The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition - Hardcover

Beeley, Christopher A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 030017862X ISBN 13: 9780300178623

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2012

Synopsis

No period of history was more formative for the development of Christianity than the patristic age, when church leaders, monks, and laity established the standard features of Christianity as we know it today. Combining historical and theological analysis, Christopher Beeley presents a detailed and far-reaching account of how key theologians and church councils understood the most central element of their faith, the identity and significance of Jesus Christ.

Focusing particularly on the question of how Christ can be both human and divine and reassessing both officially orthodox and heretical figures, Beeley traces how an authoritative theological tradition was constructed. His book holds major implications for contemporary theology, church history, and ecumenical discussions, and it is bound to revolutionize the way in which patristic tradition is understood.

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Beeley is Walter H. Gray Associate Professor of Anglican Studies and Patristics at Yale Divinity School. He is the author of Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light, which won the 2010 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise. Beeley lives in New Haven, CT.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Unity of Christ

Continuity and Conflict in Patristic TraditionBy Christopher A. Beeley

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2012 Christopher A. Beeley
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-17862-3

Contents

Preface.................................................................................ix1. Origen of Alexandria.................................................................32. Eusebius of Caesarea.................................................................493. Nicaea (325) and Athanasius of Alexandria............................................1054. Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Constantinople (381).....................1715. Augustine and the West...............................................................2256. Cyril, Leo, and Chalcedon (451)......................................................2567. Post-Chalcedonian Christology........................................................285Epilogue................................................................................311Notes...................................................................................313Bibliography............................................................................351General Index...........................................................................375Scripture Index.........................................................................389

Chapter One

Origen of Alexandria

Christianity was born in Jerusalem, the temple city of ancient Israel where Jesus was crucified and his disciples first witnessed the risen Lord. Yet the great flowering of Christian theology began farther south, in the cosmopolitan port city of Alexandria on the northern coast of Egypt. A century and a half after Jesus's death, Alexandria produced the most prolific theologian of the early Christian period and the person who had the greatest influence on the church's understanding of Christ for over five hundred years—Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–c. 254).

Well before the time of Christ, Alexandria had become the most important commercial, educational, and cultural center of the eastern Mediterranean. It was the second-largest city in the Roman empire and the leading center of Greek culture and learning for much of late antiquity. By the time of Origen, the city had long been the site of pioneering work in textual and literary criticism, such as the critical edition of Homer produced by Zenodotus, the first curator of the city's famous Museum. When the Romans sacked Athens in the first century CE, Alexandria became the unquestioned center of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy as well. Greek philosophy, literary criticism, rhetorical studies, and science dominated the intellectual culture of the city in Origen's time. In recognition of its cultural importance in the early second century, the philosopher Dio Chrysostom referred to Alexandria as the crossroads of the world (Or. 32.35–36).

Late antique Alexandria also proved to be a fertile seedbed for Judaism and Christianity. By the first century CE, the Jewish population of Alexandria was the largest outside Palestine, occupying a sizeable sector of two of the city's five quarters. Alexandrian Jews developed a distinctly Greek, or Hellenistic, form of Judaism, which is reflected in such major works as the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures that remains the definitive text of the Old Testament for most of the Greek-speaking church; the Book of Wisdom; and the many works of the biblical commentator and Platonist philosopher Philo (c. 20 BCE–c. 50 CE). However, in a violent backlash against Jewish revolts between 115 and 117, the Roman authorities of Alexandria, with support from the Greek citizenry, crushed the Jewish community, destroying the synagogue and obliterating most of the population. As a result, there remains precious little record of Alexandrian Judaism between the second and the fourth centuries.

The origins of Christianity in Alexandria are notoriously murky. Most scholars now believe that Christianity first appeared there in the first century through the mission of Jewish Christians from Palestine, and that the earliest Alexandrian Christians lived in fairly close contact with the Jewish population. The popular idea that Mark the Evangelist founded the Alexandrian church and served as its first bishop, first attested in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History in the early fourth century (H.E. 2.16), is unlikely. Following the destruction of the Jewish community in 117, Christians preserved several priceless works of Hellenistic Judaism, including the Septuagint and Philo's writings. Like the city's Jews, second- and third-century Alexandrian Christians were strongly influenced by the surrounding Greek cultural environment. By the mid-second century we know of Christian teachers of widely different views, from proto-orthodox writers such as Clement of Alexandria to Gnostic Christians Basilides, Valentinus, and Carpocrates. The interrelations among these figures is unclear; while there were certainly major differences among them, which one can see, for example, in the anti-Gnostic remarks in Clement, the divisions were not as fixed as they would later be, as indicated by Clement's positive use of certain Gnostic ideas.

Clement appears to have worked as an independent teacher, possibly as an ordained presbyter of a Christian congregation, but probably not as the head of an official school under episcopal sponsorship, as Eusebius portrays him; nor does he appear to have been Origen's teacher, although Origen later read his works. From what little evidence we have, second-century Alexandrian Christianity appears to have been rather diverse, possibly including Jewish Christians oriented toward the Jerusalem church, Greek-speaking Christians of a more ascetical bent, an apocalyptically oriented variety, and a form of Marcionite Christianity—or some combination of these. As far as we can tell, more Christian literature of the second and third centuries was produced in Alexandria than in any other location, although much of it is either lost or exists in fragmentary quotations or later Coptic translations, such as the texts found in the Nag Hammadi library. Particular Christian communities were led by presbyter-teachers, who may have elected one of their own to serve as bishop; however, the city does not appear to have been supervised by a single bishop until Origen's bishop, Demetrius (189–232).

The greatest fruit of Christian Alexandria was the indefatigable teacher, scholar, and near-martyr Origen. Many other writers from the second and third centuries influenced later Christian traditions, from the apologists and Irenaeus to the teachers of the Roman church, while the Scriptures remained at the heart of the church's theological musings and liturgical life. Yet Origen towered above all earlier theologians of record as the great master—or, in some cases, the persistent nemesis—of those who undertook to do serious theology for several centuries to come. Even when his legacy was tarnished with accusations of heresy, it was usually an Origenist theological program that governed the discussion. Origen synthesized much of the theology that others had produced before him, and by the end of his life he had become the most highly regarded Christian authority of international scope since the apostles.

LIFE AND WORKS

Throughout his adult life Origen combined a passionate dedication to the work of biblical interpretation with a broad knowledge of Greek culture, particularly philosophy. Born around 186, Origen came from a Christian family of middle-class means or better. His father, Leonides, was a teacher of Greek literature, a known Christian, and a Roman citizen, while his mother may or may not have been a Roman citizen. By all accounts, Origen's parents raised him in the Christian faith. Eusebius writes of Leonides's teaching his son from the Bible (H.E. 6.2.7–11), and Jerome tells us that Origen's mother taught him to recite the Psalms at a young age (Ep. 39.22). In addition, Origen received a thorough training in "the Greek subjects," namely, literature, philosophy, science, and medicine, first from his father and later from others (Eusebius, H.E. 6.2–3). However legendary these accounts may be, Origen's written works show the depth and rigor of his engagement with Christian Scripture and his extensive study of pagan Greek culture.

When Origen was sixteen, his family suffered the horror of Leonides's imprisonment and beheading during the persecution of Emperor Septimius Severus. As part of their reprisals, the Roman authorities confiscated the family's savings, which meant that, as the eldest of seven sons, Origen was forced to go to work as a grammaticus, or a teacher of Greek literature (Eusebius, H.E. 6.2.15–31), as his father had, in order to support the family. By the time Origen was eighteen, Bishop Demetrius put him in charge of the instruction of catechumens, making him possibly the first person to serve as official catechist for the Alexandrian church as a whole. Over the next several years, Origen developed himself as a Christian teacher with legendary zeal and discipline, concentrating on biblical interpretation while continuing to study Greek subjects. His skilled teaching attracted a solid following of students, including the wealthy government official Ambrose, whom Origen converted from Valentinian Christianity and who later became Origen's major financial supporter (H.E. 6.23.2). According to Eusebius, Origen studied philosophy under a Christian philosopher named Ammonius (H.E. 6.19.4–16), who may or may not have been Ammonius Saccas, the teacher of Plotinus. Like most intellectuals of the day, Origen's philosophical learning was eclectic, yet the predominant framework was Platonic. He also studied the Hebrew language with a person he calls his "Hebrew teacher," who seems to have been a Jewish Christian (Princ. 1.3.5; 4.3.14; Eusebius, H.E. 6.16.1). Eventually Origen gave charge of the elementary catechumens to Heraclas, the brother of one of his students who had been martyred; Heraclas eventually became the next bishop of Alexandria (H.E. 6.3.2; 6.15).

Origen's intellectual approach can best be described as devotion to the Word above all. The Greek term logos can refer to the written word of texts, the exercise of human reason, and the Word of God present both in the Christian Scriptures and in Jesus, the Word made flesh. For Origen, it meant all of these. Although he disagreed with certain points of Greek philosophy when he thought them incompatible with Christian doctrine, he saw no conflict in principle between biblical Christianity, Greek philosophy, and devotion to Christ, and he regularly made use of philosophy for the analysis of the Scriptures and the exposition of the faith. We catch an invaluable glimpse into Origen's intellectual profile and pedagogical method in the report of a student's first encounter with the master. A certain Theodore—Origen's most famous student, who was later called Gregory Thaumaturgus (the Wonder-Worker), the great missionary to Cappadocia—describes the first time he heard Origen teach, when he and his brother were passing through Palestine on their way to study law in Beirut. Theodore was instantly enthralled by Origen's "love for the holy Word, the most beautiful object of all which, by its ineffable beauty, attracts all things to itself," and by the man himself, who was its "friend and spokesperson." Then and there the brothers abandoned their plans to study law and remained with Origen to pursue the only goal that mattered: "philosophy—and that divine man, my guide in philosophy!" (Adr. 6.83–84). Theodore reports that Origen's curriculum proceeded according to the following order: Socratic dialectic; followed by physics, geometry, astronomy, and natural history; after which came ethics; and finally the study of theology, which is the summit of philosophical wisdom (Adr. 7–13). Christian philosophy, as Origen conceived it, thus proceeded from learning basic habits of reasoning and thought, to the contemplation of the natural order, to the study of the virtuous life, and finally to the contemplation of God and the divine economy of salvation. A similar progress from natural to divine contemplation would later be inscribed in monastic spirituality by Origenists such as Evagrius of Pontus.

Origen's reputation as a Christian teacher quickly spread beyond Alexandria. Starting around the 210s, he began to travel abroad to teach and conduct research. He visited Palestine, Athens, and Nicopolis of Actium, and at some point he went to Rome, where he heard the Christian teacher Hippolytus and was reportedly greeted with honor (Jerome, Vir.Ill. 61). Soon bishops invited Origen to teach and to participate in theological disputes and local church synods in places as far ranging as Arabia, Palestine, and Antioch. At one point, Julia Mammaea, the mother of Emperor Alexander Severus, brought Origen to the imperial court in Antioch to participate in theological debates, which may have included Valentinians from Alexandria (H.E. 6.21.3–4).

Origen's career was divided into two major phases. After working for two decades in Alexandria, he moved to Caesarea in Palestine, probably in the year 231. The main cause of this move was a falling-out with his bishop. Although we have little evidence to go on, it appears that some jealousy on Demetrius's part, or a mutual rivalry between the two men, was a major factor in the demise of their relations. That their differences were at least theological is suggested by the letter that Origen wrote to his friends in Alexandria, in which he defends his orthodoxy but not his ecclesiastical status. At one point Bishop Theoctistus of Caesarea ordained Origen a priest, a gesture that seems to have been intended to formalize Origen's permanent association with the Caesarean church, and possibly to establish him as the head of a new Christian library and school in Caesarea, which would help to raise the profile of Christianity in a city that already boasted active philosophical and Rabbinic Jewish intellectual activity. Demetrius protested the act to the Palestinian hierarchs and sought the intervention of a Roman synod; Origen was forced to defend himself to Fabian of Rome and others. Origen took refuge in the Caesarean church and made it the base of his activities from then on. In his first work written in Palestine, he describes himself as an Israelite who has just escaped the persecution of the Egyptians (Com.Jn. 6.pref.).

Origen's time in Caesarea was the most productive period of his life. He devoted himself to the creation of what would become the first Christian university, a resource that Pamphilus and Eusebius further developed in the early fourth century and which contributed to the theological training of Gregory of Nazianzus. As an ordained priest, Origen preached extensively through the Scriptures, often extemporaneously. His congregation in Caesarea was mixed, including both advanced students and relatively illiterate catechumens and church members. From Caesarea Origen also continued to make research trips and to serve as a theological expert at synods and debates in the surrounding regions.

The last two decades of Origen's life were scarred by further violence. When anti-Christian persecution broke out after the murder of Alexander Severus in 235, Origen went into hiding. Roman authorities arrested Origen's patron Ambrose in Nicomedia as well as a Caesarean priest named Protoctetus. To support his friends, Origen wrote an Exhortation to Martyrdom, which became a classic statement of the rationale of Christian martyrdom. In 250 Palestinian Christians suffered heavily from new persecutions under Emperor Decius. Bishop Fabian of Rome was martyred, and Alexander of Jerusalem and Babylas of Antioch were imprisoned and eventually died as confessors of the faith. Origen too was arrested, imprisoned, and severely tortured; according to Eusebius, he was "stretched four spaces" on the rack (H.E. 6.39.6). During his imprisonment Origen received a letter of encouragement from Dionysius, the new bishop of Alexandria and a great admirer, who later helped to rehabilitate Origen's reputation and enabled Origenian theological tradition to carry forward in Alexandria (H.E. 6.46.2). During his painful final years Origen wrote letters to encourage others who were suffering for the faith (H.E. 6.39.5). He died in 254 or 255 as a result of the injuries he had incurred. Ever since the murder of his father, Origen had deeply honored the spirit of Christian martyrdom. In the end, he too perished at the hands of the Roman state and died as a confessor of the faith.

Origen was a theologian of massive industry. In the course of his studies he memorized much of the Greek Scriptures, and he wrote between one thousand and two thousand total volumes, making him the most prolific author in the early church. Only a small fraction of Origen's corpus survives, and much of what remains exists only in Latin or other translations. Fortunately, we still possess several major works that give us a reliable sense of his theological outlook. The main focus of Origen's labors was biblical interpretation; most of his works are commentaries, notes, and homilies on the Scriptures. Yet, while Origen was a meticulous reader of the sacred text, his commentaries on Scripture also served a contemporary purpose. Unlike modern commentaries, which seek to give a comprehensive and historically informed account of the meaning of a biblical book, Origen believed that the true interpretation of Scripture reflects a distinct theological position, which itself derives from Scripture (and so on). He often advanced his views in direct competition with rival interpreters whose doctrine he thought posed a threat to the church's received rule of faith, and he tends to comment on passages that his opponents had used. He never wrote a commentary on an entire book of the Bible.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 030017862X
• ISBN 13: 9780300178623
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 391