 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode will be an interview about John of Damascus with Andrew Louth, who is emeritus professor of patristic and Byzantine studies at Durham University. Hi Andrew, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me here. We're going to be talking about John of Damascus, who we've just been looking at in the podcast. Can you remind listeners who he was, when did he live, that sort of thing? He's born in the, probably almost certainly in the third quarter of the seventh century, so between 650-675, we're not at all sure. And he lived the first part of his life in Damascus, which is why he's called John of Damascus. His family had been the family that had been in charge of the fiscal administration in Damascus under all the regimes of the seventh century, the Byzantium, the Persians, then Byzantium again, then the Arabs. They managed to sort of stay there. And it's quite likely that John of Damascus went into the fiscal administration under his father towards the end of the seventh century. And then beginning of the eighth century, it looks as if the caliph decided that the administration was going to become much more Islamic. And it looks as if it was then that John of Damascus left Damascus and went down to Jerusalem, where he became a monk, where he lived the rest of his life. Most of his writings, I think, come from this period when he was a monk, probably in Jerusalem. The tradition is that he was at the monastery of Marsava, but it's a late tradition, and I don't think anybody believes it any longer. And as a monk, he would have been exposed, obviously, to a great deal of patristic literature, but also he knows something about pagan literature, philosophical literature. He refers to them sometimes. Yes. He refers to pagan literature in very general terms, those outside it is. He hardly ever mentioned anybody. He mentioned Aristotle once, I think. But his knowledge of classical literature or pagan literature would have been from his education. He's clearly very well educated because he could write very well. He writes much, much more clearly, say, than Maximus. And actually, there's an article by Mango which points out that the great writers at the end of the seventh, beginning of the eighth century, all come from Damascus, which had been for centuries a great century of Hellenistic culture, and still continued, I think, as a place where a really good education was available, probably better than in Constantinople. Oh, really? And so we could also put this in the context of more general Syrian culture, which also produced theological literature and philosophical literature in Syriac. Whether John knew Syriac is not at all clear. He almost certainly knew Arabic. But he certainly came from a Greek-speaking family in Damascus. No man may not necessarily have known Syriac. And would you say that he, as it were, holds the pagan thinkers at arm's length? Or is he deliberately trying to integrate them into Christian theology? I don't think he's deliberately doing anything. I think he's so much part of a tradition that when we talk about the influence of pagan philosophy on him, the influence, say, of Aristotle, Porphyry, whoever, I think almost invariably it's coming through somebody else. I don't think there's much evidence, possibly, possibly, parts of the dialectical. He put this together from Porphyry or six century Aristotelian sources. But I'm not sure. I think he's dealing with a world where all this has already been assimilated into Christian education. And that means that he doesn't seem to have much hesitation in using concepts and terminology that we might associate with pagan philosophy in the context of, say, talking about Christology or the Trinity. So a lot of this material is in John, but also before John is shot through with what someone like me would consider to be technical terminology from Aristotelianism. Like say, ousia, which means substance, or hypostasis, which means something like existence. Yeah. And that, I think, in a sense, that has all become part of the Christian tradition, really in the sixth century and some sense in the seventh century. I think Maximus is also largely drawing on a tradition that he doesn't regard as being particularly pagan. It's the way Christians have been thinking for at least a hundred years. And can you give us maybe an example of how this works in practice? So how would he use philosophical or what someone might consider to be philosophical terminology in a theological context? There's a great deal of interest in defining individuality. The context of all of this is the theology of the Trinity and Christology. Because by the sixth century, the standard language is that God consists of three hypostasis, one ousia, and Christ consists of two phycis and one hypostasis or prosopon. And so what do these words mean? So we have ousia, prosopon, and phusis. Ousia means being, often translated as substance. But I think it's more helpful to you being, because it's vaguer, and I don't think it is particularly clearly defined. Phasis is a term which I don't think has got any real background in pagan thought in the way that Christians use it. It's more or less the equivalent of ousia, but it's a different word. And I think that the term basil, particularly in another capital, his brother basically, not Perigonasianus. In the fourth century, you wanted to be able to talk about the way in which God is in two different ways. The way he is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the way he is as God. And Basil more or less suggests, well, we'll use ousia for the oneness of God, and we will use hypostasis for the threeness of God. So there are three persons or hypostasis, one divine being. And then that language is used in the Chalcedon in relation to Christology. There are two kinds of being in Christ, or two theses, two natures. There's a divine one and a human one, but they are united in a single hypostasis. And the next century, the sixth century, oversimplifying it, but the sixth century spends a great deal of time trying to work out what this really means. I mean, the terminology, the councils introduced terminology, but they didn't define it. And the definition of what you mean by ousia, what you mean by theses, what you mean by being, what you mean by nature, what you mean by hypostasis or person, this really belongs to the sixth century. And in the context of real division in the church as to whether this language is satisfactory or not. And would you say that John is an innovative figure in this tradition? No. And he's not trying to be innovative, of course. He's not trying to be, he isn't, I don't think. He's a great clarifier. I think that if you read his dialectica, you would come away with a very clear sense of what kind of thing he means by hypostasis, nusia, and theses, and so on. But he's not new. It's all taken from other people. And he doesn't want it to be new. Where he does have ideas that are perhaps both venue in a way, is one of the other topics that came up in the seventh century was the heresism of what's called monosyllitism, monenerism, which is a kind of compromise between those who accept to Chalcedon and those who reject to Chalcedon, the Monophysites. And the compromise of who agree with Chalcedon is one person, there are two natures, but there's only one activity or one will. Right. So monosyllitism means one will. Monosyllitism. Yes. And monenergism means one energy. One activity. One activity. And Maximus is a great good time trying to sort this out. And I think Maximus' thought is largely tentative. He's created a problem for himself by insisting on two wills, because he wants a Christ with two wills, which doesn't destroy his unity. And but also, the two wills are actually genuine. He's not happy with the idea that the human will is simply quiescent, which I think almost as monotheistic thought. I don't think they thought he didn't have a human will. But the human will was simply quiescent. Just doesn't do anything. It doesn't do anything. It just follows the divine will. Whereas Maximus wants to say Christ has two wills, divine and human, and they just agree about everything. And they do agree, but they come into agreement. The will actually, the human will. In the agony in the garden, when Christ says, not my will, but your will be done, there is an engagement between Christ's human will and Christ's divine will, because the Father's will is his divine will. And what's John's position on this particular issue? Well, the thing is about John is that John goes a step further. He says that there are two different wills, two distinct wills, divine and human, but that the product of the will, what you will, the thilliton, what you will, is one in case of Christ. And that sort of clarification is no more than that, I think, is found in John in a way that you don't find in Maximus. I see. So Christ wills to walk on water, and that is an example of the divine will and the human will agreeing to walk on water, but the walking on water is one thing. Yes, exactly. In fact, that's one of the standard examples. And it really goes back to Severus of Antioch, the great opponent of Chalcedon in the fifth, sixth century, who objected to this idea that Christ does human things and he does divine things. And Severus' example, what about the walking on the water? It can't be divine because it's walking. It can't be human because it's walking on the water. So what is it? It must be a divine human activity. Right. Now, that's picked up by the Orthodox eventually, and they interpret it as showing how the divine and the human are genuinely authentic because it is walking and it is on water, but it's a single activity. And I think with John of Damascus, that is, it's only a tiny clarification, but this notion that there are two thalimata, two wills in Christ, but only one thaliton, only one object. Something I personally find really exciting and fascinating about John of Damascus is something you've already mentioned, which is that he lives in Damascus and then he's in Jerusalem. And these are places in the Islamic empire during his life. And so in a way, he's not, I mean, in some sense, he's not a Byzantine figure, right? Because he doesn't live in the Byzantine empire. In another sense, he obviously is. He's a Christian theologian who writes in Greek. What was his attitude towards Islam? And in fact, how much did he really understand and know about Islam? Was he interested in it? Was he curious or does he just kind of fob them off with superficial criticisms? I think there's a lot of disagreement over this and the disagreement is connected with partly questions of what we can really ascribe to John. I am pretty certain that the 10th, sorry, the 100th heresy on heresies which deals with Islam, I'm pretty sure that is by John of Damascus. But there's another work called the dialogue between a Saracen and a Christian. This is said to be apophonis to Ioana de Moscigno. Which is from the voice of. And actually apophonis is quite regularly used in this period to mean from the teaching of, they're not necessarily printed by the teacher. Yeah, you see it a lot with late antique commentaries on Aristotle. It will say from the mouth of or from the voice of Ammonius. That's to mean that it's his commentary, but it was written down by his students. Yeah. And I suspect that's quite like. The other question is what was Islam like in the end of the 7th, beginning of the 8th century? Was it a thing called Quran? Is there the kind of the body of doctrine that exists now? Was it fully fashioned by then? I mean, according to the traditional Islam, the whole of the revelation that's contained in the Quran was delivered to Muhammad. And by the time Muhammad died, it was finished. And it's all there complete. But my impression is that quite a lot of more recent scholarship on Islam suggests that there was a time when the various surah of the Quran existed independently and were brought together over a period of time, not all beginning of the 7th century. But either way, John definitely knows this text or body of text because he cites specific passages. But the interesting thing about John is that John knows a little bit of it. And it could be. He knows three surah and he knows another surah, which we don't know about. Though the contents of it you can find in other parts of the Quran. It's called the surah of the camel. Yeah. And that would fit with the idea that Islam took time to consolidate. And that so John Damascus knows Islam in an incorrect state. I mean, that's one possible. And it seems to me very, very plausible. If that's the case, then what? Well, he's quite clear that Islam is wrong. He regards it as the last and the most dire heresy. And after that, there's any antichrist to come. I think it was taken very, very seriously. The very apocalyptic opening of Onherus's 100. I don't think it's just literary. Yeah, he says they're harbingers of the antichrist. That's right. Literally. Yeah, he says that's what he means. But on the other hand, I think he's very clear about what Muslims say about Christians and how Christians can respond to Muslims. The first and the main criticism that he wants to respond to is that Christians are associators, that they associate someone with God who isn't God. And that is genuinely Islamic, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, that's one of the standard accusations that they even make against each other in theological disputes. The shirk, which is polytheism, basically. But you see, and he's quite clear. That's what they... He responds robustly. They're saying, no, we are not associators, but you are mutilators because you mutilate the Godhead. And his way into this is by saying that God has a word and a spirit. And I think the Quran says this too. And his question is, what about this word and spirit? Are they created or are they uncreated? And certainly in the dialogue with the Saracen, the Christian says to the Saracen, you have to be very careful because if you say that the word and the spirit are created, you will be in deep trouble with your own Muslims. And I think all this fits into what I... They are these sort of mutazilim discussions. Yeah. There's this big debate that happens after John's period in the ninth century, really, about whether the Quran is created. And since the Quran is the word of God, that effectively is a question about whether God's word is eternal with God, which is the side of the debate that eventually wins out, or whether the word is created. Yeah. And there actually has been some discussion in secondary literature about the extent to which that debate has... Debate about the Trinity as a kind of preparatory stage or an influence. I mean, in that respect, John knows what he's talking about and looks as if he knows enough about Islam to know where it differs from Christianity and where they criticize Christians. For the rest of it, a lot of the things he says about Islam and about Muhammad are... How can I put it? They're impolite. Very impolite. I mean, he attacks and he attacks very vigorously. But of course, this was standard form for rhetoric in classical times and in late antique times. If you criticize, you don't just sort of say they're wrong, but you say that they are liars and they are fools and so on. I mean, that's standard form. And I think one shouldn't be surprised that John takes this line and get very upset about it as if he has nothing to say other than to vilify them. That's not true. He knows very clearly what the issues are. The other interesting thing about this is that I argue in my book that if you look at the presentation of the Trinity in his online Orthodox faith, he goes back to Gregory of Nissa to his Catholic exploration and uses that as the template. Now, in Gregory of Nissa, the template is there is God, the Father, who has a word and has a spirit and devotes the doctrine of Trinity out of this. And I think that it cannot... I think it must be the case that he chooses to go back three centuries to use a rather primitive form of truly Orthodox Christianity written by a genuine father. Because again, it presents Christians with a way of presenting the Trinity, which is going to be less easy for the Muslims to reject because it uses the sort of terminology they're familiar with. It's less technical and complicated. Yes. But actually that brings us to another question that I wanted to ask you, which is precisely this concept of Orthodoxy. I mean, obviously the Muslims are not Orthodox Christians, but there's also a lot of debate going on within Christianity. We've already talked about Christology. We've talked about the Trinity. There's also iconoclasm. And something we've discussed already on the podcast is that he vigorously attacks iconoclasm and defends the icons. So when he does these things, he obviously historically, he was helping to form what becomes Orthodox belief in the Byzantine Eastern Church. What would he have thought of himself as doing? Is he saying, here is exactly the list of beliefs that you should adopt, or maybe even here are exactly the forms of words you should utter and you shouldn't say anything else? So is it like a catechism in other words? Or is it more like he's trying to police the boundaries of acceptable belief while leaving a lot of room inside those boundaries for freedom of thought and debate? It's a bit between those. With the triumph of Islam in the Middle East and the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, it meant that all Christians were on a level playing field. There was no favored imperial party as had been the case with since Constantine. And that meant that Christians had to be very clear about what it was that they thought and be clear why the others were wrong, which they needed to argue. And that's why I think, for instance, one of John's works is called The Electric. It's a textbook of logic, helping you to define the terms you use and also, I think, helping you to argue properly and convincingly. And it seems to me that there's a lot of evidence in the 7th century there's a great deal of argument between different groups because Islam had taken away a dominant group that could just simply rely on persecution as well. The argument as well. Behind the argument, there's an iron fist, let's say with Justinian, but in the 7th century, no longer. And I think this means that people have then to be very defined and be clear about what it is they believe and clear about what is wrong with those who believe otherwise. And this would include other Christians like the Malofsites, to use the term that the Orthodox use of them, the Malofsites, those who don't accept Karsine, the Nestorians, those who don't accept Ephesus. And then, but it would also include, you would get into arguments again, for the first time, for a long time, against Manichae. Because with the, I mean, the 7th century changes the geography. And so, where's the Byzantine Empire ended with the Tigris Rufrates? This Islamic Empire stretches to India and includes a whole range of things that have been sort of pushed out of the empire, like the Nestorians, like the Manichae, and so on. Also, the Jews become important again, because again, they are a people of the book, they are just as protected as Christians. Whereas in the Christian Empire, they were very much not equal to Christians. And so, there's a great deal of debate in the 7th century. We only know the Orthodox side of it, but I'm pretty sure that this was just one side. It's just because of history that we have this. So, what's going on, I think, is that John of Damascus, sitting in the shadow of the mosque that had been built on the Temple Mount, knowing perfectly well who's politically in charge, is clear and wants to define who the Orthodox are. It's about this time that people start to use Orthodox as a kind of self-defining term. As a word, you mean? Yeah. I mean, it's always existed, but as a way of expressing one's identity, because one's Orthodox, I think belongs to around this time. So, actually, I guess what you're saying is that it's really more about defining a group around a set of beliefs, rather than a kind of thought police project where he's telling you, do say this, don't say this. He's more saying, here's what we think and here's why we think it. He's giving you arguments against the other communities in this very multicultural context that he finds himself in. That's right. I think it's right to say that Orthodox is a matter of working out what the boundaries are, but I'm not sure how much freedom there was within this. And as far as John's role in the later Orthodox tradition goes, something that you point out in your book, which I actually found somewhat surprising, is that John doesn't seem to have been very influential in the generations after his death. Certainly his works against iconoclasm would have been works to even to possess would be, put you in very great danger of your life until iconoclasm is well over. Iconoclasm isn't well over until a century after John's death. The fact that he wrote these means that any of his other writings would be, of dubious things until iconoclasm is well over. One thing that might disturb some readers of John is that his works are not original in a different sense than the one we mentioned earlier. We said he's not trying to be innovative. He's adhering to a theological tradition, but he does more than that. He actually writes works that are just kind of cut and paste texts where he brings together lots of different sources, lists them with or without commentary. And this is actually an interesting feature of Byzantine thought that I'm going to go on to discuss. So I was just wondering what you thought about this. How do you think one should go about reading a text which is cobbled together from other texts? There's a remark by Lionel Wickham, a great patristic scholar, who says that patristic scholarship aspired after the genre of the Florilegium and in John of Damascus found its goal or something like that. And a Florilegium is one of those compilations. A Florilegium is a collection. John of Damascus does prepare proper Florilegia. All of the works against the iconoclasts either morph into a Florilegium as the first or contain an actual list of quotations at the end in support of the case. And John's Florilegia on iconoclasts are enormously influential. They get to the West very quickly. There's a manuscript that can be dated in the about the 780s, I think it is, which has got a Florilegium which is clearly very indebted to John. That's within 30 years of his death. His polemical works, which are the least well known of his works, mostly on Christology but is also one against Manichaeism. His polemical works use quotations from the fathers because that was the way you argued. But they're not really Florilegia. There's a real argument going on and John is in command of this argument. On the Orthodox faith is intended to be an epitome of Orthodox doctrine and on the whole, he does this by taking some Orthodox source. There is for the Trinity, he takes Gregor of Nyssa. He uses a lot of, he loves, in Gregor of Nisens, lots of quotations from him. Maximus for Christology and the Will. Nemesius Vimesse he uses a very great deal for general information about everything. Nemesius Vimesse wrote a book on human nature which is an elaborate description of human nature, again drawn from other sources, by which he is very clear, he cites them, which was used by later Greeks as a kind of a summary of modern science, what we know about the human being, how it works, how the humans operate and what sort of stuff. So is John just thinking that he needs to put this information together in a useful way to make it available to people? Yes, I think so. So it's really, it's almost like a pedagogical project. The other thing that I should mention because it's never, isn't mentioned, and I think he's probably in some ways the most important thing about John O'Jaskis, he's also a poet and he wrote an enormous amount of liturgical poetry. I mean he's attributed, he became so famous as a poet within the Byzantine tradition that he's, that enormous amount of stuff is attributed to him, it really isn't by him. But he's one of the great writers of canons and this is a form of monastic literature. It's a song which accompanies the ode that is sung at Matins. And I mean any orthodox Christian, well most orthodox Christians, will know by heart the Easter canon. And what this is also composed from patristic sources. But what he does, he will take phrases from particularly Gregory Nazianzus and sometimes with other people and put them all together and you get, it isn't that you don't know it's a patchwork because it fits together so nicely, but what he's done is take these prose sermons and turn them into songs and so that the orthodox faith can be sung and therefore remembered. And I think in some ways that is as important as his only orthodox faith, but only within the Byzantine world. This doesn't translate into the Latins. Well, it's not entirely true. Some of his, Trapara, his verses do get through into Latin, but they're only a very small number. Okay, well actually that gives us a great transition to the next episode, which is going to be about compilations and works of that kind in the Byzantine tradition. For now, I'll thank Andrew Love very much for coming on the show. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it very much. And please join me next time here on the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.