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Durham E-Theses Durham E-Theses ENYΠOΣTATOΣ Gleede, Benjamin J. How to cite: Gleede, Benjamin J. (2005) ENYΠOΣTATOΣ, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3054/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk ENYIIOl:TATOl: MA-thesis by Benjamin J. Gleede Dekan Adlerstr. 20 91322 Grafenberg GERMANY A copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published! without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 2 1 JUN 2005 Content Preface ...................................................................................... 1 I. The Pre-neochalcedonian tvvn6ararot;-tradition .... .......................... 2 1. £vun:oa'ta'tos -a technical and doxological Christian term ................................... 3 2. The development of the technical usage during the Arian controversy ........................ 7 3. The establislm1ent of the teclmical usage in late fourth- and early fifth-century authors ... 14 II. The Christo logical application of EJJVn6ararot;.. ............................ 20 A. £vun:oa'ta'tos and the 'insubsistence-fommla' from John the Grmarian to John of Damascus ................................................................................................. 21 1. John the Grammarian and the introduction of £vun:oa'ta'tos into the Christo logical debate ...................................................................................................... 23 2. Leontius of Byzantium and the distinction of EV'UT[OO"'ta'tOV and un:oa'taO"ls ............ 29 2a. Philosophical excursion: The distinction Ka8 'au'to - EV UAA<V, the problem of substantial qualities and inexisting natures ........................................................... 33 3. Ephrem of Amid ....................................................................................... 38 4. Pamphilus the Theologian ........................................................................... 40 5. De sectis and the Christological disadvantages of the common usage ........................ 45 6. Leontius of Jerusalem ................................................................................ 47 7. Maximus the Confessor. ............................................................................. 53 8. Anastasius Sinaites (and the Doctrina patrum) ................................................... 66 9. John of Damascus .................................................................................... 75 B. Summary.............................................................................................. 89 Abbreviations and Bibliography ...................................................... 93 1 Preface The so-called doctrine of enhypostasia is probably the only thing an average theologian knows about the post-chalcedonian development of patristic theology. It was very prominent in the confessional orthodoxy of the seventeenth century, despised by most of the enlightenment theologians and rehabilitated in the twentieth century in the context of Karl Barth's reinterpretation of the trinitarian and Christological dogma. Whereas this solemn tradition was mainly inaugurated by the western reception of John of Damascus' ilTJYrl yvwo"E.coc;, modem patristic scholarship from F. Loofs wanted trace back this doctrine until the beginning of the sixth-century and derived its origin from Leontius of Byzantium's defence of the Chalcedonian dogma. With more and more of Loofs' postulates about Leontius being refuted, Brian E. Daley challenged also this doctrine as being alien both to the Christo logy of Leontius and to the entire patristic era in a widely discussed, but still unpublished paper. The term E.vunOCJ'tCX.'toc;, Daley argued, does not signify a quasi-accidental inherence of Christ's human nature in the person of the divine Logos, but simply its reality. The prefix E.v- is not to be misunderstood as meaning 'in', but- being the opposite of an a- privativum -has to be understood as 'having' or 'endowed with'. Of course, this gives rise to the question, whether several hundred years of doctrinal tradition have in fact been deceived by an insufficient acquaintance with Greek prefixes. This examination wants to contribute to a solution of this problem on a mainly terminological level, by analysing the use and significance of the term in question in the Christian authors of the relevant period. However, as the technical Christological usage in the post-chalcedonian debates developed on the background of an older, trinitarian usage the Church probably inherited from Origen, we will briefly have to work out this background in a first chapter on its use during the trinitarian debates of the late third up to the early fifth century. For the post-chalcedonian period, we will examine the works of those authors we consider to have contributed to a more or less significant degree to the development of our term one by one. Of course, this presupposes criteria of selection which have to be justified. Our main criterion was, whether the author presents explicit reflections about the meaning of our term and whether he connects it with a Christological somewhat comparable to the alleged doctrine of enhypostasia. Hence, we included neither the letter of the monk Eusthatius, because he just uses the tenn without any explicit reflections upon its meaning, nor Eulogius of Alexandria, because he just 2 repeats John the Grammarian, nor Anastasius of Antioch, because in his dogmatic sermons he does not use the term at all and in his antitritheist dialogue he only makes a short remark about it which is perfectly in line with what we had already read in Jolm the Grammarian or De sectis. On the contrary, we did include Anastasius Sinaita - although his writings do by no means occupy a prominent place in the history of our term -, because of his extensive treatment of the 'no nature without hypostasis'­ objection which was the stimulus for the whole development of technical Christological usage of our tern1. A problem we can treat only marginally is that of the alleged metaphysical innovations connected with the enhypostasia-doctrine. Nonetheless, the few remarks we are going to present about this will hopefully enable the reader to judge for himself about those postulates. Additional support for such a judgement could be provided by the short preface introducing the treatment of our individual post-chalcedonian authors. The clues concerning those authors' relationship to contemporary philosophy are thus probably not as necessary as those concerning the interrelation of the Christian authors amongst each other which provide the necessary basis for any description of a development of a term, but nevertheless have their relevance in the context of our fragmentary remarks concerning possible metaphysical innovations. I. The Pre-neochalcedonian EV'U1tOO''W.'tOc;-tradition The Greek prefix E.v- is subject to a crucial ambiguity which was not only puzzling for interpreters of sixth-century Christology. Being derived from the local preposition meaning "in", it can actually retain its literal, localising sense, e.g. in £:yycia'tptoc; ("in the womb") or Evuypoc; ("in the water"). Even Aristotle has to refute the possible misunderstanding of differentiae like (l;c.i)ov) £vu8pov as distinguishing species of animals according to their location (Topics VI,6 144 b 31-145 a 1). However, in most of the cases it has lost its localizing sense and is simply opposed to an a- privativum, as in EV'tl!lOc; I cht!loc;. In those cases, one has to determine how 'external' the possessed entity is conceived to be with regard to the possessing one. In the context of a materialistic philosophy, £vuA.oc; would in any case mean just 'material', i.e. it would describe a kind of identity between UATl and the EVUAOV. In contrast, an idealistic philosophy would not conceive of the £vuA.ov as matter or matetial, but as in-mattered, i.e. currently in some kind of connection with matter without being identical with it. 3 Similar examples are the important Christian terms £vmxpKO<; and £vm:DI-lCX'tO<;. Melito of Sardes was blamed for being a materialist because of writing a treatise ITEpi 'tOU EVOCDI-lchou 8EO'U, which was interpreted as 'On the corporeal God', but in fact meant 'On the incorporated i.e. incarnate God' .1 We will have to see which of those two possible meanings can be verified with regard to £vunocna'to<;. 1. £vvtr6cnaror; -a technical and doxological Christian term It is very a astonishing fact that the tenn £vunoo'tCX'tO<; at least until the sixth century CE seems to appear only in Christian texts. The only possible pagan reference I could find stems from Secundus, a gnomologist of the second century, but in the light of a closer philological examination the phrase appears to originate in a later misreading
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