David Bentley Hart's Monistic Christology: Panel Discussion on "The Light of Tabor"

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[00:00:00]Hello everybody. Uh my name is Aristotle Papan Nicolola and together with George Demacopoulos.

[00:00:07]I am the co-director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center here at Forom University. Um thank you for joining us.

[00:00:14]Please check out our website at forom.edu/orththodoxy.

[00:00:20]Please um check out our eagazine uh publicy.org.

[00:00:25]and all our panelists have written for public orthodoxy at one time or another and we're grateful to them for that and our YouTube channel and all the things related to our center. So, thank you for for being with us. Uh we definitely have an esteemed panel here to discuss a a very very important book the light of tabour towards womanistic uh Christologology and I've already gotten um emails uh David about how it is that we can orthodox center can support host such a session on a monistic uh christologology. So I'm sure we'll get some answers to that uh today.

[00:01:06]Um the the esteemed panelists I are pretty much well known to I think the participants and to really to much to a much wider sort of theological audience.

[00:01:20]Uh but I'll I'll start with some very very brief introductions and then we'll sort of get right into the topic of the day which is thus is to discuss David's latest book. And uh David, as it says here in the back of the book, is a religious study scholar, philosopher, cultural commentator, and writer of fiction. But you know, David, it doesn't say here. You are also a theologian, right?

[00:01:42]>> Yeah. I I I found that odd, >> right? I don't know why they didn't put that here in the back.

[00:01:47]>> What's funny is I should have noticed that when they sent me the copy. I just was fine and it never it never crossed my mind. I'm sorry about that. So you can write that in with a Sharpie.

[00:01:57]>> You are. Yeah, every write it in. Um, so an author and translator of 23 books, including the award-winning You Are Gods.

[00:02:06]Uh, Rowan Williams is a very well-known theologian, someone who wrote his dissertation on Vladimir Loski, which was cutting edge at the time in the mid 1970s.

[00:02:17]Um, and who is the former Archbishop of Canterbury, former professor as an ameritus professor at Cambridge University. Um and of course author of many many books and many articles as well as everybody knows. And Jordan uh is the assistant professor of theology at Belmont University and the author of his own christoologgical work the whole mystery of Christ creation as incarnation in Maximus uh confessor. And of course I just Rowan Rowan you have sort of recently written a a Christologology book um Christ the heart of creation I think it's called and so here we're we're we're all gathered here today to uh discuss the christoologgical christoologgical question. So we'll begin with David who will give us about you know five to seven minutes of some bullet point introductions and then we'll have reactions from Rowan and from Jordan. And of course we will take uh questions uh from the audience. Please put your uh put your questions uh into the chat or into the Q&A and uh we'll just you know we'll just kind of dive in. So, David, why don't you kind of lead us off and uh and sort of begin with however it is that you want to sort of uh begin this session for us.

[00:03:44]>> Uh well, well, thank you. Yeah, flag me down if I go on too long. I'll try to keep it to about seven minutes. I'm I'm uh I'm pleased and and and honored and uh a little abashed actually to have been invited to this and uh for Rowan and Jordan both to have consented to participate actually uh well actually I don't want to lie about this. I had a certain premonition not of this particular event but I sometimes we do have premonitions uh and when I wrote the lectures that became this book the third of them uh juxtapose uh Rowan and Jordan's books in a very opportunistic and probably totally misrepresentative fashion I I probably violently distorted what they had to say but my reason for doing so is that these were uh substant anal books to grapple with. I I didn't want to use straw man but the other is I I had a premonition of something like this one day coming about where the three of us would be talking about christologology and uh I could use that opportunity as a kind of triangulation of forces so that I as the colloquy advanced I could see if we could start a debate between them and while I hung back in laconic reserve sort of like Solon or Nester and then inserted myself in the conversation at the end to resolve any differences. Um, which I imagine was a miscalculation.

[00:05:21]But yeah, no, thank you, Rowan. Thank you, Jordan. Thank you, Telly, and everyone else. Um, and I should also say before we began this uh uh Telly, you mentioned that someone asked how a book with the subtitle tortomanistic Christologology could be hosted by by the Orthodox studies uh department at Forom. And I I just want to point out menistic is a very broad term. I just didn't want to monophosite or meafosite because that would be uh incorrect. Um >> yeah, although although I mean I shouldn't I shouldn't start with a question but someone like Roger hate was all for romanistic Christologology. So there's a question of how it is that your ministic chrysology differs from someone like Roger hates but we won't go there quite yet.

[00:06:13]>> Again it's a broad term it's a it's a large it's it's a large >> yeah we won't we won't go there quite yet. So begin go you go ahead with your introductory and then we'll then we'll go >> also since I have the two of them here both of whom uh have a somewhat more positive take supposedly on on say Hegel than I do since we're on this issue although my hostility is exaggerated in popular uh popular rumor. I do want to point out that one of the the curiosities of this book is it may be more purely Hegelian in many respects uh than their approaches to christologology.

[00:06:50]Um but again it's a matter of um interpretation.

[00:06:57]There were two two principal concerns that led to the lectures. Um, when I was trying to think through what I I I truly understand to be the the burden in content of christoologgical tradition and the problems that continue uh after two millennia to it it's obviously the most divisive dogmatic locus in the tradition. I mean it it it quite literally shattered uh the accumn as as an institutional body as a regional uh family of churches uh during the area period of the great christoologgical controversies and arguably it remains um the area of greatest contention to this day in theology even though uh quite often the disagreements occur within broadly speaking the Caledonian uh uh tradition. I mean, I'm not talking about the differences between the Caledonian and non-caledonian churches, but even within those traditions, broadly speaking, that are Caledonian, remarkable, vastly different understandings of the burden of of the dogmatic language continue to arise and clash with one another.

[00:08:14]And so one of my concerns is the tendency of dogma to acquire accretions of theological meaning that aren't necessarily actually present in the original. Uh and so the inexraable transformation in the consciousness of the church over time of what were originally fairly spare minimalist cunningly vacuous rules of doctrinal grammar more intended I think to pacify disputes rather than decide among disputants uh into rigid propositional systems.

[00:08:52]uh a grammar I mean every grammar is of its nature tuto uh it it simply expresses rules that are implicit in the language being used. It doesn't give us much in the way of semantic content for those rules. It doesn't tell us what the what the content in this case of the doctrines and the doctrinal language we use is. And so part of the the uh purpose behind this this book was simply to try to disentangle the grammar uh from its later theological acceptations.

[00:09:32]Uh a second concern was that it seemed to me clear that within the history of the reception of calcidon or in the larger world of christologology calcedonian and non-calcedonian um many of the the problems that have arisen reflect what look like contradictory impulses and intentions in theological tradition as such and the Christian theological tradition as such even even before the the christoologgical controversies.

[00:10:11]Um and attached to that second concern was uh was a question that continued to arise for me whether there was a certain ir irresolubility uh in the claims um that that the tradition as a whole made about the story of Christ that was only laterally reflected in the christoologgical controversies. And in the book I describe it as a tension between a mythic narrative I obviously mythic not in the sense of false or or merely pictorial uh narrative but one that's not propositional and one that uh you know dwells still very much in the realm of foran in realm of representations but not for for that reason any more defective than the metaphysical or doctrinal language we use. I mean, God infinitely exceeds the capacity of human words. And so, uh, one form of discourse doesn't enjoy a natural superiority over another. And the understanding of a theologian of those words is not necessarily superior to those of a person of great piety, but no, no great uh interest in doctrinal lossi, right?

[00:11:35]Um, but the a tension between that mythic narrative and a propositional language that does not necessarily coordinate well with the narrative or at least in a way that isn't volatile and that doesn't require constant negotiation and adjustment.

[00:11:52]Um I think one of the ways in which this is true I mentioned uh Sergey Bulgakov's uh remark on I think page 71 of the text that uh uh when Bulgakov very daringly for an orthodox theologian was was criticized or not criticizing but but passing a kind of historical verdict on the petristic period of of of of uh christologology. It knew only God and man, divinity and humanity outwardly conjoined but not inwardly united. The possibility of the incarnation says Bulgarov is not merely some correspondence between the divine and human natures in Christ but rather quote even their primordial identity in Sophia heavenly and creature in as much as with regard to person uh personality the son of God is kindred with the son of God sons of God by grace the children of God by grace let's say um and I think probably reflecting just on that remark of Bulgakov led me to wonder how well over the over the course of the centuries we have properly distinguished between or refuse distinguish to distinguish between language of hypothesis and person. the way in which the language of person has altered over the centuries taking on meanings with each successive uh historical epoch corresponding to I mean now you know the great schools of 20th century personalism against which my complaint is that they're not personalist enough actually in the way Bakol's thought is but um you see clearly that we're using now the word person uh in a way that contains within that uh every every moment of development within the concept right up into the 20th century in which person becomes very much about uh psychological interiority and specific particular dignity of persons and has any number of moral and phenomenological and spiritual resonances that at first the word persona or the word propum did not uh at least not explicitly Um I won't uh to save us time I won't go any we may talk later about those issues in finer detail.

[00:14:24]Um the the the principal concern I also had in the final phases of the book had to do with what it really means to say that in Christ uh there is full humanity and full divinity. Because one of the good things about the development of the concept of person is that it follows naturally from a kind of thinking that opens up within Christian thought about what it is that constitutes the human.

[00:14:56]And what cannot be missing from that definition if we're really to say that God is this man, the son of God is this man, not simply the son of God appears in the form of this man.

[00:15:10]Um, and the degree to which that seems to assert so radical uh a compatibility between the entirety of created personhood and the person of the sun.

[00:15:28]uh and and maybe wonder if perhaps that has also led in its own way as a kind of counterweight against it the the the impulse to try to widen the distinction in other in other areas of discourse between the divine and the human. Um and you know I and I think this is true of all traditions. I mean I I mentioned things like uh the late Augustinian the Calvinist uh emphasis upon an division between grace and nature that to my mind becomes at times incoherent or manualist tradition of the supernatural and the natural or the neopoly.

[00:16:08]um to my mind again erecting of a a barricade of energies between between the trinitarian taxis and creation.

[00:16:20]Um so is there something endemic to the mystery of Christian claims about the incarnation that resists resolution?

[00:16:32]Because only only Christianity confronts this constellation of problems because the union of eternity and time in Christian thought is volatile in a very particular way and all of it is concentrated in the uniqueness of the event of Christ in time as yet still the eternal son of the father. I didn't really think when I got to the end and it's you know it's just a series of lectures. I should probably should have made it longer. John Milbank pointed out that I should have had a chapter on the crucifixion and that's true. I should have um but but but I do I I I did want to uh you know draw what conclusions I could in such a way as to make the questions that were provoking me evident. Uh and again that's why I drew on Rowan and Jordan. As I said, they were convenient uh iron men uh for my argument. Uh although I probably, as I say, treated them with coughable uh incompetence.

[00:17:40]All right, let me stop there because I think I've gone past the seven minutes.

[00:17:43]I was >> Okay, >> thank you, David. Yeah, and we'll have a chance to kind of get at many of these kinds of issues through the discussion.

[00:17:49]So, Rowan, do you want to uh please follow up?

[00:17:54]Thanks very much telly and thank you for the opportunity of engaging in this discussion.

[00:18:00]The first thing I'd want to say really is how very much I I admired the book and how very much a number of the central points rang bells with me and I thought resonated with what I I most wanted to say. And I think um you you allowed in the book that despite our disagreements, there are some very fundamental convergences on one or two things here which I would very um very definitely want to celebrate. And perhaps it's worth beginning by saying that your own critique of my reading of Calvin certainly made me go back to the text and ask myself had I had I expressed this clearly or successfully. And I think the answer is no. Um I think you can certainly read the text as I think you did saying something like humanity can be fully itself without reference to the second person of the trinity. And that phrasing is is almost there. I think not quite what I wanted to say. Um, but I can see why um an overenthusiastic summary of Kelvin might have led to that form of words. Might come back to that later, but that's just sort of putting my hand up and saying I take the point of about the phrasing and there are things I'd want to clarify. But given the relatively short time available, I wonder if I could just pick up um a handful of issues that I'd like to ask you David for some further clarity about.

[00:19:37]And first of all, I suppose most basically there's the question of what what is the monos in monistic?

[00:19:45]Um, more than once, I think particularly in the Bulgakov chapter, you talk about the the dangers of two equal and opposite errors around the trinity. God is not an individual with component parts. God is not a society of collaborating individuals.

[00:20:14]God is neither a very complex psychology nor a very successful committee as you might say and I you know I would sign up absolutely for that but that of course does mean that there's something about Christian theology which complicates the notion of the monos a bit and that's where I have written about this elsewhere that's why I'm interested in the way in which Thomas Aquinas in discussing whether um the unity of God is is the optimum form of unity. Quote St. Bernard to say, "Well, the trinity is the optimal form of unity."

[00:20:50]So, whatever we're talking about in monism, it's not, and I think you probably agree with this, it's not reductive. It's not saying it all boils down to um but if therefore there's a kind of difference bound up with that fundamental monos um isn't there a bit more to be said for giving the destruction of finite infinite a little bit more rope here in terms of the ontological difference as some people want to express So that's um that's one question which I' I'd really be interested to hear more about and it it relates to a second issue which is a very uh interesting and I think illuminating phrase you use quite late on in the last chapter. Um if I just refer to pages 85 and 86 here.

[00:21:47]Um, Maximus, it seems to me, captures this with exquisite precision in insisting that Christ possessed both a fully human will and a fully divine will, while also denying that he possessed an eomic or deliberative will in addition to his natural will. This would of course be a contradiction if the natural will within us were ontologically rather than merely modily distinct from the divine will itself.

[00:22:09]And I'd quite like to hear you say a bit more about that word modily.

[00:22:13]you use it in one or two other contexts >> in I think interesting ways and if I read you rightly part of what you're saying there is the ontological difference is whether we're talking about divine and human will or divine and human anything is dangerously suggestive of a fundamental alienation between finite and infinite.

[00:22:42]The use of modal is presumably here intended to say well we are dealing with one fundamental let's say agent reality whose modes of operation differ um hierarchically necessarily because um finite is derivative and I think I'd just like to hear a bit more about how you're using modal there and whether I'm right in thinking that the the anxiety is again about a sort of alienation, the wrong kind of duality.

[00:23:23]Um, so yes, that that's that's a secondary point to to my first I suppose.

[00:23:30]Then I guess I've got a question about what is distinctive about the hyperstatic union.

[00:23:40]I dare say you've been asked this already by people. Um there's a way of reading um the book which says Christ is is simply simply exactly Christ is the the absolute and unconditional exemplification of what we are all destined for some way.

[00:24:03]Is the hyperstatic union then perhaps to pick up your own term modally different from the other kinds of union between the finite and the infinite?

[00:24:14]a particular kind of tomist theology and yes all right I'm I'm prepared to to play the token toist in this argument for a bit the sort of standard to thing is there are three modes of union between the divine and the created there's the union of the presence of the creator's action has cause in effect throughout creation an active presence which some tends every every finite event every finite agent every finite sub subject and substance There's the union created by grace. I'm bracketing your extremely important discussion about grace and nature for a moment. The union created by grace which is the particular kind of filial absorption into the body of Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit which enables us to pray the prayer of Christ. And then there's the hypothatic union which is purely and simply oneoff. um it is what it is so that um we may be inducted into union mark 2 the the union within the body of Christ.

[00:25:19]Is there is there a difference between the hypothatic union and that kind of union? Um and if so what?

[00:25:28]And then maybe finally um again picking up some of your discussion towards the end about divine will and human will and I don't if I can find the phrase now. Um yes. Um point again as I understand you is that the human will in the sense of natural will. The Maximian natural will is oriented to the same good as the divine will in some important sense. And I can see the sense in which that that will hold. I also want to say something like this that the human natural will is oriented to the good of a creature. And while that is certainly vision of and union with God in some important sense, it's the good of a creature who becomes what it is to become through the processes of passibility, change, narrative, etc. Um so that one way of expressing if I read you right the modal difference is to say the modality of the finite is irreducibly to do with with change with passibility with um with history as it were. Um and that consideration is another thing that would make me put just one or two little question marks in the margin about um some of the ways in which you phrase the insight about the absolute convergence here of finite and infinite will. So there I think I've probably had my my time but those those are a few of the things I just want to bowler to the court at this point.

[00:27:23]>> Yeah. Thank you. My only comment is that um what you say at the beginning, what you said at the beginning about Christians doing something saying something different about the monos makes me think of Carl Roner's famous phrase where he says that, you know, in order to to really be serious about God's self-communication in Christ, we have to radicalize monotheism. Um which of course he thinks that's what the Trinity is. Um anyway, Jordan, why don't you go and then David will have a chance for you to respond.

[00:27:54]Okay.

[00:27:55]>> All right. Am I on here?

[00:27:57]>> You're definitely on.

[00:27:58]>> Okay. Sorry. Uh >> water.

[00:28:02]>> That's what's in this Pooh Bear cup right here. Um so yeah, uh thank you very much for having me. Thanks to the center for setting this up. I definitely feel like one of these things is not like the others is kind of the way I want to begin. Um I don't really see how I have a seat at the table. Um, I was reading these two gentlemen's books 20 years ago, only aspiring to be them. So anyway, you know, I could go on, but I really do mean it. I I do appreciate the hospitality and the generosity of giving me your time. So, thank you. Um, so I similarly to to Rowan, I would like to begin with some common causes that I think David and I share. Um, and I do also agree with David. But I wanted to say that I think the triangulation here is really interesting and uh I just can't stop since I first heard the lectures and then read read this now a few times. Um I think it's really really productive um bringing the three together if I could just sort of crystallize what I how I would how I would say where we are in the configuration.

[00:29:15]I suspect and this is something I'm willing to be corrected on. I think David and I share a lot of common intuitions and and end goals, but we differ in the execution.

[00:29:28]And I think the way we differ or the way I differ from David in the execution in some moments brings me closer to to Rowan's intuitions about some of the difference. And so that already is an interesting kind of I think triangulation. So, uh, whatever other nonsense I say, at least hopefully that will bring out something of of of, uh, worth. So, I think the common causes, I just am going to list them very quickly.

[00:29:54]Um, the overall one, as I see it, is that I totally agree with what David says in the introduction that the only coherent Christian pictures, this is a summary, a paraphrase, the only coherent Christian picture is one that sees the incarnation, deification, and creation as one.

[00:30:12]I think at some point David even goes so far as to say and I again I would totally agree that God's own act of being God automatically always implicates all the other elements there that I just listed uh the the act of creation theification which is um something that occurs already in the midst of us in the middle in the incarnation and so I I actually think that way of thinking is another context I've called that the sort of originian gestalt or the sort of originian form of thinking. I do think a fundamental intuition that brings a lot of otherwise disperate thinkers together around origin is the idea that what's true of Christ is ultimately true of everything.

[00:30:55]>> And just a point of clarification, Jordan, that's an intuition that you think you share with David in a way that's maybe a little bit different than Rowan at this point.

[00:31:02]>> Yeah, I think all of these are different. Okay.

[00:31:04]>> And I should say I have other ones that I think I I share with both of them and everything. This is not >> No, I know. I understand for the audience I want to make clear.

[00:31:11]>> Yeah.

[00:31:12]>> You're kind of you're kind of giving us now in some sense where I stand with David but not quite with Rowan. Okay.

[00:31:18]>> Yes. Yes. And then when we'll get to the execution that'll be where I probably sound more like Rowan. And it might just be that I'm hopelessly incoherent.

[00:31:24]Right. So and those two represent the coherent uh uh position.

[00:31:28]>> I want to be clear but yeah keep going.

[00:31:31]>> So so yeah. So that overall picture is that that that the only coherent Christian picture sees these three as you know I I say like as one logic or crystal logic I'm happy to use another phrase but um and so there are basically three corlaries that flow from that I think again all common causes or convergences with David between David and I what's true of Christ is ultimately true of everything number two neither the reality of incarnation nor of deification is contingent and I do suspect that that's that's going to put David and I on one side and and a lot of other people on the other.

[00:32:05]Like I don't think there's any world without the incarnation. And I think one of the things the incarnation reveals is that there would never have been no world.

[00:32:14]And and so I think uh there's no contingency in that sense as a mere opposition to something like an impersonal necessity.

[00:32:22]Uh but it's like something like a greater determination. I would just call it love which is determinate though never quite formal.

[00:32:29]Uh the third correlary I would say is that creation's goodness then this this does connect to something Rowan said.

[00:32:34]Sorry Rowan I didn't you know I'm not trying to but uh I don't think creation's goodness needs depends on its absolute difference from God or even its modal difference or even the fact that we must say esqueologically that the goodness that deification delivers is somehow different than the goodness that God enjoys eternally.

[00:32:54]So, in that to to sort of wax Hegelon a little bit here, or you might just say Jensenian or something. Um, I don't think creature uh I don't think the goodness of creation needs to, as it were, depend on it not being the creator uh in order to preserve the integrity of that goodness. And I do also think that's something that follows from the incarnation.

[00:33:20]Okay, enough with the common causes that there are many others that I had listed.

[00:33:25]Uh that last one though might might even come somewhat as a surprise perhaps to to David because uh one of the things one of the ways I think he tries to critique Rowan and I at the same time is to say that we both have a a two-tiered picture of our own, a peculiar one and ones that don't really like coherent together, but nevertheless we sort of end up in a two two-tiered moment which perhaps has the center of gravity in it.

[00:33:49]Uh I I don't think that's true for my picture, but um but uh that's fine. And so I just wanted to say a quick note about few what I would take to be our slight slight to uh to grave distortions. Uh ju just to throw it out there, but I actually don't want to spend too much time on this. So I just want to basically three clarifications.

[00:34:09]One is that when I say logic, I never think I I never think of it as giving a picture of the way something actually is. like I don't I I agree with David saying that metaphysics is more or less rules of predication.

[00:34:24]Uh and there's another moment in the book where David says that uh it's true with any event that the metaphysical description will never right exhaust the actual the true living positive dynamic determinations of the event >> Hegelian principle.

[00:34:38]>> Yes. Exactly. And so that's so I'm so but then then I will I just throwing out there a little protest if that's the case and uh if that's the case as I think it is and in fact I designed sort of the four elements of the crystal logic especially that fourth one to culminate to make that point then I do think that there's a tendency although I understand it and and and David's not the only one who has read it this way to sort of as it were uh extract certain elements or moments of the unfolding of that logic as if that is a like sort of my ontology or so the most obvious is that the hypothesis is am I arguing the hypothesis is some sort of fundamental prior uh to nature and I I don't mean to argue for that what I what I tried to argue for is in fact uh in a few different places is something like a kind of mutual grounding and I do think following Maximus and ambigum 27 I do think there has to be such such a thing in light of the event or the fact of the incarnation, there has to be such a thing as a properly improper predication of the whole Christ.

[00:35:48]And so and and the the predicates typically are attracted first of all by the whole by the natures, but uh the rules as it were for for for uh predicating of a nature are not the same as as predicating of a person, which we I think we'd all agree with.

[00:36:03]But then there's also the further uh uh uh task of having to think how then to predicate of the whole of these two natures. And so things like whenever I try to claim that Christ's identity is such that it's not like it's certainly not two a reconcilable realities trying to be sort of hammered together in this vacuous pit called the you know the the hypothesis. I think that the the the whole Christ his actual hypothesis is the occasion for the task itself rather than the answer of a preset task. So I think it's only when you have you point to like the man hanging on the cross and say through him all things were made.

[00:36:41]Now we have a new problem that I'm not totally sure is uh glimpsed otherwise.

[00:36:46]So I wouldn't want to frame it in in a way in which there's two irreconcilable um you know sort of oppositional uh principles or dimensions of reality that have to be brought together in in the hypothesis. Although I do think I I will say though that there are moments like at the end of Aristotle's ethics where he himself is wavering on whether or not the noose in us should be called malista anthropos or if it should be to say that you see he says also that it exceeds the human right and so I'm not so I think at any moment any sort of metaphysics or myth for that matter could go to Gilgamesh or whatever u that tries to have a subject wherein the two are one you're going to have a version of this problem of predication and so I just I just wanted to say I don't I you know so when I speak of the hypothesis positivity for example I don't I don't think that that what I'm trying to suggest there is is an excess which is cannot be formalized but that doesn't mean it's empty um or when I speak of the indifference to be honest I don't entirely see the difference between my use of indifference In David's use of indistinction, what is the difference between indifference and indistinction?

[00:38:04]to say that God for example uh is sort of there's a prime I don't know if it's primordial or I can't remember the I I had a a quotation from you but to say that God is always already uh both modes in a moment or a point of indistinction doesn't sound all that different to me from saying that Christ's hypothesis is indifferent and therefore utterly hospitable to the two natures he is. So I don't I don't I don't see a massive gap here between our strategies even even at this point. Uh I'm going to skip some of this other stuff on paricoresis.

[00:38:37]We could come back to that some other day. So here I've got like four little little final points and slashproposals or as you if you will olive branches.

[00:38:47]Okay.

[00:38:50]Uh I don't want to I don't want Rowan Williams to be the only one that's referenced Aquinus. So I will I will go ahead and do that. uh and uh but maybe maybe for a point that is somewhat benile which of course you know nature is said in many ways this kind of thing uh and so I sense that there and I think actually really from Aristotle's physics book two or metaphysics 4 uh onward uh and certainly Aquinus does this in the sumo theologica but also he does it in on the union of Christ and elsewhere he always prefaces um his discussion of Christology with the with the meaning obviously right was the meaning of nature meanings of nature and person and I think it's interesting that he picks up there um something uh that's already there in Aristotle which is that they're basically two sorts of meaning one is that something's nature is everything that's all always already there from its origin uh I think David mostly means that when he says nature everything that's there at the origin.

[00:39:57]Um and then there's a second meaning though that as the activity or the interior uh principle of motion which distinguishes the kind of modality of a of a uh of a originated uh being from any other kind of being as that is is reduced to act it then completes in Aristotle's language it completes the essence and so that's of course you know where we can get as well nature understood as essence which yes tends towards the abstract or the logical or the taxonomic uh but nevertheless it's something that to pun a little bit it sort of grows out of the original idea of nature as that which is there at the origin of something's growth.

[00:40:39]So my proposal is this. I think that maybe David just uses the word mode the way I want to use the word nature.

[00:40:50]Um, and in that case, things like indistinction and indifference really aren't so different.

[00:40:58]Um, number I don't know what number I'm on, but another thing uh uh so uh I think that uh I actually think even on the level of intuitions and maybe then if we can start parsing out things like how he's using nature like like I'm sorry I'm sorry to get a little scattered and I am trying to land the plane here but I'm a bad pilot. I I think for example, David, a few different times you you make a pretty big uh point about the difference between toinaton and dynamis faculty that's interior.

[00:41:29]>> Yeah. Very eccentric distinction.

[00:41:32]>> Yeah, I was trying to hunt it down in politics for and I just couldn't find it. But I'll have to ask you about that later. Um, so, uh, I take it that like some of the later neoplatists when they're trying to appropriate Aristotle, one of the points they're going to make around similar sorts of distinctions is that as soon as we start to say that something there's there's a potential in something which cannot be immediately reduced to act by that agent.

[00:41:58]And therefore is I think you I think you used the word extrinsic at one point correct me if I'm wrong but there's an extrinsic sort of agent which actualizes a potential that is nevertheless always already within the you know the patient then what I think a or like strictilians would say is well then now we have a problem because now we're talking about something being a natural potential which nevertheless depends on another and so then the question is how is it that another has the potency to reduce my potency to act and that that is natural to me and yet also extrinsic.

[00:42:37]>> Yeah. And so you can of course go to the vertical modality way and you can say well there's sort of different versions of causality different grades and you can sort of lay out the the latter there and or you can be a more strictilian and say well I you know say like Aristotle does at the end of the ethics well hey I don't I don't know if when we actualize the noose in all completion if we really are still human.

[00:43:00]Um, and at that point it's like that's just one of those examples where I kind of feel like why is this so different from uh saying that Christ is in all things as the innate yet supernatural potential of every human being. So my book still as well also sort of issues in a universal potency which is itself the God man uh in all things. And I wanted to phrase it as innate yet supernatural in order to hold those two things together. And I guess this is a point where I'm just saying like I don't see so much. There's different terminology for sure and perhaps different concerns, but I don't see some massive divergence there between what we're saying. And in fact, I think probably the aristoilian framing framing you use allows us even to have in a sense similar starting points because right your argument as I take it is that Christ is the talos uh that that of humanity and and so uh uh you can't you know just as an acorn can't become you know some something other than the tree that it's supposed to be we can't become something other and Christ is the god human.

[00:44:10]Therefore, it's natural to the human being to be made god.

[00:44:15]And all of that I can actually get on board with. But of course, we both have to sort of start or presuppose or accept the fact or the event of the incarnation in order to apply the risatilian framing in a way that's then convincing. So, I'm not even sure we have different starting points, though we have different starting points to present, you know, the case. So, I think I've said enough.

[00:44:36]There's a few other things, but I I need to stop here because I'm going on and on. But uh I think basically the overall theme is I actually don't think we're so far uh apart, although I'm, you know, willing to have the discussion uh further. But thank you very much.

[00:44:50]>> David, you want to kind of give us a kind of brief response to some of that and then we can sort of open it up a little bit more?

[00:44:58]>> Okay. Um before you go on, David though, let me just say to the audience as well, we are taking questions and there is a Q&A function. So now is the time actually to start putting in your questions into the Q&A function. So David, go ahead. Sorry about that.

[00:45:12]>> Well, um uh I I'm quite eager to say there's not a violent difference uh of of any of our three views uh from one another. But um it is always good fruitfully to misread one another. um you know uh it it shows how our language uh leaves open uh possibilities that we're not always aware of and and so you mentioned paracoresis actually I should uh I was re when I reread the book the the uh other night to prepare for this I noticed that I a passage I had removed which I should have left in uh talks about the origin of the term in Gregory Nazanza um Christologology because then when I later talk about why I understand the use of the word intrinitarian theology but don't know exactly how to apply it to Christologology. I'm might be giving the exam, you know, I don't want to give the uh impression that Maximus was misunderstanding a prior trinitarian term because it's a christoologgical term originally, but it's still an interestingly difficult one that doesn't map onto the later use in trinitarian theology, which might be at least schematically more uncomplicated.

[00:46:41]Um, but let me yeah, let me let me start quickly with Rowan. um the monos. Um I think at the end at the end I'm trying to converge on something like Bulgakov's trihyposic person uh as the one act of all acts. Um and when I speak of uh of the natural will as being oriented to the same end as the divine will. It is in the end that is it is the antecedent finality of that.

[00:47:25]Um and that would you know I'm not sure I I I could even distinguish there as the final horizon of the will between the good of the creature and the goodness of God in say uh for the simple reason that even the good of the creature has to be oriented towards that one good you know what sustains it is always that um eternal rational appetite for the fullness of God.

[00:47:53]But here I think is where uh where Ro and I both I think have more sympathy for Shivara than than Jordan tends to have.

[00:48:05]You do have to try to center on what it is we mean when we talk about uh the interval of analogy between being and beings between the vine and the human.

[00:48:16]Because of course this also is one of those neverending debates although it's much more recent vintage. the three ways in which we can think about the analogy.

[00:48:25]I mean we the vacuous and impossible one of just a pure proportion A is to B as B is to see but A but God isn't to anything.

[00:48:34]Um or as many Bartian critics tend to read Chiovara as God and creature are severally classed under a larger overarching category being well that's wrong too. I mean the re Shivar is quite clear he talks about analogia entis he means the analogy of an ends to the essence subsistence and so uh it's it's much more the case that um the analogy is between the perfect eternal act of the trinitarian life in which there's no distinction between uh essence and existence you know it simply is all of reality there in the act of the father being fully manifest of the son in the infinite life of spirit of the spirit.

[00:49:23]uh whereas we are directed to that very same end but under the the dynamic uh and always oscillating relationship of essence to existence in a in and he uses formulations in um uh Mench, one of his late works when he was a little off the edge of sanity at that point. uh uh um the uh so language is very similar of Gregory of Nissan and epictosis you know or epectasis I should say um and and that's the distinction for him is the mode of action the mode of act within the one act of all acts right but in one sense so the oneness is the one end toward which all spiritual nature which ultimately is the nature of all creation, all spiritual nature is of necessity directed. And why spirit to my mind always spans the distinction between finite and infinite even if the infinite is present in in the finite always as a kind of anticedent finality.

[00:50:41]Um and it's that that violation uh or not violation but that but that that that refusal that that indistinction use my word that the contrary impulse of theology uh fights against quite often and so that this hypothatic union now becomes not a perfect union but a perfect cordon senire between the divine and human right. In the place of christologology, we we use the two nature language as a way of not allowing the union u uh in full primordial or esquetological depth. Um I think we I don't know if we've lost row in there or not, but we we've lost the picture. Um, I agree that with with uh Jordan that we're we're closer together than we are far apart. Even if my pmical or rhetorical tendencies always tend towards extremes, I it I'm sorry. It's it all has to do with growing up in Maryland, Jordan. We got HL Minkin poured into us in school every day from grade, you know, from elementary school onward. And that's just one way to have an argument is by exaggerating all the differences. But if I can say how you could be fruitfully misread, if that's what I did, um, indifference to the difference, let's let's finish the phrase indifference to the difference between the natures.

[00:52:19]Uh, seems like the dynamism of person there is a category whether person or hypothesis. I would actually like to know if you if you use those words as equivalents because I I really can't tell from the book. Whereas I find it hard and I I understand that they have been equivalent in the tradition on and off. Uh but if you actually look at the philosophical and doctrinal and devotional histories of the two words, they're not saying exactly the same thing. Right? And then we are caught in these these ambiguities of nature when we talk about substance. In fact, are we talking about primary or secondary substance? At times it interjects itself into trinitarian and christoologgical um discourse. But one way you can be mis fruitfully misread perhaps if that's again if that's what I did is that that hypothesis seems to become a category that looks like it has always already analled uh a radical difference such that if I were to take it literally in the direction that sometimes the rhetoric seems to be pointing I would also have to say that the category of person the person of the son exceeds the divine nature.

[00:53:35]uh which would be a formulation I would very find it very hard to give any sense to um but perhaps we could agree on I I don't know I mean uh the reason I have a a a fondness for Bulgak's formulation is in in making actually the language of of personhood still more radical I mean going back uh very to a very early period in in his theological work. You are already seeing that that that this um that this tri-hypostatic structure of personhood uh which is a perfect simple act in which each person fully each hypothesis fully unfolds the whole mystery of personhood in a way that no individual human being can fully unfold the whole mystery of human personhood.

[00:54:29]um is the structure of all reality and that nature is simply the language of nature is just a way of individuating or even just modally distinguishing. What do I mean by mode? Well, again, it's it's a it's it is a way of trying it's and we all do this, I know, of finding one term that's ambiguous enough that it looks like a solution to the ambiguity in all the other terms we're using.

[00:54:57]What I meant to say, of course, or or what I was gesturing toward is is uh an understanding of spiritual nature, spiritual destiny, spiritual personhood uh uh as as always already a full an expression of the logos within the lo the lawy within the logos. Um that has that as its origin, an end. And I I worry about the ways in which the Caledonian formula has been taken over the course of Christian history in a way that to my mind creates an instability in all sorts of the claims we're making such as you know grace perfects nature.

[00:55:45]Everyone says it. Manualist to say it.

[00:55:48]And they have, you know, they have the most austere, even more so in many ways than than Calvinism, certainly more than Lutheranism. I have other problems there but but the most austere division between the supernatural and the natural to the point really that in uh their formulations not only in in B and Avaris but uh but in um Billyart and definitely in Gaggo Lrange uh that really there is no inherent spiritual destiny in human nature except uh what is super added to it. so that there is no injustice in the withholding of grace from the creature. And you get this rather monstrous picture of grace.

[00:56:32]We're trying to, you know, talk about the super abundance of God's love and we end up talking about the super abundance of God's indifference in a completely different sense than you use the word or or God's spite. But I'm I'm willing to believe that I've exaggerated the differences here. I I I I am more I believe with Rowan on the language of analogy of infinite and finite. I read it slightly differently but not radically differently. Um but at the end part of that is also that in insisting on just the analogical interval all right of the onlogical difference of the difference between divine and human of the difference between creator and create and created creature.

[00:57:21]I'm not trying to insist on this sort of austere uh division. I am trying to frame it very much in my understanding of what Shavar says uh about the dynamic movement of the finite in its own nature towards the only fulfillment of that nature which is the supernatural end that is nothing less than the essence of God.

[00:57:50]And that's the great mystery I think one of the great mysteries written into Christologology. I mean what does it oblige us to say about being human? Not only in what defines us as the finite dependent indigent creatures we are but defines us as the spiritual beings who can be joined to God without being lost becoming something other you know something more than but but something alien to our humanity. Um, it's also for me though it is an interval of innocence, of divine innocence. Um, I I I Heel a bit. I'll admit that shelling is unfair. The late shelling of the 1840s was somewhat unfair to Hegel in his reading of the logic. Okay, not completely unfair. I think he's right that the the Anelian project of of trying to simply make the concept of God adequate to the being of God uh is is something that seems to be the logic and the system as a whole. But on the whole I think you know Shelling exaggerates things. One thing he is right about it seems to me is if you're going to assert this radical unity uh to what degree uh is the identity of God as God in the event of Christ inextricably tied up with the evil of this world with uh moral evil but natural evil as and and I I I don't think that that's that that that's um that interval of innocence can be uh dispensed with. I'm going way off the track as this isn't actually what I was being asked about. I just wanted to ride my own hobby horse for it. Um it is possible though you know in using the language of modal distinction uh that I've just created more problems more ambiguities but I do think it's a it's a fruitful way to think about it. I do want to point out that that that the language of modality is asymmetrical here too. I mean I said that we are modes god is not. Okay that's another way of framing the autological difference. We are modalities of the divine presence. uh God is not a mode of anything is is you know so um the disproportion of the analogist the disproportion of the antico ontological difference uh I try to preserve in the language of modality but what is the oneness of Christ that's the real question of the monos does is Christ just the exemplification of something to me though this isn't this this is not as great a problem as it probably should Because as he is the event of God as a creature um he is also you know the structure of reality. In one sense yes he does perfectly exemplify the structure that comes into being in him.

[01:01:00]Uh even as as he is the one in whom all things are created. And this is important to me to say, well, let me say Jordan, you mentioned Jensen, you said Jensenian, Hegelian or Jensenian, but there's a big difference there, right? Because for for Jens um there's that that that element of Lutheran volunteerism you know in which the the transcendence of God not just transcendence of father but the transcendence of God is a sort of abyssal liberty that's even prior to I mean logically prior obviously structurally prior to the trinitarian taxes and that what happens in Christ is the singular preoccupation of the father with this man whereby he he becomes father in the futurity of the spirit and our participation in that uh is a a gracious inclusion in that story.

[01:02:00]But he was always fighting against having any natural, any connate, any metaphysical um propriety to that that no less than a bartian he would object that that's a presumption on grace. And to my mind, that's precisely the kind of of uh cord and that the kind of division that that I think renders the story incoherent. It really does leave you uh with an absolute paradox and and absolute impossibility of saying what it means to say that our our natures as creatures in the divine image are fulfilled uniquely fulfilled in Christ.

[01:02:48]But one more point, I'm taking too long here. I also Yeah, I I believe that Christ is what we are called to become.

[01:02:56]That may be an infinite becoming, but that that same transparency that I I would use the language of Gregory Nazien again, you know, in that famous sermon that uh or or Maximus's language about becoming uncreated in the most radical and real sense that that that is the end. uh because nothing has happened to us in the hypothatic union unless the hypothatic union is something that radically uh determines and happens to us at the very ground and at the very end of our nature. Um I could have made this much clearer if I if I'd sketched it out before, but I guess that those were my first those are my reactions >> to do Ran. Do you have any thoughts to >> very very briefly because I don't want to intrude on questions in the audience but um to welcome the reference to Javara and I would want to say precisely what you said I think David about um how we construe analogy in that context the I think the myodim dissimilitudo which comes into Shivar's discussion always greater difference or dis dissimilitude is not a way of saying crudely, >> yeah, >> God is more unlike us than God is like us. It's saying our likeness to God is always extended in precisely the epictatic form that you you hint at, which is what gives the creaturely good, that strong modal difference we are infinitely becoming.

[01:04:34]And um I I welcomed your use of of that phraseiology as well. Um I think I might leave it there and just give Jordan time to >> Can I just what add one sentence to that of course is I think the the the formula as Shivari uses it of the Mayo dissimilitudo excuse me uh actually is meant to affirm the radical imminence of Yes. Yeah. I mean and and um so those who defend him against Bart by trying to exaggerate you know his even more the holy otherness of God is asserted even more than in Bart yes but in a very specifically in an onlogical yeah >> they sort of haven't really got the point of of analogy itself there >> and the which he always talks about the tension which >> which is irreducible in the relation of the fire to the infinite and and therefore in analogy Um I I also don't want to derail us too far and I want to get to the audience, but I'll just say on analogy since it's been brought up several times. Uh I for one for one thing I I never simply deny analogy. I don't oppose it. I don't think it's something one can do without from the beginning or anything like that. I don't obliterate it as as John Milbick said. I do. Uh so >> he also goes to screens in his >> Yeah. Yeah. It's okay. That's all right.

[01:06:00]See, my problem is I was raised in the Midwest, so I just bottle up all my emotions and all of a sudden I explode.

[01:06:05]So that's >> um So, no, I I um I think uh I think that's just fine except I do think that that Christologology pushes us beyond. Beyond is not against.

[01:06:23]And so I I you know when I say surpass we shouldn't gloss that as oppose but I do think surpass means something I mean like so to say for example that God uh doesn't become well Jesus does >> um and so if if what we mean by the negation I mean I take analogy fundamentally is first and foremost a double negation and I I learned that from from David and uh and others you decades ago and it's and I think that's that is the the necessary unavoidable use of it that we do have to keep in mind and I'm on board with that. So I'm not I don't think we should just erase that. But I do think that like going back to Maximus's ambigum 27 the properly improper that is a proper judgment about predication in light of what he calls there the whole and he says what you say of the whole you must say also of the parts and you must say improperly of the parts of the whole in so far as those are parts of that whole and I think that is the kind of thing that um I don't know I'm not always sure like John Betts says and I love John Betts but like he says in the logos of creation that that his reading of Haman quote overturns every classical theism.

[01:07:38]So there are moments where I feel like analog is being wielded to quote unquote overturn or go beyond. And that those are the moments where maybe I wouldn't use the word overturn but surpass like okay I feel like okay I'm on board. I know where we're going. But then all of the sudden sometimes the analogical predication becomes a rule that is used against even the whole Christ. And I don't that's not a Bartian concern in the sense that I'm not like I'm not here sort of abstractly opposing natural theology or anything like that. But I but I do think that uh like so when Dionius in epistle 4 denies that what what we predicate of Christ uh when we say he is human that it is quote not like saying that he is the cause of humanity. And when Maximus in ambiguum 5 glosses that same text and he he begins by affirming yes we do not mean that then whatever we go on to say must reflect the going beyond of what we don't mean when we say Jesus is human does not mean God caused Jesus and so you know or to say it one other way and that' be done does Jesus infinitely become God. Does Jesus become God?

[01:08:46]If he doesn't become God, then I then I'm not sure he's like me.

[01:08:52]>> Um, >> but but why is that? Why is that?

[01:08:55]>> Well, let me finish because I know because I only say that that's one-sided.

[01:09:00]>> Yeah.

[01:09:01]>> The God I mean, this is why I think the later christoologgical controversies are not just sort of unfortunate detours into details because the whole Monerist crisis is exactly on this question. The whole Julianist crisis is exactly on this question because the question it almost feels like I think to some including some of the meaphysites but also others even within the neocal quote unquote neocedonian camps they were fighting over this there's a phantom subject that comes in to take the predicate of become when Jesus is growing in wisdom and stature >> because of course if he's God he has never had any need to become anything god doesn't become god but then what is Jesus becoming as the human being and who is doing the becoming.

[01:09:46]>> I think we get we'll get Rowan on this uh because he seems to want to maybe >> Yes. I I I'm not sure I quite see the worry here because it seems to be that of course Jesus as possessed of a human subjectivity or let's put it slightly differently the eternal word assuming the human complete human subjectivity in Jesus naturally there is growth in that.

[01:10:08]Jacqu Mareta's work on the grace and humanity of Jesus is is a very skillful tomist meditation on that perhaps too technical and too um rigorous in some ways but I don't see the problem I don't feel that how should I put it the union of the second person of the trinity with the individualized humanity that is Jesus of Nazareth is not something that becomes it doesn't develop. It's there. It's there from um March 35th, you know, it's there from the inunciation. Um, >> on the other hand, it seems to me perfectly reasonable to say that Jesus like me grows in wisdom and stature in the sense that the what what I think of as the welling up of that given union in the detail, the learning of his humanity, his learning how to be human is is not a problem. He he learns how to be God in human form as a human subject.

[01:11:13]That doesn't mean that he is not from the beginning God in human form. How that is to be enacted is a moment by moment development. I I I think that I think that's coherent with what we believe about union.

[01:11:30]I think you do.

[01:11:31]>> No, I agree with with your I I um of course I also again uh using an ambiguity with with a certain rhetorical flourish as if to make it seem like I'm dispelling ambiguity. In the book I talk about um uh uh the logos becoming this man means that uh this man has always already become divine. You know that that that what for us uh is still an existential project. But I have to ask you this Jordan. I mean is there any sense in which you become a logos within the logos of God or is that um I mean just let's just remove it from the realm of christologology for a moment because obviously Christ is the unique case okay he is always perfectly this one he is the eternal son there is nothing in him that is not the eternal son right >> uh and that would be even be in the in the weakness and frailty of of his infancy of his boyhood of the of the the the agony of the cross.

[01:12:42]Whereas for us there is a division you in terms of will between the nomic and natural maybe. So that there is a becoming. But what are we becoming? We are becoming that which is most radically essential to us from the start from eternity, >> right?

[01:12:59]>> Uh in God. Well, um, you know, we're finite and, uh, I suppose you could say we're becoming the logos in that sense.

[01:13:09]Uh, but I would I would, uh, I would even pull back from that, curiously enough. Now, again, that's not to assimilate our case to that of Christ.

[01:13:18]Um, but I certainly don't think that, no, I don't think it is correct to say that God becomes in Christ in that sense. uh uh and there I admit it's it's more a metaphysical predisposition than anything else. I I just I cannot assign a logical meaning.

[01:13:38]>> Yeah.

[01:13:39]>> To what it is we're talking about when we speak of God as the fullness of all being from whom all comes. Uh if we're not willing also to say infinite act that has no unrealized potential does not become.

[01:13:55]Okay. Um but um you know again I don't know is is is >> is this an irreconcilable difference between us? Uh yeah probably >> at least at least cannot have one. Well, I and obviously of course there's that amphibolous sense again you're more robustly Hegelian than I am um in uh in being willing to grant that God can can be actualized can achieve in the fin yet the but what he actualizes isn't anything other than what he always already was that's why we have to complete the predicative sort circle there, alpha, alpha and omega in that sense.

[01:14:49]>> But but I but I but >> so I I sometimes suspect there's a sort of deeper rivalry in in exactly like exactly where the later controversies went makes sense to me because >> Oh yeah. Well, they had to go there, the monothelite cont, right? And so when Maximus applies peris not just to the natures, but to the activities, the the actualizations of those natures and then to the wills, >> he is he is trying to do justice to the fact that the same subject we must say of one and the same subject both that he was always already pure act. There's never he never had to become in some sort of merely finite durational sense.

[01:15:31]But also he to quote him he who is a son by nature became a son by grace as well.

[01:15:39]>> That's a yeah that's a bulgovian point though too.

[01:15:42]>> Well yeah well right and Bakov is is also the one >> became a son by grace but he did not become a son by nature. Um I >> Right. So I mean that's generally where the the distinction is made between saying God you know Jesus became the word became the son >> right but but on your but on your view as well David isn't it isn't it our nature to become God >> so why would it be a like there would be no problem then >> because because God is already God I >> yeah he's right so so so it's sort of like the way I like I would read for example just to throw in another name John Scutter Aruja Paraphysion, you know, when when the last division of nature is the the one who create uh who neither creates nor is created, >> what he's doing there is saying that what is accomplished was also what was always already accomplished. And yet that doesn't negate the accomplishing.

[01:16:39]>> Yeah. Roman, do you want to get in on this a little bit or because I Yeah, >> I I'll pass.

[01:16:44]>> You sure?

[01:16:46]>> I was trying to bring you two together.

[01:16:48]You know, that's really what I'm doing.

[01:16:50]Um anyway, there's great great stuff there.

[01:16:53]There's definitely a place to go in the future, so Oh, yes. Well, we don't want to we don't want to keep everyone waiting. Are there any questions? Tell me.

[01:17:03]>> There are quite a few actually. We're definitely >> see thumbs up. I see hearts rising on the screen. Say, I just saw that.

[01:17:09]Hearts, hearts, hearts.

[01:17:10]>> We're definitely not going to get to them all, but >> those are votes for David Hart.

[01:17:13]>> I'm gonna I'm sorry, everybody. We're definitely not gonna we're definitely not going to get to to all of them. Um uh but I will I will I will give it to you.

[01:17:24]I mean the thing I want to say is I mean just the the the word that I haven't quite heard yet in all this I mean it it just sound I mean just to simplify it a little bit to simplify it the challenge of talking about God's relationship to the world when in fact you can't spatialize God. Uh so the kind of the challenge of that but um especially when talking about the incarnation but I haven't quite heard the eternal and the temporal kind of come into play here in terms of talking about this >> kind of problem because I I >> well I think that's what we were just sort of talking >> sorting out in a way. Yeah. Sorting out.

[01:17:59]Yeah. Because I see also Bulgakov kind of solving >> this problem at in >> Bulgakov solved all problems.

[01:18:06]>> All problems. Right. Yeah.

[01:18:09]All right. Let's let's get a couple questions. Uh I'm sorry everybody. I'm definitely not going to be able to get to over 21 questions. Um because we like to at the center here we don't we don't we don't like to have two hour webinars.

[01:18:21]Um so we're going to wrap this up within about five to seven minutes or so. So we have to do maybe a couple questions. One question here is you know related to what we were just talking about. Is the event of incarnation the means or the end of human perfection in God given the necessity or contingency of the incarnation?

[01:18:42]Is the union of nature perfective in itself apart from the unique history death and resurrection of the incarnate one? All right. So is the event of incarnation the means or the end of a human perfection in God?

[01:18:59]Given the necessity or contingency of the incarnation, is the union of nature perfective in itself apart from the unique history, death and resurrection of the incarnate one. So I might even copy that and put it in the chat. That's only available to the panelists. So I can't they're not letting me do that. So, I can't do that.

[01:19:23]So, I Well, I can't do that.

[01:19:24]>> Well, can't can't the answer be both.

[01:19:27]Um, >> go ahead, David. Yeah.

[01:19:28]>> Well, I mean, can't can it be both the end and and um the means? Um because I I mean, I I don't think any of us here think of God as a sort of deliberating subject who uh you know, chooses between in a landscape of possible worlds. So this this has always been the structure of creation. This is the structure of even being itself as as belonging to to father, son and spirit.

[01:20:05]Um but yeah I I mean without Christ uh there there is no perfected union, right? Um and our you know that facultus facult if you want or that that uh the enemies uh whatever we want to call it that that brings us to our spiritual end is nothing less I mean it is really like literally concretely the uh our integration into the body of Christ into the the the or what Gregory of Nissa called the man of the first the atom of the first creation the one in whom We alone have our full humanity because it is in perfect communion with all other persons in in the headship of Christ in the logos in the living body of Christ is sustained by the spirit. So I I don't know I don't know how to distinguish between those two. Uh >> anybody else to say yeah >> just a brief comment um the word contingent which has come up once or twice >> I don't think to talk about the contingency of the incarnation is to say um is is to downgrade it. It's more to say the shape that the incarn life takes is a shape in some sense determined by the fallen history of humanity.

[01:21:27]The incarnation looks like this because our post Adamic history is like this.

[01:21:33]>> And in that sense, you might say the shape of the incarnation is contingent.

[01:21:38]>> Yeah.

[01:21:39]>> But the yes, as David says, I don't think we've got to choose here between two exclusive alternatives. We're we're talking about a particular kind of union which does not develop or evolve as as our union with God does.

[01:22:01]It's a given as I say from March the 25th. It's there. Um and that's unique I believe. Um but what that union is directed to is of affiliation with God in Christ. And so far as it is possible for for those of us who are not Jesus of Nazareth, we are assimilated infinitely in the process of being assimilated into that eternal affiliation which the incarnation makes possible for us.

[01:22:39]given that that we start from a a fallen position.

[01:22:44]>> Thank you.

[01:22:45]>> Yep. Um I'm going to get one more question. Uh kind of a short one. So I'd like to hear each of the panelists answer the question. Is Christ's human nature particular or universal?

[01:23:02]Each of you have to is Christ's human nature particular or universal?

[01:23:09]>> Both. I was about to say again I'm I'm not sure I would know how to draw the distinction there. It is you know nature only exists in being actual right. Um you know that that usa has to be paria presence. So in that sense it's it's particular but but it is there is only one human nature uh and and and so in Christ everything that human nature is uh has been fulfilled and perfected and and shared with all of us who are are human. Um yeah I'm not I'm not quite sure what the way to the question. It's an interesting question though, isn't it?

[01:23:49]>> It is.

[01:23:51]Now I think I'd want to say primarily particular in that Jesus of Nazareth was Jesus of Nazareth. Um and that particular history is is itself what it is. But part of what it then becomes is through the the resurrection and glorification of that particular human nature. It becomes as as various people have said in some sense open to an infinity of specific relationships with other other humans. It it becomes the cornerstone of the body of Christ as we experience it.

[01:24:35]It becomes universal in the sense of universally trans transformative, universally transfiguring >> universally that element in a relationship which radically reorients every subject, every created subject towards God the father. Um I I wouldn't simply therefore say becomes universal because I'm not quite sure what that means. But something in the risen Christ's relation to other human individuals is different from the relationship simply of Jesus of Nazareth in you know AD26 or whenever to other human individuals >> and Jordan want to have the final word because we'll probably wrap it up after this.

[01:25:18]>> Oh I ju I just wouldn't want to assign a priority to either. I'd want to simultaneously affirm both. If Christ's human deified humanity is universal, then that means it's also eternal which is also then the presupposition of his modality in time. So he becomes what he always already was. And I think you have to have that just as fundamentally uh for the particular instantiation of his humanity as as the reverse. So I just wouldn't I would just deny a priority.

[01:25:49]>> Still like the question though.

[01:25:50]>> Yeah, it's a famous one.

[01:25:55]All right, everybody. You know, we have so many questions that we could probably go on for and I'm sure through the back and forth, we could probably go on for about 3 4 hours in in good salon fashion. Um, but uh we have to put it we have to put an end to it. Um, this has been really really great as you say fruitful kinds of differences. Sorry about that. Hold on a second please. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

[01:26:21]Sorry about that. So um thank you all.

[01:26:24]Thank you all very much. Thank you for being a part of us. Thank you for being with us and as you say fruitful kinds of disagreements and the conversation obviously will go on as it has for centuries. Okay everybody take care and I have to go get that. So >> thank you.

[01:26:41]>> Take care. Thank you very much. Bye bye.