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The Reception of John of Damascus in the Summa Halensis

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The Reception of John of Damascus in the Summa Halensis RichardCross The Reception of John of Damascus in the Summa Halensis Abstract: John of Damascus was perhaps the most important Christian encyclopedist of late antiquity.His influencecrops up in two distinct ways in the Summa. He is an authority to be cited in support of positions adopted in the Summa,and sometimes the inspiration of thoseteachings;and he is an authority whose apparentlydeviant positions need to be givenacceptable interpretations. Of the times that John is men- tioned, his name crops up in association with some very distinctive issues: on the positive side, the will and passions (and action theory more generally), and the ac- counts of providence, faith, and images; and on the negative side, divine simplicity and associated epistemic and semantic questions, the Trinity,and the prelapsarian human condition. This chapter,accordingly, divides the material up in twoways: first,examining cases in which John clearlyinfluenced the authors of the Summa, albeit not always unproblematically; and,secondly, examining those problematic cases in which John presents aposition apparentlyinconflict with thatadopted by the authorsofthe Summa. John of Damascus (d. c. 750) wasperhapsthe most important Christian encyclopedist of late antiquity.¹ He summarized, through extensive quotation, almostthe whole of the dogmatic heritageofthe Greek-speakingtheologians from the Cappadocians to Maximus the Confessor,and wasthe chief sourcefor knowledge of these theolo- gians’ thinking in the medievalwest.Asweshall see, texts from Gregory of Nazian- zus, Nemesius of Emesa, and Maximus, mediated through John, turn out to be par- ticularlysignificant for the Summa Halensis,asdoJohn’sown contributions to the Iconoclast controversy.John’s De fide orthodoxa or Expositio fidei,the Summa’s source, exists in two Latin translations: areasonablyaccurate one by Burgundio of Pisa, probablydating from 1153 to 1154,and an incompleteone (cc. 45 – 52 only, material on the metaphysics of the Incarnation) by Cerbanus the Hungarian, proba- blydone some ten or more years before Burgundio’s. Burgundio’simmediatelybe- came the standard version.² Foranoverview of John’slife, work, and thought, see AndrewLouth, John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2002). See Eligius M. Buytaert, ‘Introduction,’ in John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa:Versions of Burgun- dio and Cerbanus,ed. Eligius M. Buytaert,Franciscan InstitutePublications, Text Series,8(StBona- venture, NY:Franciscan Institute; Louvain: Nauwelaerts; Paderborn: Schöningh,1955). Forthe Greek text,see John of Damascus, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos,vol. 2, Expositio fidei,ed. Bo- nifatius Kotter,Patristische Texteund Studien, 12 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1973). Thereare OpenAccess. ©2020 Lydia Schumacher,published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110685022-007 72 Richard Cross John crops up in two distinct ways in the Summa. He is an authority to be cited in support of positions adopted in the Summa,and sometimes indeed seemingly the in- spiration of those teachings;and he is an authority whose apparentlydeviant (i.e. (frequently) non-Augustinian) positions need to be givenacceptable interpretations. This dialectic oftenshows up in the positioning of the relevant texts:inthe argu- ments pro,orinthe ad oppositum;and not infrequentlyone of John’stexts is used as acorrective of another.(There is nothing unusual about the Summa in this respect; we could find the sameinany writer’suse of John, and indeedofauthorities in gen- eral, at least in the medievalwest.) John’spresenceisnotable but not absolutelypervasive in the Summa: Icounted over 700mentions—somewhat comparable with Aristotle (‘The Philosopher’)atup- wards of 500,but well belowthe 5,000 or so citations of Augustine. Of the times that John is mentioned, his name crops up in association with some very distinctive is- sues: on the positive side, the willand passions (and action theory more generally), and the accounts of providence,faith, and images; and on the negative side, divine simplicity and associatedepistemic and semantic questions, the Trinity,and the pre- lapsarian human condition. In what follows, Ishallaccordingly divide the material up in two ways:first,examining cases in which John clearlyinfluenced the authors of the Summa,albeit not always unproblematically; and, secondly, examining those problematic cases in which John presents aposition apparentlyinconflict with that adopted by the authors of the Summa. John was an authority:the authors never sim- plyreject what he writes. Influence Action Theory Undeniablythe most significant locus for John’sinfluenceonthe Summa lies in the domainofactiontheory—in particular, theories of the will and the passions. John himself summarizes and adapts avast rangeofearlier philosophical and theological traditions. Philosophically, what John provides represents an attempt to integrate what Aristotle had to sayonactionwith the view thatthere is awill or rational ap- petite distinct from the various pre-rational appetites isolated by Aristotle.³ This led various English translations; IrefertoJohn of Damascus, Writings,trans. Frederic H. Chase, The Fa- thers of the Church, 37 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,1958). It is certainlypossible to arguethat Aristotle’saccount of appetite allows him to give an account that is functionallythe same as one that includes awill. But it is not the standardreading. Michael Frede has recentlyargued that the origin of the notion of will is Stoic, originatinginparticular in Epi- ctetus (see Michael Frede, AFreeWill: TheOrigin of the Notion in AncientThought,ed. A.A. Long (Ber- keley,CA: University of California Press, 2011), against the earlier claim that the notion is distinctively The Reception of John of Damascus in the SummaHalensis 73 John to posit acomplex sequence of seven psychological events involved in deliber- ate activity—asequence that was developed in great detail by Thomas Aquinas⁴—but the details of which the Summa’sauthors largely ignore.⁵ The theological background to John’sdiscussion is Christological: Maximus’ attempt to defend the existenceof two wills in Christ,adivinewill and ahuman will, against his so-called ‘monothe- lite’ opponents whose position was eventuallycondemned at the Third Council of Constantinople.⁶ Hereisthe problem: giventhat the human will is agenuine will, how do we secure that it is necessarilygood?Ireturn to the Christological issue in amoment,once Ihavelaid out the basic contours of the rather complex passage of ideas from Maximus to the Summa. Anumber of medieval accounts of appetite in general attempt to bring together the view that there are pre-rational appetites with the view thatthere is arational appetite. Forexample, Peter Lombardmaintained—doubtless following insights from Augustine—that there are two kinds of appetite in ahuman being:asensory one (sensualitas), and arationalone (voluntas—will).⁷ John himself uses aslightly different distinction between two kinds of appetite,one thathehas borrowed from Maximus: thelesis and boulesis,roughly,anatural inclinationtothe good, and ara- tional desire for thingssubject to choice.⁸ The authorsofthe Summa use John’sdis- tinctionasthe starting point for their own discussion: There is will as nature, and will as will, as John Damascene says:inother,Greek, words, θέλησις and βούλησις.Will as natureisageneral and indeterminateappetite. (…)[It]isimplanted into every power of the soul with respect to its act and object: so it is in the irascible power with respect to the arduous, in the concupiscible powerwith respect to the good, in the rational power with respect to the true.⁹ Here thelesis is the name of an inclination common to all the soul’spowers—an in- clination to the good. But it is also the name of apower,specificallyarational will Christian, and found first in Augustine (see Albrecht Dihle, TheTheoryofWill in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley,CA: University of California Press,1982)). See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II, qq. 11–17.Iuse the edition of Aquinas’ works edited by Robert Busa, found at http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html. On this,Michael Frede, ‘John of DamascusonHuman Action, the Will, and Human Freedom,’ in Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources,ed. Katerina Ierodiakonou (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 86–7. See Maximus, Ad Marinum (PG 91:28B-37 A). See Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae (hereafter, Sent.)II, d. 24,cc. 3–4, 2vols,ed. Ignatius C. Brady, Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, 4–5(Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaven- turae, 1971– 81), 1:452– 3. John of Damascus, Expositio fidei,c.36, ll. 51–83 (Kotter,89–91;Buytaert,135–7; Chase, 249); for thelesis,see Maximus, Ad Marinum (PG 91:12B); for boulesis,see Maximus, Ad Marinum (PG 91:13B). Alexander of Hales, Doctoris irrefragabilis Alexandri de Hales Ordinis minorum Summa theologica (SH),4vols (Quaracchi: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1924–48) VolI,P1, In2, Tr1, Q4,C7(n. 326), pp. 479b-80a. 74 RichardCross that naturallyinclines to the supreme good, distinct from the rational deliberative will.¹⁰ The authorsuse this distinction of rational wills to explain how wrong- doing is compatible with the Aristotelianview thathuman beingsalways will the su- preme good (eudaimonia): According to Damascene, we should distinguish between the natural will, according to which all
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