A Book Worth Discussing: Vítor Westhelle's The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross Mark W. Thomsen Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross. By Vítor Westhelle. Minneapolis: Fortress. 2006. xii and 180 pages. Paper. S22.00.
Currents in Theology and Mission 34 no 4 Ag 2007, p 282-286.
Vítor Westhelle's The Scandalous God might be entitled "Reflections from the Abyss." His text is a series of profound reflections upon life marked by absurdity, pain, suffering, horror, meaninglessness. the experience of chaos, and the abyss. For Westhelle the Cross is the lived reality of hell and darkness. Furthermore, he incisively describes how Christians continually
hide. deny, and decorate the reality of the Cross, the abyss. Westhelle will not allow his readers to escape the Cross. But, he argues, life is not only the abyss. There are also unexpected signs of light and life within the darkness. These surprising events of hope are only to be found in the midst of the abyss when people live out expressions of love in the shadow of the Cross. For Westhelle the theology of the Cross is not a theological articulation of some objective truth. Rather "it is a practice [a journey] of solidarity with the pain of the world, which follows the encounter with Christ Crucified" (p. 112). One does not read Westhelle's text; one meditates, is challenged and blessed.
Westhelle's primary perspective
Theologies of the Cross begin from a variety of experiential and theological perspectives. The most dominant perspective within our Christian communities is rooted in a medieval world in which royalty was to be given due respect. If the laws of the realm were violated—if, for example, a king's deer was illegally killed and eaten by a poverty-ridden family—royalty was offended and the realm dishonored. The "world" had been thrown out of joint by the offense. The balance of justice had to be restored and the king's wrath assuaged. The violator in some way had to pay the price so that royalty's honor might be restored.
This is often called the Anselmian perspective. Mel Gibson's Passion film portrayed in bloody horror the price that had to be paid for human violation of God" s cosmic law. We have sinned; a price had to be paid: we are incapable of paying such a price. However, through the suffering of God's Son God pays the ultimate sacrifice, and by his stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53). Martin Luther, although accepting a portion of this medieval tradition, dramatically changed the perspective from which one could see the death of Jesus. Luther found this new radical perspective in the apostle Paul. Faith did not only contemplate the Cross of Jesus as an objective reality, but the believer in faith personally entered the reality of death and resurrection (Rom 6:1-6). One dies to sin and rises to life in the Spirit. We are all sinners. Sin is that which throws the world out of joint. For Luther sin is being centered in self rather than in God. When the axis of life moves from God to our own desires, the world begins to shake. Salvation for Luther takes place when the obsessive self is put to death and God performs a contemporary resurrection.
Through the power of the Spirit we are raised as new creations—people who in trust live with God as the center of life. Luther emphasizes that this work is God's work and is a free gift received in faith. We are right with God—justified—by God's grace through faith. Being a theologian of the Cross, for Luther, is not a quiet, academic study of Jesus crucified. Rather it is experiencing the wrath of God burning through our guilt against our sin. In angst one's pride-filled ego is annihilated in preparation for life centered in God. Westhelle lives, breathes, and thinks in this theological world of Luther. However, he radically transforms the perspective and vocabulary. For Westhelle, as for Luther, the Cross is a contemporary experience.
But for Westhelle it is not limited to an individual experience of death and resurrection. It involves the very death and resurrection of God. Westhelle's primary motif is not found in medieval Europe with Anselm or in the Epistle of Romans with Paul and Luther but in the post-New Testament world of Melito of Sardis (150 A.D). He quotes Melito: "He that hung up the earth in space was Himself hanged up: He that fixed the heavens was fixed with nails . . . God put to death!" (p. 2) The death of God, the resurrection of God. This is the perspective of Westhelle. This perspective has its beginning in the Hellenistic Christian Church where assertions
of the deity of Christ were presupposed. This theme—God died and dies and God lives—is central to Westhelle's reflections. Having written his Ph.D. dissertation on G. W. F. Hegel, Westhelle finds Hegel's thoughts helpful. He quotes from Hegel's Christian Religion: Lectures on the Philosophy
of Religion: God has died, God is dead: this is the most frightful of all thoughts, that eventhing eternal and true does not exist, that negation itself is found in God. . .. How ever, the process does not halt at this point, rather, a reversal takes place .. . God arises again to life, and thus things are reversed, (p. 70) For Hegel, religious language is true but takes the form of immature pictures rather than the form of mature abstract philosophical categories. Theology said God died and God lives. As a philosopher Hegel changed from this theological imagery to abstract language and described all reality as a cosmic rational system. Der Geist (The Absolute Mind or Spirit). For Hegel this cosmic system was not static but was a vital living organism that progressively moved toward a goal. First there was the Absolute Mind/Spirit, and then this Absolute (God) annihilated itself and died into a world of matter. The Absolute God dies. Transcendent
Spirit becomes immanent in a material process. Nevertheless, the Absolute Spirit lives again and begins to think and become self-conscious of itself through the human process and mind. In human thought the Absolute Spirit that died is lifted and lives again in the human spirit. Westhelle finds the religious thought of Hegel, although not the rationalistic system,
helpful in articulating his own vision of the Cross. For him the phrase "God died" points not just to the Son of God's death on the Cross but also to a cosmic experience and expression of reality, similar to that found in Hegel. Death, suffering, alienation, conflict, and oppression are present realities. They are the manifestation of God's death, the death of everything that is life, love, and truth. Westhelle's reflections are steeped in the pain and suffering of the world. In pain, death, poverty, marginalization. oppression—
and this is what is meant by the Death of God—we experience living in the abyss, in darkness and despair. That is the truth of human existence. Truth-telling points to the abyss and agents of death. Westhelle continually quotes Luther saying a theologian of the Cross calls a thing what it is ! A theology of the Cross calls us to recognize the suffering of the world and the pain of God. We are called to name suffering, death, chaos, and oppression what it is. and we are called to live in solidarity with the pain of God and the world. Luther's understanding of dying and rising, death and resurrection was focused on an individual experience of dying to self and being raised in faith to justification and the life of the Spirit. Westhelle's perspective and vision focus upon a Cosmic Divine Death and Life of which one is a small but significant participant. A theology of the Cross rips away the façade that attempts to hide pain and death and invites one into the abyss where in the darkness there is the possibility of life and light. But there is no possibility of life unless we are first willing to participate in the death of God, the pain of the world. Westhelle uses a Gospel image to express our journey in the aftermath of the darkness and death of the Friday crucifixion, the Abyss. He relates the story of the women walking to the tomb of Jesus on that Sunday morning. They walk in an atmosphere of deep sorrow, expressing their love for Jesus as they go to anoint his body for the last time. It was in performing this act of love to their dead master that they experienced the resurrection, or life and hope. Westhelle sees this as what gives meaning to life — performing acts of love in the shadow of the abyss — and makes light shining in the darkness possible. God died, and God lives. The abyss is reality, but love in the shadow of the abyss makes the return of God possible. This is Westhelle's primary perspective for a theology of the Cross. A cosmic death of divinity and a cosmic resurrection are a reality portrayed in the Cross and resurrection, but, much more, they are a cosmic reality in which we participate. Westhelle on Luther Westhelle writes out of a Lutheran perspective and finds many of his themes and insights in Lutheran texts from the Reformation. He references Luther's profound words "The Cross is our theology." Although using the language and texts of Luther. Westhelle discovers new possibilities for meaning in Luther's texts. He uses these new insights for the purpose of developing his own theology of the Cross. This particularly reflects Westhelle's dialogue with postmodernism, which emphasizes that all language is molded by its cultural-historical context and that in one sense its truth, its relevance, is limited to its own cultural-historical context. However, texts are also remembered and transcribed and therefore become detached from their original intent and context. They float beyond their time and place and are always open to new insights and meanings. This, it appears, is how Westhelle reads the texts of Luther. We have already seen how Luther's death and resurrection themes have been transformed from personal dying and rising with Christ to a Cosmic death and resurrection within the totality of reality, the death and resurrection of God or in Hegelian terms, the death and life of Der Geist. In a similar way Westhelle reinterprets Luther's understanding of the wrath of God in the form of pain and suffering. Luther sees suffering, particularly
spiritual/psychological suffering (inner despair or angst), as the abyss exploding from an encounter with a terrifying God. In the midst of this terrifying encounter one may experience the abandonment of God. God 's wrath experienced in a terrified conscience is God* s annihilating power crushing the personal ego. making possible life in the Spirit. This vision is rooted in Luther's vision of the bondage of the will and irresistible grace. For Luther, human beings are bound in sin eternally, bound in pride-filled self-centeredness, and are incapable of escaping from this ego-centered prison. God alone with irresistible power (grace) can break this bondage—and does so through God's wrath, which through suffering, pain, and a terrifying spiritual abyss destroys one * s egocentricity. It is put to death, annihilated, in order that a resurrection might occur, a faith-life of the Spirit realized. Westhelle recognizes this original spiritual struggle of Luther and is aware of how Luther found answers to his quest for a gracious God in a radically new understanding of righteousness/justice. We receive what is not due to us (p. 40). Steeped in Luther's world and writings Westhelle deals with a floating text that is not necessarily bound to Luther's original form of angst but is still angst, despair, the abyss. He explains Luther's statement of God's "breaking down in order to restore" as the consequence of "speculative strategy about God's way of dispensing salvation" and indicates that Luther at this point was molded by (not free from) his medieval monastic tradition. Luther, or rather the contemporary Lutheran text, does not really intend to say that God annihilates the ego as a means of salvation: what is intended by the text is the prevention of any claims on our part to merit our salvation (p. 54). By avoiding a direct conflict with Luther's
intent Westhelle is able to continue his dialogue with Luther in the context of twenty-first-century reality. For Westhelle that is expressed in the theme God died and God lives. Suffering, pain, and the abyss are realities, and Life (the Resurrection of God) is experienced as love is shared in the shadow of the abyss. Within the new paradigm Luther's experience of angst is today shared in another form by those who experience the death of God. the abandonment
of God, in oppression, marginaliza-tion, hunger, pain, and death. Furthermore, those who recognize the death of God or the reality of the abyss experience the transformation of life, for they are no longer resisting God's grace. In recognizing themselves as abandoned by God and dwelling in the bondage of death they are ready to count on God's grace to lift them up (p. 55). This is the twenty-first-century expression of justification by grace. Westhelle reads another set of Luther texts that deal with the hiddenness of God in a similar way. He recognizes that Luther speaks of a hiddenness of God in the passion of Christ: God is met in the opposite, death or the Cross. However, in The Bondage of the Will Luther speaks of a second hiddenness that is behind the Cross. For Luther this second hiddenness of God arises for faith when confronted by the fact that some persons come to faith by the irresistible power of God and others do not. Why so? It is hidden in the terrifying otherness of God. I have argued in my book Christ Crucified: A 21st Century Missiology of the Cross (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2004. 51-53) that Luther at this point sacrifices radical crucified truth for continuity with Hellenistic rationalism, which Luther claims to fully reject. Westhelle, however, argues that the double sense of hiddenness found in Luther does not represent "alternative options for interpretation" (p. 56) because both are valid. Nevertheless, in claiming their validity he changes the perspective of Luther. Luther's convictions arise out of the experience of being saved by irresistible grace: Westhelle argues that it arises out of our experiences of being abandoned. Within the context of Westhelle's primary paradigm—
God died, God lives—the second hiddenness of God arises out of the abyss when life and meaning are gone. He quotes David Tracy, who sees Luther's affirmation of a second hiddenness as rooted in our experience of God as "frightening, not tender, sometimes even as an impersonal reality—it—of sheer power .. . signified by metaphors ... as abyss, chasm, chaos, horror" (p. 57). Westhelle at this point plays the role of the confessional theologian claiming that floating textual interpretations are not only legitimate but enriching of the tradition. In this case he argues that Luther's own interpretation was based not on a rational argument involving irresistible grace but upon the authority of Scripture. He continues: But it is better to admit there is an inscrutable shadow-side to God than the other options available to us. It would be simply a descriptive statement of our finite experience, and of the very finitude of our reason. But if it is blasphemy,
it is the one of Job. This is the one God is great enough to take.(p. 57). Amazingly, one has to add to Westhelle'sthought that God takes more than the blasphemy of Job. A theology of the Cross affirms that God takes the blasphemy of the death of Christ into God "sown being agonizes over the victimizers and blasphemers as well as the abandoned and even embraces them with love. Only such love has the audacity to say Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. Westhelle has much wisdom to share about the Cross shattering all rationality. Loving one's enemies is the heart of irrationality and the heart of the Cross. Westhelle does not reflect upon this absurdity. Interestingly, instead of love of enemy as the epitome of love he reflects on the love of the dead friend as the epitome of love since the friend can no longer return an exchange of the gift (referencing Kierkegaard). Westhelle as theologian is free to express his theological witness and as most theologians free to deal with confessional texts floating apart from their original context and intent. But it is also legitimate to point out that this does not express what Luther writes in The Bondage of the Will. I prefer to deal with theological texts insofar as possible in their context and intent and state that I believe or think this to be true and this to be not true. In Westhelle's words, simply state what it is. Having read the original text in its own context one is free to say that the tradition must be stretched and reinterpreted for the contemporary context.
Westhelle's text is fascinating to read and contemplate. He writes out of his own experience of the abyss and the experiences of the millions who share participation in the contemporary death of God. His interpretations of Luther's texts that make possible a focus upon the reality of pain, suffering, the abyss, injustice, oppression and tyranny are a gift for which we owe him gratitude. His use of Luther texts to call for truth telling—to call a thing what it is—is profound. His imagery of sharing the fragrance of love with the smells of death is. truly, hope.
Showing posts with label christology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christology. Show all posts
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Karl Barth's Retrieval of Luther's Substantive Christology by Amy Ellen Marga
Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner: Karl Barth's Retrieval of Luther's Substantive Christology Amy Ellen Marga Luther Seminary
Currents in Theology and Mission 34 no 4 Ag 2007, p 260-270
Despite Karl Barth*s lasting commitment to the Reformed tradition of John Calvin, it is the thought of Martin Luther that casts a long shadow over Barm's theology. As George Hunsinger points out. At certain vital points Barth follows Luther not only, broadly speaking, against Calvin and the Reformed tradition, but also against the main lines of the Lutheran tradition. There are points, in other words, where Barth actually retrieved Luther in order to stand with him not only against modernity, but also against the rest of the Reformation. (George Hunsinger. Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids. MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. 2000). 282.) If we refocus the historical lens upon Barth and Luther, they can be seen to stand like bookends on the shelf of the modern age. with Luther standing at the beginning of what historians now call "early moder-nity," and Barth standing at its end.(W. Stacy Johnson, among others, has even suggested that Barth"s theology contains the seeds for postmodern theology. See his The Mystery of God: Karl Barth and the Postmodern Foundations of Theology (Louisville. KY: Westminster John Knox. 1997). Barth looked back for the sake of looking forward and in so doing engaged in intense study of Luther. Barth absorbed aspects of Luther's theology that allowed him to articulate Christian theology in deeper and more sophisticated ways over against modernity, which had through the course of the Enlightenment set the criteria for how we know what we know and thus how we articulate the sinner's relationship to Jesus Christ. As Hunsinger has noted. Barth "almost alone among modern theologians" granted "uncompromising precedence to the Reformation over modernity itself." He did not reject modernity, but he "refused to allow secular epistemologie s to set the terms for the validity of the gospel." (Hunsinger. Disruptive Grace. 293.) Barth"s mature Christology. seen in his Church Dogmatics, vol. IV. published in the early 1950s, has been a central channel into comparisons of his theology with that of Luther. Both Karin Bornkamm and Gerhard Ebeling have demonstrated that Luther and Barth share a Christocentrism in the best sense: clearly this was one thing Barth learned from Luther. Bornkamm has shown how Barth transformed Luther's conception of the offices of Christ as priest and king for the sake of forging a relationship
between Christology and soteriology. (Karin Bornkamm. "Die reformatorische
Lehre vom Amt Christi und ihre Umformung durch Karl Barths." in Luther und Barth. Veröffentlichung der Luther-Akademie Ratzeburg. Vol. 13. ed. Joachim Heubach (Erlangen: Martin-Luther-Verlag. 1989). 144. Currents in Theology and Mission 34 4 (August 200 )
Marga, Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 261). Ebeling traces the christological impulses that Barth took from Luther, even while Barth formed his own criticisms of the Reformer in the Church Dogmatics.( Gerhard Ebeling. Lutherstudien, vol. 3 (Tubingen: Mohr. 1985). 495-506.) But Barth had already begun retrieving aspects of Luther's Christology almost thirty years earlier. One example of this is a lecture that Barth gave in 1929 in Münster on theology and ethics titled "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life." After a decade that included two lecture cycles in dogmatic theology and intense engagement with Roman Catholic theology. Barth dove into the works of Augustine, Calvin, and Luther. The result was a lecture on theology and ethics titled "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life" that displays Barth's deepening understanding of Luther's Christology. In this essay I briefly present Luther's Christology from his 1535 Galatians commentary (Luther wrote this commentary in 1531. but it was not published until 1535.) and show how Barth reached back to retrieve this for his own theology despite the drastically different epistemological landscape of the two thinkers brought about by the Enlightenment. Barth reached over Enlightenment notions of rationality and morality to retrieve Luther's substantive Christology, and in so doing he left behind the psychological and historical interpretations of the person and work of Christ by thinkers such as Werner Elert and Karl Holl. Luther's theology provided Barth with the resources to pull Christology out of the grip of Enlightenment understandings of the individual as an autonomous agent and show that reconciliation of the human to God by God and through God alone need not be beholden to modern theories of rationality or morality. Martin Luther's Christology in the Galatians commentary The richness of Martin Luther's Christology
has provided scholars with a wide variety of angles from which to analyze it. Ebeling has tried to capture its expanse under the terminology of a "forensic-antithetical*'
Christology." Finnish scholars such as Tuomo Mannermaa have focused their attention on the aspect of deification in Luther's early work. (See. for example. Der im Glauben gegenwärtige Christus. Rechtfertigung und Vergottung (Hannover: Lutheran-Verlag-Haus. 1989). Bernhard Lohse. and in more detail Ian Siggins. have approached
Luther ' s Christology from a more inductive angle, ( See Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther's Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development (Minneapolis: Fortress. 1999). and Ian D. Kingston Siggins. Martin Luther's Doctrine of Christ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). 10. See Lohse. Martin Luther's Theology, 220. notes 8. 9. 11. Luther's Small Catechism, in The Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress. 2000), 355.Marga, Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 262)laying out the wide span of images that Luther employed, from his appropriation of motifs of Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux to his borrowings from medieval piety and the New Testament.10 This variety, however, does not weaken two fundamental commitments visible in all aspects of Luther's Christology: his commitment to the Chalcedonian formula and his commitment to human salvation as the central function and purpose of Christ's person and work. These two commitments are summed up in the Small Catechism: "I believe that Jesus Christ, true God. begotten
of the Father in eternity, and also a true human being, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord. He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned human being.*'11 The first commitment, seen in the words "true God and true human being." points to the ancient christological dogma from the Council of Chalcedon in 451. which established that the one person of Christ is constituted by two natures, divine and human, unconfusedly. unchangeably, indivisibly. and inseparably. The second commitment is to soteriology. seen in the words "He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned human being." Luther rarely speaks of the person of Christ without referring
to his saving work on our behalf. The name Christ means reconciliation of the sinner to God; Christ is reconciliation. Luther's double commitment to the Chalcedonian formula and to the explicit salvific function of Christ has been called by Hunsinger a "substantive" Christology.12 Christ as very God and very human is the sole agent who initiates and fully completes
the reconciling action that takes place between God and the human. No other component or action is necessary in a substantive
Christology for reconciliation to be "real" for the human individual. An account of the substantive nature of Luther's Christology can be seen in his Galatians commentary, where he writes. For you do not yet have Christ even though you know that He is God and man. You truly have Him only when you believe that this altogether pure and innocent Person has been granted to you b\ the Father as your High Priest and Redeemer,
yes. as your slave. Putting offHis innocence
and holiness and putting on your sinful person. He bore your sin. death, and curse: He became a sacrifice and a curse for you. in order thus to set you free from the curse of the Law. (Luther's Works [hereafter LUT 26:288) When Christ steps before God in our place as the sinner to be punished, he not only initiates but also completes our being made righteous in God's eyes. There is no other process outside of Christ alone that initiates
and completes the justification of sinners. Neither the sanctification of the sinner nor the workings of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life functions the way that Christ's saving work does—a saving work that is embodied in Christ's very person. Christ's person embodies the precedence of God's grace over any "good works" of our own. Luther states. "Christ took the initiative. . . . He did not find a good will or a correct intellect in me. but He Himself took pity on me. ... By a mercy that preceded
my reason, will and intellect. He loved me ... so much that He gave Himself for me" (LU7 26:175). Reconciliation begins with Christ alone. And it is completed in Christ alone: ". . . victory over sin and death, salvation and eternal life . . . come ... by Jesus Christ alone"(p. 138). There is no gradual getting better or gradual transformation in the sinner.
Justification is not completed by a process of sanctification. It is this once-and-for-all sense of Christ's person and actions on our behalf that makes Luther's Christology a substantive Christology. His actions need no enhancement or outside aid and do not continue upon some gradual scale within the human being. What Christ began. Christ fully completes for us. The righteousness that comes to us through Christ's reconciling act is a righteousness
that brings with it its own new life. We are given a life that is not our own. for Christ's own righteousness acts upon us. takes us over. It decenters and destabilizes
the center of our own egos, for it is the righteousness of Christ's person and not of our own person. Luther claims. "I do indeed
live in the flesh, but I do not live on the basis of my own self (LW 26:170-71). When we live in Christ, we are no longer the one who controls this reality in our lives. The presence of the person of Christ 12. Hunsinger. Disruptive Grace. 284.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 263 displaces ourselves as the center of our lives. We cannot scale this reality in our lives down to a size that we can grasp and thus control, for the righteousness of Christ does not become a quality that inheres within the human being (cf. LW 26:127). nor is it somehow infused into the human to give him or her a new identity as non-sinner. It is a reality that remains distinct from us and greater than ourselves. Indeed, the new life in Christ thrusts individuals into an existence of contradictions:
We are now saints while still being sinners. As Luther states, when we believe the good news that Christ died for us, we "are reckoned as righteous, even though sins, and great ones at that, still remain in us" (LW 26:234). Thus, although Christ starts and finishes our reconciliation with God, we, living in the here and now, do not shed our old sinful ways. We are not rid of our sin. Luther writes, These tu o things are diametrically opposed: that a Christian is righteous and beloved by God, and yet that he is a sinner at the same time. For God cannot deny His own nature. That is. He cannot avoid hating sin and sinners: and He does so by necessity, for otherwise He w ould be unjust and would love sin. (p. 235) This is the heart of Luther's classical doctrine
of the simul iustus et peccato?'. In this life, we live a life of opposites. of being a saint and sinner at the same time. God does not abandon us to the tension of saint and sinner, however. Christ's own presence to the reconciled sinner never ceases. It is an ongoing event. He is our 44'pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night' [Ex. 13:21 ] to keep God from seeing our sin" (p. 232). In that Luther emphasized Christ as the mediator, he was able to express the work of Christ in both the past, what he did as mediator for us on the cross, as well as in the present, what Christ does for us today: The new life in Christ thrusts individuals into an existence of contradictions:
We are now saints while still being sinners. ''Christ Himself is the life that I now live" (p. 167). The mediator comes to us continually.
"Today Christ is still present to some," Luther states, "but to others He is still to come. To believers He is present and has come: to unbelievers He has not yet come" (p. 240). Thus, there is a clearly actualistic element in Luther's Christology that modern theology can draw upon. Christ does not remain in static. Aristotelian categories
but spans the divide between God and human, between past, present, and future,
between action and substance, between
saint and sinner. Luther's Christ is the One who comes, who is coming. The mechanism that binds the reconciled
sinner to Christ is faith. This is a core aspect of Luther's Christology in the Galatians
commentary. "Through faith, the human participates in this saving reality of Christ who is present in the Word. This faith is a union with Christ."13 Luther writes, ... these three things are joined together: faith. Christ and acceptance or imputation. Faith takes hold of Christ and has Him present, enclosing 13. Marc Lienhard. Martin Luthers christologisches Zeugnis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1973^ 217.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 264 Him as the ring encloses the gem. And w hoever is found having this faith in the Christ who is grasped in the heart, him God accounts as righteous.
(LW 26:132) This faith is inseparably connected to Christ's personal presence to us and to the destabilized lives that we live as the simul iustus et peccator. Faith is the epistemologica!
underpinning of Luther's understanding
of the "I yet not I" in Christ. "The life I live. I live on the basis of faith," Luther states. "For the time of life that I am living I do indeed live in the flesh, but not on the basis of the flesh and according to the flesh, but in faith, on the basis of faith, and according to faith" (LW 26:170). But this inseparable connection to Christ's personal presence is not depicted as some kind of mystical union with Christ or "spiritual" faculty that then allows the believing human to make inspired statements
about God (LW 26:28-29:287). Although
Christ is present to us through faith, he still remains beyond the reach of natural human reason, in the "cloud of faith" (p. 287). Luther states, "how [Christ] is present —this is beyond our thought: for there is darkness" (p. 130). Thus, it is precisely the concept of faith that maintains the distinction
between Christ and the reconciled sinner.
It maintains the distance between Christ's mediating activities and the natural
activity of our human intellect, which, finally, are still under the control of sin. death, and the devil. As Marc Lienhard puts it. "Christ is a reality "pro nobis' and *in nobis' but he is and remains * extra nos."*14 Christ is in us and for us but remains
as a reality outside of us. And. because Christ remains outside of us. he is beyond our rational and moral control. Thus, faith cannot be understood to be identical with human reason. For Luther, faith is a "mode of cognition" that is not identical to human reason.15 Faith is not the natural human capacity to understand or to comprehend in the way it understands objects
around itself. Luther disputes the "Sophists" on this point, arguing that even though the "natural endowments" of human
reason are capable of mastering physical,
civic, and political matters, the intellect is in fact corrupt and inept in matters of the knowledge of God. A completely other form of "comprehending" is necessary in order for knowledge of God to arise in the human being. When we discuss faith. Luther states, "we are in an altogether different
world—a world that is outside reason"
(LW 26:234). Nonetheless, faith neither destroys reason
nor renders it impotent in its own sphere. Faith is essentially a different kind of rationality,
an "understanding" that moves beyond
reason: it has its source and function in a manner different from natural human reason. Karl Barth and the modern challenges to Christology The Enlightenment s turn to the subject. The period of the Enlightenment brought with it a sustained focus upon the human individual as an independent, rational, and moral agent. The intense scrutiny upon the workings of the human mind and the rise of science in the Enlightenment made it almost
impossible for twentieth-century theologians
to bring together in theological anthropology the incompatible opposites of the "I yet not I." the saint-sinner of Luther ' s theology, or even the Chalcedonian formula of Christ as very God and very man. and still be taken seriously. Further, theologians no longer could claim that hu-14. Lienhard. Martin Luthers chnsto-logisches Zeugnis. 290. 15. See Brian Gerrish. Grace and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon. 1962). 82.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 265 man knowledge of God was a distinct but still true and valid "knowledge." for it does not arise from logical thinking, scientific experiment, and mathematical reasoning. "Faith" as a form of knowledge proved no match for the Enlightenment concept of human rationality. Indeed, the distinction that Luther made between faith and reason was possible because the concept of natural human rationality had not yet been elevated to the normative status that it was in the Enlightenment. Before the Enlightenment insistence that morality and rationality obey certain rules of logic and science, there was still room for Christ to be an ''effective Subject"' in the rational, moral agent.16 As the effective Subject in humans, Christ imputed his righteousness to us through faith. He was the reference point for rational
thinking and moral decision making in faith. In Luther's theology, Christ was the reference point for every "good work" that came from the human individual, and good w orks were understood as a consequence of the immediacy and activity of Christ within the believing sinner. This immediacy
and activity kept the human rational ego decentered. allowing it to be a moral subject only by virtue of the "I yet not I."' It did not stand on its own two feet. The Enlightenment transformation of the understanding of human rationality hustled Christ the effective Subject out of theories of knowledge. This can be seen clearly in the thought of Descartes. Although
the Christian tradition was no stranger to a sense of inwardness (Augustine
had already found a way to God through a flight inward), it was anchored in the human subject's connection to God—in Luther's case, to the effective and personal presence of Christ in faith. Descartes loosed the inwardness of the human subject from its divine mooring, making it no longer necessary for human reason to operate solely by virtue of reference to the divine presence.
He assigned a power—the power of "self-mastery'"—to human reason that excluded
any possibility of conceiving the human ego as decentered.1" Human reason was unified, and effective in and of itself: no other effective Subject operated within it. The "I yet not I" central to Luther's Christology was lost. Immanuel Kant took Descartes' understanding
of the autonomy of reason one step further, proposing that the very nature of "reason" meant that one behaves in an ethical manner as well.18 He pulled morality
into the orbit of the Enlightenment notion
of reason, endowing the human with an unprecedented sense of moral freedom. This autonomous morality was "accessible and accepted by every moral agent:"19 the human individual him- or herself, without any mediating presence from a divine subject,
had the capacity to act according to one's "good will." The moral nature of humans became rooted in autonomous reasoning,
thus excluding any need or possibility
that an external force or being could work upon the human to make one into a moral being. Charles Taylor has judged Kant " s moral theory to be "a powerful... .revolutionary force in modern civilization. [His idea] seems to offer a prospect of pure self-16. Bengt Hagglund. "Luthers Anthropologie."
in Leben und Werk Martin Luthers von 1526 to 1546. Festgabe zu seinem 500. Geburstag. Vol. 1 (Góttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1983). 74. 17. Charles Taylor. Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989). 147. 18. See Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Harper Torchbooks. Harper and Row. [1785] 1964). 19. Manfred Kuhn. Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001). 285.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 266 activity, where my action is determined . . . ultimately by my own agency as a formula-tor of rational law."20 Natural reason itself is an instrument that formulates and sets moral principles: it alone obligates humans to do good works. It alone produces righteousness.
The philosophical consensus about human rationality and morality ushered in by Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant and Descartes was worlds apart from the early modern understanding of the human of Luther's era, where rationality reached its limit in relationship to the divine being and where morality was made possible b\ nothing other than the divine action. Lutheran theology and the "face" of Jesus Christ. While the Enlightenment granted a new autonomy to human reason, it could do so only by limiting reason to the sphere proper to it. namely, the sphere of history. "Reason" could no longer draw credible conclusions about anything that lay outside history and the logical sequence of events that make history. Speaking of Jesus as true God and true man became impossible. Credible speaking of Jesus Christ was restricted
to speaking of Jesus the man. Jesus the historical figure, the divinity of whom could be established only from what we know about his humanity "from below."21 Throughout the nineteenth century into the early twentieth, leading thinkers such as Elert promoted Christologies based solely on Christ's historical appearance, on the "face" of Christ. His physical presence— his 'face'—was the only reality of God that humans needed to see. In the life of Jesus as a purely historical figure, humans have the full, visible, complete face of God directly
and immediately before them. Jesus Christ did not reveal a God behind and beyond himself. His person and work were not considered revelation.22 Because modern Protestantism did not think in terms of the God outside history, the Christology of a Lutheran like Elert did not seek a Christ who mediated between humans and a God who was perceived as an ultimately unknowable metaphysical "Father."
The face and life of the historical Jesus was enough for natural human reason to discover and know God in God's fullness.
This kind of intense focus upon history, and the rather uncritical and naive trust in history and human reason that accompanied
it. was prevalent among Protestant
thinkers of Barth's da\. The substantive Christology of Luther lay buried deep in the layers of history, which makes the fact that Barth retrieved this aspect from Luther all the more remarkable. Barth' s retrieval of a substantive Christology.
Already in Barth's early theology from the decade of the 1920s, before he even considered writing the massive Church Dogmatics (first begun in 1932). he displayed
a keen interest in the theology of the Reformation, but he harbored doubts about the accuracy of his Lutheran contemporaries'
representation of Luther's theology.2"1 The Protestantism of the era. with its strong historicizing and psychologizing tenden-20. Taylor. Sources of the Self. 364. 21. Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the nineteenth Centwy 1870-1914. vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale Universitt Press. 1985). 157. 22. Werner Elert. Die Lehre des Luthertums im Abriß (Munich: Beck. 1924). 29. For a similar Lutheran perspecm e. see Paul Althaus. "Theologie und Geschichte. Zur Auseinandersetzung mit der dialektischen Theologie." in Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 1 (1923/24): 771. See also Barth's Unterricht in der christliche Religion, vol. 2 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich. 1990). par. 15:22. for his references to Elert and Althaus. (Hereafter Unterricht) 23. Unterricht 15:23: 28:29-30.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 26" cies evident in thinkers like Elert, was completely inadequate for truthful talk of the God of Jesus Christ. After the outbreak of World War I and the profoundly disturbing
involvement of leading Protestant theologians
in justifying the aggression of the German nation, Barth could no longer accept
a doctrine of revelation that read God's actions and intentions directly from the events of history. The Lutheran view that only the humanity of Jesus Christ was a positive and direct revelation of God on the surface of history became unacceptable to him.24 If Jesus Christ was the true Savior, God had to be at work in him. The historical
figure of Jesus of Nazareth needed to be part of something greater than himself. In his preparations for his seminal cycle on dogmatic theology, begun at the University
of Göttingen in 1924, Barth discovered
for himself the ancient Chalcedonian Christology by which Christ was truly God. truly human, unmixed, undivided, uncon-fused, and unseparated.25 What this discovery
did was allow Barth to move his theology beyond the historical, psychological ghetto of modern Christology and closer to that of Luther,26 closer to a substantive Christology
in which Christ's own person and work starts and completes our reconciliation with God.27 Precisely because humans come to know Jesus Christ as both God and man, his saving actions on our behalf are a real and effective reconciliation: That Jesus Christ is this one, the incarnated Logos God. is the absolute decisive presupposition
for his work... . One can not interpret the officium mediatorium, the completion of reconciliation
between God and the human, one will alw ays misinterpret it if one does not previously know who the mediator, who the completer is in this act, who the representative of this officium is. The work of Christ has its very particular character, its very particular qualification, its very particular gradient determined through that which is effective here, through the very union with God which Christ finds himself in.28 Contrary to his Lutheran contemporaries.
Barth established that Christ's work cannot be understood on the basis of the historical figure of Jesus alone. Knowing who Christ is and what Christ does comes only from knowing that he is united to the Father as very God and very human. "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life." In 1929, five years after his first lectures in Göttingen, Barth pushed even more against psychologized, historicized Christology in a lecture he gave at a theological conference
in Elberfeld. Germany, titled "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life." Using Luther. Barth demonstrated here how a substantive Christology of Jesus Christ the mediator functions as a critique of the Enlightenment
understanding of the human as a rational, moral agent. Barth's targets were soteriologies like that of Holl, whose emphasis on Christianity as a religion of ''conscience'' essentially canceled out any need for a substantive Christology. In an essay on Luther's doctrine of justification, Holl argued against the traditional
substantive Christology of Luther. To Holl. the contradiction between the holy God and the sinful human could not be solved by simply pointing to Christ's person
and work as the mediator between them.29 God meets the sinner with the in-24. Unterricht 15:22. 25. Unterricht 6:169. 193: 28:46. 26. Unterricht 6:169, 193: 28:46. 27. Unterricht 29:75. 28. Unterricht 29:75. See also Bruce McCormack's work on this aspect of Barth's dogmatics in his Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995). 327ff. 29. Karl Holl. Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rückblick auf die Frage der H eil s gewissheit in Kirchengeschichte. vol. 1: Luther (Tubingen: Mohr. 1921). 91-130.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 268 tenti on to forgive and transform "the human
into his own image."3U Christ does not represent this intention and therefore does not function as a mediating "third thing" in the meeting of God and the sinner. God's intention can turn into actual forgiveness only when the human's own intentions and actions turn toward the good. Thus. God actually meets not the sinner but rather the human as moral agent who strives to fulfill the Law—as a doer of good works. Reconciliation
of God and the human is therefore not an event where the enmity between God and the sinner is resolved: it is merely a "meeting of good wills." God justifies the one who is already justified.31 The completion
of reconciliation depends, finally, upon the moral fiber of the autonomous individual.
The transformation of the individual
into the imago Dei may or may not take place: justification is the "foundation for a new life." but it is up to the individual to gradually get better.32 Such a moralistic soteriology rejects the central role of Christ as mediator between
God and the sinner. It has no need for a substantive Christology because "sin" is no longer perceived as a devastating ontological force. Sin is a misguided good will, but a good will nevertheless. The human rational agent remains rational and able to make moral decisions, even as a sinner, for rationality contains morality within itself. Sin is merely a discrepancy between rationality and morality whereby sinful actions occur when human moral intentions do not follow reason. To Barth, however, the rational and moral constitution of the autonomous individual
does not help us get better and better. Sin brings the rational, moral agent to his or her knees. Sin is about the rational, moral agent's own struggle against God: it is human resistance to grace, not a description
of intentions. The struggle against this enmity toward God is undertaken by Christ and Christ alone, the Reconciler Spirit. Using Luther's simul iustus et pec cat or. Barth expresses the externality of Christ's work upon us. The human will never cease to acknowledge and confess, in all seriousness, that one's having been justified is utterly not in oneself, and consequently not m one's human unbelief. Indeed, the Christian is simul peccator et Justus and the surmounting of this irreconcilable contradiction does not lie in the Christian .. . but is the action of the Word of God. the action of Christ, w ho is always the One who makes one out to be a sinner, in order to make one (though a sinner) into a righteous [hu]man." Not we but Christ conquers our "radical evil and hate" toward the living God.34 This retrieval of a substantive Christology
had implications for both human reason and human morality. Barth countered
the rationalism in contemporary theories
of justification using the terminology of reason itself. He argued that the only activity that humans can ever really know is our own. Human rationality, therefore, only perpetuates our enmity toward God. Our insistence upon our own limited, self-enclosed rationality, and on controlling everything through our reason, does not bring us knowledge of God's work in Christ. In "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life" he writes that reason, "in its unbelief, in its stubbornness, in its meek self-righ-30. Holl. Die Rechtfertigungslehre. 99. 31. Holl. 97-98. 32. Holl. 98. 33. Holl. 31: Barth. -Der Heilige Geist und das christliche Leben."" in Karl-Barth-Gesamtausgabe.
Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1925-1930. Ill (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich. 1994). 495. 34. Barth. "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life."" trans. R. Birch Hoyle (Louisville. KY: Westminster/John Knox. 1993). 19.20.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 269 teousness. in which it wishes to remain by itself . . . does not wish to hear of something
radically different from its own workings"
(pp. 19, 20). The exercise of reason does not bring us insight into God's activities:
"What we can make evident to ourselves
is always our own activity. Even when we set this under the prefix of grace, it still remains our own working*' (pp. 24-25). With these claims, Barth locates a '"blind spot" in human rationality that can be filled only by Christ, for it is Christ alone who mediates himself to us through a "continual
giving" of himself into faith, whose righteousness is "established as true in our flesh" (p. 29). In so doing. Barth reintroduces
Christ as the effective Subject, so significant to Luther's theology, into an understanding of the modern sinner in relation
to God. The rational agent is indeed subject, but a subject whose agency has limits in relation to God's reconciling activity.
It is "I yet not Γ* who comes to know God. Barth further buttresses his argument against the abilities of human reason before God by qualifying the ability oí faith as a mode of cognition, lest it too be swallowed up by the all-encompassing Enlightenment conceptions of reason. Even faith is "hidden
from itself (p. 30: emphasis added). Rational thought cannot not make "faith" into a living knowledge of God. This is the task of the Holy Spirit: "but the two things, the acknowledgement of this contradiction [sin] and the knowledge of its being surmounted,
are not our own business, but are the Holy Spirit's"(p. 31). Here. too. Barth does not allow the human "I" to take control
of one * s own faith. Faith is mediated to the human by God and cannot be swallowed
up by one's sense of self as agent. The destabilizing "I yet not I" remains central to the identity of the believing Christian.
Β arth reintroduces
Christ as the effective Subject, so significant to Luther's theology, into an understanding of the modern sinner. In his retrieval of a substantive Christology
Barth also challenged the Enlightenment
conception of a reasonable, autonomous morality, and destabilized the human as a moral agent. When Christ is understood as the sole effector of our reconciliation
to God, the individual "person must be left out of consideration" (p. 26: emphasis added). Although human individuals
are indeed agents of actions, any and every good work that we see as being "ours" is canceled out, and the "I yet not I" comes into effect. As Barth states, the work of Christ the Reconciler Spirit must be seen in its fundamental and immutable [unaußiebbar] restriction of ever} thing that is our o\\ η w ork. Wherever the action of humans in themselves, m w hate\ er pretense or form, is made into a condition
of the human's fellowship with God. there the Holy Spirit is forgotten, and there sin is committed in order to overcome sin. (p. 20) Where human morality, the human will or conscience, is seen as the way to mediate the relationship between the sinner and God. the two aspects of reconciliation that need to be held together—justification and sanctification—fall away from each other. Justification turns into a slow, gradual
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern burner 2"0 process by which the sinner thinks he or she could become a nonsinner through the good works that he or she performs (p. 21). Reconciliation then becomes a matter of the "'divine gift and man's creative action combined in one*" (p. 22. quoting Augustine).
The "I yet not I" collapses into the willful human ego, and a substantive Christology
is dissolved. Barth was well aware of the implications
of his modern epistemologica! interpretation
of Luther's substantive Christology. When it is properly understood,
first, as being fully undertaken, begun,
and completed in Christ's person and work as the God-man, and further, as an event that is outside the control of our reasoning skills and moral abilities, the term "Christian" must take on a very particular
meaning. Supposing w e decide to side . .. w ith Luther . .. to proceed with caution when w e use the adjective
"Christian" and to use the word in a way quite other than is the vogue in our victorious modern Christendom. What. then, is meant by such phrases as "Christian" view of the universe. "Christian" morality. "Christian" art? What are "Christian" personalities. "Christian" families. "Christian" groups. "Christian" newspapers. "Christian" societies ... ? Who gives us permission
to us the adjective so profuselv? (pp. 37-38) Concluding remarks What Barth gained from Luther's substantive
Christology was a way to express the work of Christ upon the sinner that overcomes
the human drive to relate to God as beings who are autonomous, reasonable, and good-willed. Luther " s tight unification of Christ's person and work highlights that Christ's action as the God-man and mediator
is something that is started and finished in our lives by Christ alone. In that Luther closely connected the person and work of Christ with the creation of faith as a mode of cognition that is distinct from natural human reason, his Christology limits the capabilities of natural human reason to comprehend and therefore control what God's actions are toward us. To Barth, this meant that when it comes to the God-human relationship, human reason has a distinct blind spot. Taking this blind spot seriously means that Christians, especially Lutherans, maintain a healthy critical distance
to the process by which we weigh matters of moral weight using our everyday
reason and common sense. The "I yet not I" as the foundation for rational thinking
provides us with a critical check upon the way we go about trying to lead lives we would like to call Christian. Sustaining the faith that is beyond the reach of our control requires that Christ continually mediate himself to us as a Subject working within us. Finally, taking Barth's retrieval of Luther' s Christology seriously means bringing
to light the falsity that lies in the concept
of an autonomous "good will" that accompanies modem individuals* sense of self. Morality never arises out of ourselves,
and moral actions always have enfolded
within them some other hidden motive and external influence, whether it be economic, personal, idealistic, or practical.
It is clear in the theologies of both Barth and Luther that the only external factor that can actually make our good actions good is the divine influence, which comes from beyond our ability to rationalize
and control, which is mediated to us in the person of the crucified Christ who continually
works upon us as God's Reconciling
Spirit.
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Currents in Theology and Mission 34 no 4 Ag 2007, p 260-270
Despite Karl Barth*s lasting commitment to the Reformed tradition of John Calvin, it is the thought of Martin Luther that casts a long shadow over Barm's theology. As George Hunsinger points out. At certain vital points Barth follows Luther not only, broadly speaking, against Calvin and the Reformed tradition, but also against the main lines of the Lutheran tradition. There are points, in other words, where Barth actually retrieved Luther in order to stand with him not only against modernity, but also against the rest of the Reformation. (George Hunsinger. Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids. MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. 2000). 282.) If we refocus the historical lens upon Barth and Luther, they can be seen to stand like bookends on the shelf of the modern age. with Luther standing at the beginning of what historians now call "early moder-nity," and Barth standing at its end.(W. Stacy Johnson, among others, has even suggested that Barth"s theology contains the seeds for postmodern theology. See his The Mystery of God: Karl Barth and the Postmodern Foundations of Theology (Louisville. KY: Westminster John Knox. 1997). Barth looked back for the sake of looking forward and in so doing engaged in intense study of Luther. Barth absorbed aspects of Luther's theology that allowed him to articulate Christian theology in deeper and more sophisticated ways over against modernity, which had through the course of the Enlightenment set the criteria for how we know what we know and thus how we articulate the sinner's relationship to Jesus Christ. As Hunsinger has noted. Barth "almost alone among modern theologians" granted "uncompromising precedence to the Reformation over modernity itself." He did not reject modernity, but he "refused to allow secular epistemologie s to set the terms for the validity of the gospel." (Hunsinger. Disruptive Grace. 293.) Barth"s mature Christology. seen in his Church Dogmatics, vol. IV. published in the early 1950s, has been a central channel into comparisons of his theology with that of Luther. Both Karin Bornkamm and Gerhard Ebeling have demonstrated that Luther and Barth share a Christocentrism in the best sense: clearly this was one thing Barth learned from Luther. Bornkamm has shown how Barth transformed Luther's conception of the offices of Christ as priest and king for the sake of forging a relationship
between Christology and soteriology. (Karin Bornkamm. "Die reformatorische
Lehre vom Amt Christi und ihre Umformung durch Karl Barths." in Luther und Barth. Veröffentlichung der Luther-Akademie Ratzeburg. Vol. 13. ed. Joachim Heubach (Erlangen: Martin-Luther-Verlag. 1989). 144. Currents in Theology and Mission 34 4 (August 200 )
Marga, Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 261). Ebeling traces the christological impulses that Barth took from Luther, even while Barth formed his own criticisms of the Reformer in the Church Dogmatics.( Gerhard Ebeling. Lutherstudien, vol. 3 (Tubingen: Mohr. 1985). 495-506.) But Barth had already begun retrieving aspects of Luther's Christology almost thirty years earlier. One example of this is a lecture that Barth gave in 1929 in Münster on theology and ethics titled "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life." After a decade that included two lecture cycles in dogmatic theology and intense engagement with Roman Catholic theology. Barth dove into the works of Augustine, Calvin, and Luther. The result was a lecture on theology and ethics titled "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life" that displays Barth's deepening understanding of Luther's Christology. In this essay I briefly present Luther's Christology from his 1535 Galatians commentary (Luther wrote this commentary in 1531. but it was not published until 1535.) and show how Barth reached back to retrieve this for his own theology despite the drastically different epistemological landscape of the two thinkers brought about by the Enlightenment. Barth reached over Enlightenment notions of rationality and morality to retrieve Luther's substantive Christology, and in so doing he left behind the psychological and historical interpretations of the person and work of Christ by thinkers such as Werner Elert and Karl Holl. Luther's theology provided Barth with the resources to pull Christology out of the grip of Enlightenment understandings of the individual as an autonomous agent and show that reconciliation of the human to God by God and through God alone need not be beholden to modern theories of rationality or morality. Martin Luther's Christology in the Galatians commentary The richness of Martin Luther's Christology
has provided scholars with a wide variety of angles from which to analyze it. Ebeling has tried to capture its expanse under the terminology of a "forensic-antithetical*'
Christology." Finnish scholars such as Tuomo Mannermaa have focused their attention on the aspect of deification in Luther's early work. (See. for example. Der im Glauben gegenwärtige Christus. Rechtfertigung und Vergottung (Hannover: Lutheran-Verlag-Haus. 1989). Bernhard Lohse. and in more detail Ian Siggins. have approached
Luther ' s Christology from a more inductive angle, ( See Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther's Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development (Minneapolis: Fortress. 1999). and Ian D. Kingston Siggins. Martin Luther's Doctrine of Christ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). 10. See Lohse. Martin Luther's Theology, 220. notes 8. 9. 11. Luther's Small Catechism, in The Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress. 2000), 355.Marga, Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 262)laying out the wide span of images that Luther employed, from his appropriation of motifs of Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux to his borrowings from medieval piety and the New Testament.10 This variety, however, does not weaken two fundamental commitments visible in all aspects of Luther's Christology: his commitment to the Chalcedonian formula and his commitment to human salvation as the central function and purpose of Christ's person and work. These two commitments are summed up in the Small Catechism: "I believe that Jesus Christ, true God. begotten
of the Father in eternity, and also a true human being, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord. He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned human being.*'11 The first commitment, seen in the words "true God and true human being." points to the ancient christological dogma from the Council of Chalcedon in 451. which established that the one person of Christ is constituted by two natures, divine and human, unconfusedly. unchangeably, indivisibly. and inseparably. The second commitment is to soteriology. seen in the words "He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned human being." Luther rarely speaks of the person of Christ without referring
to his saving work on our behalf. The name Christ means reconciliation of the sinner to God; Christ is reconciliation. Luther's double commitment to the Chalcedonian formula and to the explicit salvific function of Christ has been called by Hunsinger a "substantive" Christology.12 Christ as very God and very human is the sole agent who initiates and fully completes
the reconciling action that takes place between God and the human. No other component or action is necessary in a substantive
Christology for reconciliation to be "real" for the human individual. An account of the substantive nature of Luther's Christology can be seen in his Galatians commentary, where he writes. For you do not yet have Christ even though you know that He is God and man. You truly have Him only when you believe that this altogether pure and innocent Person has been granted to you b\ the Father as your High Priest and Redeemer,
yes. as your slave. Putting offHis innocence
and holiness and putting on your sinful person. He bore your sin. death, and curse: He became a sacrifice and a curse for you. in order thus to set you free from the curse of the Law. (Luther's Works [hereafter LUT 26:288) When Christ steps before God in our place as the sinner to be punished, he not only initiates but also completes our being made righteous in God's eyes. There is no other process outside of Christ alone that initiates
and completes the justification of sinners. Neither the sanctification of the sinner nor the workings of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life functions the way that Christ's saving work does—a saving work that is embodied in Christ's very person. Christ's person embodies the precedence of God's grace over any "good works" of our own. Luther states. "Christ took the initiative. . . . He did not find a good will or a correct intellect in me. but He Himself took pity on me. ... By a mercy that preceded
my reason, will and intellect. He loved me ... so much that He gave Himself for me" (LU7 26:175). Reconciliation begins with Christ alone. And it is completed in Christ alone: ". . . victory over sin and death, salvation and eternal life . . . come ... by Jesus Christ alone"(p. 138). There is no gradual getting better or gradual transformation in the sinner.
Justification is not completed by a process of sanctification. It is this once-and-for-all sense of Christ's person and actions on our behalf that makes Luther's Christology a substantive Christology. His actions need no enhancement or outside aid and do not continue upon some gradual scale within the human being. What Christ began. Christ fully completes for us. The righteousness that comes to us through Christ's reconciling act is a righteousness
that brings with it its own new life. We are given a life that is not our own. for Christ's own righteousness acts upon us. takes us over. It decenters and destabilizes
the center of our own egos, for it is the righteousness of Christ's person and not of our own person. Luther claims. "I do indeed
live in the flesh, but I do not live on the basis of my own self (LW 26:170-71). When we live in Christ, we are no longer the one who controls this reality in our lives. The presence of the person of Christ 12. Hunsinger. Disruptive Grace. 284.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 263 displaces ourselves as the center of our lives. We cannot scale this reality in our lives down to a size that we can grasp and thus control, for the righteousness of Christ does not become a quality that inheres within the human being (cf. LW 26:127). nor is it somehow infused into the human to give him or her a new identity as non-sinner. It is a reality that remains distinct from us and greater than ourselves. Indeed, the new life in Christ thrusts individuals into an existence of contradictions:
We are now saints while still being sinners. As Luther states, when we believe the good news that Christ died for us, we "are reckoned as righteous, even though sins, and great ones at that, still remain in us" (LW 26:234). Thus, although Christ starts and finishes our reconciliation with God, we, living in the here and now, do not shed our old sinful ways. We are not rid of our sin. Luther writes, These tu o things are diametrically opposed: that a Christian is righteous and beloved by God, and yet that he is a sinner at the same time. For God cannot deny His own nature. That is. He cannot avoid hating sin and sinners: and He does so by necessity, for otherwise He w ould be unjust and would love sin. (p. 235) This is the heart of Luther's classical doctrine
of the simul iustus et peccato?'. In this life, we live a life of opposites. of being a saint and sinner at the same time. God does not abandon us to the tension of saint and sinner, however. Christ's own presence to the reconciled sinner never ceases. It is an ongoing event. He is our 44'pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night' [Ex. 13:21 ] to keep God from seeing our sin" (p. 232). In that Luther emphasized Christ as the mediator, he was able to express the work of Christ in both the past, what he did as mediator for us on the cross, as well as in the present, what Christ does for us today: The new life in Christ thrusts individuals into an existence of contradictions:
We are now saints while still being sinners. ''Christ Himself is the life that I now live" (p. 167). The mediator comes to us continually.
"Today Christ is still present to some," Luther states, "but to others He is still to come. To believers He is present and has come: to unbelievers He has not yet come" (p. 240). Thus, there is a clearly actualistic element in Luther's Christology that modern theology can draw upon. Christ does not remain in static. Aristotelian categories
but spans the divide between God and human, between past, present, and future,
between action and substance, between
saint and sinner. Luther's Christ is the One who comes, who is coming. The mechanism that binds the reconciled
sinner to Christ is faith. This is a core aspect of Luther's Christology in the Galatians
commentary. "Through faith, the human participates in this saving reality of Christ who is present in the Word. This faith is a union with Christ."13 Luther writes, ... these three things are joined together: faith. Christ and acceptance or imputation. Faith takes hold of Christ and has Him present, enclosing 13. Marc Lienhard. Martin Luthers christologisches Zeugnis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1973^ 217.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 264 Him as the ring encloses the gem. And w hoever is found having this faith in the Christ who is grasped in the heart, him God accounts as righteous.
(LW 26:132) This faith is inseparably connected to Christ's personal presence to us and to the destabilized lives that we live as the simul iustus et peccator. Faith is the epistemologica!
underpinning of Luther's understanding
of the "I yet not I" in Christ. "The life I live. I live on the basis of faith," Luther states. "For the time of life that I am living I do indeed live in the flesh, but not on the basis of the flesh and according to the flesh, but in faith, on the basis of faith, and according to faith" (LW 26:170). But this inseparable connection to Christ's personal presence is not depicted as some kind of mystical union with Christ or "spiritual" faculty that then allows the believing human to make inspired statements
about God (LW 26:28-29:287). Although
Christ is present to us through faith, he still remains beyond the reach of natural human reason, in the "cloud of faith" (p. 287). Luther states, "how [Christ] is present —this is beyond our thought: for there is darkness" (p. 130). Thus, it is precisely the concept of faith that maintains the distinction
between Christ and the reconciled sinner.
It maintains the distance between Christ's mediating activities and the natural
activity of our human intellect, which, finally, are still under the control of sin. death, and the devil. As Marc Lienhard puts it. "Christ is a reality "pro nobis' and *in nobis' but he is and remains * extra nos."*14 Christ is in us and for us but remains
as a reality outside of us. And. because Christ remains outside of us. he is beyond our rational and moral control. Thus, faith cannot be understood to be identical with human reason. For Luther, faith is a "mode of cognition" that is not identical to human reason.15 Faith is not the natural human capacity to understand or to comprehend in the way it understands objects
around itself. Luther disputes the "Sophists" on this point, arguing that even though the "natural endowments" of human
reason are capable of mastering physical,
civic, and political matters, the intellect is in fact corrupt and inept in matters of the knowledge of God. A completely other form of "comprehending" is necessary in order for knowledge of God to arise in the human being. When we discuss faith. Luther states, "we are in an altogether different
world—a world that is outside reason"
(LW 26:234). Nonetheless, faith neither destroys reason
nor renders it impotent in its own sphere. Faith is essentially a different kind of rationality,
an "understanding" that moves beyond
reason: it has its source and function in a manner different from natural human reason. Karl Barth and the modern challenges to Christology The Enlightenment s turn to the subject. The period of the Enlightenment brought with it a sustained focus upon the human individual as an independent, rational, and moral agent. The intense scrutiny upon the workings of the human mind and the rise of science in the Enlightenment made it almost
impossible for twentieth-century theologians
to bring together in theological anthropology the incompatible opposites of the "I yet not I." the saint-sinner of Luther ' s theology, or even the Chalcedonian formula of Christ as very God and very man. and still be taken seriously. Further, theologians no longer could claim that hu-14. Lienhard. Martin Luthers chnsto-logisches Zeugnis. 290. 15. See Brian Gerrish. Grace and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon. 1962). 82.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 265 man knowledge of God was a distinct but still true and valid "knowledge." for it does not arise from logical thinking, scientific experiment, and mathematical reasoning. "Faith" as a form of knowledge proved no match for the Enlightenment concept of human rationality. Indeed, the distinction that Luther made between faith and reason was possible because the concept of natural human rationality had not yet been elevated to the normative status that it was in the Enlightenment. Before the Enlightenment insistence that morality and rationality obey certain rules of logic and science, there was still room for Christ to be an ''effective Subject"' in the rational, moral agent.16 As the effective Subject in humans, Christ imputed his righteousness to us through faith. He was the reference point for rational
thinking and moral decision making in faith. In Luther's theology, Christ was the reference point for every "good work" that came from the human individual, and good w orks were understood as a consequence of the immediacy and activity of Christ within the believing sinner. This immediacy
and activity kept the human rational ego decentered. allowing it to be a moral subject only by virtue of the "I yet not I."' It did not stand on its own two feet. The Enlightenment transformation of the understanding of human rationality hustled Christ the effective Subject out of theories of knowledge. This can be seen clearly in the thought of Descartes. Although
the Christian tradition was no stranger to a sense of inwardness (Augustine
had already found a way to God through a flight inward), it was anchored in the human subject's connection to God—in Luther's case, to the effective and personal presence of Christ in faith. Descartes loosed the inwardness of the human subject from its divine mooring, making it no longer necessary for human reason to operate solely by virtue of reference to the divine presence.
He assigned a power—the power of "self-mastery'"—to human reason that excluded
any possibility of conceiving the human ego as decentered.1" Human reason was unified, and effective in and of itself: no other effective Subject operated within it. The "I yet not I" central to Luther's Christology was lost. Immanuel Kant took Descartes' understanding
of the autonomy of reason one step further, proposing that the very nature of "reason" meant that one behaves in an ethical manner as well.18 He pulled morality
into the orbit of the Enlightenment notion
of reason, endowing the human with an unprecedented sense of moral freedom. This autonomous morality was "accessible and accepted by every moral agent:"19 the human individual him- or herself, without any mediating presence from a divine subject,
had the capacity to act according to one's "good will." The moral nature of humans became rooted in autonomous reasoning,
thus excluding any need or possibility
that an external force or being could work upon the human to make one into a moral being. Charles Taylor has judged Kant " s moral theory to be "a powerful... .revolutionary force in modern civilization. [His idea] seems to offer a prospect of pure self-16. Bengt Hagglund. "Luthers Anthropologie."
in Leben und Werk Martin Luthers von 1526 to 1546. Festgabe zu seinem 500. Geburstag. Vol. 1 (Góttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1983). 74. 17. Charles Taylor. Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989). 147. 18. See Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Harper Torchbooks. Harper and Row. [1785] 1964). 19. Manfred Kuhn. Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001). 285.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 266 activity, where my action is determined . . . ultimately by my own agency as a formula-tor of rational law."20 Natural reason itself is an instrument that formulates and sets moral principles: it alone obligates humans to do good works. It alone produces righteousness.
The philosophical consensus about human rationality and morality ushered in by Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant and Descartes was worlds apart from the early modern understanding of the human of Luther's era, where rationality reached its limit in relationship to the divine being and where morality was made possible b\ nothing other than the divine action. Lutheran theology and the "face" of Jesus Christ. While the Enlightenment granted a new autonomy to human reason, it could do so only by limiting reason to the sphere proper to it. namely, the sphere of history. "Reason" could no longer draw credible conclusions about anything that lay outside history and the logical sequence of events that make history. Speaking of Jesus as true God and true man became impossible. Credible speaking of Jesus Christ was restricted
to speaking of Jesus the man. Jesus the historical figure, the divinity of whom could be established only from what we know about his humanity "from below."21 Throughout the nineteenth century into the early twentieth, leading thinkers such as Elert promoted Christologies based solely on Christ's historical appearance, on the "face" of Christ. His physical presence— his 'face'—was the only reality of God that humans needed to see. In the life of Jesus as a purely historical figure, humans have the full, visible, complete face of God directly
and immediately before them. Jesus Christ did not reveal a God behind and beyond himself. His person and work were not considered revelation.22 Because modern Protestantism did not think in terms of the God outside history, the Christology of a Lutheran like Elert did not seek a Christ who mediated between humans and a God who was perceived as an ultimately unknowable metaphysical "Father."
The face and life of the historical Jesus was enough for natural human reason to discover and know God in God's fullness.
This kind of intense focus upon history, and the rather uncritical and naive trust in history and human reason that accompanied
it. was prevalent among Protestant
thinkers of Barth's da\. The substantive Christology of Luther lay buried deep in the layers of history, which makes the fact that Barth retrieved this aspect from Luther all the more remarkable. Barth' s retrieval of a substantive Christology.
Already in Barth's early theology from the decade of the 1920s, before he even considered writing the massive Church Dogmatics (first begun in 1932). he displayed
a keen interest in the theology of the Reformation, but he harbored doubts about the accuracy of his Lutheran contemporaries'
representation of Luther's theology.2"1 The Protestantism of the era. with its strong historicizing and psychologizing tenden-20. Taylor. Sources of the Self. 364. 21. Claude Welch, Protestant Thought in the nineteenth Centwy 1870-1914. vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale Universitt Press. 1985). 157. 22. Werner Elert. Die Lehre des Luthertums im Abriß (Munich: Beck. 1924). 29. For a similar Lutheran perspecm e. see Paul Althaus. "Theologie und Geschichte. Zur Auseinandersetzung mit der dialektischen Theologie." in Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 1 (1923/24): 771. See also Barth's Unterricht in der christliche Religion, vol. 2 (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich. 1990). par. 15:22. for his references to Elert and Althaus. (Hereafter Unterricht) 23. Unterricht 15:23: 28:29-30.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 26" cies evident in thinkers like Elert, was completely inadequate for truthful talk of the God of Jesus Christ. After the outbreak of World War I and the profoundly disturbing
involvement of leading Protestant theologians
in justifying the aggression of the German nation, Barth could no longer accept
a doctrine of revelation that read God's actions and intentions directly from the events of history. The Lutheran view that only the humanity of Jesus Christ was a positive and direct revelation of God on the surface of history became unacceptable to him.24 If Jesus Christ was the true Savior, God had to be at work in him. The historical
figure of Jesus of Nazareth needed to be part of something greater than himself. In his preparations for his seminal cycle on dogmatic theology, begun at the University
of Göttingen in 1924, Barth discovered
for himself the ancient Chalcedonian Christology by which Christ was truly God. truly human, unmixed, undivided, uncon-fused, and unseparated.25 What this discovery
did was allow Barth to move his theology beyond the historical, psychological ghetto of modern Christology and closer to that of Luther,26 closer to a substantive Christology
in which Christ's own person and work starts and completes our reconciliation with God.27 Precisely because humans come to know Jesus Christ as both God and man, his saving actions on our behalf are a real and effective reconciliation: That Jesus Christ is this one, the incarnated Logos God. is the absolute decisive presupposition
for his work... . One can not interpret the officium mediatorium, the completion of reconciliation
between God and the human, one will alw ays misinterpret it if one does not previously know who the mediator, who the completer is in this act, who the representative of this officium is. The work of Christ has its very particular character, its very particular qualification, its very particular gradient determined through that which is effective here, through the very union with God which Christ finds himself in.28 Contrary to his Lutheran contemporaries.
Barth established that Christ's work cannot be understood on the basis of the historical figure of Jesus alone. Knowing who Christ is and what Christ does comes only from knowing that he is united to the Father as very God and very human. "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life." In 1929, five years after his first lectures in Göttingen, Barth pushed even more against psychologized, historicized Christology in a lecture he gave at a theological conference
in Elberfeld. Germany, titled "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life." Using Luther. Barth demonstrated here how a substantive Christology of Jesus Christ the mediator functions as a critique of the Enlightenment
understanding of the human as a rational, moral agent. Barth's targets were soteriologies like that of Holl, whose emphasis on Christianity as a religion of ''conscience'' essentially canceled out any need for a substantive Christology. In an essay on Luther's doctrine of justification, Holl argued against the traditional
substantive Christology of Luther. To Holl. the contradiction between the holy God and the sinful human could not be solved by simply pointing to Christ's person
and work as the mediator between them.29 God meets the sinner with the in-24. Unterricht 15:22. 25. Unterricht 6:169. 193: 28:46. 26. Unterricht 6:169, 193: 28:46. 27. Unterricht 29:75. 28. Unterricht 29:75. See also Bruce McCormack's work on this aspect of Barth's dogmatics in his Karl Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995). 327ff. 29. Karl Holl. Die Rechtfertigungslehre in Luthers Vorlesung über den Römerbrief mit besonderer Rückblick auf die Frage der H eil s gewissheit in Kirchengeschichte. vol. 1: Luther (Tubingen: Mohr. 1921). 91-130.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 268 tenti on to forgive and transform "the human
into his own image."3U Christ does not represent this intention and therefore does not function as a mediating "third thing" in the meeting of God and the sinner. God's intention can turn into actual forgiveness only when the human's own intentions and actions turn toward the good. Thus. God actually meets not the sinner but rather the human as moral agent who strives to fulfill the Law—as a doer of good works. Reconciliation
of God and the human is therefore not an event where the enmity between God and the sinner is resolved: it is merely a "meeting of good wills." God justifies the one who is already justified.31 The completion
of reconciliation depends, finally, upon the moral fiber of the autonomous individual.
The transformation of the individual
into the imago Dei may or may not take place: justification is the "foundation for a new life." but it is up to the individual to gradually get better.32 Such a moralistic soteriology rejects the central role of Christ as mediator between
God and the sinner. It has no need for a substantive Christology because "sin" is no longer perceived as a devastating ontological force. Sin is a misguided good will, but a good will nevertheless. The human rational agent remains rational and able to make moral decisions, even as a sinner, for rationality contains morality within itself. Sin is merely a discrepancy between rationality and morality whereby sinful actions occur when human moral intentions do not follow reason. To Barth, however, the rational and moral constitution of the autonomous individual
does not help us get better and better. Sin brings the rational, moral agent to his or her knees. Sin is about the rational, moral agent's own struggle against God: it is human resistance to grace, not a description
of intentions. The struggle against this enmity toward God is undertaken by Christ and Christ alone, the Reconciler Spirit. Using Luther's simul iustus et pec cat or. Barth expresses the externality of Christ's work upon us. The human will never cease to acknowledge and confess, in all seriousness, that one's having been justified is utterly not in oneself, and consequently not m one's human unbelief. Indeed, the Christian is simul peccator et Justus and the surmounting of this irreconcilable contradiction does not lie in the Christian .. . but is the action of the Word of God. the action of Christ, w ho is always the One who makes one out to be a sinner, in order to make one (though a sinner) into a righteous [hu]man." Not we but Christ conquers our "radical evil and hate" toward the living God.34 This retrieval of a substantive Christology
had implications for both human reason and human morality. Barth countered
the rationalism in contemporary theories
of justification using the terminology of reason itself. He argued that the only activity that humans can ever really know is our own. Human rationality, therefore, only perpetuates our enmity toward God. Our insistence upon our own limited, self-enclosed rationality, and on controlling everything through our reason, does not bring us knowledge of God's work in Christ. In "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life" he writes that reason, "in its unbelief, in its stubbornness, in its meek self-righ-30. Holl. Die Rechtfertigungslehre. 99. 31. Holl. 97-98. 32. Holl. 98. 33. Holl. 31: Barth. -Der Heilige Geist und das christliche Leben."" in Karl-Barth-Gesamtausgabe.
Vorträge und kleinere Arbeiten 1925-1930. Ill (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag Zurich. 1994). 495. 34. Barth. "The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life."" trans. R. Birch Hoyle (Louisville. KY: Westminster/John Knox. 1993). 19.20.
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern Sinner 269 teousness. in which it wishes to remain by itself . . . does not wish to hear of something
radically different from its own workings"
(pp. 19, 20). The exercise of reason does not bring us insight into God's activities:
"What we can make evident to ourselves
is always our own activity. Even when we set this under the prefix of grace, it still remains our own working*' (pp. 24-25). With these claims, Barth locates a '"blind spot" in human rationality that can be filled only by Christ, for it is Christ alone who mediates himself to us through a "continual
giving" of himself into faith, whose righteousness is "established as true in our flesh" (p. 29). In so doing. Barth reintroduces
Christ as the effective Subject, so significant to Luther's theology, into an understanding of the modern sinner in relation
to God. The rational agent is indeed subject, but a subject whose agency has limits in relation to God's reconciling activity.
It is "I yet not Γ* who comes to know God. Barth further buttresses his argument against the abilities of human reason before God by qualifying the ability oí faith as a mode of cognition, lest it too be swallowed up by the all-encompassing Enlightenment conceptions of reason. Even faith is "hidden
from itself (p. 30: emphasis added). Rational thought cannot not make "faith" into a living knowledge of God. This is the task of the Holy Spirit: "but the two things, the acknowledgement of this contradiction [sin] and the knowledge of its being surmounted,
are not our own business, but are the Holy Spirit's"(p. 31). Here. too. Barth does not allow the human "I" to take control
of one * s own faith. Faith is mediated to the human by God and cannot be swallowed
up by one's sense of self as agent. The destabilizing "I yet not I" remains central to the identity of the believing Christian.
Β arth reintroduces
Christ as the effective Subject, so significant to Luther's theology, into an understanding of the modern sinner. In his retrieval of a substantive Christology
Barth also challenged the Enlightenment
conception of a reasonable, autonomous morality, and destabilized the human as a moral agent. When Christ is understood as the sole effector of our reconciliation
to God, the individual "person must be left out of consideration" (p. 26: emphasis added). Although human individuals
are indeed agents of actions, any and every good work that we see as being "ours" is canceled out, and the "I yet not I" comes into effect. As Barth states, the work of Christ the Reconciler Spirit must be seen in its fundamental and immutable [unaußiebbar] restriction of ever} thing that is our o\\ η w ork. Wherever the action of humans in themselves, m w hate\ er pretense or form, is made into a condition
of the human's fellowship with God. there the Holy Spirit is forgotten, and there sin is committed in order to overcome sin. (p. 20) Where human morality, the human will or conscience, is seen as the way to mediate the relationship between the sinner and God. the two aspects of reconciliation that need to be held together—justification and sanctification—fall away from each other. Justification turns into a slow, gradual
Marga Jesus Christ and the Modern burner 2"0 process by which the sinner thinks he or she could become a nonsinner through the good works that he or she performs (p. 21). Reconciliation then becomes a matter of the "'divine gift and man's creative action combined in one*" (p. 22. quoting Augustine).
The "I yet not I" collapses into the willful human ego, and a substantive Christology
is dissolved. Barth was well aware of the implications
of his modern epistemologica! interpretation
of Luther's substantive Christology. When it is properly understood,
first, as being fully undertaken, begun,
and completed in Christ's person and work as the God-man, and further, as an event that is outside the control of our reasoning skills and moral abilities, the term "Christian" must take on a very particular
meaning. Supposing w e decide to side . .. w ith Luther . .. to proceed with caution when w e use the adjective
"Christian" and to use the word in a way quite other than is the vogue in our victorious modern Christendom. What. then, is meant by such phrases as "Christian" view of the universe. "Christian" morality. "Christian" art? What are "Christian" personalities. "Christian" families. "Christian" groups. "Christian" newspapers. "Christian" societies ... ? Who gives us permission
to us the adjective so profuselv? (pp. 37-38) Concluding remarks What Barth gained from Luther's substantive
Christology was a way to express the work of Christ upon the sinner that overcomes
the human drive to relate to God as beings who are autonomous, reasonable, and good-willed. Luther " s tight unification of Christ's person and work highlights that Christ's action as the God-man and mediator
is something that is started and finished in our lives by Christ alone. In that Luther closely connected the person and work of Christ with the creation of faith as a mode of cognition that is distinct from natural human reason, his Christology limits the capabilities of natural human reason to comprehend and therefore control what God's actions are toward us. To Barth, this meant that when it comes to the God-human relationship, human reason has a distinct blind spot. Taking this blind spot seriously means that Christians, especially Lutherans, maintain a healthy critical distance
to the process by which we weigh matters of moral weight using our everyday
reason and common sense. The "I yet not I" as the foundation for rational thinking
provides us with a critical check upon the way we go about trying to lead lives we would like to call Christian. Sustaining the faith that is beyond the reach of our control requires that Christ continually mediate himself to us as a Subject working within us. Finally, taking Barth's retrieval of Luther' s Christology seriously means bringing
to light the falsity that lies in the concept
of an autonomous "good will" that accompanies modem individuals* sense of self. Morality never arises out of ourselves,
and moral actions always have enfolded
within them some other hidden motive and external influence, whether it be economic, personal, idealistic, or practical.
It is clear in the theologies of both Barth and Luther that the only external factor that can actually make our good actions good is the divine influence, which comes from beyond our ability to rationalize
and control, which is mediated to us in the person of the crucified Christ who continually
works upon us as God's Reconciling
Spirit.
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Review of: Joh, W Anne. Heart of the cross by GERARD HALL, S.M.
HEART OF THE CROSS: A POSTCOLONIAL CHRISTOLOGY. By W. Anne Joh. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2006. Pp. 192. $24.95.
Theological Studies 68 no 3 S 2007, p 704-705. ISSN: 0040-5639. Related Record Number: ATLA0001599828
Review of: Joh, W Anne. Heart of the cross. 192 p. Louisville, Ky : Westminster John Knox, 2006.
While this study, through the use of postcolonial theory, poststructuralist psychoanalysis, and political-liberationist-feminist hermeneutics, provides insight into the theology of the cross, it achieves its distinctiveness as a narrative theology by its appeal to Asian/Korean American experience. Using Korean notions of jeong (agape, eros, filial love, compassion, empathy,
solidarity, relationality) and han (ruptured heart, original wound, world sorrow, personal and collective experience of alienation), Joh establishes
categories (and stories) with which she engages in a debate with traditional and contemporary theologies of the cross. Following Moltmann, J. wants to reclaim the cross as a "signifier of redemptive agency" (118), a claim she finds wanting in the writings of feminist scholars (100). At the same time, she stands with the feminist critique of "traditional interpretations of the cross" (118), a critique from
BOOK REVIEWS 705 which Moltmann's "hierarchical" trinitarian Christology is not immune (81). A new theology of the cross beckons. J. interprets the cross as performing a double-gesture: it pays homage to patriarchal concepts of power and obedience while it simultaneously subverts
these very same powers (76). Postcolonial theories—focusing on the politics of identity and difference, along with notions of "hybridity," "mimicry,"
and "interstitial third space,"—provide contours for presenting this double-gesture of the cross, an action that is profoundly subversive. Especially
productive in this discussion is Julia Kristeva's notion of the "abject" (Powers of Horror [1982]) for analyzing the dynamics of oppression. J. argues that "abjection on the cross has been haunting the edges of doctrinal theology" (92). For Kristeva, abjection and love belong together just as, for J., han and jeong are "two different sides of the same heart" (111). The subversive power of the cross is then found not in the obliteration of the abject (as in traditional theology), but in its return, mimicking and symbolizing
"the confrontation between the logic of love and the logic of violence" (114). If readers are left wondering where the redemptive power of the cross resides, J.'s final chapter seeks to answer this in terms of a Christology of jeong that is both personal and political. Jesus' own praxis of jeong is outlined with reference to the Buddhist concept of the no-self; indeed, "Jesus is awakened to no-self through jeong" (123). There is here, no doubt, a basis for developing a genuinely Asian Christology that juxtaposes rather than opposes han and love, or the cross and resurrection. This creative scholarship provides a Christology especially relevant to a world in which oppressed and oppressor, love and hate, self and other, are interpreted in oppositional categories that privilege patriarchal dominance in its various forms. As J. informs us, "jeong never collapses the space between the I and the other" (127). It retrieves the cross as a subversive power through which our modes of solidarity and relationality can be critiqued and even transformed. Although privileging the subversive power of the cross, J. also wishes to establish its postcolonial redemptive potential. To this end, conversation with contemporary theologians writing on the cross and redemption—such as René Girard, James Alison, Stephen Fin-Ian, and S. Mark Heim—would provide deeper grounding for her tantalizing,
if somewhat technical, thesis. Australian Catholic University, Brisbane GERARD HALL, S.M.
Theological Studies 68 no 3 S 2007, p 704-705. ISSN: 0040-5639. Related Record Number: ATLA0001599828
Review of: Joh, W Anne. Heart of the cross. 192 p. Louisville, Ky : Westminster John Knox, 2006.
While this study, through the use of postcolonial theory, poststructuralist psychoanalysis, and political-liberationist-feminist hermeneutics, provides insight into the theology of the cross, it achieves its distinctiveness as a narrative theology by its appeal to Asian/Korean American experience. Using Korean notions of jeong (agape, eros, filial love, compassion, empathy,
solidarity, relationality) and han (ruptured heart, original wound, world sorrow, personal and collective experience of alienation), Joh establishes
categories (and stories) with which she engages in a debate with traditional and contemporary theologies of the cross. Following Moltmann, J. wants to reclaim the cross as a "signifier of redemptive agency" (118), a claim she finds wanting in the writings of feminist scholars (100). At the same time, she stands with the feminist critique of "traditional interpretations of the cross" (118), a critique from
BOOK REVIEWS 705 which Moltmann's "hierarchical" trinitarian Christology is not immune (81). A new theology of the cross beckons. J. interprets the cross as performing a double-gesture: it pays homage to patriarchal concepts of power and obedience while it simultaneously subverts
these very same powers (76). Postcolonial theories—focusing on the politics of identity and difference, along with notions of "hybridity," "mimicry,"
and "interstitial third space,"—provide contours for presenting this double-gesture of the cross, an action that is profoundly subversive. Especially
productive in this discussion is Julia Kristeva's notion of the "abject" (Powers of Horror [1982]) for analyzing the dynamics of oppression. J. argues that "abjection on the cross has been haunting the edges of doctrinal theology" (92). For Kristeva, abjection and love belong together just as, for J., han and jeong are "two different sides of the same heart" (111). The subversive power of the cross is then found not in the obliteration of the abject (as in traditional theology), but in its return, mimicking and symbolizing
"the confrontation between the logic of love and the logic of violence" (114). If readers are left wondering where the redemptive power of the cross resides, J.'s final chapter seeks to answer this in terms of a Christology of jeong that is both personal and political. Jesus' own praxis of jeong is outlined with reference to the Buddhist concept of the no-self; indeed, "Jesus is awakened to no-self through jeong" (123). There is here, no doubt, a basis for developing a genuinely Asian Christology that juxtaposes rather than opposes han and love, or the cross and resurrection. This creative scholarship provides a Christology especially relevant to a world in which oppressed and oppressor, love and hate, self and other, are interpreted in oppositional categories that privilege patriarchal dominance in its various forms. As J. informs us, "jeong never collapses the space between the I and the other" (127). It retrieves the cross as a subversive power through which our modes of solidarity and relationality can be critiqued and even transformed. Although privileging the subversive power of the cross, J. also wishes to establish its postcolonial redemptive potential. To this end, conversation with contemporary theologians writing on the cross and redemption—such as René Girard, James Alison, Stephen Fin-Ian, and S. Mark Heim—would provide deeper grounding for her tantalizing,
if somewhat technical, thesis. Australian Catholic University, Brisbane GERARD HALL, S.M.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
CHRISTOLOGY OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA
HIGHLIGHTS IN THE DEBATE OVER THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA'S CHRISTOLOGY
AND SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR A FRESH APPROACH [ 1 ]
© John S. Romanides
http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.09.en.highlights_in_the_debate_over_theodore.02.htm
When one is confronted with this kind of language one has the right to wonder if he is not dealing with a theology which is maintaining the accepted forms of an official state religion but whose basic presuppositions are quite different. This is certainly to be expected m any situation where the state and hierarchy are constantly struggling to impose a uniformity of faith. There can be no doubt about Theodore's zeal against the Arians and Eunomians. It must be remembered, however, that Sabellius and Paul of Samosata would have shown just as much enthusiasm for the overthrow of this new polytheism. We are not trying to suggest that Theodore was a Sabellian; his fervor against any form of theopassianism would count this out. Nor are we suggesting that he was a crypto-Samosatene. Theodore calls Paul of Samosata an "angel of satan" because "he says that Christ our savior is a simple man and fails to recognize that hypostasis of the divinity of the One before the ages." [ 86 ] However, the fact that theologians are struggling against each other does not mean that their basic presuppositions are necessarily different. There is a thread of presuppositions running right through Paul of Samosata, the Arians and Nestorians, which bears this point out and also seems to be the key to understanding Theodore's Christology.
Although he seems quite confident that Theodore has no metaphysical explanation to offer for the union of two natures, because the Mopsuestian supposedly considers this to be in the realm of mystery, still Galtier expresses in a footnotes [ 87 ] a slight reservation by referring to a possible clue in the fragments of Theodore's letter to Domnus. [ 88 ] Perhaps by tracing out the meaning of this passage in the light of other passages with the help of the general Syrian theological environment we can arrive at a very important clue for the better understanding of both Nestorianism and Arianism.
In this letter Theodore writes "and why is it necessary to say any more? The reason of the union according to essence is true (or applicable) only in the case of consubstantials, but in the case of things not consubstantial it is not applicable {or true), there being no clear (reason) possible for confusion. But the manner of union according to good-will, while preserving the natures, demonstrates the one person of both inseparably, and also the one will and one energy, together with the one authority and rule which is consequent to these." [ 89 ] It is quite clear that Theodore is here limiting the concept of essential or natural union to consubstantíals. Thus the Persons of the Trinity can be united by nature to each other, but not to things heterosubstantial. To these God can unite Himself only according to good-will. Now the question arises, why does Theodore preclude the possibility that God can unite Himself by nature to something not consubstantial with Himself ? It may be remembered that Nestorius was quite violent on this point against Cyril. Theodoret and the Antiochene bishops generally were also scandalized by Cyril's "natural" or "hypostastic" union. There is every indication to believe that Theodore's reaction to Cyril's terminology would have been generally the same as that of Nestorius.
Before we examine an important text to demonstrate this point one should ask whether Theodore would have heard such language for the first time from Cyril. Of course, the answer is no. He deals with this notion at length and rejects it as being impious. [ 90 ] Also he was certainly familiar with the theology of his opponent Apollinaris who claimed that Christ is both by nature God and by nature man. On the other hand, it is quite possible that he knew St. Gregory the Theologian's letters to Cledonius attacking not only Apollinaris, but also those who divide Christ by speaking of two Sons and refusing to acknowledge the two births of the Only-Begotten Son of God, one from the Father before the ages and one "afterward of the Virgin Mary."[ 91 ] In his first letter to Cledonius, Gregory speaks of the union in Christ as being according to essence.`' [ 92 ]
The very fact that Theodore spends a great deal of time discussing the manner by which God dwells in Christ is an indication that he is very much aware of the metaphysical aspects of the problem. Galtier's insistence that for Theodore all this belongs to the realm of mystery is without foundation. In his De Incarnatione Theodore sets out to solve the problem of the divine indwelling in Christ and never once gives the impression that it is really a mystery and therefore cannot be defined. He mentions two opinions concerning the manner of indwelling. "On the one hand some have decided that the indwelling takes place by essence and others by energy" [ 93 ] Theodore rejects both the Samosatene approach and the traditional approach offered in opposition to Paul of Samosata. God cannot be present in any special place according to essence because this would be a limitation of His infinity. On the other hand, if God is everywhere present by reason of His essence, granting to all the indwelling also, He would be granting this not only to men, but also to irrational and inanimate things. Since both these possibilities are improper, it is nonsense to speak of an indwelling according to nature. Neither can the indwelling take place according to energy because the providential operation of God is everywhere present. The only possibility left is to speak of God effecting His indwelling by His good-will whereby He becomes present in whom He chooses not by any spacial movement from place to place, but by will. Neither is it proper to say that God works His omnipresence by will because then He would have to work His special presence by a necessity of nature. "For thus the infinity is unto Him better preserved, when He does not appear to work by some necessity of the uncircumscribed nature. For if He is omnipresent by will, He will again be found working by necessity, no longer working the presence by opinion, but by the infinity of nature, and having the will following." [ 94 ]
It should be noted at the very outset that in this passage ïõóßá and öýóéò are synonymous and used interchangeably. This is a clear indication that Theodore would have reacted to Cyril's Ýíùóéí êáôÜ öýóéí or õðüóôáóéí exactly as he would have had Cyril spoken of an Ýíùóéí êáô' ïõóßáí. The second point which must be made clear is the fact that Theodore is not objecting to a union or presence by nature because it would primarily imply a union ordained and imposed upon the I.ogos from the outside as in the case of the Arian teaching. He is clearly rejecting any indwelling by nature or by essence because this implies for him an inner necessity of the divine essence itself for union with what is created. One must realize that in Theodore he is confronting a doctrine of divine relations geared to protect the divine nature from a deterministic type of pantheism, on the one hand, and an unconcerned and absolutely transcendental type unmoved mover, on the other. Far Theodore to allow any êáô' ïõóßáí union or indwelling of God in a creature would be a capitulation to Aristotelian enemies and a reversal of the Stagirite's categories of relations. For God to be related by nature to what is created would make the creature out to be the unmoved mover. Therefore, God does not work His presence in or union with creatures by nature. He only happens to be present everywhere according to essence because His nature cannot be contained by any place. [ 95 ]
Underlying Theodore's concept of divine relations is a clear distinction between nature and will, which one finds again in Nestorius. This distinction is based only partly, as we shall see, on Theodore's doctrine of the Trinity. The Three Persons of the Trinity are related to each other by a necessity of nature, whereas they can be related to creatures only by will. Thus the Father is not Creator because He is Father, neither is He Father because He is Creator. He is Father because He begets His San from His very essence, whereas He is Creator because He so wills to create. Creatures are very far from His essence, being products of the divine will. The Father is Father by nature, whereas He is Creator by will. [ 96 ]
Such distinctions, so obvious in Theodore's theology, between what is in God by nature and what God does by energy and will, or between God in His Essence and God in His Glory, were common in the ancient Church [ 96a ] apparently for various reasons which seem to be distinguishable into three general groups:
1) The first and most primitive type of such a distinction may be found in such a writer as St. Irenaeus [ 97 ] who finds the distinction between God in Himself and Gad in His uncreated Glory or power in the Old Testament. [ 98 ] To see God is not to see His essence but to see Him in His glory or divinity. [ 99 ] St. Gregory the Theologian states," . . when I looked closer [behind the cloud of Mt. Sinai], I saw, not the First and unmingled Nature, known to Itself - to the Trinity, I mean; not That which abideth within the first veil, and is hidden by the Cherubim; but only that [Nature] which at last even reaches to us. And that is, as far as I can learn, the Majesty, or as holy David calls it, the Magnificence which is manifested among the creatures, which He has produced and governs. For these are the Back Parts of God, etc." [ l00 ] These distinctions are found also in St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa and the whole Eastern tradition and presuppose a certain understanding of the prophetic experience which underlies Orthodox Triadology and Christology [ 100a ] and presents a definite understanding of Biblical inspiration and of the use of divine names quite foreign to Theodore's theology.
2) A second and further elaboration of the distinction between divine essence and will was clearly formulated by St. Athanasius, [ 101 ] who relegated the generation of the Son to the essential aspect of the divine mystery, thereby rejecting all conceptual explanations, and ascribed the act of creating to the will of God. What is from the essence of the Father belongs to the very nature of God, and what is from non-being by the will of God is a creature. The Father's begetting the Son and creating the world are not the same, as the Arians claimed. Thus we believe in the Son ãåííçèÝíôá êáß ïõ ðïéçèÝíôá of the Nicean Creed. St. Athanasius would go so far as to say, "As far then as the Son transcends the creature, by so much does what is by nature transcend the will." [ 102 ]
3) As we have already seen, Theodore follows these Athanasian distinctions in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity. However, there are indications that this was done with some very important variations which are clearly products of a moralistic metaphysic developed primarily by certain theological groups within the geographical area of the Oriental Diocese of the Roman Empire.
Faced with the need to combat determinism in both its ethical and cosmological or philosophical forms, it seems that a Syrian theological tradition was created which emphasized the superiority of what is done according to will as over against what is done by nature. What is done by nature can neither be praised nor rewarded nor justly punished, whereas what is done by will is indicative of a higher form of life. A man who realizes his own freedom to will what is good can occupy himself with meritorious works, on the one hand, for the reward of eternal life, and at the same time become instrumental for the betterment of society. Such a moralistic foundation would overcome the pessimism of pagan religions and philosophies and at the same time would be conducive to building up the moral stamina of the Roman Empire. Within such categories there would automatically be a strong tendency to think of divine adoption primarily as a reward which comes at the end of a process of meritorious living and the Biblical doctrine of grace and sin would become subordinated to this principle. The grace of God would not be so much a gift bestowed upon man in order to liberate him from the enemy, but a reward bestowed upon him because he has fulfilled the law. The destruction of Israel's enemies would not be the work of God's glory, but rather the work of Israel who would thereupon be rewarded with the glory of God for such meritorious efforts. Such an inversion of the Biblical pattern is perhaps the most characteristic feature of Theodore's Christology. In this respect Galtier is entirely wrong in claiming that the sole initiative for the incarnation lies with the Son of God. For Theodore, God unites Himself by will to the assumed man, but this union. is dependent on God's foreknowledge of the assumed man's merits. Theodore could not imagine that one could preserve both the freedom of God and Christ otherwise.
In reading through the Catechetical Homilies one is impressed by the frequency with which the words mutability and immutability occur in connection with either the concept of sin and perfection on the one hand or the nature of God on the other. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth because Its very nature is immutable and capable of bestowing this immutability upon man. What is immutable is true and what is subject to change is falsehood. [ l03 ] Man is a sinner because of his mutable nature and because he is involved in the process of change. When he is resurrected he will receive immortality of body and immutability of the sou1. [ 104 ] Both the mind and will of man will become
conformed to the will of God and to the Truth which is the divine nature, and thus man shall partake of the divine immutability and become forever happy. [ l05 ]
It seems that one is here confronting the Hellenistic idea that change and motion are either evil or negative in meaning, whereas only immutability and changelessness are of eternal significance and conducive to true security and happiness. [ l05a ] This of course means that freedom of choice and human activity could be for Theodore only a temporary stage to the beatific vision, which in reality is the petrification of human will and energy. within such a frame of references human will and activity in this life are the foundation upon which one gains the merits needed for the attainment of immutability and immobility in the next life. Actually then, salvation is participation in the divine immutability whereby the nature of man and God are joined in one act of willing and knowing.
By distinguishing between what God does by will and what belongs to the divine nature Theodore is able to overcome or avoid the philosophical problem of divine relations and makes possible a reciprocal relationship between God and man. He thus lays the metaphysical foundations for a moralistic ethic which merits changelessness and immutability and happiness in the future life. It is exactly within such a context that he develops his Christology. The relationship between natures cannot be according to nature or essence since this would mean a necessary conjunction which could neither be praiseworthy nor any real moral example for anyone to follow.
The union of the two natures in Christ is effected then by goodwill and good-pleasure. However, there is in Christ a special and unique example of such a union, since there was no time when the human nature existed independently of this conjunction based on the divine foreknowledge of the assumed man's merits. Furthermore, whereas all other men have only partial participation in the grace of God, the man Jesus. has a complete communion effected by the perfect conjunction of natures. Because of this conjunction there is in Christ only one will and one energy. Still, the assumed man undergoes a process of perfection which is not completed until the resurrection, when perfect immutability is attained. Starting from such presuppositions concerning the relationship between sinfulness and mutability or between perfection and immutability Theodore comes pretty close to saying that Christ was actually sinful prior to His resurrection. [ 106 ] The very existence of two wills and energies in Christ would clearly presuppose a lack of immutability on the human side and therefore some measure of imperfection and sinfulness. Therefore if there is a real conjunction of natures in Christ there must be one will and one energy. In Theodore one clearly finds a Nestorian type Monotheletism and Monenergism which perhaps goes some way to explaining its diophysite counterpart of the seventh century. There is some possibility that the presuppositions of the heresies condemned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council are to be found not so much in Monophysitism as in Nestorianism.
It seems clear enough that underlying Theodore's thought is a moralism in this life topped by a Platonic type of eudaimonia in the next. Such a concept of human destiny lacks any real understanding of the Biblical doctrine of creation and freedom and logically leads to eschatological determinism, to the íÝêñùóéò and not to the êÜèáñóéò of human will and energy. Salvation is the abolition of human freedom by the absolute submission of the will, not to the will of God, but to some sort of stiff and impersonal and motionless immutability. Thus, if Christ is perfect, He can have no natural will belonging to the very essence of human nature and differing by the will o f God from the will of God. Nor can there be any proper activity or energy of the creature which is not a duplication of the immutable and immobile divine nature. Not to be a duplication is in reality to be sinful.
The doctrine of meritorious works in this life with the promise of reward in terms of immutability and happiness in the next, transformed into a metaphysical system concerning the nature of God and the world, seems to be at the very basis not only of Theodore's theology, but also of other heretical movements originating in the Oriental Diocese generally. That God can be related to other essences only by will and never by nature is a basic presupposition of Paul of Samosata's Christology. He claims that "the wisdom of God was not united essentially to the human element from its birth, but according to quality (êáôÜ ðïéüôçôá)." [ l07 ] In a fragment whose authenticity is doubted he says, "Different natures and different persons have one and only mode of union, accord according to will, from which appears the unit (ìïíÜò) of those thus united to each other according to energy." [ 108 ] In Christ there is one will. "Do not be surprised that the Savior had one will with God. For as nature shows one and the same essence existing of [or in] many, thus the relationship of love accomplishes one and the same will of [or in] many by means of one and the same manifested satisfaction." [ 109 ] All who reach the state of eudaimonia have one willing and knowing with each other and God and thus the divine will and energy becomes the only will and energy. What is done by nature is not praiseworthy. "What prevails by reason of nature merits no praise. But what prevails by the relationship of love is praiseworthy, prevailing by one and the same energy and motion which never ceases to increase, according to which the Savior, having been conjoined to God, is never separated unto the ages, having with Him one and the same will and energy eternally moving unto the manifestation of good things." [ 110 ] G. Bardy points out some similarities which exist between the ideas expressed in this fragment and those in Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia. [ 111 ] In this respect noteworthy is Paul's insistence that in Christ there is one will and energy, and the union of natures is effected by a relationship according to love, will, and opinion. Theodore also speaks of one energy and will in Christ and claims that the Logos is in the man "according to the relationship of opinion" [ 112 ] or the Logos united the man to Himself "by the relationship of opinion."[ 113 ]
The philosophical problems involved in the doctrine of divine relationships did not obviously present Paul of Samosata with serious difficulty as far as the doctrine of the Trinity is concerned, since the divine Persons were for him unhypostatic energies. [ 114 ] However, the application of the category of necessity or necessary being to the divine nature and the preservation of the real relations of God toward creation by the above mentioned philosophical distinction between nature and will, or between what God does by a necessity of nature and what He does by will, automatically introduces difficulties not only into Christology, but also into the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, especially when the hypostatic character of the Persons is admitted. Is the Father related to the hypostatic Logos by nature or by will? In order to preclude Valentinian type of necessary emanations and Manichaean divisions of the divine nature Arius and his followers insisted on a relationship of will. [ ll5 ] There can be no essential relationship of the two. There is no reason to suspect any sophistical trick in the Arian claim that "Unless He has by will come to be, therefore God had a Son by necessity and against His good pleasure." [ 116 ] For the Arians, as for Paul, Theodore and Nestorius, what is by nature is by necessity.
The Orthodox answer to this Arian objection is quite clear. Necessity is contrary to will, while what is according to nature is far above will and completely beyond the conceptual powers of man. No logical categories or concepts can be applied to the unknown nature of God. The Arians have no right to apply the categories of necessity and will to the divine nature. "Forgetting, however, that they are hearing about God's Son, they dare to apply human contrarities in the instance of God, `necessity' and `beside purpose,' to be able thereby to deny that there is a true Son of God. For let them tell us themselves, that God is good and merciful, does this attach to Him by will or not? If by will, we must consider that He began to be good, and that His not being good is possible; for to councel and choose implies an inclination two ways, and is incidental to a rational nature. But if it be too unseemly that He should be called good and merciful upon will, then let them hear what they themselves have said `therefore by necessity and not at His pleasure He is good'; and, 'who is it that imposes this necessity on Him ?' But if it be unseemly to speak of necessity in the case of God, and therefore it is by nature that He is good, much more is He, and more truly, Father of the Son by nature and not by will."[ 117 ] The Holy Trinity is the pre-existing primordial reality, but beyond all concepts of reality, necessity and being. God is certainly free, but not in any moralistic sense of opposition between what is by necessity of nature and what is by will. God is what He is by nature and not by any necessity or will. God is not free by will, but by His very nature. He is not subject to the moralistic metaphysics of any moralistic philosophy as imagined by both Arians and Nestorians. St. Cyril devotes much time to a refutation of the Arians on this point in his work "On the Consubstantial Trinity," [ 118 ] written before the outbreak of the Nestorian Controversy. St. Gregory the Theologian writes, "Let us not ever look on this generation as involuntary, like some natural overflow, hard to be retained." [ 119 ]
One may add at this. point that salvation is not a matter of doing good things by will as opposed to the necessities of nature, but rather a renewal of the natural freedom of human nature itself. The doctrine of human will as distinguished from the necessary or natural appetites of human nature can be justified only within a moralistic complex in which correct choices in this life lead to the reward of happiness and motionless satisfaction in the next, which in reality is a final victory of what is taken as the necessary drive toward the contemplation of immutable realities. Motion and change are only of temporary significance and enable man freely to choose the exchange of his freedom of will for happiness. However, in the Orthodox tradition this is pure rubbish and leads to Monotheletism and Monenergism unless the perfection of Christ's human nature is sacrificed. Man's destiny is not happiness, but natural freedom. In Christ there was no "deliberative will" (èÝëçìá ãíùìéêüí), but a "natural will" (èÝëçìá öõóéêüí) and "natural freedom." In His human nature Christ was not free by an act of will. He was free by His very nature. Therefore, He really had or has two natural wills and energies, divine and human, without any connotation of sinfulness. For Platonized forms of Christianity, which understand the fall of man in terms of lack of happiness and immutability, this is not possible. Purity and sinlessness in the Bible are not immobility of a satisfied mind and will conjoined to immutable realities, but rather the freedom of the heart or, in modern terms, of the sub-conscious. A person can will good things all he wants, but unless his heart or subconscious is purified by the grace or glory of God, his works are of no avail and he is still a captive to demonic influences. Willful good works which are not products of a heart being purified by divine grace are not only not meritorious, but, much worse, they are satanic. Good works produced by a filthy sub-conscious and a rationalistic self-justifying self-assertiveness can be nothing else.
One can get a good glimpse into an aspect of the metaphysical background of Arianism and Nestorianism by turning to some interesting documents attributed to St. Justin Martyr and dated between the middle of the fourth and the first half of the fifth centuries. [ l20 ] These works definitely belong geographically to the Syrian province and are strongly Nestorian in tendency. The idea that the Logos works by essence his special presence in Christ, His Temple, is rejected. [ 121 ] The special presence takes place in Christ rather in the sense that being the purest of all temples He has the greatest degree possible of participation "not in divine nature but in divine honor by the good-will of the Logos." [ 122 ] This union is likened unto participation in the rays of the sun which shine equally on all. Yet the purer and more powerful the contemplating eye the more perfect and complete is the participation. In this sense is the Logos present in His own Temple in a special manner.[ l23 ] He cannot be especially present in Christ by nature since He happens to be by essence everywhere present.[ l24 ]
In another document evidently by the same author one comes across the following: "If God creates by nature, He creates whatever He creates by necessity. But if He creates by will, He creates authoritatively. Creating authoritatively, He creates as much as He wills and whatever He wills and whenever He wills."[ 125 ] In another work of this same collection we find the following question and answer: "If to be in potentiality is considered inferior to being in actuality, how does the Creator of the world, being Creator in potentiality and not in actuality before the creation of the world, not fall under the title of inferiority? The answer: They whose power of act is determined by some natural necessity are those whose power is considered inferior to the Act. Whosoever's power of act is determined by will and not by some natural necessity is not in the category of inferiority." [ 126 ] It is quite strange that having such presuppositions, this same author accepts the essential relationship of the three divine Hypostases.[ l27 ] What type of answer could he have given to the Arian objections to the generation by necessity? It is perhaps not surprising that his language in places indicates that he may have been a converted Arian who had not completely overcome his former way of thinking. The Logos and Spirit are God by participation and are deemed worthy of divinity. He writes for example: "For since the Father begat the Son from His proper essence, and from the same [essence] projected the Spirit, naturally (åéêüôùò) partaking of one and the same essence, they were deemed worthy of one and the same divinity (ôÞò áõôÞò êáß ìéÜò èåüôçôïò çîßùíôáé)."[ 128 ]
It seems clear enough that once the moralistic metaphysical distinction between what God is by a necessity of nature and what He does by will is introduced into the field of Biblical theology one is immediately caught up into the Samosatene, Arian and Nestorian problematics concerning the divine relations. That these were vital problems for the theologians of the Oriental Diocese should not be surprising to the modern theologian, especially to anyone familiar with the contradictions of the Thomistic system, which is forced to deny any real relationship of God toward creation in order to avoid pantheism. The Orthodox Fathers of the Church refused to apply any categories or names to the divine essence, let alone the category of necessary being, and thereby could freely speak of the Logos uniting Himself by nature to human nature in order to emphasize the reality of the incarnation of One of the hypostatic Persons of the Trinity. Of course the terms "hypostatic union" and "natural union" are not definitions of what is a complete mystery. The divine essence is by its very nature radically unknown to any creature. "Natural union" can therefore only mean a "real union." This the Nestorians could not accept because for them it would mean a defined and determined union which would destroy the very basis of their moralistic ethics of merits and rewards and deprive their type of anti-deterministic metaphysic of its very foundations. It is only when one realizes this essential point that he can fully grasp the violent Nestorian reaction to Cyril's "natural and hypostatic union."
Theodoret argued that this cannot be because "nature is something necessary and without will." [ 129 ] Cyril takes him to task for daring to apply such a category to the divine nature. [ l30 ] The Oriental bishops see in this term a recurrence of the Apollinarin heresy. Natures work by necessity only when created by God to function in a predetermined manner. God operates not by necessity but by will or grace.[ l31 ] Exactly in this respect the Orientals agree with the Arians in principle. God cannot unite Himself by nature to creatures. For the Arians this is proof that the Logos is a creature because united by the will of his creator to human nature in such a way that the union is natural and predetermined from without. For the Syrians the Logos cannot be united by nature to His Temple because He is God. Nestorius is, of course, the classical exponent of these presuppositions. "A voluntary union cannot be a natural union. If then they say that the union of the natures resulted in one nature, even though we ourselves should concede to them that it took place voluntarily, yet after it took place, the union existed not voluntarily in that the natures have acquired it. And it suffers as being united, whether it will or not, and accepts the sufferings of that nature to which it has been united, since it is defined by it and not by impassability nor by immortality nor by infinity. For the definition and circumscription of all nature is that in which it has to be." [ 132 ] It is quite obvious that Nestorius is a stranger to the Orthodox patristic apophaticism which denies any application of definitions or concepts to the divine nature.
As we have seen, Theodore is also involved in the general Oriental metaphysical scheme with its peculiar reduction of God to the categories of necessary being as opposed to what God does by will. What is by nature is by necessity. "The reason of union according to essence is true only in the case of consubstantials, but in the case of things not consubstantial it is not applicable, there being no clear (reason) possible for confusion." [ 133 ] Theodore accepts the principle that metaphysical rules and concepts can be applied to the divine nature. Apart from the unique exception in the case of the Divine Consubstantials Gad can be united and related to non-consubstantials only by energy and goodwill. "For thus the infinity is unto Him better preserved, when He does not appear to work by some necessity of the uncircumscribed nature. For if He is omnipresent by will, He will again be found working by necessity, no longer working the presence by opinion, but by the infinity of nature, and having the will following." [ 134 ]
The last point we wish to make regards Theodore's Biblical method and especially his doctrine of inspiration. In this respect he differs radically from the central Orthodox patristic tradition and has points of contact with the Eunomeans and the traditional fundamentalism of Western theology. Perhaps Theodore's understanding of prophecy and inspiration explains more than anything else his metaphysical approach to Christology. There are two specific doctrines of inspiration which concern us here, the one which believes that God actually dictated words to those who were objects of His revelations, and the other which believes that God revealed His uncreated Glory and Will to the prophets and apostles who in turn transposed their suprarational and suprasentient experience into the idiom established by the prophetic tradition to convey their message in direct proportion to the spiritual capacities and needs of the various levels of people addressed.
a) One of the best examples of a fundamentalistic literalist doctrine of inspiration in the Ancient Church is that of Eunomius'35 who believed that the very names of things exist eternally in the mind of God and constitute the very definitions of essences. Besides these uncreated names and determinations of creatures there are also eternal and uncreated names of God which are revealed in Scripture and constitute- definitions of the divine nature. One can see clearly the intimate connection between the Eunomean doctrines of God and Biblical Inspiration. Since the names "Father" and "Unbegottenness" are eternal definitions of the divine essence, it follows that the names "Son" and "Begottenness" must be designations of another and created essence.
b) In direct opposition to Eunomius, St. Gregory of Nyssa rejects the contention that names are eternal and insists that all words and languages are products of human accommodations to the necessities. of communication on the human level, and all concepts either conveyed by words or simply contemplated can never extricate themselves from their creaturely qualities. Knowledge of God, therefore, cannot be conceptual. God cannot be reached by contemplation. God is not like anything man experiences either intellectually or by sensation. Knowledge o f God can come only by revelation and knowledge about God can be had only from those who have been the objects of this revelation, which is above all rational and sentient categories. It is a knowledge which can be indicated but not conveyed by human language or concepts. He who has been graced with revelation can only point to the Glory of God. Only God can reveal His proper Glory to whom He chooses. This is why Christ revealed His Own Proper Glory which is at once His and the Father's. The Bible, therefore, is not inspired because dictated verbally by God, but because either written by or about those who have and are encountering God in His Self-revelation which is not a conveyance of words and images. [ l36 ] St. Gregory writes , "Neither, then, did God speak in the Hebrew language, nor did He express Himself according to any form in use among the Gentiles. but whatsoever of God's words are recorded by Moses or the Prophets, are indications of the Divine will, illuminating, now in one way, now in another, the pure intellect of those holy men, according to the measure of grace of which they were partakers. Moses, then, spoke his mother-tongue, and that in which he was educated. But he repeatedly attributed these words to God, as I have said, on account of the immaturity of those who were being brought to the knowledge of God, in order to give a clear representation of the divine will, and to render his hearers more obedient, as being awed by the authority of the speaker." [ 137 ] It is only in the New Testament that one confronts actual human words of the Incarnate Logos, but even these words are not uncreated definitions of eternal truths. They are the pedagogical means which point the way to seeing the Ruling Power of God which is beyond all concepts and forms, yet made manifest in the human nature of the Logos.
As we have already seen, Theodore of Mopsuestia follows the Eunomean interpretive method of applying the Biblical names of God to the divine nature. He also seems to follow the Eunomeans in their contention that God revealed words to the prophets. Theodore explains that God operated His revelation upon the prophets in such a way that the impression was created upon them that they were hearing someone speak, þóôå äïêåßí áõôïýò þóðåñ ôéíüò ëáëïýíôïò áêïýåéí ôå êáß ðáéäåýóèáé [ l38 ] In another passage [ l39 ] Theodore seems to be repeating the divine language theories of Eunomius. He explains that Moses does not record God's saying anything in the first instance of creation ("In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth") because there were as yet no creatures (angels) to reap any benefit from such verbal instruction. Once angels did come into existence then God began to speak for their sake since His essence was to them invisible. Had He not spoken they would have remained without proper knowledge of their Creator. Theodore is here attacking St. Basil who believes that the angels were created before heaven and earth. In other words, if St. Basil were correct the Bible should read, "God said, l.et there be heaven and earth." St. Gregory of Nyssa had already anticipated Theodore on this in his refutation of Eunomius' similar understanding of Genesis, where God is pictured as speaking and applying already existing names to the things He is creating. [ 140 ]
It is interesting to note that according to the Mopsuestian the angels were in need of divine speech for instruction since they could not see the divine essence. To understand what he means by this one must recall the fact that for Theodore those saved do have a vision of and conjunction with the divine nature when rewarded with immutability and happiness in the next life. This means that Theodore is referring to the angels before the fall. To have had the vision of the divine nature from the very beginning would contradict the Mops·uestian's moralistic metaphysics. Vision of the divine nature at creation would mean perfect satisfaction, happiness and immutability from the very beginning and no logical possibility for a fall. [ 141 ] This would upset the scheme of the Antiochene moralism described above since there would be no distinction between what is by nature and what is by will and angels would be completely happy and immutable by nature. The same would be true for man. Otherwise the whole structure of merits and rewards would tumble. The vision of God in His uncreatedness would be putting the reward before the accumulation of merits and would make the fall logically impossible. Hence the extreme importance for God to communicate His Will to angels and men by the medium of words, concepts and created impressions. The fact that the impression of hearing a voice is an inward experience and not something imposed on the senses from without does not absolve Theodore of the charge of having an anthropomorphic understanding of revelation, as H. Kihn believes. [ 142 ] For God to speak to prophets from without or from within is substantially the same thing since in both instances God is conveying and the prophet is receiving words.
It naturally follows from Theodore's moralistic metaphysics that the prophetic claim to seeing God in His uncreated Glory would be relegated to the realm of divinely inspired imagination. This is exactly how he explains Isaiah's claim to have seen God: "When Isaiah says he saw God and the Seraphim, he also heard voices coming toward him. For this. reason he sometimes says, The word of the Lord which was upon so and so, meaning by word the energy by which he believed he was learning what was fitting, being taught by a certain voice, and at other times (he says) vision, which he saw here or there, meaning by this the revelation, according to which, believing to see something (ïñÜí ôß äïêþí), he learned what was proper." [ 143 ] Seeing the glory of God is no more than an imaginary process, even though produced by Divine inspiration. The cause of this revelation is uncreated, but the effect is a created impression of voices and visions.
This understanding of seeing the Glory of God is from the Orthodox patristic viewpoint sheer heresy, but on the other hand much more refined than the grossly superstitious concept of Augustine which became common in the West and in the person of Barlaam the Calabrian was finally condemned by the Palamite Council of 1341. [ 144 ] According to Augustine what the prophets and apostles saw was not anything uncreated, [ l45 ] since for him the very substance of God is alone uncreated and visible only in the next life (with the possible exception of the ecstatic visions of Moses and Paul). Rather, in seeing the glory of God the prophets saw and heard created things which temporarily came into existence and passed away and received their revelations (visions and words) by means of these creatures. [ l46 ] Thus from the Old Testament viewpoint Augustine and his followers "changed the Glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man." (Rom. 1:23). As for Theodore so for Augustine the vision of God comes at the end of all actions, since the contemplation of the divine substance means satisfaction of all desires, i.e. happiness and immutability. "For this contemplation is held forth to us as the end of all actions, and the everlasting fullness of joy. . . . For we shall not seek anything else when we shall have come to the contemplation of Him." [ 147 ] So long as man is involved in mutability and mortality it is impossible for him to see God. In his present condition man can see only changeable things. [ l48 ] Augustine and Theodore seem to be in perfect accord.
For the biblical writers, however, for the so-called Asia Minor School, for Justin, for the Alexandrian Theologians, for the Cappadocians, for Hilary of Poitiers, and for the Orthodox patristic tradition generally, to see the Glory of God does not belong to the realm of divinely inspired imagination or Augustinian wonder-working. Rather it is a real and actual vision of God enthroned upon His Uncreated Majesty. The Glory of God is His very Throne, Power, Kingdom (âáóéëåßá), the Unapproachable Light in which He eternally dwells. God is the "King and Lord of Glory" which alone can be known to creatures both in this life and the next, when God will be seen as He is. In spite of the partial and limited character of the prophetic and apostolic experience of seeing the Majesty of God, it is still the very Uncreated Glory that they saw be f ore they parted this life. The Glory of God is His Godhead (not essence) and Ruling Power by which He saves Israel from her enemies and the Church from the rule of Satan.
The miracles and resurrection of Christ only point to this Glory of God and by themselves could never have demonstrated more than the fact that God was acting in the man Jesus. The climax of New Testament Revelation is the fact that He who was born of the Virgin and is Son of David revealed the Uncreated Glory of His Father as His own natural and proper Glory, and thereby revealed His proper Godhead. "Light . . . was That Godhead Which was shewn upon the Mount [of transfiguration] to the disciples - and a little too strong for their eyes." [ 149 ] The Primitive Christians did not come to believe in the Godhead of Christ by a hit and miss process. Rather the Apostles and many others saw and continue to see (God is not only He Who Acted, but He Who Acts) the Godhead or Glory of Christ. The Apostles learned by experience that Christ is the "Lord of Glory," the very same "King of Glory" Who revealed Himself to the Old Testament prophets ( John 12, 41 ) . It is exactly because he was confronted by the Glory of Christ that St. Paul learned to speak of the Crucified Lord of Glory (I Cor. 2, 8) .
The Biblical writers and the Orthodox Fathers were not hampered in recognizing the reality of the Old and New Testament Theophanies because of any Hellenistic and moralistic doctrine of human destiny. Man's destiny is not immutability of mind and will by a Platonic contemplation of immutable truths. The destiny of man is freedom. Neither are works meritorious. [ 150 ] Besides, the wicked will also come to the knowledge of Truth [ 151 ] by seeing the Uncreated Glory of God, but to them God will be a consuming fire, the eternal fire of hell (Lk. 16:19-31). For platonized forms of Christian intellectualism this would be impossible. [ l52 ] Hence the ideas of hell entertained by same traditions for whom the vision of God could only mean happiness.
Both Augustine and Theodore of Mopsuestia reject the Old Testament revelatory and epistemological foundation of New Testament Christology and Triadology. [ 153 ] However, the bishop of Hippo had a legalistic and authoritarian understanding of the Church's dogmas, accepting them at first on faith, and then trying hard the rest of his life to understand them conceptually by contemplation. In the Orthodox tradition there is also a distinction between faith and knowledge, but knowledge is here the vision of and participation in God's Glory, not the contemplation of the eternal and immutable ideas of Plato. "Attack the ideas of Plato," says St. Gregory the Theologian to the Eunomians. [ l54 ] In contrast to Augustine, Theodore of Mopsuestia was not so much limited by an obedience to an ecclesiastical authority as he was by the metaphysical principles in the air of his theological environment. In view of his understanding of the Old Testament Theophanies and because of his Antiochene metaphysical concept of God and his Hellenistic understanding of human destiny, it is no wonder that St. Paul's crucified Lord of Glory had not the slightest effect in conditioning his Christology. If the Lord of Glory was crucified in His humanity, He was certainly born as man in His humanity, so that He Who was born of the Virgin is consubstantial with the Father, and Mary is Theotokos with no Nestorian strings attached. The very idea of a man becoming or being Lord of Glory by adoption is sheer nonsense, if not as blasphemous as worshipping an adopted man. That the Old Testament Messiah is the anointed of God is a statement of fact which does not abrogate the reality that the King of Glory humbled and emptied Himself in becoming Son of David and anointed King of Israel. St. Cyril of Alexandria over and over again uses St. Paul's Crucified Lord of Glory in expounding Biblical Christology. However, this did not make the slightest dent in the rationalistic metaphysical mind of Nestorius who no doubt held opinions about the Old Testament vision of the Lord of Glory and Biblical inspiration similar to those of Theodore.
The opinion generally prevails that Theodore's Christology is based on an inductive historico-biblical method which begins by recognizing the full humanity of Christ and tries from this point to solve the problem of the unity of subject in Christ. This is clearly a myth. Theodore, like many others of the Oriental Diocese, is a moralistic metaphysician who applies concepts and definitions to the divine nature and'. in advance determines what is for God possible and what is not. According to his doctrine of divine relations it is impossible far God to unite Himself by nature to human nature. His starting point is not the human nature of Christ, nor is it the biblical witness as history, but rather a definition and limitation of divine nature in terms of a necessity distinguished from will. It is exactly because of this transcendental starting point that Theodore's doctrine of the Trinity has no- room for any real distinction between hypostasis and essence. In Cappadocian and Alexandrian Triadology the reality of the Divine Hypostases as distinguished from the divine essence is grounded in the belief that the Second Hypostasis of the Trinity really and truly lived and willed and suffered as a real and complete man and that He really and truly was resurrected in the flesh to become the first-born from the dead. [ l55 ] For Theodore there is no need to distinguish between the hypostasis of the Logos and the nature of the Logos because the one person effected by the union of natures not only is not the Only-Begotten Son of God, as Sullivan clearly demonstrates, but also cannot be an hypostasis of the Trinity. Natural or hypostatic union is for Theodore a necessary union. There can be no doubt that Theodore would have wholeheartedly supported the attack on St. Cyril. Whether he would have changed his mind about the double consubstantiality of the One and Unique Hypostasis born of the Virgin when faced by the decision of the Fourth Ecumenical Council one can never know. On the other hand one can not preclude the very strong possibility that Theodore may have remained more faithful to Nestorius than did Theodoret and the other Antiochenes.
There are solid enough reasons for believing that the Fifth Ecumenical Council had no business condemning Theodore who had died in communion with the Church, but there are no reasons for putting forth the notion that this was made possible by some kind of reversal to a one-sided Cyrilianism or neo-chalcedonianism which supposedly upset the balance of strict chalcedonianism. The dogmatic decisions of the Fifth Council are no different from those of Chalcedon and any claim that Theodore passes the test of chalcedonian Christology is unrealistic. C. Moeller is no doubt correct when he claims that the anathemas of the Fifth Council are strange to modern Roman sensitivities. If he and other Roman theologians studied more carefully the Christology of Chalcedon and the Triadology of the First and Second Councils, they would further discover that their theology is not in accord with these either, especially in regard to the Biblical doctrine of Revelation and Grace which underlies all Orthodox Patristic Theology.
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FOOTNOTES
[ 1 ] For recent bibliography and listing of sources see B. Altaner, Patrology (London 1960), pp. 372-373.
[ 86 ] Ibid., p. 381.
[ 87 ] Op. cit., p.183, n. 58.
[ 88 ] Swete, vol. II, pp. 338-339.
[ 89 ] Ibid.
[ 90 ] Ibid., pp. 293-294.
[ 91 ] Ep. CII.
[ 92 ] Ep. CI.
[ 93 ] Swete, vol. II, pp. 293-294.
[ 94 ] Ibid.
[ 95 ] Ibid., pp. 293-296, 300, lines 26-30; Tonneau, op. cit., pp. 105, 227-229.
[ 96 ] Tonneau, op. cit., pp. 45-47.
[ 96a ] J. S. Romanides, Ôï ðñïðáôïñéêüí áìÜñôçìá (Athens 1957), pp. 45-51, 54.
[ 97 ] Contr. Haer. III, 24, 2; IV, 20, 1-5ff.
[ 98 ] For similar opinions on the O.T. basis for such beliefs see A. J. Heschel, God in Search of Man (Meridian Books, N. Y. 1959) p. 80ff.
[ 99 ] Irenaeus, op. cit.
[ 100 ] Theol. Orat. II, 3 Here one perhaps has the ultimate source of John Scotus Eriugena's Natura quae creat et non creatur.
[ 100a ] J. S. Romanides, "H. A. Wolfson's Philosophy of the Church Fathers," in Gr. Orth. Theol. Rev., Vol. 5, No. 1.
[ 101 ] On this see G. Florovsky, "The Idea of Creation in Christian Philosophy," The Eastern Churches Quarterly, Vol. VIII, No. 3, Supl. (London 1949).
[ 102 ] Contr. Arian. III, 62. Migne, P.G. 26, 453. For detailed discussion of these distinctions see St. Cyril, Thesaurus, Migne, P.G. 75, 308-313. St. Basil, P.G. 29, 673.
[ 103 ] Tonneau, op. cit., pp. 249-255.
[ 104 ] Ibid., p. 465.
[ 105 ] Ibid., pp. 249-255.
[ 105a ] J. S. Romanides, Tò IIñïðáôïñéêüí ÁìÜñôçìá, pp, 34-42.
[ 106 ] Tonneau, op. cit., p. 455. Similar presuppositions concerning sin and mortality are at the basis of Julian of Halicarnassus' insistence on the áöèáñóßá of Christ's human nature before the resurrection.
[ 107 ] Frag. IX in G. Bardy, Paul de Samosate (Bruges 1923), p. 326.
[ 108 ] Ibid., frag. XXVI, p. 353.
[ 109 ] Ibid., frag. XXVIII, p. 354.
[ 110 ] Ibid., frag. XXIX, p. 355.
[ 111 ] Ibid., pp. 355-357.
[ 112 ] Swete, p. 310, lines 20-21.
[ 113 ] Ibid., p. 308, lines 16-17.
[ 114 ] Frag. XV, op. cit., p. 335.
[ 115 ] See Arius' letters to Eusebius and Alexander in G. Bardy, Recherches sur Saint Lucien d'Antioche et Son Ecole (Paris 1936), pp. 226-228, 235-237. Cf. frag. of the Thalia, pp. 256-257, 262-263.
[ 116 ] St. Athanasius, Contr. Arian. III, 62. Migne P.G. 26, 453B.
[ 117 ] Ibid., 453C-456A. Cf. 63, 64, 65, 66, 67. It is interesting to note that these same principles were debated between Monothelites and Orthodox in the seventh century and this adds substance to our suspicion that the Nestorian moralistic metaphysic lies at the basis of the heresies condemned at the Sixth Council. See e.g. St. Maximus, Disputatio cum Pyrrho, Migne, P.G. 91, 293. This passage is discussed by H. A. Wolfson, op. cit., p. 485.
[ 118 ] Migne, P.G. 75, 773ff.
[ 119 ] Theol. Orat. XXIX, 2. Migne, P.G. 36, 76BC. That God is related to creatures by will and not by nature (except in the Incarnation) is in Orthodox patristic theology a statement of fact, or a confession of faith, and not the outcome of applying metaphysical concepts to the divine nature. There is a real distinction between ãåííÜí and åêðïñåýåéí, on the one hand, and èÝëåéí, åíåñãåßí, ðñïíïåßí, on the other, not because of a distinction between what is by necessity and what is by will, but because of the Biblical distinction between what is uncreated and what is created. If there were no difference between ãåííÜí and ,èÝëåéí (or ðïéåßí, etc,), then either the Son would be a creature, or creatures would be uncreated and eternal.
[ 120 ] B. Altaner, op. cit., pp. 369-370, 397-398.
[ 121 ] Åêèåóéò ïñèÞò ïìïëïãßáò 17.
[ 122 ] Ibid., 15.
[ 123 ] Ibid. 17. Cf. 12ff.
[ 124 ] Ibid. Leontius of Byzantium accuses Nestorius of thinking of the divine nature as though it were an infinite expanse unable to be contained in any place. Leontius argues that spatial concepts are not applicable to God and it is foolish to think that the divine essence occupies space like a sort of continuous quantity. Migne, P.G. 86, 1401-1413. Cf. Georges Florovsky, op. cit.
[ 125 ] ÅñùôÞóåéò ×ñéóôéáíéêáß, III, 2.
[ 126 ] Áðïêñßóåéò ðñüò Ïñèïäüîïõò 114.
[ 127 ] ¸êèåóéò ïñèÞò ïìïëïãßáò 1-9.
[ 128 ] Ibid., 2.
[ 129 ] Migne, P.G. 76, 401.
[ 130 ] Ibid., 408.
[ 131 ] Ibid., 325.
[ 132 ] G. R. Driver and L. Hodgson, The Bazaar of Heracleides (Oxford I925), p. 38.
[ 133 ] Swete, vol. II, pp. 338-339.
[ 134 ] Ibid., pp. 293-294.
[ 135 ] His views may be found developed and refuted in St. Gregory of Nyssa's, Second Book Against Eunomius. Migne, P.G. 45, 909-1122, especially 973 ff.
[ 136 ] Deut. 4, 15; Acts 1, 19.
[ 137 ] Op, cit., 997D.
[ 138 ] Devreesse, op. cit., p. 81, n. 5. H. Kihn, Theodor von Mopsuestia und Julius Africanus als Exegeten, Freiburg 1880, p. 107. For a history of the Church's attitude toward Theodore's theories about the Bible see L. Pirot, L'oeuvre exégétique de Théodore de Mopsueste, 1913.
[ 139 ] Devreesse, op. cit., p. 9, n. 2. H. Kihn, op. cit., p. 109 f.
[ 140 ] Op. Cit.
[ 141 ] Augustine and the scholastic tradition generally accepted at least a partial vision of the divine essence from the very beginning and were thus faced with such a problem. See e.g. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 94, 1. J. S. Romanides, Tò IIñïðáôïñéêüí ÁìÜñôçìá, p. 112, n. 2.
[ 142 ] Op. cit., p. 110 ff.
[ 143 ] Ibid., p.107. Devreessee, op. cit., p. 81, n. 5. L. Pirot, op. cit., p. 169 f.
[ 144 ] In opposition to the Augustinian type doctrine of revelation held by Barlaam the Calabrian, who believed that the glory of God as manifested in such instances as the Transfiguration was created and served only to elevate minds deprived of purity and intellectual understanding to the grasping of the divine ideas (íüçóéò ôþí èåïåéäþí - a strong indication that Barlaam was not in the nominalist tradition which rejects the existence of divine forms, - áíáãùãÞ áðü ôïý ôïéïýôïõ öùôüò åðß íïÞìáôá êáß èåùñÞìáôá), the Constantinopolitan Council of 1341 declared with the Greek Fathers that the Glory of God revealed to the prophets. and apostles. is none other than the Uncreated Godhead (not essence) and in pronouncing on the Church's doctrine of revelation quoted St. Dionysius the Areopagite who writes, ÉùÜííçí ðáñáëáìâÜíåé, ùò ôÞò èåïëïãßáò ðáñèÝíïí êáß êáèáñþôáôïí üñãáíïí, üðùò ôÞí Ü÷ñïíïí äüîáí ôïý Õéïý èåáóÜìåíïò, <<åí áñ÷Þ Þí ï Ëüãïò, êáß ï Ëüãïò Þí ðñüò ôüí Èåüí, êáß Èåüò Þí ï Ëüãïò>>, âñïíôÞóåéå. J. Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Monuments of the Orthodox Catholic Church, Athens 1952, vol. 1, p. 302.
[ 145 ] De Trinitate, II, v, 10; vi, 11; viii, 14; ix, 16; x, 17, 18; xiii 23; xiv, 24, xv, 25, 26; xvi, 26 (Glory which Moses saw is creature) ; xvii 32; xviii, 35; III, pref., 3; iv, 10; x, 21-xi, 22, 24, 26, 27.
[ 146 ] Ibid.
[ 147 ] Ibid., I, viii, I7.
[ 148 ] "...there is nothing that is visible that is not changeable. Wherefore the substance, or, if it is better to say, the essence of God, wherein we understand, in proportion to our measure, in however small a degree, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, since it is in no way changeable, can in no way in its proper self be visible. It is manifest, accordingly, that all those appearances to the fathers, when God was presented to them according to His own dispensation, suitable to the times, were wrought through the creature." Ibid., III, x, 21-xi, 22. This does not mean that the wise man in this life is divorced from "unchangeable wisdom," for "his rational soul is already partaker of the unchangeable and eternal truth ...' Ibid., III, iii, 8.
[ 149 ] Oration on Holy Baptism, VI. Migne, P.G. 36, 365A.
[ 150 ] J. S. Romanides, op. cit., p. 109-111.
[ 151 ] Father G. Florovsky deals with the example of Maximus the Confessor in The Resurrection of Life, Ingersoll Lecture, Harvard University, 1950-1951, p. 20.
[ 152 ] "And what is life eternal, unless that sight which is not granted to the ungodly?" St. Augustine, op. cit., 1, xii, 30.
[ 153 ] For other brief discussions of this foundation see my articles H. A. Wolfson' s Philosophy of the Church Fathers, mentioned above, and "Justin Martyr and the Fourth Gospel," in Gr. Orth. Theol. Rev., Winter 1958-59, Vol. IV, No. 2, pp. 115-134. It should be further noted that because he rejected the Biblical fact that God revealed Himself in His Uncreated Glory and because he conceived of God as absolute simplicity and being, Augustine quite naturally identified God with His Essence, Will and Ruling Power. These being identical, it was unavoidable that (1) he confuse the divine energy of sending or bestowing the Spirit or the grace of the Spirit with the procession of the Spirit and (2) distort the Patristic doctrine of the radical incommunicability of the Hypostatic Attributes. Thus he became the source of Filioque. The Nestorianizing theologians of the East were immune to this because they clearly distinguished between divine essence and energy and adhered to the incommunicability of the Hypostatic Attributes. Furthermore, for Augustine the Divine Essence must be the object of human knowledge. Otherwise there would be no knowledge of God since all else that exists is created. Augustine accepts the Arian and Eunomian axiom that to know a thing is to know its substance. "But nothing is at all rightly said to be known while its substance is not known. "De Trinitate X, x, 16. To know God is to know at least in part the divine essence. Since Its vision is impossible in this life and since seeing God's Glory is to see a creature, the surest road from faith to knowledge is that of piety, Bible study and most important contemplation. Creatures are reflections of their immutable divine prototypes and Scripture is a heaven sent clarification of these eternal ideas.. Therefore, both creatures and Scripture help one to contemplate by analogies and likenesses these unchangeable and eternal truth-ideas in God. It is exactly because the traditions following Augustine lost contact with the prophetic, apostolic and patristic vision of God's Uncreated Glory that the problem of Universals became so important. The Nominalists and to some extent the Protestants rejected the Universals and were left with a Bible of Augustinian wonder-working. Amazing is the exploratory way in which Augustine wrote his De T'rinitate. Upon reaching Book Three he writes "I myself confess that I have by writing learned many things which I did not know." One should compare this with Oration XXVII of St. Gregory the Theologian. In Book II Augustine promises to explain the procession of the Holy Spirit. This promise along with other parts of the work was stolen by friends and published. Finally when Augustine was nearing the end of this work he mentions in Book XV that he had promised to explain the procession of the Holy Spirit but admits that he "had attained to endeavor rather than accomplishment." Beyond any doubt the most ironic tragedy in history is that Western Theologians and finally an illusionist papacy turned Augustine's endeavor into an infallible accomplishment and brought about the final touches of a separation which was long in the making. What is almost equally as tragic is that a sober Protestant theologian can even today say that "it is this (the Filioque) which the poor folk in the Eastern Church. have never quite understood. . . ." K. Barth Dogmatics in Outline, p. 44.
[ 154 ] Oration XXVII, 10, Migne, P.G. 36, 24B.
[ 155 ] Father Florovsky always protests against the prevailing notion that the East one-sidedly contemplates the doctrine of the Trinity whereas the West concentrates on the humanity of Christ. He constantly points out that the Eastern doctrine of the Trinity is grounded in Christology which is always the starting point of all its theology.
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AND SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR A FRESH APPROACH [ 1 ]
© John S. Romanides
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When one is confronted with this kind of language one has the right to wonder if he is not dealing with a theology which is maintaining the accepted forms of an official state religion but whose basic presuppositions are quite different. This is certainly to be expected m any situation where the state and hierarchy are constantly struggling to impose a uniformity of faith. There can be no doubt about Theodore's zeal against the Arians and Eunomians. It must be remembered, however, that Sabellius and Paul of Samosata would have shown just as much enthusiasm for the overthrow of this new polytheism. We are not trying to suggest that Theodore was a Sabellian; his fervor against any form of theopassianism would count this out. Nor are we suggesting that he was a crypto-Samosatene. Theodore calls Paul of Samosata an "angel of satan" because "he says that Christ our savior is a simple man and fails to recognize that hypostasis of the divinity of the One before the ages." [ 86 ] However, the fact that theologians are struggling against each other does not mean that their basic presuppositions are necessarily different. There is a thread of presuppositions running right through Paul of Samosata, the Arians and Nestorians, which bears this point out and also seems to be the key to understanding Theodore's Christology.
Although he seems quite confident that Theodore has no metaphysical explanation to offer for the union of two natures, because the Mopsuestian supposedly considers this to be in the realm of mystery, still Galtier expresses in a footnotes [ 87 ] a slight reservation by referring to a possible clue in the fragments of Theodore's letter to Domnus. [ 88 ] Perhaps by tracing out the meaning of this passage in the light of other passages with the help of the general Syrian theological environment we can arrive at a very important clue for the better understanding of both Nestorianism and Arianism.
In this letter Theodore writes "and why is it necessary to say any more? The reason of the union according to essence is true (or applicable) only in the case of consubstantials, but in the case of things not consubstantial it is not applicable {or true), there being no clear (reason) possible for confusion. But the manner of union according to good-will, while preserving the natures, demonstrates the one person of both inseparably, and also the one will and one energy, together with the one authority and rule which is consequent to these." [ 89 ] It is quite clear that Theodore is here limiting the concept of essential or natural union to consubstantíals. Thus the Persons of the Trinity can be united by nature to each other, but not to things heterosubstantial. To these God can unite Himself only according to good-will. Now the question arises, why does Theodore preclude the possibility that God can unite Himself by nature to something not consubstantial with Himself ? It may be remembered that Nestorius was quite violent on this point against Cyril. Theodoret and the Antiochene bishops generally were also scandalized by Cyril's "natural" or "hypostastic" union. There is every indication to believe that Theodore's reaction to Cyril's terminology would have been generally the same as that of Nestorius.
Before we examine an important text to demonstrate this point one should ask whether Theodore would have heard such language for the first time from Cyril. Of course, the answer is no. He deals with this notion at length and rejects it as being impious. [ 90 ] Also he was certainly familiar with the theology of his opponent Apollinaris who claimed that Christ is both by nature God and by nature man. On the other hand, it is quite possible that he knew St. Gregory the Theologian's letters to Cledonius attacking not only Apollinaris, but also those who divide Christ by speaking of two Sons and refusing to acknowledge the two births of the Only-Begotten Son of God, one from the Father before the ages and one "afterward of the Virgin Mary."[ 91 ] In his first letter to Cledonius, Gregory speaks of the union in Christ as being according to essence.`' [ 92 ]
The very fact that Theodore spends a great deal of time discussing the manner by which God dwells in Christ is an indication that he is very much aware of the metaphysical aspects of the problem. Galtier's insistence that for Theodore all this belongs to the realm of mystery is without foundation. In his De Incarnatione Theodore sets out to solve the problem of the divine indwelling in Christ and never once gives the impression that it is really a mystery and therefore cannot be defined. He mentions two opinions concerning the manner of indwelling. "On the one hand some have decided that the indwelling takes place by essence and others by energy" [ 93 ] Theodore rejects both the Samosatene approach and the traditional approach offered in opposition to Paul of Samosata. God cannot be present in any special place according to essence because this would be a limitation of His infinity. On the other hand, if God is everywhere present by reason of His essence, granting to all the indwelling also, He would be granting this not only to men, but also to irrational and inanimate things. Since both these possibilities are improper, it is nonsense to speak of an indwelling according to nature. Neither can the indwelling take place according to energy because the providential operation of God is everywhere present. The only possibility left is to speak of God effecting His indwelling by His good-will whereby He becomes present in whom He chooses not by any spacial movement from place to place, but by will. Neither is it proper to say that God works His omnipresence by will because then He would have to work His special presence by a necessity of nature. "For thus the infinity is unto Him better preserved, when He does not appear to work by some necessity of the uncircumscribed nature. For if He is omnipresent by will, He will again be found working by necessity, no longer working the presence by opinion, but by the infinity of nature, and having the will following." [ 94 ]
It should be noted at the very outset that in this passage ïõóßá and öýóéò are synonymous and used interchangeably. This is a clear indication that Theodore would have reacted to Cyril's Ýíùóéí êáôÜ öýóéí or õðüóôáóéí exactly as he would have had Cyril spoken of an Ýíùóéí êáô' ïõóßáí. The second point which must be made clear is the fact that Theodore is not objecting to a union or presence by nature because it would primarily imply a union ordained and imposed upon the I.ogos from the outside as in the case of the Arian teaching. He is clearly rejecting any indwelling by nature or by essence because this implies for him an inner necessity of the divine essence itself for union with what is created. One must realize that in Theodore he is confronting a doctrine of divine relations geared to protect the divine nature from a deterministic type of pantheism, on the one hand, and an unconcerned and absolutely transcendental type unmoved mover, on the other. Far Theodore to allow any êáô' ïõóßáí union or indwelling of God in a creature would be a capitulation to Aristotelian enemies and a reversal of the Stagirite's categories of relations. For God to be related by nature to what is created would make the creature out to be the unmoved mover. Therefore, God does not work His presence in or union with creatures by nature. He only happens to be present everywhere according to essence because His nature cannot be contained by any place. [ 95 ]
Underlying Theodore's concept of divine relations is a clear distinction between nature and will, which one finds again in Nestorius. This distinction is based only partly, as we shall see, on Theodore's doctrine of the Trinity. The Three Persons of the Trinity are related to each other by a necessity of nature, whereas they can be related to creatures only by will. Thus the Father is not Creator because He is Father, neither is He Father because He is Creator. He is Father because He begets His San from His very essence, whereas He is Creator because He so wills to create. Creatures are very far from His essence, being products of the divine will. The Father is Father by nature, whereas He is Creator by will. [ 96 ]
Such distinctions, so obvious in Theodore's theology, between what is in God by nature and what God does by energy and will, or between God in His Essence and God in His Glory, were common in the ancient Church [ 96a ] apparently for various reasons which seem to be distinguishable into three general groups:
1) The first and most primitive type of such a distinction may be found in such a writer as St. Irenaeus [ 97 ] who finds the distinction between God in Himself and Gad in His uncreated Glory or power in the Old Testament. [ 98 ] To see God is not to see His essence but to see Him in His glory or divinity. [ 99 ] St. Gregory the Theologian states," . . when I looked closer [behind the cloud of Mt. Sinai], I saw, not the First and unmingled Nature, known to Itself - to the Trinity, I mean; not That which abideth within the first veil, and is hidden by the Cherubim; but only that [Nature] which at last even reaches to us. And that is, as far as I can learn, the Majesty, or as holy David calls it, the Magnificence which is manifested among the creatures, which He has produced and governs. For these are the Back Parts of God, etc." [ l00 ] These distinctions are found also in St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa and the whole Eastern tradition and presuppose a certain understanding of the prophetic experience which underlies Orthodox Triadology and Christology [ 100a ] and presents a definite understanding of Biblical inspiration and of the use of divine names quite foreign to Theodore's theology.
2) A second and further elaboration of the distinction between divine essence and will was clearly formulated by St. Athanasius, [ 101 ] who relegated the generation of the Son to the essential aspect of the divine mystery, thereby rejecting all conceptual explanations, and ascribed the act of creating to the will of God. What is from the essence of the Father belongs to the very nature of God, and what is from non-being by the will of God is a creature. The Father's begetting the Son and creating the world are not the same, as the Arians claimed. Thus we believe in the Son ãåííçèÝíôá êáß ïõ ðïéçèÝíôá of the Nicean Creed. St. Athanasius would go so far as to say, "As far then as the Son transcends the creature, by so much does what is by nature transcend the will." [ 102 ]
3) As we have already seen, Theodore follows these Athanasian distinctions in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity. However, there are indications that this was done with some very important variations which are clearly products of a moralistic metaphysic developed primarily by certain theological groups within the geographical area of the Oriental Diocese of the Roman Empire.
Faced with the need to combat determinism in both its ethical and cosmological or philosophical forms, it seems that a Syrian theological tradition was created which emphasized the superiority of what is done according to will as over against what is done by nature. What is done by nature can neither be praised nor rewarded nor justly punished, whereas what is done by will is indicative of a higher form of life. A man who realizes his own freedom to will what is good can occupy himself with meritorious works, on the one hand, for the reward of eternal life, and at the same time become instrumental for the betterment of society. Such a moralistic foundation would overcome the pessimism of pagan religions and philosophies and at the same time would be conducive to building up the moral stamina of the Roman Empire. Within such categories there would automatically be a strong tendency to think of divine adoption primarily as a reward which comes at the end of a process of meritorious living and the Biblical doctrine of grace and sin would become subordinated to this principle. The grace of God would not be so much a gift bestowed upon man in order to liberate him from the enemy, but a reward bestowed upon him because he has fulfilled the law. The destruction of Israel's enemies would not be the work of God's glory, but rather the work of Israel who would thereupon be rewarded with the glory of God for such meritorious efforts. Such an inversion of the Biblical pattern is perhaps the most characteristic feature of Theodore's Christology. In this respect Galtier is entirely wrong in claiming that the sole initiative for the incarnation lies with the Son of God. For Theodore, God unites Himself by will to the assumed man, but this union. is dependent on God's foreknowledge of the assumed man's merits. Theodore could not imagine that one could preserve both the freedom of God and Christ otherwise.
In reading through the Catechetical Homilies one is impressed by the frequency with which the words mutability and immutability occur in connection with either the concept of sin and perfection on the one hand or the nature of God on the other. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth because Its very nature is immutable and capable of bestowing this immutability upon man. What is immutable is true and what is subject to change is falsehood. [ l03 ] Man is a sinner because of his mutable nature and because he is involved in the process of change. When he is resurrected he will receive immortality of body and immutability of the sou1. [ 104 ] Both the mind and will of man will become
conformed to the will of God and to the Truth which is the divine nature, and thus man shall partake of the divine immutability and become forever happy. [ l05 ]
It seems that one is here confronting the Hellenistic idea that change and motion are either evil or negative in meaning, whereas only immutability and changelessness are of eternal significance and conducive to true security and happiness. [ l05a ] This of course means that freedom of choice and human activity could be for Theodore only a temporary stage to the beatific vision, which in reality is the petrification of human will and energy. within such a frame of references human will and activity in this life are the foundation upon which one gains the merits needed for the attainment of immutability and immobility in the next life. Actually then, salvation is participation in the divine immutability whereby the nature of man and God are joined in one act of willing and knowing.
By distinguishing between what God does by will and what belongs to the divine nature Theodore is able to overcome or avoid the philosophical problem of divine relations and makes possible a reciprocal relationship between God and man. He thus lays the metaphysical foundations for a moralistic ethic which merits changelessness and immutability and happiness in the future life. It is exactly within such a context that he develops his Christology. The relationship between natures cannot be according to nature or essence since this would mean a necessary conjunction which could neither be praiseworthy nor any real moral example for anyone to follow.
The union of the two natures in Christ is effected then by goodwill and good-pleasure. However, there is in Christ a special and unique example of such a union, since there was no time when the human nature existed independently of this conjunction based on the divine foreknowledge of the assumed man's merits. Furthermore, whereas all other men have only partial participation in the grace of God, the man Jesus. has a complete communion effected by the perfect conjunction of natures. Because of this conjunction there is in Christ only one will and one energy. Still, the assumed man undergoes a process of perfection which is not completed until the resurrection, when perfect immutability is attained. Starting from such presuppositions concerning the relationship between sinfulness and mutability or between perfection and immutability Theodore comes pretty close to saying that Christ was actually sinful prior to His resurrection. [ 106 ] The very existence of two wills and energies in Christ would clearly presuppose a lack of immutability on the human side and therefore some measure of imperfection and sinfulness. Therefore if there is a real conjunction of natures in Christ there must be one will and one energy. In Theodore one clearly finds a Nestorian type Monotheletism and Monenergism which perhaps goes some way to explaining its diophysite counterpart of the seventh century. There is some possibility that the presuppositions of the heresies condemned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council are to be found not so much in Monophysitism as in Nestorianism.
It seems clear enough that underlying Theodore's thought is a moralism in this life topped by a Platonic type of eudaimonia in the next. Such a concept of human destiny lacks any real understanding of the Biblical doctrine of creation and freedom and logically leads to eschatological determinism, to the íÝêñùóéò and not to the êÜèáñóéò of human will and energy. Salvation is the abolition of human freedom by the absolute submission of the will, not to the will of God, but to some sort of stiff and impersonal and motionless immutability. Thus, if Christ is perfect, He can have no natural will belonging to the very essence of human nature and differing by the will o f God from the will of God. Nor can there be any proper activity or energy of the creature which is not a duplication of the immutable and immobile divine nature. Not to be a duplication is in reality to be sinful.
The doctrine of meritorious works in this life with the promise of reward in terms of immutability and happiness in the next, transformed into a metaphysical system concerning the nature of God and the world, seems to be at the very basis not only of Theodore's theology, but also of other heretical movements originating in the Oriental Diocese generally. That God can be related to other essences only by will and never by nature is a basic presupposition of Paul of Samosata's Christology. He claims that "the wisdom of God was not united essentially to the human element from its birth, but according to quality (êáôÜ ðïéüôçôá)." [ l07 ] In a fragment whose authenticity is doubted he says, "Different natures and different persons have one and only mode of union, accord according to will, from which appears the unit (ìïíÜò) of those thus united to each other according to energy." [ 108 ] In Christ there is one will. "Do not be surprised that the Savior had one will with God. For as nature shows one and the same essence existing of [or in] many, thus the relationship of love accomplishes one and the same will of [or in] many by means of one and the same manifested satisfaction." [ 109 ] All who reach the state of eudaimonia have one willing and knowing with each other and God and thus the divine will and energy becomes the only will and energy. What is done by nature is not praiseworthy. "What prevails by reason of nature merits no praise. But what prevails by the relationship of love is praiseworthy, prevailing by one and the same energy and motion which never ceases to increase, according to which the Savior, having been conjoined to God, is never separated unto the ages, having with Him one and the same will and energy eternally moving unto the manifestation of good things." [ 110 ] G. Bardy points out some similarities which exist between the ideas expressed in this fragment and those in Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia. [ 111 ] In this respect noteworthy is Paul's insistence that in Christ there is one will and energy, and the union of natures is effected by a relationship according to love, will, and opinion. Theodore also speaks of one energy and will in Christ and claims that the Logos is in the man "according to the relationship of opinion" [ 112 ] or the Logos united the man to Himself "by the relationship of opinion."[ 113 ]
The philosophical problems involved in the doctrine of divine relationships did not obviously present Paul of Samosata with serious difficulty as far as the doctrine of the Trinity is concerned, since the divine Persons were for him unhypostatic energies. [ 114 ] However, the application of the category of necessity or necessary being to the divine nature and the preservation of the real relations of God toward creation by the above mentioned philosophical distinction between nature and will, or between what God does by a necessity of nature and what He does by will, automatically introduces difficulties not only into Christology, but also into the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, especially when the hypostatic character of the Persons is admitted. Is the Father related to the hypostatic Logos by nature or by will? In order to preclude Valentinian type of necessary emanations and Manichaean divisions of the divine nature Arius and his followers insisted on a relationship of will. [ ll5 ] There can be no essential relationship of the two. There is no reason to suspect any sophistical trick in the Arian claim that "Unless He has by will come to be, therefore God had a Son by necessity and against His good pleasure." [ 116 ] For the Arians, as for Paul, Theodore and Nestorius, what is by nature is by necessity.
The Orthodox answer to this Arian objection is quite clear. Necessity is contrary to will, while what is according to nature is far above will and completely beyond the conceptual powers of man. No logical categories or concepts can be applied to the unknown nature of God. The Arians have no right to apply the categories of necessity and will to the divine nature. "Forgetting, however, that they are hearing about God's Son, they dare to apply human contrarities in the instance of God, `necessity' and `beside purpose,' to be able thereby to deny that there is a true Son of God. For let them tell us themselves, that God is good and merciful, does this attach to Him by will or not? If by will, we must consider that He began to be good, and that His not being good is possible; for to councel and choose implies an inclination two ways, and is incidental to a rational nature. But if it be too unseemly that He should be called good and merciful upon will, then let them hear what they themselves have said `therefore by necessity and not at His pleasure He is good'; and, 'who is it that imposes this necessity on Him ?' But if it be unseemly to speak of necessity in the case of God, and therefore it is by nature that He is good, much more is He, and more truly, Father of the Son by nature and not by will."[ 117 ] The Holy Trinity is the pre-existing primordial reality, but beyond all concepts of reality, necessity and being. God is certainly free, but not in any moralistic sense of opposition between what is by necessity of nature and what is by will. God is what He is by nature and not by any necessity or will. God is not free by will, but by His very nature. He is not subject to the moralistic metaphysics of any moralistic philosophy as imagined by both Arians and Nestorians. St. Cyril devotes much time to a refutation of the Arians on this point in his work "On the Consubstantial Trinity," [ 118 ] written before the outbreak of the Nestorian Controversy. St. Gregory the Theologian writes, "Let us not ever look on this generation as involuntary, like some natural overflow, hard to be retained." [ 119 ]
One may add at this. point that salvation is not a matter of doing good things by will as opposed to the necessities of nature, but rather a renewal of the natural freedom of human nature itself. The doctrine of human will as distinguished from the necessary or natural appetites of human nature can be justified only within a moralistic complex in which correct choices in this life lead to the reward of happiness and motionless satisfaction in the next, which in reality is a final victory of what is taken as the necessary drive toward the contemplation of immutable realities. Motion and change are only of temporary significance and enable man freely to choose the exchange of his freedom of will for happiness. However, in the Orthodox tradition this is pure rubbish and leads to Monotheletism and Monenergism unless the perfection of Christ's human nature is sacrificed. Man's destiny is not happiness, but natural freedom. In Christ there was no "deliberative will" (èÝëçìá ãíùìéêüí), but a "natural will" (èÝëçìá öõóéêüí) and "natural freedom." In His human nature Christ was not free by an act of will. He was free by His very nature. Therefore, He really had or has two natural wills and energies, divine and human, without any connotation of sinfulness. For Platonized forms of Christianity, which understand the fall of man in terms of lack of happiness and immutability, this is not possible. Purity and sinlessness in the Bible are not immobility of a satisfied mind and will conjoined to immutable realities, but rather the freedom of the heart or, in modern terms, of the sub-conscious. A person can will good things all he wants, but unless his heart or subconscious is purified by the grace or glory of God, his works are of no avail and he is still a captive to demonic influences. Willful good works which are not products of a heart being purified by divine grace are not only not meritorious, but, much worse, they are satanic. Good works produced by a filthy sub-conscious and a rationalistic self-justifying self-assertiveness can be nothing else.
One can get a good glimpse into an aspect of the metaphysical background of Arianism and Nestorianism by turning to some interesting documents attributed to St. Justin Martyr and dated between the middle of the fourth and the first half of the fifth centuries. [ l20 ] These works definitely belong geographically to the Syrian province and are strongly Nestorian in tendency. The idea that the Logos works by essence his special presence in Christ, His Temple, is rejected. [ 121 ] The special presence takes place in Christ rather in the sense that being the purest of all temples He has the greatest degree possible of participation "not in divine nature but in divine honor by the good-will of the Logos." [ 122 ] This union is likened unto participation in the rays of the sun which shine equally on all. Yet the purer and more powerful the contemplating eye the more perfect and complete is the participation. In this sense is the Logos present in His own Temple in a special manner.[ l23 ] He cannot be especially present in Christ by nature since He happens to be by essence everywhere present.[ l24 ]
In another document evidently by the same author one comes across the following: "If God creates by nature, He creates whatever He creates by necessity. But if He creates by will, He creates authoritatively. Creating authoritatively, He creates as much as He wills and whatever He wills and whenever He wills."[ 125 ] In another work of this same collection we find the following question and answer: "If to be in potentiality is considered inferior to being in actuality, how does the Creator of the world, being Creator in potentiality and not in actuality before the creation of the world, not fall under the title of inferiority? The answer: They whose power of act is determined by some natural necessity are those whose power is considered inferior to the Act. Whosoever's power of act is determined by will and not by some natural necessity is not in the category of inferiority." [ 126 ] It is quite strange that having such presuppositions, this same author accepts the essential relationship of the three divine Hypostases.[ l27 ] What type of answer could he have given to the Arian objections to the generation by necessity? It is perhaps not surprising that his language in places indicates that he may have been a converted Arian who had not completely overcome his former way of thinking. The Logos and Spirit are God by participation and are deemed worthy of divinity. He writes for example: "For since the Father begat the Son from His proper essence, and from the same [essence] projected the Spirit, naturally (åéêüôùò) partaking of one and the same essence, they were deemed worthy of one and the same divinity (ôÞò áõôÞò êáß ìéÜò èåüôçôïò çîßùíôáé)."[ 128 ]
It seems clear enough that once the moralistic metaphysical distinction between what God is by a necessity of nature and what He does by will is introduced into the field of Biblical theology one is immediately caught up into the Samosatene, Arian and Nestorian problematics concerning the divine relations. That these were vital problems for the theologians of the Oriental Diocese should not be surprising to the modern theologian, especially to anyone familiar with the contradictions of the Thomistic system, which is forced to deny any real relationship of God toward creation in order to avoid pantheism. The Orthodox Fathers of the Church refused to apply any categories or names to the divine essence, let alone the category of necessary being, and thereby could freely speak of the Logos uniting Himself by nature to human nature in order to emphasize the reality of the incarnation of One of the hypostatic Persons of the Trinity. Of course the terms "hypostatic union" and "natural union" are not definitions of what is a complete mystery. The divine essence is by its very nature radically unknown to any creature. "Natural union" can therefore only mean a "real union." This the Nestorians could not accept because for them it would mean a defined and determined union which would destroy the very basis of their moralistic ethics of merits and rewards and deprive their type of anti-deterministic metaphysic of its very foundations. It is only when one realizes this essential point that he can fully grasp the violent Nestorian reaction to Cyril's "natural and hypostatic union."
Theodoret argued that this cannot be because "nature is something necessary and without will." [ 129 ] Cyril takes him to task for daring to apply such a category to the divine nature. [ l30 ] The Oriental bishops see in this term a recurrence of the Apollinarin heresy. Natures work by necessity only when created by God to function in a predetermined manner. God operates not by necessity but by will or grace.[ l31 ] Exactly in this respect the Orientals agree with the Arians in principle. God cannot unite Himself by nature to creatures. For the Arians this is proof that the Logos is a creature because united by the will of his creator to human nature in such a way that the union is natural and predetermined from without. For the Syrians the Logos cannot be united by nature to His Temple because He is God. Nestorius is, of course, the classical exponent of these presuppositions. "A voluntary union cannot be a natural union. If then they say that the union of the natures resulted in one nature, even though we ourselves should concede to them that it took place voluntarily, yet after it took place, the union existed not voluntarily in that the natures have acquired it. And it suffers as being united, whether it will or not, and accepts the sufferings of that nature to which it has been united, since it is defined by it and not by impassability nor by immortality nor by infinity. For the definition and circumscription of all nature is that in which it has to be." [ 132 ] It is quite obvious that Nestorius is a stranger to the Orthodox patristic apophaticism which denies any application of definitions or concepts to the divine nature.
As we have seen, Theodore is also involved in the general Oriental metaphysical scheme with its peculiar reduction of God to the categories of necessary being as opposed to what God does by will. What is by nature is by necessity. "The reason of union according to essence is true only in the case of consubstantials, but in the case of things not consubstantial it is not applicable, there being no clear (reason) possible for confusion." [ 133 ] Theodore accepts the principle that metaphysical rules and concepts can be applied to the divine nature. Apart from the unique exception in the case of the Divine Consubstantials Gad can be united and related to non-consubstantials only by energy and goodwill. "For thus the infinity is unto Him better preserved, when He does not appear to work by some necessity of the uncircumscribed nature. For if He is omnipresent by will, He will again be found working by necessity, no longer working the presence by opinion, but by the infinity of nature, and having the will following." [ 134 ]
The last point we wish to make regards Theodore's Biblical method and especially his doctrine of inspiration. In this respect he differs radically from the central Orthodox patristic tradition and has points of contact with the Eunomeans and the traditional fundamentalism of Western theology. Perhaps Theodore's understanding of prophecy and inspiration explains more than anything else his metaphysical approach to Christology. There are two specific doctrines of inspiration which concern us here, the one which believes that God actually dictated words to those who were objects of His revelations, and the other which believes that God revealed His uncreated Glory and Will to the prophets and apostles who in turn transposed their suprarational and suprasentient experience into the idiom established by the prophetic tradition to convey their message in direct proportion to the spiritual capacities and needs of the various levels of people addressed.
a) One of the best examples of a fundamentalistic literalist doctrine of inspiration in the Ancient Church is that of Eunomius'35 who believed that the very names of things exist eternally in the mind of God and constitute the very definitions of essences. Besides these uncreated names and determinations of creatures there are also eternal and uncreated names of God which are revealed in Scripture and constitute- definitions of the divine nature. One can see clearly the intimate connection between the Eunomean doctrines of God and Biblical Inspiration. Since the names "Father" and "Unbegottenness" are eternal definitions of the divine essence, it follows that the names "Son" and "Begottenness" must be designations of another and created essence.
b) In direct opposition to Eunomius, St. Gregory of Nyssa rejects the contention that names are eternal and insists that all words and languages are products of human accommodations to the necessities. of communication on the human level, and all concepts either conveyed by words or simply contemplated can never extricate themselves from their creaturely qualities. Knowledge of God, therefore, cannot be conceptual. God cannot be reached by contemplation. God is not like anything man experiences either intellectually or by sensation. Knowledge o f God can come only by revelation and knowledge about God can be had only from those who have been the objects of this revelation, which is above all rational and sentient categories. It is a knowledge which can be indicated but not conveyed by human language or concepts. He who has been graced with revelation can only point to the Glory of God. Only God can reveal His proper Glory to whom He chooses. This is why Christ revealed His Own Proper Glory which is at once His and the Father's. The Bible, therefore, is not inspired because dictated verbally by God, but because either written by or about those who have and are encountering God in His Self-revelation which is not a conveyance of words and images. [ l36 ] St. Gregory writes , "Neither, then, did God speak in the Hebrew language, nor did He express Himself according to any form in use among the Gentiles. but whatsoever of God's words are recorded by Moses or the Prophets, are indications of the Divine will, illuminating, now in one way, now in another, the pure intellect of those holy men, according to the measure of grace of which they were partakers. Moses, then, spoke his mother-tongue, and that in which he was educated. But he repeatedly attributed these words to God, as I have said, on account of the immaturity of those who were being brought to the knowledge of God, in order to give a clear representation of the divine will, and to render his hearers more obedient, as being awed by the authority of the speaker." [ 137 ] It is only in the New Testament that one confronts actual human words of the Incarnate Logos, but even these words are not uncreated definitions of eternal truths. They are the pedagogical means which point the way to seeing the Ruling Power of God which is beyond all concepts and forms, yet made manifest in the human nature of the Logos.
As we have already seen, Theodore of Mopsuestia follows the Eunomean interpretive method of applying the Biblical names of God to the divine nature. He also seems to follow the Eunomeans in their contention that God revealed words to the prophets. Theodore explains that God operated His revelation upon the prophets in such a way that the impression was created upon them that they were hearing someone speak, þóôå äïêåßí áõôïýò þóðåñ ôéíüò ëáëïýíôïò áêïýåéí ôå êáß ðáéäåýóèáé [ l38 ] In another passage [ l39 ] Theodore seems to be repeating the divine language theories of Eunomius. He explains that Moses does not record God's saying anything in the first instance of creation ("In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth") because there were as yet no creatures (angels) to reap any benefit from such verbal instruction. Once angels did come into existence then God began to speak for their sake since His essence was to them invisible. Had He not spoken they would have remained without proper knowledge of their Creator. Theodore is here attacking St. Basil who believes that the angels were created before heaven and earth. In other words, if St. Basil were correct the Bible should read, "God said, l.et there be heaven and earth." St. Gregory of Nyssa had already anticipated Theodore on this in his refutation of Eunomius' similar understanding of Genesis, where God is pictured as speaking and applying already existing names to the things He is creating. [ 140 ]
It is interesting to note that according to the Mopsuestian the angels were in need of divine speech for instruction since they could not see the divine essence. To understand what he means by this one must recall the fact that for Theodore those saved do have a vision of and conjunction with the divine nature when rewarded with immutability and happiness in the next life. This means that Theodore is referring to the angels before the fall. To have had the vision of the divine nature from the very beginning would contradict the Mops·uestian's moralistic metaphysics. Vision of the divine nature at creation would mean perfect satisfaction, happiness and immutability from the very beginning and no logical possibility for a fall. [ 141 ] This would upset the scheme of the Antiochene moralism described above since there would be no distinction between what is by nature and what is by will and angels would be completely happy and immutable by nature. The same would be true for man. Otherwise the whole structure of merits and rewards would tumble. The vision of God in His uncreatedness would be putting the reward before the accumulation of merits and would make the fall logically impossible. Hence the extreme importance for God to communicate His Will to angels and men by the medium of words, concepts and created impressions. The fact that the impression of hearing a voice is an inward experience and not something imposed on the senses from without does not absolve Theodore of the charge of having an anthropomorphic understanding of revelation, as H. Kihn believes. [ 142 ] For God to speak to prophets from without or from within is substantially the same thing since in both instances God is conveying and the prophet is receiving words.
It naturally follows from Theodore's moralistic metaphysics that the prophetic claim to seeing God in His uncreated Glory would be relegated to the realm of divinely inspired imagination. This is exactly how he explains Isaiah's claim to have seen God: "When Isaiah says he saw God and the Seraphim, he also heard voices coming toward him. For this. reason he sometimes says, The word of the Lord which was upon so and so, meaning by word the energy by which he believed he was learning what was fitting, being taught by a certain voice, and at other times (he says) vision, which he saw here or there, meaning by this the revelation, according to which, believing to see something (ïñÜí ôß äïêþí), he learned what was proper." [ 143 ] Seeing the glory of God is no more than an imaginary process, even though produced by Divine inspiration. The cause of this revelation is uncreated, but the effect is a created impression of voices and visions.
This understanding of seeing the Glory of God is from the Orthodox patristic viewpoint sheer heresy, but on the other hand much more refined than the grossly superstitious concept of Augustine which became common in the West and in the person of Barlaam the Calabrian was finally condemned by the Palamite Council of 1341. [ 144 ] According to Augustine what the prophets and apostles saw was not anything uncreated, [ l45 ] since for him the very substance of God is alone uncreated and visible only in the next life (with the possible exception of the ecstatic visions of Moses and Paul). Rather, in seeing the glory of God the prophets saw and heard created things which temporarily came into existence and passed away and received their revelations (visions and words) by means of these creatures. [ l46 ] Thus from the Old Testament viewpoint Augustine and his followers "changed the Glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man." (Rom. 1:23). As for Theodore so for Augustine the vision of God comes at the end of all actions, since the contemplation of the divine substance means satisfaction of all desires, i.e. happiness and immutability. "For this contemplation is held forth to us as the end of all actions, and the everlasting fullness of joy. . . . For we shall not seek anything else when we shall have come to the contemplation of Him." [ 147 ] So long as man is involved in mutability and mortality it is impossible for him to see God. In his present condition man can see only changeable things. [ l48 ] Augustine and Theodore seem to be in perfect accord.
For the biblical writers, however, for the so-called Asia Minor School, for Justin, for the Alexandrian Theologians, for the Cappadocians, for Hilary of Poitiers, and for the Orthodox patristic tradition generally, to see the Glory of God does not belong to the realm of divinely inspired imagination or Augustinian wonder-working. Rather it is a real and actual vision of God enthroned upon His Uncreated Majesty. The Glory of God is His very Throne, Power, Kingdom (âáóéëåßá), the Unapproachable Light in which He eternally dwells. God is the "King and Lord of Glory" which alone can be known to creatures both in this life and the next, when God will be seen as He is. In spite of the partial and limited character of the prophetic and apostolic experience of seeing the Majesty of God, it is still the very Uncreated Glory that they saw be f ore they parted this life. The Glory of God is His Godhead (not essence) and Ruling Power by which He saves Israel from her enemies and the Church from the rule of Satan.
The miracles and resurrection of Christ only point to this Glory of God and by themselves could never have demonstrated more than the fact that God was acting in the man Jesus. The climax of New Testament Revelation is the fact that He who was born of the Virgin and is Son of David revealed the Uncreated Glory of His Father as His own natural and proper Glory, and thereby revealed His proper Godhead. "Light . . . was That Godhead Which was shewn upon the Mount [of transfiguration] to the disciples - and a little too strong for their eyes." [ 149 ] The Primitive Christians did not come to believe in the Godhead of Christ by a hit and miss process. Rather the Apostles and many others saw and continue to see (God is not only He Who Acted, but He Who Acts) the Godhead or Glory of Christ. The Apostles learned by experience that Christ is the "Lord of Glory," the very same "King of Glory" Who revealed Himself to the Old Testament prophets ( John 12, 41 ) . It is exactly because he was confronted by the Glory of Christ that St. Paul learned to speak of the Crucified Lord of Glory (I Cor. 2, 8) .
The Biblical writers and the Orthodox Fathers were not hampered in recognizing the reality of the Old and New Testament Theophanies because of any Hellenistic and moralistic doctrine of human destiny. Man's destiny is not immutability of mind and will by a Platonic contemplation of immutable truths. The destiny of man is freedom. Neither are works meritorious. [ 150 ] Besides, the wicked will also come to the knowledge of Truth [ 151 ] by seeing the Uncreated Glory of God, but to them God will be a consuming fire, the eternal fire of hell (Lk. 16:19-31). For platonized forms of Christian intellectualism this would be impossible. [ l52 ] Hence the ideas of hell entertained by same traditions for whom the vision of God could only mean happiness.
Both Augustine and Theodore of Mopsuestia reject the Old Testament revelatory and epistemological foundation of New Testament Christology and Triadology. [ 153 ] However, the bishop of Hippo had a legalistic and authoritarian understanding of the Church's dogmas, accepting them at first on faith, and then trying hard the rest of his life to understand them conceptually by contemplation. In the Orthodox tradition there is also a distinction between faith and knowledge, but knowledge is here the vision of and participation in God's Glory, not the contemplation of the eternal and immutable ideas of Plato. "Attack the ideas of Plato," says St. Gregory the Theologian to the Eunomians. [ l54 ] In contrast to Augustine, Theodore of Mopsuestia was not so much limited by an obedience to an ecclesiastical authority as he was by the metaphysical principles in the air of his theological environment. In view of his understanding of the Old Testament Theophanies and because of his Antiochene metaphysical concept of God and his Hellenistic understanding of human destiny, it is no wonder that St. Paul's crucified Lord of Glory had not the slightest effect in conditioning his Christology. If the Lord of Glory was crucified in His humanity, He was certainly born as man in His humanity, so that He Who was born of the Virgin is consubstantial with the Father, and Mary is Theotokos with no Nestorian strings attached. The very idea of a man becoming or being Lord of Glory by adoption is sheer nonsense, if not as blasphemous as worshipping an adopted man. That the Old Testament Messiah is the anointed of God is a statement of fact which does not abrogate the reality that the King of Glory humbled and emptied Himself in becoming Son of David and anointed King of Israel. St. Cyril of Alexandria over and over again uses St. Paul's Crucified Lord of Glory in expounding Biblical Christology. However, this did not make the slightest dent in the rationalistic metaphysical mind of Nestorius who no doubt held opinions about the Old Testament vision of the Lord of Glory and Biblical inspiration similar to those of Theodore.
The opinion generally prevails that Theodore's Christology is based on an inductive historico-biblical method which begins by recognizing the full humanity of Christ and tries from this point to solve the problem of the unity of subject in Christ. This is clearly a myth. Theodore, like many others of the Oriental Diocese, is a moralistic metaphysician who applies concepts and definitions to the divine nature and'. in advance determines what is for God possible and what is not. According to his doctrine of divine relations it is impossible far God to unite Himself by nature to human nature. His starting point is not the human nature of Christ, nor is it the biblical witness as history, but rather a definition and limitation of divine nature in terms of a necessity distinguished from will. It is exactly because of this transcendental starting point that Theodore's doctrine of the Trinity has no- room for any real distinction between hypostasis and essence. In Cappadocian and Alexandrian Triadology the reality of the Divine Hypostases as distinguished from the divine essence is grounded in the belief that the Second Hypostasis of the Trinity really and truly lived and willed and suffered as a real and complete man and that He really and truly was resurrected in the flesh to become the first-born from the dead. [ l55 ] For Theodore there is no need to distinguish between the hypostasis of the Logos and the nature of the Logos because the one person effected by the union of natures not only is not the Only-Begotten Son of God, as Sullivan clearly demonstrates, but also cannot be an hypostasis of the Trinity. Natural or hypostatic union is for Theodore a necessary union. There can be no doubt that Theodore would have wholeheartedly supported the attack on St. Cyril. Whether he would have changed his mind about the double consubstantiality of the One and Unique Hypostasis born of the Virgin when faced by the decision of the Fourth Ecumenical Council one can never know. On the other hand one can not preclude the very strong possibility that Theodore may have remained more faithful to Nestorius than did Theodoret and the other Antiochenes.
There are solid enough reasons for believing that the Fifth Ecumenical Council had no business condemning Theodore who had died in communion with the Church, but there are no reasons for putting forth the notion that this was made possible by some kind of reversal to a one-sided Cyrilianism or neo-chalcedonianism which supposedly upset the balance of strict chalcedonianism. The dogmatic decisions of the Fifth Council are no different from those of Chalcedon and any claim that Theodore passes the test of chalcedonian Christology is unrealistic. C. Moeller is no doubt correct when he claims that the anathemas of the Fifth Council are strange to modern Roman sensitivities. If he and other Roman theologians studied more carefully the Christology of Chalcedon and the Triadology of the First and Second Councils, they would further discover that their theology is not in accord with these either, especially in regard to the Biblical doctrine of Revelation and Grace which underlies all Orthodox Patristic Theology.
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FOOTNOTES
[ 1 ] For recent bibliography and listing of sources see B. Altaner, Patrology (London 1960), pp. 372-373.
[ 86 ] Ibid., p. 381.
[ 87 ] Op. cit., p.183, n. 58.
[ 88 ] Swete, vol. II, pp. 338-339.
[ 89 ] Ibid.
[ 90 ] Ibid., pp. 293-294.
[ 91 ] Ep. CII.
[ 92 ] Ep. CI.
[ 93 ] Swete, vol. II, pp. 293-294.
[ 94 ] Ibid.
[ 95 ] Ibid., pp. 293-296, 300, lines 26-30; Tonneau, op. cit., pp. 105, 227-229.
[ 96 ] Tonneau, op. cit., pp. 45-47.
[ 96a ] J. S. Romanides, Ôï ðñïðáôïñéêüí áìÜñôçìá (Athens 1957), pp. 45-51, 54.
[ 97 ] Contr. Haer. III, 24, 2; IV, 20, 1-5ff.
[ 98 ] For similar opinions on the O.T. basis for such beliefs see A. J. Heschel, God in Search of Man (Meridian Books, N. Y. 1959) p. 80ff.
[ 99 ] Irenaeus, op. cit.
[ 100 ] Theol. Orat. II, 3 Here one perhaps has the ultimate source of John Scotus Eriugena's Natura quae creat et non creatur.
[ 100a ] J. S. Romanides, "H. A. Wolfson's Philosophy of the Church Fathers," in Gr. Orth. Theol. Rev., Vol. 5, No. 1.
[ 101 ] On this see G. Florovsky, "The Idea of Creation in Christian Philosophy," The Eastern Churches Quarterly, Vol. VIII, No. 3, Supl. (London 1949).
[ 102 ] Contr. Arian. III, 62. Migne, P.G. 26, 453. For detailed discussion of these distinctions see St. Cyril, Thesaurus, Migne, P.G. 75, 308-313. St. Basil, P.G. 29, 673.
[ 103 ] Tonneau, op. cit., pp. 249-255.
[ 104 ] Ibid., p. 465.
[ 105 ] Ibid., pp. 249-255.
[ 105a ] J. S. Romanides, Tò IIñïðáôïñéêüí ÁìÜñôçìá, pp, 34-42.
[ 106 ] Tonneau, op. cit., p. 455. Similar presuppositions concerning sin and mortality are at the basis of Julian of Halicarnassus' insistence on the áöèáñóßá of Christ's human nature before the resurrection.
[ 107 ] Frag. IX in G. Bardy, Paul de Samosate (Bruges 1923), p. 326.
[ 108 ] Ibid., frag. XXVI, p. 353.
[ 109 ] Ibid., frag. XXVIII, p. 354.
[ 110 ] Ibid., frag. XXIX, p. 355.
[ 111 ] Ibid., pp. 355-357.
[ 112 ] Swete, p. 310, lines 20-21.
[ 113 ] Ibid., p. 308, lines 16-17.
[ 114 ] Frag. XV, op. cit., p. 335.
[ 115 ] See Arius' letters to Eusebius and Alexander in G. Bardy, Recherches sur Saint Lucien d'Antioche et Son Ecole (Paris 1936), pp. 226-228, 235-237. Cf. frag. of the Thalia, pp. 256-257, 262-263.
[ 116 ] St. Athanasius, Contr. Arian. III, 62. Migne P.G. 26, 453B.
[ 117 ] Ibid., 453C-456A. Cf. 63, 64, 65, 66, 67. It is interesting to note that these same principles were debated between Monothelites and Orthodox in the seventh century and this adds substance to our suspicion that the Nestorian moralistic metaphysic lies at the basis of the heresies condemned at the Sixth Council. See e.g. St. Maximus, Disputatio cum Pyrrho, Migne, P.G. 91, 293. This passage is discussed by H. A. Wolfson, op. cit., p. 485.
[ 118 ] Migne, P.G. 75, 773ff.
[ 119 ] Theol. Orat. XXIX, 2. Migne, P.G. 36, 76BC. That God is related to creatures by will and not by nature (except in the Incarnation) is in Orthodox patristic theology a statement of fact, or a confession of faith, and not the outcome of applying metaphysical concepts to the divine nature. There is a real distinction between ãåííÜí and åêðïñåýåéí, on the one hand, and èÝëåéí, åíåñãåßí, ðñïíïåßí, on the other, not because of a distinction between what is by necessity and what is by will, but because of the Biblical distinction between what is uncreated and what is created. If there were no difference between ãåííÜí and ,èÝëåéí (or ðïéåßí, etc,), then either the Son would be a creature, or creatures would be uncreated and eternal.
[ 120 ] B. Altaner, op. cit., pp. 369-370, 397-398.
[ 121 ] Åêèåóéò ïñèÞò ïìïëïãßáò 17.
[ 122 ] Ibid., 15.
[ 123 ] Ibid. 17. Cf. 12ff.
[ 124 ] Ibid. Leontius of Byzantium accuses Nestorius of thinking of the divine nature as though it were an infinite expanse unable to be contained in any place. Leontius argues that spatial concepts are not applicable to God and it is foolish to think that the divine essence occupies space like a sort of continuous quantity. Migne, P.G. 86, 1401-1413. Cf. Georges Florovsky, op. cit.
[ 125 ] ÅñùôÞóåéò ×ñéóôéáíéêáß, III, 2.
[ 126 ] Áðïêñßóåéò ðñüò Ïñèïäüîïõò 114.
[ 127 ] ¸êèåóéò ïñèÞò ïìïëïãßáò 1-9.
[ 128 ] Ibid., 2.
[ 129 ] Migne, P.G. 76, 401.
[ 130 ] Ibid., 408.
[ 131 ] Ibid., 325.
[ 132 ] G. R. Driver and L. Hodgson, The Bazaar of Heracleides (Oxford I925), p. 38.
[ 133 ] Swete, vol. II, pp. 338-339.
[ 134 ] Ibid., pp. 293-294.
[ 135 ] His views may be found developed and refuted in St. Gregory of Nyssa's, Second Book Against Eunomius. Migne, P.G. 45, 909-1122, especially 973 ff.
[ 136 ] Deut. 4, 15; Acts 1, 19.
[ 137 ] Op, cit., 997D.
[ 138 ] Devreesse, op. cit., p. 81, n. 5. H. Kihn, Theodor von Mopsuestia und Julius Africanus als Exegeten, Freiburg 1880, p. 107. For a history of the Church's attitude toward Theodore's theories about the Bible see L. Pirot, L'oeuvre exégétique de Théodore de Mopsueste, 1913.
[ 139 ] Devreesse, op. cit., p. 9, n. 2. H. Kihn, op. cit., p. 109 f.
[ 140 ] Op. Cit.
[ 141 ] Augustine and the scholastic tradition generally accepted at least a partial vision of the divine essence from the very beginning and were thus faced with such a problem. See e.g. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 94, 1. J. S. Romanides, Tò IIñïðáôïñéêüí ÁìÜñôçìá, p. 112, n. 2.
[ 142 ] Op. cit., p. 110 ff.
[ 143 ] Ibid., p.107. Devreessee, op. cit., p. 81, n. 5. L. Pirot, op. cit., p. 169 f.
[ 144 ] In opposition to the Augustinian type doctrine of revelation held by Barlaam the Calabrian, who believed that the glory of God as manifested in such instances as the Transfiguration was created and served only to elevate minds deprived of purity and intellectual understanding to the grasping of the divine ideas (íüçóéò ôþí èåïåéäþí - a strong indication that Barlaam was not in the nominalist tradition which rejects the existence of divine forms, - áíáãùãÞ áðü ôïý ôïéïýôïõ öùôüò åðß íïÞìáôá êáß èåùñÞìáôá), the Constantinopolitan Council of 1341 declared with the Greek Fathers that the Glory of God revealed to the prophets. and apostles. is none other than the Uncreated Godhead (not essence) and in pronouncing on the Church's doctrine of revelation quoted St. Dionysius the Areopagite who writes, ÉùÜííçí ðáñáëáìâÜíåé, ùò ôÞò èåïëïãßáò ðáñèÝíïí êáß êáèáñþôáôïí üñãáíïí, üðùò ôÞí Ü÷ñïíïí äüîáí ôïý Õéïý èåáóÜìåíïò, <<åí áñ÷Þ Þí ï Ëüãïò, êáß ï Ëüãïò Þí ðñüò ôüí Èåüí, êáß Èåüò Þí ï Ëüãïò>>, âñïíôÞóåéå. J. Karmiris, The Dogmatic and Symbolic Monuments of the Orthodox Catholic Church, Athens 1952, vol. 1, p. 302.
[ 145 ] De Trinitate, II, v, 10; vi, 11; viii, 14; ix, 16; x, 17, 18; xiii 23; xiv, 24, xv, 25, 26; xvi, 26 (Glory which Moses saw is creature) ; xvii 32; xviii, 35; III, pref., 3; iv, 10; x, 21-xi, 22, 24, 26, 27.
[ 146 ] Ibid.
[ 147 ] Ibid., I, viii, I7.
[ 148 ] "...there is nothing that is visible that is not changeable. Wherefore the substance, or, if it is better to say, the essence of God, wherein we understand, in proportion to our measure, in however small a degree, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, since it is in no way changeable, can in no way in its proper self be visible. It is manifest, accordingly, that all those appearances to the fathers, when God was presented to them according to His own dispensation, suitable to the times, were wrought through the creature." Ibid., III, x, 21-xi, 22. This does not mean that the wise man in this life is divorced from "unchangeable wisdom," for "his rational soul is already partaker of the unchangeable and eternal truth ...' Ibid., III, iii, 8.
[ 149 ] Oration on Holy Baptism, VI. Migne, P.G. 36, 365A.
[ 150 ] J. S. Romanides, op. cit., p. 109-111.
[ 151 ] Father G. Florovsky deals with the example of Maximus the Confessor in The Resurrection of Life, Ingersoll Lecture, Harvard University, 1950-1951, p. 20.
[ 152 ] "And what is life eternal, unless that sight which is not granted to the ungodly?" St. Augustine, op. cit., 1, xii, 30.
[ 153 ] For other brief discussions of this foundation see my articles H. A. Wolfson' s Philosophy of the Church Fathers, mentioned above, and "Justin Martyr and the Fourth Gospel," in Gr. Orth. Theol. Rev., Winter 1958-59, Vol. IV, No. 2, pp. 115-134. It should be further noted that because he rejected the Biblical fact that God revealed Himself in His Uncreated Glory and because he conceived of God as absolute simplicity and being, Augustine quite naturally identified God with His Essence, Will and Ruling Power. These being identical, it was unavoidable that (1) he confuse the divine energy of sending or bestowing the Spirit or the grace of the Spirit with the procession of the Spirit and (2) distort the Patristic doctrine of the radical incommunicability of the Hypostatic Attributes. Thus he became the source of Filioque. The Nestorianizing theologians of the East were immune to this because they clearly distinguished between divine essence and energy and adhered to the incommunicability of the Hypostatic Attributes. Furthermore, for Augustine the Divine Essence must be the object of human knowledge. Otherwise there would be no knowledge of God since all else that exists is created. Augustine accepts the Arian and Eunomian axiom that to know a thing is to know its substance. "But nothing is at all rightly said to be known while its substance is not known. "De Trinitate X, x, 16. To know God is to know at least in part the divine essence. Since Its vision is impossible in this life and since seeing God's Glory is to see a creature, the surest road from faith to knowledge is that of piety, Bible study and most important contemplation. Creatures are reflections of their immutable divine prototypes and Scripture is a heaven sent clarification of these eternal ideas.. Therefore, both creatures and Scripture help one to contemplate by analogies and likenesses these unchangeable and eternal truth-ideas in God. It is exactly because the traditions following Augustine lost contact with the prophetic, apostolic and patristic vision of God's Uncreated Glory that the problem of Universals became so important. The Nominalists and to some extent the Protestants rejected the Universals and were left with a Bible of Augustinian wonder-working. Amazing is the exploratory way in which Augustine wrote his De T'rinitate. Upon reaching Book Three he writes "I myself confess that I have by writing learned many things which I did not know." One should compare this with Oration XXVII of St. Gregory the Theologian. In Book II Augustine promises to explain the procession of the Holy Spirit. This promise along with other parts of the work was stolen by friends and published. Finally when Augustine was nearing the end of this work he mentions in Book XV that he had promised to explain the procession of the Holy Spirit but admits that he "had attained to endeavor rather than accomplishment." Beyond any doubt the most ironic tragedy in history is that Western Theologians and finally an illusionist papacy turned Augustine's endeavor into an infallible accomplishment and brought about the final touches of a separation which was long in the making. What is almost equally as tragic is that a sober Protestant theologian can even today say that "it is this (the Filioque) which the poor folk in the Eastern Church. have never quite understood. . . ." K. Barth Dogmatics in Outline, p. 44.
[ 154 ] Oration XXVII, 10, Migne, P.G. 36, 24B.
[ 155 ] Father Florovsky always protests against the prevailing notion that the East one-sidedly contemplates the doctrine of the Trinity whereas the West concentrates on the humanity of Christ. He constantly points out that the Eastern doctrine of the Trinity is grounded in Christology which is always the starting point of all its theology.
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