Posted by Photini I share below, with permission, a response given by Dr George Gabriel (Untrodden Portal of God,etc) In Christ Photini ------------------------------------- I am familiar with Fr George Papademetriou's defense of Augustine's sainthood in his article on the GOA website which you mentioned. Fr George Papademetriou is a fine man but not a theologian. His defense of Augustine's sainthood quotes (in English) from a 15th-century work by Pat. Gennadios Scholarios, the first ecumenical patriarch under the Ottomans and a great patriarch for his time and circumstances. Fr. George was translating from a modern Greek translation of Scholarios's work. The 15th-century Scholarios document, however, is seriously corrupted and much of it defies comprehension and thus translation. It is the only extant text. In fact, a few years ago I spent many hours researching the text at Holy Cross library in Brookline, MA. One of the West's respected textual scholars, whose name I cannot remember, tried to develop a critical version of it and largely failed. It is well known that Scholarios was imbued with Western theological paradigms. He was a (lay) theologian at the Council of Florence who favored the union but changed his view some years later, and he was made a bishop. It is clear even in the corrupted 15th-century text that Scholarios was severely criticial of Augustine's confusion of philosophy with theology. Nevertheless, Scholarios excused Augustine's errors and even anathematized anyone who does not accept Augustine as a saint. The anathematization is utterly without authority. At the end of the day, a text so badly corrupted cannot be accepted as an accurate representation of the writer's thought. But neither is the thought of Scholarios authoritative. Fr George certainly must have known both the old Greek as well as the modern Greek texts because he was the librarian at Holy Cross for many years and had ready access to them. He must have been aware of the 15th-century text and that no translation of it can be regarded as an accurate representation of the writer's thought. See my appendix about Augustine in the 2nd edition of my book "Mary the Untrodden Portal of God" where I raise the nagging issue: A true saint is one who has seen, and has been taken into, the uncreated glory of God and beheld God in Christ. How, then, is it possible for one who had seen it and been there in the (temporary) state of theosis, and who learned the mind of God mistake the uncreated for a created energy? In history, it appears, the Church's leaders always had serious problems when Augustine's name would pop up from time to time. By the ninth century, St. Photios's time, the peak of reverence for Augustine had long been reached in the West and, because of his fame, it had spread to the East. The East, however, had no knowledge of his writings that existed only in Latin. St. Photios was fighting against the Filioque and the universal supremacy of the Pope of Rome. When his Met. Lavrentios of Sicily wrote to him that Augustine in fact teaches Filioque, Photios exploded at the heinous charge against a "father." Not knowing Latin, however, Photios had never read Augustine's writings, and he was perhaps Constantinople's most educated man. Finally, he was not able to deny that Augustine created the filioque, so he simply dismissed the issue of Augustine by saying, "Nevertheless, we should respect him for the virtues of his life." Photios probably had learned little or nothing about the latter's numerous other heresies and paradigms, e.g. created grace, analogia entis, analogia fidei, predestination, death as a creation by God, Christ as having never appeared personally to the prophets and patriarchs of the OT)? Very doubtful, in my opinion. St. Photios deliberately, strategically, and wisely chose to drop the issue of the person of Augustine in order to avoid opening a new front and new battle with Rome while the struggle over Papal supremacy and the Filioque was raging. By opening a new battle with the whole West over Augustine, he would have risked losing the greater war. The irony is that the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, earlier in that century, had condemned theology based on the Neo-Platonic system of eternal ideas in the essence of God, in other words, the same paradigm that underlies Augustine's analogia entis. It is no surprise, then, that the Fifth Ecumenical Synod (sixth cent.) knew nothing about Augustine except that the West had great reverence for him. His name is mentioned two times in the Fifth Ecumenical Synod. This is cited by his defenders today as proof that the Church regards him a great father. But this is not necessarily borne out in those two places where he is mentioned: In the 14th century, Augustine's theology under the names of Varlaam and Akyndinos was condemned by the collective Ninth Ecumenical Synod consisting of the three Hesychast Synods. Augustine's name never appears in that controversy. The enigma here is that, decades earlier, "De Trinitate" was the first of Augustine's works to appear in Greek (1275). By the early 14th century, more works appeared in Greek. These were well received by those intellectuals in the East who revered the Greek philosphical tradition. One has to believe that St. Gregory Palamas was aware of Augustine's work in Greek, yet he never mentioned Augustine's name, and neither did the three Hesychast Synods. Might it have been considered politically incorrect to alienate the powers of the West in a period when the Ottomans had come to occupy all of Asia Minor, parts of Greece and the region surrounding Constantinople? So we have these ironies of history: The Church has condemned Augustinian theology in several Synods and in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, yet some Orthodox persist in considering him a saint and father. And Augustine escaped posthumous condemnation. Origen was condemned for less, and Theodoret of Kyros was excommunicated for less by the Third Ecumenical Synod (and restored by the Fourth upon his repentance). Basil of Seleucia, a fine orthodox father of both the Third and Fourth Ecumenical Synods, was never personally recognized as a saint because he was falsely accused of "being soft on the Monophysites." These men, too, led virtuous lives no less than Augustine. Yet, Augustine's name has evaded any official taint since his works became known in Greek seven centuries ago, and later in many more languages.
on 10/26/2007, 12:56 pm, in reply to "Re: AGAIN, Augustinianism"
I understand what you're saying, but the most conspicuous error I see is that assumption that Augustine is an Orthodox saint, and its on that validity that sets up a tweak in our theology.
Dear Fr.----------,
The GOA does not commemorate Augustine on his feast day. Neither was he ever found in the Greek minaion, not even in the latest edition published near the end of the last decade and approved by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. A service for Augustine's feast day, however, was written by Achbp. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and it is used in the ROCOR.
1) In the sessions when the question of earlier precedence for posthumous anathematizations was raised, it was said that the same question came up in the previous century at a synod in N. Africa which Augustine attended. Augustine then mentioned the precedent of an earlier N. African synod that indeed anathematized posthumously. (The Fifth Ecumenical Synod, as you know, on the basis of this precedence, then proceeded to anathematize Origen posthumously.)
2) In the preamble of the acts of this Synod, several major (Eastern) fathers are mentioned as models to be imitated for the purity of their orthodox faith, tacitally intended in the context of the Christological decree of the Synod. Originally, Augustine was not included in that list, but his name was later added at the request of the Pope. Again, the Greeks knew very little about Augustine except his reputation as the great Western father.
George S. Gabriel Ph. D. (September, 2007)
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