Thursday, December 25, 2008
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
"May he who, for the sake of our salvation, was born in a cave and lay in a manger, Christ our True God, through the prayers of his most pure Mother; of the holy, glorious, and all-laudable Apostles; of our Holy and God-bearing forebears; of the holy and righteous ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna; and of all the Saints, have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and loveth humanity. Amen." - Blessing at the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy for the Nativity of Christ, Byzantine Rite
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7 comments:
May this Nativity be especially blessed for you and your loved ones.
You said on Arturo Vasquez's blog more than half an year ago that "Adam Kadmon is the Logos" -- which is true. -- How did You know that? :-\ -- That again, seeing Alice C. Linsley leaving comments on Your blog, I'm not surprised! :)
(Hi, Alice!) :-)
... and the Sephiroth are the Logoi.
Lucian: I'm not sure why I shouldn't know this. However, identifying "sephiroth" with "logoi" is problemmatic, from a Christian perspective in that the only "emanations" from the unmanifest God are personal: the Word/Son and Holy Spirit, and, given that, "logoi", in the plural, would have to be created.
No, according to the Fathers, the Logos is the hypostatic sum of all of God's logoi. Just like Adam Kadmon is the 10 Sephiroth (10, as a monad, being a symbol of Infinity, because there is no shortage to the number of God's graces or energies). Christ is THE Power of God, and the sum of all His powers. -- why should these Patristic statements, which also share a strange and curious commonality with Judaism, be in any way problematic? :-\
Lucian:
I'm not sure which patristic statements you are referring to, but the problem is that, as you say, Christ, THE Logos, is THE power of God, a single hypostasis. Within Kabballa, there seems to be a tendency to hypostasize/reify the various attributes and/or "energies" of God. For Orthodox trinitarian Christian theology, there are precisely Three Divine Hypostases/Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Well, that may be true, but it is interesting that they gather them all together in the one person of Adam Kadmon. From this perspective they resemble us a great deal. But there might probably also be some differences there. I wasn't alluding to a particular or isolated Patristical statement; all the Fathers speak of the Logos and of the logoi.
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