Logomachy, Orthodoxy, and the Holy and Great Council

Protopresbyter Dr Doru Costache

Sydney College of Divinity
Australia
- 7 June 2016 -

To Paul,
who stirred my interest in the matters discussed here

I remember reading, many years ago, a very popular Romanian short story, Election of an Abbess,
by Damian Stnoiu. At the forefront of the story were the human, all too human politics, intrigues,
plots, hatred, betrayals, and other such dubious virtues exhibited by the dwellers of a large nunnery
during an election campaign. At some point in the story, the author changed the anglefrom the
complex interactions between the nuns caught in the game of thrones to the devils which piled up
on a nearby hill, reduced to spectators unable to cause more havoc than the nuns themselves did.
This is how the Orthodox Commonwealth, which travels toward the Holy and Great Council, must
currently look to the invisible hordes piling up on the hills Why should the enemy stir us against
one another when we do it so well ourselves? How could the devil divide further what is already
divided? The fact of the matter is that instead of looking at the greater good, namely, the beginning
of serious talks about the challenges confronting the Church in our age, the Orthodox seek more and
more pretexts to postpone the encounterfrom the game of thrones to human, all too human,
passions.
My intention is not to review the whole pre-conciliar pandemonium. Until a few days ago, when the
friend to whom I dedicate this essay brought me up to date, I have not been even aware of it. Given
his questions and my own concerns, in what follows I refer to one of the most recent episodes of
this pitiful saga, namely, the declaration of Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, of 25 May 2016, gone
viral on the world wide web. More specifically, and without discussing either his anachronistic
notion regarding the supposedly ecumenical practice of pre-conciliar consultation or his hierarchical
dismissal of the teachers of theology, herein I consider his renewed attack on the terminology of
personhood and modern Orthodox personology. In short, Metropolitan Vlachos labels the
contemporary discourse on personhood as theological poison, a doctrinal error, a theological
deviation and a misinterpretation of the teaching of the Fathers, urging the abandonment of the term
person in favour of the term man/human being. The attack contains the outrageous statement that
the theology of personhood, with its trademark, the freedom of personal will as distinct from the
necessary character of the natural will, annihilates the Trinitarian God. To make his plea weightier,
the Metropolitan concatenates some impressive namesfrom Aquinas to Kant and Hegelcultural
trends and ideologiesfrom scholasticism to socialismand eventssuch as the recent tripartite
communique in Mytilene and the upcoming Holy and Great Council. There is not much a willing
reader can make out of this tirade. How are all these related? How can the Mytilene declaration on
the challenges of this day and age, including the humanitarian crises unfolding under our very eyes,
bear on the contemporary Orthodox theology of the person? How do, both the Mytilene declaration
and the other items mentioned by the Metropolitan, bear on the Holy and Great Council? But
enough said with reference to the inconsistencies of his discourse.

Turning to more serious matters, I begin by considering the reasons behind the Metropolitans very
colourful invectives related to the Orthodox theology of the person and his exhortation to abandon
the vocabulary of person.
Before anything though, I have to point out that, alongside the Metropolitans dislike for modern
Orthodox personology, behind his opposition one can discern the assumption that theology is
reducible to a useless, repetitive academic exercise. It seems that for him Orthodox theology must
be satisfied with reciting some well-rehearsed lines of basic catechisma view which any student
of the Fathers may readily liken to the handbookish opinions of the notorious ex-metropolitan
Stephen of Nicomedia about the innovations of St Symeon the New Theologian or, earlier, the
criticisms levelled by traditionalists at St Basil the Greats unusual Homilies on the Hexaemeron.
By opposing the language of personhood as theologically valid, Metropolitan Vlachos denies
contemporary theology its task to convey the wisdom of the ecclesial tradition in ways that take in
consideration our current circumstances and reach out to audiences of today. In so doing, he omits
the call and task of theology to engage the world in a missionary fashionby bridging the Gospel
and the culture of any time and place so that the minds and lives shaped by certain cultural
frameworks be more receptive to the ecclesial tradition. Among other directions in contemporary
theology, this, precisely, is what modern Orthodox personalists undertake, namely, to work
according to the paradigm of the Logos incarnate and so flesh out the Gospel by the means of
contemporary culture. Much like in the first centuries of Christianity, when our ancestors had to
adopt notions and terms relevant to their cultural contexts in order to successfully promote the
Gospel in the midst of a hostile society, contemporary Orthodox theologians, struggling to make an
impact on this brave new world of ours have to explore appropriate ways to do so as efficiently as
in the past. There is nothing new, methodologically speaking, in the current efforts to make the
message of tradition heard and appreciated in the language of the personat least not for a diligent,
honest and God-fearing researcher of the Fathers of old. They, the saints of old, have done the same
when, in their attempts to promote the Christian ethos and lifestyle in the language of ecclesia or
leitourgia, adopted these very words from the pre-Christian culture. They, the saints of old, have
done the same when they adopted the term philosophia to designate the Christian lifestyle,
particularly the monastic experience. The reader knows that the list could continue indefinitely. I
will mention here only the fact that personological vocabularyhypostasis (the person in its
ontological dimension), prosopon (the person in its relational dimension), nous (the person in its
thinking and contemplative dimension) etcwas borrowed and refashioned by the saints of old
from the classical culture. Contemporary personalists tread therefore the path of tradition, some of
them, like Vladimir Lossky, Panayiotis Nellas and Father Dumitru Stniloae, having even walked
the path of holiness in the footsteps of the saints of old. Theology cannot be reduced to lecture room
speculations. Its task is as sacred, apostolic, necessary and ecclesially relevant as any other
undertaking of Gods peopleirrespective of the weaknesses of either those who serve it or their
output. This is the light in which should be assessed the efforts of the most illustrious Orthodox
theologians of modern times, as long as the Church is the living body of Christ in which all the
members, organs and cells have a function to perform.
Orthodoxy is not a matter of changing some words by other words. Orthodoxy is not logomachy.
There are no Orthodox words. All the words can be used either the wrong way or the good way, this
is the lesson of the Fathers. The latter have led the way by adopting the strangest words and ideas
from the culture of their times, converting them into channels for the communication of the Gospel.
They have called the human person, alongside anthropos, in many other ways, including zoon

logikon (rational animal, e.g. St Cyril of Alexandria, St Gregory Palamas) and zoon theoumenon
(deified animal, e.g. St Gregory the Theologian, St Nicholas Cabasilas). And if one makes the effort
to look at the vocabulary of Orthodoxy in other languages than Greek, more surprises will become
apparent. Whereas both the Metropolitan and anyone else could simply avoid this vocabulary in
their sermons, the terminology of prosopon and the construal of a person-centred theological
anthropologyrooted in the wisdom of the saints of oldproves to be what Orthodoxy needs
today to communicate its message to our contemporaries. Both the terminology of the person and its
theological articulations are an effective missionary and pastoral tool. The numerous conversions to
Orthodoxy in lands where the Orthodox are in minority, particularly among Western intellectuals,
should be largely credited to the efforts of the Orthodox theologians who have walked withand
likethe Fathers, inspiredly presenting to the world our traditions call to the human person to
embrace a noble life of wholeness and holiness. We should not fear the words and ideas of our time,
the way the Fathers of old have not feared the words and ideas of their times. Instead, we should
work on these ideas and words to transform them into means for the conveyance of the ecclesial
wisdom to the world.
Looking again at the Metropolitans statements, together with the conviction that his Trinitarian
God is an ideological construct that is threatened (literally, destroyed) by a certain theological
discourse, the reader may discern there the echo of a tenet he proposed elsewherenamely, that if
there was a Byzantine theology of the person it would have derived from a Christological, not
Trinitarian foundation. For him, a personology rooted in Trinitarian theology is inconceivable. Two
points on this. First, it is true that Byzantine personology was refined by St Cyril of Alexandria
through the latters remaking of the Cappadocian notion of hypostasis, a process which continued
with the contributions of the so-called neo-Chalcedonians, particularly St Maximus the Confessor
and St John Damascene. That said, at least Letter 38 in the corpus of St Basil the Great outlined the
theology of the person within a clear Trinitarian context. Second, the distinction between
Christological and Trinitarian doctrines is a modern construct of foreign origin that, largely,
illustrates the heterodox representation of Christ as not quite one of the Holy Trinity. Within the
ecclesial tradition, any Christological theology is Trinitarian and any Trinitarian theology is
Christological. There is no Orthodox reflection on personhood that is deprived of either Trinitarian
or Christological connotations. The opposition of the Metropolitan to contemporary person-centred
theology has no traditional ground and seems to depend on foreign ways of thinking.
But the problems related to the Metropolitans anti-personalist assertions are even more serious than
that. Borrowing from the Western reinterpretation of tradition by Jean-Claude Larchet, the
Metropolitan presents a simplified version of the views of the latters substantialism or naturalism
and rejects the Orthodox person-centred discourse on a Trinitarian and an anthropological level. If I
read correctly his statementsparticularly his appraisal of the person as no more than an individual
specimen of a naturetogether with Larchet he would consider the person an attribute or
phenomenon of nature, whether divine or human. This is typical for a pre-Christian understanding
of the person as individual subordinated to natures determinism, an understanding which in modern
secular culture has taken the form of naturalism. For instance, in the name of nature or ones genetic
makeup currently many vices, sins and crimes tend to be easily justified given the general
perception that one cannot fight his or her nature. In Trinitarian terms, the reduction of the person to
nature was condemned by the ancient Church as Sabellianism, a heresy according to which the
divine persons were manifestations of Gods substance. A Christological assessment conduces to
identical outcomes. When looked at from the viewpoint of Christology, the substantialist position
corresponds to monophysitism. By monophysitism the Byzantines understood the representation of

Christ only in terms of nature (physis monon) and the rejection of the richer vocabulary of the
Cappadocian Fathers, St Cyril of Alexandria and others, which approached the mystery of Christ in
various ways and by using terms which are foundational for the Orthodox theology of the person. I
would say that the current opponents to Orthodox personalism in the name of ancient substantialism
are by all intents and purposes monophysites, without the term having a bearing on nonChalcedonian Christology.
Granted, in its subtler versions, as posited by Larchet and other scholars, this reductionist
naturalism takes the form of an opposition to what the proponents see as the separation of person
from nature in the discourse of many Orthodox personalists, from Vladimir Lossky to Panayiotis
Nellas and from Father Dumitru Stniloae to Christos Yannaras and Metropolitan John Zizioulas. I
am not convinced that any of the above Orthodox thinkers have in fact contemplated a separation.
Their views can be summarised in the tenet that for Christian anthropology, with its Trinitarian and
Christological foundations, human mystery cannot be reduced to the determinism which
characterises our nature and that all our existential decisionsvirtuous or sinful, dispassionate or
vicious, theocentric or autonomousare made on the level of personhood. This tenet is the actual
point contested by Metropolitan Vlachos. According to him, the notions of human person,
natures necessity and will and freedom of the person contradict Orthodox theology which, in
his views, would assert natures goodness and the fact that human nature does not know necessity;
furthermore, that (free) will is natures desire, not an aptitude of the person. This is the context
within which the Metropolitan outrageously affirms that the link between will and person destroys
the Trinitarian God by introducing tritheism. These are very serious assertions which would
require a more detailed analysis than the points outlined below. Nevertheless, given the pressures of
these days even the following brief observations could be of some use.
Before any further comment, I have to emphasise that the statements of Metropolitan Vlachos
should not come as a surprise to anyone still attached to what many illustrious Orthodox
theologians of last century have referred to as the Babylonian captivity of Orthodox theology to
foreign, Western medieval ways of thinking. A diligent reader will find a striking overlap between
the Metropolitans statements and that alienated form of thinkingindeed a scholasticising
pseudomorphosis of Orthodox theologyfor which human mystery was reducible to a simplistic
psychosomatic schema and which replaced the doctrine of supernatural deification by the view that
holiness is attainable within the boundaries of nature. The same is true for the origin of this entire
debate, which can be drawn back to the attack of Savvas Agouridis on modern Orthodox
personalism, launched in 1990, from a thoroughly nontraditional angle, deprived of liturgical,
philokalic and patristic sensitivity. But let me address several punctual matters which the
Metropolitan seems to be unaware of, albeit his commitment to tradition.
He opposes what he calls the separation of person and nature. I reiterate my suspicion that modern
Orthodox personalism does not entail a literal separation. Distinction is not separation. I propose
that what modern personalists posit is a distinction between person and nature as different orders
pertaining to the human mystery, not their separation. This distinction has taken various forms in
the past, from the classical soul and body construct to St Gregory of Nyssas refusal to reduce whatis-in-the-image-of-God-within-us to our psychosomatic nature etc. This distinction indeed entails
persons inbuilt capacity to transcend its naturespecifically the fallen nature which we all inherit
through birthand so escape genetic conditioning. This capacity makes possible ones embracing
sinful life. How would one account for sin if sin is determined by ones nature? The same capacity
makes possible also asceticism and the ascetic transformation of ones being. This is how an

Egyptian young woman, Mary, has chosen debauchery at first and then has become, through
determination and ascesis, St Mary the Egyptian. Nature does not make sinners and saints. This is,
furthermore, how from St Silouans sinful dust one becomes without beginning and without
endas St Maximus the Confessor and St Gregory Palamas affirmedthrough uncreated
participation in the divine life, without the created being transformed into uncreated. It is not the
dust of the earth that is deified. What is deified is what-is-in-the-image-of-God-within-us. And this
is how the Word of God [who] is whole, complete essence [i.e. nature], for He is God, and whole,
undiminished hypostasis [i.e. person], for He is Son, ... became the seed of His own flesh, and ... the
hypostasis of two natures (trans. Nicholas Constas, slightly altered) as St Maximus articulated the
mystery of the hypostatic/personal event of the incarnation. Whereas the distinction between person
and nature facilitates our perception of the incarnation, ascesis and deification, the monophysite
denial of their distinction (by overemphasising persons dependence on nature) makes these
impossible to articulate in an Orthodox manner.
Metropolitan Vlachos is of the opinion, which derives from his naturalism or monophysitism (as
defined above), that will belongs to nature and that there is no will of the person. Ecclesial tradition
stands in firm and consistent opposition to his views. St Paul spoke to the Romans about the
conflict of the law of the mind and the law of the body. Yes, he did not use the words person
and nature, but one cannot expect that from a first century Christian anyhow. Nevertheless, is not
his a distinction between personal freedom and natural determinism? In the Byzantine era, St
Maximus and St John Damascene spoke of two different kinds of will within the human being: one
physical and one gnomic (St Maximus) or physical instinct, , and personal will, (St
John). In his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, St John went as far as to point out that the
natural will or instinct does not deserve the designation of will because it is conditioned and not
free. Putting aside any irreverent thought about how things occur within the Trinitarian God, it
results that what makes possible good behaviour/transformation and misbehaviour/deformation on a
human level is not the natural will/energy; it is the personal will/energy. No one is either virtuous or
sinful by nature. The distinction between natural will and personal will entails a distinction between
nature and person, albeit the saints of old may not have felt the need to emphasise it in those days.
Metropolitan Vlachos, finally, attempts to bring theodicy to bear on his crusade against modern
Orthodox personology by asserting that the link between nature and necessity blames God for the
creation of man and that nature is good. Necessity, as a trait of nature, is neither good nor evil.
Necessity, however worded, is part and parcel of nature on all the levels of the visible creation
human, biological and cosmic. Cosmically, necessity manifests itself in the purposeful dynamism of
the universe which moves towards higher states of complex unity. Biologically, necessity pushes all
life forms to survive and multiply. On a human level, given our biological side, necessity is obvious
in the instincts of survival and reproduction. Necessity is not evil even though necessity has nothing
free about it, as St John Damascene stated. Not even our fallen condition from the paradisal
goodness (an aspect ignored in the statements of the Metropolitan) causes natural necessity to be
evil. We are not evil because we have to eat. And we do not eat because we want; it is because we
must. This natural conditioning made St Antony deplore the moments when he had to submit to the
necessities of natureat least according to the narrative of his life by St Athanasius the Great. Thus,
it is not up to our nature or natural will or instinct to postpone eating for instance; by nature, we
have to eat when we are hungry. There is something else within us, however, another level of the
human realitycall it person, mind, spirit, soul or anything elsewhich is irreducible to nature, its
necessity, its conditioning and instincts. At that other level can a decision be made to eat more than
needed or to fast, to eat when we are hungry or to delay surrendering to necessity. At that other level

the potential of nature, its very instincts and energies, can be well-used or misusedand that is the
real problem. Thus, it is neither the association of will with person nor the association of nature
with necessity which are blameful. It is the sinful misuse of our potential that is blameful. A true
theodicy, the way we see in the Fathers of old, points to sin as blameful, not to any representation of
human reality in terms of person, will and natureor any other terms.
Therefore, when taking position either pro or contra the terminology of personhood and the personcentred character of Orthodox theology, there are many more aspects which should be considered
than just to maintain faithfulness to some phraseology. Talking theology and conveying the message
of the ecclesial traditionthese are not a matter of finding better words. Orthodoxy is not
logomachy. And whilst the debate around the implications of modern Orthodox person-centred
theology is quite welcome when there is nothing pressing upon our shoulders, the anti-personalist
crusade of Metropolitan Vlachos is as out of place these days, when the Orthodox endeavour to
walk together towards the Holy and Great Council, as all the other attempts to sabotage this goal
attempts which cannot avoid being likened to a game of thrones and suspected as betraying
human, all too human passions. These attempts to sabotage the Council remind me of a saying of
a contemporary Romanian elder, Father Arsenie Papacioc, of blessed memory. During a talk on the
spiritual warfare, he conveyed that at times the strategy of the enemy takes the form of an
encouragement to wait, wait, wait, postpone, delay, leave it for some other time Let the Churches
meet! Let their hierarchs meet, so that they put a beginning to further and richer conversations
rather than not meet and postpone everything forever because of words or games of thrones or
human, all too human passions. Then will the Churches rejoice, when looking down from the tops
of the mountains, at the havoc of the world.