Western Rationalists vs Eastern Mystics?

Brief word on a false dichotomy

In the middle of the 19th century, the Slavophile movement arose in Russia as a reaction against rapid Westernization and the sweeping reforms of Peter the Great. Its leading figures—Aleksey Khomyakov and Ivan Kireevsky—argued that Russia, and the Slavic people more broadly, possessed a distinct spiritual and cultural vocation rooted in Orthodox Christianity, one that stood in stark opposition to the “rationalism” of Western theology. Here, centuries into modernity, lies the origin of the demonstrably false dichotomy between “Western rationalism” and “Eastern mysticism” that has—sadly—become a dominant theme in a significant number of modern Orthodox theologians. The list below names just a few:

• Vladimir Lossky

• Fr. John Romanides

• John Meyendorff

• Fr. Sergei Bulgakov

• Christos Yannaras

While I have respect and admiration for all of these men (although I think the slanderous and false view of St. Augustine introduced into Orthodox theology by Romanides has done lasting harm and needs to be purged from the Church), I believe a thorough and critical engagement with many of their beliefs—especially as it concerns the “Slavophile dichotomy”—is due.

The most significant problem with the dichotomy of a “rationalistic West” and a “mystic East” is the fact that it is simply untrue. The narrative of a “scholastic West” that tries to think too much about God (beginning with Augustine and his filioquism) and a mystical East that avoids all syllogizing in theology (culminating in St. Gregory Palamas’ defence of hesychasm) has zero basis in actual history. The perpetutation of this false narrative can only do harm, both with respect to an authentic Orthodox Christian self-understanding and with respect to the evangelization of the more theologically educated and historically knowledgeable Christians in the West.

I’ll admit, however, that the East-West dichotomy has proven an effective tool in evangelizing many Western Christians, especially since an emphasis on authentic Christian spirituality is hard to find in both Rome and mainline Protestantism these days. Many converts—especially those from Protestant backgrounds—see the rich spiritual tradition safeguarded by the Orthodox Church and are moved to articulate—often publicly—the spiritual deficiencies they encountered in their prior denominations and the depth of wisdom they have found preserved in “Eastern” Orthodoxy. There are countless conversion stories from ex-Protestants and Catholics online which describe, often quite beautifully, the joy of finding the Orthodox Church and her spiritual treasures. Far from discounting their testimony, I wish to simply nuance the discussion. We can all recognize that the Holy Spirit can operate even when a theological or historical misunderstanding is present.

I was moved to write this post after coming across a video on Instagram by @thevikingchristian, which serves as a clear illustration of how the Slavophile East–West dichotomy is often invoked today and how it can only be justified by appealing to old stereotypes, misreadings, and simple historical inaccuracies. In no way is this an attack on the man who recorded and posted the video—he seems like a genuinely pious, sincere, and humble Orthodox Christian—but rather a simple “refutation” of the errors he promotes in it.

He opens the video by noting how “Western people love an argument, they love a debate” and “are always trying to prove what they think is right through tangible evidence, reason, science” and proceeds to reference Aquinas and Anselm as two examples of Western thinkers who sought “certainty” and a “rational demonstration of the divine.” He then flatly states that “It doesn’t work like that” and the notion of “proving God” is rejected by Orthodox Christianity. For Orthodox Christians, he continues, “God is not an object among objects” but the very “ground of being,” so that trying to “prove” His existence is akin to grasping at smoke. He then concludes the video with a clear and well-articulated account of the Orthodox doctrine of deification as participation in God through the life of the Church.

As I said above, my central problem with the East-West dichotomy is that it relies on claims that are simply false. The idea that Orthodox theology never employed rational proofs for God is demonstrably untrue. In the very beginning of St. John of Damascus’ On the Orthodox Faith, he gives a concise explanation of the Argument from Motion in a chapter titled “That God Exists.” St. Gregory Palamas opens The 150 Chapters by appealing to the Argument from Causation as proof God exists. In volume one of The Experience of God, St. Dumitru quotes a passage from St. Gregory the Theologian where he accuses all atheists of being “wanting of sense” given the clear evidence of design in creation (this is the Teleological Argument). Clearly, rationalistic “proofs” for God cannot stand in tension with the “mystical theology” or “participatory knowing” of the Orthodox Church, since its greatest mystics appealed to these very proofs. There is an entire tradition of “Byzantine scholasticism” that many Orthodox Christians today either ignore or are ignorant of, and in no way does the rational definitions and arguments found therein contradict the centrality of the experience of God in theology. After all, Palamas himself “is heir to this long tradition of Byzantine scholasticism as much as he is an heir of the earlier patristic tradition and to the whole mystical, apophatic, and monastic tradition of the Christian East.”¹

Not only does thevikingchristian’s video display a misunderstanding of Orthodox theology, it also perpetuates several false stereotypes about Western theology. Chief among these is the claim that those who formulate rational proofs for God (such as Thomas Aquinas) either implicitly or explicitly misunderstand God as an “object among objects.” Anyone with a basic knowledge of Thomistic theology know that God is, as in Orthodox theology, the “ground of being” and the One in whom all created beings participate in. He is self-subsisting Being, not the highest being in a genus. The charge that scholasticism reduces God to a “being among beings” reflects a modern misunderstanding—often rooted in later nominalism—not Aquinas’ own metaphysics. Properly read, Aquinas’ doctrine of divine simplicity and pure act (actus purus) is entirely incompatible with the caricature presented in the video, despite there being real and perhaps unbridgeable differences between Thomas’ theology and that of the Fathers.

Furthermore, Aquinas explicitly rejects the kind of autonomous rationalism that is often attributed to him. In the prologue of the Summa, he insists that sacred doctrine does not proceed from human reason as its source, but from divine revelation. This entails that “If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections” (ST I, q.1, a.8). For Aquinas, then, theology is not a self-enclosed philosophical system, nor an attempt to construct truth from reason alone. His arguments presuppose revealed doctrine and function to clarify, defend, and order what God has made known in the Church. The Summa is thus not a bottom-up rationalist project, but a systematic exposition of truths received by faith, in which reason serves revelation rather than replacing it.

I would like to conclude by noting the ironic fact that the East-West dichotomy is most passionately promoted by self-proclaimed “traditionalists” in the Orthodox Church. It is the “ecumenist modernists,” like yours truly, who are attempting to blur the lines between them. The irony consists of the fact that East-West dichotomy is thoroughly modern, stemming not from the Fathers but, as noted, the Slavophile movement. Before the 19th century, Thomas Aquinas and Western theology was never criticized for being “overly scholastic.” St. Gennadios Scholarios, student of Palamas, calls Aquinas the “light from the West” whose only significant errors were the Filioque and denial of the essence-energy distinction. This alone should give us pause. If the Palamite tradition itself did not understand scholastic theology as a betrayal of Christian mysticism, then the modern habit of opposing “Byzantine spirituality” to “Western rationalism” cannot claim patristic pedigree. It is, rather, a post-patristic narrative imposed retroactively upon the tradition, one that obscures the real theological issues at stake while replacing them with slogans and stereotypes. Recovering a more historically grounded and theologically precise account of East and West is not an exercise in ecumenical naïveté, but a necessary step toward an Orthodox self-understanding that is both intellectually honest and genuinely traditional.

1. https://journal.orthodoxwestblogs.com/2019/01/10/st-gregory-palamas-and-thomas-aquinas-between-east-and-west/