Name-Worshippers in Their Own Words Vs. The Holy Fathers

WHAT A NAME-GLORIFIER IS

A study by Nicholas Snogren

 “Even if bishops are driven from their Churches, be not dismayed. If traitors have arisen from among the very clergy themselves, let not this undermine your confidence in God. We are saved not by names, but by mind and purpose, and genuine love toward our Creator.”

St. Basil the Great: Letter CCLVII, To the monks harassed by the Arians

 "If, then, one who speaks of the Son does not by that word refer to a creature, he is on our side and not on the enemy's; but if any one applies the name of Son to the creation, he is to be ranked among idolaters.” 

St. Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, S:8

Because of the confusion over the subject of God’s name, and the disinformation being spread about it (that Name-glorifiers don’t really believe the Name of God is God), it seemed prudent to supply the Faithful with an exact definition.

This article contains definitions of the Name-glorifiers from articles written by a prominent Name-glorifier, Tatiana Senina; as well as quotes from Anthony Bulatovich himself. Bulatovich was the principle Name-glorifier ‘theologian’. These definitions are then contrasted to direct quotes from the Holy Fathers of the Church.

PART I. WHAT THE NAME-GLORIFIERS SAY THEY BELIEVE.

To begin, here are quotes taken from Tatiana Senina’s article on Name-glorifiying. All quotes are from her and the author of their doctrine, Anthony Bulatovich, and can be found here (accessed September 11 new-style, 2012)

“The formula ‘The Name of God is God Himself’ may indeed seem strange to one unfamiliar with patristic doctrine or with the practice of noetic prayer. In my opinion, this formula evoked and continues to evoke misunderstanding because people are accustomed to understand as ‘names’ only conventional signs and symbols that could of course not be identified with the object named.”

 Tatiana Senina: Name-Glorifying or Name-Worshipping?

The essential definition of a Name-glorifier is the belief that the Name of God is God. Let’s see how she breaks down the statement for those of us who are “unfamiliar with patristic doctrine or noetic prayer.” She continues:

“…We are obligated to explain how the Holy Fathers understood the Names of God and what they taught about prayer, and then compare their teaching with the teaching of the name-glorifiers and then decide whether the former is a heresy… Indeed, if we were considering a teaching that equated created letters or sounds with God, which it would be enough for anyone to write or pronounce in order to achieve the desired miracle, then such a teaching could be called ‘name-worshipping’ and compared with magic and shamanism...”  

Ibid.

At a cursory glance there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this second quote. She affirms that the created letters and sounds of the name of God cannot work miracles when pronounced by just anyone (think about a Hispanic whose name is Jesus). However, she does not say that the created letters and sounds which specifically refer to God aren’t God.

Continuing with Senina’s definition:

“He (Bulatovich) founded his teaching on the Divinity of the Names of God above all on the basis that the Divine Name is, according to the Holy Fathers; His energy or operation, and that God’s energy is God Himself. This is the point around which the polemics essentially turned.”

Ibid.

So, a Name-glorifier is someone who thinks that the name of God is His energy, which energy is God Himself. If A is B and B is C, A is C. Why does Senina only say that God’s name is his Energy? To get around the fact that the Russian Church and the Patriarch of Constantinople decreed that to say God’s name is His ‘essence’ is a heresy.*  The Church Fathers understood that there is no division in God.

“No difference either of nature or of operation is contemplated in the Godhead”

St. Gregory of Nyssa: Letter to Ablabius, On Not Three Gods

“There is not one subsistent Person, but a similar substance in both Persons. There is not one name of God applied to dissimilar natures, but a wholly similar essence belonging to one name and nature.”  

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Treatise De Synodis: Sirmium by the Easterns to oppose Photinus. 64.

“The heretics when beset by authoritative passages in Scripture are wont only to grant that the Son is like the Father in might while they deprive Him of similarity of nature. This is foolish and impious, for they do not understand that similar might can only be the result of a similar nature.”  

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Treatise De Synodis: On the Councils, or, The Faith of the Easterns 19.

 “If any one grant the Son only a likeness of activity, but rob Him of the likeness of essence which is the corner-stone of our faith, in spite of the fact that the Son Himself reveals His essential likeness with the Father in the words, ‘For as the Father hath life in Himself, so also hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself (John v. 26)… such a man robs himself of the knowledge of eternal life… let him be anathema.”  

 St. Hilary of Poitiers: Treatise De Synodis: On the Councils, or, The Faith of the Easterns. VI.

If you say God’s name is His energy, then (according the the Holy Fathers), you have to say it’s His nature, or essence, or substance, as well! People may gainsay the 1913 Anathema against the Name-worshipers all they want- they’re already condemned!

Which Holy Fathers does Bulatovich quote to support his ideas? Senina tells us:

“According to the quotations in his writings, Antony Bulatovich did not have at his disposal the majority of sources that were used by Gregory Palamas, nor the works of Palamas himself…not once did Antony quote Palamas in his writings.’…if, while writing his treatises, Gregory Palamas referred to the dogmatic works of the fathers, Antony Bulatovich in his works focused on the scriptures and on the liturgical texts.”   

Tatiana Senina: The Status of Divine Revelation in Hieromonk Anthony Bulatovich

The great Saint of our Church, Gregory Palamas, in his humility, founded his writings on the explanations of the Church Fathers. Bulatovich, a Russian author, admits that he based his work on the Scriptures, without even having the Church Fathers available! Personal interpretation of the Holy Scriptures is Protestantism. The Orthodox rely strictly on what the Fathers of the Church, who were enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and taught by the Apostles themselves, have handed down to us.

Name-glorifiers have a habit of trying to hide the actual meaning of their belief by fancy language which makes them sound innocent at first.

“…These sounds and letters [of the Name] are different in every language, and they will not carry over into eternity, and are not united in any way with the Lord Jesus Christ, because when we, speaking about the Name, have in mind created human words with which we express ideas about God and about Christ…”

Before we finish that sentence, take note of the meaning so far. Sounds and letters will not carry over into eternity. They are not united in any way with the Lord Jesus Christ. When we speak about the Name, we have, in mind, created words, with which we express our perceptions and conceptions of God. Now let’s see the rest of the sentence:

“When we, speaking about the Name, have in mind created human words with which we express ideas about God and about Christ, then it is appropriate to speak of the presence of God in His Name…”

Hieroschemamonk Anthony (Bulatovich), Moia bor’ba s imiabortsami na Sviatoi Gore [My Battle with the Onomatoclasts on the Holy Mountain], p. 117.

The second half of the sentence says the exact opposite of the first! The sounds and letters of the name are in no way united with Jesus Christ, but it is appropriate to speak about His presence in them when we have them in mind. They are un-united, but He is in them.

Name-glorifiers have this trick of saying that the letters and sounds which make up a written or spoken name are not related to the mental image of a name. The Fathers often refer to our mental images or ideas as ‘conceptions’, which are a capability of our ‘reasoning’:

 ‘The reasoning part of the soul is divided into conception and articulation. Conception is an activity of the soul originating in the reason without resulting in utterance… And it is this faculty chiefly which constitutes us all reasoning beings… But articulation by voice or in the different dialects requires energy: that is to say, the word is articulated by the tongue and mouth, and this is why it is named articulation. It is, indeed, the messenger of thought, and it is because of it that we are called speaking beings.”

St. Hilary of Poitiers: De Trinitate. Book II, Chapter XXI.—Concerning Conception and Articulation.

When Bulatovich speaks of the Name of God “in mind”, he is referring to our conception. According to the Apostolic teaching of the Church, here defined by St Hilary, conception is reasoning without utterance and articulation is the utterance of that same reasoning. Therefore, if we were to articulate our conception of this “Name”, we’d be articulating God! That is, according to Name-glorifiers.

In the beginning of this article, we pointed out a subtlety in Senina’s apology for the “Nameglorifiers”, namely, that words and letters which equate with God do not work miracles on their own. She does not say that the words and letters which make up THE name of God are not God, since that’s what they really believe. Rather, she mixes her language to lure people into a false sense of trust, so that they swallow poison mixed with honey.

Here is the rest of the previous quote from Bulatovich:

“But when we have in mind the Name itself, that is Truth itself, that is God Himself, as the Lord said of Himself: ‘I am… the Truth’ (Jn 14:6).”  

Hieroschemamonk Anthony (Bulatovich), Moia bor’ba s imiabortsami na Sviatoi Gore [My Battle with the Onomatoclasts on the Holy Mountain], p. 117.

“The main thesis of the adherents of Onomatodoxy [Name-glorifying] is that every energy of God is God and is called God, and therefore the words of God recorded in the Holy Scripture, are also not the dead words of God but the living words. Hence the names of God are also the Spirit and Life in their innermost mystery, and they possess divine dignity and can be rightly called God Himself, as the Energy of the Divinity, inseparable from the substance of God.”

Hieroschemamonk Anthony (Bulatovich): Idem, Moya mysl’ vo Khriste:

O Deyatel’nosti (Energii) Bozhestva (My Thought in Christ:

On Activity (Energy) of the Godhead) (Petrograd: Ispovednik, 1914), p. 5

The definition of a Name-glorifier then is that the Name of God is God, whether spoken, or written on a chalkboard. God is His name. God is a creature.

Let’s see what Bulatovich would have realized if he had actually founded his ideas on the teaching of the Holy Fathers.

PART II. WHAT THE HOLY FATHERS SAY ABOUT THE NAME OF GOD.

Senina assures us that the theology on the uncreated thought of the Name of God is from the Holy Fathers, and admits that if it were not, it would be a heresy. So, what do the Fathers say? All quotes (except St. Isaac) are taken from the Early Church Fathers series, second edition, (accessed on 9/10/12, new style). St. Isaac’s quotes are taken from the Holy Transfiguration Monastery’s publication of his Ascetical Homilies.

 “Because the Deity is goodness itself, true mercy and an abyss of loving bounty - or, rather, He is that which embraces and contains this abyss, since He transcends every name that is named and everything we can conceive - we can receive mercy only by union with Him.”  

St. Gregory Palamas: On Prayer and Purity of Heart no. 1

“For no one can utter the name of the ineffable God; and if any one dare to say that there is a name, he raves with a hopeless madness.”  

St. Clement: First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter LXI.--Christian baptism.

 "There exists no name which embraces the whole nature of God, and is sufficient to declare it; more names than one, and these of very various kinds, each in accordance with its own proper connotation, give a collective idea which may be dim indeed and poor when compared with the whole, but is enough for us." - 

St. Basil the Great: Prolegomena, Dogmatic Works; i, Against Eunomius

"Things are not made for names, but names for things. Eunomius unhappily was led by distinction of name into distinction of being."

“The last word of Nicene orthodoxy has to be uttered; and it is, that God is really incomprehensible, and that here we can never know His name.”  

Preface to St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Select Writings and Letters,  trans. William Moore, M.A.

 “For God cannot be called by any proper name, for names are given to mark out and distinguish their subject-matters, because these are many and diverse; but neither did any one exist before God who could give Him a name, nor did He Himself think it right to name Himself, seeing that He is one and unique, as He Himself also by His own prophets testifies, when He says, "I am the first and I am hereafter and beside me there is no other God." (Isa. xliv. 6.)”  

St. Justin the Philosopher: Hortatory Address to the Greeks: Chapter XXI.--The namelessness of God.

“The One above conception is inconceivable to all conceptions; and the Good above word is unutterable by word… and Word unutterable, speechlessness, and inconception, and namelessness -- being after the manner of no existing being, and Cause of being to all, but Itself not being…”  

St. Dionysius the Areopagite: On the Divine Names, caput I, section I.

 “. . the most proper of all the names given to God is ‘He that Is’…”  

St. John of Damascus: An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith; Chapter IX.—Concerning what is affirmed about God.

“From many similar instances in Holy Scripture it may be proved that the name of God has no pre-eminence over other words which are applied to the divine…”  

St. Basil the Great: Letter to Eustatius the physician, section 5.

 “…but thou, beloved, when thou hast heard of ‘The Word,’ do not endure those who say, that He is a work; nor those even who think, that He is simply a word. For many are the words of God which angels execute, but of those words none is God; they all are prophecies or commands…”  

St. John Chrysostom: Homily IV, John i. 1.-“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.”

 “Let us not then confound the creation with the Creator, lest we too hear it said of us, that ‘they served the creature rather than the Creator’ ( Rom. i. 25 ) Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”  

Ibid.

“The good Cause of all is… without utterance; as having neither utterance nor conception, because It is superessentially exalted above all, and manifested without veil and in truth, to those alone who… leave behind all divine lights and sounds, and heavenly words, and enter into the gloom, where really is, as the Oracles say, He Who is beyond all.”  

St. Dionysius the Areopagite: Mystic Theology, Caput I, section III.

“Every name of God is due to a conception.”  

St. Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, S:8

 “If any man says that the Son of God is the internal or uttered Word of God: let him be anathema.”  

St. Hilary of Poitiers: Treatise De Synodis: The Creed according to the Council of the East. VIII.

How does the consensus of the Fathers sound compared to Name-glorifiers?

Who is to be trusted more, a few 20th century Russian monks, or the consensus of the Fathers of our Church who were taught by the Apostles themselves and enlightened by the All-Holy Spirit?

 “When… all reflections and thoughts cease within you… you have been worthy of the operation of grace.”  

St. Isaac the Syrian- Appendix B, 4:59

“When the intellect wishes mystically to go before the One, it must refrain from all thoughts…”  

Ibid. 4:63

“It [God] is neither soul, nor mind… or reason, or conception; neither is expressed, nor conceived; neither has power, nor is power, nor light… nor truth… neither Deity, nor Goodness; nor is It Spirit according to our understanding… neither is there expression of It, nor name, nor knowledge; neither is It darkness, nor light; nor error, nor truth; neither is there any definition at all of It, nor any abstraction.”    

St. Dionysius. Mystic Theology, CAPUT V.

That the pre-eminent Cause of every object of intelligible perception

is none of the objects of intelligible perception.

“God is not matter----soul, mind, spirit, any being, nor even being itself, but above and beyond all these.” - 

Preface to ‘Mystic Theology'

“They left the head and worship the hat.”  

Elder Kallinikos the Hesychast

So we see what the consensus of the Fathers is concerning the name of God. To say the Name of God is God clearly goes against the teaching of the Church. The quote at the beginning of this article was against the Arians, who tried to say that Jesus Christ was only a man. How much worse to worship a WORD as God!

 “When Paul is investigating the special methods of the work of redemption he seems to grow dizzy before the mysterious maze which he is contemplating, and utters the well-known words, ‘O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!’ These things are beyond the reach even of those who have attained the measure of Paul’s knowledge. What then is the conceit of those who announce that they know the essence of God!… All who have even a limited loyalty to truth ought to dismiss all corporeal similitudes. They must be very careful not to sully their conceptions of God by material notions. They must follow the theologies delivered to us by the Holy Ghost. They must shun questions which are little better than conundrums, and admit of a dangerous double meaning… before the incarnation He neither had the name above every name nor was owned by all to be Lord… ‘And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.’ (Matt. Xxviii. 18) We must understand this of the incarnation, and not of the Godhead.  

St. Basil the Great: Prolegomena, Dogmatic Works; i, Against Eunomius

Notes:

*  His energy is His action, or operation, in the world, and His nature, or essence, is what He is. According to the Fathers, it is impossible for us to know his essence- our minds and language cannot contain it.

The Fine Line

The following letter was written by a then-hierodeacon of Holy Transfiguration Monastery (now living at Holy Ascension Monastery) and is posted with his permission.


Dear ----,

Please accept my apologies for this jumble of thoughts I am here trying as simply as possible to make several points that seem to me to lie at the heart of the issue.

My background reading concerning this controversy, as I have mentioned to you, is:

From Recent Sources:

Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky’s "On the New False Teaching..."

The Decision of the Russian Synod….” Published in Greek 1913 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, English Translation

The Address of the Confessors of the Name of God, 1918

A paper of quotes from Archimandrite Isaac’s book, which inspired the Name Worshippers, with editorial comments on the quotes

A paper entitled “On the New Martyr Michael Novosolov, ‘Confessor of the Name of God’"

Archimandrite Justin Popovitch on Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky.

Resolution of the Sacred Synod Concerning the Dogma of Redemption…. By Metropolitan Makarios of Toronto

A paper issued 7/26/12 the contents of which relate various documents and events concerning this controversy and concludes with the 5^th Chapter of the Anathemas written by St. Gregory Palamas against Barlaam and Acyndinus, from the Synodicon


From Early Sources:

St. Dionysius the Areopagite On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology – C. E. Rolt

On the Spirit, The Hexameron – St. Basil the Great, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol.8

On the Third and Fourth Councils, St. Cyril of Alexandria

On the Cosmic Mystery of Christ – St. Maximus the Confessor

Exposition of the Orthodox Faith – St. John of Damascus, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 9.


Please understand, as should be self evident, that I have read some of these materials in the past and now recently have found various passages, which seem to me to be applicable to this present topic.  I cannot now write a dissertation that would include quotes and references, since my only aim here now is to outline some conclusions I have reached, which I reached through these sources.

I decided to write this brief outline of conclusions on the basis of a conversation I had with Fr. N., after a Monday morning Liturgy at the Convent a couple of weeks ago.  He began the conversation which circled around to some comments he made concerning how it is that the Name of God is God.  Once he had said this I interjected a comment something to the effect, “You know, Fr. N., we have to be very careful of a fine line here”.  He asked, “What fine line?”  I said, “Well, for example, concerning icons; very great Grace comes through the holy icons, but they are not God”.  He replied, “Yes, well…. About deification”.  What followed was a dissertation at some length on deification, on how the Energies of God are God, which after a while degenerated into judgments against Metropolitan Anthony Krapovitsky, St. Joseph Volokolomsk, and others closer to us.  [He said ] they were only for the external styles of Worship and prayer and did not either understand nor did they want prayer ropes and prayer of the heart, and this is the reason they were against the Name Worshippers.  Here he quoted some things from Bulatovich’s book against Metropolitan Anthony and other comments.  I was not able to complete my thought with him, i.e. moving along from icons to the Name of Jesus.  I was going to say, “And so also the Name of God, which is an icon in word instead of picture, conveying sanctifying and deifying Grace, to those who are open to it – yet as a created object it, in and of itself, is not and can not become uncreated God”.

What, then, is this fine line?  It seems to me it is the line St. Cyril of Alexandria drew for the Fourth Council, in a sense dividing between that which cannot be divided, dividing between that which is inseparably bound together, even as St. Basil says in his dissertation on the Holy Spirit, that just as The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are bound together so inextricably that there is no space between them, yet their Persons are not “con-fused”, meaning their Persons are distinct, each one, not blended together, but inextricably bound together.  Can one dare to add a thought, perhaps from 1 John 4, God is love, and love is that which binds together, making inseparable those who offer and receive it.  But, of course we are way over our heads here since as St. Dionysios and St. Maximus the Confessor say in no uncertain terms, any thought we might have about God, any name we might use for God is totally inadequate since God is totally beyond all thought and description, and can only be experienced as He gives Himself to us in His love for us.

This fine line, then is that which runs between Christ’s two Natures, as St. Cyril has shown us.  Eutyches, Dioscoros, and the Monophysites erred to the right.  They crossed the conservative line, they did what St. Basil showed must not be done because it is not true – since the Persons of the Holy Trinity are not intermingled (meaning not con-fused), neither can the two natures of Christ be intermingled, loosing their precious separate identities.  I think it was St. Athanasius who said in his On the Incarnation, “That which Christ did not take on, He did not save”, meaning His Manhood totally created and physical, in “…all things like us sin excepted”, said St. Paul.  The Nature of Christ’s Godhead is not human in and of itself, neither is the Nature of Christ’s Manhood God in and of itself.  Yet the two, intrinsically bound together, unconfused, are the God-Man Jesus Christ our Saviour.

What then of His Name that is above every name in heaven, on earth and under the earth?  In conjunction with His Name, St. Paul said, “Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself (i.e. emptied himself), and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”.  He became wholly and totally Man as well as His Name, which bears the eternal and uncreated Grace of His Godhead, but bears it without becoming it.  His Name is physical, created, not uncreated God.  To say so is to con-fuse the two Natures. This is monophysitism.

I have heard it said, His Name is God because God has given it therefore it is uncreated.  What?  The Holy Spirit conceived in the Virgin’s womb Him Who is the Son of God but now taking on His created Human Nature – the two are inseparably bound together yet one is uncreated and the other is created.  That which is created is not uncreated, yet creation has all come from God just as The Human Nature of Christ has come from God but that does not make it uncreated, and neither does it make His Name uncreated, just because it came from God.

Here, I would like to interject what might seem at first to be a digression, yet I do not mean it to be.  In a saying by St. John of Kronstadt concerning names, he says “The Name of the Lord is the Lord Himself … the name of the Mother of God is the Mother of God, the angel is the angel, the name of a saint is the saint”.  He explains, “…let the closeness of your word to your heart be a pledge and a testimony of the closeness to your heart of the Lord Himself, the Mother of God, the angel or the saint”.  This explanation seems to me to be completely in line with the line identified by St. Cyril between the uncreated Godhead of the Son and His created Nature as Man, i.e. His human Nature is deified by it’s unity with his Godhead, but it is not con-fused with it, it is still a created human Nature, created by God, by the will of the Father, the operation of the Holy Spirit, and the acceptance of the Son So, our names, whether of our Saviour, the Theotokos, an angel a saint or ourselves are intrinsically bound to us, manifesting our natures, yet in and of themselves, they are a word of designation and not totally we ourselves, we are infinitely beyond them for also they are but a word of designation. So both things are true each in its own context, our name is us because it is intrinsically bound to us and all that we are, yet at the same time our name remains a word and does not become totally us in essence, but also remains a designation, an icon, of us and all that we are. This I believe is St. John’s meaning here.

What more of the fine line? St. Cyril was and is right maintaining un-confusion of the two natures, for, horribly enough as a thought, if Christ as Man is not just deified by His relationship to His divinity, but the Human Nature is somehow subsumed into the Divine nature, then even His sewage becomes God, uncreated God, and how more blasphemous and ridiculous can one get than this stupid thought. To say, then, that His Name is uncreated God is to cross this line of con-fusion, with disastrous results theologically, and in dis-harmony with the thinking of all the greatest Fathers of old.

So far we have not dealt with the question of God’s uncreated energies. Geronta has said that “the energies of God, despite their being uncreated, are God in the sense that they bear God to us but are NOT His Essence, which can not be known by any of creation, but only by God. When I asked him what the energies of God are, he said that God’s Energies are his Grace. But as we have seen above, His Grace, i.e. His Energies are one thing, and the means He uses to convey His grace can take the form of created things, such as the bread and wine that become the Body and Blood of our Saviour. By association and deification by the Holy Spirit, and the will of the Father, the bread and wine become truly the Body and Blood of Christ – the God – Man, absolutely, even as we experience it, but the physical nature of the bread and wine also remain their true created and physical nature, despite the fact that they are bound together un-confusedly with the two natures of Christ, having become His most Pure Body and Most Precious Blood. Thus the fine line remains, thanks to St. Cyril and the Fourth Council, which is that the bread and wine become God by deification and association, but not by nature. The same is true of the Name of God.

Do the Name Worshippers really mean that the created physical name of God given us by God becomes uncreated God by nature?  If so, they have crossed St. Cyril’s fine line of discernment, having forgotten that it is a physical icon in a word, yet at the same time designating and intrinsically bound to our uncreated God, bearing to us the eternal weight of His Divine and uncreated Energies, the Grace of His unfathomable and inestimable Divine Love for us and His whole creation.

Please forgive me, the sinner. This is the best I can do at the moment. Perhaps when I see you I will have a few more thoughts.

With all my love in Christ our Saviour.
Fr. B.

P.S. Polytheism: Once things can “become” an Energy of God, then things are part of God. Monophysitism yields to this.