Feb
19
Augustine and Maximos on Free Choice
February 19, 2007 |
As I mentioned in my post on the metaphysics of Saint Maximos the Confessor, Joseph Farrell does an admirable job of putting his explanation of the theological themes involved into their historical context. This feature of his analysis is strikingly evident in his assessment of the problem of free choice in the two Saints. After noting that the differences between East and West often amount to problems in the order and manner in which the West frames its questions, he puts Saint Augustine’s position into the context of Arianism on the one hand and the simplistic analysis of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus on the other:
For the Arians, the opposition of Christ’s will at Gethsemane to the Passion was a true opposition, and therefore, Christ was not God. For St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the same confusion of opposition and distinction held true, but that meant rather that Christ’s words - - “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; Nevertheless, let not what I will but thy will prevail” - - indicated that the Son had no special will of his Own in contradistinction to the Arian position. For St. Augustine, there are indeed two wills in Christ, the divine and the human. But, because he, like the Arians and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, cannot disentangle distinction from opposition, these two wills are opposed.
The importance of this, for Farrell, lies in his belief that this reading of St. Augustine explains why, in Farrell’s analysis, St. Augustine treats Christology as a whole as somehow subordinate to the theme of Predestination, and this is what he means when he speaks of the West putting questions in the wrong way or in the wrong order. Nor does it end with St. Augustine:
If this point were to be put in scholastic terms one would perhaps say that the treatise on Christology is a part of the much broader treatise on predestination, or providence, as is indeed the case in the general arrangement of the Summa Contra Gentiles of [St.] Thomas Aquinas, where in the first book God in His essence and attributes is discussed, followed by three intervening books [that] discuss providence, and finally by the last book entitled Salvation in which the persons of the Trinity are discussed. In this general arrangement one may perhaps see the seeds of the modern “Christologies from below” being already sown.
I think Farrell is on to something here, though I’m not sure I would follow him in his conclusion that the West generally muddles issues that the East sees with preternatural perspicacity. Certainly the doctrine of Saint Augustine has a tendency to make some of us nervous, while the view of Saint Maximos, grounded as it is in metaphysics rather than logic, has a certain appeal. I doubt that it is warranted to go much beyond that as a general conclusion about the relative merits of East and West.
Where I think Farrell tends to stray, if that is the proper word, is when he appears to endorse the rather muddled metaphysics of later Greek theologians whose positions are more political than philosophically nuanced. This is particularly the case with the claims, made rather strenuously by Photios of Constantinople, that a confusion between Person and Nature lay behind the West’s mistaken endorsement of the Filioque.
Most importantly, Photios asks whether the Spirit’s procession is to be seen as a procession from the one divine person of Christ, or from His two natures, the point being, that if one could so confuse person and nature, the[n] the Spirit might just as easily be said to proceed from His humanity, since that, technically, was anointed, and therefore Christ.
It is rather ironic that Farrell does not submit Photios to the same critical scrutiny here as he did earlier and so effectively in the case of St. Augustine, for here is a clear case of putting the cart before the horse and coming up with an incorrect analysis due to a mistaken method of putting the question. As we have already seen in the posts on the Filioque controversy (for example, here, here, and principally here), Trinitarian doctrine cannot be understood independently of the predicational analysis of the metaphysical structures involved, and from that point of view it is quite clear that it is not a confusion of Person and Nature that explains the West’s commitment to the Filioque, but a desire for coherence (a property that was not always essential to the style of Photios). Be that as it may, Farrell rightly locates the Filioque controversy within the context of the Spanish Adoptionist heresy (though that connection is well known among scholars of the problem) and likens Saint Augustine’s doctrine of predestination and his “bottom-up” Christology to the metaphysical confusion underlying the Adoptionist controversy.
While that is, indeed, an interesting connection, I doubt very much that it is necessary to establish the attractiveness of Maximos’ idea that the two wills in Christ are not opposed in the way that Saint Augustine imagined. It gives a kind of genealogy of Augustinianism, but it can hardly serve as a refutation of it, any more than Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals establishes the arbitrariness of all moral discourse. More to the point is Farrell’s intuition - - surely correct - - that divine simplicity is underinterpreted in the writings of St. Augustine. Simplicity is not a univocal term, but Saint Augustine tends to treat it as though it were, and this leads him to assert that whatever is true of God is necessarily true of his attributes as well, one the grounds that the notion of truth itself with regards to a metaphysical simple can only be understood in this way. Augustine’s motive for treating God as an essence rather than a substance was not without merit, however (De Trinitate 7.5.10):
[if God may be called a "substance"] then there is something in him as in a subject, and he is no longer simple; his being, accordingly, would not be one and the same with the other qualities that are predicated of him in respect to himself…But it is wrong to assert that God subsists and is the subject of his own goodness…that God himself is not his own goodness, and that it inheres in him as in a subject.
Arguably there are more sophisticated ways to handle the problem that Saint Augustine has set himself, but I think Farrell pushes his thesis too hard when he uses this maneuver on Augustine’s part as a pretext for asserting that
the question for St. Augustine then became one of securely maintaining the real distinction of persons in the face of a simplicity [that] had already nullified the real quality and distinctions of the attributes amongst themselves. Here the subordination of the persons and attributes to the essence in the ordo theologiae also provides St. Augustine with the means to attempt to distinguish the persons from each other. Having assumed an absolute, definitional simplicity, the persons can no longer be absolute hypostases, but are merely relations, since the names Father, Son, and Spirit are terms relative to each other.
Unless sincerity of assertion can persuade, this fails to persuade. While it seems sensible to say that St. Augustine has maintained “an absolute, definitional simplicity” that may not hold up very well under intense critical scrutiny, in the absence of any non-polemical definitions of persons, hypostases, relations, and the metaphysical structures behind them, this particular claim falls rather flat. Sadly, it is just such a non-polemical explanation that Farrell fails to provide.
This does not diminish the importance of Farrell’s book, of course: in many ways it is quite clever, and it is certainly a stimulating read. In particular, he manages to make some very good historical sense out of the position of Maximos on free choice; I will turn to that topic in a subsequent post.
Comments
8 Comments so far
The political ad hom re Saint Photios is rather politically motivated as well as being dismissive. Lots of nasty things have been written about Photios, so I’d recommend putting the Cath Encyc down. The Latin’s need Photios to be mean, nasty, the eater of children and so they made him one.
But of course, he is a saint.
Farrell said: Most importantly, Photios asks whether the Spirit’s procession is to be seen as a procession from the one divine person of Christ, or from His two natures, the point being, that if one could so confuse person and nature, the[n] the Spirit might just as easily be said to proceed from His humanity, since that, technically, was anointed, and therefore Christ.
Scott: It is rather ironic that Farrell does not submit Photios to the same critical scrutiny here as he did earlier and so effectively in the case of St. Augustine
I’m confused by this statement here Scott. St. Photios point, and Farrell’s unpacking of the argument, is to show the fallaciousness of the “of” equals “from” argument that the Carolingians used to buttress the filioque. What textual scrutiny was Farrell supposed to apply here to Photios?
Photios
Photios,
It wasn’t particularly textual scrutiny that I had in mind when I wrote that, but rather a kind of historical scrutiny. I was thinking of the way in which Farrell assesses the, shall we say ordo theologiae in St. Augustine. When I read his book I was almost immediately persuaded that he was right about Augustine’s “bottom-up Christology” (actually, “bottom-up” is my phrase; probably not the best way of putting it), and I merely wondered whether it might not also be fair to ask methodological questions about how Our Father in the Faith Photios approaches the problem of the Procession. It seems to me that such questions are fair, and to ask them avoids possible charges of question begging. This is not to suggest that Our Father will, in the end, be liable to the same sorts of criticisms that St. Augustine fell victim to, only that the question seems to be a fair one but was not asked.
Ah, I gotcha now Scott. Well, I think Farrell would say now, or at least through my dialogues with him and his analysis in GHD, that it is difficult to label a very specific ordo theologiae in the texts of St. Augustine as a whole. This is because Farrell distinguishes between St. Augustine and “Augustinism” or shall we say an “Augustinian” mindset. The order of say a work like Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologiae, he would identify as “Augustinism” as well as other thinkers like the Carolingian Alcuin and Ratramnus to Anselm of Canterbury. St. Augustine the sermonizer and OT exegete he would identify as St. Augustine the great bishop and part of that consensus patrum on something called the “patristic ordo theologiae,” AND identify Augustine as the seed sower for “natural theology” in a work like De Trinitate. Even the Pelagian controversey is a mixed bag of how Augustine addresses the question. In some arguments, Augustine argues the need for baptism liturgically on the basis that infants are freed from the devil in the exsufflation rite (even if he misunderstands exactly on what basis we are held captive to the devil). Other arguments, say in a work like Rebuke and Grace, he subordinates the person of Christ to an overarching predestination of God. Christ is the most illustrious example of predestination. Here we see the interposition of an attribute between “God” and Christ, where God for Augustine is not so much the Trinity of Persons or God the Father as the creed says but the divine essence. Here we see the “Augustinian” ordo theologiae sown: essence (God) —> attributes (predestination) —> Persons (Christ). Is this the precursor for the Reformation disputes, and particularly Calvinism, on predestination? I think so and is the basis of why Barth criticized Calvin’s view of predestination as Arianism. Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and the Athanasius in the West Hilary of Poitiers identified any interposition of attributes between Persons as Arian. It is at this point that St. Photios draws on the tradition in maintaining that the Persons are absolutely unique. The ordo theologiae of Persons - (Operations - Essence) Nature is the basis of which Photios can say that properties are predicated about a Person, and the properties are absolutely unique and considered true and only true about THAT person or properties are absolutely in common amongst all the Persons, thus a property of their nature. For St. Augustine in De Trinitate God (the divine essence) is an absolutely simple essence, for St. Photios God (the Father) is a simple Trinity. Only after considering that each Person is simple, do we then make the “jump” and say that simplicity is a property of the nature: properties are predicated of persons. But by skipping that step and going straight to the essence for analysis, it is believed by Photios that the uniqueness of hypostatic properties will [eventually] be lost. Persons are no longer the BASIS for the relations amongst them, but now Persons are reduced to the very relations themselves because of the commitment to such a starting point in theology. Each model comes away with a very different understanding of Person I believe.
I am pleased to see in your analysis that you are saying so much about the “ordo theologiae.” That tells me you are understanding where we are coming from and why we are so different. The “ordo theologiae” is not an ontological PRIMACY of Person over against Nature, but rather an ontological PRIORITY in which we consider and address theological questions. Farrell has taken that step in labeling these two different mindsets in Christian thinkers for the ease of explanation and clarity. One mindset he believes to be left-over from the influence of Hellenistic thinking and the other is the inauguration of a new mindset from Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection.
I hope that helps.
Photios
Photios:
The distinction you’ve drawn between “ontological primacy” and “ontological priority”, affirming the latter while denying the former, is unclear to me. As you expound it, the latter seems to be more an epistemological priority. All that reflects is a denial of natural theology as a “preamble to faith” that could provide knowledge preserved and elevated by revelation.
As for Patriarch Photios, I agree that for him, hypostatic properties are “absolutely unique.” So if, as per the Cappadocians, causation of being ad intra is unique to the Father, it follows that the Son and the Holy Spirit have no role in each other’s coming forth from the Father. That of course rules out the filioque in the sense in which I’ve been expounding and defending it. But I have yet to see any good argument that we need to accept the premises.
Best,
Mike
Photios
Thank you for the clarification. I think I am slowly beginning to see the differences between the Photian and the Augustinian analyses. Like Mike, I’m not altogether sure I understand the difference between ontological primacy and ontological priority, but I’m hopeful that there will be some explanation of that that will make sense to me. In traditional metaphysics “primacy” and “priority” refer to the same thing, but I’m quickly learning that this is not traditional metaphysics we’re dealing with!
Whatever else I think I may finally decide regarding this whole issue, I think you are exactly right about the origin of the Calvinistic interpretation of predestination!
I don’t know. Let me think about that some more, but I definitely do recognize your concern for clarification. I know for Cappadocian epistemology that the way we know things and what we are knowing corresponds to how things really are.
Excellent–this will be a useful discussion for me, and stimulating as well, since the Cappadocian view, as you describe it, is the same as Aristotle’s, and one of my own particular interests lies in the way in which Greek philosophy generally works to link metaphysics with predication. I’ll be looking forward to your further comments!