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Reformed Classicalist

Mascall on Christ and Modernity: Part 2

RTS Papers / The Thought of E. L. Mascall / Spring 2019


THE FIRST UNION OF PERSONS IN THE DIVINE ESSENCE


“Derived equality” is his via media concerning the Son and the Spirit in the Trinity. At the extremes are “equality without derivation” and “derivation without equality.” Two ways to land on equality without derivation are modalism, conceiving that the persons are identical, and tritheism, conceiving that they are entirely independent. On the other hand, when derivation is emphasized at the expense of the equality, what results is subordinationism. The Son, even in his preincarnate state, is conceived as ontologically inferior to the Father. Of course Arius took this error to the extreme.

Mascall entertains the idea that the “logos Christology” in the preceding centuries may have inadvertently paved the way for the error of Arius. That is because the Greco-Roman usage of logos almost always demanded some intermediary between First Cause and the world; and articulating the logos doctrine was, for Justin Martyr and others, largely motivated by showing the intellectual prowess of the Christian message to the Greek mind.


Now to the homoousios doctrine itself, it is not enough to say “the same as,” so as to avoid the heretical “similar to” (homoiusios), but we must also affirm “one with.” Otherwise there is nothing to prevent ditheism or tritheism. From this thought, Mascall is ready to help the reader make a leap in historical theology. To be fully orthodox, one must take the road from Nicaea to Chalcedon and beyond by moving from homoousios to perichoresis. What is meant by this?

Simply put, perichoresis is the word used for the dynamic relationship between the Persons of the Godhead. The Greek words for something like a “dance” and the preposition “around,” suggest a kind of eternal, mutual activity.

It was applied by Maximus the Confessor to the Son as “the reciprocity that holds between the two natures of Christ in virtue of their inherence in the one divine Person of the Son.”


Such reflection drowns in its depth the many crude misconceptions we might have about “firstborn” and “only begotten,” and so forth. The earthly practice of inheritance, of sons from fathers, is nearer to the eternal generation of the Son, than is the earthly practice of procreation, sons from fathers. Begottenness is essentially shared essence. By the ninth century, and John of Damascus’ writing of De Fide Orthodoxa, the progression from merely homoosian to perichoresis had been complete, and with it the final protection from the two extremes of modalism and tritheism on the one side, and subordinationism on the other.


The main difference between East and West is that the former tended to think in terms of the relations of the three Persons to each other, whereas the latter tended to think in terms of the different relations of the Persons to the one Godhead or divine substance. Was a “realist tendency” already coalescing in Western theology, making the Latin mind more systematic than the Greek, during those decades after Nicaea?

Some may think that realism undermines the Trinity because “divine” would constitute a universal, a genus, in which the three Persons participate, so that it is the abstract or “real being” above or behind the Trinitarian Persons. The Cappadocian formulation of the doctrine is helpful in alleviating that suspicion: “The whole Godhead, not as a logical universal but as a concrete existent, possessed wholly by each Person in the way appropriate to each.”

How the divine attributes, or ideas, can still function in a doctrine of realism, while the whole Trinity is a concrete existent, is subject for another writing. “The notion of perichoresis” in the East “finds its counterpart in the Western doctrine of subsisting relations.” In Aristotelian terminology, all that is in God must be spoken of in terms of either substance or relation. Aristotle had “substance” as the one of his ten categories that must be for the thing to be. For him, primary substance was the individual thing (John Smith), whereas secondary substance was more like a universal (Man). Augustine and Thomas both saw was that relation (subsisting) could not be removed from God. Thus a different relation could be real and logically distinct, within a being, without implying separate ontological status.


Mascall summarizes in this way: priority without superiority; priority without sequence. There is a perfect and simple procession, so that what proceeds ad intra need not be sequential. It is also important to note that the imagery used by Hillary, Augustine, and Peter Lombard, concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being Author-Mind, Image-Thought, and Gift-Love, do not suggest anything like modalism.


Thomas tended to agree with these reflections, but further qualified that the Son and Spirit are not merely “hypostatized operations,” yet rather in virtue of the [eternal] exercise of those operations in the Godhead. In fact Thomas offered his own definitional contribution: “A divine Person therefore means a relation as subsisting.” This is the first and most essential union that explains all others.


THE SECOND UNION OF NATURES IN THE WORD MADE FLESH


The solution that came out of Nicaea provoked the controversy that led up to Chalcedon. It is only when the Son’s equality to the Father is admitted that one arrives at the next problem of their relation and of the relation between the two natures. In terms of a via media, this second union he calls “unconfused union.” The implication being that at one extreme is such a divorce of the two natures that we conceive of two persons, whereas at the other is such a confusion of the two natures that one is absorbed in the other. The former is Nestorianism and the latter Eutychianism (or monophysitism).


Two main premises help us, and these can come from a careful reading of the biblical data. First, human nature does not simply mean bodily nature, but also the human soul; second, John does not say that the Word united flesh to himself, but rather that the Word became flesh. The incarnate nature was a creation.


We must examine Mascall’s idea of the humanity of Christ, as it becomes the real link between the theological reflection and the destiny of mankind. The body of Jesus was made naturally in the womb of Mary, while the soul was “created by God and infused into his body” yet this is not to be taken in the “crude creationist” sense of having no hereditary connection to the bodily line. The Person of this human nature was uncreated, not a separate person, but the pre-existent Word.


Now how should we understand the active relationship between the atemporal God and the Word made flesh in space and time? Returning, first, to his metaphysical distinction between infinite and finite being: “Just because of its radically dependent and non-self-sufficient character, finite being is open to fresh influxes of creative power which will elevate and transform it, but not destroy it.” Grace, in general, and the Incarnation, in particular, are philosophically justified in this way. Second, Mascall examines a variety acts of the divine Person in the human nature. The word Theandric is used to describe these operations and activities.


Arriving at the depths of Christological reflection here, we must avoid Nestorianism; but we must avoid it in a way that does not land us in Apollinarianism. To put it in credal language: How should we affirm that Christ has a “reasonable soul” without demanding that “soul” and “person” are logically coextensive? If we cannot, then we must choose our heresy. What Mascall suggests is that the lack of a second (human) person in the Son is not a denial of any psychological faculty, since “Person” is a metaphysical ascription. The human nature inheres in the Word, and thus, in the most important sense, has more of person than any other human. And he elicits more help from the past to make his case.


As perichoresis was the climax of the mature Trinitarianism by the eighth century, so Leontius’ idea of enhypostates achieved the same in Christology. What does this word mean? If we can agree that hypostases refers to the essence of the person, then to be “in” (en), in this case, refers to the incarnate Christ being in the Person of the Son. It is not that the independent person, Jesus, reached out to both the divine and human natures and united them “in Him,” as if his person was a third substance. This is where his previous distinction is so applicable: “The Person of the Word and his divine nature are … really identical and only logically distinct … The divine Person and the human nature, on the other hand … are not absolutely identical.” So the human nature was neither its own hypostates, nor was it ahypostasis, but rather inheres in the divine logos.


If one is inclined to a more “Western” way to sail between Apollinarius and Nestorius, Mascall draws back on his Thomism again to solve this matter. God is the one for whom to exist is his essence. To exist is to be in pure act. It follows that this divine actuality is what moves all personal actions. Consequently the human thoughts and decisions of the Son require no separate human person (initiating actor) since the Word is the ultimate Being-in-act. Human nature in the Son is complete in every respect and yet the acting Subject is the uncreated, eternal Word.


THE THIRD UNION OF THE CHURCH WITH CHRIST


This union begins in Mascall’s via media on salvation. He calls it “defied creaturehood,” and anyone familiar with the doctrine of theosis will know his basic proof text and roughly where he is going with it. This balanced doctrine will steer between the undue exaltation of nature and the undue limitations on grace. He naturally goes right to 2 Peter 1:4 and “partakers in the divine nature.”


Words like “deification” and “divinization” have also been used almost universally by the fathers. “Not by nature, but by adoption,” said Augustine; and St. John of the Cross added that, “the substance of the soul … is God by participation in God.” He quotes Augustine again to the clear effect that this does not involve any destruction of the creaturely status or ontological becoming of the divine. Hence the balanced name: deified creaturehood.


At this point Mascall begins to use the label “mysticism” in a way that is neutral to the brand that is often joined at the hip with rationalism for looking inward for light, as well as the brand that has long been scorned by rationalists as “anyone who believes in angels and ghosts and such.” There are many understandable reasons to cast out the mystic. In non-Christian mysticism, it is elitism. The “higher road” is the only way. In Catholic mysticism, he argues, the Christian experience is revealed to the individual “with particular intensity and vividness,” but any are welcome and none are forced (nor can anyone force it). But in the end, says the Christian, all who receive saving grace will be deified. The mystic is simply the one who consciously reflects upon what all Christians possess.

What makes this third union so complex is that it is really a confluence of the doctrines of salvation, church, and final destiny. And what makes it so controversial is that Mascall most clearly distinguishes himself from Reformed theology at this point, yet does so by landing at least some of his blows against a straw man.

When it comes to nature and grace per se, his Reformed antagonists are Barth and Brunner. The latter being the more moderate of the Neo-Orthodox who rejected Luther’s view of the image as mere relic, and Barth’s more extreme denial even of the relic. To be fair, many who call themselves Reformed really do appropriate the doctrine of total depravity with a scorched-earth Gnosticism. There must be being and participation at the common and special grace levels. In spite of its pious sound, there can be no “gulf” between Creator and creature, lest the creature should cease to exist. Mascall uses the word “interpenetration” to describe God’s giving grace to the dependent without confusing the two. How then do we conceive of the “connection” that graciously preserves nature?


The solution out East was to distinguish between divine essence and energies. What is the goal? It is to find a category whereby we may take seriously the promise of 2 Peter 1:4 without either degrading God or consuming the creature. A question immediately arises. How is this not guilty of the very “third thing” or “intermediary” brought up about all pagan views? How does it not make the same mistake that we see made today, of separating God’s essential ontology from some “relational” or “covenantal” ontology?


Mascall turns to how grace is causal to nature. Several Thomas quotations highlight the impossibility that the creature could contribute to the First Cause of grace, yet Mascall seems not to want to focus there and insists only to speak of sanctifying grace. Grace is the entire first cause, yet always works to and through man’s nature and faculties. The Westminster Divines would agree entirely, as would Bavinck.


We may also say that other unions emerge within this third: as the church is united to Christ, so also is the humanity of each participating in the life of God. Thus when God and man are reconciled, so are the individual and the communal. Mascall turns in this direction with an illuminating description of the church as “the sphere of the New Humanity, of human beings remade by incorporation into Christ.”


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