for our sake, and he renews our nature by means of things beyond nature’. 46 Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, Series Secunda II, Concilium Universale Constantipolitanum Tertium, ed. Rudolf Riedinger, 2 vol. (Berlin, 1990-1992), Document 8 page 230, line 23. 47 Epistula ad Theophilum Vol. 95, p. 348 line 31. 48 Canones Julii Day 5 Canon 8.2 ode 1 line 5, and Canones Aprilis Day 11 canon 14 ode 7 line 50.

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assume Palamas was acquainted with the Maximian interpretation of theandric energy. If he did not read Ambiguum 5, he read a text that drew from Maximus’ work on the question, such as liturgical hymns, the texts of Lateran 649, the acts of Constantinople III, or the works of John of Damascus.49 In what follows, I offer several instances where one may see glimpses of a Maximian dyenergist Christology in Palamas’ Defense of the Hesychasts,50 his three-part work against Barlaam the Calabrian. My claim is not that Palamas drew directly from Ambiguum 5, but that his work is indebted to Maximus’ work on theandric energy and its clarification of dyenergist Christology. One explicit reference to neo-Chalcedonian Christology occurs in Triads III 3.6-7, in which Palamas responds to Barlaam’s claim that a vision of divine light is impossible. Barlaam, concerned that Palamas’ essence-energy distinction does not preserve divine simplicity, argues51 that human eyes cannot see the essence of God, and the light the monks see in prayer must be either a vision of the divine essence, which is impossible, or a vision of a created light.52 Palamas rejects Barlaam’s claim that light is something created. Light, like grace and glory, are differentiated manifestations of the divine energy, which flows from the divine essence. Palamas refutes Barlaam’s claims by offering him two scenarios with equally implausible conclusions, both of which draw on Maximian Christology. First, if Barlaam claims that the light is not divine, he implies that God does not possess an energy: Thus, he is an atheist, for ‘no nature can exist, nor be known, if it does not possess an essential energy’.53 Denial of divine energies is a denial of God’s existence. Palamas cites a passage from Disputatio cum Pyrrho (645), an account of Maximus’ debate with Pyrrhus over the number of Christ’s energies and wills.54 In that work, Maximus 49 It is important to note that the conciliar adoption of Maximus’ work on the term ‘theandric energy’ is quite limited. This will be discussed further in the conclusion of the article. 50 The hesychast controversy arose between 1337 and 1341 when the monk Barlaam of Calabria criticized certain practices of monks on Mt. Athos, such as the repetition of the Jesus Prayer with a certain posture and breathing. See R. Ferwerda and Sara J. Denning-Bolle, Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite (Binghamton, NY, 1999), 4. Barlaam found it particularly offensive that the monks claimed they could see a divine light in prayer, and that such a light entered the intellect, descended into the heart and affected the body. Palamas responded vehemently to these criticisms. The Fifth Council of Constantinople (1341) vindicated Palamas’ position and excommunicated Barlaam (Dialogue, VI). Palamas’ three-part work, written prior to the council, refutes multiple accusations made against the hesychasts by Barlaam of Calabria. 51 We must rely on Palamas’ text to know what Barlaam argues, since Barlaam’s works have mostly been destroyed. 52 ‘For him, the knowledge of God is either a mystical experience, individual and incommunicable, or a rational syllogism, constructed from revealed premises. In the latter case, knowledge has a purely dialectical nature, since it implies no real experience’ (J. Meyendorff, Christ [1975], 202). 53 Nicholas Gendle, The Triads, ed. John Meyendorff (New York, 1983), Bk III 3.6. I. English citations of the Triads have come from this edition, although I have also frequently consulted John Meyendorff’s Défense des Saints Hésychastes (Louvain, 1959). 54 P. Blowers, Maximus the Confessor (2016), 51.

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reaffirms what he had stated in Ambiguum 5: No nature can exist or be known if it does not possess an essential energy.55 Palamas’ Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite contains a similar argument. There he writes, ‘By saying that the activity does not differ from that essence, they have made God an essence without activity’ and fall into the ‘trap of atheism’.56 He cites Maximus’ Letter to Marinus (ca. 640):57 ‘When the divine and human activity is taken away, there is no God, nor man’.58 This passage originally refers to Maximus’ claim that the divine and human natures of Christ have corresponding energies. Returning to the Triads, Palamas continues, if Barlaam wishes to preserve divine simplicity by claiming that the energies are created, he effectively calls the divine nature a created nature.59 He asks: ‘How would we know Christ in two energies and two natures, if the natural energies of God were not uncreated? How would we know of the two wills, if he did not possess, as God, a natural and divine will? What is the will of God, if not an energy of the nature of God? Would the will of the uncreated therefore be created?’60 Palamas goes on to accuse Barlaam of miaphysitism via monenergism: ‘He had, therefore, only one energy, which was not even divine, and if he had but one energy, he necessarily had but one nature, which itself was not divine, as the ancient heretics said’.61 This is a worse kind of monophysitism than in previous controversies, he concludes, for it implies that Jesus possessed a singular human nature and no divine nature. These instances of explicit reference to seventh-century Christology, in which Palamas transposes the language of seventh-century Christological debates to support the distinction between divine essence and divine energy, are infrequent, but significant.62 Nicholas Gendle’s observation that this tactic is a ‘polemical exaggeration’63 fails to appreciate that the Christology is a crucial

55 Maximus makes the same point in Ambiguum 5 to demonstrate the existence of two energies in Christ. This observation does not originate with Maximus. Sophronius also appeals to it in the context of the Christological debates, and the concept is Aristotelian. 56 Dialogue XXXI. 57 Jean-Claude Larchet, Introduction to Opuscules théologiques et polémiques (Paris, 1998). 58 Dialogue XXXI. 59 Tr. III 3.6. 60 Ibid. III 3.7: Πόθεν ἐν δυσὶν ἐνεργείαις καὶ φύσεσιν ἔγνωμεν Χριστόν, εἰ μὴ αἱ τοῦ Θεοῦ φυσικαὶ ἐνέργειαι ἄκτιστοὶ εἰσι; Πόθεν δὲ καὶ ἐν δύσι θελήσεσι γινώσκομεν αὐτόν, εἰ μῆ καὶ ὡς Θεὸς θέλησιν εἶχε φυσικὴν καὶ θείαν; Τὶ οὖν τὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ θέλημα, οὐχὶ φύσεώς ἐστιν ἐνέργεια Θεοῦ; Ἆρ᾽ οὖν κτιστόν ἐστι τὸ τοῦ ἀκτίστου θέλημα; 61 Ibid. 62 The seventh-century debates about Christ’s energies were their own transposition, for the Christological language of these debates derives from language of essence and energy in Trinitarian debates. See J. Pelikan, Christian Tradition (1971), 72. 63 N. Gendle’s comment on III 3.7, footnote 94 of the Classics of Western Spirituality Triads (New York, 1983).

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building block for Palamas’ positive assertions about the essence-energy distinction in the Triads. Hesychasm’s Debt to Dyenergist Christology Grappling with the phrase ‘new theandric energy’ allowed Maximus to ‘heighten the paradox’ of the communication of idioms, and this, in turn, allowed him to speak about the saints in a particular way with respect to their activities. This set a precedent for how Palamas describes the hesychast’s reception of grace. In the Triads, Palamas argues that the Holy Spirit plays a crucial role in the bestowal of divine energy. While Catherine LaCugna criticizes the Palamite essence-energy distinction for reifying the persons of the Trinity,64 and Dorothea Wendebourg and Robert Jenson suggest that the distinction renders Palamas a modalist,65 such criticisms neglect Palamas’ emphasis on the hypostasized character of the energy. It is true that for Palamas, Father, Son, and Spirit all possess the same divine energy, since they share one divine nature.66 Yet the revelation and transmission of the divine energy takes on characteristics specific to the persons of the Trinity. Palamas envisions the grace received by the hesychast as a bestowal of the divine energy through the Spirit. He agrees with Barlaam’s claim that humans cannot participate in the divine essence, yet disagrees that this must necessarily mean grace is created. Instead, grace, like the Thaboric light, is a divine energy communicable to the faithful.67 Three passages from the Triads illustrate how this claim might rest on a Maximian dyenergist Christology. In the first, from Book III, Palamas asserts that the ‘deifying gift of the Spirit is a mysterious light, and transforms into light those who receive its richness’.68 This light is a divine energy that is neither perceptible to bodily senses, nor the natural powers of the rational mind – the vision of such a light surpasses both of these faculties. All the same, the hesychast who beholds the divine light does not abandon sense and intellection. Rather, he is in 64

Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (New York, 2006),

193. 65 Marcus Plested, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford, 2012), 32-3. See also Dorothea Wendebourg, Geist oder Energie (Munich, 1980), and Dorothy Wendebourg, ‘From the Cappadocian Fathers to Gregory Palamas: The Defeat of Trinitarian Theology’, SP 17 (1982), 194-7. See also Robert Jensen, Systematic Theology I (Oxford, 1997). 66 For example, see Dialogue XVI: ‘There is in essence and energy one created divinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’. 67 Tr. III 1.8. The divine energy can be differentiated, and can be understood as light, grace, and ‘deification’. Palamas even insists that ‘essence’ may be called an energy (III 2.11), since God’s essence is superessential. 68 Ibid. III 1.35.

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a state of amazement in which ‘intellectual activities are entirely bypassed by the light of union and by the action of the light’. Palamas continues: For when the energy of the Holy Spirit overshadows the human mind, those in whom He is working do not become disturbed in mind, for this would be contrary to the promise of the divine presence. He who receives God does not lose his senses. On the contrary, he becomes like one driven mad, so to speak, by the Spirit of Wisdom; for this light is also the wisdom of God, present in the deified man, yet not separate from God.69

Palamas maintains the dignity of human sense and intellection while articulating its insufficiency to receive the light, or grace, of the Spirit. There are two energies at work – that of the human nature, and that of the divine nature which, given through the Spirit, engages the natural human energy of the hesychast while surpassing it, driving him, paradoxically, ‘mad by the Spirit of wisdom’. Were this grace or light created, as Barlaam contends, the human intellect could not fall short of beholding this divine light, and we would not require this synergy. In the second passage, from Book II, Palamas explains how the spiritual practice of the hesychast changes his bodily appearance. He claims in Book III, as we saw above, that the divine energy surpasses the faculties of sense and intellect. Yet the grace of the Spirit, given in the soul, also ‘works itself out’ in the body such that ‘the whole man becomes spirit’, after the manner of John 3. The Incarnation is the precedent for this ‘bodily experience of divine things’: For just as the divinity of the Word of God incarnate is common to soul and body, since He has deified the flesh through the mediation of the soul to make it also accomplish the works of God; so similarly, in spiritual man, the grace of the Spirit, transmitted to the body through the soul, grants to the body also the experience of things divine, and allows it the same blessed experience as the soul undergoes.70

The ‘whole man becomes Spirit’, then, not by an abandonment of the body but by a graced elevation of the body. As Christ’s deified flesh accomplished the works of God, the grace of the Spirit ‘deifies the body’ through the soul. Indeed, one might be surprised not to see corporeal evidence of grace in those being sanctified. Palamas recalls the martyr Stephen, whose shining face communicated the radiance of his soul.71 The hesychasts’ bodies, too, display the divine energy, a gift of God and the fruit of their prayer. Yet Palamas writes, ‘This communication takes place not only during the mental prayer of the soul, but also at those moments when the body is operating’.72 If the hesychast appears radiant, or if a person performs a miraculous deed, we can conclude 69 70 71 72

Ibid. III 1.36. Ibid. II 2.12. Ibid. Ibid. II 2.13. The example Palamas gives is the laying of hands at ordination.

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that ‘It is through the mediation of their souls and body that God effects things supernatural, mysterious, and incomprehensible’.73 Palamas returns to this theme in Book III of the Triads. The saints have not only ‘received an energy identical to that of the deifying essence’,74 they have become vessels of this divine energy; they ‘reveal it in themselves’.75 The hesychast’s mode of activity takes on a new and divine character. ‘Divine signs and the communication of the Holy Spirit are accomplished through them’,76 Palamas writes. With the help of the Spirit they, too, ‘live in a divine way’,77 or we might say, ‘do the things of man in a manner beyond man’. The saints have become instruments (ὄργανα) of the Spirit: The saints are instruments of the Spirit, having received the same energy as him. For certain proof of what I say, one can cite the charisms of healing, the accomplishment of miracles, foreknowledge, the irrefutable wisdom that the Lord even called the Spirit of our Father, and the sanctifying transmission of the Spirit, which they received of and by those who are sanctified with them.78

This passage calls to mind the description in Ambiguum 5 of Christ ‘working wonders in a human way’, revealing the divine power by concealing it in human action.79 Christ’s theandric mode of activity is in the background, here – it is this mode that the saints imitate, not by uniting human nature to the divine nature, but by yielding human activity to the divine energy. In this, there is nothing improper to human nature, or destructive of it. To borrow a phrase from Meyendorff, ‘between the divine and human energies there is a “synergy”, of which the relation of the two energies in Christ is the ontological basis’.80 Neither Maximus nor Palamas would think of his paradoxical description of Christ’s activities and corresponding description of the saints’ as innovative. The Christian tradition has always suggested that saints suffered in imitation of Christ and worked miracles in his name. The martyr Blandina took the shape of a cross at her death. Peter raised the widow Dorcas from the dead (Acts 9:36-42). Basil invoked such images in arguing for the divinity of the Holy Spirit; those who have acquired grace ‘live in a divine way’.81 In the case of Maximus and Palamas, what we have is, as Pelikan described it, a ‘heightening’ of the Chalcedonian logic, articulated by Maximus in terms of Christ’s energies, and 73

Ibid. II 2.14. Ibid. III 1.33. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. III 1.35. 77 Ibid. III 1.38. 78 Ibid. III 1.33. 79 Elsewhere, Palamas also describes the suffering of the martyrs in a way that reflects Maximus’ description of Christ “suffering in a divine way”. See Homily 16.33. 80 John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York, 1974), 164. 81 Tr. III 1.38. 74

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by Palamas, transposed to address the question of divine energy at work in the human person. Hence, the claim of Constantinople 1351 that Palamas’ thought is as an ἀνάπτυξις of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Conclusion This article has reviewed Maximus the Confessor’s early contribution to dyenergist Christology in order to bring out dimensions of neo-Chalcedonian theology in Palamas’ Triads. Maximus’ efforts to clarify the phrase ‘new theandric energy’ in light of Chalcedon led to a more substantive vocabulary for deification. Gregory Palamas profited from these efforts as he described, among other things, the deified life of the hesychast. Palamas drew on the fruits of earlier theological controversies and put them in conversation with a presentday debate. His articulation allowed the full meaning of these dogmas to unfold, and allowed Christological language to show its purchase for pneumatology and a theology of deification. Palamas’ construal of the saints’ participation in the divine energy relies not only on Christ having two energies in the first place, but on the way that these divine and human energies in Christ have been disclosed, and what is made possible through them. Perhaps one needn’t accept a dyenergist Christology to argue that the light of Christ a Thabor, or grace, is a divine energy. Yet one could not explain how a saint participates in that grace, light, or energy without also speaking about a human energy. Thus, the question of two energies arises, a question of how a divine and human energy interact. Christ’s two energies, and the theandric mode of their execution, sets the precedent for Palamas’ description of the synergy between the Spirit’s grace and the hesychast. He takes offense at Barlaam’s claim that grace is something created precisely because he understands that sanctification requires divine assistance in the form of grace, a divine energy. I will close with two brief points for possible discussion. First, I have endeavored to show how Palamas’ thought profited from Maximus’ efforts – but to what degree is Palamas’ dyenergist Christology Maximian, as opposed to simply neo-Chalcedonian? Constantinople III asserted Christ’s two energies and wills without reference to Maximus (who, after his death, remained a taboo figure in imperial circles), and neglected to incorporate the rich theology of deification he developed alongside his Christology. Did Palamas profit from the conciliar tradition, or Maximus’ dyenergist Christology more directly? It seems the latter. Second, given my conclusions, I suggest that efforts to compare Palamas’ theology of grace with that of Western figures, such as Thomas Aquinas, begin with examining their respective receptions of neo-Chalcedonian Christology.82 82

A. Lévy’s work Le créé et l’incréé (2006) is a prime example of such scholarship.

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While Halleux’s observation that Eastern and Western theologies of deification deviate in where they assign the point of mediation between God and human persons (for the East, the essence-energies distinction; for the West, charity as habitus), the subsequent move should not be an exhaustive comparison of energy-essence and habitus, but a study of the Mediator, for both of Halleux’s points of mediation occur in the person of Christ. The neo-Chalcedonian expression of the interaction between Christ’s divine and human operations and energies is a key to understanding both Aquinas and Palamas’ theology of grace. To advance in our understanding of how and why these theologians differ, we must attend to their common sources.

The Topic of the Divine Energies as Accidents in the Palamite Doctrine: Its Meaning, Historical Context, Including that of the Teaching about the Nature of Theological Language Dmitry BIRIUKOV, National Research University Higher School of Economics / Saint Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation, Russian Federation

ABSTRACT Gregory Palamas has faced a problem of compatibility of two theological provisions within his doctrine based on the distinction of substance and non-created activities in God: these are, firstly, that God is unalterable, and, secondly, that He acts accordingly with time in relation to the created world, in particular, having made the created being. This background caused polemical argumentations on the possibility of signifying the divine activities as accident. The notion of accident here refers to the context ascending to the Peripatetic tradition, yet modified in writings of such Christian authors as Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria and John Damascene. Palamas addresses this topic in two of his works, Antirrh. c. Acind and Capita 150, written within the interval of five or six years. We see that Palamas is moving towards a more detailed notion of accident while considering its applicability to divine activities: this is him moving to the notion of inseparable accidents. But even in this sense, the accident, compliant to Palamas, must not be attributed to God and divine activities, though the Church tradition used to do this. Palamas finds a solution of this tension by pointing out that the notion of accident was used by the Church tradition in an improper sense. Meanwhile, his ally David Dishypatus takes a more subtle position: he admits a possibility to apply the notion of accident to the divine activities, but minding core restrictions of the human language, which speaks of God only within the horizon of human nature.

In the fourteenth century,1 Palamites and Antipalamites discussed the status of a certain reality, which was referred to as Divine energies. One of the controversial issues was: is it possible to understand participable and knowable uncreated energies of God (on the existence of which Gregory Palamas and his followers insisted), as distinct from the unparticipable and unknowable essense of the Divinity, through the analogy with the philosophical concept of ‘accident’ (τὰ συμβεβηκότα),2 and if so, in which sense. 1 The article was prepared within the framework of the HSE University Basic Research Program and funded by the Russian Academic Excellence Project ‘5-100’. 2 The term ‘accident’, τὰ συμβεβηκότα, was developed in the philosophy of Aristotle. Speaking of accident, Aristotle distinguishes between different types of accident. One is something inherent

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 305-316. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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The theme of a correlation between accident and essence appears already in the First Letter of Barlaam of Calabria to Palamas (1336). There Barlaam (an opponent of the teaching of Gregory Palamas and Palamism) discusses the possibility of using proofs relating to the categories of essence and accident both in the created world and as regards the Divine reality. He declares that in relation to created beings, which are known either by senses or by the means of reason, the accident is understood as existing ‘in the essence’, and that it is knowable by means of proof on the basis of the definition of this essence. But in relation to the Divine, super-essential reality, which, according to Barlaam, is in no way given to us through experience, the essense is not knowable to us, and the accident, which exists ‘in the essence’ (assuming that it exists) is therefore not provable. As far as Barlaam’s line of thought can be reconstructed, he insists that there can be nothing accidental in God, but that everything in Him is essence. This means that that which Palamas calls uncreated Divine energies is in fact also the Divine essence. But if energies, according to Palamas, are knowable and, accordingly, a proof may be offered concerning them, then, according to Barlaam, it turns out that in God provability has to do with essence, which (according to Barlaam) is absurd.3 Gregory Palamas discusses these deliberations of Barlaam in his Second Epistle to Gregory Akyndinos.4 He insists on the distinction in God between essence and energies, which are understood through the analogy with accident, but he is not yet discussing the question of a correlation of the categories of energy and accident. Then deliberations on the applicability of the category of accident to the Divinity appear in Antipalamite polemics in the works of the Gregory Palamas’ next opponent, Gregory Akindinos (a former friend of Palamas), in particular in his Rebuttal of the Dialogue of an Orthodox with a Barlaamite5 (1342-1343). Here, too, the context is the teaching of Gregory Palamas on the distinction in God between the uncreated energies and the essence. When turning to this subject Akyndinos probably had in mind the correspondence between Palamas and Barlaam, which was known to him. As we have seen, there the topic of accident had already made an appearance.

in something not out of necessity and through an accident – for instance, when someone got to Aegina not because he wanted to get there, but because he was brought there by a storm, and the other – which is inherent in something as such (and is common to all things of the same species), but is not contained in its essence (i.e. belongs to the ‘logos of the essence’), as, for instance, it is inherent in a triangle to have two right angles in total; accident in this second meaning may be unchangeable (Metaphysics Δ 30). 3 Barlaam Calabrius. Epistle 1: Barlaam Calabro. Epistole Greche. I primordi episodici e dottrinari delle lotte esicate, Studio introduttivo e testi a cura di G. Schirò, Istituto Siciliano di Studi Bizantini e Neogreci, Testi e Monumenti 1 (Palermo, 1954), 255-6. 4 Gregorius Palamas. Epistle 2 ad Barlaam, 30-1: Γρηγοριου του Παλαμα Συγγραμματα. Τ. A, Ἔκδ. Β´, επιμ. Π.Κ. Χρήστου (Θεσσαλονικη, 1988), 277-8. 5 That is, Gregory Palamas’ work with this title.

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In his Rebuttal Akindinos produces an imaginary (or non-identified) quote from Gregory (its genuinity is doubtful in any case), which connects the notions of ‘accident’ and ‘action’ (energizing), applying them to Divinity, and makes the point that the accident in God is such that it does not appear or vanish: Ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἐγὼ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ταῦτα λέγω τῷ Θεῷ προσγινόμενα καὶ ἀπογινόμενα συμβεβηκότα ἢ ποιότητας καὶ ἕξεις, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ περὶ τὸ Θεῖον οὔσας καὶ ἀπογινομένας οὐδέποτε, ἄλλας δὲ τῆς οὐσίας αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς φύσεως καὶ ἐνεργουμένας αὐτῷ καὶ ὑφειμένας αὐτοῦ ἀπειράκις ἀπείρως. But even I do not contend that God’s accidents or properties, or His possessions appear and vanish, but say that they are always around the Divinity and never disappear, being other in relation to His essense and nature, in which He acts, inferior to Him in endlessinfinite time of times.6

In general Akindinos’ position is the following: he rejects the possibility of application of the categories of energy and accident to the Divine reality (even if this accident does not appear or disappear, but exists with God always). Referring to Maximus the Confessor and Dionysios the Areopagite he states, for example, that the angelic beings and human souls, being simple by nature, are alien to the division into essence and accident, and that this is even more so for the Divinity, which is absolutely simple, so that composition of essence and accident/energy is impossible, for in God all is essence or essential properties.7 The position concerning the Divine energies that was rejected by Akyndinos was characteristic to Gregory Palamas and his followers. According to them, Divine energies is that element in God, which is different from His essence; they are God Himself, they are uncreated and eternal. But is it possible to call energies accidental within the framework of the Palamite discourse? Investigation of this question could help to set the Palamite energy discourse within the Aristotelian system of coordinates, which is very important for Byzantine dogmatic thought in general. The question about the possibility of calling divine energies ‘accidental’ was discussed, among the proponents of Palamism, in the works by Gregory Palamas himself, as well as by David Dishypatos, Matthew Blastares and others. Below I will examine the interpretation of this subject in the works of Gregory Palamas and David Dishypatos. Palamas discusses the question of the possibility of calling energies accidental first in the 6th book of Antirritics against Akindinos, and then in his 150 Chapters. One of Gregory Palamas’ allies, the monk David Dishypatos, touches upon it in his Word on the Blasphemies by Barlaam and Akindinos, sent as a letter 6 Gregorius Acindynus, Refutatio magna I 52: 1-6: Gregorii Acindyni Refutationes duae operis Gregorii Palamae cui titulus dialogus inter Orthodoxum et Barlaamitam, ed. J. Nadal Cañellas, CChr.SG 31 (Turnhout, 1995), 62. 7 Ibid. I 50-2: Gregorii Acindyni Refutationes duae 61-3.

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to kyr Nikolaos Kabasilas. The 6th book of the Antirrhetici against Akindinos is dated around 1344, while the above-mentioned work by Dishypatos can be dated to the end of 1344 or the beginning of 1345. This means that subject was discussed by Gregory Palamas and David Dishypatos simultaneously. And if we take into account that speaking on this subject Gregory and David use the same theses and refer to the same source, Thesaurus by Cyril of Alexandria, we can be certain that Gregory Palamas in his 6th Antirritics against Akindinos and David Dishypatos develop the theme of the Divine energies as being accidental either depending on each other or in close connection with each other. In his Antirrhetici against Akindinos Palamas enters into polemics with Gregory Akindinos and discusses the correlation between the categories of accident and the (Divine) energy. Despite the fact that Akindinos, when polemizing against the teaching of Gregory Palamas on the Divine energies, identifies the categories of energy and accident, Gregory practically separates them. According to Palamas, Divine energy can be called accident – if we use this term in an improper sense – for, as well as the accident, energy is contemplated and exists in something other than itself (this distinguishes energy and accident from the category of essence, which exists in itself). And in the proper sense accident is changeable; it is acquired and vanishes. Energy, as distinct from accident, is natural and always exists with the essence. Therefore energy cannot be called accident in the proper sense. When energy in the Divinity is evidently dependent on time (as in the case of the energy, with which God created the world), we should speak about an ability that always exists with the essence, corresponding to this energy (for example, the ability to create). Following the tradition of the Church, energy may be called accident – for each of them exists in the other, and not in itself – though not in a proper sense. Let us quote the corresponding passage from Palamas: Παράστασις ὅτι κἂν συμβεβηκός πως λέγηται ἢ ἐνέργεια αὕτη, ἀλλ’ οὐχ οἷον μὴ προσεῖναι τῷ θεῷ· Οὐ γὰρ ὅτι δημιουργεῖν ὁ θεὸς ἤρξατο καὶ πέπαυται ὅτε ἠθέλησεν αὐτός, διὰ τοῦτο μὴ φυσικῶς ἐροῦμεν τὸ δημιουργεῖν ἔχειν τὸν θεόν, ταυτὸ δ’ εἰπεῖν ταύτην τὴν ἐνέργειαν. Εἰ δὲ φυσικῶς αὕτη πρόσεστι θεῷ, πῶς οὐκ ἄκτιστος; Ἐπεὶ γὰρ καὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ θεῷ θεωρουμένων ἐστίν, ἀλλ’ οὐ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ὑφεστηκυῖα, τῶν δ’ ἐν ἑτέρῳ θεωρουμένων τὰ μὲν φυσικῶς ὑφεστηκυῖα, τῶν δ’ ἐν ἑτέρῳ θεωρουμένων τὰ μὲν φυσικῶς ἐστι, τὰ δὲ κατὰ συμβεβηκός, συμβεβηκὸς δὲ τῷ θεῷ οὐδὲν ἐνθεωρεῖται – καὶ γὰρ οὐδ’ ἐπίκτητον οὐδὲ μεταβαλλόμενον, ὁποῖον τὸ κυρίως ἐστὶ συμβεβηκός – φυσικῶς ἄρα πρόσεστιν ἡ ἐνέργεια αὕτη τῷ θεῷ. Τὸ δὲ φυσικῶς προσόν, εἰ καὶ συμβεβηκὸς ἔστιν ὅτε λέγεται πρὸς τὴν οὐσίαν ἀντιδιαστελλόμενον, ἀλλ’ οὐ πάντως ἐστὶ συμβεβηκὸς οὐδὲ τοιοῦτον. Ἡ μὲν γὰρ οὐσία οὐκ ἔσθ’ ὅπως ἂν ῥηθείη ποτὲ συμβεβηκός, καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ὑπάρχουσα, ἡ δὲ ἐνέργεια ἔσθ’ ὅπως ἂν ῥηθείη, μὴ οὐσία οὖσα χουσα, ἡ δὲ ἐνέργεια ἔσθ’ ὅπως ἂν ῥηθείη, μὴ οὐσία οὖσα μηδὲ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν ὑπάρχουσα, εἰ καὶ μὴ πάντως ἂν ῥηθείη, τῷ φυσικῶς ἐνθεωρεῖσθαι καὶ μὴ κατὰ συμβεβηκός. 8 8 Gregorius Palamas, Antirrh. c. Acind. VI 21.76; 78: Γρηγοριου του Παλαμα Συγγραμματα. Τ. Γ´, επιμ. Π.Κ. Χρήστου (Θεσσαλονικη, 1970), 443-5.

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Demonstration that even though this energy is called accident in some sense, but not in the sense that it is not inherent to God. … God started and finished creating when He wished, but this does not let us say that [the property] to create (otherwise speaking, this energy) does not belong to God by nature. But if it is inherent to God by nature, how can it not be uncreated? For, as it belongs to those, which are contemplated in God, but does not exist on its own (among those which are contemplated in the other, some are natural and the other is according to the accident, however no accident is contemplated in God; and of course, nothing acquired ot changeable, which is accident in the proper sense), it means that this energy is inherent to God by nature. And if something is inherent by nature, although it is called accident sometimes, as opposed to the essence, is not quite accidental. […] An essence, being according to itself, can never be called accident, but energy sometimes can be, as it is not an essence and is not in itself, even if it can not be called this in any sense, for it is contemplated naturally and not according to accident.

As we can see, Palamas here speaks about energy as ‘natural’, always inherent to the essence, and thus opposes energy to the changeable accident (with the reservation that energy can be called accident in an improper sense). In the course of his reasonings, Palamas illustrates the possibility of calling energies accident ‘from tradition’, with the fragments of the Thesaurus by Cyril of Alexandria (I omitted it in the citation quoted above). Some theses close to those we have seen in Palamas, but somewhat less detailed, are formulated by Palamas’ ally David Dishypatos in his polemics against Barlaam of Calabria and Gregory Akyndinos in the Word on the Blasphemies by Barlaam and Akyndinos, sent as a letter to kyr Nikolaos Kabasilas.9 The occasion for the reasonings of Dishypatos about the possibility of calling Divine energy an accident was the identification of Divine energies and powers with the category of accident by his opponents (obviously, by Gregory Akindinos in his Rebuttal). In this identification, according to Dishypatos, one can see that his opponents prefer the psychic sense to that which is from Spirit.10 According to Dishypatos, ‘everything we say about God, we say on the basis of what is habitual to is, not possessing that which is higher than we. From this it follows that we are compelled to think about that, which is inherent to God according to His essence and nature as accident’ (πᾶν ὅπερ ἐπὶ θεοῦ λέγομεν, ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων ἐθῶν τοῦτο λέγομεν, τὸ ὑπὲρ ἡμᾶς οὐκ ἔχοντες, ἐξ οὗ δὴ καὶ συμβαίνει κατ’ ἀνάγκην ὡς περὶ συμβεβηκότων νοεῖν τῶν κατ’ οὐσίαν καὶ φυσικῶς προσόντων τῷ θεῷ).11 In the same way as Palamas, Dishypatos in this context refers to Cyril of Alexandria, to the same passage from Cyril’s Thesaurus as Palamas did (offering a somewhat fuller quotation). 9 David Dishypatus, Ad Nicolaum Cabasilam 28; 31: Δαβὶδ Δισυπάτου Λόγος κατὰ Βαρλαὰμ καὶ Ἀκινδύνου πρὸς Νικόλαον Καβάσιλαν, επιμ. Δ. Τσάμης, Βυζαντινὰ κείμενα καὶ Μελέται 10 (Θεσσαλονίκη, 1973), 58-61. 10 David Dishypatus, Ad Nicolaum Cabasilam 28: Ibid. 58.9-12. 11 David Dishypatus, Ad Nicolaum Cabasilam 31: Ibid. 61.15-8.

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In this passage from the Thesaurus12 Cyril polemizes against the thesis of Arians (of the Eunomian version) that in God everything is essence. He wants to demonstrate that hypostatical qualities, which individualize the Persons of the Trinity, for instance the unbegottenness of the Father, do not belong to the essence of God and, therefore, belong to the accident. Accordingly, Cyril argues for the possibility of speaking about the accident in God. Cyril says that on the one hand it is wise to state that there is nothing accidental in relation to the essence of God. However on the other hand we are forced to think about something as accident in relation to the Divine essence. Namely, it is the creative activity of God, manifesting in the creation of the world, which, obviously, had not always coexisted with God, but was added (συμβέβηκε) to Him. In this sense, according to Cyril, it is right to call that, which does not belong to the Divine essence, accident in God, while being aware that it is said only from the perspective of human nature and language, ‘for the human nature cannot say about God anything more than what is inherent for itself. We use for it the notions which are close to us, creating out of them patterns for something bigger, as those who draw the heavenly circle on a small sheet’ (Οὐκ ἔχει γὰρ ἡ ἀνθρώπου φύσις μεῖζόν τι τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτὴν λέγειν ἐπὶ Θεοῦ. Διὸ δὴ τοῖς ἰδίοις ἔθεσιν ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ κεχρήμεθα, τὰ καθ’ ἑαυτοὺς μειζόνων ὑπόδειγμα ποιούμενοι, ὥσπερ οἱ ἐν μικρῷ πίνακι τὸν οὐράνιον καταγράφοντες κύκλον).13 We should note that of these two Palamite authors – Gregory Palamas himself and David Dishypatos – the latter is closer to Cyril’s thought. Indeed, it is Gregory’s intention to make a distinction between two registers of language, connected with using words in a proper and an improper sense: Gregory says that if we take the notion of accident in the proper sense, it cannot be applied to God, but if we use it in an improper sense, then we can speak about accident in relation to the Divine essence. As for Cyril of Alexandria and David Disyphatus following him, they have a different intention. They draw attention to the fundamental limitation of human language, including the philosophical one – limitation by the horizon of human nature; and to the fact that a human being is in principle unable to make an adequate statement about that which supercedes the limits of human reality – about God. Therefore, according to Cyril and David Dishypatos, we are able to speak about an accident in God, without necessarily being aware of this fundamental limitation. In his 150 Chapters (1349-1350), written 5 or 6 years after the Antirrhetici against Akyndinos, Palamas, again polemizing with Akyndinos, touches upon the theme of Divine energies as accident. He writes: Συμβεβηκός ἐστι τὸ γινόμενον καὶ ἀπογινόμενον, ἀφ’ οὗ καὶ τὰ ἀχώριστα συμβεβηκότα συνορῶμεν. ἔστι δέ πως συμβεβηκὸς καὶ τὸ φυσικῶς προσόν, ὡς αὐξόμενόν 12 13

Cyrillus Alexandrinus, Thesaurus 31, PG 75, 448D-449A. Ibid., PG 75, 449A.4-9.

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τε καὶ μειούμενον, καθάπερ ἐν τῇ λογικῇ ψυχῇ ἡ γνῶσις. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν τοιοῦτον ἐν τῷ θεῷ, ὅτι δὴ παντάπασιν ἀμετάβλητος μένει, δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν οὐδὲν αὐτῷ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς λέγοιτ’ ἄν. οὐ μὴν πᾶν ὅπερ ἐπὶ θεοῦ λέγεται οὐσίαν σημαίνει, λέγεται γὰρ καὶ τὸ πρός τι, ὅπερ ἀναφορικόν ἐστι καὶ ἀναφορᾶς πρὸς ἕτερον, ἀλλ’ οὐκ οὐσίας ἐστὶ δηλωτικόν. τοιοῦτόν ἐστι καὶ ἡ θεία ἐνέργεια ἐπὶ θεοῦ, οὔτε γὰρ οὐσία ἐστὶν οὔτε συμβεβηκός, εἰ καὶ συμβεβηκός πώς ἐστι παρ’ ὧν καλεῖται θεολόγων, δεικνύντων τοῦτο μόνον, ὅτι ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ θεῷ καὶ οὐσία οὐκ ἔστιν. An accident is that which comes into being and passes away again, whereby we understand also inseparable accidents. But there is a sort of accident and natural attribute such as can increase and decrease, like knowledge in the rational soul, but there is no such thing in God because he remains absolutely immutable and for this reason nothing could be predicated of him as an accident. Nor indeed does everything predicated of him denote the substance, for relation is predicated of him, which is relative and refers to relationships with another but is not indicative of substance. Such also is the divine energy in God, for it is neither substance nor accident, even though it is called a quasiaccident by some theologians who are indicating solely that it is in God but is not the substance.14

In this passage the theme of energy as accident is more developed than in the passage from the Antirrhetici against Akyndinos. At first Palamas, as in the Antirrhetici speaks about accident as changeable, that which appears and disappears (unlike the unchangeable essence). But later in this context Palamas mentions the inseparable accident (within the framework of the philosophical discourse suggested here it means that it is inseparable from the individual, but is separable from the essence, understood as a species, common to individuals). Except for the accident as that which appears and disppears, it is possible, according to Palamas, to speak about an accident as simply changing, and not disappearing; such is knowledge in a rational soul. Palamas states that the category of accident, understood in these senses, is not applicable to God, for he is unchangeable. Divine energy in God is that, which is correlated with something, and in this sense is not the essence; but it is not an accident, due to the unchangeability of God. Although some theologians15 still call energy an accident – to show that there is something different from the essence in God. 14 Gregorius Palamas, Capita 150, 127: Saint Gregory Palamas. The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, ed., trans., study by R. Sinkewicz, Studies and Texts 83 (Toronto, 1988), 230, trans. by R. Sinkewicz, in ibid. 231. 15 Obviously, Palamas here, as well as in the Antirritics means Cyril of Alexandria, as well as Gregory the Theologian, whose statement he discusses in the next chapter of his treatise. These are the words from the 31th Word, On the Holy Spirit by Gregory the Theologian, where he speaks about the Spirit as accident and energy of God: τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ἢ τῶν καθ’ ἑαυτὸ ὑφεστηκότων πάντως ὑποθετέον, ἢ τῶν ἐν ἑτέρῳ θεωρουμένων· ὧν τὸ μὲν οὐσίαν καλοῦσιν οἱ περὶ ταῦτα δεινοί, τὸ δὲ συμβεβηκός. εἰ μὲν οὖν συμβέβηκεν, ἐνέργεια τοῦτο ἂν εἴη θεοῦ. τί γὰρ ἕτερον, ἢ τίνος; τοῦτο γάρ πως μᾶλλον καὶ φεύγει σύνθεσιν (Gregorius Nazianzenus, Oratio 31.6, PG 36, 140A: Gregor von Nazianz. Die fünf theologischen Reden, ed. J. Barbel [Düsseldorf, 1963], 228).

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If we compare this exposition with what is stated about energies as an accident in the Antirrhetici, we will see, that here he speaks about a special kind of accident – an inseparable accident, illustrated with the example of knowledge in intelligent soul. It is exactly this inseparable accident, which, as far as we can see, is compared by Palamas with energy in this passage, although he is aware of all incomparability of these categories. So, in 150 Chapters we can see the elaboration of the thesis about the possibility of a comparison of the Divine energy with the category of accident, first formulated in the Antirrhetici. In the passage from 150 Chapters the context is not only the Thesaurus of Cyril of Alexandria, but also the more scholasticized texts of Christian and ancient classical traditions. The closest parallel to this passage is Chapter 5 ‘On Sound’ from the Philosophical Chapters of John Damascene, where Damascene first distinguishes essence and accident and then makes a distinction within the framework of accident, distinguishing separable and inseparable accidents: Συμβεβηκὸς δέ ἐστι τὸ κατὰ πλειόνων καὶ διαφερόντων τῷ εἴδει ἐν τῷ ποῖόν τί ἐστι κατηγορούμενον καὶ μὴ λαμβανόμενον ἐν τῷ ὁρισμῷ, ἀλλὰ δυνάμενον καὶ ὑπάρχειν καὶ μὴ ὑπάρχειν, ὃ οὔτε παρὸν σῴζει οὔτε ἀπὸν φθείρει. Τοῦτο ἢ χωριστόν ἐστιν ἢ ἀχώριστον· χωριστὸν μέν, ὃ ποτὲ μὲν γίνεται ποτὲ δὲ ἀπογίνεται ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ ὑποστάσει . ἀχώριστον δέ, ὅπερ οὐσίας μὲν οὐκ ἔστι συστατικὸν ὡς μὴ ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ εἴδει θεωρούμενον. Ὅμως ἡνίκα γένηται ἔν τινι ὑποστάσει, ἀδύνατον χωρισθῆναι αὐτῆς, οἷον ἡ σιμότης, ἡ γρυπότης, ἡ γλαυκότης καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα. Τοῦτο τὸ ἀχώριστον συμβεβηκὸς λέγεται καὶ χαρακτηριστικὸν ἰδίωμα· . An accident is that in which something is of a certain sort and which is predicated of several things differing in species but which does not enter into the definition. It can either be or not be, for, when present, it does not assure the existence of the species, and when it is absent, the species is not destroyed. It is either separable or inseparable. That accident is separable which is sometimes present and sometimes absent in the same hypostasis. That, on the other hand, is inseparable which is not constituent of a substance because it is not found in the entire species, but which, nevertheless, when it does become present in some hypostasis, cannot be separated from it. Such, for example, are the having of a snub nose, being hooknosed, being grayhaired, and the like. This inseparable accident is called a characteristic peculiarity. 16

The inseparable accident here is connected by Damascene to the concept of a characteristic peculiarity of an hypostasis. As this is an inseparable accident the notion of change is not used here, as is also the case in Palamas. In the preceding chapter of the Philosophical Chapters, ‘On being, essence and accident’, Damascene speaks about the accident in the context of the subject of change. 16 Joannes Damascenus, Dialectica 5: Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, T. I, ed. B. Kotter, Patristische Texte und Studien 7 (Berlin, 1969), 57-9, trans. G.N. Warwick. In his turn, John Damascene here is following Porphyry, see Isagoge, in Porphyrii isagoge et in Aristotelis categorias commentarium, ed. A. Busse, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca IV I (Berlin, 1887), 12.24-6.

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As an example of relations between accident and essence he speaks about cognition and soul – as we find it in Palamas (with the distinction that Palamas, speaking about knowledge, contained in the soul, uses the word γνῶσις, while Damascene uses ἐπιστήμη or φρόνησις): Οὐσία μὲν οὖν ἐστι τὸ κυριώτερον ὡς ἐν ἑαυτῷ καὶ μὴ ἐν ἑτέρῳ ἔχον τὴν ὕπαρξιν, συμβεβηκὸς δὲ τὸ μὴ δυνάμενον ἐν ἑαυτῷ εἶναι ἐν δὲ τῇ οὐσίᾳ θεωρούμενον. Ἡ μὲν γὰρ οὐσία τὸ ὑποκείμενόν ἐστιν ὥσπερ ὕλη, συμβεβηκὸς δὲ ἡ ἐν τῇ οὐσίᾳ ὡς ἐν ὑποκεμένῳ θεωρουμένη, οἷον χαλκὸς καὶ κηρὸς οὐσία σχῆμα δὲ καὶ μορφὴ καὶ χρῶμα συμβεβηκός, καὶ σῶμα μὲν οὐσία χρῶμα δὲ συμβεβηκός, καὶ ψυχὴ μὲν οὐσία ἐπιστήμη δὲ συμβεβηκός. Τὸ μὲν οὖν σῶμα οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν τῷ χρώματι ἀλλὰ τὸ χρῶμα ἐν τῷ σώματι, οὐδὲ ἡ ψυχὴ ἐν τῇ ἐπιστήμῃ ἀλλ’ ἡ ἐπιστήμη ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, οὐδὲ ὁ χαλκὸς ἢ ὁ κηρὸς ἐν τῷ σχήματι ἀλλὰ τὸ σχῆμα ἔν τε τῷ κηρῷ καὶ τῷ χαλκῷ. Καὶ τὸ μὲν χρῶμα καὶ ἡ ἐπιστήμη καὶ τὸ σχῆμα ἀλλοιοῦνται, τὸ δὲ σῶμα καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ καὶ ὁ κηρὸς τὰ αὐτὰ μένουσιν οὐκ ἀλλοιουμένης τῆς οὐσίας. Essence is something most important, for it has existence in itself, and not in the other. And accident is that, which cannot exist in itself, and is seen in the essence. Essence is the subject, as substance. Accident is what is seen in the essence as in subject. For instance, copper and wax are essences, and figure, form, colour are accidents; body is essence and its colour is accident, soul is essence and knowledge is accident. Not the body is in the colour, but the colour in the body, not the soul in the knowledge, but the knowledge in the soul, not copper and wax in the figure, but the figure in copper and wax. Colour, knowledge and figure change, while the body, the soul and wax remain the same, for the essences do not change.17

Reinhard Flogaus,18 proving that Gregory Palamas, while writing 150 Chapters was reading and using Augustine’s treatise On the Trinity, translated by that time into Greek from Latin by Maximus Planudes,19 – states, that the distinction of various kinds of accident by Palamas in the passage from 150 Chapters quoted above testifies to his borrowing from On the Trinity (5.4.5-6), where Augustine distinguishes the inseparable and separable accidents and discusses the possibility of application of the notion of accident to God: Συμβεβηκὸς δὲ οὐκ εἴωθε λέγεσθαι, εἰ μὴ ὅπερ σὺν ἀλλοιώσει τινὶ τοῦ πράγματος ᾧ συμβέβηκεν ἀπογίνεσθαι δύναται. Καὶ γὰρ καὶ εἰ λέγονταί τινα συμβεβηκότα 17

Joannes Damascenus, Dialectica 4: Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, I 63. See Reinhard Flogaus, ‘Palamas and Barlaam Revisited: A Reassessment of East and West in the Hesychast Controversy of 14th-Cent. Byzantium’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 42 (1998), 17-9. 19 The same thesis is discussed in the following works: Reinhard Flogaus, ‘Der heimliche Blick nach Westen: Zur Rezeption von Augustin De trinitate durch Gregorios Palamas’, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 46 (1996), 275-97; Γιάννης Δημητρακόπουλος, Αὐγουστῖνος καὶ Γρηγόριος Παλαμᾶς. Τὰ προβλήματα τῶν ᾿Αριστοτελικῶν κατηγοριῶν καὶ τῆς Τριαδικῆς ψυχοθεολογίας (᾿Αθήνα 1997); Josef Lössl, ‘Augustine’s On the Trinity in Gregory Palamas’ One Hundred and Fifty Chapters’, Augustinian Studies 30 (1999), 61-82; see Dirk Krausmüller, ‘Banishing Reason from the Divine Image: Gregory Palamas’ 150 Chapters’, Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 13 (2019), 60-8. 18

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ἀχώριστα . Εἰ δὲ κἀκεῖνο δοκεῖ συμβεβηκὸς λέγεσθαι ὅπερ, εἰ καὶ μὴ ἀπογίνεται, ὅμως μειοῦται ἢ αὔξεται, ὡς ἔστιν ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς ζωή ἐπεὶ μᾶλλον ζῇ φρόνιμος οὖσα καὶ μεῖον ἄφρων γινομένη ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν τοιοῦτον ἐν τῷ Θεῷ γίνεται, ὅτι δὴ παντάπασιν ἀμετάβλητος μένει. Δι’ ἣν αἰτίαν οὐδὲν ἐν αὐτῷ κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς λέγεται (οὐδὲν γὰρ αὐτῷ συμβέβηκεν), οὐ μέντοι πᾶν ὃ λέγεται λοιπόν ἐστι κατ’ οὐσίαν λέγεσθαι. ὅτι μὴ κατ’ οὐσίαν ταῦτα λέγεται ἀλλὰ κατ’ ἀναφοράν, ὃ καίπερ ἀναφορικὸν ὂν οὐκ ἔστι συμβεβηκός . Usually [some property] is not called accident, if it is not that, which can disappear with some change of the object, to which it is inherent. Even if some accidents are called inseparable . But if you want to call accident that, which does not disappear, but becomes less or more, like, for example, the life of soul … for it is more alive, when prudent, and less alive when it becomes reckless . But in God there is nothing of this kind, for He remains absolutely unchangeable. Due to this reason nothing in Him is called according to accident (for there is nothing accidental in Him); however from this it does not follow, that everything which is said about Him is said as applied to the essence. For [something] is said in relation to something: for it is said not as applied to the essence, but relatively. Even if relative, it is not accident 20.

In fact in the mentioned passage Palamas, unlike Augustine, does not distinguish between different kinds of accidents (as Flogaus states), but speaks only about one kind of an accident – that which is inseparable. Nevertheless, this passage from Augustine is indeed quite close to the passage from 150 Chapters quoted above, and Palamas’ line of reasoning in general follows that of Augustine. Therefore we can agree with Flogaus regarding Augustine’s influence on the 127th chapter of Palamas’ 150 Chapters, where the question of the possibility of calling Divine energies an accident is discussed. Having in mind this passage from Augustine, we can state that when Palamas mentions the accident in the above quoted 127th chapter of 150 Chapters as something ‘which can become more or less’, like knowledge in an intelligent soul, he follows Augustine and means the inseparable accident mentioned before. But it seems that according to Damascene knowledge in the soul is a separable accident.21 In my opinion, there remains a possibility of there being a trace of John Damascene in relation to the teaching about accident in this passage by Palamas. It is manifest in the fact, that both Palamas and Damascene, illustrating the changeable accident in its relation to the category of essence, quote the example of knowledge (accident) in human soul (essence), while in the quote from Augustine it is not knowledge, but life (of soul). We can summarize the results of our research as follows. In the course of his polemics against opponents Gregory Palamas faced the question of how to 20 Αυγουστίνου περί Τριάδος. Βιβλία πεντεκαίδεκα άπερ εκ της Λατίνων διαλέκτου εις την Ελλάδα μετήνεγκε Μάξιμος ο Πλανούδης, επιμ. Μ. Παπαθωμόπουλος, Ι. Τσάβαρη, G. Rigotti (Athens, 1995), 349, 351. 21 Joannes Damascenus, Dialectica, brev. α’: Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, I 59.

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combine two theological theses within the framework of his theological system, presuming the distinction between essence and Divine uncreated energies in God. One is the thesis, that that which belongs to the sphere of Divine (including the Divine energies) must be unchangeable, the other is the thesis, that God acts/energizes, conforming with time in relation to the created world, in particular while creating the world. Faced with the polemics of their opponents, Gregory Palamas and the Palamites tried to clarify the status of Divine energies – the reality of which they maintained – in the philosophical field, namely in the language of the Aristotelian philosophy, which served as a recognized field of inter-cultural communication at that time. Against this background Palamites formulate the polemical reasonings about the possibility of naming the uncreated Divine energies accident, where the notion of accident has a meaning that goes back to the Peripatetic tradition, but is refracted – in the connection with the concept of energy – in the works of such Christian authors as Gregory the Theologian and Cyril of Alexandria. According to the Palamites, there is a similarity between the categories of energy and accident – for both energy and accident refer to something existing not in itself, but in another. In this relation both categories are opposed to the category of essence as referring to that which exists in itself and through itself. However the category of accident gravitates towards the connotations of appearing, disappearing and changeable in relation to essence. This does not allow Gregory Palamas to identify accident with energy, which, according to the basic intuition of Palamites, is the natural manifestation of essence and coexists with essence – even if accident can also have the meaning of coexisting with essence, when it is an inseparable accident. Palamas touches upon this subject in two works – Antirrhetici against Akyndinos and 150 Chapters, written with a timespan of 5 or 6 years. As a result we observe in Gregory Palamas a movement towards the clarification of the notion of accident in the discussion of the possibility of its application to the uncreated energies: it should be the inseparable accident. But even in this sense the notion of accident, according to Palamas, cannot be applied to God/Divine energies, although he himself points out, that in the Church tradition that notion has been applied to God. For Palamas the resolution of this tension consists in the fact that the notion of accident was used in the tradition of the Church in an improper sense. By contrast, the position of his friend and ally David Dishypatos (following Cyril of Alexandria in this respect) is more subtle in this respect: he speaks about the possibility of applying the category of accident to the Divine energies without special reservations, but necessarily having in mind the fundamental limitation of all human language statements about God by the perspective of human nature. Here we are confronted with the neuralgic points of the Palamite doctrine. Namely, with the tension between the unchangeability of God, declared within the framework of the Palamite doctrine, which also means the unchangeability

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of His energies, on the one hand, and the understanding of energies of God as correlating with that which is not God, with the created beings, existing inside the temporal order, on the other. In my opinion Palamas tries to solve this contradiction on the basis of the idea of potencies in God. But this is the subject of my next article.

Historia brevis to Anne of Savoy: An Attempt to Rediscovering the Role of David Dishypatos on the Hesychast’s Controversy Alessia BROMBIN, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Italy

ABSTRACT The rise of Hesychasm’s studies, starting from 1920s by Dumitru Stăniloae and Basil Krivocheine, ushered a re-discovery of Gregory Palamas’s thinking with Vladimir Lossky in the 1950s and the help from other Orthodox theologians, primarily John Meyendorff. Current interest in the Hesychast’s controversy is indicated by the number of studies which have been published in the last fifty years, however there is a short important document, that can be credited to the circle of secondary literature, though it was never fully considered. The author was a monk, Dishypato. Dishypato belonged to the Palaeologan Dynasty and worked in close contact with Gregory Palamas. In the 1347, Empress Anne of Savoy requested David to write an account of the second period of the controversy (1341-51) between Palamas and Barlaam of Calabria. The text, the so called Historia brevis, was remarkable for the fact that it summarized in a clear few words the inconsistency of Barlaam’s and Akindynos’ doctrine, giving a considerable endorsement for palamite’s theology. Specifically, this issue will try to overhaul two editions of Τοῦ τιμιωτάτου καὶ σοφωτάτου μοναχοῦ κυροῦ Δαυὶδ ἱστορία διὰ βραχέων ὅπως τὴν ἀρχὴν συνέστη ἡ κατὰ τὸν Βαρλαὰμ καὶ Ἀκίνδυνον πονηρὰ αἵρεσις edited by Uspenskij in 1892 and the Candal’s version (1949). This project considers the variegated compound of the epistle within its own specific contexts to find, as much as possible, an homogenous text. This draft of the text will represent the effort to deepen our understanding of the last dispute’s phase.

The events regarding the hesychast controversy (1337-1351) are traditionally divided into two temporal phases coinciding with the theme of the dispute. The first focused on the method of hesychast prayer, while the second challenged the effects of this practice: the divinization of man and the vision of light. The first phase began in 1337 and was over in the summer of 1341, the next one was inaugurated in the same year, the day after the two synods of Constantinople, and ended in 1351. The report of the monk David Dishypatos, disciple of Gregory Palamas, summarized the terms of the querelle in progress, allowing the transit between this two moments.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 317-327. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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1. David Dishypatos and the contest We learn from the writings that David Dishypatos was born in Thessalonica1 and that he was an hesychast. He distinguished himself both as a theologian and as a polemicist, more likely he belonged to the clan of the ‘Dishypatoi’ originating in Constantinople and directly related to the imperial court.2 He was given a primary role in the controversy: his kinship and ancestry to the court and to the senior officers of the Empire contributed decisively to the fortunes of the hesychast party. We will not be far from the truth if we thought that David Dishypatos was somewhat the deus ex machina of the complicated story, especially since this had been set on a political as well as a doctrinal basis. He wrote an epistle to Anne of Savoy in favour of the case. […] Around 1354 Gregory Palamas addressed to him a letter after returning to Thessalonica from captivity.3

Dishypatos entered in the school of Gregory Palamas on Mount Athos.4 The opponent of Palamas, Barlaam of Seminara (the Calabro) addressed two epistles to him (VI; VIII)5, while in his Epistle V (1336) he openly stated that he had received from Dishypatos some notions on ‘hesychasm’. In the spring of 1341 he passed under the spiritual direction of Gregory Sinaite in Paroria.6 At the same time, he received a letter from Gregory Akindynos, another opponent of the hesychast doctrines, who invited him to reach Constantinople as a pacière between Palamas and Barlaam, in order to prevent lacerations within the Empire and avoid further ecclesiological splits. Concurrently with the death of Gregory Sinaite (1347),7 no news on Dishypatos has been found. The death of the Sinaite caused the rapid decline of the lavra in Bulgaria, therefore Dishypatos, together with other monks, probably returned to Mount Athos (1455).

1 A.M.T., ‘Dishypatos, David’, ODB, 638; V. Laurent, ‘Dishypatos, David’, DHGE, t. XIV, 115-6; B. Kotter, ‘Dishypatos, David’, in LThK, III, 178; S. Pétridés, ‘Dishypatos, David’, DTC, vol. XIV, 1416. 2 C. Ducange, Familiae Augustae Byzantine, XLII, Ed. Venise, 207. 3 Barlaam of Seminara, Epistole greche: i primordi episodici e dottrinari delle lotte esicaste, studio introduttivo e testi a cura di G. Schirò (Palermo, 1954), 10. See A. Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica alla polemica esicastica (Roma, 2005), 194-404. 4 Philotheos Kokkonos, Encomium, PG 151, 563. 5 Following the cod. Marc. gr. 332 (Epistle VI; VIII, Τῷ Δισυπάτῳ, in Epistole greche, ed. Schirò (1954), 315-8; 329-30). See J. Gouillard, Autour du Palamisme [Notes sur quelques ouvrages récents], ÉO 37 (1938), 426-7. 6 A. Rigo, ‘La vita e le opere di Gregorio Sinaita’, Cristianesimo nella storia 10 (1989), 579608, 593-97. 7 G. Podskalsky, ‘Gregorios Sinaite’, TRE, vol. XIV, 206.

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2. Editorial, occasionality and literary genre The text of David Dishypatos was written in the form of an epistle-essay; it was given a title that summed up the contents: Brief history of the wise and reverend monk David on the outbrake of the unfortunated heresy according to Barlaam and Akindynos (Τοῦ τιμιωτάτου καὶ σοφωτάτου μοναχοῦ κυροῦ Δαυὶδ ἱστορία διὰ βραχέων ὅπως τὴν ἀρχὴν συνέστη ἡ κατὰ τὸν Βαρλαὰμ καὶ Ἀκίνδυνον πονηρὰ αἵρεσις). The current translation by Manuel Candal (1943) summarizes the title as Brief History.8 The purpose of the writing is reported in the debut: ‘the illustration of the errors of Barlaam and Akindynos’. The manuscript is dated between 1345 and 1346. The Byzantine Empress Anna of Savoy felt the urge to clearly understand the terms of the dispute by entrusting the task of summarizing to the monk David Disypatos. Due to the transcription of the manuscripts from uneven sources there are two different printed editions. The first9 composed by the Russian Archimandrite Porfirio Uspensky,10 who in 1892 collected several documents on the Athonite monastic foundations to draw up a historical profile. The other edited by Candal in two periodicals in 1943 and reprinted in 1949.11 Uspensky referred to a manuscript from the library of the monastery of the Meteors in Thessaly discovered in 1859. The second, Manuel Candal, a Jesuit and professor at the Pontifical Oriental Institute,12 whose edition was based essentially on the cod. Monac. g. 508. He carefully examined all the manuscripts and grouped them into two distinct series called: “type A” (cod. Monac. Gr. 508, cod. Matrit. Gr. 77, cod. Mosq. Gr. 277, cod. Oxon Misc. 120g, cod. Vindob. Theolo. 210g) and of “type B” (that of the cod. of the Uspensky Meteors and of the Monastic cod. 505). The first was used by Candal while the second by Uspensky. 8 See M. Candal, ‘Origen ideológico del Palamismo en un documento de David Disípato’, OCP 15 (1949), 90-1. The problem of title emerged above all by comparing the different manuscripts examined by Candal. In the Lambros Catalog (I352b) in section 14 is reported ‘conversation of the monk Matthew with Barlaam’, this does not seem to have anything in common with the composite text that sees the monk David as an author. Reason for which it did not include, in its version, a conspicuous group of manuscripts because they were considered unrelated (see M. Candal, ‘Origen ideológico’ [1949], 90-1) also Bayer reports Kurz Historie, see H.V. Beyer, ‘David Dishypatos als Theologe und Vorkämpfer für die Sache des Hesychasmus (ca.1337-ca.1350)’, Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik 24 (1975), 107-28. 9 P. Uspenskij, Vostok Khristianskij, Athon, vol. III, SPb (1982), 821-8. 10 Porfirio Uspensky (Russia - 1804-1885) was a theologian, orientalist, archaeologist and Byzantinist. In 1834 he became the Archimandrite of Odessa, where he became interested in Eastern Christianity. 11 M. Candal, ‘Origen ideológico’ (1949), 85-125. 12 Emmanuel Candal (1897-1967) signed himself qualifying as ‘Prof. de Teología comparada en el Pontif. Instituto Oriental de Roma’ (Carte Mercati 116, f. 105r). The Jesuit priest became a priest in 1926, worked as a lecturer in Comillas in Spanish Cantabria and trained at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome.

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Professor Robert Browning13 in 1957 edited for Byzantion the publication of another paper by Dishypatos, an iambic carme, which clarified the Palamite doctrine and added some considerations on the present text.14 He pointed out that both previous editions were uneven and incomplete. He proposed to include a section of the cod. Oxon. Misc. Gr. 120 foll. 197-205v rejected by Candal15 and reported the four passages in the epilogue. The first of these sections represents a patristic florilegium with the specific intention of supporting the position of Palamas, while the other three illuminate the text. In the first section of the paper, the monk presents the positions taken by Barlaam and Akindynos against Palamas, strictly referring to the controversy. Lines 5-62 show the disagreement between Barlaam and Palamas more clearly than their iambic poem. The text can be divided into six basic sections following the numbering supplied by Candal: a) a list of the Barlamite doctrines against the divine light, as well as the positions of Palamas (5-62); b) an introduction of the explanatory metaphor of the ‘solar disk’ placed in analogy to concepts of divine ‘essence’ and ‘energy’ (63-124); c) an analogy of ‘water source’ and ‘fire’ to illustrate the process of participation in the divine energies (125-34); d) an attribution to Akindynos of the same heresy of Barlaam (135-42); e) an exposition of Akindynos’s own heresy (143-53); f) a refutations and an epilogue (154-5). Dishypatos informed the Empress of the existence of other pamphlets on the same subject and a related reply of Palamas.16 Concerning the proper heresy of Akindynos, outlined in parallel to that of Barlaam, he underlines that the latter considered only the essence of God uncreated and created all his energies: like the vision of the taborical light that the Hesychasts perceived. Akindynos also considered all operations uncreated, but nature was equal to the divine essence, thus trespassing into pantheism. The text describes the ways as the categories of οὐσία and ἐνέργεια coexist in God without affecting its simplicity. But the author seems to partially deny his intent, if his goal was only to talk about the debut of the Hesychast dispute. The author, however, does not allude at all to the Palamite question, which had marked the controversy up to that point, namely the improper use of the 13 Robert Browning (1914-1997) was a Scottish Byzantinist. Professor at University College London (1947-55), being a lecturer at the same university (1955-65), as well as professor of classical and ancient history at Birkbeck College in London (1965-81). 14 R. Browning, ‘David Dishypatos’ poem on Akindinos’, Byz 25-27 (1955-7), 713-45. 15 See M. Candal, ‘Origen ideológico’ (1949), 92. 16 See Sections 116,15-7; 118,38; 138-42; 118-49; 118-57.

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syllogism in the demonstrations. Furthermore, he doesn’t mention the episode of the clash between Barlaam and the hesychast Ignatius.17 The theme is bound only to a theological dispute over the light and the doctrine of the distinction between essence and energies in God.18 3. Epilogue The Transfiguration on Mount Tabor and the vision of the divine light according to the Hesychast occurs by grace and comes from the operations that God unilaterally decided to give to men: most of the Fathers who spoke of the Transfiguration affirm the uncreated, divine nature of light that appeared to the apostles. […] Palamas develops this teaching in relation to the problem of the mystical experience; the light that the apostles saw on Mount Tabor is God’s own by nature, eternal, infinite, existing outside time and space, as it appeared in the Old Testament theophanies: the glory of God.19

Dishypatos’s text confirms Palamas’ aversion to the naturalism of Akindynos and Barlaam; for they rejected every direct action of the Spirit in the field of gnosis and divine communion. With the deifying grace man is able to access full communion with God, by virtue of the Spirit infused in baptism. Distinguishing between the unknowable divine essence and its operations, Palamas tried to tune the transcendence of God and his knowledge, at the same time this differentiation did not compromise the uniqueness and simplicity of God. To avoid misunderstandings, he specified that operations should not be consider essences different from the one and simple divine nature, but real manifestations of God. The concept was expressed through the analogy of the ray and the sun.20 The light was understood as an emanation of the one divine light. The operations must not be thought of as diminishing God, these do not self-pose by detaching themselves from God, but they are enhypostatic, that is, coexisting and dependent on the divine ὑπόστασις, inseparably united with the Trinity. The grace of deification is a unicum with the ὑπόστασις. 17 The recipient of the Epistles IV-V key character of the episode then treated in the Epistles VI-VIII. We have only a few elements, Barlaam addresses them with friendship (Ep. VIII,3,22; VI,4.27), informs us that he had the opportunity to discuss topics concerning Hesychasm (Ep. V,15,110/12; see A. Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica [2005], 105). 18 See A. Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica (2005), 109. 19 V. Lossky, Teologia mistica della Chiesa d’Oriente (Essai sur la théologie mystique de l’Église d’Orient, 1944), (Bologna, 1985), 216. 20 All the images taken from the created world through which Palamas attempts to capture the character of this ineffable distinction between what God is in his essence and what he is in his energies, are insufficient. Palamas compares the essence to the solar disk and the energies to the rays. He also compares God to human intelligence whose learning faculties diversify from one object to another, while in its essence the intellect does not pass to the other substances, see V. Lossky, A immagine e somiglianza di Dio (In the Image and Likeness of God, 1974) (Bologna, 1999), 94.

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The epistle of Dishypatos represents, in the final analysis, the attempt to recognize the primacy of experience in the spiritual theology of Palamas and on this ground plays its role as a privileged witness of the Eastern tradition. For Western spirituality, influenced by the intellectualism of its own theology, we come to know God through analogy, but the real experience of God remains within the bounds of suspicion. In Eastern spirituality it is associated with the seemingly antinomic idea that God is unknowable and at the same time can be experienced. Palamas tried to dissolve the reticence about a transcendent God, who communicates without ceasing to be himself, through his operations. The uncreated supernatural consents to God to involve man fully in his divinity while safeguarding his incommunicability.21

Translation Brief history of the wise and reverend monk David on the outbrake of the unfortunated heresy according to Barlaam and Akindynos [5] Barlaam acknowledged, follower to the Hellenic doctrine, that there was no other divine light except the knowledge learned from the Greek teaching’s flimsy philosophy. He even didn’t believe that the light was divine, and enlightenment was eternally shared and visible only to those who purified the heart through the commandments of God. [10] Having heard among the monks of the divine enlightenment and theophanies and many other things and especially of the enlightenment on Mount Tabor, according to that divine transfiguration of the Lord, hearing that they called that light eternal and divine, that ‘brigthness of his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became shining as light’22 [15] – as reported in the Gospel –, he wanted to turn these positions around, he refuted the monks, wrote speeches against this divine light, in order to prove that was material and perishable. He claimed that this light had not always existed, but it was created, so that the ignorant disciples would see and marvel, and then dissolved, become extinct and disappear [20] in nothingness. Monks, once come to know of these speeches, asked Palamas to talk23 to Barlaam and advise him, in order to quit speaking and writing, and curse against the divine light, because he offended the saints who are singing to the hymns to the divine light. In fact, Barlaam 21

See P. Miquel, ‘Grégoire Palamas docteur de l’Expérience’, Irénikon 37 (1964), 237. Matt. 17:2, Nestle-Aland 1993XXVIII and parallels in Mk. 9:2-8; Lk. 9:28-36. 23 See Philotheos Kokkonos, Βίος Γρηγορίου Παλαμά (Life of Gregory Palamas) (Thessalonica, 1984), 168-70. 22

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[25] wrote in his speeches that anyone who glorifies the light, differently what he writes, he is heretic, ungodly and an atheist. Palamas saw him and spoke to him more then once; he begged him, rebuked him and refuted him verbally, but he could not convince [30] him in any way, but he persevered in this blasphemy and outrage the saints. Therefore, Palamas was forced to refute in writing, collecting what the saints had written about the divine light of the transfiguration, and he showed by their own words, that it was divine and inaccessible, timeless, uncreated and eternal, enlightenment and grace, [35] and a magnificence of god, and divinity, just like the saints would classified it; the great Gregory the Theologian us well says «a light, the divinity that manifested itself on the mountain to the disciples»,24 Barlaam, having heard these things, replied that if this was really the case then that light was the essence of God. again he says25 ‘Christ will come again with his body, this is my thought, but this was seen only by the disciples on the mountain, or appeared, transcending the divine flesh’26 the same again ‘they went up the mountain in order that the flesh would shine and show the divinity, who ascended together? Peter, James and John’,27 and again Basil the great ‘And the disciples knew the beauty of him, to whom he explained the parables in private (Mk. 4:10-2). Then Peter and the sons of thunder (Mk. 3:17) on the mountain saw the beauty of Him, who exceeded the splendor of the sun in splendor (Matt. 17:2) and were deemed worthy to perceive with eyes the anticipation of his glorious parousia (2Pet. 1:16-7)’.28 And John Damascene, ‘the Law’s shadow vanished and the truth of Christ was clearly manifested. Thus Moses declared on Tabor, contemplating your divinity’.29 Metaphraste from his commentary on the Gospel of John: ‘ascending the mountain with Jesus, and considered 24 Εὶς τὸ [ἅγιον] βάπτισμα φῶς ή παραδειχθεῖσα θεότης ἐπὶ τοῦ ὄρους τοῖς μαθηταῖς, μικροῦ στερροτέρα δὲ ὄψεως (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration XL,6). 25 See Cod. Oxon. Misc. gr. 120, foll. 197-204v. 26 Gregory of Nazianzus, First letter to the priest Cledonius (Letter CI), PG 37, 181B: (with some variations from the original) Ἀλλ’ ἥξει μὲν μετὰ τοῦ σώματος, ὡς ἐμὸς λόγος, τοιοῦτος δὲ οἷος ὤφθη τοῖς μαθηταῖς ἐν τῷ ὄρει, ἢ παρεδείχθη, ὑπερνικώσης τὸ σαρκίον τῆς θεότητος. Gregory Palamas interpreted the passage in question referring to the ‘taborical light’ equating it to ‘life’, this is the fate of deified men, like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration (Gregory Palamas, Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ. Συγγράμματα, v. I [Thessalonica, 1962-1992], 624.18-24, footnote 33; Triads III,1,10). 27 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration XXXII, 18, PG 36, 193CD. See Grégoire de Nazianze, Discours 32-37, SC 318. Parallels in Carm. I,2,21 and Epist. 249,16. 28 Basil the great, Homilies on Psalms 44,5, PG 29,400C-D (79); Omelie sui Salmi e altre omelie esegetiche, a cura di G. Mazzanti and S. Giani, Patrologia: Beiträge zum Studium der Kirchenväter (Frankfurt am Main, 2017), 355-6. 29 Unidentified quote. The text in which Damascene reports his commentary on the Transfiguration is the Homily on the Transfiguration of the Lord, PG 96, 546B-548B.

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worthy of a vision beyond the sayable and marvelous, he saw the divinity of the revealed word’.30 [40] And therefore make the essence of a participable and visible God, assimilating this to the blasphemy, impiety and tenet of the Messalians. Palamas replied to these things, that this light called by the saints is divine, uncreated and divinity; instead, it is not the essence of God, but energy, grace and glory, enlightenment sent to the saints [45] by the essence of God. In fact, all the saints and men and angels see the eternal glory of God, they certainly receive an eternal grace and a gift. But no one, neither man nor angel has seen or can see the essence of God. Having heard these things, Barlaam replied that: since you say [50] that ‘the essence of God is unparticipated and invisible’, but its energy and grace are participable and turned towards the saints, so say that there are two gods, one superior and one inferior; essence is superior, invisible and unparticipated, the energy and grace that the saints receive from God is inferior. And thus, he conceived [55] the crime of duotheism,31 and filled up the ears of many with this. Palamas wrote in reply that the essence of God is unparticipable and invisible to every creature and to the angels themselves, while the energy and its deifying grace [are] comunicabile [60] and the angels and saints also participate in it. Participated32 by these, [however] it is inseparable and indivisible from the divine essence. In fact, as in the sun its disc is sensitive and totally intangible in itself, it cannot be caught by the eyes (if in fact someone approaches it, it risks losing [65] he same visual power because of the light, and being burned completely), but his rays reach us and illuminate everything in the world; we call sun both the disk and its rays33 and not for this reason they are two suns, but only one, even if there is an innumerable quantity [70] of rays; so also concerning God, which is an intelligible sun. And if we say that its essence is unparticipated and invisible, we say its energy and grace that all saints receive, but only one is God who has the essence and energy. And as if someone said that there are many suns because of the many rays of 30 Simeon Metaphraste, Commentarius in divum apostolum Joannem evangelistam ac theologum, PG 116, 685D. 31 The term is translated as ‘double deity’; Lampe reports the use in Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration XXVI, 18 and XXXI, 13 defining it as ‘believing in two Gods’ (διθεῖα, PGL, 367). 32 Cod. Oxon. Misc. gr. 120, foll. 197-204v. The term divine ‘participation’, referring to human beings, is part of the patristic tradition, which alludes to deify (θεοποιέω). Its positive meaning consisted in receiving the nature of God as a gift. Gregory of Nazianzus was granted the diffusion of the verb deify, placing more emphasis on the ontological nuances of being made in the image and divine likeness. Common is the use in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximum the Confessor. 33 The analogy was used by Palamas in the Capita physica 92; 94 (see PG 150, 1185D; 1188CD).

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[75] the sun, he would not say the truth at all, so even if someone said that there are many gods because of the energies and graces of God, this would likewise be unacceptable. So then, we say (just as the holy church of God teaches) that the Father has the Son, also to have the Holy Spirit and we call the Father God, [80] and God the Holy Spirit, and we do not say that they are three gods, but that the three are one God; so, if we say the same that the essence of God has a nature of energy and grace the essence is also called divine, furthermore it is called both the deifying energy and grace itself, but the divine essence is one with energy, being inseparable [85] and indivisible from it. Indeed, the energy does not separate itself from essence, as neither does the Son from the Father or the Holy Spirit; or even [one can] say from the tangible examples, like the ray from the sun or the heat from the fire. The Son and the Holy Spirit which we glorify, are of the same substance as the Father and through communion they are one and nevertheless a divinity, corresponding to God; in fact, of divine and shining energy, nor can it be said to be of the same divine substance, nor is it separated from substance, but the substance is eternally contemplated, inseparably and substantially, in fact, this [is] common and thus energy [is] common to the hypostatic Trinity.34 And in this way, we say that the essence of the sun (or rather its disk) [90] is superiorly endless, since it can [be] imparted to the rays and to the brightness sent into our eyes; that is the source, the beginning, the root and the conductor of brightness, so as the saints teach, we say also the divine essence, as inseparable and invisible, it is superior to the brightness, [95] the energies and charisma sent by her, which the Holy Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, offers and gives to the saints; in fact, all the divine energies are common gifts of the three venerable hypostases. And in this way the Lord says in the Gospels that ‘my Father is greater than me’,35 and he says it according [100] to humanity, but he says more, according to his origin, as the saints teach, in fact the Father is the origin of the Son, not the Son of the Father; so, theologians also affirm about the divine essence and the divine gifts. The divine essence is above the energies and gifts that it distributes, as its origin and source; in fact, that is the cause, and [105] those from these; therefore, that produces and distributes these things, not them [from] that. This then, as we have stated, [is that] that Barlaam and Akindynos think, or rather: they are all created, both the light created in the 34 Palamas in his Homilia in Transfigurationem Domini, XXXIV, PG 15, 424-49, pronounced between 1352-3 (or 1356-7), quotes Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 40,5, PG 36, 364B), in order to attest to the common nature of the Son with the Father and the Holy Spirit. 35 Jn. 14:28b.

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splendor of Tabor in the divine transfiguration, and all the divine energies and the illuminations [110] the spirit’s gifts; and say uncreated only the divine essence. But this is impossible. In fact, as if someone said that the sun’s rays are dark, necessarily these also darken the disk of the sun that sends them; in fact, such [is] the disk and also [are] the rays; that [115] brightness, [is] bright, therefore if that darkens, [it is] dark; so also think of the divine essence and divine energies. Whoever says that the energies are like that, the essence also does it: if the energies [are] uncreated, even the essence [is] uncreated, if created, the essence [is] also created; in fact, the energies of essence are inseparable. [120] And so, with regard to the sun, if someone said that they are dark – I say the rays – so the essence and the disk of the sun are also bright, he would not speak correctly, in fact, at the disk there are also rays; so also for God, those who say that they are created – I say energies – the essence is uncreated, does not know what he says. In fact, these are the energies, [125] and this is the essence that makes them gush forth: if uncreated, [it is] uncreated, if created, [it is] created. So also [is it] of the source: such is that, such is also the water that flows from it; if sweet, [it is] sweet, if bitter, [it is] bitter. The same also for the fire, if someone said [130] that the fire is hot, but the energy sent by him [is] physically cold, while it is indeed clear that a warm essence is not able to emanate a cold energy, nor yet a cold essence [can emanate] a warm energy, in fact, the water does not heat nor the fire cools, but each has the energy related and corresponding to the essence, so it is for God the same thing and the energy [135] is suitable to the essence: the essence being uncreated, so makes the energy uncreate; those who say that energy is created, necessarily makes the essence created. So, as I said, Barlaam and Akindynos also reason. Because of this, someone will not accept completely that Akindynos has any difference with [140] the doctrines of Barlaam; but since he was condemned, Barlaam brought a bad reputation, for this reason Akindynos denies through reasoning that he has the same opinion, fearing to be killed by the crowd, thus taking revenge. For this reason, he often hurls anathema at him in this heretical way, though he, on this subject, corresponds to [145] this. He has such awareness of this guilt, so he really wants to hide. And Akindynos fell into another impiety worse than Barlaam’s. In fact, he also thinks like that, that deifying grace is created; but he was reprimanded by the saints and at the same time but if someone asks him: clearly, tell me about what you think? Desiring to hide, immediately and escaping [from the control] of the saints, fearing to suffer the same slander and sentence of Barlaam, deprive them – saying: ‘now this is not [attributable] to the Verb, but to the double deity’, hiding from it all this false belief. If he really was able, in this way, to escape and flee, then he persisted to

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lying and claiming [his positions] remaining firm in his own wickedness. You tell me, revealing openly and truly what you think, now, is nothing but the thought of another, but another deceitful [it] has served, since it affirms: ‘as the scriptures and saints say well’, this was not a reply but a clear and manifest deception; in fact this was a defense in his favor, when they forced the saints to offer an apologia through those own doctrines [of the saints], with which he satisfied all those heretics. Instead, they did not find this on anyone [of the saints], but they clearly and manifestly affirmed those own doctrines. If Akindynos himself, having concealed the absurdity, was thus able to cheat and elude the answer, he remained in the same false belief. If in fact [he] forces himself – he replies – saying – ‘I, as you see’, since is: ‘that is what the scriptures say about the light of the transfiguration and of the simple divine grace, created and uncreated’; he truly believed [this], he really believed [this], (alas) the miserable obliged creature would certainly force himself to say, but fearing he did not hear the Christians [who wanted] to stone him at once, so he knew [the outcome of] this death sentence, before Barlaam, and then his own, he affirmed with certainty that uncreated grace and that light seen by the apostles, as agreed [with Barlaam] and repeatedly [put] in writing and in verbal form. In fact, [God] sent that one uncreated [substance]. Messalians, anciently they were expelled and excommunicated from the church of God, [these meant] not only these creatures rational and participable, but also irrational and inanimate, this is not only but also beyond the doctrines of the Messalians, and [they are] all atheists and impious,36 but he was rebuked by the saints and at the same time [150] fearing to suffer the same things as Barlaam, affirms the uncreated grace, but says that this is the essence of God: and he makes this participation in all creatures, rational and irrational, animate and inanimate, which is the maximum of all [the] impiousness. These, in short, are the impieties opinion, and what they think and support Barlaam and Akindynos, from which it is necessary to flee and all return to upright and orthodox37 [155] of Barlaam and Akindynos.

36 37

Cod. Oxon. Misc. gr. 120, foll. 197-204v. Ibid.

The Church Fathers in Gregory Acindynos’ Theological Conception: The Interpretation of the Term μεῖζον Andreas ZACHARIOU, Institute for Theology and Philosophy, Athens, Greece; Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University, Tbilisi, Georgia

ABSTRACT Declaring himself firmly aligned with the correct faith, that is the teaching of the Church, Gregory Acindynos attacked St Gregory Palamas’ theological conceptions, which he considered to be totally erroneous. During the second phase of the hesychast controversy (13411347) and within the context of his antirrhetical exegesis, notably in relation to the meaning of the term ‘greater’ (μεῖζον), Acindynos invoked the Church Fathers in order to support his interpretation of the verse: ‘The Father is greater than I’ (ὁ Πατήρ μου μείζων μού ἐστιν, Jn. 14:28). Yet, despite the fact that he emphatically declares the Church Fathers as ‘teachers of piety’ and assert that their theology represents that which is theologically exact and true, he made use of them in a particular manner. He questioned the theological rigour of any positions of theirs that would diverge from his perception and selectively utilized only those that corroborate his own theology against Palamas’ conception.

Gregory Acindynos (ca. 1300-1348)1 describes the Church Fathers as ‘wise and holy’, who have received the ‘rule of piety’, that is the correct faith, ‘out of revelation and contemplation’ (ἐκ θείας ἀποκαλύψεως καὶ θεωρίας), and ‘hand it down to the Church’.2 They are therefore ‘teachers of piety’,3 and their 1

For Acindynos’ biography, see in particular: Angela C. Hero, ‘Introduction. I. The life of Akindynos; Commentary’, in Gregorii Acindyni Epistulae, ed. Angela C. Hero, CFHB 21 (Washington, 1983), ix-xxxiii, 309-439; Juan Nadal, ‘Introduction’, in Gregorii Acindyni Opera. Refutationes duae operis Gregorii Palamae, cui titulus Dialogus inter Orthodoxum et Barlaamitam, ed. Juan Nadal, CChr.SG 31 (Turnhout, 1995), xiii-lxvii; id., ‘Gregorio Akíndinos. I. Biografía’, in Report to Kalekas, ed. Juan Nadal, CCTB 2 (Turnhout, 2002), 189-314, 189-223; id., ‘Gregorio Akindinos, ¿Eslavo o Bizantino?’, Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Neoellenici 27 (1990-1991), 25965 ; id., La résistance d’Akindynos à Grégoire Palamas, Enquête historique, avec traduction et commentaire de quatre traités édités récemment, vol. 2. Commentaire historique (Leuven, 2006), 28-103; Theodoros Ntinas, Ο Γρηγόριος Ακίνδυνος στο πλαίσιο των ιστορικών γεγονότων και οι θεολογικές διαμάχες στο πρώτο μισό του 14ου αιώνα (PhD diss.) (University of Peloponnesos, 2016), 62-123; Andreas Zachariou, Ἡ θεολογικὴ γνωσιολογία τοῦ Γρηγορίου Ἀκινδύνου. Προσέγγιση στὴ διαμόρφωση καὶ τὴν ἀπόπειρα πατερικῆς κατοχύρωσης τῶν θεολογικῶν του ἀντιλήψεων (Athens, 2018), 23-99. 2 Gregory Akindynos, Antirrh. III, 22 [ed. J. Nadal, Gregorii Acindyni Opera. Refutatio magna (Antirrheticæ, I-IV), CChr.SG 31 (Turnhout, 1995), 199.62-5]. All translations are mine, unless otherwise stated. 3 Id., Antirrh. III, 45, CChr.SG 31, 228.1-2. See also, Antirrh. IV, 60, CChr.SG 31, 409.6-8.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 329-340. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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theology represents that which is pious and true.4 Their understanding and interpretation of either Scripture or a theological position a certain Father expressed, constitutes the criterion of orthodoxy.5 These very ‘sacred rules of piety’, the tradition of the Church – a tradition which is identified with the belief in ‘a single divinity of three hypostases’, are what Acindynos had been following already since early childhood (ἐξ ἁπαλῶν ὀνύχων).6 His belief of those ancient and authoritative understandings of God is unshakeable: ‘Nothing can convince me’, he says, ‘that either what I believe is mistaken, or that Palamas’ doctrines are correct’.7 That means he presents himself as someone who neither strays from the correct faith, nor dares to alter it in any way, be that by including or removing any element.8 I However, in his opposition to St Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), Acindynos employs the Church Fathers in a specific manner. He proceeds from the consensus that the Fathers are most certainly the authentic bearers and the sole reliable interpreters of ecclesial tradition, yet he uses their teachings in a way not entirely unaffected from his own theological presuppositions. He points out that not everything found in their writings should be immediately elevated to formal teaching/theology of the Church without further scrutiny. He holds their writings to include erroneous and/or personal opinions, that is, a particular way of thinking that deviates from orthodoxy. Without allowing this to detract from the overall esteem of the Fathers, Acindynos offers two plausible explanations: Firstly, the questionable passages may well have been interpolations introduced by heretical scribes. Patristic writings may have been adulterated with malign, heretical interpolations, and as such support a theology that is wholly separated from that of the authoring Father. He says: Who is unaware, ... that the various heretics surreptitiously added their own perceptions to the treatises of the Fathers and the ecclesiastical authors, intending to corrupt the correct doctrines?9 4

Id., Iambi, PG 150, 849B. See id., Antirrh. I, 35, CChr.SG 31, 40.3-11; Antirrh. ΙΙ, 39, CChr.SG 31, 136.7-137.15. 6 Id., Antirrh. II, 58, CChr.SG 31, 164.44-50; Epist. 27, CFHB 21, 92.103-5; Ἔκθεσις ἐπίτομος τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, f. 25v. 7 Id., Antirrh. I, 8, CChr.SG 31, 11.10-8. See also, Antirrh. II, 43, CChr.SG 31, 144.85-6; Antirrh. III, 4, CChr.SG 31, 171.34-40; Antirrh. IV, 26, CChr.SG 31, 358.1-9; Iambi, PG 150, 845B. 8 Id., Antirrh. IV, 56, CChr.SG 31, 404.59-64. See also Epist. 31, CFHB 21, 114.35-7: ‘We must neither violate their word nor establish other rules of piety unknown to ourselves or to our fathers, nor must we put up with those who disturb the boundaries set by our fathers’ (trans. A.C. Hero, Epist. 31, CFHB 21, 115-7). 9 Id., Ἑτέρα ἔκθεσις καὶ ἀνασκευὴ τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, f. 118r. 5

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Secondly, some Fathers may have expressed their opinions by concession (κατ’ οἰκονομίαν) in particular instances, opting for a phrasing that would be relatable to their audiences (or readers), even if it were not the absolutely precise rendition. For a multitude of reasons, at times, they may have come to express mistaken theological ideas, which were not in accord with ratified doctrinal decrees. With those ideas, they came to deviate from the commonly accepted faith, the common rule of piety, which they themselves professed in their other writings and within different contexts. Such could be the case in their polemic against various heresies,10 or when they were making simple references to matters of faith, philosophizing freely rather than speaking with doctrinal rigour.11 He thus concluded that the use of the writings of the Fathers should be made with great care, and in a selective manner. In both cases, namely of adulterated texts and of imprecise theological expression, the absolute criterion by which they can be judged is their conformance to the commonly accepted faith. Any consonant patristic notion can be accepted as true, while any clashing idea ought to be rejected as false. Still, this rejection can only move within certain bounds. Since the mistaken position is not expressed directly by a heretic, but rather is found in some Father’s text, Acindynos rejects it without at the same time casting doubt on that particular Father’s overall theological eminence. In fact he maintains that by locating and removing those conceptions considered incompatible with true faith ‘the tradition – both the faith and the theology that the Fathers handed down – is preserved free from adulterations and erroneous innovations’ (ἀκαινοτόμητον διασῴζειν τὴν παρὰ τῶν θείων πατέρων καὶ θεολόγων ἡμῖν παραδοθεῖσαν πίστιν καὶ τὴν θεολογίαν). Acindynos supports his viewpoint by invoking a particular phrase of Basil the Great’s, which he treats as a ‘rule’ (κανόνα), that essentially determines the correct understanding of God. Basil the Great urges one to discard those theological opinions that deviate from the commonly accepted faith. One is expected to ignore, disregard, and reject such erroneous notions, or attempt to align them with the traditional line, so that our understanding regarding God is not subverted.12 The Basilian passage, that Acindynos invokes most frequently in his antirrhetic works,13 actually reads as follows: Then we must acknowledge, proceeding from universal notions, that statements about God that are inconsistent when taken literally, make no sense; that is, acknowledge, in

10

Ibid., f. 98r. Id., Antirrh. IV, 58, CChr.SG 31, 407.1-8. 12 See id., Ἑτέρα ἔκθεσις καὶ ἀνασκευὴ τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, ff. 118r-v. 13 See for example, id., Antirrh. I, 9, CChr.SG 31, 12.31-5; Antirrh. III, 18, CChr.SG 31, 194.7-13; Report to Kalekas, 24, 277, 811-6; Ἑτέρα ἔκθεσις καὶ ἀνασκευὴ τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, ff. 98r. 11

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accord with the universal concepts that the divine nature is good and free from anger and just. So, if ever Scripture says that God is angry, or grieves, or changes His mind, or treats someone as they do not deserve, it is appropriate to search after the intention of the passage and to think carefully as to how we could re-establish it, but by no means to overturn reasonable assumptions about God. And thus, we shall read Scripture without stumbling, benefiting from easily comprehensible passages and receiving no harm from those that are more obscure.14

It is evident that the phrase could hardly be used to lend full support to Acindynos’ argumentation. In reality, as Palamas correctly points out, Basil the Great, indicates the appropriate manner of reading Scripture, so that the reader avoids ‘suffering harm’ from ambiguous passages.15 Acindynos continues further, saying that an incorrect and/or an obscure patristic opinion can be restored to orthodoxy by evaluating it against the rule provided by the commonly accepted faith. Given that the Father represents a ‘teacher of piety’ and is therefore unlikely to diverge from ‘common … assumption of piety’, one should first invoke corresponding opinions that exist in that Father’s other writings. If, however, he has not addressed the matter under question elsewhere in his works, then one should seek out the position of the other Fathers who have dealt with the subject. This double comparison clarifies and restores the deviating conception, and one can draw out ‘unmistaken knowledge’ (ἀπλανῆ γνῶσιν) for the given ‘question’ (ζητούμενον).16 II On his side, Palamas has a different viewpoint and does not assent to the use of particular criteria in the reading of the Fathers. He casts doubt on Acindynos’ intepretation and maintains that he (Acindynos) does not ‘regard the Fathers as altogether credible interpreters of God’s revealed truth, and considers those, who believe that we should acquiesce to all of the Fathers’ theological positions, as deviating from the correct faith’.17 However, this very position of Palamas, of not applying any criteria for Church Fathers opinions, is apparently exaggerated and a deviation from the patristic tradition. 14 Basil of Caesarea, In proph. Isaiam, 5-6, PG 30, 128A. See St. Basil the Great, Commentary on the prophet Isaiah, trans. Nikolai A. Lipatov, Texts and Studies in the History of Theology 7 (Mandelbachtal, Cambridge, 2001), 6. 15 See Gregory Palamas, Antirrh. 6, 10, 24, Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ Συγγράμματα (= ΣΠ) 3, 402.13-26 [ed. Leonidas Kontogiannes, Basileios Phanourgakes, Antirrhetics 1-7 (Thessalonica, 20102)]. See further in A. Zachariou, Ἡ θεολογικὴ γνωσιολογία τοῦ Γρηγορίου Ἀκινδύνου (2018), 67-72. 16 Gregory Akindynos, Ἑτέρα ἔκθεσις καὶ ἀνασκευὴ τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, ff. 116r-v. 17 Gregory Palamas, Antirrh. 3, 17, 69-70, ΣΠ 3 (20102), 211.15-212.19.

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Acindynos’ position for the selective use of patristic teachings on those cases alone, where these teachings are in accord with the commonly accepted faith of the Church, is not mistaken. It is actually an obviously sensible method, whose origins well predate Acindynos’ application. The notion of ‘infallibility’ is addressed by the Church already following the first Council of Nicaea (325) and is ascribed to the context of the Ecumenical Church rather than to each Father individually. Although the Fathers are vested with honour and treated with respect, they are not always infallible. Their positions and opinions may come to deviate from correct doctrine, and consequently are not accepted without examination. Therefore, they are not binding, and do not automatically constitute statements of Church dogma by themselves. The Church adopts only those positions that witness, reveal, and confirm the common tradition, which in turn constitutes the official doctrine of the Church, expressed through the Ecumenical Councils and recorded in their Creeds.18 To give an example, Athanasius the Great, dealing with accusations that one of Dionysius of Alexandria’s Epistles expressed heretical Arianist ideas, he promoted a clear and methodical way to judge a person’s orthodoxy. One should first consider the entire literary output of the accused party, and only then move to decide whether the mistaken opinion under examination was expressed as a theological position and confession of faith, or simply reflects a theology phrased by concession and in response to particular challenges. 19 On the basis of these two criteria, Athanasius determines the accusations levelled against Dionysius to be slanderous, because firstly the suspicious phrasing was used in the particular case of the latter’s polemic against Sabellius,20 and secondly Dionysius, in his other writings, further elaborates on his conceptions and theologizes correctly.21 18 See further in Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1 (Utrecht, 1986), 9-12; Georges Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View (Belmont, MA, 1972), 93-103; Hubertus Drobner, The Fathers of the Church. A comprehensive introduction, trans. S. Schatzmann (Peabody, MA, 2007), 3-5; Thomas Graumann, ‘The Conduct of Theology and the “Fathers” of the Church’, in Philip Rousseau (ed.), A Companion to Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009), 539-55; Stylianos Papadopoulos, Πατρολογία, vol. A´ (Athens, 20004), 17-79; Nikos Nikolaides, Θέματα Πατερικῆς Θεολογίας (Thessalonica, 2009), 61-74; Ken Parry, ‘The Nature and Scope of Patristics’, in id. (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics (Oxford, 2015), 3-11; Richard Price, ‘Fathers and the Church Councils’, in Ken Parry (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Patristics (Oxford, 2015), 400-13. 19 Athanasius of Alexandria, De sententia Dionysii, 4, ed. Hans-Georg Opitz, Athanasius Werke, 2.1 (Berlin, Leipzig, 1935), 48.23-49.7. 20 Ibid. 9, ed. Opitz, 51.27-52.3. 21 Ibid. 6, ed. Opitz, 50.2-3. Basil’s viewpoint regarding Dionysius of Alexandria is similar to Athanasius’. See Epist. 9 (Μαξίμῳ Φιλοσόφῳ), ed. Yves Courtonne, Saint Basile Lettres, tome I (Paris, 1957), 38.1-39.31: ‘… Our judgment of them (= the writings of Dionysius) is this. We do not admire all the opinions of the man, and there are some we disagree with altogether. In fact, as regards this present impiety which is being spread abroad, I mean that of the doctrine of unlikeness (= Anomoeans), this man is, as far as we know, the one who first furnished its seeds. Still,

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Photius of Constantinople holds a similar position. He maintains that the correctness of a Father’s theological opinion can be assessed by the measure in which it conforms to the common faith of the Church, as that has been expressed in the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils and the general theological concordance of the ‘holy and renowned Fathers’ (τῶν ἱερῶν καὶ περιωνύμων Πατέρων).22 He also acknowledges the possibility that the mistaken or deviating opinions can result from malign interpolations of heretical scribes of later periods,23 and moves on to conclude that any occasional mistaken position that truly belong to the Fathers do not detract from their authority. Such ideas might have been expressed as the result of ignorance or some oversight or simply because of human error.24 It is also possible, he continues, that such deviating and inaccurate conceptions were phrased ‘impromptu’ (πρόχειρα) and ‘by concession’ (κατ’ οἰκονομίαν), and in response to specific situations, such as during the refutation of heretical beliefs, or the inability of their audience to comprehend a more complex, albeit more precise, rendition.25 Taking into account how the Fathers in question did not clutch stubbornly at such ideas, did not reject the correct conceptions when such were brought to their attention, and of course never attempted to present their opinions as a dogma of the Church, then any such position cannot be considered as constituting anything more than just human mistake, and can in no case be inflated and regarded as heretical teachings.26 Therefore any mistaken theological notions expressed ‘against the commonly accepted ecclesiastical doctrine’ (ἀπ’ ἐναντίας τοῦ κοινοῦ καὶ ἐκκλησιαστικοῦ δόγματος) are to be summarily discarded, yet their authors are not to be otherwise deprived of the ‘honour and glory’ that befits all Fathers of the Church.27 I think the cause is not perversity of judgment, but the excessive desire of opposing Sabellius […]’, trans. Sister Agnes Clares Way, Saint Basil, Letters, vol. I (1-185), FC 13 (Washington, DC, 2008), 41-2. See also Christos Arambatzes, Θέματα Εκκλησιαστικής Γραμματολογίας και Πατερικής Ερμηνευτικής (Thessalonica, 2014), 321-30, 378-82. 22 Photius of Constantinople, De S. Spiritus mystagogia, 5, PG 102, 284A-285A. See also, id., Epist. 291 (Τῷ ἀρχιεπισκόπῳ καὶ μητροπολίτῃ Ἀκυληΐας), ed. Basilius Laourdas, Leendert G. Westerink, Epistulae et Amphilochia, vol. III (Leipzig, 1985), 147.250-5. 23 Id., De S. Spiritus mystagogia, 71, PG 102, 352BC. 24 Ibid. 68, PG 102, 348A. 25 Id., Epist. 291 (Τῷ ἀρχιεπισκόπῳ καὶ μητροπολίτῃ Ἀκυληΐας), 148.284-91. See also, De S. Spiritus mystagogia, 72, PG 102, 352C. 26 Id., De S. Spiritus mystagogia, 68, PG 102, 348AB. 27 Photius makes particular reference to Augustine, Jerome, Ambrosius, Clement of Rome, Dionysius of Alexandria, Methodius of Olympus, Hippolytus of Rome, Irenaeus of Lugdunum (Lyon), and Papias of Hierapolis, who may have on occasion taught certain things that were not completely in accord with the commonly accepted faith, nevertheless remain Fathers and teachers of the Church. See, id., Epist. 291 (Τῷ ἀρχιεπισκόπῳ καὶ μητροπολίτῃ Ἀκυληΐας), 146.245-149.331; De S. Spiritus mystagogia, 66-75, PG 102, 344B-357A. See further in Anna Koltsiou-Niketa, Τό κύρος τῶν Πατέρων τῆς Ἐκκλησίας. Μιά ἀνέκδοτη ἐπιστολική πραγματεία [Φιλοσοφικὴ καὶ Θεολογικὴ Βιβλιοθήκη 42], (Θεσσαλονίκη, 2000), 23-34; C. Arambatzes, Θέματα Εκκλησιαστικής Γραμματολογίας (2014), 331-48.

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It should be noted that, although Acindynos calls upon and employs the aforementioned criteria, his use of them cannot be considered to be objective. He rather uses the criteria in a wholly subjective manner since he declares his own theology to be the expression of the commonly accepted faith, on the basis of which a patristic position is to be judged. In other words, he identifies the ‘common doctrines’, or simply put, the faith of the Church, with his own hermeneutical perceptions, imposing the latter as the absolute interpretive measure of the former. Therefore, while Acindynos claims to follow the teachings of the Fathers, he first casts it in the light of his own epistemological preconditions, which are in turn formulated by the necessities of his opposition to Palamas.28 It is in this manner that he comes to assert that his theology, and more specifically his ontology regarding the triune God, to be in perfect agreement with the Church’s teaching and that his antirrhetic effort turns against those whom the Church also battles against: ‘to speak of me’, he says, ‘is in fact to mean the Church, and those whom I oppose are exactly those whom the Church opposes’.29 He even goes so far as to consider himself to be superior in faith and the highest criterion of piety: I readily concede that comparing to others I lack in virtue; yet, when it comes to piety I dare say that I, more than anyone, possess the spirit of faith.30

III To demonstrate better Acindynos’ perception and his use of patristic teaching, I will discuss how he understands the term ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) in the relation between the Trinitarian Persons of the Father and the Son. His interpretation commences from specific epistemological precepts with respect to the existence of a ‘single divinity’.31 The divinity is triune, that is to say it corresponds to the Holy Trinity,32 and cannot be separated into substance and energy.33 Besides the personal differences, that is the particular properties 28 See A. Zachariou, Ἡ θεολογικὴ γνωσιολογία τοῦ Γρηγορίου Ἀκινδύνου (2018), 62-74. See also, Panagiotes Christou, ‘Introduction’, in Gregory Palamas, Antirrhetics 1-7, ΣΠ 3 (20102), 15-6; id. Ἑλληνικὴ Πατρολογία, vol. Α´. Εἰσαγωγή (Thessalonica, 20043), 309-10. 29 Gregory Akindynos, Epist. 41, CFHB 21, 166.54-6 (trans. A.C. Hero: Epist. 41, CFHB 21, 167). See also Antirrh. III, 79, CChr.SG 31, 288.58-63. 30 Id., Address to Hierotheos, ed. K. Pitsakes, Ἐπετηρὶς τοῦ Κέντρου Ἐρεύνης τῆς Ἱστορίας τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Δικαίου 19 (1972) (Athens, 1974), 201 (87r). 31 Id., Antirrh. I, 42, CChr.SG 31, 49.3-4; Antirrh. II, 50, CChr.SG 31, 152.2-5; Antirrh. III, 81, CChr.SG 31, 291.60-3; Antirrh. IV, 15, CChr.SG 31, 338.6-8; Antirrh. IV, 40, CChr.SG 31, 377.1-9. 32 See id., Report to Kalekas, 10, 263.242-264.246; Antirrh. III, 14, CChr.SG 31, 185.54-5; Antirrh. III, 62, CChr.SG 31, 253.38-9; Antirrh. III, 81, CChr.SG 31, 291.60-2; Antirrh. IV, 8, CChr.SG 31, 324.39-40. 33 See for example, id., Ἑτέρα ἔκθεσις καὶ ἀνασκευὴ τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, f. 80v; Epist. 40, CFHB 21, 154.86-90; Epist. 56, CFHB 21, 232.46-54; Antirrh.

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of the three Persons (unbegotten, begotten, originated from the Father), the divinity cannot be distinguished in any other ways: it has no superior (higherranking or primary) (ὑπερκείμενο) and inferior (lower-ranking or secondary) (ὑφειμένο) parts.34 This theological schema indicates the divinity’s perfection, whereby divine nature, or God’s substance, is ‘active’ (ἐνεργής), and its energy is ‘innatus’ (ἔμφυτος), that is ‘insubstantial’ (ἐνούσιος) [within the essence, not outside and distinct from the essence].35 In this divinity, which is indivisible and wholly undifferentiated in itself, God’s uncreated energy corresponds to the Persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit.36 Acindynos expresses his understanding of the meaning of the term ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) in responding to one of Palamas’ theological arguments. Palamas employs the cause and caused schema (αἴτιο – αἰτιατό) to explain ‘the transcendence’ (τὸ ὑπερκείμενο) of the divine essence to the divine energies, drawing upon the interpretation that Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian put forward on the ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) in the relation between the Trinitarian Persons of the Father and the Son. Palamas specifically contends that this pattern of cause and caused (αἴτιο – αἰτιατό) constitutes a relationship, in which the former transcends (ὑπέρκειται) the latter and is ‘greater’ (μεῖζον).37 ‘Greater’, however, does not mean superior to something inferior; it is in this manner that the verse: ‘The Father is greater than I’ (ὁ Πατήρ μου μείζων μού ἐστιν, Jn. 14:28), is used and interpreted both in subordinationism, where Christ is understood as inferior and subordinate to the Father, and by Arians, who determine the Son to be a creature.38 Instead, Palamas interprets the phrase to indicate causal origin, meaning ‘out of which’ (ἐξ οὗ),39 as did Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great. The Nazianzene mentions that the Father is ‘greater’ than the Son since he constiI, 15, CChr.SG 31, 16.1-7; Antirrh. II, 13, CChr.SG 31, 102.8-11; Antirrh. IV, 21, CChr.SG 31, 351.1-3. 34 Id., Epist. 37, CFHB 21, 134.87-90; Report to Kalekas, 17, 267.406-268.416; Antirrh. I, 3, CChr.SG 31, 4.8-11; Antirrh. III, 14, CChr.SG 31, 185.48-54; Antirrh. IV, 16, CChr.SG 31, 340.16-20. 35 Id., Antirrh. I, 7, CChr.SG 31, 9.3-8. The greek words [concepts] ἔμφυτος and ἐνούσιος are translated into latin as innatus and insubstantial respectively. For ἔμφυτος (innatus), see for example, John of Damascus, Expositio fidei, 2, 23, PG 94, 950A. For insubstantial (ἐνούσιος) [in + substantia = within the essence (ἐν-ο-ούσιος)], see Leontius Byzantinus, Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, 1, PG 86 (A´), 1278D; Anastasius Sinaita, Viæ Dux, 8, PG 89, 134D; Maximus Confessor, Opuscula theologica et polemica, PG 91, 206B; id., Ambiguorum Liber, PG 91, 1035C; John of Damascus, Contra Jacobitas, 11; 12; 52; 79, PG 94, 1442AD; 1462CD; 1475C. 36 Gregory Akindynos, Epist. 27, CFHB 21, 94.113-9; Antirrh. IV, 19, CChr.SG 31, 345.3-5. 37 Gregory Palamas, Dial. Orthod. cum Barlaam., 19, ed. Georgios Mantzarides, ΣΠ 2 (Thessalonica, 20103), 181.15-7. 38 See more details in Stergios Sakkos, «Ὁ Πατήρ μου μείζων μού ἐστιν». Vol. A´. Κριτικὴ κειμένου καὶ ἑρμηνεία (Thessalonica, 1968), 51-68. Id., ‘«Ὁ Πατήρ μου μείζων μού ἐστιν». Ἰω. 14, 28’, in Πρακτικὰ Θεολογικοῦ Συνεδρίου: Ὁ ἐπουράνιος Πατήρ (Thessalonica, 1993), 335-47, 337-9. 39 Gregory Palamas, Ad Athan. Cyz., 20, ed. Nikos Matsoukas, ΣΠ 2 (Thessalonica, 20103), 431.1-2.

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tutes the cause of the Son, while Basil considers the Son second in ‘order’ and ‘rank’ (τάξει ... καὶ ἀξιώματι) to the Father, precisely because of this causal origin of the Son from the Father. However, both Church Fathers, Gregory and Basil, clarify that this does not mean that the Son is inferior to divine nature.40 Therefore, Palamas supports that God’s essence is the cause (αἴτιο), and as such is ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) than, and transcends (ὑπέρκειται) to its energy, while this energy, as it derives from the essence, is consequently the caused (αἰτιατό).41 This particular schema, Palamas clarifies, neither results in the separation of the essence from its energy, nor introduces a hierarchical relationship of a superior and an inferior part. Essence and energy are ‘divided indivisibly’, thus maintaining their natural union and coexistence.42 Since their distinction does not result in their separation into two parts, the indivisible of the divinity is consequently preserved.43 Acindynos disagrees with Palamas’ perception, and accuses him of acting subjectively, and selectively employing the opinions of only some Fathers, in particular opinions that do not constitute the commonly accepted teaching of the Church.44 Acindynos himself interprets ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) as superior to something inferior. He contends that ‘greater is only greater to something else that is lesser’ (τὸ μεῖζον ἐλάττονός ἐστι μεῖζον), and outrightly rejects the possibility of the term being applicable to the Trinity. That is to say, he considers that the term ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) can in no way refer to the relationship between the hypostases of the Father and the other two Persons.45 While the Father is indeed the cause of the Son, this does not necessarily imply a hierarchical relationship of a ‘greater’ and a ‘lesser’ part. If the Father is considered to be greater (μείζων), then the Son is correspondingly lesser (ἐλάττων), and therefore inferior, which would indicate a difference in their respective ranks (διαφορὰν ἀξιωμάτων).46 It is only natural then for Acindynos to believe that with his theology Palamas insults and degrades the Persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit against that of the Father, much in the way that the heresiarchs Arius, Eunomius, and Macedonius did.47 That’s why he suggests 40 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 29, 15, ed. Paul Gallay, SC 250 (Paris, 1978), 208.1-2; 15-6; id., Or. 40, 43, ed. Claudio Moreschini, SC 358 (Paris, 1990), 298.1-9. Basil of Caesarea, Adv. Eunom., 1, 25, ed. Bernard Sesboüé, SC 299 (Paris, 1982), 262.28-32; id., Adv. Eunom., 3, 1, ed. Bernard Sesboüé, SC 305 (Paris, 1983), 146.31-5. 41 See Gregory Palamas, Dial. Orthod. cum Barlaam, 19, ΣΠ 2 (20103), 181.15-182.8. 42 Id., Antirrh. 3, 22, 102, ΣΠ 3 (20102), 234.26-235.4. See also Antirrh. 2, 8, 26, ΣΠ 3 (20102), 103.19-104.5. 43 Id., Dial. Orthod. cum Barlaam, 16, ΣΠ 2 (20103), 178.8-12. See also De divinis operat., 19, ed. Georgios Mantzarides, ΣΠ 2 (Thessalonica, 20103), 111.8-15. 44 Gregory Akindynos, Ἑτέρα ἔκθεσις καὶ ἀνασκευὴ τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, f. 79r. See also Antirrh. Ι, 64, CChr.SG 31, 79.1-80.7; Antirrh. I, 65, CChr.SG 31, 81.1-8. 45 Id., Ἔκθεσις ἐπίτομος τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, f. 17v. See also Antirrh. I, 65, CChr.SG 31, 81.4-82.13. 46 Id., Antirrh. I, 64, CChr.SG 31, 79.1-4. See also Antirrh. ΙV, 29, CChr.SG 31, 363.1-364.6. 47 Id., Antirrh. I, 65, CChr.SG 31, 81.4-8.

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the heretical use of the schema denoting the Father as ‘greater’ and the Son as ‘lesser’ to be the reason that forced the Fathers to interpret the term ‘greater’ as referring in particular to Christ’s human nature.48 Palamas’ theology, Acindynos claims, nullifies the theological datum of the indivisible divinity for two reasons. Firstly, it strikes against the consubstantiality of the Trinity, introducing the division into superior and inferior parts; being the source and cause of the other two Persons, the Father is essentially greater, that is to say superior to them, while the Son and the Holy Spirit are lesser and inferior and of a different essence.49 Secondly, it equates the Persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit with the ‘subordinate (lower) energies’ (ὑφειμένες ἐνέργειες). Since the Father is superior to the Son and the Holy Spirit, precisely in the manner that substance is superior to its energies, and since these two Persons – as mentioned previously – are identified with God’s energy, then the Son and the Holy Spirit must be relegated to the same order as the ‘subordinate (lower) energies’ (ὑφειμένες ἐνέργειες), and share the same ontological properties with them.50 Aiming to avoid such erroneous theological conclusions, Acindynos understands the use of the term ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) by the Fathers, on whom Palamas establishes his theological conception, to be a deviation and outright rejects it. He contends that indeed some Fathers have used the term ‘greater’ in a causal context (αἴτιο – αἰτιατό), yet they did so by concession (κατ’ οἰκονομίαν) and straight after they set aside and rebut that certain use, interpreting Jn. 14:28 correctly. That being so, he only considers as universally acceptable – and consequently orthodox – that use of the term ‘greater’ that references the relationship between Father and Incarnate Son, always in keeping with the equality of honour and consubstantiality proper to the two Persons.51 Acindynos’ interpretation, however, may not be wholly accurate. Firstly, Palamas critiques his interpretation, considering it both slanderous towards his theology and erroneous in itself. If the ‘greater’ in the relationship between cause and caused necessitated inequality, then not only God’s essence would have to be unequal and dissimilar from its energy, but that inequality and dissimilarity would also describe the relationship between the Persons of the Father, as cause Id., Ἑτέρα ἔκθεσις καὶ ἀνασκευὴ τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, f. 79r. Id., Ἔκθεσις ἐπίτομος τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, f. 17v. 50 Id., Ἑτέρα ἔκθεσις καὶ ἀνασκευὴ τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, ff. 79r-80r. See further in A. Zachariou, Ἡ θεολογικὴ γνωσιολογία τοῦ Γρηγορίου Ἀκινδύνου (2018), 124-50, 311-29. 51 See Gregory Akindynos, Antirrh. I, 64, CChr.SG 31, 79.1-81.54; Ἑτέρα ἔκθεσις καὶ ἀνασκευὴ τῶν τοῦ Παλαμᾶ πονηροτάτων αἱρέσεων, Monac. gr. 223, ff. 79r-80r. See also Ps.-Basil of Caesarea, Adv. Eunom., 4, 3, PG 29, 693C-696A; Ps.-Athanasius of Alexandria, De comm. essent., 6, PG 28, 40CD; id., De Trin., 2, 8, PG 28, 1168C; id., Contra Maced. 1, 19, ed. Elena Cavalcanti, Ps. Athanasio, Dialoghi contro i Macedoniani (Turin, 1983), 102, 100-3; John Chrysostom, In Ioh. 46, 1, PG 59, 258; id., Ad Gal., 2, PG 61, 614-5; Ps.-John Chrysostom, De Trin., PG 48, 1091; Epiphanius, Panarion. Haer. 69 Contra Arioman. 53, ed. K. Holl, Epiphanius, Ancoratus und Panarion (haer. 65-80), vol. 3, GCS 37 (Leipzig, 1933), 200.26-8. 48

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(αἰτίου), and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, as caused (αἰτιατῶν). But this would mean the re-introduction of the heresies of Arius and Eunomius into the theology of the Church.52 Moreover, the ecclesiastical tradition itself offers no support that would justify Acindynos’ interpretation. It is indeed the case that many amongst the Fathers, interpreting Jn. 14:28, use the term ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) as indicative of the relationship between the Father and Christ’s humanity. First to use this interpretive method was Irenaeus of Lyon, and many Fathers followed suit after the fourth century in both East and West.53 Still, Acindynos is mistaken in assuming that the use of the term is isolated from the relationship between the Father and the Son and exclusively refers to it within the context of the ‘divine economy’ (θεία οἰκονομία). Besides the aforementioned Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus,54 a considerable number of Fathers and ecclesiastical writers, defending orthodoxy against Arianism, interpreted the term ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) within the schema of Father as the cause (αἰτίου) and the Son as the caused (αἰτιατοῦ). This particular interpretation is found first in Alexander of Alexandria, and is afterwards also espoused by Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Epiphanius of Constantia, Augustine of Hippo, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Photius of Constantinople and Euthymius Zigabenus.55 Some of them, such as Gregory of Nazianzus, 52 Gregory Palamas, Ad Paul. Asan., 11, ed. Nikos Matsoukas, ΣΠ 2 (Thessalonica, 20103), 372.25-373.4; Antirrh. 1, 7, 26, ΣΠ 3 (20102), 58.6-20; Antirrh. 2, 9, 35, ΣΠ 3 (20102), 109.17110.9. 53 See, for example, Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies II, 28, 8, ANF 1, The Apostolic Fathers – Justin martyr – Ireneaus (New York, 1887), 401-2; Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 29, 18, ed. Paul Gallay, SC 250 (Paris, 1978), 214.1-216.29; Gregory of Nyssa, De deit. Fil. et Spir. Sancti, ed. Ernestus Rhein et al., GNO X/2 (Leiden, 1996), 125.9-130.11; Amphilochius of Iconium, Εἰς τὸ Ὁ πατήρ μου μείζων μού ἐστιν, 1-3, ed. Cornelis Datema, CChr.SG 3 (Turnhout, 1995), 227.3230.55; Augustine of Hippo, Faith and the Creed, 9, 18, FC 27 (Washington, DC, 1999), 335-6; Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Christian Faith, NPNF2 10 (New York, 1896), 231-3; Cyril of Alexandria, Comment. in Joan., Libr. 8 et 9, PG 74, 12D-13A; Basil of Seleucia, Or. 32, 1, PG 85, 352BC; Leo the Great, On Pentecost. Serm. 77, 5, FC 93 (Washington, DC, 1995), 343-4; Anastasius Sinaita, Viae Dux, X. 1, 2, ed. Karl-Heinz Uthemann, CChr.SG 8 (Turnhout, 1981), 155.144-7; Theophylact of Ohrid, Comment. in Joan., 14, PG 124, 189B-192B; See more in S. Sakkos, «Ὁ Πατήρ μου μείζων μού ἐστιν». Vol. A´ (1968), 98-107. 54 See above, note 40. 55 Alexander of Alexandria, Epist. ad Alexander Constantin. 12, PG 18, 565C; Athanasius of Alexandria, Contra Arian. 1, 58, ed. K. Metzler, Kyriakos Savvidis, Athanasius Werke, 1.1. Die dogmatischen Schriften, 2. Lieferung. Orationes I et II Contra Arianos (Berlin, New York, 1998), 169.18-26; Gregory of Nyssa, Adv. Arium et Sabellium, ed. Fridericus Mueller, GNO III/1 (Leiden, 1958), 82.6-7; John Chrysostom, In Joan. Homil. 75, 4, PG 59, 408; Epiphanius, Ancoratus, 17, ed. Karl Holl, Epiphanius, Ancoratus und Panarion (haer. 1-3), vol. 1, GCS 25 (Leipzig, 1915), 26.2-15; Augustine of Hippo, Faith and the Creed, 9, 18, FC 27 (Washington, DC, 1999), 336; Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaur. 11, PG 75, 141D; Maximus Confessor, Amb., 25, ed. Nicholas Constas, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers – The Ambigua, vol. 2 (London, 2014), 14; John of Damascus, Expos. Fidei 1, 8, ed. Bonifatius Kotter, PTS 12 (Berlin, New York, 1973), 24.147-25.152;

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Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine of Hippo and Cyril of Alexandria, also use in their writings the previous interpretation, the one that refers to Christ’s human nature. Later on, in the twelfth century, these two manners of interpreting Jn. 14:28 were decreed orthodox in two Councils held under Manuel III Comnenos, convened in Constantinople in 1166 and 1170.56 Both interpretations of the passage become current and remain so up to the hesychast controversies in the 14th century.57 Despite that, Acindynos chooses to depend exclusively on one interpretation of the passage, the one referring to Christ’s human nature. I do believe that his insistence on using this particular interpretation stems from his theological suppositions. What actually upsets Acindynos is not the particular use of the term ‘greater’ (μεῖζον) to describe the relationship between the Father as the cause (αἰτίου) and the Son as the caused (αἰτιατοῦ), nor that the term is used by only some and not all of the Fathers. His quarrel is instead with the specific use that the term finds in Palamas’ hands, which he considers threatening to his own theological system. In his attempt to defend his understanding of the correct faith against Palamas’ theology, he utilizes only those patristic texts that are in agreement with his own perceptions. In this respect, though, he may well be considered as an innovative theologian who acts not in perfect alignment with the patristic tradition.58 Photius of Constantinople, Epist. 176, ed. B. Laourdas, L.G. Westerink, Epistulae et Amphilochia, vol. II (Leipzig, 1984), 63.2-64.50; Euthymius Zigabenus, Comment. in Joan., 14, PG 129, 1405C. See more in S. Sakkos, «Ὁ Πατήρ μου μείζων μού ἐστιν». Vol. A´ (1968), 107-16. 56 See more details in S. Sakkos, «Ὁ Πατήρ μου μείζων μού ἐστιν». Vol. B´. Ἔριδες καὶ Σύνοδοι κατὰ τὸν ΙΒ´ αἰῶνα (Thessalonica, 1968), 52-73, 159-61, 202-4. 57 See, for example, Nicephoros Blemmydes, Sermo ad Monachos, PG 142, 588AB; Gregory Palamas, De process. spir. sanc. 2, 4, ed. Boris Bobrinsky, ΣΠ 1 (Thessalonica, 20103), 80.2581.8; Dial. Orthod. cum Barlaam, 19, ΣΠ 2 (20103), 181.15-26; John Kyparissiotes, Decades, 9, 3, PG 152, 928CD; Manuel Calecas, De fide, 5, PG 152, 576D-577C. 58 See further in A. Zachariou, Ἡ θεολογικὴ γνωσιολογία τοῦ Γρηγορίου Ἀκινδύνου (2018), 62-74. Some scholars however have a different understanding of Acindynos’ agreement with the Church Fathers. See for example, Martin Jugie, ‘Palamite (controverse)’, DTC 11/2 (1932), col. 1777818, 1803. Lowell Clucas, The Hesychast Controversy in Byzantium in the Fourteenth Century: A Consideration of the Basic Evidence (PhD diss.) (University of California, 1975), 301-33; Juan Nadal, ‘La critique par Akindynos de l’herméneutique patristique de Palamas’, Istina 3 (1974), 297-328 ; id., ‘Denys l’Aréopagite dans les Traités de Gregoire Akindynos’, in Ysabel de Andia (ed.), Denys l’Aréopagite et sa postérité en Orient et en Occcident. Actes du Colloque International, Paris, 21-24 Septembre 1994, Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 151 (Paris, 1997), 535-64 ; id., La résistance d’Akindynos à Grégoire Palamas, vol. 2 (2006), 198-285 ; id., ‘Le rôle de Grégoire Akindynos dans la controverse hésychaste du XIVe siècle à Byzance’, in Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala (ed.), Eastern Crossroads. Essays on Medieval Christian Legacy, Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 1 (Piscataway, 2007), 31-58. R. Mihajlovski, ‘A sermon about the anti-Palamite theologian Gregory Akyndinos of Prilep’, in Miša Rakocija (ed.), Niš and Byzantium, Sixth Symposium, Niš, 3-5 June 2007 (Niš, 2008), 149-56, 153-4; P. Christou, ‘Introduction’, in Gregory Palamas, Antirrhetics 1-7, ΣΠ 3 (20102), 16; G. Kapriev, ‘Gregory Akindynos’, in Henrik Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Philosophy Between 500 and 1500 (New York, 2011), 437-9.

Reception and Interpretation of the Patristic Tradition in Theophanes of Nicaea’s Works Petros N. TOULIS, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

ABSTRACT The 14th century, as far as the history of Theology is concerned, can be characterized as the century that Church was in need of interpreting more accurate and with soteriological perspective the Christological dogma that formulated in previous Ecumenical Councils (3rd-6th centuries). The questions concerning the natures of Christ and the manner of manifestation in terms of energy were susceptible to various interpretations that were dominated either by philosophical premises or by soteriological criteria. One of these questions concerning the hypostasis of the Logos in Transfiguration and the nature of the Divine light ‘raised’ in the Hesychastical controversy. The most outstanding Patristic figure of that century was Maximus the Confessor, because his Christological works were the basis on which St Gregory Palamas constructed his argumentation being entangled in disputes with scholars and theologians of his time. A successor of Palamite theology at the third part of the controversies (1347-68) was Theophanes of Niceae (d. 1381) who tried to interpret the mystery of the divine Economy using the previous patristic tradition. Through this article we will try to underline the use of patristic sources in the Orations of the Divine light, written by Theophanes bishop of Niceae. Especially we intent to present the Maximian interpretation of the term ‘hypostasis’ on which Theophanes builds his argumentation. Within this framework we will attempt to approach the methodology and the hermeuneutical criteria by means of which he attempts to recover the true meaning that is hidden within this Tradition and to demonstrate the misinterpretation that is put forward by those who deviate from the faith of the Church.

1. Introduction Theophanes III, Metropolitan of Nicaea (d. 1381), is one of those numerous Palamite1 theologians of the Palaiologan Era whose intellectual legacy is still not fully understood. He was probably in the circle of Patriarch Philotheos 1 In this article the use of the term Palamite is epistemologically in neutral sense, only to refer to the distinct features of Palamas’ teaching that aroused in a number of theologians in the Palaiologan Era. See Norman Russel, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (Oxford, 2019), 22.

Studia Patristica CXXIX, 341-352. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Kokkinos as in his work he appeals to him as teacher.2 In addition, Symeon Archbishop of Thessalonica refers to him as ‘New Confessor’,3 which indicates the importance of his works. His name is appeared for the first time in a Synodical act in 1364 when he signs as Bishop of Nicaea during the second Patriarchate of Philotheos Kokkinos.4 It must be noted that Theophanes had never actually stayed in his bishopric since the city of Nicaea was under Ottoman rule in which it was forbidden for bishops or any other ecclesiastical authority to enter their territories. Nevertheless, Theophanes was constantly sending Epistles through which he was in permanent contact with Christians in these territories supporting and advising them. According to Demetrius Cydones’ Letter to the Patriarch Philotheos,5 Theophanes was sent by the Patriarch to Mount Athos in order to investigate the accusations by the monks of Lavra concerning theological views expressed by Prohoros Cydones. We are not sure whether he visited Lavra for this case,6 because at the same time he was also in charge of the discussions in Serres with the Serbs concerning the Serbian schism.7 From the above we observe that he was an important personality not only for the Patriarchate but also for the Imperial court, whose theological and intellectual legacy is still not fully understood, since a number of his works remain unpublished. In this article, we will try to underline the use of patristic sources in the Orations of the Divine light, and especially to identify the interpretation of the dogmatic and symbolic texts he quotes to prove his argumentation. Within this framework we will attempt to approach the methodology and the hermeneutical criteria by means of which he attempts to recover the true meaning that is hidden within this tradition and to demonstrate the misinterpretation that is put forward by those who deviate from the faith of the Church.

2 Ioannis Polemis, Theophanes of Nicea: His Life and Works, Wiener Byzantinistische Studien XX (Wien, 1996), 4. 3 Symeon of Thessalonica, Κατά αἱρέσεων 31 (Contra Heresies), PG 155, 145B. See also Georgios Zacharopoulos, Ὁ Θεοφάνης Νικαίας (;-1380/1). ῾Ο Βίος καί τό συγγραφικό του ἔργο, Κέντρο Βυζαντινών Ερευνών (Thessaloniki, 2003), 37. 4 Dmitry Makarov, ‘Determining the Historical Context of Theophanes of Nicaea’s Theological Propensities’, Phronema. Journal of St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College 28 (2013), 29-52. 5 Giovanni Mercati, Notizie di Procoro e Demetrio Cidone, Studi e Testi 56 (Città del Vaticano, 1931), 322. 6 According to Demetrius Cydones, Theophanes did not pay attention to this case, because he never went to Lavra, where Prohoros stayed. See G. Zacharopoulos, Ὁ Θεοφάνης Νικαίας (;-1380/1) (2003), 40. 7 For more on the Serbian Schism see Ioannis Tarnanides, Ιστορία της Σερβικής Εκκλησίας (Thessaloniki, 1985), 53-4.

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2. The five Orations on the Light of Tabor In the five Orations, Theophanes not only sets out to defend Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos’ arguments on the Divine light, which Prohoros Cydones expressed against the Palamites in a treatise named ‘De Essentia et Operatione Dei’,8 but also to offer an interpretation to the Synodal Tome of 1368. In that Synod, Prohoros Cydones’ views discussed and condemned, finishing the Hesychastical controversy and proclaimed Gregory Palamas as saint. If we take into consideration that Theophanes was not signed the Synodical Tome due to his absence to Chrysoupolis (to resolve a problem between the Metropolitan of Ierissos with the Monastery of Zographou) and the internal textual evidence of the dating of the Orations (1369-76),9 we can assume that he wrote those orations to clarify and justify the decisions of the Tome. As we informed by the Tome, Prohoros denies the distinction between Essence and Energy in God, stating that the Tabor Light is a symbol of the Essence of God, totally created and uncreated at the same time.10 In his first Oration Theophanes starts with an epistemological argument describing the method of knowledge and the way of true theology according to the previous patristic tradition which intends to follow. He distinguishes between the human knowledge (which is based on senses and with them created things are examined) and the effort of knowledge of the uncreated divine mysteries (ἐρευνητικὴ θεωρία) through the illumination of the Holy Spirit.11 The major question of the first Oration is if the deified body of Christ is major, minor, or equal of the divine light in Transfiguration.12 Those views were discussed in all the stages the Palamite controversy, although the anti-Palamites,

8 Antonio Rigo, ‘Il Monte Athos e la Controversia Palamitica dal Concilio del 1351 al Tomo Synodale del 1368’, in Gregorio Palamas e oltre. Studi e documenti sulle controverse teologiche del XIV Secolo Byzantino, Orientalia Venetiana XIV (Firenze, 2004), 54-134. The text of the Prohoros Cydones’ treatise is was edited by Manuel Candal, ‘El libro VI de Procoro Cidonio (Sobre la luz taborica)’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 20 (1954), 237-66. 9 Ioannis Polemis, Θεοφάνους Νικαίας, ᾿Απόδειξις ὅτι ἐξ ἀϊδίου γεγενῆσθαι τά ὂντα καί ἀνατροπὴ ταύτης, Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi. Philosophi Byzantini 10 (Athens, 2004), 74-5. 10 A. Rigo, ‘Il Monte Athos e la Controversia Palamitica dal Concilio del 1351 al Tomo Synodale del 1368’ (2004), 106-7; N. Russel, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (2019), 237. 11 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, First Oration on the Tabor Light §1, p. 125. More for the double theological methodology: Nikolaos Matsoukas, Δογματική καί Συμβολική Θεολογία Α΄. Εἰσαγωγή στή Θεολογική Γνωσιολογία (Thessaloniki, 2000), 137-58. 12 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, First Oration on the Tabor Light §2, p. 129. εἰ τὸ ζωοποιὸν καὶ τεθεωμένον τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου σῶμα ἴσον ἢ μεῖζον ἢ ἔλαττον εἴη τῆς ἐν τῷ θαβωρίῳ φανείσης θείας φωτοχυσίας καὶ θεοποιοῦ δόξης καὶ χάριτος [if the life-giver and the divinized body of God the Logos is major or minor of the divine light-shining and the divine glory and grace].

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as Theodoros Dexios,13 even after the Tome of 1351, tried to interpret abstracts from hymns of the Transfiguration and relative patristic texts out of the Christological context of the Fourth (Calcedon 451) and Sixth (Constantinople II 681) Ecumenical councils, which the Tome of 1351 explains further.14 Theophanes bases his argumentation mentioning Cyril’s of Alexandria Letter to Suncensus15 concerning the hermeneutics of the hypostatic union of two natures in Christ.16 With this Cyrillian expression is revealed that the one who acts the mystery of Salvation is the one Logos in Theology and in Economy, deconstructing the Eutichian commingling and fusion and the Nestorian division of natures.17 Theophanes states that analogically He is the One and only Incarnated Logos who acts. Consequently in Him, we cannot distinguish the quality of Himself and his Energy, as analogically we cannot compare the quality between Him and the Light of Transfiguration.18 We observe that closing this 13

N. Russel, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (2019), 107-8. Despo Lialiou, ‘Ὁ Ἁγιορειτικός Τόμος, Ὑπὲρ τῶν ἱερῶς ἡσυχαζόντων (Εἰσαγωγικά, ἱστορικά, θεολογικά καὶ ἑρμηνευτικά συμφραζόμενα)’, in Γρηγοριανά Β΄ και Σύμμεικτα (Thessaloniki, 1998), 409-38. 15 Cyril of Alexandria, ᾿Επιστολή 45, (Epistle to Sucensus), A.C.O. 1.1.6, p. 151: ἀλλ’ ἡ τεθεωμένη σὰρξ τοῦ Κυρίου αὐτὸς ὁ Κύριός ἐστιν, ἐπεὶ ἀχώριστός ἐστι τῆς ἰδίας ἐψυχωμένης σαρκός ὁ δὲ σεσαρκωμένος Θεὸς Λόγος εἷς ἐστιν [but the divine flesh of the Lord, is the Lord, because is inseparable from his own ensouled flesh, He is the incarnated Logos himself]. 16 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, First Oration on the Tabor Light §5, p. 134: Πρῶτον τοίνυν ἀνάγκη περὶ τῆς θείας καὶ ζωοποιοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου σαρκὸς καὶ τῆς ἐν τῷ ὄρει φανείσης τοῖς ἀποστόλοις φωτοχυσίας καὶ ἀπροσίτου δόξης εἰπεῖν, εἰ τὸ ἴσον ἢ ἄνισον ἐν τούτοις προσήκει δοξάζειν. [ ]ἀλλ’ ἡ τεθεωμένη σὰρξ τοῦ Κυρίου αὐτὸς ὁ Κύριός ἐστιν, ἐπεὶ ἀχώριστός ἐστι τῆς ἰδίας ἐψυχωμένης σαρκός ὁ δὲ σεσαρκωμένος Θεὸς Λόγος εἷς ἐστιν ὥσπερ γὰρ εἷς Θεὸς ὁ Πατήρ, οὕτω καὶ εἷς Κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός [Firstly, there is need to mention about the divine and life-giver Lord’s Flesh and the light-flashing of the unconceivable glory, which is appeared to the Apostles in the mountain, if there is equal or non-equal for them to glorify.[...] but the divine flesh of the Lord, is the Lord, because is inseparable from his own ensouled flesh, He is the incarnated Logos himself, just as One is the Father, and One is the Lord Jesus Christ]. 17 Despo Lialiou, Ἑρμηνεία τῶν Δογματικῶν καὶ Συμβολικῶν Κειμένων τῆς Ὀρθοδόξου Ἐκκλησίας τ. Γ΄, Ἑρμηνεία τῶν ὑπομνηματιστικῶν τοῦ Ἁγ. Κυρίλλου Ἀλεξανδρείας, Pournaras (Thessaloniki, 2000), 235-48 and 403-5. 18 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, First Oration on the Tabor Light §5 p. 134: Ἀλλὰ καὶ ἡ φυσικὴ αὐτοῦ ἐνέργεια καὶ δόξα, ἥτις καὶ τὰς ὄψεις περιηύγασε τότε τῶν ἀποστόλων, τί ἕτερον ἂν εἴη παρ’ αὐτὸν τὸν Κύριον· ὥσπερ γὰρ ἡ ἔμψυχος τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου σὰρξ διὰ τὸ ἀδιαίρετον αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ Θεὸς Λόγος σεσαρκωμένος, οὕτω καὶ ἡ φυσικὴ ἐνέργειά τε καὶ χάρις αὐτοῦ αὐτός ἐστι καὶ οὐκ ἄλλος. διὰ τὸ φυσικὸν καὶ ἀχώριστον, ἐνεργός τε καὶ παντουργός. Εἷς ἄρα ἐστὶν ὁ Θεὸς Λόγος, ἐνεργὸς ὁ αὐτὸς καὶ σεσαρκωμένος·διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἂν εἰκότως αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ ἴσος λέγοιτο, καὶ ἔτι πολλῷ μᾶλλον μείζων τε καὶ ἐλάττων [But his natural energy and glory, which was shining then in the faces of the Apostles, what else would be but the Lord, just as God the Logos’ ensouled flesh, due to his indivisibility, He himself is the Incarnated Logos, in the same manner His natural energy and grace, He is himself and not another, due to natural and indivisible, who acts everything. He is the One God the Logos who is acting and incarnating. That is why we cannot characterize him as equal or major or minor]. 14

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argument he quotes an abstract from John of Damascus’ ‘Oration in Transfiguration’19 which is used also by the fathers of the Tome of 1368.20 Both, the Fathers of the Synod and Theophanes, conclude that the glory of Divinity of Christ became also glory of His body due to the hypostatic union and the perichoresis of the natures.21 In the same Christological context Theophanes tries to solve the question about the symbolic character of the divine gifts in the Eucharist. This argumentation was firstly given by the Iconoclast Emperor Constantine V who promoted the view that ‘the bread which we receive is an image of his (Christ’s) body, taking the form of his flesh and having become a type of his body’.22 Patriarch of Constantinople Nicephorus responding in his second Antirrhetical Oration to the Iconoclast Emperor Constantine clearly states that even though the Eucharist has a symbolic character, the bread is actually the divine body of Christ and not a type or icon of His presence.23 During the third phase of the Palamite Controversy Johannes Kyparissiotes and Prohoros Cydones, in their effort to prove that in patristic thought the light of Transfiguration is a symbol, connect the symbolic meaning of Eucharist with their argumentation. According to them the Divine light is a symbol in the same sense as the bread and the wine are symbols and types of Christ’s body.24 Theophanes in his third Oration uses the word σύμβολον concerning the Eucharist in order to explain the use of this term by Maximus the Confessor. His target is to declare that the characterization of the Divine light as symbol 19 John Damascene, Λόγος εἰς τήν Μεταμόρφωσιν (Sermon in Tranfiguration) 12, PG 96, 546B: Καὶ δοξάζεται μὲν ἡ σὰρξ ἅμα τῇ ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος εἰς τὸ εἶναι παραγωγῇ, καὶ ἡ τῆς θεότητος δόξα καὶ δόξα τοῦ σώματος γίνεται [The flesh is glorifying from the time that it started to exist out of nothing, and the glory of the divinity becomes glory of the body]. 20 Τόμος κατά τοῦ μοναχοῦ Προχόρου τοῦ Κυδώνη (Synodal Tome 1369), ed. A. Rigo, p. 125: οὐδε γάρ ἀκούειν ἤθελε τοῦ θείου πατρός ᾿Ιωάννου τοῦ Δαμασκηνοῦ, διαρρήδην λέγοντος ότι: ἔμπροσθεν τῶν μαθητῶν μεταμορφοῦται ; ἀεὶ ὡσαύτος δεδοξασμὲνος καί λάμπων ἀστραπή θεότητος, ἀνάρχως μεν γαρ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρός γεννηθεῖς, τήν φυσικήν ἀκτίνα ἄναρχον κέκτηται τῆς θεότητος και ἡ τῆς θεότητος δόξα και δόξα τοῦ σώματος γίνεται [He did not want to listen the holy father John Damascene who said: in front of his disciples is Transfigured, who He is glorified and shined on a lighting of the Divinity beginningless begotten from the Father, the natural shine beginningless owns of the Divinity, and the glory of Divinity becomes glory of the body]. Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, First Oration on the Tabor Light §6, p. 136. 21 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, Fourth Oration on the Tabor Light §6, p. 248: τοὐναντίον μὲν οὖν ἅπαν διὰ τὴν καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἕνωσιν καὶ τὴν ἐν ἀλλήλαις τῶν φύσεων περιχώρησιν ἡ δόξα τῆς θεότητος δόξα καὶ τοῦ σώματος γέγονε [the glory of the divinity became also glory of His body due to the hypostatic union and the perichoresis of the natures]. On the Perichoresis see Vasileios Tsingos, Περιχώρισις (Thessaloniki, 2015). 22 Nicephorus Patriarch of Constantinople, ᾿Αντιρρητικός (Antirrheticus), 2, 3, PG 100, 337. See also Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago, 1977), 93. 23 Nicephorus Patriarch of Constantinople, ᾿Αντιρρητικός (Antirrheticus), 2, 3, PG 100, 336. 24 I. Polemis, Theophanes of Nicea (1996), 112.

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has the same meaning as Dionisius the Areopagite characterizes the gifts of the Eucharist as symbols. The body of Christ in the Eucharist is not a symbol or an account of not being real. On the contrary, he emphatically affirms that the Eucharistic bread is His body which is hypostatically united with his divinity,25 quoting Pope Leo’s Letter to Flavian of Constantinople (in which Leo defends the reality of the hypostatic union of the two natures and its implications naming the communication of idioms)26 and criticizing this anti-Palamite argument in the context of the Fourth Ecumenical Council. He also quotes directly Dionisius’ Celestial Hierarchy, taking him as authority stating that the Areopagite calls the gifs of the Eucharist symbols and the Eucharist a ‘Theurgy’(θεουργία).27 The term θεουργία, according to Theophanes, is ‘the transmission of the divine grace for the theosis (divinization) of man’.28 As N. Russel concludes, 25 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, Third Oration on the Tabor Light §5, p. 212: Ὡσαύτως ὁ παρὰ τῆς ἱεραρχικῆς τε καὶ ἱερατικῆς τάξεως ἱερουργούμενος ἑκάστοτε θειότατος ἄρτος αὐτό ἐστι τὸ καθ’ ὑπόστασιν ἡνωμένον τῇ θεότητι τοῦ μονογενοῦς σῶμα [in the same manner, whenever the divine bread is officiated by the bishops or priests, this is the body of the only begotten Son, united hypostatically with the divinity]. 26 Leo the Great (Pope), Ἐπιστολή πρός Φλαβιανόν Κωνσταντινουπόλεως (Epistle. 28 To Flavian), A.C.O. II, 1.1, p. 14.26: ἐνεργεί μεν ἑκατέρα μορφή μετὰ τῆς θατέρου κοινωνίας, ὅπερ ἴδιον ἔσχηκεν [For each form does what is proper to it with the co-operation of the other (retrieved by https://www.ccel.org)]. 27 Dionisius Areopagite, Περί ᾿Εκκλησιαστικής ῾Ιεραρχίας (Ecclesial Hierarchy) 2, 12, PG 3, 425D: Καὶ τὰς ἱερὰς θεουργίας ὁ ἱεράρχης ὑμνήσας ἱερουργεῖ τὰ θειότατα καὶ ὑπ’ ὄψιν ἄγει τὰ ὑμνημένα διὰ τῶν ἱερῶς προκειμένων συμβόλων, καὶ τὰς δωρεὰς τῶν θεουργιῶν ὑποδείξας εἰς κοινωνίαν αὐτῶν ἱερὰν αὐτός τε ἔρχεται καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους προτρέπεται. [The hierarch speaks in praise of the sacred works of God, sets about the performance of the most divine acts and lifts into view the things praised through the sacredly displayed symbols. Having thus revealed the kindly gifts of the work of God, he himself comes into communion with them and exhorts the others to follow him. (Pseudo-Dionisius, The Complete Works, The Classics of Western Spirituality [New York, 1987], 211)]. Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, Third Oration on the Tabor Light §5, p. 212: Ἀλλὰ τὸ παρ’ ἡμῶν ἐσθιόμενόν τε καὶ πινόμενον τοῦτο δεσποτικὸν σῶμα καὶ αἷμα, θεῖα σύμβολα παρὰ τοῦ μεγάλου Διονυσίου καλεῖται τούτῳ τῷ λόγῳ. Ὁ γὰρ Κύριος καὶ Θεὸς ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦς δι’ ἡμᾶς καθ’ ἡμᾶς γενόμενος τὴν προσληφθεῖσαν φύσιν τῆς φθοροποιοῦ ἁμαρτίας καὶ τοῦ θανάτου ἀπήλλαξε διὰ τῆς ἀπορρήτου ταύτης οἰκονομίας καὶ τῶν θεοπρεπῶν ἔργων, ἅτινα ἔργα θεουργίας ὁ θεῖος καλεῖ Διονύσιος· τῆς δὲ τοιαύτης θεουργίας τὸ τέλος ἦν τὸ τὸν ἄνθρωπον θεὸν κατὰ χάριν γενέσθαι τῇ τῆς θείας φύσεως κοινωνία [But the Lord’s body and blood, which we eat and drink, are called by the great Dionisius divine Symbols. Our Lord and God, Jesus, who is begotten for us, released human nature, which was conceived from sin and death, with this mystical Economy and the divine work, which Dionisius calls “work of theourgy”. The purpose of the theourgy is to divinize humanity by grace through the participation of the divine nature]. More in ‘theourgy’ and its philosophical and theological significance in Areopagite and Maximus see Panagiotis Pavlos, ‘Theurgy in Dionisius the Areopagite’, in Panagiotis G. Pavlos, Lars Fredrik Janby, Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson and Torstein Theodor Tollefsen (eds), Platonism and Christian Thought in Late Antiquity (London, 2019), 151-80. 28 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, Third Oration on the Tabor Light §5, p. 213.

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theosis, is the consummation of grace in action according to Palamites. This grace in action is the uncreated grace which represents the biblical ‘outpouring’ of the Spirit.29 In the prementioned passage the consequences of the hypostatic union regarding the Eucharistic body of Christ are clearly explained. The Eucharistic interpretation of the term θεουργία in the Palamite texts is not an intellectual or theological innovation but the expression of the liturgical and hymnological tradition of the Church. In that sense, the Eucharist, whenever it is celebrated, may be regarded as a symbol and as a type of the Resurrection 30 and the pneumatically seen Logos (πνευματικῶς ὁρώμενος Λόγος).31 29

N. Russel, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (2019), 208-9. Gregory Nazianzus, Λόγος εἰς τό ῾Αγιον Πάσχα (Oration 45 in Sanctum Pascha), PG 36, 654C-656A: Μεταληψόμεθα δὲ τοῦ Πάσχα, νῦν μὲν τυπικῶς ἔτι, καὶ εἰ τοῦ παλαιοῦ γυμνότερον (τὸ γὰρ νομικὸν Πάσχα, τολμῶ καὶ λέγω, τύπου τύπος ἦν ἀμυδρότερος)· μικρὸν δὲ ὕστερον, τελεώτερον καὶ καθαρώτερον, ἡνίκα ἂν αὐτὸ πίνῃ καινὸν μεθ’ἡμῶν ὁ Λόγος ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τοῦ Πατρὸς, ἀποκαλύπτων καὶ διδάσκων, ἃ νῦν μετρίως παρέδειξε. Καινὸν γάρ ἐστιν ἀεὶ τὸ νῦν γνωριζόμενον [Now we will partake of a Passover which is still typical; though it is plainer than the old one. For that is ever new which is now becoming known. It is ours to learn what is that drinking and that enjoyment, and His to teach and communicate the Word to His disciples. For teaching is food, even to the Giver of food. Come hither then, and let us partake of the Law, but in a Gospel manner, not a literal one; perfectly, not imperfectly; eternally, not temporarily (Retrived from https://www.ccel.org)]. John Damascene, ῎Εκδοσις ᾿Ακριβής τῆς ᾿Ορθοδόξου Πίστεως (Expositio Fidei), ed. B. Kotter, p. 198: Εἰ δὲ καί τινες «ἀντίτυπα» τοῦ σώματος καὶ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ Κυρίου τὸν ἄρτον καὶ τὸν οἶνον ἐκάλεσαν, ὡς ὁ θεοφόρος ἔφη Βασίλειος, οὐ μετὰ τὸ ἁγιασθῆναι εἶπον, ἀλλὰ πρὶν ἁγιασθῆναι αὐτὴν τὴν προσφορὰν οὕτω καλέσαντες […] Ἀντίτυπα» δὲ τῶν μελλόντων λέγονται οὐχ ὡς μὴ ὄντα ἀληθῶς σῶμα καὶ αἷμα Χριστοῦ, ἀλλ᾿ ὅτι νῦν μὲν δι᾿ αὐτῶν μετέχομεν τῆς Χριστοῦ θεότητος, τότε δὲ νοητῶς διὰ μόνης τῆς θέας [But if some persons called the bread and the wine antitypes of the body and blood of the Lord, as did the divinely inspired Basil, they said so not after the consecration but before the consecration, so calling the offering itself. […] Further, antitypes of future things are spoken of, not as though they were not in reality Christ’s body and blood, but that now through them we partake of Christ’s divinity, while then we shall partake mentally through the vision alone (Retrieved from https://www.ccel.org)]. Basil the Great, Liturgy, Εὐχήν ἐν τῷ συστείλλαι τά ῞Αγια, ed. J. Goar, p. 149: Ἥνυσται καί τετέλεσται, ὅσον εἰς τήν ἡμετέραν δύναμιν, Χριστέ ὁ Θεός ἡμῶν, τό τῆς σῆς οἰκονομίας μυστήριον˙ ἔσχομεν γαρ τοῦ θανάτου σου τήν μνήμην˙ εἴδομεν τῆς ἀναστάσεώς σου τόν τύπον˙ ἐνεπλήσθημεν τῆς ἀτελευτήτου σου ζωῆς˙ ἀπηλαύσαμεν τῆς ἀκενώτου σου τρυφῆς ἡς καί ἐν τῶ μέλλοντι αἰώνι πάντας ἡμάς καταξιωθήναι εὐδόκησον, χάριτι τοῦ ἀνάρχου σου Πατρός, καί τοῦ ῾Αγίου καί ἀγαθοῦ καί ζωοποιοῦ σου Πνεύματος, νῦν καί ἀεί καί εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. ᾿Αμήν [The mystery of Your dispensation, O Christ our God, has been accomplished and perfected as far as it is in our power. We have had the memorial of Your death. We hove seen the type of Your resurrection. We have been filled with Your unending life. We have enjoyed Your inexhaustible delight which in the world to come be well pleased to give to us all, through the grace of Your holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages (The Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great, ed. Fr. N. Michael Vaporis, retrieved from https://www.goarch.org/-/the-divine-liturgy-of-saint-basil-the-great)]. 31 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, Third Oration on the Tabor Light §5, p. 213-24: Ἀλλ’ ἡ τοιαύτη θεουργία, ἤγουν ἡ μετάληψις καὶ κοινωνία, καὶ παρὰ τοῦ Σωτῆρος κατὰ τὸν μυστικὸν δεῖπνον ἱερουργήθη συμβολικῶς, καὶ νῦν καθ’ ἑκάστην παρὰ τῆς ἀρχιερατικῆς τε καὶ ἱερατικῆς τάξεως· τό τε γὰρ 30

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The fathers of the Hesychastical movement were trying to rearrange and connect the ‘lex orandi’ and the dogmatic expositions of the Ecumenical councils with the liturgical cycle of the main feasts of the ecclesial calendar, starting from the feast of the Entrance of Virgin Mary in the Temple, through the Annunciation, the Nativity, His presentation to the Temple, Baptism and Transfiguration in order to reach Crucifixion, Resurrection and Pentecost, that conclude the whole mystery of Divine Economy. This interpretation is not independent from the causes of the Palamite Controversy. In fourteenth century, due to Messalianism and other philosophical movements one observes an autonomous interpretation of the divine Economy, downgrading the Prophetic and Apostolic evidences in a process of a logical and intellectual interpretation on the one hand, and the Messalianic tendencies for an autonomistic vision of the neptical tradition, which on the other side is set outside of the context of the unified Prophetic-Apostolic and symbolic testimonies.32 In that sense, Palamites project the criteria of interpretation of the divine Economy, starting from the Prophetic and Apostolic testimonies of the Theophanies. Secondly, the Baptismal confession of faith according to the NiceanConstantinopolitan Creed as the summary of the Scriptures following by the Synodical-Patristic interpretation of the Creed for the work of Logos and the work of the Spirit which ‘sustains the institution of the Church’,33 and lastly the liturgical practice that is testified through the Synodical act and practice.34 With those criteria we have to interpret the care of Theophanes of Nicaea about the true meaning of Transfiguration and the notion of the Divine light. He underlines in his third and fourth Oration the revelation of Logos in the prophets of the Old Testament that are represented in the Transfiguration by σῶμα τοῦ θεουργοῦντος ὡς ἄρτος ὁρᾶται καὶ ἡ μετάληψις τούτου καὶ κοινωνία, δι’ ἧς συναρμολογούμεθα τούτῳ, συμβολικὴ καὶ τυπική τις ἐστί· διὰ γὰρ βρώσεως τελεῖται καὶ πόσεως αἰσθητῆς [But this theourgy, that is perception and communion, which was celebrated by Saviour in the Last Supper symbolically, and now is celebrated by the bishops and priests. His body is visualized as bread and his perception by us and communion in which we are united with him, is symbolically and a type visualised by the perceptible eating and drinking]. 32 Despo Lialiou, Τὸ Μυστήριο τῆς Θείας Οἰκονομίας κατὰ τὰ Ἀναγνώσματα τῆς Κυριακῆς καί τινων ἑορτῶν (Retrieved from https://auth.academia.edu/DespoLialiou), 2nd Sunday of the Lent, no. 7. 33 Stichiron of the Vespers, Sunday of Pentecost: Πάντα χορηγεῖ τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, βρύει προφητείας, ἱερέας τελειοῖ, ἀγραμμάτους σοφίαν ἐδίδαξεν, ἁλιεῖς θεολόγους ἀνέδειξεν, ὅλον συγκροτεῖ τὸν θεσμὸν τῆς Ἐκκλησίας. Ὁμοούσιε καὶ Ὁμόθρονε, τῷ Πατρὶ καὶ τῷ Υἱῷ, Παράκλητε, δόξα σοι [The Holy Spirit provideth all things; He gusheth forth prophecy; He perfecteth the priesthood; He hath taught wisdom to the illiterate. He hath shown forth the fishermen as theologians. He holdeth together the whole institution of the Church. Wherefore, O Comforter, one in essence and throne with the Father and the Son, glory be to Thee (Retrieved from the Ελληνικά Λειτουργικά κείμενα της Ορθόδοξης Εκκλησίας http://glt.goarch.org/ and http://www.st-sergius.org/services.html)]. 34 D. Lialiou, Τὸ Μυστήριο τῆς Θείας Οἰκονομίας κατὰ τὰ Ἀναγνώσματα τῆς Κυριακῆς καί τινων ἑορτῶν, 2nd Sunday of the Lent, no. 7.

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Moses and Elijah. According to the hymns of the pre-feast day and especially in Vespers, an analogy is made between Moses who went through the ‘bright cloud’ to receive the Law, and the ‘bright and lightning cloud’ in the Transfiguration which represents the presence of the Holy Spirit. This presence is the testimony that, He is the ‘Pneumatically Seen’ Logos by Moses and the Prophets.35 After the Ascension the recognition and the confession of Christ as God in the church of Pentecost is only ‘Pneumatically’, exactly as Christ, the Incarnated Logos acts the miracles (σημεῖα) with the one and same identical energy with the Spirit, in order to identify the presence of the Spirit in the world.36 Christ Transfigured, according to the hymns of the Canon of the feast day, is the one and identical Logos who people have to confess as God, pneumatically seen, who enlightens the whole creation as He did before without flesh.37 In Transfiguration, as in His Baptism, the whole Trinity is revealed, but furthermore during the Transfiguration is revealed the sanctification and the introduction in the Church for salvation of the whole creation, because Christ is one that recapitulates in Him all the prefiguration of the Old Testament38 as 35 Stichiron of the Vespers of 5th August: Δεῦτε συνανέλθωμεν, τῷ Ἰησοῦ ἀναβαίνοντι, εἰς τὸ ὄρος τὸ ἅγιον, κἀκεῖ ἀκουσώμεθα, φωνῆς Θεοῦ ζῶντος, Πατρὸς προανάρχου, διὰ νεφέλης φωτεινῆς, προσμαρτυρούσης ἐν θείῳ Πνεύματι, αὐτοῦ τὴν γνησιότητα, τῆς ἀϊδίου Υἱότητος, καὶ τὸν νοῦν φωτιζόμενοι, ἐν φωτὶ φῶς ὀψώμεθα [Come, let us go up with Jesus, Who ascendeth the holy mountain, and there let us listen to the voice of the living God, the beginningless Father, which through the divine Spirit beareth witness by a cloud to His true Sonship and, illumined in mind, let us gaze upon Light amid light. (Retrieved from the Ελληνικά Λειτουργικά κείμενα της Ορθόδοξης Εκκλησίας http://glt.goarch.org/ and http://www.st-sergius.org/services.html)]. 36 D. Lialiou, Τὸ Μυστήριο τῆς Θείας Οἰκονομίας κατὰ τὰ Ἀναγνώσματα τῆς Κυριακῆς καί τινων ἑορτῶν, Pre-feast of Transfiguration (5th August), no. 32. 37 Canon A, 5th Ode: Ὁ τοῦ φωτὸς διατμήξας τὸ πρωτόγονον χάος, ὡς ἐν φωτὶ τὰ ἔργα ὑμνεῖ σε Χριστέ, τὸν Δημιουργόν, ἐν τῷ φωτί σου τὰς ὁδοὺς ἡμῶν εὔθυνον [Thou hast parted light from the primal chaos, that Thy works might hymn Thee in light, O Christ, as their Creator do Thou direct our paths in Thy light (Retrieved from the Ελληνικά Λειτουργικά κείμενα της Ορθόδοξης Εκκλησίας http://glt.goarch.org/ and http://www.st-sergius.org/services.html)]. 38 Stichiron in Liti of the Vespers: Νόμου καὶ Προφητῶν σε Χριστέ, ποιητὴν καὶ πληρωτὴν ἐμαρτύρησαν, ὁρῶντες ἐν τῇ νεφέλῃ, Μωϋσῆς ὁ θεόπτης καὶ Ἠλίας ὁ ἔμπυρος ἁρματηλάτης, καὶ ἄφλεκτος οὐρανοδρόμος, ἐπὶ τῆς Μεταμορφώσεώς σου, μεθ’ ὧν καὶ ἡμᾶς, τοῦ σοῦ φωτισμοῦ ἀξίωσον Δέσποτα, ὑμνεῖν σε εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας [Moses the God-beholder and Elijah of the fiery chariot, who traversed the heavens without being consumed, beholding Thee, O Christ, in the cloud at Thy transfiguration, bore witness to Thee as the Creator and Fulfiller of the law and the prophets. With them grant Thine enlightenment also unto us, O Master, that we may hymn Thee throughout the ages], and Stichiron of the Aposticha in the Vespers: Ὁ πάλαι τῷ Μωσεῖ συλλαλήσας, ἐπὶ τοῦ ὄρους Σινᾶ διὰ συμβόλων. Ἐγὼ εἰμι, λέγων ὁ Ὤν, σήμερον ἐπ’ ὄρος Θαβώρ, μεταμορφωθεὶς ἐπὶ τῶν μαθητῶν, ἔδειξε τὸ ἀρχέτυπον κάλλος τῆς εἰκόνος, ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην, ἀναλαβοῦσαν οὐσίαν, καὶ τῆς τοιαύτης χάριτος, μάρτυρας παραστησάμενος Μωϋσῆν καὶ Ἠλίαν, κοινωνοὺς ἐποιεῖτο τῆς εὐφροσύνης, προμηνύοντας τὴν ἔνδοξον διὰ Σταυροῦ, καὶ σωτήριον Ἀνάστασιν [He Who of old spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai in images, saying: “I am He Who is”, is today transfigured before His disciples on Mount Tabor, and having shown forth the pristine beauty of His countenance, hath taken upon Himself human nature. And

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‘Light from Light’ according to the Nicaean Creed. Due to our limited noetic powers, which are created, this ‘pneumatic vision’ of the Prophets, Apostles and Saints, is given with words, symbols and notions taken by the physical reality in order to be understood by anyone.39 Echoing the Horos of the Seventh Ecumenical Council and the distinction made by the fathers of that Synod between σύμβολον and εἰκών,40 Theophanes is trying to explain the relation between σύμβολον and its truth (ἀλήθειαν) based on Maximus the Confessor, regarding the Divine light.41 The first who used the Maximian terminology to justify his views on the Taboric vision was Gregory Akindynos opposing Palamas’ position. God for Akindynos may be known symbolically or by likeness as the Prophets taught.42 having set before them Moses and Elijah as witnesses to this grace, He made them partakers of gladness who, for the sake of the Cross, proclaim His glorious and saving resurrection], and Stichiron of the Aposticha in the Vespers: Τὸ ἄσχετον τῆς σῆς φωτοχυσίας, καὶ ἀπρόσιτον τῆς Θεότητος, θεασάμενοι τῶν Ἀποστόλων οἱ πρόκριτοι, ἐπὶ τοῦ ὄρους τῆς Μεταμορφώσεως, ἄναρχε Χριστέ, τὴν θείαν ἠλλοιώθησαν ἔκστασιν, καὶ νεφέλῃ περιλαμφθέντες φωτεινῇ, φωνῆς ἤκουον Πατρικῆς, βεβαιούσης τὸ μυστήριον τῆς σῆς ἐνανθρωπήσεως, ὅτι εἷς ὑπάρχεις καὶ μετὰ σάρκωσιν, Υἱὸς μονογενὴς καὶ Σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου [The foremost of the apostles, beholding Thine unbearable splendor and Thine unapproachable divinity, O beginningless Christ, were stricken with godly awe; and, covered with a radiant cloud, they heard the voice of the Father proclaiming the mystery of Thy becoming a man; for Thou alone, even after Thine incarnation, art the only-begotten Son and Savior of the world (Retrieved from the Ελληνικά Λειτουργικά κείμενα της Ορθόδοξης Εκκλησίας http://glt.goarch.org/ and http://www.st-sergius. org/services.html). 39 D. Lialiou, Τὸ Μυστήριο τῆς Θείας Οἰκονομίας κατὰ τὰ Ἀναγνώσματα τῆς Κυριακῆς καί τινων ἑορτῶν, Feast of Transfiguration (6th August), no. 33. 40 Theophanes namely in his text mentions: Theodore Studite, Letter to Platon, PG 99, 504CD, Επιστολαί II, 194, PG 99, 1589D, Nicephorus Patriarch of Constantinople, Antirrhetic 3, 18, PG 100, 404A and 408AB. Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, Fourth Oration on the Tabor Light §4, p. 243-4. 41 Maximus the Confessor, Περί διαφόρων ἀποριῶν, ed. and trans. N. Constas, 10, 17, pp. 190-3: Τὴν μὲν ἀκτινοφανῶς ἐκλάμπουσαν τοῦ προσώπου πανόλβιον αἴγλην, ὡς πᾶσαν ὀφθαλμῶν νικῶσαν ἐνέργειαν, τῆς ὑπὲρ νοῦν καὶ αἴσθησιν καὶ οὐσίαν καὶ γνῶσιν θεότητος αὐτοῦ σύμβολον εἶναι μυστικῶς ἐδιδάσκοντο[…] καὶ πρὸς τὴν ὡς Μονογενοῦς παρὰ Πατρὸς πλήρη χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας δόξαν διὰ τῆς παντελῶς πᾶσιν ἀχώρητον αὐτὸν ἀνυμνούσης θεολογικῆς ἀποφάσεως γνωστικῶς ἀναγόμενοι, τὰ δὲ λευκανθέντα ἱμάτια τῶν ῥημάτων τῆς ἁγίας Γραφῆς φέρειν σύμβολον, ὡς τηνικαῦτα λαμπρῶν καὶ τρανῶν καὶ σαφῶν αὐτοῖς γενομένων, καὶ παντὸς γριφώδους αἰνίγματος καὶ συμβολικοῦ σκιάσματος χωρὶς νοουμένων, καὶ τὸν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὄντα τε καὶ καλυπτόμενον παραδηλούντων λόγον, ὁπηνίκα τὴν τελείαν καὶ ὀρθὴν περὶ Θεοῦ γνῶσιν ἔλαβον, καὶ τῆς πρὸς τὸν κόσμον καὶ τὴν σάρκα προσπαθείας ἠλευθερώθησαν [They were taught, in a hidden way, that the wholly blessed radiance that shone with dazzling rays of light from the Lord’s face, completely overwhelming the power of their eyes, was a symbol of His divinity, which transcends intellect, sensation, being and knowledge […] they were also taught that the garments which became dazzling white, convey a symbol: first, of the words of the Holy Scripture, which at the moment became bright, clear and transparent to them, grasped by the intellect without any dark riddles or symbolic shadows and pointing to the meaning (logos) that lay concealed within them (at which point the disciples received the perfect and correct knowledge of God, and were set free from every attachment to the world and the flesh)]. 42 Gregory Akindynos, Refutation, ed. J. Nadal, IV, pp. 322-3.

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Even though these views were not included in the Synodal Tome of 1351, Prohoros Cydones in the early of 1368 with his treatise ‘De essentia et operatione Dei’ asks the question intensively again. God can be called light by analogy but not as Theophany, because in reality, this light is a created divinity.43 Explaining further his views in his Apology on the Synod of 1368,44 he defends the use of syllogisms and the ‘Analogia entis’ in theological affairs in the same manner as Thomas Aquinas does, reproducing verbatim many passages of the ‘Summa Contra Gentiles’ and ‘Summa Theologiae’ in Greek translations made by his brother Demetrius. Theophanes on the contrary, underlines that the Divine light cannot be considered as an icon but as a symbol of divinity only if it is considered in one subject (ὑποκείμενον), which is the natural glory of the Son of God, who has it from his Father,45 as the Tome of 1351 declares.46 3. Concluding remarks It is proven that Theophanes of Nicaea in his Orations on the Divine light bases his argumentation on the patristic literature in order to defend the Tome of 1368. We can suppose that he also takes the opportunity to express his faith on the subject. As he was absent from the Synod, he consequently did not sign it. He builds his opposition to Prohoros’ views on the interpretation of the dogmatic and symbolic texts of the Church, as he recognizes that Prohoros’ argumentation falsifies the Christological affirmations of the Fouth, Sixth and Seventh Ecumenical councils. In the Palamite controversy we have to observe that there is no development of the doctrine as modern scholars expressed recently.47 In the Tome of 1351 is indicated that the Fathers of the Synod gave an explanation (ἑρμηνεία) of the Sixth Ecumenical council.48 The same indication we observe also in the Tome of 1368. Theophanes’ of Nicaea references the Ecumenical councils to 43

Prohoros Cydones, De essentia et operatione Dei VI, 9, ed. M. Candal, p. 270.1-9. Τόμος κατά τοῦ μοναχοῦ Προχόρου τοῦ Κυδώνη (Synodal Tome 1369), ed. A. Rigo, p. 109. 45 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, Third Oration on the Tabor Light §11, p. 230. 46 Τόμος συνοδικός ἐκτεθείς παρά τῆς θείας καί ἱεράς συνόδου τῆς συγκροτηθείσης κατά τῶν φρονούντων τα Βαρλαάμ καί ᾿Ακινδύνου, ἐπί τῆς βασιλείας τῶν εὐσεβῶν βασιλέων ἡμών Καντακουζηνοῦ καί Παλαιολόγου (Tome of 1351), ed. A. Meloni and D. Dainese, 213. For further analysis of the tome of 1351 see D. Lialiou, ‘Ὁ Ἁγιορειτικός Τόμος, Ὑπὲρ τῶν ἱερῶς ἡσυχαζόντων (Εἰσαγωγικά, ἱστορικά, θεολογικά καὶ ἑρμηνευτικά συμφραζόμενα)’ (1998), 409-38. 47 More on those discussions and critics see N. Russel, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (2019), 133-62. 48 D. Lialiou, ‘Ὁ Ἁγιορειτικός Τόμος, Ὑπὲρ τῶν ἱερῶς ἡσυχαζόντων (Εἰσαγωγικά, ἱστορικά, θεολογικά καὶ ἑρμηνευτικά συμφραζόμενα)’ (1998), 409-38; N. Russel, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (2019), 160-1 and 237. 44

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support his argumentation and to prove that there is no innovation in the Palamite theology. It has to be noted that in that controversy the major discussions where on the light of Transfiguration. The Palamite hermeneutical approach of Transfiguration, which Theophanes follows, indicates the interpretation of the eschatological teaching of the Nicaean Creed because in the Transfiguration the Triune God is revealed. Christ recapitulates in Him all the types and prefigures in Him at the same time the ἔσχατα and the judgment of all creation. Every Theophany (revelation), either as a prefiguration and revelation of the non-fleshy Logos (ἄσαρκος Λόγος), or as a fulfillment, that is, a recapitulation, truth, and revelation of the Incarnated Logos, or as a revelation of the Resurrected Christ and Spiritually seen, is a gift of the Triune God, through His uncreated energy, bringing into existence the world, raising beings into light, making them sustainable in being, and according to their receptivity deifies them through the mystery of Eucharist,49 which is the fulfilment of the mystery of the divine Economy.50 Due to human’s inaccessibility to understand the mystery of the divine Economy, the Prophetic, Apostolic, and Hymnological interpretations of the prophetic and apostolic visions and the testimonies of the saints are given by the use of verbs and terminology as representations and symbols drawn from the physical reality, so that they may be perceived by each, without mental shapes.51 At the same time, however, more accurate terminology should be given when aspects of the Divine Economy are falsified in order to signify the inerrancy character of the Theophanies. Consequently, we can assume that with those Orations, Theophanes justifies and accepts the decisions of the Tome of 1368, even though he did not sign it, due to his absence and places himself with the Palamites.

More on Eschatological interpretation of the Transfiguration, see Fadi Georgi, Η Ανάστασις και η Ζωή. Η Εσχατολογία του Αγίου Γρηγορίου Παλαμά (Thessaloniki, 2010), 189-219. 50 D. Lialiou, Τὸ Μυστήριο τῆς Θείας Οἰκονομίας κατὰ τὰ Ἀναγνώσματα τῆς Κυριακῆς καί τινων ἑορτῶν, Feast of Transfiguration (6th August), no. 33. 51 Theophanes of Nicea, Λόγοι πέντε περί Θαβωρίου Φωτός (Orations on the Light of Tabor), ed. G. Zacharopoulos, Fourth Oration on the Tabor Light §10, p. 255. See also in D. Lialiou, Τὸ Μυστήριο τῆς Θείας Οἰκονομίας κατὰ τὰ Ἀναγνώσματα τῆς Κυριακῆς καί τινων ἑορτῶν, Feast of Transfiguration (6th August), no. 33. 49