Abstract

This essay argues that the concept of nature, found in the treatise on the person of Jesus Christ by John Philoponus, Sixth Century Alexandrian, presents the Church with a definition of nature that is helpful for relations between Science and Theology today. This was a concept over which the East and the West of the Church have been divided. The argument of The Arbiter was written in response to the Emperor Justinian's call for a resolution to the Christological debates dividing up and weakening his Empire. John Philoponous, as a scientist of some renown in his time and in response to the Emperor, presented his argument to the Church with a dynamically open-ended and truly kinetic grasp of the natures of Christ within the physical nature of a Ptolemaic Cosmos that he understood to be God's Creation. Thus, nature for Philoponus was to be understood through the inherent relations the Creator had created and revealed through Jesus Christ in the world. By carefully considering the way the wholeness of God and the wholeness of the world with all its parts may be understood together, as that cosmos which is the object of the creative will of God the Word become flesh as the Man Jesus Christ, Philoponus argues for what we may name the rational contingency of physical nature. Created nature is different from the nature of God. Yet the created reality of the cosmos, contingent being, is embedded in the non-contingent Being and nature of God Himself. So Philoponus would argue that the wholeness in which the particular natures of Christ is to be experienced and thought only exists as the actual nature of God's interaction with His Word in Christ and in the world. The humanity the Word has become we name Jesus Christ. The person of Jesus Christ reveals for us the that wholeness by which Man as the Incarnation of the Word and the revelation of the life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit possesses both a created nature and the uncreated nature of God as One. This oneness is not the same as the oneness of the cosmos, but rooted in the ground of the Divine Being. Philoponus would think together the divine and human natures of the person of Jesus Christ in such a way that both the particular man and the divine Son or Word are properly grasped as one reality. The argument appeared to Western thought to be that of a monophysite and tritheist. Thus, his argument was historically a failure and Philoponus became obscure in both the fields of the history of science and theology. He was declared anathema in 680 AD. But recent investigations have begun to understand him as an original and creative thinker whose contributions should any longer go ignored. I have argued that the way this Alexandrian Grammarian accomplished his explanation of the relational wholeness between God, Man, and the Cosmos would be helpful to us today, as we attempt to relate theology and science in our own time. Nature now appears to possess an invisible depth of being and form that challenges, perhaps as never before in history, the facility by which human beings may grasp its reality in all of its depths. We do not explain the invisible by the visible, but quite the other way around. I would argue that John Philoponus employed this same method in order to think together the whole and the parts of Jesus Christ. He introduced a new concept of nature with his resolution of the problem. I believe he was no monophysite and quite right in his explanation of the problem of divine and human whole and the parts that must be faced in person of Christ. The invisible dimensions of created reality were for John Philoponus to be grasped as that point where the uncreated reality of the Triune God and the visibly particular man in Palestine meet together. Here is the Triune God whose Word created and sustains all things in their being. As such, Jesus Christ is the compelling center around which all the cosmos moves as God's creation. nature was not to be defined except as this Word become flesh in the world. This meant that the incarnation posited something new in the nature of the world, a newness that required a fresh conceptualization of the significance of nature itself. The uniqueness of this person was to be apprehended so that as the Revelation of God he was truly understood with and for us in the world. It was probably Philoponus's effort to lay hold of this new dimension in the midst of the debates that gained for him as both a monophysite and a tritheist his condemnation. I hope my presentation of this fragment of the 7th chapter from 'The Arbiter' will help obtain the removal of the anathema from his theological work. I have translated the fragment of the 7th chapter of The Arbiter by John Philoponus from the Jacobite Syriac text employed by A. Šanda for his Latin translation of the treatise in "Opusucla Monophysitica Ioannis Philoponoi" . In my Ph.D. dissertation on the Alexandrian Grammarian, I have argued that the condemnation of Philoponus as tritheist and monophysite is a mistake of tragic proportion . This fragment of The Arbiter was employed to establish the Anathema against him in 680 AD. My translation is a attempt to communicate the conceptual power of Philoponus's thought. One can compare this with the translation of this chapter by F.H. Chase, Jr in "The Writings of St. John of Damascus" . I believe it will readily be apparent that the syntax of words in sentences does not necessarily communicate an argumentation that is conceptually faithful to the intention and purpose of its author. This is certainly a real problem, but I have tried to grasp as best I could the conceptual power in the thought of the Alexandrian, and to communicate this thought with my translation, without attempting to develop any formal English style in relationship with the Syriac. I have italicized my translation of the most significant terms in the argument. I have also underlined any word that I believe needs special attention when we employ an English term for it. I hope my reason for this will be evident to my reader