The abstract of On the Holy Spirit reads:
The only way for creation to be saved and deified is through communion with the uncreated. This communion is the work of the Holy Spirit, who is ‘life-giving’. Life and communion coincide only in the realm of the uncreated, since in creation death overcomes communion. The Spirit gives true life because he is uncreated and the communion he offers comes ‘from above’, from the uncreated God. The description of the Holy Spirit as ‘life-giver’ is another way of saying that he is God, this truth put in soteriological terms. On this description hangs the entire existential significance of the Pneumatology
Another good quote:
For the first time in the history of philosophy, particularly of Greek thought, we have an identification of an ontological category, such as hypostasis, with a notion, such as Person. In classical antiquity, both Greek and Roman, these terms always remained clearly separate and distinct. Hypostasis was identical with substance or ousia, and indicated that something is, and that it is itself, while prospon indicated, in a variety of nuances and forms, the way something relates the other beings. By calling the Person a ‘mode of being’ (tropos hyparxeos) the Cappadocians introduced a revolution into Greek ontology, since they said for the first time in history that a) prosopon, is not secondary to being, but is its hypostasis; and b) a hypostasis, ie an ontological category, is relational in its very nature, it is prosopon. The importance of this lies in the fact that Person is now the ultimate ontological category we can apply to God. Substance is not something ontological prior to Person (no classical Greek would say this), but its real existence is to be found in the Person.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Clifton at April 13, 2005 06:30 AM | TrackBack