Symeon the new theologian biography

The Study of Spirituality, ed. Cheslyn, Wainwright, Yarnold
(Oxford University Press, ) pp.

‘He became man that we might be made god’; he became ‘incarnate’ that we might be ‘ingodded’.

So St Athanasius of Alexandria sums up the message of salvation in Christ (De Incarnatione, 54). The Eastern Orthodox tradition has sought to give full emphasis to both parts of his statement. ‘He became man’: the implications of this were explored more especially by the Greek Fathers from the fourth to the seventh centuries.

Symeon the new theologian biography wikipedia

What does it mean to affirm that Jesus Christ is fully God, truly human, and yet a single undivided person? It was in response to this three-sided question that the first six Ecumenical Councils, from Nicaea I () to Constantinople III (), developed the classic expression of Trinitarian theology and Christology.

In the centuries that followed, the main focus of attention shifted from the first to the second part of Athanasius’ dictum: ‘. . . that we might b