International Catholic University
In our previous discussions we focused on the two basic questions that the Church Fathers encountered in the development of the Church's doctrine on the Trinity and on the Incarnation, what we referred to as the Trinitarian question and the Christological question. The question of the Incarnation is the area that many of the studies of the Church Fathers have necessarily focused upon, that is the great question, how the two natures of the one divine Person in Jesus Christ could both be affirmed while at the same time maintaining the unity of His person. In this lecture I will broaden the discussion to focus on Christ's saving work according to the Fathers. We focus on this view of Christ because a true picture of the Fathers would show that they were primarily interested in Christ's saving work and its effects.
In the introductory lecture I stressed the pastoral emphases of the Church Fathers. While the threats from Arianism, Adoptionism, Modalism, and Monarchianism all forced the clarification of the Christological teaching of the Church, nevertheless the Fathers continued to focus on theology done in Ecclessiae. The pastoring they were so intimately involved in had to do primarily with the reality of Christ's saving work and how this reality impacted particularly and specifically upon the people they shepherded. A true picture of their interest in Christ has to do with this question of His saving work. They developed their theology of the Incarnation as a function of the doctrine of salvation. They saw the doctrine of the Incarnation and the doctrine of salvation as closely linked and they often took positions on who Jesus is only in relation to His saving work.
In the Fathers' writings we should distinguish two aspects or approaches, first, their expression of the traditional faith, things concerning the mystery of God's saving plan and the saving work of Christ; and second, their theological explanations or theories concerning this mystery. The Fathers were trailblazers, and at times they did not get everything right in their theological explanations or theories, but taken as a whole they contributed greatly to the development of Christian doctrine. With regards to the traditional faith handed down through the Creed, the Baptismal formulae, and the liturgical rites, they continued to affirm and confirm, Lex orandi est lex credendi. Their theological explanations or theories, in contrast to their traditional faith or their expression of the traditional faith, were not always worked out in neat systems. Often several themes or images came together within the context of one work, be it an exegetical commentary on a book of scripture, be it a series of catechetical instructions, or a homily delivered on an important liturgical occasion. They did not write what we would call classical textbooks in a systematic way as became the practice in the Medieval and later Church eras.
Where is this Patristic material on Christ's saving work to be found? No treatise deals exclusively with this mystery although many Patristic texts treat it. In this area more than in others one sees the importance of Patristic presentation in liturgies, in catechetics and in homilies. Patristic scholars have too often neglected these sources. In this lecture we shall describe a number of the Patristic themes or theories concerning Christ's saving work without attempting to go into the teachings of the individual Fathers. These themes can be kept in mind when reading texts of any of the Fathers to see whether a particular Father uses them and if so, what importance is given to them. Keep these themes as a reference point so that as you read specific Church Fathers, you can test and see if these themes are apparent in all or most. How do different Fathers in different ages pick up these themes? Are certain themes more important in one part of the Church or in one context than in another? These are threads, then, that will run through the Apostolic Fathers, the Apologists, the Third Century Fathers, as well as the later Greek and Latin Church Fathers.
The first is the theme of God the Father's economy or plan, a plan of salvation initiated by Him out of love. This is a very strong theme running through the entire corpus of the Church Fathers. Christ's saving work and the actual salvation of mankind in and through Christ, for the Church Fathers, is the result of God the Father's plan, dispensation or economy. Economy here is used in the sense of the providential rule of His creation. The economy is initiated by the Father out of love for mankind. This theme is especially strong in Saint Irenaeus, one of the earlier Apologists, and also in the writings of Saint Augustine.
A second theme that runs through the corpus of the Church Fathers writings with regard to Christ's saving work is that Christ as teacher and illuminator makes known a new way of life, imparting true knowledge about God, man and human destiny. This theme has often been overlooked by modern interpreters, but it is a strong element especially in the earlier Fathers. Christianity spread among the pagans for one reason, because there was so much doubt and obscurity among them concerning life, death and future existence, concerning the meaning of a good life and the way to find help to lead a good life. This theme has an important relevance in the Church today, for like the earliest centuries in the Christian era, we too live in a time when such questions are being asked more and more frequently. The Church Fathers saw in Christ the illuminator, the teacher, the one who said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." (John 14/6) And so through Christ and as instruments of Christ, being the images, the living icons of Christ, the Church Fathers were able to impart true knowledge. In this era of skepticism, of relativism, and of doubt, we can learn much from the Church Fathers by proclaiming with vigor, clarity and strength the truth of who Jesus Christ is today, tomorrow and forever.
A third theme concerning Christ's saving work is that His life, death and resurrection as an example for our imitation as the way of Christian life. Christianity was often referred to as The Way because of what Jesus said of Himself. This theme is closely connected with the preceding ones of Christ being teacher and illuminator, although it makes those themes more concrete and explicit. Jesus brings not only a doctrine, but by His life, gives a way. One of the truly great gifts of the Church Fathers is in their capacity to integrate spirituality and teaching. They were not interested in communicating an abstract set of doctrines that demanded only intellectual assent. They were pastors and servants, most concerned with enabling and assisting their people to become holy and Christ like, taking into themselves the very attitudes of Christ as St. Paul urged of his fellow Christians. The Pauline teaching is certainly affirmed in the understanding and teaching of the theme of the Church Fathers that Christ's life, death and resurrection served as an example for our own way of life.
A fourth theme of the Fathers is that Christ's life, death and resurrection, especially His death out of love in obedience to God the Father, is a showing forth of God's love moving persons to respond with faith, hope and love. Some would see this as the exclusive, or as the main theme, of the Church Fathers. Although this is an exaggeration, this theme is constantly present and is very important. The great Pascal event of Christ's life, death and resurrection is the very heart and center of our Christian faith. The Church Fathers always see the Pascal event in relation to the entire working out of God's salvation plan.
A fifth theme is that Christ's saving work is seen as a victory over sin, over death, and over Satan. These three that are overcome - sin, death and Satan - are always closely related to each other by the Fathers. Sometimes Satan is seen more as a personification standing behind sin and death. Thus for the Fathers he is a very real person and force. We know for example in the early baptismal liturgy, of the strong and poignant prayers of exorcism that are prayed over the neophytes.
A sixth theme of Christ's saving work is that the Incarnation itself is saving. An exchange happens between God and humankind where we are divinized. Christ's death and resurrection, ascension and glorification, stand at the very center of Christ's saving act. Nevertheless from the moment of His conception, each of His actions and words participate in the wonder of redemption and the fulfillment of God's saving plan. An oft repeated patristic maxim states that God became man that man might become God by participation. The Church Fathers may never be accused of pantheism. When they say that God became man so that man might become God they are speaking by way of participation, not by way essence. Mankind originally shared the divine privilege of immortality. Sin is death and brings death. But through the Incarnation itself God becomes man. The Word divinizes human nature. The union of the divine and human natures in the Person of the Word restores and elevates human nature and destroys death. This theme is strongest in such Greek Fathers as Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Saint Cyril of Jerusalem. Undoubtedly it is to some extent influenced by Platonic philosophy, which conceived of human nature as an idea, or universal in which all individuals participate. Thus when the Word assumes and divinizes the individual human nature, every human person is affected by way of the universal human nature, the real nature. This is not simply a deduction from Platonic philosophy. It is a good example of the Fathers building upon and adding to the wisdom of the day, because it also expresses the conviction that salvation by Christ means divinization of human kind. These same Fathers stressed the activity of Christ and His human history beyond the incarnation itself. That is, His passion, death and resurrection, and also His teaching, are part of His saving work. This means that the theme that the Incarnation itself is saving is also present in the Latin Fathers such as Augustine, although it is less strong in the West than in the East.
The Western Fathers tend to emphasize the passion and death of Christ more. Ambrose says in his work on the Holy Spirit that, although the mystery of the assumption of the flesh and of the passion are equally admirable, the fullness of faith resides in the mystery of the passion. Where Athanasius and the Eastern Fathers probably would nuance that in a way that more emphasizes the unity of the Incarnation, the life, the teachings and the events surrounding Christ's passion, death and resurrection form one integral whole. As a side note with regard to liturgical understanding, the Latin Rite has traditionally emphasized the consecration of the Mass as the moment when the transubstantiation of bread into the body of Christ and wine into the blood of Christ takes place. The Eastern Divine Liturgy has always emphasized the totality of the Eucharistic prayer, as one consecratory event. I think analogically, here looking at Christ's saving work, we in the West have traditionally focused more specifically on the passion, death and resurrection of Christ while the Eastern Church Fathers have focused more broadly on all of the aspects of Christ's life from His conception, from His incarnation right through to His triumphal ascension and glorification at the right hand of the Father.
This leads us to the seventh theme which is the whole life, death, passion and resurrection of Christ our Savior. The entire corpus of the work of Christ is saving. Behind this theme stands the Scriptural metaphor of the vine and the branches, and even more so the Pauline doctrine of Christ as head in whom all things are recapitulated, that theme of Christ sharing our human condition to the full and saving it by raising humankind from death, sharing this mysteriously or mystically, and also really and truly. Saint Irenaeus, one of the early Apologists in the Western Church, has a doctrine of recapitulation that is an early and very important expression of some aspects of this theme. Christ saves by living through the whole of human history, summing it up, as it were, and reordering it in Himself. All is brought to completion and perfection in His resurrection. In the teaching of Saint Irenaeus, the theme of Christ as the new Adam and the theme of Mary as the new Eve are paramount. He emphasizes the fact that what the first Adam and Eve brought about through sin, has all now been redeemed, relived, recapitulated in the new Adam who is Christ and the new Eve who is our Blessed Mother. In other words, Christ substitutes for us. He substitutes for Adam and Eve who sinned. He substitutes for you and for me who sin. Or better, in some Fathers, human persons are united to Him in a mystic real identity so that they live through the very mysteries with Him. Gregory of Nyssa very poignantly, very profoundly, and very movingly, speaks of this mystical union with Christ. And we shall see when we look at the works and teachings of Saint Augustine that in his writings, this theme of Christ as head and we humans as members is very highly developed.
This theme stands behind an expression that one finds in some of the Fathers when they insist on the full humanity of Christ, that what was not assumed in human nature cannot be repaired. This idea occurs early with respect to the flesh of Christ and the expression itself is found in Gregory Nazianzus and later authors with respect to the human soul and the human mind of Christ. If Christ did not assume a human soul and a human mind, Gregory and others would argue that the soul and mind were not saved in human beings. The whole of human nature had to rise to glory and overcome sin and death to be saved and this had to take place in Christ. What a profound and wonderful thought about everything that makes us human, the mind, heart, psyche, soul, spirit, body, and flesh. We speak about who we are as human, all of that was assumed into the Divine Person of Christ through His human nature. Because of that we are redeemed. The Church Fathers again remind us that that which was not assumed in human nature by Christ could not be redeemed.
This theme shows why the resurrection is considered so central to Christ's saving work and is more than just the proof of His victory, for the Church Fathers and for the tradition of the Church. The resurrection of Jesus Christ really accomplished salvation. It really accomplished salvation because when Christ was raised in His human nature every aspect of our human nature, all assumed into the Person of Christ, was raised up. How truly profound and powerful the words of our Redeemer, "And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself." (John 12/32)
Another theme, the eighth of Christ's saving work through the Incarnation, is that Christ's death is an expiation or reparation for our sins. The Fathers, such as Irenaeus, see Adam's disobedience and ours leading to death. By Christ's obedience unto death, by His free acceptance of death out of love, He expiates, or we might say repairs, the offence of the disobedient Adam and his descendants who are rightly punished with death. Death is a consequence of sin. In the beginning humankind was blessed with the gift of immortality. Through sin, death entered by one man, and by one man, sin and death have been expiated or repaired. Christ chose to suffer and die on the cross not simply because this was the way He chose, or the best way. He himself said, "A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends." (John 15/13) By His free choice to accept death, even death on the cross, out of obedience to His Father, Christ has redeemed suffering and redeemed death.
For all of us who experience suffering and who will ultimately experience death as part of our human existence, Christ's saving act has given them a positive dimension. In the Old Testament we know Job asks the enduring question of why the innocent suffer. And we who are blessed to reflect back upon the Old Testament through the eyes of the New now see clearly that there is an answer. The Church Fathers have instructed us in the answer to the perennial question of why the innocent suffer. What is the meaning of our own suffering? What is the meaning of the suffering of those whom we love, those who seem to be afflicted through no fault of their own? Christ is the answer. The Church Fathers remind us time and time again that he chose obedience unto death on the cross in order to redeem suffering and death. Suffering for the man or woman of faith, to the extent that he or she can allow that suffering to be appropriated, to be participatory in the suffering of Christ, shares in the ultimate meaning of life, shares in the ultimate power and redemptive value of sharing intimately in the redemptive act of Christ. As Saint Paul reminds us, we are privileged to fill up in our own bodies what is still lacking in the body of Christ. And so this profound Scriptural teaching is reinforced, is developed, is accented, and is affirmed, in a most beautiful way by the Church Fathers, who see in Christ's death both an expiation or reparation for sins and offering us a wonderful possibility of mystical identification with Christ. Saint Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians says, "for our sakes he made him to be sinned who knew nothing of sin so that in him we might become the justice of God." In all of this there is some element of correspondence between the penalty of death owed to personal sins and the suffering and death of Jesus. When the Fathers use this correspondence, they do not do so in a way that is primarily emphasizing the justice of God or balancing the scales of justice. Rather it is part of a larger emphasis on other statements stressing Christ's love and obedience as that which really expiates and repairs. The Church Fathers emphasize the mercy and compassion of our God, and it was Christ's obedience to a loving God and His response of love to love that is the essence of expiation. His love and obedience pushed even to death, death on the cross.
Another theme of Christ's saving work is that His life, and especially His death, was a freely accepted sacrifice. Christ as Priest sacrificing His life for the salvation of all is a constant theme in the Church Fathers. There is strong Scriptural background for this as given in Ephesians 5/2 and the whole Epistle to the Hebrews, which so powerfully manifests Christ as the one High Priest. This theme is emphasized as showing our being reconciled to the Father, but it is not limited to expiation or sin. Sacrifice includes the element of offering praise and thanks to God for His benefits to Christ. This is seen in the Fathers, for example in the Didache, an early document of the Church, and in Justin Martyr.
Now to say a few words about the priesthood with regard to Christ's life and especially his death as a sacrifice. One of the questions often discussed in our own age about the priesthood is the identity of the priest. It is in this theme that the Church Fathers offer very clear consoling and direct thought on the essence of the priest. Christ's life, and especially His death, He accepted lovingly and obediently as both sacrifice and the one sacrifice. It seems that there can be no greater expression of the identity of priestly life than one who both sacrifices and is sacrificed at the table of the Lord. The priest is privileged to be the one who serves in Persona Christi and at the same time, is modeling his life on Christ the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep, who is constantly encouraged to be sacrificed. "This is my body given for you, this is my blood poured out for you." So within this theme of Christ's death as being freely accepted as sacrifice so too is found the identity of a priest. The priest's vocation freely embraces the power of Christ to sacrifice and be sacrificed. This theme runs through many of the Church Fathers.
Another important theme of the Church Fathers in relation to Christ's saving work and the Incarnation is that of Christ as mediator. Because Christ is seen to be both God and man, He is viewed as the mediator between the Father and the human race that has offended the Father. He is the bridge between the Father and humanity. God became man so that man can be lifted up and participate in the very divinity of God. The Church Fathers accent our subjective entry into, or our appropriation of, Christ's saving work. Although this is not always explicitly stated, this appropriation by ourselves into Christ is presupposed and at times treated quite clearly. Entry into Christ's saving work is by faith, hope, love, conversion, and by the sacraments and the liturgy within the Christian community. We appropriate by our response to the invitation to love as Christ loved, to be obedient as Christ was obedient to the will of the Father. By our response to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, by our participation in the very divinity of God through the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, by the constant call to conversion and by our being nourished and strengthened within the liturgy and the sacraments of the Church.
These then present in a very full way the themes that run through the different eras of the Church Fathers. They can be drawn together perhaps by using the very strong Patristic theme of Christ's Passover or Pascal victory and mystery that involves all of us. Within God the Father's economy, His loving plan for all of us, sin and all of its expressions, slavery, death, ignorance, doubt, separation, disobedience, discord, despair, all are incorporated into Christ's life, death and resurrection, His saving work. And flowing from that comes to us knowledge, faith, hope, love, new life, deification, new creation, adoption, immortality, reconciliation, peace and freedom.
In concluding this particular section of our reflection on Christ's saving work it may be helpful to summarize briefly the main points of the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon. This was the Council largely relying on the thought of Saint Leo the Great and Saint Cyril of Alexandria, bringing together the Church's teaching on what we have come to acknowledge as the Hypostatic Union. The main points of Chalcedon are as follows: First, that Jesus Christ is only one person, the divine Person, or the Hypostasis of the Son of God or of the Word. Second, this one divine Person subsists or exists in two natures, the Divine nature and the human nature, each of which is perfect as a nature, lacking no perfection of the nature. Thus His human nature has a human soul as well as a human body. These were united to each other except in the three days of Christ's death his death when they were separated from each other. Third, the Son or Word is united to human nature not accidentally or by a moral union, but substantially. The two natures are united in His very person. Hence, theologians call it the Hypostatic Union, the Greek word for a person being hypostasis. Fourth, the perfect divine nature and the perfect human nature remain distinct from each other. Although united in the person of the Word they are in no way confused or mixed. Fifth, because the one Person exists in the two natures the properties and activities of each nature may be correctly predicated of that one Person. For example, Jesus Christ as God is eternal and creates; Jesus Christ as man suffers and dies. In certain ways the properties and activities of each nature may even be predicated concretely by what was later called the communication of idioms, or the sharing of property. For example, can we say that God died on the cross? At first thought it seems contradictory or absurd. Through the communication of idioms we can say that He the Son, who is God, died according to his human nature on the cross. And we could also therefore say that Mary is the God bearer or Mother of God. That is, He the Son, who is God, was born in his human nature of the Virgin Mary. We can also say that this child created the universe. Why? Because He, Mary's Son, who is a child and human, created the universe according to His Divine Nature. At the time of the Council of Ephesus in 431, Mary, Godbearer Theotokos, became an expression about which much discussion concerning Christ occurred.
This formulation of the Church's understanding of the Incarnation of Christ as expressed through the Council of Chalcedon balances and harmonizes two approaches to Christ. One stresses that He has as perfect a human nature as any human. The other stresses that He is truly God, a divine Person in a divine nature. In earlier centuries the distinction between person and nature was not clear, thus each approach was liable to emphasize certain aspects and to become erroneous. For example, those of the Antioch school stressed the full humanity of Jesus. They were liable at times to see in Him a human subject, or person, and in explaining the union of the human and divine in Christ, they might tend to explain His oneness or unity as accidental, a union of two subjects, the Divine and the human. Those of the Alexandrian school were greatly influenced by neo-Platonic philosophy. They stressed the divine Person in Christ and strongly insisted on the unity of Christ. This school would run into the opposite danger of that at Antioch of minimizing the full perfection of Christ's humanity in order to assure his unity and the dominance and sinlessness of the divine Person of the Word. We, then, have become the beneficiaries of two not contradictory, but complementary, emphases. We owe a great debt of gratitude to all of the Church Fathers for struggling with this Christological question, how one who is a divine Person fully takes on our human nature. The Hypostatic Union, a key development of Patristic thought, confirmed and affirmed in the Council of Chalcedon, is one of the great treasures that we have received. We owe a great debt of gratitude not only in respect to our understanding of Christ's saving work and the Incarnation but in the many doctrines, the many teachings that so enrich us as followers of Christ, as inheritors of the deposit of faith as it was developed through the prayer, the study, and the conflict that made up the Patristic era in which we are the beneficiaries thereof.
These review topics are to help you understand the lecture and prepare for the final exam; they are not a written assignment.
Describe in detail Patristic themes concerning Christ's saving work.
Describe the main points concerning Christ and his saving work in the Council of Chalcedon.
Jurgens, William.