Αποστολική Διακονία της Εκκλησίας της Ελλάδος

3. Truth and the Redeemer

When Christ says, that He is the truth and the life of the world at the same time, then he gives to the truth content with ontological extensions. If the truth saves the world, then this happens because it is life. The mystery of the Christology, as it is accepted by the term in Chalcedony, indicates, that the salvation as the truth and the life is made capable only on a true person and through it, that is, something to which nature, as we have seen, cannot offer because of its individualization. The only ability for a true person exists when the being and communion coincide. The triadic God offers this unique ability for an identification of the being with the communion in Himself; He is the revelation of the true person.

The Christology relies exactly on the presupposition that only the Triad can offer to the created being a real base on the person and thus, salvation. So, Christ has to be God to be a Savior; but this means something even more: he mustn't be an individual, but a true person. In the experience of the individualized existence is completely impossible for any analogy to be found with a being, which is entirely, and even in an ontological sense personal. Our experience on the person through communion and love transfers to us an idea of such an existence, but offers no ontological change. True life, lacking death, is not to us as persons possible without shaking the very foundations of our existence. Through the analogy of love we can reach to understanding the Christology from the viewpoint of the cross (a person, who loved us so much, died for us), but we cannot follow it to the point of the Resurrection (a person, that defeated death), the Christology does not contribute ontologically to that at all. Christ is the truth exactly because in himself does not show only the being, but the permanence, meaning the survival of the being. Through the resurrection, Christology shows, that the created being, is at such a grade real, so that not even the human freedom can wipe it out[i], as we tried to do on the cross. In the resurrection of the Christ existentially truth and being are identified and His freedom relieves from the fall and is no longer a threat for the being.

So it is, that Christology translocates the question concerning the truth from the place of the individual and nature to the level of the person. It would then be pointless to understand Christ, the truth, as "nature"[ii] or as an individual personality. In Him we can much more see a person, in which the division of "natures" has been transformed into dissimilarity and communion[iii]. Therefore, if the Christology is translocated from our own individual existence, this seems to lead to an image of the Christ, which is no more "human" and at the same time results from that has been said, that, even though such a "lift of the individualization" of Christ takes place in Christology, the existential sequences have no more any ontological importance.

If the individualization of the Christ creates in the Christology unsurpassable problems and if we link it to the allegation, that Christ is the truth, then this should be examined more thoroughly in reference to Ecclesiology. If the being of Christ takes place with the way of an individual, that is, as an individual situation, which lies above or below us, then the question that appears before us inevitably is this: how can man and the sum of creation be connected to this individual existentially, that is, not only with a psychological or moral way, but ontologically[iv]. This problem is closely connected to the relation between Christology and Pneumatology. We should then take a glance on it first; before we can then see what position the Church took in the presentation of the Christ as truth and communion.

[i] Dostoyewskie reveals the ontological sequences of freedom, when he characterizes the effort of human freedom to be validated. With the words of Kirilov in «Demons», he can prove that there is a God, that is, the ultimate reference of existence, only when he can put an end to his very existence by committing suicide. The fact, that life goes on even though the ability of man to kill himself, constitutes the ontological proof on that man is not the ultimate cause of existence, even under the threat that he puts regarding the being by having the ability to destroy the beings through death. One should observe the importance of this thought on the ontological sequences of the cross and the resurrection of the Christ

[ii] D. M. Mackinnon, defends the use of the term «nature» in his Christology, «Substance» in Christology...(see above, footnote 58). The purpose of this defense is to suggest the immediate and direct presence of God in Christology and to answer to the basic question: «How can a particular action of him, who is connected to the Father, be identical to the Father, without it being in the nature of his relationship?» These words should be evaluated positively in the relevance of the western thought, which has the tendency to separate the being or the substance from the relationship or the person. However, that which we had wanted to indicate here, based upon the thought of the Greek Fathers (see above, Part II, 3), is the fact, that the being and the relationship have to be identified with one another, and that «nature» or the «substance» only in the «way of existing» are true.

[iii] The paterical term of the hypostatic union, as developed mainly by Cyril of Alexandria, creates by the person (hypostasis) and not by the natures the base for the existence of Christ. At this point exists a delicate but characteristic difference concerning the idea of a notification of idioms, which thought approaches, that the two natures could have by themselves an ontological situation.

[iv] The problem has certain difficulties of Reason and experience, which Christology cannot solve for modern day man, for as much as it perceives Christ as an individual. How can an individual, which lived in Palestine so many years ago have something to do with me «hic et nunc»? If we insert the Holy Spirit as some sort of «deus ex machina» to solve this problem, it creates more problems than the ones it solves and in no case does it seem convincing at an existential or an ontological level. The only reasonable alternative solution in the relevance of such an individualized Christology is to understand our relationship with Christ as an Imitatio (imitation) Christi or through the substituting theories of redemptology. All efforts to describe this relationship, as ontological, leads necessarily into quitting from an individualistic understanding of Christ (see the biblical sense «person-body»).