We must comprehend fully what a “person” is. A “person” is an identity that is formed through a relationship. We are all persons, on account of our relationships. We each have attained our personal identity through our various relationships, i.e., the biological ones from our parents, the natural ones from the environment, from the food we eat, from our social relations. All of these elements are necessary, in order for us to be called a person; however, it is the person that transubstantiates these relationships, and makes them its own. You breathe this air, so you have a relationship with it, just as I do, but this air becomes mine, yours – it becomes “personal” - when it filters through each one of us as persons. Thus, the person can similarly assume natures; but, that which defines my personal identity is not the air that I assume. It is dependent on that which is the most significant, the most decisive, which will make me be me and not someone else. In the same way, it is up to our liberty to choose which of all our relationships is the most definitive for our personal identities. If, for example, I decide that my relationship with my parents is the definitive one, then all of my other natural, social relationships will be coupled to this relationship with my parents, thus proving that this is where I have drawn my personal identity from. In other words, the decisive relationship becomes the criterion that makes me be what I am.
If I do not desire to make the personal relationship with my parents the decisive element for my personal identity, then I transpose the relationship. And this is something that indeed occurs. The young child has a personal relationship with its mother. Gradually, it transposes its decisive relationship to either its social relationships or, later on, to its biological relationships which will remove it from the others. Thus, its personal identity no longer relates to the parental relationship, but to the other relationships. This extends into our entire existence. If, for example, one were to imagine a person hinging his personal hypostasis on what he eats – i.e., a relationship with food – then indeed, if he persisted in this relationship, his entire personal identity would be dependent on this relationship.
Our personal identity is a matter of relationships - whatever those relationships may be. Depending on how decisive a relationship is, that will eventually be one that will judge and subject all the other relationships, and will incorporate them therein. It is quite obvious, that when a person is in love with someone, that will be the prevalent relationship at that moment of time, as he will be seeing everything through that prism. The personal relationship, which gives us our identity, is always the one that makes us a person. To return to the issue of Christology : what makes Christ a person, in other words, the relationship through which all the other relationships pass and which finally determines His identity, is His relationship with the Father.
With the Incarnation, Christ took on other relationships; He had a relationship with the Holy Virgin, with His disciples, with the natural environment; He partook of sustenance; He was Jewish – He had relationships with the entire Jewish community. All of these are relationships that belong to His personal relationships. In other words, all of the humanity that He takes unto Himself, all of the created, is not foreign to His person. Mankind therefore is not lesser, by belonging in that relationship of His with the Father.
When we say that Christ (and I am trying to interpret the dogma of Chalcedon here) has only one Person but also Has two natures, this implies that His divine and His human natures (and anything else that these natures might include) all fall under the one personal relationship that determines Christ’s identity, which is His Filial relationship with the Father. Thus, despite the new relationships that He embraces (as a Person) with His incarnation, He is, and He remains, the Son of the Father. This is a very important point, because He could –for example- have taken on new relationships as I said before. When we embrace new relationships, we tend to shift the center of our identity. I will digress briefly at this point. In his work “In search of lost time”, Proust ponders very intensely over death, and he makes several very important observations such as : when a person whom we love dies, what matters in the long run is that we will replace him with someone else. If we don’t replace him, our identity is endangered because it is indeed impossible for us to connect, to relate to something that does not exist unless we transfer that person into an existent sphere; but death strikes the person at this point. As long as we maintain our relationship with that person, that person will be giving us with our identity. The “I” changes, when the “you” changes.”
So, when Christ says “I”, what does He mean? Where does He draw that consciousness of “I”? An entire discussion took place during our century – chiefly in Roman Catholic theological circles - as to whether Christ had two kinds of consciousness; a divine one and a human one. Many theologians had reached the conclusion that He had two. The problem is, that in order to have a conscience of one’s “I”, in order to be an “I”, to be your self, it is impossible without a relationship. Either I am me because I am not -for example- this table here (hence I am me when related to this table, but, if this table ceases to exist I can no longer be me), or, I am me when related to someone else. We always are what we are (as a personal identity), when related to someone else. You cannot say “me”, if there is no “you”. After many centuries, philosophy in our day and age has reached that simple truth: that the “I” without the “you” is a myth; it is incomprehensible.
When Christ says “I”, where does He draw His consciousness of that “I”? He draws it inevitably from His relationship with the Father. This is why the Person of Christ is only one, i.e., that of the Son. If He drew His relationship from Mary also – from the Holy Virgin, as a child from its mother – then we would have had two persons, and Nestorius’ position would have been valid : we would have had one human with two persons : one relationship from here, and another relationship from there – both of which would have given Him His identity. But, to be given two determining relationships for your identity is something that doesn’t eventually stand to reason, because only one of the two relationships will be the determining one.
This becomes evident in iconography also. In a Western icon of Christ and the Holy Mother, the person of Christ is portrayed as a beautiful baby with a maternal relationship, which, however, limits the identity of the depicted baby. If we take a Byzantine icon, we will notice that the hagiographer strives to give the impression that the One held in the Holy Virgin’s embrace is God, despite the maternal relationship between them. This maternal relationship is not the baby’s determining relationship for the baby’s identity. The child seems to be stating that “yes, I may have a relationship with the mother, but My identity, my “I”, is governed by another relationship – the relationship that I have with the Father.
By what, therefore, are our personal identities judged? They are judged by how we place ourselves existentially. In other words, if the Father were to ask the Son to go on the Cross and the Holy Mother –as a mother- were to say “Don’t go, my child”, or, if the Son were to stop and consider His mother and decide that His relationship with the mother was the determinant of His identity, thus deciding He would not go on the Cross, then indeed His Person would not be defined by His relationship with the Father, but a relationship with another person, the Holy Mother.
This is what we do all the time, when verifying our personal identity. The one who finally determines our personal identity is the one to whom we offer our existence. The Martyrs, the Saints, all verify this fact; Why does theosis exist? Why does the Martyr acquire theosis? What does “theosis” mean? This is not Platonic mysticism. These are existential, basic things. A Martyr acquires theosis, because at that moment (of his martyrdom), he relates himself as a person to Christ. He has put aside all other relationships. When a mother tosses her children into the lions’ mouths for them to become martyrs, what exactly happens at that moment? Her personal relationship is transposed, and consequently, that mother is judged by that specific moment. Those Martyrs had chosen the relationship with God, just as Christ had, to be the determining relationship of their identity. Thus, God saw in their persons the person of His Son. They had done as the Son had done, hence were acknowledged by God as sons, and they had accordingly acknowledged God as Father, and with this relationship, they had sealed their lives forever, i.e., they had attained theosis.
Christ, however, did not attain theosis by making this kind of a decision while being a human, i.e., while having previously chosen the human relationship as the definitive relationship and afterwards transposing it to His relationship with God. Because, in Christ’s case, the relationship with the Father was precedent. What Christ did, was to persist in acknowledging His relationship with the Father as being the determinant relationship, hence the reason we do not have theosis in the case of Christ; we do not have an embracing, a transposing of the existing relationship and the projection of a new person; what we have, is simply a confirmation of the identity that had always existed.
Christ does not assume an identity from Himself, because there also exists that –par excellence demonic-- relationship, where one places his own will and his own interests as the supreme criterion of his decisions, like Adam had done when he put himself in God’s place and determined his identity from his own self. Christ does not acquire an identity from a created being, despite the fact that the created element is embodied within His identity. He subsumes all of His other relationships in His predominant relationship with the Father, and, being thus engulfed in this relationship with the Father, all of those other relationships are liberated from the restrictions that they were subject to; they are set free and are engulfed in His Body, as a part of His identity.
It is important to persist on that which the Council of Chalcedon decided; i.e., that the person is one, and that the said person is the Son and Logos of God. Besides, even the word “Son” is a word that implies a relationship - the filial relationship – because it is only within this relationship that mankind is fulfilled; only then can we speak of the fulfilment of mankind.
If mankind had a person of its own – in the way that speculating Western theologians want it – then it would not have been fulfilled, because it would eventually have been restricted; its identity would have been governed by the limitations of the created, which determine the boundaries of Man.
Consequently, by accepting one person in Christology – and that person is the Son – we are actually allowing mankind infinite possibilities. This is an anthropological maximalism, and not a minimalism. We do not have here a demoting of mankind.
The Chalcedon dogma is of major existential significance, provided we comprehend it with the significance that has been given to the meaning of “person”.
Source: http://www.oodegr.com/english/dogmatiki1/E6.htm#10
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