“ He tries to secure the unity of the two natures by relegating to the divine Logos the formative and controlling agency. It is not a human individual that the Logos assumes, nor is it humanity, or human nature in general. It is rather a potential human individual, a nature not yet developed into a person or hypostasis. The hypostasis through which this takes place is the personal Logos through whose union with this potential man, in the womb of Mary, the potential man acquires a concrete reality, an individual existence. ”

“ Two natures may form a unity, as the body and soul in man. So man, both soul and body, is brought into unity with the Logos; there being then one hypostasis for both natures.” There is an interchange of the divine and human attributes, a communication of the former which deifies the receptive and passive human nature. In Christ the human will has become the organ of the divine will. Thus while John is an adherent of Chalcedon and a dyothelite, the drift of his teaching is in the monophysite direction. ”

“ With him the “mysteries,” the entire ritual, are an integral part of the Orthodox system, and all dogma culminates in image-worship. The date of his death is uncertain; it is probably about 752. John Damascenus is a saint both in the Greek and in the Latin Churches, his festival being observed in the former on the 29th of November and on the 4th of December, and in the latter on the 6th of May. ”