Sanctification of Nature.

In its present, defective state, created nature fulfils its destiny quite inadequately. The Biblical, anthropocentric concept of the world is preserved in Greek patristic literature: nature suffers from the Fall of man, the “microcosm,” to whom God has granted the control of nature and who, instead, prefers to be controlled by it. As a result instead of revealing through its internal meaning (logos) and purpose (skopos), the divine plan for creation and through this — God Himself, nature became the domain and instrument of Satan: throughout creation, the “natural energy,” which conforms to the original divine plan, is in struggle with the destructive forces of death. The dramatic character of the present existence of creation is generally taken for granted by Byzantine theologians, but it is most explicitly formulated in liturgy and spirituality.

The Byzantine rite of Baptism has inherited from Christian antiquity the strong initial emphasis on exorcism. The deliberate renunciation of Satan, the sacramental expulsion of the forces of evil from the soul of the candidate for baptism, implies a passage from slavery under the “prince of this world” to freedom in Christ. Liturgical exorcisms however are concerned not only with the demonic forces controlling the human soul. The “Great Blessing of Water” on the Feast of the Epiphany exorcises the cosmos whose basic element, water, is seen as a refuge of “nestling dragons.” The frequent mention of the demonic forces of the universe in liturgical and patristic texts should be understood in a theological context, for they cannot be reduced to Biblical or Medieval mythologies alone even if they often reflect mythological beliefs. The “demonic” in nature comes from the fact that creation has fallen out of its original meaning and direction. God had entrusted control over the world to man — His own “image and likeness.” But man chose to be controlled by the world and thereby lost his freedom. He then became subject to cosmic determinism to which his “passions” attach him and in which ultimate power belongs to death. This is the interpretation which Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus apply to the passage of Genesis 3:21 about the “garments of skin” given to Adam and Eve after the Fall. Rejecting Origen’s identification of the “garments” with material bodies — an interpretation based upon the Origenistic idea on the pre-existence of souls, Maximus describes the change in man’s situation only in terms of a new dependence upon the animal side of the world’s existence. Instead of using the potentialities of his nature to raise himself and the whole of creation to God, man submitted himself to the desires of his material senses.²⁷ As a result, the world which was originally created by God, as “very good” became for man a prison and a constant temptation, through which the “prince of this world” establishes his reign of death.

By sanctifying water, food, and plants as well as the results of man’s own creativity such as works of art or technology (the Byzantine liturgy is very rich in sacramental actions of sanctification, or blessing), the Church replaces them all in their original and true relation, not only to God but also to man, who is God’s “image,” to proclaim God’s control over the universe as the Blessing of Epiphany does, and amounts, in fact, to affirming that man is no longer a slave to cosmic forces:

The immaterial powers tremble before Thee; the sun praises Thee; and the moon worships Thee; the stars are Thy servants; and light bows to Thy will; the tempests tremble and the springs adore Thee. Thou didst spread out the heavens like a tent; Thou didst set the land upon the waters... [Therefore,] heeding the depth of Thy compassion, Ο Master, Thou couldst not bear to see humanity defeated by the devil, and so Thou didst come and didst save us. ... Thou didst free the children of our nature...

Thus, sanctification of nature implies its demystification. For a Christian, the forces of nature cannot be divine; neither can they be subject to any form of natural determinism: the resurrection of Christ by breaking the laws of nature has liberated man from slavery to nature, and he is called to realize his destiny as lord of nature in God’s name.

Byzantine liturgy, when it proclaims the sanctification of the cosmos, frequently mentions, not only the demonic powers, which have usurped authority over the world but also the “bodiless powers of heaven,” cooperates with God and man in the restoration of the original and “natural” order in the world. Yet Byzantium has never had a universally accepted system or description of the angelic world with the exception of the Celestial Hierarchy of pseudo-Dionysius in which each of the nine orders of angels is considered as an intermediary between the highest power above it and the form of existence below. The goal of Dionysius is to preserve inside an outwardly Christian system of thought a hierarchical concept of the universe adopted from Neo-Platonism.

In spite of its very widespread but rather peripheral influence, the Dionysian concept of the angelic world never succeeded in eliminating the more ancient and more Biblical ideas about the angels. Particularly, striking is the opposition between the very minor role ascribed by Dionysius to the “archangels” (second rank from the bottom of the angelic hierarchy) and the concept found in Jewish apocalyptic writings including Daniel, Jude, and Revelation where the archangels Michael and Gabriel rank is the “chief captains” of God’s celestial armies. This idea has been preserved in the liturgy, which should be considered as the main and most reliable source of Byzantine “angelology.”

Involved in the struggle against the demonic powers of the cosmos, the angels represent, in a way, the ideal side of creation. According to Byzantine theologians, they were created before the visible world,²⁸ and their essential function is to serve God and His image, man. The scriptural idea that the angels perpetually praise God (Is 6:3; Lk 2:13) is a frequent theme of the Byzantine liturgy, especially of the Eucharistic canons, which call the faithful to join the choir of angels — i.e., to recover their original fellowship with God. This reunion of heaven and earth, anticipated in the Eucharist, is the eschatological goal of the whole of creation. The angels contribute to its preparation by participating invisibly in the life of the cosmos.

Notes

1. Origcn, De principiis, I, 2, 10; cd. Koctschau, pp. 41-42; trans. Butterworth, p. 23.

2. Sec G. Florovsky, “The Concept of Creation in Saint Athanasius,” Studia Patrisiica VI, part IV, TU 81 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1962), 36-37.

3. Athanasius, Contra Arianos, III, 60; PG 26:448-449.

4. Contra Gentes, 41; PG 25:81CD.

5. Contra Arianos. II, 31; PG 26:212B.

6. Ibid., II, 2; PG26:149c.

7. Ibid., I, 20; PG 26:55A.

8. See, for example, Thesaurus, 15; PG 75:276B; ibid., 18; PG 75:313C.

9. De fide orth., I, 8; PG 94:812-813.

10. See especially Gregory of Nazianzus, Cartn. theol IV de mundo, V, 67-68; PG 37:421.

11. John of Damascus, De fide orth., II, 2; PG 94:865.

12. Ibid., I, 9; PG 94:837.

13. Maximus the Confessor, Schol.; PG 4:317.

14. Georges Florovsky, “The Idea of Creation in Christian Philosophy,” EChurchQ 8 (1949), 67.

15. See Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, pp. 76-84.

16. Maximus the Confessor, Amb. 7; PG 91:1081c.

17. lbid.; PG 91:1081B.

18. Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, p. 81.

19. See S. L. Epifanovich, Prepodobnyi Matksim lspovednik i Vizantiiskoe bogoslovie (Kiev, 1915), pp. 136-137.

20. See J. Meyendorfr, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Washington: Corpus, 1969), pp. 100-102.

21. See Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thai., 60; PG 90:621A.

22. Maximus the Confessor, Amb.; PG 91:1057B.

23. Milton V. Anastos, “The History of Byzantine Science: Report on the Dumbarton Oaks Symposium of 1961,” Dumbarton Oakjs Papers 16 (1962), 411.

24. Basil of Caesarea, In Hex., horn. 5; PG 29:1160D.

25. Ibid., 3; PG 29:73C.

26. Maximus the Confessor, Cap. gnostica, I, 10; PG 91:1085D-1088A.

27. See, in particular, Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thai. 61; PG 90:628AB.

28. Gregory Nazianzus, Or. 38, 9; PG 36:320C; John of Damascus, De fide orth.; II, 3; PG 94:873.

Man.

The view of man prevailing in the Christian East is based upon the notion of “participation” in God. Man has not been created as an autonomous or self-sufficient being; his very nature is truly itself only inasmuch as it exists “in God” or “in grace.” Grace therefore gives man his “natural” development. This basic presupposition explains why the terms “nature” and “grace” when used by Byzantine authors have a meaning quite different from the Western usage; rather than being in direct opposition, the terms “nature” and “grace” express a dynamic, living, and necessary relationship between God and man, different by their natures but in communion with each other through God’s energy, or grace. Yet man is the centre of creation — a “microcosm,” and his free self-determination defines the ultimate destiny of the universe.

Man and God.

According to Maximus the Confessor, God in creating man “communicated” to him four of His own properties: being, eternity, goodness, and wisdom.¹ Of these four divine properties, the first two belong to the very essence of man; the third and the fourth are merely offered to man’s willful aptitude.

The idea that his “participation” in God is man’s particular privilege is expressed in various ways but consistently, in the Greek patristic tradition. Irenaeus, for example, writes that man is composed of three elements: body, soul, and Holy Spirit;² and the Cappadocian Fathers speak of an “efflux” of the Holy Spirit in man.³ Gregory of Nyssa in his treatise On the Creation of Man in discussing man before the Fall attributes to him the “beatitude of immortality,” “justice,” “purity.” “God is love,” writes Gregory, “and source of love. The creator of our nature has also imparted to us the character of love... If love is absent, all the elements of the image are deformed.”⁴ Jean Danielou’s comments on this passage may, in fact, be extended to Greek patristic thought as a whole:

Gregory identifies realities which Western theology considers distinct. He ascribes to man certain traits such as reason or freedom which the West attributes to the [created] spirit; others such as apatheia or love (called grace by Westerners), he attributed to divine life as well as the effects of final glorification: incorruptibility and beatitude. For Gregory, the distinctions do not exist.⁵

Thus, the most important aspect of Greek patristic anthropology, which is taken for granted by the Byzantine theologians throughout the Middle Ages, is the concept that man is not an autonomous being, his true humanity is realized only when he lives ‘in God” and possesses divine qualities. To express this idea, various authors use various terminologies: Origenistic, Neo-Platonic, or Biblical; yet there is a consensus on the essential openness of man, a concept, which does not fit into the Western categories of “nature” and “grace.”

As we have seen in the passage of Maximus’ citation at the beginning of this section, the “natural” participation of man in God is not a static giveness; it is a challenge, and man is called to grow in divine life. Divine life is a gift but also a task, which is to be accomplished by a free human effort. This polarity between the “gift” and the “task” is often expressed in terms of the distinction between the concepts of “image” and “likeness.” In Greek, the term homoiōsis, which corresponds to “likeness” in Genesis 1:26, suggests the idea of dynamic progress (“assimilation”) and implies human freedom. To use an expression of Gregory Palamas’: Adam, before the Fall, possessed “the ancient dignity of freedom.”⁶ Thus, there is no opposition between freedom and grace in the Byzantine tradition: the presence in man of divine qualities, of a “grace,” which is part of his nature and makes him fully man, neither destroys his freedom nor limits the necessity for him to become fully himself by his own effort; rather, it secures that cooperation, or synergy, between the divine will and human choice, which makes possible the progress “from glory to glory” and the assimilation of man to the divine dignity for which he was created.

The understanding of man as an “open being” naturally possessing in him a divine “spark” and dynamically oriented toward further progress in God has direct implications for the theory of knowledge and particularly for the theory of the knowledge of God. Western Scholasticism has assumed that this knowledge is based upon revealed premises — Scripture or church magisterium, — which serve as a basis for development by the human mind in conformity with the principles of Aristotelian logic. This concept of theology, which presupposes the autonomy of the human mind in defining Christian truths on the basis of Revelation, is the initial issue in the controversy between Barlaam the Calabrian and Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century. According to Barlaam, the natural human mind could never reach divine truth itself but only draw conclusions from revealed premises. In cases when revealed premises specifically affirmed a given proposition, a logical intellectual process could lead to “apodictic” conclusions, i.e., to intellectually evident truths. If a theological affirmation could not be based on revealed premises however it could not be considered as “demonstrated” but only as “dialectically possible.” To refute these views, Palamas developed an experiential concept of our knowledge of God based upon the notion that God is not known through a purely intellectual process, but that man when he is in communion with God (i.e., restored to his natural state) can and even must enjoy a direct knowledge and experience of his creator. This direct knowledge is possible because man since he is not an autonomous being but an image of God “open upward” possesses the natural property of transcending himself and of reaching the divine. This property is not simply intellectual; it implies purification of the whole being, ascetical detachment, and ethical progress: “It is impossible to possess God in oneself,” writes Palamas, “or to experience God in purity, or to be united with the unmixed light unless one purify oneself through virtue, unless one get out or rather above oneself.”⁷

Obviously, this Palamite understanding of knowledge coincides with Gregory of Nyssa’s concepts of “the sense of the heart” or the “eyes of the soul”⁸ and with Maximus’ identification of the knowledge of God with “deification.” For the entire patristic and Byzantine tradition, knowledge of God implies “participation” in God — i.e., not only intellectual knowledge but a state of the entire human being transformed by grace and freely cooperating with it by the efforts of both will and mind. In the monastic tradition of Macarius, reflected, for example, in the writings of Symeon the New Theologian, this idea of “participation” is inseparable from the idea of freedom and of consciousness. A true Christian knows God through a free and conscious experience; this is precisely the friendship with God, which was man’s state before the Fall, the state in which God wanted man to live, and which was restored in Jesus Christ.

Man and the World.

The “image and likeness” of God in man implies, not only an openness of man toward God, but also a function and task of man in the whole of creation.

Against Origen, the Fathers unanimously affirmed that man is a unity of soul and body. On this point, the Biblical view decidedly overcame Platonic spiritualism; by the same sign, the visible world and its history were recognized as worthy of salvation and redemption. If, in the Origenistic system, the diversity of visible phenomena was only a consequence of the Fall and of the bodily nature of man — an “engrossed” and defective mode of the soul’s existence, the only true and eternal reality being spiritual and divine, — the Biblical and Christian concept understood the universe in its entirety as “very good;” and this concept applied first of all to man.

According to Maximus the Confessor, body and soul are complementary and cannot exist separately.⁹ If primarily directed against the Origenistic idea of the pre-existence of souls, this affirmation raises the issue of the soul’s survival after death. This survival is not denied, of course, but neither is it understood as “liberation” from the body, in a Platonic sense. The separation of body and soul at death is as contrary to “nature” as death itself, and the ultimate and eternal survival of the soul is possible only if the whole man is raised from death at the resurrection. Yet the soul’s immortality is not only directed toward the resurrection of the whole man; it is also conditioned by the soul’s relationship to God. The spiritual literature of the Byzantine East frequently speaks of the “death of the soul” as a consequence of rebellion against God, i.e., of sin. “After the transgression of our ancestors in Paradise,” writes Gregory Palamas, “…sin came into life. We ourselves are dead; and before the death of the body, we suffer the death of the soul; that is to say: the separation of the soul from God.”¹⁰

Obviously, the dual nature of man is not simply a static juxtaposition of two heterogeneous elements, a mortal body and an immortal soul; it reflects a dynamic function of man between God and creation. Describing the anthropology of Maximus, Lars Thunberg is fully justified when he writes, “Maximus seems to stress the independence of the elements [i.e., soul and body], not primarily in order to maintain the immortality of the soul in spite of its relationship to the body but in order to underline the creative will of God as the only constitutive factor for both as well as for their unity.”¹¹ We are here back to the point made at the beginning of this section: man is truly man because he is the image of God, and the divine factor in man concerns not only his spiritual aspect — as Origen and Evagrius maintained — but the whole of man, soul and body.

This last point is the reason why a majority of Byzantine theologians describe man in terms of a trichotomist scheme: spirit (or mind), soul, and body. Their trichotomism is very directly connected with the notion of participation in God as the basis of anthropology.

We have seen that this theocentrism appears in Irenaeus’ use of Pauline trichotomism: Spirit, soul, and body.¹² Under Origenistic influence, the Fathers of the fourth century, followed by the later Byzantine authors, preferred to speak of mind (nous), soul, and body. The desire to avoid ambiguity concerning the identity of the “spirit” and to affirm the created character of the human “spirit” may also have contributed to this evolution. But even then, Origenistic and Evagrian terminology was unsatisfactory because the concept of the nous was connected with the myth of eternal pre-existence, original, Fall and disincarnate restoration. Although it reflected satisfactorily the theocentric aspect of patristic anthropology, this terminology failed to emphasize the function of man in the visible world. Thus, in Maximus the Confessor, the human mind, though certainly understood as the element par excellence connecting man with God, is also seen as a created function of man’s created psychosomatic unity.

The nous, therefore, is not so much a “part” of man as (1) the ability which man possesses to transcend himself in order to participate in God, (2) the unity of man’s composite nature when it faces his ultimate destiny in God and in the world, and (3) the freedom of man, which can either fully develop if it finds God or become defective if it submits itself to the body. “The spirit (nous) in human nature corresponds most nearly to the person,” writes Vladimir Lossky.¹³ The judgment of Lars Thunberg on Maximus is valid for the entire Byzantine tradition: “Maximus is able to express his conviction that there is a personal aspect in man’s life, which goes, as it were, beyond his nature and represents his inner unity as well as his relationship to God.”¹⁴ This concept of the person or hypostasis, irreducible to nature or to any part of it, is a central notion in both theology and anthropology, as we shall see later in connection with the doctrine of the Trinity.

As image of God, man is lord of creation and “microcosm.” This second concept, which is widely used in Platonism and Stoicism, is adopted by the Cappadocian Fathers and given a Christian dimension: man is a “microcosm” because (1) he unites in his hypostatic existence the intelligible and sensible aspects of creation, (2) he is given by God the task and function to make this unity ever more perfect, especially after the Fall, when forces of disintegration and division are also actively at work in creation. On this point and especially in Maximus the Confessor, we find another aspect of the polarity of image-likeness: God’s gift to man is also a task and a challenge.

Maximus in a famous passage of Ambigua 41:16 lists five polarities, which are to be overcome by man: God and creation, the intelligible and the sensible, heaven and earth, paradise and world, man and woman. The polarities have been sharpened by sin and rendered insuperable by human capabilities alone. Only the man Jesus, because He is also God, is able to overcome them. He is the new Adam; and in Him, creation again finds communion with the creator and harmony within itself.

The central role of man in the cosmos is also reflected — better perhaps than in any system of concepts — in the Byzantine liturgy with its emphasis on the union of heaven and earth, its sacramental realism, its rites of blessing food, nature, and human life as well as in the affirmation that by nature man is closer to God than the angels themselves are. The idea originates in Hebrews 1:14 and is developed by Gregory Palamas in the context of an Incarnational theology: “The Word became flesh to honour the flesh, even this mortal flesh; therefore, the proud spirits should not consider themselves and should not be considered worthy of greater honours than man nor should they deify themselves on account of their incorporality and their apparent immortality.”¹⁶

Among creatures, there is no greater glory than to be the lord of all creation: man is given this glory if he preserves in himself the image of God — i.e., if he partakes in the life and glory of the creator Himself.

Original Sin.

In order to understand many major theological problems, which arose between East and West both before and after the schism, the extraordinary impact upon Western thought of Augustine’s polemics against Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum must be fully taken into account. In the Byzantine world where Augustinian thought exercised practically no influence, the significance of the sin of Adam and of its consequences for mankind was understood along quite different lines.

We have seen that in the East man’s relationship with God was understood as a communion of the human person with that, which is above nature. “Nature” therefore designates that, which is, in virtue of creation, distinct from God. But nature can and must be transcended; this is the privilege and the function of the free mind made “according to God’s image.”

Now, in Greek patristic thought, only this free, personal mind can commit sin and incur the concomitant “guilt” — a point made particularly clear by Maximus the Confessor in his distinction between “natural will” and “gnomic will.” Human nature as God’s creature always exercises its dynamic properties (which together constitute the “natural will” — a created dynamism) in accordance with the divine will, which creates it. But when the human person, or hypostasis, by rebelling against both God and nature misuses its freedom, it can distort the “natural will” and thus corrupt nature itself. It is able to do so because it possesses freedom, or “gnomic will,” which is capable of orienting man toward the good and of “imitating God” (“God alone is good by nature,” writes Maximus, “and only God’s imitator is good by his gnome”);¹⁷ it is also capable of sin because “our salvation depends on our will.”¹⁸ But sin is always a personal act and never an act of nature.¹⁹ Patriarch Photius even goes so far as to say, referring to Western doctrines, that the belief in a “sin of nature” is a heresy.²⁰

From these basic ideas about the personal character of sin, it is evident that the rebellion of Adam and Eve against God could be conceived only as their personal sin; there would be no place, then, in such an anthropology for the concept of inherited guilt, or for a “sin of nature,” although it admits that human nature incurs the consequences of Adam’s sin.

The Greek patristic understanding of man never denies the unity of mankind or replaces it with a radical individualism. The Pauline doctrine of the two Adams (“As in Adam all men die, so also in Christ all are brought to life” [1 Co 15:22]) as well as the Platonic concept of the ideal man leads Gregory of Nyssa to understand Genesis 1:27 — “God created man in His own image” — to refer to the creation of mankind as a whole.²¹ It is obvious therefore that the sin of Adam must also be related to all men, just as salvation brought by Christ is salvation for all mankind; but neither original sin nor salvation can be realized in an individual’s life without involving his personal and free responsibility.

The scriptural text, which played a decisive role in the polemics between Augustine and the Pelagians, is found in Romans 5:12 where Paul speaking of Adam writes, “As sin came into the world through one man and through sin and death, so death spreads to all men because all men have sinned [eph ho pantes hemarton]” In this passage there is a major issue of translation. The last four Greek words were translated in Latin as in quo omnes peccaverunt (“in whom [i.e., in Adam] all men have sinned”), and this translation was used in the West to justify the doctrine of guilt inherited from Adam and spread to his descendants. But such a meaning cannot be drawn from the original Greek — the text read, of course, by the Byzantines. The form eph ho — a contraction of epi with the relative pronoun ho — can be translated as “because,” a meaning accepted by most modern scholars of all confessional backgrounds.²² Such a translation renders Paul’s thought to mean that death, which is “the wages of sin” (Rm 6:23) for Adam, is also the punishment applied to those who like him sin. It presupposed a cosmic significance of the sin of Adam, but did not say that his descendants are “guilty” as he was unless they also sinned as he did.

A number of Byzantine authors, including Photius, understood the eph ho to mean “because” and saw nothing in the Pauline text beyond a moral similarity between Adam and other sinners in death being the normal retribution for sin. But there is also the consensus of the majority of Eastern Fathers, who interpret Romans 5:12 in close connection with 1 Corinthians 15:22 — between Adam and his descendants there is a solidarity in death just as there is a solidarity in life between the risen Lord and the baptized. This interpretation comes obviously from the literal, grammatical meaning of Romans 5:12. Eph ho, if it means “because,” is a neuter pronoun; but it can also be masculine referring to the immediately preceding substantive thanatos (“death”). The sentence then may have a meaning, which seems improbable to a reader trained in Augustine, but which is indeed the meaning which most Greek Fathers accepted: “As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men; and because of death, all men have sinned...”

Mortality, or “corruption,” or simply death (understood in a personalized sense), has indeed been viewed since Christian antiquity as a cosmic disease, which holds humanity under its sway, both spiritually and physically, and is controlled by the one who is “the murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44). It is this death, which makes sin inevitable and in this sense “corrupts” nature.

For Cyril of Alexandria, humanity after the sin of Adam “fell sick of corruption.”²³ Cyril’s opponents, the theologians of the School of Antioch, agreed with him on the consequence of Adam’s sin. For Theodore of Mopsuestia, “by becoming mortal, we acquired greater urge to sin.” The necessity of satisfying the needs of the body — food, drink, and other bodily needs — are absent in immortal beings; but among mortals, they lead to “passions,” for they present unavoidable means of temporary survival.²⁴ Theodoret of Cyrus repeats almost literally the arguments of Theodore in his own commentary on Romans; elsewhere, he argues against the sinfulness of marriage by affirming that transmission of mortal life is not sinful in itself, in spite of Psalm 51:7 (“my mother conceived me in sin”). This verse, according to Theodoret, refers not to the sexual act but to the general sinful condition of mortal humanity: “Having become mortal, [Adam and Eve] conceived mortal children, and mortal beings are a necessary subject to passions and fears, to pleasures and sorrows, to anger and hatred.”²⁵

There is indeed a consensus in Greek patristic and Byzantine traditions in identifying the inheritance of the Fall as an inheritance essentially of mortality rather than of sinfulness, sinfulness being merely a consequence of mortality. The idea appears in Chrysostom in the eleventh-century commentator Theophylact of Ohrida²⁷, who specifically denies the imputation of sin to the descendants of Adam,²⁶ and in later Byzantine authors, particularly in Gregory Palamas.²⁸ The always-more-sophisticated Maximus the Confessor, when he speaks of the consequences of the sin of Adam, identifies them mainly with the mind’s submission to the flesh and finds in sexual procreation the most obvious expression of man’s acquiescence in animal instincts; but as we have seen, sin remains, for Maximus, a personal act, and inherited guilt is impossible.²⁹ For him as for the others, “the wrong choice but not inherited guilt made by Adam brought in passion, corruption, and mortality.”³⁰

The contrast with Western tradition on this point is brought into sharp focus when Eastern authors discuss the meaning of baptism. Augustine’s arguments in favour of infant baptism were taken from the text of the creeds (baptism for “the remission of sins”) and from his understanding of Romans 5:12. Children are born sinful not because they have sinned personally, but because they have sinned “in Adam;” their baptism is therefore also a baptism “for the remission of sins.” At the same time, an Eastern contemporary of Augustine’s, Theodoret of Cyrus, flatly denies that the creedal formula “for the remission of sins” is applicable to infant baptism. For Theodoret, in fact, the “remission of sins” is only a side effect of baptism, fully real in cases of adult baptism, which is the norm, of course, in the early Church and which indeed “remits sins.” But the principal meaning of baptism is wider and more positive: “If the only meaning of baptism is the remission of sins,” writes Theodoret, “why would we baptize the newborn children who have not yet tasted of sin? But the mystery [of baptism] is not limited to this; it is a promise of greater and more perfect gifts. In it, there are the promises of future delights; it is a type of the future resurrection, a communion with the master’s passion, a participation in His resurrection, a mantle of salvation, a tunic of gladness, a garment of light, or rather it is light itself.”³¹

Thus, the Church baptizes children not to “remit” their yet nonexistent sins but in order to give them a new and immortal life, which their mortal parents are unable to communicate to them. The opposition between the two Adams is seen in terms not of guilt and forgiveness but of death and life. “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven; as was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven” (1 Co 15:47-48). Baptism is the paschal mystery, the “passage.” All its ancient forms, especially the Byzantine, include a renunciation of Satan, a triple immersion as type of death and resurrection, and the positive gift of new life through anointing and Eucharistic communion.

In this perspective, death and mortality are viewed not as much as retribution for sin (although they are also a just retribution for personal sins) but as means through which the fundamentally unjust “tyranny” of the devil is exercised over mankind after Adam’s sin. From this, baptism is liberation because it gives access to the new immortal life brought into the world by Christ’s Resurrection. The Resurrection delivers men from the fear of death and, therefore, also from the necessity of struggling for existence. Only in the light of the risen Lord the Sermon on the Mount does acquire its full realism: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body — more than clothing?” (Mt6:25).

Communion in the risen body of Christ, participation in divine life, sanctification through the energy of God, which penetrates true humanity and restores it to its “natural” state rather than justification, or remission of inherited guilt, — these are at the centre of Byzantine understanding of the Christian Gospel.

The New Eve.

As early as Justin and Irenaeus, primitive Christian tradition established a parallel between Genesis 2 and the Lucan account of the Annunciation and the contrast between two virgins, Eve and Mary, to symbolize two possible uses of created freedom by man: in the first — a surrender to the devil’s offer of false deification, in the second — humble acceptance of the will of God.

Although it was superseded after the Council of Ephesus by the veneration of Mary as Mother of God, or Theotokos, the concept of the New Eve, who on behalf of all fallen humanity was able to accept the corning of the new “dispensation,” was present in the patristic tradition throughout the Byzantine period. Proclus, Patriarch of Constantinople (434-446), frequently used the idea in his homilies. The Virgin Mary is viewed as the goal of Old Testament history, which began with the children of Eve: “Among the children of Adam, God chose the admirable Seth,” writes Palamas, “and so the election, which had in view by divine foreknowledge her who should have become the Mother of God, had its origin in the children of Adam themselves, filled up in the successive generations, descended as far as the King and Prophet David... When it came to the time when this election should have find its fulfilment, Joachim and Anna, of the house and country of David, were chosen by God. ... It was to them that God now promised and gave the child who would be the Mother of God.”³²

The election of the Virgin Mary is therefore the culminating point of Israel’s progress toward reconciliation with God, but God’s final response to this progress and the beginning of new life comes with the Incarnation of the Word. Salvation needed “a new root,” writes Palamas in the same homily, “for no one, except God, is without sin; no one can give life; no one can remit sins.”³³ This “new root” is God the Word made flesh; the Virgin Mary is His “temple.”

Byzantine homiletic and hymnographical texts often praise the Virgin as “fully prepared,” “cleansed,” and “sanctified.” But these texts were to be understood in the context of the doctrine of original sin, which prevailed in the East: the inheritance from Adam was mortality, not guilt, and there was never any doubt among Byzantine theologians that Mary was indeed a mortal being.

The preoccupation of Western theologians to find in Byzantium ancient authorities for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary has often used these passages out of context. And, indeed, Sophronius of Jerusalem († 638) praises Mary: “Many saints appeared before thee, but none was as filled with grace as thou... No one has been purified in advance as thou hast been...”³⁴ Andrew of Crete († 740) is even more specific, preaching on the Feast of the Virgin’s Nativity: “When the Mother of Him who is beauty itself is born, [human] nature recovers in her person its ancient privileges and is fashioned according to a perfect model, truly worthy of God. ... In a word, the transfiguration of our nature begins today...”³⁶ This theme, which appears in the liturgical hymns of the Feast of September 8, is further developed by Nicholas Cabasilas in the fourteenth century: “Earth she is because she is from earth; but she is a new earth since she derives in no way from her ancestors and has not inherited the old leaven. She is... new dough and has originated a new race.”³⁶

Quotations can easily be multiplied, and they give clear indications that the Mariological piety of the Byzantines would probably have led them to accept the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary as it has been defined in 1854 if only they shared the Western doctrine of original sin. But it should be remembered — especially in the context of the poetical, emotional, or rhetorical exaggerations characteristic of Byzantine liturgical Mariology — that such concepts as “purity” and “holiness” could easily be visualized even in the framework of pre-Christian humanity, which is considered as mortal but not necessarily “guilty.” In the case of Mary, her response to the angel and her status as the “new Eve” gave to her a special relation to the “new race” born of her. Yet never does one read in Byzantine authors any statement, which would imply that she receives a special grace of immortality. Only such a statement would clearly imply that her humanity does not share the common lot of the descendants of Adam.

In order to maintain a fully balanced view of Byzantine Mariology, it is necessary to keep in mind the essentially Christological framework of the veneration of the Theotofos in Byzantium (a point, which is stressed in the next chapter). Yet the absence of any formal doctrinal definition on Mariology as such allowed the freedom of poets and orators as well as the reservation of strict exegetes. They always had available in hundreds of copies the writings of the greatest of Byzantine patristic authorities, John Chrysostom, who found it possible to ascribe to Mary not only “original sin,” but also “agitation,” “trouble,” and even “love of honour.” ³⁸

No one, of course, would have dared to accuse the great Chrysostom of impiety. So the Byzantine Church wisely preserving a scale of theological values, which always gave precedence to the basic fundamental truths of the Gospel, abstained from enforcing any dogmatic formulation concerning Mary, except that she was truly and really the Theotokost, “Mother of God.” No doubt, this striking title, made necessary by the logic of Cyrillian Christology, justified her daily liturgical acclamation as “more honourable than the Cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim.”

What greater honour could be rendered to a human being? What clearer basis could be found for a Christian theocentric anthropology?

Notes.

1. Maximus the Confessor, De Char., III, 25; PG 90:1024BC.

2. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., 5, 6, 1.

3. Gregory of Nazianzus, Carm.; PG 37:452.

4. Gregory of Nyssa, De opif. horn. 5; PG 44:137C.

5. Jean Danielou, Platonisme et theologie mystique (Paris: Aubier, 1944), p. 54.

6. Gregory Palamas, Triads, I, 1, 9; ed. J. MeyendorfT (Louvain, 1959), p. 27.

7. Ibid.; ed. MeyendorfT, p. 203.

8. See Danielou, Platonisme et theologie mystique, pp. 240-241.

9. Maximus the Confessor, Amb. 7; PG 91:1109CD.

10. Gregory Palamas, Horn. 11; PG 151.-125A; see other references in J. Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas (London: Faith Press, 1964), pp. 122-124.

11. Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, p. 103.

12. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., 5, 6, 1.

13. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology, p. 201.

14. Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, p. 119.

15. Maximus the Confessor, Amb.t 41; PG 91:1305D.

16. Gregory Palamas, Horn. 16; PG 157:204A.

17. De Char., IV, 90; PG 90:1069C.

18. Maximus the Confessor, Liber Asceticus; PG 90:953B.

19. Maximus the Confessor, Expos, or. dom.; PG 90:905A; on this, see J. Meyendorfl, Christ, pp. 112-113.

20. Photius, Library, 177; ed. R. Henry (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1960), 2:177.

21. Gregory of Nyssa, De opif. horn. 16; PG 44:185u.

22. Sec Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, s.j., in The Jerome Biblical Commentary (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968) 53:56-57 (II, pp. 307-308): “The meaning of the phrase eph’ hõ is much disputed. The least convincing interpretations treat it as a strict rel[ative] phrase: (1) ‘in whom,’ an interpretation based on the [Vulgate] translation, ‘in quo,’ and commonly used in the Western Church since Ambrosiaster. This interpretation was unknown to the G[ree]k Fathers before Theophylact. But if Paul had meant this, he could have written en ho (see 1 Cor 15:22)... (4) ‘Since, inasmuch as, because’... This interpretation, commonly used by G[ree]k patristic writers, is based on 2 Cor 5:4; Phil 3:12; 4:10, where eph’ hõ is normally translated ‘because.’ ... It would thus ascribe to all men an individual responsibility for death... all men sinned: …the verb should not be translated, ‘have sinned collectively’ or ‘have sinned in Adam’ because these are additions to the text. Here, hēmarton referred to personal, actual sins of men, as Pauline usage elsewhere suggested... and as the G[ree]k Fathers generally understood it. ... This clause, then, expresses a secondary — quasi-parenthetical — role the actual sins of men play in their condemnation to ‘death.’ However, a notion of Original Sin’ is already contained in the first part of the verse, as the reason why ‘death’ has spread to all men. If this is not true, the rest of the paragraph would make little sense. A universal causality of Adam’s sin is presupposed in 5:15a,16a,17a,18a,19a. It would be false, then, to the whole thrust of the paragraph to interpret 5:12 so as to imply that man’s condition before Christ’s coming was due wholly to his own personal sins.”

23. Cyril of Alexandria, In Rom.; PG 74:789B.

24. Theodore of Mopsuestia, In Rom.; PG 66:801B.

25. Theodoret of Cyrus, In Rom.; PG 80; 1245A.

26. John Chrysostom, In Rom. horn. 10; PG 60:474-475.

27. Theophylact of Ohrida, Exp. in Rom.; PG 124:404c.

28. See J. Meyendorff, Gregory Palamas, pp. 121-126.

29. See Epifanovich, Prepodobnyi Maksim Ispovednik i Vizantiiskoe bogoslovie, p. 65n5.

30. Maximus the Confessor, Quaest. ad Thai, PG 90:40SBC.

31. Theodoret of Cyrus, Haeret. fabul. compendium, 5:18; PG 83:512.

32. Gregory Palamas, Horn, in Present., 6-7; ed. Oikonomos (Athens, 1861), pp. 126-127; trans. in EChurchQ 10 (1954-1955), No. 8, 381-382.

33. Ibid., 2; p. 122.

34. Sophronius of Jerusalem, Qratio, II, 25; PG 87:3248A.

35. Andrew of Crete, Horn. I in Nativ. B. Mariae; PG 97-.812A.

36. Nicholas Cabasilas, Horn, in Dorm., 4; PG 19:498.

37. Gennadios Scholarios, Qeuvres completes de Georges Scholarios, edd. J. Petit and M. Jugie (Paris, 1928), II, 501.

38. John Chrysostom, Horn. 44 in Matt.; PG 57:464; Horn. 21 in Jn 2; PG 59:131.

Jesus Christ.

Byzantine Christology has always been dominated by the categories of thought and the terminology of the great controversies of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries about the person and identity of Jesus Christ. As we have shown in Part I, these controversies involves conceptual problems as well as the theological basis of life. In the mind of Eastern Christians, the entire content of the Christian faith depends upon the way in which the question “Who is Jesus Christ?” is answered.

The five ecumenical councils, which issued specific definitions on the relationship between the divine and the human natures in Christ, had at times been viewed as a pendulant development: from the emphasis on the divinity of Christ, at Ephesus (431), to the reaffirmation of His full humanity, at Chalcedon (451), then back to His divinity with the acceptance of Cyril’s idea of Theopaschism, at Constantinople (553); followed by a new awareness of His human “energy” or “will,” again at Constantinople (680), and of His human quality of describability in the anti-iconoclastic definition of Nicaea n (787). Still, this opinion is often expressed in Western theological literature that Byzantine Christology is crypto-Monophysite and offered as an explanation for the lack of concern among Eastern Christians for man in his secular or social creativity. We hope that the following discussion sheds some light on these frequently recurring issues.

God and Man.

To affirm that God became man and that His humanity possesses all the characteristics proper to human nature, it implies that the Incarnation is a cosmic event. Man was created as the master of the cosmos and called by the creator to draw all creation to God. His failure to do so was a cosmic catastrophe, which could be repaired only by the creator Himself.

Moreover, the fact of the Incarnation implies that the bond between God and man, which has been expressed in the Biblical concept of “image and likeness,” is unbreakable. The restoration of creation is a “new creation,” but it does not establish a new pattern, so far as man is concerned; it reinstates man in his original divine glory among creatures and in his original responsibility for the world. It reaffirms that man is truly man when he participates in the life of God; that he is not autonomous either in relation to God nor in relation to the world; that true human life can never be “secular.” In Jesus Christ, God and man are one; in Him, therefore, God becomes accessible not by superseding or eliminating the humanum, but by realizing and manifesting humanity in its purest and most authentic form.

The Incarnation of the Logos was very consistently considered by Byzantine theologians as having a cosmic significance. The cosmic dimension of the Christ-event is expressed particularly well in Byzantine hymnology: “Every creature made by Thee offers Thee thanks: the Angels offer Thee a hymn; the heavens, a star; the Magi, gifts; the shepherds, their wonder; the earth, its cave; the wilderness, the manger; and we offer Thee a Virgin Mother.”¹ The connection between creation and the Incarnation is constantly emphasized in the hymns: “Man fell from the divine and better life; though made in the image of God, through transgression he became wholly subject to corruption and decay. But now the wise Creator fashions him anew; for He has been glorified.”² Similarly, the hymnology of Good Friday stresses the involvement of creation as a whole in the death of Christ: “The sun beholding Thee upon the Cross covered itself with gloom; the earth trembled for fear...”³

Thus, poetic images reflect the parallelism between Genesis 1:2 and John 1. The coming of Christ is the Incarnation of the Logos “through whom” all things are made: it is a new creation, but the creator is the same. Against the Gnostics, who professed a dualism distinguishing the God of the Old Testament from the Father of Jesus, patristic tradition affirmed their absolute identity and therefore the essential “goodness” of the original creation.

The Christ-event is a cosmic event both because Christ is the Logos — and therefore in God the agent of creation — and because He is man since man is a “microcosm.” Man’s sin plunges creation into death and decay, but man’s restoration in Christ is a restoration of the cosmos to its original beauty. Here again, Byzantine hymnology is the best witness:

David foreseeing in spirit the sojourn with men of the Only-begotten Son in the flesh, called the creation to rejoice with him and prophetically lifted up his voice to cry: ‘Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in Thy name” [Ps 88:13]. For having gone up, Ο Christ, with Thy disciples into Mount Tabor, Thou wast transfigured, and hast made the nature that had grown dark in Adam to shine again as lightning...4

The glorification of man, which is also the glorification of the whole of creation, should, of course, be understood eschatologically. In the person of Christ, in the sacramental reality of His Body, and in the life of the saints, the transfiguration of the entire cosmos is anticipated; but its advent in strength is still to come. This glorification however is indeed already a living experience available to all Christians, especially in the liturgy. This experience alone can give a goal and a meaning to human history.

The cosmic dimension of the Incarnation is implied in the Chalcedonian definition of 451 to which Byzantine theology remains faithful: Christ is “of one substance with us in His humanity, ‘like unto us in all things save sin.’“ He is God and man, for “the distinction of natures is in no way abolished because of the union; rather, the characteristic properties of each nature are preserved.” The last sentence of the definition obviously covers the creative, inventive, controlling functions of man in the cosmos. The idea is developed in the theology of Maximus the Confessor when he argues against the Monothelites, for the existence in Christ of a human “will,” or “energy,” stressing that without it authentic humanity is inconceivable. If Christ’s manhood is identical with ours in all things except sin (and unless one classifies as “sin” every human “motion,” “creativity,” or “dynamism”), one must admit that Christ who is man in His body, in His soul, and in His mind was indeed acts with all these functions of true humanity. As Maximus fully understood, Christ’s human energy or will was not superseded by His divine will but accepted conformity with it. “The two natural wills [of Christ] are not contrary to each other..., but the human will follows [the divine].”⁵ This conformity of the humanum with the divinum in Christ is, therefore, not a diminution of humanity but its restoration: “Christ restores nature to conformity with itself... Becoming man, He keeps His free will in impassibility and peace with nature.⁶ “Participation” in God — as we have shown — is the very nature of man, not its abolition. This is the key to Eastern Christian understanding of the God-man relationship.

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

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 556