403 Ambrose Mong Many Western Theologians Have Been Fascinated

book reviews 403

Ambrose Mong Purification of Memory: A Study of Orthodox Theologians from a Catholic Perspective (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2015), 212 pp. isbn 97890227175132 (pbk). £25.00/ $50.00.

Many Western theologians have been fascinated by Orthodox theology since the 1920s, after the arrival of leading Russian intellectuals in Western Europe and the establishment of the Saint Sergius Theological Institute in Paris. Ambrose Mong’s study of eight major Orthodox theological figures of the twen- tieth century is thus situated in a long tradition. Mong, a Asian Dominican, follows in the footsteps of another Dominican, Aidan Nichols, a well-known British theologian, who published a similar book, studying eleven Orthodox theologians, under the title Light from the East: Authors and Themes in Ortho- dox Theology (1995). Inevitably, the books overlap in the theologians studied: both tackle Nicholas Afanasiev, Sergius Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky and John Meyendorff. Mong also considers Nicholas Berdiaev, John Zizioulas and Jaroslav Pelikan; and Nichols includes Paul Evdokimov, Panay- iotis Nellas, John Romanides, Alexander Schmemann, Panayiotis Trembelas and Christos Yannaras. Nichols’ book is now somewhat dated, but is still a valu- able reference work on the authors and themes studied. The perspectives of the two Dominicans is different. Nichols limits his study to one judiciously selected major theme for each author, for example apopha- tism in Lossky, neo-Palamism in Meyendorff, sophiology in Bulgakov, and tradition in Florovsky. Nichols thus manages to cover most of the main themes in modern Orthodox theology. Mong covers several issues for each author and compares the thinking of Orthodox and Roman Catholic or Protestant theologians on certain issues. Mong’s preferred Roman Catholic authors are Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, John Paul ii, Paul McPartlan and Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict xvi. Mong also appeals to several major Anglican and Protestant theologians, notably Karl Barth, Henry Chadwick, Adolf von Harnack, Jürgen Moltmann and Rowan Williams. Perspectives from non-Orthodox authors on the issues addressed by the Orthodox theologians help to situate their thinking in a broader Christian perspective. At times, however, in Mong’s discussion of the non-Orthodox theologians, there is a certain lack of engagement between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox, and the connection is left somewhat up in the air. For example, Mong writes that ‘Bulgakov’s emphasis on God’s experience of forsak- enness was taken up by the Lutheran theologian Jürgen Moltmann’ (p. 106), followed by a good discussion of Moltmann’s theology of the suffering God (pp. 106–109). But no direct connection between Bulgakov and Moltmann is

404 book reviews shown, other than that they appear to agree that ‘God willingly enters into the limited and finite situation of human beings …’ (p. 108). Unfortunately Mong’s knowledge of general Orthodox theology is at times weak. In the chapter on Zizioulas, we read that ‘the Orthodox Church claims that the only authoritative sources it has are the Bible and the Fathers, which are common to all Christians’ (p. 52). Orthodox would quickly add as ‘authoritative sources’ the dogmatic pronouncements of ecumenical councils and certain local councils, the liturgy, icons, canons and the lives and writings of the saints – not all of the same weight. And of course Orthodox attach great- er importance to the Greek and Byzantine Fathers than do other Christians. In discussing Zizioulas’ view that the parish is not ‘a “complete” or “catholic” church’, Mong comments that ‘the idea that the parish by itself is not “catholic” contradicts Orthodox teaching’ (p. 58). No authority is given for this bold state- ment and one can only wonder what ‘Orthodox teaching’ he has in mind, since there is no authoritative Orthodox doctrine on this subject. One can only refer to specific authors, ancient and modern, including of course Afanasiev and Zizioulas, who disagree on this point. In practice, it is too easy to forget that Orthodoxy has no magisterium and that, beyond the dogmatic pronouncements of ecumenical councils, teachings on many subjects are often the views of particular writers, who may or may not be expressing a broader consensus over time. In the discussion of Bulgakov’s Mariology, Mong writes that ‘Mary is also “wholly deified” and thus makes possible the divinization not only of people, but also of the world at large’ (p. 112). The second part of the sentence is close to the ‘co-redeemer’ theory, which is certainly not Bulgakov’s view, as suggested in the citation from Bulgakov which follows: ‘In her [Mary] creation is utterly and completely divinised, conceives, bears and fosters God.’ Unfortunately also, there are too frequent grammatical lapses for an aca- demic book. These should have been caught in copy-editing. A paragraph in the chapter on Lossky begins ‘Due to their consubstantiality, Lossky argued that …’ (p. 132), and it is only later in the sentence that the reader grasps that the ‘their’ refers to the three Persons of the Trinity. Another sentence in the same paragraph begins, ‘In the West, they speak …’ – who are ‘they’? On page 21, the Second Vatican Council is followed by a plural verb (‘have recognised’) and the Roman Catholic Church as well (‘have attempted’). More seriously no doubt, in the chapter on Meyendorff we read that ‘he condemned the Orthodox Church for not accepting the decrees of the Council of Florence’ (p. 22). After some head-scratching and consultation with the Meyendorff book cited (The Primacy of Peter), it would appear that the ‘he’ who condemned the Orthodox Church is not Meyendorff, but Pope Paul vi!

ecclesiology 13 (2017) 387-421