On First Principles by (review) David Bentley Hart

Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, Volume 3, Number 1, 2020, pp. 103-107 (Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/joc.2020.0008

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/757668

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] BOOK REVIEWS 103 with Freud and all later schools of thought, Chaudhari will find a very congenial inter- though she surpasses all of them in her strik- locutor. I would also mention the work of the ing observation that “the unconscious has a contemporary psychoanalyst Nancy McWil- prayer life of its own” (84). A little later she liams of Rutgers University, who has written admits to coming to “wonder if God doesn’t with much insight on the many and often respect our unconscious pleas as much as strong gifts of schizoid types, whom she our conscious pleas,” a welcome, hopeful, portrays as capable of very high functioning and helpful insight which perfectly accords indeed. McWilliams’ work would introduce with St. Paul in Romans 8:26. some nuance into the slightly more pessimis- Chaudhari also goes beyond (espe- tic portrait Chaudhari gives of this type. cially) Freudian pessimism about the lim- ited and narrow possibilities for healing to Adam DeVille suggest (drawing here on St. Macarius and University of St. Francis Ps-Dionysius) we not be afraid to enter into the depths of darkness because even there God has prepared the ground, as it were, for the as-yet unrealized healing waiting to be called forth: “the psyche seems to have Origen. On First Principles. Ed. and trans. embedded in its created nature an impetus John Behr. Oxford Early Christian Texts. toward healing” (86), and that impetus to- Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ward healing can be brought forward with 800 pp. the assistance of “an Other” (96). Thus there are no grounds for ultimate despair, insofar Sometimes, it seems as if there is little left as even “symptoms and disease can . . . be for one to say about Origen of Alexandria (c. seen . . . still participating in the fullness of 184–c. 253); more often, it seems as if no one being” (97). Even disease is teleologically or- could possibly say enough. dered toward the divine, Chaudhari seems In one sense, he towers over Christian to say, and although disease may not be fully theological history. After Paul, there is no or obviously healed in this life, it will be in single Christian figure to whom the whole the age to come. This is the kind of wise and tradition is more indebted. It was Origen hopeful realism found throughout this ex- who taught the church how to read scripture traordinary book. as a living mirror of Christ, who evolved the In conclusion, let me simply note one principles of later Trinitarian theology and minor flaw and then a few areas and authors Christology, who majestically set the stan- that Chaudhari might wish to engage with dard for Christian apologetics, who pro- to further her work. The flaw: on p. 107 and duced the first and richest expositions of again on 123, the Scottish analyst Fairbairn contemplative spirituality, and who, simply is referred to as “Donald Fairbairn” but in said, laid the foundation of the whole edifice fact his name was William Ronald Dodds of developed Christian thought. Had there Fairbairn. been no Origen, the Christian intellectual At several points, especially when tradition might never have been much more Chaudhari says we must regard our “ego than a squalid hovel located somewhere at ideal” critically (85; cf. 101) and never sim- the disreputable purlieus of classical culture. ply assume that it speaks to us in the voice of Moreover, he was not only a man of extraor- God, I saw clear parallels with another recent dinary personal holiness, piety, and charity, and very powerful new book, Belief After but a martyr as well, who died as a delayed Freud, by the Spanish Jesuit and psychoan- result of the brutal torture he suffered alyst Carlos Dominguez-Morano, whom during the Decian persecution. He was, in 104 JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN STUDIES short, among the greatest of the church fa- such abuse of episcopal prerogative ever ac- thers and the most illustrious of the saints tually occurred. It is a tragic circumstance, and yet, disgracefully, official church tradi- however, that the damage done by the im- tion—East and West—commemorates him posture has yet to be wholly undone. For as neither. the better part of Christian history, Origen’s This is because, in another sense, who name and reputation have labored under the he was and what he achieved have been hid- burden of the picture those anathemas paint den for the better part of the Christian era (even though none of them actually names behind a false mythology and an even falser him as the author of the teachings con- historical record. Though, as I say, he towers demned). But, for two centuries or so, Chris- over the landscape of Christian thought, he tian scholars have been striving to rescue has done so invisibly ever since his puta- both from their unfortunate posterity, and to tive “condemnation” in 553 at the Fifth Ec- recover his thought from the caricatures that umenical Council. His shadow looms over long ago displaced it in Christian conscious- everything, but he has been erased from the ness. With the great renaissance of patristic historical horizon. (One thinks irresistibly studies in both the Orthodox and Catholic of those Stalin-era photographs from which theological world in the last century, a new purged enemies had been airbrushed out.) period of critical reappraisal and reconstruc- And yet, as we know from the oldest records tion of Origen’s work began in earnest. But of the council—which was convened to deal there is still a great deal left to do. solely with certain Antiochian theologians— It would be difficult to name a more the fifteen anathemas pronounced against significant contribution to this cause in what later came to be called “Origenism” modern Anglophone scholarship than John were never even discussed by the assem- Behr’s edition of Origen’s great systematic bled bishops, let alone ratified, published, or treatise (if that is what it is) De Principiis promulgated. And since the late nineteenth (Περὶ Ἀρχῶν). Whether or not the work was century various scholars have convincingly indeed Origen’s magnum opus, it is certainly established that neither Origen nor “Ori- one of his magna opera, and it provides us genism” was ever the subject of any condem- as full a picture of his theological vision as nation pronounced by the “holy fathers” in we can hope to possess. And yet, curiously 553. The best modern critical edition of the enough, it is a work that even accomplished Seven Councils, Norman Tanner’s, simply scholars have tended down the centuries to omits the anathemas as spurious. Only after read as through a glass darkly rather than the council’s close were they added to the face to face. This is not merely because the record, apparently to appease the emperor text in full exists only in the Latin version Justinian. of Rufinus (344–411); as more recent schol- Even if the council had pronounced arship has come to conclude, and as Behr Origen a heretic (and his name does in points out, viewed in the context of late fact—again probably illegitimately—appear antiquity’s somewhat latitudinarian con- on a list of heretics attached to its canons), ventions of , Rufinus’s appears to it would have been not only an injustice, be a fairly faithful rendering. Certainly, the but a preposterous act of temerity. To have long passages that still survive in the original declared any man a heretic three centuries Greek, preserved in the Origenian anthology after he had died in the peace of the church, compiled supposedly by Basil the Great and in respect of doctrinal determinations not Gregory of Nazianzus under the title Philo- reached during his life, would have been a calia, seem to cast a generally favorable light gross violation of all proper canonical order. on the corresponding passages in the Latin It is a happy circumstance, therefore, that no (and Behr provides both). BOOK REVIEWS 105

The greater obstacle to a clear assess- more theologically sophisticated than But- ment of the treatise in its own terms has, for terworth’s. Then, too, Behr is a scrupulous a long time, been the prevailing assumption guide regarding which portions of Rufinus’s that the reports of Origen’s enemies in the version may be suspect and which not. But patristic period are generally trustworthy Behr’s contributions go still further. and the consequent conclusion that the De Principiis is a mysterious text, even virtual absence of what came to be called once the thickets of misconceptions and “Origenism” from his extant works must be misrepresentations have been cleared away. the result of expurgation on the part of the It is clearly a treatise of remarkable theolog- translators. Thus, the version of De Principiis ical substance, and has the appearance of that for a long time was the standard criti- a kind of theological “systematics” (to wax cal edition—that of Paul Koetschau from momentarily anachronistic). It also, how- 1913—came annotated with passages from ever, has something of the appearance of Origen’s detractors, presented more or less (as its title might suggest) a basic primer in as fragments of the original text or as testi- theological concepts. Yet it seems in many monies to the content of the original Greek ways too curiously organized to be the for- version. In two cases, Koetschau actually mer and too advanced in its reflections quite synthesized an “original” Greek text from to serve as the latter. What kind of a book is dubious secondary sources and offered it as it, really? Its organizing principles seem elu- Origen’s own words. What until now, more- sive, and yet one has the clear sense that for over, was the standard English translation Origen there was a deeply integrated and lu- of the text—that of G. W. Butterworth from cidly consecutive logic knitting its divisions 1936—followed the Koetschau edition. The into a coherent whole. So what precisely are result has been generations of students and those divisions, and why are they arranged even senior scholars who have been taught as they are? to read Origen’s own text as a bowdlerization Certain older authorities imposed a while according the certainly fraudulent and fourfold structure on the text that often inept interpretations of hostile critics the seemed more confusing than orderly; Koet- status of authoritative reports. (To be fair to schau even added chapter headings to ce- both Koetschau and Butterworth, neither in- ment the impression that this was Origen’s tended this to be the case.) intention. Behr follows the tendency of more Behr’s version, blessedly, gives us an edi- recent scholarship in seeing two large divi- tion of the text in English from which Ori- sions (or “cycles”) in the text. On his account, gen’s mythic Doppelgänger has finally been the first of these is “theological” in the sense entirely exorcised, and from which conse- of clear doctrinal deliverances, as drawn quently the real Origen is allowed to shine from scripture or the clear affirmation of the out largely unobscured. The extraneous and church (concerning the Father, Son, Spirit, doubtful materials that Koetschau intro- rational creatures, and the created order). The duced directly into the text are here safely second is an “economic” treatment of certain sequestered in critical quarantine. Behr’s conclusions that might follow the apostolic is also an edition whose critical apparatus deposit and of certain speculative explora- goes a great way toward dispelling the worst tions of topics on which no definitive teach- of the slanders that have attached them- ings have as yet been established. Whether selves to Origen’s reputation like poisonous this general division adequately deals with leeches since well before Justinian’s med- all the problems the text presents can be dlings in the Fifth Council. And, for what it debated; but Behr’s approach does seem to is worth, Behr’s rendering of Rufinus’s Latin make sense of the general architectonics of is a bit more accurate and is in many places the work. Moreover, he is probably correct to 106 JOURNAL OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN STUDIES place Book Four’s great disquisition on bib- into existence in the heavenly court; there, lical interpretation (of which the Philocalia in the eternal intention and perfected cre- preserved the better part) in a category of its ation of God, we are already—and in that own, as a kind of theoretical explanation and sense eternally have ever been—joined to justification of the procedures adopted in God, pervaded by his glory like iron thrust the rest of the text, before the treatise’s final into the fire. But that does not mean that our “recapitulation.” worldly lives are merely the middle chapters The richest aspect of Behr’s long intro- in the several histories of isolated psycholog- duction—and, one would think, the most ical selves. Our “descent” from that eternity likely to generate debate—is his treatment of is simply the difference between our eternal Origen’s views of the relation between eter- end and the temporal reality of creation, by nity and time. Of course, even Athanasius (in which alone we can make our ascent to God De Decretis) indicated that even in his day in his Son. Our “fall” away from God was, incautious readers tended to mistake many and has always been, nothing other than our of Origen’s purely speculative expositions of actual turning away from the reality of the difficult topics for firm pronouncements, and union of God and humanity on the cross of that Origen’s own beliefs were often equated Christ. with ideas he had done no more than con- Behr, in fact, is more radical here than scientiously acknowledge in the course of any other reader of Origen I know of. He reaching his own conclusions. And modern extends this same reasoning even to the re- scholarship has gone a good way toward cor- lation between eternity and time in the in- roborating this claim. Behr is quite vigilant in carnation and earthly ministry of Christ. He making sure that his readers know not only rejects the notion that the eternal Sonship of that Origen, say, explicitly rejected any the- Christ consists in a pre-incarnate state from ory of the transmigration of souls, but also which the Logos literally departed in order that nothing in his surviving works seems to to assume a “new” state as the man Jesus (and support such notions as literally pre-existent most especially the notion that he did so by spiritual intellects falling away from the eter- way of donning a pre-incarnate and unfallen nal contemplation of God through satiety, soul). I will not venture into the details. I will or their congelation into physical bodies, or confess, however, that here I hesitate to fol- their ultimate cyclic return to the eternal sta- low Behr all the way, not because his argu- tus quo ante (and so forth). ments are not compelling, but solely on the For Behr, one thing that Origen grasped grounds of historical plausibility. Then again, with particular genius was the sheer incom- it is our perhaps distorted understanding mensurability of eternity and time. Rather of the history of Christian thought—and of than, say, the mythology of a realm of dis- Origen’s thought in particular—that is very embodied intellects dwelling continuously much at issue in all of this. in some sort of pre-temporal but consecu- I confess, my own tendency is somewhat tive eternity, then falling away into ensoul- to regret too demythologized a treatment of ment and corporeality, and then being led Origen. Obviously, of course, the caricature by Christ upward again to their original of Origen’s theology that has prevailed since condition, Origen taught merely that God’s the early centuries is something that must creative and rational intentions and prin- be done away with. On the other hand, I am ciples are with him from everlasting, in his not at all sure that a subtler but nonetheless “foreknowledge” and by virtue of the divine somewhat more literal notion of a real fall Wisdom, his Son. We were all of us, that is of spiritual beings from the “aeon” around to say, in some sense created in our last end, God would have been a particularly outra- before the foundations of the world, called geous supposition in Origen’s time, or would BOOK REVIEWS 107 be any more so today. , for behavior, especially how your parents really instance, very ingeniously takes up such treated you, not to mention what you faced a theme without allowing it to degenerate in school. And, what of the dense, often into a crude mythology; and I have found it toxic, sometimes uproariously funny and possible in the past to read Origen through wonderful swirl of people thrown together Bulgakov without feeling I was imposing an in a parish community—in particular how alien scheme on the texts. But that may be they treated you as their pastor, as well as purely a matter of taste and temperament. vice versa. Barbara Brown Taylor captured Behr’s arguments are compelling, whether I something of such a stew of humanity in always want them to be or not, and his schol- her memoir, Leaving Church. The same has arship is impeccable. This book is, viewed been done by Mills here, with honesty and from any set of predispositions, a genuinely most especially humor. With him, we en- splendid work. counter the swirl of souls that constitute Nativity of the Holy Virgin parish. It’s really David Bentley Hart a goulash, but there’s much grace in it. Will Willimon and Walter Brueggemann, no less, among others, have found his narrative true and reassuring. So too colleagues of mine in ministry. They praise it as moving, even painful, and real over and against their own William C. Mills. Losing My Religion: A experiences of family, education, and pasto- Memoir of Faith and Finding. Eugene, OR: ral service. RESOURCE Publications, 2019. xv + 151 pp. There is no doubt that Mills could have said a lot more. Having tried to draw upon Some would say Augustine (of Hippo) my own family, formation, and parish expe- started it all off with hisConfessions , but the rience several times in my writing, I know genre of spiritual memoirs has a new and the challenge of being faithful to the truth worthy addition in this account of growing while at the same time recognizing the need up, education, and service in ordained minis- to protect individuals, especially when the try from William C. Mills. Some of the most full story cannot be told, not just for candor’s powerful works in memoir include those of sake but for respect of privacy. That said, one Richard Holloway, Barbara Brown Taylor, cannot escape the deft mix of narrative and Darcey Steinke, Kate Braestrup, and Sara symbolism Mills employs. I think, in particu- Miles, among others. Mills’s account deserves lar, of his describing how the clerical cassock to be in this procession and the ingredients is a garment but also the start of taking on a he brings, not always found in others, include new identity, akin to the monastic’s reception a subtle sense of humor, unembarrassed of the habit. He continues this with the vari- self-honesty, and generous humanity. Purely ous items that comprise a priest’s vestments as an aside, other than a few chapters of mine for celebration of the liturgy. And, toward that I have placed in recent publications, I do the end of his account, there is a subtle but not know of other Eastern Church priests beautiful and powerful invocation of the who have shared their personal journeys. meanings of water and baptism, death and As Patricia Hampl observes about new life. memoir writing, there are so many chal- Full disclosure requires I say that I have lenges in remembering. Do others recall known William Mills for over twenty years, the event or setting as you do? And if not, is first as a parish intern, and later on as a your recall accurate? How much do you tell student informally, and colleague and, yes, of the more gory details of “family of origin” friend. Our history does not preclude my