GOD, THE UNIVERSE AND HUMANKIND
The world has become mingled with God, and creation and Creator became one!
II/5, 18
OUR STUDY OF SAINT ISAAC must begin with an investigation of his doctrine of God, the Creator and Guide of the universe, and his understanding of how God reveals himself through the created world. In this connection, Isaac’s ontology must also be analyzed, that is, his teaching on the structure of the created being, as must his Christology, the doctrine of the redemption of the world by the incarnate Word of God. This analysis will help us define Isaac’s place in the Eastern theological tradition and his interpretation of the christian faith, that is, his personal attitude to fundamental dogmas of Christianity.
1. DIVINE LOVE WHICH REVEALS ITSELF THROUGH THE CREATED WORLD
In Isaac’s understanding, God is above all immeasurable and boundless love.1 The conviction that God is love dominates Isaac’s thought: it is the source of his theological opinions, ascetical recommendations, and mystical insights. His theological system cannot be comprehended apart from this fundamental concept.
Divine love surpasses human understanding and verbal description. At the same time, this love is reflected in God’s actions with respect to the created world and humankind: ‘Among all his actions there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love, and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and the end of his dealings with us’.2 Both the creation of the world and God’s coming to earth in flesh had as its only aim, ‘to reveal his boundless love to the world’.3
Divine love was the main reason why God created the universe and is the main driving force behind the whole of creation.4 In the creation of the world divine love revealed itself in its fullness:
What that invisible Being is like, who is without any beginning in his nature, unique in himself, who is by nature beyond the knowledge, intellect, and feel of created beings, who is beyond time and space, being the Creator of these, who at the beginning of time was learnt about through hints and was made known as if it were through his mark by means of the establishing of the fullness of creation, who made his voice heard in connection with his handiwork and so the Being of his lordship was made known, the fountainhead of innumerable natures—this Being is hidden, for as he dwelt in his Being for aeons without number or limit or beginning, it pleased his graciousness and he made a beginning of time, bringing the worlds and created beings into existence. Let us consider then, how rich in its wealth is the ocean of his creative act, and how many created things belong to God, and how in his compassion he carries everything, acting providentially as he guides creation, and how with a love that cannot be measured he arrived at the establishment of the world and the beginning of creation; and how compassionate God is, and how patient; and how he loves creation, and how he carries it, gently enduring its importunity, the various sins and wickednesses, the terrible blasphemies of demons and evil men.5
Divine love is a continuing realisation of the creative potential of God, an endless revelation of the Divinity in his creative act. Divine love lies at the foundation of the universe, it governs the world, and it will lead the world to that glorious outcome when it will be entirely ‘consumed’ by the Godhead:
What profundity of richness, what mind and exalted wisdom is God’s! What compassionate kindness and abundant goodness belong to the Creator! With what purpose and with what love did he create this world and bring it into existence! What a mystery does the coming into being of the creation look towards! To what a state is our common nature invited! What love served to initiate the creation of the world! … In love did he bring the world into existence; in love is he going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of him who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.6
The will of God, which is replete with love, is the primal source of all that exists within the universe:
He it is who dwells in the light of his nature, who wished all creation to approach the dark cloud of his eternal glory, who has given the crown of his own everlastingness to the creation which he made,… who has caused the fullness of what he has established to participate in the everlastingness of his Kingdom, Being, and Lord, exalted beyond any secondary notion; whose will is the fountainhead of natures, with the worlds, created beings and natures flowing from him as though from a source, without number or limits.7
God is not only the Creator of the universe and its driving force, he is first of all ‘the true Father’, ‘who in his great and immeasurable love surpasses all in paternal affection’.8 Thus his attitude to the created world is characterized by an unceasing providential care for all its inhabitants: for angels and demons, human beings and animals. God’s providence is universal and embraces all.9 None of his creatures is excluded from the scope of the loving providence of God, but the love of the Creator is bestowed equally upon all:
There is not a single nature who is in the first place or last place in creation in the Creator’s knowledge,… similarly there is no before or after in his love towards them: no greater or lesser amount of love is to be found with him at all. Rather, just like the continual equality of his knowledge, so too is the continual equality of his love.10
All living creatures exist in God’s mind before their creation. And before they were brought into being, they received their place in the hierarchical structure of the universe, a place which is taken away from no one, even if one falls away from God:
Everyone has a single place in [God’s] purpose in the ranking of love, corresponding to the form he beheld in them before he created them and all the rest of created beings, that is, at the time before the eternal purpose for the delineation of the world was put into effect. … He has a single ranking of complete and impassible love towards everyone, and he has a single caring concern for those who have fallen, just as much as for those who have not fallen.11
The providential care of God and his love extend to angels, who were the first product of the divine creative act, and includes those who fell away from God and turned into demons. According to Isaac, the love of the Creator towards fallen angels does not diminish as a result of their fall, and it is no less than the fullness of love which he has towards other angels.12
To think that hatred and resentment exist in God, even against demonic beings, would be thoroughly odious and utterly blasphemous, Isaac claims; as it would be to imagine in that glorious Nature any other weakness or passibility or whatever else might be involved in the retribution of good or bad. Instead, God acts towards us in ways he knows will be advantageous to us, whether by means of things that cause suffering, or by way of things that cause relief, whether they cause joy or grief, whether they are insignificant or glorious: all are directed towards the single eternal good.13
To say that the love of God diminishes or vanishes because of a created being’s fall would be ‘to reduce the glorious Nature of the Creator to weakness and change’.14 Yet we know that
There is no change or any earlier or later intentions, with the Creator: there is no hatred or resentment in his nature, no greater or lesser place in his love, no before or after in his knowledge. For if it is believed by everyone that the creation came into existence as a result of the Creator’s goodness and love, then we know that this original cause does not ever diminish or change in the Creator’s Nature as a result of the disordered course of creation.15
Nothing that happens in creation may affect the nature of the Creator, Who is ‘exalted, lofty and glorious, perfect and complete in his knowledge, and complete in his love’.16
This is why God loves the righteous and sinners equally, making no distinction between them. Before creation, God knew humanity’s future sinful life, and yet created humankind.17 God knew all persons before they become righteous or sinners, yet the fact that they underwent change does not change his love.18 Even many blameworthy deeds are accepted by God with mercy,
and are forgiven their authors, without any blame, by the omniscient God to whom all things are revealed before they happen, and who was aware of the constraints of our nature before he created us. For God, who is good and compassionate, is not in the habit of judging the infirmities of human nature or actions brought about by necessity, even though they may be reprehensible.19
Even when God chastises someone, he does so out of love and for the sake of that person’s salvation and not for retribution. God respects human free will and does nothing against it:
God chastises with love, not for the sake of revenge—far be it!—but in seeking to make whole his image. And he does not harbour wrath until such time as correction is no longer possible, for he does not seek vengeance for himself. This is the aim of love. Love’s chastisement is for correction, but does not aim at retribution. … The man who chooses to consider God as avenger, presuming that in this manner he bears witness to His justice, the same accuses Him of being bereft of goodness. Far be it that vengeance could ever be found in that Fountain of love and Ocean brimming with goodness!20
The image of God as Judge is completely overshadowed in Isaac by the image of God as Love (ḥubba) and Mercy (raḥme). According to him, mercifulness (mraḥmanuta) is incompatible with justice (k’inuta):
Mercy is opposed to justice. Justice is equality on the even scale, for it gives to each as he deserves. … Mercy, on the other hand, is a sorrow and pity stirred up by goodness …; it does not requite a man who is deserving of evil, and to him who is deserving of good it gives a double portion. If, therefore, it is evident that mercy belongs to the portion of righteousness, then justice belongs to the portion of wickedness. As grass and fire cannot coexist in one place, so justice and mercy cannot abide in one soul.
Thus one can speak not at all of God’s justice, but of mercy that surpasses all justice:
As a grain of sand cannot counterbalance a great quantity of gold, so in comparison God’s use of justice cannot counterbalance his mercy. Like a handful of sand thrown into the great sea, so are the sins of the flesh in comparison with the mind of God. And just as a strongly flowing spring is not obscured by a handful of dust, so the mercy of the Creator is not stemmed by the vices of his creatures.21
Decisively rejecting the idea of requital, Isaac shows that the Old Testament understanding of God as a chastiser of sinners, ‘visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation’,22 does not correspond with the revelation we have received through Christ in the New Testament. Though David in the Psalms called God ‘righteous and upright in his judgments’,23 God is in fact good and merciful. Christ himself confirmed God’s ‘injustice’, in his parables—in particular the parables of the workers in the vineyard and of the prodigal son,24 and still more so by his incarnation for the sake of sinners: ‘Where, then, is God’s justice, for while we are sinners Christ died for us?’25
Thus, Isaac claims, one should not interpret literally those Old Testament texts, where wrath, anger, hatred, and other similar terms are applied to the Creator. When such anthropomorphic terms occur in Scripture, they are being used in a figurative sense, for God never does anything out of wrath, anger, or hatred: anything of that sort is far removed from his nature. We should not read everything literally, as it is written, but rather perceive within the Old Testament narratives the hidden providence and eternal knowledge of God.26 ‘Fear God out of love for him, and not for the reputation of austerity that has been attributed to him’.27
If by nature God is love, someone who has acquired perfect love and mercy towards all creation becomes godlike: his perfect state of love towards creation is a mirror wherein he can see a true image and likeness of the Divine Essence.28 All the saints ‘seek for themselves the sign of complete likeness to God: to be perfect in the love of the neighbour’.29 Characteristic in this connection is Isaac’s well-known text about the ‘merciful heart’ through which one becomes like God:
And what is a merciful heart? It is the heart burning for the sake of all creation, for men, for birds, for animals, for demons, and for every created thing; and by the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful man pour forth abundant tears. By the strong and vehement mercy which grips his heart and by his great compassion, his heart is humbled and he cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in creation. For this reason he offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner he even prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in his heart in the likeness of God.30
The ‘merciful heart’ in a human person is therefore the image and likeness of God’s mercy, which embraces the whole of creation, people, animals, reptiles, and demons. In God, there in no hatred towards anyone, but all-embracing love which does not distinguish between righteous and sinner, between a friend of truth and an enemy of truth, between angel and demon. Every created being is precious in God’s eyes. He cares for every creature, and everyone finds in him a loving Father. Even if we turn away from God, God does not turn away from us: ‘If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful, for he cannot deny himself’.31 Whatever happens to humankind and to the whole of creation, however far it may remove from God, he remains faithful to it in his love, which he cannot and will not deny.
2. THE STRUCTURE OF THE CREATED WORLD
According to biblical revelation, creation comprises both the invisible world of bodiless spirits and the visible material world. To the former belong angels and demons; to the latter the whole universe, including human beings, animals, and inanimate objects.
Isaac summarizes the biblical account of creation in the following passage:
On the first day eight noetic natures were created, seven in silence and one by verbal command, and this was light; on the second day the firmament was created; on the third day God gathered the waters and made the herbs to blossom forth; on the fourth day, the division of light; on the fifth day, the birds, reptiles and fish; and on the sixth day, the animals and man.32
In speaking of the structure of the angelic world, Isaac expounds on the ninefold angelic hierarchy, a teaching borrowed from the Corpus Areopagiticum, which is in turn based on the names of angelic beings encountered in the Old Testament. Referring to the biblical text, Isaac says:
The divine books have given all these spiritual essences nine spiritual names and divided them into three divisions of three each. The first is composed of the great, sublime and most holy Thrones, the many-eyed Cherubim, and the six-winged Seraphim; the second in order is composed of the Dominions, the Virtues and the Powers; the third is composed of the Principalities, the Archangels and the Angels. The names of the orders are thus interpreted: in Hebrew Seraphim means those who are fervent and burning;33 the Cherubim, those who are great in knowledge and wisdom; the Thrones, receptacles of God and rest… .34 These orders are given these names because of their operations. The Thrones are so called as once truly honoured; the Dominions, as those who possess authority over every kingdom; the Principalities, as those who govern the atmosphere; Powers, as those who give power over the nations and every man; Virtues, as once mighty in power and dreadful in appearance; the Seraphim, as those who make holy; the Cherubim, as those who carry; the Archangels, as vigilant guardians; the Angels, as those who are sent.35
Isaac tells us that God created angels ‘all of a sudden, out of nothing’ as
worlds on high without number, limitless powers, legions of seraphs of fire, fearful and swift, wondrous and mighty, which have the power to carry out the will of the almighty design, the simple spirits which are luminous and incorporeal, which speak without a mouth, which see without any eyes, which hear without any ears, which fly without any wings. … They do not tire or grow feeble, they are swift in movements, never delaying in any action, fearful to look upon, whose ministry is wondrous, who are rich in revelations, exalted in contemplation, who peer into the place of the Shekhina36 of Invisibleness, glorious and holy essences, who are arranged in ninefold order by the Wisdom which has created all. … They are fiery in their movements, acute in intellect, wondrous in knowledge, resembling God insofar as that is possible.37
Thus angels resemble God and within themselves bear his likeness: ‘In them Being, the Creator who is above all things, constituted a resemblance in everything—as far as possible—to himself.38 Angels, Isaac says, are ‘invisible beings, whose task it is to be stirred by praises of God in that great stillness which is spread over their world, so that, by these praises, they may be raised up in contemplation to the glorious Nature of the Trinity, and remain in wonder at the vision of the majesty of that ineffable glory’.39 Angels are always astonished at the divine mysteries, ‘because of revelations that come upon them in various ways’.40
Demons, on the other hand, are ‘extremely polluted’, and in their state of uncleanness they cannot see the angelic orders that are above them.41 Demons possess the same qualities as angels, but the divine light is not given to them, as they are bearers of darkness.42 The demons will to ruin and destroy a human being; yet they cannot do any harm to him unless they have permission from God.43 Thus demons are entirely subject to God and they act only in accordance with God’s permission and order. In particular, when we are attached to God night and day, God allows neither demons nor wild animals and reptiles to hurt us in any way: ‘rather, in our presence they behave in complete peacefulness, as ministers of God’s will’.44 But if we are attached to sin, God gives the order to one of the demons to ‘flog us harshly’, not out of revenge, but so that ‘by one means or another we will not become lost far away from God’.45
If the invisible world of angels has been created with the aim of praising God’s glory and might, the material world also is called to bear witness to God’s omnipotence. The material world has been made as a magnificent temple that reveals and reflects God’s beauty. Isaac’s cosmology corresponds to the scientific conceptions of his time: God laid out the earth as a bed and heaven as ‘a vault’; he fixed ‘the second heaven as a wheel that adheres to the first heaven’; he created the ocean that surrounds heaven and earth ‘as a girdle’; ‘therein he established lofty mountains reaching even to heaven, and he ordered the sun to journey behind the mountains all the night long; he set the great sea within the mountains and it dominates over one-half and one-fourth of the dry land’.46
The human person is also created as a temple of God, a dwelling place of the Divinity.47 The indwelling of God within this temple was most fully realized in the person of Christ—God who became man. We shall speak more specifically later of Isaac’s Christology and of his understanding of the deification of human nature by Jesus Christ. Here we want only to point out that human nature, in Isaac’s vision, is created with the potential of accommodating the fullness of the Divinity. Human nature has also the potential for endless existence, in the likeness of God.48 Every human person is provided with five ‘incomparably great gifts’: life, sense perception, reason, free will, and authority.49 In speaking of the structure of a human person, Isaac follows the division of human nature into spirit, soul, and body which is traditional in greek philosophical and patristic anthropology.50 He also maintains the division of the soul into three parts—desire, zeal, and reason (reḥmta, ḥnana, mliluta, corresponding to the Greek to epithymitikon, to thymoeides, to logistikon).51 This concept, derived from platonic anthropology, he borrowed from Evagrius, John the Solitary, and Babai.52
We do not find in Isaac a developed doctrine of the fall and original sin, which, according to christian tradition, led to the loss of the initial god-likeness of human beings and damaged and perverted the whole of human nature. Isaac’s teaching on the passions and sin, however, fully corresponds to that doctrine. According to him, God did not impose the passions and sin upon our nature.53 The passions are characteristic of humans in their fallen state. By its nature, the soul is dispassionate. In its original nature, the soul was characterized by godlike dispassion; only later did the passions entered into the soul.54 Both the body and the soul became subject to the passions when they lost what belonged to them by their nature and went outside their well-being.55
At the same time, as if contradicting himself, Isaac claims that there are passions which are given by God: these passions of the body and soul are implanted in them for their benefit and growth.56 This apparent contradiction is clarified by the fact that the syriac word ḥašša, like its greek counterpart pathos, means both ‘passion’ and ‘suffering’. Thus, the sinful passions are unnatural, whereas the sufferings sent by God may serve to promote spiritual growth. Isaac’s teaching is also clarified by reference to the patristic tradition, in which there are two understandings of pathos: a sinful desire of the soul; and a natural capacity of the soul which can be directed towards both good and evil.57 Isaac may have had in mind both understandings of ‘passion’ as he wrote the texts quoted above.
Unlike the sufferings which come from God, the sinful passions harm human nature. ‘Anyone who does not voluntarily withdraw himself from the causes of the passions is involuntarily drawn away by sin’, Isaac warns. ‘These are the causes of sin: wine, women, riches, and robust health of body. Not that by their nature these things are sins, but rather nature readily inclines towards the sinful passions on their account, and for this reason man must guard himself against them with great care’.58
After the fall, humanity’s only means of turning away from the passionate towards the original blessed state comes through the Incarnation of the Word of God. The Incarnation, which stands at the centre of the New Testament message, is one of the key themes of Saint Isaac.
Because Isaac expounded his Christology in accordance with east-syrian theological tradition, where the use of ‘nestorian’ terminology is characteristic—it is in fact the terminology of Theodore of Mopsuestia, inherited by his disciple Nestorius—a good number of Isaac’s christological texts were never translated into Greek and thus remained unknown till the present. The only work of the ‘Greek Isaac’ that deals directly with christological matters is the ‘Epistle to Symeon’, but it belongs, as we have said, to Philoxenus of Mabbug and thus contains a Christology opposed to Isaac’s. Only after the rediscovery of Part II does a precise analysis of Isaac’s Christology become possible. But before turning to the newly-discovered texts, let us first point to a few characteristic passages from Part I in which some christological themes are mentioned.
Here we find the Incarnation identified as the moment when the love of God for human beings reveals itself to the highest degree and when human beings are called, in turn, to respond to the love of God with their own love for God:
God the Lord surrendered his own Son to death on the cross for the fervent love of creation. … Yet this was not because he could not redeem us in another way, but so that his surpassing love, manifested hereby, might be a teacher unto us. And by the death of his Only-begotten Son he made us near to himself. Yea, if he had had anything more precious, he would have given it to us, so that by it our race might be his own. Because of his great love for us it was his pleasure not to do violence to our freedom, although he is able to do so, but he chose that we should draw near to him by the love of our understanding. For the sake of his love for us and obedience to his Father, Christ joyfully took upon himself insult and sorrow. … In like manner, when the saints become perfect, they all attain to this perfection, and by the superabundant outpouring of their love and compassion on all men, they resemble God.59
The Incarnation took place, then, because of the love of both the Father and of the Son for human beings, and because of the Incarnation a human person is able to attain such a state of love when he becomes like God.
The Incarnation of the Son of God is, according to Isaac, the new revelation about God. In Old Testament times, before the Incarnation, people were unable to contemplate God and to hear his voice, but after the Incarnation this became possible:
Creation could not look upon him unless he took part of it to himself and thus conversed with it, and neither could it hear the words of his mouth face to face. The sons of Israel were not even able to hear his voice when he spoke with them from the cloud… .60 The sons of Israel made ready and prepared themselves, keeping themselves chaste for three days according to the command of Moses,61 that they might be made worthy of hearing the voice of God, and of seeing the vision of his revelation. And when the time was come, they could not receive the vision of his light and the fierceness of the voice of his thunder. But now, when he poured out his grace upon the world through his own coming, he has descended, not in an earthquake, not in a fire, not in a terrible and mighty sound,62 but ‘as the rain upon a fleece, and rain-drops that fall upon the earth’,63 softly, and he was seen conversing with us after another fashion. This came to pass when, as though in a treasury, he concealed his majesty with the veil of his flesh,64 and among us spoke with us in that body which his own bidding wrought for him out of the womb of the Virgin.65
Not only for human beings, but also for angels, the door of contemplation and vision was opened in Jesus when the Word became flesh; before the Incarnation they could not penetrate into these mysteries, Isaac claims.66
In Part I we also find a passage in which Isaac discusses how the two natures of Christ are shown in Holy Scripture. According to him, Scripture often uses words figuratively. For example, ‘things that pertain to the body are said of the soul’, and vice versa.
Likewise things pertaining to the Lord’s Divinity, which are not compatible with human nature, are said with respect to his all-holy body; and again, lowly things are said concerning his divinity which pertain to his humanity. Many, not understanding the intent of the divine words, have stumbled here with a stumbling from which there is no recovery.67
Under the ‘many’ Isaac most probably means the monophysites: as a true diophysite, he insists upon the necessity of distinguishing between the divine and human natures of Christ, in spite of the fact that Scripture does not make such a precise distinction.
These are the main christological passages from Part I. When we turn to Part II we direct our attention first to one of the ‘Gnostic Chapters’ in which Isaac speaks of the Incarnation. He emphasizes that God’s love for creation was the main and only reason of the coming on earth of the Son of God and of his death on the cross:
If zeal had been appropriate for putting humanity right, why did God the Word clothe himself in the body, using gentleness and humility in order to bring the world back to his Father? And why was he stretched out on the cross for the sake of sinners, handing over his sacred body to suffering on behalf of the world? I myself say that God did all this for no other reason than to make known to the world the love that he has, his aim being that we, as a result of our greater love arising from an awareness of this, might be captivated by his love when he provided the occasion of this manifestation of the kingdom of heaven’s mighty power—which consists in love—by means of the death of his Son.68
The Incarnation and the death on the cross of the Saviour, Isaac claims, happened
not to redeem us from sins, or for any other reason, but solely in order that the world might become aware of the love which God has for his creation. Had all this astounding affair taken place solely for the purpose of forgiveness of sin, it would have been sufficient to redeem us by some other means. What objection would there have been if he had done what he did by means of an ordinary death? But he did not make his death at all an ordinary one—so that you might realize the nature of this mystery. Rather, he tasted death in the cruel suffering of the cross. What need was there for the outrage done to him and the spitting? Just death would have been sufficient for our redemption—and in particular his death, without any of these other things which took place. What wisdom is God’s! And how filled with life! Now you can understand and realize why the coming of our Lord took place with all the events that followed it, even to the extent of his telling the purpose quite clearly out of his own holy mouth: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son’69—referring to the Incarnation and the renewal he brought about.70
Therefore, it was the love of God, and not the necessity of redeeming humanity from sin, which was the sole reason for the Incarnation of the Word. God became man because he wanted human beings to turn to him as their father. Isaac speaks of this in Chapter XL:
When the entire extent of creation had abandoned and forgotten God and had perfected themselves in every kind of wickedness, of his own will and without any supplication or request from elsewhere he came down to their abode and lived among them in their body just as one of them, and with a love exalted beyond knowledge or description by any created being, he begged them to turn back to himself, showing them concerning the glorious establishment of the world to come, having intended before all worlds to introduce felicity such as this for creation: he informed them of its existence and forgave them all the sins which they had previously committed, and confirmed this good will by means of authoritative signs and wonders, and the revelation to them of his Mysteries; and finally he has stooped down so far that he is willing to be called ‘Father’ of sinful human nature, dust from the earth, despicable human beings, flesh and blood: can these things be performed without great love?71
Let us now look at Chapter XI, in which the Christology of Isaac is expounded with great precision. In this chapter, which is largely dedicated to the cross, our attention is drawn by the abundance of typically east-syrian terms through which Isaac presents his christological ideas. The cross, he says, is a symbol of ‘the Man who completely became a temple’ of God;72 the cross is made in the name of ‘that Man in whom the Divinity dwells’;73 the humanity of Christ is the ‘garment of his Divinity’.74 The use of such terms is characteristic of the entire east-syrian tradition, which can be designated as strongly dyophysite. The humanity of Christ had already been described by Ephrem as a ‘garment’, a phraseology preserved by later east-syrian writers, but subsequently expunged in the west-syrian tradition.75
Following a tradition derived from Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore, Isaac emphasizes that, although Christ has two natures, we venerate them together, that is, we worship one Christ in two natures. In doing so, we ascribe to the man Jesus the same names that are ascribed to God the Word:
We do not hesitate to call the humanity of our Lord—he being truly man—’God’ and ‘Creator’ and ‘Lord’; or to apply to him in divine fashion the statement that ‘by his hand the worlds were established76 and everything was created’. For he to whom all these things apply willingly dwelt in him, giving him the honor of his divinity and authority over all, because of the benefits which creation was about to receive through him. … He even bade the angels worship him, according to the words of the blessed Paul: ‘introducing the Firstborn into the world, he said: Him shall all the angels of God worship’.77 He granted to him that he should be worshipped with himself indistinguishably, with a single act of worship for the Man who became Lord and for the Divinity equally, while the two natures are preserved with their properties, without there being any difference of honor.78
Therefore God ‘willingly dwelt’ in the man Jesus; whereas the man Jesus ‘became’ God and by his death on the cross received power over the whole of creation. Because of the cross, the man Jesus was lifted up to God the Word:
For we believe that all that applies to the Man is raised up to the Word who accepts it for himself, having willed to make him share in this honor. All this is made known to us in the cross, and through this affair, which unbelievers consider so contemptible, we have acquired an accurate knowledge of the Creator.79
This strongly diophysite understanding of the person of Jesus Christ may appear to lead in the theological thought of Isaac to a division of the image of the historical Jesus. But this is not the case. Isaac understands Christ as one person: God who came in human flesh. The humanity of Christ is as real as the humanity of each one of us. At the same time the man Jesus is simultaneously God the Word and the Creator of the universe:
O wonder! The Creator clothed in a human being enters the house of tax collectors and prostitutes,80 and when they turn towards him—through his own action—he was urging them, providing them, by means of his teaching, with assurance and reconciliation with him. And he sealed the word of truth with true testimonies, consisting in miracles and signs. Thus the entire universe, through the beauty of the sight of him, was drawn by his love to the single confession of God, the Lord of all, and so the knowledge of the one Creator was sown everywhere.81
The universal significance of the coming of God on earth and dwelling in human flesh is thus clearly emphasized.
What are the soteriological consequences of Isaac’s christological accent on the distinction between the two natures of Christ? Does it not imply a rejection of the belief—which is traditional in Eastern Christian theology—that the salvation of humanity occurs through deification of the human nature and that this takes place because of the union of human nature with the divine in the person of Christ? In the alexandrian tradition, in particular, deification was understood as occurring through the unity of the two natures in Christ: as iron, in being united with fire, turns into fire, so humanity, united with the Divinity, becomes deified. If there is no real unity and there is only a conditional unity ‘in veneration’, how can anyone speak of the deification of human nature?
Isaac, who did not use the alexandrian terminology of deification, appears not to have rejected the idea of deification, but he expressed it in a different way. According to him, the man Jesus, upon ascending to God after his resurrection, raised human nature up to the level of the Divinity. Furthermore, the suffering, the death, the resurrection and the ascension of Christ opened up to human nature the possibility of ascending to God:
Amid ineffable splendour the Father raised him to himself to heaven, to that place where no created being had trod, but to which he had, through his own action, invited all rational beings—angels and human beings—to that blessed Entry, in order to delight in the divine light in which was clothed that Man who is filled with all that is holy, who is now with God in ineffable honour and splendour’.82
This approach to soteriology differs from the alexandrian; but does not lose the essence of the christian message: the salvation of the human being by Christ through the unity of human nature with the Divinity. The way by which the man Jesus ascended—from earth to heaven, from humanity to Divinity—is opened up to everyone after his resurrection. Deification is perceived dynamically, as an ascent of the human being, together with the whole created world, to divine glory, holiness and light.
In addition to Chapter XI, another very important text in connection with Christology is Chapter V of Part II, which also contains several characteristic passages. There we find a prayer using the terminology of a ‘temple’ and ‘the one who dwells in it’:
I give praise to your holy Nature, Lord, for you have made my nature a sanctuary for your hiddenness and a tabernacle for your mysteries, a place where you can dwell, and a holy temple for your Divinity, namely, for him who holds the sceptre of your kingdom, who governs all you have brought into being, the glorious Tabernacle of your eternal Being, the source of renewal for the ranks of fire which minister to you, the Way to knowledge of you, the Door to the vision of you, the summation of your power and great wisdom—Jesus Christ, the only-begotten from your bosom and remnant gathered in from your creation, both visible and spiritual.83
The idea of the human person ascending to God through the Incarnation of the Word is also present in this prayer: ‘O Mystery exalted beyond every word and beyond silence, who became human in order to renew us by means of voluntary union with the flesh, reveal to me the path by which I may be raised up to your mysteries …’84 The terminology of ‘voluntary union’, which occurs in both Nestorius and Babai, is generally characteristic of the east-syrian tradition.85
The Incarnation is understood as the sacrifice of God the Son which was offered because God the Father loves the world and which united the created world with God. Isaac speaks of the union of God with the world as a ‘mingling’, an expression which would never be allowed by the east-syrian tradition in connection with the natures of Christ:
You have given your entire treasure to the world: if you gave the only-begotten from your bosom and from the throne of your Being for the benefit of all, what further do you have which you have not given to your creation? The world has become mingled with God, and creation and Creator have become one!86
Is this statement about the ‘mingling’ between the world and God not a way of overcoming of the extremes of the dyophysitism? In other words, this statement breaks down the sharp boundaries between God and creation which are a characteristic of the strongly diophysite position of the Church of the East. If Theodore of Mopsuestia and his disciples can be accused of making a distinction between the divine and human natures which leads to a division of the image of Christ into two, can we maintain that in Isaac the Syrian, who represents the same stream of theological thought, we find a break with the extremes of diophysitism? Isaac does not speak of the essential unity, let alone a ‘confusion’, of the two natures of Christ. He does, however, speak of the ‘mingling’ of God with creation,87 and this implies that the sharp demarcation between divinity and humanity that was strongly present in the school of Theodore is not equally strong in Isaac.
Precisely because the uncreated Word of God and the created man Jesus are one and the same person, Isaac finds it possible to speak of the ‘mingling’ (ḥultana) of God with the creation through the Incarnation of God88 the Word. Thus in his prayer Isaac appeals to Christ as to one person who is simultaneously God and man:
O Christ who are covered with light as though with garment,89 who for my sake stood naked in front of Pilate, clothe me with that might which you caused to overshadow the saints, whereby they conquered this world of struggle. May your Divinity, Lord, take pleasure in me, and lead me above the world to be with you. O Christ, upon you the many-eyed Cherubim are unable to look because of the glory of your countenance, yet out of your love you received spit upon your face: remove the shame from my face and grant an open face before you at the time of prayer.90
In summarizing what has been said of the theology of Isaac the Syrian, we emphasize yet again that his entire theological thought derives from the idea that God reveals himself to the world as ineffable love. This love created the world and guides it. Out of love for creation and for the salvation of humankind, God assumed human flesh and died on the cross that he might renew human nature and open for humanity an entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The salvation of a human person is nothing else than an ascent to the divine light and love; it is a following of Christ, who was a human being, but was raised up to the level of the Divinity, and by this deified human nature.
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1. The theme of the divine love runs through the whole of the syriac theological tradition; see Brock, Spirituality, 84.
2. II/39,22.
3. Gnostic Chapters IV, 79.
4. Cf Bettiolo, ‘Charité’.
5. II/10,18–19.
6. II/38,1–2.
7. II/10,24.
8. I/52 (254) = PR 51 (361).
9. I/7 (65) = PR 7 (103).
10. II/38,3.
11. II/40,3.
12. II/40,2.
13. II/39,3.
14. II/38,4.
15. II/38,5.
16. II/10,23. Cf II/40,1.
17. II/5,11.
18. II/38,3.
19. II/14,15.
20. I/48 (230) = PR 45 (323).
21. I/51 (244) = PR 50 (345).
22. Ex 20:5; Num 14:18.
23. Ps 117:137.
24. See Mt 20:13–15; Lk 15:20–22.
25. I/51 (250–251) = PR 50 (357–358).
26. II/39,19.
27. I/51 (251) = PR 50 (358).
28. I/64 (312) = PR 65 (455).
29. I/71 (346) = PR 74 (510).
30. I/71 (344–345) = PR 74 (507–508).
31. 1 Tim 2:13.
32. I/26 (132) = PR 25 (187–188).
33. We slightly alter D. Miller’s translation of this phrase, as only the interpretation of the name of Seraphim is based on Hebrew.
34. Here follows the quotation from the Dionysian On the Celestial Hierarchies 72.
35. I/26 (131–132) = PR 25 (187–188).
36. The hebrew term Shekhina means ‘presence’, ‘glory’. It is found in several early syriac writers and in liturgical texts; see Brock, Note 5 to II/10,24 (46).
37. II/10,24.
38. II/20,8.
39. II/12,1.
40. II/8,6.
41. I/26 (130) = PR 25 (184).
42. Cf I/28 (137–138) = PR 27 (196).
43. I/54 (270) = PR 53 (386).
44. II/9,6.
45. II/9,12.
46. I/26 (132) = PR 25 (187).
47. II/5,6.
48. Cf II/18,18.
49. II/18,18.
50. Cf I/4 (32) = PR 4 (45) et al.
51. II/19,1 Cf. II/17,1.
52. See Brock, Note 2 to II/17,1 (91).
53. I/3 (19) = PR 3 (26).
54. I/3 (17) = PR 3 (21).
55. I/3 (19) = PR 3 (25).
56. I/3 (19) = PR 3 (25).
57. See Ware, ‘Pathos’.
58. I/5 (41–42) = PR 5 (61).
59. I/71 (345–346) = PR 74 (509–510).
60. Cf Dt 5:25 ff.
61. Cf Ex 19:15 ff.
62. Cf 3 Kgs 19:12.
63. Ps 72:6.
64. Cf Heb 10:20.
65. I/77 (381–382) = PR 82 (574–575).
66. I/28 (139). The text is absent from the east-syrian version but is found in the west-syrian (and thus in the greek translation).
67. I/3 (18) = PR 3 (24).
68. Gnostic Chapters IV, 78.
69. Jn 3:16.
70. Gnostic Chapters IV, 78.
71. II/40,14.
72. II/11,12. The word ‘temple’ is based on John 2:19.
73. II/11,13.
74. II/11,24.
75. See Brock, Note 1 to II/11,24. Cf Brock, ‘Metaphors’, 16–18.
76. Cf Heb 1:13.
77. Cf Heb 1:6.
78. II/11,21. Isaac uses the language of the east-syrian Synods of 554 and 612, both of which spoke of the ‘properties’ of two natures, the first presumably reflecting the chalcedonian definition; see Brock, Note 3 to II/11,21.
79. II/11,22.
80. Cf Mt 21:31–32.
81. II/11,28.
82. II/11,29.
83. II/5,6. The scriptural allusions are to John 10:9 (‘door’), John 1:18 (‘bosom’), Is 1:9 = Rom 9:29 (‘remnant’).
84. II/5,7.
85. See Brock, Note 1 to II/5,7.
86. II/5,18.
87. The theme of the ‘mingling’ of God with creation is very characteristic of Ephrem in referring to the Incarnation and the Eucharist, and appears frequently in his hymns.
88. Cf II/7,3, where Isaac speaks of the ‘perfect mingling’ of the saints with God, which symbolically typifies the union of Christ in the Holy Trinity. The terminology is Evagrian: see Brock, Note 7 to II/7,3.
89. Cf Ps 104:2.
90. II/5:22–23.