THREE KINDS OF CHRISTIANITY
IN TWO PARTS

© 2000, 2003 by Orchid Land Publications

[updated 20030419]

PART ONE: THE LANDSCAPE

       To understand what follows, it is necessary to depart from the usual format of these pages and say what gave rise to the present page.  I had just been reading a recent letter on my site to a prominent Latin apologete and was in process of updating reading materials on a page of readings when I was putting back one of the books I had considered adding--a collection of Orthodox writings by D. B. Clendenin (an otherdox), Eastern Orthodox theology:  a contemporary reader.   ("Contemporary" is less than accurate, as nearly all of the material is by authors no longer alive; and prominent writers, among whom one should count Protopresbyter John Romanides, are not represented).  I had the book in hand and happened to start reading the last contribution, The Very Revd. A. Schmemann's "Moment of truth for Orthodoxy"--on the ecumenical movement and Orthodoxy.  I found far more than I expected; this gave me the impetus to write what follows.  
     One more item of relevance is that I had just written some potential converts to Orthodoxy how even sympathetic Western experts on Orthodoxy like J. Pelikan (a Protestant before he recently became Orthodox; I refer to his The spirit of Eastern Christendom and his Christianity and classical culture), Th. Spidlik (a Jesuit; his book on Orthodox praxis, Spirituality of the Christian East,  is subtitled "A systematic handbook"!), and other notable writers didn't even mention the key to understanding the Orthodox view of being--energy--the term is not even in the indexes of the highly learned volumes in question.  On checking Clendenin's collection, I of course found several entries; and this is what perhaps led me to examine the volume, which had been sitting on my shelf for some time, a bit more closely.  
     At this juncture, I wish to quote three remarkable passages from p. 207 of the writing--by Fr. A. Schmemann--under scrutiny.    

Since it cannot be better stated, I won't try.   

    1. The Greek-language paradigm of early Christianity (the divinely ordained vehicle for speaking about the Gospel and transmitting it having been the Greek of the first century) based the truth of a thought on being--on what is--and freewill was further depending on knowing what choices are available and what is entailed by each of those choices.  Most basically, reality is the actualization of potential reality--what is able to be made real, to be caused to exist.  (Knowing and willing are of course energies, as is existing.)  The boundary is drawn between potentiality and actuality:  Potentiality is dýnamis "power"; its actualization as a real act or entity is energization; for energy is what makes a power active and real, what causes it to live or exist--any existence being some kind of "activity" in this scheme.  Essence is more on the side of dýnamis, in contrast with energy.  Another boundary viewed as axiomatic is that between Uncreated and created.  While the Uncreated causes the created, the Uncreated Essence is not ontologically participable or intellectually knowable by created beings; the boundary between infinite Being beyond being and finite being is absolute.  The only continuing link between them is the uncreated Energy that emanates or radiates from uncreated Essence.  What exists (in the uncreated realm) is knowable.  The cosmos is intelligible because caused by the uncreated Logos.  Relations are real enough but are not real existents.  Despite this reservation, really and truly are synonymous.
    2a. The Dominican or Thomist paradigm, derived from Cordovan Aristotelianism (various Cordovans are cited as authorities by Thomas, while Aristotle is simply "the philosopher"), differentiates matter (materia, etymologically related to the Indo-European word for "mother") from form (forma).  These are not unrelated to potentiality and actuality, respectively, and indeed were referred to at times by Thomas himself as potentia and actus or operatio.  But actus turns out to mean a kind of realized potential that is a static result of some causation; it lacks the "energetic" quality of enéryeia in Greek and energy in English.  Moreover, it is "essential"; God's essence is actus purus--the realization of every potential (or, as the Latins put it:  the absence of all mere potential)--the energies of existing and intellection.  Even operatio, which dropped out of later usage except in denying that sanctifying Grace is a habitus operativus, is more abstract and static--though ontological (entitative), to be sure--than an energetic activity.  Thomism accepts that knowing something is having it somehow become part of the knower's being; and, in the case of God, knowing His Essence through an intellectual vision is partaking of His Essence in some way or other (intellectually or intentionally rather than ontologically).  There are numerous articles in Aquinas's writings about how God knows and how humans know.  The boundary between Essence and Energy is broken down (the divine Essence is [the Energy] of existing--being realized--and knowing); the boundary between real entities or subsistents and also the relations subsisting among them is broken down.  And the boundary between Uncreated and created is broken down, since there is an analogy (analogia entis) between the ways the two exist (this underlies the heresy of the Western Filioque).  It is even held that a created believer can both know and participate in the divine Essence (which is both unknowable and imparticipable by finite being in the first paradigm).  The boundary that is drawn is between an inert potential and a static form--the achieved result of some cause.  And rather than thinking of truth as depending on being simpliciter, there is a sense in which knowing and being are mutually tied together.  Will and intentionality come in--say in sacramental validity; Latins also say that sanctifying Grace is entitative, not operative; and that participation in the divine essence is not entitative but intentional.  While will is subordinate to intellect (epistemology) and being (ontology), it forms an essential condition for those kinds of reality just noted.  
     If this orientation is thus more "Alexandrine" or intellect oriented than "Antiochine" or Semitic, nevertheless, given the reality of forms and the fact that the soul is the formatrix or formatura of the body, the body loses some of the primal quality it has for 1.  Matter serves only to differentiate individual entities in 2a.  It, along with time, will be viewed more Gnostically in 2b, as will be seen presently.  
     2b. The Franciscan (and later Augustinian) or Scotist-Ockhamist paradigm is very clear that will is the primary reality, superior to intellect and being--both of which it can disregard and indeed supplant in a virtual reality.  It embraces the outlook of Cordovan (Semitic) culture more than Thomism does, and is of course even more juridically oriented.  God's Essence is will.  If will looks like an energy to an Orthodox, it must be viewed otherwise to understand the paradigm under scrutiny.  For where will causes things--whether perceptible or volitional/covenantal, though not merely metaphorical or relational:  The results or output of will are static rather than energetic--indeed, they are virtual.  Since willed covenants and promises are most real and are verbally "caused," words are very prominent; the Semitic element is quite evident here.  Words fall into two categories.  On the negative side, where relational classes like transindividual "natures" are mere words, they are hardly real for Nominalists.  But words have a more positive side evident in the centrality of "the book" and preaching in this framework.  Volitional words create covenants, promises, and laws, which are the really real things in this orientation.  And of course, Islamic predestination enters to defines the recipients of the virtual reality of divinely imputed righteousness (Grace).  A different boundary is erected between Uncreated and created will, as also between spirit and matter (and time).  Materiality and time do not count for much, as already intimated.  For Luther, a believer is in mere reality a sinner but by imputation (by God's will) righteous--and the latter counts for more than the former.  If covenants, promises, and laws are not everlasting as such (thus, the Old Covenant of the Hebrews gives way to the New Covenant of Christ and the Holy Spirit), they are not therefore necessarily finite like matter and time.  While finding meaning in time is thought by many to be one of the things that make humans different from animals, perhaps the only difference between humans and time lies in the way God views them.  In some unanalysed, assumed way, Christ's promise in John 16:13 that the Holy Paraclete would guide the faithful to all truth is timeless rather than temporal--everlasting even though it did not, given the incompatibility of the Reformation and all prior versions of Christianity, function in the time between early Christianity and the Reformers:  This temporal gap between early Greek-language Christianity is unreal and for all practical purposes not something to be concerned with, since the timeless promise eventually got fulfilled in the Reformation.  Like time and an unfolding tradition that sifts out error from durable truth, materiality is so negligible (a lot more negligible than in 2a) that it can and indeed should be discarded from religion.   Incarnation, fleshly Resurrection, Mystery (sacrament), etc., can, like time, play only conditional rôles at most in this framework; i.e. God had to become incarnate to teach on earth and to die a juridical (satisfying, atoning, redeeming, etc.) death; and it had to happen in time.   In place of a full emphasis on the resurrection of the body--the theme of the early Gospel--the Reformer Calvin spoke of the body as the soul's prison.   (See below for more on this Gnostic orientation toward matter and time in religion.)  Truth no longer depends on being but on will, which is now primal:  Not only is imputed righteousness more real than real righteousness; even faith is redefined in volitional or fiducial terms as fiducia "trust, loyalty."  Given the belittling of human will, the only realities in human beings is their disobedience of divine law and the virtual reality imputed to predestinated believers by the absolute and arbitrary will of the Creator.  Partaking  the Lord's Supper "by faith" is at least as real as if one physically consumed Christ's Body and Blood.  From a pre-Nominalist view that a proper intention (belief in the reality of the Body and Blood and true repentance) is an essential condition for the efficacy partaking of the holy Mysteries--without it, partaking of Christ's Flesh and Blood redounds to one's condemnation rather than Divinization--we now arrive at a position that turns the tables on that and makes intention all that is essential!  Luther could have the Lord's Supper by faith whenever and wherever he wished; when Calvin received the Lord's Supper by faith it was as real as if he had actually eaten Christ's Body and Blood.  Only relations that are tied to the will--like covenantal relations including unity of believers with Christ--are real; as already observed, relations among beings, which are real for the Orthodox and substantial for the Latins, are nugatory for the Reformers.  The emphasis on will and the downgrading of the religious status of matter (Mysteries [sacraments, including things banned by the Reformers like icons, candles, holy water, and relics as well as bodily crossing and prostrating oneself) and time (an unfolding critical tradition) is replaced, as already intimated by a Gnostic view of materiality in religion and "eschatological" time.  Where ancient Gnostic time is meaningless because cyclical and endlessly iterative, time in the paradigm under consideration has a negative meaning--impacting religion only when it ends.  Paradoxically, what began as a very concrete orientation ends up as more virtual than concrete, more wordy and volitional than ontological and epistemological:  God is now a Word, not "the Reason and Wisdom of God"; His will is what makes something true and right (justum quia jussum), not some rational order in among created beings. 
      If your thought world draws the boundaries of reality in one of the foregoing ways, you will be forced to view certain things in given ways that accord with such assumptions and premises, and you will be unable to grasp other ways of viewing reality that conflict with the premises of your ideology.  Till this is clear to the various parties, ecumenical discussions across paradigms cannot rise above  gobbledygook--apples on one side are oranges on the other side--or at most, agreement on words without agreeing on their context-determined meanings.  I will simply diagram the purport of these quotations.  But first, look at the following table, which describes paradigms or frameworks--the approach, emphasis, and  prevailing outlook or phronema of each of the three kinds of Christianity:

More succinctly:       

(CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON PARADIGMS; HERE, FOR A LIST OF DIFFERENCES.)  
     Note that the intellect and will are both energies and are definers of essence in the West; in the East, energies are a function of essence and also define anessence, though of course the divine Creator-LOGOS ("Reason, Rational Principle") and WISDOM of God is God the Son in all respects.  The Franciscan tradition from Scotus  (even slightly earlier with Richard of Middleton) down through the Reformation steadfastly maintained that "will is the noblest power in the soul" and that "will is simply nobler than the intellect."  Will's primacy was due to its creative efficacy.  The Eastern and Western conceptualizations of the divine Being beyond being are different--no distinction being made between Essence and Energy, the Essence being energetic and patterned to agree with created energies in the West:  The analogia entis used to justify the Filioque heresy by the Latins and in Calvin; it is rejected by Barth, though he is as Filioquist as the others in failing to accept John 15:26 at its face value.  The West gives lip-service to the total transcendence and unknowability of the divine Essence, but the Latins violate their own premises in their teaching that the Vision of God is a "face-to-face"  vision of the divine Essence (divinæ Essentiæ; I-II.iii.8)!   Where Orthodoxy teaches that the human soterial goal is to become one with God's Being--but by sharing in His uncreated Energies or Life, not His imparticipable and unknowable Essence--the Latin scholastics' goal is to know and participate in God's unknowable and imparticipable Essence. The Reformation goal is to be saved by a decision of the divine will that predestinated sinful believers (who are born depraved because the divine will imputes Adam's sins to each newborn) are virtually righteous while remaining really sinners.  How a human could still be different from the animals if human nature had lost the Icon (or Image) of God (reason and freewill) is not explained by the promoters of this paradigm; what got lost at the Fall was the Energy of omoíosis or Assimilation to God (mistranslated "Likeness of God"), not the Icon of God; but since energy plays no rôle in this paradigm, the energy of omoíosis cannot be distinguished from the static potential of the Icon of God.
      Where Orthodoxy (cf. Philp. 2:13 and other passages in the Bible) understands Grace to ontological--the uncreated Energies of God-- and the Reformers hold a theletist (elevating will over being) view of Grace--as imputational--, papal Christianity is more rationalist and somewhat less ontological than Orthodoxy.  Thus, sanctifying Grace in papalist teaching is a created habitus entitativus--NOT a habitus operativus (where the last term is as close as the West got to "energetic")--a form or quality--of the believer's soul.  Moreover, the Latins entertain an intellectual vision of the divine Essence, in contrast with the energetic Vision of uncreated Light in Orthodoxy.  In his Summa theologica, Thomas Acquinas says that we pursue an intelligible goal (finem intelligibilem) "through that which is made present to us by an act of the intellect (per actum intellectus; I-II.iii.4); ". . . the essence of beatitude consists of an act of the intellect" (ibid).  How far this has strayed from early Christianity--not so far, though, as the Reformers' accepting the Scotist priority of will of over reason (and possibly even to will's status of being the divine Essence)!  
     In the following portrayal, Orthodoxy is on the right, and movements progressively to the Christian left are correspondingly located iconically farther left.  The time line runs from top to bottom. 

If we leave off the Gnostics and Monophysites, there are two kinds of Christianity from Orthodox point of view--so Fr. Schmemann maintains.  But since the Denominationist forms of Christianity are incompatible with Latin Christianity, we in effect have three kinds of incompatible theologies about the Christian Faith.
      The origins of these are outlined on a page of this website; see also the lineage chart and the only approach the West can use to grasp the original Apostolic (Orthodox) Christianity.  (See also HERE.)  The matter of Christianity is similar--the Bible; the ecumenical Synods and the Fathers' consensus on the interpretation of the Bible is widespread among the larger bodies of Christians.  But the form imposed on that matter--the form that has that material meaning this or that--is quite different in the three varieties of Christianity. While Orthodox and papal Christianity agree in respecting materiality and in refusing to exalt will over being and reason, the really big dividing line is between Eastern (including Oriental) Christianity and the Western paradigms invented in the later Middle Ages on the basis of a third-hand Aristotelianism.
       If the Latins are to act like the apologete responded to in the letter already mentioned, and if ecumenical conversations are to be squeezed into the Western parameters of the ecumenical movement, Orthodoxy should have nothing to do with it. 

An Orthodox Christian (or any other member of any other Faith) cannot usually discuss theology with others if he allows their paradigm to define the parameters of the discussion.  One must speak entirely in our framework unless frameworks themselves are the point of the discussion.   
       Fr. Schemann, no die-hard mind full of bias, points out that arguing in the terms others set (about Church unity, the branch theory, etc.) is wrong; he accordingly faults Orthodox participants in ecumenical discussions for letting themselves be dragged into alien frameworks and be hamstrung by its premises.  We can only lose if we try to respond to questions posed by Latins or other otherdox in their framework and according to their assumptions so foreign to Greek-speaking Apostolic thought and the ancient mind-set; we must reframe the questions in our Biblical, Greek-language framework before responding.  Till the other parties are willing to get back at the beginning as outlined in the response just referred to, the Orthodox should heed Fr. Schmemann's wise words and have nothing to do with ecumenics.   It's an endeavor we can only lose if we play it on their chessboard.  We should adhere to the outline in the chart above and not deviate from it.  Our strength lies in continuing the Greek-language culture and ways of thinking embedded in the New Testament down to the present; the others must know that their version of what the Gospel means has been squeezed into frameworks invented in the latter Middle Ages.  That's their problem; we should not let our ancient culture and experience and theology be forced into the exiguous confines of such neo-Mediaeval frameworks--which are incompatible with each other, as both are (and more so) with Apostolic Christianity.  One only has to examine the concept of energy in the New Testament to see this.  (See links in the letter being referred to.)

       The idea that we have to give up the Apostolic phronema in favor of a mishmash of ecumenical perfervidity is something we should not touch with a barge pole.  The article by Fr. Schmemann cited above should be read by all.

PART TWO:  HOW ECUMENICAL DISCUSSIONS 
WITH ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS SHOULD BE 
PREMISED AND CONDUCTED 

     The order that an Orthodox could properly agree to should be, first, the all-holy Trinity (not least the Filioque), and then, Salvation.  Where Protestants and Latins begin in the reverse order, no Orthodox should allow oneself to fall into that trap.  It would be proper initially to take care not to fall into the Protestant trap of confusing the ambiguous sense of the LOGOS with the Scriptures, as in Karl Barth's "The possibility of knowing the WORD (sic) of God lies in the Word of God and nowhere else" (cf. ". . . God the Revealer is identical with His act in revelation . . .").

The whole frame of discussion should be:  "Could a first- or third-century Greek-speaking Christian entertain such an idea?"  The historical matter of Cordova should not be neglected:  Did the Latins get their third-hand Aristotelianism from the Arabs and then cram the content of the Gospel into this "form"?  How can this be viewed as a "development" of the ancient Greek-language framework of early Christianity?  Did the Reformers get their will-orientation, predestination, anti-iconism, and emphasis on the word or book from Islam and then justify them with the Old Testament?    (Since Calvin bowled on Lordsdays, the later strict sabbatarianism must have come in from John Knox's Scottish Presbyterians.)  Did both get their pervasive juridicalism from Cordova?  How can this be viewed as a "development" of the ancient Greek-language framework of early Christianity?  One can then (and only then) proceed to deal with the Church and her clergy (including patriarchs and papacy), the all-holy Theotokos (the "Mother of YHWH" in Luke 1:43), and the sacramental Mysteries--including icons, relics, blessed bread, etc. 
     If the papal party or Denominationists are unwilling to proceed thus and insist on slanting the premises of the discussion in the direction of late-Mediæval premises, we should say, "Thank you, but no way."  The minute the Orthodox agree to premises or biases that create a late-Mediæval Thomist or Nominalist frame of reference, the Orthodox phronema cannot survive in an ecumenical discussion.  It is, strictly speaking, insanity to think otherwise.  Fr. Schmemann is right.

CLICK HERE & HERE & HERE FOR EAST-WEST DIFFERENCES

and HERE & HERE AS WELL AS HERE FOR ECUMENICAL PAGES