Nestorius

Nestorius (c. 386–c. 451) was a pupil of Theodore of Mopsuestia in Antioch in Syria (modern Turkey) and later became Archbishop of Constantinople. He taught that the human and divine aspects of Christ were distinct natures, not unified. He preached against the use of the title Mother of God (Theotokos) for the Virgin Mary and would only call her Mother of Christ (Christotokos).

 He also argued that God could not suffer on the cross, as he is omnipotent. Therefore, the human part of Christ died on the cross, but not the divine.

In Christ, human nature is united with the hypostasis of the Logos and while remaining fully itself is liberated from sin, the source of which is the gnomic will. Because it is "en-hypostasized" in Logos Himself, Christ’s humanity is perfect humanity. In the mysterious process, which started with His conception in the Virgin’s womb, Jesus passed through natural growth, ignorance, suffering, and even death — all of experiences of the fallen humanity, which He had come to save, and He fulfilled through the resurrection the ultimate human destiny. Christ could thus be truly the saviour of humanity because in Him there could never be any contradiction between natural will and gnomic will. Through the hypostatic union, His human will, precisely because it always conforms itself to the divine, also performs the "natural movement" of human nature.

The doctrine of "deification" in Maximus is based upon the fundamental patristic presupposition that communion with God does not diminish or destroy humanity but makes it fully human. In Christ the hypostatic union the communication of idioms (perichõresis tõn idiõmatõn). The characteristics of divinity and humanity express themselves "in communion with each other" (Chalcedonian definition), and human actions, "energies," have God Himself as their personal agent. Therefore, it can be said that "God was born," that Mary is the Theotokos, and that the "Logos was crucified" while birth and death remain purely human realities. But it can and must also be said that a man rose from the dead and sits at the right hand of the Father having acquired characteristics, which "naturally" belong to God alone: immortality and glory. Through Christ’s humanity deified according to its hypostatic union with the Logos, all members of the Body of Christ have access to "deification" by grace through the operation of the Spirit in Christ’s Church.

The essential elements of Maximian Christology provided the permanent terminological and philosophical framework for Byzantine thought and spirituality. They were adopted with the Trinitarian doctrine of the great Cappadocian Fathers together in the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith of John of Damascus (first half of the eighth century), which served as a standard doctrinal textbook in Byzantium. They also provided the most authoritative frame of reference in most of the doctrinal controversies, which arose in the East during the Middle Ages.

Why do you think I talk so much about the THEOTOKOS?

I'm NOT Nestorian. 

Heh.

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Whoever knows and recognizes how near God’s Kingdom is to him may say with Jacob, “God is in this place, and I knew it not.”
Meister Eckhart, "The Nearness of the Kingdom"

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the Kingdom of God is within you.

 

Post Edited ("I am-in-I Am") : 3/7/2008 8:11:12 PM (GMT-6)

OK, Nestorius. Forgetting all the biometrics, let’s just get to the stuff of heresy.

Essentailly, D, you haven’t answered my question. But I think see my answer in what was posted.

D: He taught that the human and divine aspects of Christ were distinct natures, not unified. He preached against the use of the title Mother of God (Theotokos) for the Virgin Mary and would only call her Mother of Christ (Christotokos). He also argued that God could not suffer on the cross, as he is omnipotent. Therefore, the human part of Christ died on the cross, but not the divine. His opponents accused him of dividing Christ into two persons: they claimed that proposing that God the Word did not suffer and die on the cross, while Jesus the man did, or that God the Word was omniscient, while Jesus the man had limited knowledge, implied two separate persons with separate experiences.

Tom: You gotta be kidding me, right? They condemned a man for this? For not saying Mary was the “Theotokos”? And for saying God did not suffer and die on the cross? I can see enough room in acceptable theology for why somebody would not want to say these things. What a lynch mob.

At Ty’s house you and I sat shaking our heads at Ty (and Luther) for saying “God (the Son) died” because our view of aseity precluded God’s dying. Now what? I wanna get back to this later.

Nobody’s out there condemning Calvin or Augustine? Surely the determinism that found a beachhead in Augustine from which to infect the faith of millions, and which essentially gets Canonized with Calvin was more injurious than any of those errors attributed to Nestorius. Like we're every consistent in our condemnation. Sure.

D: Nestorius responded that he believed that Christ was indeed one person (Greek: prosopon).

Tom: And they condemned him in spite of this? Sheesh.

D: The Council held that Christ is one person, and that the Virgin Mary is the mother of God. The condemning pronouncement of the Council resulted in the Nestorian schism and the separation of the Assyrian Church of the East from the Byzantine Church.

Tom: Good for the Assyrians.

D: Hypostasis is the personal "acting" source of natural life; but it is not "nature," or life itself.

Tom: And in the case of human beings, say, you and me, you deny any acting source to our natural life? That is, we're not 'person'.

D: In the hypostasis, the two natures of Christ accomplish a union without confusion.

It sounds to me as if Nestorius was perfectly Orthodox in agreeing on the human ‘stuff’ of Christ. He didn’t posit a human ‘something’ which he shouldn’t have. It seems that his disagreement was on the communication of idiomatum, on the relation between the divine and the human in Christ. That was all.

D: 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?

Tom: Oh brother. These guys had too much time on their hands.

D: 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.

Tom: Or she was no one’s mother.

D: She was therefore, indeed, the "Mother of God."

Tom: I’d never say it. For me to be a “mother” (or “father”) of some “person” means to be the person whose creative act marks the coming into being of a person. And there is never any coming into being of a person. And there’s no creative reproductive act that Mary contributes to the hypostatic union. I’m not saying this act can’t obtain through cloning in a laboratory. But all cloning is is reproduced effects of the union of male and female. This union (in whatever form it’s mediated, through normal vaginal conception, cloning, or whatever) is a necessary cause of the coming into being of a new person. I commented on your objections to Ware months ago. I asked you what YOU thought a ‘human person’ was, and you offered me Ware’s comments about being born of two parents, as if you thought this constituted human personhood. I disagreed (as you did), but not with WHAT you disagreed with. I don’t disagree that such union produces human persons. I only disagreed that this union itself WAS the human person. I asked you what a ‘human person’ is. You didn’t answer. But I know the answer. There is no such thing as ‘human personhood’.

This is why I asked about Nestorius. If he’s condemned for separating Christ into a human and a divine person, AND if everybody knew that there is no such thing as ‘human persons’ or ‘human personhood’, then it would have been a simple thing indeed for the council to instruct Nestorius by saying, “Silly Nestorius, there are no such things are ‘human persons’. Where did you get that idea?” At the very least we’d find SOMETHING along these lines in the proceedings. But we don’t. That suggests that Nestorius’ supposed division of Christ into a divine and human person was a division into two categories which everybody know DID exist per se but which nobody wanted to grant IN CHRIST’S CASE. And so, in saying Christ was had a “human nature” not a “human person” they were DENYING Christ what they in fact AFFIRMED in the case of everybody else.

D: 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?

Tom: Ok, let me try something here, D. It’s just more heresy. But so what.

I don’t think hypostases (divine or human) die. They experience the death of their material mode of existing, sure (physical death). But they don’t (and cannot) experience hypostatic death, the death of their ‘persons’. Not even human persons. God wills their continued existence. So essentially ‘subjects’ (that is, persons) don’t die (or cease to exist). They shed their physical modes of existing, and they as subjects experience the death of their bodies, but ‘they’ as subjects, do not die. In THIS sense I can say God the Son, the PERSON of the Son, the divine hypostatsis, experienced death. He experienced birth too, BUT not hypostatic coming into being per se. So I won’t say Mary is the “mother,” viz., the agent responsible for the creative act who brings a divine person into being. There is no such coming into hypostatic being for the Son.

But never mind that. Here’s what I want to wonder about.

The Orthodox view of the Trinity makes “hypostasis” a irreducible ontological category. And we all like that because it encourages a “relational ontology.” F, S, and SP don’t spring from some more fundamental ‘stuff’ of divinity. It’s the PERSON, the hypostasis, that is fundamental. And hypostasis is a RELATIONAL reality. It obtains only “in relation to” other hypostases or persons. THIS IS THE ESSENCE OF GOD—the hypostatic realtions. The ousia of God just is hypostatic interrelatedness. This is what I’ve always understood the Greek contribution to be, and I like it. The Trinity gives us a “relational ontology,” and ontology of persons, so that persons-in-relation IS the divine ‘ousia’. There’s nothing more fundamental or essential to God than the interrelatedness of other persons. Right? The is the divine ousia. God’s ousia is just the necessary ‘way’ the persons relate to each other. When we talk about the “nature” of God, we’re talking about what follows from God’s personal/hypostatic relatedness (as opposed to something that precedes and underlies that relatedness).

But at the same time the Orthodox seem to posit another divine ‘ousia’ that’s entirely unknowable and about which we can say nothing. It’s the REAL essence of God, you know, the “Oooo can’t talk about it mysterious ‘essence’.” (This is Zizioulas’ criticism of Lossky by the way; Lossky’s separating from the simple personal interrelatedness that is divine persons some ‘ousia’ that’s unknown, which somehow stands behind the persons and accounts for their existence.) If there’s no more essential reality or stuff to God than the interrelatedness of the persons, no more deep ‘ousia’ underlying this interrelatedness, then the hypostases are it. They’re the end of the road. They ARE the ‘ousia’ of God. That’s my understanding.

Now bring in aseity. What’s it comprehend? It’s the obtaining of unsurpassably beautiful and intense triune-personal life. You said it mean the life-experience of the persons can’t increase of decrease in terms of their sentient apprehension of beautiful experience. OK then. And we want to say that THIS essential experience of the Persons can’t be touched, changed, modified, or penetrated by creation. The only divine thing, the ONLY divine reality that comes into contact with creation is the divine energies, which are NOT the ‘essence’ or God. But if God’s essence is the life-experience of the divine persons, then how does the divine persons of the Logos, the very person of the Son, incarnate? If there’s no MORE essential reality to God that ‘relating hypostases’ then how can what is essential to God, viz., SON, incarnate and die?

The reply is, it’s in the Son human nature and not his divine nature that he experiences death. But D, come on, an experience means an experienCER! It implies a SUBJECT, a person whose experiencing this. So it doesn’t help to say the SON experiences death in his human nature but not in his divine nature. It’s still the SON, the divine SON, experiencing creation. The divine Son’s having a contingent experience doesn’t bring contingency right into what defines God essentially, God’s ousia? How not? You’d have to say the SON himself, hypostatically, doesn’t constitute the essence of God. But we said he DOES. Now we’re saying the hypostasis of the Son is having a human experience. And we try to skirt the obvious problem by dumping the evidence into the distinction between natures in Christ. The problem doesn’t occur in the natures, it occurs with the ONE indivisible PERSON of the Son.

Please don’t post some site for me. You talk.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/8/2008 5:43:08 AM (GMT-6)

D: So, you’ll agree that human beings, fully realized and glorified, will be non-divine centers of self-determining, freely creative loving expression who perceive themselves as such in relation to God?

Tom: I wanted to ask this too. We’ll be:

·         non—divine centers of experience,

·         thinking, feeling, choosing beings,

·         self-determining/self-disposing in the freely creative expression of love,

·         self-perceiving in our apprehension of all of the above,

·         stand, in all of the above, in relationship to God.

But you deny any of this constitutes personal existence. There's no human person here. So my question is, if we wanted to say such beings are also persons, D, what would we need to add to the above?

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/8/2008 5:45:07 AM (GMT-6)

I can only handle one paragraph at a time. And...AND...I pretend no authority of any sort!

Statement: ...it’s in the Son human nature and not his divine nature that he experiences death.

Comment: IN his humanity the second person of the trinity experienced death. But the subject who experienced that death IS the second person of the holy trinity. And--though raised below I'll point to it now--Ware mentions the empathy with which the Father and Spirit also experienced the passion. But I'd also mention the patristic phrase that "there was a Cross in the heart of God before the foundation of the world." God knew.

 

Statement: But D, come on, an experience means an experienCER! It implies a SUBJECT, a person whose experiencing this. So it doesn’t help to say the SON experiences death in his human nature but not in his divine nature. It’s still the SON, the divine SON, experiencing creation.

Comment: (above)

 

Statement: The divine Son’s having a contingent experience doesn’t bring contingency right into what defines God essentially, God’s ousia? How not?

Comment: That Cross was in the heart of God before the foundation of the world. Nothing changed in the essence of God. Also, it was not the divinity of the Son that died; it was his humanity. His divinity was never separated from his body or separated from his soul in hades. The humanity tasted death, the Son died and personally experienced death, the Father and Spirit knew death vicariously, BUT the "ousia"did not "become contingent."

Perhaps the devil thought that it would have to? But it did not.

  

Statement: You’d have to say the SON himself, hypostatically, doesn’t constitute the essence of God. But we said he DOES.

Comment: What do you mean? One person does not "constitue the essence of God." God is trinity.

 

Statement: Now we’re saying the hypostasis of the Son is having a human experience.

Comment: Yes.

 

Statement: And we try to skirt the obvious problem by dumping the evidence into the distinction between natures in Christ.

Comment: ?

 

Statement: The problem doesn’t occur in the natures, it occurs with the ONE indivisible PERSON of the Son.

Comment: "Indivisible" seems like an ambiguous word here. Humanity is Christ's humanity. In that respect its a good word. That divinity did not separate from either of the body or the soul of Christ in his death bears this out. But that scripture points to sometimes the actions of the humanity and other times the actions of the divinity of Christ IS SHOWN TO US TO AFFIRM BOTH THE DIVINITY AND HUMANITY, AND THEM IN BOTH UNITY AND DISTINCTION.

Hope that helps.

Just for the record, with this conversation I’m OFF personhood and creativity and ON to something entirely different.

Tom: ...it’s in the Son’s human nature and not his divine nature that he experiences death.

B: IN his humanity the second person of the trinity experienced death. But the subject who experienced that death IS the second person of the holy trinity.

Tom: Right. The Son experiences death. There’s only one way “to experience death” and that is “to die.” I can totally understand why Antioch had a problem saying “God died.” It implies “God IS dead.” That’s why I made my comments about what it means for a ‘subject/person’ to die.

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Tom: But D, come on, an experience means an experienCER! It implies a SUBJECT, a person whose experiencing this. So it doesn’t help to say the SON experiences death in his human nature but not in his divine nature. It’s still the SON, the divine SON, experiencing creation.

B: (above)

Tom: I’m just trying to move from the experience of a subject to the subject, from the Son’s dying to the dead Son. What’s it mean for the existence of the ‘subject’ of the Son to say he died on the Cross IF its also the case that what and who the Son is constitutes the necessary and unchanging essence of God.

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Tom: The divine Son’s having a contingent experience doesn’t bring contingency right into what defines God essentially, God’s ousia? How not?

B: That Cross was in the heart of God before the foundation of the world. Nothing changed in the essence of God. Also, it was not the divinity of the Son that died; it was his humanity.

Tom: D (Dwayne now), you gotta see this now. Where’s that consistency you’re always pursuing? I’m counting on you having it now…

B, I totally appreciate the need and desire and passion to want to not mess with the essence of God. I’m interested in that too. But I have to be able to say things meaningfully and know they’re consistent, compatible with each other. So…

Yes, the cross was in the heart of God before the foundation of the world. But whatever that means (and I’m not suggesting it doesn’t mean something), it isn’t the SAME as ACTUALLY being incarnate and dying. The Son’s ACTUAL (in time, on earth, in flesh, incarnate) life/death/resurrection ADD something to the equation that their being in the heart of God from the beginning cannot be. The cross in the heart of God from the beginning means God foresees it, contemplates its possibility, its inevitability even, and embraces it with a ‘yes’…no problem. But the ‘event’ of the cross, the actual experience of it, is different, and its NEW, and it’s a CHANGE. To deny this, is, well…if D walks out on me here, I’m hanging it up!

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Tom: You’d have to say the SON himself, hypostatically, doesn’t constitute the essence of God. But we said he DOES.

B: What do you mean? One person does not "constitute the essence of God." God is trinity.

Tom: Right. I mean the essence isn’t constituted without the Son. So, the Son shares in constituting the essence. F, S, and SP together, in their persons, constitute the essence of God. Then we want to say God doesn’t change ‘essentially’ at all. Well, that means that what constitutes the essence doesn’t at all change. And that means the SON doesn’t change. And what does that mean for the claim that the Son incarnates and dies?

That what constitutes, or shares in constituting, God’s essence, cannot change. I wanna say that too. But then we say the Son, the actual hypostasis of the Son, who together with F and SP constitutes this unchanging essence, THIS unchanging Son experiences the world (cross and death). Do you see ANY problems here?

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Tom: Now we’re saying the hypostasis of the Son is having a human experience.

B: Yes.

Tom: And you don’t see the problem?

(1)    The Son IS an unchanging person who together with F and SP are the unchanging essence of God that cannot change.

(2)    The Son (not his energies, not some nature detached from him, but HIM, the SON) enters a temporal world, lives, etc., and dies on the cross. This involves change. And you don’t get around this by saying “Oh, it was all in the heart of God before the creation of the world.”

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Tom: The problem doesn’t occur in the natures, it occurs with the ONE indivisible PERSON of the Son.

B: "Indivisible" seems like an ambiguous word here. Humanity is Christ's humanity. In that respect its a good word.

Tom: It is a good word. I’m not talking about the humanity of the Son. I’m talking about the person, the hypostasis of the Son and its indivisibility. The hypostasis of the Son is one and the same whether un-incarnate or incarnate. Try this:

To say X is absolutely unchanging means (against Aquinas) that none of X’s relations change, so that the truth about X never changes. But the truth about the Son does change. He ‘becomes’ incarnate. That’s a change. I know you don’t want to say this. But I cannot BUT say it.

Tom

Just for the record, with this conversation I’m OFF personhood and creativity and ON to something entirely different.

Tom: ...it’s in the Son’s human nature and not his divine nature that he experiences death.

B: IN his humanity the second person of the trinity experienced death. But the subject who experienced that death IS the second person of the holy trinity.

Tom: Right. The Son experiences death. There’s only one way “to experience death” and that is “to die.” I can totally understand why Antioch had a problem saying “God died.” It implies “God IS dead.” That’s why I made my comments about what it means for a ‘subject/person’ to die.

PoW: Christ died in every way needed for our salvation. He experienced what was, in human terms, abandonment by God. Yet the Son did not die with respect to his divine-nature, nor to his communion in the Trinity.

PoW: I don’t particularly like the phrase “God IS dead.” I’d rather be more detailed and concrete: “Christ lay in the grave”; and “his soul descended to Sheol.” That way I can mentally compare Christ not rotting in the tomb with his being alive as sustainer of those same un-rotting molecules, in another role.

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Tom: But D, come on, an experience means an experienCER! It implies a SUBJECT, a person whose experiencing this. So it doesn’t help to say the SON experiences death in his human nature but not in his divine nature. It’s still the SON, the divine SON, experiencing creation.

B: (above)

Tom: I’m just trying to move from the experience of a subject to the subject, from the Son’s dying to the dead Son. What’s it mean for the existence of the ‘subject’ of the Son to say he died on the Cross IF its also the case that what and who the Son is constitutes the necessary and unchanging essence of God.

PoW: You ask what his going to the Cross means for the Son AND his being one of the Trinity *means* together. It means the Father’s will. That the Son is the unique-son of the Father is part of the Trinitarian-communion. Neither essence nor person precede each other so as to make the other “follow necessarily” in the Trinity. The meaning of the “AND” above is that the Love of the Father, Son and Spirit is evident in the economy of the Cross.

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Tom: The divine Son’s having a contingent experience doesn’t bring contingency right into what defines God essentially, God’s ousia? How not?

B: That Cross was in the heart of God before the foundation of the world. Nothing changed in the essence of God. Also, it was not the divinity of the Son that died; it was his humanity.

PoW: Another say to say this is that nothing about the incarnation taxed the Trinity so as to require the Essence to need changing. I’m speaking here in simple human and mechanical engineering terms: The “specks” for loving all the way to the Cross were present, are present, and presently and eternally continue for ages and ages…

 

Tom: D (Dwayne now), you gotta see this now. Where’s that consistency you’re always pursuing? I’m counting on you having it now…

B, I totally appreciate the need and desire and passion to want to not mess with the essence of God. I’m interested in that too. But I have to be able to say things meaningfully and know they’re consistent, compatible with each other. So…

PoW: As above, nothing in the economy requires more or expends the reach of the Trinity.

 

Yes, the cross was in the heart of God before the foundation of the world. But whatever that means (and I’m not suggesting it doesn’t mean something), it isn’t the SAME as ACTUALLY being incarnate and dying.

….PoW: if it were the same then the Cross would not have been necessary.

The Son’s ACTUAL (in time, on earth, in flesh, incarnate) life/death/resurrection ADD something to the equation that their being in the heart of God from the beginning cannot be.

….PoW: It adds something to “the equation” as that means the economy. But it does not change God’s love, it fulfills it.

The cross in the heart of God from the beginning means God foresees it, contemplates its possibility, its inevitability even, and embraces it with a ‘yes’…no problem. But the ‘event’ of the cross, the actual experience of it, is different, and its NEW, and it’s a CHANGE. To deny this, is, well…if D walks out on me here, I’m hanging it up!

PoW: That change is that One of the Trinity experienced death, and experienced time and the entropy of the fall by walking through it being faithful. But the other two persons also experience the empathy of it. But again, what ignorance, suffering and temptation wrought did not change the relationship of Father to Son, to Spirit, etc.

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Tom: You’d have to say the SON himself, hypostatically, doesn’t constitute the essence of God. But we said he DOES.

B: What do you mean? One person does not "constitute the essence of God." God is trinity.

Tom: Right. I mean the essence isn’t constituted without the Son. So, the Son shares in constituting the essence. F, S, and SP together, in their persons, constitute the essence of God. Then we want to say God doesn’t change ‘essentially’ at all. Well, that means that what constitutes the essence doesn’t at all change. And that means the SON doesn’t change. And what does that mean for the claim that the Son incarnates and dies?

PoW: It looks like you are treating the F/S/Sp as subcommittees that break up, do experiential stuff, and then reconvene to reform their corporation. Saying “together in their persons…” seems to atomize the persons. But the Son and Spirit have the Father as “fountainhead.” The Father begets out of his love, the Spirit proceeds and rests in the Son, etc.

PoW: In the economy the Son’s passion is total. Absolutely. But he is passionless in his passion – while he wishes for another way he is unswerving in his determination to go from Tabor to Golgotha.

That what constitutes, or shares in constituting, God’s essence, cannot change.

PoW: Yes.

 

I wanna say that too. But then we say the Son, the actual hypostasis of the Son, who together with F and SP constitutes this unchanging essence, THIS unchanging Son experiences the world (cross and death). Do you see ANY problems here?

PoW: This is very late to bring this issue to the table – waiting until the Annunciation to broach what should belong with Genesis 1 or John 1. St. Maximus the Confessor talks about *three* incarnations: the Creation, the Law, and in Mary. This is just the most pervasive, invasive incarnation because the Son experienced time directly in his own flesh. He personally experienced temptation. He even grew. He held stuff in his stuff-y hands, who always held stuff together “in his hands.” But this did not change the divine essence. What  in God  involved argument, deliberation, second opinion? Angels were amazed, and the Father watched approvingly. Thirst overwhelmed him, and the Son refused drink. The grave held his body, but the Spirit resurrected him.

PoW: This is God’s faithfulness.

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Tom: Now we’re saying the hypostasis of the Son is having a human experience.

B: Yes.

Tom: And you don’t see the problem?

(1) The Son IS an unchanging person who together with F and SP are the unchanging essence of God that cannot change.

PoW: Looks like you are constructing that the exxence is constituted by the sum of three persons. I can’t follow this.

(2) The Son (not his energies, not some nature detached from him, but HIM, the SON) enters a temporal world, lives, etc., and dies on the cross. This involves change. And you don’t get around this by saying “Oh, it was all in the heart of God before the creation of the world.”

PoW: Yes, THAT was the change the Son underwent. That’s it.

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Tom: The problem doesn’t occur in the natures, it occurs with the ONE indivisible PERSON of the Son.

B: "Indivisible" seems like an ambiguous word here. Humanity is Christ's humanity. In that respect its a good word.

Tom: It is a good word. I’m not talking about the humanity of the Son. I’m talking about the person, the hypostasis of the Son and its indivisibility. The hypostasis of the Son is one and the same whether un-incarnate or incarnate. Try this:

PoW: I see your point. I still think that word does not work; but I’ll follow you to refer to the person of the Son, who is the subject of the humanity of Christ, and is the Son both before and during/after.

 

To say X is absolutely unchanging means (against Aquinas) that none of X’s relations change, so that the truth about X never changes. But the truth about the Son does change. He ‘becomes’ incarnate. That’s a change. I know you don’t want to say this. But I cannot BUT say it.

PoW: NO, I can say that. His change is that he became incarnate. That did give him extra roles. Several of them. But his roles as Son/Word did not change. In fact some of these roles are congruent with each other.

 

PoW: Btw, it would seem that, extending from your difficulty, that you’d eventually feel a problem with the Trinity having different roles…

 

Tom

PoW: Bruce  :)

 

Tom: To say X is absolutely unchanging means (against Aquinas) that none of X’s relations change, so that the truth about X never changes. But the truth about the Son does change. He ‘becomes’ incarnate. That’s a change. I know you don’t want to say this. But I cannot BUT say it.

PoW: NO, I can say that. His change is that he became incarnate. That did give him extra roles. Several of them.

Tom: Right. We’ve got two different sorts of changes. One involves the Son’s ceasing to be what he’s always been with respect to the Father and Spirit. That’s the change we don’t want to suppose occurs. Another involves the Son’s continuing to be what he’s always been but adding a NEW role or relationship. That’s a change you’re happy with.

What I’m trying to say is that the latter addition is a change to/within the trinitarian relationships and thus an essential change, not in that the essence ceases being something it has always been, but that it becomes something new. There’s something new (incarnation) that qualifies the Son’s relation to the Father. The Son is now incarnate. He wasn’t before. The Son brings this change, which now qualifies who he is (it’s the hypostasis, the ‘who’ of the Son, who is incarnate, right?), to his relation to the Father. That’s an essential change, POW—by way of addition, not subtraction—but a change nonetheless. A crude analogy (of the difference between these sorts of change): If I have $1.00 in my pocket and subtract $.50, the AMOUNT of money I have in my pocket changes AND I no longer have $1.00 in my pocket. But if I instead ADD $.50 to that pocket, the AMOUNT of money changes BUT <there being $1.00 in my pocket> doesn’t change. There’s still $1.00 there just as there always has been. That’s just no longer ALL there is. This is the sort of change I'm speaking of. It's a real change.

But this means that the standard apophatic line (at least as it’s argued in Lossky, not in Zizioulas though) about us being able to say absolutely nothing about God essentially isn’t really true. We can know much about THAT it is but nothing about HOW it is. Again, this is part of the difference between Zizioulas and Lossky. You have Papanikolaou's book on Lossky/Zizzy.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/9/2008 11:40:49 PM (GMT-5)

Gentlemen, pardon me for butting in here but I noticed your talk of Nestorius.  Years ago I read a short book on Nestorius and Nestorians taking the gospel to China, at a time when the "official" church was starting their monastic habit by hiding in caves and disregarding the great commission.  Some of the khans even had Nestorian priests 'on staff'.  I remember it made me rethink the 'barbarian hordes attacking chrisendom in the west' a bit.

I found it recently online at:

http://www.aina.org/books/bftc/bftccontents.htm

Free book, can't beat that.

Post Edited (Duigan MacBoyd) : 3/10/2008 1:46:30 PM (GMT-5)

http://www.orthodoxsyrianchurch.com/

"Malankara Orthodox Church is an ancient Church of India and it traces its origin to as far back as A. D. 52 when St. Thomas one of the Disciples of Jesus Christ came to India and established Christianity in the South Western parts of the sub-continent."

Post Edited (Spinning Pot-spinner) : 3/10/2008 2:13:45 PM (GMT-5)

Also this:  http://www.oca.org/OCworldjapan.asp?SID=2

The Church of Japan

His Eminence Daniel
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