{"id":2071,"date":"2015-01-04T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T14:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=2071"},"modified":"2015-01-02T15:58:58","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T19:58:58","slug":"learning-our-faith-from-the-fathers-of-the-church-20150104","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=2071","title":{"rendered":"Learning Our Faith from the Fathers of the Church — 20150104"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I have shared with you, it is our belief that it was through a Hypostatic Union that God<\/em>, in the Person of Jesus Christ, is both God and Man. The hypostatic union implies that the Logos made humanity His own<\/em> in its totality; thus the Second \u00a0Person of the Trinity was indeed the subject, or agent, of the\u00a0\u00a0 human<\/em> experiences, or acts, of Jesus. The controversy between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius concerning the term Theotokos, <\/em>applied to the Virgin Mary, concerned essentially this very problem. Was there, in Jesus, a human person whose mother could have been Mary? Cyril\u2019s answer –\u00a0\u00a0 emphatically negative – was, in fact, a Christological option of great importance. In Christ, there was only one Son, the Son of God, and Mary could not have been the Mother of anyone else. She was, therefore, indeed the \u201cMother of God.\u201d Exactly the same problem arose in connection with the death of Christ. Impassibility and immortality were indeed characteristics of the divine nature. How, then, asked the theologians of Antioch, could the Son of God die<\/em>? Obviously, the \u201csubject\u201d of Christ\u2019s death was only His humanity. Against this point of view, and following Cyril, the fifth Council (553) affirms: \u201cIf anyone does not confess that our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified in the flesh is true God and the Lord of Glory and one of the Holy Trinity, let him be anathema.\u201d This conciliar text, which paraphrases 1 Corinthians 2:8 (If they had understood, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory<\/em>), inspired the hymn \u201cThe Only-Begotten Son,\u201d attributed to Emperor Justinian and sung at every Byzantine Eucharistic Liturgy: \u201cOne of the Holy Trinity, You were crucified for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theopaschism<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 <\/em>the acceptance of formulae which affirm that the \u201cSon of God died in the flesh\u201d – illustrates how distinct the concepts of hypostasis<\/em> and nature<\/em> or essence<\/em> really are. The distinction is stressed by one of the main Chalcedonian theologians, Leontius of Jerusalem: The Logos is said to have suffered according to the hypostasis, for within His hypostasis He assumed a passible human essence besides His own impassible essence, and what can be asserted of the human essence can be asserted of the hypostasis.<\/em> What this implies is that the characteristics of the divine essence – impassibility, immutability, etc – are not absolutely binding upon the personal<\/em>, or hypostatic, existence of God. The affirmation that the Son of God indeed \u201cdied in the flesh\u201d reflects, better than any other Christological formula, the boundlessness of God\u2019s love for man, the reality of the \u201cappropriation\u201d by the Logos of fallen and mortal humanity – i.e., the very mystery of salvation.<\/p>\n

While this may be difficult to understand, I would encourage you to not give up and wrestle with it. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I have shared with you, it is our belief that it was through a Hypostatic Union that God, in the Person of Jesus Christ, is both God and Man. The hypostatic union implies that the Logos made humanity His … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-our-faith-form-the-church-fathers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2072,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions\/2072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}