Does Christianity Have Metaphysical Commitments? (1 of 2)

Theological Letters

An inquirer, “Henry,” had noticed a pattern across my publications on the Eastern Church fathers, namely, that I identify metaphysical commitments that the Eastern fathers see as essentially Christian. “Henry” wanted to know if he was reading me correctly, and if so, whether I think the Eastern fathers believe Christianity is a philosophically committed faith or one that is philosophically indeterminate and pliable. The following is my answer. Due to the length of my reply, it will be broken into two parts. Please subscribe and support my work.

Dear “Henry,”

Thank you for your letter. You are correct in seeing throughout my work a claim that the Eastern Church fathers believe the Christian faith has metaphysical commitments, commitments that play a critical and indispensable role throughout the disputes that frame the boundary lines of Orthodox Christianity. 

I realize that many today think of Christianity as metaphysically neutral, if it has anything to do with metaphysics at all. Christians need not engage in philosophy, and those who choose to can pair the Christian religion with whatever philosophical framework tickles their fancy. To take just one example, in Christian anthropology, we find a full spectrum of positions on the body-soul question. Some are substance dualists, affirming that the body and soul are two distinct but conjoined substances that are separated at death; others take a more Thomist approach, where the soul is the immanent form of the body, but despite a mutual dependence of body on soul and soul on body, the discrete existence of the soul is preserved by miracle post-mortem in the intermediate state (i.e., the state between the death of the body and the resurrection); still others go the route of a full blown materialism, where there is no soul, just body — and thus, they must come up with explanations of how the intermediate state is possible or, denying such a state, how to preserve continuity of identity between death and resurrection; and still others try to thread the needle with a form of emergent dualism, where soul and body are distinct, the former being an emergent substance, arising out of the complexities of body — a theory that raises its own challenges for the intermediate state, when the soul loses the body that gives rise to it.¹ The presumption of the dispute is that Christianity has no prescriptive commitments on the body-soul question; it only has descriptive commitments to doctrines that intersect with the question, such as the intermediate state  or the resurrection from the dead. 

The perspective is rather postmodern. The words of various confessions and doctrinal statements are seen as just that, words whose meaning is broadly indeterminate, like a labeled box into which one can place any number of objects, so long as they fit. To take a more overtly confessional example, to be “Chalcedonian” in one’s Christology, on such a view, one need only affirm that Jesus Christ is fully God, fully human, and one person in whom these two natures are conjoined. But the guts of these terms are up for grabs, as if the fathers had no commitments on the meanings of God, human, nature, fully, or person. Hence, one can toy with any number of theories of personhood, for example; so long as the theory affords an avenue for affirming that Christ is one person despite his two natures, all is well. And the same goes for natures, God, human, and fully. Along these same lines, I’ve noticed that some patristics scholars now wish to read the Church fathers in purely semantic ways, as if they were merely seeking a common vocabulary about matters of faith, the philosophical substance of the language was (on this reading) immaterial or indeterminate. 

Popular as these trends may be, I find them utterly indefensible, historically speaking. Throughout the Eastern fathers, I see very clear and consistent metaphysical commitments, and these commitments are integral to how they understand the Christian faith generally and its gospel in specific. Such metaphysics play an indispensable role in the confessional disputes about the Trinity and Christology, and inform why the doctrines in question were worth defending at the cost of life and limb — literally. And I should note here that they do not see such metaphysics as additive to Christianity, as Hegel or Harnack would suggest, but as present from the start, as “biblical,” we might say. In short, I see in the Eastern fathers and their confession of faith a fully orbed philosophy that is not merely preferential but, in their assessment, essential to Christianity as such.

As you’ve apparently noticed, I’ve been producing a steady stream of articles that point toward this conclusion (“Athanasius of Alexandria”; “The Metaphysical Idealism of the Eastern Church Fathers”; “Cappadocians”; “The Begotten-Not-Made Distinction in the Eastern Pro-Nicenes”; “On the Metaphysics of God and Creatures in the Eastern Pro-Nicenes”; “Created Corruptible, Raised Incorruptible”; “Are Created Spirits Composed of Matter and Form?”). These and other works are all driving toward a pair of books, the first being on the metaphysics of God and creatures in the Eastern Church fathers and the second on its application to the problem of evil. The relevant content is far too vast for a letter — hence the book project. However, to briefly illustrate the confessional nature of Eastern patristic metaphysics, I will zero in on three sets of metaphysical commitments in the major disputes of the first millennium. More examples with greater depth could be offered, but time is short. 

The first set of commitments appear in the Arian dispute, which was the first dispute that convinced me of the metaphysical convictions of the Eastern Church fathers.² Well known is Arius’ claim, condemned by Nicea, that there was a time when the Son was not. From this claim followed the obvious charges that Arius’ Son of God is a creature and, as creature, cannot be of the same nature as God. But Athanasius appends to this rather obvious charge a string of less obvious charges, such as if the Son came into being, then the Son is mutable; if he came into being, he is corruptible; if he came into being, he is accidentally good; if he came into being, he cannot give life to humanity — to name a few. Now, we might be tempted to conclude that Athanasius is simply trumping up the charges, as it were, and these so-called “entailments” are not in fact entailments of Arianism. The problem with this take, however, is that these charges are not unique to Athanasius. They echo in Alexander of Alexandria and ultimately in the Council of Nicea itself. Moreover, they continue to echo in later fathers, such as the Cappadocians. Hence, there seems to be something to them, some common rationale that these various writers share.

The underlying reasoning becomes clear if we focus on the root charge of mutability — that is, if the Son came into being, then he is mutable. Athanasius’ anti-Arian polemics make clear that he is not suggesting that creatures happen to be mutable, even though God could make immutable creatures. Rather, Athanasius thinks it is metaphysically necessary that every creature qua creature is mutable. His rationale is this. To be created is to come into being, and vice versa; to come into being is to move from non-being into being; and the movement from non-being into being is a mutation. Every creature is thus mutable because its existence begins with mutation.

By way of background, the notion of generation and corruption was a puzzling one in the ancient world — and likely would be puzzling to folks today, were critical thinking not a lost art. The Eleatics recognized that our talk of generation falls into general incoherence. For when we say that thing p was not and then moved into being, we speak about p as if it existed before it came to exist. In other words, when we say that at Time 1 (T1) p did not exist, we already have a problem, namely, we are speaking about p when there is no p; we are referring to “it” when there is no “it” to which to refer. We then go on to say that, at T2, p moved into being. But if p does not yet exist, then “it” is not an “it” at all, and as such, “it” can do nothing, including “move into being.” The only way for such talk to make sense is to presume that p exists at T1. But if p exists at T1, then there is no need for it to move into being at T2, since it already exists. 

Now, the central premise in Eleatic conundrums of this kind is that ontology is binary. Things either are or are not; there is no middle, no partial existence. So, if p is, then it is, and it need not “move into being,” since it exists already. But if p is not, then “it” can do nothing, including move into being. 

A couple of different solutions emerged in response to the Eleatics, but the one that is relevant here is Aristotle’s answer. He locates the Eleatic error in their binary ontology — a thing either is or is not. Aristotle suggests that there is in fact an ontological middle between existence and nothing, namely, potentiality or “non-being.” Aristotle recognized that there are aspects of ontology that are more than nothing but less than concrete actuality. My potential to be stronger than I am presently is more than nothing, but it is less than my actual strength. Such ontological potential, argues Aristotle, is what makes possible generation and corruption. Such potential includes the potential to be p. Hence, we need not speak about p — concretely real — moving into existence, as if it exists before it exists. Instead, we can talk about the potential to be p moving into a concrete manifestation of p. Or, put otherwise, we can speak about a transition from non-being into being. 

Aristotle identifies non-being or potentiality with matter (or more specifically, prime matter). Matter, in this sense, does not refer to atoms or particles or even elements. Prime matter is even more basic. Prime matter is nothing but a substratum of ontological potential — the potential to be something. We might think of it like a shapeless bit of fabric that is potentially any number of shapes. The fabric receives shape when draped around a solid object. Were we to drape it around a ball, the fabric’s potential for sphericality would become actual. Were we to drape it around a cube, the fabric’s potential for cubicality would become actual. However, neither cubicality nor sphericality belongs to the fabric as such; it belongs to the ball or the cube that communicates the shape to the fabric. Unpacking the analogy, the fabric is analogous to prime matter, the ontological potential to be something; the object that communicates a shape to fabric is “form” — i.e., the properties manifest in matter that the mind identifies by general noun (animal, human, bipedal, and so on); and the draping process, wherein shape is gradually communicated by degrees to the fabric is analogous to generation or becoming — undraping being analogous to corruption. So, in the same way, when we see a plant move into being, we are beholding the manifestation of formal properties within matter, a manifestation that moves material potential, or non-being, into concrete actuality, or being.

This is sometimes called a “moderate realist” view of generation, and such a view underwrites Athanasius’ anti-Arian polemics.³ Athanasius’ use of this metaphysic is reflected in the fact that, while he speaks of man being created out of nothing (ouk on), he also refers to man’s natural state of non-being (mē on / einai) from which he first moved into being and to which he may retreat in corruption. As in Aristotle, the term “non-being” does not refer to absolute nothingness, but rather to the ontological potential of matter. In other words, within Athanasius’ talk of creation, we find two distinct points: (1) God creates all things, including matter, from nothing — that is, without use of pre-existent material, contra the pagan Demiurge doctrine in which matter is a second principle uncreated by God. But Athanasius also presumes (2) that creation involves a movement into being, or generation. When discussing the latter point, Athanasius presumes that all creatures receive once-foreign properties when created, and this reception of properties involves a movement from non-being into being.  

Athanasius’ argument against Arius is that if the Son of God was not and then came to be, as Arius suggests, then the Son is mutable. The reason is obvious, when looked at in the light of the moderate realist metaphysics of generation. Coming to be or becoming or generation involves the manifestation of formal properties in matter, and such a manifestation is a movement from potentiality, or non-being, into actuality, or being. Such a movement is the very meaning of mutation (alloiōtos): i.e., becoming something one previously was not. Therefore, every creature is mutable of metaphysical necessity because every creature’s existence begins with a mutation, namely, the movement into being — a point Aristotle himself makes in his Physics. The metaphysical underpinnings of the point are clear enough from Athanasius’ own works, but this reading of Athanasius is confirmed by the fact that Arius feels compelled to state in his defense that he does not believe the Son derives subsistence from matter, indicating a clear understanding of Athanasius’ rationale.

Equally noteworthy is the fact that Arius attempts a rejection of Athanasius’ metaphysics, but the rebuttal fails, the Council of Nicea and the pro-Nicenes siding with Athanasius’ metaphysical assessment. In later stages of the dispute, Arius suggests that while the Father indeed created the Son, the Father created the Son immutable. Athanasius replies that Arius is proposing a metaphysical fiction: To come into being is a mutation, which is what God causes when making a being; hence, to speak about God making an immutable being is incoherent, since made entails mutable. Here, we again see Athanasius’ realist commitments in two respects: (i) Athanasius insists, like any good realist, that Arius’ proposal is metaphysically impossible because it entails a formal contradiction, namely, predicating mutable (i.e., made) and immutable of the same object; hence, not even God can do what Arius suggests, since the suggestion is incoherent.⁴ (ii) Athanasius insists that the moderate realist entailments of Arianism attach to Arius’ position whether Arius likes it or not. In other words, Athanasius sees the metaphysics of becoming and corruption as Christian, and thus the moderate realist entailments of Arianism rightly judge the position, whether Arius grants the metaphysic or whether he rejects it. 

Lest we think all of this is unique to Athanasius, it most certainly is not. As mentioned in above, the very same lines of argument echoes in contemporaries of Athanasius, such as Alexander of Alexandria. Moreover, these commitments echo in the Council of Nicea itself, especially in its anathematizing of Arius for ascribing mutability and “turnability” (a term I’ll discuss shortly) to the Son of God. I draw particular attention to this point, since the anathemas indicate that the Council, like Athanasius, disregards Arius’ claim that God creates the Son immutable, affirming with Athanasius the metaphysical entailment that the Son is mutable if he is in fact created. Arius’ pivot that God creates the Son immutable fails to get him off the hook; the entailment sticks, whether Arius likes it or not. As one of the troparia to Athanasius sings, he refuted the “heretical non-sense of Arius.” What Arius proposes isn’t just false; it’s metaphysical nonsense, since not even God can create immutable creatures.

Now, we could cynically say that the point was merely to put down Arianism, and thus whatever did the trick, argumentatively speaking, was welcome. Were this the case, the metaphysics of the dispute would likely disappear into the background following the Council. But they do not. Athanasius’ metaphysical presumptions concerning the nature of “making” or “creating” continue to echo in the Eastern fathers after him, becoming only more pronounced and refined in figures, such as the Cappadocians, for example (see my article “Cappadocians (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa)”). Moreover, the description of making in which God calls non-being into being (a phrase that appears in both Philo of Alexandria and St. Paul, who are arguably the background of Athanasius’ metaphysics) appears twice in John Chrysostom’s divine liturgy,⁵ which, in an Eastern patristic context, indicates a greater dogmatic significance than any statement from any one father (see my discussion of the distinction between dogma and charygma in my letter, John of Damascus’ Defense of Icons (Reply 1 of 3)). Moreover, the materiality of all creatures, including angels — an obvious entailment of Athanasius’ metaphysics of creation — not only echoes in Eastern patristic writers after Athanasius, such as the Cappadocians, Pseudo-Macarius, John of Damascus, et al., but the doctrine is codified in the canons of Nicea II.

Needless to say, the metaphysics of the Arian dispute bind a pro-Nicene confession to a great many metaphysical commitments concerning the nature of both creation and creatureliness as such. Time does not permit me to work through each of these commitments. I will simply point you to two of my articles. The one, in Philosophy and Theology, works through the metaphysics of God and creatures that follow from the Arian dispute (i.e., “On the Metaphysics of God and Creatures in the Eastern Pro-Nicenes”); the other, in Religious Studies, works through how the metaphysics of God and creatures is critical to making sense of the begotten-not-made distinction of the Nicene confession (i.e., “The Begotten-Not-Made Distinction in the Eastern Pro-Nicenes”).⁶ 

Now, it may be tempting to look at the foregoing and conclude that, while Athanasius and those in his lineage have a working metaphysic that is integral to their thinking about Christianity, specifically its understanding of creation, its significance stands outside of “Christian essentials,” as it were. The problem here is that the reply is false. The metaphysics discussed above are central to how Athanasius, et al., understand the Christian gospel, not just creation. As such, the metaphysics cannot be excised from the Christian faith without changing the very essence of the religion itself. 

To demonstrate the point, let’s zero in on the topic of corruption. Corruption, as you’ll recall, is the flipside of generation. Just as creaturely properties move into being, transitioning from non-being into being, so they can retreat from being, returning to the non-being from whence they came. One of the metaphysical entailments of Athanasius’ metaphysics is that every creature qua creature is not only mutable but corruptible. Recall that prime matter, which underwrites our generation, is a substratum of potential. As such — that is, as pure potentiality — it has no innate properties of its own. Every property it receives is alien to it, and thus, any property it receives it can release, since none are essential or necessary to prime matter. The implication is that every creature qua creature can retreat from being, or undergo corruption. 

Here, we should note two different types of corruption to which every creature is susceptible. The first is the more basic ontological corruption: just as formal properties move into being, manifesting within matter (generation), so these properties can retreat back to non-being (corruption). This most general meaning of corruption is common to all creatures, sentient or not. Plants come into being and again retreat from being; dogs come into being and again retreat from being; humans come into being and again retreat from being. Corruption in this sense is just ontological deterioration. Rational beings, however, introduce a unique form of moral or spiritual corruption. Volition introduces moral and spiritual properties into the equation, properties that require free choice or self-determination. Such properties, according to the Eastern fathers, are products of either volitional movement toward God (moral and spiritual generation) or volitional retreat from God (moral and spiritual corruption). Such properties these same fathers see as accidental to creatures — no creature is necessarily morally or spiritually upright. On the one hand, this should be evident from the fact that we have examples of both holy and unholy men and holy and unholy angels. The fact that these species are compatible with either property indicates the accidental status of such properties. But there is a more significant metaphysical reason why moral and spiritual goodness is accidental to creatures. The Eastern Church fathers take attributes such as holiness and virtue and goodness to be native to God. They are expressions of the divine nature, or “energies” that exude from it. I will say more about the energies in a moment, but for now, let it suffice that the Eastern fathers understand the creaturely manifestation of holiness or virtue or goodness to be a product of participation in the divine nature, a divine attribute taking up residence within the creature. Hence, for God, such attributes are articulations of his own nature, while creatures only ever manifest such attributes by participation in God’s nature. Therefore, such attributes, being divine in origin, are necessarily extrinsic to the nature of creatures — or accidental to them. 

This brings us to the moral or spiritual dimension of corruption. In keeping with the above thinking on these attributes, the Eastern fathers draw a distinction between God, who is morally and spiritually unturnable (atreptos) and creatures who are morally and spiritually turnable (treptos). In other words, God cannot turn away from Goodness, since this is native to his nature. But creatures, for whom Goodness is extrinsic, are capable of either embracing divine Goodness or turning away from it.⁷ 

The foregoing is critical to how the Eastern Church fathers understand both the human condition and the Christian gospel. When considering the foregoing, we can see that one of the metaphysical necessities that binds all creatures is corruptibility. Putting aside for a moment our actual corruption — ontological and spiritual — we face the threat of corruption simply by virtue of being creatures. Hence, even if the world were presently uncorrupted, all souls and spirits clinging to God, the threat of corruption would still linger overhead, like a timebomb threatening the whole of the cosmos. How can we ever escape the danger of retreat from God, given that every creature is corruptible by metaphysical necessity? This problem is just as central to how the Eastern fathers understand Christianity as our actual fallen-ness. The Christian faith, as the Eastern fathers understand it, addresses not merely actual corruption, but the very threat of corruption — a threat that would be no less real if our ancestors did not fall and that must be addressed if our redemption is to result in spiritual rest, free from another cosmic tumble. 

Here, the distinction between creatures — which are of metaphysical necessity mutable, corruptible, and spiritually turnable — and God — who is immutable, incorruptible, and spiritually unturnable — has soteriological significance. The Eastern solution to the problem of corruption is for creatures to participate in the only nature that is incorruptible, namely, God’s own. The point they see as central to the New Testament. The Eastern fathers see the human condition as characterized by bondage to sin, death, and corruption, and though “sin” is typically read in a moral sense in the West, the Eastern fathers see it as a much broader term indicating corruption and death (see, for example, Chrysostom’s reading of Romans 5). Yes, moral infractions are “sin,” since they “miss the mark,” but so are all manifestations of corruption in our world. As for the remedy to our corrupted position, Peter tells us that we only escape the corruption that has come upon the world by partaking of the divine nature, and this is presumably the mechanism for the metamorphosis that Paul describes in the resurrection from the dead, where we put off corruption for incorruption. Such is the eternal life Christ offers his hearers, the Life of the Father that the Father has given to the Son to give to us.

The point brings us to the Eastern doctrine of deification. Athanasius frames the Christian hope in terms of us partaking of the divine nature. The Incarnation, submits Athanasius, supplies this lifeline. As he explains in his notoriously shocking statement, God became man in order that we might become God. The point illuminates why Athanasius takes Arianism to be so dangerous. If the Son of God is created — if he is mutable, corruptible, accidentally good, and all the things native to creatures qua creatures — then he does not bear in his person the divine nature in which we must participate. At best, he has clung to it, like a holy angel, but the divine nature is just as alien to him as it is to us. The Incarnation is a lifeline only if the Son of God is of the same, incorruptible nature as God the Father. Only in this way can he serve as mediator, bringing divinity near, joining the divine nature with human nature in his person (see my letter Why Is Mary Called “Mediatrix” in Eastern Orthodox Theology). Arius’ Christ, being a creature, can offer no such hope. This is why Arius’ teachings undermine Christianity as such.

Athanasius’ metaphysics, then, does not simply inform his understanding of the nature of creatures, providing political fodder for his attacks on Arius. His metaphysics are central to his understanding of the human condition and the solution offered by the Christian gospel. And for this reason, this metaphysics also frames why precisely Arius’ teachings are deadly poison to all who ingest them. In short, the metaphysics of the Arian dispute are central to the pro-Nicene understanding of Christianity as such.

Such a perspective reappears again and again in the major controversies of the first millennium. In the Apollinarian dispute, Gregory of Nyssa identifies one of Apollinaris’ errors as ascribing mutability to Christ’s divinity. Apollinaris sought to explain the Incarnation by suggesting that the union of divinity and humanity was achieved by the Logos taking the place of the rational spirit in the humanity Christ took upon himself. The resulting composite is still human, Apollinaris argued, because man is a body, soul, and spirit (or mind),⁸ and since the Logos is a rational spirit, this divine substitute still leaves us with the three component parts of man. Putting aside the question of whether Apollinaris is correct that the resulting composite would be human — the Cappadocians think it would not be — Apollinaris’ theory requires that the various passibilities we see in Christ, such as grief and temptation, are attributable, not to his humanity, but to his divinity. Taking note of this implication, Gregory of Nyssa echoes the Athanasian argument that our only hope of attaining incorruption is to partake of the incorruptible nature of God. If the Son of God is by nature mutable, then he is also corruptible and spiritually turnable, and he cannot, then, offer us the incorruption that the Christian gospel promises. 

All of this should sound familiar, as it is an echo of Athanasius contra Arius. What we see in the Apollinarian dispute is an echo of Athanasian metaphysics. We see the presumption that all creatures are innately mutability, corruptibility, and turnability; we see the centrality of these metaphysical traits to the creaturely condition that Christianity exists to remedy; we see the contrasting divine traits of immutability, incorruptibility, and unturnability; and we see the insistence that partaking of these divine attributes is how we put off corruption for incorruption. Moreover, we see that, as in Arianism, the Apollinarian heresy undermines Christian hope by introducing mutability, and thus corruptibility, into Christ’s divinity, thereby undermining his ability to offer to our species the incorruption promised in the gospel.

To name just one further echo, we see the point in Maximus the Confessor’s comments on Origenistic apokatastasis. Though this term is often used today as a synonym for universal salvation, the term itself simply refers to cycles of various kinds. In medicine, it refers to the movement of a bodily member from healthy to unhealthy and back; in astronomy, it refers to cycles of celestial bodies in which they return to their original place; it is sometimes used to refer to diaspora who return to their homeland, and so on. Within Origenism, it refers to the spiritual or cosmic cycle in which souls are generated without bodies; some fall into bodies; and then these souls return to their divine source. Such was Origen’s peculiar form of universalism. Maximus worries that if souls existed prior to their bodily state in communion with God and then fell, what is to prevent them from falling again after their reconciliation? The critique presumes the metaphysics discussed above.

Maximus understands that, for the fathers before him, our salvation is not a return to a pre-Fall idyllic state. The very fact that our ancestry was corruptible is proof of the fact. Rather, the end for which we were made has yet to be realized. Consider, for example, the common take amongst the Eastern fathers on the image-likeness distinction. When asking whether Adam was created mortal or immortal — a question that emerged because of the microcosm doctrine, which teaches that Adam is a union of mortal (earth) and immortal (heaven) — a consistent answer from very early on (e.g., Theophilus of Antioch) is that he was created neither: Adam was potentially mortal and potentially immortal. That is to say, Adam is a microcosm that joins the organic, dissoluble parts of creation (the mortal) with the higher, indissoluble spiritual parts of creation (the immortal). Adam's will functioned like the fulcrum of a balance scale, capable of raising up the lower parts of his nature by embracing the higher part of his nature, or dragging down the higher part of his nature by subjugating it to the lower parts of his nature (see my article “On Whether the Soul Is Immortal According to the Eastern Church Fathers,” section IV.) This picture of Adam plays into the interpretation of the image and likeness of God. In the Genesis account, God says, Let us make man in our own image and according to our likeness, and then God makes man in his own image; likeness is not repeated. This omission the Eastern fathers take to be significant. The image of God is something innate to the nature of man, referring to our reason and free choice — and in some cases, the invisibility and indissolubility of the soul (again, see my aforementioned article on the soul). But the likeness of God is active, referring to the attributes of God that must be freely acquired through free choice and imitation of God. Hence, Adam was created in the image of God and made to acquire the divine likeness, but having turned away from his divine archetype, the likeness was never acquired. In short, Adam was made to become something that he never became. In this light, we are still within the creation narrative, groping toward the making of man, awaiting the eighth day of creation in which the cosmos is finally rightly formed, as Irenaeus and Basil of Caesarea explain. The resurrected Christ is the first fully realized human being to grace the face of our planet. 

The point is what contextualizes Maximus’ critique of Origenism. First, the Christian narrative, even when culminating in salvation, is not apokatastasis. For the word would imply we are trying to return to Eden. We are not. What we are made for has never before been realized. It is not a return. The narrative is linear, not cyclical. Second, to claim that salvation is cyclical, that we are seeking to return to a state that has been lost, is to introduce a very serious problem, one that threatens to undermine Christian hope. To wit, if we began in the state to which we hope to again attain, and if from this state we fell, then this state does not include unturnability and incorruptibility, evident in the fact of the Fall that followed. This is Maximus' concern. And the concern, as explained above, is one that is broached again and again in the Christian disputes. Our hope is not just redemption but a redemption that leads to incorruption and unturnability, a coming to rest in Goodness, immune to retreat. Arianism undermined this hope with its mutable Son of God, as did Apollinarianism, and Origenism likewise undermines it with apokatastasis.⁹

Continue reading in Part 2

1. For a discussion of these points in dialogue an Eastern Church fathers generally and their confessional commitments specifically, see my article “Are Created Spirits Composed of Matter and Form?,” passim, esp. section 4.

2. For citations on the various things stated here about the Arian dispute and the metaphysics thereof, see any of the following articles:  “Athanasius of Alexandria”; “The Metaphysical Idealism of the Eastern Church Fathers”; “On the Metaphysics of God and Creatures in the Eastern Pro-Nicenes”; “Created Corruptible, Raised Incorruptible.”

3. “Realism” centers around the observation that the mind naturally identifies and abstracts from objects general nouns, indicative of genera (e.g., animal), species (e.g., human), and properties (e.g., bipedal). The question is whether the mind, in doing this, identifies something real outside of itself in reality, or whether it invents these categories and imposes them on objects, mentally grouping them, even though no such groups exist outside of the mind (i.e., Jane and Joane are identified by a common species, human, in the mind, but outside the mind, Jane and Joane are discrete individuals who are in no way conjoined). The former position (i.e., these general nouns identify something real outside of the mind) is aptly named “realism,” while the latter position is named “nominalism,” from the Latin nomen (i.e., the groups are mere names imposed on reality). Within realism, the two general positions are sometimes labeled “moderate realism” and “extreme realism.” The former is the position of Aristotle, which holds that the commonalities the mind identifies are immanent within the material objects we encounter, as described above; they have no existence independent of these concrete manifestations. The extreme position is that of Plato, who, according to a traditional reading of him, believes that these commonalities (or Forms) exist as ideal substances independent of the objects we encounter, and these Forms comprise a second, ideal world (the World of the Forms) of which our material world is a copy. For an overview of realism, see Frederick Copleston, “The Problem of Universals,” in History of Philosophy, 9 vols. (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1950), vol. 2, 136-55. For a critique of the moderate-extreme distinction, see section I of my article “The Metaphysical Idealism of the Eastern Church Fathers.”

4. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.25, a.4. On the realist modalities of impossible, possible, and necessary, see my letter Reflections on the Ontological Argument.

5. John Chrysostom, The Divine Liturgy of Saint John the Chrysostom, ed. Fr. George L. Papadeas (Patmos Press, 1981), 18, 27.

6. A truncated version of the latter article can be found in four posts on substack. See “‘Begotten Not Made?’ Is the Nicene Distinction Cogent (1 of 4)”; “‘Begotten Not Made?’ Is the Nicene Distinction Cogent (2 of 4)”; “‘Begotten Not Made?’ Is the Nicene Distinction Cogent (3 of 4)”; and “‘Begotten Not Made?’ Is the Nicene Distinction Cogent (4 of 4).”

7. I flesh out these points with reference to the free will defense, arguing that this metaphysics has tremendous benefit in answering why God does not make incorruptible creatures, in my article “Created Corruptible, Raised Incorruptible.”

8. On the distinction between the terms soul and spirit, the tendency among Eastern writers is to use “spirit” (pneuma) when referring to bodiless, intelligent creatures, such as angels. By contrast, “soul” (psyche) is inclusive of the irrational, since not everything that has a soul, or life, is rational. Instead, “man … shares life with irrational living beings” (John of Damascus, Expositio fidei orthodoxae, 2.12 [PG 94.928b]). Hence, Eastern writers refer to the souls of  beasts (John of Damascus, De haeresibus, 90 [PG 94.758b]) and even to the plant or vegetative (phytikos) aspect of the soul (John of Damascus, Expositio fidei orthodoxae, 2.12 [PG 94.928bc]). In the case of man, however, God breathed into him, giving him a “rational, understanding soul” (Expositio fidei orthodoxae, 2.12 [PG 94.920b]). In this light, the rational soul is a species within the broader genus of soul. The Eastern fathers do not, therefore, differentiate the soul and spirit of man, as if these were two distinct things. Instead, “the faculties of the soul are divided into those belonging to its rational part and those belonging to its irrational part” (Expositio fidei orthodoxae, 2.12 [PG 94.928b]), the former being that which humanity has in common with the bodiless, intelligent natures (Expositio fidei orthodoxae, 2.12 [PG 94.925c-28a]). Hence, the Eastern fathers will, at times, use spirit or mind in reference to the human soul, since “it does not have a mind as something distinct from itself, but as its purest part” (Expositio fidei orthodoxae, 2.12 [PG 94.924d]).

9. As an aside, this feature of Eastern patristic thought is a sorely under appreciated one. I think, for example, of a popular podcast that speaks about five falls of angels (as well as three falls of man). The claim is dangerous for the very reasons noted above. If angels confirmed in righteousness can later fall, then our hope of unturnability is undermined, just as it is by the doctrines of the Origenists. The podcast hosts seem to be oblivious to this heretical implication, but I think, by “fall,” they mean something more like demonic plots to undermine the worship of God, not five separate occasions on which holy angels, confirmed in righteousness, became demons. If five “demonic plots” is all they mean by “fall,” then the teaching is not heretical. But I fear that by calling each plot a “fall” (a term traditionally used to refer to a creature not yet confirmed in righteousness corrupting its own nature by freely turning away from Goodness) they are leading laity to believe there are five instances in which holy angels, confirmed in righteousness, became demons, which would indeed be a heretical teaching, carrying the same deadly poison as Arianism, Apollinarianism, and Origenism.