Paulos Mar Gregorios

A Reader

K. M. George

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781506430164
• eBook ISBN: 9781506430171
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Paulos Mar Greogorios: A Reader is a compilation of the selected writings of Paulos Mar Gregorios, a metropolitan of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church of India and a former President of the World Council of Churches. The book deals with his thought in the areas of ecumenism, orthodox theology, philosophy, interfaith dialogue, and philosophy of science. The book will be of special value to the students of ecumenism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, Indian philosophy, interdisciplinary studies, and holistic education.

IV

Theology and Ecumenism

The pervasive influence of St. Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–395) the youngest of the three Cappadocians, is evident in the thinking and writings of Mar Gregorios. Long before he formally started studying theology in Western universities like Princeton, Yale, and Oxford, he was desperately seeking a reliable and intellectually sophisticated articulation of the insights he had gathered from his Indian Christian upbringing, Orthodox liturgical ethos, his study of the Bible and serious personal reflections. His strong and at times devastating criticism of St. Augustine is counterbalanced by his exhilarating discovery of St. Gregory of Nyssa. On themes like human freedom, sin, creativity, divine goodness and the whole nexus of relationship between God, world and humanity, Gregorios found the theological anthropology and the whole thought world of Gregory of Nyssa providing a new and exciting paradigm, a powerful alternative to the Augustinian West. Henceforth, in all intellectual exchanges of Mar Gregorios, whether with the Marxist or the people of other faiths, with science and technology or with peace and disarmament, with ecumenical initiatives or with Asian-African identity, it was Gregory of Nyssa in particular and the Cappadocian thinking in general that shaped to a large extent the mindset of Mar Gregorios. For him, it was a relief to discover that sin is alien to human nature as created by God and that freedom is the creativity of the Good.

We have included substantial passages from the Cosmic Man: The Divine Presence, which Mar Gregorios considered as his most important work. His writings on freedom and authority, sacramental theology, the communitarian dimension of faith, humanity’s role as mediator, and his treatment of the mystery of incarnation are all interconnected, and provide a coherent and systematic expression of Orthodox theology in its patristic and liturgical moorings. While Mar Gregorios is known in Christian circles as a leader of the ecumenical movement, he was initiated to the World Council of Churches at its third world assembly in 1961 in New Delhi. A newly ordained young priest of the Malankara Orthodox Church in India, Fr. Paul Varghese was one of the Bible study leaders of the assembly. His insightful biblical exegesis and studies became legendary since then. He continued to be one of the most distinguished Bible study leaders in the ecumenical movement for decades to follow. Yet he was very critical of some of the developments in the ecumenical movement and the domination of rich Western churches in setting the agenda of ecumenism.

The God-World-Humanity Relationship—Insights from Gregory of Nyssa

St. Gregory of Nyssa and
the Greek Philosophy

Thus it is on the basis of the faith of the Church, which regards the scriptural notion of creation in the image of God as central to the understanding of humanity, that Gregory can reject the anthropology of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. In all major matters, scripture (or rather the intent of scripture), understood in consonance with the intent of the faith of the Church becomes the category by which to judge Plato, Aristotle or the Stoics—whose views dominated the “outside philosophy.” There was no attempt on the part of Gregory to accommodate the insights of the gospel to suit the preferences of prevailing philosophies. On the contrary, his adherence to the Church’s understanding of reality was strong enough to enable him to reject the prestigious views of Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics.

We can illustrate the same point by looking at what Gregory did to two other prevailing assumptions of outside philosophy—one that man is a microcosm of the universe, and the other that the whole universe breathed together as a single organism—the concept of sympnoia. Before we do that, however, it needs to be pointed out that Gregory’s use of “outside” wisdom was not confined to philosophy alone. He opened himself to all branches of culture, literature, music, art, medicine, engineering, and biology. He listened to contemporary rhetoricians like Libanios and Themistios, as well as to scientists like Theon of Alexandria, who taught from 378–395 CE, developing the mathematics of Euclid and Ptolemy. Gregory, probably, followed the thought of Oribasius (ca 320–400 CE), the personal physician of Emperor Julian the Apostate and author of seventy or seventy-two medical works, incorporating all previous Western medical knowledge.^[1] Gregory frequently visited medical doctors, and acquired an immense amount of anatomical knowledge, conceivable with the help of Caesarius, the brother of Gregory Nazianzen, who had been court physician before Oribasius and who later joined the Pontic monastery of Basil.^[2]

Gregory knew something also about art, music and architecture. The sculptor’s art is described in the commentary on the Psalms; he gives detailed instructions on Church architecture to Amphilocius.^[3]

His knowledge of music shows up in the Commentary on the Inscriptions of the Psalms; where the whole creation becomes one giant musical instrument, which when properly tuned, bursts forth in the celestial music of a cosmic symphony, our own hymnody and psalmody being participations in this cosmic music.^[4]

Thus Gregory exemplifies a positive attitude to the material creation as such, and not merely to pagan philosophy. The mistrust of pagan knowledge, art and culture, of beauty and pleasure, which characterised certain aspects of the early Latin tradition are not seen here. It is a fact that the better values in pagan culture were more freely appreciated and faithfully conserved by Gregory than they were by many contemporary pagans, who under the influence of Neoplatonism and Manicheeism despised the aesthetic values of this world.

In order to appreciate this basically positive approach of Gregory to the material creation, we have to observe two apparently contradictory facts about his thought. On the one hand, he attacks the pagans who regard human science, language and poetry as divine creations. He would de-divinise science and language over against Eunomius who regarded the human mind as practically worthless and regarded divine names as well as the names of things as handed down by God himself. For Gregory it does not demean language to say that it is a creation of man, nor does it detract from the glory or the grace of God, for all that man has that is good is a reflection of that glory and a gift of that grace. In the pagan controversy whether language has its origin along with the phusis created by God, or by the thesis or ascription of man, Gregory takes definitely the latter side,^[5] as does St. Basil (but not Origen). It is no disgrace for language and science to be a human creation.

On the other hand, Gregory has a higher evaluation of human capacity than Eunomius and his Neoplatonist school. The human faculty of knowing and creating is a noble thing, not a thing to be despised, though it becomes despicable when it exceeds its natural limits and capacities.

The fourth century was an age very much like ours—an age of prosperity and affluence when philosophy becomes devalued and science-technology gains the upper hand.^[6] Gregory had the unusual ability to create a philosophical system which neither was antagonistic to science nor failed to make use of it. But his intellectual system was not a mere integration of the philosophic and scientific traditions. He had sufficient faith to make the Christian tradition a touchstone for the evaluation and appropriation of philosophical and scientific insights and discoveries. He integrated science and philosophy on the foundation of the Christian tradition. This principle of integrating science and philosophy on the basis of the Nicean tradition of Christianity, using Trinity-incarnation as central category is what we hope to illustrate, by taking two key terms of Gregory’s contemporary science and philosophy—the concept of sympnoia of the cosmos and the idea that man is a microcosmos. (CM 4–6)

Diastēma as Extension

We have no English word by which to translate diastēma. To translate it as gap or interval could be to miss out its meaning of extendedness. So we will use this Greek word in English, rather than use distance, distension or interval, and explain every time that it has another meaning as well.

[ . . . ]

Gregory’s concept of diastēma seems so daringly original, that we should be careful not to assimilate it into the categories of other thinkers.

For Gregory, diastēma is intimately connected with movement and change. A translation like “standing apart” gives the impression of being static, while for Gregory it is impossible for the creation to be static except in death and non-being. All is in movement, all is changing—that is the very nature of creation.

The creation is an orderly process in space and time—a taxis kai akolouthia, diastēmatikōs ek tinos eis ti tēi zoēi diodeuousa (an order and sequence, distensionally journeying through life from something to something). It is a movement from origin to perfection, from archēto telos, and an hodos to traverse from beginning to end.

It is thus extension not only in space, but also in time. For what is time after all? It is the interval between the beginning and the end or between inception and perfection. This latter is a particular characteristic of creation, totally absent in God. Gregory never tires of making this distinction in the dispute against Eunomius, for the heart of Eunomius’s contention is that the Son has a beginning and therefore that he cannot be God. From the beginning Gregory has to attack this contention that the second person of the Trinity has a beginning, and to state the teaching of the Church that he is the beginning of all things. It is with this intention that he makes the clear line of demarcation between created nature and uncreated nature. (CM 75–76)

[ . . . ]

The Stoics were perhaps the first to use this term in a philosophical sense. Zeno and Chrysippus both used it in relation to their refutation of the cosmological theories of the atomists, but it had no central significance in their thought.^[7]

In the history of Christian thought, however, diastēma became a key notion in the Arian controversy. The basic claim of Arianism is that “there was a then when the Son was not.” If this is conceded then there is an interval between the origin of the Father and the origin of the Son, since normally the Father has to be older than the Son.

[ . . . ]

By the fifth century adiastatos or “unextended” had become a qualifying adjective for the Holy Trinity.^[8] But Gregory finds a more comprehensive use for the term for the whole structure of the Creator-creation relationship, by positing: (a) that, on the one hand, there is no diastēma or extension or gap internally within the uncreated nature of God; time-space extension does not apply to the godhead, therefore, there can be no time-space gap either in or between the three persons of the Trinity; (b) that, on the other hand, all created existence is by nature extended in time and space, and therefore diastēma is the characteristic of created being; and (c) that there is an ontological and therefore epistemological gap between the Creator’s being and that of the creation which the human mind or any other created mind is incapable of traversing. (CM 68–69)

[ . . . ]

The recognition of the limits of human reason is no demeaning thing. It means only to be reminded that he is a creature, totally dependent upon the will of the Creator. But Gregory does not devalue reason. He grants to it enormous capacities of knowledge and skill within the created world. Unless, however, we recognise what belongs to the essence of the Christian faith, namely that God’s ousia cannot be the object of our thought; but can only be adored and worshiped as the perfection of all being and all good, man does not become himself.

The gap between creation and Creator is first ontological, but not spatial-temporal, and secondly, epistemological. We can neither objectify God as a vis-a-vis, nor can we know him as an object. To apply the term diastēma also to this gap between Creator and creation is thus slightly misleading, for it is not the distance between two points—one at the boundary of creation and the other at the boundary of God. For God is infinite, has no boundary. The creation is finite and has a boundary. The creation cannot exist but in God, but God is not spatial, and therefore the diastēma between the Creator and the creation cannot itself be conceived in any spatial terms. It is a diastēma between the undiastatic Creator and the diastatic or extended creation. We can conceive no mental image of such a gap, but it is our experience.

The diastēma between the Creator and the creation in Gregory has another unique feature—namely that it is a one-way gap. From the side of God, there is no gap. All creation is immediately present to him—in all its extension of space and time. All time and all space have come to be “at once” and are together in their entirety always present to God or “in God.” (CM 94–95)

Uncreated and Created Nature

So, ontologically speaking the fundamental difference between the uncreated nature and the created nature may be summarised thus:

1. The Creator’s being is self-derived, self-generating, self-subsistent, not dependent on aught else. The creation has no being in itself. Its being is derived from God, subsists only by the will of God, and cannot exist in itself, but is constantly and every moment recreated by God’s will, on which it i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Philosophy—Western and Indian/Asian
• Ethical Dimensions—Peace, Ecology, Holistic Healing, Interfaith Dialogue
• Autobiographical Glimpses, Worship, and Spirituality
• Theology and Ecumenism
• Perspectives on Future Humanity
• Subject Index
• Author Index