St John of Damascus on the Prayer of Christ
My Lenten reading for this year, as I am trying to acquaint myself with the rich and vast legacy of the West, is the writings of Saint John of Damascus, the Last of the Early Church Fathers (675-750 AD). In his work DIALECTICA, John assiduously lists the fundamentals of philosophy, as well as the heresies of his day and before, before turning to theology in DE FIDE ORTHODOXA. Together, the works are titled THE FOUNT OF KNOWLEDGE.
John was born and raised in Damascus, behind enemy lines, for it had been conquered by the Mohammedan in 635 AD.
I here quote in full the saint’s summary of the Christian faith on the question of the Prayers of Christ.
Jesus prays in the Gospel at the tomb of Lazarus, and in His agony the Garden of Gethsemane the hour before His arrest and passion. This passage comes at the end of a description of orthodox trinitarianism, where the doctrine that Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine is examined in excruciating detail.
One detail of that examination reveals that the humanity of Christ necessarily granted him human reason, human passions, and human vulnerability to temptation and natural fear.
Likewise, the divinity of Christ, while immune in His omnipotence from such passions, nonetheless allowed and ordained Him to suffer these woes and weaknesses, for, without this, He could not cure and unmake such woes and weaknesses in us.
The paradox of God the Son prayer to God the Father, when they are both one in being, is examined and clarified.
The words below are his.
Chapter 24:
Prayer is an ascent of the mind to God, or the asking God for things which are fitting. Then, how did the Lord pray in the matter of Lazarus, and at the time of His passion?
For, since Christ is one and His sacred mind was once and for all united hypostatically to God the Word, it neither needed to ascend to God nor to ask of God.
It was, rather, that He appropriated our appearance and impressed what was ours upon Himself. He became a model for us, He taught us to ask of God and to lift ourselves up to Him, and through His sacred mind He opened the way for us to ascend to God.
For, just as He endured the passions and gave us victory over them, so also does He pray and open up for us, as I said, the way to the ascent to God. And so, also, does He for our sake fulfill all justice, as He said to John, and reconcile His own Father to us and honor Him as principle and cause, thus showing Himself to be not adverse to God.
Thus, in the matter of Lazarus, when He said: ‘Father, I give thee thanks that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always; but because of the people who stand about have I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me,’ was it not made quite plain to all that He had said this to show that He honored His own Father as His own cause and that He Himself was not adverse to God?
When He said: ‘Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt,’ is it not clear to everyone that He is teaching us to ask help of God alone in times of trial and to put the divine will before our own, and that He is showing that He had truly made His own what is proper to our nature, and that He actually had two wills that are natural and correspond to His natures and are not mutually opposed?
‘Father,’ he says as being consubstantial, ‘if it be possible,’ not because He did not know — and what is impossible for God? — but to instruct us to put the divine will before our own. For this alone is impossible, namely, that which God does not wish and does not permit.
‘Nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt,’ He says as God, since He is of the same will as the Father, while at the same time He says it as man to show the natural will of His humanity, for this last naturally shrinks from death.
Now, the ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ He said because He had appropriated our appearance. For, unless by subtle imaginings a distinction should be made between what is seen and what is thought, God as His Father would not be called ours.
Nor was He ever deserted by His divinity — on the contrary, it was ourselves who were left behind and overlooked.
And so He appropriated our appearance and prayed these things.
My comment: In the immediate next chapter, St. John expands on what he means by ‘an appearance.’ He is not proposing the heresy of the Docetists, which held the body of Christ to be a mere airy illusion without flesh. He is using the term in a fuller sense.
The words below are his.
Chapter 25:
One should, moreover, know that there are two kinds of appropriation, the one being natural and substantial and the other apparent (προσωρική) and relative. Now, the natural and substantial is that by which the Lord out of His love for man assumed both our nature and all that was natural to it, and in nature and in truth became man and experienced the things that are natural to man. It is apparent and relative, however, when one assumes the appearance (πρόσωπον) of another relatively, as out of pity or love, and in this other’s stead speaks words in his behalf which in no way concern himself.
It was by this last kind of appropriation that He appropriated our curse and dereliction and such things as are not according to nature, not because He was or had been such, but because He took on our appearance and was reckoned as one of us. And such is the sense of the words, ‘being made a curse for us.’
Chapter 26:
God’s Word Himself, then, endured all things in His flesh, while His divine nature, which alone is impassible, remained unaffected. For, when the one Christ made up of both divinity and humanity suffered, the passible part of Him suffered, because it was of its nature to suffer, but the impassible did not suffer with it. Thus, since the soul is passible, it does feel pain and suffer with the body when the body is hurt, although it itself is not hurt. The divinity, however, being impassible, does not suffer with the body.
And it should be known that, although we speak of God having suffered in the flesh, we by no means speak of the divinity suffering in the flesh or of God suffering through the flesh. For if, when the sun is shining upon a tree, the tree should be cut down by an axe, the sun will remain uncut and unaffected, then how much more will the impassible divinity of the Word hypostatically united with the flesh remain unaffected when the flesh suffers. And just as if one should pour water upon a red-hot iron, that which is naturally disposed to be affected by the water — the fire, I mean — will be quenched, while the iron remains unharmed, because it is not of its nature to be destroyed by the water; how much less did the divinity, which is alone impassible, endure the suffering of the flesh and still remain inseparable from it.
Now, examples do not have to be absolutely and unfailingly exact, for, just because it is an example, one must find in it that which is like and that which is unlike. For likeness in everything would be identity and not an example, which is especially true with divine things. So, in the matter of theology and the Incarnation, it is impossible to find an absolutely perfect example.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
