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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 11/19/2002 6:32 AM (GMT -6) |   | This first post of this thread on "Things about the Incarnation" is serving me to keep something off of the "If Jesus Is God... " thread -- at least for the moment. I want to give roome for Doc and Alan; and today, being my day off gives me more time than they have.
What's up?
Meyendorff writes (quoted on the other thread): "...man's restoration in Christ is a restoration of the cosmos to its original beauty." Meyendorff also points out that Patristic Trinitarian theology is always concerned with religious experience and salvation -- not speculation. The same can be said of this Christological statement: "...man's restoration in Christ is a restoration of the cosmos to its original beauty."
There are three things that I want to just put here for a moment. They are intended as timesavers during this moment that I have to do some reduction on M's text and seek quotes that will aid a discussion. But, as the above quote says, Christ is not only about God. Christ is also all-about-us. Our restoration to the original beauty that God intended; but also a "new creation" beyond mere return to the garden.
What's up with US?
That said, I hope there is suitable foundation for others to use this thread too. (I hope so.)
Al
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(all this from pages 154-155 of John Meyendorff's Byzantine Theology)
Folder One
. . . It affirmed, on the contrary, following Cyril of Alexandria, that Christ's unique hypostasis is the pre-existing hypostasis of the Logos; that is, that the term is 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 is precisely a "symmetrical" Christology which was rejected as Nestorian in Ephesus (431). This "assymetry" 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 emphasized earlier, in the patristic concept of man, "theocentricity" is a natural character of humanity; thus assymetry does not prevent the fact that Christ was fully and "actively" man.
*** ...thus assymetry does not prevent the fact that Christ was fully and "actively" man. ***
*** "a "symmetrical" Christology ... was rejected" ***
I'm not certain that what Meyendorff presents above (assymetry) is possible in the Thomistic framework -- in the Western idea of "divine simplicity." Is it Alan? ( )
Folder Two
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 was 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."
* * * *
Folder Three
(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 was fully man and also that He was a human individual, but it rejects the Nestorian view that He was 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. . . . Divine nature and human nature could never merge, or 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.
quote:
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
This last set bears on the observation by various Roman Catholics that the basic way that the Greek East and the Latin West have approached the Trinity and God's essence are different. A convenient quote on that line is this:
The Catholic theologian de Regnon wrote: "The Latin considers personality as a mode of nature..." and "...the Greek considers nature as the content of the person."
Another comment comes from Karl Rahner:
"Without our experience of Father, Son and Spirit in salvation history, we would ultimately be unable to conceive at all of their subsisting distinctly as one God."
It is at that point -- that while I'm disagreeing with Doc on some fundamentals -- I'm hoping to see him "turn East" to find releif from 'nature driven' deity in favor of 'person originating.'
THAT'S ALL THE CARDS ON THE TABLE.
Al
Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 11/19/2002 12:05:29 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 11/27/2002 5:41 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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