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Christ In Eastern Christian Thought
By John Meyendorff
218 pp ashington and Cleveland, Corpus Books 1969 $7.95

Professor Meyendorff writes in the conclusion of his book that it had been fundamentally conceived as a historical study, the goal being to chart the mainstreams of christological thought in Byzantium. The crucial point in the complex development of Orthodox theology is of course the dogma of Chalcedon, once universally accepted in the churches of the catholic tradition, but which, more recently, has lost some of its popularity in dissident theological circles, due to prejudice, or to a scanty evaluation of the textual evidence. Indeed, the Council of Chalcedon, which the author rightly regards as "the most perfect example of conciliarity," needs no rehabilitation, but, all the same, the present book goes a long way toward providing much needed information and dispelling unreasonable prejudices.

One of the major obstacles which the church had to overcome in formulating her doctrine was the total lack of an adequate theological language. Her borrowing Platonic and Aristotelian categories should not deceive us. These categories had to be re-thought fundamentally, and if such terms as essence, potency, energies, and the like, sound much the same as before, they would, in the writings of the Greek Fathers and in conciliar formulae, refer to authentic Biblical, Christian, "engaged" notions. The so-called Hellenization of Christianity remained largely nominal.

A case in point is the key concept of hypostasis, which the author follows in a succession of chapters in which the development and fluctuations of christology are analyzed and appraised from Chalcedon to the Palamite controversy in the fourteenth century. The etymology of hypostasis and the use of this term in Hellenistic philosophy are little useful, if at all relevant, for understanding what the Byzantine theologians meant by it. Chalcedon marked a major breakthrough, with its unambiguous distinction between hypostasis and nature (physis). In the light of this distinction, hypostasis, as the translation of Pope Leo's persona, a term which St. Jerome regarded as slippery, replaced the totally artificial, insufficient, and Nestorian or Nestorian-flavored prospopon tes henoseos of the Antiochians. In the sixth century, according to Leontius of Byzantium, hypostasis designates the individual, the "someone." Leontius of Jerusalem, a much neglected author, defines hypostasis "a nature with characteristics," physis meta idiomation; this implies that the hypostasis of the Logos, while retaining the characteristics of the divine nature, has acquired, through the incarnation, human characteristics; its from-then-on composite character is further analyzed in St. John Damascene's definitive synthesis.

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The progress of patristic studies has enabled the author to throw light on Leontius of Byzantium and to cut to size his contribution to post-Chalcedonian theology. Leontius of Byzantium built his christology on the basis of an Origenist scheme originating principally in the De principiis and condemned by the fifteen anathemas of the fifth Council (Constantinople, 553) and by the Letter to Menas of Emperor Justinian: pre-existence of the souls; diversification and materialization of the human beings a sequel to "the fall"; pre-existence of the human soul of Christ, the only one not overcome by sin and worthy of being eternally united with the Logos (henosis kat' ousian); and finally, wholesale reintegration of the spiritual world. The author remarks incidentally that the formal condemnation of Origenism makes it difficult to hold Harnack's theory of Byzantine Christianity being nothing else than Hellenized Christianity, a theory which lingers inexplicably on many Western theological campuses.

The Origenism of Leontius of Byzantium should qualify his statements about a union according to the hypostasis, henosis kath' hypostasin or hypostatike, and, a fortiori, the celebrated enhypostaton. it takes to read Leontius' theory out of its Origenist context, in order to be able to regard his enhypostaton as a suitable amendment to the Chalcedonian anhypostaton. The latter needs no amendment, but merely to be understood in its original intent, which was to circumscribe and express as far as is humanly possible the mystery of the incarnation and the resulting doctrine of salvation. This was the chief aim of the Byzantine theologians, who were little concerned with the improbable task of figuring out what the consciousness of a God-man could or could not be.

The communicatio idiomatum, that is to say, the interchangeability of the characteristics of either nature by reason of their subsisting in the hypostasis of the Logos, which has always been the acid test of a theology of Christ and was subjected to a variety of interpretations, is in the foreground of the author's concern. He makes it clear that it goes beyond the nominal stage, or any metaphoric usus loquendi, or any conception of the hypostasis as a mere logical bracket holding together the divinity and the humanity of Christ. The communication is in depth and affects the hypostasis. It would enable Theodore the Studite, in the time of the iconoclastic controversy, to speak of the hypostasis of Christ as describable (Perigrapte), and this is most likely why the Byzantine icon painters inscribed ho on in the cruciform halo of Christ, for in him the invisible Deity was made visible.

An entire chapter is devoted to the formula "God suffered in the flesh," by no means a Monophysite exclusivity. It expresses the fundamental reality implied in the epithet of theotokos applied to the Virgin; it is an

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essential part of Cyrillian doctrine, and it was re-affirmed by the sixth-century Chalcedonians, as they feared that the definitions of Cbalcedon, directed as they were against Eutychianism., might seem to soften the Ephesian condemnation of Nestorianism. The author remarks appropriately that the controversial addition by Peter the Fuller of the words "crucified for us" to the Trisagion, needs not be regarded as formally heretical as long as the Trisagion, "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal," is understood as a prayer to Christ and not as a hymn to the Trinity. Less ambiguous, of course, is the Alleluia verse which we sing as antiphonal refrain in the Divine Liturgy of the Holy Cross: "O Son of God, crucified in the flesh, save us who sing unto Thee: Alleluia!"

The author is certainly right in thinking that the passibility of the flesh thus predicated of the Logos kath' hypostasin challenges the thesis of God's immutability as stated by the Thomists and a majority of the western schoolmen. Aquinas' notion of God as the Actus Purus, his insufficient distinction between hypostasis and nature, make God a prisoner of himself and should, in rigor of logic, preclude that communication with the world of rational and spiritual creatures which faith implies. Christian theology ought not to start from a philosophical abstraction, nor explain the divine persons merely as relations subsisting within the incommunicable essence. There is, if not an inconsistency, at least an unresolved tension between the First Part of the Summa Theologiae and the Third Part. The latter reflects the christological dogma formulated at Ephesus and Chalcedon. Aquinas, in order to justify why and how the passion affects hypostatically the Second Person of the Trinity, quotes as authorities the twelfth anathema in St. Cyril's Capitula, and several passages from the homilies of Theodotus of Ancyra (IIIa P., qu. 16, art. 4; qu. 46, art. 12).

To this "open" conception of the hypostasis of Christ-a felicitous expression coined by the author-corresponds an anthropology equally open to the intimate, effective, participation of man in the divine life. For man is not conceived as a mere composite of soul and body; in fact, he is not really human as long as he is not actually animated by the Spirit. Such a motion is not merely subjective, nor is it due to some extrinsic grace falling from the blue, like the donum superadditum of the Augustinians. Byzantine theology ignores a theoretical state of "pure nature," and sees man, created in the image of God, yet fallen and forgiven, as striving toward a perfect likeness, "unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."

The Orthodox concept of deification, which unfortunately Western theologians, Catholic and Protestant, do not readily accept, makes it

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possible to integrate fully, not only dogmatics and morals, but also the spiritual doctrine of the mystics. This had been established in the author's former studies on St. Gregory Palamas, and it is being confirmed today from another angle. The importance of this excellent book is not to be measured by volume, and it justifies what may appear to be a disproportionally long review.

Georges A. Barrois
Princeton Theological Seninary
Princeton, New Jersey