In recent years, an abundance of theological writing has been devoted to the Orthodox understanding of personhood. Much of it is severely academic in tone though a smaller body of writings breathes the living spirit of the Fathers. The following three part essay is my humble attempt to offer some reflections on the topic. In the footnotes one may find the theologians I believe best reflect the Mind of the Church on this question and who served as the inspiration for this essay.
Theanthropic Personhood: Part One
By Paul Rosenboom
- Our Aspirations for Infinity Fulfilled in Christ
Of the many mysteries that fill creation, the mystery of the human person is the greatest. In the human person, all the eternal questions become interwoven because the mysteries of both God and man converge.(1) According to the Holy Fathers, the secret of man is connected to the salvific Mystery of Christ. In His divine-human person, our Lord united, in the most perfect and salvific way, God and man, divine and human nature, without the diminishing of either.
History has revealed man’s relentless struggle to penetrate the mystery of personhood. In the ancient Greek era, the mystery of the human person remained largely unknown. The person was reduced to a mask and the notion of God identified with eternal ideas and eternal laws. With Platonism, the soul sought release from the prison of the body and was subject to reincarnation while the rational faculty sought a merging with Universal Reason. In Aristotle, death dissolves all concrete individuality. In classical Indian philosophy and religion, with its inescapable karma and impersonal nirvana, man ultimately disappears into divine Nothingness, an abyss of depersonalization. Since the decline of medieval scholasticism, modern European philosophy lacks a concept of personhood in its entire divine and human fullness. In its place, a dynamic Faustian and secular humanism has prevailed, resulting in a tendency to reduce man to a merely biological unit or the raw material shaped by economic forces. In the last century, the futile attempt to forge a philosophy of humanistic personhood in the face of such relentless determinism was swallowed up in the labyrinth of modern psychology or the attempt to exalt man through an empty nihilism and existentialism. Such philosophies lead only to despair and an unbridled individualism which inevitably descends into the fragmentation of identity and personhood. Radical individualism claims the potential to be anything it desires and ultimately reveals a frightening nothing but incessant indulgent desire. Man’s attempt at self-definition and self-realization amount to man’s “voluntary entrance into a cage of his own limitation” constrained by his ego, where everything is vanity of vanities. (2) The attempt in our day to construct a platform of human rights based on the absolute value of the human person without any connection to the divine appears to be based on a vaporous philosophy that, upon rigorous scrutiny, dissipates as so much smoke.
Nevertheless, through sustained contemplation of man and his world, one may awaken to a world of spiritual realities and, through careful introspection and self knowledge, one may discern a yearning for infinity in all its expressions, in all the strivings and agonies of the human spirit. These ultimately merge into a powerful effort to overcome death and mortality, and to ensure eternal life. This yearning for infinity is found in the very nature of man; “the hunger for immortality is the ancient metaphysical hunger of the human spirit.”(3) And from where did this longing for infinity in all directions enter the human spirit? It cannot have its origins in our finite material nature; this profound yearning cannot be reduced to a material explanation. Because man is made in the image of God, this yearning for immortality expresses the very essence of what it means to be human. As a result of being constituted in the image of God, man experiences a yearning for divine infinity of life, for divine infinity of knowledge, for divine infinity of perfection. Man by his very constitution is inspired to rise above his material existence. He is open upwards to the transcendent. Man’s spiritual needs are the expression of a spiritual nature and, in our depths, we experience a hunger, an inner sense of needing communion with God; “You have made us for yourself, O Lord and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” (4)
But we have no capacity to fulfill our personhood on our own; it is rather Christ as the God-man Who is the key to Personhood. The mystery of the human person is connected to the Mystery of Christ.(5) In the person of the God-man Christ, the most essential needs of man’s being are satisfied once and for all. Orthodox anthropology maintains the centrality of Christ as the only true person, the very measure of man. “Now, because Christ is the eternal God-Man through the hypostatic union of the two natures in the person of Christ, human nature is irrevocably unified with the divine nature because Christ is eternally God-Man…Consequently, human nature is now enthroned in the bosom of the HolyTrinity.”(6) Man is created in the image of Christ, the New Adam. “Nothing is more human than the Lord Christ, Who personifies in Himself the most ideal perfection of all that is truly human. He is the most perfect synthesis of the Divine and the human. Christ showed both God in His perfection and man in his perfection.” (7)
In Orthodoxy, deification is Christification. Man is created in the image of Christ. This was the great Master Design or Plan which God preconceived - to make a perfect man both in His own image and after His own likeness, who would be the foundation and purpose of the entire creation; He was going to make a perfect man and through him a multitude of godlike men with whom He would be in communion. We can infer that the imperative declaration of God “let us make man,” was creative of two different men, the type and the true, that is, Adam and the Messiah. God created a man in His own image, namely Adam and Eve and then created a man in His own image and after His own likeness, the God-man, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah. This prophecy in Genesis concerning the Messiah is the purpose of the entire universe of God’s creation and the foundation of personhood. “Although the first Adam was created before Christ was born, God already had Christ in mind as the Incarnate Son of God, Who became Man, and so He created man in His Image. Col1:16-17, 3:10 This is why man is turned toward Him, and this yearning and aspiration is turned toward Christ.” (8)
- Created Anew in the Life of the Church
Personhood is not psychological, moral or emotional but ontological; “it is the rebirth of our innermost being in Christ.”(9) Our potential as human beings is fulfilled only through baptism and communion with Christ. Our true personhood is not something we possess but it is a gift given to us through the Grace of our rebirth in the Church of Christ. Without the mysteries of the Church, we remain persons by potential, separated from God and constrained by our own ego-centered individualism.
The Church is Christ extended through the ages. Christ identifies with His faithful: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” The Church as the Body of Christ, with Christ as the Head, is a community of theosis. As members of the Body of Christ, Christ’s life is offered to us and becomes our life. Regeneration through Holy Baptism carries the soul up into a new world and a new life, superior in vastness and beauty to this present world. By means of rebirth through water and spirit, the soul assumes a spiritual nature, which is nourished and grows through the processes of spiritual life. The regenerated soul is united to God and Christ by the powerful tie of love and is nourished by the Spirit, and grows until it becomes sanctified, and even perfected. The soul reborn of water and spirit, and having God for its Father and for its mother the Holy Church of God, is nourished with the Heaven-sent Bread of Life, and the words of truth spoken by the Lord, which are life and spirit. But this spiritual growth requires the keeping of God’s commandments, participation in the liturgical life, especially the Divine Liturgy, and the discipline of unceasing prayer. Prayer draws upon the soul the spirit of the strength and power of God, through which the laws and the commandments of God are fulfilled. Grace acts in that person “in proportion to his carrying out of God’s commandments.”(10) Whoever keeps Christ’s word and commandment in deed, dwells in God; and the Triune God dwells in him. The fulfillment of the commandments of God keeps the soul in love and at peace with God, and renders it worthy of the spiritual food and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Those who worthily partake of these become one flesh and one spirit with the Son of God and remain with Him forever, bearing fruit in virtue and love to the glory of God.
- Liturgy and Eucharist
“The Church travails in birth until Christ is born and formed in us, so that every holy Christian is born a christ by partaking in Christ…” Christ is being born and is taking form in each member of His Body, the Church.(11) Through the sacraments and, most importantly, in the Divine Liturgy, corrupt man is united with the new root that is Christ and partakes of divine life. “It is through the grace that we receive at each Liturgy that we are enabled to enter eternity, and are empowered to escape corruption, sin and death, because what we are offered and receive is nothing other than the Life of God Himself.”(12) In turn, as Archimandrite Sergius writes: “our whole life is to become a Liturgy, an Anaphora; a constant offering of our talents, our time, our hearts and our world to Christ.”(13)
The Orthodox Christian sustains himself continually with the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, through which he is intimately joined with Christ and with his brothers in Christ. The holy and perfect nature of Christ’s soul becomes a remedy and cure for the fragmented and broken nature of men; the virtue and holiness of Christ’s nature can be transmitted to the nature of every man, if he wishes to become a partaker and sharer of Christ’s virtues. Deification is experienced Eucharistically. “It is in the Holy Liturgy that every human being finds his true relationship and communion with God and with other human beings - especially his brethren who are joined to Christ’s Body - and his proper relationship with the world.” (14)
The Eucharist is central to Orthodox life. The perfect righteousness and the perfect morality, which the Gospel of Christ dictates to Christians, are so bound up with the mystery of the Eucharist that without this heavenly food, no one can fulfill these commandments. The Body of Christ, which we eat, is a new creation, and of a different nature; it is a body that is pure and imperishable, a temple of abundant grace. It assimilates the body of old Adam to itself in the same way as the wild olive tree is cultivated by the grafting onto it of a cultivated tree. The Body of Christ is the temple and house of the Holy Spirit; it is evident that whoever takes the Body of Christ into him, takes the Holy Spirit along with it. The Spirit of God is implanted in the hearts of men, and it marks man with the seal of adoption. Therefore, the true human person is constituted of body, soul and Spirit. Whoever has the same Body and the same Blood as Christ, and consequently the same Spirit, is naturally a brother of His, and a son of God. Just as the Father loves our Lord Jesus Christ, His firstborn Son, so He also loves the brethren of Christ, because they are His own children, and He gives them honor and glory in His Kingdom. The view of Christians as brothers of Christ is firmly established in the Scriptures and is to be understood in this Eucharistic context. “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister and mother.” (Mt.12 48-50) “...but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”(Jn 20:17)
END OF PART ONE
Forthcoming: Part Two: Love and Asceticism
Notes:
- Fr. Athanasios Yevtich, “The Mystery of the Human Person as Seen through the Person of St. John the Theologian” in Emmanuel: The Only-Begotten and Firstborn Among Many Brethren p.27 Sebastian Press Western American Diocese 2008
- Fr. Athanasios Yevtich, “The Anthropology of Hesychasm” in Christ: The Alpha and the Omega pp.76-77 Western American Diocese 2007
- St. Justin Popovich, “The Supreme Value and Infallible Criterion” in Man and the God-Man p.19 Sebastian Press Western American Diocese 2009
- St. Augustine, Confessions, 1,1,1
- Alexis Torrance, “The Concept of the Person in Orthodox Theology” (Lecture at Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville NY) Youtube video
- Fr. George Kapsanis, Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life Holy Monastery of St. Gregory Mount Athos 2006
- Yevtich
- Fr. Athanasios Yevtich, “Man in Christ” in Emmanuel, p.80
- Torrance video
- Fr. Athanasios Yevtich, “Orthodox Faith and Life” in Emmanuel: The Only-Begotten and Firstborn Among Many Brethren p.23 Sebastian Press Western American Diocese 2008
- Fr. Athanasios Yevtich, “Orthodox Faith and Life” in Emmanuel: The Only-Begotten and Firstborn Among Many Brethren p.27 Sebastian Press Western American Diocese 2008
- Arch. Sergius Bowyer, Acquiring the Mind of Christ: Embracing the Vision of the Orthodox Church p.2 St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press, PA. 2015
- Ibid. p.7
- Fr. Athanasios Yevtich, “Orthodox Faith and Life” in Emmanuel: The Only-Begotten and Firstborn Among Many Brethren p.31 Sebastian Press Western American Diocese 2008
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