Scott Brightwell dot Org

The four adverbs used to qualify the mystery of the hypostatic union belong to our common tradition - without commingling (or confusion) (asyngchytos), without change (atreptos), without separation (achoristos) and without division (adiairetos).

Those among us who speak of two natures in Christ, do not thereby deny their inseparable, indivisible union; those among us who speak of one united divine-human nature in Christ do not thereby deny the continuing dynamic presence in Christ of the divine and the human, without change, without confusion.

Our mutual agreement is not limited to Christology, but encompasses the whole faith of the one undivided church of the early centuries. We are agreed also in our understanding of the Person and Work of God the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father alone, and is always adored with the Father and the Son.

The British Orthodox Church has on their website the documents agreed to by the East and the Orient regarding their commonly held beliefs. Within those documents it states that language misunderstandings — not actual heresy — split the Orthodox Church long ago.

May God heal what man has split asunder.

What is my praise before Thee? I have not heard the cherubim singing,
that is the lot of souls sublime,
but I know how nature praises thee.

In winter I have thought about the whole earth praying quietly to Thee in the
silence of the moon,
wrapped around in a mantle of white,
sparkling with diamonds of snow.

I have seen how the rising sun rejoiced in Thee,
and choirs of birds sang forth glory.

I have heard how secretly the forest noises Thee abroad,
how the winds sing,
the waters gurgle,
how the choirs of stars preach of Thee
in serried motion through unending space.

A poem written by Archpriest Grigori Petrov (Gregory Petrov) shortly
before his death in a Siberian prison camp in 1942.

A common image for popular accounts of the “The Mind” is a brain in a bell jar. The message is that inside that disembodied lump of neural tissue is everything that is you.

It’s a scary image but misleading. A far more dangerous idea is that brains cannot become minds without bodies, that two-way interactions between mind and body are crucial to thought and health, and the brain may partly think in terms of the motor actions it encodes for the body’s muscles to carry out. Alun Anderson

www.edge.org is presenting thinkers around the world this year with the question “What is your dangerous idea?” Many of the psychologists’ answers are variations of “there is no God,” but many contributers deal with issues of science, society, and the person.

The above is very similar to Orthodox Christian view of the integrated nature of the “person.” We often speak of the mind, body, and soul as if they were distinct and separate, but they’re not. They’re aspects of the single hypostasis that is each person. There is no “mind” separate from the “body.” The “soul” is as integral to the body and the mind as they are to it. They’re inseparable. That’s why “death” is such an unnatural condition and is the ultimate conclusion of the sickness of sin (which fundamentally is our desire to individuate ourselves from the source of live.. God).