Posts Tagged Western Latin Tradition
“Christianity is in a pretty poor mess…” ~ Fr. Richard Rohr
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church on October 6, 2025
Christianity continues decades of decline in the U.S., and the “Church” continues to splinter apart worldwide. Along with Fr. Richard, I think that qualifies as a “pretty poor mess”.
Some background for consideration:
The Christian Nicene Creed[1], the official Statement of Christian Beliefs, states:
[I believe] in one holy, catholic apostolic Church
This was indeed a reality until AD 451. It’s become a wistful faerie tale since then (I submit 1054 and 1517 as additional evidence).
The original language of the New Testament and Nicene Creed is Greek: catholic in Greek is καθολικὴν (katholikén), meaning universal (not “Roman Catholic”!); church in New Testament Greek is ἐκκλησία ((ekklēsía) and translates as “assembly” or “gathering.” In the New Testament context, ἐκκλησία referred to the assembly of Christ believers, not the worldly institution that we know as “Church”. Church is an invention developed by generations of post-apostolic institutional male clerics. It’s actually helpful, I think, that in English we use the word Church, because apostolic Ekklesía and Church are clearly not the same thing.
Many “Churches” claim to embody the New Testament Ekklesía, but in fact often operate with only one or two of the five ministries present in the apostolic Ekklesías (Eph. 4:11 refers). And “worship leader” is not one of them.
The facts speak for themselves:
- There are more than 45,000 different Christian denominations in the world today. That’s up from 33,000 in 2007.[2]
- In 2023, 62% of the U.S. adults self-identified as Christians. That’s down from 78% in 2007. Estimates for 2025 are as low as 57%.
- In 2023, approximately 33% of adults attended church at least once a month. That’s down from 2007, when it was 57%.
- The percentage of U.S. adult “nones”, those having no religious affiliation, has risen from 16% in 2007 to 29% in 2023[3].
New and returning Christians are often encouraged to “Find a Bible-believing Church” and all will be well. “Bible-believing” now has such a plethora of divergent definitions and applications that, today, the term is virtually meaningless. In most cases, it simply implies, “Be like us”! Not helpful, I submit.
I will offer a word of knowledge for the Sunday crowds triumphantly proclaiming belief in “one holy, catholic apostolic Church”. Consider the following simple working definition of insanity:
“Continuing to do what you have been doing and expecting a different outcome.”
[1] Excerpt from the Christian Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of AD 325/381
[2] Gina A. Zurlo, ed. World Christian Database (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2025)
[3] Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Study, 2023-24.
When was the Roman Catholic Pope Declared “Infallible”?
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, Theology on May 7, 2025
Papal infallibility was dogmatically defined by the First Vatican Council in 1870. This doctrine states that the Pope is preserved from error when he solemnly defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals.
“Ex cathedra” is a Latin term that means “from the chair.” In the context of the Roman Catholic Church, it refers to the Pope’s authority to make infallible declarations on matters of faith and morals when he speaks in his official capacity as the Bishop of Rome. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, it is believed that he is guided by the Holy Spirit and is free from error in his teachings.
No such dogma exists in any form in Orthodox Christianity. Clearly a modern Afterthought of the Western Latin Church.
J.B. Heard: Theology Proper
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, The Logos Doctrine (series), Theology on April 27, 2025
Rev. John Bickford Heard (28 Oct 1828 – 29 Feb 1908) was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was a British clergyman and graduate/lecturer at Cambridge University (M.A. 1864). His series of lectures at the Cambridge Hulsean Lectures of 1892-93 served as the basis of his book, Alexandrian and Carthaginian Theology Contrasted, published by T&T Clark, Edinburgh, in 1893. Excerpts below are from this work:
“Nor need we be at a loss for a definition of theology, since the Master has himself deigned to define it. At the crowning stage of His ministry, in summing up all He had been given to teach, He sums it up: “And this is life eternal: that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” [John 17:3]
Theology, rightly considered, is the knowledge of God in His relation to us, the cardinal point of which lies in the truth which the old Greek poet [Acts 17:28] had glanced at. “For we are also His offspring” – this is the true keynote; and theology, setting out from this kinship between us and God, we at once soar, as on wings of a spiritual intuition, across the abyss between creature and Creator.”
Op. cit. pp. 31, 32. Brackets [ ] mine.
Christian Theology: Greek East and Latin West Contrasted *
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls, Theology on April 8, 2025
Theology is at its best and purest stage when it is intuitive [noetic]; it is based on our spiritual instincts [nous]; its only logic is that best of all logic, when there is one single step, as it has been well said, from the premise to the conclusion.
Eastern Greek theology set out with the doctrine of God in His relation to man. Conversely, Western Latin theology adopted the opposite doctrine of man in his relation to God.
The difference is more than verbal, whether we make man or God the starting-point of our inquiries on this subject. Setting out with man [the Latin model], we have to take him as we find him, blind and insensible to spiritual things. We have to find an explanation for this strange fact – we have to begin with a theory of original sin, a tradition of the fall, and the problem of evil in general. We get out of our depth all at once in a kind of theodicee [theodicy], which lands us at last in a dilemma which no thinker has yet to overcome, and which J.S. Mill admitted to be logically insoluable. Either God is all-goodness, but not all-mighty, or He is all-mighty, but not all-goodness. Pelagians and Augustinians, Arminians and Calvinists, have beaten their wings against the bars of this cage ever since Latin theology replaced Greek [in the Latin West], as it did soon after Augustine’s day, and we are no nearer a solution than ever.
On the other hand, setting out, as the Greeks did, at the other end of the problem, all unfolds itself in a simple and natural order, and there is no room for these gloomy afterthoughts which have made earth a prison-house, and evil a kind of Manichaean partner with good in the government of the universe. Let us notice the order in which the early Fathers of the Alexandrian school [Greek] approached the problem. Their point of departure was the general Fatherhood of God, – of a God, let us add, who was not so much transcendent as immanent in the world [e.g., the Incarnation and His energaeia]. The opening verses of the Gospel of St. John is the key to all that is distinctively Hellenistic in contrast with the Latin or magisterial conception of God. The Logos is σπερματικόσ, or germ-like, in the world: that Logos in man becomes reason or thought in its two-fold manifestation of speech and action. At a loss for a Latin equivalent for the Greek Logos, the Latin mind lost hold of the primitive and deep significance of the thought that there was a Wisdom which was one with God, and yet had its habitation with the children of men.
The Latins, lacking the Logos doctrine, never could see the true grounds of the incarnation which were laid deep in the original and unchangeable relations of God to men… In this point of view Latin theology never has been “rational” in the sense that the early and best type of Greek theology harmonized reason and revelation. To the Hellenistic mind there was no strained reconciliation between reason and faith… The contrast between the two theologies, for which we have to thank Aquinas, the one known as natural and the other as revealed, never so much as occurred to Greek thought when at its best and earliest stage.
History may be said to contain two chapters, and only two – one in which man seeks after God and loses himself in the search; and a second, in which God seeks after man, and seeks, as the shepherd after the lost sheep, until He finds it.
* Excerpted from Alexandrian and Carthaginian Theology Contrasted, John B. Heard. T&T Clark, Edinburgh 1893. Brackets [ ] mine.
Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology: An Issue of Emphasis and Balance
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Contemplative Prayer (series), Ekklesia and church, Essence and Energies (series), First Thoughts, Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, The Cappadocians, Theology on April 6, 2025
Overview
Apophatic and Cataphatic are two terms used in theology to describe different approaches to understanding God. The Eastern Orthodox and Latin West each use both types. The issue comes down to one of emphasis and balance: The Orthodox East is overwhelmingly Apophatic in approach, while the Latin West is predominantly Cataphatic.
Definitions
Apophatic theology (from Greek: ἀπόφημι apophēmi, meaning “to deny”) uses “negative” terminology to indicate what it is believed the divine is not. It means emptying the mind of words and ideas and simply resting in the presence of God. Apophatic prayer is prayer that occurs without words, images, or concepts. This approach to prayer regards silence, stillness, unknowing and even darkness as doorways, rather than obstacles, to communication with God. Apophatic theology relies primarily on experience and revelation.
Cataphatic theology (from the Greek word κατάφασις kataphasis meaning “affirmation”) uses “positive” terminology to describe or refer to the divine, i.e. terminology that describes or refers to what the divine is believed to be. Cataphatic prayer is prayer that speaks thoroughly, intensively, or positively of God: prayer that uses words, images, ideas, concepts, and the imagination to relate to God. Cataphatic theology relies heavily on logic and reason.
Background
Apophatic theology—also known as negative theology or via negativa—is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation. In Orthodox Christianity, Apophatic theology is based on the assumption that God’s essence is unknowable or ineffable and on the recognition of the inadequacy of human language to describe God. The Apophatic tradition in Orthodoxy is balanced with Cataphatic theology (positive theology) via belief in the Incarnation and the self-revealed energies of God, through which God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. However, Apophatic theology is the dominant traditional Eastern paradigm of an experiential, revealed theology, intimately linking doctrine with contemplation through purgation (catharsis), illumination (theoria), and union (theosis).
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – 215) was an early proponent of Apophatic theology with elements of Cataphatic. Clement holds that God is unknowable, although God’s unknowability, concerns only his essence, not his energies, or powers. According to Clement’s writings, the term theoria develops further from a mere intellectual “seeing” toward a spiritual form of contemplation. Clement’s Apophatic theology or philosophy is closely related to this kind of theoria and the “mystic vision of the soul.” For Clement, God is both transcendent in essence and immanent in self-revelation.
The Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century)) were early exemplars of this Apophatic theology. They stated that mankind can acquire an incomplete knowledge of God in his attributes, positive and negative, by reflecting upon and participating in his self-revelatory operations (energeia). But, the essence of God is completely unknowable.
A century later Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th century) in his short work Mystical Theology, first introduced and explained what came to be known as Apophatic or negative theology.
Maximus the Confessor (7th century) maintained that the combination of Apophatic theology and hesychasm—the practice of silence and stillness—made theosis or union with God possible.
John of Damascus (8th century) employed Apophatic theology when he wrote that positive (cataphatic) statements about God reveal “not the nature, but the things around the nature.”
All in all, Apophatic theology remains crucial to much of the theology in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The opposite tends to be true in Western Latin Christianity, with a few notable exceptions to this rule.
Cataphatic theology
In the Latin West a heavily Cataphatic theology, or via positiva, developed, which remains today in most forms of Western Christianity. This type of Cataphatic theology is based on using human reason to make positive statements about the nature of God. It slowly developed from the 5th to the 11th century, emerging as Scholasticism in the Medieval Period (11th-17th centuries). (see entries for Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, below)
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) significantly influenced scholasticism, emphasizing the integration of faith and reason. His ideas laid the groundwork for later Scholastic thinkers who sought to reconcile Christian theology with classical philosophy, particularly through dialectic reasoning. Augustine’s doctrines of the filioque, original sin, the doctrine of grace, and predestination found little support outside of the Western Roman Church. Within the Western Latin church, ‘Augustinianism’ dominated early theology.
Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 1109) is widely considered the father of Scholasticism, endeavoring to render Christian tenets of faith, traditionally taken as a revealed truth, as a rational system. Scholasticism prescribed that Aristotelian dialectic reason be used in the elucidation of spiritual truth and in defense of the dogmas of Faith.
Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 – 7 March 1274) reflects the mature emergence of this new medieval Scholastic paradigm, which promoted the use of formal intellectual reason, putting it at odds with the predominantly Eastern revealed tradition of hesychastic contemplation. Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (1265–1274), is considered to be the pinnacle of Medieval Scholastic Christian philosophy and theology. The resulting ‘Thomism’ remains the foundation of contemporary Western Latin theology.
The Seven Sacraments, or Mysteries of the Christian Church
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, New Nuggets, Theology on April 2, 2025
The inward life of the Christian Church is mystical (or sacramental). The word “mysteries” (Greek mysteria) is the term used in the Orthodox East; “sacraments” (Latin sacramenta), the term used in the Latin West. So, how and when did Western Latin and Eastern Orthodox come to identify and accept the seven sacraments, or mysteries of the Christian Church?
One might reasonably assume that the seven Sacraments (Mysteries) were determined early in the period of the united Church (AD 33 – 1054). That assumption would be false.
One of the renowned teachers of the united Church, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (6th Century) listed six sacraments in his work The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (ca. AD 500): baptism, Eucharist, confirmation, priesthood, the consecration of monks, and rites for the dead.
Two centuries later, another early teacher revered East and West, John of Damascus (675-749), mentions only two sacraments: Baptism together with the corresponding chrismation and the Eucharist (Communion), the only two mysteries identified in the New Testament and instituted by Jesus.
Clearly, there was no unanimity on the identity or number of sacraments/mysteries in the first 1,000 years of the unified Christian Church, nor at the time of the Great East-West Schism of 1054.
In the post-Schism Latin West, Peter Lombard (1100-1164), in his fourth Book of Sentences (d.ii, n.1), enumerated the seven sacraments. This list of sacraments was accepted by the Western Latin Roman Church at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
49 years later, during the Second Ecumenical Council of Lyons in 1274, Eastern Greek theologians, under Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos (in his Profession of Faith), accepted the seven Latin Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation (Chrismation), Eucharist, Penance, Priesthood, Marriage, and Anointing of the Sick.
So, clearly, neither the Seven Holy Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church nor the Seven Holy Mysteries of the Eastern Orthodox Church are First Thoughts of God, but mostly, save two, distant Afterthoughts of Man, codified a thousand years after Jesus and the Apostolic age.
Woman Wisdom: Chokmah, Sophia, Wisdom in the Old Testament
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, Theology, Women in Early Christianity on March 29, 2025
“Woman Wisdom” was well established in the Hebrew literature of the Old Testament long before the New Testament era. The patriarchal (some might say misogynistic) leaders of the post-Apostolic Christian Church, especially after the 2nd century, so completely suppressed this idea of the feminine personification of God, that they had to invent the cult of Mary in the 5th and 6th centuries to redress the obvious, embarrassing imbalance!
If you want to explore the beautiful ancient Hebrew tradition of the Feminine emanation of the Godhead (called Chokmah in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek, and Wisdom in English), try the following:
- Proverbs 1-9
- Wisdom of Solomon 7-9
- Sirach (AKA Ecclestiasticus) 24
In the interest of full disclosure, my male noetic intuition has always experienced both Wisdom (Chokmah) and the Holy Spirit (Ruach) as female. In case you think that’s in error or heretical, let me point out that in Hebrew both Chokmah and Ruach are feminine nouns.
Nous: Noesis and Dianoia
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, The "Nous" (series) on March 26, 2025
Noesis refers to immediate, intuitive understanding or insight, while dianoia involves discursive thinking, particularly in mathematical and technical contexts. Essentially, noesis is about direct apprehension, whereas dianoia is a more analytical and reasoned thought process.
In the Christian Latin West, the Enlightenment (17th – early 19th century) enthroned and focused almost entirely on the discursive, analytical, reasoning mind. So complete was that focus on the sensory, reasoning faculty (dianoia), that it literally came to define “mind” in the Western world. It still does.
The Greek East, although influenced heavily by the Enlightenment, did not lose their ancient distinction between noesis, direct apprehension, and dianoia, reasoned thought. To them, mind was “nous” (a term unknown in the West), and included both the noetic and the dianoetic faculties of the human mind.
In Eastern Christian culture, the noetic faculty is considered more mature than the dianoetic, because by noesis humans can instantly and intuitively apprehend God and truth of things spiritual whereas dianoia is focused on a dualistic understanding of the material, sensory world. It is no accident that noesis and dianoia both share the same Greek root; nous.
So, I guess one could say that both the Latin West and Greek East defined “mind” correctly; the West just lost the better half of theirs.
Silence
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, Theology on March 24, 2025
“No wonder that silence is probably the foundational spiritual discipline in all the world’s religions at the more mature levels. At the less mature levels, religion is mostly noise, entertainment, and words. Catholics and Orthodox Christians prefer theatre and wordy symbols; Protestants prefer music and endless sermons.”
The Women Disciples of Jesus
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, Women in Early Christianity on March 22, 2025
Christianity most often focuses on the twelve male disciples as followers of Jesus. We most often overlook the women who followed Jesus. Luke tells us that there were a large group of women who were also followers of Jesus. In fact, Luke lists the women along with the disciples.
8:1 Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 8:2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 8:3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
Mark tells us that the women at the cross were among those who followed Jesus and provided for him.
15:40 There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 15:41 These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.
Matthew also tells us of women followers at the cross and later at the tomb (cf. John 19:25).
27:55 Many women were also there, looking on from a distance; they had followed Jesus from Galilee and had provided for him. 27:56 Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. . .
These women “provided for them out of their resources” (Luke 8:3). “Provided” [Gk: diakoneo] means “to serve, wait on, minister to as deacon,” and it was used in the early Christian community to describe “eucharistic table service and proclamation of the word” (Jane Schaberg, Women’s Bible Commentary, 376).
Mary Magdalene “was a prominent disciple of Jesus who followed him in Galilee and to Jerusalem. She is always listed first in groups of named female disciples” (The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 884). She is mentioned in all four Gospel accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion. Mary was one of the women Luke named in chapter 8, not only following Jesus, but serving him from her own means. She stood at the cross with the other woman and saw where Jesus was buried. She was the first to see the Risen Christ. She became known as the “apostle to the apostles”.
In all the Gospel accounts women are the first to the tomb Sunday morning, and they are the first to see the risen Christ and commanded to carry the good news to the disciples. In all four accounts different women are named, but one name is constant in all four gospels: Mary Magdalene. She was the first preacher of the good news of the resurrection to the male disciples.
The tradition that Christ appeared first to women was well established by the end of the second century when Celsus, a pagan critic, discounted the gospel and resurrection by saying that an account given by a hysterical woman could not be trusted (cf. Luke 24:11). Origen, an Early Church Father, responded by saying that there was more than one woman who witnessed the risen Christ, and that none of them were hysterical in the Gospels.
It is ironic, with the low status of women in the Greco-Roman world of that day, that Jesus chose to appear to Mary and the other women; and that “the first Christian preachers of the Resurrection were not men, but women!” (The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 883).
Jesus did not first appear to the “rock” of the church, Peter, or even to the beloved disciple, John. He appeared to Mary and the women who followed him and served him. Mary saw him first, and she received the central tenet of the Christian faith: “He is risen!” She was the first to proclaim the good news, or gospel, of the resurrection. That he appeared to Mary first can only mean that this was by divine appointment and was a deliberate act on His part.
________________________________________________________________________________
Shawna Renee Bound, “Women in the Gospels” in Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: A Biblical Theology of Single Women in Ministry, unpublished thesis, (Copyright © 2002 by Shawna Renee Bound).
Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992).
Gail R. O’Day, “John” in the Women’s Bible Commentary, exp. ed., eds. Carol A. Newsome and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998).
Jane Schaberg, “Luke” in the Women’s Bible Commentary, exp. ed., eds. Carol A. Newsome and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998).
First Thoughts 