thank you for this article. As always, it was a great pleasure to read. And, as is regularly the case, there are many points I could respond to, which means that any reply I could give would inevitably fall short. I will limit myself for now, as we will surely, God willing, find ways to build connections in the future as we both go deeper into this topic and the elements it brings to light in our respective reflections.
First, a question: Only persons can be free. But does that really mean freedom is proper to the person? Perhaps it belongs instead to an element composing the person (real or virtual,) or to a connection between this unique element, which is found only in a person, and a single or multiple non-unique elements, which might be found, for example, more generally in hypostasis, essence, existence, or nature. Why do you say freedom is proper to the person rather than an element or subset of person which is either only present in a person or only connected to an element in a way resulting in freedom if in a person? And, for you, what makes a hypostasis a person?
Second, why is freedom a mystery that eludes positive philosophy?
Third, I greatly enjoyed the piece about teacher/prophet, priest, and king. One might also compare these to "bringing forth/carrying to others," "offering before God," and "building/establishing." Like a person wondering into another country, telling people there about the righful law, offering with them what was bad before God and establishing His righful rule (to express it in a more OT-way.) However, I wonder: when it says that as priests we offer ourselves and nature, what nature, in addition to ourselves, is being referred to here?
There are many other points I wrote down, but the rest are things for which I am grateful to have been reminded, or entirely new insights I have learned and can now integrate into my life and thought. Thank you!
Hello Justus! I appreciate you taking time to read the article and to reflect on it as you have. It always gives me joy to witness you dig so deeply, right to the foundations of what you read. I will give my thoughts on your questions in the order you wrote them.
First, I think that freedom considered as an attribute has reference, properly speaking, to personhood. Concrete persons each have freedom, as an attribute of their being persons, in their ability to specify the vector of their energy, so to speak. What I’m trying to convey is that God, properly speaking, is the only one who is free in Himself (i.e., He wasn’t given His freedom by anyone or anything); He is entirely unconstricted in His being and activity. But God Himself has this freedom as Person, and His Person is the concrete expression of His essence, and His essence is not something that exists or could exist by itself, apart from His Person. From this, then, being made in the image of God, ourselves persons like Him, inherit this attribute of freedom, though in a creaturely—and to some extent, potential—form, which must be progressively actualized through our deification, or the transformation of His image in us into likeness. What makes a hypostasis a person, then, is precisely its being in the image of God as Person. And as I’ve mentioned before, though perhaps not to you, I don’t think “person” is cataphatically or exhaustively definable in the way we might try to define natural objects; I think this has at least something to do with persons being in some sense “self-transcendent”, but I’ll leave this thought here for now. Finally, persons have a holistic quality, in the sense that I don’t think they are decomposable like our bodies are when considered merely as physical objects. This, I think, is due to the holistic nature of the image of God; aspects of the image can be analyzed in conceptual isolation, but these aspects (of which freedom is one) cannot be separated from one another ontologically, else they would cease to be the image of God. The caveat here is that the image of God in us, in our current state, is something that is in a sense potential or virtual, to be actualized as likeness with our spiritual development.
My answer to the second question is related to some things I said in my answer to the first question. I don’t think freedom is entirely unapproachable from the perspective of philosophy, but philosophy can only approach the “borders” of the person, and cannot enter into the mystery, so to speak. Because of this, the same is true of the attributes of personhood. In so far as freedom is an aspect of personhood and the image of God, it inherits an “apophaticity” which renders it something that can only be experienced, eluding expression in terms of concepts precisely due to its nature. I realize that what I am saying here might sound vague, but I think the difficulty here is due to the very point I’m trying to express.
As for the third question, I believe St. Dumitru means that we offer, in addition to ourselves, the whole of nature in the sense of creation because we are the priests of creation, offering it all up to God as a Eucharistic gift. I’ve written elsewhere, in reflection on St. Dumitru’s work (I don’t recall where at the moment), that human nature “contains” all of creation within it. In other words, human nature is the consummation and crown of the whole created order of being. And I think there is naturally a connection here with our God-given vocation as kings; our ability to have dominion over all of creation is dependent upon the macrocosmic constitution of human nature.
Indeed, that was helpful. And I agree to the level things were explained. In the divine mirror, the notion of personhood is not reducible to any particular attribute or property, for it is an expression of the unity and indivisibility of the divine image. If we consider a hypostasis as a singular substance reflecting God, it is natural to conclude that its ultimate or real "form" is not of composition and thus cannot be divided. This aligns with my own metaphysics of monads, which are simple substances that contain within them the harmony of the universe—not as parts, but as reflections of the whole.
If we take the image of God to be reflective of His infinite and self-transcendent nature, then any attempt to exhaustively define "person" would indeed be like attempting to contain the infinite within the finite in the same or lesser respect, a project bound to fail. One would be able to contain a kind of infinity in another kind of finity, but only if that finity is of a higher dimension, which, ofc, is not the case in regards to God -> creation.
To think about that, there are also some other ways. For example: Potential infinities can be captured in finite representations by a rule or algorithm. Infinite detail in finite space via fractal geometry. Gödels incompleteness theorems show that a finite formal system (like arithmetic) can generate statements that require an infinite process of reasoning to understand, which may be counted under these.
In regards to freedom eludes positive philosophy.... in the sense that there is a lived experience connected with it (or rather: defined by it) that cannot be explained, just lived, yes, it eludes positive philosophy. But that does not appear to be what you mean, after all, everything practical is like that. I try to understand what you mean by the apophatic dimension, and ofc, on the borders I understand it. But I don't think that I truly understand it.
On the point about persons, what you suggest is interesting and I think aligns with the idea that while we can now be said to be human persons, we have not become persons to the fullest possible extent, and will be becoming more fully persons eternally because the image of God is inexhaustible in its depth, and will always have new facets of expression.
To try to clarify the point about freedom being elusive to philosophical analysis, I suppose all I’m trying to say is that because freedom is something that is so bound up with the nature of personhood, and personhood is a very deeply apophatic reality, it is to that extent a mystery from the perspective of an analysis which seeks to unpack how it works analytically. It seems to me that any philosophical definition of freedom one might offer would always involve reference (implicitly or otherwise) to a deeply apophatic notion like “agent”, or “person”, and then any analysis of freedom on the basis of this definition depends upon one’s positive account of these deeply apophatic realities, which seems to present a stopping point for cataphatic explication. I’ll need to think more on this; sorry if I’ve been unclear in my explanation—just thinking out loud!
Yet, it may still be the expression of something apophatically yet itself be fully positive - as are the energies of God in common understanding. Which means that the truely apophatic object (subject) is what it relates to.
Yes, this is how I’ve understood it; the energies of God have a cataphatic aspect to them, which is why we can call them the positive names we do—love, goodness, etc.—but they all carry within them and are expressions of the infinitely transcendent, apophatic “reality” of God as Person. This is also something I’m still working on understanding. There’s some really deep discussions of this in St. Dumitru’s Experience of God Vol. 1, which I will definitely return to again after I finish the 5th and 6th volumes!
Dear Johnathon,
thank you for this article. As always, it was a great pleasure to read. And, as is regularly the case, there are many points I could respond to, which means that any reply I could give would inevitably fall short. I will limit myself for now, as we will surely, God willing, find ways to build connections in the future as we both go deeper into this topic and the elements it brings to light in our respective reflections.
First, a question: Only persons can be free. But does that really mean freedom is proper to the person? Perhaps it belongs instead to an element composing the person (real or virtual,) or to a connection between this unique element, which is found only in a person, and a single or multiple non-unique elements, which might be found, for example, more generally in hypostasis, essence, existence, or nature. Why do you say freedom is proper to the person rather than an element or subset of person which is either only present in a person or only connected to an element in a way resulting in freedom if in a person? And, for you, what makes a hypostasis a person?
Second, why is freedom a mystery that eludes positive philosophy?
Third, I greatly enjoyed the piece about teacher/prophet, priest, and king. One might also compare these to "bringing forth/carrying to others," "offering before God," and "building/establishing." Like a person wondering into another country, telling people there about the righful law, offering with them what was bad before God and establishing His righful rule (to express it in a more OT-way.) However, I wonder: when it says that as priests we offer ourselves and nature, what nature, in addition to ourselves, is being referred to here?
There are many other points I wrote down, but the rest are things for which I am grateful to have been reminded, or entirely new insights I have learned and can now integrate into my life and thought. Thank you!
~ Justus
Hello Justus! I appreciate you taking time to read the article and to reflect on it as you have. It always gives me joy to witness you dig so deeply, right to the foundations of what you read. I will give my thoughts on your questions in the order you wrote them.
First, I think that freedom considered as an attribute has reference, properly speaking, to personhood. Concrete persons each have freedom, as an attribute of their being persons, in their ability to specify the vector of their energy, so to speak. What I’m trying to convey is that God, properly speaking, is the only one who is free in Himself (i.e., He wasn’t given His freedom by anyone or anything); He is entirely unconstricted in His being and activity. But God Himself has this freedom as Person, and His Person is the concrete expression of His essence, and His essence is not something that exists or could exist by itself, apart from His Person. From this, then, being made in the image of God, ourselves persons like Him, inherit this attribute of freedom, though in a creaturely—and to some extent, potential—form, which must be progressively actualized through our deification, or the transformation of His image in us into likeness. What makes a hypostasis a person, then, is precisely its being in the image of God as Person. And as I’ve mentioned before, though perhaps not to you, I don’t think “person” is cataphatically or exhaustively definable in the way we might try to define natural objects; I think this has at least something to do with persons being in some sense “self-transcendent”, but I’ll leave this thought here for now. Finally, persons have a holistic quality, in the sense that I don’t think they are decomposable like our bodies are when considered merely as physical objects. This, I think, is due to the holistic nature of the image of God; aspects of the image can be analyzed in conceptual isolation, but these aspects (of which freedom is one) cannot be separated from one another ontologically, else they would cease to be the image of God. The caveat here is that the image of God in us, in our current state, is something that is in a sense potential or virtual, to be actualized as likeness with our spiritual development.
My answer to the second question is related to some things I said in my answer to the first question. I don’t think freedom is entirely unapproachable from the perspective of philosophy, but philosophy can only approach the “borders” of the person, and cannot enter into the mystery, so to speak. Because of this, the same is true of the attributes of personhood. In so far as freedom is an aspect of personhood and the image of God, it inherits an “apophaticity” which renders it something that can only be experienced, eluding expression in terms of concepts precisely due to its nature. I realize that what I am saying here might sound vague, but I think the difficulty here is due to the very point I’m trying to express.
As for the third question, I believe St. Dumitru means that we offer, in addition to ourselves, the whole of nature in the sense of creation because we are the priests of creation, offering it all up to God as a Eucharistic gift. I’ve written elsewhere, in reflection on St. Dumitru’s work (I don’t recall where at the moment), that human nature “contains” all of creation within it. In other words, human nature is the consummation and crown of the whole created order of being. And I think there is naturally a connection here with our God-given vocation as kings; our ability to have dominion over all of creation is dependent upon the macrocosmic constitution of human nature.
I hope these answers help a bit!
Thank you for your answering.
Indeed, that was helpful. And I agree to the level things were explained. In the divine mirror, the notion of personhood is not reducible to any particular attribute or property, for it is an expression of the unity and indivisibility of the divine image. If we consider a hypostasis as a singular substance reflecting God, it is natural to conclude that its ultimate or real "form" is not of composition and thus cannot be divided. This aligns with my own metaphysics of monads, which are simple substances that contain within them the harmony of the universe—not as parts, but as reflections of the whole.
If we take the image of God to be reflective of His infinite and self-transcendent nature, then any attempt to exhaustively define "person" would indeed be like attempting to contain the infinite within the finite in the same or lesser respect, a project bound to fail. One would be able to contain a kind of infinity in another kind of finity, but only if that finity is of a higher dimension, which, ofc, is not the case in regards to God -> creation.
To think about that, there are also some other ways. For example: Potential infinities can be captured in finite representations by a rule or algorithm. Infinite detail in finite space via fractal geometry. Gödels incompleteness theorems show that a finite formal system (like arithmetic) can generate statements that require an infinite process of reasoning to understand, which may be counted under these.
In regards to freedom eludes positive philosophy.... in the sense that there is a lived experience connected with it (or rather: defined by it) that cannot be explained, just lived, yes, it eludes positive philosophy. But that does not appear to be what you mean, after all, everything practical is like that. I try to understand what you mean by the apophatic dimension, and ofc, on the borders I understand it. But I don't think that I truly understand it.
The third thing makes sense.
On the point about persons, what you suggest is interesting and I think aligns with the idea that while we can now be said to be human persons, we have not become persons to the fullest possible extent, and will be becoming more fully persons eternally because the image of God is inexhaustible in its depth, and will always have new facets of expression.
To try to clarify the point about freedom being elusive to philosophical analysis, I suppose all I’m trying to say is that because freedom is something that is so bound up with the nature of personhood, and personhood is a very deeply apophatic reality, it is to that extent a mystery from the perspective of an analysis which seeks to unpack how it works analytically. It seems to me that any philosophical definition of freedom one might offer would always involve reference (implicitly or otherwise) to a deeply apophatic notion like “agent”, or “person”, and then any analysis of freedom on the basis of this definition depends upon one’s positive account of these deeply apophatic realities, which seems to present a stopping point for cataphatic explication. I’ll need to think more on this; sorry if I’ve been unclear in my explanation—just thinking out loud!
I see!
Yet, it may still be the expression of something apophatically yet itself be fully positive - as are the energies of God in common understanding. Which means that the truely apophatic object (subject) is what it relates to.
Yes, this is how I’ve understood it; the energies of God have a cataphatic aspect to them, which is why we can call them the positive names we do—love, goodness, etc.—but they all carry within them and are expressions of the infinitely transcendent, apophatic “reality” of God as Person. This is also something I’m still working on understanding. There’s some really deep discussions of this in St. Dumitru’s Experience of God Vol. 1, which I will definitely return to again after I finish the 5th and 6th volumes!
I am awaiting it with joy!