Adolf Harnack · 19 of 21

Chapter VI. The Doctrine of the Necessity and Realit of Redemption throught the Incarnation of the Son to God.

B.—THE DOCTRINE OF REDEMPTION IN THE PERSON OF THE GOD-MAN IN ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE NECESSITY AND REALITY OF REDEMPTION THROUGH THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD.

Natural theology was so wide in its scope as understood by the Greek Church, that, as indications in the preceding chapter will have already shown, only a historical fact absolutely unparallelled could make headway against it. The Greek Fathers knew of such a fact—“the newest of the new, yea, the only new thing under the sun”; it was the Incarnation of the Son of God. It alone balanced the whole system of natural theology, so far as it was balanced, and exerted a decisive influence upon it. But the incarnation could only be attached with complete perspicuity to that point in the natural system which seemed the more irrational, the more highly the value of human nature was rated—this point of contact being death. The dreadful paradox of death was destroyed by the most paradoxical fact conceivable the incarnation of the Deity.

This at once implied that the fact could not but be capable of a subsequent explanation, nay, even of a kind of a priori deduction. But its glory, as an expression of the unfathomable goodness of God, was not thereby to be diminished. The necessity of redemption, whether that consisted in the restoration or the perfection of the human race, was based by the Fathers, as a rule, on the actual state of wretchedness of mankind under the dominion of death and sin. So far, however, as this condition was compared with the original state or destiny of man, redemption was already thought of as intrinsically necessary, and was no longer merely regarded as a postulate of man’s need of salvation. In this connection the Fathers often lost sight of the capacity left to man of being and doing good. In innumerable passages they speak of the helplessness and irredeemableness of mankind, using expressions which could without difficulty be inserted in Augustine’s doctrine of sin. But just as often a phrase occurs which betrays the fact that the whole view is nevertheless quite different; in other words, that the outward condition characterised by feebleness and death, and the sensuousness of corruptible human nature are thought of as the source of all evil and all sin. This state is accompanied by a darkening of knowledge which could not fail to subject man to the influence of the demons and lead him into idolatry.

The divine act of grace in Christ applied to death, the demonic rule, sin, and error. In Homilies, Biblical commentaries, and devotional writings, these points of view interchange, or are apparently regarded as equivalent. But since natural theology formed the background of their conceptions, the absolute necessity of the form assumed by the act of grace in the incarnation could be demonstrated neither in relation to sin nor to error. The whole question turned here on support, example, and illumination, or, if this line was crossed, theology ceased to be systematic and consistent. The importance of Athanasius and the Cappadocians consisted in the strenuous emphasis laid by them on the impressive connection existing between the incarnation and the restoration of the human race to the divine life, and in their consequent escape to some extent from the rationalistic scheme of doctrine; for the reference of the incarnation to sin did not carry the Greeks beyond it. The above combination had been made in the Church long before this (see Irenæus), but in the theology of Origen it had been subordinated to, and obscured by, complicated presuppositions.

Athanasius wrote a treatise “Concerning the incarnation of the Logos” (περὶ ἐνανθρωπήσεως τοῦ λόγου), an early writing whose value is so great because it dates before the outbreak of the Arian controversy. In this work he went a step further: for he strove to prove that the redemption was a necessity on the part of God. He based this necessity on the goodness (ἀγαθότης) of God. This goodness, i.e., God’s consistency and honour, involved as they were in his goodness, were necessarily expressed in the maintenance and execution of decrees once formed by him. His decrees, however, consisted, on the one hand, in his appointment of rational creatures to share in the divine life, and, on the other, in the sentence of death on transgressions. Both of these had to be established. God’s intention could not be allowed to suffer shipwreck through the wickedness of the devil and the sad choice of humanity. If it were, God would seem weak, and it would have been better if he had never created man at all. Then the transgression occurred. “What was God now to do? Ought he to have demanded penitence on the part of man? For one could have deemed that worthy of God and said, that as men had become mortal through the transgression, they should in like manner recover immortality through repentance (change of mind). But repentance (in itself) did not retain the true knowledge as regards God; God accordingly would in his turn have shown himself untruthful, if death had not compelled men; nor did repentance deliver from the physical, but only put an end to sins. Therefore, if the transgression had alone existed, and not its consequence, mortality, repentance would have been all very well. But when, the transgression having occurred, men were fettered to the mortality that had become natural to them, and were robbed of the grace which corresponded to their creation in the divine image, what else should have happened? Or what was needed for this grace and renewal except (the coming of) him who also in the beginning made all things of nothing, the Logos of God? For it was his part once more to restore the corruptible to incorruption.”

Athanasius shows that the Logos who originally created all things from nothing required to assume a body and thus to secure the restoration of man from corruptibility to incorruption (ἀφθαρσία). How this happened Athanasius discusses in various, to some extent inconsistent, lines of thought, in which he speaks especially of a removal of men’s guilt through the death of Christ, as well as of an exhaustion of the sentence of death in the sacrifice of his body presented by the Logos. From these premises it follows that Athanasius had the death of Christ in view, whenever he thought of the incarnation of the Logos. “The Logos could not suffer τὴν τοῦ θανάτου κράτησιν (‘the power of death’ in mankind), and therefore took up the fight with death. He assumed a body and so became mortal. This body he surrendered to death on behalf of all. His body could not be really overcome, ‘kept’, by death. In it all died, and for this very reason the law of death (νόμος τοῦ Θανάτου) is now abrogated; its power was exhausted on the body of the Lord (κυριακὸν σῶμα); it had no further claim on his fellow-men (κατὰ τῶν ὁμοίων ἀνθρώπων) . . . The body assumed by the Logos came to share in the universal meaning of the Logos. The resurrection of the body and of the Logos guaranteed the general resurrection and incorruption (ἀφθαρσία).” Here follows the place assigned to the sacrifice. It presented that which was due (ὀφειλόμενον) to God in place of death. But the pervading and prominent thought of Athanasius is that the incarnation itself involved the Christian’s passage from the fate of death to incorruption (ἀφθαρσία), since the physical union of the human with the divine nature in the midst of mankind raised the latter to the region of divine rest and blessedness. The result of the incarnation consisted accordingly, first, in the eradication of corruption (φθορά)—by the existence of the divine in its midst, but, finally, by the death of Christ, in which the truthfulness of God was justified—and in the corresponding transformation into incorruptibility—renewal, or completion of the divine image by participation in the nature, free from all suffering, of the Deity. But, secondly, the incarnation also resulted, as indeed had been long before held by the Apologists, in the restoration of the correct knowledge of God, which embraced the power of living rightly, through the incarnate Logos. But while Athanasius kept firmly in view this restoration of the knowledge of God through the Logos, he was not thinking merely of the new law, i.e., the preaching of Christ; he held it to have been given in the contemplation of the Person of Christ. In his work, that of a man, God came down to us. The dullest eye was now in a position to perceive the one true God—viz., in Christ—and to escape from the error of demon-worship. This thought is very significant; it had already been expressed by Clement and Origen, having received a deeper meaning from the latter, though he had not yet given it so central a place in his system. Athanasius expressly notes that creation was not sufficient to let us perceive the Creator and Father; we needed a man to live and work among us before we could see clearly and certainly the God and Father of all.

When Athanasius placed the knowledge of God side by side with the deliverance from death, the transition was obtained from the fact of redemption to the doctrine of the appropriation, and to the explanation of the particular result, of the work of love done by the Logos. This only benefited those who voluntarily appropriated the divine knowledge made accessible by the incarnate Logos, and who regulated their conduct by the standards and with the power thus given them. In any case the transformation of the corruptible into the incorruptible (the Theopoiesis) remained under this conception the ultimate and proper result of the work of the Logos, being ranked higher than the other, the knowledge of God. But here we find the greatest difference between Athanasius and like-minded theologians on the one hand, and Arius, the Eusebians, etc., on the other. The elements contained in their views are the same; but the order is different. For these “conservative” theologians saw the work of the Logos primarily in the communication of the true and complete knowledge which should be followed by a state of perfection. But Athanasius made everything tend to this consummation as the restoration and the communication of the divine nature. Accordingly, it was to him a vital theological question how the incorruptible was constituted which was represented in the Logos, and what kind of union it had formed with the corruptible. But while he put the question he was sure of the answer. His opponents, however, could not at all share in his interest in this point, since their interest in Christ as the supreme teacher did not lead them directly to define more precisely the kind of heavenly manifestation which he represented even for them. When they did give such definitions, they were influenced by theoretical, or exegetical considerations, or were engaged in refuting the propositions of their opponents by setting up others.

The Trinitarian and Christological problems which had occupied the ancient Church for more than three centuries here rise before us. That their decision was so long delayed, and only slowly found a more general acceptance, was not merely due to outward circumstances, such as the absence of a clearly marked tradition, the letter of the Bible, or the politics of Bishops and Emperors. It was, on the contrary, owing chiefly to the fact that large circles in the Church felt the need of subordinating even the doctrine of redemption to rational theology, or of keeping it within the framework of moralism. The opposite conviction, that nature was transformed through the incarnate Logos, resulted here and there in a chaotic pantheism; but that was the least danger. The gravest hindrance to the acceptance of the view of Athanasius consisted in the paradoxical tenets which arose regarding the Deity and Jesus Christ. Here his opponents found their strength; they were more strongly supported by the letter of Scripture and tradition, as well as by reason.

Supplement I.—No subsequent Greek theologian answered the question, why God became man, so decidedly and clearly as Athanasius. But all Fathers of unimpeached orthodoxy followed in his footsteps, and at the same time showed that his doctrinal ideas could only be held on the basis of Platonism. This is at once clear in the case of Gregory of Nyssa, who in some points strengthened the expositions given by Athanasius. Yet his model was Methodius rather than Athanasius.

Gregory sought, in the first place, to give a more elaborate defence of the method of redemption—by means of the incarnation,—but in doing so he obscured Athanasius’ simple combination of the incarnation and its effect. According to Gregory, God is boundless might, but his might was never divorced from goodness, wisdom, and righteousness. He next shows in detail (Catech. magn. 17-26) against Jews and heathens —as Anselm did afterwards—that the incarnation was the best form of redemption, because the above four fundamental attributes of God came clearly to light in it. Especially interesting in these arguments is the emphasis laid on God’s treatment of those who had passed over to his enemies, his respect for their freedom in everything, and his redemption of men without wronging the devil, their master, who possessed a certain claim upon them. This account of the matter indeed had strictly an apologetic purpose. In the second place, Gregory, while following Athanasius, still more strongly identified the state from which God has delivered us with death. The state of sin was death. He taught, with the Neoplatonists, that God alone was Being. Therefore all revolt from God to the sensuous, i.e., to not-being, was death. Natural death was not the only death; it might rather mean deliverance from the bonds of the body become brutal (l. c., ch. 8). Sensuousness was death. In the third place, although he also saw the redemption in the act of incarnation, Gregory held that it was not perfected until the resurrection of Jesus. That is, he was more thoroughly influenced than Athanasius by the conviction that the actual redemption presupposed renunciation of the body. We are first redeemed, when we share in the resurrection which the human nature assumed by Christ experienced through the resurrection (l. c., ch. 16). The mystery of the incarnation only becomes clear in this resurrection. The Deity assumed human nature, in order by this union to exhaust, until it had wholly disappeared, that which was liable to death in this nature, viz., evil. This result was only perfected in the resurrection of the human nature of Christ; for in it that nature was first shown completely purified and rendered capable of being possessed of eternal life. In the fourth place, Gregory was able to demonstrate the application of the incarnation more definitely than Athanasius could with his figure of the king and the city. But he does so by the aid of a thoroughly Platonic idea which is only slightly suggested in Athanasius, and is not really covered by a Biblical reference (to the two Adams; see Irenæus). Christ did not assume the human nature of an individual person, but human nature. Accordingly, all that was human was intertwined with the Deity; the whole of human nature became divine by intermixture with the Divine. Gregory conceives this as a strictly physical process: the leaven of the Deity has pervaded the whole dough of humanity, through and in Christ; for Christ united with himself the whole of human nature with all its characteristics. This conception, which was based on the Platonic universal notion “humanity”, differed from that of Origen; but it also led to the doctrine of Apokatastasis (universalism), which Gregory adopted. Meanwhile, in order to counterbalance this whole “mystical”, i.e., physical, conception, he emphasised the personal and spontaneous fulfilment of the law as a condition, in the same way as the later Antiochenes. The perfect fulfilment of the law was, however, according to Gregory, only possible to ascetics.

In the fifth place, Gregory set the sacraments in the closest relation to the incarnation, recognising (l. c., ch. 33-40) Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the only means by which mortal man was renewed and became immortal. It undoubtedly appears superfluous to a rigorous thinker to require that something special should happen to the individual when all mankind has been deified in the humanity assumed by Christ. But the form given to his ideas by Gregory was in keeping with the thought of his time, when mysterious rites were held to portray and represent that which was inconceivable. Sixthly, and lastly, Gregory gave a turn to the thought of the incarnation in which justice was done to the boldest conception of Origen, and “the newest of the new” was subordinated to a cosmological and more general view. Origen had already, following the Gnostics, taught—in connection with Philipp. II. 10 and other texts—that the incarnation and sacrificial death of Christ had an importance that went beyond mankind. The work of Christ extended to wherever there were spiritual creatures; wherever there was alienation from God, there was restoration through Christ. He offered himself to the Father for angels and æons (see Valentine). To all orders of spiritual beings he appeared in their own shape. He restored harmony to the whole universe. Nay, Christ’s blood was not only shed on earth at Jerusalem “for sin” (pro peccato); but also “for a gift on the high altar which is in the heavens” (pro munere in superno altari quod est in cœlis). Gregory took up this thought. The reconciliation and restitution extend to all rational creation. Christ came down to all spiritual creatures, tures, and adopted the forms in which they lived, in order to bring them into harmony with God: οὐ μόνον ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἄνθρωπος γίνεται, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸ ἀκόλουθον πάντως καὶ ἐν ἀγγέλοις γινόμενος πρὸς τὴν ἐκείνων φύσιν ἑαυτὸν συγκατάγει. This thought, far from enriching the work of the historical Christ, served only, as in the case of the Gnostics, to dissipate it. And, in fact, it was only as an apologist of Catholic Christianity that Gregory held closely to the historical personality of Christ. When he philosophised and took his own way, he said little or nothing of the Christ of history. It is almost with him as with Origen. He also reveals a supreme view of the world, according to which that which alienates the Kosmos from God forms part of its plan as much as that which restores it to him, the Kosmos being, from its creation, full of God, and, because it is, existing in God. The incarnation is only a particular instance of the universal presence of the divine in creation. Gregory contributed to transmit to posterity the pantheistic conception, which be himself never thought out abstractly, or apart from history. A real affinity existed between him and the pantheistic Monophysites, the Areopagite, and Scotus Erigena, and even modern “liberal” theology of the Hegelian shade may appeal to him. In the “Great Catechism” (ch. XXV.), which was meant to defend the historical act of the incarnation, he has an argument which is in this respect extremely significant. “The assumption of our nature by the deity should, however, excite no well-founded surprise on the part of those who view things (τα ὄντα) with any breadth of mind, (not too μικροψύχως). For who is so weak in mind as not to believe when he looks at the universe that the divine is in everything, pervading and embracing it, and dwelling in it? For everything depends on the existent, and it is impossible that there should be anything not having its existence in that which is. Now, if all is in it and it in all, why do they take offence at the dispensation of the mystery taught by the incarnation of God, of him who, we are convinced, is not even now outside of mankind? For if the form of the divine presence is not now the same, yet we are as much agreed that God is among us to-day as that he was in the world then. Now he is united with us as the one who embraces nature in his being, but then he had united himself with our being, that our nature, snatched from death, and delivered from the tyranny of the Adversary, might become divine through intermixture with the divine. For his return from death was for the mortal race the beginning of return to eternal life.” The pantheistic theory of redemption appeared in after times in two forms. In one of these the work of the historical Christ was regarded as a particular instance, or symbol, of the universal, purifying and sanctifying operations continuously carried out through sanctifying media—the sacraments—by the Logos in combination with, as in their turn on behalf of, the graded orders of supersensuous creatures; this was the view of Dionysius the Areopagite. The other form of the theory included in the very idea of the incarnation the union of the Logos with those individual believing souls in whom he was well pleased. The latter conception which was already prominent in Methodius is especially marked in Macarius. In Homily IV. e.g., (ch. 8, 9), his first words lead us to expect an exposition of the one historical incarnation. Instead of that we read: “Thus in his love the infinite, inscrutable God humbled himself and assumed the members of our bodily nature . . . and transformed in love and benevolence to men he incorporates and unites himself with the holy and faithful souls in whom he is well pleased, etc.” In each a Christ is born.

The thought that Christ assumed the general concept of humanity occurs, though mingled with distinctive ideas, in Hilary, who was dependent on Gregory. We find it also in Basil, Ephræm, Apollinaris, Cyril of Alexandria, etc. Throughout these writers the conception is clearly marked that in Christ our nature is sanctified and rendered divine, that what it has experienced benefits us, as a matter of course, in our individual capacity, and that we in a very real way have risen with Christ.

Even in the Antiochenes passages occur which are thus to be interpreted—exegesis led them to this view; but they exist, so far as I know, even in Chrysostom, and they are so phrased in general as to show that according to them this suffering and dying with Christ, as an independent fact, was not merely a supplementary condition of the actual union with Christ, but the only form in which it was accomplished. In them the general concept of humanity does not occur; accordingly, the humanity of Christ is conceived much more concretely. He is really a fighting, striving man who reaches victory through free-will. As this man himself is united morally with the deity, the moral element must never be left out of account in our union with him. But in so far as the incarnation of Christ produces a new state (Katastasis), one not included in the plan of humanity, it undoubtedly results in our glorification, a state not involved in the moral element per se.

When we come to John of Damascus we no longer find any definitive conception of the incarnation. The clear intention assigned to it by Athanasius has escaped him; even of the ideas of Gregory of Nyssa only a part, and that the apologetic part, are reproduced (De fide Orth. III. 1, 6). At this point also the attempt to unite the Aristotelian tradition of the school of Antioch with the Alexandrian only led to a combination of fragments. Yet the sentence, “Christ did not come to this or that one, but to our common nature”, never wholly became a dead letter in the Greek Church. But everything taught in that Church as to the incarnation is already to be found either developed, or in germ, in Irenæus; not the simple exposition of Athanasius, but a mixture of the thought of the historical with that of the mystical redemption, is to be traced in the majority of the Fathers. It is the Christ in us, the cosmical Christ, as we already saw in Methodius.

Supplement II.—Those Fathers, and they were in the majority, who found the cause of the incarnation in the intention of God to rehabilitate the human race, knew of no necessity for the incarnation apart from the entrance of sin. While they almost all explained that what Christ conferred was more and greater than what man had lost, yet they did not use this idea in their speculations, and they attached as a rule no special significance to it. But even Irenæus had also looked at the incarnation as the final and supreme means of the divine economy by which God gradually brought the original creation, at first necessarily imperfect, to completion. Where this idea occurred, it also involved the other, that Christ would have come even if there had been no sin. Accordingly, those Fathers who laid no special stress on sin, seeing it appeared to them to be more or less natural, and who conceived redemption rather as a perfecting than restitution, maintained the necessity of the incarnation even apart from sin: so Theodore of Mopsuestia, Pelagius and others. The incarnation was regarded by them as forming the basis of the life in which man is raised above his nature and common virtue, that is, the ascetic and angelic life. Clement of Alex., starting from quite different premises, expressed the same thought. Abstinence from evil was the perfection that had been attained even by Greeks and Jews; on the other hand, the perfect Gnostic, only possible after the complete revelation of the Logos, found perfection in the ascetic life of intuition, a life resting on faith, hope, and love. Therefore in order to institute this life, the complete revelation of the Logos was required; it was unnecessary to bring sin into the question. However, the proposition that Christ would have come even if Adam had not sinned was, so far as I know, bluntly asserted by no Greek theologian; the combination of Adam and Christ in the Bible stood in the way.

Supplement III.—On the ground of Biblical texts like Matt. XXV. 24, Eph. I. 3-5, 11, II. Tim. I. 8-10, the Greeks have also spoken (e.g., Athan. c. Arian. II. 75-77) of an election of believers in Christ before the foundation of the world, and of the decree of redemption framed by God, with reference already to sin, before the creation. Athanasius even says that our future eternal life in Christ is conditioned by the fact that our life was founded on Christ even before time was. But the idea of predestination, like the thought that Christ is the head of his Church, is confined to the lines of a Biblical doctrine, which for that very reason is true. Neither the doctrine of the work of Christ, nor of the appropriation of his work, is influenced by those conceptions. As a rule, however, the idea of predestination takes the form that God having foreseen men’s attainments in virtue elected them. This version is especially clear in the school of Antioch, and even enters into their Christology; but it is the opposite of what Paul meant.