Samuel Rutherford on Efficacious Grace in Conversion

 

"God ordinarily contributes two causes to the work of conversion, one moral and one physical. These are outlined in the Examen, shortly after Rutherford asked whether God’s work of conversion is only moral, consisting merely in persuasion, invitation, promises and commands, or whether God’s work also consists in a real and physical predetermination of the will. Moral influences such as those outlined above are given by grace alone, in that the sinner does not deserve to be persuaded and invited by God, nor does the sinner have a right to hear the Gospel. In addition to this, Rutherford considered such graces to be ineffectual without a physical predetermination of the will. “It is hard to affirm,” he wrote in the Trial and Triumph of Faith, “that all who are prepared with these preparations of order are infallibly converted.” Nevertheless, such moral influences are part of God’s ordinary way of effecting the work of conversion, where moral influences are understood to act upon the mind and the will prior to God’s physical determination of the will. Whereas God’s moral influences are ineffectual and subjective, God’s physical acts regarding conversion are effectual and objective. The physical nature of converting grace may be understood in two ways. First, God’s converting grace is said to be physical, objective, and real, in that a new heart is actually given to the converted sinner and new powers are really granted to the will. Second, the physical nature of efficacious grace is emphasized by God physically predetermining certain acts associated with walking in obedience to God’s commands (Deut 8.6)........God’s efficacious grace, which predetermines physical acts of assent, belief, and will, provide the sufficient condition to which the good intentions of a converted saint may be joined." (Robert C. Sturdy, Freedom from Fatalism: Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)'s Doctrine of Divine Providence [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021], pgs. 301-302)

Leontius of Jerusalem on Defining Hypostasis

 

One of the crucial neo-Chalcedonian theologians is the sixth-century writer Leontius of Jerusalem. He is known especially (along with Leontius of Byzantium) for formulating the doctrine of enhypostasis and explaining how the human nature of Christ exists in union with the single person of the Word. He is known for he is technicality and comprehensiveness in defining key ontological and metaphysical concepts and terms that were being used in the christological controversies of the 5th and 6th centuries, whether against the Nestorians, or the Monophysites who were at the time being led by Severus of Antioch. 

Kenneth Warren Wersche did his doctoral dissertation on the christology of Leontius of Jerusalem and how it relates to his soteriology. He has several sections on the concept of hypostasis which were quite helpful to me and which I thought I should quote and make a summary and analysis of in this article. I will be utilizing Aloys Grillmeier as well (Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 2, Pt. II, pgs. 276-282).

To begin with, we ought to hear from Leontius himself:

“Hypostasis also refers to when particular, different natures, together with their properties but not their prosopa, come together (τίνων συνελθουσον φύσεων διαφόρων ίδικων) in union in the same thing under one existence (ύφ’ έν στάσις). That is to say, there occurs a particular "standing together" (σΰοτασίς) which belongs to one single individual (ένδς µόνου άτοµου). It is also generally agreed that hypostasis refers to the coming together not of different natures, but of many particular properties (ιδιωµάτων µερικών) by themselves, from all of which is constituted one universal property in one particular subject, or in one single nature.” (Leontius of Jerusalem, Adversus Nestorianos, 2.1; in PG 86:1529) 

In that same passage, Leontius also writes that "[hypostasis is] that which shows the concrete individual thing (ὑποκείμενον ἄτομον τόδε τι) in its existence (πρὸς τῇ συστάσει) and as set off from all other things, whether of the same or of a different substance, by its specific mark (κατὰ τὸ ἰδικὸν γνωριστήριον); it is, as such, a detachment (ἀπόστασίς τις) and a limitation of unlimited being (διορισμὸς τῶν ἀδιορίστων οὐσιῶν) into the personal singularity of each one. This is why the Fathers considered, and called it, person (prosopon)." 

For Leontius’ doctrine, “one should note carefully that the term hypostasis itself is not the coming together of natures, or of properties, but it is itself that in which the στάσις or σύστασίς is observed. In other words, the hypostasis itself is not a union or a coming together, but it is that in which the union or coming together takes place.” (Kenneth Warren Wesche, “The Defense of Chalcedon in the 6th Century: The Doctrine of ‘Hypostasis’ and Deification in the Christology of Leontius of Jerusalem,” [PhD diss., Fordham University, New York, 1986), pg. 52)

Wesche postulates that Leontius of Jerusalem is basically teaching that hypostasis is the ontological reality which is the ground or basis for the union of natures and/or respective properties. It is the underlying reality or “that in which the union takes place.” In this schema, there is a dependence of substance on hypostasis, which is why it is possibly for two natures to exist in a single hypostasis. 

A key emphasis here is that hypostasis is not the same thing as a “particular nature.” This would lead to Nestorianism and tritheism. 

According to Leontius of Jerusalem, the principle of hypostasis (rather than nature) is to exist in distinction and separation from other natures (Adversus Nestorianos, 2.7). This is why a Nestorian doctrine of two hypostases in Christ destroys any possibility of an incarnation and personal union, since two hypostases by definition “stand away from each other” and are thus opposed in that sense. No union is possible in such a situation.

Leontius distinguishes the hypostasis from that which constitutes it (natures and properties). He speaks of properties as belonging more properly to natures, but accruing to the hypostasis and being manifested in the hypostasis. 

One particularly interesting claim of Leontius is that natures and accidents do not exist as 'parts' of the hypostasis as such, only the particular properties (idiomata) do:

"Neither ousiai, nor accidents, nor the substantial properties belong to the substantial hypostasis as parts, but [only] things that are seen individually in a particular object (ἐν τῷδε τινι), whether from the ousia or around the ousia or even from elsewhere in and around [the hypostasis]." (Adversus Nestorianos, 1.6, in PG 86:1421)

To illustrate an instance of how Leontius' metaphysics play out, Johannes Zachhuber gives the following analogy:

"To say that Peter is a human being would then be no different from saying that Peter is healthy or tall or irascible. If this seems counterintuitive, it should be recalled that Leontius reconstructs insubsistence Christology in this precise sense. The eternal hypostasis of the Logos receives, in time, another nature into its own existence. This neither modifies divine nature nor, fundamentally, the divine hypostasis even though it completes its individual property." (Johannes Zachhuber, The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappodocian Fathers to John of Damascus [Oxford University Press, 2020], pg. 265)

This of course leads to a huge concept in Leontius' view of hypostasis: the individual overarching property (idioma). The hypostasis has particular properties, but in order to be formally "one" hypostasis (which, I would argue, is for Leontius basically the same as being a hypostasis simpliciter, because he viewed the formal ratio of hypostasis as an individual subject separate and opposed to other hypostases and/or beings) it has to have this individual property. For example, in the case of the divine persons in the Holy Trinity, Leontius wrote: "These are several simple properties of the same hypostasis. From all of them, however, one composite property is conceptualized, of the fatherly or filial hypostasis." (Adversus Nestorianos, 1.20, in PG 86:1485)

It should be briefly noted in passing that Leontius is not teaching the same doctrine as Damian of Alexandria, who thought that the hypostasis is the particular property.