A History of Christian Thought: From its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism
by
Paul Tillich,
Carl E. Braaten (Editor)
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Previously published in two separate volumes entitled
Paperback, 550 pages
Published November 15th 1972 by Touchstone
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URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tillich
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CHAPTER
II Theological Developments in the Ancient Church
A. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS
WE come now to the
apostolic fathers, the earliest post-biblical writers we know of, some of them
even earlier than the later books of the New Testament. These apostolic
fathers, Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, "The Shepherd" of
Hermas, and others, were more dependent on a Christian conformism that had
gradually developed than on the outspoken position of Paul in his Letters.
Paul's influence during this period was felt more indirectly through John and
Ignatius. The reason for this, at least in part, was that the controversy with
the Jews was a matter of the past; Paul's conflict with the Jewish Christians
did not have to be continued. Instead of that, the positive elements in the
faith which could provide an understandable content for the pagans had to be
brought out. In general one could say that in the period of the apostolic
fathers the great visions of the first ecstatic breakthrough had disappeared,
leaving in their place a given set of ideas which produced a kind of
ecclesiastical conformity, and making the missionary work possible. Some people
have complained about this development, deploring that so early after the
second generation of Christians the power of the Spirit was on the wane. This
is an unavoidable thing, however, in all creative periods. One needs only to think
of the Reformation. After the breakthrough and after the second generation
which received the breakthrough, a fixation or concentration on some special
points begins. There are the educational needs to preserve what was given
earlier.
Nevertheless, this period of the
apostolic fathers is extremely
18 A History of Christian Thought
important, even though
it may have considerably lost its spiritual power in comparison with the
preceding period of the apostles, since it preserved what was needed for the
life of the congregations. The first question to be asked was: Where could one
find the expression of the common spirit of the congregation? Originally the
real mediators of the message were those who were bearers of the Spirit, the
"pneumatics", those who had the pneuma. But as we know from
Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, especially chapter 12, he already
encountered difficulties with the bearers of the Spirit because they produced
disorder. So he laid stress on order together with the Spirit. In the Pastoral
Epistles, which were attributed to Paul, the emphasis on ecclesiastical order
became increasingly important. By the time of the apostolic fathers the
ecstatic spirit had almost disappeared. It was considered dangerous. And why,
they asked, do we need it? Everything the Spirit had to say has already been
classically expressed in Scripture and tradition. Therefore, instead of the
prophets who traveled from place to place as the apostles did, we now have
definite norms and authorities arising in the Christian congregations. What
were these norms and authorities?
The
first and basic authority was the Old Testament. Next to that was the earliest
collection of writings which are now in the New Testament. The limits of the
New Testament had not yet been definitely set. It took more than two hundred
years for the church to make a final decision on all the books in the New
Testament canon.
Besides
these writings there was already a complex of dogmatic and ethical doctrines
which had become traditional. In I Clement these are called "the canon of
our tradition". This tradition had various names, like truth, gospel,
doctrine, and commandments. This, however, was a large amount of material; it
had to be narrowed down for those who were to be baptized. So a creed was
created which they could confess when they became members of the church. This
creed had a similarity to our present Apostles' Creed, because its center was
also christological. Christology was at the center because this is what distinguished
the Christian communities from Judaism as well as paganism.
Baptism
was the sacrament of entrance into the church. The baptized person, who at that
time, of course, was a pagan adult, had to confess that he would accept the
implications of his
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 19
baptism. Then he was
baptized in the name of Christ. Later on the names of God the Father and the
Spirit were added. As yet there were no accompanying explanations; this was
faith and liturgy, not yet theology.
All
these things were going on in the church. This church was the ekklesia, the
assembly of God or Christ. The original meaning of ekklesia was
"called out". They were called out of the houses and nations to form
the church universal; they were called out of the barbarians, out of the Greeks
and the Jews, to become the true people of God. Of course, the Jews anticipated
this and were a kind of ekklesia themselves. But they were not the true
people of God, for the true people of God are universally called out of all the
nations. If this is the case, it becomes necessary for those called together
unto the conformity of the ecclesiastical creed to distinguish themselves from
those outside and from heretics inside. How can this be done? How is it
possible to determine whether a doctrine conforms to the doctrines of the
church instead of being introduced from barbarian, Greek, or Jewish teachings?
The answer was that this can be done only by the bishop who is the
"overseer" of the congregation. The bishop represents the Spirit who
is supposed to be within the whole congregation. In the struggle against
pagans, Jews, barbarians, and heretics, the bishop became more and more
important. In his letter to the Smymeans Ignatius wrote: "Where the bishop
is, there the congregation should be." Prophets who appear may be right
or wrong, but the bishop is right. The bishops were representatives of the true
doctrine. Originally the bishops were not distinguished from the presbyters or
elders. Gradually, however, the bishop became a monarch among the elders,
giving rise to the monarchical episcopate. This is a natural development. If
the authority which guarantees truth is embodied in human beings, it is almost
unavoidable that there will be a tendency to narrow down upon one individual
who holds the final decision. In Clement of Rome we already find traces of the
idea of apostolic succession, that is, that the bishop represents the apostles.
This shows clearly how early the problem of authority became decisive in the
church and started a trend toward its fuller development in the Roman Church.
We
shall now take up some of the special doctrines of this period. In view of the
pagan world in which these Christians
20 A History of Christian Thought
lived it was essential
to emphasize above all a monotheistic idea of God. Thus the Shepherd of Hermas
says: "First of all, believe that Cod is one, who has made all things,
bringing them out of nothing into being." The doctrine of creation out of
nothing is expressed here. Although we cannot find this doctrine explicitly in
the Old Testament, it might be said to be implicit there, and certainly was
expressed prior to Christianity by the Jewish theologians during the
inter-testamental period. This doctrine was decisive for the separation of the
early church from paganism.
Along
the same line was the emphasis on the almighty God, the despotës, as he
was called, the powerful ruling Lord. Clement exclaims, "0 great
demiurge", speaking of him as the great builder of the universe and the
Lord of everything. These concepts which seem so natural to us were important
because they were a defense against paganism. Creation out of nothing means
that Cod did not find an already pre-existent matter when he started to create.
There was no matter which resists form, as it was in Neo-Platonic paganism, and
which must therefore be transcended. Instead, the material world is an object
of God's creation; it is good and must not be disparaged for the sake of
salvation. The word "demiurge" was used in Plato and Gnosticism for
something below the highest Cod. The highest God is beyond doing such a lowly
thing as creating the world, and so he leaves that to the demiurge. This means
that the divine reality is not present in the act of creation. Against this
notion Clement says that the great demiurge is Cod himself; there is no
dichotomy between the highest Cod and the maker of the world. Creation is an
absolute act out of nothing. This implies Cod's almighty power. To say that Cod
is almighty does not mean that Cod is one who sits on a throne and can do
anything he wants to do like an arbitrary tyrant. Rather, almightiness means
that God is the sole ground of everything created, and that there is no such
thing as matter which resists him. This is the meaning of the first article of
the Apostles' Creed; "I believe in Cod the Father Almighty, Maker of
heaven and earth." We should read this with great awe, because by this
confession Christianity separated itself from the dualistic interpretation of
reality in paganism. There are not two eternal principles, an evil principle of
matter as eternal as a good principle of form. The first article of the Creed
is the great wall which Christianity erected against paganism. Without this
wall
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 21
christology inevitably
deteriorates into gnosticism in which Christ is one of the cosmic powers
alongside others, although perhaps the highest among them. Only in the light of
the first article is the second article of the Creed meaningful. Do not reduce
God to the second Person of the Trinity.
As
the ruler of everything God has a plan of salvation. Ignatius in particular
develops this idea of a plan of salvation. In his letter to the Ephesians he
speaks of the economy towards the new man". This is a wonderful summary of
the Christian message. Economy here means "building a house". It is
used for the structure of the relationships between God and the world. There is
an economy of trinitarian thinking: Father, Son, and Spirit. Only all three
together are God. There is an economy of salvation, that is the building up of
the different periods which finally lead to the new man. This idea of the new
man, the new creature or new being, as the aim of the history of salvation is
an important contribution of these theologians. This economy of salvation is
already present in the period of the Old Testament. So Ignatius says:
"Judaism has believed towards Christianity." The Christ, the new man,
is the perfect fulfillment in which the disruption of the old man is overcome
and death is dissolved. This leads to Christology.
Generally
one can say that Jesus as the Christ was considered to be a pre-existent
spiritual being who had transformed the historical Jesus into an agent of his
saving activity. The Spirit is a hypostasis in God, an independent power
in complete union with God. The Son came into the realm of flesh.
"Flesh" here always means historical reality. He accepted flesh; or
the flesh cooperated with the Spirit in him. The Holy Spirit dwelt in the
flesh which he chose. He became the Son of God by his service.
Alongside
this there was another idea. One could also say that the first Spirit, the proton
pneuma, became flesh. For instance, Ignatius said: "Christ is God and
perfect man at the same time. He comes from the Spirit and the seed of
David." This means that he is not only some spiritual power which has
accepted flesh, but that he as the spiritual power has become flesh.
Another
term that was used was iatros, physician. Salvation was still understood
here as healing. This physician heals both fleshly and spiritually. Very mixed
ideas were used to emphasize that something paradoxical has happened, that a
divine spiritual
22 A History of Christian Thought
power has
appeared under the conditions of humanity and existence. Thus, he is depicted
as one having genesis and at the same time without genesis; he has come into
the flesh; he has entered into death. But he is Cod who came into flesh and in
death has eternal life. He is both from Mary and from Cod; he is able to suffer
and not able to suffer, because of his elevation to God.
Ignatius could say: "For there is one Cod who made himself manifest
through Jesus Christ his Son, who is his logos, proceeding from his
silence." And II Clement: "Being the first Spirit, the head of the
angels, he became flesh. Being he who appears in human form, Christ is the word
proceeding out of the silence." He proceeds from silence, apo siges. The
Christ breaks the eternal silence of the divine ground. As such he is both God
and complete man. The same historical reality is the one as well as the other,
both as one person. One could speak of a double message (a dip/on kerygma), the
message that this same being is both Cod and man.
Here we see the chief religious interest of this whole period, the
interest, as Clement says, to speak theologically of Christ as of Cod.
"Brothers, so we must think about Jesus Christ as about God, for if we
think small things about him, we can hope to receive small things only."
The absoluteness of salvation demands an absolute divine Savior. We are confronted
here by the problem of two possible ways of thinking: Did Christ come into the
flesh, accepting it? Or did he come as the Logos, being transformed into it?
Both types of christology already appear, taking on flesh, or being transformed
into it.
The idea of the divine Logos breaking the silence of God is very
profound. It means that the divine abyss in itself is without word, form,
object, and voice. It is the infinite silence of the eternal. But out of this
divine silence, the Logos breaks forth and opens up what is hidden in this
silence. He reveals the divine ground.
The christology we find here is not a theoretical problem; rather, the
christological problem is one side of the soteriological problem. The interest
is to have a safe salvation; the desire is to get the courage which overcomes
the anxiety of being lost. The question of salvation is the basis of the
christological question. What is this salvation? The work of Christ is twofold,
first, gnösis (knowledge) and secondly zo (life). This is the way
sal‑
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 28
vation was conceived of
in the early Greek church. Christ brings knowledge and life. Sometimes the two
things are combined in the phrase athanatos gnösis, immortal knowledge,
knowledge of that which is immortal and which makes immortal.
Christ
called us from darkness into light; he made us serve the Father of truth. He
called us who had no being and willed that we have being, out of his new being.
This means that knowledge brings being. Knowledge and being belong together; so
do he and non-being. Truth is being; new truth is new being. Whoever has this
knowledge of being has saving knowledge. This has to be emphasized against a
gross misunderstanding. Harnack and his followers viewed ancient Christianity
as being infected by Greek intellectualism. There are two things wrong in this
viewpoint. First, Greek intellectualism is an inappropriate term because the
Greeks were extremely interested in truth. With but some exceptions, the truth
they wanted to have was existential truth, truth concerning their existence, truth
that saves them out of this distorted existence and elevates them to the
immovable One. The early Christian congregations understood truth in the same
way. Truth is not theoretical knowledge about objects, but cognitive
participation in a new reality that has appeared in the Christ. Without this
participation no truth is possible, and knowledge is abstract and meaningless.
This is what they meant when they combined knowledge and being. Participating
in the new being is participation in truth, in the true knowledge.
This
identity of truth and being mediates life. Christ gives immortal knowledge, the
knowledge which gives immortality. He is the Savior and leader of immortality.
In his own being he is our imperishable life. He gives both the knowledge of immortality
and the drug of immortality, which is the sacrament. Ignatius called the Lord's
Supper the remedy against our having to die, the antidoton to me apothanein.
There is a very profound meaning in this idea that the sacramental
materials of the Lord's Supper are, so to speak, drugs or remedies which
produce immortality. First of all, it shows that the apostolic fathers did not
believe in the immortality of the soul. There is no natural immortality,
otherwise it would be meaningless for them to speak about immortal life which
Christ offers. They believed that man is naturally mortal, just as the Old
Testament held that in paradise man was able to eat from the food of the gods,
called the "tree of life",
24 A History of Christian Thought
and to keep alive by
participating in this divine power. Similarly the apostolic fathers taught that
with the coming of Christ the situation of paradise has been re-established.
Again we may participate in the food of eternity, which is the body and the
blood of Christ. In doing this we build into ourselyes a counter-balance to our
natural having to die. Death is the wages of sin only insofar as sin is
separation from God. Because of this sin Cod's power to overcome our natural
having to die does not work any more. But with Christ's coming it works again.
It works in a sacramentally realistic way in the materials of the sacrament of
the Lord's Supper. In the light of this we can conclude that our traditional
way of speaking of the immortality of the soul is not classically Christian
doctrine, but a distortion of it, not in a genuine, but in a pseudo-Platonic
sense.
B. TRE APOLOGETIC MOVEMENT
The Apologetic movement
can rightly be called the birthplace of a developed Christian theology.
Christianity needed apologetics for different reasons. An apologia means
a reply or answer to a judge in the court, if someone should accuse you.
Socrates' apologia, for instance, was his answer to those who accused
him. Likewise, Christianity expressed itself in terms of answers to particular
accusations. Those who did this systematically are called the Apologists.
Answers
were needed because of a double accusation against Christianity: (1)
Christianity was a threat to the Roman Empire. This was a political accusation;
Christianity undermines the structure of the empire; (2) Christianity was,
philosophically speaking, nonsense, a superstition mixed with philosophical
fragments. These two attacks supported each other. The philosophical attack
was taken over by the political authorities and used in their accusations. Thus
the philosophical attacks became dangerous in terms of their political
consequences. Celsus, the physician and philosopher, was the most important
representative of these attacks. It is important to know his thinking if we
want to see how Christianity was regarded at that time by an educated Greek
philosopher and scientist. Celsus saw Christianity as a mixture of fanatic
superstition and piecemeal philosophy. According to him the historical reports
in the Bible are contra‑
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 25
dictory and lack any
certain evidence. Here for the first time we have historical criticism of the
Old and New Testaments, something which will be repeated later again and
again. In Celsus it is criticism motivated by hate. Later, in the eighteenth
century, we witness a criticism moved by a love toward the reality which lies
behind these reports.
In
turning to Celsus' attack on Christianity, we find that one of the main points
is the resurrection of Jesus. Celsus observed that this event, which is
supposed to be so important, was witnessed only by adherents of the faith, and
at first only by a few ecstatic women. The deification of Jeins is not any
different from the processes of deification which we know of elsewhere in
history. For example, Euhemerus, the Cynic, has given enough examples of the
way in which a human being, a king or hero, was deified. What is particularly
disgusting, Celsus said, is that when the stories are most incredible, as many
of the Old Testament stories, they are explained away allegorically. Of course,
this was actually done. An element of anti-Judaism is visible in Celsus'
criticism of the Old Testament miracle stories. This is understandable because
Celsus was directing his criticisms against the Jews as much as against the
Christians.
Celsus charged that the descent
of God contradicts the
un‑
changeable character of God which
the Christian writers had also strongly emphasized. But if the divine Being has
descended to earth, why did this happen in a despised corner of the world, and
why did it happen only once? Particularly disgusting to the educated pagan—and
we have here another element of anti‑
Jiidaistic feeling—is the fight
between the Jews and Christians whether the Messiah has or has not appeared.
The argument from prophecy to fulfillment that was used so much by Christians
is also a stupid one. Celsus was historically educated enough to sri, that the prophet
did not anticipate a fulfillment in the terms in which the fulfillment
happened. Thic is an especially sore point iii all of church history. For the
sound idea of a universal pre-jiaratory revelation was distorted into a
mechanism of "foresee-i i ig " events which later happened.
Celsus'
deepest criticism of Christianity was neither scientific Willi respect to
history nor philosophical with respect to the idea oil'Incarnation; instead, it
was one which arose out of a basically ii'Ilgious feeling. He said that the
demonic powers which,
26 A History of Christian Thought
according to Paul, had
been conquered by Christ are actually ruling the world. The world has not
changed since the beginning of Christianity. And Celsus adds that there is no
sense in trying to overcome thse powers; they are the real rulers of the world.
Therefore, one should be obedient to the Roman rulers on earth; at least they
have reduced the power of the demons to some extent—which is also a Pauline
idea. They have established a certain order in which the demonic forces are
limited. However questionable the Roman emperors may be as persons, they must
be obeyed and venerated, for Rome has become great through obedience to the
orders of this world, to the necessities of law and nature. Christians are
guilty of undermining the greatness and the glory of Rome, and thus undercut
the only power that can prevent the world from falling into chaos and the
demons from having a complete victory.
That
was a serious attack, one which has been heard frequently in the history of
Christianity. christians who had the same philosophical education that Celsus
had tried to answer for the church. The Apologists did not answer the attacks
so much on the level of historical criticism as on the philosophical level.
They did it in a way which shows three things that characterize every
apologetic. First of all, if you want to speak meaningfully with someone, there
must be a common basis of some mutually accepted ideas. The truth that is
common to both Christians and pagans must first be elaborated. If they have
nothing in common, no conversation is possible and no meaningful address to
the pagans is possible. A rule for all Christian missionary work is that the
other one must understand what you say; but understanding involves at least
partial participation. If the missionary speaks an absolutely different
language, no understanding is possible. Thus, the Apologists had to show that
there is something in common.
Secondly,
the Apologists had to point out defects in the ideas of paganism. There are
things which contradict the pagan ideas. It can be shown that for centuries
pagan philosophers have brought forth criticisms of these ideas. This is the
second step of apologetics, namely, showing the negativity in the other.
Thirdly, it must be shown that one's own position is not to be accepted as
something from the outside, but rather that Christianity is the fulfillment of
a longing and desire in paganism. This is the apolo‑
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 27
getic form of theology
which I use in my own systematic theology, that is, the correlation between
question and answer.
There
is, however, one danger in apologetics; the common ground may be overemphasized
at the expense of the differences. Then you merely accept the other as he is,
without giving him anything different. A way must be found between the two
extremes of either throwing indigestible material at the other from an external
position, or telling him what he already, knows. The latter is the way liberal
theology has often acted, while the former is the way of fundamentalism and
orthodoxy.
1. The Christian Philosoph!,
Justin
Martyr was perhaps the most important of the Apologists. In speaking of
Christianity he said: "This is the only philosophy which I have found
certain and adequate." What does this mean? Some anti-apologetic
theologians interpret this as evidence that Christianity was dissolved into a
philosophy. They say further that this is what every apologetic theology does
to Christianity. But when Justin said that Christianity was a philosophy, we
must understand what he meant by philosophy. Philosophy at that time referred
to the spiritual, non-magical and non-superstitious character of a movement.
So Justin was saying that Christianity is the only certain and adequate
philosophy because it is not magical or superstitious. For the later Greeks
philosophy was not only a theoretical but more a practical matter. It was a
matter of existential interpretation of life, a matter of life and death for
the existence of the people at that time. To be a philosopher ordinarily meant
to belong to a philosophical school, a sort of ritual community in which the
founder of the school was supposed to have had a revelatory insight into the
truth. Accep-I once into such a school was not a
matter of having a Ph.D., h1t of being personally initiated into the atmosphere
of this school.
Jiistin
taught that this Christian philosophy is universal; it is I I
iv all-embracing truth about the meaning of existence. From this it follows
that wherever truth appears, it belongs to the Christians. 'liuth concerning
existence, wherever it appears, is Christian Iruth. "What anybody has said
about the truth belongs to us, the Christians." This is-not sheer
arrogance. He does not mean that
28 A History
of Christian Thought
Christians now possess
all the truth, or that they alone discovered it. He means, in terms of the
Logos doctrine, that there-cannot be truth anywhere which is not in principle
included in Christian truth. This is what the Fourth Gospel says: the Logos
appeared, full of truth and grace.
And
vice versa, Justin said: "Those who live according to the logos are
Christians." He included people like Socrates, Hera-clitus, and Elijah. He
added, however, that the total logos which appeared in Christ has become body,
mind, and soul. Therefore, the philosophers apart from Christianity are partly
in error and even partly subjected to demonic inspirations which come from the
pagan gods. The gods of the heathen are not non-existent; they are real demonic
forces and have destructive power.
What
does all this mean? It removes the impression that these Christians felt
themselves to be just another religion. Actually we find here the negation of
the concept of religion with respect to Christianity, as though it were one
religion among others, and as though Christianity is right and all other
religions wrong. The Apologists would not say that their religion is
right, the others wrong, but that the Logos has appeared on which their
religion is based. He is the full Logos of God himself, appearing in the center
of his being, appearing in his totality. This is more than religion. This is
truth appearing in time and space. So the word "Christianity" is
understood not as a religion but as the negation of all religions. In
virtue of its universality Christianity is able to embrace them all. Justin
said what I think is absolutely necessary to say. If anywhere in the world
there were an existential truth which could not be received by Christianity as
an element of its own thinking, Jesus would not be the Christ. He would be
merely one teacher alongside other teachers, all of whom are limited and partly
in error. But that is not what the early Christians said. They said—and we
should say—that if we call Jesus the Christ, or the Logos as the Apologists
called him, this means that by definition there cannot be any truth which
cannot in principle be taken into Christianity. Otherwise the application of
the term "Logos" to Jesus as the Christ would not have been possible.
This does not mean that this Logos knew all the truth; that would be
nonsense and would destroy his humanity. But it does mean that the fundamental
truth which has appeared in him is essentially universal, and therefore can *ke
in every other
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 29
truth. For this reason
the early theologians did not hesitate to take in as much Greek philosophical
truth as they could, and also as much Oriental mysticism as they could.
The
appearance of the Logos in Christ makes it possible for even the most
uneducated human being to receive the full existential truth. In contrast, the
philosophers may lose it in discussing it. In other words, the Apologists are
saying that Christianity is far superior to all philosophy. Since philosophy
presupposes education, only a few human beings have access to its truth. Others
are excluded from truth in its philosophical form. However, they are not
excluded from the truth that is manifest through the Logos in a living person.
The message of Jesus as the Christ is universal in embracing all mankind, all
classes, groups, and social stratifications of mankind.
Another
argument that was used in defense of Christianity was the moral power and
action of those who belong to the church. Therefore, the Christian
congregations could not be dangerous to the Roman Empire. They help to prevent
the world from falling into chaos. Even more than the Roman Empire itself, they
are supporters of world order. So Justin could say: "The world lives from
the prayers of the Christians and from the obedience of the Christians to the
law of the state. The Christians preserve the world, and on the other hand, for
their sake Cod preserves the world."
2. God and the Logos
The
philosophical idea of God is inborn in every human being. All the
characteristics which Parmenides attributed to Being are here attributed
to God eternal, without beginning, needing nothing, beyond passions,
indestructible, unchangeable, and invisible. There is, however, one point of
difference between classical Greek philosophy and Justin's doctrine of God.
This difference comes from the Old Testament and changes everything. It is the
statement that God is the Almighty Creator! The moment this statement is made,
the personal element enters the ahstract and mystical description of God's
identity. Cod as Creator is acting, and as the Almighty he is the acting power
behind everything which moves.
It is interesting to observe that
in such a statement about God,
30 A History of Christian Thought
Christian monotheism
oscillates between the transpersonal element of Being and the personal element
of God as Creator and, of course, also as Savior. This oscillation is necessary
as soon as the idea of God is made an object of thought. One cannot escape some
elements of the eternal, the unconditional, the unchangeable, etc. On the
other hand, practical piety and our experience of creatureiness presuppose a
person-to-person relationship. Christianity must oscillate between these two
elements, because both elements are in God himself.
Between
Cod and man there are angels and powers, some good and some evil. But their
mediating power is insufficient. The Logos is the real mediator. It is
difficult to explain what the word "logos" means, especially to those
who are nominalists from birth. It is difficult because thisconcept is not the
description of an individual being, but of a universal principle. If one is
not used to thinking in terms of universals as powers of being, such a concept
as Logos remains impossible to understand. The concept of the Logos can be
explained best against the background of Platonism or medieval realism.
Logos
is the principle of the self-manifestation of God. The Logos is God manifest to
himself in himself. Therefore, whenever God appears, either to himself or to
others outside himself, it is the Logos which appears. This Logos is in Jesus
as the Christ in a unique way. And this, according to the Apologists, is the
greatness of Christianity and the basis of its claim about salvation. For if
the divine Logos in its fullness had not appeared in Jesus as the Christ, no
salvation would be possible. This is an argument from existence, not from
speculation. This means that the classical theologians start from the
experience of salvation, and then proceed to speak of Jesus as the Christ in
terms of the Logos.
The
Logos is the first "work" or generation of Cod as Father. The Father,
being eternal mind, has the Logos in himself; he is "eternally
logical", as Athenagoras, one of the Apologists, said. Here
"logical" does not mean that he can argue well; he leaves that to us.
As "logikos" he is adequate to the principles of meaning and truth.
God is not irrational will; he is called eternal nous (mind), and this
means he has within himself the power of self-manifestation. This analogy is
taken from our experience. There is no mental process that is going on in some
way or other except
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 81
in silent words.
Likewise, the inner spiritual life of God includes the silent word in him.
There
is a spiritual procession that goes out from the Father to the world in which
he manifests himself to himself and to the world. But this procession does not
produce separation. The Word is not the same thing of which it is the Word. On
the other hand, the Word cannot be separated from that of which it is the Word.
The Word of God is not identical with God; it is the self-manifestation of God.
But if you separate it from Cod, it becomes empty, without content. This is an
attempt to describe the meaning of the term "Logos," in analogy with
the mental processes of man. The process of generation of the Logos in
God—eternally, of course—does not make God small. He is not less than he was by
the fact that he generates his Word. So Justin\ can say: "The
Logos is different from Cod according to number, but not according to
concept." He is God; he is not the God, but he is one with God in
essence. Justin used also the Stoic doctrines of the immanent and the
transcendent Logos. The Logos in God is logos endiathetos, that is the
indwelling Logos. This eternal, indwelling Logos, the Word in which Cod
expresses himself to himself, becomes with the creation the logos
prophorikos, the proceeding, outgoing Logos. The Logos is then a word that
is spoken toward the outside, toward the creature, through the prophets and the
wise men. Logos means both word and reason. If one thinks in Old Testament
terms, one would prefer to translate logos by "word"; if one
thinks in Creek terms, as the Apologists did on the whole, then one would
translate logos by "reason". "Reason" here does not
mean "reasoning", but refers to the meaningful structure of reality.
As
the immediate self-expression of the divine, the Word (the Logos, form, or
reason) is less than the divine abyss, because the divine abyss is always the
beginning, and out of the depths of divinity his self-manifestation toward the
world comes. The Logos is the beginning of the generations of God; he has, so
to speak, a diminished transcendence or divinity. But if this is so, how can he
reveal God fully? This became a problem for later times. As soon as the
Apologists used the term "logos" the problem arose and could not be
silenced any more, if the Logos is the self-expression of God in movement, is
he less than God or fully God? One continued to call Christ God, but how could
the
32 A History of Christian Thought
statement be
made understandable to pagans that a historical individual who lived and died
is to be called "God"? The difficulty was not the incarnation as such.
"Incarnation is one of the most ordinary events in Greek mythology and in
all mythology. Gods come to earth; they take on animal, hUman, or,plant form; they do certain
things and then return to their divinity. Such a concept, however, could not be
accepted by Christianity. The difficulty was that this Son of Cod, who
was a historical man and not a mythical figure, is supposed to be the
absolute and unique incarnation of God.
The incarnation is a once-for-all event; and it is not a particular
element or characteristic of God which becomes incarnate. Rather, it is the
very center of divinity which becomes incarnate, and to express this the idea
of the Logos was used. The problem was to combine monotheism, which was
emphasized so strongly against pagan polytheism, with the idea of Christ's
divinity. Both aspects of Christ, his humanity and his universality, had to be
kept together. This was the need of that time which the Apologists fulfilled.
And therefore they were successful.
In the Apologists the incarnation is not the union of the divine Spirit
with the man Jesus; rather, the Logos really becomes man. This
transformation christology becomes increasingly important through the Logos
doctrine. Through the will of God the preexistent Logos has become man. He has
been made flesh. Here we have the first clear decision for the
transformation christology over against the adoptionist christology. If the
Logos (or Spirit) adopted the man Jesus, then we have quite a different kind of
christology from the idea that the Logos is transformed into flesh.
The saving gifts of the Logos are gnosis (knowledge) of God, of
the law, and of the resurrection. As the Logos Christ is, first of all, a
teacher; not a teacher who teaches us many things he knows better than we, but
a teacher in the Socratic sense of giving us existential power of being. The
Logos gives us truth about God and moral laws which we are to fulfill through
freedom. Thus a kind of intellectualization and some educational elements come
into the doctrine of the Christ. This was a possible consequence of the Logos
doctrine, and for this reason there have always been reactions against it.
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 83
C. Gosi'icis
The Apologists defended
Christianity against the philosophers and emperors. However, the threats to
Christianity did not come only from the outside. A much greater danger came
from the inside; this was the danger of gnosticism. The term "gnosticism"
is derived from the Greek word gnO.s'is, meaning "knowledge".
It does not mean scientific knowledge. Gnösis is used in three ways: (1)
as knowledge in general terms; (2) as mystical communion; (3) as sexual
intercourse. All three meanings can be found in the New Testament. Gnösis is
a knowledge by participation. It is as intimate as the relation between
husband and wife. It is not the knowledge resulting from analytic and synthetic
research. It is a knowledge of union and of salvation, existential knowledge in
contrast to scientific knowledge. The Gnostics were the Greek intellectuals;
but they understood the cognitive function of man in terms of participation in
the divine.
The
Gnostics were not a sect; if anything, they were many sects. Actually, however,
gnosticism was a widespread religious movement in the late ancient world. This
movement is usually e1led syncretism. It was a mixture of all the religious
traditions of that time. It spread all over the world, and was strong enough to
penetrate Greek philosophy and the Jewish religion. Philo of Alexandria was a
typical forerunner of gnosticism. It was also strong enough to penetrate Roman
law and Christian theology.
The
basic elements of this religious mixture are the following: (1) The destruction
of the national religions by the conquests of Alexander and Rome. The great
world empires undercut the national religions. This is the negative
presupposition. (2) The philosophical interpretation of mythology. When you
read the systems of the Gnostics, you have the feeling that they have
rationalized mythology. And this feeling is accurate. (3) The renewal of the
ancient mystery traditions. (4) The revival of the psychic and magical elements
which appeared in the religious propaganda of the East. While the political movement
went from West to East, the religious movement went from East to West. Hence,
gnosticism was an attempt to combine all the religious traditions which had
lost their genuine roots, and to unite
34 A History of Christian Thought
them in a system of a
half-philosophical, half-religious character.
There
were many similarities and differences between the gnostic groups and original
Christianity. Against the public tradition of the Christian churches,
they claimed to possess secret traditions known only to the initiated. They
rejected the Old Testament because it contradicted many of the their
fundamental tenets, especially their dualistic and ascetic tendencies. The New
Testament was not rejected but purged. Marcion was the man who tried to purge
the New Testament, leaving the ten main Letters of Paul and the Gospel of Luke,
which most clearly bears Pauline influence. Presumably, they did not contain
elements which contradicted the basic ideas of gnosticism, as did the other
Epistles and Gospels in the New Testament.
Marcion
was not primarily a speculative philosopher, but a religious reformer. He
founded congregations of followers which lasted for a long time. The title of
his book is Antitheses. He was a Gnostic in his distinction between the
God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, the God of the law
and the God of the gospel. He rejected the former and accepted the latter. This
problem should not be seen in terms of the fantastic idea of two gods. Rather,
it should be seen in terms of the problem with which Harnack wrestled at the
end of his life. That is the problem whether the Old and New Testaments are not
so different that they cannot be combined. Marcionism is a form of radical
Paulinism which exists throughout church history. In the modern period we have
it in the Barthian school, when the God of revelation is placed against the God
of natural law. In natural law and in history man is thought to be by himself.
Of course, this school does not speak of a second God; such a fantastic
mythology would be impossible today. Rather, it speaks of a radical tension
between the natural world of reason and of morality and the religious realm of
revelation which stands against all other realms. This was Marcion's problem,
and be solved it by a radical separation in terms of a gnostic dualism.
For
the Gnostics the created world is evil; it was- created by an evil god
whom they equated with the God of the Old Testament. Therefore, salvation is
liberation from the world, and had to be accomplished through ascetic means.
There is no place for eschatology in this dualistic world view, for the
end of the world
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 35
is seen in the light of
a dualism. A dualistic fulfillment is not a fulfillment; it implies a split in
God himself.
The
Savior is one of the heavenly powers, called "aeons" or
"eternities". The word "eternity" does not have the
connotation of timelessness here, but of cosmic power. The higher aeon, the
savior aeon, the savior power of being, descends to earth and takes on human flesh.
It is self-evident, however, that a divine power cannot suffer. So he takes on
either a strange body, or a body which only seems to be a body, but he does not
become flesh. (The early Christians rejected the Gnostics on this
point.) The Savior descends to the different realms in which the various
astrological powers rule. This has special reference to the planets, which were
considered as astrological powers long after the Renaissance, even in
Protestantism. He reveals the hidden weapons of these demonic powers by
trespassing their realm and overcoming them on his descent. He brings down the
seals of their power, their names and their characters. If you have the name of
a demonic power, you are superior to it; if you call it by name, it falls down.
One of the Gnostic texts says: "Having the seals, I shall descend,
going through all aeons. 1 shall recognize all mysteries. I shall show
the shape of the gods. And the hidden things of the holy path, called gnOsis, I
shall deliver." Here we see the claim of the good God, of the power of
mystery which comes down to earth.
The
demonic powers are the representatives of fate. The human soul which has fallen
into their hands is liberated by the Savior and by the knowledge he brings. One
could say: What the Savior does in gnosticism is somehow to use white magic
against the black magic of the planetary powers, the same powers of whom Paul
in Romans 8 speaks when he says they have been subjected by Christ. Therefore,
the magic power of the sacraments is acknowledged. The highest power comes to
earth in them.
Besides
these speculative and sacramental features, gnosticism had ethical values of
community and asceticism. The ascent of the soul is demanded, following the
Savior who has ascended. The Savior liberates from demonic powers for the sake
of union with the fullness, the plërOma, the spiritual word. On the
upward way the human soul meets these rulers; the soul tells the rulers
what it knows about them. He knows their names, and therefore their mysterious
power, the structure of evil they represent. When
36 A History of Christian Thought
he tells them their
names, they fall down and tremble and cannot stop the soul on its way any more.
These poetic images show that gnosticism was a religion of salvation
from the demonic powers. This was the problem of the whole period, both in and
outside of Christianity. Somehow man is better than his creator. Man must be
saved from the powers of the demiurge, the one who created the world. But not
all men are able to be saved. There are three classes of human beings: the pneuinatikoi,
i.e., the spiritual ones; the psychikoi, i.e., those who follow the
soul; and the sarkikoi, i.e., those who follow the flesh. The sarkikcd
are lost; the pneurnatikoi are saved; but the middle group, the psy-chikoi,
can go either way. In order to be elevated on high, man must
participate in the mysteries. These are mostly mysteries of purification, and
usually connected with baptism. The Spirit in baptism enters the sacramental
water and dwells in it. The Spirit is brought down by a special formula of
initiation.
These
ideas formed a great temptation to Christianity. Christ remained in the center
of history as the bringer of salvation; but he was put into the framework of
the dualistic world view of Hellenism. The religious mood of this period is
beautifully expressed in the Acts of Andrew, one of the apocryphal
writings. "Blessed is our generation. We are not thrown down, for we have
been recognized by the light. We do not belong to time, which would dissolve
us. We are not a product of motion, which would destroy us again. We belong to
the greatness toward which we are striving. We belong to him who has mercy
towards us, to the light which has expelled the darkness, to the One from whom
we have turned away, to the Manifold, to the Super-heavenly, by whom we have
understood the earthly. If we praise him, it is because we are
recognized by him." This is really religious piety, not mere speculation,
as the critics of gnosticism have said.
There
are many people today who would like to renew gnostic religion as their own
daily expression of religious experience, not because of the fantastic
speculation, but because of the real piety expressed in it. Gnosticism was a
great danger for Christianity. If Christian theology had succumbed to this
temptation, the particular character of Christianity would have been lost. Its
unique basis in the person of Jesus would have become meaningless. The Old
Testament would have disappeared, and with it the
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 37
historical picture of
the Christ. All of this was avoided because of the work of the men whom we call
the anti-gnostic fathers. These fathers fought against gnosticism and expelled
it from the church.
D. THE ANTI-GNOSTIC FATHERS
The first great
Christian theologians developed their systems in opposition to—and partly in
acceptance of—the ideas of gnosticism. Their defense against attacks from the
outside was made in terms of the Logos doctrine. However, some of the spirit of
the world which was conquered by Christianity entered into Christianity itself.
The fight then had to be waged against a Christianized paganism. Such a fight,
however, is never simply a negation, but always involves reception as well. The
result of this partial rejection and partial reception of the religious mood of
that time is what we call "early Catholicism". The theologians with
whom we now have to deal are important because they represent this early
Catholicism. They express ideas which grew out of a rejection and an acceptance
of the pagan religious movement of their time. To do this they accepted the
Logos doctrine which had been developed by the Apologists. But now they brought
it constructively—not only apologetically—into a framework of Bible and
tradition. In doing this they deprived this doctrine, at least partly, of its
dangerous implications, one of them, of course, being a relapse into
polytheism, tritheism, or ditheism. The greatness of theologians like Irenaeus
and Tertul-han is that they saw this danger, and used the Logos doctrine to
develop constructive theological ideas in relation to the religious movements
of their own period.
Irenaeus
was the greatest of the anti-gnostic fathers, religiously speaking. He
understood the spirit of Paul and had a feeling for what Paul's theology meant
for the Christian Church. However, the Pauline doctrine that was important for
Irenaeus was not so much the one with which Paul fought against Judaism —the
doctrine of justification by grace through faith—but it was more the center of
Paul's own teaching, his doctrine of the Holy Spirit. In some ways Irenaeus'
theology stands closer to Protestant Christianity than most of early
Catholicism; yet he was the father of early Catholicism—and ultimately not a
Protestant—
88 A History of Christian Thought
inasmuch as the Pauline
doctrine of justification through faith, which I like to call the
"corrective side" in Paul's theology, was not at the center of
Irenaeus' thought.
Tertullian
was another anti-gnostic father, the master of Latin rhetoric. He was the
creator of ecclesiastical terminology in the Latin language. He had a juristic
mind, although not a jurist himself. He was possessed of a very aggressive
temperament and a Strong character. He understood the primacy of faith and the
paradox of Christianity. lInt he was not artificially primitive, for he
accepted the Stoic philosophy and with it the idea that the human soul is by
nature Christian—anima naturaliter chrirtiana. He also accepted the
Logos doctrine of the Apologists, because he did not only accept the paradox of
Christianity but, having a sharp rational mind, he believed that Greek
philosophy could not surpass Christianity in rational sharpness and clarity.
The
third anti-gnostic theologian was Hippolytus, more scholarly than the other
two. lie carried on polemics against the gnostic movement in his exegetical
works and writings on church history. These three theologians saw clearly the
situation of the early church. It is important for Protestants to see how early
the main fundamentals of the later Roman system were already
present in the third
century. -
1. The System of Authorities
The
problem which the Gnostics posed for the church was in the realm of authority,
the question whether the Holy Scriptures were decisive as over against the
secret teachings of the Gnostics. The gnostic teachers said that Jesus had
passed on secret insights to them during the forty days after his resurrection
when he was together with his disciples. These insights formed the content of
gnostic philosophy and theology. Against this notion the anti-gnostic fathers
had to establish a doctrine of Scripture.
The
Holy Scripture is given by the Logos through the divine Spirit. Therefore, it
became necessary to fix the canon. The very foundations of the church were
threatened by the intrusion of secret traditions which asserted quite different
things from what the biblical writings said. Thus, the decision to fix the
canon arose out of the life-and-death struggle with gnosticism. This meant that
the church must always return to the classical period,
- Theological
Developments in the Ancient Church 39
namely, the apostolic
period of Christianity. What was written at that time is valid for all later
times; anything really new that comes later can never be canonical. This is one
of the reasons that so many of the books in the Bible go under apostolic names
even though they were written during the post-apostolic period.
That
which is canonical, it was felt, must be canonical in an absolute sense,
including the letters of the text. Here Christianity simply followed the
legalistic interpretation of the law in Judaism in which every Hebrew letter in the Old
Testament text has an open and a hidden meaning, and is absolutely inspired.
This, of course, was not enough, because the Bible must be interpreted. This is
true whenever the Bible is made an absolute norm. The Gnostics interpreted the
Scriptures differently from the official church. Therefore, the principle of
tradition was bound to come up. The tradition was identified with the regula
fldei, the rule of faith. When this happened, not the Bible but the rule of
faith became decisive, just as the confessional documents written after the
Reformation became the decisive canon for theological instruction, and not the
Bible.
The
rule of faith was also called the canon of truth; something is true because it
comes from the apostles. It is apostolic tradition (traditio apostolica) which
is mediated through presbyters or bishops. This, however, is still too
indefinite; there are too many elements in the tradition, ethical and dogmatic.
So a concentrated summary of the Bible and the rule of faith was needed in connection
with the confession at baptism, the main sacrament at that time. This, of
course, presupposes that the bishops who are responsible for the rule of faith
and the baptismal creed have the gift of truth. They have it because they are
the successors of the apostles. Here already we have a clear expression of the
episcopal doctrine of apostolic succession. The apostolic succession is most
visible in the Roman Church, which was founded by Peter and Paul, according to
these anti-gnostic fathers. Irenaeus says about this church: "To this
church all nations must come, because of its greater principality, the church
in which the apostolic tradition has been always preserved."
Thus
we have a very impressive system of authorities: the Bible, the apostolic
tradition, the rule of faith, the baptismal creed, and the bishops, created in
the struggle against the Gnostics. What is astonishing is how early all this
happened.
40 A History of Christian Thought
2. The Montanist Reaction
A
reaction set in against the developing order, a reaction of the Spirit against
the order, represented by a man named Montanus. This reaction was very serious,
as evident in the fact that Tertul-han himself later became a Montaiiist. This
Montanistic reaction against- ecclesiastical fixation of
Christianity runs throughout church history in one form or other.
The
Montanists had two basic ideas: the Spirit and the "end". The Spirit
was suppressed by the organized church. There was a fear of spiritual movements
because the Gnostics had claimed to have the Spirit. It was denied that
prophets necessarily have an ecstatic character. A churchman at this time wrote
a pamphlet to the effect that it is unnecessary for a prophet to speak in
ecstasy. The church was unable to understand the prophetic Spirit any more. It
was understandably afraid of the Spirit because in the name of the Spirit all
kinds of disruptive elements entered into the church.
The
other idea was that of the "end". After the expectation of Jesus and
the apostles that the end was very imminent had been disappointed, the
apostolic fathers began to establish themselves in the world. The
disappointment that the end did not come caused great difficulties and led to
the necessity of creating a worldly church, a church that is able to live in
the world. Mon-tanism was a reaction against this worldly church. But the
Mon-tanists experienced what the earlier Christians had experienced; the end
they expected did not come. So they also had to establish themselves in the
world; they also became a church. It was a church with a strict discipline, and
to a certain extent it was an anticipation of the sectarian type of church
which arose during the Reformation and in later Protestantism. The Montanists
believed that they represented the period of the Paraclete, following the
periods of the Father and the Son. The sectarian revolutionary movements in the
church have generally made the same claim; they represent the age of the
Spirit.
It
happens, however, that when the attempt is made to fix the content of what the
Spirit teaches, the result is extreme poverty. This happened, for example, to
the Quakers after their initial ecstatic period. When the content is fixed it
turns out that there
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 41
is nothing new, or what
is new is more or less some form of a rational moralism. This happened to
George Fox and his fol‑
lowers, and to all ecstatic
sects. In the second generation they become rational, moralistic, and legalistic;
the ecstatic element disappears; not much remains that is creative compared to
the classical period of apostolic Christianity. The Montanists fixed their poor
contents in new hooks; they adopted the idea of a prophetic succession, Of
course, this is self-contradictory, because succession is an organizational
principle, whereas prophecy is an anti-organizational principle. The attempt to
combine them was unsuccessful, and will always he unsuccessful.
The
Christian Church excluded Montanism. However, its victory over Montanism also
resulted in loss, This loss is visible in four ways: (1) The canon was
victorious against the possibility of new revelations. The solution of the
Fourth Gospel that there will be new insights, always standing under the
criticism of the Christ, was at least reduced in power and meaning. (2) The
traditional hierarchy was confirmed against the prophetic spirit. This meant
that the prophetic spirit was more or less excluded from the organized church
and had to flee into sectarian movements. (8) Eschatology became less
significant than it had been in the apostolic age. The ecclesiastical
establishment became much more important. The expectation of the end was
reduced to an appeal to each individual to be prepared for his end which can
come at any moment. The idea of an end of history was not important in the
church after that. (4) The strict discipline of the Montanists was lost, giving
way to a growing laxity in the church. Here again something happened which has
frequently happened in the history of the church. Small groups arise with a
strict discipline; they are regarded with suspicion by the church; they form
themselves into larger churches; then they lose their original disciplinary
power in themselves.
3. God the Creator
We
must now deal with what the anti-gnostic fathers taught within the framework of
the strict safeguards which they built up against gnosticism. The Gnostics had
contrasted God the Father and God the Savior. Now the gnostic theory was called
a bla.sphemia creatoris, a blasphemy of the Creator. This ought
42 A History of Christian Thought
to be kept in
mind by all neo-orthodox theologians today. There is much gnostic Marcionism in
them, that is, a dualistic blasphemy of the Creator God. They put the Savior
God in such opposition to the Creator God that, although they never fall into
any real heresy, they implicitly blaspheme the divine creation by identifying
it with the sinful state of reality. Against this tendency Irenaeus said that
God is one; there is no duality in him. Law and gospel, creation and salvation,
are derived from the same God.
This one God is known to us not speculatively but existentially. He
expresses this in saying: "Without God, you cannot know God." God is
never an object. In all knowledge it is he who knows in us and through us. Only
he can know himself; we may participate in his knowledge of himself. But he is
not an object whom we can know from the outside. God is unknown according to
his greatness, his absoluteness, his unconditional character. He is known
according to his love in which he comes to us. Therefore, in order to know God,
you must be within God; you must participate in him. You can never look at him
as an object outside yourself. This God has created the world out of nothing.
This phrase "out of nothing" is not a description of the way God
created, but a protective concept that is only negatively meaningful, It means
that there is no prior resisting matter out of which God created the world, as
in paganism. In creating the world God is not dependent on a matter which
resisted the form which the demiurge, the world-builder, wanted to impose on
it. The Christian idea is that everything is created directly by God without
any resisting matter. God is the cause of everything. His purpose, the immanent
telos of everything, is the salvation of mankind. The result is that the
creation is good, and the Creator God is the same as the Savior God. We should
see that the blasphemy of the Creator, new or old, is always based on a confusion
of the created goodness of the world with its distortion.
This one God is a trias, a trinity. The word trinitas appears
first in Tertullian. Although God is one, he is never alone. Irenaeus says:
"There is always with him the word and the wisdom, the Son and the
Spirit, through which he has made everything freely and spontaneously."
God is always a living God and, therefore, never alone, never a dead identity
with himself. He always has his word and his wisdom with himself. These are
symbols of his spiritual life, his self-manifestation and his self‑
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 48
actualization. The
motive of the doctrine of the trinity is to speak of God as living and to make
understandable the presence of the divine as a living, creative ground.
According to Irenaeus, these three are one God because they have one dynamis,
one power of being, essence, or potentiality. "Potentiality" and
"dynamics" are the Latin and Greek terms respectively for what we can
best translate as "power of being".
Tertullian
spoke of the one divine substance which develops itself in the triadic economy.
"Economy" means "building-up". The divinity builds up
eternally in a unity. Any polytheistic interpretation of the trinity is sharply
rejected. On the other hand, God is established as a living God, not as a dead
identity. Thus Tertullian used the formula una substantia, tres personae to
speak of God.
Contrary
to gnosticism, man is created good. He has fallen by his own freedom. Man who
is mortal by nature was supposed to become immortal through obedience to God,
remaining in paradise and participating in the food of the gods, in the tree
of life. But he lost this power by disobedience to God. So it must be regained.
Immortality, as we said before, is not a natural quality but something which
must be received as a gift from the realm of the eternal. There is no other way
to get it. Sin is spiritual as well as carnal. Adam has lost the possible similitudo
(similitude) to God, namely, immortality, but he has not lost the natural
image, because the natural image makes him human. Here we have Irenaeus' famous
distinction between similitudo and imago. These two words are
used in the Vulgate translation of Genesis 1:26, which states that God made man
in his image, after his likeness. Irenaeus places a theological
interpretation on these two words. Every man has the natural image of God; man
as man, as a finite, rational being, is able to have a relationship to God. Similitudo
means that man has the possibility of becoming similar to God. The main
point in this similarity with God is eternal life. If someone gets eternal
life, he overcomes his natural mortality and participates in the eternal life
as a gift of God.
4. The History of Salvation
The
history of salvation was described in three or four covenants. The first
covenant is that which is given with creation.
44 A History of Christian Thought
This is the natural law which is
ultimately the law of love innate in man. Secondly, the law is reinstated after
it faded away when man lost his immediate innocent participation in it. The
third' stage is law as it is re-established in Christ, after Judaism distorted
the law of Sinai. The law is the same throughout, namely, the law of love
innate in man by nature. God does not give arbitrary commandments, but he
restates those commandments which are identical with man's essential nature and
which are, therefore, valid under all circumstances. Then, in Tertullian, we
have a fourth covenant, because he became a Montanist. This is the covenant
with the Paraclete, the divine Spirit, who gives the new law at the end of the
days. This means that the history of salvation was understood as the education
of mankind in terms of a law. This made it possible to understand why the Old
Testament belongs to the Christian Scriptures and why philosophy belongs to
Christianity. They are all stages in the one history of salvation. They are not
negated but confirmed by the revelation in Christ. The problems connected with
a dualism were solved in terms of a history of salvation in different
covenants. There is not only one revelation. The biblical idea of kairos means
that there is a revelation adapted to each new covenant situation, first, that
of paradise, then that of the elected nation, then that of the followers of
Christ, and, sometimes, that of the divine Spirit. In each case there is a
different kairos, a different "right time". This kind of
thinking liberates Christianity from a narrowness in which its own revelation
is declared to be the only one and is not viewed within the whole context of
the history of revelation. Such a narrowness leads, as in the case of Marcion
and, partly at least, in the Barthian school, to an isolation of revelation
over against the whole history of mankind.
Turning
to christology, Irenaeus said: "The invisible of the Son is the Father;
the visible of the Father is the Son." This is eternally so. There is
always something which is potentially visible in God, and there is always
something which remains as mystery and abyss in God. These are two sides which
symbolically are distinguished as Father and Son. The Son who is eternally the
visible of the Father becomes manifest in the personal appearance of Jesus as
the Christ. The anti-gnostic fathers emphasized the monotheistic aspect in
Christianity more strongly than the Apologists because they had to deal with
Christian polytheistic
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 45
tendencies. The
Apologists, with their Logos doctrine, were drawn into a dangerous
approximation to polytheistic thinking, or tritheistic, if the Spirit is
handled in the same way as the Logos. In the line of thought which leads from
John to Ignatius and Irenaeus, the Logos is not so much a lesser hypostasis, an
inferior form or power of being in God, but is much more God himself as
revealer, as his self-manifestation.
Irenaeus
called salvation artakephalaiösis, or fecapitutatio, meaning
recapitulation. He was pointing to Ephesians 1.10 which speaks of all things in
heaven and earth being gathered up into Christ. Irenaeus built his idea of the
history of salvation on these words in Ephesians. It means that the development
which was broken in Adam is resumed by Christ and fulfilled in him. In Christ
the new mankind has started. That which mankind was supposed to become, once
disrupted by Adam, has finally reached its fulfillment in Christ. However, not
only mankind but the whole cosmos finds its fulfillment in the appearance of
the Christ. In order to accomplish this, Christ had to participate in the
nature of Adam. Thus Christ is the beginning of the living as Adam is the
beginning of the dead. Adam is fulfilled in Christ; this means that Christ ts
the essential man, the man Adam was to become but did not actually become. Adam
was not in a state of fulfillment fmm the beginning; he lived in childish innocence.
Here we have a profound doctrine of what I calla transcendent humanism, a
humanism which says that Christ is the fulfillment of essential man, of the
Adamic nature. Such a fulfillment became necessary because a break occurred in
the development of man; Adam fell away from what he was to become. The
childish innocence of Adam has been lost; but the second Adam can become what
he was to become, fully human. And we can become fully human through
participation in this full humanity which has appeared in Christ. This
includes eternal life, similitude with God with respect to participation in
infinity.
When
I go into these matters, I am always surprised how much better the theology of
the ancient church was than the popular theology which developed in the
nineteenth century, how much profounder and more adequate to the paradox of
Christianity, without becoming irrationalistic, nonsensical, or absurd. Of
course, there were absurd elements on the borderline, on the edges, with
respect to miracles, etc. But the central position was
48 A History of Christian Thought
utterly profound,
namely, the understanding of Christ, not as an accidental event or a
transmutation of a highest being, but as fulfilled or essential humanity,
therefore always related to Adam, to man's essential being and to his fallen
state.
S. Trinity and Christology
Tertullian
provided the fundamental formula for the trinity and christology. He used
juristic language in a skillful way so that it became decisive for the future.
The formulae of Tertullian entered the Latin creeds of the Roman Catholic
Church. "Let us preserve the mystery of the divine economy which disposes
the unity into trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, three not in
essence but in grade, not in substance but in form." Here we have for the
first time the word trinitas, introduced by Tertul-lian into
ecclesiastical language. He also spoke of the unity in the trinity, denying any
form of tritheistic tendencies. Instead, he speaks of "economy", an
important word in ancient Christian theology. To speak of divine economy is to
speak of God "building up" his manifestations in periods of history.
In a living and dynamic way the trinity is built up in historical
manifestations. But in this trinity there is but one divine essence. If we
translate "essence" by "power of being", we have what this
word meant. There is one divine power of being, and each of the three economic
manifestations of the power of being participates in the full power of being.
God
has eternally the ratio (reason) or logos in himself. It is an
inner word. This is, of course, the characteristic of spiritual existence. If
we say God is Spirit, we must also say he is trini-tarian; he has the
word within himself and has the unity with his self-objectivation. The word
proceeds from God just as the beam proceeds from the sun. In the moment of
creation the Son becomes a second person, and the Spirit a third person. The
divine substance or essence, meaning power of being, is in all three persons.
Tertullian's term "persona" does not mean the same as our word
"person". You and I are persons because we are able to reason, to
decide, to be responsible, etc. Such a concept of person was not applied to
God at all, nor to the three hypostases in God. What then does persona
mean? Persona, like the Greek word prosöpon, is the mask of
the actor through which a special
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 47
character is acted out.
Thus we have three faces, three countenances, three characteristic expressions
of the divine, in the process of divine self-explication. These are the
classical formulae of trinitarian monotheism.
Tertullian
also provided basic formulae with respect to christo-logy. He said: "We
see a double essence, not confused but
united in one person, in God and
the man Jesus." In this statement
we have the formula of
the doctrine of the two natures, or powers of being, in the one person of
Christ. Here persona means one
individual face or being of
personal character, namely, Jesus. In
this person two
different powers of being are united, one divine and one human. Each of these
powers is independent; neither is
confused with the other; yet they
are united in one person. If we ask how this is possible, we are anticipating
the later discussions.
On
the question whether the incarnation is a metamorphosis, that is, God becoming
man, or the acceptance of a human essence,
Tertullian decides for the
latter. Like most of the theologians
Tertullian is certain that God is
ultimately unchangeable, and that the two powers of being must be preserved in
their respec‑
tive identities. Jesus as man is
not a transformed God; he is a real
man, true man. He can be
true God also, but he is not a mixture of both. If the Logos were transfigured
or transformed into some‑
thing else, he would have changed
his nature; but the Logos remains Logos in the man Jesus. So Tertullian thinks
more in terms of the Logos adopting a human nature instead of the mythological
idea of transmutation.
According
to Irenaeus the saving power is the divine Spirit who dwells in the church and
renews the members out of what
is old into the newness in
Christ. Christ gives them life (zoe) and
light (phos); he gives
them the new reality. This is God's work in man, accepted by faith. Therefore,
no law is needed since we
love God and the
neighbor. That is the Pauline element, but it is
not strong enough to
overcome the anti-Pauline elements. Ultimately, the new being is mystical and
ethical. In this sense
Erenaeus' conception is
the highest form of early Catholicism, but it is not Protestant. In
Protestantism the renewal takes place by justification through faith.
Irenaeus
thinks of the process of salvation in terms of a mystical regeneration into
immortality. In contrast to this, Tertullian
48 A History of Christian Thought
speaks of a wholesome
discipline as the content of the Christian life. He speaks of a process of
education by the law, and the reality of obedience to it is eternal life. Here
we have Tertullian, the Roman juristic mind, who likes the law, and at the same
time the ascetic pietist, who became a Montanist. In Irenaeus we have mystical
participation, in Tertullian subjection to the law. These are the two sides of
early Catholicism. The second aspect, subjection to law, became decisive just
before the Protestant breakthrough. But the Protestant movement denied also the
Irenaean form, and returned to the other side of Paul, namely, justification
through faith.
In Tertullian
we have the Roman Catholic form of Jewish legalism. The relationship to God is
legal. Christianity is merely the new law. Christianity returns to the religion
of the law, but is prevented from becoming simply another Jewish system of laws
and rules by the sacramental salvation. Therefore, he could say: "the evangelium,
the Gospel, is our special law." Transgressing the law means that
guilt is produced and punishment is required. "But if we do his will, he
will make himself our debtor. Then we can gain merits." There are two
classes of demands: precepts and counsels. In this way every man can
acquire a treasury of holiness in which he returns to Christ what Christ has
given him. The virtue of the Christian is crowned. The sacrifice of asceticism
and martyrdom moves God to do good to us. "In the measure in which you do
not spare yourselves, in this measure, believe me, God will spare you."
Here at the end of the second century we meet many ideas that were to become important
in later Roman Catholicism. Already we have the idea that while the precepts
are for everybody, there are special counsels for monks; and we already have
the idea of Christ as the new law. Roman Catholicism emerged quickly in
Christianity. The reason for this is that Roman Catholicism was the form in
which Christianity could be readily received, including all the Roman and Greek
forms of thinking and living.
6. The Sacrament of Baptism
At
this time baptism is still the most important sacrament. It removes past sins.
Baptism has two meanings: it means the washing away of sins and the reception
of the divine Spirit. This, of
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 49
course, presupposed the
baptismal confession of the creed, the consciousness of one's sins and the
certainty of the Savior.
The
practice of baptism had three characteristics: (1) One lays the hand on the
candidate for baptism, and gives him sacred oil, the medium which makes
the reception of the Spirit possible. (2) One rejects the devil, with all his
pomp and angels. One leaves the demonic sphere; this meant the end of one's
participation in paganism. This was not simply a moralistic formula; it went
much deeper. It was breaking away from the demons which ruled the world, the
rejection of polytheistic paganism. (3) The third element in baptism is the
unity of forgiveness and regeneration. The pagan existence has come to an end,
and the Christian existence begins. At baptism the preparatory stage of
introduction into the church has come to an end. Those who are baptized are
called the teleioi, the perfect ones. For they have reached the telos,
the inner aim, of man's existence itself.
The
theory of baptism in the anti-gnostic fathers was that the Spirit is united
with the water, as it was in the gnostic mysteries. It was easy for Tertullian,
with his Stoic background, to think of the Spirit as a material force in the
water. This force somehow physically extinguishes the former sins and
physically gives the Spirit. Here we see what has been called Tertullian's
"materialism". This is important because it made infant baptism
possible. If the water is the saving power, the child can be saved as much as
the adult. It was not without some hesitation that Tertullian accepted this
doctrine. But Christianity had to accept it as soon as it ceased to baptize
individuals, one by one, called out of paganism, but baptized "all
nations". Then the children cannot be excluded. However, if children are
to be included, it is necessary to have a completely objective theory of
baptism, because infants are not subjects who can decide.
The
Lord's Supper was for Irenaeus the physical mediation of immortality. In it the
union with heavenly and divine elements takes place.
These
ideas are the making of the Roman Church; in the long run they were to become
very influential. The Catholic Church was ready around the year A.D. 300. For
this reason we cannot say that Protestantism is a restatement of the early
centuries. The Catholic features were powerful very early. This is one of the
reasons that the "middle way" of Anglicanism, which in itself
50 A History
of Christian Thought
would be an ideal
solution to-the
schism of the churches, does not work. The so-called agreement of the first
five centuries is by no means an agreement with the principles of the
Reformation. Therefore, if someone says that we should unite by going back to
the development which runs from Irenaeus to Dionysius the Areopagite, I would
say that he had better become a Catholic, because Protestantism cannot do that.
In these first centuries there are many elements which Protestantism cannot
accept, for example, in the doctrine of the church, the system of authorities,
the theory of the sacraments, not so much with respect to trinity and
christology, although the implications are present there also.
E. NEO-PLATONISM
The end of Greek
philosophy reached a state in which philosophy had become religion, and
religion had become mystical philosophy. So when philosophers now became
Christian, they could use a philosophy which was already half-religious.
Philosophy at this time was not the philosophy taught today by empiricists,
logical positivists, or naturalists. In the period of the New Testament
philosophy itself included a religious attitude. This is why Christianity had
to deal with philosophy, for it was a rival religion. The name of this
religious philosophy was Neo-Platonism. In Neo-Platonism, Platonic, Stoic, and
Aristotelian ideas were brought into a system which was philosophical and
religious at the same time. Neo-Platonism expressed the longing of the ancient
world for a new religion. It expressed the dissolution of all particular
religions and at the same time the collapse of autonomous reason, the
impossibility for reason to create by itself a new content of life. Therefore,
these philosophers became mystics and, as mystics, they tried to create a new
religion under the imperial protection of Julian the Apostate. In doing this
they had to clash with Christianity. The great Alexandrian theologians, Clement
and Origen, met the challenge of Neo-Platonism, and used its concepts to
express Christianity.
Neo-Platonism
is important not only because of its influence on Origen, who produced the
first great theological system, but because through Dionysius the Areopagite it
influenced all later forms of Christian mysticism and most forms of classical
Christian
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 51
theology, especially
with respect to the doctrines of God, the world, and the soul. It is impossible
to understand the further development of Christian theology without knowing
something about Neo-Platonism, the last great attempt of paganism to express
itself in terms of a philosophical theology, which was both science and life
for the ancient mind.
Plotinus
was the philosopher most responsible for the system of Neo-Platonism. There is
not only a scientific and a religious side to it, but also a political aspect.
The emperor, Julian the Apostate, tried to introduce the Neo-Platonic system
against Christianity, which shows that he considered it not only as science or
philosophy, but as an all-embracing system of religious elevation of the soul.
For
Plotinus God is the transcendent One; he is the one who transcends every
number, even the number "one" inasmuch as it is a number which
includes 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. It is that which is beyond number, and for this he
uses the word "one". Thus, whenever we hear the word "one' in mystical
language, it is not to be understood as one number alongside others, but as
that which transcends all numbers. The One points in particular to that which
is beyond the basic cleavages of reality, the cleavage between subject and
object, and between the self and the world. Therefore, the divine is the abyss
of everything specific, the abyss in which everything definite disappears. But
this abyss is not simply something negative; it is the most positive of all
because it contains everything that is. When you read in mystical literature
about "transcendent nothingness", do not interpret this as
"nothing" but as "no-thing", that is, nothing definite,
nothing finite, but the ground of everything finite and definite. Since it is
without differentiation within itself, it is immovable, unchangeable, and
eternal. Out of this eternal ground of everything, in which everything
disappears, all things have their origin at the same time. The whole system is
a description of the way in which the world and all its forms originate in the
ultimate ground of being. The first thing which is originated, like the light
which is radiated out of the sun, is what in Greek is called the nous, which
can be translated as "mind" or "spirit". It is the second
principle after the ultimate principle, after the ground of being from which it
has emanated. This second principle, the nous, is that in which the
first principle, the eternal ground, looks at itself. It is the
52 A History of Christian Thought
principle of the
self-intuition of the eternal. Cod is manifest to himself in the principle of
the nous. This self-intuition of the divine in the nous is the
source of all forms and structures, of all possibilities and of what Plato
called "ideas". These "ideas" are the essential potentialities
of being. Everything true and beautiful is contained in the nous, in
the divine mind and his eternal self-intuition. Not only are the universal
essences—treehood, redness, etc.—in the eternal mind, but also the essences of
the individuals. In Cod is the form of each of us, independent of the changes
in every moment of our lives, that form which a great painter would see and
express in his portrait of us.
But
there is a third principle which Plotinus called the "soul". The soul
is the principle of life in all Creek thinking. It is not primarily an immortal
substance, but the principle of movement. It is the principle which moves the
stars, so the stars have souls; the principle which moves the animals
and plants, so they also have souls; the principle which moves our bodies, so
we have souls; the principle which moves the whole universe, so there is a
world-soul. This soul-principle is midway between the nous and the
bodily reality. It is the productive power of the existing world; it forms and
controls matter, as our life-principle forms and controls every cell in our
body. The soul of the world actualizes itself in many individual souls.
Everything has an individual soul. These individual souls give movement and life
to everything, but they all have their common principle in the world-soul.
This
principle of soul, universally and individually, is the principle of ambiguity.
Plotinus knew that life is ambiguous, that ambiguity is a definite
characteristic of life. The soul is turned both toward the spirit (or nous) and
toward matter. It looks in two directions, so to speak; it looks always to
meaningful contents. In our language we call this man's spiritual life,
expressed in knowledge, ethics, aesthetics, etc. At the same time it looks to
our bodily existence and the whole world of material embodiment.
In
this system of hierarchies, coming down from the ultimate to the mind and soul
and matter, everything which is has a place. In this way Plotinus could place
the whole mythological world into his system, after it was purified by
philosophy. The gods of the pagans become limited powers of being which have
their place in the whole of reality. This world is harmonious; it
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 53
is directed by the
principle of providence. This union of providence and harmony—the main
principle of the Enlightenment and of the modern belief in progress—forms the
basis of an optimistic world-view. This optimism immediately makes itself felt
in another 'statement of Plotinus, namely, that the planetary forces, the
demonic forces, are an illusion. They have no independent power; they are
subjected to providence, just as Paul described it in Romans 8. The difference
is that Plotinus derived this statement from his philosophy of cosmic harmony,
while Paul derived it from the victorious triumph of Christ over the demons.
There
are many different souls in the cosmos: mortal souls, such as plants, animals,
and human beings, and immortal souls, such as the half-divine and divine beings
of ancient mythology. These mythological gods are re-established in this system
as powers of being. They do not contradict each other but have their definite
place in this system of hierarchies.
The
principle which orders this whole world, in terms of providence, is the logos.
The logos is the rational side of the nous or mind. It is not another
hierarchy but is only the dynamic side of the flour; it is the principle
of reason which organizes everything providentially and gives it its place. To
use a modern expression, it is the natural law to which everything is
subjected, in physics and living bodies. The nous is not the logos; it
is the source of all contents, but the logos gives order to them. The logos is
the more dynamic principle, the providentially working power which directs the
natural and moral laws.
Because
of its 'ambiguity the soul is able to turn away from the nous, and with
it from its eternal source in the abysmal One. It can separate itself from its
eternal origin and turn to the lower realms. Nature is the realm of the
unconscious; it stands between matter and the conscious soul. But nature has
unconscious souls; in man alone the soul is completely conscious. This turning
away of the soul from the nous toward matter, toward the bodily realm,
is the source of evil. Evil is not a positive power; it is the negation of the
spiritual. It is participation in matter, in non-being, in that which has no
power of being by itself. Evil arises when the soul turns to non-being. Neither
Greeks nor Christians could admit that evil is an ontological reality. The idea
that there is a divine ground of evil, a divine being which produces evil, is
the Manichaean heresy. Evil is non-being. When
54 A history of Christian Thought
this statement is made,
whether by Plotinus, Augustine, or myself, the charge is made that this
means that sin is not taken seriously, that sin is nothing. The sound of the
word "non-being" conveys the impression to some that sin is
imaginary, not real. However, a distortion of something which has being is as
real as the undistorted state of that being, only it is not ontologically real.
If sin were ontologically real, this would mean that there is a creative
principle of evil, as in Manichaeism; but this is what the Christian doctrine
of creation denies. Augustine said, "Esse qua esse bonum est", being
as being is good. Evil is the distortion of the good creation.
Plotinus
described this non-being (me on) as that which is matter and can become
being. This non-being of which he speaks is that which as yet has no being and
which resists against having being. He calls it that which lacks measure,
limit, form. It is always in want, indefinite, hungry; it is the
absolute poverty. In other words, evil is the presence of this non-being
in our bodily existence. It is the absence of the power of being, the power of
the good.
The
soul turned toward this non-being because it believed that with its help it
could stand upon itself. Thus, it separated itself from the ground and from the
nous toward which it looked originally. But the soul looks back and
yearns for the ground from which it came. Lovingly the soul ascends to that
which is worth being loved, namely, the ground and origin of being itself. When
the soul reaches the ultimate aim of its longing, it becomes like Cod. He who
has the ultimate intuition of the divine has become one with God. But this way
is hard. This way goes first through the virtues, next to the ascetic
purification. The ultimate union with God cannot be reached either by morals or
by asceticism in this life. It can only be reached by grace, that is, when the
divine power of the transcendent One grasps the mind in ecstasy. This happens
only rarely, only in great experiences which cannot be forced.
In
the highest ecstasy there happens what Plotinus calls the flight of the one to
the One, that is, of us who are individual ones to the ultimate One who is
beyond number. What is the telos, the inner aim, the goal, the purpose,
of man's being? Plato had already given the answer: homoiösis tou
theou kata to dynaton, that is, becoming similar to God as much as
possible. This was also the aim of the mystery religions, in which the
soul was sup‑
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 55
posed to participate in
the eternal One. This is the Alexandrian scheme of thought. It is a circle
which starts in the abysmal One, descending by emanation through the
'hierarchies until the ambiguous situation of the soul is reached, then
through the soul falling into the power of the material world, which is
determined by non-being. The circle continues then through the elevation of the
soul, back through all these different grades up to the highest one, and
in ecstasy this goal is reached. We must keep this system in mind, for
we cannot understand the relationship of Christianity to mysticism and to Greek
philosophy apart from it.
F. CLEMENT AND ORIGEN OF
ALEXANDRIA I. Christianity and Philosophy
The
Neo-Platonic system was developed in Alexandria. Am-monius Saccas was the
teacher of both Plotinus and Origen. Origen was the great theologian and
philosopher of the school in Alexandria. This was a catechetical school, a kind
of theological seminary. The first great teacher in this school was Clement of
Alexandria. Clement used the Logos doctrine in a radical way. In this respect
he was more dependent on Stoicism than on the Platonic school. God is the One
who is beyond numbers. The Logos, however, is the mediator of everything in
which the divine becomes manifest. The Logos, he said, is the itian-loving
organ of God, and therefore the educator of mankind in past and present. The
Logos, as the self-manifestation of the divine, is always working in human
minds. The Logos prepared the Jews by the law, and the Greeks by their
philosophy. He has prepared all nations in some way. The Logos is never absent I n) in people.
When
Clement speaks of philosophy, he does not have in mind ii particular
philosophy, but that which is true in all philosophers. In his thought many elements
from Greek philosophy are pitixed with biblical materials. He quoted whole
sections from Stoic sources. He introduced Christianity not only into
philosophy but also into a philosophical way of life. Phi loso phein was
defined by Clement as a striving for a perfect life. Living a philosophical
life in the late Greek development was striving to become as near to ()d as possible. Clement's idea
was to live according to the
56 A history of Christian Thought
Logos, a logikon life;
perhaps we could translate this as a "meaningful life", a life in
terms of objective meanings. Christians start first with faith, pistis.
Pistis is not adequately translated by "faith". It is a state of
being in faith. In this sense faith is a state of participation in the reality
of the new being. It includes conversion, ascetic tendencies, passions, and
hope. This is the presupposition of everything else in Christianity, and here
Clement deviates from the Creek philosophers. Living according to the Logos
means participation in the realm of faith and love, that is, in the realm of
the church. The Alexandrian theologians were not independent philosophers, but
members of the Christian Church. Therefore, they participated in the state of
faith which is presupposed by all knowledge. However, the state of faith is
insufficient since it is un(lerstcxxl only as assent and obedience. A real
participation demands something more, a drive toward knowledge or gnösis. The
Christian is the perfect "gnostic". Gnösis is a cognitive
faith, a faith which develops its contents cognitively. It is a scientific
explanation of the traditions of faith. "Scientific" here is used not
in the sense of the natural sciences but in the methodological sense.
Everybody is on the way of this development, but only a few reach the aim. The
perfect ones are only those who are, as Clement says, "gnostics according
to the ecclesiastical canon". This means that philosophers are bound by
the ecclesiastical tradition which they accepted when they entered the church.
The highest good for these perfect gnostics is the knowledge of God. This
knowledge is not a theoretical knowledge in terms of arguments and analyses,
but a participation in God. It is not cpistemë, that is, scientific
knowledge; it is gnosis, that is, mystical or participating knowledge.
It is not a gnãris of free speculation but of participation in the
congregation and in God. The tradition remains the canon, that is, the
criterion, and the church is the mother without which gnösis is
unattainable.
Clement's
thought is a great example of a synthesis of Christian thinking and Greek
philosophy. Christianity had to cope with Neo-Platonism as a universal and
extremely impressive system. All the values of the past were united in it.
Christianity had to use it and conquer it at the same time. This was done by
the school of Alexandria. Christianity was elevated to a state of highest
education.
Porphyry was one of the most
important Neo-Platonists. He
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 57
acknowledged the high
educational standing of the Alexandrian school, especially of Origen. He
expressed regrets, however, that Origen would live in a barbaric and irrational
way as a Christian. Participation in the Christian congregation was incomprehensible
to him as a Neo-Platonist. Porphyry acknowledged Origen's philosophical
creativity; he said that Origen "hellenized" by interpreting the
strange myths of the Bible by Greek thought. Clement and Origen were both Greek
philosophers, and at the same time faithful and obedient members of the
Christian Church. They had no doubt that it is possible to combine these two
things.
Origen
begins his system with the question of sources. He takes the sources much more
seriously than Clement. The sources are the biblical writings and their summary
in the ecclesiastical teaching and preaching. The ancient "rule of
faith" provided the systematic scheme of his thought, but the Scriptures
are the basis of its contents. The first step for the true theologian is the
acceptance of the biblical message. Nobody can be a theologian who does not
belong to the church. A free-soaring philosopher is not a Christian theologian.
But more than this is required of the theologian. He must also try to
understand things philosophically, and that means for Origen in terms of
Neo-Platonic philosophy.
2. The Allegorical Method
The
basic authority for Origen was Scripture. He introduced the famous distinction
between three meanings of the Scripture. (1) The somatic, literal or
philological sense. Everybody can understand the somatic sense (from söma, meaning
"body"); it is identical with the literal historical meaning. (2) The
psychic or moral sense. The moral sense means the application of the
biblical text to our situation, its existential application to ourselves. (3)
The pneumatic or spiritual sense. It is understandable only to those who
are perfect, not in the moral sense but in the mystical sense. There are some
cases in which the biblical text has only a mystical meaning; then this coincides
with the literal sense. Ordinarily, however, the mystical sense has to be
distinguished from the literal meaning. The mystical sense is to be found
through the allegorical method; this is a method of finding the hidden meaning
behind the texts.
This doctrine of the allegorical
method, or the idea of a mystical
58 A History of Christian Thought
meaning in the texts,
was strongly attacked by the sixteenth-century reformers, and it is alien to
our realistic philological mind. What is the reason behind the allegorical
method? This is easily understood. It arose in order to make a text that is
absolutely authoritative applicable to the situation of the interpreter. It
became necessary to find a meaning other than the literal one. Every sermon
does this with the biblical texts. Today it is done by those interpreters of
the Old Testament who find the christo-logical pronouncements of the New
Testament in it. It is almost inescapable; if you have a text that is an
absolute authority, and its literal meaning does not say anything to you, then
consciously or unconsciously you use a method which transfers the original
meaning into an existential meaning. Of course, this can lead to a complete
undercutting of the authority of the text. For this reason the Lutheran
Reformation re-established the genuine, literal, philological text as the real
authority. But when we examine the dogmatic statements and their proofs derived
from the Bible that we find in orthodox or fundamentalist authors, we notice
immediately that they do exactly what Origen did; they use a method which
interprets the Bible beyond itself. Only if you are completely honest can you
have the literal text, and then say, "This does not say anything to
us," or "We must say something else; we recommend beyond the
text, and we do not mean to express a hidden meaning in the text." I think
this is the only consistent attitude. But think of another example—the American
Constitution and its Amendments. They have absolute, legal validity, but in
order to make them applicable, there is the Supreme Court which interprets
them. Interpreting always means applying something to the present situation.
The justices of the Supreme Court do not apply the allegorical method; instead
they speak of the "spirit" of the law, and the spirit of the law may
often contradict the letter of the law.
There
are two classes of Christians: (1) The many simple ones, who accept on
authority the biblical message and the teachings of the church without
understanding them fully. They take the myths literally. As Origen said, they
prefer the healing miracles to the story of Jesus going with his three apostles
to the mount of transfiguration, which is an allegorical or metaphorical expression
for those who go beyond the literal meaning to a transformed interpretation of
it. Origen referred to the attitude of
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 59
the primitive believers
as "mere faith". This represents a lower degree of Christian
perfection. All Christians begin at this level. (2) There are those to whom the
charisma of gnosis, the grace of knowledge, is given. In this way the
converted, educated Greek becomes the perfect Christian, but he always does it
on the basis of faith. This concept of faith is different from the meaning of
faith in Protestantism. Here faith means the acceptance of doe-trines, whereas
in Protestantism faith is acceptance of the reuniting grace of God. For Origen
the first step is the acceptance of authority; the second is the autonomous
rational understanding of the biblical message. The second step does not do
away with the first step, but is possible only on the basis of it.
3. The Doctrine of God
The
first doctrine in Origen's system was the doctrine of God. God is being-itself,
and therefore beyond everything that is. He is beyond knowledge, because
knowledge presupposes the cleavage between subject and object. He is beyond
change and passion. He is the source of everything. But he has his Logos, his
inner word, his self-manifestation. This Logos makes God manifest first
to himself and then to the world. The Logos is the creative power of being;
all powers of being are united in him. The whole spiritual world is united in
the Logos. It is the universal principle of everything in particular, of
anything that has being. This divine Logos radiates eternally from the ground
of being, from the divine abyss, as splendor radiates from the source of light.
Therefore, one is not supposed to say: "There was a time when the Son did
not exist." To say this is to deny the eternity of the Logos. There never
was a time in which the Son, the eternal Logos, did not exist.
The
eternal Logos is eternally generated out of the divine substance. He is not
created "out of nothing"; he is not finite. He has the
same substance with the Father. Here the formula homoousios tO patri (being
of one substance with the Father) first arises. In spite of the eternity
of the Logos, however, the Logos is less than the Father. Only the Father is
without origin; he is not even generated. He is auto theos, God by
himself, whereas the Son is God by the Father. The Son is the picture of the
goodness or essence or nature of God, but not God himself.
60 A History of Christian Thought
Thus,
we have
two trends in this Origenistic thinking. First, the Son is co-eternal with the
Father; secondly, the Son has a kind of lesser validity and power of being than
the Father. The Son is the highest of all generated realities, but he is less
than the Father. The same thing is true of the Spirit, who is working in
the souls of the saints. Although the religious tradition of the congregations
demands that the trias (the three) be the object of adoration, the
Spirit is called less than the Son and the Son less than the Father. And
sometimes the highest spiritual beings are even called gods. This means that
two principles are in conflict in Origen's thought. The one is the divinity of
the Savior; he must be divine in order to be able to save. The other is the
scheme of emanation. There are degrees of emanation from the absolute, the
Father, down to the lowest levels. The line of division between the highest
three (Father, Son and Spirit) and the rest of spiritual beings is somewhat
arbitrary.
The
rational natures, or spirits, which are eternal were originally equal and
free, but they fell away from their unity with God in different degrees of
distance. As result of their revolt in heaven against God, they may have fallen
into material bodies. This is their punishment and at the same time the way of
their purification. The human soul is the mediation between these fallen
spirits and the human body. The human soul is the spirit which has become cold.
That is, the intensive fire, which is the symbol for the divine Spirit, is
reduced to a life process. The fall is a transcendent fall. It precedes our
existence in time and space. And it is a free fall; it is decided in freedom.
The freedom is not lost by the fall, but it is actual and present in all
concrete actions. In these concrete actions the transcendent fall becomes
historical reality. We could say that the individual act represents the eternal
nature of the fall. In other words, our individual existence in time and space
has a prelude in heaven. The decisive thing about us has already happened when
we appear on earth. This has particular reference to sin. Sin is based on the
transcendent fall. This doctrine of the transcendent fall is difficult to
understand for people who have grown up in nominalistic thinking. It is
understandable only if one realizes that transcendent powers are realities and
not individual things. There is a profound meaning in this doctrine which makes
it necessary as a symbol in Christian theology. It means that our human
existence and the existence of
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 61
reality as a whole are
considered not only as creation but also as guilt and judgment. When we look at
the world, we see that it is universally fallen. Its fallenness penetrates
through everything, even through nature outside of man. If we ask: Where did it
come from? Why is the fall universal? Why are there no exceptions? Then the
answer is: Because the fall precedes the creation, just as the fall follows the
creation. Origen has two myths of the fall. The one is transcendent;
mythologically speaking, it is not in space. It is the eternal transition from
union with God to separation from God. The other is the immanent,
inner-historical fall. The transcendent fall becomes actual through special
acts on the historical plane. Sin is spiritual, but the bodily and social existence
strengthens sin. It is transcendent and a destiny which, like every destiny, is
united with freedom.
As
in Plotinus, sin for Origen is a turning away from God. It is not something
positive. Being evil means being without goodness. Sin, therefore, has a double
relation to creation. With respect to the creation of the free and equal
spirits, creation precedes the fall; with respect to the bodily world, creation
follows the fall and follows the freedom of the spirits. On account of the
freedom of the spirits, it is possible for the fall to happen again even in
eternity. The end of the world process is not necessarily the end of history.
The fall may repeat itself, and then the whole process starts over again. In
these ideas we see the cyclical thinking of Greek philosophy with respect to
history. This way of thinking was not overcome by Origen, as it was done later
by Augustine.
4. Christologg
The
most difficult part of Origen's thought has to do with his christology. The
Logos unites itself with the soul of Jesus, who is an eternal spirit as
everyone else is. He is pre-existent as all souls are. But the Logos unites
himself with just this soul. The soul of the man Jesus has received the Logos
completely. The soul of Jesus has merged into the power and the light of the
Logos. This is a mystical union which can be emulated in all saints. The soul
mediates between the Logos of God and the body of man. In this way there are
two sharply separated natures united in Jesus. The statement of the Fourth
Gospel that the Logos became flesh is a literal way of speaking.
The froth is that the Logos took
62 A History of Christian Thought
on flesh so much that it
could be said that he had become it. This is more like adoptioriistic
thinking. Popular feeling in the East, on the other hand, wanted to have a God
on earth who walks with us, not a divine transcendent power who merely takes on
flesh, and then returns after he has taken it on. But for Origen this idea was
unacceptable because the Logos can never cease to be also outside of Jesus. The
Logos is the form of everything that has form. After the incarnation the Logos
ceased to be a man, but this is somehow the case with all spiritual beings, who for this
reason are called gods. But if they are gods, where does the dividing line come
between them and the third person of the trinity? This problem was not solved,
and could not be solved on the basis of the doctrine of emanation. In the
doctrine of emanation there is a continuous going down and returning.
Christianity, however, belonged to monotheism. How can monotheism be maintained
if there are two emanations which are lower than God and at the same time
divine?
When
men follow the example of the Logos, they themselves become logikoi, that
is, determined by meaning, reason, and creative power. They are led back to
deification. However, Jesus had to do something else to make this possible for
men. He had to give his body as a sacrifice. To whom did he give it? To Satan,
as a ransom! Satan demands such a price for letting the others go free; but
Satan was betrayed. Satan was unable to keep Jesus, because Jesus was pure and
therefore not within the pale of Satan's power. This idea of the betrayal of
Satan was not only a theological notion in Origen but was also to be found in
popular piety. The Middle Ages was full of stories of how the peasants,
especially their wives, betrayed the devil when lie came, so he had to leave
them alone. To us this seems to be a grotesque mythological idea, and it
certainly is if taken literally. But it contains a profound religious insight,
namely, that the negative element can never ultimately prevail; it cannot
prevail because it lives from the positive. When Satan takes Jesus into his
power, he cannot keep in his power that from which be himself lives, namely,
the divine nature. This shows the ultimate futility of sin. It cannot
indefinitely keep in its control the positive power of being, because this
power of being is derived from the good. The good and the power of being
are one and the same thing. So the meaning of Origen's doctrine is that it is
impossible for Satan
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 63
to prevail ultimately,
because he lives from that against which he strives to prevail.
Origen's
interpretation of the Song of Songs in terms of the mystical love of the soul
with Christ introduced into practical piety an idea which had a tremendous
effect on later church history. The human soul is the bride of the Logos; this
is the meaning of this love song. The soul receives the bridegroom in herself;
she is sometimes visited by the Logos. That is, the divine Spirit is sometimes
experienced by us, sometimes the soul is left alone, and no one visits her from
the eternal. This is the first mystical interpretation of the Song of Songs
that is directly related to the individual. In Judaism it was interpreted in
terms of the relation between Cod and the synagogue. Here we see an example of
the necessity for allegorical interpretation. The Song of Songs itself is
nothing more than a Jewish love song, perhaps a wedding song which was
performed at weddings or festivals. Yet it is in the canon and has divine
authority. What can be done with it? The answer of the Jews was that it
concerns the relationship between God and the nation. And in my old Luther
Bible, which I love dearly because I received it for my baptism, there is
something that is said in the superscription of the Song of Songs about the
relationship between God and the church. But Origen interpreted it in terms of
the mystical marriage between Christ and the soul. This is, of course, an
example of mysticism, but it is a transformation of non-Christian mysticism.
It is concrete mysticism. The soul, being grasped by the Spirit of God, does not
go beyond itself into the abyss of the divine, but the Logos, the concreteness
of the divine, comes into the soul. This is the first step in what I call the
"baptizing" of mysticism. Mysticism could be introduced into the
church by becoming concrete. If Origen, and later on Bernard of Clairvaux,
speaks of the mystical marriage between the Logos and the soul, the centered
personality is not destroyed. It is preserved, as in a marriage there is a
complete union in which the persons are not destroyed.
5. Eschatology
The last point in Origen's
theology is the doctrine of the final al of history and the world. He
interprets this end spiritualisti-ally. The primitive imagery is interpreted in
spiritual terms.
64 A history of Christian Thought
The second coming of
Christ is the spiritual appearance of Christ in the souls of the pious. He
comes back to earth again and again, not in a dramatic appearance in physical
terms, but into our souls. The pious people are fulfilled in a spiritual
experience. The "spiritual body" of which Paul speaks is the essence
or the idea of the material body. It is that which is painted by a great
portrait painter. This is what partcipation of the body in the eternal means.
The
punishment for sin is hell. Hell is the fire which burns in our conscience, the
fire of despair because of our separation from God. This, however, is a
temporary state of purging our souls. At the end everyone and everything will
become spiritualized; the bodily existence will vanish. This famous doctrine of
Origen is called apokatastasis ton panton, the restitution of all
things. Because freedom is never cancelled out, there is the possibility
that the whole process could start over again. Origen was a thoroughgoing
philosopher of freedom, and this is what distinguishes him from Augustine.
This
spiritualization of eschatology was at least part of the reason that Origen
became a heretic in the Christian Church, although he was its greatest
theologian. The simple ones revolted against this great system of scientific
theology. Monks and others did not want to yield their literalism with respect
to the future life, the final catastrophe, the eternal judgment, etc. The
motives of the simple ones were mixed. Partly this reaction to Origen's
doctrine was due to a Jewish type of realism of bodily existence, against a
Greek dualism, and partly it was motivated by the idea of revenge against those
who were better off on earth. So they fought for a very realistic and
literalistic idea of judgment, final catastrophe, and heaven. The church took
their side and condemned the heretical side of Origen.
G. DYNAMIC AND M0DALIsTIc
MONAIICHIANISM
The simple ones revolted
also against Origen's Logos christology which he had received from the
Apologists. The laymen, the simple ones, were not interested in the
cosmological speculations of the Logos concept. They wanted to have Cod himself
on earth in Christ. This group was called the Monarchians, from monarchia, meaning
"one man's rule". They wanted to have only one ruler,
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 65
one God not three, as
they felt was entailed by the Logos christo-logy. Against the Logos as a second
God, they stressed the "monarchy" of the Father. This movement was a
monotheistic reaction against the tritheistic danger of the Logos doctrine. The
Logos doctrine hypostasized the Son beside God, and the Spirit beside both of
them.
A
man named Theodotus, a craftsman from Rome, thought that Jesus was a man on
whom the divine Spirit descended in baptism, giving him the power of his
messianic vocation. But this did not make him God. People of this type of
thinking were most interested in those passages in the Gospels which deal with
Jesus as a man. There is perhaps a connection between Theodotus and a group in
Asia Minor called the Alogoi, so called because they denied the doctrine
of the Logos. And since the Logos idea appeared in the Fourth Gospel, they
rejected it. They tried to establish the true text and to stress its literal
interpretation against allegorizing. They were in a sense predecessors of many
later movements in church history which emphasized the humanity of Jesus, from
the school of Antioch through medieval adop-tionism to modem liberal theology,
over against the Logos as God becoming man. This is called the adoptionistic or
dynamic christology. The man Jesus is adopted; he is filled by the Logos or the
Spirit, but he is not God himself. This is the one wing of the monarchic,
monotheistic reaction against the Logos Christology.
1. Paul of Samosata
Paul
of Samosata, a bishop of Antioch, was in the line of thinking we have just
presented. He said that the Logos and Spirit are qualities of God, but not
persons. They are eternal powers or potentialities in God, but not persons in
the sense of independent beings. Jesus is a man who was inspired by this power
from above. The power of the Logos inhabited Jesus as in a vessel, or as we
live in houses. The unity that Jesus has with God is the unity of will and
love; it is not a unity of nature, because nature has no meaning with respect
to God. The more that Jesus developed in his own being, the more he received of
the Spirit. Finally he achieved eternal union with God, and then he became the
judge and received the status of God. He became God, but somehow he had to
deserve to become God. Such an idea is, of
66 A History of Christian Thought
course, the negation of
the divine nature of the Savior. This denial is what made him a heretic,
although many people of his time and even today would prefer to follow his way
of thinking.
The
Monarchian movement itself was split. The one side followed the adoptionist
christology. It says that God, or the Logos, or the Spirit, adopted a fully
human individual, made him into Christ, and gave him the possibility of becoming
fully divine in his resurrection. In the West we find this way of thinking in
Theodotus of Rome and in the East in Paul of Samosata. This christology started
with human existence, then it emphasized those biblical statements which refer
to the humanity of Christ, and finally it showed that Jesus was driven by the
Spirit while on earth and in the end elevated into the divine sphere. The other
side of Monarchianism is called modalistic Monarcliianism; it was more in line
with the basic feeling of the masses of Christians. "Modalism" means
that God himself appears in different modes, in different ways. It was also
called Patripassianism, which means that the Father himself suffered in
Christ. Another name for this movement is Sabellianism, from its leading
representative, Sabel-lius. This became a widespread movement in the East and
the West, and was a real danger to the Logos christology.
In
the West there was a man named Praxeas with whom Tertullian was fighting. His
idea was that God the Father himself was born through the Virgin Mary, that God
the Father himself, the only God, suffered and died. To be Cod means to be the
universal Father of everything. If we say that God was in Jesus, this means
that the Father was in him. Therefore, Praxeas and his followers attacked the
so-called ditheoi, those who believed in two Gods, and the tritheoi, those
who believed in three Gods. They fought for the monarchy of Cod and for the
full divinity of Christ in whom the Father himself appeared. Both notions had
great popular support because the popular mind wanted to have God himself
present on earth, a God who is with us, who participates in our fate, and whom
we can see and hear when we see and hear Jesus.
2. Sabellius
Sabellius
was the leader of the modalistic Monarhians. He said: "The same is the
Father, the same is the Son, the same is the
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 67
Holy Spirit. They are
three names, but names for the same reality. Do we have one or three
Gods?" Father, Son, and Spirit are names, they are prosöpa (countenances,
faces), but they are not independent beings. They are effective in consecutive
energies; one follows the other, but the same God appears in different faces.
It is the same God acting in history in three countenances. The prosOpon (countenance)
of the Father appears in his work as creator and law-giver. The prosopon of
the Son appears from the birth to the ascension of Jesus. Since the ascension
of Jesus the countenance of the Spirit appears as the life-giver. Through' all
appearances it is the same monarchic Father-God. Therefore, it is not adequate
to speak of a trias in heaven. There is no transcendent, heavenly
trinity. Instead of being transcendent, the trinity is historical or
"economically", in the sense of oikonomia, building a house.
The trinity is built up in history.
When
Sabellius says that the same God is essentially in the Father, Son, and the
Spirit, that there are only differences of faces, appearances, or
manifestations, he is saying that they are all homoourios. That is, they
all have the same essence, the same divine power of being. They are not three
beings, but they have the same power of being in three manifestations. Although
this trend of thinking was condemned, it has never disappeared. It reappeared
as a strong monotheistic trend in Augustine and through him in Western theology
in general. This modalistic thinking was in opposition to the Logos
christology. If you are able to distinguish these two basic trends, you have an
insight into what was involved in these seemingly incomprehensible struggles
over an iota in homoous-ios and homoiouios. This was not a fight
over abstract concepts, but it was a conflict between a monotheistic trend and
the attempt to establish divine hierarchies between God and man. The East in
general, dependent as it was on Plato, Plotinus, and Origen, was interested in
hierarchical essences between God and man. This, of course, would make of
Christ a demi-god, as we shall see. The West, and some groups in the East, were
interested in the divine monarchy, on the one side, and in the humanity of
Jesus, on the other. For us as Westerners, the problem of hierarchies is an
abstract one, not a problem of living realities.
68 A
History of Christian Thought
H. THE TIUNiTARIAN CONTROVERSY
First we must see how
the trinitarian problem developed after Origen. Origen was so powerful in his
constructive thinking that he conquered all rivals, also the Monarchian and
Sabellian theologians. And his christology was so impregnated with mystical
piety that his statements could become formulae of a creed. We must not forget
that when the Greek thinkers produced a confession or creed, it may seem like
abstract philosophy to us, but to them it was the mystical intuition of
essences, of powers of being. For instance, in Caesarea a creed was used in
baptism which had added mystical formulae from Origen: "We believe in
Jesus Christ, the Logos of God, God from God, Light from Light, Life from Life,
first-born of all creatures, generated out of the Father before all
generations." This is both philosophy and mysticism. It is Hellenistic
and not classical Greek philosophy. Hellenistic philosophy was united with the
mystical traditions of the East. Therefore, seemingly abstract philosophical
concepts could become mystical confessions.
This
combination of mystical philosophy with a Christian confession was endangered
when the emanation system of Origen was called into question from the point of
view of Christian conformism. For example, the eternity and the pre-existence
of all spirits, the idea of the transcendent fall, the spiritual body-less
resurrection, and the spiritualized eschatology, were all questioned. The place
of the Logos was also questioned. Common-sense conformism, supported by the
Monarchian reaction, demanded nothing less than God on earth. The theory of
emanation by degrees, in hierarchies of powers of being, demanded something
less than that which is ultimately transcendent, the One which is beyond
everything given.
Out
of this conflict a division occurred in the school of Origen between a left
wing and a right wing of Origenistic thinking. The right wing said: Nothing is
created or subordinate in the trias; nothing has been added which is not
in the trinity from the beginning. The Son is not inferior to the Father, nor
the Spirit to the Son. Representatives of this position wanted what is today
called a "high christology". The Son in Jesus is not less than the
Father himself.
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 69
The
left wing opposed the traditionalism of the right wing; it was
"scientific" and modernistic. This position held that the Son is essentially
strange to the Father; he was a created being; he had no being before he was
generated. This means that the Logos christology is developed in hierarchical
terms. First, there is God the Father, the highest hierarchy, the eternal One
beyond everything; then there is the Logos, the second hierarchy and inferior
to the first; the Spirit is the third hierarchy, and inferior to the secoiicl.
The immortal spirits form the fourth hierarchy, lower than the three others.
These are the two wings involved in a great struggle which almost ruined the
Christian Church.
Besides
theological differences politics became involved in the trinitarian
controversy. The attempt was made to find a practical way to solve the problem
without going into its theoretical depths. This was the way of Roman
eclecticism, something like our American pragmatism. Rome provided the
direction for a practical solution which avoided the depths of Greek thinking.
Dionysius, the pope in Rome, declared: "Two things must be preserved: the
divine trias and the holy message of monarchy." These were the two
main terms of the two wings, the one affirming the holy message of the
monarchy, which stood against the Logos christology, the other affirming the
divine trias, which expressed the Logos christology. So the pope took
the main formulae of both groups and said they must both be preserved. But he
did not say how that was possible. This was practical church politics, an
approach which finally prevailed, as we shall see. But it prevailed only after
a tremendous conflict of almost eighty years. This conflict, which we call the
Arian controversy, had a lasting effect on the church, and the decision which
was finally reached became valid for all periods of Christianity.
1. Arianism
The
Arian controversy was a unique and classical struggle which was caused by many
motives. The politics of the emperors was involved in it. They needed a unity
in the church because Christianity had by this time become the favored religion
of the Roman Empire. This threatening division in the church would split the
whole empire into pieces, it was feared. Personal feuds between bishops and
theologians were involved. There was also
70 A History of Christian Thought
a conflict between a
narrow traditionalism and an unrestrained speculation. A strong emphasis on
theoretical solutions to problems collided with popular monastic fanaticism.
But that is not the whole story. The really decisive issue, its basic meaning
and permanent significance, had to do with the question: How is salvation
possible in a world of darkness and mortality? This has been the central
question ever since the apostolic fathers, and it was the question involved in
the great trinitarian and christo-logical controversies.
Athanasius,
the great foe of Anus, answered that salvation was possible only on one
condition, namely, that the Son of God was made man in Jesus so that we might
become God. This is possible only if the Logos is eternal, if it is really God
who has appeared to us in Jesus. God is Father only because he is the Father
of the Son. Thus, the Son is without beginning; eternally the Father has the
Son. The Son is the eternal Son of the Father; and the Father is the
eternal Father of the Son. Only if they are co-eternal can Jesus, in whom the
Logos is present, give us eternity. He can make us like God, which always means
to make us immortal, and to give us eternal knowledge, the knowledge of
eternal life. Not even the highest of all created spirits can give us a real
salvation. A created spirit, even the highest, is less than God. But we are
separated from God. We are dependent on God and must return to him. So God
himself must save us.
According
to Anus, a presbyter from Alexandria, only God the Father is eternal and
unoriginated. The Logos, the pre-existent Christ, is a creature. He is created
out of nothing; there was a time when he was not. Origen had made the statement
that there was no time in which he was not. Against this the left-wing Origenistic theology said that there
was atime in which he was not. This time was prior to our temporal existence,
but it was not eternity. The Logos is not eternal. The power of God at worlz in
Jesus is not the eternal divine power itself, but is a limited and lower
hierarchy. This Logos is strange to the divine nature and dissimilar in every
respect from the Father's essence. The Logos can neither see nor know the
Father completely and exactly. He becomes God only in the way in which
every saint may become deified. This deification happened, as it happens in
every saint, through his freedom. The Logos had the freedom to turn away from
Cod, but he did not do that. This Logos, a half-divine power,
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 71
is the soul of Jesus.
This means that Jesus is not fully man with a natural human soul. Mary
gives birth to this hall-God, who is neither fully God nor fully man. This
solution of Anus is in line with the hero cults of the ancient world. This
world is full of half-gods, gods who even in heaven (i.e., Olympus) are not
fully gods but derived forms of Cod. Jesus is one of these gods, but he is not
God himself.
2. The Council of Nicaea
Anus'
christology was rejected at the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325. The Nicene Creed
begins: "We believe in one Cod, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things
visible and invisible." These are important words. The word
"invisible" has reference to the Platonic "ideas". God is
the creator not only of the things on earth, but of the "essences" as
they appear in Plato's philosophy. The Creed continues: "And in one Lord,
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only-begotten of the
essence of the Father, God of God, and Light of Light, true Cod of true God,
begotten not made, being of one substance [hoino-ousios] with the Father,
by whom all things were made in heaven and on earth, who for us men and our
salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the
third day he rose again, ascended into heaven. From thence he comes to judge
the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost." Then it goes on to say:
"And those who say there was a time when he was not, or he was not before
he was made, and he was made out of nothing, and out of another substance or
thing, or the Son of God is created or changeable, or alterable, they are
condemned by the Catholic Church." This is the fundamental Christian
confession. The central phrase is "of one substance with the Father".
Nothing like this is said of the Holy Ghost. And this was the reason for
further struggles and decisions. The condemnations are interesting; the
all-embracing one is directed against the Arians: "Those who say there was
a time when he was not... are condemned by the Catholic Church."
Now
we will present the significance of the decision of Nicaea for world history
and the history of the church:
(1)
The most serious Christian heresy was overcome. Christ is not one of the many
half-gods; be is not a hero. He is God
72 A IILstors, of Christian Thought
himself appearing in
divine essence within a historical person. It meant a definite negation of
paganism. In Anus paganism again raised its head after it had been defeated in
the anti-gnostic struggle. The victory of Arianism would have made Christianity
only one of many possible religions.
(2)The confession of Nicaea was
expressed in terms' more pleasing to Rome and the West than to the East. The
East did not like the homoousios; instead it wanted a ladder of
hierarchies. Rome and her allies in the East insisted on the homoousios. For
this reason the decision of Nicaea was immediately attacked. A sixty-year
struggle ensued until in A.D. 381 a settlement was reached more satisfying to
the East.
(3)The decisive statement is:
"Being of one substance with the Father." This is not in the scheme
of emanation but in the scheme of Monarchianism. Consequently it was accused of
being Sabellian; and so were the main defenders, Athanasius and Marcellus.
(4)The negative character of the
decision is especially evident in the condemnations. The creatureliness of
Christ is negated. He has no other ousia than the Father; but what the homoousios
is was not explained. It was not decided whether the three prosöpa are really differences in God,
and if so whether they are eternal or historical. And no doctrine of the Spirit
was given. Only one thing was determined: Jesus Christ is not an incarnated
half-god; he is not a creature above all others; he is God. And God is creator
and unconditioned. This negative decision is the truth and the greatness of the
Council of Nicaea.
(5)There were some other
implications. The statements were made in philosophical, non-biblical terms.
Some Greek concepts were taken into the dogma, not so much as classical
philosophy but as mystical philosophy of religion.
(6)From now on the unity of the
church is identical with the majority of the bishops. A conciliarism had
developed in hierarchical terms; the majority of the bishops replace all other
authorities. Only much later did the claim of the Roman bishop to a special
status among the bishops become dominant, until finally the authority of the
majority of the bishops was abolished.
(7)The church had become a state
church. This was the price which had to be paid for unity. The emperor did not
command the content of the dogma, but he exercised pressure. When there were
revolts against the dogma, the emperors after Constantine
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 73
had to exert even more
pressure. This means that a new development in church history, indeed, of
world history, had begun.
3. Athanasius and Marcellus
The
chief defender of the decision of Nicaea was Athanasius. He was primarily a
great religious personality. His basic religious convict-ion was unalterable, and
therefore he was able to use a variety of scientific means and political ways
to advance his cause. His style was clear; he was consistent and cautious,
although at times he could be compromising in his terminology. Several times he
was expelled from his episcopal see in Alexandria. He was persecuted, but in
the end he was victorious over heretics and emperors. Athanasius saved the
decision of Nicaea, but in order to do so he had to compromise with a more
Origenistic interpretation of the Nicene formulae.
For
Athanasius sin is overcome by forgiveness, and death, which is the curse of sin,
is overcome by the new life. Both are given by Christ. The new life includes
communion with God, moral renewal, and eternal life as a present possession.
Positively speaking, eternal life is deification, becoming like God as much as
possible. Thus, two things are needed, a victory over finitude and a victory
over sin. There must be both participation in the infinity of God and
participation in the holiness of God. How can this be provided? Only by Christ
who, as true man, suffers the curse of sin and, as true Cod, overcomes death.
No half-god, no hero, no limited and relative power of being can do that. Only
as historical man could Cod change history, and only as divine could he give
eternity. There is no such thing as a half-forgiveness or half-eternity. If
our sins are forgiven, they must be fully forgiven; if we are eternal, we must
be fully eternal. No half-god could be the Savior. Salvation is the problem of
christology.
The
Christ who performs this work of salvation is not understandable to the human
mind except through the divine Spirit. Only through the Spirit can we come into
unity with the Christ. This implies that the Spirit of Christ must be as divine
as Christ himself. Groups arose after the Nicene decision to deny the divinity
of the Spirit. Athanasius fought against them too, and \aid: They are wrong,
for they want to make the Spirit into a reature. But if the Spirit of Christ is
a creature, then Christ also
74 A Lfistory of Christian Thought
is a creature. The
Spirit of Christ is not the human spirit of the man Jesus; the
Spirit of Christ is not a psychological function. The Spirit of Christ is God
himself in Jesus and through him in us. In this way the trinitarian formula
which remained unfinished at Nicaea was finally completed. In order to be able
to unite us with Christ, the Spirit must be as divine as Christ himself, not
half-divine, but fully Cod.
One
of Athanasius' supporters was Marcellus, by whom the Monarchian tradition
entered the discussion. Although he was an intimate friend of Athanasius,
Marcellus was condemned by the more Origenis tic theologians who did not like
his Monarchian tendencies. Marcellus' emphasis was on monotheism. Before the
creation God was a monas, a unity without differentiation. His Logos was
in him, but only as a potential power for creation, but not yet as an actual
power. Only with the creation does the Logos proceed and become the acting
energy of God in all things, through whom all things have been made. At the
moment of creation the divine nwnas has become a dyas, the unity
has become a duality. In the incarnation, the act in which the Logos took on
flesh, the second "economy" is performed. An actual separation occurs
between Father and Son, in spite of the remaining potential unity, so that now
it is possible for the "eyes of faith" to see the Father in the Son.
Then a further broadening of the monas and of the dyas occurs,
when after the resurrection of Christ the Spirit becomes a relatively
independent power in the Christian Church. But these separations are only
preliminary; the independence of the Spirit and of the Son is not final. The
Son and the Spirit will finally return into the unity with the Father, and then
the flesh of Jesus will wither away. The potential or eternal Logos should not
be called the Son; he becomes the Son only through the incarnation and the
resurrection. In Jesus a new man, a new manhood, appears, united with the Logos
by love.
What
we have described is a dynamic Monarchian system. The trinity is dynamized, is
put into movement, approaches history, and has lost the static character it has
in genuine Origenistic thinking. But this system was rejected. It was accused
of being Sabellian, of representing that kind of Monarehianism in which Cod the
Father himself appears on earth. The Origenistic system of degrees and
hierarchies triumphed against Marcellus.
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 75
But
the struggle continued. The Origenistic protest against the homoousios led not only to conflict with
people like Athanasius or Marcellus, but also against the Nicaenum itself. This
happened in the East, of course. The Origerrists who had been overwhelmed by
the pressure of the emperor at Nicaea gathered their forces again and insisted,
against the Nicaenum, on three substances in the trinity. This was, so to
speak, a pluralistic interpretation of the trinity, in the scheme of emanation,
of hierarchies and powers of being. The trinity is seen in degrees, but only
the Father is unconditioned and unlimited. He alone is the source of everything
eternal and temporal. This was the mood of the Eastern theologians and the
popular piety in the East. This mood prevailed again and again, in some cases
with strong support of the emperor, who defied the decision of his predecessor
Constantine and tried to press the supporters of Nicaea against the Nicaenum.
There
was, however, a shortcoming in Eastern theology; it was united only negatively
and not on a positive decision. So it was easy to split it and reduce its
power of resistance against the Nicaenum. There were some in the East who
practically returned to Anus; they were called the arzomoioi (Anomoeans), which means
"the Son is unlike the Father in all things". He is completely a
creature. There were still others who mediated between the Nicaenum and the
mood of the East. They were called the homoiourianoi, for they accepted the homoioiirios, but not the homoousios. Ilornoiousios is derived from homoios which means "similar".
This means that the Son is similar in essence to the Father. So now we have the
struggle between the homoousios and
the Jiomoiousios. The
hostile pagans in Alexandria cracked jokes about this fight going on in the
streets, barbershops, and stores, in which Christians were arguing over an
iota, the smallest letter in the alphabet, the only letter that distinguishes homoiousios from homoousios. But this was more than a fight
over an iota; a different piety lay behind it. For the homoiousianoi the Father and Son are equal in
every respect, but they do not have the identical substance. This group
interpreted the Nicene formula homoousios, which they could not remove any
more, in the sense of homojousiog. And
even Athanasius and the West finally agreed that this could be done, if only
the formula itself were accepted. The West in turn accepted the eternal
generation of the Son, a formula which derived from Origen and which the
76 A History of Christian Thought
West did not like, and
with it the West accepted the inner-divine, eternal trinity, which is a
non-historical (non-economic) view of the trinity. The East, on the other hand,
accepted the homoousios after it was possible to interpret it in the light
of the homoiousios. And under these same conditions the East also
accepted the homoousia of the Spirit.
This
means that theological formulae were discovered which were able to resolve the
struggle, but theological terms are never able to overcome the religious
difference itself. We shall see how this worked itself out in the later
developments of the Eastern and Western churches, in the coming fights and
struggles and in the final separation. But for the time being the Synod of Constantinople,
A.D. 381, was able to make a decision in which both East and West agreed, in
which the homoousios and the Izomoi-ousios could come together.
Before this was possible, however, new theological developments had to occur.
These developments are represented by the three great Cappadocian theologians.
4. The Cappadocian Theologians
The
three Cappadocian theologians were Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, his
brother, and Gregory of Nazianzus. Basil the Great was the bishop of Caesarea;
he was many things, a churchman, bishop, the great reformer of monasticism, a
preacher, and a moralist. He fought against the old and neo- and semi-Arians,
against everything which followed the idea that Christ is a half-god and
a half-man. Basil died, however, before the favorable decision of
Constantinople was reached.
Basil's
younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa, was called "the theologian". He continued
the Origenistic tradition and its "scientific" methods. After
Christianity became victorious under Constantine and after the Nicene dogma
became fixed, it was possible now again for theology to attempt a union of
Greek philosophy and Christian dogma. But this theology no longer had the
freshness of the first great attempts made by the Apologists and Origen. It was
much more determined by the ecclesiastical situation and the Creed of Nicaea,
thus, it was more a matter of formulae than of material creativity. Gregory of
Nazianzus created the definitive formulae for the doctrine of the trinity. He
had become an intimate friend of Basil when both of them were
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 77
students in Athens. They
were united not only in their common theological convictions but also in their
common asceticism. Gregory of Nazianzus became bishop and was president of the
synod of Constantinople for a certain period.
These
Cappadocian Fathers, especially Gregory of Nazianzus, made sharper distinctions
between the concepts that were used in1 the trinitarian dogma. Two
series of concepts were used: the first is one divinity, one essence (otsia),
one nature (phyris); the second series is three substances (hypostaseis),
three properties (idiötêtes), three persons (prosopa, personae). The
divinity is one essence or nature in three forms, three independent realities.
All three have the same will, the same nature and essence. Nevertheless, the
number three is real; each of the three has its special characteristics or
properties. The Father has the property of being ungenerated; he is from
eternity to eternity. The Son has the characteristic of being generated. The
Spirit has the characteristic of proceeding from the Father and the Son. But
these characteristics are not differences in the divine essence, but only in
their relations to each other. This is complex and abstract philosophy, but it
offered the formula which made the reunion of the church possible. The Council
of Constantinople removed the condemnations which bad been added to the Creed
of Nicaea, because they did not apply to the new terminology any more. It also
said something about the Holy Spirit which was not included at Nicaea:
"And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from
the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and
glorified." These phrases have mystical power and could be used
liturgically.
This
decision ends the trinitarian struggle. Anus and Sabellius and their many
followers were excluded. The negative side of this decision is clear, but its
positive implications for developing the doctrine of the trinity pose extreme
difficulties. I shall point not four of them.
(1)
On the one hand, the Father is the ground of divinity; on the other hand, he is
a special persona, a particular hypostasis. Now, if these two
points of view are taken together, it is possible to speak of a quaternity
instead of a trinity. It is possible to speak of the divine substance as the
one divine ground, and of the three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, as the
manifestations of the ground. Then we have a quateriuty rather than a trinity.
There
78 A History of Christian Thought
was always an
inclination in this direction, and Thomas Aquinas still had to fight against
it. As a rule theology said: The Father is both the source of all divinity and
of each of the manifestations.
(2)The distinctions in the eternal
trinity are empty. The doctrine of the trinity was created in order to
understand the historical Jesus. As long as this was kept in mind, the
difference between Cod and Jesus was evident. But how can differences be
maintained in the realm of a transcendent trinity? Distinctions are made by
words like non-gererated, generated, and proceeding. And what do such words
mean? They are words without content, because there is no perception of any
kind which can confirm their meaning. To anticipate a bit, Augustine said these
differences are not expressed because something is said by them, but in
order not to remain silent. This means that if the motives for the doctrine of
the trinity are forgotten, the formulae become empty.
(3)The Holy Spirit even now remains
an abstraction. The Spirit can be brought in concretely only if he is defined
as the Spirit of Christ, of Jesus as the Christ; but if he is placed into the
transcendent trinity, he is more an abstraction than a person. For this
reason the Spirit was never very important for Christian piety. In the
moment in which he was deified in the same sense that Christ was
considered divine, the Spirit was replaced in actual piety by the Holy Virgin.
The Virgin who gave birth to Cod acquired divinity herself to a certain extent,
at least for popular piety.
(4)The idea of three hypostaseis,
three different personae, could lead to tritheism. This danger
became much more real when the philosophy of Aristotle replaced that of Plato.
Plato's philosophy was always the background of mystical realism in the Middle
Ages. In this philosophy the universals are more real than their individual
exemplars. In Aristotle the matter is quite different. Aristotle called the
individual thing the telos, the inner aim, of all natural development.
If this is the case, the three powers of being in God become three independent
realities, or more exactly, the three manifestations of God become independent
powers of being, independent persons. Those who are nominalists by education
have a great difficulty in understanding the trinitarian dogma. For nominalism
everything which is must be a definite thing, limited and separated from all
other things.
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 79
For mystical realism, as
we have it in Plato, Origen, and the Middle Ages, the power of being
in a universal can be something quite superior to and different from the
power of being in the individuals. Therefore, the danger of tritheism was very
minimal as long as the trinitarian dogma was interpreted in terms of the
Platonic philosophy. Tritheism became a danger as soon as the Aristotelian
categories came to predominate, and with it the nominalistic trend which placed
great emphasis on the individual realities. Then the Son and the Spirit could
become, so to speak, special individual beings; then we are in the realni of
tritheism.
The
great theologian in the East, John of Damascus, protested against this
consequence. He emphasized the unity of action and being among the three
manifestations of God. However, something else happened. For practical piety
the trinitarian dogma became just the opposite of what it was originally
supposed to be. It was supposed to be an interpretation of Jesus as the Christ;
it was supposed to mediate this understanding to the Greeks with the help of
the Logos doctrine. But the consequences of the Logos doctrine had become so
dangerous in Anus, in particular, that traditional theology reacted against it.
When it was still used, its philosophical meaning had been broken. In this way
the trini-tarian dogma became a sacred mystery. The sacred mystery was placed
on the altar, so to speak, and adored. It was introduced into the icons, the
pictures which are so important for the cult in the Eastern church, into
liturgical formulae and hymns, and there the mystery has lived ever since.
However, it lost its power to interpret the meaning of the living God.
I. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEM
The christological
problem is historically a consequence of the trinitarian controversy. In
principle, however, it is the other way around. The trinity is the answer to
the christological problem. It is
an answer whose final
formulae seem to deny the basis on which it arose. The question was: If the Son
is of one substance with the Father, how can the historical Jesus be
understood? this was the purpose of the whole trinitarian dogma. But with tile trinitarian dogma formulated as it was at Nicaea, is it still possible
to make Jesus understandable? How can he who is of
80 A History of Christian Thought
divine nature, without any
restriction, be a real man at the same time? The christological controversy,
which lasted for several centuries and brought the church once again to the
edge of self-destruction, was an attempt to answer this question.
There
were always two main types of christologial thought: Either Cod as Father (or
as Logos or Spirit) used the man Jesus of Nazareth, begetting, inspiring, and
adopting him as his Son, or a divine being (the Logos or eternal Son) became
man in an act of transformation. The Creed of Nicaea, with its homoousios
and its Monarchian tendency, favors the former solution. And so does the
Roman theology. The emphasis on the divinity of the eternal Son makes the
emphasis on the humanity of the historical Son much easier. A half-god can he
transformed into man; God himself can only adopt man. But this former solution
was not in the line of Origenism. In Origen the eternal Logos is inferior to
the Father and has, by his union with the soul of Jesus, in eternity the traits
of the historical Jesus. Therefore, he can easily be transformed into Jesus
with the help of the body, and a transformation christology can result. No
sharp distinction between these two possibilities was made. The honioousios could
be interpreted closer to Sabellius or to Anus. This means that the
chzisto-logical interpretations that followed Nicaea could be either in the
sense of adoption or in the sense of transformation. This uncertainty was 50011 discovered by some theologians.
It became a matter of controversy when a man arose to do what Anus had done in
the trinitarian struggle, namely, to draw out the consequences of the
Origenistic position, but now in the sphere of christology. This man was
Apollinarius of Laodicea.1
1. The Antiochean Theology
The
West never followed the Alexandrian line, of which Apollinarius was the most
radical expression. The religious interest of the Alexandrians really had to do
with the problem of salvation. How is salvation possible unless the humanity of
Jesus is more or less swallowed up into the divinity, so that we can adore him
as a whole, so that his mind is identical with the divine
1 Editor's
note: At this point in Tillich's lectures, Father Georges Florovsky delivered
two lectures on Apollinarius and on Cyril of Alexandria. For this reason
Tillich did not himself deal with their positions at any length.
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 81
Logos? The answer is: It
would be impossible. Therefore, the general trend moves in the direction of
what was later called Monophysitism. According to Monophysitism there is only
one nature; the divine nature has swallowed up the human nature.
The
West and the school of Antioch protested against this tendency in Alexandrian
theology. One of the first theologians of
this school was Theodore
of Mopsuestia. The Antiochean school has definite characteristics which
distinguish it from the school of Alexandria, and which make this school the
predecessor of the emphasis on the historical Jesus in modern theology.
(1)The school of Antioch had a
strong philological interest and wanted an exact interpretation and emphasis on
the historical picture of Christ. In this way it anticipated the historical
criticism developed in the modern period.
(2)The school had a rational
tendency—just as liberal theology also had—in the sense of Alexandrian
philosophy.
(3)The Antiochean theologians also
had strong ethical-personalistic—instead of mystical-ontological—interests,
just as Rome and the Stoics had.
Rome
and the West were not always on the side of Antiochean theology, but on the
whole Antioch represented the main trends
of the West. In alliance with
Antioch in the East, it was possible
for Rome, with its
emphasis on history and personality, to become victorious over the mystical
ontological interest of the East.
Popular religion,
however, was on the whole on the side of
Alexandria and against Antioch.
Antioch could not prevail for a number of reasons. The basic structure of the
dogma was against
it, coming as it did
from Origen and being much more in line with
Alexandrian thinking. Politics
was against it and there was also a lack of moral resistance against the
superstitions which had developed widely in Christianity at that time. The
personalities
were not great enough to
resist the demands of the people for a
magically working God who walks
on earth and whose human nature is only a gown for his divine nature.
Nevertheless, Antioch,
in alliance with Rome, saved the
human picture of Christ in its religious significance. Without Antioch the
church would probably have lost entirely the human picture, and the historical
conscious-I eSS of the West would not have been able to develop.
Antioch
defended the church against the Monophysites for whom the human character of
Christ was swallowed up in divinity
82 A History of Christian Thought
and who also gave rise
to numerous magical and superstitious ideas. Thus, Antioch paved the way for
the christological emphasis of the West. It is perhaps impossible for
someone from the West fully to understand the religious meaning of the East.
This is even more difficult for Americans than for Europeans, because Europe is
much closer to the East, not only geographically but historically. The
mystical-ontological elements permeate the whole of Western culture in
Europe. This is not the case in the United States. Your heritage is indebted to
the Antiochean school and to Rome which, in alliance with this school, saved
the kind of attitude which is natural to you.
Theodore
of Mopsuestia emphasized against Apollinarius that in Christ there is a perfect
nature of man in union with the perfect nature of God. He said: "A
complete man, in his nature, is Christ, consisting of a rational soul and human
flesh; complete is the human person; complete also the person of the divinity
in him. It is wrong to call one of them impersonal." It was common in the
East, in Monophysitism, to hold that only one nature is personal, the divine
nature and not the human. Therefore, Theodore said: "One should not say
that the Logos became flesh." For Theodore this was a vague,
metaphorical way of speaking and should not be used as a precise formula.
Instead, one should say: "He took on humanity." The Logos was not
transformed into flesh. This idea Of transformation, or transmutation, was felt
by him to be pagan, so he rejected it. The pagan spirit of superstition wanted
to have a transformed God walking on earth. But then Theodore was confronted by
a difficult problem. If the human and divine sides of Christ are themselves
persons, is he not then a being with two personal centers? Is he not a
combination of two sons, a monster with two heads, as Theodore's enemies put
it? Theodore tried to show the unity of the two persons. He rejected the unity
in essence or nature. In essence they are absolutely different because the
divine nature cannot be confined to an individual man. The Logos is universally
present. Even when Jesus lived, the flowers were blooming, animals were living,
men were walking, and culture was going on. The Logos was active in all this.
He said that it is impossible for the Logos to be only the man Jesus. He spoke,
therefore, of a unity by the Holy Spirit, which is a unity of grace and will.
In this way he established in Jesus an analogy with the prophets, who were
driven by the Spirit. How‑
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 83
ever, this is a unique
event in Jesus, for in the prophets the Spirit was limited, whereas in Jesus
the Spirit was unlimited.
The
union of the two natures started in the womb of Mary. In it the Logos
connected himself with a perfect man in a mysterious way. This Logos directed
the development, the inner growth, of Jesus, but never by coercion. As every
man Jesus had grace, even unlimited grace. Grace never works through coercion
but through the personal center. By the grace of Cod Jesus increased in
perfection. In this way, he said, there is one person in Jesus, but the natures
are not mixed. He denied that he spoke of two Sons; instead, he said, he
affirmed two natures. The divine nature does not change the human nature in its
essence. Jesus had a human nature which by grace could follow the divine
nature. Thus, one could speak of Mary giving birth to God. This was the
decisive formula. It was against the tradition of the Antiocheans, but they
could not deny the phrase theotokos (Mother of God). He justified the
acceptance of this phrase by saying that Mary also gave birth to a man. This is
a direct and adequate way of speaking; the other, that Mary gave birth
to God, is only indirectly adequate, because the body of Jesus was united with
the Logos of Cod.
In
the same way Theodore agreed that the human nature must he adored and,
conversely, that God had suffered. These things can be said only of the unity
of the person. Of this unity one can say these things because what can
be said of the unity can be said of the whole being. But he rejected the idea
of a transformation of the Logos into a human being. The Western theologians
said that the oneness of nature is reached only when Christ is elevated to the
throne of God at the resurrection, with the bod' and the human soul being
glorified and transformed. This event of the human side being swallowed up is a
transcendent event which happens in heaven, not on earth. So Theodore said that
only the flesh, that ,i.§, the
historical person, suffered and died, oct the divine nature in him. It
is blasphemy to say that divinity mid flesh belong to one nature. Ambrose said
that though Christ had two natures, he suffered only in his human nature. The
same grace which accepted the human nature in Christ and made him the Son of
Cod also justified us before Cod and made us his children.
Thus
we see here two allies: Rome, with her empirical, per-'i inal, and historical
interest; Antioch, having the same interest,
84 A History of Christian Thought
but using it for
philological studies and philosophical considerations. This alliance of Rome
and Antioch might have led perhaps to a full victory of the Antiocheans over
the Alexandrians. But this did not happen. For Rome had more of a political
than a theological interest. Rome was the great center of the church and as
such it did not want to surrender Christianity on account of a theological
formula.
Nestorius
was one of the leaders of the Antiochean school. In A.D. 429 he preached
against the doctrine of theotokos, that the Virgin Mary gave birth to
God. Nestorius taught that Mary gave birth to a man who became the organ of
divinity. Not the divinity but the humanity of Christ suffered. Thus, one could
say that Mary is christotokos. Later Nestorius admitted that indirectly
one could speak of Mary as theotokos in the sense that God the Logos
came down and united himself with the man to whom Mary gave birth. But this was
not a divine being coming down to become a man in terms of a transmutation
myth.
The
two natures of Christ preserve their qualities in the personal union. They are
connected without being mixed in the humanity of Jesus. The term
"man" describes the one nature in him, the term "God" or
"Logos" the other nature. These ideas brought the charge of heresy
against Nestorius. They were generally present in the Antiochean tradition, but
with Nestorius they became suspect and finally repudiated. If we say that
Nestorius became a heretic, we could say that he was the most innocent of all
heretics. Actually he was a victim of the struggle between Byzantium and
Alexandria.
2. The Alexandrian Theology
There
were other developments which supported the Alexandrian cause.
(1)For a long time the Mary-legend,
for which there is little basis in the Bible, had grown out of the pious
imagination. The figure of Mary
attracted the novelistic mind.
(2)The second reason for the
predominance of Alexandria over Antioch was the high valuation placed on
virginity strengthening the trend toward asceticism.
(3)There was also a spiritual vacuum
in the religious life of that period. The
empty space which wanted to be filled was the
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 85
desire to have a female
element in the center of religion. Egypt had such an element in its myth of
Isis and Osiris, the goddess and her son, but Christianity did not. In this it
followed Judaism, which discarded every female element. The Spirit was not able
to replace the female element. First of all, the Spirit appears, in the stories
of Jesus' birth, as the male factor. Secondly, the Spirit is an abstract
concept. Thus, in the popular mind the Spirit could never replace the different
forms of male-centered religion which came from the Old Testament.
(4)
The transformation christology of Alexandria had a popular appeal. Imagine a
simple-minded human being who wants to have God. If you tell her: "There
is God, on the altar; go and have him there", then she will go. But how is
this possible? Because of the incarnation, for in the incarnation God became
something which we can have, whom we can see, with whom we can walk, etc.
This is popular feeling, and this feeling became decisive against the
Antiocheans.
Cyril
of Alexandria wanted to show that the human nature was taken into the unity of
the Logos, who remained what he was. So he could say that the Logos himself
experienced death, since he received into himself the body of Jesus. In his
formula, "out of two natures, one", he accepted the abstract
distinction of the natures, but in actuality there is no difference between the
two natures. This made it possible for him to be the protagonist in the fight
for the theotokos. His religious motive was this: It is not a man who
has become King over us, but God himself who appeared in the form of a man. If
Nestorius were right, then only a man, and not the Logos, would have died for
us; if he were right, then in the Lord's Supper we eat the flesh of a man. What
the people wanted was the physical presence of the divine.
At
first it seemed that the Antiocheans and the Alexandrians rould be united.
Then, however, the Alexandrians reacted so vigorously and victoriously that
Rome took the side of Antioch. Home put a condition to the Antiocheans; they
had to remove Nestorius because he was under too much suspicion. After a
(ompromise was worked out at the Council of Ephesus (A.D. 431) nud a number of
other synods, including the famous Latrocinium Of Ephesus (the synod of
robbers), a final settlement was reached tit the Council of Chalcedon (A.D.
451). Here the alliance of flame and Antioch proved its strength. They were
helped by the
86 A History
of Christian Thought
fact that one from the
opposition, Eutyches, a monk in Constantinople, put forth such a radically
Monophysitic position that he was condemned. This was both a condemnation of
Alexandria and a victory for Antioch.
3. The Council of Chalcedon
Pope
Leo I wrote a letter which became decisive for the outcome at Chalcedon. It
said that the properties of each nature and substance were preserved entire,
and came together to form one person. Humility was assumed by majesty, weakness
by strength, mortality by eternity. There was one true God in the entire and
perfect nature of true man. The Son of God therefore came down from his throne,
from heaven, without withdrawing from his Father's glory, and entered this
lower world, because of the unity of the person in each nature, which can be
understood that the Son of Man came from heaven, and conversely that the Son of
Cod has been crucified and buried. Here we have the same phenomenon as in the
theology of Antioch. A radical statement is combined rather easily with
traditional ideas. The decision of Chalcedon was made on this basis. In
significance it was not surpassed by Nicaea, and together with Nicaea it
surpasses all other synodal decisions. No one can study systematic theology
today without knowing something about this decision at Chal-cedon. The substance of it was expressed in
paradoxical formulae.
(1)"Therefore, following the
holy Fathers, we all with one consent teach men to confess one and the
same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same complete in Godhead and also complete
in manhood."
(2)"True God, and at the same
time true man, of a reasonable soul and body."
(3)He is "consubstantial with
the Father, according to his Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to
his manhood; in all things like unto us, apart from sin."
(4)He is "begotten before all
ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us
and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer (theotokos),
according to the manhood."
(5)"One and the same Jesus
Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, in two natures. These two natures must not be
confused, and they
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 87
are natures without any
change, without division, without separa-lion."
(6)
"The distinction of natures being by no means annulled by the union, but
rather the characteristic of each being preserved and coming together to form
one person and one substance. He is not parted or divided into two persons but
one and the same Son and Only-begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus
Christ."
In
this document, as in similar ones, we see how readily philosophical terms
could have a transition into liturgical and poetic language. The negative side
of these statements is clear. The positive side is more doubtful. The position
of Rome was victorious, but different interpretations were possible. The East
was disappointed by the decision; the delegates from Alexandria did not
subscribe. If they had subscribed to something so contrary to popular demand
back home, they would have been beaten to death by the fanatic monks on their
return. The reaction of the East against Chalcedon, in its radical aspects, was
strong enough to divide the East from Rome to such a degree that it became an
easy prey to the Islamic puritan reaction. This is especially true of the
Monophysitic churches of Egypt and neighboring countries. They were all
swallowed up by the reaction of Islam, which I would call a puritan reaction,
that is, a reaction against the sacramental superstitious form into which Christianity
had fallen more and more. I have a thesis—I do not know whether Father
FlOrovsky would agree with it—that the attacks of Islam would never have been
successful if Eastern Christianity had taken into itself the elements of
personality and history. Instead, Christianity in this region fell deeper and
deeper into popular superstition, and so became vulnerable to the Islamic type
of reaction.
The
decision of Chalcedon was partly denied, partly set aside. From A.D. 482-519
the first schism occurred between the East aIt(l the West. Chalcedon was
maintained by the West; the East ither rejected it or veered toward a
Monophysitic interpretation ii it. After the reunion under Emperor Justin
(519), Mono-1hysitism became victorious in Alexandria. It was a radical ,itiirn
to Cyril and his emphasis on the unity of the natures. After he union in the
incarnation only one nature is present. Christ IN one, according to his composite
nature, according to his person, oeording to his will. After the union there is
no duality of natures
88 A History of Christian Thought
or energies. The more
radical Monophysites said that Chalcedon and Pope Leo, who asserted two natures
and two energies, should be condemned. These Monophysites taught that with the
conception in Mary the flesh of Christ became progressively deified. That
really made Mary a goddess. The radicals said their enemies adored something
mortal. They wanted nothing less than God on earth, without human relativity.
4. Leontius of Byzantium
Emperor
Justinian wanted a reunion of the Chalcedonians and the Monophysites. He was
aided in this by the teaching of a monastic theologian, Leontius of Byzantium.
By combining Cyril and Leo with a new scholastic idea he found a solution to
the christological problem which endured in the East for a long time. Leontius
said that the human nature in Christ does not have its own hypostasis; it
is anhypostas-is (without hypostasis). Here hypostasis means
being an "independent being". Instead, the human nature is enhypostasis,
which means that the human nature is in the hypostasis of the
divine Logos. Here we have reached scholasticism. When it comes to the formula enhypostasis,
we do not really know what that means. But the reason it was invented is
clear. The question was: Can two natures exist without an independent head, an
hypostasis? The answer was, they cannot. Therefore, Christ has one hypostasis
representing the two natures.
The
being of the human nature is in the Logos. This meant that the theology of
Antioch had to be condemned, including Theodore. The religious meaning of this
Byzantine theology became visible in the fight about the suffering of Cod which
was expressed in liturgical and theological formulae. The treis-hagion (thrice
holy) was also enlarged to the formula: "Holy God... Almighty
immortal,
who for us was crucified, have mercy upon us." One of the holy trias has
suffered in the flesh. This was carried through and dogmatized in A.D. 553, at
the Fifth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, in spite of protests from Rome.
The Council expressed itself in fourteen anathemas. The two natures are distinguished
only in theory, not in practice. The person of the Logos has become the
personal center of a man. The human nature has no personal characteristics of
its own. This was the
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 89
decisive point, because
if this is the case, how can he help us? The Crucified is the true Cod and Lord
of glory, and one of the trinity. The identification of Jesus Christ with the
Logos is complete. As in the icons in which Christ appears in gold-ground
setting, the human personality has disappeared.
But
the West could not be so easily conquered. A new reaction of the West occurred.
The question arose whether the one person of Jesus Christ has one or two wills.
This time the fight was between the Mon.othelites and the Dyothelites.
This time the West prevailed. Christ who has two natures also has two
wills. The human nature is not swallowed up by the divine. This whole
development can be grasped only if we realize that the key to it is the problem
of how salvation is related to the individual, to history, and to personal
life. On this point the West was clear, the East was not.
The
last controversy in the East had to do with the icons. Eikôn means
"image". Icons were the images of the fathers and saints in the
churches. The icons deserve veneration and not adoration. However, if one asks
what this distinction actually means, we must say that in popular understanding
veneration always develops into adoration.
We
have been surveying the rise and further fate of the christo-logical doctrine
as formulated at the Council of Chalcedon. Through all this there has
probably been a hidden protest against this emphasis on the Eastern church.
This is understandable because it does not have the same vital significance to
you as, let is say, the Reformation or modern theology. However, the situation
is such that if you know the fundamentals of the early development, and really
understand it, everything else becomes iumparatively easy. If, on the other
hand, you know only the contemporary situation, and not the foundations, then
everything is in the air. It is like a house built from the roof rather than
from the foundations. I believe that the developments in ancient Christian
theology are really foundations, foundations that must be considered
immediately after the biblical foundations.
The
doctrine of Chalcedon, whatever we think of the use of Creek terms in Christian
theology, saved the human side of the hIi'tllre of Jesus for our Western
theology, and even for the East. Ihe human side was on the verge of being
completely swallowed up by the divine' nature, so that succeeding developments
in the
90 A History of Christian Thought
West, including the
Reformation, would not have been possible. This is the importance of the
Council of Chalcedon and its decision, which the East never really accepted,
but transformed it and let it become swallowed up in its sacramental way of
thinking and acting.
To
understand the steps in the christological doctrine, always keep in mind two
pictures: (1) The being with the two heads, God and man, where there is no
unity; (2) The being in which one head has disappeared, but also humanity has
disappeared. The one remaining head is the head of the Logos, of God himself,
so that when Jesus acts, it is not the unity of something divine and something
human, but it is the Logos who is acting. Thus, all the struggles, the uncertainties,
the despair and loneliness, which the Gospels present, were only seemingly
experienced by Jesus, but not really. They are inconsequential. This was the
danger in the Eastern development. The fact that this danger was overcome is
due to the decision of Chalcedon. We must be grateful to the Eastern church
that it was able to do this against its own basic feeling. The power of the Old
Testament and the power of the full picture of the human side of Jesus
prevented the East from failing in this respect.
J. PsEuno-DIoNysIus THE ABEOPACITE
Dionysius
the Areopagite is the classic Christian mystic, one of the most interesting
figures in Eastern church history. He was also of extreme importance to the
West. In Acts 17.84 we read of a man called Dionysius who followed Paul after
he had preached in the Areopagus. His name was used by a writer who lived
around A.D. 500. In the tradition this man was accepted as the real Dionysius
who talked with Paul. He wrote his books under the name of Dionysius. What
seems to us now a falsification was a custom in ancient writing. It was not a
betrayal in any technical or moral sense to launch one's books under famous
names. Not until the fifteenth century was this falsification historically
established. It is an established historical fact that the man who wrote these
books wrote around A.D. 500 and used the name of Paul's companion in Athens in
order to lend authority to his books. He was translated into Latin by John
Scotus Eriugena, a great theologian of the West, around 840. This Latin
translation was used
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 91
throughout the
Middle Ages and had many scholastic commentators. Dionysius represents the
main characteristics of the Byzantine end of the Greek development. He is the
mediator of Neo-Platonism and Christianity, and the father of most of Christian
mysticism. His concepts underlie most Christian mysticism in the East as well
as the West. Some of his concepts, such as that of hierarchy, entered the ordinary
language and helped greatly to form the Western hierarchical system of Rome.
We have two basic works of his, On the Divine Names and On the
Hierarchies. The latter book is divided into the heavenly and the
ecclesiastical hierarchies. The word "hierarchy" was probably
created by him; at least we do not know whether anyone else had used it before.
The word is derived from hieros, meaning "holy, sacred" and archë,
meaning "principle, power, beginning". Thus, hierarchy is defined
by Dionysius as a "holy system of degrees with respect to knowledge and
efflcaey". This characterizes all Catholic thinking to a great extent; it
is not only ontological, but also epistemological; there are degrees not only
in being, but also in knowledge. The system of holy degrees is taken from
Neo-Platonism, where it was first fully developed after Aristotle and Plato (Symposium).
The man who is most important is Proclus, a Neo-Platonic philosopher who
has often been compared with Hegel. He has the same kind of triadic thinking-_thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis—and brings all reality into such a system of holy
degrees.
The surprising thing about Dionysius is that this system, which was the
end of the Greek world and summarized everything Greek wisdom had to say about
life, was introduced into Christianity and used by it. A short time before,
this system had been used by Julian the Apostate in order to combat
Christianity. Thus, .Julian and the Christian theologians who fought against
each other in a life-and-death struggle were united in a Greek Christian
mystic and theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius.
The other book is On the Divine Names. The term "Divine
Names" is also a Neo-Platonic term, which the Neo-Platonists used when
they brought all the gods of the pagans into their system. How could they do
this? Because they followed the philosophical criticism in terms of which no
educated Greek of that time believed literally in the pagan gods. Still
there was the tradition, there was popular religion, and so something had to be
92 A History of Christian Thought
done about these divine
names. They tried to show that the qualities of the divine were expressed in
these names. These names express different degrees and powers in the divine
ground and divine emanation. They point to principles of power, of love, of
energy, and other virtues, but they cannot be taken as names for special
beings. This means that they discovered, in present-day terminology, the
symbolic character of all our speaking about God. Writings on the divine names
can be found throughout the medieval period. The theologians wrote on the
symbolic meaning of everything we say about God. They did not use the word
"symbol" at that time, but they spoke of "name" as an
expression of a characteristic or quality. If we follow the insight of
classical theology in this respect, we will not say, as is often done, that our
speaking of God is only symbolic. This "only" is very wrong!
The wrong is on our side when we fall into a literalism, against which also the
Reformers, especially Calvin, fought.
The
symbolic interpretation of everything we say about God corresponds to the idea
of God which Dionysius developed. How can we know about God? Dionysius
answered: There are two ways of recognizing God. First, there is the way of
positive or affirmative theology. All names, so far as they are positive, must
be attributed to God because he is the ground of everything. So he is
designated by everything; everything points to him. God must be named with all
names. Secondly, however, there is the way of negative theology which
denies that he can be named by anything whatsoever. God is beyond even the
highest names which theology has given to him. He is beyond spirit, beyond the
good. God is, as Dionysius says, super-essential. He is beyond the Platonic
ideas, the essences, beyond all the superlatives. He is not the highest being
but beyond any possible highest being. He is supra-divinity, beyond God, if we
speak of God as a divine being. Therefore, he is "unspeakable darkness".
By this combination of words he denies that God, in view of his nature, can be
either spoken of or seen. Thus, all the names must disappear after they have
been attributed to God, even the holy name "God" itself. Perhaps this
is the source—unconsciously---of what I said at the end of my book, The
Courage to Be, about the "God above God", namely, the God above
God who is the real ground of everything that is, who is above any special name
we can give to even the highest being.
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 93
It
is important that the positive and the negative ways lead to the same end. In
both cases the forms of the word are negated. If you say everything about God,
you can just as well say that you say nothing about him, that is, not anything
special. This is the first thing, of course, which must be said about God,
because it is this which makes him Cod, namely, that which transcends
everything finite. In this sense even the problem of unity and trinity
disappears in the abyss of God. Since that which is super-essential, beyond the
Platonic ideas, is also beyond all numbers, it is even beyond the number
"one"—so that there is no difference between three or one or many in
this respect. Whenever it is said that God is One, translate this to mean that
Cod is beyond all numbers, even the number "one". Only on this basis
can we then speak of "trinity", and of the infinite self-expression
in the world.
From
this abysmal One, which is the source and substance of all being, the light
emanates, and the light is the good in all things. Light is a symbol not only
for knowing but also for being. It is as the Greek philosopher Parmenides said,
that where there is being there is also the logos of being. This light,
which is the power of being and knowledge, is identical with itself; it is unshaken
and everlasting. There is a way downward and a way upward. We have this already
in Heraclitus who said that in everything there is a trend from earth over
water over fire to air, and an opposite trend from the air to earth. That is,
there is a fundamental tension in every living being, a tension of the
creative power of being going down, and the saving power of being going up. The
three stages of the way upward are purgation, illumination, and union. Purgation
is purification in the ethical-ascetic realm; illumination is in the realm of
mystical understanding; union is the state of perfection, the return into
unity with God. In this last stage something takes place which Dionysius (ailed
the mystical ignorance. The same thing was mediated to he modern world through
Nicholas of Cusa in his idea of learned ignorance (docta ignorantia). These
two men say that this is the only ultimate true knowledge. This word
"ignorance" says that we do not know anything special any more when
we have penetrated into the ground of everything that is. And since everything
special is changing, it cannot be ultimate reality and truth. If you penetrate
from everything changing to the ultimate, you reach
94 A History of Christian Thought
the rock of eternity;
you have the truth which can rest on this rock alone.
This
fundamental reality is represented in degrees called hierarchies. The line from
above to below is the line of emanation. The line from below to above is the
line of salvation. The hierarchies represent both ways. They are the way in
which the divine abyss emanates. At the same time, they are the revelations of
the divine abyss, so far as it can be revealed, in the upward way of saving
union with God. From the point of view of the way upward, the hierarchies have
the purpose to create the greatest possible similarity and union of all beings
with Cod. The old Platonic formula, "being equal to Cod as much as
possible", was used also by the Areopagite—coming nearer and nearer to God
and finally uniting with him.
Every
hierarchy receives its light from the higher one and passes it down to the
Lower one. In this way each hierarchy is active and passive at the same time.
It receives the divine power of being and gives it in a restrictive way to
those which are lower than it. However, this system of degrees is ultimately
dualistic. There are two fundamentally different hierarchies, the heavenly and
the earthly. The heavenly hierarchies are the Platonic essences or ideas above
which there is Cod. These are the first emanations from God, which Dionysius
interpreted as hierarchies of angels. This is a development which had
already occurred in later Judaism (the inter-testamental period). The concept
of angels—which is a symbolic personalistic concept—amalgamates with the
concept of hypostatized essences or powers of being. They become one and the
same being and represent the heavenly hierarchies. If you want to interpret the
concept of angels in a meaningful way today, interpret them as the Platonic
essences, as the powers of being, not as special beings. If you interpret them
in the latter way, it all becomes crude mythology. On the other hand, if you
interpret them as emanations of the divine power of being in essences, in
powers of being, the concept of angels becomes meaningful and perhaps
important. The sentimental picture of angels as winged babies has nothing to do
with the great concept of divine emanations in terms of powers of being.
The
ecclesiastical hierarchy on earth is an image of the heavenly hierarchy. The
angels are the spiritual mirrors of the divine abyss. They always look at him
and are the immediate
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 95
recipients of his power
of being. They are always longing to become equal with him and to return to
him, With respect to us, they are the first revealers. If we understand the
matter in this way, we can understand what it means that they are the essences
in which the divine ground expresses itself first. There are three times three
orders of angels—which is, of course, a scholastic play—making it possible to
give a kind of analogy to the earthly hierarchies. The earthly hierarchies are
powers of spiritual being. Here we can learn something about medieval realism. The earthly hierarchies are:
(1)The three sacraments: baptism,
the Lord's Supper, confirmation;
(2)The three degrees of the clergy:
deacons, priests, bishops;
(3)The three degrees of non-clergy:
the imperfect, who are not even members of the congregation, the laymen, and
the monks, who have a special function.
These
nine earthly hierarchies mediate the return of the soul to God. They are all
equally necessary and are all equally powers of being. As children of nominalism,
you will immediately ask: What does it mean that sacraments are equal with
people (clergy, laity) as hierarchies? This can be understood only if you
realize that the people here function as bearers of sacramental power, as
hearers of the power of being. The same is true of the sacraments. '['his is
what makes it possible for Dionysius to call all nine of them hierarchies. They
are all sacred powers of being, some of Iliem embodied in persons, some in
sacraments, and some in persons who only have the functions of being believers
in the congregation.
This
brings the earthly world into a hierarchical system, hecause earthly things
such as sounds, colors, forms, stone, etc. are used, especially in the
sacraments, to express the ecclesiastical hierarchy. All reality belongs to
the ecclesiastical reality, liicause the ecclesiastical reality is the
hierarchical reality as expressed in the different degrees of being and
knowledge of God. In
I lii' mystery of the
church all things are interpreted in terms of Iiiiir symbolic power to express
the abyss of divinity. They express
II and they guide everything back
to it. The ecclesiastical mysteries penetrate into the interior divinity, into
the divine ground ii all things. Thus, a system of symbols in which everything
is JIt('IItially included is established. This is the principle of
96 A History of Christian Thought
Byzantine culture,
namely, to transform reality into something which points to the eternal, not to
change reality as in the Western world.
Hence,
hierarchical thinking in the East is much more in the vertical line,
interpreting reality by penetrating into its depths, whereas the kingdom of Cod
concept, as in Protestantism, belongs to a horizontal theology. Looking at the
situation in terms of East and West, the East lacked the ability to work in the
historical line of transforming reality, and therefore became first the victim
of the Islamic attack, and then a victim of the Marxist attack. On the other
hand, when we look at our culture we can say without much doubt that we have
lost the vertical dimension to a great extent. We always go ahead; we never
have time to stand somewhere and to look above and below.
To
understand what I mean by making everything transparent for the divine ground,
we should look for a moment at art. We have the most translucent religious art
in the Byzantine mosaics. These mosaics have no tendency at all to deribe
anything which happens in the horizontal line. They want to express the
presence of the divine through everything which appears on the horizontal level
of reality, on the place of time and space, by making everything a symbol
pointing to its own depths. This is the greatness of the mosaics. There are a
few examples of them in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. There you have
the expression of divine transcendence, even when the subjects are completely
earthly—animals, trees, men of politics, women of the court. Every expression
has its ultimate symbolic meaning. The last great controversy in the Byzantine church
had to do with icons, or pictures, because the Byzantine culture believed in
the power of pictures to express the divine ground of things. The danger was
very great that popular belief would confuse the transparency of the pictures
with the power of the divine itself, which is effective through the pictures
but is never identical with them. The whole conflict was over the meaning of
the transparent power of the pictures. For the East this was essential;
therefore, most of the great art came from there, and then conquered the West.
The danger then became so great in the West that after Rome had partly
capitulated, it finally was attacked again by Protestantism, especially
Reformed Protestantism, in a way which removed the pictures from the churches altogether.
Thus, in
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 97
Calvinism natural
objects lost their transparency. This is the meaning of all iconoclastic
(image-destroying) movements. This is understandable as a reaction to the
superstitious way in which many Catholics prayed to their pictures, etc.
When we realize, however, that by the same act all natural objects lost their
transparency, one cannot be so sure about it. Things become merely objects of
technical activity, nature becomes dedivinized, and its function to represent
the divine becomes lost. We can say that what the Byzantine culture effected
was the spiritualization of all reality. That is not to be confused with
idealization, which is something quite different. Hofmann's picture of Jesus is
an idealization. A Byzantine picture of Jesus has transparency, but it is not
an idealized picture. The divine majesty is visible throughout, not a nice
human being with ideal, manly handsomeness. So I would say that the Eastern
church represents something which we have lost. Therefore, I am especially
happy that Eastern Orthodox churches could be taken into the World Council of
Churches, thus making communication with them possible again. We should not
imagine that we have nothing to learn from them. It may happen that with
centuries of more intimate contact, the dimension of depth may again enter
Western thinking.
The
system of Dionysius was received by the West. There were two things which made
this possible, which Christianized or baptized this mysticism. First, the
emanation was understood not in a natural but in a personal picture. God has
given existence to all beings because of his benevolence. This goes beyond
pagan thinking. Here the personalistic element comes in and the Neo-Platonic
dualism is removed. Secondly, the system of hierarchies was built around Christ
and around the church. All things have their power of illuminating and uniting
only in relationship to the church and to the Christ. Christ is not one
hierarchy alongside others. This was prevented by Nicaea. But Christ is
God manifest, Who appears in every hierarchy and works through each one. In
this way the system of pagan deities and mysteries, which lived in
Neo-Platonism, was overcome, and in this way the Western church could
receive the system of hierarchies and mysteries. As a result medieval mysticism
was not in opposition to the ecclesiastical hierarchy. They worked together;
only much later did conflicts arise.
98 A History
of Christian Thought
K. TERTULLIAN AND CYPRIAN
The two men in the West
with whom we must deal first are Tertullian and Cyprian. We already discussed
Tertullian to some extent in connection with the Montanist movement of radical
spiritualism and radical eschatology. He was its greatest theological
representative. We also spoke of him in terms of his ability to create those
trinitarian and christologieal formulae which, under pressure from Rome,
finally conquered all the other suggestions made by the East. Further, we saw
that he was a Stoic philosopher, and as such he used reason to develop his
rational system in a radical way. The same Tertullian, however, was also aware
of the fact that in Christianity there is also the element of paradox. He who
said that the human soul is naturally Christian (anilna naturaliter
clzristiana) is the same one who is supposed to have said—though he did not
actually say it—"I believe because it is absurd" (credo quia
absurdum est). What Tertullian actually said was: "The son of Cod
died: it is by all means to he believed, because it is absurd. And he was
buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible."
This paradoxa is a mixture of two factors: first, it expresses the
surprising, unexpected reality of the appearance of Cod tinder the conditions
of existence; secondly, it is a rhetorical expression of this idea in the way
in which Roman orators used the Latin language. It must not be taken as a
literal expression, but by means of a paradox a pointing to the incredible
reality of the appearance of Christ. Now, people added to this the formula, credo
quia absurdum est, but Tertullian himself never said this. With such a view
he never would have been able to present such clear dogmatic formulae and, as a
Stoic, believe in the ruling power of the Logos.
In
Tertullian there also appeared an emphasis on sill, which was to become
important in the West later. He spoke of the vicium originis, the
original vice, and identified it with sexuality. In this way he anticipated a
long development in Roman Christianity, the depreciation of sex and the idea
of the universality of sinfulness.
For
Tertullian' the Spirit is a kind of fine substance, as it was also in Stoic
philosophy. The fine substance is called Spirit, or grace or love. They are
actually the same thing in Catholic theology. Thus,
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 99
Roman Catholic theology
can speak of gratia infusa, infused grace, infused like a liquid, a very
fine substance, into the soul of man and transforming it. This is the
non-personalistic element in Roman Catholic sacramental thought. This grace can
be infused sacramentally into the oil of extreme unction, into the water of
baptism, into the bread of the Lord's Supper, and thus into the soul. This is
one of the sources of this kind of "spiritual materialism", so to
speak, which played such a great role in the Roman Church.
Finally,
Tertullian represented the idea that asceticism, the self-denial of the vital
reality of oneself, is the way to receive this substantial grace of God. He
used the juristic term "compensation" for sin; asceticism is the
compensation for the negative character of sin. And he used the term
"satisfaction". By good works we can "satisfy" God. And he
spoke of "self-punishment". To the degree that we will punish
ourselves, God will not punish us. All of this is legalistic thinking, although
Tertullian was not himself a jurist. But every Roman orator and philosopher
used the legal categories. This was in general a fundamental characteristic of
the West and it became decisive for the later develop-rnent of the Roman
Church.
Cyprian,
bishop of North Africa, had his greatest influence on the doctrine of the
church. The problem of the church which Cyprian discussed was a very
existential one. There were the Persecutions as a result of which there were
those who were ('ailed the lapi, those who fell away either by recanting
the faith or by surrendering books to the searching servants of the pagan
authorities or by denouncing fellow Christians in a trial. This was II matter
of great concern to the church. These people wanted to return
to the church and overcome the weakness which had caused them to fall. Who
should be readmitted to the church? 'I'he church could not accept those who had
fallen out of sheer malignancy. Who should make the decision as to who is
eligible to return? The ordinary teaching was
that it shall be done by those who were "spirituals", that is, those
who had become titartyrs or in some other way had proved that they were fully
Christians.
This method, however, was a sort of i t'muant from the past in which the
"spirit" was still dominant
ver the "office". But
now the office wanted to set aside this
'rnnant of the pest and
to take over this decision too. The bishop,
100 A History of Christian Thought
who is the church, must
make the decision on the lapsi. And he should decide in a very liberal
way; he should accept those who fell even more than once, in the same way that
other mortal sinners are received.
On
the other hand, the teaching was still powerful that the Spirit must decide
whether or not someone can belong to the church. So Cyprian said that the
bishops are the spirituals, those who have the Spirit, namely, the Spirit of
succession from the early apostles, apostolic succession. In this way the
Spirit became the qualification of the office. This was the greatest triumph of
the office, that now the Spirit is bound to the office, and the Spirit is
called the Spirit of succession. This was a transition to the idea that the
clergy are endowed with the graces by virtue of ordination, and that the
highest of all clergy, the pope himself, embodies the grace of God on earth.
Another
existential problem was what to do with people who are baptized by heretics and
schismatics. I hope the difference is clear. Heretics are those who have a
different faith, those who have deviated from the doctrinal order of the
Christian Church. Schismatics are those who follow a special line of
church-political development, those who split away from the church, motivated perhaps
by a conflict between bishops or by an unwillingness to accept the bishop of
Rome. Hence, the separation of the Eastern and Western churches is called a
schism. The Eastern church is considered by Rome not as a heretical church but
as a schismatic church. Protestantism is considered by Rome as a heretical
movement, because the very foundations of faith are at stake and not only the
refusal to acknowledge the bishop of Rome.
Now
the question arose as to how it was possible to receive into one's own congregation
persons who had been baptized by one of these groups. The answer that was given
was in terms of the objective character of baptism. The validity of baptism
does not depend on the person who performed it We shall see how Augustine
carried this through. Cyprian's idea of the church stood behind all this.
(1)
"He who does not have the church as Mother cannot have God as
Father." "There is no salvation outside the church" (extra
ecciesiam nufla salus). The church is the institution in which salvation is
attained. This represents a change from the early
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 101
Christian period in
which the church was a community of saints and not an institution for
salvation. Of course, in this period too salvation was happening in the church;
people who were being saved from paganism and from the demons gathered in the
church. But the church itself was not considered as an institution of
salvation but as a community of the saints. This emphasis in Cyprian is very
consistent with the legal thinking of the West.
(2)The church is built on the
episcopate. This is according to divine law and is, therefore, an object of
faith. "Therefore you must know that the bishop is in the church and the
church is in the bishop, and that if somebody is not with the bishop, he is not
in the church." This is the purest form of episcopalianism, although
somewhat different from what that word means today.
(3)The unity of the church is
correspondingly rooted in the unity of the episcopate. All bishops represent
this unity. However, in spite of the equality of all of them, there is one
representative of this unity; that is Peter and his See. The See of Peter is
the church "from which the priestly unity has arisen, the womb and the
root of the Catholic Church." This is said prior to Augustine. The
consequence of this, although not yet in Cyprian's mind, was unavoidably the
principate of Rome in a much more radical way than he expressed it.
(4)The bishop is sacerdos—the Latin
word for "priest". The main function of the priest is sacrificial.
The priest sacrifices the elements in the Lord's Supper and thus repeats the
sacrifice on Golgotha. "He imitates what Christ did; he offers a true and
perfect sacrifice to Cod the Father within the church." Here again this is
not yet the same thing as the Catholic Mass, but it would titiavoidably lead to
it, the more so in the primitive nations, with their realistic thinking and
their tendency to take as real what is symbolic. Many of the fundamentals of
the Roman Church existed as early as about A.D. 250, when Cyprian lived.
Whatever we say against the Roman Church, we should not forget that the early
developments in Christianity led this way. And when today one speaks of the
agreement of the first five centuries, this is entirely misleading. Of course,
Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox agree on the major synodal decisions, but
this is only an apparent agreement, because the living meaning of these things
was abso-Ii itely different from what the Reformers built up as Protestant
102 A History of Christian Thought
doctrine. If you look at
a man like Cyprian, you can see the difference. No Protestant can accept any
of these points.
Let me sum up some of the points
of the Occidental tradition.
(1)One could mention first the
general practical, activistic tendency in the West, the legal relations between
God and man, the much stronger ethical impulses for the average Christian, not
with respect to himself but with respect to the world. And we can include in
this point the eschatological interest, without mysta-gogal and mystical
emphasis. In short, we could say that law more than participation characterizes
the West from the very beginning.
(2)The idea of sin, even original
sin, is almost exclusively Occidental. The main concerns of the East dealt with
death and immortality, error and truth. The main focus of the West was on sin
and salvation. In St. Ambrose, for example, the apostle Paul, the main teacher
on sin and salvation, is held in high esteem. Ambrose has been called the doctor
gentium, the teacher of the nations. Paul has the keys of knowledge; Peter
has the keys of power. Throughout the history of the Middle Ages there continued
a struggle between Peter and Paul, so to speak, between the keys of knowledge
which finally prevailed in the Reformation, and the keys of power which always
prevailed in the Roman Church. Therefore, according to St. Ambrose grace is
primarily understood as the forgiveness of sins and not as deification, as we
have it in the Platonic attitude in the East,
(3)The latter point has the following
consequences: Western Christianity emphasizes the historical humanity of
Christ, his humility and not his glory. For example, on the door of St. Sabina
in Rome, before which I stood with great awe, you find in woodcut relief the
first picture or sculpture of the crucifixion. The door is world-famous, coming
from the fourth century. Here the West shows that it deviates from the Christ
of glory which you find in all mosaics; this is more symptomatic of the
difference between East and West than many theological formulae. Of course, the
same thing is also expressed in theological formulae. What we said when we
dealt with Chalcedon can now be illustrated by contrasting a mosaic in, let us
say, Ravenna, which was under Byzantine influence at that time, with the door
in St. Sabina. There you find the two christologies clearly expressed in
picture. In the one you have the
tremendously powerful Lord
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 103
of the universe, the
Judge of the world in all glory, or as the risen One, in his majesty surrounded
by angels, men, animals, and inorganic parts of nature, all of which
participate in his glory. In the other you have this wonderful—from another
aspect, poor—presentation of the suffering Christ. The former is Alexandrian
christology, which portrays a Christ whose bodily existence is swallowed up by
the divine form. The latter is Anti-ochean, Roman christology, which emphasizes
the humanity of Christ more than anything else, including his suffering
humanity. This gives an example of the difference in feeling. Thus, we have in
'the whole history of painting in the West the most wonderful, the most cruel,
and the most destructive representations of the crucifixion. The early Gothic
crucifixes, of which there are many, are such that perhaps trustees of a modern
church would not permit them to be hung; they are so ugly. As if the
crucifixion were a beautiful thing! It was ugly—and that is what the West
accepted and could understand.
(4)
The idea of the church is emphasized much more in the West than in the East.
Somehow the church is built according to the legal structure of the Roman
state, with the principle of authority, with the double law—the canonic and the
civil law. The hierarchical power is centralized in the pope; and everyone
personally participates, even the monks, in the sacrament of penance.
L. THE LIFE AND THOUGHT OF
AUGUSTINE
Now we come to the man
who is more than anyone else the representative of the West; he is the
foundation of everything the West had to say. Augustine lived from A.D. 354 to
430. His influence overshadows not only the next thousand years but all
periods ever since. In the Middle Ages his influence was such that even those
who struggled against him in theological terminology and method—the Dominicans,
with the help of Aristotle—quoted him often. Thomas Aquinas, who was the great
opponent of Augustinianism in the Middle Ages, quoted him affirmatively most
frequently.
In
Augustine we also have the man to whom all the Reformers referred in their
fight with the Roman Church. He influenced modern philosophy in a profound way
insofar as it was Platonic,
104 A History of Christian Thought
for example, Descartes
and his school, including Spinoza. He has influenced modern theology as well. I
would say, almost unambiguously, that I myself, and my whole theology, stand
much more in the line of the Augustinian than in the Thomistic tradition. We
can trace a line of thought from Augustine to the Franciscans in the Middle
Ages, to the Reformers, to the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, to the German classical philosophers, including Hegel, to the
present-day philosophy of religion, to the extent it is not empirical
philosophy of religion, which I think is a contradiction in terms, but a
philosophy of religion which is based on the immediacy of the truth in every
human being.
1. The Development of Augustine
To
understand Augustine we must trace his development in seven different steps,
and then an eighth step which is a negative one with respect to
content.
(a)
The first of these seven steps, which may help us to understand the immense
influence of this greatest of all church fathers, is Augustine's dependence on
the piety of his mother. This means, at the same time, that he is dependent on
the Christian tradition. This reminds us of Plato's situation. When
Plato wrote, he also wrote out of a tradition, the aristocratic tradition of
the Athenian gentry to which he belonged. However, this tradition had come to
an end in the self-destructive Peloponnesian War; the masses took over, and
then, as always, followed the tyrants. The aristocracy was killed, not only as
human beings, but as the principle of aristocracy itself. So what Plato saw in
his mind was an ideal form of political and philosophical existence; it was a
vision which had no reality any more. Therefore, I must warn you about a
mistake! The name of Plato overshadows everything else in Greek thought, even
Aristotle. However, do not imagine that Plato was the most influential man in
the later ancient world. To be sure, he did have some influence and his book, Timaeus,
was almost the "bible" of the later ancient world. But he could
not exercise real influence because everything he developed was in the realm of
pure essences, and no longer had historical foundations. Here I am thinking in
terms of pure economic materialism. If the social and economic conditions no
longer exist, if a civilization has reached
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 105
a certain state, it
cannot be influenced, much less transformed, by the ideal form of ideas which
come from the past. There is a parallel to this in our day in the longing for
the Middle Ages; the increasing power of the Roman Church has something to do
with this situation. But it cannot succeed. We cannot go back to the Middle
Ages, although this is the hope of every Catholic. Thus, when Plato wrote his Republic
and later on his Laws, implying in these writings all elements of
his philosophical thought—which included at the same time his social,
psychological, and religious thought—he was acting in some sense as a
reactionary. By reactionary we mean that he was driving toward something which
was a matter of the past, and could not be re-established any more in the
period of the Roman Empire. This produced again a kind of emptiness in which
the Cynics, Skeptics, and Stoics were much more important than Plato, because
they were adequate to the situation. Stoicism, not Platonism, governed the
later ancient world. Plato, however, returned in the Middle Ages.
Augustine
was in quite the opposite situation. Whereas in Plato a great aristocratic
tradition came to an end, a new tradition started in Augustine. He had a pagan
father and a Christian mother. The pagan father made it possible for him to
participate in what was greatest in paganism at that time, and his Christian
mother made it possible for him to enter into another tradition, a new
archaism.
(b)
Augustine discovered the problem of truth. This second step is connected with
the fact that he read Cicero's book, Hortensius. In it Cicero dealt with
the question of truth. For Cicero this meant choosing between existing ways of
truth, between the different philosophies. Cicero, a great Roman statesman,
answered in terms of a kind of eclectic philosophy, as I believe every American
statesman would do if he were to write a book on truth. He would choose those
elements in philosophy which are most relevant to the political situation in
which he found himself. Likewise, Cicero was interested in truth from a
practical point of view. He was not an original philosopher. After the
catastrophe of Greek philosophy this was impossible. Hence, from a pragmatic
point of view he held that what enhances good citizenship in the Roman Empire
is of philosophical value. The ideas which enhance are providence, God,
freedom, immortality, rewards, etc. Augustine was in the same situation, only
for him it
106 A History of Christian Thought
was the City of Cod, not
the civitas terrena, which he had in mind. So he developed a pragmatic
philosophy, with Platonic and other elements, on the basis of the need of the
Christian life, not on the basis of Roman citizenship. The basic form was pragmatic
and eclectic, as in Cicero. Augustine also was not an opginal philosopher in
the sense in which Plato or the Stoics were, He was a philosopher in whom the
great synthesis between the Old Testament idea of Yahweh and the Parmenidean
idea of being was achieved. More than anyone else in the history of the church
Augustine was responsible for the communion of Jerusalem with Athens.
(c)
The third point was his Manichaeism. The Persian religion was dualistic and in
the Hellenistic period produced a movement called Manichaeism, named after its
leader Maui. It was a Hel-lenized Parsism, dualistic in character. We can
consider it a mixture between the prophecy of Zoroaster, the prophet of the
Persian religion, and Platonism in the form of the gnostic thinking in the
late ancient world.
The
Manichaeans were for a long time the main competitors of Christianity. They
asserted that they represented the truly scientific theology of their time.
Augustine was attracted to it for this reason, and also because the dualism of
the Maniohaeans made it possible to explain sin rationally. This is the reason
that the Manichaeans have always had some influence in the history of
Christianity. In the Middle Ages there were always-some sects influenced by
Manichaean ideas, and there are many Manichaearm ideas around today without our
knowing them as such. Whenever sin is explained in terms of two
ultimate principles, that is Manichaean; the evil principle is as positive as
the good. For ten years Augustine was attracted to Manichaeism. There were
reasons for this. First of all, for this group truth was not a merely
theoretical issue, a matter of bgical analysis, but it was a religious issue, a
matter of practical or existential concern. Secondly, truth was saving truth.
Manichaeism was a system of salvation. The elements of the good, which are
captivated by the evil principle, are saved from it. Thirdly, truth lies in the
struggle between good and bad, which gives one the possibility of interpreting
history.
Augustine
always remained under the influence of Manichaeism. He left the group
and fought against it, but his thinking and even more his feeling were colored
by its profound
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 107
pessimism about reality.
His doctrine of sin is probably not understandable apart from his Manichaean
period. Augustine left Manichaeism under the influence of astronomy. Astronomy
showed him the perfect motion of the stars, that is, the fundamental elements
in the structure of the universe. This made any dualistic principle impossible.
If the universe has a structure of regular mathematical forms which can be
calculated and which are harmonious, where can you find the effect of the
demonic creation in the world? The world as created in its basic structure is
good; this is what he derived from astronomy. This means that he used the Greek
Pythagorean idea of the cosmos. He used the principles of form and harmony as
expressed in mathematics.
This
Greek European principle overcame for Augustine the Asiatic dualism and negativity.
Thus, the separation of Augustine from the Manichaean philosophy was a symbolic
event. It meant the liberation of modern natural science, mathematics, and
technology from the Asiatic dualistic pessimism and negation of reality. This
was extremely important for the future of Europe. The later medieval
Augustinian philosophers and theologians were always men who emphasized
astronomy and mathematics 'more than anything else. Modern natural science is
born, as are Platonism and Augustinianism, on the basis of a belief in a
harmonious cosmos determined by mathematical rules. This was also the
world-view of the Renaissance. If we look deeper into the movements of thought,
we can see that this anecdote about Augustine leaving the Manichaeans because
of astronomy, after he had joined them because of its explanation of sin and
evil, becomes a world-historical symbol for the relationship of the Asiatic
East and the European West.
(d) After Augustine left the
Manichaean group, he fell into skepticism, as often happens if you are
disillusioned about a system of truth. You may fall into doubt about every
possibility of truth. At this time the mood of skepticism was widespread. Even
in the later Academy, the Platonic school, skepticism about knowledge existed
in what was called probabilism. Only probable statements are possible; no
certainty is possible. All of Augustine's earlier philosophical writings deal
with the problem of certainty. He wanted to overcome the skeptical philosophy;
he wanted certainty. This is an important element in his thinking because it
presupposed the negative end of the Creek
108 A History of Christian Thought
development. The heroic
Greek attempt to build a world on the basis of philosophical reason came to a
catastrophic end in skepticism. The attempt to create a new world in terms of
a doctrine of essences ended in skepticism. It is on this basis that the
emphasis on revelation must be understood. Skepticism, the end of Greek
philosophy, was the negative presupposition of the way in which Christianity
received the idea of revelation. Skepticism is very often the basis for a
doctrine of revelation. Those people who emphasize revelation in the most
absurd supernaturalistic terms are those who enjoy being skeptical about
everything. Skepticism and dogmatism about revelation are correlated. The way
that Christianity emphasized revelation up to the Renaissance is related to
the tremendous shock Western mankind experienced when all the attempts of the
Greek philosophers to bring certainty proved to be in vain.
Skepticism
also gave rise to a new doctrine of knowledge, a new epistemology, which
Augustine created. It starts with the inner man instead of the
experience of the external world. Skepticism, which was the end of all
attempts to build a world in the objective realm, in the realm of things and
objects, had the effect of throwing Augustine upon himself to find therein the
place of truth. Thus, we have two consequences of his participation in
skepticism: the one is that he accepted revelation, the other that to find
certainty as a philosopher he looked into the innermost center of his soul, in
the subject himself. Augustine stood between skepticism and the new authority,
that of the church, just as Plato stood between the old authority and the
beginning of skepticism. Here again we have the end of the archaic period in
Plato and the beginning of a new archaic period in Augustine.
(e)
Augustine's liberation from skepticism in the philosophical realm was brought
about by his Neo-Platonic period. While skepticism was at one end of Greek
thinking, Neo-Platonism was at the other. Skepticism was the negative,
Neo-Platonism the mystical, way that Greek philosophy came to its finish.
Augustine became a Neo-Platonic philosopher and used this philosophy as the
basis for a new certainty, the immediate certainty of God. In Neo-Platonism you
have the immediacy of truth in the inner soul, and from this he got his new
certainty of the divine.
Neo-Platonism
also gave Augustine the basis for his interpretation of the relationship of
God and the world; God is the creative
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 109
ground of the world in
terms of amor
(love).
Then, from a psychological point of view it gave him an entrance into himself,
although this had to be supported by his Christian experience. But now
Augustine did something which later on all Renaissance philosophers also did—he
turned the meaning of Neo-Platonism into its opposite. Neo-Platonism was a
negative philosophy, i philosophy of escape from the world. The elevation of
the soul out of the material world into the ultimate is the meaning of
Neo-Platonism. Augustine changed this emphasis; he dropped the idea of degrees,
and instead used Neo-Platonism for the immediate experience of the divine in
everything, but especially in his soul.
(f)Augustine overcame skepticism not
only philosophically with the help of the Neo-Platonists, but also with the
help of the authority of the church. This happened under the influence of St.
Ambrose, bishop of Milan, in whom the authority of the church was represented.
The principle of authority was a form in which the new archaism, or the new
archaic period which starts with the church tradition, became conscious of
itself. The catastrophe of skepticism drove Augustine more and more to
authority, to the authority of revelation, concretely given to him by the
authority of the church.
The
entire medieval development had an underlying anxiety of skepticism, the
anxiety of meaninglessness, as we would call it, over against which the
acceptance of revelation and authority stood. Authority for Augustine meant the
impressive, imposing, overwhelming power of the church and its great
representatives. The phenomenon of authority was not a problem of heteronomy,
as it is for us, that is, subjection to what someone else tells us to accept.
For Augustine it was the answer to the question implied in ancient skepticism.
Therefore, he did not experience it as heter-onomy but as theonomy, and somehow
rightly so at that time.
(f) Another thing which impressed Augustine
profoundly was Christian asceticism, as represented by monks and saints. He
experienced the tension between the mystical ideal and his own sensual nature.
In Augustine's time the sphere of sexuality was profanized in a terrible way.
Neither Stoic reason nor Neo-Platonism was able to overcome this profanation on
a large scale. The natural forms of love, sanctified by tradition and faith in
the archaic periods of Greece and the other countries, had been
destroyed. An unrestrained naturalism of sex prevailed.
110 A History of Christian Thought
None of the preaching of
the Stoics, Cynics, or Skeptics was able to help against this, because they
preached the law, and the law is powerless against a naturalistically distorted
libido. Augustine found a new principle of sanctification which proved the
solution for himself and for others in this realm. It had the same tension in
itself as we met in the Christian Neo-Platonism in Dionysius, that is, both
affirmation and negation of the world. Christianity affirms creation and
sanctifies existence through the historical appearance of the divine in Christ.
Neo-Platonism negates creation; in fact, it has no real creation. And it
negates the historical appearance of God, or makes it a universal event which
always is happening. Augustine was divided; insofar as he was a Christian, with
his roots in the Old Testament, he valued family and sex, to the extent that
sex was kept within the family. Being influenced by Neo-Platonism and the
ancient negativity toward the world, he denied sex and praised asceticism. This
conflict went on through the whole history of the church. We find it even in
the Reformers, although the Reformation was basically on the positive side of
Augustine, affirming the body in dependence on Old Testament prophetism. On
the other hand, the suspicion of libido was so deeply rooted in the Christian
tradition that in spite of their radicalism, the Reformers were unable to eradicate
the remnants of Neo-Platonic asceticism, and were suspicious of everything
sexual. This is still true of Protestants in countries under Calvinist
influence.
(h)
It is important not only to understand these seven steps in the development of
Augustine, but also to notice what is missing among these major influences on
him. Aristotle is missing, not entirely, of course, because Plotinus had
taken much of Aristotle into his system. Yet, Aristotle was not directly
important for Augustine. This means that Augustine did not include in his philosophy
and theology the concern for Greek science. Not only Greek natural science, but
also political science was not really implied in his thinking. This is
significant for the further development in the Middle Ages.
(1)
What Aristotle did was to construct a system of mediation, not a system of
dualism, as we have in Plato and Plotinus. The system of mediation could not be
used by Augustine because for him the dualistic world-view seemed to be the
adequate expression of Christianity.
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 111
(2)The emphasis in Aristotle on the
importance of the individual provides a basis for tendencies which are far
removed from Augustine,,.who wanted the community of the church.
(3)Aristotle speaks about the middle
way between the extremes. He denies anything like the erotic and ascetic
ecstasies of Augustine. Again, it is a quasi-bourgeois attitude. The consequences
of this later on become very explicit in Protestantism.
(4)Aristotle represents the special
sciences which deal with things in their rational and horizontal relationship.
Augustine denies the importance of such things. What is important is the
knowledge of God and the soul, not knowledge of the natural things.
(5)Aristotle was a logician.
Augustine had no particular interest in logic. The intuitive and voluntaristic
character of his thinking made him disinterested in the abstractions of pure
logic.
(6)Aristotle was an inductive
thinker, an empiricist. He started from the given reality in time and space and
went up from there to the highest abstractions. Augustine, following Plato, was
an intuitive thinker; he started from above and went down to the empirical
realities.
Now, these two different attitudes were due to clash as soon as
Aristotle was rediscovered in the thirteenth century. For this reason this is
the greatest century of Christian theology; it is completely determined
by the tension between Aristotle and Augustine. This tension continues through
all the succeeding centuries. If anyone wishes to place a label on me, he can
call me an "Augustianian", and in this sense
"anti-Aristotelian" and "anti-Thomistic". I am in basic
agreement with Augustine with respect to the philosophy of religion, but not
necessarily in other things. For example, as a Gestalt theologian or
philosopher I am closer to Aristotle than to Augustine or Plato, because the
idea of the living structure of an organism is Aristotelian, whereas the
atom-istic, mechanical, mathematical science is Augustinian and Platonic.
2. Augustine's Epistemology
The purpose and the way of knowledge are expressed in Augustine's famous
words: "I wish to know Cod and the soul." "Nothing else?"
"Nothing at all." God and the soul! This means
112 A History of Christian Thought
that the soul is the
place where Cod appears to man. He wants to know the soul because only there
can he know Cod, and in no other place. This implies, of course, that Cod is
not an object beside other objects. God is seen in the soul. HeAs in
the center of man, before the split into subjectivity and objectivity. He is
not a strange being whose existence or non-existence one might discuss.
Rather, he is our own a priori; he precedes ourselves in dignity,
reality, and logical validity. In him the split between the subject and object,
and the desire of the subject to know the object, are overcome. There is no
such gap. Cod is given to the subject as nearer to itself than it is to itself.
In
the Augustianian tradition the source of all philosophy of religion is the
immediacy of the presence of God in the soul or, as I prefer to say it, the
experience of the unconditional, of the ultimate, iii terms of aiiultimate or
unconditional concern. This is the prius of everything. This is not a
matter of discussing whether or not somebody exists. Augustine connects this
with the problem of certainty. He says that we have immediate evidence of two
things, first, the logical form—because even the question of evidence presupposes
the logical form—and secondly, the immediate sense experience, which should
really be called "sense impression" because "experience"
is too ambiguous. What he means is this: I now say that I see blue. Objectively
the color may be not blue but green—sometimes I confuse these two, especially
in ladies' dresses, to the horror of Mrs. Tillich. In any case, the sense
impression I have is blue. This is absolutely certain, even if the dress is not
blue. This is what he means with immediacy. I may see a man, but as I come
nearer, it is in reality a tree. This often happens when you are walking in a
fog. This means there is no certainty about the objective element in it; but
there is absolute certainty about the impression I have as such. There is
skepticism about everything real. Logical forms are not real; they are structures
which make questions possible. Therefore, they are immediate and necessary.
And sense experiences are not real, except insofar as I have them. Whether they
are more than this, I do not know. Thus, these two evidences—of the logic and
of the percep-tion—do not overcome skepticism.
How
then can doubt about reality be overcome? First, we must start with the general
doubt; we must doubt about everything. It was not Descartes who first said
this. It was said even before
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 113
Augustine. But
Augustine also said it. Is there a point of certainty somewhere? He said:
"You know that you are thinking." "Do not go outside; go
into yourself," namely, where you are thinking. "The truth dwells in
the interior of man, for a mind knows nothing except what is present to the
mind. But nothing is more present to the mind than the mind itself." That
is to say, the immediate self-consciousness of the asking skeptic is the fixed
point. The truth which was lost in the exterior world, where everything fell
under skepticism, is found again in the interior world. The soul is the inner
realm, in contrast to Greek philosophy in which it is the power of life. The
discovery of soul in this sense is one of the most important consequences of
Christianity. It includes the world as the sum of all appearances. In contrast
to the Greeks, where the soul is a part of all things, the world now becomes an
object. The world is an appearance for the soul, which is the only real thing.
Now these ideas—go into your inner reality and there you will find
truth—sound very much like Descartes' cogito ergo sum (I think,
therefore I am). The difference is that in Descartes the self-certainty of the
ego is the principle of mathematical evidence —he derives from this his
rational system of nature—whereas for Augustine the inner evidence is the
immediacy of having God. So Augustine says: After going into your soul,
transcend yourself. This means that in your soul there is something which
transcends your soul, something immutable, namely, the divine ground. He refers
here to the immediate awareness of that which is unconditional. This is
certainly not an argument for the existence of God, but a way of showing that
God is presupposed in the situation of doubt about him. "While not seeing
what we believe, we see the belief in ourselves." That is, we see the
situation of being grasped by something unconditional.
There were people whom Augustine met who said: Why truth at all? Truth
as such is not necessary. Why not stick to probabilities? Why not restrict
oneself to pragmatic answers, answers which work? Augustine replied that this
is not sufficient, because it leads to a complete emptiness of life. Without
something unconditional or ultimate, the preliminary meanings lose their significance.
This cannot be counteracted by saying that the human situation is not one of having
truth but of searching for truth. Augustine replies that searching for
truth is no answer to the
114 A History of Christian Thought
question of truth,
because if we are searching for truth, we must at least have some intuition of
truth, we must know when we approach truth that we are approaching it. In order
to know that we are approaching truth, we must already have some criterion,
namely, truth itself. He is saying that in every relativism, however radical
it may be, an absolute norm is presupposed, even if it cannot be expressed in
propositions. Since truth is something which we can find only in the interior
of the human soul, physics is useless for ultimate truth. It does not
contribute to the knowledge of Cod. He says that while angels have knowledge
of divine things, the lower demons recognize the world of bodies. A knowledge
of the bodily world involves participation in it. Knowledge is union; union
implies love; and he who deals cognitively with the bodies loves them and
participates in them. This means that he is distracted from the highest, divine
knowledge; it means that he is in untruth. The natural sciences have meaning
only insofar as they show the divine causes in nature and show the traces of
the trinity in flowers and animals; they have no meaning in themselves. The
consequence of this is that for the greater part of the Middle Ages the natural
sciences were reduced in significance and were not really furthered at all. The
technical relation to nature is of no interest to Augustine, nor the analytic
character of controlling knowledge. This makes the attitude of the Middle Ages
to the natural sciences understandable. If the people of the Middle Ages loved
nature, it was because they could see it as an embodiment of the trinity. This,
of course, gave them the possibility of artistic production, which is much
higher than most of what we produce under the power of controlling knowledge.
Go to the Cloisters (Museum) and look at the carpets on the walls there; what
you see there is not a representation of nature in terms of natural science.
None of the flowers or animals is naturalistically exact; but they are all
painted in order to show the traces of the trinity, that is, the movement of
life to separation and reunion in the natural objects. They try to show the
divine ground in nature, and that gives them their beauty. To understand these
creations, you must see their intentio, that which is really meant.
Augustine
said that the Neo-Platonists and Plato himself were nearest to Christianity. He
saw trinitarian elements in their thought, especially the Logos doctrine. Then
he says—an im‑
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 115
portant statement for
revealing the relationship of theology and philosophy—that one thing which
philosophy could not affirm is that the Logos has become flesh. Philosophy
makes it possible for theologians to speak of the Logos, but when theology says
the Logos became flesh, this is a theological statement based on a religious
message that distinguished Christianity from classical philosophy. The
statement about the Logos becoming flesh is a matter of revelation, not
philosophy. The Logos as the universal principle of the cosmos appears in
historical form. This is a unique, incomparable historical event.
3. The Idea of God
Augustine's
idea of love is the power which unites the mystical and ethical elements in his
idea of God. Let us first deal with his idea of love before taking up the
problem of God. Anders Nygren, the Swedish theologian who wrote Agape and
Eros, criticized Augustine, as he did Christian theology in general, for
combining eros and agape in a synthesis. Nygren is right that in
Augustine there are both elements. Agape is the element of love in the
New Testament sense of the personal, forgiving character of God. ErOs represents
the longing of all creatures for God as the highest good, the desire to be
united with it, to fulfill itself by intuiting eternally the divine abundance.
The agape element is emphasized when we speak of God moving down to man
in oaritas—I prefer the Latin word to the much distorted word
"charity"—of becoming humble in Christ, exercising grace and mercy,
participating in the lowest and elevating it to the highest. ErOs, on
the other side, drives from below to above; it is a longing, striving, being
moved by the highest, being grasped by it in its fullness and abundance. The
Logos becoming flesh, that is agape. But all flesh (all natural and
historical reality) is desirous for ()d; this is erOs. In my Systematic
Theology I have shown that if you remove erOs, you cannot speak of
love toward God any more, because this is love toward that which is the highest
power of being in which we are fulfilled.
God
is summa essentia, ultimate being, beyond all categories, 1 iv yond
all temporal and spatial things. Even the categories of substance cannot be
used. Essence and existence, being and (Illality, functions and acts, these
cannot be distinguished in this
116 A history of Christian Thought
side of Cod. The
negative theology which we found in Dionysius is present also here; both were
dependent on Neo-Platonism. On the other hand, there is the positive way. Cod
is the unity of all forms; he is the principle of all beauty. Unity is the form
of all beauty and Cod is the unity of all forms. All ideas, all essences, or
power, or principles of things, are in the mind of God. Individual things come
to pass and return to Cod through the ideas.
Here
we have the two elements in the idea of God. Insofar as God is beyond any
difference, he is beyond subject and object. Love is not a subjective feeling
directed toward an object. It is not that objects are ultimately loved, but
through our love toward them love itself is loved. Anwr amatur, love is
loved; this means that the divine ground of being is love. Love is beyond the
separation of subject and object. It is the pure essence, blessedness, which
is the divine ground in all things. If we love things in the right way,
including ourselves, we love the divine substance in them. If we love things
for their own sake, in separation from the divine ground in them, we love them
in the wrong way; then we are separated from Cod. There is thus for Augustine a
right kind of self-love; this is to love yourself as loved by God, or to love
God, the divine ground of everything, through yourself.
Augustine
is also in the personalistic tradition of the Old and New Testaments and the
early church. This is more important for him than for the Eastern theologians,
like Origen. He sides completely with the West in the trinitarian discussion.
He is more interested in the unity of Cod than in the different hypostaseis,
the three personae, in Cod. He expresses this in terms which make it
clear he is one of those responsible for our present-day indnation to apply the
term persona to Cod, instead of applying it individually to the Father,
Son, and Spirit. Of course, Augustine never became heterodox in this respect,
although he leaned, as did the West generally, toward a Monarchian view. That
he was inclined in this direction is evident by the analogy he sees between
the trinity and the personal life of man. He says: "Father, Son, and
Spirit are analogous to amans (he who loves), qnod amatur (that
which is loved), and amor (the power of love)." Or: "The
trinity is analogous to memory, intelligence, and will." This means that
he uses the trinity in order to give analogically a description of God as
person. Since God is a person, and that
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 117
means a unity, all acts
of God toward the outside (ad extra) are always acts of the whole
trinity, even the act of the incarnation. None of the three personae or hypostaseis
acts for himself. Since the substance of all things is love, in its threefold
appearance as anians, quod atnatur, and amor, everything which is
created by the divine ground bears the traces of the trinity. This gives a
theonomous character to the immediate world. The forms of life are not denied
or broken but theonomously filled with divine substance.
On
the relation of God to the world, Augustine expressed very clearly the doctrine
of creation out of nothing. There is no matter which precedes creation;
creation is done without an independent substance. This means there is a
continuous threat of finitude. I believe that when our modem existentialist
thinkers, including myself, say that finitude is the mixture of being and
non-being, or that non-being is present in everything finite, this has
something to do with Augustine's statement that everything is in danger of the
fathomless abyss of nothingness. The world is created in every moment by the
divine will, which is the will of love. Therefore, Augustine concluded—and the
Reformers followed him—that the creation and preservation are the same thing;
the world is at no moment independent of God. The forms, laws, and structures
of reality do not make it an independent reality. God is the supporting power
of being, which has the character of love. This makes every deistic fixation of
the two realities—God and the world—impossible. God is the continuous, carrying
ground of the world.
All
of this is in agreement with Augustine's famous doctrine of time.
Philosophically speaking, this is his greatest achievement, because here he really
starts a new era of thinking about the concept of time. (Cf. his prayer, Book
II of the Confess—ions.) Time is not an objective reality in the sense
in which a thing is. Therefore it is not valid for God. The question how time
was before creation is meaningless. Time is created with the world; it
is the form of the world. Time is the form of the finitude of things, as is
·1ce also. Both world and
space/time have eternity only insofar its they are subjects of the eternal will
to creation. That means they are potentially present in the divine life,
but they are not eternal as real; as real they are finite; they have a
beginning and to end. According
to Augustine there is only one world4 process.
118 A
History of Christian Thought
This is the decisive
statement by which he denies the Greek concept, held by Aristotle and the
Stoics, that the world is cyclical, that there are cycles of birth and rebirth
which repeat themselves infinitely. For Augustine there is a definite beginning
and a definite end; only eternity is before and after this beginning and end.
For the Creeks space was finite and time was infinite, or better, endless. For
Augustine neither time nor space is infinite. He agrees with the Greeks on the
finitude of space. They could not understand the infinity of space because
they were all potential sculptors; their world-view was plastic; they wanted
to see bodies in space. The infinity of space would have disrupted the plastic
form of reality, expressed in mathematical forms by the Pythagoreans.
Augustine, however, said time was finite. This finitude of time is necessary if
time is to have an ultimate meaning. In Greek thought it does not; instead it
is the form of decay and repetition. Time has no meaning of itself in creative
terms. The endlessly recurring times of nature are meaningless. Meaningful
time is historical time, and historical time is not a matter of quantity. The
six thousand years of world history about which Augustine speaks are the
meaning of time. And if, instead, there were one hundred thousand years or even
a few billion years, this could not take away the meaning of time. Meaning is a
qualitative, not a quantitative, concept. The measure of time is not clock
time. Clock time is physical time; it tends to repeat itself. But the meaning
of time is the kairos, the historical moment:, which is the qualitative
characteristic of time.
There
is one world whose center is the earth, and one history whose center is the
Christ. This one process is eternally intended by God, but eternity is not time
before time, nor is it timelessness. It is something beyond all these
categories. However, although the world is intended eternally, it is neither
eternal nor infinite; it is finite and meaningful. Infinite meaning is
actualized in the finite moment. This feeling of finitude makes the Middle Ages
understandable to us. People then felt that they lived in one process which has
a definitely known beginning with the days of creation a few thousand years
before our time and which will have a definite end with the days of judgment a
few years or a few thousand years ahead of us. We live within this period, and
what we are doing in it is extremely important—it is the meaning of the whole
world process. We are in the center of everything
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 19
that happens, and Christ
is in the center of everything that we are. This was the medieval world-view.
You can imagine how far we are removed from it if you realize what this means
not in terms of words but in terms of a feeling toward reality, an awareness
of one's existence.
4. The Doctrine of Man
Augustine
said that the decisive function in man is the will. It is present in memory and
in intellect, and has the quality of love, namely, the desire toward reunion.
This predominance of will was another of the great ideas by which the West
overcame the East, and which produced the great medieval struggle between
voluntarism and intellectualism. The two basic activities of the soul—knowledge
and love, or will, which is the same—have an ambiguous character. They are
directed partly toward themselves and partly beyond themselves. They are directed
toward one's self in self-knowledge and self-love. "We are, we know that
we are, and we love this our being and knowing." This means we are
self-related and self-affirming. We affirm ourselves in knowledge and in will.
On
the other hand, love and knowledge transcend ourselves and go to the other
beings. Love participates in the eternal; this is its own eternity. The soul
has transtemporal dimensions. This participation is not what is usually called
immortality, but it is the participation in the divine life, in the divine
loving ground of being. However, this idea is in tension with another in
Augustine. One could say that this mystical element is in tension with an
educational element. The souls are not only eternal in their essence, but also
immortal in the technical sense of continuation in time. As a result those who
are excluded from eternity because they are separated from God are still
immortal; this immortality means their punishment and damnation. They are excluded
from God; this means they are excluded from love—love is the ground of
being—and they deserve no pity. There is no unity of love between them and the
others. If this is the case, however, one iwist ask how there can then be unity
of being, if being is love. I kre we see one of those conflicts between
mystical-ontological thinking and ethical-educational thinking. We saw the same
conflict in Origen when he spoke about the apokatastasis ton
120 A history of Christian Thought
pantOn,
the
return of everything to God, the final salvation of everything that has being,
a teaching which the church rejected. In this sort of conflict esoteric
theology, philosophy, or mysticism always chooses the one side, specifically
the side of the eternal and the union with God in eternity. Ecclesiastical,
educational or ethical thinking always chooses the other side, namely, the personal
possibility of being eternally condemned and punished. Logically this is
impossible to hold, because the very concept of the eternal excludes
continuation in time, and the ontological concept of love, which is so strong
in Augustine, excludes being which is not in unity with love. The educational
view exercises a continual threat over everyone. Therefore, the church has
always maintained it, accepting the logical contradiction in order to produce
the threat of the eternal (i.e., endless) condemnation. Ontological mysticism
and educational moralism contradict each other on such matters.
I
am reminded here of another problem which is perhaps much more concrete in our
time. Anybody who seriously reflects on it, or at least carries on his
reflection within the Christian or existentialist tradition, will no doubt
agree that the idea is utopian that at a certain time the kingdom of God, or
the classless society, will be established on earth, without power or compulsion.
Utopian means literally (from ou-topos, no place) that there is "no
place" for this in time and space. But if this is admitted, then we
diminish the fanatical will toward political revolution and the transformation
of society. Some will tell you they know this is utopian, but if they tell the
people, they will no longer fight for the transformation of society. They can
fight only if they believe the final stage is at hand, if the kingdom of God is
at hand. Only this conviction releases the power to act. What are we to answer?
Here we have the same problem. The ethical, in this case the
social-educational, point of view contradicts the insight into the relation of
time and eternity. So many say, we know this is utopianism, but we must affirm
it, otherwise people will not act. Others say, and I belong to this latter
group, the disappointment which follows utopianism always and necessarily makes
it impossible to speak like this to people, if you know better, because the
disappointment is worse than the weakening of fanaticism. This would be my
decision, and yet it is a very questionable one.
In Augustine even the unbaptized
children are not condemned
Theological Developmentsin the
Ancient Church 121
to hell but to the limbus
infantium where they are excluded from the eternal blessedness, from the
divine love. Such an idea might have had a tremendous educational and
ecclesiastical value in certain periods of history, but not for us any more.
Very often it produces—this is especially true of the personal fear of
con-demnation—neurotic stages, and therefore we cannot say that it is superior.
5. Philosophy of History
Augustine's
philosophy of history is based—as philosophy of history usually is—on a
dualism, not an ontological dualism, of course, which is impossible, but a
dualism in history. On the one hand, there is the city of God, on the other the
city of earth or the devil. The city of God is the actualization of love. It is
present in the church, but the church is a corpus mix'um, a mixed body,
with some people who belong to it essentially and spiritually and others who do
not. Then there is a mediation between these two characteristics of the
church, the one wherein it represents the kingdom of God and the other wherein
it is a mixed body, and this is the hierarchy. The hierarchy, those who have
the consecrations, mediates between the two. In them Christ rules the church
and Christ is present. Thus, the Catholic Church could use Augustine in both
ways. It could identify the kingdom of God with the church to such a degree
that the church became abso-lutized; this was the one development which
actually happened. On the other hand, the difference could be made very clear,
and this is what the sectarian movements and the Protestants did. There is a
dialectical relationship between the kingdom of God and the church in
Augustine. It was ambiguous enough to be useful for different points of view.
But one thing was clear for him: there is no thousand-year stage in world
history, no third age. Chiiasm or millennialism was denied by him. Christ rules
the church in this present time; these are the thousand years. There is no stage
of history beyond the one in which we are living. The kingdom of God rules
through the hierarchy, and the chiliasts are wrong. We should not look beyond
the present period in which the kingdom of Cod is presentin terms of history.
The
kingdom of the earth has the same ambiguity. On the one hand, it is the state
of power, compulsion, arbitrariness, tyranny;
122 A History of Christian Thought
Augustine edled it the
"gangster state". It possesses all the imperialistic characteristics
that we see in all states. On the other hand, there is the unity which
overcomes the split of reality, and from this point of view it is a work of
love. If this is understood by the emperor, he can become a Christian ruler.
Here again we have the ambiguous valuation: the state is partly identical with
the kingdom of the devil and it is partly different from it because it
restricts the devilish powers.
History
has three periods: that before the law, that under the law, and that after the
law. In this way we have a fully developed interpretation of history. We are in
the last period, in the third stage; it is a sectarian heresy to say that
another state must still be expected. The medieval sects, of course, expressed
this heresy. In this light the struggle becomes visible between the revolutionary
attempts of the sectarian movements and the conservatism of Augustine's
philosophy of history.
6. The Pelagian Controversy
We
touched on Augustine's doctrine of man when speaking of the voluntaristic
character of his thinking, his idea that the center of man is not the intellect
but the will. In this he began a development which goes through the whole
Western world, represented by theologians and philosophers for whom the will is
the center of man. When we come to the medieval philosophers and theologians,
and to the modern ones, we will see how this influence was continually
maintained in creative tension with the tendencies coming from Aristotle. The
tension between Augustine and Aristotle is the decisive power which moves the
medieval history of thought; almost everything can be seen in relation to this
tension.
So
far this has been only a description of man in his essential relationship. If
man is seen in his essential relationship to Cod, to himself, and to others,
then he is seen by Augustine as a will whose substance is love. This love is
the creative ground of everything that is. This is an idea of love in which agape
and eros are united. However, this essential nature of man is not
his existential nature; it is not actual in time and space. On the contrary,
this essential nature of man is distorted by what Augustine calls sin,
especially original sin, in line with the tradition of the New Testa‑
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 123
ment and the church. His
doctrine of sin, the center of his doctrine of man, was developed in his
controversy with Pelagius.
Augustine's
conflict with Pelagius is one of the great struggles in church history,
comparable to the trinitarian and christo-logical controversies. It is one
which repeats itself again and again in the history of the church. Already in
the New Testament there was the tension between Paul and the writers of the
"catholic" Letters; we have it between Augustine and Pelagius,
somehow also between Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscans, and finally between
Karl Barth and the present-day liberals. One point is always decisive. Usually
it is discussed in terms of the concept of freedom, but this is misleading
because freedom has so many connotations not relevant for this question. The
decisive point is the relationship of religion and ethics. The question is
whether the moral imperative is dependent on the divine grace for its
actualization, or whether divine grace is dependent on the fulfillment of the
moral imperative.
Pelagius
was not an isolated heretic. He represented the ordinary doctrine of people
who were educated in Greek thinking, especially in Stoic traditions, and for
whom freedom is the essential nature of man, Man is a rational being, and a
rational being has freedom of deliberation and decision. This alone would not
have made him a heretic, because most of the Eastern church had exactly the
same idea of freedom. But Pelagius developed this concept in a way which
brought him into conflict with Augustine. When this conflict was
resolved, Augustine was at least partly victorious and Pelagius was an
arch-heretic, whose name still stands for one of the classic Christian
heresies,
For
Pelagius death is a natural event, not a result of the fall. Since death
belongs to finitude, it would have happened even if Adam had not fallen into
sin. The same idea, we have already seen, was expressed in Ignatius and
Irenaeus, namely, that man is naturally finite and destined to die as
everything natural. However, according to the story of paradise it is possible
for man to overcome his essential finitude through participation in the food of
the divine. What Pelagius does is to leave out the second possibility and to
affirm only the first as true and in accord with the Christian tradition.
The
sin of Adam belongs to him alone and not to the human race as such. In this
sense original sin does not exist. Original sin
124 A History
of Christian Thought
would make sin into a
natural category, but man is a moral being. Therefore, the contradiction of the
moral demand must be an event of freedom and not a natural event. Everybody
must sin in order to be a sinner. The simple dependence on Adam does not make
anyone a sinner. Here 'again Pelagius is saying something that is universally
Christian, that there is no sin without personal
rpicipation in sin. On the other
hand, he does not see that
fstianity also stresses' the tragic universality of sin, thus making it a
destiny of the human race. The relationship to Adam as the one presupposed as
the first man is, of course, mythological, but in this myth the Christian
Church—whether it took it literally or not—has preserved the tragic element
which we also find in the Greek world-view. Pelagius had a point, but he did
not see the profundity of the Christian description of the human situation.
When
children are born they are in the state of Adam before the fall; they are
innocent. Of course, Pelagius could not close his eyes to the fact that the
evil surroundings and customs distort their innocence. This is akin to the
modem psychoanalytic theory of the relationship to the parents or their
representatives which determines the complexes and other negativities in the
depths of the soul. Today there is even another theory, the biological theory
that the distortion is inherited and cannot be avoided even if you place the
child in the best possible surroundings. There is some ditrtion in its very
nature from birth. However, Pelagius wanted to ~id the idea of hereditary sin.
Sin is not a universally tragic necessity, but a natter of freedom. America is
very much in favor of this Pelagian idea that every individual can always make
a new beginning, that he is able by his individual freedom to make decisions
for or against the divine. The tragic element, on the other hand, is very much
known in Europe, and is not so near to the heart, of Americans. In Europe the
negative side of Augustinianism—we could call it exitentia1ism—has emphasized
the tragic element and has reduced the ethical zeal and impact that Pelagianism
can have.
The
function of Christ un4er these circumstances is a double one: to provide the
forgiveness of sins in baptism to those who believe, and to give ar'i example
of a sinless life not only by avoiding sins but also by avoiding the occasions
,of sins through asceticism. Jesus was an example of asceticism, a kind of first
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 125
monk; Pelagius himself
was a monk. Grace is identical with the general remission of sins in baptism.
Grace has no meaning after this because then man is able to do everything
himself. Only in the situation of baptism does man receive the grace of forgiveness.
We can
say that Pelagianism has a strong ethical emphasis with many ascetic elements,
but the tragic aspect of life has been entirely lost. Do not take him lightly;
take him seriously. I do not say that we are all born Pelagians—as I say about
nominalism—but I would say that Pelagianism is very near to all of us, especially
in those countries which are dependent on sectarian move-ments,as America so
strongly is. It is always effective in us when we try to force God down to
ourselves. This is what we usually call "moralism", a much abused
term. Pelagius said that good and evil are performed by us; they are not given.
If this is true, then religion is in danger of being transformed into morality.
Against
these views of Pelagius we have Augustine's doctrine of sin. Augustine agreed
with Pelagius that freedom is the original, essential quality of man, so that
Adam was free when he fell. Originally man's freedom was directed toward the
good, and the good is the love with which God loves himself. In this sense everybody
is free. But this freedom is dangerous, so dangerous that man could change his
direction toward God and direct himself instead toward particular things in
time and space. Augustine saw that the danger of freedom was so great that he
created the famous doctrine of ad/utorium gratiae, the helping power of
grace, which was given to Adam before he fell. He was not in pure nature (in
puns naturalibus). The assisting power of grace made it possible for Adam
to continue indefinitely in directing his will toward God. It made it possible
for him. This, however, was a point on which the Reformers disagreed with
Augustine. This ad/utorium gratiae, this assisting power of grace,
implied indirectly that nature in itself cannot be good; it must be fulfilled
by super-nature. It implied that man in puns naturalibus, in his purely
natural state, is so endangered that actually he must fall, unless supernature
helps him. The Reformers placed such an emphasis on human nature—very similar
to the Renaissance at this point—that they declined this idea of a donum
superadditum, a gift of grace that is added to man's nature. This is a very
profound distinction, and behind this seemingly Scholastic terminology there
126 A History of Christian Thought
is hidden the question
of the valuation of creation. In the doctrine of the donum superaddituin there
is something of the Greek valuation of matter as the resisting power. An
element of the Greek tragic feeling enters here in contrast to the Jewish and
Protestant affirmation of nature as good in itself.
Augustine
held that the first man, Adam, had the freedom not to fall, not to die, not to
turn away from the good. In this state he was at peace with himself—a profound
remark in view of our modern depth psychology; he was at peace with all things
and all men. There was no cupidity, no desire, not even in sexual life. There
was no pain in this state, not even in the event of childbirth. It was easy
for Adam not to fall; there was no real reason for it. Yet, astonishingly, he
did fall. And since there was no external reason for his fall, it started in
his inner life. Sin, according to Augustine, is in its very inception
spiritual sin. Man wanted to be in himself; he had all the good possibilities;
there was nothing for him to endure from which he would have to turn away; he
had everything he needed. However, he wanted to have all this by himself; he
wanted to stay in himself. Therefore heturned away from God and fell. This is
what Reinhol'd Niehuhr calls "pride" and what I prefer to call hybris,
self-elevation. In this way man lost the assistance of grace and was left
alone. Man wanted to be autonomous and tostand upon himself. This meant a
wrong4ove of himself which cut off the proper love toward God. Augustine said:
"The beginning of all sin is pride; the beginning of pride is man's
turning away from Goà." If you say hybris instead of pride, it is
profounder because pride often has the connotation of a special psychological
attitude. But that is not what is meant here. The most humble people in a
psychological sense can have the greatest pride.
Now
these statements show first of all that Augustine as aware that sin is
something which happens in the spiritual realm _turning away from the ground of
being to whom one belongs. It is not a naturalistic doctrine of sin. Even more
important than this, Augustine shows clearly the religious character of sin.
Sin for him is not moral failure; it is not even disobedience. Disobedience is
a consequence, not the cause of sin. The cause is turning away from God, from
God as the highest good, as the love with which God loves himself through us.
Since this is the nature of sin, it ought to be kept distinct from
"sins", which refer
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 127
to moral acts. Sin
is primarily and basically the power of turning away from God. For this reason
no moral remedy is possible. Only one remedy is adequate—a return to God. This,
of course, is possible only in the power of God, a power which man under the
conditions of existence has lost.
The immediate onsequence of man's turning away from his highest good is
-the loss of this good. This loss is the essential punishment of man.
Punishments in terms of educational or juristic terminology are secondary. For
Augustine the basic punishment is ontological. If God is everything positive,
the ultimate good, or the power of being overcoming non-being, the only real
punishment that is possible is the intrinsic one of losing this power of being,
of not participating any more in the ultimate good. Augustine described it
thus: "The soul died when it was left alone by God, as a body will die
when it is left by the soul." The soul which is dead, religiously
speaking, has lost its control over the body. When this happened, the other
side of sin became actual. The beginning is pride, hybris, turning to
oneself, becoming separate from God. The consequence is concupiscence, the
infinite endless desire. The word concupiscentia, desire or libido (in
the ways in which modern psychology uses it) has two meanings in Augustine:
the universal meaning, the turning toward the movable goods, those goods which
change and disappear, and the narrower meaning of natural, sexual desire, which
is accompanied by shame. This ambiguity of the term "concupiscence"
is to be found also in Freud's concept of libido. Both terms are meant
universally, the desire to fulfill one's own being with the abundance of
reality, and both have the meaning of sexual desire. Innumerable consequences
followed from this ambiguity. For example, in Freud there followed his
puritanism, his depreciation of sex, his bourgeois suppression, and on the
other hand, the rpvelation of this situation. But Freud never found a solution
to this problem, either by suppressing or getting rid of the desire. And since
you cannot get rid of it, you have, according to Freud, the desire unto death,
the death instinct, as he calls it, which is the necessary answer to the
endlessness of desire. In Protestantism, as in all of Catholicism earlier, the
ambiguity of the term "con-tiipiscence had all sorts of ascetic
consequences, including the most extreme and disgusting forms. The Reformers
tried to re-i,tablish the dignity of the sexual, but they succeeded only in a
128 A History of Christian Thought
limited way. They never
completely followed through on their own principles against the Roman Church.
Therefore, anyone who knows anything about the history of moral behavior and
the history of ethical theory in Protestantism will see that Christianity has
been very uncertain on this point and has produced no satisfactory answer to
this question implied in human existence.
Adam's
sin is original sin for two reasons. We all existed potentially in Adam, in
his procreative power, and in this way we participated in his free decision and
thus are guilty. This is myth, of course, and a very questionable one.
Secondly, Adam introduced libido, desire, into the process of sexual
generation, and this element was passed on by heredity to all posterity.
Everyone is born out of the evil of sexual desire. Original sin is primarily
spiritual, sin of the soul, in Adam as in everyone else. But it is also bodily
sin. Augustine had great difficulty in uniting the spiritual character of sin
in everybody with the hereditary character of sin which derives from Adam.
Because
of original, hereditary sin, everybody belongs to a "mass of
perdition", to a unity of negativity. The most striking consequence of
this is that even infants who die early are lost. Since everyone belo'hgs to
the mass of perdition, nobody can be saved except by a special act of God. This
is the most powerful emphasis on the solidarity of mankind in the tragedy of
sin. Thus, he denies most radically—almost in a Manichaean sense—the freedom in
the individual personality. The all-embracing unity of mankind makes us what we
are. Now, in the light of our modem research into depth psychology and
sociology we are probably able to understand better than our fathers what
Augustine meant, namely, the inescapable participation of everyone in human
existence, in a social structure, and in an individual psychological structure,
whether neurotic or otherwise. The question which arises, however, is: What
about the participation of the individual in guilt? There is no answer to this
in the context of Augustine.
Man
has lost his possibility to turn toward the ultimate good because of his
universal sinfulness. We are under the law of servitude, the bondage of the
will. Therefore, grace is first of all gratia data, grace given without
merit. it is given by God to a certain number of people who cannot be
augmented or dirnin‑
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 129
ished; they
belong to him eternally. The rest of the people are left to the damnation which
they deserve. There is no reason in man for the predestination of the one group
or the rejection of the other. The reason is in God alone; it is a mystery.
Thus, one cannot speak of prescience, of foreseeing what man would do, as is
often done in the doctrine of freedom. This is impossible since God's willing
and knowing are identical. Cod can never look at something as though it were
not carried by his power of being, that is, his will. God always wills what he
knows. "He has elected us not because we would be holy, but in order to
have us become holy." There is no reason in man for predestination. God
does both the willing and the fulfilling.
Augustine was nevertheless not a determinist in the technical
psychological sense. Predestination does not exclude man's will. The
psychological will of man is preserved and distinguished from external forces,
or from compulsory elements in man. But the direction of the will toward God is
dependent on God's predestination, and his predestinating will cannot be
explored. Grace is given to everybody who becomes a Christian. The forgiveness
of sins, which is given first happens in baptism and is received by faith. Here
Augustine continues the general tradition. But beyond this, forgiving is a real
participation in the ultimate good. This ultimate good has appeared in Jesus as
the Christ, without which neither good thinking nor good acting nor loving is
possible. He describes this side of grace as the inspiration of the good will,
or he speaks of the inspiration of love, primarily the love toward God.
"The Spirit helps", he says, "by inspiring in the place of bad
concupiscence, good concupiscence, that is, diffusing caritas (agape) within
our hearts." Justification, therefore, is an inspiration of love. Faith
is the means to receive it. But faith by that time already had the deteriorated
sense—which makes Christian preaching about faith almost impossible today—of an
acceptance of doctrines which are unbelievable. So Augustine distinguished
between two forms of faith. The one form of faith he called credere deo aut
christo, believing directed toward God or Christ, that is, accepting their
words and commands; the other is credere in deum aut christum, believing
into God and into Christ. The first is an intellectual
acknowledgment, without hope and love. The second is a personal communion which
is created by grace, or by the Holy Spirit, or by love.
130 A History of Christian Thought
This alone is the faith
which justifies, because it makes him who is justified just.
Those
who are predestined are not able to fall away again. They receive the gift of
perseverance, the gift of not losing the grace which they have received. None
of this depends on any merit, not even on the merit of not resisting grace,
since grace for Augustine is irresistible when it comes to you.
With
these ideas Augustine attacked Pelagius. In all respects it is the opposite of
Pelagius' teachings. Augustine's doctrine, however, was never completely
accepted by the church, although he was considered the greatest teacher of the
church. Pelagianism was rejected, and even semi-Pelagianism, which cropped up
later, was condemned a hundred years later. Yet, this rejection did not prevent
it from creeping back into the church. Historians sometimes refer to this as
crypto-semi-Pelagianism. It cannot be denied that especially in the Augustinian
school, in the later Franciscans, semi-Pelagianism was very much alive. It was,
of course, out of the question to repeat Pelagius' teachings in the official
church. But semi-Pelagianism, which denied the irresistibility of grace and
stressed the necessity to work to keep grace, crept back into the church to
make Augustine's doctrine educationally possible. We spoke about this problem
before. You cannot have such a doctrine as Augustine's in an institution of
education, and the Christian Church was the only institution of education for
a thousand years. In such a situation you must appeal to the free will of those
to be educated. An extreme doctrine cannot be presented in a direct way to most
people. Thus, the ultimate tragic element was not lost entirely, but it was to
a certain extent restricted for the sake of the educational needs. This was the
situation when the Reformers came upon the scene. In their time the tragic
element had been reduced almost to nothing by the educational, ethical, and
ascetic emphases which were dominant in the church. The churches with only some
exceptions are usually very suspicious of any doctrine of predestination—at
least the Catholic Church was—because that makes the ultimate relation to God
independent of the church, or at least it tends to do so. So here again we have
one of those tensions of which I spoke in connection with Origen and other
theologians, the tension between the ultimate theological and the penultimate
educational points of view. You always have these two elements in tension in
Theologicçzl Developments ii2 the
Ancient Church 131
religious instruction,
in counseling, as well as in preaching. The great struggle between Augustine
and Pelagius is perhaps the classic example of the problem in the Christian
Church.
7. The Doctrine of the Church
Augustine's
doctrine of the church has had a great influence on all Christian churches, not
only the Roman, and therefore we must deal with it. We have already shown that
in Cyprian the church is defined as an institution of salvation, largely
replacing the concept of the church as the communion of saints (communio
sancto.rum). The consequence of regarding the church as an instifution was ,a
change in the idea of the holiness of the church. In this situation Augustine
entered into conflict with the Donatist movement. Originally there was an
emphasis on the sanctification of the individual members and the group as a
whole. This emphasis gave way to the sacramental reality of the church. Now
the holiness of the church is identical with the sacramental gifts, especially
with the sacramental power of the clergy. The idea of sanctus (holy,
saint) no longer refers to someone who is personally sanctified, but to one who
has the sacramental power. This represents a fundamental change in meaning
from the subjective to the objective element, from personal holiness to
institutional holiness.
There
were people in North Africa where Augustine was a bishop who did not go along
with this development and who were interested in the actual sanctification of
the church and its members, especially of the clergy. The issues which were involved were
the following:
(1)the discipline in the act of
penance;
(2)the question whether baptism is
valid if performed by heretics;
(3)the question whether ordination is
valid if performed by traditores, traitors, who either delivered
over holy books during the persecutions, or denied they were Christians.
Are
the objective graces valid if they are mediated by persons who are not
subjectively holy? The Donatists excluded them and did not allow them to become
ministers because for them the holiness of the church is the personal holiness
of its representatives. The consequence of this would be to make individual
132 A History of Christian Thought
Christians dependent on
the moral and religious status of the clergy. They would be dependent on the
inner holiness of the ministers. Now, Augustine was clear about the fact that
it is impossible to make a judgment of this kind, that any attempt to do so would
lead to terrible consequences—to assume the role of Cod who alone can look into
the hearts of people. He wanted to save the objectivity of the church in face
of the demand for subjective holiness of its representatives. Here he followed
the lead of Cyprian. To do this he introduced the distinction between faith
(including hope) and love. Faith and hope are possible outside the church
because they are determined by their content. You may live among heretics, you
may even be one yourself, but if you satisfy the formula of baptism in the
right way, then the content is decisive and not your personally heretical or
morally unworthy status. The formulae are the same as they are in the Catholic
Church. Thus, if the heretical churches use these same formulae, their
objective contents make their sacramental actions valid.
Love,
on the other hand, is something which cannot be found where there is not the
right faith. Love is the principle which unites the church. This is not a
simple moral goodness, which can be found everywhere, but it is the agapeic
relationship of individuals to each other. This spirit of love, which is
embodied in the church as the unity of peace, as the re-establishment of the
original divine unity which is disrupted in the state of existence, is
something that can be found only in the church. For this reason there is
salvation only in the church. Salvation is impossible without the inpouring of
agape, that grace given like a fluid into the hearts of men. Although
there may be valid sacraments outside the church, salvation can only be had
within it.
This
distinction between faith and love is of extreme importance and makes the
church the only place of salvation for Catholics. From this there follows the
distinction between the validity and the effectiveness of the sacraments. The
sacraments of the heretics are valid if they are performed in terms of the
orthodox tradition. This means nobody has to be rebaptized. On the other hand,
the sacraments have no effectiveness within the heretical groups, but only
within the church. For example, baptism always gives a character
indelebilis, as the technical term stated; it is a quality coming
from God, which one has throughout one's life whatever
Theological Developments in the
Ancient Church 133
one does. This was very
important because it enabled the medieval church to treat the pagans and Jews
differently from the baptized Christians. The baptized Christians were
subjected to the laws of heresy, while pagans and Jews were not. Even though
baptized Christians should try to become Jews or pagans or Muslims, they could
not because the very act of baptism conferred an indelible character upon
them, no matter who performed the act, whether orthodox or heretical.
In
the same way ordination is always valid. Priests who are fallen and
excommunicated are forbidden to administer the sacraments, but if they should
do it, the sacraments are valid. If in prison a medieval priest who happens to
be excommunicated should marry a couple, the marriage is valid in spite of the
fact that he was forbidden to do so. And no re-ordination is needed if the
priest is absolved and rejoins the clergy, because ordination is and remains
valid.
All
of this made the people in the church completely independent of the quality of
the priest. Nobody can know this quality for sure anyway. Of course, priests
who committed mortal sins that were publicly visible were excommunicated and
forbidden to perform sacramental acts, but this is different. What he does is
valid in any case. What we have here is the hierarchical institution of
salvation, which as an institution is independent of the character of
those who function in its behalf, and within this institution there is the
spiritual community of the faithful. According to Catholic doctrine the first
is the condition of the second; according to sectarian beliefs the second, if
anything, is the condition of the first. These two concepts of the church have
been in conflict throughout the history of the church.
