I recently read a disagreeable post by a certain member who argued that Christ was without gender before His Nativity and after the Ascension, and that the Divine Logos is neccessarily devoid of gender. Aside from being contrary to the formularies, this view also alarmed me because it was Nestorian, and in debating with this chap, no one seemed to catch this heretical aspect. Essentially, Nestorianism says the divine hypostasis of our Lord and the human hypostasis are separate, in a personal union, or in its more extreme forms, says that our Lord consists of two persons, the divine Logos, and the man Jesus, in a semi-adoptionist union of will. Chalcedonian theology in contrast posits the human and divine natures of our Lord are in hypostatic union, and Cyrillian Miaphysite theology expressed the same concept but substitutes the word nature for hypostasis, so our Lord has a human and divine nature that is not composite, without change, confusion, or separation. With both models, there exists a principle of communicatio idiomatum in which attributes proper to one nature are applied to the other, owing to the hypostatic or natural union. Thus, if our Lord is male in the flesh, he is male in His divinity, and always has been and always will be, owing to divine impassability (“God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow”). The only way to have a genderless Logos and a male Christ is to make recourse to the Nestorian heresy and reject hypostatic union and communicatio idiomatum. And this throws a wrench into soteriology, because a man in a union of will with the Logos or a personal union of a divine and human hypostasis is not God incarnate, and the incarnation facilitates the passion, resurrection and glorification of fallen humanity, since only God in His perfection can glorify the human race and trample down death by death. Only God can bear the weight of our sins on the Cross. ~ Even worse is the blasphemous crucifix depicting Christ as a woman at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, which simply ignores the scriptural text and implements a make-believe religion commonly referred to as “Womanist Theology”, a nasty recent heresy.
Not totally on topic but I was in another forum a couple of weeks ago wherein was being discussed the most desirable ecumenical partners for Continuing Anglicans. The Copts were mentioned (as if they're the only Oriental Orthodox/non-Chalcedonian church out there). One participant piped up: "They're monophysite! We can't talk to heretics." To which my response is always: stop, no more talking from you, go read a book and educate yourself.
Indeed. Orthodox Christology by Fr. Peter Farrington is a good start. By the way, correct me if I am confusing you with someone else, but didn’t you spend some time in the Syriac Orthodox church?
I never said they were. Indeed, I don't think anyone outside of the Union of Scranton is at the present time. And that proposition is controversial. Let me explain though: until we can achieve some sort of broad unity in our own ranks, it's totally reasonable for these large groups to ignore us. They should! Much of the Continuum is an embarrassment to the High Priestly Prayer and common decency. The Union of Scranton is comparable in size to the larger continuing churches. But that there are continuing CHURCHES (ie. competing jurisdictions) is a travesty which is slowly being remediated.
To be fair, so is the EO-OO schism. Everyone is in schism. And it is all so sordid and nasty. Church politics are awful. St. Clement said that schism, by itself, for political reasons, is worse than heresy.
With the cultural tsunami coming our way we need to get our acts to together and form strong unions and intercommunions. It might be our only way.