Not all theologians are liars

Given what I said in the last entry, it was inevitable that I would want to qualify it: all theologians are liars, but there are exceptions. In a lecture given in 2012, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware drew on St Gregory Palamas to outline three categories of theologian:

St. Gregory Palamas of the 14th Century distinguishes three kinds of theologians. First he says, there are the saints. They are those who possess personal experience; who have themselves beheld the divine light, and these are the true theologians. Secondly, there are those who lack such personal experience but who trust the saints and learn from them. And they too may be good theologians, albeit on a lower level. Thirdly, there are those who lack personal experience and who do not trust the saints, and they are bad theologians.

The ‘bad theologians’ are those self-styled theologians who are more interested in their academic prowess than in the pursuit of truth. They may court controversy to bolster their standing or boost their book sales. They may put personal bias before the truth of the gospel. But generally they presume that the Infinite can be grasped and analysed by finite human reason.

Then there are what Metropolitan Kallistos calls the ‘good theologians’. They may lack the kind of personal experience of God enjoyed by the saints, but they are at different stages on the path to that kind of experience. They know only too well their own finitude and sinfulness and they recognize the truth of Gregory of Nyssa’s suggestion that any unqualified statement about God is a lie.

Finally, the ‘saints’  or ‘true theologians’ are, as St Gregory puts it, those who have directly experienced the divine Light. Or, following Evagrius of Pontus, they are those whose prayer is true. But by no means all saints have attempted to articulate their experience and relate it to Scripture. In fact, in its 2000-year history the Orthodox Church has granted the title ‘Theologian’ to just three saints: St John the Apostle, St Gregory of Nazianzus, and St Symeon the New Theologian. However, this category can be expanded to include those Fathers of the Church who have been recognized as saints. St John is in a class of his own, since his writings form part of the New Testament. Otherwise, these theologians are regarded by the Orthodox Church as authoritative rather than infallible. And these are the theologians who might reasonably regarded as exceptions to my previous entry.