{"id":4352,"date":"2016-08-28T10:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=4352"},"modified":"2016-08-24T12:53:44","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T16:53:44","slug":"learning-our-faith-from-the-greek-fathers-of-the-church-20160828","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=4352","title":{"rendered":"Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20160828"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Saint<\/a>

Saint Maximos the Confessor
\u041f\u0440\u0435\u043f\u043e\u0434\u043e\u0431\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u041c\u0430\u043a\u0441\u0438\u043c \u0418\u0441\u043f\u043e\u0432\u0435\u0434\u043d\u0438\u043a
\u039c\u03b1\u03be\u03b9\u0301\u03bc\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c4\u03bf\u03c5 \u039f\u03bc\u03bf\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b7\u03c4\u03bf\u03c5\u0301<\/p><\/div>\n

I truly realize that this is truly a \u201cheady\u201d article. It is this for three reasons: (1) the subject matter is truly complex and, in some ways, very academic mixed with spirituality; (2) the Fathers were highly educated men who mixed theology, philosophy and spirituality; and (3) the topic is a mystery and it is important that my readers have a sense of the struggle that our Church has gone through in order to come up with the truths in which we believe.<\/p>\n

The central message of the Alexandrian theology of Athanasius and Cyril had been that the salvation of the world is not being accomplished by any created mediation, but by the Son of God, who makes himself accessible to human beings, sharing his own life with them by assuming humanity in his personal existence as a human being. In this perspective, however, theological consistency and spiritual experience require that Christ be fully human, for, indeed, to use the celebrated phrase of Gregory of Nazianzus, \u201cwhat is not assumed is not healed, and what is united to God is saved.\u201d Salvation understood as communion with God, or deification, implies that the fullness of humanity – not a part of it – be the object of God\u2019s love, and Maximus described that fullness as including specifically the \u201cmovement\u201d or dynamism of created humanity: human will, human freedom and human creativity. All these were assumed by the person of the incarnated Logos and became part, through his death and resurrection, of his eschatological new creation.<\/p>\n

The last and, perhaps, the most decisive episode in the debates concerning the identity of Christ came with the so-called iconoclastic crises in the Byzantine world (715-843). Quoting Old Testament prohibitions against graven images and idolatry, the iconoclasts objected to images of Christ: since he was God, his image was also, necessarily, an image of God and, necessarily, an image of God and, therefore, an idol. Against this position theologians John of Damascus, Theodore of Studios, Patriarch Nicephoros,, affirmed the reality of Christ\u2019s humanity, which was historical and therefore truly \u201crepresentable\u201d and seen with human eyes. However, since Christ\u2019s personal identity is that of the Son of God, an image of Christ is an image of God, who makes himself visible as man.<\/p>\n

Christ\u2019s humanity allows us to image Him and, therefore, image God.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I truly realize that this is truly a \u201cheady\u201d article. It is this for three reasons: (1) the subject matter is truly complex and, in some ways, very academic mixed with spirituality; (2) the Fathers were highly educated men who … 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":[5,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-our-faith-form-the-church-fathers","category-maximos-the-confessor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4352","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=4352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4353,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4352\/revisions\/4353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}