Doctor Ehrmstuhl on the phone

The other day, I stopped during hours at the office of Doctor Ehrmstuhl and was pleased to find him at his desk. His office was generously lined with books and could have been tidy until he left off shelf space and began stacking along the floor. He motioned for me to come in and he seemed pleased to see me. It had been a while. Nevertheless, he was in animated conversation with someone on the phone. I waited so long that I finally took down some of it, and so here it is. These are my notes, remember, so factual mistakes or exaggerations are my own.

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I too was taught that differences between traditions, and especially between east and west, are due to the different emphases along what, for lack of a better term, is called the Christ event: birth-to-ascension. Over that, I lay the linguistic, political, and geographic differences that have shaped and separated both halves. I would add, on my own, that the east seems to properly begin with the community whereas the west has been fascinated by the individual and individualism to our very day. (He drummed his fingers on the table in muted staccato.)

You are right that the east is not as interested in how to be cleansed and more in how to live a holy life. The high example of that for EO are the monks of Mount Athos. EO kept the monasticism that Luther democratized in the West. It also retained a Neoplatonic core that the west gave up for Aristotelianism in the fourteenth century w Thomas Aquinas.

Let's separate mysticism from theosis (deification is a Latin term which doesn't quite ring with the right overtones.) Theosis, the doctrine that the new humanity is made like God, is definitely front-and-center in EO. Funny enough, it is in the west as well. A couple of decades ago, scholars started finding it in the Reformers--especially Calvin. Theosis has been in the west all this time as well. When we talk about the imago Dei's renewal in the sanctification process, the end goal where this is going is Christlikeness or theosis. I asked Tom Wright about it probably ten years ago now, and he affirmed that theosis is not only permissible but biblical. That said, it is NOT becoming a God or God, it is becoming like God: being made in the image of his Son.

That is why I don't like deification. It doesn't leave enough difference in the undertones and it suggests that one, in our own track, can improve and improve until one finally arrives at divinity. This is a kind of Mormon or New Age or New Thought or some brand of Wesleyan perfectionism. I prefer theosis because it keeps a note of distinction in between that which is by nature and that which is by grace. It is soteriological, not ontological.

(At this point, Dr. Ehrmstuhl remembered me. We exchanged some whispered pleasantries, and he assured me he was almost done. But, whomever he was talking to seems to have hit a nerve, and the doctor's attention swiveled back to the conversation.)

Mysticism is a style of discipleship which often refers to saints in the tradition who emphasized prayer and ascetic discipline, figures like Theresa of Avila, San Juan de la Cruz, Francois Fenelon, Catherine of Siena, or anchorites like Richard Rolle or Julian of Norwich, and many others. But mysticism is a slippery word. Evelyn Underhill lays it all out in her work on mysticism. There are dangers here. You could be a neopagan and practice this, or a Buddhist or whatever. A deep question in my project is what to do with mysticism in the Christian tradition. Should we jettison it or not? Should mysticism even exists where the Solas exist? The short answer: a highly qualified yes. I do not agree with the hesychastic approach of the EO. They seek the uncreated light born of the energies of the Trinity. I think it is the ever-flowing agape life of the Spirit (Augustine's maestro) who calls us in the solas always higher up and further in. When theology turns its gaze there, it becomes apophatic--it can only say what is not.

(Here, his interlocutor took up the challenge. The Doctor swiveled in his chair. He finally broke in:) There is a Mount Athos documentary on YouTube. It is good. (More from the other side.) Hesychasm has nothing to do with the solas. I was using the solas as a part/whole to mean the framework of Reformed theology. Oh yes, a synecdoche--good catch! What I mean by that is that, because of that Neoplatonic core, EO developed a mysticism that is different than the mysticism of the West. And so I do not find their way into prayer a live option. What I know of it seems a way wholly apart from scripture. It risks keeping the divine Jesus and not the man. Or it might avoid Jesus altogether and try to climb on the rope of the Spirit alone. Therefore, it rings alarms in my head, not least of which is the alarm of gnosticism. I am not saying that EO monks are gnostics. They would probably be quick to shut that down. I'm just saying that it makes me nervous.

The whole essences and energies things comes out of Neoplatonic problems with the doctrine of the Trinity: how does the ineffable God have anything to do with finitude? The thinker here is Gregory of Palamas. (The doctor got up and rummaged around on his shelves.) The general understanding these days is that this language is strange to Western ears, but that it is orthodox. Trinitarian thinkers, EO or Western, are getting at the same thing. I read Palamas in that slim Classics of Western Theology volume. His isn't language I'm adopting anytime soon, but okay. One is stuck with the tradition you grew up with. I am okay attempting to be an informed Westerner.

(Here, again, his interlocutor took up the conversation for some distance.) Your thoughts on individualism and monasticism are good ones. I am not a good guide wading out any deeper into EO waters. I will say this, though. The danger with monasticism is that it has a tendency to create spiritual hierarchies (classism) in the church, and that is going on in EO. I prefer monasticism without hierarchy, and there are models for that even in Protestantism. My own denomination, for example, has various monasteries scattered about, as do other Protestant denominations.

Oh, I completely agree that the path of awakening, purgation, and union is the established way. But it has to be found correctly. Simply put: if it is not in Jesus, it is not available. He is the foundation stone. But not to worry: Paul's language of union with Christ, of being buried with him and raised with him, of being made alive in him: that is the invitation. So the mystic way is not to know nothing and to realize nothing, but to know Christ, following the pull of the Spirit, and to be remade after his image. It is to be invited, because the church has been invited, to the meal that the Trinity has set.

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At this point, I got a phone call from my wife. The doctor and I nodded genially, and he may have apologized. And I left.

Hermeneutics is love's desire to know

I haven’t read Hans-Georg Gadamer, best known for his work Truth and Method (New York: Crossroads, 1989), but Roger P. Ebertz, who teaches philosophy at the University of Dubuque, has. And on this Ebertz and I very much agree: Gadamer’s hermeneutic model of knowing is superior to the absolute I (the ego or cogito) of Descartes and Kant and the Enlightenment project.

This makes me a postmodernist of a sort. I believe in context; I have made the hermeneutical turn. And I hope it means that I have skipped the turn to the subject as best I can, though as an American, doing that completely is impossible. Nevertheless, I have leapt over it and grasped for the context and community of hermeneutics. I agree with Heidegger that human beings, that I, am thrown into the already spinning world and I cannot deny that or rise wholly above it. There is no absolute viewpoint. There is no point of superior knowing. As I said before, the way human beings are in the world is tensed. We are history all the way down. “In all understanding,” quoting Gadamer, “whether we are aware of it or not, the efficacy of history is at work” (301).

Ebertz outlines several Gadamerian themes that clarify the hermeneutical model of knowing. Let me reproduce them here.

1. We each stand facing the world from a historical and linguistic position as a member of communities. Gadamer calls this qualification prejudice, meaning our knowing is bounded by our finitude. Others call this our social situatedness. What we can know is finite and bounded. Gadamer calls this our horizon.

2. We may as well accept our prejudice as we acquire knowledge. Descartes looked for a method to remove all prejudice from knowing. Gadamer says this is impossible.

3. Without our prejudice, we cannot understand. After all, we can’t begin from nowhere. “Prejudices are biases of our openness to the world. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something—whereby what we encounter says something to us” (9).

4. Our prejudice helps us recognize what is new to us. And here Gadamer raises the question of authority and tradition. Both are connected to language, “for language is . . . the reservoir of tradition and the medium in and through which we exist and perceive our world” (29). And both allow us to recognize and be open to the new.

5. Every cultural object, such as another person, a text, a painting, a piece of writing, is an other, and every other has its own horizon. Gadamer called others texts and made the interpretation of a text stand in for the requirement all others make upon us.[1]

6. Bridging the unknown between oneself and the other is the hermeneutical task. Gadamer calls the goal of hermeneutics the “fusion of horizons.” This cannot be a complete fusion. It is just an agreement about the subject matter at hand. It is a loving act.

7. Questions are the spade and trowel of hermeneutics. “Questioning . . . and being questioned . . . is at the core of interpretation. It is a dialogue.” Gadamer calls it play. In play, we risk ourselves, we risk our prejudices. Change may be required. Also, love.

8. Change is always happening. No horizon is ever fixed. Horizons are always being formed and reformed. Others will pull us up short and interrogate us. That’s the nature of the task. Love opens our arms in vulnerability and expectation.

I want to make sure and say that all of this is absolutely in community. Our tools and limitations weren’t invented by us. We grew up in them. And no one seeks understanding alone, but as part of a formal or informal community of seekers. I added love to the above principles because I want to highlight the ethical and personal dimension of the discussion.

I also want to say, as a theologian, that the above is not a recipe for relativism or rampant perspectivalism or psychologism. I confess that the triune God made the world, and that he has spoken to us in flesh and bone in the historical life of Jesus of Nazareth. Here, let me quote Ebertz:

To say that each person’s view of reality is relative to his or her historical, cultural situation does not imply that there is no independent reality which we each view. To say that our language shapes or influences the way we view reality does not imply that reality is entirely constructed by culture and language. As a Christian, I believe there is a reality that transcends my beliefs and culture, my worldview. There is in fact “a God who is there,” as Francis Schaeffer used to say, and a reality that God has created. We can thus affirm that there is a truth, and that it is God’s truth. But this does not entail that any human being can ever grasp that truth fully and see reality without seeing it from his or her own perspective. Since we are finite and fallen, this perspective can never perfectly represent reality.(18)

Now a few words about theology as craft. As I construct my own theology, as I interrogate my prejudice, I seek after God’s wisdom knowing I can never fully contain it. What I can hope to attain is a life given shape by the confession "Jesus is Lord." I can seek as one among others who are also seeking, inhabiting and contributing to a tradition. As Ebertz says, “It is both out of our tradition that we understand the world and into our tradition that we contribute our unique development of that tradition in light of our own experience and work” (28). Finally, I must be suspicious of claims to have arrived as one is suspicious of any idol-—and even my heart may attempt such a claim! To be historical means that knowledge of oneself and others can never be complete (302). Therefore, humility and love seeking understanding are essential to the theological task.

Finally, I mean for this entry to work together with the entry just before it on Augustine and time. In that article, the subject matter of time and eternity is a little different, yes, but the bones are the same: God's is the only absolute seat of being and knowing. Our being and knowing is always qualified. (Ebertz says that is because we are finite and fallen. I think it would be true even if we weren't fallen. Polk says, for example, that once you are in a body, you are limited.)

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[1] Note Richard Young's discussion of deeper and surface structures of meaning in language in Intermediate New Testament Greek (Nashville: BH, 1994), 4-7. Surface structure is the spoken or written symbols of a language determined by grammar and syntax. Deep structure he divideds into two parts: the linguistic deep structure, which does not concern this note, and conceptual deep structure which is the total meaning of the communicative act. Some correspondence exists between the surface and the deep structure, but speakers are efficient and do not encode everything they mean. They rely on information shared between speaker and hearer to fill in data. And, because no two people share the exact same pool of experiences and knowledge, communication is never perfect but requires a hermeneutical process or spiral toward clarity just as Gadamer describes. Young writes,

The meaning of an utterance cannot be determined by adding up the supposed meaning of individual words and pieces of grammar. Meaning can only be determined by viewing the communication act as a whole. Each part contributes information to the whole, while at the same time being modifed by the presence of other parts. Thus semantics [the study of language meaning] must be concerned with a wide range of interacting linguistic and extralinguistic data." (6)

[2] To quote Hilary Putnam, "Elements of what we call ‘language’ or ‘mind’ penetrate so deeply into what we call ‘reality’ that the very prospect of representing ourselves as being ‘mappers’ of something ‘language-independent’ is fatally compromised from the start."

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Roger P. Ebertz, "Beyond Worldview Analysis: Insights from Hans-Georg Gadamer on Christian Scholarship," Christian Scholar's Review 36:1 (Fall 2006).

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed. New York: Crossroads, 1989.

----------, Philosophical Hermeneutics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Jean Grondin, The Philosophy of Gadamer, trans. Kathryn Plant. Continental European Philosophy (Montreal, Ithaca: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003.

----------, "Gadamer's Basic Understanding of Understanding," in The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer ed. Robert J. Dostal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Note also Brice Wachterhauser's article in that same volume "Getting It Right: Relativism, Realism and Truth."