The Augustinian Confusion: A sufficient safeguard from Arianism? Not at all.

May 31, 2007

Excerpt from God, History, and Dialectic by Most Rev. Photius (Joseph P.) Farrell, S.S.B., D.Phil.(Oxon.): 

When St. Augustine wrote his De Trinitate, he may have done so partially in an effort to combat Arianism.  Certainly the Council of Toledo advanced Augustine’s arguments for the filioque as being anti-Arian in nature.  But is the filioque in fact an adequate safeguard against Arianism?  We have seen that the Arians defined deity by confusing the hypostatic feature of the Father, ingenerate causation, with the divine essence itself: they defined the divine essence by the Father’s personal feature.  Thus, they could deny that Christ was fully God because he did not cause but was caused.  To this we saw that Athanasius’ response is to go to the root of the heresy: the definition of the divine essence as causation; if that were so, he said, then, yes, the Son in order to be God would have to cause the Spirit, and the Spirit a fourth person, and so on until on ended in Polytheism.

But it is exactly this course which Augustine pursues:

“As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.”(De Trinitate, 7:3:5) Read the rest of this entry »

20 Comments | Absolute Divine Simplicity, Augustine, Dialectic and Theological Method, Farrell, Filioque, GHD | Permalink
Posted by photios

Reply to an Evangelical

May 28, 2007

“As Evangelicals we believe in ‘Enhypostatic Interfusion’ or Miaphytism in dealing with say John 15….

Essence and Energy are communicable – otherwise we would only be beholding christlikeness [energetic potentiality] and NOT be becoming Christlike [communicable and essential actuality].”

These are snippets of a comment posted on my blog. I have provided them to give some context to my response which I have included below. I am interested on obtaining some feed back regarding the response. Is it correct or wrong? Can it be improved? How?

I would appreciate any constructive comments and I think this matter is very much in line with the material in this blog and it underlies some of the discussions here.

The Essence of God is unknowable and incommunicable because it is uncreated and without beginning in time. The created cannot take on the nature [used interchangeably with essence for this argument] of the uncreated because it could only do so in time thus giving a beginning in time to the uncreated nature, thus contradicting the uncreated nature and it ceasing to be uncreated and without beginning. The Son of God could take on created nature in time because it can have a beginning but the reverse is not possible.

The Son of God has two natures in one person. The human nature remains created and fully human and it does not become uncreated. Nevertheless, it can be united without confusion to the Divine nature and share in the fullness of the life of the Divine nature. Christ’s human nature, although created, is no less Christ than His Divine nature. Thus, when we are united to Christ’s human nature we too share in the Divine nature in the same fullness as Christ’s human nature. We are truly Christlike. There is nothing in Christ’s humanity that we do not share in our own hypostasis. However, only the hypostasis of the Son of God can have two natures, we retain one nature, our human nature, but in Christ we participate in the divine nature in His human nature, through the energies of God in the Holy Spirit. Thus we share in omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience and most importantly the Love of God. These are all ours as they are Christ’s. We live in the fullness of life as Christ does in His human nature; His life is our life.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council rejected monophysitism because it confused the human nature of Christ and His Divine nature. This means that we cannot participate in the Divine life without ceasing to be completely human or becoming God and so denying our salvation. Miaphysitism may be acceptable terminology only if one accepts the two nature teaching of Pope Leo and the Council.

Each hypostasis contains its nature completely within itself. Thus each of the Persons of the Trinity has the fullness of the nature/essence of God within itself. The nature is not shared between them. Each human person has human nature entirely within himself. One human is no less human than another and the human nature is not something outside each person that we somehow share. Rather it is whole and complete in each person.

To have the Divine nature is to have it whole and complete within our own hypostasis. Because it is not within our hypostasis presently, it must begin to be within our hypostasis at some point, if we are truly to have this nature, and this is the reason why we cannot have the Divine nature; it cannot begin in our hypostasis. Only the three hypostases of the Trinity, which are without beginning can have the divine nature within them. We cannot speak of the Divine essence outside of the hypostases of God and neither can we talk of it outside our own hypostases, if we could share in it.

To share in the Divine essence or to know it or for it to be communicated means to have it as our nature completely within our own hypostasis. Otherwise, what is meant, by partaking or sharing the Divine nature, is to share in the energies of the Divine essence, which we can do without having the Divine essence enhypostasised.

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Posted by monkpatrick

St John of Damascus on the Place of God and more

May 25, 2007

“Bodily place is the limit of that which contains, by which that which is contained is contained: for example, the air contains but the body is contained. But it is not the whole of the containing air which is the place of the contained body, but the limit of the containing air, where it comes into contact with the contained body: and the reason is clearly because that which contains is not within that which it contains.

But there is also mental place where mind is active, and mental and incorporeal nature exists: where mind dwells and energizes and is contained not in a bodily but in a mental fashion. For it is without form, and so cannot be contained as a body is. God, then, being immaterial and uncircumscribed, has not place. For He is His own place, filling all things and being above all things, and Himself maintaining all things. Yet we speak of God having place and the place of God where His energy becomes manifest. For He penetrates everything without mixing with it, and imparts to all His energy in proportion to the fitness and receptive power of each: and by this I mean, a purity both natural and voluntary. For the immaterial is purer than the material, and that which is virtuous than that which is linked with vice. Wherefore by the place of God is meant that which has a greater share in His energy and grace. For this reason the Heaven is His throne. For in it are the angels who do His will and are always glorifying Him. For this is His rest and the earth is His footstool. For in it He dwelt in the flesh among men. And His sacred flesh has been named the foot of God. The Church, too, is spoken of as the place of God: for we have set this apart for the glorifying of God as a sort of consecrated place wherein we also hold converse with Him. Likewise also the places in which His energy becomes manifest to us, whether through the flesh or apart from flesh, are spoken of as the places of God.

Read the rest of this entry »

7 Comments | Church Fathers, Essence/Energies, Orthodox, Trinity | Permalink
Posted by monkpatrick

Philosophy and Reason

May 25, 2007

“But the blessed Apostle Paul, taking precaution against this, as we have often shown, warned us to be on our guard, saying: Take heed lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ, in Whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Therefore we must be on our guard against philosophy, and methods which rest upon traditions of men we must not so much avoid as refute. Any concession that we make must imply not that we are out-argued but that we are confused, for it is right that we, who declare that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, should not flee from the doctrines of men, but rather overthrow them; and we must restrain and instruct the simple-minded lest they be spoiled by these teachers. For since God can do all things, and in His wisdom can do all things wisely, for neither is His purpose unarmed with power nor His power unguided by purpose, it behooves those who proclaim Christ to the world, to face the irreverent and faulty doctrines of the world with the knowledge imparted by that wise Omnipotence, according to the saying of the blessed Apostle: For our weapons are not carnal but powerful for God, for the casting down of strongholds, casting down reasonings and every high thing which is exalted against the knowledge of God.

The Apostle did not leave us a faith which was bare and devoid of reason; for although a bare faith may be most mighty to salvation, nevertheless, unless it is trained by teaching, while it will have indeed a secure retreat to withdraw to in the midst of foes, it will yet be unable to maintain a safe and strong position for resistance. Its position will be like that which a camp affords to a weak force after a flight; not like the undismayed courage of men who have a camp to hold. Therefore we must beat down the insolent arguments which are raised against God, and destroy the fastnesses of fallacious reasoning, and crush cunning intellects which hit themselves up to impiety, with weapons not carnal but spiritual, not with earthly, learning but with heavenly wisdom; so that in proportion as divine things differ from human, so may the philosophy of heaven surpass the rivalry of earth.”

St Hilary of Poitiers, Book 12 on the Trinity. Post-Nicene Fathers.

18 Comments | Church Fathers, Dialectic and Theological Method | Permalink
Posted by monkpatrick

Church and dogma

May 19, 2007

“Every alteration in the basic creed, each subsidence in the hidden foundations of the Church, ‘which the Lord founded upon the rock of faith,’ produces sooner or later cracks of division on the ’surface’ of the Church’s face. If dogma is falsified, whether intentionally or not, ecclesiology, both pastoral and administrative, is deformed, spiritual life is falsified and man suffers.

Ecclesiology and Christian anthropology have the same basis: Trinitarian and christological dogma. The Word is made flesh, and theology is ministered in the life of the faithful. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the theology of the Fathers who proclaimed Christ speaks about our life, which is Christ.

The hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ makes us partakers by grace in the unapproachable life which is in the Holy Trinity. And the mode of existence of God in Trinity forms also the mysterious structure of our own being ‘in the image’. Only when we are conformed to Christ, recognising Him by partaking in His Life, do we ‘regain our proper stature,’ our natural function and our freedom, as the Church and as persons. Ecclesiology and spirituality have the same basis: dogma. The Church is Christ, His body living in history. It is summarised in each of the faithful, who is the Church in miniature. The personal consciousness of each of the faithful has an ecclesial dimension, and every problem of the Church is the problem of the personal salvation of each of the faithful.

Consequently, when the heretic lays hands on the “traditional faith” he lays hands on the life of the faithful, their raison d’etre. Heresy is at once a blasphemy towards God and a curse for man. This is the reason why the entire organism and spiritual health and sensitivity of Orthodoxy has from the beginning reacted against the destructive infection of heresies.’

Archimandrite Vasileios in Hymn of Entry pgs 20-21.

18 Comments | Eastern Orthodox, Orthodox, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by monkpatrick

Another Schism Healed…without the Pope

May 17, 2007

Very often Catholic apologists tend to give the impression that without the papacy, dogs and cats will co-habitate, mass hysteria will take place and the Borg will invade. If you don’t have a single and psychologically simple center of unity, all you are left with is Protestant like schism upon schism. It is nice to see this isn’t the case.

21 Comments | Papacy | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson

Prolegomena to God, History, and Dialectic by Most Rev. Photius (Joseph P.) Farrell, S.S.B., D.Phil.(Oxon.)

May 16, 2007

“Prolegomena: An Eastern Orthodox Geistesgeschichte

Christian civilization — or what remains of it — stands, apparently exhausted and irreparably divided, on the uncertain terrain of a century’s and millennium’s finish, ill-prepared to carry any cogent or consistent witness into the third millennium and twenty-first century of its dispensation.  This is because the equation of “Western European” with “Christian” civilization is itself founded upon a schism which resulted in a kind of cultural and historiographical heresy.Such statements may seem like good news to the “multiculturalist”, so I wish to dispel any lingering and seductive causes for rejoicing that they may have engendered.  First, these essays are not an attack on Western European civilization.  They are rather an analysis of the roots of that civilization, and of its origin in a theological heresy and of the cultural and moral crisis that heresy has sired.  For this reason, these essays are a spiritual effort, akin to the process of self-examination before confession.  By the same token, these essays are more of introspection and retrospection than of argument in any sense that a modern historian, philosopher, or “theologian” would recognize.  I believe that I have managed to surpass intuition in these pages, but it would indeed be presumptuous for me to claim that argument has been achieved, or that an exhaustive articulation of what is a very complex hypothesis has been accomplished.  I maintain only that, at the end of these essays, a very complex phenomenon will have been surveyed, and that, like all surveys, it is subject both to the usual omissions of fact,  and to the hazzards of over-generalization here or too exclusive and narrow a focus there. “Multiculturalists” will find no support or cause of joy for their projects in these pages for a second reason.  The undertaking represented here was attempted because of my personal conviction that our “culture”, as one contemporary adage has it, is in a state of profound moral crisis, a crisis which affects every aspect of our life — social, political, economic, and religious — for every aspect of our cultural conventions are at stake.  I do not, however, seek the ultimate causes for this crisis in material, and for that reason, superficial causes.    The crisis is not founded on any merely economic, political, scientific, or legal basis.  Still less it is founded, as the conservative opposition to multicultaralism has it, on “the collapse of moral values”.  Nor is the crisis founded on any combination of these factors.These essays argue rather that the crisis is a specifically theological one, for what has been lost is not “spirituality” or “moral values” or any such meaningless abstraction.  “Spirituality” and “moral values” have collapsed because the theological, ecclesiastical, and liturgical context in which they are born and nurtured has long since crumbled into the stew of competing theological illiteracies of “denominations”, themselves the result of specific doctrinal assumptions made and adopted by a part of our culture long ago, and specifically rejected by yet another part of it.And lest these terms — “theological” and “doctrinal” — be misunderstood, I mean that the crisis has specifically doctrinal and therefore conceptual roots.  It is in large measure attributable to a constellation of theological and philosophical paradigms which, once adopted, worked themselves out in the History of Christian Civilization itself.Finally, “multiculturalists” and their conservative counterparts who pretend to defend “Judeo-Christian”, by which they mean only Western European, civilization, and who profess to do “objective”history, will not find much of comfort here, for these essays are in the final analysis an intensely personal statement.  They are an examination of my own spirit, both as one raised and at home in that Western European civilization, and as one who, as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, lives every day confronted by the tragedy of the Schism between Eastern and Western Europe.  These essays are an attempt to resolve a profoundly internal and personal struggle.   Read the rest of this entry »

25 Comments | Church Fathers, Dialectic and Theological Method, Eastern Orthodox, Farrell, GHD | Permalink
Posted by photios

Trinitarian Structure, Lay Responsibility and Infallibility

May 14, 2007

‘If we suppose that we have a center that cannot err, matters change radically in the Church. Everything is degraded to the level of worldly existence. Things move mechanically, regulated from the outside. We return to the curse of the law. The whole architecture of the Church is put out of shape…The responsibility of the laity is diminished or done away with entirely. Theology, instead of being a “mystery” clearly delivered to the Church, becomes an individual intellectual concern. Dogma no longer serves as a guide for life, nor does life lead to the open door of the truth which frees.

The suffering and the struggle inherent in the universal responsibility of the laity is something which has cost and continues to cost dearly. It is painful for the whole body of the Church, and for this very reason leads to salvation. This is because, in a way that is conscious and recognised, it leads everyone as a community and as persons to spiritual maturity and adulthood in Christ. In this spirit of responsibility, faith matures and theology is born, The truth is made flesh within us, as freedom become tangible: “We who are many are one body and one spirit” (1 Cor 10:17).

We are bound together by the common faith which, in accordance with tradition, each of us has found and finds personally through the exercise of his own responsibility-”so each of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom 14:12)-and through the communion of the Holy Spirit. The Church leaves the believer free to feel Christ dwelling within him; free to live in fear on the sea of the present age; free to be crushed by his resposibility; free to cry out to the Lord, “Master we perish,” and to see Him in the night of the present age, walking on the waters for him personally and for the whole Church; and free to hear the Lord say to him, “It is I.”

…It is a mysterious presence of God made man, which surpasses firm administration, world conquest or history. It is a certainty for man, given by God. It is an expansion of our being to His dimensions, a process whereby what is mortal is swallowed up in life.

This unconfused and indivisible interpenetration of life and certainty, of the laity and responsibility, of freedom and unity, constitutes the source of renewal in the Church. Here we see the operation of the Trinitarian “leaven” of the Kingdom of God, which no one can impede and which sanctifies and renews all things, making them pass through unceasing trials:…

Every believer is called to live theologically, and the whole body of the Church is creating theology in its life and its struggle. Thus the ex cathedra of Orthodoxy, the way in which it expresses itself infallibly, is from the Cross. The responsibility that is spread over the whole body of the people is a cross…The spiritual life of each believer which provides the overall balance is a cross. On the Cross, the Lord “stretched out His hands and united what had previously been sundered.”

The infallibility on which the Vatican prides itself is a disruption of the trinitarian structure of the Church’s ecclesiology and spirituality. Orthodoxy cannot accept the dogma of Rome’s infallibility without denying itself. It could not accept it without living it; all the dogmas of the Church have been embodied in its worship and have formed and set their seal on its life. Supposing that the Church did accept it and lived it consistently, as it lives all the other dogmas, it would then cease to exist. The Church itself would cease to live. This dogma of infallibility is one that the Western Church has manufactured in its own way. This is a dogma which no Church can live in a way that is Orthodox; it brings about the paralysis of the whole body of the Church.’

Ecclesiology and spirituality have the same basis: dogma. The Church is Christ, His body living in history. It is summarised in each of the faithful, who is the Church in miniature. The personal consciousness of each of the faithful has an ecclesial dimension, and every problem of the Church is the problem of the personal salvation of each of the faithful.

Archimandrite Vasileios in Hymn of Entry pgs 50-52.

9 Comments | Books, Free Will, Papacy | Permalink
Posted by monkpatrick

Grand Moff Tarkin Appears!

May 3, 2007

Grand Moff Tarkin, a character from the Star Wars film seems to have appeared in the blogsphere. I grew up on Star Wars. It was the biggest thing when I was a kid. Princess Leia retorts to the effect to one of his inquiries at one point in the film, “The tighters your grasp, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!” (There’s more truth in this I suspect than one might suppose.)

This morning I posted some questions over at Kimel’s blog. I thought I could at least ask questions, but I suppose not. The ultimate Gnostic weapon of prohibition of questions has finally made its appearance. My questions weren’t rude or crass but were in fact part of the historical discussion and on topic. But I suppose in order to assimilate everything to the Monad of the Pope, the Orthodox simply must be silenced. If the Pope speaks, every voice must be quiet.

Of course, what Kimel will create is a decreased or decreasing band of respondents, who will only give him a skewed picture of things. It seems ironic to desire an ecumenical discussion and then prohibit questions from the other side. This simply confirms the old Papal attitude that non-Catholics just need to submit. As I said before, not yet ecumenical.

 For your contemplation, here are the questions I asked.

  Read the rest of this entry »

215 Comments | Dialectic and Theological Method, Eastern Orthodox, Papacy, Predestination, Theosis/Deification | Permalink
Posted by Perry Robinson