Can God obey?
But how can Christ’s obedience be reconciled with faith in his divinity? Obedience is an act of the person, not of nature, and the person of Christ, according to orthodox faith, is that of the very Son of God. Can God obey himself? Here we touch upon the most profound core of the Christological mystery. Let us try to understand in what this mystery consists. In Gethsemane Jesus says to the Father: “yet not what I will, but what Thou wilt” (Mark 14:36). The whole problem consists in knowing who that “I” and who that “you” is; who says the “fiat” and to whom it is said. In antiquity, two quite different answers were given to this question, according to the underlying type of Christology. For the Alexandrian School, the “I” speaking was the person of the Word that, as incarnate, says his “yes” to the divine will — the “you” — that he himself has in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He who says “yes” and he to whom he says “yes” constitute the same will, but considered in two t
