John of Damascus and Christian Discourse (original) (raw)

The present article is a discussion of the philosophical-theological mode in which Christian orthodoxy could critically engage with non-Christian modes of thought in a manner intentionally consistent with native metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions and commitments. Hermeneutics will be more or less the platform on which the notion of “Tradition,” informed by Gadamer and Florovsky, is raised so as to articulate how Christian tradition - for the present study largely derived from the philosophical work of John of Damascus - informs a hermeneutic mode of discourse, analysis, and worldview, what elsewhere has been called a hermeneutic of tradition. In short, this hermeneutic of tradition relative to historic orthodoxy refers in the first place to the intentional act of understanding according to the Scriptural, Apostolic, Patristic, and Conciliar norms as embodied and expressed by the particular Fathers and Ecumenical Councils of the historic, undivided Church, and the application of these norms, the regula fidei, or, perhaps yet more boldly, the “hermeneutic canons,” to contemporary problematics. The argument, then, seeks to show in light of Ricoeur’s interpretation theory how John of Damascus' Dialectica fittingly provides a foundation for Christian discourse, which is to say a foundational conceptual apparatus integrating Christian epistemology and metaphysics into a coherent system of thought which provides tools for engaging contemporary philosophical discourse from within a consistently orthodox perspective.