Alex, no need for an apology. But to whatever extent you feel the need to offer one, I accept it.
No worries about the lengthy reply. I wrote it on the trip to Athos, and it helped pass the time. And perhaps it will do some onlooker good.
I’m glad you found the reply about obedience helpful. I enjoyed writing that, and I’ve never spoken to the issue directly.
As for the Trinity, I think reflecting on the “hive mind” concept may prove fruitful, as I suspect this may be lurking in the back of some of your thinking.
Now, wconcerning the obedience question, I would need to know the context in which I said this. I suspect it was when talking about Genesis and the fact that in the text God commands and then God obeys, and I noted the intentional echo of the Memphite creation myth where Ptah thinks of an archetype, declares let there be, and Atum obeys and creates a material copy. Or perhaps it was in the context of discussing the causal relations and the Father as the fount of divinity and the Monarch.
This one is a more nuanced issue. I mentioned that the Eastern fathers do not always resolve the apparent tensions between Christ’s two natures in the same way. For example, when explaining Christ’s words about the day or the hour, some argue he is speaking about his humanity when including himself amongst the ignorant, while Basil reads this as an acknowledgment of his eternal begetting — that all that he has, including his knowledge, is native to the Father and shared with him by eternal generation. When talking about the Father being greater than him, there are two different explanations in the Eastern fathers. The one is that he is speaking about his humanity. So by humbling himself to the lowly estate of a creature and taking on that nature, he makes himself suitably of the station of a creature. The other explanation, found in figures like John of Damascus, is that he is speaking about causation and headship. That is to say, just as Adam has a certain priority as the first man from which all others come and as the head of the household or original patriarch (even though all other humans are equal in nature), so the Father is the First Principle of divinity, begetting the Son and outbreathing the Spirit, and this is also why there is a paternal headship even in the Trinity.
When it comes to obedience or doing the will of the Father, earlier writers, such as Justin Martyr or Origen are perfectly comfortable speaking about the Son obeying the will of the Father — as God. And I admit that this early language doesn’t trouble me if understood in keeping with the qualifications of the later fathers. My position is very much like that of Basil on the term “homoiousia”: There’s nothing wrong with the word, but since it has been tainted by the Arians, he’ll relinquish it. Such is my stance on talk of obedience.
Following the Arian dispute, the Eastern fathers became more squeamish about such language, as the quote from John of Damascus shows. But they still recognized a distinction of persons and a distribution of activity or varied roles. In addition, they continue to recognize the Father as the first principle or cause or Monarch. But they move away from obedience language to executing language — the Son naturally executes the will of the Father. The worry, in Basil, about “obey” language seems to be about Arianism, where the Son might be ignorant of the Father’s will without a command or have the type of autonomy that might allow for disobedience. Instead, the Fatter and Son share a common will, such that when the Father wills, it is natural for the Son to execute that will. Such becomes the preferred framing in these later fathers.
However, two things should be noted here. The first is that common will should never be taken to again return to the composite person or hive mind concept. The Eastern fathers consistently qualify the point to insist that the Son really does have the capacity of will, an insistence found in Basil's On the Holy Spirit and Gregory's Great Catechism, for example. In other words, they are concerned to avoid turning the Son into a mindless or will-less appendage — hence always repeating that the Son is not void of will.
Second, and closely related, it is critical to recognize that, according to these same fathers, will belongs to nature but is exercised by a person. The common will is thus an affirmation of a common nature — being divine, or having the divine nature, they have a common divine will, since the divine nature is rational and volitional. But such is true of you and me. Being human, you and I have a common, human will, despite us using or exercising the powers of will differently. In short, will is an abstract power that wills nothing; persons having the volitional nature exercise the power of will. The point is essential to their Christology and understanding of the gospel, where Christ appropriates and heals all aspects of our (common) nature.
Yes, we again get the same caveats noted above: You and I are materially separate and autonomous in ways the Trinity is not. And these differences mean that we might disagree and oppose one another, while such is impossible for the persons of the Trinity. But these caveats do not change the facts that (a) the common nature refers to the fact that divinity is a rational, volitional nature that the three share, just as human nature is a rational and volitional nature that we share, and (b) this abstract nature does not will anything; the persons having it are the ones who will things; so the commonality is not the basis for harmony, as if “common” indicates "composite person" or “hive mind”; rather, the general distinctions between the created and the uncreated noted above are what produce this harmony which is uncharacteristic of creatures.
Given these points, even these later fathers acknowledge that the Son executes or does the will of the Father, acknowledging the Monarchical reality that the will being done originates with the Father. I think obedience is a fine word for such realities, which is why earlier fathers use it. But I also acknowledge that the later fathers are worried about implications attaching to the term because of Arian and other such heretics.
Now, returning to why I find your approach to “correcting me” unhelpful. When you presume your misunderstanding of me or of the fathers is correct and proceed to proclaim in a long thread that I’m ignorant of or misrepresenting the fathers (when I’m neither) followed by a barrage of quotes (with which I’m already familiar), you give the onlooker the impression that you are correct — that I’m ignorant of this or that nuance or have misrepresented the fathers or that your misunderstanding is correct. This forced me into a position of needing to reply at length (as I am now), which is something I don’t have time for, given my more pressing obligations, but feel impelled to do for the sake of the onlooker.
What would be a more sober and useful approach would be something like this: “Dr. Jacobs, when you employ Gregory’s three human persons analogy, do you mean to suggest there are no differences between created hypostases and divine hypostases?” This brief question avoids the false accusation of ignorance and misrepresentation and allows for a concise reply — "Certainly not. See this, this, and this article."
In the future, I would ask that you take this approach.
Alex, I recognize that your intentions are good — truly — but allow me to explain why I find these lengthy threads unhelpful.
Your “corrections” only illuminate for me how you have misunderstood the source material, misunderstood me, or where you have not listened fully to me. I understand that you intend this to be helpful, giving me a glimpse of how I might be misunderstood, but I don’t presume your misunderstandings are universal or necessarily the product of me failing to be clear on the points in question.
For example, you suggested in your thread on the Trinity two things. The first is that I fail to discuss the fact that the Trinity is undivided, unlike created hypostases of a common nature. Second you claim that the common energies (misrepresented in your comment as numerically one energy) is meant to temper Gregory’s three hypostases analogy. The former point grossly misrepresents my work; the latter misrepresents Gregory.
To the former, i have spoken at great length about the fact that created hypotheses are materially separate, differentiated by material accidents, casually brought about in a per accidens manner, and displaying general autonomy — along with other metaphysical necessities, such as mutability, turnability, temporality, etc. And I have been exceedingly clear that none of this applies to the Holy Trinity: The hypostases are distinct, not separate (explaining perichoresis in this context), distinguished by causal relations rather than material accidents (of which there are none because they are immaterial), displaying a per se casual relationship (as opposed to per accidens), which also entails no autonomy — along with the catalogue of negations, such as immaterial, immutable, atemporal, etc. I go through every one of these at length in my piece of the begotten not made distinction; I discuss these in my article on not there Gods; I explain them in a basic and truncated way (given the target audience) in my piece on understanding the Trinity; I touch on these in all my lectures on the Trinity, including the one published via my podcast. If you’ve missed this, the reason is not due to silence.
As for the point regarding Gregory, first, the energies are common amongst the persons, having a single source, namely the divine nature, but they are numerous — as Basil explains (the essence is one but the energies are many) and Gregory also explains, contra the Eunomians. As for why Gregory brings up the common energies when writing to Ablabius, the reason is not to show how the persons of the Trinity collapse into one or to blur the lines between them. The point is to demonstrate the common nature they share. If you understand what an energy is, then you understand it is an articulation or outward expression or operative power of a nature — and according to the Cappadocians, this is how we come to know a nature (any nature), not by direct access (since we have none), but by inference from its energies. By demonstrating common energies, he demonstrates the common nature of the persons. This is not a distinctive feature of the Trinity, however; you and I have common energies as well because we have a common nature. Now, are there differences between created and uncreated hypostases, including how we exercise our operative powers? Yes, as already noted and as I’ll get to further below. But such is not the purpose of Gregory raising the common energies.
And this goes to a rhetorical reason I begin where I do when discussing the Trinity. The children of Modernity and Latin theology generally have a tendency toward “monotheism,” not as the term is defined by the Eastern fathers (I.e., there is only one divine nature as opposed to several) but as a single subject. Hence there is a tendency to try to collapse the persons into a single person or a single lump called God, as if the persons were parts of a composite whole and this forth fellow is the real God. Such conceptions are false and utterly contrary to the Eastern fathers who are exceedingly clear about the absolute distinction of the persons; the nature is one but the persons are several. Hence, I think it imperative to first break this misconception — or better, smash this idol — and begin with the very analogy the terms used indicate: three subjects of a common nature. (Notice that Gregory’s letter to Ablabius is occasioned by the fact that Ablabius understands precisely what these words mean and thus asks if we believe in three Gods, and Gregory’s reply does not deny the meaning of the terms but only corrects Ablabius’ erroneous metaphysics that call Paul, Timothy, and Silvanus three humans as opposed to one human.) Once this starting point is firmly established, I then move into the sorts of qualifications needed to differentiate the created from the uncreated. But these qualifications should never return one to the idolatrous fourth fellow who represents one composite person or a divine hive mind or any such thing. And the way you characterize things in your concern leads me to suspect that you have such an error at work in your thinking and reading of the fathers.
Alex, I’ll reply to your other string of comments on the Trinity if I have time. But suffice it to say that the previous cluster of comments highlights nuances that I’m neither ignorant of nor silent about. To the contrary, I’ve both published and lectured on such matters. See my recent post on the begotten-not-made distinction, for example, which is a truncated version of my article in Religious Studies. I would add that some of your “corrections” in that thread are inaccurate in their characterization of such nuances — such as your framing of the common energies in Gregory’s letter to Ablabius. As for this comment, again, there is no inaccuracy to be spoken of. John’s point is that Christ really does have a human will that really displays obedience — hence the comment about the real as opposed to unreal will. And this means the person of Christ obeys, not the humanity of Christ, since the exercise of will is by the person who wields it, never by the abstract common power — the alternative being Nestorian. As for whether obedience is rightly ascribed to the instrument of the human will only or the divine as well goes into a nuance about how the fathers address certain seeming contradictions between the divine and the human natures in the person of Christ — compare comments on Christ’s knowledge of the day and hour, as an example, or about growing in wisdom or about the Father being greater than he— and you’ll find there is not uniformity in their “solutions,” and so, I, like them, have preferences concerning the best resolution, though all within the pale of acceptable Eastern patristic norms. While I appreciate your zeal, I don’t find these efforts to “correct” terribly helpful.
Hey Alex, send an email to thenathanjacobspodcast@gmail.com to let me know your friend's name and I'll make a note. I'd love to make it easier for people to purchase with us internationally. I'll have to look into this. Thank you so much for your support!
Remind me what you’re trying to make payments on?
Alex, no need for an apology. But to whatever extent you feel the need to offer one, I accept it.
No worries about the lengthy reply. I wrote it on the trip to Athos, and it helped pass the time. And perhaps it will do some onlooker good.
I’m glad you found the reply about obedience helpful. I enjoyed writing that, and I’ve never spoken to the issue directly.
As for the Trinity, I think reflecting on the “hive mind” concept may prove fruitful, as I suspect this may be lurking in the back of some of your thinking.
Until next time…
(Part 2)
Now, wconcerning the obedience question, I would need to know the context in which I said this. I suspect it was when talking about Genesis and the fact that in the text God commands and then God obeys, and I noted the intentional echo of the Memphite creation myth where Ptah thinks of an archetype, declares let there be, and Atum obeys and creates a material copy. Or perhaps it was in the context of discussing the causal relations and the Father as the fount of divinity and the Monarch.
This one is a more nuanced issue. I mentioned that the Eastern fathers do not always resolve the apparent tensions between Christ’s two natures in the same way. For example, when explaining Christ’s words about the day or the hour, some argue he is speaking about his humanity when including himself amongst the ignorant, while Basil reads this as an acknowledgment of his eternal begetting — that all that he has, including his knowledge, is native to the Father and shared with him by eternal generation. When talking about the Father being greater than him, there are two different explanations in the Eastern fathers. The one is that he is speaking about his humanity. So by humbling himself to the lowly estate of a creature and taking on that nature, he makes himself suitably of the station of a creature. The other explanation, found in figures like John of Damascus, is that he is speaking about causation and headship. That is to say, just as Adam has a certain priority as the first man from which all others come and as the head of the household or original patriarch (even though all other humans are equal in nature), so the Father is the First Principle of divinity, begetting the Son and outbreathing the Spirit, and this is also why there is a paternal headship even in the Trinity.
When it comes to obedience or doing the will of the Father, earlier writers, such as Justin Martyr or Origen are perfectly comfortable speaking about the Son obeying the will of the Father — as God. And I admit that this early language doesn’t trouble me if understood in keeping with the qualifications of the later fathers. My position is very much like that of Basil on the term “homoiousia”: There’s nothing wrong with the word, but since it has been tainted by the Arians, he’ll relinquish it. Such is my stance on talk of obedience.
Following the Arian dispute, the Eastern fathers became more squeamish about such language, as the quote from John of Damascus shows. But they still recognized a distinction of persons and a distribution of activity or varied roles. In addition, they continue to recognize the Father as the first principle or cause or Monarch. But they move away from obedience language to executing language — the Son naturally executes the will of the Father. The worry, in Basil, about “obey” language seems to be about Arianism, where the Son might be ignorant of the Father’s will without a command or have the type of autonomy that might allow for disobedience. Instead, the Fatter and Son share a common will, such that when the Father wills, it is natural for the Son to execute that will. Such becomes the preferred framing in these later fathers.
However, two things should be noted here. The first is that common will should never be taken to again return to the composite person or hive mind concept. The Eastern fathers consistently qualify the point to insist that the Son really does have the capacity of will, an insistence found in Basil's On the Holy Spirit and Gregory's Great Catechism, for example. In other words, they are concerned to avoid turning the Son into a mindless or will-less appendage — hence always repeating that the Son is not void of will.
Second, and closely related, it is critical to recognize that, according to these same fathers, will belongs to nature but is exercised by a person. The common will is thus an affirmation of a common nature — being divine, or having the divine nature, they have a common divine will, since the divine nature is rational and volitional. But such is true of you and me. Being human, you and I have a common, human will, despite us using or exercising the powers of will differently. In short, will is an abstract power that wills nothing; persons having the volitional nature exercise the power of will. The point is essential to their Christology and understanding of the gospel, where Christ appropriates and heals all aspects of our (common) nature.
Yes, we again get the same caveats noted above: You and I are materially separate and autonomous in ways the Trinity is not. And these differences mean that we might disagree and oppose one another, while such is impossible for the persons of the Trinity. But these caveats do not change the facts that (a) the common nature refers to the fact that divinity is a rational, volitional nature that the three share, just as human nature is a rational and volitional nature that we share, and (b) this abstract nature does not will anything; the persons having it are the ones who will things; so the commonality is not the basis for harmony, as if “common” indicates "composite person" or “hive mind”; rather, the general distinctions between the created and the uncreated noted above are what produce this harmony which is uncharacteristic of creatures.
Given these points, even these later fathers acknowledge that the Son executes or does the will of the Father, acknowledging the Monarchical reality that the will being done originates with the Father. I think obedience is a fine word for such realities, which is why earlier fathers use it. But I also acknowledge that the later fathers are worried about implications attaching to the term because of Arian and other such heretics.
Now, returning to why I find your approach to “correcting me” unhelpful. When you presume your misunderstanding of me or of the fathers is correct and proceed to proclaim in a long thread that I’m ignorant of or misrepresenting the fathers (when I’m neither) followed by a barrage of quotes (with which I’m already familiar), you give the onlooker the impression that you are correct — that I’m ignorant of this or that nuance or have misrepresented the fathers or that your misunderstanding is correct. This forced me into a position of needing to reply at length (as I am now), which is something I don’t have time for, given my more pressing obligations, but feel impelled to do for the sake of the onlooker.
What would be a more sober and useful approach would be something like this: “Dr. Jacobs, when you employ Gregory’s three human persons analogy, do you mean to suggest there are no differences between created hypostases and divine hypostases?” This brief question avoids the false accusation of ignorance and misrepresentation and allows for a concise reply — "Certainly not. See this, this, and this article."
In the future, I would ask that you take this approach.
(Part 1)
Alex, I recognize that your intentions are good — truly — but allow me to explain why I find these lengthy threads unhelpful.
Your “corrections” only illuminate for me how you have misunderstood the source material, misunderstood me, or where you have not listened fully to me. I understand that you intend this to be helpful, giving me a glimpse of how I might be misunderstood, but I don’t presume your misunderstandings are universal or necessarily the product of me failing to be clear on the points in question.
For example, you suggested in your thread on the Trinity two things. The first is that I fail to discuss the fact that the Trinity is undivided, unlike created hypostases of a common nature. Second you claim that the common energies (misrepresented in your comment as numerically one energy) is meant to temper Gregory’s three hypostases analogy. The former point grossly misrepresents my work; the latter misrepresents Gregory.
To the former, i have spoken at great length about the fact that created hypotheses are materially separate, differentiated by material accidents, casually brought about in a per accidens manner, and displaying general autonomy — along with other metaphysical necessities, such as mutability, turnability, temporality, etc. And I have been exceedingly clear that none of this applies to the Holy Trinity: The hypostases are distinct, not separate (explaining perichoresis in this context), distinguished by causal relations rather than material accidents (of which there are none because they are immaterial), displaying a per se casual relationship (as opposed to per accidens), which also entails no autonomy — along with the catalogue of negations, such as immaterial, immutable, atemporal, etc. I go through every one of these at length in my piece of the begotten not made distinction; I discuss these in my article on not there Gods; I explain them in a basic and truncated way (given the target audience) in my piece on understanding the Trinity; I touch on these in all my lectures on the Trinity, including the one published via my podcast. If you’ve missed this, the reason is not due to silence.
As for the point regarding Gregory, first, the energies are common amongst the persons, having a single source, namely the divine nature, but they are numerous — as Basil explains (the essence is one but the energies are many) and Gregory also explains, contra the Eunomians. As for why Gregory brings up the common energies when writing to Ablabius, the reason is not to show how the persons of the Trinity collapse into one or to blur the lines between them. The point is to demonstrate the common nature they share. If you understand what an energy is, then you understand it is an articulation or outward expression or operative power of a nature — and according to the Cappadocians, this is how we come to know a nature (any nature), not by direct access (since we have none), but by inference from its energies. By demonstrating common energies, he demonstrates the common nature of the persons. This is not a distinctive feature of the Trinity, however; you and I have common energies as well because we have a common nature. Now, are there differences between created and uncreated hypostases, including how we exercise our operative powers? Yes, as already noted and as I’ll get to further below. But such is not the purpose of Gregory raising the common energies.
And this goes to a rhetorical reason I begin where I do when discussing the Trinity. The children of Modernity and Latin theology generally have a tendency toward “monotheism,” not as the term is defined by the Eastern fathers (I.e., there is only one divine nature as opposed to several) but as a single subject. Hence there is a tendency to try to collapse the persons into a single person or a single lump called God, as if the persons were parts of a composite whole and this forth fellow is the real God. Such conceptions are false and utterly contrary to the Eastern fathers who are exceedingly clear about the absolute distinction of the persons; the nature is one but the persons are several. Hence, I think it imperative to first break this misconception — or better, smash this idol — and begin with the very analogy the terms used indicate: three subjects of a common nature. (Notice that Gregory’s letter to Ablabius is occasioned by the fact that Ablabius understands precisely what these words mean and thus asks if we believe in three Gods, and Gregory’s reply does not deny the meaning of the terms but only corrects Ablabius’ erroneous metaphysics that call Paul, Timothy, and Silvanus three humans as opposed to one human.) Once this starting point is firmly established, I then move into the sorts of qualifications needed to differentiate the created from the uncreated. But these qualifications should never return one to the idolatrous fourth fellow who represents one composite person or a divine hive mind or any such thing. And the way you characterize things in your concern leads me to suspect that you have such an error at work in your thinking and reading of the fathers.
Alex, I’ll reply to your other string of comments on the Trinity if I have time. But suffice it to say that the previous cluster of comments highlights nuances that I’m neither ignorant of nor silent about. To the contrary, I’ve both published and lectured on such matters. See my recent post on the begotten-not-made distinction, for example, which is a truncated version of my article in Religious Studies. I would add that some of your “corrections” in that thread are inaccurate in their characterization of such nuances — such as your framing of the common energies in Gregory’s letter to Ablabius. As for this comment, again, there is no inaccuracy to be spoken of. John’s point is that Christ really does have a human will that really displays obedience — hence the comment about the real as opposed to unreal will. And this means the person of Christ obeys, not the humanity of Christ, since the exercise of will is by the person who wields it, never by the abstract common power — the alternative being Nestorian. As for whether obedience is rightly ascribed to the instrument of the human will only or the divine as well goes into a nuance about how the fathers address certain seeming contradictions between the divine and the human natures in the person of Christ — compare comments on Christ’s knowledge of the day and hour, as an example, or about growing in wisdom or about the Father being greater than he— and you’ll find there is not uniformity in their “solutions,” and so, I, like them, have preferences concerning the best resolution, though all within the pale of acceptable Eastern patristic norms. While I appreciate your zeal, I don’t find these efforts to “correct” terribly helpful.
Hey Alex, send an email to thenathanjacobspodcast@gmail.com to let me know your friend's name and I'll make a note. I'd love to make it easier for people to purchase with us internationally. I'll have to look into this. Thank you so much for your support!