Council of Chalcedon is an actual closing point for Christology and a starting point for anthropology. Behind the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon,together with later clarifications added by the Second and the Third Councils of Constantinople, there were centuries of dispute between the School of Alexandria and the School of Antioch about the person and natures of Christ (4th/5th – 7th centuries). Therefore the light shed on the man by patristic Christology concerns understanding of his being a person and his nature. The analysis of the Council’s teachings of faith shows that these two concepts belong to two different areas which means that every man, following the man Jesus, is a person whose dignity is on a different level than his natural features (mind, will, consciousness, etc.) – in other words, it originates from transcendence. Simultaneously, person is a relational reality because it puts a man in a relation with God in which the nature can be improved, the nature whose essence – since it was adopted by Logos – is to be capax Dei, or ability to grow in following Christ.
Is man capax Dei? Zofia J. Zdybicka answers this question drawing on the entire tradition of classical philosophy which culminates in St. Thomas Aquinas. She considers the problem from the perspective of: (1) man who transcends the precariousness of human nature by his specific capabilities (intellectual knowing, loving, ability to freedom and religion); (2) faculties of the human soul (reason and will) which condition man’s disposition to knowing and loving God; (3) the metaphisical necessity for God to exist as the Supreme Truth and Good. The article concludes with threefold thesis. First, man is capax Dei because—within his capabilities which make him go beyond the entire world of beings (cosmos)—he is open to the Supreme Truth and Supreme Good. Secondly, man is capax Dei because—through his soul’s faculties fittingly developed (recta ratio and recta voluntas)—he can succeed in cognizing and loving God. Thirdly, man is capax Dei because God (the Supreme Truth and Good)—as proven by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Forth Way in particular—really exists.
Wychowanie do prawdziwie chrześcijańskiej modlitwy będzie zawsze polegało na tym, co jasno wyłożył św. Paweł w swojej olśniewającej carmen Christo: „Niech was ożywiają uczucia znamienne dla Jezusa Chrystusa” (por. Flp 2,5). Z dalszych wersetów wynika, jakie: miłość, dobroć, pokora, posłuszeństwo wobec Boga, dar z siebie. O moralność chodzi tu wtórnie (co nie znaczy: nieistotnie), pierwszorzędnie zaś o to, by myśleć, działać i kochać jak Jezus, w Nim i dla Niego. Bo Kościół jest wspólnotą zjednoczoną na modlitwie z Jezusem
EN
Ratzinger shows christological specifi city of Christian prayer against the background of the universal phenomenon of prayer based on existential imperative of human transcendental search for sense and longing for the Other. First of all, it consists not so much in the specifi c spiritual practice as a moral duty, as it has an ontological source. Jesus convinces of that on the pages of the Gospel, when He reveals the very essence of intertrinitary relations in His man’s prayer (both in its content and form) to His Father. The essential relationship between love and submission, adoratio and proskynesis, expressed by the filial communion with the Father’s will, also in the time of death, is a salutary ‘yes’ for us of God’s promises and defi nes what human piety actually is. Christian prayer consists in participating in the prayers of Jesus and – as such – it constitutes the foundation and essential experience of the Church.
Ratzinger shows christological specificity of Christian prayer against the background of the universal phenomenon of prayer based on existential imperative of human transcendental search for sense and longing for the Other. First of all, it consists not so much in the specific spiritual practice as a moral duty, as it has an ontological source. Jesus convinces of that on the pages of the Gospel, when He reveals the very essence of intertrinitary relations in His man’s prayer (both in its content and form) to His Father. The essential relationship between love and submission, adoratio and proskynesis, expressed by the filial communion with the Father’s will, also in the time of death, is a salutary ‘yes’ for us of God’s promises and defines what human piety actually is. Christian prayer consists in participating in the prayers of Jesus and – as such – it constitutes the foundation and essential experience of the Church.
PL
Wychowanie do prawdziwie chrześcijańskiej modlitwy będzie zawsze polegało na tym, co jasno wyłożył św. Paweł w swojej olśniewającej carmen Christo: „Niech was ożywiają uczucia znamienne dla Jezusa Chrystusa” (por. Flp 2,5). Z dalszych wersetów wynika, jakie: miłość, dobroć, pokora, posłuszeństwo wobec Boga, dar z siebie. O moralność chodzi tu wtórnie (co nie znaczy: nie-istotnie), pierwszorzędnie zaś o to, by myśleć, działać i kochać jak Jezus, w Nim i dla Niego. Bo Kościół jest wspólnotą zjednoczoną na modlitwie z Jezusem.
The article is an analysis of the cathegory of Presence in the context of religion. The scope is to show the phenominon of presence as a fundamental cathegory in the aspect of religious existence. Article mentions definitions of presense known in both classical and modern philosophy. Especially interesting for the work is the concept of God’s presence through: the word, the Providence, the world and the mystical experience. The matter of God’s presence is complemented by analisys of God’s secrecy often discussed in the religious literature, especially in the theologhy of spirituality. The text is featuring reciprocal correlation, dialectics of both terms and the consequences for the spiritual life. There are mentioned antropological conditions of the posibility for religious relationship, especailly relationship in which the essence is the presence – that are: capax Dei (man’s ability (and need) to relate to the Divine) and quaerere Deum (man’s ability (and need) to seak for Divine).
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