seeing in a mirror dimly

This is a cracker of a podcast! Punk music, Latin, Skateboarding, Christology, Purple hair, Impassibility, and Haggis – all in one episode!

Seumas MacDonald, a great bloke whom I’m had the pleasure of meeting recently joins us on this podcast.  Seumas is currently undertaking his MTh at Moore Theological College and is putting his Latin skills to use as he studies through St. John Chrysostom’s sermons! I’ve found Seumas to be a really lovely and thoughtful bloke who has a serious love of theology – check out his blog here.  And his recently installed languages blog here.

In this podcast, we discuss how Seumas came to faith in Christ, find out a bit about St. John Chrysostom, and delve into the subject of Impassibility: Does God Suffer? Really great thoughts and insights from Seumas, and I heartily recommend his thoughts and suggestions on how to think Christologically.

Read:
Seumas has some follow-up thoughts from the podcast.  Great resources particularly on the subject of Impassibility.

Listen:
 

Download this episode of the Pilgrim's Podcast!

PS:
I have no idea what happened at 34:52.  It sounds we were possessed for 5 seconds.  But I can assure you that it probably has more to do with the encoding of the file!

Since late last year I’ve been reading and thinking about a whole lot of Christological things.  Fascinating stuff which simply leads me to wonder and praise!  I think I might blog a little through some thing soon, but here’s an absolutely brilliant quote from Fr. Thomas Weinandy on Cyril’s understanding of the suffering of God:

“For Cyril this is the marvellous truth of the Incarnation.  God from all eternity may have known, within his divine knowledge, what it is like for human beings to suffer and die, and he may have known this perfectly and comprehensively.  But until the Son of God became man and existed as man, the Son of God, who is impassible in himself as God, never experienced and knew suffering and death as man in a human manner.  In an unqualified manner one can say that, as man, the Son of God had experiences he never had before because he never existed as man before – not the least of which are suffering and death.  This is what, for Cyril a proper understanding of the Incarnation requires and affirms, and this is what the communication of the idioms so remarkably, clearly, and even scandalously safeguards, advocates, and confesses.

The eternal, almighty, all-perfect, unchangeable, and impassible divine Son, he who is equal to the Father all in ways, actually experienced, as a weak human being, the full reality of human suffering and death.  What was an infamy to the Docestists, to Arius, and to Nestorius was for Cyril and the subsequent Christian tradition the glory and grandeur of the Gospel.  Even among those today who advocate a suffering God, the Incarnation is still a scandal, for while, with the best of intentions, having locked suffering within God’s divine nature, they have, in so doing, locked God out of human suffering.” (pg52-53, The Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria: A Critical Appreciation)

My journey in thinking about the Extra Calvinisticum has now taken me to the realm of what’s known as the communicatio idiomatum (english: the Communication of the Attributes).  That the attributes (such as omniscience, omnipresence, immensity etc) cannot be transferred between the human and divine natures of Jesus, but are correctly predicated of his person and also are referred to using the reduplicative expression (as man, or as God) .  Thomas G. Weinandy in Does God Suffer? has recounted a great little example that he shares with his students – what do you think?

“Jesus goes to Martha’s, Mary’s, and Lazarus’ home for dinner.  Martha serves as a starter (to use the English term) raw carrots with garlic dip (a yet to be discovered American culinary invention).  Jesus ate the carrots.  Who was it who ate the carrots?  Who was the acting subject?  It was the Son of God who ate the carrots.  Was he eating the carrots as God or as man?  Obviously, he was eating the carrots as man.  God as God cannot eat carrots for he does not have teeth, a mouth, a stomach etc.  Lazarus also ate the carrots, but unfortunately he ate a rotten carrot and died of food poisoning.  Four days later Jesus returned and raised Lazarus from the dead.  Who was it who raised Lazarus from the dead?  It was the Son of God who raised Lazarus from the dead.  But did he raise Lazarus from the dead as God or as man?  At this juncture there is silence among the students.  Inevitably the more pious students first break the silence by saying that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead ‘as God.’  I remain silent.  Then some brave soul, usually a girl, will hesitantly whisper, almost inaudibly, ‘as man.’  That is precisely the correct answer.

Within the Incarnation the Son of God never does anything as God.  If he did, he would be acting as God in a man.  This the Incarnation will never permit.  All that Jesus did as the Son of God was done as a man - whether it was eating carrots, or raising someone from the dead.  He may have raised Lazarus from the dead by his divine power or, better, by the power of the Holy Spirit, but it was, nonetheless, as man that he did so.  Similarly, the Son of God did not suffer as God in a man, for to do so would mean that he was not a man.  The Son of God suffered as a man.” (pg 205).

Ironically, as I’ll go on to show in another post (sometime… I’ve been pretty slack lately!), protecting God’s impassibility is done in order to uphold Christ’s humanity – particularly his solidarity in our weakness!

Oh, here’s an excerpt from the excellent book which this quote was taken from.