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| Domenico Ghirlandaio, Dionysius the Areopagite with Thomas Aquinas, Madonna and the Child, 1486. |
The following article by Dr. Sebastian Morello replies to Dr. John Lamont's critique of his work.
I was initially pleased to see that recently Rorate Caeli had published a critical essay by John Lamont on my writings. Given that Lamont has often shown himself to be a thoughtful writer, I was flattered that he deemed my work worthy of his critical engagement. Indeed, one of his essays is among the works cited in Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries (see p. 105), the very work that has caused controversy among niche platforms of the internet. One can imagine my disappointment, then, when I read Lamont’s paper and found that, whilst it contained some interesting history of classical philosophy and its relationship with Christian intellectual culture, insofar as it claimed to respond to my writings, it comprised a sequence of attacks on straw men.
Fellow academics in both theology and philosophy who are familiar with my writings and who kindly read Lamont’s piece at my request were all equally surprised at the “misrepresentation” of my thought and the “tendentious character” of Lamont’s arguments. It is frustrating to observe an otherwise thoughtful person so manifestly miss the mark.
From what is a long essay, I have abstracted the few attempts to address what’s actually in my writing, and happily I’ve found that a comparatively short reply suffices.
Lamont claims that I am seeking to transpose Neoplatonism wholesale into the conceptual framework of Christianity. In fact, what I argue is that Neoplatonic metaphysics has already been purified, elevated, and in turn assumed into Christian intellectual culture, but on account of the success of Enlightenment rationalism we are unable adequately to engage with this aspect of our own intellectual heritage. I acknowledge the antagonistic relationship that Neoplatonism and Christianity historically had, and I celebrate that the Church won out whilst appropriating what was redeemable in Neoplatonic thought (See Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries, pp. 6-7). I reject—explicitly so in my writings—the deterministic and quasi-pantheistic tendencies of classical Neoplatonism, and Plotinus’s own negative view of matter (as I reject aspects of Aristotle or any other classical philosopher which are incompatible with orthodox Christian doctrine). I do, however, endorse a baptised form of Neoplatonic participation-emanation metaphysics.
Here, Lamont will begin to claim—as he does in his essay—that ‘divine emanation’ is incompatible with Christianity. He seems to be unaware that prior to publishing Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries, I published an extended analysis of the role of emanation metaphysics in Aquinas’s wider ontology, and the Angelic Doctor’s explicit use of Neoplatonic texts, especially that of Proclus (see The World as God’s Icon, p. 32-33).
I accept that an un-Christian, deterministic form of emanation metaphysics is anathema to Christians. But a Christianised emanation metaphysics which sees creation’s relation to the Creator not as an artifact that discloses nothing of the divine nature and divine mind, but rather as an outflowing of God’s own inner life, which in turn reflects Him as the primordial ‘book’ of revelation, is not only compatible with Christianity but is the account of the Creator-creation relation that is indigenous to Christianity. The former view—that of creation as an arbitrary artifact—leads to deism, the latter view to a doxological theism. That is why, when Aquinas deals with the Creator-creation relation, he repeatedly uses the very word that Lamont condemns, namely ‘emanation’ (Summa Theologiae I, 45, 1).
Lamont concedes that Dionysius the Areopagite—the authority, as it happens, who is cited more than any other by Aquinas—incorporated Neoplatonic metaphysics into his theology. But then, bizarrely, Lamont fails to tell us whether it was wrong—or, to use Lamont’s words, advocating apostasy—for Dionysius to have done this. Lamont only observes that Dionysius altered the meaning of some terms and developed the concepts of Neoplatonism. Readers are left wondering, however, whether it was wrong in Lamont’s view for Dionysius to have done this. If it was not wrong, then presumably I too am permitted to join this tradition; if it was wrong, then surely Dionysius must be condemned by Lamont along with those who followed him, including Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas.
Lamont is apparently unaware that there is now a vast amount of scholarship on the role of Plotinian and Neoplatonic participation-emanation metaphysics in Christian philosophy and theology. I would encourage him to study the works of Cornelio Fabro, Louis-Bertrand Geiger, John F. Wippel, W. Norris Clarke, and Gregory T. Doolan among others, all of whom I’ve written about—another fact of which Lamont appears uninformed.
So, that deals with theoretical Neoplatonism, but what of practical Neoplatonism, namely theurgy? In the writings of Iamblichus, theurgy is sharply distinguished from ‘goetia’, which is sorcery or black magic. Theurgy, as Iamblichus describes it, is the calling down into a hallowed place of benevolent spirits (translated as ‘angels’ and ‘archangels’ by Thomas Taylor in his 1821 edition of Iamblichus’s On the Mysteries of the Egyptians), that these spirits might operate as mediators between the practitioners and the One, increasing union between those practitioners and their Creator.
I suggest, then, that what we observe in ancient theurgy is an elevated form of practical natural religion, and thus offers us a way to consider what is baptised, assumed, and superseded by supernatural religion. This in turn gives us a way of thinking about liturgy, by considering that from which liturgy arises, namely the assumption by supernature of what’s redeemable in nature, in this case our natural religiosity. Given the widespread liturgical confusion in our own time, such approaches are not without their usefulness.
Like all aspects of natural religion, theurgy remains under the dominion of the devil until it is baptised, and hence ceases to be natural religion. Such an observation is trivial, given that this is the case for all aspects of natural religion that are assumed and superseded by their supernatural counterpart, whether sacrifice, priesthood, initiation, or anything else. This is the way I consider theurgy from the outset in Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries (see p. 4); how the question of theurgy relates to the nature-supernature relation and distinction is treated at length in the appendix co-authored with Peter Kwasniewski (see pp. 137-159). So, to answer Lamont’s query regarding why I do not directly respond to St Augustine’s criticisms of theurgy: because such criticisms align with my own critical engagement with theurgy. If Lamont wishes to attack what I write about theurgy, he would do well to attack what I actually write about theurgy.
In dismissing my work, Lamont judges it expedient to link my thought to that of René Guénon, whom he associates with “magic and the occult”. It is obvious that Lamont knows little if anything about Guénon. The analysis of Enlightenment and modernity which Guénon offered from the perspective of classical realist metaphysics, centred on the correlative principles of act and potency, is among the most devastating available. The not uncritical utilising of Guénonian thought by Catholic writers such as Jean Borella, Wolfgang Smith, Stratford Caldecott, Jean Hani, Robert Bolton and others is yet another current of 20th and 21st century Catholic scholarship of which Lamont seems totally unaware.
Lamont successfully joins a small chorus of people who attack straw men whom they think are me. Matthew Minerd stands out as a critic of my work who has raised genuine objections and challenges, to which I responded in conversation with him, a dialogue which can be found on Pelican+:
Lamont’s article has some interesting and informative history, but sadly it is even defective in that regard, given Lamont’s commitment to the notion that the historical relationship between Neoplatonism and Christianity has been largely adversarial and not dialogical, which is an eccentric and highly selective reading of history. Moreover, he ignores all the ways I have argued that Neoplatonism required a profound purification for its redeemable aspects to be drawn into a Christian account of creation and its relation to the Creator.
Thus, inasmuch as Lamont’s essay is an attempt to respond to me, it falls flat on its face.
