I was thinking of going through and responding to a few of the posts on the 2nd page that were addressed to me, but I realized that there still seems that there is some background that I am missing before I can even continue to discuss this.
Shalom deusveritasest,
Here's the thing. The ACE's understanding of the Godhead and the Incarnation is not rooted in Greek philosophy, they're rooted in Jewish mystism. In order to get a proper understanding of the ACE's Christology you have to forget about Greek terms like physis, prosopon & ousia, and about the Greek understanding of concepts like "the soul" held by such individuals as Socrates, Plato & Aristotle:
Socrates and Plato
Plato, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, considered the soul as the essence of a person, being, that at which decides how we behave. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies. The Platonic soul comprises three parts:
the logos (mind, nous, or reason)
the thymos (emotion, or spiritedness, or masculine)
the eros (appetitive, or desire, or feminine)
Each of these has a function in a balanced and peaceful soul.
The logos equates to the mind. It corresponds to the charioteer, directing the balanced horses of appetite and spirit. It allows for logic to prevail, and for the optimisation of balance.
The thymos comprises our emotional motive, that which drives us to acts of bravery and glory. If left unchecked, it leads to hubris – the most fatal of all flaws in the Greek view.
The eros equates to the appetite that drives humankind to seek out its basic bodily needs. When the passion controls us, it drives us to hedonism in all forms. In the Ancient Greek view, this is the basal and most feral state.
Aristotle
Aristotle, following Plato, defined the soul as the core or "essence" of a living being, but argued against its having a separate existence in its entirety. In Aristotle's view, a living thing's soul is its activity, that is, its "life"; for example, the soul of an eye, he wrote, if it were an independent lifeform itself, would be sight. Again, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because 'cutting' is the essence of what it is to be a knife. Unlike Plato and the religious traditions, Aristotle did not consider the soul in its entirety as a separate, ghostly occupant of the body (just as we cannot separate the activity of cutting from the knife). As the soul, in Aristotle's view, is an actuality of a living body, it cannot be immortal (when a knife is destroyed, the cutting stops). More precisely, the soul is the "first actuality" of a body: its capacity simply for life itself, apart from the various faculties of the soul, such as sensation, nutrition and so forth, which when exercised constitute its "second" actuality, which we might call its "fulfillment." "The axe has an edge for cutting" was, for Aristotle, analogous to "humans have bodies for human activity." The rational activity of the soul's intellective part, along with that of the soul's two other parts—its vegetative and animal parts, which it has in common with other animals—thus in Aristotle's view constitute the essence of a human soul. Aristotle used his concept of the soul in many of his works; the De Anima (On the Soul) provides a good place to start to gain more understanding of his views.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoulThe Greek Fathers were influenced by these ideas, the Assyrians and Jews were not, this stuff is foreign to them. The Aramaic word Miltha in John chapter 1 is not equivalent to the Greek word Logos, and as I mentioned earlier there is no cognate for prosopon in the Hebrew OT, in ancient Hebrew there is no such thing as a "person" (whether human or divine) the way it's understood by Greeks. My advice is to forget about everything Greek when dealing with the ACE and instead consult Jewish mystical writings like the
Zohar, that's where you'll see similarities.
So far of what has been depicted of the Triadology and Christology of the ACE appears to be orthodox. In the common divine kyana, manner of being, of the Trinity (this appears almost entirely equivalent to ousia) there are three qnome, meaning three particular/individual instances of this kyana, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the Incarnation there are identified two kyana, both which necessarily are found having particular and concrete qnome, these two qnome being possessed by the parsopa (seemingly equivalent to the Greek prosopon or the Latin persona) of Christ.
Very good, you seem to have grasped this quite well.
This is all fine and good. But it doesn't seem like it goes quite far enough to preserve orthodoxy as I see it in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy. It seems like only external and objective categories are being expressed. Kyana is simply a known type of being (whether it be divine, human, feline, etc.), and qnome is simply the particular instances of kyane. Also, parsopa seems to only address the external (or material as you say) and observable appearances of personality.
Not quite, the reason being is that so far we've only dealt with "dictionary definitions" of the these key Aramaic terms, we haven't gone into the imagery associated with them, and in a spiritual context this imagery can be very deep. And always bear in mind is that there is still no real "dictionary definition" for qnoma, "instantation of a nature" is the closest we've come so far in English but it still does not capture all the imagery associated with it - it's a simplified/incomplete explanation.
On the contrary, it seems that the Alexandrine and, to a certain extent, the Byzantine theology and Christology is much more concerned with the nature of the inner being of the Trinity and of Christ. For instance, the word hypostasis, I have been told, literally means "what lies beneath". What is the reality of this individual underneath how things appear and what we can see? I'm also concerned with coming to know what is the understanding of subject for Syriac Christians rather than simply object.
Well the root word from which qnoma derives from is qom:
The word is a noun derived from the verbal root "qom" (as in "Talitha qomi".) The verb means "to rise, to stand up, to be present."
As such, the root of this word is found thousands of times in both the Hebrew and the Aramaic of the OT. (not just the Peshitta OT, but also the original Hebrew.)
...The word for "resurrection" in Aramaic is "Qeyamtha", which is also derived from the root "Qom."
The reason why Prof. Brock and others have concluded that the CoE definition for Qnoma is the archaic one, is because of the imagery involved with the primitive root meaning "to rise up, stand up, to be established."
"Kyana" means "nature" in an abstract sense, and "Qnoma" means an "individuated kyana", i.e., "something which has arisen, stood up, and become established from an abstract concept."
From:
http://www.peshitta.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=659&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=qnoma&start=15As you can see qnoma is not equivalent to hypostasis, the Aramaic word aitutha (substance/essence) is much closer to hypostasis than qnoma. Prof. Sebastian Brock specifically stated not to equate qnoma with hypostasis because it doesn't actually mean hypostasis. While it's true that qnoma is closer to hypostasis than any other Greek term, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's
that close. Greek is not going to help you with this, rather turn your attention to the Hebrew & Aramaic Biblical texts.
As to the Trinity: is there a teaching which indicates an understanding of the three qnome as being more than simply instances of the Godhead, but actually distinct subjects or individuals or personalities, each having their own consciousness? If we simply say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct instances of the divinity without ascribing them their own individual experiences of the divinity that they share, then I don't see how the fullness of the divinity has actually been communicated. How are we protected from Sabellianism here? The Greek protects from the difference of the word hypostasis. Three hypostases establishes that there is a subject and subsistence to each of the persons, and thus that they each have their own consciousness and distinct experience (distinct in being the possession of one person or the other, not distinct in the essence of what the experience is) of the Godhead.
{Hebrews 1:1-3} In all ways and in all forms, God spoke previously with our fathers by the prophets. And in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of everything and by whom he made the ages, who is the radiance of his glory and the image of his being and almighty by the power of his word. And
in his qnoma, he accomplished the cleansing of our sins and sat down at the right hand of majesty in the high places. (Peshitta)
I see no reason why the 3 Qnome of the Godhead cannot have their own experiences and conciousness. It was the Son, the 2nd Qnoma of the Godhead who, as Rony said "entered the material realm" (became flesh) not the other two (the Father & the Holy Spirit). But that does not make them 3 distinct individuals or personalities, not in Hebraic thought that is. Jews and Assyrians can't say that the 3 Qnume are distinct individuals or personalities because in Hebraic thought this is the same thing as saying that they are 3 different dieties.
Hippolytus of Rome knew Sabellius personally and mentioned him in the Philosophumena. He knew Sabellius disliked Trinitarian theology, yet he called Modal Monarchism the heresy of Noetus, not that of Sabellius. Sabellianism was embraced by Christians in Cyrenaica, to whom Demetrius, Patriarch of Alexandria, wrote letters arguing against this belief.
The ACE's understanding of the Godhead is not like Sabellianism:
In Christianity, Sabellianism, (also known as modalism, modalistic monarchianism, or modal monarchism) is the nontrinitarian belief that the Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son and Holy Spirit are different modes or aspects of one God, as perceived by the believer, rather than three distinct persons in God Himself.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SabellianismQnoma does not mean "mode" or "aspect" or "attribute", see this:
http://www.assyrianchurch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=727More about Sabellianism from Wikipedia:
Meaning and origins
God was said to have three "faces" or "masks" (Grk. prosopa), (Latin persona)[1]. The question is: "is God's threeness a matter of our falsely seeing it to be so (Sabellianism/modalism), or a matter of God's own essence revealed as three-in-one (trinitarianism)?"
Three "faces" or "masks"? I hope Vladimir Lossky (an EO) didn't mean that literally.
Modalists note that the only number ascribed to God in the Holy Bible is One and that there is no inherent threeness ascribed to God explicitly in scripture.[citation needed]. The number three is never mentioned in relation to God in scripture, which of course is the number that is central to the word "Trinity". The only possible exceptions to this are the Great Commission Matthew 28:16-20 and the Comma Johanneum, a disputed text passage in First John[citation needed] known primarily from the King James Version and some versions of the Textus Receptus but not included in modern critical texts.[citation needed] Modalism has been mainly associated with Sabellius, who taught a form of it in Rome in the third century. This had come to him via the teachings of Noetus and Praxeas.[2]
The number 3 is never mentioned in relation to God in Scripture yes, but neither is the number 1, i.e. in the exclusively singular sense (yakhid). In the Shema YHWH is said to be 1 (ekhad), i.e. in a collective sense, Modulists (like Oneness Pentecostals) obviously don't understand the meaning of the Hebrew word ekhad. No Assyrian, Messianic Jew or even Rabbinical Jew believes that God is exclusively singular like Muslims do (tawhid). The 3 Qnume of the Godhead have eternally existed within God's kyana (nature), they are not "modes" or "aspects" that God switches between. The plurality is within God's very nature, Sabellianism does not recognize any sort of plurality within God's nature itself, Assyrians and Jews do.
As to Christ: where is continuity and identification with the Word actually established? If the humanity that is supposedly the Word's is identified as being an entirely different qnoma from Him, it doesn't appear that the identification is made on the level of qnoma. On the other hand, if the parsopa of Christ did not exist before the union, then how can it be identified as being part of the eternal being of the Word? Where is the direct point of connection and continuity with the eternal Word? The Greek likewise establishes this direct continuity by identifying not only one prosopon but also one hypostasis, one subject, one subsistence in Christ who contains within Himself both perfect divinity and perfect humanity.
Before I answer this let us remember that the Incarnation, like the Godhead is essentialy an ineffable mystery. We'd do well to adhere to the wise words of Mar Ephriam:
That said, I'll rather let Rony tackle this one where details are concerned as he can explain the ACE's position better than I can. What I can give you is my personal understanding based on my studies of Scripture in Hebrew and Aramaic:
*God is eternal, man is mortal.
*Flesh can hunger, suffer pain (physically), urinate, deficate, bleed and die, spirit cannot.
*Man cannot forgive sins or raise the dead, God can.
*God cannot be tempted by Satan, man can.
Yeshua the Messiah is both 100% God and 100% man - 100/100 not 50/50, that is what Scripture teaches. Yeshua's humanity and divinity are united within His parsopa without separation, confusion, or alternation (as the Miaphysites say), how is that possible if humanity and divinity are so different? I don't know how but I believe it, I accept it as fact through faith not reason, just like I accept the Resurrection as fact through faith not reason. And I think it may do us further harm rather than good if we continue to pry deeper than that.
