# Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (John Meyendorff)



## RamistThomist (Jun 28, 2014)

Meyendorff, John. _Christ in Eastern Christian Thought_. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1975.

Meyendorff does a great job in surveying the various strands of Byzantine Christology. He unites them under the idea of man's being made to participate in the life of God. This requires a Christology to match, so we see an emphasis on the Logos taking to himself human flesh and deifying, which flesh then becomes the theotic (I made up that word) life for all of humanity. Some of the figures surveyed below shed light on the Christology, but in many ways more importantly, the metaphysics of Byzantine Christianity.

*The Image Concep*t: “Image implies a participation in the divine nature” (114). Commenting on Cyril, Meyendorff says “It appears from this passage that the proper dignity of human nature, as conceived by God and realized by Adam, consists of going beyond itself and receiving illuminating grace” (115). This is the Eastern version of the Latin donum superadditum. Byzantine piety was rooted in a geographical tradition where the idea of “image” had a cultic priority (173). 

*Spirituality*: Prayer: principal means of liberating the mind. “This liberation implies for Evagrius a dematerialization…a prelude to the immaterial gnosis” (121). As it stands this is a Buddhist statement and has nothing in common with the Bible. Later theologians realized this and focused the technique around the repetition of the Jesus Prayer. Not really a biblical solution but not as crudely Buddhist either.

*Per Maximus the Confessor*: It’s a beautiful metaphysics, maybe the most beautiful. While he did cut Origenism off at the knees, the spectre of Neo-Platonism and Ps. Dionysius haunts the realm. We hear absolutely nothing of the gospel proclamation extra nos. Meyendorff is quick to assure us that Maximus is no Pelagian. Fair enough (though see comments by Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 17), but is he a semi-Pelagian?

*Critical questions*: If salvation is simply participation, does this mean that salvation is in some sense an arising upward of the inner man? How does this square with the extra nos that comes by preaching? Further, how does it escape Feuerbach’s critique?

How coherent is it to speak of the mind knowing by going outside of itself? We are back to chain of being. Something is simply wrong with man qua man that we need something added to him. Therefore, we can ask another question: Was Christ really human? “Most Byzantine writers, however, have refused to recognize in Christ any ignorance, and explained such passages as Lk. 2:52 as a pedagogical tactic on the part of Christ” (87). Whatever faults Reformed Christology may have, it does not have this fault. Here we make a clean and healthy break with Byzantine Christology.

Their reasoning why is interesting. “There was also a certain philosophy of gnosis, which made knowledge the sign par excellence of unfallen nature” (87). Back to chain-of-being ontology. Ignorance, or lack, is sin, or at least in the realm of not-as-good.

Given the sharp distinction between person and nature, if we say that God truly suffered in the flesh, how does one maintain divine impassibility? Simply saying the divine person suffered in his human nature only removes the problem a step. It does not solve it, for the divine nature remains untouched. But given the strong union language used by the East, it seems unlikely that the divine nature should remain so untouched. This leads us to ask: are they really that far from Nestorius? In both cases there seems to be a “gap” between the divine nature and the human nature. And given their insistence on the communicatio idiomata, we must further ask: why isn't it a two-way street? If the two natures are so thoroughly united that the divine "pours" into the human, then how come the human doesn't "pour" into the divine? Simply saying "divine impassibility," while a correct conclusion, evades the real issue.

“The Word has the initiative in the work of the Incarnation, and it is evident that the theory of enhypostasis while asserting and underlying Christ’s humanity, shows in an unequivocal way the primordial greatness of the divinity” (156). No one will accuse John of Damascus of being a monothelite; in fact, his statement appears to be a restatement of the instrumentalization thesis. Calvinists never say that Christ’s divinity overrides his humanity, or that the Holy Spirit mechanistically does so. But if Calvinists are to be accused of monothelitism because the divine nature has precedence over the human nature, then the charge must also extend to John of Damascus.

Conclusion: as a work of historical theology this book is outstanding. It is well-written, well-formatted, and the scholarship is top-notch. Further, unlike many converts to EO today, Meyendorff is honest and open about the Byzantine's borrowing from both pagan and philosophical sources not friendly to biblical revelation. This touches on the basic failure of Byzantine Christianity. The apostle Paul said the preaching of the Cross is foolishness to the Greek. Byzantine Christianity responded by downplaying the preaching and adding Greek philosophical systems that were respectable to the pagans.


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