Athanasius says "When he was doing the works of the Father in a divine way, the flesh was not external to him. On the contrary, the Lord did these things in the body itself." However he spoils it somewhat by saying "Thus, when it was necessary to raise up Peter’s mother-in-law, who was suffering from a fever, it was a human act when he extended his hand but a divine act when he caused the disease to cease. Likewise, in the case of “the man blind from birth” [
John 9:6] it was human spittle which he spat, but it was a divine act when he opened the man’s eyes by means of clay." This seems to blunt the impact of the previous quote.
Forgive me Hedrick, because I think we are in closer alignment on this issue than one might think, for we both fully desire a Christological expression which conveys the complete humanity and divinity and the perfection of that union without change, confusion or division.
Now, in the specific case of the above quote, I don’t entirely see how those statements blunt the previous ones, because Christ throughout his Incarnation glorified our fallen humanity by imparting to it, through the entire course of His Incarnation from conception, which is a mystery, but from that point on, through a natural nativity, a childbirth which also according to the Fathers did not physically alter St. Mary in any respect that might cause someone of a primitive understanding of the concept of virginity, which is to say, most people until very recently, and even today the majority of the population in less educated countries and developing nations, who hold to primitive notions about this, which required a further miracle so as to stress that aspect of His birth. From then on, His life was a process of sanctifying and glorifying, from childhood, through constructive work (carpentry being both an art and a vital craft, even more so then than now given the lack of mass production, and widespread use of other materials; in antiquity our Lord could have been involved in some way in nearly everything that was built), through baptism (his Baptism by St. John in the Jordan elevated further this act, which itself can be understood as St. John cleansing people in the ancient tradition of the Judaic ritual bath of purification, the mikvah, used as you doubtless know but our readers might not, to remove any uncleanness under the Mosaic Law, or Torah, for example, to attain the ritual purity required of priests before serving in the Temple after any act or experience that was under the Torah defiling, of which there were many, and transformed this means of ritual purity which required, and among Jews, Samaritans and the Mandaean Gnostics who regard John the Baptist as the Messiah, continues to require, frequent repetition, into a singular act of spiritual purification, an indellible washing away of the faith, owing to the glorification of Baptism when St. John baptized Christ, the Spirit descended as a dove and the voice of the Father was heard.
This process of glorification and deification continued, with the incarnate Word of God actually dying and being resurrected, and then ascending to Heaven before returning in the Eschaton*
Communicatio idiomatum, which we see foreshadowed in St. Athanasius, can be understood as the imparting of divinity to ordinary human activities, and the glorification of humanity by imparting it to divine activities. However, in St. Athanasius we do not see communicatio idiomatum in a complete form, but rather, we see a prototype of all modern Christological texts, because De Incarnatione, like the other magnum opus of St. Athanasius,
The Life of Anthony trod new ground; whereas the latter was the first biography and hagiography of a monastic hermit, who himself is only the second such hermit, the first such hermit, St. Paul the Hermit, being known of only through the testimony of St. Anthony and his hagiographers, chiefly St. Athanasius, and on the whole the work was at the time quite unique as it introduced the world to a new form of Christian living which developed from the isolated hermitage to the confederated hermitage, or skete, from Scetis, where these appeared, and from thence to coenobitic monasticism, in just a few decades, the importance of that work in promoting the angelic life cannot be overstated (I imagine it must be a bit weird hearing a Congregationalist praising monastic living, but I see myself as a Congregationalist Evangelical Catholic, like the LCMS, but seeking to if possible retain some aspect of the tradition which the UCC seems to be losing, who also fully accepts episcopal polity, for the early bishops presided over single congregations). Perhaps the UCC could be turned around through a monastic order, but I digress.
Just as the Vita Antonis was vital, if you will forgive the feeble pun, in fueling the fires of monastic zeal which did so much good for the early Church, and then literally held Christendom together, in the East as much as the West, durimg the Dark Ages, with the Eastern Roman Empire in irreversible decline and the Western Roman Empire defunct, De Incarnatione was even more revolutionary, for it set forward a basic set of Christological principles which remain accepted more or less without reservation by all Christian churches which follow the creed. We can quibble a bit over how St. Athanasius viewed the precise nature of the Incarnation, although I fear that would be unproductive, for three reasons: firstly, we obviously are not drawing the same conclusions from the same texts (perhaps because I have less than a sterling opinion of Rausch, and only encountered him after having read about St. Athanasius through the writings of CS Lewis, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, and Pope Benedict XVI, among other very high churchmen, and also through the writings of other Patristic figures like St. Gregory Nazianzus, and through his own writings; Vita Antonis is the most riveting piece of Christian literature outside the realm of sacred Scripture, in my opinion, an absolute page-turner which deeply moved me to repentence, so I am admittedly biased to an extreme extent concerning St. Athanasius.***
Secondly, the texts themselves are clearly prototypical, in that we can extract the kind of “The Divine Word did this, and the Man Jesus did this” antiphonal cadence of Mar Narsai’s hymn I linked you to earlier, from what St. Athanasius wrote, almost as easily as Communicatio Idiomatum. The Nestorians never anathematized, and indeed venerate, St. Athanasius, because he can be interpreted, like St. Ephrem the Syrian, whose Syriac hymns are used by both the Church of the East and their one-time Christological opponents, the Miaphysite Syriac Orthodox Church, and both call him the “Harp of the Spirit” (however, while the Church of the East calls the very Nestorian Mar Narsai “The Flute of the Spirit”, the Syriac Orthodox bestow this title on Mar Jacob of Sarugh, whose metrical homily “Haw Nurone” is my favorite Eucharistic liturgical hymn specifically on the subject of Holy Communion. It really deserves a good English adaptation, like that received by Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent, or the numerous excellent settings of Phos Hilarion, Te Deum Laudamus, and other ancient hymns).
Thirdly, and most importanrly, owing to the prototypical nature of the work of St. Athanasius, which I would argue has, like the Nicene Creed itself, universal applicability, and there is no doubt Nestorius opposed Arius as much as St. Cyril or St. Celestine, I would argue we are debating the wrong Christological figure.
Theopaschism, which is the topic at hand, was never explicitly addressed by the august Pope of Alexandria who we have been debating, but St. Gregory Nazianzus did make an explicit remark in favor of a Theopaschite Christology (despite, for reasons which became ironic under the rule of Justinian, who we should also be talking about, being a fan of Origen and one of the compilers of the Philocalia), saying “We needed [...] a Crucified God.” St. Augustine and his followers also entered into the discussion by stating that any suffering of the humanity of our Lord would be much greater than that of His divinity, to avoid the twin perils of Patripassianism and Modalism. Which in the end, Severus of Antioch, who we should be talking about the most, because it was he who wrote the hymn Ho Monogenes that planted into the liturgy of all Eastern churches, due to Justinian, clear Theopaschite language, and it was his arguments which persuaded Justinian and the bishops of the Second Council of Constantinople (the Fifth Ecumenical Council in EO-Lutheran-RC reckoning) to anathematize any who denied that Jesus Christ who was crucified was the incarnation of God (in Canon X, which I quote in full, below).
So really, Theopaschism began with an event, the Theopaschite Controversy, wherein the Scythian Monks forced the issue by exerting pressure on Justinian to allow St. Severus, the Oriental Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, to debate his Chalcedonian opponents, owing to a silent majority of Chalcedonians who while accepting the Tome of Leo rejected the anti-Theopaschite sentiment which animated Nestorius and the Nestorians.
*There have of course been occasional Christophanies, such as the appearance of our Lord at Holy Etchmiadzin in the early fourth century, an event that enabled St. Gregory the Illuminator to convert the entire nation of Armenia from Paganism and making it the first Christian sovereign country, , the city state of Edessa once ruled by King Agbar which had at some prior point embraced Christ, being at best a city state, and more likely than not a suzerain power under Roman protection, notwithstanding).
**I myself regard the anathema of Origen by Emperor Justinian as unfair and wrong, and while I feel I lack the authority to declare him a saint, privately regard him as venerable, but I also venerate St. Epiphanius who had justifiable objections to Origen, so this is a complex issue for me.
*** Indeed, regarding St. Athanasius, I am biased to the point where I think he is one of around a dozen Patristic figures who modern day Christianity depends upon entirely, the others being Origen**, and Ignatius, Clement, Irenaeus of Lyon, Victor, Ephrem the Syrian, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Cyril of Alexandria, Celestine, Ambrose of Millan, Augustine of Hippo, John Cassian, Jacob of Sarugh, Maximus the Confessor, Theodore the Studite and John Damascene, and of course Empress Theodora and her son Emperor Michael III, and the Docetic, Gnostic, Arian, Nestorian, Monothelite, Iconoclast and other heretical adversaries of the above. St. Gregory of Nazianzus is also of particular importance for introducing into the discussion Theopaschism, as noted above.
Also, a few other Oriental Orthodox saints, and a group of Chalcedonians known as the Scythian monks, are of similiar importance to St. Athanasius and were of particular relevance to this discussion, as they dealt directly in the realm of Theopaschitism, which Chalcedonians initially regarded as heretical, under the influence of crypto-Nestorians, including: Severus of Antioch, Peter Fullo, and Jacob of Sarugh, and their counterparts, Emperor Justinian (who did nonetheless incorporate the hymn Only Begotten Son, probably written by Severus, into a prominent place in the Byzantine liturgy; the Antiochene West Syriac liturgy naturally features it even more prominently as an introit, and whose anathemas, despite naming people who I think by virtue of their ascetic lives, scholarship, and their repose in the peace of the church, did not deserve it, namely Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia, who the Assyrians do venerate, which is good, but they also venerate Nestorius and attribute an East Syriac style reordering of what was probably the Byzantine form of the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, which Nestorius would have used while Patriarch of Constantinople, and in my opinion Nestorius simply did too many objectionable things to be venerated. Neither Mar Theodore the Interpreter, as the Assyrians call him, or Origen, ever violently persecuted anyone.
But it was St. Severus who provided the intellectual framework for Theopaschitism, and St. Peter Fullo who, by inserting into the Oriental Orthodox version of the hymn known as the Trisagion the controversial Theopaschite clause, which I will quote below with his addition in bold, who seem to me as the main advocates of Theopaschitism:
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal One, Who Was Crucified For Us, Have Mercy on Us.
Now, pressure from the Scythian monks forced Justinian to allow a debate between St. Severus and the majority of anti-Theopaschite bishops, and this evidently persuaded Emperor Justinian to, for a time, become Theopaschite, for he inserted Canon X into the Second Council of Constantinople which reads “"If anyone does not confess that our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified in flesh is true God and Lord of glory and one of the holy Trinity, let him be anathema.” And the aforementioned hymn Only Begotten Son and Word of God, also known by its Greek title Ho Monogenes, which was written by St. Severus, was interpolated into the Byzantine liturgy as described above.
Only-Begotten Son and Immortal Word of God,
Who for our salvation didst will to be incarnate of the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary;
Who without change didst become man and was crucified;
Who art one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit:
O Christ our God, trampling down death by death, save us!
This council was convened largely to legitmize the anathemas that Justinian unilaterally proclaimed in the Three Chapters, against people the Oriental Orthodox viewed as crypto or prot-Nestorian, such as Theodore of Mopsuestia, in a failed attempt to heal the Chalcedonian schism (when it failed, Justinian resorted to arrests and executions of Oriental Orthodox bishops on a massive scale, and it was only through the aid of his Oriental Orthodox wife that Jacob Bar Addai was able to consecrate, in many cases using the emergency procedure of acting solo, for bishops are under normal conditions supposed to be ordained by three or more other bishops, a new hierarchy for the Oriental church in Syria and Egypt) and also a few other people some has gripes with, such as Origen.
Now this is where things get interesting and bizarre. For whatever reason, Justinian no longer desired to embrace theopaschism, and instead sought to ameliorate Canon X by embracing as doctrine a theological idea that originated, like so much else, good and bad, with Origen, that being apthartodocetism.
Apthartodocetism is a long and complex subject, deserving of a follow-up post by you or me, for the edification of other members, and it has never been anathematized as a heresy, but I strongly suspect
@hedrick that you are both familiar with it and also very much opposed to its implications.
Indeed the problems with Apthartodocetism are such that Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople managed to dissuade Justinian from declaring Apthartodocetisim an official Eastern Orthodox doctrine. Which is probably for the best.