St. John (c. 652–c. 750) was born and raised in Damascus. He began a career of civil service, but then joined his brother as a monk at the St Saba monastery near Jerusalem, where he was ordained as a priest. He dedicated the rest of his life to writing books and church hymns. His greatest contribution was his De Fide Orthodoxa, (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith) [1] is considered the most robust theological effort of Eastern scholasticism, as is Aquinas’ Summa in the West.
De fide is a dogmatic work, divided into four books. The first book considers the essence and attributes of the Holy Trinity; book two covers creation, anthropology, and providence; the third book is an excursus on Christology; and the fourth covers various aspects: the church, sin/salvation/sanctification, scripture, eschatology, images, and other controversial topics.
This post will be a brief exposition of some key themes St. John’s doctrine of Christ, specifically his understanding of the incarnation, union, and action (concerto). Book III will be our source of exposition.
Incarnation, Union, and Action (Concerto)
St. John’ Christology follows the Chalcedonian tradition. The Incarnation is the “ineffable and incomprehensible” condescending act of “perfect God becoming perfect man,” “without suffering change” (De Fide Orth. 3.1). The Word “united to the rationally and intellectually animated flesh which He had from the holy Virgin and which had its existence in Him” (De Fide Orth. 3.2). While the Word assumed flesh, a human nature, there wasn’t a compounded nature from the two nor did the essence of the Word give up simplicity. The person of Jesus Christ has both the human and divine natures. The Son of God incarnate has a substantial union, indicating it is a true union and not an imaginary union, denoting that the two natures are “truly united to each other into one composite Person of the Son of God, while each essential difference maintained intact” (De Fide Orth. 3.3.).
St. John takes up the discussion regarding the mutual communication between the natures, where he first makes the proper distinctions between nature and person. The “substance means the common species including the persons that belong to the same species—as, for example, God, man—while person indicates individual, as Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Peter, Paul” (De Fide Orth. 3.4). With that said, it is important to understand, writes St John, that “divinity and humanity are indicative of the substances or natures, but the terms God and man refer to nature.” In the God-man, we have two distinct natures in the composite Person, having a “mutual immanence” in that they communicate in the person the perfect identity of each nature. Therefore, when referring to the Son of God, we can genuinely say that God suffered, and the Lord was crucified. And when Christ died, we can say God died in the flesh. And when Christ was born, we can say he was uncreated (De Fide Orth. 3.4).
When speaking of one nature, one person (or being) is commonly assumed. Of composite natures that is correct; but there can be no individuated essences/natures of Divinity. The Divine essence is simple. So, we “confess one nature, while we hold three really existing Persons” (De Fide Orth. 3.5). These Persons, St. John writes, are “in three properties of being uncaused and Father, of being caused and Son, and of being caused and proceeding.” To clear up his language a bit, he is referring to their modes of existence in the One being of God, which are inseparable, “united to one another and mutually immanent without confusion.” (De Fide Orth. 3.5). The Persons, while they are subsistent in themselves, they are united in their essence. Their threeness is intrinsic to their oneness and their oneness is intrinsic to their threeness, yet the distinctions of relations are always maintained. As it pertains to the hypostatic union, the Persons are fully united in their essence, but in some ineffable manner that “surpasses all understanding and comprehension,” the divine essence is hypostatically united to a human nature in “one composite Person made of those natures.”
St. John is treating a topic that is beyond all creaturely intellect. The Incarnation is truly mystifying. Nevertheless, he, as articulated in the tradition before him, applies the same metaphysical construal of the hypostatic enactment of the Divine Son. With the Holy Trinity as the determined metaphysical framework, so likewise, the union of God and man in the one Christ is a unity without confusion, and mutually immanent, yet does not suffer change or amalgamation, thus retaining the full properties of the divine nature and the human nature. If a confusion of natures took place, then we would have a tertium quid, a third thing, thus a separation in the Trinity would ensue. St. John stresses that “number is not by nature a cause of division or union, but is, rather, a sign of the quantity of the things numbered, whether they be united or divided” (De Fide Orth. 3.5).
He gives a common example in nature to explain. In coal, there are two natures, one of fire and the other of wood. They are not united or divided by number but are in some other manner. The fire is always fire and the wood is always wood in the coal. And therefore, St. John writes, “just as it is impossible to say that the three Persons are one Person, even though they are united, without bringing about confusion or suppression of the difference, so it is impossible to say that the two hypostatically united natures of Christ are one nature without our bringing about suppression, confusion, or annihilation of their difference” (De Fide Orth. 3.5). But in this union of natures in the Person of Christ, does the divine nature have a true entire union to the human nature?
A basic entailment of the species of created beings, persons, is that the person is a complete substance (a supposit). And so, the differences between persons are characteristics, or accidents. So, persons, while having a common human nature, are individuated by their accidents. Humanity does not subsist fully in one person. Rather, humanity is found in the individual persons. When one person suffers, the entire person suffers but not the entire species of humanity suffers together. But the substance of the divine essence, St. John writes, is predicted “entirely and completely in each one of its Persons—all in the Father, all in the Son, all in the Holy Ghost” (De Fide Orth. 3.6). In the Incarnation, the Word of God, having he entire divine essence, “was united in one of its Persons to the entire human nature, and not a part of one to a part of the other” (De Fide Orth. 3.6). St. John makes sure to deploy the “safety-line” phrase for when metaphysical speculation begins to lose its soteriological footing. And I will quote him in full:
But, certainly, let us not be constrained to say that all the Persons of the sacred Godhead, the Three, that is, were hypostatically united to all the persons of humanity. For in no wise did the Father and the Holy Ghost participate in the incarnation of the Word of God except by Their good pleasure and will. We do say that the entire substance of the Divinity was united to the entire human nature, because God the Word lacked none of those things which He implanted in our nature when He formed us in the beginning; He assumed them all–a body and a rational, intellectual soul, together with the properties of both, for the animal which lacks one of these is not a man. He in His entirety assumed me in my entirety and was wholly united to the whole, so that He might bestow the grace of salvation upon the whole. For that which has not been assumed cannot be healed. (De Fide Orth. 3.6, emphasis added)
St. John concludes this chapter with a conciliar affirmation, with the likes of Athanasius and Cyril, declaring that in saying “the Divinity was united to the flesh,” does not imply that the nature of the Word suffered, since Divinity cannot suffer. Nor does his unity to flesh entail that when his human nature suffered, all persons suffered. Therefore, “when we say, ‘the nature of the Word,’ we mean the Word Himself. And the Word possesses the community of substance and the individuality of person” (De Fide Orth. 3.6).
Having established his hypostatic doctrine, St. John sees the need to remove the entanglements of language when it comes to how we speak about the incarnate Word of God, enabling a partitive discourse about the Son. Because Jesus Christ is the God-man, when speaking about him, we can say that he is God the Word, who existed before all things, and is timeless, eternal, simple, etc., differing from the Person of the Father through begetting and relation. And while the Word is united to flesh, he is still perfectly united to the Father. With that said, when speaking about the God-man, we can also say when the fullness of time came, “without leaving from the bosom of the Father,” the Word was conceived in the virgin Mary, by the Spirit, taking the form of man. “The very same Person exists before the ages he made flesh subsist for Himself from the holy Virgin” (De Fide Orth. 3.7). Though he was circumscribed in the flesh; he was uncircumscribed in his divinity. St. John concludes 3. 7, stating, “one must know” that while the natures of the Lord are “mutually immanent . . . [the] immanence comes from the divine nature.” It doesn’t compete with the human nature nor does the human nature affect the divine nature, for the divine nature “pervades all things and indwells as it wishes, but nothing pervades it.” In this way, the natures communicate mutually, while the divine nature remains impassible, unaffected by the body (De Fide Orth. 3.7).
In 3.7, St. John offers a helpful discussion on the distinction between union and incarnation. In the union, the Word assumes human flesh, not as having been an individual previously (i.e., self-subsistent) and then being taken on by the Word, having his self-subsistence in his Person. St. John, precisely notes, “This Person of the Word of God became Person to the flesh, and in this way ‘the Word was made flesh,’ and that without any change, and the flesh without transformation, was made Word, and God was made man. For the Word is God, and man is God by virtue of the hypostatic union” (De Fide Orth. 3.11). The point is to avoid any misunderstanding of Jesus as Person entailing that he is so without being the incarnate Person. He clarifies further, noting when we say ‘nature of the Word’ it does not indicate “the person alone, nor what is common to the Persons, but the common nature as considered wholly in the Person of the Word.” We would never say the nature of the Word suffered in the flesh, so we wouldn’t say the nature became flesh. However, Scripture tells us Christ suffered in the flesh. Again, the nature of the Word does not signify the Person; thus, we say that “to have become incarnate means to have been united to the flesh, and that the Word was made flesh means that without suffering change the very Person of the word became Person of the body” (De Fide Orth. 3.11).
While it may sound pedantic, the purpose is to be precise, making the proper distinctions within the hypostatic union so that what we have in the incarnation is not a third, confused and mixed thing. God applies to all the Persons, but we speak of the Godhead to indicate the divine nature; thus, we speak of the Father to indicate Person. Likewise, humanity indicates human nature; Peter, indicates person. And in the incarnation, one of the Persons of the Godhead (i.e., divine essence) takes on human substance (i.e., humanity). The Godhead is not shared, nor does it take on all of humanity. That is why Godhead is not referenced to a Person because the Godhead is not one of the Persons alone (De Fide Orth. 3.11).
Chapter 13 is a short section concerning the properties of the two natures. Basically stated, the Son has a “twofold set of natural properties belonging to the two natures.” This means, a will, operation, freedom, wisdom, knowledge, as is proper to each nature. Because the Son is fully God, he can feely act as God, performing miracles. And because the Son is fully man, he shares in the bodily suffering as man (De Fide Orth. 3.13). But to avoid any sort of competing dualism in the Son, because the Son is one Person, when he acts, his natures act “in concert” (De Fide Orth. 3.14). So, in the Son’s willing to act, whatever action he carries out will be attributed to the particular property, be it the divine or human. But the manner of willing to perform the action is one in communion.
Chapter 15 is where we see the distinction of the Eastern view of divine power or energies (Gk. energea). The West refers to it as operations [2]. In the incarnation, the Lord has divine energy and energy proper to human nature. There are differences in the energies; there is a capacity for energy, a product of energy, and an agent of energy. Energy/Operations “is the efficacious and substantial motion of the nature” (De Fide Orth. 3.15). Within our bodies we have all these energies/operations working together. The mind forms a thought, a simple energy or operation, and puts forth thoughts invisibly and independently, which are then articulated in speech. The forms of energy are different. First, the mind (the soul) considers the thought to be done, which the soul carries it out through the body, and the effect of the body (i.e., grasping, holding, clasping a thing) is the body’s configuration to what the soul wanted. The body becomes an instrument for the soul. And this applies the same in Christ. His power to work miracles is a divine energy; the work of his hands, his willing and saying, “Be made clean,” were a human energy. When he broke the bread with his hands to feed the five thousand, the breaking of bread was a human energy, while the multiplication of loaves was a divine energy.
St. John’s energy/operation distinctions purposes to show that the operations of soul and the body are invisible, thus one and the same, likewise, his divine operation is one and the same in the Person of Jesus. He writes, “just as we know that the natures are united and mutually immanent and still do not deny their difference, but even number them, while we know them to be indivisible; so also do we know the connection of the wills and operations, while we recognize their difference and number them without introducing any division” (De Fide Orth. 3.15). None of the operations/energies exceed their proper limits; rather, the Person of Christ is one, and is both divine and human, “who wills and acts in both one way and the other, that is to say, both in a divine and in a human fashion” (De Fide Orth. 3.15). And here, seeking to retain the proper oneness of the Lord Christ in his operations, albeit human and divine operations, while both being different, he writes, nevertheless “they are inseparable in the theandric operation” (De Fide Orth. 3.15).
Because “the Person of the Lord is one, his operation must also be one, then because of the one Person there must also be one substance” (De Fide Orth. 3.15), which also safeguards from one holding that a natural operation of God and a creature are the same. St. John’s utilization of the phrase “theandric” reasons to show that in the incarnation, the Son’s human operation was divine—deified, without excluding his divine operation; rather, both are found in the other (De Fide Orth. 3.19). The operations are distinct according to their properties but by reason of identity belong to the Person.
St. John concludes:
Thus, while the divinity worked the miracles but not separately from the flesh, the flesh did the humble things but not apart from the divinity. Thus, also, while remaining impassible, the divinity was joined to the suffering flesh and made the sufferings salutary. And the sacred mind was joined to the acting divinity of the Word and thought and knew the things which were being done.
Therefore, the divinity communicates its excellences to the flesh while remaining with no part of the sufferings of the flesh. . . .
Christ acts through each of His natures and in Him each nature acts in communion with the other. The Word does whatever pertains to the kingdom and the principality, which is what belongs to Him by reason of the authority and the power of His divinity, while the body in accordance with the intent of the Word united to it does what has also become proper to it. (De Fide Orth. 3.15)
Conclusion
It is readily apparent that St. John is meticulous
in his Trinitarian and Christological formulations. Philosophy is utilized as
the handmaiden to his theology, which enables him to make proper conceptual
distinctions so that his doctrinal judgments are clear and consistent. Nowhere
do we see him move beyond the bounds of theology, but rather he anchors his
arguments to the biblical text. St. John’s work is a rigorous and erudite piece
of theology. It is truly deserving of its regard as a standard text in the
Eastern tradition, and it is also a great source for Classical retrieval.
~ Romans 11:36 ~
[1] The English translation being cited is Saint John of Damascus and Frederic Hathaway Chase, Writings, trans. Frederic H. Chase Jr., vol. 37, The Fathers of the Church, a New Translation (Catholic University of America Press, 1958).
[2] The NPNF series uses “operations,” whereas the Fathers of the Church series uses “energies.”
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