Don’t Eff the Ineffable

On PSA and other pointless arguments.

Waterfall and Northern Lights by Carl Svante Hallbeck

“The simple and absolute and unchangeable mysteries of theology are revealed in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.” — Saint Dionysios the Areopagite

“Whenever theology is transformed into a religious philosophy… it is always the result of forsaking the apophaticism which is truly characteristic of the whole tradition of the Eastern Church.” — Vladimir Lossky

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Whenever I write a piece like this, I feel like I need to open with a big whopping disclaimer. So, here it is:

In case it wasn’t obvious, I have no teaching authority over anyone (except my kids, who can’t read). My reason for being on Substack is to have friendly conversations with intelligent strangers about topics of mutual interest. We’re just having a good time.

All right. Let’s get started.

For reasons unknown to me, Orthodox “influencers” on Twitter and YouTube have decided that we’re going to spend 2026 talking about PSA.

For those who don’t know, penal substitutionary atonement is a doctrine most identified with Calvinism. To quote Wikipedia’s very neat summary, PSA “declares that Christ, voluntarily submitting to God the Father’s plan, was punished (penalized) in the place of sinners (substitution), thus satisfying the demands of justice and propitiation, so God can justly forgive sins making us at one with God (atonement).”

There’s a question of whether the Orthodox Church also teaches PSA, or whether it’s a Protestant heresy that’s being smuggled into the church by American converts. You may be wondering, Who asked this question? I have no idea. But a full-on Orthobro civil war has broken out over it, so it must be extremely important.

I’m not sure where I fall, exactly. I rather like what Father Daniel Sysoev said: “I don’t consider substitutionary atonement to be a heresy, but a precise expression of Orthodoxy (though not an exhaustive one).” Precise, but not exhaustive. The language of PSA may be acceptable, so long as we don’t reduce the whole Crucifixion to PSA.

Then again, the Anti-PSA camp would point out that penal substitutionary atonement is, by definition, exhaustive (or at least attempts to be). It tries to give a comprehensive soteriological account of Christ’s death. So, the Anti-PSA camp might say that Sysoev’s understanding of the Orthodox position is correct; he simply misunderstands the Calvinist position by that PSA is less rigid than it really is.

If I had to stake out a position, it would be this: I think the whole conversation is foolish. Also, I think the Orthodox do ourselves a terrible disservice by trying to validate (or invalidate!) terms and concepts that have their origin in the heterodox churches and did not develop organically within our tradition.

Anyone who knows a little Byzantine history knows that Orthodoxy tends towards the apophatic. That is, we’re reluctant to make positive claims about the Divine Realities. That’s why, if you look at the dogmas of the Orthodox Church, they’re not only different to those of the Catholic and Protestant churches: there are also far fewer of them. We don’t “eff the ineffable.” We try not to come up with tight, scholastic definitions for things that are ultimately beyond human comprehension.

(I know that statement is going to trigger a bunch of people on both sides. Please note, I’m just speaking in generalities. If the claim that Eastern theology tends to be more apophatic whereas Western theology tends to be more kataphatic causes you to lose your peace, you probably shouldn’t be on the internet.)

This is one of the things that really drew me to the Orthodox. Clearly, they were committed to their ancient doctrines. It’s right there in the name! And yet they also seemed only to engage in theological arguments when absolutely necessary. This suggested all kinds of good things. A reluctance to cast pearls before swine. Commitment to peace, both inner and outer. Critical insights into how human beings form and change their beliefs. Proper emphasis on prayer, fasting, and good works. Intellectual humility. Above all, a deep reverence for mystery.

Yet there have been two major periods of history where Orthodox theologians have been drawn towards kataphatic/scholastic/systematic theology in a big way: the 16th and the 19th centuries. I think both ultimately prove why we need to stay firmly grounded in the apophatic tradition.

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The first episode came about thanks to the Protestant Reformation. Sir Steven Runciman spells this out in his book The Great Church in Captivity:

Negotiations with the great Protestant Churches of the West and the need to meet the attack of the Church of Rome obliged the Orthodox to give thought to their own doctrines. Their potential friends as well as their enemies continually asked them for precise information about details of their belief. It was embarrassing, at times even humiliating, to have so often to reply that there was no authorized doctrine on these points. There was no doubt that relations with the Anglican Church were seriously damaged by the variety of answers given by responsible Greek ecclesiastics when questioned on transubstantiation. It was not surprising that the questioners, however well disposed they might be, began to suspect the honesty of the Greek episcopate. Confronted by theologians who liked clarity and accuracy, the Orthodox found that their traditional apophatic avoidance of precision was out of date and harmful to themselves. The West did not share their spiritual modesty. It considered their answers dusty; it was hot for certainties.

His analysis here is a little “knowing.” Clearly, though, he’s not unsympathetic to the Orthodox way. And I think he’s absolutely right to emphasize the role that pride (or at least shame) played in the theological debates of this era.

Now, let me be clear. I’m not saying that every single person who engages in systematic theology is evil and will burn in Hell forever. I’m not questioning either the genius or the sanctity of Cyril Lukaris and Peter Moghlia.

All I’m saying is that the Orthodox bishops should not have allowed themselves to be dragged into the West’s civil war. It didn’t help either the Catholics or the Protestants. In the end, all it did was cause a tremendous amount of confusion for the Orthodox themselves. That confusion persists to this day, as evidenced by the ongoing Orthobro Civil War (among many other things).

We did ourselves a mischief there.

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The second episode takes place mainly in the Russian Church. As Russia itself continued to look Westward, its intellectual class became fascinated by Enlightenment philosophy, especially Kant and Schelling. The first major thinker in this movement is Vladimir Solovyov. Father Andrew Louth says the following in his book Modern Orthodox Thinkers:

Solovyov was enormously widely read and found himself trying to think through in a Russian context concepts and ideas that had been around in the West for a long time. It was as if Solovyov and some of his contemporaries were trying to catch up with centuries of intellectual development in the West in a matter of decades. They are thinkers in a hurry.

Later, Louth says again that 19th-century Russian theology “often gives the impression of wanting desperately to catch up with all the developments of thought in the West that had passed the Russians by.”

To be blunt, I’m not a fan of Solovyov. I have to assume that the Roman Catholics who keep telling me to read The Russian Church and the Papacy haven’t read it themselves—or any of his writing, for that matter. Why would they want to claim him as a Uniate when his vision of a “Unia” included, not just Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but Protestantism and Judaism as well?

Of course, that’s fine if you’re a Unitarian Universalist or something. I don’t judge! But if a Roman Catholic tells me he’s an admirer of Solovyov, it’s kinder to assume he’s going off something he read on the Internet.

Anyway. This is why, per Louth, it was the “scaffolding” of Solovyov’s theology (rather than its content) that influenced future generations of Russian theologians. They were fascinated by his engagement with non-Orthodox sources, particularly Enlightenment philosophy. And to be sure, these “Solovyovites” are a mixed bag, in my opinion. Florensky I adore; Berdyaev… not so much.

It’s worth noting that where Lukaris and Moghlia were bishops, Solovyov and Berdyaev were laymen. Along with a novel “scaffolding,” this era gave us a spirit of experimentation, where clever laymen read a lot of books about God stuff and then sound off with their opinion (sort of like I’m doing now).

Of course, there’s a rich history of lay theologians in the Orthodox Church. But what emerges in 19th-century Russia is quite novel. Even lay theologians in the Early Church were expected to be intensely committed to fasting and prayer. Infidelity to Church authorities was an automatic disqualifier, too. (That’s why Tertullian, for all his smarts, isn’t considered a Church Father.)

For them, theology wasn’t a game for intellectuals to play. And today? Today, the Orthodox Church is rife with “academic theologians” who express the most outlandishly heretical and blasphemous opinions—usually under the influence of the secular, Western intelligentsia.

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I think we could sum this all up with the question: “What is the problem with Orthodox theology?”

Some would say that we’re too far behind the West in systematizing our beliefs and/or engaging with the dominant intellectual trends. These would include a huge range of thinkers.

I would argue that it’s the opposite. All too often, the Orthodox have allowed pride and ambition to drag us into debates that have nothing to do with us, and to follow intellectual fads that are antithetical to our traditions. It’s not that we gave the wrong answers to these questions. It’s that the better, more authentically Orthodox response would have been to keep an apophatic silence.

That, ultimately, is my position on PSA. We have our own traditional understanding of the Crucifixion; we have our own traditional language we use to express that understanding. We don’t need to justify or refute the Calvinist position. We don’t need to engage with it at all.

Take another example. Many contemporary Orthodox theologians (e.g., Alfeyev) have tried to develop an Orthodox concept of infallibility. Of course, the Church Fathers and Ecumenical Councils use the word “infallible”—so, yes: we have some notion of infallibility. What we don’t have is a tight definition of procedural/juridical infallibility like our Roman Catholic friends’.

Put it another way. Catholics will say, “For us, the pope is infallible. Who do you say is infallible?” In my opinion, that’s not a question we should even attempt to answer. Because the way they use the word “infallible” is entirely conditioned by a specific theological context and is laden with centuries of dogmatic subtext. Our context and subtext are both completely different.

When we do try to come up with our own principle of procedural/juridical infallibility, we end up with something lame like “receptionism.” And no one’s happy with that answer, Catholic or Orthodox. So, why did we bother answering in the first place? Why would we compare ourselves to the Western churches at all? Why not just say, “This is not our tradition,” and move on with our lives?

Of course, if they really want to know what we think, they can ask. We’ll gladly explain our own views to them, in our own words. And if they get confused, they can ask more questions! But if they’re only here to pick fights or score points, it’s better to say nothing. “I have often regretted the words I have spoken,” Saint Arsenios tells us, “but I have never regretted my silence.”