Page 143 - Uros Todorovic Byzantine Painting Contemporary Eyes

Chapter II
proposed that the entity of the divine could be approached and understood through the application of rational thought alone. As stated by Demetrius Moshos (1998), through the dialectical syllogism Varlaam also attempted to disprove the legitimacy of the de- monstrative syllogisms of the Latin theologians, and that, not by deconstructing these syllogisms, but by refusing to discuss their method and by aiming to replace it by his dialectical syllogism.46
In this, Varlaam was also adhering to the apophatic method in a rather distorted man- ner, without realising that the Church fathers adhered simultaneously to the apophatic and the cataphatic method. Thus, through the method of (a misunderstood) apophatic theology and Aristotle’s dialectical syllogism, Varlaam was basically led to a perception that God’s essence could be approached through human intellectual capability – that is, by gradually negating meanings that could be ascribed to God’s essence. But, as we al- ready stated, one of the crucial factors that Varlaam overlooked is that in the writings of the Church fathers the apophatic negation of meanings simultaneously entails an affir- mation. For example, in the writings of Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite the negating meanings which refer to God can and should also be understood as affirmative, that is, they can and should be understood as an affirmation of the state of lacking, which is stressed by the negating letter a in the beginning of such words: such as anengiktos (ἀνέγγιχτος / ἀνέγγικτος) – meaning the one who lacks tangibility, therefore intangible, untouched and untouchable.47 Thus, although it is a negating name, anengiktos simulta- neously expresses an affirmation of the state of lacking tangibility. Therefore, according to Orthodox theology regardless of whether one adheres to the apophatic or cataphatic method, in each case, one implies the other. It appears that it did not occur to Varlaam that when understood properly, the apophatic method cannot lead to a perception that God’s essence can be approached intellectually.
In Orthodox theology, which as we said adheres to the apophatic and the cataphatic method simultaneously, the perceptions of God which are formed do not refer to the
purpose of questioning or asserted in a dialectical discussion. The distinction between demonstrative and dialectical syllogisms reflects the two kinds of substantive reasoning characterizing the life of theory and the life of action in eth- ics and politics. Aristotle makes the main goal of studying the syllogism demonstration, just as he gives priority to the life of theory in Politics. He promoted the stringent ideal of a science that organizes the truths of its subject matter through demonstrative syllogisms, so that a reasoner achieves rational certainty. A system of demonstrative syllogisms provides causal explanations of the essences and attributes of substances. This ideal of a science has been very influen- tial in western intellectual history, and is said to have produced the deductive method of Euclidean mathematics.” (For the entire essay see: https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Anci/AnciBark.htm)
46 Δημήτριος Μόσχος, Πλατωνισμός ἤ Χριστιανισμός; Οἱ φιλοσοφικές προϋποθέσεις τοῦ Ἀντιησυχασμοῦ τοῦ Νικη- φόρου Γρηγορᾶ (1293–1361) (Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Παρουσία, 1998), 181–182.
47 The word anengiktos is used in the first chapter of the Mystical Theology by Saint Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. 141