Review of Louth Andrew, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2013
As many have observed, the basic difficulty of dialogue between Eastern and Western theologies consists in the different ways each side perceives the experience and task of knowing and worshiping the true God. That is to say, the difficulty of East/West dialogues consists in differing conceptions of religious experience, or different understandings of the way in which a Christian comes into the knowledge of God, to say nothing of the nature and content of that knowledge.
Andrew Louth’s brief book, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology, works in a space between these two perspectives. It goes without saying that Louth is well-versed in the patterned articulations of Western theologies. Indeed, the book itself originated as a series of lectures delivered at the Amsterdam Centre for Eastern Orthodox Theology (now the St Irenaeus Orthodox Theological Institute) in the Free University of Amsterdam. In a way, then, IEOT is a measured attempt at Eastern/Western theological interface. Thus, its organization and definitions reflect both Eastern and Western conventions, and it may prove helpful in going the distance between the two, so long as the reader can distinguish between the two tendencies. My goal in this essay—which is not so much a review but a digest—is to provide a brief and sympathetic summary of Louth’s description of Orthodox theology. I leave the work of evaluation to others.
Because Louth’s book is written for one’s first foray into Eastern Orthodox Christianity, this digest mostly interacts with Louth’s presentation of prolegomenous issues, for therein lie the foundations from which every other difference or parallel between Protestants and Orthodox precipitates. Among other things, these issues concern the paradox of theological thought, the God-world relation, and revelation in Christ. The main material for these concerns lies in chapters 3–4 (creation and Christ), but the accidents and implications of such topics pervade the book. In any case, we must start somewhere, so we begin (as a Reformed Protestant might) with principial matters—though Pavel Florensky might identify this decision as our first mistake (15).
Indeed, it would be a mistake to assume that the Orthodox understanding of revelation, creation, relation, and Incarnation can be treated apart from the rest of the Orthodox theological conception, and especially apart from participation in the divine liturgy (as the Orthodox would have it). Rather, Louth seems to communicate that the Orthodox conception of God and truth is really all one thing, and it should be taken as one thing. He emphasizes that the Orthodox theological method, as it were, teaches the reception of theology through participation and not through rational deliberation. The whole of theology begins in the liturgy, in the movements of the liturgy, and through listening and responding in the liturgy—the human encounters Christ in the liturgy. Thus, the whole of theology is discovered through “encountering Christ” in the liturgy (7, 123). All mediums of revelation—Scripture, the councils, the Fathers, prayer, sacraments—are such mediums because they mediate encounters with Christ (7). But these mediums do not operate out of themselves but only within the context of participation on the part of the faithful. “The only knowledge that counts, the only knowledge that is truly Orthodox is participation in God’s movement in love towards us in creation and Incarnation by our response of love” (122). In other words, the articulation of theology is subordinate to participation in theology (123). By its very nature, the apophatic approach lends itself to the apprehension and appreciation of the inarticulable. As Christos Yannaras says, “The language of conventional logic and schematic concepts” are not really in accord with “the apophatic attitude” (114). Any attempt at defining transcendent truths constitutes a contradiction of terms, because the transcendent is undefinable (albeit by definition). Nevertheless, by moving closer to the Unknowable through prayer and the sacraments—parts of the “liturgical dance,” as Louth describes it—the Unknowable becomes approachable (137). Such is the paradox of theological knowledge in the Orthodox tradition.
Louth’s articulation of the doctrine of creation is especially helpful in characterizing this paradox, this simultaneous possibility and impossibility of theological knowledge. God’s creation of all things from nothing postulates (as Florensky called it) an antinomy: God and creation are entirely separate, and all creation finds its source in God. Creation indicates both the transcendence of God over his creation and the immanence of God in his creation. “God is beyond any creaturely categories, and so can be thought of as infinitely exalted . . .but [this] does not mean that creation is remote from the divine. On the contrary, God is intimately present to all his creatures” (39–40). Historically, the Orthodox have described the relation between the two sides of this antinomy in a few ways: through distinguishing God’s essence from his energies (40–41), through the harmonization of created diversity via the Logos/logoi principle (41–43), or through the particular understandings of divine wisdom, as was popular among Florensky, Sergei Bulgakov, and Vladimir Solovyov (43–46).
The mystery of the Incarnation intensifies the mystery of theological knowledge while still upholding both sides of the epistemological paradox. The reality of God and man in Christ is related to the spiritual/physical duality of humanity. Although the antinomy might not be resolved into easy terms, Louth tries to show how this antinomy goes, so to speak, all the way down the line, from the impossibility of theological knowledge to humanity’s dual nature. And by following that line back up to the top (to the absolute distinction between God and creation) theological knowing becomes possible even if it is still incomprehensible because of the enduring hiddenness of the ultimate. But humans, made according to the image of God (specifically the image of Christ, Louth says), possess an affinity towards God, an affinity given by the grace of God, which finds satisfaction in the God-man (85–88). Participation in Christ—and participation in the renewal of Christ—enfolds man into Christ, that is, into God. “This is the mystery of Christ. It is a mystery that has been declared, a secret that has been exploded, as it were . . . we shall never fully understand . . . it is not a matter of information, but of participation in the restoration of all things in Christ: it entails deification, theosis” (99). Thence, theology is possible, but not theology in a familiar Western sense. Orthodox theology is not so much an exercise of the intellect but an exercise in being human in God’s world. Theology is a fundamentally doxological way of being—or perhaps becoming.
In summary, Louth’s presents Orthodox theology as participation in the mystery of Christ by way of the divine liturgy and its accessories. The unknowable remains unknowable, and the mystery remains a mystery. Yet participation in Christ founds and solidifies humanity’s relation to God, initially through man’s creation according to the Image of God, and subsequently through man’s deification through participation in Christ, who is the Image of God. Knowing God in the Orthodox sense does not begin with the articulable. Rather, it begins with encountering Christ in the liturgy. It begins with encountering Christ in the right way and in the right place. Without that encounter, the God remains unknown in the absolute sense.
Thus, Orthodox theology is as exclusive as it is expansive. The encounter with Christ is definite in form, with regard to its liturgical context, but also substantially indefinite, concerning its ungraspable nature. Because of the formal restriction, Florensky can say, “[There] is only one way to understand Orthodoxy: through direct Orthodox experience” (15). From this perspective, any knowledge of God which had not come through properly mediated experience is neither true, reliable, nor real knowledge. In light of the fundamentally liturgical and experiential dimension of Orthodox theology, it is worth asking whether Orthodox theology set forth Western terms still corresponds to Orthodox theology expressed in a more native mode.
IEOT may provide the evangelical reader with a suitable entry point into Orthodox thought, so long as he or she recognizes Louth’s use of Western theological forms. To this end, it is fitting that the nine chapters of IEOT rehearse the Western pattern by treating the familiar loci of Protestant theology with some flexibility: God, creation, Christ, sin, man. sacraments, and eschatology. In a way, the book constitutes an attempt to translate Orthodox theology into a Western theological language, and it excels in readability and clarity. However, the Western structure conceals as much as it reveals. In a way, this Western order of articulation inverts the Eastern order of theological knowing. One could almost read the book backwards and walk away with a better approximation of religious experience in the Orthodox view. In short, Louth’s book is not so much an introduction to Eastern Orthodox theology. Rather, it is a portrait of Orthodox religious experience put to parchment in Protestant pastel.
