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Chapter One: Eschatology and Ontology
to the patristic period and still in use in the Orthodox Church. In the prayer of the Anaphora of these liturgies, God the Father is ad- dressed as ὁ ὤν: thou who Art (Basil), “ineffable ... ever being, being always the same (ἀεὶ ὤν, ὡσαύτως ὤν)” (Chrysostom). Similarly, in Byzantine iconography, the capital letters Ο ΩΝ appear on the top of the figure of Christ (sometimes also of the Father whenever he is depicted) as an indication of his divinity. This is still found in the Greek Orthodox churches, usually on the three ends of the Cross where the three letters appear in the halo.
This consistent application of ontological categories to theology by the Greek fathers contained risks which ought to be avoided. The Parmenedian identification of being (εἶναι) with knowing (νοεῖν) could lead to the false conclusion that the human mind can grasp and conceive God in his essence. Ontology should be, therefore, dis- tinguished from gnoseology, and the affirmation that God is should exclude the knowledge of what (τί) God is, his nature or essence (φύσις or οὐσία). Ontology, thus, acquires certain inner distinctions which the Cappadocian fathers, in particular, develop as a general rule: in speaking of being we must distinguish between what someone or something is and how one is12 (i.e., the nature or ousia of being and the mode of being); substance ontology cannot state anything other than God simply is . However, being does not exclusively refer to what God is (his substance); it points also to how he is, to his hypostases or persons (Father, Son, and Spirit). God’s substance is not accessible to us except through the energies it radiates by his creative and sanctify- ing love,13 while his hypostases offer themselves to us for communion with divine being, above all in the Incarnation. Ontology, therefore, can be applied to theology only in the form of being as communion .14
The unknowableness of God’s substance, therefore, does not an- nul the use of ontology in theology; it only calls for a rejection of substance ontology as a means of communion with God and knowl- edge of him and for a revision of ontology which would bring out the mode of being rather than its substance as the most appropriate ground
12 Basil, С . Eunom . 14–15 (PG 29:545AB) and Gregory Naz., Or . 3.16 (PG 36:93AB).
13 See J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1979),
p. 186f, about the relevant patristic teaching.
14 See my Being as Communion, pp. 15–48. –66–