Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom [Hardcover]

David Bradshaw (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 27, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0521828651 | ISBN-13: 978-0521828659

Winner of the Journal of the History of Ideas's Morris D. Forkosch prize This book traces the development thought about God and the relationship between God's being and activity from Aristotle, through the pagan Neoplatonists, to thinkers such as Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas (in the West) and Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, and Gregory Palamas (in the East). The resulst is a comparative history of philosophical thought in the two halves of Christendom, providing a philosophical backdrop to the schism between the Eastern and Western churches.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...this impressively scholarly endeavor not only intends to inform us of the philosophical landscape of theologies of the Christian east, but would lead us to learn from their practice by undertaking comparative explorations, exemplified by the exchange he sets up between Aquinas and Palamas."
-David B. Burrell, Nova Et Vetera

"One of the central virtues of this book, which deserves to be called a tour de force, is that it builds bridges without employing rhetorical gimmicks. The gulfs between Eastern and Western Christianity, philosophy and theology, and ancient philosophy broadly and narrowly conceived all here come under attack...Beginning with the ancient concept of energeia, Bradshaw is able to cast light on a plethora of deeply divisive issues. Scholars of ancient philosophy primarily or exclusively devoted to the 4th century B.C.E. are hereby invited to a little horizon expansion."
-Lloyd P. Gerson, University of Toronto, Ancient Philosophy

"The study is a learned and original undertaking, presents many valuable insights, and is a fairly complete history of the career of the term energeia."
-L.J. Elders, Institute of Philosophy and Theology Rolduc Kerktrade, The Netherlands

Book Description

Winner of the Journal of the History of Ideas's Morris D. Forkosch prize This book traces treatments of the relationship between God's being and activity from Aristotle, through the pagan Neoplatonists, and into thinkers such as Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas (in the West) and Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, and Gregory Palamas (in the East). The result is a powerful comparative history of philosophical thought in the two halves of Christendom, providing a philosophical backdrop to the schism between the Eastern and Western churches. It will be of wide interest to readers in philosophy, theology and medieval history.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (December 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521828651
• ISBN-13: 978-0521828659
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,808,639 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars West meets East in this scholarly but readable book, June 17, 2005

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Brian Mitchell (Alexandria, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Hardcover)

Prof. Bradshaw has written a brilliant but readable book for serious thinkers. The subject itself is difficult, but Bradshaw does a masterful job of making it as plain as possible. The reader who perseveres will be rewarded with a clear and compelling contrast between two very different Gods: a Western God who can be rationally comprehended but only seen from some distance, in the Beatific Vision, and an Eastern God who is beyond comprehension but whose divine nature is not seen but shared, through participation in the divine energeia. Bradshaw clearly favors the latter, but the reader is left to judge for himself which view better fits the biblical testimony, in which we are called to be "joint heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:17) and "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). The book should be especially enlightening to Protestant and Evangelical readers, to whom the Orthodox teaching on "divine energy" sometimes seems bizarre. After they read this book, it will not seem so.

The book also provides a scholarly corrective to the ignorant notion that the coming of Christianity meant the end of reason and the "closing of the Western mind." The truth is exactly the opposite. As Bradshaw shows, the neoplatonist school of late pagan philosophy was edging its way toward Christianity and ultimately approximated the Christian understanding of God with its own trinities of "the One, Intellect, and Soul" and "Being, Life, and Intellect." What neoplatonism lacked was a sense of divine personhood and a compelling reason to believe its own speculation. Christianity satisfied such deficiencies with an incarnate Christ, a convincing historical narrative, a rich liturgical heritage, and a welcoming human community, in addition to a theology that in time far surpassed anything the philosophers were capable of. Far from being the end of philosophy, Christianity was its fulfillment.

The book should furthermore prompt readers to rethink the false dichotomy of philosophy and theology. As Bradshaw shows, the great Greek philosophical tradition of Plato and Aristotle was fundamentally theological. Take out the theology and the philosophy dies. The proof is in today's academy, where philosophy is taught as archaeology, a field of dead ideas of interest only to academics, leading students not to truth but to doubt and despair. No wonder that Christians themselves have taken to talking in terms of a Christian "worldview," when what they mean is what the ancients called philosophy. With this book and others like it, perhaps we can recover a better appreciation for the "Holy Wisdom" that enlightened the ancient world before darkness entirely overtakes our modern one.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Energeia in philosophy and christian theology, July 7, 2005

By 

Stoyan Tanev (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Hardcover)

This is a very important and timely book. I found it very exciting and its implications far reaching.

In very broad terms, the book deals with the articulation and the implications of the historical development of the relationship between Christian faith (theology and spiritual life) and philosophy (or reason in general). The author points out the "important and urgent task" faced by historians of philosophy - to answer questions like: When and how the division between faith and reason occur? What was the turn in history that triggered such a division and was it inevitable? The specific approach that David Bradshaw undertakes is to consider the above questions in the light of the split between the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West. How did it happen that the division of faith and reason is a strictly Western phenomenon and did not practically happen in the Christian East? Bradshaw's motivation is expressed very clearly: "If we are to properly understand the long story of Western philosophy, we must take into account of the eastern alternative."

How does Bradshaw undertake his comparative study? First, he focuses on the formation of the two traditions up to the point in history where each of them had achieved a relatively definitive form - Thomas Aquinas in the West and Gregory Palamas in the East. Second, and here is what I found to be one of the most exciting point, he chooses the term 'energeia' as a connecting thread in his comparison. Energeia is a Greek word used for the first time by Aristotle (this determines the special place for him in the title of the book) and usually translated as activity, actuality, operation or energy. It is a term that has been fundamental in Eastern Christian theology since the first centuries up to the present days. To be more precise, the teaching of the Greek Church Fathers on the relationship between man and God can be properly understood only if one knows the difference between "created" and "uncreated" and the difference between "essence" and "energy" in God (see for example John Romanides, An Outline of Orthodox Patristic Dogmatics, Orthodox Research Institute, Rollinsford, New Hampshire, 2004). The possibility and the ultimate destiny of human kind to participate in the uncreated energies of God, to be purified, illumined and deified in this present life, are a core teaching of the Eastern Christian tradition. The distinction between essence and energy, however, has long been recognized as one of the most important differences between Eastern and Western Christian thought. David Bradshaw shows how energeia, after its "invention" by Aristotle and the evolution of its meaning within the context of Neoplatonism, developed into two branches: "energies" in the East and "esse" (the Latin infinitive of "to be") in the West. Bradshaw does not focus only on Christian tradition and view earlier developments as a mere preamble to it. He believes this to be a distortion of history. His genericly (if I can call it that way) historical approach is in the heart of his argumentation. This is what makes Bradshaw's work academically sound and convincing.

Bradshaw's analysis is impressive with its historicity, constructiveness, integrity, depth and far reaching implications. It underlines the continuous coherence of Byzantine theology with its roots in apophaticism which is understood as an inherently epistemological refusal to limit the truth to its rational definition by ignoring its experiential nature. Unsurprisingly, Thomas Aquinas' teaching is seen in the light of Augustine's legacy. Bradshaw, however, finds that Palamas, too, is best understood in the same way - as a reaction to Augustine's influence to Barlaam of Calabria. This approach to the understanding of Palamas' articulation of his teaching on the divine energies was previously ointed out by John Romanides [...] and is now more comprehensively developed by Bradshaw as another connecting thread in his comparison.

Bradshaw finds that the differences between the Eastern and the Western traditions can be summarized in a single word: synergy. For the East the highest form of communion with the divine is not an intellectual act (as in Augustine) but sharing of life and activity. The emphasis was on the ongoing and active appropriation of those aspects of the divine life that are open to participation. In the West, synergy played remarkably little role. Bradshaw finds that the major reason for that is, before everything, linguistic. Most of the Greek works articulating the notion of synergy were not translated into Latin. In addition, the Latin language did not offer terms as suitable as energeia to situate the meaning of co-sharing and partaking within a broader metaphysical context. Augustine's legacy of God's simplicity was too dominant in the West to allow a distinction between God in what He is in himself (i.e., in his essence) and in what he is in his openness to creation (i.e., in his uncreated energies) leading to "a sense of distance between God and creatures, a kind of spiritual dualism artificially separating human body and soul, and a kind of naturalism expressed through the assumption that there is a sphere of natural reason independent of revelation."

Bradshaw believes to "have treated the historical material impartially with the aim of arriving at a sympathetic understanding of both traditions within their own context" and, I believe, he has really done so. This, however, does not mean that he does not clearly express his own views which I would identify as "pro-Eastern." This makes me think of his work as a well articulated invitation for a constructive re-thinking of the history of Western Christianity in the light of its own origins in the times of the first centuries and of the first Ecumenical Councils when the the Church was One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. This rethinking seems to be critically important today when globalization is part of everyday life. I find it also critically important within the context of the ongoing complex process of European integration.

Well, what then is so exciting about using energeia as a connecting thread in the comparison of the Christian East and West? I think that energy is a very abused term. It is used in many different contexts and, sometimes, with questionable meanings. Physicists, for example, tend to look at the meaning of energy in a mechanistic way - the capacity of a body or a system to perform work. Here is a paragraph from Richard Feynman (Six easy pieces, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Massachusetts, 1975): "There is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in the manifold changes which nature undergoes. ... [Yet] it is important to realize in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is." The concept of energy has some popularity in psychology, too. It was initiated by a Russian psychologist - V. M. Bekhterev - and his "Collective reflexology" published in 1921 and translated in English in 2001 (L.H. Strickland (Ed.), New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers). For Bekhterev human "reflexes" were manifestations of energy output following transformations of energy input and thus the reflexes of individuals and groups might become explainable in the same terms applying to energy in physical systems. The specific meaning of energy, however, is far from being strictly defined.

So, we can think that there is a well defined modern meaning of the term energy but, actually, there is not. I think that the book of David Bradshaw is an important systematic contribution to the clarification of the metaphysical understanding of the term energy in general.

Stoyan Tanev
Odense, Denmark

29 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revealed God or Philosophical Idol?, May 21, 2006

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Death Bredon (Anglosphere) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Hardcover)

First, the negative review is pure B.S.

Dr. Bradshaw is not polemical and goes right to the primary texts (and I believe he does so in the original languages). Hence, his supposed "oversight" of the best western scholarship is nonsense, as Dr. Bradshaw's work IS the best western, secondary writing on his topic. No need to bow to the clouded and prejudiced views of those who have gone before.

Moving on:

Dr. Bradshaw's painstakingly documented and detailed demonstration and explication of the fundamental difference between the views about God held by the Christian East and West (since the ascendency of Augustinian theology) is a must read for all serious 'theologians,' Eastern and Western, Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox alike.

The first crucial point that Bradshaw argues, and which I believe he has demonstrated, is that Eastern Christianity used the language of the ancient Greek philosphy to go beyond the concepts and content of that philosophy to explain the new information about God offered by Christian revelation. More importantly, Bradshaw precisely demonstrates how Eastern Christianity employed Greek philosophical words and embued them with extended or new meaning to explain that God is personal and beyond conceptualization and, furthermore, that mankind can really participate in divine life without pantheistic absorption. Indeed, the notion that God as personal, not an idea, set of ideas, or an impersonal force of somekind -- and more, that man can participate in divine life without pantheistic absorption -- was entirely alien to pre-Christian Hellenic thinking.

The second crucial point that Bradshaw argues, and I believe that he demonstrates, is that Augustinian theology not only used certain terminology of ancient Greek philosophy but also conflated the God of Christian revelation with certain concepts from the content of Greek philosophy, thereby trapping God into a conceptual box, so to speak. Specifically, by limiting God to "being itself" in agreement with neoPlatonic philosophy (an apparently self-evident human logic) but contrary to the often mysterious traditions of authentic, apostolic Christian revelation, the Christian West developed an inauthentic, systematic theology (both in neoPlatonic Augustianism and Aristolelian Thomism), which was based on a conceptual idol, not the unlimited God of revelation, and worse yet, an idol whose 'life' no man could ever participate in or share in.

Finally, Bradshaw invites further scholarship and hard thinking about the possibility that western theology (or perhaps more appropriately western intellectual idolatry) created the fertile ground for the Enlightenment and all the disaster it birthed: the genocidal Twentieth Century. Of course, the fact that the Christian East experienced no Enlightenment and no Reformation is not proof that the idiocyncracies of western theology caused those events, but it does raise the question. And Bradshaw pinpoints the dubious aspects of western theology that best support the view that post-schism western Christianity has planted the seeds of its own destruction and perhaps of the world.