You're missing the main emphasis....Like i've said a number of times, the primary divine qualities of the Eucharist are: that it is immortal and itself able to bestow immortal life, and that it is incorruptible and able to transform us unto incorruptibility.
On Mount Tabor, Christ made His divinity manifest to His disciples by His Transfiguration. However, what they saw was not His divine essence but rather the divine and uncreated energies of God which shone forth from His humanity by virtue of the hypostatic union.
Likewise in the Eucharist, we partake of the Body and the Blood of God - of the Logos - yet we do not partake of the divine essence, but rather that which has been imbued with the divine uncreated energies of God, and which is therefore rightly called divine without it referring to essence.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. I was actually thinking of it terms of the iron and the fire. If we think of the fire as the fullness of Divinity and the iron as Christ's humanity, when we place the iron into the fire, the iron becomes infused with certain properties of the fire without becoming fire (I know this is the common analogy used for Theosis, but I think it works here as well). Thus, the iron has aspects of fire just as Christ's body has aspects of Divinity (i.e. the energies and not the essence) making it Life-Giving (a quality of the Divine). So, when we eat the Body of Christ, this is equivalent to the red hot iron (as opposed to the uninfused iron) that is consumed. That is what I had been thinking which is why to say we do not partake of the divinity in the Eucharist confused me. In these terms, it makes total sense. Once again, thanks for the wonderful explanations and analogy.
[quote author=QT_PA_2T link=topic=5832.msg78617#msg78617 date=1193045728]1) Is it right to say that the Holy Body and Blood is Divine, BUT we do not eat the Divinity, we only eat the life-giving body? Is that right? I'm asking as it still is hard to understand how Christ's humanity and Divinity were United in the Person and Body of Christ, and yet, when we eat His body, we separate the Divinity from the Humanity?
In the same way that the disciples were able to touch the Humanity of Christ without touching His Divinity. Just because the Humanity and Divinity of Christ are so perfectly United into One Nature, it does not follow that direct association with His Humanity necessarily entails direct association with His Divinity, and hence it does not follow that consuming His Humanity necessarily leads to consuming His Divinity. After all, the union is one "without mingling, without confusion, and without alteration." (Priest's Last Confession). The fact of the matter is that the notion of consuming the Divine Essence is absurd precisely because it is impossible. The Divine essence is not a material substance capable of being held in the mouth, broken by the teeth, tasted by the tongue, and digested by our biological organs.
2) If it bestows on us immortality, then why do we pass away?
Because it is a process; it is not something instantaenous. Furthermore, it is a process we, according to our own free will, are to participate in. The Grace of immortality and incorruption was not imposed upon Adam and Eve, nor is it imposed upon us; rather it is offered, through various means, the most important means of which is the Eucharist, and it is in turn up to us to receive and actualise that Grace according to our exercise of virtue and repentant struggle against sin.
Our bodies die? Why do they decay after our death?
Our fallen nature dissolves into its constituent elements in order to signify the end of our fallen condition. Our body, whilst dissolving, does not cease to exist completely, but is raised anew, spiritual and immortal.
Which part of us becomes immortal??
Our entire being. Our physical aspect, which is plagued by defects and weaknesses, is dissolved into its constituent elements, as I have said, in order to signify the demise of those defects and weaknesses; our body is raised in a transformed condition, spiritual and immortal, as I have said.
3) If someone NEVER had Holy Communion - what would be their fate? Let's say they were protestant and NEVER had Holy Communion, what would be outcome: they are baptised, believe, but they do not have the life-giving body??
I do not presume to know anyone's fate. We have been given the sure and definite way to salvation, and have been enlightened as members of Christ's Body, the Church, to perceive and understand that partaking of the Divine Body and Blood of Christ is a normative and necessary condition for our salvation. I make no exceptions to this rule, and would be a fool to take my chances pursuing any other path. Ultimately, however, I cannot dictate to God the absolute terms and conditions of His own ordinances, nor can I dictate to Him the way His Justice and Mercy should operate. I can only act according to the path He has definitely laid down for me; a path that has been tried and tested by the Holy Fathers with undeniable success, as demonstrated from the age of the Apostles, to the modern era as evidenced in the lives of figures like the holy Pope St Kyrillos VI, for example.
[quote author=QT_PA_2T link=topic=5832.msg78708#msg78708 date=1193128086]So how is it, in simple terms, do we partake of the Divine Nature?? In simple terms. Imagine you are talking to small sunday school kids?? how would you explain it??
The purpose of theologising is spiritual and practical edification before intellectual understanding (which itself is useful only insofar as it promotes the former). Theologising is simplified insofar as any given simplification enables the audience to retrieve some practical and spiritual edification; our aim is not to make every single person intellectually comprehend what are, by nature, complex and intricate mysteries. If I were discussing the Eucharist with Sunday School kids, I would not even use the terms 'divinity' or 'divine', nor would I introduce Christological vocabulary. It's enough for them to know that the Eucharist is something essential to their salvation; that through it, they live forever, though they die in this flesh in this world; that by it, God by His Grace gifts them with ability to escape every physical, psychological and spiritual fault that makes life in this world unbearable at times.
Vass, not to reduce you to a child, but to emphasise the essential point i'm making here which applies to people of all ages: we do not discuss theological issues to fulfill our intellectual curiosities. It is enough for you to recognise the transcendence of the Divine essence, and at the same to acknowledge that in spite of this, we are Graciously made able to partake of a Humanity that is not any normal Humanity, but the Humanity that God Himself made His very own; a Humanity that is capable of bestowing upon us immortal life and incorruptibility. If you get that, then you have retrieved all that you need from this discussion as concerns your spiritual edification. I ask you to therefore not persist in having anyone oversimplify these delicate issues any further for your intellectual satisfaction; they are not simple issues, they are not meant to be, and there is no need for you to, and indeed it is impossible for anyone to, have a complete intellectual grasp of these issues in the first place.
I know the question was answered for this post, but i was reading through and i wanted to ask a question about this part:
[quote author=Safaa link=topic=5832.msg78483#msg78483 date=1192739581] The right school is the one of the Fathers of the Church, old and stable which told us that we partake of the Life giving Body and Blood of our Lord God and saviour and we receive the Grace of the Holy Spirit.
How do we recieve the "Grace of the Holy Spirit" through communion??!!!.....i thought we get that first through baptism and mayron!!! don't we....?!
[quote author=jydeacon link=topic=5832.msg87441#msg87441 date=1210643842] Hey Mina, Here is a topic that might answer your question. Iqbal does a good job of answering it i think. http://tasbeha.org/content/community/index.php?topic=5357.0
hm.....it's longggg....u have any specific parts??
[quote author=jydeacon link=topic=5832.msg87446#msg87446 date=1210644368] page 2 and on i think are important its long but the discussion flows so it will be good to read it, also here is the article of HH talking about this issue, page 12: http://www.copticpope.org/downloads/eng_keraza/engkeraza23-02-2007.pdf
Well done for finding this.
On page 12 i think it says:
They also say that we share the divine nature through the Eucharist Sacrament. Through which we eat divinity and drink divinity!! And when we opposed them in this they accused us in our faith! And we had to explain this point to them in our book (New Heresies from p. 168 to p. 174).
WHere is this book of heresies??
I understand the heresy now. THey believe that given His Divinity did NOT depart from His Humanity, then how is it we cannot eat of the Divine Nature.
I hate to give Iqbal credit sometimes, but his answer was perfect. lol
But, what I want to know is why don't they accept it???
THen of course, that's how they come to the conclusion that we are gods (with a small "g") so as to tell us that we have become partaken of the divine nature. This is not Orthodox teaching... (is it!??).
THen, the point about atonement - gosh!! (in the above article) - that was going a bit too far. (really). I think.
If I take a course (and I need to!) in Patristic Theology I doubt I will come to these same conclusions as Mr.Bebabwy. We all learn from the fathers when we read the lives of the saints etc.
I really hate Church division. Its the worst thing. THat's why im so grateful for this site and those that respond. I think it can help a lot!!
THeir problem is with the issue of "Partaking of Divine Nature". I answered someone who recently thinks that we partake of Divinity which means that we become divine. This is not the case. I know I asked that question, but it wasn't because I read their works, it was because I just KNEW that we can never be divine (we are sons of God THROUGH adoption, not essence - this was so embedded in my head, that I knew this already), so I wanted to understand more. Iqbal's response is always valuable, but in this occassion, i truly thank my parents. Not that they said anything different, but the wording and examples used were more clearer to me. (Again, that's why I thank the posters here.. everyone is at a different wavelength: if I don't understand fully a subject in physics, let's say, from one book, i'll read another book that will explain the same thing in a different way).
This is also the benefit of reading from the fathers. I guess we can all read the Bible and have our own interpretation of it. Then when we read from the fathers, it corrects perhaps and guides our thoughts to what is right. The problem begins when someone ALREADY had a distorted idea in his/her head. So, when they read the Bible, they are looking for explanations in the Bible to certify their distorted ideas. Then they go to Patristic Theology, open the books of the Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, and still use that to confirm their ideas.
THese are really small issues when u think about it. I mean, for it to end in ex-communicating Bebawy is just remarkable.
[quote author=Iqbal link=topic=5832.msg78507#msg78507 date=1192773910] I think many people are talking past each other as a result of the consistent and ambiguous use of loaded terms like 'divine.' We need to be more clear as to what we mean when we use such terms.
St Cyril of Alexandria made it clear that although the humanity of Christ was not divine as a matter of essence, since it was indeed consubstantial with us, it was nevertheless divine insofar as it accrued divine properties by virtue of the Hypostatic Union. One of those divine properties which we attest to in our Liturgical confession is the property of "Life-Giving." This property of "Life-Giving" is not one proper to mere humanity; nevertheless it became an attribute of Christ's humanity by virtue of the hypostatic union, and was ultimately realised in His Resurrected body. It is in this sense that Christ's humanity may be said to indeed be divine; it is in this sense, that we may be said to partake of the divine through the Eucharist; finally, it is in this sense that we, in the words of St Athanasius, become divine through participating in the Eucharist.
If we reduce the term 'divine' to an exclsuive reference to the 'divine essence' of God, we deprive ourselves of rich patristic vocabulary and fall victim to impoverished theological articulations.
Guys, Can I use this (above response from Iqbal) as the answer to my question concerning the words of Saint Cyril of Alexandria who said in the Fraction Prayer in our Coptic Orthodox Eukologion (Al Kholagy):
"When your glory descends on your Sacraments, our minds are lifted to behold your majesty. When the bread and wine are transformed to your body and blood, our souls partake of your glory and become united with your Divinity ... You gave us the privilege to eat your body publicly; grant us to unite with you sacramentally (secretly). ... As you are one with your Father and the Holy Spirit we become united with you and you with us..." St Gregory the Theologian in the Liturgy we pray in our Kholagy also says: " And when you ascended to Heaven bodily you filled us all with your Divinity."
Comments
Compare eating (in the Eucharist) to sight.
On Mount Tabor, Christ made His divinity manifest to His disciples by His Transfiguration. However, what they saw was not His divine essence but rather the divine and uncreated energies of God which shone forth from His humanity by virtue of the hypostatic union.
Likewise in the Eucharist, we partake of the Body and the Blood of God - of the Logos - yet we do not partake of the divine essence, but rather that which has been imbued with the divine uncreated energies of God, and which is therefore rightly called divine without it referring to essence.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. I was actually thinking of it terms of the iron and the fire. If we think of the fire as the fullness of Divinity and the iron as Christ's humanity, when we place the iron into the fire, the iron becomes infused with certain properties of the fire without becoming fire (I know this is the common analogy used for Theosis, but I think it works here as well). Thus, the iron has aspects of fire just as Christ's body has aspects of Divinity (i.e. the energies and not the essence) making it Life-Giving (a quality of the Divine). So, when we eat the Body of Christ, this is equivalent to the red hot iron (as opposed to the uninfused iron) that is consumed. That is what I had been thinking which is why to say we do not partake of the divinity in the Eucharist confused me. In these terms, it makes total sense. Once again, thanks for the wonderful explanations and analogy.
In the same way that the disciples were able to touch the Humanity of Christ without touching His Divinity. Just because the Humanity and Divinity of Christ are so perfectly United into One Nature, it does not follow that direct association with His Humanity necessarily entails direct association with His Divinity, and hence it does not follow that consuming His Humanity necessarily leads to consuming His Divinity. After all, the union is one "without mingling, without confusion, and without alteration." (Priest's Last Confession). The fact of the matter is that the notion of consuming the Divine Essence is absurd precisely because it is impossible. The Divine essence is not a material substance capable of being held in the mouth, broken by the teeth, tasted by the tongue, and digested by our biological organs. Because it is a process; it is not something instantaenous. Furthermore, it is a process we, according to our own free will, are to participate in. The Grace of immortality and incorruption was not imposed upon Adam and Eve, nor is it imposed upon us; rather it is offered, through various means, the most important means of which is the Eucharist, and it is in turn up to us to receive and actualise that Grace according to our exercise of virtue and repentant struggle against sin. Our fallen nature dissolves into its constituent elements in order to signify the end of our fallen condition. Our body, whilst dissolving, does not cease to exist completely, but is raised anew, spiritual and immortal. Our entire being. Our physical aspect, which is plagued by defects and weaknesses, is dissolved into its constituent elements, as I have said, in order to signify the demise of those defects and weaknesses; our body is raised in a transformed condition, spiritual and immortal, as I have said. I do not presume to know anyone's fate. We have been given the sure and definite way to salvation, and have been enlightened as members of Christ's Body, the Church, to perceive and understand that partaking of the Divine Body and Blood of Christ is a normative and necessary condition for our salvation. I make no exceptions to this rule, and would be a fool to take my chances pursuing any other path. Ultimately, however, I cannot dictate to God the absolute terms and conditions of His own ordinances, nor can I dictate to Him the way His Justice and Mercy should operate. I can only act according to the path He has definitely laid down for me; a path that has been tried and tested by the Holy Fathers with undeniable success, as demonstrated from the age of the Apostles, to the modern era as evidenced in the lives of figures like the holy Pope St Kyrillos VI, for example.
The purpose of theologising is spiritual and practical edification before intellectual understanding (which itself is useful only insofar as it promotes the former). Theologising is simplified insofar as any given simplification enables the audience to retrieve some practical and spiritual edification; our aim is not to make every single person intellectually comprehend what are, by nature, complex and intricate mysteries. If I were discussing the Eucharist with Sunday School kids, I would not even use the terms 'divinity' or 'divine', nor would I introduce Christological vocabulary. It's enough for them to know that the Eucharist is something essential to their salvation; that through it, they live forever, though they die in this flesh in this world; that by it, God by His Grace gifts them with ability to escape every physical, psychological and spiritual fault that makes life in this world unbearable at times.
Vass, not to reduce you to a child, but to emphasise the essential point i'm making here which applies to people of all ages: we do not discuss theological issues to fulfill our intellectual curiosities. It is enough for you to recognise the transcendence of the Divine essence, and at the same to acknowledge that in spite of this, we are Graciously made able to partake of a Humanity that is not any normal Humanity, but the Humanity that God Himself made His very own; a Humanity that is capable of bestowing upon us immortal life and incorruptibility. If you get that, then you have retrieved all that you need from this discussion as concerns your spiritual edification. I ask you to therefore not persist in having anyone oversimplify these delicate issues any further for your intellectual satisfaction; they are not simple issues, they are not meant to be, and there is no need for you to, and indeed it is impossible for anyone to, have a complete intellectual grasp of these issues in the first place.
[quote author=Safaa link=topic=5832.msg78483#msg78483 date=1192739581]
The right school is the one of the Fathers of the Church, old and stable which told us that we partake of the Life giving Body and Blood of our Lord God and saviour and we receive the Grace of the Holy Spirit.
How do we recieve the "Grace of the Holy Spirit" through communion??!!!.....i thought we get that first through baptism and mayron!!! don't we....?!
Hey Mina, Here is a topic that might answer your question. Iqbal does a good job of answering it i think. http://tasbeha.org/content/community/index.php?topic=5357.0
hm.....it's longggg....u have any specific parts??
page 2 and on i think are important its long but the discussion flows so it will be good to read it, also here is the article of HH talking about this issue, page 12: http://www.copticpope.org/downloads/eng_keraza/engkeraza23-02-2007.pdf
Well done for finding this.
On page 12 i think it says:
They also say that we share the divine
nature through the Eucharist Sacrament.
Through which we eat divinity and drink divinity!!
And when we opposed them in this they accused us
in our faith! And we had to explain this point to them
in our book (New Heresies from p. 168 to p. 174).
WHere is this book of heresies??
I understand the heresy now. THey believe that given His Divinity did NOT depart from His Humanity, then how is it we cannot eat of the Divine Nature.
I hate to give Iqbal credit sometimes, but his answer was perfect. lol
But, what I want to know is why don't they accept it???
THen of course, that's how they come to the conclusion that we are gods (with a small "g") so as to tell us that we have become partaken of the divine nature. This is not Orthodox teaching... (is it!??).
THen, the point about atonement - gosh!! (in the above article) - that was going a bit too far. (really). I think.
If I take a course (and I need to!) in Patristic Theology I doubt I will come to these same conclusions as Mr.Bebabwy. We all learn from the fathers when we read the lives of the saints etc.
I really hate Church division. Its the worst thing. THat's why im so grateful for this site and those that respond. I think it can help a lot!!
THeir problem is with the issue of "Partaking of Divine Nature". I answered someone who recently thinks that we partake of Divinity which means that we become divine. This is not the case. I know I asked that question, but it wasn't because I read their works, it was because I just KNEW that we can never be divine (we are sons of God THROUGH adoption, not essence - this was so embedded in my head, that I knew this already), so I wanted to understand more. Iqbal's response is always valuable, but in this occassion, i truly thank my parents. Not that they said anything different, but the wording and examples used were more clearer to me. (Again, that's why I thank the posters here.. everyone is at a different wavelength: if I don't understand fully a subject in physics, let's say, from one book, i'll read another book that will explain the same thing in a different way).
This is also the benefit of reading from the fathers. I guess we can all read the Bible and have our own interpretation of it. Then when we read from the fathers, it corrects perhaps and guides our thoughts to what is right. The problem begins when someone ALREADY had a distorted idea in his/her head. So, when they read the Bible, they are looking for explanations in the Bible to certify their distorted ideas. Then they go to Patristic Theology, open the books of the Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, and still use that to confirm their ideas.
THese are really small issues when u think about it. I mean, for it to end in ex-communicating Bebawy is just remarkable.
I think many people are talking past each other as a result of the consistent and ambiguous use of loaded terms like 'divine.' We need to be more clear as to what we mean when we use such terms.
St Cyril of Alexandria made it clear that although the humanity of Christ was not divine as a matter of essence, since it was indeed consubstantial with us, it was nevertheless divine insofar as it accrued divine properties by virtue of the Hypostatic Union. One of those divine properties which we attest to in our Liturgical confession is the property of "Life-Giving." This property of "Life-Giving" is not one proper to mere humanity; nevertheless it became an attribute of Christ's humanity by virtue of the hypostatic union, and was ultimately realised in His Resurrected body. It is in this sense that Christ's humanity may be said to indeed be divine; it is in this sense, that we may be said to partake of the divine through the Eucharist; finally, it is in this sense that we, in the words of St Athanasius, become divine through participating in the Eucharist.
If we reduce the term 'divine' to an exclsuive reference to the 'divine essence' of God, we deprive ourselves of rich patristic vocabulary and fall victim to impoverished theological articulations.
Guys, Can I use this (above response from Iqbal) as the answer to my question concerning the words of Saint Cyril of Alexandria who said in the Fraction Prayer in our Coptic Orthodox Eukologion (Al Kholagy):
"When your glory descends on your Sacraments, our minds are lifted to behold your majesty. When the bread and wine are transformed to your body and blood, our souls partake of your glory and become united with your Divinity ... You gave us the privilege to eat your body publicly; grant us to unite with you sacramentally (secretly). ... As you are one with your Father and the Holy Spirit we become united with you and you with us..." St Gregory the Theologian in the Liturgy we pray in our Kholagy also says: " And when you ascended to Heaven bodily you filled us all with your Divinity."