Aquinas and Eastern Orthodoxy

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The present understanding of the relationship between Eastern Orthodox theology and the West is based on the experience of the émigrés from Russia, expelled by Lenin in 1922, who encountered welcoming Western (mostly Catholic) theologians, mainly in Paris, in the 1920s and 1930s and sought to engage with their unfamiliar, and in many ways alien, theology. Out of this grew a sense that, while the Filioque and papal claims were still important, the real difference between East and West was found in styles of theology: the West more rationalistic, the East more intuitive and mystical. This perception came to inform the Orthodox rediscovery of the theology of Gregory Palamas, the defender of the monks' claim to the validity of their mystical experience in the hesychast controversy of the 14th century, with the result that that controversy came to be seen as emblematic of the divide between East and West, the respective champions being Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas. This understanding of the hesychast controversy has informed virtually all subsequent research into the hesychast controversy. So, for historical reasons, the hesychast controversy has been understood in terms of categories derived, not from the controversy itself, but from a much later encounter between East and West.For a properly scholarly understanding of the hesychast controversy, there is needed a deconstruction of the categories that have been hitherto applied, which might lead to a more genuine understanding of that controversy. This has consequences beyond the simply scholarly, as the perception of an opposition between a scholastic West and a mystical East is very widespread and rarely questioned. The immediate purpose of the present project is to look at the history of the engagement between Aquinas and Eastern Orthodoxy. I have already made a start of this in a chapter commissioned for the Cambridge Companion to the Summa Theologiae on 'Orthodoxy and the Summa Theologiae'. It is clear that Aquinas had no direct role in the hesychast controversy, as he was not known to the Byzantines until a Greek translation of the Summa contra Gentiles was published in 1354, later than the synods (1341-1351) that decided in favour of Palamas. It is also clear from my initial research, that Aquinas was invoked on both sides of the continuing controversy, not just by the opponents of Palamas.In the proposed project, I intend first, to survey what engagement there has been between Aquinas and the Eastern Orthodox tradition, which falls into four sections: a. Aquinas' own debt to Eastern traditions (especially Dionysios the Areopagite and John Damascene); b. his role in the Byzantine hesychast controversy; c. the place of Aquinas in the theology of the Ottoman period (both in Greece and Russia), during which period Orthodox theology was articulated in Latin categories (a period generally disowned by modern Orthodox theologians, perhaps too readily); d. the engagement with Aquinas in the twentieth century. A sketch of this, which needs much more thorough research, is found in the article for the Cambridge Companion. Secondly, the project will explore the changing interpretation of Aquinas in the latter part of the twentieth century, which has produced a picture of Aquinas in many ways more congenial to the Eastern Christian tradition. Thirdly, I shall explore ways of developing more fruitful engagement between Aquinas and the Eastern tradition.The results of this project, principally made available in a monograph, will further the increasingly friendly relationships that exist between the Western and Eastern Churches, and provide a theological basis for a deeper rapprochement. The importance of this for promoting mutual understanding in an increasingly global world in which, in particular, Europe is now beginning to embrace countries that belong to the Byzantine tradition as well as those that formed part of Latin Christendom, could well be very great indeed.