St. John of Damascus (ca. 675-ca. 750)

ANDREW LOUTH

Monk and theologian. Born probably in Damascus, John belonged to a family that had played a prominent role in the fiscal administration of Syria throughout the political changes of the 7th century, and he himself served under the caliph in Damascus. Probably early in the 8th century he left the service of the caliph and became a monk in or near Jerusalem (according to a late tradition at the Monastery of Mar Sava in the Judean Desert).

He was a prolific writer, most of his works being written while he was a monk. In his day, he had, as the chronicler Theophanes bears witness, a great reputation as a preacher, though only about a dozen of his homilies survive. He was also an important composer ofliturgical poetry, much ofwhich is still sung in the churches of the Byzantine tradition, and was one of the first to develop the genre of the canon, which forms the heart of the dawn office (Orthros). His prose works are mostly polemical or expository, defending and setting forth the theological tradition of the ecumenical councils against those groups who rejected it and had found relative religious freedom under the Muslim yoke. He is the first Christian theologian to write about Islam from direct knowledge. He also achieved renown in his own lifetime for his opposition to the Byzantine iconoclasm introduced by Emperor Leo V.

John saw himself as a defender of conci­liar orthodoxy, as it had developed up to St Maximos the Confessor, and he epito­mized the Greek patristic tradition in an important trio of works based on the genre of a century, primarily a vehicle for monastic meditation. These included a handbook of logic (Dialectica), which expounded a basically Aristotelian logic and the technical language of Greek theology; a century on heresies – the eighty chapters of an epitome of Epiphanios’ Panarion, supplemented by twenty chapters of John’s own composi­tion, the last of which was on Islam; and a century summarizing the essential points of the Christian faith (On the Orthodox Faith, or Expositio Fidei) on the doctrines of God and the Trinity, creation (including a great deal of astronomical, geographical, physiological, and psychological learning), Christology, and various points concerned with Christian worship, the sacraments, icons, and the last things. On the Orthodox Faith was translated into many languages, including Latin, in which form it provided valuable access to Greek patristic theology for the Scholastics and later western theo­logians up to Schleiermacher. Perhaps his most creative theology is to be found in the three treatises John composed against iconoclasm, which contain a classical defense of icons in Christian worship, based princi­pally on the doctrine of the incarnation, but which give imagery a central epistemological role in Christian theology. The same use of imagery lies at the heart of his liturgical poetry. His treatises against the iconoclasts were translated into Slavonic in the early modern period and provided an Orthodox defense of religious painting against Calvinist Protestantism.

SEE ALSO: Canon (Liturgical); Hymno- graphy; Iconoclasm; Orthros (Matins)

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Anderson, D. (trans.) (1980) St. John of Damascus: On the Divine Images. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Chase, F. H. (trans.) (1958) St. John of Damascus: The Fount of Knowledge. Fathers of the Church 37. New York: Fathers of the Church.

Louth, A. (2002) St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nasrallah, J. (1950) St. Jean deDamas: son epoque, sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris.

O’Rourke-Boyle, M. (1970) “Christ the Eikon in the Apologies for Holy Images of John of Damascus,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 15: 175–86. Sahas, D. J. (1972) John of Damascus on Islam: The “Heresy of the Ishmaelites.” Leiden: Brill. Salmond, S. (trans.) (1978) “St. John of Damascus: On the Orthodox Faith,” in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers vol. 9. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.