Logopneumatika at Nyssa

In the first five centuries of the Christian Church, the integration of theology and philosophy was a major task for the fathers. They recognized that much truth had been assimilated in the words/works of Homer, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in the East and Cicero, Seneca, and Vergil in the West. However, they accepted the multifaceted authority of Scripture as the norma normans of the Church and where Plato or Vergil could not be synchronized with this authority, it had to be altered (at the least) or abandoned (at the most).

Yet there was another interlocutor to be engaged: the Jews. Though the first generation of Christians were almost totally Jewish, within a century, the Pauline mission proved to be more efficacious than the Petrine mission and Christianity became much more Gentilic. The Jews claimed the Hebrew Scriptures as their own authority for worship of YHWH and maintenance of their society, but they disagreed that Christ was the te,loj of the law. After the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70, Pharisaism survived and became increasingly introverted and textual, upholding its interpretation of the TNK over that of the Christians. The evolving Trinitarian theology and proto-Nicene christology made any reconciliation impossible.

Thus, an impasse existed between Christianity and its epistemological and liturgical underpinnings in Greco-Roman philosophy and Judaism respectively. One of the ways to navigate this impasse was through what I have called logopneumatika, a Trinitarian infused principle of Word and Spirit.

Observe this remarkable statement by Cappadocian Father Gregory of Nyssa:

"Truth passes in the mean between these two conceptions [Greek philosophy and Judaism], destroying each heresy , and yet accepting what is useful to it from each. The Jewish dogma is destroyed by the acceptance of the Logos and by belief in the Spirit, while the polytheistic error of the Greek school is made to vanish by the unity of the [divine] nature abrogating this notion of plurality. Yet again, of the Jewish conception, let the unity of the nature stand; and of the Greek only the distinctions as to persons. It is as if the number of the Trinity were a remedy in the case of those who are in error as to the One, and the assertion of the unity for those whose beliefs are dispersed among a number of divinities" (Catechetical Orations, 3).

To combat the ardent and misguided monotheism of Judaism, Gregory appeals to the Word (the enfleshed Son of God in Jesus of Nazareth) and the coequal, coeternal Holy Spirit. Without these personal agents, the Father remains lacking because without an ontological community of persons, He cannot love without creation for there would be no one and no thing to love. To combat the speculative polytheism of Hellenism, Gregory similarly appeals to a Trinitarian principle, but one of unity.

Logopneumatika is a positive and profitable proposal because it adequately captures the diversity of the Godhead as Speaker (the Father), Message/Word (the Son), and Communicative Act (the Spirit) and the unity of their ontological and economic communication. Where philosophy and religion can help us understand the world of logopneumatika, it ought to be appropriated and employed. Where they differ, they must be destroyed.