Yannaras's Orthodoxy & the West

Yesterday I received a review copy of Chrestos Yannaras’s Orthodoxy and the West: Hellenic Self-Identity in the Modern Age, trans. Fr Peter Chamberas and Norman Russell (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross, 2006), courtesy of Aimee Cox Ehrs, Managing Editor of Holy Cross Orthodox Press. It arrived in fine condition, a nicely designed volume featuring a painting of the contemporary Greek iconographer and painter, George Kordes, entitled ‘Ο Ήλιος ο Ηλιάτορας’ (1997). Here is the publisher’s description from the back cover:

From the fourteenth century to the present day the Greek Church has either willingly adopted Western religious ideas or had them forced upon it by authoritarian Greek governments. This book tells the story, from a Greek perspective, of the penetration of Orthodoxy by Western theological attitudes, beginning with the first translations of Thomas Aquinas and ending with the tradition of academic theology of the modern Greek universities. The unfolding of the story, punctuated by many vivid portraits of the chief personalities of the times, raises searching questions about the nature of Hellenic self-identity.

I requested this book, in part because of my admiration for Yannaras based on his brilliant The Freedom of Morality, trans. Elizabeth Briere (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1984), but also on the basis of Felix Culpa’s posted excerpts on Papadiamandis here. Yannaras’s appreciation of the great Skiathan as ‘the most important figure in modern Greek literature’ (Orthodoxy, p. 252), but also as ‘the most important and most authentic modern Greek theologian’ (p. 254), even if it may be ever so slightly hyperbolic, and particularly in the second statement, is an important testimony from a giant in modern Greek theology and philosophy. His evaluation is quite valuable and full of insight. Here is a passage that did not appear on Ora et Labora:

Papadiamantis excels at telling stories that bring the kingdom of the Gospels to life, enabling us to experience it in the popular holiness of a still-surviving eucharistic community. Old island women who love the Church services and simple priests with the common faults of human nature, goatherds and sailors unaware of their own sanctity, drunkards and petty criminals of childlike innocence, are all justified and made resplendent within the eucharistic body which was then still a living reality. (p. 254)

Of course, the observations about Papadiamandis are offered in the context of a wholly invaluable study of contemporary Greek theology, whether expressed in academic theology, philosophy, or literature, and its relationship with the piety of the Greek people. Thus, we also find discussions of Kontoglou, Fr Romanides (he strongly applauds Ancestral Sin, but is less enthusiastic about Fr Romanides’s subsequent work), Panagiotes Chrestou, George Mantzarides, Metropolitan John (Zizioulas), and others. Yannaras's study promises to contribute much to the acquaintance of English-speaking Orthodox—whose acquaintance with contemporary theology is so often limited to the Russian émigrés—with the trends and overall context, as well as the specific figures of Greek theology. It is thus in some ways a fuller, but also more impassioned, presentation of some of the information in Yannaras’s article ‘Theology in Present-Day Greece’, trans. Angeline Bouchard, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 16.4 (1971) pp. 195-214 (I’m not familiar with his article, ‘Orthodoxy and the West’, of the same year, and so cannot comment on its relation with the present book). Here is his concluding paragraph on Mantzarides, the retired head of my department at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki:

Mantzaridis published other studies on Palamite theology which were later collected in a volume entitled Palamika. As Professor of Christian Ethics at Thessalonica, he transformed the legalistic character which this branch of theology had acquired through Ch. Androutsos, B. Antoniadis and their imitators. In Mantzaridis’s writings Christian ethics insists on theosis as humanity’s goal, and appeals to the witness of the patristic experience for every subsidiary aspect of moral teaching. The morality of the ecclesial person is restored to its real existential dimensions of freedom from death. It is a morality revelatory of true life: Christian ethics is ‘a revelation of God’. (p. 280)

Until it arrived, however, I’d forgotten that I had already been exposed to one unfortunate defect of Orthodoxy and the West: Yannaras’s almost wholly negative evaluation of St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain (pp. 131-7), which is only hinted at in the earlier ‘Theology’ article (p. 197). It’s true that Yannaras grants, ‘St Nikodemos’s theological originality is obvious; he is the theologian of ecclesiastical worship, drawing his main themes from the Liturgy’ (pp. 130-1). But immediately afterward, I’m afraid he falls into the trap of being so vigilant against ‘Western captivity’ that he does not hesitate to cry ‘J’accuse!’ when he finds—particularly in St Nicodemus’s Εξομολογητάριον and Χρηστοήθεια των Χριστιανών—the sort of language that he doesn’t care for even in the Holy Fathers and Saints of the Church. Thus, his treatment of St Nicodemus consists mostly of individual phrases taken out of context and assumed to prove that ‘the books remain Roman Catholic in their theology and language’ (p. 131).

Fortunately, Fr George Metallinos has produced a wonderfully apt response, diplomatically addressing Yannaras’s objections to the Saint, and reverently re-evaluating and explaining the latter’s writings in accordance with the undeniably valuable insights Yannaras has provided into the ethos of Orthodoxy. One can read an earlier version of it here, at the Orthodox Christian Information Center, and a revised version published as the ‘Introduction’ to the beautifully done English translation of the Εξομολογητάριον, St Nikodemos the Hagiorite, Exomologetarion: A Manual of Confession, trans. Fr George Dokos (Thessalonica: Uncut Mountain, 2006), pp. 33-60. Having granted that the language to which Yannaras objects is indeed a feature of the Saint’s writing in places, Fr Metallinos concludes:

However, we should not confuse language with the spirit of Holy Tradition, which is preserved, not simply by language and intellectual expressions, but above all by the practice of asceticism and the entire spiritual struggle. St Nikodemos, despite the language of the Exomologetarion and other related works of his, is faithful to the Hesychastic tradition and is a successor to St Gregory Palamas, by virtue of the ascetical experience to which he fully adhered. (p. 45)

Given Yannaras’s concession that St Nicodemus ‘was brought up surrounded by Orthodox worship, studied patristic texts, especially [St] Gregory Palamas, and had theological knowledge of the ascetic fathers’ (p. 131), one can’t help but wonder, with Fr Metallinos, why we do not then read him within the context of this Tradition and interpret him accordingly, rather than in the context of a Western scholasticism and pietism with which, by contrast, he had very little to do.

Anyway, I feel quite certain that this unfortunate opinion does not mar the work as a whole, and I greatly look forward to reading it through.