COWEN: Let’s say you’re trying to explain to a Catholic, in metaphysical terms, where Orthodoxy diverges from Catholicism. Not the history ... but fundamental, underlying conceptual differences on metaphysics. In as few dimensions as possible, where do you see that difference?
HART: Well, for one thing, there’s no history of the notion of inherited guilt. The whole idea of sin is very different. We’re born into a state of alienation from God and from the world and from our neighbor is a common Christian idea. But in the West, mostly just as a result of certain translation issues, but also because of the very powerful influence of the late Augustine on the development of Western theology, there came then that somehow one is born in a state of guilt, which, to be honest, was considered repugnant in the East.
I suppose, then, the greatest difference would be the theology of grace. In the West, it became more and more the case that grace was treated as antithetical to nature. Grace was a principle over against nature. It was therefore given according to a purely predilective, predestining will of God.
Whereas in the East, that opposition between grace and nature simply never took root. Grace was just a word for the way God deals with creatures, and it was seen as more continuous with nature: that we’re always already naturally oriented to union with God, and that it’s an unnatural impediment that separates us from God rather than a failure to receive a super-elevating grace.
In Western tradition, grace became a very extraordinary gift, whereas in the East it remained an ordinary reality from which we were extraordinarily separated by a tragic history that had to be overcome.
HART: Well, for one thing, there’s no history of the notion of inherited guilt. The whole idea of sin is very different. We’re born into a state of alienation from God and from the world and from our neighbor is a common Christian idea. But in the West, mostly just as a result of certain translation issues, but also because of the very powerful influence of the late Augustine on the development of Western theology, there came then that somehow one is born in a state of guilt, which, to be honest, was considered repugnant in the East.
I suppose, then, the greatest difference would be the theology of grace. In the West, it became more and more the case that grace was treated as antithetical to nature. Grace was a principle over against nature. It was therefore given according to a purely predilective, predestining will of God.
Whereas in the East, that opposition between grace and nature simply never took root. Grace was just a word for the way God deals with creatures, and it was seen as more continuous with nature: that we’re always already naturally oriented to union with God, and that it’s an unnatural impediment that separates us from God rather than a failure to receive a super-elevating grace.
In Western tradition, grace became a very extraordinary gift, whereas in the East it remained an ordinary reality from which we were extraordinarily separated by a tragic history that had to be overcome.
