The Coming of the Impassible God: Tracing a Dilemma in Christian Theology 9781463213992

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The Coming of the Impassible God

Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought 1

Perspectives on Philosophy and Religious Thought (formerly Gorgias Studies in Philosophy and Theology) provides a forum for original scholarship on theological and philosophical issues, promoting dialogue between the wide-ranging fields of religious and logical thought. This series includes studies on both the interaction between different theistic or philosophical traditions and their development in historical perspective.

The Coming of the Impassible God Tracing a Dilemma in Christian Theology

Joseph M. Hallman

Gorgias Press 2007

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2013 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2013

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ISBN 978-1-59333-792-6

ISSN 1940-0020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is Available from the Library of Congress Printed in the United States of America

Inpassibilis inpassibiliter Inpassibilis passibiliter Passibilis inpassibilita O beata trinitas. (Impassibily impassible Passibly impassible Impassibly passible O blessed Trinity.) Hymn III, 84–85. Marius Victorinus SC 68, 640.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents.................................................................................vii Preface ...................................................................................................ix Acknowledgments ...............................................................................xiii Abbreviations ....................................................................................... xv 1. The Background, Modern and Ancient............................................. 1 The Modern Situation .................................................................... 2 Karl Rahner..................................................................................... 4 The Philosophers: Plato, Aristotle, Celsus, and Plotinus............ 11 Aristotle ........................................................................................ 16 The Metaphysics ........................................................................... 18 Middle Platonism: Celsus ............................................................. 20 Plotinus ......................................................................................... 22 2. Alexandrians, Apologists, and Gregory the Wonderworker .......... 27 Apostolic Fathers.......................................................................... 33 Apologists of the Second Century................................................ 34 Clement of Alexandria ................................................................. 36 Origen of Alexandria .................................................................... 40 Origen on Divine Suffering .......................................................... 43 Ad Theopompum ......................................................................... 46 3. Tertullian and his Heirs.................................................................... 49 God’s Goodness ............................................................................ 53 God’s Justice ................................................................................. 55 Deus Incarnatus ............................................................................ 58 De carne Christi............................................................................ 59 Novatian ....................................................................................... 63 Arnobius ....................................................................................... 65 Lactantius...................................................................................... 66 Conclusion.................................................................................... 69 4. Arians and Orthodox: The Logos Suffers but God Does Not........ 71 The Crucified God of the Arians ................................................. 73 Athanasius..................................................................................... 76 Gregory of Nyssa.......................................................................... 79 vii

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Ἀπάqeia ....................................................................................... 82 The Incarnation ............................................................................ 83 The Tura Commentary: An Obscure Contribution ................... 85 The Incarnation ............................................................................ 89 5. The Latins: Hilary and Augustine.................................................... 93 Augustine on Divine Immutability .............................................. 96 God’s Wrath ................................................................................. 98 God’s Repentance....................................................................... 100 Divine Jealousy........................................................................... 102 God’s Love and Mercy ............................................................... 103 Divine Mercy.............................................................................. 105 Augustine on the Incarnation..................................................... 107 The Communication of Idioms.................................................. 112 6. Cyril and Nestorius........................................................................ 119 Cyril of Alexandria..................................................................... 120 The Early Cyril .......................................................................... 121 Divinisation in the Commentary on John ................................. 122 Disputed Fragments in Book Eight............................................ 124 Fragments from Book Seven ...................................................... 126 The Logos Feels Emotion........................................................... 127 The Ephesus Period .................................................................... 128 The Late Cyril ............................................................................ 131 Nestorius .................................................................................... 134 The Book of Heracleides ............................................................ 136 Conclusion.................................................................................. 140 7. Theodoret and the Eranistes .......................................................... 143 Eranistes...................................................................................... 146 Theodoret’s Commentaries........................................................ 151 Communication of Idioms?........................................................ 155 8. Severus of Antioch and Philoxenus of Mabbug ............................. 161 Philoxenus of Mabbug (440–523) ............................................... 165 9. The Christological Solution: Leontius of Jerusalem and Maximus the Confessor.............................................................................. 173 Leontius of Jerusalem ................................................................. 174 Maximus Confessor .................................................................... 175 Pericώrhsij............................................................................. 181 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 189 Bibliography....................................................................................... 191

PREFACE In spite of the influence of philosophical notions of the immutable and impassible God, Christianity developed a theology of Incarnation. Because of the contributions of various thinkers from East and West, several disputes and Christological councils, rancorous debates and condemnations, over the course of six centuries Christianity achieved a full intellectual flowering of its revelation. The divine being, unlike the unchanging One of Greek philosophy, came in the flesh as a human being from Nazareth, revealing the true nature of the deity as Father, Son, and Spirit. I am convinced that studying the development of Christology through the lens of divine immutability and impassibility is an appropriate way to do so. These two divine attributes, drawn especially from Plato, clash with the two most important incarnational texts in the New Testament, John 1:14, and Phil 2:5–11. They also clash with a literal reading of many important texts from the Old Testament proclaiming that the God of Israel does indeed change the divine will as circumstances arise, is passionate, and is surprised many times by the behavior of the chosen people. How did Christian theologians reconcile their underlying philosophical understanding of God with Scripture? The Incarnation teaches something new. God draws near in the human being of Jesus. Greek philosophers criticized traditional belief in gods and goddesses appearing in human form, and hence viewed this teaching as a relapse into mythology. Orthodox Jews thought that it was a violation of the first commandment. Already in the second century, Christian Apologists sought intellectual respectability. This meant conversing with philosophers. Because they claimed the Hebrew Scriptures as their own, Christians also held debates with Jews. Whether Trypho existed historically or not, Justin’s Dialogue shows the importance of those debates. The intellectual debates about Jesus, among both outsiders and insiders, led to a theological view of the divine being displacing all philosophical understanding, as Augustine saw intuitively and ethically, but not theologically. God is near, humble, and loving, not, as in ix

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Greek philosophy, distant, aloof, and impersonal. This means that the body is good. Jesus had one. All of humanity, including each life, is good, although capable of evil. When viewed through the lens of Incarnation, the cosmos itself testifies to the true nature of God, seen by theologians such as Irenaeus in the second century, and Maximus Confessor in the seventh. Unlike other books on Christology, I have not treated the relevant councils as such. I have also not attempted to be a historian. There are several excellent treatments available covering various developments leading to the councils and repercussions afterward. I have also neglected many important thinkers along the way, such as Gregory of Nazienzus and Basil of Caesurea. The focus is on those who in my view contributed interesting and important ideas relevant to the issue of divine immutability and impassibility, be they heretics such as the Arians, or orthodox such as Cyril of Alexandria. Others may disagree with the criterion “interesting.” To recast a saying of Alfred North Whitehead, it is important that ideas be interesting even if they turn out to be false. Interesting ideas lead to future development because they “lure” thinking forward as Whitehead put it. Occasionally I point out the limitations inherent in certain Christological ideas held by some “favorite” theological bishops and saints in various traditions, such as Augustine of Hippo, Cyril of Alexandria, and Severus of Antioch. I have carefully attempted to treat every thinker fairly, and it is up to the reader to evaluate successes and failures. I hope that some readers will examine those that I neglected, asking whether they too made interesting contributions. The first chapter has two goals: first, to present a sense of the issue from a modern point of view. I thought it best to concentrate on one major contemporary Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, since divine immutability and impassibility became especially important to him in light of the Incarnation. The chapter also surveys the ancient philosophical foundations for divine immutability and impassibility. For this I perused the corpus published in the Loeb edition for each philosopher, namely Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus (Philo of Alexandria in the next chapter). I used the Loeb edition because it is readily available in libraries. Next (chapter 2), I discuss Apologists and early Alexandrians beginning with Philo. Each of these represents some interesting contribution to the discussion. It is especially Origen and Gregory the Wonderworker that demonstrate the disparity between the philosophers’

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view of God as immutable and impassible, and the Christian understanding of the Incarnation. The next chapter takes up the case of Tertullian, who defends yet rejects divine immutability and impassibility in different texts in deference to Scripture and to the Incarnation. “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” he asks. In spite of this famous comment, Tertullian is inconsistent because he does like Athens as well as Jerusalem. Those who follow him became sensitized to the question of divine change, suffering, and emotions. Lactantius wrote an entire treatise on divine anger. In chapter 4 I discuss the apparent emphasis on divine suffering among some Arians. One of their objections to the full divinity of the Logos was that the Logos suffered, and therefore could not be the supreme being. The reader will note ahead of time that I am not adding anything new to the scholarship on Arianism, but only want to show that divine impassibility played into that important controversy. Athanasius does not resolve this question, instead insisting that unless the Word is fully divine and fully human, we are not saved—a paradox containing a soteriological insight carried forward in the Eastern Church to this day. Gregory of Nyssa is important because he sees that change is important, but only on the human level, not for God. As far as I know, among the Cappadocians he is unique in this respect. An obscure contribution comes from a Commentary on the Psalms discovered at Tura, ascribed by many to Didymus the Blind. He uses distinctions made by Aristotle regarding various types of change suggesting that one of them can appropriately express the type of mutability that occurred in the Incarnation. Next comes a discussion of theologians of the West, Hilary of Poitiers, and most importantly, Augustine. The latter begins with a notion of divinity coming directly from Plotinus, and gradually throughout his career, but not entirely, reconstructs his theological understanding of God in light of the Incarnation. Chapter 6 takes up divine impassibility as it relates to the dispute between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius. I attempt to legitimate the concerns of both, Cyril because in spite of divine impassibility he will not compromise the unity of Christ, Nestorius because he recognizes the logical conundrum and wants Cyril to “come clean.” Theodoret’s Eranistes makes it clear that the problem of divine immutability and impassibility in light of the Incarnation was not resolved by Cyril to the satisfaction of the Antiochenes. His is the last

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great protest against those who think it is appropriate to say that the Word “suffers impassibly.” Severus of Antioch and Philoxenus of Mabbug defend the Christology of Cyril against Chalcedon. The first of the two, whom I treat briefly, is unsuccessful in my view because he provides no distinctive analysis of change and suffering on the divine level. Philoxenus is better. He attempts to analyze various types of change to discover one that is appropriate to the divine, but again does not succeed. He does not achieve the clarity provided by Didymus the Blind in the fourth century in the Commentary on the Psalms. Finally, we turn to Maximus the Confessor (chapter 9), who develops a magnificent theology of the Incarnation. By carefully moving between what is known about God in the light of Incarnation, and what is not, he solves the problem of unity of person and natures in Christ in a manner that answers Nestorians and Monophysites, and protects Chalcedon as well as Alexandrian Christology. Maximus comes closer than anyone before him to a systematic theology rooted in Christ displacing the Greek theology of God that haunted the Christian tradition for five centuries. I have published some of this material before in slightly different form, and thank all of those granting their kind permission to give it new life—Augsburg/Fortress Press, the Journal of Early Christian Studies, and Australian Catholic University. Joseph M. Hallman

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work would not have been possible without the support for many years of the University of St. Thomas. Through grants, sabbaticals, and a two-year appointment as a University Scholar, I was provided with time for research usually unavailable in institutions that have teaching as their primary mission. I also want to thank several individuals who have contributed to my work in one way or another: Paul Duff’s friendship through the years has been a true gift. His imagination, humor, ability as a teacher, scholar, and parent were inspiring. Jeff Carlson was for many years an engaging intellectual companion. Our many conversations sometimes long into the night always helped me formulate my thoughts more clearly. Bob Zeidel who is by profession an immigration historian, listened and graciously took my ideas seriously, whether good, bad, or indifferent. I greatly appreciate his patience during our many long premarathon runs. Robert Louis Wilken had more influence on my scholarship than any other single person. He was a mentor and critic, devoted to the concerns of patristic as well as contemporary theology, and it was a rare privilege to study with him. I remember him best for reading the names of the casualties of the Vietnam War in public at Fordham University and smoking cigars during his Origen seminar. I acknowledge Everett Ferguson, who encouraged me to submit a paper on Cyril and Nestorius to the JECS where it was subsequently published. I replied to more than fifty of their critical ‘suggestions.’ As a result I achieved a level of excellence impossible without the aid of editors and readers. Above all, thanks to my loving spouse, partner, and friend Janice Ray. Jan is one of those rare people with so many abilities that no matter where we lived, be it New York City, Wheeling, West Virginia, or St. Paul, Minnesota, everyone always wanted to hire her. Our family has continually relied on her for economic support, and on her love. We have also come to admire her strength especially in her recent struggle with illness. xiii

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And how can I acknowledge the three adventurers that I have helped parent to successful professional lives, our two sons David and Eric, and daughter Sara? Words cannot describe the support they have given me in my work and life. Finally, and with much gratitude I thank Steve Wiggins and Katie Stott of Gorgias Press for their efficiency and kindness in helping to bring this book into being. It was a pleasure to work with such fine people.

ABBREVIATIONS ACO ACW ANF CCSG CCSL CSCO CSEL GCS NPNF PG PL SC VC

Acta Conciliourum Oecumenicorum. ed. E. Schwartz. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1914–40. Ancient Christian Writers. New York: Newman, 1946–. Ante-Nicene Fathers. ed. A Roberts and J. Donaldson. Buffalo: Christian Literature, 1885–1897. Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca. Turnholt-Leuven: Brepols, 1977–. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina. Turnholt: Brepols, 1953–. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium. Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO, 1903–. Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna: Geroldi, 1866–. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller. Berlin: Akademie, 1897–. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. ed. P. Schaff et. al. New York: Christian Literature, 1887–1894. Patrologia Graeca. ed. J. P. Migne. Paris: J. P. Migne,1857– 86. Patrologia Latina. ed. J. P. Migne. Paris: J. P. Migne, 1844– 64. Sources Chrétiennes. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1941–. Vigiliae Christianae.

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1. THE BACKGROUND, MODERN AND ANCIENT Due to the influence of ancient philosophy, the common teaching of Christian theology from the second century on is that the divine cannot suffer or change in any way. In technical terms, the divine is impassible and immutable by definition. In spite of this Christian piety continually appeals to God to hear prayers and to effect changes among creatures, to heal the sick and comfort those in need, and to punish evildoers. The vast array of images in prayer and song praise a God who cares for people, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, the Good Samaritan who goes out of his way to help a robbed and injured man, the Father who forgives and reinstates his prodigal son, the healer and exorcist, the crucified one. The mind and will of God obviously change any number of times in Scripture. God has an ambiguous relationship with Adam and Eve, discovering and condemning their sin but clothing their nakedness lovingly. Abel’s sacrifice is mysteriously better than that of Cain. Yahweh condemns Cain for murder, but still protects him with a mark. The entire human race is a regrettable creation except for one family, but after the flood the new covenant begins with a rainbow as a sign of divine forgiveness. God loves Moses but punishes him by not letting him enter the Promised Land. Saul is anointed King then later rejected. David is Yahweh’s beloved, but is condemned for adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband. To the chagrin of Jonah, God reverses the decision to destroy the Ninevites. Yahweh loves Israel but continually punishes her for idolatry. Any reader of the Old Testament is hard pressed to find an impassible Platonic divine being portrayed on its pages. Yahweh is passionate, wrathful, jealous, loving, protective, a creator and a destroyer, an avenger remembering offenses yet sometimes offering forgiveness. The New Testament portrays Jesus in its central doctrine as the bringer of salvation through his death and resurrection, a suffering despairing death that is quite unlike that of the peaceful Socrates. In Mark and Matthew, Jesus’ final words from the cross are not a profes1

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sion of faith, but a painful human question: “My God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is passionate. He responds emotionally to peoples’ needs. He becomes angry over the lack of repentance and sorrowful over his impending death. He weeps because of the death of Lazarus, loves children and sinners, preaches forgiveness and love of enemies. God is the loving provident Father of Jesus, not the impassible One of Greek philosophy. Given Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus how are we to understand that God is immutable and impassible? Because the Christian theological tradition saw all suffering as a mark of imperfection, the death on the cross is attributed only to the human Jesus. Yet the personhood of Jesus, according to teaching of the Council of Chalcedon, is single and divine. Jesus is one divine person in two distinct natures. How is it that the human nature suffers but the divine person does not? In the course of this book I will show how Christian theologians struggled with this question, and importantly, did not adopt the God of the philosophers, but over six centuries developed and helped dogmatize a uniquely incarnational view of the divine being, a view that to Plato would have been no more than a poetic fiction. I will begin with a brief examination of the concern expressed by contemporary theologians, especially Karl Rahner, that the descent and suffering of God in the Incarnation should be taken more seriously in Christian theology. I will then document how divine immutability and impassibility arose as ancient philosophical doctrines that were adopted and adapted by Christian thinkers without displacing the uniquely incarnational view that triumphed in the ecumenical councils. For three hundred years theologians from the time of Arius to Maximus the Confessor struggled to maintain this view along with the two philosophical attributes. Theologians and bishops differed strongly among themselves on the issue. By a radical reformulation of the question in the seventh century, Maximus the Confessor successfully overcame the apparent contradiction.

THE MODERN SITUATION The modern discussion of the question of divine mutability and passibility began in Germany with an essay in the mid-nineteenth century

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by I. A. Dorner. 1 Dorner argued that the doctrine of God’s immutability expressed absolute ethical self-identity through time, but came to be misunderstood deistically and without connection to the cosmos. He believed that the Reformation “bore the seeds of a new doctrine” of God’s livingness and presence, although it did not create one. 2 It is in Britain in the 1920s, however, that the issue begins to be taken seriously. Baron von Hügel wrote a response to the fourth edition of James Hinton’s The Mystery of Pain published in 1870 criticizing Hinton for attributing suffering to God and responded to several others who held this view before 1921. 3 Von Hügel argued that because suffering is evil, God can sympathize with us without suffering. God cannot participate in evil. Sympathy, yes, indeed, overflowing Sympathy—a Sympathy which we cannot succeed in picturing vividly without drawing upon our own experience of ourselves, where sympathy and suffering are so closely intertwined; but no suffering in God. 4

The discussion of the question of God’s suffering gave rise to a classic study published in 1926 which was commissioned by the Anglican Church, J. K. Mozeley’s The Impassibility of God: A Survey of Christian Thought. Mozeley’s survey was followed by Bertrand R. Brasnett, The Suffering of the Impassible God that supported the notion of divine suffering against Von Hügel and others. There were also numerous other works in English in the 1930’s and 40’s which supported the idea of divine suffering in passing. For H. W. Robinson, for example, 1 I. A. Dorner, “Über die richtige Fassung des dogmatischen Begriffs der Unveränderlichkeit Gottes, mit besonderer Beziehung auf das gegenseitige Verhältnis Zwischen Gottes übergeschlichtlichen und geschlichtlichen Leben,” Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie I/2 (1856) 440ff.; III/4 (1858) 479ff. This three part essay was rescued from obscurity and translated into English by Robert R. Williams and Claude Welch. See Isaak August Dorner, Divine Immutability: A Critical Reconsideration. Welch had translated part 3 some time ago in Claude Welch, God and Incarnation. The recent edition contains a revised version of part 3. 2 C. Welch, God and Incarnation 108. See also Robert F. Brown, “Schelling and Dorner and Divine Immutability,” JAAR 52/2 (June, 1985) 237–249. 3 Baron Von Hügel, “Suffering and God,” Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion 167–213. 4 ibid. 205.

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“there is no valid philosophical or theological objection against the doctrine that God suffers and the genuinely Christian conception of God requires that, in some sense, He should be a suffering God.” 5 Leonard Hodgson’s The Doctrine of the Trinity contains a description of divine self-limitation as it applies to the Father and the Logos, which comes from the creation of free creatures. The eternal Son shares with the Father in that limitation of the divine that is involved in the activity of creation. But the Father and the Son know what they are doing. It is part of omniscience to know in detail its own limitations, and that intuitively. 6 For W. R. Matthews, the atonement implied divine suffering even though it was not the “predominant note in the life of God.” 7 Theological writing on divine suffering, emotion, and change continues and a survey of this increasingly vast literature would be the subject of an entire chapter. 8 Of special interest for this book is the attempt made by Karl Rahner begun in 1954 to rethink the Christian understanding of God based on a renewed incarnationalism, and to offer a Christology to replace that of Roman Catholic seminary manuals. This involved a radical questioning of the traditional understanding of divine immutability. Since Rahner was one of the most important Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, his work provides a contemporary example of an attempt to resolve this issue.

KARL RAHNER The second section of Rahner’s 1954 article on Christology included in Theological Investigations volume 1 raises the issue of the language of John 1:14 and the Christology of descent for the first time, and it is here that Rahner began to understand the need to reconstruct the no5

87.

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Suffering Human and Divine. Also O. Quick, Doctrine of the Creed 184–

77. God in Christian Thought and Experience. Also T. H. Hughes, The Atonement 318. A brief article alerted me to this literature: Richard Baukham, “Only the Suffering God can Help: Divine Passibility in Modern Theology,” Themelios 9/3 (April, 1984) 6–12. 8 For a fairly recent bibliography see the published thesis of Marcel Sarot, God, Passibility, and Corporeality. See also the bibliographies of Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? and Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God. 7

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tion of the Christian God in the light of the Incarnation. 9 Here as in so many other theological areas, Rahner knew that important revisions were necessary for a renewed understanding of the deus incarnatus. The Incarnation should possibly be conceived as “wholly the Happening of God himself, in all truth and in the most radical way.” 10 Even though God the Word changes in no way when he assumes the human nature as his own, it is not enough to hold that only the human nature changes. Somehow, Rahner believed, change must be included on the divine side without denying divine immutability. In a footnote discussing creation and Incarnation, Rahner suggests that the whole of Christology could be seen as the unique and most radical realization of this basic relationship of God to what is other than himself, measured by which all else in creation would be only a deficient mode, fading away into indistinctness; it would be the sharpest realization of this basic relationship, which lies in the selfalienation of the God who remains within himself, and thereby radically unchanged. 11

Note the interesting use of the term self-alienation (Selbstentfremdung) in reference to the God of Christian revelation. This section ends with a statement that is repeated by Rahner several times in his writing, that “Christology is at once beginning and end of anthropology, and that for all eternity such anthropology is really theo-logy.” He adds the following comment in explanation of this dictum: “For God himself has become man.” 12 This is the reason that one can say that Christology = anthropology = theology, the study of God. God became radically other and to grasp this is to grasp the nature of being human. Although he never loses sight of this understanding, later in Foundations of Christian Faith, for example, Rahner seems to interpret this statement more in terms of his transcendental Christology rather than the Christology of descent. 13

9

Karl Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” Theological Investigations vol. 1. The original essay is in Schriften Zur Theologie vol. 1. 10 ibid. 174. 11 My underlining. ibid. 176, n.1. 12 ibid. 185. His underlining. 13 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith. See especially 225 of this work.

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Rahner raises the issue of the divine descent again in an essay in volume 4 of Theological Investigations. “The Word became flesh,” he writes. “And we are only truly Christians when we have accepted this.” 14 And similarly in this essay, the Christological action is in a footnote. We could miss by a hairs breadth or even omit, he says, the point of the whole statement from John 1:14. that this event is that of God himself...We must say that God who is unchangeable in himself can change in another (can in fact become man). But this ‘changing in another’ must neither be taken as denying the immutability of God in himself nor simply be reduced to a change of the other. Here ontology has to orient itself according to the message of faith and not try to lecture it. 15

Further on in this remarkable essay he acknowledges the anthropological implications of this conception. We could now define man, within the framework of his supreme and darkest mystery, as that which ensures when God’s selfutterance, his Word, is given out lovingly into the void of Godless nothing. And if God himself is man and remains so forever, if all theology is therefore eternally an anthropology man is forever the articulate mystery of God. 16

Rahner repeats the statement of the equivalence of Christology, anthropology, and theology on the next page, again clearly in the context of the Christology of descent, the divine becoming the other in the other. By the time of his article in Theological Investigations vol. 13 entitled “The Two Basic Types of Christology,” Rahner continues to hold the position that the divine descent exemplified in metaphysical Christology or Christology from above is not to be minimized. Kenotic statements are intended “in their full seriousness.” 17 In this article, however, nothing of significance is added to the basic theological re14

Rahner, “On the Theology of the Incarnation,” Theological Investigations vol. 4, 112–113. 15 ibid. 113, n.3. 16 ibid. 116. 17 Rahner, “The Two Basic Types of Christology,” Theological Investigations vol. 13, 217.

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flection. What does it mean to say that God changes in the other, but remains immutable in the divine self? Rahner does not say. In another essay published later, Rahner expresses concern about the recurrence of monophysite Christology on the contemporary scene. In a comment possibly directed at Moltmann’s The Crucified God, he says: We can find very modern Christologies, with considerable intellectual and religious power, which are radical Christologies of descent, to such an extent that the death to which Jesus was destined threatens to become the inner destiny of God himself, in an almost gnostically monophysitic way. 18

I believe that Rahner’s inability to satisfactorily explain how God can change, not in the divine self but in the other, led him toward a different approach to Christology, one that made a better fit with his earlier philosophical anthropology. This inability, along with Rahner’s belief that Christologies from below could not adequately represent the teachings of the Christological councils, led him to develop this third approach which he called “transcendental Christology.” Even though the section on Christology in Foundations is encyclopedic in nature, it seems clear even there that Rahner prefers transcendental Christology over the other approaches that he discusses. He develops the notion of an Absolute Savior, that is, a human being in whom God’s absolute irrevocable self-communication took place. 19 The goal of human existence in Rahner’s anthropology from the writing of Spirit in the World was for the individual human spirit to encounter the divine in the moment of abstractive self-presence rather than in the otherness of creation. Transcendental Christology affirms that there is the historical possibility that a single individual might be the absolute example of such an encounter. In Foundations, Rahner gives his most extensive explanation for the statement made years earlier, that in the Incarnation, God changes not in the divine self but “in the other.” As I perused this section several times however, it occurred to me that Rahner offers nothing new on this question. John 1:14 is still important, as is metaphysical Christology or the Christology from above. But the discussion contains no new developments. 18 19

Rahner, “Christology Today?,” Theological Investigations vol. 17, 32. 193–194.

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In his final Christological essays, Rahner clearly prefers transcendental Christology over all other approaches. 20 Instead of statements explaining the divine descent further, he says the following: “The hypostatic union is understood as the presupposition, in itself, perhaps not entirely explicable, for what we experience in Jesus.” 21 Hence we should simply recognize that the reality of the discovery of Jesus is grounded in the hypostatic union, a union of God and the human that is “not entirely explicable.” We do experience Jesus as “the ultimate, irrevocable work of God’s forgiveness and promise of himself to us.” 22 In Jesus, we discover the offer of an unsurpassable and absolute selfcommunication of God.” 23 Transcendental Christology is “indispensable.” 24 It is in the light of transcendental Christology that Rahner can still claim that he “can accept the words of the Johannine prologue with a faith so steadfast that I am ready to die for it.” 25 Nevertheless, he continued to maintain that those Christologies beginning with Cyril of Alexandria that emphasized divine suffering, which Rahner called “neo-Chalcedonian,” were theologically legitimate. 26 The chapters which follow attempt to legitimate those Christologies which take divine suffering and change seriously by attending to the theological tradition which created them, something which Rahner did not do. They also legitimate those Christologies that are critical of the language of divine suffering, believing that it is incoherent. If we understand the issues behind the great Christological disputes about the Christology of descent lasting from the fourth to the seventh centuries, we will see that the Christology of the Christian Church should not and cannot be divided into ‘high’ and ‘low’ approaches as is popular today, but is formally and fundamentally that of deus incarnatus, God Incarnate, and the three-hundred year struggle for coherent Christological claims.

20

Rahner, Theological Investigations vol. 21 chapters 15, 16, 17. ibid. 215. 22 ibid. 23 ibid. 225. 24 ibid. 235. 25 ibid. 222. 26 ibid. 213–215. 21

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The Christology of divine descent can be renewed as Karl Rahner believed, but only if we recover the theological tradition within which it developed, and whose dogmas are still taught today. Those dogmas also need to be retrieved in light of the biblical and theological traditions that gave them life and that they protect. I assume that the Christian Bible is a single narrative the focus of which is salvation history, that is, the history, beginning with creation, of God’s dealings with creatures. I also assume along with the tradition expressed especially in the liturgy of the Easter Vigil, that this is the orthodox reading of the entire Bible. While realizing that this is a somewhat unpopular position in theology today, the Christian church has read its Bible as a single book at least up to the time of the Enlightenment. From the creation to the stories of the patriarchs, Moses, Israel the Prophets, Psalms, and Wisdom literature, finally to the life, teaching, death, resurrection of Christ, time of the Church and the future return of Christ, God gradually revealed the divine nature as Father, Son, and Spirit, in Creation, Incarnation, and as the Coming and the Presence of the Spirit in the ongoing Church. This belief is not subject to historical or scientific investigation, since both are closed to the possibility of the transcendent and revelation. Neither science nor history (nor philosophy incidentally) can discredit revelation, and it is open to dispute whether they can be used in support of it. One writer expresses this well in a “run-on” sentence which “exposes the truncated and inadequate version of the good news that characterizes both liberals and conservatives” today. I take it that the good news is summed up in the great creeds of the church which confess that the biblical narrative renders for us one God whom we know as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who (alone) created the world, who elected Israel as his special people so that all peoples would come to know and love the one true God, who in the fullness of time sent his Son to reconcile through his sacrificial death the peoples of the earth and to restore the order of creation. This Son ascended to the right hand of God, the Father, who sent the Spirit to those who receive the Son and bound them together in his body the church, who will come again to judge the peoples of

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THE COMING OF THE IMPASSIBLE GOD the earth and who, through the Spirit, will bring all things to their intended end and perfection. 27

I do not intend to present the entire tradition of theological reflection on the divine being, but to concentrate on the two attributes that are particularly problematic for the development of the Christian understanding of God Incarnate, those of divine immutability and impassibility. I am convinced that a study of these in particular provides the key to the historical development of Christology from Clement and Tertullian to Chalcedon and beyond. Neither attribute as understood by philosophers is appropriate to the divine being of salvation history. This is not to argue that they are inappropriate in all senses, but only that given the context for the parallel developments of Platonic and Neo-Platonic views of God during the rise of Christian theology, its incarnational and Trinitarian view of the deity marked it out as distinctive. Christian theologians who adapted this new view of God to philosophy, or philosophy to this new view of God, could not and did not embrace philosophy completely or systematically. And this is the reason that the Fathers were not very good philosophers. Such was not their intention as we shall see. The end of this Christological development of the Christian understanding of God comes providentially in the seventh century, at the time of the rise of Islam, which although it is a relative of Christianity, becomes another of its rivals, both in its understanding of God and of what it means to be human. Although Judaism and Islam are close neighbors of the Christian church, it is of the utmost importance for Christian theology today as always, to specify its major difference from them. This forms the basis for any possible dialogue. By tracing the development of the theological understanding of the deus humilis, and how theology resolved its use of the philosophical conceptuality of immutability and impassibility in doing so, Christian teaching that God is fully incarnated in the man Jesus of Nazareth becomes a defensibly coherent claim. A critical theological study of the incarnate humble God in dogma and theology from this viewpoint has important ecumenical implica27

Philip Turner, “The Powerlessness of Talking Heads: Re-Evangelization in a Postmodern World—The Place of Ethics,” in Carl B. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, The Strange New Word of the Gospel 79.

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tions for Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Oriental Churches. The Christological differences among these Churches can be overcome by a theological study of the tradition which does not take sides on ancient Christological disputes, but tries to understand the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the positions held by these Churches, their councils and their theologians, on the impassibility and immutability of the humble God incarnate. This is the ‘problembehind-the-problem’ of the full divinity and humanity of Christ and of the unity of person which is usually missed by theologians today who either try to justify the Christological teachings of their own Church over those of others, or who completely dismiss incarnational Christology and substitute one of several modern concoctions.

THE PHILOSOPHERS: PLATO, ARISTOTLE, CELSUS, AND PLOTINUS The philosophical conceptuality used in the development of the Christian understanding of God originated in a completely different context from that of Christian thinkers exercising their fides ex intellectu. Although Greek philosophy too was theological in that there was reflection on the nature of the cosmos, the deities, and what it meant to be human, no single salvation history rested at its core. Unlike the Christian church, the liturgies of Hellenism were immensely diverse and the various philosophical positions followed suit. Yet commonly among them from the beginning, Greek philosophers addressed the problem of permanence and change. Greek philosophy was always “in search of something which persisted through all change.” 28 Socrates accepted his unjust condemnation and death because he was convinced that he had discovered immutable perfection. He expected to enjoy it through his soul in life after death. To exempt the divine from change, Aristotle concludes that God is a mind which “thinks only of thinking” and of nothing else, all else being mutable. For Plotinus the soul that is unhappily attached to the body is able to discover the immutable One by passing into the true sanctuary wherein the alone meets the alone. We can immediately see how deeply un-biblical and un-Christian all of these assertions are. Al28

John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy 9. See also G. Watson, “The Problem of the Unchanging in Greek Philosophy,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 27 (1985) 57–70.

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though Christian writers used philosophical concepts to describe the God of Jesus Christ, they could not be completely committed to them. Anaximander (c. 610–540 B.C.E.) says flatly, “the all is unchangeable.” 29 Anaxagoras (c. 500–428) in Aristotle’s Physics describes the ultimate as impassible mind. 30 The atoms of Democritus (fifth century) are impassible 31 and immutable. 32 We see in the pre-Socratic period how the vocabulary assigning these attributes to the divine being is already beginning to take shape. Essentially it is by means of these attributes that perfection is described and distinguished from imperfection. Whatever changes and is affected by the temporal dimension is imperfect. Plato (c. 429–347) is more difficult to understand because his position on perfection and change shifts in the Republic, Phaedo, and Symposium, and again in the later Timaeus, which was so influential among early Christian writers. Plato begins by strongly asserting that the divine is unchangeable and impassible, and changes that view considerably by the time of the Timaeus. But he ultimately seems to return to that view. In the Symposium Diotima tells Socrates that love is neither god nor mortal, but a great daimon. It is less than divine because it lacks the beautiful and the good, which it desires. 33 That which lacks beauty and goodness desires them, and is therefore not a god. The discovery of the beautiful in a vision of “eternal being, neither becoming nor perishing, neither increasing nor diminishing” is the final object of love. Beauty does not exist in anything else, but in “singularity of form independent by itself.” All things coming to be and perishing partake in it, yet the beautiful becomes neither greater nor less and is affected by nothing. 34 One must ascend “on the rungs of a ladder from bodily beauty to beautiful deeds, from deeds to beautiful learning, and from learning at last to that particular study which is concerned with the 29

Tὸ dὲ πᾶn ἀmetάblηton εἶναι. Herman Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker 12th ed. vol. 1, 81, line 10. 30 Tὸn noàn ¢παθῆ, ibid. vol. 2, 20, line 34; also 29, line 31. 31 ¢paqέj, ibid. vol. 2, 114, line 13. 32 ἀνalloίwta, ibid. vol. 2, 84, line 15. 33 vol. 3, 202 D–E. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Loeb Classical Library is used throughout this section as well as for Aristotle, Plotinus, and Philo of Alexandria in the next chapter. See the introduction. 34 ibid. 210E–211B.

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beautiful itself and that alone; so that in the end he comes to know the very essence of beauty.” 35 Once one has beheld the divine beauty, the vision remains and only then does true virtue become possible. 36 The last section of the Symposium that features the confession of the homosexual love of the drunken Alcibiades for Socrates, places this vision of perfect beauty in comic relief. Love itself should always be honored for the sake of imperishable beauty, its ultimate object, something far removed from the grasp of Alcibiades, at least for the duration of the evening. The Phaedo contains some of Plato’s strongest language about the main impediment in the search for beauty: the body. It is a hindrance that contaminates the soul, keeping it from finding truth. 37 The fact of our recollected knowledge demonstrates that souls existed in a timeless realm before their entry into bodies. 38 True being is always the same. Socrates asks, “Absolute equality, absolute beauty, any absolute existence, true being—do they ever admit of any change whatsoever? Or does each absolute essence, since it is uniform and exists by itself, remain the same and never in any way admit of any change?” Cebes replies that they must of necessity remain the same. 39 The realm of the soul is the pure, everlasting, immortal, and changeless. 40 Reincarnation is the fate of those who have not freed themselves from the influences of the body, 41 and evil is the soul’s false belief that the sense objects that please or pain it are distinctive, real, and true; this belief completely bonds evil to the body. 42 Whatever is beautiful is beautiful because of its participation in absolute beauty. 43 Phaedo ends with the heroic and beautiful death of Socrates, an illustration of the doctrine of the soul’s imperishability. The soul of Socrates will presumably return to its original spiritual home among the absolutes, no longer polluted by the body and its physical influence. It seems clear that nothing could be further from the narrative of 35

ibid. 211C. ibid. 212A. 37 66A–67A, vol. 1. 38 ibid. 75C–76E. 39 ibid. 78D. 40 ibid. 79D. 41 ibid. 81E. 42 ibid. 83 C–D. 43 ibid. 100C. 36

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salvation history than Platonic teaching about the soul’s desire for the perfect spiritual realm and the second-rate nature of the body and of history. Biblical faith can see in these doctrines nothing less or more than a view that is a rival understanding, and one that is in error. The body in communal history in this life counts because God became human, and mystical Christian experience that departs from this norm should always be considered suspect. The discussion of God in the Republic is in the context of Plato’s critique of the stories of gods and goddesses in the Homeric epics. It extends his discussion of eternal being even further, and situates it in the context of Greek religion. In Book 2 Plato argues that since God does only good, the cause for evil should be sought elsewhere. In spite of Homer’s statements, Zeus does not arbitrarily allot good and evil. 44 The belief that God unjustly allots good and evil is not only false but harmful to the republic. Plato’s technical description of divine immutability then follows. To be altered (ἀlloioῦtai) and by another happens least to the best things; the soul, for example, is less affected by external states of affairs than the body. Since God is the best, God is least alterable by another. 45 If God decided to alter the divine state, it must be for the worse; since God is not deficient in anything, God could not change for the better. This leads to the following corollary: “No poet then must be allowed to tell us that ‘the gods, in the likeness of strangers, assume many disguises as they visit the cities of mortals.’” 46 Because of the absolute immutability of the divine, the stories of incarnation in Homer are false. If the divine is immutable, the form assumed by a god must be a disguise, a false representation. True incarnation of God is impossible. 47 The Timaeus was one of the most important dialogues for early as well as medieval Christian writers. In contrast to the Phaedo, it is positive about the world of change. William J. Prior notes that “earlier disparagement of the phenomenal world is largely absent from this dialogue. The cosmos is now a suitable object for serious philosophical study.” 48 The discourse on creation begins with the following question: 44

379D, vol. 5. ibid. 380E–381A. 46 ibid. 381D. 47 See Laws 10.894 in vol. 11; Phil. 33B & C in vol. 8. 48 William J. Prior, Unity and Development in Plato’s Metaphysics 92. 45

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“What is that which eternally exists and has no becoming, and what is that which eternally becomes, which never has being?” 49 The first, because it is eternal, can be known by reason, but the second is known only by dÒxa, opinion, because it is an object of sensation, and it becomes and perishes, and never really is. 50 Sensory objects become and perish, and are therefore caused by another. Yet “to discover the maker and father of all is indeed a task and to declare to all what one discovers is impossible.” 51 The end result of the search for the origin of things is difficult, and communicating it to others is impossible. There is a paradigmatic form used by the creator of which the creation we experience is a copy, and that form is a living creature, eternal and unchanging. The copy becomes, the paradigm is. 52 Because we only know the world of change, we cannot always achieve truth, which is of the unchanging, but only belief. We deal with copies only and not the paradigms used by the Creator. Eventually, however, Plato introduces another form to explain the origin of things. This form is “baffling and obscure. What essential property, then are we to conceive it to possess? This in particular, that it should be the receptacle, and as it were the nurse of all becoming.” This receptacle is a substance that receives all changing things, locates them, and supports their underlying reality as they change. Plato calls it a divine mother, 53 an invisible and unshaped image partaking of the intelligible in some way. The Creator is the father, the receptacle the mother, the creation the offspring. In the Timaeus, receptivity is a necessary general cosmological component introduced to explain how things can become other things while continuing to remain in existence. Another noticeable shift is that Plato is much less critical of the existence of the deities here than in the Republic. In fact, the demiurge generates them, then gives each their various tasks in completing the particulars of creation. 54 One 49

Timaeus 27C, vol. 12. ibid. 27D–28A. 51 ibid. 28C. This line is often quoted by early Christian writers. 52 ibid. 41A. 53 ibid. 50C–D. See Prior, Unity and Development 108ff., for a description of the receptacle and how it fits into the development of Plato’s metaphysics as a whole. 54 Timaeus 40E–41A vol. 12. 50

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might say that the Republic demythologizes, and that the Timaeus remythologizes. Plato and all of his followers held to the anti-incarnational principle that the divine cannot visit the human realm. Yet to explain the creation of the cosmos he added the notion of the receptacle and a remythologized understanding of the deities, even though the divine is absolutely immutable. His final comments on change occur in an analysis in Laws 10 of ten kinds of motion, the highest of which is selfmovement. Whatever moves itself is alive and has a soul. 55 Other kinds include circular motion, locomotion, combination, separation, increase, decrease, becoming, perishing, and being moved by another. Nevertheless a thing really exists only when it remains the same; when it changes it is destroyed. 56 It seems here that all other ways of dealing with permanence and change are ultimately displaced by those of the Republic, Phaedo, and Symposium. Ultimate perfection includes absolute immutability.

ARISTOTLE In his On the Heavens, Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) describes the existence of a primary body that is eternal, unbegotten, immortal, without growth or change of quality, ageless, and impassible. 57 The plurality of heavenly beings is also described as ἀnalloίwta kaὶ ἀpaqῆ, unchanging and impassible. 58 His analysis of motion takes up where Plato’s left off in Laws, and he proposes a full-fledged philosophy of motion and change. Repeatedly, sometimes tortuously, Aristotle tries to account for the various types of motion as well as to discover its basic character. For him “the one thing above all that needed explanation” was “the phenomenon of motion and change.” 59 To repeat the beginning of this chapter, this was the dominant question for ancient Greek philosophy: why/how do things change but remain the same? We need to notice again how different this question is from the narrative of salvation history, which is a narrative of the covenant partnership of the one God with human beings. Creation of the natural world of change 55

Laws 10. 893B–904E vol. 11; also Phaedrus 245C–246A vol. 1. Laws 10. 894A vol. 11. 57 On the Heavens 270A ff., vol. 13 Loeb Classical Library. 58 ibid. 279A. 59 W. K. C. Gutherie, The Greek Philosophers from Thales to Aristotle 128. 56

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is a condition for the partnership, but unlike the approach taken by philosophy (and science today) never to be a topic of speculation in abstraction from it. We stand in wonder at the heavens because we know their Author and how important we are, especially since God became one of us. Aristotle’s discussion of change in the Physics argues that generating and perishing are not forms of change but are transformations or metabolaί. In the On Coming to Be and Perishing, he discusses these metabolaί as changes of substance rather than of quantity (increase or decrease), quality, and spatial movement. The latter three changes are changes of motion or kίνηsiς, and one of these movements, a change of quality or an ἀlloίωσις, can occur without either a metabοlή, or any other type of kίnηsiς. To simplify, in developing his analysis of change or motion, Aristotle refines the philosophical vocabulary—a μεταβολή is a change of substance. Kίnηsiς is a general term covering three types of change, that of quantity, quality, or movement in space. None of these necessarily involves the others. 60 Aristotle formally classifies quality in four categories in Categories 9B, 32–33. First, there are habits and dispositions. Habits are more lasting, and include the virtues and knowledge; dispositions include heat, cold, disease, health, and so on. Second, there are inborn capacities and incapacities, such as athletic abilities or the lack thereof. The third group included affective qualities, such as sweetness, bitterness, sourness, coldness, warmth, whiteness, blackness; in the soul one finds temper, madness, and irascibility. Finally, we have shape and form: straight, crooked, triangular etc. Hence there are many types of qualities that can change without involving a loss of substance, an increase or decrease, or spatial movement. “For what changes as to an affection does not necessarily increase or diminish—and likewise with the others. Thus ἀλλοίωσις would be distinct from the other changes.” 61 We will notice later how, based on Aristotle, an obscure fourth century Christian writer (or Didymus the Blind?) perhaps in response to an Arian argument against the divinity of the Logos (whatever changes or suffers cannot be divine), will argue that the In60

Physics 192B; 200B; 224A; 225B–226B; 241A; 243A; 244B–248A; Metaphysics 1069B; 1088A. 61 Categories 15A, 22; also Physics 246A, 2–3; Metaphysics 1069B, 12; 1088A, 32; On the Soul 416B, 34.

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carnation involves a specific ἀλλοίωσις, or change of quality for God. Hence God as God remains perfectly ἀμετάβλητος in the Incarnation, but not ἀναλλοίωτος, is unchanging in substance, but changes qualitatively. God ‘descends’ in the Incarnation, but the descent is not a physical change of place. God ‘empties himself’ in the Incarnation without decreasing. Change of substance or place, and physical decrease, are impossible for God. But the Incarnation is a qualitative change that makes a real difference in the divine being. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this obscure fourth century text from Tura. It represents a Christological breakthrough, largely unappreciated by historical theologians in the continuing struggle to defend the Incarnation rationally.

THE METAPHYSICS Book Lamda of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is the most important source for his theology in the entire corpus. Here he argues that to explain the continuous eternal motion of the cosmos there must be a substance that is both unmoved (ἀκίνητος) and eternal. Since actuality precedes potentiality, it must also be actual. Besides being unmoved and eternal, God is thought, life, happiness, and good. 62 But considering God to be thought or mind causes some difficulty: If mind thinks nothing, where is its dignity? It is in just the same state as a man who is asleep. If it thinks, but something else determines its thinking, then since that which is its essence is not thinking but potentiality, it cannot be the best reality, because it derives its excellence from the act of thinking. 63

If God is mind but does not think, then the mind is not in act. If God is mind and does think, the thought is of something else to which it is in potentiality, and its actuality (excellence) is deficient. Aristotle draws the following conclusion about God: “Therefore mind thinks itself, if it is that which is best; and its thinking is a thinking of thinking.” 64 Aristotle’s deity is quite different from the God of Christian faith who is actively involved in the lives of people, and there is no

8.

62

Metaphyics 1027B; Aristotle also argues for an unmoved mover in Physics

63

Metaphysics 1074B. ἔστιν ἡ νοήσeως νόhσις.

64

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way whatsoever than one can claim that they are similar. Even a surface reading of Thomas Aquinas’ understanding of God shows that although Thomas uses the terminology and conceptuality of Aristotle, their views of the divine being are poles apart. It is important to see whether any of the various types of change outlined above can be applied to God. The argument from motion which is constructed on the basis of cosmic movement, seems to exempt God from only one form of κίνησις, that of movement in space. Yet this is not Aristotle’s conclusion. The Unmoved mover is also impassible and immutable, ¢paqές κaὶ ¢νaλλοίωτον. “For all other kinds of motion are posterior to spatial motion. Thus it is clear why this substance has these attributes.” 65 But is it clear? Aristotle has certainly not shown it here. He assumes that all forms of change depend upon local motion. Hence if a substance is exempt from movement in space, it can change neither qualitatively nor quantitatively. Yet it does not seem to follow necessarily that “all kinds of motion are posterior to spatial motion,” but only that some are. Unless the argument from motion excludes all change whether spatial or not, as it does when formulated by Thomas Aquinas, it cannot exclude changes of quality, those described by the noun ¢λλοίωσις. That is why the fourth century Christian author of a commentary on the Psalms (Didymus the Blind?) can legitimately take issue with Aristotle based on Christian revelation of the Incarnation, arguing that a change of quality in God did occur in the descent of the Word made flesh. In the midst of the discussion of God as unmoved mover, Aristotle dismisses the stories about the gods visiting us in human form as “unintelligible.” 66 We will see this statement repeated in the philosophic attack on Christian teaching of the Incarnation later on. Responding to this accusation means absorbing the Christian story of divine descent, and making it intelligible in theology and in dogma. This was the cause for a theological and doctrinal struggle from the fourth to the seventh century that resulted in churches that are divided even to this day.

65 66

Metaphysics 1073A. ibid. 1074B.

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MIDDLE PLATONISM: CELSUS The claim that Christian teaching about the Incarnation was unintelligible began with a major criticism from Celsus, a middle Platonist who wrote a treatise in 170–180 entitled Ἀληθὴς Λόγος, or The True Word which is preserved in Origen’s refutation. The title itself is an attack on the Logos theology of the early Christian church. 67 For Celsus, philosophy provides the true word, not Christian teaching on the Incarnation. Celsus argues that Christians had introduced mutability and passibility into the divine being by teaching the Incarnation. For him the Christian story had reintroduced into Greek philosophical tradition what Celsus considered a false and outmoded element, that a god could visit the human race. For him belief in the Incarnation was a lapse into the old myths. As Plato had put it, “No poet must be allowed to tell us that ‘the gods in the likeness of a stranger assume many disguises as they visit the cities of mortals.’” 68 Celsus argued that nothing new should be said about the divine, and that ancient Platonic doctrines were superior to the new Christian fad: 69 God is good and beautiful and happy, and exists in the most beautiful state. If then He comes down to men, He must undergo change, a change from good to bad, from beautiful to shameful, from happiness to misfortune, and from what is best to what is most wicked. Who would undergo a change like this? It is the nature only of a mortal being to undergo change and remolding, whereas it is the nature of an immortal being to remain the same without alteration. Accordingly, God could not be capable of undergoing this change. 70

Origen replies that although indeed God does descend in providence and concern for human affairs, the divine essence remains unchanged. On this last point he cites Ps 101 (102):28 and Mal 3:6, two classic proof texts. Unlike the gods of Epicurus and the Stoics, the Christian God does not change. He does descend however. A close 67

The best Greek edition of the Contra Celsum is in vol. 1 and 2 of the GCS. Here I will use the English translation by Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum giving page numbers from this translation in parentheses. 68 Plato, Republic 381D. Celsus’s description of God is dependent on 381B and C. 69 Celsus 4.14–19. 70 ibid. 4.15 (192–93).

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reading of the Contra Celsum confirms that Origen accepted Plato’s description of the divine while rejecting Plato’s objection to the divine descent. We will see that Augustine did something very similar with the philosophy of Plotinus. Origen writes: He who came down to men was originally “in the form of God” and because of his love for men ‘emptied himself’ so that men might be able to receive him. But he underwent no change from good to bad; for ‘he did no sin’; nor from beautiful to shameful, for ‘he knew no sin.’ Nor did he pass from happiness to misfortune; although ‘he humbled himself,’ nevertheless he was happy, even when he humbled himself in the way expedient for our race. 71

Origen uses the example of a physician who sees terrible things and touches wounds, yet does not contract the diseases of his patients: The Word remains Word in essence. He suffers nothing of the experience of the body or the soul. But sometimes he comes down to the level of him who is unable to look upon the radiance and brilliance of the Deity, and becomes, as it were, flesh. 72

Because Celsus does not understand the Christian story, he does not grasp “how because of his great love of man, God made one special descent in order to convert those whom the divine scriptures mystically case ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’” 73 Notice how Origen writes of “one special descent” to distinguish Christian belief from the Homeric mythology of many visitations. Celsus’s final comment presents an either/or, the true God of Plato and Aristotle, or the false God of Christian faith: “Either God really does change, as say, into a mortal body; and it has already been said that this is an impossibility. Or He does not change, but makes those who see Him think He does so, and leads them astray and tells lies.” 74 Origen replies that the Word does change but only in the perception of each person according to their spiritual capacity, not in essence. Nevertheless, the divine descent truly occurred. Origen cites again the kenotic passage from Philippians. He accepts the fact that although 71

Celsus 4.15 (193). ibid. (194). 73 ibid. 4.17 (195). 74 ibid. 4.18 (195). 72

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some who saw Jesus did not recognize him and were deceived about his identity, the Word accepted the limited human condition for the sake of our salvation. 75 We will see more of the Christology of this great Alexandrian in the next chapter, a Christology that provided an impetus for theology in the East (and West?) that is historically unparalleled. And it is by way of the Arian heresy that orthodox teaching received its form and shape from the fourth to the seventh century.

PLOTINUS Plotinus (c. 205–269/270) was Origen’s contemporary and later became one of Augustine’s main philosophical resources. Although difficult to gauge its influence on Christian theology, Plotinus taught a trinity of three divine hypostases. In a descending hierarchy they are the One (or Good or Beauty), Mind, and Soul. 76 By means of this speculative structure, he attempts to synthesize the theological work of previous philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Middle Platonists. The One is beyond being, mind, thought, or soul. 77 Intellect or Mind is the repository of the intelligible forms; and the lowest hypostasis, Soul, infuses the changing world with life. 78 Matter is evil because it is without form, so evil is the privation of form. 79 Although bodiliness is not evil (because it is a form), for Plotinus it is precisely the embodied human condition that creates the problem of human existence: how to free the soul from its dependence on the body and the external environment. In his treatise on Beauty, which is reminiscent of Socrates’ speech in the Symposium, Plotinus describes the ascent of the soul to the Beautiful. To ascend to the higher world we must strip off what we put on in our descent until we are able to see with the self alone: If anyone sees it, what passion will he feel, what longing in his desire to be united with it, what a shock of delight! He who has seen it glories in its beauty and is full of wonder and delight, enduring a 75

ibid. 4.19 (196–97). Plotinus, Ennead 1.2, vol. 1 Loeb Classical Library. Also 2.9, vol. 2; 6.9, vol. 6. 77 Ennead 1.7, vol. 1. 78 ibid. 1.2, vol. 1; 6.9.8–9, vol. 6. 79 ibid. 1.11, vol. 1; also 3.6.11, vol. 3. 76

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shock which causes no hurt, loving with true passion and piercing longing. 80

Once we experience absolute beauty we need none of its lower forms. “The man who attains this is blessed in seeing that blessed sight, and he who fails to attain it has failed utterly.” The beauty one sees in bodies is but an image, a trace, or a shadow of the absolute. It is like a reflection on water and if one mistakes it for the real thing and clings to it, one drowns. 81 To attain the absolute one must develop an inner sight that moves away from bodily and spiritual instances of beauty and ascends to the absolute by means of the soul. Plotinus describes three vocations, that of the philosopher, the musician, and lover, and how one is able to move upward differently in these different journeys toward absolute beauty. 82 Here he depends upon the ascent imagery of the Symposium. The philosopher is closer to beauty than the musician and the lover, but the latter two ascend by harmony and rhythm, or the appreciation of beautiful bodies, laws, or souls that one admires. Plotinus imagines our souls as a chorus surrounding the unmoving leader, the One. As we turn toward the leader and away from external distractions, we learn to sing correctly. We form a singing and dancing ballet around the One. 83 In this ballet the soul sees the source of life, of mind, the principle of being, the cause of good, the root of love. Once it attains to full contemplation, it thinks truly, is impassible, and lives correctly, moving beyond the statues in the temple into the sanctuary itself. 84 Ultimately it is the flight of the alone to the alone. 85 Nothing spiritual, whether the Good, the Mind, or the Soul, is capable of being changed or affected by another. To be nonbodily is to be unchanging and impassible. 86 Virtues and vices do not constitute changes of the soul. 87 The human experience of emotion and learning seems to imply that the soul is mutable and passible. Plotinus goes to great lengths to show that what seems to be is simply not the case. 80

ibid. 1.6.7 vol. 1. ibid. 1.6.8. 82 ibid. 1.3. 83 6.9.8, vol. 6. 84 ibid. 6.9.9.14–15. 85 ibid. 6.9.11.51. 86 3.6, vol.3. 87 ibid. 3.6.3 81

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Admittedly the soul feels pleasure and pain, anger, envy, jealousy, and desire. It is always moving and changing (κινουμένης καὶ μεταβαλλούσης). In spite of appearing that it passes from potentiality to actuality, however, there is no ἀλλοίωσις or πάϑος for the soul. Virtues and vices do not constitute changes of the soul. 88 Plotinus answers the obvious objection that if the soul were impassible by nature, we would not have to make it so, by using the analogy of sleep. The soul is asleep and needs to be purified in order to recover its true impassible nature. “For the activity of sense perception is that of the soul asleep, but the true wakening is getting up from the body, not with the body. Getting up with the body is like going from one sleep to another, but the true rising is a rising altogether away from bodies.” 89 Ideal wellbeing comes from living at a distance from the cares and concerns of the world. The highest end of human life is to live unperturbed by poverty, war, sickness, slavery, and death in complete impassibility. 90 Plotinus sometimes distinguishes between two souls, a higher one that is unchangeable and impassible, and a lower soul that is mixed with the body. 91 The higher soul uses the body and the lower soul that is mixed with the body, but is itself “free from all responsibility for the evils that man does and suffers; these concern the living being, the joint self.” 92 The true soul is at peace, “turning to itself and resting in itself. The changes and clamor in us come from what is attached to us and from the affections of the joint entity.” Virtues and vices belong to the lower soul as do reincarnation and punishment in Hades. 93 The higher soul does not suffer with the body. Its impassibility is in imitation of the Good. It ought not share the feelings of the lower soul that is its inferior companion. 94 From the fourth century on, Christological reflection directed the Christian use of philosophy, and Plotinus was certainly influential in the thought of St. Augustine. Augustine can perhaps be characterized as having the two Christological poles in tension, one Plotinian and 88

ibid. 3.6.1. ibid. 3, 69–76. 90 1.4, vol. 1. 91 ibid. 1.1.2. 92 ibid. 1.1.9. 93 ibid. 1.1.10–12. 94 ibid. 1.2.5–6. 89

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the other biblical, typified especially by the influence of Paul. Whatever influence Platonism had on Augustine’s theology, Christian faith is far removed from belief in the immutable and impassible Plotinian One. We ought also to notice, however, the elegance of the thought of Plotinus, and how it directed Augustine away from Manichean dualism in a manner similar to the Platonism that directed Justin Martyr toward Christianity. Through reading Plotinus, Augustine’s mind took flight, and in some sense did not return to earth until he realized the implications of the Incarnation. Only then could he discover the deus humilis, the humble God of Christian faith.

2. ALEXANDRIANS, APOLOGISTS, AND GREGORY THE WONDERWORKER Philo of Alexandria (c. 30 B.C.E.–45 C.E.), a contemporary of Jesus, was the single most important resource for early Christian philosophical reflection on God’s nature. 95 His was the first attempt to reconcile the Greek notion of immutable, perfect divine being with the revealing God of salvation history. Most importantly, he wrote the first monograph on God’s immutability, the Quod deus immutabilis sit. Before discussing this treatise, we should note an interesting feature of Philo’s terminology that continues to go unnoticed. In spite of his belief that God is impassible and without emotion, 96 not once in his entire corpus did Philo attribute the technical terms ἀπαθ»ς or ἀπ£θεια to the divine being. 97 This is a remarkable omission given the fact that philosophical descriptions of God as ἀπαθ»ς abounded. Secondly, although Philo held that God is immutable and expressed that with various terms such as ¥τρeπτος (not turning) and ἀμετάϐλητος (not being overthrown), he never attributed ἀναλλοίωτος (unchanging absolutely) to the divine being. This is again surprising given the common ordinary use of these technical terms among philosophers. I suggest that Philo did not conform to philosophical usage because he realized that the God of biblical faith could certainly not be described as being without passion, and that only some types of immutability belonged to the God of the Bible. Scripture itself shows that he is indeed correct. 98 95

See David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey. See De Abrahamo 202, Philo, Loeb Classical Library vol. 6, for example. 97 I indicated this in 1991 in The Descent of God 24 and so far as I know, it has not been discussed in other treatments of this topic that have appeared thus far. 98 Robert M. Grant hints at this in The Early Christian Doctrine of God 29, n.43. 96

27

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The Quod deus sit immutabilis is the second part of a commentary on Gen 6:1–12. Of special importance is his discussion of Gen 6:6–7, a passage which also intrigued Christian writers for obvious reasons. Immediately before the flood, the Lord reflects on the creation of humanity in the light of human sin: And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them. 99

Philo knew that on the basis of this passage some readers thought that the Creator regretted creating the human race. He described as “godless” all who would interpret Gen 6:5–7 literally. “For what greater impiety could there be than to suppose that the Unchanging changes?” he writes. 100 Even the soul of the Sage achieves a certain peace, and if such peace can be found among human beings, can we “doubt that He, the Imperishable Blessed One who has taken as His own the sovereignty of the virtues, of perfection itself and beatitude, knows no change of will, but ever holds fast to what He proposed from the first, without any alteration?” 101 Two examples of human mutability follow. Philo wishes to deny concrete imperfections of the deity rather than construct an absolute and abstract sense in which God cannot change. He is not merely Platonizing the God of Scripture to suit his philosophical contemporaries but analyzing precisely how divine immutability applies specifically to the God of the Bible. First there is the human experience of the loss of friends. We tire of our friends and turn from them, “though we have no charge to bring against them, and count them among our enemies

99

vol. 3. For Gen 6:6 (or 6:7) Philo read “God took it to heart.” (™nequmήqη) The Hebrew text states that God repented. For 6:7 (6:8) he read “was displeased that he made them.” (™nequmήqηn) In Questiones et Solutiones in Genesin 1.95, Supplement 1 he calls this last statement about God an “exaggeration.” For comparison among various Greek manuscripts and the Hebrew text in passages such as these, see Charles T. Fritsch, The AntiAnthropomorphisms of the Greek Pentateuch. 100 Quod deus immutabilis sit 22, vol. 3: tÕn ¥trepton tršpesqai. 101 ibid. 26.

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or at best as strangers.” 102 God has “no such fickleness,” but never wavers in love. For Philo, God is an immutable lover. Second, Philo cites the human experience of conformity. We modify our judgments to conform to those of others who themselves “have not remained constant.” 103 This mutability of moral judgment is reprehensible because it is based on fear of what others might think. God feels no such pressure to conform, but knows all because of creating all, and lives in the fullness of eternity, not in the imperfect world of human relationship. God’s moral constancy is absolute and immutable. Philo’s two examples ground his understanding of divine immutability. Both forms of change, loss of a friend through neglect and conforming to what others think, are impossible for God who is our constant companion and is unwavering in will. Notice that Philo tells us concretely that in the light of salvation history some types of change are denied of the divine being. He does not deny to God any and all types of passibility and change as philosophical argument commonly does. After describing the levels of God’s creation, Philo turns to Gen 6:7, which reads: “So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’” On hearing this some “supposed that the Existent feels wrath and anger.” God “is not susceptible to any passion at all. For disquiet is peculiar to human weakness.” Then why does Scripture ascribe these emotions to God? Christian authors will use Philo’s answer tirelessly. These texts contain a kind of “elementary lesson to admonish those who could not otherwise be brought to their senses.” 104 The text is only pedagogical in nature, not literal. Philo mentions other biblical anthropomorphisms and their pedagogical value as well. In teaching God’s anger, jealousy, and wrath, the Bible is similar to surgeons that withhold the truth from someone who needs to have a limb amputated. 105 If Scripture represents God as “dealing in threats, indignation

102

ibid. 27–28. ibid. 28. 104 ibid. 52. 105 ibid. 66. 103

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and anger,” or again “as using weapons of war for His onslaughts on the unrighteous,” it is to admonish the fool. 106 In this context the apparent contradiction between Num 23:19 (“God is not as a man”) and Deut 8:5 (“like a man He shall train his son”) becomes a hermeneutical problem for Philo. The idea that God has human emotions comes from a comparison with human nature. Exactly how valid is this comparison? Num 23:19 gives a better description of God than Deut 8:5, which is merely for purposes of instructing the many. In other words, the Deuteronomy passage should not be taken literally, but the passage in Numbers should. In another text Philo states that Num 23:19 is true, implying that Deut 8:5 is not, which I take to mean “not true literally.” 107 The first passage applies to those who love God, the second to those inferior believers who only fear God. For Philo a God who is “like a man” is a God who is angry, threatens, and punishes. These two texts commonly appear in opposition in Philo. Num 23:19 “keeps truth in view” while Deut 8:5 is for “duller folk,” whom God will chasten. 108 To describe God as a human is for our feeble comprehension. In reality God is unbegotten, deathless, unchanging, holy, alone blessed. 109 God swears an oath in Exod 13:11. Does God need to make oaths to guarantee their truth? No! “God is not as man.” To give God human passions is impious. Bodily parts and passions cannot belong to God. The oath of God is a crutch for our weakness. In summary, in the Quod deus, God is ἄτρεπτος and without human emotions, although not ἀπαθής. Passages in Scripture indicating that God is angry are pedagogical because God has no human anger. Philo commonly uses ἄτρεπτος, literally “non-turning,” for God’s immutability. He uses the term ἀμετάβλητος (not being overthrown) less often. Never, as mentioned previously, does he describe the divine as ἀναλλοίωτος, a term used commonly among philoso-

106

ibid. 68. Questiones. et Solutiones in Genesin 2.54, Supplement 1. 108 Legum Allegoriae 2.33. vol. 1. 109 ἀγενήτου, ἀφϑάρτου, ἀτρέπτου, ¡gίou, μόνον μακαρίου. De Sacrificiis Abelis et Caini 101, vol. 2. For a discussion of the difference between Greek and Jewish responses to anthropomorphisms as well as the importance of Num 23:19 for Philo, see H. A. Wolfson, Philo vol. 2, 127ff. 107

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phers in an absolute sense. 110 Ἄτρεπτος can even be attained by souls who share it with God. 111 Philo describes this sharing of divine ἄτρεπτος in De posteritate Caini, 1–31. The soul is like a ship at the mercy of a stormy sea. But “proximity to a stable object produces a desire to be like it and a longing for peace.” 112 God is stable (ἀκλινής), and creation is unstable. Abraham drew near to God and attained stability. “For a truly unchanging soul has access to the unchanging God.” 113 The quality of ἄτρεπτος belongs primarily to God, but also to the Logos, then to the Sages, finally to the person who makes gradual progress. 114 The words of Deut 5:31 addressed to Moses (“but you, stand here by me”) contain a double affirmation: first, God moves and turns all but does not change; second, He “makes the worthy man sharer of this own nature, which is repose.” 115 As the text continues later, Philo expresses a marvelous insight into salvation history that will become a major Christian theme, that of the descent of God. God is said to “go down” with his people (Gen 46:6) and bring them up while not moving from place to place. Although unchanging, God initiates the act whereby God’s people can find repose: But with those who go down in the sense of changing their place, I will go down, in all pervading Presence without any alteration of locality. I do this in pity for rational nature, that it may be caused to rise out of the nether world of the passions guided step by step by Me. 116

110

Philo uses ἀναλλοίωτος in De Somniis 1.188, vol. 5 to describe the Platonic world of ideas. One can also consult Legum Allegoriae 2.89, vol. 1; De Somniis 1:232, 249; 2:221, 228, 237; De mutatione nominum 46, 54, 87, vol. 5; De Specialibus Legibus 1:312, vol. 7; De confusione linguarum 96, vol. 4; De Cherubim 90, vol. 2; Questiones et Solutiones in Exodum 2.37, Supplement 2; Questiones et Solutiones in Genesin. 1.42. 111 De Somniis 2.228, 237. 112 De posteritate Caini 23, vol. 2. 113 ibid. 27. 114 See also De Somniis 2. 237. 115 De Posteritate Caini 28. God is ἀκίνητος and ἄτρεπτος. 116 ibid. 30–31.

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Although God is immutable, a divine descent occurs in which God attempts to share divine immutability out of pity for human beings. In De plantatione Philo offers a similar thought. In spite of an invective against anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms in this work 117 Philo makes a statement which might come as a surprise to any faithful Platonist: “In so far as He is Ruler, He has both powers, both to bestow benefits and to inflict evil, changing His dealing as the recompense due to the doer of every deed demands.” 118 The biblical doctrine of divine moral constancy implies God’s ability to respond to changing circumstances of reward or punishment, which in turn requires the ability to change how God deals with people. Philo also states occasionally that God shows anger and mercy, and at times writes quite realistically about divine happiness. 119 Brehier’s entire discussion of God in Philo revolves around the question of whether the abstract philosophic description of God displaces a concrete biblical view. 120 If one attends especially to Philo’s examples and use of vocabulary, clearly it does not. Samuel Sandmel argues that God as Being is distinct from God as Θέος or Κύριος in Philo, and that God as Being is unknowable as such. Θέος and Κύριος refer to God as creator and governor of the world. 121 Since ἄτρεπτος rather than ἀναλλοίωτος is Philo’s favorite philosophical adjective for God’s immutability or constancy, and because he has no formal doctrine of divine impassibility, Philo shows that he is aware that the God of Israel cannot be described in language drawn indiscriminately from Greek philosophy. The Fathers of the Church follow directly in these footsteps. When Philo applies ἄτρεπτος to the human soul, its meaning for God becomes clear. Unlike ἀναλλοίωτος, ἄτρεπτος allows for change of some type in God.

117

De Plantatione esp. 35, vol. 3. ibid. 87. 119 De Vita Mosis 1.6, vol. 6; De Somniis 2.177f.; De Opificio Mundi 156, vol. 1; De Somniis 2,177f. 120 E. Brehier, Les idees philosophiques et religieuse de Philon D’Alexandrie 69–82; also R. M. Grant, The Early Doctrine 29 n. 43; 31, n.47. 121 Samuel Sandmel, Philo of Alexandria 89–101. 118

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APOSTOLIC FATHERS The earliest Christian writers after the period of the New Testament seldom offer systematic reflection on the divine nature. Like the New Testament, this literature is for the most part un-philosophical. Nevertheless there is a concern to maintain God’s immutability and impassibility. Clement of Rome’s Letter to the Corinthians (c. 96 C.E.) argues that God “stands in need of nothing and desires nothing of anyone except that confession be made to him.” 122 Although Clement does not overtly advocate a technical doctrine of impassibility, his statement resembles one. This is actually the biblical idea that purity of heart is superior to sacrifice. God clearly does desire something: purity of heart. In another place Clement states that God is free from wrath, 123 but still warns of an impending condemnation and judgment. 124 Ignatius of Antioch (martyred between 98–117) is somewhat more theological than the other writers of this period and has several interesting phrases about Jesus. God is above seasons, timeless, the invisible who became visible for us and the impassible who suffered for us. 125 Jesus is our God incarnate who is first “passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord.” 126 On his way to Rome to be executed Ignatius fears that his death will be prevented. He writes in the Letter to the Romans a passage which is quoted often in the tradition, sometimes admiringly, sometimes not: What a thrill I shall have from the wild beasts that are ready for me! I hope they will make short work of me. I shall coax them on to eat me up at once and not to hold off, as sometimes happens, through fear. If they are reluctant, I shall force them to it. Forgive me—I

122 To the Corinthians 52.1. For Christian authors in this and the following chapters, I generally use the standard English translations of Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers unless otherwise noted. 123 ibid. 19.3, ¢Òργητοj. 124 ibid. 21, 28; 35; 41. 125 Letter to Polycarp 3.2. tÕn ¢Òraton, tÕn di ̓ ἡm©j ÐratÒn; tÕn ¢paqÁ, tÕn di ̓ ἡm©j paqhtÒn. See L. W. Barnard, “The Background of St. Ignatius of Antioch,” Studies in the Apostolic Fathers and their Background ch. 2. 126 Letter to the Ephesians 7.2; also 18.2; 19.3; Letter to the Trallians 7.1.

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THE COMING OF THE IMPASSIBLE GOD know what is good for me. Now is the moment I am beginning to be a disciple. 127

For Ignatius martyrdom is the crown of Christian discipleship leading him to desire to imitate the Passion (π£θοuς) of my God. 128 Not only is it important to see how God suffered in Jesus. For Ignatius divine suffering provides a paradigm for Christian martyrdom.

APOLOGISTS OF THE SECOND CENTURY Justin Martyr (100–165) became a Christian apologist in the midsecond century by converting first to Platonism, then to Christianity. Despite his adherence to the middle Platonic concept of God, which is Philo’s as well, he shows a strong concern to maintain the Christian understanding that God is “a compassionate and long-suffering Father who in Christ has drawn near to his creation, and who is concerned with the welfare of every individual soul.” 129 The Christian God is incomprehensible, inexpressible, immutable, impassible, and noncorporal: “For no one may give a proper name to the ineffable God, and if anyone would dare to say that there is one, he is hopelessly insane.” 130 We may not even properly use the term “God” much less Father, Creator, Lord, or Master. 131 God is too far away from the business of the world to be named or known. Because God is unchanging, God is “superior to changeable things.” 132 Unlike the pagan deities, the divine nature is “unbegotten and impassible,” 133 and Christians can look forward to a future existence that is also impassible. 134 In spite of these statements, in several other texts especially the Dialogue With Trypho, Justin’s biblical religiosity impels the reader to think again about how much Justin has been or not been affected by 127 Letter to the Romans 5.2–3. The translation is from Cyril C. Richardson, Early Christian Fathers 104–5. 128 ibid. 6.3. 129 L. W. Barnard, Justin Martyr, His Life and Thought 78. 130 I Apology 61.10. For texts and translations of Justin see J. Quasten; Patrology vol. 1, 201f. For background see Barnard, Justin Martyr. 131 2 Apology 6. 132 1 Apology 13.4; 20.2. 133 1 Apology 25.2. 134 2 Apology 1.2; Dialogue with Trypho 124.4; 46.7.

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Platonism. Most of his arguments there do not concern philosophy at all, but the proper interpretation of Jewish Scripture. Justin becomes the philosopher in his apologetic defense of Christianity to philosophically trained officials, and the biblical interpreter in his defense of Christian faith before Trypho. His systematic exposition of divine transcendence and immanence, or the relationship of biblical and Platonic thought is far from sufficiently developed. Nevertheless his place in the developing tradition, as philosophical reason confronted Christian faith, led to more satisfying proposals later. When compared to Justin, Aristides’ apology (early second century) reads like a manual of negative theology. 135 Siding with philosophers against pagan religion, the God of Aristides is virtually unknowable, immutable, impassible, as well as unbegotten, uncreated, and immortal, without wrath or anger. Since the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome have mutable and emotional qualities, they are not divine. They laugh and cry, get angry, are troubled, and have sex. Our God is far above these activities. Aristides sees no way to distinguish the Christian God from pagan deities except by negations. Everything they are, our God is not. Athanagoras’s Plea for Christians (177 C.E) transmits Justin’s doctrine of a God who is incomprehensible and impassible as well as uncreated, eternal, invisible, and without limit, 136 and is also immortal, immovable, and unchangeable. 137 The divine stands in need of nothing. Burnt offerings have no effect. 138 Like Aristides, Athanagoras commonly writes about God’s immutability and impassibility in polemics against the gods and goddesses. The gods get angry, feel desires, find sacrifices pleasing to them. Our God does none of these things and is therefore superior. 139 Our discussion of the apologists could not end with a better passage showing the as yet undeveloped understanding of the divine being

135

See 1, 4, 5, 7, 10, 13. For the text of Aristides as well as background see J. Geffcken, Zwei Griechischen Apologeten. English is from ANF 9, 263–79. 136 Plea 8 and 10. L. W. Barnard, Athenagoras: A Study in Second-Century Christian Apologetics. 137 Plea 22: ¢θ£νατον, ¢κίνητον, ¢ναλλοίωτον. 138 ibid. 13; Resurrection of the Dead 12. 139 ibid. 21, 22, 29.

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in second century Christianity than that of Theophilus (c. 180) who writes in defense of divine wrath. You will say, then, to me, “Is God angry?” Yes, he is angry with those who act wickedly, but he is good, and kind, and merciful, to those who love and fear him; for he is a chastener of the godless, and father of the righteous; but he is a judge and punisher of the impious. 140

Immediately afterward he writes “And he is without beginning because he is unbegotten, and he is unchangeable (ἀναλλοίωτος) because he is immortal. 141 Later he connects God’s immutability to the divine unoriginate nature: “because he is uncreated, he is also unchangeable (again ἀναλλοίωτος); so if matter were uncreated, it would be unchanging and equal to God; for that which is created is mutable (τρέπτον) and alterable, but that which is uncreated is immutable and unalterable.” 142

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA In Clement of Alexandria (150–215) two things become remarkably clear. First, that philosophical description of God, especially Platonic, is now part and parcel of Christian theology. Secondly, the doctrine of Incarnation is combined with the Middle Platonic understanding of divine transcendence in a way that will not be made completely coherent for centuries to come. I will argue later in the book that the last author we will treat, Maximus the Confessor, having appreciated the long doctrinal struggle that preceded his time, is the first writer to attain such complete coherence in his understanding of the Incarnation of the Logos. But the roots for the solution come originally from Alexandria, mainly from Clement and Origen. Clement insists strongly on divine transcendence and impassibility. 143 We must undergo “purification by confession” in order even 140

Ad Autolycum 1.3. ibid. 1.4. 142 ibid. 2.4. 143 See E. F. Osborn, The Philosophy of Clement of Alexandria Texts and Studies, N.S. 3, chap. 2; Salvatore R. C. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and Gnosticism 213f. Lilla outlines Clement’s doctrine of divine transcendence in seven points showing similarities with Philo, Gnos141

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to conceive of God, he writes. Only then are we able to attain “contemplation by analysis, advancing by analysis to the first notion.” In a carefully constructed statement, Clement explains how analysis leads to a negative description of God. We proceed by abstracting from the body its physical properties, taking away the dimension of depth, then that of breadth, and then that of length. For the point which remains is a unity, so to speak, having position; from which if we abstract position, there is the conception of unity. 144

By casting ourselves into Christ’s greatness we are then able to attain some “conception of the Almighty, knowing not what He is, but what he is not.” God is above space, time, name, and thought. He is strictly inexpressible and unknowable. “For how can that be expressed which is neither genus, nor difference, nor species, nor individual, nor number?” 145 We cannot properly name that which we do not know. If we call it the One, Good, Mind, Absolute Being, Father, God, Creator, or Lord, the titles merely provide support for the mind to keep it from error. None of these titles express the divine essence, and all together they are only descriptions of the divine power. For Clement there is no possible analogy between God and the world, because there is no natural relationship. 146 We are not related to God by essence, nature, or power of essence, but only because we are God’s work. No natural knowledge of God is possible, and Clement’s insistence on this point highlights the importance of his theology of revelation through the Logos. In this same passage, the connection between negative theology, impassibility, and divine transcendence is clear. We cannot understand the passions of God by referring to our own. To do this implies a carnal understanding of Scripture. God is impassible. To suppose that God literally hears anything is impious, “for the Divine Being cannot ticism, Plotinus, and Ammonius Saccas. 144 Stromateis 5.12.81. (2:380). All references to the Stromateis and Paidagogos are from the edition of Clement in GCS. I will give volume numbers and pages from this edition in parentheses. On this point in Clement see H. Chadwick’s translation of the Contra Celsum 429, n.4. 145 Strom. 5.12.81, (2:380). 146 Strom. 2.16.74–75, (2:152).

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be declared as it exists.” God’s biblical joy at our repentance is not truly God’s but ours. The prophets appropriate joy to God because of our fleshly condition. God’s wrath is, for Clement according to one writer, “hardly more than a metaphor.” 147 Again and again Clement describes God as completely immutable and impassible, free of anger and without desire. 148 The impassibility of God becomes the model for true Christian virtue. Jesus himself had an impassible human soul, wholly free from human emotions. 149 The Christian Gnostic strives to attain the condition of ἀπάθεια in imitation of God and of Christ, and this is the essence of true piety. 150 Is Clement a thoroughgoing Platonist who happens to be a Christian theologian? Has he not lost sight of the grand narrative of salvation history with its passionate God of revelation, and its history of passionate human responses? How can Clement reconcile his Platonism with the various passages in the Gospels that attribute emotions to the Incarnate Christ? In both Clement and Origen after him, this tendency to overly Platonize the God of Scripture is held in check by one thing and one thing only: their recognition of the “amazing reality” of the Word made flesh. It is the recognition of this amazing reality especially in Alexandria that creates a turning point in Christian reflection on the nature of God. It is important to see this point as clearly as the Fathers did. That the Word became flesh is unknown to philosophy, and belief in the Incarnation provides a way of life which reason cannot fathom. In a well-known text of Paidagogos (1.8.62f) Clement depicts the Incarnation as an act of love that balances out divine punishment. The Lord Teacher sympathized (sump£qηson) with us because he became embodied and knew our weakness. Clement also writes of the love felt by God and the Logos which we experience in the divine act of creation. If God is good, how can God be angry and punish Clement asks? Reproof is surgery for the soul’s passion. The Logos is our great Gen147

R. P. Casey, “Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Platonism,” Harvard Theological Review 18 (1925) 69. 148 Stromateis 7.13.16 (3:12); 6.7.60 (2:462); 6.10.80 (2:471); Stromateis 4.23.151, (2:315). 149 Paidagogos 1.2.4, (1:91–94). See Theodor Rüther, Die sittliche Forderung der apatheia 58–60. 150 See Osborn, Philosophy of Clement 2: Stromateis 5.11.67, (2:371); 6.9.71f., (2:467); 7.11.60f., (3:43–44); 7.14.84 f., (3: 60).

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eral, punishing to do good, censuring as a sign of good will, chiding out of love. He suffered for us when he might have destroyed us. “For the Divine Being is not angry in the way that some think; but often restrains, and always exhorts humanity, and shows what ought to be done.” 151 God does not feel angry unjustly or out of vengeance but has a loving, saving anger for our benefit. But God does feel anger of some kind, and is therefore not absolutely impassible. “The feeling of anger (if it is proper to call His admonition anger) is full of love for man, God condescending to emotion on man’s account; for whose sake also the Word of God became man.” 152 How is it possible that God can condescend to the emotion of saving anger? Does the divine condescension out of love imply some form of mutability and passibility in God? Christian faith in the Word made man becomes the instance par excellence of divine condescension. It remains for others to render this thought more coherently, but Clement has held tightly to salvation history, even if not as tenaciously as some did before him, such as Irenaeus. 153 Clement reflects on the condescension of the Incarnate Logos in a number of other texts as well, such as the following: “So the Savior uses many tones and many devices in working for the salvation of men; His threats are for warning; His rebuke for converting; His lamentation to show pity; His song to encourage.” 154 Even more direct is a passage that refers to the indwelling of the Logos in us. Christians “hear about the image of God, an image which dwells with us, is our counselor, companion, the sharer of our hearth, which feels with us, feels for us.” 155 The following two Christological statements are important even if they are only meant rhetorically: “Trust, O man, in Him who is man and God; trust O man, in Him who suffered and is adored. Trust, ye slaves, in the living God who was dead.” 156 Also this: “The Lord ate from a common bowl, and made the disciples recline on the 151

Paidagogos 1.8.62 f. (1.133). ibid. 153 I treated Irenaeus and other early Christian apologists briefly in The Descent of God, p.30–35. 154 Protreptikos 4.53, (137). 155 Protreptikos 4.53, (137). 156 Protreptikos 10.84, (229). 152

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grass on the ground, and washed their feet, girded with a linen towel— He, the lowly minded God, and Lord of the universe.” 157

ORIGEN OF ALEXANDRIA Origen says often that the one God cannot change in any way. Against the Stoics he argues the “unchangeable and unalterable” divine nature. 158 He commonly predicates ἄτρεπτος and ἀναλλοίωτος to God. The treatise on prayer insists the praying is valuable, even though God is unchangeable and foreknows everything. 159 God’s nature is such that prayers are eternally foreseen. God is impassible because God is entirely unchangeable: “God’s anger is not to be considered a passion. How can an impassible being have a passion? God does not suffer, he is immutable.” 160 Origen’s discussions of God’s anger occur often in refutations of Marcion, as they did for many early Christian writers. Biblical passages ascribing wrath to God are not to be taken literally. “Whenever we read of the anger of God, whether in the Old or the New Testament, we do not take such statements literally, but look for the spiritual meaning in them, endeavoring to understand them in a way that is worthy of God.” 161 God’s wrath is not an emotional reaction to a situation, but a method of correction and education, “something he uses in order to correct by stern methods those who have committed many terrible sins.” 162 Divine anger is what “each man brings…on himself by his sins.” Anger is as improper for God as it is for us. “Therefore we do not attribute human passions to God, nor do we hold (other) impious opinions about Him.” 163 157

Paidagogos 2.3.28.1, (1:179). Contra Celsum 1.21, (1:72); 4.14, (1.284); 6.62, (2:132). His scriptural basis for this is usually Ps 101:8 and Mal 3:6. For Origen I use the GCS except where indicated otherwise, and provide volume numbers and pages in parentheses. English for On First Principles is from G. W. Butterworth, Origen: On First Principles. For Contra Celsum, I use H. Chadwick’s translation. 159 See chaps. 5–7, (2:308f.). 160 Fragment on John 51, (4:526). 161 Principles 2.4.4, (5:132). See also 4.2.1–2, (5:305–310). 162 Celsus 4.72, (1:341). 163 Also Celsus 6.64, (2:134–51). 158

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Origen often discusses divine anger in the context of biblical passages that ascribe unworthy emotions or body parts to God. 164 We ought not to interpret literally any of the texts that mention God’s voice, hearing, speech, anger, or repentance. 165 God is not moved by anger or vengeance, and the supposed divine repentance over past decisions is only our changed perspective regarding unchanging divine providence. 166 In Homily 20 on Jeremiah, Origen ascribes anger to God and to us, but in vastly different senses that corresponds to the vast difference between the Logos itself and our logoi. This homily comes very close to a complete denial of the reality of God’s anger and repentance by making their similarity to ours purely verbal. In Homily 18 on Jeremiah, repentance is unworthy and obnoxious both to a wise person and to God. Origen cannot conceive of how one could simultaneously be repentant and wise. Contrary to 1 Kgs 15:11 and Joel 2:12, God knows the future. So God cannot choose badly and repent afterward. According to Num 23:19 God does not act like man. 167 But in Prov 3:12 and Deut 1.31, God does. What is the solution in the case of divine repentance? For Philo, the Numbers passage is true, and those that contradict it are figurative. For Origen God does not act like humans in ruling nature because God makes no errors. But when divine providence immerses itself in human matters, it uses human senses, customs, and words to reflect our lowly condition. God really does know whether Israel will repent or not. Therefore Scripture uses terms such as “repentance” to convert infants even as an adult might display an irate face to a child. God appears to be angry and repentant, but in fact is neither. Origen, like Philo, eliminates the literal meaning of passages about God’s repentance and anger by arguing that the texts that refer to them are only pedagogical. 164

Principles 2.8.5, (5:162). Homily on Genesis 3.2, (6:41). 166 Fragment on 1 Samuel 15:9–11, (3:295–97). I believe that Crouzel interprets this passage incorrectly (as well as Homily on Jeremiah 20.2) when he states that God changes decisions in the light of Saul’s changed attitude or that of the Ninevites. Origen clearly asserts God’s foreknowledge (line 12–13, p.296). Thus God need not and cannot change decisions. H. Crouzel, Origene et la “conaissance mystique” 260. 167 In the Homily on Numbers 16:3 Origen interprets Num 23:19 to refer to the fact that the divine “in nulla est passio.” See Grant, Early Doctrine 29. 165

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The passion and death of the Incarnate Logos presents the most important issue for Origen regarding immutability and impassibility. Does the Logos actually suffer? Origen answers by appealing to Jesus’ human nature in Principles 2.6.2. “The reality of each nature exists in one and the same person” he writes “in such a way that nothing unworthy or unfitting may be thought to reside in that divine and ineffable existence, nor on the other hand may the events of his life be supposed to be the illusions caused by deceptive fantasies.” In his reply to Celsus’s argument that God cannot suffer, be crucified, drink vinegar and gall, he says: “The person and the essence of the divine being in Jesus is quite a different matter from that of his human aspect.” 168 Earlier in this work he writes: “Just as he intentionally assumed a body whose nature was not at all different from human flesh, so he assumed with the body also its pains and grief. He was not Lord of these so that he felt no pain.” 169 Origen strictly denies the suffering of the Logos as such. “The Word remains Word in essence. He suffers nothing of the experience of the body or the soul.” 170 He repeatedly defends the reality of the human soul of Jesus along with the divinity of the Logos. “For after the Incarnation the soul and body of Jesus became very closely united with the Logos of God.” 171 Being quite aware of the need to express the unity of soul and Logos in Christ, Origen argues for the intimate relation of the two: “We affirm that his mortal body and the human soul in him received the greatest elevation not only by communion but by union and intermingling, so that by sharing in his divinity he was transformed into God.” 172 Thus we see in Origen the beginning of Christology formally speaking and the emergence of the one person, two natures doctrine along with the fully human soul. Given Origen’s insistence on the eternal existence and full divinity of the Logos where do emotions and change belong? He usually denies all forms of emotion and change to 168

Celsus 7.16 (2:167). The Celsus passages generally show that despite the problem of Rufinus’ ‘doctored’ translation of Principles, the Principles texts cited do represent Origen’s thought. 169 Celsus 2.23 (1:151). 170 ibid. 4.15 (1:185). 171 ibid. 2.9 (1:136). 172 Celsus 3.41 (1:237). See also Principles 2.6.3–5, (5:141–145).

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the divine as in Platonism. At the same time, this denial seems to apply only to ‘unworthy’ forms of emotion and change, such as anger or change of purpose based on lack of omniscience. What should be done with God’s love for us, the divine condescension resulting in the Word becoming a crying infant that causes Origen to marvel in the On First Principles? Could this be the main defining characteristic of God, the full character of the divine revealed in the Incarnation as he said in the homily on Ezechiel?

ORIGEN ON DIVINE SUFFERING The most remarkable text on divine suffering to come from Alexandria in the third century is a homily on Ezech 6:6 delivered by Origen. In this surprising homily Origen explicitly denies the impassibility of God the Father, as well as that of the Logos! The Savior, Origen says, descended to earth in pity for the human race, He suffered our sufferings before he suffered the cross and thought it right to take upon Him our flesh. For if He had not suffered, He would not have come to take part in human life. First he suffered then He descended and was seen.

Origen claims here the Logos suffered in his preexistent condition. He continues: What is that passion which He suffered for us? Love is that passion. Also the Father Himself and God of the universe, longsuffering, very pitying and compassionate, does He not suffer in some way? Do you know that when he deals with human things, He suffers a human passion? ‘For the Lord your God endures our ways as if a man should endure his son.’

In an attempt to correct Philo’s negative view of Deut 8:5, Origen continues: Therefore God endures our ways inasmuch as the Son of God bears our sufferings. The Father Himself is not impassible. If asked, He has pity and compassion, He suffers something of love, and He comes to be in those things in which because of the greatness of his nature, He cannot share, and for us he endures human sufferings. 173 173

GCS 8, 384–85. This translation is from J. K. Mozeley, The Impassibility

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Origen’s speculative habit of mind rooted as it was in Greek philosophy leads him to complete and total amazement at the Incarnation. He began the tradition in Alexandria that lasted to the time of Cyril and beyond, the emphasis on the centrality of the descent of God based especially on Phil 2:6–8 and the prologue of John’s Gospel. “We are lost in amazement that such a being , towering high above all should have ‘emptied himself’ of his majestic condition and become man and dwelt among men.” The author of On First Principles had realized earlier that the Incarnation utterly transcends the limits of human wonder and is beyond the capacity of our weak mortal intelligence to think of or understand, namely, how this mighty power of the divine majesty, the very word of the Father, and the very wisdom of God, in which were created ‘all things visible and invisible’, can be believed to have existed within the compass of that man who appeared in Judaea. 174

It is likewise amazing that the wisdom of God entered into a woman’s womb and was born as a child, cried as a child, and at the hour of a shameful death experienced fear. The mind “with its narrow limits is baffled, and struck with amazement at so mighty a wonder knows not which way to turn, what to hold to, or whither to betake itself.” Origen’s amazement at the Incarnation led him as it did others, to statements made in the homily above, which do not agree with his more philosophical descriptions of the divine being. All writers that I consulted agree on the uniqueness of the text of the homily on Ezechiel in Origen’s corpus. It affirms the passibility of the Logos even before the Incarnation and in simple direct language affirms the passibility of the Father as well. Disagreement exists, however, on the significance that these statements have. M. Pohlenz sees them as “completely unique” and argues that Origen is only speaking pedagogically or perhaps rhetorically. 175 Robert Grant on the other hand, believes that “something of great theological significance has happened here,” that Origen questioned the doctrine of absolute divine impassibility. Henri Crouzel holds that Origen is expressing the mysof God: A Survey of Christian Thought 60–61. 174 Principles 2.6.2. 175 M. Pohlenz, Vom Zorne Gottes: Eine Studie über den Einfluss der griechischen Philosophie auf das alte Christentum 36.

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terious paradox by which God is both impassible and passible, and of course it needs to be shown why this is a paradox rather than a contradiction. 176 There are three other instances where Origen implies that God has feelings. Selecta in Ezechiel 16.8 is a good example of the quandary that the tradition finds itself in as it seeks to be philosophically responsible but faithful to the Incarnation. The text simultaneously affirms and denies divine passibility. The strong denial, “God is impassible, just as he is immutable and uncreated,” is followed a few lines later by a description of God as one, immutable, and all-powerful. Immediately after this, Origen says, “God feels compassion for the one to be pitied; for God is not heartless.” 177 In the Homily on Numbers 23:2, Origen strongly portrays the divine emotions of happiness at human conversions and salvation, and sorrow for human sin. It is remarkable, even for a homily, that he depicts the joy of God and of the angels so realistically, and that he cites a great number of biblical texts expressing divine emotion, as though their thematic importance as a whole suddenly struck him acutely. A careful reading of the homily shows that he is on the verge of literal interpretation of the texts, but the conclusion restates his usual theology of divine impassibility. All those passages in Scripture in which God is said to lament, rejoice, hate or be happy are written figuratively and in a human way. It is entirely foreign to the divine nature to have passion or the feeling of mutability, since it endures in unchanged and uninterrupted happiness. 178 Homily 8.5 on Exodus discusses the divine jealousy of Exod 10:5. Rather than deny that God feels jealous, Origen explains how jealousy can be conceived in a manner worthy of God: “Here, therefore, God is 176

R. M. Grant, The Early Christian 31; H. Crouzel, Origene et la “conaissance mystique” 261. 177 PG 13.812A: Sumpάsχei ὁ θeÕς tῷ ἐleÁsai· oÙ g¦r ¥splagχnoς ὁ θεός. Thomas Weinandy in his recent book Can God Suffer? repeatedly attacks my contention that the Fathers are logically inconsistent at times like these. Yet he never offers any textual evidence to refute me, simply saying that I do not understand. I understand quite clearly the struggle within the tradition to be philosophically responsible as well as faithful to the developing doctrine of the Incarnation. Because he does not grasp the historical development of this teaching, Weinandy glosses over these problematic texts. 178 GCS 7.211–214.

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jealous because he requires and desires that your soul adhere to him; if he seizes you, castigates you, is indignant and angry, and acts jealously toward you, know that he is the hope of your salvation.” 179 In this same homily, Origen previously said: “God does and suffers all things for us that we may be able to learn; he expresses notable and useful affections for us.” 180 Unlike the Homily on Numbers, there is no denial of possibility here. Origen intends to show that God’s jealousy is worthy of a God who desires our salvation. Thus out of the four passages in which Origen calls divine impassibility into question because of biblical texts, three are homilies. It is important to notice which emotions are appropriate to the divine being who has become incarnate, since ultimately the revelation of God’s pity, although expressed in many texts of the Old Testament, is revealed in a final way because of God becoming human. Regarding other divine emotions that Origen considered unworthy of God such as anger or repentance for a past decision, Old Testament texts are not to be taken literally.

AD THEOPOMPUM The most important document in early Christian literature to address the question of divine suffering philosophically is a treatise to Theopompus, extant only in Syriac, supposedly written by one of Origen’s pupils, Gregory the Wonderworker in the third century. 181 It is somewhat outside of the ‘main-stream’ of Origen’s thought in that it is not Trinitarian at all, and there is no formal recognition of the dual nature of Christ. This is precisely what makes the treatise so interesting. Because the author does not view the suffering of Christ as belonging only to the human nature, he is forced to focus on the point raised by Celsus, that “God cannot suffer, be crucified, drink vinegar and gall” (Celsus 7.16) far more sharply than Origen did. For the Ad Theopompum, the question is not how to differentiate the divine and the human

179

ibid. 6.229. ibid. 6.227. 181 Gregory’s works, including this whose authorship is disputed, are now in English thanks to a translation by Michael Slusser, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus: Life and Works. He discusses the arguments regarding authorship and his translation of Ad Theopompum on 27–28. 180

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in Jesus, but how to reconcile the teaching that God cannot suffer with the fact that Jesus the Son of God truly did. The text begins with a certain Theopompus asking whether God is impassible. Gregory replies “with some distaste” with another question: “How can we not say that God does not fall under passion, O Theopompus?” Theopompus then states his dilemma: “If God is impassible by nature, it follows that he can never suffer even if he should wish to, because then his nature would be doing something that was contrary to his will.” Gregory argues that to place God under the restriction of necessity by opposing divine nature to divine will is blasphemous. “If God cannot accomplish what he wills, then he is subject to a very great passion, because then we would be saying that his will was subject to the constraint of his nature.” The omnipotent God can never be kept by his nature from doing what he wills because God is superior to all things, able to do all things, and under no necessity. It is impious to take away the freedom of almighty God. Essentially, the argument of the treatise as I read it, is that God is not passible in the same way as creatures, but is passible by will. Unlike human suffering, God’s passibility is by choice, and not by nature. God chose to suffer in Jesus. But since will and nature are identical and cannot contradict each other, God’s passibility-by-will can never change God or cause the divine to suffer. Hence to say that God is passible, is to use the term in another sense from what it means for creatures. Creatures are passible because of limitation, God is passible by will. Because will and nature are the same in God, God’s passibility is essentially different from that of creatures, that is, distinct by essence. Let us hazard the following formula for divine suffering: God Suffers Impassibly = God Suffers (D-Suffering, appropriate only to the divine) Impassibly (not H-suffering, appropriate to humans). To simplify the question, and this is what Cyril was unable to do in the dispute with Nestorius as we will see, if one says that God suffers while remaining impassible, one must be giving a different meaning to passibility in the divine case from in the case of creatures. Otherwise there is a contradiction rather than the ‘mysterious paradox’ to which Athanasius appeals (see the next chapter). The law of noncontradiction applies in theology as well as in philosophy: “a thing cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time.” Gregory sees this point very clearly, although many after him, even some writers today, do not. In fact, only one writer understands the logical issue clearly during the Arian dispute, an unknown author of an obscure

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Commentary on the Psalms discovered at Tura as we will also see. Yes, God suffers, but in a divine manner only. Thus we can continue to assert that God is impassible, i.e., God does not suffer like creatures. In Ad Theopompum, there are four aspects of divine suffering which are unique: (1) it is freely chosen; (2) it is useful; (3) it is salvific; (4) it causes the passions to suffer, because it conquers them. Gregory uses instructive examples. If very hard stone is struck by iron, the stone remains impassible and the ‘smiter’ feels the impact. In the same way, when suffering strikes an impassible being, suffering suffers, and not the impassible being. Another example: when the eyes gaze at the sun, the eyes suffer, not the sun. Although attention has been paid to this treatise by some careful scholars, theologians tend to ignore it. Hence there is virtually no theological appreciation of Gregory’s argument. 182 It is obviously quite abstract, and seems somewhat oblivious of the narrative of salvation history, which by this time should include at least a fairly strong recognition of the importance of Trinitarian theological reflection, and perhaps, some thoughts on the dual nature of Christ. Why they do not appear in this treatise, if it is from Gregory the Wonderworker, a pupil of Origen, is difficult to explain. But it is the very absence of reflection on the dual nature of Christ that causes the acute focus on the question of divine suffering and impassibility. The Ad Theopompum is an important attempt to introduce suffering into the divine being while preserving divine perfection. Clement had already grasped but in a fleeting way that the philosophical doctrine of divine impassibility did not completely satisfy Christian intuition. Origen discovered the connection between the revealed love of God the Son in the Incarnation, and the love of God the Father for the Son and for us. Certainly God is always the same and changes not. But God, Father and Son, truly feels the passion of love. The Ad Theopompum argues that God can truly suffer in Jesus and remain impassible, and suggests a way to hold this position without contradiction. It is the task of others to show how this insight into God’s revealed nature fits into a more sophisticated and developed Christology.

182

For those who have taken this treatise seriously, see the footnote in Slusser’s edition of the works of Gregory, p.27, n.113. Because I did not fully grasp the argument of the text at the time, I interpreted it differently in my earlier The Descent of God p.46–49.

3. TERTULLIAN AND HIS HEIRS Tertullian (160–240) has recently been called the “first theologian of the West.” 183 He confronted the same problem regarding the nature of God and of Christ as those who wrote in Greek. Given the influence of the twin philosophical axioms of immutability and impassibility, how was a Christian theologian to uphold the biblical portrait of God in the narrative of salvation history, a God who had emotions and changed providentially and descended to become human? For Tertullian, Scripture itself testified to God’s just anger as well as to divine mercy, and for him the Incarnation revealed a suffering God who changed. This paradox created the indispensable and inept dishonor of Christian faith. That dishonor testified to its truth. Like nearly all other early Christian writers, Tertullian holds that God is immutable. Various aspects of the divine character remain unchanged because God is eternal. In the treatise against Hermogenes, who held that matter was eternal, Tertullian argued as follows: Hermogenes holds that matter is eternal; but the attribute of eternity belongs to God alone, because it is essentially a divine property; if matter were eternal, it would be God. “But God must be One, because that is God which is supreme; but nothing can be supreme save that which is unique; but nothing can be unique if something can be put on a level with it; but matter will be put on a level with God when it is authoritatively declared to be eternal.” 184 183

West.

The title of the book by Eric Osborn, Tertullian: First Theologian of the

184

Adv. Hermogen. 4.6, CCL 1, 400–401. See the translation of J. H. Waszxink, The Treatise Against Hermogenes in ACW; also Ad nationes 2.3. Tertullian gives this argument only in this treatise. See René Braun. “Deus Christianorum”: Recherches sur le vocatulaire doctrinal de Tertullien 42. For all of my references, the page numbers are the same in both editions.

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Tertullian then argues that immutability is a property of eternity, and therefore of God, since mutability and temporality belong observably to matter. “What is eternal does not change; obviously it would lose what it had been by becoming by the change what it was not, if it were not eternal.” 185 The type of mutability which renders matter temporal is not simply change of any sort, but loss. Tertullian may have used the term indemutabilis of God in a precise sense to indicate that a particular type of immutability, that is, the incapacity to become less, belongs to the eternal. 186 Eternity cannot belong to anything that changes for the worse. But then change (demutatione) for the worse has been admitted by matter, and if this is so, it has lost its condition (status) of eternity; it has in short, died its natural death (mortua est denique sua forma). But eternity cannot be lost because, unless it cannot be lost, it is not eternity.

Tertullian concludes: “Therefore it is incapable of change for the worse because if it is eternity it can be changed for the worse in no way.” 187 The use of demutatio and the context of the argument itself show that eternity cannot involve loss. Eternity and the incapacity to become less imply each other. Matter decays and is therefore not eternal, and because of his earlier argument that not eternal=not divine, it is not divine. A passage in Ad nationes carries the same implication. God exists in “unimpaired integrity and ought not to be diminished or suspended or destroyed. Well, then, also His happiness would disappear if He ever suffered loss (si quid patitur).” 188 If God as eternal cannot become less, neither can the divine become more. God is by definition the supreme, the magnum summum, existing in eternity. Against Marcion’s second God of goodness Tertullian argues that God is one and that divine attributes cannot be shared. “God is not if God is not one,” and is “the great supreme One existing in eternity, unborn, unmade, without beginning and without end.” 189 Marcion must ascribe the property of eternity to his God because there 185

12.3, CCL 1, 407. See 2.2; 12.1; 12.3. R. Braun, “Deus christianorum,” 57. 187 12.5, CCL 1, 407. 188 Ad nationes 2.6.1, ibid. 50. 189 Adversus. Marcionem 1.3.1–2, CCL 1, 443–44. 186

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can be no God without it. But eternity can only belong to the supreme being, who by the definition of supreme is unique. And the unique is by definition one. Since God is not temporal, neither is God mutable. “Eternity has no time. It is itself all time: it acts, it cannot then suffer.” 190 The type of immutability which eternity implies is the incapacity to be affected by time, which is a third type of immutability ascribed to God by Tertullian. The divine cannot become less, because only matter can decay, cannot become more because of being summum magnum, and cannot be affected by that which is temporal. In these texts Tertullian seems to have completely absorbed the God of the philosophers. But as we will see in his discussion of the God of biblical faith and of Incarnation, the case is not so simple. Book 2, chapter 16 of Tertullian’s work against Marcion contains his most important discussion of divine emotions. He begins by stating the need for God’s severity and for the feelings that accompany it, such as wrath, jealousy, and sternness. Emotions are as indispensable to severity as severity is to justice. Heretics say that “if God is angry and jealous and roused and grieved, He must therefore be corrupted and must therefore die.” 191 They judge that the divine is like the human, hence that God must have the same passions that we do. Actually, the reverse is true, Tertullian argues. The Marcionites should “discriminate between the natures (substantias) and assign to them their respective senses, which are as diverse as their natures require, although they seem to have a community of designation.” 192 God has feelings in the supreme way that befits the divine nature. Tertullian continues. We who are made in the divine image are emotionally similar to God. “And this, therefore, is to be deemed the likeness of God in man, that the human soul has the same emotions and sensations as God, although they are not of the same kind, differing as they do both in their conditions (status) and their expressions (exitus) according to their nature.” 193 The distinction between God’s emotions and ours arises from the fact that the divine essence is incorruptible and ours is not. To have emotions in a divine manner is to 190

“Quod facit, pati non potest.” Adv. Marc. 1.8.3, ibid. 449. Adv. Marc. 2.16.3, ibid. 493. 192 2.16.4, ibid. 193 2.16.6, ibid. 191

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possess them all perfectly, such as meekness, patience, mercy, and their parent, goodness. So also does God feel anger. Because of divine incorruptibility, God is affected by emotions only in a happy way, will be angry but not irritated or tempted, moved but not subverted. 194 Tertullian needed to show how God’s emotions are different from ours, as well as similar, but his development remained incomplete. He concluded chapter 16 thus: He must use all (feelings) because of all (situations), as many senses as there are causes: anger because of the proud and whatever else hinders evil. So again, mercy because of the erring, and patience because of the impenitent, and preeminent resources because of the meritorious, and whatever is the work of good. All these feelings move Him in His own way, in which it is fitting that He should be moved (pati), and because of Him man is affected equally in his own way. 195

In On the Testimony of the Soul Tertullian argues against Marcion that the anger attributed to God in the Bible is literally true, and it is worthy of the divine being. Marcion denied that emotions could belong to the God of Christianity, especially divine wrath. Because of the many passages in Scripture which attribute ‘unworthy’ characteristics such as emotions to the divine, in Marcion’s “refined” view the Jewish God is a lesser deity than the God of Jesus and of Paul. 196 Marcionites seemed to honor the god of Jesus by doing away with concern for knowing the world, and they did not ascribe anger to the divine. If God is angry, they said, God is passionate (passionalis), and that which is passionate is corruptible. But for Tertullian the soul has a superior opinion. It knows and therefore fears God. “Whence, then, the soul’s natural fear of God, if God cannot be angry? How is there any dread of Him whom nothing offends? What is feared but anger? Whence comes anger but from ob-

194

2.16.7, ibid. 494. ibid. 196 Marcion was opposed by Origen, and by all who argued that the Old Testament was a Christian book. For Marcion, see E. C. Blackman, Marcion and His Influence; Joseph R. Hoffman, Marcion, On the Restitution of Christianity. 195

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serving what is done?” 197 In Tertullian’s view the soul needs to fear God and God’s anger is necessary for the fear to be real. For Tertullian God cannot become more or less, or be affected by time, but is eternally the same. Here, however, God can and must have negative emotions to be a judge, and further, all emotions in order to be God. God does not feel them as we do, but nevertheless experiences them somehow, and therefore changes emotionally in a way that is appropriate to the divine. Although he does not describe specifically or define systematically how this can be, Tertullian understands God’s feelings in comparison with our own, a comparison rooted in the relationship of humanity to God as God’s image. God is truly related to the world and responsive to the peculiar situation of each person.

GOD’S GOODNESS Tertullian defended the goodness of the biblical Creator against Marcion’s attack. For Marcion divine goodness absolutely distinguished the Christian from the Jewish God. Tertullian’s description of God’s goodness in relation to the world leads directly to another aspect of God’s mutability, divine justice. The Adversus Marcionem again contains his most important discussions of this topic. 198 There are “certain rules for examining God’s goodness.” First, all things in God should be natural and ingenerate (ingenita) in order that they may be eternal just like God’s own state.” If they naturally belong to God, the attributes will not be “accounted casual and extraneous, and thereby temporal and lacking eternity.” God is eternal, so ought the divine attributes to be. But Marcion’s God is not eternally good. He becomes so by saving mankind. Second. “All properties of God ought to be as rational as they are natural.” God’s goodness must be reasonable. The goodness of Marcion’s God is irrational because God proceeded to save creatures that God did not create or know. 199 Thirdly, God’s attributes must be perfect. Because it is unnatural (temporal) and irrational, and also because it does not save most people, the goodness of Marcion’s God is imper197

De testimonio animae 2, CSEL 20, 137. See especially 1.22f., CCL 1, 463f. Tertullian explains at great length why the goodness of the Creator is an eternal attribute (2.3, ibid. 477), and why only the Creator is good by nature (2.1.6, ibid. 476). 199 1.23, ibid. 465–66. 198

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fect. “So long, then, as you prefer your god to the Creator on the simple ground of his goodness, and since he professes to have this attribute as solely and wholly his own, he ought not to have been lacking in it to anyone.” 200 But divine goodness for Marcion lacks something else as well, and this is crucial to Tertullian’s defense of the Old Testament: to be good divinely, God must be able to condemn. For Tertullian, divine goodness must include divine justice. Marcion’s God is imperturbable and listless, could only save some people, and could not condemn at all. This type of goodness is inappropriate to God because it is unresponsive to the changing situations of human life. The goodness of Marcion’s god is “neither ingenerate nor rational nor perfect, but wrong and unjust and unworthy of the very name of goodness.” 201 A God who cannot condemn is not good enough to be divine. It is precisely this point that leads Tertullian to argue that God is mutable and passible, and does indeed have personal feelings: For it is furthermore, at this point quite open to discussion whether God ought to be regarded as a being of simple goodness, to the exclusion of all those other attributes, sensations, and affections which the Marcionites indeed transfer from their god to the Creator, and which we acknowledge to be worthy characteristics of the Creator too. 202

If any being is represented as divine without the attributes that express personal responsiveness to the world, it lacks a necessary aspect of deity and is therefore not truly divine. What could be more unphilosophical than this assertion? For Marcion’s god, as Osborn puts it, there could be no change nor shadow cast by turning. All that contradicted perfect love must be denied. In this Marcion followed a common view of God. For Plato, the form of the good was above all contradiction; dialectic was the way to reach the summit where all conflict ceases and there is an everlasting loveliness that neither flowers nor fades. For Aristotle, the first cause of all, like a magnet in an armchair, needs to do nothing. For the Epicureans, the chief 200

1.24.3, ibid. 467. 1.25.1, ibid. 468. 202 1.25.2, ibid. 201

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attribute of gods was their remoteness and their lack of involvement in human affairs. 203

Tertullian also argues that Marcion contradicts himself because his God does have emotions after all. If the new god announced by Jesus was a newcomer in the affairs of the human race, his concern for the human race had a beginning. And the desire to be known and accepted now by us means that Marcion’s God must be jealous of the Creator, which for Tertullian is an appropriate divine feeling based on the Old Testament. When the God of Marcion decided to entertain a concern for our salvation after such a long time of indifference, “did he not by this very fact become susceptible of the impulse of a new volition, so as palpably to be open to all other emotions? But what volition is unaccompanied by the spur of desire? Who wishes for what he desires not?” 204 Concern in Marcion’s God gives rise to will, and will gives rise to desire to save humanity from the rule of the Creator God. Emotions necessarily arise that are appropriate to the adversary relationship with the Creator originated by this new concern for the human race: “anger, discord, hatred, disdain, indignation, spleen, loathing, displeasure.” 205 Since the God of Marcion cannot be offended or get angry, and cannot judge or punish, it cannot be the true God.

GOD’S JUSTICE That humanity is good by creation is evident especially in the freedom of the will that we possess. Although God had previous knowledge of our fall and the power to prevent it, there was no divine interference with the liberty bestowed, a liberty that is part of human created goodness. Since the human race fell, it became necessary for God to become a judge in order to remain good. Although divine justice for Tertullian is eternal, it is also temporal and responsive to the situation of sin. It is eternal, innate, and natural, as is divine goodness. Goodness created the world, justice arranged it. “Do not suppose that His function as a judge must be defined as begin-

203

Eric Osborn, Tertullian: First Theologian of the West 88–89. Adv. Marc. 1.25.4 CCL 1, 469. 205 1.25.6, ibid. 204

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ning when evil began, and so tarnish His justice with the cause of evil.” 206 Nevertheless, divine justice takes on another function in the world as the result of sin. “Up to the fall of man, therefore, from the beginning God was simply good; after that He became a judge both severe and, as the Marcionites will have it, cruel.” 207 When sin occurred, the goodness of God had an adversary and divine justice acquired a new purpose: to direct God’s goodness against this adversary. The result was that the “divine goodness, being interrupted in that free course whereby God was spontaneously good, is now dispensed according to the deserts of every man; it is offered to the worthy, denied to the unworthy, taken from the unthankful, and also avenged on all its enemies.” 208 In another text he writes that God is “good from His own (character), just in consequence of ours. For if man had never sinned, he would simply and solely have known God in His superlative goodness, from the attribute of His nature.” 209 Justice is an extension of the divine goodness when it is a punishment for sin. Tertullian counters a major objection to divine mutability. Marcionites claim that God is inconstant if the divine judgments change over time. Tertullian argues that the mark of a good judge is to decide on the merits of the case at hand, in terms of the present moment of a person’s existence. God must change judgments depending on the goodness or evil of people now. No one should think of God as completely rejecting or choosing a person for life. God’s capability to judge and decide rationally whether to accept or reject someone at any point in their life is a feature of divine providence. 210 Tertullian makes the same argument to deny the validity of Judaism. “Let us not annul this power which God has to reform the law’s precepts answerably to the circumstances of the times, with a view to man’s salvation.” 211 Jewish religious institutions are no longer a valid response to God’s will according to Tertullian, because God’s will has changed. In Book 2, chapter 24 of the work against Marcion, Tertul206

2.12.3, ibid. 489. 2.11.1, ibid. 488. 208 2.13.1, ibid. 489. 209 De resurrectione carnis 14, CSEL 47, 42–43. 210 Adv. Marc., 2.23.1–3, CCL 1, 500–501. 211 Adversus. Judaeos 2.10, CCL 2, 1343. 207

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lian discusses the same type of divine mutability in his interpretation of 1 Sam 15:11 where God “regrets that I made Saul king.” God’s regret in this case, as in the case of the Ninevites, has a different meaning than it does for us. It is obvious from the Greek word for regret or repentance that sin need not be involved: For it will have no other meaning than a simple change of a prior purpose; and this is admissible without any blame even in a man, much more in God whose every purpose is faultless. Now in Greek the word for repentance is formed not from the confession of a sin but from a change of mind, which in God we have shown to be regulated by the occurrence of varying circumstances. 212

Thus for Tertullian there are good reasons for the divine mutability and passibility taught in Scripture. God has various emotions that are appropriate to goodness but also to justice. God changes to become the judge of human sinfulness; and God’s will changes in accord with the changing circumstances of history. In each case the change is caused in God by changes in the temporal world. Tertullian’s desire to include mutability in his description of God springs partially from what he conceives as logical necessity. But his major concern is to theologically defend the personal and active God of biblical faith and salvation history in various relationships with the world. While as we have seen previously, Tertullian is not unique among the Fathers in this regard, he certainly expresses it more strongly than any other early Christian writer. Unlike his interpreters, whether friends or foes, I take this along with his Christology, to be his most important and distinctive theological contribution. A number of authors have argued that Tertullian “capitulates” to Marcion in regard to divine mutability, an opinion based on a passage in the second book of the treatise against Marcion. M. Pohlenz, R. Cantalamessa, and Jean-Claude Fredouille appeal to the following statement: 213 Whatever attributes, therefore, you (Marcionites) require as worthy of God must be found in the Father, who is invisible and unap212

Adv. Marc., 2.24.8, CCL 1, 503. M. Polenz, Vom Zorne Gottes 28, 42, 58; R. Cantalamessa, La christologia de Tertullian 41; Jean-Claude Fredouille, Tertullian et la converson de la culture antique 161–162. 213

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In other words, the Marcionite idea of God is partially correct in that their “worthy” attributes apply to the Father, and the “unworthy” attributes such as wrath and jealousy apply to the Son. Obviously this suggestion is not coherent with Tertullian’s other arguments. Hence it is better to see him in this passage as vacillating, but not capitulating. Fredouille admits this in effect by citing passages that occur later in the treatise in which Tertullian again states the legitimacy and worthiness of divine wrath. 215 The three authors may see Tertullian’s “capitulation” as a point in his favor, because they themselves perhaps see no theological alternative to absolute divine immutability and wish to see Tertullian as “coming around in the end” so to speak. Tertullian argues on the one hand that God has emotions and changes, but on the other that the divine is immutable and impassible. This inconsistency is puzzling. The fact that Tertullian accepts the “Platonized doctrine of God and creation which he had inherited from his predecessors as normative Christian teaching,” but is troubled by divine immutability needs an explanation. Norris suggests that Tertullian did not understand or come to terms with the “philosophical presuppositions of the theology he transmits.” 216 I believe that Tertullian was trying to uphold the biblical view of God and at times realized that the philosophical presuppositions he inherited were inadequate for this task. Hence the inconsistency is puzzling only if he wanted to be more of a philosopher than a theologian.

DEUS INCARNATUS Tertullian’s anti-docetic treatise against the Marcionites, the De Carne Christi, was followed some years later by a work on the Incarnation directed against Praxeas (Adversus Praxean), a monarchian. 217 In these two treatises Tertullian attempts to refute opposite positions, on the 214

Adv. Marc. 2.27.6, CCL 1, 506–507. See 5.13.3; 5.19.8, ibid. 702–703. 216 God and World 112. 217 See the discussion of the chronology of Tertullian’s works in T. D. Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study 30–56. 215

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one hand, that the flesh of Jesus was not real, on the other, that the Logos had no distinct identity within the divine nature. For Marcion, the Logos was the true God of Christianity in contrast to the God of the Old Testament. And behind Marcion’s docetism was the Platonic objection that because God cannot change, God cannot become truly human. For Praxeas, Logos was only a different name for the one God. And importantly, he takes the full humanity of Christ for granted. The issue is the real distinction between the Father and the Son. Thus in this treatise Tertullian must argue that the Word is truly divine and yet truly distinct from the Father. The Logos must have all the divine attributes, as such, including eternity and immutability, yet be distinct. The De carne establishes the Word’s mutability as a condition for the reality of the Incarnation. Jesus is truly God, God’s Word truly became flesh. Tertullian defends the mutability of the Word against Marcion. Later, however, as a condition for divinity, he denies it against Praxeas! He does not develop a systematic viewpoint by which he can simultaneously defend the becoming of the Word as well as immutability, thereby refuting both opponents. De carne proposes mutability, conversio and Adv. Praxean denies the transfiguration of the Logos. Although the two terms used for change do not have precisely the same sense, in Adv. Praxean he states at least once (27.13) that the conversio of the Word in the Incarnation, for which he previously argued in De carne, is impossible. 218

DE CARNE CHRISTI Marcionites hold that the Incarnation is impossible: if God becomes what God previously was not, the divine identity disappears. Something without end is necessarily also inconvertible, since the conversion into something else puts an end to what one originally was. There can be no conversion of something unending. 219 Tertullian admits that this is true for things in general, but nothing is the same for God. If, then, the things which differ from God and from which God differs lose what they were when they are converted, what will the difference of the divinity be from everything else except that the contrary ob218 219

See R. Cantalamessa, La christologia di Tertullian 72f. De carne 3.4, CCL 2, 876.

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tains, i.e., that God can be converted into all things and continue as he is. 220 Since God is not equal to creatures in any other respect, why would God be their equal in changeability (in exitu conversionis)? 221 Because of being divine, God can become anything, yet remain the same. The divine will need not obey the laws and dictates of creaturely possibility. In this context Tertullian makes the same claim as we have seen in the Ad Theopompum above: “With God, nothing is impossible but what he does not will.” 222 The divine character is such that it can allow for change while retaining its identity, which is in this case an embodiment (corporationem) of the Word in Jesus. 223 It is correct to say that God was literally crucified, that God died and was buried, and that God rose from the dead. The fact that the docetic Marcionites deny this reality destroys the “indispensable dishonor of our faith.” 224 We must ponder this last phrase in Tertullian’s argument. He never wrote the statement attributed to him so authoritatively by so many textbooks: “I believe because it is absurd.” He was not a fideist, but he was fond of paradoxes, especially the paradox of Christian faith in the suffering crucified Son of God. “The Son of God is crucified. Because it is so shameful, it does not shame me. The Son of God dies. It is credible because it is so unlikely. The buried One rises. It is certain because it is impossible.” 225 The crux of Christian faith in the Incarnation is that it is based on the unlikely, shameful, and impossible fact that the Son of God died and rose from the dead. And for Tertullian this is grounded fundamentally in divine mutability and passibility. 226 220

3.5, ibid. 3.6, ibid. 876–877. 222 3.1, ibid. 875. Also in Adversus Praxean 10.9, ibid. “For with God, to be willing is to be able. All that He has willed, however, He has both been able to accomplish and has displayed His ability.” 223 De carne 4.1, CCL 2, 878. 224 5, ibid. 880–883. 225 5.4, ibid. 881. 226 Tertullian is best presented on the “credo quia ineptum” by Eric Osborn, Tertullian: First Theologian of the West chapter 3. But I do not think he appreciates the role divine passibility plays in these paradoxes in Tertullian. Roy Kearsley shows a stronger appreciation in his Tertullian’s Theology of Divine Power 69–76; 152–153. 221

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Tertullian is the first Christian theologian to confront directly the problem of divine mutability which Christian belief in the Incarnation presents. Because of the obvious logical difficulty of his position in De carne, however, in which it is not clear how the divine can remain the same while becoming human, it is not surprising that he reverses it. In Adversus Praxean he not only changes his terminology but even defends what he previously denied: the unchanging nature of the Word. In that work, Tertullian again asks what it means to say that the “Word became flesh.” 227 Is the becoming a transfiguratio or a clothing, an indutus with flesh? Since God is unchangeable and incapable of form, being eternal, divine becoming can only mean the latter. Transfiguration involves the destruction of the previous existent: “For whatsoever is transfigured into some other thing ceases to be that which it had been and begins to be that which it previously was not. God, however, neither ceases to be what He was nor can He be any other thing than what He is.” 228 Divine transfiguration into flesh is impossible. If the Word becomes flesh by a change of substance, the resulting unity is a mixture, a tertium quid or “third thing” neither divine nor human. Tertullian uses the distinction of natures to interpret passages in the New Testament that apply to the human nature or to the divine, depending on the attribution. Neither the Father nor the divine Son is capable of suffering. 229 And even though the Spirit enables Jesus to suffer in the flesh it is also impassible. Of all the authors consulted about this inconsistency in Tertullian, J. P. Mahé has the most satisfactory view. 230 He explains it as clarity of expression gained by the time the Adv. Praxean is written, and that this represents an advance over the terminology of the De carne. David Rankin sees Tertullian as an early advocate of the communication of idioms, the language that allows the human attributes of Christ, such as suffering and death, to be attributed to the divine. Following Grillmeier, he connects it to the Stoic understanding of krasis, a type of mixture that preserves the characteristics of each element. 231 Rankin is 227

Adv. Prax. 27, CCL 2, 1198–1200. 27.6–7, ibid. 1198–99. 229 29, ibid. 1202–1203. 230 See his Introduction to La chair du Christ 150–155. 231 David Rankin, “Tertullian and the Crucified God,” Pacifica 10 (October 1997), 298–309. 228

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aware, however, that Tertullian’s theology of the communication of idioms is at least incomplete, and that he does not fully understand its implications. 232 The conflicting view stated in Adv. Praxean clearly demonstrates this. Conversio in De carne means an absolutely unique change that preserves the unchanging essence of Christ. In Adv. Praxean Tertullian gives up the term ‘conversion’ and explicitly rejects transfiguratio as an apt expression for the mutability that the Incarnation involves. 233 He settles on the term induere (clothing) to express the Incarnation. One might say that in the De carne, Tertullian foreshadows Alexandrian Christology, and in the Adversus Praxean, Antiochene. Obviously and without criticism of him, because he comes early in the development of Christology, Tertullian is not fully aware of the problems with their different approaches, especially those of the Antiochenes who resemble him here. For Plato, Aristotle, Middle Platonists, and Plotinus, the truth of the claim that the divine became human is unthinkable. In spite of this Tertullian made real contributions to a theology of God and of the Incarnation. God cannot change in the same way as creatures, but for Tertullian some type of change is essential to divine involvement in a changing world. His adherence to the narrative of salvation history would not allow him to simply repeat the philosophical axioms of immutable and impassible divinity in the light of either the Old or the New Testament. In the light of faith in Scripture, the divine in some sense does suffer and change. Although deeply influenced by philosophy, Tertullian realized the conflict between it and Scripture when he wrote his famous and oft-quoted sentence “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” 234 The polemical intentions of his major theological works prevented him, however, from developing a more systematic view of God.

232

See the conclusion 309. Also Roy Kearsley, Tertullian’s Theology of Divine Power 71–76 and the conclusions in chapter 9. 233 J. P. Mahé, La chair 150–155. 234 I cannot resist quoting Osborn’s answer: “Everything, provided you travel (economy class) by way of Ephesus and disembark at Jerusalem.” Tertullian 47.

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NOVATIAN Novatian’s major dogmatic treatise, De Trinitate, “was probably written well before 250 and is the first great Latin contribution to theology to appear in Rome.” 235 A portion of this work, chapters 4–7, discusses divine immutability and God’s wrath. Somewhat later Arnobius would write an apology for Christianity, Adversus nationes, in which the doctrine of God’s immutability became the major theological idea. Lactantius apparently disagreed strongly enough with his teacher Arnobius that he wrote a treatise of his own defending the reality of God’s wrath, the De Ira Dei. The theological differences among these writers is quite instructive, as they seek to balance the need for rational argument with that of fidelity to biblical teaching. Novatian’s De Trinitate discusses the nature and attributes of God at some length. 236 The Christian doctrines of God’s fatherhood, omnipotence and creation are required by the rule of faith, the regula fidei, which may have been the original title of the work. 237 God has no beginning and no end. As a result God is always infinite and there is nothing greater, and is always eternal because there is nothing older. That which is without origin is preceded by none because it is not temporal. 238 God does not change or become transformed into other forms, lest by change the divine appear to be mortal. Novatian’s argument against divine mutability recalls Tertullian. But for Tertullian in his Alexandrian mood, change does not necessarily imply mortality; for Novatian it does. “For change (immutatio) implied in turning from one thing to another (conversionis) is comprehended as a portion (portio) or a certain death.” 239 In the same passage Novatian connects immutability to divine perfection. “Thus there is never in Him any accession (adjectio) or increase (accedit) of any part or honor, lest anything should appear to have ever been wanting to His perfection.” If anything increases in God, it implies that God had a beginning, and if God loses anything, it 235

J. Quasten, Patrology 2, 217. For the work itself see PL 3, 913–82. Chapters 2–8, ibid. 915–27. 237 See R. DeSimone, The Treatise of Novatian the Roman Presbyter on the Trinity: A Study of the Text and the Doctrine. See also his translation, The Trinity 67; 23 n. 1 discusses the title. 238 PL 3, 916. 239 ibid. 919. 236

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indicates possible death and perishing. But that which constitutes divinity must necessarily always exist and have no beginning and no end. God must always be the same to be God, and is the same because of having no beginning. Novatian gives Tertullian’s argument from Hermogenes 4.3, which deduces God’s oneness from divine eternity. “And thus (because of no beginning) He is declared to be one, having no equal. For whatever can be God must as God be of necessity the highest. But whatever is the highest must certainly be the highest in such a sense as to be without any equal. And thus that must needs be alone and one on which nothing can be conferred, having no peer.” 240 The argument surprisingly concludes that God is infinite rather than immutable or perfect. Novatian apparently confuses infinity with immutability or perfection, since the attributes all imply no beginning or end: “There cannot be two infinites, as the very nature of things dictates. And that is infinite which neither has any sort of beginning nor end.” 241 Despite his defense of divine immutability, Novatian also defends the divine wrath, indignation, and even hatred in a manner reminiscent of, if not directly dependent upon Tertullian. We are not to understand these emotions “in the sense in which they are human vices since God is incorruptible. For such passions as these will rightly be said to be in men and will not rightly be judged to be in God.” 242 God has these passions but is not corrupted by them because God does not have them in a human way. The passible nature of humanity as opposed to the impassible nature of God allows us to distinguish between the wrath of the two. These passions are rightly felt by an embodied individual. Since God is not embodied, God does not have them properly. In the following chapter, Novatian argues against anthropomorphic conceptions of the deity despite the biblical passages to the contrary. Novatian cannot reconcile immutability with God’s emotional character as portrayed in Scripture. Ultimately he rests his case, as so many in the tradition have attempted to do, on divine incomprehensibility. Chapter 7 states this quite forcefully: God is something like us in the divine feelings of wrath, indignation, and hatred, but we simply do not know how God is like us because the divine is incomprehensi240

ibid. 920. ibid. 242 ibid. 921. 241

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ble. Neither can we speak properly of God. “We can in some degree be conscious of Him in silence, but we cannot in discourse unfold Him as He is.” 243 As we shall see later there is a profound truth asserted here, but without the sophistication that develops later after the Christological controversies, especially in Maximus the Confessor. Only Maximus is able to state the precise moment that knowledge of the divine from revelation in creation and Incarnation intersects with mystery.

ARNOBIUS In his Against the Nations written around 296, Arnobius completely rejected all theological attempts to justify God’s emotions. He is the rare example of a theologian adopting the Epicurean understanding of God, an understanding that cannot be made to agree with Christian revelation. Arnobius wanted to differentiate the Christian God from the popular deities of his time, but took the extreme position that God is aloof from the concerns of the world. This theme “runs through all of Adversus nationes, and is really its central thought, the fountainhead of all its teaching.” 244 Arnobius strongly condemns the passionate gods and goddesses of paganism. They are much too involved in the affairs of the world, and the actions and passions that the myths attribute to them are unworthy of the divine. When the enemies of Christianity, for instance, say that their gods are angry with Christians, do they not see that they are attributing base feelings to them? “For to be angry, what else is it than to be insane, to rave, to be urged to the lust of vengeance?” 245 True gods have no anger or grudges. It is “childish, weak, petty, and unbecoming” for pagan gods to “be busied with the coarser matter of earth,” and it is a sacrilege to believe that God feels despised if worship is not given. 246 The Christian God does not need prayers. These only benefit us by bringing us closer to God. 247

243

2, ibid. 916. Quasten, Patrology 2, 388.; George E. McCracken, Arnobius of Sicca: The Case against the Pagans 7–8, p.29–30. 245 1.17, CSEL 4, 13. 246 1.23, ibid. 5. 247 1.27, ibid. 17–18. 244

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Arnobius often draws the same connection between feelings and corruptibility noted previously. The gods should not have emotions since those who are “touched by passion live a life of suffering and are weakened by grief.” They are therefore “bound by the laws of mortality.” 248 Whatever is liable to suffering is corruptible “by that very capacity of suffering,” he writes, in reference to the human soul. 249 And “whatever is upheld by causes and things external to itself must be mortal and on the way to destruction, when anything on which it lives begins to be wanting.” 250 For a summary statement, we return to the beginning of the work: For wherever, as the philosophers hold, there is agitation, there of necessity passion must exist. Where passion is situated, it is reasonable that mental excitement (perturbatio) follows. Where there is mental excitement, there grief and sorrow exist. Where grief and sorrow exist, there is already room for weakening (imminutione) and decay (corruptioni). 251

He repeats this argument in almost the same form near the end of the work: feeling is being moved by another. Whatever is moved by another is capable of suffering and frailty and must therefore be corruptible. “Therefore that should be called mortal which has been made subject to the emotions of anger.” 252 But God is immortal; therefore God cannot be angry.

LACTANTIUS In reaction to his teacher’s Epicurean theology, Lactantius wrote a treatise on divine anger in which he rejected that theology and argued for the reality of God’s emotions. The De Ira Dei is a presentation and defense of the doctrine of divine wrath in the context of divine providence, and is startling testimony in the tradition that divine impassibility was in conflict with that tradition. 253 248

6.2, ibid. 214–215. 2.26, ibid. 69–70. 250 7.3, ibid. 239. 251 1.18, ibid. 13–14. 252 7.5, ibid. 241. 253 See E. F. Micka, The Problem of Divine Anger in Arnobius and Lactantius 81–112. 249

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Many persons, Lactantius says in chapter 1 of his treatise, hold that God is not angry, either because anger is in conflict with goodness or because God does not care about us at all. Because our innate ignorance regarding God has been taken away by revelation, we have better knowledge than those philosophers who hold one or the other opinion. 254 The first step in attaining true knowledge of God is the rejection of popular religion: the second (chap. 2) is for the mind to perceive that there is one supreme God, whose power and providence made the world and governs it. The third and final step is the acceptance of Jesus’ teaching, which moves us to knowledge and worship of the true God. Because he has already discussed the first step in his Divine Institutes Lactantius begins with the second. 255 There are those who accept the oneness of God but incorrectly understand the divine nature. They deny that God has any form or think that the divine is unmoved by affection, because every affection is a sign of weakness. Others take away anger from God but believe that God is kind. Lactantius lists all the possible solutions to the problem of God’s emotions, and then proceeds to discuss each one to see which ones can be excluded (chap. 2). They are: (1) God has anger but no kindness; (2) God has neither anger nor kindness (Epicurus and Arnobius, his teacher); (3) God has kindness but no anger (Stoics); (4) God has both anger and kindness. Lactantius excludes the first solution easily: to believe that God is only angry is unreasonable, incredible, and inconsistent with God’s goodness. Against the second solution he argues that if God is not moved (a quality of a living being), if God does nothing as governor of the world, God simply does not exist. What happiness could God have if the divine were inactive, at rest and immovable, deaf to those who pray to Him and blind to worshipers? Providence is worthy of God. It is the distinctive attribute of the deity. Epicurus (and Arnobius by implication) is wrong because if God feels nothing whatsoever, there is no concern for the world and no divine providence. For Lactantius the existence of God without providence and the feelings that accompany it is impossible. He rejects the third solution as well. If one emotion is felt by God, so must its opposite, since the opposite external circumstances 254 255

CSEL 27, 67–132 for the entire discussion. Divine Institutes 5–6, CSEL 19.

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call for opposite emotions (chapter 5). To be consistent, God must feel hatred for the wicked people just as much as love for the good, because loving good people is connected to hating the wicked, and hating the wicked to loving the good. To love, one must also hate, since some ought to be loved and some hated. Lactantius does not believe that a Christian should repress negative feelings; they are appropriate to some life situations. 256 Besides this, emotional life has a unity of its own, an integral movement in us and in God which cannot be set aside (chapter 4). God experiences anger as well as kindness. All of piety and religion depends on this understanding (chapter 6). Lactantius proceeds to explain why religion is necessary (chapters 7–8). It maintains the human wisdom that separates us from animals, and creates a sense of justice by which public life can be maintained. Recognizing both God’s kindness and anger are essential for religion and for the social order (chapter 12). In chapter 15 Lactantius does find it necessary to distinguish feelings which are improper for the divine being from those which God has. There is no divine fear because desire, injury, pain, death which are the causes for fear, are absent. God can do whatever God wishes and therefore cannot envy anyone. (chapter 13). God has no sexual passion, no need for a successor or consort, no avarice, no grief (chapter 16). But favor, anger, and pity belong to the divine, as does patience (chapter 20). Each of God’s feelings is a fitting providential response to some creaturely condition. Lactantius’s theology of God rests on this crucial point: God has whatever emotions God needs for the governance of the world, but not those which conflict with divine perfection. Novatian and Arnobius argued that that which has emotion is necessarily corruptible. Tertullian distinguished between emotions and corruptibility, holding that in essence they are not mutually implicative. Lactantius simply turns Arnobius around, and argues that lack of feeling is a sign of corruptibility, since to be at rest is to be dead! God is eternally alive and never at rest in divine governance. God is not corrupted by divine feelings, but is a living God precisely because of them. Lactantius describes divine anger in a way that makes it worthy of God. It is reasonable and wise and justifiable if its motive is the correc256

CSEL 27, 72–73.

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tion of evil, as it is for God, and not vengeance. It belongs to us and to God alike, but God always feels it at the right time and place (chapters 18 and 21). Finally, divine anger is necessary for the preservation of God’s authority (chapter 23). Lactantius’s treatise on divine anger shows how important it was for him to maintain the personality of the divine. Without it and the emotions that accompany it, the Christian doctrine of providence disappears. Lactantius saw that the Scriptural view of providence and divine personal characteristics cannot be rendered in a consistent and meaningful way if one adheres strictly to the Middle Platonic, Epicurean, or Aristotelian conception of God’s transcendent immutability and impassibility. Nevertheless, and inconsistently perhaps, Lactantius like Tertullian also describes God in the familiar philosophical manner. The divine is “inpassibliis inmutabilis incorruptus beatus aeternus”, impassible, immutable, incorrupt, blessed, and eternal. 257 God is one and perfect, 258 “incomprehensible and unspeakable, and fully known only to Himself.” 259 Lactantius’s debt to philosophy is obvious in his summary description of God in the Epitome of the Divine Institutes: There is, then, one God, perfect, eternal, incorruptible, incapable of suffering, subject to no circumstance or power, Himself possessing all things, ruling all things, whom the human mind can neither estimate in thought nor mortal tongue describe in speech. 260

CONCLUSION Despite his inability to construct an understanding of God and the theological importance of the Incarnation that was perfectly consistent, Tertullian’s descriptions of divine emotions and mutability show how biblical he in fact was. For him God had to change to adopt a new attitude to a new situation, that is, to human sinfulness and had to feel appropriate emotions in order to judge as well as to love properly. And it was especially the Incarnation of God’s Son that led him to begin to redefine his notion of God in a way that had less to do with Athens and more with Jerusalem. 257

2.8, CSEL 19, 137. 1.3, ibid. 7ff. 259 1.8, ibid. 29. 260 ibid. 678. 258

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Novatian argued for God’s emotions especially for divine wrath, but did less than Tertullian because he eventually appeals to God’s incomprehensibility instead of to the Incarnation. Out of concern to distinguish the Christian God from the many deities of Greece and Rome, Arnobius denies entirely the possibility of divine emotions. Arnobius appeals, one might suggest, more to Epicurus than to Scripture. Lactantius faces squarely the question of divine emotions and mutability, arguing that God must relate to the world in a providentially emotional manner. Both he and Tertullian saw that God must have feelings in a way that was distinctively divine, both by having only ‘appropriate’ feelings and by having them perfectly. In the next chapter, we will see how Athanasius reformulated the Christian theological understanding of God in opposition to the Christology of Arius, and this prepared the way for the Council of Nicea. Yet Athanasius strongly affirmed with his opponent, the truth of the divine descent. We will see later why Augustine rejects the possibility that feelings and change literally apply to God. He consistently asserts that God is immutable and impassible, thereby intensifying if not creating several classical theological problems, such as creation in time by an unchanging being, predestination, and the conflict between human free will and divine foreknowledge. If we look to Augustine’s Christology, however, something new appears especially in his later antiArian texts. Augustine inherited Athanasius’s Christology, and was strongly affected by the descent imagery of Paul and John. Although he did not absorb it fully, this imagery dramatically affected Augustine’s Christian understanding of divine immutability and impassibility.

4. ARIANS AND ORTHODOX: THE LOGOS SUFFERS BUT GOD DOES NOT The full debate about the distinctive nature of the Christian God erupted in the Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. Even before the Council of Nicea in 325, Alexandrian theologians tended to think in terms of a Logos-sarx or Word-flesh scheme that emphasized the divinity sometimes at the expense of the human Jesus. The Gospel of John was their favorite text, especially the “Word became flesh” of 1:14. Athanasius (c. 295–373) had so absorbed the Alexandrian model that some scholars criticize his neglect of the soul of Jesus even today. Yet even though he does not speak of the human soul, Stead is certainly correct that “Athanasius’s whole understanding of the humanity assumed by the Logos implies the presence of a soul.” 261 The followers of Arius (c. 260–336) and Apollinaris (c. 310–390) shared with Athanasius his so-called ‘neglect’ of the human soul of Christ believing that it kept them from the implication that Jesus was a mere man. If that were the case, and this is also true for Athanasius, there could be no salvation. Yet they drew opposite conclusions. While Arius denied the full divinity of the Word and Apollinaris the full humanity of Jesus, Athanasius held to the single divine personhood of Jesus, and to his full humanity, thereby defining what comes to be orthodoxy. Although contemporary reaction to and criticism of the Wordflesh Christology of the Alexandrians might have some legitimacy, “it must be admitted that, viewed within its soteriological context, their position is consistent and religiously compelling. The Logos himself 261 C. Stead, “The Scriptures and the Soul of Christ in Athanasius,” Vigiliae Christianae 36, no. 3 (September, 1982), 233.

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took over our flesh, shared our experience, and overcame our weaknesses and sin by his divine power.” 262 As we will see later, Alexandrian Christology was not completely consistent, as noticed by writers from the school of Antioch. Out of Arianism and the anti-Arian theology of Alexandria, a “paradox” emerges because of a growing awareness of a conflicting truth: in spite of the divine attributes of perfect changelessness and impassibility taken over from Greek philosophy, God’s divine Word somehow did suffer with us and for us. The rise of Arianism signals the end of the period in which it is possible to have a theological understanding of God solely by relying on ancient Greek philosophical resources, which of course, hardly any Christian thinker did except perhaps Arnobius of Sicca, a startling counter-example. Athanasius understood this. For him, Arians were mistaken in their concept of theology because they believed they were able to form a Christian idea of God by first developing in isolation the theory of the divinity of the Father and the Son, without taking into consideration right from the start the mystery of the incarnation of the Son. 263

Kannengiesser calls Athanasian Christocentrism an “astonishing innovation” in Alexandrian theology that was previously so thoroughly dominated by Origen. Athanasius was the first Christian author to publish a treatise On the Incarnation of the Word because he saw that “that which is first in the exposition of the Christian faith is not God as such, nor the universe in its divine origin, but the historical event of salvation accomplished in Christ.” 264 Like Philo before him, Athanasius was a theological pioneer. In other words, the significance of the Incarnation as the cardinal point of Christian faith first came fully into its own in the fourth century because of Athanasius. At the same time another view is also possible as we will see, one that gives some credit to the heretical Arians for the “astonishing innovation.” Their emphasis on the personal unity of Christ although leading to a 262

F. M. Young, “Reconsideration of Alexandrian Christology,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 22 (1971), 105. 263 Charles Kannengiesser, “Athanasius and Traditional Christology,” Theological Studies 34 (1973), 112. 264 ibid.

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denial of the full divinity of the Logos, allowed for the reality of divine suffering. 265 The Christology of the school of Antioch emphasized the full and real humanity of Jesus. The Christology of the two complete natures in Jesus— one human, one divine—developed at the council of Chalcedon in 451 was an attempt to re-legitimate the Alexandrian view as reflected at Nicea (325) and Ephesus (431), but to allow for its critique as well, lest the God who became human in Jesus did not really come at all (Arius), or did not become fully human (Apollinaris). Throughout this portrayal of Alexandrians and Antiochenes, be they orthodox or heretical, it is important not to take sides, which has usually been the case among theologians, but instead to recognize the work of the Spirit in the minds and actions of sincere but imperfect Christian thinkers, whether orthodox or heretical.

THE CRUCIFIED GOD OF THE ARIANS R. P. C. Hanson thought that “at the heart of the Arian Gospel was a God who suffered.” Arians wanted “to be faithful to the Biblical witness to a God who suffers.” 266 Hanson explains the lowering of the Word to the status that was less than fully divine as a logical implication of Arian belief in the suffering of the Word. The Arians saw that the New Testament demanded a suffering God, as their opponents failed to see. They were convinced that only a God whose divinity was somehow reduced must suffer.

265 A view developed especially by R. P. C. Hanson in “The Arian Doctrine of the Incarnation,” in Robert C. Gregg, ed., Arianism: Historical and Theological Reassessments 181–211; The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381. 266 The Search p.121. For Arius and Arianism in general see especially Christopher Stead, “The Freedom of the Will and the Arian Controversy,” in Platonismus und Christentum, Festschrift für Heinrich Dörrie ed. H.-D. Blume and F. Mann, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Erganzungsband 10, 245– 57; Maurice Wiles, “In Defence of Arius,” Journal of Theological Studies 13 (1962): 339–47; Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation; “The Centrality of Soteriology in Early Arianism,” Anglican Theological Review 59 (1977): 260–78; A. Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition 1, 219–45; Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition especially part 1.

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THE COMING OF THE IMPASSIBLE GOD Hence the radical Arian doctrine of Christ, but hence also the Arian readiness to speak of God as suffering. 267

So it is that Arian thought made a contribution to the Christian theology of Incarnation. It “achieved an important insight into the witness of the New Testament denied to the pro-Nicenes of the fourth century, who unanimously shied away from and endeavored to explain away the scandal of the Cross.” 268 Although this is an overstatement, Hanson’s argument is based on the fact that Arians had no doctrine of the human soul of Jesus. Hence all the sufferings of Jesus, including his mental anguish, fear, and doubt, affected the Logos. This is especially obvious in the Homilies on the Psalms of Asterius the Sophist (died c. 341). 269 Of Asterius Hanson writes, “Everything that he says suggests that he believes in a God who can suffer.” 270 Regarding the crucifixion Asterius says, “Do not say a mere man was killed, but God in flesh making the suffering and the death of the flesh his own.” 271 He speaks of the crucified God, Θεὸν ™σταύρωσαν, and of the Incarnation as the moment when God revealed divine condescension, love, and providence. 272 Hanson also appeals to the two Arian homilies in Greek given on the octave of Easter preserved under the name of John Chrysostom (c. 354–407). 273 The term ἐnanqrwpήsaj (in-humanization) is used twice for the divine descent, 274 and at one point the homilist states boldly that “God was not unwilling to suffer on the cross.” 275 The prayer of a just one truly in-

267

Hanson, The Search 41. ibid. 122. 269 Marcel Richard, Asterii Sophistae Commentarius in Psalmos Quae Supersunt Accedunt Aliquot Homiliae Anonymae. See also Eiliv Skard, Index Asterianus. 270 Hanson, The Search 38. 271 Hom. 22.2–3 in Asterii Sophistae p.173; also Hom. 2.6, p.6. 272 Hom. 2.3; 2.6, ibid. p.5 & 6; Hom. 25.25, ibid. p.198: σugkάtabasin, φilanqrwpίαn, ™popteίan. See also Hom. 4.13, p.51; frag. on 255, line 8. Other texts cited in Hanson, The Search 38–41. 273 J. Liébaert, ed., Deux Homelies Anomeenes pour l’Octave de Paques, SC 146. 274 Hom. 1. 15. 213 in Liébaert, Deux Homelies p.76. Also in 2.13.169, p.108. See Hom. 15.17 in Richard, Asterii Sophistae p.115. 275 Hom. 1. 24. 344–45 in Liébaert, Deux Homelies p.88. 268

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clines the divinity toward pity, 276 and prayer brings the divine judge to compassion. 277 Liébaert finds a pro-Nicene interpolation in the first homily when it states that the Logos assumed that which is of humanity for humanity. He did not transform the better into worse; he did not change more into less; the putting on of flesh does not change the nature of divinity; the assumption of the flesh does not diminish the hypostasis of the only begotten. 278

Further, “He endured fatigue, the untiring artisan of creation.” 279 Homily 1.24 also attributes suffering to a God who is fully divine. Liébaert attributes this to homiletic excess. 280 Neither a pro-Nicene interpolation nor homiletic excess are necessary explanations. Even though the homilies appear to be authentically Arian in nature, they too show the ambiguity and inconsistency in the tradition when attributing change or suffering to the divine. If one attributes suffering to the divine Logos, can that Logos be fully divine, of one essence with the Father? The homilist can say on the one hand yes, and on the other no. The question had yet to be resolved. Another important passage from this Arian literature comes from the Unfinished Work on Matthew also ascribed to John Chrysostom, although probably written in Latin by an Arian of the fifth century. 281 Where is the scandal of the cross of Christ? What would scandalize us if a mere man died? Unbelievers perish because they know that if God came, God would die, and if God died, God could not be God. Believers are saved because they know that Christ did not die because of the weakness of human nature, but drew death to himself by means of divine power. Thus God was not absorbed by death but absorbed it. Therefore we do not believe that Christ died on the cross, but that death died in Christ. 282 276

Hom. 2.1.7–8, ibid. p.94. sump£qeian. Hom. 2.2.29, ibid. p.96. 278 Hom. 1.2.31–33, ibid. p.58. 279 Hom. 1.3.37, ibid. p.58. 280 Hom. 1.24.344–5, ibid. 88. See 36–37 for Liébaert’s comments. 281 Opus Imperfectum In Matthaeum PG 56, 612f. 282 My translation. 30.39, c. 788. 277

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The same homilist can also say later that the Word of God “put human salvation above his own impassibility.” 283 Rowan Williams makes an important comment about Hanson’s understanding of this Arian insight, that it “is held at the high price of postulating ‘two unequal gods’; only Nicea can actually do justice to a doctrine that the Nicene Fathers would have rejected—the selfsacrificing vulnerability of God.” The fact that Arians had the right idea about divine suffering but that it led them to the wrong idea of God “puts the unavoidable question of what the respective schemes in the long term make possible for theology.” The answer for Hanson in Williams’s view is perhaps the “odd conclusion that the Nicene fathers achieved not only more than they knew but a good deal more than they wanted.” 284

ATHANASIUS For Athanasius the Word shares the divine attributes of the Father, being ἄtreptoς and ἀnalloίωtoς by essence. Thus the defense of the divinity of the Word consists in the transference of divine attributes to the Word with one important difference: the Word became flesh, and now flesh must be attributed to God. 285 The incorporeal Word made his own the properties of the body, as being his own body. For what the human body of the Word suffered, this the Word, dwelling in the body, took upon himself (¢nšferen), in order that we might be enabled to be partakers of the Godhead of the Word. 286

God becomes human so that humans may partake of God, and because of the Incarnation the impassibility and immutability of the Logos become important for salvation. Unless the divine Word re283

“Sui ipsius impassibilitati praeposuit salutem humanam.” 51.47, c. 928. For Hanson’s complete case regarding Arian insistence on a suffering God based on these and other sources, see especially The Search p.109–28. 284 Arius: Heresy 22. 285 Discourse 1, PG 26, 49B; 57A; 84C; 93B; 112C; Disc. 2, ibid. 160B; 168A; 220A. For Christological usage of ἄtreptoς, ἀnalloίwtoς and other Christological terms in Athanasius see G. Muller, ed., Lexicon Athanasianum, digessit et illustravit. 286 Letter 59 to Epictetus 6 PG 26, 1060 C.

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mains the same, we cannot become like it ourselves. The Logos carried my suffering (mou t¦ p£qh), although being impassible (¢paq¾j ên), “and so I became free” from passion, Athanasius says. 287 The problematic nature of this claim, however, did not escape him: “And truly it is paradoxical that he it was who suffered, and he was in it, which thus suffered; suffered not, because the Word, being by nature God is ¢paq»j.” 288 Because the impassible Word was in the passible body of Jesus, it destroyed the body’s weaknesses in order to do away with them in us and to “invest us with what was his,” that is, immortality. When the flesh of Jesus suffered, the Logos was not external to it. Therefore pathos is said to be his (diὰ toῦto gὰr aὐtoῦ lέgetai kaὶ tὸ pάqoς). The suffering of his body, however, did not touch him in his divinity. 289 The Son of God remained ἄtreptoς and άnalloίwtoς in the human economy and in the enfleshed presence that he had. 290 The assumption of the flesh (prόslηφiς tÁς sarkὸς) did not make a servant of the Word who was by nature Lord. 291 “He is impassible and incorruptible and the very Word and God, but he cared for and saved suffering humanity, for whom he endured these things, by his impassibility.” 292 Athanasius’s vision of the Incarnation of the Word is religiously compelling, but not logically so. The Antiochene critique will emphasize the presence of the human soul of Jesus, and attempt to resolve the problem of the suffering of the Logos by emphatically denying it. All the suffering of Jesus in Antioch’s view takes place in the human body and soul. Yet this answer creates the new problem of the unity of person in Christ. Either the Logos suffers and changes, or it does not. If it does not, both Arius and Athanasius agree, we are not saved. But can the Impassible suffer? Yes, but only if, as in the Ad Theopompum, there is more than one meaning for one or the other term. Divine suffering must be different from our imperfect sufferings, or we are involved either in a denial of divinity or in a contradiction. 287

Disc. 3, PG 26, 397A; 437B; 440A. For ἀpάqeia as a religious goal in the fourth century, see the Prologue to Palladius’s Lausiac History vol. 34 of ACW. 288 Letter 59 to Epictetus 6 PG 26, 1060 C. 289 Disc. 3, PG 26, 389C. 290 Disc. 2, ibid. 160B. 291 ibid. 176C. 292 De Incarnatione 54.15, SC 199, p.458.

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Although Athanasius does not resolve this question, he says several times that the Logos exhibited sugkatάbasij or condescension in the Incarnation, thereby changing in some way. In three places in the De Incarnatione and in six texts of the Discourses, the term appears either in reference to creation or Incarnation. 293 In creation God’s wisdom imposes its form on the world and this is a type of divine condescension. 294 It is an indirect divine lowering mediated through wisdom. In the Incarnation, however, it is different. After creation the Logos descended and assimilated with it. 295 The Logos is first-born because of lowering himself down to be with creatures, resulting in God becoming the brother of all. 296 Athanasius also gives the motive for the divine condescension in the Incarnation. The Word condescended because of our weakness, out of love, pity and mercy. 297 The theme of divine descent already portrayed by Philo, Origen, Clement, and the Ad Theopompum springs from the biblical truth that conflicts with the Greek philosophical heritage influential in Arianism, and Athanasius cannot resolve the intellectual dilemma that this conflict creates. Logic compelled Arians to believe that the Word could not be fully divine because of the Incarnation and crucifixion. God cannot change or suffer. Since the Logos changes and suffers, the Logos is not God. Athanasius defends the full divinity of the Logos but nevertheless retains the image of divine condescension as does the tradition after him. Others follow with slightly better explanations. Gregory of Nyssa and Didymus the Blind, or one of his pupils, discover new theological possibilities and develop more positive understandings of change, Gregory on the human, Didymus on the divine level.

293

See Charles Kannengiesser’s Introduction to De Incarnatione in ibid. 129. He cites four instances in the Discourses rather than six. I discovered another in Disc. 2, PG 26, 277C and am also counting a non-Athanasian text from Disc. 4, ibid. 516C. 294 Disc. 2, ibid. 312B and 317B. 295 ibid. 256B. 296 ibid. 277C. This passage may refer to creation. I take it to refer to Incarnation because of ἀdelfός, however. In 284A–B the lowering refers to both creation and Incarnation. See J. Roldanus, Le Christ et L’Homme dans la Theologie D’Athanase D’Alexandrie 200–201; 211–12. 297 De Incarnatione 46.3, SC 199, 434.

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GREGORY OF NYSSA If the fourth century is one of strong reaction to opposing christological views, it is also and perhaps most importantly the time when the Incarnation made its deepest impression on Christian theological writing. The Fathers create new philosophical concepts and language to accommodate belief in the Incarnation and in the Trinity of persons. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330–395) is one of the most important contributors in both areas. And he also evaluates mutability more highly, albeit on the human level, than anyone before him. Gregory uses all the Greek terms for immutability interchangeably to distinguish God from creatures. He writes: The uncreated nature is incapable of admitting of such movement (kinήsewj) as is implied in turning (metabol¾n) or change (trop¾n) or alteration (ἀlloίwsin), while everything that subsists through creation has connection with change (ἀlloίwsin), inasmuch as the subsistence itself of the creation had its rise in change (ἀlloièsewj). 298

Immutability is the primary attribute of God in The Life of Moses 2.25. God is true being “which is always the same, neither increasing nor diminishing, immutable to all change whether to better or to worse, standing in need of nothing else, alone desirable.” 299 Immutability is also applicable to human life. In a passage he wrote against the neo-Arian Eunomius, Gregory connects faith in the unchangeable uncreated Trinity with the attainment of a “steadfast unalterable life” rather than a changeable one in which we are “tossed about by the waves of this lifetime of uncertainty and change.” 300 On the other hand, our ability to change distinguishes us from God in whose image we are made. “Alteration (treptÁj) is necessarily observable in man because man was an imitation of the divine nature, and unless some distinctive difference had been occasioned, the imitating subject would be entirely the same as that which it resembles.” 301 Al298

Cat. Or. 6 in James H. Srawley, The Catechetical Oration of Gregory of Nyssa 33–34. 299 SC 1, 3rd ed., 60. I am using the translation of Malherbe and Ferguson, Life of Moses. 300 Cat. Or. 39 in Srawley 156. 301 Cat. Or. 21 in ibid. 81. Discussions of immutability in Gregory include

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though created nature resembles the divine, “The uncreated nature is immutable (¥trepton) and always remains the same while the created nature cannot exist without change (ἀlloièsewj).” 302 God is radically distinguished from creatures because of divine immutability. What could be more Platonic? On the other hand, Gregory’s works contain a strand of thought about human perfection that shows the influence of a new anthropology. This has impressed a number of writers, especially Jean Daniélou. The world is “constantly being created, ever changing for the better in its growth in perfection” writes Gregory. In this process “no limit can be envisaged, nor can its progressive growth in perfection be limited by any term. In this way, its present state of perfection, no matter how great and perfect it might be, is merely the beginning of a greater and superior state.” 303 This growth in perfection is not automatic, and although change for the worse is always possible, the Word is a pedagogue or a guardian protecting us from change for the worse: Though we are changeable by nature, the Word wants us never to change for the worse; but by constant progress in perfection, we are to make our mutability an aid in our rise towards higher things, and by the very changeability of our nature to establish it immovably in good. 304

The reason for human mutability is endless progress in perfection. At the end of Gregory’s treatise on perfection, he eloquently states this remarkable idea, sounding virtually modern or post-modern. Jean Danielou’s Introduction to From Glory to Glory 48f.; “Le probleme du changement chez Grégoire de Nysse,” Archives de philosophie 29 (1966), 323– 47. This article is reprinted in his L’Etre et le temps chez Grégoire de Nysse 95– 115; E. Ferguson, “God’s Infinity and Man’s Mutability: Perpetual Progress According to Gregory of Nyssa,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 18 (1973), 57–78; Ronald E. Heine, Perfection in the Virtuous Life: A Study in the Relationship Between Edification and Polemical Theology in Gregory of Nyssa’s De Vita Moysis 46–61. 302 De op. hom. 16.12, 184C in PG 44; also Contra Eunomium (hereafter CE) 3.2.10 in Werner Jaeger, ed., Gregorii Nysseni Opera 2.55. I will refer to this edition as GNO. See also Life of Moses 2.2f. 303 Comm. in Cant. 6, GNO 6.174.8f.; J. Daniélou, From Glory to Glory 196–197. 304 Comm, in Cant. 8. GNO 6.252.9f.; Daniélou, From Glory to Glory 216.

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Therefore I do not think it is a fearful thing, I mean that our nature is changeable (treptὴn). The Logos shows that it would be a disadvantage for us not to be able to make a change (ἀlloίwsin) for the better, as a kind of wing of flight to greater things. Therefore, let no one be grieved if he sees in his nature a penchant for change (metabolὴn). Changing (ἀlloioύmenoς) in everything for the better, let him exchange “glory for glory” becoming greater through daily increase. 305

The limitlessness or infinity of God parallels human perfectibility, of which it is an analogue, and Gregory associates God’s infinity with divine incomprehensibility. “The characteristic of the divine nature is to transcend all characteristics.” God is true being, “inaccessible to knowledge, infinite, enclosed by no boundary,” so God can never be entirely seen. 306 “This truly is the vision of God; never to be satisfied in the desire to see him. But one must always, by looking at what he can see, rekindle his desires to see more. Thus no limit would interrupt growth in the ascent to God.” 307 Gregory’s theological epistemology is radical, especially in comparison to his Arian opponent Eunomius. More than any other thinker, he foreshadows the apophatic theology of Maximus the Confessor, whose Christology is influenced directly by Ps. Dionysius. Later I will argue that Maximus, coming at the end of the conciliar period in Christology, resolves the longstanding issue of divine immutability and impassibility in the Incarnation, and that his solution may relate to the epistemology of a post-modernity witnessing the rise of apophaticism. Gregory has been seen by at least one writer as a deconstructionist. Alden A. Mosshammer argues credibly that Gregory’s view of the divine being, Scripture, and the Incarnation, best takes account of the difference between God’s being and that of creatures, and

305

De Perfectione GNO 8.1.213.20–214.4. Hence Daniélou’s title. Vit. Mos. 2.234–36. 2.162. See E. Mühlenberg, Die Unendlichkeit Göttes bei Gregor von Nyssa; “Die philosophische Bildung Gregors von Nyssa in den Buchcen Contra Eunomium,” in Écriture et Culture Philosophique dan le Pensée de Grégoire de Nysse, ed. M. Harl 230–51; Robert S. Brightman, “Apophatic Theology and Divine Infinity in St. Gregory of Nyssa,” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 18 (1973), 97–114. 307 Vit. Mos. 2.234–36; 2.162. 306

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is able to avoid excessive literalism in the use of theological and scriptural language, as well as appeals to allegory. 308 Gregory’s theology is uncompromising in regard to God’s immutability because it functions as an ‘apophatic qualifier’ in its intimate connection to that which distinguishes God from creatures. Here he is very much a Platonist. Although immutability is linguistically negative, it nevertheless asserts the knowledge that God is mysterious to creatures by essence. Nevertheless, Gregory’s understanding of the descent of God in the Incarnation and of ἀπάqeia when applied to it, show the unmistakable influence of the narrative(s) of sacred history.

Ἀπάqeia In most places, Gregory tends to use ἀπάqeia in reference to all feelings and exalts the Christian attempt to attain it. Ἀπάqeia in its usual meaning pertains to the absence of all the passions, and Gregory inherits this usage from the tradition. 309 He does at times, however, give a positive evaluation of some human emotions. Desire (™piqumίa) is necessary, for example, if it is founded on the purity of the soul. Anger and rage and hatred should be aroused, like dogs guarding the gates, but only for resistance to sin. 310 In a comment from the sixth homily on the beatitudes, wrath is not completely forbidden. “For sometimes one may lawfully turn such an emotion to good use. The use of anger is often opportune, namely, whenever this passion is roused for the chastisement of sin.” 311 Norris believes that Gregory is of two minds about ἀpάqeia. Is pathos “a natural part of man’s God-given constitution” for him or a “perversion of this nature, i.e., vice?” For Norris Gregory’s position “reflects, in its very difficulties and apparent confusions, the logic of

308

Alden A. Mosshammer, “Disclosing but not Disclosed: Gregory of Nyssa as Deconstructionist,” in Drobner und Klock (eds.), Studien Zur Gregor Von Nyssa Und Der Christlichen Spätantike 99–123. 309 See Vit. Mos. 2.203; Cat. Or. 35:6.8. Walter Völker writes that “Die Apathielehre ist von zentraler Bedeutung in der Bildtheologie Gregors.” Gregor Von Nyssa Als Mystiker 259. 310 De Virginitate 18.2.16. See Michael Abineau’s Introduction to Traité de la Virginitaté SC 119, 166–71. 311 PG 44, 1276A.

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late Platonic speculation on the impassibility of the soul.” 312 Since we noticed the weakness of Plotinus’ attempt to explain how an impassible soul can experience emotions, this seems quite likely. Gregory simply inherited the confusion. However, the two-mindedness we will see regarding the Incarnate Word does not spring from philosophy, but rather, from Gregory’s reflection on the Incarnation.

THE INCARNATION One of Eunomius’s arguments against the divinity of the Word is that Jesus suffered and died on the cross, while the divine is impassible. Gregory states a principle reminiscent of the Ad Theopompum, as is this entire text: “Nothing is truly passion which does not tend to sin.” 313 He then distinguishes between pάqoς and ἔrgon, arguing that pάqoς is used improperly if it is applied to sinless desires, such as pain or fear of death. The ἀpάqeia of the Lord refers to divine sinlessness, not to divine impassibility in an absolute sense. 314 In other words, the impassibility of the Logos does not mean that Jesus did not suffer in any sense whatsoever. It only means that the divine is sinless. By implication, whatever feelings the Incarnate Son of God has as portrayed in the gospels, such as pity and anger, cannot be sinful. Such is Gregory’s Christological understanding of divine ἀpάqeia. Passion refers to sinful desires only, hence Jesus as God and as man is without passion. The Incarnation does not eliminate the human feelings of Jesus. Even more importantly, the Incarnation is an act of divine philanthropy, an act in which both the Father and Son share. This philanthropy is certainly felt with passion of some kind. To say that God is ἀpaqής means only that unruly disordered passions have no place in the divine, but it does not exempt God, as Origen put it, from the passion of love. The Incarnation is the supreme example of this passion.

312

R. A. Norris, Manhood and Christ: A Study in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia 34–35, n.4. Also Jean Daniélou, Platonisme et Théologie Mystique 99–110; Jerome Gaith, La Conception de la Liberté chez Grégoire de Nysse 60– 63. 313 CE 3,4,27, GNO 2.144. The same argument is in Or. Cat. 16. 314 The divine nature has ¢p£qeia in the generation of the Word in its non-incarnate reality. See CE 3.2.58F., GNO 2.71.

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The Life of Moses 2.28–30 suggests that the Logos changed because of the Incarnation. Exod 4:1–9 provides the context, the story of the two signs given to Moses that he was the Lord’s appointed. The second sign is the instantaneous contraction of leprosy on Moses’ hand after placing it in his bosom. His hand is cured by repeating the same action. This passage leads Gregory to reflect on Ps 76:11, which he interprets christologically. He writes: “Although the divine nature is contemplated in its immutability (ἀnalloίwtῳ), by condescension to the weakness of human nature it was changed (ἀlloiwqeίsης) to our shape and form.” 315 Returning to Exodus, Gregory suggests that the bosom of Moses signifies the bosom of the Father and the hand of Moses is the Logos. Thus “when he was manifested to us from the bosom of the Father, he was changed to be like us.” This was not the final change of the Word however. “After he wiped away our infirmities, he again returned to his own bosom the hand which had been among us and had received our complexion. (The Father is the bosom of the right hand.)” Gregory’s final comment attempts to preserve the divine immutability by assigning change solely to the human nature of Jesus. What is impassible by nature (ἀpaqὲj tÁj fύsewj) did not change (ºlloίwsen) into what is passible, but what is mutable and subject to passions (tÕ treptÒn te kaὶ ἔmpaqej) was transformed into impassibility (ἀpάqeian) through its participation in the immutable (¥trepton). 316

Here one sees clearly the Christological dilemma. In his polemic against Eunomius, Gregory argues that the divinity, hence the immutability of the Logos must be preserved, or there would be no divine condescension, no kέnwsij. If kέnwsij is lost, the essential mystery of faith disappears, faith in the elevation of the human to the divine through the emptying of the divine. “And this we declare to be the mystery of the Lord according to the flesh, that He who is immutable came to be in that which is mutable and to that end altering it for the better, and changing it from the worse.” 317 315

2.28. Malherbe and Ferguson, Life of Moses 61. 2.30, ibid. 62. 317 CE 3.3.52, GNO 2.126; also CE 3.2.39, GNO 2.65. See J. R. Bouchet, “La vocabulaire de l’union et du rapport des natures chez saint Grégoire de 316

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The Arian view of Incarnation brings no salvation because there is no master mingling with servants, but only a servant with other servants. Gregory’s own language of Incarnation and consequent elevation of human nature is very strong. He can write of the flesh of Christ being “transformed into the Godhead.” 318 Human nature mingles with the divine so that it becomes divine. “The Godhead empties Itself that it may come within the capacity of the human nature, and the human nature is renewed by becoming divine through its commixture with the divine.” 319 But there is no divine suffering as a result of the Incarnation. God’s lowering does not pollute God’s nature, but does divinize the humanity of Jesus. 320 Even though Gregory will not attribute change or feeling to God, he does have a positive view of these on the human level. Finite but unending progress in spiritual perfection on the human level parallels the divine infinity. Gregory like Athanasius before him is deeply impressed by the divine condescension of the Logos in the Incarnation. It means that God did suffer in some sense. Cyril will later use the phrase ‘impassible suffering’ for the Incarnate Logos. This will be seen by Cyril’s opponents as a contradiction, and they will accuse him of Arianism. In the fourth century, in a Commentary on the Psalms an obscure author from Alexandria suggests new terminology to overcome this apparent contradiction.

THE TURA COMMENTARY: AN OBSCURE CONTRIBUTION Philo had never used the term ἀnalloίwtoj for God in spite of clear philosophical precedent; neither is God ἀpaq»j. Both Clement and Origen commonly use these terms, although they sometimes vacillate. Clement writes of God “condescending to emotion on man’s account; for whose sake also the Word of God became man.” 321 And in one of his homilies Origen says that the Father and the Logos suffer from the

Nysse,” Revue Thomiste 68 (1968), 565. 318 CE 3.362f., GNO 2.130. 319 CE 3.3.67, GNO 2.131; also 3.4.43, GNO 2.150; for a brief accurate presentation of the manner of union in Gregory, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines 298–300. 320 CE 3.4.1f., GNO 2.134; also CE 3.14.17, GNO 2.140. 321 Paidagogos 1.8.62 in GCS 1, 133.

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passion of love for us. 322 Finally we noticed the Ad Theopompum of Gregory the Wonderworker attempting to work out the logic of divine suffering, and Gregory of Nyssa’s contribution which we discussed above. The Tura Commentary on the Psalms uses the term ἀlloίwsij to describe the divine kenosis in the Incarnation, insisting that change belonged not only to the humanity of Jesus but to the divine Logos as well. This obscure and non-influential Commentary presents a Christology that is one of the turning points in the tradition. It should be taken out of obscurity by contemporary theologians and explored. 323 Astutely, and based on the distinctions of Aristotle, the writer conceptualizes the divine manner of change in a way appropriate to God, something which has been attempted by modern process thinkers. If there is an appropriate way to think of divine change, we can understand the Incarnation in a way that is non-contradictory without lowering the Logos to creaturely status, as the Arians did, and without affirming divine change and suffering paradoxically as Athanasius did and as Cyril will later on. The Tura Commentary with astonishing originality, takes another path. Arians argued that the mutable and passible nature of the Word determined that it was not and could not be divine. Athanasius agreed that indeed, if Arius was correct about the Word’s mutability, his conclusion was likewise correct. But for Athanasius the Logos was immutable, ἀnalloίwtoj and ¥treptoj, therefore divine. Only the man Jesus could suffer and change. Who is the author of this commentary? The usual answer is Didymus the Blind (c.313–398), the famous pupil of Origen. The question of the authorship of works ascribed to Didymus is difficult. That he wrote the De Trinitate has been challenged since 1957. 324 Reynolds ar322

Hom. in Ezech. 6.6 in GCS 8, 384–85. Richard A. Layton, Didymus the Blind and his Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria 176, n.57 notices this but does not note its uniqueness. Michael Ghattas does better in “Die Christologie Didymos’ des Blinden von Alexandria in den Schriften von Tura,” 287–298. 324 L. Doutreleau, “Le De Trinitate est-il l’oeuvre de Didyme l’Aveugle?” Recherches de science religieuse 45 (1957), 514–57. For a complete discussion of the state of the question up to 1972, see A. Heron, Studies in the Trinitarian Writings of Didymus the Blind: His Authorship of the Adversus Eunomius IV–V and the De Trinitate 1–10. This work contains very little on the question of divine immutability (155–57) and nothing on the use of ¢lloίwsij in the 323

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gues convincingly that the Commentary on Ezechiel and the Commentary on the Psalms have essentially the same Christology, but does not notice that they diverge at a crucial point. Only the latter proposes that in the Incarnation the Word changes. 325 Bienert calls the commentary one of two “Kollegnachschrften” allowing for the authorship of an anonymous disciple of Didymus. 326 For my purpose the question of authorship is of slight importance. The author or authors of all the works attributed to Didymus, with the exception of the Commentary on the Psalms, has or have virtually the same understanding of divine impassibility and immutability as that of the Alexandrians in general, that neither can be attributed to the divine being. 327 The terminological contribution of the Commentary to the theological discussion of divine immutability has hitherto gone unappreciated by theologians in spite of the work of A. Gesché in the early 1960s. 328 Strangely enough, even recent literature on divine immutability and impassibility ignores it. Gesché affirmed the importance of the discussion of the human soul of Jesus in the Commentary, but thought that the term ἀlloίwsij in reference to the Incarnation was a “mot dangereux” because it seemed heterodox. 329 The Commentary seemed to depart from the unanimous teaching among the orthodox that the Word became flesh while remaining immutable and impassible. First of all, we will deal with the general discussions of ἀlloίwsij in the Commentary, then examine its application to the Incarnation. The first verses of two psalms in the Septuagint, Ps 33:1 and 44:1 use Psalm Commentary. 325 S. C. Reynolds, Man, Incarnation, and Trinity in the Commentary on Zechariah of Didymus the Blind of Alexandria chap. 3, p.36f. 326 W. Bienert, “Allegoria” und “Anagoge” bei Didymos dem Blinde von Alexandria 5.31. The other is the Commentary on Ecclesiastes. 327 Jürgen Hönsheid, Didymus der Blinde De Trinitate Buch 1, 1.14, p.40) paralleled exactly in Ps. Athan. PG 28, 1180C-1181A. Also Hönscheid, Didymus 1.74, p.166; 1.71 p.160; but see 1.33 p.78–79 as an exception: “He who is impassible became passible for us.” 1.24 p.58; 1.9 p.32; for De Spiritu Sancto see PG 39, 1036, 1041, 1044–45, 1083–84; Kata Manichaion ibid. 1088 and 1104; In Zach 5.35, SC 85 p.986; 1.10, SC 83 p.194; 2.192f., SC 84 p.515f. 328 My discussion is heavily indebted to his work. A. Gesché, La Christologie du “Commentaire sur les Psaumes” découvert à Toura; “L’âme humaine de Jésus dans la Christologie du IVème s. le témoignage du Commentaire sur les Psaumes découvert à Toura,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 54 (1959): 385–425. 329 La Christologie 243.

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the term. There is also a discussion of ἀlloίwsij at Ps 20:1 whose context is unclear since this verse does not have the word. I begin with this last text. It reads: “From Scripture and natural insight we suppose about God that God is ¥treptoj and ἀnalloίwtoj since whatever has no underlying quality neither changes nor alters (trέpetai, ἀlloioàtai).” 330 A case is then made for distinguishing between ¥treptoj and ἀnalloίwtoj, holding that the latter is a distinct type of change that is different from changes of becoming or of growth. Ἀlloίwsij is a metabolὴ kάta poίon, a change of quality. The author provides two examples of this type of change: movements from vice to virtue and from sickness to health. Other changes and movements such as becoming and growth are not changes of quality, but of being or of quantity. Ἀlloίwsij is distinctive, fundamentally different from other types of change, and unlike its usual understanding among the Fathers, not synonymous with any other term for change. At Ps 44:1, the author lists four distinct types of metabol» or kίnhsij: (1) change of becoming, for instance, from egg to bird and seed to corn; (2) change of corruption such as the corruption of the human body; (3) change of growth from small to large or large to small; (4) change of quality (poίon), which is ἀlloίwsij. 331 Here Gesché noted the influence of Aristotle’s Physics which distinguished four types of metabol» or kίnhsij: (1) change of being, either becoming or corruption; (2) change of quantity, either growth or perishing; (3) change of place, that is, motion; (4) change of quality (poίon), which is ἀlloίwsij. 332 There are obvious differences between the Commentary and the Physics, but the similarities are pronounced. The Commentary follows the Physics in using metabol» and kίnhsij synonymously. In other places in the same work Aristotle distinguished them, arguing that coming into being and corruption are instances of change but not of motion. 333 330

The edition of the Commentary is the five volumes of Didymos der Blinde, Psalmenkommentar (Tura Papyrus) in Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen ed. L. Doutreleau, A. Gesché, and M. Grönewald (Bonne: R. Habelt, 1968 and years following). This text is in v. 1, p.2. 331 v. 5, p.8. 332 200b, 34f. 333 Physics 192b, 15f., and 225b, 8–9. Also Physics 243a, 9–10 where three types of kίnhsij are mentioned, movement of place, quantity, and quality. See 224a, 21f.; 241a, 32.

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THE INCARNATION The Commentary applies the term ἀlloίwsij to the Incarnation because of a Christological interpretation of the word in the first verse of Psalm 33 and Psalm 44. In both cases the term evokes Ps 76:11 a passage that controls its usage. In the Septuagint Ps 33:1 reads: “A psalm of David, when he altered his face before Abimelech; and he let him go, and he departed.” The ºlloίwsen in reference to David’s face suggests that the change was voluntary. This is a metabol¾ poiÒthtoj, or qualitative change that brings to mind another ἀlloίwsij, the alteration of the face of the Savior in the assumption (lÁyij) of the form of a slave. 334 The alteration is not a metabol» from one form to another, but a concealment (™pίkruyij) of one form within another that is visible. There is a principle stated unequivocally: “Alteration (ἀlloίwsij) of the face (prosèpou) of the unchanging (ἀtrέptou) can occur.” This change brings Ps 76:11 to mind which reads “And I said, now I have begun, this is the alteration of the right hand of the Most High.” At the same time and perhaps somewhat inconsistently, God’s right hand is called ¥treptoj but also ἀnalloίwtoj. Presumably the writer is attempting to preserve the unchanging identity of the divine essence in spite of the change because of the Incarnation. “Eternally it is identical and the same,” he writes. “We do not mean anyone other than the Savior. How then does He change do we think? He descends to educate. For we are truly aided if he descends.” 335 However this important passage is translated, its force should not be weakened. God came to be enfleshed in a real way, and for the Commentary this indicates that some type of real change took place in God, specifically a change of quality, the quality of form (morφ»). This alteration is called a prόslhyij, and addition, or a “taking-to-oneself,” not a transformation (metabol»). “The Logos became flesh and took the form of a slave, altered himself not by a transformation as I have often said, but by addition (prόslhψin).” 336 Prόslhψij refers to the specific type of divine change that occurred in the Incarnation. In describing how the Logos changed, the author used Aristotle’s distinctions, but specifically in a Christian way, something we have often 334

vol. 3, p.202: ἀlloίwsin toῦ prosèpou toῦ swtÁroυ. vol. 5, p.202: σunkatabaίnei paideÚsa. 336 Psalmenkommentar v. 3, p.204. 335

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among the Fathers in their encounter with philosophy. For Aristotle, there are changes of qualities in the world at large, but never in the divine. For the Commentary, the Incarnation is an alteration of the divine Logos, a change of form or a taking-to-oneself without loss of divine essence. Ps 44:1 again brings Ps 76:11 to mind and the writer comments that the right hand of God is ἀlloίwtoj because of the economy of salvation, the Incarnation. 337 We thus have three different phrases expressing the qualitative alteration of the Word of God in the Incarnation. It is a change of form by which the invisible divinity is hidden in the human visible form; it is an addition to the divine self, or a takingto-itself of the human; it is a change for the sake of the economy of salvation, an enfleshment. 338 Obviously we do not see here a fully developed and systematic attempt to refine these notions, since it will take the Christological controversies of the fifth century and beyond to sift through these terms and meanings. But we do see a writer who in the light of the Incarnation, struggles to free Christian thought from complete dependence on the concepts and language of divine immutability taken from Greek philosophy. Gesché briefly examined various patristic texts to see whether there are any parallels for the Commentary’s Christological use of ἀlloίwsij. 339 Since there is no complete study of this question, no conclusion is possible. A look at several different interpretations of the three relevant psalm verses leads to some interesting discoveries however. Only two passages are truly parallel, one from Origen, and one whose authorship is problematic. The Origen passage is an exegesis of Ps 76:11 that states: “The right hand of the Most High is the Savior who altered himself, taking the form of a slave.” 340 The second passage says: “The Only-Begotten is said to be altered, not by a metabol», but by a prόslhysij.” 341 There is also a parallel in Gregory’s Life of Moses 2.28 cited above. In 2.30 however, Gregory makes it clear that the 337

ibid. 5, 192. oÙk ἀlloiωqeˆ kat¦ qeόthta ἀll¦ kat¦ tὴn oἰkonomίan kat¦ tὴn ™nanθrώpsin. 339 La Christologie p.252–60. 340 PG 12, 1540B: ºlloίwsin ˜autÕn morfὴn doÚlou labèn. 341 PG 69, 1192. 338

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change is only on our part, not on God’s, who is ¥treptoj kaὶ ἀpaq»j. In his own exegesis of Ps 44:1, Eusebius points out that so far as the Word is God, he is both ἀnalloίwtoj as well as ¥treptoj. 342 The text from Origen may suggest that the author of the Commentary, who is in some way historically dependent on him, went to Aristotle’s analysis of change to specify further how the immutable divine being was capable of the type of change that the Incarnation seemed to imply, a change which Origen himself marveled over as a young writer in his On First Principles. Whether this is true or not, the Commentary stands virtually alone in the fourth century, discovering among philosophical terms for change, one which seemed appropriate for the Incarnation. Gesché’s comment that these texts do nothing but express a fidelity to biblical vocabulary is quite correct, but it misses the significance of the contribution of the Commentary, which is to challenge the prevailing patristic Greek philosophical fidelity that made synonyms of ¥treptoj and ἀnalloίwtoj. 343

342 343

PG 23, 392B. La Christologie p.260.

5. THE LATINS: HILARY AND AUGUSTINE The issue of divine immutability and impassibility became important in the fourth century because of Arianism. If the Logos was changeable by nature and capable of suffering as a creature, it could not have divine status. The key-phrase here is “as a creature.” The usual assumption was that there could be no other form of suffering or change than the creaturely. Didymus the Blind (or his pupil) suggested an alternative to denying that God could change in the Incarnation. Instead he offers a linguistic/theological solution by adapting one of Aristotle’s types of change to the divine descent. The Commentary on the Psalms from Tura uses the term ¢lloίwsij for the Incarnation, arguing that the divine can undergo a change of quality without a change of essence. Neither Hilary of Poitiers (d. 367) nor St. Augustine saw any such possibility, perhaps because they had no Aristotle to consult. Hilary states many times that the Logos is unchangeable and impassible. For he was able to suffer, and yet the Word was not passible. Passibility denotes a nature that is weak; but suffering is the endurance of pains inflicted, and since the Godhead is immutable and yet the Word was made flesh, such pains found in Him a material which they could affect though the person of the Word had no infirmity or passibility. And so when he suffered his nature remained immutable, because like his Father, his person is of an impassible essence, though it is born. 344

This view appears several times in the De Trinitate. “God, I am sure, is subject to no change. His eternity does not admit of defect or amendment, of gain or of loss.” 345 In a discussion of divine generation, 344 345

De Synodis 49, PL 10. 516B–517A. De Trinitate 3.13, CCL 62.84, lines 2–4.

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Hilary connects immutability with impassibility and divine perfection: “God being impassible cannot be divided, for if he must submit to be lessened by division, he is subject to change and will be rendered imperfect if his perfect substance leaves him to reside in the severed portion.” 346 Although Hilary is unwavering on this point, several of his Christological texts show an inconsistency when he interprets Phil 2:6–8, the Pauline kenotic hymn which had such an important effect on the Christology of the fourth century, and later on Cyril of Alexandria. Hilary not only defends the divine unchanging nature of the Logos against the Arians. He tries to develop a theology of divine kenosis as well, as does Augustine later on, inconsistent though this dual aim sometimes appears in both writers. 347 In several passages of De Trinitate, Hilary argues that the Incarnation involved a true evacuatio of the divine forma. “He emptied himself of the form of God, that is, of that wherein He was equal with God,” he writes. 348 The two forms of God and the servant, do not coexist. The obedience of death has nothing to do with the form of God, just as the form of God is not inherent in the form of a servant, nor could He who was abiding in the form of God, take the form of a servant without emptying himself, since the combination of the two forms would be disharmonious. 349

In spite of the loss of the forma dei, the divine nature remains so that Jesus is truly divine. “The Incarnation is summed up in this, that the whole Son, that is his manhood as well as his divinity, was permitted by the Father’s gracious favor to continue in the unity of the Father’s nature.” 350 The divine nature did not cease to exist but was “exercising its proper power in the fashion of the humility it assumed.” 351 346 ibid. 4.4.104, lines 25–28. See also 3.15; 3.16; 4.8; 5.17; 5.34; 6.2; 6.17; 10.2; 11.47. 347 For a historical summary of kenotic Christology, see the comprehensive article by P. Henry, “Kénose,” Dictionnaire de la Bible Supplément 5, 7– 161. 348 “Exinavit autem se ex dei forma, id est ex eo quod aequalis Deo erat.” De Trin. 8.45, CCL 62A, 358, 17. 349 De Trin. 9.14 in ibid. 385. Disharmonious = “non conveniente sibi.” 350 De Trin. 9.38, ibid. 412, 11. 351 De Trin. 9.51, ibid. 429, 28–29. Also 10.7; 10.15, 19, 20.

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The interpretation of Phil 2:6–8 leads Hilary to distinguish between the divine form and divine nature. The divine form is left behind in the Incarnation, while divine nature is preserved, and this implies some type of divine mutability. Yet as we have seen so often in the tradition, he is not completely consistent on this point. In De Trinitate 10.22, Hilary reverses his position and argues from that point on that the two forms, that of God and of the servant, could and indeed did coexist. From 10.22 on, there is no distinction between forma and natura at all: “Thus it was just as true that he received the form of a slave as that he remained in the form of God” he writes. 352 Hilary is adamant about this reversal. In 10.22 he seems to have suddenly grasped the importance of the issue. Distinguishing between the two forms invites reflection which, without the distinction made in the Tura Commentary or a similar one, leads to a denial of divine immutability, hence of the divinity of the Word. If he did so, Hilary would have fallen into the hands of his Arian opponents. This reversal is coupled with a Christology that appears somewhat docetic. So the man Jesus Christ, only-begotten God, as flesh and as Word at the same time Son of Man and Son of God, without ceasing to be himself, that is, God, took true humanity after the likeness of our humanity. But when, in this humanity, he was struck with blows or smitten with wounds, or bound with ropes, or lifted on high, he felt the force of suffering, but without its pain. 353

Although for Hilary the body of Jesus was human, it could not feel pain. He did not eat and drink out of necessity, but as a concession to us. 354 These comments have occasioned much scholarly interest. 355 Galtier explains the inconsistent use of forma by distinguishing a broad and a narrow sense of the term. In the proper and narrow sense of the 352

De Trin. 10.22, ibid. 476, 24–27. 10.23. “ineptum passionis, non tamen dolorem passionis inferrent” in ibid. 477, 1–7. 354 De Trin. 10.24. Also 10.28, 35, 44. 355 See the summary of literature on this up to 1966 in C. F. A. Borchardt, Hilary of Poitiers’ Role in the Arian Struggle 117–130; also Paul Galtier, Saint Hilaire de Poitiers 121–41; “In forma Dei et forma servi selon saint Hilaire,” Recherches de science religieuse 48 (1960): 101–18; A. Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition 1, 396f. 353

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divine forma as glorious and majestic, there can be no coexistence with the form of the servant. But in the broad sense the two can coexist. 356 Yet Galtier does not notice the connection in the text of De Trinitate between the shift away from the first narrow meaning of forma dei as a state of divine being which was set aside, to the second meaning in which the divine and human form can coexist, and how this shift results in Hilary’s somewhat docetic Christology. The shift of meaning and the docetic comments not only occur together in the text, but are certainly related. As soon as the divine form and divine nature become equivalent in 10.22, the divine form begins to overshadow the form of the servant, hence the human nature of Christ. If there is in fact, no real evacuatio in the Incarnation, divine power overcomes the weaknesses of human nature. The Christological developments of the next century will emphasize the full humanity of a Christ who ate because he was hungry, drank because he was thirsty, and experienced the fullness of innocent human suffering and death. In his later writings Hilary appears to modify his position about the full humanity of Jesus. 357 Yet although he did not modify his understanding of divine immutability and impassibility in the light of the Incarnation, he did appreciate the Christological importance of Phil 2:6–8.

AUGUSTINE ON DIVINE IMMUTABILITY Even a surface reading shows that Augustine is “intransigent in his contention that God is absolutely immutable.” 358 To a large extent this is due to the influence of his Neo-Platonic understanding of God. 359 Indeed for Augustine, immutability may have been God’s most important attribute, “the basis on which other attributes rest, the root from which they spring.” 360 Many passages suggest that this is the case. 361 356 357

517.

358

Paul Galtier, Saint Hilaire 130. See especially Trac. in Ps. 53:7, CSEL 22, 140; De Synodis 49, PL 10, 516–

Bernard J. Cooke, “The Mutability-Immutability Principle in St. Augustine’s Metaphysics,” Modern Schoolman 24 (November, 1946), 43. 359 R. Holte, Beatitude et sagesse: saint Augustin et la problème de la fin de l’homme dans la philosophie ancienne. 360 Cooke, “The Mutability-Immutability,” 42. Not everyone agrees as Cook indicates. Some think divine simplicity lies at the root of Augustine’s conception of God, others that divine spirituality is the key. It is likely that

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Whether true or not, we are dealing with a central affirmation. It is one that cannot be revised without calling into question the theological adequacy of his entire conception of God, and Augustine’s Christology as we will see later. Augustine’s reasons for insisting on divine immutability are many. Absolute immutability grounds the immutability of truth; 362 it also distinguishes God from all creatures, including the soul and angels that are spiritual like God; 363 it is essential to God’s perfection; 364 and God is immutable because of being eternally beyond time. 365 Because God cannot change, God is impassible. Contrary to some biblical passages, God cannot have feelings according to Augustine. The Bible and the Christian tradition have characteristically attributed these to God, even “unworthy” feelings such as wrath, jealousy, and regret for a past decision. These became acutely problematic for Augustine as they were for Christian writers before him. 366 Tertullian’s main opponent here was Marcion, who denied the goodness of the God of the Old Testament outright. Divine wrath, jealousy, and the none of God’s attributes is the root of all the others, but that they are mutually implicative. 361 Martin Grabmann, Die Grundaken des heiligen Augustinus über Seele und Gott; M. Schaus, Die psychologische Trinitätslehre des heiligen Augustinus 90f.; W. P. Tolley, The Idea of God in the Philosophy of St. Augustine. 362 De doctrina Christiana 1.8.8, CCL 32,11; Conf. 12.25.34–35, CCL 27, 234–36; De libero arbitrio 2, ch. 3ff., CCL 29, 239f. 363 De Civ. 4.31 in CCL 47, 126: 8:5 in ibid. 222 states that ascribing the mutability of the soul to the divine nature is “nefas.” In 8.6, ibid. 223 he argues divine simplicity and immutability simultaneously. Also 11.10, CCL 48, 330. 364 Conf. 7.17.23, CCL 27, 107; 13.16.19, ibid. 252; De Trin. 5.2.3, CCL 50, 208; De Civ. 12.1–2, CCL 48, 355–57. 365 De Civ. 7.22 in CCL 47, 203. This is especially clear where Augustine defends God’s eternal immutable foreknowledge and will, such as De Civ. 5.9 in CCL 47, 136–140; Enchiridion 95–104, CCL 46, 99–107; De Div. 11.21, CCL 48, 339; 12.17, ibid. 373. See Wilma Gundersdorf Von Jess, “Divine Eternity in the Doctrine of St. Augustine,” Augustine Studies 6 (1975), 75–96. In the second section of her dissertation she argues convincingly that all God’s attributes are melded or blended into one another by Augustine, The Divine Attributes in the Thought of St. Augustine. 366 See Cornelius Meyer, ed. “Affectus,” in Augustinus-Lexicon vol. 1, 166– 180.

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arbitrary ability to change the divine mind and will were characteristics unworthy of the Father of Jesus. For Augustine, the Manichees raised this question in somewhat the same way. In this cult, “the stern Jehovah of the Hebrews was rejected as a malevolent demon.” 367 Augustine must show that God does not have unworthy feelings because God is perfect and does not change, but he also needs to defend the Old Testament against Manichean criticism. He does this very consistently, by rejecting all literal rendering of the divine emotions, whether worthy or not. Love and mercy are not felt as emotions by God. No feeling whatsoever is appropriate to the divine essence. God is impassible because God is immutable.

GOD’S WRATH Augustine’s favorite explanation for God’s anger as portrayed in Scripture is that it is the divine punishment for sin, but has no perturbatio accompanying it. God judges and condemns the sinner while feeling nothing: “We must take care to understand that the anger of God is free from any turbulent emotion; for His anger is an expression for His just method of taking vengeance; as the law might be said to be angry when its ministers are moved to punish by its sanctions.” 368 God’s anger is only “just retribution,” but not “perturbation of the mind.” 369 Divine anger is not like ours because ours is irrational. 370 The power that God has to punish sinners is called anger only “metaphorically from custom.” 371 It is “transferred by analogy from human emotions,” 372 and it applies to “the effect of His vengeance, not to the disturbing mental affection.” 373 The fact that God is said to be angry is “an abuse of the word, or a peculiarity of idiom.” 374 Because God 367

Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography 50. For an excellent discussion of Augustine’s biblical interpretation, see H. I. Marrou, St. Augustin et la fin de la culture antique 469–503. 368 Enarr. in Ps. 82.12 in CCL 39, 1144. See J.-C. Fredouille, “Sur la colere divine: Jamblique et Augustin,” Recherches Augustiniennes 5 (1968). Fredouille lists approximately twenty Augustinian texts on divine anger on p.8–9. 369 De Trin. 13.16, CCL 50a, 411. 370 Quest. in Hept. 2.10, CCL 33, 72; De patientia 1.1, PL 40, 611. 371 Enarr. in Ps. 105.32, CCL 40, 1565. 372 Enchir. 10.33, CCL 46, 68. 373 De Civ. 9.5, CCL 47, 254; Enchir. 29.112, CCL 46, 109. 374 Contra Faust. 22.18, CSEL 25, 607.

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knows from all eternity those upon whom punishment will fall, he need not respond temporally and mutably to their sins as they are committed. His anger is only a “just and fixed” condemnation of sinners. 375 The anger of God is not a disturbing emotion of His mind, but a judgment by which punishment is inflicted upon sin. His decision is as inflexible as his prescience is certain.” 376 Augustine occasionally gives other interpretations that remove it altogether. Sometimes it is a human anger felt by a holy soul that sees the divine law broken by a sinner. It could also be an obscuring of the mind of the sinner. 377 Augustine gives this psychological explanation most persuasively in his last text on the subject: When God is said to change His will, as when, e.g., He becomes angry with those to whom He was gentle, it is rather they than He who are changed, and they find Him changed in so far as their experience of suffering at His hand is new, as the sun is changed to injured eyes, and becomes as it were fierce from being mild, and hurtful from being delightful, though in itself it remains the same as it was. 378

One cannot help but note the absence of Christological explanations for divine anger in Augustine. Gospel texts that show that Jesus was angry are a clue as to the reality of God’s wrath as embodied in human form. Hence his problem with divine wrath is concerned with the Old Testament, and is mainly philosophical. Uncharacteristic of Augustine’s discussions of divine anger is yet another suggestion. God’s anger is another word for human existence. “For God’s anger is this mortal life, in which man is made like to vanity, and his days pass as a shadow.” 379 The wrath of God is the punishment of death for Adam’s sin, as well as all the evils of life that precede death, evils which will be done away with in the afterlife. Our present life is “full of temptation, cares, bodily sorrows, and indigences. We are mutable and feeble even 375

Epist. 190.10, CSEL 57, 145. De Civ. 15.25, CCL 48, 493. 377 Enarr. in Ps. 2.4, CCL 38, 4. 378 De Civ. 22.2, CCL 48, 807. Also De Trin. 5.16.17, CCL 50, 227. J.-C. Fredouille, “Sur la colere,” 10. 379 De Civ. 21.24, CCL 48, 790–791. See L. Pinomaa, “Der Zorn Gottes. Eine dogmengeschictliche Übersicht,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 17 (1940), 603. 376

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when we are healthy, because we are not yet fully healthy.” 380 Augustine’s usual explanation for God’s anger, however, is that it is an idiomatic and metaphorical term for the punishment of sinners that God eternally foreknows and immutably wills.

GOD’S REPENTANCE Especially problematic for Augustine as in the Fathers generally, are biblical passages stating that God repents for a former decision. Gen 6:7 visualizes the creator of the world regretting the creation of the sinful human race: “I repent that I made humanity.” 1 Sam 15:11 and 15:35 portray God regretting that Saul became king. God rejects Saul and chooses David. A third case is that of the Ninevites. “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.” 381 These texts imply that God can change when events in the world change. Let us recall Tertullian’s solution based on the Greek term met£noia. Only a simple change of prior purpose or change of mind is involved, which does not necessarily imply a previous error on God’s part. Tertullian admitted that God could change the divine mind, seeing it as a prerogative of a perfect being, rather than as an imperfection. But Augustine deals with the text in the light of his belief in absolute immutability, as well as with the troubling Latin phrase poenitet me, with its explicit reference to sorrow for a former decision. Neither sorrow nor error can be in God. 382 It is here that Augustine gives his most radical pronouncement about some texts of Scripture. Passages such as these do not properly express the divine nature. Properly expressive passages are found only rarely in Scripture. 383 One such text is Exod 3:14 which he thought referred to God’s metaphysical essence. Repentance is simply impossible for God, since complete foreknowledge and regret for a decision cannot coexist. Therefore, we deny divine repentance! 384 That something could be temporally added 380

Enarr. in Ps. 37.5, CCL 38, 384–85. Jonah 3:10; also Amos 7:3 and 6; Jer 18:8; 1 Chr 21:15a; Ps 106:45. 382 He writes: “Non enim dolorem paenitentiae patitur Deus, aut in aliquo fallitur, ut velit corrigere in quo erravit.” Enarr. in Ps. 131.18, CCL 40, 1920. 383 “Raro point scriptura divina.” De Trin. 1.1.2, CCL 50, 29. 384 “Negamus poenitentiam.” De div. quest. ad Simpl. 2.2.2, CCL 44, 76. 381

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to God’s knowledge is absurdissimum atque falsissimum he writes. God does not repent. Later in this same passage, Augustine writes that God repents in some ineffable manner, lessening the shock of the denial. 385 Augustine also offers less radical solutions. In one of his best discussions of divine repentance, he explains how the biblical references to God’s emotions are improper expressions, just like those that refer to God’s feet, face, hands, and eyes. Such expressions are used because of custom, and because of the poverty of human language. The inspired authors knew full well that God did not literally have emotions, or a body. God’s hand is the power of operation; divine feet signify the power of governing and caring for all things; ears and eyes refer to the power of perception and of knowledge; God’s face is the power by which the divine is manifested in the world. By the same reasoning, divine repentance is the divine providence by which the world is calmly administrated by God. Specifically, God’s repentance refers to those things that providentially pass out of existence contrary, not to the divine wishes, but to ours. 386 In another text Augustine gives the same type of solution, arguing that divine repentance is our perception of a specific type of providence. “The repentance of God refers to things ruled by his power that change unexpectedly for us.” 387 Divine repentance is like God’s anger, only something we perceive but not something real in God. All of Augustine’s interpretations of the repentance passages suggest either outright denial of their literal truth, or that divine repentance is only a subjective perception of ours, a perception of a providence that is eternally unchanging. In discussing Jonah 3:10, he says that God is not uncertain about the repentance of the Ninevites, but only seems so. 388 Regarding Gen 6:7, he reaffirms the doctrine that God does not change, and the divine judgment only appears to change, that is, to us. 389 God exchanged Saul for David thereby changing his works, but changing them “through his own immutable will.” 390 The 385

2.2.2, ibid. 77. Also 2.2.5, ibid. 80–81. De div. quaest. 52 in CCL 48A, 83. 387 Contra advers. Legis et Prophet. 1.20.40 in PL 42, 627. 388 “Aliter quidem videtur hominibus, et aliter visum est Deo.” Enarr. in Ps. 50.11, CCL 38, 607. 389 Sermo 22.6, CCL 40, 296. 390 Enarr. in Ps. 131.18 in CCL 40, 1920. In support of this interpretation he cites Ps 109 (110):4. He cites this verse in the same context in Contra ad386

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divine decisions are immutable, like the divine being, but can appear to change to us.

DIVINE JEALOUSY The divine jealousy of Scripture was also difficult for Augustine. 391 Exod 20:2; 34:15; Deut 4:24 and 2 Cor 11:2 along with several other texts cause problems for earlier Christian writers in debates with Marcionites. Here as in the case of repentance, Augustine’s choice is clear. He must either deny that God can become jealous, or, less radically, interpret God’s jealousy as some quality that does not contradict immutability and impassibility. Augustine generally follows the latter course, describing God’s jealousy as eternal unchanging providence or justice when applied to certain specific situations. We cannot deny God’s jealousy, he writes, because it is found in Scripture. But we must believe in it in some way that is far removed from the human case of jealousy. We must find another way to understand God’s jealousy. Since the anger of god is not a mental disturbance but a power to punish, his jealousy is not the excruciating emotion that accompanies marital jealousy, but tranquil and sincere justice and providence. 392 At times Augustine comes closer to a literal understanding of God’s jealousy than he does for any other ‘unworthy’ emotion and seems to want to defend it. If one purges jealousy of all unworthy qualities, it can be applied to God. God is jealous “as when diligence is manifested in guarding conjugal chastity, in which sense it is profitable for us not only unhesitatingly to admit but thankfully to assert that God is jealous of his people when He calls them His wife.” 393 In another anti-Manichean text, Augustine affirms his general principle that “nothing is able to be said that is worthy of God.” 394 A vers. Legis et Prophet. 1.20.40 in PL 42, 627. See also De Civ. 14.11 in CCL 48, 431. 391 For a general discussion see Pierre Adnes, “Jealousie de Dieu,” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 8, 79–93. 392 Contra Adim. Man. Discipl. 11, CSEL 25, 136. Also Contra Advers. Legis et Prophet. 1.20.40, PL 42, 627. In this latter text divine jealousy = divine providence. 393 Contra Faust. 22.18, CSEL 25, 607. 394 Contra Adim. Man. Discipl. 13, CSEL 25, 144.

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prime example is the statement that the Word of God came down from heaven even though it cannot move from place to place, being present everywhere. If we remove error and sorrow from our understanding of jealousy, nothing remains except the will to guard chastity and to condemn conjugal corruption. What better word is there to express the will of God to keep us from loving corrupt things, his will to love our chastity, and to punish our unchastity? For a God “who is not jealous does not love.” 395 The consuming fire that is combined with jealousy in Deut. 4:24 is God’s love for us and his jealousy is part of that love. God’s jealousy can also be seen as the providential manner in which the soul is turned away from temporal things toward the divine, a ‘preventive’ providence so to speak. This also prevents the worship of false gods by the soul. While defending God’s jealousy and sensing its propriety when purged of unworthy feelings, given his strong sense of divine immutability and impassibility, Augustine reduces it, like God’s anger to some aspect of unchanging providence or divine justice. 396

GOD’S LOVE AND MERCY At the end of his long and well-known discussion of time in Book 11 of the Confessions, Augustine writes: Therefore, just as in the beginning you have known heaven and earth without change in your knowledge so too ‘in the beginning you made heaven and earth’ without any difference in your activity. Whosoever understands this, let him confess it to you, and whosoever does not understand it, let him confess it to you. 397

Later in Book 12 he distinguishes four types of priority which might apply to that of God over creation, then states that the type that God has is rarely seen and difficult to conceive. 398 While he does give a solution to this question in The City of God, the deeper problem that he must resolve is how to describe the ongoing relation between God

395

ibid. 146. ibid. 7. 129; also De div. quaest. 52, CCL 44A, 83. 397 Conf. 11.31.41, CCL 27, 216. 398 Conf. 12.29.40, ibid. 239. 396

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and creatures without making God mutable and passible. 399 Does God’s relationship to creatures begin to be for God as well as for creatures? Is God continuously affected by it? And above all, what does it mean to say that God loves and forgives as well as creates in time? De Trinitate 5.16.17 answers these questions systematically. God does become the Lord of creation and the Lord of Israel, but there is no change involved. Only new relations come into being, such as that of a carpenter to a wooden chest that he makes. But then Augustine denies that God is related to his work as carpenter. His first example is that of friendship, which cannot be pressed for an obvious reason: it necessitates reciprocity. Secondly God is to creation as money is to either a pledge or a price, undergoing no change in itself because of being one or the other, or both simultaneously. The relation between God and creatures can begin to be in time, although nothing happens to the substance of God. In the same way, money can begin to be a price (that is, related to something with a price on it) or a pledge (related to something or someone to whom it is owed) without itself becoming anything different. The amount, so to speak, is set. “O Lord,” it is said, “you are our refuge.” God becomes a refuge only so far as we are concerned, but not so far as God is concerned. Did something happen in God’s nature that was not happening before we took refuge?” No. There is a change in us but not in God. God begins to be our Father when we are regenerated by divine grace. But there is a change only in us, not in God. Augustine states the theological principle that applies to all cases of the divine in its relation to creatures: Therefore, anything that begins to be said of Him in time, which had not been attributed to Him previously, is evidently spoken of relatively, but such expressions are not used according to an accident of God, as though something new had taken place in Him, but plainly according to an accident of that creature with whom God, according to our manner of speaking, entered a relationship. 400

God cannot begin to love someone. When we find God, we only say that God begins to love us, but this is incorrect if taken literally. 399 400

De Civ. 4–6, CCL 48, 323–26. De Trin. 5.16.17, CCL 50, 227.

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“He loved and predestined all his saints before the constitution of the world.” God does not begin to love us without loving us eternally. “So, too, when we speak of Him as being gentle towards the good; it is they who are changed, not He; just as light is painful to weak eyes and pleasing to strong eyes, namely, by their change, not its own.” In another passage, Augustine collapses the relation of love between God and the world into God’s giving being to creatures. 401 The solution to the problem of how an immutable creator can create a mutable world, then, resolves the problem of God’s love as well, by reducing both, which Thomas Aquinas will do later, to a change on the creature’s part. How does God love us he asks? So that God might use and enjoy us? Never! If God enjoys us, God needs us, and no sane person would say that. God is our every good, and our every good comes from God. Therefore God does not enjoy us because God does not need us. Yet God does use us. For if God does neither, Augustine writes, I cannot discover how God loves us! He then hastens to add that God cannot use us in the way that we use created things. Divine use is connected to divine goodness. It can only mean that “because he is good, we are, and in so far as we are, we are good.” Instead of God enjoying us, or making use of us in some way that these words imply, God causes us to exist, and that is what it means to say that God loves us.

DIVINE MERCY Since God cannot truly feel love for his creatures, neither can he feel mercy. Human mercy is accompanied by a feeling of misery of heart, miser-icordia, which God cannot have. Human misery of heart accompanies the feelings of mercy or compassion, because by means of human compassion, one shares the misery of the one pitied. 402 It is impos401

De doctrina Christiana 1.31.34, CCL 32, 26. Contra Adimant. Man. Discipl. 11, CSEL 25, 137; De div. quaest. 2.2.3, CCL 44, 79; Contra Advers. Legis et Prophet. 1.20.40, PL 42, 627. In De Civ. 9.5, CCL 47, 254 he writes: “What is mercy but a certain feeling of compassion is our hearts evoked by the misery of another and compelling us to offer all possible aid?” See Theodore Koehler, “Misercorde,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 10, 1322–23. He rightly stresses the importance of divine mercy for Augustine, but God cannot literally have such a feeling “evoked by the misery of another” lest the divine becomes passible and mutable. 402

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sible for the divine essence to be disturbed by such an emotion, worthy as it is: With regard to pity, if you take away the compassion which involved a sharing of misery with him whom you pity, so that there remains the peaceful goodness of helping and freeing from misery, some kind of knowledge of the divine pity is suggested. 403

God experiences the peaceful goodness of helping and freeing from misery, and this gives some meaning to divine mercy. Yet the most obvious interpretation is that this is no feeling at all, and that the divine mercy is reduced, as in the cases above, to God’s giving of being to those who are saved. God’s peaceful goodness is the eternally foreknown and predestined giving of grace to the saints. The ability to help and to free creatures from misery can be only God’s eternal predestination of some souls before the constitution of the world, which is equivalent to the giving of their existence in grace. 404 God’s mercy is nontemporal. Augustine describes divine emotions in summary fashion in the following way: God’s repentance is not because of error; his anger has no ardor of a perturbed mind; his mercy does not have the compassionate misery suggested by the Latin term; the jealousy of God has no spite of mind. But the repentance of God refers to things ruled by his power which change unexpectedly for us; the anger of god is the punishment of sin; the mercy of God is the goodness of helping; the jealousy of God is providence which does not allow those which it has subdued to love with impunity what it prohibits. 405

There is a difference between a denial that God can repent, and the idea that an unexpected and perceptible change in human affairs ruled by providence appears to be a divine change of will toward us, although such is not really the case. Also there is a difference between denying that God can be jealous at all, and interpreting jealousy as di403

De div. quaest. 2.2.3, CCL 44, 79. Contra Advers. Legis et Prophet. 1.20.40, PL 42, 627. See also De div. quaest. 1.2.7, CCL 44, 31–32 where God’s mercy precedes faith and is not a response at all. Also Retract. 1.24, PL 32, 626. 405 Contra Advers. Legis et Prophet. 1.20. 40, PL 42, 627. 404

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vine justice and providence in general, and a difference between an outright rejecting of an angry God and the reduction of divine anger to our perception, or to divine punishment. Finally, because God predestines us for salvation, God can validly be said to love us and to have mercy on us. Augustine defends these scriptural characteristics of God by placing them in our perception, or by reducing them to impassible divine qualities of providence, justice, punishment, or God’s eternal action towards us that does not involve changes.

AUGUSTINE ON THE INCARNATION Augustine recalls in the Confessions his former Photinian view of Jesus and the Apollinarian understanding of Alypius. 406 In referring to his own Christology Augustine wrote: “I had not even an inkling of the meaning of the mystery of the Word made flesh.” Christ was subject to change, and the “Word cannot suffer change, as by now I knew in so far as I was able to know it. In fact I had no doubt of it at all.” Thus Christ was only the perfect man “because in him human nature had reached the highest point of excellence and he had a more perfect share of divine wisdom.” But this, he realized later, was a heretical view. From reading the Platonists Augustine had already learned about the existence of the Logos of John’s Prologue, but not about the divine descent and Incarnation. “The books also tell us that your onlybegotten Son abides forever in eternity with you; that before all times began, he was; that he is above all time and suffers no change.” 407 But Platonists do not teach the most important truth, that which grounds both humility and charity. In reading these books “was I not without charity, which builds its edifice on the firm foundation of humility, that is, on Jesus Christ? But how could I expect that the Platonist books would ever teach me charity?” 408 We should pause here to reflect on the profound nature of this insight, the connection between the practice of Christian charity and humility, and belief in the Incarnation, its primary paradigm. We have not only the words of Jesus and the various ethical injunctions on love to ponder in the tradition, but an ultimate theological reason for Christian love. Since God lowered divinity to the human level out of 406

Conf. 7.19.26, CCL 27, 108–9. Conf. 7.9.13–14, CCL 27, 101–2. 408 Conf. 7.20.26, ibid. 110. 407

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love for sinful humanity, so ought Christians to lower themselves for one another. In Augustine’s case as a reader of philosophy, discovering the work of the intellect in the light of the Incarnation is crucial. All intellectual endeavor is in and of itself nothing but a work of pride, and is bereft of charity and humility unless seen through the lens of the Incarnation. In spite of the absence of charity in the Platonist writings, “these books served to remind me to return to my own self.” 409 They led Augustine to a vision of the divine that he described as the seeing of a transcendent creative light and the hearing of a voice saying “I am the God who Is.” Yet importantly, there is something missing in this revelation that he discovers in a passage from Paul to which he refers in Book 8. The Word made flesh brings the gift of grace and forgiveness of sin, and subsequent freedom of the will. Augustine stresses the importance of the Incarnation in three different places in the early Cassiciacum writings. Philosophers would never have found the truth unless God willed in clemency to send the divine intellect down to a human body. 410 As Robert O’Connell puts it, “In all three instances where, at Cassiciacum, this union of divinity and humanity is expressly referred to, the stress is placed on the enormous divine condescension involved.” 411 Augustine returns to this theme again and again through his corpus. The divine lowering teaches humility and this is another truth unknown to philosophy. 412 The saving water of humility is not found among Epicureans, Stoics, Manichees, or Platonists. Although they may discover good precepts of custom and discipline, they will never find humility. This comes only from Christ who became humble even to death on the cross. 413

409

Conf. 7.10.26, ibid. 103. Contra Acad. 3.19.42.15–16, CCL 29, 60–61. Also De Ordine 2.9.27, ibid. 122; 2.5.16, ibid. 116. 411 R. J. O’Connell, Augustine’s Early Theory of Man 265. 412 Epis. 118.3.22–4.24, CSEL 34, 2, 686. 413 “Haec via ab illo est, qui cum esset altus, humilis venit. Quid enim aliud docuit humiliando se, factus oboediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem cruces? Quid aliud docuit nisi hanc humilitatem?” Enarr. in Ps. 31, 18 exposition 2, CCL 38, 239. 410

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The humility exhibited by the Word in the Incarnation is the cure for pride, the worst of all sins. Only divine humility is the true medicine for superbia. 414 Augustine states this at times quite strongly: Pride is the source of all diseases, because pride is the source of all sins. Therefore, that the cause of all diseases might be cured, namely pride, the Son of God came down and was made humble. Why are you proud, o man? God was made humble for you. Perhaps you would be ashamed to imitate a humble man; at least imitate a humble God. 415

Gerald Bonner sees quite correctly that for Augustine “it is the humility of Christ which is the most striking feature of the Incarnation.” 416 The core of Christian faith in the Deus Incarnatus is an acceptance of the divine descent in Jesus of Nazareth. Augustine cites Phil 2:6–8 more than two hundred times in the De Trinitate alone. In his entire corpus he cites or alludes to this passage nearly one-thousand times! Did this cause Augustine to rethink his Plotinian view of the divine being as immutable and impassible? To that question the answer must be a resounding no. This answer conflicts with an article by William Mallard on the Incarnation in Augustine 417 Mallard sees correctly that the Cassiciacum passages and Confessions Book 7 imply divine lowering, and concludes that “The Incarnation of God thus suggests the mutability of God.” 418 But we will see how fervently Augustine is committed to the view that God cannot change. Mallard suggests that Augustine reconciled divine humility with immutability by revising his idea of divine perfection so that “the characteristic of tending to lower himself could be considered a perfection of God and therefore reconcilable on an unexpected level with divine immutability.”

414

Sermo 77.7.11, PL 38, 488. Enarr. in Ps. 18, 15 exposition 2, CCL 38, 112, 26–32; De Trin. 8.5.7, CCL 50, 276, 1–8; Sermo 142.2, PL 38, 778. 415 In Jo. Trac. 25,16, CCL 36, 256–57. 416 Gerald Bonner, “Christ, God, and Man in the Thought of St. Augustine,” Angelicum 61 (1984), 275. Also Otto Schaffner, Christliche Demut: Des Hl. Augustinus Lehre von der Humilitas. 417 “The Incarnation in Augustine’s Conversion,” Recherches Augustiennes 15 (1980), 80–98. 418 ibid. 92.

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God’s immutability is thus transformed into the immutable divine clemency. “God’s mercy in humility is indeed a divine perfection, not inconsistent with his nature as immutable and eternal. For God forever disposes himself graciously and mercifully towards the world.” 419 The Neoplatonic philosophers are repudiated says Mallard. “The immutable perfection of deity is now named as an eternal clemency or mercy, sealed in the self-humbling of Incarnation. Immutability=perfection=perfect goodness=mercy=its actualization in selfabasement.” 420 One might argue that Augustine should have said this, but it is not what he did say. Van Bavel is correct on this point, however inconsistent one might think Augustine is. Augustine believed in the divine kέnwsij without ever implying an alteration of the divine nature. 421 One finds the strongest evidence to support this interpretation in his Christmas homilies. 422 The Incarnation is the assumption of an inferior nature, not the conversion of the superior one. 423 The Word does not change. In the beginning to be what he was not, God remains unchanged. 424 Similar statements abound in Augustine. Incarnation means “not that wisdom was changed, since it is absolutely unchangeable; but that it was his will to make himself known in such humble fashion to men.” 425 In regard to Phil 2:6–7 he writes: “When he accepted the form of a servant, he accepted time. Did he change therefore? Was he lessened? Was he exiled? Did he fall into defect? No. He was lowered by accepting an inferior, not by degenerating from equality.” 426 Again, 419

ibid. 95–96. ibid. 98. 421 T. J. Van Bavel, Recherches sur la Christologie de Saint Augustine: l’humain et le divin dans le Christ d’apres saint Augustin 11. 422 PL 38, 995f. English in S. M. S. Muldowney, Sermons on the Liturgical Season 3–48. 423 Serm. 186.2.2–3.3, PL 38, 1000: “Ac per hoc qui erat Dei Filius, factus est hominis filius, assumptione inferioris, non conversione potioris; accipiendo quod non erat, non amittendo quod erat.” 424 “Verbum autem domini manet in aeternum, et incommutabiliter manet,” ibid. 1002; also 1003. 425 De Fide et Symbol 9.18. 426 “Demutatus est ergo? deminutus est? exilior redditus? in defectum lapsus? Absit. Exinaninisse se dictus est accipiendo inferiorem, non degenerando ab aequali.” Enarr. in Ps. 74.5, CCL 39, 1028. 420

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“ was made visible not through a change in its own nature, but by its being attired in the clothing of our nature. In this way, the soul finds Him whom it forsook in pride, outwardly humble, and will imitate his visible humility.” 427 John Cavadini holds that Augustine assigned suffering to the Logos. 428 In a footnote, he states starkly that “Augustine is very clear that it is the Word who suffers,” 429 citing the following text from De Trinitate 4.18: They are not prepared to consider how it can be that the Word of God abides totally unchanged in himself and yet by taking on a lower nature can suffer what is proper to that nature, which an impure demon cannot suffer because he does not have an earthly body. (italics and translation mine.)

Notice the careful phrasing in this passage. Augustine suggests in an aside that an immutable Logos can suffer somehow, but does not explain how this is possible. Even when he seems to assign suffering to the Logos, Augustine is very clear that it is only in terms of the human nature that there can be such a ‘communication of idioms.’ In a text cited by Joseph Torchia who argues that Augustine has such a view especially in his later writing in response to Arianism, Augustine is likewise very careful. If you attend to the distinction of substances, the Son of God descended from heaven, the Son of man was crucified: if to the unity of person, then the Son of man descended from heaven, and the Son of God is crucified. 430

427

De libero arbitrio 3.10.30, CCL 29, 293. John Cavadini, “Jesus’ Death is Real: An Augustinian Spirituality of the Cross,” in E. A. Dryer (ed.), The Cross in Christian Tradition 169–191. 429 188, n.28. 430 Augustine, Contra M. Arianiorum Episcopum PL 42, II, 20, 5, 790. Joseph Torchia, O. P., “The Significance of the communcatio idiomatum in St. Augustine’s Christology, with special reference to his rebuttal of later Arianism,” Patristica Studia 38, 306–323. The text is cited on 318. For analysis of Augustine’s anti-Arian corpus, see also Brian E. Daley, S.J., “The Giant’s Twin Substances: Ambrose and the Christology of Augustine’s Contra Sermonem Arianorum,” in Lienhard, Mueller, & Teske, Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum 477–495. 428

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I believe that the if-then construction shows that Augustine is making a rhetorical point rather than an ontological one, and that the full understanding of the communication of idioms needs an ontological basis. Many other texts could be cited in defense of my position, but unnecessarily. Augustine’s insight into the divine humility did not carry over into any substantive revision of his Neoplatonic view of God.

THE COMMUNICATION OF IDIOMS Since the publication of Scheel in 1901, how Augustine used the communication of idioms in writing about Christ has been disputed. 431 Scheel thought that Augustine’s Christology was essentially neoPlatonic, and that because he used phrases that sounded Nestorian, his Christology was similar to theirs. 432 The communication of idioms for Augustine as for the Nestorians, was no more than a figure of speech. Before Scheel, Dorner, Harnack, and Loofs presented their own critique of Augustine’s Christology. It was especially Harnack who thought Christology was marginal to Augustine’s theological enterprise. For more than fifty years there was little response to these criticisms. In 1954 Van Bavel tried to answer the points made by Scheel and others. His defense of Augustine’s Christology was preceded to some extent in articles by Portalie and Van Crombrugghe. 433 All three authors in their own way were trying to establish Augustine’s place in the development of conciliar Christology. Some of his key texts attribute the characteristics of the human nature of Christ to the single divine Word. Because of his neo-Platonic understanding that the divine being can neither suffer nor change, Augustine is both careful and hesitant in doing so. I argued above that Augustine’s commitment to divine immutability and impassibility is absolute. Biblical passages that portray God as mutable and passible do 431

O. Scheel, Die Auschauung Augustins über Christi Person und Werk. Goulven Madec, “Christus,” in Cornelius Mayer (ed.), Augustinus Lexicon vol. 1, 891. 433 See the Introduction to William Babcock’s thesis, The Christ of the Exchange: A Study in the Christology of Augustine’s Ennarationes in Psalmos 2–45; Joanne McWilliam, “The Study of Augustine’s Christology in the Twentieth Century,” in Joanne McWilliam (ed.), Augustine: From Rhetor to Theologian 183–205. 432

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not properly express the divine nature. Passages that do so he writes in the first book of De Trinitate, such as Exod 3:14 are rare. 434 Divine immutability grounds the immutability of truth; it also distinguishes God from all creatures, including the soul and angels. God is immutable because of being eternally beyond time. 435 The communication of idioms is rooted in the understanding that since the divine persona of the Word is the only one Christ has, characteristics of the human nature can be legitimately attributed to the divine person. Thus it is appropriate to say, and Augustine does say, the Word was born of a woman, was crucified, died and was buried. It is important here to note several things. Augustine never wrote a sustained work on Christology. Because this is so, he provides no philosophical or theological grounding for the communication of idioms. His statements are always rhetorical. The question is are they more than rhetorical suggesting a revision of Plotinian ontology? Nearly all of the communication-of-idioms texts occur in sermons and letters. Some do occur in other works, however, and importantly, they do so during his entire career, not just toward the end when he developed a more technical use of the terminology of una persona. 436 Should they be interpreted to carry theological weight beyond rhetorical devices that capture the imagination of hearers or readers? In using the communication of idioms for Christ, Augustine typically qualifies in some way so that he continues to adhere to the neoPlatonic view that God is unchangeable and impassible. Are these qualifications paradoxes or contradictions? Enarr. in Ps. 66.5 pictures the aged Simeon in the temple, holding the “infantem Verbum Dei.” This text seems to me to be no more than rhetorical, as is Enarr. in Ps. 44.3 which is clearly so. It reads: “pulcher in utero virginis, ubi non amisit divinitatem, et sum sit humanitatem; pulcher natus infans Verbum.” 437 Enarr. in Ps. 93.15 is on the humility of the publican and the pride of the Pharisee. Christ teaches us humility quia Deus factus est homo. Ipsa est humilitas quae displicet paganis, unde nobis insultant. Qualem deum colitis quae natus est? qualem 434

De Trin. 1.1.2 in CCL 50, 29. See the references in The Descent of God 100–111. 436 See Van Bavel’s list in 57, n.149. 437 CCL 39, 862; CCL 38, 496. 435

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One of the most interesting texts comes from Letter 49 written in 415 to Bishop Evodius. In discussing how we should understand how attributions function that belong only to one of the natures, Augustine uses the example of someone with the name ‘philosopher.’ In the suitable and ordinary use of language, if we say that the “the philosopher was killed, the philosopher died, the philosopher was buried” we are not talking about that which made him a philosopher, i.e., his soul. The philosopher does not die in that part of him or her which makes them a philosopher. In like manner the name of God, or Son of God, or Lord of Glory, or any other such name, is given to Christ as the Word, and it is nevertheless, correct to say that God was crucified, seeing that there is no question that He suffered this death in his human nature, not in that in which He is the Lord of Glory. (NPNF, I, First Series, 541.)

Agostino Trape’s discussion of Augustine’s work in Quasten’s fourth volume, claims that statements such as “God who was born,” “the Crucified God,” and “the God who died” are “frequent expressions in Augustine.” 439 He cites three texts: (1) Ep. 169,2,8. The text argues the oneness of Christ by offering two arguments: first, that there can be no increase in the number of persons of the Trinity, so whatever we need to explain regarding the unity of Christ we cannot add another person. Second, the human soul is united to the body, but in the case of a philosopher that dies and is buried, we do not say that the body of the philosopher died, but that the philosopher died. In a similar way it is “correct to say that God was crucified, seeing that there is no question that He suffered this death in his human nature, not in that in which He is the Lord of Glory.” Notice how Augustine always carefully qualifies his statements about deus crucifixus. It only happens in the human nature; (2) Serm. 213.4 is an important text dated 410 C.E.: The Son of God is crucified and buried Augustine says. This is followed by the following comment: “The man is crucified, the man is 438 439

CCL 39, 1316. Quasten vol. 4, 431.

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buried. God is not changed, God is not killed, death only applies to the human.” Christ is crucified in the flesh, only in the flesh! 440 Again notice the qualification, here stated strongly; (3) In a comment on John 3:13, Augustine writes: “because of the unity of person the Son of God is on earth and because of the same unity of person the Son of Man is in heaven.” 441 Augustine was quite capable of constructing what we might call ‘systematic’ treatments of topics, as he did in De Trinitate and in the last chapters of the Confessions for example. Because he wrote extensively and coherently against Manichees, Donatists, and Pelagians, and to a lesser extent Arians and Apollinarians, we can say with some precision what his positions were in each case. Such is not true of his use of the communication of idioms, however. Augustine’s homilies engage in powerful rhetorical and homiletic excess, and his statements ought not be thought of as on the same level as his more systematic expositions. His paradoxical expressions were meant to haunt the religious listener after she or he went home, not answer theological questions. Throughout his career Augustine remained deeply committed to the neo-Platonic understanding of divine immutability and impassibility. I have found no evidence that this ever changed substantially. In his lengthy exposition of Augustine’s use of the Christological hymn of the Letter to the Philippians, Verwilghen implies Augustine’s grasp of the communication of idioms relying on texts such as De Trinitate 1.13. Here Augustine writes “the Lord of glory was crucified, because even God is rightly said to have been crucified, not after the power of the divinity, but after the weakness of the flesh.” Again, as in the statements above, the denial is just as important as the affirmation. Verwilghen believes that we may deduce that when Augustine omits the distinction between the forma dei and forma servi, he is attributing to the one person. When he makes the distinction, he is attributing to one or the other forma. He cites Contra Sermonem Arianorum 8 in defense of this position as well as Augustine’s comment on John 3:13 discussed above. 442 Although this may be true, I am 440

Serm. 213, PL38, 1061–1062. Wilhelm Geerlings, Christus Exemplum: Studien zur Christologie und Christusverkundigung Augustins 126. 441 Serm. 194, 9 (no other reference given in Quasten.) 442 Albert Verwilghen, Christologie et Spiritualité selon Saint Augustin:

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somewhat skeptical about deducing the Christological state of mind of an author, and I believe, as stated above, that Augustine’s use of communication of idioms language is formal, without deep Christological import. Other authors think that Augustine’s Contra Sermonem Arianorum and his other anti-Arian texts marks “a turning point in his Christological thought.” 443 I do not find their arguments persuasive however. Although the unity of Christ’s person is strongly stated in that literature, in every instance when Augustine uses the language of the communicatio, he carefully qualifies it with statements that the Word cannot change or suffer in any way. Contra Sermonem Arianorum 8 states the following: “The Son of God is said to be crucified and buried, although this is not that divinity by which he is OnlyBegotten of the Father and coeternal but in the human nature he bore infirmity.” But Augustine also writes: “We confess in the Creed that the Only-begotten Son of God was crucified and buried.” 444 Many other texts could be cited in defense of my position, but unnecessarily. Augustine’s insight into the divine humility did not carry over into any substantive revision of his Neoplatonic view of God. Augustine’s friends in the theological academy today probably see this as a virtue. They might argue that because the communication arises from a mysterious event, the divine Word becoming human, there can be no more understanding than one which states these paradoxical propositions as conclusions that must be drawn. In this case the danger is that they become vacuous. The humble God of St. Augustine shows that they were not vacuous to him because they had ethical and religious import. The centrality of humilitas and caritas as a way of life is unknown to that same philosophy from which his view of God springs. Does the ‘communication’ have any meaning that goes beyond that all important understanding that the incarnate God is in some L’hymne aux Plilippiens 485–486. 443 Brian E. Daley, “The Giant’s” 478 cited approvingly by Joseph Torchia 310 in the article mentioned above. 444 Contra Sermonem Arianorum 8, PL 42, 688. See also Contra Max. 2,20,30: “si unitatem personae et Filius hominis descendit de caelo, et Filius Dei est crucifixus.” PL 42, 790.

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sense humble? In the conclusion that must be drawn, and not in a monophysite way which will be condemned later, the Incarnation suggests substantial revision and even outright rejection of Neoplatonism with its emphasis on the perfection of the Other World only available in spiritual vision. Do we not learn from the Incarnation that the divine is hidden in creation, as Gerald Manley Hopkins (and Maximus Confessor) saw so clearly, and is available to soul and body together, close at hand in the manifold skins of the beings of the physical world? Augustine died in the year before the Council of Ephesus and like most others before him, simply could not completely absorb on the metaphysical level the Christological implications of the divine descent. Augustine absorbed deeply, however, the ethical and religious implications of the Incarnation of the deus humilis with his insistence on the supernatural quality of charity and humility that philosophers could not know because they lacked knowledge of the Incarnation. I believe that Augustine held the position that although birth, crucifixion, death, and burial can be attributed to the Word verbally, the Word never actually experienced them, because the Word was God. The best example is Augustine’s interpretation of Jesus’ cry of dereliction from the cross. Augustine believes that it is not the Jesus of history but Christ as totus Christus who is speaking as the head of his body, emptying this powerful text of its literal sense. We sinners are the ones abandoned by God, not the divine Word. The divine Word could never experience abandonment by God. 445 It would be left to others, mostly in the East, to explore further and to state dogmatically the Christological implications of the unity of Christ’s person and the communication of idioms. Augustine’s discussions of divine impassibility and immutability created a theological tradition for Western thought. These attributes will perhaps always be discussed within the framework that he provided, a framework in which it is difficult to see the Incarnate Word ontologically as a true deus humilis. The great councils of the Eastern Church will enter the picture, sharpening the question, and bringing it into focus in Alexandria and Antioch, and in the Nestorian and monophysite debates. And foremost among those debates is the one between Nestorius and Cyril. In the end then, the ‘communication’ can only work on the rational level if we can analyze the status of this language of faith. Why 445

See Babcock 284–298.

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are these statements not contradictory? Are they metaphorical and rhetorical only or is there some literal or at least analogical truth at stake? Is this only emotive-symbolic language meant to arouse feelings of wonder and devotion, but not describing a real state of affairs? Related to that is the question of Christological epistemology. What exactly is the ‘mystery’ of the Incarnation? What is the function of the term ‘mystery’ in that phrase? What is it that I know about God because of the Incarnation?

6. CYRIL AND NESTORIUS The Christological question in the strict sense arose when early thinkers from Antioch beginning with Eustathius (bishop of Antioch from 324–330) examined the Arian position: the human soul of Jesus was missing. 446 And this seemed to be the case among the anti-Arians as well! Assuming that the Logos is immutable and impassible, the change, emotion, and suffering of Jesus described in the Gospels must belong to something else besides the divine Logos. All agreed that the body of Jesus suffered. But Antiochene theologians argued that the Alexandrians, whether they adhered to Nicea or not, neglected explicit recognition of a finite spiritual principle to which Jesus’ mental and psychological feelings and his experience of physical sufferings could be attributed. If Jesus had no human soul or personality, his sufferings became the sufferings of God. Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius occupied the center of this controversy in the fifth century. I believe that we will better understand their fundamental disagreement if we place the issues of divine immutability and impassibility in the forefront of the discussion. 447

446

See Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition vol. 1, 296–301. Three articles from 1997 address this: my own “The Seed of Fire: Divine Suffering in the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997) 369–91; John J. O’Keefe, “Impassible Suffering? Divine Passion and Fifth Century Christology,” Theological Studies 58 (1997) 39–60; “Kenosis or Impassibility: Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrus on the Problem of Divine Pathos,” Studia Patristica 32, 358–65. Most recently Paul Gavrilyuk, “Theopatheia: Nestorius’s main charge against Cyril of Alexandria,” Scottish Journal of Theology 56/2 (2003) 190–207. 447

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CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA There is good evidence that the early Cyril regularly attributed emotions to the one God when he interpreted the Old Testament. This is surprising given his Alexandrian background, but probably springs from a general lack of interest in the questions of Greek philosophy. Cyril simply takes the many texts ascribing emotion to the deity at face value. The De adoratione in spiritu et veritate (between 412 and 429) often mentions the divine anger to which Scripture testifies. 448 Statements indicating that the God of Scripture has emotions also occur in two early texts which deal with the Abraham and Isaac story. 449 It is clear that Cyril defends the absolute immutability and impassibility of the Logos from his early anti-Arian writings through his later works. There is no doubt that for him, the Word had to be immutable and impassible in order to be divine. In the famous epistola dogmatica approved unanimously at the first meeting of the council of Ephesus, then by Pope Leo in 451, and at Chalcedon and Constantinople, for example, Cyril denies the mutability and passibility of the Word in no uncertain terms. He writes: For we do not say that the nature of the Word was changed (metapoihqeῖsa) and made flesh, nor yet that it was changed (meteblήqh) into whole man, of soul and body...the Word did not suffer in the divine nature because it was impassible and nonphysical. 450

Cyril is completely consistent in holding that the act of generation does not result in divine mutability because divine mutability is selfcontradictory. Hence generation must be without change of the divine 448

See PG 68, 153D–155A; 169D in reference to the sins of the Sodomites; 364C which discusses Josh 7:1b: “the anger of the Lord burned against the Israelites;” 378C-D; 381D; 389C. I have avoided discussion of the dating of Cyril’s works by following the general consensus among scholars and by giving the earliest and latest possible years of authorship within that consensus. See J. Quasten, Patrology vol. 3, 116–142. 449 From the same period as De adoratione, see Glaphyra in Genesim PG 69, 140B–C; 145D; 148A; Festal Letter 5.6, in Pierre Evieux et al. (eds.), Cyrille D’Alexandrie: Lettres Festales SC 372, 30–32. 450 Also in this letter God is completely ἄtreptoj mὲn kaὶ ¢nalloίwtoj pantelîj. P. E. Pusey (ed.), The Three Epistles of S. Cyril 6–8. See also G. M. de Durand (ed.), Deux Dialogues Christologiques SC 97, 683E.

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nature. Essentially Cyril is only repeating the position of Athanasius and of Nicene orthodoxy. Various important gospel texts, however, attribute emotion and psychological suffering to Jesus. Cyril confronts these passages for the first time in the Thesaurus (written no later than 425), then in his early Commentary on John (before 429). He discusses them several times later in the three texts entitled de recte fide (c.430) and in the Scholia de Incarnatione Unigeniti (sometime after 431). These texts offer solutions which differ considerably from each other. In one of his last works, Quod Unus Sit Christus, Cyril has still not resolved the problem. This lack of resolution on Cyril’s part provides a key element in understanding both Nestorianism and the rise of monophysitism.

THE EARLY CYRIL Because Scripture ascribes both human and divine things to Jesus, Cyril says in the Thesaurus that we should not be confused by passages describing the agony in the garden and Jesus’ fear of death. Examples of acting in a divine manner include the raising of Lazarus from the dead and changing water into wine; it is the human which agonizes and fears death. 451 We cannot ascribe suffering and death to the Word. 452 We should not be bothered by Scriptural shifts of voice between the speech of the Son as Word and as human however. Statements such as “let this cup pass from me” during the agony in the garden (Matt 26:39) are proper to the flesh, not to the Logos. 453 This does not necessarily mean that Cyril in his early writing denies that Jesus has a human soul. He uses s£rx in a sense that includes the soul, and says so explicitly in his early Commentary on John when he interprets John 1:14. 454 451

PG 75, 393A. For a discussion of this section of the Thesaurus and Athanasian parallels, see Jacques Liébaert, La Doctrine Christologique De Saint Cyrille D’Alexandrie Avant La Querelle Nestorienne 114–125. 452 396 A–D. 453 397A. 454 P. E. Pusey, Cyrilli Archiepiscopi Alexandrini In D. Joannis Evangelium vol. 1, 140. An English translation is by the same author, Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John. I will provide page numbers for this edition in parentheses. Contrary to Liébaert, I do not believe that s£rx and sîma are equivalent terms for Cyril. Liébaert thinks that Cyril used s£rx in Thesaurus 24 (from which the Thesaurus passages above are taken) only once in the general sense of human nature. I cannot see how one can make that determina-

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After arguing against the Arians that the Logos is divine, and therefore cannot grow, Cyril asserts that the human nature is perfected by the divine Word. Hence growth in wisdom and grace (Luke 2:52) is not the result of moral development in the give-and-take world of human experience, but the gradual elevation of the humanity of Jesus by the Logos. This becomes Cyril’s constant theme when discussing the issue of Jesus’ emotions, such as fear of death, sadness, and being troubled. 455 The Logos perfects the humanity of Jesus, and as a result raises up the entire human race. There are some good examples in the Commentary on John.

DIVINISATION IN THE COMMENTARY ON JOHN Cyril’s view of salvation grounds his early understanding of the Incarnation and his resistance to the Christology of Nestorius. Like Augustine, he believed that all of human nature was affected by the sin of Adam as well as by the enfleshment of the Logos. The Logos could not be intimately united to all of human nature unless it united with the human nature of Jesus. Although Cyril uses a wide range of soteriological imagery in the Commentary on John, the perfection of humanity is one of his favorites. 456 “The Word became flesh” means that the Logos assumed a soul as well as a body. Importantly, John writes that the Word “became” flesh, not that it “came into” flesh. Otherwise you might suppose that he came to it as in the case of the prophets or other of the saints by participation. Wherefore he is also God by nature in flesh and with

tion. It is interesting to note how seldom Cyril uses sîma (twice) in comparison to s£rx (27 times!) in that text in comparison to Athanasius. (see 124 of Liébaert) Could this be a subtle but purposeful shift on Cyril’s part to a use of s£rx which included the soul? For a recent discussion of Jesus’ soul in Cyril’s early Christology see Lawrence J. Welch, “Logos-Sarx? Sarx and the Soul of Christ in the Early Thought of Cyril of Alexandria,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38/3 (1994) 271–292. 455 See Thesaurus 444A; Liébaert 118–119. 456 See Joseph L. McInerney, “Soteriological Commonplaces in Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on John,” in Disciplina Nostra ed. by Donald F. Winslow 179–185.

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flesh, having it as his own, and conceived of as being other than it. 457

Cyril also adds, however, that God did not leave the divinity to be changed into flesh and to suffer. This is impossible, “for Godhead is far removed from all wavering (¢lloίwsij) and change (metabolήj).” Cyril’s analysis of the “dwelt among us” in John 1:14 brings out his soteriological concern most clearly. For we were all in Christ, and the community of human nature rises up to his person; since therefore he was named the last Adam giving richly to the common nature all things that belong to joy and glory, even as the first Adam [gave] what pertained to corruption and dejection. The Word then dwelt in all through one so that the One being declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, the dignity might come to all human nature...Therefore in Christ the bond is truly made free, mounting up into mystic union with him who had the form of the servant. 458

For Cyril human beings by nature are rising up through our likeness to Christ. Much later in the Commentary when he interprets John 10:28, he writes that “because he has become man, he brought all men into friendly relationship by being of the same race, so that we are all united to Christ in a mystical relationship.” 459 According to Cyril, all of us, both good and evil persons, will rise from the dead as a result. Physical immortality is now assured for all because of the Incarnation. In a statement made in connection with the lifegiving qualities of the Eucharist he develops a striking analogy. The saving power of Jesus is hidden like a spark in the stubble of human nature. It is a seed of fire. He writes: For as if one took a spark and buried it amid much stubble, in order that the seed of fire preserved might lay hold on it, so in us too our Lord Jesus Christ hides life through his own flesh, and inserts it 457

Pusey 1.140 (1.109). ibid. 1, 141 (1, 110). For the Adam-Christ typology of Cyril see especially Robert L. Wilken, Judaism And The Early Christian Mind: A Study of Cyril of Alexandria’s Exegesis and Theology 93–142. 459 ibid. 2, 252 (2, 100). See also the references in H. Chadwick, “Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy,” Journal of Theological Studies N.S. 2(1951) 154, n.1. 458

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An important soteriological text occurs in Cyril’s spiritual interpretation of the miracle of Cana. The deeper meaning of the change from water into wine relates to the Incarnation in which God “rendered all our nature whole, raising it from the dead in Himself.” 461 Further on when he interprets the passage on Nicodemus he writes that we become partakers of the divine nature, as enjoying Him who proceeds from it essentially, and through him and in him re-formed (¢namorfoύmenoi) to the Archetype-Beauty, and thus re-born (¢natiktÒmenoi) unto newness of life, and re-molded (¢naplattÒmenoi) to the divine sonship. 462

DISPUTED FRAGMENTS IN BOOK EIGHT There are several texts which discuss the soul of Jesus in book eight of Pusey’s edition of the Commentary on John which Liébaert thinks are problematic because they come from catenae. 463 The early Cyril has nothing to say about the soul of Christ in the Thesaurus or in De Trinitate (written shortly after Thesaurus). But he does mention the soul at least twice in his pre-Ephesus period. 464 And we have seen that s£rx includes the soul in Cyril’s interpretation of John 1:14. Is it possible that because of some texts in John’s gospel, Cyril developed his thoughts on the soul of Christ even further before the confrontation with Nestorius? Or are the texts discussing the soul of Christ in the Commentary inauthentic? The text which raises the question about the soul of Christ in book eight is John 12:27: “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I 460

Pusey 1, 533 (1, 421). For Eucharist in Cyril see H. Chadwick, “Eucharist and Christology” 145–164. 461 ibid. 1, 204 (1,157). 462 ibid. 1, 219 (1, 168). In his recent book on Cyril’s Christology, John A. McGuckin emphasizes its soteriological importance. St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy, Its History, Theology, and Texts 173–226. 463 J. Liébaert, “La Doctrine Christologique” 129–137. 464 In the Easter Festal letter of 420: PG 77, 573B; Glaphyra in Genesim 6: PG 69, 297C. See Grillmeier 415, n.4.

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have come to this hour.” In the first part of the statement the human nature of Jesus is affected by trouble and fear. Because these are human emotions, they are controlled by the Logos, “cut short” (diakÒpthtai) as he puts it, “by the power of the Word.” 465 The trouble and fear are overcome. Hence the second part of the statement: “it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” Nevertheless: He feels as a human characteristic the mental trouble that is caused by suffering. Yet he is not agitated like we are, but only just so far as to have undergone the sensation of the experience; then again immediately he returns to the courage befitting to himself. 466

The text continues: “From these things it is evident that he indeed had a rational soul.” Being troubled by thinking about terrible things, such as his coming death, “must be the suffering of the rational soul, by which alone in truth a thought can enter into us through the processes of the mind.” 467 For the suffering of dread is a feeling that we cannot ascribe to the impassible Godhead, nor yet to the flesh; for it is an affection of the cogitations of the soul, and not of the flesh. 468

This dread is a human psychological emotion precisely because it involves “anticipation of coming suffering” which animals cannot have. Besides this, the text does not say “my flesh is troubled” but “my soul.” 469 If we do not attribute suffering to the soul of Jesus, we fall into the docetism of Manes; we must hold that the entire human nature has been made one with God, “for that which has not been taken into his nature, has not been saved.” 470 This discussion ends with a strong statement about the necessity for the Logos to be united to a human soul, and the saving result of this union. These do not seem to be the thoughts and words of the Cyril of this period as Liébaert convincingly argues. Yet the argument is soteriological and in this respect does sound like Cyril. 465

Pusey 2, 316 (2, 150). ibid. 2, 317 (2, 151). 467 ibid. 2, 317 (2, 151). This certainly does not sound like the early Cyril. 468 ibid. 469 ibid. 470 ibid. 2, 318 (2, 151). For a French translation and a detailed analysis of the relevant texts of book eight, see J. Liébaert, La Doctrine 131f. 466

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FRAGMENTS FROM BOOK SEVEN It is interesting to contrast how Cyril deals with the human knowledge and emotions of Jesus in John’s account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead in fragments from book seven of the Commentary. According to this text, Jesus asks “where have you laid him?” (11.34) Cyril claims that Jesus must have feigned ignorance and finds a parallel in God’s question to Adam— “Adam, where are you?” 472 He also has a problem with Jesus being troubled by Lazarus’ death, since God cannot feel grief. “Surely it is an infirmity of human nature to be abjectly overcome by grief, but this as well as the rest is brought into subjection, in Christ first, that it may be also in us.” 473 Jesus weeps for Lazarus, but only a little, Cyril says, “lest he might seem to be cruel and inhuman.” He did this to instruct us not to weep too much over the dead. “For it is one thing to be influenced by sympathy, and another to be effeminate and unmanly.” Hence Jesus permitted his s£rx to weep a little even though it was “in its nature tearless and incapable of any grief, so far as regards its own nature.” 474 Perhaps the fragments from both books seven and eight are all from Cyril, perhaps not. When emotions are attributed to the human soul of Christ in the fragments from book eight, they are “cut short” and held under control by the impassible Logos. If the Logos merely 471

Pusey 2, 320 (2, 154). See the important parallel in Thesaurus 14: PG 75, 397C. Liébaert thinks that this is the same text but that it has been misplaced in the Commentary. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is authentically Cyril’s because of this parallel. 472 Pusey 2, 281 (2, 123). Liébaert takes this fragment to be authentic. 473 ibid. 2, 280 (2, 122). 474 ibid. 2, 282 (2, 123).

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permits the flesh to weep a little as in book seven, grief is also held in check. Aside from the uncharacteristic emphasis on the soul in the fragment from book eight, conceptually the two passages are in agreement. If s£rx includes the rational soul for Cyril in book seven, and there is good evidence in the Commentary that it does, the two texts say the same thing in different words. It is also important to note the emphasis on salvation. Christ must feel emotions in order that emotions be brought into subjection, and their subjection is the way that they are divinised by the Logos both in Christ and in us.

THE LOGOS FEELS EMOTION Book nine contains one of the most surprising passages in the entire Commentary. In discussing John 13:21 (parallel 12:27) that states that “Jesus was troubled in spirit,” Cyril strongly insists that divine attributes are not like ours. But they do include some kind of emotion (kίnhsij)! “The divine nature is exceedingly terrible in uttering reproofs, and is stirred to violent emotion (kinoύmenon) by unmingled hatred of evil.” 475 Scripture expresses God’s anger and wrath (ὀrg¾n kaὶ qumÕn) in human language even though the divine essence is not subject to these feelings “in any way that bears comparison with our feelings, but is moved to indignation (kinoumέnhj) the extent of which is known only to itself and is natural to itself alone.” And it certainly seems as though the emotion (kίnhsin) of the Godhead, intolerant of the restraint of the flesh, did really bring about a slight shuddering and an apparent condition of disturbance, exhibiting the anger (ÑrgÁj); doubtless similar to what is recorded also at the raising of Lazarus where we read that Jesus went to the tomb “groaning in himself.” 476

In the last reference Cyril returns to the Lazarus event with an even stronger sense that it is necessary to attribute some type of muta475

ibid. 2, 363 (2, 193). Pusey’s translation may render kίnesij too strongly. Nevertheless even at its weakest the term suggests divine emotion, hence change. 476 The emphasis is mine. Pusey 2, 363 (2, 194). Liébaert’s translation is slightly, but insignificantly different, 128. He centers solely on the issue of the human soul of Christ, hence does not see the importance of this unique text for Cyril’s view of impassibility.

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bility, not just to the human soul of Jesus but to the divine Logos itself! Interestingly in the only other text from the non-catena section of the Commentary which discusses the emotions of Christ, Cyril states that “God the Word, immortal and incorruptible, and life itself by nature could not shudder at death,” and assigns the shuddering only to the flesh. 477 We have come upon exactly the dilemma which the early Cyril had to face. Either he attributes emotion and mutability to the Logos and risks condemnation for Arianism, or he assigns them to the human soul. At this point Cyril cannot decide how to resolve this dilemma. I do not believe that he ever did.

THE EPHESUS PERIOD In the de recte fide addressed to the Emperor and written around the year 430 Cyril mentions the soul of Christ in passing in several places. 478 Here he gives it theological significance by attributing anxiety, fear, sadness, and the agony of Jesus to it. 479 In a letter to the emperor’s wife, he writes: It is therefore evident that the only begotten Son has become man in taking on a body, not without a soul or mind, but on the contrary, a body animated by a rational soul and having the perfection of what comes to it by nature. And just as he has made his own all bodily properties, just so he made his own all those of the soul...thus just as according to the economy he granted to his body to suffer on occasion what comes to it, just so he granted to his soul to suffer what is proper to it. 480

Here we see a full awareness on Cyril’s part of the importance of the soul of Christ. Yet a short time later in the Scholia On The Incarnation he can reverse his position and argue that the soul of Jesus does not suffer in its own nature! 481 In the Scholia, Cyril writes: 477

128.

478

21.

479

A comment on John 6:38–39. Pusey 1, 487 (1, 384). See Liébaert 127– Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum I, I, I, 45 line 19; 52 line 12; 53, line

ibid. 1, 1, 1, 55. Oratio ad Pulcherium et Eudociam augustus de fide A.C.O 1, 1, 5, 58–9. 481 Besides H. Chadwick, “Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian 480

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Even though the body is weighed down or tortured and the soul indeed feels pain because its own body suffers, still it will itself not allow any torment into its own nature. 482

In spite of not suffering any torment, however, the soul does have a certain sympathy (sunalgeῖn) for the sufferings of the flesh, i.e., a certain consciousness of what is happening to the body. 483 For the body is moved to physical desires; and the soul follows but not as a participant because it is outside of these desires. 484

The question regarding the suffering of the soul is intrinsically related to the question about whether and how the Logos suffers the sufferings of the body. But it is out of place to say that God the Word feels the sufferings; the Godhead is impassible and is not of us. But having a rational soul united with the body, he himself impassibly knew things happening within the body while it suffered, and he was doing away with the weaknesses of the flesh as God, but making them his own because they came from his own body. Thus also he is said to have hungered, been tired, and suffered for us. 485

Here as elsewhere Cyril vigorously denies that the Logos suffered. Unlike the soul, the divinity does not perceive the body’s pain. The divinity is not of us (kaq ¹m©j), but is united with the body which possesses the rational soul. Yet while the body suffered, the Logos Controversy,” Journal of Theological Studies N.S. 2 (1951) 158–162 see G. Joussard, “‘Impassibilite’ du Logos et ‘impassibilite’ de l’ame humaine chez saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie,” Recherches de Sciences Religieuse 45 (1957) 209–244. Mainly from the Scholia 8 (A.C.O. I, 5, 220) Joussard argues that for Cyril, the soul does not suffer. It is by nature impassible. 482 “et si forte a suo corpore deprimatur aut torqueatur, condolet quidem, quod suum corpus patiatur, ipsa vero in suam naturam nullum patitur omnino tormentum.” A.C.O. 1. 5, 189, line 1–3. See the stronger version in F. C. Conybeare, The Armenian Version of Revelation and Cyril of Alexandria’s Scholia on Incarnation and Epistle on Easter 176. 483 A.C.O. 1. 5, 220 line 34. 484 ibid. 1. 5, 188, line 33. The soul is “nulla quidem modo participans” in the sufferings of the body. See also F. C. Conybeare 176. 485 A.C.O. 1. 5, 221, 3–5; R. Hespel, Le florilege cyrillien, in Bibliotheque du Museon 154, line 3–6; Conybeare 176.

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knew impassibly what was happening within it. The Word cannot be ignorant of the sufferings of the flesh, so it knows of them impassibly. 486 Cyril gives several analogies for the effect that the divine has on the human. One comes from the hot coal which touched Isaiah’s lips (Isa 6:6–7) to purify him before he began his preaching. Other analogies include that of fire touching wood, the odor of a lily (here the fragrance is incorporeal, hence like the divine) and the divine presence in the ark of the covenant. 487 Although the sufferings of the body do not affect the Logos because it is by nature impassible, the Logos does affect the body. This explains the miracles that Jesus worked through his body. The body belongs to the Word “not in the same way as laughing is proper to a man or neighing to a horse, but because it was made His by true union, to possess and accomplish its uses as an instrument for whatever was its nature to do...” 488 Near the end of the Scholia Cyril asks how we can attribute suffering to Christ and still consider him impassible as God. 489 God remains impassible insofar as his nature is concerned, for God is impassible. 490 The soul does not suffer in its own nature, but it is not outside of passion insofar as it belongs to a body which suffers. Cyril reaches for more analogies, such as the water from the Nile which turns into blood in Exod 4:9 and the two birds which 486

A.C.O. I. 5 p.221; R. Hespel 154, line 3–6. A.C.O. 1. 5, 189–190; 221–222; Conybeare 178. The Latin and Armenian versions give even more examples. For a discussion of the analogies for the Incarnation in Cyril see John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril 196–212. 488 Conybeare 197; A.C.O. 1. 5, 203, line 28–30. The most recent definitive work on Cyril’s understanding of the unity of person in Jesus comes from R. A. Norris, “Toward a Contemporary Interpretation of the Chalcedonian Definition,” in Lux in Lumine: Essays to Honor W. Norman Pittenger ed. R. A. Norris 62–79; ibid. “Christological Models in Cyril of Alexandria,” Studia Patristica 13 part 2 ed. E. A. Livingstone 255–68; Ruth M. Siddals, “Oneness and Difference in the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria,” Studia Patristica 18/1 ed. E. A. Livingston 207–11; ibid. “Logic and Christology in Cyril of Alexandria,” Journal of Theological Studies ns 38 (1987) 341–367. See also G. Joussard, “Une intuition fondamentale de saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie en christologie dans les premieres annees de son episcopate,” Revue des Études Byzantines 11 (1953) 175–186, esp. 179 and 183. 489 “quonam modo et passionem ipsi deputemus et inpassibilem servemus ut deum?” A.C.O. 1. 5, 209; Conybeare 205. 490 “inpassibilis enim deus est.” A.C.O. 1. 5, 209, line 14–15. 487

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are part of the ritual for the cleansing of leprosy in Lev 14:4–7. Both of these seem to limp badly! Again he insists that the sufferings of the Logos are truly his, but that he does not suffer in the divine nature. 491 Succinctly he writes: He suffers and does not suffer in one way and another: he suffers humanly in the flesh as man; he remains impassible in a divine way as God. 492

The Scholia seems to end on a note of desperation when Cyril insists over and over again that his position does not force him to hold that God suffers. He probably has his Antiochene opponents in mind who say the exact opposite about his Christology thereby accusing him of heresy.

THE LATE CYRIL In a treatise written late in his career, the Quod Unus Sit Christus, Cyril mentions the soul of Christ several times, but makes almost no explicit appeal to it to solve his exegetical problems with texts ascribing sorrow or fear to Jesus. 493 Jesus’ cry of dereliction from the cross does not express Jesus’ own feeling of despair but was spoken as an example for us. “It was meant so that we should learn something from it.” 494 Rather than a doubt arising in the human soul of Jesus, the statement “My God, why have you abandoned me?” is the question asked by a human race mired in the sin of Adam. 495 After wrestling with the issue of divine suffering repeatedly throughout this treatise, Cyril seems to end on a note of desperation similar to that expressed at the end of the Scholia. The flesh suffers, he says, the deity does not. But there are no examples one can use to express this. Cyril now thinks only one of his examples from the Scholia is appropriate: it is as if iron is heated by a flame. The 491

A.C.O. 1.5, 210; Conybeare 207–208; 210–211. “patitur et non patitur secundum aliud et aliud: patitur quidem humane caro, eo quod homo sit; inpassibilis autem divine manet ut deus.” A.C.O. 1.5, 211, line 9–10. 493 G. M. de Durand (ed.), Deux Dialogues Christologiques SC 97, 728D, 238; PG 75, 1292 B–C; Durand 736C–E, 348. 494 Durand 755D, 438–756D, 442. Quoted from the translation of J. A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria on the Unity of Christ 103. 495 See McGuckin, On the Unity 105–106. 492

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flame, which represents the Logos, does not become less hot when heating the iron. Only the iron, the humanity of Jesus, changes. 496 Hence throughout his career Cyril gives a variety of interpretations, some of which suggest that the Logos suffers, at least by implication, and others which assert that mental and psychological sufferings should be attributed to the human soul of Jesus. Commonly, whether Cyril mentions the soul of Jesus or not, the Logos is divinising Jesus’ humanity as well as ours, always acting for a salvific purpose by elevating what it touches. It is the spark in the stubble, the seed of fire. For Cyril the theology of Antioch ignored the self-abasement which the incarnation implies, a self-abasement necessary for salvation. The death of a man, however righteous, cannot have any redemptive value. So Cyril’s problem is to find a form of words which preserves the impassibility of the Logos while at the same time affirming that in some sense the Logos suffered. If he did not suffer, we are not saved. 497 Chadwick holds that Cyril reached a “not very illuminating conclusion: the Logos suffered impassibly.” (¢paqîj œpaqen). 498 Aside from the irresolution evident in Cyril’s texts, I believe ¢paqîj œpaqen is quite illuminating in the context of the Christology of Alexandria beginning with Athanasius. Because of this a logical problem arises which Cyril recognizes but does not resolve. His statement is “not very illuminating” because it does not satisfactorily explain how the Logos is impassible and simultaneously able to suffer. Although the paradox of Cyril expresses the theological distinctiveness of the Christian view of God compared to those of Plato and Aristotle, theological conceptuality to express this incarnational understanding was unavailable. 496

Durand 776A and following, 504. McGuckin, On the Unity 130–131. H. Chadwick, “Eucharist” 158. One of the phrases in the dogmatic epistle is particularly interesting in this regard. “He was the one, incapable of suffering, in the body which suffered.” See P. E. Pusey (ed.), The Three Epistles of S. Cyril 8. Also “in the crucified body he was impassibly making his own the sufferings of his own flesh.” ibid. 24. These statements indicate that for Cyril, the sufferings of Jesus had to belong to the Logos in some way, even though he was impassible. The salvation offered by Christianity depended upon this. 498 Chadwick, “Eucharist,” 159. So far as I can ascertain, the phrase is not found in Cyril’s Greek. Chadwick cites R. V. Sellers, Two Ancient Christologies 88; to Sellers’ references Chadwick adds Scholia 37, A.C.O. I.5, 213, line 7 that has “patiebatur autem inpassibiliter.” 497

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For McGuckin the statement ¢paqîj œpaqen although paradoxical is not a “meaningless conundrum.” 499 ‘God suffered impassibly’ is only apparently contradictory “because the word ‘God’ is being used in a different way to normal.” 500 In this statement Cyril is referring to God-in-the-flesh, not God-in-himself. McGuckin is correct, but does not go far enough. Unless one shows definitively that they are using one of the two terms, either ¢paqîj or œpaqen in a sense different from the other, there is a contradiction. Hence what must be found is a way of understanding suffering that is appropriate to the divine, one that does not limit God, or take away divine attributes. In other words, the statement must mean that God suffers in one sense, and in another sense does not. Later in the book McGuckin writes: Cyril says he suffers impassibly. That does not mean it is a play act; it means he does suffer, but does so qua man, not qua God, but neither, because of the intimate union, does he suffer in a discontinuous (or unengaged) way, rather in a direct fashion in so far as he has made the body his very own and because of it now exists in two conditions. Cyril understands the suffering as a mode of God’s very impassibility...the passivity is an expression of the perfect power of the Godhead whereby it appropriates to itself the fragile and powerless flesh. 501

Cyril’s thoughts on divine suffering and the human soul of Jesus developed over time as I have shown and it is necessary to appreciate the inner dynamic of his continuing search for a rational solution as well as his ultimate failure. In a footnote to the text quoted above McGuckin comes close to proposing a rational way to overcome this apparent contradiction. The Incarnation is a real but not an absolute limitation on the Godhead because the Godhead chooses to adopt the limitations that apply to humanity as an exercise of its omnipotent freedom. 502

499

John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria 185. ibid. 191. Nestorius argued that impassible suffering was a logical absurdity. See the fragment in Friedrich Loofs, Nestoriana: Die Fragmente des Nestorius 333, 21ff. 501 ibid. 202–203. 502 ibid. 201, n.47. 500

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Because Cyril never resolves the question of the suffering of the Logos or of the human soul of Jesus, his Christology opens the door both to the critique of Antioch with its emphasis on the suffering of the human soul of Jesus on the one hand, and to the suffering of the divine Logos in monophysitism on the other. It is not enough to say ¢paqîj œpaqen. Because Cyril simultaneously affirms and denies divine suffering, his logic fails. Nestorius upholds the ¢paqîj of the Logos denying the œpaqen, the monophysites uphold œpaqen, denying ¢paqîj.

NESTORIUS The usual approach to the differing Christologies of Cyril and Nestorius is to try to determine where orthodoxy lies. Even today there is a tendency to take sides. The translator of Cyril’s letters in the Fathers of the Church series states about one of Nestorius’ responses to Cyril that “Nestorius replied arrogantly... and in his answer favored blasphemies similar to the earlier ones.” 503 In an appendix to the English translation of the Book or the Bazaar of Heracleides, one of the editors proposes a choice between “Cyril’s inconsistency” and “the barren coherence of Nestorius.” 504 Bebis has a negative evaluation of Nestorius as a theologian and of his orthodoxy as well. He writes: “A pupil of Theodore of Mopsuestia, he had not the power and the intuition to see the value of the Apophatic Theology of the Fathers.” 505 Bebis describes Nestorius’ soteriology as “weak, deficient, and one-sided” because it does not measure up to the divinisation theology of Athanasius and Cyril. 506 Nestorius is the prime example of “complete failure to see that behind the Christological controversy of his times the whole theology of the Church on the redemption of mankind could stand or fall.” 507 To ask how Nestorius deals with the issue of divine suffering may provide a less polemic and more fruitful understanding of the difference between him and Cyril than these contemporary writers offer. 503

n.7.

504

John I. McEnerney (trans.), St. Cyril of Alexandria: Letters vol. 1, 50,

G. R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson (eds.), The Bazaar of Heracleides 420. G. S. Bebis, “The Apology of Nestorius: A New Evaluation,” in Studia Patristica v.11, pt.2, 107–112. 506 ibid. 110. 507 ibid. 111. 505

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How does Nestorius attempt to reconcile the demands of ancient philosophy that God can neither change nor suffer in any way with the Athanasian intuition dogmatized by Nicea that Christian faith is incarnational, that the God of Christianity has drawn near in the human person of Jesus? We should not presume that either Nestorius or Cyril “favored blasphemies.” Nestorius certainly did not intend a so-called “barren coherence,” nor was he at all unaware of the importance of soteriology. In fact, his entire project was an attempt to construct a soteriology preserving human freedom of will and resisting the notion of divine absorption which he thought Cyril taught. 508 And if Cyril was inconsistent on the question of divine suffering and change, it should be no surprise. He merely reflected the continuing inconsistency of the entire tradition as it first repeated then came to react against the twin philosophical axioms of divine immutability and impassibility in the light of the Incarnation. A. Grillmeier reviewed the literature about Nestorius written from the seventeenth century until the 1970’s in an appendix to the second edition of his Christ in Christian Tradition. 509 A sampling of this literature shows the scholarly community’s continued interest in the historical question of the justice of Nestorius’ condemnation, and wonders whether Nestorius is more theologically in line with tradition than previously thought. This question is especially important because of the recent discovery of a Syriac text, originally in Greek from Nestorius’ own hand, entitled in its English translation, The Bazaar of Heracleides, dated 451. We now have some direct access to the later thought of Nestorius. 510 Before this there were mainly the fragments collected by Friedrich Loofs and others. 511 508

See R. A. Norris Jr., “The Problem of Human Identity in Patristic Christological Speculation,” Studia Patristica 17/1, 155. 509 Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition Second Edition, vol. 1, 559– 568. 510 G. R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson, Nestorius: The Bazaar of Heracleides Hereafter I will refer to this work as DH. There is a French translation of this work by F. Nau, Le Livre d’Heraclide de Damas. 511 Most importantly Friedrich Loofs, Nestoriana: Die Fragmente des Nestorius. Also see the others as noted in Quasten v. 3, 515–516. Whether interpolated or not, the Bazaar allows us access to sustained arguments by Nestorius. See McGuckin, St. Cyril for a recent discussion of the sources for Nestorius, 126–130.

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In several of these fragments Nestorius’ insistence on divine immutability and impassibility in the Incarnation is quite clear. We shall see that this is also the case in the Bazaar. Like many writers before him, Nestorius often cites Mal 3:6 and Ps 101:28 as evidence that the divine excludes change and suffering. 512 Neither John 1:14 nor Phil 2:5–7 can be interpreted to mean that the Logos changes or suffers as a result of the incarnation. 513 The ideas of the Bazaar are especially relevant if as Scipione argues the first part was actually written by Nestorius. Scipione argued against the thesis of L. Abramowski who held that the first 125 pages came from the monastery of the Acoimetai between 523 and 533. If Scipioni is correct that we are hearing from Nestorius in part one, the Bazaar explains why Nestorius found the Christology of Cyril so objectionable and how he himself attempted to deal with the issue of divine suffering in the Incarnation. 514 Since the second part of the treatise discusses immutability more than twenty times, however, whether Nestorius wrote part one or not has little effect on my contention that immutability was his major concern.

THE BOOK OF HERACLEIDES The first part of the book is a dialogue with a certain Sophronius, Nestorius’ opponent. It contains an important discussion which is reminiscent of a work mentioned above, the Ad Theopompum ascribed to Gregory the Wonderworker. For Sophronius a single argument provides for the possibility of the Incarnation: God can do whatever God wills. 512

Loofs 193, 5–6; 267, 5; 320, 28–321, 1. Loofs 176, 6–19; 306–307; 254, 4.13.16. This last fragment is from the first homily against Theotokos. 514 Luise Abramowski, Untersuchungen zu dem Liber Heraclidis des Nestorius in Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium vol. 242, Subsidia T.22. Abramowski questioned the authorship of the first part. I. Scipioni, Nestorio e il concilio di Efeso: Storia dogma critica defended it as authentic. He argues that these pages were Nestorius’ own reworking of another work of his with the interesting title, Theopaschites. The Syriac translator refers to this work in his preface. For a complete discussion see Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition Second Edition vol. 1, 501–519; also Roberta C. Chesnut, “The Two Prosopa in Nestorius’ Bazaar of Heracleides,” Journal of Theological Studies N.S., 29/2 (October, 1978) 392–398. 513

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It pertains to the omnipotent and infinite nature to be able to do everything; ...all other things are limited while it is not limited by anything, and it, as God, can do what cannot be done by anyone else. 515

Everything God wishes to do, God does. Hence God can become flesh. 516 Nestorius replies that although God can do whatever God wants to do, God cannot become flesh. If God became flesh, God would be limited. Flesh cannot do everything “in that it is flesh and not God. For it pertains to God to be able to effect everything, and not to the flesh; for it cannot do everything it wishes.” 517 To this Sophronius replies that God is only able to will to become what he is not, not what he is. God became flesh but the divine nature did not change. God must have become flesh in some other way. Nestorius thinks that this implies two essences in the Incarnation, one which God was by nature, one which God became, which was of flesh. Sophronius denies this implication, and offers the analogy of water, which can be frozen or running. Water has one essence, but two forms. Nestorius suggests that this view is docetist. Sophronius replies that Nestorius prefers logic over faith, and repeats his contention that because God can do anything, God can become flesh. He gives three more examples: God could raise up children of Abraham from stones; turn a human body into a pillar of salt; create a man from dust. In these examples, Nestorius says, the former essence is lost and replaced by another. Sophronius appeals to Moses’ staff which became a serpent, then a staff again, and to the Nile which turned to blood, then returned to water. Nestorius maintains that in these examples as well, there is a change of essence. 518 He thinks that the two essences in the Incarnation cannot be combined without loss of the singularity of each essence, and must be united in some other way. It is here that the importance of divine immutability appears. Nestorius wonders how anyone could think that the Creator changed the divine being into a created nature.

515

DH 10. I have altered this quotation slightly and will continue to do so to avoid archaic turns of phrase. 516 ibid. 13. 517 ibid. 14. 518 ibid. 15–17.

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THE COMING OF THE IMPASSIBLE GOD For in that God is Creator, God is unchangeable, and works by an unchangeable nature...In effect either God is what God is by nature, eternally God, and did not become another nature while remaining in the essence of God; or, not having the nature of God, was made and is not the Creator, which is absurd and impossible. 519

The logic of Nestorius is apparently unshakable, because it reduces Sophronius to an hour of silence! 520 Nestorius argues that those who propose a combined nature after a hypostatic union are teaching divine passibility. 521 His own theory of union is difficult to understand, but rests on a theory of a combination of two proposopa in the incarnation rather than two ousia. 522 In the second part of part one of the Bazaar Nestorius lists the human experiences of Jesus that his opponents assign to God: the human fear and the betrayal, the interrogation, the answer, the smiting upon the cheeks, the sentence of the cross, the way of the cross, the setting of the cross upon his shoulder, the bearing of his cross, the removal (of it) from him that it might be set on another, the crown of thorns, the robes of purple, the raising up on the cross, the crucifixion, the fixing of the nails, the gall which was offered unto him, the other distresses, the surrender of his spirit to the Father, the bowing down of his head, the descent of his body from the cross, the embalming, his burial, the resurrection on the third day, his appearance in his body, his speaking and his teaching... 523

According to Nestorius they have “God suffering the sufferings of the body...thirsting, hungering, in poverty, in anxiety, meditating, 519

ibid. 27. I re-wrote this and the following passages from the Bazaar to make them gender-neutral and to avoid archaic language. 520 ibid. 28. 521 ibid. 35–41. 522 Rowan A. Greer, “The Image of God and the Prosopic Union in Nestorius’ Bazaar of Heracleides,” in Lux in Lumine: Essays for W. N. Pittenger 46– 61; H. E. W. Turner, “Nestorius Reconsidered,” in Studia Patristica 13 (1971) 306–321; Roberta C. Chesnut, “The Two Prosopa In Nestorius’ Bazaar of Heracleides,” Journal of Theological Studies N.S., vol. 29, pt.2 (October, 1978) 392–409; J. A. McGuckin, “The Christology of Nestorius of Constantinople,” Patristic And Byzantine Review 7 (1988) 93–129. 523 DH 92.

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praying...the properties of God the Word they ignore and make them human.” 524 It is an “awful and dreadful thing” to tell others that the Son “has been changed from impassible to passible and from immortal to mortal and from unchangeable to changeable.” Nestorius dramatizes what he considers the glaring contradiction: his opponent holds that the divine can neither suffer nor change, but the hypostatic union means that the sufferings and changes described by the gospels must have happened to the eternal Logos. “They make use indeed of the name of orthodox, but in fact they are Arians.” 525 Nestorius is able to argue effectively against Cyril’s favorite analogy for the unity of Christ, that of the soul and the body. If the union is natural like that of the soul and body, when the body suffers, the Logos suffers just like the soul. 526 as the soul naturally gives perception to the body, so by means of this perception it experiences the sufferings of the body, so that the perception of the sufferings of the body is given by the soul and to the soul; for it is passible. 527

The union of Logos and the human is not hypostatic for Nestorius, but voluntary “as consisting in a property of the will and not of the nature.” 528 As we saw above in the Scholia, Cyril argues that the soul does not suffer in the same manner as the body, thereby attempting to avoid Nestorius’ conclusion regarding natural union. For Nestorius, orthodoxy demands that one holds to the impassibility of the Logos in the Incarnation. The Logos “by nature is impassible and unchangeable and invariable, does not even suffer in any manner in the human nature, since it is not his to suffer in his nature.” 529 Cyril has “made even God the Word passible.” 530 The ortho524

ibid. 93. ibid. 94; see also 178; 181. 526 ibid. 162. 527 ibid. 172; McGuckin, St. Cyril 198–201 does a fine job expressing the importance for Cyril of the soul/body analogy for the union of the divine and human in the Incarnation. Yet he does not mention the problem which it presents which Nestorius saw clearly: if the union is reciprocal, when one suffers or changes, so does the other. But as we saw above, Cyril does not think of the union as completely reciprocal in either case. 528 ibid. 179. 529 ibid. 212. 525

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dox are those who consider the Word “unchangeable and invariable,” not those who attribute “birth and growth and upbringing and gradual advance in stature and in wisdom and in grace and the commandments and their observance and their fulfilment and the suffering and the cross and the death and the resurrection” to it. 531 In a comment near the end of the book, Nestorius captures the dilemma of Cyril who implies that God changes, while “ten thousand times you say that he is unchangeable!” 532 Scholars usually analyze Nestorius’ understanding of unity of the incarnate person in the Bazaar, but until recently did not pay sufficient attention to the underlying issue of divine immutability and impassibility. 533 This focus is understandable if the question is one of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Yet if one simply reads this book as it now stands, divine impassibility is clearly the single most important issue in it, discussed repeatedly throughout the treatise. Depending upon how one numbers the passages, Nestorius discusses impassibility in part two alone, for example, more than twenty times! 534

CONCLUSION McGuckin makes an important point concerning the historical importance of Cyril’s Christology. It is highly doubtful whether a prophetic or charismatically based Christology, such as that favoured by several of the Antiochenes would ever have survived its reinterpretation by Islam. This is another way of saying that it was Cyril’s vision and concept of the divine Lord that authentically articulated the faith of the entire eastern church, and gave voice to the warmth of his people’s religious

530

ibid. 173. Although this passage does not name Cyril, it clearly refers to him as “this man” and as “one who lied concerning the fathers.” See also 174; 177. 531 ibid. 212; also 219. 532 ibid. 250. 533 See the references in footnote 447 above. 534 Relevant pages I have not cited: DH 226; 230; 232; 237; 240; 243; 244; 247; 258.

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commitment to a God who had so willingly, and personally, committed himself to the vagaries of their life. 535

Belief in the descent of God in Jesus of Nazareth expresses the essence of Christian faith and needs to be preserved to adhere to the fullness of that faith. Working out the theological question of divine passibility is intimately related to the intelligible defense of the Christian confession. This confession may appropriately begin with a paradox of impassible suffering, but must ultimately make use of rational systematic categories and distinctions to express it. Otherwise belief in a divine descent can be dismissed by intelligent and thoughtful people as contradictory. And this is the importance of the critique of Nestorius who in the spirit of rational theology, demanded consistency. The last important Antiochene challenge to Cyril came from Theodoret.

535

St. Cyril 223–224.

7. THEODORET AND THE ERANISTES Eranistes—We say that he suffered in an impassible way. Orthodoxus—What sensible person would put up with these absurd riddles? For no one has ever heard of impassible suffering…That which is impassible did not suffer, and that which suffered would not remain impassible. (Eranistes, Dialogue 3)

The logic of the classic debate between Antioch and Alexandria can perhaps be simplified: God does not suffer and change, nor have human imperfection. Both schools agree. But according to the New Testament, Jesus does suffer and change, and shows that he has some human imperfections. He does not know the time of the Eschaton for example, or where Lazarus is buried. Jesus also fears death, and in two Gospels feels abandoned by God on the cross. How can we ascribe these truly to Jesus while at the same time holding that Jesus is God? Antioch emphasizes that Jesus was fully human, had a human soul, and that all imperfection must be assigned to the human nature, either to the body or the soul. Alexandria agrees, but nevertheless subjectifies Jesus ultimately as the divine Word made flesh, so that in some way these imperfections must be assigned to the divine Word without compromising divine perfection. Hence the so-called ‘communication of idioms’ allows us to predicate human qualities to God the Logos that do not, strictly speaking, belong to him. The Antiochene view tends to separate the two natures. But the Alexandrian view which emphasizes single divine subjectivity has difficulty specifying exactly how the divine Logos can suffer and change while remaining impassible and immutable. This issue was important not only to Nestorius as we have seen, but to Theodoret as well. It was assumed on both the Antiochene and Alexandrian side as axiomatic in this debate that God can neither suffer nor change in any way. 143

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Theodoret presents the last important Antiochene challenge to Cyrillian Christologies. Because his Christology fell into disrepute, his objections to Alexandrian Christology remained unanswered. Nestorians were barred from participating in future dialogue being condemned equally by all parties from the time of Justinian on, even, to the present.

THEODORET Theodoret’s works can be divided chronologically with some ease between those composed before the council of Ephesus in 431 and those written later. Beyond that, precise dating is difficult, especially for his exegetical works. 536 One of the most important patristic discussions of immutability and impassibility from the period between the council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon is his Eranistes consisting of three dialogues with patristic florilegia appended to each. They are titled: Unchanging, Unmixed, and Impassible (Ἄtreptoj, Ἀsύgcutoj, Ἀpaqήj). The usual date given for Eranistes is 447 or 448. The fact that Theodoret, “the last great theologian of Antioch” 537 spends nearly an entire treatise defending these concepts signals their importance in the Christological debate and in his Christology as a whole. Theodoret’s Christological concerns appear early in his career. In his magnificent apologetic work, Graecarum affectionum curatio written before 423 for example, he accepts Plato’s critique of the gods and goddesses and wholeheartedly adopts Plato’s view of the divine nature as immutable, beyond change. 538 After finding evidence for the Trinity in the Old Testament, in Plato, and in the Neo-Platonists, 539 Theodoret argues that although John’s gospel states that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, it immediately upholds divine immutability in the phrase “and we beheld his glory.” 540 Although he believes that we can know things about the divine nature, such as that God is good, 536

See M. Richard, “Notes sur L’Evolution Doctrinal de Théodoret,” in Opera Minora 46, 459–472. 537 J. Quasten, Patrology vol. 3, 536. 538 SC 57, 148–149. 539 ibid. 68ff. 540 ibid. 163.

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just, the light, life, the demiurge, and sovereign governor of the universe because of creation, Theodoret’s list of divine attributes shows his adherence to negative theology of which immutability and impassibility are a part. God has no beginning, is deathless, immortal, infinite, indestructible, invisible, without form, has no figure, no shape, no limits, is inaccessible. 541 Ultimately we know God through the Logos who proceeds eternally and without suffering (¢crόnoj kaὶ ¢paqîj) from the Father. 542 In another early treatise preserved with the works of Justin Martyr entitled Quaestiones et responsiones ad orthodoxos, Theodoret responds to questions as to whether God can change the divine will given divine immutability. Like so many of the Fathers, he struggles with the biblical stories about the rejection of Saul and the sparing of the Ninevites. 543 For Theodoret God knows ahead of time what God will do eventually, hence remaining immutable. The second question asks how God can change the divine will to accommodate the need to condemn sin justly. Here again because God knows what will happen, there is no need to ascribe a change of will to the divine, but only to the human. 544 In the second treatise preserved in Justin’s works, there is no awareness of the problem seen later at the council of Ephesus. More than one-half of the Expositio rectae fidei discusses the Trinity. Nevertheless one begins to see the emergence of the Antiochene Christology of Theodoret. In order to protect divine immutability and impassibility when dealing with the Incarnation, he will continually and nearly without exception throughout his writing, call attention to the need to differentiate the divine from the human in Christ. The Expositio states that “as man he died, as God he rose.” 545 It is fitting to divide the natures about which we speak, attributing the great and the divine to the divine nature, the lowly and the human to the human nature. 546 541

ibid. 165. ibid. 166. See also his list of negative attributes in an early treatise preserved with the works of Cyril, De sancta et vivifica Trinititate PG 75, 1188 C–D. 543 See J. T. C. Otto, Corpus apologetarum christianorum saeculi secundi vol. 4, 50. 544 ibid. 70. 545 ibid. 32. 546 ibid. 48. 542

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Theodoret prefers the image of the divine indwelling to divine becoming no matter what the language of John 1:14 says. If the (divine nature) remained what it was, how could it become what it was not? And if it became what it was not, how could it remain what it was? 547

All the works I have cited thus far precede the writing of Eranistes, as do the ten orations on providence, De providentia orationes X. 548 The last discourse of this work is on the Incarnation. Theodoret emphasizes that the Creator does not change, but is “the incorporeal one, the invisible, the unchangeable, the one who always remains the same.” 549 Because the Logos is divine, the Logos does not change. If those who practice medicine do not themselves contract the wounds they are engaged in attending, but restore health to the ailing without incurring any injury to themselves in the process, the supreme Artist, God, who has an impassible nature that is superior to change and does not admit of mutation, will certainly derive no defilement whatever from healing us. 550

ERANISTES 551 The main issue of the first of three dialogues between Eranistes, the imaginary collector of unorthodox doctrines from various heretics, and Theodoret, who plays the role of Orthodox, is whether and how God could remain immutable in the Incarnation. How can the divine Word become human, truly suffer and die on the cross, and continue to be immutable and impassible? 547

ibid. For a careful analysis of all of Theodoret’s terminology for the union of the two natures in his pre-Ephesus period, see M. Mandac, “L’union Christologique dan les oeuvres de Theodoret anterieures au concile d’Ephese,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 48 (1971) 81–96. 548 PG 83. 555–774. 549 PG 83. 749 A. 550 PG 83. 749. See also the end of the discussion of the Incarnation in the earlier Curatio, where Thedoret insists the human nature of Christ supports all the human qualities, the divine nature the divine qualities. SC 57, 283. 551 An excellent work which I found very useful for this chapter remains strangely unpublished. J. L. Stewardson, The Christology of Theodoret of Cyrus according to his Eranistes.

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The first main point is that the attribute of immutability ¥treptoj, applies to the entire Trinity. 552 Other names such as “Father” and “Son” and “Holy Spirit” refer to specific hypostases. Both agree. They turn almost immediately to the main text supporting Alexandrian Christology from Athanasius to Cyril and beyond: The Word became flesh. 553 Why does this not imply change, Orthodox asks? Eranistes replies weakly that the Word does not become flesh by changing but in a way that “he himself knows.” 554 Orthodox prefers the language of “assuming flesh” rather than “becoming” it, labèn rather than the ἐgέneto of John 1:14. 555 Eranistes insists on the language of John 1:14, that the Word was made flesh “as he himself knows.” He gives as examples miracles preceding the Exodus from Egypt. God can do anything, so God can become flesh. Orthodox insists that God cannot change citing Ps 3:27 (“You are the same and your years shall not fail”) and Mal 3:6 (“For I the Lord do not change”). Both texts were commonly used by the Fathers to defend immutability. Eranistes replies weakly that “it is wrong to investigate things that have been concealed” to which Orthodox quips: “and (it is also wrong) to be totally ignorant of things that have been revealed, nor yet what is plain to be altogether ignored.” 556 Eranistes has stated one of the common arguments used by Alexandrians to defend their interpretation of John 1:14: God can do anything God wills to do. He now states the other defense commonly used, that of divine mystery and incomprehensibility. “I do not know how the Incarnation took place; but I did hear that ‘The Word became flesh.’” 557

552

I will use the edition of G. H. Ettlinger, Theodoret of Cyrus: Eranistes which I will cite first throughout this discussion. This text is on 66, line 10 (33). For English I will use his recently published translation in FC, vol. 106. I will cite these pages in parentheses after references to his Greek edition. 553 Contrary to some interpreters, I do not believe that this treatise is only meant to refute Eutyches who is nowhere named, but is a critique of Alexandrian Christology in general with Apollonaris, Eutyches, Dioscorus, and Cyril in mind. Ettlinger deduces that it is most probably aimed at Dioscorus. See FC 106, p.6–10. 554 æj oἶden aὐtόj. 66, 17 (34). 555 66, 18 (34); 68, 16 (38). 556 67, 13–14 (35). 557 ibid. 15–16 (35).

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In other words, I believe what I have been taught in spite of not understanding how such a thing is possible. Orthodox then gives several analogies, such as making glass from sand, wine from grapes, and lime from stone to show that if something is made into something else, it changes. Eranistes replies that “remaining what it was, it became what it was not.” 558 He accuses Orthodox of inventing labèn, insisting that it is not scriptural. Orthodox cites Heb 2:16, which in reference to the Incarnation, reads “takes hold (ἐpilamb£netai) of the seed of Abraham.” Eranistes replies that John 1:14 and Heb 2:16 are inconsistent: ἐgέneto or ‘becoming’ cannot be reconciled with labèn or ‘assuming.’ Orthodox sees them as compatible, reading “became” in the sense of “assumed.” Eranistes clings stubbornly to the words that he has been taught: “The Word became flesh.” For Orthodox this means that Eranistes holds that the immutable changed into flesh. Later in the dialogue Eranistes insists that he wants to know the meaning of John 1:14. 559 Orthodox wants to establish from Scripture that other passages imply or state the position that he holds, that the Word assumes flesh rather than becomes it. He extends the reading of John 1:14 arguing that “we have seen His glory” shows that the Word remained unchanged, even though the hymn of descent in Phil 2:5–8 states that the divine “took the form of a slave, coming into being in human likeness.” 560 Eranistes begins to yield when confronted with this text which uses the language of “assuming” rather than “becoming.” Gal 3:13 stating the “Christ was made a curse for us” cannot be taken literally by Orthodox. He quotes from Athanasius’ Letter to Epictetus: Just as he was said to have become a curse, not because he himself became a curse, but because he accepted the curse on our behalf, so also is he said to have become flesh, not because he changed into flesh, but because he assumed flesh for us. 561

The Word was not literally turned into a curse or into flesh. Orthodox also cites Gregory of Nazienzus, Ambrose of Milan, and many 558

mέnwn Ö ἤn gέgonen Ö oὐk ἤn. 68, 14 (35). 89, 15–16 (59). 560 89, 29–30 (60). 561 ibid. 91, 24 -30 (62). 559

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others, appending a florilegium to this dialogue, as well as to the two which follow. The first dialogue finally ends with Eranistes confessing his own belief in divine immutability and admitting that the Word took rather than became flesh. 562 The second dialogue of the treatise discusses the union of the two natures. Yet even here it eventually returns to the troubling issue of immutability. Eranistes points out impatiently that although he does not know how the Word was made flesh, he believes it. Orthodox argues throughout for two natures, Eranistes for one. Eranistes claims again that he does not know the manner (trόpon) in which the Word was made flesh, and Orthodox accuses him of unfairly pretending to be ignorant rather than admitting error. Orthodox proclaims “loudly and clearly” what he knows: The divine Incarnation was free of change. For if (the Word) became flesh in accordance with some alteration (ἀlloίwsin) or change (tropήn) the divine nature and realities would in no way apply to him after the change. 563

Even though the issue of immutability has supposedly been resolved between them, the question of the natures remains. Eranistes holds that there is only one nature, Orthodox that there are two that remain distinct. Nevertheless, they again return to the issue of immutability. Eranistes repeats one of his former statements: “I know not the manner, but I believe that he was made flesh.” Orthodox accuses him of acting like the Pharisees by only pretending that he does not know the manner, and proclaims openly that the Incarnation cannot imply variation (ἀlloίwsin) or change (tropήn). Eranistes says: “We have agreed again and again that God the Word is immutable.” 564 Then Orthodox says “He was made flesh by taking (labèn) flesh.” After returning to the question of the two unconfused natures vs. the one after the union, the second dialogue ends like the first, with patristic testimony appended. The final dialogue contains a very important discussion of divine power. Eranistes argues that God can suffer because all things are pos562

Ὁmologî k¢gë kaˆ ἄtrepton eἶnai tÕn qeÕn lÒgon kaˆ s£rka ¢neilηφšnai. ibid. 111, 4–5 (88). 563 ibid. 136, 31f. (115). 564 ibid. 137, 3 (115).

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sible for the divine being. Orthodox argues that some things must be impossible for God, that is, anything involving change for the worse. The impossibility of change for the worse demonstrates the infinity of divine power. 565 Further, “with God many things are impossible, everything that is, which is repugnant to the divine nature.” Eranistes wants to say that after the Incarnation God became capable of suffering. 566 Using Cyril’s phrase, the Word “underwent the passion impassibly.” 567 Orthodox replies with the statement cited at the beginning of this chapter. And what man in his senses would ever put up with such ridiculous riddles? Whoever heard of an impassible passion...? The impassible has never undergone passion, and what has undergone passion could not possibly be impassible. 568

This statement clearly and dramatically sums up the position of Antioch. The position of Alexandrians, like Cyril and his heirs, constitutes for Theodoret, a ridiculous riddle. In the final section Theodoret abandons the dialogue format and briefly attempts to show the truth of his three arguments by syllogism. The problem with Theodoret’s Eranistes is that “assuming” flesh involves mutability as clearly as “becoming” flesh. It implies another form of change, one which is less substantive or transformative, but a change nonetheless. Eranistes clarifies the issue of what is theologically at stake in a reasonable defense and/or explanation of the Incarnation, but it does not offer a solution. By removing change and suffering from the Logos to the human nature, Nestorius and Theodoret open themselves to the criticism of Cyril and of all the Christologies influenced by him, that they believe in two sons, a human son who suffers and a divine Son who remains impassible. Yet the position of Cyril is as problematic on this point as that of Eranistes because Cyril too can only appeal to paradox and divine incomprehensibility. How can we take either view on this issue over the other? Because of a literal reading of John 1:14, and a commitment to the common axioms of divine impassibility and immutability, Cyrillian Christologies, at least on the 565

ibid. 196–197 (186). ibid. 201, 22–23 (191). 567 Ἀpaqῶj ἀutÕn peponqέnai famέn ibid. 218.29 (211). 568 ibid. 30–33 (211). 566

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surface, may be professing a contradiction at the heart of Christian faith. Appropriate theological justification for the communication of idioms will only be given much later by Maximus the Confessor.

THEODORET’S COMMENTARIES It is important to examine the Christological content of the exegetical works of Theodoret, especially the question of the immutability and impassibility of God and of the Logos in the Incarnation. This has recently been made possible by the publication of Guinot’s L’Exegese de Theodoret de Cyr. 569 Guinot provides access to the important Christological terms in various indices. For Guinot, there is no development of Christological terminology and conceptuality in Theodoret’s exegesis. “From one commentary to the other in each case the terminology remains relatively uniform, and (Theodoret’s) Christology is no different from that of the Eranistes.” 570 Theodoret’s Commmentary on the Song of Songs provides a good example. “The Christology of Theodoret is well defined at the time of this commentary, and it does not undergo any fundamental modification in what follows.” 571 Two examples should suffice. Theodoret attempts to explain how it is that the soul cannot find God as it searches through the city (2.3–4). If God is unchanging (¥treptoj), why can God not be found? 572 He answers that because God is superior to humans, his presence can only be experienced by self-denial and contemplation. It is not God who is ever absent from us—we are absent from God. In his interpretation of Song 5:10–16 in which the Beloved comes to the Garden, the beloved is Christ. But Christ as God cannot literally come to the Garden. “God always was, but man came to be, not losing what God was, nor becoming a man, but by taking on (ἐndusάmenoj) human nature.” 573 Whenever Theodoret comments on Old Testament passages which appear to conflict with divine immutability and impassibility, he always reminds the reader that these attributes may not be com569

Jean-Noel Guinot, L’Exégèse de Théodoret de Cyr. ibid. 577, note 46. 571 Jean-Noel Guinot, “La Christologie de Théodoret de Cyr dans son Commentaire sur le Cantique,” Vigiliae Christianae 39 (1985), 266. 572 PG 81. 113 D–116 A. 573 PG 81. 156 C. 570

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promised. God is ἀnalloίwtoj and ¥treptoj. 574 God is above change because of an immutable nature. 575 In spite of biblical texts to the contrary, God has no anger because God is ἀpaqήj. Exek 6:12 which reads “Thus I will spend my fury and my anger upon them” cannot mean that the divine being is literally angry. These are human words and do not apply to God. 576 Ezech 35:3, “I will stretch out my hand against you...” is metaphorical. We know that the divine nature is impassible. 577 Other commentaries contain many references to the axioms of immutability and impassibility. These usually come in relation to passages from the New Testament which conflict with Theodoret’s Christology because they appear to attribute doubt, fear, suffering, and even death to the divine Word. Matt 26:39 (“Father if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.”), John 20:17 (“I go to my Father and your Father.”) and Heb 5:7–9 (Christ has “Godly fear,” “learned obedience,” and was “made perfect”) apply only to the form of the servant, not to the Logos that exists before all ages, which is perfect, impassible, immortal, deathless. 578 In his response to Cyril’s last anathema, Theodoret admits that the morfὴ Θeoῦ and the morfὴ doύlou are united, but immediately afterward states that it is the man who was assumed by the Word that suffers for us, not Christ. 579 His reply to the tenth anathema of Cyril interprets the Hebrews passage in a similar way. Who is it that lived with godly fear and offered supplication with strong crying and tears, not able to save himself but appealing to him that is able to save him and asking to be spared from death? Not God the Word...It is on the contrary that which was assumed by him of the seed of David, mortal, passible and afraid of death; al-

574

In Ps. 92. PG 80, 1624 A; 1625 B. In Ps. 102. 26–28. PG 80. 1684 A & B. 576 In Ezech. 6.12; PG 81, 861 A. 577 PG 81. 1169 D–1172 A. See also Daniel 11.36. PG 81. 1525 C; In Ps. 41.11. PG 80. 1173 D. 578 In Ps. 15.2, PG 80. 957. See also his comment on 1 Timothy 6:15 at PG 82. 672 C where Theodoret says that God is called ‘blessed’ because of divine immutability. 579 PG 76. 459 B & C. 575

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though this itself afterwards destroyed the power of death through union with the God who had assumed it. 580

Theodoret appears to interpret this passage differently, perhaps in a more Alexandrian fashion in his Commentary on Hebrews, as we shall see later. The words of Jesus from the cross in Mark and Matthew, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” cannot possibly come from the Logos. For how can an impassible nature suffer? Christ said this as man. 581 The divine nature is not raised from the dead because it is impassible. Although Jesus and the only begotten Son are the same, he suffers as man, and rises as man. 582 Since the divinity is impassible, only the body suffers. 583 In his Commentary on Hebrews, Theodoret characteristically divides up the attributes of Jesus by connecting them either to his divinity or humanity, and it is here that his exegesis clearly fails. Theodoret’s interpretation of Heb 1:1 (“In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain.”) applies to the divinity. For Theodoret this text teaches not only that God is ¥treptoj and ἀnalloίwtoj, but also ἀpaqήj. For if the divine nature suffers, how can it remain the same, he asks? 584 One of the most common constructions in this commentary is his use of æj Θeόj and æj ¥nqrwpoj. The phrase “appointed heir of all things” from Heb 1:2 applies to man and the “through whom also he created the worlds” which follows immediately applies not to the man but to God. When he interprets Heb 1:3, he mentions the prologue to John’s gospel in passing. Because the divine Word is joined (sunέzeuktai), by human generation to suffering and to time, he (John) necessarily calls him the 580

PG 76. 436 C-437 A. I used Kevin McNamara’s translation from “Theodoret of Cyrus and the Unity of Person in Christ,” Irish Theological Quarterly 22 (1955), 321. 581 In Ps. 21.2. PG 80. 1009 B. 582 I Thess. 1.10. PG 82. 633 A. 583 I Cor. 15.12. PG 82. 352 C. See also Rom. 4.24. PG 82. 93 D. 584 PG 82. 688 C.

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THE COMING OF THE IMPASSIBLE GOD Logos and shows that the generation is impassible and nontemporal. 585

By using the term “joined”, does Theodoret come close to attributing suffering and temporality to the Logos, something he characteristically does not do? I do not believe so. The “joining” to suffering and time seems clearly external and does not affect the eternal and impassible Logos. Nevertheless, Christ is God and man in one person (prόswpon). One of the most interesting Christological discussions in the commentary is Theodoret’s interpretation of Heb 5:7–10. It clearly brings out the problem for Antiochene Christological exegesis generally, and specifically for that of Theodoret. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. (Heb 5:7–10)

Verse 5 of chapter five states that Christ “was appointed” as high priest and quotes Ps 2:7, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you,” a text which was very problematic during the Arian period. The issues for Theodoret are obvious. Because the divine can neither change nor suffer, the “loud cries and tears” cannot come from the divine Logos. Neither can the Logos learn obedience, “be made perfect,” be appointed or designated a high priest. One would expect to read what Theodoret wrote about this passage previously in his reply to the tenth anathema of Cyril that all these are to be attributed to the human nature of Christ. Predictably he argues that none of these can be predicated of the divinity because God the Word does not change (is ἀnalloίwtoj and ¥treptoj) and cannot suffer (pάqouj ἐleύqeroj). Nevertheless, and surprisingly in this passage, the divine nature participates (sunecώrhsen) in the human suffering thereby showing that the human nature is real, and not merely an appearance as in the Gnostic heresies. This is one of the rare instances where 585

PG 82. 681 B.

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Theodoret is willing to attribute anything human to the divine subject, the Logos. Theodoret then quotes another problematic passage, Matt 26.39: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” We heard Theodoret insist previously that God could not possibly utter these words. They came from the human Jesus. Here, he does not give that explanation. Instead, this passage along with Heb 5:8 where he “learned obedience through what he suffered” are now hyperboles, not meant to be taken literally! Indeed Jesus showed obedience before the passion, not after it. The sufferings of Christ are also expressed by hyperbole, not only to show the truth of the Incarnation, but also to confirm what Paul said before, that we have a priest who shares our infirmities, and is like us in all things except sin. 586 The obvious explanation for this new interpretation, whether one considers it better or not, is that it springs from a stronger sense of the unity of person in Christ. Although human imperfections are applied to Jesus by hyperbole, one could argue that at least they do apply to the one Christ.

COMMUNICATION OF IDIOMS? Theodoret is consistent in holding the unity of the person of Christ. He does not teach two sons and legitimately defends himself in his letters against this charge by appealing to his corpus. At the same time, he never uses the communication of idioms to describe Christ, since it represents a false way of speaking. As Grillmeier points out, “he will not make the Logos the common subject of the divine and the human sayings. For him, ‘the Logos has suffered’ means: the Logos suffered in his divine nature.” 587 This is true for all of his writings including the commentaries. Theodoret is entirely consistent. M. Mandac suggests that Theodoret had at least a weak doctrine of communicatio. 588 Although Guinot does not state this explicitly, if I

586

This discussion is in PG 82. 712 C–713 B. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition vol. 1, 493. 588 Marijan Mandac, “L’Union christologique dans les oeuvres de Théodoret antérieures au concile d’Éphèse,” Ephemerides.Theologicae.Lovanienses 47 (1971) 64–96. The last six lines of the article argue for a vague sense of the communication of idioms in Theodoret. 587

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interpret him correctly, he implies it as well. 589 Since Theodoret had such strong reasons to deny it, and because he is so consistent, I do not see how such an argument is defensible even by implication. To accept the communicatio would have been inconsistent for Theodoret. Let us examine the texts cited. Mandac cites Theodoret’s response to Cyril’s twelfth anathema. The anathema reads: Whoever does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh and was crucified and tasted death in the flesh, or that he was not firstborn from the dead, or was life and living as God, let them be anathema. 590

Theodoret replies in part that because of the union of the form of the servant with the form of God, the form of God is joined (oἰkeiόw—translated by Mandac as s’est approprie) to the sufferings. 591 Immediately after this, Theodoret hastens to point out that it is not Christ who suffers, but the man that was assumed by the Word. This is hardly the context to argue for even a weak sense of communicatio. Another passage comes from a pre-Ephesus work of Theodoret on the Incarnation, and this text uses the same verb, oἰkeiόw, to connect human sufferings to the Logos. For Mandac, this is an appropriation of the sufferings of Jesus by the Logos. 592 I believe a better sense of the text is that the Logos, because it is joined to the human, is also joined generally to human sufferings, but does not appropriate them to itself in any subjective sense, but only externally. The divine cannot suffer. To be joined to human suffering for Theodoret does not mean that God suffers. Guinot also cites Theodoret’s reply to Cyril’s twelfth anathema, and correctly points out that in spite of the use of oἰkeioύmenoj to connect suffering to the form of God, Theodoret never tires of distinguishing between the passible human nature and the impassible divine nature, and that this is obvious in the passage. 593 Guinot cites two

589

Guinot, L’Exégèse 616–618. PG 76, 449B. 591 Mandac 93. 592 PG 75, 1452A. 593 Guinot, L’Exégèse 617. 590

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other passages using the same term, one from QL 19 (on Lev 14:51), 594 and one from the Commentary on Isaiah 53.3. 595 There is also a comment on Ps 40:5 which says “I am the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. united (oἰkeioύmenoj) to human suffering.” 596 In other texts, however, oἰkeioύmenoj expresses the unity between Christ and us because of his humanity, not the unity between the two natures of Christ. In a comment on Heb 2:5–8, Christ is joined (again, oἰkeioύmenoj) to our entire nature. 597 Once again, I believe that Theodoret is consistent. Christ’s connection with other human beings is similar to the connection between the divine and the human natures, and should not be construed as being any stronger. Because Christ was human, he was one of us. Guinot concludes this discussion by pointing out, once again quite correctly, that for Theodoret the mode of union of the divine and the human natures was ineffable. 598 Nevertheless, whatever it means to think of the union in this apophatic way, it is not even remotely possible that for Theodoret the ineffability of the union could compromise divine impassibility and immutability. If we set aside the question of Theodoret’s orthodoxy, what is at stake here? I believe that there are two issues that were unresolved at the time of the separation of the ancient churches after Chalcedon. The Alexandrians beginning with Athanasius, were convinced that the description of the divine being by Plato and Aristotle as the singular immutable impassible deity was not the only description one needed for the God of Christian faith who became Incarnate in Jesus. They were convinced by intuitive religious understanding, rooted ultimately in their soteriology (which was rooted primarily in their intuitive understanding of the Eucharist), that the ultimate subject of attribution in Jesus was the divine Logos. Only if this were true could the Incarna594

PG 80, 324B. SC 315, 148. 596 PG 80, 1164C. Theodoret also uses oἰkeiόw in this way three times in the Eranistes. M. de Durand thinks that the imprecision of this term allows both Theodoret and Cyril to use it without agreeing on the communication of idioms and I believe he is correct. See SC 97, 26 - 27; Guinot, L’Exégèse 616, n.165. 597 PG 83, 692A. See also PG 83, 360B. 598 Guinot, L’Exégèse 618. 595

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tion divinize the entire human race. Unless Jesus was God made flesh, and unless the Eucharist is the divine in the form of bread and wine, we are not saved. Nevertheless, they adhered to the Platonic portrait of divinity. Alexandrians do hold and state repeatedly along with Plato and Aristotle that the perfect divine being can neither change nor suffer. For Theodoret and for the Antiochenes generally, the God of the philosophers was the God of both Jewish and Christian faith, and unless Antioch could have reconsidered the nature of the deity itself, it was unable to validate the communication of idioms. A related point is the manner in which both sides seem to understand the way they attribute human or divine qualities to Christ. Theodoret, as Grillmeier stated above, takes statements of attribution literally as statements of fact. They correspond to reality. Contradictions cannot be accepted, even in religious discourse. Something cannot both be and not be in the same way at the same time in a theology that is logically consistent. The Christological religious discourse of the Alexandrians does admit of apparent contradictions, and the discourse of the communication of idioms is the prime example. Does this mean that ultimately as Christians, we are left with two ways of speaking about the divine being which are at bottom incompatible? Could Antioch and Alexandria ever agree on the proper way to describe the divine being revealed in Christ Jesus? Grillmeier is critical of Theodoret as having “an incomplete, symmetrical conception of Christ in which the hypostasis of the Logos does not come fully into its own.” 599 The choice of the term is a good one, because it brings out what is at stake here. Symmetry is usually considered a virtue, as in logic, architecture, and art, but in the case of the Incarnation according to Grillmeier, apparently not. The asymmetrical view of the Incarnate Lord that became Christian orthodoxy is the result of the acceptance of the twin axioms of divine impassibility and immutability from philosophy while teaching the communication of idioms from the Christian tradition. In the last chapter of this book, I will argue that Maximus the Confessor, because he can imagine the question in a way that is radically new, is able to create a symmetrical Christology for the first time, adhering to the unconfused and

599

Christ 494.

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unmixed natures of Chalcedon on the one hand, and to the single divine subject of attribution of Ephesus on the other.

8. SEVERUS OF ANTIOCH AND PHILOXENUS OF MABBUG After reviewing the various statements issued by the Roman Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches between 1970 and 1995, R. G. Roberson concludes that “the ancient christological dispute” which originated at the council of Chalcedon in 451 “has been substantially resolved.” He writes: Even though different interpretations of the meaning of the Chalcedonian definition remain, the churches have been able to set aside the old disputes and affirm that their faith in the mystery of Christ which transcends all formulations, is, in fact, the same. 600

Although the Apostolic Church of the East which originated after Ephesus in 431 presents a different set of christological issues, Pope John-Paul II and the Patriarch of that Church, Mar Dinkha IV issued a “Joint Declaration on Christology” in November of 1994 which states that “the divisions brought about were due in large part to misunderstanding.” 601 It seems then that the conciliar formulations of 431 and 451 are no longer obstacles for the reunion of many of these ancient separated churches and that they now remain separated because of other issues. Participants in the various recent christological dialogues have shown a remarkable willingness to free themselves of ancient terminology and anathemas. Among all the participants in the controversies from Arianism on, an axiom held almost universally at least on the surface, runs contrary to the biblical narrative, that in spite of Christian belief in the Incarnation, the divine being cannot change or suffer in any way.

600 601

R. G. Robersen, The Eastern Christian Churches 222. Origens 24/1 (May-Dec.1994) 402.

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Hopefully, I have documented the fact that the metaphysical commitment to divine immutability and impassibility is strongly held by Antiochenes such as Nestorius and Theodoret, but is also held in a weaker sense by Alexandrians from Athanasius to Cyril. The latter were willing to accept what to the Antiochenes was a contradiction: the immutable and impassible Logos changed and suffered while remaining immutable and impassible. This was a mystery for Alexandrians, and a rational explanation was unavailable to philosophers and Christian thinkers alike. Athanasius, to cite but one example, can write: And truly it is paradoxical that he it was who suffered and yet suffered not. Suffered because his own body suffered, and he was in it, which thus suffered; suffered not, because the Word, being by nature God, is impassible. 602

For ancient Antioch, Alexandria’s insistence on the oneness of Christ’s person seemed to lead to a Christological contradiction: Christ is God. Christ suffers. God does not (cannot) suffer. The formulation of Chalcedon did not resolve this particular problem and was therefore dissatisfying to many of those who treasured Cyril’s legacy, such as Severus of Antioch, and Philoxenus of Mabbug. Even though mutability and suffering are attributed only to the human nature, ultimately and apparently if Christ is one, they must also be attributed in some way to the divine person. To non-Chalcedonians, the two-natures theology seemed to be a return to Nestorianism, and even more importantly by distancing the divine from the human, seemed to empty the Incarnation of its soteriological significance. Severus’ first work, the Philalethes, written between 509–511 was a response to a florilegium compiled around 482 in Alexandria. The compiler extracted large sections from the work of Cyril to show that he would have favored the formula of Chalcedon. 603 The florilegist upholds the two natures doctrine and believes that Chalcedon’s teaching 602

Letter 59 to Epictetus 6, PG 26, 1060 C. Robert Hespel, Severe D’Antioch Le Philalethe C.S.C.O. 133, 134. For a complete listing of Severus’ works, and discussion see Pauline Allen and C. T. R. Hayward, Severus of Antioch. My brief discussion is not intended to do justice to his Christology, but only to make the point that he does not advance the discussion in any important way that I can see. 603

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can give the correct interpretation for Christ’s suffering. It was precisely the two natures formula that seemed to “offer(s) the possibility of confessing the divinity of the Logos as incapable of suffering and immortal, and of expressing in contrast the suffering and mortality of the human nature.” 604 Hence divine change and suffering is removed by the Christology of two natures. Only the human suffers, not the divine. All imperfections are attributed to the human nature of Christ. Severus rejects this interpretation. In the Philalethes through Cyril he asserts the immutability and impassibility of the divine Word perhaps hundreds of times. But he also rejects the dyophysite critique of the mίa fύsij position. Indeed for Severus, the one-nature formula “maintained an absolute character; without it the mystery of the incarnation could no longer be expressed adequately, insofar as it is possible at all.” 605 A new formulation of the problem was necessary, but instead of responding with new or better arguments and explanations to support the statements Cyril made, Severus simply repeats what Cyril wrote. As. H. J. Hohn puts it in reference to Severus, “speculative analysis seems not to have been his forte.” In hindsight because of the great influence and authority of Severus, this was unfortunate. Given his important place in history, he missed a theological opportunity to overcome at least partially, the post-Chalcedonian divisions. A second work, the Orationes Sancti Severi Ad Nephalium provides some comments of interest here. 606 Throughout the Orations Severus insists that his anti-two natures position and the use of mίa fύsij does not lead to a denial of impassibility. He vehemently denies the validity of Pope Leo’s question as to which nature suffered on the cross.607 That there can be no mixture of natures but only one nature of the Son incarnate, no one can demonstrate by syllogism. Instead we must turn to Scripture. The Incarnation was prefigured in the burning bush of Moses. The fire burned, but the bush was not consumed. God can become human without change. Severus also cites the iron/fire analogy of Cyril. The fire which represents the Logos, 604

Grillmeier with the collaboration of T. Hainthaler, English trans. By P. Allen and J. Cawte, Christ in Christian Tradition vol. 2, part 2, p.28. 605 H.-J. Hohn in ibid. 129. 606 J. Lebon (trans.) Severi Antiocheni Orationes ad Nephalium eiusdem ac Sergii Grammitici epistulae mutuae C.S.C.O., SS, v. 120. 607 ibid. 36, 22–23; 44, 10–11.

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does not become less hot when heating iron. Only the iron, the humanity of Christ, changes. For Severus, there are two important points in Cyril’s use of these analogies: nothing is impossible for God, and the truth of the Incarnation is absolutely incomprehensible. 608 In these Orations Severus again does nothing more than appeal to authority, mainly that of Cyril. So far as I can see, he provides not a single original analogy for the Incarnation of his own, nor a single philosophical distinction that might be helpful. Severus does not attempt to explain how the impassible God in the flesh, remaining impassible, can really suffer. He defends himself, however, against the suggestion that God suffers in the Godhead by calling upon his usual witnesses. 609

Both sides could produce evidence from authority. As Abelard was to dramatically demonstrate later in his famous Sic et Non, complete reliance on the argument from authority leaves much to be desired. It certainly is one of the least effective ways of advancing discussion among conflicting parties, each perhaps, using either the same authorities or their own in opposite ways. Severus and others do, however, make an important distinction to defend Cyril’s Christology from the charge that because all the words and deeds of Jesus must be attributed to the Logos, they and Cyril admit change and suffering into the Godhead. This was a major objection of Nestorius in the Book of Heracleides, and the central thesis of Theodoret’s Eranistes. Severus did make an important attempt to answer this objection by arguing that although the Word truly became flesh, the divine did not change. The phrase ‘immutable becoming’ as well as several others with the same meaning occur often in his works. 610 The phrase ‘immutable becoming’ is useful according to Lebon, because of the equivocal nature of the term ‘becoming.’ He cites several passages from Severus in his book and article, and since they are so numerous in Severus and in Philoxenus (whom we will discuss next), it 608

ibid. 42–43. Grillmeier 51. 610 J. Lebon, Le Monophysisme Severien: Etude Historique, Litteraire Et Theologique 208, note 1. See the entire section p.205–212. Essentially the same discussion in “La christologie du monophysisme syrien,” Das Konzil Von Chalkedon I, ed. A. Grillmemer and H. Bacht 431–450. 609

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is unnecessary to include them here. Christian faith in the Incarnation asserts that the Word truly became flesh they say, but that the Word, because it is divine, cannot change. Since Severus presents no general analysis of becoming, it is difficult to interpret his ‘immutable becoming.’ This phrase creates the same problem as the “impassible suffering” ridiculed so effectively by Theodoret. According to the principle of non-contradiction, what the first term denies cannot be affirmed by the second term. Hence each must have a different meaning, but these are not specified. The phrase at least does suggest, however, some type of divine temporality, a coming-into-human-being without change of essence. The divine will determines that the eternal divine Word comes into being in time for the purpose of salvation. The question for Nestorians, the Tome of Pope Leo, Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians is whether this statement can be made intelligibly. Can immutable becoming be expressed coherently? Chalcedonians say no. The doctrine of two natures protects the divine from change and suffering by attributing them to the human nature. NonChalcedonians claim that salvation is at stake. If God the Word did not truly come to be human and not just take up a human nature, we are not healed. Which of these alternatives represents the better dogmatic formulation of Christian faith on the one hand, and meets the legitimate demand for intelligibility on the other? We need to conceive of divine becoming in such a way as to preserve the identity of the divine being. Philoxenus was aware of this.

PHILOXENUS OF MABBUG (440–523) Philoxenus is truly a theologian of the Incarnation. Almost the entire Three Treatises on the Trinity 611 deal with that topic and the Trinity oc611 Philoxeni Mabbugensis tractatus tres de Trinitate et incarnatione ed. and trans. by A. Vaschalde, C.S.C.O. SS, 9,10. Also called the Book of Sentences. Out of the many dogmatic treatises of Philoxenus, only two have survived complete: Memre Against Habib also called De uno ex Trinitate incarnato et passo Dissertationes X and the Book of Sentences also called De Trinitate et Incarnatione Tractatus III. See André de Halleux, Philoxène de Mabbog: Sa Vie, Ses Écrits, Sa théologie 225. Because I cannot read the original language of these treatises I read them in translation. Hence I base my understanding of Philoxenus on a reading of the first two dissertations of the De uno, on the Book of Sentences, and on André

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cupies only a brief section of the very first treatise. 612 Philoxenus is a completely preoccupied controversialist arguing that his position is orthodox as compared to that of Eutyches and his followers on the one hand, and various brands of Nestorianism on the other. If he is preoccupied with defending the reality of the incarnation, nowhere is this more evident than in the many pages where he cites John 1:14 against all Christological heresies: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This text is the foundation stone of the economy of salvation which is incarnational. 613 God really came to be human while remaining God. Whether one looks to creation in general or to various miracles in the Bible, there is no analogy for this event whatsoever. It is entirely sui generis, incomprehensible, and must be accepted in faith. This is his constant theme. 614 Philoxenus also insists on a literal interpretation of Gal 3:13, that Christ “became a curse” for us. This statement shares the unique status of John 1:14. He compares these two statements with several from the Old Testament and claims that there is no comparison possible because Old Testament statements do not refer to God revealed in the flesh, but only in fire or light or in a cloud. 615 The effect of the Christian words is salvation. 616 According to André de Halleux, the number of passages which mention divine becoming without change in Philoxenus is infinite! Yet in order to make the case that the divine can become without change, Philoxenus needs to explain how divine becoming differs from ordinary types of change. 617 In various places in the Three Treatises he discusses familiar or ordinary types of becoming asking whether any are comparable to God’s coming to be human in the Incarnation. In his most sophisticated discussion, he distinguishes six types of coming-tobe: (1) creation from nothing, which is similar to Incarnation in that it is a truth of faith; (2) constitution by another, as plants from the earth, or human beings through sexual intercourse; (3) coming to be different de Halleux’s monumental work. In spite of this limitation, appropriating the insight of Philoxenus is important to this work. 612 Beginning on 24, line 4 to the end of the first tractate. 613 André de Halleux, Philoxène 324. 614 ibid. 59, 4–7; 71, 8–20; 74, 17–28. 615 ibid. 126, 5–6. 616 ibid. 126, 9–10. 617 ibid. 319, note 3.

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as an individual through change; (4) diverse human wills can become one in the formation of human community; (5) a man and a woman become one flesh;(6) a person from the lower ranks becomes a prince or king. 618 For Philoxenus, none of these provide an analogy for the divine becoming. It is completely and totally unique. 619 The becoming of the Word is an irruption, something entirely new and original. 620 Earlier he distinguishes only two types of becoming from the Incarnation, creation from nothing or change of something which already exists. Here he also argues that the divine becoming is unique, a third way of coming to be. 621 Philoxenus so constantly repeats his belief that the becoming was for us and because of us that there is no need to cite passages. 622 His main objection to any form of dyophysitism is that we cannot be saved if the Word does not literally become flesh. 623 Philoxenus finds four differences between the coming to be of creatures and the divine becoming. In the divine case (1) what comes to be already existed; (2) what comes to be does not change; (3) what comes to be is for us, not for itself; (4) the coming to be is by divine action, not dependent upon other agents. Divine power is especially apparent because not only can God create creatures from nothing, but can also by divine will become whatever God wills, that is, human from humankind. 624 Thus there are two births for the Son of God, one natural, one by choice or will. 625 Yet how do we know that this is true? How can apparent contradictions, such as something coming to be which already exists, or being born while being already generated, or suffering while remaining impassible, or dying while immortal, be accepted? Philoxenus says that if it is taught by God, yes can be no, and no can be yes! Unlike the many things available for knowledge, these apparent contradictions are statements of faith, like the mystery of the Trinity, creation from nothing, the ranks of angels, and the many miracles in 618

Tractatus tres 119, 33–37. ibid. 120, 1–2. 620 André de Halleux, Philoxène 321. 621 ibid. 52–53. 622 ibid. 53, 32. 623 ibid. 70, 9. 624 ibid. 54, 12–19. 625 ibid. 57, 9–14; 79, 3–7; 58, 1–2. 619

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the Old Testament. 626 But from the distinctions he makes, does this type of change necessarily involve a contradiction? In this and several other discussions it is clear that one of the main issues underlying the one nature/two natures dispute is the relationship between faith and reason. For dyophysites, the two natures position seems more reasonable than accepting an apparent contradiction. Instead, opposite characteristics are attributed to different unmixed natures, one human, one divine. For Philoxenus, the two modes of union, the Antiochean assumptus homo, and the becoming of the Word are incompatible. The becoming of the Word constitutes a new state, that of incarnate being. This distinguishes it from assumptus homo in which humanity is extrinsic to the deity. 627 If one maintains with Leo’s Tome and Chalcedon that the person of the Word is one and must ultimately be the subject of all attribution, however, the contradiction seems to reappear. Even though the Tome and the council avoid the mίa fύsij, does not the impassible still suffer and the immortal die? Philoxenus’ strong appeal to faith over reason is also apparent in the second of ten dissertations On One of the Trinity Being Incarnate and Suffering. 628 Here he is defending the language of divine descent against an opponent who claims that (1) a descent is impossible for the divine being in general and (2) a descent for one of the hypostases of the Trinity is impossible without involving the other two. Both of these are good objections. Philoxenus replies that the difficulty of the mystery does not cause us to deny it. 629 In fact, he accuses his opponent of acting like a philosopher because of his demand for noncontradictory statements. If I speak the truth when I say he descended from heaven, and remained in heaven; and “he came into the world but was already in the world,” indeed, sit down and mourn about your life since be-

626

ibid. 82–89. ibid. 334–336. 628 Two of these are translated into Latin by M. Brière. Sancti Philoxeni episcopi Mabbugensis dissertationes decem de uno e sancta Trintate incorporato et passo P. O. 15, 439–542. 629 Brière 499–500. 627

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cause of your childishness in acting like a philosopher, you are without God and without faith. 630

Even though he appeals often to faith over reason, Philoxenus is not without hermeneutical sophistication. He is not a literalist in regard to Scripture or tradition. In a remarkable passage he explains why we cannot simply take all the words spoken by the Fathers at face value. We must consider the time when they were spoken, when, why, and what their cause and scope was. To understand the tradition we need to think about the sense of the words as well as the words themselves. “The same word does not necessarily imply the same sense,” according to Philoxenus. Both orthodox and Arians agreed, for example, that there was one Son of God, but attributed a very different meaning to the words. 631 This has a very modern sound. But if we look carefully into the dispute between Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians, it is not only a question of faith, the interpretation of tradition, or intelligibility. These form the background for the Christological issue. The point made above about the Book of Heracleides holds for Philoxenus as well as for Cyril. Nestorius’ fundamental objection to Cyril’s Christology is that Cyril attributed change and suffering to God. Philoxenus directly attributes suffering and death to the divine Word in several of his letters. “Be not troubled” he writes to the monks, “at the statement that God was crucified for us.” 632 Because he was not a sufferer by nature, he became a sufferer by will so that he could suffer for us. “Of him who is impassible, we confess that he suffered for us.” 633 Philoxenus sees the mystery of salvation inextricably linked to divine becoming and suffering. Everything that He became, He became, not for Himself, but for us. For He was not a sufferer by His nature, because if He had suffered being a sufferer (by nature), He would have suffered for Himself. 634

630

ibid. 503–504. Brière 26–27; 510–511. 632 Arthur A. Vaschalde, Three Letters of Philoxenus, Bishop of Mabbogh 100. 633 ibid. 102. 634 ibid. 101. 631

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In another letter, he writes a passage that deserves quoting at some length. He who as God, designs, fashions, shapes, joins, and creates the fetus in the womb, the Same as man, was formed and shaped, and became a child in person. He who, as God, nourishes everything, waters it, and gives it the increase, who supports, holds, and preserves all things, the Same, as man, was carried and grew, was held in arms, sucked milk, and received increase in his person. He who as God experiences neither hunger, nor fatigue, nor sleep, nor ignorance, the Same as man was hungry and thirsty, ate and drank, was sleepy and slept, and asked questions to learn. He who as God is above suffering and insult, whose nature is not subject to death, the Same as man suffered, was insulted, slapped in the face, scourged, and really tried by death; and he who is always one without change because he is God, rose from the grave on the third day because he became man. 635

In a letter to emperor Zeno, he distinguishes between change and becoming. “For I learn from John and Paul that (the Word) has become; but that he has changed, none of those who saw and served the Word (ever) said.” 636 Philoxenus like Cyril reveals the weakness of his position by protesting too much that in spite of the divine becoming and suffering there is no change in God. 637 He is as vulnerable on this point as Cyril, possibly even more so, because he habitually uses the contradictory language of divine immutability and mutability, of impassibility and suffering. Over and over again in the last of the Three Treatises, even to the point of losing the reader entirely, Philoxenus insists that God does not change or suffer in his being. One can scarcely pay attention to the text due to the many desperate repetitions of this principle, something reminiscent of Cyril’s Scholia.

635

ibid. 108. ibid. 121. 637 Philoxenus insists on divine immutability on two grounds, neither of them philosophical: (1) Mal 3:6, a passage constantly used this way throughout the tradition and (2) his understanding of Nicean orthodoxy. See André de Halleux, Philoxène 340. 636

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André de Halleux is more positive about Philoxenus’ Christology than I have been. He holds that in spite of Philoxenus’ apophatic approach, which could even be called ‘anti-theology,’ Philoxenus does develop a rational argument in favor of divine immutability in the divine becoming. Philoxenus gives three arguments: (1) the becoming of the Word must be distinguished from the inevitable imperfection attached to change in creation. Among creatures, being and becoming are mutually contradictory notions. Yet in principle, the essence of God is not incompatible with an eventual becoming; (2) God’s becoming is propter nos, for us. While the becoming of creatures is based on need, that of God is entirely gratuitous and disinterested. Here becoming is not contrary to divine perfection; (3) God becomes without change because God becomes by will, not by nature. 638 The paradox of God’s death while remaining alive is resolved in the same manner as the being while becoming: God dies in a way which conforms to the divine nature, that is, without abandoning life in death. 639 Although it is doubtful that such reflections merit the category of ‘rational theology’, Philoxenus is well on the way toward it. Although he is scarcely to be blamed for not working out this insight sufficiently, I do not see him forming these three principles with as much clarity as André de Halleux does. Ultimately like Cyril, both Severus and Philoxenus must rest their case on faith, on the power of God to do anything, and on the incomprehensibility of the Incarnation. Unless he had been able to explain more precisely how there could be becoming without change, and death without death, the reconciliation of Nestorians, Eutychians, Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians, was impossible. The highly charged political atmosphere between the time of the Council of Chalcedon, the period of the Henoticon, the condemnation of the Three Chapters, and the Second Council of Constantinople prevented it. Nevertheless a more thorough examination of the issue of change and becoming was necessary, one in which a good Christian thinker would not be asked to mourn his or her life because of acting like a philosopher. This development compares negatively to the success of the Cappadocians who worked out the distinction between oὐsίa and ὑpόstasij to the apparent satisfaction of the church 638

André de Halleux, Philoxène 342–346. He uses the term ‘anti-theology’ in his conclusion to the book, 515. 639 ibid. 491.

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in the post-Nicene period, thus upholding the Nicene use of ὁmooύsioj and inserting yet another philosophical term into the Christian creed in 381. Without further contributions from the side of Nestorians, Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians, there could be only the politics and religion of anathema for which this period provides a sorry example. 640

640 Pauline Allen and C. T. R. Hayward, Severus 3–30; I. R. Torrence, Christology after Chalcedon: Severus of Antioch and Sergius the Monophysite.

9. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL SOLUTION: LEONTIUS OF JERUSALEM AND MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR The Christological problem began with Arius’ denial that the Logos had the same status as the Father. Various decisions had already been made in the years preceding him that led in the direction of his condemnation. It was already decided by the tradition, in the condemnation of Ebionism and Adoptionism earlier, not to adopt the so-called ‘low’ Christology favored by some theologians today. John’s gospel captured the imagination of Christian writers from the second century on, and that gospel functioned theologically for the interpretation of the first three gospels. John’s gospel, although written last, became theologically prior. The Arian debates lasting until the Council of Constantinople in 381 have been studied extensively, perhaps exhaustively. Although it was not always clear what terminology should be used to express the divinity of Christ, or what individual writers using these terms meant by them, eventually a dogmatic clarity emerged which was canonized in 381. Christ as Logos was ὁmooύsioj with God; the Holy Spirit was also an ὑpόstasij of the divine nature. If Arius played the role of stimulating this most important Trinitarian theological development, so too did Nestorius in Christology. The insistence of the school of Antioch that passibility and mutability could not be applied to the divine ὑpόstasij was grounded in the philosophical and theological tradition. That tradition, with some exceptions such as Tertullian and a few others, saw no possible way for assigning suffering and change to the divine being. Hence, it could only be predicated of the human nature, not of the divine person. Alexandrians from Athanasius to Cyril faced a dilemma. They wanted to assign suffering to the Logos, but realized that this was philosophically impossible. Alexandrians call divine suffering a paradox 173

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and a mystery that cannot be explained. Although the councils decided that Cyril was right, the problem persisted between Ephesus and Chalcedon, and well after the council of Chalcedon in the so-called ‘monophysite’ churches. The Christological problem arises specifically in what is called the ‘communication of idioms.’ In Christological discourse, this refers to legitimizing the predication of divine attributes to the human, and human attributes to the divine. Since there is only one prόsopon or ὑpόstasij in Christ, and that is divine, it is possible to say that ‘God suffered’ in the passion and death of Christ or that ‘Jesus came down from heaven.’ The history of this practice is both interesting and problematic. Many writers such as Athanasius and Cyril use the language of the communicatio by saying that because of the oneness of the divine person in Jesus, it can be said that God suffered, not in the divine but only in the human nature. Since Chalcedon taught the unity of person and duality of natures, the justification for making these and similar statements is attachment to that council.

LEONTIUS OF JERUSALEM According to Grillmeier/Hainthaler, some of the most important contributions to the development and defense of Chalcedon in the postChalcedonian period come from Leontius of Jerusalem. He seems to be the first theologian to consciously distinguish between an ontological union of the natures as such and a hypostatic union. 641 The author believes that some of the neologisms of Leontius, specifically his use of the prefix ἐn before terms such as Øfίshtmi and Øpostάnai when used of the human nature of Christ contribute “a great christological concept.” 642 The absence of a human ὑpόstasij in the Incarnation is then resolved by stating that the human nature is personalized in the divine ὁpόstasij. But is this not merely a verbal solution, simply duplicating the problem with which one begins? Is there any theological advantage in terms of the ontology of union to be gained by inventing these new terms? Only Maximus provides an 641

For the contribution of Leontius of Byzantium, see Brian E. Daly, “A Richer Union: Leontius of Byzantium and the relationship of human and divine in Christ,” Studia Patristica 24, 239–265. 642 Grillmeier/Hanthaler, Christ 2, 2, p.282.

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ontological basis for the unity of natures as such, and that it is grounded in a new and subtle theological epistemology. A much more important contribution of Leontius is the distinction he makes between ὑpόstasij, fύsij, and ἰdièmata in the Incarnation. He (Christ) is in reality only one single, non-human hypostasis. For he has the divine nature with its (divine) ἰdièmata. But he is not only in the divine ἰdièmata. In addition to the divine he is overrich in particularities, which are gathered to him through the assumption of the new (second) nature. 643

After the Incarnation because of the human nature, the ἰdièmata in the divine ὑpόstasij are increased without a change either in the divine ὑpόstasij or the divine nature. The author tends to appreciate only one side of this addition, the fact that “the whole richness of the divine nature was thus bestowed on ours.” 644 Tradition developed a soteriology of divinisation based on Incarnation, but has been fairly silent on the what it means to assert how the divine becomes “overrich in particulars” as a result of the effect on the divine of human ἰdièmata. Leontius allows for an understanding that the communication of idioms is not only linguistic but metaphysical. Seeing an ontological unity of natures in Christ marks a turning point in post-Chalcedonian Christology. I believe that Leontius paved the way for a clearer understanding of the unity of natures in Christ that is not only hypostatic, but natural, of the natures. Maximus the Confessor refines this understanding and it enables him to refute monenergism (one energy in Christ after the Incarnation) as well as monothelitism (one will) without falling into Nestorianism

MAXIMUS CONFESSOR The historical contribution of Maximus in the development of Christology is well known. In spite of torture and exile, he resisted the Emperor and successfully defended the teaching of Chalcedon. 645 In some 643

Cited in ibid. 290. ibid. 291. 645 For a good introduction, see Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ 13–43; Andrew Louth, Maximus 644

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circles today he is considered a martyr to the cause of Chalcedon who is vindicated by tradition in his struggle against monenergism (one energy in Christ after the hypostatic union), then monothelitism (one will after the union). He viewed both as extensions of monophysitism. It is also common to emphasize the many other contributions of Maximus. A careful study of the Christology of Maximus provides startling evidence that the Christological development that ended with him shows in retrospect a clear line of progress in which the Christological faith of both the Eastern and Western church found coherent understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation. Maximus constructs an ontology of the communicatio by basing it not only on the single person, but on the unity of the natures whose lόgoi, or essences never change, and the new trόpoi or modes of action appropriate to the single Christ. He develops the concept of perichèrhsij or ‘intertwining’ of the two natures to express this ontologically. By a careful reading and analysis of Ambiguum 5, his last Ambiguum and other texts, I will attempt to show how Maximus develops these two notions. 646 This ‘Difficulty’ is an attempt to defend the Christology of Ps. Dionysius’ fourth letter against a monenergistic interpretation, especially his use of the phrase in the singular ‘a certain theandric energy’ of the Incarnate Christ which seems to imply monenergism. I will begin at 1049A, where Maximus sets the epistemological context for what follows. 647 I paraphrase: the Incarnation creates important implications for what it means to know God. It raises human nature up to the divine, thereby creating another mystery. God as such remains completely incomprehensible. The Incarnation is even more incomprehensible in that the more God becomes known through this event, the more God is recognized to be incomprehensible. In other words, first comes the divine mystery, next, the Incarnation by which God is known, finally, as we gradually come to know the revelation of God in the Confessor 3–77. 646 I will analyze this text, and refer to other important passages as well. It presents a good overview of Maximus’ Christology. For dating the work of Maximus, see Polycarp Sherwood, An Annotated Date-List of the Works of Maximus the Confessor. 647 PG 91; for a translation of this entire text, see Andrew Louth, Maximus the Con fessor 171–179.

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Christ, (1) we come to know how incomprehensible God is as God Incarnate and (2) how incomprehensible God is as human, and (3) how incomprehensible the human is as God. Theologically it is always difficult to balance the appeal to rationality on the one hand and to mystery on the other. Postmodernity has made an unwitting contribution to theology by unseating Lady Reason from her 18th century throne and demonstrating how tentative all knowledge is. Maximus’ understanding of the Incarnation springs from the dialectical and dynamic polarity between mystery and revelation. In the Incarnation the divine is revealed as human, yet as a result the divine becomes even less knowable as such. Divine incomprehensibility, usually only a vague and general notion, becomes more because it is just this God Incarnate that we know but do not know. The human nature of the divine Christ is also incomprehensible since there has never been a sinless member of our race after Adam, and no one born of a Virgin. In the Incarnation, Christ “institutes afresh” (kainotomήsaj) the laws of his own physical generation by means of the Virgin Birth; his ability to walk on water also shows that the energy of his flesh is not separable from the power of his divinity. 648 Because the Word has truly become man, he “speaks, walks, moves his hands, uses his senses naturally in the perception of things sensible, is hungry, thirsty, eats, sleeps, is tired, weeps, (and) is distressed.” 649 The energy of the assumed nature is not abrogated. To the contrary, both natural lόgoi are preserved, but there are new trόpoi, modes of being. Further, the natures are moved by the divine ὑpόstasij. 650 The nature that is assumed is not self-moved (oὐk aὐtokίnhtoj). Since it is moved by the divine ὑpόstasij, it has no independent ὑpόstasij, but receives its being in the Word. 651 Louth thinks this passage provides a good definition for the doctrine of ἐn ὑpostasίa in Leontius of Jerusalem, but that Maximus does not use the term in this way. 652 It is better to say that Maximus does not have the doctrine at all, and that it is not to his advantage to use it, because it seems to be 648

Louth 173; PG 91, 1049 B–C. PG 91, 1049 D; Louth 173–4. 650 PG 91, 1052 A. 651 PG 91, 1052 A-B. 652 215, note 13. 649

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only a verbal solution. “No independent hypostasis” for Maximus probably means in context “no ὑpόstasij at all” rather than implying a dependent ὑpόstasij. Louth reads the passage in the second sense, which I think is less likely than my reading. 653 Movement implies nature, lόgoj is a matter of nature, trόpoj of the economy. Because the differences are based on lόgoj, in the union the two energies are preserved (no monenergism) in a union without confusion (ἀsugcύtwj—from Chalcedon, no monophysitism). 654 The human nature is united without confusion to the divine nature, and is COMPLETELY EMBRACED (di΄ Ölou perikecèrhke). 655 He writes: Divinely, if I may so speak, he experienced suffering, for he suffered willingly, since he was not a mere man (yilÕj ¥nqrwpoj), and humanly he performed wonders, for he did them through the flesh, since he was not a naked God (m¾ gumnÕj ØpÁrce Θeoj).” 656

As God made man in the Incarnation, Christ brought to us a certain new theandric energy (from Ps. Denys). He fulfilled the economy for our sake theandrically by using the divine and human energies in the same person. 657 For who knows how God assumes flesh and yet remains God, how remaining true God, he is true man, showing himself truly both in his natural existence and each through the other, and yet changing neither? Only faith can grasp these things honoring in silence the Word, to whose nature no logos from the realm of being corresponds. 658

The term “theandric” refers to a Godhead clothed in the human, and a humanity with divine power, not a composite nature, but God made man, perfectly Incarnate, hence the uniqueness of the Incarnation by which humanity is transformed and divinity is clothed, but without loss of the identity of either. Further, this unity is not at the 653

See also Difficulty 1 and Louth’s note on this term at p.214, note 5. PG 91, 1052 B. 655 PG 91, 1053 B. 656 PG 91, 1056 A; Louth 176. 657 PG 91, 1056 B–C. 658 PG 91, 1057 A; Louth. 177. 654

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expense of energy since energy follows from nature or lόgoj. It is clear that the theandric energy of Christ is divine and human, therefore double without confusion, but welded together to become the same (ἀsugcύtwj sunkekrothmέnon). 659 The “Difficulty” concludes with a summary statement: For by the active power of his own Godhead, the Word made flesh, possessing the whole power of his humanity, with all its openness to suffering, quite unimpaired by the union, being humanly God, performs wonders, accomplished through the flesh that is passible by nature, and being divinely man, he undergoes the sufferings of nature, making them perfect by divine authority. Or rather in both he acts theandrically, being at the same time both God and man, sufferings showing that he is what we have become, and by performing wonders demonstrating to us what we are to become. 660

As Larchet points out, the distinction between lόgoj and trόpoj appears often when Maximus discusses the problematic texts of Ps. Denys, as in Ambiguum 42. 661 The text, from the second homily on baptism, mentions a triple birth of Christ, his physical birth, his baptism, and his resurrection. Whatever novelty Christ experiences, M. writes, is on the level of trόpoj, not lόgoj. A new lόgoj would corrupt the nature which cannot be changed. Thus the trόpoj is new, and the lόgoj is preserved. In the Disputation with Pyrrus, after his opponent quotes a comment from the Tome of Pope Leo in support of his monothelitism, Maximus replies that the Pope assumes the trόpoj of communication of idioms (tù tÁj ἀntidÒsewj trόpῳ). The natural attributes of the two parts of Christ are communicated because of the ineffable union (kat¦ t¾n ¥rrhton žnwsin) without change (metabolÁj) or mixture (sumfÚsewj). 662 Further on Maximus argues that Christ experienced fear because he was human, but not exactly the same type of fear that we have. He also hungered and thirsted but in a way superior to 659

PG 91, 1057 D: Louth 178. See the iron, sword, and fire analogy at 1060 B; Louth 179. 660 PG 91, 1060 B; Louth 179. 661 Jean-Claude Larchet, La divinization de l’homme selon saint Maxime le Confesseur 347. 662 PG 91, 296C–297A.

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us (Øpὲr ἡm©j), that is, voluntarily. 663 He was truly afraid, but in a way superior to us. Maximus summarizes: “all things that are natural in Christ have both the lόgoj proper to human nature and a trόpoj which is above nature so that the nature through the lόgoj and the economy through the trόpoj can both be trusted.” 664 Then Maximus can turn to the unity based on the Øpόstasij: The same one person is visible and invisible, mortal and immortal, corruptible and incorruptible, touchable and untouchable, created and uncreated. And according to the same reverent way of understanding, (They also correctly taught that) there are two wills of one and the same person, not only defining by the number two, but also by means of the expression “one to another” (¥llo kaˆ ¥llo), that is, by the proportionality (ἀnalogίaj) of each will one to another, the human to the divine. 665

Thus Maximus is not only using trόpoj to refer to the unity of nature which results from having a common Øpόstasij although it is always rooted there, but also to new trόpoi which result from raising the human nature of Christ to a new level, a level which is above us while remaining fully human in its lόgoj. It is clear in Maximus that the divine experienced new trόpoi in the Incarnation, as did the human. It is also clear that trόpoj implies change, because of its derivation from trέpw—to change or turn, and because it refers to the economy of salvation. Finally the distinction between lόgoj and trόpoj allows for a withdrawal from the abstractions of person and nature, and a return to the New Testament. As David Yaego writes: “The union of the natures and energies is not conceived in abstract or merely conceptual terms.” Christ is the union of divine and human energies not in the abstract, “but in the self-consistent, singular pattern of his contingent actions, in a word, in the concrete Gospel narrative.” 666

663

PG 91, 297 D. PG 91, 298 D–300 A. 665 PG 91, 300 B. 666 David Yaego, “Jesus of Nazareth and Cosmic Redemption: The Relevance of St. Maximus the Confessor,” Modern Theology 12 (1996) 175. 664

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Pericώrhsij The ontological unity of natures becomes even more evident in Maximus’ Christological use of pericώrhsij. There are two possible metaphors at work in this term. One comes from the root or general meaning that brings to mind a circular motion, a rotation around a fixed point. It is dynamic, and in combination with terms implying mutuality which are used constantly by Maximus, reciprocal. The other meaning comes from various philosophical notions of mixture. Lampe distinguishes “interchange with, pass into reciprocally” from the second sense, translated “interpenetrate.” He notes that it is often difficult to distinguish between the first and second sense. 667 As Christological texts implying reciprocity, Lampe cites four from Maximus, two from the Dispute with Pyrrhus, one from Opusculum 7, and another from 16. As examples of Christological interpenetration, Lampe cites two texts from Pseudo-Cyril’s work on the Trinity, and a large number of examples from John of Damascus. So far as I can see, he provides not one example for the second sense of the term from Maximus. In discussing pericώrhsij applying to Trinitarian interpenetration, again he cites only Pseudo-Cyril and John. It is also interesting to note how often John combines pericώrhsij with the Chalcedonian adverb describing the natures as unmixed, ἀsugcÚtwj, as though whatever pericώrhsij means, it dare not imply compromising that Chalcedonian term. On the basis of Lampe, the root meaning of the word, and because Maximus is so conscious of defending ἀsugcÚtwj, I translate pericώrhsij by the term “embrace” and when combined with terms of mutuality or reciprocity, (¥llo kaˆ ¥llo) “embracing one another.” This translation opens itself to a dynamic circular metaphor when it evokes the all important physical contact with arms and body. Unlike the term ‘interpenetrate,’ it avoids any overtones of mixture of substances. As examples of this translation/interpretation, I will cite four texts (in addition to Ambiguum 5 discussed above), then discuss the two opposing interpretations of pericώrhsij. I will then conclude by discussing the Christological and soteriological significance of my translation/interpretation. 667

Lampe 1077.

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Opuscula 4 and 16 both use one of Maximus’ favorite analogies for unity of the natures, the combination of fire and iron, presumably in making a sword. Like the iron combining with fire, “so too the supreme nature embraces the human because of the union and is one with it without confusion.” 668 Iron placed in fire is still iron. By nature it remains capable of cutting even though it changes in appearance. It looks differently and behaves differently from cold metal, but retains its capacity to cut. The fire exists in the capacity to cut, and the capacity to cut exists in the fire because of the “utmost embracing and communication of these into each other.” (Here the use of “embracing” may be jarring because “embracing” implies a human interaction. Perhaps another term should be used for non-human examples). 669 Further in the same text, M. states that the natures are united because of their complete embracing of each other. 670 The last text is from Opusculum 7 where Maximus writes that the two natural energies of divine and human nature are preserved. The divine and the human unite in their mutual coming together and embracing, sumfuίa kaˆ pericwrήsei. 671 In my view, nothing is more important in the Christology of Maximus than this, his ability to keep the natures unmixed, but having an ontological relationship which is deep and profound. This is the key I believe to all other elements of his theology: cosmology, liturgy, spirituality, and the monastic life. His entire outlook is Christocentric, shaped by Scripture, the tradition, and his loyalty to Chalcedon. There are two rival interpretations of pericώhsij in Maximus among contemporary writers, and I think there is much at stake Christologically as well as soteriologically. Prestige holds that for Maximus the interpenetration moves only one way, from the divine to the human. Maximus always calls the process a perichorēsis of the two natures ‘to’ (eis or pros) one another, never a perichorēsis ‘in’ (en) one another or ‘through’ (dia) one another. The idea in the background is simply

668

Opusculum 4, PG 91, 60B. Opusculum 16, PG 91, 189D. 670 ibid. 208 AB. 671 Opusculum 7, PG 91, 88A. 669

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the metaphor of rotation from a fixed point back to that point again.” 672

Hence the meaning of pericώhsij cannot be ‘interpenetrate,’ because “no one ever had the hardihood to suggest that the human nature is capable of interpenetrating the divine; the process, where it is alleged, is always in the opposite direction, and for reasons sufficiently obvious.” 673 ‘Sufficiently obvious’ must refer to the supposed impropriety of assigning change to the divine being. Wolfson has another view. The principle of interchange of properties means that owing to the fact that in Jesus two natures are combined into one person, it is possible to ascribe to either one of these natures properties that are peculiar to the other. 674 Wolfson gives the philosophical background for various types of physical union, mostly from Aristotle and the Stoics, then discusses the use made by the Fathers. 675 He has a separate section on pericώrhsij, which he translates as “penetration.” 676 Lars Thunberg sides with Wolfson and against Prestige as does Larchet. 677 But Thunberg is very careful to point to the uniqueness of Maximus’ Christological use of the term. Although he believes it is related somewhat as in Gregory of Nazienzus to the Stoic understanding of krάsij, Maximus was not “exclusively bound to a Stoic terminology in this context” but is here as elsewhere “in fact, very eclectic.” 678 Although Thunberg appreciates the theological subtlety at work in Maximus’ terminology, connecting Maximus’ Christology with the Stoic term krάsij at all is an error that is widely held in support of the “interpenetration” understanding. 679 672

G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought 294. ibid. 292–293. 674 H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers vol. 1, 371. 675 ibid. 372–418. 676 ibid. 418–428. 677 Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor 22–36. 678 ibid. 29, note 46. For a brief but excellent summary of the various interpretations of pericώrhsij, see his “‘Circumincession’ once more: Trinitarian and Christological Implications in an Age of Religious Pluralism,” Studia Patristica 29, 364–372. 679 Oft-cited is Verna Harrison’s use of ‘interpenetration’ which does not appreciate the unique way that Maximus uses pericώrhsij Christologically. 673

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I do think Prestige is correct, however, but for another reason besides the one he implies, which is that the human cannot penetrate the divine. Maximus is so insistent on the Chalcedonian privative adjectives, continually insisting that the natures are ‘unmixed’ that the circular metaphor is more appropriate. Besides this Maximus is clearly dependent on Nemesius of Emesa’s De natura hominis where krάsij involves partial loss of some original qualities such as water mixed with wine. Maximus himself uses this very example. 680 Added to this is the fact that Chalcedon had already condemned this very term as inappropriate to express the unity of Christ. How could such a strong supporter of Chalcedon ever have that understanding? 681 Since Maximus combines pericώrhsij with phrases denoting reciprocity he strengthens the force of the word. A circular metaphor of mutual embrace is better than a mixture of natures without loss of identity. The circular metaphor is also dynamic and dialectical, while interpenetration is static. The natures move around and with one another in a divine/human, human divine embrace. Maximus never uses ™n when writing about the relationship between the two natures, but only eἰj or prόj. He uses eἰj in exactly the second sense in the Lexicon of Liddell and Scott: “with verbs which express rest in a place when a previous motion into or to it is implied.” 682 Prόj likewise suggests a previous-movement-toward rather than a presence-in. In other words, the movement of lowering of the divine to the human nature, and the human ascent to the divine which brings the renewal of human nature, is continuous. The metaphorical motion of the divine descent, results in natures that embrace each other but do not intermingle, both being singularly hypostasized in the divine person. Because of the ontological union of the two natures, the communication of idioms becomes more than a verbal profession of faith in the Incarnation. Maximus writes: See “Perichoresis In The Greek Fathers,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly (1991) 35.1, 53–65. 680 Opusculum 18, PG 91, 213A-215A. 681 For all of this see especially Torstein Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor: A Study of his Metaphysical Principles chapter 6. 682 H. G. Liddell and Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon Seventh Edition 230.

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Divinely, if I may so speak, he experienced suffering, for he suffered willingly, since he was not a mere man, and humanly he performed wonders, for he did them through the flesh, since he was not naked God. As his sufferings were wonderful, since they had become new through the natural divine power of the one who suffered, so were the wonders suffered, since they were fulfilled through the natural suffering power of the flesh of the One who worked these wonders. 683

It is common to contrast the theologies of grace in the West with the divinisation soteriology of the East. Those discussions and disputes have tended to focus on the question of divine presence-in, hence are haunted by mixture metaphors. The West has always been fearful regarding metaphors suggesting divine absorption. Perhaps the terminology of active divine-human and human-divine embracing could bridge that perceived difference between East and West. The divinisation of the humanity of Christ in the Incarnation occurs also in the humanity of those who profess and practice Christianity. The pericώrhsij of the human and divine is at the core of the Christian experience of God. It seems clear that neither Maximus nor the tradition after him, nor even his modern interpreters have appreciated the significance of the relation between the human and the divine nature, and the effect that the human nature has on the divine. Wolfson calls this the ‘humanation’ of God. Because of the long patristic history of salvation as divinisation by the theologians of the East, all attention has focused on the effect of the divine on the human, the divinisation of the human nature of Christ because of its relation to the divine person, and to the divine nature. No significant attention is given to the concomitant ‘humanation’ of God in the Incarnation, even though this could have significant theological results, especially if balanced with apophaticism. Tollefson writes: The pericώrhsij doctrine is a beautiful piece of theological reflection. St. Maximus holds that not only is man deified by the penetration of the fullness of the divine energy into his natural functions;

683

Ambiguum 5, PG 91, 1056 A–B; Louth 176.

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THE COMING OF THE IMPASSIBLE GOD the incarnated God Himself is humanized by the penetration of the energy of the human nature into the divine nature. 684

Perhaps one could start by re-wording one of Maximus’ sentences from Ambiguuum 5 to read: “As we gradually come to know the revelation of God in Christ and in ourselves, we gradually come to know how incomprehensible our effect on the divine nature is.” Yet the search for rational appreciation of this point might lead to a deeper grounding for soteriology, and for Christian anthropology. Process theologians have reflected more than any other theological school on the effect creatures have on the divine being. That the movement does not usually resonate within traditional theological circles is possibly due to the liberal Protestant positions to which it has usually been connected. In the light of the Incarnation Catholic theologians should take more seriously the image of God in Alfred North Whitehead as the “Fellow Sufferer Who Understands.” Finally, if we recall the remarkable vision of Plotinus from the treatise On Beauty discussed in chapter one above, we can compare how Maximus sees the Incarnation as well as all other forms of union of the created and the divine. Plotinus, good Platonist that he was, thought only souls could attain a final unity with the One. They danced around it and sang in a chorus. J. P. Williams captures this image of the dance quite well. In the application of pericώrhsij to theological language he writes: the modes of theological speech proper to humanity and to divinity engage in a kind of circular dance, where each participant word or concept changes position now referring to divinity, and now to humanity, now signifying privation, now apophatic affirmation, now affirmed, and now denied. 685

The Incarnation reveals that the entire human race, indeed the entire creation, is capable of dancing and singing around and with the divine being in all of its creaturely fullness, physical and spiritual, body and soul. Christian liturgy is a formalization of this unity, making it more conscious and intense, as is the Christian life. But for Maximus 684

Tollefsen, Christocentric Cosmology 267. J. P. Williams, “The Incarnational Apophasis of Maximus the Confessor,” Studia Patristica 37, 633. 685

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there is also the comic liturgy. All of creation embraces and is embraced by the divine without either becoming the other.

CONCLUSION This work began with a discussion of the philosophical origin of the idea that God is immutable and impassible. Plato and Aristotle and all thinking derived from them could never accept a divine being capable of suffering and change. Early Christian Apologists found common ground with philosophy in their own search for rational coherence. But as dogmatic Christology developed, and there are signs of this in nearly all early Christian thinkers, as Jesus came to be understood more and more as the divine Word incarnate, this common ground shifted radically. Even though he was unable to resolve the difference, Origen for example, saw this clearly in his response to Celsus cited above. The Incarnation is an exceptional occurrence. The divine came to earth as human only once to reveal God’s true nature and intention toward us. I also began with a brief discussion of the contemporary critique of the traditional view that God cannot change or suffer. Karl Rahner provides a good example of the problem. His intuition that in some way God did change in the Incarnation was negated by his eventual move to transcendental Christology. How can God change in the Other, but not in the divine self? Because of Rahner’s vast influence especially among Catholic theologians in the U.S. during the twentieth century, his move was important. Transcendental Christology, what was it but a theological collapse into philosophy, a constant temptation in Catholic thought as many Protestant critics have continually noted? A similar critique might be leveled at other influential Catholic thinkers such as Bernard Lonergan and David Tracy. Although this was clearly not his intention, Rahner’s desire to avoid being “narrowly Christological” led him to be not Christological enough. Our long journey through the tradition presents example after example of Christian thinkers seeking rationality within the context of the new understanding of the divine being incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. It reveals the tension. The divine being is other than the world 189

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but is also Word made flesh. Through this long period, there are intellectual inconsistencies as well as condemnations, and fleeting attempts to think differently such as in Gregory the Wonderworker, Tertullian, Origen, and Didymus the Blind. We need take no sides in retrospect, but only appreciate the outcome—a new horizon for thought from Maximus that is explicitly Christological. Unfortunately his vision was lost, and the Reformation attempted to retrieve it. Even more unfortunate is the virtual absence of dogmatic Christology among the theologians of the modern church. Can Christology today return to the ancient profession of faith generated by the first seven ecumenical councils? This faith grounds a system of thought and action based on a new world view brought about by revelation, a view uniting Scripture, liturgy, preaching, prayer, cosmos, the human, and the divine. Contemporary Christology openly or implicitly denies the validity of Christological dogmas. It can never represent the understanding of Christ that the Church still struggles to maintain in practice, whether among its members or in service to the world. Post-modern thought with its emphasis on deconstruction and on our inability to rationally describe even the reality we think we know in any ultimate or finished way, may be more open to the revelation of the mystery of God becoming human.

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