R. Demetrios Harper | St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Seminary (original) (raw)

Books by R. Demetrios Harper

SVS Press, 2019

Front cover, back cover, and table of contents for "The Analogy of Love: St Maximus the Confessor... more Front cover, back cover, and table of contents for "The Analogy of Love: St Maximus the Confessor and the Foundations of Ethics."

SVS Press, 2019

"The Analogy of Love examines the ethical dimensions of St Maximus the Confessor's theological sy... more "The Analogy of Love examines the ethical dimensions of St Maximus the Confessor's theological synthesis in order to retrieve an authentically Christian sense of virtue. Demetrios Harper considers the legacy of Immanuel Kant for contemporary approaches to morality, which tend to see morals as abstract imperatives divorced from the flow of human existence. Against this background, he argues that Maximus provides us with the alternative of a quintessentially Christian approach to morality: one in which love constitutes the core of both ontology and morals, enabling the gathering of the splintered parts of human nature into a single, consubstantial whole, initiating them into the cosmic Ecclesia of Christ."

Routledge, 2018

Christos Yannaras is one of the most significant Orthodox theologians of recent times. His work e... more Christos Yannaras is one of the most significant Orthodox theologians of recent times. His work engages not only with issues of philosophy and theology, but also takes in wider questions of culture and politics. With contributions from established and new scholars this collection considers the four main strands of Yannaras’ work - philosophy, theology, ethics and culture - and reflects on the ways in which Yannaras has engaged and influenced thought across these fields.

"It is in Christ that time and eternity, history and metaphysics, hold together. This Christologi... more "It is in Christ that time and eternity, history and metaphysics, hold together. This Christological conviction-and the relational understanding of reality that it entails-unites Andrew T.J. Kaethler and Sotiris Mitralexis's extraordinary collection of essays. By no means do the authors agree on every point. But the relational ontology of love on display in this book flows from a shared, ever-deepening movement into the triune God of history."-Hans Boersma, J.I. Packer Professor of Theology, Regent College

This book explores the relationship between being and time-between ontology and history-in the context of both Christian theology and philosophical inquiry. Each chapter tests the limits of this multifaceted thematic vis-à-vis a wide variety of sources: from patristics (Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa) to philosophy (Kant, Kierkegaard, Heidegger) to modern theology (Berdyaev, Ratzinger, Fagerberg, Zizioulas, Yannaras, Loudovikos); from incarnation to eschatology; and from liturgy and ecclesiology to political theology. Among other topics, time and eternity, protology and eschatology, personhood and relation, and ontology and responsibility within history form core areas of inquiry. Between Being and Time facilitates an auspicious dialogue between philosophy and theology and, within the latter, between Catholic and Orthodox thought. It will be of considerable interest to scholars of Christian theology and philosophy of religion.

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles by R. Demetrios Harper

In "The Fountain and the Flood: Maximus the Confessor and Philosophical Inquiry," Studia Patristica, edited by Sotiris Mitralexis. Leuven: Peeters, 2017

This paper briefly explores the ontological ethics of St. Maximus the Confessor in light of the m... more This paper briefly explores the ontological ethics of St. Maximus the Confessor in light of the modern shame/guilt distinction. As many prominent commentators have affirmed, a virtue-based or ontological sense of ethics is intrinsic to or at least presupposed by the Confessor's great theological synthesis. Appropriating but simultaneously transcending Aristotelian and Stoic naturalism, Maximus establishes the chief virtue of love as the ontological locus of being, the δύναµις that enables the eschatological wholeness of nature and a genuine reciprocity between rational beings. Inasmuch as every authentic virtue constitutes a manifestation of love and its nature-constituting properties, the habituation of virtue and the resulting disposition occurs in relation to an 'other'. The activity of virtue is an ontic movement towards one's Creator and fellow creatures, achieving a functional community of nature and a perichoretic relationship with the divine. Conversely, an unvirtuous disposition and the habituation of vice facilitate a rupture in nature and movement towards solipsism, a reality that is represented par excellence by Maximus's discussions of the ontological mechanisms involved in humanity's fall. As this essay proposes, the reciprocal or relational approach to virtue manifested in the Confessor's synthesis is consistent with the criteria of certain modern ethical approaches that affirm the natural superiority of shame over the individuating emotion of guilt. Indeed, it seems quite probable that Maximus would have great sympathy for Bernard Williams's endorsement of shame as an ethical emotion, insofar as it implies that the subject who undergoes shame is the member of a community who fails to live or act in a " cooperative or self-sacrificing manner. " The ethical dimensions of the Confessor's synthesis, therefore, constitute a very interesting and provocative alternative to the majority of contemporary Christian approaches to morals, which, in Kantian fashion, typically fixate upon the autonomous fulfilment of abstracted principles and rely on the inner-directed or insular emotion of guilt to correct behavioural lapses. In his provocative and challenging work, Shame and Necessity, Bernard Williams argues for the inherent inadequacy of modern approaches to morality, outlooks that are dependent, in his view, upon modes of 'inner-directedness and guilt'. (1) Following Nietzsche's spirited critique of European morals in his Genealogy of Morals, Williams argues that the Judeo-Christian tradition has bequeathed a moral psychology to the modern western human that is primarily guided by

Analogia: The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies - St Maximos the Confessor, 2017

Abstract and cover.

Presented at the XVIII. International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford. Studia Patristica. Forthcoming, 2021

Book Chapters and Papers by R. Demetrios Harper

In The Reception of Greek Ethics in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, edited by Sophia Xenophontos. Cambridge University Press, 2021

T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Ethics. Edited by Tobias Winright. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021

This chapter seeks to elucidate the principles of self-determination inherent in the moral though... more This chapter seeks to elucidate the principles of self-determination inherent in the moral thought of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, comparing them to the assumptions underlying the contemporary notion of autonomy. While a thoroughgoing genealogy is beyond the scope of so brief a study, it, nevertheless, seeks to highlight some of the significant milestones on the road to the modern conception of autonomy. Of particular note is the turn from "morality as obedience," manifested initially in the thought of the natural law voluntarists and culminating-though in a very different intellectual framework-in Immanuel Kant. In turning to the Eastern Christian tradition and its sources, the study strives to demonstrate that there is a similarly rigorous emphasis upon personal moral responsibility in late antique and Byzantine Christian thought, yet it is conditioned by an equally substantial emphasis upon obedience and a self-effacing repudiation of personal and individual dispositions. A prima facie examination of these Christian notions might seem to suggest many common features with post-Enlightenment and contemporary conceptions of moral autonomy, which emphasize self-legislation and independently-derived moral criteria. Nevertheless, a closer reading of these sources discloses a mindset that grounds moral self-determination in an ethic of co-governance, establishing the heteronomous "other" as an indispensable aspect of the quest for the good.

In "Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher," edited by Sebastian Lalla, Sotiris Mitralexis, Marcin Podbieleski, and Georgios Steiris. Wipf and Stock Cascade Books, 2017

In "The Triune God," edited by Constantinos Athanasopoulos, 235–47. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, Jan 10, 2015

In the latter portion of The Triads, St. Gregory Palamas describes deification as an event that i... more In the latter portion of The Triads, St. Gregory Palamas describes deification as an event that is inclusive of the entirety of man’s being, inasmuch as he becomes “entirely God in his soul and body by grace”. This bold assertion on the part of St. Gregory is demonstrative of the way in which he consciously follows in the footsteps of his theological forebearer, St. Maximus the Confessor, by synthesizing Evagrian-style spirituality with Biblical anthropological presuppositions. Man qua being, for Palamas, can only be defined as such to the extent that he possesses both soul and body, both of which are eternally predetermined for deification. The ascetic life and the practice of the virtues therefore constitute not a rejection of the body or its powers, but rather function as a way of redirecting man away from an inordinate obsession with the physical world that he may become receptive to the deifying grace of God. In his rigorous defense of the practitioners of hesychia, Palamas makes it clear that he considers prayer and the ecstatic experience of the uncreated light to be events that are inclusive of man’s entire hypostasis, even asserting that man’s bodily senses become capable of participating in this foretaste of the eschata. My paper shall focus upon Palamas’ ‘eschatological’ view of the body and his insistence on the relevance of man’s somatic dimension in the spiritual life. I shall also strive to illuminate the ontological presuppositions of his synthesis that enable his anthropological perspective, with particular emphasis on those which he received from his predecessors. Finally, I will argue that the Incarnation is a sine qua non of his theology and, consequently, of his eschatology of body.

In "Between Being and Time: From Ontology to Eschatology," edited by Sotiris Mitralexis and Andrew T. J. Kaethler. Lanham: Lexington, 2019

In "Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Perspectives," edited by Symeon Paschalidis and Alexis Torrance. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018

Bringing together international scholars from across a range of linked disciplines to examine the... more Bringing together international scholars from across a range of linked disciplines to examine the concept of the person in the Greek Christian East, Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition stretches in its scope from the New Testament to contemporary debates surrounding personhood in Eastern Orthodoxy. Attention is paid to a number of pertinent areas that have not hitherto received the scholarly attention they deserve, such as Byzantine hymnography and iconology, the work of early miaphysite thinkers, and the relevance of late Byzantine figures to the discussion. Similarly, certain long-standing debates surrounding the question are revisited or reframed, whether regarding the concept of the person in Maximus the Confessor, or with contributions that bring patristic and modern Orthodox theology into dialogue with a variety of contemporary currents in philosophy, moral psychology, and political science.

In "Bringing forth Treasures Old and New: Themes in Contemporary Orthodox Theology," edited by Alexis Torrance and Dylan Pahman (forthcoming), 2021

Last Things," Fr. Matthew Baker draws a contradistinction between the views of Met. John Zizioula... more Last Things," Fr. Matthew Baker draws a contradistinction between the views of Met. John Zizioulas and those of his mentor, Fr. Georges Florovsky, with regards to the significance of human agency within the historical process. 1 As Baker contends, the former tends to reflect an approach that is similar to that of Hans-Georg Gadamer, which deems the expressions of tradition and the hermeneutical attempts to engage them as being primarily impersonal events, events that, in the Metropolitan's view, must inevitably be eclipsed by the conclusive and decisive eschatological future beyond the boundaries of historical becoming. 2 By contrast, Florovsky consciously follows R. G. Collingwood, emphasizing the role and input of free human subjects within history, and not merely as an unconditioned attempt at epistemological orientation within an otherwise inexorably determined linear movement. 3 What Baker quite dexterously captures is the fact that Florovksy sees the created world and the human being as embodying creative contingency, "the openness of history to new events," a perspective that serves to "underwrite the permanent significance of human historical action." 4 This view does

In "Aristotle and Christianity:" Proceedings of the International Conference celebrating 2400 years from the birth of Aristotle, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, November 24–25, 2016, ed. Apostolos Nikolaidis, et al. Athens: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2017

In a seldom-noticed section of his ground-breaking work, After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre sets in... more In a seldom-noticed section of his ground-breaking work, After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre sets in relief the age-old tension between the teleological aretology of Aristotlewhose ethical theory MacIntyre would later adopt and vociferously defend-and the intellectualistic morals of the Ancient Stoic school. 1 Following the objections of the Peripatetics, MacIntyre argues that the Stoic approach nullifies the possibility of real virtue or character, the result of which is a "retreat into interiority" and the restriction of morality's range to the private space of the human agent. 2 This Stoic theory of ethics and action is of course demanded by their thoroughly deterministic ontology, according to which the human moral agency is essentially limited to either assent or a refusal to assent to the images given by external phenomena.

In "Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, and Culture," edited by Andreas Andreopoulos and Demetrios Harper. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018

This essay examines Christos Yannaras’ critique of modern moral sensibilities and his arguments f... more This essay examines Christos Yannaras’ critique of modern moral sensibilities and his arguments for the retrieval of what he terms a “Eucharistic ethos,” an approach that affirms an essentially ontological model of morality in which love and interpersonal communion function as the highest moral criteria. The point of departure is Yannaras’ genealogy of western epistemology and metaphysics, perhaps most concisely expressed in his thoughtful but challenging work Heidegger and the Areopagite. As he argues, Medieval Scholastic rejection of apophaticism inaugurates the reduction and eventual death of ontology, which, although diagnosed by Nietzsche, culminates in the solipsistic moralism of Immanuel Kant. This Kantian-style narcissism is the functional impetus, consciously or unconsciously, within modern moral sensibilities. The way back from the slow retreat into subjective individualism, as Yannaras suggests in his Freedom of Morality, is the re-establishment of a “Eucharistic ethos” in which ultimate human concerns again become the foundation for morality, as opposed to abstracted laws designed as markers for individual achievement. As I argue throughout, Yannaras’ makes a real contribution to Christian ethics and, moreover, finds himself in the illustrious company of thinkers such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Bernard Williams in recognizing and diagnosing the extent to which contemporary moral sensibilities have the tendency to be detached from authentic human concerns. Finally, in an attempt to build on Yannaras’ proposals, I critically discuss his own ontological suppositions, arguing that aspects of his personalist perspective work to seriously undermine his efforts to retrieve a Eucharistic ethos and, consequently, require reconsideration if his approach to morality is to have enduring resonance.

Conference Posters by R. Demetrios Harper

Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame, Second Annual Byzantine Postdoctoral Fellowship Workshop, 2019

Session Chairs: Alexis Torrance and Perry Hamalis.