THEOLOGY

THEOLOGY. Theology in the Orthodox tradition has a considerably broader meaning than philosophical discourse about divinity. The latter applies, to be sure, when Christian thinkers were obliged to express and defend the faith in language borrowed from the Greek philosophical tradition of Plato and Neoplatonism (qq.v.). Nor, it must be added, did they feel the latter to be entirely at variance with the revelation in Christ. The history of Orthodox theology (as of Roman Catholic [qq.v.] and Protestant theology) is in great part the struggle against and in alliance with the inheritance of the great pagan Greeks. Borrowing a phrase from Fr. Georges Florovsky (q.v.), it is a wrestling with concepts in order to discover the words “most adequate” to the mystery of God (q.v.) become man (theoprepeis logoi).

In this struggle one may discern two basic approaches in Orthodox Church Fathers, as the former were categorized by Dionysius the Areopagite (qq.v.). There is first and primarily apophatic theology. This phrase goes beyond the mere negation of concepts. It denotes the fact that the transcendent God (q.v.) is, indeed, transcendent, other, and thus “known,” in Dionysius’s famous phrase, only “by unknowing.” Classically apophatic theology insists on a particular content to this “unknowing,” i.e., the possibility of a genuine experience of the unknowable God revealed in the Incarnate Word and communicated to the believer in the action (energeia) of the Holy Spirit (q.v.). This is therefore the real mystical theology, the union beyond word and concept.

The experience of the divine leads to the other approach of classical Eastern theology, affirmative or cataphatic theology. The Unknowable is revealed in his creation, in the words of the Scriptures (q.v.), and finally in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. These givens constitute the realm of the oikonomia, God’s self-extension into the universe for humanity’s creation and salvation. On the one hand, words and concepts must be assigned and accorded their full seriousness, though always with the proviso that they carry within themselves and point toward a presence that finally transcends both them and every artifice of the created intellect. On the other hand, certain concepts, or “names,” do carry a particular weight because they are revealed images, “notional icons” one might say, beyond which the believer cannot go. This applies with particular force to the names accorded the persons of the Trinity (q.v.). In the Trinity, and in the formulations of the Ecumenical Councils concerning Christology (qq.v.), apophatic and cataphatic can be seen to meet and fuse: not a man and a god, but the God-man, not One and not Three, but both, and beyond the categories of one and many.

Beyond the necessary intellectual engagement, the Church Fathers, the liturgy, and the tradition of Christian asceticism (qq.v.) express broader and higher meanings for theology, among them: 1) prayer (q.v.), “he who prays is a theologian,” says Evagrius of Pontus (q.v.); 2) glorification or praise occur particularly in the celebration of the liturgy, both on earth among human beings and in heaven with the angels; 3) the vision of God (q.v.) is anticipatory in this life and unendingly unfolded in increasing perfection in the age to come; and finally 4) God himself who is the threefold unity of the Trinity. This rounded vision of theology as intellectual, scriptural, liturgical, and experiential was classically formulated in the Byzantine era, and exemplified with particular force in the writings of Gregory Palamas and Nicholas Cabasilas (qq.v.) in the 14th c. Under the impress of the West following the end of the Empire, Orthodox thought suffered a “pseudomorphosis”-borrowing once more from Florovsky-and its theology, at least the latter as printed in official church manuals, took on the shape and flavor of a third-rate Scholasticism (q.v.). The rediscovery of the patristic inheritance owes to two sources, the monastic revival stimulated by the Philokalia (q.v.) and the welcome assistance of Western historical scholarship, two streams that began to converge in Russia in the late 19th c. and early 20th c.

Outside the frontiers of its fixed theological inheritance, Orthodoxy gives considerable play to theological expression and opinion, to “things said theologically,” theologoumena. For example, the application of the mystery of Christ to contemporary Christian life is traditionally Orthodox, but today is usually categorized under moral theology-a relatively new phrase in the Orthodox lexicon. During the era of the Fathers the Church had been content with the ascetic tradition, on the one hand, and insistence on the basic norms of Christian behavior, exemplified in homilies on the preparation of the catechumenate for Baptism (q.v.), on the other. New times require new efforts and the range of behaviors or “lifestyles” (classically, “the way of life”) in late 20th-c. society is so wide and so confusing that Orthodox pastors and teachers are obliged to grapple with heretofore unknown issues: in vitro fertilization, euthanasia, genetic manipulation, etc. Nonetheless, new times do not always produce new problems. The old ones are quite active and resurface, such as the recent excitement over Just War theology. Some Orthodox writers have responded to this uniquely Western Christian theologoumenon, for which there appears to be little support in classical patristic thought. For the Fathers, war is always evil, and any killing, even in self-defense, is a sin (q.v.). Yet Byzantium (q.v.) and its successor Orthodox states have engaged in it. The question of war and its place-or lack thereof-in Orthodox thought and life requires the new application of both strictly theological reflection and of historical investigation.