Autor: Ormerod, Neil

Buch: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Titel: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Stichwort: Erlösung - frühe Kirche; Irenäus (Inkarnation hinreichend für E.), Tertullian (Lösegeld), Origenes

Kurzinhalt: Each has a certain existential appeal; each invites us to explore an aspect of salvation. But if and when we switch to a more explanatory mode of thinking, each also resists an easy systematization.

Textausschnitt: EARLY CHURCH IMAGES FOR REDEMPTION

93a While the historical narrative of Jesus' conflict with authorities and their part in his execution remained available through the canonical Gospels, it is clear that subsequent theological reflection on the nature of Jesus' death was far more interested in the images found in the other writings of the New Testament as a source of inspiration. (Fs)

93b Irenaeus (second century C.E.), for example, develops the Pauline notion of recapitulation (see Eph 1:10). Working on a cosmic canvas, Irenaeus creates an account of Jesus as the one who sums up in himself the seemingly irreconcilable contrasts of the cosmos: corruptibility-incorruptibility; mortality-immortality; passibility-impassibility; comprehensibility-incomprehensibility. All these are brought together in Jesus Christ. (Fs)

There is therefore, as I have pointed out, one God the Father, and one Christ Jesus, who came by means of the whole dispensational arrangements [connected with Him], and gathered together all things in Himself. But in every respect, too, He is man, the formation of God; and thus He took up man into Himself, the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible being made comprehensible, the impassible becoming capable of suffering, and the Word being made man, thus summing up all things in Himself: so that as in super-celestial, spiritual, and invisible things, the Word of God is supreme, so also in things visible and corporeal He might possess the supremacy, and, taking to Himself the pre-eminence, as well as constituting Himself Head of the Church, He might draw all things {anakephalaioo-recapitulate) to Himself at the proper time.1

93c Because of his sharing in our nature, we are able to share in his. It is easy to read this as simply accomplished in the incarnation itself, that is, the very fact of the incarnation is sufficient for salvation, without reference to the death of Jesus. The mechanism of salvation is then a type of deus ex machina, the automatic outcome of the incarnation itself. This tends to downplay the important role of conversion and repentance in redemption. The image of recapitulation, however, gives a powerful sense of the wholeness that salvation brings. In Christ all things are made whole; everything is brought together in him. All the painful divisions we experience, the lack of wholeness that pervades our lives-all these thing are healed through the saving work of Jesus. (Fs)

94a The Latin theologian Tertullian (b. ca. 160) developed a different account that draws on the New Testament notion of ransom (Mark 10:45). This account argues that Jesus' death is in some sense a ransom that had to be paid for sin:

Oh how unworthy is it of God and His will that you try to redeem with mere money a man who has been ransomed by the Blood of Christ\God spared not His own Son for you, letting Him become a curse for us; for "cursed is he who hangs on a tree"; as a sheep He was led to sacrifice, as a lamb to the shearer ... And all this that He might redeem us from our sins ... hell lost its right to us and we were enrolled for heaven ... man, born of the earth, destined for hell, was purchased for heaven ... Christ ransomed man from the angels who rule the world, from the powers and spirits of wickedness, from the darkness of this world.2

94b In this scheme Jesus has paid a ransom, the needed price, so that the "rights" of hell or the angelic powers have been released, or "enrolled" for heaven. According to Tertullian, the devil has gained certain rights over humanity because of the sin of Adam, so that we have become "slaves to sin." God must treat the devil "fairly" and so must pay the price demanded for our release. And what could be more valuable than the life of his own Son?

Again this image is clearly a powerful symbol of release from the burden of slavery, and to that extent has significant existential appeal. How often do we feel "enslaved" by forces beyond our control? How often do we feel as if a price is being extracted from us for our past failings and the failings of others? Imagine what it would be like, then, if someone was to "pay the price" for our release. What love it would reveal and what gratitude it would elicit from us!

94c Even in the early church, however, people could see that there were problems associated with the image of ransom. Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the Cappadocian fathers, for example, asks the question, "To whom is the ransom paid?"

If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether. But if to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, On what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his father [i.e., Abraham], but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim?3

95a Nonetheless, the theme of ransom was taken up with enthusiasm by Gregory of Nyssa, another of the Cappadocians, who expanded the metaphorical language to include discussion of the "deception" of the devil as part of the transaction. The devil is deceived into taking Jesus, not realizing who Jesus is, since his divinity is clothed in his humanity. The devil literally bites off more than he can chew, overreaching himself in claiming what he has no right to. In doing so he forfeits all claims to humanity. In this way Gregory of Nyssa avoids the notion that somehow the devil profits from accepting a ransom from God. Despite its mythic framework, Gregory's insight effectively captures the way in which evil often overreaches itself and so makes itself undone. (Fs)

95b Finally, we should consider the image of "sacrifice," which first finds systematic exploitation in the writings of Origen. Origen moved in a world where the notion of sacrifice is "self- explanatory. "It was common among both pagans and Jews, who engaged in various forms of sacrifice. The self-explanatory character of the necessity of sacrifice is spelled out in the following:

It may well be that as our Lord and Savior ... bestowed remission of sins on the whole world, so also the blood of others, holy and righteous men ... has been shed for the expiation, in some part, of the people .. . Christ is spoken of as a lamb because his willingness and goodness, by which he made God again propitious to man and bestowed pardon for sins, stood as a lamb, a spotless and innocent victim, a victim by which heaven is believed to be reconciled to men .. . While there are sins there must needs be required sacrificial victims for sins. Had there been no sin the Son of God would not have been constrained to become a lamb, nor would there have been a need for him to be incarnate and put to death ... but since sin entered into the world, and sin of necessity requires propitiation, and propitiation cannot be effected save by a sacrificial victim, such a victim had to be provided for.4
96a The logic of the situation is clear: sin requires propitiation; propitiation requires sacrifice; and sacrifice requires a victim. This is simply a given in Origen's worldview. Nonetheless, he was well aware of the ambiguity of the language of sacrifice, that the symbol has certain darker tones that do not seem compatible with a Christian understanding of God:

But in addition, the other sacrifices akin to this sacrifice seem to me to be the shedding of the blood of the noble martyrs. It was not in vain that the disciple John saw them standing beside the heavenly altar ... Now to comprehend, even if to a limited extent, the more spiritual sense of such sacrifices which cleanse those for whom they are offered, one must understand the sense of the sacrifice of the daughter of Jephte who was offered as a holocaust because of the vow of him who conquered the children of Ammon. She who was offered as a holocaust consented to this vow, for, when her father said, "I have opened my mouth to the Lord against you," she said to him, "And if you have opened your mouth to the Lord against me, perform your vow." Such accounts give an appearance of great cruelty to God to whom such sacrifices are offered for the salvation of men.5

96b The mention of Jephtha's sacrifice of his daughter (Judg 11) should sound a warning. It is a classic "text of terror," a text of truly terrifying implications.6 Do we really want to implicate God in this sacrifice of innocent life to mark the occasion of a military victory? Is this really compatible with the God revealed by Jesus?

96c Indeed, Origen brings the notions of sacrifice and ransom together so that the sacrifice of Jesus becomes an expiation that averts the power of the devil. Frances Young notes:
Origen's way of explaining the sacrificial death of Christ and the expiatory power of his blood, is in terms of the offering of a ransom to the devil and the analogy with human sacrifices of aversion, examples of which can be found in pagan literature. He is at a loss as to how such sacrifices of aversion work, but basically feels that the sacrificial death of Christ is only explicable in such terms, while recognizing a great degree of difference, for Christ died to save the whole world ... Christ gave his soul as a ransom for many. To whom did he give it? It could not have been God; rather it was to the wicked one who had dominion over us until the [soul] of Jesus was given to him as a ransom for us. But he was deceived; he thought he could master it... and did not realize that he could not bear the torture of holding it. So the life offered in sacrifice and the blood shed as an expiation become in the hands of Origen, the ransom price given by God to the devil.7

97a Despite these difficulties, the symbol of Jesus' death as a sacrifice is firmly embedded in Christian consciousness and particularly in Catholic sacramental doctrine of the eucharist. We shall explore this further below and in chapter 7. (Fs)

As with notions of recapitulation and ransom, the notion of sacrifice has a strong existential appeal. If someone is willing to sacrifice something valuable for our sake, then we must also be valuable in their eyes. Or, as Paul argues:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. (Rom 5:6-8)
97b But again the image is not without its ambiguities, if it is turned into a sacrifice needed to placate an angry God. Then it is no longer something God does for us to reveal the depths of the divine love and compassion for humanity, but something humanity does to try to get God off its back. Underneath such an inversion of roles lies a powerful ambiguity in our human experience about God-so ambiguous in fact that we end up confusing God with Satan, the Accuser. (Fs)

97c The purpose of the above collage is not to present a comprehensive account of how the early church fathers understood the mechanism of redemption. It is to indicate something of the variety of approaches as well as the difficulties each presents. Each has a certain existential appeal; each invites us to explore an aspect of salvation. But if and when we switch to a more explanatory mode of thinking, each also resists an easy systematization. The first real attempts at some form of systematization begin to take shape in the Middle Ages. (Fs)