Chris to Logy and Soteriology 1

8/7/2019 Chris to Logy and Soteriology 1

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Emmaus, and the disciples near the shore, Peter and John on their fishing boat, didany of them identify him?

To follow Jesus you have to know him, seeing Him with the eyes of your heart. Toconfess Him as Lord you have to believe in Him.

To believe in Him you have to believe in the Salvific power of the Fatherdemonstrated in the Sotereological grace of the redeemer.

Miaphysite Christology: The Christology of Alexandria was firmly based in soteriology, the saving act of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Logos. Athanasius stated; "God became man,in orderthat man might become god in Him," The notion of salvation through participationin divine life (Deification) was the anchor point in Cyril defense of the unity of thePerson of Christ, in the Hypostatic (concrete natural) union of Divinity and humanityin Christ, the Pansoter (Universal Redeemer). Cyril spoke of both one hypostasis andof a "united incarnate nature of the Logos" to make it plain that Christ was a singlepersonal being, opposing the Antiochene term prospon with the "hypostatic union."Since hypostasis and nature were used synonymously, he often spoke of a united

nature in Christ. His formula "single incarnate nature of the God-word" was agenuine Alexandrine term, used and vindicated by Athanasius, even if borrowed byhis friend Apollinarius, who studied in Alexandria. Cyril did not deny the real fullexistence of the human nature of Christ, nor did he believe that the incarnate Logoswas an admixture of Divine and the human, of a human nature being integratedwith certain particulars of the Divine nature.

Therefore, the Fathers of the Church Affirmed that Jesus Christ is fully God and trulyhuman, emphasizing that His Divinity is "indivisibly united" with His humanity in a"hypostatic, Personal" union that began at His conception and will continue everafter, as preserved in the Eucharistic confession of the Alexandrine OrthodoxChristology.

Cyril's Ecumenical Christology:+ "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad" for the middle wall of partitionhas been taken away, and grief has been silenced, and all kind of difference of opinion has been removed; Christ the Savior of us all having awarded peace to hischurches,..." Cyril to John, of Antioch+ In the recent ecumenical reproach the Armenian Catholicos stated;" We said thatthe well known Cyrillic formula of "One united nature of the Incarnate Word" hasconstituted the basis, the crux of our Christologies, for us the Oriental Orthodox, itwas very important to put the emphasis on the fact that it was the Logos whoassumed humanity. We always put the emphasis on the divinity of Christ and this isin line with the Alexandrian Christology. We also say "two natures" in theoria --

because we cannot speak about "two natures" after the "unity," after theincarnation. So, even though there are some differences of emphasis, essentially weare saying the same thing.+ In "Nicene Christianity", David Yeago quotes St. Maximus the confessor words;"in the passion of the Father's reign that overcomes Jesus' fear in the garden of Gethsemane, we see human will and desire, formed and moved, by divine love withthe sin of the world. It is precisely this fidelity, achieved against the grain of fearand horror, within the frailty of the flesh that the Son of God has truly made hisown, that redeems the world."



Chalcedon Christology Today: The definition of faith of Chalcedon led Dr. Albert Schweitzer to conclude that "itsdoctrine of the two natures dissolved the unity of the person, and thereby cut off the last possibility of a return to the historical Jesus... He was like Lazarus of old,bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; the grave-clothes of the dogma of the DualNature' (Quoted from Credo by Jaroslav Pelican)+ "Chalcedon was a stumbling block-and still is.It has been said that present daytheology has put chalcedon in the dock. It is not difficult to find many utterancesamong contemporary theologians both Protestant and Catholic, which tend in thesame direction. (of A. von Harnack) Almost everywhere we hear about the aporia,the impossible deadlock, presented by the so-called doctrine of the two natures -- in

Tillich, in Rahner, in Pannenberg, in Schoonenberg, Kung, Wieerkehr and manyothers."; Theology and the Church, Crossroads, by Cardinal W. Kasper, 1989, p.95

The tome of Leo:'a thorn in the flesh'

Cardinal of Munich, W. Kasper, for many years professor of systematic theology atthe university of Tubingen, Theology & The Church, states on pages 98,99;"The brilliant investigations of Andre Halleux has put judgments about the council of Chalcedon on a new footing.... On the basis of detailed analysis of the texts andsources (accepted by Grillmeier, Ritter and Abramowski) , Halleux has shown thatthe council's definition really contains no more than two word-for-word quotationsfrom Leo's tome, a Leonine 'thorn in the flesh."

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Chris to Logy and Soteriology 1