"People never cease to project on to God their individual and collective obsessions, so that they can appropriate and make use of him. But they ought to understand that God cannot be apprehended from without, as if he were an object, for with him there is no outside nor can the Creator be set side by side with the creature."
- Olivier Clement
"Most people are enclosed in their mortal bodies like a snail in its shell, curled up in their obsessions after the manner of hedgehogs. They form their notion of God's blessedness taking themselves for a model. "
- St. Clement of Alexandria
"Every concept formed by the intellect in an attempt to comprehend and circumscribe the divine nature can succeed only in fashioning an idol, not in making God known."
- St. Gregory of Nyssa
"The infinite is without doubt something of God, but not God himself, who is infinitely beyond even that."
- St. Maximus the Confessor
8 comments:
"People never cease to project on to God their individual and collective obsessions, so that they can appropriate and make use of him. But they ought to understand that God cannot be apprehended from without, as if he were an object, for with him there is no outside nor can the Creator be set side by side with the creature."
- Olivier Clement
But He emptied Himself ('of the signature of his all consuming burning Glory of Holiness') and did exactly that (Philippians 2:7)...set Himself "side by side with the creature".
Hi Mark,
Yes indeed, the Creator became one of His own, a creature - while yet without ceasing to be the Creator. We maintain that Christ is both fully God and fully man, one Person hypostatically joining two natures (and two wills, and two energies), divine and human, without confusing either. The difficulty arises, and I think Olivier points to this here in his quote, when we project our creaturehood on to the Creator, thereby confusing the two distinct categories of being/existence (namely the uncreated vs. created), confusing the two natures, and thus create a distorted understanding of God (in our image). What Olivier is saying here, echoing the church fathers, that the Creator cannot be compared to the created, there is no basis for such a comparison. Does that help?
"the Creator cannot be compared to the created"
Robert, Hi. I understand the arguments, nuances and positions - I am a miaphysitist, but how about this?
2 Corinthians 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him...
Mark I am not sure I understand your question (or point). But I will try to clarify, hopefully it will help and be pertinent to your concern. In the context of Clement's quote, I would affirm that Christ is both fully creator and fully creature, and thus understand scriptures such as the one you reference in that light. I do not hold that the creator ceased to be creator when He took on our created nature, our flesh. In other words, the two natures were not confused, altered or diminished in the Incarnation.
If your point is that because Christ became one of us ( yet without sin) we have an Advocate who is the Firstborn among His brethren(!), and so He relates to us and we to Him; then I would fully agree with you. However, this is to misunderstand Olivier Clement's passage, as his concern there is to demonstrate the real and existential difference - an unbridgeable abyss as the fathers refer to it sometimes - which if diminished or overlooked results invariably in idolatry.
Christ is the perfect God-man from birth, deified; unlike Him we are not yet deified, possessing a gnomic will.
"If your point is that because Christ became one of us ( yet without sin) we have an Advocate who is the Firstborn among His brethren(!), and so He relates to us and we to Him; then I would fully agree with you. However, this is to misunderstand Olivier Clement's passage, as his concern there is to demonstrate the real and existential difference - an unbridgeable abyss as the fathers refer to it sometimes - which if diminished or overlooked results invariably in idolatry."
Robert, I love your paraphrasing of Scripture:
1 John 2:1,2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
What I am advocating is that this advocacy bridges that "unbridgeable abyss".
Mark I think you are right, Christ reconciled us to Himself.
The advocacy, however, does not alter His nature, nor ours.
The abyss, the profound and categorical difference between His nature and ours, remains (for one we don't become uncreated like Him, for we are deified by grace, not by nature). St Gregory's quote bears repeating here: "Every concept formed by the intellect in an attempt to comprehend and circumscribe the divine nature can succeed only in fashioning an idol, not in making God known."
I think also that the essence/energy distinction, as well as the apophatic approach following the tradition of St. Maximus are key to shedding light on this mportant understanding.
Hi A S!
It looks to me as if Mark D. is having the same struggle as I did, as a Christian raised in a western Christian tradition, not to understand the Orthodox doctrine of God's incomprehensibleness in His essence as meaning we cannot be in true intimate communion with Him. It took me awhile to realize that the careful essence vs. energies distinction is simply the Orthodox manner in which we describe God as both fully transcendent (unable to be comprehended/circumscribed by the created, including human intellect and language) and at the same time fully immanent through the Incarnation in Christ and by the Holy Spirit (genuinely present in and to the human heart and capable of being experienced). You've done a good job here clarifying. Thanks.
ofgrace, I am glad to be be of use!
Indeed it is a struggle for us westerners thinking in modern theological categories, failing to understand the Orthodox dogmatic teaching of uncreated energies. The ramifications of this failure are quite profound. Take iconography for instance: veneration and the creation of sacred art makes little or no sense without affirming uncreated energies - icons depict deified persons in line and color. This can be put in other words: changing Christology changes soteriology.
Thanks for stopping by and dropping a line.
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