f i r s t t h i n g s May 2013

matters by Gregory Palamas. It is, in- deed, one of most admirable features of this book that it is sensitive to what East and West have in common.

Eastern and Western traditions. The interest in Aquinas in the Byzantine East in the last century of the Byz- antine Empire was not paralleled in the West, where Thomas star was already declining in the face of at- tacks by Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, the rise of nominalism in philosophy, and the dissolution of his rational metaphysics by the two powers doctrine in theology. It was only with Pope Leo XIIIs bull Ae- terni Patris (1879) that Thomas role as the Catholic theologian, the doctor communis, became assured.

One wonders why there was this Byzantine interest. Plested does not speculate; he draws attention to the fact and gives a fine account of the engagement of Byzantine thinkers with Aquinas. This account upsets the commonly received wisdom. Enthusiasm for Thomas was felt throughout the intellectual world of late Byzantium, fractured as it was by the so-called Hesychast controversy over the claims by Athonite monks to have genuine experience of the uncreated light of the Godhead in prayer, not least through the use of the Jesus Prayer.

As Plested points out, the He- sychast controversy was already settled before the advent of Thomas on the Byzantine scene. Despite the recent tendency in Orthodox circles to oppose Aquinas and Gregory Palamas, Hesychasms main theolog- ical defender, there is little sense of this in the fourteenth century. Promi- nent supporters of Palamas, such as Nicholas Cabasilas and Theophanes of Nicaea, made enthusiastic use of elements of Aquinas theology.

O rthodox interest in Aquinas did not end with the collapse of

Plested begins the story rather dif- ferently, however; he wants to place Aquinas in the context of what he calls Byzantine scholasticism. By this he means a tradition of learned analysis of theological issues, using logic and argument, that he traces back to the eighth-century father John Damascenes Fount o f Knowl- edge, written by the former civil ser- vant to the Muslim caliphate who had become a monk near Jerusalem, where he devoted his life to prayer and study. This tradition Plested traces further in great Byzantine scholars such as Photios, the great ninth-century patriarch of Constan- tinople, and the courtly Michael Psellos, Consul of the Philosophers in the eleventh century.

This was a very learned tradi- tion of scholarship, but it was noth- ing like the scholasticism of the high Middle Ages, which is much more than a keenness to present theology systematically combined with the use of syllogistic reasoning. Medieval scholasticism was a product of the grow th of the university, which spawned intense competition among the teachers, the schoolmen, for stu- dents: competition pursued through the quaestio, at which a schoolman invited challenges to his opinions (the questions), to which he responded with virtuosic displays of learning and argument.

There is no parallel in the Byz- antine East, where there was hardly one university, and no institutional competition. Nevertheless, Plested is right to underline Aquinas debt to Greek theology, found especially in his Christology, and his indebtedness to John Damascene and the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areop- agite. This interest in Greek theology is more marked in him than in any of the other scholastics. Plested also draws attention to the championing of the use of reason in theological

The Dumb Ox and the Orthodoxby Andrew Louth

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he Greeks never had any interest in Latin culture: This was true in the clas- sical period and was in- herited by the Church

Fathers (the interest of the Greeks in St. Gregory the Great is the excep- tion that proves the rule). It began to change at the end of the thirteenth century, when, in the wake of the Byzantines outright rejection of the reunion negotiated at the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, the Em- peror Michael VIII Palaiologos com- missioned a translation of Augustines De Trinitate, to inform the Greeks about Latin theology. The translator also translated Boethius De Conso- latione Philosophiae, as well as some Ovid, which suggests genuine interest among the Greeks in Latin culture.

The process initiated by the em- peror continued and grew apace. The most striking example of this is the Byzantine interest in Thomas Aquinas, several of whose works were translated into Greek, beginning with his Summa contra Gentiles, translated in 1354, and continuing with much of the Summa Theologiae, several quaes- tiones, some of his opuscula , and commentaries on Aristotle all this backed up by works expounding and commenting on Aquinas, as well as at- tacking him, a process that continued to the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. This is the core of Marcus Plesteds magnificent book, the fruit of vast erudition and research in ter- ritory as yet very imperfectly mapped.

Andrew Louth, an Orthodox priest, is professor emeritus o f Patristic and Byzantine studies at the University o f Durham.

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R E V I E W S

largely unknown: There are hardly any editions, and Plested himself has drawn on forays among manuscripts. However, there is now a research project, Thomas de Aquino Byz- antinus, that will eventually see the publication of critical editions of the Byzantine translations of Aquinas and many of the Byzantine discus- sions of him.

able. Until then, it is very difficult to move beyond what this book has so clearly and elegantly outlined. What did, or does, Thomas look like in Greek dress? Already, in a conference held last year in connection with the Thomas de Aquino Byzantinus proj- ect, some hints of an answrer emerged. It was suggested, for example, that the analytical Thomas of the Latins became, in the Greek of Kydones translation, a rhetorical Thomas.

The question of translating from one cultural m atrix to another is complex. It is true, as Plested urges, that Aquinas had an exceptional 111- terest in Greek theology and philoso- phy, but he read all this in Latin, not Greek, and it could be argued that both John Damascene and the Areop- agite read rather differently in Latin translation (however accurate) than in the original Greek: They were read in a Latin cultural matrix profoundly influenced by Augustine.

That is only a symbol of a much larger problem. Plested does not do much towards addressing it, but he ably brings us to the threshold. If he manages to dislodge the stereotypes with which Western theology, not least St. Thomas, has been (with a few exceptions) approached by Orthodox theologians in the twentieth century, his achievement will be great.

Perhaps all that is needed, to be- gin with, is for Orthodox theologians actually to work their way through some of the quaestiones of the Sum- ma Theologiae. They will discover

another book, which he may well be contemplating. I hope he is; it will be eagerly awaited.

At the beginning of the book, Plested shows himself well abreast of developments in the study of Aquinas over the last century or so. The Aquinas that the Russian migr theologian Bulgakov, for example, encountered in Paris in the later twenties the traditional Thomism of Garrigou-Lagrange and the Neo-Thomism of Maritain and Gilson is not the Aquinas found in modern studies of the saint; the theologian, the commentator on the Scriptures, is not overlooked now, as he largely was in the past.

Plested does not explore what engagement with the Aquinas of modern research would entail, nor does he relate this rediscovery of the breadth of Aquinas to the Aquinas encountered in his history of Ortho- dox reading of him. In fact, it seems that the Byzantine reading of Aquinas was limited to quite narrow concerns: those regarding the sought-after union with the West; after the Refor- mation, other, similarly narrow con- cerns emergedgrace and free will, the doctrine of the sacraments.

But the transla tors themselves must have engaged with more ex- tensive issues. How? It is difficult for modern scholars to ascertain. For one reason, the Byzantine Thomas is

the Byzantine Empire. During the period of Turkish rule, some of the Byzantine engagement with Thomas was secondhand (much knowledge of Thomas in the West was also secondhand), but Plested points us to thinkers, virtually unknown nowadays, such as Koursoulas and Damodos, who display a genuine knowledge and appreciation for the Angelic Doctor.

The author surveys Russian en- gagement with Thomas before the nineteenth century and then moves on to the modern period, beginning with that century. There are some books that have escaped his keen attention (by Olga Meerson and Myroslaw I. Tataryn, for instance), but the mod- ern period, properly speaking, at- tracts his withering examination.

The astonishing receptivity to Aquinas among Orthodox thinkers seemed to falter in the last century. Aquinas became a cipher for the al- leged failures of the West: a narrow, juridical rationalism, an overweening confidence in human understanding of God. Plested closes his book by making a plea for the Orthodox to re- cover the confidence in their own tra- dition that enabled them to respond with understanding and enthusiasm to Aquinas, and to engage with his theological achievement.

He is less clear on what this might mean. Partly this is simply that such an engagement would involve

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In his later service as prime minis- ter, Begin is best known for ceding the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty, a widely praised accomplishment, though its wisdom (which not a few far-sighted people questioned at the time) seems less evident now with the rise of the Mus- 11m Brotherhood in Egypt. I think he

does not, I think, give them as much credit as they deserve in this book, an English translation of a Hebrew biography published in 2007. He ar- gues that Begin, while a principled, truthful, and moral politician, was governed almost totally by emotion and intuition, shortchanging his analytical abilities.

much that is congenial, even if it is expressed in an unfamiliar idiom and with concerns that are unexpected. For example, Thomas devotes much time to the virtues, as does the Or- thodox ascetic tradition; nonetheless, it sounds rather different (different lists, different arrangements).

It would be interesting to explore what such difference amounts to. This book clears the way for such an engagement, and as such it deserves an enthusiastic welcome. Q

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