As my readers may have already deduced from previous issues of this article, I have been presenting information on how the Fathers of the Church, after great debate, finally came to the formation of a dogmatic statement about Who the … Continue reading
Category Archives: Learning Our Faith from the Church Fathers
In last week’s Bulletin, I introduced the fact that Greek thought originally showed much opposition to the concept of divine-humanity. It seemed impossible to not only conceive of the idea but also to express the idea that somehow Jesus was … Continue reading
This article has been, perhaps, the most difficult to write. The Fathers of the Church are not necessarily easy to understand since they frequently used philosophical terms to forge an understanding of what they believed about Jesus Christ. As I … Continue reading
In the last issue of this article, I tried to present the position of Ephesus (431) about the Person of Christ. As you know, the Church struggled for centuries to find the right and appropriate way to express the Incarnation … Continue reading
While I am quite aware that at times this article may be quite challenging because of how the Fathers of the Church thought and wrote, I have several hopes in sharing this information and how the Church has struggled through … Continue reading
As I suggested in the last issue of this article, the Eastern Fathers of the Church maintained that the Incarnation of God as a human being had cosmic significance. It renewed creation. In fact, the Fathers talk about the New … Continue reading
The incarnation of the Word of God (i.e., Logos, Son of God or Christ) was very consistently considered by Byzantine theologians as truly having a cosmic significance. The cosmic dimension of the Christ-event is expressed particularly well in Byzantine hymnology: … Continue reading
Byzantine Christology (i.e., study of Christ) has always been dominated by the categories of thought and the terminology of the great controversies of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries about the person and identity of Jesus Christ. These controversies involved … Continue reading
In order to maintain a fully balanced view of Byzantine Mariology (beliefs about Mary, the Mother of God), it is necessary to keep in mind the Christological framework of the veneration of Mary in Byzantium. The absence of any formal … Continue reading
As I stated in the last issue of this article, the election of the Virgin Mary is the culminating point of Israel’s progress toward reconciliation with God and God’s final response to this progress with the beginning of new life … Continue reading