Fr Touma (Bitar) on Academic Theology and True Theology

 Arabic original here.

 Theology and the Other Theology

"If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory..." (John 7:17-18)

A strange title, right? People think that theology is theology, and not something else!

This is because theology, in people's minds, means some things and it does not mean something else. In our tradition, the theologian is one who prays or one who loves or one who keeps the commandments... Such a one knows theology and is able to teach it.

As for theology, for most people it is an academic subject or set of subjects whose topic is God and divine things. It is taught like other academic subjects are taught in the humanities, sciences or other academic fields.

Theology is taught in institutes or in faculties for those who want to receive an education in it or who want to prepare for teaching or service in the Church, here, there or in some way.

In such a case, theology (or perhaps we should say, the study of theology) is covered with an academic veneer: lectures, studies, research, readings, publications, etc. If you say "theologian" your interlocutor will generally understand you to mean someone who is experienced in the study of theology and has received degrees in it, someone who has become a teacher of it or the author of theological studies.

But there are those who connect the study of theology to voluntary or mandatory prayer, pastoral activities and other such things as a way to prepare for service or specific services connected to the church or group that the students belong to.

In the ecumenical context, students seek to delve deeply into one of the fields of theology in prestigious centers of education or prominent universities without belonging to the ecclesiastical groups or sects behind those centers: biblical studies, church history, philosophy of religion, dogmatics, ecumenical theology, etc.

This and similar things is the predominant understanding of theology for most people. Within such a framework of treating theology academically and ecumenically, the students range from people who to different degrees practice lifestyles within the churches or sects to which they belong or where academic achievement is considered a prerequisite for assuming pastoral positions (the episcopacy, the priesthood, etc.)-- people who run the centers-- and people who have no relationship to prayer, pastoral activity or responsibilities in those institutions, and even no connection to faith in Christ the Lord! They have, perhaps, their convictions and their opinions, but they have no relationship, except academically, to the tradition of the community to which they are assumed to belong-- or perhaps do not belong-- inasmuch as their approach can be purely cultural.

For us in Orthodoxy, as I have known it, in its tradition, this approach to theology is dominated by a Western mindset derived from the scholastic movement that started to prevail in Catholicism and the Church in the West beginning in twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Naturally, some of this was perhaps useful, but it does not belong to the core of our tradition, nor do we belong to the rational approach it takes, which determines the framework within which theology is treated as theology. With regard to it, we are in a strange place, as though we are not on our own territory!

Theology [NB: in Arabic the word 'lahut' means both 'theology' and 'divinity'], as I have seen it in the Church, in my church, is the Holy Trinity. It is the Heavenly Father as the Son has revealed Him in the Holy Spirit, as he says, "All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him" (Matthew 11:27).

Theology, then, is declared (or, shall we say, is revealed) by the Son. "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9)! "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30)! "I am in the Father and the Father in Me" (cf. John 10:38)! Jesus' words in general to Peter, the disciples and everyone were, in practice: "What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this" (John 13:7). This is what the Lord said to Peter when He was washing the disciples' feet. When, afterwords? This is what the Lord Jesus revealed in Chapter 4 of the Gospel of John: "The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you" (John 14:26).

So long as knowledge of theology depends on knowledge of the Son and what the Son reveals to us, then theology is not known through the mind but "in the Spirit"! I do not say "through the Spirit", but "in the Spirit". The Spirit, the Lord's Holy Spirit, is not an instrument of knowledge, but knowledge itself. We are in Him and He is in us! We and Him are one! The Apostle Paul's expression "in Christ" is the fruit of the apostle's knowledge of the Lord's Christ. If the knowledge is "in Christ",  then it is also "in the Spirit" and "in the Father". According to John, "Just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us" (John 17:21). Knowledge of God is for you to be in Him, because He is in you!

This knowledge, then, is not of something or of an idea, but a profound existential encounter! We know Him-- God. We do not know about Him or of Him. This is eternal life: "that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent" (John 17:3)! After that, if we speak of it, what we say is a witness. If you speak of the Lord's Christ with your tongue and are not in Him, you have transformed into a parrot or a bodily organ, even if you sing various tunes! Action (praxis), according to St Joseph the Hesychast, is a condition for teaching or to speak of God or to speak of theology! Satan doesn't know God, but rather knows about Him. From this angle, he is the greatest theologian!

In authentic theology, there is no separation between the way, the truth and the life. Everything apart from it is vain. And your Lord is the one who brings you to Himself. That is, to the truth. So He Himself is the way. And since you know the way-- that is, since you know Him-- you are freed from everything that can separate you from Him-- that is, sin. At that point, you find that the truth brings you to Jesus, the life. That is, to eternal life. The Apostle Paul did not say that life comes from Jesus or through Jesus, but "life for me is Christ." Therefore, the Lord Jesus-- to Him be glory-- has given us Himself to eat. His body-- that is, in effect, Himself in the body-- is true food and thus He is true knowledge.

Even if you've piled up degrees in theology, so long as you do not know God and His Christ in the Spirit and flesh-- this practical, personal, existential knowledge-- you are ignorant of Him! You might transmit, in a literal manner, what the Church says and what one or another of the holy fathers says. This might perhaps make you a transmitter. But the way in which you read what is in your hands, the way you translate and explain its contents, which stops at the limits of your own understanding, which perhaps for you is on the level of conviction and certainty, but it is no more than a set of speculations coming from your personal ignorance of the Lord's Christ and of what the Lord's Holy Spirit inspires, on account of your pride and the effects of your passions! This scope, in the state you are in, is the demonic, psychological, frivolous scope, which perhaps you consider to be valuable, scientific positions and opinions with a wide sphere of influence, while the driving factor behind them is nothing other than the passions at work in your heart! This is what makes theological discourse that is limited to what reason can see, analyzing and synthesizing, in theological topics, to be a liberal scope for contradictory opinions at the expense of living faith active in love. This spreads confusion among believers in the Church and estranges the reader from the living, spiritual, apostolic tradition, which alone embraces that which the Lord's Spirit is pleased to reveal with regard to theology.

There is, then, a cerebral, intellectual, academic theology and there is a spiritual, existential theology that has an intellectual, revelatory expression. The first comes from data and passion in the soul, while the second is from personal, existential knowledge of the Lord's Christ and of the exalted divinity.

And so we hold that theology, in terms of speech about God, is divine revelation in human expression. There can be no approach to divine things through humanity, but "in humanity", since the Lord's Holy Spirit abides in us and is active with us. Purely academic theology is foreign to the mind of Christ in the Orthodox Church! Therefore, rationalistic theology is indeed something alien to Christ's Church. We treat theology just as we treat holy things and giving witness. The true theologian is someone who reads, writes or speaks God, not about God! He bears witness. Otherwise, it's better for him to keep silent.

Talking about God is dangerous!

Archimandrite Touma (Biter)

Abbot of the Monastery of St Silouan the Athonite

Douma, Lebanon

Sunday, May 14, 2023