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Albert: I'm working within a basically existentialist framework, so a person for me is a "subject", which has no attributes and is unanalyzeable. The subject is bound to the objective world, but the nature of that binding is contingent, and also determines the "nature" (divine, human, or whatever) which the person possesses.

Doc: If “subject” has no attributes and is unanalyzable, how does “subject” differ from “nothing?” What is the “it” that is “bound to the objective world”?

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Originally posted by albert

Albert: The problem comes that we do know a few things about being God and being human which are relevant to the issue. For example, we know that Jesus as God is a person, and that a human is a person. So the problem then becomes is it possible for someone to be at once fully person X and at the same time fully person Y. That does not seem such an easy question to evade.

For myself, besides my existentialist convictions, I can't see any way out of Apollinarianism unless the concept of "person" has no attributes, or those attributes are unrelated and independent of the attributes of what you call "nature" (whether human or divine).

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Karl Barth loved Fr. Georges ...after a long tough day working together at the WCC Ecclesiology Section. The story ...they (along with a few others) went out for beer and ended up singing Mozart in the streets at 1 in the morning. Orthodox ecclesiology was part of the reason Barth revised his Christian Dogmatics into Church Dogmatics with the first non-traditional section being Word of God (instead of the usual order of Doctrine of God de uno, followed by Doctrine of God in Trinity, then Christ and His Work) as an ecclesial concept/reality: God Incarnately became human communion/church so that humans could become a deified communion of saints/church (a Barthian paraphrase of a Florovsky paraphrase of St. Anthanasius). ....Which, of course, was the point of Bonhoeffer's dissertation on the theology of the Church: Being and Act: Being as Communion (which influenced the Orthodox title by Metropolitan Zizioulas, Being as Communion).

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The Byzantine Fathers Of the Sixth to Eighth Century.
by Georges Florovsky
www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/fathers_florovsky_3.htm

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St. Maximus distinguishes a dual assumption — the same distinction appears later in St. John of Damascus. First, there is natural or essential assumption. The Logos accepts the entire fullness of human nature in its primordial innocence and guiltlessness, but in that feeble condition into which it fell through sin, with all the weaknesses and flaws which are the consequences of sin or even retribution for sin but are themselves not anything sinful — the so-called "unreproachable passions" such as hunger and thirst, fear, fatigue. At the same time, though, the acceptance of weaknesses and disparagement are acts of free subordination, for in incorrupt nature there is no need to be feeble or under someone’s power. It is especially necessary to observe that St. Maximus directly ascribes omniscience to Christ through humanity as well. Indeed, as he understands it, "ignorance" was one of the most shameful flaws of human nature in sin. Secondly, there is relative or oikonomic assumption — acceptance in love and compassion. Thus the Savior accepted sin and man’s guilt, his sinful and guilty feebleness. In the portrayal by St. Maximus Christ’s human nature proves to be particularly active, efficacious, and free. This concerns the redemptive sufferings more than anything else. This was free passion, the free acceptance and fulfillment of the will of God. In the Savior’s chaste life the restoration of the image of God in man was accomplished — through human will. And by his free acceptance of cleansing — not punitive — suffering, Christ destroyed the power of the Old Adam’s free desire and sin. This was not retribution or punishment for sin, but the movement of saving Love.
St. Maximus explains Christ’s redeeming work as the restoration, the healing, the gathering of all creation in ontological, not moral, terms. But it is Love which is the moving force of salvation. The Love displayed on the Cross most of all. Christ’s work will be fulfilled in the Second Coming. The Gospels lead to this, to the "spiritual" appearance of the Logos, the God-Man, just as the Old Testament led to the Logos Incarnate. Here St. Maximus follows Origen’s motif.

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The Three Divine Persons
In Orthodox terminology the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are called three divine persons. Person is defined here simply as the subject of existence and life -- hypostasis in the traditional church language.

As the being, essence or nature of a reality answers the question "what?", the person of a reality answers the question "which one?" or "who?" Thus, when we ask "What is God?" we answer that God is the divine, perfect, eternal, absolute ... and when we ask "Who is God?" we answer that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/orthodox-faith/doctrine/holy-trinity.html

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The Fifth Ecumenical Council

In addition to rejecting the unorthodox and ambiguous teachings of the Three Chapters, the Fifth Ecumenical Council carefully clarified the Orthodox doctrine of the hypostatic union of divinity and humanity in Christ. In a long series of statements, the Council affirmed, without ambiguity, the traditional Orthodox faith that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is "one of the Holy Trinity," one and the same divine person (hypostasis) Who has united personally (hypostatically) in Himself the two natures of God and man, without fusing them together and without allowing their separation in any way.

www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/orthodox-faith/bible-and-church-history/sixth-century.html

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The Fourth Ecumenical Council

. . .

The Chalcedonian definition states that Jesus Christ is indeed the Logos incarnate, the very Son of God "born of the Father before all ages." It affirms that the Virgin Mary is truly Theotokos since the one born from her "according to the flesh" in Bethlehem, is the uncreated, divine Son of God, one of the Holy Trinity. In His human birth, the Council declared, the Word of God took to Himself the whole of humanity, becoming a real man in every way, but without sin. Thus, according to the Chalcedonian definition, Jesus of Nazareth is one person or hypostasis in two natures - human and divine. He is fully human. He is fully divine. He is perfect God and perfect man. As God, He is "of one essence" (homoousios) with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. As man, He is "of one essence" (homoousios) with all human beings.

The union of divinity and humanity in Christ is called the hypostatic union. This expression means that in the one, unique person of Christ, divinity and humanity are united in such a way that they are neither mixed together and confused, nor separated and divided. Christ is one person Who is both human and divine. The Son of God and the Son of Mary is one and the same person.

www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/orthodox-faith/bible-and-church-history/Fifth-Century.html

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Sermon on the Transfiguration
Saint Gregory Palamas,
Archbishop of Thessalonica

. . .

Even the face of Moses was illumined by his association with God. Do you not know that Moses was transfigured when he went up the mountain, and there beheld the Glory of God? But he (Moses) did not effect this, but rather he underwent a transfiguration. However, our Lord Jesus Christ possessed that Light Himself. In this regard, actually, He did not need prayer for His flesh to radiate with the Divine Light; it was but to show from whence that Light descends upon the saints of God, and how to contemplate it. For it is written that even the saints "will shine forth like the sun" (Mt 13:43), which is to say, entirely permeated by Divine Light as they gaze upon Christ, divinely and inexpressibly shining forth His Radiance, issuing from His Divine Nature. On Mount Tabor it was manifest also in His Flesh, by reason of the Hypostatic Union (i.e., the union of the two perfect natures, divine and human, within the divine Person [Hypostasis] of Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity). The Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon defined this Hypostatic union of Christ's two natures, divine and human, as "without mingling, without change, without division, without separation."

We believe that at the Transfiguration He manifested not some other sort of light, but only that which was concealed beneath His fleshly exterior. This Light was the Light of the Divine Nature, and as such, it was Uncreated and Divine. So also, in the teachings of the Fathers, Jesus Christ was transfigured on the Mount, not taking upon Himself something new nor being changed into something new, nor something which formerly He did not possess. Rather, it was to show His disciples that which He already was, opening their eyes and bringing them from blindness to sight. For do you not see that eyes that can perceive natural things would be blind to this Light?

Thus, this Light is not a light of the senses, and those contemplating

www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/feasts-and-saints/sermons/on-the-transfiguration.html

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Its about salvation, and Christ's voluntary suffering. Its about His saving us. (blue) Its not about speculating.

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As we all probably just want to get to the Biblical revelation and still make some logical sense -- in that order -- one might take a que from these quotes:

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Originally posted by jefscott

I don't see how I'm speculating.

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Originally posted by jefscott

It seems, as Albert pointed out, that the contrast made in Phillipians between the "form" of God and the "form" of a slave is precisely what determines what Christ emptied Himself of. If I understand your position, you're saying that Christ added humanity, but emptied Himself of nothing. That seems to deny what the passage is saying.

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Originally posted by TGB

Hi all-

Thought I’d share a few comments of Gordon Fee from his Philippians (NICNT, 1994) Commentary regarding morphe (“form” used in 2.6, 7 “form of God” and “form of a slave”) and kenosis.

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But what about morphe? Our difficulties here are twofold: discovering what Paul himself intended by this word, and translating it into English, since we have no precise equivalent. The key to understanding the word lies with Paul’s reason for choosing it, which in turn lies with what transpires in the sentence itself. His urgency is to say something about Christ’s “mindset,” first as God and second as man. But in the transition from Christ’s “being God” to his “becoming man,” Paul expresses by way of metaphor the essential quality of that humanity: he “took on the ‘form’ of a slave.” Morphe was precisely the right word for this dual usage, to characterize both the reality (his being God) and the metaphor (his taking on the role of a slave), since it denotes “form” or “shape” not in terms of the external features by which something is recognized, but of those characteristics and qualities that are essential to it. Hence it means that which truly characterizes a given reality.

What the earliest followers of Christ had come to believe, of course, on the basis of his resurrection and ascension, was that the one whom they had known as truly human had himself known prior existence in the “form” of God—not meaning that he was “like God but really not,” but that he was characterized by what was essential to being God. It is this understanding which (correctly) lies behind the NIV’s “in very nature God.” And it is this singular reality, lying in the emphatic first position as it does, which gives such extraordinary potency to what follows, and therefore to the whole.

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This leads us then to the most famous, but unnecessary, crux of all, the main clause of the present sentence, “but [in contrast to his considering equality with God as something to seize on to his own advantage] he emptied (ekenosen) himself.” This is a crux, however, that has been generated by scholarship, not by Paul or by Pauline ambiguities. The debate has raged over the concept of “emptying himself,” i.e., what kenosis means, and emerged either because of a faulty understanding of harpagmon or because it has been assumed that the verb requires a genitive qualifier—that he must have “emptied himself” of something. But that is precisely not in keeping with Pauline usage. Just as harpagmon requires no object for him to “seize,” but rather points to what is the opposite of God’s character, so Christ did not empty himself of anything; he simply “emptied himself,” poured himself out. This is metaphor, pure and simple. The modifier is expressed in the modal participle that follows; he “poured himself out by having taken on the ‘form’ of a slave.”

Pauline usage elsewhere substantiates this view, where this verb regularly means to become powerless, or to be emptied of significance. Here it stands in direct antithesis to the “empty glory” of v. 3, and functions in the same way as the metaphorical “he became poor” in 2 Cor 8:9. Rather than doing anything on the basis of “empty glory,” Christ on the contrary “emptied himself,” or as the KJV has it (memorably), “he made himself of no reputation,” whose sense the NIV has captured with its “made himself nothing.” As Wright put it well, “The real humiliation of the incarnation and the cross is that one who was himself God, and who never during the whole process stopped being God, could embrace such a vocation.”

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Tom

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Originally posted by albert

(c) The issue of showing the nature of God is just as valid if Christ gave up his divinity (even more so), then if he retained it. It shows that God loves us so much that he was even willing to give up his own deity to save us. Let me put it this way. If Christ was just man, was that not a greater sacrifice on his part, then if he was both man and God?

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Originally posted by albert

PoW: So, Albert, strengthen your arguement and answer the question: "How would giving up his diety save us."

Albert: It was only by becoming "like us in all respects" that he can legitimately stand in our place as our representative.

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Originally posted by albert

PoW:PoW: The incarnation, according to Florevsky's description, is "assymetrical." Humanity, being healed by Christ's becoming "like us in all respects" is restored.

Albert: But if he retained his deity then he quite manifestly did not become like us in all respects. In fact he was extremely unlike us in many respects.

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Then you wrote: If I'm misunderstanding you, please clarify.

OK. I'll try.

One of the sections I troubled myself to clip and post said that Christ did NOT take a sick humanity. He took OUR humanity without sin, and, then, WILLINGLY took on himself the CONSEQUENCES of our sin -- even though he had not done anything to earn those consequences upon himself.

See, THAT is about salvation! (Its not speculation about what ideas are intellectually stimulating, or who's logic is cute.) Christ's voluntary suffering: THAT's the core!

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(b) The issue regarding kenosis is not whether the verb requires a genitive qualifier or not. The direct object of the verb is, as Fee notes, "himself". He emptied himself. If he was God, and he gave up his divine nature, then "emptied himself" is a perfectly apt description of this, without any following genitive. But where I would take issue with Fee, is on the issue of metaphorical usage. There are only four other occurrences of the verb kenoo in Paul (and nowhere else in the entire NT), and none of them have the direct object "himself". Furthermore, it is not at all clear that the word is being used metaphorically in those cases, as he claims. It can quite literally be taken as "to make empty" in all cases (Rm. 4:14, 1 Cor. 1:17, 1 Cor. 9:15, 2 Cor. 9:3). The word also has to be taken in its immediate context, which is that it has just been stated that Jesus was in the form of God. It is focussed on his nature as God. The "making empty" should be connected with this.

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Jefscott: Wouldn't you at least say that a person must at least have the capacity for consciousness or sentience?? Even a dead person or fetus has this much true of it doesn't it? And if so, isn't that capacity a kind of attribute?

Albert: Firstly, can I say that I'm sorry but I couldn't find a good book on kenosis. You might have to just look in systematic theology textbooks - but most of them will be biased against kenotic theory.

As for the person issue, the problem is that you're using "person" in a way that is quite different to me. The subject is conscious, but consciousness is a part of the objective world. The subject "stands behind" consciousness. As for "capacity for consciousness", if you're referring to fetuses or say people who are in a coma, then I think that what has happened for them is that subjective time for them has stopped relative to our time. That's what I think unconsciousness is. It also happens to us when we sleep. So no, I don't think it follows that the subject has attributes.

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Originally posted by albert

PoW: Even in YOUR scenerio "eternality" is something that the Son has/is that we don't have.

Albert: "Eternality" is not a property. It just consists in always having existed, and, as Kant pointed out, existence is not a property or attribute. If, however, you mean immorality, the impossibility of ceasing to exist, then that is a property which Christ gave up when he became human.

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Originally posted by jefscott

Basically, I'm saying that a "person" has certain capacities that MAKE it a person.

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Originally posted by albert

PoW: It says nothing about the source of Being.

Albert: No, it doesn't. But Christ gave up his role as an originator of "Being" (that much abused term) when he became human.

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Originally posted by albert

PoW: But I had in mind the intrinsic possessorship of Life.

Albert: But isn't that immortality, and the power to grant it? I've already said that I think Christ gave that up when he became human.

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Originally posted by albert

PoW: Kant is not so cool as a contributor to philosophy. This is my considered opinion.

Albert: OK, well I disagree with you, but that's not really crucial to the discussion. Also I think you've missed the point on the issue of "art for art's sake", but that's really off on a tangent.

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For example, the concept of "person" presumably includes for you personality, psychological makeup, consciousness and so forth.

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Now in a sense, the subject might be said to have certain "capacities" (e.g. "being there" [Dasein], acting freely, imposing meaning/referentiality), but those capacities are all, in my view, unanalyzeable and not capable of being described in terms of properties or attributes or essences or whatever.

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They are also inseparably bound together (you can't have one without the others).

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So I don't agree that because the subject has certain "capacities", that it must have attributes.

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Jefscot: A human soul is a "person" which CAN under the appropriate conditions be conscious. There are no mere conditions which would make a quark "being" conscious. Do you agree with this or no??

Albert: I'm not sure what you mean by a "human soul", and neither am I sure how you understand the metaphysics of quarks.

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