"For it is not, I repeat, not the nature -- in other words, that which is common among the Three Hypostases -- which is worshipped, but the specific personal distinctions whereby the Hypostases of the Trinity are distinguished."
--Patriarch Photius, Concerning the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, 47 (translation by Joseph Farrell).
6 comments:
Anyone who dresses as sharp as Photius must have something to say.
Are not the Three Persons in Unity the essence of God? Hence, if we worship the persons we are worshipping God. Certainly it would be odd, on any reading, to say that we worship God's nature. But, then again, the doctrine of the simplicity of God (regardless its limits in Trinitarian discussions) at least enables us to make sure that we contend that God is his nature.
Photius,
In the passage you just quoted, what words are translated "nature" and "subsistence"? Are they ousia and hypostasis?
Thanks,
Dan
Photius,
YOu beg the question, I believe, because the person of the Son does not exhaust all that it means to be God. For example, Jesus sayes he was sent from the Father and he is one with the Father, but he is clear that the Father is other than he. But they are One.
I know, BTW, that the Orthodox and Rome have different notions of simplicity. What I don't like, however, is that some who embrace the East try to insist that the EAst doesn't have a philosophically discussable concept of simplicity.
Also, John's statement about heresy does not speak to my comments, because I am not nature and subsistence as identical. The nature of God is the Three Persons in Communion.
But surely there is no consideration of the Person apart from the Nature/Being. To worship the Person is to worship an "enhypostastised" Nature for each of the Person is *equally* God. The "ascription" God does not refer to His Name, i.e. to Who He is, but to *What* He is (Divinity). That is why we confess that in the "Quicunque vult" and obliquely affirmed in Article I of the 39 AoR that there is not Three Almighties, but One Power and Glory.
Experientially, when we personally confess and worship God, we are addressing Him in His Oneness; when we personally confess and worship God the Father of Our Lord Jesus in the Spirit, we are addressing Him in His Threeness.
This is not to say that the ordo theologiae (the priority of essence over existence and vice-versa) is not pertinent or important ... the great insight of the Eastern tradition must not be sidelined or neglected. But to pit philosophical theology against creedal theology, intellection/abstraction against intuitive/doxative aspects of the life and witness of the Church to the apostolic faith smacks of the legalistic clap-trap of the papal definitions.
After all, the Apostles' Creed is not the same as the "Quicunque vult": the former is a body of succinct statements expressing the broad essentials of orthodoxy; the latter reflects a particular concern which have been repeatedly crop up, hence its polemical and strident nature.
I'll stick with Augustine and the Latin Fathers on this, including predestination and grace. I think the role of the Spirit as the bond of unity in the Church commensurates perfectly with His intra-Trinitarian role as the bond of love ("vinculum amoris") between the Father and the Son, hence the Filioque.
Jason said:
"Experientially, when we personally confess and worship God, we are addressing Him in His Oneness;"
Who is the "Him" here in your statement, Jason? There is no all-encompassing Divine supra-hypostasis that can be the antecedent of the pronoun "Him" here. In other words, it is not appropriate theological or liturigcal language to hypostasize the Trinity into some sort of collective entity that can be addressed singularly in personal terms.
When I pray to God, my address is directed to the Father. I do not address an Essential "Him," but rather I address a Personal "Him." Likewise, when I confess one God, I confess "the Father Almighty."
Dan
when we personally confess and worship God the Father of Our Lord Jesus in the Spirit, we are addressing Him in His Threeness."
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