Jesus Christ in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition

Op.: Archpriest. John Meyendorff. Jesus Christ in Eastern Orthodox Theology. Sv. Oleg Davydenkov, with L.A. Uspenskaya, note. Moscow, PSTBI, 2000.

Introduction

"Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?" – to this question of Jesus to his disciples on the road to Caesarea Philippi, Peter answered: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:13-16). However, Peter's answer was understood differently and did not prevent later schisms.

And indeed, the disputes about the Person of Jesus Christ, which continued during the first centuries of Christian history, did not have an abstract, academic character. For the words and deeds of Jesus have different significance and different powers, depending on whether they come from an ordinary man or from the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, whether they are regarded as a mere episode in human history or as the unique words and deeds of the Lord of History Himself.

Does God save man only by transmitting His commands from heaven, as Judge and Master, or does He identify Himself with man out of His love for man and reveal Himself to us as "living love"? Disputes about the Person of Jesus Christ have given rise to different approaches. But can this dispute be resolved by a simple reference to historical data? Of course not, for the historical evidence of Jesus not only "constitutes" history, but also calls for the transformation of history, the liberation of man from the categories and conditions of the fallen world. Their true content and significance cannot be reduced to "historical facts" considered from the position of an "impartial observer". Even Jesus' closest disciples understood the meaning of His ministry only after the Spirit had taught them "all things."

Undoubtedly, the knowledge of Christ is based on the experience of eyewitnesses. But Christian Tradition trusts their testimonies only because the Holy Spirit made them apostles: it was He who taught them "all things" and gave them the ability to comprehend the true meaning of the historical events in which they participated. The testimony of the apostles does not at all claim to be the kind of infallibility that rationalist criticism denies them. The question is not posed in such a way that the written testimonies of Mark, Luke, or Matthew, taken separately or in their traditional general opposition to the theological approach of John, contain the concept of Christ offered to us by the Church as true. Rather, on the contrary, the New Testament as a whole corresponds to the vision of the Church, which has a host of witnesses and complementary theologians recognized as such in accordance with the single criterion of the Holy Spirit living in the Church. A historical-critical approach can and should be applied to the study of apostolic testimonies, but it is necessary to take into account not only the views of each of the authors of the New Testament books individually, but the holistic vision of the New Testament, which is a collection of complementary testimonies. Moreover, the New Testament gospel cannot be separated from the ways in which it has been proclaimed in different historical epochs and in the context of different cultures. In order for the Greeks to understand the New Testament, it was not enough to write it in Greek: preachers had to use the categories that were familiar to their hearers.

The present work is an attempt to show that the Church's Tradition in its Christological definitions fully corresponds to the New Testament.

This is possible because Tradition is a continuous sequence not only of ideas, but also of experience. It presupposes not only intellectual coherence, but also live communication on the paths of comprehension of the truth. Thus the truth that is comprehended is not the truth about certain objects, since God Himself is not an object known by the senses or reason, but about God and man. Indeed, for the Greek Fathers, "theology" was inseparable from anthropology.

It is my deep conviction that Byzantine Christological thought, which has nothing in common with the secretly Monophysite, Hellenized form of Christianity as it is sometimes perceived, is in fact capable of satisfying the basic requirements of the modern theological search put forward by the new theology.

A person is truly a man only when he participates in the Divine life. However, this participation is not a supernatural gift, but the very essence of human nature.