The de Régnon Paradigm and Lossky’s Thesis

The single most consequential challenge to Lossky’s work is the argument that the East/West Trinitarian contrast he sharpened — a person-first East against an essence-first West — is a modern heuristic derived from the nineteenth-century Jesuit Théodore de Régnon rather than a datum of the patristic sources. Michel René Barnes and Lewis Ayres made the case for the fourth century; André de Halleux made it against Lossky by name; Sarah Coakley made it for Gregory of Nyssa; the Orthodox Readings of Augustine scholars and Marcus Plested made it from within Orthodoxy. David Bradshaw stands as the measured contrast, defending a real East–West divergence on disciplined grounds. This file names the positions and adjudicates none.

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

What Is and Is Not at Stake

Stated once more, because the distinction governs everything that follows.

Not at stake: the Filioque is an unreceived addition to the Creed and the monarchy of the Father is Orthodox doctrine; the essence–energies distinction is dogma. The Church confesses these and this repository confesses them with her (METHODOLOGY §4.1). No scholar named below disputes that the Orthodox Church rejects the Filioque; the debate is not about that.

At stake: the historical-interpretive claim that Eastern and Western Trinitarian theology constitute two systematically opposed approaches — the East beginning from the persons, the West from the essence — and that from this opposition the divergent characters of Eastern and Western theology, ecclesiology and spirituality can be derived. That claim is the frame of Lossky’s Filioque essay and of chapter 3 of the Mystical Theology, and it is what is contested (see The Filioque Thesis).

Théodore de Régnon and the “Paradigm”

The critique is organized around a name. Théodore de Régnon (1831–1893), the French Jesuit, proposed in his Études de théologie positive sur la Sainte Trinité (4 vols., Paris: Retaux, 1892–1898) 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. Through the twentieth century this schematization — “the Greeks start from person, the Latins from essence” — became the organizing assumption of a great deal of theology (see The De Régnon Paradigm Critique, which sets out the paradigm and its critics at length; this file agrees with that staging).

Barnes and Ayres

The decisive intervention came from historians of fourth-century theology.

Michel René Barnes, in “De Régnon Reconsidered” (Augustinian Studies 26/2, 1995: 51–79) and “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology” (Theological Studies 56, 1995: 237–250), 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.

Lewis Ayres, in Nicaea and Its Legacy (Oxford, 2004) and Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge, 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.

The force of this for Lossky is direct. His whole architecture presupposes the contrast at its sharpest. If Barnes and Ayres are right that the contrast is a modern construct rather than a patristic datum, then the claim that “the difference between the two conceptions of the Trinity determines, on both sides, the whole character of theological thought” (Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, p. 80) rests on a paradigm the sources do not straightforwardly bear.

De Halleux: Lossky Named

The most directly targeted critique is André de Halleux’s two-part article, “Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les Pères cappadociens? Une mauvaise controverse” (Revue théologique de Louvain 17, 1986). De Halleux argued that contemporary Orthodox theology had broadened the polemic against the Filioque into a confrontation between Greek Trinitarian personalism and Latin essentialism; that Vladimir Lossky, “the principal new anti-Filioquist,” was well versed in Greek patristics and in scholastic thought but had been inspired in this framing by Russian Slavophile thinkers and especially by de Régnon; and that the analysis fails, because the Cappadocian Fathers cannot be enlisted for it. His conclusion is that the Cappadocians were “at the same time and equally totally both personalists and essentialists” — that the opposition is a false one, une mauvaise controverse.

This is the sharpest form of the objection as it bears on Lossky specifically, because it names him, identifies his dependence on de Régnon, and attacks the exegetical foundation of his case.

Coakley and the Cappadocians

Sarah Coakley edited the special issue of Modern Theology (18/4, 2002) devoted to re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa, subsequently published as Re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). Her introduction lays out a critique of the de Régnon paradigm as applied to Nyssen’s Trinitarianism (Coakley, “Re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa: Introduction — Gender, Trinitarian Analogies, and the Pedagogy of The Song,” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 [2002]: 431–443). In an earlier essay she had questioned the transfer of modern notions of “person” onto Cappadocian hypostasis in the analytic and social-Trinitarian discussions (Coakley, “‘Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: A Critique of Current Analytic Discussion,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium, ed. Davis, Kendall and O’Collins, Oxford, 1999, pp. 123–144).

Coakley’s targets are chiefly the analytic social Trinitarians and, in the same 2002 issue, John Zizioulas by way of Lucian Turcescu’s article — but the argument reaches Lossky, since it is his framing that supplied the Orthodox side of the contrast (see The Person-versus-Individual Debate).

The Orthodox Re-Readings

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 (SVS Press, 2008) 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 later polemics. The repository maps the resulting spectrum of Orthodox opinion on Augustine and places Lossky within it: a critical voice, but a measured one — “more measured than Romanides,” not making Augustine the villain of a historical drama, “but his framing reinforced the sense of Augustine as standing at the headwaters of a theologically problematic Western trajectory” (The Spectrum of Orthodox Opinion).

Marcus Plested‘s Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford, 2012) makes the parallel point for the scholastic side: Aquinas was read, translated and in part appropriated by Byzantine theologians, including in the Palamite century, so that the wall between a Palamite East and a Thomist West is far more porous than the grand narrative allows. This bears on Lossky’s Palamism as well as on his triadology (see Lossky as Expositor of Palamas; Critique of Scholasticism).

David Bradshaw: The Measured Contrast

Not all the scholarship cuts against the substance of the East–West difference, and fairness requires the other voice. David Bradshaw, in Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge, 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 the case with philosophical rigour rather than sweeping historiography. Bradshaw is not on the “de Régnon is a myth” side; he defends a genuine divergence while conducting the argument in a way that is careful, falsifiable and respected in the academy (see The De Régnon Paradigm Critique, which places Bradshaw as the sober middle position).

Bradshaw’s existence matters for the fair assessment of Lossky, because it shows that “the paradigm is a construct” and “there is no real difference” are two different claims, and that only the first is well supported.

The Defence of Lossky

Four things can be said on the other side, and are said by Lossky’s defenders.

1. Lossky’s own text is more careful than the tradition he founded. He explicitly allows “the possibility of an Orthodox interpretation of Filioque, as it first appeared at Toledo”; he insists that “Orthodox triadology is not a counter-blast to Filioquism; it does not run to the other extreme”; and he denies that the essential identity of the Three is ontologically posterior to their hypostatic diversity (Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, pp. 73, 80). A reading of Lossky that makes him a straightforward “person-first” theologian in de Régnon’s sense has to disregard these passages. He is arguing for a preserved antinomy, not for an inversion.

2. The critique targets the paradigm, not the dogma. Barnes, Ayres, Coakley, Plested and the Fordham scholars are historians and systematic theologians re-describing fourth- and thirteenth-century texts. None of them thereby establishes that the Filioque is a legitimate addition to the Creed, and several are explicit that they are not arguing that. The Orthodox reader loses nothing dogmatic if the whole critique is granted.

3. Lossky was a competent Latinist arguing from the primary texts. His account of relations of opposition is drawn from Aquinas and cited to the Summa (Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, pp. 74–77). Whether he read Aquinas correctly is a fair question; that he read him is not in doubt. He was Gilson’s student and Eckhart’s scholar (see Dionysius, Eckhart, and the Negative Way).

4. Something in the contrast survives. Bradshaw’s work, and the continuing Catholic–Orthodox difficulty over created grace and the essence–energies distinction, suggest that even after the paradigm is dismantled there remains a real difference in the metaphysics of divine presence — which is roughly what Lossky said, though not in the form in which he said it (see Uncreated Grace and Deification; The Distinction).

Where Lossky Sits in the Field

Locating him without adjudicating.

The field runs from the grand narrative — the lineage the repository’s other collection identifies as running Lossky → Romanides → Farrell, at its maximal end far beyond anything Lossky wrote — through the measured divergence-thesis (Bradshaw), to the paradigm-critics and Orthodox re-readers (Barnes, Ayres, de Halleux, Coakley, Demacopoulos, Papanikolaou, Plested) who hold the sharp opposition to be overdrawn (The De Régnon Paradigm Critique).

Lossky stands at the head of that lineage but not at its extreme. He supplied the frame that Romanides radicalized and that Joseph P. Farrell radicalized further; he did not himself write a civilizational pathology, he made concessions his successors dropped, and the repository’s Augustine collection is right to call his framing measured by comparison with Romanides (The Spectrum of Orthodox Opinion). He is nonetheless the modern author who did most to make the contrast plausible, and it is his formulation, not de Régnon’s, that most twentieth-century readers actually encountered.

That is the honest placement. The Orthodox reader is heir to the whole of this debate, not to one side of it. What may be held with the Church is firm; the grand historical narrative built around it is one contested position in a live scholarly field, and it should be read as such.

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, no. 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.
  • de Halleux, André. “Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les Pères cappadociens? Une mauvaise controverse.” Revue théologique de Louvain 17 (1986), parts 1 and 2. (Lossky named as the principal new anti-Filioquist and as inspired by de Régnon; the Cappadocians as both personalist and essentialist.)
  • Coakley, Sarah. “Re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa: Introduction — Gender, Trinitarian Analogies, and the Pedagogy of The Song.” Modern Theology 18, no. 4 (2002): 431–443; reprinted in Re-thinking Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Sarah Coakley. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
  • Coakley, Sarah. “‘Persons’ in the ‘Social’ Doctrine of the Trinity: A Critique of Current Analytic Discussion.” In The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins, 123–144. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • 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.
  • Lossky, Vladimir. “The Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Trinitarian Doctrine.” In In the Image and Likeness of God, ch. 4, pp. 71–96. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976 [1974]. (The Toledo concession, p. 73; the citation of Aquinas, pp. 74–77; “not a counter-blast to Filioquism” and the determination of “the whole character of theological thought,” p. 80.)
  • Repository: The De Régnon Paradigm Critique; The Spectrum of Orthodox Opinion; Critique of Scholasticism; METHODOLOGY.md, §4.1–4.2.