The Homoean

I think we can comfortably sketch out Ephrem's theology. Yes he had one. This theology descends from the physicality of man, which descends from the image of Christ as "like" - but not - God. We are not faffing about with the Platonic "real" of our Catholic theologians; Ephrem meant matter and flesh.

It is because Jesus was intrinsically flesh, Christ came to Sheol - as all flesh must. Christ was there, in flesh, to enflesh the bones of the dead. The enfleshed dead ascended and the righteous dead of the future will ascend the mountain of Paradise. This mountain is nonmetaphorically rooted in this here Earth. Man had come down from this mountain, after sinning therein, to this - flat - Earth.

(Incidentally the mountain breaks the Firmament so also alone was not subject to the Flood; I don't know if Noah's ship parked on it, or saw it; but it existed. Alexander may have visited it.)

Since man has physicality in physical Paradise, man is permitted food and wine up there... and "pure embraces". Meanwhile also the Rapture can happen, of physical bodies.

Since Christ is, although a man, God-like: he and he alone is the intercessor before the Father, seated at His right. No other saint is necessary; starting with his mother Mary, who was fully his mother, like any other woman.

This is the mature and final expression of Constantine's Imperial dogma as of the AD 359-60 councils (now rejected). Ephrem was a "doctor of the Church" to Chrysostom and Lactantius and others. Nestorius - perhaps the first dyothelete - might have backed off the worst of it; certainly Augustine did, from the standpoint of a Revelation which Ephrem rejected. As of 1920 I find that the Roman Church has elevated Ephrem. Unfortunately.

BACKDATE 7/21