IV' The Background

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IV. The Background

• 2nd and 3rd Centuries

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons(ca. 130 ca. 200)

• From Smyrna in Asia Minor.
• Taught at Rome and became bishop of Lyons in 178.
• Suffered greatly under persecution and may have
  died as a martyr.

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• The Opponent Gnosticism
• The Key Idea to Refute spiritual/material
  dualism
• The Resulting Emphasis salvation as sharing in
  Gods incorruption/immortality

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• Harnack on Irenaeus
• Incorruptibility is a habitus which is the
  opposite of our present one and indeed of mans
  natural condition. For immortality is at once
  Gods manner of existence and his attribute as a
  created being man is only capable of
  incorruption and immortality. Now the sole way
  in which immortality as a physical condition can
  be obtained is by its possessor uniting himself
  realiter with human nature, in order to deify it
  by adoption, such is the technical term of
  Irenaeus. The deity must become what we are in
  order that we may become what he is.
• History of Dogma, 2.241

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• Gross on Irenaeus
• We see a physical or mystical conception of
  deification beginning to emerge for the first
  time. According to this theory, which springs
  from the Johannine idea of the Logos as the
  principle of life, human nature is immortalized
  and thus divinized by the very fact of the
  intimate contact that the incarnation establishes
  between it and the divine nature of the Word.
• The Divinization of the Christian, p. 125

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• Gross on Irenaeus
• By assimilating them believers to the
  incarnated Logos, who is the child of God by
  nature, this grace makes the baptized ones the
  adopted children of God.
• Our doctor sees in agennesia, with aphtharsia
  which proceeds from it, the distinctive element
  of the divine essence, perfection, and the glory
  of divinity. Only God is incorruptible by
  nature, in the strict and complete sense.
  However, some creatures have part in the glory
  of the Unbegotten.
• The Divinization of the Christian, pp. 129-30

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• Hart on Irenaeus
• Throughout Adversus Haereses the language of
  immortality and incorruptibility is inseparable
  from the language of atonement and
  reconciliation. To use Harnacks terms, the
  physical and the ethical fall together. For
  Irenaeus it would seem to be the case that what
  man is (his essence or nature) is not to be
  considered in a static manner, but is bound up
  with his relationships, and more particularly
  with his relationship to his Creator. Mans being
  is changed, therefore, precisely because and
  insofar as his relationship with the Father is
  healed and renewed, and not in any mechanistic
  fashion.

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• Russell on Irenaeus
• Men become gods through baptism, which makes
  them adopted sons of God in the Pauline manner.
• The Incarnation is an essential prerequisite
  for our journey to God, for we need to be mingled
  with the Logos through the adoption of baptism in
  order to participate in immortality and
  incorruption.
• The Doctrine of Deification, p. 106

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• Irenaeus on the Priority of Adoption
• For if a man had not conquered humanitys foe,
  that foe would not have been conquered justly.
  Conversely, unless it was God who conferred
  salvation, we should not possess it securely, and
  unless humanity had been closely united to God,
  it could not have become a sharer in
  incorruptibility . On what basis could we be
  sharers in adoption as Gods sons? We had to
  receive, through the Sons agency, participation
  in him. The Word, having been made flesh, had to
  share himself with us. That is why he went
  through every stage of human life, restoring to
  all of them communion with God.
• Against Heresies 3.18.7

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• They are not yet in a relationship of sharing
  with the Logos of God the Father. Being
  ignorant, moreover, of that Emmanuel who is born
  of a virgin, they are deprived of his gift, which
  is eternal life. Since they are not recipients of
  the Logos who is incorruption, they continue in
  the mortality of the flesh. Without question he
  is addressing these words to those who do not
  receive the gift of adoption but on the contrary
  despise the incarnation constituted by the
  unstained birth of Gods Logos. The Logos of God
  became a man, and the Son of God was made Son of
  man, so that humanity, having received the Logos
  and accepted adoption, might become son of God.
  The only way in which we could receive
  incorruption and immortality was by being united
  with them.
• Against Heresies 3.19.1

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• He the Son also, in the end of times, for the
  recapitulation of all things, is become a man
  among men, visible and tangible, in order to
  abolish death and bring to light life, and bring
  about the communion of God and man.
• Thus, then, does the Word of God in all things
  hold the primacy, for He is true man and
  Wonderful Counselor and God the Mighty, calling
  man back again into communion with God, that by
  communion with Him we may have part in
  incorruptibility.
• Proof of the Apostolic Preaching 6, 40

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• Irenaeus on Divine and Human Action
• Humanity slowly progresses, approaches
  perfection, and draws near to the uncreated God.
  It was therefore appropriate for humanity first
  to be made, and then having been made to grow,
  and having grown to be strengthened, and having
  been strengthened to increase, and having
  increased to reach adulthood, and having reached
  adulthood to be glorified, and having been
  glorified to see its Lord.
• Against Heresies 4.38.3

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• As it was not possible that the man who had
  once for all been conquered, and who had been
  destroyed through disobedience, could reform
  himself, and obtain the prize of victory and as
  it was also impossible that he could attain to
  salvation who had fallen under the power of
  sin,the Son effected both these things, being
  the Word of God, descending from the Father,
  becoming incarnate, stooping low, even to death,
  and consummating the arranged plan for our
  salvation.
• Against Heresies 3.18.2

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IV.A. Irenaeus of Lyons

• Summary
• Salvation is primarily personal, understood as
  union with the natural Son so that we become
  adopted sons and daughters.
• Participation in Gods qualities flows from this
  personal union.
• Incorruption is prominent because of the error
  Irenaeus is combatting, not because it is the
  only (or even the main) element of his
  soteriology.
• A tension in his understanding of the relation
  between the created and saved conditions

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria(ca. 185-254)

• Raised in a Christian family in Alexandria.
• His father was killed in a local persecution in
  202, and Origen almost shared the same fate.
• Was head of the Alexandrian catechetical school.
• Lived a strictly ascetic life.
• Was the early Churchs most prolific writer and
  first systematic theologian.

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• The Opponent Gnosticism
• The Key Idea to Refute fatalistic determinism
• The Resulting Emphasis the reality and freedom
  of human choices

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Origen in contrast to Irenaeus
• Rejection of Gnostic fatalism, but acceptance of
  Gnostic dualism
• Focus on human souls, not on whole persons
• Difficult to see salvation in personal terms
• Salvation as the human task to achieve mystical
  union with God in his qualities

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Harnack on Origen
• But the great loss when Origen was condemned
  consisted in the fact that men no longer
  possessed a theological system complete in
  itself. Origens was the only one that the Greek
  Church had produced. After its rejection there
  existed, besides dogma, a vast sum of incongruous
  fragments, bound artificially together by
  quotations from Scripture and tradition and from
  Aristotelian scholasticism.
• History of Dogma, 3.148

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Gross on Origen
• Jesus is Saviour primarily because he is
  enlightener.
• Distinction between ordinary Christians and
  Gnostics
• Logos is the archetype of deification.
• Our effort produces qualities in us that God
  possesses in substance.

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Russell on Origen
• By proceeding along the steep path of virtue
  they believers become through imitation of
  Christ partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet.
  14). This is a declaration that the destiny
  of believers is to share in Christs divine
  attributes, which are his virtue, power,
  incorruptibility, and glory. The Christian takes
  on a new identity through sharing in Christs
  nature, now by taking on his moral excellence,
  and after the parousia by sharing in his eternal
  life.
• The Doctrine of Deification, p. 151

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Russell on Origen
• Deification in Origens writings means the
  participation of rational creatures through the
  operation of the Son and the Holy Spirit in the
  divinity that derives ultimately from the
  Father. Participation is the means by which such
  a deification is effected. The term denotes not
  merely the ontological dependence of the
  contingent on the self-existent, but also the
  dynamic reaching out of the Persons of the
  Trinity to rational creatures in order to endow
  them with their attributes.
• The Doctrine of Deification, p. 154

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Pre-Cosmic Cosmic/Temporal Eternal
• Creation of Souls Union with God
• (likeness)
• Creation of
• Fall physical world (loss of
  individuality)
• Union with bodies
• (image of God)

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• God the Father bestows on all the gift of
  existence and a participation in Christ, in
  virtue of his being the word or reason, makes
  them rational. From this it follows that they are
  worthy of praise or blame, because they are
  capable alike of virtue and wickedness.
  Accordingly, there is also available the grace of
  the Holy Spirit, that those beings who are not
  holy in essence may be made holy by participating
  in this grace.
• On First Principles 1.3.8

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Origen on Christ
• There can be no doubt that the nature of
  Christs soul was that which belongs to all
  souls. Since, however, the capacity to choose
  good and evil is present in all souls, this soul,
  which belongs to Christ, chose to love justice in
  such a way that justice was rooted unchangeably
  and inseparably within it, in proportion to its
  immeasurable love. Consequently, firmness of
  intent and depth of attachment and warmth of
  inextinguishable love set aside any possibility
  of knowledge of change and alteration.
  Furthermore, what had its location in choice has
  by now, through the attachment created by long
  habit, become a matter of nature.
• On First Principles 2.6.5

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Now the fact that he said, He made him in the
  image of God, and was silent about the likeness,
  points to nothing else but this, that man
  received the honour of Gods image in his first
  creation, whereas the perfection of Gods
  likeness was reserved for him at the
  consummation. The purpose of this was that man
  should acquire it for himself by his own earnest
  efforts to imitate God, so that while the
  possibility of attaining perfection was given to
  him in the beginning through the honour of the
  image, he should in the end through the
  accomplishment of these works obtain for himself
  the perfect likeness.
• On First Principles 3.6.1

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Here indeed the likeness seems, if we may say
  so, to make an advance, and from being something
  similar to become one thing for this reason,
  undoubtedly, that in the consummation or end God
  is all in all.
• On First Principles 3.6.1

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• And discoursing in human form, and announcing
  Himself as flesh, He calls to Himself those who
  are flesh, that He may in the first place cause
  them to be transformed according to the Word that
  was made flesh, and afterwards may lead them
  upwards to behold Him as He was before He became
  flesh so that they, receiving the benefit, and
  ascending from their great introduction to Him,
  which was according to the flesh, say, Even if
  we have known Christ after the flesh, yet
  henceforth know we Him no more. He did not
  continue in the form in which He first presented
  Himself, but caused us to ascend to the lofty
  mountain of His word, and showed us His own
  glorious form, and the splendour of His garments
  .
• Against Celsus 6.68

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Summary
• Our action is the key to union with God.
• Union is participation in Gods qualities.
• Immateriality is Gods primary attribute.
• The final state of creatures will be immaterial.
• Image/likeness distinction
• Christ as our archetype/leader

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Fixing Origen
• By truncation ??
• Removing the pre-existence of souls and starting
  from the emergence of history
• Retaining the focus on salvation as the ascent of
  the soul toward sharing in Gods qualities
• By adaptation ??
• Bringing the fall into the realm of history
• Focusing on redemption as a historical act
  primarily accomplished by God

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IV.B. Origen of Alexandria

• Pre-Cosmic Cosmic/Temporal Eternal
• Creation of Souls Union with God
• (likeness)
• Creation of
• Fall physical world (loss of
  individuality)
• Union with bodies
• (image of God)