The De Régnon Paradigm Critique

Against the East-West grand narrative that Farrell radicalizes stands a body of modern scholarship that has questioned its very foundation — the so-called “de Régnon paradigm,” the neat opposition of a person-first East and an essence-first West. This file sets out that critique fairly and by name (Michel Barnes, Lewis Ayres, the Orthodox Readings of Augustine scholars, with David Bradshaw and Marcus Plested as more measured contrasts), names where GHD sits in the field, and adjudicates nothing.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox academic (both-sides scholarly debate, per METHODOLOGY §4.2)

The Both-Sides Question, Precisely Stated

This is the collection’s §4.2 flagship, and its discipline must be exact (see METHODOLOGY.md, §4.1–4.2). What is not a both-sides question: the Filioque is an error, the monarchy of the Father is Orthodox doctrine, the essence-energies distinction is dogma — these the Church confesses, and this collection confesses them. What is a genuine scholarly both-sides question, on which serious and faithful scholars divide and the Church has adjudicated nothing, is the historical-interpretive claim at the heart of GHD: that Eastern and Western Trinitarian theology stand in a systematic, civilization-defining opposition — essence-first West against person-first East — rooted in Augustine. That claim, and the whole grand narrative built on it, is what the scholarship gathered here contests. The task is to name the positions and adjudicate nothing.

Théodore de Régnon and the “Paradigm”

The critique is organized around a name: Théodore de Régnon (1831–1893), the French Jesuit whose Études de théologie positive sur la Sainte Trinité (4 vols., 1892–1898) proposed the influential formula that the Greeks began Trinitarian theology from the three persons and proceeded to the one essence, while the Latins began from the one essence and proceeded to the three persons. This schematization — “the Greeks start from person, the Latins from essence” — became, through the twentieth century, the organizing assumption of a great deal of theology, including the neo-patristic lineage Farrell inherits (see The Neo-Palamite Lineage). It is the intellectual scaffolding of the whole East-West contrast.

Michel Barnes and Lewis Ayres

The decisive scholarly intervention came from historians of fourth-century theology. Michel René Barnes, in “De Régnon Reconsidered” (Augustinian Studies, 1995), argued that de Régnon’s contrast had been detached from its original, careful context and hardened into a paradigm that the patristic sources do not support — that the sweeping “Greek person-first / Latin essence-first” opposition is a modern heuristic retrojected onto the Fathers, not a description of what they actually did (Barnes, “De Régnon Reconsidered” [1995]; and “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology,” 1995). Lewis Ayres, in Nicaea and Its Legacy (2004) and Augustine and the Trinity (2010), developed the point into a full re-reading: the pro-Nicene theologians of the later fourth century, East and West, shared a common grammar of Trinitarian faith, and Augustine in particular is far closer to the Greek pro-Nicenes — and far less the essence-first rationalist of the paradigm — than the standard contrast allows (Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy [2004]; Augustine and the Trinity [2010]).

The force of this for GHD is direct: Farrell’s entire architecture presupposes the de Régnon contrast at its sharpest. If Barnes and Ayres are right that the contrast is a modern construct rather than a patristic datum, then the “Two Europes” rests on a paradigm the sources do not straightforwardly bear, and the derivation of a civilizational pathology from Augustine’s supposedly essence-first, dialectical Trinity loses its foundation (see The Two Triadologies; Farrell’s Reading of Augustine).

The Orthodox Re-Readings: Augustine and Aquinas

The critique is not merely a Western-academic one; it has been taken up within Orthodox scholarship. George Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou‘s edited volume Orthodox Readings of Augustine (2008), from Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies center, gathers Orthodox scholars who, drawing on Barnes and Ayres, argue that the polemical Orthodox picture of Augustine rests substantially on caricature, that Augustine is closer to the Greek Fathers than the critics allowed, and that much of the hostile image is a retrojection of the later Photian and post-schism polemics (Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou, eds., Orthodox Readings of Augustine [2008]). This is the appreciative pole of the Orthodox spectrum the repository has already mapped, and it is the standing answer, from within Orthodoxy, to the maximalist critique to which Farrell belongs (see St. Augustine: The Spectrum of Orthodox Opinion).

Marcus Plested’s Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (2012) makes the parallel point for the scholastic side: far from being a sealed alien system, Aquinas was read, translated, and in part appropriated by Byzantine theologians — including in the Palamite century — so that the “two theologies” wall between a Palamite East and a Thomist West is far more porous than the grand narrative allows (Plested, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas [2012]; see Scholasticism and the Dialectic).

David Bradshaw: The Measured Contrast

Not all the scholarship cuts against the substance of the East-West difference, and fairness requires the other measured voice. David Bradshaw, in Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (2004), argues that there is a real and consequential divergence between Eastern and Western metaphysics of God — but locates it carefully in the differing receptions of the Aristotelian notion of energeia, and builds his case with philosophical rigor rather than sweeping historiography. Bradshaw stands as the sober counterpart to Farrell: he defends a genuine East-West divergence (and so is not simply on the “de Régnon is a myth” side) while conducting the argument in a way that is careful, falsifiable, and respected in the academy (Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West [2004]). Reading Bradshaw beside Farrell shows what a disciplined version of the same intuition looks like — which is itself part of a fair assessment of GHD.

Where GHD Sits in the Field

Locating GHD in this field, without adjudicating: Farrell sits at the maximal end of the neo-Palamite/Romanides grand-narrative tradition — the tradition the de Régnon-paradigm critics (Barnes, Ayres) and the Orthodox re-readers of Augustine and Aquinas (Demacopoulos, Papanikolaou, Plested) have most sharply challenged. He does not engage that critique, partly because much of it postdates or coincides with GHD’s composition and because GHD, self-published and unreviewed, never entered the scholarly conversation where the critique was made (see Reception and Assessment). David Bradshaw occupies a middle position — affirming a real divergence but on careful, limited grounds. The field, then, runs from the grand narrative (Lossky → Romanides → Farrell), through the measured divergence-thesis (Bradshaw), to the paradigm-critics and Orthodox re-readers (Barnes, Ayres, Demacopoulos, Papanikolaou, Plested) who hold the sharp opposition to be overdrawn.

The collection names these positions and takes none. The Orthodox reader is heir to the whole debate. What the reader may hold with the Church — the Filioque is an error, the monarchy and the energies are Orthodox doctrine — is firm; the grand historical narrative that GHD builds around them is one contested position in a live scholarly field, and it should be read as such (see What the Reader Can Take With Confidence).

See Also

References

  • de Régnon, Théodore. Études de théologie positive sur la Sainte Trinité. 4 vols. Paris: Retaux, 1892–1898.
  • Barnes, Michel René. “De Régnon Reconsidered.” Augustinian Studies 26/2 (1995): 51–79; and “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology.” Theological Studies 56 (1995): 237–250.
  • Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; Augustine and the Trinity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
  • Demacopoulos, George E., and Aristotle Papanikolaou, eds. Orthodox Readings of Augustine. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008.
  • Plested, Marcus. Orthodox Readings of Aquinas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
  • Bradshaw, David. Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.