04 — Philosophy and Heresies
This section covers the first two parts of St. John of Damascus’s Fount of Knowledge: the Philosophical Chapters (Dialectica), his christened logical toolkit drawn from the Aristotelian-Porphyrian commentary tradition, and On Heresies (De Haeresibus), his catalogue of one hundred heresies — culminating in the first Christian theological notice of Islam, the chapter on “the heresy of the Ishmaelites.”
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Overview
The Fount of Knowledge moves in three steps — tool, warning, truth (see 03 — The Fount of Knowledge). This section treats the first two. The Dialectica supplies the precise vocabulary — substance, hypostasis, nature, person, the Porphyrian predicables — that the Trinitarian and Christological controversies had shown indispensable, as a propaedeutic for theology. On Heresies then inventories the errors against which orthodoxy is defined, its earlier entries drawn from Epiphanius and its last entries original.
The Islam chapter (numbered 100 in Kotter’s critical edition, 101 in the older Migne text) is handled strictly in historical context — what John wrote, his knowledge and its limits, the polemical register of his age stated plainly, and how scholarship reads the text — distinguishing eighth-century polemic from contemporary Orthodox-Muslim engagement.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Dialectica | The Philosophical Chapters — the Aristotelian-Porphyrian toolkit christened for theology, why a monk taught logic, and its sources in the Alexandrian commentators |
| On Heresies | The catalogue of one hundred heresies, and the chapter on “the heresy of the Ishmaelites” — its content, historical significance, and scholarly reception |
See Also
- 03 — The Fount of Knowledge — the encyclopaedic whole these two parts belong to
- 03 — The Exact Exposition — the dogmatic third part that the Dialectica’s vocabulary serves
- 07 — Perichoresis and Enhypostaton — where the Dialectica’s doctrine of hypostasis feeds Christology
- St. Gregory Palamas: Ottoman Captivity — a later, very different Orthodox encounter with Islam
References
- John of Damascus. Saint John of Damascus: Writings (Philosophical Chapters; On Heresies). Translated by Frederic H. Chase, Jr. Fathers of the Church 37. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958.
- Sahas, Daniel J. John of Damascus on Islam: The “Heresy of the Ishmaelites.” Leiden: Brill, 1972.
- Louth, Andrew. St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Kotter, Bonifatius, ed. Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos IV (Liber de haeresibus). Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981.