[refsherne]

Er … hello …
Um … I thought originally I was being balanced in my view of the priesthood and sacraments. I did not seek to be (jovially!) controversial - but am happy to oblige! Ah, this has made my month!

Please do not misunderstand me, but I think there has been a misunderstanding!

I will post my reply concerning the priesthood and sacraments in another post, but for now I will concentrate on the following:

It is not possible to define Church as deification. Deification is an ascetical act, or rather, the fruit of ascetical life, that brings one into communion with Christ himself. It is not a thing, or a group, or a community, or an identity: it is an act of communion with and in Christ. The Church is this Christ's body, which feeds and fosters this process of deifying life through Christ's presence in his creation.
The moment we start calling the Church deification, Christ is fundamentally depersonalised.
INXC, Dcn Matthew

Apart from splitting hairs I agree with you [er … deification is a divine act!! However, to be united worthily with God will indeed involve purification by cooperating with the deifying grace itself. Indeed someone wrote near your post that "we have to be careful in how we speak of these awesome things so as not to be led astray" … but I know what you meant!]. All I meant to say was that the Church - being Christ’s Body of which we are a part (and also a ‘whole’, being in each other?) - is made up of us who by being united with Christ are also deified. The way I put it might have been imprecise, but two can make that mistake …

In addition to Fr Matthew's comments, I would also like to emphasize that the incarnate Christ is not an angel. The angels are a distinct creation and are by definition non-corporeal, thus it is not possible for an angel to be incarnate and remain an angel - it would be a violation of his very nature. The Incarnate Christ is true God of true God and fully man as well - no mention of "angels" here.

I can split hairs, physicists can split the atom, but no one can split Christ from God: there never was a time when the Son of God was not! As my prayer book states (probably quoting a standard text): "From a Virgin didst Thou come, not as an ambassador, nor as an angel, but the very Lord Himself incarnate, and didst save me, the whole man. Wherefore I cry to Thee: Glory to Thy power, O Lord".

From the above:
The only father I know of to speak of Christ explicitly as angel is St Justin the Philosopher (second century), who uses this title for the Word at various places.

I do know of one minor Father who, writing to distinguish between the ministry of angels and Christ, says, "Who was the Angel who said to Moses, ‘I am that I am [LXX The Being], the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob’, if not the Son of God, as the great Basil told us?" (St Gregory Palamas in "A study of Gregory Palamas", John Meyendorff, page 192; the reference to St Basil as being ‘great’ has long troubled scholars - as almost no one has heard of him - as has the hieroglyphic reference for his work: Contra Eunom. II, 18, P.G. XXXIX, 609B. The mention of ‘PG’ has led some to speculate that he was a tea drinker, as opposed to someone called Eunom who probably wasn’t).

Indeed the minor prophet Malachi says that, "Behold, I will send my messenger [angel], and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger [angel] of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts" (Mal 3:1). The gospels of Matthew and Mark directly quote from this verse.

There is also another possible reference to this ‘Angel of the Covenant’ Who said of Himself, "I am The Being" (as quoted above). On Orthodox Icons of Christ appear the cryptic letters ‘W’, ‘O’, ‘N’. Scholars are divided as to their meaning: most hold that the letters refer to the word ‘won’ because Christ ‘won’ the victory over sin and death, however others say that they refer to ‘own’ (reading from top then from left to right) because Christ ‘owns’ us as we "were bought at a price" (1 Cor 7:23).

Nevertheless, there exists a minority of scholars who actually believe that these three letters are from the Greek alphabet, and that the refer to the words "ὁ ὤν" (in capitals O WN), the Greek for "The Being" spoken by the Angel of the Lord who appeared to Moses. If this is true - and it is only a vague possibility - then Christ would be proclaimed to be the Angel of the Lord - that Angel who became incarnate - on almost every icon!

As such, it seems problematic to speak of 'the Angel now known as the Incarnate Christ', as this seems to speak of a type of being: one who is an angel, then becomes incarnate.

To conclude, I do not say merely, "the Angel now known as the Incarnate Christ", but "the Angel of the Lord, the Angel now known as the Incarnate Christ". By using the term "Angel of the Lord" from the Old Testament I merely wanted to emphasise the ancientness of deification in the Church.

"You say potato, I say potato": you read ‘angel’ where I write ‘Angel’!!

Richard