Dr. Norman Russell is an Orthodox theologian and patristics scholar. He is the author and translator of many important works on Eastern Orthodoxy, including The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2004), Theosis and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Cyril of Alexandria (Routledge, 2004). His many translations include works by classical authors like John of Damascus (d.749) and modern Greek Orthodox theologians such as Christos Yannaras (d.2024) and Panayiotis Nellas (d.1986). Dr. Russell completed his doctorate at Oxford University under the supervision of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware (d.2022) and has lectured in many universities and theological institutions in Europe and the United States.
This interview touches on Dr. Russell’s recent work on John of Damascus, different strands in the Greek theological tradition, modern Greek Orthodox theology, Orthodox-Oriental Orthodox relations, conceptions of Incarnation and the Fall in Eastern Christianity, and Islamic responses to Christian beliefs about the Fall. The interview was conducted with Dr. Matthew Anderson, executive editor for Dialogue Across Borders, on January 6th, 2025.
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Excerpts:
DAB: John Damascus is often thought of as the last of the Greek Church Fathers. People will refer to him as a kind of bookend for the Greek patristic tradition. I wonder if you think that's accurate. Could you say also a word about the Greek tradition that preceded him? Given your close familiarity with this tradition, could you sketch out the landscape of that tradition a bit for our readers?
NR: Let us firstly take a look at the concept of a “father” of the Church. The Fathers of the Church came into currency as a result of the Ecumenical Councils - and in particular from the 3rd Ecumenical Council of 431, the one presided over by Cyril of Alexandria, when it began to be necessary to provide a florilegium (i.e. excerpts, quotations) of supportive texts from authoritative Christian writers to the doctrines that were being pronounced. These authoritative Christian writers became known as Fathers of the Church. They were principally the Cappadocians, and then, of course, Cyril and Athanasius. For Cyril, Athanasius and the Cappadocians were the Church Fathers. Then Cyril himself joined them, and was an authoritative figure for the Chalcedonians and the non-Chalcedonians equally. The Fathers did not include many other early writers, like Irenaeus of Lyon or the Apostolic Fathers, which is why the Greek texts of these people survive by accident on the whole. So, the Fathers were those authoritative Christian theologians who were cited at the Ecumenical Councils to back-up doctrine - and it was an expanding category as the councils moved on through the centuries.
But the consideration of John of Damascus as the last of the Fathers is basically a Western concept. John of Damascus was, at first, persona non grata in the Byzantine Empire, because he wrote strongly in favor of icons and of the legitimacy of Christian images at a time when iconoclasm was the official doctrine of the Byzantine state, supported by the Byzantine church. Then, in the 11th century, and this has been very well put by Vassa Kontouma, who is a great authority on the history of the reception of John of Damascus – he comes into his own after the disaster of the battle of Manzikert in 1071. The battle of Manzikert was when the Seljuk Turks destroyed the Byzantine army, took the emperor prisoner, and came into Asia Minor to form the Sultanate of Rum. But the business of reconstituting the empire after this disaster involved strengthening the solidarity of Orthodox Christians through a clear understanding of their faith. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos recommended to one of his chief propagandists in this to use John of Damascus, and John of Damascus became an authoritative Greek theological writer only in the 11th century. He was not considered a Father of the Church in that sense, but an authoritative writer. But he was translated very early into Latin. There was Burgundio of Pisa, who spent a lot of time in Constantinople and translated him into Latin. He quickly became taken up at the University of Paris. He entered the Latin constellation of authoritative writers as the last Father of the Church - that's how they thought of him.
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DAB: On Gregory Palamas (d.1357), who you have been working on for a while - does he stand as kind of a central figure within that Greek spiritual tradition as an inheritor and interpreter of that stream of thought - is that how you see him?
NR: There are two streams of thought that struggled in the last years of Byzantium. One is the spiritual tradition represented by the Hesychast monks, whose theological engine is Gregory Palamas. The other is, what in Western terms, you would call the “secular” Church, the Church of the Empire. Not to go into the confusing details - but the civil war between John Kantakouzenos and the underage John V Palaeologos and his regents, since he was only nine years old when his father died and this caused a crisis, finished in 1347. That year, Palamism became triumphant, and all the empty episcopal positions which had been in abeyance during the civil war, were filled by Palamite theologians. The Church became infused with monastic spirituality. I believe that it is this that gave the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire the inner strength to keep going, conserve its faith, and inspire the people. It is monastic spirituality that takes over now.
You mentioned modern Greek theologians. It's complicated - I'm going to do a course on modern Greek theologians for Agora University in the United States. There's a very good book on it by Father Andrew Louth, who is a modern Orthodox theologian. It’s a biographical presentation, which is extremely clear and readable. You've got different streams with modern Orthodox theology. During the Ottoman period, you have a division between the monastic spirituality that carries on from Palamas and Hesychasm. You've got the scholastic tradition, which has come from the West with books written in Latin in Russia. In Russia at that time, as you probably know, in the seminaries, the textbooks were written in Latin, and you had the revolutionary ideas coming as well from the Enlightenment in France. The modern Orthodox church remained split between these influences. There was a theological renaissance in the 1960s in Greece. This was the result of the earlier Russian theological renaissance, which happened in the last years of the long 19th century. The last three decades before WWI were a time of immense creativity for the Russians. Their leading theologians were exiled, expelled, or left as refugees after the Russian Revolution. They went to Paris, and there they established a printing house and an institute of theology and produced extraordinarily influential works. I'm talking about Florovsky, Lossky, Bulgakov, Schmemann, Evdokimov and others too. This theology of the Russians came to Greece like a revelation, and transformed their theology, with people like Yannaras (d.2024), Zizioulas (d.2023) and Nellas (d.1986). This theology, with a philosophical basis in existentialism that was influential at the time, transformed Greek theology away from its dry scholastic structure into a theology of Christian experience. Now, this is being superseded in a way by another Western influence, which is that of theological modernism, which is treating theology in a scientific way and trying to apply it to modern problems, dealing with feminism and liberation theology. The Greeks are very aware that they can't just delve into their patristic past, they have to address modern issues as well. The most creative theologians are able to use insights from the Fathers to address the modern issues. It's what Greek theologians at the moment are struggling with.
