Redeeming the Dialectic by means of the Filioque

"I am trying to suggest how Christian Trinitarian logic has a mediating structure which is not dialectical. The key point here (simply to state things baldly for the present, without argument) is that that which lies “between” two poles is paradoxically “extra” to those two poles, an irreducibly hypostatic third. In the case of the infinite Trinity, this extra is itself indeed the procession of the love that lies between Father and Son (as Augustine put it)—yet the arriving externality of this thirdness is still guaranteed by the fact that Father and Son (according to the logic of substantive relation, perfected by Aquinas after Augustine) are in their mutually constitutive relationship only through this additional constitutive relationship to the Holy Spirit—which is not so much their “child” as the very womb of desire of truth in which the Father has originally conceived the Word of reason. If, to speak by geometrical analogy, Father and Son are points only because they are the two ends of one line, then this line is a line only because it is the base of a square whose remaining space is the Holy Spirit."

- John Milbank, The Double Glory, or Paradox Versus Dialectics, in The Monstrosity of Christ, p. 147

Reading Plan for August 2015

I really want to get Milbank's Beyond Secular Order, but I have to read some other stuff first (and I can't afford it at the moment).  So here goes:

Plotinus, Enneads

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason.

William Morris, Wolfings and Roots of the Mountain.

Milbank and Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (reread).

George MacDonald, Lilith.

Dostoevsky, The Idiot (more than 3/4 finished)

On not ossifying the fathers

I am trying to take a more positive, constructive role in theology.  This post is akin to an autobiographical manifesto.  Part of it is how I came to the church fathers and ultimately my critical-appreciation of them, and the other part is how to use the Fathers to kill souls.

I left seminary disillusioned.  While I had made a lot of intellectual mistakes there, academically it was not the best (in terms of actually doing scholarship).  I didn't want to say that the Reformed faith was wrong, despite RTS's best efforts to make it so, but I knew there was something more.

For reasons I don't entirely remember, I was reading Thomas Aquinas as I left seminary.  I had one foot in the door for medieval and patristic theology.  I am not sure how I first heard of John Milbank.  I do remember reading about him in James K. A. Smith's Introducing Radical Orthodoxy.  This was late 2006, early 2007.

There is a lot wrong with Radical Orthodoxy, but there is a lot right--and a lot that is just plain fun.  So what that they over-interpreted Aquinas as a Neo-Platonist?  They got all the right people in academia angry, and that is good.  For me they introduced me not only to a wider world of theology but also to ask different--deeper--questions of church history.

I dove right in.  And made mistakes.  But I also latched on to key points: how Christology shapes everything.  (Some Eastern Orthodox guys played that card as a front to justify going to Eastern Orthodoxy when in reality they wanted smells and bells, but that is another story).  Anyway, I realized that Systematic Theology didn't have to follow the outline of Berkhof (Berkhof is useful but limited to a certain context, namely a seminary classroom).

Before continuing on the RO line, I should probably address a common criticism:  Did RO read Reformation metaphysics correctly, namely that Western theology took a nominalist turn with Scotus and the Reformation crystallized it?  Obviously, anyone who advances that reading today will be laughed at. So we can say RO was definitely wrong on that point.  Further, not all of Milbank's criticisms in "Alternative Protestantism" hold water (or at least they might attack Reformation ontology but not where Milbank thinks they do).

This was around 2008-2009.  I was able to read the Father without pretending that the Fathers were a complete deposit who taught a unified, identifiable theology across time and space.  Moreover, I was able to honestly say, "St ______ is wrong here.  That's okay.  I can still benefit from what he says elsewhere."  Side note:  Remember that stupid facebook meme that has the Nicene Fathers pictured and the caption reads, "So these guys are right about the canon but wrong about everything else?"  The epistemological howlers in that statement are too painful to mention.

Back to the Fathers.  Since I didn't (at the time) believe the Fathers taught a unified, ahistorical body of truth, that meant I didn't have to play East and West against each other.  I could say guys like Anselm, Aquinas, and Wycliff were good guys.  And I could benefit from the modern John Wycliff, Oliver O'Donovan.  While some Ecumenist Orthodox guys will speak kindly of the aforementioned gentlemen, technically speaking they are heterodox (or heretics!), so good luck with that one.  The harder-line folks will say that they (and by extension, you and me) are deprived of grace.

Towards the end of 2010 I moved into a harder, Eastward direction.  I never officially became Orthodox.  It wasn't viable for a number of reasons.  While this meant I accepted Orthodox doctrines like anti-Filoque and icons, the main problem is I had to cut off my theological past.  Another problem is I had to place the Fathers within the received tradition of the church.  This implied a number of cognitively dissonant positions:

• The Fathers are part of Holy Tradition but I must interpret which Fathers are speaking Orthodoxically by Holy Tradition.  I couldn't square the circle.  All of the Orthodox problems with Sola Scriptura would come crashing down on Tradition.
• This meant that the Fathers probably didn't disagree about "big stuff."  
• So what was I supposed to do when I came to issues where the Fathers sounded "Western" or were plain wrong?  

The dissonance was building up.  Move on to the end of 2011. I was beginning to be more "Western" in terms of cultural outlook.  I just didn't feel right "negating" my Western heritage.  I know that no one was "making" me to do that, but the cultural enclave mentality among a certain denomination is just too overwhelming.  I was by no means Protestant, of course, but possibly Western.

My daughter was born in 2012.  My life was turned upside down and I really had to put theology on the side.  And life was hard--all of which made me reevaluate everything.

By May of 2012 I was firmly in the Protestant, even Reformed camp (again).  From 2012-2015 (now) I have been in the Protestant camp and plan to stay there.  There are problems with Reformed theology--some big ones actually.   But there are also key gains that outweigh the problems and the Reformed tradition can be the Reformational Tradition.

So how do we use the fathers?

1. Protestant liturgy is about to come to a crisis-point and the Fathers offer insight.
2. Obviously, you have to sit at the Fathers feet when it comes to triadology and Christology.
3. Some of the early church historians are quite fun.
4. Recent developments in Continental philosophy and phenomenology make Maximus, Pseudo-Dionysius (and stop pretending he was Paul's traveling companion) and to a lesser degree Origen quite relevant today.

How do we misuse the fathers?

1. Pretending that they are "infallible," either individually or corporately.
2. Pretending that they have good advice on married sexuality.
3. Pretending they exist outside of time and space.

Miracles as Jesus's Donum to the Church

Musings from Milbank's (in)famous essay, "Alternative Protestantism."

Premise: The gift of Christ is the gift of the Spirit to the Church (38).  It is a gift that is beyond law.  It is a divine indwelling power.

Premise 2: What about the Spirit as donum is withdrawn from the church?  In other words, do we have the full Spirit/donum today?  You have to answer yes.  Should we then expect the full donum?  Certainly, why not?  Ergo, cessationism is false.

If aspects of the Spirit-donum have been withdrawn, we need evidence that it has.   Was Jesus crossing his fingers when he promised us his donum?

Bulgakovian Update

At one point in his life Sergius Bulgakov reread the works of Soloviev.  That's what I am doing with Bulgakov and John Milbank.  They were so very wrong on some issues, but profoundly correct on others.

A Covenant Ontology as Chiasm

Much of my project consists in rejecting the view that there is an entity behind the entity that is the real entity.  When played out in terms of creation and soteriology, this means that deliverance is the overcoming of estrangement (Tillich/Horton) and the rescue from finitude. (I would quote some examples from Orthodox Bridge where they say precisely this, but people would then call shenannigans since it isn’t a scholarly venue.  Fair enough)   A narratival ontology by contrast is dynamic, forward-moving, and is redeemed by thespoken word whose echoes (literally, since sound is the vibration of air) redeem the cosmos.

Another interesting thought:  narrative and covenant are related.  We really can’t know the existence of a covenant pact except in the narrative from which it arises. Have we not also seen that covenant is a category that can also answer ontological questions?  Which model is more relevant to biblical life, participationist schemes or narratival schemes?  Ontologians (forgive the neologism) speak of ousias, overcoming the carapaces of embodiment (Milbank), entities behind the ousia, etc.   A covenantal narrative speaks of blood, cutting, hair, flesh, presence, and genital emissions.   Which model is relevant not only to the biblical narrative but also to real life?

Reformed theology is accused of being nominalist.  It’s hard to see how this is so.  On the other hand, it is not immediately clear why we should favor philosophical realism in its ancient or medieval forms.   The contrast between these two systems allows the Reformed to posit a more robust ontology:  verbalism.   Realism, whether Platonic or Thomist, sees the forms as extra/intra mental realities.   That’s well and good, but at the end of the day the forms are either still in my mind or in Plato’s world above the world. And that’s it.  The Covenantalist sees ultimate reality in the spoken Word.    Imaging Creator Yahweh, our words, whether good or bad, create new situations and new realities.  To be sure, we can’t create physical entities ex nihilo, but the situations are no less real because of that.   In terms of salvation, these spoken realities approach us extra nos.

(Recommended reading:)
Horton, Michael, Four Volume Series on Covenant
Leithart, Peter.  Brightest Heaven of Invention, pp. 223ff

In Practice

• A participationist model will approach the Lord’s Feast asking how the elements change.  A covenantalist will ask is this not a manifestation of the joy of the kingdomand of Yahweh’s victory?  A covenantalist approach let’s Yahweh feed us and isn’t worried about the elements changing our ontological status.
• A participationist model is vertical.  It is more interested in the Forms and in moving to a higher degree of finitude (which will ultimately be overcome).  A covenantalist is horizontal:  it is focused on the in-breaking of Yahweh’s kingdom in history.  I understand that the anchorites speak of Kingdom in their eucharistic services.  That may be so, but it is ultimately dwarfed by a focus on what the elements do.  Incidentally, this is the real value of what the word “rite” really meant.  When Yahweh spoke of signs, it usually meant “sit back and watch this.”  It meant Yahweh was acting mightily for his people’s deliverance.

Nota Bene:   is not the idea (oops) of Sign eschatological?  It points to the final reality but is not the final reality; yet, the final reality is in some small way present in the sign.  Never lose the tension between the sign and the thing signified, for that tension is in its essence eschatological.

A broadside across the Cyrillene bow

Some EO and RCC converts were attacking Protestantism's doctrine of man and the atonement on Facebook.  Granted, there are some difficulties and I am not fully satisified with Hodge's approach. but I noticed that both sides in the debate hold to an out-dated substance metaphysics.   This runs into problems when we apply it to Christology.   Take the great Father Cyril of Alexandria, whom they use to attack Protestantism.  Let's see what happens:

Dr Bruce McCormack illustrates some key gains with Cyril’s Christology. Like Apollinaris he understood that the Logos had to instrumentalize the human nature.  Unlike Apollinaris he avoided truncating that human nature.  The problem, though, as Lutherans were keen to pick up on, is locating the “acting agent.”  Normally Cyril locates the acting agent as the Logos asarkos.  However, when we get to the communicatio idiomata, it seems Cyril is locating the acting agent as the whole Christ, which is an entirely different term.  Anchorites are using a sliding scale.

Orthodox and Lutherans hold to a real communication of attributes.  Good.    There is a problem, though.  St Maximus said the relationship was tantum…quantum.   This means if there is a real communication, it’s a two-way street.  However, if we attribute human attributes to the divine (which is how John Milbank reads Andrew Louth’s reading of Maximus), how can we seriously maintain any doctrine of divine impassibility?

 Continuing McCormack’s argument.  We admit that the person of the Logos is the acting agent of the union, denying activity to the human nature; this is consistent with the principle that persons act, not natures.  However, when one communicates this to the modern world, using modern terminology, we find that we are equivocating on the term “human.”  In today’s language humanity means, among other things, a self-activating nature.  And that is Nestorianism.