The Cappadocians (Church in History Series)

Rating:
Summary: Great topic, flawed execution.
Review: Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press is a very odd institution. Associated with St. Vladimir's Seminary, the chief seminary of the Orthodox Church in America, it produces an extensive catalogues of books about Orthodox history and the Orthodox Fathers. Thus far, the good part.
The annoying attribute of the catalogue, however, is that SVS Press seems to feel the necessity to aim for a broad audience. Thus, for example, the recent new biography of St. Gregory the Theologian (as the Orthodox have always called him) is entitled _St. Gregory of Nazianzus_ (as the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, when they have noticed him, have called him).
Thus, too, the present tome, which is on thre subject of three of the central figures in the Orthodox theological tradition: the Cappadocian Fathers St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Its author is listed on the spine, on the front cover, on the back cover, and on the title page simply as "Anthony Meredith." However, on the bibliographical page, one encounters a copyright statement in the name of "Anthony Meredith, S.J."
The problem here is that several of the SVS Press books on topics such as this one are written by Protestants and Latins (usually Jesuits). When it comes to a topic such as the theology of the Cappadocians, whose legacy is perhaps the chief distinction between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, to have the text be written by a Jesuit is to court distortion and uncomprehension.
This book demonstrates both. So, for example, one repeatedly reads of the Holy Spirit proceeding "from the Father through the Son." This is contrary to Christ's explicit teaching in the New Testament, where He refers to the Holy Spirit "Who proceeds from the Father." (John 15:26) It also contradicts the Nicene Creed, which, relying directly on the Holy Scriptures, also refers to "the Holy Spirit ... Who proceeds from the Father." The Roman Catholics in A.D. 1009 made "and the Son" a dogmatic addition to the Creed, thus separating themselves from the Orthodox Tradition of, e.g., the Cappadocian Fathers who did so much to establish Nicene orthodoxy as Orthodoxy.
This distortion runs through the book in other terms, too. Thus, for example, at page 104 one "learns" that "homoousios" (Greek for "of one essence") in the Creed "very clearly meant that whatever was affirmed about the Father must also be affirmed about the Son." However, this is precisely the Augustinian error that led to the Latins' interlineation of A.D. 1009. The Father has the unique quality within the Godhead of being that from which the others originate; this emphatically is _not_ to be affirmed about the Son. If one does not hold, as St. Basil affirms in _Against Eunomius_ (see page 105!!), that each of the three Persons shares the same essence but has a different characteristic (the Father as source, the Son as only-begotten of the source, the Spirit as only processor from the source), one ends in a Triniatrian muddle. Anyone who knows the slightest thing about the Cappadocians and their Orthodox successors knows this. (Cf. St. Gregory the Theologian's poem "On the Holy Spirit" in the collection of his poems, _On God and Man_.) To refuse to see the implications for the _filioque_ controversy is to expose oneself as a Latin partisan -- and an enemy of the Cappadocians, the subjects of the book! (Indeed, the material on page 106 offers all the proof that one needs that the Cappadocians never would have accepted the absurd _filioque_.)
On page 110, the author refers to "the Western form of the Nicene Creed." However, since that "form" was adopted in the 11th century, it is no more a "form" of the Nicene Creed than Christianity is a "form" of Judaism.
Also appallingly arrogant is the author's criticism of St. Basil at pages 116-117 for not displaying an appreciation of "art for art's sake." Really, the subjects here are three monastic saints, not some dilettante Borgia pope. What connection appreciation of secular art has to _theosis_, I do not understand. Perhaps the author should have approached these great churchmen with the idea of learning from them, not of criticizing them from a completely secular, culturally and religiously foreign perspective. I wish that SVS Press would more carefully assign and edit the texts it publishes. This one is a fair source of information on these saints for people already familiar with the Tradition; for others, it is more apt to be a pitfall than an aid.