He [Christ] … taught us how one might acquire the ability to refrain from evil and be perfectly good. This takes place in four different ways: first, abandon and reject the things of the world; secondly, love God and put Him above the world; thirdly, love other people and put them above the world; and fourthly, forgo retaliation, cling to forgiveness, reward evil with good, and imitate God.

~ Theodore Abu Qurra, Theologus Autodidactus

I am working on writing my second book, this one on the topic of Orthodox Christian social thought and for Ancient Faith Publishing, and I decided that I should add a chapter on Middle Eastern Orthodox Christians after the Arab conquests of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt.

Theodore Abu Qurra was a late-eight and early-ninth century Orthodox theologian and sometime bishop of Harran, near Edessa, and he is one of the first to write in Arabic (in addition to Greek and Syriac). Edessa was religiously pluralistic, and in the work quoted above, Theodore developed an intriguing thought experiment for trying to discern which religion is the truest.

The thought experiment goes like this: Imagine a man who lives on top of a mountain with his father, a king, whom he knows but has never seen. His father sends him to a village in his kingdom with a physician to care for him. Unfortunately, the son ignores the physician and falls ill. The physician notifies the king, and so the king writes his son a letter telling him what has caused his illness and how to get better, sending it with a messenger. Unfortunately, the king’s enemies hear of this. The king is too powerful for them to harm directly, but they devise a plan to send false messengers with counterfeit letters that will lead the son to poison himself and die. As it happens, all the messengers arrive at the same time, and the son does not know who to believe. How can he figure it out?

In answering that question, Abu Qurra posits that we can learn a lot about God by reflecting on what is best in us, just as the son could identify the true message from his father though his likeness to himself. “While God is unseen, through the likeness of our own nature’s virtues, notwithstanding that God transcends and is contrary to our nature, our minds can see both Him and the attributes according to which He is to be worshipped,” says Theodore.

In this work he surveys the claims of various religions, including Jews, Samaritans, Marcionite Gnostics, Manicheans, Zoroastrians, Christians, and Muslims. Before sorting through their differences, he begins by acknowledging that each share in common: “each claims to have a god, to have something permitted and forbidden, and to have a reward and a punishment.” Through reason, he arrives at a conception of what later philosophers and theologians would call “natural religion” or “natural theology.” Ultimately, he argues that Christianity best accords with what our reason, reflecting on our human nature, teaches us about true religion.

The whole work ultimately has a very scholastic and even modern feel to it. Theodore was well ahead of his time. Indeed, he is clearly familiar with Aristotle and even translated some works attributed to Aristotle into Arabic. So he is a genuine forerunner of Arab and later, through contact with Arab literature, Western Christian scholasticism.

I find this all fascinating because too often when I read contemporary Orthodox texts, they try to polemicize against Western Christian traditions by claiming they are too “rationalistic” or “scholastic.” But there are many figures like Theodore who would be quite at home among “rationalistic” and “scholastic” thinkers. That said, he did still write polemics against other Christian traditions — he didn’t think they were all the same — but the points of difference, to him, were not a matter of the Orthodox being so mystical and ascetic as to be above rational discussion. Indeed, in his view the two go together!

“I beseech you … brethren,” wrote St. Paul, “by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1).

St. Paul saw this same connection: It is through asceticism (“present[ing] your bodies as living sacrifices”) that we offer to God “reasonable service.” So, what is reasonable about it?

Theodore has a good explanation. Like St. Severinus Boethius, he grounds our ultimate happiness in God:

Each of us [naturally] desires unceasing wealth, that we might distribute it to all. Each of us desires to be merciful and gentle, pure, good, and just, and—the summit of every virtue—to love all and be loved by all. Each of us desires to live in unceasing and unmeasured happiness. The same holds for what is like these desires.

He continues, “The object of such desires is God, in and of Himself.” Why?

God implanted in us worldly desires and prepared objects corresponding to them, that we might obtain them and enjoy happiness. God did not deprive us of these objects, lest we be miserable. That would not befit Him. Rather, He generously granted them to us, for the happiness and sustenance of our life, as befits Him. In precisely the same manner, since He implanted in us desires and He is their object—may He be blessed and exalted!—we know that He does not keep us from Himself, lest He make us miserable. That would not befit him. Rather, He generously grants Himself to us, and we dwell with Him and touch Him, partaking of His sweetness and happiness through these desires. It is for these that our souls long. They represent perfect happiness and consummate longing. Through Him, we become gods and enjoy Him forever.

And so, the teaching of Christ as summarized by Abu Qurra: “first, abandon and reject the things of the world; secondly, love God and put Him above the world; thirdly, love other people and put them above the world; and fourthly, forgo retaliation, cling to forgiveness, reward evil with good, and imitate God.”

Not only did Christ teach this, I would add, but he modeled it for us in his ministry, teaching, miracles, death, and resurrection. And when we follow after him in that, we embody his resurrection and, indeed, embody God by grace. In so doing, we acquire the transcendent good, the highest happiness, for which we are made but for which our nature of itself is incapable of achieving. As St. Seraphim of Sarov put it, it is the continual “acquisition of the Holy Spirit,” whom we receive through baptism and are sealed in our chrismation.

Well, I suppose we’ve moved beyond purely rational reflection once we get to the sacramental nature of our Orthodox faith. But that rational reflection helps us better see how the supernatural and suprarational fits into our lives. Indeed, the continual struggle to overcome one’s passions is a matter of submitting them to our God-given reason, after the image of our Creator, in whose likeness we were made to grow. Our asceticism and mysticism, then, ought to make us more reasonable people. If not, I would suggest, and I think Theodore might agree, we could be doing it wrong.

There is a corollary to this, and to be fair perhaps that’s what all the modern polemics are about. If all this holds, then the more reasonable we become, the more ascetic (properly understood) we should expect to become as well. And perhaps before we get puffed up thinking we are so smart, we should ask ourselves how well we are doing at praying, fasting, almsgiving, “forgo[ing] retaliation, cling[ing] to forgiveness, reward[ing] evil with good, and imitat[ing] God.” If we aren’t doing those things well, we probably aren’t as rational as we think.

Thankfully, we have saints, Fathers, and forebears like Theodore Abu Qurra to helps us both think — and live — lives of the rational asceticism that befits our nature and supernaturally fulfills the characteristics of true religion, by God’s help, “may He be blessed and exalted!”