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The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined - A Review

Here Father V.C. Samuel has penned one of the most important theological and ecumenical works of the 20th century. This volume could rightly be called the magnum opus of an Indian Orthodox theologian, philosopher, and polyglot whose bibliography spans dozens of volumes. Reared in the Orthodox faith from his childhood in Kerala, he mastered the scriptures, the Syriac language, and the writings of Bar Hebraeus at a young age. Fr. Samuel was ordained a priest at 25 and would go on to earn some of the highest academic accolades in the fields of theology and philosophy. One of his most important works, his doctoral thesis titled “The Council of Chalcedon and the Christology of Severus of Antioch” provided the foundation for this book.

The author begins the book by providing details of the events leading up to and during the council of Chalcedon in 451. For the sake of brevity, we will not recount these events in this review. Instead, we will focus on the reunion efforts after the council as well as the Christological systems of the most important theologians of both parties. The most famous attempt at reunion was initiated by the emperor Zeno, who issued the henoticon in the spring of 482. This “pact of union” was a doctrinal statement that affirmed Nicea as the sole rule of faith and laid out a Christology which was acceptable to both Chalcedonians and anti-Chalcedonians. 

The document initially achieved the reunion of all the major eastern sees. Acacius of Constantinople, Peter Mongus of Alexandria, and the exiled anti-Chalcedonian patriarch Peter Fullo of Antioch all assented to the henotikon. This reunion would prove to be short lived. Hyper-partisans on both sides of the divide would denounce their respective hierarchs as having compromised the true faith, with Pope Felix III excommunicating Acacius for his perceived abandonment of Chalcedon, while the anti-Chalcedonian acephalites in the east separated themselves from their hierarchs for what they believed to be unacceptable concessions made to the adherents of the council. Severus, the great anti-Chalcedonian patriarch of Antioch and the most prolific theologian on the one-nature side, himself associated with this movement at one point.

We also know that Severus, later in his ecclesiastical career, was recalled from his exile in the 530s to dialogue with the emperor Justinian, in an attempt to build bridges between both sides. This dialogue proved unsuccessful but possibly softened Justinian’s position towards the anti-Chalcedonians and might have even influenced the emperor’s decision to convoke the second council of Constantinople in 553. This council condemned the three chapters, affirmed Cyril’s 12 anathemas, and anathematized all those who refused to say “one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh.” These were all among the main points of contention for the detractors of Chalcedon that led them to reject the synod in the first place. In the decade following this council, unity parleys were held by both sides in Constantinople, with temporary reunion being briefly achieved on the pretext that upon reunion the two-nature side would drop the council of Chalcedon. When the Chalcedonians failed to hold up their end of the bargain, the reunion collapsed. 

What’s fascinating to me is that even in late antiquity, in the heat of the moment and in the immediate aftermath of the council, there were moderates on both sides that were willing to acknowledge the merits of the other party’s position. When the onerous patriarch John Scholasticus tried to convince the imperial authorities to stir up persecutions against the anti-Chalcedonian Christians, the Emperor Tiberius II Constantine pressed the Constantinopolitan Patriarch whether the anti-Chalcedonians were heretics deserving of persecution, John answered “no” and conceded that the miaphysites were, in fact, fellow Christians. Tiberius then refused to persecute them on the basis that they were fellow Christians and that the empire was already exhausting its resources fighting the heathen barbarians. 

Similarly, it is well known that the anti-Chalcedonian leaders opposed re-baptising, re-chrismating, and re-ordaining Chalcedonians who would transition to the anti-Chalcedonian Orthodox body. Severus would go as far as to describe those who did so as schismatics, referring to them as the “religion of the re-anointers.” We also know that certain Chalcedonian patriarchs, such as John the Faster and John the Merciful considered the anti-Chalcedonians fellow Christians and maintained they should remain unmolested by the imperial authorities. Efforts to reunite both camps lasted well into the 7th century, with the monothelite pact of Cyrus collapsing shortly after being signed by prominent anti-Chalcedonian leaders. The death knell of the reunion efforts being the Islamic invasions of North Africa and the Middle East which followed shortly after.

Father V.C. Samuel then devotes time to the Christologies of the various theologians of both parties, focusing particularly on Severus of Antioch, John of Damascus, and John the Grammarian. What I found interesting was the author’s dismissal of much higher profile theologians on the Chalcedonian side such as Leontius and the eminent theologian Maximus the Confessor, based on the claim that both held to an Origenist-influenced Christology. For our purposes, we will focus on comparing and contrasting the positions of Severus and John Damascene, since both figures are often considered the culmination of patristic theology in their respective ecclesiastical traditions. 

What is striking about Damascene’s polemical writings about the anti-Chalcedonians is that he doesn’t seem to have access to any of Severus’ primary writings, instead reproducing passages from the corpus of the 6th century Aristotelian philosopher John Philoponus, who was condemned as a tritheist heretic by both the imperial Church as well as the anti-Chalcedonians. Damascene also seems to conflate the various Gaianite-Julianist factions with the “Severians.” This despite the fact that Severus and his allies went through great lengths to condemn and refute the Gaianites during his lifetime.

Damascene’s key Christological principles are as follows:

1. The word “nature” in the phrase “in two natures” means ousia

2. Christ’s manhood had no hypostasis of its own

3. Instead, it receives its existence from its unity with the Word

4. This is what is known as enhypostasia

5. The incarnate Christ possesses two wills and operations

With respect to point (2), Father V.C. Samuel considers this to be a major weakness in Damascene’s Christology. If Christ is “in two natures,” and “natures” is equated to ousia, and if Christ’s humanity is not a hypostasis (hypostasis being taken to mean “concrete reality”), does this mean that Christ is said to have only assumed human nature on the level of abstract reality? If so, John Damascene’s Christology seems to suffer the same flaw as that of John the Grammarian. Father Samuel maintains that Severus’ Christology avoids this pitfall by maintaining in no uncertain terms the integrity of the Lord’s human nature, will, and operation and positing that His humanity is hypostatic, but non-self-subsistent. That is, it receives its individuated existence from the hypostatic union with the Word. A comparison can be drawn between this and Damascene’s notion of enhypostasia, but because Damascene refuses to push the envelope further, falling short of calling Christ’s humanity hypostatic, he believes the Christology of Severus is superior with regards to this point. The author is by no means a hyperpartisan of Severus and is willing to criticize him when he feels necessary, however. Specifically, Father Samuel goes on record saying that Severus lacked comprehensive knowledge of Hellenistic philosophy. 

Overall, this work is a masterpiece of scholarship and the first English work about the Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries to be written by a priest of the anti-Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches. Father V.C. Samuel’s expansive research spans over 900 notes and references, and this volume has laid the foundation stone for the rapprochement efforts between the Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian Orthodox communities that launched in the mid-20th century. The author’s work is comprehensive enough for the scholar and equally accessible to the layman with no prior background knowledge. That said, I have three minor criticisms of this book:

1. The author seems too dismissive of Leo’s tome, without factoring in developments in 20th century patristics scholarship which argue that Leo’s Christology is not substantially different from the Christologies of earlier Latin fathers. Though an anti-Chalcedonian myself, I do believe Leo’s tome should have been given fairer treatment.

2. I do wish Father Samuel had chosen to focus on the Christology of the great Byzantine philosopher and theologian Maximus the Confessor, rather than Severus’ interlocutor John the Grammarian. The Grammarian is a very obscure figure in ecclesiastical history while Maximus is a giant who is revered by the Chalcedonians at least as much as Severus is by the anti-Chalcedonians.

3. In the opening chapters of the book, when recounting the minutes of the council of Chalcedon, Father V.C. Samuel mentions how Dioscorus’ co-accused were charged with wrongfully deposing Flavian and forcing the dissident bishops at Ephesus 449 to sign “blank papers.” The accused bishops are then quoted as saying “we have sinned, forgive us!” Fr. Samuel seems to interpret this to mean that they are asking forgiveness for falsely accusing Dioscorus of doing so. I disagree, my reading of the minutes leads me to believe that they are asking forgiveness from the bishops at the council for being complicit in Flavian’s deposition.

That aside, this work is a must for anyone seeking to understand the history of the Christological controversies, the theology of the anti-Chalcedonian Orthodox, and the nuanced and sometimes esoteric differences between both parties. 

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The Emergence of the Modern Coptic Papacy - A Review

In this work, Magdi Guirguis and Nelly Van Doorn-Harder present us with one of the first scholarly works on the modern Egyptian Church in English. This volume details the history of the Coptic Church from the Ottoman era (1517-1798) to the modern day through the lives of its patriarchs. In this review, we will be paying particular attention to the conflict between the Coptic popes and the Coptic lay notables (arakhina) in their struggle for hegemony over the wider Coptic Church and community.

Before we begin our review, it is worth mentioning the historical documents used by Magdi Guirguis, who authored part one of the book, titled: The Coptic Papacy under Ottoman Rule. These sources included:

1. Records of the shari’a courts found in Dar al-Watha’iq al-Qawmiya in Cairo; these document aspects of everyday life in Egypt from the 16th to 19th centuries.

2. Diwan al-Ruznama records, also found in Dar al-Watha’iq al-Qawmiya in Cairo; these provide a record of the history of the monasteries, their restoration and destruction dates, as well as their financial endowments by the state

3. Archives of the Coptic Orthodox patriarchate in Cairo

Guirguis’ meticulousness in his research is impressive, and he successfully sheds light on what many historians consider to be a very stagnant and impenetrable period in Egyptian history.

When talking about the relations between the Copts and the Ottoman state, it is important to contextualize this relationship in light of the ‘aqd al-dhimma (or “covenant of protection”), which had been in place since the time of the Caliphate of Umar in the 7th century. This “fundamental legal reference point” (as the author calls it) basically rendered the Copts second-class citizens in their own country and in the eyes of the Islamic state. Throughout the Coptic community’s time under their Islamic hegemons, the authority of the Coptic patriarch would fluctuate. The extent of his power would vary depending on the whims of the state. At times, the Islamic government would support the patriarch and would enact measures to ensure his absolute control over his church. At other times, the state would seek to limit his authority, sometimes even siding with the Coptic laity over their own pope. This is a recurring theme throughout this period of Coptic Church history: with both lay elites and the patriarch vying for power over the Coptic community. To tease this theme out, we will discuss some interesting events during the reigns of popes John XIII, John XIV, and Mathew III. 

During the tenure of John XIII, the Coptic patriarch enjoyed extensive jurisdiction over souls as far as Ethiopia, Nubia, and even Jerusalem. The Coptic Church also lost several crucial dioceses during this time, including the Pentapolis, Rhodes, and Cyprus. During his time in office the patriarch was solely responsible for collecting the jizya and representing the Coptic community before the state. John XIII took it upon himself to battle changing sexual mores. Many Copts and Muslims alike during this period were practicing polygamy, concubinage, and even prostitution. John XIII showed no hesitation in wielding his religious authority to combat this moral threat festering in his community. This patriarch would enact excommunications and urge the wider community to ostracize those who engaged in deviant behaviors. Primary source documents show that this campaign was an overwhelming success.

Under John XIV and Gabriel VIII, the Coptic Church came very close to union with Rome. In response to the Turkish threat and the Protestant revolt, the Roman Church undertook efforts to unite all of Christendom. We know that the reigning Coptic patriarch during the council of Ferrara-Florence sent representatives to the council and that a bull of union with the Copts was issued by Eugene IV of Rome. The rapprochement efforts ultimately proved unsuccessful, however. Nevertheless, reconciliation attempts with the Coptic Church continued well into the 16th century. John XIV (1571-85) warmly welcomed a Roman delegation to Cairo to discuss the reestablishment of communion between the two sees. Pope John and most of his bishops were initially onboard, but many ultimately defected from the reunion agreement. John XIV died before being able to unilaterally sign a declaration of union with the Roman Church. 

John XIV’s successor, Gabriel VIII, is said to have signed a reunion agreement with Rome in January 1597. Gabriel is even said to have implemented the Gregorian calendar into the liturgical cycle of the Egyptian Church. This caused quite an uproar amongst the Coptic laity who opened a case against their patriarch with the Muslim judge in Cairo. The Islamic jurist ruled against the patriarch and in favor of the Coptic gentry. According to the ruling, the Coptic pope had no right to change the church calendar and that it was a violation of Shar’ia for him to force the Coptic faithful to follow the newly implemented calendar. In another incident, the patriarch tried to implement a new way of calculating the date of easter. The Coptic gentry again appealed to a Shar’ia court, this time in Alexandria. The jurists deemed the new calculation inaccurate and ruled that the patriarch had to follow the calculation of the Muslim astronomers. Despite these tensions, reunion efforts with Rome would continue until the mid-18th century, when a Coptic bishop by the name of Antonious of Jirja converted to Catholicism.

Gabriel VIII’s successor, Mark V, suffered a tempestuous papacy. Mark raised the ire of many of the Coptic gentry for his opposition to polygamy. The Coptic laity, with the support of the bishop of Damietta, lodged a complaint against their patriarch to the Islamic authorities. Mark was deposed and an anti-pope John née Girgis Ibn Butrus was installed in his place. Mark V was eventually reinstated after the reign of the then Pasha ended in August 1611. This episode in ecclesiastical history highlights the lengths the Coptic elites were willing to secure their polygamous and polyamorous practices. We even have a story of one Coptic patriarch, John XV, being poisoned by a Coptic archon after the former rebuked him for practicing concubinage. 

About halfway through the 17th century, control over the Coptic community shifted from the patriarch and bishops to the Coptic notables or arakhina. This came at a time where the state institutions of the Ottoman empire were beginning to weaken, and power began to decentralize to various local authorities. Thus, in transferring power from her patriarch to the Coptic lay notables, it can be said that Coptic Church at this time acted as a microcosm of the wider Ottoman empire. This transfer of power eventually reached a point where the notables would appoint both the Coptic patriarch as well archbishops for jurisdictions as far as Ethiopia. The head of the arakhina was appointed by the wider community, and followed a very clear and traceable line of succession. 

The Coptic archon class maintained good relations with state authorities, Islamic religious leaders, and became the primary patrons of the Coptic clergy and faithful. So extensive was the power of this elite lay class, that the hierarchy often had to turn a blind eye to polygamy and concubinage so as to avoid clashing with them. By far the most remarkable Coptic archon of this period is Mu’allam Ibrahim El Gawhiri, who rose to become Egypt’s chief scribe during the latter half of the 18th century. His statesmanship and high ethics were praised even by the Islamic historian Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti. Mu’allam Ibrahim’s brother Girgis assumed the former’s duties upon his passing. The brothers are generally considered the last of the Coptic archons to exercise strong leadership over the community. As Egypt moved into the 19th century, the control of the Coptic Church shifted from the gentry back to the hierarchy.

For the remainder of this review, we will discuss the patriarchs who can rightly be described as the architects of the modern Coptic Orthodox Church. Following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, massive transformations in law, administration, trade, and education ensued. In the wake of this great change, arose those whom Nelly van Doorn-Harder calls the “great reformers” of the contemporary Coptic Church. These include: Cyril IV (1854-1861), Cyril VI (1959-1971), and Shenouda III (1971-2012).

Cyril IV pushed for Coptic participation in the army and government. He also enacted many educational reforms, in an age where many Copts were still captivated by magic and superstition. Clergy were often ignorant and had to sell their religious services to make ends meet. To combat this, Cyril IV provided salaries for priests, summoned them to weekly meetings to engage in theological reading and discussion, and imported a printing press from Austria which he used to print and distribute books to local parishes free of charge. He also opened a school called Madrasat al-Aqbat al-Kubra which drew Muslims and Copts alike, as well as the first Egyptian school for girls. During his ecclesiastical career, Cyril IV also made several trips to Ethiopia to mediate administrative disputes with the local hierarchy. He also worked to improve inter-ecumenical relations with other Christian denominations in the Middle East.

Reformer, saint, leader, and mystic, Pope Cyril VI is one of the most well-known Copts in history. His visage is found in Coptic homes, churches, books all over the world. He is referred to in this volume as “the last of the traditional popes” in that he traveled only seldomly, making only two trips to Ethiopia during his entire papacy. He also allowed people to see him as needed without an appointment. Cyril VI assumed the Markan throne in the wake of a radically changing country. There was often tension between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the community council (or majlis al-mili), which had lost much of its power following Nasser’s reforms. For that matter, Nasser’s policies led to the increasing marginalization of Copts in political and public life at large.

Cyril VI was born to well-to-do parents in Menofia. At the age of 25, he entered the monastery of Baramus, taking the name Father Mina. Father Mina led a very austere and ascetic life, despising praise and recognition and fleeing positions of power. Fr. Mina eventually left to inhabit the ruins of the monastery of his patron saint. He later would rent out a windmill in the middle of the Egyptian desert, becoming increasingly ascetic and praying the liturgy daily. In 1944, he was appointed head of the Monastery of St. Samuel of Kalamun, which would later attract the eminent Coptic theologian Matta Al Maskin to its ranks. Becoming patriarch in 1959, some of the highlights of Cyril VI’s papacy includes building close relations with Gamal Abdel Nasser and his nationalist government, the building of new churches and monasteries, particularly a new patriarchal cathedral in Cairo, as well as the foundation of Coptic emigre communities in the west. While famous for his peaceability, asceticism, and spirituality, Cyril VI did not shy away from wielding his ecclesiastical authority to discipline clergy when necessary; as in the case of Matta Al Maskin, when the latter countermanded Cyril VI’s papal order to renovate the Monastery of the Syrians by going to live as a hermit in the desert.

Cyril VI’s successor, Shenouda III, has cemented a reputation for himself as among the most beloved and dynamic popes in Coptic Church history. The beginning of Shenouda’s papacy was marked by increased sectarian tensions in Egypt as well as a direct head-to-head conflict between the head of the Coptic Church and the leader of the Egyptian state, Anwar Al Sadat, who is credited with creating much of the existing sectarian climate in contemporary Egypt. Shenouda had a distinctly autocratic style of Church governance, divesting all authority over the Coptic community from the lay leaders and concentrating it into the papacy and the holy synod. Laymen were discouraged from “doing theology.” Instead, prominent laypeople who were active in Church ministry were ordained into the ranks of the clergy. Shenouda’s conflicts with Matta Al Maskin and the lay scholar George Bebawi became public scandals, and created a rift in Coptic theological discourse which still exists to this day. 

Controversies aside, Shenouda was an absolute giant of a churchman and could very well be called the founder of the contemporary Coptic Church. He fostered ecumenical dialogues and signed theological agreements with the Byzantine Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Protestants alike. A staunch patriot, he was keen to promote national unity between Copts and Muslims and worked towards increased cooperation and cohesion between both communities. Shenouda ordained dozens of bishops and oversaw the establishment of Coptic parishes all over Egypt, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Shenouda was also remarkable at engaging with and commanding the love of Copts of all walks of life; the wealthy, the poor, the elderly, and especially the youth. Over 10 years after his passing, his presence, his legacy, and his staunch conservatism still loom large. He almost single handedly transformed the Church from a once obscure national Church into a global communion.

In all, I recommend this volume and indeed the entire “Popes of Egypt” series to anyone interested in the Coptic Church or in Arabic-speaking Christianity in general. Both Guirguis and Doorn-Harder are respected scholars in their fields. Guirguis is an expert in Ottoman era documents and author of An Armenian Artist in Ottoman Egypt: Yuhanna al-Armani and His Coptic Icons, while Doorn-Harder is a professor of Islamic studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. 

What I found particularly fascinating was just how close the Coptic Church came to reunion with Rome in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Especially telling is how the Coptic laity were willing to take recourse to the Islamic authorities when they felt their patriarch was violating church law. I do, however, wish Guirguis had elaborated more on the Coptic Church’s role in the council of Florence in the 15th century, for the sake of providing additional historical context. 

While I enjoyed part one more than part two, I thought Doorn-Harder did a good job of describing how the changes in an increasingly modernizing Egypt provided the backdrop for the modernization of the Coptic Church. The conflict between Pope Shenouda and Dr. George Bebawi hearkens the reader back to the dispute between Pope Demetrius and the scholar Origen in the third century. In both cases, we see a charismatic and powerful ecclesiastical authority figure trying to rein in the power and influence of a prominent lay scholar. This, in an attempt to consolidate all theological authority in the hands of the Church’s divinely appointed bishops.

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The Early Coptic Papacy: The Egyptian Church and its Leadership in Late Antiquity - A Review

In this volume, renowned scholar of Egyptian and Arabophone Christianity Stephen J. Davis explores how the ancient Egyptian Church’s hierarchy came to develop in the first centuries A.D., as well as how the shepherds of the late antique Coptic Church leveraged notions of apostolicity, orthodoxy, resistance, exile, and persecution to solidify their authority over the Egyptian Christian faithful. While this book covers the history of the Coptic Church from its inception to the Arab conquest in the 7th century, for the purposes of this review we will be focusing primarily on the events following the council of Chalcedon to the Rashidun invasion of Egypt, discussing any events antedating 451 only where necessary to provide needed historical context. 

Davis begins chapter four by discussing the aftermath of the council of Chalcedon and the banishment of Dioscorus to Gangra. The author speaks of the endeavor to create a rival Imperial or “Melkite” Church as a form of imperialism or “ecclesiastical colonialism.” While I’d normally be hesitant to project contemporary postcolonial theory onto 5th century Imperial Church politics, I think Davis for the most part does so appropriately and effectively. The fact of the matter is that following Chalcedon, the majority of the native Egyptian faithful as well as Egypt’s domestic bishoprics continued to recognize Dioscorus and his anti-Chalcedonian successors as the legitimate heirs of both the Markan throne and the Alexandrian Church’s theological heritage. Thus, the attempt by the Emperor Marcian’s loyalists to install Proterius instead of a popularly-backed anti-Chalcedonian from the school of Dioscorus and Cyril was an effort on the part of an out-of-touch colonial aristocracy to form a “new elite system” to contest with “local, institutional leadership.” Thus, the Coptic Church post-Chalcedon can thus rightly be described as a colonized community under the hegemony of the Imperial Byzantine establishment.

I also quite enjoyed the concise but informative survey of Coptic Church history after the deposition of Dioscorus. Casual readers of post-Chalcedon Church history might be tempted to think of the schism as crystallizing overnight, with two separate ecclesial communities forming immediately in the wake of the council. This is not at all the case, as Davis rightly notes. Instead, partisans and opponents of the council competed for the same bishoprics throughout the empire, with the anti-Chalcedonian Patriarch Theodosius I being the last Alexandrian bishop to be recognized by both sides in the mid-6th century. Many Coptic Patriarchs sought compromise with the other side, including Peter Mongus who signed Zeno’s henoticon in an attempt to reestablish communion with the other major eastern sees, by effectively ignoring Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo. Later anti-Chalcedonians would agree to reunion on the basis of Cyrus’ “monothelite” pact of union. In many such cases, extremists on both sides of the divide opposed their hierarchs’ conciliations. One such movement, the acephalites or “headless ones,” counted among their ranks the future Antiochian Patriarch Severus and the Church historian Zacharias Rhetor - both of whom were associated with this movement while they were still laymen. 

Davis also documents intra-ecclesial conflicts within the Church of Alexandria during this time. In addition to the schism between the miaphysites and dyophysites, the anti-Chalcedonian leadership faced many internal divisions within their own ranks. For one, the dispute between Severus of Antioch and Julian of Halicarnassus throughout their shared exile in the Egyptian desert led to a devastating rift within both the Coptic Church and the wider anti-Chalcedonian Orthodox communion of Churches. The “Gaianites,” followers of the popular Julianist/Aphthartodocetist Patriarch Gaianus formed a rival hierarchy to the imperially-backed Severan Patriarch Theodosius. The Gaianites existed as a separate hierarchical structure from the mainstream Severan-Theodosian Coptic Church well into the 8th century.

Davis also talks about internal sub-schisms within the Severan-Theodosian faction. The death of the perenially exiled Theodosius in Constantinople led to a power vacuum which gave rise to four rival claimants to the Markan throne: 

The Severan-Theodosian bishop Peter IV, whom the Coptic Church considers to be the legitimate successor to Theodosius to this day

The Chalcedonian bishop John

The Gaianite-Julianist bishop Dorotheus 

Another Severan-Theodosian named Theodore, whom the anti-Chalcedonian bishop of Antioch Paul tried to install, much to the ire of the local Egyptian bishops

After the death of Peter IV, a schism broke out between Peter’s successor, the Syrian-born Alexandrian Patriarch Damian, and his Antiochian counterpart Peter Callinicus. Damian accused Callinicus of being a tritheist, while the latter accused Damian of Sabellianism. This schism lasted for the better part of 30 years, until their successors Anastasius and Athanasius mended the rift based on a mutually declared statement of faith. This, only for Pope Damian’s extreme loyalists to elect an antipope in response to the rapprochement between Antioch and Alexandria.

Davis briefly discusses the civil strife and palace intrigue that led to the Persian invasion of Egypt during the first half of the 7th century. While the Persians generally treated the Christians harshly, some sources indicate that they were more conciliatory towards the anti-Chalcedonian populace than the Byzantines. In any case, the Byzantines shortly retook Egypt in 629 under the leadership of Heraclius. Cyrus is then installed as Chalcedonian Patriarch of Alexandria, while also wielding significant civic authority. Cyrus attempts to broker a reconciliation between anti-Chalcedonians and Chalcedonians on the basis of the monothelite pact of union. While this attempted reunion was partially successful, it was resisted by no less a figure than the renowned Coptic monastic Samuel of Kalamun, who rejected the pact out of solidarity with the exiled Coptic Patriarch Benjamin. The solidarity between the monastic communities of the Coptic Church and their exiled Patriarchs is a recurring theme throughout Coptic history, as Davis notes throughout this volume. Indeed, Coptic Patriarchs from Athanasius to Theophilus to Cyril would often draw on monastic support in the face of opposition from their theological and political opponents. 

This then brings us to what is arguably the most consequential event in the history of the Egyptian Church (alongside the council of Chalcedon): the Arab conquest of 641. While it was traditionally believed by some historians that the Copts welcomed the Arabs as liberators from their Byzantine-Chalcedonian hegemons, the historical data paint a much more nuanced picture. It is true that Amr Ibn Al-As, the Arab military commander in charge of the Egyptian military campaign, did grant certain concessions to the Coptic Patriarch Benjamin. He returned property to the Egyptian Church that was previously seized by the Byzantines and allowed him to come out of imperially imposed exile and freely administer the affairs of his Churches. That said however, many Coptic writers, including the chronicler and bishop John of Nikiu describe the Arabs as oppressors who brought upon the Copts a heavy “yoke” comparable to that of the biblical Pharaoh. 

Worth noting is that there existed a strong cultural continuity with Egypt’s Greco-Roman heritage for quite some time after the Rashidun invasions. The Arabs, for instance, retained Greek as the official language for imperial account books and did not integrate into wider Egyptian society for at least the first two centuries after the fall of Alexandria, remaining for the most part cloistered in their army barracks. Many Copts also seemed to mistakenly assume that the Arabs would eventually leave, just like the Persians had done shortly before. 

Davis is, as I said, a world class scholar of Egyptian and Arabic-speaking Christianity. He is known for such works as “Coptic Christology in Practice” as well as a translation of the medieval Copto-Arabic text “Disputations Over the Fragment of the Cross.” He is also the editor of the new series “Christian Arabic Texts in Translation” and has served as academic dean of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo. Davis’ work is a must have for anyone interested in Coptic Christianity and the history of the ancient Egyptian Church. Davis’ meticulous research methods present the history of the late antique Alexandrian Church in a concise and accessible manner, without sacrificing precision and detail. I particularly enjoyed his summary of the very complicated (and even convoluted) history of the Coptic Church post-Chalcedon. Wracked with political intrigue, imperial persecution, and divisions both across and within confessional lines, it can be difficult for the student of Church history to keep track of all the different creeds, confessions, and rival claimants to the Patriarchate during this turbulent period of time. Nevertheless, Davis manages to do so quite successfully, giving us a clear overview of the rival lines of episcopal succession, as well as the historical backdrop of Byzantium’s loss of Egypt to both the Persians and eventually the Rashidun invaders. 

By studying Davis’ work, one can also draw certain parallels between events in the late antique Egyptian Church and contemporary Coptic Church history, particularly in the life of the late Pope Shenouda III. For instance, Demetrius’ attempted suppression of Origen’s pedagogic activities is similar to the conflict between the late Pope Shenouda and the scholar George Bebawi. In both cases, the bishop of Alexandria leverages his episocopal power to strictly define what “Orthodoxy” is in the face of what is perceived to be a lay teacher overstepping his authority. 

Similarly, Theophilus’ attempt to consolidate monastic support while isolating Isidore and the tall brothers is comparable to the state of relative marginalization the monks of St. Macarius’ monastery experienced in the wake of the dispute between Pope Shenouda and Father Matthew the Poor. Likewise, the exile of many Egyptian Popes like Athanasius, Dioscorus, Timothy Aelurus, Theodosius, and Benjamin on account of pressure from the governmental authorities is a recurring historical theme that played out in the life of Pope Shenouda as recently as the Sadat era in the 1980s.

[edward-sonbati]

Three Monophysite Christologies - A Review

This monograph explores the theologies of three of the most important Syrian “Monophysite” theologians: Severus of Antioch, Philoxenus of Mabbug, and Jacob of Serug. Written by Roberta Chestnut, a former professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, and published in 1976 by Oxford University Press, this work is one of the first theological analyses of the teachings of these three 6th century bishops to be written in English. 

The author owes much to the trailblazing work of previous Francophone scholars like Joseph Lebon and Andre de Halleux, as well as renowned Estonian Syrologist Arthur Voobus, something which she makes note of in her introduction. Chestnut provides only brief biographical information on each of the three Syrian bishops and then dives right into the substance of each of their theological systems. 

The book is divided into three parts, each part being dedicated to one of the three aforementioned bishops. Part one focuses on Severus, by far the most prolific and influential advocate of one-nature Orthodoxy. Severus, we are told, was born in Sozopolis in Pisidia around the year 465 A.D. It’s worth noting that Chestnut relies on contested sources which maintain that Severus hailed from a distinguished Christian family when the best evidence, including Severus’ own homilies, indicate that he was originally a Pagan, converting to Christianity later in life under the influence of Christian students. As a youth, he went to Alexandria to study grammar and rhetoric, and later moved to Beirut to study law. He was baptized at the shrine of Leontius of Tripoli and later joined the anti-Chalcedonian monastery of Maiuma under the leadership of Peter the Iberian. 

Severus traveled with a group of likeminded monks to the court of the anti-Chalcedonian or “Monophysite” leaning Emperor Anastasius, seeking to accrue further favor for the miaphysite-Cyrillian cause. In 512 A.D., the council of Sidon was convoked, deposing the Chalcedonian Patriarch of Antioch Flavian II, Severus was consecrated bishop shortly thereafter. He served as Patriarch until the coronation of the hardline Chalcedonian Emperor Justin, who forced him into exile to the deserts of Egypt. After the death of Justin and the accession of his nephew Justinian to the imperial throne, Severus, with the support of the Empress Theodora, was summoned to Constantinople to participate in a series of unity parleys to unite the pro and anti-Chalcedonian factions. When these efforts at rapprochement proved unsuccessful, he was forced back into exile in Egypt, where he died around 538 A.D.

The chapter devoted to Severus begins by defining some of the key theological terms he uses in expounding his doctrine of the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ. In the Severan corpus, explains Chestnut, hypostasis “refers to the individual, rather than the generic.” Human beings derive this individuality from their distinct historicities. “Peter is distinguished as an individual from Paul by the fact of their different past histories, although both share the same generic humanity,” as the author explains. Severus’ top priority in expositing his doctrine of the incarnation is a) to secure the absolute perfection and integrity of the incarnate Jesus’ full humanity and full divinity and b) perhaps even more emphatically, to refute what he perceived to be the excessively dualistic Christology of Nestorius, Theodore, and the council of Chalcedon.

But what is the key difference between the Cyrillian/Severan notion of “hypostatic (or natural) union” and the Nestorian/Theodorean (and, according to Severus, Chalcedonian) notion of a “prosopic union”? Chestnut explains: “a prosopic union is one in which two prosopa, two self-subsistent hypostases, are joined in some way: the union of Peter and Paul, who are united by a union based on the authority of apostleship, is a prosopic union.” Chestnut further explains, “most important of all, the members of a prosopic union are not in an iconic relationship to each other: one does not present a picture of the other on a different level of reality from the other.” This is in contrast to what Severus posits to be the Orthodox understanding of the incarnation, whereby he says: 

The peculiarity of the natural union is that the hypostases are in composition and are perfect without diminution, but refuse to continue an individual existence so as to be numbered as two, and to have its own prosopon impressed upon each of them, which a conjunction in honour cannot possibly do (Severus, Letter XV).

In the Severan system, the natures or hypostases of the Incarnate Word subsist 

in an iconic relationship to each other: one reflects the other on a different level of reality: the body is an image of the soul on the sensible level, and in the same way, the humanity is an image of the divinity on the created level in such a way that, looking at the one, we see the other. Thus the Incarnate Word is one nature, one hypostasis, and one prosopon.

Chestnut’s explanation of the relationship between the divine and human natures in Severus’ theological system in terms of an “iconic relationship” is an interesting one, one which underscores the importance of the notion of eikon in eastern Christian theology, particularly as it relates to the Incarnation and how God uses matter as a vehicle to confer His grace upon the material realm. Much more can be said of this, but further exploration of this point exceeds the scope of this paper. For the purpose of brevity, I won’t say too much more about Chestnut’s appraisal of Severus’ theology, but I will quickly touch on Severus’ key epistemological and metaphysical assumptions.

According to Chestnut, Severus’ three basic epistemological assumptions are:

Reality is divided into three distinct levels which stand in iconic relationship to each other: a) the immaterial God b) the intelligible realm c) the created, material realm

There is a very real distinction between the divine and human natures in Christ, which is conceived of en theoria

There is also a distinction between a prosopon/subject and its predicates/properties

These assumptions are the groundwork of Severan Triadology, Christology, and spirituality.

Part two discusses the theology of Severus’ contemporary and friend, Philoxenus, the Syriac-speaking bishop of Mabbug. Philoxenus was born between 440 and 455 A.D. in an Aramaic-speaking community in Persia. Educated at the school of Edessa, which had both a pro-Cyril and a pro-Theodore faction, Philoxenus later moved to Antioch. Afterwards, the Chalcedonian Patriarch Calandio expelled him for his loyalty to the one-nature doctrine of Cyril. Later, the anti-Chalcedonian Patriarch Peter Fullo appointed him bishop of Mabbug in 485. It is possible that Philoxenus as bishop played a role in closing down the school of Edessa in 489 when the institution skewed too pro-Antiochene/Theodorean. Philoxenus was one of the architects of the synod of Sidon in 511 which deposed the Chalcedonian Patriarch Flavian II of Antioch. Between 513 and 515 Philoxenus and Severus co-presided the synod of Tyre which affirmed the henoticon of Zeno and condemned Chalcedon. When Emperor Justin took the throne several years later, Philoxenus went into exile, dying in 523 in Thrace.

Philoxenus’ Christology is certainly less technical than that of Severus. Philoxenus is less concerned with a systematic and intellectually sophisticated doctrine of the Incarnation undergirded by lofty metaphysical and epistemological principles. Instead, Philoxenus sets forth a simple, descriptive Christology. According to Chestnut, this Christological doctrine is that “Jesus Christ is God by nature, and by a miracle of His will: He has one nature or hypostasis, the divine, but He has two modes of existence, a natural one, and a non-natural one.” Christ is a “double being” in the same way the newly baptized believer is, retaining his “old nature” in addition to the “new nature” he has just put on.

What I thought was particularly interesting was Philoxenus’ use of ancient embryological theory to explain the doctrine of the Incarnation. According to this theory, the father provides the sperm while the mother provides the blood that incubates the sperm, both elements combining and “mixing” indissolubly and indivisibly to produce the embryo. In like manner, Jesus is “from the nature” of Mary and “from the nature” of God the Father, the two natures being inseparably made one and united. It is this understanding of the Incarnate Christ as “mixture” or meshing of two elements that informs Philoxenus’ soteriology and spirituality: “Your own union with Jesus today is indeed, in that He has mixed you in the life of the Spirit by baptism… You, today, in deed, he has mixed with His hypostasis” (Homily IX). It is clear, however, that Philoxenus has a nuanced definition of the word “mixture” that precludes synousiasm:

The Word was not changed into flesh when he was embodied from it, nor was the flesh turned into [the] nature of the Word when he was united to it. Nor again were the natures mixed with each other like water in wine (Letter to the Monks of Senoun).

Thus, like Severus, Jesus Christ is true God and true man without separation or confusion according to Philoxenus.

It is worth devoting some time to Philoxenus’ understanding of “faith” and epistemology. For Philoxenus, “faith is the first essential prerequisite to any Christian life,” says Chestnut. Faith is the “sixth sense” and “an organ of perception by means of which we are able to experience the whole realm of the Spirit.” Philoxenus is clearly not an empiricist. According to him one cannot perceive anything beyond the natural realm without a strong, operative and “healthy faith.” Faith is what allows us to plumb the depths of Christian truth. Faith allows the believer to recognize Jesus of Nazareth as the Incarnate God, it allows the believer to perceive Baptism as more than just mere water, the Eucharist as more than just mere bread and wine. One cannot understand or believe in God without faith. In a very stark statement, Philoxenus asserts that faith, inasmuch as it is the creative power of God, itself is uncreated! Faith is used by the Holy men of God to work miracles. Through faith, the Saints speak and act in the name of God Himself.

The third part of Chestnut’s book, which I consider to be by far the weakest of the three, is devoted to the thought of Jacob of Serug. Dubbed “flute of the Holy Spirit” by his devotees, Jacob was born in a small village on the Euphrates circa 451 A.D. The son of a priest, Jacob was educated at Edessa and may well have been classmates with Philoxenus. For many years he served as the episcopal visitor for the diocese of Sarug. In 519, he was ordained bishop of Batnan and served his diocese until his repose in 521. Jacob tended to be more irenic than Philoxenus and Severus, and only weighed in on the theological controversies of his day very rarely and hesitantly.

What immediately stood out to me was Jacob’s use of Gnostic imagery and tropes to preach Christian truth. Whereas Philoxenus and Severus (albeit the former to a much lesser extent) drink from the wellspring of Greek thought and make generous use of Platonist philosophical constructs in their writings, Jacob’s thought is, according to Chestnut, “far more mythological or symbolic.” Jacob’s theological anthropology can be briefly summarized as follows: mankind, in the person of the “great Adam,” was created by God in the image of His son, Jesus. “The Great Dragon,” however, defeated Adam in the “first contest.” This erected a wall of enmity between Adam and God, between the “lower” and “upper” beings. Adam was cast out from Eden, which was guarded by a cherub with a flaming sword. Both a mountain of fire and a great sea of fire also separated him from his former paradise. Some of the Watchers/Cherubim came to live in Eden, taking the place of Adam. Adam became an inhabitant of “the Dark City” and fell under the control of “the keepers of the night.” 

The human race continually degenerated, falling more and more under the spell of the “Evil Archon.” God the Father, who is “the Great King,” could not withstand His creation continuing to decay. To rescue His image from the snares of the evil one, He sent “the Son of the Kingdom” to Earth to dwell in the unopened womb of the Virgin, who became a “sealed letter full of secrets.” He manifested Himself in the “schema of man” in a discrete manner, so as not to reveal His identity to the “archons and keepers of the dark city.” It wasn’t until His death that the Evil Archon realized that it was the Lord of Glory and Creator of all who had been crucified. 

Upon His death, Christ “dived into hell like a brave swimmer” to retrieve the precious pearl. By allowing death to swallow Him who is life, Christ “acted as poison within Death” and death itself died. In accomplishing all of this, “Christ has a left path by means of which men are able to ascend to the Father, and in the mind of the perfect, the Word may now dwell as He dwelt in the womb of Mary.” What is particularly interesting about Jacob’s eschatology, is the treacherous path Jacob says the right-hand thief must take to enter into Paradise. The thief on the right experiences “the baptism mixed with blood.” In so doing, he assumes “the garment,” “the key,” and “the passport” necessary to enter Paradise. In the footnote of page 118, Chestnut writes: 

The watchers do not wish to let the good thief into Eden, in spite of his special equipment for a safe entry: the Cherub even tries to trick him into descending to hell to help Jesus. There is also a glimpse of the dangers involved in the entry into ‘Paradise’ in the early Jewish tradition, in the legends surrounding the entry into Paradise of Akibha, Ben Azai, Ben Zoma, and Aher.

Jacob’s Christology is strictly unitive, much like his contemporaries Severus and Philoxenus. For Jacob, Jesus is: “One Son, one number, one hypostasis, one nature, one God, who was enfleshed from the holy Virgin, one of the Trinity who was seen in the flesh” (Letter 3). Jacob also maintains that Christ possesses one will and one operation. In the Incarnate Jesus there are “no separate proprieties,” all attributes of the divinity and humanity belong to the Word. For Jacob, “nature” refers to a concrete existence or reality. Thus Christ’s divine element is His “nature,” while Christ’s humanity is a “schema” that He assumed. Chestnut argues that in Jacob’s system, “nature” refers to the fixed “essence” of something, whereas a “schema” is a mode or manner of being, i.e. some secondary form of existence. 

This brings us to Chestnut’s highly critical appraisal of Jacob’s Christology. Chestnut maintains that because Jacob asserts that Jesus was without sin and corruption, that he was “probably a monophysite of the aphthartodocetist position.” This is a bold claim that is made with very little evidence. Maintaining that Christ’s human body was without corruption is very different from saying that His body was incorruptible prior to the resurrection, it is the latter statement that is the lynchpin of Julianist/aphthartodocetist theology. She further goes on to say that the bishop of Batnan has “little interest” in the human nature of Jesus and that for him the human nature is “little more than that of a symbol.” In other passages she seems to (rather anachronistically) assert that Jacob was a monothelite, despite him predating the controversy by a little over a century. 

Overall, this is an excellent theological monograph that belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in ancient Christian thought, especially specialists in Syriac patristics and those researching the Christological controversies of the 6th century. Chestnut’s work is analytical and incisive, providing the reader with a generous and comprehensive survey of writings from each of the ancient theologians in question. Chestnut is, for the most part, very diligent about providing primary source material to support her assertions. That said however, her claim that Jacob of Serug held to an aphthartodocetist or, what one might call a “hard” Monophysite Christology, seems to be asserted rather brashly and prematurely, without commensurate evidence to support her claims. Such dismissiveness surrounding the dignitaries of what were once referred to as the “lesser eastern churches,” was commonplace in western scholarship in the decades immediately preceding and following Vatican II. The reader of this work should, therefore, keep such theological biases in mind.

[edward-sonbati]

Guides to the Eucharist in Medieval Egypt - A Review

In what might be the first work of its kind, Arsenius Mikhail’s Guides to the Eucharist in Medieval Egypt, being the first installment in Stephen J. Davis’ Christian Arabic Texts in Translation, presents us with translated excerpts from three different medieval Copto-Arabic commentaries on the Coptic liturgy. These texts are: 1) the 13th century priest Abu al-Barakat Ibn Kabar’s The Lamp of Darkness, 2) The Precious Jewel by Yuhanna Ibn Saba (a lesser known 13th century ecclesiastic), and 3) The Ritual Order, by 15th century Coptic Pope Gabriel V. 

The book begins with a scholarly introduction, providing a brief biography as well as introducing the reader to the cultural and historical backdrop of each of the authors surveyed. We are told that the first author, Ibn Kabar, was a prominent government official under the Mamluk prince Baybars al-Dawadar prior to being forced out of his position by Sultan Al-Malik Al-Ashraf. He was eventually ordained priest of the hanging Church in old Cairo in 1300, passing away between 1323 and 1325. His magnum opus, The Lamp of Darkness, is a 24 chapter long treatise covering various topics from scripture, to canons, to dogmatics, to liturgics. The excerpts contained in this volume describe the Coptic liturgy of his day in meticulous detail, for the purpose of being used as an instruction manual for priests and deacons living in an age of great liturgical diversity (and perhaps even confusion) in the Egyptian Church. 

The second author, Yuhanna Ibn Sabba, was a contemporary of Ibn Kabar and a lesser known ecclesiastical figure by comparison. He presents us with a more overtly doctrinal and theological work in his Precious Jewel. This is a vast work spanning over 100 chapters and a wide variety of topics both theological and liturgical. His writing betrays a knowledge of the works of pseudo-Dionysius and perhaps even Clement, Origen, and Cyril of Alexandria. Ibn Sabba remains an enigmatic figure in Copto-Arabic literature, little is known of his life or ecclesiastical career. That said, however, Mikhail remarks that his intricate knowledge of the rites and ritual of the medieval Egyptian Church indicates that he had direct access to the sanctuary. Throughout the treatise, he also displays an in-depth knowledge of the administrative affairs of the patriarchate, leading some to suspect he was the reigning Coptic Pope’s archdeacon. In many instances, Ibn Sabba offers descriptions of the liturgy that differ greatly from those provided by Ibn Kabar. This leads the author to believe that Ibn Sabba was accustomed to a liturgical rubric very different from the Cairo rite known to Ibn Kabar.

The third author, Pope Gabriel V, who sat on the patriarchal throne from 1409-1427, led an “unremarkable tenure,” according to the author. Formerly a tax collector, he took the name of Gabriel upon entering the monastery of St. Samuel of Qalamun during a turbulent time for Egypt’s Christians. The jizyah had been required of each individual Christian, rather than the entire community, relations with the Ethiopian Church had been strained, and the Venetian merchants stole the head of St. Mark. Despite these troubles, Pope Gabriel V took a keen interest in creating a single liturgical rubric to be used by the entire Egyptian Church, commissioning a delegation of learned priests, deacons, and other ritual specialists to canonize the standard rubric used by the Coptic Church to this day. 

Mikhail is one of the few English-speaking scholars to specialize in the Coptic liturgy, earning his doctorate from the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Vienna in 2017, specializing in liturgical studies and sacramental theology. He is known chiefly for his work The Presentation of the Lamb: The Prothesis and Preparatory Rites of the Coptic Liturgy, the first, and perhaps only, English language analysis of the Prothesis in the Coptic rite. The series editor, Stephen J. Davis, is a world renowned expert in Coptic and Middle Eastern Christianity, known for his contribution to such works as Disputation Over a Fragment of the Cross as well as AUC Press’ The Popes of Egypt series. Davis is also the author of the monumental work Coptic Christology in Practice, which might be one of the few scholarly works documenting the dispute between former Coptic Pope Shenouda III and Father Matthew the Poor written by a non-Copt.

There are two things that particularly stood out to me in the actual corpus of the translated works themselves: 1) Yuhanna Ibn Sabba’s interesting, if at times somewhat unconventional, theological claims. For instance, his claim that the water being mixed with wine during the liturgy is in commemoration of the Virgin Mary drinking water with wine during her pregnancy. Or in another section where he claims that God created man to replace the number of fallen angels who followed Lucifer in his rebellion. Perhaps even more interestingly, his assertion that the nine “holies” chanted in the Trisagion represent the nine angelic orders and that “the earthly Church resembles the heavenly Jerusalem,” with the priest as leader of the earthly ranks offering up the prayers of the people to the Trinity the same way the leader of each angelic rank offers prayers up to God on behalf of their fellow angels. As mentioned before, this indicates a knowledge of the pseudo-Dionysian corpus which I am surprised a medieval Copto-Arabic churchman would have had. 2) The authors’ collective willingness to co-opt traditional Islamic terminology to expound Christian doctrine. For instance, Ibn Sabba’s reference to prayer as a “proper duty and necessary obligation.” Or Pope Gabriel V’s claim that the New Testament, as a fuller and more complete revelation than the Old, contains in it “the injunctions and interdictions.”

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the work and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Christian Arabic literature, Coptic liturgy, or liturgical studies more generally. Mikhail’s translation is readily accessible to both technical and popular audiences. His introduction is packed with interesting and invaluable insights, and his meticulous research methods cover a lot of ground. The author went down into the weeds, using manuscripts from desert churches and monasteries, making note where different manuscripts varied throughout the translated texts and providing important justifications for certain translation choices. My only minor criticism of the book is that I wish the notes were a bit more comprehensive at certain times. I would have also loved for this work to include the original Arabic text alongside the English translation.

[edward-sonbati]

Aristotelian Teleology and Contemporary Evolutionary Theory

This paper will seek to define the key Aristotelian concepts of actuality, potentiality, form, matter, the doctrine of the four causes, and natural teleology and argue that they are not only necessary for a satisfactory understanding of the natural world but will also seek to demonstrate —using arguments from Thomas Nagel’s 2012 bombshell work Mind and Cosmos— that they also provide a framework for understanding contemporary evolutionary theory. 

Before we delve into an in-depth analysis of the doctrine of the four causes, we must first expound Aristotle’s general notions of coming to be and passing away. Fundamental to such notions are the concepts of potentiality and actuality. According to Aristotle, potentiality is to actuality as “someone waking is to someone sleeping, as someone seeing is to a sighted person with his eyes closed, as that which has been shaped out of some matter is to the matter from which it has been shaped” (1048b1–3). In other words, potentiality is an object’s 1 potential to have or become something, whereas actuality is the realization of an object’s potentiality. It is these core concepts that serve as the foundation for Aristotle’s theories of causation. It is on account of this foundation that he can distance himself from the strict monism of Parmenides. Aristotle and his predecessor began with the same presupposition —that being cannot come to be from non-being— but arrived at fundamentally different conclusions. Parmenides took this to mean that change of any sort was impossible and that all reality was 

1 Taken from: Cohen, S. Marc, "Aristotle's Metaphysics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = 

<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/>.

fundamentally one, despite the apparent ubiquity of plurality. This is because, for him, any change in the features or attributes of an object would imply a transition from non-being to being or vice-versa. If, for instance, a red ball were to become blue, the “blueness” of the ball, which was originally in a state of non-being, would then pass into a state of being, a metaphysical impossibility. For Parmenides, this purported impossibility forces us to subscribe to a radical monist conception of reality. 

Aristotle, however, presents us with a way out. By positing his notions of potentiality and actuality, he set forth what he considered to be a coherent theory of causation that contains significant explanatory power all while avoiding the dilemma that he and his pre-Socratic predecessor spurned. In the ball example, the red ball’s potentiality is its potential to be blue. When the ball is painted and becomes blue this potentiality is now realized into the realm of actuality. 

The transition from potentiality to actuality is not something measured or described in absolute, categorical terms, but rather on a spectrum. The historian of philosophy Peter Adamson says: 

A striking feature about change, which becomes obvious once we start thinking in terms of potentiality and actuality, is that changing inherently involves a degree of incompleteness. When I’m on the way from London to Paris, I have partially, but not completely, actualized my potential for moving towards Paris.2 

Fully acknowledging that change is something that occurs gradually along a continuum rather than a sudden and instantaneous transition from point A to point B, Aristotle uses the word entelecheia or “completeness” to describe the ultimate and final actuality of an object. It is 

2 Excerpt From: Peter Adamson. “Classical Philosophy: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 1, Chapter 34.” iBooks.

important to note here that the word entelecheia is related to the word teleos meaning “end” or “purpose” (cf. Adamson). Thus, when an object has reached its entelecheia it has fulfilled the final end or purpose of its initiated change. 

The concept of teleos plays an important role in (shockingly enough) Aristotle’s teleology and the wider scheme of his theory of causation. These concepts will be fleshed out later on in this paper. For now, we have established the foremost tenet Aristotelian causation: that “any change is going to be a transition from potentiality to actuality.” 3 

Using this fundamental principle as a building block, we will now set out to construct a comprehensive understanding of the natural world within an Aristotelian framework. Regarding nature and natural causes, Aristotle brings to our attention the following: 

Since there are [four causes of natural things], the student of nature ought to know them all; and in order to give the sort of reason that is appropriate for the study of nature, he must trace it back to all the causes—to the matter, the form, what initiated the motion and what something is for (194b16ff). 

Thus, the doctrine of the four causes are the four ways in which a causal event is accounted for. These four ways are the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. A particular emphasis, however, is placed on the “matter” and “form” underlying an object; these concepts are crucial to understanding the object’s “nature.” Regarding nature he says: “One way we speak of nature [is] as the primary matter that is a subject for each thing that has within itself a principle of motion and change” (193a29) and again in the same passage: “Some people think that nature and substance of a natural thing is the primary constituent present in it, having no order in its own right, so that the nature of a bed, for instance wood, and the nature of a statue bronze” (193a10). 

3Ibid.

In light of these passages, the fundamental nature of an object is taken to mean its constituent material or “matter”. 

However, Aristotle is not married to one understanding of “nature,” and in certain contexts will refer to the structure or “form” of an object as being even more fundamental to its nature than its matter. He says: 

In another way the nature is the shape, i.e., the form in accordance with the account [...] of things that have within themselves a principle of motion” (193a31, b4) [...] Indeed, the form is nature more than the matter is. For something is called when it is actually so, more than when it is only potentially so (193b7). 

These two seemingly contrary definitions of nature can nevertheless be harmonized; while a substance’s nature is fundamentally its form, its matter is also a nature inhering within the form. Using the example of a wooden table: the wood which constitutes the table is, in some sense, the very nature of the table. However, the structure or form of the table is more fundamentally its nature than the wooden material that comprises it. This is because the wood itself merely has the potentiality to be the table, whereas the structure or form of the table is the actualization of the wood’s potentiality 

Having discussed causes on the level matter and form, we must now define the meaning of efficient and final causes. An efficient cause is that “which brings something to be by imposing form on matter.” It is the agent or mechanism by which something is caused or 4 brought about. The final cause is the final end or purpose (teleos) of the object of causation. Going back to the example of the wooden table: a wooden table’s efficient cause is the carpenter that made it. Its material cause is the wood that comprises it. Its formal cause is the structure it 

4 Excerpt From: Peter Adamson. “Classical Philosophy: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 1, Chapter 33.” iBooks.

has that allows it to be used as a table. Lastly, its final cause is the purpose or end (i.e. teleos) which it serves, namely, to be dined upon. 

With our newfound understanding of Aristotle’s theories of causation in the natural world, we can now delve into his teleology. For Aristotle, causes in nature all have a tendency towards an end or purpose. He writes: 

This argument, then, and others like it, might puzzle someone. In fact, however, it is impossible for things to be like this. For these and all natural things come to be as they do either always or usually, whereas no result of luck or chance comes to be either always or usually. (For we do not regard frequent winter fain or a summer heat wave, but only summer rain or a winter heat wave, as a result of luck of coincidence.) If, then, these seem either to be coincidental results or to be for something, and they cannot be coincidental or chance results, they are for something. Now surely all such things are natural, as even those making these claims would agree. We find, then, among the things that come to be and are by nature, things that are for something (198b33-99a8). It then clear that, for Aristotle, all things in nature are “for something.” Natural phenomena are 

not merely the result of a stroke of luck or mere chance, but occur in order to achieve an ultimate end. 

Despite being fully aware that these phenomena have natural explanations and are not directly initiated by a rational agent, Aristotle completely rejects the notion that the seemingly mechanistic order of natural events somehow precludes a purposeful cause or inclination: 

Besides, it is strange for people to think that there is no end unless they see an agent initiating the motion by deliberation. Even crafts do not deliberate. Moreover, if the shipbuilding craft were in the wood, it would produce a ship in the same way that nature would. And so if what something is for is present in craft, it is also present in nature. This is clearest when a doctor applies medical treatment to himself—that is what nature is like (199b26-34). 

The argument is this: the final cause of a craft, say, shipbuilding, is achieved by a rational agent whereas the final cause of a natural event is driven by nature itself, on account of the innate inclinations towards purpose or teleos within the natural world.

Now that we have provided an account of Aristotle’s doctrines of causation and natural teleology, we can now set out to argue the thesis of this paper: that these doctrines are not only necessary for a satisfactory understanding of the natural world —on account of their ability to provide a sufficient explanation of causation on the level of agent, matter, form, and purpose— but that they are still relevant today and can serve to provide crucial insights into understanding and nuancing contemporary evolutionary theory. 

In his book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False American philosopher Thomas Nagel argues that a materialist worldview fails to properly account for mind, consciousness, and the diversity of life. His reasoning is as follows: 

I believe this possibility [i.e. that the physical sciences can provide an accounting for subjective mental aspects of reality] is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. 5 

The materialist and physicalist accounts of both consciousness and reality in general cannot account for subjective sentient experience. This is because consciousness itself cannot be reduced to physical processes and patterns occurring within the brain. Trying to account for consciousness within a materialist understanding of the universe is akin to using a knife to paint a living room, it’s not the right tool one needs to go about the task. We must, therefore, seek an alternative method of understanding conscious experience. Luckily for us, Nagel thinks he has such an alternative. 

5 Nagel, Thomas. “The Core of 'Mind and Cosmos'.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 Aug. 2013, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/the-core-of-mind-and-cosmos/.

An avowed atheist, Nagel seeks to posit a type of natural teleology in order to account for both consciousness and the grandeur of the universe, all while avoiding both theism and materialism in the process: 

Some form of natural teleology, a type of explanation whose intelligibility I briefly defended in the last chapter, would be an alternative to a miracle— either in the sense of a wildly improbable fluke or in the sense of a divine intervention in the natural order. 6 Nagel thinks that a cosmology whereby the universe has a natural inclination or “bias” towards 

teleology and mindedness provides a sufficient explanation for conscious experience without needing to invoke either the infinitesimally small chance of the universe coming to be within a materialist and purposeless framework or the intervention of an intelligent creator. He dubs this theory “panpsychism,” the idea that “mindedness” or the inclination towards consciousness can be found throughout all things in nature. He says: 

The universe has become not only conscious and aware of itself but capable in some respects of choosing its path into the future--though all three, the consciousness, the knowledge, and the choice, are dispersed over a vast crowd of beings, acting both individually and collectively.7 

It is because the universe itself is both conscious and self-aware that it creates sentient beings that are likewise conscious and self-aware. 

In proposing his theory, Nagel gives due credit to his ancient predecessor who first sowed the seeds of this doctrine: 

This is a throwback to the Aristotelian conception of nature, banished from the scene at the birth of modern science. But I have been persuaded that the idea of teleological laws is coherent, and quite different from the idea of explanation of the intentions of a purposive being who produces the means to his ends by choice. 8 

6 “Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False,” p. 124 7Ibid. 

8Ibid, p. 66.

It is clear, then, that far from being an irrelevant relic of the past, Aristotle’s ideas concerning purposeful causation and natural teleology still hold weight amongst contemporary thinkers and intellectuals seeking to gain a better grasp on the origin and ultimate end of the cosmos. 

In this paper, we have explored Aristotle’s conceptions of matter and form and have seen that they describe the constituent material and structure of substances, respectively. Further, we have argued that his doctrine of four causes provides a satisfactory explanation of natural phenomena on the level of agent or mechanism (efficient cause), constituent material (material cause), structure (formal cause), and purpose (final cause). It is this doctrine that lays the foundation for his natural teleology: the idea that all things in nature are geared towards a certain end or purpose. We have also seen, using Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, that this doctrine, long thought to be outdated, might yet still provide us with an explanation of both the grandeur of the universe and the origin of subjective, conscious experience that cannot be accounted for by a strictly materialist conception of reality.

[edward-sonbati]

Platonic Epistemology as Proto-Rationalist

Plato’s epistemology is arguably the first systematic theory of knowledge in western philosophy. Central to this epistemology are the foundational doctrine of forms, the doctrine of recollection, and the immortality and pre-existence of the soul. This paper will explore the development of these key Platonic doctrines from his transitional work, the Meno, to later middle works such as the Republic, and the Phaedo and argue that these doctrines serve as the foundation of a proto-rationalist epistemology. 1 

In the Meno, the young aristocrat whom the dialogue is named after poses the following epistemological problem to Socrates: 

And how, Socrates, will you look for it, when you don’t know at all what it is? Which totally unknown thing will you inquire into? And even if you find it out, how will you know that it is the thing you didn’t know? (Meno 80d) 

Meno raises doubt that one can even effectively inquire and pursue knowledge to begin with. For if one already knows something, there is no need for inquiry, and if one doesn’t know something one cannot inquire into it as he does not know what to look for. Meno would have us believe that human beings are essentially in an epistemological black hole whereby the pursuit of knowledge is either impossible or for naught. In response, Socrates rebukes Meno’s position, calling it 

“wimpy” and “lazy,” and argues for a more sanguine epistemology. It is here where Plato, through the literary character of Socrates, first espouses the doctrine of recollection. 

Since the soul is immortal, and has been born many times, and has seen everything here and in the underworld, there is nothing that it hasn’t learned, and it’s no wonder that it can recollect everything that it used to know about virtue and other things. Everything is related, and the soul has learned everything, so after it has recollected one thing (a process that men call “learning”), nothing prevents it from recollecting everything else. If, that is, one is brave and does not give up the inquiry, for inquiring and learning are 

1“Proto-rationalist” is a term I have coined to describe what I consider to be a primitive and early form of the rationalist epistemology of later modern philosophers, such as Descartes and Kant

just recollection. So we must not give credence to that contentious argument: it would make us lazy and only wimpy men enjoy hearing it (Meno 81cd). 

This teaching is a chief cornerstone of Platonic epistemology and effectively voids Meno’s initial objection into philosophical inquiry. When the soul “learns” or acquires knowledge, it is not learning something new or foreign to it. Rather, it is simply recollecting information that it had prior knowledge of in a past life. Here we see a small and subtle hint of the doctrine of forms that will be further teased out in the middle works. As we will see later in the paper, the pre-existent soul had perfect knowledge of the forms before being imprisoned in a corporeal body where one must recollect knowledge of said forms through philosophical inquiry. 

Crucial also to Platonic epistemology as exposited in the Meno is the role of hypothetical reasoning. Urging Meno to loosen what Socrates considers to be his tight ideological restrictions on the acquisition of knowledge, Socrates argues the following: 

It seems, then, that we must consider what something’s like without yet knowing what it is. Will you at least loosen your reigns a little and allow whether it comes about by teaching or in some other way to be considered from a hypothesis. By “from a hypothesis”, I mean they geometers often consider whatever anyone asks them. For example, when asked whether a certain area can be inscribed as a triangle in a given circle, they reply “I don’t yet know whether this is so, but I do think I have a hypothesis, as it were, that’s relevant to the issue: If this area is such that when applied to the given line of the circle it falls short by a space similar to that which has been applied, then it seems to me that there’s one conclusion, and there’s another if it’s impossible for this to happen. So I’d like to tell you my conclusion about inscribing this thing in the circle hypothetically (Meno 86d-87b). 

It is clear here that hypothetical reasoning plays an integral role in pursuing knowledge, even knowledge as tautological and self-evident as geometric proofs. Before the geometer can conduct a proof, he must employ hypothetical reasoning to begin his work. 

Nevertheless, this ability to reason hypothetically in order to ascertain tautological geometric proofs is readily accessible to anyone, as demonstrated by the example of the slave boy. Guided through a series of questions by Socrates, Meno’s bondservant is able to

successfully answer Socrates’ questions using hypothetical reasoning. Socrates then uses this example to support his doctrines of recollection and the pre-existence of the soul, saying: 

SOCRATES: But if he did not acquire them in this life, it is obvious at once that he had them and learned them during some other time? 

MENO: Apparently. 

SOCRATES: Which must have been the time when he was not a human being? MENO: Yes. 

SOCRATES: So if in both of these periods (when he was and was not a human being) he had had true opinions in him which just have to be awakened by questioning to become knowledge, then his soul must have been learning throughout all time? For clearly he has always either been or not been a human being. 

MENO: Evidently. 

SOCRATES: If the truth of everything that exists is always in our soul, then the soul must be immortal, so you should be confident, and, whatever you do not happen to know at present—that is, whatever you don’t remember—you must try to inquire into and recollect? (Meno 86ab). 

It is because the slave boy had prior knowledge of the geometric shapes that he was able - through the guidance of Socrates’ questioning- to answer the questions concerning them, despite never having learned geometry. 

From all this we can gleam elements of an early, proto-rationalist epistemology. Speaking through Socrates, Plato clearly argues that reason, rather than subjective experience, is the best means of obtaining knowledge. The immaterial soul in its pre-existent state has perfect knowledge (of what we shall later learn to be the forms) which must be recollected through hypothetical reasoning. It is for this reason that the slave boy can accurately answer questions regarding geometric shapes despite having no training in the geometric sciences. This is because he already has past knowledge of geometry, he only needs to recollect the pertinent knowledge through appropriate, reasoned questioning. 

The Phaedo is a watershed in Platonic epistemology in that it is arguably one of the first dialogues to give a clear and sophisticated exposition of the doctrine of forms and the

immortality of the soul. Perhaps most pertinently, a rejection of any inkling of empiricist understanding of epistemology is made clear from the get-go. 

In this dialogue that we first learn that there are such things as forms (what one might think of as a proto-typical and primitive understanding of universals, such as justice itself, bigness itself, beauty itself, etc.) that all entities have a relative partaking of. It is, in fact, from this foundational doctrine of forms that Socrates argues for the immortality of the soul. If one were to render the argument in its logical form it might run as follows: 

P1 There are forms 

P2 If something has a certain feature, it derives this feature from the relevant form P3 The forms have contraries 

P4 No form ever admits or instantiates its contrary 

P5 The soul has the feature of life (and indeed, it is the life-force of man) P6 Life and death are contraries 

:.P7 The soul cannot die (per P4) 

As we will see, it is the immortal soul that serves as the seat of a person’s knowledge and intellectual inquiry. 

In arguing that a true philosopher yearns for death and spends his life practicing for it, Socrates argues that death -and with it the separation of the soul from the body- is necessary for the acquisition of perfect knowledge: 

[The soul] thinks best when it is not troubled by anything like hearing or sight, or pain or any pleasure—when it is, as far as possible, alone by itself, and takes leave of the body, avoiding, as far as is possible, all association or contact with the body, and reaches out toward reality.” (Phaedo 65c).

In order for the philosopher to fulfill his quest for the pursuit of knowledge he must become disembodied intellect; a soul without the trappings of the body and bodily senses, which serve only to deceive the philosopher (Phaedo 65a-c). It is then clear that for Plato it is through reasoning and intellection that knowledge is acquired, rather than subjective experience or sense-perception. 

But in no dialogue is an early rationalist take on epistemology expounded so clearly than in Plato’s magnum opus, the Republic. It is in this monumental work that he lays the foundation for his metaphysics and the doctrine of forms comes to full fruition. 

In what is perhaps the most well-known and celebrated excerpt of the Republic, the Allegory of the Cave, Plato recounts the flight of the mind from the visible, sensible world to the intelligible world in the form of a parable. It begins as follows: 

And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets (Republic 514a-c). 2 

The prisoners only know the world of the cave and the shadows cast upon its puppets by the fire in the background. The prisoners are an archetype for man in his unenlightened state. At this stage, man -unenlightened by knowledge of the forms- only perceives the sensible and visible world, completely unaware of the intelligible and unchanging world of the forms. 

But what happens when one of the prisoners breaks free from his bondage? Plato answers: 

2 All citations from the Republic are taken from the Benjamin Jowett translation (Vintage, 1991), pp. 253-261 (Public Domain)

And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive someone saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision (Republic 515d). 

When someone first breaks free of the shackles and bondage of the visible world and begins to approach knowledge of the forms he will initially be averse to this knowledge and will have difficulty fully embracing it and integrating it into his worldview. Eventually, however, he will grow accustomed to the light and his understanding will increase: 

He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day [...] Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is [...] He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold? (Republic 516a-c). 

In the same way that the prisoner will learn of the true nature of the sun and its role in the passing of night and day and the change of seasons, so too will the enlightened man come to know and understand the doctrine of the forms and that objects in the sensible, visible world are only shadows of the forms, partaking of them and deriving their features from them in an imperfect manner. 

Underlying the allegory is a sharp distinction between the intelligible and the sensible and between that which is ascertained through reason and that which is ascertained through sense-perception. The former is characteristic of enlightened thinkers who have acquired an

understanding of the forms, the latter of the unenlightened, chained by the fetters of the sensible world and know only the shadows visible before them. 

In this paper, we have explored some of the foundational doctrines that comprise Plato’s epistemology. These include: the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, the doctrine of recollection, and, chief of all, the doctrine of forms. In the Meno we saw that Socrates argues that all learning is essentially recollection. The pre-existent soul, having once had perfect knowledge of all things, must relearn and re-acquire its past knowledge through recollection, guided by hypothetical reasoning and philosophical inquiry. In the Phaedo, Socrates argues that the soul, pre-existent and immortal by nature, is alone the organ by which the human being attains knowledge, independent of bodily senses or subjective experience. It is for this reason that the true philosopher yearns for death. For only through the soul’s separation from the body can true knowledge be acquired. Lastly, we analyzed the Allegory of the Cave and saw the equation of enlightenment with knowledge of the intelligible and unchanging world of the forms, on the one hand, and the equation of unenlightened thinking with the objects of the sensible, visible world on the other. (SHOULD I REPHRASE THIS SENTENCE?) 

A common theme permeates all three dialogues, that is, that true knowledge is acquired through reasoned intellection rather than through sense-perception or individual experience. It is through reason alone, untainted by corporeal senses, that the philosopher can take flight from the sensible, visible world to the unchanging and intelligible world of the forms. It is because of the exalted role reason plays in Plato’s epistemology that we can rightly call his theory of knowledge and recollection “proto-rationalist,” laying the foundation for later rationalists such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant.

[edward-sonbati]

The Liturgical Theology of Pope Cyril VI - A Thematic Outline of Dr. George Bebawi’s “My Holy Mentor”

The Liturgical pneumatology of Pope Kyrillos

The divine services as a means by which the believer acquires “the Fiery Spirit” of Divine Love cf. pgs 24-27

Crucial to attaining a heart “ignited” with this love is keeping a consistent canon of prayer comprising the prescribed prayers of the Church including the Psalis, the Agpeya, and the Jesus prayer as well as regular partaking of the Holy Eucharist pages 73-74

The psalis especially “keep your heart in the love of the Lord Jesus” page 79

For “a heart ignited with the name of the Lord Jesus does not sin ever… and if it sins, it finds the comfort and cure in the name of the Lord Jesus” page 75

Liturgical prayers and mysteries of the Church are inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself page 97

The importance of using the prescribed prayers of the Church - the Psalis - to attain the fiery spirit

According to Fr. Mina, the believer must ask to receive the “fiery Spirit” to dwell within his own soul page 69

Lex orandi, lex credendi

Note the Saint’s ability to derive an entire doctrine just from the Thursday Psali page 29

Page 32 Jesus’ Messiahship and crucifixion can be gleaned even from the Coptic letter chi

For Fr. Mina/Pope Kyrillos the creed is a manual of the spiritual life and not merely a doctrinal statement pgs 42-47

The creed prepares us for our own resurrection and grants us the joy of Christ’s resurrection page 49

The link between spirituality and doctrinal Orthodoxy “The Purity of the teaching does not enter into defiled hearts” page 46

“If a generation comes that despises the arrangement of vespers and matins, the the church would implode from the inside, and the enemy would gain control over her” page 85

Dr. George outlines what he refers to as Pope Kyrillos’ “Alphabet of Orthodoxy” 

In it he says “The Only Son became human, for the human to become a son to the Father by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” further “The Son of God manifested in the body to manifest those of the body in heaven with the heavenly powers and for Adam to become a heavenly citizen” page 96

This is very much congruent with what is exposited in the Thursday Theotokia “He took what is our and gave us what is His”

Pope Kyrillos held what you might call a liturgical Christology: for His Christology and Soteriology is rooted not in theological textbooks or dogmatic statements, but rather in the liturgical prayers of the Church

“He made it one with His divinity without mingling, confusion, or alteration.” These are words of courage in accepting the incarnated Lord. For when Christ united His divine hypostasis with human nature, He gave us the one soul that does not separate in us. For we say, “You have blessed my nature in you,” which is the blessing of unity, the blessing of conquering death, the blessing of the resurrection, and the blessing of entering the eternal heavenly kingdom page 100

Disavowal of “scholasticism” in the sacramental theology of Fr. Mina

“The sacraments are not in need of human intelligence, craftiness, or skill but of humility of heart planted in love given to one by the Holy Spirit.” page 204

Liturgy as Theologia Prima

“For all the words of the prayers in the Agpeya, Tasbeha, liturgies and other service books are mysteries from the Spirit of God. Every phrase in them has a deep theological meaning that might be sought after before seeking signs or rituals. The Orthodox faith and doctrine are the key to rites, and every rite is a way that points us toward doctrine” page 205

“These prayers [i.e. the Church’s prayers] are what explain the Holy Bible, not the opposite. If you study a commentary on the Bible and this commentary does not help you in your prayer life, then, in reality, it has moved your heart away from the Love of the Lord Jesus” page 218

Transfiguration and glorification of the believer in Christ through the prayers of the church 

The “Thursday Psali, which precedes the Friday one, contains all the features of salvation to prepare our entrance into the mystery of the crucifixion of the Lord of Glory. Page 31

Re the Saturday Psali he says “I will give you some help in the Saturday Psali, you will find a verse that says ‘O name full of glory,’ and it is from Phillipians 2:6-8 and it is the glory of God that is given to us through the Holy Spirit” page 33

Liturgy of Saint Cyril prays for the purification and sanctification of the ‘inner being’ of man

The “inner being” or “inner heart” is a Coptic expression which crept into informal Arabic according to Fr. Mina the Recluse has three important aspects:

The beginning of confronting the self to seek the truths we must face page 57

The inner heart must remain in continual retreat, abiding constantly in the presence of the Lord Jesus page 58

“St. Anthony tells us that the Holy Spirit leads the soul and body to repentance; this means that He makes the soul and body as one and purifies the heart from considering the body s a thing or tool, meaning that the body is nothing else but you” page 59 - this highlights the importance of the body in the liturgical spirituality and theological anthropology of the late Pope

Page 39 the sacraments changes us to the “life and glory” of Jesus Christ

4 steps to grow in Christ Fr. Mina gave Dr. George, 3 of which involve the liturgical worship of the Church pages 50-51

The well known phrase in the Gregorian liturgy “and at your ascension in the body, having filled all with your divinity”

Repeating the name of the Lord Jesus in the Psalis and consecrating all acts of your life to Him

One ought to make the sign of the cross and mention the name of the Lord Jesus every hour of his life

Daily Tasbeha or midnight Psalmody is to be prayed daily, as it allows us to participate in the communion of the saints and “puts you before the Universal Church in the commemoration and doxologies” page 51

“These are the prayers of the church that uproot from our personal prayers all forms of selfishness” page 85

The liturgical prayers and actions as the means by which we enter into the divine presence

The vespers incense prayer quotes the Song of Solomon “Your name is poured fragrant oil”

Fr. Mina explains that “‘the poured fragrant oil’ in the name of the Lord is His divine presence through the Holy Spirit” page 79

“The name of the Lord Jesus is the sum of all: St. Mina, you, and me; for it is the name of the divine presence in us. Don’t we say, ‘Emmanuel our God is now in our midst with the glory of His Father?’ Are these just words, or is this truth that transcends words? Page 80

Archangel Michael carries our prayers to heaven at the liturgy dismissal

“The end of the liturgy is the beginning of our entrance into heaven” page 86

Thus we have a share in the mystical visions of the prophets Ezekiel and Moses who were brought into the divine presence and worshiped the Lord of Hosts alongside the heavenly hosts

Indeed Fr. Mina argues that “whoever carries the body of the Lord of Hosts, our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ, becomes like the cherubic chariot carrying the throne of God” page 87

“In uniting with love [i.e. of the Lord Jesus], your body becomes the same exact body as the Lord Jesus, meaning that the Lord will own it. For He is the glorified one who transfigured on Mount Tabor, this same glory becomes ours [...] You have to live in the love of your body, for the Lord Jesus has sanctified it and united with His divine life” pages 228

Liturgy as transforming and sanctifying time itself 

“Fr. Abdel Al-Mesih Al-Masudi taught that [during] the liturgy time transformed order into the order of the economy” page 84

Chronos becomes kairos

This is why the “Midnight prayer is the prayer of meeting the Bridegroom and becoming ready for judgment day” and in Matins “we welcome the Risen Lord from among the dead as the Bible says He arose ‘very early in the morning (Luke 24:1)’” page 85

“Six jars of water are a symbol of the six days of creation, where Christ changed them to wine showing that all of time itself has been sanctified” page 133

Yet even in Fr. Mina’s thought there is still an understanding that the final fulfillment and binding together of all things in the person of Christ is still yet to come. There is thus tension between the “already” and the “yet to come” page 189

“For God gives us life, glory, and resurrection of His only begotten Son. He prepares us in wait for the life-giving second coming on judgment day” page 189

Pope Kyrillos’ Eucharistic Cosmology

The Eucharistic korban offered up in the liturgy as the eternal sacrifice which binds all believers, and indeed, the whole cosmos together

“For this reason, incense is offered to the servants and the congregation, for they must return to the fragrance of eternal life which was given in the anointing of this same fragrant aroma [...] for we are with the Lord Christ being offered as incense to God the Father as korban.” page 127 Thus, we liturgically participate in Christ’s mystical sacrifice at calvary during the raising of incense prayer

The Hegomen Abd al-Masih al-Masudi told Fr. Mina that there is a manuscript tradition of the Euchologion with the following prayer: “Lord, accept us unto You as living sacrifices in the sacrifice of Your Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, love and honor to Your holy name and glory to You with the Father through the Holy Spirit” page 178

Thus in the liturgy the faithful are mystically incorporated into Christ’s mystic sacrifice on Calvary and presented as a sweet smelling savor to God the Father 

Integral to Fr. Mina’s understanding of the liturgical and expiatory sacrifice is the Biblical maxim that the “Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8. In his exposition of the prothesis prayer he says “The Lord was no longer just the Passover Lamb who saved the people from the angel of death, but rather, He is the lamb who saved all of creation. Behold I, Mina the Priest, enter into this service which preceded the creation of the world” page 182 

Despite Fr. Mina’s very exalted liturgical worldview, whereby the believer is “purified by prayer, the fellowship of the saints, and most importantly, by clinging to the name of the Lord” page 215 he also acknowledges that even after “we enter into the sacrament of the kingly banquet by the Spirit the comforter so that we may enter they mystery of Christ. We live in a world not completely redeemed for the creation still groans” page 215

Commenting on John 6 he says:

Neither the murmuring of the disciples nor the successive arguing of the Jews was capable of causing the Lord to further expound or amend His seemingly difficult words. In essence, He legally sealed and factually declared that, even if it came to letting go of all the disciples, or if the heavens and the earth were to go away, the words He spoke were immutable.

[edward-sonbati]

Themes in Bishop Mettaous’ “Spirituality of the Rites of the Holy Liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox Church” - A Thematic Outline

Liturgy as performative exegesis

“The beauty of the Coptic Church is in its scriptural foundation; she lives the spirit, and practices according to the Words of the Holy Scriptures. Her prayers are biblically founded and are organized according to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Every word in the book of the Holy Liturgy (the Kholagy) has its origins in the Scriptures.” page 15

“The holy liturgy is a living display of the holy scriptures” page 17

Useful article: https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/38584/chapter-abstract/334614333?redirectedFrom=fulltext 

The world as sacrament and the Adamic priesthood in the thought of Bishop Mettaous

“All Church rituals and symbols are an earthly representation of the heavenly world.” page 19

“The Church constantly prays for the whole world; the sick, the reposed, the orphans, the needy, the widows, the travelers, the rulers, as well as the animals, plants and vegetation, and the waters. Just as the Church advocates intercession, we intercede for the whole world to her Beloved Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ. The prayer of the Midnight Absolution is a living example of a Church which is concerned about every facet of the world, no matter how small.” page 19

Because it is our role as “a priestly nation” (1 Peter 2:9) to sanctify all of creation

Elements of the material realm remind us of the immaterial: “The Morning Prayers are then prayed at sunrise, while the sun is spreading its golden rays over the world, reminding us of the ‘Sun of Righteousness’, our Lord Jesus (Mal.4:2).” page 18

Mettaous has an understanding of Adam as the original cosmic priest: “Biblical scholars say that when Adam and Eve fell God told them to offer a blood sacrifice of an animal without blemish. This sacrifice was to be an archetype of the blood of Christ, Who crushed the devil, for as it is written in the book of Hebrews (9:22), “There is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood.” After Adam offered his sacrifice, “The Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them” (Gen.3:21)” pages 31& 32

The book of Jubilees (3:27) confirms this

Anba Mettaous’ emphasizes the Biblical maxim that “without blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22)

It is for this reason that God rejected Cain’s sacrifice “because his sacrifice was not according to the law. By not offering a blood sacrifice, he showed that he did not feel the need for atonement. God also rejected his offerings because of his evil deeds.” page 32

Christ’s shedding His blood and earthly life “clothes us in purity and righteousness” and His being laid in the tomb “purified it [i.e. the earth]”

Thus, the savior takes away the curse of the land and the sacrifice we offer to God is the bloodless sacrifice of bread and wine, the fruit of man’s own labor page 32

The medieval Byzantine writer Nicholas Cabasilas says more or less the same thing

Christ’s priests as intercessors for all creation, and not man only: Now the priest comes to the crucial moment of intercession. This very moment manifests his office as a priest and an intercessor on behalf of the whole of creation, as he offers the oblations and the bloodless sacrifice on behalf of everything and everyone in the world. Page 197

Anamnesis of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice at Calvary and scriptural mimesis

Seemingly everything in the liturgy symbolizes the narratives in scripture:

5 spoonfuls of incense represent 5 righteous priests of the OT: Abel, Noah, Melchizedek, Aaron, and Zacharias

The priest then places on top of the paten a dome symbolising the star that appeared over the manger at the birth of our Saviour. Page 85

During the selection of the lamb the priest places his right hand on top of his left, placing his hands over the tray in the shape of a cross, as Jacob did when he blessed the sons of Joseph (Genesis 48:8). While doing this the priest says, “May the Lord choose a lamb without blemish.” page 98

Leaven as representing the sin which Christ carries on the cross page 101

The droplets of wax that fall from the burning candle remind us of the sweat that dripped from the Saviour’s Body like drops of blood as He prayed in Gethsemane, “And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Page 215 - kind of a reach, but OK

Practical and symbolic explanations: “They transfer the incense smoke on the Sacrament as a symbol of the spices which Joseph of Arithmea and Nicodemos put on the Saviour’s body at His burial, but the old liturgy books limited its explanation by saying, “Incensing the hands is done in preparation for touching what is before him and holding it within his hands.” page 190

Moving the chalice from West to East symbolises that we, who were once alienated from God and living in darkness, (the west symbolising alienation from God), have been transformed to the light and to the grace of God through the Bloodshed and death of Christ on the cross page 193

Liturgy as Anamnesis and participation in Christ’s own Sacrifice

Use of the present tense when describing the inaudible priestly prayer of the vespers incense (page 27): “This special prayer is a deep spiritual prayer which the priest is directing to our Lord Jesus Christ, the True Sacrifice and the Lamb, Who is bearing the sins of the whole world.” (emphasis mine)

The “Mystery of the Confession” prayer: “O God, as You accepted the repentance of the thief on Your right while on the cross, accept the confession of Your people. Forgive all their sins for the sake of Your Holy Name which is called upon us, and according to Your mercy and not on account of our sins.” In this prayer the priest asks God to accept the confessions and repentance of his people, just as He accepted the confession and repentance of the thief at Golgotha. He also asks the Lord that He may prepare the congregation to partake of His Mysterious Dinner.

HG’s own definition of anamnesis: “every time we perform the Mystery of Thanksgiving and partake of the Holy Sacrifice we preach the Lord’s Death in our own inner Jerusalem, inviting our souls to die with Christ so that we may also rise with Him” page 194

Here remembrance means the living memory rather than just remembering. The word ‘Anamnesis’ is a Greek word, meaning ‘recalling’ and ‘re-enacting’ page 195

We ‘remember’ Christ, Who died for us and Rose from the dead, not merely as an historical event, but as an existing, true sacrifice. In other words, it is an effective memory because what we offer on the altar is the same sacrifice that was offered up for us on the cross. Page 195

Therefore each eucharist is a “mini-Calvary” of sorts for each believer: Today, in partaking of the Holy Communion, the Slain One descends from the Altar into our hearts, into our bodies and into our souls, to set us free, and to save us from the captivity of the world and Satan. Page 196

Liturgy as testifying to the unity between the Church militant and triumphant page 59

Eucharist as participatory sacrifice: He places upon the Lamb that is about to be slain for us, all the hardships, tribulations and diseases of His people. Page 102

The Coptic liturgy is fully conscious of the unity and eternality of Christ’s sacrifice: The procession of the Lamb goes around the Altar only once, to symbolise the Saviour being taken to the temple by his parents to fulfil the requirements of the law. It also represents that Christ would offer Himself only once as a sacrifice for the whole world. Page 105

Liturgy as a participation in the angelic worship 

While facing West the priest views the worshippers standing in their rows, appearing to be in awe and reverence, reminding him of heaven where hosts of angels, apostles and saints are standing before the Lord’s throne, praising Him endlessly. The priest then offers incense to the congregation. Page 42

In explaining the practicing of offering incense in the presence of a bishop or patriarch: The prostration and offering of incense before a high priest is not done because we worship the priest himself (as some people might think) but to offer him incense, being our spiritual leader, so that he can plead for us (intercede) and raise the incense to God on our behalf [...] incense is offered to the Patriarch or the Bishop. Because he has the seniority in priesthood, the incense is offered to him which he then offers with his prayers to the Lord, page 42

Ibn Saba and Pseudo-Dionysius say almost the same thing (refer to Guides to the Eucharist in Medieval Egypt)

This reflects certain neo-Platonist undertones in Orthodox Liturgical Theology and Orthodox theology more generally: “As the saints are a mirror image of the Light of Christ, this Light is then transmitted to us.”, pg 49

The priest upon completing the incense circuit “then hangs the censer in its place. It is preferable to follow the authentic Coptic tradition of hanging the censer by its chain in the centre of the Sanctuary’s entrance, as was done in the ancient Coptic churches. This ascending incense gives comfort to the spirit and soul of the congregation through its sweet fragrance, as it represents the prayers that are rising to the Throne of Grace which the Angel offers to the Divine Glory” page 62 

The priests and deacons who are celebrating the Holy Mass in their white vestments resemble the angels who praise and chant before the throne of God, the church thus becoming the Heavenly Jerusalem on earth. They praise God, sanctify the church through their prayers, and partake of the Holy Communion. Page 82

Vision of Isaiah and the ark of the covenant in the command to the priest on the ordination day: “The Command which the bishop reads on the ordination day says, “It is your duty, above all other church commands, and before all other Apostolic instructions, to apply the utmost care for the distribution of the Lord’s life-giving sacraments. You shall administer this diligently and fervently. Rest assured that the Seraphim and Cherubim are standing around the Altar, with fear and awe.” Page 162

Quoting Saint Barsanuphius of Gaza: the deacon is compared to the Cherubim who “with fear and awe praises God, because he holds the blood of the Eternal King” page 198

Ultimate goal of the liturgy: union with Christ

The Church’s main objective by praying collectively in the Liturgy and concluding with the believers partaking of the one Body of Christ is to unite all people in Jesus Christ.  Page 224

Anba Mettaous says that union with Christ develops in three stages:

The first stage is establishing a covenant with God

The second stage of this growing relationship is to abide in the glorified Christ

The third stage is where “full unity with the beloved can be achieved. At this stage, the believer totally abandons his will and desires as he feels overwhelmed with God’s will and desire and is burning with the love of God. He believes in Him totally, relies on Him totally, and submits to Him totally in order to live a life of joy and happiness in the Lord.” page 225

However, Anba Mettaous frames this union with Christ in strictly moralistic terms, he explains: “Unity with Christ is not a unity of nature or substance but a unity of will and desire.” page 225 the very lofty, mystical view of Theosis is seemingly absent from Mettaous’ work

In his book “Sacramental Rites”, Mettaous says that the Eucharist is a means by which we become “partakers of the divine nature”

[edward-sonbati]

Triune & Interpersonal Indwelling in Orthodox Liturgical Theology

“Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” (John 14:10). In St. John’s Gospel, these are the words of our Lord Jesus in His final gathering with the disciples prior to the crucifixion. According to Orthodox Triadology, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit enjoy an eternal communion of love, dwelling within one another. This doctrine is what the theologians call the divine perichoresis. Likewise our Lord, seeking to graft all His followers into the divine life of the Trinity says: “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him” (John 6:56).

This notion of interpersonal indwelling, not simply of the persons of the Trinity within each other, but of Christ within the believer is the fundamental basis of all Orthodox spirituality and soteriology. Our salvation is not merely some legal declaration of justification in the divine courtroom. Rather, for the Orthodox worshipper, the goal of the Christian life is to be united to and to dwell in Christ, both in this life and the next. In the same way the divine persons commune with and indwell one another, Christ desires for us to participate in this communion and indwelling.

But if the goal of the Christian is the life in Christ and communion with the All-Holy Trinity, what are the means by which the seeds of this life, of theosis, are planted? It is through the Church’s rites of initiation, namely: baptism, chrismation, and, (chief of all) the holy eucharist, by which this indwelling and communion with Christ is mediated. The birth into this life in Christ begins in the waters of the baptismal font. As His Eminence Metropolitan Hierotheos states: “man is born two times: the first biological birth from his (natural) mother and the second spiritual birth from his spiritual mother, which is the Church” (O’Grady, Select Texts, p. 293). We are baptized into Christ by participating in His death and resurrection through immersion in the sacred waters (Gal. 3:27, Rom. 6:3).

Building on an analogy used by Nicholas Cabasilas, Metropolitan Hierotheos explains that while baptism is the means by which man is born spiritually, chrism is the means by which man is endowed with spiritual movement; man is sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit upon being anointed with the oil of God. Upon receiving the seal of the Holy Spirit, we are told that the Spirit Himself dwells within the Christian (2 Tim 1:14).

We will now devote the rest of this piece to the most glorious of all the divine mysteries: the holy eucharist. It is through this mystery that, according to Cabasilas, our union with Christ is made perfect and all-sufficient: “the Saviour is present in every fashion with those who dwell in Him, that He supplies their every need and is all things to them” (Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, p. 47). It is through this most awe-inspiring mystery that Christ Himself dwells in us and confers upon us the fullness of His divine-human hypostasis:

He who is all and more than all draws near, and becomes permanently one with us: one soul, one body. He gives His soul and body, the whole of His divinity and His humanity to us (Archimandrite Vasileios, Hymn of Entry, p. 64).

It is through the mysteries of the Church that we fulfill our mission as Christians by being grafted into the divine life of our Master, being made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Our Lord Jesus Himself illustrates beautifully when He says: “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit” (John 15:5). Could it possibly be a coincidence that our Lord uses the imagery of a grapevine to illustrate our life with and dwelling in Him? No (O’Grady, Lecture: Foundation of the Eucharist in Scripture and Tradition). Rather, it is our partaking of the fruit of the vine contained in the sacred chalice which allows Christ to abide in us and us in Him. The common thread here is that interpersonal indwelling is fundamental to the structure of the cosmos, being intrinsic to the life of the eternal and worshipped Trinity. Christ calls each of us to participate in and enjoy this indwelling, for it is this indwelling and communion which undergirds all Orthodox spirituality and soteriology.

[edward-sonbati]

The Existence of Evil Does Not Justify Atheism

The Existence of Evil Does Not Justify Atheism 

In this essay I will argue that the existence of evil does not justify atheism. I will also seek to provide an adequate explanation of how a Theistic God could co-exist with evil. In order to do this, I will first analyze the logical argument from evil as propounded by Epicurus and Mackie, which maintains that the coexistence of God with evil is logically impossible. I will then examine the more moderate and arguably stronger evidential argument from evil advocated by Rowe, which maintains that -while the coexistence of the God of classical theism with evil is not logically impossible- it is at the very least highly unlikely. I will also take a look at popular theistic counterarguments to the problem of evil and their strengths and drawbacks. Lastly, I will devote special attention to the skeptical theist and felix culpa theodicies and argue that they are the best solutions to our classical problem. 

Believers in the classical theistic creeds maintain that God is the absolute sovereign of the cosmos, perfect in power, wisdom and goodness. However, given the ubiquity of evil and suffering in the world, there appears to be (at least at face value) a clear discrepancy between this claim and observed reality. The Greek philosopher Epicurus, who is credited with being the first thinker to exposit the problem of evil, said: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” From the 1 Epicurean trilemma we see that the existence of evil alongside an all-powerful and good God 

1 Hospers, John. An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis. 3rd Ed. Routledge, 1990, p. 310.

forms an “inconsistent triad,” whereby if two of the propositions are true, the third must be false. Given that the existence of evil is clearly and observably true, it follows that one of God’s essential attributes -be it his power, his goodness, or both- is compromised. 

Drawing from Epicurus’ trilemma, skeptics of theistic claims have formulated what is known as the logical problem of evil, which argues that the existence of the theistic God is logically impossible given the existence of evil and suffering in the universe. In standard form, the argument runs as follows: 2 

(1) God is all-powerful 

(2) God is all-good 

(3) Evil exists 

(4) A sequence of statements is not logically consistent if and only if: (a) that sequence violates the law of noncontradiction or (b) a clear contradiction can be deduced from that sequence. 

(5) If God is all-powerful, he would be able to prevent all the evil that occurs in the universe (6) If God is all-good, he would desire to prevent evil when possible 

(7) If God is capable of preventing all evil from occurring and does not, he is not all-good (8) If God desires to prevent all evil but cannot, he is not all-powerful 

(9) If evil and suffering exist, God is either not all-powerful or not all-good (10) Evil and suffering exist 

(11) God is therefore either not all-good or not all-powerful 

(12) God is all-good and all-powerful 

(13) P11 and P12 constitute a contradiction 

The first four premises constitute the underlying assumptions of the argument. P11 is deduced from P5-P10. The conjunction of the first two premises leads us to P12. The final two premises of the argument constitute a logical contradiction. The argument’s form is valid, with the conclusion following necessarily given the truth of its premises. 

In attempt to rebut the above argument, theistic thinkers have sought to challenge one or more of its premises, particularly P7. Indeed, the success of the entire argument seems to 

2 P1-P12 taken verbatim from the author’s second take-home exam.

rest largely on the assumption that God should necessarily want to prevent all evil on account of his omnibenevolence. The premise in question is quite controversial, and opponents argue that God has perfectly sound, justifiable reasons for allowing evil to exist. 

Advocates of the free will defense, for instance, maintain that God, out of his love and benevolence, allows human beings to freely choose good or evil. A world with human volition, some argue, is a more valuable and overall better state of affairs than an otherwise equally good world entirely without evil. Some tease this out by arguing that the triumph over evil by mankind is conducive to man’s “soul-building” or edification. That is to say, that when people overcome evil, it strengthens and builds up their character, bringing forth second-order goods -goods that are a reaction to evils- such as perseverance, vigilance and humility that would not have been produced otherwise. Others argue that evil exists as a logically necessary counterpart to good, much in the same way relative greatness and smallness serve to contrast each other. Advocates of this view maintain that good can only be perceived and freely chosen comparatively along a continuum of virtue or vice. It is this comparison and contrast between the two that allows humans to recognize and come to know the difference between good and evil, with the hope that this will enable or woo them into to choosing the former over the latter. 

None of these arguments are without objections. The free will defense, for instance, falls short in explaining the anguish and suffering caused by natural disasters and disease. While the misuse of human volition does account for much of the evil observed in the world, it fails to explain these particular evils. It also fails to explain why God couldn’t omit moral monsters -those who perpetrate evils far beyond what is necessary for soul-building or the

bringing about of second-order goods- from existence or bring about a state of affairs whereby everyone freely chooses good. 

While the claim that God could omit moral monsters from existence or that he could somehow bring about a world whereby everyone freely chooses good over evil has some merit, it seems lacking. In both cases, God would be bringing about a state of affairs whereby good is the only viable option, effectively hindering or putting a cap on man’s free choice. 

With respect to the point about natural disasters and disease, it is of genuine merit. Hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes and horrible illnesses of every sort, all of which are unaccounted for by human choice, comprise a great deal of the evil and suffering in the world and we would expect that an all-powerful and all-loving God would prevent these evils. However, even this objection is not without potential solutions, taking a more anthropo-cosmic approach, some (particularly Christian) philosophers of religion argue that such natural evils are caused by the fall of man from God’s grace and favor. Advocates of such approaches claim that God made a perfect world whereby man was placed in paradise and created without want, free from disease, disaster or any source of distress or suffering. Man, by virtue of his free choice, turned away from God’s commandments and fell from divine grace, and thereby caused his world to likewise fall into corruption and become susceptible to evil and disease. This argument is promising in that it reconciles the existence of natural evils with the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent creator. A more in-depth look at this argument, however, is beyond the scope of this paper. 3 

The soul-building defense has its own difficulties given the magnitude of the suffering 3 For a thorough treatment of this subject, cf. The Problem of Evil by Peter van Inwagen

and anguish in the observed world. The early Christian writer and philosopher Paul of Tarsus says in his first letter to the Corinthians says: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” Many argue that this claim is simply untrue and that the amount of suffering and hardship 4 in the world far exceeds what is necessary to edify and strengthen the character of human beings. Rather than using the loss of a child, or a battle with cancer to cultivate virtues such as strength, patience, long-suffering and perseverance, why can’t God bring about these qualities using a far less arduous and taxing state of affairs? Further, while some who do suffer such ordeals are built up and strengthened, many victims of such tragedies are more likely to have their souls destroyed rather than built up and develop worse moral characters as a result of their suffering. 

Additionally, the idea that evil serves as a logical and necessary counterpart to good is problematic on many fronts; intuitively it seems unconvincing, it is unclear if it works even on its own terms and it seems to conflict with fundamental theistic assumptions about God. Firstly, if this claim is true, then God is not really the active force or agent of goodness in the world, he simply facilitates a state of affairs whereby good is brought about. This conclusion would be unattractive to most theists who maintain that God is both all-good and the source of all that is good in the world. Secondly, in order for this claim to work it must first be established that a quality or substance (in this case, good) can only come about given the presence of its opposite (namely, evil). Thirdly, it seems to entail unattractive consequences 

4 1 Corinthians 10:13, taken from the New King James Version

about God’s existence and essential attributes. If good can only exist alongside evil, what of the all-good God who is said to have preexisted all things? Did evil eternally preexist alongside him? Is his goodness contingent upon and only exemplified by its coexistence with an equally evil existent? It seems, therefore, that the claim that evil must exist as good’s necessary counterpart seems like a non-starter for classical theists. 

All of the defenses provided above are much debated and have each been the subject of much scrutiny in theological and philosophy of religion circles. However, some (such as the free will defense used in conjunction with the belief in man’s fall) are more effective than others and provide us with good reason to at least entertain the idea that P7, arguably the foundation of the entire argument, is of questionable truth value and that it is possible that an omnibenevolent God has justification for allowing evil to occur. 

This leaves us with the more moderate evidential argument from evil, which uses the existence of evil to build an inductive case against God’s existence (whereas the Epicurean argument attempts a deductive case). According to this argument, while the coexistence of the theistic God with evil is not logically impossible, it is, at the very least, highly unlikely. Succinctly stated, it is as follows: 5 

(1) God is the all-powerful and all-good sovereign of the universe 

(2) If God (all powerful & all good) exists, then he probably would prevent gratuitous evils without jeopardizing some greater good or causing some greater evil 

(3) Gratuitous evils exist. 

(4) If (1) and (2), then God probably doesn’t exist. 

(5) God probably doesn't exist. 

That is to say, a) there are gratuitous and pointless evils b) if God exists, gratuitous and 5 P1-P3 taken verbatim from the author’s second take-home exam.

pointless evils probably would not c) it is unlikely, therefore, that God exists. Looking at the original argument: P2 is uncontroversial while P1 is highly contested. However, if P1 can be proven, P3 follows logically given P1 and P2. In support of P1, the philosopher William L. Rowe gives the following example of what he considers to be a gratuitous evil: 

Suppose in some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering. So far as we can see, the fawn's intense suffering is pointless. For there does not appear to be any greater good such that the prevention of the fawn's suffering would require either the loss of that good or the occurrence of an evil equally bad or worse. Nor does there seem to be any equally bad or worse evil so connected to the fawn's suffering that it would have had to occur had the fawn's suffering been prevented. 6 

At face value, Rowe’s point seems very compelling. To the best of our knowledge, the fawn’s pain and suffering cannot be linked to the prevention of an evil of equal or greater severity nor can it be said to be the cause of a greater good. However, in order for this argument to work we must first establish that we are in an adequate epistemic position to make such a judgment. 

 Enter skeptical theism, which states that human beings are not in a justified epistemic position to know God’s intentions and purposes for allowing evil to occur. The skeptical theist approach, as pioneered by Stephen Wykstra, rests primarily on the condition of reasonable epistemic access (CORNEA for short) which states: 

On the basis of cognized situation s, human H is entitled to claim "It appears that p" only if it is reasonable for H to believe that, given her cognitive faculties and the use she has made of them, if p were not the case, s would likely be different than it is in some way discernible by her. 7 

In other words, we are only entitled to claim that certain evils are gratuitous and/or pointless if our cognitive faculties— and our use of them— allow us to reasonably discern such a claim. 

6 William L. Rowe’s The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism 

7 The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of "Appearance"

For Wykstra and other skeptical theists, Rowe’s fawn example, and indeed all examples of seemingly gratuitous evils, do not meet this condition. We are not epistemically justified in assuming that if God -who is infinitely greater than any human being in his wisdom and discernment- did allow certain evils to happen for some justifiable reasons that said reasons would always be discernible to us. In other words, it is possible that the suffering and pain of Rowe’s fawn can be connected with either the prevention of a greater evil or the cause of a greater good, we simply lack access to that knowledge. If true, this would effectively negate the fundamental assumption of the evidential argument: that gratuitous evils exist. 

Skeptical theism, however, is not without its detractors. If one were to grant the truth of its premises, it could be argued that it leaves its advocates in an epistemological black hole. If God has perfectly justified reasons for allowing seemingly gratuitous evils to happen, it could very well be argued that he also has perfectly justified reasons (that we cannot possibly know) for deceiving us about a seemingly infinite number of issues, be it common sense, chemistry, physics, morality or even cardinal religious doctrines. 8 Does this mean that skeptical theism leads its proponents to a radical, global skepticism? 

The skeptical theist’s answer is “no.” Simply because we do not know God’s reasons for allowing evil to happen does not entail that we have any positive evidence to believe that he would deceive us about all of our insights and that, in fact, we have good reason to think otherwise (be it by inference, an appeal to his goodness, revelation, etc.). Furthermore, whatever reasons one might have for rejecting global skepticism, the skeptical theist is entitled to hold to the same reasoning. 

8 Cf. Hud Hudson’s The Father of Lies?

What about issues concerning divine revelation? Core theistic beliefs (take the Christian doctrine of Jesus’ bodily resurrection, for example) can only be known on account of God’s revelation to man. While skeptical theists might be able to successfully avoid global skepticism, do their suppositions logically lead one to a certain religious skepticism, whereby God might well have good reason to deceive us about issues concerning divine revelation? The answer for the skeptical theist is once again a resounding “no.” This dilemma can be circumvented by appealing to a variety of epistemological theories. Perhaps the skeptical theist can hold to a non-reductionist view of testimony -an essentially innocent-until-proven-guilty epistemology- whereby one is justified in accepting divine revelation as true in the absence of reasons to think otherwise. Better yet, an appeal to proper functionalism -a theory of knowledge that states that one has prima facie justification for holding a belief produced by reliable, truth-seeking cognitive faculties- can allow the skeptical theist to maintain that said reliable, truth-seeking cognitive faculties lead one to accept divine revelation as true in the absence of reasons to think that it is false. Some might further argue that there are independent, evidential bases for accepting aspects of revelation (in the case of the resurrection, for example, the historical testimony of those who claimed to see Jesus after the crucifixion). 

So while not entirely without its drawbacks, the skeptical theist approach to the problem of evil does seem thus far to be the most impregnable and stalwart defense to the age-old dilemma. It, used in tandem with the felix culpa defense, constitutes what I consider to be the best response to the issue. 

Having said all of this, we are now ready to discuss the theodicy we alluded to earlier both in the opening paragraph and in our discussion on second-order goods: Felix culpa or

“happy fault” is the thesis that God allows evil to bring about a greater and more valuable good. The early African Christian theologian and philosopher Augustine of Hippo says: “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” Putting it 9 all together we come to this conclusion, that God, in his benevolence, wisdom and power, allows evils of all sorts to occur in order to bring forth a greater good that otherwise would not have come about if evil didn’t exist at all. Because he is incomprehensibly greater than man in his wisdom and discernment, how he does this and his reasons for doing so are often unknown to us. 

From the above arguments, I conclude that existence of evil does not in and of itself justify atheism. In this paper, we have seen that the central premise of the logical problem of evil— -that God cannot be all-good if he is capable of preventing all evil and does not—- is suspect as there could be justified reasons for allowing such evils to occur, for instance, using that evil to bring about a greater good that could not have otherwise occurred in the absence of evil or using said evil to prevent an evil greater evil from occurring. We then -looking through the lens of skeptical theism- saw that the evidential problem of evil rests on the unestablished and faulty assumption that if God were to use evil to bring forth some greater good that his reasoning or mechanism for doing so would always be discernible to us. We instead argued that we are not epistemically justified in assuming God’s reasons or purposes for allowing evils to occur. We then combined this approach with the felix culpa thesis to show that is possible that an all-loving, all-powerful and all-wise God uses evil to bring forth greater good, the how and why of which are unbeknownst to us. 

9 Augustine, Enchiridion, viii.