Dionysius to Maximus 09:00 - 10:20 Wednesday, 21St August, 2019 Room 11 Presentation Type Short Communications Scott
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Dionysius to Maximus 09:00 - 10:20 Wednesday, 21st August, 2019 Room 11 Presentation type Short Communications Scott 806 The Gnoseological Function of σύμβολον in Dionysius the Areopagite Alexandru Atanase Barna University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania Abstract The text presents some aspects on the way Dionysius the Areopagite uses σύμβολον, not merely as a liturgical instrument, but more as a gnoseological category. As scholars have analyzed the link between symbol and mystery or symbol and ontology, I develop in this paper the link between symbol and gnoseology, to propose a sense and a content for Dionysian ‘symbolic theology’, mentioned several times in Corpus Dionysiacum. From this perspective, symbol, as it is used and linked with other mystical and gnoseological concepts, can be also understood as an instrument that reveals a special theological content a Christian needs to access, a sort of personal dynamic knowledge revealed through mysteries. Α comparative analysis of the contexts and meanings of σύμβολον in Neoplatonic representative literature and in CD follows an interrogation on the sources and nature of the symbolic theology, announced as the title of the unknown treatise Symbolic Theology and widely present within the Corpus, even not directly expressed or deciphered. Several terms relating symbolon reveal a special semantic field, which involves a gnoseological function that can be attributed to the theological revelated content correspondent to those symbols. I propose the idea that the meanings of symbols, as are used by Dionysius, represent a path to distinguish in his works a theology of revelation. A special relation between gnoseology and ontology in Dionysius is questioned in the final part of the paper, but the conclusion focuses on the fact that the gnoseological function of symbolon is better anchored in the use and nature of CD. 627 Composite Nature without Particularities: Leontius of Byzantium’s Understanding of Severus of Antioch’s Miaphysite Christology Yuichi Tsunoda Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan Abstract This article elucidates how Leontius of Byzantium (c. 485-c. 543) understood the composite nature (physis), which is the fundamental concept in Severus of Antioch’s (c. 465-538) Miaphysite Christology. First, Severus of Antioch understood the Incarnation as the process of the dynamic economic activity of the divine Logos, which makes the humanity its own. Severus held that Christ is the one composite nature as the incarnate Logos, which possesses the humanity. The composite nature comprises two particularities, namely the divine particularities and the human particularities. The divine particularities contain the divine properties and the human particularities include the human properties. The notion ‘particularity’ indicates the integrity of entity and the intrinsic otherness. In the single nature of the incarnate Logos, the otherness of the divinity and the humanity continues and thus the two particularities remain without any confusion. Second, Leontius of Byzantium interpreted Severus’s Christology from his perspective of the hypostatic union. Severus held that the two properties indicate the two particularities. By way of contrast, Leontius thought the two properties should indicate their underlying realities, namely the two distinct natures. He did not recognize the entities of two particularities and so he did not recognize any real distinction of the divinity and the humanity in the one composite nature. Consequently, without considering the two particularities, he understood that there is a confusion of the divinity and the humanity in the composite nature of Severus’s Christology. 696 From the Hypostatic Union to Hypostasis. On the Interplay between Christology and Anthropology in Maximus the Confessor Marius Portaru The Patristic Institute Augustinianum, Rome, Italy Abstract Very recent research in Christology (Riches 2016, Daley 2018) has cast a fresh light on Cyril of Alexandria’s concept of the hypostatic union, showing that the bishop of Alexandria understands the unity of Christ not as a joining together of the two natures, but as stemming from the one hypostasis of the Word, which becomes the starting point of describing Jesus the Christ, with a subsequent emphasis on the exchange of properties. Maximus the Confessor’s adopts Cyril’s understanding of the hypostatic union as developed by the six-century theologians (mainly Leontius of Byzantium and Leontius of Jerusalem), but he needs to extend it to anthropology to successfully reject monoenergism and monothelitism. In my paper, I argue that Maximus strives to define a unitary concept of hypostasis (more developed than the Cappadocians’, intended to solve mainly Trinitarian dilemmas), so as to fit equally well within Christological and Anthropological contexts. In his effort to harmonise the Trinitarian, Christological and Anthropological use of hypostasis, he must work out carefully a series of conceptual tensions: that between the divine and human will, between natural and personal freedom, between the senses of tropos uparxeos, but most importantly, he must address the fundamental tension between hypostasis and nature..