APPENDIX TO THE SECOND EDITION
Dec. 7/20, 1980 [Feast of]
St. Ambrose of Milan
May the blessing of the Lord be with you!
Thank you for your “open letter” of November 3 and your personal letter of November 4. I assure you that I found no reason for offense in either of them, and for me they are only the occasion for a friendly discussion of the teaching (at least one aspect of it) and the importance of two great hierarchs and theologians of 19th-century Russia — Theophan the Recluse and Ignatius Brianchaninov.
My comment on page 389 of The Soul After Death that Bishop Theophan was perhaps the “only rival” to Bishop Ignatius as a defender of Orthodoxy against modern errors was not meant to imply in any way that Bishop Theophan was inferior as a theologian or a Patristic scholar; I merely had Bishop Ignatius as the center of my attention there, and Bishop Theophan thereby looks a little “smaller” in that context, which of course he was not in reality. In saying, in the same place, that Bishop Theophan’s defense of Orthodoxy was on a less “sophisticated” level than Bishop Ignatius’, I was also not implying any inferiority to Bishop Theophan, but only expressing what I believe to be the case: that Bishop Ignatius in general paid more attention to Western views and to combatting them in detail, whereas Bishop Theophan emphasized more single- mindedly the handing down of the Orthodox tradition and only incidentally touched on the Western errors regarding it. I had in mind, for example, the contrast between Bishop Ignatius’ long defense and explanation of the toll-houses (which I cite on pp. 73ff190 of The Soul After Death), and Bishop Theophan’s laconic statement (the only one I know of where he criticized the Western skepticism with regard to this teaching) that “no matter how absurd the idea of the toll-houses may seem to our ‘wise men,’ they will not escape passing through them” (Psalm 118, p. 289). By speaking of the “sophisticated” level on which Bishop Ignatius wrote, I only meant to say that he was more concerned than Bishop Theophan to argue with the Western views on their own ground, while Bishop Theophan seemed more inclined to dismiss the Western views without much discussion. But perhaps this was not true in all cases.
Thus, I think that on the relative greatness of these two hierarchs there is no real disagreement between us. I certainly acknowledge Bishop Theophan’s greatness as a theologian and a Patristic scholar, and my only reason for emphasizing Bishop Ignatius in The Soul After Death is that it was he and not Bishop Theophan who spoke in such detail against the Western errors with regard to the Orthodox teaching on life after death. I very much welcome your research on Bishop Theophan, whom I greatly respect and admire, and who unfortunately is not as appreciated as he should be today owing to the inclination of some people nowadays to view him rather naively as “scholastic” just because he translated some Western books or perhaps used some Western theological phrases.
Regarding the specific point of Bishop Theophan’s disagreement with Bishop Ignatius’ teaching: You are correct in the supposition expressed in your private letter to me that when I wrote of this disagreement on page 3691 of The Soul After Death I had not read Bishop Theophan’s booklet Soul and Angel, which criticizes Bishop Ignatius’ teaching, and that my comments there were indeed based solely on Fr. Florovsky’s small reference to it. Having since been able to obtain and read Bishop Theophan’s booklet, I see that my comments there are not precise. You are, of course, correct that there was no “dispute” between the two, but only Bishop Theophan’s disagreement, expressed after the death of Bishop Ignatius. The point of disagreement was also not expressed precisely (as I will discuss below). The main question you raise, however, is whether indeed this disagreement was a “minor” one, as I have stated; this question I would like to address here briefly.
Perhaps this question is only a semantic one, based on a difference of perspective in viewing the disagreement between these two theologians. Anyone reading Bishop Theophan’s Soul and Angel, with its 200 (albeit small) pages criticizing Bishop Ignatius’ teaching, and seeing the emphasis with which Bishop Theophan accused what he regarded as Bishop Ignatius’ error, might be inclined to call the disagreement a “major” one. But in looking at the whole context of Bishop Ignatius’ teaching on life after death, I still cannot help seeing this disagreement as a “minor” one, for the following reasons:
1. Bishop Theophan, in the whole course of his criticism in Soul and Angel, accuses only one and the same error (or supposed error) of Bishop Ignatius: the idea that the soul and angels are bodily and only bodily in nature. Bishop Theophan himself writes: “If the new teaching had only said that angels have bodies, one would not have needed to argue with it; for in this case the chief, dominating side in angels would still be a rationally free spirit. But when it is said that an angel is a body, one must deny in it rational freedom and consciousness; for these qualities cannot belong to a body” (Soul and Angel, Second Edition, Moscow, 1902, p. 103). If Bishop Ignatius had indeed held such an opinion, with all the emphasis and consequences which Bishop Theophan ascribes to it, it would surely have been a serious error on his part. But even so, it would not have directly affected the rest of his teaching on life after death: angels and souls would still act in the same way and in the same “places” whether they are bodies or have bodies (or even assume bodies, as Bishop Theophan himself seems more inclined to believe). Bishop Theophan’s criticism, thus, does not at all affect the whole system of Bishop Ignatius’ teaching, but only one technical aspect of it. And even here their agreement is greater than their disagreement: both agree that there is a bodily aspect to the activities of angels, whether in this world or in the other world, and that therefore the account of their activities in the Lives of Saints and other Orthodox sources are to be accepted as true accounts and not as “metaphors” or “fantasies,” as Western critics believe. Therefore, in the whole context of Bishop Ignatius’ (and Bishop Theophan’s) teaching on life after death, I cannot but see this disagreement as “minor.”
2. I seriously question whether Bishop Ignatius actually taught the teaching which Bishop Theophan ascribes to him; certainly, at any rate, he did not place on it the emphasis or draw the consequences from it which Bishop Theophan was most concerned to oppose. Thus, in the quotation from Bishop Theophan above, where he states that “when it is said that an angel is a body, one must deny in it rational freedom and consciousness” — it is clear that Bishop Theophan is only drawing the logical conclusion from what he thinks Bishop Ignatius believes, but nowhere can he find a quotation from Bishop Ignatius himself that he actually believes angels to be deprived of rational freedom and consciousness; certainly Bishop Ignatius did not believe this. In my own reading of Bishop Ignatius’ “Homily on Death” I did not find such a teaching. I have not read his “Supplement” to this work, but I am sure that there also there will not be found the whole emphasis and consequences of that teaching which Bishop Theophan accuses. Without entering into the full details of the disagreement between them (which might be a major study in itself and would have, I think, no particular value for Orthodox theology or the Orthodox teaching on life after death), I suspect that the error on Bishop Ignatius’ part was not in holding the precise teaching which Bishop Theophan criticizes, but (perhaps) in overemphasizing the bodily side of the angelic nature and activity (rather easy to do in combatting the overly “spiritual” emphasis of Western teachers) to the extent that he may sometimes have seemed to be saying that angels (and souls) are bodies rather than (as I think he actually meant to say) that angels and souls have (ethereal) bodies, or that a bodily aspect is part of their nature. As Bishop Theophan has said, there would be no argument between them if such was indeed his teaching, for he regards this (for example, in Soul and Angel, p. 139) as a permissible opinion on this complex question which has not been dogmatically defined by the Church.