“The Father is the sole origin of all things, He is the origin of the Son and the Spirit as Their begetter and source, coeternal, coinfinite, limitless, coessential and undivided…” Saint Thalasios
Volf, as with the greater part of western theologians, is a child of Augustine and his ontological first principal is the essence of God.The archbishop of Canterbury suggests in a document which Volf seems to largely agree when he writes, “God is the name of a kind of life, a ‘nature’ or essence…” This element of Western theology and how it differentiates the West from the East is found in the Catholic encyclopedia:
The Greek Fathers approached the problem of Trinitarian doctrine in a way which differs in an important particular from that which, since the days of St. Augustine, has become traditional in Latin theology.
In Latin theology thought fixed first on the Nature and only subsequently on the Persons. Personality is viewed as being, so to speak, the final complement of the Nature: the Nature is regarded as logically prior to the Personality. Hence, because God's Nature is one, He is known to us as One God before He can be known as Three Persons. And when theologians speak of God without special mention of a Person, conceive Him under this aspect.
This is entirely different from the Greek point of view. Greek thought fixed primarily on the Three distinct Persons: the Father, to Whom, as the source and origin of all, the name of God (Theos) more especially belongs; the Son, proceeding from the Father by an eternal generation, and therefore rightly termed God also; and the Divine Spirit, proceeding from the Father through the Son. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm#V )
The Eastern/Cappadocian view spoken of above is elucidated by Metropolitan John Zizioulas when he writes,
The hypostasis of the Father, not nature, is the cause of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father freely offers Himself, all that He is, to the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Son and Holy Spirit freely receive as gift their being and identity from the Father. In the same manner that the Son is Son because He is the only begotten of the Father, the Father is Father because He has begotten the Son. Likewise He is originator of the Spirit. Thus, the unity of the Godhead is a communion of Love which affirms Gods single nature, while allowing this nature to remain wholly unknowable.
By applying this to God, observe the consequences: The Cappadocians for the first time in theology introduce the meaning of ‘agent’ – that the one God is not just one Essence, but that He is the Father, and that He as a Person makes manifest the unity of the Trinity, and not He as an essence. Naturally the term ‘one essence’ continues to exist, but not in the sense of a causative essence. It is not essence that causes God to have hypostases. Essence functions differently now. The ultimate and the foremost point of reference for the existence of God is not the Essence, it is the Father. This means that you cannot proceed from the essence of God in order to subsequently reach the Father. You start from the Father, and, because He claims to be a Person and not an essence, He bears the characteristic of not being ‘only’; whereas essence can be understood as something on its own, and essence is of course one.
In this way, we bypass the principal status of the unit, by introducing multiplicity as something primeval in ontology, in God’s being; obviously, the meaning of the term ‘Father’ has no ground on its own, without the existence at least of a Son. Whose Father would He be, if a Son didn’t exist? We would then have to concede that He wasn’t always ‘Father’. However, if He was always the ‘Father’, then the Son must also have existed always. Thus, this multiplicity, this interdependence of the persons, becomes a chief ontological predicate; in other words, you cannot go past it, or behind it, in order to discover something that precedes it and leads us to it. The one Essence is not a precedent, and it is not the ‘cause’ of God’s being. Precedent is the Father, as the agent, but because by definition He is automatically in a communion, He cannot be acknowledged as a single unit.
With Augustine, all of what I told you up to now is cancelled. Because from there onwards, an entirely new position is taken, on which many things will depend, such as the Filioque and many other things. But, compared to the essence of the problem, the Filioque issue is minute in size. The problem is summarized in the following: Does the essence of God precede the person? Augustine couldn’t grasp the Cappadocians’ thoughts on this issue, and thus made the mistake of considering the Essence of God – the one Essence – as being the One God; hence the beginning of tremendous problems. ( http://www.oodegr.com/english/dogmatiki1/C2b.htm#5)
I think it would be difficult to argue that Volf and Rowan are not Western in their Trinitarian Confession. It is also probably of no surprise that their shared position leans towards Augustine and away from the Cappadocians. The reason I felt that it was important to illustrate this fact is because I think that this has a great bearing on Christian dialogue with Islam from an Orthodox prospective.
First, we must ask the question, to whom do we pray? In the Orthodox East we address God as Person or Persons. All prayers are addressed to a specific Person of the Trinity or to all three. Examples being, The Anaphora prayer addressed to the Father, the Jesus Prayer, and the “Heavenly King Comforter…” to name but a few. We must remember that though we pray, say to the Father, it does not mean that we exclude the Son or separate the two (one cannot say Father without the implication of the Son, the very identity of the Father rests in His begetting the Son). The Orthodox Liturgical prayers do not speak to a “divine nature” or “life force”, they are all deeply personal. This is not surprising because the Orthodox teaching is that the unity of the Godhead is understood as the Father being the Cause of the Son and Spirit (One Cause) and that the Godhead is a single Communion of Persons. This, I believe, is significant because we must pose the question to Islam, do you pray to a Personal God (The God of Abraham is Personal) or do you pray to a Divine Nature?
Second, if we Orthodox believe in the Godhead as a Communion of Persons is that not the same as saying that God the Father has “associates” in the Persons of the Son and Spirit? I suppose it depends on what is meant by “associate”. If “associate” simply means “to be in union” then perhaps this is a real division between Islam and Christianity (at least in the East). For the Orthodox Christian the One God is a Unity of Persons. This interesting subject is explored in much greater detail by Metropolitan John Zizioulas in the book Communion and Otherness pgs.149-154 (The Title of the chapter is- The Father as Cause)
And when I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; for Godhead is neither diffused beyond These, so as to introduce a mob of gods, nor yet bounded by a smaller compass than These, so as to condemn us for a poverty stricken conception of Deity, either Judaizing to save the Monarchia, or falling into heathenism by the multitude of our gods. For the evil on either side is the same, though found in contrary directions. Gregory Nazianzus Oration 45:4
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