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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Kenosis in the Life of the Trinity

....as the basis of everything else, including ecclesiology.

Mother Clement and I were discussing this just last evening...

"The Church and the Cross"

Some have posited that the kenosis, the self-emptying, spoken of Philippians 2:7 means that Christ, in becoming human, somehow set aside his Deity. No, not at all; rather, the Divine Nature itself is inherently kenotic: "God IS love".

2 comments:

Ttony said...

The post you link too is fascinating: how far would that point of view be considered as mainstream by the Orthodox. Fr Stephen says that the jurisdictions are a thing only of the last hundered years and minimises their importance (presumably the Bishop is the key figure) - but is that an extreme view?

FrGregACCA said...

I think he's speaking primarily about, and in reaction to, the jurisdictional mess in the Byzantine Orthodox "diaspora," particularly North America and secondarily, Western Europe. I'm sure that he would agree that each bishop is the focus of unity for each local Church. However, here too, this is not simply each bishop as diocesan "pope": for Orthodoxy, the Church is inherently counciliar and communal, from top to bottom.

As noted, my interest in this post is less about ecclesiology and more about trinitarian theology as such as well as its application to the questions to theology by human existence, which, of course, include ecclesiology, but are not confined to it.