Christian Theology/Christian Metaphysics — The Long and Winding Road.
This book is an intense and detailed examination of the development of Christian theology between the Cappadocian Fathers and John of Damascus. This period resolved the great Trinitarian issues of Christianity and saw the rise and fall of Christological issues (mostly.) The author, Johannes Zachhuber, is a professor of Theology at Oxford who brings an encyclopedic knowledge of history and philosophy into the discussion. Along the way, he introduces us to key theological players, such as Gregory of Nyssa. John the Grammarian, Severus of Antioch (St. Severus for the Monophysites), and John of Damascus (“the Damascene”) in a way that gives reality to people who are either unknown or only vaguely known.
This is not a work for the faint-hearted. Having some background in Aristotelian metaphysics is essential, and, even then, for amateurs like myself, the fine distinctions between nature, physis, ousia, enhypostaton, prosopon, hypostasis, idiotes, and other concepts are taxing. However, I found the discussion interesting since I approached this mostly as history. This review will favor that perspective. There are other reviews of the text that explain the philosophical elements that are vague to me.
Zachhuber starts with the Cappadocian Fathers, the brothers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus. The Cappadocian Fathers were active in the late Fourth Century. Basil died on January 1, 379. His work was carried on by his brother and friend.
The issue for the Cappadocians was the relationship of the Persons of the Trinity to the Divine Nature. Previous efforts at this had proven problematic. For example, the very influential theologian Origen offered an explanation that lessened the Son:
Origen argued for a slight but important distinction between the two divine persons: the Father, he suggested, was God in the fullest and most proper sense of the word; the source of all being including the Son.32 The Son thus received his divinity by derivation from that source. He was god, but not ‘the’ God. He was not a rival or competitor of the Father. He was not, for example, entirely simple without any participation in the plurality of the created world which explains why he, not the Father, became directly involved in salvation history and, specifically, the Incarnation.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 21). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
Zachhuber notes that the “crucial ontological subordination of the Son to the father functioned as a door opener to more radical Arian positions.” [1] After the Council of Nicea (325 AD), Origen’s explanation was seen as incompatible with orthodoxy. Orthodoxy adopted the Athanasian position that the Father and the Son were Homoousias, i.e. of the same substance.[2] The opposition position proposed by Arius was “Homoiousias,” meaning “of a similar substance.” Although Homoiousians appealed to the authority of Origen, the orthodox tradition did not want to entirely repudiate Origen’s authority since he was so useful on so many other subjects.
The conundrum that Christians faced was that the Persons of the Trinity are one thing — a single, undivided, undividable Being) in one way but are three different Beings in another way.
Different solutions to this conundrum were offered. Christian theologians liberally looted classical metaphysics to get a handle on the issue. Aristotle’s The Categories proved to be one of the most influential texts that Christians could plagiarize to deal with the conundrum of Ousia and Hypostasis/universal and particular. For example, Zachhuber points to Appollinarius of Laodicea’s use of ideas from Aristotle’s Categories:
Responding to Basil’s request for a theologically sound understanding of the term homoousios to which we shall return, Apollinarius initially traces this problem back to two definitions of ousia, according to which the term signifies
(1) what is said to be ‘one in number’ (μία ἀριθμῷ);
(2) what is contained in one ‘description’ (ἐν μίᾳ περιγραφῇ).
Of these two, the former appears to be the ‘first substance’ of Aristotle’s Categories,60 the concrete, countable, individual object. The latter might well be what Aristotle in the same writing called ‘second substance’, the species and genera.61 Second substances are said in Categories to contain individuals of which the same ‘formula of being’ (λόγος τῆς οὐσίας) can be predicated, and Apollinarius term ‘circumscription’ (περιγραφή) could be a substitute for that Aristotelian phrase.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 27). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
After this conventional bit of Aristotelian metaphysics, Appolinarius offered a third definition for “ousia”:
His major argument, however, is that apart from those two, there is a further understanding of ousia, and it is this third one which alone in his view is pertinent when it comes to the Trinity. According to this use, ousia is said of two or more people united as a ‘family’ (κατὰ γένος); the term ousia — and by implication homoousios — can therefore be applied to those who are connected as parents and children or, more broadly, as ancestors and their descendants. What this means, Apollinarius goes then on to explain in no uncertain terms. The members of such a family are ‘the same’ (ταὐτόν) according to substance; the descendant is ‘the same’ (ταὐτόν again) as his progenitor; the whole family are ‘one’ (εἷς).
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 27). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
The virtues of Apollinarius’s approach are that it is robust and coherent. The downside is that it would undermine the core axiom of Christianity, namely, that it is monotheistic, by defining a family of gods, maybe Thor, Odin, and adopted brother Loki, as a single God. This may be congenial to one particular offspring of the Protestant Reformation (with its main office in Utah), but despite its attractiveness, this approach has been a word salad too far.
Basil’s response to Apollinarius was:
The teaching of the early Basil as found in his first letter to Apollinarius can be summarized in the following tenets:
(1) The common divinity of Father and Son is described in terms of shared predicates.
(2) These predicates are understood as univocal and thus indicative of ontological co-ordination.
(3) This creates a new problem for the individual identity of the Trinitarian Person. It is this problem that causes Basil’s hesitation towards the homoousion and underlies his terminological preference for likeness terminology.
(4) A solution to this problem through the use of individual predicates — which could also become the new place for the traditional, hierarchical language — is only beginning to emerge.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 35). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
So, since Thor and Loki don’t “share predicates,” one being the God of War and the other the God of Evil, they are not “one god.” In contrast, the Father and the Son are one because they have the same predicates, e.g., omnipotence, omniscience, etc.[3] However, the divine Persons are also different in some way since they have individual predicates that are not shared, e.g., the Son is begotten, and the Father is unbegotten. [4]
The distinction between the Trinity and the Persons of the Trinity describes a difference between the universal and the particular:
Basil, as we have seen, started off from the idea that ousia was common to Father and Son, and that this commonality was expressed by shared predicates. The terms through which he expressed the latter tenet, however, were taken from the philosophical debate about Aristotle’s Categories, and in this context, it had always been inscribed into the duality of universal and particular. Basil may not, in 362, have thought of Father and Son as ‘particulars’ but the logic underlying his argument at that time clearly tended in that direction.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (pp. 39–40). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
After Basil, Gregory of Nyssa developed Cappodocian theology as follows:
To summarize, the Epistle 38, written in all likelihood by Gregory of Nyssa, marks several transitions:
(1) From Basil’s trinitarian analogy of ‘common’ and ‘particular’ to a trinitarian philosophy clearly aimed at a comprehensive account of universal and particular being.
(2) From Basil’s ‘abstract’ theory emphasizing almost exclusively the conceptual and linguistic dimension dimension to a theory encompassing both this abstract and a more concrete dimension albeit not in a stable union.
(3) From an understanding of ousia and hypostasis as universal and particular towards an emphasis on the duality of being and existence.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 54). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
The definition of universal and particular are key at this point in Christian theology. Under the Aristotelian understanding of “being,” the divine ousia — the divine Being — is not found by itself. It is only found in the particulars — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, one can encounter no “God substance” distinct from the divine Persons. Zachhuber states:
The truth is, as we observed throughout this chapter, that Cappadocian philosophy as a whole is geared towards the universal. Being, ousia, is one: in these words, its fundamental tenet can be paraphrased. This universal ousia, admittedly, exists or subsists only and exclusively in a multitude of hypostases. Divine nature is only and exclusively encountered in the three Persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit. It has no existence outside those three. Analogously, human nature exists only and exclusively in the many — though not infinitely many — human individuals. This postulate was built into the basic structure of Cappadocian philosophy due to its doctrinal background in Trinitarian theology with its need to avoid any semblance that the ousia of Nicene doctrine could exist separately from the divine Persons.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (pp. 69–70). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
In a decisive intellectual/theological move, the Cappodocians also insisted on the equality of the Persons (which seems required if they share the same predicates):
The most decisive step taken by the Cappadocians beyond earlier articulations of trinitarian doctrine was their postulation of equality between the three persons on the basis of the tenet, adapted from Categories, that univocal predication indicated ontological co-ordination. The Aristotelian link was made explicit by the dual reference to the definition of synonyms, which according to Categories have their ‘formula of being’ (λόγος τῆς οὐσίας) in common, and the subsequent claim that substances (ousiai) don’t admit of ‘a more or less’ (Categories 4).
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 78). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
The Cappodocian approach became the classical theory through theologians like Cyril of Alexander. The classical Christian model accepted the equality of the Persons and their hypostatic individuality. Cyril argued that “the Father exists in his idiotes and son exists in his idiotes” [5] (I note this because calling God an “idiotes” seems worth noting.)
This Cappodocian approach was problematic when applied to Christological issues. The three Persons were ontologically one because they had one nature or one substance. Christ, however, was one person with two natures….or was it one nature?[6] Zachhuber explains:
What was the problem? The strength as well as the weakness of the Cappadocian theory, as we have seen, lay in its insistence on a reciprocal relationship between universal and particular being: nature (φύσις) or substance (οὐσία) existed without variation, as a true unit, in all its constituent individuals or hypostases. In turn, the multiplicity of individuals strictly made up the whole nature (πάσα φύσις); the universal has no existence beyond its particulars. While this theory has sometimes been seen as representing an ontological turn towards the individual or even the person, the reverse is the case. For Gregory of Nyssa, individuals were merely constituent parts of the whole ‘dough’ (φύραμα) as Gregory often said using a biblical term.73
This lack of a proper account of individuation became a major liability in the context of Christology which ultimately was a theory about one divine Person becoming incarnate in one human individual. Or that, at least, would seem like the least controversial interpretation of the crucial biblical verse according to which ‘the Word became flesh’ (John 1, 14). How can this statement be understood in the context of the classical theory? For the Cappadocians, there existed a simple binary between statements pertaining to the universal and statements pertaining to the particular; no third in between them was allowed as Gregory of Nyssa insisted in his defence against tritheism. Was the Incarnation, then, a truth about universal natures? In this case, however, it would have to apply equally to all members of the class. This was evidently false: only the Logos, neither Father nor Spirit had become incarnate. And the object of the Incarnation was Jesus of Nazareth, surely a human individual however much his ontological relationship with all human beings may matter for soteriology.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 94). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
Two axioms controlled all Christological controversies. One axiom was the “double homoousion.” Zachhuber explains:
The use of the Nicene homoousion in Christology usually takes the form of the double affirmation that Jesus Christ is ‘consubstantial with the Father according to his divinity and consubstantial with us according to his humanity’. It is therefore conventionally referred to as the double homoousion.106 Often enough, its use may have been and still is conceptually innocent simply indicating that Christ is fully divine as well as human. Yet within a context shaped by the Cappadocian philosophy, the affirmation of the double homoousion had considerable considerable potential of further logical and ontological implications. If the Nicene homoousion mandated a view of reality in which a common substance only existed in its instantiations in a certain number of hypostases, the duplication of this model in the case of Jesus Christ raised a number of complicated and uncomfortable questions. Did both natures exist as hypostases in the saviour? Would there thus be two hypostases as well as two natures? And if so, how would his personal unity be maintained?
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 103). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
The other axiom was expressed by the motto “No nature without Hypostasis” (“NNWH”), meaning that for a rational being to have a nature, it had to have (or be) a person for the nature to subsist in. A nature is conceived as a universal principle , e.g., we are all humans in that we share a common (or a single) human nature, i.e., humanity. But “humanity” is never seen by itself in the wild. We do not see “humanity” in the abstract. What we see are individual humans, i.e., persons. From seeing individual humans we abstract the concept of humanity. Thus, to see humanity, we must first see a person. Humans are real; humanity is a concept. (Thus, by extension, it would seem that the divine Persons are real and the Divine Nature is a concept.)
Saying that Persons are real, but natures are only concepts creates a theological moral risk. For example, Jesus is a Person, but he seems to have a divine nature and a human nature. Are those natures only concepts or are they real, and if they are real, how real are they? Are there, perhaps, two Jesuses (or “Jesi” if it conjugates that way)?
Ever since Nestorianism was repudiated, one of the great fears of Christianity was that the single Jesus would be divided into two “persons” — a divine person and a human person.[7] Thus, the NNWH axiom favored Miaphysitism (aka Monophysitism) on the assumption that each nature had to be allotted to a single person (or vice versa), and allocating two natures to Jesus meant affirming two persons.
Another confounding Christological problem was what was meant by nature. When Christians affirmed that the “divine nature” of Christ was consubstantial with the Divine Nature, did that mean that Jesus’s divine nature was consubstantial with the whole trinity — including the Father — or just the divine nature of the Son — which suggested that maybe the Son and the Father were not consubstantial.[8] Zachhuber refers to this as WT/WHI (“Whole Trinity/Whole Humanity (in the Incarnation)”) objection:
One of Severus’ standard arguments against the implications of John’s reconstruction of Chalcedonian Christology is that, on its basis, the whole Trinity would have been incarnated into the whole of humanity. This claim was to become a staple of the miaphysites’ anti-Chalcedonian polemic; in what follows I shall refer to it as the WT/WHI argument. The Grammarian protests against this claim arguing that this would only obtain if ousia was understood as being only partially present in its particulars, which was not at all his view:
We, however, are not driven to such a degree of ungodliness that we consider a partition and division of the divine substance to exist. But we say that each characteristic hypostasis has the marks of the divinity without any of them lacking, [namely] goodness, creativity and whatever exists around the uncreated nature. For thus we also say that the Trinity is consubstantial, since the same substance is recognized entirely (ὁλοτελῶς) in three persons.57
As we have seen, Severus uses language that comes close to suggesting that each individual only contains part of the universal; thus far, John’s defence is perhaps not entirely without merit in the present context. Ultimately, however, it does little to invalidate what is arguably a devastating argument against his Christological model, at least within the framework of the classical theory.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 136). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
John the Grammarian risked the Patripassian heresy; Severus risked blowing the Cappadocian model out of the water. There were bad choices all around.[9] The Monophysite cliff was far more dangerous since it threatened to deny monotheism.[10]
Initially, the Monophysites held the upper hand, notwithstanding their defeat at Chalcedon. Their position seemed more coherent, and their theologians were more competent. From the outset, the Monophysites put the Chalcedonians on the defensive.
Unfortunately for the Monophysites, they fell off the polytheist cliff during the Tritheist Controversy of the mid-sixth century[11]:
The tritheistic controversy must surely count as an obscure chapter in an overall little-known period of doctrinal history.38 It was one of several doctrinal conflicts within sixth-century miaphysitism and, in one sense, largely confined to this part of the Eastern Church. Chalcedonians seem involved mostly as outsiders occasionally moderating discussions between the combatants, probably not without glee at the spectre of such radical doctrinal divergence within this formidable opposition party to the imperial Church.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 155). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
In attacking Chalcedonians, Monophysites had taken to employing the term “ousia” not just for the divine substance but for each of the persons/hypostases separately. Thus, the Father and the Son had separate ousia. Zachhuber argues:
The case made by the early tritheists was thus as simple as it must have seemed powerful: if Christology demanded the stipulation of particular natures and substances and if, further, terminological and conceptual equivalence was accepted between Trinity and Christology or theology and economy, then particular natures must also be recognized in the Trinity. God, the Son, who became Incarnate and suffered on the cross, was, consequently, not strictly ‘the same’ God who as Father was ingenerate and did not become incarnate or who, as Spirit, was breathed by the Father and did not become incarnate either. Each divine person is God: this had, of course, always been orthodox doctrine. Yet the ‘tritheists’ now concluded that this predication meant that divine nature, substance, or simply ‘divinity’ existed as individuated in each hypostasis and was therefore as countable as they were.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (pp. 158–159). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
“Three hypostasis with three ousia meant to many three [gods].” [12] The result of this was “enough to trigger mass conversions to the Chalcedonian Church.” (Id.)
In addition, Chalcedonian Christianity had its own antipathy to efforts to reduce Jesus to a single nature as a result of the Apollinarian Controversy. The Apollinarian controversy in the last decades of the fourth century was a “dress rehearsal” for the Christological controversies of the fifth century. Apollinarianism posited that the human mind of Jesus was replaced with the Logos. In this case, Christ’s nature would be Monophysite, namely a divine nature. The conclusion that this construct constituted a single nature was justified by an analogy to the human body and human soul which together constitute a single human nature. Apollinarius justified this construct as consistent with the principle of the double homoousian. In principle, Appolinarius was right about both points, but the construct left out the human mind and made Christ not fully human. As such, Apollinarianism reeked of Docetism:
We have here, expressed in the abstract terms of Cappadocian philosophy, the common objection levelled against Apollinarius from all his opponents: if Christ is not fully human, he is ultimately not human at all. Neither his eating nor his sleeping, and ultimately neither his passion nor his cross are then real, as Gregory goes on to point out. For all its technical sophistication, Apollinarius’ Christology was ultimately little different from the docetism of second-century gnostics.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 101). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.[13]
The latter part of the book seems to present the dispute between Monophysitism and Chalcedonian as terminological.[14] Both sides agree on the principle of double homoousian. What changes is the understanding of NNWH axiom. Initially, the Chalcedonians seemed defensive about the idea that two natures might be attached to a single person. Over time, particularly by the time of John of Damascus, this concern evaporated, and Chalcedonian theologians simply acknowledged that that was what was happening. They also became more relaxed on the WT/WHI issue. Yes, the divine nature of Jesus was consubstantial with the divine nature of the whole trinity, but that did not mean that the Father suffered on the cross because the Father was a separate person (and the divine nature is impassable.)
It took a lot of terminological redefinitions and/or redefinitions of concepts to get to this point. Still, to me, as a historically inclined layman, it seems that the theologians came to accept the conclusions that their premises entailed. [15] Chalcedonians also seemed to have more confidence in their positions, as illustrated by the writings of Maximus the Confessor, who took Cappocian definitions that natures were universal for granted, rather than trying to address “the intricate problem of whether the two natures in the Incarnation were universal or particular.”
Zachhuber ends his account with Yanah ibn Mansur ibn Sarjum (aka John of Damascus (aka “the Damascene.”).) As with many earlier theologians, the Damascene relied heavily on Aristotle’s The Categories to shape a mature and confident expression of Chalcedonianism.[16] The Damascene's ideas were incorporated into Peter Lombard’s The Sentences, from which they made their way into St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.
Zacchuber points to an idea in the thoughts of the Damascene that is worth noting. John of Damascus inverts the order of understanding established by the Cappadocians. The Cappadocians had said that we know the divine substance as an extraction of ideas from the divine Persons. In contrast:
[I]n created being, only the hypostases are known ‘in reality’ whereas their common nature is known only in thought.128 In the Trinity, however, it is the reverse (ἀνάπαλιν): here the community and unity are seen ‘in reality’, whereas we know their distinctions only ‘by conception’ (ἐπινοίᾳ).
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 306). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
In created beings, individual, particular persons are seen in reality; they are separated from each other in time and space; they differ in most respects; they do not inhere in each other; and their nature is only seen as one as a concept. In God, the opposite is true. Were we to see God, we would see the Persons as unseparated by time and space, as totally inhering in each other, and as his Nature (since His nature and His existence are the same thing.) In those circumstances, we would see the Persons “in concept” rather than “in reality.”
Thus:
[D]ivine nature is evident to us in its unity of being and operation whereas the distinction of hypostases is difficult to discern given not only the preponderance of common properties but also — the Damascene’s most celebrated doctrinal innovation — their mutual co-inherence (perichoresis).
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 307). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
For their part, the Monophysites still affirm that Christ had a complete human nature (with a soul and mind) and a divine nature, which forms a new single nature in the same way that the soul and body — each with their own natures — make up a single composite nature. Further, just as the nature of the soul and the body do not intermingle or mix, neither do the divine nature and the human nature of Christ, which is consistent with the Chalcdonian formula. This single (compound) nature is then attached to a single person, avoiding the risk of slipping into Nestorianism.
Both Chalcedonianism and Monophysitism end up at the same conclusion.
It is a squabble about words all the way down.
This is a fascinating book if you have an interest and the background. If you have those elements, Zachhuber offers a lot to think about concerning why we have the theology we have. He provides a solid background briefing about a plethora of interesting thinkers. The book is tough sledding from start to finish. It is not easy to digest or summarize as you can see from this review, but I think it warrants the effort.
Footnotes:
[1] Arianism was the theological position that the Son was a created being, inferior and subordinated to the Father.
[2] “Ousia” is a key word in this discussion that means “substance.”
[3] Zachhuber uses the term “formula of being” to describe this. This term comes from Aristotle’s Categories.
[4] The term “hypostasis” is used for “person.”
[5] “Idiotes” means “an amateur, an unprofessional man, a layman; an ungifted person.” Presumably, in the fourth century, it merely meant “a person” without the pejorative implications that it would acquire later.
[6] The “two nature” approach was endorsed by the Council of Chalcedon and became known as “Chalcedonianism” or “diaphysitism” (meaning “two natures.) The competing position was monophysitism (meaning “one nature.”)
[7] Nestorianism taught that, in essence, Mary should be called Christotokos — Christ Bearer — rather than Theotokos — God-Bearer — because before the birth of the Savior, May carried the person who was the Christos — or savior — but not the Theos — or God. This implicated the idea that either after birth, there were two persons inhabiting the body of Christ, or that the human person was extinguished by the Divine Person. Neither option was considered palatable.
[8] The former option raises the heresy of Patripassianism, which argues that the Father suffered on the Cross along with the Son.
[9] To the Monophysites, Severus is “St. Severus.” See Christology and the Council of Chalcedon by Fr Shenouda M. Ishak.
“In fact, Severus came dangerously close to saying that the nature was quantitatively divided in the process of individuation.”
(Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 148). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.)
It would be game, set, and match against any Christian theologian who stepped over that line.
“In chapter thirty of the ninth book of his work, Michael [the Syrian] relates that the originator of the sect was a certain John Ascoutzanges. John, whose soubriquet literally describes him as a man ‘with bottle-shaped boots’…..”
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 156). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
The Man with Bottle-Shaped Boots.
History comes alive!
“Thus far, ‘tritheist’ must be considered a term of abuse coined by their opponents. At the same time, it is hard to see how Ascoutzanges and his followers would have avoided the conclusion that saying ‘three Gods’ was as legitimate as ‘three natures’ or ‘three divinities’.”
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 159). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[13] The orthodox maxim was “that which was not assumed by Christ was not saved by Christ.” In this case, that maxim would have meant that the human mind was not saved.
That seems like a big deal.
[14] Or worse, as Zachhuber observes:
The debates we have followed in this part of the book can easily appear petty and technical in equal measure confirming the frequent suspicion that the doctrinal controversies after the Council of Chalcedon degenerated into a formalistic conflict over terminological precision, an early version of the notorious rabies theologorum.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 181). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
[15] Zachhuber credits the reception of the new authority of ps.-Dionysius the Arpagite, who “strongly stressed the absolutely transcendent oneness of the divine substance.”
[16] The Monophysites also relied on that source:
“Theodore of Raïthu quotes Severus of Antioch with the dictum that the best theologian is the one who knows Aristotle’s Categories,59 and regardless of whether these words are genuine or apocryphal, they certainly mirror an educational practice that may well have started with Sergius of Reshaina in the early sixth century.
Zachhuber, Johannes. The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (p. 289). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
Historians often point out that Aquinas synthesized Aristotelianism with Christianity as a new idea in the thirteenth century. Reading this book, it became obvious that Aquinas was carrying on a project that had begun nine-hundred years earlier. His success in the project may have been helped by the fact that Christian theology had long been pre-adapted for such a synthesis.