dialectic skill in treating of the personal unity in Christ's twofold nature (which he conceived as enhypostasis, not anhypostasis, of the human nature in the Logos), of the communicatio idiomatum (which, however, amounts to merely a verbal one), and of volition and the operation of volition in Christ. This exposition of Christologj' is followed by controversial tracts against the Ace])hali : TTfpi avvSiiTOv (piaewQ ; and against the Monothelites : irepl tCjv iv Xpiorw dvo ^tKrifiaroii' Kct'i tvipyiuov kcii XotTTwv (pvfTtKuiv (O'lw/iarwv, etc. (comp. Baur, Gesch.d. Dreieinif/keit, ii, 17G sq. •, Christologie, ii, 257). {r/) Bap- Ham (which is allegorically represented as sevenfold) he holds to be necessary for the forgiveness of sin and for eternal life. Body and soiU, to be puritied and saved, need regeneration, which comes from the water and the Spirit. {]}) Faith " is the acceptance of the irapaSooiQ T>ic hKKXjjaiac Ka^oXtifijc, and of the teachings of Scrip- ture; it is also confidence in the fultilment of (iod's promises and in the efficacy of our prayers. The for- mer depends on ourselves, the latter is a gift of the Holy Spirit." On the relation of faith to works, on regener- ation and sanctitication, he but imperfectly repeats the Semipelagian views of the earlier CJreek teachers. His remarks on the cross and on adoration reflect the mirac- ulous spirit of the times, (i) The Euchai-ist John teaches to be the means by which God completes his comminiication of himself to man, and thus restores him to imnicirtality. Transubstantiation, in the full accep- tance of the term, he docs not teach, though Romanists have tried to interpret his writings in favor of their views. He admits, it is true, that the Eucharist is the actual body of Christ, but he does not consider it idenli- cul with that which was glorified in heaven, and does not deem the bread and wine mere accidental phenom- ena. (/) On Mart/, the Immaculate Conception, Relics, and the Worship of Images, he expresses himself more explicitly in separate treatises. The authority for ador- ing the cross, images, etc., he finds, not in Scripture, but in tradition, {k) In his remarks on the Scriptures he alludes simply, and that very briefly, to inspiration, and the value of Holy Writ, repeats the canon of the O. T. according to Epiphanius, and includes in the books of the N. T. the canons of the apostles according to the Trullan canon. Incidentally he also adverts to the four different formulas used in Scripture to designate Christ and the origin of evil, which he holds can neither be assigned to God, nor to an evil principle independent of God. Celibacy John attempts to vindicate by the Scriptures; he alludes to the abrogation of circumcision, to anti-Christ, resurrection, and the last judgment. These are the principal contents of John's main work. He has by no means done eipial justice to all its parts; the important questions of atonement, sin, grace, and the means of salvation, receive only a cursory notice. The style of his discourse, owing to the diversity of his sources, is not uniform ; while, for the most part, it has strength and fluency, it sometimes lapses into rhetorical prolixity and affectation. John was particularly in- clined to the philosophy' of Aristotle, and wrote various popular tracts, in which he collected and illustrated that philosopher's principles. He wrote also letters and treatises against heretics, especially against the IMani- ehaeans and Nestorians. His works have been collected by Le Quien under the title Opera omnia Bamasceni Joh. quce extant, etc., Gr. and Lat. (Yenet. 1748, 2 vols. 8vo). This edition contains 'K.i(pu\aia (pi\oao<piKa ; Tlipi a'nt'irrtwv ; "E/ct^otric c'tKpilSt'jC rtjg op^oSo'^ov rria- rfwc ; Upcg tovq ("ta/3aXXov-af rat; ayiaQ ttKih'ac ; AilStXXoQ TTipi op^ou Trpovoi]paTOQ ; Ttl/iof ; K«rd 'M.avixaiuiv AiaXoyoQ ; AidXoyoQ 'S.apaKrfvuv Kcd 'S.pKTTiavov ; Tltpi CpaKovTwv ; Hfoi uyiag TpidSoc ; IIspl roij TOKTayiov vnvov ; Tiipi twv ciyiwv vi]aTiiwv ; Tltpl Tioi' OKToj r/)c 7roi')]ptag Ttviv^idrtxyv ; EiVnywyj) doyfiaTuM' <Troixei^<'^>lQ ! Hfpi trtn'^krov (pvaewQ ; Tlipi Tiov iv rfp Xpi<T-<iJ cvo SrtXr))idTii)v Kai tvtpytiwv Kai XoiTTiov (pi'fTtKuiv Icuofinriov • "Eirog aKpifUnraroi' Kara ^toarvyoijf; aiuiatiog rwv 'SttTTopiavwv ; Ha(r\dXiov ;
Aoyoc dTToStiKTiKog -mpl rwv cty'iwv Kai (tstttojv iiico- v(ut> ; Hefji twv di^viXiov ; 'lepa ■jrapdXXtjXa, etc.
John of Damascus is now generally regarded as one of the ablest men of the Greek Church in the 8th cen- tury; but he by no means, on that account, deserves to be honored with the title of "philosopher." He was not an independent inquirer, but simply " an acute and diligent compiler and expounder of what others had thought, and the Church received." " He was," as an American ecclesiastic has well put it, " in design, meth- od, and spirit, the precursor of the scholastic theologi- ans. They, indeed, lived iii another quarter of the globe from Syria, spoke a different language, and drew their materials from a different soiu-ce. With them Augustine was the chief authority, whereas Damas- cenus followed Gregory of Nazianzum and other Greek fathers as his principal guides. The spirit of the age no doubt acted in a similar way upon both. It was considered unsafe, both in a religious and in a civil point of view, to think differently from the Church and its reverend teachers. In the West, as well as in the East, Aristotle had come to be regarded as an oracle. These circumstances may account, in part, for the simi- larity which we perceive both in the Greek theologian and in Peter of Lombardy, the first great ccholastic the- ologian of the Latin Church. But no one who has com- pared the orthodox faith of the one with the sentences of the other can well doubt that some of the early trans- lations of the former were employed in the composition of the latter. It cannot, probably, be far from the truth to say that, while Augustine is the father of the scho- lastic theology as to the matter of it, the learned Greek of Damascus was the father of it as to its form."