Ontological Differences, Part II

In my last entry, I had presented the address of His All-Holiness, Bartholemew, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, in which His All-Holiness suggested that there might be ontological differences between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches which would need to be addressed. One of the things that I have noted about Orthodox Theology, is that it asks different questions and speaks almost in another language from that with which Western “theologians” are familiar. In my near twenty year sojourn in Russian Catholicism, I have learned perhaps a little about that language and those questions. Perhaps it would be helpful to those readers to present what I believe that I have learned.

The two main questions which I have learned, which the Orthodox continually ask, and to which Western theologians seldom respond, are these:

1. Why do you “theologize” through intellectual disputation rather than through your worship?

That the Orthodox ask this question comes in part from their own eponym: the very word Orthodoxy comes from a Greek phrase which can either mean right belief or true worship. Wrapped up in this linguistic nexus is the settled belief among Orthodox that only those who have entered into the heavenly worship can truly be called “theologians”. As far as I have been able to find, Orthodoxy accords the term “theologian” to only three people: John the Evangelist, Maximos the Confessor, and Gregory Palamas. All of those writers have in common the doxologies, or the praise of God, in their writings.

And the Orthodox regard most highly their hymnographers, from Ephrem the Syrian and John of Damascus, to the many (and usually anonymous) monastic theologians who have inscribed the dogmata of their theology into their hymns. Good translations into modern English of those hymns, and that theology, can be found at Archimandrite Ephrem Lash’s website of Anastasis. Otherwise, I would recommend that one compare in Fr. Alvin Kimel’s excellent weblog, Pontifications, his extracts from many eastern writings, which include the highest hymnography, with those of Western theologians, if only to mark the difference in language.

By comparison, most Western “theologians”, from the Schoolmen onward, appear to be far more interested in intellectual dispute than in the praise of the mysteries. From the viewpoint of those in the East, these appear to be, at worst, mere attempts to “unscrew the inscrutable”, and at best, attempts to treat the saving truths of salvation as data for analysis. Their opinion of this process can be best summed up by the Angelic Doctor, the Blessed Thomas Aquinas, who at the end of his life, in response to a divine vision which he was granted, considered all of his writings to be “so much straw.” The Orthodox would entirely agree.

In consequence, many Orthodox appear to believe that much of post-Schism Roman Catholic formation of dogma, from its definition of Transubstantiation, through its definitions of Purgatory, Papal Primacy and Infallibility, and even that of the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady (which the Orthodox express in their Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos), is tainted by an overintellectualization of basic truths, which should be better worshiped as mysteries than defined as doctrines.

I would venture to say that until and unless Roman Catholic “theologians” start to understand and address the question raised above, a basic ontological difference will continue to exist between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, and attempts at union which ignore that difference are doomed to failure. Perhaps the main reason why Orthodox are beginning to look with interest on the current pontiff, His Holiness Benedict XVI, is that His Holiness appears to understand the question, and moreover, appears both to worship and to “theologize” as the Orthodox do.

The second question which Orthodox raise, which is actually a summary of several questions which they ask, is this:

Why does your worship so seldom express your theology, or Sacred Tradition?

I will leave discussion of this question, and its subsidiary questions, to a later posting.