Did Christ have a fallen human nature?

[M. Markewich]

I get that we Orthodox do not believe that original sin includes guilt for the first sin, just the consequences. However, I was wondering, since Christ became man to save man, wouldn't He have taken on every aspect about us? Wouldn't He have had an inclination to sin, except that He fully resisted falling to it? This is hard for me to understand because on one hand it seems like some Orthodox do and some Orthodox don't think that Christ was exempt. For example,
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/incarnation_redemption_florovsky_e.htm

It must be stressed that in the Incarnation the Word assumes the original human nature, innocent and free from original sin, without any stain. This does not violate the fullness of nature, nor does this affect the Savior’s likeness to us sinful people. For sin does not belong to human nature, but is a parasitic and abnormal growth. This point was vigorously stressed by St. Gregory of Nyssa and particularly by St. Maximus the Confessor in connection with their teaching of the will as the seat of sin.7 In the Incarnation the Word assumes the first-formed human nature, created "in the image of God," and thereby the image of God is again re-established in man.8

On the other hand, from a thread here at Monachos:
http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1564

Among those rejecting Chalcedon, there were indeed some who put forward positions that quite properly could be described as monophysite, most notably Julian of Halicarnassus, who asserted that Christ’s body was by nature incorruptible from the moment of the union, even before the resurrection, so that “even though Christ wept over Lazarus, it was his incorruptible and divine tear that raised him from the dead.”

So the first quote seems to say Christ did not have our fallen nature but the second says that denying He had it is monophysitism. Can anyone help me?

[John Charmley]

Dear Matt,

My understanding is that the Church teaches that He was like unto us in everything save sin.

At the heart of St. Cyril's soteriology was the following insight, which seems to me germane to this theme:


As God he wished to make that flesh which was held in the grip of sin and death evidently superior to sin and death. He made it his very own, and not souless as some have said, but rather animated with a natural soul, and thus he restored flesh to what it was in the beginning. He did not consider it beneath him to have to follow a path congruous to this plan, and so he is said to have undergone a birth like ours, while all the while remaining what he was. He was born of a woman according to the flesh in a wondrous manner, for he is God by nature, as such invisible and incorporeal, and only in this way, a form like our own, could he be made manifest to earthly creatures. He thought it good to be made man and in his own person to reveal our nature honoured in the dignities of the divinity. The same one was at once God and man, and he was "in the likeness of a man (Phil 2:7) since even though he was God he was "in the fashion of a man". (Phil 2:8)'

(On the Unity of Christ pp.53, 55 of the SVS edition).


Since He took on our true nature, which was without sin, so He was what we should have been, and by so being, He was what we can become. What was assumed can be healed; but it is our fallen nature that requires the healing.

St. Cyril is most insistent on the Word 'becoming' flesh. At this moment the person (the Word) who had always existed as God also became man. This did not involve any mixing, changing, or confusing of natures (here the soul/body analogy which St. Cyril was fond of using, is not applied, because it it were it would indeed give the impression Nestorius thought he saw in Cyril's work). Instead the Word takes on a new manner of being - as man. This means, on St. Cyril's reading, that


the Word of God the Father became Flesh, not by a change or alteration of his own nature ... but because having made the flesh taken from the body of the Virgin his own, one and the same subject is called Son, before the Incarnation as Word still incorporeal, and after the Incarnation as the same Word now embodied. That is why we say that the same subject is simultaneously both God and Man, not dividing him conceptually into a human being with a separate identity and God the Word also with a separate identity, that we may exclude any idea of two Sons, but acknowledging that one and the same subject is Christ and Son and Lord.
[Russell, St. Cyril of Alexandria (2000) pp. 179-180]

I await correction if I err, but I do not see how it could be Orthodox to say that He had our sinful nature, as that would militate against an Orthodox soteriology.

In Christ,

John

[Mourad Mankarios]

I suppose if we were to look to St Maximus the Confessor for some understanding on this issue then we would find that the result of man's fall is the gnomic will. It is the gnomic will which is the sign or evidence of man's fallen nature and it is this which creates his inclination towards sin.

With regards to Christ St Maximus will explain to us that while Christ possessed both a human and divine will He did hot have a gnomic will. However, this makes Him no less human since the gnomic will is really foreign to humanity.

How then this would fit into the larger picture of a fallen human nature, Julian of Halicarnassus, monophysitism and others I have to admit I'm not quite sure. Perhaps others can build on what we have been able to elaborate on here.

[M. Markewich]

Thank you both, this is making more sense and apparently I held the wrong opinion. However, the main thing that concerns me is that this seems to make Christ's suffering as a man not as severe, as in, it seems like He really doesn't experience all the temptation we do. I thought that Christ imitated us in all things save sin? And the inclination to sin isn't sin itself, right?

The reason I think this relates to monophysitism, Mourad, is because if Christ does not suffer original sin like us, then He is also exempt from death and a corruptible body, don't you think? I've heard the view before that Christ died only because He chose to lay down His life, not because this was a part of His nature as a man. However, it seems like the quote I included says that this type of view of Christ is monophysite.

I don't mean to sound rebellious regarding the right belief, but I want to make sure I understand the reasoning.

[Athanasius Abdullah]

Julian of Halicarnassus was a Bishop who was ex-communicated by several Synods of the Oriental Orthodox (non-Chalcedonian) Church during the late fifth century for his belief that a) the Lord Christ could not assume post-fall humanity due to its allegedly being inherently sinful (an inherent sinfulness allegedly transmitted by procreation), and b) that the Lord Christ hence took incorruptible pre-fall flesh. His chief opponent was St. Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, who responded accordingly:

1) He defended the sanctity of the procreative act within the conjugal union, and the integrity of marriage itself.

2) He refuted the idea that sin became inherent to humanity subsequent to the fall. The fallen condition, argues St. Severus, does not affect our ontological nature, rather it affects the world to which we were expelled, and hence our personal experience (which is fundamentally shaped and governed by our experiences in this fallen world) of God and ourselves. St. Severus advocates a notion similar to St. Maximus' "gnomic will", by arguing that sin is the product of the corruption of our personal wills--something that is self-induced albeit influenced by outside forces.

3) He rejected the idea of there being any ontological distinction between pre-fall and post-fall humanity in the first place--both are corruptible i.e. ontologically susceptible to death (i.e. mortal), suffering, etc., and both are ontologically "good".

4) He rejected the idea that the Lord Christ underwent corruptible human experience contrary to His incorruptible humanity. The Lord Christ did not suffer anguish in spite of His Humanity, but rather precisely because of it.

5) He advocated the Cyrillian idea that the Lord Christ's Humanity only became incorruptible at the Resurrection.

In conclusion, St. Severus argued that the Lord Christ assumed "our sinful nature, though without sin". It's kind of ironic that this Father of the OO Church was himself anathematised by an EO Synod for allegedly undermining the Humanity of Christ, considering the lengths he went to to defend its integrity to the point of ex-communicating a once close friend.

I'm not 100% certain, but if I recall correctly, I believe Fr. V.C. Samuel, in his comparative studies between St. Severus' and St. John the Damascene's Christologies, observes that the only point of contention between them was that John the Damascene in fact argued that the Lord Christ took pre-fall flesh.

In XC
-Athanasius

[Mina Soliman]

I'm not 100% certain, but if I recall correctly, I believe Fr. V.C. Samuel, in his comparative studies between St. Severus' and St. John the Damascene's Christologies, observes that the only point of contention between them was that John the Damascene in fact argued that the Lord Christ took pre-fall flesh.

Just to make sure I'm saying the right thing here also, I'm lucky to have the book with me. I think two important differences outlined by the book:

1. St. John of Damascus did not clarify his acceptance of "composite hypostasis" and did not mention anything on the humanity of Christ being "hypostatic."

2. St. John of Damascus rejected Julian's thought that Christ's humanity was incorruptible before the Resurrection, but seemed to have supported Julian's premises to reach that conclusion.

God bless.

[John Charmley]

Dear Matt, Dear Athanasius, Dear Mourad,

Thank you all for enlightening and interesting posts.

St. Cyril seems to me the touchstone of Orthodoxy here. With his love of paradox he taught that Christ suffered - 'impassibly'. Had Our Lord's nature not been as our own is then He would not have assumed it and it would not have been healed. Our true nature in in God's image, and that is restored in the Incarnation; if it was not so then it would be hard to understand the purpose of the Incarnation.

I am very grateful to you, Athansius for mentioning St. Severus, who gets such a bad deal outside Oriental Orthodox circles at times, and yet whose teaching here is, as elsewhere, impeccably Orthodox.

At the centre of the Incarnation is the restoration of us in the image of God; what was not assumed could not have been healed, and we know He came to heal us.

In Christ,

John

[M. Markewich]

Thanks again everyone. In light of what Athanasius wrote about Julian and Severus' criticism, would it be accurate to say that both views, the one that John of Damascus had (who seems to have believed that Christ only assumed the non-fallen aspects of man) and the one that Severus had (that Christ assumed all of fallen human nature) are both permissible in Orthodoxy, as long as you don't end up preaching an incorruptible Christ? This confuses me as well! Mina said,


2. St. John of Damascus rejected Julian's thought that Christ's humanity was incorruptible before the Resurrection, but seemed to have supported Julian's premises to reach that conclusion.

So if St. John had the same premises and differed on corruptibility, then he must have believed Christ assumed some aspects of fallen nature but not all. How could Christ be exempt from some of original sin but not all of it? How could He have a human body that could be subject to corruption but not a corrupted will? It seems to me if Christ had a corrupted will, like us, He would have sanctified it by resisting the temptations of it. I really am just trying to understand.

[M. Markewich]

2) He refuted the idea that sin became inherent to humanity subsequent to the fall. The fallen condition, argues St. Severus, does not affect our ontological nature, rather it affects the world to which we were expelled, and hence our personal experience (which is fundamentally shaped and governed by our experiences in this fallen world) of God and ourselves. St. Severus advocates a notion similar to St. Maximus' "gnomic will", by arguing that sin is the product of the corruption of our personal wills--something that is self-induced albeit influenced by outside forces.
Hi Athanasius - are you saying then that the gnomic will is not present from birth, but is learned? If so then I think I could completely understand how Christ could completely imitate man, even in his fallen state, without taking on sinful additions that he picks up from his experience.

[Mourad Mankarios]

This is an interesting debate because it was a controversy that was exclusive to the OO side and was never really addressed in such depth by the EOs.

For the main part it seems that it has been acceptable simply to proclaim the full humanity and divinity of Christ without sin and that He really suffered and died and much else than that has been more theologoumenon rather than dogma or doctrine.

However, it would seem to me that if Julian of Halicarnassus believed that Christ truly suffered and died then it would be odd to say that he believed that Christ's humanity was incorruptible.

It appears that while such is ascribed to him the true difference between Julian and Severus is that while Severus would have advocated a corruptibility by necessity Julian would have advocated a voluntary corruptibility since a necessary corruptibility would mean that Christ Himself would be in need of salvation.

Hence for Julian and the EO it seems that Christ's kenosis is the key to understanding His suffering and death. Thus His kenotic passion is truly selfless and extended purely out of love for all of mankind.

And it appears that Julian's understanding of Christ is probably the one more dominantly held within nonChalcedonian circles.

To say that Christ's will was inclined towards sin it would seem to me would also be sin. He was the perfect God-man and as such His will was completely aligned with that of the Father's and hence He says, "I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me" (Jn 5:30). Also St James tells us, "God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone" (Js 1:13).

For Severus also there is a difference in pre and post fall humanity simply on the basis that man falls from grace. Hence his corruptibility is not so much an essential aspect of his humanity as it is as a result of his fall from grace.

A separation and hence corruption which man comes to inherit.

With this in mind we will probably find little difference between Severus and Julian since the purpose of the hypostatic union is to resolve the effects of the fall.

[Athanasius Abdullah]

Dear Mourad,


For the main part it seems that it has been acceptable simply to proclaim the full humanity and divinity of Christ without sin and that He really suffered and died and much else than that has been more theologoumenon rather than dogma or doctrine.

Whilst that may be the case in regard to the EOC, it is certainly not the case with regard to the OOC given the conciliar treatment of the issue and the fact men were ex-communicated in consideration of the issue. Julianism, insofar as the OOC is concerned, is nothing short of heresy.


It appears that while such is ascribed to him the true difference between Julian and Severus is that while Severus would have advocated a corruptibility by necessity Julian would have advocated a voluntary corruptibility since a necessary corruptibility would mean that Christ Himself would be in need of salvation.

This is simply not the case at all.

According to St. Severus, the Lord Christ, in His Humanity, was ontologically susceptible to all experiences proper to true Humanity; but this says nothing with respect to whether He was thus necessarily or voluntarily subject to those experiences. The latter question concerns the manner in which He underwent those experiences to which He was--in His Humanity--ontologically susceptible, and not whether He was in fact ontologically susceptible to them in the first place (which is the issue of contention between St. Severus and Julian). That St. Severus inherited St. Cyril's stress on the Word's ultimate authority over His Human experiences is clearly indicated in many of his writings. For example, in his Letter to Ecumenius, St. Severus states: “God the Word did not permit his flesh in all things to undergo the passions proper to it”.

Here, St. Severus admits that there were things proper to the Humanity the Lord Christ assumed which He nevertheless had the power to exercise discretionary governance upon—He had the volitional capacity to undergo that to which He was--in His Humanity--ontologically susceptible to, and He had the volitional capacity to conversely not undergo such experiences. Later on in the same letter, St. Severus explains that the Lord Christ’s ability to experience Humanity in a manner far different from the way we mere human beings experience the same nature shared by the Lord Christ, is due to the Hypostatic Union: “For in many instances [His Flesh] is seen not to have undergone the things which manifestly belong to its nature; for it was united to the Word, the Maker of nature.”

Likewise, you will find statements to the converse effect i.e. that just as the Lord Christ did not undergo certain human experiences by virtue of His not permitting it, so too did He undergo certain human experiences by virtue of His consciously permitting it to be, and not because He was of necessity subject to His own Humanity.

According to Julian, on the other hand, the Lord Christ underwent true human experience contrary to His Human Nature; it’s not that He permitted His flesh to undergo that which is proper to it as far as He willed, but rather that He permitted His flesh to undergo that which was improper to it as far as He willed (and it was improper to it, precisely because, as far as Julian was concerned, the Lord Christ's Humanity was incorruptible and hence not ontologically susceptible to suffering, death etc.). That’s the key difference, and it is quite a significant difference at that.

As I argued earlier, the main reason that Julian sought to avoid attributing a fallen Humanity to the Lord Christ was due to his false anthropological premises regarding the relationship between sin and human nature.

In XC
-Athanasius

[Athanasius Abdullah]

In fact, Mourad, I encourage you to read the entirety of the letter of St. Severus that I have referred you to in my last post. It is replete with statements contrary to the interpretation you have ascribed to him, with plenty of support from St. Cyril whom he oft-quotes in his persistent reliance upon the great Doctor. One most explicit Cyrillian statement on the issue of whether the Lord Christ underwent Human experience voluntarily or out of necessity, which St. Severus quotes as representative of his own line of thought, reads as follows:


"For, though it is said that he hungered and thirsted, and slept and grew weary after a journey, and wept and feared, these things did not happen to him just as they do to us in accordance with compulsory ordinances of nature; but he himself voluntarily permitted his flesh to walk according to the laws of nature, for he sometimes allowed it even to undergo its own passions"

In XC
-Athanasius

[Mourad Mankarios]

"For, though it is said that he hungered and thirsted, and slept and grew weary after a journey, and wept and feared, these things did not happen to him just as they do to us in accordance with compulsory ordinances of nature; but he himself voluntarily permitted his flesh to walk according to the laws of nature, for he sometimes allowed it even to undergo its own passions"

I think that sounds like Julianism...


According to Julian, on the other hand, the Lord Christ underwent true human experience contrary to His Human Nature; it’s not that He permitted His flesh to undergo that which is proper to it as far as He willed, but rather that He permitted His flesh to undergo that which was improper to it as far as He willed (and it was improper to it, precisely because, as far as Julian was concerned, the Lord Christ's Humanity was incorruptible and hence not ontologically susceptible to suffering, death etc.). That’s the key difference, and it is quite a significant difference at that.

However, the fact that He permitted it makes His humanity just as susceptible to suffering and death as though it were natural to it. It seems that the only difference is that in Severian anthropology corruption (original sin or the consequences thereof) is inherited whereas for Julian it is willed...



As I argued earlier, the main reason that Julian sought to avoid attributing a fallen Humanity to the Lord Christ was due to his false anthropological premises regarding the relationship between sin and human nature.

I'm not sure this is actually the case since no where does Severus actually correct or attack such a notion on Julian's part...

[Peter Farrington]

Dear Mourad

Have you read all of St Severus' works against Julius? There are several thick volumes that I have not yet read through.

I agree entirely with Athanasius on this issue.

At its heart is the matter as Athanasius correctly describes St Cyril and St Severus' understanding.

Did Christ voluntarily undergo those things which were natural to his humanity (as St Cyril and St Severus state), or did he voluntarily undergo those same things which were alien to his human nature.

If they were alien then they were not assumed, and if not assumed then not healed. It was a pretence of being human. If I make a mooing noise it does not make me a cow. But if I take on the nature of a cow and choose to moo, or not moo, then I would be voluntarily undergoing those things which are natural to my cow-ness.

This argument with Julius was not so much about the human self-consciousness of the Word, or His experience, as experience, but whether the experiences BELONGED to the humanity He united to Himself, or merely were performed by His humanity and yet ultimately alien to it.

Our Lord could voluntarily allow His humanity to grow weary, but He was not bound by such natural weariness. But the weariness was natural to His humanity and not alien to it and merely acted out. There is a massive difference here in theological meaning.

This debate did also impinge on the Chalcedonian community, and the Emperor Justinian died a Julianist, and his last ecclesial act was to command that Julianism be accepted throughout the Empire.

Peter

[Athanasius Abdullah]

I think that sounds like Julianism...

If it were Julianism, the last clause of the statement in question would have read: “passions contrary to it", as opposed to, “its own passions”. My entire second last post was aimed at explaining this fundamental distinction.

Again, St. Severus and St. Cyril both taught that the Lord Christ permitted what was proper to His Humanity, whereas Julian taught that the Lord Christ permitted what was improper to His Humanity. A Humanity that does not have as proper to it, the properties of hunger, thirst, and sleep etc., is not our humanity, and hence experiencing such properties has no soteriological implications.


It seems that the only difference is that in Severian anthropology corruption (original sin or the consequences thereof) is inherited whereas for Julian it is willed...

Or, to more accurately convey the significance of the difference in question and its consequent implications:

It seems that the difference is that according to St. Severus’s Christology (which, in regard to the nature of Christ’s Humanity and Human experience is none other than the Christology of St. Cyril as evidenced in St. Severus’s letter which I referred you to in my previous posts) corruption is inherited by virtue of the Lord Christ assuming the very fallen nature that needed to be healed and hence conquering the corruption naturally proper to it in order that we may in turn conquer the corruption naturally proper to our nature, whereas for Julian such corruption is willed contrary to that which is proper to the Humanity assumed, and hence contrary to the very nature which corruption affects in us; corruption is hence not conquered in the fallen flesh, but rather in an already incorruptible flesh, deeming the Word’s human experiences superfluous.


I'm not sure this is actually the case since no where does Severus actually correct or attack such a notion on Julian's part...

Actually, he most certainly does: in Homilies CXXIII, LXXV, and LXVIII. I advise you to consult the research of Chestnut and Draguet on the matter.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

One thing important to keep in mind here is what we call the blameless passions:
according to St John of Damascus among these are hunger, thirst, fatigue, pain & shrinking from death. These are actually part of our nature and not just results of the Fall. Although fear of death is obviously a result of the Fall in a directly causal sense it is still a blameless passion since the fear itself is a manifestation of the natural desire to desire life.

Christ then assumes the blameless passions in as much as these are natural to man.

What I hear being asked is how it can be, if salvation really relates to our deliverance from sin, that Christ assumed all of our humanity, but yet not that which is sinful and fallen.

One part of the answer surely is that sin is not something added to man at the Fall. Sin rather is a distortion of man's nature. And this is what Christ has assumed.

And yet in Christ there is in this assuming of our nature some sort of mysterious & sinless grappling with our sin as is made so clear in the icon of the Descent into Hades.

In other words when we say that Christ assumed the blameless passions we do not mean this was a defensive work of Christ to prevent Himself from being sullied by our sin. Rather we mean that by assuming our nature in its fullness He actively uses this as a bridge to heal our broken sinfulness.

How He can do this without falling pertains to the nature of His Divine will. But the point is that He does sinlessly suffer the effects of our sin in order to heal it.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[M. Markewich]

What I hear being asked is how it can be, if salvation really relates to our deliverance from sin, that Christ assumed all of our humanity, but yet not that which is sinful and fallen.

One part of the answer surely is that sin is not something added to man at the Fall. Sin rather is a distortion of man's nature. And this is what Christ has assumed.
Hello, Father. For me, the question is not why did He not inherit our sinfulness, but why didn't He inherit all of the effects of our sinfulness? If we are born with the inclination to sin, and we are not born with guilt, then it follows that this inclination cannot be cause for guilt and is not sin either. That is why it doesn't make sense to me to say Christ assumed some of our fallen attributes (such as the ability to die) but not others (the inclination to sin). One possible explanation that I like, which I mentioned in this thread, is we are not born with the inclination to sin, but largely learn it from others.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Hello, Father. For me, the question is not why did He not inherit our sinfulness, but why didn't He inherit all of the effects of our sinfulness? If we are born with the inclination to sin, and we are not born with guilt, then it follows that this inclination cannot be cause for guilt and is not sin either. That is why it doesn't make sense to me to say Christ assumed some of our fallen attributes (such as the ability to die) but not others (the inclination to sin). One possible explanation that I like, which I mentioned in this thread, is we are not born with the inclination to sin, but largely learn it from others.

The inclination to sin is a result of the Fall & not of human nature in itself. Although I suppose this could apply in either case, Christ assumes human nature, He doesn't inherit it. His assuming of humanity is entirely through the free assumption of this by His Divine will. It is not as with us through the involuntary event on our part of being born. This is one of the central points about Christ as subject being the Person of the Divine Logos. There is not only what He interacts with: sin, guilt or whatever. There is how He interacts with this sin as the Divine Logos.

Precisely then as God He manifests His divine freedom in regards to sin and meets it through our humanity without it being able to overcome Him in any sense.

Whatever it is of humanity that He assumes then the main point is that He operates from divine freedom. Which doesn't mean "He does whatever He wants to do." It means that in regards to this question He precisely manifests His divinity as not being subject to the slavery of sin. He can encounter death without this subjecting Him to its power.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Mourad Mankarios]

I think to put the argument as to suffer what is proper or improper to humanity is an interesting way of seeing things, however, their may be a slight alternative.

According to Severus and I suppose Orthodoxy in general corruption is a result of man's fall from grace. It is precisely this which results in the passions which man now experiences and I suppose in a sense your could say that this separation from grace became proper to humanity after the fall.

However, for Julian it seems that while Christ was not effected by the fall His kenotic experience resulted in a humanity identical to that one generated after the fall.

Therefore, in both Severus and Julian Christ is able to provide healing equally. It just seems that they both reach their individual conclusions differently.

Matt, with regards to inclination to sin, although this thread has taken a slightly different path, I think Severus, Julian and Orthodoxy in general would agree that such could not be found in Christ. Can you imagine being tempted by sin, to actually consider it, to be enticed, to have a certain love for it. Here from the very first a person has sinned as Christ also says, "If you were to look at a woman to lust for her you have already committed adultery with her in your heart" and also as the Proverb says, "As he thinks in his heart so is he". So it is that the very inclinations of the heart determine the man, not in so much that they are yet to be played out but that they compose his very being and so are sin. So Christ also says, "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks" (Lk 6:45). Isn't it then befitting that Christ would be perfectly and completely good treasure...

[Athanasius Abdullah]

Dear Mourad,

It looks like we're just going to have to agree to disagree. I think Peter's cow analogy brought about the implications of the difference in question so very clear. More importantly, however, I don't think you are taking into account the seriousness of the heretical anthropological premises which ultimately determined Julian's conclusions on the matter; as R.P. Casey states:


For Severus and for the vast majority of Orthodox theologians, the statement that Christ's body was fthartos was only a necessary corollary to the doctrine that he was in all points homoousios imin. For them fthora consisted of the natural human weaknesses, such as hunger, thirst, pain, and death, to which human nature had been subject since the fall and from which, by assuming a complete human nature, Christ redeemed us. For Julian fthora had a quite different sense. In his view Adam's fall had the result not only of weakening and corrupting the human nature in which his descendents shared, but also of transmitting to it the taint of guilt and blame of which this corruption was the outward and visible sign. In human nature the natural accompaniment of fthora is sin, and to say that Christ's body was fthartos was the equivalent of attributing to him also a genuine share in the sin of Adam. With such a view of fthora Julian's most pressing difficulty was to find a way of removing Christ from the sphere of this guilt of sin without violating the principle of homoousios imin." ('Julian of Halicarnassus', The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 19, No. 2. (Apr., 1926), p. 211)

In XC
-Athanasius

[John Charmley]

Dear Athanasius, Dear Matt,

Some very interesting points being made here, but isn't the central one the question of 'human nature'. We are taught, surely, that he was like unto us in everything save sin, and that was because His human nature was surely the image of God that is imprinted upon us, but whose contours are distorted by the consequences of the Fall? If that be so, then He assumes our nature as it was meant to be, not as it has become.

That certainly seems to be what St. Cyril teaches, and St. Philoxenos of Mabbogh says:

The complete man was redeemed in God. Since the whole of Adam had come under the curse and been deprived, the whole of him was taken by God and renewed. The Lord who became incarnate gave His body unto death for the sake of everybody, and His soul for the salvation

St. Clement of Alexandria explains the Saviour's role in the renewal of our
nature, as he said:


For this He came down, for this He assumed human nature, for this
He willingly endured the sufferings of man, that by being reduced to the measure of our weakness He might raise us to the measure of His power ... The Word of God, became man just that you may learn from a man how it may be that man should become god.

I hope this will help us to find the way forward here.

In Christ,

John

[Athanasius Abdullah]

Dear John,


We are taught, surely, that he was like unto us in everything save sin, and that was because His human nature was surely the image of God that is imprinted upon us, but whose contours are distorted by the consequences of the Fall? If that be so, then He assumes our nature as it was meant to be, not as it has become.

The fundamental point here is that ontologically there is no difference between human nature before the fall and human nature subsequent to the fall. The notion, for example, that the Lord Christ assumed a humanity that was not naturally susceptible to mortality because He assumed pre-fall humanity which itself was naturally immortal, is an anthropological error. Before the fall, Adam and Eve were indeed mortal (and this principle is in fact Athanasian; St. Severus directly quotes St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation to this effect--one of the fruits of St. Severus is that he was a great Patristic scholar; his works are replete with patristic references, particularly to Sts. Athanasius and Cyril and the Cappadocian Fathers), they were simply safeguarded from being victim to such mortality because of their Union with the Divine Grace.

Notice that in the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil according to the Coptic Rite, the priest chants that God, "created man in incorruption", as opposed to saying that God "created man incorrupt". Man experienced a state of incorruption by virtue of his union with the Divine Grace in the Paradise of Joy, but he was not, in his humanity, incorrupt.

In XC
-Athanasius

[John Charmley]

Dear Athansius,

Many thanks for this explanation - and for the quotation from St. Severus. You make a very important point.

In his epistle to the Magnesians, St. Ignatius writes:

I remark, that two different characters are found among men — the one true coin, the other spurious. The truly devout man is the right kind of coin, stamped by God Himself. The ungodly man, again, is false coin, unlawful, spurious, counterfeit, wrought not by God, but by the devil. I do not mean to say that there are two different human natures, but that there is one humanity, sometimes belonging to God, and sometimes to the devil. If any one is truly religious, he is a man of God; but if he is irreligious, he is a man of the devil, made such, not by nature, but by his own choice.

Writing to the Philippians he says of Satan:

the cross of Christ was the beginning of his condemnation, the beginning of his death, the beginning of his destruction. Wherefore, also, he works in some that they should deny the cross, be ashamed of the passion, call the death an appearance, mutilate and explain away the birth of the Virgin, and calumniate the [human] nature itself as being abominable. He fights along with the Jews to a denial of the cross, and with the Gentiles to the calumniating of Mary, who are heretical in holding that Christ possessed a mere phantasmal body.

All of which go to the point you are making about human nature.

Again, thank you for making it so clear.

In Christ,

John

[Mina Soliman]

Thanks again everyone. In light of what Athanasius wrote about Julian and Severus' criticism, would it be accurate to say that both views, the one that John of Damascus had (who seems to have believed that Christ only assumed the non-fallen aspects of man) and the one that Severus had (that Christ assumed all of fallen human nature) are both permissible in Orthodoxy, as long as you don't end up preaching an incorruptible Christ? This confuses me as well! Mina said,



So if St. John had the same premises and differed on corruptibility, then he must have believed Christ assumed some aspects of fallen nature but not all. How could Christ be exempt from some of original sin but not all of it? How could He have a human body that could be subject to corruption but not a corrupted will? It seems to me if Christ had a corrupted will, like us, He would have sanctified it by resisting the temptations of it. I really am just trying to understand.

The point is, the point that is made very clearly by Fr. Subdeacon Peter and Athanasius, that although St. John of Damascus rejected the incorruptibility of the flesh that Julian taught, he seemed to have not defined it the same way as St. Severus did. He still went on to believe, as Julian believed, that it is not normal for humanity to be hungry, to feel pain, to be mortal, etc. This was the premises by which St. John supported, or at least how Fr. VC Samuel read in him.

I personally cannot really comment any further because I haven't really delved into the Severus/Julian debate. While the debate makes sense to support St. Severus, and I do lean towards St. Severus, there are a lot of questions in my mind, and I wish that we can have a discussion in the Christological section on this part, but I think we should get to the point of answering your original post.

Let us believe what St. Athanasius believed. Man was created like any other creature, "out of nothing." Thus, as creatures, we are susceptible to "nothingness," and thus we are NATURALLY corrupt. Man, unlike any other animal, has both the intellectual ability to know God and to acknowledge His Lordship through the Image and Likeness inscribed in him that no other animal has. Because of this, God in direct communion with man brought man to something that is BEYOND his own nature, to escape the natural laws that affect man and other creatures (fatigue, hunger, death).

Man however disobeyed God and joined the world with all its natural corruption. Now here's an interesting case that St. Athanasius makes. Man not only joins the world in corruption, but makes himself and the world a worse place, and goes beyond what is naturally corrupt, to a point of true bloodthirsty evilness. The inclination to such evil via man's will, according to St. Athanasius, seems to be unnatural on man's part. Man has gone MAD, and that is not normal.

The idea in Orthodox Christology is that Christ bore what is natural, and therefore did not bear a will that is inclined to sin. A will inclined to sin therefore is not natural, but it is something that man allows under the direction of Satan. It is as unnatural as a pathology. Christ confronted the MADNESS inflicted by Satan without fear both through the toughest temptations and through man's mad actions against Him, and conquered them with weapons that man never expected: love, humility, faith, and the power of the Resurrection.

Now, one can argue that a predisposition to sin can occur because of human nature as much as because of the environment. But as I said earlier, while it happens, it's probably due to a pathological part of man, an abnormal part of man. Just as a side note, this is probably why St. Athanasius believed that Christ did not bear illnesses or diseases, because he probably felt that such are not normal in human nature.

I stand corrected if I said something wrong, as this is something that I am still understanding.

God bless.

Mina

[Tim Grass]

Maybe someone should point out that in the Orthodox Church, Severus of Antioch is not commemorated as a saint.....

--Tim

[Macarius]

Greetings,

I do not wish to undermine all of the wonderful points made in this thread by those learned much more than I, but if we could examine the words of St. Paul


Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

How do the words of St. Paul relate to the view that Christ did not bear a will inclined to sin. I am not saying that they are contradictory, I am simply looking for an explanation; specifically for "in all points tempted as we are."

God Bless,
Michael

[Peter Farrington]

Hi Michael

To be tempted is not to be culpable. We see even in the temptations of Christ in the desert that he was tempted with food, with power and with fame, just as we are tempted, yet he was not attracted by these temptations because His will was not aimlessly drifting this way and that, as our is, but being united with the Word, the human will functioned entirely in conformity with the Divine will of the one who had assumed it.

Christ did not become man, while remaining what He is, so that He might find out what a tough life we have, as it were, rather He became what we are so that He might infuse our humanity with His Life and Power. He came to save us, not to sympathise with us. (Though of course He sympathises.)

A drowning man does not need another drowning man to rescue him, but he does need someone strong and confident and a powerful swimmer to enter into his circumstances and get wet and cold, so to speak.

I think this is why some of the Old English materials (and elsewhere) describe Christ as a young warrior. We need a Saviour to stand with us, but we don't need someone weak like us, we need someone who enters into our situation but in his own strength changes our situation for the better.

So He faces our temptations in our humanity, but He is not like us because He (the person who has become fully and perfectly man) is in fact God. He alone has the power of His divine life to renew the divine spark as it were in our humanity. He is the Second Adam who does things properly this time in obedience to the Father. He is both in continuity with us in our weak humanity that grows tired and hungry, but there is a discontinuity because He is also God. He does not have a human will which is bound or liable to make wrong choices because it is not completely united to God as in our case, like a cheap compass that doesn't consistently face North, rather His human will, united to His Divine will, is like a magnet always facing North without fail. Because He who wills in both His humanity and Divinity is the Word.

As has been written:


His human will follows and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will. For it was right that the flesh should be moved but subject to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of God the Word, so also the natural will of his flesh is called and is the proper will of God the Word, as he himself says: “I came down from heaven, not that I might do mine own will but the will of the Father which sent me!” where he calls his own will the will of his flesh, inasmuch as his flesh was also his own. For as his most holy and immaculate animated flesh was not destroyed because it was deified but continued in its own state and nature (ὄρῳ τε καὶ λόγῳ), so also his human will, although deified, was not suppressed, but was rather preserved according to the saying of Gregory Theologus: “His will [i.e., the Saviour’s] is not contrary to God but altogether deified.”

So He always says No to sin. He always has His united human and Divine will fixed on doing the will of the Father. And His No to sin is a Yes to life because Sin is a negation of life. His very becoming flesh begins to transform His humanity because it is deified even while it remains complete humanity.

He is tempted in all things as we are, but He overcomes temptation in His humanity, there is no dilly-dallying with temptation. He just says no! He didn't come to allow temptation to have a foothold in our hearts and minds, as we so often do, he came to crush the power of Satan.

He is a mighty warrior, assuming the weakness of our flesh, but as we see at the Transfiguration He is filled with all the fulness of the Godhead. He comes to destroy all the works of the enemy, and He does so, in His flesh, so that the power of the enemy can be broken in all flesh by union with Him.

He was 'tempted' as we are, but He did not 'give in' to temptation as we do. Just as a life-guard might be wet and cold as we are if we are drowning, but he is not drowning Himself or we are both lost, and Christ, the God-man, never falls under temptation, or He is lost as we are.

Peter

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

The point is, the point that is made very clearly by Fr. Subdeacon Peter and Athanasius, that although St. John of Damascus rejected the incorruptibility of the flesh that Julian taught, he seemed to have not defined it the same way as St. Severus did. He still went on to believe, as Julian believed, that it is not normal for humanity to be hungry, to feel pain, to be mortal, etc. This was the premises by which St. John supported, or at least how Fr. VC Samuel read in him.


Minas,

St John of Damascus in his Orthodox Faith Book 3 writes:


The word destruction (fthora) has two meanings. Thus it means human sufferings such as hunger, thirst, weariness, piercing with nails, death- that is separation of the soul from the body- and the like. In this sense we say that the Lord's body was destructible, because He endured all these things freely. Destruction, however, also means the complete dissolution of the body and its reduction to the elements of which it was composed. By many this is more generally called corruption (thiafthora). This the Lord's body did not experience.

Therefore it is impious to say with the insane Julian [of Halicarnassus] and Gaianus that before the resurrection the Lord's body was indestructible in the first sense. For, if it was thus incorruptible, then it was not consubstantial with us, and the things such as hunger, the thirst, the nails, the piercing of the side, and the death which the Gospel says happened did not really happen, but only seemed to. But if they only seemed to happen, then the mystery of the Incarnation is a hoax and a stage trick; it was in appearance and not in truth that He was made man and in appearance and not in truth that we have been saved.


If in relation to man's present condition after the Fall we are saying that,


it is not normal for humanity to be hungry, to feel pain, to be mortal, etc.

then this statement is not correct. It is the contrary of St John of Damascus' position. Yes, man did not suffer these things before the Fall- before the Fall these things were not 'normal' to him. However after the Fall man does suffer these things without this involving personal sin; ie the blameless passions. After the Fall these things are now 'normal' to man. This is the human nature which Christ assumed in its fullness. With more or less stress this is the standard Orthodox position.

Granted there is a very subtle and even mysterious point here that I tried to raise yesterday. When we say Christ assumed human nature but without sin we do not mean entirely removed from the effects of the Fall.

But how does this not mean assuming sinful nature as it seems our friend a few days ago asked?

I have always personally liked St Cyril of Alexandria's description of Christ's assuming human nature because it suggests that Christ in His Divine nature freely engages with man in his (ie man's) fullness.

Thus it is not as if Christ can save us because as God He is infinitely removed from us even as He assumes our nature. But rather that as God He is divinely free to engage with our fallen humanity and to save it.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Peter Farrington]

Dear Father


Thus it is not as if Christ can save us because as God He is infinitely removed from us even as He assumes our nature. But rather that as God He is divinely free to engage with our fallen humanity and to save it.

Yes, absolutely. The Word freely assumes our humanity with His own purpose, that of saving us, not out of any necessity at all. He is never bound to necessity by our humanity but always He is found to be freely acting as He wills for our salvation.

I sometimes sense that folk are trying to bring God down to our level and limit Him within our experience. But just as there is a freedom in the spirit of those who are saintly, which we sense when we meet them, and just as the greatest saints have the greatest sense of freedom about them, so our Lord, being the Word made flesh, has such freedom almost without limit within the integrity of His humanity.

If I consider the experience of Christ, the Word incarnate, as far as is possible for me, I might say that he does not struggle with temptation as I do, but this is not a weakness and imperfection of His incarnation, rather it shows how far I have to travel to even begin to be fully human in our present circumstances. His is the true freedom of the saints, a liberty of spirit, but even more than is found in the saints because in them it is a gift of grace, and in Christ it is own.

Jesus Christ is a man truly alive, in one sense, and it was for this that He became incarnate.

Peter

[Mina Soliman]

Father bless,

Perhaps, you are right. Like I said, I really couldn't comment further, since this is something I haven't delved into. What was more important for me was to understand the theological correctness.

I think I would agree that saying something as normal or not normal might not be enough. For example, while man is normally susceptible to death, we can say it was not normal because God intended for man to stay alive. In this, if St. John of Damascus believes so, then I would say this is something I find Orthodox.

Now, perhaps, Fr. V.C. Samuel was confused at the time of writing this. I wish I owned a copy of this, but in the minutes of Aarhus, the very first unofficial consultation between our "families our Orthodoxy", it was this very issue of Julianism that he was forced to clarify in a paper he wrote. I forget exactly what it was he wrote, since I didn't understand much about Julianism at the time, but I do remember Fr. John Romanides questioning the use of the words "corruptible" and "incorruptible" as in they could mean just about anything if used in the correct context, just as you used the words "normal" and "not normal," which got Fr. V.C. Samuel to clarify and change a few things in his paper.

God bless.

Mina

[Athanasius Abdullah]

Dear Tim,

Is this where we get into the whole, "You're not Orthodox we are", "Nah, we are!", "No way, get out, I said it first!" match? I'm not going there.

How's this for objectivity?: Insofar as Non-Chalcedonian Orthodoxy is concerned, St. Severus of Antioch is a great Saint, insofar as Chalcedonian Orthodoxy is concerned, he is anathematised for a position which, as far as the Non-Chalcedonian Orthodox are concerned, he evidently never held (a position that is slowly but surely being recognised by reputable heirarchs and theologians of your Church--even if the converse applies to certain others).

I realise (and respect) that this forum has a Chalcedonian Orthodox bias to it, but I don't think we Oriental Orthodox participants should (nor do I think it is expected that we) not give due honour to our own Saints when speaking of them. I have gone out of my way to give due honour to yours, of my own accord and out of respect for the bias of this particular forum.

I did not bring up St. Severus of Antioch as if to impute his authority on Chalcedonian Orthodox readers, but simply because his works and Christology are substantially relevant to the subject of this thread and, I would argue, to the development of Orthodox Christological thought on the particular matter in question.

In XC
-Athanasius

[M. Markewich]

After reading Mourad's and Peter's post, I have concluded that my definition of inclination to sin must be off. When I say the phrase, I mean, "the preference of doing wrong over right", not as sin of the heart. For example, I may be walking down the street, see a nice looking girl, and be tempted to lust for her (because the demons tempt me), but I can say "no". So I was inclined to sin, but decided not to; I didn't even let the lust go on in my head, but stopped the idea immediately. This is what I thought Christ inherited - the demons tried to tempt Him, too, but He never gave them ground.

I think the inclination to sin, the way I now see it is actually defined, Christ could not have inherited; and I believe neither did humans, otherwise we'd be born with sin. I think now knowing the real definition, it seems obvious we learn how to be inclined to sin, in the true sense of the phrase, through our experience.

[John Charmley]

[Tim]Maybe someone should point out that in the Orthodox Church, Severus of Antioch is not commemorated as a saint.....


[Athanasius]I realise (and respect) that this forum has a Chalcedonian Orthodox bias to it, but I don't think we Oriental Orthodox participants should (nor do I think it is expected that we) not give due honour to our own Saints when speaking of them. I have gone out of my way to give due honour to yours, of my own accord and out of respect for the bias of this particular forum.

Dear Tim, Dear Athanasius,

What interesting contrasts on our fallen human nature these quotations provide.

In XC

John

[Macarius]

Peter,


I sometimes sense that folk are trying to bring God down to our level and limit Him within our experience. But just as there is a freedom in the spirit of those who are saintly, which we sense when we meet them, and just as the greatest saints have the greatest sense of freedom about them, so our Lord, being the Word made flesh, has such freedom almost without limit within the integrity of His humanity.
Jesus Christ is a man truly alive, in one sense, and it was for this that He became incarnate.


Wonderful words, an important point for all to recognise.

I just want to reinforce that although Christ's Will never wavered before temptation, He was tempted in every way that we are tempted, He simply never fell.

[Athanasius Abdullah]

Dear Mina and Fr. Raphael,

Fr. V.C. Samuel states:


John of Damascus who, in agreement with Severus, admits that Julian and Gaianos were wrong in ascribing incorruptibility to our Lord’s body before the resurrection seems to agree with Julian in maintaining that natural and blameless passions like hunger, thirst, fatigue, pain, the shrinking from death, and so on, ‘which are not under our control’ ‘have come into our life
as a result of the condemnation occasioned by his fall’ [fn. 891].

The question is, did St. John the Damascene teach that man, both before and subsequent to the fall, was ontologically susceptible to hunger, thirst, mortality etc., yet, by virtue of his union with the Divine Grace in Paradise, only experienced them subsequent to the fall? Or did St. John teach that hunger, thirst, mortality etc., were ontologically as much as they were experientially alien to man before the fall?

The passages brought forth by both Fr. V.C. Samuel and Fr. Raphael do not seem to very clearly address such questions.

In XC
-Athanasius

[Mourad Mankarios]

After reading Mourad's and Peter's post, I have concluded that my definition of inclination to sin must be off. When I say the phrase, I mean, "the preference of doing wrong over right", not as sin of the heart. For example, I may be walking down the street, see a nice looking girl, and be tempted to lust for her (because the demons tempt me), but I can say "no". So I was inclined to sin, but decided not to; I didn't even let the lust go on in my head, but stopped the idea immediately. This is what I thought Christ inherited - the demons tried to tempt Him, too, but He never gave them ground.

If you were tempted by the girl then you have sinned. A person who is perfectly free from sin is not even tempted and so scripture says about God that He is neither tempted nor tempts anyone. This was perfect dispassion that the monastics strived for. So that they could not distinguish between gold and stone, a man and a woman, or praise and contempt.

There are different levels of temptation, from the external to the mind to the heart to the actual action or sin itself.

With Christ the temptation was external, never internal.



I think the inclination to sin, the way I now see it is actually defined, Christ could not have inherited; and I believe neither did humans, otherwise we'd be born with sin. I think now knowing the real definition, it seems obvious we learn how to be inclined to sin, in the true sense of the phrase, through our experience.

Actually, as St Maximus and the fathers teach man is born with an inherent inclination towards sin (the gnomic will) that is he inherits a predisposition for sin. However, for a child this could not be accounted for sin since it is only the potential for such which a person does not realise until they reach an age of reason and accountability.

[Tim Grass]

With all due respect to individuals here, who have quickly gone and taken general comments as personal attacks.... and to John C.'s pretty uncharitable comment above.... I think the point is still valid. In this thread, Severus's position has been hugely leaned on..... so I don't think it's out of place or wrong to at least note that in the Chalcedonian Orthodox Church (and this forum is, after all, Chalcedonian Orthodox) Severus is not commemorated as a saint.

I haven't spoken against the main or what he wrote.... and I haven't said anything against anyone's Orthodoxy. But this thread's mentioning Severus a lot, so it seems reasonable to at least bring this into things. It can't *not* be of relevance.

--tim

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Mina and Fr. Raphael,

Fr. V.C. Samuel states:



The question is, did St. John the Damascene teach that man, both before and subsequent to the fall, was ontologically susceptible to hunger, thirst, mortality etc., yet, by virtue of his union with the Divine Grace in Paradise, only experienced them subsequent to the fall? Or did St. John teach that hunger, thirst, mortality etc., were ontologically as much as they were experientially alien to man before the fall?

The passages brought forth by both Fr. V.C. Samuel and Fr. Raphael do not seem to very clearly address such questions.

In XC
-Athanasius

Dear Athanasius,

Just so that we're on the same page here we probably both see that the hunger, thirst, fear of death that St John speaks of refers to the suffering in man's nature which results from the Fall. In other words we're not referring to natural desires like partaking in what surrounds us or being alive. Rather we're speaking of the ways in which the Fall distorts these things. Which is probably why the list is often not too clear since in fact no hard & fast line can be drawn between these desires.

In any case, before the Fall man was not susceptible to hunger, thirst, or fear of death. But it is very important in terms of the present discussion to see that we mean this in the sense referred to above where St John does not mean that before the Fall man had no natural desires. Before the Fall man still desired to have communion with that which surrounded him & to eat and drink in that sense. But after the Fall a distortion of these natural desires arises. Thus the hunger and thirst which St John refers to.

At least this is how I see it.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Nina]

From St. Gregory Palamas (The Homilies Vol. 1; St. Tikhon's Seminary Press pg. 197):

"As the evil one procured our twofold death by means of his single spiritual death, so the good Lord healed this twofold death of ours through His single bodily death, and through the one Resurrection of His Body gave us a twofold resurrection. By means of His bodily death He destroyed him who had power over our souls and bodies in death, and rescued us from his tyranny over them both. The evil one clothed himself in the serpent to deceive man, but the Word of God put on man's nature to trick the trickster. He received this nature in its undeceived and pure state, and kept it so to the end, offering it as first fruits to the Father for sanctification from ourselves for ourselves."

[M. Markewich]

If you were tempted by the girl then you have sinned. A person who is perfectly free from sin is not even tempted and so scripture says about God that He is neither tempted nor tempts anyone. This was perfect dispassion that the monastics strived for. So that they could not distinguish between gold and stone, a man and a woman, or praise and contempt.

There are different levels of temptation, from the external to the mind to the heart to the actual action or sin itself.

With Christ the temptation was external, never internal.
I thought I had just provided an example of external temptation, though. My example said the demons push me to think about it, but I don't allow it to take ground in my mind. The demons (or at least, the devil himself) tried to tempt Christ similarly into becoming an earthly king. I honestly just don't see the difference.


Actually, as St Maximus and the fathers teach man is born with an inherent inclination towards sin (the gnomic will) that is he inherits a predisposition for sin. However, for a child this could not be accounted for sin since it is only the potential for such which a person does not realise until they reach an age of reason and accountability.

So, if the inclination to sin is actually sinful itself, and we have it from the moment we are conceived, wouldn't God be making something that wasn't "very good", and the fetus would already be a sinner, but God is just not going to hold him/her accountable yet? And if we Orthodox hold this view of the inclination to sin, then aren't we really in agreement with the Roman Catholics, who say we are all born guilty, but popular belief says that babies will be going to Heaven anyway, since thy have not reached an age of accountability?

Also, doesn't this cause a problem if you believe Mary was morally pure from birth, since Mary also reached an age of accountability and therefore her inclination to sin would have been realized?

[Peter Farrington]

Hi Matt

On that topic, and I also would like to get back to it, I agree with you.

The fact of being tempted is not sin, otherwise our Lord sinned in being tempted, yet it is clear from the description of His temptation that He never gave any room to the tempter.

We can also find many accounts from the Fathers of those who faced up to temptation and resisted manfully (and womanfully) not giving any room for temptation to find any place in the heart to take root.

I have been thinking about this on and off for the last few days, and in my own daily prayers from the Coptic Orthodox tradition we pray at every Hour, for those things

'...which we have committed willingly and those things which we have committed unwilling, those things which we have committed knowingly and those things which we have committed unknowingly, the hidden and the manifest.'

I have been thinking that in Christ He is always mindful, always recollected, or centred. There is no sense of sinning unthinkingly as I often do. He always knows what He is doing.

Whereas I will unthinkingly snap at some family member, He is never out of control because all of His faculties are ordered properly.

Back to the original topic, which I have also been thinking about. The Word does not take our broken humanity and dwell in it without deifying it, but this deification is a progressive process which comes to completion in the resurrection. But it began even at the Annunciation, and at the moment when the Word took the flesh which He created for Himself in the womb of the Ever-Virgin Mary.

So this does not mean that His humanity remains in the same entirely broken condition as our own, even though the humanity which He united to Himself is entirely that broken humanity.

Julian was wrong in a theological sense because he proposed that the Word united to Himself a humanity which was not broken and was not in need of healing.

But I believe that we would also be wrong to consider that the Word was bound by our infirmity in taking our humanity. Rather from the first moment of His incarnation He began to transform and renew and redeem our humanity, without it ceasing to be what it is, but rather making it what it was created to be.

I like the passage in the 6th council which says:


... his human will follows and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will. For it was right that the flesh should be moved but subject to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of God the Word, so also the natural will of his flesh is called and is the proper will of God the Word, as he himself says: “I came down from heaven, not that I might do mine own will but the will of the Father which sent me!” where he calls his own will the will of his flesh, inasmuch as his flesh was also his own. For as his most holy and immaculate animated flesh was not destroyed because it was deified but continued in its own state and nature (ὄρῳ τε καὶ λόγῳ), so also his human will, although deified, was not suppressed, but was rather preserved according to the saying of Gregory Theologus: “His will [i.e., the Saviour’s] is not contrary to God but altogether deified.”

So our broken humanity was united to the Word but in being united began to be deified, and that deification is our own salvation.

Did Christ unite Himself to our broken humanity? Yes, He did. But did it remain broken when it became the own humanity of the Word? No, it began to be deified and renewed.

Peter

[John Charmley]

Dear Nina,

His nature was wholly human and wholly divine; ours, on the other hand, is wholly human and 'fallen', which may be why we all, from time to time, find ourselves reading these posts and finding in them things which it may be doubted that the writer intended.

I have read the last few exchanges between yourself and Peter with mounting sorrow, since I hope I might be pardoned if I say that both of you bring to this forum a refreshing forthrightness along with a fund of wisdom and knowledge, and I am sure I am far from alone in learning much from you both.


Pray, both of you, forgive my interference, but love for you both prompts it; you both bring so much here and even if my clumsy words just makes me a lightning-rod for your righteous wrath, I felt a need to do so. That there should be (what I see as) such misunderstanding between two such great souls, is simply a sign that whatever we write about the fallen nature (or as most of us agree, otherwise) of Our Lord, we remain firmly of one nature and in sore need of His transforming presence.

Forgive me if I have caused offence - sometimes one does without meaning to.

In Christ,

John

[M. Markewich]

I'm sorry about allowing the last thread to get off topic, but now, since my questions still remain, I am going to post the last on-topic post I had in the former thread.



If you were tempted by the girl then you have sinned. A person who is perfectly free from sin is not even tempted and so scripture says about God that He is neither tempted nor tempts anyone. This was perfect dispassion that the monastics strived for. So that they could not distinguish between gold and stone, a man and a woman, or praise and contempt.

There are different levels of temptation, from the external to the mind to the heart to the actual action or sin itself.

With Christ the temptation was external, never internal.
I thought I had just provided an example of external temptation, though. My example said the demons push me to think about it, but I don't allow it to take ground in my mind. The demons (or at least, the devil himself) tried to tempt Christ similarly into becoming an earthly king. I honestly just don't see the difference.


Actually, as St Maximus and the fathers teach man is born with an inherent inclination towards sin (the gnomic will) that is he inherits a predisposition for sin. However, for a child this could not be accounted for sin since it is only the potential for such which a person does not realise until they reach an age of reason and accountability.
So, if the inclination to sin is actually sinful itself, and we have it from the moment we are conceived, wouldn't God be making something that wasn't "very good", and the fetus would already be a sinner, but God is just not going to hold him/her accountable yet? And if we Orthodox hold this view of the inclination to sin, then aren't we really in agreement with the Roman Catholics, who say we are all born guilty, but popular belief says that babies will be going to Heaven anyway, since thy have not reached an age of accountability?

Also, doesn't this cause a problem if you believe Mary was morally pure from birth, since Mary also reached an age of accountability and therefore her inclination to sin would have been realized?

[John Charmley]

Dear Matt,

I suspect we may end up in the same place as last time, although I hope not.

Wiser heads than mine will meditate upon gnomic wills, and upon the nature of Christian anthropology, but I should like, if I may, to approach it first through the writings of St. Isaac the Syrian, and then through Tertullian; trying to keep my views out of it because they are of no account, but to record what two of the Fathers have written on this theme.

St. Isaac writes that our human person is created as a temple of God; the indwelling of God within this temple was most fully realised, of course, by Jesus Christ. The clear implication is that Human nature has the potential for accommodating the fullness of the Divinity.

God does not impose sinful passions upon our nature, they are, in that sense, unnatural and the results of the Fall; indeed they are its sign. It is these sinful passions which we are to abjure, and in healing our fallen nature, the Incarnation restores us to the our original nature. That nature has its passions, virtuous ones for union with God and to know Him and to be obedient to His will.

Of the sinful passions the Saint writes:

These are the causes of sin: wine, women, riches and robust health of body. Not that by their nature these things are sins, but rather nature readily inclines towards the sinful passions on their account, and for this reason man must guard against them with great care. [St. Isaac, Works I/5, 41-42)

Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho chapter 23, writes:


that, according to the will of God, Jesus Christ the Son of God has been born without sin, of a virgin sprung from the stock of Abraham.
Tertullian, in his Treatise on the Soul chapter 41 affirms:

For God alone is without sin; and the only man without sin is Christ, since Christ is also God.
In the same Father's On the Flesh of Christ Chapter 16, we read:

We maintain, moreover, that what has been abolished in Christ is not
carnem peccati, “sinful flesh,” but peccatum carnis, “sin in the flesh,” —
not the material thing, but its condition; not the substance, but its flaw;
and (this we aver) on the authority of the apostle, who says, “He
abolished sin in the flesh.” Now in another sentence he says that Christ
was “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” not, however, as if He had taken on
Him “the likeness of the flesh,” in the sense of a semblance of body
instead of its reality; but he means us to understand likeness to the flesh
which sinned, because the flesh of Christ, which committed no sin itself,
resembled that which had sinned, — resembled it in its nature, but not in
the corruption it received from Adam; whence we also affirm that there
was in Christ the same flesh as that whose nature in man is sinful. In the
flesh, therefore, we say that sin has been abolished, because in Christ that
same flesh is maintained without sin, which in man was not maintained
without sin. Now, it would not contribute to the purpose of Christ’s
abolishing sin in the flesh, if He did not abolish it in that flesh in which
was the nature of sin, nor (would it conduce) to His glory. For surely it
would have been no strange thing if He had removed the stain of sin in
some better flesh, and one which should possess a different, even a sinless,
nature! Then, you say, if He took our flesh, Christ’s was a sinful one. Do
not, however, fetter with mystery a sense which is quite intelligible. For in
putting on our flesh, He made it His own; in making it His own, He made
it sinless. A word of caution, however, must be addressed to all who
refuse to believe that our flesh was in Christ on the ground that it came not
of the seed of a human father, let them remember that Adam himself
received this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father. As earth
was converted into this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father,
so also was it quite possible for the Son of God to take to Himself’ the
substance of the selfsame flesh, without a human father’s agency.

I apologise for the length of the last quotation, but it is so spot on this theme that it seemed to demand citation in full.

I hope that these patristic sources will help us stay on theme - and on message, as it were, given the purpose of this site.

In Christ,

John

[Athanasius Abdullah]

Dear Matt,

I would have to contend with Mourad's reading of Maximus the Confessor just as I previously contended with his reading of Severus of Antioch (which did not seem to be based on any solid primary, or even secondary evidence).

In his Disputation With Pyrrhus, Maximus the Confessor explicitly denies the idea that the gnomic will is inherent to human nature (and is explicitly quoted to that effect in J. Farrell's, The Disputation With Pyrrhus of Our Father Among the Saints Maximus the Confessor pp. 31-32). This forms the primary anthropological premise to his Christological conclusion concerning why and how Christ was able to be fully man and yet at the same time sinless.

In XC
Athanasius

[Mourad Mankarios]

Dear Matt,

I would have to contend with Mourad's reading of Maximus the Confessor just as I previously contended with his reading of Severus of Antioch (which did not seem to be based on any solid primary, or even secondary evidence).

In his Disputation With Pyrrhus, Maximus the Confessor explicitly denies the idea that the gnomic will is inherent to human nature (and is explicitly quoted to that effect in J. Farrell's, The Disputation With Pyrrhus of Our Father Among the Saints Maximus the Confessor pp. 31-32). This forms the primary anthropological premise to his Christological conclusion concerning why and how Christ was able to be fully man and yet at the same time sinless.

In XC
Athanasius


These are really two completely different statements, that is, to say anthropologically that the gnomic will is inherent to human nature, that is, as naturally created by God prior to the fall and that it has become inherited and inherent to human nature post the fall are two statements not contradictory. St Maximus is stating that while all humans inherit the gnomic will it is not natural to them but foreign - a contagion which humanity seeks to eliminate through its theosis.

As such I too would agree with St Maximus as stated above that the gnomic will is not inherent to the true essential human nature as created by God. All St Maximus is trying to do by establishing the such is that Christ was not lacking in His human nature by not possessing a gnomic will as all humans born naturally do. If anything his premise does support an inherited gnomic will that although foreign has become common to all human beings post the fall.

Dear Matt,

According to Orthodoxy man is born with a moral or spiritual disease just as a person can be born with a physical disease which however in no way reflects as a defect in God but rather this is due to sin. God's creation is perfect therefore, however sin has marred His creation and man's longing is for that original perfect creation which he was once established in.

Hence while man, according to Orthodoxy, is born with such a spiritual ailment which is his inclination towards sin he is not born with the guilt of sin, and hence the difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicisim. Therefore a child has no guilt only an inclination which is yet to be realised. The inclination itself cannot be sin until it is realised. That is, when I, in a particular situation, am inclined towards sin then it would be accounted as sin. A child, however, does not have any rational faculty to be aware of any such inclination. Therefore, spiritually, he is completely pure and without sin until such may occur.

WIth regards to St Mary and sin, this is an extremely controversial and difficult subject and there are a variety of opinions. St John Chrysostom would insist that she did sin. However, all of Orthodoxy would agree that she is the most pure and most venerated. Purity in such case therefore is more of a relative term rather than an absolute term something which is usually ascribed to God alone.

[Athanasius Abdullah]

Dear Mourad,


These are really two completely different statements, that is, to say anthropologically that the gnomic will is inherent to human nature, that is, as naturally created by God prior to the fall and that it has become inherited and inherent to human nature post the fall are two statements not contradictory. St Maximus is stating that while all humans inherit the gnomic will it is not natural to them but foreign - a contagion which humanity seeks to eliminate through its theosis.

You’ve missed the entire point; when Maximus the Confessor denies that the gnomic will is not inherent to human nature, he does not have in mind any ontological distinction between pre-fall and post-fall human nature so as to warrant his being interpreted to mean a) that the gnomic will is not inherent to human nature only in the sense that it is not part of the “original design” of human nature, as opposed to his being interpreted to mean b) that its not inherent to human nature according to the fact that it is not a property of nature per se. It seems to me that you’re falsely reading your own presuppositions into his anthropology. If you can provide me with concrete evidence substantiating your belief that such presuppositions were held by St. Maximus himself, then we may have a basis to proceed on to further discussion, but until then one would have to reject your interpretation as being fundamentally eisegetical in nature.

In his Disputation With Pyrrhus, St. Maximus the Confessor explains that the basis behind the Lord Christ’s not having assumed a gnomic will, is not because He assumed human nature in its original pre-fall condition (as if such a distinct ontological category of human nature ever existed in the first place), but rather because the gnomic will is a “mode of the will’s employment” rather than a type of natural will. Maximus the Confessor explicitly states (and I refer you to pp. 31-32 of Farrell’s book which I referred to in the previous post) that the gnomic will is rightfully ascribed to us, not because we have a post-fall humanity of which the gnomic will has naturally become part of as a consequence of the fall, but rather because of the corrupt exercise of the hypostatic mode of employment of our natural will. I strongly encourage you to borrow and read J. Farrell’s book.

St. Severus of Antioch dispenses further wisdom on the matter by explaining that the cause of offences is not the nature with which we are born, but rather the influences of the world (being ruled by satan and the evil forces) on our mode of willing and hence ultimately upon our internal cognizance of our inherently good nature. Sinful nature is neither nature with sin inherent to it, nor nature with sinful inclinations inherent to it, which is why St. Severus could explicitly assert that the Lord Christ “took our sinful nature, yet without sin”. Sinful nature is nature that, being subject to the corruption of this world, is prone (though not by necessity or compulsion) to being realised by the self so actualising such a nature as being sinful. Sin and its inclinations become “second nature” ; they seem so much a part of us that we regard them as such, and speak of them as such, but insofar as ontological reality is concerned they are in fact not.

You are Coptic Orthodox, are you not? I would ask you to read St. Severus (who, as you would be aware, is one of our Churches highest and most respected authorities) and St. Maximus side by side—you will find that they illuminate one other quite well insofar as the issues in question are concerned. Note that I am not telling you to read one’s anthropology/Christology into the other—that would certainly be academically dishonest, and that is certainly not what I have done (I am not even Eastern Orthodox so what interest would I have to try and bring Maximus in line with Severus?), I am only encouraging the exercise I have recommend insofar as it may give you wider perspective to consider as I fear that your reading is being governed by a rather narrow reading.

In XC
Athanasius

[John Charmley]

Dear Matt, dear Mourad, Dear Athanasius,

I'm sorry Tertullian didn't help get us out of what is, again, proving the cul de sac of St. Maximus and 'gnomic will'.

From the point of view of Orthodox soteriology the Saviour has to be sinless - if He is carrying sin, He cannot save us. The point of the quotations from St. Isaac was to try to highlight his view (which is Orthodox teaching, I thought) that since we are made in God's image our original nature is also sinless and has the potential to accommodate the divinity; it is to restore us to this state that the Incarnation took place. Our nature has not changed, it is marred, damaged, but the damage is redeemable - and He redeems us.

To quote from one of Pope Shenouda's works, The Life of Repentance and Purity (1990):

There is no one without sin, not even if his life was only one day
on earth. For we all sin and need repentance. Therefore, repentance becomes a daily work, since we sin everyday. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

Pope Shenouda and Pope Paul VI declared on 10 May 1973 that:


In accordance with our apostolic traditions transmitted to our Churches and preserved therein, and in conformity with the early three ecumenical councils, we confess one faith in the One Triune God, the divinity of the Only Begotten Son of God, the Second Person of the, Holy Trinity, the Word of God, the effulgence of His glory and the express image of His substance, who for us was incarnate, assuming for Himself a real body with a rational soul, and who shared with us our humanity but without sin. We confess that our
Lord and God and Saviour and King of us all, Jesus Christ, is perfect God with respect to His Divinity, perfect man with respect to His humanity. In Him His divinity is united with His humanity in a real, perfect union without mingling, without commixtion,without confusion, without alteration, without division, without separation. His divinity did not separate from His humanity for an instant, not for the twinkling of an eye. He who is God eternal and invisible became visible in the flesh, and took upon Himself the form of a servant. In Him are preserved all the properties of the divinity and all the properties of the humanity, together in a real, perfect, indivisible and inseparable union.


As St. Paul tells us in Hebrews 4:15:

For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
As St. John (1 John 3:5) says:

5 And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.

It seems pretty clear that Orthodox teaching is that He was without sin. The how and the why lie in the mystery of the Incarnation. But I do think we need to get beyond St. Maximus and 'gnomic wills' if we are to see the bigger picture. I may, of course, be missing the whole point, and if so, please accept my apologies.

I shall leave us with one of the Fractional Prayers from the Liturgy of St. Basil:

Who grew little by little, according to the form of men,
yet He, alone, without sin

In Christ,

John

[Mourad Mankarios]

Dear Mourad,

You’ve missed the entire point; when Maximus the Confessor denies that the gnomic will is not inherent to human nature, he does not have in mind any ontological distinction between pre-fall and post-fall human nature so as to warrant his being interpreted to mean a) that the gnomic will is not inherent to human nature only in the sense that it is not part of the “original design” of human nature, as opposed to his being interpreted to mean b) that its not inherent to human nature according to the fact that it is not a property of nature per se. It seems to me that you’re falsely reading your own presuppositions into his anthropology. If you can provide me with concrete evidence substantiating your belief that such presuppositions were held by St. Maximus himself, then we may have a basis to proceed on to further discussion, but until then one would have to reject your interpretation as being fundamentally eisegetical in nature.

I would agree with both (a) and (b) here. However, why would this be a question for St Maximus if the gnomic will was not believed to have become inherent to human nature post fall. If this was not the case then He would not have had to argue the validity of Christ's not having a gnomic will but since this was the case he found himself in a position where he would rightly have to justify how Christ could provide salvation and yet not possess a gnomic will which was believed to be common to all of humanity.



In his Disputation With Pyrrhus, St. Maximus the Confessor explains that the basis behind the Lord Christ’s not having assumed a gnomic will, is not because He assumed human nature in its original pre-fall condition (as if such a distinct ontological category of human nature ever existed in the first place), but rather because the gnomic will is a “mode of the will’s employment” rather than a type of natural will. Maximus the Confessor explicitly states (and I refer you to pp. 31-32 of Farrell’s book which I referred to in the previous post) that the gnomic will is rightfully ascribed to us, not because we have a post-fall humanity of which the gnomic will has naturally become part of as a consequence of the fall, but rather because of the corrupt exercise of the hypostatic mode of employment of our natural will. I strongly encourage you to borrow and read J. Farrell’s book.

I think we can both agree here that the gnomic will is definitely not a type of natural will but rather the mode of operation of one's natural will which however became inherent to post-fall humanity.

Thanks for the reference...I'll try to get my hands on it, although I could imagine it might be a bit tough.



St. Severus of Antioch dispenses further wisdom on the matter by explaining that the cause of offences is not the nature with which we are born, but rather the influences of the world (being ruled by satan and the evil forces) on our mode of willing and hence ultimately upon our internal cognizance of our inherently good nature. Sinful nature is neither nature with sin inherent to it, nor nature with sinful inclinations inherent to it, which is why St. Severus could explicitly assert that the Lord Christ “took our sinful nature, yet without sin”. Sinful nature is nature that, being subject to the corruption of this world, is prone (though not by necessity or compulsion) to being realised by the self so actualising such a nature as being sinful. Sin and its inclinations become “second nature” ; they seem so much a part of us that we regard them as such, and speak of them as such, but insofar as ontological reality is concerned they are in fact not.


I think I can agree with such a notion of sinful nature. But it seems now firstly that you are suggesting that St Severus is saying that there is a distinction between pre-fall humanity and post-fall sinful human nature and secondly that such a sinful nature is inherited.

Obviously this could not be read into St Maximus since for him sinful nature was a reference to the gnomic will and this for him was absent in Christ.

Therefore there can really be no correlation between the two but if anything somewhat of a contrast.



You are Coptic Orthodox, are you not? I would ask you to read St. Severus (who, as you would be aware, is one of our Churches highest and most respected authorities) and St. Maximus side by side—you will find that they illuminate one other quite well insofar as the issues in question are concerned. Note that I am not telling you to read one’s anthropology/Christology into the other—that would certainly be academically dishonest, and that is certainly not what I have done (I am not even Eastern Orthodox so what interest would I have to try and bring Maximus in line with Severus?), I am only encouraging the exercise I have recommend insofar as it may give you wider perspective to consider as I fear that your reading is being governed by a rather narrow reading.


I think this would be quite an exercise to read all of St Severus as well as St Maximus, especially considering that their thoughts on certain areas of dogma have not been categorised. However, I do believe that in another thread I was able to find many quotes attributed to St Maximus from the Philokalia suggesting that there is some form of spiritual ailment, an inherent stain on man's soul, an ontological distortion of man's being which man comes to acquire post-fall as the "gnomic will", that is his ontologically distorted hypostatic mode of operation and which the incarnation serves to correct.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I think there is some confusion in terms here. If man is ontologically or inherently sinful then he is sinful by nature. In which case the purpose of Christ's Incarnation is to go against nature rather than transforming it. This is a serious distortion of the Patristic understanding of what salvation means.

St Maximos' point centers precisely on the question of how in Christ human nature is transformed rather than ontologically changed. Of course St Maximos was dealing specifically with the question of monothelitism. But the point for him was that Christ can have a fully operable human will without this overturning the integrity of human nature since the human will is not inherently confused, sinful or 'gnomic'.

Lest we ourselves unintentionally fall into greater confusion let's also keep in mind that what the 'gnomic will' refers to must not be confused with man's inherent limitedness.

The first unequivocally refers to one of only many symptoms of the Fall. Man presently is sinfully confused about what is proper for him. Man though also has a natural limitedness which is not sinful; he is after all not omniscient as God is. This difference is absolutely crucial.

After all isn't this one of the points of Christ's not knowing 'the Hour'? Or next week on Lazarus Saturday we hear:


O strange and marvellous wonder! Although He knew the answer, yet as if ignorant the Maker of all asked, 'Where does he lie, whom ye lament? Where is Lazarus buried, whom I shall shortly raise up for your sake, alive from the dead?' (1st tropar, Ode 3, canon sung at Compline)

This doesn't mean that Christ has adopted the sinful mode of human knowing with its confusion. Rather it means that Christ fully accepts a human limitation on knowledge which is inherent to us. Within Him human knowledge is transfigured to Divine purpose.

For us of course knowledge is both inherently limited & sinfully confused. Our will & ability to know is severely afflicted by the results of the Fall. But this goes for all affects of the Fall. The inclination towards sin or the ancestral sin is already fully sinful- it is not innocent. This inclination is the attraction we have towards sin which in itself is sinful. And because of this we do have a degree of guilt.

We shouldn't draw such a sharp dividing line between how eastern or western Fathers described this because both are addressing the issue of how sin is fundamental to us & its affects. The western & eastern Fathers both share a fundamental view of Christ's redemption of that sin even if they express themselves differently or stress different sides of this issue. Whether we think of it in terms of how we suffer the cosmic effects of sin or the cosmos suffers from our having personally sinned does not change that these two perspectives are not contradictory. Really they are complementary. They both stress that through the Fall something fundamental in nature has been distorted, that this has universal effects and that only through Christ could this be healed.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[M. Markewich]

Thank you everyone; all of your responses have been very helpful for me.

Hello John,

It seems pretty clear that Orthodox teaching is that He was without sin. The how and the why lie in the mystery of the Incarnation. But I do think we need to get beyond St. Maximus and 'gnomic wills' if we are to see the bigger picture. I may, of course, be missing the whole point, and if so, please accept my apologies.
Actually, the discussion about the gnomic will is exactly what I am wondering about. If Christ assumed who we are, but left out certain aspects (such as the gnomic will) that we are born with, then how was He fully tempted like us but without sin? Knowing if the gnomic will is inherited in birth or is learned after birth will clear up the question for me. Right now I find Athanasius' example to make the most sense (and it is a view I've held for a long time already, and I always thought it was mainstream Orthodox thought).

Hello, Father Raphael,

For us of course knowledge is both inherently limited & sinfully confused. Our will & ability to know is severely afflicted by the results of the Fall. But this goes for all affects of the Fall. The inclination towards sin or the ancestral sin is already fully sinful- it is not innocent. This inclination is the attraction we have towards sin which in itself is sinful. And because of this we do have a degree of guilt.
Are you saying that our sinful confusion, then, is learned after birth? I feel like things are becoming more clear for me now.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Hello, Father Raphael,

Are you saying that our sinful confusion, then, is learned after birth? I feel like things are becoming more clear for me now.

No- because we are born with a sinful nature. This is the ancestral sin, the legacy of the Fall on all of us.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[John Charmley]

Dear Matt,

As I understand it, 'gnomic will' is what human nature is attracted to by inclination; our marred human nature is unable to distinguish between sin and God's will. In its unmarred state, in the Incarnate Word, human nature recognises the will of God as its sole objective.

Or so it would seem.

In Christ,


John

[John Charmley]

Dear Matt,

I was struck by this, from St. John 6:35-40

35 And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. 36 But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. 37 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. 38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 39 This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. 40 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

St. Cyril's reading of this is to the point of this discussion, and was that it showed that Our Lord's human nature was uncorrupted by sin since it did God's will - as unfallen human nature would always will to do. In this, the Saint follows in the Alexandrian tradition going back to St. Clement, a summary of which follows.

According to St. Athanasius, Adam, had a pure mind that was not enslaved to carnal lusts, so he could reflect God with his pure soul. We are free, but because our minds are involved in evil desires and materialism we are in need of God's grace to make our minds free so that we can enjoy communion with God with pure hearts.

According to St. Clement of Alexandria, the fault of Adam and Eve consisted in the fact that, using their volition wrongly, they indulged in the pleasures of sexual intercourse before God gave them leave; their sin was in disobeying God, of course, not in the sexual act itself, which is not inherently sinful. As a result, their will and rationality were weakened and they became a prey to sinful passions. He says: 'The first man played in Paradise, at liberty, since he was the child of God. Then he fell, through pleasure ... and was led astray through his desires... How great the power of pleasure! Man was free, in his innocence, and then found himself bound by his sins.'

St. Clement accepts the historicity of Adam, but he also regards him as symbolizing mankind as a whole. All men, he teaches have a spark of the divine in them and are free to obey or disobey God's Law, but all, except the Incarnate Logos, are sinners. His teaching seems to be, that through our physical descent from Adam and Eve, we inherit, not indeed their own guilt and curse, but a disordered sensuality which entails the dominance of the irrational element in our nature, and a lack of knowledge, for sin is due to ignorance.

The necessity for a dyothelite theology seems to have followed from the dyophysite tendencies in the Chalcedonian Christology, and seems not to have been so great an issue among the Oriental Orthodox. Accepting, as the Oriental Orthodox always have, the two natures of Our Lord, both perfectly human and perfectly divine, unmixed, even for the twinkling of an eye, they do not speak of them as two after union. The attempt by the Patriarch Sergius to achieve reunion through what has been called a 'monenergist' Christology, drew close enough to the non-Chalcedonian position to satisfy some of those who could not accept Chalcedon, but was insufficiently close to meet with universal approbation.

At which point, in all humility, a Non-Chalcedonian should clear off and leave the field to those whose tradition has produced some great thinkers on this problem.



In Christ,

John

[M. Markewich]

Dear John, I appreciate your explanation. Today in my World of the 20th Century lecture I was thinking about this issue while going over Soviet Russia. I thought, would I call God unfair if He had me born in the Soviet Union instead of America? Of course not; it's not His fault mankind had enslaved itself there. And if I were a Soviet subject, and I met an American, who was born free, would I consider him a non-human because he had it easier? No. It seems like I am complaining because Christ looks like an American to my Soviet eyes, since I am born inherently without freedom now. But through Christ, and following Him, I can learn this freedom and make it a part of myself. Although I still feel somewhat bothered by this doctrine, I can see why it makes sense.

[John Charmley]

Dear Matt,

A good analogy. In Christ we are all free, since in Him, and through Him, we can realise our true self - the self made in the image of God which, when truly free, will follow His will because in it is perfect freedom.

As we are told in John 8:29-36:


29 And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.
30 As He spoke these words, many believed in Him.
31 Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.
32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
33 They answered Him, We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, `You will be made free'?
34 Jesus answered them, Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.
35 And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever.
36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

As St. Paul told us, in Romans 6:22-23:


22 But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We are called to accept that gift, to repent, to amendment of life, and to the perfect freedom that is found only in Him: the Truth will make us free; He is the Truth. What He assumed, He healed, by the act of assuming it. Wholly Human, He was what we can become, and what we were before the fall; wholly divine, He shows us God and His love for us.

In the face of such love, all we can do is to be humble, be grateful, and, in true repentance, follow His way.

It is we who have the fallen human nature; it is Him who redeems it. He who was rich made Himself poor for our sake. As the hymn by Isaac Watts, which I have cited before, concludes:


Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

The rest is silence.

In Christ,

John

[M. Markewich]

Thank you again for your response, John. It has helped me feel more firm in this belief.

It is we who have the fallen human nature; it is Him who redeems it. He who was rich made Himself poor for our sake. As the hymn by Isaac Watts, which I have cited before, concludes:

Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Isn't that called The Wondrous Cross? I like that song, too.

[Aidan Kimel]

I thought I would resurrect this excellent thread. It is well worth reading, if you have not read it before.

I've been wondering about what it means when we say that in the Incarnation the Son assumes a "fallen" human nature. Today I came across a lengthy citation from the Scottish theologian, Thomas F. Torrance. I thought I would post it here and elicit responses. Is Torrance faithfully representing the views of the Fathers (or at least some of them), or is his view at least consistent with the views of the Fathers (or at least some of them)? As some of you may know, Torrance was a big fan of Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria.


"The crucial factor here is the meaning of the ‘human nature’ of Christ. There is no doubt at all that by ‘human nature’ the fathers wanted to stress the actuality of Christ’s union with us in our true humanity, that Christ was human in all points exactly like us, yet without sin. And that is right as far as it goes, for Christ was fully human like ourselves, coming into and living in our mode of existence, and sharing in it to the full within a span of temporal life on earth between birth and death, and in the unity of a rational soul and body. But the Chalcedonian statement does not say that this human nature of Christ was human nature ‘under the servitude of sin’ as Athanasius insisted; it does not say that it was corrupt human nature taken from our fallen creation, where human nature is determined and perverted by sin, and where it is under the accusation and judgment of holy God.

“But that is all essential, for ‘the unassumed is the unhealed’, as Gregory Nazianzen expressed it, and it is with and within the humanity he assumed from us that the incarnate Son is one with the Father. Therefore the hypostatic union cannot be separated from the act of saving assumption of our fallen human nature, from the living sanctification of our humanity, through the condemnation of sin in the flesh, and through rendering from within it perfect obedience to the Father. In short, if we think of Christ as assuming neutral and perfect humanity, then the doctrine of the hypostatic union may well be stated statically. But if it is our fallen humanity that he sinlessly assumed, in order to heal and sanctify it, not only through the act of assumption, but through a life of perfect obedience and a death in sacrifice, then we cannot state the doctrine of the hypostatic union statically but must state it dynamically, in terms of the whole course of Christ’s life and obedience, from his birth to his resurrection.

“For many people the difficulty with Chalcedonian christology is this, that when it speaks of ‘the human nature’ of Christ, it seems to be speaking of some neutral human nature which we know in some way from our general knowledge of humanity, even though we nowhere have any actual experience of such neutral human nature. Here then, there appears to be a twofold difficulty. It appears to define the human nature of Jesus in terms of some general conception of human nature, and then to think of Christ’s human nature as perfect, or at least neutral, and to that extent unlike our actual human nature. Now if Christ’s human nature is perfect, and further, if Christ is the Word become man, the new Adam, then we cannot define Christ’s human nature in terms of some general idea of human nature we have already conceived, for it is the human nature of Christ alone that is the norm and criterion of all true human nature. The same mistake appears to be present in the Chalcedonian concept of the divine nature of Christ, for it too is defined in terms of some general concept of divine nature, which somehow we have already formed in our minds, whereas if Christ is the Son of God become man, then it is the divine nature of Christ which must be our only norm and criterion for the understanding of divine nature. It is not surprising therefore that the Chalcedonian christology, in spite of its intention, should always tend towards a form of dyophysitism, tempting correction in the form of being counterbalanced by a new monophysitism.”

Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Robert T. walker, ed.; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic and Paternoster, 2008): 201-2.

Thanks!

[Grace Singh]

this is really a new branch of theological discussion for me, but i have learned a lot by pouring over this thread. would any of the below ideas be on par with Orthodox thought, or are they deviating from what the Fathers have established as Orthodox and definate about Christ?

as to our Lord's assuming humanity, could it be said that as humans have always had the capacity to feel pain and grow tired and be tempted (but that these weaknesses were only manifest through and after the fall), that Christ assumed our pre-fall humanity, but in the context and for the sake of fallen beings? to say that Christ chose to suffer as a Man, trial by trial, as an earlier poster noted sounds like a facsimilie of human suffering and experience, not an actual human experience. the Lord Jesus Christ chose to become a Man and take on flesh, to truly suffer the natural consequences of living in a fallen world, to be subject to things like hatred, thirst, hunger, pain, and grief in a real way, as a Man, while still being God. in other words, once in the world He was subject to the things the world would throw at Him, while still being Master of that world, and its Creator at every given moment.

pre-fall humanity was still tempted, but temptation in and of itself did not cause the fall. it was that temptation giving birth to sin, something that did not happen in our Lord Christ.

[Owen]

Christ had an unfallen human nature (this is what His being without sin means); He is the Second Adam, who completed the tasks the First Adam failed to complete. His unfallenness sanctified the waters when He was baptized, and trod down Death and liberated those in Hades when He died; it also gave us the possibility of union with God in a renovated body when He ascended to Heaven, deifying the flesh He had assumed.

[Aidan Kimel]

"In rejecting Aphthartodocetism, the Orthodox affirmed (1) that the inheritance of mortality from Adam was not an inheritance of guilt, and (2) that the Logos voluntarily assumed, not an abstract ideal manhood, but our fallen humanity, with all the consequences of sin, including incorruptibility" (Byzantine Theology, p. 158).

I presume that when Meyendorff speaks of fallen human nature, he is speaking of mortal human nature.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

"In rejecting Aphthartodocetism, the Orthodox affirmed (1) that the inheritance of mortality from Adam was not an inheritance of guilt, and (2) that the Logos voluntarily assumed, not an abstract ideal manhood, but our fallen humanity, with all the consequences of sin, including incorruptibility" (Byzantine Theology, p. 158).

Dear Fr,
Should this be corruptibility?

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Father David Moser]

"...the Logos voluntarily assumed, not an abstract ideal manhood, but our fallen humanity, with all the consequences of sin, including incorruptibility" (Byzantine Theology, p. 158).

I'm sure its just a typo, but the quote here should read "our fallen humanity, with all the consequences of sin, including corruptibility"

Fr David Moser

[Aidan Kimel]

Yes, thanks for catching the typo. The passage should read:

"In rejecting Aphthartodocetism, the Orthodox affirmed (1) that the inheritance of mortality from Adam was not an inheritance of guilt, and (2) that the Logos voluntarily assumed, not an abstract ideal manhood, but our fallen humanity, with all the consequences of sin, including corruptibility" (Byzantine Theology, p. 158).

[Grace Singh]

Yes, thanks for catching the typo. The passage should read:

"In rejecting Aphthartodocetism, the Orthodox affirmed (1) that the inheritance of mortality from Adam was not an inheritance of guilt, and (2) that the Logos voluntarily assumed, not an abstract ideal manhood, but our fallen humanity, with all the consequences of sin, including corruptibility" (Byzantine Theology, p. 158).

wouldn't assuming fallen humanity also mean an assuming of fallen nature?

[Anna Stickles]

Isn't there another thread on here somewhere where we talked about that the fact that our nature as created and mortal is inherently corruptible? That being corruptible is not a result of sin? A picture that comes to mind is that of an electric magnet wherein as long as it is plugged in, the magnetism is holding together all the pieces in a large metal statue, but as soon as the magnet is unplugged and this stablizing force removed the statue starts collapsing into its indiviudal parts. This is like us in that when we are separated from God we start to suffer the effects of being mortal and corruptible, but when we are joined to Him, even though we are not suffering the effects of our corruptibility, we are still nevertheless intrinsically corruptible.

So then can we say that Christ assumed our corruptibility, but since in Him humanity was reunited with God, He did not assume our corruption?

[Aidan Kimel]

Anna, I am presently reading The Burning Bush by Sergius Bulgakov. It's a remarkable book. Bulgakov vigorously takes the Catholic Church to task for teaching that the human body, apart from supernatural grace, is naturally mortal. I'm not sure if Bulgakov accurately states the Catholic view, though he may well be stating the views of those writing at the time; but I think he wants to say that Adam was created naturally immortal. I'm not sure if I'm reading him correctly, though, and will need to re-read this short book a couple of times. But here's a couple passages:


The incorrupt and virginal human has in himself both the power of life--posse non mori--and the power of chastity--posse non peccare--not by means of an extraordinary gift--donum superadditum [the catholic view], but as an internal norm., the exact essence of his nature. Both death and sin, although possible in the human owing to his creatureliness (as sin as to a certain time was possible even for the world of bodiless powers: this is proven by the fall of the Morning Star and his angels and the battle of Michael and his hosts with him in heaven, who definitively resisted in this battle and conquered), were for the human precisely not normal and contrary to nature. (pp. 16-17)

Thus the primordial human was neither mortal nor concupiscent according to his nature, for in his very nature was included a life of grace in Gd and with God, for he was created int he world for God. But, as a creaturely being, he had in himself the creaturely weakness and instability of nature; in it lay the possibility of life not only in God and for God but also in the world and for the world. And in original sin the human extinguished the life of grace within and tore asunder his direct graced communion, "conversation" with God; he committed homicide against himself, ceased to be a human, a friend of God, and instead became a natural being, and plunged into cosmism. This fall, this homicide was at the same time suicide: as the soul is the life of the body, so God is eternal life for the human, the life of the soul. Having turned away from God, the human lost the power and fountain of life within and, weakened, he could no longer contain and bind his body. (p. 18)

I don't know how this rhymes with other Eastern writers.

[Anna Stickles]

Fr Alvin,



Both death and sin, although possible in the human owing to his creatureliness ..., were for the human precisely not normal and contrary to nature. Thus the primordial human was neither mortal nor concupiscent according to his nature, for in his very nature was included a life of grace in Gd and with God, But, as a creaturely being, he had in himself the creaturely weakness and instability of nature;


For more on the subtleties of what he is trying to say, there was an earlier thread (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?6165-Are-death-and-corruption-natural&p=80953&viewfull=1#post80953)where Fr Ireneaus says



The basic patristic position is nuanced, and amounts to essentially this:


Only God is eternal and incorruptible by nature; anything that is created is intrinsically, 'naturally' mortal and corruptible, since it is not God; yet
God creates all things into harmony with Himself, by which they participate in His eternity and incorruptibility and these attributes become those of creation in union with Himself; and since this participation / union is the manner in which God created them, it is their 'natural' condition.
Human sin forges a division between man and God, which extends beyond humanity to all the created realm, the consequence of this being that all things fall into their 'natural' mortality, finitude and corruptibility; yet
God, in redeeming creation, re-unites it with Himself through man, thus restoring to it the 'natural' immortality, eternity and incorruptibility which are God's own, and for which creation was always intended.
It is this nuance that allows the Fathers to say that man is both 'naturally' mortal/corruptible and 'naturally' immortal/incorruptible. But this is maintained in the very specific observation of the fact that, prior to sin, the 'natural' corruptibility of all created things did not result in the actual corruption or death of any created thing, since all existed in the 'natural', created state of communion in God's incorruptibility.



Whether this helps or not I don't know. Sergius Bulgakov is quite bold in saying that humanity has in itself the power of life, but I think that the way he qualifies this in defining what it means to be a creature keeps it within the Patristic context.

[Grace Singh]

Isn't there another thread on here somewhere where we talked about that the fact that our nature as created and mortal is inherently corruptible? That being corruptible is not a result of sin? A picture that comes to mind is that of an electric magnet wherein as long as it is plugged in, the magnetism is holding together all the pieces in a large metal statue, but as soon as the magnet is unplugged and this stablizing force removed the statue starts collapsing into its indiviudal parts. This is like us in that when we are separated from God we start to suffer the effects of being mortal and corruptible, but when we are joined to Him, even though we are not suffering the effects of our corruptibility, we are still nevertheless intrinsically corruptible.

So then can we say that Christ assumed our corruptibility, but since in Him humanity was reunited with God, He did not assume our corruption?

Ms. Anna ~

is it possible that we were created with the potential to die and grow weak over time, but that our disobedience to God made that potential a cursed reality? after all, Adam was made in God's image but was still a creation, not the Creator.

here is what the Lord God said to Adam after the fruit was eaten :

Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

(Genesis 3:17-19)

so it sounds like the fate of returning to the ground and dying is something pronounced only after the fall, not something that would have happened anyway without the fall. the potential to die was there, but was realized by Adam's disobedience. similar to how all wood has the potential to burn, but is burned only if a spark ignites, or fire is touched to it.

[Anna Stickles]

so it sounds like the fate of returning to the ground and dying is something pronounced only after the fall, not something that would have happened anyway without the fall. the potential to die was there, but was realized by Adam's disobedience. similar to how all wood has the potential to burn, but is burned only if a spark ignites, or fire is touched to it.

I believe you are understanding me very well, and it is interesting that you use this analogy as this is almost exactly what St Athanasius says and notice how he says we put on Life like asbestos that protects us from being consumed by the fire. Of course this Life is Christ Himself.



Therefore He put on a body, that He night find death in the body, and blot it out. For how could the Lord have been proved at all to be the Life, had He not quickened what was mortal? And just as, whereas stubble is naturally destructible by fire, supposing (firstly) a man keeps fire away from the stubble, though it is not burned, yet the stubble remains, for all that, merely stubble, fearing the threat of the fire — for fire has the natural property of consuming it; while if a man (secondly) encloses it with a quantity of asbestos, the substance said to be an antidote to fire, the stubble no longer dreads the fire, being secured by its enclosure in incombustible matter; in this very way one may say, with regard to the body and death, that if death had been kept from the body by a mere command on His part, it would none the less have been mortal and corruptible, according to the nature of bodies; but, that this should not be, it put on the incorporeal Word of God, and thus no longer fears either death or corruption, for it has life as a garment, and corruption is done away in it. On the Incarnation (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers:_Series_II/Volume_IV/Incarnation_of_the_Word/On_the_Incarnation_of_the_Word/Chapter_44)( 44.7)

[Grace Singh]

Anna ~

interesting! very beautiful and striking analogy of asbestos-covered stubble.... so does the writer mean to say that Christ assumed a pre-Fall human nature, but was still subject to the conditions of the flesh in a post-fall world? because as the writer said, Christ was slain, but was not consumed or destroyed, as it were.

[Anna Stickles]

Anna ~

so does the writer mean to say that Christ assumed a pre-Fall human nature, but was still subject to the conditions of the flesh in a post-fall world?

I'm not sure that it is quite right to say that Christ assumed a pre-Fall human nature. I think we are creating a false dichotomy here in differentiating between pre-fall and post-fall human nature. Human nature really hasn't changed in essence; what Christ assumed was our mortal nature. But in Himself He reunited that nature with God which restores it to it's pre-fall state, that natural state Fr Ireneaus describes in point 2 in the quote in post #68 above.

It is precisely because in Christ human nature is united to the Divine in an unbreakable bond that death no longer has any power to destroy it. But each of us has to take hold of what Christ offers for ourself. And this is what our spiritual practices in the Orthodox church teach us to do. This is also how we understand communion. We partake of the Body and Blood of Christ, we put on Christ, we are united with His Body, we receive His life, and our body is changed into the likeness of His body. This is a foreshadowing and foretaste of the resurrection.


II Cor 4:11,16 For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. ...Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.
Notice above how the Apostle relives in himself this dying and coming alive with Christ. This is the essence of our spiritual practice in Orthodoxy entered into at Baptism. (see Rom 6:4)


II Cor 5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, 3inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. 4For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life.And here St Paul talks about what we've been talking about here, our need to be clothed with Life. The Church, the Body of Christ, is that heavenly dwelling.

There are a number of threads here dealing with the issue of how Christ assumes the consequences of sin, actually suffering our human frailty and mortality, while still remaining sinless. The only one I remember right now is the one Did Christ feel emotions (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?4500-Did-Christ-feel-emotions), but I have this vague memory of there being another better one, but anyway, Fr Raphael describes it like this



It is very important that we keep in mind the term that the Fathers eventually formulated for Christ's manner of relation to human nature. This is summed up in the term, 'the blameless passions.' That is Christ fully adopts human nature including certain results of the Fall but He does this in a sinless way.

This last point is what is most important here for it relates to how Christ adopts the fullness of human nature without disdaining its present weaknesses. But the manner in which He does this as the pre-Incarnate Word of God is always in reference to man's original divine purpose.

Thus He feels hunger but without greed; He fears death but without fleeing from it. In other words Christ knows & experiences our sin inexpressibly more fully than we do but the way in which He does so is sinless.