International Catholic University
In our first lectures we considered the Fathers' teachings about the Trinitarian God and about Jesus' saving work and the Incarnation, and we have introduced many themes of the Father's theological anthropology, that is, their theological views on the human person's created being, history, and relation to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
A large number of themes come together under this heading of theological anthropology. First is the theme of the created human person. This includes thought concerning the body, the resurrection of the body, the soul, the immortality of the soul (by nature or as a gift of God), and either the dual (body and soul) or the triple (flesh, psyche and spirit) view of the person, the being of man and woman, and human freedom. A second convergence of themes might be called the original state of humankind and would include the questions of original justice, the special gifts sometimes referred to as preternatural, and the meaning of original sin. A third theme is that of God's gifts: grace, justification, the supernatural, and the vocation of the human person to share in God's nature or life. This includes adoption as a child of God, sharing or partaking in the Divine Nature, deification or divinization, membership in the Body of Christ, and the indwelling of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And finally, the social aspect of all of the above. What are the effects of original sin or personal sins? What do the Fathers teach us about Christian asceticism, marriage and virginity, the Church, and eschatology? So numerous are these themes that come under the heading of theological anthropology that many can be only mentioned or summarized very succinctly.
Let us begin with a fundamental concept of theological anthropology, the human person. In the Church Fathers, we find two main types of human psychology, a triple or triadic view and a dual or dyadic view. The triadic view sees the human person as a union of flesh (Greek sarx or Latin caro), the animating soul (Greek psyche or Latin anima), and spirit (Greek pneuma or Latin spiritus). Sometimes spirit is replaced by mind (Greek nous or Latin mens). In such a view, growth in Christian virtue or holiness would be by the presence of the Holy Spirit to the spirit or the presence of the person, or it could be by the presence of the Logos verbum to the mind. The dual or dyadic view sees the human person as a union of body (Greek soma or Latin corpus) and soul. In this view the soul has both the animating activities with respect to the body by dwelling in it and vivifying it, and the spiritual activities of intellection, willing, and free choice.
The great problems with which the Fathers were confronted concerning the body were its corruptibility and the consequent annihilation of the human composite. Many of the Fathers present as one of the most important elements of Christ's salvation, the freedom from final corruption and annihilation in which those saved through Christ would share in his resurrection by their own bodily resurrection. Some Fathers found a tendency influenced by Platonism and Stoicism to regard the body as inferior, even as evil or at least strongly tending to evil, and to consider the emotions or passions as inimical to, and destructive of, moral and spiritual growth. Some Christian asceticism, as well as some attitudes toward sexuality, marriage, and virginity, were influenced by such views. On the other hand, the Fathers of the Church always strongly opposed groups such as the Encratists, who denied the goodness of marriage and advised their sectarians to avoid it. Nevertheless Manicheanism and Gnosticism, even though rejected by the Fathers, had some influence among some groups of Christians.
What do the Fathers teach us about the soul or spirit? Some Fathers hold the soul or spirit to be mortal by nature, with immortality being received only as a gift or a grace from God. Others maintain that the soul is naturally immortal, but needs God's added gifts to avoid evil and to know and love God in the higher way persons were called to by God's revelation in Christ. Since the Church Fathers were breaking new theological ground and deepening the understanding of the Church's deposit of faith, it is not shocking or surprising to see variations in some aspects of Patristic thought. The question of the immortality or mortality of the soul is one such area where it took some time for Catholic thought to be solidified.
Another theme important in this area of theological anthropology is that of human freedom and of man created in the image of God. In reaction to the cultural environment of their time, the Fathers, especially those in the East, stressed human freedom, freedom of the human will. Stoicism minimized free will by saying that human beings are in the hands of fate; they even have the expression, "Fate made me do it." The Greek cyclical view of history maintained that everything is predetermined and will eventually repeat itself. Manicheism taught that at least the material part of the human person is from an evil god (a co-principle of creation with the good God), so human persons cannot avoid evil. Gnosticism held that humans are divided into three classes in which they are fixed: somatics, or bodily people, psychics, or people in between spirit people and bodily people, and pneumatics, or spiritual persons. The pneumatics are assured of salvation, the somatics cannot achieve it, while the psychics have a possibility of salvation if they gain gnosis and escape time, the body and evil. Stoicism, Manicheism, and Gnosticism, attack human freedom and responsibility in one way or another. They exonerate the person from responsibility for actions and leave no room for personal choices for good or evil, whereby in the case of good choices a person might work toward his or her salvation. Therefore the Fathers stressed personal freedom and initiative in response to God's revelation and help. And in stressing human freedom and responsibility many of the Fathers used the theme of the human person as image of God, especially because of the endowment of human freedom in creation itself. Their Scriptural source for this was Genesis 1/26, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."
What about the original state of mankind and original sin? The doctrines of original justice and original sin were worked out only gradually during the Patristic era and reached their full development only with Saint Augustine in the late Fourth and early Fifth Centuries. One reason why the Fathers in the earlier periods were generally silent about these themes of original justice and original sin may have been their concern about insisting on human freedom and responsibility against their contemporary Stoics, Manichees and Gnostics. Another reason might be that many of the early writings are apologetic works directed to non-Christians, and so they fail to present a full body of statements about Christian belief. They focus understandably first and foremost on the Trinitarian question and the Christological question. For Saint Irenaeus and for many of the earlier Fathers, Adam is the source of sin because sin entered human history through him, and he is the type of all sinners because of his disobedience, or as some said, his pride in seeking undue knowledge or in misusing knowledge. There was lacking, however, a clear doctrine that all human persons had somehow sinned in Adam and had inherited guilt and liability to punishment because of Adam's sin. This latter view gradually developed from reflection on the many texts found in Saint Paul, from deductions concerning the practice of infant baptism, and perhaps from theologizing about the virginal conception of Jesus. As for infant baptism, the Fathers differed as to why infants were baptized. John Chrysostom denied that it was done to remove sin or guilt. Origin mentioned this as does Tertullian, but neither draws a clear doctrine of original sin from the practice. Cyprian (died 258) is the first to link the two and others did the same afterwards. Ambrose, the teacher of Saint Augustine, insisted that infants were baptized because they had inherited some corporate fault from Adam. Again it is Saint Augustine who developed fully our present understanding on original sin and its relation to the sacrament of Baptism.
The virginal conception of Jesus was linked with the holiness of Jesus by some of the Fathers. It is said in Luke 1/35, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." The influence of Christian asceticism, itself subject to non-Christian influences in some ways, may have emphasized this influence, with the corresponding concept that those conceived through ordinary human intercourse lack some holiness. As in Paul, the doctrine of original sin was presented as a prelude or counterpart to the universal saving work of Christ bringing more abundant gifts to all. That is, although the doctrine had a pessimistic side it was really meant to assert the positive, and to point out the abundant goods given to us through Christ. In this sense the Exsultet of the Easter Liturgy perhaps composed by the great Saint Ambrose himself could sing of Adam's sin as a felix culpa, that is a happy fault. And it is truly necessary, because it merited such and so great a Redeemer. Linked with this view of Adam's fall and of human solidarity with his fall, was a changed view about Adam and Eve in their first condition. There is no clear evidence that the early Fathers viewed Adam and Eve as enjoying many special prerogatives or some very lofty space of human existence. But as more stress was placed upon the fall of Adam and Eve and the consequences for them and their descendants, the picture of their original state, of their original justice before sin, was painted in brighter colors. They were seen, for example, as endowed with immortality, great knowledge, physical perfection, and freedom from suffering. These came to be called in later theology the preternatural gifts of Adam and Eve before sin. They were gifts given over and above human nature and not strictly owing to it, yet not strictly supernatural either, as grace was considered to be.
What about the doctrine of grace? It is such an important element of our Catholic faith and such an essential part of our theological anthropology. God's response to the human person's sin was the saving work of Christ. We have already seen how the Fathers viewed this saving work of Christ. Here we shall examine these effects more directly under the category of grace, which like Christ's saving work, had many ramifications and was treated through many themes.
Until recent times the theology of grace reflected controversies of the last five or six centuries which were concerned with the relation between grace and nature or between grace and free will. Justification was discussed in terms of faith, or of good works done under faith. The renewal of Patristic studies, especially of the Greek Fathers, which has marked the last seventy five years of scholarship, has helped broaden the awareness of the rich doctrine of grace in all of the Fathers, including Saint Augustine, who was studied too exclusively for his doctrine on the debated issue coming out of the Reformation. These newer studies have given a more balanced and less one sided view of Patristic doctrines of grace and justification, a view that is generally much more positive and realistic.
As with other doctrines, it took several centuries for what was lived and practiced in the realm of grace to be thought out and expressed in doctrinal statements. The theme of grace is one that permeates the New Testament. But like the many Scriptural references to the Most Holy Trinity or to those that indicate the saving work of Christ, it took time to integrate them, ponder them, and articulate them in a way that took advantage of the wisdom of a particular age. The same is true with the doctrine of grace. We are not limiting ourselves here to the exact or precise word grace, but are emphasizing the whole idea of the gifts communicated by God's graciousness, with graciousness itself being the primary source of the gifts given. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, one of the great Apologists of the late Second Century, taught the doctrine of recapitulation of all things in Christ against the doctrine of self redemption as taught by the Gnostics. Irenaeus opposed the Gnostic doctrine of salvation by a secret gnosis, with a doctrine of Christian love available to all as the one means of salvation. He stressed, as did others, the saving power of Christ's Revelation, a public Revelation not hidden or reserved to only a few, but communicated to all through the Church, which had received it from the apostles through apostolic succession.
The Fourth Century saw the fullest development of the Patristic understanding of grace. This doctrine and that of salvation lies behind much of the controversy that we have previously discussed with respect to the Christological and Trinitarian questions. Athanasius linked the Incarnation with divinization. The Word of God became Man in order that we might be made God, not in any pantheistic sense, but rather through our participation in the divine nature of God. For Saint Athanasius the words "consubstantiality with the Father" are also important for the doctrine of grace. If the Word is not God He cannot make us divine.
In his treatise against the Arians, Saint Ignatius writes, "There would have been no profit to us men if either the Word had not been truly and by nature the Son of God, or the flesh which he assumed had not been real flesh." Athanasius also speaks of Sonship by nature, belonging to the Word, and sonship by grace, that belongs to created human persons. That is his sense of participation in the divine nature.
Among the Western Fathers, Saint Cyprian of Carthage speaks of the human person's need of grace for salvation and of Baptism as the labor of rebirth and sanctification. Saints Hilary, Ambrose and Augustine all have developments on grace. Saint Augustine is often referred to as the Doctor of Grace. In general we can say that the Western Fathers stressed original sin and its effects more than do the Eastern Fathers. Therefore the Western Fathers tend to look somewhat more to the healing function of grace rather than to the elevating function of grace, which is more emphasized in the Greek and Eastern Church Fathers. The Western Fathers speak of the more positive aspect of grace giving rebirth, renewal, holiness and the indwelling of God.
A few themes of grace appear repeatedly in the Church Fathers. First, the Fathers teach us that the bestowal of grace and gifts is the work of the Trinity. The Fathers see the control of grace in gifts as coming from the Father, by the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Second, the effect of these gifts is the divinization of the Christian. This sense of divinization has been a theme present in the teaching of the Greek Fathers throughout the Third and Fourth Centuries. We have noted already its importance and its place in Saint Athanasius' understanding of the saving work of Christ. Specific points concerning divinization are that Baptism is usually linked with divinization as a means by which we receive it, it is a grace of adopted sonship, it is a sharing in the divine nature, and it is real in the person, but at the same time is above nature, that is, it is supernatural.
Another theme surrounding the Fathers' teaching on grace is that there is a profound spiritual and mystical aspect of this doctrine. This is especially true in Fathers such as Origin and Gregory of Nyssa who write of the indwelling or inhabitation of the Persons of the Trinity in the Christian. Part of our inheritance is the very beautiful and profound sense of each Christian being a dwelling place of the Trinity. It also includes a sense of the mystical birth of Christ in each Christian, based on Saint Paul's Letter to the Galatians 4/19, "My little children, you to whom I am giving birth again in labor until Christ is formed in you." This is found in Saint Irenaeus and Origin. The spiritual mystical aspect of the doctrine of grace also is reflected in the illumination of the Christian. The Greek word for illumination was used for Baptism itself because Baptism was considered an illumination of the person's mind and so of his life. The Johannine writings used the light-darkness theme, and the Fathers often see salvation as the new knowledge brought by Christ's replacing former ignorance. Saint Clement of Alexandria expresses this as the first in a series of steps leading to divinization. He writes, "Baptized, we are illumined; Illumined, we are adopted; Adopted, we are made perfect; Perfect, we are immortalized. I have said, it is written, you are gods, and sons of the Most High, all of you."
The next theme regards the question of grace and liberty. For the Greek Fathers it is through grace that liberty is gained. In teaching this they are faithful to Pauline Theology. Grace and liberty are not opposed to each other as they are presented in some later theologians. For the Greek Fathers, human persons are like God by liberty and are like God by grace. Man's original liberty was destroyed by sin which enslaved man. Faith in Christ and the grace of Christ restores liberty. Beatitude gives liberty its full perfection. This is a theme that is perennially important, the relationship of grace and freewill.
These different themes all relate to the question of theological anthropology. They should give you a deep appreciation for the richness, and especially for the very positive affirmation, of who we are as human persons, body and soul, made in the image and likeness of God. Too often the Church is stereotyped as being anti-flesh, anti-body, anti-sexuality, and while there may have been some stream of that incorporated through an overemphasis on Platonic philosophy, by far the majority of the Fathers emphasize and reemphasize the positive value of creation, the positive value of sexuality, the positive value of Christian love. We are blessed by the rich corpus of thought and development on these important themes of theological anthropology.
A final theme central to a comprehensive understanding of the teaching of the Church Fathers has to do with the sacraments. The Greek word that in the fourth century came to be used for sacrament was mysterion, from which the English word mystery is derived. In the pre-Christian Greek usage, it meant both a secret and a religious initiation in which secrecy was imposed. For Saint Paul mysterion signifies the secret of God above man's salvation through Christ, a secret now revealed. There is, in the word then, an ambivalence of secret and revelation. For Paul, mysterion signifies the hidden meaning, whether symbolic or typical, of an institution. Thus he applied it to marriage in the Church in Ephesians 5/32, insofar as marriage, from its first institution, was a type of the union of Christ in his Church. For Saint Paul, mysterion is a hidden action, as when he speaks of the mystery of inequity.
In the New Testament, mysterion was not applied to the sacred rite constituting the sacraments. Early Christian writers applied the word to the mysteries of Christ, that is Christian belief and practices. Only in the Fourth Century did John Chrysostom apply the word mysterion to Baptism and Confirmation. The Latin equivalent would be expected to be arcanum, but instead sacramentum came to be used. In early Latin translations, sacramentum was used to translate mysterion. Early translators seem to wish to avoid words such as mysteria, sacra, arcana, and initia, because in Rome these words were already applied to pagan mystery rites. Tertullian was very important for establishing Latin terminology. His place is crucial for the application of this term sacramentum to Christian rites. He used sacramentum not only for all the meanings of mysterion found in Scripture, but also for faith, Catholic doctrine and discipline, the economy of salvation, and so forth. He also applied the term sacramentum to Christian rites.
For us the question of how many Sacraments there are has a direct and specific answer, seven. But for the Church Fathers using the word sacramentum in a much broader sense, there would be many more than seven sacraments because it would include not only Christian rites but also Christian doctrine and discipline. Thus Tertullian speaks of the sacramentum militiae, that is the oath pronounced at the start of military service in the army; Christianity as the militiae Christi, the army of Christ, being a sacramentum. He also speaks of Baptism as a sacramentum, as the oath par excellence expressing opposition to the worship of false idols.
There are some general points concerning the Fathers teaching on the sacraments. First, the Fathers had no theology of the sacraments. They emphasized the individual Sacraments of Initiation, especially since much of their treatment of sacraments is found in catechetical instructions concerning the Sacraments of Initiation. Recall that the Church Fathers were not academic scholars in the modern sense. They were bishops and pastors, fully involved in the life of their community and so they dealt with specific instructions with regard to individual rites and sacraments. By examining these sacraments they did develop principles of sacramental theology which then gradually extended to other symbolic rites.
Second, their general notion of a sacrament involved a double element. One element is a symbol, a thing that conveys meaning in various ways, and the other is an element of sanctification, or of making holy. Sacraments were looked upon as symbols of sanctification or holiness, that is, symbols or signs of holiness insofar as they symbolized or signified a holy reality and helped produce this reality. This general notion was lived and taught rather until the time of Saint Augustine, who develops the notion of sign and symbol in a technically conscious way.
A third point is that there was no clear classification of seven sacraments as they came to be listed in twelfth century, and as the seven were defined by the Council of Trent in 1547. These seven sacraments were not clearly differentiated from other sacred symbolic rites practiced in the early Church. Thus Tertullian uses the word sacrament, sacramentum, only of Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist and Marriage. He does however speak of other rites that would come to be called Sacraments. Origen speaks of all the rites later to be called sacramenta except for Confirmation, which was not always clearly distinguished from Baptism, and for the Anointing of the Sick. He quotes James 5/14-15 as a basis for this sacrament. Ambrose uses sacramentum only of Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist, although he knows the other rites later to be called the sacraments. Confirmation was closely linked with Baptism and only gradually did the Fathers come to see it as a separate sacrament or rite. Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist were given closely together in the Rite of Initiation during the Paschal Vigil. In the West, the imposition of hands seemed more important in Confirmation than did the Anointing so far as the exterior symbol of Confirmation was concerned. The East stressed the Anointing as more important. Penance is often mentioned and at an early date. From the earliest period Christian Penance was available for the Baptized.
Scholars differ as to whether there was any private penance in the early centuries. Private penance was referred to in any of three elements. First, private penance can mean private confession of sins as opposed to public confession. Private confession was the general practice of the Church since the earliest ages. Second, private penance might refer to private as opposed to public acts of satisfaction. Penitential practices in the Patristic era were often publicly imposed and publicly performed. And third, private penance can refer to private as opposed to public absolution from sin. Penance was considered to be reconciliation not only with God but with the Church which had been betrayed by the sinner. The early Christians were aware of this social character of sin and felt the need for reconciliation with the community as well as with God. In reading ancient authors or modern scholars, one must examine which definition or definitions are meant.
The Sacrament of Sacred Orders was clearly thought to be an important and holy rite but it was seldom called a sacrament.
There is little textual evidence of the practice of Anointing of the Sick. The first clear text, written in the Third Century, concerns the blessing of oil and refers to the strength of those who taste it and the health of those who use it. The East seems to have been ahead of the West in regard to the Sacrament of Anointing.
Another point which the Church Fathers clarified about sacramental theology concerned the re-baptism of heretics and schismatics and the ordinations performed by them. As heretical or schismatic groups separated from the main body of the Church, they began to take in new members, baptize them, and ordain them. When any of these persons wished to join the Catholic Church the question arose as to whether they should be baptized or ordained again by the Church. Rome and Alexandria had the practice of not baptizing them but of having a Reconciliation ceremony. In the African and in some Eastern Churches, the practice was to baptize and ordain them again. Cyprian, the great Bishop of Carthage, disagreed with Pope Stephen I of Rome about this. Cyprian held that the Lord had taught that only those who had the Holy Spirit could baptize and confirm for remission of sin. This disagreement finally led to a clarification of the distinction between genuine or valid reception of the Sacraments and the fruitful reception of them, that is the reception of the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins and the beginning of a share in the Divine Light. The link of Baptism and the Spirit was investigated as a result of this controversy. The Roman practice prevailed, at least in the West. Saint Augustine, although an African, sided with the Roman position and worked out the theology opposing re-baptizing those coming from heresy or schism into the Church.
During the Patristic era the importance of the formula, the words pronounced in the conferring of the sacrament, came to be stressed. Thus if Baptism was performed correctly in the name of Christ, it was considered genuine and valid. This removed doubt about the conferring of the sacrament if the life of the minister was that of a schismatic or an evil person. Stress was laid on the power of the symbolic rite itself, as long as the proper words, and what came to be known as the correct matter, were used. In these circumstances, the sacraments came to be seen and recognized as valid. This is the foundation of what later came to be called ex opere operato, literally from the work having been performed. Through the development of the thought of the Fathers of the Church we have been richly endowed with a deeper and fuller understanding of the meaning of the sacraments and their place in relationship to the economy of salvation.
These review topics are to help you understand the lecture and prepare for the final exam; they are not a written assignment.
Describe what is meant by the theological anthropology of the Fathers.
Describe the themes of the Church Fathers concerning grace.
Describe the themes of the Church Fathers concerning the sacraments.
Jurgens, William.