08 — Reception and the Critical Literature
The honest headline for this section is that the critical literature on Nellas is thin. He has advocates — Norman Russell, Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, Yannis Spiteris, Aidan Nichols, Doru Costache — and he has readers who use his categories without discussing him. He has, so far as this collection could establish, almost no published critics. That is a fact about the state of scholarship, not a verdict on his work, and this section reports it as such rather than manufacturing an opposition.
Tradition: Greek Orthodox
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The English-Language Reception | Norman Russell as translator and advocate; Bishop Kallistos’s foreword; Aidan Nichols’s chapter; Doru Costache’s recruitment of Nellas for a scientifically engaged theology; the diffusion of the “garments of skin” into English Orthodox writing; and the thinness of the secondary literature stated plainly |
| Nellas Among the Greek Generation | The comparison with Christos Yannaras and Metropolitan John Zizioulas; the standard reading that Nellas is more directly patristic and less philosophically mediated; why that makes him attractive to readers wary of personalism; and the care required not to invent a rivalry that was never explicit |
The Whole of the Secondary Literature, Listed
It is unusual to be able to list the substantive discussions of a significant theologian in a single short table, and it is worth doing here so that the reader knows exactly how much ground the assessments in this collection stand on. Norman Russell’s own footnote is the best guide: “For an assessment of Nellas see Spiteris 1992, 255–77. See also the briefer treatments in Nellas 1987, 9–14 (by Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia); Nichols 1995, 170–80; and Yannaras 2006, 297–300” (Russell, “Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers,” Philosophy & Theology 18:1 [2006], 89 n. 15).
| Discussion | Where | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Yannis Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca (Bologna, 1992), 255–277 | Italian | The fullest published assessment in any language; sympathetic |
| Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, Foreword to Deification in Christ (1987), 9–14 | English | The standard short biographical and theological introduction; sympathetic |
| Aidan Nichols OP, Light from the East (London: Sheed and Ward, 1995), 170–180, ch. “Panagiotis Nellas and Anthropology” | English | A Roman Catholic dogmatician’s chapter-length exposition |
| Christos Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West (2006), 297–300 | English (trans. from Greek) | A contemporary’s placing of him within the Greek generation |
| Norman Russell, “Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers” (2006), 81–82 | English | The standard scholarly placement in English |
| Doru Costache, “Holism, Dynamism, and Integration” (AIOCS, 2018) | English | A recent constructive appropriation, chiefly on science and anthropology |
That is close to the whole of it. There is no monograph on Nellas in English, no collection of essays, no critical edition, no biography, and no sustained published critique.
Why the Literature Is Thin
Several causes converge, and none of them is a judgement on the quality of the work.
He died at fifty with one book. A theologian’s secondary literature is normally generated by a career: by controversies entered, positions revised, students trained, and a corpus large enough to sustain specialists. Nellas had none of these.
He wrote in Greek and only one work was translated. English-language scholarship engages what it can read. The 1975 Cabasilas monograph, the articles, and the Epi tas Pigas apparatus are all untranslated (see Zōon Theoumenon and Its English Life).
He held no chair and trained no doctoral students. He taught schoolchildren. There is no Nellas school (see Paris, the Arsakeio, and an Early Death).
He picked no fights. Deification in Christ does not argue with contemporaries; it argues with the Fathers’ help about the human being. Books that do not attack anyone are not attacked back.
The Methodological Commitment of This Section
Per the repository’s METHODOLOGY §4.2, live intra-Orthodox disputes are set out from both sides and adjudicated by neither, with proponents named and texts cited. That rule is applied here with a specific additional discipline: where no critic exists, none is invented. Questions that a reader might reasonably raise are flagged as open questions rather than attributed to imaginary opponents, and the difference between “X has argued” and “one might ask” is kept visible.
See Also
- Legacy and Assessment — where the weighing is done, provisionally
- Deification in Christ — the book that is the object of the reception
- Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) and Christos Yannaras — the contemporaries with whom he is compared
- The Patristic Question — the Synaxi debate over personalism, in full
References
- Russell, Norman. “Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers.” Philosophy & Theology 18, no. 1 (2006): 77–92.
- Spiteris, Yannis. La teologia ortodossa neo-greca. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1992.
- Kallistos of Diokleia (Ware), Bishop. Foreword to Nellas, Deification in Christ, 9–14. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987.
- Nichols, Aidan, OP. Light from the East: Authors and Themes in Orthodox Theology. London: Sheed and Ward, 1995. (Ch. “Panagiotis Nellas and Anthropology,” 170–180.)
- Yannaras, Christos. Orthodoxy and the West: Hellenic Self-Identity in the Modern Age. Trans. Peter Chamberas and Norman Russell. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006. (Nellas at 297–300.)
- Costache, Doru. “Holism, Dynamism, and Integration: The Anthropological Thinking of Panayiotis Nellas.” AIOCS (aiocs.net), 27 April 2018.