Byzantine Theology: Major Themes
Byzantine Theology: Major Themes
The distinctive theology of the eastern, Greek-speaking church during the Middle Ages is often known as “Byzantine theology.” The name is derived from the Greek city of Byzantium, which Constantine (272–337; reigned 306–37) chose as the site of his new capital city for the eastern Roman empire in 330. At this point, it was renamed Constantinople (“city of Constantine”). However, the name of the older town remained and gave its name to the distinctive style of theology that flourished in this region until the fall of Constantinople to invading Islamic armies in 1453.
During the time of the emperor Justinian (483–565; reigned 527–65), Byzantine theology began to emerge as an intellectual force of some considerable importance. As the eastern and western churches became increasingly alienated from each other (a process which began long before the final schism of 1054), so Byzantine thinkers often emphasized their divergence from western theology (e.g., in relation to the filioque clause: see p. 287), thus reinforcing the distinctiveness of their approach through polemical writings. For example, Byzantine writers tended to understand salvation primarily in terms of deification, rather than western legal or relational categories. In addition, they found themselves puzzled by the doctrines of purgatory which were gaining the ascendancy in western Catholic circles. Any attempt to achieve a degree of reunion between east and west during the Middle Ages was thus complicated by a complex network of political, historical, and theological factors. By the time of the fall of Constantinople, the differences between east and west remained as wide as ever.
To appreciate the distinctive nature of Byzantine theology, we need to consider its general outlook. Byzantine theologians were not particularly concerned with systematic formulations of the Christian faith. For them, Christian theology was something “given” and which therefore needed to be defended against its opponents and explained to its adherents. The idea of “systematic theology” is somewhat foreign to the general Byzantine ethos. Even John of Damascus, whose work On the Orthodox Faith is of considerable importance in the consolidation of a distinctively eastern Christian theology, is to be seen primarily as an expositor of the faith, rather than as a speculative or original thinker.
Figure 2.2 The ancient city of Constantinople.
Source: The Art Archive / Real Biblioteca de lo Escorial / Gianni Dagli Orti.
Byzantine theology can be regarded as remaining faithful to a principle originally set out by Athanasius in his writing On the Incarnation, which affirmed that theology was the expression of the mind of the saints. Byzantine theology (including its modern descendants in both Greek and Russian orthodoxy) is thus strongly oriented toward the idea of paradosis (“tradition”), particularly the writings of the Greek fathers. Writers such as Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–c.394), Maximus the Confessor (c.580–662), and the unknown writer who adopted the pseudonym “Dionysius the Areopagite” (believed to have lived in the late fifth and early sixth centuries) are of particular importance in this respect.
Two Byzantine theological controversies were of particular importance. The first, which broke out during the period 725–842, is usually referred to as the iconoclastic (“breaking of images”) controversy. It erupted over the decision of Emperor Leo III (685–741; reigned 717–41) to destroy icons, on the grounds that they were barriers to the conversion of Jews and Muslims. The controversy was mainly political, although there were some serious theological issues at stake, most notably the extent to which the doctrine of the incarnation justified the depiction of God in the form of images.
The second controversy, which broke out in the fourteenth century, focused on the issue of hesychasm (Greek: hesychia, “silence”), a style of meditation through physical exercises which enabled believers to see the “divine light” with their own eyes. Hesychasm placed considerable emphasis upon the idea of “inner quietness” as a means of achieving a direct inner vision of God. It was particularly associated with writers such as Simeon the New Theologian (949–1022) and Gregory Palamas, who was elected archbishop of Thessalonika in 1347. Its opponents argued that its methods tended to minimize the difference between God and creatures, and were particularly alarmed by any suggestion that God could be “seen.”
In responding to this criticism, Palamas developed the doctrine now generally known as “Palamism,” which draws a distinction between the divine energies and the divine essence. The distinction allowed Palamas to defend hesychasm by affirming that it enabled believers to encounter the divine energies but not the unseen and ineffable divine essence. Believers cannot participate directly in the divine essence; however, they are able to participate directly in the uncreated energies which are God's mode of union with believers.
Palamas's theology was espoused and developed particularly by the lay theologian Nicolas Cabasilas (c.1320–c.1390), whose Life in Christ remains a classic work of Byzantine spirituality. His work has been reappropriated in more recent years by Neopalamite writers such as Vladimir Lossky (1903–58) and John Meyendorff (1926–92; see pp. 124, 261).
The golden era of Byzantine theology came to an end in 1453, when the great city of Constantinople finally fell to Turkish Islamic armies, which were conducting a jihad (“holy war”) against Christians in the region. This event marked the end of an age. With the fall of Byzantium, intellectual and political leadership within Orthodoxy largely passed to Russia. The Russians had been converted through Byzantine missions in the tenth century, and took the side of the Greeks in the schism of 1054. By the end of the fifteenth century, Moscow and Kiev were firmly established as patriarchates, each with its own distinctive style of Orthodox theology. It was only when Greece, now part of the Ottoman empire, finally broke free from Turkish rule in 1831 that the renewal of Orthodox theology in that region was able to begin.
It will be clear from the material presented in this chapter that Christian theology underwent significant development in both eastern and western Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Subsequent generations of theologians have regarded the period as being of landmark significance in relation to several areas of theological reflection, with a number of its writers being regarded as possessing permanent importance. The rise and fall of Byzantium is of particular importance to a full understanding of the subsequent development of eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and Greece, just as the rise of scholasticism and humanism were of considerable importance to the shaping of western theology.