Is it that difficult though? Really?

Face to face, D. Person to person, in mutually defining exchange of life (thoughts, feelings, and desires). Interpersonal relationality.

It just can’t be that complicated.

Zizy described ‘person’ earlier as an identity grounded in personal give and take with others.

I described being a person as...

“the giving and receiving of meaning [Zizy says ‘identity’, that’s fine; it’s what I mean also—the meaning of my existence = my identity] so that the meaning of my existence (viz., the apprehension, experience, and enjoyment of my meaning) is increasingly achieved when ‘others’ share in determining that meaning and I in theirs; and finally when the fullest exchange of life brings my meaning to its fullest apprehension and expression—glorification and union with God.”

Personhood, I suggested is...

“an individual’s apprehension of her meaning through the discerning and conferring of value and beauty upon others for their own sake AND in the reception of the same from others.”

And I said that...

“a person, a 'Who', is the consummate meaning of one's apprehension of the role others play in determining one's aesthetic experience and the role one plays in determining the same for others.”

We shall see God, know God, “face to face,” prosopon to prosopon; "we shall know even as we are known" (do you see the objective distinction here?) Different faces. Different persons. I’ll perceive God and myself. My relationship with God, like Zizy says, will be the defining/determining relationship grounding my identity, yes. But that won’t mean ‘no longer perceiving myself as a self other than God’. It just means that the “I” that I perceive is seen fundamentally from the perspective of the relationship I have with God and the exchange of life that defines that relationship and shapes my identity, my person.

I honestly cannot manage to get myself inside your idea that perceiving our identities as God’s children, his offspring, has to entail either the abandonment of personal autonomy or the cessation of a perceived “I” that is other than God, a “face” that is other than the “face” into which we stare.

Face to face.

Come on now.

Tom

Post Edited (PLANIS) : 1/8/2008 3:56:49 PM (GMT-6)

I had a hard time following some of what you said. You’re journey to the mystical world is almost complete my padawan learner!

But I did notice this, which gave me pause…

D: …to the extent that my human spirit draws all of its consciousness from its "Father's Child/Father" relation and NONE from any other relationships in the created order…

Tom: I don’t see why it should be the case that others contribute nothing to our identity (though I might be misreading you). I rather think we identify from the center out (like an open set, not a closed set). Others participate in shaping us, but their contributions, their gifts of love and unique creations, are themselves perceived and defined by the center. Even the Son, whose person (whose perceived meaning and identity) is defined by his relationship to the Father, still relates to others as they themselves are and as he himself is, as Son, not as Father, and as having his life experience shaped (and perceived as shaped) by the world. So God defines us, determines our identities, yes, but we relate that identity to others and receive in turn their love and favor. This exchange is interpersonal and genuine. Our identity as determined by God doesn’t preclude our absorbing the contribution others make to our life experience.

But yes, all perceptions throughout the universe will be properly related to the source of all being, God. I’m just not sure our identity is a closed set or an open-centered set. You know me. Whatever you think it is I’ll pick the other and we’ll take off!

Tom

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 1/8/2008 4:22:58 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 1/8/2008 4:37:43 PM (GMT-6)

 

HERE is a worthwhile thing to 'quote' if you would like to say AMEN to any parts of it. Tom?

 I'm not sure to what extent the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ's two natures in one person can serve as the "paradigm" for us, other than the fact that we have been adopted -- in-grafted -- into Christ, and thus we can say that He is in us and we are in Him.  Perhaps that is what Paul means in Eph. 2:6, "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus ..."  The present (and not the future) tense of his words indicate a current reality, one which completes Paul's though in Rom. 6:1ff in which, in baptism, we are buried and raised with Christ.  The implications are stunning.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/8/2008 5:05:15 PM (GMT-6)

---------------------------------------------------------------

Post Edited ("I Am Spirit") : 1/8/2008 6:06:57 PM (GMT-6)

THIS is from Meyendorff's book that is FREE in ENTIRETY online.

http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/byzantine_theology_j_meyendorf.htm#_Toc26430268

I'm posting a larg portion just to give context to the parts I underline, etc.

In Christ, the union of the two natures is hypostatic: they "concur into one person [prosōpon] and one hypostasis," according to the Fathers of Chalcedon. The controversies which arose from the Chalcedonian formula led to further definitions of the meaning of the term hypostasis. While Chalcedon had insisted that Christ was indeed one in His personal identity, it did not clearly specify that the term hypostasis, used to designate this identity, also designated the hypostasis of the pre-existing Logos. The anti-Chalcedonian opposition in the East built thus its entire argument around this point that Byzantine Christology of the age of Justinian committed itself very strongly to excluding that interpretation of Chalcedon, which would have considered the "prosōpon, or hypostasis," mentioned in the definition as simply the "prosōpon of union" of the old Antiochian School— i.e., the new synthetic reality resulting from the union of the two natures. It affirmed, on the contrary, following Cyril of Alexandria, that Christ’s unique hypostasis is the pre-existing hypostasis of the Logos; that is, in the term used in Christology with exactly the same meaning as in the Trinitarian theology of the Cappadocian Fathers, one of the three eternal hypostases of the Trinity "took flesh" while remaining essentially the same in its divinity. The hypostasis of Christ therefore pre-existed in its divinity, but it acquired humanity by the Virgin Mary.

This fundamental position has two important implications:

(a) There is no absolute symmetry between divinity and humanity in Christ because the unique hypostasis is only divine and because the human will follows the divine. It was precisely a "symmetrical" Christology, which was rejected as Nestorian in Ephesus (431). This "asymmetry" of Orthodox Christology reflects an idea which Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria stressed so strongly: only God can save while humanity can only cooperate with the saving acts and will of God. However, as we have emphasized earlier, in the patristic concept of man, "theocentricity" is a natural character of humanity; thus asymmetry does not prevent the fact that Christ is fully and "actively" man.

(b) The human nature of Christ is not personalized into a separate human hypostasis, which means that the concept of hypostasis is not an expression of natural existence, either in God or in man, but it designates personal existence. Post-Chalcedonian Christology postulates that Christ is fully man and also that He is a human individual, but it rejects the Nestorian view that He is a human hypostasis, or person. A fully human individual life was en-hypostasized in the hypostasis of the Logos without losing any of its human characteristics. The theory associated with the name of Apollinaris of Laodicea and according to which the Logos in Jesus had taken the place of the human soul is systematically rejected by Byzantine theologians since it implied that the humanity of Christ was not complete. Cyril’s celebrated formula — wrongly attributed to Athanasius and, in fact, uttered by Apollinaris — "one nature incarnate of God the Word" was accepted only in a Chalcedonian context. Divine nature and human nature could never merge, be confused, or become complementary to each other; but in Christ, they were united in the single, divine hypostasis of the Logos: the divine model matched the human image.

The fact that the notion of hypostasis is irreducible to the concepts of "particular nature," or to the notion of "individuality," is crucially important not only in Christology but also in Trinitarian theology. Hypostasis is the personal "acting" source of natural life; but it is not "nature," or life itself. In the hypostasis, the two natures of Christ accomplish a union without confusion. They retain their natural characteristics; but because they share a common hypostatic life, there is a "communication of idioms," or perichoresis, which, for example, enables some of Christ’s human actions — words or gestures — to carry consequences which only God could have provoked. The clay made out of His spittle, for example, restores sight to the blind man.

Christ is one [writes John of Damascus]. Therefore, the glory which naturally comes from the divinity has become common [to both natures] thanks to the identity of hypostasis; and through the flesh, humility has also become common [to both natures]... , [but] it is the divinity which communicates its privileges to the body remaining itself outside the passions of the flesh.7

The hypostatic union implies also that the Logos made humanity His own in its totality; thus the Second Person of the Trinity was indeed the subject, or agent, of the human experiences, or acts, of Jesus. The controversy between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius concerning the term Theotokos applied to the Virgin Mary concerned essentially this very problem. Was there, in Jesus, a human person whose mother could have been Mary? Cyril’s answer — emphatically negative — was, in fact, a Christological option of great importance. In Christ, there was only one Son, the Son of God, and Mary could not have been the Mother of anyone else. She was therefore, indeed, the "Mother of God." Exactly the same problem arose in connection with the death of Christ: impassibility and immortality were indeed characteristics of the divine nature. How then, asked the theologians of Antioch, could the Son of God die? Obviously, the "subject" of Christ’s death was only His humanity. Against this point of view and following Cyril, the Fifth Council (553) affirms: "If anyone does not confess that our Lord Jesus Christ who is crucified in the flesh is true God and the Lord of Glory and one of the Holy Trinity, let him be anathema."⁸ This conciliar text, which paraphrases 1 Corinthians 2:8 ("If they had understood, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory"), inspired the hymn "The Only-begotten Son" attributed to Emperor Justinian and sung at every Byzantine Eucharistic liturgy: "One of the Holy Trinity, you were crucified for us."

"Theopaschism" — the acceptance of formulae which affirm that the "Son of God died in the flesh" — illustrates how distinct the concepts of "hypostasis" and "nature" or "essence" really are. The distinction is stressed by one of the main Chalcedonian theologians of the age of Justinian, Leontius of Jerusalem: "The Logos," writes Leontius, "is said to have suffered according to the hypostasis, for within His hypostasis He assumed a passible [human] essence besides His own impassible essence, and what can be asserted of the [human] essence can be asserted of the hypostasis."⁹ What this implies is that the characteristics of the divine essence — impassibility, immutability, etc. — are not absolutely binding upon the personal, or hypostatic, existence of God. Later we shall see the importance of this fact for the patristic and Byzantine understanding of God. Meanwhile on the level of soteriology, the affirmation that the Son of God indeed "died in the flesh" reflected — better than any other Christological formula — the boundlessness of God’s love for man, the reality of the "appropriation" by the Logos of fallen and mortal humanity — i.e., the very mystery of salvation.

An often-recurring criticism of Byzantine Christology, as it was defined by the Fifth Council, was that it, in fact, had betrayed Chalcedon by assuring the posthumous triumph of the one-sided views of Alexandrian Christology. Assumed by the divine hypostasis of the Logos the humanity of Christ, according to these critics, would have been deprived of an authentically human character. "In Alexandrian Christology," writes Marcel Richard, "there will never be any place for a true psychology of Christ, for a real cult of the Saviour’s humanity even if the assumption by the Word of a human soul will be expressively recognized."¹⁰ And Charles Moeller also maintains: "The tendency of the East to see Christ more and more as God (a tendency which is so marked in its liturgy) betrays a certain exclusivism which increases after the schism."¹¹ This "neo-Chalcedonism" of the Byzantines is thus opposed to true Chalcedonian Christology and branded as a crypto-Monophysitism; it consists essentially in an understanding of the hypostatic union which would so modify the human properties of Jesus that He would no longer be fully man.¹²

It is undoubtedly true that Byzantine theology and spirituality are very conscious of the uniqueness of the personality of Jesus and are reluctant to investigate His human "psychology." A balanced judgment on this subject however can be attained only if one keeps in mind not only the doctrine of the hypostatic union but also the prevailing Eastern view of what "natural" man is; for in Jesus, the new Adam, "natural" humanity has been restored. As we saw, "natural" man was considered as participating in the glory of God. Such a man undoubtedly would no longer be fully subject to the laws of "fallen" psychology. These laws however were not simply denied in Jesus but seen in the light of soteriology.

The full dimension of the problem was never directly discussed by Byzantine theologians, but there are indications which can help us to understand their position: (a) their interpretation of such passages as Luke 2:52 ("He progressed in age and wisdom"), (b) their attitude toward the heresy of Aphthartodocetism, and (c) the stand of the Orthodox defenders of the images against the iconoclasts.

(a) The idea of "progress in wisdom" implies a degree of ignorance in Jesus, which is confirmed by other well-known passages of the Gospels (Mk 13:32, for example). Byzantine thought on this subject may often have been confused by the Evagrian idea that "essential knowledge" is the very characteristic of humanity before the Fall. Evagrius also thought that Jesus was precisely a created "intellect" which had preserved this original "knowledge." The search for gnosis was indeed conceived, in the Evagrian spiritual tradition, which remained alive in the Christian East as the very content of spiritual life. This may have contributed to the fact that a majority of Byzantine authors deny any "ignorance" in Jesus Himself. John of Damascus, for example, can write:

One must know that the Word assumed the ignorant and subjected nature; [but] thanks to the identity of the hypostasis and the indissoluble union, the Lord’s soul was enriched with the knowledge of things to come and other divine signs; similarly, the flesh of human beings is not by nature life-giving while the Lord’s flesh without ceasing to be mortal by nature becomes life-giving, thanks to its hypostatic union with the Word.¹³

This text certainly represents a clear case of a representative Byzantine author’s affirming that the hypostatic union — in virtue of the "communication of idioms" — modifies the character of human nature. But this modification is clearly seen in the framework of a dynamic and soteriological Christology; the humanity of Christ is "paschal" in the sense that in it man passes from death to life, from ignorance to knowledge, and from sin to righteousness. However, in many less-justifiable cases, the ignorance of Jesus, as the Gospel texts describe, is simply interpreted as a pedagogical device or "appearance" on the part of Christ to show His "condescension." This obviously unsatisfactory solution is rejected by other authors who affirm Christ’s real, human ignorance. "Most Fathers admitted," writes the anonymous author of the De sectis, "that Christ was ignorant of certain things; since He is in all things consubstantial with us and since we ourselves are ignorant of certain things, it is clear that Christ also suffered ignorance. Scripture says about Christ: ‘He progressed in age and wisdom’ [Lk 2:52]; this means that ‘He was learning what He did not previously know."¹⁴ Obviously, Byzantine theologians are authentically concerned about recognizing in Christ our fallen humanity, but their minds are less clear about the moment when in Jesus this humanity becomes the transfigured, perfect, and "natural" humanity of the New Man.

(b) The heresy of the Aphthartodocetae whose leader was the sixth-century theologian Julian of Halicarnassus conceived Christ’s humanity as incorruptible, and they were accused of a docetic understanding of the Incarnation. As R. Draguet has shown, the issue is not so much the connection between hypostatic union and corruptibility but the very nature of man. Was man naturally corruptible (as he is naturally ignorant), or did corruptibility come with sin? The Aphthartodocetae denied that man by nature was corruptible. Since Christ is the New Adam and the truly "natural" man, His humanity is indeed incorruptible. In rejecting Aphthartodocetism, the Orthodox affirmed: (1) the inheritance of mortality from Adam was not an inheritance of guilt, and (2) the Logos voluntarily assumed not an abstract ideal manhood but our fallen humanity with all the consequences of sin including corruptibility. Opposition to Aphthartodocetism certainly contributed to preserving a clearer notion of Christ’s real and full human nature.

 

I want this by the other (above) from Meyendorff's "Byzantine Theology."

 Redemption and Deification.

The Chalcedonian definition proclaims that Christ is consubstantial not only with His Father but also "with us." Though fully man, Christ does not possess a human hypostasis, for the hypostasis of His two natures is the divine hypostasis of the Logos. Each human individual fully "consubstantial" with his fellow men is nonetheless radically distinct from them in his unique, unrepeatable, and inassimilable personality or hypostasis: no man can fully be in another man. But Jesus’ hypostasis has a fundamental affinity with all human personalities: that of being their model, for indeed all men are created according to the image of God, i.e., according to the image of the Logos. When the Logos became incarnate, the divine stamp matched all its imprints: God assumed humanity in a way which did not exclude any human hypostasis, but which opened to all of them the possibility of restoring their unity in Him. He becomes, indeed, the "new Adam" in whom every man finds his own nature realized perfectly and fully, without the limitations which would have been inevitable if Jesus is only a human personality.

This was a concept of Christ which Maximus the Confessor had in mind when he re-emphasized the old Pauline image of "recapitulation" in reference to the incarnate Logos²¹ and saw in Him the victory over the disintegrating separations in humanity. As man, Christ "accomplishes in all truth the true human destiny that He Himself has predetermined as God and from which man had turned: He unites man to God."²² Thus, Chalcedonian and post-Chalcedonian Christology would be meaningless speculation where it is not oriented toward the notion of redemption. "The whole history of Christological dogma was determined by this basic idea: the Incarnation of the Word, as Salvation."²³

Byzantine theology did not produce any significant elaboration of the Pauline doctrine of justification expressed in Romans and Galatians. The Greek patristic commentaries on such passages as Galatians 3:13 ("Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us") generally interpret the idea of redemption by substitution in the wider context of victory over death and of sanctification. They never develop the idea in the direction of an Anselmian theory of "satisfaction." The voluntary assumption of human mortality by the Logos was an act of God’s "condescension" by which He united to Himself the whole of humanity; for, as Gregory of Nazianzus wrote, "what is not assumed is not healed, and what is united to God is saved;"²⁴ therefore, "we needed a God made flesh and were put to death in order that we could live again."²⁵

The death of "One of the Holy Trinity in the flesh" was a voluntary act, a voluntary assumption by God of the entire dimension of human tragedy. "There is nothing in Him by compulsion or necessity; everything was free: willingly He was hungry, willingly thirsty, willingly He was frightened, and willingly He died."²⁶ But — and this was the essential difference between the Orthodox and the Aphthartodocetae — this divine freedom of the hypostasis of the Logos did not limit the reality of His human condition: the Lord assumed a mortal humanity at the very moment of the Incarnation, at which time the free divine decision to die had already been made. "He takes a body, a body which is not different from ours," writes Athanasius; "He takes from us a nature similar to ours; and since we all are subject to corruption and death, He delivers His body to death for us."²⁷

The idea that the cross was the purpose of the Incarnation itself was vividly suggested by the Byzantine liturgical texts of the Nativity. The hymnology of the pre-feast (December 20 to 24) is structured according to that of Holy Week, and the humility of Bethlehem is viewed as leading toward Golgotha: "The kings, first fruits of the Gentiles, bring Thee gifts... By myrrh they point to Thy death..." "Born now in the flesh, Thou shalt in the flesh undergo burial and death, and Thou shalt rise again on the third day."²⁸

The question whether the Incarnation would have taken place, had there not been a Fall, never stood at the centre of attention in Byzantium: Byzantine theologians envisaged rather the concrete fact of human mortality: a cosmic tragedy in which God through the Incarnation undertook to become personally — rather, hypostatically — involved. The major and apparently the only exception to this general view is given by Maximus the Confessor for whom the Incarnation and "recapitulation" of all things in Christ is the true "goal" and "aim" of creation; the Incarnation therefore was foreseen and foreordained independently of man’s tragic misuse of his own freedom.²⁹ This view fits in exactly with Maximus’ idea of created "nature" as a dynamic process oriented toward an eschatological goal — Christ the incarnate Logos. As creator, the Logos stands as the "beginning" of creation; and as incarnate, He is also its "end" when all things are going to exist not only "through Him" but "in Him." In order to be "in Christ," creation had to be assumed by God, made "His own;" the Incarnation therefore is a precondition of the final glorification of man independent of man’s sinfulness and corruption.

Given the fallen state of man, the redemptive death of Christ makes this final restoration possible. But the death of Christ is truly redemptive and "life-giving" precisely because it is the death of the Son of God in the flesh (i.e., in virtue of the hypostatic union). In the East, the cross is not envisaged so much as the punishment of the just one, which "satisfies" a transcendent Justice requiring a retribution for man’s sins. As Georges Florovsky rightly puts it, "the death of the Cross was effective not as a death of an Innocent One but as the death of the Incarnate Lord."³⁰ The point was not to satisfy a legal requirement but to vanquish the frightful cosmic reality of death, which held humanity under its usurped control and pushed it into the vicious circle of sin and corruption. And, as Athanasius of Alexandria has shown in his polemics against Arianism, God alone is able to vanquish death because He "alone has immortality" (1 Tm 6:16). Just as original sin did not consist in an inherited guilt, so redemption was not primarily a justification but a victory over death. Byzantine liturgy, following Gregory of Nyssa, uses the image of the devil swallowing a hook hidden by the body of Emmanuel; the same idea is found in a pseudo-Chrysostomic sermon read during the liturgy of the paschal night: "Hell received a body and encountered God; it received mortal dust and met Heaven face to face."

Summarizing this patristic concept of death and resurrection, in the light of the Christological statements of the fifth and sixth centuries, John of Damascus writes,

Although Christ died as man, and His holy soul was separated from His most pure body, His divinity remained with both the soul and the body and continued inseparable from either. Thus, the one hypostasis was not divided into two hypostases, for from the beginning both body and soul existed in the hypostasis of the Word. Although at the hour of death body and soul were separated from each other, yet each of them was preserved having the one hypostasis of the Word. Therefore, the one hypostasis of the Word was an hypostasis as of the Word; so also of the body and of the soul, for neither the body nor the soul ever had any proper hypostasis other than that of the Word. The hypostasis, then, of the Word is ever one, and there were never two hypostases of the Word. Accordingly, the hypostasis of Christ is ever one. And though the soul is separated from the body in space, yet they remain hypostatically united through the Word.³¹

The triduum of Easter — the three days when Christ’s humanity suffered the common fate of man, yet remained mysteriously en-hypostasized in the one divine hypostasis of the Logos — was graphically expressed in the traditional Byzantine iconography of the Resurrection: Christ trampling down the gates of Sheol and lifting Adam and Eve back to life. Better than any conceptual language and better also than the image of any particular event or aspect of the mystery — such as the empty tomb or even the crucifixion itself — this icon points to the dynamic, soteriological dimension of Christ’s death: God’s intrusion into the domain usurped by the devil and the breaking up of his control over humanity. The same mystery of hypostatic unity which remained unbroken in death itself is expressed in the Byzantine liturgy of Holy Week; on Good Friday, at vespers, at the very moment when Christ gives up the spirit, the first hymns of the Resurrection are beginning to resound: "Myrrh is fitting for the dead, but Christ has shown Himself free from corruption." The hidden yet decisive triumph over death permeates the liturgical celebration of Holy Saturday: "Though the temple of Thy body was destroyed in the hour of the passion, yet even then one was the hypostasis of Thy Divinity and Thy flesh."³² One could discover in these texts the ultimate, soteriological reason why Cyril’s theopaschite formula becomes a criterion of orthodoxy in sixth-century Byzantine theology: death was vanquished precisely because God Himself had tasted of it hypostatically in the humanity which He had assumed. This is the paschal message of Christianity.

In connection with our discussion of the Greek patristic view of original sin as inherited mortality, we mentioned the concomitant understanding of the Resurrection as the foundation of Christian ethics and spirituality, for the Resurrection of Christ means indeed that death has ceased to be the controlling element of man’s existence, and man therefore is also free from slavery to sin. Death certainly remains as a physical phenomenon, but it does not dominate man as an unavoidable and ultimate fate: "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Co 15:22). And Athanasius writes, "Henceforth, we are dissolved for a time only, according to our bodies’ mortal nature in order the better to receive resurrection; like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish but sown in the earth; we shall rise again since death has been brought to nought by the grace of the Saviour."³³ And Chrysostom: "It is true we still die as before, but we do not remain in death; and this is not to die. The power and the very reality of death are just that a dead man has no possibility of returning to life. But if after death, he is to be quickened and moreover to be given a better life, then this is no longer death but a falling asleep."³⁴ Since death has ceased to be the only possible end of existence, man is free from fear and sin based on the instinct of self-preservation is no longer unavoidable. The vicious circle has been broken on Easter Sunday and is broken each time "the death of Christ is announced and His resurrection is confessed."

But what does "being in Christ" mean concretely? The last quotation — from the Byzantine Eucharistic canon of St. Basil — suggests the answer: through baptism, chrismation, and the Eucharist, man freely becomes a member of the risen Body of Christ.

This element of freedom — and even of "consciousness" — is essential to the doctrine of salvation as understood by the Byzantine patristic, sacramental, and liturgical tradition. On the one hand, there are emphatic affirmations of the universality of redemption. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, assures us that

As the principle of death took its rise in one person and passed on in succession through the whole of the human nature, so the principle of the Resurrection extends from one person to the whole of humanity... This is the mystery of God’s plan with regard to His death and His resurrection from the dead.³⁵

And his thoughts on the universality of redemption and "recapitulation" are echoed by Maximus the Confessor. On the other hand, the new life in Christ implies personal and free commitment. On the last day, the Resurrection will indeed be universal, but blessedness will be given only to those who longed for it. Nicholas Cabasilas tells us that baptismal "resurrection of nature" is a free gift from God given even to children who do not express consent; but "the Kingdom, the contemplation of God, and common life with Christ belong to free will." ³⁶

Byzantine theologians seldom devote much explicit attention to speculation about the exact fate of souls after death. The fact that the Logos assumed human nature as such implied the universal validity of redemption but not the apokatastasis or universal salvation, a doctrine which in 553 was formally condemned as Origenistic. Freedom must remain an inalienable element of every man, and no one is to be forced into the Kingdom of God against his own free choice; the apotytastasis had to be rejected precisely because it presupposed an ultimate limitation of human freedom — the freedom to remain outside of God.

But by rejecting God, human freedom, in fact, destroys itself. Outside of God, man ceases to be authentically and fully human. He is enslaved to the devil through death. This idea, which is central to Maximian thought and which makes him profess so strongly the existence of a human created will in Christ, serves as the basis of the Byzantine understanding of the destiny of man: participation in God, or "deification" (theōsis) as the goal of human existence.

En-hypostasized in the Logos, Christ’s humanity, in virtue of the "communication of idioms," is penetrated with divine "energy." It is therefore a deified humanity, which however does not in any way lose its human characteristics. It is quite to the contrary. These characteristics become even more real and authentic by contact with the divine model according to which they were created. In this deified humanity of Christ’s, man is called to participate, and to share in its deification. This is the meaning of sacramental life and the basis of Christian spirituality. The Christian is called not to an "imitation" of Jesus — a purely extrinsic and moral act — but, as Nicholas Cabasilas puts it, to "life in Christ" through baptism, chrismation, and the Eucharist.

Deification is described by Maximus as a participation of the "whole man" in the "whole God":

In the same way in which the soul and the body are united, God should become accessible for participation by the soul and through the soul’s intermediary by the body in order that the soul might receive an unchanging character and the body immortality; and finally that the whole man should become God deified by the grace of God-become-man becoming whole man — soul and body — by nature and becoming whole God — soul and body — by grace.³⁷

"Thus, for Maximus the doctrinal basis of man’s deification is clearly to be found in hypostatic unity between the divine and the human nature in Christ."³⁸ The man Jesus is God hypostatically; and, therefore, in Him, there is a "communication" (perichōrēsis — circumincessio) of the "energies" divine and human. This "communication" also reaches those who are "in Christ." But they, of course, are human hypostases and united to God not hypostatically but only "by grace" or "by energy." "A man who becomes obedient to God in all things hears God saying: ‘I said: you are gods’ [Jn 10:34]; he then is God and is called ‘God’ not by nature or by relation but by [divine] decree and grace." ³⁹ It is not through his own activity or "energy" that man can be deified — this would be Pelagianism — but by divine "energy" to which his human activity is "obedient;" between the two, there is a "synergy" of which the relation of the two energies in Christ is the ontological basis. But there is no confusion of natures just as there cannot be any participation in divine essence by man. This is the theology of deification which we can also find in Gregory Palamas: "God in His completeness deifies those who are worthy of this by uniting Himself with them, neither hypostatically — that belonged to Christ alone — nor essentially but through a small part of the uncreated energies and the uncreated divinity... while yet being entirely present in each."⁴⁰ Actually, the Byzantine Council of 1351, which confirmed the theology of Palamas, defined it as a "development" of the decrees of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680) on the two wills or "energies" of Christ.⁴¹ In "deification," man achieves the supreme goal for which he is created. This goal, already realized in Christ by a unilateral action of God’s love, represents both the meaning of human history and a judgment over man. It is open to man’s response and free effort.

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 1/8/2008 6:46:05 PM (GMT-6)

Boy... Meyendorff surely is clear, lucid, and secinct.

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/8/2008 8:13:28 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/8/2008 8:15:16 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Imago Dei) : 1/8/2008 10:52:39 PM (GMT-6)

I'm not budging. I am a Rock.

First...

Violin? Are you in here? OK then (rapping beat in background), "Yo yo yo yo, come ON come ON come ON. VioLIN is in da house. Vegas is in da house. Yo gotta woman sheez in da house..."

Have you been here all along? Oh puulleeeease agree with me. POW flip flops (love ya POW), sometimes with me, sometimes with D. He might as well be John Kerrey or Mit Romney. And others who already agree with me aren't here because they're out living the interpersonal dream. Got no time to tawk 'bout it! Will you join my side here Vi?

OK, so…

I don’t see anything in Meyendorff that contradicts my core convictions. There is this in Meyendorff that I liked:

The man Jesus is God hypostatically; and, therefore, in Him, there is a “communication” (perichōrēsis — circumincessio) of the “energies” divine and human. This “communication” also reaches those who are “in Christ.” But they, of course, are human hypostases and united to God not hypostatically but only “by grace” or “by energy.”

The underlined portion can ONLY mean that our unity with God in Christ is not a unity that obtains in one, or as one, hypostasis. But if we are not one with God by being “one hypostasis” with God, it can only be the case that we are, “of course,” as M says, “human hypostases united to God ‘by energies’.”

Perfect.

And note the bit by Palamas:

This is the theology of deification which we can also find in Gregory Palamas: “God in His completeness deifies those who are worthy of this by uniting Himself with them, neither hypostatically — that belonged to Christ alone [Oh my stars and garters! Do you ya'll see this? I'm on the floor laughing here!] — nor essentially but through a small part of the uncreated energies and the uncreated divinity... while yet being entirely present in each.”

See that "neither hypostatically nor essentially"?

Ya'll, this thread is OVA. Let's wrap it up and start something new. I got sum'in else I wanna talk about, yo.

Meyendorff’s “not hypostatically” and here Palamas’ “neither hypostatically nor essentially” say the same thing, that being one with God hypostatically (i.e., having the divine identity or self-perception as the identity of the human nature) occurs “only in Christ” (wherein lies Christ’s sui generis [speaking other languages makes me more right, right Vi?]).

Exactly. Read 'em and weep baby.

Two more things. D responded to this:

“A man who becomes obedient to God in all things hears God saying: ‘I said: you are gods’ [Jn 10:34]; he then is God and is called ‘God’ not by nature or by relation but by [divine] decree and grace.”

D has always liked this passage. The GO make a lot of it too. I think it’s a mistake to try to wrench metaphysics from it, but whatever. In the end I don’t mind saying we are ‘gods’ with a small ‘g’ IF (if if if) it’s qualified by one half hour of explanation before AND after one says it. You guys know how this gets misunderstood by those who aren’t saturated in it. Heck, D and I don’t even agree on what it means. He thinks it means we and God share a single “identity” (our hypostatic existence, i.e., our personal identity, is God’s identity; it’s only a little ‘g’ for D because we are ‘contingent’ expressions of God’s identity). But being little ‘gods’ in my view means we DO the same things that God DOES (freely create beauty through interpersonal relationships).

But this all gets so misunderstood by others, so I don’t think it’s wise to say it. Who was it? Some GO Father regretted calling this process “theosis” for this very reason. Just call it salvation and describe it as getting your identity from the relation with God. That’ll do.

Secondly, D responded (with Zizy) to my questioning whether or not others contribute to our identity in heaven. I understand Zizy’s point. I don’t dispute it. We derive our identity from the relationship we have with God. And there’s an exclusivity to this. Fine. But (a) contrary to D, the relationship from which we solely derive our identity is the interpersonal relationship with God (Face to face, Prosopon to prosopon, Person to person), and that’s my main beef anyhow, and (b) what I was trying to describe (and I’ll always insist on it) is that we continue to relate to others as other hypostases in ‘face to face’ relationship with God but whose unique identities are perceived and engaged and enjoyed by us. So when D says “we get our identities only from God” he means we get God’s identity (remember, for Zizy and me, “identity equals person”), that is, we “identify ourselves as God” which can’t be the case. Zizy, Meyendorff, and Palamas all say our unity with God (deificiation) is not hypostatic. Palamas is explicit, saying THAT kind of unity “only occurs in Christ.”

That means there’s a sense in which OUR union with God is different than Christ’s, i.e., it’s not a union that results in one identity, one hypostasis (as it did in Christ), for that would mean “one hypostasis or person”) personifying throughout us all (which is what D wants but cannot get from Palamas or Meyendorff or Zizy or Florovsky or Nesteruk; whose he get it from? I don’t know). Yes, we GET our identities from God, but as the GO homilies say, “Paul remains Paul, Peter remains Peter, John remains John.” Surely this personal distinction, this difference of identies, is perceived and enjoyed by all. So it’s “a diversity of individual identities (or persons)” who all derive their personhood, their personal existence, from God in Christ through the Spirit dancing the divine dance. We all derive this in the same way, by “relating interpersonally” with God, and there’s a common (ecclesial, yes, thank you!) identity too; we are all “sons of God,” all God’s offspring, all members of Christ’s body; but after all, my brother and I are different persons, have different identities, though we both share the same Father, so there’s SOME shared identity between us.

D, what about your answer to my question there (on history)?

T

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 1/9/2008 3:55:47 AM (GMT-6)

That’s as close as I can get to D.

T

Post Edited (HumanHypostasis) : 1/9/2008 4:42:36 AM (GMT-6)

One last passing remark...

Meyendorff on Leontius of Jerusalem:

Leontius writes: “Christ does not possess a human hypostasis which, like ours, is particularized and distinct in relationship to all beings of the same species or of different species, but the Word's hypostasis, which is common to and inseparable from both his [human] nature and the [divine] nature which is greater than [his humanity].”

See those words? “…does not possess a human hypostasis which like ours is….” He’s denying in the case of Christ what he affirms in the case of all other human beings—a non-divine hypostasis or “personal identity subjectively experienced” which is not identical to the divine hypostasis or “personal identity of God.”

Yep.

T