scholarly journals Nauczanie św. Grzegorza z Nyssy o wszechmocy Bożej na podstawie "In illud: tunc ipse filius"

Vox Patrum ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 511-525
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Kotkowska

Analyzing the work of St Gregory of Nyssa, in the first approximation we can say that he is a typical representative of his age. In the theology of the 4th century the power of God as the absolute ruler was emphasized more than his other attributes, so the image of God did not show him as the One who reigns through humility. In this regard, it is worthwhile to draw attention to a small, polemic treatise In illud: tunc ipse filius of St Gregory, in which his understanding of God's omnipotence receives a deeper dimension that appears to the modern man. In his work, this Father of the Church comments on one verse from the Letter of St Paul to the Corinthians: „And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself with be subject in his tum to the One who subjected alt things to him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 15, 28; KJ). The problem which preoccupied Gregory of Nyssa, was the incorrect opinion or heresy of Arius and his followers. According to them, the Son is subjected to God, by the rule of creation, so He cannot be equal to God the Father and, in this way, He is not God. One from the crown arguments, which the Arians used were St. Paul’s words from his Letter to the Corinthians. However, the Bishop of Nyssa shows, that exactly this quotation, from the historical-salvific perspective, emphasizes the divinity of Christ. He portrays to us the Son who is subjected to God's vivifying power and the Father who receives the Son's subjection in His human nature. So, in this way, God is omnipotent on the cross, as a humble man. The image of God, which emerges from Gregory's theology, allows us to include his voice into present discussion of God's omnipotence and man's free will.

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (14) ◽  
pp. 92-97
Author(s):  
Edvica POPA ◽  

The notion of divine image is generously described by the patristic literature, each of the authors trying to identify the content of this special characteristic of human being, considered (in different positions) the defining element of the created rational being, indicating the possibility of opening to God not through something external, but from the inside of the human being. Since when they speak of God, the Church Fathers do not consider the reality of the one being, but that of the three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as well as when the question of the image of God is raised, they emphasize that this the image by which human nature is conformed is the image of the Son, or the image of the Word. In this article I set out to draw some points on this patristic feature of the Eastern Fathers.


Perichoresis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 55-63
Author(s):  
Magdalena Marunová

Abstract Gregory of Nyssa (cca 335–cca 395), one of the three Cappadocian Fathers, introduces the creation of human beings on the basis of Genesis 1:26–27 and interprets these two biblical verses as a ‘double creation’—the first of which is ‘in the image of God’ (Genesis 1:26) and secondly as male or female (Genesis 1:27). His concept of ‘double creation’ is obviously inspired by Philo of Alexandria, a first-century Jewish philosopher, but Gregory points out the condition of human beings before and after committing the sin, in contrast to Philo’s conception. While Philo distinguishes between the first and the second creation of the entirety of nature, Gregory only relates the double creation to humans. Thus plants as nourishment for humans, according to Genesis, must be matched with the second creation of humans. In the resurrection, when the ‘first creation’ of human nature will be reached, human beings with their restored bodies will only feed on immaterial, spiritual food—the Word of God.


2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 295-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Entwistle ◽  
Stephen K. Moroney

The field of psychology in general, and clinical psychology in particular, has historically focused on the things that go wrong in human behavior and functioning. Similarly, evangelical theology has traditionally highlighted the problem of sin and its wide-ranging consequences for human beings. Not surprisingly, this state of affairs has led to integrative efforts that concentrate on the darker side of human nature and tend to neglect what is admirable and noble in human nature. A case is made in this article that a more complete view is needed that celebrates humans’ positive features as creatures who bear the image of God, while simultaneously recognizing the pervasiveness of sin and its effects. After reviewing the one-sidedness of past integrative efforts, we suggest several possibilities for relating the image of God to findings within positive psychology, before concluding with some cautions for this new endeavor.


Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 253-269
Author(s):  
Roland Marcin Pancerz

Epiphanius of Salamis was one of the Church Fathers, who reacted resolutely against incorrect Christology of Apollinaris of Laodicea. The latter asserted that the divine Logos took the place of Christ’s human mind (noàj). In the beginning, the bishop of Salamis tackled the problem of Christ’s human body, since – as he told himself – followers of Apollinaris, that arrived in Cyprus, put about incorrect doctrine on the Saviour’s body. Among other things, they asserted it was consub­stantial with his godhead. Beyond doubt, this idea constituted a deformation of the original thought of Apollinaris. Anyway, Epiphanius opposing that error took up again expressions, which had been employed before by the Apostolic Fathers and Apologists in the fight against Docetism. Besides, Epiphanius told that some followers of Apollinaris denied the exi­stence of Christ’s human soul (yuc»). Also in this matter, in all probability, we come across a deformation of the original doctrine of the bishop of Laodicea. A real controversy with Apollinaris was the defence of the human mind of the Sa­viour. Epiphanius emphasized that He becoming man took all components of hu­man nature: “body, soul, mind and everything that man is”, in accordance with the axiom “What is not assumed is not saved” (Quod non assumptum, non sanatum). A proof of the integrity of human nature was the reasonable human feelings the Saviour experienced (hunger, tiredness, sorrow, anxiety) as well as knowledge he had to gain partly from experience, which was witnessed by Luke 2, 52. In the lat­ter question, the bishop of Salamis was a forerunner of contemporary Christology. The fact that Epiphanius admitted a complete human nature in Christ didn’t bring dividing the incarnate Logos into two persons. Although the bishop of Sa­lamis didn’t use technical terms for the one person of Jesus Christ, he outlined nonetheless the idea of the hypostatic union in his own words, as well as through employing the rule of the communicatio idiomatum. The ontological union of the divine Logos with his human nature assured Christ’s holiness, too.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Thomas Joseph White

The Chalcedonian confession of faith asserts that Christ is one person, the Son of God, subsisting in two natures, divine and human. The doctrine of the communication of idioms is essential to the life and practices of the Church insofar as we affirm there to be properties of deity and humanity present in the one subject, the Word made flesh. Such affirmations are made without a confusion of the two natures or their mutually distinct attributes. The affirmation that there is a divine and human nature in Christ is possible, however, only if it is also possible for human beings to think coherently about the divine nature, analogically, and human nature, univocally. Otherwise it is not feasible to receive understanding of the divine nature of Christ into the human intellect intrinsically and the revelation must remain wholly alien to natural human thought, even under the presumption that such understanding originates in grace. Likewise we can only think coherently of the eternal Son’s solidarity with us in human nature if we can conceive of a common human nature present in all human individuals. Consequently, it is only possible for the Church to confess some form of Chalcedonian doctrine if there is also a perennial metaphysical philosophy capable of thinking coherently about the divine and human natures from within the ambit of natural human reason. This also implies that the Church maintains a “metaphysical apostolate” in her public teaching, in her philosophical traditions, as well as in her scriptural and doctrinal enunciations.


Diacovensia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-651
Author(s):  
Wiesław Przygoda

Charity diaconia of the Church is not an accidental involvement but belongs to its fundamental missions. This thesis can be supported in many ways. The author of this article finds the source of the obligation of Christians and the whole Church community to charity service in the nature of God. For Christians God is Love (1 John 4, 8.16). Even though some other names can be found, (Jahwe , Elohim, Adonai), his principal name that encapsulates all other ones is Love. Simultaneously, God which is Love showed his merciful nature (misericordiae vultus) in the course of salvation. He did it in a historical, visible and optimal way through his Son, Jesus Christ through the embodied God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who loved the mankind so much that he sacrificed his life for us, being tortured and killed at the cross. This selfless love laid the foundations for the Church, which, in essence, is a community of loving human and God’s beings. Those who do not love, even though they joined the Church through baptism, technically speaking, do not belong to the Church since love is a real not a formal sign of belonging to Christ’s disciples (cf. John 13, 35). Therefore, charitable activity is a significant dimension of the Church’s mission as it is through charity that the Church shows the merciful nature of its Saviour. A question that needs to be addressed may be expressed as follows: in what way the image of God, who is love, implies an involvement in charity of an individual and the Church? An answer may be found in the Bible, writings of the Church Fathers of and the documents of Magisterium Ecclesiae and especially the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.


1920 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 362-389
Author(s):  
Herbert L. Stewart

The widespread reaction towards the Church of Rome by which the first half of the last century was marked, has been subjected to a multitude of more or less intelligent explanations. It was to be expected from poor human nature that each critic should explain in accordance with that law of human development which he had himself embraced, and in illustration of that moral which he deemed it most salutary to draw. In this field the disciple of Bossuet will be forever at issue with the disciple of Comte. From the one we hear how the eyes of Europe had been providentially opened by long years of anarchy and bloodshed, how the spirit of schism had been at length unmasked, how the exhausted nations were taught once more to value a unified spiritual control, and how amid the wreck of thrones and the desolation of kingdoms the very dullest of mankind must have been awed by the spectacle of the Chair of Peter standing fast, an authentic token of the Mighty Hand and the Outstretched Arm. From the other side we listen to the cold comment that world disasters are apt to drive back the less robust sort of mind to the solace of old superstition, that mental progress like all things human has its ebb and flow, and that we need not be surprised if a season of shivering credulity alternates with a season of fearless rationalism. The philosophic historian may well be left to wear himself out in this profitless debate with the brethren of his own craft. Non nostri est tantas componere lites.


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