Exact Exposition

John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith

John of Damascus, monk of Mar Saba

The whole of doctrine, catalogued by a man who had watched his city change hands and kept writing.

Catch rate: 53 / 255
Base research: 180
Stat total: 276

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina76

Contend70

Defend74

Popularity56

Total276

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Stamina 76

A hundred chapters covering the whole of doctrine, handed on complete. Very little of this book has ever been in doubt, and none of it is lost.

Contend 70

High. It does not only state the Trinity; it reasons toward it, from what God must be if he is living and rational. An argument that shows its working hits harder.

Defend 74

This became the standard doctrinal textbook of the Greek church and stayed so for centuries. A text that settled is a text that defends.

Popularity 56

Enormously influential in the East and much less quoted in the West, so it is not always the first thing recalled.

Cited for this book

John of Damascus wrote this at the monastery of Mar Saba, near Jerusalem, under Muslim rule. Before becoming a monk he worked in the caliph’s government. His catalogue of heresies ends with the earliest detailed Christian account of Islam by a named writer. Reformed Christians do not follow him on images.

Development

A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.

Exact Exposition→
Lv 48

Damascene’s Corpus

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
1	Created or Uncreated	Natural Theology	Argument	70	100%	15
1	Random Verse	Bible	Argument	10	100%	30
34	Chapter…	Bible	Scripture	—	—	12
36	The Word and the Spirit	Theology Proper	Argument	66	100%	15
39	God Is Not Wordless	Theology Proper	Argument	72	100%	10
42	The God of Matter	Christology	Argument	74	95%	10
45	Affirm	—	Status	—	—	1
45	Two Perfect Natures	Christology	Argument	80	100%	10
50	Speak Greek	History	Status	—	100%	5

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“All things, that exist, are either created or uncreated. If, then, things are created, it follows that they are also wholly mutable.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.3 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain).public domain

“But things that are created must be the work of some maker, and the maker cannot have been created. For if he had been created, he also must surely have been created by some one, and so on till we arrive at something uncreated.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.3 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain).public domain

Created or Uncreated

Natural TheologyArgument · power 70 · 100% accurate

In the gameA dilemma with only two doors, and one of them opens on God. Everything that exists was made or was not; whatever was made needs a maker; the regress has to stop.

“Moreover the Word must also possess Spirit. For in fact even our word is not destitute of spirit.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.7 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain). Distinct from Timothy I’s sun/light/heat: this one reasons from the arguer’s own mind rather than from the sky.public domain

The Word and the Spirit

Theology ProperArgument · power 66 · 100% accurate

In the gameYour own thinking is the analogy: a mind, the word it forms, and the breath that carries it. Faint, and not nothing.

“So then this one and only God is not Wordless. And possessing the Word, He will have it not as without a subsistence, nor as having had a beginning, nor as destined to cease to be.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.6 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain).public domain

“For there never was a time when God was not Word: but He ever possesses His own Word, begotten of Himself.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.6 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain). The sentence answers Arius in Arius’ own words — “there was when he was not.”public domain

God Is Not Wordless

Theology ProperArgument · power 72 · 100% accurate

In the gameReason its way toward the Trinity instead of asserting it: a God who is living and rational was never without his Word, and a Word with no beginning is not a creature.

“I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter.”
John of Damascus, On Holy Images 1.16 (trans. Mary H. Allies, 1898, public domain). The modern phrasing “I worship the Creator of matter” is a different, later rendering.public domain

The God of Matter

ChristologyArgument · power 74 · 95% accurate

In the gameJohn of Damascus wrote this to an emperor who was destroying images. His argument is that God took a body, and a faith embarrassed by matter has not understood what happened.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.

Affirm

Status

In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.

“We hold that there has been a union of two perfect natures, one divine and one human… without change or confusion or alteration or difference or separation.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 3.3 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain), eliding the list of names he refuses in between.public domain

Two Perfect Natures

ChristologyArgument · power 80 · 100% accurate

In the gameChalcedon, held steady against the error on either side of it — the union that blurs the two, and the union so loose it is only an agreement.

Strong against

×2.5Summa Theologiaea book · why?

Aquinas cites John of Damascus for this teaching again and again in the Summa (III, q.2): two natures, one person.

What answers it

The specific move or chapter of Scripture that cuts through this one, and why. The number is how much harder it hits than usual — ×4 is four times the normal force.

What Is Not Assumed×2.5

John of Damascus gives this very rule in the Exposition (3.18): what is not assumed is not remedied. He read Gregory the Theologian closely and quotes him by name.

Read it: Not Wordless

The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Greek.

“All things, that exist, are either created or uncreated. If, then, things are created, it follows that they are also wholly mutable.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.3 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain).

“But things that are created must be the work of some maker, and the maker cannot have been created. For if he had been created, he also must surely have been created by some one, and so on till we arrive at something uncreated.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.3 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain).

“So then this one and only God is not Wordless. And possessing the Word, He will have it not as without a subsistence, nor as having had a beginning, nor as destined to cease to be.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.6 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain).

“For there never was a time when God was not Word: but He ever possesses His own Word, begotten of Himself.”
John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1.6 (trans. Salmond, NPNF² 9, public domain). The sentence answers Arius in Arius’ own words — “there was when he was not.”

Notes

Written at Mar Saba, outside Jerusalem, under Muslim rule — John worked in the caliph’s administration before he became a monk. The last chapter of his heresy catalogue is the earliest substantial Christian account of Islam by a named author.

The argument runs from creation up to something uncreated, then from “God is not without His Word” straight into Nicaea. On images this game does not follow him, and says so where Nicaea II appears.