Recapitulation

Pantokrator from Ayia Sofia

This is my third post on Irenaeus of late, and probably the last for a while. One of the important parts of Irenaeus’ vision of theology is called recapitulation. It is a beautiful theory that I first met in Robert E Webber’s book Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicallism for a Postmodern World (pp. 56ff).

The idea is that the human race by committing evil is tending towards destruction. We have turned from our sustainer and creator and therefore shall all die. God, in a grand rescue plan became a human being like us. In Against the Heresies, he writes:

Therefore, as I have already said, he caused man to become one wiht God. For unless a man had overcome the enemy of man, the enemy would not have been legitimately vanquished. And again: unless God had freely given salvation, we would not now possess it securely. And unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and men, by his relationship to both, to bring both to friendship and concord, and present man to God, while he revealed God to man. (3.19.6, in A New Eusebius, p. 119)

For those, like me, who cannot read second-century theology without an eye to the future, will see shades of Athanasius’ On the Incarnation and Gregory of Nazianzus’ famous dictum, ‘What has not been assumed cannot be healed.’ The incarnation, the irruption of God as a man into human history changes the game.

Many people have maintained that Irenaeus’ theology has no place for the Cross, that simply by being incarnate Christ effected our salvation. However, Gustav Aulén, in his class work on the subject Christus Victor, demonstrates that when Irenaeus says incarnation he includes crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension in the bundle. Aulén puts it thus:

Assuredly, then, the death of Christ holds a central place in Irenaeus’ thought. But, we must add at once, it is not the death in isolation; it is the death seen in connection, on the one hand, with the life-work of Christ as a whole, and on the other with the Resurrection and the Ascension; the death irradiated with the ligh tof Easter and Pentecost. (48)

Aulén immediately gives us this footnote:

Some words of Zankow (The Orthodox Eastern Church, p. 55) are as true of Irenaeus, and of the later Greek Fathers, as of Eastern Christianity in general: “Christ’s Resurrection is inseparably connected with His death on the cross. For the Orthodox Church, as well for its theology as for its popular conceptions, salvation is only finally complete in the Resurrection. Sin and death are conquered, and life is bestowed upon men. Only the Resurrection is the real earnest of salvation and of eternal life.” (n. 2, p. 48)

Who does Christ triumph over? Christ is the conqueror of sin and death. And the devil, who is bound up with both. Because of all that transpired in the incarnation, we are set free from the power of sin, death, devil.

And what is the recapitulation bit of this Christ the Victor?

Christ brings us back to what one may call the ‘Adamic’ state. As the second Adam, a concept Irenaeus develops, Christ undoes the evil of Adam. The cosmic effects of the fall as well as the human effects are reversed, and we are able to enter into communion with God through faith in Christ.

Part of the ethical consequences of the cosmic nature of Irenaean recapitulation is our attitude towards the rest of creation. If creation was cursed with us and healed with us, we must treat it well. We are to live now as though we have already come into the Kingdom of the Heavens. This is a good thing, seeking to live in harmony with ‘nature’ (as Zeno the founder of Stoicism once said).

Irenaeus puts it best, and Webber puts it better than I.

I do not believe that recapitulation nullifies other views of the atonement. I believe that it works alongside them and shows different nuances to the wilful sacrifice of God for humanity and how that relates to us and the world around us.

What makes a Protestant?

One evening, as a friend and I walked to Vespers at the local Orthodox Church, he remarked that he had invited some of our other friends who had responded by looking at him as though he had three heads. Another time, these same friends had chuckled in a, “Yeah, right,” sort of way when he said that he was as much a Protestant as they were.

The question has been raised here as to why I am not Eastern Orthodox, given that I seem to embrace so many Eastern Orthodox beliefs. The question is related to the response of more evangelical, Reformed Protestants who don’t see my Methodist/Episcopalian friend who appreciates Aquinas, incense, and Kallistos Ware as being “as Protestant” as they are.

What makes a Protestant?

GK Chesterton, in The Thing: Why I Am Catholic, takes issue with some of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century responses to this question, when people such as Dean Inge argued that basically being a Protestant was rising in protest whenever things were going wrong. He also has trouble with the fact that those things that make a Milton or a Bunyan delightful to the modern Protestant are things that Milton and Bunyan share with Catholics — not things that make them Protestant.

This question has needed answering for a good while, then.

According to Bruce McCormack at the University of Edinburgh’s Croall Lectures for this year, Protestants — the theologians, at least — should be working from within the framework of their confessional statements to produce a comprehensive worldview. He was not fond of those Protestants who produce either Catholicism light or a Patristic synthesis to theological issues. We should be identifiable through our adherence to the confessional statements of our tradition, according to McCormack. At least, that’s what I think he was saying.

For many contemporary Protestants, this is probably a bit of a problem, especially if we consider the very large number of Anglicans who are Arminians and thus cannot throw themselves wholeheartedly into Article of Religion 17, “On Predestination.” For me, saying that I must pledge my allegiance to a particular confession and produce theological thinking in accord with it is a definite problem, if we recall this post.

Nonetheless, I would still like to say that I am a Protestant. And being Protestant requires more than a rejection of papal claims. There are, I believe, certain doctrinal positions Protestants emphasise as well as certain approaches to doctrine and worship.

First of all, justification by faith. As a Protestant, I believe that nothing we do can make us justified before God. No amount of condign merit will justify me. It is the faith within the heart and life of the believer that justifies. God will justify those who have chosen to follow Him and put their trust in Him. From true faith will flow a life of good works, yes; but the good works are not what justify us but the fruit of the justified.

Second, the primacy (supremacy?) of Scripture for faith, life, and doctrine. A lot of Anglicans like pointing to Hooker’s three-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, from which the removal of a single leg means utter disaster, saying that people like Mark Driscoll are troubling because of how much they overemphasise Scripture.

Well, the fact of the matter is, Scripture contains everything necessary for salvation. Other things might be okay, but they aren’t necessary. If it’s not in Scripture, it is not binding. Now, tradition and reason are important for the interpretation of Scripture. We can never escape them. That is the point of this whole website. But Scripture still stands supreme. If tradition, through the years, has come up with something counter to Scripture, the Church — the same Church who handed down the tradition — can jettison it after a long, painful process of prayer and searching the Scriptures together.

Third, I do not believe that a true Protestant will have a Roman understanding of the sacrifice of the Mass. That is to say, the idea that Christ himself is offered upon the altar as an immolation for our sins by the Priest who stands in Christ’s stead each Sunday. Now, the idea that there is a twofold sacrifice of ourselves, our souls and bodies, along with the gifts of bread and wine at the Holy Table — this is acceptable. It is also acceptable to say that the Eucharist recapitulates Christ’s atoning work and brings its benefits to the assembled Body through the Sacramental act (see Robert E. Webber, Worship Old and New).

As regards other aspects of the Sacrament, Protestants are divided. I, myself, follow Luther in The Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, as explained here. I affirm with my Anglican heritage that the Holy Eucharist and Holy Baptism are outward, visible signs of an inward, invisible grace.

If to be Protestant one must sign on to a confessional statement, most Protestants would have to believe in penal substitutionary atonement. And most of us do. And some of us believe in Christus Victor. Some of us, rascals that we are, believe in both. But this issue is more of an East vs. West question than a Protestants vs. the World question.

In fact, most of the major questions of Christology and Triadology (the study of the All-holy Trinity) do not have a particular spin from the Protestants, outside of heretics like Oneness Pentecostals. We tend to follow St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas on these issues. Some, like Reformed theologian T.F. Torrance, turn to Sts. Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria for their Christology. I, myself, follow a sort of Neo-Chalcedonian, Conciliar Christology with something of an Augustinian-Thomist Triadology for good measure. There’s nothing un-Protestant about that!

I’m getting tired. But I think that the issue of justification, the place of the Bible in the Christian life, and the question of the sacrifice of the Mass (tied into how you answer the first two) are among three of the defining points of Protestants.

I am a Protestant, and maybe even an Anglican.

Pain & Anguish Greater Than We Could Ever Know

What use is Patristic theology? I mean, why read the Fathers? How does this stuff, this all-too-frequently high-flying, maximalist, cerebral theology help any of us in our daily lives?

Well. Today I was reading The Orthodox Way by Met. Kallistos Ware. The chapter at hand was his chapter all about Christ, the theanthropos — the God-man. And while I was reading, some thoughts took hold of me. They follow, inspired by the Fathers and Met. Kallistos.

First, let us consider the Person Who died on the Cross that Friday long ago. That Person, that God-man, that one-of-a-kind being was fully God and fully man. As my friend Pope St. Leo I says, he is complete in what is his own and complete in what is ours. Everything that could be predicated about God can be predicated about the incarnate Christ. So also everything about man — save sin.

And, as Holy Scripture tells us, Jesus suffered everything we suffered except sin. He is, by the Scriptural record, fully human. He grew tired, thirsted, hungered — died. God the Word was eight days old and held in the arms of his mother (as per St. Cyril of Alexandria).

Second, let us consider who God is. God, as we learn from the careful, prayerful reflection of the Fathers upon their deep reading of Scripture, is three persons. These three persons are co-equal and co-eternal and other suchlike things. They also are one, sharing a single essence. God, the one, true God of Christian monotheism, is also three. His existence is one of endless, boundless love, self-giving love at a level of intimacy we creations shall never know.

We’ll never know this kind of love because each of us has only one essence per person. God, on the other hand, has one essence and three persons. It is not the sort of thing we can really even properly conceive. Jesus, then, was a participant in this divine life of self-giving love and shared essence. He took on flesh and became human without ceasing to engage in the life of the Trinity.

Third, let us consider what this Person went through on the Cross that Friday long ago. Before he died, he went through enormous amounts of physical pain, torture, and suffering. Such is the stuff of many Good Friday sermons. Yet what else do we see him suffering before death? According to 2 Cor, God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us.

That is intense. Jesus was the perfect human, not only in terms of being entirely human complete with body, soul, and spirit, but also in terms of sinlessness. And now, this sinless soul, this one and only human being ever to not sin takes upon himself the sin of the entire world.

Think about how it feels to sin, knowing you shouldn’t. There is a definite feeling of sorrow, sadness. A feeling of separation. Separation from who you know you should and could be, from whomever you may have wronged in sinning, from God himself.

This separation is what causes the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” One of the Trinity was crucified and died for us. He was cut off from the divine life that gave Him life. He was cut off from everything he had ever known.

I don’t know how to express how powerful that anguish must have been because I can’t even express how glorious the love of the divine life is.

What I do know is this — He suffered this separation and pain out of love for His creation. He suffered this separation, this death both physical and spiritual (for spiritual death is the separation of the human soul from God) so that we might have true life through him. This is victory, friends.

This Good Friday, let us bless the Lord who loved us so much that He suffered the unthinkable.

Christ Is Risen!

He is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!!

Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ trampled down death with death.  He rose from the grave and is the firstborn from the dead.  We who put our faith in Him shall share in His resurrection and shall one day put on immortal bodies.  Through His crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus took on the powers and principalities.  He defeated death.  He conquered the Devil and his minions.  He took on the curse laid upon humanity and the world since Adam and broke it.  He released the stranglehold that sin had on humanity.

How can we keep silent?  How can we not sing His great praises?  Christ is risen, let us rejoice!

As we sing the great praises of the most high God, as we hymn our Lord Christ, we sing not just of His victory for us human beings but for all creation as well.  He is Christus Victor, a fact demonstrated by His mighty resurrection.  I find that some of the Easter hymns we sang at Little Trinity on Sunday reflect a Christ the Victor mentality.

The chorus of “Up From the Grave He Arose” by Robert Lowry (1826-1899):

Up from the grave he arose;
with a mighty triumph o’er his foes;
he arose a victor from the dark domain,
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

The chorus and final verse of “Welcome, Happy Morning,” by Venantius Fortunatus (c. 590), trans. John Ellerton (1868):

“Welcome, happy morning!” age to age shall say:
“Hell today is vanquished, Heav’n is won today!”

Loose the souls long prisoned, bound with Satan’s chain;
All that now is fallen raise to life again;
Show Thy face in brightness, bid the nations see;
Bring again our daylight: day returns with Thee!

The chorus of “Thine Be the Glory,” by Edmond Budry (1884), trans. Richard Hoyle (1923):

Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son,
Endless is the vict’ry, thou o’er death hast won.

When we see the debates about Christus Victor, people talk as though NT Wright were doing something new, or introducing into Western theology something long missing.  Robert E. Webber says that Christus Victor or the theory of recapitulation are often lacking in Western theology (see Ancient-Future Faith and Worship Old And New).  However, the hymnists of the 1800’s seem to see something of this theme of Christ’s triumph over his foes.  And it is not hard to see this great triumph extending not only to sin in humans but the brokenness of the entire world.

Finally, Christus Victor does not supplant the idea of Christ as victim, despite what some of its Western detractors and Eastern supporters may say.  They are two concepts that help bring out the fullness of what Christ did for us through his passion, death, and resurrection.  Indeed, if we are to look at the atonement fully, we will find it lacking if we support only one of these two views, Latin or Classic.

Christ is the victor!  He has triumphed over his foes!  He vanquished Hell!  He set free the imprisoned souls!  He defeated Satan!  He won an endless victory over death!  This is the glorious reality of the Easter miracle when a dead Man regained life.  That life is now life for us all.