{"id":2173,"date":"2015-02-01T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2015-02-01T15:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=2173"},"modified":"2015-01-30T11:37:21","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T16:37:21","slug":"learning-our-faith-from-the-fathers-of-the-church-20150201","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=2173","title":{"rendered":"Learning Our Faith From the Fathers of the Church — 20150201"},"content":{"rendered":"

The definition developed by the Council of Chalcedon proclaimed that Christ is consubstantial (i.e., having the same substance or essential nature<\/em>), not only with His Father, but also \u201cwith us.\u201d Though fully man, Christ does not possess a human hypostasis (i.e., the personality of Christ as distinguished from His two natures, human and divine<\/em>), for the hypostasis of His two\u00a0\u00a0 natures is the divine hypostasis of the Logos, the Word.<\/p>\n

Each individual, fully consubstantial<\/em> with his fellow men, is, radically distinct from them in a unique, unrepeatable and unassimilable personality: no man can fully be in<\/em> another man. But Jesus\u2019 hypostasis has a fundamental affinity with all human personalities: that of\u00a0\u00a0 being their model.<\/em> For indeed all men are created according to the image of God (i.e., according to the image of the Logos<\/em>). When the Logos became incarnate, the divine stamp matched all its imprints: God assumed humanity in a way which did not exclude any human hypostasis, but which opened to all of them the possibility of restoring their unity in Himself. He became, indeed, the new Adam<\/em>, in whom every man finds his own nature realized perfectly and fully, without the limitations which would have been inevitable if Jesus were only a human personality.<\/p>\n

I can’t tell you how important the ideas are in the previous paragraph. They truly address the issue of Jesus being our human model and archetype. He is God\u2019s revelation to humankind on how to live human life in the way and manner that God intended when He created humanity.<\/p>\n

Jesus is the concrete, physical image of God, who is invisible. He IS God\u2019s revelation to us about our humanity. God became man so that we might know about the ultimate goal of our lives, namely to become like God.<\/p>\n

It is this concept of Christ which Maximus the Confessor had in mind when he re-emphasized the old Pauline image of recapitulation<\/em> in reference to the incarnate Logos and saw in Him the victory over the disintegrating separations in humanity. As man, Christ accomplishes in all truth the true human destiny that He Himself had predetermine as God, and from which man had turned: He unites man to God.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Thus Chalcedonian Christology, and that which followed, would truly be meaningless speculation were it not oriented toward the very notion of redemption (i.e., giving to mankind the vision of union with God<\/em>). The whole history of Christological dogma was determined by this basic idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The definition developed by the Council of Chalcedon proclaimed that Christ is consubstantial (i.e., having the same substance or essential nature), not only with His Father, but also \u201cwith us.\u201d Though fully man, Christ does not possess a human hypostasis … 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":[58],"class_list":["post-2173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-our-faith-form-the-church-fathers","tag-hypostasis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173","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=2173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2174,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173\/revisions\/2174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}