Theology and the Eucharist

On the Resolution of Antinomies in Light of Divine Revelation

Fr. Dumitru Staniloae begins his ground-breaking essay “Eternity and Time” with an antinomy: 

In Christianity there are two conceptions of God, one which comes from the Bible and which belongs to Christian life and experience, and the other which comes from Greek philosophy. The first presents God as the living God, full of concern and interest for humankind. The second presents God as unmoved and immoveable. Eastern Orthodoxy has made a great effort to combine and harmonise the two conceptions. It has sought to reconcile both these ways of thinking about God by means of the doctrine of the divine essence and the divine energies—by saying that while in his essence God remains unmoved, he comes out of himself in his energies.¹

From the earliest times, Christian theology has been concerned with the resolution of antinomies/paradoxes in light of the revelation of Christ (this should be no surprise, as the New Testament is filled with antinomies). Fr. Dumitru finds the resolution to the paradox of God’s simultaneous transcendence and immanence in the doctrine of the uncreated energies, which he, as an Orthodox Christian theologian, affirms as essential to the deposit of divine revelation. In the mysteries of the faith, every antinomy is reconciled, although not on any “one-sided” basis (e.g. rationalism, empiricism, idealism, or any other “ism”).

“The glory of God is to conceal a matter and the glory of Kings is to search it out.” So declares the wise Solomon in Proverbs 25. Contrary to those who seek some cynical, esoteric or otherwise unknown “explanation” of the often paradoxical parables of Jesus (and his explicit recognition of their mysterious nature), we see that they are simply revelations of the glory of God, invitations to increase in one’s wisdom and appreciation of the depths of God’s. We should not be surprised when God Incarnate does what we are told is the glory of God. 

When faced with an antinomy, we first see a mere contradiction, irreconcilable in our minds, which are muddied by the chaos of the world. We stand, like Job, before the courtroom of God, presented with wisdom, which is more valuable than gold or crystal (Job 28:17). The apparent contradictions of the wisdom of God present themselves as foolishness to our worldly minds (ref. 1 Cor. 1:18). But these difficulties in Scripture and in the teachings of the Church are not for us to stumble over in confusion, “for God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.” (1 Cor. 14:33). It is when we see these antinomies through the light of Christ–who, in His incarnation, unites all opposites–that we traverse the bridge between seemingly irreconcilable ideas. Antinomy represents an incompleteness in our ontological and, by consequence, epistemological constitution, our traversing of a distance towards the Truth (which we do not yet have in full) which unites our being with Being as such. It is in the God-Man (note the antinomy) that we see the love and wisdom of God as “all-in-all.” In the seemingly paradoxical giving of God Himself to creation in His death on the cross, all things are harmonized once again and find their place in the heart of the God of heaven and earth. 

Theology is concerned with the resolution of antinomies in light of divine revelation, and this is so because humanity finds itself in a state of incompleteness and fragmentedness:

From the point of view of dogmatics, antinomies are inevitable. If sin exists (and the first half of faith is in the recognition that it does in fact exist), then our entire being, just like the whole world, is fragmented. Taking as our starting point one corner of the world or our own rational mind, we have no reason to expect that we will get the same result we would have gotten if we had started from another corner. A meeting is improbable. The existence of a multitude of dissonant schemes and theories, which are equally conscientious but proceed from different starting points, is the best proof that there are cracks in the world. Reason itself is fragmented and split, and only the purified God-bearing mind of saintly ascetics is somewhat more whole.²

Human rationality is itself fragmented, alienated from the Truth, and its “transfiguration” is a living antinomy, its actual resolution. Fr. Pavel Florensky dedicates the first few chapters of his The Pillar and Ground of the Truth to an analysis of the antinomy of rationality, and he concludes that rationality, on its own terms, cannot account for the truth, and must, of necessity, “renounce” its own powers (recognize its limits). This “faith” reveals itself not only as an implication of rational thought, but both its precondition and purpose. Knowledge is never “self-relational” and cannot be expressed in the tautological formula “A=A,” as Fr. Pavel writes about at length, since to know anything is to know something about an other, and even to know oneself is to know oneself in relation to others. Since rationality cannot “deduce” the other in its singularity and uniqueness, it must “open” itself to the other to know it on its own terms. This is faith, the paradoxical telos of reason.

Self-knowledge is, of necessity, mediated by otherness, as the self only ever arises in communion with others, so to “know thyself” is to know oneself in relation to God and other creatures. While rationality is the very faculty of knowing, it is only in its self-renunciation, its open acceptance of its lack of knowing, that true knowledge arises. This antinomy is “resolved” through divine revelation, as in Trinitarian theology we learn that knowledge is always based in faith, faith understood as openness toward the other. God the Father does not know Himself through an act of solipsistic self-introspection, but in the begetting of His perfect image. God’s “self-knowledge” is achieved through His knowledge of the Son and the Spirit: “In God it is not possible for an ‘I’ to assert himself over against another ‘I’; instead he continually considers the other as a substitute for himself. Each sees himself only in relation to the other, or regards only the other, or sees himself only in the other.”³ The “faith” that each divine person has in one another is not, however, incomplete or uncertain in any respect, as it is always-already contained within the fullness of divine being as “love.” Thus, creaturely faith, which is completed in hope and love, is our (incomplete) participation in God’s very mode of life and knowledge. The self-renunciation of rationality, which had once strived for knowledge on its own terms, paradoxically completes and justifies it, but this “foolishness” is, from the true/divine perspective, the only rational choice. The antinomy of rationality’s self-renunciation is based in the fact of man’s temporal condition as fragmented and ontologically incomplete, and the act of self-renunciation (faith) is the experience of antinomy, an act of “turning from” (metanoia) partial/fragmented truths toward the full Truth. Once this path is traversed, the antinomy is resolved. The traversing of the path is time. Time, as such, is inherently antinomic, being characterized by ontological incompletion. While various in manifestation, every example of ontological incompletion consists of a lack of union with God (e.g. rationality’s inability to grasp the truth and the necessity of faith), and where there is incompletion there are antinomies. 

But what of the antinomy “God is both three and one”? No aspect of this formula seems to involve ontological incompleteness, so is the Trinity an antinomy? We suggest that, on the contrary, the Trinity is the sole resolution of every antinomy, and for this reason it is (antinomically!) the cause of each. The Triune God is the fullness of being, who has the power to transcend even Himself in creating, and through this condescension creates the potential for antinomies. But the Trinity itself is not, in fact, an antinomy, and can only be considered one if one misunderstands either God’s oneness or threeness. In temporal reality, distinct things are never perfectly united because the perfect union of creatures occurs only in (as) eternity. For this reason, we tend to understand the category of “person” as akin to the “individual,” which we then falsely apply to the Godhead. But, for God (and, in the end, for every identity recapitulated in Christ), distinction does not entail division because it is precisely the distinction of the three persons that allows for their consubstantiality and mutual interiority. “In itself” the doctrine of the Trinity is not an antinomy because once the categories of person (which relates to God’s threeness) and nature (which relates to His oneness) are properly understood, there is neither a contradiction nor an apparent one. The precise formulation of these distinctions, through which we properly grasp what is antinomic from a certain (lower) perspective in its inherent reasonableness, is precisely the task of theology. Thus, St. Gregory Palamas says that theology must always “render an explanation” that does not fall into inconsistencies, “lest we play the role of nitwits”: 

We believe both that the Lord is one and that he is not one. Does not the Creed itself compel us and admonish us always to inquire and render an explanation—especially if someone is railing against these beliefs—how he is one and how he is not one, lest we play the role of nitwits (ἄτοποί τινες), thinking and speaking inconsistencies (ἀνακόλουθα)?⁴

(Note: the following few paragraphs are written in collaboration with

Seraphim Hamilton

for our upcoming book Communion and Time: Reflections on the Theology of Eternity and Time).

Divine revelation is beyond antinomy, as it is above any particular perspective that would somehow be ignorant of the whole. It is the language of the eschaton, which must always condescend to history and is essentially “historical.” The historical basis of our “eschatologically-oriented” theology (Fr. Georges Florovsky coined the term “linguistic icons” in reference to dogmas) is essential, as both Jew and Gentile traditions are woven into the New Israel. Fr. Dumitru conceives of theology not as the overcoming of one way of thinking by the other, but by synthesis of one in terms of the other. Fr. Florovsky famously framed theology in terms of “Christian Hellenism,” which in God’s providence had seen Biblical forms of thought adapted and incarnated in terms of the philosophical tradition of the Hellenistic world. Yet this way of thinking is not foreign to the Scriptures themselves. Indeed, the prophetic word uttered by Noah after the flood suggests that the harmony of Shem and Japheth (the father of the Hebrews on the one hand and Hellenes on the other) in the tent of Shem plays a key role in the culmination of history. Japheth will be enlarged and come to dwell in the tents of Shem (Genesis 9:27). In the literary patterning of the Biblical text, these prophetic utterances especially pertain to the culmination of human history in the rise of the Messianic kingdom. God initiates this pattern by speaking of the time in which the seed of the woman will deal a crushing blow to the death-dealing serpent (Genesis 3:15)- providing the justification for the careful lineage which is documented from this point onwards. Genesis 4:25-26 identifies Seth as the seed who replaces Abel, and Genesis 5 traces Adam’s lineage through him. Lamech’s prophetic word concerning Noah thus recalls the curse of Genesis 3, and these blessings roll through Genesis like a golden thread. The patriarchs of the Book of Genesis bless their offspring in relation to the Messianic kingdom in which the serpent will finally be driven out, cast down, and overcome by the Kingdom of God which will shelter all nations. Hence, Genesis ends with Jacob’s blessing of his sons- including a prophecy of the messianic seed from the line of Judah. The fulfillment of that promise is designated as belonging to the “latter days”, a phrase which the prophets of Israel identify as the time of the birth of God’s Kingdom constituted out of all nations (Isaiah 2:1-4, Daniel 2:28). Noah’s word concerning the enlargement of Japheth and his coming into the tents of Shem is part of this pattern. It is no accident that Daniel’s prophecy concerning the latter days thus narrates the rise of three successive Japhetite kingdoms- the Persians, Hellenes, and Romans. In the days of the fourth kingdom, Daniel informs us, the kingdom of God will come. 

It is precisely in and in relation to the era of the Roman Empire that Jesus Christ arrives. The apostolic ministry of Paul of Tarsus is then the principal instrument by which Noah’s word of promise comes to pass in the birthing pangs of the Kingdom of God. The Apostle Paul is by profession a tent-maker (Acts 18:3), and his profession has a spiritual sense carried in its literal. He frames the apostolic mission specifically in terms of Jews and Greeks (Romans 1:16) as well as in terms of the broader constellation of nations. He is acquainted with Hellenistic literature (Acts 17:28-29) and introduces Dionysius the Areopagite to Christ (Acts 17:34- it is notable in this context that Fr. Staniloae argued for the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus). Christendom was born in the baptism of the Roman Empire. Its canonical philosophy was articulated by the Ecumenical Councils in the metaphysical tradition of the classical philosophers. Christianity is born in the harmonization of Hebrew and Hellenic–and this quality is attested in the inspired Scriptures themselves:

…too often modern theologians erect a disastrous partition between "biblical" faith and theology's chronic "Hellenism;' as if the Bible were never speculative or as if hellenized Judaism did not provide the New Testament with much of its idiom; Hellenism is part of the scriptural texture of revelation, and theology without its peculiar metaphysics is impossible. The "metaphysical"–the doctrinal, the theologoumenal–does not occur simply as a reflective excess, at a distance from the figure of Christ, but is the inevitable filling out of the force released by his particularity.⁵

The solution to the “antinomies” of philosophy (and, we may add, the antinomies present in the Scriptures) is the theology of the Church, born out of the meeting of Jew and Gentile and the “Christian Hellenism” most evident in the theology of the ecumenical councils. The councils most frequently resolved theological disputes through the introduction of novel language or the clarification of old terminology. The “development of doctrine” evident throughout the centuries does not consist of an “alteration” of the faith, but the Church’s acquisition of a greater number of ways to express the same divine revelation. For example, the terminology of “hypostasis” and “ousia” eternalized in the Nicene Creed are the means by which the mystery of the Trinitarian God is rendered more intelligible than it had previously. The goal of “apophatic theology,” for Fr. Dumitru, is not simply to articulate the incomprehensibility of God, but to reveal these inexhaustible depths in language, a beautiful task for which we were created. Thus, to affirm divine “mystery” is not to say that there is a “lack” of things we can know about God, but that there is an overabundance which He is willing to share with us. The task of theology is to resolve antinomies in light of the overabundance of divine revelation. After all, “it is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to find it out.” Creation is given to man in order for him to discover its inner potentials and actualize them in accordance with the will of God—he is the steward meant to “guard and cultivate the earth.” Psalm 1 compares the righteous to trees, because it is in the life of a tree that we see a living symbol of the purpose of man. Trees reach down into the multiplicity of the earth to gather its raw elements and material. This raw material is then unified in the trunk of the tree and brought up to be shaped by the light of the sun through photosynthesis to create an array of beautiful leaves, pines and fruits. This is what man is called to do in Genesis 1, when he is told to be fruitful, multiply and to establish dominion over the earth. We are called to go out into the multiplicity of the untamed wilderness, gather it onto ourselves and by shining the light of our God-given intellect upon it we shape it into a beautiful array of fruits to present to God. This is the eucharistic task of man, one that includes, perhaps uniquely, theology. 

“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field,  which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.” (Mt. 13:30-31)

The eschatological transformation of the world into the kingdom of God through the synergy of human and divine activities begins with the mustard seed of faith. The seed is hidden in the ground, and through the kingly task of searching out that which has been concealed by God, this seed grows both down into the multiplicity of the earth and up towards the unity of heaven. It is in the growing of our roots through searching the hidden things of God that we grow upwards towards a beautifully arranged canopy wherein the birds of the heavens nest.

1. Dumitru Staniloae, Eternity and Time.

2. Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth.

3. Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God.

4. Tikhon Pino, Essence and Energies.

5. David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite.