The Unity of Christ (Beeley)

THE GREAT MASTER: ORIGEN

Alexandria Egypt was the crossroads of the world (Dio Chrysostom).  Alexandrian Christianity had rather diverse beginnings.

First Principles: “Origen’s presentation of his doctrinal system here is arguably the most influential single theological project in all of Christian tradition outside of the canonical Scriptures” (Beeley 11).

Christ and Cosmology

words of Christ include “the whole of Scripture” (13).  

“Origen encourages readers to move beyond the human Christ.”

• dualist view of the cosmos: the physical and sensible world seen as radically impermanent compared to the intellectual sphere. God and the saints inhabit a spiritual world in contrast to the physical world (15).  

Origen’s dualist cosmology came at a certain cost:  it determined how he spoke about Christ.

• he notes that Christ has two natures, but places these two natures within a Platonic, dualist cosmology.

Divinity and Distinctness

• our source of knowledge: epinoiai; conceptions.  
• For Origen a hypostasis is a distinctly existing thing; a concrete entity or being (Cm. John. 10.212).  
• On the Son’s being:  ousia meant something different for Origen than it did for Nicea.  For Origen this suggested a diminution from the Father’s being.  “Being” suggests the actual existence of a thing, so for two things to share the same being is to be the same thing.

The Image of God

• The Son has many epinoiai in contrast with the Father’s simplicity.  The Father cannot be directly describable because of his simplicity. Only the Christ, who becomes many things, can image the Father’s simplicity.  The Son is mediator between God and creation, not as an intermediary of being, but in the Son’s way of being divine.

Incarnation: Image Revealed

• The human soul of Jesus bridges the gap between God’s divinity and Christ’s humanity. In fact, Origen must hold to trichotomy as the only way to bridge the gap. 

FOURTH CENTURY AUTHORITIES

Eusebius of Caesarea

Origen was regarded by some as an accurate transmitter of the rule of faith (51).  ++

Economia

• God’s ordered dealings with creation, which culminate in the Incarnation.
  • Eus. wants to maintain that Christ is “divine” and older than creation.  Therefore, the Christian faith is really ancient.
• “theology:” confession of the divinity of Christ.  It is the interpretation of economia (64).
  • Christ’s manner of existence is two-fold
    • He is known to be God by those who believe.
    • Yet he put on human existence capable of suffering.
  • Beeley maintains that Eus. does not see Christ’s generation in any temporal sense (67).  
    • Christ is divine not as an independent deity (one god among others), but as the direct result of his specific relatinship with God the Father.

Does Eusebius hold to a hierarchy of being ala Middle Platonism?

• To be sure he does say the Son is the bond between creation and God.  But this may be an overly literal reading of his texts. 

Is Eusebius a Semi-Arian??

• Beeley argues that Eusebius uses temporal prepositions devoid of temporal meaning (91).  He is concerned to use “biblical, rather than philosophical” terms to stress the Son’s transcendence over creation.
• Eusebius uses a sequential language to underscore our theological epistemology:  we must remember the “causal ordering of the divine generation…Eusebius’s language preserves the economic basis of theological knowing with respect to the inner structure of the Trinity, resisting the leap to an artififical, abstract conceptuality of pure eternity” (92).  

Christology:  Martyrdom leads to political triumph.

• Eusebius’s understanding of matyrdom “is far from an abstract concern.  It is initially tied up with the surrounding Greco-Roman society in wys that call on Christians to witness to Christ with their bodies as much as with their minds” (96).

NICEA AND ATHANASIUS

Both Arius and Alexander departed from Origen:

• Arius in denying the Son’s consubstantiality
• Alexander in denying that the Son was generated from the Father’s will (116).

Alexander’s modifications:

• Son always exists from the Father..  The Greek term aei denotes nonsequentiality (116);  

Athanasius I

• Christ’s identity as the eternal Word of God. 
  • Logos idea: Word is truly of or from the Father (128).  
  • Principle of existence or means of God’s providence (C. Gent. 29, 42, 46). 
• Salvation Through Incarnation
  • Our need to overcome death and mortality (Inc. 10).  Overcome this by participating in the Word (Inc. 4-5, 11).  
  • Our natural state is “corruption towards non-being” (Inc. 4, 7).  
  • Christ’s death reverses all of this
• The Word versus its Flesh
  • highly dualist conception of Christ (Beeley 133).   Distingishes between the human body and the Word. 
  • Divine word did not suffer at all when it was born/died (Inc. 17).  
  • The Word used the body as an instrument (Inc. 20).  
• Dualist Cosmology and Anthropology
  • strong distinction between intelligible and sensible realms (C. Gent 10).  
  • Radical division between being and nonbeing. 
  • God is known by works, but we can’t know his essence.  This raises a tension:  how can the Word reveal itself through his bodily acts yet deny any knowledge of God’s essence (136)?  
• Conclusions:
  • Logos Christology is dualist.
  • Absolute impassibility of the Word.

Athanasius II: The Orations Against the Arians

Per Marcellus of Ancyra, the human Christ will eventually cease to be in the eternal kingdom; this is probably why the Creed says “His kingdom will have no end” (144).  

• Rhetorical strategy:  mean

• The Image of God
  • This is a new development in his works.  
  • Christ is the image and form of divinity.
    • He reveals the divinity of the Father, the brightness of the Father’s light.
    • The Father sees himself in this image (Prov. 8:30; C. Ar. 1.20; 2.82).
  • If Image, then fully divine
  • Language of mediation:  
    • denies the “Word” is a mediator of divinity to creatures, except in Incarnate form (C. Ar. 1.59: 2.31).  
    • If God requires a mediator, then wouldn’t the mediator require a mediator, and so on ad infinitum? (C. Ar. 2.26). 
  • Is God’s will distinct from his being?
    • C. Ar. 1.29; 3.62
• The Incarnation
  • Christ’s human experiences were not the experiences of the WOrd, but of his human flesh alone (C. Ar. 1.41).  
  • Beeley argues Athanasius’s debt to Marcellus (154). 
  • The communicatio idiomatum is strictly verbal (155; cf. C. Ar. 3.32; 41).
  • It is hard for Athanasius to say that Jesus developed (Luke 2:52).  
• Technical terminology
  • emphasis on strict oneness between Word and Father (follows Origen).  
  • metaphysics:  real problem with Arian term “originate” is that it means the Word was created in time and ex nihilo (Decr. 16).  
  • homousion as generic: relationship b/t father and son–common nature shared by derivation; relationship b/t all humans of one class (Ep. Serap. 2.8-9).

Athanasius III: The Late WOrks 

CAPPADOCIANS

• Homoian debate
• Apollinarius
  • Despite his problems in truncating Jesus’s soul, he raises a valid point: what is Christ’s “acting principle?”  Traditional ontology and psychology would have said “the soul.”  If Jesus had two souls, per Apollinarius, then which one is the “acting” one?
• Gregory of Nazianzus
  • Views Christ’s identity in dynamic, narrative terms (Beeley 185)
  • the very nature of human existence is a dynamic movement towards God rooted in our creation and oriented towards consummation (185).  By anchoring theosis in the goodness of human creation, Gregory avoids most of the pitfalls associated with this doctrine.
    • Christ is the means of our restoration.
    • Xp effects our divinization in and through himself.
    • He uses language of “mixture” (mixis), “union” (henosis), and “blending” (krasis). in regards to the divinity and humanity in Christ.  
      • Not a crass mixture, though.  Gregory isn’t too clear on this point.
  • Biblical interpretation:  Gregory’s understanding of perichoresis is to emphasize the difference b/t intra-Trinitarian relations and the union of God with humanity (Beeley 189, cf. Ep. 101.20-21).  
    • communicatio is true at the level of Christ’s being.  Christ did not merely operate (energein) by grace, but was and is joined together with human existence in his being (Ep. 101.22).  Here is a huge advance over Athanasius’s dualism. 
    • His method preserves the unity of Christ and, pace Athanasius, does not see the humanity as a separate existence.
  • The suffering of God.  incorporation of human suffering into the divine life (not simply divine being;  he is not abandoning impassibility, but seeing God’s being as life).  
  • Through the knowledge of Christ as “God made visible,” Christians are divinized and elevated through faith (Beeley 194; cf. Or. 29.18-19).
• Gregory of Nyssa
  • he embraced Greek philosophy more than did Basil or Nazianzus.
  • Against Eunomius
    • Nyssa focuses on the language of creation.
    • For the most part Gregory does not represent an advance on the Nazianzen.   Per the communicatio he repeats both Ath. and Naz., “the lowly statements apply to the Servant; the honors to the master’ (Beeley 208; cf. C. Eun. 3.3.65-66).  
      • the divinity participated in Christ’s passion by serving as the active principle against the passivity of the flesh (210).  
  • Against Apollinaris
    • Here Gregory’s dualist Christology almost comes apart (see his references to a drop of wine in the sea; Christ not coming again bodily, but in the Father’s glory–Antirrh. 230).

THE CONSTRUCTION OF ORTHODOXY

Augustine and the West

• Hilary of Poitiers
  • Transition point between East and West.
  • “carries forward a revitalized Eusebian tradition…Origen” (226).  
  • “The Trinity”
    • The Son’s generation is closely tied with role as unique revealer of the Father.
    • Distinction between Father-Son relationship and Creator-creature relationship.
    • The Son is image of the Father’s substance; distinct but not dissimilar.
    • One God because one principle (Trin. 5.10; 7.32).
  • Hilary’s weak points:
    • Jesus did not have the same kind of humanity as us (10.23), 
    • Did not believe Jesus possessed a corruptible human substance.
    • This “froze his Christology in a particular dualist position” (Beeley 230).
• Ambrose of Milan
  • He indirectly corrected Hilary’s project.
  • echoes Nazianzus that Christ’s divine identity need not conflict with his human.
  • The Word died a human death, not a divine one (Inc. 5.36).
  • Divine mediation:  not only reconciles us to God but positively convey’s divine nature to us (Inc. 4.23).
• Augustine’s early Christology
  • Consciously adopted the “one persona, duabas naturas” (concept).
  • Strongly unitive Christology
  • Christ is the crucial link between the divine love and the love we show others.
  • Totus Christus
  • Augustine’s use of “two personae” is not meant to be dualist: “he uses the term to mean something like a literary persona or voice” (Beeley 240).
• Augustine’s Mature Christology
  • Christ’s humanity is humanity of the divine Son; he is divinely human.
  • Augustine’s project, while deficient in many respects, does constitute an advance in one key area:  he ties in the juridical aspect. (Trin. 4.19).
• Augustine’s Late Christology
  • Christ’s introduces “healing into the death of the flesh” by the hidden and mysterious power of the divine decree.
  • Christ’s mediation is his divine-human identity.  
    • The nature of divine mediation is not to wield absolute power but to extend oneself in love and justice (Civ Dei. 9.16-17).

CYRIL, LEO, and CHALCEDON

• Cyril of Alexandria
  • His major influence, argues Beeley (258), was not Athanasius but Gregory Nazianzen.
    • His use of “Hypostatic union” at this point is not strictly technical.
    • The Word is united with human flesh as a single hypostasis.  Union is “the concurrence into one reality (en) of the things united” (Un. Chr. 3.62/ Ep. Eulog. 64).  
    • “The one nature”
• Leo of Rome
  • we see the language of “both natures acting.”  This is a very definite–though often unnoticed–move away from Cyril.   Natures do not act.  Persons do.
  • Beeley openly states that “Leo’s position is essentially the same as Nestorius” (Beeley 276).
  • Chalcedon bypasses the earlier narrative dynamics of Gregory and Cyril (economy of salvation) and moves into technical language (282).

POST-CHALCEDONIAN CHRISTOLOGY

• Leontius of Byzantium
  • all natures are hypostasized but need not have multiple hypostases. 
  • the hypostatic characteristic of every nature is not the same as the nature itself.
    • a nature is a general category; hypostasis a specific one. A hypostasis exists in itself, whereas a nature can only exist in a hypostasis.
    • The problem is that this leads to a generic definition of the Trinity
    • The hypostasis is seen as a principle of individuation.  
    • His connection of the two natures suggest they exist within a kind of netrual space, rather than in the Son of God (291). 
• Constantinople II
• Maximus the Confessor
  • Did he misunderstand Gregory?  Gregory sees the Trinity as a monad moving to a dyad and ending in a triad (Or. 23.8).  Maximus resists this meaning and says Gregory is speaking of creation (Quaest. 105; Ambig. 1).
  • Places himself in a narrative understanding of Christology.
  • The wills work together in this way: The divine Son wills all that Christ does.  He is the ultimate subject of all of Christ’s works.   But Jesus also had a natural human will–whether or not to follow and obey the divine will.
  • Jesus’s will is not gnomic (300ff). It does not wander or subject itself to wavering human condition.
• John of Damascus
  • He differs with Maximus’s approach in several respects:  he does not begin with Nazianzen but as a committed Chalcedonian he filters the fathers through that standpoint.
  • He relies heavily on Leontius.
  • Even though Jesus’s humanity is divinized, Damascene emphasizes that it was God who became man, not man becoming God.

Observations

Beeley shows how the old Antiochene/Alexandrian divide breaks down at key moments (272).

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