NATURE

NATURE. Nature, in Greek physis, played a singular and highly controversial role in the Christological (q.v.) debates of the 5th-7th c. Analogous to the English word nature, physis could be used to convey both an abstract sense, as in “human nature,” or a concrete personality, as in “so-in-so has a gentle nature.” The confusion in the centuries of debate lay in the fact that both senses were in use. Cyril of Alexandria (q.v.) prefers the concrete sense. Hence the significance for him of the phrase, “one nature of God the Word incarnate,” is the concrete unity of Christ in his person. The Tome of Leo (q.v.), on the other hand, uses it abstractly, thus the “two natures” in Christ of divinity and humanity. Turned around, however, Cyril’s formula can be read to mean the disappearance of Christ’s humanity in his divinity, while Leo’s formula can be-and was-read as advocating two Christs. Virtually the same difficulty applied in the Trinitarian debates of the 4th c. with the terms ousia (essence) and hypostasis (person). Both could mean either abstract being, in general, or concretely existing things. The final adjudication regarding these terms may be found in Joh n of Damascus’s (q.v.) summary, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, where hypostasis alone is assigned the meaning of a specifically existing thing, while ousia and physis are equated with each other as signifying the abstract. (See Christology; Cosmology; Trinity.)