2.      Mid-term examination in class on the content of the readings and the material discussed in class. [20% of the grade]

3. Three 4-5 page essays, one for each of the sections of the course (Church history, theology, A Church Father of your choice). [30% of the grade]

4. One final examination on the content of the readings discussed in class [30% of the grade]

The West never followed the Alexandrian line, of which Apollinarius was the first and most radical expression, and was rejected for this reason. How is salvation possible if in Jesus the humanity is not more or less swallowed into the Divinity, so that we can adore Him as a whole, so that His mind is identical with the Divine Logos? The answer was: It is impossible. Therefore the general trend goes in the direction of what was later called Monophysitism – one Divine nature, into which the human nature is swallowed.

Against this the West and the school of Antioch protested. And let me say something about the school of Antioch and their general attitude. The first is Theodor of Mopsuestia. This whole school has very definite characteristics which distinguish it from most of the Alexandrian tendencies and which make them the predecessors of the emphasis on the historical Jesus in modern theology.

1) They had a very strong philological interest, and gave a most exact interpretation and emphasis on the historical picture of the Christ. So they had the same half-philological interest which historical criticism developed in our days.

2) They had a rational tendency – just as liberal theology also had – in the sense of Alexandrian philosophy.

3) They had strong ethical-personalistic interests – instead of mystical-ontological – exactly as Rome and the Stoics had.

Rome, the West, was not always on their side, but on the whole Antioch represented some main Western trends, although it itself developed in the East. It was the great ally of Rome in the East which made it possible that Rome – i, e. , the emphasis on history, personality – was victorious over against the mystical-ontological interest of the East.

But the popular religion was on the whole on the side of Alexandria, and not of Antioch. And since Antioch, beyond this, was broken by the basic structure of the dogma, coming from Origen, much more in the line of Alexandrian than of Antiochean thinking; since it further was broken by politics and by lack of moral resistance against the superstitious level of Christianity – which developed largely at that time everywhere in Christianity – Antioch could not prevail. The personalities were not great enough to resist the demands of the people for a magically working God who walks on earth and whose human nature is only a gown for his Divine nature. Nevertheless, Antioch, in alliance with Rome, has saved the human picture of Christ in its religious significance. Without Antioch, probably the Church would have lost completely the human picture, and this means the history-conscious West never would have been able to develop.

In this way Antioch also has defended the main part, at least, of the Church against the Monophysites, which according to the human character of Christ being swallowed up, has produced infinite sacramental magic superstitious things. In doing all this, Antioch paved the way for the Christological emphasis of the West. Now it was very fortunate that you heard a representative of the East because it is perhaps impossible for somebody who comes from the West fully to understand what the religious meaning of the East is. And I believe this is even more difficult for you than for me, because in Europe we are much nearer to the East, not only geographically but also in history. The mystical-ontological elements permeate the whole Western culture in Europe, but they don't in this country. Therefore you should be all very grateful for your heritage to the Antiochean school. . . and to Rome which in alliance with this school was able to save that kind of attitude which is natural to all of you.

Theodor emphasizes, against Apollinarius, the perfect nature of man in unity with the perfect nature of God. He says: "A complete man, in his nature, is Christ, consisting of a rational soul and human flesh; complete is the human person; complete also the person of the Divinity in him. It is wrong to call one of them impersonal." This was what finally prevailed in many sections of the East, in everything Monophysite, that only one nature is personal, namely the Divine, and the human is not. Therefore he says: "One should not say that the Logos became flesh." You remember I came to this again and again already in the Apostolic Fathers. He says this is a vague metaphoric kind of talk and should not be used as a precise formula, but one should say: He took on humanity. "The Logos had not been transformed into flesh." This transformation, or transmutation, idea was felt by him as pagan, and so he rejected it. But the pagan spirit of superstition wanted to have a transformed God walking on earth. But of course this brought Theodor into a very hard problem. If each side in Christ, the human, and the Divine, are themselves persons, is He not a being with two personal centers? Is He not a combination of two sons, a monster with two heads, as his enemies told him? Theodor tried to show the unity of the two persons. He rejected the unity in essence or nature. In essence they are absolutely different because the Divine nature cannot be confined to an individual man. The Logos, as follows from the Fourth Gospel, is always universally present. Even when Jesus lived, the flowers were blooming, the animals living, men were walking, culture was going on. All this is Logos. How can the Logos be only the man Jesus?,;, he says;that is impossible. He speaks, therefore, of a unity by the Holy Spirit, which is a unity of grace and will. In this way he establishes in Jesus the analogy to the prophets, who were driven by the Spirit. But it is a unique event because in the prophets the Spirit is limited; in Jesus the Spirit is unlimited.

The union of the two natures started in the womb of Mary. In it the Logos has connected a perfect man with Himself in a mysterious way. This Logos directs the development of Jesus, His inner growth. But it does not do so by coercion. Jesus, as every man, has grace, even unlimited grace. But grace never works through coercion, but through the personal center. In this way Jesus increased in perfection, by the grace of God. So he says we have one person, but the natures are not mixed. He denied that he spoke of two sons, but he affirmed that he spoke of two natures. The Divine nature does not change the human nature, in its essence; but it was a human nature which by grace could follow the Divine nature. The Divine nature does not change the human nature. Therefore one can speak of Mary as giving birth to God – you remember this was the decisive formula. This is against the tradition of the Antiocheans, but they couldn't deny at least the phrase – Mary giving birth to God. He justified the acceptance of this phrase by saying that Mary also gave birth to a man, and this is the direct and adequate (way of) speaking; the other, that she gave birth to God, is only indirectly adequate, because the body of Jesus was united with God the Logos.

In the same way, he agrees that the human nature must be adored and, conversely, that God has suffered. But he says all this can be said only of the unity of the first person. In this unity one can say this because what you can say of the unity, you can say of the whole being. But not because of a transformation of the Logos into a human being – this he rejects.

Now this is the Antiochean theology. It is very near to us, and this is not by chance; the West was near to these ideas.

The oneness of nature, the Western theologians said, is reached only when Christ is elevated at the resurrection to the throne of God, where the body and the human soul are glorified and transformed. But this event of the human part being swallowed up, is something transcendent. This happens in Heaven, but not on earth. So he says: Only the flesh, i. e. , the historical person, has suffered and died, not the Divinity in Him. It is blasphemy to say that Divinity and flesh belong to one nature. Having both natures, He suffered in His human nature, Ambrose said.:The same grace which accepted the human nature in Christ and made Him the Son of God, made us also justified before God and His children."

This means we see here two allies: Rome with the empirical personal and historical interest; Antioch, which has the same interest and uses it for philological studies and for philosophical considerations, which however were less successful than the historical criticism.

This alliance of Rome and Antioch could have led perhaps – we don't know – to a full victory of the Antiocheans over the Alexandrians. But this did not happen. And it did not happen because Rome had no direct theological interest. It had only a political interest – not political in the state sense, but in the Church-state sense. Rome was the great (center of the Church's movement) and as such it did not want to surrender Christianity because of a theological formula.

One of the members of this school for (whom) we should have great (respect), is Nestorius. He preached in 429 against the theotokos doctrine, that Mary gave birth to God. Mary gave birth to a man, who became the organ of Divinity. Therefore not the Divinity but the humanity of Christ has suffered. Therefore one could even say, as he does, that Mary is Christotokos. But if this is the case, that Christ is Christotokos – and only indirectly, later, did he accept that Mary can become theotokos – this was not really meant; he really meant that here is God, the Logos, coming down; there is Mary giving birth to a man: and they are united. But it is not a divine being coming down and becoming; a man, in terms of a transmutation myth.

The two natures preserve their qualities in the personal union. They are connected in the humanity of Jesus, but He is not deified in it. The unmixed connection of the natures: that is what he teaches. He who terms Jesus or Christ the only begotten or the Son, he means the one person. The term "man" describes the one nature in Him; the term "God," "Logos," the other nature. But these ideas brought him into heresy. They were consistently in the Antiochean school, but with him the Antiochean school became suspect and finally rejected. . . . . Nestorius actually was a victim of the fight between Byzantium and Alexandria.

But some other developments supported the Alexandrian cause:

1) Already for a long time the Mary-legend – for which there is very little basis in the Bible – produced out of and against the Biblical reports legendary stories of a pious imagination. This figure of Mary attracted the novelistic mind of all those who talked about her, and so a whole Mary-legend developed.

2) The second reason for the predominance of Alexandria over Antioch was the high valuation placed on virginity, which came together with an ascetic trend which increased in strength

3) There was also a spiritual vacuum in the life of that time, an empty space which like all other empty spaces in the spiritual life soon are filled – namely, the desire to have a female element m the center of religion. This was the case in Egypt, in the myth of Isis and Osiris, the goddess and her son, but it was not in Christianity. Following Judaism, every female element was thrown out. The Spirit could not replace the female element; first of all He appears, in the early reports of the birth of Jesus, as the male element, in respect to her as the female element. And beyond this the Spirit is an abstract concept. It was so even for those days" So the Divine Spirit never could replace, in the popular mind, the different forms of male-centered religion coming from the Old Testament.

4) The popular appeal of the transformation Christology, which was represented by Alexandria. Imagine a simple-minded human being: she wants to have God. Of course if you tell here: "There is God, on the altar. . ., go and have Him there," then she will go – this fills the Catholic churches because there you have God on the altar. But how is this possible? Because of the Incarnation, for in the Incarnation God became something whom I can have, with whom I can walk, whom I can see, etc, , . All this is popular feeling, and this feeling was decisive against the Alexandrians.

What Cyril wanted was to show that the human nature is taken into the unity of the Logos, who remains what He was" Therefore he could say that the Logos Himself experienced death, since He has received His body, namely, in Jesus. In the formula "out of two natures, one," he accepts the abstract distinction of the natures, but actually there is no difference between the natures This makes it possible for him to be the protagonist in the fight about the theotokos. The religious motive is: It is not a man who became king over us, but God, who has appeared in human form. If Nestorius were right, then only a man, not the Logos, would have died for us, (because the Logos cannot die.) Only if the natures were so united (as Cyril wanted), he could say they were united and that they can represent the duality. "If Nestorius is right, then we eat in the Lord's Supper the flesh of a man," What the people wanted was the physical presence of the Divine. This underlies the sacramental development, and was the whole Alexandrian theology.

First it seemed they could be united. Then the Alexandrians reacted, but they reacted so much and so victoriously that Rome took the side of Antioch. But Rome put a condition to the Antiocheans. They had to remove Nestorius because he was now too much suspect. After a synod in Ephesus in 431, in which a compromise was prepared and (also) many further synods – the famous latroceneum Ephesum ,the synod of "gangsters," as they were called, because they came with sticks to drive each other out, and they transported hundreds of monks to the doors of the church where the synod took place, in order to threaten everybody who would deny the theotokos of Mary, God walking on earth.

After all this, the final and most famous synod, that of Chalcedon, took place in 451, the only other date (together with Nicaea, 325) which I would like you to know. In the Synod of Chalcedon, the alliance of Rome and Antioch proved its strength. They were very much supported by the fact that one of their opposition, the bishop of Alexandria, Eutychus, put forth such a radically Monophysitic attitude that he was condemned. This condemnation of Alexandria was at the same time the victory for Antioch.

How does this decision of Chalcedon look? Decisive for the actual outcome of this synod was that the Roman pope, Leo I, wrote to a synod in Ephesus a letter which was not even read by the victory-drunken Alexandrians, In Chalcedon, however, the letter was accepted as a basic document. There Leo says: "Thus the properties of each nature and substance were preserved entire, and came together to form one person. Humility was assumed by majesty, weakness by strength, mortality by eternity." "There was one true God in the entire and perfect nature of true man. The Son of God therefore came down from His throne, from Heaven, without withdrawing from His Father's glory, and entered this lower world, because of the unity of the person in each nature, which can be understood that the Son of Man came from Heaven, and conversely that the Son of God has been crucified and buried. " Here again you have the same phenomenon as in the Antiochean theology: on the one hand a radical statement, and combining them rather easily with traditional ideas. The decision of Chalcedon was made on this basis. It was not passed in significance by Nicaea, and together with Nicaea passes all the other synodal decisions. Today no one can study systematic theology who does not know something of this decision. In it the problems discussed are mentioned all together and brought into paradoxical formulas. Everything discussed in the main synods, etc., were brought together into paradoxical formulas.

1) "Therefore, following the Holy Fathers, we all with one consent teach men to confess one and the same Son of God, Jesus Christ, the same complete in Godhead and also complete in manhood."

2) True God, and at the same time true man, of a reasonable soul and body.

3) He is consubstantial with the Father, according to His Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to His manhood – in all things like unto us, apart from sin,

4) He is begotten of the Father both before all worlds, according to His Godhead, and also in these latter days, on account of us and our salvation, of the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer, according to His manhood.

5) One and the same Christ, Lord, only begotten, is to be acknowledged in two natures, but these natures must not be confused. And they are natures without any change, without division, without separation.

6) The distinction of natures, being in no way annulled by the union, the characteristic of each nature being presented and coming together to form a person and a substance. It is not parted nor is it divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten God. . . . the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here you see, as in many of these documents, how easy these philosophical terms had a transition into a liturgical and poetic language. This was always the case. And it makes them much more beautiful.. . . .

Again the negative side was clear. The positive side was doubtful. The Roman way was victorious, but different interpretations were possible. The East was disappointed by this decision. The Alexandrian delegates did not subscribe. They said what most Russian delegations today would say, if they subscribed to something so much against the popular demand: they would say they would be killed if they signed this document and came home. They would not be able to live any more because of the fanatic monks who would beat them to death. Therefore the reaction of the East was unavoidable. This reaction against Chalcedon by the East, in its radical consequences, was strong enough to divide East and Rome in such a degree that it became an easy prey to the Islamic puritan reaction. This is especially true of the Monophysitic churches of Egypt and neighboring countries. They were all swallowed up by the reaction of Islam, which I would call a puritan reaction, against the sacramental superstitious form into which Christianity fell more and more. It is a thesis I have that the attacks of Islam never would have been successful if Christianity had taken into itself the element of personality and history. But it didn't They fell down deeper and deeper into popular superstition, and so they were surprised...

The decision of Chalcedon was partly denied, partly put aside. From 482- 590, the first schism occurred between the East and the West, the latter maintaining Chalcedon, the other trying to reinterpret it. After the reunion, Monophysitism became victorious in Alexandria. It was a radical return to Cyril and his emphasis on the unity of the natures '; . . .. After the union, only one nature is there; Christ is one, according to His composite nature, according to His person, according to His will. After the union there is no duality of natures or energies. Chalcedon and Leo, who assert two natures and two energies, should be condemned. The more radical Monophysites taught that with the conception in Mary the flesh of Christ became progressively deified. They really made Mary already a goddess. The radicals said their enemies adored something mortal. But both are united in the opposition to the two natures. They wanted nothing except God on earth, and without human relativity.

An alliance of the emperor, who wanted a union with the Monophysites and a new theology, solved the problem for a long time for sections of the East. The man was Leontius of Byzantius, who combined Cyril and Leo with a new scholastic thought.

He said:

1). The human nature in Christ is neither an acted hypostasis nor without hypostasis; it is anhypostasis. Here you have reached Scholasticism...(Hypostasis means being an independent being.) (When) :one understands hypostasis, one understands non-hypostasis. But when it comes to the formula enhypostasis (one hypostasis in the other), then we don't know any more what that really means. The reason why it was invented is clear. The question was: Can two natures exist without an independent head? The answer was, they cannot; therefore Christ must be the representative. . .

2) The being of the human nature is in the Logos: This meant the condemnation of the whole Antiochean theology, including Theodor, who was attacked by him. The religious meaning of this theology became visible in the fight about the suffering of God which was expressed in liturgical and theological formulas. The treis-hagion (thrice holy) was also enlarged to the formula: "Holy God. . . . Almighty. . . immortal, who for us was crucified, have mercy upon us." And the theological formula: One of the holy trius has suffered in the flesh. - - Both things are carried through in spite of Rome's protest. All this was dogmatized in 553 in Constantinople, in the 5th Ecumenical Council. The Council expressed itself in fourteen anathemas. . . It decided that He who did the miracles is the same. . . The unity is not a matter of energy, etc., or honor, but it was an indirect one, or a unity by mercy. But it was a union of the personal with the Divine power.

The natures, Divine and human, are only distinguished in theory, not in practice. The person of the Logos has become the personal center of a man. The human nature has not personal characteristics of its own. This was the decisive point; because if it has not, how can He help us? The crucified is the true God and Lord of glory and one of the Trinity. The identification of Jesus Christ with the ethical Logos is complete. Like the icons in which Christ appears in gold-ground (setting), the human personality has disappeared. This is the meaning of all this.

But the West could not be conquered so easily. A new reaction of the West occurred. The question was whether the one person, Jesus Christ, has one or two wills. One speaks in this time of monoteletis and duoteletis. They fought with each other, but finally this time the West prevails. Christ has two independent natures; the human nature is not swallowed up by the Divine.

You can grasp this development if you use the key of the problem of salvation and how salvation is related to the individual, to history, to personal life. Here the West was clear; the East was not.

The last fight in the east was about the icons.Ikon means image, the images in the churches of the Fathers and Saints. The icons deserve veneration and not adoration. But if one asks what this actually means, we must say that in popular understanding veneration always develops into adoration. . . . This was perhaps for us not the greatest thing the East gave the West – although I would say that the salvation of human nature is something extremely great – but there is still something else in the East, namely the development of mysticism. To this we will go tomorrow by dealing with the classical early Christian mystic (ca. 500), Dionysius the Areopagite , who influenced everything in West and East after Chalcedon.

Yesterday I gave a survey on the rise and further fate of the Christological doctrine as formulated in the Council of Chalcedon. Today I want to bring to an end the discussion of the Eastern church. I must say something which has been experienced in several years of giving these lectures, that there is a hidden protest against the emphasis on the Eastern church in some of you, probably even now. I understand this because it does not have the actuality, let us say, of the Reformation or of modern theology. The situation is thus: As long as you know the fundamentals of the early development and have really understood it – which is not so easy – then everything else is comparatively easy. But if you know only the present-day things and don't know the foundations, then every- thing is in the air, and you always are in a state of a house built from the roof and not from the foundations. That's really why I myself and of course some of my colleagues – e. g., Prof. Richardson – think that the foundations of Christian theology, as given in the early Church, are really foundations; they are foundations immediately after the Biblical foundations, and as such they must be considered. For this reason I gave almost half of our whole time to the Greek church. I give also this hour to it, and then we will go to the Roman church of the Middle Ages.

Yesterday I tried to show you that the doctrine of Chalcedon is something which, however we think about the use of Greek terms in Christian thinking, has saved one important thing for our Western theology, even in the East, namely the human side of the picture of Jesus. It was almost at the edge of falling down completely and being swallowed by the Divine nature, so that all the developments of the West, including the Reformation, would not have been possible. This is the importance of the Synod of Chalcedon and of a decision, which the East never really accepted, which (it) transformed after it, which (it) first of all swallowed up in (its) sacramental kind of thinking and acting.

If you understand this, then perhaps the single steps of the Christological doctrine are easy to understand. Always have two pictures in your mind if you want to understand them:

1) The being with the two heads, where there is no unity: God and man.

2) The being in which one head has disappeared, but also humanity has disappeared.

The one head is the head of the Logos, of God Himself, so that when Jesus acts it is not the unity of something human and something Divine, but-it is something else: it is the Logos who acts. So all the struggles, all the uncertainties, the despairs, the loneliness, and all this which we have in the Gospel picture, is only seemingly and not really so. It has no consequences: it is inconsequential. This was the danger of the Eastern development, and the fact that this danger has been overcome is the great importance of the decision of Chalcedon, for which we must be very grateful to the Eastern church that it was able to do this against its own basic feeling. But the power of the Old Testament and the power of the full picture of the human side in Jesus, was such that the East couldn't fail in this respect.

I come now to one of the most interesting figures in Eastern church history,Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), who was also of extreme importancefor the West. (Cf. Acts 17:34, where a man called Dionysius followed Paul who was speaking in the Areopagus; he is called Dionysius the Areopagite, in the tradition. His name was used by a 'writer writing between 480-510, probably ca. 500. He called himself Dionysius the Areopagite, namely the man who was with Paul and who received much wisdom from him. This man was accepted as the real Dionysius who talked with Paul, when he gave to his books this name. This was of course in our terminology a falsification. But it was the usage of ancient writing, so it was not a betrayal in any technical or moral sense; but it was a matter of launching books under famous names. Not until the 16th and in some cases even the 19th century was this falsification scientifically discovered. Not even the Catholics doubt about. it. It is a historically established fact that the man who wrote these books wrote actually about 500 and that he used the name of the companion of Paul in Athens in order to give authority to his books. He was translated into Latin by the first great Western theologian of the New World, namely Scotus Eriugena, ca. 840.

This Latin translation was used in all the Middle Ages and had many Scholastic commentators. For us he has all the main characteristics of the Byzantine end of the Greek development. He is the mediator of Neoplatonism and Christianity, the father of most of Christian mysticism. Therefore we must deal with him very carefully. His concepts underlie most Christian mysticism in the East as well as in the West, and some of his concepts – such as hierarchy, which he invented – entered the ordinary language and helped greatly to form the Western hierarchical system of Rome.

We have two basic works of-his: "On the Divine Names", : and "On the Hierarchies." The latter book is divided into the Heavenly and the ecclesiastical hierarchies. The word "hierarchy" probably was created by him; at least we don't know if anyone else used it before. It is derived. from hieros, holy, sacred; and arch principle, power, beginning, etc. – thus, a holy power. The word hierarchy is defined by him as a holy system of degrees with respect to knowledge and efficacy This characterizes .all Catholic thinking very much; i. t., it is not only ontological, but also epistemological; there are degrees not only in being but also in knowledge. The system of holy degrees is taken from Neoplatonism, where it was first fully developed, after Aristotle and Plato (Symposium). The man who is most important is Proclus, a Neoplatonic philosopher who has often been compared with Hegel; he has the same kind of triadic thinking, thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, arid brings all reality into such a system of holy degrees.

The surprising thing about Dionysius is that this system, which was the end of the Greek world, the summary of everything Greek wisdom had to say about life, was introduced into and used by Christianity. Shortly before, this system was used by Julian the Apostate in order to fight Christianity, in order to bring paganism in again in a large system, which is the basis for all Greek thinking, and for the new religion of he educated to which he wanted to introduce Christlanity. So Julian and the Christian theologians who were figbting with each other in a life and death struggle, now were united in a Greek Christian mystic and theologians, Pseudo-Dionysius, Dionysius created Christian mysticism by using the system of degrees. This is what "hierarchy" means. The other book is "On the Divine Names." The term "Divine names" is also a Neoplatonic term, which was necessary for the Neoplatonists when they brought all the gods of the pagans into their system, How could they do this? Because they followed the philosophical criticism of hundreds of years, and no educated Greek of that time believed literally in the pagan gods. But there was still the tradition, there was the popular religion, and so something had to be done about these Divine names, What they tried to show was that the qualities of the Divine were expressed in these names. These names cannot be taken literally, They express different degrees and powers in the Divine ground and Divine emanation; they point to principles of power, of love, of energy, and other virtues, but they are not something which in terms of "name" could be understood as special beings. This meant they discovered, in present-day terminology, the symbolic character of all our speaking about God. The writings about the Divine names can be found in all the Middle Ages; all theologians did this; they spoke about the symbolic meaning of everything we say about God, They didn't use the word "symbol" at that time, but used the word "name," i. e., expressing a character or quality. And when you today have a popular discussion or a bull session, and someone tells you,'" Now what we say about God is only "symbolic," you can say that this "only" is very wrong, and as long as a real thinking theology exists, people have understood the symbolic character of what we say about God, and the wrong is on our side that we haven't followed in this respect the insight of classical theology – of the Greek and of the Western church – but that we have fallen into a literalism against which all the Reformers, especially Calvin, were fighting. The symbolic interpretation of everything we say about God corresponds to the idea of God Dionysius develops. First of all, how can we know about Him? He answers: There are two ways of recognizing Him, the affirmative theology: all names, as far as they are positive, must be attributed to God because He is the Ground of everything; so He is designated by everything, everything points to Him, This is the positive theology, and this has to be done. God must be named with all names,

But then, at the same time – there is a negative theology which denies that He can be named by anything whatsoever. He is even beyond the highest names theology has given to Him. He is beyond spirit, He is beyond the good. He is, as he says, super-essential, i. e., beyond the Platonic ideas, beyond essences; super-exalted, i. e. , beyond all superlatives; He is not the highest being but beyond any possible highest being; and He is super-Divinity, i. e., He is beyond God, if we speak of God as a Divine being. Therefore He is "unspeakable Darkness", In both cases he denies the possibility, by His very nature, that He can be seen , that He can be spoken Therefore all names disappear, after they have been attributed to Him, even the holy name "God." Perhaps this is the source, unconsciously, for what I say at the end of my "Courage to Be," about ."the God above God," namely the God above God which is the real ground of everything that is, which is above any special name we can give, even to a highest being. It is important that the positive and the negative way lead to the same end. In both cases the forms of the world (are) negated. If about God you say everything, you can equally say you don't say anything about Him, namely, anything special. That is, of course,the first thing which must be said about God, because that is what makes Him God, namely, that which transcends everything finite. In this sense Dionysius says that even the problem of unity and trinity disappears in the abyss of God. Since that which super-essential, beyond the Platonic "ideas," is also beyond all numbers, it is even beyond the number one – so that there is no difference between three or one or many, in this respect. When you hear that God is "one," don't think of numbers; always translate this by the sentence that God is beyond numbers, not only against two and three and four and five, but beyond all numbers. Only on this basis can we then speak of "trinity, " and of the infinite Self-expression in the world. First of all, "one" means beyond one and two and three and four; it does not mean one against two and three and four – this is a complete misunderstanding.

From this abysmal "one," which is the source and substance of all being, the light emanates, and the light is the good in all things. The word "light" is a symbol not only for knowing but also fore being. "Hierarchy" for Dionysius is a system of degrees not only for our knowledge but also for being itself.

It is the same as the earliest Greek philosopher Parmenides said, that where there is being there is also the Logos of being. This light, which is the power of being and knowing, is identical with itself; it is unshaken, it is everlasting. What the first Greek philosopher Parmenides said, the.1ast, Dionysius, said. In this the East was consistent in its whole development.

There is a way downwards and a way upwards – we have this already in Heraclitus who says that in everything there is a trend from earth over water over fire to air, and an opposite trend from the air to earth, i.e., every living being is a tense reality, in which there is a fundamental tension, a tension of the creative power of being going down, and the saving power of being going up. The three stages of the way upward are purgation, or purification (this is the ethical-ascetic realm); illumination (this is the realm of mystical understanding); and union or perfection (this is the return into the unity with God. In this last stage something takes place which became the foundation of the modern world through Nicholas Cusanos, namely what Dionysius calls the mystical ignorance; what Cusanos called the learned ignorance (docta ignorantia). Of this the two men say that it is the only ultimate true knowledge. And again this word "ignorance" says we don't know anything special any more when we have penetrated into the Ground of everything that is. And since everything special is changing, it is not ultimate reality and truth. But if you penetrate from everything changing to the ultimate, then we have the rock of eternity and we have the truth which only can rest on this rock.

Now this fundamental reality is represented in degrees called "hierarchies." The line from above to below is the line of emanation. The line from below to above is the line of salvation. The hierarchies represent both ways. They are the way in which the Divine abyss emanates. They are, at the same time, the revelations of the Divine abyss, as far as it can be revealed, in the way upwards – in the saving union with God.

From the point of view of the way upward, they have the purpose to create the most possible similarity and union of all beings with God. Here again the old Platonic formula which I already gave you, "being equal to God as much as possible," is used by the Areopagite – coming nearer and nearer to God and finally uniting with Him.

Every hierarchy takes its light from the higher one and brings it down to the lower. In this way each hierarchy is active and passive at the same time. It receives the Divine power of being and gives it in a restrictive way to those who are lower than it. But this system of degrees is ultimately dualistic. I already said this when I spoke about the title of the book on hierarchies. There are two fundamentally different hierarchies, namely the Heavenly and the earthly. The Heavenly hierarchies are the Platonic essences or ideas, above which is God, but which are the first emanations (and) are from God, but which in Dionysius are interpreted as hierarchies of angels. This is a development which already occurs in later Judaism; the two concepts, the concept of angels – which is a symbolic personalistic concep t– amalgamates with the concepts of hypostatized essences or powers of being: they become one and the same being and they represent the Heavenly hierarchies. If you want to give a meaningful account about the concept of angels to your people, and perhaps even to yourselves, always interpret them as the Platonic essences, as the powers of being, not as special beings. If you interpret in the latter way, it becomes crude mythology; if you interpret them as emanations of the Divine power of being in essences, in powers of being, then it becomes a meaningful concept and perhaps a very important one – but of course not in terms of the sentimental winged babies which you find in pictures of angels. This has nothing to do with the great concept of Divine emanations in terms of powers of being.

This is the one hierarchy, and as an image of this hierarchy we have the ecclesiastical hierarchy which is on earth. The angels are the Spiritual mirrors of the Divine abyss. They always look at Him, i. e., they are the immediate recipients of His power of being. They always are longing to become equal with Him and to return to Him. And they are with respect to us the first revealers. Now if we understand it in this way, we can understand again what it means that they are the essences in which the Divine ground expresses itself first.

There are three times three orders of angels – which is of course a Scholastic play – making it possible to give a kind of analogy to the earthly hierarchies. The earthly hierarchies are powers of Spiritual being. Here you can learn something about medieval realism. The earthly hierarchies are:

1) The three sacraments: baptism~ the Lord's Supper, confirmation

2) The three degrees of the clergy: deacons, priests, and bishops.

3) The three degrees of non-priests: the imperfect, who are not even members of the congregation; the laymen; and the monks, who have a special function.

These nine earthly hierarchies mediate the return of the soul to God. They all are equally necessary and all are equally powers of being. You will immediately ask, as children of nominalism, "what does that mean, that here the sacraments are equal, as hierarchies, with people; namely, the clergy, laymen, etc." This you can understand only if you understand that the people are not people here but bearers of sacramental power, bearers of power of being. And so are the sacraments. That is the point .of identity which makes it possible that he calls all nine of them hierarchies. But in order to understand this, you must know what arch , power of being, means. They all are sacred powers of being, some of them embodied in persons, some in sacraments, some in persons in the congregation with the function only of being believers in the congregation, with no special function. "

This brings the earthly world into a hierarchical system because earthly things – especially in the Sacraments – are used to express themselves – sounds, colors, forms, stone, etc. All reality belongs to the ecclesiastical reality, because the ecclesiastical reality is the hierarchical reality as expressed in the different degrees of being and knowledge of God. In the mystery of the Church, all things are interpreted in terms of their symbolic power to express the abyss of Divinity. They express it and they guideback to it. The ecclesiastical mysteries penetrate into the interior Divinity, into the Divine Ground of all things. And so a system of symbols in which everything is included potentially, is established. This is the principle of Byzantine culture, namely to transform reality into something which points to the eternal – not changing reality, as it is in the Western world, but interpreted reality, penetrating into its depths.

Therefore the understanding of the Eastern hierarchical thinking is much more an understanding of the vertical line, going into the depths of theology, while the Kingdom-of- God theology, for instance in Protestantism, is a horizontal theology, and we can say, looking at the situation in East and West, that the East is missing, (with respect to) transforming reality, and therefore became first the victim to the Islamic attack, and then a victim to the pseudo-Islamic Marxian attack, because it was not able itself to work in the horizontal line, transforming reality.

On the other hand, when we look at our culture we can say – without too much doubt about this – that we have lost the vertical dimension to a great extent; we always go ahead; we never have time to stand somewhere and to look above and below.

These are two types. Here I give you a system of hierarchies which is completely

vertical and has very little horizontal. In order to understand what I mean with making everything transparent for the Divine ground, we should look for a moment at art. The most translucent religious art is the Byzantine mosaics. They don't want at all to describe anything which happens in the horizontal line; they want to express, in everything which appears on the horizontal level of reality, on the plane of time and space, to make it a symbol pointing to its own depths: the presence of the Divine. This is the great(ness) of the mosaics. There are a few examples of them in the Metropolitan Museum, which you should look at. There you have the expression of Divine transcendence, even if the subjects are completely earthly – animals, trees, men of politics, women of the court. Every expression has its ultimate symbolic meaning, and therefore. . . the last great fight in the Byzantine church was a fight about pictures, because the Byzantine culture believed in the power of pictures to express the Divine ground of things. And the danger was very great that the popular belief would confuse the transparency of the pictures with the power of the Divine itself, which is effective through the pictures, but which is never identical with them. And the whole fight, especially coming from the West against the East, and on the other hand coming from Mohammedanism against the East, was a fight about the meaning of the transparent power of the pictures. For the East, this was essential and still is; therefore most of the great art came from there and then conquered the West. But from the West the danger was so great that after Rome partly capitulated, it finally was attacked again by Protestantism, especially Reformed Protestantism, in a way which removed the pictures from the churches again. Therefore in Calvinism natural objects have lost their transparency - -that is the meaning of all iconoclastic (image-destroying) movements. You can understand this when they saw the superstitious way in which many Catholics prayed to their pictures, etc... But when you understand what else was thrown out in the same act, then you are not so sure about it - -namely, that natural objects have lost their transparency: they are simply objects of technical activity, and nature became de-divinized, its Divine character, its representative character for the Divine, became lost. This is part of the whole problem. So we can say that what the Byzantine culture effected was the spiritualization of all reality. Please don't: confuse that with idealization --t hat is something quite different. Idealization is the picture of Hoffman's in Riverside Church, an idealized Jesus. A Byzantine Jesus is a transparent and never idealized Jesus. There is the Divine majesty which is visible throughout, but not a nice human being with ideal, manly handsomeness. That is not what great Christian art wanted to do. Therefore don't confuse it. And I would say that this Eastern church represents something which has been lost, and therefore I am especiaIly happy that it was possible and still is possible to communicate with this church – but it is not possible with the Roman church – namely to take them into the World Council of Churches, and I hope we will not believe, because we are the big majority and are the dynamic power there, that we have nothing to learn from them. We have much to learn from them. . .

This may happen in centuries of more intimate contact, and then it might be that the dimension of depth will again enter the Western thinking, more than it does now.

The system of Dionysius was received by the West. There were two things which made this possible, and which Christianized, or baptized, it. The one was that emanation was not understood in a natural but in a personal picture. God has given existence to all beings because of His benevolence. This goes beyond pagan thinking. Here the personalistic element comes in and the Neoplatonic dualism is removed.

Secondly the system of mysteries is built around Christ, and around the Church. All things have the power of illuminating and uniting only in relationship to the Church and to the Christ. Christ does not become one hierarchy beside others. This was prevented by Nicaea. But He becomes God manifest, appearing in hierarchy and working through every hierarchy. In this way the system of pagan divinities and mysteries, which lived in Neoplatonism, was overcome, and in this way the Western church could receive the system of hierarchies and mysteries.

Consequently medieval mysticism never was in contrast to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. They all worked together, and only much later did conflicts arise.

This brings to an end my interpretation of the East, and tomorrow we start with the transition towards the West.

We finished the discussion of the Eastern development of Christian theology and we are now looking at the West, with the intention to remain there until the end of these lectures – which is perhaps not absolutely fair to the East, because there were developments there which one must certainly study if one wants to understand the situation in present-day Russia, for example, but our limitations are so great that I cannot go into this.

The two men who lead us from the East to the West, and with whom we must deal first, are Tertullian and Cyprian. We already discussed Tertullian to some extent in connection with the Montanistic movement of radical spiritualism and radical eschatology. He was its greatest theological representative. We also spoke about him in connection with his ability to create those formulas which finally survived, in a very early stage, those formulas about Trinity and Christology which, under the pressure of Rome, finally conquered all the other suggestions made by the East. Further, we have seen that he was a Stoic philosopher and as such he was fully aware of the importance of reason and carries through his rational system in a very radical way. But the same Tertullian is also aware of the fact that on the basis of his philosophical attitude there is something else, namely the Christian paradox, He who said that the human soul is naturally Christian (anima naturaliter christiana,) a phrase you should remember, and is the same who is said to have said, at the same time – though he did not actually say it – that "I believe what is absurd," (credo quia absurdum est). What he really said was: "The Son of God is crucified; it is not a shame because it is a matter of shame. And the Son of God had died; it is credible because it is inadequate And the buried (was) resurrected; it is certain because it is impossible."

Now what you find in such paradox is a mixture of an understanding of the surprising, unexpected – and that means, in Greek, "paradoxical" - -reality of the appearance of God, or God-man unity, under the conditions of existence; and at the same time it is a rhetorical expression of this idea, in the way in which the Roman educated orators used the Latin language. So you must not take it as a literal expression but as a pointing – by means of paradox – to the incredible reality of the appearance of Christ. Now people have added to this, credo quia absurdum est, "1 believe because it is absurd," but this of course is not Tertullian. He never would have been able to give very clear dogmatic formulas and (be) a Stoic, believing in the ruling power of the Logos.

In Tertullian also appears something which is important later in the West, namely the emphasis on sin. He speaks of the vicium originis, the original vice, and identifies it with sexuality. In this way he anticipates a long development of Roman Christianity, the depreciation of sex and the doctrine of the universality of sinfulness.

Another thing can be derived from him and partly from his Stoic background: for him the Spirit is a kind of fine substance, as it was in Stoic philosophy. This fine substance is called grace or Spirit – which is the same thing in all Catholic theology; usually the third concept is love: (grace, spirit and love are actually the same in Catholic theology.) Therefore Roman Catholicism can speak of, infused grace, infused like a liquid, like a very fine substance, into the soul of man and transforming it. This is the non-personalistic element in all Roman Catholic sacramental thinking, and in the way in which the fine substance of the Spirit, or of love or grace, can be infused into the soul,. . into the oil of extreme unction, into the water of baptism, into the bread of the Lord's Supper. Here you have one of the sources of this kind of "spiritual materialism," if you want to call it like this, which played such a great role in the Roman church.

Finally he represents the idea that asceticism, the self-denial of the vital reality of oneself, is the way to receive this substantial grace of God. He uses the juristic term "compensation" for sin; asceticism, compensation for the negative side of sin. Or he uses "satisfaction": by good works we can satisfy God. Or he uses "self-punishment" and says that to the degree in which we will punish ourselves, God will not punish us. All this is legalistic thinking. And although he himself was not a lawyer, every Roman orator and philosopher was potentially a lawyer, as every American is a philosopher! . . . This use of legal categories was another fundamental characteristic of the West and it became decisive, for the later development of the Roman church in the movement in which the second and great important element was put into the foreground, namely the Church, and this was Cyprian.

The North African bishop Cyprian's greatest influence was on the doctrine of the Church. The problem which he discussed was also a very existential one – as in all Church history very few people were mere scholars; most of them had very fundamental existential affairs and concerns, and out of that arose their doctrines. In the moment in which a theology says something which you cannot existentially realize any more, either the theology is bad or you have not yet had a special experience – both things are possible. But usually, I would say, the theology then is bad, or these parts of a theology are bad. And I believe – this is self-criticism – that in every theological system there are, besides those elements which are creations of existential concern and therefore full of blood and power and speaking to others, sections which are like lines drawn out in order to fill the system up, but not created on the basis of existential concern. And I believe that most of you are very sensitive to this; that is the reason why for a teacher every lecture should be a matter of fear and trembling – at least it is for this teacher! And just for this reason, because I never know, with absolute exactitude, (whether) something I tell you in systematics – and my whole "history of Christian thought" is very much systematic, as you know – is existential or not. That is the meaning of the word "existential." Nietzsche called it "spirit", and then he has said: Spirit is the life which cuts into its own life; out of its own suffering it produces its own creativity... He doesn't use the word existential, but that's what it means.

For the people like Cyprian, the problems of the Church were existential problems. There were the persecutions; there were those called the lapsi those who were fallen either by recanting Christianity or at least by surrendering books to the searching servants of the pagan authorities, or who denounced others in a trial such as those we see now in this country. All this was a matter of great concern for the Church, and of course each of them who did this was so to speak under Divine judgment. And these people wanted to return to t he Church and overcome the weakness which got hold of them. No one can judge them who is human. But not everybody could be returned into the Church; in cases where there was not human weakness but malignancy or lack of depth, it was not possible for the Church to re-accept. Now the question was: Who decides, in this situation. The ordinary doctrine was: those who are "spirituals," i. e. , those who had become martyrs or had in any other way proved that they were fully responsible Christians.

But against this, which was a kind of remnant from the period of Christianity in which spirit was still fighting with office and office was not yet prevailing, now the office didn't want this remnant of the past and wanted to take over this decision too. The episcopalian point of view said that the bishop, who is the Church, must decide about it. And he must decide in a very liberal way. He must take those who fell even more than once. In the same way, other mortal sinners must be received. The Church had become a country Church, a territorial, a universal Church, the Church of the Empire, and so no one could be easily excluded. The decision was now in the hands of the bishop.

But on the other hand the doctrine was still powerful that the Spirit must decide whether or not someone can belong to the Church. So Cyprian said that the bishops are the Spirituals, those who have the Spirit, namely the Spirit of succession from the early Apostles, apostolic succession. In this way the Spirit became the qualification of the office This was the greatest triumph of the office, that now the Spirit is bound to the office and the Spirit is called the Spirit of succession. This was a transition, and shortly after it became clear that the clergy has the graces which belong to it by ordination, and that the highest clergy, finally the Pope, embodies the Divine grace on earth. But this was the transition to it