Scholasticism and Hesychasm. Help please

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Warjuning

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Hello!
As you may know, Orthodox theologians oppose Scholasticism because according to them:
  1. It leads to heresies ( the Filioque, the Papacy, denial of the essence-energy distinction -Thomism in particular- etc. )
  2. It is too rationalistic in contrast to Eastern Theology which “is born out of the experience of the Saints”.
  3. It lead to feudalism-capitalism which are great evils amongst others - for them at least.
  4. The project of natural theology ultimately failed and planted the seeds for Enlightenment atheism and modern secularism.
I deeply like Scholasticism but I am really confused and I do not want to fall into heresy. Please help.
 
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Hello Warjuning,
  1. As to the heresies, I can’t help you there. They aren’t heresies for us. Scholasticism addresses religion from the point of view that man addresses knowledge: reason. If reason is applied to both scripture and the ‘experience of the Saints’ in order to comprehend a cohesive creation rather than a collection of individual experiences, I don’t see the problem personally. As to Filioque, from everything I have read in the actual theology against it, it is not so much a heresy as a dispute against inclusion in the Creed. If you strip away the theological language differences which has built up over centuries. We pretty much say the same thing. It is just the Orthodox focus on emanation and origin and Catholics focus on causation. As to the essence-energy distinction, some modern Orthodox scholars actually view St. Gregory Palamas’ initial essence-energy distinction in light of a ‘formal’ distinction as found in Scotus, a Scholastic. Again, if you strip away the differences in language, the essence-energy distinction may be reconciled with even St. Thomas Aquinas’s De Ente et Essentia if Essence is equivocated and Energy is considered as Grace. At it’s very least the Ousia of God seems to be identical to Aquinas’s description of the Essence/existence of God.
  2. Reason is the faculty with which man intellectually engages the world. Unless God hard -wires knowledge into your brain, man uses reason to address and process information handed down to him, even if it is through mystical experiences. Again, Scholasticism attempts to reconcile Sacred Scripture and Tradition which is born out of the experience of the Saints. This also seems to reject the massive amounts of material from the Saints who the Orthodox recognize which support Scholastic principles and concepts.
  3. Feudalism and capitalism were around long before Scholasticism. This one is pretty much mute.
  4. How did it fail? Thomas’s Five Ways have been the bulwark against philosophical atheism since they were written until the advent of the New Atheism. They really didn’t plant the seeds for Enlightenment atheism and modern secularism as Enlightenment philosophy onward pretty much rejected the Scholastics. I think Descartes was the last to hold any respect for the Scholastics. Even he was simply toeing the line of agnosticism, not outright atheism. That did not come until Baruch Spinoza.
God Bless,
Br. Ben, CRM
 
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A few points.

Get Aquinas by Ed Feser.

Once you know the essence (no pun intended) of Aquinas’ thought, you can see that there is a center to the thought that branches outward. That is, there are more fundamental notions in Aquinas, and I hardly see how these notions are anti-Eastern Christianity, and I think that it’s just an inherent distaste for Western Christianity — or just misunderstanding — that causes some Easterners to reject Aquinas without really listening to what he has to say.

So for isntance, in that book, you’ll note that the main thrust of the metaphysics regards act and potency, form and matter, essence and existence, etc., and then you have natural theology — the five proofs — and the hylemorphic dualistic understanding of the soul.

Frankly, I don’t see how Eastern theology is inherently anti-Thomstic. I don’t think it is, and I think that’s a myth.

After all, Catholicism includes all Eastern traditions as well (not just Byzantine Orthodox, but Syriac, Maronite, Chaldean, Syro-Malabar, and Coprtic as well). So if Thomas isn’t your cup of tea, it doesn’t have to be. But as you say, you appreciate it, and there is no reason why someone coming from the Eastern traditions shouldn’t also appreciate it.

Also, Aquinas may lead to the Papacy, Filioque, etc. But guess what! Aquinas was a Catholic. Why would he NOT fit these into his overall framework??

The Easterner may mean that you can’t appreicate Thomas because he is a Catholic, and Catholicism is heretical. Well, fine, according to Orthodoxy. But it’s just silly to go from that analysis to the Thomistic philosophical/metaphysical approach in general. That conflates two different things, even if you don’t really have one without the other.

After all, the papacy and Filioque existed way before Aquinas came along!

I have found that my faith has only increased thanks to Aquinas.

Oh and P.S. It’s just silly to pit reason/philosophy and Thomism in particular against mysticism and mystery. Anyone who says this doesn’t know a thing about Aquinas’ own mystical life — his devotion for the Eucharist and the mystical encounter with Christ on the crucifix, etc.

Be Catholic and get the WHOLE of the faith. You don’t have to settle for reason OR mystery: Get both!
 
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Also another thought, but I think worthy of its own post:

In many ways, I think Thomas’ thought is actually much more biblical than any other Christian philosophical approach (though of course Thomas builds off others as well. And he was VERY aware of the church fathers, too).

Take the soul, for example. Some early Christians (and many today) take an unhealthy dualistic approach to the human person. Of course, man is matter and spirit. But this must be balanced in a way that shows that man is a single unit, made in the image of God. Thomism does this by saying that the spiritual soul is not a separate substance, but rather a component of the single “soul” (form) of the human person. That is, a human IS a single substance that is body + spiritual capacity, not body substance + spiritual substance. This parallels the biblical understanding that we await Resurrection of the body, not liberation from the body.
 
Get Aquinas by Ed Feser.
Click to expand...
I have read it. Ed Feser is boss.
Be Catholic and get the WHOLE of the faith. You don’t have to settle for reason OR mystery: Get both!
Click to expand...
That’s basically why I find Catholicism so attractive. It’s anthropology seems to account for the human being as a whole. Both as a religious and a logical being.

Thanks for helping me man.

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I think Thomas’ thought is actually much more biblical than any other Christian philosophical approach
Click to expand...
True that. His use of aristotelian metaphysics is genious.
 
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I also think that The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas would also be a good suggestion for this topic, at least with regards to Thomas’s metaphysics. It is considered one of the benchmarks for Neo-Thomist metaphysics and goes well beyond the material of the Summa Theologiae in its explanation of Thomas’s metaphysical thought. I myself have a well-loved copy.

After that, I think that The Metaphysical Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas by Msgr. John Wippel (both volumes) would be helpful. He was a student of Gilson and was actually Pope Benedict XVI’s adviser on Aquinas.
 
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There’s nothing wrong with applying reason and logic to theological questions. We all do that naturally if we’re honest about it. Reason informed by faith is a very sound and beneficial approach. On top of that the west also has a great tradition of mysticism. And that combination is powerful IMO.
 
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I think that the real issue is their desire to not be reunited with the Catholic Church.
 
I think It is because of their tradition. From the schism until now the Orthodox have defined themselves to be the opposite of what they think the “West” is. To accept doctrines such as the filioque, papal supremacy etc, they will basically have to abandon their tradition of 1000+ years . This will never happen.
 
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