According to the theology of the Orthodox Church the work of both the Son and the Holy Spirit is requisite to salvation. Our transfiguration, our theosis, the attainment of union with God, is the work of the Triune Godhead. St. Paul defines the Church as his body, in so far as she has Christ as her head, and she is the fullness in so far as the Holy Spirit quickens her and fills her with divinity–the Godhead dwells within her bodily as it dwells in the deified humanity of Christ.

Just as the Son ‘comes down’ to earth and accomplishes His work through the Holy Spirit, so the Person of the Holy Spirit comes into the world, being sent by the Son (Jn. 15:26). In our previous blog on the economy of the Son of God, we saw that the incarnation makes the creature fit to receive the Holy Spirit, by the deification of human nature. In our present blog we will see that Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church, is the sequal or result of the Son’s economy. The Church, redeemed by the Son, is now filled by the Holy Spirit, as He descends into the creation and fills her with His presence. In a certain sense, Christ was a preparation for the Holy Spirit–Pentecost was the object, the final goal of the divine economy on earth.

The Holy Spirit was sent into the world (to the Church), in the name of the Son, therefore it is needful to bear the name of the Son (a member of His body) in order to receive the Holy Spirit. Christ recapitulated humanity in Himself, and so became the principle, the hypostasis of a renewed human nature. In ‘putting on Christ ,’ through baptism, we have access to the unity of the ‘new man.’ In Christ, nature is one and undivided. Recreated in the Holy Spirit, we become His members and are included in His hypostasis. The Church is one nature, and we become one by becoming part of His nature.

(At this point it will be helpful to keep in mind the blog I wrote on Christian anthropology. More specifically, the distinction between nature and persons. Humanity is a nature, a nature that was unity in the beginning, now fragmented by sin. And it is our destiny for that nature to be made one once more, in Christ. But remember, that humanity, though still a unity, is also a diversity. Many persons, in fact billions of people, in all their diversity, each one unique, make up this unity. Humanity is a unity according to nature, and a diversity according to persons.)

In the Church we now are one renewed nature in Christ, but we are still multiple in persons. Human nature finds itself reunited in the hypostasis of Jesus Christ, but the work of the Holy Spirit concerns persons. The Holy Spirit communicates to human hypostases the fullness of deity after a manner which is unique, and ‘personal,’ partaking of Him according to the capacity of their nature. The Holy Spirit grants to each person created in the image of God the possibility of fulfilling the likeness of God in the common nature. As Christ lends His nature to us, so also the Holy Spirit gives His divinity to us personally. Therefore, the work of Christ unifies, while the work of the Holy Spirit diversifies. Neither the unity, nor the diversity of humanity is possible without the other. The Son creates the unity of His mystical Body through the Holy Spirit, while the Holy Spirit communicates Himself to persons through the Son.

This two-fold economy, the work of unity and of diversity, is further seen in a two-fold communication of the Holy Spirit when Christ establishes His Church. First, in the Gospel of St. John, chapter 20, Christ gives the Holy Spirit to the whole Church when He breathes upon the Apostles in the upper room. Here is a function of unity, giving priestly power to the college of the Apostles, in not so much a personal as a functional way, in relation to Christ, by whom the Holy Spirit is given. This is the bond of unity in the Church. Here the Holy Spirit is bestowed on all in common as the bond of unity and sacerdotal power, but still remains unknown to persons, and is not related to personal holiness.

When Christ ‘breathes,’ He creates the Church, the reconstitution of our nature in Christ. He does not create anew out of the same matter as in the beginning. He calls not upon dust, but rather, he uses His own flesh. He restores life not by forming anew a vital principle which He formerly maintained in the natural order. Now, by shedding His blood in the hearts of communicants, He may cause life to spring up in Him. The Church, as it is His body, relates to our nature.

The second communication of the Holy Spirit is a personal coming. The Holy Spirit appears as a Person of the Holy Trinity, independent of Christ as to His hypostatic origin. At Pentecost, the divided tongues of fire rested upon each one. This communication must not be considered corporately, as it is far from being a function of unity. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit communicated Himself to persons, giving Himself to us as a function of diversity. In this great mystery of kenosis, He remains hidden, unrevealed, so to speak, by the gift in order that this gift which He imparts may be fully ours, adopted to our persons.

This presence of the Holy Spirit, given to the Church at Pentecost, signifies both the end and final goal, and at the same time, marks the commencement of the spiritual life. In baptism, the Holy Spirit recreates our nature, purifying it and uniting it to the body of the Son. In chrismation, the Holy Spirit bestows deity, the common energy of divine grace, upon the baptized person. This baptismal grace is the foundation of all the Christian life, the Kingdom of God which the Holy Spirit prepares within us. He makes our being the throne of the Holy Trinity.

St. Symeon the New Theologian said, “We receive the naked fire of the Godhead, the fire of which our Lord said: I am come to cast fire upon the earth (Luke 12:49). What is this fire if not the Holy Spirit, consubstantial with the Son by His deity, the Holy Spirit with whom the Father and the Son enter into us and can be contemplated.”

The Holy Trinity dwells within us, confers the glory of divinity, the eternal light, of which we must partake. This grace cannot remain hidden within us. All believers who have received the Holy Spirit have also experienced Him, being conscious of His presence. At first we see it in order that afterwards we attain to it with pains and manifold labors.

Now we have the divine life which is opened up within us in the Holy Spirit. He mysteriously identifies Himself with human persons while still remaining incommunicable. He substitutes Himself, so to speak, for ourselves, for it is He who cries in our hearts. He effaces Himself, as Person, before the created person to whom He appropriates grace. In Him the will of God is no longer external to ourselves: it confers grace inwardly, manifesting itself within our very person, in so far as our human will remains in accord with divine will.

Check out their new album “Meridional.” So good.

Inception gave me that feeling. You know the feeling? The feeling you had after you watched the Matrix in the theater for the first time?

Despicable Me made me smile for 24 hours. Happy is what it will make you. Agnes kills me!

In our fallen state created being is separated from God by nature, but also by will. The will has created sin as our new existential mode, and therefore created an infinite distance between created and uncreated. We said earlier that the natural separation of uncreated and created ought to have been overcome by deification, but this distance became an impassible abyss after man willed his new state–sin and death. Humanity now exists in sin and death, his new state near to non-being. Whereas before the fall, man was called to overcome the distance created by nature (created vs. uncreated), now after the fall, man is incapable of breaching the triple barrier of sin, death, and nature.

Man is incapable of saving himself, so he cries out for salvation, the removal of these obstacles. God in His providence condescends to the liberty of men, and coordinates His actions in order to govern the fallen universe to accomplish His will without doing violence to the liberty of creatures. He increasingly ‘descends into’ the world by acts of providence, and finally, in His economy, He enters this process of condescension as a person. The chasms of death, sin, and nature are broken by God, in Christ, in the inverse order. Jesus Christ, our salvation, heals nature by His incarnation, sin by His crucifixion and entrance into Hades, and the “last enemy,” death, by His glorious resurrection. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26).

Let’s make some notes about the human nature of Jesus Christ. This humanity had the immortal and incorruptible character of the nature of Adam before he sinned, but Christ submitted it voluntarily to the condition of our fallen nature. In this action, Christ assumes not only human nature but also that which was against nature, all the consequences of sin, though He himself remained outside original sin in virtue of the Virginal birth. He took an individual nature liable to suffering and death, and descended to the last outpost of being.

At that time, hellenistic thought could not admit the union of two perfect principles, yet the Church declares the antinomy (radical distinction) of the incarnation: the unlimited is limited in an ineffable manner, while the limited is stretched to the measure of the unlimited. It took until the fourth century for this Christian ‘foolishness’ to triumph over the hellenistic ‘wisdom.’ The Church declared the distinction between ousia (nature) and hypostasis (person) and then added the further distinction by adding two different natures in one hypostasis. Note the apophatic character of the Nicean formula regarding the incarnation: “…made known in two natures being mingled, without change, indivisibly, inseparably… the union does not destroy the difference of the two natures, but on the contrary, the properties of each nature only remain the more firm since they are found united in one person or hypostasis which is neither separated nor divided into two persons…”

The ‘how’ of this union of natures remains a mystery based on an incomprehensible distinction–the identity of the nature and of the person. But Christ reveals that the perfection of the person consists in self-abandonment: the person expresses itself most truly in that it renounces to exist for itself. It is the self-emptying of the Person of the Son, in the Divine kenosis. The entire mystery of economy consists of this kenosis of the Son of God.

The two natures of Christ remain distinct and unmixed. However, being united hypostatically (in His Person) without being transformed into one another, they permeate one another. This permeation is one the whole unilateral, coming from the divine nature and not from the human nature. However, the Divinity, having once penetrated the flesh, gives to it an ineffable faculty of penetrating the Divinity. The humanity of Christ is a deified nature that is permeated by the divine energies from the moment of the incarnation (iron penetrated by fire). Therefore, in each act of Christ, two distinct operations act in conformity to both natures, and by both natures (the sword reddened both cuts and burns at same time). Each nature acts according to its own properties.

The two wills are distinct also, but He who wills is one, and wills in conformity with each of the two distinct natures. The volition has one object because the two wills are united, the human will be freely subjected to the divine will. Note that this liberty is not the same as our free will, that faculty of choice which belongs to the person. The divine person has no need to choose. Choice is a limitation, characteristic of our debased liberty. The divine will permits the human will to will, to manifest fully what is proper to humanity. It always ‘prevents’ the human will, in such a way that the humanity wills ‘divinely’ in accord with the divinity which allows it to expand. The two wills are not in conflict.

The incarnation introduced into His divine person all sin-scarred, fallen human nature, therefore, His earthly life was a continual humiliation, continually submitting to fallen conditions. His human will continually renounced what naturally belonged to it, and accepted what was contrary to incorruptible and deified humanity. What we see here is two distinct assumptions of human nature by the Word: a natural assumption (deified human nature) and an economic assumption (subject to the conditions of fall). This natural assumption is ‘masked’ by the economic assumption. It may help to remember the account of the Transfiguration of Christ upon Mt. Tabor. In His economy Christ appeared as any other man, while in His transfiguration Christ shows the natural assumption, shining with the glory of God!

“What is not assumed, cannot be deified.” What must be deified in us is our entire nature, belonging to our person which must enter into union with God, to become a person recreated in two natures: a human nature which is deified, and a nature, or rather a divine energy, that deifies. In our nature we are new, parts of the humanity of the Son, pure and incorruptible. But, our persons have not yet reached union. Redemption and purification of nature do not yet provide all the conditions necessary for theosis. The work of Christ is an objective, consummated work. Yet, the work of the Holy Spirit is waiting for accomplishment….

To be continued…

So when I heard that one of my favorite film makers, M. Night Shayamalan, was making three live action movies from this series I was so excited. The first of the three is now in theaters, and I excitedly saw it. It was terrible! It is hard for me to remember all the things that Night did well, they exist beside all this things that made this film terrible. Sadness. I can’t talk about it very much right now. But I will say this, the problem is similar to what made the last three Star Wars movies terrible. Visual effects can not save terrible dialogue. Remember how terrible the Architect scene in the second Matrix movie was. It was like: insert ridiculous information monologue here. The Last Airbender falls into these camps quite often. Night struggled with how to reveal the mythology of the “Avatar” world, and how much of it was necessary to reveal. My personal opinion is that less is more. And dialogue should be written for the characters, not for the audience. If the audience only gets hints into the mythology of the world and belief systems of the characters, then it enhances the mystery. And the cartoon exists for anyone intrigued to have more. Anyway, here is the movie trailer, which looks amazing.

The next four blogs will continue our journey in discussing the mystery of salvation, and will be a kind of “unit;” each one will build upon the other. In this blog, part three, I wanted to discuss a little about developing a Christian anthropology. So, to that end, let us ask some leading questions, and hope that they are answered along the journey. What is understood by the Fathers in the phrase “in the image of God?” How do we understand the nature of humanity? What is understood by the term person, and how is a person different than an individual? What is the relationship between the soul and body, in relation to the ‘image of God.’ How does the Eastern Orthodox Church understand the will?

At the creation God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” St. Gregory of Nyssa said that ‘let us make man in our image’ concerns humanity considered in its ontological unity, that, “It is the whole of [human] nature, extending from the beginning to the end [of history], that constitutes the one image of Him who is.” He is saying that humanity as a whole, together, are the image of God. He said, “To say that there are ‘many human beings’ is a common abuse of language. Granted there is a plurality of those who share in the same human nature… but in all of them, humanity is one.” Furthermore, in Paradise, the ‘completed’ Adam is shown to be fragmented in some way because he is a single man. We are told it was “not good for man to be alone,” that it was the destiny of Adam as a whole, as a community, as a unity of persons, to be the likeness of the Holy Trinity.

If you are familiar with some of my previous blogs on the Holy Trinity, you will be familiar with the Orthodox Church’s use of antinomy in expressing mystery. Also, you will recall from these blogs, that the Trinity is a unity of nature and a diversity of persons. Keep these concepts in mind for latter, as you can already see our topic leading in a similar direction. Just as God is a unity of nature, so humanity is a unity of nature. Just as God is a diversity of persons, so humanity is a diversity of persons.

The Orthodox Church believes that the whole human being is in the image of God, that only the unity of soul and body constitutes the human being. The visible aspect of humanity would not exist if it were not the invisible made visible; soul and body must mutually symbolize each other. The early church was not preoccupied with the immortality of the soul, as some western denominations have become. The Church believes that it is incontrovertible but holds that it is contrary to nature and therefore only provisional. St. Irenaeus of Lyons said, “Spirits without bodies will never be spiritual men and women, It is our entire being, that is to say, the soul and flesh combined, which by receiving the Spirit of God constitutes the spiritual man.” The soul and body together is called to life and resurrection, proved by Christ’s bodily resurrection and bodily ascension. Earthly flesh has penetrated into God Himself!

Being both body and soul, both visible and invisible, man is situated at the meeting place of intelligible and sensible. Man unites these two worlds within himself, therefore participating in all spheres of the created universe. St. Maximus said, “all things which have been created by God, in their diverse natures, are brought together in man as in a melting-pot, and form in him one unique perfection-a harmony composed of many different notes.” All the divisions that creation contains: uncreated vs. created nature, intelligible vs. sensible universe, heavens vs. earth, paradise vs. man’s habitation, male vs. female, have man at their center, who virtually contains them all in himself. Adam was to unite in himself the whole of created being; and at the same time to reach perfect union with God, therefore granting the state of deification to the whole creation, and unite these divisions. Adam failed. We will talk more of these divisions and their unification in Christ in a latter blog. Back to the ‘image.’

Man was not formed by a divine command addressed to the earth as the rest of creation, but rather God Himself fashioned him from the dust of the earth with his own hands, and breathed life into him. St. Irenaeus speaks of these two ‘hands’ as the Word and the Holy Spirit. The Father, as an act of will, creates by His Word, and breathes life by His Holy Spirit. Though not literal in language, St. Irenaeus describes the nature of the created soul thus: “The soul is a breath of God, and though heavenly, it allows itself to mingle with the earth. It is the light shut up in a cave, but it is none the less divine and inextinguishable.” According to Irenaeus, the soul ‘mingles’ with ‘the Heavenly Spirit,’ is helped by something greater than itself. It is the presence of this divine power in it which causes it to be called ‘a portion of the Deity.’ It originates in and is infused with uncreated grace. The human spirit is therefore intimately connected with grace, and is produced by it in the same way as a movement of air is produced by the breath, contains this breath and is inseparable from it. It is proper to the soul to participate in divine energy; creation in the image and likeness of God implies or presupposes grace.

It is impossible to define the divine image because the image is a mystery. In so far as it it perfect, it is necessarily unknowable. As it reflects the fullness of its archtype, in this case the Godhead, it must also possess the unknowable character of the divine Being. Therefore, we can only conceive of it through the idea of participation in the infinite goodness of God. He surpasses in goodness, created in His goodness, and gives His goodness to man beyond enumeration. All this goodness is summed up in the phrase ‘image of God,’ is equivalent to saying that God made human nature a sharer in all that is good.

The image implies the final perfection of man. For St. Gregory of Nyssa, when speaking of the image of God, he describes it as a state of becoming, he sees it primarily as a freedom. This freedom is from necessity, not being subject to the domination of nature. We are not forced to acquire the likeness of God, but must choose freely. For St. Gregory, freedom is the ‘formal’ image, the necessary condition for the attainment of perfect assimilation to God. The image implies a personal being, not controlled by nature, but one that can control nature.

The person is not a part of humanity, just as the persons of the Trinity are not parts of the Godhead (remember the antinomy of nature and persons), therefore the image refers to the whole man in his entirety. As God included all mankind in his first creation (the ontological unity of the nature common to all men), creating the ‘universal’ man, the image is not in a part of the nature, nor is grace in one individual among those it regards; this power extends to the whole human race.

The human person cannot realize the fullness to which he is called, if he claims for himself a part of the nature, regarding it as his own particular good, since the image reaches perfection when the human nature becomes like the divine, in attaining a complete participation in God’s uncreated beauty. What this really long sentence is trying to express is that the nature of humanity is supposed to be, or destined to be one, just as the ousia of God is a unity. The problem is that ‘fallen’ humanity does not come even close to living in this unity, but rather the one common nature appears split up by sin, parcelled out to individuals. In Christ, in His Church, this unity is re-established.

We do not know the human person, the human hypostasis in its true condition because of our ‘fallenness.’ Is that a word? Anyway, the problem is that WE EXIST AS INDIVIDUALS. But a person is not an individual. Let me explain. In a certain sense person and individual are opposites. The person or hypostasis is that which distinguishes us from our nature or ousia. The individual expresses itself as a mixture or person with elements which belong to the common nature. In our present condition, we know persons only through individuals, and as individuals. Think of it, when we ‘characterize’ an individual, we gather together individual characteristics, traits which are also found in other individuals. These traits belong to nature and are never absolutely ‘personal.’

If we remember back to my blog about the persons or hypostases of God, and the nature or ousia of God, we will recall the effort the Church puts into maintaining an absolute and radical distinction between the two, which results in the use of antinomy. The persons of God are not aspects, nor parts of, nor relationships within the essence of God. The persons are a primordial reality, absolutely distinct from the essence. Now, back to the human, we must remain in this apophatic state, and use the antinomy once more. The nature of humanity and the hypostases of humanity are absolutely distinct. Just as God is 3=1 or 1=3, we are 1=many or many=1. God is an absolute unity and an absolute diversity (antinomy), and likewise, we humans are a unity and a diversity. To maintain the radical distinction between nature and person, the person is not made up of characteristic found within nature, making the person part of nature. Rather, the person is what we are that is not part of the nature.

What is most dear to us in someone, what makes him himself, remains indefinable, a mystery, for there is nothing in nature which properly pertains to the person, which is always unique and incomparable. The man who is ‘governed’ by his nature and acts in the strength of his natural qualities, of his ‘character,’ is the least personal. He has set himself up as an individual, and is the proprietor of his own nature. He pits his nature, which he regards as his ‘me,’ against the natures of others. Fallen humanity, as individuals, confuses person and nature. This is egoism.

The person is free from its nature, is not determined by it. The human hypostasis can only realize itself by the renunciation of its own will, that which makes us subject to natural necessity. The individual must be broken. This the root principle of asceticism: the free renunciation of one’s own will, the renunciation of individual liberty to recover true personal liberty (image). St. Evagrius of Pontus said, “a perfect monk will after God, count all men as God Himself.” What he means by this is that the person of another will appear as the image of God, when he can detach from individual limitations. When we realize our own person we rediscover our common nature.

So, we see that the image of God is not part of our nature, but rather, the image is the person which includes the nature in itself. Leontius of Byzantium (6th. cent.) described this as an enhypostasized nature. All nature is found in an hypostasis, such being the nature of a hypostasis which cannot otherwise exist. The person is not part of the nature, and does not divide the nature. An individual divides the nature. Now, the fallen man has a double character, the individual nature and the person.

The individual nature is only a part of a whole, one element which makes up the universe. Because the individual is only a part of nature, it is impoverished. It shuts itself up in the limits of his particular nature, and does not realize himself.  Unlike the individual, the human person contains all in himself, the nature being the content of the person, and the person being the existence of the nature. In renouncing possession and giving itself freely, the person finds full expression in the common nature. It expands indefinitely, being enriched by everything which belongs to all. The person becomes the perfect image by acquiring that likeness which is the perfection of the common nature.

At this point I should probably comment that even when man removes himself as far as possible from God, and becomes unlike him in His nature, living as an individual, he remains a person. The image of God in man is indestructible. Man possesses his nature freely because he is a person created in the image of God. All the same, the person cannot be separated from enhypostasized nature. Therefore, every ‘unlikeness’ in the nature limits the person, or obscures the ‘image of God.’ If freedom belongs to the person, the will by which we act is a faculty of our nature.

St. Maximus said the will is “a natural force which tends towards that which is conformed to nature, a power which embraces all the essential properties of nature.” Let’s clarify a little bit. St Maximus taught that the human will have two aspects, the natural will and the choosing will. The natural will is the desire for good to which every reasonable nature tends, while the choosing will is a characteristic of the person. So, the nature wills and acts, the person chooses, accepting or rejecting that which the nature wills. According to this line of thinking, St. Maximus sees the freedom of choice is already a sign of imperfection, a limitation of our true freedom. Perfect nature has no need of choice, for it knows naturally what is good. Choice indicates this fallen state, this fallen nature which is no longer able to know its true good, living ‘against nature,’ and faced with the necessity of choice.

And here we connect to our role in theosis. We are called to assimilate our nature to the divine nature, while bound to a mutilated nature, which it knows and wills by. This is why we no longer choose well. We yield to a nature which is the slave to sin. That in us which is made the image is dragged into an abyss, though always retaining freedom of choice and possibility of turning to God. We are called to fight our way out of this ‘abyss’ and into the kingdom; man is called to reunite by grace two natures, the created and uncreated, in his person, and become ‘a created god.’

Here is one of their new tracks from the upcoming album “Meridional,” called “Deathbed Atheist.”