Classical Metaphysics: Some Terminology

I mention classical metaphysics or substance ontology a lot. I suppose it's fair that I define my terms.  Bruce McCormack notes,

1. The order of knowing runs in the opposite direction to the order of being.   This means before we "know" God we are operating with some abstract notion of "being" or "person" and projecting that onto God. As McCormack argues, "The consequence of this methodological decision is that the way taken to the knowledge of God controls and determines the kind of God-concept one is able to generate" (187). This leads to:
2. Metaphysical thinking in "the strictest sense of the term."  We are beginning "from below" and through an inferential process determining what God can be.
3. Which means that we have a fully-formed (or mostly formed) concept of what God is before any consideration of his self-revelation in Christ.  As McCormack notes, "the content of Christology will be made to conform to a prior understanding of God" (188).  Natural theology has now given us a definition of God apart from God's decision to elect, save, create, etc.  There is now a metaphysical "gap" between God in the abstract and the Triune God.  

McCormack, Bruce.  "The Actuality of God: Karl Barth in Conversation with Open Theism." Engaging the Doctrine of God, ed. Bruce McCormack, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008.

We see this playing out with great confusion in the Nestorian debate.  John McGuckin writes,

Ousia: Essence, substance, being, genus, or nature.

Physis: Nature, make up of a thing. (In earlier Christian thought the concrete reality or existent.)

Hypostasis: The actual concrete reality of a thing, the underlying essence, (in earlier Christian thought the synonym of physis.)

Prosopon: The observable character, defining properties, manifestation of a reality.

Even at first sight it is clear that the words bear a range of meanings that overlap in some areas so as to be synonymous.  This is particularly so with the terms Physis and Hypostasis which in the fifth century simultaneously bore ancient Christian meanings and more modern applications.. In relation to Physis, Cyril tended to use the antique meaning, Nestorius the modern. In relation to Hypostasis the opposite was the case.”

True, both Cyril and Nestorius used the terms to different ends, but neither challenged the metaphysical grammar--and neither gave a satisfactory solution.

John Anthony McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy, SVS, 2004,

A broadside across the Cyrillene bow

Some EO and RCC converts were attacking Protestantism's doctrine of man and the atonement on Facebook.  Granted, there are some difficulties and I am not fully satisified with Hodge's approach. but I noticed that both sides in the debate hold to an out-dated substance metaphysics.   This runs into problems when we apply it to Christology.   Take the great Father Cyril of Alexandria, whom they use to attack Protestantism.  Let's see what happens:

Dr Bruce McCormack illustrates some key gains with Cyril’s Christology. Like Apollinaris he understood that the Logos had to instrumentalize the human nature.  Unlike Apollinaris he avoided truncating that human nature.  The problem, though, as Lutherans were keen to pick up on, is locating the “acting agent.”  Normally Cyril locates the acting agent as the Logos asarkos.  However, when we get to the communicatio idiomata, it seems Cyril is locating the acting agent as the whole Christ, which is an entirely different term.  Anchorites are using a sliding scale.

Orthodox and Lutherans hold to a real communication of attributes.  Good.    There is a problem, though.  St Maximus said the relationship was tantum…quantum.   This means if there is a real communication, it’s a two-way street.  However, if we attribute human attributes to the divine (which is how John Milbank reads Andrew Louth’s reading of Maximus), how can we seriously maintain any doctrine of divine impassibility?

 Continuing McCormack’s argument.  We admit that the person of the Logos is the acting agent of the union, denying activity to the human nature; this is consistent with the principle that persons act, not natures.  However, when one communicates this to the modern world, using modern terminology, we find that we are equivocating on the term “human.”  In today’s language humanity means, among other things, a self-activating nature.  And that is Nestorianism.