FIRST REASON

HOLY WRIT

Of the many signs that tell of the adversaries' mistrust of their
own cause, none declares it so loudly as the shameful outrage
they put upon the majesty of the Holy Bible. After they have
dismissed with scorn the utterances and suffrages of the rest of
the witnesses, they are nevertheless brought to such straits that
they cannot hold their own otherwise than by laying violent hands
on the divine volumes themselves, thereby showing beyond all
question that they are brought to their last stand, and are
having recourse to the hardest and most extreme of expedients to
retrieve their desperate and ruined fortunes. What induced the
Manichees to tear out the Gospel of Matthew and the Acts of the
Apostles? Despair. For these volumes were a torment to men who
denied Christ's birth of a Virgin, and who pretended that the
Spirit then first descended upon Christians when their peculiar
Paraclete, a good-for-nothing Persian, made his appearance. What
induced the Ebionites to reject all St. Paul's Epistles? Despair.
For while those Letters kept their credit, the custom of
circumcision, which these men had reintroduced, was set aside as
an anachronism. What induced that crime-laden apostate Luther to
call the Epistle of James contentious, turgid, arid, a thing of
straw, and unworthy of the Apostolic spirit? Despair. For by this
writing the wretched man's argument of righteousness consisting
in faith alone was stabbed through and rent assunder. What
induced Luther's whelps to expunge off-hand from the genuine
canon of Scripture, Tobias, Ecclesiasticus, Maccabees, and, for
hatred of these, several other books involved in the same false
charge? Despair. For by these Oracles they are most manifestly
confuted whenever they argue about the patronage of Angels, about
free will, about the faithful departed, about the intercession of
Saints. Is it possible? So much perversity, so much audacity?
After trampling underfoot Church, Councils, Episcopal Sees,
Fathers, Martyrs, Potentates, Peoples, Laws, Universities,
Histories, all vestiges of Antiquity and Sanctity, and declaring
that they would settle their disputes by the written word of God
alone, to think that they should have emasculated that same Word,
which alone was left, by cutting out of the whole body so many
excellent and goodly parts! Seven whole books, to ignore lesser
diminutions, have the Calvinists cut out of the Old Testament.
The Lutherans take away the Epistle of James besides, and, in
their dislike of that, five other Epistles, about which there had
been controversy of old in certain places and times. To the
number of these the latest authorities at Geneva add the book of
Esther and about three chapters of Daniel, which their
fellow-disciples, the Anabaptists, had some time before condemned
and derided. How much greater was the modesty of Augustine (_De
doct. Christ. lib._ 2, _c._ 8.), who, in making his catalogue of
the Sacred Books, did not take for his rule the Hebrew Alphabet,
like the Jews, nor private judgment, like the Sectaries, but that
Spirit wherewith Christ animates the whole Church. The Church,
the guardian of this treasure, not its mistress (as heretics
falsely make out), vindicated publicly in former times by very
ancient Councils this entire treasure, which the Council of Trent
has taken up and embraced. Augustine also in a special discussion
on one small portion of Scripture cannot bring himself to think
that any man's rash murmuring should be permitted to thrust out
of the Canon the book of Wisdom, which even in his time had
obtained a sure place as a well-authenticated and Canonical book
in the reckoning of the Church, the judgment of ages, the
testimony of ancients, and the sense of the faithful. What would
he say now if he were alive on earth, and saw men like Luther and
Calvin manufacturing Bibles, filing down Old and New Testament
with a neat pretty little file of their own, setting aside, not
the book of wisdom alone, but with it very many others from the
list of Canonical Books? Thus whatever does not come out from
their shop, by a mad decree, is liable to be, spat upon by all as
a rude and barbarous composition. They who have stooped to this
dire and execrable way of saving themselves surely are beaten,
overthrown, and flung rolling in the dust, for all their fine
praises that are in the mouths of their admirers, for all their
traffic in priesthoods, for all their bawling in pulpits, for all
their sentencing of Catholics to chains, rack and gallows. Seated
in their armchairs as censors, as though any one had elected them
to that office, they seize their pens and mark passages as
spurious even in God's own Holy Writ, putting their pens through
whatever they cannot stomach. Can any fairly educated man be
afraid of battalions of such enemies? If in the midst of your
learned body they had recourse to such trickster's arts, calling
like wizards upon their familiar spirit, you would shout at
them,--you would stamp your feet at them. For instance I would
ask them what right they have to rend and mutilate the body of
the Bible. They would answer that they do not cut out true
Scriptures, but prune away supposititious accretions. By
authority of what judge? By the Holy Ghost. This is the answer
prescribed by Calvin (_Instit. lib._ I, _c._ 7), for escaping
this judgment of the Church whereby spirits of prophesy are
examined. Why then do some of you tear out one piece of
Scripture, and others another, whereas you all boast of being led
by the same Spirit? The Spirit of the Calvinists receives six
Epistles which do not please the Lutheran Spirit, both all the
while in full confidence reposing on the Holy Ghost. The
Anabaptists call the book of Job a fable, intermixed with tragedy
and comedy. How do they know? The Spirit has taught them. Whereas
the Song of Solomon is admired by Catholics as a paradise of the
soul, a hidden manna, and rich delight in Christ, Castalio, a
lewd rogue, has reckoned it nothing better than a love-song about
a mistress, and an amorous conversation with Court flunkeys.
Whence drew he that intimation? From the Spirit. In the
Apocalypse of John, every jot and tittle of which Jerane declares
to bear some lofty and magnificent meaning, Luther and Brent and
Kemnitz, critics hard to please, find something wanting, and are
inclined to throw over the whole book. Whom have they consulted?
The Spirit. Luther with preposterous heat pits the Four Gospels
one against another (_Praef. in Nov. Test._), and far prefers
Paul's Epistles to the first three, while he declares the Gospel
of St. John above the rest to be beautiful, true, and worthy of
mention in the first place,--thereby enrolling even the Apostles,
so far as in him lay, as having a hand in his quarrels. Who
taught him to do that? The Spirit. Nay this imp of a friar has
not hesitated in petulant style to assail Luke's Gospel because
therein good and virtuous works are frequently commended to us.
Whom did he consult? The Spirit. Theodore Beza has dared to carp
at, as a corruption and perversion of the original, that mystical
word from the twenty-second chapter of Luke, _this is the
chalice, the new testament in my blood, which_ (chalice) _shall
be shed for you_ [Greek: potaerion ekchunomenon], because this
language admits of no explanation other than that of the wine in
the chalice being converted into the true blood of Christ. Who
pointed that out? The Spirit. In short, in believing all things
every man in the faith of his own spirit, they horribly belie and
blaspheme the name of the Holy Ghost. So acting, do they not give
themselves away? are they not easily refuted? In an assembly of
learned men, such as yours, Gentlemen of the University, are they
not caught and throttled without trouble? Should I be afraid on
behalf of the Catholic faith to dispute with these men, who have
handled with the utmost ill faith not human but heavenly
utterances? I say nothing here of their perverse versions of
Scripture, though I could accuse them in this respect of
intolerable doings. I will not take the bread out of the mouth of
that great linguist, my fellow-Collegian, Gregory Martin, who
will do this work with more learning and abundance of detail than
I could; nor from others whom I understand already to have that
task in hand. More wicked and more abominable is the crime that I
am now prosecuting, that there have been found upstart Doctors
who have made a drunken onslaught on the handwriting that is of
heaven; who have given judgment against it as being in many
places defiled, defective, false, surreptitious; who have
corrected some passages, tampered with others; torn out others;
who have converted every bulwark wherewith it was guarded into
Lutheran "spirits," what I may call phantom ramparts and parted
walls. All this they have done that they might not be utterly
dumbfounded by falling upon Scripture texts contrary to their
errors, texts which they would have found it as hard to get over
as to swallow hot ashes or chew stones. This then has been my
First Reason, a strong and a just one. By revealing the shadowy
and broken powers of the adverse faction, it has certainly given
new courage to a Christian man, not unversed in these studies, to
fight for the Letters Patent of the Eternal King against the
remnant of a routed foe.

The Authroity of the Church.

On Purgatory.

Violation of Scripture by Heretics.

On the Mission of the Church.

On the Papacy.

On Faith and Reason.

The Source for these links can be found HERE.

Please vote for this post on pickafig.

PASTOR JACK’S SCRIPTURE ATTACK AGAINST ROMANISM is a rather cheaply done booklet which bills itself as “A handy guide for the refutation of Catholicism.” Basically, it consists of “a series of bibilically (sic) based arguements (sic) against various errors perpetrated on humanity by the popish religion.” The first series of “arguments” are related to the reformation doctrine of sola scriptura.

The Argument:

1. With officious precision the Romish Catachism (sic) states: “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” The blatant reference to tradition (sic) already highlights how wrong such a statement is, for Jesus had noting to do with tradition (sic) as a reading of Mark 7 or Matthew 15 shows. But we will deal with that subject further along.

The fact is that the Lord has commanded us Christians-by which I mean true Bible Christians- to “search the Scripture” (John 5:39). Romish authority is well aware that one way the true Bible Christian does this is by perusing the word, checking out what a pastor or preacher is saying, like the noble Bereans who checked the Appostle (sic) Paul’s preaching too see if it accorded with Scripture (Acts 17:11).

Response:

a. In light of the official Latin text of the Catechism, “authentically” should more properly be translated as “authoritatively.”

b. Since the subject of Tradition will come up latter, I’ll only note the following: The Hebrews used two primary words to denote the concept of Tradition; masar, meaning “to hand on,” and gibbel, meaning “to receive.” Tradition is the handing on and/or receiving of some teaching or practice. The Greek word for Tradition is paradosis, “that which is handed on” (paradososn, paradidonai, paradidomi ect), or “that which is received” (paralambano, paralambanien, ect). To say that Jesus had nothing to do with Tradition is quite wrong, for He Himself states: “All things have been handed over (paradidomi) to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him” (Matt 11:27). Here revelation is described as Tradition coming to us through the Son from the Father. The condemnation of man-made traditions in chapter 15 has nothing to do with the Reformation novelty of Scripture Alone; rather it’s about the source of Jesus’ teaching and His authority to teach it. Because His teaching and authority comes from the Father he is able to “declare all foods clean” in spite of the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law (Mark 7:19; Matt 15:15-20). The condemnation in Matt 15 is meant to call the readers mind back to Matt 11:27 and prepare for Matt 16:13-20, where both the Father and the Son reveal something to Peter.

c. Pastor Jack seems to be under the delusion that John 5:39 was directed to believers, but it wasn’t. Our Blessed Lord was speaking to men thinking of killing Him (John 5:18). Further, Jack seems to think the words are a command, they are not. “Search” (ereunao) is in the indicative mood, not the imperative. In other words, it indicates something the addressees do, not something Christ wants them to do. This becomes apparent when properly translated into English and seen in its fuller context: “You search the Scripture in which you think you have eternal life; even they testify on my behalf. But you are unwilling to come to me to have life’ (John 5:39-40). The condemnation of the addressees in John 5:44-47 confirms the indicative mood of verse 39.

d. The Bereans were Jews who studied the Scripture (i.e., Old Testament) by the light of St Paul’s teaching and came to see it as true, thus coming to faith. How can those who claim to have faith already appeal to this passage as proof of what Christians must do? Jews needed the proclamation of the Gospel in order to understand the Scripture (2 Corinthians 3:15-18; 4:1-6), the proclamation included the interpretation of Scripture (Acts 17:1-3), which interpretation was one of “these things” the Apostles were to witness to (Luke 24:44-48). If faith comes through hearing the proclamation of the Gospel by those who are sent (Rom 10:14-15; see also Col 1:4-8; Eph 1:13-14), then who, I ask, preached to the Reformers that they could claim to have heard and believed? If one receives the Spirit through faith in what is heard (Gal 3:2), how did the Reformers come to possess the spirit they claimed guided them in their reading of Scripture?

One final note. The account of the Berean’s conversion states that they “received (dechomai) the word.” Dechomai is a synonym for lambano, the root of paralambano, a Tradition word.

466 The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human person joined to the divine person of God’s Son. Opposing this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the third ecumenical council, at Ephesus in 431, confessed “that the Word, uniting to himself in his person the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man.” ⁸⁹ Christ’s humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason the Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb: “Mother of God, not that the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh.” ⁹⁰ (Source)

Is Ratzinger a Nestorain? Does he contradict the ancient Doctrine? Before answering these questions, it would, I think, be a good idea to inquire into the competence of Mister Dyer to answer them.

Dyer the Amateur Theologian

It is logic which put the “logy” in theology. Is mister Dyer possessed of the logic necessary to undertake theology? I do not believe he is.

Mister Taylor Marshall, of the CANTERBURY TALES blog responded to Dyer as follows:

Some Eastern Orthodox bloggers… have accused the Holy Father of heresy – Nestorianism no less! They have found two quotations in Ratzinger’s God and the World (pp. 293-294) that they believe proves that Benedict XVI is heretical.

I took a look at the quotes and they are not as tight as one might expect, but I think that one should first check the English translation of the work. It may be just fine in the German. The Ratzinger zinger-line is this one, which does sound a little strange:

“[Mary] was in the sense of having been the mother of the man that was entirely at one with God.”

One would expect “the mother of the person” because “man” in English does not necessarily mean “person”. But we don’t know what it was in German. Also, we should be willing to grant that Cardinal Ratzinger was not being absolutely precise. I don’t think that makes him a formal heretic. I guarantee that if you asked him personally, the Holy Father would provide a beautiful and orthodox account of the incarnation.

To which Mister Dyer responds:

The real zinger, is, in fact, the later statement:

“The Greek theologian Maximus the Confessor depicts this process in a particularly impressive way. He shows us how the “alchemy of being” is accomplished in the prayer on the Mount of Olives. Here, Jesus’ will becomes one with the will of the Son and, thereby, with the will of the Father. All the rebelliousness of human nature, which shuts itself against death and against the horrors he can see, comes to the surface in this prayer. Jesus has to overcome man’s inward resistance against God. He must overcome the temptation to do it some other way. And now this temptation reaches its zenith. Only the breakdown of this resistance makes this yes possible. It ends with the fusion of his own individual, human will into the will of God, and thus, with a single petition: “But let not my will, but your will, be done (God and World, pg. 327).”

There is no sense in which Jesus united himself to the Son of God. And I’ve had 2 years of German, so this is no German mistake.

Whether Dyer truly understand Ratzinger’s quoted statement here will be dealt with below; for now I wish to focus on this self-proclaimed amateur theologian’s expertise as a German linguist. Notice that mister Dyer nowhere quotes or analyzes the German text. Indeed, he never even tells us he has read it. When Father Al “the Pontificator” Kimel presented an english translation of the German text done by a German friend of his, Mister Dyer did not dispute it; nor did he present us with his own translation; he simply ignored it.

“And I’ve had two years of German, so this is no German mistake.” First of all, the possibility of a mistake isn’t about the German; rather, it’s about the English translation. Notice that the “this” in the quote refers not to the German text, but to the English. If I understand him correctly, the scatologian is claiming to be able to assure the validity of the English translation by working it back into German, after all, he has made no reference to the actual German. It needs hardly be said that, if this is what he intends with the above statement, then it is illogical. If I read an English translation of a German math book and suspect that the equation “two plus two equals five” is erroneous, then I cannot simply re=translate that text back into German because I’ll see the same suspected error. One can only establish the validity of a translation by comparing it to the original language text.

Several people noted that some of the quotes he gave of Ratzinger were capable of being understood in an un-orthodox sense but were not necessarily so. It was further noted that Ratzinger was giving and interview, not writing a carefully crafted theological tome. To bolster their arguments some respondents to Dyer appealed to theological works of Ratzinger which were unequivocally orthodox, to them Dyer replied:

Also, again, it doesn’t matter what Ratzinger says in some other place, when this statement is heretical. Its always been the province of heretics to cloak their words in ambiguity. So, quoting him somewhere else begs the question.

Try putting that into an Aristotelean syllogism and the only thing one would come up with is a Dyerian sillygism.

State of the question: Is such and such a statement by Ratzinger Nestorian?

Premise 1: Certainly this statement is Nestorian. Evidence to the contrary is to be ignored because

Premise 2: Ratzinger is a nestorian.

Conclusion: Ratzinger is a Nestorian.

Dyer the Moralist:

Father Al Kimel, in a response to Mister Dyer prefaced the response with this sound advice:

I agree that the two citations from Ratzinger are awkward and certainly vulnerable to a Nestorian construal; but before advancing the charge of heresy, one has a moral obligation to read the Pope’s published work and to understand his Christology. This Mr. Dyer has clearly not done.

I myself wrote:

From the Catechism: 2478 To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:

Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.

Sound advice. However, Mister Dyer, it appears, will have none of it. He proof-texts a passage From Ratzinger’s writing, declares it heretical, and then, this amateur theologian, when presented with texts that don’t square with his declaration, wipes them away like snot on the end of his nose. ‘Fools!’ he says. ‘Et dilettante locuta est: causa finita est’ (the dilettante has spoken: the matter is finished). Then, to end with a comic flourish, he declares his opponents guilty of his own illogical crime: “…it doesn’t matter what Ratzinger says in some other place, when this statement is heretical. Its always been the province of heretics to cloak their words in ambiguity. So, quoting him somewhere else begs the question.”

So, why hasn’t Mister Dyer fulfilled his moral obligation? Apparently he feels he doesn’t have to because this particular moral obligation is a Catholic thing. Here is how he responded to me and my use of the catechism:

I’m not Novus Ordo anymore, so quoting the Novus Ordo catechism at me is meaningless.

The old adage that, “truth is where you find it,” which is so near and dear to both Eastern and Western Christianity, apparently no longer applies. It needs hardly be said that not paying attention to the requirements of the 8th commandment comes in very handy when a man wishes to engage in a hermeneutics of discontinuity.

So, is Ratzinger a heretic?

Dyer sees this quote from Ratzinger as heretical:

A Human Being as the Mother of God!

This is in fact a great paradox. God becomes small. He becomes man; he accepts thereby the limitations of human conception and childbirth. He has a mother and is truly woven into the tapestry of our human history, so that in fact a woman is able to say to him who is her child, a human child: the Lord of the world is within you.

Dyer sees the bold faced words as being heretical. It’s rather obvious however that this is only because he sees them in isolation from the rest of the text. First of all, as the context makes clear, Ratzinger is here repudiating Nestorianism. It needs hardly to be said that a man of average intelligence, who possessed a respect for the 8th commandment might begin to wonder if his understanding of Ratzinger’s words are correct. Notice first of all that the Cardinal’s words appear under the heading “A Human Being as the Mother of God!” Notice that those words are followed, not by a question mark, but by an exclamation point. Furthermore, notice how Ratzinger begins his statement: “God becomes small. He becomes man; he accepts thereby the limitation of human conception and childbirth. He has a mother…” The personal pronoun throughout relates to the God who “became small”. There is no indication of a change in personal pronoun. Dyer himself describes “the principle error” of the Nestorians as, “ascribing simultaneous personhoods to both the humanity and the divinity.” But it is rather clear, when one see the words Dyer finds objectionable in their context, that he has not ascribed a personhood other than the divine to the humanity of Jesus. So, let’s look again at the words Mister Dyer thinks heretical: “so that in fact a woman is able to say to him who is her child: the Lord of the world is within you.” Who is the “him” who is her child? Dyer would have us believe that it was the non-divine person of the Nestorians, but the introductory phrase is conjunctive: “so that in fact a woman can say to him…” So, who is the “him”?

the “God who became small;” he who became man and accepted the limitations of human conception and childbirth.

Ratzinger continues:

For a long time, there was a great deal of controversy about the expression Mother of God. There were the Nestorians, who said she did not of course give birth to God; she gave birth to the man Jesus. Accordingly she should be called the Mother of Christ, but not Mother of God. It was basically a matter of the question of how profound a unity there is between God and man in this person Jesus Christ, whether it is so great we can say, Yes, the one who is born of her is God, and so she is God’s Mother. Obviously she is not God’s Mother in the sense of his having come from her. But she was in the sense of having been the mother of the man that was entirely at one with God. In this way she entered into a quite unique union with God.

The words in italics in the above quote are what Dyer finds objectionable. He writes: “Did you get that? St. Mary gave birth to a ‘human child’ who has ‘God within him,’ and this child was a ‘man’ who was united with God”

But recall that Mister Dyer himself has stated that the Nestorians refused to admit that Mary could be called the Mother of God. With that in mind re-read this statement by Ratzinger: “Obviously she is not God’s mother in the sense of his having come from her. But she was in the sense of having been the mother of the man that was entirely at one with God.” Notice here that Ratzinger is not denying that Our Lady can be called Mother of God; rather, he is describing the sense in which that can be done. Because Mister Dyer wants to prove Ratzinger is a Nestorian he understand the reference to “the man” according to Nestorian theology. Take this assumptiion away, and the Cardinal’s words are orthodox. She is the Mother of God because she was the mother of the man that was entirely at one with God. It’s precisely this oneness that was accomplished by the incarnation when Mary became pregnant. Who was entirely at one with the man? The divine person of the son of God. This is how she can be termed Mother of God. This is how Ratzinger can speak (as we saw earlier) of God becoming small and accepting the limitations of conception and childbirth.

Mister Dyer Gives the following quote from Ratzinger:

“The Greek theologian Maximus the Confessor depicts this process in a particularly impressive way. He shows us how the “alchemy of being” is accomplished in the prayer on the Mount of Olives. Here, Jesus’ will becomes one with the will of the Son and, thereby, with the will of the Father. All the rebelliousness of human nature, which shuts itself against death and against the horrors he can see, comes to the surface in this prayer. Jesus has to overcome man’s inward resistance against God. He must overcome the temptation to do it some other way. And now this temptation reaches its zenith. Only the breakdown of this resistance makes this yes possible. It ends with the fusion of his own individual, human will into the will of God, and thus, with a single petition: “But let not my will, but your will, be done

Dyer comments:

This is astonishing, Did you notice that the human Jesus is said to unite his will with the will of the son! Then, he states the strange view that Jesus had a natural inclination against God, and after Jesus overcame this, he was united in will to God-God the Son. While it is true that there are two sills, these two wills pertain to the two natures in Christ, and not to two persons in moral conjuction.

Again Mister dyer insists on interpreting thing with the assumption that Ratzinger is a Nestorian.

First, regarding the statement that “he states the strange view that Jesus had a natural inclination against God.” No, that is not what he says. He speaks about the rebelliousness of human nature which Jesus sees in his prayer on Mount Olivet. The temptation Jesus experiences to “do it some other way” is clearly an outward temptation, not the product of his own human nature which was un-fallen. Perhaps this would have been a little clearer to Mister Dyer had he paid attention to the previous paragraph which he nowhere quotes:

Jesus can see the whole abyss of human filth and human awfulness, which he has to carry and through which he must make his way. In what he sees, which goes far beyond anything of which we can be aware — and even we can feel horribly sick if we take a look at the awfulness of human history, into the abyss of denial of God, which can destroy people — in this he sees how dreadful is the burden that is being laid upon him. This is not just anguish in the face of his execution; it is being confronted with the entire, fearful, abyss of human destiny, which he has to take upon himself.

As is clear from the above, along with the mention of the name St Maximus the Confessor, the “alchemy of being” refers to the fact that the one divine person, who possessed two natures showed forth the unity of those natures in one person in the prayer on Olivet. Rather than listening to the scatologian’s torturous eisegesis of the Cardinal’s theology ought not look at the Cardinal’s teaching itself?

“It is common enough for the theological textbooks to pay scant attention to the theological development which followed Chalcedon. In many ways on e is left with the impression that dogmatic Christology comes to a stop with a certain parallelism of the two natures in Christ. It was this same impression that led to the divisions in the wake of Chalcedon. In fact, however, the affirmation of the true humanity and the true divinity in Christ can only retain its meaning if the mode of the unity of both is clarified. The Council defined this unity by speaking of the `one Person’ in Christ, but it was a formula which remained to be explored in its implications. For the unity of divinity and humanity in Christ which brings `salvation’ to man is not a juxtaposition but a mutual indwelling. Only in this way can there be that genuine `becoming like God,’ without which there is no liberation and no freedom.

“It was to this question, after two centuries of dramatic struggles which also, in many ways, bore the mark of imperial politics, that the Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) addressed itself. On the one hand, it teaches that the unity of God and man in Christ involves no amputation or reduction in any way of human nature. In conjoining himself to man, his creature, God does not violate or diminish him; in doing so, he brings him for the first time to his real fullness. On the other hand (and this is no less important), it abolishes all dualism or parallelism of the two natures, such as had always seemed necessary in order to safeguard Jesus’ human freedom In such attempts it had been forgotten that when the human will is taken up into the will of God, freedom is not destroyed; indeed, only then does genuine freedom come into its own. The Council of Constantinople analyzed the question of the two-ness and the one-ness in Christ by reference to the concrete issue of the will of Jesus. It resolutely maintains that, as man, Jesus has a human will which is not absorbed by the divine will. But this human will follows the divine will and thus becomes one will with it, not in a natural manner but along the path of freedom. The metaphysical two-ness of a human and a divine will is not abrogated, but in the realm of the person, in the realm of freedom, the fusion of both takes place, with the result that they become one will not naturally, but personally. This free unity – a form of unity created by love – is higher and more interior than a merely natural unity. It corresponds to the highest unity there is, namely, Trinitarian unity. The Council illustrates this unity by citing a dominical word handed down to us in the Gospel of John: `I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). Here it is the divine Logos who is speaking, and he speaks of the human will of the man Jesus as his will, the will of the Logos. With this exegesis of John 6, 38 the Council indicates the unity of the subject in Christ. There are not two `I’s in him, but only one. The Logos speaks in the I-form of the human will and mind of Jesus; it has become his I, has become adopted into his I, because the human will is completely one with the will of the Logos. United with the latter, it has become a pure Yes to the Father’s will.

Maximus the Confessor, the great theological interpreter of this second phase of the Christological dogma, illuminates this whole context by reference to Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives, which as we already saw in thesis I, expresses Jesus’ unique relationship to God. Indeed, it is as if we were actually looking in on the inner life of the Word-made-man. It is revealed to us I the sentence which remains the measure and model of all real prayer: `Not what I will, but what thou wilt’ (Mk. 14, 36). Jesus human will assimilates itself to the will of the Son. In doing this, he receives the Son’s identity, i.e., the complete subordination of the I to the Thou, the self-giving and self-expropriation of the I to the Thou. This is the very essence of him who is pure relation and pure act., Wherever the I gives itself to the Thou, there is freedom because this involves the reception of the `form of God.’ [The Absolute].

But we can also describe this process, and describe it better, from the other side: the Logos so humbles himself that he adopts a man’s will as his own and addresses the Father with te I of this human being; he transfers his own I to this man and thus transforms human speech into the eternal Word, into his blessed `Yes,’ Father.’ By imparting his own I, his own identity, to this human being, he liberates him, redeems him, makes him God. Now we can take the real meaning of `God has become man’ in both hands, as it were: the Son transforms the anguish of a man into his own filial obedience, the speech of the servant into the Word which is the Son.

Thus we come to grasp the manner of our liberation, our participation in the Son’s freedom. As a result of the unity of wills of which we have spoken, the greatest possible change has taken place in man, the only change which meets his desire: he has become divine. We can therefore describe that prayer which enters into the praying of Jesus and becomes the prayer of Jesus in the Body of Christ as freedom’s laboratory. Here and nowhere else takes place that radical change in man of which we stand in need, that the world may become a getter place. For it is only along this path that conscience attains its fundamental soundness and its unshakable power. And only from such a conscience can there come that ordering of human affairs which corresponds to human dignity and protects it. Every generation has to seek anew this right ordering of the world in response to a conscience that is alert, until the kingdom of God comes, which God alone can establish.