Monthly Archives: April 2013

The Ontological Entropy of the Zizioulian Universe

Posted on 18 April 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“Existence is relentlessly threatened by death,” writes Met John Zizioulas. “To say that the world is created, in other words that ‘there was a time when it was not,’ does not simply mean that it could just as well not … Continue reading →

Posted in Zizioulas & Yannaras | Tagged , , , , , , , | 32 Comments

John Zizioulas and the Created-Uncreated Dialectic

Posted on 16 April 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Well over twenty years ago, on the urging of Fr Stephen Freeman, I purchased and read Being as Communion by John Zizioulas. I was most interested in Zizioulas’s ecclesiological writings, but I was perhaps most challenged by his reflections on … Continue reading →

Posted in Zizioulas & Yannaras | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

St Athanasius: The Death of Death in the Death of God

Posted on 15 April 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“For the Word, realizing that in no other way would the corruption of human beings be undone except, simply, by dying …” (Inc. 9). St Athanasius the Great knows this to be true, not through philosophical reflection or even biblical … Continue reading →

Posted in Athanasius | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 55 Comments

St Athanasius: Substitutionary Atonement and the Dilemma of Death

Posted on 13 April 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“For Athanasius,” writes Khaled Anatolios, “the history of humanity since the fall of Adam is the story of an accumulating momentum of decline which was bound to lead to humanity’s utter destruction. Because sin inverts the divinely ordained anthropological dialectic … Continue reading →

Posted in Athanasius | Tagged , , , , , , | 12 Comments

St Athanasius: The Surd of Sin and the Expulsion from Paradise

Posted on 11 April 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

The creatio ex nihilo is inconceivable. We cannot think nothing. We cannot conceptualize nothing. We cannot imagine nothing. Nothing is neither a something nor the emptiness between somethings. Nothing is not the “stuff” from which God has made the world. … Continue reading →

Posted in Athanasius | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

St Athanasius: The Nothingness of the World

Posted on 5 April 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

It may come as a surprise to most Orthodox and Catholic believers that the ecumenical dogma that God created the world from “out of nothing” (creatio ex nihilo) is now disputed by some theologians in the name of the Bible—at … Continue reading →

Posted in Athanasius | Tagged , , , , | 30 Comments

St Athanasius: The Fall of Man into the Body

Posted on 4 April 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Humanity was originally created to rejoice in God, knowing the Father through the Son in the Spirit. In this knowledge and communion humanity would have enjoyed immortal, incorruptible life. But something went awry and a spanner was thrown into the … Continue reading →

Posted in Athanasius | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments

St Athanasius: The Creation of Humanity in the Image of the Image

Posted on 4 April 2013 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“In the beginning wickedness did not exist,” writes St Athanasius of Alexandria. In the beginning God the Father created human being in the image of his Image, that is to say, in the image of the eternal Word who would … Continue reading →

Posted in Athanasius | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments