Jesus Christ, Incarnate Logos of God, Source of Freedom and Unity

JESUS CHRIST, INCARNATE LOGOS OF GOD, SOURCE OF FREEDOM AND UNITY

DUMITRU STANILOAE1

An authentically theological way of thinking Orthodox thinking about the liberation and unification or recapitu lation of mankind in Christ has remained faithful to the mind of the Fathers of the Church. It therefore links this theme closely to its under standing of Christ as the divine LOGOS incarnate. This understanding forms the groundwork of a firm faith and a firm theology. A theology which would be nothing more than an aggregate of feelings, lacking an ontological view of the relationship between Christ and the world, would be shifting soil. It could not provide a basis for common efforts undertaken with a view to liberation and unification. A purely sentimental theology would rather only justify and deepen the capricious attitudes fostering the divisions among Christians. A theology may take its cue from social circumstances. But these take different forms, and are interpreted in the light of different interests, each of which seeks to orient society in its own special way. Such a theology would be equally incapable of enabling Christians to act along converging lines and with deep conviction for the sake of liberation and unity. Clear and efficacious guidelines for the striving towards liberation and union can only be provided by an authentically theological way of thinking. Furthermore, the liberation and unity brought within our reach by Christ cannot be properly envisaged except in relation to the objective salvation which He accomplished. They can only mobilize to the full the interest and efforts of Christians when they are seen as elements of salvation. But salvation, being the establishment of a certain positive relationship between God and men, implies primarily a certain under standing of God — the chief subject of any theology understood in the strict sense of the term.

1 The Rev. Professor D. Staniloae, Rumanian Orthodox Church, is Professor Emeritus of Theology at the Orthodox Theological Institute, Bucharest. This article was translated from the French by the WCC Language Service. THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW

From such a standpoint, one can see however that this theology, theology in the strict sense of the term, does not neglect the human side of the relationship between God and man. But in terms of this theology, as far as man is concerned, the most solid and unifying factor in this relationship is the understanding of God. And this factor has to come into play if the work of man's salvation is to be effectively accomplished in him. All that has been said up to the present comes into focus when it is specified that this theology in the strict sense of the term — which could be called a 'theological theology' in contrast to the various types of non-theological, or rather anthropological theologies — is not, as we understand it, a theology concerned with God in general. It is a theology concerned with the Son of God as the supreme Logos, the source and stay of all the rational structures of things and of the reason of all men. This is truly theology because it is concerned with theos ho logos. This theology began with St John the Evangelist, who saw in Christ the divine Logos incarnate. It remained predominant throughout the whole of patristic thinking. For the Fathers also understood Christ to be this incarnate Logos. St John the Evangelist was called 'the Theologian'. But this was not because he was considered to have been the first to have speculated about God in human terms. Nor was it because he was considered to have been the first of Christian thinkers to have brought the human logos into association with the notion of God, the transcendent being. He was called the Theologian because he envisioned God Himself, or, more precisely, the Son of God, both as theos and as Logos. The Greek Fathers developed the doctrine which atì&rms that Christ does not save us merely because He is Son of God or true God, but also because He is the supreme Logos, or because the Son of God incarnate is the divine Logos.

Human reason and divine mystery There is a relationship, involving a certain correspondence, between human reason and the divine Logos. The divine Logos became incarnate to fortify in two respects the rational element in human nature. One was to harmonize the ways in which this reason is used by the various rational beings, the unified mode thus realized being itself then linked JESUS CHRIST, SOURCE OF FREEDOM AND UNITY to its source, the incarnate Logos. The other was to give human reason the preponderant role in knowledge of God's work, and in man's self- guidance in his personal life. Thus theology, in so far as it is concerned with theos ho logos, can also be a theology of the encounter between ho theos and human reason, inasmuch as God Himself is the source of human reason. This is the base on which patristic spirituality also developed, in which the passions are held in check by reason. The divine Logos is not, of course, an impersonal Reason, but a hypostatic, personal Reason. He is not merely the supreme reality, full of intelligible meaning, either as object of knowledge for another person or quite simply for the beauty of this intelligibility in itself. This supreme Reason is a person whose fully intelligible being both knows and can be known. As such, this person is superior to his own rational mani festation, as he is to all knowledge which would claim to have grasped fully his intelligibility. For the person in general is an unfathomable mystery and at the same time full of meaning. All the more so the divine or the supreme Person. If each person is a mystery which defies definition, the divine Person is the infinite mystery. This mystery, however, is the source of rational manifestations, which are intelligible and are imparted by these meaningful manifestations. The driving force behind these rational or meaningful manifestations is the interest in, indeed the infinite love for, the persons who are brought into communion. The rational is merely the manner in which communication comes about, the way knowledge of self is imparted. The persons to whom the supreme Person imparts Himself in an intelligible way are in turn rational in their ways of communicating with each other and of imparting to each other at the same time the inexhaustible mysteries of love and liberty.

Love is more than reason Persons use reason to communicate with one another and to make their lives a relationship of love. It is not reason that makes use of persons. The person is infinitely more than the circumscribed reason by which he or she imparts himself to other persons. But he cannot impart himself without in his communication implying an overall meaning for his existence, a meaning richer than any given meaning that is communicated. It is impossible to think of a rational order as existing objectively on its own. It is always a rationality communicated or received by a person. 406 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW

It is impossible to think of a rationality without a hypostatic reason which thinks and communicates its thought or which receives a com municated thought. And it is impossible to imagine a person without the will to communicate himself or to receive a communication in a fully meaningful way, in a way that is rational or intelligible. This is how, in fact, the person breathes spiritually. It is impossible to think of a rationality without a person or of a person not under the necessity of communicating himself in some rational or intelligible way. The separation of the person and the rational results in the fantastic notion of a self-engendered rationality which is devoid of meaning, and a person as a sentient life-force, blind and devoid of meaning. The supreme Person imparts the life-giving mystery of his fulness by means of rational or intelligible forms, and his communications must take on, for non-divine existents, contours defined against the back ground of his infinity. This is the only way in which he can make him self comprehensible to them. He has conceived the finite rational structures of these existents, and, at the moment which he determined, has given actuality to these mentally discerned existents. He thus com municates his discriminated rational thoughts to the finite persons which he has likewise called into existence. Thus in the divine Logos, the living and infinite depth of the Person is likewise the voluntary source of defined, rational thoughts on which the light of their life-giving infinite source is perpetually playing. The things of the world are communications exemplifying the rational thoughts of the supreme Person, at a level of discernment which is in keeping with human understanding. Cognitive human reason itself is the creation of this supreme cognitive Reason, created to under stand the thoughts communicated by this supreme Reason by means of things.

The divine image in man This is what constitutes the divine image in man. The divine Reason merely externalizes His thoughts on the level of human reason. Now the externalized thoughts are words addressed to human understanding. The circumstances produced by men, but also by the supreme Reason, give rise to a dialogue between God and man which leads men to their fulfilment in God. Undoubtedly, divine Reason also speaks to men by divine words, whose pattern is embodied in things and in the actions accomplished on JESUS CHRIST, SOURCE OF FREEDOM AND UNITY 407 them. By such direct speech, the hypostatic Reason which speaks to men through nature gives more explicit contours to the goal towards which it desires to lead men through the circumstances of their life among natural things. This goal is none other than to grow constantly in knowledge of the divine Reason and to be united with Him. Man himself, as personal (hypostatic) reason or as rational person, when taking in the meaning of things, expresses them in words while recognizing them as patterned words addressed to him by the creative Reason which is the guiding force behind them. Thus the world is the means of the ordinary dialogue between God and man. All that exists is in the service of this dialogue between the hypostatic Reason of God and the hypostatic reason of man. Men think and speak rationally, by acts and direct words, because God first thought and thinks, spoke and speaks, acted and acts, at the level of mankind, through intelligible things. And if they so think and speak, it is because this concrete and intelligible world exists, created and governed ration ally by the hypostatic Reason in order to externalize its thoughts for man and lead him by way of reason to a better knowledge of himself, to reciprocal knowledge and to union with God and with his fellow-men. All that exists bears the imprint of the person. Everything is permeated by the person, the rational person. Better, let us say that all creation was made for the sake of dialogue between the divine Person and human persons, and to be an expression of the dialogical relationship between these rational persons. Everything bears the actual and virtual imprint of inter-personal dialogue. This provides a personal, mystical basis for the rational order of the world and gives an inexhaustible mystical depth to this rationality itself. It explains why active human reason tends towards the goal of absolute perfection, while the passive rationality of the world, as object of human reason, equally promotes this goal. But it also explains the thrust of reason towards a universal union of thought, as well as the desire to give full implementation to an intelligible, inter-personal relationship inscribed in man's own being. The active reason of man and the passive rationality of the world have this mystical basis and this indestructible and hence mystical tendency towards an absolute goal. This basis and tendency are mani fested in the very fact that no definitive scientific explanation of nature and man will ever be attained, in spite of the fact that man is perpetually making progress in this matter of scientific explanation. 408 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW

The rational order has no existence of its own, by virtue of its nature, but is the expression of the person, the means of communication between persons and hence the medium in which they move. In turn the person, though he is more than all the rationality which he expresses and receives in his perpetual activity, is a factor which produces, radiates, communi cates and freely receives, without limit, rational meaning and thought, and along with these, his life-giving spirit.

A world devoid of meaning Without the divine Person who is author and dispenser of meaning, and without the human person who takes in, expresses and communi cates these meanings on the basis of meanings actually communicated by the world, i.e. by the created work of the divine Person, all existence would be entirely meaningless and irrational. There is a type of philos ophy which tries to explain everything on the basis of a rationality intrinsic to existence. But it can find no grounds for the rationality of this existence apart from the person who produces, communicates and grasps it. There was a time when men yielded to the illusion of this supposedly philosophical explanation of existence, put forward in 'rational' but impersonal terms. We are now observing a state of dis illusionment resulting from this sort of philosophy, and the talk is now of a meaningless world, a universe of the absurd. A chaotic existence, or an existence not governed by 'rational' laws, would be devoid of sense. But this would also be true of a 'rational' order of existence if it were impersonal. This latter approach to existence is of a nature, furthermore, to imbue us with illusions and provide us with the illusory satisfaction of a 'rational' explanation, which is not, in fact, a rational explanation. The mystery of the Person who created and sustains the rational world is a luminous mystery. This mystery is the sole dwelling-place of the light by virtue of which there is any meaning, and by virtue of which all things have meaning. Only such a rational person, both living and infinitely superior to reason, creator and governor of the world of things, guarantees that the world cannot be reduced to things, while also guaranteeing that no other existing person can be reduced to the level of things. To suppose that a world could be rational without a Person from whom rationality emanates is to propose an utterly dark mystery, utterly impenetrable in its absurdity. Such a world is not amenable to any real explanation. It is a world devoid of meaning. JESUS CHRIST, SOURCE OF FREEDOM AND UNITY 409

III

The personal as the unifying The supreme divine Logos, on whom all existence and all meaning pivot, is where all has consistence — reason, word, person, divine Person and human person, inter-personal dialogue and the world as medium of this personal and rational dialogue — and where the meaning of all these realities is comprised. All is rational because all bears the imprint of the person. There is no explanation of existence except in a 'pan-rationality' of a personal nature. The hypostatic divine Reason, by means of its ideas, is present in things, for all things exist and are defined by these ideas of the supreme Reason. By virtue of his rationally organized nature, man, in contrast to things, is not merely an image modelled by a divine idea, but also a cognitive personal rationality. He is not merely an image of an idea of the divine Reason, but image of the divine hypostatic Reason itself. As such, he has the capacity, as he also feels the necessity, of assembling within him all the rational content of the world, according to the image of the divine Reason, who is the source of all the rationality in things. Man thus grows more and more like the divine Person, and learns to know better and better the riches of divine thought and the greatness of the divine love for man. Men, being all images of the same hypostatic divine Reason, are called to give actual, concrete unity to their thinking, in a process simultaneous with their advance into genuine union with the divine Reason. It is in the hypostatic Reason that men are like each other, and it is there that unity among them comes about. Their unity is not merely manifested in a growing identity of thought which comprises more and more fully the riches of meaning in things and helps men to understand themselves. It is also manifested in men's words and in the acts by which they respond to each other. These are the means by which they come to be united among themselves and united with the divine Reason in a harmonious dialogue. But this harmonious dialogue which is God's will has been disturbed from the start by men's selfish passions. Covetousness, greed and pride have thrown up obstacles to the unifying action of reason, or have enslaved it to the divergent interests of their selfishness. 410 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW

It was to fortify human reason against the revolt of these lower forces, disruptive of human unity, that the divine Reason became incarnate, strengthening human reason and the image of divine Reason against the lower forces working within each man in the service of selfishness. This is why it is only in Christ that human reason with a unifying force can be found, since it draws on the strength of the divine Reason united to it. Christ's human reason is the model of human reason as a unifying force, and the centre from which this force for unity radiates. Man is called by his reason to be the unifying element of all creation. But men must be at unity among themselves if this is to be achieved. And it is by means of this same reason, identical in all and aspiring to understand all things and all men, that they can unite among themselves. This is why St Maximus the Confessor calls man not a microcosm but a macrocosm. It is by their reason that men rise above the fleeting pleasures by which they are locked in on themselves. For by their reason they can rise to what endures and attain mutual comprehension with other men.

Man as the wedding-ring Cognitive human reason has need of the world, no doubt. It needs it to discover the riches of God's thoughts, as it needs its fellows to advance perpetually in knowledge of other meanings comprised in the inexhaustible depths of creation, engulfed as it is in the infinity of the divine thought. St Maximus the Confessor therefore says that man is the world's wedding-ring, for he is linked through the elements of his nature with all the elements of nature. The link is not just that of theoretical knowledge. There is also a vital bond by which he discerns at the world's material surface the tissue of rational unity which emanates from God. It is by this that man also knows God Himself. The Son of God, source and goal of all rational thought and of all rational structures, became man and not another creature precisely because man is the wedding-ring of creation and aspires to the supreme Reason or understanding. It is only in Christ that all things and all men can be gathered into one, not merely because He is God and hence supreme Reason, but also because He is the man whose body is linked to all the elements of the universe, and whose human reason actually brings into play through JESUS CHRIST, SOURCE OF FREEDOM AND UNITY the divine Reason which is united to it, the capacity to take in the rational structures of all things and of all men (St Maximus, Ambigua, P.G.91, 1385). It is in Christ and through Christ, if we raise ourselves to an under standing of Him, that we achieve in truth an understanding of all things and all men. And it is by becoming more and more united with that totally unifying principle, the humanity of Christ, that we make progress in our moves towards unity. No rational thought, and no activity of this thought that makes for unity can exist elsewhere than in Christ.

IV Rising above our passions Up to this point, we have stressed the unifying power of Christ-as supreme Reason incarnate, a power which by reinforcing our reason as a unifying factor also summons us to make an effort to bring about union, with reason playing the chief role. But our reason cannot exercise this unifying function if our ration ality is not also displayed in rising above our passions. One of the reasons for the incarnation of the divine hypostatic Reason was to liberate us from our passions through our reason, once this was fortified by the divine Reason incarnate. Our passions divide us, bring us into hostile confrontation with each other, drive us through our pride to take up conflicting attitudes. We are enslaved by these passions to impulses which relay each other in spite of ourselves, and which also leave us at the mercy of the passions of others. Liberation and unifi cation go together. What is salvation but this liberation from our passions and this union in love, which cannot be achieved unless we ensure that reason is the predominant force in our lives? Unless reason, under the sway of the love of God, strives in the direction of holiness, it is impossible to make any headway towards genuine libera tion or genuine unity. Any liberation and unity achieved without such effort will always be superficial, questionable and shaky. Moreover, reason cannot fail to see how equal men are in the same faculty of reason and in a brotherhood by which all are enriched. It is only the passions that open up deep chasms between men. Our passions obscure our view of men and things, preventing our seeing the objective purity of their rational structure, which is so worthy 412 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW

of respect and love because their eternal ground and goal are in God. We never see men or things except as misted over by our passions, the cause of internecine struggle for things and of biased views in human relationships. The passions must be dominated by reason if the flawless beauty of things is to be disclosed and unclouded tranquillity attained in human relationships. Reason must reign if men are not to let prejudice and mutual antipathies upset them. When religious denominations hold aloof from each other, the cause is often to be found in the passionate championship of their stance on tfye part of their members, or in their pride. Reason is as much a means as the goal in the task of rising ^bove the contrasts of passion- swayed positions.

V The love that frees and unites St Maximus the Confessor suggests that there are five main cate gories which provide the structure for all that exists : substance, move ment, difference, union and stability. Movement brings about both the differentiation and the unity of the rational elements implicit in all existing things, and so attains eternal stability, once unity in depth has been brought about, combining the different aspects of reality. Distinc tions are not eliminated by unity, any more than the effort to attain unity is impeded by the movement of differentiation {Ambigua, P.G. 91, 1133-1139). By virtue of these two forms of movement, which cannot but go together, reality becomes more and more the symphonic unity of a universal conciliarity. The passions accentuate merely the differences. But reason aspires to a unity where due heed is given to the rich variety of the ideas of the divine Reason, and acts accordingly. How is it to be achieved, this rich and symphonic unity which corre sponds to the riches contained in the divine Reason? The way is this. Each one's reason must be united, as far as is possible, with the whole vast spectrum of the rational structures intrinsic to things and persons, seen not through the mists of the lower passions, but in the light of the love that unifies. ^s

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