Thank you for this. I was reminded of this post when I heard someone talking about the depiction of Jesus in iconography. What side, do you think would a Neo-Chacedonian take on the question of “some children see Him lily white…” (the Christmas song) in which it seems the universal aspect of Christ’s humanity is emphasized over his particularity as an historical first century Jew?
I think the consistent neo-Chalcedonian position would be that Christ's singularity is shown more lucidly in that he need not be one or the other, particular or universal. Rather he himself, in his very person, is the identity of his own particularity and universality, which is why he himself is the logic of creation, from beginning to end (alpha and omega). So the neo-Chalcedonian would challenge the very framework of the debate.
As I read: “A love song: My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. You, [Jesus], are the most handsome of the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty!” (Ps45:1-3)
Thanks for sharing brother, this is the perfect resource to share with those dipping their toes into this ancient stream. It’s comprehensive and concise at once.
You say, "Sergius Bulgakov... still bristled at the connotations of the trend toward hypostatic identity in the Christo-logic." In what ways would you say your understanding of Christology differ significantly or completely from Bulgakov's Christology?
I’ve come to think that depends on when I’m his career he’s writing. In the last half of Lamb of God, for instance, I don’t see great divergences between us. Insofar as Sophia becomes a prior ground of all that comes after, including the hypostatic union, and so remains yet another iteration of the metaphysics of cause and effect or of the limitation of act by power, then my critique would be the same as those I’d make of Neoplatonic Christianities. And yet Bulgakov seems to move beyond that, not only in LoG but also in Bride of the Lamb.
Thank you for responding! In the introductory section to The Lamb of God Bulgakov articulates his critique of enhypostasis or in-hypostatization based on his view that the hypostatic union is possible because of and manifests the natural fittingness of both natures to the divine hypostasis (the principle of divine-humanity). Are his criticisms and formulations here not an example of what you would critique as Neoplatonic Christianity?
Right—the first half of that book depends on some very specific historical work that I’d dispute (eg about the importance of Leontius of Byzantium). It also still restricts the logic of incarnation to cause and effect the way you indicate: because the natures were always naturally fitting, therefore the incarnation was “possible.” But then much depends on how you take that “possible”: is it classical and/or Kantian? If the former, then it’s inadequate to the actual event of the incarnation, which is not two natures pre-fitted finally being fitted together, but is the person of Christ’s very identity being one that generates the very natural difference he also manifests in himself. But if the latter—if, I mean, the Kantian “possible” that seeks merely the conditions for the given event/experience of incarnation, then the last half of the book makes more sense, which is just where I most agree with him. On this reading, Bulgakov will be showing not merely that the two natures were always compatible (in fact his antinomies seem to deny this!), but rather that the incarnation’s possibility is such that, upon reflection, we transform our very idea of what a nature and person is and how they relate. This is a different sense of “nature” than that featured in his antimony. Nature, in our apprehension of the incarnation’s depth and scope and logic, you might say, undergoes a kind of retroactive movement: what we thought most defined nature in thought—its delineation of this form or kind of being from all others—proves inadequate to the incarnation’s reality, and then this very realization, upon reflection, transfigures what we thought was thought’s own boundaries with respect to being. It is natural to us to be supernatural. No person, after all, is without her nature even as she is *not simply* her nature (or accidents for that matter). We see then that Christology determines exactly the mystery of personhood as the mystery of all things.
Thanks for this. I always love more Maximus! I have a two major questions:
1) In what way does the neo-Chalcedonian synthetic understanding of hypostatic union as the joining/distinction of nature and person differ from Aristotle's basic understanding of hylomorphism? As I was reading section 2 on Synthesis, it certainly felt like a retread of Aristotle's basic ontology. I don't mean that as a problem, but it certainly makes me question whether something truly novel is being offered here. While I do understand that the neo-Chalcedonians intended their position to offer a particular solution to a very Christian problem (and therefore one that Aristotle couldn't have imagined, much less solved), the basic ontology here doesn't feel that far from the Aristotelean wheelhouse. But perhaps I am missing something?
2) It seems to me that you—as well as Rahner and the neo-Chalcedonians—are having to craft some very subtle rhetoric to try and thread a delicate needle. On the one hand, you want to affirm the unity and divinity of Christ, while on the other, you want to preserve Christ's distinct and independent humanity. So we get the kind of dialectic you offer here: bouncing back and forth, trying to hold together what must also be kept apart.
But it seems to me that a panentheistic or "theology of participation" metaphysics would remove much of the difficulty here: to the extent that the cosmos is actually "contained in" God, then everything is in fact already divine, in some way or another. In that sense, the struggle to hold together Christ's humanity and divinity seems to be removed: Christ is simply the one who is in harmony with the divinity which is at his very center. Of course, this perspective certainly raises new concerns, since this proposal suggests that everyone and indeed everything is actually the Word Incarnate (at least potentially). But this strikes me as having not only good Scriptural grounds (Paul's "...will be all in all") but also suggesting universalism (which would seem a plus for you!) and, indeed, would also seem to offer great metaphysical support for the Ratzinger quote you open with.
I noticed below, however, that you are suspicious of neo-Platonic metaphysics, and I imagine you would class panentheistic metaphysics under this umbrella (as would I). I wonder if you could elaborate more on, what, exactly, you see as the problems with such an approach, as it seems to me a very productive direction to move in.
1) The neo-Chalcedonian view does indeed differ in context or origin of the problem. But it differs in at least three other ways as well. First, it denies explicitly the post-existence of the soul to body, often attributed to Aristotle. Rather, it must maintain the simultaneity of the Son's becoming his human nature and generating that same human nature "without the slightest interval," as Maximus puts it. This is also what makes this particular act uniquely revelatory of the logic of creation from nothing: it is an identity between uncreated and created nature that has no prior matter, specific or otherwise, and is indeed the very identity that generates the natural difference of what is simultaneously one. Surely this isn't Aristotle. Second, a neo-Chalcedonian "person" or hypostasis is not an Aristotelian first ousia. The latter is considered either under its "universal" aspect, as ousia, or under its "particular" aspect, as first. But in either case we're dealing with a dialectic of universal and particular that occurs explicitly within the logic of essence (ousia). Thus even if one contemplates first ousia in its particularity, one is still contemplating it first and foremost as an instance of the universal it exemplifies. But this is not the logic of person. It might be a logic of this or that, of ti on, but it isn't the logic of a person (of a personal name, of personal relations, of love, of a subject whose identity makes its "parts" identical only as subject, etc.). This is the significance of Maximus following Cyril, who denies that Christ names either a universal or an individual as such. A person is the subject of particularity no less than of universality. Surely this isn't Aristotle either. Third and finally, the "hypostatic whole" that a "person" is, marks its own metaphysical parts with its distinctively personal identity, such that even in death, understood as the separation of body and soul, the disembodied soul and the decomposed body forever retain genitive relations to their actual whole, the person: even in separation they remain the body and soul *of* this or that person, such that unless they were that person's parts, they would not ever have been, and yet the whole whose parts they are is also irreducible to either its parts or the sum of its parts. So while Maximus's hypostatic whole can seem like Aristotelian hylomorphism, neither the specific hylē nor the universal/particular morphē, nor their formal or numerical oneness, adequately capture the concrete whole whose self-subsistence is the very condition for their actuality as specific matter or form, or their relation as a formal or numerical one. This is an extension of the second point. But it's crucial because it makes Maximus's supposed hylomorphism compatible with his more "Platonic" moments, as when he argues that a disembodied soul can and must still retain its activities lest it be merely conceived as another body (Epp 6-7). In these and other ways, I can't see how neo-Chalcedonian "composite person" is just another iteration of Aristotelian hylomorphism.
2) I wouldn't say the neo-Chalcedonian wants to maintain "Christ's distinct and independent humanity." Its natural distinction from divinity, yes; but not its self-standing, independent existence (which would be Nestorian). In fact, Christ's humanity is not only distinct from his divinity, but its very distinction from divinity is only actual *as* simultaneously his person. His very person proves to be no less the condition of the natural difference between his own natures as the natures' mutual difference is the condition of his person being their union. This isn't just a captious point. Such a simultaneity and reciprocity (or, as Maximus likes it, perichoresis) is precisely one way this whole approach differs from Neoplatonic participation. Iamblichus, for instance, is quite clear that the theurgic act, while participating in the divine (higher) activities, also does precisely nothing *to* the divine nature(s)/gods themselves. The asymmetry is constitutive of participation: as Proclus says, if cause and effect were identical, there'd be no procession at all; if they were equivocal, there'd be no causation; therefore they must be at once like and unlike one another in the very constitution of their relation. And one crucial way they're unlike is that it's not true to say that the whole of the cause is in the whole effect (although the reverse is true). And yet this is precisely what we say about the Incarnation and ultimately about our own deification (cp. Amb 41.5): precisely because the actual relation between Christ's divinity (cause) and humanity (effect) is the selfsame subject/person, Christ himself, his two natures utterly interpenetrate each other in reality--they are, not in principle but in fact, "whole in whole, wholly," as Maximus often says. This is not Neoplatonic participation as I know it, at least. Similarly, no account of participation of which I'm aware can say: when the effect is affected, so is the cause. But when Christ is crucified, so is God. The divine nature suffers? Well no. But here we have two options: either the cause is really just the totality of its concept as divinity, such that what happens to Christ's humanity doesn't happen to his divinity--but then neither does it ever happen to God himself; or, more paradoxically but necessarily, in my view, Christ's divinity does not suffer, yet when *he* does, God does--this would mean that the actual life/being of God is not restricted to our idea of his divine nature (that is, this option actually permits the logic of person to play a role as fundamental as any logic of essence/nature--even and especially in God). Neoplatonic participation works only so long as you stipulate that the natural asymmetry upon which it is based means that nothing proper to effect redounds to cause--that is, as long as we're basically proscribing in principle that God can be a human being. But the Christian must go beyond this: God's actual oneness, you might say, isn't merely the presupposition of the claim that the Three are one God; God's oneness is just as much the eternal and unfailing achievement of the Three's actual life/being. All to say: the very logic of the Trinity is, in Christ, "made vertical," as it were, and precisely in a way and form that no version of Neoplatonic metaphysics can abide. Notice: that doesn't mean the participation is simply wrong. But it does mean it cannot be the whole logic of the God-world relation. That relation is Reason incarnate, the person of Christ, the Incarnation of God.
Thanks for your response. I'm not sure I phrased my questions as clearly as I should have. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that the neo-Chalcedonian position is literally identical to Aristotle's, nor was I suggesting we ought to adopt any pagan Neoplatonist position wholesale (it would not be Iamblichus, but Pseudo-Dionysius or Eriguena who I'd want to draw from, in any event!).
That said, I continue to feel like there is something in your original article that leaves me uneasy, though I have (clearly) struggled to articulate it well. (Part of the reason for that is that I have struggled to articulate it to myself.) So let me approach the issue a little differently.
First though, let me contextualize my questions a bit too. I had a history professor in undergrad who said that there were, broadly speaking, two kinds of historians: "parachutists" and "truffle-diggers". The former were focused on big-picture questions, the latter on detailed questions. He was adamant that the historical profession needed both (and of course some folks in between).
My own approach to theology and philosophy is definitely of the parachutist type: I always want to boil down metaphysical questions to figure out what the principle issues are, and also to ask how we can operationalize our theories. It might be worth adding that I am a priest and not an academic (though I have dabbled in the academy), so I am also always wondering "how would this idea impact the faith of the folks in the pew?" So, my questions below are offered in that spirit.
It seems to me that your proposal rests on specific interpretations of two terms: "person" and "ousia" (as well it should!).
As for the first, if I am reading you correctly, "person" needs to do a lot of work: first, it must be able to refer to the "persons" of the Trinity, second, it needs to refer to regular-old human beings, and third, it needs to refer to Jesus, the Word Incarnate, the divine human. Now, of course, in the above, you focus specifically on the third task. But surely, if we are using the same term to refer to each “thing”, then there must be some unifying definition of the word we intend, even if the precise way that word is employed in each case differs in important ways, and even if we indeed use it only analogically in some cases. Analogical use is different from the “normal” one, but it can only be so different before it becomes an entirely different term altogether. And indeed, I think you actually address the need for “person” to refer to all three when you say: “Neo-Chalcedonians insisted on the strict univocity of at least one term common to both theology and economy—namely the Son’s very “person.”, and when you say “The person of Christ unites three identities at once: [1] natural identity with Father and Spirit (divinity); [2] natural identity with human beings (humanity); [3] hypostatic identity with himself as and in his two natures” in the preceding paragraph.
In short, I am wondering whether one specific metaphysical term can actually bear all this weight. I should say that though my tone here is skeptical, it is not meant to be adversarial. If we *could* deploy "person" in this way, that would seem to me a good thing, especially as I think that would make language around theosis clearer and the spiritual work of theosis more approachable—very good things indeed (at least from my perspective).
Now, it's certainly true that the Christian tradition, more or less from Nicea forward, has used the term person in this broad and crucial way. But here's where Chalcedon's approach comes into sharp relief: it seems to me that the formula at Chalcedon was *intentionally* vague: the hypostatic union was both a unity but also had real distinction, but they did not offer an in-depth metaphysical system around this claim.
In other words, they argued *that* Jesus was both God and human, and set some guidelines around what were or were not acceptable ways to think about that, but they didn't say *how* that was so in precise or technical terms. If I understand the neo-Chalcedonian project (and your continuation of it), the goal is to provide precisely that metaphysical specificity. But, again, I do worry whether "person" can bear all that weight.
This concern is all brought to a head in the way in which you seem to want to understand the Logos as always already "enhumanized" from eternity, so to speak, so as to prevent any concern about how the Logos might otherwise have come to interact with a (creaturely) human Jesus. I am thinking especially of your claim that “It’s that he himself—in himself—made real the very difference between his own humanity and his own divinity.” This does feel like a grand effort to both synthesize and sublate the monophysite and Nestorian wings of Christology (definitely my words and not your words; this is me in my radical "parachuting" mode). But I think it might be a bridge too far (if I can be allowed to hastily shift from a weight to a distance metaphor).
Now, as for "ousia": here my questions are aimed even more at the tradition than at your specific proposal. I have long felt that the formula of one hypostasis uniting two natures (or ousias), one human and one divine, could only be affirmed in a vague or analogical sense, since, properly speaking, there is no such thing as a divine ousia at all.
God is not defined by any form whatsoever; God must be understood as the formless form of all forms (or if you prefer, the ousia-less ousia of all ousias). God is beyond ousia, before ousia, the condition of possibility of any ousia. So, in a strict sense, I believe it is imprecise to say that in Jesus, a/the human ousia is united with the divine ousia.
Of course, to the extent that we are speaking analogically (as Aquinas would insist we must), then I am fine with that—but only and always under that condition. As with "person", though, to the extent that we want to form a very technically specific metaphysics of the hypostatic union, I worry that this will require an overly determined idea of the divine ousia, and we will lose that understanding of the fundamental limits of any possible metaphysics. This is, in large part, why I recommended a (broadly) Neoplatonist framework, because the apophatic caution inherent to that approach, I think, can guard us from an overly familiar attitude towards the divine.
And to bring this back more specifically to Christology: to the the extent that a "ousia-less" metaphysics privileges the infinitude and ineffability of God over any idea or category of the divine as thought by humans, it also reminds us of the need for a radically asymmetrical relation between God and humanity/cosmos. I take it that this is an approach that you are actively trying to overcome in your above proposal. For example, I think that Rahner’s Rule, “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity”, may be an elision between our knowledge of God and God as God is in Godself—and if I am right in this, then this, too, troubles me.
All of that said, I want to reiterate that I don’t think I’m opposed to what I think your goal is in all of this (assuming I have properly discerned that—which I might not have!). To the extent that your effort here is aimed at making the hypostatic union relevant to Christians as an immediately available spiritual reality here and now, I applaud you and can only offer my encouragement. I’m just not sure the metaphysical “guts” of your specific proposal can get us there.
Thanks again for the original piece and your comment. Though we disagree on some issues, I always love good theological discourse! May God guide us both to the truth, whatever it may be.
Thanks for these thoughtful replies, Scott. I don't take any of this as antagonism. Iron sharpens iron, etc. I'll try to be very concise, since our comment box is constricting!
1. Person. I don't think I have the anxiety or skepticism here that you do. At first blush, I rather expect "person" to do quite a lot. After all, the two most distinctive claims of Christian faith depend on just that: Trinity and Incarnation. This is why I think it's true to claim, as several have, that the development of Christian theology necessitated the development of a new, profound, and often paradoxical sense of "person." Small wonder, though: everything critical claim in Christian theology depended on just that.
Now, as you note, "person" was used in a pretty elastic way (though not from Nicaea on, since Nicaea's anathemas still equate hypostasis and ousia, and the Creed makes no mention of person at all). But the elasticity flagged a need for development as much as it did a sign of mere formal capaciousness. I'll return to the "formal" point in a bit. First, though, a word on Chalcedon. I agree that Chalcedon itself set up some guidelines and intimations, as it were, in that it argued *that* Jesus was divine and human without explaining *how* that's so. But it did a bit more than that. The guidelines are not merely formal. They bear on the promised content in need of development: in whatever sense Christ is two, it is with respect to ousia/physis; in whatever sense he is one, it is with respect to hypostasis/prosopon. These are not mere suggestions that we should somehow say "one" and "two" of Christ. They rather point the way forward without walking the way themselves: identity is found in person, duality in nature/essence. Yes, neo-Chalcedonians had then to develop what that could mean or look like. But to interpret Chalcedon in the manner that many post-liberal theologians once did, i.e. as akin to "grammatical rules," is not only questionable historically, but is itself a furtive speculative claim about Christology--one, in fact, that you go on to make in your remarks on apophaticism.
I do admit, however, that if the core issue in all this merely had to do with whether the *concept* of person could bear all this metaphysical weight, then we would perhaps be on a fool's errand. But the Son of God is no mere concept (indeed no person is). And yet persons are knowable not only as objects but as subjects, and as subjects who know themselves as knowers and objects known, all united in self-knowing (or self-consciousness or "Spirit"). That last remark does land us in later, more explicit developments (in certain German idealists, say). But the seeds of those developments lie here already. Rahner was again correct: Chalcedon is more a "beginning" than an "end."
In brief: it is no mere concept of person but the person of Jesus Christ who is himself the univocal reality in all three registers you mention: Trinity, Incarnation, and "regular human beings," with the understanding that the latter is either a sheer abstraction or else it is the second itself. For Christ is the true and total Adam, and we are his Body who has his mind. This person, and not some abstraction about "person" as such, is what bears the weight--as if bearing a cosmic Cross, if you'll indulge the expression. Anything less, in my view, implicitly denies that the Son of God is fully divine, or fully human, or that our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Col 3.1-3).
2. Ousia. It's certainly true that the divine essence is traditionally thought of as super-essential or above all notions of ousia/physis. But you know well, I imagine, that this isn't so straightforward: not only in Christology, but in Trinitarian theology (e.g. is the Son "of the same ousia" as the Father?), beatific vision (e.g. Do we see the "essence" of God?), and doctrines of creation (e.g. Isn't the main difference between God and world that the latter comes to be from nothing, and thus is essentially/in ousia different from God?)--in all these areas the "super-essential" essence of God appears rather determinate, at least negatively. And that's a second point: to claim that God's essence is "above essence," or that God has no essence, or that God's essence exceeds all notions of essence, is still determinative of that selfsame essence precisely because it *distinguishes* that super-essence from any other, non-super-essence (i.e. all creation). This too is why the invocation of Neoplatonic apophaticism fails to address the real issues, all of which concern the positive and negative determinations of God himself. After all, both Dionysius and Maximus explicitly deny that the claim of the Incarnation amounts to the same sort of claim as saying that God is cause of human beings. No: Christ *is* a human being, not just (as divine) the cause of human beings (cf. Amb 5 on Dionysius's Ep 4). If the logic of Incarnation thus differs from that of the "vertical" or processional logic of cause-effect, then either this Incarnation-logic is intelligible or it isn't. If it unintelligible, then neither can we state that or how it differs from Neoplatonic participation at all (Dionysius and Maximus sent us into nowhere!). It would *mean* nothing at all to distinguish the Incarnation from any instance of participation. Worse, it would likely amount to an absurdity--which is exactly what non-Christian Neoplatonists thought. If the distinct Incarnation-logic is intelligible, though, then whatever else we say about it, it won't be a mere restatement of Iamblichus or Proclus etc.
In brief: I think the appeal to apophaticism masquerades as a modest epistemic point, but that, when confronted with the actual content of Christology, turns out to be much more speculatively ambitious: it amounts to a denial that God can reveal himself by his own Incarnation, i.e. that the latter opens his very person in a knowledge that is neither merely conceptual nor merely a lack of conceptuality. Your rejection of Rahner's Rule wouldn't make sense without such determinate content: why reject his copula unless you know that it cannot be? And how would we know that it cannot be unless we've equated the limits of our abstraction with the absolute limits of what God can accomplishment in his Incarnation? How do we know what we can know with the "mind of Christ" within us by just considering the finite limits of our merely human minds? The claim that otherwise "our knowledge of God" can't *ever*, in any fashion, be but an "elision" between the finite limits of our minds and God as God is "in Godself"--this is itself an absolute claim to know that our minds can never become infinite or adequate to what God is in itself, along with the converse that God's infinity cannot achieve his own finitization and the identity of the two (or as Maximus put it: that in the Incarnation God "became a symbol of himself"--the self he himself is, is both sides of the mediation). If we don't know what God is like in Godself, then how do we know that what God is like in Godself can't itself become its own mediation to us, its self-knowledge as our knowing of itself? Is this not the inevitable issue of taking seriously that the Incarnation reveals not just what God isn't, but what God is--not just the great non-ousia but the non-ousia *as* the Three persons in God?
I think, then, that by whatever logic of ousia (positive or negative) that we proscribe God's ability to reveal Godself fully in and to us, by that same logic we proceed as if God's intelligibility were determined in a merely negative and thus still finite fashion. That is, we ignore the fact that the negation in "God's essence is above essence" is *manifest* precisely as the one God's being and revealing himself, in Christ, as Three.
Thanks again for thoughtful responses. I will also endeavor to keep my comments as concise as possible (though I have failed before!)
As for Christ being the reality of person and not just a concept: certainly this is true, but here is where I will call for theology to use philosophy carefully. Now, philosophical rigor can take many forms, but for me, it comes back to a careful evaluation of our own phenomenological processes and limits. My knowledge of things is built from my senses (please interpret this very broadly—I don't want to get into detailed lists of various sensory inputs and impressions a la Kant here) and my conceptual cognition (again, interpret this broadly).
While Christ doubtlessly is a person and no mere concept of a person, when I talk about Christ, I can only be talking about *my concept* of Christ as a person. To deny this, I think, would be to say something like "I can know things beyond the limits of what I can know". And I take this to be a contradiction of reason. I follow Levinas in insisting that we must be very mindful of the phenomenological limits of phenomenology. All kinds of mischief results otherwise (and Hegel's not even the worst of it!)
Now, perhaps we could say that we know Christ through direct participation in Christ. But surely if this is so, I wonder how much help metaphysical Christology will be to discover the reality! The blessed Magdalene was not reading her Plato at the tomb, after all. May we all have something of her vision. Perhaps to know the Incarnate One is to experience reality beyond the limits of knowing. One might even say to enter a cloud of unknowing. But if this is so, you and I will both need to put down our books.
The same point applies to our discussion of ousia. I do not think it is correct to say that a negative statement about God is somehow as determinate as a positive one. Indeed, I would insist that just the opposite is true, because a negative statement about God is much more about my lack of knowledge than it is about any quality about God. To say "God is beyond my knowing" is equivalent to saying "My knowing doesn't reach God." But, again, this kind of epistemic relation is implied in *any* statement about knowledge; I deny the possibility that we can say anything objective about anything without implicating our own process of knowing the thing described. (In that regard, I am a bit of an unwashed postmodernist.)
In other words, apophatic theology doesn't really tell us anything about God per se; it tells us about our own limits.
In short, then, I again worry that your proposal takes philosophical resources but deploys them in ways that those resources can't quite bear. If I may be so bold, I find that this kind of overzealous deployment of philosophy is common in the most interesting theology. We humans, our reach often exceeds our grasp, etc. etc.
Of course, it may just be the case that our basic philosophical premises and intuitions are different. Wouldn't be the first time this happened! Thanks again for the discussion.
I want to focus on one passage from your reply because I think it clarifies our disagreement. You wrote that when you talk about Christ "I can only be talking about *my concept* of Christ as a person. To deny this, I think, would be to say something like 'I can know things beyond the limits of what I can know.' And I take this to be a contradiction of reason."
It isn't a contradiction of reason unless you presuppose that the abstract concept of our own abstraction is itself the limit for reason (as Kant does). But it could just as well be the case--and this is my view--that the perfection of reason itself assumes the form of the person of Christ, both as object and as subject (and as interpersonal, super-natural knowledge, of which faith is the first dawning). In other words, the philosophical rigor you have privileged includes an absolute claim about reason itself, which renders it not merely phenomenological but properly speculative. This is what I meant before about a kind of speculative immodesty under the guise of the epistemically modest (on which see Gillian Rose, *The Broken Middle*, esp. Ch.1). Again, when you say that speaking of a person "can only" refer to "my concept" of Christ as a person, you are presupposing a rather definite and absolute perspective on how language, concepts, and persons must relate, and indeed what they are in themselves. But even phenomenologically, I think your view lacks the rigor you recommend: while I always *make use* of concepts when I speak of an actual person, I *never* intend merely the concepts I use. Not at all: I intend the very reality indicated by the proper name of that actual person. On this I recommend Robert Spaemann's *Persons: The Difference Between 'Someone' and 'Something'*, and/or Charles de Winckelmans, *The World of Persons*. Their work as well as others contradicts the very thing you here presuppose.
And so I think it's clear that the idea of "phenomenological limits of phenomenology" is a contradiction in terms: one cannot have a phenomenology *of* phenomenology. What you really have is a speculative account of phenomenology, which you equate with phenomenology itself. That's either an equivocation or a self-contradiction. Either way it isn't sufficiently self-aware, in my view.
As to ousia. You say that you "deny the possibility that we can say anything objective about anything without implicating our own process of knowing the thing described." Either such a denial is a mere formal truth or else it hides more determinate content. If it were the former, it'd become the simple observation that knowing any object simultaneously includes knowing the knowing of that object. Sure. Only a naive realist denies this. The more interesting question is whether a subject who knows herself reveals something more--to wit, that knowing oneself as object in no way excludes knowing as subject, and indeed knowing oneself as subject and object in a single act. Hence it says little to note that a moment of objectification implies a correlative moment of subjectivity. The crucial thing is what self-consciousness is, since it includes both at once. If you mean something more determinate here, then it would appear to be yet another version of speculative immodesty in guise of epistemic modesty: for you would be presupposing a total grasp of what it means to be "object" and what it means to be "subject" precisely in order to make each the limit for the other vis-a-vis an Other, i.e. God. But that's a full-blown speculative account--a total view--and not merely a phenomenological one. This is always the postmodern problem (again see Rose, *The Dialectic of Nihilism*).
On the one hand, you worry that I deploy philosophical resources "in ways that those resources can't quite bear," and yet you invoked Neoplatonic metaphysics to affirm precisely what historical Neoplatonists denied: the Incarnation of God. Nor did they treat their metaphysics as a simple therapy to chasten their spirit's ambition to know the whole. That's an interpretation that, in my view, actually deploys those resources in a way they cannot bear--indeed in a way that those very resources opposed fairly consistently and over many centuries.
On the other hand, your real worry seems to be less philosophical or historical, something more like a practical or pastoral concern: that the "overzealous deployment of philosophy" is a sign that one is reaching for what "exceeds our grasp." Here again, though, the modest counsel covers its own immodest totalizing: it presumes to know as a matter of course, and for all time, that what exceeds our grasp can neither condescend to be grasped, nor elevate the grasping mind, so as to be grasped even as it remains what it was when it was beyond our grasp. The pastoral counsel turns out, in other words, to depend on the bold, indeed excessive ambition to deny the Incarnation of God always and in all things, even as this is just what the NT regards as the very end of creation itself (Col 3.11). This Hegel rightly exposed as a "striving against the Spirit." Who are we, after all, to tell God what his limits are in his desire to manifest himself completely and to all? How do you know when and where and why this can or cannot ever occur? Why assume that either your theory or experience of finite limits constitute limits for the Absolute's self-disclosure? Here we see that one cannot but interpret one's own phenomenological limits, at least if one insists on doing theology too. Best to admit that openly, I'd say.
Jordan, thanks again for your response. The thread we are forming here would suggest that we are the two biggest nerds on the internet. Excellent company to keep, I would say!
Let's start right at the top. In response to my claim about the limits of reasoning, you say "It isn't a contradiction of reason unless you presuppose that the abstract concept of our own abstraction is itself the limit for reason (as Kant does). But it could just as well be the case--and this is my view--that the perfection of reason itself assumes the form of the person of Christ, both as object and as subject (and as interpersonal, super-natural knowledge, of which faith is the first dawning)."
Now, I think this idea is really interesting, but I have to first disagree with one part of this and then point to two concerns it raises for me:
Firstly, and most importantly, my comment about the limits of reasoning is not abstract, it is an experiential reference drawn from phenomenology as such (that is to say, of my own phenomenological reflection on my phenomenality). This is an important point, because I think you repeatedly elide different modes of thought in your comment above, moving between a sort of absolute metaphysical frame and a phenomenological one, but without showing how we can make that move. I take it as a great gain of postmodern thought (about which more later) that philosophy now (at least should) require us to explain how our claims refer to something beyond phenomena as such. I'm not sure you do that here.
To wit: I am actually very sympathetic to the idea that in our own action of reasoning, we are the Logos at work, so to speak. (Indeed, I think we might agree that such a position is probably required by orthodox Christian doctrine.) But I don't see how that helps your original case, at least not without some more maneuvering. After all, we have been discussing the metaphysics of the hypostatic union. This is an idea (as before, interpret this term broadly); it's a speculative metaphysical reference. Now, if you want to suggest that this idea is actually also a reference to, and indeed identical to, the very field or event of my own reasoning, that's a very interesting idea. But that's a very different claim than what is advanced in your original post, and indeed it relies on a completely different mode of reasoning.
Now, I do see a connection between the two claims in the Ratzinger quote you opened with. But I don't really see that claim come together in the argument made in the piece itself. And it's worth noting just how big a claim it is, and how much work one would need to do to really substantiate it.
This brings me to my last concern: even if it is true that my own exercise of reason just is the Incarnate One at work (and, actually, as suggested above, I think this is right), it still remains the case that when I talk about Jesus, I must have a concept of Jesus, which I have gained from my worshipping community and Scripture, etc. etc. There is no shortcut from a metaphysical claim about the identity of any thinker and Christ to saying that that thinker has the correct doctrinal view of Christ. I imagine you would agree that, e.g. when Plato reasoned, that too was a participation in the Logos. But Plato certainly didn't have a doctrine of the Incarnation as a concept in his mind. So, if your goal is to justify a given concept of the Incarnation, it won't do to simply suggest that in having a concept you are participating in the Logos—even if that is perfectly true. In other words, experiencing (or indeed being) something is not the same as having a perfectly determined metaphysical concept of that thing.
I am not sure what you mean when you say one can't have a phenomenology of phenomenology. One can (and I would argue, must) have a phenomenology of anything one can think about. Phenomenology is just the study of what appears in and as consciousness, without reference to anything else. I don't think there is any contradiction here. Again, I wonder if there is an elision between some absolute frame of reference, within which the idea of phenomenology can be placed, and the actual experiential practice of phenomenology.
I'm also not sure what to make of your claim that a Neoplatonist can't affirm the Incarnation. While it's true that pagan Neoplatonists like Plotinus were hostile to the idea, I am sure you would agree that there is a group of people we could refer to as "Christian Neoplatonists", such as Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena (as well as Nyssa, at least at times, and even Augustine). This strand of thought has also continued up to the present day. D.B. Hart has, for example, sometimes referred to his mode of Christianity as "Neoplatonic" (of course, he's described it in other ways too, but this is no problem).
When I speak about a Neoplatonist theology, it's a Christian Neoplatonism I am referring to. I don't see how anyone could claim that such a thing is somehow impossible, even if they don't agree with it.
Lastly, about postmodernism. You argue that my caution for epistemic humility is actually a kind of totalizing view in disguise. I have two comments here:
First, I have made a specific claim that I don't think humans can have anything like complete knowledge of God. I have pointed to both phenomenological reasons for this, as well as more metaphysical and doctrinal ones (such as God's infinitude). Now, what I have not said is that I am 100% sure that I must be right. I have made a claim—a very common one in philosophical theology!—and am happy to have an interlocutor respond.
But what I find odd is that your response is not actually a claim to know that I am wrong, but rather an insistence that I can't possibly be 100% sure about my own claim. Which is both true but also, I think, irrelevant. You go on to suggest that perhaps human reasoning will achieve what I think it can't. True enough. But what I am asking you for is to justify the claim you have made here and now, rather than to say that someone (else?) might do so in the future. Again, I think there is an elision here between different modes of discourse. I offer a claim grounded in experience and present knowledge; your response doesn't challenge either but then shifts to an absolute mode of reference (about reason as such) and then suggests that some new experience might increase our stock of knowledge. Again, I think there are good structural reasons to deny this (I don't know what it would mean to have complete knowledge of the infinite—my own view of theosis is an infinite ascent into the infinite, a process of entering the divine that is never "complete") but this is beside the point I originally made anyway.
And this brings us to the topic of postmodernism. While I do think there are some thinkers who engage in the kind of inverted totalizing anti-totalizing reasoning you critique here (like Nietzsche and probably Heidegger), that isn't the only mode of postmodern thinking. I actually wrote about this; if you are interested, you can find part 1 of 2 here: https://phenomenologyeastandwest.substack.com/p/postmodernism-vs-postmodernism-part
All of that said, as we have both suggested now, it may just be that we are approaching this problem from positions different enough that we won't see eye to eye. And of course, that's OK. After all, we both agree that our ideas won't save us. Soli Deo gloria.
Thanks for this post. I very much appreciate your insight into neo-Chalcedonianism and defense of what may now be the only manner of addressing contemporary theologians tendency to essentially lose the capacity to understand a difference between the created and uncreated leading to an eternally enfleshed Christ and man being essentially undifferentiated from God other than that we have yet to actualize our innate potency. It seems to me this is where the enhypostation of the Logos becomes in my mind crucial as it allows for union and difference which after all was much of Maximus’ point I think and if we lose that we seem to have a material God descending to earth from some celestial order of beings. Does that make sense?
I agree, in a sense: there is an essential moment of reflection where we must see that Christ wasn't eternally enfleshed in the sense that the event of the Incarnation wasn't merely a repetition of some past state of condition. This is much of the gist of Gregory of Nyssa's Anti-Apollinarian writings. And yet I confess a degree of dissatisfaction here. If, after all, the flesh of Christ is deified so that flesh, which is by nature temporal, still becomes "without origin" and eternal--as did Melchizedek's--then I think we must add a further moment to our reflection wherein the content of eternity includes in itself the consequences of deified, created things (like flesh). So while it's true that we cannot accept a "prior" time in which Christ is enfleshed, it's also true that we can't merely accept a "prior" time in which Christ isn't, lest we unwittingly deny the actual eternity of Christ's flesh by appealing to its natural temporality. We must, I mean, give total weight to the paradox disclosed here: Christ himself, who is divine and human and so incorporeal and corporeal, is the very same "before and after" the event of the union. Within time, it's true to say that there was a time when Christ was "not yet" enfleshed. But the enfleshment itself is the unity--nay, the identity--of time itself with eternity itself, which are natural characteristics of his selfsame person. Much more to say, but this point should reframe the discussion many are having elsewhere, I think.
I think this is where it’s important to clearly distinguish economy from theology or the standpoint of eternity and the standpoint we occupy now. If not then at least acknowledge the paradoxes created by these different standpoints. I’m perfectly fine with paradox, but alas many seem to wish to see above it.
I would say rather that man is by nature generated from and toward Christ, who is already in all. Thus man becomes by grace what God is by nature, which is at once an ecstatic and original “potency” in the form of Christ in you (Col 1.27). If one sees then, and if one wishes to say “by nature” in the less precise sense of “whatever we are from our origination,” then yes, we are by nature and by grace to become what God is by nature and, as human, also by grace. This way of articulating things preserves the phenomenological and formal point that we are oriented from creation toward deification, but it has the added merit of preserving the irrepressibly personal and existential unfolding of that orientation in Christ’s own ecstatic love for us. If we simply say that we are human and divine by nature, we lose the sense of the latter and needlessly expose ourselves to superfluous vulnerabilities and misunderstandings. We also obscure why the spiritual life actually matters.
Thank you for this. I was reminded of this post when I heard someone talking about the depiction of Jesus in iconography. What side, do you think would a Neo-Chacedonian take on the question of “some children see Him lily white…” (the Christmas song) in which it seems the universal aspect of Christ’s humanity is emphasized over his particularity as an historical first century Jew?
I think the consistent neo-Chalcedonian position would be that Christ's singularity is shown more lucidly in that he need not be one or the other, particular or universal. Rather he himself, in his very person, is the identity of his own particularity and universality, which is why he himself is the logic of creation, from beginning to end (alpha and omega). So the neo-Chalcedonian would challenge the very framework of the debate.
So would he like the song? 😁
He'd love it more than anyone else could!
Properly applied apophatics does seem to produce the most satisfying kataphatics! 🎄
As I read: “A love song: My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. You, [Jesus], are the most handsome of the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty!” (Ps45:1-3)
Thanks for sharing brother, this is the perfect resource to share with those dipping their toes into this ancient stream. It’s comprehensive and concise at once.
You say, "Sergius Bulgakov... still bristled at the connotations of the trend toward hypostatic identity in the Christo-logic." In what ways would you say your understanding of Christology differ significantly or completely from Bulgakov's Christology?
I’ve come to think that depends on when I’m his career he’s writing. In the last half of Lamb of God, for instance, I don’t see great divergences between us. Insofar as Sophia becomes a prior ground of all that comes after, including the hypostatic union, and so remains yet another iteration of the metaphysics of cause and effect or of the limitation of act by power, then my critique would be the same as those I’d make of Neoplatonic Christianities. And yet Bulgakov seems to move beyond that, not only in LoG but also in Bride of the Lamb.
Thank you for responding! In the introductory section to The Lamb of God Bulgakov articulates his critique of enhypostasis or in-hypostatization based on his view that the hypostatic union is possible because of and manifests the natural fittingness of both natures to the divine hypostasis (the principle of divine-humanity). Are his criticisms and formulations here not an example of what you would critique as Neoplatonic Christianity?
Right—the first half of that book depends on some very specific historical work that I’d dispute (eg about the importance of Leontius of Byzantium). It also still restricts the logic of incarnation to cause and effect the way you indicate: because the natures were always naturally fitting, therefore the incarnation was “possible.” But then much depends on how you take that “possible”: is it classical and/or Kantian? If the former, then it’s inadequate to the actual event of the incarnation, which is not two natures pre-fitted finally being fitted together, but is the person of Christ’s very identity being one that generates the very natural difference he also manifests in himself. But if the latter—if, I mean, the Kantian “possible” that seeks merely the conditions for the given event/experience of incarnation, then the last half of the book makes more sense, which is just where I most agree with him. On this reading, Bulgakov will be showing not merely that the two natures were always compatible (in fact his antinomies seem to deny this!), but rather that the incarnation’s possibility is such that, upon reflection, we transform our very idea of what a nature and person is and how they relate. This is a different sense of “nature” than that featured in his antimony. Nature, in our apprehension of the incarnation’s depth and scope and logic, you might say, undergoes a kind of retroactive movement: what we thought most defined nature in thought—its delineation of this form or kind of being from all others—proves inadequate to the incarnation’s reality, and then this very realization, upon reflection, transfigures what we thought was thought’s own boundaries with respect to being. It is natural to us to be supernatural. No person, after all, is without her nature even as she is *not simply* her nature (or accidents for that matter). We see then that Christology determines exactly the mystery of personhood as the mystery of all things.
Thanks for this. I always love more Maximus! I have a two major questions:
1) In what way does the neo-Chalcedonian synthetic understanding of hypostatic union as the joining/distinction of nature and person differ from Aristotle's basic understanding of hylomorphism? As I was reading section 2 on Synthesis, it certainly felt like a retread of Aristotle's basic ontology. I don't mean that as a problem, but it certainly makes me question whether something truly novel is being offered here. While I do understand that the neo-Chalcedonians intended their position to offer a particular solution to a very Christian problem (and therefore one that Aristotle couldn't have imagined, much less solved), the basic ontology here doesn't feel that far from the Aristotelean wheelhouse. But perhaps I am missing something?
2) It seems to me that you—as well as Rahner and the neo-Chalcedonians—are having to craft some very subtle rhetoric to try and thread a delicate needle. On the one hand, you want to affirm the unity and divinity of Christ, while on the other, you want to preserve Christ's distinct and independent humanity. So we get the kind of dialectic you offer here: bouncing back and forth, trying to hold together what must also be kept apart.
But it seems to me that a panentheistic or "theology of participation" metaphysics would remove much of the difficulty here: to the extent that the cosmos is actually "contained in" God, then everything is in fact already divine, in some way or another. In that sense, the struggle to hold together Christ's humanity and divinity seems to be removed: Christ is simply the one who is in harmony with the divinity which is at his very center. Of course, this perspective certainly raises new concerns, since this proposal suggests that everyone and indeed everything is actually the Word Incarnate (at least potentially). But this strikes me as having not only good Scriptural grounds (Paul's "...will be all in all") but also suggesting universalism (which would seem a plus for you!) and, indeed, would also seem to offer great metaphysical support for the Ratzinger quote you open with.
I noticed below, however, that you are suspicious of neo-Platonic metaphysics, and I imagine you would class panentheistic metaphysics under this umbrella (as would I). I wonder if you could elaborate more on, what, exactly, you see as the problems with such an approach, as it seems to me a very productive direction to move in.
Hey Scott--
Thanks for the questions. I'll take them in turn:
1) The neo-Chalcedonian view does indeed differ in context or origin of the problem. But it differs in at least three other ways as well. First, it denies explicitly the post-existence of the soul to body, often attributed to Aristotle. Rather, it must maintain the simultaneity of the Son's becoming his human nature and generating that same human nature "without the slightest interval," as Maximus puts it. This is also what makes this particular act uniquely revelatory of the logic of creation from nothing: it is an identity between uncreated and created nature that has no prior matter, specific or otherwise, and is indeed the very identity that generates the natural difference of what is simultaneously one. Surely this isn't Aristotle. Second, a neo-Chalcedonian "person" or hypostasis is not an Aristotelian first ousia. The latter is considered either under its "universal" aspect, as ousia, or under its "particular" aspect, as first. But in either case we're dealing with a dialectic of universal and particular that occurs explicitly within the logic of essence (ousia). Thus even if one contemplates first ousia in its particularity, one is still contemplating it first and foremost as an instance of the universal it exemplifies. But this is not the logic of person. It might be a logic of this or that, of ti on, but it isn't the logic of a person (of a personal name, of personal relations, of love, of a subject whose identity makes its "parts" identical only as subject, etc.). This is the significance of Maximus following Cyril, who denies that Christ names either a universal or an individual as such. A person is the subject of particularity no less than of universality. Surely this isn't Aristotle either. Third and finally, the "hypostatic whole" that a "person" is, marks its own metaphysical parts with its distinctively personal identity, such that even in death, understood as the separation of body and soul, the disembodied soul and the decomposed body forever retain genitive relations to their actual whole, the person: even in separation they remain the body and soul *of* this or that person, such that unless they were that person's parts, they would not ever have been, and yet the whole whose parts they are is also irreducible to either its parts or the sum of its parts. So while Maximus's hypostatic whole can seem like Aristotelian hylomorphism, neither the specific hylē nor the universal/particular morphē, nor their formal or numerical oneness, adequately capture the concrete whole whose self-subsistence is the very condition for their actuality as specific matter or form, or their relation as a formal or numerical one. This is an extension of the second point. But it's crucial because it makes Maximus's supposed hylomorphism compatible with his more "Platonic" moments, as when he argues that a disembodied soul can and must still retain its activities lest it be merely conceived as another body (Epp 6-7). In these and other ways, I can't see how neo-Chalcedonian "composite person" is just another iteration of Aristotelian hylomorphism.
2) I wouldn't say the neo-Chalcedonian wants to maintain "Christ's distinct and independent humanity." Its natural distinction from divinity, yes; but not its self-standing, independent existence (which would be Nestorian). In fact, Christ's humanity is not only distinct from his divinity, but its very distinction from divinity is only actual *as* simultaneously his person. His very person proves to be no less the condition of the natural difference between his own natures as the natures' mutual difference is the condition of his person being their union. This isn't just a captious point. Such a simultaneity and reciprocity (or, as Maximus likes it, perichoresis) is precisely one way this whole approach differs from Neoplatonic participation. Iamblichus, for instance, is quite clear that the theurgic act, while participating in the divine (higher) activities, also does precisely nothing *to* the divine nature(s)/gods themselves. The asymmetry is constitutive of participation: as Proclus says, if cause and effect were identical, there'd be no procession at all; if they were equivocal, there'd be no causation; therefore they must be at once like and unlike one another in the very constitution of their relation. And one crucial way they're unlike is that it's not true to say that the whole of the cause is in the whole effect (although the reverse is true). And yet this is precisely what we say about the Incarnation and ultimately about our own deification (cp. Amb 41.5): precisely because the actual relation between Christ's divinity (cause) and humanity (effect) is the selfsame subject/person, Christ himself, his two natures utterly interpenetrate each other in reality--they are, not in principle but in fact, "whole in whole, wholly," as Maximus often says. This is not Neoplatonic participation as I know it, at least. Similarly, no account of participation of which I'm aware can say: when the effect is affected, so is the cause. But when Christ is crucified, so is God. The divine nature suffers? Well no. But here we have two options: either the cause is really just the totality of its concept as divinity, such that what happens to Christ's humanity doesn't happen to his divinity--but then neither does it ever happen to God himself; or, more paradoxically but necessarily, in my view, Christ's divinity does not suffer, yet when *he* does, God does--this would mean that the actual life/being of God is not restricted to our idea of his divine nature (that is, this option actually permits the logic of person to play a role as fundamental as any logic of essence/nature--even and especially in God). Neoplatonic participation works only so long as you stipulate that the natural asymmetry upon which it is based means that nothing proper to effect redounds to cause--that is, as long as we're basically proscribing in principle that God can be a human being. But the Christian must go beyond this: God's actual oneness, you might say, isn't merely the presupposition of the claim that the Three are one God; God's oneness is just as much the eternal and unfailing achievement of the Three's actual life/being. All to say: the very logic of the Trinity is, in Christ, "made vertical," as it were, and precisely in a way and form that no version of Neoplatonic metaphysics can abide. Notice: that doesn't mean the participation is simply wrong. But it does mean it cannot be the whole logic of the God-world relation. That relation is Reason incarnate, the person of Christ, the Incarnation of God.
Thanks for your response. I'm not sure I phrased my questions as clearly as I should have. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that the neo-Chalcedonian position is literally identical to Aristotle's, nor was I suggesting we ought to adopt any pagan Neoplatonist position wholesale (it would not be Iamblichus, but Pseudo-Dionysius or Eriguena who I'd want to draw from, in any event!).
That said, I continue to feel like there is something in your original article that leaves me uneasy, though I have (clearly) struggled to articulate it well. (Part of the reason for that is that I have struggled to articulate it to myself.) So let me approach the issue a little differently.
First though, let me contextualize my questions a bit too. I had a history professor in undergrad who said that there were, broadly speaking, two kinds of historians: "parachutists" and "truffle-diggers". The former were focused on big-picture questions, the latter on detailed questions. He was adamant that the historical profession needed both (and of course some folks in between).
My own approach to theology and philosophy is definitely of the parachutist type: I always want to boil down metaphysical questions to figure out what the principle issues are, and also to ask how we can operationalize our theories. It might be worth adding that I am a priest and not an academic (though I have dabbled in the academy), so I am also always wondering "how would this idea impact the faith of the folks in the pew?" So, my questions below are offered in that spirit.
It seems to me that your proposal rests on specific interpretations of two terms: "person" and "ousia" (as well it should!).
As for the first, if I am reading you correctly, "person" needs to do a lot of work: first, it must be able to refer to the "persons" of the Trinity, second, it needs to refer to regular-old human beings, and third, it needs to refer to Jesus, the Word Incarnate, the divine human. Now, of course, in the above, you focus specifically on the third task. But surely, if we are using the same term to refer to each “thing”, then there must be some unifying definition of the word we intend, even if the precise way that word is employed in each case differs in important ways, and even if we indeed use it only analogically in some cases. Analogical use is different from the “normal” one, but it can only be so different before it becomes an entirely different term altogether. And indeed, I think you actually address the need for “person” to refer to all three when you say: “Neo-Chalcedonians insisted on the strict univocity of at least one term common to both theology and economy—namely the Son’s very “person.”, and when you say “The person of Christ unites three identities at once: [1] natural identity with Father and Spirit (divinity); [2] natural identity with human beings (humanity); [3] hypostatic identity with himself as and in his two natures” in the preceding paragraph.
In short, I am wondering whether one specific metaphysical term can actually bear all this weight. I should say that though my tone here is skeptical, it is not meant to be adversarial. If we *could* deploy "person" in this way, that would seem to me a good thing, especially as I think that would make language around theosis clearer and the spiritual work of theosis more approachable—very good things indeed (at least from my perspective).
Now, it's certainly true that the Christian tradition, more or less from Nicea forward, has used the term person in this broad and crucial way. But here's where Chalcedon's approach comes into sharp relief: it seems to me that the formula at Chalcedon was *intentionally* vague: the hypostatic union was both a unity but also had real distinction, but they did not offer an in-depth metaphysical system around this claim.
In other words, they argued *that* Jesus was both God and human, and set some guidelines around what were or were not acceptable ways to think about that, but they didn't say *how* that was so in precise or technical terms. If I understand the neo-Chalcedonian project (and your continuation of it), the goal is to provide precisely that metaphysical specificity. But, again, I do worry whether "person" can bear all that weight.
This concern is all brought to a head in the way in which you seem to want to understand the Logos as always already "enhumanized" from eternity, so to speak, so as to prevent any concern about how the Logos might otherwise have come to interact with a (creaturely) human Jesus. I am thinking especially of your claim that “It’s that he himself—in himself—made real the very difference between his own humanity and his own divinity.” This does feel like a grand effort to both synthesize and sublate the monophysite and Nestorian wings of Christology (definitely my words and not your words; this is me in my radical "parachuting" mode). But I think it might be a bridge too far (if I can be allowed to hastily shift from a weight to a distance metaphor).
Now, as for "ousia": here my questions are aimed even more at the tradition than at your specific proposal. I have long felt that the formula of one hypostasis uniting two natures (or ousias), one human and one divine, could only be affirmed in a vague or analogical sense, since, properly speaking, there is no such thing as a divine ousia at all.
God is not defined by any form whatsoever; God must be understood as the formless form of all forms (or if you prefer, the ousia-less ousia of all ousias). God is beyond ousia, before ousia, the condition of possibility of any ousia. So, in a strict sense, I believe it is imprecise to say that in Jesus, a/the human ousia is united with the divine ousia.
Of course, to the extent that we are speaking analogically (as Aquinas would insist we must), then I am fine with that—but only and always under that condition. As with "person", though, to the extent that we want to form a very technically specific metaphysics of the hypostatic union, I worry that this will require an overly determined idea of the divine ousia, and we will lose that understanding of the fundamental limits of any possible metaphysics. This is, in large part, why I recommended a (broadly) Neoplatonist framework, because the apophatic caution inherent to that approach, I think, can guard us from an overly familiar attitude towards the divine.
And to bring this back more specifically to Christology: to the the extent that a "ousia-less" metaphysics privileges the infinitude and ineffability of God over any idea or category of the divine as thought by humans, it also reminds us of the need for a radically asymmetrical relation between God and humanity/cosmos. I take it that this is an approach that you are actively trying to overcome in your above proposal. For example, I think that Rahner’s Rule, “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity”, may be an elision between our knowledge of God and God as God is in Godself—and if I am right in this, then this, too, troubles me.
All of that said, I want to reiterate that I don’t think I’m opposed to what I think your goal is in all of this (assuming I have properly discerned that—which I might not have!). To the extent that your effort here is aimed at making the hypostatic union relevant to Christians as an immediately available spiritual reality here and now, I applaud you and can only offer my encouragement. I’m just not sure the metaphysical “guts” of your specific proposal can get us there.
Thanks again for the original piece and your comment. Though we disagree on some issues, I always love good theological discourse! May God guide us both to the truth, whatever it may be.
Thanks for these thoughtful replies, Scott. I don't take any of this as antagonism. Iron sharpens iron, etc. I'll try to be very concise, since our comment box is constricting!
1. Person. I don't think I have the anxiety or skepticism here that you do. At first blush, I rather expect "person" to do quite a lot. After all, the two most distinctive claims of Christian faith depend on just that: Trinity and Incarnation. This is why I think it's true to claim, as several have, that the development of Christian theology necessitated the development of a new, profound, and often paradoxical sense of "person." Small wonder, though: everything critical claim in Christian theology depended on just that.
Now, as you note, "person" was used in a pretty elastic way (though not from Nicaea on, since Nicaea's anathemas still equate hypostasis and ousia, and the Creed makes no mention of person at all). But the elasticity flagged a need for development as much as it did a sign of mere formal capaciousness. I'll return to the "formal" point in a bit. First, though, a word on Chalcedon. I agree that Chalcedon itself set up some guidelines and intimations, as it were, in that it argued *that* Jesus was divine and human without explaining *how* that's so. But it did a bit more than that. The guidelines are not merely formal. They bear on the promised content in need of development: in whatever sense Christ is two, it is with respect to ousia/physis; in whatever sense he is one, it is with respect to hypostasis/prosopon. These are not mere suggestions that we should somehow say "one" and "two" of Christ. They rather point the way forward without walking the way themselves: identity is found in person, duality in nature/essence. Yes, neo-Chalcedonians had then to develop what that could mean or look like. But to interpret Chalcedon in the manner that many post-liberal theologians once did, i.e. as akin to "grammatical rules," is not only questionable historically, but is itself a furtive speculative claim about Christology--one, in fact, that you go on to make in your remarks on apophaticism.
I do admit, however, that if the core issue in all this merely had to do with whether the *concept* of person could bear all this metaphysical weight, then we would perhaps be on a fool's errand. But the Son of God is no mere concept (indeed no person is). And yet persons are knowable not only as objects but as subjects, and as subjects who know themselves as knowers and objects known, all united in self-knowing (or self-consciousness or "Spirit"). That last remark does land us in later, more explicit developments (in certain German idealists, say). But the seeds of those developments lie here already. Rahner was again correct: Chalcedon is more a "beginning" than an "end."
In brief: it is no mere concept of person but the person of Jesus Christ who is himself the univocal reality in all three registers you mention: Trinity, Incarnation, and "regular human beings," with the understanding that the latter is either a sheer abstraction or else it is the second itself. For Christ is the true and total Adam, and we are his Body who has his mind. This person, and not some abstraction about "person" as such, is what bears the weight--as if bearing a cosmic Cross, if you'll indulge the expression. Anything less, in my view, implicitly denies that the Son of God is fully divine, or fully human, or that our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Col 3.1-3).
2. Ousia. It's certainly true that the divine essence is traditionally thought of as super-essential or above all notions of ousia/physis. But you know well, I imagine, that this isn't so straightforward: not only in Christology, but in Trinitarian theology (e.g. is the Son "of the same ousia" as the Father?), beatific vision (e.g. Do we see the "essence" of God?), and doctrines of creation (e.g. Isn't the main difference between God and world that the latter comes to be from nothing, and thus is essentially/in ousia different from God?)--in all these areas the "super-essential" essence of God appears rather determinate, at least negatively. And that's a second point: to claim that God's essence is "above essence," or that God has no essence, or that God's essence exceeds all notions of essence, is still determinative of that selfsame essence precisely because it *distinguishes* that super-essence from any other, non-super-essence (i.e. all creation). This too is why the invocation of Neoplatonic apophaticism fails to address the real issues, all of which concern the positive and negative determinations of God himself. After all, both Dionysius and Maximus explicitly deny that the claim of the Incarnation amounts to the same sort of claim as saying that God is cause of human beings. No: Christ *is* a human being, not just (as divine) the cause of human beings (cf. Amb 5 on Dionysius's Ep 4). If the logic of Incarnation thus differs from that of the "vertical" or processional logic of cause-effect, then either this Incarnation-logic is intelligible or it isn't. If it unintelligible, then neither can we state that or how it differs from Neoplatonic participation at all (Dionysius and Maximus sent us into nowhere!). It would *mean* nothing at all to distinguish the Incarnation from any instance of participation. Worse, it would likely amount to an absurdity--which is exactly what non-Christian Neoplatonists thought. If the distinct Incarnation-logic is intelligible, though, then whatever else we say about it, it won't be a mere restatement of Iamblichus or Proclus etc.
In brief: I think the appeal to apophaticism masquerades as a modest epistemic point, but that, when confronted with the actual content of Christology, turns out to be much more speculatively ambitious: it amounts to a denial that God can reveal himself by his own Incarnation, i.e. that the latter opens his very person in a knowledge that is neither merely conceptual nor merely a lack of conceptuality. Your rejection of Rahner's Rule wouldn't make sense without such determinate content: why reject his copula unless you know that it cannot be? And how would we know that it cannot be unless we've equated the limits of our abstraction with the absolute limits of what God can accomplishment in his Incarnation? How do we know what we can know with the "mind of Christ" within us by just considering the finite limits of our merely human minds? The claim that otherwise "our knowledge of God" can't *ever*, in any fashion, be but an "elision" between the finite limits of our minds and God as God is "in Godself"--this is itself an absolute claim to know that our minds can never become infinite or adequate to what God is in itself, along with the converse that God's infinity cannot achieve his own finitization and the identity of the two (or as Maximus put it: that in the Incarnation God "became a symbol of himself"--the self he himself is, is both sides of the mediation). If we don't know what God is like in Godself, then how do we know that what God is like in Godself can't itself become its own mediation to us, its self-knowledge as our knowing of itself? Is this not the inevitable issue of taking seriously that the Incarnation reveals not just what God isn't, but what God is--not just the great non-ousia but the non-ousia *as* the Three persons in God?
I think, then, that by whatever logic of ousia (positive or negative) that we proscribe God's ability to reveal Godself fully in and to us, by that same logic we proceed as if God's intelligibility were determined in a merely negative and thus still finite fashion. That is, we ignore the fact that the negation in "God's essence is above essence" is *manifest* precisely as the one God's being and revealing himself, in Christ, as Three.
Thanks again for thoughtful responses. I will also endeavor to keep my comments as concise as possible (though I have failed before!)
As for Christ being the reality of person and not just a concept: certainly this is true, but here is where I will call for theology to use philosophy carefully. Now, philosophical rigor can take many forms, but for me, it comes back to a careful evaluation of our own phenomenological processes and limits. My knowledge of things is built from my senses (please interpret this very broadly—I don't want to get into detailed lists of various sensory inputs and impressions a la Kant here) and my conceptual cognition (again, interpret this broadly).
While Christ doubtlessly is a person and no mere concept of a person, when I talk about Christ, I can only be talking about *my concept* of Christ as a person. To deny this, I think, would be to say something like "I can know things beyond the limits of what I can know". And I take this to be a contradiction of reason. I follow Levinas in insisting that we must be very mindful of the phenomenological limits of phenomenology. All kinds of mischief results otherwise (and Hegel's not even the worst of it!)
Now, perhaps we could say that we know Christ through direct participation in Christ. But surely if this is so, I wonder how much help metaphysical Christology will be to discover the reality! The blessed Magdalene was not reading her Plato at the tomb, after all. May we all have something of her vision. Perhaps to know the Incarnate One is to experience reality beyond the limits of knowing. One might even say to enter a cloud of unknowing. But if this is so, you and I will both need to put down our books.
The same point applies to our discussion of ousia. I do not think it is correct to say that a negative statement about God is somehow as determinate as a positive one. Indeed, I would insist that just the opposite is true, because a negative statement about God is much more about my lack of knowledge than it is about any quality about God. To say "God is beyond my knowing" is equivalent to saying "My knowing doesn't reach God." But, again, this kind of epistemic relation is implied in *any* statement about knowledge; I deny the possibility that we can say anything objective about anything without implicating our own process of knowing the thing described. (In that regard, I am a bit of an unwashed postmodernist.)
In other words, apophatic theology doesn't really tell us anything about God per se; it tells us about our own limits.
In short, then, I again worry that your proposal takes philosophical resources but deploys them in ways that those resources can't quite bear. If I may be so bold, I find that this kind of overzealous deployment of philosophy is common in the most interesting theology. We humans, our reach often exceeds our grasp, etc. etc.
Of course, it may just be the case that our basic philosophical premises and intuitions are different. Wouldn't be the first time this happened! Thanks again for the discussion.
Thanks again, Scott.
I want to focus on one passage from your reply because I think it clarifies our disagreement. You wrote that when you talk about Christ "I can only be talking about *my concept* of Christ as a person. To deny this, I think, would be to say something like 'I can know things beyond the limits of what I can know.' And I take this to be a contradiction of reason."
It isn't a contradiction of reason unless you presuppose that the abstract concept of our own abstraction is itself the limit for reason (as Kant does). But it could just as well be the case--and this is my view--that the perfection of reason itself assumes the form of the person of Christ, both as object and as subject (and as interpersonal, super-natural knowledge, of which faith is the first dawning). In other words, the philosophical rigor you have privileged includes an absolute claim about reason itself, which renders it not merely phenomenological but properly speculative. This is what I meant before about a kind of speculative immodesty under the guise of the epistemically modest (on which see Gillian Rose, *The Broken Middle*, esp. Ch.1). Again, when you say that speaking of a person "can only" refer to "my concept" of Christ as a person, you are presupposing a rather definite and absolute perspective on how language, concepts, and persons must relate, and indeed what they are in themselves. But even phenomenologically, I think your view lacks the rigor you recommend: while I always *make use* of concepts when I speak of an actual person, I *never* intend merely the concepts I use. Not at all: I intend the very reality indicated by the proper name of that actual person. On this I recommend Robert Spaemann's *Persons: The Difference Between 'Someone' and 'Something'*, and/or Charles de Winckelmans, *The World of Persons*. Their work as well as others contradicts the very thing you here presuppose.
And so I think it's clear that the idea of "phenomenological limits of phenomenology" is a contradiction in terms: one cannot have a phenomenology *of* phenomenology. What you really have is a speculative account of phenomenology, which you equate with phenomenology itself. That's either an equivocation or a self-contradiction. Either way it isn't sufficiently self-aware, in my view.
As to ousia. You say that you "deny the possibility that we can say anything objective about anything without implicating our own process of knowing the thing described." Either such a denial is a mere formal truth or else it hides more determinate content. If it were the former, it'd become the simple observation that knowing any object simultaneously includes knowing the knowing of that object. Sure. Only a naive realist denies this. The more interesting question is whether a subject who knows herself reveals something more--to wit, that knowing oneself as object in no way excludes knowing as subject, and indeed knowing oneself as subject and object in a single act. Hence it says little to note that a moment of objectification implies a correlative moment of subjectivity. The crucial thing is what self-consciousness is, since it includes both at once. If you mean something more determinate here, then it would appear to be yet another version of speculative immodesty in guise of epistemic modesty: for you would be presupposing a total grasp of what it means to be "object" and what it means to be "subject" precisely in order to make each the limit for the other vis-a-vis an Other, i.e. God. But that's a full-blown speculative account--a total view--and not merely a phenomenological one. This is always the postmodern problem (again see Rose, *The Dialectic of Nihilism*).
On the one hand, you worry that I deploy philosophical resources "in ways that those resources can't quite bear," and yet you invoked Neoplatonic metaphysics to affirm precisely what historical Neoplatonists denied: the Incarnation of God. Nor did they treat their metaphysics as a simple therapy to chasten their spirit's ambition to know the whole. That's an interpretation that, in my view, actually deploys those resources in a way they cannot bear--indeed in a way that those very resources opposed fairly consistently and over many centuries.
On the other hand, your real worry seems to be less philosophical or historical, something more like a practical or pastoral concern: that the "overzealous deployment of philosophy" is a sign that one is reaching for what "exceeds our grasp." Here again, though, the modest counsel covers its own immodest totalizing: it presumes to know as a matter of course, and for all time, that what exceeds our grasp can neither condescend to be grasped, nor elevate the grasping mind, so as to be grasped even as it remains what it was when it was beyond our grasp. The pastoral counsel turns out, in other words, to depend on the bold, indeed excessive ambition to deny the Incarnation of God always and in all things, even as this is just what the NT regards as the very end of creation itself (Col 3.11). This Hegel rightly exposed as a "striving against the Spirit." Who are we, after all, to tell God what his limits are in his desire to manifest himself completely and to all? How do you know when and where and why this can or cannot ever occur? Why assume that either your theory or experience of finite limits constitute limits for the Absolute's self-disclosure? Here we see that one cannot but interpret one's own phenomenological limits, at least if one insists on doing theology too. Best to admit that openly, I'd say.
Jordan, thanks again for your response. The thread we are forming here would suggest that we are the two biggest nerds on the internet. Excellent company to keep, I would say!
Let's start right at the top. In response to my claim about the limits of reasoning, you say "It isn't a contradiction of reason unless you presuppose that the abstract concept of our own abstraction is itself the limit for reason (as Kant does). But it could just as well be the case--and this is my view--that the perfection of reason itself assumes the form of the person of Christ, both as object and as subject (and as interpersonal, super-natural knowledge, of which faith is the first dawning)."
Now, I think this idea is really interesting, but I have to first disagree with one part of this and then point to two concerns it raises for me:
Firstly, and most importantly, my comment about the limits of reasoning is not abstract, it is an experiential reference drawn from phenomenology as such (that is to say, of my own phenomenological reflection on my phenomenality). This is an important point, because I think you repeatedly elide different modes of thought in your comment above, moving between a sort of absolute metaphysical frame and a phenomenological one, but without showing how we can make that move. I take it as a great gain of postmodern thought (about which more later) that philosophy now (at least should) require us to explain how our claims refer to something beyond phenomena as such. I'm not sure you do that here.
To wit: I am actually very sympathetic to the idea that in our own action of reasoning, we are the Logos at work, so to speak. (Indeed, I think we might agree that such a position is probably required by orthodox Christian doctrine.) But I don't see how that helps your original case, at least not without some more maneuvering. After all, we have been discussing the metaphysics of the hypostatic union. This is an idea (as before, interpret this term broadly); it's a speculative metaphysical reference. Now, if you want to suggest that this idea is actually also a reference to, and indeed identical to, the very field or event of my own reasoning, that's a very interesting idea. But that's a very different claim than what is advanced in your original post, and indeed it relies on a completely different mode of reasoning.
Now, I do see a connection between the two claims in the Ratzinger quote you opened with. But I don't really see that claim come together in the argument made in the piece itself. And it's worth noting just how big a claim it is, and how much work one would need to do to really substantiate it.
This brings me to my last concern: even if it is true that my own exercise of reason just is the Incarnate One at work (and, actually, as suggested above, I think this is right), it still remains the case that when I talk about Jesus, I must have a concept of Jesus, which I have gained from my worshipping community and Scripture, etc. etc. There is no shortcut from a metaphysical claim about the identity of any thinker and Christ to saying that that thinker has the correct doctrinal view of Christ. I imagine you would agree that, e.g. when Plato reasoned, that too was a participation in the Logos. But Plato certainly didn't have a doctrine of the Incarnation as a concept in his mind. So, if your goal is to justify a given concept of the Incarnation, it won't do to simply suggest that in having a concept you are participating in the Logos—even if that is perfectly true. In other words, experiencing (or indeed being) something is not the same as having a perfectly determined metaphysical concept of that thing.
I am not sure what you mean when you say one can't have a phenomenology of phenomenology. One can (and I would argue, must) have a phenomenology of anything one can think about. Phenomenology is just the study of what appears in and as consciousness, without reference to anything else. I don't think there is any contradiction here. Again, I wonder if there is an elision between some absolute frame of reference, within which the idea of phenomenology can be placed, and the actual experiential practice of phenomenology.
I'm also not sure what to make of your claim that a Neoplatonist can't affirm the Incarnation. While it's true that pagan Neoplatonists like Plotinus were hostile to the idea, I am sure you would agree that there is a group of people we could refer to as "Christian Neoplatonists", such as Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena (as well as Nyssa, at least at times, and even Augustine). This strand of thought has also continued up to the present day. D.B. Hart has, for example, sometimes referred to his mode of Christianity as "Neoplatonic" (of course, he's described it in other ways too, but this is no problem).
When I speak about a Neoplatonist theology, it's a Christian Neoplatonism I am referring to. I don't see how anyone could claim that such a thing is somehow impossible, even if they don't agree with it.
Lastly, about postmodernism. You argue that my caution for epistemic humility is actually a kind of totalizing view in disguise. I have two comments here:
First, I have made a specific claim that I don't think humans can have anything like complete knowledge of God. I have pointed to both phenomenological reasons for this, as well as more metaphysical and doctrinal ones (such as God's infinitude). Now, what I have not said is that I am 100% sure that I must be right. I have made a claim—a very common one in philosophical theology!—and am happy to have an interlocutor respond.
But what I find odd is that your response is not actually a claim to know that I am wrong, but rather an insistence that I can't possibly be 100% sure about my own claim. Which is both true but also, I think, irrelevant. You go on to suggest that perhaps human reasoning will achieve what I think it can't. True enough. But what I am asking you for is to justify the claim you have made here and now, rather than to say that someone (else?) might do so in the future. Again, I think there is an elision here between different modes of discourse. I offer a claim grounded in experience and present knowledge; your response doesn't challenge either but then shifts to an absolute mode of reference (about reason as such) and then suggests that some new experience might increase our stock of knowledge. Again, I think there are good structural reasons to deny this (I don't know what it would mean to have complete knowledge of the infinite—my own view of theosis is an infinite ascent into the infinite, a process of entering the divine that is never "complete") but this is beside the point I originally made anyway.
And this brings us to the topic of postmodernism. While I do think there are some thinkers who engage in the kind of inverted totalizing anti-totalizing reasoning you critique here (like Nietzsche and probably Heidegger), that isn't the only mode of postmodern thinking. I actually wrote about this; if you are interested, you can find part 1 of 2 here: https://phenomenologyeastandwest.substack.com/p/postmodernism-vs-postmodernism-part
All of that said, as we have both suggested now, it may just be that we are approaching this problem from positions different enough that we won't see eye to eye. And of course, that's OK. After all, we both agree that our ideas won't save us. Soli Deo gloria.
Thanks for this post. I very much appreciate your insight into neo-Chalcedonianism and defense of what may now be the only manner of addressing contemporary theologians tendency to essentially lose the capacity to understand a difference between the created and uncreated leading to an eternally enfleshed Christ and man being essentially undifferentiated from God other than that we have yet to actualize our innate potency. It seems to me this is where the enhypostation of the Logos becomes in my mind crucial as it allows for union and difference which after all was much of Maximus’ point I think and if we lose that we seem to have a material God descending to earth from some celestial order of beings. Does that make sense?
Thanks Nicholas!
I agree, in a sense: there is an essential moment of reflection where we must see that Christ wasn't eternally enfleshed in the sense that the event of the Incarnation wasn't merely a repetition of some past state of condition. This is much of the gist of Gregory of Nyssa's Anti-Apollinarian writings. And yet I confess a degree of dissatisfaction here. If, after all, the flesh of Christ is deified so that flesh, which is by nature temporal, still becomes "without origin" and eternal--as did Melchizedek's--then I think we must add a further moment to our reflection wherein the content of eternity includes in itself the consequences of deified, created things (like flesh). So while it's true that we cannot accept a "prior" time in which Christ is enfleshed, it's also true that we can't merely accept a "prior" time in which Christ isn't, lest we unwittingly deny the actual eternity of Christ's flesh by appealing to its natural temporality. We must, I mean, give total weight to the paradox disclosed here: Christ himself, who is divine and human and so incorporeal and corporeal, is the very same "before and after" the event of the union. Within time, it's true to say that there was a time when Christ was "not yet" enfleshed. But the enfleshment itself is the unity--nay, the identity--of time itself with eternity itself, which are natural characteristics of his selfsame person. Much more to say, but this point should reframe the discussion many are having elsewhere, I think.
Very well put.
I think this is where it’s important to clearly distinguish economy from theology or the standpoint of eternity and the standpoint we occupy now. If not then at least acknowledge the paradoxes created by these different standpoints. I’m perfectly fine with paradox, but alas many seem to wish to see above it.
Would you say one of the neo-Chalcedonian implications is that man is by nature, like Christ, both human and divine?
I would say rather that man is by nature generated from and toward Christ, who is already in all. Thus man becomes by grace what God is by nature, which is at once an ecstatic and original “potency” in the form of Christ in you (Col 1.27). If one sees then, and if one wishes to say “by nature” in the less precise sense of “whatever we are from our origination,” then yes, we are by nature and by grace to become what God is by nature and, as human, also by grace. This way of articulating things preserves the phenomenological and formal point that we are oriented from creation toward deification, but it has the added merit of preserving the irrepressibly personal and existential unfolding of that orientation in Christ’s own ecstatic love for us. If we simply say that we are human and divine by nature, we lose the sense of the latter and needlessly expose ourselves to superfluous vulnerabilities and misunderstandings. We also obscure why the spiritual life actually matters.