OK.

When I wrote a college art appreciation text for adult students I used a few illustrations, and kept refering to them. Familiarity is 80-90% of learning at the beginning. "Simple" doesn't have to be simple, it just has to be very, very familiar, connected, and easy to manipulate. (People want to know what is expected of them, and how to do it.)

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Post Edited ("I Am Spirit") : 1/7/2008 4:31:53 PM (GMT-6)

Couldn’t pass up posting this from Zizioulas:

[Note: He says “persona” but of course means “person” or hypostasis.]

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The stressing of the one persona instead of two, i.e., that we have only a divine persona and not a human one, was presented as an opposition to Nestorius’ and the Nestorians’ position, who focused on the persona of Christ; who wanted to preserve the persona of Christ in full with its human attributes and were afraid that if one were to say that there is no human persona in Christ, there would be a diminished presence of the human element.  The Church’s position in this instance was that we are not dealing with a human persona; there is only a divine persona. How can we comprehend this, without underestimating, without demoting the presence of a complete humanity? We mentioned that Christ is a complete God and a complete human. Could He be a complete human, if He didn’t have any persona whatsoever?  Here we have a huge problem, on which very many dogmaticians in the West stumble.

We must comprehend fully what a “persona” is. A “persona” is an identity that is formed through a relationship. [Nobody commented on my definition of ‘person’ a couple of pages back. Touche! This is just how I defined person. Uhah.] We are all personae, on account of our relationships. We each have attained our personal identity through our various relationships, i.e., the biological ones from our parents, the natural ones from the environment, from the food we eat, from our social relations. All of these elements are necessary, in order for us to be called a persona; however, it is the persona that transubstantiates these relationships, and makes them its own. You breathe this air, so you have a relationship with it, just as I do, but this air becomes mine, yours – it becomes “personal” - when it filters through each one of us as personae. Thus, the persona can similarly assume natures; but, that which defines my personal identity is not the air that I assume. It is dependent on that which is the most significant, the most decisive, which will make me be me and not someone else. In the same way, it is up to our liberty to choose which of all our relationships is the most definitive for our personal identities. If, for example, I decide that my relationship with my parents is the definitive one, then all of my other natural, social relationships will be coupled to this relationship with my parents, thus proving that this is where I have drawn my personal identity from. In other words, the decisive relationship becomes the criterion that makes me be what I am.

If I do not desire to make the personal relationship with my parents the decisive element for my personal identity, then I transpose the relationship. And this is something that indeed occurs. The young child has a personal relationship with its mother. Gradually, it transposes its decisive relationship to either its social relationships or, later on, to its biological relationships which will remove it from the others. Thus, its personal identity no longer relates to the parental relationship, but to the other relationships. This extends into our entire existence. If, for example, one were to imagine a person hinging his personal hypostasis on what he eats – i.e., a relationship with food – then indeed, if he persisted in this relationship, his entire personal identity would be dependent on this relationship.

Our personal identity is a matter of relationships - whatever those relationships may be.  Depending on how decisive a relationship is, that will eventually be one that will judge and subject all the other relationships, and will incorporate them therein. It is quite obvious, that when a person is in love with someone, that will be the prevalent relationship at that moment of time, as he will be seeing everything through that prism.  The personal relationship, which gives us our identity, is always the one that makes us a persona.

To return to the issue of Christology : what makes Christ a Persona, in other words, the relationship through which all the other relationships pass and which finally determines His identity, is His relationship with the Father.

With the Incarnation, Christ took on other relationships; He had a relationship with the Holy Virgin, with His disciples, with the natural environment; He partook of sustenance; He was Jewish – He had relationships with the entire Jewish community. All of these are relationships that belong to His personal relationships. In other words, all of the humanity that He takes unto Himself, all of the created, is not foreign to His Persona.  Mankind therefore is not lesser, by belonging in that relationship of His with the Father.

When we say that Christ (and I am trying to interpret the dogma of Chalcedon here) has only one Persona but also Has two natures, this implies that His divine and His human natures (and anything else that these natures might include) all fall under the one personal relationship that determines Christ’s identity, which is His Filial relationship with the Father. Thus, despite the new relationships that He embraces (as a Persona) with His incarnation, He is, and He remains, the Son of the Father. This is a very important point, because He could — for example — have taken on new relationships as I said before. When we embrace new relationships, we tend to shift the center of our identity. I will digress briefly at this point. In his work “In search of lost time”, Proust ponders very intensely over death, and he makes several very important observations such as: when a person whom we love dies, what matters in the long run is that we will replace him with someone else. If we don’t replace him, our identity is endangered because it is indeed impossible for us to connect, to relate to something that does not exist unless we transfer that person into an existent sphere; but death strikes the person at this point. As long as we maintain our relationship with that person, that person will be giving us with our identity. The “I” changes when the “you” changes.

So, when Christ says “I”, what does He mean? Where does He draw that consciousness of “I”? An entire discussion took place during our century – chiefly in Roman Catholic theological circles - as to whether Christ had two kinds of consciousness; a divine one and a human one. Many theologians had reached the conclusion that He had two. The problem is, that in order to have a conscience of one’s “I”, in order to be an “I”, to be your self, it is impossible without a relationship. Either I am me because I am not - for example - this table here (hence I am me when related to this table, but, if this table ceases to exist I can no longer be me), or, I am me when related to someone else. We always are what we are (as a personal identity) when related to someone else. You cannot say “me” if there is no “you.” After many centuries, philosophy in our day and age has reached that simple truth: that the “I” without the “you” is a myth; it is incomprehensible.

When Christ says “I”, where does He draw His consciousness of that “I”? He draws it inevitably from His relationship with the Father. This is why the Persona of Christ is only one, i.e., that of the Son. If He drew His relationship from Mary also – from the Holy Virgin, as a child from its mother – then we would have had two personae, and Nestorius’ position would have been valid: we would have had one human with two personae, one relationship from here, and another relationship from there – both of which would have given Him His identity. But, to be given two determining relationships for your identity is something that doesn’t eventually stand to reason, because only one of the two relationships will be the determining one.

This becomes evident in iconography also. In a Western icon of Christ and the Holy Mother, the persona of Christ is portrayed as a beautiful baby with a maternal relationship, which, however, limits the identity of the depicted baby. If we take a Byzantine icon, we will notice that the hagiographer strives to give the impression that the One held in the Holy Virgin’s embrace is God, despite the maternal relationship between them. This maternal relationship is not the baby’s determining relationship for the baby’s identity. The child seems to be stating that “yes, I may have a relationship with the mother, but My identity, my “I”, is governed by another relationship – the relationship that I have with the Father.

By what, therefore, are our personal identities judged? They are judged by how we place ourselves existentially. In other words, if the Father were to ask the Son to go on the Cross and the Holy Mother – as a mother - were to say “Don’t go, my child”, or, if the Son were to stop and consider His mother and decide that His relationship with the mother was the determinant of His identity, thus deciding He would not go on the Cross, then indeed His Persona would not be defined by His relationship with the Father, but a relationship with another persona, the Holy Mother.

This is what we do all the time, when verifying our personal identity. The one who finally determines our personal identity is the one to whom we offer our existence. The Martyrs, the Saints, all verify this fact; Why does theosis exist? Why does the Martyr acquire theosis? What does “theosis” mean? This is not Platonic mysticism. These are existential, basic things. A Martyr acquires theosis, because at that moment (of his martyrdom), he relates himself as a persona to Christ. He has put aside all other relationships. When a mother tosses her children into the lions’ mouths for them to become martyrs, what exactly happens at that moment? Her personal relationship is transposed, and consequently, that mother is judged by that specific moment. Those Martyrs had chosen the relationship with God, just as Christ had, to be the determining relationship of their identity. Thus, God saw in their personae the persona of His Son.  They had done as the Son had done, hence were acknowledged by God as sons, and they had accordingly acknowledged God as Father, and with this relationship, they had sealed their lives forever, i.e., they had attained theosis.

Christ, however, did not attain theosis by making this kind of a decision while being a human, i.e., while having previously chosen the human relationship as the definitive relationship and afterwards transposing it to His relationship with God. Because, in Christ’s case, the relationship with the Father was precedent. What Christ did, was to persist in acknowledging His relationship with the Father as being the determinant relationship, hence the reason we do not have theosis in the case of Christ; we do not have an embracing, a transposing of the existing relationship and the projection of a new persona; what we have, is simply a confirmation of the identity that had always existed.

Christ does not assume an identity from Himself, because there also exists that – par excellence demonic -- relationship, where one places his own will and his own interests as the supreme criterion of his decisions, like Adam had done when he put himself in God’s place and determined his identity from his own self. Christ does not acquire an identity from a created being, despite the fact that the created element is embodied within His identity. He subsumes all of His other relationships in His predominant relationship with the Father, and, being thus engulfed in this relationship with the Father, all of those other relationships are liberated from the restrictions that they were subject to; they are set free and are engulfed in His Body, as a part of His identity.

It is important to persist on that which the Council of Chalcedon decided; i.e., that the persona is one, and that the said persona is the Son and Logos of God. Besides, even the word “Son” is a word that implies a relationship - the filial relationship – because it is only within this relationship that mankind is fulfilled; only then can we speak of the fulfillment of mankind.

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There is a great deal in D’s view I agree with (that we are not ‘inherently’ persons in the sense that we generate our own personal existence as God does, that we derive our personal existence from God and others, that our ‘person’ (our identities) is ultimately fulfilled and realized in Christ, etc.).

But that our ‘person’ finds ultimate fulfillment only in relationship to God (a) doesn’t preclude any development of the person now, prior to theosis, and (b) doesn’t mean that my “I” when fully realized in Christ will not perceive itself as a distinct, non-divine “I.” It’s one thing to say that our relationship with God determines our fundamental identity, it’s another thing to say one of those relata (viz., God) becomes the only person or ‘identity’ in the relationship, so that my “I” is perceived by me as God. On the contrary, to say “my relationship with God becomes the defining relationship that determines my identity” precludes any such evaporation of personal distinction (i.e., perceived distinctness of identities). It demands the hypostatic nature of each of the relata (relating entities) in the relationship.

My hunch would be to say that Christ is paradigmatic in the sense that just as the Logos become a human in interpersonal, interhypostatic relationship with the Father (that is, human nature enters into the interpersonal relationship between Son and Father), so we come to stand in interpersonal relations with the Father in Christ, NOT in D’s sense that we are not non-divine hypostases participating in the Son’s relationship with the Father, but in the sense that just as human nature hypostacized in Christ relates to the Father as hypostasis to hypostasis, so we each come to relate to the Father hypostasis to hypostasis.

Love,

Tom

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 1/8/2008 5:53:20 AM (GMT-6)

Was reading an interesting article today written by a Greek Orthodox medical doctor regarding the definition of “person” and its role in medical treatment. Interesting.

He comments on Maximos’ use of 1Co 13 where Paul writes, “We now see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face,” and then comments, “Paul had in mind the spiritual and empirical elevation of man and his final arrival to the area of the uncreated divine light and the energies of God.” He suggests that the “Creator and creature shall encounter each other face to face,” where face is the person, the perceiving ‘Who’; thus "person to person." The theotic relationship is thus a “face to face” or “person to person” encounter. So the communication of divine life which fulfills human personhood, which heals our face, follows from the clarity of perception as it gazes into the divine Face.

I would say that God is Face with a capital "F" (since he generates his own hypostatic existence) while I am face with a smallcase "f" (since I derive my existence from God). Thus, the relationship is "Face to face," or inter-personal.

I like the analogy of divine-human relationship as being a “face to face” encounter. It’s not one face staring at itself in a created mirror, it's two faces.

Exactly.

St. John Chrysostom was asked how we are to confront the sick and needy “as person.” He answers, “I do not show any aversion to any person because each person is worthy of great attention as a creature of God even though he may be a simple slave. I do not consider social class, but virtue, and I do not face the master or the servant, but the human person.”

I mean, D, if these guys all believed human beings were NOT persons, non-divine persons who find their fulfillment in “face to face” encounters with the divine Person, what are they talking about? You really think you have a historical case for your reading of Chalcedon?

Gotta go.

Sorry I got back on. I was gonna drop out, but at the last minute we got a couple of days downtime dumped on us so I wanted to take advantage of the time.

Tom

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 1/8/2008 8:59:33 AM (GMT-6)

These are also good…

Archbishop Chrysostomos

Keeping in mind these general principles with regard to the source of genuine theology (empirical theology), let us examine what St. Gregory Palamas says about the person. To begin with, we must say something about the Orthodox understanding of man. Man exists both in essence and in hypostasis (and the word hypostasis is one which Palamas seems to prefer over the word person, having drawn much of his language in this regard from both St. Basil the Great and St. John of Damascus). The essence of man (bear in mind that this word derives ultimately from the verb to be, as Metropolitan Ierotheos reminds us) describes his state of being, which he shares with all others. His hypostasis (person), however, is that which distinguishes him from others…

The human person is the hypostatic manifestation of the human essence, the realization of who a human being is as an individual: being, again, common in his essence but individual in his hypostasis or person, as St. Gregory Palamas affirms. It is primarily the human person to which the therapeutic and salvific methods of Hesychasm, as the spiritual teachings of Palamas are called, are directed. The cleaning and enlightenment of the individual human mind, the purification of the human heart, and the restoration of the passions (which have been misdirected and perverted, as a result of the Fall) constitute the Hesychastic way of life. And the way of life that effects these things leads to the restoration of the individual, the human person, who freely turns from a life of sin to one of synergy with God. In short, one can say, though risking theological difficulties in overstating this point, that the restoration of the human being in Christ centers on the person, on the restoration of the person, and on the cure of the process of disease which separates the individual from the full realization of his potential in Christ.

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Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos

In the Fathers as presented by St. John of Damaskos there is no difference between individual and person. The holy Fathers identify person with individual. I think, however, that if we look at this view within the whole patristic teaching, apart from the verbal differences, we will find elements of truth. This means that we can use this distinction between individual and person when we wish to distinguish the man who is inspired by the grace of God from the other man who simply uses himself up with his material and biological needs…

The fact that we can apply the term 'person' to man as well, with the necessary explanations and distinctions which we have mentioned, is seen also in contemporary deified persons who, being partakers of the same revealing experience of the holy Fathers and having a patristic awareness, are using this term. They teach especially that it is at this point that the difference between Orthodoxy and the other confessions lies, as well as the difference between Orthodoxy and the other eastern religions.

One of them is Archimandrite Sophrony, who writes: "In the Divine Being the Hypostasis constitutes the innermost esoteric principle of Being. Similarly, in the human being the hypostasis is the most intrinsic fundamental. Persona is 'the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible... which is, in the sight of God, of great price' (1 Peter 3-4) - the most precious kernel of man's whole being, manifested in his capacity for self-knowledge and self-determination; in his possession of creative energy; in his talent for cognition not only of the created world but also of the Divine world. Consumed with love, man feels himself joined with his beloved God. Through this union he knows God, and thus love and cognition merge into a single act."

…Professor Christos Yannaras expresses the first. He gives us the definition of the person and its dimensions in philosophical-theological language. He says that self-consciousness, on the one hand, and otherness on the other, are what differentiates one person from another. These terms are used by the holy Fathers. For instance the term 'otherness' is used by St. Dionysios the Areopagite and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Yannaras writes: "We all understand that what differentiates personal existence from every other form of existence is self-consciousness and otherness. We call the awareness of our own existence 'self-consciousness', the certainty that I have that I exist, and that it is I who exist, a being with identity, an identity which differentiates me from every other being. And this differentiation is an absolute otherness, a unique, distinct, and unrepeatable character which defines my existence." But since this self-knowledge and otherness are not products of thought but of many factors which are being investigated by contemporary psychology as well, therefore the way in which the ego is formed and matures "is nothing other than the relationship, reference. It is the potential which constitutes man, the potential to be opposite someone or something, to have one's face-toward someone or something, to be a person" (pros-opon). Thus "we use the word 'person' to define a relational reality. The person is defined as a reference and relationship and it defines a reference and a relationship."

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In this article (http://www.unionwithchrist.com/human%20person.pdf) Ware also uses the 1Cor 13 passage describing the eschatological destiny of humans in “face to face” (‘prosopon’ to ‘prosopon’) terms, as a relationship of ‘person to person’.

Sounds good to me.

T