California, Here I Come

In a few weeks I will be traveling home for Christmass with my family. Said home is in southern California. Usually I get together with a few friends for dinner, drinks and this sometimes includes visiting various theological discussion venues in the area, as a don the role of theological gadfly. (This only gets better with dark beer.) Should you be a native of such parts and wish to join our happy throng, please let me know via email so I can orchastrate the outing so as to maximize happiness for the greatest number of people.

Be Thankful

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The Glory of the Physical

“While Gregory [of Nyssa]is regularly described by scholars as a “Platonist’, in fact he contrasts the inherent certainty of sense knowledge with the inherent uncertainty of abstract knowledge (or in Gregory’s terms, knowledge of sensibles verses knowledge of intelligibles). Sense knowledge is clear and certain; knowledge by intellect alone is neither. This positive evaluation of the world of sensibles leads Gregory to see creation as a trustworthy sign of its Creator; indeed, one striking feature of Gregory’s theology is the confidence with which he believes that the evidence of creation bears out his theology. This confidence depends on Gregory’s theological shift from the one Creator reasoning to the one God reasoning I have outlined, but in Gregory’s case this shift is supported by his definite sense of the veracity and the virtue of material creation.”

Michel Barnes, Dunamis in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology, 254.

Lemon Juice on a Paper Cut

Like Bactine of old, this stings. Oh! Daniel, my Daniel! This one is for you!

Reason’s Empty Nest

This is a worthwhile read.

“Secular” Turkey

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Note that the Halki School of Theology was shut down by the Turkish government while at the same time limiting heirarchical positions in the Orthodox Church to Turlish citizens, making it nearly impossible to continue to produce cleargy of Turkish citizanship.

Play It Again Sam

Protestants of a classical stripe (Calvinists and Lutherans) often make a lot of noise over “the gospel.” Soteriological issues understood primarily in moral and legal categories are of utmost importance for them. How can one stand before a holy deity? How is a person vindicated or justified before God is always on their lips.

A more substantial grasp of the Reformation controversies between Rome and different Reformation traditions (Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist) discloses that the issues are not fundamentally soteriological. The issues are something of a replay of the older Christological debates. Soteriological and other adjoined debates concerning the nature of the sacraments and their efficacy or Mary are a function of one’s Christology. Take under consideration the following citations.

“Lutherans have learned from experience that any error in the doctrine of the Sacrament inevitably indicates a prior error in Christology.” David P. Scaer, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics: Christology” 56.

Concerning Mary, “The Reformed have generally favored the Nestorian position and denied Mary that title[Theotokos], though Calvin did not.” Scaer 57

“The Reformed hypothetically hold to the genus idiomaticum, but this is a verbal and not a real predication, as each of the natures remain not only distinct but separate. Thus to this day Reformed theologians do not operate with any meaningful understanding of the genus idiomaticum and in effect still deny the personal or hypostatic union in Christ.” Ibid.

“Whereas the greatest difference betwneen the Lutherans and the Reformed appears in the genus maiestaticum, which the Reformed utterly reject, we note that the Reformed view of the communicatio, which tends to be restricted to the genus idiomaticum,  approarches the communication more as a praedicatio verbalis, or verbal predication, of idiomata from both natures of the person, whereas the Lutheran view insists that the person actually bears the idiomata of both natures. The Reformed, in addition, do not view the apostelesmata, or shared operations, of the natures as a genus of the communicatio idiomatum but as a separate communicatio apostelesmatum according to which the distinct operations of both natures are brought to completion in the one work of Christ.  Thus, Lutheran teaching is a real communicatio while the Reformed, remaining at the level of a communicatio in concreto only, is quite accuratley called antidosis onomaton, a mutual interchange of reciprocation of names, rather than a transfer of communication of properties…” Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 74.

Cats and Dogs Living Together

I fully expect a full scale Klingon invasion soon after seeing this.

Drawing near to God

In light of recent discussions this quote from St Gregory Palamas may help provide some more patristic light on the issues.

Every created nature is far removed from and completely foreign to the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature; but if every other thing in nature, He is not nature, just as He is not a being if all other things are beings. And if He is a being, then other things are not beings. And if you accept this as true also for wisdom, goodness, and in general all things that pertain to God or are ascribed to Him, then your theology will be correct and in accordance with the saints. God both is and is said to be the nature of all beings, in so far as all partake of Him and subsist by means of this participation: not however by participation in His nature – far from it – but by participation in His energy. In this sense He is Being of all beings, the Form that is in all forms as the Author of form, the Wisdom of the wise and, simply, the All in all things. Moreover, He is not nature, because He transcends nature; He is not a being, because He transcends every being; and He is not nor does He possess a form because He transcends form. How, then, can we draw near to God? By drawing near to His nature? But not a single created being has or can have any communication with or proximity to the sublime nature. Thus if anyone has drawn close to God, he has evidently approached Him by means of His energy. In what way? By natural participation in that energy? But this is common to all created things. It is not, therefore, by virtue of natural qualities, but by virtue of what one achieves but virtue of free choice that one is close to or distant from God. But free choice pertains only to beings endowed with intelligence. So among all creatures only those endowed with intelligence can be far from or close to God, drawing close to Him through virtue or becoming distant through vice. Thus such beings alone are capable of wretchedness or blessedness. Let us strive to lay hold of blessedness.  

Thus when you hear the fathers saying that God’s essence is imparticipable, you should realise that they refer to the essence that does not depart from itself and is unmanifest. Again, when they say that it is participable, you should realise that they refer to the procession, manifestation and energy that are God’s natural attributes. When you accept both statements in this sense you will be in agreement with the fathers.

And St Maximos also says, ‘He who is deified through grace will be everything that God is, without possessing the identity of essence.’ Thus it is impossible to participate in God’s essence… It is, however, possible to participate in the divine energy.

St Gregory Palamas, “Topics of Natural and Theological Science” Philokalia Vol 4

St Gregory also calls omnipresence an energy of God. We must not confuse the attributes or properties of God with His essence. We can be united to God in His energies even if we cannot participate in His essence. We can participate in omnipresence, omnipotence and all God’s attributes by the grace of God through His energies without needing to attain to His unapproachable essence. Man is created in God’s image and likeness to participate in divinity and so God’s attributes are not opposed to man, even though man is limited. God has His attributes by nature but this does not mean that man can not participate in them and be deified by grace. The energies of God are uncreated, and divine and, unlike the essence, can be participated in part without negating participation in the divine.

Some say that the union of divine and human is impossible; Christ cannot be God Incarnate. However, the Fathers have proved this reasoning false centuries ago and they speak well on the matter so nothing of substance can be added to them. Man is created in time, man is limited by time and space, man is limited in all ways but this does not mean that God cannot make man transcend himself and live in the limitless life of God. What contradiction can there be between God and His image? What opposition can creation have with God when is created in Him? Only sin is opposed to God and this is the result of the free choice of the sinner. Only unbelief in the power of God can deny man to participate in the infinite life of God and for the Divine to be united to Man in one Person, the Son of God.

A Sign of the Apocalypse

Every once in a while something happens that shouldn’t happen. Something is out of place. I don’t mean the commercials that the devil does on a regular basis. I mean things like cats and dogs living together.

So this Saturday morning I went over to Concordia Publishing for their annual warehouse sale. Since I am in Saint Louis, I could throw a rock and hit something Catholic or Lutheran and Corcordia is literally five minutes from my home. So I went to pick up some kids books and see if there was anything Lutheran that I wanted to buy at discount.

I am looking through the theology section and I find a book that looks promising. I intend to buy it, but before I leave I see another book. It is a pro-LDS book unfortunately published by Eerdmans some time ago. I have looked at the book in the past, specificallythe sections where the LDS try to co-opt early church sources particularly on theosis. It contains all of the usual mistakes that occur when the LDS bumble through the Fathers.

But this floored me. Between all of the Rome-is-the-whore-of Babylon texts, whether recent or from the era of Lutheran scholasticism, and all of the Luther-is-our-only-real-church-father books, there is a pro-Mormon text. So, being me, I complained.

I told the clerk that I knew that she didn’t order the book, but that seeing that this was Concordia Publishing bookstore, they shouldn’t have Mormon books. Someone of a managerial status came over to investigate and stated that all of their books go through a process of theological review. I replied to the effect that somehow they must have missed this one since it was Mormon! Besides, they wouldn’t sell pro-Roman works and Rome is Trinitarian! He noted that the book had been on the shelf for two years and it hadn’t sold. I noted that this was probably a good thing as they shouldn’t have the book at all.

What is the world coming to when I can’t even count on the Lutherans to protest crass heresy?