05 — Person and Nature

The distinction between the person (hypostasis) and the individual is Lossky’s most influential single idea and his most contested. Person, on his account, is not a part or a property of nature but that which is irreducible to nature: the “who” that possesses a nature and cannot be reduced to it. Transposed from Trinitarian theology into anthropology, the claim reshaped Orthodox thinking about the human being — and it is precisely here that current patristic scholarship has pushed back hardest.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration)

What This Section Covers

The first file sets out the distinction itself: its Trinitarian origin, its transposition to anthropology, its ethical and ascetical consequences, and its extraordinary afterlife in Zizioulas, Yannaras, Sophrony and others. It also records, from Lossky’s own pen, the striking admission that he had not found an elaborated doctrine of the human person in patristic theology — an admission which both his critics and his defenders have made much of.

The second file follows chapter 6 of the Mystical Theology and the essay “The Theology of the Image”: the patristic distinction between image and likeness, what in the human being the image consists in, the fall as a disorder of person and nature, and the theology of the two wills that Lossky takes from St. Maximus.

Section 08 carries the criticism at length; this section states the position in its own terms, notes the principal objections, and hands the argument on.

Files

File Description
Person versus Individual The distinction, its Trinitarian ground, its anthropological transposition, its influence, and Lossky’s own reservation
The Image and the Likeness Image and likeness; what the image is; person, nature and will after Maximus; the fall and redemption

See Also