Christos Yannaras

Η σύνδεση του αριστοτελισμού με την ορθόδοξη θεολογία είναι προϊόν της σύγχρονης νεοελληνικής ανάγκης να δομηθεί ένας «ελληνοχριστιανικός» λόγος που να γεφυρώνει ή, ακόμη καλύτερα, να εκμηδενίζει την απόσταση ανάμεσα στην «νεορθοδοξία», την πρόσληψη του Αριστοτέλη κατά τους βυζαντινούς χρόνους, και την φιλοσοφία του ίδιου του Αριστοτέλη.
Το επιχείρημά μου είναι ότι υπάρχει ένα σοβαρό πρόβλημα με τον
ενδιάμεσο κρίκο αυτής της κατασκευής. Το πρόβλημα είναι ότι ο ίδιος ο Γρηγόριος Παλαμάς και οι οπαδοί του θα ήταν αρνητικοί
στην οικειοποίηση του Αριστοτέλη προκειμένου να καταδειχθεί μια
όποια «ελληνοχριστιανική» συνέχεια. Για την ακρίβεια, θα ήταν
αρνητικοί σε κάθε «ελληνοχριστιανική» σύνθεση, όπως εννοούν
αυτήν ο Λορεντζάτος και ο Γιανναράς.
Ο Παλαμάς αποσύνδεσε την αριστοτελική ορολογία από την
αριστοτελική φιλοσοφία. Όμως, η αποσύνδεση αυτή είναι δείγμα
εννοιολογικής ασυνέχειας παρά συνέχειας. Στην παλαμική εκδοχή της Ορθοδοξίας δεν γίνεται πουθενά λόγος για εννοιολογική συνέχεια, τουναντίον, καταγγέλλονται οι πειραματισμοί με την ελληνική οντολογία και γνωσιολογία.
[...] Άρα, πώς μπορεί κάποιος σήμερα να μιλά για «ελληνοχριστιανική» συνέχεια, χωρίς να υποπίπτει αφενός μεν σε μιαν ακόμα χριστιανική αίρεση, αφετέρου δε (και αυτό ενδιαφέρει τον γράφοντα) σε μιαν αναχρονιστική ιστορικοφιλοσοφική contradictio in adiecto;

Examining Christos Yannaras’ work has not been the easiest of tasks for non-Greek speaking researchers, mainly because of (a) the absence of translations for the whole spectrum of his contributions –most English translations are quite recent- and (b) the focus on the theological aspects of his work and not on the philosophical ones, due to the research interests of western researchers.

In this paper, I will attempt to summarise Yannaras’ work with help from his recent philosophical autobiography; namely the ‘Six Philosophical Paintings’ (Ἕξι φιλοσοφικὲς ζωγραφιές). Thus, I will try to (a) explain the understanding of apophaticism not as a ‘negative theology’ but as an all-encompassing communal epistemology (a communal justification of apophatic knowledge) which leads to a consistent ‘critical ontology’; (b) to sketch the acknowledgement of the person (πρόσωπον) and of radical relationalism (σχέσις in the sense of ἔρως) as leading to a ‘relational ontology’, an ontology of the person; and (c) to trace the path to this stance towards philosophy and theology as the historical experience of the orthodox East.

Other contributions of Christos Yannaras e.g. the contrasting distinction between ‘ecclesia’ and religion, the freedom of morality, a ‘political theology’ etc. are hereby seen as stemming from the above prioritisation.

This essay outlines the key stages in the study of Dionysius in twentieth-century Greek Orthodox theology and scholarship. After an introductory overview of this topic, the complexities of the Greek scene are presented since there is considerable diversity in the handling of this ancient author by Greek theologians. The section that follows focuses on specific political and social factors that have or could have affected the development of the engagement with patristic literature in the universities of Athens and Thessaloniki but also in the public sphere. It provides some specific examples of how that is reflected in the Greek scholarly and religious bibliography relating to this ancient Christian author. The fourth and longest section examines three readers of his writings from the interwar and postwar periods: Emmanouel Karpathios (1888–1972), Christos Yannaras (b. 1935), and John Zizioulas (b. 1931). It compares the approach of these three readers: the first followed a different method from the other two, who adopted a similar theological methodology but developed very different views on this subject of research or more accurately on this aspect of the Orthodox tradition.
Keywords: Christian mysticism, Orthodox hagiography, Western influences, twentieth century philosophy, Greek theology, Russian émigré religious thought, neopatristic synthesis, Emmanouel Karpathios, Christos Yannaras, John Zizioulas.

This paper was delivered in the context of:
https://www.academia.edu/27395788/Corpus_Dionysiacum_Areopagiticum_Ancient_and_Modern_Readers_Final_Programme

If you are interested in reading this essay, feel free to contact me by e-mail for a digital copy of it.

The marginalization of divine being, who is the source of energies, makes Ioannis Zizioulas to actually ignore the divine energies in his Eucharistic and personalist theological vision. On the other hand, Christos Yannaras gives a certain importance to the distinction between essence and energies, but he comes to bound energies to person. While, one of the gains of patristic theology was to clearly link the energies to nature, both in Trinitarian theology field as well as in Christology and that of anthropology, while many heresies tied it of person. Therefore there is necessary to distinguish between hypostasis and energy: one energy in three hypostases. While the relationship of Palamite categories to the discourse of 'person' in contemporary Orthodox theology is still unclear, in our study we intend to show that the re-engaging with Palamite theology could help to balance the normative existentialism's of Yannaras and Zizioulas.

This paper provides a preliminary assessment of the stages of development in modern Greek academic theology and the role of the Areopagitic writings in the construction of an orthodox "philosophical theology" within the modern Greek context. It considers the central role of the Greek 1960s and identifies specific points of originality and extensions of the intellectual progress inherited from Russian émigré religious thought in the 1960s, with the aim of complementing the recent approach by Paul Gavrilyuk (Modern Theology, 24:4, 2008). Unlike Gavrilyuk's important contribution, which focuses exclusively on Christos Yannaras and his well-known ‘anti-western’ stance, the current paper argues firstly that there exists a broader modern Greek hermeneutics within which Yannaras’ work can be understood and secondly, that there is an entire generation of Greek theologians in the 1960s, whose work and contribution to this fermentation of ideas needs to be taken into account. This study appraises the role of other philosophers and theologians, such as Spyridon Kyriazopoulos, Nikolaos Nissiotis, Evangelos Papanoutsos, Nikolaos Matsoukas, Panagiotis Christou and Fr. John Romanidis among others. It also analyzes the reasons for the 'silent absence' of John Zizioulas from these debates, as well as the clearly negative attitude of the scholars Panagiotis Trembelas, Megas Farantos and Stylianos Papadopoulos, who had a 'neo-protestant' polemical reception of the Areopagite and expressed reservations about apophaticim in their published work. Lastly, this paper highlights the relevance of the aforementioned 'national tradition' to the emergence of a generation of Dionysian scholars and 'neo-patristic' thinkers in both the 1980s and the 1990s.

A revised and expanded version of a conference paper by the same name given at the University of Cambridge in 2017 and now published in the volume Polis, Ontology, Ecclesial Event: Engaging with Christos Yannaras' thought (James Clarke & Co).

Eastern Orthodox political theology has not received sufficient attention by the largely Protestant- and Catholic-dominated field of political theology. One of the Orthodox world’s most important thinkers, Christos Yannaras, who has written extensively on politics, is relatively unknown amongst English-speaking Protestant and Catholic theological circles because his substantive work on politics is only available in Greek. This essay provides an introduction to one of Yannaras’ most important works on political theology, The Inhumanity of Right, which has not been translated into English. Yannaras approaches politics through his person-centric anthropology and relational ontology, viewing the purpose and goal of politics as “authentic existence” in communion with the Trinitarian God. The essay seeks to demonstrate, via Yannaras’ political thought, that Orthodox theologians bring a unique perspective to common political problems and challenges and that the field of political theology would be enriched from a deeper engagement with Orthodox political theology.

McLuhan's references to Eastern Christianity in The Medium and the Light reveal an ambivalence that raises challenging questions about both of them. If the Reformation was the product of the technology of print that undermined manuscript-based medieval culture, such a communal culture persisted in the Eastern Orthodox Church, while the Catholic Counter-Reformation's print-based centralized bureaucracy seems like dead weight in the neo-tribal electric environment. McLuhan often lumped together Orthodoxy and the Orient in their appeal to post-literate Western man under those conditions. To be sure, rare is now the Catholic or mainline Protestant church that does not display at least one Eastern icon as a self-evident touchstone of authentic Christianity. But is that new prestige of Eastern Christian forms to be viewed as the Trojan horse of an Oriental peril to Western civilization as it dissolves into a global electronic environment? The Eastern Church is, if anything, the more direct heir of Greco-Roman tradition, and yet did not treat it as the "hard shell" of visual-literate immutability it became in the West. Has her Eastern way of handling that heritage preserved Christian possibilities that are neither married to Western modernity, nor to be subsumed under post-modern electronic Orientalism? McLuhan's understanding of faith, theology, Incarnation, the Logos, etc., often has an Orthodox ring to it: "the medium is the message" could sum up the theology of the icon. With its acute sense of their inseparability, can Orthodoxy contribute to a critical understanding of electric conditions that also challenge it as their counter-environment? How would it stand up to McLuhan-inspired scrutiny as the Christian interface between East and West, audile-tactile and visual culture, participation and personality?

Ο Μπαρούχ Σπινόζα και ο Χρήστος Γιανναράς, εκκινούν τη θεμελίωση της σκέψης τους, από την "Οντολογία της Σχέσης", της κίνησης και του γίγνεσθαι. Το "κακό" αναδύεται για τους δύο στοχαστές, μέσα στις ανθρώπινες σχέσεις, ως εκείνο το αποτέλεσμα που προσβάλλει την ανθρώπινη ύπαρξη και τη δυναμική ενεργητικότητα της ζωής της. Το κακό δεν έχει οντική υπόσταση καθ΄εαυτό, αλλά αποκτά υπαρκτική υπόσταση με βάση το τι σημαίνει για τον άνθρωπο και τον κόσμο, καθώς εξελίσσονται οι κοινωνικές σχέσεις μέσα στο χώρο και τον χρόνο. Και οι δύο, αποσυνδέουν το αίνιγμα του κακού και την εμπειρία του καλού, από ηθικές a priori αρχές και αξίες, και τα συνδέουν με εμπειρικές πραγματικότητες ως αποτέλεσμα των κοινωνικών σχέσεων και των έτερων τρόπων ζωής των ανθρώπων. Το καλό και το κακό, κατανοούνται ως βιωμένες μαρτυρίες σχέσεων και τρόπων ζωής, που μας γνωστοποιούνται ως Ήθος, και όχι ως μια δέσμια σε τυπική και κανονιστική Ηθική.

The article, in Romanian, begins by highlighting some of the issues pertaining to modern anthropocentrism and secular naturalism, like the dissolution of the inner life and of society. It then explores the main elements of ecclesial anthropology, like its theocentric, personalist, synergetic and communional dimensions, alongside reviewing the most important anthropological contributions associated with the neopatristic movement.

According to Ch. Yannaras it is necessary that the universal Church through a synod offer a renewed hermeneutics of the problem of evil, sin and fall, and consequently also of the reality of the angelic world, of hell and eternal damnation. It is a necessity dictated by science and rational criticism that make unsustainable a traditional (literal and historical) hermeneutics, even if widely used and assumed in the historical process of religious institutionalization of the Christian faith. The intent  of Yannaras is to propose a hermeneutics based on the ontological self-understanding of the Church as it is given in its communal experience and in its liturgy, and as it has been enlightened by the light of the first seven Ecumenical Councils of the Church.

Ο Μπαρούχ Σπινόζα και ο Χρήστος Γιανναράς, εκκινούν από τη θεμελίωση της σκέψης τους, στην "Οντολογία της Σχέσης", της κίνησης και του γίγνεσθαι. Το "κακό" αναδύεται για τους δύο στοχαστές, μέσα στις ανθρώπινες σχέσεις, ως εκείνο το αποτέλεσμα που προσβάλλει την ανθρώπινη ύπαρξη και τη δυναμική ενεργητικότητα της ζωής της. Το κακό δεν έχει οντική υπόσταση καθ΄εαυτό, αλλά αποκτά υπαρκτική υπόσταση με βάση το τι σημαίνει για τον άνθρωπο και τον κόσμο, καθώς εξελίσσονται οι κοινωνικές σχέσεις μέσα στο χώρο και τον χρόνο. Και οι δύο, αποσυνδέουν το αίνιγμα του κακού και την εμπειρία του καλού, από ηθικές a priori αρχές και αξίες, και τα συνδέουν με εμπειρικές πραγματικότητες ως αποτέλεσμα των κοινωνικών σχέσεων και των έτερων τρόπων ζωής των ανθρώπων. Το καλό και το κακό, κατανοούνται ως βιωμένες μαρτυρίες σχέσεων και τρόπων ζωής, που μας γνωστοποιούνται ως Ήθος, και όχι ως μια δέσμια σε τυπική και κανονιστική Ηθική.

This bipartite paper engages with the early development of the Christian philosopher, Christos Yannaras (1935- ), as outlined in Heidegger and the Areopagite (1967, rev. ed. 1988), focusing on the question of whether Yannaras’ reading of the Byzantine thinker is consistent with the epistemological principles of the ancient author. Following evaluation of the book within the context of the French academic, Russian Orthodox émigré and Greek study of the author, I examine the compatibility of the book with Areopagitic liturgical epistemology, both as an academic contribution in the western European context and as means of developing a modern Christian philosophical line of argument. I conclude that, although Yannaras’ approach served as a useful point of departure in modern Greek Areopagitic and “neo-Patristic” studies, it cannot be deemed objective in the field of academic research given its ideological correlation of Dionysius with Patristic frameworks that the Areopagite does not clearly employ and were part of inter-confessional discussions of Yannaras’ time and Vladimir Lossky's influence on him. Moreover, Yannaras applies Dionysius’ work to the context of the Greek 1960s for apologetic purposes rather than to contribute to a fertile dialogue with other European studies or philosophical developments of his time. The term “neobyzantine” cannot be ascribed to this philosophical essay, as it is rather the product of modern Greek religious identity problem from the author’s early “existential anti-westernism” and is marked by a vein that seems to lack the epistemological dynamism of the Areopagite (e.g. Epp. 6-8) and Byzantine “political orthodoxy”.

The research studies the original and controversial reflection of the Metropolitan of Pergamon Ioannis Zizioulas (1931) on the ontological freedom of God, as the cause and cipher of His being, related to a personalist conception of the Trinity, recognised in the teaching of the Greek Church Fathers, in which the person represents the primary ontological category and coincides with absolute freedom, by virtue of the Father, as Trinity and One God, uncaused freely cause of the Trinitarian being, beyond the necessity of nature and the contingency of choice.
The issues investigated lead to the «limits of ontology» – of an «erotic ontology» – and introduce to an apophatic-mystical knowledge of ecclesial-eucharistic type. According to Paul Tillich, they have mostly been overlooked by modern theologians, yet they are at the heart of the christian faith, have implications on the anthropological, ecclesiological, pastoral, ecumenical level, of dialogue with the abrahamic religions, and re-propose the fecundity and depth of the teaching of the Fathers to theology.
Taking into account Zizioulas’ epistemological principles, according to which a systematic theologian must research what the Fathers have said, «make explicit what is implicit» and asking what they «would say today», the study intends to present his proposal systematically and to verify its conformity to dogma and internal coherence. Part One analyses Zizioulas’s theological-philosophical references and eucharistic epistemology, Part Two explores his patristic reading, Part Three determines and investigates the aspects of his theological development.

La ricerca studia l'originale e dibattuta riflessione del metropolita di Pergamo Ioannis Zizioulas (1931) sulla libertà ontologica di Dio, quale causa e cifra del suo essere, connessa ad una concezione personalista della Trinità, ravvisata nell'insegnamento dei Padri della Chiesa greci, in cui la persona rappresenta la categoria ontologica primaria e coincide con la libertà assoluta, in virtù del Padre, quale Trinità e Dio Uno, causa libera incausata dell'essere trinitario, oltre la necessità della natura e la contingenza della scelta. Le questioni indagate conducono ai «limiti dell'ontologia»-di un'«ontologia erotica»-e introducono ad una conoscenza apofatica-mistica di tipo ecclesiale-eucaristico. Secondo Paul Tillich sono state per lo più tralasciate dai teologi moderni, eppure stanno al cuore della fede cristiana, hanno implicazioni sul piano antropologico, ecclesiologico, pastorale, ecumenico, del dialogo con le religioni abramitiche, e ripropongono alla teologia la fecondità e la profondità dell'insegnamento dei Padri. Tenendo conto dei principi epistemologici di Zizioulas, secondo cui un teologo sistematico deve ricercare cosa hanno affermato i Padri, «esplicitare ciò che è implicito» e chiedersi cosa «direbbero oggi», lo studio intende presentare in modo sistematico la sua proposta e di verificarne la conformità al dogma e la coerenza interna. La Parte Prima analizza i riferimenti teologico-filosofici e l'epistemologia eucaristica di Zizioulas, la Parte Seconda esamina la sua lettura patristica, la Parte Terza individua ed esamina gli aspetti del suo sviluppo teologico.