Studia Patristica XVII Part 3: Athanasius, Cappadocian Fathers, Chrysostom, Augustine and his Opponents, Oriental Texts 0080257798, 9780080257792

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Wolfgang ULLMANN, Berlin
Part III
R KLEIN, Erlangen
KOLP, Richmond, Indiana
A T HANSON, Hull
VIAN, Roma
Critica
F DECRET, Lyon
Mary Ann DONOVAN, 3 C , Berkeley
R W HUNT
Abbreviations xvii
ESCRIBANO-ALBERCA, Bamberg
Classica
HAYES, S J , Toronto
A H ARMSTRONG, Halifax, Nova Scotia
A SYKES, Oxford
Historica
Theologica
Reginald WEIJENBORG, O F M , Rome
F WRIGHT, Edinburgh
Ascetica
Irénée-Henri DALMAIS, 0 P , Paris
Dolores GREELEY, R S M , St Louis
A NATALI, Lille
R P C HANSON, Manchester
S J VOICU, Rome
B BUBACZ, Kansas City
A ETCHEGARAY CRUZ, Valparaíso
Lydia SPELLER, Oxford
K HOUSE, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Walter H PRINCIPE, C S B , Toronto
E R HARDY+
A SCHINDLER, Bern
E G HINSON, Louisville, Kentucky
J F VAN DER KOOI, Bethel
N EL-KHOURY, Fanar
Liturgica
G A M ROUWHORST, Utrecht
J W WATT, Crowthorne
Gnostica
P R DAVIES, Sheffield
Author Index
A E JOHNSON, Chicago

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Studia Patrioticn

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Studia Patristica

VOL. XVII in Three Parts

PART THREE

Other Titles of Interest

ALLWORTH , E. Ethnic Russia in the USSR : The Dilemma of Dominance JAMESON, K. P. and WILBER , C. K. Religious Values and Development KLIBANOV, A. I. History of Religious Sectarianism in Russia LAUTERBACH , W. Soviet Psychotherapy MCCAGG, W. O. and SILVER , B. D. Soviet Asian Ethnic Frontiers

ROY , R. Experimenting with Truth : The Fusion of Religion with Technology, Needed for Humanity's Survival

Studia Patristica

VOL. XVII in Three Parts

Edited by Elizabeth A. Livingstone

PART THREE

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Preface

HE Eighth International Conference on Patristic Studies met in Oxford from 3 Tto 8September 1975 , under the direction of the Rev. Dr. M.F. Wiles, Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford , and the Rev. Dr. G.C. Stead , Ely Professor in the University of Cambridge . These volumes of Studia Patristica contain a substantial proportion of the papers delivered at the Conference .

It is

my pleasant duty to thank all those who presented papers , and especially those who allowed their papers to be included in the Proceedings ; it is on those who participate that the value of these gatherings mainly depends .

For guidance and help in

connexion with the production of these volumes warm thanks are due to Professor Wiles and Professor Stead ; to Dr. S. P. Brock , the Rev. A. Louth , Dr. Beryl Smalley , the Rev. Professor H.F.D. Sparks , Dr. U. Treu , Dr. P.D. Wiles , Miss Frances M. Williams , and the Rev. Dr. E.J. Yarnold , S.J .; and also to Alix Wiles , Barbara Barrett and John Cooper of the Pergamon Press for their care and cooperation in the production of Studia Patristica XVII . I am grateful also to the Berlin Academy for agreeing to the continued use of this title .

15 St. Giles , Oxford .

Elizabeth A. Livingstone

Contents

xvii

Abbreviations

Part I Historica J.S. ALEXANDER , St. Andrews Methodology in the Capitula Gestorum Conlationis Carthaginiensis L.W. BARNARD , Leeds The Site of the Council of Serdica

3 9

H. BERTHOLD , Manchester, New Hampshire Did Maximus the Confessor Know Augustine ?

14

Francine CARDMAN , Cambridge , Mass . The Rhetoric of Holy Places : Palestine in the Fourth Century Irénée-Henri DALMAIS , 0.P. , Paris La Vie de Saint Maxime le Confesseur reconsidérée ?

26

26

31 338

T.M. FINN , Williamsburg, Virginia Social Mobility , Imperial Civil Service and the Spread of Early Christianity W.H.C. FREND , Glasgow Church and State . Perspective and Problems in the Patristic Era

18

Antoine LAURAS , S.J. , Paris Saint Léon le Grand et les Juifs

55

A. LENOX-CONYNGHAM , London The Judgment of Ambrose the Bishop on Ambrose the Roman Governor

62

R.T. MEYER , Washington, D.C. Palladius as Biographer and Autobiographer

66

Lydia SPELLER , Oxford Ambrosiaster and the Jews

72

vii

viii

Contents

Theologica Edouard DES PLACES , S.J. , Rome La théologie négative de Pseudo - Denys , ses antécédents Platoniciens et son influence au seuil du Moyen Age L. GLADYSZEWSKI , Gniezno Die Marienhomilien des Hesychius von Jerusalem R.P.C. HANSON , Manchester The Transformation of Images in the Trinitarian Theology of the Fourth Century

E.R. HARDY + The Further Education of Cyril of Alexandria ( 412-444 ) : Questions and Problems P. HENRY , Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Why is Contemporary Scholarship so Enamored of Ancient Heretics ? A. LOUTH , Oxford Messalianism and Pelagianism E. MÜHLENBERG , Göttingen The Divinity of Jesus in Early Christian Faith R.A. NORRIS , New York The Problems of Human Identity in Patristic Christological Speculation

81 93

97

116

123 127

136

147

C. RIGGI , Rome La Catéchèse adaptée aux temps chez Epiphane

160

M. SLUSSER , St. Paul , Minnesota The Scope of Patripassianism

169

W.V. TANGHE , Cambridge Ratramnus of Corbie's Use of the Fathers in his Treatise De Corpore et Sanguinis Domini

176

R.P. VAGGIONE , New York Οὐχ ὡς ἔν τῶν γεννημάτων : Some Aspects of Arian Dogmatic Formulae

181

Christoph VON SCHÖNBORN , O.P. , Fribourg La sainteté de l'icône selon S. Jean Damascène

188

Dorothea WENDEBOURG , Munich From the Cappadocian Fathers to Gregory Palamas . Trinitarian Theology

The Defeat of

Frances M. YOUNG , Birmingham Did Epiphanius Know What He Meant by ' Heresy ' ?

194

199

Gnostica

C. GIANOTTO , Turin Le personnage de Melkisedeq dans les documents gnostiques en langue copte D.L. HOLLAND , London Some Issues in Orthodox- Gnostic Christian Polemics

209

J. MAGNE , Paris Thèmes anti - gnostiques dans l'iconographie

223

J. MONTSERRAT- TORRENTS , Barcelona Le notice d'Hippolyte sur les Naassènes

231

214

ix

Contents R. TREVIJANO ETCHEVERRIA , Salamanca La incomprensión de los discípulos en el Evangelio de Tomás D.H. TRIPP , Manchester The ' Sacramental System ' of the Gospel of Philip

243 251

Biblica H.A. BLAIR , Sherborne Allegory , Typology and Archetypes

263

Jane BARR , Oxford The Vulgate Genesis and St. Jerome's Attitude to Women

268

J. Patout BURNS , S.J. , Chicago The Function of Christ in Ambrose of Milan's Interpretation of the Command Given to Adam

274

Yvonne BURNS , London A Newly Discovered Family 13 Manuscript and the Ferrar Lection System

278

Marie- Gabrielle CUÉRARD , Maintenon Nil d'Ancyre : quelques principes d'herméneutique , d'après un passage de son commentaire sur le Cantique des cantiques Sandro LEANZA , Messina Sul Commentario all'Ecclesiaste di Didimo Alessandrino Clementina MAZZUCCO , Turin Eusèbe de Césarée et l'Apocalypse de Jean V. MESSANA , Caltanissetta La nudité d'Adam et d'Ève chez Diadoque

290 300

317

325

M.A. SIGNER , Los Angeles St. Jerome and Andrew of St. Victor : Some Observations

333

A.K. SQUIRE , Lillehammer Adam's Song in a Commentary of Hilary of Poitiers

338

Critica

M. AUBINEAU , Paris Textes nouveaux d'Hésychius de Jérusalem : bilan et méthodes I. BREWARD , Dunedin A Neglected Protestant Patrology E.C. BROOKS , Somerleyton, Lowestoft The Translation Techniques of Rufinus of Aquileia ( 343-411 ) R.W. HUNT+ The Need for a Guide to the Editors of Patristic Texts in the 16th Century

345 352

357

365

P. SMULDERS , S.J. , Amsterdam Is There a Medicine Against Contamination ?

372

Josef VAN BANNING , S.J. , Oxford The Critical Edition of the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum , an Arian Source

382

Michaela ZELZER , Vienna Die Mailänder Tradition der Ambrosiusbriefe

388

X

Contents

Classica A.H. ARMSTRONG , Halifax, Nova Scotia Two Views of Freedom: a Christian Objection in Plotinus , Enneads VI.8 [ 39 ] 7 , 11-15 ?

397

Edward G.T. BOOTH , O.P. , Rome John Philoponos : Christian and Aristotelian Conversion

407

Elizabeth A. CLARK , Fredericksburg The Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba

412

R. CROUSE , Halifax, Nova Scotia The Doctrine of Creation in Boethius : the De hebdomadibus and the Consolatio

417

C. DATEMA , Amsterdam Classical Quotations in the Works of Cyril of Alexandria

422

D.W. DOCKRILL , Newcastle, N.S.W. The Fathers and the Theology of the Cambridge Platonists

427

Gillian R. EVANS , Bristol Thierry of Chartres and the Unity of Boethius ' Thought J. MARENBON , Cambridge Making Sense of the De Trinitate : Boethius and Some of his Medieval Interpreters P.E. ROREM , Edison, New Jersey Iamblichus and the Anagogical Method in Pseudo- Dionysian Liturgical Theology

440

446

453

Part II Ascetica

G.J.M. BARTELINK , Nijmegen Le diable et les démons dans les oeuvres de Jérôme

463

Pearse A. CUSACK , O.C.S.0 . , Roscrea, Tipperary The Story of the Awkward Goth in the Second Dialogue of St. Gregory I

472

K.S. FRANK , Freiburg Zur Anthropologie der Regula Magistri

477

P. HENRY , Swarthmore, Pennsylvania From Apostle to Abbot : the Legitimation of Spiritual Authority in the Early Church

491

J.F. KELLY , Cleveland, Ohio The Gallic Resistance to Eastern Asceticism

506

George P. LAWLESS , O.S.A. , Washington , D.C. Ordo Monasterii : A Double or Single Hand ?

511

Joseph T. LIENHARD , S.J. , Milwaukee ' Discernment of Spirits ' in the Early Church

519

R.M. PETERSON , Milwaukee ' The Gift of Discerning Spirits ' in the Vita Antonii 16-44

523

A.E.D. VAN LOVEREN , Nijmegen Once Again : ' The Monk and the Martyr ' . St. Anthony and St. Macrina

528

Contents Benedicta WARD , S.L.G. , Oxford ' Signs and Wonders ' : Miracles in the Desert Tradition

xi 539

Liturgica J. BADEWIEN , Heidelberg Begründet in der Alten Kirche erst die Taufe Kirchenmitgliedschaft ? Eine Problemskizze ( 3./4 . Jahnhundert )

545

Robert J. BARRINGER , C.S.B. , Toronto Penance and Byzantine Hagiography : Le répondant du péché R.F.G. BURNISH , Nottingham The Role of the Godfather in the East in the Fourth Century

558

Lotfi LAHAM, Jerusalem Le place des Saints Pères dans la Liturgie de l'Eglise Byzantine

565

M.B. MORETON , Middleton Cheney Offertory Processions ?

569

M.J. MORETON , Exeter Εἰς ἀνατολὰς βλέψατε : Orientation as a Liturgical Principle Keetje ROZEMOND , Haarlem Les origines de la fête de la Transfiguration T.J. TALLEY , New York The Origin of Lent at Alexandria

552

575

591 594

Second Century Maria Lodovica ARDUINI , Milano Probabile influenza di Ireneo di Lione in alcune autori medievali

615

B. BALDWIN , Calgary, Alberta The Church Fathers and Lucian

626

T. BAUMEISTER , Mainz Das Martyrium in der Sicht Justins des Märtyrers

631

B.D. CHILTON , Sheffield Irenaeus on Isaac

643

A. DAUNTON- FEAR , Thrapston , Kettering The Ecstasies of Montanus P.R. DAVIES , Sheffield Martyrdom and Redemption : on the Development of Isaac Typology in the Early Church

648

652

B. DEHANDSCHUTTER , Leiden Le Martyre de Polycarpe et le développement de la conception du martyre au deuxième siècle

659

E. FERGUSON , Abilene , Texas The Terminology of Kingdom in the Second Century

669

E. FERGUSON , Abilene , Texas Canon Muratori . Date and Provenance

677

P.C. FINNEY , St. Louis , Missouri Idols in Second and Third Century Apology

684

T. HALTON , Washington, D.C. Hegesippus in Eusebius

688

xii

Contents

A.T. HANSON , Hull The Theology of Suffering in the Pastoral Epistles and Ignatius of Antioch

694

E.G. HINSON , Louisville , Kentucky Evidence of Essene Influence in Roman Christianity : an Inquiry

697

A.E. JOHNSON , Chicago Interpretative Hierarchies in Barnabas I - XVII A. LE BOULLUEC , Paris Exégèse et polémique antignostique chez Irénée et Clément d'Alexandrie : L'exemple du centon

M. MARCOVICH , Urbana On the Text of Athenagoras , Legatio A. MÉHAT , Versailles Saint Irénée et les charismes

702

707

714 719

Carolyn OSIEK , R.S.C.J. , Chicago Wealth and Poverty in the Shepherd of Hermas M. STAROWIEYSKI , Warsaw Les problèmes de systématisation et d'interprétation des évangiles apocryphes

731

A. TUILIER , Paris Les évangélistes et les docteurs de la primitive église et les origines de l'Ecole ( Sudaσnaλɛov ) d'Alexandrie

738

M.F. WILES , Oxford Ignatius and the Church

750

Ann E. WILHELM- HOOIJBERGH , H. Landstichting Rome or Alexandria , which was Clemens Romanus ' Birthplace ?

756

R. WINLING , Strasbourg Une façon de dire le salut : la formule ' Etre avec Dieu - être avec Jésus - Christ ' dans les écrits ( apocryphes chrétiens compris ) de l'ère dite des Pères apostoliques

760

D.F. WINSLOW , Cambridge, Mass . The Polemical Christology of Melito of Sardis

765

W.K. WISCHMEYER , Heidelberg Der Aberkios inschrift als Grabepigramm

777

725

Tertullian to Nicea in the West I.L.S. BALFOUR , Edinburgh Tertullian's Description of the Heathen A.A.R. BASTIAENSEN , Nijmegen Tertullian's Reference to the Passio Perpetuae in De Anima 55 , 4 S.G. HALL , London Stephen I of Rome and the One Baptism G. HALLONSTEN , Lund Some Aspects of the So- called Verdienstbegriff of Tertullian E. LUPIERI , Turin Novatien et les Testimonia d'Isaïe G.P. LUTTIKHIUZEN , Groningen Hippolytus ' Polemic Against Bishop Calixtus and Alcibiades of Apamea

785

790 796

799

803

808

xiii

Contents Paul McGUCKIN , C.P. , Newcastle -upon -Tyne The Christology of Lactantius

813

D.M. SCHOLER , Lombard, Illinois Tertullian on Jewish Persecution of Christians

821

P. STOCKMEIER , Munich Gottesverständnis und Saturnkult bei Tertullian

829

R.G. TANNER , Newcastle , N.S.W. The Aim of Lactantius in the Liber de Mortibus Persecutorum

836

Origen Cécile BLANC , Saint - Genis-Laval L'attitude d'Origène à l'égard du corps et de la chair Henri CROUZEL , S.J. , Toulouse Actualité d'Origène : Rapports de la foi et des cultures : Une théologie en recherche Robert J. DALY , S.J. , Chestnut Hill Sacrificial Soteriology in Origen's Homilies on Leviticus E. FRÜCHTEL , Kulmbach/Ofr . Origenes interpres aut dogmatistes ? Giulia Sfameni GASPARRO , Messina La doppia creazione di Adamo e il tema paolino dei due uomini nell'esegesi di Origene

843

859 872 879

897

R.P.C. HANSON , Manchester Was Origen Banished from Alexandria ?

904

F. LEDEGANG , Nijmegen Images of the Church in Origen : the girdle ( Jeremiah 13 , 1–11 )

907

L.G. PATTERSON , Cambridge, Mass . Methodius , Origen and the Arian Dispute

912

L.G. PATTERSON , Cambridge , Mass . Origen: His Place in Early Greek Christian Theology

924

Karen J. TORJESEN , Göttingen Origen's Interpretation of the Psalms

944

J.W. TRIGG , Houston, Texas A Fresh Look at Origen's Understanding of Baptism Wolfgang ULLMANN , Berlin Hermeneutik und Semantik in der Bibeltheologie des Origenes , dargestellt anhand von Buch 10 seines Johanneskommentares

959

966

Part III Athanasius

Charles KANNENGIESSER , S.J. , Paris Athanasius of Alexandria : Three Orations Against the Arians : a Reappraisal

981

xiv

Contents

R. KLEIN , Erlangen Zur Glaubwürdigkeit historischer Aussagen des Bischofs Athanasius von Alexandria über die Religionspolitik des Kaisers Constantius II A. L. KOLP , Richmond, Indiana Partakers of the Divine Nature : The Use of II Peter 1.4 by Athanasius

1018

J.L. NORTH , Hull Did Athanasius ( letter 49 , to Dracontius ) know and correct Cyprian ( letter 5 , Hartel ) ?

1024

A. PETTERSEN , Cambridge A Reconsideration of the Date of the Contra Gentes -- De Incarnatione of Athanasius of Alexandria

1030

G.M. VIAN , Roma Il testo delle Expositiones in Psalmos di Atanasio

1041

996

Cappadocian Fathers S.C. ALEXE , Bucarest Saint Basile le Grand et le christianisme roumain au IVe siècle

1049

F. DECRET , Lyon Basile le Grand et la polémique antimanichéenne en Asie Mineure au IVe siècle

1060

T.J. DENNIS , Windsor, Berks . The Relationship Between Gregory of Nyssa's Attack on Slavery in his Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes and his Treatise De Hominis Opificio

1065

Mary Ann DONOVAN , 3.C. , Berkeley The Spirit , Place of the Sanctified . Basil's De Spiritu Sancto and Messalianism

1073

H. DROBNER , Mainz Die Beredsamkeit Gregors von Nyssa im Urteil der Neuzeit I. ESCRIBANO-ALBERCA , Bamberg Der Prophetie - Begriff von In proph. Isaiam ( P.G. 117-668 ) Marcella FORLIN PATRUCCO , Turin Social Patronage and Political Mediation in the Activity of Basil of Caesarea

1084

1095

1102

Walter M. HAYES , S.J. , Toronto Didymus the Blind is the Author of Adversus Eunomium IV/V J.M. MATHIEU , Caen Remarques sur l'anthropologie philosophique de Grégoire de Nazianze (Poemata dogmatica , VIII , 22-32 ; 78-96 ) et Porphyre

1115

Anthony MEREDITH , S.J. , Oxford Gregory of Nyssa and Plotinus

1120

D.A. SYKES , Oxford The Bible and Greek Classics in Gregory Nazianzen's Verse

1127

C.N. TSIRPANLIS , Barrytown, N.Y. The Concept of Universal Salvation in Saint Gregory of Nyssa

1131

Reginald WEIJENBORG , O.F.M. , Rome Some Evidence of Unauthenticity for the ' Discourse XI in honour of Gregory of Nyssa ' , attributed to Gregory of Nazianzen

1145

1108

XV

Contents

D.F. WRIGHT , Edinburgh Basil the Great in the Protestant Reformers

1149

Chrysostom J.B. DUMORTIER , Lille La Version Arménienne du Commentaire sur Isaïe de Jean Chrysostome

1159

Dolores GREELEY , R.S.M. , St. Louis Prophet of Social Justice St. John Chrysostom

1163

P. LECLERCQ , Lille La technique de l'emprunt chez Georges d'Alexandrie dans sa Vie de S. Jean Chrysostome

1169

A. NATALI , Lille Eglise et évergétisme à Antioche à la fin du IVe siècle d'après Jean Chrysostome R.G. TANNER , Newcastle , N.S.W. Chrysostom's Exegesis of Romans S.J. VOICU , Rome Le corpus pseudo- chrysostomien : Questions préliminaires et état des recherches

1176

1185

1198

Augustine and his opponents W.S. BABCOCK , Dallas , Texas Augustine and Tyconius : a Study in the Latin Appropriation of Paul

1209

B. BUBACZ , Kansas City Augustine's Structural Theory of Perception

1216

Joanne McW . DEWART , Toronto The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy

1221

A. ETCHEGARAY CRUZ , Valparaíso L'enarratio Augustinienne sur le Ps . 50 et 0 Deus, miseri de Gottschalk d'Orbais

1245

C.A. GARCIA-ALLEN , Boynton Beach, Florida Was Pelagius Influenced by Chromatius of Aquileia ?

1251

D.K. HOUSE , Halifax, Nova Scotia A Note on Book III of St. Augustine's Contra Academicos B. LORENZ , Regensburg Überlegungen zum Bild des Weges in den Confessiones des Augustinus José OROZ RETA , 0.A.R. , Salamanca Une polémique augustinienne contra Cicéron : Du fatalisme à la prescience divine Walter H. PRINCIPE , C.S.B. , Toronto The Dynamism of Augustine's Terms for Describing the Highest Trinitarian Image in the Human Person

J.F. PROCOPÉ , Cambridge Augustine , Plotinus and Saint John's Three ' Concupiscences '

1258

1264

1269

1291

1300

xvi

Contents

A. SCHINDLER , Bern L'Histoire du Donatisme : considérée du point de vue de sa propre théologie

1306

Basil STUDER , 0.S.B. , Rome Jésus- Christ , notre justice selon saint Augustin

1316

J.F. VAN DER KOOI , Bethel Patientia als Element in Augustins Geschichtsanschauung . Mit einem Seitenblick auf G.E. Lessing

1343

Oriental Texts

M. ALBERT , Paris Lettre 19 de Jacques de Saroug

1351

N. EL-KHOURY , Fanar Anthropological Concepts of the School of Antioch

1359

Bernadette JANSSENS , Ghent L'influence de Prudence sur le Liber Manualis de Dhuoda

1366

G.A.M. ROUWHORST , Utrecht The Date of Easter in the Twelfth Demonstration of Aphraates

1374

Erik TEN NAPEL , Groningen Concepts of Paradise in the Seventh Memra of the Hexaemeron by Emmanuel bar Shahhare

1381

J.W. WATT , Crowthorne The Syriac Adapter of Evagrius ' Centuries

1388

Gabriele WINKLER , Collegeville, Minnesota A Remarkable Shift in the 4th Century Creeds : an Analysis of the Armenian , Syriac and Greek Evidence

1396

Author Index

1403

Athanasius

Charles Kannengiesser, S.J. R. Klein A. L. Kolp J. L. North A. Pettersen G. M. Vian

SP 3-8

Paris Erlangen Richmond, Indiana Hull Cambridge Rome

Athanasius of Alexandria Three Orations Against the Arians A Reappraisal Charles Kannengiesser , S. J. Paris

HERE are nineteen important manuscripts , dating from the tenth century , which Tare directly rein en to Athanasius, pre, data, fainst the Ariane (contra Arianos = C.A. ) , and which form part of the rich literary heritage he has left us . One could also add another dozen manuscripts of a secondary nature , written before the sixteenth century , such as the Codex Cantabrigensis Graecus 203 , housed at present in the library at Trinity College ; this , along with three or four other very ancient sources , was used for the editio princeps of Athanasius ' C.A. , a work first published in 1601 in Heidelberg by the Calvinist printer , Commelinus . The Benedictine edition of Saint - Germain - des - Prés , on the other hand , which was published in Paris in 1698 by the Maurist Bernard de Montfaucon , is based on a wider selection of sources , with a very decided preference given to the Parisian codices of C.A. , the Regius codex of the 11th century and the Seguerianus codex of the 12th century . This Benedictine edition was severely criticized from a textual point of view by Hans -Georg Opitz , the only real scholar of our century who has undertaken the task of studying the entire manuscript tradition of Athanasius . His work , Untersuchungen zur Ueberlieferung der Schriften des Athanasius , dedicated to his teacher , Hans Lietzmann , in 1935 , unfortunately achieved little success because of the untimely death of the author during the Second World War . The important edition of AthanasiusWerke started by Opitz in 1934 , under the auspices of the Berlin Academy , was permanently halted in the middle of a word , in the second part , which included the apologetical and historical writings of Athanasius ; the first part had been reserved by the editor for the dogmatic writings such as the C.A .: this was never published after the war , although several advertisements appeared indicating that the scholars who succeeded Opitz would do the work in West Germany . My own collation of the principal manuscripts of the C.A. is almost finished . work on this text has made it clear , to me at least , that there is need for a new

981

My

982

C. Kannengiesser

edition ; this , I hope , will be ready in the near future , even though I do not think it will add to what we already know about the doctrinal content of Athanasius ' works . Hopefully , the critical text which will emerge from the new collation of manuscripts ( taking into account , of course , all the direct and indirect manuscript evidence which has been part of the history of the C.A. ) will give us a text which will be very faithful to advance over the the viewpoint of the text itself ,

the oldest of the Athanasian recensions ; this indeed will be an Benedictine edition of 1698 , though it will not modify , either from vocabulary or of doctrine , the theological teachings found within at least as we read them in Volume 26 of the Patrologia Graeca .

Thus , in all honesty , a scholar can use this traditional text of 1698 if he does so prudently , taking the proper precautions , as he makes a personal judgment on the meaning of the text of the C.A. both as Athanasius understood them and in the light of the history of Christian doctrine .

With this in mind , I will cite this fourth-

century Alexandrine Father - of- the - Church in the fine translation , made not too far from this very room , by John Cardinal Newman , more than a hundred years ago . French scholars , who have probably been in the forefront of other areas of research , have not so far succeeded in achieving a thorough translation of the C.A. I note that several versions exist in English , two quite different ones in German , and others in Dutch and Italian . Unfortunately , despite some useful resumés and a selection of texts paraphrased and repeatedly cited in manuals and monographs , there does not exist in any language a precise and accurate study of the C.A. as a literary text . Since this work is a monument of ancient literature and a literary witness of Christian tradition , it is first of all necessary , it seems to me , to put these orations in a proper literary context , while at the same time , interpreting them in light of the overall career of the Bishop of Alexandria during the forty- five , often hectic , years that he served his people as Ordinary of his diocese . Thus , I propose that the controversial questions with regard to this work , often considered as the principal work of Athanasius in matters of doctrine , be analyzed in its structure as a literary work which involves a logic of its own ; this will help us understand a bit more clearly some of the larger considerations which make up these important treatises . Here I would like to insert two preliminary remarks . First , in my view it is inevitable that the theological concepts of Athanasius become ambiguous and poorly understood , if they are taken out of their literary context and logical framework . Even in going from one of the three C.A. to the next , modern critical scholars someIn any

times do not do justice to the intention of certain passages in these texts .

case , such scholarship is hardly conducive to examining this work from a literary It is appropriate here , I believe and this in my second remark - to

perspective .

mention also the problem concerning the date of composition of the Orations.

The

date one chooses should not be reached independently of the structure of these works . The question then becomes : what new insights will we gain by studying the C.A. with a more critical eye from a literary perspective ?

983

Athanasius of Alexandria

Let us look at some of the literary dimensions of these treatises , though I hope that the details which I feel I should mention , and which can get a bit complicated , will not disturb you . Initially , it is clear that Athanasius carefully prepared what he wanted to write by selecting and citing Arian texts , as well as verses of Scripture specially favoured by his adversaries . He intended to refute those texts which he thought were inexact or wrong from a doctrinal point of view, and provided , in turn , what he considered an orthodox interpretation of the controversial verses of Scripture .

The heretical texts which he cited , taken from the Thalia of Arius

and from a Syntagma , a work of Asterius , are central to the general introduction to the C.A. I am referring to the first ten numbers as enumerated by Migne in the Benedictine text .

The scriptural verses highlighted by the Arians are next intro-

duced in successive steps , insofar as they are related to the principal Arian theses , which Athanasius had summarized in his general introduction on the basis of the selected texts of Arius and Asterius .

Numbers eleven to twenty-two of the Migne

enumeration correspond to chapter one ; in this chapter the concept of the absolute eternity of the Son and the Father as equals is developed by Athanasius according to the teaching of his predecessor , Alexander of Alexandria . In doing so Athanasius thought he could counteract the Arian teaching illustrated by the phrase v пOTE , ÖTE OÙμ Aν - there was a time when He ( the Son ) did not exist . After this first refutation of an Arian text , carefully chiseled and fundamentally dialectic in nature , there follows from numbers twenty-three to thirty- four a second chapter , where the second anti -Arian theological principle is explained , that of the generation of the Son by the Father's proper Essence .

In place of his argument which

would recall the Thalia in chapter one , Athanasius next introduces what might be considered a popular theatrical vignette ; he sets the scene by placing the Arian propagandists on a street corner in the market area where they address loaded questions both to women who have not had any formal education and to children , as , for example , ' Did the One -Who- Is create the One -Who -Was - Not by means of the One-WhoIs , or the One-Who -Was ? ' It should be added that in all of this , the arrangement of chapters follows the order of the textual citations taken from the Thalia and placed at the beginning of the work .

In short , it seems that the actual organization of

the first C.A. is straight - forward and well-planned , in accordance with the material of the adversaries set out by Athanasius in the general Introduction . Indeed , the third chapter , from numbers thirty - five to fifty-two , is separated from the two preceeding ones and clearly stands by itself . The famous line ἦν ποτε , ÖTE Oún hv had served as a counterpoint to the first chapter , which was devoted to the concept of the Son's eternal existence .

The vignette concerning Arian propaganda

staged in the Christian sections of Alexandria contributed to the notion of divine generation which had been discussed in the second chapter .

Thus , at this point ,

Athanasius has recourse to Scriptures which assist him in treating and formulating

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C. Kannengiesser

his views on the immutable nature of the Son . Beginning with the introduction to the third chapter - that is , numbers thirty- five and thirty - six -- Athanasius bases the principle of divine immutability on Scripture : the Son is immutable like the Father . The rest of the chapter explains and corrects some of the abuses committed by the Arians in their exegesis of Phil . 2 , 9-10 , ' therefore God raised him to the heights ' , and of Psalm 44 , 7-8 , especially ' therefore God , even Thy God , hath anointed Thee ' . What is noteworthy is the finesse with which the dialectical and carefully developed exegetical motifs are linked together in this chapter . But it is at the beginning of the fourth and last chapter of the first C.A. that Athanasius presents the biblical views of the Arians which he especially wants to refute , as in the previous chapters he refuted the initial textual references of Arius and Asterius . The texts of Scripture employed by the Arians are first of all listed by Athanasius . Then he presents the hermeneutical principles by which he develops an anti -Arian exegesis in dealing with these texts . He lists the biblical citations , as found in Migne's number fifty- three , in the following order : Prov . 8 , 22 ; Hebr . 1,4 and 3,1-2 ; Acts 2,36 . His refutations , which come later , are in the following order : Hebr . 1,4 in the last chapter of the First Oration ; Hebr . 3,1-2 and Acts 2,36 in the first chapter of the Second Oration , as found in Migne's numbers six to seventeen ; and finally , Prov . 8,22 in the rest of the Second Oration . As is clear , it is Prov . 8,22 which has been moved around . It is important to note , in dealing with these citations , that not only does the introduction to the last chapter of the first C.A. correspond completely with the biblical verses mentioned in the first chapter of the second C.A. , but all the hermeneutical principles mentioned in that same introduction are intentionally repeated and scrupulously followed throughout the entire first chapter of the second C.A. We should not be surprised , then , to discover that there is a real possibility that the general introduction of the second C.A. , or , if you prefer , the five first numbers of the second C.A. , was in some way a later addition . Part of it is taken from the general introduction to the first C.A .; otherwise it repeats some ideas evident in this first work and which have almost no rapport with the exegesis that follows . It is surprising to discover that after the first chapter of the second C.A. , which treats Hebr . 3,1-2 and Acts 2,36 , we find a rather expansive general introduction to the commentary on Prov . 8,22 and one which is essentially catechetical in nature . This introduction appears to be an intentional effort to produce a more thorough literary and doctrinal study to this verse of Proverbs than was the case in the previous commentaries .

And this is really what we find !

This general intro-

duction , Migne's numbers eighteen to forty- three , takes up again the Arian propaganda of the marketplace ; it recalls the Thalia of Arius ; it makes some additional comments in numbers thirty- seven to forty- two .

In short , the introduction prepares the way

for a genuine exegesis of Prov . 8,22 , in that it takes up again and summarizes from

985

Athanasius of Alexandria a new perspective the ideas which are chacteristic of the First Oration .

At the

beginning of the commentary itself on Prov . 8,22 , after this long catechetical introduction , the exegetical principles arrived at at the beginning of the last chapter of the First Oration are once again mentioned , before being applied successively to each word which is under scrutiny in verse twenty- two of Prov . 8 : EntɩOE , äpxn , núρlos , eis ĕpya auтou , as found in Migne , numbers forty- four to fifty- two . Methodically , Athanasius , following the principles he had established , first presents a literal exegesis and then a doctrinal synthesis , as found in numbers fifty- three to sixty-one . Athanasius follows this with two other ' critiques ' , using the same method as before , that is , an analytical exposé followed by a doctrinal synthesis ; the first devoted to Col. 1,15 : πρωτότοκος τῆς κτίσεως Firstborn over all created things from numbers sixty-two to seventy-two ; and the second to Prov . 8,23 : рò тоŨ aiшvos ἐθεμελίωσέ με He founded me before the world -- from numbers seventy- three to seventy- seven .

Both of these critiques form a direct complement to the exegesis of

Prov . 8,22 , which is not the case with the next explanation of this same biblical verse - an explanation announced as ' new ' , actually intended by Athanasius to conform more to what he calls ' the genre of the proverb ' . This explanation can be found in number seventy- seven and goes on to number eighty-two . And this last addition to the Second Oration forms the only passage of the First and Second Orations which cannot be linked to the double group of Arian citations and biblical verses insisted upon by the Arians . We do not see here quite the same style as is found in the long commentary on Prov . 8,22 which precedes it and which is not really connected to it . Rather , it would be better to think of this as a sort of conclusion to the Second Oration as it exists today . It is evident that the complete absence of any genuine conclusion can leave us quite perplexed , especially when we have seen not only how careful Athanasius was to provide an introduction to each of the Orations , but also how meticulous he was in dividing up the sections within the Orations . This is all the more true if we note how each of the chapters which we have mentioned is concluded with very precise rhetorical means . Yet , the Third Oration begins without the slightest suggestion of an introduction . This Third Oration is not without a formal structure , however ; it is clearly divided into discernible parts both in terms of form and content : 1) a first chapter provides a commentary both on John 14,10 : ' I am in the Father , and the Father in me ' , and also on Deut . 32,29 : έyш μóvos - I alone with the express intention of noting the essential unity of the Father and the Son by virtue of their ' mutual indwelling ' ; 2)

a second chapter provides a commentary on the last words of John 17,11 : ' that

they may be one , as we are one ' , and on parts of John 17,20-23 , especially on the phrases ' may they all be one ' , they may be one , as we are one ; I in them and Thou

in me

may they be perfectly one ' , likewise with the express purpose of noting the

986 C. Kannengiesser moral nature of the unity among Christians , which manifests itself both in their virtuous actions and in their peaceful comportment ; this is a direct result of their being united to the essential unity of the Father and Son as ' adopted children ' ; 3)

a fourth chapter which is linked to these exegetical sections and which answers

the Arian objection : the Son is born ' by the desire and will of the Father ' , as is this last chapter pretrue for us Christians in our state of ' adoptive sonship ' sents a dialectical discussion which sounds very scholarly and abstract ; 4)

yet , chapter three of the Third Oration precedes this last chapter

it can be

considered a complete treatise in itself having : a ) appropriate exegetical and dialectical emphases ; b) its own method for refuting adversaries ; c ) its own biblical references which are used to elucidate the phrase ' according to the flesh ' of the Word incarnate ( his ignorance , his growing up , his tears , his fears , his agony ) ; d ) its own conclusion . In 1935 Opitz demonstrated that this central section of the Third Oration , which goes from numbers twenty - six to fifty - eight in Migne and which is one of the passages that the historians of dogma cite most often when they discuss Athanasian christology , was circulated as a discrete section in Greek and Syriac speaking areas up to the seventh century ( pp . 164-168 ) . It was sometimes cited as a treatise ' On the Word made flesh ' , attributed to Athanasius ; it was incorporated into the Third Oration thanks to the efforts of a Byzantine editor . Recently , a number of discoveries have confirmed for the most part the observations made on this subject by Opitz . Yet , the Third Oration as we have it is a composite work ; unfortunately , some of the logical coherence of this text has been lost by the later insertion of a section - or if you will , a ' logos on John 1,14 ' between the present chapters two and four . I should add here , that without this central section - so amazing by the tightness of its argument and the rigour of its terminology - the Third Oration really has no connection with the First and Second Orations ; neither does it logically develop what has been established nor does it repeat or modify any important points .

I could go beyond this and say that the

Third Oration ignores the other two ; it simply lacks their polemical structure which deals with adversary sections in Arius ' Thalia , in a work by Asterius , and in the Arian interpretation of certain parts of the Bible .

It also ignores all the

hermeneutical principles so carefully articulated , as only a pedagogue like Athanasius could do , which were so well applied throughout the first two Orations . As you see , what I have been stressing in my research and have to some extent outlined here tonight leads me to some important propositions which I think can be formulated succinctly in the following way :

1.

First of all , the First and Second Orations are intimately connected with one

Athanasius of Alexandria

987

another in such a way that it seems artificial to divide them .

2. Secondly , the exegesis of Prov . 8,22 makes the first two Orations unbalanced . Not only is it too heavy a section , but its doctrinal content has been elaborated in a manner that is a bit too clever . In addition , it takes up proportionately too much space in comparison with all the other chapters which precede it in the First and Second Orations . It is likewise clear that it has all the appearances of a small treatise that has been ' reworked ' , no doubt by Athanasius himself , and added by him to the First and Second Orations in their original form . 3. Thirdly , this explains why the exegetical material which had been listed is out of order , even though Athanasius insisted very much on the proper order at the beginning of the last chapter of the First Oration .

Thus , the exegesis of Prov . 8,22 has

been transferred from where it was originally intended to be so that it might occupy a larger place ; thus in its final form , it follows the other exegetical material . It is tempting , I must admit , but perhaps foolhardy although we do have touchstones in the exegetical sections in the First and Second Orations -- to try and discern throughout the actual commentary , properly so called , of Prov . 8,22 ( that is Migne's numbers forty- four to sixty- seven of the Second Oration ) , what had been the proper proportion and form for this commentary before it had been reworked and enlarged . 4. This leads me to an hypothesis which I would like to share with you : there is a unique Athanasian Treatise against the Arians. The present First and Second Orations have transmitted to us a version of this treatise which has been amplified and expanded by certain oratorical and doctrinal considerations in order to focus more completely on the exegesis of Prov . 8,22 .

5.

Fifthly and finally , all of what I have said clearly demonstrates that a literary

analysis does not help in establishing contact between the original Oration against the Arians of Athanasius and what has been handed down to us as his Third Treatise against the Arians . If we look for a moment at this hypothesis which postulated a gradual genesis of Athanasius ' Orations against the Arians ( and I emphasize the notion of ' gradual ' ) and which maintains that these Orations had their beginnings in a nucleus of ideas , in themselves quite important , embodied in the First Oration and a small part of the Second , then the problem of dating the Orations is placed in an entirely new light . Such a hypothesis , I suggest , gives a new character and a different hue to the rest of the critical data which I would like to discuss with you . The literary structure of the First and Second Orations , such as we have seen were developed by Athanasius to respond to the ideas advanced by his adversaries , will serve from now on as the foundation of my own critical argument . Only once in his life did this Alexandrine bishop produce a work , considered both personal and doctrinal , which brought together a wide selection of Arian texts and citations . And these textual citations play a very decisive role in the doctrinal material of

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C. Kannengiesser

the First and Second Orations ; it is normal and natural to find in other works of Athanasius traces of the First and Second Orations where he has cited the heretical ideas without which the First and Second Orations would not have existed . By putting the Orations into some sort of time framework in relation to the other doctrinal works of Athanasius , we can observe some rather astonishing parallels with Arian documents of this period and with the refutation of them in the First and Second Orations , namely : in the important dogmatic letter de decretis In Defence of the -

Nicene Council

Dionysii

generally thought to be written about 350 ; in his de sententia

Defence of Dionysius written about 354 ; in the well -written Epistola ad episcopos Aegyptiae et Libyae - The Circular Letter to the Bishops of Egypt and written in 356 ; in the well -known letters to Serapion ' On the Divinity of Libya -

the Holy Spirit ' , written between 356 and 362 ; and finally in the impressive - written apologetical work de synodis - On the Council of Ariminum and Seleucia in 361/362 . In 1898 , Stülcken demonstrated the parallel between the de decretis of 350 and the Orations in order to establish , with sound reasoning I believe , the literary dependence of the first on the second . His argument would have been even more probing , in my opinion , if he had indicated , as his own notes clearly reveal , that he only wanted to show the parallel relationships between the de decretis and the First and Second Orations , or even more precisely , between the de decretis and the First Oration . Moreover , Stülcken has not really considered in his proposal all the possible approaches , since the same question of literary dependence as pertains especially to the polemical material in the First and Second Orations ought to be asked and treated in turn , without pushing too hard , by showing the relationship between the Orations and the three other works of Athanasius I have just mentioned which are among the most interesting doctrinal works he wrote : de sententia Dionysii , Epistola ad episcopos Aegyptiae et Libyae , and the de synodis . Without deciding one way or another in an a priori manner concerning the date of composition of the Orations and thus prejudging the situation , it is possible to use the more characteristic elements of their literary and polemical structure as a sort of ' heuristic key ' in order to understand the structure of the other works of Athanasius which I have mentioned . Thus the de decretis provides a rather long lesson of hermeneutics about the decisions of the Council of Nicea twenty- five years after it met . And this lesson of the de decretis not only follows to the letter certain passages in the First Oration , but all its doctrinal themes are worked out according to an intellectual framework which can only be appreciated after one has analyzed the First Oration . Nor would I want to fail to call attention to the carefully articulated analysis of the Arian positions which are cited and duly rebuted in the Defence of Dionysius which develops a considerable number of precise ideas showing how the Defence is an important link between the de decretis and the

989

Athanasius of Alexandria Thus the polemical structure

Circular Letter to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya. which can be clearly discerned in the Orations provides a number of criteria which allow the scholar to determine with more precision the nature of the dependence of one dogmatic work on another throughout Athanasius ' career . The case of the Circular Letter to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya , dictated by Athanasius at the beginning of his third exile , between 9 February and 7 April 356 , is by far the most interesting . In this Circular Letter , Athanasius completely reworked all the polemical material of the First Oration ; he rearranged the Arian texts in a different order , in tune more with the genuine doctrinal motifs he wished to treat , which reflected , at the same time , not only the systematic arguments and refutations one finds in the First Oration , but also a review of ideas proposed in the de decretis . Thus , this Circular Letter of 356 reveals a black and white clarity and precision in its dependence on the First Oration . But I am not going to develop this much further , except to state that this Circular Letter is the first work of Athanasius which makes reference to his commentary on Prov . 8,22 , thus to the Second Oration in its present state . Likewise it seems to me - and I say this with a certain amount of astonish-

ment - that Athanasius seemed to ignore completely the existence of the Third Oration . In the Letters to Serapion on the Divinity of the Holy Spirit , published between 356 and 362 , and no doubt closer to 356 than 362 , Athanasius made use of the Orations , though I would not insist in this point . What is striking , however , is the identical language and the type of argument which Athanasius used both in the First and Second Orations and in the Letters to Serapion which were , in fact , destined for the monastic communities in the deserts of Egypt . And for the first time in a work by Athanasius , these Letters to Serapion embody some of the literary and doctrinal elements which can be found more clearly and more explicitly inthe Third Oration . Finally , the voluminous apologetical work , the de synodis , finished in December 361 or January 362 , presents in chapter fifteen the well-known ' Blasphemies of Arius ' ; I would only like to make one remark about these ' Blasphemies ' .

On the one hand , a

comparison of these ' Blasphemies ' with the collection of citations of Arius , constantly repeated by Athanasius in one work after another since the writing of the First Oration , at a number of points shows clearly a knowledge of the Arian positions which were part -and -parcel of the controversies around 360 ; on the other hand , these ' Blasphemies ' are marked by the different phases of the controversies that occurred after the decade of the 30's . In other words , the ' Blasphemies of Arius ' presented in chapter fifteen of the de synodis are related to the polemical structure of this apologetical work , as a version , if you will , of the ancient Thalia of Arius mainly directed against Acacius of Caesarea . But let me stop here with this investigation of the impact of the Orations in the other principal dogmatic works of Athanasius .

I believe I am in the company of fine

990 C. Kannengiesser scholars , as I state my conclusion : ' The Orations were written before the other works we have looked at ' . To this I would add another important point : ' The Third Oration remains completely foreign to the literary conparisons which lead to the conclusion I have just made ' . Putting aside for the moment the enigmatic status of the Third Oration , whose direct relationship with one or other of the later writings attributed to Athanasius is not being called into question , let us concentrate our attention on something which we really must ask : if the Orations were written before the de decretis of 350 and before the other works I have mentioned , what date should be given to them ? Without doubt , both Loofs and Stülcken have offered valuable arguments ; they suggest 340 or thereabouts as the date of composition , that is , either just before or during Athanasius ' second exile . But I would like to be even more precise . In doing this , the distinction I make between the first two Orations and the third , as well as my contention that the entire work can be reduced to one single original Oration , allows me to continue the discussion started by Bernard de Montfaucon and Lenain de Tillemont which , unfortunately , remained in limbo for nearly three centuries .

In

resuming this discussion which concerns both the Letter of Athanasius concerning the Death of Arius and one of his letters To the Monks - this Letter to the Monks normally serves as a preface to the popular Historia Arianorum ad Monachos , written in 358 - I have found something rather spectacular at least to my mind - which will shed light on the date and audience , the ' Sitz - im- Leben ' , even on the intention of Athanasius à propos the original Oration against the Arians . All of this will lead to the confirmation of my hypothesis . To begin , the ninth or tenth century Byzantine editor was wrong in attaching the admirable Letter to the Monks to the History of the Arians . In spite of a similar expression at the beginning of each of these writings concerning the ' sufferings ' which the Arians had caused Athanasius to experience , these two writings are of a completely different nature . In 1891 , Archibald Robertson dealt with their relationship without drawing the proper conclusions from his research .

He merely mentioned

in his fine English edition , the following : ' The Letter and History are frequently Joined together without any sign of division . At the same time the correctness of this collocation is not entirely free from doubt ' .

In fact the History of the Arians

is the low point of the works which Athanasius dictated , with regards , at least , to doctrinal content and spirituality .

In this work , Athanasius mostly chronicles the

events and facts relative to the Arian crisis , listing them year after year , without a single line devoted to theological reflection

all of this in fifty columns of

Greek in the Migne edition ! In order to prove my case , I have only to mention this : the divine title of the Word ( Logos ) is not even mentioned once in this work . Yet in the Letter to the Monks , we find the following ( and with your permission , I would like to cite a few passages ) :

Athanasius of Alexandria

991

...In compliance with your affectionate request , which you have frequently urged upon me , I have written a short account of the sufferings which ourselves and the Church have undergone , refuting , according to my ability , the accursed heresy of the Arian madmen , and proving how entirely it is alien from the Truth . And I thought it needful to represent to your Piety what pains the writing of these things has cost me , ...For the more I desired to write , and endeavoured to force myself to understand the Divinity of the Word , so much the more did the knowledge thereof withdraw itself from me ; and in proportion as I thought that I apprehended it , in so much I perceived myself to fail of doing so . Moreover also I was unable to express in writing even what I seemed to myself to understand ; and that which I wrote was unequal to the imperfect shadow of the truth which existed in my conception ... ...I frequently designed to stop and to cease writing ; believe me , I did . But lest I should be found to disappoint you , or by my silence to lead into impiety those who have made enquiry of you , and are given to disputation , I constrained myself to write briefly , what I have now sent to your piety . For although a perfect apprehension of the truth is at present far removed from us by reason of the infirmity of the flesh , yet it is possible ... to perceive the madness of the impious ... Wherefore for this reason , as perceiving this and able to find it out , I have written , knowing that to the faithful the detection of impiety is a sufficient information wherein piety consists . For although it be impossible to comprehend what God is , yet it is possible to say what He is not . And we know that He is not as man ; and that it is not lawful to conceive of any originated nature as existing in Him . So also respecting the Son of God , although we are by nature very far from being able to comprehend Him ; yet it is possible and easy to condemn the assertions of the heretics concerning Him , and to say , that the Son of God is not such ... Accordingly I have written as well as I was able ; and you , dearly beloved , receive these communications not as containing a perfect exposition of the Godhead of the Word , but as being merely a refutation of the impiety of the enemies of Christ , and as containing and affording to those who desire it , suggestions for arriving at a pious and sound faith in Christ . And if in anything they are defective ( and I think they are defective in all respects ) , pardon it with a pure conscience , and only receive favourably the boldness of my good intentions in support of godliness ... Now when you have read this account , pray for me , and exhort one another so to do . And immediately send it back to me , and suffer no one whatever to take a copy of it , nor transcribe it for yourselves . But like good money-changers be satisfied with the reading ; but read it repeatedly if you desire to do so . For it is not safe that the writings of us babblers and private persons should fall into the hands of them that shall come after ... (Robertson , p . 503 ) The final salutations follow. As Athanasius says himself in his Letter to Serapion Concerning the Death of Arius , sent just after the present Letter to the Monks , it is a question in all of this of an anti -Arian theological treatise concerning ' the highest and chief

992

C. Kannengiesser doctrines ' of the Christian faith taught according to the Alexandrine tradition περὶ τῶν ἀνωτάτων καὶ κορυφαιοτάτων δογμάτων .

The fact that the Three Orations

comprised such a massive amount of material prevented many scholars from seeing in this an allusion to the Orations . But the uniquely original Treatise against the Arians of my hypothesis corresponds perfectly to the confidential statements made by Athanasius in the Letter to the Monks . Yet , at this point , my entire hypothesis seems suddenly to have fallen into a fatal trap . On one hand , a comparative study of the writings of Athanasius indicates that the period around 340 is the date of composition of the original Orations .

On

the other hand , the Letter to the Monks which I connected with the composition of the Orations is dated 358 , along with the Letter Concerning the Death of Arius and the History of the Arians. This date seems to have been established by the Byzantine editor who regrouped these works together some time in the tenth century .

This date

makes some sense , but not too much , from a psychological point of view ; the History of the Arians certainly dates from 358 , and the Letter to the Monks was written at the same time since it seems it was addressed to the same audience ; on the other hand , this same Letter to the Monks is linked to the Letter to Serapion Concerning the Death of Arius ; finally , the other Letters to Serapion Concerning the Divinity of the Holy Spirit were certainly drafted ' in the desert ' near the monasteries of the monks , during the third exile of Athanasius , that is about 358.

In short , it

makes some sense to see why 358 was chosen since all these works were addressed to the same people and with a similar pastoral purpose .

But it is easy to overlook the

one chronological indication contained in the Letter to the Monks , which I intentionally did not cite just a minute ago .

Towards the end of the Letter to the Monks ,

before the customary greeting , Athanasius makes an allusion to ' the death of Arius , which others also have just informed you about - ἣν ἤδη φθάσαντες καὶ παρ' ἑτέρων ἔγνωτε . Arius died in Constantinople in 336. This mention of his death in the Letter to the Monks only alludes to the longer account of this death which was sent to Serapion either the same day or a few days afterwards in the Letter intitled as Concerning the death of Arius . Yet no one , as far as I know , has ever mentioned in this context the other important allusion to this same account , in Athanasius ' Circular Letter to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya which dates from the spring of 356.

This encyclical

Letter contains a résumé of the Letter to Serapion Concerning the Death of Arius and develops two precise literary topics .

By 356 , Athanasius had become fiercely

opposed to the ecclesiastical policies of Constantius II and all that they represented ; thus he started to inculcate into the bishops under his jurisdiction the idea that the imperial and actual protectors of those whom he considered as ' Arians ' were , in fact , the equivalent of the first leaders of the heresy , starting with Arius himself . In the twelfth chapter of the Circular Letter , Athanasius presents

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his famous argument , mainly composed of textual citations borrowed from the Thalia of Arius , as I already noted in the comparative study I made between the Orations and the other dogmatic writings of Athanasius .

From chapter thirteen to chapter

seventeen he refutes the opposing view , especially from an exegetical and theoretical point of view . In chapter eighteen , as we expect him to do , he balances his theoretical position with some pragmatic and empirical evidence . It is here that he talks about Arius ' death ; he can hardly hide his intention to praise ' blessed Constantine ' while looking disfavourably at his son , Constantius , who was actually ruling and who was favourably disposed towards the episcopal adversaries of Athanasius . Arius' death is recounted towards the end of chapter eighteen .

In chapter nineteen , his

death is recounted again and Athanasius includes a résumé of the Letter to Serapion Concerning the Death of Arius together with a commentary which focused attention again on this letter so as to highlight Constantine's attitude towards Athanasius , an attitude judged praiseworthy enough , although Athanasius himself had been ordered into exile by Constantine ; thus he was at Trier during the time when Arius died . It is clear that we have here a literary ' montage ' .

The double citing of Arius ' death

in two successive chapters can only be explained by the fact that an older version was intentionally joined to a newer version in order to accommodate the older one to the more recent circumstances of the so- called Arian crisis . Thus , an excellent literary effect is produced in mentioning after the theoretical refutation this death of Arius as part of an empirical argument in chapter eighteen , by having recourse to the Letter to Serapion on the same subject to block this argument in chapter nineteen , after having started the theoretical refutation by recalling the Thalia of Arius in chapter twelve , and by summarizing parts of the Thalia in the First Oration . Thus , the entire effort to argue against the political adversaries of 356 in chapters thirteen to seventeen is put into a new framework , build up by facts and texts which link the attention of the readers with the early stages of the Arian controversy . In any case , we are forced to posit an earlier date for this Letter to Serapion Concerning the Death of Arius , since Athanasius used it again in his Circular Letter of 356. Thus we can also dismiss the hypothetical date of 358 for the Letter to the Monks and for the Letter to Serapion Concerning the Death of Arius . I think it is a bit too easy to jest about the unanimous silence of the critics on the subject of the grave debate which began suddenly twenty-two years after the death of Arius , a debate instigated by monastic communities in Egypt which necessitated some formal action on the part of Bishop Serapion of Thmuis in addition to an official letter from the Pope of Alexandria . In this letter , certain people are mentioned who came to meet with the monks persuading them that Arius had reconciled himself to the Church before his death . It would seem that many other accounts like this would have been much clearer had they been written right after Arius ' death and not years later .

There exists , however , a literary work which had a bearing on

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this topic .

In the collection of Festal Letters which Athanasius wrote , the twelfth

letter was lost and subsequently replaced by a personal letter of Athanasius to Serapion ; this fairly private letter had probably been attached to the official Festal Letter for Easter 340 and sent from Rome during the first few weeks of that same year .

This letter , which described the disputes with the Melitians and noted

the introduction of the forty- day Lenten fast in the churches under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Alexandria , reproduced point -by-point the major features of Athanasius ' style and composition as found in his Letter to Serapion Concerning the Death of Arius . I can assure you , too , that whoever analyzes carefully Athanasius ' Letter to the Monks will be justly rewarded .

This personal letter of Athanasius

which I cited a while ago has a number of points in common with the present First Oration: of a total of 18 propositions in this letter , 11 of the 18 offer approximately 30 points of comparison exclusively with this First Oration , either in terms of verbal characteristics or in terms of similar groups of words . In addition , there are 7 points in common with the twin apologies Against the Heathen and on the Incarnation , and 6 others can be cited as referring both to this apology and the First Oration . I am not going to go into more detail . It seems to me , however , that we have gone quite a long way and arrived at the immediate proximity of those days which Athanasius reserved for the redaction of his original treatise Against the Arians written for the Egyptian monks . This redaction can be placed between the private letter to Serapion which I mentioned before was written at the beginning of 340 and the Letter Concerning the Death of Arius - all these writings dating from the first part of Athanasius ' Roman exile before he left for Milan where he was ordered to meet with the Emperor Constantius in the autumn of 342 - and his voyage to Trier and his participation at the Council of Sardica during the summer of 343 . I am sure you feel with me that this attempt to organize more precisely the chronology of this material concerning Athanasius and his letters has given us enough new reasons to reinvestigate the interpretation of the Orations against the Arians . But almost nothing has been said about the nature and significance of the present Third Oration . Let me indicate a few directions I hope the research would take in the future : 1.

First , the Third Oration cites implicitly and uses other Athanasian writings in No other work of Athanasius is quite like this .

a unique sort of way . 2.

Secondly , the actual Third Oration has unusual points -of- contact with two other

later works attributed to Athanasius : first , the Letter to the Bishops of Africa ( Ad Afros ) which we normally think was written about 369 ; and second , the Letter to Maximus, the Philosopher , dated ' about 371 ' .

The unusual qualities of these two

letters can be best appreciated only after a comparison has been made between them and the Third Oration.

3.

And finally , the Third Oration seems to vibrate with the theological thinking of

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one of Athanasius ' best friends and admirers , his junior by ten years , whom he visited after returning from his second exile in 346 ; I mean , of course , Apollinarius of Laodicea . These two men lived in the same intellectual universe and understood one another's language and mode of thinking . rigorous comparative study of their works .

SP 3 - C

Scholars would do well to undertake a more

Zur Glaubwürdigkeit historischer Aussagen des Bischofs Athanasius von Alexandria über die Religionspolitik des Kaisers Constantius II R. Klein Erlangen

THANASIUS , der Bischof von Alexandria , war im Jahr 355 von einer Bischofsvervon Grinden verurteilt und seiers Antho erhoben 1 worden. Der Kaiser Constantius schickte im Anschluß daran einen zuverlässigen A

Beamten nach Aegypten , der für die Durchführung des Beschlusses sorgen sollte . Athanasius konnte jedoch rechtzeitig entkommen . Einige Monate später ließ Constantius den Alexandrinern einen persönlichen Brief überbringen mit der Forderung , ihren widersetzlichen Oberhirten den staatlichen Organen auszuliefern . So war diesem jede Möglichkeit einer Rückkehr in sein Amt genommen . Am 24. Februar 357 hielt der schon lange vorher ordinierte Gegenbischof Georgius seinen Einzug in der noch immer unruhigen Stadt.2 Der abgesetzte Metropolit hatte jedoch bei den Mönchen in der Wüste eine sichere Zuflucht gefunden . Er nützte dort die Gelegenheit zu literarischen Arbeiten , in denen er sich in sehr polemischer Weise gegen alle Vorwürfe zu rechtfertigen versuchte . Das entscheidende Werk , das in dieser erzwungenen Muße 3 entstand , ist die historia Arianorum ad monachos . In formaler Hinsicht fällt an dieser Schrift auf , daß der Verfasser besonders viele wörtliche Reden eingefügt hat , sowohl solche , die von Bischöfen zur Verteidigung des ' rechten Glaubens ' und somit seiner eigenen Sache gehalten werden , wie auch Man

solche , welche seine Gegner , die Verfechter der ' arianischen Sache ' , halten .

hat längst gesehen , daß diese Reden im Gegensatz zu den zahlreichen Urkunden , wie sie besonders in der vorangegangenen ' Apologie gegen die Arianer ' erscheinen , keinen Anspruch aud Authentizität erheben können , sondern in der vorliegenden Form der Feder des Verfassers entstammen . Wie weit sie wirklich gesprochene Sätze dem Sinne nach 4 wiedergeben , soll an zwei Beispielen nachgeprüft werden . I Im ersten Fall ist dies wesentlich leichter , da der Parallelbericht eines anderen Zeugen vorliegt .

Gemeint ist das denkwürdige Verhör , in dem sich der römische

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Bischof Athanasius und Kaiser Constantius II Beschof Liberius im Jahre 355 in Mailand dem Kaiser zu stellen hatte .

Die wenigen

westlichen Teilnehmer , welche den Spruch des Konzils gegen Athanasius nicht unter5 schrieben , mußten auf kaiserlichen Befehl den Weg in die Verbannung antreten . Constantius war sich bewußt , daß die Entscheidung des Konzils an Ansehen noch gewönne , wenn der Bischof von Rom - er war in Mailand nicht anwesend sich ebenfalls zur Unterschrift bereitfände .

Daher wurde auf seine Veranlassung der hohe Beamte

Eusebius , versehen mit einem persönlichen Brief des Kaisers , in die ehrwürdige Metropole geschickt , um Liberius hierfür zu gewinnen . Als dieser sich weigerte , der Forderung nachzukommen , wurde er in einer kurzfristigen nächtlichen Aktion in die kaiserliche Residenz nach Oberitalien gebracht . Constantius , der ihn mit ausgesuchter Höflichkeit behandelte , erreichte jedoch auch in einem persönlichen Gespräch sein Ziel nicht und so mußte der seines Amtes entsetzte Oberhirte Roms sich 6 ebenfalls dem Verbannungsurteil fügen ." Von jener Unterredung ist nun bei Theodoret in stenographischem Wortlaut ein Bericht erhalten , ' ein Dokument , das mit seiner lebendigen Gegenständlichkeit die Bürgschaft der Echtheit an sich trägt ' ( Caspar ) . Das kann freilich nicht heißen , daß eine durchgehende jeder Satz und jedes Wort tatsächlich so gesprochen wurden Stilisierung und manche spätere Zutaten sind unübersehbar

aber die Grundzüge des

Inhalts und die Abfolge der Gedanken dürften der tatsächlichen Unterredung ent7 sprechen ." Der Kaiser beginnt das Gespräch mit der Frage an Liberius , warum er dem ' ruchlosen Wahnsinn des unseligen Athanasius ' noch nicht die Gemeinschaft aufgekündigt habe , da dies doch der ganze Erdkreis durch gemeinsamen Beschluß getan habe . Der Angeredete beruft sich auf die Normen des kirchlichen Prozeßverfahrens , die in Mailand nicht eingehalten worden seien .

Constantius nimmt den Gedanken , die Ver-

urteilung durch den ganzen Erdkreis , noch einmal auf und sucht ihm nun größeres Gewicht zu verleihen , indem er darauf verweist , daß sich Athanasius dem Spruch bisher noch nicht gefügt und sein Bistum noch nicht verlassen habe .

Der Bischof konkreti-

siert nun , warum man nach seiner Meinung nicht von einem ordentlichen Verfahren sprechen könne .

Die Entscheidung sei in Abwesenheit des Angeklagten aus Rücksicht

auf die Ehre des Kaisers und aus Angst vor dessen Ungnade gefällt worden .

Aber in

Tyros , so entgegnet dieser , sei in Anwesenheit des Beschuldigten gerichtet worden , was Liberius für die letzte entscheidende Abstimmung zu Recht verneint . Den Zusatz des anwesenden Ministers Eusebius , daß dieser überführt sei , vom katholischen Glauben abgewichen zu sein , beantwortet Liberius ausführlicher mit der Aufzählung urkundlichen Materials , das Athanasius schon auf den Synoden von Rom und Serdica vorgelegt 8 haben dürfte . Den plumpen Einwurf des ebenfalls anwesenden Bischofs Epiktet von Centumcellae , Liberius gehe es nicht um den Glauben , sondern um die Stärkung seines Ansehens bei den römischen Senatoren , beachtet der Kaiser in vornehm zurückhaltender Weise gar nicht .

Er führt vielmehr eines neues Argument ins Feld , wenn er dem

Verhörten vorwirft , durch die Verweigerung seiner Unterschrift störe er den Frieden

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der Christenheit und der ganzen Welt .

Dieser läßt sich jedoch nicht vom Glauben auf

das Feld der Politik abdrängen und sucht durch ein Beispiel aus dem Alten Testament , die Geschichte von den Jünglingen im Feuerofen , seine standhafte Haltung auch gegen das Votum einer erdrückenden Mehrheit zu legitimieren .

Mit Recht kreidet ihm

Eusebius sofort an , daß er mit diesem Exemplum den Herrscher dem tyrannischen Babylonierkönig an die Seite stelle . Diese unbeabsichtigte Beleidigung korrigiert Liberius sofort . Im Anschluß daran bringt er die gleiche Forderung vor , die Paulinus von Trier in Arles und Eusebius von Vercellae auf dem Konzil von Mailand erhoben hatten , daß man zunächst von jedem Teilnehmer die Unterschrift unter das nicänische Symbol verlangen müsse .

Erst wenn dies geschehen sei und wenn die ver

bannten ' Brüder ' wieder an ihre Sitze zurückgekehrt seien , könne eine Untersuchung an Ort und Stelle anberaumt werden . Dem harten Einwurf des Epiktet , daß für eine solche neue Versammlung das gesamte öffentliche Postwesen nicht ausreiche , begegnet Liberius mit dem unglaubwürdigen Argument , daß die Kirchen selbst ihre Bischöfe überallhin befördern könnten . Der Kaiser läßt sich jedoch durch das Beharren auf der Glaubensfrage nicht von der Person des Athanasius ablenken und verweist erneut auf die Rechtmäßigkeit des bereits ergangenen Urteils . Es erstaunt nicht , wenn er darauf beinahe stereotyp das formal juristische Prinzip , niemand dürfe in Abwesenheit verurteilt werden , zu hören bekommt .

Als der angeredete Bischof jedoch etwas

von einer persönlichen Feindschaft des Constantius gegen den Gerichteten durchblicken läßt , hält ihm jener erregt einen der wirklichen Anklagepunkte vor : Athanasius habe seinen Bruder Constans gegen ihn aufgehetzt , und schon lange ertrage er dies mit großer Sanftmut .

Nun empfinde er über den Urteilsspruch mehr Genugtuung 9 als über die Siege gegen Magnentius und Silvanus . Als hierzu Liberius wiederum

nichts anderes vorzubringen weiß als die Forderung nach Rückführung der vertriebenen Bischöfe und die Bekenntnisfrage , versucht es der Kaiser sogar mit einer flehentlichen Bitte : ' Laß dich um des Friedens willen erweichen , unterschreibe und kehre zurück nach Rom!

Aber selbst der gewährte Aufschub von drei Tagen sowie das

Angebot einer ansehnlichen Geldsumme konnten dem Bericht des Theodoret zufolge den römischen Bischof nicht erweichen .

Die kirchlichen Satzungen , so schließt rühmend 10 das Protokoll , standen ihm höher als der Aufenthalt in Rom . Überblickt man das gesamte Gespräch , so erscheint Liberius zwar als ein redlicher

Vertreter des Glaubens und der Rechte der Kirche , gewiß nicht ohne Würde und innere Überzeugung , aber besondere Klugheit und Gewandtheit , wie man dies vom Inhaber eines so hohen kirchlichen Amtes erwartet , kann man ihm sicher nicht zubilligen . Sicherheit sind ebenfalls nicht seine stärksten Seiten . weit gegangen ist , steckt er sogleich zurück .

Mut und

Wenn er merkt , daß er zu

Er kennt zwar die Argumente - ' es

geht nicht um die Person des Athanasius , sondern um den Glauben ' und ' kein Urteil über einen Abwesenden ' - aber selbstbewußt bringt er sie nicht vor . Auch wenn er einmal Athanasius als einen Mann bezeichnet , der nichts verbrochen hat , so gewinnt

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man andererseits durch seine Bitte um eine eingehende Untersuchung in Ägypten und sein ständiges , teilweise unmotiviertes Ausweichen auf die Bekenntnisfrage doch die Überzeugung , daß er von der Richtigkeit seiner eigenen Behauptung nicht vollständig durchdrungen ist .

Über die Stellung des Kaisers innerhalb einer Versammlung von

Bischöfen im allgemeinen sowie über die Rolle , die insbesondere Constantius im Palast zu Mailand spielte , fällt in dieser ganzen Unterredung kein Wort . Vergleicht man den Inhalt dieses Dokuments mit dem , was Athanasius aus der gleichen Situation gemacht hat , so könnte der Unterschied nicht größer sein .

In

einem überaus selbstbewußten Monolog , dem er ein eigenes Kapitel in seiner historia Arianorum widmet ( 39 ) , warnt der nach Mailand gebrachte Liberius den Kaiser , die Kirche zu verfolgen und mit seiner Hilfe die Gottlosigkeit einzuführen ; denn zu allem anderen sei er bereit , nur nicht dazu , sich áp¤ɩоμаvúτns nennen zu lassen . Constantius solle doch die Christen nicht zwingen , Feinde der Christen zu werden . Nach dieser auch sprachlich gelungenen Antithese rät er ihm eindringlich , nicht mit dem den Kampf aufzunehmen , der ihm seine Herrschaft verliehen habe , und diese Gnade statt mit Dank nicht mit gottlosem Handeln zu vergelten . Der Gehorsam gegen die Gebote Christi , den einst Paulus gezeigt habe , gelte auch für den Kaiser , der endlich aufhören solle , Menschen zu verfolgen , die an Christus glauben .

Er , Liberius ,

sei gekommen , ehe die Gegner ihre falschen Anklagen auch gegen ihn ersinnen könnten . Durch seine Verbannung , die er jetzt erwarte , werde überall sichtbar werden , daß die Beschuldigungen gegen die , welche das gleiche Schicksal bereits erlitten hätten hier soll man in erster Linie an Athanasius denken - ebenfalls jeder Grundlage 11 entbehrten . Die Worte ihrer Widersacher bestünden nur aus Lüge und Verleumdung ." Der Unterschied zwischen den beiden Dokumenten , im Ton wie im Inhalt , liegt klar auf der Hand .

Aus dem vorsichtigen Gesprächspartner ist ein leidenschaftlicher

Verteidiger des ' rechten Glaubens ' gegen den ' arianischen Wahnsinn ' sowie ein unerschrockener Hirte seiner Bischöfe gegen unerlaubte Übergriffe des Staates geworden . Der Alexandriner hatte sicherlich von der Haltung seines römischen Amtsbruders gehört und wußte , daß jener auf kaiserlichen Befehl den Weg ins Exil zu gehen hatte , aber es ist sehr unwahrscheinlich , daß ihm der aktenmäßig festgehaltene 12 Wortlaut des Verhörs zur Verfügung stand . Er versichert nämlich im Gegensatz zu Theodoret nachdrücklich , daß Constantius ohne jede Antwort sofort das Verbannungs13 urteil ausgesprochen habe . So formte er nach eigenem Gutdünken eine rhetorisch glanzvoll aufgeputzte Rede eines tapferen geistlichen Würdenträgers . Dem Vertreter der weltlichen Macht gesteht er kein einziges Wort der Erwiderung zu .

Die erste

Hälfte besteht aus mehreren eindringlichen , sich jeweils steigernden Mahnungen an Constantius , die schuldige Dankbarkeit gegen seinen göttlichen Herrn nicht zu vergessen und weiterhin nicht unschuldige Bischöfe zu verfolgen . Mit der sechsfachen Anapher des Wörtchens un hämmert er ihm seine Pflichten gegen die Kirche und ihre Amtsträger ein . Den Höhepunkt und zugleich den Abschluß des ersten Teils bildet das Schriftzitat : Σκληρόν σοι πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζειν ( Act . 26 , 14 ) .

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Es ist vom Verfasser bewußt in die Mitte der Rede gesetzt .

In der zweiten Hälfte

werden die Konsequenzen aus dem vorher Gesagten für den vorliegenden Fall gezogen : Weil der Kaiser sich gegen die Wahrheit vergeht , deshalb sind seine Beschuldigungen 14 gegen die Verbannten Lug und Trug. Betrachtet man diesen kunstvollen Bau der Rede , so ist bereits über ihren Gehalt und darüber , wie sie zu bewerten ist , Wesentliches ausgesagt .

Athanasius geht es keineswegs um eine sachgemäße Darstellung , sondern

um ein bewunderungswürdiges Plädoyer des Liberius für die ' reine Lehre ' sowie um die persönliche Integrität dessen , der damals für ihn gesprochen hatte .

Sämtliche

Sätze lassen sich auf die Antithese ' Kampf für den rechten Glauben gegen die 15 Haeresie zurück führen ." Wandelt man diese Antithese in einen persönlichen Gegensatz um, so kommen auf der einen Seite die Verteidiger der ' orthodoxen ' Religion , allen voran Athanasius und Liberius , auf der anderen die ' Arianer ' , die Verfechter des ' gottlosen Wahnsinns ' , zu stehen .

Die Identifizierung der Wahrheit mit

Athanasius ist dabei so vollständig , daß sein Name gar nicht mehr erwähnt zu werden braucht . Um den Eindruck dieser wirkungsvollen Gegenüberstellung nicht zu verve wischen , werden konkrete Dinge gar nicht angesprochen .

Kein Wort verliert der

Verfasser über das formalrechtliche Problem , ob ein solcher Spruch ohne die persönliche Anwesenheit des Beklagten legitim sei , woran sich Liberius nach der Aussage Theodorets so sehr klammerte . Es versteht sich beinahe von selbst , daß der Kaiser keine Gelegenheit erhält , die politischen Anklagen gegen den Alexandriner , etwa die Konspiration mit Magnentius und das Ausspielen der kaiserlicher Brüder , vorzubringen oder sein Programm vom Frieden auf dem ganzen Erdkreis in die Waagschale zu werfen . Athanasius war sich sehr wohl bewußt , daß Constantius gerade dieses letzte Argument immer wieder in den Mittelpunkt rückte und daß er damit die allermeisten Bischöfe in Mailand zu gewinnen wußte ; denn an anderen Stellen der historia Arianorum greift er es selbst auf ( z . B. 36 , 2 ) .

Ebenso zeigt sein ausführlicher Widerlegungsversuch

der politischen Anklagepunkte in der kurz vorher erschienenen ' Apologie an den Kaiser Constantius ' , daß er sehr genau Bescheid wußte , worum es in Mailand wirklich ging .

Aber darauf kommt es ihm in dieser sorgfältig komponierten Liberiusrede gar

nicht an .

Sein Streben ist in propagandistischer Manier allein darauf gerichtet ,

sich selbst und jene wenigen Bischöfe , die sich seiner Sache annahmen , als entschlossene Gegner der αἵρεσις τῶν ᾿Αρειανῶν in ein günstiges Licht zu rücken . Die gesamte Rede unterscheidet sich daher in keiner Weise von den langen Haßtiraden , die der ebenso ungestüme wie ungebildete Bischof Lucifer von Calaris in seinem syrischen 16 Exil gegen den Kaiser verfaßte , dem er seine Verbannung nicht verzeihen konnte ." Es kann hier nicht auf jene andere , wesentlich längere Rede eingegangen werden , die Athanasius dem Liberius in den Mund legt , als es für diesen darum ging , dem kaiserlichen Abgesandten in Rom eine würdige Antwort zu enteilen .

Sie hat einmal

den gleichen Zweck wie die eben behandelte , nämlich die Unerschrockenkeit und die Standhaftigkeit des Bischofs zu dokumentieren , zum anderen will sie die ' arianische '

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Gesinnung der Höflinge bloßstellen.17 Jedoch wird darin der Fall des Athanasius mehr in anderer Weise ins Grundsätzliche gehoben .

Liberius erscheint als Fürsprecher

kirchlicher Freiheit gegen staatliche Übergriffe .

In einprägsamen Formulierungen

fordert er hier , daß künftig eine kirchliche Synode fern vom Palast zusammentreten müsse , bei der dann auch der Kaiser nicht anwesend sei .

' Kein Höfling ' , so fährt

er fort , ' möge dazu kommen und kein Statthalter Drohungen ausstoßen , sondern es möge 18 genug sein an der Furcht Gottes und an der apostolischen Ordnung ' . Es läßt sich ohne Schwierigkeiten zeigen , daß sich auch das Thema der kirchlichen Unabhängigkeit leitmotivisch durch die Werke des Athanasius in dieser Zeit zieht . Er sah darin eine weitere Möglichkeit , sich als ungerecht Verfolgten herauszustellen . Es bleibt noch eine indirekte Möglichkeit , jene standhafte Liberiusrede vor dem Kaiser als inhaltlich wertlose , rhetorische Fiktion zu erweisen . Es handelt sich hierbei um einige Briefe des römischen Bischofs , die im originalen Wortlaut über19 liefert sind . Im ersten trägt er im Jahr 353 in bescheidener Weise Constantius sein Anliegen vor , nämlich die Anberaumung einer neuen , größeren Bischofsversammlung , auf der die Glaubens- und die Athanasiusfrage ausführlicher behandelt werden sollten . Er spricht hier in einer Weise , die sehr stark an das Theodoretprotokoll erinnert und die andererseits in völligem Gegensatz zu dem selbstbewußten Auftreten steht , das er dem Bericht des Athanasius zufolge vor dem Kaiser gezeigt haben soll . Geradezu devot hört sich der Eingang des Briefes an : ' Obsecro , tranquillissime imperator , ut mihi benignas aures clementia tua tribuat , quo possit mansuetudini tuae mentis meae propositum apparere ' ( Feder , p . 89 ) .

Im Gegensatz zu den fingierten

Worten in der historia Arianorum , wo der Kaiser als Verfolger der Christen und Anhänger der arianischen Lehre gebrandmarkt wird , stellt Liberius hier in immer neuen Formeln die Frömmigkeit des Herrschers heraus . Er rühmt an ihm als besondere Tugend seine Milde und seine Mäßigung im Zorn .

Er bemerkt eigens , daß eine gründ-

liche Bereinigung der Glaubenssache auch der kaiserlichen Herrschaft würdig sei , die durch die Gnade Christi erhalten und gestärkt werde . Jeder wisse , wie sehr der 20 gnädige Kaiser in Ehrerbietung der heiligen Religion ergeben sei . Solche und 21 ähnliche Formulierungen finden sich beinahe in jedem Abschnitt des Schreibens . Nur gleichsam unter ihrem Schutz wagt es der Inhaber des römischen Bischofsthrones , behutsam um eine Wiederaufnahme der Angelegenheit des Ahtanasius zu bitten und seinen Vorschlag für eine neue Bischofsversammlung vorzubringen . Der Brief klingt aus mit einer beinahe abstoßenden Häufung unterwürfiger Wendungen an den gnädigsten und frömmsten Kaiser , dem er zugesteht , daß er bei seinen Handlungen stets vom Segen 22 Überblickt man das Schreiben als Ganzes , so ergibt des Himmels begleitet werde . sich daraus das Bild eines Verfassers , der es unter allen Umständen vermeiden möchte , mit seinem weltlichen Herrn in irgendeinen Konflikt zu geraten und der an der schweren Bürde leitet , die ihm durch sein hohes Amt auferlegt ist . Er bekennt später einmal ganz offen , daß die Initiative zu einer neuen Synode gar nicht von ihm

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selbst ausgegangen sei , sondern daß er lediglich aus Rücksicht auf seinem Vorgänger 23 Julius und viele seiner Amtskollegen die Sache des Athanasius vertreten habe . In einem Trotschreiben , das Liberius nach dem Mailänder Konzil an seine verbannten Amtsbrüder Eusebius und Vercellae , Dionysius von Mailand und Lucifer von Calaris sendet , bewundert er deren ' hervorragenden und einzigartigen Glauben ' , den sie dem Drängen des Constantius und seiner Bischöfe entgegengesetzt hätten . Er sichert ihnen seine Teilnahme zu und ermahnt sie , ihr hartes Schicksal standhaft zu ertragen , schließlich deutet er in ängstlichen Worten an , daß er kommenden Dinge ' schwebe und aller Leiden gewärtig sei .

in der Erwartung der Man kann Liberius gewiß

nicht vorwerfen , daß er sich seinen weltlichen und geistlichen Pflichten entzogen habe , aber andererseits ist hinzuzufügen , daß auch aus diesen Briefstellen durchaus nicht jener bewundernswerte Mut des Bischofs spricht , der sich mit seinem Namen bei 24 Athanasius verbindet . Ein völliger Zusammenbruch ist schließlich in der Verbannung festzustellen .

Beeinflußt von den auf die kaiserliche Linie eingeschwenkten Bis-

chöfen Fortunatian von Aquileia und dem ebenfalls kaiserfreundlichen Demophilus von Beroea , übernimmt er am Ende willig das Friedensprogramm des Constantius und in nicht weniger als vier Briefen bekennt er offen , daß er mit Athanasius keine Ge25 meinschaft mehr halten wolle . Er versucht sogar nachzuweisen , daß ein solcher Bruch schon lange in seiner Absicht gelegen habe , daß ihn aber mancherlei Rücksichten daran gehindert hätten , dies offen auszusprechen .

Er stellt diesen Gedanken

deshalb so sehr in den Mittelpunkt , weil er glaubt , sich dadurch die Erlaubnis zur 26 Rückkehr in seine Heimatstadt erwirken zu können ." Zieht man das Fazit aus dem politischen Verhalten des Liberius , wie es aus seinen eigenen Zeugnissen deutlich wird , so bleibt als Ergebnis die gleiche Diskrepanz zur Darstellungsweise des Athanasius , wie sie vorher der Vergleich mit dem durch Theodoret überlieferten Protokoll ergab .

Es bedarf keiner langen Überlegung , weshalb

der verbannte ägyptische Bischof seinen westlichen Amtskollegen aus einem nicht eben charakterstarken , politisch wenig gewandten und wenig mutigen Bischof in einen unerschütterlichen Streiter für die reine Glaubenslehre und die Unantastbarkeit der kirchlichen Freiheit verwandelte .

Er tat es , weil er in geschickter Weise von

Anfang an keinen Unterschied zwischen seinem persönlichen Schicksal und jenen hohen Gütern der Kirche gelten ließ .

In Wirklichkeit war Liberius gar nicht in der Lage ,

sich jener Identifizierung von persönlichem und kirchlichem Interesse , wie sie Athanasius für sich konstruierte , anzuschließen , weil auch er über die Berechtigung der kaiserlichen Anklagen gegen seinen ägyptischen Amtsbruder nicht hinwegsehen 27 konnte .

II Das zweite Dokument , das hier vorgeführt werden soll , um die Fragwürdigkeit historischer Angaben des alexandrinischen Bischofs über Constantius zu demonstrieren , ist das Schreiben , das der spanische Bischof Ossius nach den Vorgängen in Mailand

Bischof Athanasius und Kaiser Constantius II

1003

(wohl noch im Jahre 355 ) an den Kaiser gerichtet hat . Es ist lediglich durch die historia Arianorum bekannt . Bereits der französische Historiker Tillemont nannte diesen Brief , so wie er vorliegt , unglaublich groß und edel , und noch heute gilt Ossius auf Grund dieses Schriftstückes als ' glühender Verteidiger christlicher 28 Freiheit ' . Doch bereits angesichts des im ersten Teil gewonnenen Ergebnisses erscheint es gewagt , ein Zeugnis , das allein in dieser Schrift des Athanasius überliefert ist , bedenkenlos als authentisch zu betrachten . Der Verfasser der historia Arianorum verbreitet sich einer längeren Einführung über die Vorgeschichte dieses Falles .

Nach der Verbannung des Liberius , so führt

er aus , setzten die gleichen kaiserlichen Ratgeber ihrem Herrn mit aufreizenden Reden zu , daß er sich um das Einverständnis des angesehenen Bischofs von Cordoba mit dem Konzilsergebnis bemühen müsse .

Sie sollen nach der Auskunft des Athanasius

so weit in ihrer Hetze gegangen sein , daß sie behaupteten , die Verbannung der anderen Bischöfe verliere ihren Sinn , wenn dieser eine ungestraft bleibe . In einer ersten Unterredung , zu der ihn der Kaiser einlud , so heißt es weiter , konnte Ossius seinen erregten Herrn besänftigen , und es wurde ihm sogar erlaubt , ohne Schaden in seine Heimat zurückzukehren . Als hierauf die am Hof lebenden Haeretiker und Eunuchen erneut den Herrscher bearbeiteten , habe dieser mehrere teils drohende , teils schmeichelnde Briefe nach Spanien gesandt , um den Standhaften umzustimmen . Als schließlich der unmißverständliche Befehl , so schließt der Vorbericht , an jenen erging : Ἔτι σὺ μόνος τυγχάνεις ὁ κατὰ τῆς αἱρέσεως · πείσθητι καὶ γράψον κατὰ 29 'Abavaotou , schrieb Ossius völlig unbeeindruckt den folgenden Brief ." Bereits gegenüber jener Darstellung über die Vorverhandlungen ist eine gewisse Skepsis am Platze ; denn die wörtliche Rede des Kaisers ist ebenso eine Erfindung des Alexandriners wie die ' rhetorische Fiktion ' des Liberius . Daß sich Constantius und die Bischöfe am Hofe selbst als Arianer und ihren Glauben als Haeresie bezeichnet haben sollen , ist völlig undenkbar .

Ferner erscheint es zweifelhaft , daß der Kaiser dem

angesehenen spanischen Würdenträger die Rückreise erlaubte , wenn dieser sich nicht bereit fand , das Urteil von Mailand zu unterzeichnen .

Daher sind gegen diese erste

Ossiusreise gewisse Bedenken angebracht . Doch nun zu dem Brief selbst . Opitz zum ersten Mal feststellte .

Er weist am Angfang und am Ende Lücken auf , wie Gemäß der Auskunft des Athanasius ( 43 , 4 ) sollte

der Brief eigentlich am Ende des Werkes zu finden sein , aber in der gesamten Überlieferung hat er innerhalb des Berichtes über das Schicksal des Ossius seinen Platz . Auffällig ist dabei , daß der Verfasser der historia Arianorum trotz des eben genannten Satzes am Anfang des Kapitels 45 auf die Worte des Ossius Bezug nimmt . Sollte Jener Brief tatsächlich einmal am Ende gestanden haben , so wäre eine solche Anknüp30 fung ohne Sinn . Das Schreiben selbst gliedert sich deutlich in drei Teile . Der erste Teil ( 1-5 ) beschäftigt sich mit dem

üblen Sykophantentum der arianischen

Hofbischöfe ' Ursacius und Valens samt ihrem Anhang , deren Einfluß auf den Kaiser

1004

R. Klein

nach der Meinung des Ossius von größtem Unheil ist . wortreichen Einflüsterungen endlich zu entziehen .

Er rät ihm dringend , sich ihren Der Bischof , der auf sein Zeugnis

für den Glauben unter Maximian vor drei Generationen hinweist und der auch jetzt wieder eine Bereitschaft zum Martyrium bekundet , versucht in einem Rückblick zu zeigen , wie unzuverlässig und trügerisch die Reden jener Leute schon immer gewesen seien , die nun in Mailand ihre Anklagen gegen den alexandrinischen Metropoliten vorbrachten . Auf dem Konzil von Serdica seien die gleichen Leute von ihm unter dem Schutz eines feierlichen Versprechens mehrfach aufgefordert worden , die Beschwerden gegen ihren persönlichen Feind vorzubringen . Aber die hätten nicht nur dieses an sich schon großzügige Anerbieten abgelehnt , nicht einmal sein Angebot habe ihren Beifall gefunden , Athanasius mit sich nach Spanien zu nehmen , falls er ihnen trotz erwiesener Unschuld nicht genehm sei . Schließlich habe der Alexandriner während seines Besuches im kaiserlichen Hauptquartier des Constantius selbst den Versuch unternommen , mit seinen dort ebenfalls anwesenden Feinden über das gleiche Thema 31 zu sprechen . Aber sie seien wiederum nicht zu einem Gespräch bereit gewesen . 'Wie könnt Ihr ' , so spricht Ossius den Kaiser empört an , ' auf das üble Geschwätz von Ursacius und Valens gegen Athanasius hören , die doch inzwischen alles zurückgenommen haben ? '

Ihre Entschuldigungen , daß sie lediglich unter dem Druck des

westlichen Herrschers den Versöhnungsbrief an Athanasius geschrieben und in Rom vor dem Bischof und dem ganzen Presbyterkollegium einen schriftlichen Widerruf eingereicht hätten , läßt er durchaus nicht gelten . Im zweiten Teil ( 6-7 ) , den der Verfasser ohne Zweifel als Höhepunkt betrachtet , wird die grundlegende Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Kirche und Staat angerührt , und zwar mit ähnlichen Worten , wie sie Athanasius schon vorher dem Liberius in den Mund gelegt hatte .

Es beginnt mit der Aufforderung an Constantius , er möge keine Briefe

mehr schreiben und keine Boten mehr schicken , statt dessen solle er den verbannten Bischöfen die Heimkehr gestatten .

In wohlüberlegter Manier unternimmt es Ossius an

dieser Stelle , den westlichen Herrscher Constans , dessen Vertrauter er lange Zeit war , von seinem Bruder , den ' Kirchenverfolger ' Constantius , abzuheben .

Niemals habe

sich jener in kirchliche Rechtsfragen eingemischt , so ruft er aus , niemals habe er einen Bischof deportiert .

Hierauf folgen jene stolzen Worte über die Freiheit der

Kirche , um deretwillen man den vorliegenden Brief noch immer zu den bedeutendsten kirchlichen Dokumenten des vierten Jahrhunderts zählt . ' Laßt ab von der Verfolgung! Vergeßt nicht : Auch Ihr seid ein sterblicher Mensch . Fürchtet Euch vor dem Tag des kommenden Gerichts , bewahrt Euch rein auf jene Stunde ! Mischt Euch nicht in kirchliche Dinge ! ... Euch hat Gott die Kaisermacht in die Hand gegeben , uns hat er die Sache der Kirche anvertraut . Wie also jemand , der Euch Euere Kaiserherrschaft raubt , göttlich gesetzter Ordnung widerstreitet , genauso scheuet auch Ihr Euch , eines so schweren Verbrechens schuldig zu werden , indem Ihr Euch in kirchlichen Dingen Rechtsgewalt anmaßt .

Es steht geschrieben : Gebt dem Kaiser , was des Kaisers

Bischof Athanasius und Kaiser Constantius II ist , gebt Gott , was Gott gehört ? '

1005

Wie in der fingierten Liberiusrede bildet auch

hier ein Schriftzitat Mitte und Höhepunkt des ganzen Stückes . Der dritte Teil ( 8-11 ) handelt noch einmal von der Bosheit und Raffinesse der Athanasiusgegner , jedoch mit dem Unterschied , daß nun nicht mehr von ihrem früheren Treiben gesprochen wird , sondern von ihrer unheilvollen Tätigkeit in jüngster Zeit . Gemeint ist damit ohne Zweifel ihr Agieren auf den Synoden von Arles und Mailand . Ausgehend von der bekannten Gleichsetzung der Sache des Athanasius mit der des ' rechten Glaubens ' verkündet Ossius stolz , daß er sich nie der Ariuspartei anschließen werde . Gegen diese Haeresie habe er nur einen Bannfluch übrig und daher, werde er die geforderte Unterschrift nicht leisten . Er selbst habe den Bischof von Alexandria mit der römischen Kirche , ja mit dem ' ganzen Konzil ' für unschuldig be32 funden . Nach einem nochmaligen deutlichen Hinweis auf die Unglaubwürdigkeit der Athanasiusfeinde , insbesondere auf die Kompromittierung durch ihre frühere Flucht , endet Ossius mit einer eindringlichen Mahnung an den Kaiser , sich an seine schriftlichen Versicherungen gegenüber Athanasius und an die Rechtssprüche der Vergangenheit zu erinnern und sich von jeglicher Bindung an diese ' üblen Menschen ' zu lösen ; denn sie allein seien schuld an seinem schwächlichen Gesinnungswandel . Aus dem abschließenden Kapitel , das dem Ossiusthema gewidmet ist , ist zu erfahren , daß der Kaiser es auf das Drängen seiner Berater hin noch länger mit List und Drohungen versuchte , von dem spanischen Bischof die gewünschte Unterschrift zu erreichen . Als ' der Patron der Gottlosigkeit und der König der Haeresie ' jedoch vernommen habe , daß der angesehene Oberhirte von Cordoba in seinem Land zahlreiche Anhänger besitze , habe er ihn schließlich nach Sirmium kommen lassen und dort ein Jahr festgehalten . Schließlich sei ihm von Constantius , dem ' neuen Achab ' und dem ' zweiten Balthasar ' , so viel Gewalt angetan worden , daß er sich doch zur Gemeinschaft mit Ursacius und Valens bereitgefunden habe .

Einer Verurteilung des

Athanasius habe er jedoch trotz der energischen Bemühungen dieser beiden nicht zugestimmt . Angesichts des Todes , so schließt die Rahmen erzählung , widerrief der Greis sämtliche Zugeständnisse als erzwungen . Er verdammte die arianische Haeresie und verbot jedermann , sie anzunehmen . Die Echtheit dieses Briefes ist in der Forschung kaum jemals in Zweifel gezogen worden . Man hält ihn für ein Dokument , das Athanasius originalgetreu in sein Werk Dies erstaunt um so mehr , da es doch unbestritten ist , was von anderen darin enthaltenen wörtlichen Reden zu halten ist . Allerdings könnte man einwenden , daß sich ein wesentlicher Unterschied zu den sonstigen wörtlichen Redepartien in dieser Schrift zeige . Den urkundlichen Charakter könne man an der

eingefügt habe .

Anrede zu Beginn ablesen : "Οσιος Κωνσταντίῳ βασιλεῖ ἐν κυρίῳ χαίρειν . So ist man geneigt , die Bedenken zurückzustellen , die dadurch entstehen , daß eine Kontrolle durch eine Parallel überlieferung fehlt ; denn durch die Anrede scheint es möglich , das Ossiusschreiben gleichberechtigt neben die anderen echten Dokumente zu rücken ,

R. Klein 1006 die Athanasius in seine historia Arianorum aufnahm .33 Bei näherem Zusehen stellt sich jedoch heraus , daß diese Überschrift nicht einheitlich überliefert ist .

In

der maßgebenden Ausgabe von Opitz , der den fragmentarischen Charakter des Schreibens berücksichtigt , erscheint sie aus diesem Grunde nicht .

Selbst wenn man sich dieser

Lösung nicht anschließt und an der Anrede festhält , bleibt ein schwerwiegender Zweifel übrig ; denn bei einem Vergleich mit den zahlreichen echten Urkunden , welche Athanasius aufbewahrt hat , fällt ein beträchtlicher Unterschied auf : Es fehlen die sonst regelmäßig erscheinenden Titulaturen .

Der Grund für die vorliegende Beson-

derheit dürfte darin liegen , daß der Brief ursprünglich ohne jede Anrede war , und daß die vorliegende ungewöhnliche Form erst der Überlieferung zuzurechnen ist . Trifft dies zu , so wäre bereits ein formaler Beweis vorhanden , daß Athanasius nicht der genaue Wortlaut vorlag . Von einer wirklichen Urkunde kann also schon aus diesem 34 äußerlich-technischen Grunde nicht gesprochen werden . Eine genaue Durchsicht des Inhalts macht eine solche Vermutung zur Gewißheit . Das ganze Schreiben ist durchzogen von einem abgründigen Haß gegen die einflußreichen Berater des Kaisers , die Bischöfe Ursacius und Valens . Darin ist ein deutlicher Fingerzeig für die Handschrift des Athanasius zu sehen .

Wie bereits

kurz angedeutet , unterdrückte Valens schon auf der Provinzialsynode in Arles jeden Versuch , die Glaubens frage zu diskutieren . Damit verhinderte er , daß aus dem 35 Beklagten ein ungerecht verfolgter Bekenner wurde . In Mailand soll er sogar dem Bischof Dionysius das Blatt aus der Hand gerissen haben , mit dem die Zustimmung aller Konzilsteilnehmer zur fides Nicaena eingeholt werden sollte . Es ist wohl anzunehmen , daß der Alexandriner nicht verurteilt worden wäre , wenn das Ablenkungs36 manöver der Athanasius freunde gelungen wäre . Vor allem seit diesem Vorgang verfolgt Athanasius seine Gegner mit grimmigem Haß , und es ist ihm jedes Mittel recht , ihre Schlechtigkeit , ihre ' arianische ' Gesinnung und ihren charakterlosen Wankelmut hervorzukehren . Bereits bei ihrem ersten Auftreten auf der Synode von Tyrus im Jahre 335 erscheinen sie als persönliche Feinde des alexandrinischen Metropoliten . Die beiden ' an Alter und Charakter recht jungen Bischöfe ' , wie sie Athanasius ironisch nennt , hatten damals als Angehörige einer Untersuchungskommission in Aegypten maßgeblich zu seiner Absetzung beigetragen . Daß sie Schüler des Arius gewesen seien , wie es ihnen ihr Gegner ankreidet , ist wenig wahrscheinlich . Charak37 teristische Lehrsätze von ihm haben sie jedenfalls niemals vorgetragen . Auf dem Konzil von Serdica waren jene beiden beinahe als einzige Vertreter aus dem Reichsteil des Constans auf der Seite der Orientalen , welche sich weigerten , die in ihren Augen immer noch abgesetzten Bischöfe Athanasius , Marcellus , Paulus von Constantinopel und Asklepas von Gaza in ihre Gemeinschaft aufzunehmen .

Sie wurden daher von

den Okzidentalen unter der Führung des Ossius zusammen mit einigen anderen exkom38 muniziert . Als in der Folgezeit, durch die von Constans betriebene und von Constantius vollzogene Begnadigung des Athanasius ihre Lage in der westlichen

Bischof Athanasius und Kaiser Constantius II

1007

Reichshälfte sehr delikat geworden war , blieb ihnen nichts anderes übrig , als mit dem Zurückgekehrten ihren Frieden zu machen .

Sie widerriefen ihre früheren Be-

schuldigungen auf einer Synode in Mailand im Jahre 345 und zwei Jahre später gewährte ihnen Julius von Rom die Wiederaufnahme in die Kirche . Da die von ihnen in Mailand eingereichte Schrift , mit der sie die Rechtmäßigkeit ihres Glaubens nachzuweisen suchten , sich kaum von dem zweiten antiochenischen Credo unterschieden haben dürfte bekannt ist , daß darin eine Verurteilung arianischer Lehrsätze enthalten war - kann man die beiden durchaus nicht als Arianer bezeichnen . Dies aber hat man in der Nachfolge des Alexandriners fast durchwegs getan .

Zu einem solchen Urteil

ist man allerdings gezwungen , wenn man sich dessen propagandistische These kritiklos 39 zu eigen macht , daß alle seine Widersacher ausnahmslos Arianer seien." Seit sich Valens das persönliche Vertrauen des Kaisers zu gewinnen wußte , ist er zusammen mit Ursacius und Germinius , dem neuen Bischof von Sirmium , ständig in der Umgebung des 40 Hofes zu finden ." Weil der ins Zwielicht geratene Alexandriner merkte , daß in erster Linie Ursacius und Valens die Erregung des Constantius über seine Einmischung in die Politik schürten , beschimpft er sie mit den wüstesten Worten . Ihre frühere ' Reue ' , die in Wirklichkeit keine bekenntnismäßige Sinnesänderung , sondern lediglich eine erzwungene Anpassung an die politischen Verhältnisse war , nennt er hinterhältig und heuchlerisch . Wie Ossius in seinem Brief weist auch er ihre Entschuldigung , daß sie die Gemeinschaft mit ihm aus Furcht vor Constans gesucht hätten , mit Empörung zurück .

Ihre jetzige Meinungsänderung , die ihm nichts anderes bedeutet als

eine Rückkehr zur arianischen Haeresie ( während sie tatsächlich durch sein politisches Verhalten bedingt war ) , benützt er dazu , alle ihre Aussagen gegen ihn als verlogen und unglaubwürdig hinzustellen : ' Auf Ursacius und Valens darf man nicht hören ; denn sie haben auch in früheren Zeiten ihren Sinn geändert und daher verdienen sie mit dem, was sie jetzt sagen , kein Vertrauen ' .

Mit dieser Devise ver-

suchten die Freunde des Athanasius die Anklage des Kaisers und seiner Hofbischöfe 41 in Arles und Mailand zu erschüttern . Aus alledem wird ersichtlich , wie gut sich der vorliegende Brief in die Argumentation einfügt , die sich der vertriebene Alexandriner für seine Verteidigung zurechtgelegt hatte . So liegt die Vermutung nahe , daß es in erster Linie nicht Ossius ist , der in jenem Brief zu Wort kommt , sondern Athanasius selbst . Er verstand es , des Schreiben in eine willkommene Stütze seiner apologetischen Absichten umzuformen .

Es erhebt sich zudem die Frage , wie

der Oberhirte von Cordoba , fern in Spanien lebend , über die Tätigkeit der beiden Hofbischöfe vor allem in jüngster Zeit so genau unterrichtet sein konnte , wenn selbst der im nahen Rom residierende Liberius keine genaue Kenntnis vom Verlauf des Mailänder Konzils besaß . Es findet sich in jenem vielgerühmten Schreiben noch ein zweiter Leitgedanke , der an der originalgetreuen Herkunft aus der Feder des Ossius zweifeln läßt . Es ist das anläßlich der Begegnung des römischen Bischofs mit dem Minister Eusebius

R. Klein

1008

formulierte Motiv von der Freiheit der Kirche .

Schon im Jahre 339 hatte Athanasius

seine Entfernung aus Alexandria durch den ägyptischen Praefekten Philagrius und die Einsetzung eines Gegenbischofs unter dieses Motto gestellt .

Voller Entrüstung hatte

er damals in einem Rundschreiben an seine Amtskollegen ausgerufen : ' Niemals hätte ein fremder Bischof sich eindrängen dürfen mit Hilfe des Schutzes und der Gewalt 42 der weltlichen Statthalter ' ." Ähnliche Töne sind wenige Jahre später auf der Synode von Serdica zu hören .

Die dort anwesenden westlichen Bischöfe verfaßten unter der

Ägide des Athanasius ein selbstbewußtes Schreiben an den Herrscher des Ostens und verlangten darin , er möge durch ein Dekret an alle Beamten seines Reichsteils ver43 anlassen , daß sie sich jeder Einmischung in religiöse Dinge enthalten . Den Höhepunkt jener Linie bildet die stolze Abweisung eines angeblichen Kaiserwortes durch die wenigen athanasiusfreundlichen Bischöfe in Mailand im Jahre 355. . Dort soll Constantius in selbstbewußter Manier verkündet haben : ' Was ich will , das soll als kirchlicher Kanon gelten . spreche ' .

Auch die syrischen Bischöfe nehmen es hin , wenn ich so

Die Freunde des Athanasius aber sollen den Kaiser gewarnt haben , seine

Herrschaft über das Römische Reich mit den Rechtsordnungen der Kirche zu vermischen ; denn auch die Kaiserherrschaft besitze er nicht aus eigener Machtvollkommenheit , sondern habe sie von Gott erhalten . Wie sollte es noch verwundern , wenn Athanasius 44 seinem spanischen Amtskollegen auch jene Sätze in den Mund legt ? Sie waren ebenso wie der ständige Hinweis auf die Verlogenheit seiner ' arianischen ' Gegner geeignet , von dem politischen Prozeß , der im Jahre 355 gegen ihn geführt wurde , abzulenken . Es bedarf keiner besonderen Erwähnung , daß von den konkreten Anklagepunkten in jenem Brief wiederum kein Wort fällt . Von Propaganda darf man bei jener Freiheitsforderung auch deshalb sprechen , weil sich Athanasius im Verein mit Ossius bei der Vorbereitung des Konzils von Serdica sehr geschickt und sehr intensiv der staat45 lichen Hilfe von seiten des Constans zur Durchsetzung seiner Ziele bediente . Wenn schließlich von Constans in jenem Brief gerühmt wird , daß er sich keine Rechte über die Kirche angemaßt und keinen Bischof ins Exil geschickt habe , so wird dabei wohlweislich außer acht gelassen , daß der westliche Herrscher z . B. im Jahre 347 die Synode von Sirmium berief , auf welcher der als Haeretiker angeklagte Photinus sein 46 Amt verlor ." Sieht man von den beiden Leitmotiven , welche dem Schreiben des Ossius das Gepräge geben , einmal ab und betrachtet man weitere Einzelargumente , welche die Unschuld des Alexandriners unter Beweis stellen sollen , so ergibt sich das gleiche Bild .

Auf-

fällig ist zum Beispiel , wie der Verfasser das Nichterscheinen der Orientalen in Serdica zu den gemeinsamen Beratungen und ihr Ausweichen in einen anderen Ort mehrmals als Beweismittel dafür benützt , wie wenig diese von der Glaubwürdigkeit ihrer Vorwürfe gegen Athanasius überzeugt gewesen seien .

Auf jenes Eingeständnis des

schlechten Gewissens seiner Gegner im Jahre 342 legt der Verfasser der historia Arianorum auch in den übrigen Partien seines Werkes großen Wert .

Schon in seiner

1009

Bischof Athanasius und Kaiser Constantius Il

' Apologie gegen die Arianer ' hatte er verkündet , daß jene dort von solchen Gewissensskrupeln geplagt gewesen seien , daß sie die Flucht ergriffen und eben dadurch ihre Verleumdungen und ihre Verbrechen an den Tag gelegt hätten . Mit Recht bemerkt Opitz in diesem Zusammenhang , daß Athanasius über die Bischofsversammlung von Serdica sehr einseitig und dürftig berichte und daß der Leser der Apologie über die eigentlichen Zusammenhänge nichts erfahre . Die wenigen beigefügten Urkunden sind so ausgewählt , 47 daß es aussieht , als sei er völlig rehabilitiert . Es ist bekannt , wie sich die Dinge in Wirklichkeit verhielten . Die Orientalen , deren Haltung durch ihr langes Schreiben an die Kirche Africas bekannt ist , waren gekommen , um über den Haeretiker Marcellus und vor allem über den Unruhestifter Athanasius zu verhandeln . Beide waren völlig legitim durch östliche Synoden abgesetzt worden .

Statt von ihren Kollegen zu einem

echten Gespräch eingeladen zu werden , sollten sie jetzt jenen im Westen bereits aufgenommenen Bischöfen die gewünschte Untadeligkeit in Lehre und Leben bestätigen . Als sie diese anmaßende Forderung zurückwiesen , wurden sie auf Betreiben des Athanasius heftig unter Druck gesetzt und als Arianer beschimpft . Schließlich ver48 ließen sie den Tagungsort und besprachen sich getrennt in Philippopel ." In diesem Licht ist die Fluchtthese in den Zeilen des Ossius zu sehen .

Dieser mußte als an-

erkannter Führer der westlichen Bischöfe in Serdica doch genau wissen , wie es in Wirklichkeit zugegangen war . Äußerst unwahrscheinlich klingt auch die Behauptung des Bischofs von Cordoba , er habe damals den Orientalen versprochen , den Alexandriner mit sich nach Spanien zu nehmen , wenn er ihnen nicht genehm sei ; denn dessen Streben war von Anfang an darauf gerichtet , in sein Bistum zurückzukehren . Nimmt man noch die Bemerkung hinzu , der Kaiser habe nach dem Konzil eingesehen , daß Athanasius schuldlos sei , und ihn deswegen zurückkehren lassen , so verstärkt sich 49 Die der Eindruck , daß auch manche Einzelargumente nicht der Wahrheit entsprechen . Charakteristik des schlecht informierten und von böswilligen Ratgebern beeinflußten Herrschers trifft sich ziemlich genau mit dem Kaiserbild , wie es von Athanasius in der ' Apologie an Constantius ' gezeichnet wird .

Trotz des heftigen Drängens der

Arianer , so wird dort ausgeführt , habe der Kaiser ihm noch im Jahre 350 sein Wort gegeben . Daher sei es jetzt undenkbar , daß Constantius in seiner Gerechtigkeit und 50 Milde der Gegenseite Gehör schenke . Diese Beispiele zeigen zur Genüge , wie sehr sich die Sätze und Gedanken des Ossiusbriefes mit dem ganz persönlichen Anliegen des Werkes treffen , in das sie eingefügt sind . Dahinter steht immer nur das eine Ziel des Athanasius , seine Unschuld zu beweisen .

So bleibt letzten Endes das

gleiche Resümee wie bei der Liberiusrede : Ebensowenig wie eine Reihe anderer wörtlich wiedergegebener Passagen in der historia Arianorum kann der in direkter Rede abgefaßte Ossiusbrief einen Anspruch auf Originalität erheben . Er ist ein vom Verfasser des Gesamtwerkes stilisiertes Gebilde , das in pamphlethaft verzerrter Form dessen bekannte ' Argumente ' gegen Constantius und seine Berater vorbringt . Auch wenn der Inhalt des Briefes selbst nicht durch eine Parallelüberlieferung

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auf seinen Wahrheitsgehalt überprüft werden kann , so finden sich doch Zeugnisse , welche die Angaben des Rahmenberichtes in einem anderen Licht erscheinen lassen . Von diesen sollen hier einige vorgeführt werden . Während z . B. Athanasius wiederholt von einer durch den Kaiser erzwungenen Unter51 9 berichten Hilarius und andere davon ,

schrift spricht , die der Spanier leistete

daß Ossius zusammen mit seinem früheren Gegner Potamius an der Abfassung der zweiten Formel von Sirmium maßgeblich beteiligt war . Dies ist um so bemerkenswerter , als man jene Formel geradezu ein Toleranzedikt für den Arianismus genannt hat , da hier 52 zum ersten Mal das Nicaenum formell beseitigt worden sei . Daß Ossius in Sirmium nicht nur widerwillig und durch die Drohungen von kaiserlicher Seite eingeschüchtert seine Unterschrift leistete , verdeutlicht am besten ein Blick in eine zeitgenössische und in ihrem Wahrheitsgehalt völlig unantastbare Quelle .

In einem Brief , den der

Bischof Eusebius von Vercellae um das Jahr 360 aus dem Exil an seinen spanischen Amtskollegen Gregor von Elvira richtet , ist folgendes zu lesen : ' Litteras sinceritatis tuae accepi , quibus , ut decet episcopum et dei sacerdotem , transgressori te Ossio didici restitisse et cadentibus plurimis Arimino in communicatione Valentis , Ursacii et ceterorum , quos ipsi agnito blasphemiae crimine ante damnaverunt tuum adsensum denegasse , fidem scilicet servans , quam patres Nicaeni scripserunt ( C.C.L. IX , ed . Bulhart , p . 110 ) .

Diese Worte können doch nichts anderes bedeuten , als daß

Ossius sich nicht scheute , zusammen mit anderen spanischen Bischöfen gegen die 53 Nicaener öffentlich aufzutreten . Er soll deswegen sogar den Empfänger des Eusebiusbriefes , den hochangesehenen Bischof Gregor , mit staatlicher Hilfe seines Amtes entsetzt haben , wie aus einer breit ausgemalten Erzählung bei Faustinus und 54 Marcellinus hervorgeht . Ossius setzte sich also im Sinne des Kaisers und seines vertrauten Ratgebers Valens für ein rein biblisches Glaubensbekenntnis ein , in welchem die stritten Begriffe ὁμοούσιος , ὁμοιούσιος , οὐσία und ὑπόστασις auf 55 kaiserlichen Befehl vermieden wurden . Überträgt man jene hier sichtbar werdende Diskrepanz zwischen den Angaben des Athanasius und denen seiner Zeitgenossen auf den Ossiusbrief , so liegt darin eine erneute Bestätigung für die geäußerte Skepsis an dem originalgetreuen Wortlaut des nur einmal überlieferten Schrifstückes sowie an der These vom Widerruf , den der greise Bischof in Spanien geleistet haben soll . Ein abschließendes Urteil über den Wert historischer Angaben des Athanasius zur Religionspolitik des Constantius kann nur lauten , daß jener an keiner Stelle auf eine apologetische Absicht verzichtete .

Es geht daher nicht an , von ihm Berichte

über die Glaubens auseinandersetzungen seiner Zeit vorbehaltlos zu übernehmen und 56 für eine kritische Darstellung des Constantinsohnes zu verwerten . Erst durch eine eingehende philologisch- historische Interpretation ist es möglich , das bis heute lebendige Zerrbild von dem religiös schwankenden , politisch abhängigen und despotischen Kaiser Constantius ins rechte Licht zu rücken .

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ANMERKUNGEN 1. Über den Verlauf des bis in das Frühjahr des Jahres 355 hinein tagenden und von mehr als 300 Bischöfen besuchten Mailänder Konzils berichten Athanasius hist . Ar. ad mon . 33f . , apol . ad Const . imp . 4 ; 27 ; apol . de fuga 4 ; Lucifer von Calaris , rec . G. Hartel , C.S.E.L. XIV ( Wien , 1886 ) , p . 12 ; 26 ; 29 ; 79 ; Hilarius von Poitiers , opera , pars IV , ed . A Feder , C.S.E.L. LXV ( Wien - Leipzig , 1916 ) , 186f .; contr . Const . 2 ; 11 ; Sulpicius Severus , chron . II 39 ; Rufinus , hist . eccl . X 21 ; Socrates , hist . eccl . II 36 ; Sozomenos , hist . eccl . IV 9 u.a. Von Darstellungen der neueren Literatur seien genannt O. Seeck : Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt ( Darmstadt , 1966 - Nachdruck von 1922 ) , IV 147ff und ders . R.E. s . v. 'Constantius II . p . 1074ff ; E. Stein : Geschichte des spätrömischen Reiches 284-476 I ( München , 1928 ) , 234ff ; G. Bardy , ' De la paix constantinienne à la mort de Theodose ' , in : Histoire de l'Eglise depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours , ed . par A. Fliche et V. Martin , tom. 3 ( Paris , 1950 ) , 142ff ; M. Meslin , Les Ariens d'Occident 335-430 ( Paris , 1967 ) , 77f und 264ff ; R. Lorenz , in : Die Kirche in ihrer Geschichte , hg . von K.D. Schmidt und E. Wolf , Band 1 , Lieferung C 1 ( Göttingen , 1970 ) , 24f ( mit weiterer Literatur ) . 2. Zu den Vorgängen in Alexandria bis zur endgültigen Vertreibung des Verurteilten vgl . bes . Athan . apol . ad Const . 22ff ; apol . de fuga 24 ; hist . Ar . 48ff ; 81 und Sozom. hist . eccl . IV 10. Eingehend dazu Bardy a.a.0 . 147ff und H. Nordberg : ' Athanasius and the emperor ' , Soc . scient . Fennic . , Comm . hum . litt . XXX 3 ( Helsinki , 1963 ) , 47ff. Wichtig dazu auch die Bemerkungen von H.G. Opitz , Athanasius Werke II 1 , G.C.S. ( Berlin- Leipzig , 1936 ) , p . 211 ; 224f ; 293 . 3. Uber den Inhalt und die zeitliche Ordnung der historisch-polemischen Schriften des Athanasius noch immer zuverlässig K.F. Hagel : Kirche und Kaisertum in Lehre und Leben des Athanasius , Diss . , Tübingen ( Leipzig , 1933 ) , zu den beiden genannten Werken 61ff . Kurz dazu B. Altaner und H. Stuiber : Patrologie, Leben und Schriften der Kirchenväter ( Freiburg , 19789 ) , 273ff und sehr kritisch über das frühere Schrifttum W. Schneemelcher : ' Athanasius von Alexandrien als Theologe und Kirchenpolitiker ' , Z.N.T. W. ( 1950/51 ) , 242ff . Jetzt sehr aufschlußreich die einzelnen Aufsätze in dem Sammelband : Politique et théologie chez Athanase d'Alexandrie , ed . Ch . Kannengießer , Théologie historique 27 ( Paris , 1974 ) , und L.W. Barnard : ' Athanasius and the Roman State ' , Latomus 36 ( 1977 ) , 422ff. 4. Schon bei Hagel ist zu lesen , daß die eingestreuten Reden in den meisten Fällen Konstruktionen des Athanasius seien ( a.a.0 . 62 ) . 5. Es handelt sich um die Bischöfe Paulinus von Trier , Dionysius von Mailand , Eusebius von Vercellae ( von ihm sind drei historisch wichtige Briefe erhalten , C.C.L. IX , ed . V. Bulhart ( 1967 ) , p . 104ff ) und Lucifer von Calaris , der in seinem Exil eine Reihe haßerfüllter Schriften gegen Constantius verfaßte ( L. Hartel , a.a. 0. ) . Alle übrigen Bischöfe , soweit s . anwesend waren ( ca. 300 ! ) oder von kaiserlichen Boten aufgesucht wurden , scheinen dem Verdammungsurteil über Athanasius zugestimmt zu haben . Zu den Verbannungen allgemein Athan . hist . Ar . 33f , 75f ; apol . ad Const. 27. apol . de fuga 4 ; Hilar . contr . Const . 2 ; Hieron . chron . 2371 , 2374 und de vir. ill . 95f ; Ruf . hist . eccl . X 20f ; Sulp . Sev . chron . II 39 sowie sehr ausführlich Bardy a.a.0 . 142ff . 6. Über die Demarche des Eusebius in Rom berichtet ausführlich , aber sehr polemisch gegen den Kaiser Athanasius hist . Ar . 35-37 . Dazu E. Caspar : Geschichte des Papsttums I ( Tübingen , 1930 ) , 175. Danach wurde Athanasius von einer ' Versammlung von Gläubigen desselben Ranges ' seines Amtes entsetzt , weil er sich mehr angemaßt habe , als sein Stand erlaubte und versucht habe , sich in auswärtige Angelegenheiten einzumischen . Nach Opitz fand die Verhaftung des Liberius in Rom ' vor August 355 , also im Juni /Juli 355 ' statt ( p . 205 ) . Zur Liberius frage , bes . zur Echtheit seiner Briefe , allgemein A.L. Feder : ' Studien zu Hilarius von Poitiers I ' , Sitzber . d. Wien. Ak . d. Wsch . 162 , 4 ( 1910 ) , 153ff ( zu sehr den Angaben des Athanasius vertrauend ) ; E. Amman : ' Libère , pape de 352 à 366 ' , D.T. C. IX ( Paris , 1926 ) , 631ff (noch sehr apologetisch ) ; Caspar a.a.0 . 174ff und neuerdings M. Goemans : L'exil du pape Libère ' , Mélanges offertes à Chr . Mohrmann ( Utrecht , 1963 ) , 184ff . Über die Beziehungen des Liberius zu Hilarius jetzt A. Hamman : ' Saint Hilaire et le pape Libère ' , in Hilaire et son temps ( Paris , 1969 ) , 43ff .

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7. Die Echtheit dieses Dokuments ist noch immer umstritten . Für die Echtheit neben Caspar a.a.0 . 176 , Amman a.a.0 . 634 , Lietzmann bes . R.E. s.v. ' Liberius ' p . 98 ( mit Einschränkungen ) , Opitz p . 205 und neuerdings wieder J. Herrmann : ' Ein Streitgespräch mit verfahrensrechtlichen Argumenten zwischen Kaiser Konstantius und Bischof Liberius ' , Festschrift für H. Liermann ( Erlangen , 1964 ) , 77ff . Auffällig ist , daß lediglich Sozomenos noch eine Zusammenfassung des Verhörs bringt (hist . eccl . IV 11 , 3ff) , während Hilarius , Lucifer , Rufin , Socrates u.a. darüber nichts berichten . Das Original war vermutlich lateinisch . 8. Hier tauchen sachliche Unrichtigkeiten auf , die wohl auf spätere Eingriffe zurückzuführen sind . Die Synoden von Nicaea und Tyros werden verwechselt . Athanasius ist nicht mit den fünf Bischöfen in die Mareotis gesegelt , um die Vorwürfe des Priesters Ischyras zu überprüfen ( Zerbrechen eines Bechers u.a. ) , sondern er begab sich schon vor dem Ende der Synode zum Kaiser nach Konstantinopel ( apol . contr. Ar . 13 , 2 ) , die Bischöfe Ursacius und Valens traten nicht in Serdica mit ihm in Gemeinschaft , sondern erst vier Jahre später anläßlich eines Besuches bei dem Bischof Julius in Rom . Außerdem baten jene in ihrem kurzen Brief an Athanasius diesen nicht um Verzeihung wegen ihres Berichtes , den sie einst in Tyros über ihre ägyptische Mission geliefert hatten ( vgl . Hil . op . IV , Feder p . 145f und Meslin a.a. 0. 75 ; 266f ) . 9. Die Tatsache , daß Constantius einen politischen Vorwurf gegen Athanasius aufgreift , dürfte u.a. ein Indiz für den echten Kern des Protokolls sein . Es ging damals um ganz konkrete Vorwürfe gegen den Alexandriner : Einst zwischen den Brüdern Constans und Constantius Zwietracht gestiftet zu haben , mit dem Usurpator Magnentius in geheimem Einvernehmen gestanden zu sein , eine vom Kaiser gestiftete , aber noch nicht eingeweihte Kirche in Alexandria sich angeeignet zu haben und schließlich einer mehrmaligen Ladung an den Hof nicht gefolgt zu sein . Gegen diese vier Anschuldigungen verteidigt er sich in seiner Schrift Apologia ad Constantium imperatorem . Eingehend dazu J.M. Szymusiak : Apologie à l'empereur Constance . Apologie pour sa fuite . Introduction , texte critique , traduction et notes ( Paris , 1958 ) , 29ff , und J. Ceska : ' La base politique de l'homoousios d'Athanase ' , Eirene II ( 1964 ) , 150 . 10. Dieser letzte Satz mag eine nachträgliche Zutat sein ; denn gerade die Sehnsucht nach Rom war es , die Liberius später bis zur Verleumdung des Athanasius und zur Unterzeichnung eines kaiserlichen Bekenntnisses trieb . Friede und Eintracht im Reich , besonders aber unter den Christen , lautete das Programm des Kaisers in Mailand ( z.B. Athan . hist . Ar . 36 ; Luc . Cal . ed . Hartel , p . 9 ) . Wichtig dazu die Bemerkungen von Lorenz a.a.0 . 26f . 11. Diese Rede , die auch keine intitulatio aufweist , besitzt keinerlei Originalcharakter , sondern sie ist vom ersten bis zum letzten Wort ein Erzeugnis des Verfassers . Opitz spricht mit allem Grund von einer ' wertlosen rhetorischen Mitteilung über die Verhandlungen ' (p . 205 ) . Auch ist zu berücksichtigen , daß die historia Arianorum ' a work for private circulation among the Egyptian monks ' darstellt , worauf Barnard mit Recht hinweist ( Latomus a.a.0 . 433 ) . Allgemein hat T. Orlandi jüngst davor gewarnt , in den Schriften des Athanasius Werke eines Historikers sehen zu wollen ( Sull ' apologie secondo di Atanasio di Alessandria ' , Augustinianum XV ( 1975 ) , 49f ) . 12. Athanasius kannte bei der Abfassung seines Werkes bereits das weitere Schicksal des Liberius , vor allem dessen Nachgeben in Beroea und Sirmium , das er bedauert und entschuldigt ( 41 , 3 ) . 13. Dem Bericht des Theodoret zufolge hatte er vom Kaiser noch drei Tage Warteund Bedenkzeit erhalten , ehe er nach Bercea weggeschickt wurde ( II 16 , 27-29 ) . 14. Die sechs fache Anapher des ersten Teils , welche dem lapidaren Befehl auσau бLúишv XPLOTɩavoús folgt , ist in der Form einer Gradatio angelegt . Den jeweils kürzer werdenden Sätzen entspricht eine Steigerung des inhaltlichen Gewichts . Die zweite Hälfte nach dem Bibelzitat ist umgekehrt gebaut . Die drei Sätze , die jeweils von einem Verbum in der 1. Pers . Plur . ' eingeleitet werden ( ráрεоμev , doμev , ÉлLOτεÚоаμεν ) , nehmen jeweils an Umfang zu . Angesichts dieser bewußten rhetorischen Stilisierung kann durchaus nicht von einer ' farblosen Rede ' gesprochen werden ( so Caspar a.a.0 . 589 ) .

1013 Bischof Athanasius und Kaiser Constantius II 15. Mit dieser Verfälschung der Tatsachen Liberius als aufrechter Verteidiger der kirchlichen Freiheit! - beginnt bereits die einseitige Verherrlichung des Bischofs , die sich in der Folgezeit fortsetzt . Zur Liberiuslegende vgl . Feder , ' Studien ... ' , 179ff; Amman a.a.0 . 644 und C. Dagens : ' Autour du pape Libère ' , Mélanges d'Archéologie et d'Histoire de l'école Française de Rome 78 ( 1966 ) , 365ff . 16. Bei Lucifer spielt das formal juristische Argument eine zentrale Rolle , daß kein Bischof ohne persönliche Anhörung verurteilt werden dürfe ( z . B. Hartel , p . 66 ) . Über den weiteren Kampf Lucifers G. Krüger : Lucifer, Bischof von Calaris ( Leipzig , 1886 ) , 58ff und jetzt W. Tietze : Lucifer von Calaris und die Kirchenpolitik des Constantius II. , Diss . ( Tübingen , 1976 ) , 82ff ( sehr ausführlich , aber teilweise unkritisch ) . 17. Hist . Ar . 36. Sie muß wie die folgende als rein literarisches Produkt des Athanasius angesehen werden , auch wenn sie nicht mit einer Parallel überlieferung verglichen werden kann . Bezeichnend ist übrigens , wie der Alexandriner beide Reden ' aufeinander abgestimmt hat . In der ersten erscheinen die in der zweiten vermißten Einzelheiten . 18. Es ist bezeichnend , daß jene stolze und unerschrockene Antwort , die Athanasius hier dem römischen Bischof in den Mund legt , immer wieder als authentisches Zeugnis gewertet wird , s . z.B. von H. Berkhof : Kirche und Kaiser . Eine Untersuchung der Entstehung der byzantinischen und der theokratischen Staatsauffassung im vierten Jahrhundert ( Zürich , 1947 ) , 129 und bes . von H. Rahner : Kirche und Staat im frühen Christentum ( München , 1961 ) , 90. Auch Bardy verfällt der rhetorischen Raffinesse des Athanasius ( a.a.0 . 144 ) . Von solchen ' Tatsachen ' ausgehend , konstruiert man bisweilen einen Unterschied zwischen einer theokratischen Staatsauffassung im Westen und einer byzantinischen Haltung im Osten , welche in der arianischen oder semiarianischen Theologie wurzelnd - die kaiserliche Herrschaft über die Kirche eher hinzunehmen gewillt gewesen sei ( so Berkhof a.a.0 . 200ff und neuerdings wieder F. Winkelmann ' ' Probleme der Herausbildung der Staatskirche im römischen Reich des vierten Jahrhunderts ' , Klio 53 ( 1971 ) , 292 ) . Dagegen schon K. Aland : ' Kaiser und Kirche von Konstantin bis Byzanz ' , Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe ( Gütersloh , 1960 ) , 263ff. 19. Erhalten in den Collectanea Antiariana Parisina des Hilarius von Poitiers , hg . von A. Feder , C.S.E.L. LXV , 89ff , 167 , 164ff . Die Briefe aus der Verbannung überliefert ebenfalls Hilarius ( sie sind alle im Jahre 357 geschrieben ) p . 155f , 168f , 170ff , 172f. Ausführlich über den Inhalt und die Echtheitsfrage Caspar a.a.0 . 170ff und 186ff . 20. Feder , p . 90 . 21. Auf knapp fünf Seiten lassen sich folgende Panegyrica zusammenstellen : 1 . ' Tranquillissime imperator -- mansuetudo tua -- pietas tua - pietas tua animus tuus , qui lenitati semper vacat - religiosissime imperator mansuetudo tua --- mentis tuae erga deum sincera devotio - clementia tua' 3. ' Prudentia tua' 4. 'Pietas tua -- clementissime imperator aequitas et clementia tua tranquillissime imperator ' clementia tua clementia tua' 5. ' Tranquillitas tua 6 . ' Mansuetudo tua - animus tuus deo devotus tranquillitas tua --- praesente sanctae memoriae patre tuo - mansuetudo tua ' Der Schlußsatz lautet : ' Dei omnipotentis clementia te nobis custodiat , clementissime ac religiosissime Auguste ' ( Feder , p . 93 ) . Von einem ' ton d'une extrème fermeté ' , wie Dagens es formuliert ( a.a.0 . 356 ) , ist hier nichts mehr zu spüren . 22. Z.B. p . 93 : ... ipse salvator , qui de super mentis tuae propositum intuetur ' . Man fragt sich , warum Liberius selbst nicht auf dem Konzil anwesend war , wenn er schon wirklich der unerschrockene Streiter für die Freiheit der Kirche war , wozu ihn vor allem Athanasius macht . 23. So im ersten Satz des zweiten Briefes aus der Verbannung ( Feder , p . 168 ) . 24. Er bittet z . B. die Bischöfe , die er devoti per omnia dei milites nennt , sie sollten zu Gott beten : ' ...ut supervenientes impetus , qui de die in diem , cum annuntiantur , graviora vulnera infligunt , tolerabiliter ferre possim , ut inviolata fide , salvo statu ecclesiae catholicae , parem vobis dignetur me dominus efficere ' (Feder , p . 166 ) .

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25. Zu Fortunatian bes . Hieron . vir . ill . 97. Die Haltung dieses einflußreichen Freundes , der sich einst in Serdica für Athanasius eingesetzt hatte ( Athanas . apol . ad Const. 3 und 27 ; Hil . op . IV , Feder , p . 137 ) und den er einst als einen seiner Gesandten in Mailand vorgesehen hatte ( vgl . ep . ad Euseb . Bulhart a.a.0 . p . 123 ) , muß ihn sehr beeindruckt haben . Demophilus von Beroea war schon vor Serdica auf die Seite der Athanasiusgegner übergetreten . Er legte diesem im Auftrag des Kaisers die dritte sirmische Formel ( von 358 ) vor , welche der nach Rom zurückdrängende Bischof auch unterzeichnete ( Hil . op . IV , Feder , p . 78 und 169 ) . 26. In allen Briefen aus der Verbannung steht die Bitte um eine schnelle Rückkehr nach Rom im Mittelpunkt , z.B. Feder , p . 169f , 172 und bes . 173. 27. Liberius zeigt nicht das charakterlose Schwanken wie Athanasius und Hilarius (angefangen von der Schmeichelei über die bewußte Verdrehung der Tatsachen bis zu den wüstesten persönlichen Beschimpfungen des Kaisers ) , er versteigt sich auch nicht zu den abstoßenden Haßtiraden Lucifers . Dagegen ist seine menschliche Schwäche unverkennbar . 28. So Rahner a.a.0 . 89f . Ähnlich schon M.L. de Tillemont (Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique de six premiers siècles VII ( Venedig , 17322 ) , p . 313 und Berkhof a.a.0 . 132. Schließlich sei noch das Urteil von V.C. Declercq angeführt : ' It is not easy to determine , even in one's own estimation , which is the most admirable feature of this magnificent document ' : Ossius of Cordova, A contribution to the history of the constantinian period ( Washington , 1954 ) , 451. Erfreulich kritisch jetzt K.M. Girardet : ' Kaiser Konstantius II . als " Episcopus Episcoporum" und das Herrscherbild des kirchlichen Widerstandes ' , Historia XXVI ( 1977 ) , 106ff . 29. Der einleitende Bericht umfaßt die Kapitel 42 und 43 , der Brief selbst das Kap . 44 und der Schlußbericht das Kap . 45 der historia Arianorum . Ossius war sicherlich der Vertrauensmann Constantins auf dem Konzil von Nicaea ( 325 ) . Vgl . A. v . Harnack : Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte II ( Tübingen , 19315 ) , 233 , Declercq a.a.0 . 250ff und jetzt sehr kritisch G.C. Stead : " Homoousios " selon Athanase ' , Politique et théologie chez Athanase d'Alexandrie ... 235ff . 30. 43 , 4 heißt es : Οὐ κατορρωδήσας ὁ ῞Οσιος , ἀλλὰ καὶ πάσχων ὕβρεις ἔγραψε και αὐτὸς τοιαῦτα , καὶ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἀνέγνωμεν καὶ ἔστιν ἐν τῷ τέλει γεγραμμένη . Da Athanasius 45 , 1 darauf Bezug nimmt - ταῦτα μὲν ῞Οσιος ἐφρόνησε τε καὶ ἔγραψε - ist der Brief an dieser Stelle sinnvoll eingefügt . Er kann also nicht nachträglich von den Abschreibern hierher gesetzt worden sein , wie Migne glaubt ( P.G. 25 , p . 742 ) . Es bietet sich aber eine andere Erklärung an . Athanasius , der natürlich um den authentischen Text des Briefes sich bemühte , hatte die Absicht , diesen ans Ende seines Werkes zu setzen , wie er es mit einigen Schriftstücken in seiner ' Apologie gegen die Arianer ' getan hatte . Auf diese Weise wäre die Notiz ἐν τῷ τέλει γεγραμμένη erklärlich . Da er aber sein Ziel nicht erreichte , verfaßte er ihn selbst nach eigener Anschauung und fügte ihn an dieser Stelle ein . 31. Athanasius ist mit Constantius dreimal persönlich zusammengetroffen . Erstmals im Sommer des Jahres 338 in Viminacium , die zweite Begegnung dürfte noch im Herbst des gleichen Jahres im kappadokischen Caesarea stattgefunden haben . Das dritte Zusammentreffen , auf das im Ossiusbrief angespielt wird , fand im September des Jahres 346 in Antiochia statt , wohin der erneut verbannte Bischof vor seiner zweiten Rückkehr vom Kaiser beordert wurde (apol . ad Const . 5 ; vgl . Opitz , p . 134 ) . Dort war er auch mit den ihm feindlich gesinnten Bischöfen zusammengetroffen . Zu dieser dritten Begegnung bes . Bardy a.a.0 . 135f . 32. Er meint damit die Synode von Rom , die im Jahre 341 bereits die Unschuld des Athanasius ausgesprochen hatte , und vor allem das Konzil von Serdica . Auf der ersten Versammlung war der Bischof von Cordoba wohl nicht persönlich anwesend . 33. Es ist einmal der Brief des Constantius an den Praefekten Nestorius aus dem Jahre 346 , der überschrieben ist : Νικητής Κωνστάντιος Αὔγουστος Νεστωρίῳ ἐπάρχῳ ALYúnτου ( 23 , 3 ) , zum andern der Brief des Constantius an Athanasius aus dem Jahre 350 mit dem Titel : Nuxnths KwvotávτLos AŬYOUOTOS 'Adavaoly ( 24,2-4 ; vgl . auch apol . ad Const. 3 ) . Einige weitere Schreiben , die in der apologia contra Arianos überliefert sind , werden nur genannt . 34. Für die Lösung , daß diese kurze Anrede einigen codices zuzurechnen ist , spricht die Tatsache , daß in der historia Arianorum selbst die vollen Titulaturen der Stücke

1015 Bischof Athanasius und Kaiser Constantius II erscheinen , welche von den Scheibern nicht aufgenommen wurden . Wenn also eine volle Anrede von Athanasius selbst vorhanden gewesen wäre , hätte man sie sicherlich gebracht . 35. Darüber bes . Sulp . Sev . chron . II 39 , 2. Paulinus wehrte sich als einziger dagegen . Daher wurde gegen ihn das Verbannungsurteil ausgesprochen ( aber noch nicht vollstreckt ) . Dazu jetzt bes . K. Girardet : ' Constance II , Athanase et l'édit d'Arles ( 353 ) ' , Politique et théologie chez Athanase d'Alexandrie ... 63ff . 36. Hilarius berichtet ausführlich von den turbulenten Ereignissen in Mailand . Die genannte Szene führte zu einem heftigen Streit unter den Bischöfen , der auch auf die Stadtbevölkerung übergriff . Daraufhin verlegte der Kaiser das Konzil aus der Kirche in seinen Palast , wo er nach der Mitteilung Lucifers hinter einem Vorhang sitzend den Beratungen zuhörte ( Hartel , p . 285 ; 291 ) . 37. Von ihrer Zugehörigkeit zu der sechsköpfigen Kommission , welche im Auftrag der Synode in die Mareotis gesegelt war , spricht Athanasius apol . contr . Ar . 13 , 2 . Ihre Teilnahme in Tyros und vorher in Caesarea wird auch bezeugt durch Eusebius V.C. IV 43 ( auch hier wird ihre Jugend betont ) , Athan . apol . contr. Ar . 72f und 77 sowie durch Socr . hist . eccl . I 31. Athanasius behauptet zwar , daß sie Schüler des Arius gewesen seien ( ep . ad episc . Aeg . 7 ) , aber es ist ziemlich sicher , daß sie diesen niemals gesehen haben . So zu Recht Meslin a.a.0 . 72 . 38. Hil . op . IV Feder , p . 123. In ähnlicher Weise werden sie in dem Brief an Constantius als ' imperiti atque improbi adulescentes ' bezeichnet ( ibid . 184 ) . Beide Stellen dürften auf Athanasius zurückgehen . Sie werden wohl in Serdica wiederum die harte Linie gegen diesen verfochten haben . 39. Die Umkehr von Ursacius und Valens auf einer Synode zu Mailand im Jahre 345 , an der auch Constans teilnahm - Athanasius berichtet davon nichts ! - kann lediglich der Andeutung in einem Brief entnommen werden , welche die Mehrheit der Bischöfe von Ariminum an Constantius sandte ( Feder , p . 80f ) . Sie reichten dort ein Gnadengesuch und eine Bekenntnisschrift ein , womit sie auf die kaiserlich -athanasianische Linie einschwenkten . Das ouоoúglos spielte damals in der römischen Kirche noch keine Rolle (Meslin a.a.0 . 267 ) . Die Wiederaufnahme der beiden erfolgte nach einer zweijährigen Wartezeit durch Bischof Julius von Rom ( Feder p . 143f ) . Die Gemeinschaft mit Athanasius , der sich jetzt auch auf den östlichen Kaiser stützen konnte , war für sie eine politische Notwendigkeit , wenn sie nicht ihrer Bistümer verlustig gehen wollten . Von einer ' abdication théologique ' kann man sicherlich nicht sprechen (so J. Zeiller : Les Origines chrétiennes dans les provinces danubiennes de l'empire Romain ( Paris , 1918 ), 216 ) . 40. Sulpicius Severus ( chron . II 38 , 5-7 ) berichtet , daß Valens dem Kaiser als erster den Sieg bei Mursa gemeldet und diese Botschaft auf die Erscheinung eines Engels zurückgeführt habe . Der Kaiser soll später immer wieder betont haben , daß er durch die Verdienste des Valens und nicht durch die Tüchtigkeit des Heeres gesiegt habe . Das erste Anzeichen , daß das ' trio danubien ' ( Valens , Ursacius , Germinius ) erhöhten Einfluß am Hof gewonnen hatte , war die führende Rolle der drei auf der Synode von Sirmium ( 351 ) , wo der Marcellusschüler Photinus endgültig abgesetzt und vertrieben wurde . Zu den Vorgängen dort vgl . Socr . hist . eccl . II 29f ; Sozom. hist . eccl . VI 6 und Epiphanius , adversus haereses 71 , lff . 41. Die zuletzt zitierte Stelle hist . Ar . 36 , 5. Zur ' trügerischen Reue ' der beiden vgl . auch apol . ad Const . 1. Da für die beiden kein Grund bestand , ihre 345 und 347 abgelegten antiarianischen Anathematismen aufzugeben ( solche standen auch in dem neuen Bekenntnis von Sirmium) , bedurfte es keines offiziellen Widerrufs . Auch die Gemeinschaft mit einem des Hochverrats angeklagten Bischof brauchte nicht offiziell gelöst werden . 42. ep . enc . 2 , 4 ( mehr rhetorisch als sachgemäß ) . Während Rahner bezüglich dieses Rundschreibens von einem ' Lobgesang auf die kirchliche Freiheit ' spricht ( a.a.0 . 84f ) , schränkt Berkhof mit Recht ein : Die Freiheit der Kirche gegenüber der Obrigkeit ist für ihn in diesen Jahren noch kein Prinzip ( a.a.0 . 125 ) . 43. Hil . op . IV , Feder , p . 181. Man muß sich bei der Lektüre dieser welt fremden Forderung vergegenwärtigen , daß die westlichen Bischöfe nur deswegen einen solchen Ton anschlagen konnten , weil ihnen Constans den Rücken stärkte . Zudem war Constantius von einem neuen Perserkrieg bedroht ( vgl . Seeck R. E. s.v. ' Constantius II . p . 1060 ) .

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44. Für das vielzitierte Kaiserwort : ᾿Αλλ᾽ ὅπερ ἐγὼ βούλομαι , τοῦτο κανὼν voμltέodw ... gilt das gleiche wie für die zahlreichen anderen wörtlichen Reden in der historia Arianorum. Es handelt sich um eine publizistisch höchst wirksame Formulierung , die der Kaiser in dieser Form sicher nicht gebraucht hat ( so auch Caspar a.a.0 . 174 ) . Nicht zuletzt wegen dieses Satzes , der ihm hier in den Mund gelegt wird , gilt Constantius bis zum heutigen Tag im Gegensatz zu seinem Vater als ein brutaler Despot in seiner Kirchenpolitik , so z.B. bei K. Voigt : Staat und Kirche von Konstantin dem Grossen bis zum Ende der Karolingerzeit ( Stuttgart , 1936 ) , 29 oder bei M. Vogelstein : Kaiseridee -Romidee und das Verhältnis von Staat und Kirche seit Constantin ( Breslau , 1930 ) , 97. Zum rechten Verständnis des Satzes jetzt K.L. Noethlichs : Die gesetzgeberischen Massnahmen der christlichen Kaiser des vierten Jahrhunderts gegen Häretiker, Heiden und Juden , Diss . ( Köln , 1971 ) , 61 . 45. Constans hat das gemeinsame Konzil von Serdica auf Betreiben der Bischöfe Maximinus von Trier , Ossius von Cordoba und Julius von Rom vorgeschlagen . Athanasius selbst wurde vom westlichen Herrscher in Mailand über die ergangene Einladung für das Konzil unterrichtet ( im Jahre 341 ) . Ein Jahr später traf er mit Ossius und anderen Bischöfen am Hoflager des Constans in Trier zusammen , um mit diesen das Vorgehen in Serdica abzusprechen ( apol . ad . Const . 4 , 2 ; Hil . op . IV , Feder , p . 58 u.Ö. ) . Zur Chronologie jetzt W. Schneemelcher : ' Serdica 342 ' , in Evangelische Theologie ( Sonderheft ) ( 1952 ) , 83ff und K. Girardet : Kaisergericht und Bischofsgericht (Bonn , 1975 ) , 106ff . 46. Über diese von Athanasius gar nicht und von Hilarius ( Feder , p . 164f ) nur beiläufig erwähnte Synode , die von Constans selbst einberufen und geleitet wurde , wiederum Schwartz , Ges . Schr . IV 20ff. Im übrigen hat Constans auch sonst in die Kirchenpolitik ebenso aktiv eingegriffen wie sein Bruder . Man denke z . B. an das blutige Vorgehen gegen die Donatisten in Africa ( vgl . W.H.C. Frend : The Donatist Church (Oxford , 19712 ) , 177ff ) . 47. Opitz , p . 113 zu apol . contr . Ar . 45 , 6. Die Fluchtthese steht im Mittelpunkt der drei aus der Vielzahl der existierenden Urkunden ausgewählten Stücke ( 37ff , 4lff , 44ff ) . Bei ihrer Abfassung dürfte Athanasius führend beteiligt gewesen sein . 48. Das Rundschreiben der Orientalen ist überliefert bei Hilarius op . IV , Feder , p . 48-67 . Über die Trennung der Teilnehmer bes . Socr . hist . eccl . II 20 und 22; Sozom. hist . eccl . III 11. Die Fluchtthese ist nichts anderes als eine propagandistische Verfälschuung der Tatsachen durch Athanasius , der merkte , daß die besseren Argumente auf der Seite seiner Gegner waren ( Beschlüsse von Tyros und Konstantinopel ) . 49. Die Rückkehr des Athanasius erfolgte unter dem politischen Druck des Constans auf seinen Bruder ( Bürgerkriegsdrohung ; Athan . hist . Ar . XX 2 u.a. ) . Constantius deklarierte sein Einverständnis als Ausdruck seiner herrscherlichen Gnade (apol . contr. Ar . 51 , 2 und 54 , 2 ) . 50. Z.B. 2 , 2. Noch im Jahre 350 hatte ihm der Kaiser einen beruhigenden Brief geschickt ( Text ibid . 23 ) . Die Verteidigung gegen sämtliche Vorwürfe führt Athanasius mit dem Argument des schlecht informierten Kaisers ; denn sonst wäre es ihm nicht möglich , das Bild des θεοφιλέστατος βασιλεὺς Κωνστάντιος aufrechtzuerhalten . Vgl . Hagel a.a.0 . 56ff und J.M. Szymusiak a.a.0 . 51. Beachtenswert ist , wie Athanasius an anderer Stelle den Zwang und die Gewalttaten gegen den Spanier veranschaulicht , apol . de fuga 5 , 3 und apol . contr . Ar . 89 , 4. Diese Version wird übernommen z.B. von Socr . hist . eccl . II 31 und Sozom. hist. eccl . IV 6. Daß Constantius , der persönlich den Bischöfen den höchsten Respekt bekundete ( vgl . J. Moreau : ' Constantius II . ' , Jb.A.C. 2 ( 1959 ) , 167f . ) , den greisen Ossius schlagen ließ , erscheint kaum denkbar . Athanasius ist hier wohl den Topoi aus den Schilderungen über heidnische Christenverfolgungen verpflichtet . 52. Hil . de syn . 11 : ' Exemplum blasphemiae apud Sirmium per Ossium et Potamium conscriptae ' . Vgl . ibid . 63 und 87. Georg von Laodicea spricht von yoάuuата des Ossius , in welchen sogar das avóμolos nat' ovoíav enthalten gewesen sei ( Epiph . adv . haer. 73 , 14 ) . Ähnlich auch Ps . -Vigilius von Thapsus ( um 400 ) in seinem Werk de trinitate (P.L. 10 , p . 599 ) . Dazu ausführlich V.C. Declercq a.a.0 . 482ff . Über den arianerfreundlichen Charakter dieser Sirmiumformel bes . J.N.D. Kelly : Altchristliche Glaubensbekenntnisse , Geschichte und Theologie ( Göttingen , 19732 ) , 185ff .

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53. So werden auch die harten Worte des Hilarius gegen die deliramenta Osii et incrementa Ursacii et Valentis verständlich ( contr . Const . 21 - Ossius wird hier mit Ursacius und Valens in einem Atemzug genannt ! ) , die in der Zeit geschrieben sind , als jener in diesem Sinn in Spanien wirkte . 54. Die Angabe im libellus precum Faustini et Marcellini p . 368 ( ed . M. Simonetti , C.C.L. 69 1967 ) . Die Absetzung des Gregorius ließ demnach Ossius mit Hilfe des kaiserlichen vicarius Clementius durchsetzen . Das parallele Zeugnis des Eusebius schließt jeden Zweifel an der grundsätzlichen Richtigkeit dieser Quelle aus . 55. So auch Caspar a.a.0 . 182 . 56. Zutreffend sagt Caspar , daß es dem Alexandriner ' mit durchschlagendem Erfolg bei der Nachwelt bis in die moderne wissenschaftliche Literatur hinein ' gelungen sei , seine Auseinandersetzung mit Constantius , die im Kern eine Machtfrage war , zu einer Auseinandersetzung zwischen Staat und Kirche und zu einem Kampf für den rechten Glauben umzumünzen ( a.a.0 . 186 ) . Von einem Konflikt zwischen der Reichsgewalt und Athanasius , ' der von Ägypten aus eine Kontrolle über das ganze Reich ausüben wollte ' , redet Opitz , p . 179. Auch Barnard sagt , daß es Athanasius nicht auf ' a complete dualistic severance of Church and State ' angekommen sei ( ' Athanasius and the Roman State ... ' , 437 ) . Am zutreffendsten erscheint das Urteil von H. von Campenhausen : ' Athanasius fehlt jede Distanzierung zwischen dem religiösen Anliegen , das er vertritt , und der kirchlichen Position , die er zu halten wünscht (Griechische Kirchenväter ( Stuttgart , 1961 ) , 82 ) .

Partakers of the Divine Nature The Use of II Peter 1 :4 by Athanasius

A. L. Kolp Richmond, Indiana

IS divine power has granted to us all things that Hpertain to life and godliness , through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence , by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises , that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion , and become partakers of the divine nature . ( II Peter 1 : 3-4 ) The debate concerning the authorship , date and usefulness of II Peter continues almost unchanged since the fourth century .

J.N.D. Kelly captures the sentiment

when he states that ' no NT document had a longer or tougher struggle to win acceptance than 2 Peter . ,1 The problem with the canonicity of II Peter is illustrated when one reads in Eusebius that Of Peter , one Epistle , that which is called his first , is admitted , and the ancient presbyters used this in their own writings as unquestioned , but the so -called second Epistle we have not received as canonical , but nevertheless it has appeared useful to many , and has been studied with other Scriptures . 2 The earliest manuscript evidence for II Peter comes with a Greek papyrus and a Coptic version , both early third century .

Outside the manuscript evidence the

first indisputable reference to the epistle comes from Origen .

Finally , it is

only in the fourth century that the real canonical stamp of approval comes when 4 Athanasius cites II Peter in his well known festal letter of 367 A.D. The process of canonization is a dynamic one . ship , II Peter would not have made it .

Without reputed Petrine author-

One sees even with the apparent Petrine

authorship , inclusion was not certain until the forth century . By that time authorship was not the question , but rather the content of the epistle . What II Peter said had become as much a factor as the fact that an apostle said it . Again Kelly notes this shift when he declares that ' its clear teaching about "sharing the divine nature " ( 1.4 ) and about the Church as the proper custodian of

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scripture ( i.20 f ) may have helped secure it a passport . '

This suggestion by

Kelly can be demonstrated when one discovers how Athanasius employs II Peter 1 : 4 and , particularly the phrase , ' become partakers of the divine nature ' . It can be argued that the content of II Peter 1 : 4 so fits and substantiates in fourth -century language the theology of Athanasius that he guarantees the final acceptability and canonization of II Peter . Apart from 1 : 4 there are not more than one or two direct references in the writing of Athanasius to II Peter . Surprisingly there are as few as four quotations of II Peter 1 : 4 throughout the entire corpus of Athanasius . Two of these are direct quotations and the other two are obvious because of the linguistic similarities . To see these four passages together gives one an immediate sense ofthe typical context in which II Peter 1 : 4 came to the aid of Athanasius . Contra Arianos 1:16 : And thus of the Son Himself , all things partake according to the grace of the Spirit coming from Him ; and this shows that the Son Himself partakes of nothing , but what is partaken from the Father , is the Son ; for , as partaking of the Son Himself , we are said to partake of God ; and this is what Peter said , ' that ye may be partakers of the divine nature ' ... Contra Arianos III : 40 : ...what He had as Word , that when He had become man and was risen again , He says that He received humanly; that for His sake men might henceforward upon earth have power against demons , as having become partakers of a divine nature ; and in heaven , as being delivered from corruption , might reign everlastingly ... Vita S. Antonii 74 : Next , which is better , Word of God was not changed , but , being the human body for the salvation and well -being having shared in human birth , He might make the divine and spiritual nature ...

to say that the same , He took a of man , that men partake in

Ad Adelphium 4: For He has become man , that He might deify us in Himself , and He has been born of a woman , and begotten of a Virgin , in order to transfer to Himself our erring generation , and that we may become henceforth a holy race , and ' partakers of the Divine nature ' , as blessed Peter wrote . Clearly these four passages all occur in a christological context .

More specific-

ally , three of the four have a direct reference to the incarnation as the basis for our participation in the divine nature .

Finally , although not as clear as the

first two observations , nevertheless implied is the Athanasian assumption that the divine ὑπόστασις in which believers participate is the agenetic ὑπόστασις ( οὐσία ) of the Father , Son and Holy Spirit .? Taking our cue from the dogmatic anti -Arian treatise , Contra Arianos , one can project the Athanasian Sitz im Leben for the use of II Peter 1 : 4 . The theological threat of Arianism was patent ; it was exacerbated , however , by the scriptural

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' abuse ' which was evident in the choice of texts to undergird their aberrant theology . II Peter's Hellenistic language made it capable , indeed , attractive , to either the Arian position or the Nicene . Athanasius makes clear the crux of the issue when he asks , ' Which of the two theologies sets forth our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Son of the Father , this which you vomit forth , or that which we have spoken and maintain from the Scriptures ? ', 8 Obviously Athanasius feels that the Nicene position is scriptural ;

indeed , what he is doing is making a particular

interpretation of scripture ' orthodox ' because it corresponds to the Nicene theological position .

Because of the relevance to the Nicene debate of the phrase

from II Peter 1 : 4 , ' become partakers of the divine nature ' , this process of Nicene domestication applies to it like so many texts from John's gospel , Proverbs and others . The Petrine phrase , ' to become partakers in the divine nature ' , has two important aspects : that believers participate and participate in the divine nature. It is because of these two aspects that Athanasius , who may have known of II Peter from reading Origen , in the 350's A.D. used II Peter to substantiate his anti -Arian theology .

These four passages from Athanasius can be used to indicate how he

interpreted the II Peter passage . analysis :

Four questions can be posed to structure the

in what do believers participate , why do they participate , when do they

participate and , finally , how do they participate ? Because Athanasius cites II Peter so infrequently , it is important to understand the context in each case . The first passage , Contra Arianos 1:16 , comes in what may be one of the most revealing portions of the entire Athanasian corpus . The section really begins in 1 : 9 when he announces that ' we take divine Scripture , and thence discourse with freedom of the religious Faith , and set it up as a light upon 9 its candlestick . ' He then proceeds to affirm christologically what the entire treatise sets out to demonstrate , namely , that the Son of God is very Son of the Father , natural and genuine , proper to His essence , Wisdom Only-begotten , and Very and Only Word of God is He ; not a creature or work , but an offspring proper to the Father's essence . Wherefore He is very God , existing one in essence with the very Father ; while other beings , to whom He said , ' I said ye are Gods ' ; had this grace from the Father , only by participation of the Word , through the Spirit.10 Athanasius begins working with the famous distinction that divinity is possible by 11 nature or by participation ." In fact , there is only one God (one ovoúa ) which is naturally divine .

It is the make -up of that God which is in question ;

Athanasius

wants to argue that the one divine ovoúa is constituted by the Father , Son and Holy Spirit .

In opposition the Thalia of Arius argues that ' Christ is not very God , 12 The question , then , is whether the Son is divine by participation ( created ) or by nature ( uncreated ) ? Athanasius but He as others , was made God by participation . '

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continues the argument that the Son does not participate as all other creatures do , but is himself that which is participated by all creatures . And since that in which all creatures participate in order to become divine is the divine nature itself , therefore the Son must be that divine nature . The argument culminates in C. A. I : 16 when II Peter 1 : 4 is quoted . Athanasius uses II Peter 1 : 4 as scriptural affirmation of what all believers do : they participate in the divine nature .

In

this instance he is interested in what they participate , namely , the divine nature . He feels like he has just demonstrated that the Son is that in which all creatures participate ;

therefore , Athanasius concludes that the Son must be this divine

nature . In other words , II Peter 1 : 4 becomes part of the process to prove the Son's eternal uncreated nature . In C.A. I : 16 Athanasius uses the Petrine passage to say more about the Son's nature than about the believers ' activity .

This is because the

focus is on the what (the divine nature ) of the believers ' participation . As one moves from the question of what one participates in ( divine nature ) to the question why one participates , the focus shifts from the divine nature to the basis for the believers ' activity of participation .

This can be seen when one

looks at C.A. III : 40 where II Peter 1 : 4 is again cited .

This whole section has to

do with the incarnation , by which Athanasius understands that ' He became man , and 3 did not come into man . , 1 The incarnation can be appreciated when the Son's uncreated nature is understood .

Then one can grasp that ' if the works of the

Word's Godhead had not taken place through the body , man had not been deified . , 14 The basic stumbling block to human deification is that human nature is created and , therefore , corruptible .

That is why , according to II Peter , we must ' become '

partakers of the divine nature . cipation .

Believers are not divine by nature but by parti-

Participation becomes possible only with the transformation and renewal

of the corrupt nature of human creatures . The incarnation is necessary because the renewal of human nature is impossible from within its corruptible character . As Athanasius says elsewhere , ' He was made man that we might be made God . , 15

The

incarnation , then , answers why believers ' become partakers ' in the divine nature : because believers do not have it by nature and can never obtain it through their own efforts . It is at this point that C.A. III : 40 cites II Peter 1 : 4 . Athanasius declares that the Son , who is divine by nature , became human in order to ' receive ' as a gift ( participation in the divine nature ) what He had naturally as divine . The question why believers have to participate to be divine ( because of their corruptible nature ) anticipates the how can they participate question ( on the basis of the incarnation ) . The letter , Ad Adelphium , allows one to see Athanasius addressing the perennial gnostic question whether the Word really became sarx. answers this clearly . We do not worship a creature . Far be the thought . For such an error belongs to heathens and Arians . But we worship the

He

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A. L. Kolp Lord of Creation , Incarnate , the Word of God . For if the flesh also is in itself a part of the created world , yet it has become God's body . 16

Athanasius moves to demonstrate how humans can take advantage of the incarnational gift . Lord .

They do so by means of their participation in the incarnate and resurrected This participation in the divine nature through the risen body of the Lord is nothing other than the deification of the participant . Athanasius answers the

question how humans can participate in the divine nature by referring to the incarnation . He says that the flesh did not diminish the glory of the Word ... on the contrary , it was glorified by Him...And if God sent His Son brought forth from a woman , the fact causes us no shame but contrariwise glory and great grace . For He has become Man , that He might deify us in Himself , and He has been born of a woman , and begotten of a Virgin, in order to transfer to Himself our erring generation ... 17 The incarnation , then , becomes the means whereby the deification process commences and this introduces the possibility of ' becoming partakers in the divine nature ' . Athanasius then quotes II Peter 1 :4 to locate the context of the ' transfer ' of human nature to a ' Christ -like ' nature in the incarnational event . Human partic-

ipation in Christ appropriates the incarnational transference of the human nature into the divine nature . It is important to note that II Peter 1 : 4 does not say humans become the divine nature ; they are partakers in the divine nature . They are deified by participation .

II Peter is quoted to indicate the effect of the incarnation , namely , deification by participation . The remaining question is when does the believer's participation begin? Another

question lurking here is when the participation begins , what does it look like ? The final quotation of II Peter comes in the story of Antony's life . This serves to answer the question , when can participation in the divine nature begin . Antony emerges as a paradigm of one who has become a partaker . Faith in Christ begins the process of participation which culminates in death when one realizes one's immortality . Immortality is the culmination of the deificatory process . The Petrine quotation comes in the Vita at a point where Antony is being queried (by Greek philosophers ) about the cross .

Antony responds by saying that the cross

' which is chosen by us is a sign of courage and a sure token of the contempt of 18 death . ' Antony acknowledges that the incarnation happened for human salvation . Then he quotes II Peter 1 : 4 to indicate the possibility of participation in the divine nature . Athanasius uses the life of the monk as a paradigm of him who has become such a participant . Antony demonstrates in his life the fruits of the salvific state being lived out in the present . The conclusion is that any believer can enjoy the same participatory effect . In conclusion one can say that Athanasius used II Peter variably .

Nevertheless ,

Partakers of the Divine Nature

1023

it is clear that the incarnation is the foundation on which Athanasius based his

use of II Peter 1 : 4 .

In a real sense , the passage is used more to substantiate

what Athanasius wants to say about the Son of God than what he wants to say about believers in the Son .

The passage illustrates the three aspects of the Son of

God's character : the eternal divine nature of the Word , the incarnation of that eternal nature and the deification of that assumed human nature . It is only when one understands this process of re -creation ( redemption ) that each believer can appropriate in faith and in fact what II Peter 1 : 4 declares : that we can ' become partakers of the divine nature ' .

REFERENCES 1. J.N.D. Kelly , A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and of Jude ( London 1969 ) , p. 224. For a good history of the scholarly debate one should consult Michael Green , 2 Peter Reconsidered ( London 1961 ) . 2. Eusebius , Historia Ecclesiastica III : 1-4 . 3. For instance , see De Principiis IV : 4 : 4 . 4. Athanasius , Epistolae Festales 39 ( P.G. 26 : 1437 ) . 5. Kelly , p . 224 . 6. Athanasius , Contra Arianos 1:16 ( P.G. 26 : 44-45 ) ; Contra Arianos III : 40 (P.G. 26 : 409 ) ; Vita Antonii 74 ( P.G. 26 : 945-948 ) ; Ad Adelphium 4 ( P.G. 26 : 10761077) . 7. Here one can use the two different. words for the divine nature or substance interchangeably . Although the distinction between ousia for nature or substance and hypostasis for person within the one ousia came to be distinguished , at least at this time that process was only yet in a fluid state . 8. Contra Arianos I : 10 ( P.G. 26:32 ) . That Athanasius perceives the debate with the Arians very much as a debate over the correct interpretation of scripture can be seen in the blast which he levels against them in saying ' Nor does Scripture afford them any pretext ; for it has been often shewn , and it shall be shewn now, that their doctrine is alien to the divine oracles . ' Contra Arianos I : 10 ( P.G. 26:33 ) . 9. Contra Arianos 1 : 9 ( P.G. 26 : 28-29 ) . 10. Ibid. 11. See my unpublished dissertation , Participation : A Unifying Concept in the Theology of Athanasius ( Ph.D. dissertation , Harvard University , 1976 ) . 12. Contra Arianos 1 : 9 ( P.G. 26:29 ) . 13. Contra Arianos III : 30 ( P.G. 26 : 388 ) . 14. Contra Arianos III : 33 ( P.G. 26 : 393 ) . 15. De Incarnatione Verbi 53 ( P.G. 25 : 189 ) . 16. Ad Adelphium 3 ( P.G. 26 : 1076 ) . 17. Ibid. 4 (P.G. 26 : 1076-1077 ) . 18. Vita Antonii 74 ( P. G. 26 : 945 ) .

Did Athanasius (letter 49 , to Dracontius) know and correct Cyprian (letter 5 , Hartel) ? J. L. North Hull

O answer this question we must ask at least two further questions : from our To knowledge of the personal histories of Cyprian and Athanasius and of the Fortleben of the Cyprianic corpus , is there evidence which makes likely an affirmative answer to the first part of the question in the title ? What features of Athanasius ' letter to Dracontius suggest a particular knowledge and correction of Cyprian's letter to the Carthaginian presbyters and deacons ? We possess one clear indication that Cyprian was well known in at least one part of the eastern church during his lifetime : printed among Cyprian's letters is the letter of Firmilian , bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia , to Cyprian , supporting him in his debate with Stephen over rebaptism .

In it ( letter 75 , 1 , Hartel ) Firmilian

refers to a letter of Cyprian to him ; Basil , who was a successor to Firmilian in this important eastern see and a younger contemporary of Athanasius , may allude to this association in a letter to Amphilochius in 374.1 There may well have been a similar connection with Dionysius of Alexandria ; it is unlikely that in his own correspondence with Stephen in the same debate Cyprian's ecclesial activity was unknown to him. Goetz and Harnack surveyed Cyprian's posthumous reputation2 and Hugo Kock documented Cyprian's influence on north African writers in a series of articles in Ricerche Religiose .

Bernhard Koetting has written more recently about the popularity 4 of the martyr's basilicas in Carthage for the pilgrim . A complete inventory of

eastern references has yet to be made .

But among Athanasius ' contemporaries ,

Eusebius of Caesarea refers to the arrival of letters of Cyprian dealing with Novatus , in Latin ( H.E. vi , 43 ; cf. vii , 3 ) ; there is Basil's allusion which we have already noticed , and , best known , there is the panegyric of Cyprian , delivered by Gregory of Nazianzus , probably in Constantinople , in 379 ( Or . 24 ) .

The significance

of the oration for our purpose is not marred by the fact that Gregory has probably 1024

Did Athanasius know and correct Cyprian?

1025

conflated the stories of two Cyprians : the Carthaginian martyr and the Antiochene martyr , Cyprian the converted magician .

Gregory speaks of Cyprian's name as known

throughout the whole world ( P.G. xxxv . 1176B ) ; of his presiding over the whole church , West and East , North and South ( 1184B ) ; of his literary activity ' for us ' ( úпερ hµwv ) ( 1176C ) ; he has become , Gregory says , ' our Cyprian ' ( Kuпplavòs huétεpos ) ( 1184B ) .

Other references to Cyprian in post -Athanasian times , in Macarius Magnes

and in conciliar material , show how this knowledge of Cyprian was put to good use . The mention of Eusebius ' knowledge of some of Cyprian's letters in Latin raises the question of their translation into Greek . Here we may recall Harnack's collection of testimonia , repeated in the work of Hans Freiherr von Soden and in the Schanz -Hosius - Krueger history of Latin literature , relating to the translation of at least some of the letters , though not of 5 , not only into Greek but also into Syriac and Armenian . Two testimonia are especially interesting : in 397 Rufinus

refers to the availibility of the whole of the Cyprianic correspondence in Constantinople , and , though its translation is not stated , it is probably to be assumed ( C.C.L. vol . xx , p . 15 ; the bearing of a remark , op . cit . , p . 237 , not , I think , hitherto noticed , on this issue is not clear : ' ... stilus eius ( sc . Basilii ) in Graeco et sermonis splendore et dicendi gratia multum beato nostro simulat Cypriano , .. ' ) ; secondly , at the end of a sermon ( 310 ) delivered on the anniversary of Cyprian's martyrdom , Augustine speaks of the translation of Cyprian's works , 7 again without mentioning Greek ." As for Athanasius it is not difficult to establish possible lines of contact with the Cyprianic corpus . Prior to 354/355 , the date of the letter to Dracontius , Athanasius had twice been exiled to the West : in 336-7 he had lived in Trier , and two years later , in 339 , he entered upon an exile that was to last seven years , passing from Rome to Milan , to Gaul , to Sardica , again to Trier and finally to Rome once more . Though we have no explicit evidence , it is more than likely that during these periods of less active public life , amounting to about nine years , he came across at least some of the works of Cyprian , so highly revered in the West ; for example , he might well have found the dossier of thirteen letters , including 5 , which Cyprian sent to the Roman church ( letter 20,2 , Hartel ) . As far as being able to make use of them is concerned , we now have Nils Dahl's reminder about the currency of Latin in Antinoopolis in particular and in Egypt in general : ' in the fourth and fifth centuries the use of the Latin language was increasing in Egypt , both in general and among Christians 1 8," and the evidence complied by Bardy and Dekkers suggests that Athanasius was very probably conversant with Latin ; for example , he was in correspondence with Potamius of Lisbon , and fragments of both sides appear 10 to have been preserved , in Latin ( P.L. viii , 1416-1418 ; ci , 113B - C ) ." Another western correspondent was his fiery supporter Lucifer of Cagliari , amongst whose letters are three from Athanasius , in Latin ( C.C.L. vol . viii , pp . 306-310 , 316f . ) ;

1026

J. L. North

though the first two of these may be forgeries , followers of Lucifer did claim that Athanasius had corresponded with Lucifer and had translated some of his works into 11 Greek ( C.C.L. vol . lxix , p . 381 ; cf. P.L. cxxix.561A ) .* There can be little doubt that we can give an affirmative answer to our general question : though the evidence is circumstantial and cumulative , and in some of it the rhetorical and polemical elements must be soberly evaluated , there is no reason why Athanasius could not have read Cyprian's fifth letter , whether in Egypt or in the West , whether in Latin or in Greek . Cyprian's letter , summarised by himself as ' clero consilium ' ( letter 20,2 ) , is a brief monument of pastoral concern , written at the beginning of 250 , in the first days of the Decian persecution , during a self- imposed withdrawal from Carthage ; in it he offers advice on the use of church funds for the relief of those in prison and on the need for discretion when these are being visited .

Equally pastoral in tone

is Athanasius ' letter to Dracontius ( P.G. xxv.524-533 ) ; writing just over a century later Athanasius gently and firmly takes to task his friend , who had been raised to the episcopate but upon the advice of his fellow monks had declined to discharge his new duties , because of the political and spiritual risks involved . Both letters reflect a similar situation and advocate certain responses to it .

In section

three Athanasius appears to enlarge upon ideas which Cyprian had briefly employed , only , usually , to contradict them .

The most telling passage in Cyprian is : ' circa

omnia enim mites et humiles , ut servis Dei congruit , temporibus servire et quieti prospicere et plebi providere debemus ' . this sentence :

I have three suggestions to make about

1) the opening words contain a characteristic injunction to mildness and humility ( maintaining a ' low profile ' might be an idiomatic equivalent ) ; the words taken with ' quieti prospicere ' and the earlier phrases ' ad procurandam quietem' , ' caute ' , ' cum temperamento ' and ' tutius ' have the stated purpose of diminishing pagan ' invidia ' and promoting Christian safety , but to an unsympathetic , suspicious judgement they might suggest an unworthy , insipid passivity , even fear and cowardice , and it is these two shortcomings that Athanasius criticises .

Writing as he does in very

different post - Constantinian times and observing his friend recoil from his episcopal duties , he comments oún άvôρunòv tò qpóvnuɑ , and urges the more manly , Christian virtues of zeal and boldness of speech .

In displaying these , he says , quoting

St. Paul , ὑπερνικῶμεν ; 2) when we put alongside Cyprian's phrases ' ut servis Dei congruit , temporibus servire ...debemus ' , words further perfectly exemplifying that circumspection and 12 calculation to which von Campenhausen has more than once drawn attention , Athanasius ' rejoinder οὐ πρέπει τῷ καιρῷ δουλεύειν , I do not think we can avoid raising questions about some sort of dependence of Athanasius upon Cyprian . The use of the expression tữ xalpy Soulɛúɛɩv , found in Greek prior to Athanasius only two or

1027

Did Athanasius know and correct Cyprian?

three times , in St. Paul ( Romans xii . 11 v.1 . ) , Plutarch ( Life of Aratus 43,2 ) and Dio Cassius ( 63,5 ) , is especially significant : its general rarity and its uniqueness in Athanasius do not require but certainly suggest special appropriation ; 3) finally there is Cyprian's concern that the church be faithfully shepherded : ' plebi providere debemus ' ; here Athanasius concurs , advising

povτúte ths έnnλnolas ,

which is recalled at the end of the letter with τῶν προβάτων αὐτοῦ φροντίζων . To resume

in general there is no problem whatever in imagining Athanasius to be

familiar with the work of Cyprian ; in particular we have in this single sentence of Cyprian sentiments which Athanasius appears to deny , not , it should be noticed , in I re-

widely different parts of his long letter , but in the same third paragraph . gard the likelihood of some relationship as established : the rare тy naɩp picking up ' temporibus servire ' ; ' congruit ' and ' debemus ' echoed in

dovìεúεlv

deɩ and пρéлεɩ ;

' servis Dei ' recalled in Sovλevelv ... tÿ Kupuy ; ' mites et humiles ' criticised by implication in οὐκ ἀνδρικὸν τὸ φρόνημα ; ' cum temperamento phalistic

put to shame with trium-

los , rappnolatɛodаι , Ùпεрνɩишuev ; and Cyprian's ' plebi providere ' find-

ing solitary approval in φροντίζε τῆς ἐκκλησίας . But to suggest a relationship provokes the question , ' What sort of relationship ? ' 1. Is Athanasius familiar with Cyprian at first hand ? 2. Is Athanasius criticising Dracontius ' use of Cyprian , or his advisers ' use of Cyprian ? 3. Is Athanasius criticising the use made of Cyprian in the ' de fuga ' apologias of his own and earlier days ? ( It is of interest that Athanasius himself three years later withdrew into voluntary exile and was obliged to write an apologia of his action , and made considerable use of the

au pós - concept .) 13

4. Are Cyprian and Athanasius dependent on a common tradition : perhaps so-called Western text of Romans xii . 11 , and while Cyprian , the western father , accepts what he takes to be the scriptural advice and encourages others to do likewise , Athanasius repudiates it and the prudential ethic based on it , recognising only the alternative reading , Κυρίῳ ? Until certain desiderata are supplied ( a search through the Athanasian corpus 14 ; a systematic study of the ' de fuga ' genre )

for other distinctively Cyprianic ideas

no precise answer is possible , but of dependence of some sort I have no doubt .

SP 3 - E

1028

J. L. North REFERENCES

1. Letter 188 , 1 ( Courtonne ( 1961 ) , vol . ii , p . 122 ) . 2. K. Goetz , Geschichte der Cyprianischen Litteratur bis zu der Zeit der ersten erhaltenen Handschriften ( 1890/1891 ) chs . 3-6 ; A. Harnack , Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius , 1/2 , pp . 701-717 . 3. Vols . vi ( 1930 ) , pp . 304-316 , 492-501 ; vii ( 1931 ) , pp . 122-132 , 313-335 ; viii ( 1932 ) , pp . 6-15 , 317-337 , 505-523 ; ix ( 1933 ) , pp . 502-522 ; in vol . v ( 1929 ) , pp . 137-163 , 523-537 Koch had dealt with the influence of Greek writers on Cyprian . 4. Peregrinatio Religiosa ( 1950 ) , pp . 256-259 . 5. Apocriticus iii.24 , Blondel ( 1876 ) , p . 109. From the summary in L'Année Philologique , vol . 45 ( 1976 ) , p . 95 , I conclude that T.A. Sabattini , ' S. Cipriano nella tradizione agiografica ' , Rivista di Studi Classici vol . 21 ( 1973 ) , pp . 181-204 , has drawn Eudocia and Cyprian of Antioch into the discussion of eastern references to Cyprian of Carthage . 6. Harnack , op . cit . , von Soden , Der Cyprianische Briefsammlung : Geschichte ihrer Entstehung und Ueberlieferung , T.U. xxv . 3 ( 1904 ) , pp . 172-183 , ( M. Schanz - C . Hosius- ) G. Krueger , Geschichte der roemischen Litteratur bis zum Gesetzgebungswerk des Kaisers Justinian , vol . 3 ( 19223 ) , pp . 364 , 387ff . 7. P.L. xxxviii , 1413f . , undated by P.-P. Verbraken , Etudes critiques sur les Sermons authentiques de Saint Augustin ( 1976 ) , p . 135 . 8. In Text and Interpretation ( 1979 ) , edd . E. Best and R. McL . Wilson , p . 79f .; cf. J.P.V.D. Balsdon , Romans and Aliens ( 1979 ) , pp . 131-135 , 280f .; H.I. Marrou , A History of Education in Antiquity ( English translation , 1956 ) , p . 257f . But all who work on ' Latin in the eastern Empire ' ( Balsdon's heading ) must now take account of the monograph of the Finnish scholar Jorma Kaimio , The Romans and the Greek Language ( Helsinki , 1979 ) , pp . 110-129 . In his bibliography Kaimio refers to a paper of his , ' Latin in Roman Egypt ' , Actes du XVe Congrès de Papyrologie ( BruxellesLouvain ) , vol . iii , pp . 27-33 . My best efforts to consult this suggest that the date given ( 1977 ) was overoptimistic . Older investigations which an amateur has found useful are Arthur Stein , Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Verwaltung Aegyptens unter roemischer Herrschaft ( 1915 ) , esp . ch . 3 ( Der Sprachengebrauch in der Verwaltung Aegyptens ) , and Joseph Vogt , Die Alexandrinischen Muenzen ( 1924 ) , vol . i , pp . 226-230 . May the amateur enquire , ' What was the significance and impact of Diocletian's introduction of Latin legends at the Alexandrian mint in 293 / 294 ?? This date , of course , shortly precedes Athanasius ' birth . If from this time on the conduct not only of military and administrative but also of legal affairs in Latin was accelerated and the report in Sulpicius Severus is accurately preserved , the claim that Athanasius had been a ' iuris consultus ' assumes even greater importance for our investigation . This is the reading in Chronica ii , 36 printed by the first editor , Flacius Illyricus , in 1556 , and transmitted to Migne ( P.L. xx , 149A ) through Jérôme de Prato and Gallandi , for which Karl Halm preferred the reading of the only extant MS of the Chronica , ' virum sanctum ' ( C.S.E.L. , vol . i , ( 1866 ) , p. 89) . 9. G. Bardy , La Question des Langues dans l'Eglise ancienne ( 1948 ) , E. Dekkers , i , vol . 5 ( 1953 ) , ' Traductions Grecques des Ecrits patristiques Latins ' , Sacris Erudir pp . 193-233 , esp . 197ff . I am indebted to this article . Professor Charles r Kannengiesse has been kind enough to draw my atntention to his essay ' Les Citations bibliques du Traité Athanasien " Sur l'Incarnatio du Verbe " et les " Testimonia " ' , in La Bible et les Pères ( 1971 ) , preface signed by A. Benoit and P. Prigent , pp . 135een Cyprian and s t 160 , as another contribution to the discussion r abou link betw Athanasius . I mention Professor Kannengiesse here , not only to acknowledge a kindness but also to report that he shows a greater caution than Bardy , Dekkers or I , on the question of Athanasius ' Latin . His hesitation , expressed on p . 154 , is r repeated in Humanisme et Foi chrétienne ( 1976 ) , edd . Kannengiesse and Y. Marchasson , p . 506 , n . 9 : ' Il devait bien connaître aussi les Latins , peut - être avait - il appris leur langue ' . 10. The only extended discussion I know on Potamius and Athanasius is in António Montes Moreira , Potamius de Lisbonne et la controverse arienne ( 1969 ) , pp . 159-189 , 219-230 . On p . 162f . he follows Dekkers ( op . cit . , p . 216f . ) in thinking it probable

Did Athanasius know and correct Cyprian?

1029

that Athanasius wrote the letter in Latin ; on p . 170 he will not allow that Potamius knew any Greek . 11. G. Bardy , op . cit . , pp . 131f . and 173 , n . 2 , appears to contradict himself about the reliability of the Luciferian allegations about Athanasius . 12. H. Frh . von Campenhausen , The Fathers of the Latin Church ( 1964 ) , ch . 2 ; idem , Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the first three Centuries ( 1969 ) , ch . 11 . 13. In the most recent edition of Athanasius . De fuga ( S.C. vol . lvi ( 1958 ) , pp . 133-167 ) the editor , J.-M. Syzsmusiak , discusses the two exiles of 336-337 and 339-346 on pp . 16-29 . 14. In an unpublished Ph.D. thesis presented at Boston University Graduate School in 1976 , St. Cyprian of Carthage as Minister , J.W. Jacobs concludes on p . 454 , ' This study has identified dimensions , models , and structures of Cyprian's ministry . These need to be evaluated by investigating the writings of other Fathers of the Church and by exploring pastoral practices in other time - frames and cultures , to determine whether these categories apply only to Cyprian , or whether they may have some degree of universal applicability ' .

A Reconsideration of the Date of the Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione of Athanasius of Alexandria

A. Pettersen Cambridge

NE of the more recent considerations of the date of Athanasius ' Contra Gentes O - De Incarnatione is C. Kannengiesser's article ' La Date de l'apologie d'Athanase " Contre les Paiens " et " sur l'incarnation du Verbe " .¹ Countering many points made in Nordberg's articles ' A reconsideration of the date of St. Athanasius ' Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione 2, and ' Athanasius ' Tractates Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione -- an attempt at redating'³, Kannengiesser came to the conclusion that the dual Athanasian work was most probably written in c . 336. He came to this conclusion partly as a result of accepting Athanasius ' seeming ignorance about the current state of Roman senatorial policy on apotheosis as dictating 339 , the year of Athanasius ' expulsion to Rome , as a terminus ante quem for the Contra Gentes De Incarnatione , and partly as a result of accepting the reference in Contra Gentes 1 to not having the works of the teachers at hand as signaling that Athanasius was writing away from the libraries of Alexandria , the reference therefore compelling a terminus post quem of 335 , the date of the beginning of Athanasius ' first exile . Confirmation of such a time of composition Kannengiesser believed he found in Festal Letters 1-11 . For in these early Festal Letters Athanasius refers to ' those who rend Christ's tunic ' . This reference Kannengiesser takes to be of the Arians , a party which , for political reasons , was not mentioned explicitly by Athanasius until after 337 , the year of Constantine's death . Meanwhile a similar image appeared in De Incarnatione 24.

For therein Athanasius spoke of heretics as Tous Bouloμέvols

διαιρεῖν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν and coupled this clause with the use of σῶμα as an epithet 5 for the Body of Christ , the Church . Using the references in the earlier Festal Letters , Kannengiesser then identified the heretics of De Incarnatione 24 as Arians , but Arians referred to in the veiled manner as required by politics prior to 337 . Such conclusions are however open to questioning . For while the establishment of 339 as a terminus ante quem for the composition of the Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione 1030

Contra Gentes- De Incarnatione of Athanasius

1031

does seem probable , the establishment of 335 as a terminus post quem , and the identification of both ' those who rend Christ's tunic' of the Festal Letters , and tous βουλομένοις διαιρεῖν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν of De Incarnatione 24 as Arians , seems improbable . While Contra Gentes 1.13-14 refers to an absence of books , Athanasius ' being in exile is not the only possible explanation of this text . Indeed , exile seems to be not the right explanation . For , as Meijering remarks , ' nothing points towards any emotional discomfort ' such as one would have expected to have arisen if Athanasius had had to write his work while not having to hand the writings of his teachers . While agreeing with Meijering in this observation , we do not side with him in his conclusion that it is not possible to explain why Athanasius had no books at hand when he was writing the Contra Gentes De Incarnatione . For it is questionable whether or not it was Athanasius who had no books .

The statement under discussion

is found in the introduction to the Contra Gentes ; it begins in a rather rhetorical manner : the knowledge of religion and of the truth about the universe needs no instruction from Athanasius himself . For that truth is clearly revealed in natural 8 9 events , through the words of Scripture , and from the many treatises of the blessed 10 teachers , treatises whose very purpose was to expound that truth ." Indeed , ' if one reads (the many treatises of the teachers ) , one will gain some notion of the interpretation of Scripture , and will be able to attain the knowledge one desires'.11 Consequently , there was no real reason why Athanasius should have written his work , unless , that is , these works of the teachers were missing to Athanasius ' audience . The reason for writing Athanasius then immediately gives : ' but since we do not now have the writings of these teachers to hand , it is necessary for us to write to you 12 concerning what we have learnt from them' ." The meaning of the ' we ' immediately comes into question . not likely .

The first ' we ' may refer to Athanasius himself .

But such is

For the lack of books at one's side is a strange reason for writing a

treatise , especially when those books which one is lacking are available to one's readers , and when they can read them and thereby discover the truth which they wished to know . More probably the first ' we ' refers to the ' we ' , the ' Church , the Christians ' .

It seems therefore that Athanasius wrote of the Gospel of Christ to

the Christians since the books already dealing with that subject were not available 13 to them. Contra Gentes 1.13-14 therefore does not afford an argument for a terminus post quem of the Contra Gentes

De Incarnatione , but only points to the scarcity

of books at the time . The identification of the Arian party with those who wished to rend the seamless tunic of Christ is equally open to question .

The first use of this image appears

in Festal Letter 5 , where Athanasius exhorts those Christians in his care to keep 14 the holy fasts as laid down by God . For they are a means of attaining to God ." The Christians are not to be like the heterodox :

A. Pettersen

1032

non tamen velut ethnici aut contumaces Judaei aut hodierni haeretici , vel sectarum alumni . Ethnici quidem scopum festi in epularum copia positum aestimant : Judaei figura et umbra decepti , idem opinantur : sectarum alumni , separatis locis vanisque sententiis ( aberrant ) ...15 Rather the Christians are to excel these : nos autem , fratres mei , ethnicos superamus , festum agenda cum animae puritate corporisque munditia : Judaeos item , quia iam figuram aut umbram non admittimus , sed vera luce splendemus , solemque justitiae aspicimus : sectarum denique alumnos , quia Christi tunicam non discindimus , sed una in Domo , 16 in Ecclesia nempe Catholica , Pascha Domini illius comedimus ... From the above injunction of Athanasius it is clear that the Christians are distinct from the heathen , Jews , Heretics and Schismatics .

Of these latter four , how-

ever , not all are treated in the above exhortations : the ' ethnici ' is picked up by the ' ethnici ' and the ' ethnicos ' ; the ' contumaces Judaei ' by ' Judaei ' and ' Judaeos ' , and the ' sectarum alumni ' by ' sectarum alumni ' and ' sectarum alumnos ' . haeretici ' are however passed over in silence .

The ' hodierni

Moreover , ' hodierni haeretici ' are

here separated from the ' sectarum alumni ' by the particle ' vel ' .

This is disjunctive ,

a point made very strongly by its being used in common with ' aut ...aut ' , an adversative usage . Indeed , even though the above use of ' aut ... aut ... vel ' is cumulative , it is disjunctive and not conjunctive .

For while the four mentioned groups are one

in that they are not to be imitated by the Christians , they are distinct in that the Christians are not to copy either the heathen or the Jews or the heretics or the sectarians . The ' aut ... aut ... vel ' excludes options . It seems therefore that in Letter 5 the ' alumni sectarum ' , to whom the ' Christi tunicam non discindimus ' is to be related , are distinct from the ' hodierni haeretici '. ་ The second use of the ' tunic ' image occurs in Letter 6. Treating the true Paschal Feast , Athanasius notes that it has been removed from the Jews and given to the Christians . For the Jews have slain the Lord , have not reverenced the Only17 Begotten , and thus have introduced days of grief and not gladness .* Athanasius then continues : scelesti autem haeretici , et temerarii sectarum alumni , illi quidem Verbum interficientes , hi autem tunicam illius scindentes , ipsi quoque a solemnitate excludentur , quia sine bono timore vivunt ac sine intellectu ...18 As in Letter 5 , so here there seems to be a distinction between ' scelesti ... haeretici ' and ' temerarii sectarum alumni ' .

For the one is picked up by ' Verbum interficientes '

and the other by ' tunicam illius scindentes ' . That these are not mere rhetorical devices on the part of the author , we may point to ' illi quidem ... hi autem ... ' , demonstrative pronouns which are used together in contrast . It is true that the ' haeretici ' and the ' sectarum alumni ' are united by the conjunctive ' et ' , and that both are probably included in the ' ipsi quoque a solemnitate excludentur ... ' . However , this is but a unity on their common exclusion from the

1033

Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione of Athanasius true Paschal Feast , and from the Catholic Chruch .

It is not an identification of

the one group with the other . This passage therefore brings us no nearer to seeing the heretics united to the ' sectarum alumni ' , with whom the ripping of the tunic of Christ is connected . The same distinction of ' sectarum alumni ' and ' haeretici ' is to be found in Letter 719, when Athanasius remarks that : propterea peccatores , cunctique catholicae Ecclesiae extranei , haeretici et sectarum alumni , cum a iustorum laudatione sint alieni , merito solemnes non erunt ... Here , in a passage where there is no mention of Christ's seamless tunic , Athanasius uses ' et' to relate the ' haeretici ' to the ' sectarum alumni ' . Yet he uses the ' et' only to encompass all those ' catholicae Ecclesiae extranei ' .

Thus , as in Letters 5

and 6 , so here the heretics and schismatics are distinct groups , united only in their 20 both being outside the true Church . Letter 10 contains the last reference to the divided tunic . Having expounded the doctrine of the incarnation in the face of Arian thought , Athanasius concludes : Novi quidem haec non solum Christo contradicentibus displicere , verum etiam sectarum alumnis qui eadem fere opinantur , atque inter se conspirant , qui didicerunt indivisibilem Dei tunicam dividere ; neque absurdum se facere iudicant a Patre Filium separando .... 21 Here , for the first time , the ' tunic ' image , which previously has been connected with the ' sectarum alumni ' alone , is introduced in reference to both the ' Christo contradicentibus ' and to the ' sectarum alumnis qui eadem fere opinantur ... ' .

Here ,

however , the ' tunic ' which is mentioned is not the ' tunica Christi ' , as in Letters 5 and 6 , but the ' indivisibilem Dei tunicam ' . The tunic which is here rent is that symbolic of the oneness of the Father and the Son , as the last sentence shows : ' neque 22 absurdum se facere iudicant a Patre Filium separando ... ' . Having dealt with the true divinity of the Son in the face of the Arians ' impious application of Christ's human economy to his divine , Athanasius alters the tenor of the tunic metaphor from ecclesiological to theological . Yet , despite the fact that the ' sectarum alumni ' are here closely united with the heretics , the ' Christo contradicentibus ' , even to the point of thinking ' eadem ' , they are yet seen as separate groups , as the distinguishing ' non solum... verum etiam ' of ' non solum Christo contradicentibus ... , verum etiam sectarum alumni ' suggests . Indeed , this distinction of the ' sectarum alumni ' from the ' Christo contradicentibus ' is confirmed later in the same letter . For , of Christ the Saviour Athanasius writes : ' hic est qui de laqueo venantium nos expedivit sectariorum , inquam , et 23 Once again , Christi oppugnatorum, nosque , Ecclesiam suam videlicet , salvavit ... ' . in this passage , in which Christ is seen as rescuing and preserving whole his Church which the heterodox try to disunite , the ' sectarii ' and the ' Christi oppugnatores '

1034 A. Pettersen are seen as distinct groups , although united in their hunting of the Church . From Letter 10 therefore it is clear that the ' sectarum alumni ' are still distinct from the ' Christo contradicentibus ' , and that the ' tunic ' image with which both groups are here associated is different in essence from that used in Letters 5 and 6 , and from that used in De Incarnatione 24 . The identification of the ' sectarum alumni ' now needs to be made . From Letter 3 it is clear that Athanasius was under pressure not to publish the Festal Letter for 331. Those applying this pressure , referred to in Letter 3 as ' noxiis hominibus ' or ' accusatorum ' , are again mentioned in Letter 4 , this time as 24 ' hostes' and ' calumniatores ' ." That those who are mentioned in Letter 4 as having pressurised Athanasius are indeed one with the ' noxiis hominibus ' and ' accusatorum' of Letter 3 appears both from their both being engaged in the same persecution of 25 Athanasius in the period 331-332 , and from the title ' calumniatores ' of Letter 41 26 tying in with the phrase ' accusatorum calumnias ' of Letter 3. In the post script of Letter 4 those who applied this pressure are identified as Meletians : ego ( sc . Athanasius ) porro in Comitatu versor , qua ad imperatoris Constantini conspectum vocatus fui . Sed enim qui hic degunt Meletiani pugnant , invident , adversantur nobis apud imperatorem ; attamen ignominia notati pulsique hinc fuerunt , ceu calumniatores , et multis de rebus obiurgati . Pulsi vero nominatim fuerunt Callinicus , Ision , Eudaemon et Gelaeus Hieracammon ... 27, the first three persons being the Meletian bishops instructed by Eusebius to appear before the Emperor at Nicomedia to charge Athanasius with having taxed Egypt to 28 provide linen vestments , apparently for use in the Church . In Letter 5 , however , Athanasius introduced a new title by which he knew these same calumniators . He referred to them as ' sectarum alumni ' . That this group is the same as the ' calumniators ' of Letters 3 and 4 , but under a new name seems 29 likely. For it is improbable that Athanasius would have introduced a new group , 30 who were in close association with the Arians` in his letter of 333 , when he had already mentioned in his letter of 332 the Meletians , who were hand in glove with the Arians , and who continued to be so for several years . Further , the title ' sectarum alumni ' fits the Meletians . For , unlike the Arians who wanted re-admit31 tance into the Church` the Meletians were truly schismatic , having cut themselves off from the Catholic Chruch .

Indeed , oxcopatɩnós , and its cognates , with which

the ' sectarum alumni ' of Festal Letters 1-11 is obviously connected , rather than aipeτɩnós , for which ' haereticus ' is here the translation , is used almost exclusive32 ly of the Meletian schism in the rest of Athanasius ' works . ' Sectarum alumni ' would therefore be a most apposite and Athanasian description for the Meletians . This identification of the ' calumniatores ' or ' noxiis hominibus ' or ' accusatorum' of Letters 3 and 4 , and the ' sectarum alumni ' of Letters 5 , 6 and 10 with the Meletians finds support elsewhere .

For the identifying of the Meletians with this

Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione of Athanasius

1035

party explains the link , which , as we have noted , does not extend to identity , with the ' haeretici ' of the Festal Letters . For it seems clear from several passages in the Festal Letters that these ' haeretici ' were the Arians .

For the ' haeretici '

were distinct from the heathen , the Jews and the ' sectarum alumni ' , whom we have identified as the Meletians ; they were ' hodierni haeretici ' in 333 , the year of the publication of Letter 5 ; they were involved in a Christological dispute , being ' illi 33 34 quidem Verbum interficientes ' and in this they were paralleled with the Jews . Such would seem to suggest that the ' haeretici ' were the Arians , a conclusion which is corroborated elsewhere . For in Letter 2 Athanasius urges those Christians under his charge to guard the accepted sense of the Gospel . arisen :

For false teachers have

haec quippe olim ratione is qui primus malitiam invenit , serpens inquam, ille , hostis ille , cum Eva colloquens similatorem se gessit , atque ita ipsam decepit ... 35 Athanasius then continues : post hunc , imo cum hoc ipso , cuncti haeresum praeter fas inventores , lectis libris , non tamen prout sancti tradiderunt , opinantur ; sed eos secundum hominum traditiones intelligentes , 36 errore labuntur , quia vim illorum ignorant ... The same comparison with the conduct of the serpent when it beguiled Eve , but a comparison of the Arian heresy perverting the Scriptures , is made at the very begin37 ning of Contra Arianos 1. Moreover , like these ' haeretici ' of Letter 2 the Arians availed themselves of certain texts , made their own deductions from them and then argued their case .

Meanwhile in Letters 10 and 11 , the parallelism in identity

between the ' haeretici ' of Letter 2 , and therefore of Letters 5 and 6 , and the Arians of other Athanasian works is continued .

For in Letter 10 the Christological

heresy is explained in relation to the Arians , who are named : at vero Arius et Manes , atque haeretici , his quae diximus rebus non consideratis , Christum oppugnant , Salvatorem lingua sua pulsant , Liberatorem blasphemant , atque omnia contraria opinantur de salutis auctorem ... 38 Moreover , throughout this and the following letter , the parallelism between the ' haeretici ' and the Arians is made clear . For like the ' hodierni haeretici ' , the 39 40 Arians kill the Christ and are placed alongside the Jews' , a traditional comparison for Athanasius .

It seems clear therefore that when Athanasius refers to

the ' haeretici ' in Festal Letters 1-11 , he generally means the Arians .

Given this

identifying of the ' haeretici ' with the Arians , and given their link , which does not extend to identification , with the ' sectarum alumni ' in their joint attack on the Catholic Church , it makes sense to see these ' sectarum alumni ' as being Meletians . For it was they whom Eusebius allied to the Arians in c . 331 against the 41 Church . For various reasons , both internal and external to the text , it seems therefore that those with whom Festal Letters 1-11 connect the symbol of Christ's tunic are

A. Pettersen

1036 the Meletians .

From such it would seem reasonable to connect the similar Tots

βουλομένοις διαιρεῖν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν of De Incarnatione 24 also with the Meletians . It is true that the clause τοῖς βουλομένοις διαιρεῖν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν may be but a means of describing any and every heretical party . For its use in De Incarnatione 24 is in a general context . for him.

Christ underwent that death which his enemies devised 42 and

Yet , within that particular death , he preserved his body óλónλпpov

so provided no pretext to those who wished to divide the Church.

The application

of the significance of Christ's oλóxλпρoν тò оũμa in death is general , it being a warning against any and every group that wished to disunite the Church ; the text Tous Bouλoμévous ... is meaningful in itself , it being the task of every reader to apply this general truth to his time and situation , whatever these may be . Yet , 43 for all that , we might be right to follow the lead of Kannengiesser in trying to identify these men .

For Athanasius was not one who wrote in abstracto , but saw

theology as having an application . for any other .

This presumably was as true for this thought as

Thus he probably had some particular group in the back of his mind

when he wrote this . Moreover , those passages which we have already quoted from the 44 Festal Letters , which share much in common with De Incarnatione 24 , seem to have the same point of reference as De Incarnatione 24.

For both the De Incarnatione

and the Festal Letters have Christological overtones : the one relates to the death of Christ through reference to his ' whole body ' , while the other does through reference to the tunic for which the centurions , Christ's executors , threw lots . Both are ecclesiastical : they are concerned with the question of the division of the unity of the Church , an unity symbolised by the whole body of Christ , and by the seamless tunic . In both , Letter 10 excepted , the authors of the divisive measures are only hinted at , and not named .

Finally , the images , with their common object , appear

only in De Incarnatione 24 and Letters 5 and 6 ; ' cette image ne reparaîtra pas jamais , ni dans les Lettres Festales postérieures , ni dans aucun autre écrit connu 45 de S. Athanase ' . It seems therefore that it is reasonable to relate the two , and allow the identification of the ' sectarum alumni ' of the Festal Letters to aid the dating of the De Incarnatione . If therefore we identify the τοῖς βουλομένοις διαιρεῖν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν of De Incarnatione 24 with the ' sectarum alumni ' , the Meletians , of the Festal Letters we could suppose 328 , the year in which Athanasius was enthroned as bishop of Alexandria , as a terminus post quem for the Contra Gentes

De Incarnatione .

For prior to 328 ,

although Meletius had founded in Egypt a church with clergy of its own , Meletianism was not recognised officially as a schism ; it was not yet officially seen as où βουλόμενοι διαιρεῖν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν . Indeed , at the time of the council of Nicea , where the matter was raised , it was determined that Meletian clergy should be allowed to continue their functions , but be subordinate to Alexander , the then bishop of Alexandria , that their bishops , if legally elected , might take the places of the

1037

Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione of Athanasius

Catholic bishops when the latter died , and that Meletius himself might retain the title of ' bishop ' , but might have no see .

Indeed , it was only on the accession of

Athanasius in 328 that this arrangement broke down , as then the Meletians , encouraged by Eusebius of Nicomedia , went into schism . Thus it was only after 328 that the Meletians could be seen as true schismatics . Meanwhile it seems that we might be able to bring the terminus ante quem down to 335. For from Contra Gentes 1 it seems that Athanasius was writing the dual work for those who had no access to earlier works on the subject . This does not necessarily mean that Athanasius had the earlier works to hand , but the implication is that he had , an implication which has some support in that there are reminiscences of other writers in the Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione . If that is the case , Athanasius would not have written the work while in exile in 335-337 , when he was away from the libraries of Alexandria .

That he would have written it between Nov-

ember 337 , the date of Athanasius ' return from his first exile , and March 339 , when Athanasius fled Theonas , is unlikely . For not only was that a short and busy time for Athanasius , but also that was a time , as Letters 10 and 11 witness , during which Athanasius had much to say against the Arians and their heresy . Given such , the silence of the Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione on Arianism is all the more deafening , if it had been written in those years . To date the Contra Gentes De Incarnatione some time between 328 and 335 still leaves us with two traditional problems .

For the work has not been given a ' Sitz

im Leben ' , and the Arian heresy and its condemnation has not been mentioned . That the work is a -political , making no references to the government of the empire , or to the attitude of the imperial powers towards the Christians , may seem most un-Athanasian . For Athanasius was a great churchman , involved in the politics of his time .

Yet this is to see only one side of Athanasius ' personality .

For he

was also a great catechist . Indeed , it was for his perseverance in catechising the 46 noble ranks of Alexandria that Athanasius was sent into exile by Julian ." The Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione was a catechetical work , explaining against a 47 gentile background the doctrine of the Incarnation ." As such a catechetical work , the treatises would not reflect a particular situation : as such it would be a-political .

Moreover , the gentile background , against which the doctrine of the incar-

nation was here explained , and which may point to a particular Sitz im Leben , need not point to Athanasius ' experience . For it is easily explained in terms of the reader's situation . He may well have been a Gentile , or may have lived in a gentile situation , thus providing a reason for the choice of the backcloth against which the Christology is shown . In short , a catechetical work does not need a Sitz im Leben , and certainly not one particular to the author's experience . The matter of the silence of the Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione upon Arian matters is a little curious , given a composition date of 328-335 .

However , that

1038

A. Pettersen

For firstly , the dual work is a catechetical 48 work , and not an anti -Arian polemic ." Secondly , even in those Festal Letters where silence may be understood somewhat .

the Arians are implied through the term ' haeretici ' , their doctrine in not spelt out .

Nor is their condemnation made clear : ' à propos du silence de l'apologie

athanasienne sur Arius , on observera encore que les Lettres festales n'invoquent jamais , tant soit peu , la foi de Nicée .

Les hérétiques visés par ces lettres ont 49 beau être des Ariens , rien n'y rapelle leur condemnation de 325 ' ." Finally , prior to 337 , the year of Constantine's death , Athanasius seems to avoid direct reference 50 to Arianism for political reasons , as Kannengiesser observes . Despite the above not being totally satisfactory , we should accept it . For those arguments which seek to put the date of the composition of the Contra Gentes

De

Incarnatione prior to 325 , in order to explain the silence upon the condemnation of the Arians , are not entirely satisfactory . The Maurist monk , Bernard de Montfaucon , 51 in the Monitum to his edition of Athanasius ' work' argued for a date of composition of c . 318 only on the basis of the absence of any trace of the Arian controversy in the treatises . Yet an argument e silentio is not convincing , unless one can show that the author did not set aside the problem purposely . Nor is the argument of 52 Van Winden for an early date of composition convincing . For him οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν alpéoewv of Contra Gentes 6 and De Incarnatione 2 is a decisive formula in the matter of the dating of the dual work .

For , if at the time of writing , Athanasius

had in mind more than one group of heretics , he could not speak of the heretics . For Van Winden , however , οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν αἱρέσεων is all embracing . Thus if it is possible to show that Athanasius cannot have meant the Arians to be understood here , it must be concluded that the apologetic work was composed prior to the author's thinking of Arianism as a heresy . Having studied the content of the beliefs of ou 6è άrò Twν aipéocwv on creation , Van Winden concludes : ' I would prefer to say that Athanasius denounces the dualistic doctrine of creation to be found according to him 53 in all heresies of that time . At any rate , Arianism is certainly not meant ... ' . 54 Consequently , Van Winden concludes that there was no formal Arian heresy as yet'` and that therefore the two treatises must have been written in an earlier period in Athanasius ' life . The formula , où dè άnò Twν aiρéoεwv , however , which is central to the argument of Van Winden , cannot be interpreted as ' the heretics ' , as encompassing one homogeneous group .

Rather , the formula signifies ' some of the heretics ' ,

' the heretics ' being allthe various heterodox groups of the time of writing .

The

clause refers to those of the wider group of heretics who hold a dualistic doctrine of creation .

It is therefore impossible to conclude from this formula that Athanasius

denounces the dualistic doctrine of creation to be found according to him ' in all 55 the heresies of the time ' but only that he denounces those of the heretics of the time of writing who held such a view of creation .

Consequently , it cannot be

argued that since the Arian understanding of creation is not intended here

1039

Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione of Athanasius Arianism was not a heresy at the time of writing .

For Arianism might well have

been included within the ' others ' who stand over against the ' some ' who held the dualistic view. Lastly , to move the composition of the Contra Gentes De Incarnatione to a reasonable date prior to Nicea , and thus to explain the silence upon the condemnation of the Arians but leaves us with the problem of the silence of the author regarding Arius himself .

For , as Duchesne writes , ' aux environs de l'année 56 318 , le prête de Baucalis , Arius , occupait beaucoup l'opinion ' . Yet to move the

date of composition of the work to one prior to 318 is to make the author a very young author , a youthfulness which the work does not seem to support . For the various reasons above , we conclude therefore that the Contra Gentes Incarnatione was written prior to Athanasius ' second exile in 339.

De

It probably

predates his first exile of 335 and it also probably postdates Athanasius ' enthronement of 328. Thus we must date the work between 328 and 335 .

REFERENCES 1. C. Kannengiesser , ' La date de l'apologie d'Athanase " Contre les Païens " et " sur l'incarnation " ' , R.S.R. 58 ( 1970 ) , pp . 386ff . 2. H. Nordberg , ' A reconsideration of the date of St. Athanasius ' Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione ' , Studia Patristica 3 , T.U. 78 ( 1961 ) , pp . 262ff . 3. H. Nordberg , Athanasius ' Tractates Contra Gentes - De Incarnatione . An attempt at redating . Societas Scientiarum Fennica . Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 28 , fasc.3 ( Helsinki , 1961 ) , pp . 19ff . 4. Athanasius , Festal Letter 5 ( P.G. 26. 1382A ) ; Festal Letter 6 (P.G. 26 . 1386B-C ) . 5. Athanasius , De Incarnatione 24 ( P.G. 25. 137C ) . 6. Athanasius , Festal Letter 5 ( P.G. 26. 1382A ; 1386B - C ) . 7. E.P. Meijering , Orthodoxy and Platonism in Athanasius . Synthesis or antithesis ? ( Leiden , 1974 ) , p . 112 . 8. Athanasius , Contra Gentes 1 ( P.G. 25. 1A ) . 9. Athanasius , Contra Gentes 1 ( P.G. 25. 1A ) . 10. Athanasius , Contra Gentes 1 ( P.G. 25. 1A) . 11. Athanasius , Contra Gentes 1 ( P.G. 25. 1A- B ) . 12. Athanasius , Contra Gentes 1 ( P.G. 25. 1B ) . 13. Cf. A. Stegmann , Bibliothek der Kirkenväter : Athanasius II ( Kempten-München , 1917 ) , 5 ; J.C.M. van Winden , ' On the date of Athanasius ' apologetical treatises ' , V.C. 29 ( 1975 ) , pp . 291ff. 14. Athanasius , Festal Letter 5 (P.G. 26. 1382A) . 15. Ibid . , 1382A . 16. Ibid . , 1382A . 17. Athanasius , Festal Letter 6 (P.G. 26. 1386B ) . 18. Ibid. , 1386B- C . 19. Athanasius , Festal Letter 7 ( P.G. 26. 1392B ) . 20. Cf. C. Kannengiesser , ' Le témoignage des lettres festales de S. Athanase sur la date de l'apologie contre des païens , sur l'incarnation du Verbe ' , R.S.R. 52 ( 1964 ) , p . 95 . 21. Athanasius , Festal Letter 10 ( P.G. 26. 1402B - C ) . 22. Ibid . , 1402C . 23. Ibid. , 1402D . 24. Athanasius , Festal Letter 3 ( P. G. 26. 1371D - 1372A ) ; Festal Letter ↳ (P.G. 26 , 1377B , 1379B ) .

1040

A. Pettersen

25. Athanasius , Festal Letter ↳ ( P.G. 26. 1379B ) . 26. Athanasius , Festal Letter 3 ( P.G. 26. 1372A) . 27. Athanasius , Festal Letter ↳ ( P.G. 26. 1379B - C ) . 28. Cf. Athanasius , Apol . contra Arianos 60 ( P.G. 25. 357C - 360A ) . 29. Cf. Kannengiesser , op . cit . ( ' Le témoignage ... ' ) , p . 95 . 30. Cf. Athanasius , Festal Letter 10 ( P.G. 26. 1402B -C ) . 31. Cf. Socrates , H. E. 1.25f . 32. oxιopатɩnós is used of the Meletians in Apol . contra Arianos 268A . 13 ; 268D . 4 ; 280C . 5 ; Epist . ad Episc . Aegypt . 589B . 9 ; De Vita Ant . 940B . 11 ; 968B . 4 ; 969C . 7; while oxúoua is used of their schism in Apol . contra Arianos 269A . 11 ; 292A . 7 ( cf. 301C . 6-8 ) ; 296C . 12 ; 356B . 10 ; 364A . 5 ; Tomus ad Antioch . 805B . 13 ; ad Jov . 816A . 1. Meanwhile aiρEтɩnós is used of the Arians in Epist . Encycl . 225D . 1 ; 233A . 11 ; 233C . 12 ; De Vita Ant . 969C . 8 ; Apol . contra Arianos 257B . 11 ; 353C . 13 ; ad Episc . Aegypt . 565C . 10 ; 572B . 14 ; 589B . 6 ; 564A . 10-13 ; 585B . 8 ; Hist . Arian . ad Monach. 753D . 7 ; Apol . ad Const . 640D . 5 ; et al . 33. Athanasius , Festal Letter 6 ( P.G. 26. 1386B - C ) . 34. Ibid . , 1386B - C . 35. Athanasius , Festal Letter 2 ( P.G. 26. 1370A ) . 36. Ibid . , 1370A. 37. Athanasius , Contra Arianos 1.1 ( P.G. 26. 12D - 13C ) . 38. Athanasius , Festal Letter 10 ( P.G. 26. 1401D 1402A) . 39. Athanasius , Festal Letter 11 ( P.G. 26. 1411B ) . 40. Ibid. , 1411B . Cf. ibid . , 1411C . 41. Cf. Athanasius , Apol . contra Arianos 59 ( P.G. 25. 357A ) . 42. Athanasius , De Incarnatione 24 ( P.G. 25. 137C ) . 43. Kannengiesser , op . cit . ( ' Le témoignage ... ' ) , pp . 91-100 . 44. Athanasius , Festal Letter 5 ( P.G. 26. 1382A ) ; Letter 6 ( P.G. 26. 1386B - C ) ; Letter 10 (P. G. 26. 1402B-C ) . 45. Kannengiesser , op . cit . ( ' Le témoignage ... ' ) , pp . 97-98 . 46. Letter of Julian to Ecdicius , prefect of Egypt . Letter 112 ( ed . J. Bidez , L'empereur Julien , Lettres et fragments . vol . 1 , pt . 2 ( Paris , 1924 ) , p . 192 ) . 47. Athanasius , De Incarnatione 1 ( P.G. 25. 97A ) ; ibid . , 56 ( P.G. 25.193D - 196A) . 48. Athanasius , De Incarnatione 1 ( P.G. 25. 97A ) . Cf. ibid . , 56 ( P.G. 25. 193D ) . 49. Kannengiesser , op . cit . ( ' Le témoignage ... ' ) , p . 99 . 50. Kannengiesser , op . cit . ( ' La date ... ' ) , pp . 414-415 . Cf. Athanasius , Festal Letter 10 ( P.G. 26. 1397B ) where Athanasius remarks that he is afraid lest his writings be used against him. 51. P.G. 25. 1 . 52. J.C.M. van Winden , op . cit. 53. Ibid . , 294 . 54. Ibid. , 294 55. Ibid. , 294 . 56. L. Duchesne , Histoire ancienne de l'église , II ( 1907 ) , p . 126 and note 2 .

Il testo delle Expositiones in Psalmos di Atanasio G. M. Vian Roma

A

partire da Girolamo sono diversi gli autori antichi¹ che mostrano di conoscere da sono autori antichi che mostrano di conosce

per via indiretta attraverso le catene esegetiche greche e in alcune antiche traduzioni orientali . Quando nel Cinquecento e nel Seicento si iniziarono a stampare le catene greche al Salterio , videro la luce diversi brani del commento di Atanasio ; nello stesso tempo vennero mossi i primi passi verso un'edizione del testo di cui alcuni frammenti - tratti da una catena ora alla Vaticana erano stati pubblicati a Heidelberg nel 1601 , in appendice all'editio princeps del patriarca alessandrino . Nei primi decenni del Seicento uno studioso scozzese , David Colvill , iniziò per primo a lavorare direttamente sul testo atanasiano con lo scopo di prepararne un' edizione e guinse a raccogliere numerosi brani , da lui ritenuti autentici , dalle catene greche dell'Escorial , poi in parte perdute durante l'incendio del 1671 ; successivamente confrontò questo gruppo di brani con una versione in arabo del 3 commento di Atanasio conservata all'Ambrosiana . Solo pochi anni più tardi un dottore della neonata biblioteca milanese , Jacopo Filippo Buzzi , morto nel 1677 , traduceva in latino una versione araba della Lettera a Marcellino e del commento ai Salmi di Atanasio contenuta in un codice ambrosiano , con ogni probabilità lo stesso confrontato qualche anno prima da David Colvill ." Nella storia del testo va anche ricordato il nome di Andreas Arnold , uno studioso tedesco che in un piccolo libro -- pubblicato a Parigi nel 1685 e contenente l'edizione di alcuni testi cristiani antichi -- riferiva , nell'introduzione non paginata , di avere avuto l'intenzione di pubblicare il commento atanasiano al Salterio " ex ms . antiquissimo " , come letteralmente si esprime .

Accanto tuttavia a questa quanto mai

vaga indicazione , l'autore riportava in greco l'inizio e la fine del testo di 5 Atanasio da lui trovato .

1041

1042

G. M. Vian

Tredici anni più tardi , sempre a Parigi , le Expositiones in Psalmos dell'alessandrino venivano finalmente alla luce nell'ambito dell'edizione maurina a cura soprattutto di Bernard de Montfaucon . A questa edizione del 1698 , basata su sei codici parigini e preceduta da un'ampia introduzione in cui veniva ripercorsa la storia del testo , lo stesso editore faceva seguire nel 1706 un supplemento in cui pubblicava i testi raccolti un secolo prima da David Colvill . Nel 1746 , a Roma , il cardinale Niccolò Antonelli pubblicava sotto il nome di Atanasio un De titulis Psalmorum che tuttavia non è del patriarca alessandrino ed è stato attribuito a Esichio . Questo testo fu comunque ristampato , insieme alle Expositiones in Psalmos e alle altre opere di Atanasio edite dai maurini , una prima volta a Padova nel 1777 , e poi a Parigi nel 1857 da Jacques- Paul Migne . In quest ' ultima edizione - a tutt'oggi la più comoda vennero anche riuniti tutti i frammenti 6 del commento pubblicati precedentemente . Altri pochi brani del testo atanasiano furono quindi editi una trentina di anni più tardi dal cardinale Jean -Baptiste Pitra 7 sulla base di alcune catene vaticane ." Nel 1924 vedeva la luce un gruppo di frammenti di un'antica versione in copto saidico delle Expositiones in Psalmos , la prima delle antiche traduzioni orientali a comparire nella storia del testo dopo quella araba , e anche in questo caso l'editore , Jean David , confrontava i suoi frammenti copti con il commento trasmesso per via catenaria , riscontrando alcune differenze con il testo edito dai maurini . Delle traduzioni orientali copta , araba e georgiana si conoscono attualmente diversi manoscritti , mentre una duplice versione siriaca del testo - in una recensione abbreviata e in una lunga - è stata di recente edita e tradotta in inglese . Per quanto riguarda il testo greco edito da Bernard de Montfaucon , già nel 1928 10 Oltre infatti a essere Robert Devreesse sottolineava come esso fosse inservibile . incompleto e fortemente lacunoso nella parte finale , il commento edito dai maurini contiene un gran numero di testi non atanasiani , a causa soprattutto dell'utilizzazione indiscriminata delle catere . Dal secolo XVI agli inizi del XX le catene sono state infatti praticate , secondo un'efficace espressione del cardinale Giovanni Mercati , " come un bosco dove far legna e caccia " ll, e la svolta decisiva in questo ambito di ricerca si è avuta solamente con la pubblicazione del Catenarum Graecarum catalogus di Georg Karo e Hans Lietzmann , che nel 1902 offrivano per la prima volta una classificazione di tutte le catene esegetiche greche , in diversi punti e per molti aspetti non del tutto soddisfacente , ma tuttavia ancora oggi indispensabile come punto di riferimento . La ricerca sulle catene ha poi compiuto grandi progressi grazie soprattutto agli studi di Giovanni Mercati , Robert Devreesse e Marcel Richard , a cui si aggiunge ora , per le catene al Salterio , l'ampio contributo di Ekkehard 12 Mühlenberg . Sottolineando l'esigenza di una nuova edizione critica delle Expositiones in Psalmos , Giovanni Mercati ha soprattutto indicato l'importanza e la singolarità della

Expositiones in Psalmos di Atanasio

1043

catena del codice V , il Vaticano greco 754 , un grande manoscritto degli inizi del X secolo . Basata essenzialmente sul commento dell'alessandrino , la catena di Vè stata definita da Marcel Richard " la chaîne athanasienne pure " . Nel manoscritto vaticano il commento di Atanasio è anonimo e suddiviso in centurie - ognuna numerata con precisione in lettere maiuscole da uno a cento di duemila brani che riguardano tutto il Salterio .

comprendendo nel complesso più Nella numerazione delle centurie

rarissime sono le sviste , consistenti nell'omissione o nella ripetizione di un numero all'interno di una centuria , e altrettanto accuratamente la serie atanasiana è distinta dagli altri testi costituenti la catena . Oltre a brani di diversi autori anepigrafi o con esplicita attribuzione - spicca nella catena di V un'altra serie anonima- numerata con lettere minuscole all'interno di ogni salmo - dapprima creduta 13 origeniana e assegnata a Evagrio da Hans Urs von Balthasar e Marie-Josèphe Rondeau . Testimoni del testo atanasiano , oltre a V, sono , a differenti livelli , diversi 14 altri manoscritti . Tra questi , accanto ai codici vicini a V per il tipo di catena , vi sono due antiche catene , una dell'Ambrosiana ( M 47 sup . ) e l'altra della Bodleiana ( Auct . D.4.1 o , con altra segnatura , Misc . 5 ) , anch'esse largamente costituite dal commento di Atanasio . Un cenno a parte merita poi il manoscritto Coislin 10 della Nazionale di Parigi , praticamente dello stesso tipo di V , che presenta il testo atanasiano anonimo e diviso secondo un sistema assolutamente identico a quello adottato dalla catena vaticana ; l'unica differenza è costituita dal fatto che la numerazione dei brani atanasiani , in lettere maiuscole , non è in centurie come in V , ma inizia da capo a ogni salmo , come avviene in V per la serie evagriana . Dello stesso tipo di V ma non direttamente imparentato con la catena vaticana dato che i due codici presentano ciascuno alcuni brani propri mancanti all'altro - il manoscritto parigino offre tuttavia il commento atanasiano diviso in modo identico a quello della catena vaticana per quanto riguarda sia l'ordinamento dei brani sia gli incipit e gli explicit di ognuno di essi .

Il fatto induce quindi a supporre un testo atanasiano

già organizzato in una serie numerata di brani non alterata dai catenisti dei due manoscritti . Tutta la questione dovrà comunque essere esaminata più a fondo nel quadro dello studio complessivo della tradizione manoscritta del commento atanasiano . Nel corso della preparazione di una nuova edizione critica delle Expositiones in Psalmos di Atanasio a cui sto lavorando , l'esame dei sette manoscritti vaticani testimoni del testo e soprattutto lo studio di V mi hanno portato ad alcuni risultati , 15 recentemente pubblicati > che permettono di utilizzare l'edizione maurina riprodotta nel Migne . Da una parte , del commento sono stati pubblicati i testi inediti — o noti solo nelle traduzioni copta e siriaca , o pubblicati altrove ma quasi sempre con diversa attribuzione - e dall'altra sono stati distinti i numerosissimi testi non atanasiani che rendono inservibile l'edizione maurina . Si ha così una prima visione d'insieme del commento atanasiano ai Salmi . I testi inediti pubblicati sono 158 e nella maggior parte riguardano l'ultima parte del Salterio , dove cioè maggiori lacune presentano i codici utilizzati dai

SP 3 - F

"

G. M. Vian

1044

maurini per la loro edizione , che giunge fino a Ps . 146,8 e che è ora completata da una trentina di brani . I testi non atanasiani sono invece più di 800 , e in grandissima parte sono stati identificati o è stata indicata la loro provenienza in base alle attribuzioni del manoscritto vaticano e attraverso lo spoglio delle edizioni degli altri commentatori antichi del Salterio .

Dato comunque il valore non assoluto

delle indicazioni fornite dal codice V e lo stato precario del testo della maggior parte dei commenti ai Salmi trasmessi per via catenaria , non ho certo preteso di accertare sempre e in ogni caso l'autentica provenienza dei singoli testi non atanasiani , ma solo di sottolineare la loro estraneità alle Expositiones in Psalmos di Atanasio , sperimentando , una volta di più , la necessità di estese e approfondite indagini critiche nell'ambito delle catene esegetiche al Salterio .

Specificato

questo , è comunque possibile affermare che il più grande numero dei testi non atanasiani interpolati nell'edizione maurina appartengono a Teodoreto , seguito in lontananza da Evagrio , Origene , Eusebio e da un'altra decina di commentatori . Una serie di notevoli conferme alla ricostruzione del testo di Atanasio che risulta dalle ricerche da me compiute proviene dalle antiche testimonianze raccolte da Bernard de Montfaucon nella prefazione alla sua edizione del 1698.

Si tratta in

primo luogo di tre antiche citazioni dalle Expositiones in Psalmos fatte da Teodoreto , dall'autore del Chronicon paschale nella prima metà del VII secolo e da Adriano I. Tutte e tre le citazioni si ritrovano nel testo autentico di Atanasio anche se quella di Teodoreto non si riscontra nell'edizione del suo commento pubblicata nel 1769 . Ben più importante la conferma data al testo delle Expositiones in Psalmos dalla purtroppo scarna notizia di Andreas Arnold . Lo studioso tedesco infatti , pur limitandosi all'asciutta espressione " ex ms . antiquissimo " , dava l'incipit e l'explicit del commento atanasiano , e questi corrispondono esattamente al primo e all ' ultimo brano - quest'ultimo conosciuto finora solo nelle due recensioni siriache della serie anonima ordinata in centurie del codice V. Ancora più interessanti i dati che si ricavano dalle traduzioni orientali .

Quella

siriaca è giunta in due recensioni : una abbreviata , conservata integralmente da un codice dell'VIII o del IX secolo ; e l'altra , lunga ma fortemente lacunosa - mancano circa i due terzi del testo 597.

contenuta in un manoscritto datato che risale all'anno 16 2 e mentre la

I due testi sono stati di recente editi e tradotti in inglese

recensione breve non corrisponde del tutto al testo tradito dalle catene greche , quella lunga lo conferma in pieno .

Altrettanto si può dire della traduzione in

copto saidico , conservata in un manoscritto proveniente dalla biblioteca del Monastero Bianco che può essere datato al X secolo e che è ora disperso tra Londra , Parigi 17 e Vienna . Questa , sia nella parte pubblicata nel 1924 da Jean David ', sia nei frammenti inediti che mi ha gentilmente segnalato Tito Orlandi , conferma anch'essa il testo delle catene , ugualmente confermato dalla traduzione latina che Jacopo Filippo Buzzi fece del codice arabo dell'Ambrosiana , probabilmente lo stesso

1045 Expositiones in Psalmos di Atanasio 18 confrontato da David Colvill con i testi che aveva raccolto all'Escorial . Il codice non è posteriore al XVI secolo , come mi ha cortesemente comunicato Renato Traini , il quale mi ha anche assicurato dell'assoluta fedeltà all'arabo della traduzione latina, da me confrontata con il greco delle catene . Dalle indagini che ho finora condotto è possibile trarre qualche conclusione provvisoria di carattere generale . Pur essendo prematuro ogni discorso su un testo prima di un esame completo e accurato di tutta la sua tradizione manoscritta , si può fin d'ora affermare con sicurezza che le Expositiones in Psalmos sono un testo assolutamente coerente e unitario sia nel contenuto sia nello stile , come risulta anche dai 19 Questo , sondaggi che ho compiuto su temi ed espressioni ricorrenti nel commento ." sia nelle catene greche sia nelle traduzioni orientali , è unanimemente attribuito 20 ad Atanasio di Alessandria .

RIMANDI 1. Cf. P.G. 27,45-54 . 2. Ad opera sancti patris nostri Athanasii archiepiscopi Alexandrini appendix... , Ex officina Commeliniana 1601 , 95-120 . 3. Cf. G. Mercati , Opere minori II ( 1897-1906 ) , Studi e Testi 77 , Città del Vaticano 1937 , 100-107 . 4. Cf. G.M. Vian , Testi inediti dal commento ai Salmi di Atanasio , Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 14 , Roma 1978 , 14-15 nota 19 . 5. S. Athanasii archiep . Alex. Syntagma doctrinae ... , Parisiis 1685 . 6. P.G. 27,45-1344 . 7. Analecta sacra... , II , Typis Tusculanis 1884 , 444-483 e Analecta sacra ... , V , Parisiis -Romae 1888 , 3-20 . 8. J. David , ' Les éclaircissements de saint Athanase sur les Psaumes . Fragments d'une traduction en copte sahidique ' , Revue de l'Orient Chrétien 24 ( 1924 ) 3-58 . 9. R.W. Thomson , Athanasiana Syriaca . Part IV... , C.S.C.O. 386-387 , Scriptores Syri 167-168 , Louvain 1977 . 10. R. Devreesse , ' Chaînes exégétiques grecques ' , D.B.S. I , 1125 . 11. G. Mercati , Alla ricerca dei nomi degli "altri " traduttori nelle omilie sui Salmi di S. Giovanni Crisostomo e variazioni su alcune catene del Salterio , Studi e Testi 158 , Città del Vaticano 1952 , 148 . 12. E. Mühlenberg , Psalmen kommentare aus der Katenenüberlieferung , III , P.T.S. 19 , Berlin-New York 1978 . 13. H.U. von Balthasar , ' Die Hiera des Evagrius ' , Z.K.T. 63 ( 1939 ) 86-106 e 181206 ; M-J . Rondeau , ' Le commentaire sur les Psaumes d'Evagre le Pontique ' , O.C.P. 26 (1960 ) 307-348 . 14. Cf. M-J . Rondeau , ' Une nouvelle preuve de l'influence littéraire d'Eusèbe de Césarée sur Athanase : l'interprétation des Psaumes ' , R.S.R. 56 ( 1968 ) 393 . 15. G.M. Vian , op . cit. 16. R.W. Thomson , op . cit . 17. J. David , op . cit . 18. G.M. Vian , op . cit . 14-15 nota 19 . 19. G.M. Vian , ' Kńрuyua e xλñous έev @v negli scritti atanasiani ' , in Kerygma und Logos ... Festschrift für Carl Andresen ... , Göttingen 1979 , 449-454 . 20. Particolarmente significativa è l'esplicita indicazione del manoscritto , datato all'anno 597 , che contiene la recensione lunga della traduzione siriaca del commento ai Salmi di Atanasio . Cf. comunque M. Harl , La chaîne palestinienne sur le psaume 118.... , S.C. 189 , Paris , 1972 , 49-56 .

Cappadocian Fathers

S. Alexe F. Decret T. J. Dennis Mary Ann Donovan , S.C. H. Drobner I. Escribano-Alberca Marcella Forlin Patrucco Walter M. Hayes, S.J. J. M. Mathieu Anthony Meredith , S.J. D. A. Sykes C. N. Tsirpanlis Reinoud Weijenborg, O.F.M. D. F. Wright

Bucharest Lyons Windsor Berkeley Mainz Bamberg Turin Toronto Caen Oxford Oxford Barrytown, N.Y. Rome Edinburgh

Saint Basile le Grand et le christianisme roumain au IVe siècle S. C. Alexe Bucarest

A 1600 -ème commémoration de la mort de Saint Basile , archevêque de Césarée en L Cappadoce , a pour l'Église Orthodoxe Roumaine une signification particulière . Par son oeuvre théologique , par sa Liturgie , par son action sociale , par ses règles monacales , le Grand Cappadocien a profondément inspiré et continue à inspirer la spiritualité orthodoxe roumaine . En ce qui suit , nous allons évoquer une page de l'histoire de la christianisation du peuple roumain , au IVe siècle , liée du nom et de l'activité missionnaire de Saint Basile . Il s'agit des Lettres nos . 155 , 164 et 165 de Saint Basile¹, où on fait mention du transfert des reliques de Saint Sabas le Goth en Cappadoce .

Saint Sabas

a été tué par les Goths qui l'ont noyé le 12 avril 372 dans la rivière Buzău , au nord du Danube , en Dacie , c'est à dire dans la Valachie d'aujourd'hui . Nous allons interprèter le contenu de ces trois Lettres de Saint Basile en relation avec le Lettre de l'Église de Gothie à l'Église de Cappadoce , ou La Passion de Saint Sabas , qui a été envoyée en même temps avec les reliques de ce Saint martyr à Cappadoce . Dans la Lettre 155 adressée au gouverneur militaire de la Scythie-Mineure , Junius Soranus , Saint Basile s'intéresse à la situation des chrétiens habitant au nord du Danube . Il est vrai que les manuscrits de la Lettre 155 ne mentionnent pas le nom de Junius Soranus , mais vers la fin de la Lettre il est indiqué néanmoins le personage auquel Saint Basile demande de faire envoyer en patrie , c'est à dire en Cappadoce , les reliques de martyrs , parce qu'il a entendu que , dans les contrées liontaines , audelà d'Ister , a recommencé la persécution .

Dans l'acte qui se refère au martyre de

Saint Sebas le Goth on dit que ' celui - ci , le très illustre gouverneur de la Scythie , Junius Soranus , vénérant le Seigneur , a envoyé des hommes dignes de confiance , qui l'ont transporté de la région barbare en Romania .

Et en rendant à sa patrie un don

précieux et un fruit glorieux de la foi , il l'a envoyé à Cappadoce ' ( Ch . VIII , 1-2 ) . 1049

S. C. Alexe

1050

D'après le contenu de la Lettre 155 , il semble que Junius Soranus était parent de Saint Basile et que les rapports entre eux étaient étroits . Saint Basile l'assure qu'il ne veut rater aucune occasion de le saluer et d'apprendre de lui des nouvelles . Il prie pour la famille de celui - ci , pour sa soeur et ses fils , pour les parents , la maison , les serviteurs et ses amis .

Il l'exhorte de ne pas s'attrister à cause de

certaines fausses nouvelles et il lui donne des conseils spirituels - chrétiens : ' Tout le bien que tu fais toi -même , tu te l'amasses comme trésor , et le soulagement que tu procures à ceux qui souffrent presécution à cause du nom du Seigneur , tu te le prépares d'avance pour le jour de la rétribution . Tu agiras généreusement si tu envoies aussi à notre patrie des reliques de martyrs , s'il est vrai , comme tu nous l'as écrit , que la persécution que sévit là-bas fait encore aujourd'hui des martyrs au Seigneur'.3 Junius Soranus a accompli le désir de Saint Basile et a envoyé les reliques de Saint Sabas en Cappadoce . La Lettre qui accompagnait les reliques provient du ' presbytère ' de l'Église de Gothie , c'est à dire de Scythie , qui autorise le transfert ; en réalité , c'est autour du gouverneur Junius Soranus que gravitent tous les événements : de lui partent les hommes qui enlèvent les reliques du Saint , autour de lui est composée la lettre et par lui sont envoyées les reliques , plus loin , en Cappadoce .

Par conséquent , c'est autour du gouverneur Soranus qu'il faut chercher

aussi le destinataire de la Lettre 164 de Saint Basile , enregistrée dans l'édition 4 Migne sous le nom d'Ascholios , évêque de Thessalonique . Le nom de Soranus en tant que destinataire de cette Lettre est exclus , parce que Saint Basile s'adresse avec le qualificatif dεooεẞns , terme impropre pour un laïc .

Boehmer a proposé le nom d'

Ulfila , mais à la suite de la vigoureuse démonstration de Pfeilschifter , qui entre autres arguments invoque le fait que Saint Basile , défenseur renommé de l'Orthodoxie , ne pourrait pas entretenir une correspondance avec un évêque arien , a quitté cette hypothèse .

Pfeilschifter et plus tard , J. Mansion et J. Zeiller voient en Betranion ,

évêque de la cité de Tomi ( aujourd'hui Constantza ) tant le rédacteur de la Lettre 8 sur le martyre de Saint Sabas que le destinataire de la Lettre 164 . Une hypothèse tout à fait récente a formulé le P. Professeur Jean Coman ( Bucarest ) , qui considère que ' le destinataire Ascholios est probablement ou bien un Ascholios de Tomi , successeur de Bretanion ( Betranion ) et obnublié ou absorbé par son grand homonyme de Thessalonique , ou bien l'archevêque Ascholios lui -même occupant pour quelque temps le siège vacant de Tomi , après la mort de Bretanion ' . Dans la Lettre 164 , écrite probablement en 374 , Saint Basile confirme le réception du précieux don , c'est à dire les reliques de Saint Sabas . En se référant à la Lettre de l'Église de Gothie , Saint Basile avoue que celle - ci l'a déterminé de voir par les yeux de l'esprit les circonstances dans lesquelles sont passées les choses y décrites , et il évoque la paix qui régnait autrefois dans son Église , paix chassée par les disputes ariennes . Mais pourtant , le bonheur présente surpasse les chagrins ,

Saint Basile le Grand

1051

continue Saint Basile , ' nos âmes sont revenues à cette félicité d'autrefois , depuis qu'une lettre est venue d'un pays lointain , florissante de la beauté de l'amour , et qu'un martyr nous est arrivé de chez les barbares qui habitent au- delà de l'Ister , 10 pour proclamer par lui -même l'intégrité de la foi qui règne là-bas ' . Ce fait a apporté à Saint Basile une joie ineffable , et l'a fait à penser au maître spirituel du martyr : ' Certes , quand nous avons vu l'athlète , nous avons proclamé bienheureux celui qui l'avait préparé .

Il recevra lui aussi auprès du juste

Juge la couronne de la justice , pour en avoir affermi un grand nombre en vue du 11 combat pour la piété ' ." Y a-t-il une allusion à Betranion ? L'hypothèse est plau12 sible notamment parce que Saint Basile parle par la suite de l'homme bienheureux Eutyhès qui a honoré la patrie cappadocienne répandant les semences de la foi , car 13 ' aucun de nous , en effet , n'approche Eutychès par la vertu ' . Mais , qui a été Eutyhès ? Selon les dires de Saint Basile , il ressort qu'Eutyhès a préché aux temps anterieurs la parole de l'Evangile dans les régions barbares où il a répandu ' les 14 semences de la piété ' .On ne connait rien sur le temps et le lieu de son activité missionnaire . Cependant , il mérite d'être retenu le fait que Saint Basile réclame pour Cappadoce l'honneur d'avoir jetté la semence de la foi chrétienne en Gothie et il dit cela à l'occasion de la réception de reliques de Saint Sabas , martyrisé dans 15 la valée de la rivière Buzău , pendant la persécution des Goths ." Vers la fin de la Lettre 164 , Saint Basile se réfère encore une fois à la persécution en Gothie par rapport à ' l'incendie de l'hérésie ' arienne . ' Tes récits , c ' est la résistance des athlètes , les corps déchirés pour la piété , la fureur barbare méprisée par ceux dont le coeur ne se trouble pas , les tourments variés infligés par les persécuteurs , la constance des combattants dans tous leurs supplices , le bois , l'eau , tout ce qui peut faire les martyrs accomplis . Et ici , quel est l'état des 16 choses ?' Par les mots úlov et rò vowp , Saint Basile fait une allusion directe au sorte des supplices et de la mort de Saint Sabas : Τελειοθεὶς διὰ ξύλου καὶ ὕδατος (Passion , Ch . VII , 6 ) . En même temps , il faut analyser également , la Lettre 165 de Saint Basile le Grand , écrite dans la même année , 374 , et éditée sous le nom d'Ascholios , évêque de Thessalonique . Tenant comte de son contenu , on peut affirmer qu'en réalité cette 17 Lettre a été adressée aussi à l'évêque Betranion ." Pourtant , il y a parmi les Lettres de Saint Basile une ( No. 154 ) , qui en effet , a été écrite pour l'évêque Ascholios de Thessalonique . C'est son style simple qui montre qu'elle a été adressée à une ancienne connaissance , un ancien ami .

Au contraire , les Lettres 164 et 165

sont chargées des formules rhétoriques qui ressemblent entre eux et qui font voir que Saint Basile est plus réservé en ce qui concerne la manifestation des sentiments d'amitié18 bien qu'il admire ce fameux évêque parce qu'il est tel que l'ont décrit 19 ' les témoignages de tous ' . La Lettre 165 est adressée à un personage dont les vertus honorent la Cappadoce :

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S. C. Alexe

' Les qualités que tu possèdes sont l'orgueil de notre patrie ... Tu as rempli de tes fruits spirituels la terre étrangère .

Aussi est - ce à bon droit que notre patrie se

glorifie de ses propres germes ... La terre qui t'a fait naître , tu l'as honoré d'un martyr qui a récemment fleuri dans le pays barbare voisin du votre ... , un martyr de la verité , qui vient de ceindre la couronne de la justice ! Nous l'avons reçu avec joie et nous avons rendu gloire à Dieu , qui a désormais accompli dans toutes les 20 nations l'Evangile de son Christ ' . On ne connait pas la manière dont on a fait la translation des reliques de Saint Sabas , tout d'abord à Tomi et ensuite en Cappadoce .

Mais il est certain qu'à cette

époque là il y avait en Scythie deux chrétiens influents qui faisaient la liaison avec le centre orthodoxe de Cappadoce ; l'évêque Betranion et le gouverneur Junius Soranus . Le meilleur témoignage sur la foi orthodoxe et sur la personnalité de l ' évêque Betranion nous est offert par l'historien Sozomène ( ve siècle ) .

Celui - ci dit

que les fidèles ne changaient leur ancienne foi si les Églises étaient bien dirigées par des hommes courageux ; en ce sens , il donne comme exemple l'Église de ScyhtieMineure ( Dobroudja ) .

Sozomène précise que , jusqu'à son temps , dans cette région il

y avait la coutume que ' les Églises de toute la nation ( de l'ethnie ) aient un seul évêque ' .

Au temps de l'évêque Betranion , l'empereur arien Valens est venu à Tomi .

Entrant dans l'église où se trouvait l'évêque , il a exhorté celui - ci de passer à l' arianisme . Betranion , après avoir tenu avec courage , un sermon sur le dogme du Concile de Nicée , a quitté l'église avec ses fidèles .

. •

Offensé , Valens a ordonné

tout d'abord que l'évêque soit exilé , mais ayant peur de Scythes et pour des raisons politiques , il a annulé l'ordre . ' De cette manière , conclut Sozomène , Betranion s s' est montré plus fort que le zèle du dominateur .

D'ailleurs , il était homme capable 21 et renommé par la vertu de sa vie , comme l'affirment les Scythes -mêmes ' , La remarque de Sozomène sur le fait que l'évêque de Tomi dirigait toutes les Églises de Scythie-Mineure , ainsi que la fermeté de Betranion dans la foi , mènent à la conclusion que les chrétiens du côté septentrional du Danube ont bénéficié aussi de l'assistance spirituelle de cet évêque . La Passion de Saint Sabas relate que , pendant les persécutions , les chrétiens trouvaient protection en Scythie , comme fût le cas du prêtre Sansala .

La demande de Saint Basile auprès d'Junius Soranus de lui

faire envoyer les reliques des martyrs de ces régions avait pour fondement la conscience que entre l'Église de Cappadoce et l'Église du côté septentrional du Danube il y avait un lien de filiation . On a dit que l'Église gothe était la fille de l'Église 23 en considérant comme de Cappadoce 22 bien que cette affirmation ait été contestée accidentelles les interventions de Saint Basile dans cette région , les interventions de Betranion , ainsi que l'activité d'Ulfila . Cappadocien d'origine .

D'ailleurs , Ulfila lui - même était

Ses grand-parents , habitants du village Sadagolthine , près

de la ville Parnasos , ont été apportés par les Goths comme prisoniers en Valachie , 24 dans la deuxième moitié du IIIe siècle .

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Il y a trois faits qui montrent le rôle des Cappadociens dans l'évangélisation des ' Goths : 1. Eutyhès dont Saint Basile parle dans la Lettre 164 était sans doute un missionnaire pour les Goths établis dans les régions nordiques du Danube ; 2. la prédication d'Ulfila qui pendant 7 ans a répandu la foi chrétienne parmi les Goths du côté nordique du Danube jusqu'à l'an 355 lorsqu'Athanaric a déclenché sa première persécution , et il a été obligé de passer au sud du Danube , avec une partie de ses fidèles . Établi en Moesie , il est devenu adepte de l'hérésie arienne25; 3. la Passion de Saint Sabas relate que deux Cappadociens ont beaucoup contribué à la 26 conversion des Goths . La Passion de Saint Sabas se distingue des autres récits du même genre par le fait qu'il ne se conforme pas au style classique hagiographique où prédomine le miracle , mais décrit les faits d'une manière originale en donnant l'impression 27 que le rédacteur a transcrit tout à fait le récit d'un témoin oculaire .? Cette particularité fait de cet acte un document d'une importance exceptionnelle .

Cependant ,

nous aurions désirés connaître aussi le nom du village où habitait Sabas , son origine , des détails sur sa famille , le nom du village où il s'est arrêté et fut pendu à la poutre , le nom de la ville où vivait le prêtre Gouttika , et d'autres choses qui nous éclaireraient la situation ethnique des fidéles et des habitants qui ont participé d'une manière ou de l'autre au drame du Saint martyr . Mais de la Passion de Saint Sabas on voit de loin que l'auteur était préoccupé particulièrement par la conduite irreprochable de Saint Sabas et de son attitude envers les Goths persécuteurs . Il resort de la Passion de Saint Sabas que la dernière des trois persécutions d' Athanaric ne s'est pas déroulé d'une manière organisée et tant les persécuteurs , c ' est à dire les autorités locales , que les exécuteurs et les covillageois non pas manifesté de fanatisme dans la poursuite des chrétiens .

Bien au contraire , deux

fois les habitants de village ont essayé de tromper les persécuteurs pour sauver leurs parents chrétiens .

À quelle ethnie appartenaient - ils ces chréteins ? Il est

difficile d'admettre que tous étaient d'origine gothe , surtout que pendant les deux incursions des chefs Goths dans ce village , les habitants ' Goths ' ne sont pas été ralliés au dessein des persécuteurs . D'autre part , il semble que le persécution avait un caractère politique , car , lorsque Saint Sabas confesse pour la deuxième fois qu'il est chrétien , le chef Goth s'intéresse seulement s'il avait de la fortune . En constatant que Sabas était 28 pauvre il ordonne que celui ci soit éloigné comme quelqu'un que n'a aucun poids , c'est à dire sans aucune influence sur ses covillageois ( Ch . III , 4 ) . D'ailleurs , dans l'attitude même des Goths qui devaient accomplir la tâche d' exécuter Saint Sabas on voit plus de compassion que de zèle , parce qu'ils aimeraient plutôt le sauver que le tuer . Ces remarques mènent à la conclusion que vers la fin du IVe siècle , le christianisme s'était répandu et organisé non seulement dans les

.

1054 cités , mais aussi dans les villages .

S. C. Alexe En ce sens , la Passion de Saint Sabas mentionne

deux communautés chrétiennes : l'une dans la cité ( nóλus ) du prêtre Gouttika , et l ' autre dans le village où habitaient le prêtre Sansala et Saint Sabas . Au IVe siècle , deux communautés chrétiennes ayant églises , prêtres et chantres , ne se fondent pas dans une ville et dans un village au cours de quelques années . Passion note encore qu'à l'an 372 , lorsqu'il subit le martyre , Sabas était âgé de 38 ans . De même , on précise qu'il était chrétien dès sa plus tendre enfance ( EÉTU vпríoυ) et on peut présupposer que ses parents mêmes étaient chrétiens , donc , le christianisme orthodoxe sur le territoire de la Dacie était dévéloppé au moins quatre décénies avant . Sans doute , cette remarque est d'une importance particulière concernant le problème de la pénétration du christianisme au nord du Danube pendant la période de la formation du peuple roumain .

On peut mettre cette remarque en re-

lation avec la prédication d'Eutyhès , dont parle Saint Basile le Grand , avec l'ac.29 tivité missionnaire des évêques de Tomi " avec l'influence exercitée par cinq évêchés situés au long du Danube , représentés par leurs évêques au concile de 30 Sardique ( Sardica ) en 343° et avec l'oeuvre missionnaire accomplie plus tard par 31 Nicéta de Remesiana , et par ses disciples . Dans les communautés dirigées par les prêtres Sansala et Gouttika , y avait- il seulement des chrétiens d'origine gothe ? Les fouilles archéologiques , aussi que les observations concernant le fond principal du lexique roumain attestent la continuité 32 daco- romine dans la région nord -danubienne . À l'appui de ce qu'on a dit auparavant vient aussi le fait que la Passion de Saint Sabas ne parle pas de la sainte demeure où on célébrait les services divins . Sozo33 mène dit dans son Histoire ecclésiastique que s'est dans des tentes que les Goths se rassemblaient pour célébrer le culte .

On peut donc présumer que les chrétiens du

village de Saint Sabas auraient eu leur église dans une maison en bois telle que celle aux poutres de qui fût pendu Saint Sabas . Même aujourd'hui on peut trouver de telles maisons dans la vallée du Buzău . De même , on peut supposer que ces chrétiens étaient non pas seulement d'origine gothe , mais aussi des éléments indigènes dacoromains . D'ailleurs , bien que la Passion de Saint Sabas affirme que le Saint martyr était ' Goth d'origine ' ( rótos ☎v tŷ yéveɩ ) , l'appréciation immédiatement suivante qu'il vivait ' au milieu d'un peuple obstiné et perfide ' , aussi que le traitement inhumain auquel l'ont soumis les soldats goths , laissent entendre que , en fait , il appartenait à un autre ethnie , mais on l'a considéré ' Goth ' parce qu'il était habitant d'une 34 région appelée dans ce temps - là , Gothie . Quant aux prêtres Sansala et Gouttika , selon le nom , le dernier était d'origine 35 gothe . Mais la ville dans laquelle celui ci accomplissait sa fonction sacerdotale était latine , bien que jusqu'au présent l'archéologie n'ait pas fourni des renseignements sur son existence à l'est de Valachie . L'archéologue roumain I. Barnea

Saint Basile le Grand

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considère particulièrement important le fait que la Passion de Saint Sabas fait mention d'une ville ( nólus ) distincte des villages ( nãμau ) dans lesquels habitaient les ' Goths ' . ' Ainsi , du texte résulte la persistance d'une ville romaine au temps 36 de la domination des Goths sur ce territoire ' . 37 Considéré ' d'origine gothe ' , cappadocien ou ' frigien ' , ou même ' daco - romain ' le prêtre Sansala s'impose aux Goths par sa prestance ; ainsi s'explique - t- il pourquoi ceux-ci ont envers lui une attitude moins dure .

C'est probablement à cause de

son âge qu'il a été transporté dans un chariot ( Ch . IV , 6 ) .

Ferme dans sa foi , qu'

il confesse courageusement , le prêtre Sansala cherche pourtant de ne pas inciter la colère des persécuteurs qui finalement ne s'occupent plus de lui ( Ch . VII , 1 ) .

L'

hypothèse du P. Prof. I. Ionescu , selon laquelle Sansala était d'origine daco-romaine peut être affermie aussi par le fait que le prêtre Sansala avait des rapports avec l'Église de Romania , c'est á dire de Scythie -Mineure , notamment de Tomi , où il a reçu peut-être le sacrement d'ordre et où il trouvait protection pendant la persécution commencée en 370.

Son retour parmi les fidèles pour fêter ensemble les Pâques

en 372 , parle suffisament de la manière dont il accomplissait son devoir sacerdotal . Il affronte tant la fatigue du voyage de Scythie aux montagnes de Buzău , que la persécution des Goths contre les chrétiens .

Et tout cela pour apporter à ses fidèles ,

de même origine , la joie de la Résurrection de Jésus Christ . Certainement , l'exemple du prêtre Sansala aurait eu une influence particulière sur son chantre de l'église , Sabas . Les traits dominants de l'âme de Saint Sabas sont constamment mis en relief par l'auteur du récit martyrique qui souligne d'une manière croissante la bonté de Sabas et sa fermeté dans la foi chrétienne orthodoxe . C'est par son âme honnête et juste qu'il s'impose à ses covillageois qui par des divers subterfuges essaient de le sauver . Le point culminant du récit est le moment dans lequel une femme le délie et le conseille de prendre la fuite , mais il reste tranquille et prend part au travail de la maison de celle - ci . On peut deviner le dénouement . Même les hommes qui ont reçu l'ordre de le noyer sont accablés par la personalité morale du Saint martyr et disant qu'il est innocent , ils sont près de lui donner la liberté . Mais Sabas persiste dans son attitude en leur rappelant que la nonexécution de l'ordre reçu pourrait les faire subir une sévère punition . Par conséquent , ils ont accompli l'ordre , et l'ont noyé dans la rivière Museos . 38

La

critique a unanimement identifié Museos avec la rivière Buzău . Tant la Passion de Saint Sabas le Goth , que les Lettres écrites à l'occasion de cet événement , mettent en évidence les rapports spirituels entre l'Église de Cappadoce , dirigée à ce temps - là par Saint Basile le Grand , et l'Église de Scythie et Dacie-Gothie . Ces rapports étaient anciens et profonds . Saint Basile rapelle avec piété le nom d'Eutyhès et apprécie la purité et l'intégrité de la foi orthodoxe dans un pays qu'on estime ' barbare ' , mais où fleurissait le martyre . L'intervention de Saint Basile auprès du gouverneur Junius Soranus pour faire

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envoyer en Cappadoce les reliques des martyrs démontre qu'il était en connaissance du fait que au- delà de l'Ister , dans ' la région barbare ' , des missionnaires cappadociens deployaient leur activité . Cette intervention suscite la rédaction de la Passion de Saint Sabas , document extrêmement important au point de vue historique , religieux , missionnaire et littéraire concernant le IVe siècle .

Ce document jette

un rayon de lumière sur une communauté chrétienne à la campagne , dans la vallée de Buzău , sur l'orthodoxie de cette communauté , et sur les rapports avec l'Église de Romania-Scythie -Mineure- Dobroudja et avec l'Église de Cappadoce .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. P.G. , XXXII , 612C - 613B ; 633C - 637A ; 637B - 640A et l'édition d'Yves Courtonne , Saint Basile, Lettres , tome II , texte établi et traduit par ... , Les Belles Lettres , ( Paris , 1961 ) , pp . 80-81 ; 97-99 ; 100-101 ; Nous citerons d'après l'édition et la traduction d'Yves Courtonne , en indiquant la Lettre et la page . 2. La Lettre de l'Église de Gothie , qui relate le martyre de Saint Sabas le Goth , a été conservée dans deux manuscrits grecs : le Manuscrit grec No 359 , de la Bibliothèque Saint Marc de Venise , écrit au Xe -XIe siècle ( c'est d'après ce manuscrit qu'a été faite la traduction latine publiée par Lipomanus : Tomus Septimus , Vitarum sanctorum patrum ( Romae , 1559 ) , f . 72-78v ) ; le Manuscrit grec No 1660 , de Bibliothèque du Vatican , écrit en 912 . Le texte a été publié pour la première fois par les moins bollandiens dans Acta Sanctomm , avec une traduction en latin , faite par Franciscus Zinus , et reproduite par T. Ruinart dans la collection Acta martyrum ( Ratisbonae , 1859 ) , pp . 617-620 . Ensuite le texte a été réédité par Hippolyte Delehaye : ' Saints de Thrace et de Mésie ' , dans Analecta Bollandiana , XXXI ( 1912 ) , pp . 216-221 . Cette version a été reprise par Rudolf Knopf et Gustave Krüger dans Ausgewählte Märtyrerakten , vierte Auflage (Tübingen , 1965 ) , pp . 119-124 . En roumain , ont été publiées les traductions suivantes : G. Zotu , ' Sântul Sava Gothu ( Saint Sabas le Goth ) ' , dans le revue Biserica Ortodoxă Română , VII ( Bucarest , 1883 ) , No 3 , pp . 175-180 ; G. Timus , ' Epistola Bisericii Gotiei pentru martirul St. Sava ( Lettre de l'Église de Gothie concernant le martyre de St. Sabas ) ' , dans la rev . citée ci dessus , XIV ( 1891 ) , pp . 817-823 ; Constantin Erbiceanu , ' Ulfila , viaţa şi doctrina sa ( Ulfila , sa vie et sa doctrine ) ' , dans la rev . citée , XXII ( 1898-1899 ) , No 4 , pp . 375-381 ; P. Prof. V. G. Sibiescu , ' Sfîntul Sava ' Gotul ' . La 1600 de ani de la mucenicia sa ( Saint Sabas le ' Goth ' . À l'occasion de 1600 ans depuis son martyre ) ' , dans la revue Glasul Bisericii , XXXI ( Bucarest , 1972 ) , Nos 3-4 , pp . 385-388 et P. Conf . Stefan C. Alexe , ' 1600 de ani de la moartea Sfîntului Sava Gotul ( 1600 ans depuis la mort de Saint Sabas le Goth ) ' , dans Biserica Orthodoxă Română , XC ( 1972 ) , Nos 5-6 , pp . 557-560 . 3. Lettre 155 , p . 81 . 4. Lettre 164 , p . 97 . 5. Heinrich Boehmer-Romundt , ' Ein neues Werk des Wulfila ? ' , dans Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum , XI ( Leipzig , 1903 ) , p . 288 . 6. G. Pfeilschifter , ' Kein neues Werk des Wulfila ' , dans Festgabe Alois Knöpfler (München , 1907 ) , pp . 192-224 . 7. H. Boehmer , l'article ' Wulfila ' , dans Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche , 3e édition ( éditée par Albert Hauck ) , vol . XXI ( Leipzig , 1908 ) , p . 90 . 8. G. Pfeilschifter , op . cit . , p . 244 ; Joseph Mansion , ' Les Origines du christianisme chez les Gots ' , dans Analecta Bollandiana , XXXIII ( 1914 ) , p . 14 ; Jacques Zeiller , Les origines chrétiennes dans les provinces danubiennes de l'Empire Romain ( Paris , 1918 ) , p . 431 .

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9. J. Coman , Saint Basile le Grand et l'Église de Gothie . Sur les missionnaires cappadociens en Scythie -Mineure et en Dacie , art . dactylographié , p . 7. 10. Saint Basile , Lettre 164 , p . 98 . 11. Ibid . , p . 98 . 12. P. Prof. I. Ionescu , ' Sansala , primul preot creştin daco- roman atestat documentar ( Sansala , le premier prêtre chrétien daco - romain attesté documentaire ) ' , dans la revue Mitropolia Olteniei , XXII ( 1970 ) , Nos 5-8 , pp . 485-490 , suppose que ' l'antraîneur aurait été le prêtre Sansala dont il s'agit dans la Passion . 13. Lettre 164 , pp . 98-99 . 14. Ibid. , p . 98 . 15. J. Mansion , op . cit . , pp . 8-9 . 16. Lettre 164 , p . 99 . 17. J. Mansion , op . cit . , pp . 15-17 . Cf. aussi J. Zeiller , op . cit . , pp . 431-432 , et H. Leclercq , l'article ' Goths ' , dans Dictionnaire d'Archéologie chrétienne et de Liturgie , t . VI , 2e partie ( Paris , 1925 ) , col . 1439 . 18. J. Mansion , op . cit . , p . 16 ; voir aussi P. Prof. Gheorghe I. Moisescu , ' Sfintii Trei Ierarhi în Biserica românească ( Les Trois Saints Hiérarches dans l'Église Roumaine ) ' , dans le revue Ortodoxia , XII ( 1960 ) , No 1 , p . 9 . 19. Saint Basile , Lettre 165 , p . 100 . 20. Ibid. , pp . 100-101 . 21. Sozomène , Histoire ecclésiastique , VI , 21 , 2 ; cf. aussi Théodoret , Histoire ecclésiastique , IV , 31. Voir le commentaire du texte chez G. Pfeilschifter , op . cit. , pp . 209-210 . 22. H. Boehmer-Romundt , op . cit . , p . 272 . 23. Jellinek , ' Die angeblichen Beziehungen der gothischen zur kappadokischen Kirche ' , dans Festschrift Fr. Kluge zum 70. Geburtstage am 21. Juni 1926 dargebracht ( Tübingen , 1926 ) , apud J. Mansion , ' A propos des chrétientés de Gothie ' , dans Analecta Bollandiana , CLVI ( 1928 ) , pp . 365-366 . 24. C. Erbiceanu , ' Ulfila . Viaţa şi doctrina lui sau starea creştinismului în Dacia Traiană si Aureliană în secolul al IV- lea ( Ulfila . Sa vie et sa doctrine ou la situation du christianisme dans la Dacie Trajane et Aurélienne au IVe siècle ) ' . Tiré à part de la revue Biserica Ortodoxă Română ( Bucarest , 1898 ) , p . 26 . 25. Les documents relatifs à l'activité missionnaire d'Ulfila , aussi qu'aux Goths christianisés par lui , ont été collationnés par C. Erbiceanu , op . cit . , pp . 6-25 . Augustin parle de l'orthodoxie de la foi des Goths pendant le persécution d'Athanaric , selon le témoignage des ' certains frères qui à l'époque étaient des enfants et se souviennent ' de la cruauté de la persécution ( De civitate Dei , lib . XVIII , 52 ) . 26. J. Mansion , ' A propos ... ' , loc . cit. De même , G. Pfeilschifter (art . cit. , p . 213 ) , considère l'orthodoxie de la foi de Saint Sabas comme un fruit de la mission cappadocienne parmi les Goths . 27. H. Delehaye , Les Passions des Martyrs et les Genres littéraires ( Bruxelles , 1921 ) , p . 148 . 28. P.P. Panaitescu , dans son oeuvre : Obştea tărănească în Tara Românească şi Moldova . Orinduirea feudală ( La communauté paysanne en Valachie et Moldavie . Le régime féodal ) ( Bucarest , 1964 ) , p . 23 , prenant en considération l'état de pauvreté de Sabas , l'auteur voit une différentiation sociale chez les Goths et il remarque la solidarité de la communauté villageoise face aux persécuteurs . Malheureusement , certaines informations que l'auteur prend de la Passion de Saint Sabas sont envisagées d'une manière erronée à cause d'une défectueuse traduction du texte grec ( pp . 22-23 ) . Voir aussi E.A. Thompson , The Visigoths in the Time of Ulfila ( Oxford , 1966 ) , particulièrement le chapitre : The Passion of St. Saba and village life ( pp . 64-77) . L'auteur estime que l'expulsion de Saint Sabas du village est due au fait que celui - ci a refusé de manger de la viande consacrée aux idôls , acte qui symbolisait son adhésion à la communauté gothe . Dans ce sens , la faute de Saint Sabas a été la manque de solidarité avec la communauté et nom pas le fait qu'il était chrétien ( p . 68 ) . 29. Voir I. Barnea , le chapitre ' Cultura Sciției Minor în sec . IV-VII ( La Culture de Scythie Mineure au Ive -VIIe siècle ) ' , dans Radu Vulpe et Ion Branea , Din Istoria Dobrogei (De l'histoire de Dobroudja) vol . II ( Romanii la Dunărea de Jos - Les

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Romains au Bas- Danube ) , éd . de l'Académie de la République Socialiste Roumanie ( Bucarest , 1968 ) , pp . 457-458 ; P. Prof. Gh . I. Moisescu , P. Prof. Stefan Lupşa et P. Prof. Alexandru Filipaşcu , Istoria Bisericii Române (L'histoire de l'Église Roumaine ) , vol . I ( Bucarest , 1957 ) , pp . 80-83 ; P. Prof. Ioan G. Coman , ' Insemnări asupra lui Teotim de Tomis ( Notes sur Théotime de Tomi ) ' , dans la rev . Glasul Bisericii XVI ( 1957 ) , Nos 1-2 , pp . 46-50 ; Prof. Ilie Georgescu , ' Viaţa creştină în vechiul Tomis ( La vie chrétienne dans l'ancienne Tomi ) ' , dans la rev . Mitropolia Moldovei şi Sucevei , XXXVIII ( Iassy , 1962 ) , Nos 1-2 , pp . 15-32 ; I.P.S. Mitropolit Nicolae al Banatului , ' Prima mărturie documentară despre Episcopia Tomisului ( La première attestation documentaire sur l'évêché de Tomi ) ' , dans Biserica Ortodoxă Română , LXXXVIII ( 1969 ) , Nos . 9-10 , pp . 959-965 . Preotul Noculae Serbănescu , ' 1600 de ani de la prima mărturie documentară despre existenta Episcopiei Tomisului ( 160C ans depuis la première attestation documentaire sur l'existence de l'évêché de Tomi ) ' , dans la rev . cité ci - dessus , pp . 966-1014 . 30. P. Prof. I. Rămureanu , ' Sinodul de la Sardica din 343. Importanţa lui pentru istoria pătrunderii creştinismului la geto- daco -romani ( Le Concile de Sardique de l'an 343. Son importance pour la pénétration du christianisme chez les géto - dacoromains ) ' , dans la revue Studii Teologice , XIV ( Bucarest , 1962 ) , Nos 3-4 , p . 177 . 31. V. Pârvan , Contribuții epigrafice la Istoria creştinismului daco -roman ( Contributions épigraphiques à l'histoire du christianisme daco -romain ) ( Bucarest , 1911 ) , p . 162-176 et 199. Voir aussi P. Prof. Ioan G. Coman , " Aria misionara " a Sfîntului Niceta de Remesiana ( " L'aire missionnaire " de Saint Nicéta de Rémésiana ) ' , dans Biserica Ortodoxă Română , LXVI ( 1948 ) , Nos 5-6 , pp . 337-356 ; Assist . Stefan C. Alexe , ' Sfîntul Niceta de Remesiana şi ecumenicitatea patristică din secolele IV şi V ( Saint Nicéta de Rémésiana et l'oecuménicité patristique aux IVe et Ve siècles ) ' (Bucarest , 1969 ) , tiré à part de la revue Studii Teologice , XXI ( 1969 ) , Nos 7-8 , pp . 24-29 . 32. Pour l'historiographe Jordanes ( VIe siècle ) , les Gètes et les Daces sont des Goths , et le pays des géto- daces est appelé Gothie . De même , le poète Claudius ( 365-408 ) prend les Goths pour des Gètes . Voir les textes respectifs chez G. PopaLisseanu , Dacia în autorii clasici ( La Dacie chez les auteurs classiques ) , vol . I (Bucarest , 1943 ) , p . 118. Voir aussi D.M. Pippidi , Contribuţii la istoria veche a României (Contributions à l'histoire ancienne de la Roumanie ) , 2e éd . ( Bucarest , 1967 ) , p . 494 , la note 42 , et p . 496 , n . 50 . 33. Sozomène , Histoire ecclésiastique , VI , 37 , 13-14 , P.G. , LXVII , 1408AB . 34. J. Mansion , ' Les origines ,,, ' , p . 12. W. Bessel , dans l'article ' Gothen' (Allgemeine Encyclopädie des Wissenschaften und Künste , hrsg . I.S. Ersch und I.G. Gruber , 1. Sektion , 75. Teil , Leipzig , 1862 , p . 144 ) le considère Goth par naissance . De même avis est H. Boehmer- Romundt , op . cit . , p . 286 , n.1 , bien qu'il reconnaisse que le nom de Sabas était fréquent au IVe siècle en Cappadoce . V. Pârvan , op . cit. , p . 157 , le considère grec d'Asie . Ludwig Schmidt , Geschichte der deutschen Stämme. Die Ostgermanen , 2e éd . ( Munich , 1934 ) , p . 237 , dit que Sabas était cappadocien ; et , d'autre part , le Prof. Gh . I. Moisescu et collaborateurs , op . cit . , p . 63 , affirment qu'il était Goth . 35. Georg Waitz , Über das Leben und die Lehre des Ulfila ( Hannover , 1840 ) , p . 43. Voir aussi P. Prof. I. Ionescu , op . cit . , p . 488 , n . 13 . 36. R. Vulpe et I. Barnea , Din istoria Dobrogei (De l'histoire de Dobroudja) , vol . II , p . 398 . 37. P. Prof. I. Ionescu , ' Sansala ... ' , pp . 489-490 . 38. Pour l'équivalence de l'hydronyme Museos - Buzău , voir les ouvrages suivants : W. Bessel , op . cit . , p . 144 ; Dr. Gherasim Timuş , Dicţionar aghiografic cuprinzînd pe scurt Viețile Sfinţilor (Dictionnaire agiographique contenant en bref les Vies des Saints ) (Bucarest , 1898 ) , p . 742 ; L. Niederle , Slovanski starozitnosti ( Prague , 1902 ) , II , 1 , p . 30 ; H. Boehmer-Romundt , op . cit . , p . 284 , n . 4 ; G. Pfeischifter , op . cit . , p . 203. n . 2 ; V. Pârvan , op . cit . , p . 157 ; J. Zeiller , op . cit . , p . 426 ; Vasile Pârvan , ' Considerațiuni asupra unor nume de riuri daco - scitice ( Considérations sur certains noms de rivières daco - scythiques ) ' , Academia Română , Memoriile Secţiunii Istorice , IIIe série , tome I ( Bucarest , 1923 ) , p . 12 : ' Museos pouvait donc être , éventuellement , la prononciation thracique de Buseos ' ; A.D. Xenopol , Istoria

Saint Basile le Grand

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Românilor din Dacia Traiană (L'histoire des Roumains de la Dacie Trajane ) , IIIe éd . soignée par I. Vlădescu , vol I (Bucarest , 1925 ) , p . 229 ; Nicolae Droganu , ' Românii din veacurile IX-XIV pe baza toponimiei şi a onomasticei ( Les Roumains aux IX -XIVe siècles , étude fondée sur la toponymie et l'onomastique ) ' , Academia Română , Studii şi Cercetări (Études et Recherches ) , XXI ( Bucarest , 1933 ) , pp . 248-249 . Il affirme que Buzău est un mot d'origine daco - thrace , provenant de Museos ; G. Popa- Lisseanu , op . cit . , p . 115 , n . 1 ; P. Prof. Gh . I. Moisescu et collab . , op . cit . , p . 64 ; P.P. Panaitescu , op . cit . , p . 23 ; E.A. Thompson , op . cit . , p . 66 ; Mineiul lunii aprilie (Le Menée pour le mois d'avril ) , Les Éditions de l'Institut Biblique et de Mission Orthodoxe , Ive édition ( Bucarest , 1967 ) , p . 154 ; R. Vulpe et I. Barnea , op . cit. , p . 398 ; Acad . Al . Rosetti , Istoria limbii române de la origini pînă în secolul al XVII-lea (L'histoire de la langue roumaine dès origines jusqu'au XVIIe siècle ) , Les Éditions pour la Littérature ( Bucarest , 1968 ) , p . 227 ; C.C. Giurescu et D.C. Giurescu , Istoria românilor din cele mai vechi timpuri şi pînă astăzi (L'histoire des Roumains dès origines jusqu'aujourd'hui ) , Les Éditions Albatros (Bucarest , 1971 ) , p . 165 .

SP 3 - G

Basile le Grand et la polémique antimanichéenne en Asie Mineure au IVe siècle

F. Decret Lyon

E 1er janvier 379 , Basile le Grand mourait dans sa ville épiscopale . Il n'avait LⓇ que quarante neuf ans , mais c'était déjà un vieillard dont la santé fragile avait été ruinée par les excessives rigueurs de l'ascèse qu'il s'était imposée depuis une vingtaine d'années et , plus encore peut - être , par d'ardentes oppositions auxquelles il avait dû faire face , par des déboires et des controverses incessantes menées depuis 370 , quand il avait été élu au siège de Césarée , par les luttes âpres pour défendre ses propres positions orthodoxes et faire admettre par Rome sa politique ecclésiastique dans un Orient chrétien profondément divisé , au grand bénéfice de l'arianisme . 379 1979 , nous commémorons le 16e centenaire de la mort du grand évêque de Césarée en Cappadoce . A l'occasion de cette Conférence internationale d'études patristiques , c'est donc d'abord comme une contribution aux célébrations anniversaires qui ont lieu cette année , dans les Eglises et les communautés orientales en particulier , que voudrait se présenter cette communication . Si Basile de Césarée fut un remarquable témoin des luttes intestines , des schismes et des hérésies qui , dans la seconde moitié du IVe siècle , affectaient la chrétienté d'Asie Mineure , ses écrits nous fournissent - ils des indications sur la situation du manichéisme dans cette région ? En effet , la secte s'étant implantée avec le succès que l'on sait dans les provinces où les communautés de la Grande Eglise étaient florissantes et d'abord en Egypte et en Afrique du Nord , elle eut dû pareillement se diffuser dans cette Asie où , malgré l'effervescence doctrinale et le foisonnement des chapelles et des groupuscules hétérodoxes , le christianisme était particulièrement vivace et ancien puisqu'il inquiétait déjà l'Empire au temps de Trajan . Si notre documentation sur le manichéisme en cette région est fort maigre , elle nous permet du moins de savoir que , comme dans d'autre provinces romaines , la secte y avait recruté des adeptes .

Augustin d'Hippone , qui fut un collectionneur attentif 1060

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Basile le Grand

et éclairé de tous les ' scandales ' dont étaient accusés devant les tribunaux impériaux ses anciens coreligionnaires , écrit , dans son De natura boni¹, qu'en Paphlagonie , à l'occasion d'un jugement public , des Manichéens avaient dû confesser qu'ils se livraient à des pratiques de spermophagie - pratiques qui , selon du moins les dires d'Epiphane , étaient rituelles chez les Barbélognostiques . " Un second élément pourrait corroborer la notation d'Augustin sur le sujet de la présence des hérétiques dans ces provinces .

Il s'agit d'une inscription , rédigée en grec et

datant peut -être du IVe siècle , sans doute une épitaphe , provenant de Salone ( sur la côte de Dalmatie ) et portant ces quatre mots : ' Bassa , vierge , originaire de Lydie , manichéenne ' . Ainsi donc , deux documents , très différents certes et d'inégale valeur pour notre information , font apparemment état de l'implantation du manichéisme dans deux provinces des diocèses d'Asie et du Pont : la Paphlagonie et la Lydie . La secte comptait -elle également des membres dans l'ancienne Cappadoce , elle-même intégrée au diocèse du Pont ( et qui fut démembrée en deux provinces par l'empereur Valens , sans doute en 373 , pour affaiblir l'influence du métropolitain , Basile de Césarée lui - même , alors chef de l'opposition nicéenne ) ? C'est encore à l'oeuvre d'Augustin qu'il nous faut revenir , et plus précisément à son Contra Iulianum . En effet , dans les années 421-422 , répliquant à la polémique poursuivie contre lui par son redoutable adversaire pélagien , l'évêque d'Hippone faisait référence

à une oeuvre de Basile de Césarée utilisée par Julien d'Eclane

dans son argumentation .

Augustin écrivait à ce sujet : ' A l'autorité de saint

Grégoire de Nysse , nous ajouterons celle de saint Basile ( ... ) .

Dans le quatrième

volume de ton ouvrage , tu as jugé à propos de t'appuyer sur un passage du livre qu'il a écrit contre les Manichéens . Or ce passage n'a rien à voir avec la question du péché originel ( ... ) .

L'auteur s'emploie , en effet , en l'occurrence , à montrer

qu'on ne doit pas croire à un mal ayant sa substance et une espèce de matière qui lui serait propre , comme le conçoivent les Manichéens ' . Et , dans ce même chapitre , Augustin revient à six reprises pour bien souligner que le livre de saint Basile , dont il ne nie nullement l'authenticité et qu'il cite lui -même , ne saurait être exploité à tort et à travers comme le font les Pélagiens pour défendre leurs thèses , mais qu'on ne peut vraiment le comprendre qu'en se situant dans la perspective de la controverse antimanichéenne de son auteur . ' Saint Basile pèse toutes ses paroles , fait remarquer l'évêque d'Hippone , de manière à réfuter les Manichéens , contre les5 quels il combattait ' . Nul doute qu'Augustin avait en main l'ouvrage en question . L'argumentation qu'il reprend et développe lui -même pour en montrer la portée réelle se trouve d'ailleurs exposée , pour l'essentiel , dans la célèbre homélie de 6 l'archevêque cappadocien : Que Dieu n'est pas l'auteur du mal . Toutefois , à parcourir l'oeuvre de Basile , les très rares références explicites au manichéisme ne permettent pas d'affirmer que l'auteur ait eu , par ses études , ses contacts ou son ministère pastoral une connaissance directe de la secte . On ne

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saurait voir des indices d'une telle connaissance personnelle dans le fait qu'il s'emploie , lui aussi , à dénoncer l'hérésie : ' la sottise des Manichéens ' , ' l'abominable hérésie des Manichéens , que l'on peut appeler , sans manquer à la justice , la 8 pourriture des Eglises ' . En effet , dans la Catholica tout entière , de telles appréciations pour stigmatiser ces rivaux qui prétendaient se situer dans le droit fil du christianisme authentique constituaient une sorte de leitmotiv traditionnel ( que l'ancien Auditeur de Carthage reprendra à son tour et enrichira avec son goût pour les formules neuves et les superlatifs ) . En réalité , Basile ne fait qu'occasionellement mention du manichéisme .

Il con-

damne son dogme des deux Principes antagonistes , son mythe des Ténèbres , recouvrant 10 le Principe du Mal son enseignement sur l''esprit ' du Mal émanant de la terre et 11 12 de la Matière et enfin il déclare nul le baptême des Manichéens - - baptême , d'ailleurs , dont aucun texte de la secte ne signale trace , tant en Orient qu'en Occident , et dont l'existence se trouve même formellement niée à plusieurs reprises 13 par un spécialiste comme Augustin ." Les quelques rudiments de doctrine que l'on peut glaner dans l'oeuvre de Basile n'apportent donc aucun élément neuf à notre connaissance du manichéisme .

L'évêque

de Césarée n'avait évidemment pas fait ses classes chez les hérétiques comme son illustre collègue d'Hippone et , sur ce sujet , il était demeuré un rudis . S'il ne parle pas en praticien de la secte , il n'est pas impossible toutefois qu'il ait obtenu quelque information sur les conventicules manichéens , où les Elus se consacraient à une vie fort semblable , dans son dépouillement matériel sinon dans son esprit , à celle des moines dans les Eglises orientales .

Il aurait pu connaître de

telles fondations lors des voyages qu'il effectua en 356 et 357 pour étudier la vie monastique .

On sait que ces voyages le conduisirent en Mésopotamie , en Syrie , en

Palestine et surtout dans cette Egypte où , un siècle plus tôt déjà , entre les années 244 et 261 , une mission avait été envoyée par Mani lui -même

avec deux prédicateurs ,

Addâ et Patiîg - et qui avait abouti à la fondation de nombreuses communautés et aussi de monastères.14 Basile pourrait également avoir eu vent de ce genre de vie des Elus manichéens au cours des années qu'il vécut dans sa retraite monastique d'Annesoi , dans la vallée de l'Iris , en cette province de l'Hélénopont frontière de la Paphlagonie où , selon l'information rapportée par Augustin , les Manichéens étai15 ent eux-mêmes installés . Puisque nous sommes ici dans un domaine où les hypothèses tiennent une large part , nous soulignerons du moins un point de cette polémique , qui ressort clairement celui -là et se retourne en faveur des hérétiques combattus .

L'évêque de Césarée a

pu , à l'occasion de telle ou telle de ses démonstrations , condamner quelques aspects généraux de la doctrine manichéenne , mais ses critiques constituent aussi une sorte de témoignage sur la pureté de vie des adeptes de la secte . En effet , dans le Contra Iulianum , où, comme on l'a vu , Augustin se réfère à une oeuvre de Basile utilisée

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Basile le Grand par les Pélagiens , nous remarquerons un aspect de la controverse .

Le métropolitain

de la Cappadoce n'accusait pas les Manichéens d'hypocrisie , il ne leur reprochait pas des abominations argument favori de la polémique augustinienne , mais il leur faisait grief de ne pas être logiques dans leur vie d'austérité avec leur propre enseignement .

Pourquoi , leur demandait - il , imposer à leur corps ces jeûnes et ces

privations puisque , selon la doctrine dualiste de Mani , le corps humain , qui tire son origine de la ' race des Ténèbres ' , est fondamentalement impur et mauvais . Aucune pénitence ne saurait permettre une ' transubstantiation ' : quia corpus turpi16 tudinis, uirtutis non fieret corpus . Sans doute l'ascèse manichéenne des Elus , où l'évêque catholique ne voyait qu'inconséquence et absurdité , s'expliquait - elle par d'autres raisons . Il reste que c'est là un beau témoignage , bien involontaire certes , que portait , en faveur de la secte hérétique , Basile de Césarée , éminent organisateur et législateur de l'institution monastique dans tout l'Orient chrétien .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. Augustin , De natura boni , 47 , C.S.E.L. , t . 25,2 , pp . 886,18 - 887,2 ; Augustin précise qu'il tient cette information d'un ' chrétien catholique ' de Rome . 2. Epiphane , Panarion , 26 , 4 , 1-5 , G.C.S. ( éd . K. Holl ) , t . 25 , pp . 280,10 282,24 ; cf. ibid . , 26 , 4 , 6 et 4 , 8. Bien entendu , il n'entre pas dans notre objet de discuter de la valeur de ces assertions . 3. Pour les travaux consacrés à cette inscription , voir F. Decret , L'Afrique manichéenne (Ive - ve siècles ) . Etude historique et doctrinale , t . I , Texte , t . II , Notes ( Paris , 1978 ) ; cf. t . II , p . 96 , n . 68 , et , du même auteur , Mani et la tradition manichéenne ( Paris , 1974 photographie du document ) . 4. Augustin , Contra Iulianum , I , 5 , 16 , P.L. , t . 44 , 650 : ' addimus huic et sanctum Basilium ( ... ) quia et tu de libro eius , quem scripsit aduersus contra Manichaeos , in quarto uolumine huius operis tui aliquid putasti esse ponendum , quod ad causam peccati originalis ( ... ) non pertinet . Ibi quippe agit , ne malum substantiale credatur , habens suam quamdam materiam , sicut sapiunt Manichaei ' . 5. Ibid . , 651 : ' ( sanctus Basilius ) sic uerba sua librans , ut et Manichaeos, contra quos agebat , refelleret ... ' . 6. Basile de Césarée ( Homélie : Que Dieu n'est pas l'auteur du mal ) , P.G. , t . 31 , 329A 353A cf. en particulier , ibid . , 3420 ; on retrouve cette même thèse , devenue classique , sur la nature du mal et son origine , dans le Homélies sur l'Hexaéméron : cf. IIe Homélie , ↳ ( éd . S. Giet , coll . ' Sources chrétiennes ' , vol . 26bis ( 1968 ) , 16C 17A , pp . 158-162 ) , et Vie Homélie ( ibid . , 56C , p . 358 ) . 7. Id. , VIIIe Homélie sur l'Hexaéméron , 1 ( ibid . , 70B , p . 428 ) . 8. Id . , IIe Homélie sur l'Hexaéméron , 4 ( ibid . , 15E , p . 154 ) . 9. Id. , Contre Eunome , II , 34 , P.G. , t . 29 , 625 . 10. Id . , IIe Homélie sur l'Hexaéméron , 4 ( coll . ' Sources chrétiennes ' , 15C - 15E , pp . 152-154 ) ; sur ce point du mythe , cf. F. Decret , Aspects du manichéisme dans l'Afrique romaine . Les controverses de Fortunatus , Faustus et Felix avec saint Augustin ( Paris , 1970 ) , pp . 193-252 , et L'Afrique manichéenne . , op . cit . , t . I , pp . 293-305 . 11. Basile de Césarée , VIIIe Homélie sur l'Hexaéméron , 1 ( coll . ' Sources chrétiennes ' , 70B 70C , pp . 428-430 ) . Notons au passage que les Manichéens refusaient par principe de recevoir l'enseignement de l'Ancien Testament et qu'ils ne sauraient donc recourir au livre de la Genèse pour étayer leurs thèses .

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12. Id. , Lettre CLXXXVIII ( ou 1° Epître canonique ) , Canon , 1 , P. G. , t . 32 , 666 ( 269) . 13. Cf. Augustin , De haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum , 46 , P.L. , t . 42 , 38 : ' Baptismum in aqua nihil cuiquam perhibent salutis afferre : nec quemquam eorum quos decipiunt , baptizandum putant . ' ; Contra duas epist . Pelag . , II , 2 , 3 , et IV , 4 , 5. Sur la question du ' baptême ' avec onction d'huile , voir sources et bibliographie dans F. Decret , L'Afrique manichéenne . , op . cit . , t . II , pp . 182-183 , n . 137 . 14. Voir F.C. Andreas et W. Henning , ' Mitteliranische Manichaica aus ChinesischTurkestan ' , II , dans Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften ( 1933 ) , p . 302 , fragment de Tûrfân M 2 Recto I , 16 ( Adda verwandte viel Mühe auf jene Gegenden , er gründete viele Klöster , et erwählte zahlreiche Erwählte und Hörer ... ) ; L.J.R. Ort , Mani . A Religio-historical Description of his Personality ( Leiden , 1967 ) , p . 63 . 15. Cf. supra , n . 1 . 16. Augustin , Contra Iulianum , I. 5 , 17 , P.L. , t . 44 , 651 : ' Item quod commemoras dixisse Basilium: " Si castitas uirtus est , corpus uero substantialiter malum esset , impossibile erat castum corpus inueniri ; quia corpus turpitudinis , uirtutis non fieret corpus ; cum autem sanctificatur , uirtutis efficitur , et ita communicat uirtus corpori , per quam et templum efficitur Dei . ( ... ) Quomodo non exsecrabilis et ridendus Manichaei sermo conuincitur ? " ' .

The Relationship Between Gregory of Nyssa's Attack on Slavery in his Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes and his Treatise De Hominis Opificio T. J. Dennis Windsor, Berks

T Easter in 379 , or more probably in 380 , Gregory of Nyssa sent as a gift to Ahis brother Peter the treatise De hominis opificio . In the Lent of 381 , according to Daniélou's rather over- confident chronology¹ , Gregory delivered his homilies on Ecclesiastes , making in the fourth homily his celebrated attack on 2 slavery . Some would perhaps prefer to put the homilies before the treatise , but whichever suggestion is correct the attack on slavery constitutes an application to a specific problem of principles firmly established in the De hominis opificio. That , at least , is what I wish to suggest in this paper . The attack is prompted by the statement in Ecclesiastes 2.7 , ' I acquired slaves and slave girls , and slaves were born in my house ' , and is directed entirely at the slave owner . Nowhere in the passage does Gregory address the slave . 3 Does any of the things listed here , a sumptuous house , vineyards galore , beautiful gardens , a system of pools supplying orchards with water , suggest as much arrogance as the man's idea that he as a man can be master over his fellows ? ' For I acquired' , he says , ' slaves and slave girls , and slaves were born in my house ' . Do you see the vast extent of his boastfulness ? Such a voice as his is raised in open defiance against God . 5 For we have learnt from the prophet that all things are subject to the Power that transcends everything . If a man therefore , regards what belongs to God as his own property , and lets members of his family share in his ownership , and if he goes so far as to think himself lord and master of both men and women , and he sees himself as being different from those under his authority , surely in his arrogance he is doing nothing else than going beyond the limits of his own nature ? ' I acquired slaves and slave girls ' . What is that you say ? You condemn a person to slavery whose nature is free and independent , and in doing so you lay down a law in opposition to God , overturning the natural law established by him . For

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T. J. Dennis you subject to the yoke of slavery one who was created precisely to be master of the earth , and who was ordained to rule by the creator , as if you were deliberately attacking and fighting against the divine command . You have forgotten the limits of your power . Your authority is limited to ruling over brute beasts . 'Let them have authority ' , Scripture says , ' over the birds and the fishes , the four- footed beasts and creeping things ' . How is it that you ignore those creatures which are properly subjected to you in slavery , and rise up against the very creature that is free by nature ? How is it that you class one of your own species among four- footed beasts , or even reptiles ? 'You have made all things subject to man' , cries the Logos through the mouth of the prophet , and the passage lists what is subject to reason , namely cattle , oxen , sheep . Surely men have not been born to you from cattle ? Surely oxen have not provided you with human offspring ? The only mastery man can properly exercise is over the brute beasts . Is that a small thing for you ? ' You make grass grow for the cattle ' says But Scripture , ' and fresh plants for the slaves of men ' . through your system of slavery you have divided the one species , making members of that species slaves and masters of other members . ' I acquired slaves and slave girls ' . Tell me , what price did you pay for them ? What did you find among your possessions that you could trade for human beings ? What price did you put on reason ? How many obols did you pay as a fair price for the image of God ? For how many staters have you sold the nature specially formed by God ? ' God Tell said , " Let us make man in our image and likeness " me this : who can buy a man , who can sell him , when he is made in the likeness of God , when he is ruler over the whole earth , when he has been given as his inheritance by God authority over all that is on the earth ? Such power belongs to God alone , or rather it does not even belong to God himself . For , as Scripture says , ' the gifts of God are irrevocable ' . 10 Of his own free will God called us into freedom when we were slaves to sin . In that case he would hardly reduce human beings to slavery . But if God does not enslave what is free , who dares put his own authority higher than God's ? How possibly can the ruler of the earth and all that is on it be sold ? For when someone is sold it is absolutely necessary for his property to be handed over as well . What price , then , will we put on the whole earth ? What price will we put on all that is on the earth ? But if these things are beyond price , then tell me , how much is their master worth ? Even if you say ' the whole world ' , not even then have you arrived at his true value . For one who knows very well what human nature is like said that not even the whole world is a fair price for a man's soul.11 When a man is put up for sale , nothing less than the lord of the earth is led onto the auction block . Now obviously the property he has will be auctioned along with him , and that means the earth , the sea , the islands , and all that is on or in them . How much , then , will the buyer pay ? What will the vendor receive when property of this kind is involved in the transaction ?

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Gregory of Nyssa's Attack on Slavery But have a brief document , a bill of sale , and the counting out of a few obols deceived you into thinking yourself the master of the image of God ? Oh , what madness ! If the contract were to get lost , or the documents were to be eaten away by moths , or if a drop of water were to fall on them from somewhere and ruin them , where then would be the proof, where the guarantee , that he is your slave , and you his master ? For I cannot see that the title of master gives you anything beyond what your slave has apart from the title itself . What has your power added to your nature ? Neither years , nor beauty , nor good health , nor moral advantages . Both you , the master , and your slave were born in the same way , you both live under the same conditions , you both are subject to the same states of soul and body , to pain and cheerfulness , to mirth and distress , grief and pleasure , desire and fear , illness and death . There is surely no difference in these respects between master and slave ? Do they not draw the same air into their lungs ? Do they not both enjoy the same light of the sun ? Do they not keep themselves alive in the same way by the intake of food ? Do they not have the same arrangement of internal organs ? Do not the two of them become the same dust after death ? Is there not one judgement for both ? Is there not a common heaven or a common hell ? You , therefore , who are equal to your slave in all respects , tell me , what have you got that makes you superior enough to think yourself master of a man when you are just a man yourself ? How can you say , ' I acquired slaves and slave girls ' , as if you were talking about a herd of goats or a herd of pigs ? (For having said , ' I acquired slaves and slave girls ' , he goes on to mention the wealth of flocks and herds he had . ' I had great possessions ' , he says , ' of flocks and herds'12, talking as if these animals and the slaves subject to his authority were in the same class . ) 13

The arguments of the passage can be summarized as follows 14: 15 1. Man belongs to God alone ; he is the property of God ." 2. The master is no different from the slave . They belong to the same species , they

were born in the same way , they feel the same emotions , are subject to the same kinds of experience , enjoy the same conditions of existence , share the same physical makeup , and await the same divine judgement , the same heaven or the same hell . Only a difference in title distinguishes them .

The master- slave relationship is a wholly

artificial one , depending for its preservation on a simple bill of sale , a paltry and fragile document ( the vast bulk of this argument occurs , of course , in the very 16 last section of the passage ) ." 17 3. Man is by nature free and independent ." 18 4 . To condemn a person to slavery is to oppose God and to overthrow his natural law. 5.

Man was created by God to rule , to be master of the earth .

The earth is his pro-

perty , and if someone is to buy him , he must pay a fair price for his property also . 19 To do that , of course , is quite impossible . 6 . But though man is lord of the earth and all that is on it , his authority does not

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extend to other members of his own species .

When a man enslaves another he treats

him as if he were among the brute beasts , whose master he rightly is , and he goes διαβαίνει την φύσιν beyond the limits of his own nature or the limits of his 20 power .

7. The human species is one , it is a unity , and cannot be properly divided into 21 rulers and ruled ." 8.

Man as possessing reason , as made in the image of God , as being of a nature 22 specially formed by God ( τhν Оeórλαστov quoLv ) , is beyond price ."

9. God has freed men from slavery ( that is , slavery to sin ) , and would hardly then enslave what he has made free . The purchaser of a slave , therefore , claims more 23 power than God claims for himself . The influence on this passage of Stoic doctrine is clear enough , but in this case pagan thought serves but to elucidate or confirm Biblical teaching .

Gregory has a

Biblical text for this part of his homily , but it is not really Eccelsiastes 2.7 . That verse merely provides him with his starting point , nothing more . The text that dominates and actually determines much of his argument is Genesis 1.26 . It is 24 quoted almost in full on two separate occasions . ' Then God said , " Let us make man in our image , after our likeness ; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea , and over the birds of the air , and over the cattle , and over the earth , and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth" ' . Other Biblical texts are referred to , but only one of them plays a determinative , albeit very minor rôle in the argument , and that comes from the other creation narrative in Genesis 2. When Gregory describes man as thν

cóяλασтov qúouv he is clearly referring to Genesis 2.7 ,

' then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground ( ἔπλασεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον) ' . But Genesis 1.26 is also the text for the first half of the De hominis opificio . Whole books have been written about the importance for Gregory of the notion of man as made in the image of God.

What is important for both the De hominis opificio and

the attack on slavery in In Ecclesiasten IV is the link which Genesis 1 establishes between that notion and the status of man as the master of the earth : man reflects in himself , in the very essence of his humanity , the sovereignty of God . Gregory goes to great lengths to demonstrate in the De hominis opificio how this ,, 25 man , ' τὸ μέγα τοῦτο καὶ τίμιον χρῆμα ' of royal nature , ' βασιλίδα τὴν φύσιν 26 has been equipped for rule by his Creator , both in the attributes of his soul and the form of his body .

' The soul ' , he begins , ' immediately shows its royal and exalt-

ed character ... in that it owns no lord , and is self-governed , έ × тоû άdéσпоTOV 27 αὐτὴν εἶναι καὶ αὐτεξούσιον . (The term aбéonотоν is worth noting , and , of course , this statement also recalls the third of the arguments against slavery , that man is by nature free and independent ἐλεύθερα ἡ φύσις καὶ αὐτεξούσιος . ) As for the body, this demonstrates the dignity of the ruler through its upright stance ; it stretches toward heaven and looks upwards , while the animals , crawling on all fours , stoop

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beneath it.28

It also encourages the exercise of rule over the animals by its

relative weakness and defencelessness , for these compel man to tame the animals and 29 put them to his service . It helps to make that rule possible by its possession of hands , which leave the mouth free for the exercise of reason and enable articulate 30 speech . Now , among the arguments used by Gregory to attack slavery in In Ecclesiasten IV those concerning man as ruler of the earth and as made in the image of God are by far the most prominent .

The early chapters of De hominis opificio readily explain

why that should be so . But others of the anti - slavery arguments also find their basis established in the De hominis. I have already quoted the statement in De hominis 2 concerning the soul's free will .

The emphasis on the value of man's

' property ' , the earth and all that is on it , again recalls De hominis 2 , in which Gregory extols the glories of the environment , his ' royal lodging ' , which God made 32 31 ready for man when he created the world . De hominis 31 makes a passing reference to Genesis 2.7 as does the homily on Ecclesiastes .

And , most important of all , the

homily's assertion of the unity of the human species , and , too , its insistence that master and slave share a single common humanity could have no firmer philosophical foundation than the celebrated exposition of the pleroma in De hominis 16 , 17 , 22 , 33 and 29 . This remains the case although Gregory clearly had other more immediate sources of inspiration in the final part of his attack when he denied there was any real difference between master and slave . It is possible to draw up an impressive list of both pagan and Christian writers from Alcidamas and Philemon , through St. Paul and Seneca , to Basil and Gregory Nazianzen , who had already directly or indirectly 34 Such attacks attacked Aristotle's assertion of the inferior nature of the slave . did not necessarily constitute a condemnation of the institution of slavery itself . 35 One only has to think , for example , of St. Paul , Seneca , or Basil to realise that . Nevertheless the form and language of the argument in Gregory's homily is far more 36 reminiscent of passages in Seneca and Cyprian , for example) " than of his own exposition of the pleroma .

That is not really surprising .

In this one case he had

well tried sentiments to hand , while the notion of the pleroma was far too complex and technical to introduce into such a context . The De hominis opificio not only helps to explain why Gregory argues as he does

In many ways it would have been easier for him to take a somewhat softer line . His Scriptures , for example , gave no direct support to the abolitionist cause . Rather the reverse . And there were several arguments available to the Christian writer who felt uneasy about slavery , which attempted to justify its existence , or to play down its significance or effects .

#

in In Ecclesiasten IV ; it also helps to explain why he does not argue as he might have done .

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He could , for example , have adopted a Pauline stance , emphasising the equality of master and slave in the sight of God , and arguing that the distinction between master and slave is transcended within the Church . The key rôle played by Genesis 1.26 in his anthropology as expressed in the De hominis makes it easier to understand why he should keep his attention fixed on that verse and should nowhere quote Paul except 37 for one verse from Romans which has nothing to do with the subject of slavery at all . He could have suggested along with Seneca and two of his own contemporaries in 38 the West , Ambrose and Ambrosiater , that only the body of a man could be enslaved , but not his mind nor his soul .

But in the De hominis he had given , or was soon to

give his most detailed exposition of the interaction of the body and soul in man , and one of his most positive assessments of the place occupied by the body in man's nature , and these represent a strain in his thinking quite sufficient to cast suspicion upon Seneca's notion . Thirdly he might have agreed with his fellow Cappadocian , Gregory Nazianzen , that slavery was not to be found amongst men as God originally created them , but arose as 39 a result of the Fall , or man's sinfulness . Gregory Nazianzen was followed by Ambrosiaster , John Chrysostom , Ambrose , and Augustine , and it is well known how the last three of those writers used the notion to present slavery as a divinely ordained 40 punishment or remedy for sin ." Gregory's arguments in In Ecclesiasten IV nowhere touch upon the question of the Fall , nor man's inherent sinfulness , but here too he is following the lead of , or anticipating , the first half of the De hominis . For , in its long celebration of the dignity and royal nature of man , it too ignores all consideration of man's fallenness . It deals neither with fallen nor with pre -fallen man , but with ' afallen ' man . We might , therefore , call the attack on slavery in the fourth homily on Ecclesiastes a kind of appendix to the De hominis opificio . But to understand its appearance in Gregory's writings we have also to think of the monasteries of those remarkable siblings of his , Macrina and Basil . 41 In his De vita Macrinae , chapters 7 and 117 , when he is beginning to describe how Macrina formed her monastery on the family estate in the Iris valley , he tells us how she persuaded her mother to adopt the much simpler way of life of her own slave girls , and to set free all those slaves , making them her sisters and equals ( ὅσας εἶχε μεθ᾿ ἑαυτῆς ἐκ δουλίδων καὶ ὑποχειρίων ἀδελφὰς καὶ ὁμοτίμους ποιησαμένη ) . All difference in rank was thus done away with , and they all shared the same food , the same bed ( as Gregory puts it ; Lowther- Clarke rather coyly translates , ' the same kind of bed ' ) , the same in all necessities of life . As for Basil's monasteries there were no slaves there either , though slaves could sometimes be admitted as members of the communities , and instead there was common dress and property , and great emphasis laid on the duty and value of manual work . Put together, then , Gregory's experience of the monasticism of his brother and

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sister , and his own carefully considered anthropology as expounded in the De hominis opificio , apply to the mixture his keen mind and sensitivity , and what do you have ? Surely a basis for an attack on slavery whose directness and comprehensiveness is without parallel in the literature , both Christian and pagan , of the patristic 42 period ."

REFERENCES 1. J. Daniélou , ' La chronologie des oeuvres de Grégoire de Nysse ' , Studia Patristica 7 , T.U. 92 , p . 163 , n . 3 . 2. Cf. G. May , Ecriture et culture philosophique dans la pensée de Grégoire de Nysse , ed . M. Harl ( Leiden , 1971 ) , pp . 56-57 . D.L. Balas agrees with such a judgement in his paper , ' Pleroma : The Meanings of a key term of Gregory of Nyssa ' , delivered to the Eighth International Conference on Patristic Studies , Oxford , 1979 . 3. i.e. Eccles . 2.4-6 . 4. Eccles . 2.7. 5. cf. Psalm 119.91 . 6. Genesis 1.26 . 7. Psalm 8.6-8 . 8. Psalm 104.14 . 9. Genesis 1.26 . 10. Romans 11.29 . 11. cf. Mark 8.36 and parallels . 12. Eccles . 2.7 . 13. Jaeger 5 , pp . 334,10-338,22 . 14. They are listed largely in the order in which they are first introduced into the passage . 15. p . 334,17-335,1 . 16. p . 335,4 ; p . 337,13-338,22 . 17. p . 335,6-7,15 . 18. p . 335,7-11 . 19. p . 335,8-9 ; p . 336,12-13,20-337,13 . 20. p . 335,3-4,11-336,5 ; p . 338,14-22 . 21. p . 336,4-5 . 22. p . 336,6-14 ; p . 337,13-15 . 23. p . 336,14-20 . 24. p . 335,13-14 ; p . 336,10-11 ( -13 ) . 25. ch.2 , P.G. 44,132D . 26. ch.4 , P.G. 136C . 27. ch.4 , P.G. 136B- C . 28. ch.8 , P.G. 144A-B . 29. ch.7 , P.G. 140D- 144A . 30. chs.8 , P.G. 144B- C , 148C - 149A ; 10 , P.G. 152B . 31. P.G. 132D- 133B . 32. P.G. 136A. 33. 16 , P.G. 185B - D ; 17 , 189C ; 22 , 204C- D ; 29 , 233D . 34. The list also includes , for example , Dio Chrysostom and Ulpian among the pagans , and the writer of the Didache , Cyprian , and Lactantius among the Christians . 35. Cf. Philemon , Col. 3.22-4.1 ; Seneca , Epistulae Morales , 47 ; Basil , De Spiritu Sancto , 20.51 . 36. Seneca , Ep . 47.10 ; Cyprian , Ad Demetrianum , 8. 37. Rom . 11.29 , quoted p . 336,15-16 . 38. Cf. Seneca , De Beneficiis , 3.20 ; Ambrosiaster , Comm . on Coloss . , 4.1 ; Ambrose , De Joseph Patriarcha , 4.

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39. Greg . Naz . , Oratio 14 ( De Pauperum Amore ) , 25 . 40. Ambrosiaster , Comm . on Col. 4.1 ; John Chrysostom , Hom. in Gen. 4.1,2 ; Hom . de Lazaro , 6.7; Hom. in epist . ad Eph . , 6.22.2 ; Hom . in epist . 1 ad Cor , 40.5 ; Ambrose , Ep. 37 ; 77.6 ; Augustin , De Civ . Dei , 19.15 . 41. P.G. 46,965D , 969C . 42. There is no other attack on slavery to be found anywhere else in Gregory's own writings either , though there is a striking similarity between the passage in In Eccles. IV and a short passage in De pauperibus amandis 2 , Jaeger 9 , p . 116,8-11 , P.G. 46,477 , where he attacks the rich for their treatment of the poor . He reminds them , when describing the terrible situation of the poor , that man was born to rule : ' Or do you not consider who it is who is in such a desperate state ? Do you not consider that he is a man , created in the image of God , appointed to rule the earth , having the brute beasts at his beck and call ? ' His language is again , of course , borrowed from Genesis 1.26 .

The Spirit , Place of the Sanctified Basil's De Spiritu Sancto and Messalianism

Mary Ann Donovan, S.C. Berkeley

N the opening chapter of the De Spiritu Sancto¹, Basil tells us that , when prayIing with the people, he used two forms of the doxology. In the one he gave glory to God the Father ' with the Son together with the Holy Spirit ' , and in the other he glorified the Father ' through the Son in the Holy Spirit ' . He was attacked for using the expression ' in the Holy Spirit ' , and the entire treatise is his defense . In chapter 26 , Basil takes his opponents ' position and turns it against them . His express aim in the chapter is to show that the word ' in ' used with reference to the Spirit does not indicate the inferiority of the Spirit with respect to Father and Son , but on the contrary , the Spirit's equality with them as one who does like work and receives like honor .2 And here lies a paradox : having substituted with the Spirit for in the Spirit , Basil develops one of the most profound uses of in the Spirit ! When presenting the Spirit as the place of the sanctified , Basil both outlines the role of the Spirit in the unfolding dynamic of the Christian life , and also identi3 fies how , during the Christian life , the sanctified is within the Spirit . Basil portrays the role of the Spirit in the unfolding of the Christian life through the use of five analogies ( 26.61 ; 180B - 181B ) . The Spirit is present in the Christian as form , in the sense of necessary cause of the spiritual life . He is present as power to act spiritually ; as habit , enabling such action , although not always in act . As thought ( logos ) , the Spirit both breathes God's word interiorly , and inspires its utterance by the inspired Christian . Finally , as bond of unity the Spirit is the principle uniting believers . Not only is the Spirit in the Christian ; the Christian is in the Spirit during the process of sanctification . It is with respect to this idea that Basil writes : ' The Spirit is frequently spoken of as the place of them that are being sanctified ' ( 26.62 ; 181C ) . The Christian finds herself in the Spirit in contemplation , in worship , and probably in the daily struggle with the Lord . She is also the home in which the Spirit dwells ( 26.62 ; 181C - 184A ) . Thus the

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insight which previous study of this chapter has confirmed is that precisely in expounding the twofold interiority of the Spirit , Basil both unfolds the dynamic of the Christian life and also the modes in which the Christian finds herself in the Spirit during that life . He thus shows himself concerned with the relationship of the presence of the Spirit to sanctification . This relationship was a central preoccupation in the second half of the fourth century , involving questions of doctrine and matters of ascetic theory and practice . It is evident that both areas of concern intersect in Basil in a striking way . His presentation of the equality of the Spirit with Son and Father finds its corollary in his presentation of the modes of relationship to the Christian in process of sanctification . Basil , the theologian who is a leader in the fight for doctrinal orthodoxy , is one with Basil , the monastic reformer who is a leader in the fight for ascetical orthopraxy . Concern for the relationship of the presence of the Spirit likewise typifies the Messalians , who came into prominence in the later fourth century . This group , also known as the Euchites , has a name probably derived from the Greek euchomenoi , or pray-ers , because of its reliance on prayer as solely efficacious to obtain the sanctifying presence of the Holy Spirit .

Basil was in close association with both sup-

porters and attackers of this movement . He was the disciple and for many years the 6 friend of Eustathius of Sebaste , whom current scholarship has identified as a 8 leader in a series of ascetic movements which may culminate in the Messalian sect . Amphilocius of Iconium , a bishop who condemned the Messalians , was further a friend of Basil's . There is also an interesting relationship between the admittedly Messal10 ian works attributed to Macarius the Egyptian and those of Basil's brother , Gregory 11 of Nyssa . Would it not be possible that a man who shares the central Messalian concern for the relationship of the presence of the Spirit to sanctification ; who numbers among his associates people closely connected with the movement ; would it not be possible for his work itself to betray signs of Messalianism ? One may validly ask whether there is any similarity of doctrine between the writing of this great teacher of the Eastern Church , and Messalian doctrine , propositions representing which were ultimately condemned by Church Councils . For all these reasons , the problem addressed by this paper is not only valid but important : is the spirituality synthesized 12 by Basil in chapter 26 of the De Spiritu Sancto in any sense Messalian? The way can be opened to the study of this problem through the examination of two prior questions : 1 ) What is the Messalianism condemned at the Council of Sidē in 390 ? 13 2 ) Are there characteristics shared with the Messalianism condemned at Side and identifiable in an earlier strain of Messalianism? Unless this is so , while one might speak of pre-messalian tendencies , it is difficult to see how one might 14 speak with confidence of early Messalianism."

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After these questions have been examined we will turn to the spirituality synthesized in chapter 26 of De Spiritu Sancto , and underlying the entire treatise , and study it in the light of Messalian positions . We will ask first whether within De Spiritu Sancto one may locate traces of Messalianism as condemned at Side ; then we will consider whether one may discern traces of early Messalianism in the treatise . THE MESSALIANISM CONDEMNED AT SIDE Hausherr's synthesis of the condemned positions , dependent on the documents as15 sembled by Kmosko , remains a superb summary . He expresses the condemned material in four propositions : 1) As a result of Adam's sin , the human soul is inhabited by the demon We are not only susceptible to evil , but have the active power of it in ourselves . For orthodox writers like Mark the Hermit , John Climacus , and John Damascene sin is not in the idea ( πроВоλń ) , nor in the harbouring of the idea ( σvvdvaσµós ) , nor in the struggle ( náλn ) , but in the assent ( ovynádeoɩs ) . But as to пádos , it is the vicious habit produced by a long series of assents , and the final term of this progress in evil is diabolic captivity ( aixuaλwoia ) . The Messalians reverse this psychology .

The aixualwoúa is not the last friut of free consent to simple suggestion ;

it is the source , from which come the idea , the harbouring , the struggle — which are sin . Against demonic possession the only remedy is spiritual possession which makes children of God of the children of Adam .

So the Messalians confound sin with

temptation , and culpable passion with the troubled sensibility or agitated thoughts 16 of concupiscence . 2) Baptism and the sacraments are inefficacious to purify the soul of the diabolic presence That , for the Messalians , Baptism does not root out sin is a fact of experience , since it changes nothing in the psychology of the baptised . Their approach here is empirical . Consistent with their concept of evil , they refuse to admit a divine action of which we are unconscious . Grace is confounded with the sentiment of grace , willed sin with felt passion , and evil with concupiscence . Thus is rendered illusory every means of justification or sanctification of which the effects escape perception . 17 So Baptism and the sacraments are inefficacious . 3) Only prayer is efficacious If sacraments are inefficacious because they do not modify the instinctive dispositions of the soul , so also is everything which does not act on these sentiments . Prayer for the Messalians is above all a process intended to produce a determined 18 psychological state , apt to ' force ' the coming of the Spirit . With or without asceticism it must drive out the demon to give place to the Spirit . Grace comes after 19 the expulsion of sin , infallibly , as a recompense . 4) The effect of prayer is twofold : άnávɛia and then the coming of the Spirit 20 ' Аráɛɩα in itself refers to the exclusion of the passions ." For the Messalians sin

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is disturbance , commotion , or delectation and so identical with passion and concupiscence . ' Аrá cua for them is a state of soul consistent with the absence of disturbances , sensible sollicitations , or delectations . The coming of the Spirit which follows on this is identified with the Great Charism , or with ' true ' Baptism ( as opposed to sacramental Baptism ) .21 Such positions have obvious and serious implications for ascetic theory and practice . This synthesis makes readily apparent the important role given to prayer which the name Messalian reflects . This is the Messalianism condemned at Side . It locates the presence of the Spirit as dependent on άráɛɩα , which follows on prayer . For the contemporary scholar , Hausherr's synthesis identifies the central difficulty as a confusion of psychological experience with the whole of reality . What was condemned in 390 , persisted for some years . Amphilocius of Iconium , presiding at Sidē , had depended not on written records of the teaching summarized here , but on oral depositions , according to Theodoret , writing in the next generation .22 But the Messalian Asketikon , which contains the same teaching , appeared by 23 431 , when Ephesus explicitly condemned it . Later writers draw on the Asketikon ;

24 John Damascene says he read the headings of the Messalian doctrine ἐν βιβλίοις αὐτῶν . What was condemned by Amphilocius and again at Ephesus is the developed Messalian position which had persisted through the intervening years . EARLY MESSALIANISM The earliest witness to the Messalians is Ephraem , writing between 363 and 373 , 25 who remarks on none of the above , but calls attention to the group's idleness . Daniélou also finds this trait in what probably should be considered the next witness from among the extant texts taken in chronological order ( barring , of course , 26 a final dating of the Macarius corpus ) . This is Gregory of Nyssa's De Virginitate , 27 dated by Jaeger before 371. Daniélou identifies two outstanding characteristics in the monks attacked by Gregory : their refusal to work for a living with consequent dependence on others , and the fact that they consider themselves inspired , considering their dreams more worthy of belief than the gospels and calling their phantasies 28 revelations . Gregory's observations agree with the notice of Ephraem referred to above . Epiphanius ' only allusion to the revelation matter is in the enigmatic passage wherein he mentions that if you say ' prophet ' to them , they say ' I am a prophet ' ; if 29 you name Christ , it is revealed ' I am Christ ' or the patriarch or an angel . However , Theodoret's later notice agrees with Gregory's reference to the importance given to 30 revelations , especially those made in a dream." Sexual looseness is also remarked 31 Early in earlier descriptions , although this is not prominent in the later notices . Messalianism thus shares one characteristic with the form condemned at Side : a stress on revelation received by the individual , consequent on the experienced presence of 32 the Spirit .

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THE TEXT OF BASIL We have seen a synthesis of the Messalianism condemned at Side in 390 and again at Ephesus in 431 ; we have also noted a characteristic this form shares with the early Messalianism which was known before 380 , and so belonged to the world in which 33 Basil wrote De Spiritu Sancto . We now turn to the problem of this paper : is the spirituality synthesized by Basil in chapter 26 in any sense Messalian? This study will not establish Basil's knowledge of any specific Messalian documents ; rather , it seeks to determine whether the spirituality underlying the entire treatise and developed in chapter 26 is in any way compatible with Messalianism , and so whether any aspect of Messalianism has entered Christian tradition through this writing of Basil's . Part I of this study follows the order of the text of chapter 26 of the treatise , using the rest of the document as necessary to give a faithful picture of Basil's thought . It will be more useful here as a first step to take the order of Hausherr's systematic analysis of developed Messalianism . As a second step we will consider the characteristic of early Messalianism found also in the later form . DE SPIRITU SANCTO AND DEVELOPED MESSALIANISM Inhabitation of the Demon In the first section of chapter 26 , Basil discusses the presence of the Spirit in the sanctified . He holds that the Spirit is present as necessary cause of the spiritual life ; as power to act spiritually ; as habit enabling such action ; as breathing God's word interiorly , and inspiring its utterance ; and as both gifting individuals and bonding them into the one body of Christ ( 26.61 ; 180B- 181B ) . In and after sanctification there is presence of the Spirit . What then is the state of the soul before sanctification ? Basil does not directly address the question in this treatise . However , in several places he mentions the departure of the tyranny of the devil . How does he understand this ' tyranny ' ? In a discussion of Baptism , Basil writes : Who has the wisdom to understand this? how the sea is a type of baptism , making separation from Pharaoh , as this bath separates from the tyranny of the devil ? That destroyed in itself the enemy ; this kills our enmity toward God . 14.31 ; 124B If the analogy is to be taken literally , the tyrant devil ruled from afar , as did the Pharaoh , rather than from within . The army slain by the sea is identified with our own hostility toward God . Chapter 15 lends support to this reading . Continuing the discussion of baptism , the author states : The economy of our God and Savior for humankind is a restoration from the fall , and a return into fellowship with God from being alien because of disobedience . 15.35 ; 128034

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The construction parallels ' return from the fall ' with ' return from alienation ' , and the alienation is one effected by humankind's act of disobedience . The remainder of this section develops the burial analogy , with the water seen as death , receiving the body like a tomb . Immersion in water is to death as entering into fellowship with God is to life . The analogical opposite of life is death and not the devil . ( See 15.35 ; 129C . ) Alienation seems to put the effect of the fall in a change in human relations with God , making it a relationship of enmity and death . In an unspecified way this relation of enmity is joined to the ' tyranny ' of the devil . Basil remarks elsewhere that the devil is renounced at Baptism . ( See 11.27 ; 113D and 27.66 ; 188C . ) What can be renounced would seem to be more an external relationship than inhabitation . All of this taken with the absence of any affirmation of an inhabitation of the demon indicates at least that Basil is not concerned with such a question , if not also that he accepts a quite other interpretation of the effects of the fall . Inefficacy of Baptism and Sole Efficacy of Prayer If there is no inhabitation of the demon in the soul as a result of the fall , then the question of the inefficacy of baptism and the sole efficacy of prayer for the purification of the soul from the diabolic presence does not arise . Since to some degree the absence of the inhabitation of the demon has been argued from silence , it will be valuable to consider what Basil tells us about the efficacy of Baptism . Already we have seen that Baptism is efficacious for the destruction of the devil's rule ( 14.31 ; 124B ) and for cleansing from the effect of disobedience ( 15.35 ; 129C and 29.73 ; 204B ) . Not only does Baptism remove a present evil , but Basil makes it clear that it also effects positive good . In chapters 10.26 through 15.36 Basil develops his understanding of the role of the Spirit in Baptism . There he affirms that Baptism regenerates those who are saved , and is the beginning of life . ( See 10.26 ; 113A and B. ) In a discussion of why water is associated with the Spirit in Baptism , he develops this concept : Because in Baptism two ends are set forth , to render impotent the body of sin so that it no longer bears fruit for death , and to live from the Spirit having fruit in holiness . The water furnishes an image of death , receiving the body as in a tomb . The Spirit infuses the life - bearing power , renewing our souls from death in sin into life from the source . This then is the begetting from above from water and the Spirit ; as dying is completed in the water , we are energized into life through the Spirit . 15.35 , ; 129C- D Through Baptism the one who was dead is now alive . Of the three characteristics of the developed Messalianism condemned in 390 thus far examined , none appear in the De Spiritu Sancto of 374 : neither inhabitation of the soul by the demon after the fall ; nor the inefficacy of baptism to expel the

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demon ; nor the sole efficacy of prayer for this purpose . To this extent the treatise is not Messalian . The Twofold Effect of Prayer: ' Anávɛia and the Coming of the Spirit If Basil does not affirm the inhabitation of the demon in the soul of the fallen person ; if he does not affirm the inefficacy of Baptism and the sole efficacy of prayer to expel the demon ; then it is unlikely that the Bishop of Caesarea will affirm that the effects of prayer are άnácɩa followed by the coming of the Spirit . Yet within chapter 9 , a pivotal chapter for his spirituality , we find : The indwellingness ( oixɛúwous ) of the Spirit with the soul is not through the drawing near of place ( for how can one corporeally draw near to the Incorporeal ? ) . No , it is by getting rid of those passions which befall the soul because of its love of the flesh , keeping it from friendship ( oineɩóτntos ) with God . It is precisely by being cleansed from the shame contracted from evil , being restored to its natural beauty , and by being renewed through this purification to its pristine form , just like a regal image , that alone one may draw near to the Paraclete . Just as the sun , seizing the purified eye , will show you in itself the image of the invisible , in the blessed contemplation ( cάpatɩ) of the image you will see the ineffable beauty of the Archetype . Through him hearts ascend , the weak are led , those progressing are perfected . This is he who illuminating those purified from all stain , constitutes them spiritual by fellowship ( nou vwvía ) with him.9.23 ; 109A- B Taken in itself this passage certainly makes the coming of the Spirit consequent on a form of άnácia . The attainment of åлáɛɩа here described , with the consequent indwellingness of the Spirit , is not presented as the final term of sanctification . Rather it is part of a process in which hearts are elevated , the weak are supported , and ' they who are advancing are brought to perfection ' . The becoming spiritual here mentioned is evidently a gradual thing . The conclusion of the process is also presented in degrees , culminating in ' being made God ' . ( See 9.23 ; 109C . ) This reading of the text is confirmed by comparison with the rest of the treatise. There we have seen that Basil holds that the death resulting from the fall is overcome in Baptism where we are brought forth to new life through the Spirit . Elsewhere he notes that the Spirit present in the sanctified as habit is always present but not always operative . On the other hand , the Spirit departs when grace is rejected . (See 26.61 ; 180D- 181A . ) He also mentions the possibility of subsequent beginning again : Now although he [the Spirit ] does not mix with the unworthy , still more then it seems he is present in a certain way to the once sealed , waiting for their salvation from their conversion . 16.40 ; 141C- D It seems apparent that one who has once received the Spirit can fall and yet be restored . Life in the Spirit admits of growth .

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While Basil presents control of the passions as positively correlated with the presence of the Spirit , the significance of this differs from that in the developed Messalian texts . ' Anáɛua is not a precondition for the completed presence of the Spirit in Basil's thought . On the contrary , growth in άrádɛɩа follows on the presence of the Spirit . Growth in άnáveɩa and growth in the Spirit move forward together as one progresses toward godlikeness , and ultimately being made God . DE SPIRITU SANCTO AND EARLY MESSALIANISM The charactersitic of early Messalianism continuing in the developed form is stress on revelation received by the individual consequent on the experienced presence of the Spirit . Basil strongly affirms that the Spirit works in the sanctified , and the sanctified find themselves in the Spirit . Two of the ways mentioned above in which Basil understands the Spirit to be in the Christian indicate a kind of revelatory activity . In the first Basil describes the Spirit as present in the soul the way power to see is in a healthy eye . In itself , this simply means power to be what a Christian is . But there is more . Through an allusion to Ephesians 1.17-18 , Basil calls attention to the illuminating role of the Spirit by which the spiritual are themselves enabled to act as enlightened . Those who can see , do see , and so act as see-ers . This will ultimately lead to their divinization . ( See 26.61 ; 180C and 9.23 ; 109C . ) In another metaphor for the manner of the Spirit's presence in the sanctified , Basil describes the Spirit as thought or lóyos . Here he uses thought as a metaphor for the Spirit and not as an identification . He points to the fact that the Spirit , moving like thought , articulates faith within the believer , or impels her to announce that faith externally . In this sense the Spirit is seen as breathing God's word in the sanctified . ( See 26.61 ; 181A . ) Under the metaphors of power to see and of thought the Spirit may be said to exercise quasi - revelatory activities in Basil's presentation . However these metaphors for the Spirit's presence in the sanctified do not stand alone . Another in this series describes the Spirit as the principle of unity of the sanctified in the Body of Christ . Believers form one body because they share the one Spirit received in Baptism . ( See 62.61 ; 181B . ) If what marks the individual as believer is that which unites her to other believers , namely the Spirit , then membership in the body is important . This may be construed to put certain limits on what will be accepted from individuals as genuine revelation . Basil then moves to the discussion of ways in which the Spirit may be said to be the place of the sanctified , that is , ways in which the sanctified may find herself in the Spirit . He mentions four of these which may occur in the process of sanctification . The sanctified may find herself in the Spirit in contemplation , in the offering of praise and probably in the daily struggle with the Lord . Finally the

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Spirit is the place where the holy person is found to such an extent that one expects the saint to be the Spirit's home . ( See 26.62 ; 181C- 184A . ) Stress here is not so much on revelatory activity as on the experience of the Spirit . These are the examples supported by Scripture which Basil uses to illustrate the meaning of the expression : ' the Spirit is the place of the sanctified ' . There is a sympathy of climate between this approach and that in early Messalianism . Both are concerned with the relationship of the presence of the Spirit to sanctification . Both associate this with anάeɩa . Both find revelatory- type roles for the Spirit . Both are concerned with the experience of the Spirit . But there are also deep differences . The early Messalian associates presence of the Spirit with revelatory experiences . Whatever form of prayer their name denotes may be a pre-condition of this revelatory experience , but there is as yet no textual evidence of this . With early Messalianism one also associates repugnance for work and looseness in sexual matters . In contrast , Basil insists that the Spirit is in the Christian from Baptism as form in the sense of necessary cause of the spiritual life ; as power to live spiritually ; as habit enabling spiritual action ; as thought breathing God's word and inspiring its utterance ; and as bond of unity . The Christian is in the Spirit ( and may expect to experience the Spirit's presence ) during the process of sanctification to the extent that the Spirit is the place of the sanctified in contemplation and worship , and in the daily struggle . On balance we may conclude that the spirituality of chapter 26 of De Spiritu Sancto , while it shares sympathy of climate with early Messalianism , is not Messalian in this sense . With late or developed Messalianism Basil shares only a positive correlation of άnáɛɩα with the presence of the Spirit . However , unlike the late Messalians , he does not present árá cua as a consequence of prayer preceding the Great Charism of the Spirit . Rather for him the Spirit initiates Christian life at Baptism ; that life grows . The Christian progresses both in άrácɩa and the presence of the Spirit . On this reading of the texts it does not appear that the spirituality synthesized in Basil's De Spiritu Sancto , 26 , is Messalian , whether of the developed or the early form .

REFERENCES 1. Basil of Caesarea , De Spiritu Sancto . In B. Pruche ( ed . ) , Basile de Césarée : Traité du Saint -Esprit : Texte grec , introduction et traduction ( Sources chrétiennes 17 : Paris , 1947 ) . Since the Sources chrétiennes edition includes Migne references , direct quotations will be by chapter , section , and Migne reference from P.G. 32 enclosed in parentheses in the body of the text . References which are not direct quotations will be indicated by chapter and section in parentheses in the body of the text . References to Pruche's editorial material will be indicated by S.C. 17 , with page number . 2. The equality in question is specifically an identity of honor ( oμóτuμos ) with Father and Son , established principally through consideration of the baptismal

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formula together with the confession of faith dependent on this formula ( cc . 10-15 ) , and the doxologies in which that faith has been traditionally expressed in the church ( cc . 25-28 ) . ' Oμótuμos is shown to mean ' of the same nature ' without use of the term opooúolov ( cc . 16-24 ) . Basil does not seek explicitly to declare the divinity of the Spirit . Athanasius (Ep . 62 and 63 ) and Gregory of Nazianzus ( Oration 43.68-69 ) explain that Basil's ' economy of silence ' is due to a combination of pastoral and tactical reasons , rising on the one hand from a protective care for the timid among the faithful , and on the other from a vigilant prudence before the politically powerful Arians . 3. The Spirit, Place of the Sanctified: The Spirituality of De Spiritu Sancto 26 was presented to the St. Basil Symposium in Toronto in June , 1979 : publication pending. 4. Michael Kmosko has collected the basic documents through which Messalianism is known in an appendix to the preface to his edition of the Liber Graduum ; see R. Graffin ( ed . ) , Patrologia Syriaca 1.3 ( Paris , 1926 ) , pp . clxx- cexcii . A discussion of the documents is found in the preface , chapter 4 , pp . cxv- clxix . Kmosko omits two passages from Gregory of Nyssa's De Virginitate , which since have been identified as referring to the Messalians : De Virginitate 23.3.14-28 ( identified by J. Danielou , ' Grégoire de Nysse et le Messalianisme ' , R.S.R. 48 ( 1960 ) , 119-134 ) ; and De Virginitate 23.4.5-13 ( identified by Michel Aubineau , Grégoire de Nysse: Traité de la Virginité , Sources chrétiennes 119 ( Paris , 1966 ) , p . 540 , nn . 2 and 3 ) . 5. See Basil , Epistles 223 , 89 , 262 in Roy J. De ferrari , Saint Basil : The Letters ( Cambridge , Mass . , 1950-1961 ) , I - IV : and David Amand , L'Ascèse monastique de saint Basile (Bruges , 1948 ) , pp . 55-58 . Gribomont suggests that the philosopher of Basil's Epistle 1 is Eustathius . See J. Gribomont , ' Eustathe le Philosophe et les voyages de jeune Basile de Césarée ' , Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 54 ( 1959 ) , pp . 115-124 . 6. For Basil's view of the rupture between the two men , see Epistles 119 , 223 , 226 , 244 , 250 , and 263 . 7. A discussion of the life and work of Eustathius that leans towards Basil's viewpoint is that of S. Salaville , ' Eustathe de Sébaste ' , in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 5 ( 1913 ) , 1565-1571 . A discussion more favorable to Eustathius is that of J. Gribomont , ' Eustathe de Sébaste ' , in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité ↳ ( 1961 ) , 1708-1712 . 8. See J. Gribomont , ' Le monachisme au Ives . en Asie Mineure : de Gangres au Messalianisme ' , in Studia Patristica 2 ( T.U. 64 : Berlin , 1957 ) , pp . 400-415 ; J. Gribomont , ' Le " De Instituto Christiano " et le Messalianisme de Grégoire de Nysse ' , in Studia Patristica 5 ( T.U. 80 : Berlin , 1962 ) , pp . 312-322 ; J. Daniélou has cautioned against over- extension of the term. See J. Daniélou , ' Grégoire et le Messalianisme ' . 9. See Basil , Epistles 161 , 176 , 190 , 200 , 201 , 202 , 218 , 231-236 , 238 . 10. Two influential works attributed to Macarius the Egyptian and central to the discussion of Messalianism are The Spiritual Homilies ( P.G. 34 , cc . 449-822 ) and The Great Letter in W. Jaeger ( ed . ) , Two Rediscovered Works of Ancient Christian Literature : Gregory of Nyssa and Macarius ( Leiden , 1954 ) , pp . 233-301 . 11. Gregory of Nyssa's De Instituto Christiano and The Great Letter attributed to Macarius (which is Messalian in content ) stand in such a relationship to each other that one is dependent on the other ; the direction of the dependency has been a lively subject of scholarly discussion for the past 40 years . W. Jaeger , Two Rediscovered Works , holds that The Great Letter depends on the De Instituto . J. Danielou , who admits a certain Messalianism in Gregory, accepts Jaeger's thesis . See Danielou , ' Grégoire et le Messalianisme ' . H. Dörries , Symeon von Mesopotamien, Die Uberleiferung der messalianischen ' Makarios ' -Schriften ( T.U. 55 : Leipzig , 1941 ) , supported in 1941 the position that the De Instituto depends on The Great Letter . Gribomont , ' Le " De Instituto Christiano " , holds this position , as does R. Staats , Gregor von Nyssa und die Messalianer ( Berlin , 1968 ) . 12. I would like to express my appreciation to the Rev. Dr. Thomas Špidlik , Dean , Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies at Rome , who drew this problem to my

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attention when I presented the first paper on De Spiritu Sancto 26 at the Toronto St. Basil Symposium . 13. A Council of 25 bishops held at Side in Pamphylia , under the presidency of Amphilocius of Iconium ; see Mansi III , c . 6511 and Kmosko , cclii - cclxi . 14. Since the earliest documents which share common traits precede 380 ( Ephraem , from Sermon 22 in Kmosko , clxxi - clxxii ; Epiphanius , from Panarion : Haeresis LXXX , in Kmosko , clxxi -clxxx ; Gregory of Nyssa , De Virginitate in M. Aubineau , Grégoire de Nysse: Traité de le Virginité ; Sources chrétiennes 119 ( Paris , 1966 ) , pp . 246561 ) , while the others are later , I have selected 380 as the cutoff between ' early' ard ' developed ' Messalianism . 15. I. Hausherr , ' L'erreur fondamentale et la logique du Messalianisme ' , Orientalia Christiana Periodica 1 ( 1935 ) , pp . 328-368 , reprinted in I. Hausherr , Etudes de spiritualité orientale ( Rome , 1969 ) , pp . 64-103 . 16. See Hausherr , op. cit . , pp . 68-72 . 17. See Hausherr , op. cit . , pp . 72-74 . 18. Hausherr , following analysis of Messalian documents , writes : ' Ces réflexions confirment nos conjectures sur la prière en usage chez les Euchites ; elle était avant tout un procédé en vue de produire un état psychologique déterminé , apte à forcer la venue de l'Esprit ' . p . 80 . 19. See Hausherr , op . cit . , pp . 74-84 . 20. See G. Bardy , ' Apatheia ' in Dictionnaire de spiritualité 1 ( 1937 ) , 727-746 for a survey of the various meanings of this term in patristic writings . 21. See Hausherr , op . cit. , pp . 84-96 . 22. See Theodoret , Historia Ecclesiastica IV , 11 , 1 in Kmosko , cc : autuv Tàs qwvás . 23. See Definitio ... synodi Ephesinae contra impios Messalianos in Mansi IV , c . 1477 ; extract in Kmosko , clxxxv . 24. See Damascene , De Haeresibus 80 , in Kmosko , ccxxx . 25. See Ephraem , from Sermon 22 , in Kmosko , clxxii . 26. See J. Daniélou , ' Grégoire et le Messalianisme ' , p . 119 . 27. See Jaeger , Two Rediscovered Works , p . 24 . 28. See Daniélou , ' Grégoire et le Messalianisme ' , p . 121. For the text of Gregory , see De Virginitate 23.3.4-23.4.1 ; Sources chrétiennes 119 , pp . 532-536 . 29. See Epiphanius , Haeresis LXXX.3 , in Kmosko , clxxviii , lines 12-14 . 30. See Theodoret , Historia Ecclesiastica IV , 10 , in Kmosko , cxciii . 31. Ephraem writes ' Messalianos lascivos factos ' ; in Kmosko , clxxii . Epiphanius is more detailed ; see Haeresis LXX , 4 in Kmosko , clxxvii . Gregory refers to those who profess celibacy but openly cohabit with women ; De Virginitate 23.4.5-13 ; Sources chrétiennes 119 , p . 538. In this respect there is closer similarity between early Messalianism and the Eustathianism condemned at Gangres ( 340 ? ) than between early and later Messalianism . For the documents of Gangres , see Mansi II , 1095-1122 . 32. See Theodoret , Haereticarum fabularum compendium IV , 11 , in Kmosko , cxcviii ; Timothy the Presbyter , De iis ... , 14 in Kmosko , ccxxvii ; Damascene , De Haeresibus , 80 , in Kmosko , ccxxxii . 33. Daniélou suggests that Basil's work with the monks , continued by Gregory of Nyssa , had as an essential aspect the purging of more extreme Messalian elements from Cappadocian monasticism . See ' Grégoire et Messalianisme ' , pp . 127 and 134 . 34. See also chapter 29 , where Basil quotes with approval Origen's mention of the washing with water that ' is a symbol of the cleaning of the soul which is washed clean of all filth that comes of wickedness ' , ( 29.73 ; 204B . ) Here it is unspecified иanías which must be removed .

Die Beredsamkeit Gregors von Nyssa im Urteil der Neuzeit H. Drobner

Mainz

IE Reden und Predigten Gregors von Nyssa sind bislang wenig bearbeitet worden.¹ Den Grund daffre mag darin zu suchensein, und sie nie wenig for stehozt wurden und werden .

Schlägt man in der Patrologie von Altaner /Stuiber nach , findet

man dort zu Gregors Reden lediglich : ' Die Reden sind voll Schwulst und dem Pathos der Zeit ' ? Dieses Urteil erstaunt vor allem deswegen , weil Gregor in der Antike als Redner 3 durchaus geschätzt wurde . Es schien daher lohnend , die Wertungen der Beredsamkeit Gregors durch die Jahrhunderte zu sammeln , um festzustellen , wie sie beurteilt wird . Das Ergebnis darf hier vorausgenommen werden : es zeigte sich eine krasse Diskrepanz zwischen Lob in der Antike und Tadel in der Neuzeit , durchgehend vom 17. bis 20 . 4 Jahrhundert ." Im Folgenden soll nun diese erstaunliche Diskrepanz detailliert dargestellt und nach ihren Ursachen gefragt werden , besonders deswegen , da sich das Verdikt der Neuzeit nicht auch auf Basilius , Gregor von Nazianz und Johannes Chrysostomus erstreckt . Daß Gregor von Nyssa zu seinen Lebzeiten als Redner in hohem Ansehen stand , ist daraus zu schließen , daß , als während des Konzils von Konstantinopel 381 der vorsitzende Bischof Meletius starb , ihm die Aufgabe zufiel , die Grabrede zu halten .

Auch

als im Jahre 386 die Kaiserin Flacilla und ihre Tochter Pulcheria starben , wurde er 6 Auch die Nachwelt spendete in die Hauptstadt gerufen , die Trauerreden zu halten . 7 seiner Beredsamkeit großes Lob . Noch Photius ( 820-891 ) und die Suda ( um 1000 ) 8 schreiben , daß , wenn überhaupt einer der Väter ein glänzender und berühmter Redner gewesen sei , dies für Gregor zutreffe . 9 Diese Wertschätzung der Beredsamkeit Gregors teilt jedoch die Neuzeit nicht . Falls seine Reden neben seinen dogmatischen , exegetischen und asketischen Werken 10 überhaupt der Erwähnung für wert befunden werden , ist kaum eine positive Wertung zu finden .

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Man ist sich einig , daß Gregor die Höhe der Beredsamkeit seines Bruders Basilius 11 sowie seines Freundes Gregor von Nazianz nicht erreicht ." Verglichen mit Basilius 12 sei sein Stil nicht so geschmeidig und fließend , es mangle ihm am Reichtum der 14 13 Phantasie seines Bruders es fehle ihm die ' Kunst der Sittenschilderung ' und die ' Kraft der Zusprache ,' 15 von jenem sowie dessen Gewichtigkeit und Prägnanz des 16 Ausdrucks . Überdies versuche er zu stark , Basilius fortzuführen und erscheine 17 deshalb oft nur als dessen Nachahmer . 18 der Von Gregor von Nazianz unterscheide ihn der Mangel an ' glänzender Fülle ' ' Stärke der Affektes und der Phantasie 19, der Lebendigkeit und dem ' Reichtum der 20 Farben' . An ' Schönheit und Form ' stehe Gregor unter beiden'21" obwohl er ihnen in vielem 22 gleiche . Gregor habe eben sein eigentliches Gebiet , die philosophische Spekula24 23 tion , auf dem er sowohl seinen Bruder wie seinen Freund überragte ", ja mit Plato 25 und Aristoteles gleichgesetzt wird² verlassen und sich einer Kunst zugewandt , deren 26 Regeln er sich nur mühsam angelernt habe . Er sei eben ' kein geborener , sondern ein 27 künstlich gebildeter Redner ' . Die Beurteilung des Stils im einzelnen ist jedoch weniger einheitlich . Er wird 28 29 30 für trocken' " ziemlich flach und weitschweifig gehalten , gleichzeitig aber auch 31 32 für affektiert und geschmacklos` , überladen mit rhetorischen Figuren` und dem schwül34 33 stigen Pathos der Zeit . Vor allem aber werden Gregors Allegorien getadelt . Inhaltlich wird beanstandet , daß Gregors Spekulationen das Verständnis der Pre36 35 digten beeinträchtigten` , seine Beispiele oft gesucht und geschmacklos seien` 37 Nebensächlichkeiten breit ausgeführt würden' und sich überall überflüssige dog38 matische Polemik vordränge . Am besten werden noch Gregors ' Moralische Predigten ' beurteilt ( z.B. De poenitentia 399 De pauperibus amandis 40 und Contra usuarios41 ) . Sie werden für vorzüglich 44 42 43 gehalten " die Moral in ihnen sei rein und natürlich " es herrsche klare Ordnung 45 und sie enthielten manche ' das Herz erfassende Stelle ' . Gerade sie sicherten 46 Gregor seinen Ruf als Redner ." 47 Weniger positiv werden Gregors dogmatische Predigten beurteilt ." Sie seien zu 48 gelehrt und spekulativ , die Beweise meist schlecht gewählt , viele unnütze Kleinig49 50 keiten weitläufig ausgeführt ." Auch enthielten sie zu viele polemische Ausfälle 51 und überhaupt seien sie voll Schwulst und Dunkelheit . Die Meinungen über Gregors exegetische Homilien sind geteilt . Lentz sieht ge52 rade in ihnen Gregors Ruf als Redner begründet die anderen aber entdecken in 53 ihnen einen sehr verdorbenen Geschmack , weil maßlos und lächerlich allegorisiert 54 55 werde der Text werde in Aphorismen zerrupft die Erklärungen seien völlig 57 56 und zusammenhanglos ." Eine Ausnahme bilden nur die Homilien über das Vater Unser 59 58 die Makarismen " die von einigen als sehr gut bewertet werden . Ebenso geteilt sind die Auffassungen über Gregors Lob- und Grabreden . Für die

1086 H. Drobner 60 einen zeigt er sich in ihnen besonders als Redner stehe er auf der Höhe der 61 62 Beredsamkeit " wenn er auch an Basilius nicht heranreiche . Für die anderen wirkt 64 63 die Rhetorik abstoßend° " das Pathos dick aufgetragen , die Reden mit Tropen über66 65 laden , das Lob der Verstorbenen und Martyrer maßlos übertrieben . Gegenüber dieser massiven Kritik der Reden und Predigten Gregors fällt das Lob sehr spärlich aus .

Nur einer überhaupt lobt ihn uneingeschränkt , der Franzose Remy

Ceillier in seiner Literaturgeschichte ( Paris , 1740 ) : ' Der heilige Gregor von Nyssa , dem hl . Basilius , seinem Bruder , gleich an Schrift und Lehre , aber mehr als er sich um die Übung der Beredsamkeit bemühend , zeigt sich darin so fähig , daß man ihn ohne Scheu mit den berühmtesten Rednern des Altertums vergleichen kann .

Sein Stil ist

makellos und fließend , anmutig , angenehm und großartig , voll überzeugender Schlüsse und schönen Vergleichen , reich und überströmend ; man hat ihn einen Fluß der Worte genannt . Man wird mit Genuß die Grabreden auf Pulcheria und Placilla lesen , die erste Lobrede auf den hl . Stephanus , die Lobrede auf den hl . Meletius und den hl . Basilius ; er ist so auserlesen , daß man ihn für einen Redner ersten Ranges halten 67 möchte ' . Andere von den bereits genannten Autoren erkennen immerhin an , daß Gregor zu 68 69 70 seiner Zeit ein berühmter Redner war und Photius ihm großes Lob spendete ." Lentz nennt ihn einen berühmten Homileten¹, Paniel und Charpentier einen der glänzendsten und ausgezeichnetsten Redner der alten Kirche72, bei allen aber überwiegt die Kritik . Ausgewogene Beurteilungen der Beredsamkeit Gregors sind nur drei im 20. Jahr73 hundert zu finden . Hermann Jordan stellt ihn in eine Reihe mit Basilius , Gregor von Nazianz und Johannes Chrysostomus als ' das große , vielbewunderte und viel nachgeahmte Viergestirn der griechisch-rhetorischen Predigt ' , wenn er auch Gregor als 74 den schwächsten Redner der vier einstuft . Edwin Charles Dargan sieht alle drei Kappadokier als große Prediger , jeden nach seiner Eigenart ; Basilius als Führungspersönlichkeit , Gregor von Nazianz als Poeten , Gregor von Nyssa als Philosophen . 75 Johannes Quasten erkennt Gregor als den rhetorischten der drei Kappadokier an , in seinen Lob- und Grabreden und speziell in den polemischen Traktaten sei seine Diktion voll Feuer und Energie . Er sei jedoch kein Meister seiner Kunst geworden , sein Stil bleibe oft ohne Anmut , die Sätze würden überladen und er falle oft in übertriebenes Pathos , was es dem modernen Leser schwer mache , die Tiefe seines Denkens und seiner religiösen Überzeugung recht zu würdigen . Insgesamt ist also die Beurteilung der Beredsamkeit Gregors in der Neuzeit , ganz im Gegensatz zu dem uneingeschränkten Lob der Antike , fast ausnahmslos negativ . Selbst die , die ihn im einzelnen loben , erhalten dies in der Gesamtbeurteilung nicht aufrecht .

Zu fragen ist nun zweierlei :

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1. Wie ist diese Diskrepanz zwischen Antike und Neuzeit zu erklären ? 2. Wie ist die Kontinuität dieser negativen Beurteilung über drei Jahrhunderte hin trotz der tiefgreifenden Geschmackswandlung ( Barock , Pietismus , Historismus , 20. Jahrhundert ) zu erklären ? Werden die Urteile nach jeweils erneuter Prüfung gefällt , so daß die Kontinuität einen deutlichen Beweis für die Richtigkeit der Wertung darstellt , oder werden sie wie eine ungeprüfte Tradition nur jeweils übernommen und wiederholt ? Eine Antwort auf diese Fragen wird nur im größeren Zusammenhang der Predigtauffassung der letzten Jahrhunderte möglich sein , denn das Verhältnis einer Zeit zur Predigt prägt auch ihr Verhältnis zur Predigtgeschichte . In den besprochenen Werken der Predigtgeschichtsschreibung wird die Konzeption , an deren Maßstäben Gregors Reden gemessen werden , durchaus deutlich . Eine Predigt 76 7 muß zur Erweckung der Gottseligkeit ' dienen , muß ' populär und praktisch ,' 7 sein . 78 Es darf nicht an ' tieferer christlicher Erkenntnis und vor allem Selbsterkenntnis ' 79 80 fehlen . Gregor müßte ebenso nicht an ' Begeisterung' und ' christlicher Salbung ' , 81 Wärme Rührung' mit ' und sprechen , er habe das ' fließende und gefällige nicht , das 82 Basilius soviel Anmut und Eingang in das Herz verschafft ' . ' Er ist mystisch , ohne enthusiastisch zu sein . Seine Seele ist überhaupt nicht bewegt von dem großen Schauspiel des werdenden Christentums'.83 84 Sprache des Herzens ' .

Es fehle ihm eben die ' ergreifende

Mit einem Wort gesagt : Gregors Predigten sind nicht erbaulich . ' Erbaulichkeit ' aber war das Schlagwort des Predigtideals des Pietismus , der sich in Deutschland Ende des 17./Anfang des 18. Jh . gegen die protestantische 85 Orthodoxie durchsetzte . Die ersten homiletischen Grundsätze des deutschen Pietismus formulierte sein theologischer Führer , Philipp Jacob Spener ( 1636-1705 ) , im sechsten Kapitel seines Werkes Pia desideria ( 1675 ) .86 Er nimmt den aufklärerischen Gedanken des religiösen Individualismus auf und sieht als den Hauptzweck der Predigt nicht die Verkündigung einer Lehre , sondern die ' Erbauung ' der Gläubigen , die Erweckung des ' inneren oder neuen Menschen , dessen Seele der Glaube und seine Würckungen die 87 Früchten des Lebens sind ' . Die Predigt solle sich an den Bibeltext halten , 88 scholastische Gelehrsamkeit und bloße Rhetorik meiden . Die Anfänge der Erforschung der Väterpredigt in Deutschland liegen aber gerade 89 und bei zwei Vertretern des radikalen Pietismus , Gottfried Arnold ( 1666-1714 ) 90 Johann Lorenz von Mosheim ( 1694-1755 ) 2 so daß schon von daher die Ablehnung der rhetorischen Predigten Gregors verständlich wird .

Bei ihnen macht sich allerdings

neben dem pietistischen Predigtideal noch ein weiterer Einfluß bemerkbar , die protestantische Geschichtsauffassung . Schon Luther teilte die Kirchengeschichte in drei Perioden einº¹;: die Periode des Ursprungs ( Urkirche , Alte Kirche ) , die Periode des Verfalls ( etwa ab 4. Jh . ) und die Periode der Reformation , der Rückkehr zu den Ursprüngen .

Diese Periodisierung war zur Rechtfertigung der Reformation nötig um

zu zeigen , daß sie keineswegs eine neue , sondern vielmehr die ursprüngliche , wahre

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Lehre verkündete .

noch .

Diese Auffassung führte der Pietismus fort , verschärfte sie aber Die vollkommene Epoche stellen für Arnold zunächst die drei ersten Jahrhun-

derte dar ; unter Konstantin d . Gr . habe der Verfall des Christentums mit der Erhe92 Später jedoch sieht er den Beginn bung der Kirche zu Macht und Reichtum begonnen . des Verfalls bereits schon bald nach der Zeit der Apostel in der Entstehung einer 93 Für Mosheim ist der Verfall der Kirche durch ihre ' Hellenorganisierten Kirche . 94 isierung ' begründet , d.h. für die Predigt durch ihre Rhetorisierung im 4. Jh . Aus diesen beiden Gründen also , deutscher Pietismus und protestantische Geschichtsauffassung werden die rhetorischen Predigten des 4. Jh . als verbildet und schlecht abgelehnt . Da die Erforschung der Predigtgeschichte in der Folgezeit fast ausschließlich von Protestanten betrieben wird 95 und das pietistische Predigtideal bis Ende des 19. Jh . nachwirkt 96 , wird dieses abwertende Urteil über die rhetorische Väterpredigt weitergegeben und allgemein akzeptiert . Aber auch als zu Beginn des 20. Jh . die protestantische Predigt , die bis dahin ihren Antrieb aus der Zeit der Aufklärung erhalten hatte , durch die Predigt des 97 ' modernen theologischen Liberalismus ' abgelöst wurde " wurde dieses Urteil nicht revidiert , da das Interesse an der Geschichte der Predigt erlahmte . Die wenigen Predigtgeschichten des 20. Jh . kopieren lediglich die Ergebnisse des 98 99 18. und 19. Jh . Ein gewisser Neuansatz ist nur bei Dargan , Jordan und Quasten zu finden , da Dargan und Quasten außerhalb des deutschen Kulturkreises stehen , Jordan bewußt einen neuen formgeschichtlichen Ansatz versucht . Dies erklärt dann 100 auch , daß gerade sie ausgewogene Urteile fällen . Man kann also die beiden oben gestellten Fragen folgendermaßen beantworten : 1. Die Diskrepanz zwischen antikem Lob und neuzeitlicher Kritik ist dadurch zu erklären , daß der Beginn der neuzeitlichen Predigtgeschichtsschreibung in Deutschland in die Zeit des Pietismus fällt101 , der als Maßstab die ' Erbaulichkeit ' anlegt und gleichzeitig die protestantische Geschichtsauffassung in radikaler Form vertritt . 2. Dieses einmal gefällte , zeitbedingte Urteil wurde bis dato nicht revidiert , nicht weil es jeweils neu geprüft worden wäre , sondern weil das pietistische Predigtideal bis Ende des 19. Jh . nachwirkte und im 20. Jh . das Interesse an Predigtgeschichte erlahmte . Warum aber trifft dieses Verdikt der Neuzeit nur Gregor von Nyssa , nicht auch die beiden anderen Kappadokier und Johannes Chrysostomus , die doch nicht weniger rhetorisch gepredigt haben ? Diese Frage kann hier nur andeutungsweise beantwortet werden , da eine erschöpfende Antwort eine detaillierte Vergleichsstudie aller Predigten der vier Kirchenväter erforderte . Wenn die neuzeitlichen Kritiker Gregor von Nyssa vorwerfen , seine Predigten seien nicht gefällig , nicht fließend genug , es fehle ihm die Kunst der Schilderung , der 102 Reichtum der Farben usw. , was die Predigten des Basilius und Gregor von Nazianz

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auszeichne , beobachten sie durchaus etwas Richtiges . Gregors Predigten sind nicht so eingängig wie die der drei anderen . Seine Predigten sind beherrscht von scharfer Logik und zeigen einen hohen spekulativen Anspruch ; stellenweise erscheinen darin wichtige theologische Gedanken derartig konzentriert , daß sie wie ' Chiffren ' sind , die nur aus den großen theologischen Traktaten auflösbar sind . Er hält sich zurück in der Anwendung des zeitgenössischen asianischen Stils der Festrede , ebenso im Erzählerischen und volkstümlichen Bildern . Es fehlt seinen Predigten tatsächlich die gefällige Mischung von Rhetorik und Theologie der drei anderen .

Man wird den

pietistischen Kritikern zustimmen müssen , daß Gregors Predigten nicht so ' erbaulich ' sind wie die der drei anderen . Bezweifelt werden muß jedoch , ob dies der angemessene Bewertungsmaßstab für eine Predigt der Väterzeit ist . Ein zweites Moment scheint noch mitzuspielen . Gregor von Nyssa wurde als Heiliger von der Kirche niemals in dem Maße verehrt wie Basilius , Gregor von Nazianz und Johannes Chrysostomus .

Sie sind das große Dreigestirn der byzantinisch- ortho-

doxen Heiligenverehrung , Basilius als der Politiker , Gregor von Nazianz als der Theologe ( was sein Beiname wurde ) , Johannes als der ' Goldmund ' , der große Redner . Zwar zeichnet noch das Zweite Konzil von Nikaia ( 787 ) Gregor von Nyssa vor den drei anderen mit dem Titel ' Vater der Väter ' aus und setzt ihn damit in seiner Bedeutung 103 noch über sie " in die Reihe der Hierarchen ( Basilius , Gregor von Nazianz , Johannes Chrysostomus ) , die seit Konstantin Monomachos ( 1042-1055 ) als Vorkämpfer 104 des trinitarischen Dogmas kultisch verehrt werden ( am 30. Januar ) " wurde er jedoch nicht aufgenommen , obwohl auch sein Beitrag zur Entwicklung des Trinitätsdogmas 105 nicht unerheblich war . Auch im Westen blieb er von dem Ehrentitel des ' Kirchenlehrers ' , der Athanasius , Basilius , Gregor von Nazianz und Johannes Chrysostomus durch das Brevier Pius ' V 106 1568 zuerkannt wurde , ausgeschlossen , und bis heute ehrt man Basilius , Gregor von Nazianz ( 2. Januar ) und Johannes Chrysostomus ( 13. September ) im liturgischen Kalender des Westens mit einem ' gebotenen Gedenktag ' , nicht jedoch Gregor von Nyssa . Auch in der Ikonographie ist Gregor von Nyssa weit weniger bedeutend als die 107 anderen . Von dieser allgemein geringeren Einschätzung Gregors werden sich die Autoren der Predigtgeschichten kaum freigemacht haben . Es bleibt also zu wünschen , daß neue Einzelstudien zur Beredsamkeit Gregors von Nyssa sowie Vergleichsstudien aller Vier das vorgestellte jahrhundertealte Urteil prüfen und im Sinne einer seriösen literarhistorisch fundierten Kritik gegebenenfalls revidieren . Vielleicht wird das Urteil E. Gebhardts bestätigt : ' Weniger wirkten die asketischen Schriften und Reden nach .

Zu Unrecht , denn weder an Reichtum

der rhetorischen Figuren noch an Gefühlstiefe stehen sie hinter den Werken der 108 anderen Kappadoker zurück ' .

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1. Literatur zu den Predigten bei Berthold Altaner /Alfred Stuiber , Patrologie ( Freiburg-Basel -Wien , 81978 ) , 306 und Anhang 611. Dazu noch : Johannes Bauer , Die Trostreden des Gregorios von Nyssa in ihrem Verhältnis zur antiken Rhetorik ( Diss . Marburg , 1892 ) ; Jean Bernardi , La prédication des Pères Cappadociens . Le prédicateur et son auditoire ( Paris , 1968 ) , 261-332 ; Joachim Soffel , Die Regeln Menanders für die Leichenrede ( Meisenheim/Glan , 1974 ) , 82-89 . Weiterhin beschäftigte sich das Vierte Internationale Colloquium über Gregor von Nyssa in Cambridge vom 11 . 16. September 1978 mit den beiden Osterpredigten De tridui spatio ( Gregorii Nysseni Opera [ G.N.0 . ] IX , 273-306 ) und In sanctum pascha ( G.N.O. IX , 245-270 ) , dessen Kongreßakten in Kürze erscheinen . 2. Altaner / Stuiber , op . cit . , 306 . 3. Die Zeugnisse werden unten ausführlich dargestellt . 4. Zwischen dem Jahr 1000 und dem 17. Jh . war keine Beurteilung der Beredsamkeit Gregors nachzuweisen . 5. Gregor von Nyssa , Oratio funebris in Meletium episcopum , ed . Andreas Spira , G.N.O. IX ( Leiden , 1967 ) , 441-457 . 6. Gregor von Nyssa , Oratio consolatoria in Pulcheriam , ed . Andreas Spira , ebd . 461-472 ; Oratio funebris in Flacillam imperatricem , ebd . 473-490 . Literatur dazu siehe unter Anm . 1 ; außerdem : Andreas Spira , ' Rhetorik und Theologie in den Grabreden Gregors von Nyssa ' , in : Studia Patristica IX , ed . F.L. Cross , T.U. 94 ( Berlin , 1966 ) , 106-114 . 7. Photius , Bibliothèque , ed . R. Henry , tome 1 ( Paris , 1959 ) , 8 : tùv μèν opάolv , εἴ τις ἄλλος ῥητόρων , λαμπρός , καὶ ἡδονῆς ὠσὶν ἀποστάζων . 8. Suidae Lexicon , ed . G. Bernhardy , Bd . 1 ( Halle -Braunschweig , 1853 ) , 1145 : Γρηγόριος , Νύσσης ἐπίσκοπος , ... προσκείμενος δὲ μᾶλλον τοῖς τῇ ῥητορικῇ χαίρουσι . καὶ γοῦν εὐδόκιμος ἐν ταύτῃ γεγένηται καὶ λαμπρός , εἴ τις ἄλλος τῶν πάλαι ταύτη γεγενημένων . 9. So schon Otto Bardenhewer , Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur , Bd . 3 ( Darmstadt , 1962 = 2München , 1923 ) , 206 : ' Die Neuzeit urteilt über seine oratorischen Leistungen zurückhaltender ' . 10. Nicht erwähnt werden die Reden Gregors bei : Werner Jaeger , ' Gregor 6. Bischof von Nyssa ' , in : Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart , Bd . 2 ( Tübingen , 31958 ) , 1844f ; Hilda C. Graef , ' Gregorios von Nyssa ' , in : Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche , Bd . 4 ( Freiburg- Basel -Wien , 21960 ) , 1211-1213 ; Mariette Canévet , ' Grégoire de Nysse ( saint ) ' , in : Dictionnaire de la Spiritualité , vol . 6 ( Paris , 1967 ) , 971-1011 ; R. F. Harvanek , ' Gregory of Nyssa , St. ' , in : New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol . 6 ( New York , u.a. , 1967 ) , 794-796 . Nur beiläufig werden sie erwähnt bei : Wilhelm Christ , Geschichte der griechischen Literatur ( München , 21890 ) , 741 ; Benjamin , ' Gregorios 5 ) , Bischof von Nyssa ' , in : Realencyclopaedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 7 ( Stuttgart , 1912 ) , 1863f. Lediglich eine Aufzählung der Predigten bei : Jean Daniélou , ' Gregorio Nisseno ' , in : Enciclopedia Cattolica , vol . 6 ( Vatikan , 1951 ) , 1096-1111 . 11. So Louis Charles du Pin , Nouvelle bibliothèque des auteurs ecclésiastiques , vol . 2 ( Paris , 1690 ) , 230 ; Bernhard Eschenburg , Versuch einer Geschichte der öffentlichen Religionsvorträge ( Jena , 1785 ) , 170 ; Johann Wilhelm Schmid , Anleitung zum populären Kanzel vortrag ( Jena , 1786-89 ) , 89 ; C.G.H. Lentz , Geschichte der christlichen Homiletik ( Braunschweig , 1839 ) , 57 ; J.P. Charpentier , Etudes sur les pères de l'église ( übers . F. Bittner , Mainz , 1855 ; original : Paris , 1854 ) , 361 ; Abel François Villemain , Tableau d'éloquence chrétienne au quatrième siècle ( Paris , 184955 ) , 357 ; Friedrich Böhringer , Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen , Bd . 4 ( Stuttgart , 21875 ) , 160 ; Jan Jakob von Oosterzee , Praktische Theologie ( übers . A. Matthiä und A. Petry , Bd . 1 , Heilbronn , 1878-79 ; original : Practical Theology , New York , 1879 ) , 119 ; Theodosius Harnack , Geschichte und Theorie der Predigt und der Seelsorge ( Erlangen , 1878 ) , 75 ; Richard Rothe , Geschichte der Predigt (Bremen , 1881 ) , 76 ; Otto Bardenḥewer , ' Gregor von Nyssa ' , in : Wetzer und Welte's Kirchenlexikon , Bd . 5 (Freiburg , 21888 ) , 1171 ; Hermann Hering , Lehre von der Predigt ( Berlin , 1897 ) , 19 ; M. Schian , ' Geschichte der christlichen Predigt ' , in : Realencyklopädie für ( Forts.f. )

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protestantische Theologie und Kirche , Bd . 15 ( Leipzig , 31904 ) , 633 ; Hermann Jordan , Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur ( Leipzig , 1911 ) , 199 , 204 ; P. Godet , ' Grégoire de Nysse ( saint ) ' , in : Dictionnaire de la Théologie Catholique , vol . 6 ( Paris , 1920 ) , 1850 ; Otto Bardenhewer , Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur , Ba . 3 ( Darmstadt , 1962 = 2München , 1923 ) , 206 ; Wilhelm von Christ , Wilhelm Schmid und Otto Stählin , Geschichte der griechischen Literatur ( München , 1924 ) , 1425 ; G. Kieffer , Predigt und Prediger ( Paderborn , 1924 ) , 414 ; Johann Baptist Schneyer , Geschichte der katholischen Predigt ( Freiburg , 1969 ) , 53f ; Werner Schütz , Geschichte der christlichen Predigt ( Berlin- New York , 1972 ) , 18 ; Berthold Altaner und Alfred Stuiber , Patrologie ( Freiburg- Basel -Wien , 1978 ) , 306 . 12. Eschenburg , op . cit . , 170 ; Schmid , op . cit . , 89 ; Lentz , op . cit . , 57 ; Schian , op. cit . , 633 . 13. Charpentier , op . cit . , 361 ; Villemain , op . cit . , 357 ; Rothe , op . cit . , 76 . 14. Hering , op . cit . , 19 . 15. Hering , op . cit . , 19 ; Godet , op . cit . , 1850 ; Bardenhewer , Geschichte , 206 . 16. Godet , op . cit . , 1850 : ' il n- égale ni la force ni la gravité ni la concision du premier ' ( sc . Basile ) ; Bardenhewer , Geschichte , 206 übersetzt Godet wörtlich . 17. Charpentier , op . cit . , 361 . 18. Ebd. 19. Hering , op . cit . , 19 . 20. Godet , op . cit . , 1850 : ' ( il ) ne rappelle ni la vivacité du ton ni la richesse de coloris du second ' ( sc . Grégoire de Nazianze ) ; wörtl . übersetzt bei Bardenhewer , Geschichte , 207 . 21. Oosterzee , op . cit . , 109 . 22. Schmid , op . cit . , 88 . 23. Peter Roques , Gestalt eines evangelischen Lehrers ( Ubers . Friedrich Eberhard Rambach , Halle , 1741 ; original : Le pasteur évangélique , Basel , 1723 ) , 38 ; Charpentier , op . cit . , 361 ; Villemain , op . cit . , 357 ; Böhringer , op . cit . , 160 ; Ferdinand Probst , Katechese und Predigt ( Breslau , 1884 ) , 231 ; Hering , op . cit . , 19 . 24. Oosterzee , op . cit . , 118 ; Harnack , op . cit . , 75 ; Rothe , op . cit. , 75; Gerhard von Zezschwitz , ' Geschichte der Predigt ' , in : Otto Zöckler , Handbuch der theologischen Wissenschaften , Bd . 4 ( München , 1890 ) , 235 ; Schneyer , op . cit . , 53 ; Schütz , op . cit . , 18 . 25. Böhringer , op . cit . , 160 . 26. Ebd .; Rothe , op. cit . , 75 ; Schian , op . cit . , 633 ; Bardenhewer , Geschichte , 207. 27. Rothe , op . cit . , 75 . 28. Villemain , op . cit . , 357 ; Probst , op . cit . , 231 ; Joseph Lehmann , Geschichte der christlichen Predigt ( Kassel , 1904 ) , 414 . 29. Schmid , op . cit . , 89 ; Rothe , op . cit . , 76 . 30. Schmid , op . cit . , 89 ; Karl Freidrich Wilhelm Paniel , Pragmatische Geschichte der christlichen Beredsamkeit und der Homiletik ( Leipzig , 1839 ) , 526 ; Böhringer , op. cit . , 159 ; Rothe , op . cit . , 76 . 31. Zezschwitz , op . cit . , 235 . 32. Paniel , op . cit . , 524 ; Charpentier , op . cit . , 361 ; Böhringer , op . cit . , 159 ; Harnack , op . cit . , 75 ; Rothe , op . cit . , 76 ; Lehmann , op . cit . , 414 ; Schneyer , op . cit . , 53 ; Schütz , op . cit . , 18 . 33. Schütz , op . cit . , 18 ; Altaner und Stuiber , op . cit . , 306 . 34. Schmid , op . cit . , 88 ; Paniel , op . cit . , 543 ; Charpentier , op . cit . , 361 ; Böhringer , op . cit . , 159 ; Zezschwitz , op . cit . , 235 ; Schian , op . cit . , 633 . 35. Eschenburg , op . cit . , 170 ; Villemain , op . cit . , 357 . 36. Paniel , op . cit . , 525 ; Charpentier , op . cit . , 361 ; Harnack , op . cit . , 75 . 37. Paniel , op . cit . , 526. 38. Böhringer , op . cit . , 159 . 39. Gehört allerdings Asterius von Amasea. Asterius von Amasea , Homilies , Text , Introduction and Notes by C. Datema ( Leiden , 1970 ) , 183-194 . 40. Ed . Adrian van Heck ( Leiden , 1964 ) , mit lat . Kommentar ; Text aufgenommen in G.N.O. IX ( Leiden , 1967 ) , 91-108 . 41. Ed . Ernst Gebhardt , G.N.O. IX ( Leiden , 1967 ) , 193-207 .

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42. Schmid , op . cit . , 88 ; Rothe , op . cit . , 75 . 43. Eschenburg , op . cit . , 165 ; Bardenhewer , Geschichte , 207 . 44. Eschenburg , op . cit . , 165 ; Paniel , op . cit . , 524. 45. Bardenhewer , Geschichte , 207 . 46. Schian , op . cit . , 633. 47. Schian , op . cit . , 633 stuft sie geringer ein als die moralischen Predigten , jedoch ohne Angabe von Gründen . 48. Schmid , op . cit . , 88 ; Rothe , op . cit . , 75. 49. Schmid , op . cit . , 88 . 50. Ebd .; Paniel , op . cit . , 528 . 51. Paniel , op . cit . , 528. 52. Lentz , op . cit . , 55 . 53. Schmid , op . cit . , 88 . 54. Ebd .; Oosterzee , op . cit . , 118 ; Rothe , op . cit . , 75 . 55. Rothe , op . cit . , 75 . 56. Schmid , op . cit . , 88 ; Paniel , op . cit . , 528 . 57. P.G. 44 , 1119-1194 . 58. Ebd . , 1193-1302 . 59. Oosterzee , op . cit . , 118 ; Harnack , op . cit . , 75 ; Schian , op . cit . , 633 . 60. Schmid , op . cit . , 89 ; Paniel , op . cit . , 529 . 61. Schian , op . cit . , 633 ; Jordan , op . cit . , 204 . 62. Jordan , op . cit . , 204 . 63. Johannes Bauer , Die Trostreden des Gregorios von Nyssa in ihrem Verhältnis zur antiken Rhetorik ( Diss . Marburg , 1892 ) ; Freidich Loofd , ' Gregor von Nyssa ' , in : Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche , Bd . 7 ( Leipzig , 31899 ) , 151 . 64. Zezschwitz , op . cit . , 236 ; Lehmann , op . cit . , 27 ; Bardenhewer , Geschichte , 207 ; Kieffer , op . cit . , 414 . 65. Kieffer , op . cit . , 414 . 66. Rothe , op . cit . , 75 ; Harnack , op . cit . , 75 ; Zezschwitz , op . cit . , 236 ; Lehmann , op . cit . , 27 ; so auch schon Schmid , op . cit . , 89 und Paniel , op . cit . , 529 trotz ihres grundsätzlichen Lobes ( vgl . Anm . 60 ) . 67. Remy Ceillier , Histoire générale des auteurs sacrés et ecclésiastiques , vol . 8 ( Paris , 1740 ) , 439 : ' Saint Grégoire de Nysse , égal à saint Basile son frère , pour la parole et la doctrine , main plus attaché que lui à l'étude de l'éloquence , s'y rendit si habile , qu'on peut sans crainte , le mettre en parallele avec les plus célèbres orateurs de l'antiquité . Son stile est pur et magnifique , rempli des forts raisonnements et des belles conparaisons , fécond et abondant ; on l'a appellé un fleuve de paroles . On lira avec plaisir les oraisons funèbres de Pulquerie et de Placille , le premier panégyrique de saint Etienne , l'éloge de saint Melece et de saint Basile ; le choix qu'on le croyoit orateur du premier rang ' . 68. Lentz , op . cit . , 55 ; Böhringer , op . cit . , 159 ; Lehmann , op . cit . 27 , Bardenhewer , Geschichte , 206 ; Schneyer , op . cit . , 53 . 69. S.o. Anm . 7. 70. Schmid , op . cit . , 88 . 71. Lentz , op . cit . , 55 . 72. Paniel , op . cit . , 524 ; Charpentier , op . cit . , 357. 73. Jordan , op . cit . , 199 , 204 . 74. Edwin Charles Dargan , A history of Preaching , vol . 1 ( New York - Hildesheim , 1968 New York , 1905 ) , 86 : ' Basil was the man of affairs , the prelate , the orator ; Gregory Nazianzen was the man of feeling , the poet , the orator ; Gregory Nyssen was the man of thought , the philosopher , the logician . All were great preachers , each a striking example of his kind ' . 75. Johannes Quasten , Patrology , vol . 3 ( Utrecht , u.a. 1960 ) , 255f : ' ... he let himself be influenced by the eccentric characteristics of contemporary Greek rhetoric . Yet , he never became a master of the art . His style remains very often without charm . His sentences are too heavy and appear to be overcharged . In his panegyrics and funeral orations , and especially in his polemical treatises , his diction is full of fire and energy , but often falls into exaggerated pathos and bombast , making it very difficult for the modern reader to appreciate the depth of his thought and religious conviction ' .

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76. Roques , op . cit . , 38. 77. Schmid , op . cit . , 88. 78. Rothe , op . cit . , 75 . 79. Zezschwitz , op . cit . , 235 . 80. Ebd .; Rothe , op . cit . , 75 . 81. Eschenburg , op . cit . , 170 . 82. Schmid , op . cit . , 89. 83. Villemain , op . cit . , 357 : ' Il est mystique sans être enthousiaste . Son âme n'est point echauffée par les grands spectacles du christianisme naisant ' . 84. Böhringer , op . cit . , 159 . 85. Zum Pietismus vgl . Martin Schmidt , Pietismus ( Stuttgart , u.a. 1972 ) ; Erich Beyreuther , Geschichte des Pietismus ( Stuttgart , 1978 ) . Zur pietistischen Predigt vgl . Alfred Niebergall , ' Die Geschichte der christlichen Predigt ' , in : Leiturgia II , hrsg . Karl Ferdinand Müller und Walter Blankenburg ( Kassel , 1955 ) , 294-305 ; Schütz , op . cit . , 145-159 . 86. Benutzt wurde die Ausgabe von Kurt Aland in : Kleine Texte für Vorlesungen und Übungen 170 , hrsg . Hans Lietzmann ( Berlin , 1940 ) . Zu Speners Leben und Werk vgl . Paul Grünberg , Philipp Jacob Spener , 3 Bde ( Göttingen , 1893-1906 ) ; Schmidt , op . cit . , 42-64 ; Beyreuther , op . cit . , 61-122 . Zu Spener als Prediger vgl . Niebergall , op. cit . , 296f ; Schütz , op . cit . , 146-149 . 87. Spener , Pia desideria ( 79 , 35ff Aland ) . 88. Ebd . , 79 , 10ff . 89. Gottfried Arnold , Denkmal des alten Christentum oder Des hl . Macarii und anderer hocherleuchteter Männer der Alten Kirche auserlesene Schriften ( Büdingen , 1723) . Zu Leben und Bedeutung Arnolds vgl . Christian Gottlieb Jöcher , Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon , Bd . 1 ( Leipzig , 1750 ) , 561 ; Ernst Walter Zeeden , ' Arnold ' , in : Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche , Bd . 1 ( Freiburg , 21957 ) , 896 ; Peter Meinhold , Geschichte der kirchlichen Historiographie , Bd . 1 ( Freiburg-München , 1967 ) , 430442 ; Schmidt , op . cit . , 82-92 ; Beyreuther , op . cit . , 289-330 . 90. Johannes Lorenz von Mosheim , Anweisung erbaulich zu predigen , hrsg . Christian Ernst von Windheim ( Erlangen , 1763 , 21771 ) . Zu Leben und Bedeutung Mosheims vgl . Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie , Bd . 22 ( Leipzig , 1885 ) , 395-399 ; Peter Meinhold , ' Mosheim ' , in : Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche , Bd . 7 ( Freiburg , 21962 ) , 656f ; Ders . , Historiographie , Bd . 2 , 11-30 ; Schütz , op . cit . , 160-162 . 91. Zu Luthers Geschichtsbild vgl . Ernst Menke - Glückert , Die Geschichtsschreibung der Reformation und Gegenreformation ( Leipzig , 1912 ) , 2-7 ; Meinhold , Historiographie , Bd . 1 , 227-338 . 92. So in seinem Werk , Die erste Liebe der Gemeinen Jesu Christi , das ist die wahre Abbildung der ersten Christen nach ihrem lebendigen Glauben und heiligem Leben (Frankfurt , 1696 ) . 93. Gottfried Arnold , Unparteiische Kirchen-und Ketzerhistorie ( Frankfurt , 1699 ) . 94. Vgl . Meinhold , ' Mosheim ' , 656f ; Ders . , Historiographie , Bd . 2 , 11-30 . Zum Begriff der ' Hellenisierung ' in der Theologie vgl . Alois Grillmeier , ' Hellenisierung -- Judaisierung des Christentums als Deuteprinzipien der Geschichte des kirchlichen Dogmas ' , in : Scholastik 33 ( 1958 ) , 321-355 , 528-558 ; nochmals durchgesehen mit erweiterten Anmerkungen in : Ders . , Mit ihm und in ihm ( Freiburg-Basel - Wien , 1975 ) , 423-488 ; zu Arnold und Mosheim vgl . speziell 434-446 ( = Scholastik , 332-343 ) . 95. Vgl . zu den genannten Autoren die einschlägigen biographischen Werke . 96. Vgl . Niebergall , op . cit . , 334-340 ; Schütz , op . cit . , 206-219 . 97. Vgl . dazu ebd .; Friedrich Niebergall , ' Die Moderne Predigt ' ( 1905 ) , in : Aufgabe der Predigt , hrsg . Gert Hummel (= Wege der Forschung 234 ; Darmstadt , 1971 ) , 974 . 98. Niebergall , op . cit . (Anm . 85 ) , Schneyer , op . cit . (Anm . 11 ) , Schütz ,op . cit . (Anm . 11 ) . 99. Vgl . Anm . 11 , 74 , 75 . 100. Vgl . oben S. 1087 101. Die zeitliche Koinzidenz von Pietismus und Beginn der Predigtgeschichtsschreibung ist natürlich nicht zufällig , sondern die pietistische Radikalisierung des traditionellen protestantischen Geschichtsbildes läßt ein gesteigertes Interesse an Geschichte entstehen , auch der Predigtgeschichte .

1094

H. Drobner

102. Siehe oben S. 1085-1086 , 1088-1089. 103. Mansi , Bd . 13 , 293 : Βασίλειος ὁ μέγας ἐν ἔργῳ καὶ λόγῳ , Γρηγόριος ὁ τῆς θεολογίας ἐπώνυμος , Γρηγόριος ὁ τῆς Νυσσαέων πόλεως πρόεδρος , ὁ πατὴρ πατέρων παρὰ πάντων ὀνομαζόμενος · καὶ ᾿Ιωάννης , οὔτινος ἀπο γλώσσης μέλιτος γλυκίων ῥέεν αυδή τούνεκεν γὰρ καὶ τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν τοῦ χρυσοῦ στόματος ἐδέξατο . Vgl . Bardenhewer , Geschichte , Bd . 3 , 192 . 104. Vgl . Louis Réau , Iconographie de l'art chrétien , vol . III , II ( Paris , 1958 ) , 645 ; G. Kaster , ' Hierarchen , Drei ' , in : Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie , Bd . 6 ( Freiburg , 1974 ) , 517f . 105. Zur Trinitätslehre Gregors von Nyssa vgl . Michael Gomes de Castro , Die Trinitätslehre des hl . Gregor von Nyssa ( Freiburg , 1938 ) ; S. González , ' La identitad de operación en las obras exteriores y la unidad de la naturaleza divina en la teología trinitaria de S. Gregorio de Nisa ' , in : Gregorianum 19 ( 1938 ) , 280-301 ; Augusto Segovia , ' Estudios sobre la terminología trinitaria en la época postnicena ' , in : Gregorianum 19 ( 1938 ) , 3-36 ; Werner Jaeger , Gregor von Nyssa's Lehre vom heiligen Geist ( Leiden , 1966 ) ; S. González , La fórmula µía ovoúa трεйs úпoστáσEɩs en San Gregorio de Nisa ( Rom , 1939 ) ; Martin Parmentier , St. Gregory of Nyssa's doctrine of the holy spirit , Diss . Oxford 1973 ( ungedruckt ) ; Kei Yamamura , ' The Development of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Patristic Philosophy : St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa ' , in : St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 18 ( 1974 ) , 3-21 ; Elena Cavalcanti , ' Teologia trinitaria e teologia della storia in alcuni testi di Gregorio di Nissa ' , in : Augustinianum 16 ( 1976 ) , 117-124 . 106. C.A. Kneller , ' Zum Verzeichnis der Kirchenlehrer ' , in : Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 40 ( 1916 ) , 21f ; Ludwig Freiherr von Pastor , Geschichte der Päpste , Bd . 8 ( Freiburg , 1925 ) , 143 . 107. Vgl . Louis Réau , Iconographie de l'art chrétien , vol . III , I ( Paris , 1958 ) , 185f. ( Basilius ) ; vol . III , II ( Paris , 1958 ) , 607f . ( Gregor von Nazianz ) , 608 ( Gregor von Nyssa ) ; J. Myslivec , ' Basilius der Große ' , in : Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie , Bd . 5 ( Freiburg , 1973 ) , 337-341 ; U. Knoben , ' Gregor von Nazianz ' , ebd. Bd . 6 ( Freiburg , 1974 ) , 444-450 ; A.M. Ritter , ' Gregor von Nyssa ' , ebd . 517f . 108. E. Gebhardt , ' Gregor von Nyssa ' , in : Lexikon der Alten Welt ( Stuttgart / Zürich , 1965 ) , 1136 .

Der Prophetie- Begriff von In proph . Isaiam (P.G. 30 , 117-668) I. Escribano -Alberca Bamberg

CH habe zu referieren 1. über die in dieser Schrift vorhandene Tendenz zur Parallelisierung der Erleuchtung beim Träger der Prophetic und des mystischen Aufstiegs beim Deuter der Prophetie ; 2. über den platonisch-neoplatonischen Rahmen , darin der Prophetie-Begriff eingebettet ist ; 3. über die Anklänge an die älteren Schichten des Prophetie -Begriffes bei Verwendung des Schemas von Übergang vom Hören zum Schauen . Damit erhoffe ich , herausstellen zu können : 1. den mystisch -hellenistischen Prophetie -Begriff dieser anonymen , Basilius zugeschriebenen Schrift ; 2. indirekt und zugegebenerweise nur auf der schmalen Basis der Untersuchung des Prophetie - Begriffes , die Fragwürdigkeit der Autorschaft des Basilius.1 1. Tendenz zur Parallelisierung zwischen biblischem Prophet und dem qualifizierten Exegeten alexandrinisch - kappadokischer Herkunft Das Themas der Flucht - quyń - im Prooemium , wo aufs konzentrierteste über das Wesen der Prophetie referiert wird , ist alles andere als nur eine Zeitangabe Basilius im Winter , Flucht zusammen mit Bischof Atarbius , nach Wittig², sondern 3 darüberhinaus die platonische Ansage eines wohl disponierten Aufstiegs , wo mit einschlägigen Schriftstellen zur Reinigung der Seele aufgefordert wird . Denn : Méya μÈν nαι прштov xάpɩoμa ist die Prophetie , die aus einer gereinigten Seele hervorgeht wobei möglicherweise Einmaligkeit und Sonderstellung des Prophetie- Vorganges genannt werden ; dɛúтɛрov dè ... Auf dieses Zweite kommt es uns jetzt an . Dies Zweite erfordert nämlich nicht weniger ethische Zurüstung und mystische Begabung , denn es geht darum , die unter der Einwirkung des Geistes zustandegekommene Prophetie richtig zu interpretieren , und dies ist auch ein xápɩopa - το τῆς γνώσεως χάρισμα – ( 1203 ) . Die unübersehbar absichtlich hergestellte Entsprechung zwischen Prophetie und Deutung der Prophetie macht beides , die biblische Prophetie und den ' gnostischen ' Deuter desselben zum Resultat eines mystischen Aufstiegs , wobei auf beiden Seiten das xaploua vorhanden sein muß .

120C insistiert in der hergestellten Entsprechung : der

1095

1096

I. Escribano - Alberca

Prophet ist Instrument

opyavov , nach philonischem Muster-

des Geistes ; der Deuter

aber oder zweiter Empfänger der Prophetie erhält das xápɩoua der Unterscheidung der Geister , wobei Paulus bemüht wird ( 1 Kor . 14 , 29 ) : Propheten sollen Zwei oder Drei 4 Sprechen , und die Anderen [ die Rede ] beurteilen . Sind of loɩ , die bei Paulus doch auch Propheten sind , nicht hier die Deuter der Prophetie ? Somit hätten wir es - als vorläufige Beute in der Ansage von Nr . 1 des Prooemiums unserer Untersuchung mit einer Interrelation zwischen Prophetie und Gnosis zu tun , die uns aus einer älteren Schicht des Prophetie- Begriffes bekannt ist .

Klemens ' Zuspitzung der Ent-

sprechung zwischen Prophetie und Gnostik in der berühmten Definition von der Prophetie als Prognose und Gnostik als Erkennen der Prophetie muß hier beiläufig er5 6 wähnt werden . Origenes neigt auch zur Herstellung einer solchen Entsprechung . Diese Annahme wird bestätigt durch Stellen im Prooemium ( Nr . 2 ) , wo weiter zwischen Prophetie und Deutung parallelisiert wird . Qualifikationen des Propheten

Sind doch die da angegebenen hohen

ein Ternarium - in einer Entsprechung zur Befähigung

zur Deutung der Prophetie deutlich hergestellt : Charisma der oaqúa , der yvuous und der bɩbaonaλía auf Seiten des Deuters . Alle drei Charismata miteinander machen aus , daß in der Tat die Gestalt

oder Gehalt : μόρφωσις

der Wahrheit der Prophetie in

unserem Hegemonikon eingedrückt wird : évτunwoαɩ ( 121A ) .

Da das Verb évturoŨv , meis-

tens in Zusammenhang mit dem hуεμоνɩиóv , im Kommentar durchgehend als terminus technicus zur ur Beschreibung des Vorgangs der Erleuchtung der Propheten verwender wird , und zwar als Begrifflichkeit , die die Inmaterialität des Vorganges der Schau Gottes , oder des Vernehmens seiner Worte plausibel machen soll , sehe ich mich berechtigt , nicht von einer Gleichung zwischen Prophetie und Exegese was möglicherwohl aber weise , mit Ausnahme Philos , in der alten Literatur nicht vorgekommen ist von einer deutlichen Tendenz zur Parallelisierung des Vorgangs zu sprechen , was hinsichtlich einer rechten Rezeption des biblischen Prophetie- Begriffes bedenklich genug sein sollte . Im selben Paragraphen wird weiter parallelisiert , hier aber was die moralische Zurüstung -

τwν nádwν nataoтoln - und das Maß des Glaubens beim Propheten und beim

Deuter der Offenbarung angeht ( 121A- B - C ) .

Ausdrücklich werden an dieser Stelle

drei Typen genannt , die mit deisen Gaben ausgestattet sein sollen : der Prophet sozusagen ex officio , die Hörer natà naɩpóv und die Späteren , die aus der Prophetie 8 Früchte ziehen ( 121B ) . Weiterhin : Die Aufgabe des Exegeten besteht darin , zu einem vous dɩopaτɩnós zu werden ; Gottes Gabe ist aber die Erleuchtung - ἐλλάμψαι ἡμῖν τὸ πνεῦμα - um die Mysterien der Prophetie zu verstehen ( 132B ) .

Sprachlich sind wir also nicht weit

vom qwiloμós , der durchgehend im Kommentar zur Befähigung der biblischen Prophetie zählt . In den späteren Reprisen des Themas Prophetie aus Prooemium und Kapiteln I und VI kommt es wierderum zu einer anstößigen Formulierung der hier verfolgten

Der prophetie-Bergriff von In proph. Isaiam

1097

Entsprechung zwischen Prophetie und gnostischer Exegese : Danach ist die Prophetie etwas das belehrbar und lernbar wäre .

Jesajas nennt seinen Vater , und daraus soll

der Leser entnehmen , daß der Vater Lehrer in der Prophetie war - ὅτι και προφητείας 9 αὐτῷ διδάσκαλος γέγονε ( 568C ) ; aus demselben Grund wird anschließend berichtet erfahren wir durch die Schrift , daß Amos in der Prophetie zu Hause war -- κοινωνός της προφητείας ( 568D ) .

Wir fragen uns , ob die erwähnte Kongenialität zur Prophetie

durch Einweihung , Reinheit , Belehrung überhaupt einen brauchbaren Sinn abgeben würde , hätte der Verfasser nicht im Sinne , die Mönche oder die Bischöfe christliche Gnostiker , auch Deuter der Prophetie - ideologisch auf den hohen Aufstieg der Seele hin zu bearbeiten .

Wie gesagt : Korrelation zwischen Prophetie und Gnosis wäre die

passende Formel zur Kennzeichnung dieses Sachverhaltes .

Daß dadurch eine Nostri-

fizierung ( um die Kategorie Barths zu verwenden ) der Prophetie im Namen der Mystik vor sich ging , sollte nicht übersehen werden .

Varräterisch genug ist jene Stelle

aus dem Kommentar ( 460A ) , wo mittels des altalexandrinischen Fortschrittsgedankens den Hören dieser Predigten nahegelegt wird , sie können auch zu einer Situation wie jene der großen Visionäre gelangen .

Abraham , Moses , Elias , Jeremias werden erwähnt ,

die von Hause aus mäßig talentiert waren , die Erleuchtung aber durch Gott empfingen ( vgl . auch 360D ) . Die Entrückung der Propheten ist auch den Außenstehenden eine 10 offene Möglichkeit ( 453A ) . 2. Der platonisch -neoplatonische Rahmen der Prophetie- Begriffes . Zu den menschlichen Voraussetzungen zur Befähigung zur Porphetie zählen : 11 καθαρότης - durchgehend im ganzen Kommentar Bespiegelung der göttlichen Energie , und zwar in der von Gregor von Nyssa ausgebauten Fassung - κάτοπτρα γινόμεναι τῆς 12 13 δείας ἐνεργείας ; das intensive Hinschauen EVATEVĹSELV , das Daniélou als durchgehende platonische Sprachregelung bei Gregor von Nyssa fixiert hat ; die Seele wird eine von der göttlichen Liebe θεοφορουμένη - ein Terminus , den Philo verwendet , die 14 spätere alexanfrinische Schilderung der Prophetie aber gemieden hat . Von seiten Gottes wird man zum Propheten : durch den altalexandrinischen Vorgang der Öffnung der 15 Augen der Seele nicht spezifisch als Tat des Logos - die Illumination durch Eindrücken - imprimere , έντυποῦν --– der göttlichen Eingebung , die mit dem φωτισμός 16 zusammenfällt Befähigung zur ewpía (passim ) ; Befähigung zur Vorwegnahme des Künftigen in der Schau : wurden doch die Propheten der Schrift Euпроσdεν ВλέпоVTES 17 gennant . Zu der Ekstase als Komponente des prophetischen Zustandes gibt es zwei negative Stellungnehmen , sowohl im Prooemium als auch in der Reprise des Themas 18 Kap . XIII . Die Sache selbst , vom Anstößigen des Terminus Exotаous befreit , wird 19 bejaht . Das Wort wurde auf mancher Strecke in der alexandrinischen Tradition gemieden ; hier will man die Entrückung von jeder Art disqualifizierter , gottgewirkter Geistesgestörtheit abheben , und läßt man terminologisch Ekstase mit Geistesgestörtheit koinzidieren , was möglicherweise auf die Verhältnisse in Neocäsarea zurecht20 geschnitten ist' oder Weiterführung der christlich- alexandrinischen sprachlichen Kautelen in dieser Hinsicht .

I. Escribano -Alberca

1098

3. Das Schema vom Übergang vom Hören zum Schauen Der hochtrabende platonisch- neoplatonische Rahmen , darin der Prophetie- Begriff eingebettet ist , könnte an sich unserer Aufmerksamkeit entgehen , würde die altalexandrinische Kasuistik zur Orchestrierung des Themas nicht darin so eine wichtige Rolle spielen . In der Tat : die alten Topoi zur Untermauerung der Legitimation des Visionären werden reichlich bemüht und mit einer Art scholastischer Selbstverständlichkeit verwendet .

I Könige 9 , 9 wird herangezogen : Propheten als

pode

βλέποντες , was durch die textlich nicht zulässige Koppelung von ἔμπροσθεν mit 21 BAÉTOντES den Zorn Garniers auf den Kommentar gesteigert hat ." Das bekannte Motiv vom Lob der opaous in ihrer Opposition zur bloßen άnoń klingt zum Auftakt der Exegese im Kapitel I auf ( 132A ) , womit ausdrücklich die Zuordnung der opaous zu der ἡ τῶν ἀληθῶν θεωρία angesprochen wird ( 132A ) . Der Prophet empfängt nicht durch die ἀκοή ( 132B - C ) . Sind doch die Worte , die Gott spricht , schaubare Worte : Aóyou opаτoĹ ( 132C) , wofür die berühmte Philo-Stelle , die bis einschließlich Gregor von Nyssa zu dieser Mystagogik herangezogen wurde , herhalten soll : Ex . 20 , 18 : nãs o laòs έúpa την φωνήν . Die schaubaren Worte sind danach v

ɛwрnтɩnoй ( 132C ) .

Zu dieser Mystagogik

gehört auch ferner der Übergang von Jakob zu Israels , der auch im Kommentar ange22 Hierin gehört sich die Einstufung der sprochen wird ( 141C ) : Israel op @ v cóν . 23 Visionäre als ψυχαί διορατικαί " sowie die Aufstellung einer Liste von Visionären 24, die im Kommentar großzügiger ausgebaut ist als bei Origenes 4. Konklusionen A.

und Gregor von Nyssa .

Meine Analysen basieren vornehmlich auf den Befund im Prooemium und Kapiteln

I und VI , mit den Reprisen des Themas von der Prophetie bei den Kapiteln VII und XIII zusammengenommen . Es soll nicht der Eindruck entstehen , wir hätten es im Ganzen mit einem post -alexandrinischen gnostizierenden Traktat zu tun . Auffallend ist im Laufe der Exegese die realistisch futurische Anwendung der Prophetie ( Christus , 25 Maria , sogar die den Autor beschäftigenden gegenwärtigen Zeitläufe ... ) . Die Vorwegnahme der zweimal im Kommentar angesprochenen

unроσDEV BAETOVтEs ist nicht

spezifisch mit der Schauprophetie ( Verklärung Christi ) des Origenes identisch , obwohl der Kommentar die Reihe der origenistischen Visionäre sogar um einige Gestalten bereichert hat . Es fällt auch auf, daß Kap . VI des Jesajas - Kommentars des Eusebius , das , was die Aufzählung der visionären Prophetie angeht ( P.G. 24 , 121D- 125A ) , gut als Vorlage hätte dienen können , die Bezogenheit der Prophetie auf Christus auf Schritt und Tritt betont ; der Pseudo-Basilius hingegen mit einem Nebensatz – καὶ τὰ περὶ Χριστοῦ πασῇ τῇ προφητείᾳ ἐνεσπαρμένα ( 129D ) – seine Aufgabe erledigt . Dies alles zählt zu den sonst immer wieder von der Forschung beanstandeten Inkongruenzen der Schrift : wofür denn die Mobilisierung der alexandrinischen Prophetie ? Es ist aber nicht unbedenklich , daß in der kirchlichen - oder sollen wir sagen :

Der prophetie-Bergriff von In proph . Isaiam

1099

monastischen ? - Theologie die in diesem Referrat angezeigte Herunternormierung der Prophetie getrieben wurde : Nostrifizierte Prophetie , die im Magma des visionären Phänomens diffus untergeht . Der Gedanke liegt nahe , bei der Untersuchung eines solchen Prophetie - Begriffs das Visionäre als Gattung zu nennen , darin sich Deutung der Prophetie und die Prophetie selbst unterbringen ließen , wie uns die Überlegungen über die extreme Parallelisierung der prophetischen Vorgangs und der gnostischen Deutung der Prophetie nahelegen . Im Kontext der damaligen Theologie lassen sich einige Übertreibungen milde beurteilen . Dies aber dispensiert uns von der Frage nach der Hellenisierung des Christentums nicht .

Die Subsummierung der Prophetie

die Frage nach der Offen-

barung! unter den griechisch-klassischen und hellenistischen Kategorien stellt einen provozierenden Vorgang dar . Ich anvisiere jetzt das Problem von der Seite einer personalistisch - dialogischen Philosophie und Theologie , die die Selbstbespiegelungen und Tautologien des abendländischen Gottesbildes denunziert und sich auf die Alterität des Anderen ( darunter die Illèité Gottes , z . B. bei Emmanuel Lévinas ) als befreienden Ausblick konzentriert hat .

B.

Was die Autorschaft des Kommentars angeht : Diese Orchestrierung der vision-

ären Prophetie mit Elementen aus der altalexandrinischen Topik vom Hören und Schauen ist noch im 4. Jahrhundert in Kappadozien möglich . angesprochene alexandrinische Topik

Gregor von Nyssa hat die hier

viel ausführlicher als der Verfasser des

Kommentars getrieben ( Das Leben des Moses , Hohenlied -Kommentar ) , woraus ich keine törichte Folgen für die Autorschaft des Kommentars ziehen will . Allein Basilius zeigt im keinem seiner echten Werke die leiseste Neigung , Prophetie im Spannungsfeld von visio et auditio zu thematisieren oder überhaupte eine Liste der Visionären aufzustellen , die wie im Kommentar und bei Origenes alle ' Heiligen ' des AT und NT 28 26 umfaßt . Die Parallelstellen aus den echten Basilius -Schriften bei Maran'27· Wittig 29 und Humbertclaude' was diese konkrete Thematik vom visionären Prophetismus angeht , sind karg und nach meiner Überzeugung prinzipiell unzulässig , weil sie bei Basilius 30 Bei nicht im Kontext einer Mystagogik nach alexandrinischem Muster stehen . Basilius , Gregor von Nyssa und Gregor von Nazianz vollzieht sich nämlich der Übergang von der alexandrinischen Gnostik zur christlichen Mystik . In der hier analysierten Schrift haben wir es hingegen mit einer Denkbewegung zu tun , die - vielleicht nur schulmeisterlich naiv , aber doch sehr dezidiert - Mystik in der Rückkoppelung an die alexandrinischen Gnostik auslegt .

I. Escribano-Alberca

1100 ANMERKUNGEN

1. Die Infragestellung der Kritik Jul . Garniers ( P.G. 29 , CCVI - CCXXX ) durch Joseph Wittig , Des hl . Basilius d . Gr . Geistliche Übungen auf der Bischofskonferenz von Dazimon 374/5 im Anschluss an Isaias 1-16 ( Breslau , 1922 ) , sorge für weitere Beschäftigung mit der Frage nach der Autorschaft der Schrift . P. Humbertclaude , ' A propos du commentaire sur Isaïe attribué à Saint Basile ' in R.S.R. 10 ( 1930 ) , 47-68 hat die These von Wittig mit einigen Korrekturen übernommen . Vgl . D. Amand de Mendieta , L'ascèse monastique de Saint Basile ( Maredsous , 1949 ) , S. 30 : Stellungnahme gegen die These von Humberclaude . Text mit italienischer Übersetzung , Indices unvollständig Einleitung und Anmerkungen : P. Trevisano , San Basilio . Commento al profeta Isaia , 2 Bde . ( Torino , 1939 ) . 2. Wittig , op . cit . , S. 21 . 3. P.G. 30 , 120A ; vgl . parallele Konstruktion des Aufstiegs mit Quyn am Anfang : In Isaiam VII , 193 , P.G. 30 , 452C : der hier geschilderte todos des Propheten ( auch des Abrahams und des Moses ) ist auch streng mit dem Aufstieg des christlichen Gnostikers parallelisiert ( 453A ) und gilt als Beler für die Anerkennung der Ekstase im Kommentar : vgl . Trevisano , II , S. 188. Terminologisch wird 125B - 128A wie auch 5684 gegen das Wort ἔκστασις gekämpft ( οὐκ κατ᾽ ἔκστασιν ) . 10. 4. Übersetzung H - D . Wendland , Das Neue Testament Deutsch ' , 7 ( Göttingen , 1964 ) , S. 114 . 5. Ausführlicheres darüber : I. Escribano -Alberca : ' Glaube und Gotteserkenntnis in der Schrift und Patristik ' , in : Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte , hrsg . von M. Schmaus , A. Grillmeier , L. Scheffczyk , I. Bd . Fasz . 2a ( Freiburg- Basel-Wien , 1974 ) , S. 59. 6. Stellen dazu bei Escribano- Alberca , op . cit . , S. 82-83. 7. Vgl . EvTuяоŨν oder тUTоŨν in Bezug auf die Vision des Propheten : 124A ; 128D ; 132C ; 432B ; 440A ; des ' Gnostikers ' : 121A : 132B . Zum Komplez der Inmaterialität der vernommenen qwvń oder opaous gehört auch der Vergleich mit Traumgesichten : 124B ; 440A . 8. Die neoplatonische Bestimmung des Prophetie-Amtes durch die naapóτns ( 125A ) legt die Annahme nahe , kontingestes Eingreifen Gottes , Gottes spontanes Handeln im Umgang mit dem Propheten sei nur auf die unwürdigen Träger der Prophetie ( Bileam , Kaiphas , vielleicht auch Nabukodonosor und der Pharao ) beschränkt : olxovoμιnãs έv αὐτοῖς ὁ λόγος , οὐ κατὰ τὴν ἀξίαν , ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν καιρόν ( 125A ) . Vgl . 4613 : Reihe von okkassionellen Propheten ( darunter Pharao , Kaiphas ) die nicht durch die ȧúa , sondern durch vorhandene άELоnLoτía als solche gelten . 9. Vgl . die nicht explizierte Anspielung an das Thema : 132C . 10. Bei 452A- 453A geht es wie üblich um die Überlegungen über Inmaterialität der Stimme Gottes , qwтɩoμós des Propheten usw .: die Entrückung des Propheten wird eindeutig thematisiert , und zwar unter der Chiffre todos , darin auch , durch Übung , der Sohn des Jesajas teilnehmen kann ( 453A) . 11. Proeomium 3 , P.G. 30 , 121C ; weitere Stellen über nadaρóτns beim Propheten : 120B ; 125A ; 361A ; 433A- D : nádaрous der Visionäre Abraham , Moses , Jesajas . Im Bezug auf die Taufe und die darauffolgende Erleuchtung : 193B - C ; 341C : náðaрols . 12. 121C . 13. 124B . 14. Zu Philos dεopopelodau vgl . Escribano-Alberca , op . cit . , S. 11 . 15. 124B . 16. 124B ; wτLouós beim Propheten : 229D ; 232A ; 452A ; 565C- D ; 568A ; beim christlichen Gnostiker : 380C ; 385B ; das Fleisch des Gottessohnes bei der Menschwerdung : 429A. 17. 124B ; vgl . die Stellen im 3. Teil dieser Arbeit . 18. 125B ; 565C- 568A . 19. Vgl . odos als Äquivalente 453A . 20. Vgl . Wittig , op . cit . , S. 46. 21. P.G. 30 , 124B , Anm. 40 : vgl . čμrpoo9εv opuv und einfach ópuv 132A ( kasuistisch verwendet je nach dem Fall , daß man Künftiges oder Gegenwärtiges schaut ) ; einfach opwv ( 568A ) bezogen auf das Künftige . Eine Rolle - ähnlich wie bei Klemens und Origenes - spielt die Steigerung von ἐνωτίζειν zum ἀκούειν : 137B - C ; 164Α-Β .

Der prophetie- Bergriff von In proph . Isaiam

1101

22. Die Topik ist materiell vorhanden , der Umschlag vom Hören zum Schauen ( Philo , Klemens , Origenes ) nicht angesprochen . Es gibt allerdings eine Reihe von Varianten zur Bedeutung des Namens Israel . 141C : Israel ὁρῶν θεόν , im Unterschied πρὸς τὸν ἁπλῶς λαόν ; 240A- B : Jakob RтερνLOτÉS - im Unterschied zu Israel ( Sieger- Preis bekommen ) : ethische Aspektе ( проиолń ) im Vordergrund ; 516A : Jakob als Anfang , Israel als Vervollkommnung ; 605C : Jakob als Erbarmen Gottes und Israel als Erwählter ; ibid. Jakob als das Somatische , Israel als das Pneumatische . 23. Der Deuter der Prophetie ist vous dɩораτɩnós ( 132B ) ; das echte Israel ( Kirche , christliche Gnostiker ) als ai quxai ai dɩораτɩнúтεpaɩ ( 516B ) ; die Vollkommenen , die die Akkomodation des Logos an die Menschheit ( origenistische Formel ) wahrgenommen haben , sind διορατικώτεροι ( 516A ) ; Israel ist τὸ διορατικὸν ἐν ἡμῖν ( 1893 ) . 24. Als Visionäre : Moses , Elias und Ezechiel ( 129A ) ; Moses 337D- 340A ; 385A ( Jέaµa ) ; 361A ; Paulus , Jesajas , Abraham , Moses 425C- 428B ; Moses , Abraham , Jeremias 433A- C ; der Visionär steht auch im Zusammenhang mit Sendung , was eine Denkwürdigkeit im Kommentar darstellt : 429B - 432C , Moses , Jesajas , Jeremias ; vgl . 436C ; als allgemeine Möglichkeit , zur Qualität der Visionäre emporzusteigen : 460A . Zu dieser -· nicht komplettierten Liste der Visionäre gesellen sich die Schrift - Propheten ( Prooemium und Kap . I ) . Die Propheten werden nach einem dreifachen Schlagwort geschichtet ( 132C- 133C ) : als Empfänger einer opaous , eines Anupa ( das den GabeCharakter der Prophetie bedeuten soll ) oder eines Aóyos . Bei genauerer Prüfung der letzteren Gruppe ergibt sich , daß die Propheten doch nachträglich die Wörter geschaut haben ( 133B ) , was zur hellenistischen Nostrifizierung des Hör- Elements der AT- Prophetie beiträgt . Die Propheten stehen im Bereich des Kontemplativen : 384B- C ; die Zukunftsantizipationen der Propheten werden auch betont ( 148D ; 284C - D ) . Die Kirche ist jetzt die Trägerin des χάρισμα προφητικόν es hat in ihr zuerst die Apostel , dann die Propheten gegeben ( 1 Kor . 12 , 28 ) nachdem es sich ergeben hat , daß die Juden nach Johannes dem Täufer keinen weiteren Propheten gehabt haben und die Schrift überhaupt nicht pneumatisch auszulegen imstande sind ( 284C ) . 25. Vgl . Stellen dazu Wittig , op . cit . , besonders S. 76-80 . 26. Die Visionäre bei Origenes wurden besonders hervorgehoben von : H. de Lubac , Histoire et Esprit ( Paris , 1950 ) ; M. Harl , Origène et la fonction révélatrice du Verbe incarné ( Paris , 1958 ) . 27. Vgl . P.G. 29 , Prolegomena , p . CLXVI ss . , wo Maran den Aufstieg des Moses bei Basilius (In Hexaëm. Hom . 1 ) und das Prooemium des Jesajas -Kommentar ähnlich findet . 28. Wittig hat die Thematik der Prophetie durchgeackert , war aber vornehmlich an der Frage nach der Text - Rekonstruktion ( Prooemium geschrieben in Neocäsarae usf . ) interessiert , was zur Vernachlässigung der Theologie über die Prophetie führte . Vgl . auch bei Wittig die Parallelstellen aus Hexaemeron 1 , 1-3 , op . cit . , S. 8 über Moses und die Prophetie ; vgl . Traum und Prophetie beim echten Basilius Wittig , op . cit. , S. 5-7 . 29. Humberclaude , op . cit . , S. 54 : Parallelstellen zu έvтUоυv ; S. 56 : über 2 Parallelstellen zum διορατικός . 30. Vgl . meine Abhebung der Mystagogik des Basilius von der alexandrinischen Tradition : Escribano -Alberca , op . cit . , S. 86-87 . Derselbe , ' Von der Gnosis zur Mystik : der Übergang vom 3. zum 4. Jahrhundert im alexandrinischen Raum ' , in : Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift , 19 , 4 ( 1968 ) , 286-294 .

Social Patronage and Political Mediation in the Activity of Basil of Caesarea Marcella Forlin Patrucco Turin

O act in the interest of justice , to honour friendship , and to protect people That in the continention of this threefold necessity is constantly expressed in almost every letter addressed by Basil of Caesarea to civil servants and intended 1 to solicit favours for the benefit of either individual persons or social groups . Particularly the last of these themes than that exercised by the bishop

the request for more powerful patronage

is worthy of special consideration . In order to

define the structure of the relationship between the summit of the political power and the various components of urban and provincial society in late fourth century Cappadocia , and also the incidence of the activities of Basil on the social , economic and political plan at the heart of such a structure , it is essential to understand the significance of this prostasia , and the ways and modes of intervention through which it is put into action . Now , the view expressed by certain authors2- of the role of city patrons played by the bishops of this period in terms of concurrence and rivalry between the ecclesiastical institutions and the traditional patrons in the exercise of philanthropic activity is based on a hypothesis which takes no account of the fact that the activity exercised by the bishop was played on two different and complementary grounds : on the one side a role of protection in favour of the lower classes , on the other an unexhausted action of political mediation between the citizens and the central government . The exercise of charitable activity towards the humiliores , inspired by pastoral care and in complete fidelity to an entirely spiritual mission , shaped a patronage of a social and economic kind ; beside it there was the action concretely carried 4 out - and witnessed with particular frequency in Basil's correspondence" on behalf of the urban and rural producing classes : action connected with those practical interests for public utility and for the development of the provincial economy which were peculiar to the members of the upper classes

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both christian and pagan

par-

Social Patronage and Political Mediation 5 ticularly in the Greek cities of the East .

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Only with reference to this kind of activity is it possible , I think , to speak for late antiquity about the exercise of an episcopal city patronage and about the bishop's entry into a role which suited him perfectly because of the humanitarian inspiration of his spiritual mission and because of his origin from the same local aristocracy which was endowed with economic power , traditions of culture and eloquence , and important relationships , within which the patrons were recruited . Basil himself refers to this aspect of the episcopal activity when writing in 371 to the church of Neocaesarea in Pontus on the occasion of the death of the bishop 7 Musonius . The letter , which represents a sort of manifesto of the bishop's action and lines of intervention in the social structures , sketches in outline the pastoral and political virtues sought in the orthodox successor of the deceased bishop : his social activity according to Basil is accomplished through the realisation of charitable institutions in favour of the needy and through the exercise of the role 8 of проστáτns of the dñuos , that is probably , according to the meaning of the word 6ños in late Greek , protection of the urban producing classes (workers , craftsmen , traders ) .9 This letter contains the only reference in Basil's correspondence to the activity of protection undertaken by the bishop , which is expressed by the technical term 10 Rootάrns : проотаσíα , however , in the basilian vocabulary , usually indicates patronage of a political , rather than an economic and social character , which was pec11 uliar to civil servants and which was the object of the bishop's appeals ." It is just this role of mediator between the central and the local power that in my opinion

must be kept quite separate from the patronage which the bishop

offered both to the producing classes and to the needy , when we speak about the episcopal interventions on behalf of the city community : according to this perspective , in the fourth century and in a widely christianized milieu , the institution of

роoтаσía is not merely absorbed by the philanthropic activity of the bishop ; on

the contrary , it is transferred from the members of the local leading classes to the civil servants . Through the mediation of the bishop as the letters of Basil witness or through the mediation of the sophist actively committed in the public life - such as Libanius 12 in Antioch these new patrons were presented with the same requests as the traditional ones had been : personal favours , a more correct pursuance of the laws , more rapid decisions , protection against the abuses of the central administration . The comparison with Libanius ' activity is useful in order to understand the sense of this role of mediator played by Basil : it seems to be placed in a line of absolute cultural and political continuity with the role of mediators between cities and Empire and of spokesmen of the local expectations played by the rhetoricians and philosophers of the early Empire , especially in the Greek Eastern cities . The activity

M. Forlin Patrucco 1104 of Philostratus and above all that of Dio Chrysostomus 13 had - in my opinion - the same meaning and the same essential objectives , that is the safeguarding of the autonomy of the city institutions through an agreement with the officials of the central government , the preservation of a certain political power of the local leading classes , and the enlargement of their social basis also through a defence of the middle classes . In a state drawn towards a growing centralization , there was someone who very early understood that the ancient city could be saved only through the mediation of these same civil servants . The most clear example of this role of mediator played by the bishop is given by Basil's appeals to officials on behalf of the curial class of Caesarea . He solicits their direct intervention , or at least their authoritative intercession , with the imperial entourage in favour of the city council , impoverished in wealth and number because of the more general tendency of the councillors of this period to escape the 14 service and because of local events , such as the bureaucratic and administrative measure which ordered the transfer of a number of Caesarean curials to the council 15 of a new-founded city in order to guarantee the tax collection . The councillors are according to Basil the support of the whole social and political structure 16 17 of the city¹6: their presence is a guarantee of cultural and economic vitality¹7 18 their compulsory transfer changes the city into a desert and goes against the state welfare , because it undermines the local basis of its leadership.19 Therefore , the request for intervention made by the bishop to the imperial officials reveals on one hand the purpose of preserving political power , economic resources and internal organisation to the local leading classes , and on the other hand the will to assert the existence of an essential solidarity between city and state interests , This twofold perspective , favourable at the same time to the council and to the state , is I think what distinguishes Basil's engagement in public life as contrasted with the activity exercised by Libanius : the Antiochene sophist - of curial origin , although personally exempted from the munera owing to his profession - shows , like Basil , a real interest in the city economy , and endeavours to protect the producing classes often in open polemics with the provincial governors , according to 20 the most ancient and short - sighted tradition of the local rulers in the Greek cities ' ; but , in face of the troubles of the local ruling classes , he draws the Emperor's attention to their state with a merely verbal and sentimental participation : and , although he deplores the decline of the city council , he employs inexhaustable energy 21 to obtain exemption from curial service on behalf of friends and disciples . On the contrary , in Basil's correspondence , there are no requests of άTelela , with one exception , which aimed at correcting a clear unlawfulness , on behalf of a four-yearold child , enrolled in the ordo in place of his grandfather , who had obtained im22 munity because of his age . And even the councillor , who had entered the army in order to escape curial duties

1105 Social Patronage and Political Mediation according to Libanius - otherwise obtained immunity23 ) , is exhorted (and who later 24 This was by Basil to give up his decision and not to desert the city council ." - as Basil says by itself a guarantee of high reputation for its members ; it was the 25 place where the old traditions were preserved ." This care for the welfare of the city council , considered as a consignee of traditional values is -- I think -a further proof of the leading role , both political and spiritual , played by the bish26 apxos of the city magistrates' not only for the safeguarding of their autonomy

op ,

against the centralizing tendencies of the state , but also in face of an essential convergence of economic and political objectives of central and local power . One has , however , the impression that this attitude of defence of the local government structure , although connected with a sincere attention to the public welfare , was expressed by evaluations mainly drawn from traditional political theories , but that it nevertheless covered a more mo realistic consideration of the present situation . Basil , by the concreteness and the practical sense that pervaded all his episcopal activity , really seems to have been well aware of the political conditions of his time , when the actual power was held by the state bureaucracy and the vitality of the city self- government , although proclaimed , was only an echo of the past : the same requests for intervention addressed to civil servants , and the passage into their hands of the exercise of patronage , are proof that power was completely transferred to the state . Then Basil , asking officials of the central government for prostasia , seems to take note of the ruin of the city institutions , although he keeps on proclaiming their vitality and public utility ; this is - I think - closely connected with the exercise of an episcopal activity particularly drawn

like that

of the bishop of Caesarea - from the principles of an active and committed christianity and from the precepts of evangelical charity . One must consider , in fact , that the delegation to civil servants of political intervention also at a local level , requested in the appeals to magistrates , after all allowed the bishop to undertake social and charitable activities without reserve : in this sense he seems to take his stand replacing the local ruling classes -as a privileged interlocutor of the state , in an already byzantine perspective .

REFERENCES 1. See for example Basil , Epp . 84 and 86 to the Praeses Cappadociae Helias ; 110 to the Praefectus praetorio Orientis Modestus ; 117 to the Magister officiorum Sophronius ; 179 to the comes Arinthaeus ; etc. In general , about the appeals of Basil to the imperial officials , see B. Treucker , Politische und sozialgeschichtliche Studien zu den Basilius -Briefen , Munich , 1961 . 2. See in particular L. Harmand , Un aspect social et politique du mond Romain . Le patronat sur les collectivités publiques des origins au Bas-Empire , Paris 1957 , pp . 432-433 ; on the theme of the episcopal tuitio see J. Gaudemet , L'Eglise dans

1106

M. Forlin Patrucco

L'Empire Romain (Ive - ve siècles ) , Paris 1958 , pp . 352-353 ; on the figure of the bishop- patron see also J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz , Antioch . City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire , Oxford 1972 , pp . 239-242 . 3. About the charitable institutions promoted and supported by the bishops of this period see J. Daniélou- H . I. Marrou , Nouvelle histoire de l'Eglise I, Des origins à Grégoire le Grand , Paris 1963 , pp . 368-369 ; in particular on Basil see S. Giet , Les idées et l'action sociales de Saint Basile , Paris 1941 , pp . 150-153 . 4. See for example Epp. 85 ; 88 ; 110 ; 303 . 5. See L. Cracco Ruggini , ' Le associazioni professionali nel mondo romano- bizantino ' , in Artigianato e tecnica nella società dell'alto Medioevo occidentale , Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull'Alto Medioevo XVIII , 1 , Spoleto 1971 , pp . 59-193 , particularly pp . 96-103 ; M. Forlin Patrucco , ' Aspetti del fiscalismo tardo - imperiale in Cappadocia : la testimonianza di Basilio di Cesarea ' , Athenaeum 51 , 1973 , pp . 294-309 . 6. On the recruitment of patrons in the imperial age see Harmand , op . cit . , pp . 287-328 ; see also P. Petit , Libanius et la vie municipale à Antioche au Ive siècle après J.-C. , Paris 1955 , pp . 290-291 . 7. Basil, Ep . 28 : see Treucker , op . cit. , pp . 29-35 . 8. Basil, Ep . cit .: οἱ παῖδες τὸν πατέρα ( scil . σκυθρωπάζουσι ) ... ὁ δῆμος τὸν προστάτην , οἱ βίου δεόμενοι τὸν τροφέα . 9. See E. Wipszycka , ' Les Factions du Cirque et les biens ecclésiastiques dans un papyrus égyptien ' , Byzantion 39 , 1969 , pp . 180-198 ; A. Cameron , Circus Factions . Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium , Oxford 1976 , pp . 28-39 . The exclusively urban character of the oñμos is also proved by Basil , Ep . 230 . 10. Basil expresses himself in terms of assistance , distribution of food , oikonomia, with regard to his own activities in favour of the needy : see for example Epp . 27 and 31 ; in Ep . 80 the prostasia of Athanasius means the defence of orthodoxy . 11. See for example Epp . 32 to the Magister officiorum : σúµBoulos na poστάτns , 33 to the imperial official Abourgius : έnì τhν onν наτаquуɛ˜ν проσтаσíaν , 178 to the same Abourgius : ὁ ἀνὴρ τυχῶν τῆς δικαιοτάτης προστασίας , etc. 12. See the texts of Libanius collected by Petit , op . cit . , pp . 291-292 ; Liebeschuetz , op. cit . , p . 197 . 13. See the recent works of P. Desideri , Dione di Prusa . Un intellettuale greco nell'impero romano , Florence 1978 , pp . 376-434 ; and C.P. Jones , The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom , Cambridge Mass . 1978 . 14. On the phenomenon of flight of curials see Th.A. Kopeček , ' Curial Displacement and Flight in Later Fourth Century Cappadocia ' , Historia 23 , 1974 , pp . 318-342 , with bibliography . 15. See M. Forlin Patrucco , ' Domus divina per Cappadociam ' , Rivista di Filologia e d'Istruzione Classica 100 , 1972 , pp . 328-333 . 16. Basil , Ep . 74 : τῶν κρατούντων ὑφαιρεθέντων , ὥστερ ἐρείσμασι πεσοῦσι συγκατενεχθῆναι τα πάντα . 17. Ibid. 18. Basil , Ep . 75 : σπανίζειν λοιπὸν καὶ τῶν οἰκητόρων την πόλιν καὶ γεγενῆσθαι τὰ τῇδε ἐρημίαν δεινήν ... 19. Basil , Ep . 74 : εἰπεῖν δὲ καὶ τοῖς παραδυναστεύουσι μὴ τοῦτον αὔξειν τὸν τρόπον τὴν βασιλείαν ... 20. Libanius , Orat . 56.16 ; Ep . 1406 ; on this subject see Petit , op . cit . , pp . 117118 and 234 ; Liebeschuetz , op . cit . , pp . 193ff . 21. See Libanius ' texts collected by L. Harmand , Libanius . Discours sur les patronages , Paris 1955 , pp . 96-97 . 22. Basil , Ep . 84 . 23. See P. Petit , Les étudiants de Libanius , Paris 1956 , pp . 140-141 ; Kopeček , op. cit . , pp . 327-334 ; M. Forlin Patrucco , ' Aspetti di vita familiare nel IV secolo negli scritti dei Padri cappadoci ' , in Etica sessuale e matrimonio nel cristianesimo delle origini , Studia Fatristica Mediolanensia 5 , Milan 1976 , pp . 158-179 , particularly pp . 167-168 . 24. Basil , Ep. 116 . 25. Ibid: ... ἀρκοῦν πρὸς ἀσφάλειαν βίου καὶ πρὸς πᾶσαν περιφάνειαν τὸ ἐξίσου τοῖς

Social Patronage and Political Mediation προγόνοις κρατῆσαι τῆς πόλεως ἡγησάμενον . 26. Basil , Ep . 28 : οἱ ἐν τέλει τὸν ἔξαρχον ; ations of Treucker , op . cit . , pp . 29-35 .

SP 3 - J

1107

see , on this subject , the consider-

Didymus the Blind is the Author of Adversus Eunomium IV/V Walter M. Hayes , S.J. Toronto

INCE the time I completed my work on the manuscript tradition of Basil's Adver the a in the wa ,u atrage son of to believe that the whole work , all five books , have come from the pen of St. Basil himself . When I referred to the author of books IV/V as ' ( Ps . ) Basil ' , with parentheses around ' pseudo ' , it was to leave open the possibility to prove on a better day that these works are the genuine products of the great Cappadocian.¹ I am positive that the joining of books IV/V with books I /III took place long before A.D. 460-475 , a date no more than a century after the death of Basil and only sixty years after the death of Didymus the Blind , when Timothy Aelurus quoted the text and included an error of one of the sub - families in the tradition . We have no manuscript evidence of an original independent existence of Adversus Eunomium I / III or of IV/V . It is true that we possess one or the other extant manuscript of Adversus Eunomium I / III alone and one or other manuscript of IV/V separate , but the text itself of these manuscripts is to be traced back to the archetype of the five-book edition issued under the name of Basil . Presumably Adversus Eunomium I / III must have circulated separately and IV/V must have been separate once , but we have no extant manuscript witness to this , for all texts we have now can be traced back only as far as the five book edition . Furthermore , the five books as a whole were copied five times between A.D. 379 ( or 398 ) and 460 , to account for the variations in the Greek text itself. In other words , the 20 or 30 extant manuscript copies of the five books that we do have can 3 all be traced back to this scribal activity of the early fifth century . It is possible that the early patristic witnesses to the text were using separated copies or loose folios or perhaps mere quotations of the text , but the Greek text that they have derives from the five- book tradition . Indeed , books IV/V ( under various titles ) were quoted and attributed to Basil by Timothy Aelurus ( 460-475 ) , Severus 1108

Didymus the Blind

1109

of Antioch ( 520 ) , Ephraem of Antioch ( 527 ) , and Leontius of Byzantium ( 550 ) ." I knew that I was flying in the face of the obvious difference of style between books I /III and IV/V and 1000 years of scholarly suspicion . I realized that the seventh-century fragment , British Library Additional manuscript 17201 represents the concluding folios of some work . The extant text itself is taken from Adversus Eunomium , book IV , and the fragment concludes with the statement that ( whatever it is the conclusion to ) this is a work of Didymus the Blind . A ninth -century scholion in Greek tells us that books IV /V are considered as spurious additions ( to books I / III ) 5 by many because of stylistic differences , but not because of unorthodox doctrine ." When George Trapezuntius translated the Greek into Latin in the fifteenth century he did all five books , but three centuries later Julian Garnier very unwillingly included IV /V in the Maurist edition of St. Basil . Of course , Migne copies his edition . Still later , John Dräseke ( 1892 ) assigned books IV/V to Apollinarius of Laodicea . The Russian scholar Anatolii Spasskii ( 1895 ) first opposed Dräseke and proposed Didymus the Blind as author . Franz Xaver Funk ( 1897 ) also pointed to Didymus on the basis of a lengthy comparison of theological content and similarity of vocabulary 8 and style between Adversus Eunomium IV /V and the De Trinitate of Didymus . Karl Holl ( 1904 ) assigned the books to Amphilochius of Iconium .

John Leipoldt thought neither

Basil nor Didymus was author . Grave doubts were expressed about the authorship of the two books by Bardy , Bardenhewer and Puech , but Altaner followed Funk and identified books IV/V with Didymus ' missing ( two book ) work De Dogmatibus et Contra Arianos . In 1937 Père Joseph Lebon brought forth the seventh- century Syriac witness (Addition10 al 17201 ) mentioned above , But , later , after the discovery of hundreds of pages of Greek papyri in Egypt , Père Dout releau denied the traditional authorship of the De Trinitate to Didymus ."11 Thus Funk's arguments would fall by the way . In 1959 in the re-edition of the Basil volumes of Migne , Dom Gribomont saw too much unresolved testimony and wrote : Interim in dubio relinquenda sunt ommia ista . In 1965 he suggest12 ed that the two books do belong to Didymus . In 1967 Père Pruche restated the Didymus question and suggested that the Syriac fragment belongs to the ( still ) lost book of Didymus Against the Arians , which ( he conjectures ) concluded with a lengthy 13 quotation from books IV/V of Basil's Adversus Eunomium. In 1967 Emmanuel Amand de Mendieta wrote : My only certainty in this matter is that these two books were not written by Basil of Caesarea . Lastly , in 1972 , Alasdair Heron defended Didymus ' claim to the authorship of De Trinitate against Doutreleau and maintained that Didymus was author of Adversus 14 Eunomium IV/V as well . However , even after all that , I felt that I finally had all the tools for a scientific proof : 1) I had established the stemma of the manuscripts . I understood how the text had been copied step by step . unpublished , but complete .

2 ) I had a critical text of IV/V . It is

3) I knew that Basil's scripture texts are relatively

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stable from one of his works to the next . They are not identical by any means , but they show a kind of metastability . The work of Linss showed what New Testament text 15 16 tradition Basil was in . Oliver had shown that Didymus was in a different tradition . My method , therefore , was to collect all the scripture references from IV/V , collate them with the variants of the large printed editions of the Scriptures , do the same for books I /III , discover the similarities and thus prove my point . I would find some idiosyncratic scripture texts common to all five books and show once and for all that Basil was the author . Scripture is quoted 205 times in books I /III and 314 times in IV/V . Only 20 of these are taken from the same locus in the sacred text . As it happens , these 20 were identical in both sets of books and so I had not proved my point . There were absolutely no vagaries , idiosyncracies , errors , or misquotations common to all five books . I then established a provisional list of 20 scripture readings peculiar to IV /V , 17 readings that appeared in no other source . Six of these were quoted correctly in I /III , fourteen were not quoted at all , and so I expanded the search , to look for these in all the writings of Basil . In all the works of Basil I could find these 20 places only 18

times and every

time Basil had the scripture quoted correctly . Among the pseudo - Basilian works I found the pecularities only three times , one in the Liturgy of St. Basil , and two times in spurious portions of Homily 25 , De Spiritu Sancto . I then argued to myself that perhaps these 20 readings were not to be found in Basil , but they would not be in any other writer against Eunomius either . I went through the works of Apollinarius of Laodicea ( 310-390 ) . The readings occurred 12 times . Error number three appeared two times , error two occurred two times and a third time Apollinarius had his own error in the text . The other seven times he had the text correctly . Surely this was not enough positive concurrence to prove common authorship . Adversus Eunomium draws scripture from 244 loci . Apollinarius ' De Sancta Trinitate draws it from 226 loci . They have 50 loci in common . If Apollinarius wrote the two works , we are forced to concede that he wrote two works on the same subject , quoting from the same scripture authors in the same proportions , and that he repeated himself fifty times , but did not repeat himself 420 times . Gregory of Nyssa ( 330-395 ) had error eight , once . His dubious work Testimonium Adversus Iudaeos had error three , once . Gregory of Nazianzus had error seven , once . Theodore of Mops uestia ( 350-428 ) had error two , once . ( Of course , the works of Sophronius against Eunomius are lost . ) The spurious works of Caesarius , brother of Gregory Nazianzenus , are a special case . In his Dialogi de Rebus Divinis , I found error two ( two times ) , seven and eight . If anyone wishes a suggestion , it might be that the author of the spurious portion of Basil's Homily 25 , De Spiritu Sancto , may well be the author of the Dialogi de Rebus Divinis . And I see no compelling reason why it cannot be Caesarius ,

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brother of Gregory . I then went through the pseudonymous literature , especially pseudo -Athanasius , to see if the author of Adversus Eunomium was there . De Trinitate et Spiritu Sancto has two of the errors . Dialogus Primus Contra Macedonianos , Dialogus Primus De Sancta Trinitate , and the De Incarnatione Contra Arianos each had two concurrences , surely not sufficient positive proof to indicate even common sources with Adversus Eunomium IV/V . I then came to Didymus the Blind . Although the 20 scripture quotations were in 18 his Commentaries , the errors were absent . It is clear that I cannot show positive proof that Didymus is our sought - for author , from the Commentaries . But when I came , finally , to the De Trinitate , the case was entirely different . Ten of the 20 misquotations occurred exactly as in Adversus Eunomium IV/V . In fact errors two and three are the normal form of the text which the author of De Trinitate uses . I then retraced my steps and made a study of all 244 different scripture loci quoted in IV/V and I found that 177 ( 72% ) of these occur in the De Trinitate . Therefore , the repertoire of quotations used in books IV /V is basically the same as that found in the De Trinitate . After comparing the 177 readings common to books IV/V and the De Trinitate , I found another 25 idiosyncratic readings ( a total of 35 ) that point to a common source . The two authors have basically the same vagaries , same techniques of grouping quotations , favour the same authors ( Isaiah , Psalms , John , Paul ) , in the same proportion . But , of course , Spasskii , Funk , Lebon , and Heron have already done this . There are differences between the two works , of course , but 35 positive concurrences in an idiosyncracy shared by no other work in the fourth century is many times more powerful in showing common origin than the many differences between the two works show separate authorship . Our author is marvelously inconsistent in quoting scripture , but within this inconsistency he shows still more marvelous concurrence in his idiosyncracy . I wish to cite just three examples : 1) Error number 3 is simply Didymus ' usual form of the text in the De Trinitate . 2) Error number 2 , again , is the only form of the phrase in the De Trinitate . 19 3) Error number 1 should be explained Adversus Eunomium has έnтɩoάunν in Genesis 4.1 . De Trinitate has έxτnoάunv in Genesis 4.1 , two times correctly , but as Mingarelli pointed out 200 years ago , the author thought it was to be spelled with an iota , 20 though his scribe wrote it with an eta . In both cases ( Adversus Eunomium , De Trinitate ) the author is explaining the controversial ( if not incorrect ) LXX version of Prov . 8.22 ἔκτισέ με κύριος . The Fathers traditionally took ἔκτισε for the Father and ue for Christ . Normally xτw means create ( and Arius began from there ) , so they had the problem to show that nтúw does not always mean ' create ' in the LXX version or that it does not refer to the divinity of Christ+21 . Of course , the translations

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of Aquila , Symmachus and Theodotion changed Prov . 8.22 from the LXX Entɩoe to the more correct ἐκτήσατο . Our author simply states ( in both works ) that the aorist active Entɩo

means

' generate ' because that is exactly what the aorist middle έxtɩoάunν means where it occurs in Gen. 4.1 . He does this once in Adversus Eunomium and once in De Trinitate . He does not return to the problem , for him the solution is clear . But this author is the only one in the fourth century who thinks that έntLoάunv appears in Gen. 4.1 . It seems improbable that two scholars working independently could make this mistake . It seems improbable that anyone who had ever seen the text of Gen. 4.1 would make this error , but it is quite probable that a blind theologian could , being deceived by the similar pronounciation of ἐκτισάμην and ἐκτησάμην . We know how difficult it is for a blind person to learn to spell words pronounced alike. And we know from the life of Didymus how he made wooden blocks in the shape of letters , to learn to spell . Since , however , Didymus had never seen the words in question , he could hardly have suspected from pronounciation alone that they were different . Conclusion : It is clear that the author of the De Trinitate is the author of Adversus Eunomium IV/V and that he is blind . The suggestions of Syriac MS Additional 17201 , Spasskii , Funk , Altaner , Lebon , and Heron have been proved conclusively from a textual approach showing a great number of positive concurrences in error . Old ambiguities remain , however . Perhaps the same man is not author of the Commentaries and the De Trinitate . But , if we must choose , I would choose that Didymus the Blind is author of the De Trinitate and not that of the Commentaries . But , to be sure , Didymus is author of both . Perhaps the De Trinitate is a composite work , a collection of exegetical soirées in Alexandria , like quodlibetal questions , derived from various authors . On the other hand , the scripture vagaries that I have found run evenly through all three books , and if anything , point to a common source , if not author , of the work . In the De Trinitate there are nine references to an earlier work of the same author , his пршτоs λÓуоs . Seven of the references point to books IV/V as the work in question , although two of the references are hard to identify in the Adversus Eunomium text in its present form , which itself may be abbreviated . Some of the old mysteries remain . How did a work of Didymus the Blind get connected with a work of Basil the Great , within fifty years of the death of each man? Basil died in A.D. 379 , Didymus in A.D. 398. The five -book edition had been copied five times and was in common use in 460. Basil and Didymus knew each other . Perhaps Didymus sent an unsigned copy to Basil , perhaps Basil placed it into the back of the autograph copy of his own Adversus Eunomium , perhaps after the death of Basil someone gathering his works together saw this augmented copy and published it as the full text of the Adversus Eunomium.

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But one mystery does not remain . The author of the Adversus Eunomium IV /V is the same as the author of the De Trinitate , and he is blind .

REFERENCES 1. Walter Hayes , The Greek Manuscript Tradition of (Ps . ) Basil's Adversus Eunomium, Books IV/V ( Leiden , 1972 ) . 2. (Ps . ) Basil , 137 . 3. (Ps . ) Basil , 157 . 4. (Ps . ) Basil , 5-15 . 5. (Ps . ) Basil , 26 . 6. John Dräseke , ' Des Apollinarios von Laodicea Schrift Wider Eunomios ' , Z.K.G. 11 ( 1890 ) , pp . 22-61 . 7. Anatolii Spasskii , Apollinaris von Laodikea ( Sergiev Posad , 1895 ) . 8. Franz Xaver Funk , published two years later as , Die Zwei Letzten Bücher der Schrift Basilius des Grossen gegen Eunomius ( Paderborn , 1899 ) . 9. Karl Holl , Amphilochius von Ikonium ( Tübingen , 1904 ) . 10. Joseph Lebon , ' Le Pseudo -Basile est bien Didyme d'Alexandrie ' , Muséon , 50 ( 1937 ) , pp . 61-83 . 11. Louis Doutreleau , ' Le De Trinitate est - il l'oeuvre de Didyme l'aveugle ? ' R.S.R. 45 ( 1957 ) , pp . 514-557 . 12. Jean Gribomont , ' Hans Dehnard : Das Problem der Abhängigkeit des Basilius von Plotin . Quellenuntersuchungen zu seinen Schriften De Spiritu Sancto ' , Revue d' Histoire Ecclésiastique 60 ( 1965 ) , pp . 487-492 . 13. Benoit Pruche , ' Didyme l'Aveugle est - il bien l'auteur des livres contre Eunome IV et V attribués à Saint Basile de Césarée ? ' Studia Patristica 10 ( Berlin , 1970 ) , pp . 151-155 . 14. Alasdair I.C. Heron , Studies in the Trinitarian Writings of Didymus the Blind ( [Doctoral Dissertation ] Tübingen , 1972 ) . 15. Wilhelm Linss , Four Gospel Text of Didymus the Blind ( [ Doctoral Dissertation ] Boston , 1955 ) . 16. Harold Oliver , Text of the Four Gospels as Quoted in the Moralia of Basil the Great ( [Doctoral Dissertation ] Emory , 1961 ) . 17. The search list was : 1. ( 1x) Gen 4.1 : ἐκτισάμην . LXX ἐκτησάμην . 2. ( 7x ) Ps 32.6 : λόγῳ τοῦ κυρίου . LXX om . τοῦ . 3. ( 6x ) Job 33.4 : πνεῦμα θεῖον . LXX πνεῦμα κυρίου . 4. ( 1x ) Mt 11.27 ( and Lk 10.22 ) : éáv . Ν.Τ. ᾧ ἄν . 5. ibid.: οὐδεὶς οἶδε τὸν πατέρα . Ν.Τ. οὐδὲ τὸν πατέρα τις ἐπιγινώσκει . 6. Mt 18.10 : θεωροῦσι . Ν.Τ. βλέπουσι . 7. ( 3x ) Jo 5.19 : ὁ πατὴρ ποιῇ . Ν.Τ. ἐκεῖνος ποιῇ . 8. ( 1x ) Mt 16.19 : τας κλεῖς . Ν.Τ. κλεῖδας . 9. ( 2x ) Mt 26.39 : πάτερ , εἰ δυνατὸν παρελθέτω . N.T. add μου , ἐστιν , παρελθάτω . 10. Μκ 2.7 : δυσφημεῖ . οὐδενός ἐστιν . Ν.Τ. βλασφημεῖ . τίς δύναται . 11. Lk 1.34-35 : om . καὶ δύναμις ὑψίστου ἐπισκιάσει , σοι and ἐκ πνεύματος ἁγίου ἐστι . Ν.Τ. ἅγιον κληθήσεται . 12. ( 1x ) Jo 1.18 : ἐν τοῖς κόλποις . Ν.Τ. εἰς τόν κόλπον . 13. Jo 12.40 : τετύφλωνται . Ν.Τ. τετύφλωκεν . 14. Το 14.7 : ᾔδειτε . Ν.Τ. ἐγνώκειτε . 15. ( 2x ) Jo 16.28 : ἐκ τοῦ πατρός . Ν.Τ. παρὰ θεοῦ . 16. Act 7.51 : σκληρῷ τραχήλῳ . Ν.Τ. σκληροτράχηλοι . 17. Act 22.10 : ὅτι σκεῦος ἐκλογῆς μοι εἶ . Ν.Τ. om . 18. Gal 1.4 : AÚTρOV . N.T. om . 19. Tit 2.13 : ἀπεκδεχόμεθα . Ν.Τ. προσδεχόμενοι . 20. ( 2x ) I Jo 5.20 : μόνον ἀληθινὸν θεόν . Ν.Τ. ἀληθινόν .

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The number in parentheses is the number of times the idiosyncracy was found in De Trinitate , that is for numbers 1,2,3,4,7,8,9,12,15,20 . 18. Commentary on Genesis , six times ; on Ecclesiastes , three times ; on Zecharias , seven times . 19. That is , Genesis 4.1 , Ps . 32.6 . 20. Mingarelli ( ed . ) , De Trinitate , in P.G. 39 , col . 384 . 21. Père Michel van Parys , ' Exégèse et théologie trinitaire chez les Pères cappadociens ' , Irénikon 43 ( 1970 ) , pp . 362-379 has shown this labour of the Fathers .

Remarques sur l'anthropologie philosophique de Grégoire de Nazianze (Poemata dogmatica, VIII, 22-32 ; 78-96) et Porphyre J. M. Mathieu

Caen

BORDER l'anthropologie de Grégoire de Nazianze à partir des critiques qu'il Apropre de certaines solutions concernant des problèmes classiques et scolaires de la philosophie hellénique , c'est à coup sûr choisir un point de vue très étroit . De l'étude d'un passage précis , où Grégoire critique des positions anonymes , presque perdues dans la foule des dorai , on peut pourtant tirer des conclusions intéressantes . Le morceau dont nous allons partir est situé à la fin des Poemata arcana , aux vers 22 à 32 du huitième poème dogmatique , le poème Sur l'âme.¹ Le schema de développement que présente dans son ensemble ce poème dogmatique fait succéder à l'exposé critique des opinions erronées anciennes la solution proposée par l'auteur ; c'est là une méthode de réflexion philosophique et un plan d'exposé bien classiques depuis Aristote .

Grégoire commence en effet par écarter les théories incompatibles avec l'immortalité de l'âme ( vv . 3-6 ) qui en définissent la nature par le feu ( vv . 7-8 ) , par l'air ( vv . 8-9 ) , par le sang ( v . 10 ) ou par l'organisation harmonieuse du corps (vv . 11-17 ) . ' Telles sont leurs idées'` › conclut -il . Ces idées s'expliquent toutes par une confusion : l'essence ne se réduit pas aux conditions nécessaires à sa réalisation (vv . 18-21 ) . A l'opposé , on est invité à ' écouter notre théorie sur l'âme , qui est la meilleure ' . On rencontre alors un assez long développement d'anthropologie chrétienne qui repose sur l'interprétation des premiers chapitres de la Genèse ( vv.53-129 ) . On aura remarqué qu'il y a un trou entre la critique préliminaire , qu'on croirait terminée , et l'exposé positif .

C'est que Grégoire introduit en appendice une théorie

nouvelle qu'il n'accepte pas et qui est soutenue par des gens qui sont aussi par5 tisans de la mentensomatose . Qui sont les tenants de ces idées ? Quelles sont les sources de la connnaissance qu'en a Grégoire ?

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Le contenu même des idées soutenues par les adversaires n'apparaît pas dès l'abord très clairement parce que Grégoire de Nazianze ne fait pas se succéder dans les vers 22 à 32 exposé et réfutation , mais présente seulement trois arguments critiques . C'est donc nous qui devons joindre les membres épars de la théorie critiquée .

Or on voit mal , au début , en quoi il s'agit d'une théorie nouvelle et

non point seulement de celle qui ramène l'essence de l'âme à l'air et à la respiration . Ces gens , dit Grégoire , font de l'âme une chose commune à tous , errante à travers l'air , inspirée et expirée ( vv . 23-27 ) : on reconnaîtrait alors la doctrine orphique évoquée par Aristote dans le De anima ( 410b ) , rappelée d'après Aristote 6 7 par Jamblique et dont nous avons encore d'autres témoignages . Mais il s'agit , dans cette première argumentation , d'une critique hyperbolique , comme le montre bien la suite du texte du Nazianzène . L'âme en effet n'est pas inspirée et expirée par la respiration de l'individu animé , elle demeure en lui ( μével : v . 28 ) . Ce n'est pas lui qui la tire de l'extérieur , c'est sa mère qui la ' tire en avant ' ou l''attire avant la naissance ' ( роfσлаσεν : v . 29 ) , qui la ' dévore ' ( dáлтw est employé au v . 31 ) .

L'intérêt de la théorie ne porte donc plus sur l'essence de l'âme ,

qui serait remenée au processus de la respiration , il concerne le mode d'animation 8 de l'embryon . Nous pouvons alors reconnaître les anonymes de Porphyre et de Jamblique .

Lors de la conception , selon ces gens , pour employer l'expression de

Porphyre , ' l'ardeur du sexe mâle dans l'accouplement et l'ardeur correspondante de la matrice arrachent une âme à l'air ambiant par le moyen de l'inspiration qui se 10 produit alors ' . Grégoire de Nazianze nous fournit un troisième témoignage sur une théorie qui paraît bien , d'après Porphyre , être celle de platoniciens anonymes , 11 interprètes du Timée 91bc ." D'où le Nazianzène connaît - il cette théorie qu'il qualifie de livresque ( v . 32 ) ? Il est vraisemblable qu'il se souvient justement de Porphyre , pour les deux raisons suivantes : 12 1. D'une part , en dépit de l'originalité des arguments de Grégoire de Nazianzel " 13 on peut voir qu'il partage l'idée porphyrienne de l'animation de l'embryon à la naissance et à la naissance seulement . La pointe du deuxième et du troisième argument que le Nazianzène forge contre ses adversaires anonymes paraît bien être en effet de refuser une erreur qui serait la symétrique de la metensomatose : de même que , dans la metensomatose , il y a plusieurs corps dont use une seule âme , de même , dans la théorie des anonymes , il y a plusieurs âmes qui traversent un seul corps .

La chose apparaît assez nettement dans le troisième argument ( vv . 30-31 ) :

si l'on pose en hypothèse une mère de plusieurs enfants , ou lui ' fait l'honneur 14 d'une multitude encore plus grande d'âmes dévorées ' que dans le cas précédent . Cela nous indique comment il faut interpréter le deuxième argument , dans son expression assez obscure . En voici une traduction développée : ' Si l'âme aérienne demeure dans l'être animé , qu'est - ce qu'avait de vivant le mère , qu'est - ce qu'elle

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a encore de vivant , en plus , dans ses entrailles , pour adopter l'hypothèse selon laquelle elle m'avait attiré en elle avant la naissance alors que j'étais à l'ex15 térieur ?'. Le scandale est l'adjonction d'une vie à une vie dans le même vivant , la présence de deux âmes dans le corps unique de la femme enceinte . On voit que , pour Grégoire comme pour Porphyre , l'embryon ne s'anime vraiment , ne possède vraiment une vie individualisée qu'après l'instant de l'accouchement .

2.

La convergence théorique que nous venons de noter est évidemment insuffisante

pour prouver une influence . Mais , dans le refus de la même théorie d'animation de l'embryon , on rencontre aussi , chez Porphyre et chez Grégoire de Nazianze , des parallélismes d'attitude qui vont presque jusqu'à la convergence verbale . Dans les deux cas , le caractère particulièrement étrange de la théorie repoussée lui vaut d'être présentée en vedette américaine et d'être commentée par quelques termes de mépris . ' J'ai entendu ( ou faut - il traduire : lu ? ) même quelqu'un , moi , qui nous 16 soutenait ... ' , commence Porphyre . ' Je sais aussi un autre discours que moi je 17 n'accepterai jamais ' , dit Grégoire.¹ Et de conclure , l'un , Porphyre , ce sont des 18 ' fables ' une ' fiction ' dont ' j'ai ri ' " l'autre , ' ce sont des paroles de sots , de 19 vains jeux livresques ' . Il n'y a sans doute pas copie . Mais un souvenir précis paraît plus vraisemblable qu'une simple attitude analogue . Le souvenir de Porphyre que nous avons là n'est pas sans signification pour interpréter la pensée du Nazianzène . D'abord il nous confirme le créatianisme de 20 Grégoire de Nazianze . Les textes qu'on invoque généralement pour le prouver sont le plus souvent de ces passages moraux , mystiques ou métaphoriques , où l'individu humain est assimilé à Adam ou dans lesquels seule importe la toute première origine 21 divine de l'âme ." On ne trouve , parmi eux , qu'un seul texte non ambigu qui traite ex professo de l'origine de l'âme individuelle en distinguant nettement le problème de celui de la création de l'âme d'Adam ; mais ce passage qui figure dans la suite du Poème dogmatique : Sur l'âme ( vv . 78-96 ) , s'efforce justement de concilier les avantages du créatianisme et du traducianisme . Pour appliquer à l'animation individuelle la description de l'animation d'Adam ( Gen 2 , 7 ) , deux théories successives sont présentées .

L'une affirme un créatianisme dont le mode n'est compris

que par Dieu seul : à travers le développement des générations humaines la chair vient de la chair , l'âme s'y mèle de l'extérieur , de façon inconnue , selon un pro22 cessus que connaît uniquement l'auteur de cette insufflation et de ce mélange . La 23 seconde théorie veut préciser , mais seulement à titre d'hypothèse : parallèlement à la façon dont la racine adamique se développe depuis le corps primitif formé de terre , il y a multiplication par division de l'âme originelle , souffle de Dieu ; elle s'unit aux modelés humains άptɩyévedios ( v . 88 ) , à l'instant même de la naissance , en donnant à cette matière sa véritable forme spécifique .

On voit qu'il

n'y a plus créatianisme que si l'on interprète strictement le seul terme artigenethlos . Il y a alors une sorte d'harmonie préétablie entre la façon dont poussent les

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chairs humaines depuis la chair d'Adam et la participation de tous les individus S'il

humains à l'âme d'Adam , créée par Dieu , qui se divise en âmes individuelles .

y avait animation de l'embryon dès la conception , nous serions en plein traducianisme .

On ne manque sans doute pas d'arguments lexicologiques pour interpréter 24 strictement ce mot d'artigenethlos . Il n'est pourtant pas mauvais de trouver aussi

un autre texte qui permet d'affirmer que Grégoire de Nazianze professe l'animation à la naissance . Plus généralement , nous pouvons ainsi illustrer le dialogue permanent qui s'est établi , dans l'anthropologie de Grégoire de Nazianze comme chez les autres auteurs de son siècle , entre l'interprétation des premiers chapitres de la Genèse et les théories de la philosophie du temps . Porphyre avait su voir , dans Genèse 2 , 7 , l'expression mythique employée par le théologien hébreu pour décrire l'animation du 25 dehors à la naissance ." Symétriquement , Grégoire de Nazianze est capable de se souvenir de Porphyre pour comprendre et exposer une anthropologie qu'il veut biblique . Les références de Grégoire de Nazianze aux problèmes philosophiques traditionnels ne se réduisent pas au mécanisme répétitif de doxographies mortes .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. Grégoire de Nazianze , Poemata dogmatica , VIII ( De anima ) : Migne , Patrologia , series graeca , vol . 37 , col . 446-456 . R. Keydell ( ' Ein dogmatisches Lehrgedicht Gregors von Nazianz ' , Byz . Z. , 44 ( 1951 ) , pp . 315-321 ) a montré que les P.D. I - V et VII- IX forment un seul ensemble suivi . Avec D.A. Sykes ( ' The poemata arcana of St. Gregory Nazianzen ' , J.T.S. , 21 ( 1970 ) , pp . 32-42 ) , je désigne par Poemata arcana , expression dont le contenu est plus vaste sous la plume des copistes , cette suite cohérente qu'on peut aussi bien considérer avec Keydell comme un seul long poème complexe . 2. Les deux premiers vers , qui donnent une définition de l'âme fondée sur Gen 2 , 7, introduisent toutefois à l'ensemble du poème . 3. Κεῖνοι μὲν δὴ τοῖα ( ν . 18 ) . 4. Ημέτερον δ᾽ ἀΐοις ψυχῆς πέρι μῦθον ἄριστον ( ν . 53 ) . 5. Le vers 33 affirme cette identité ; dans les vingt vers qui suivent , il n'est plus question que de la metensomatose . 6. Jamblique , De anima , in Stobée , t . I , p . 366 , 17-20 Wachsmuth . Reprise textuelle d'Aristote : cf. B. Dalsgaard Larsen , Jamblique de Chalcis , t . I , p . 206 . 7. Quelques uns sont cités dans les notes ad locum de sa traduction du De anima de Jamblique par A.J. Festugière ( La révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste , t . III , p . 187 , n . 1-6 ; p . 188 , n . 1 ) . 8. Porphyre , Πρὸς Γαῦρον περὶ τοῦ πῶς ἐμψυχοῦται τὰ ἔμβρυα ( Ed . K. Kalbfleisch , Abhandl . Akad. Berlin ( 1895 ) , pp . 33-62 ) , p . 35 , 9-17 ; cf. p . 48 , 18-20 . 9. Jamblique , De anima , in Stobée , t . I , p . 381 , 15-22W . 10. Porphyre , op . cit . , p . 35 , 10-12 ( trad . Festugière , op . cit . , t . III , p . 268 ) . 11. Il faut considérer Porphyre comme le témoin principal ; le texte de Jamblique a des chances d'être dérivé de Porphyre par systématisation ( Festugière , op . cit . , t . III , p . 225 , n . 3 in fine ; p . 268 , n . 5 ) . Les anonymes de Porphyre sont des platoniciens ( Porphyre , op . cit . , p . 35 , 22-23 et surtout p . 48 , 18-20 ) ; la description du Timée 91bc a pu donner lieu à une telle exégèse ( cf. Festugière , op . cit . , t . III , p . 268 , n . 6 ) .

1119 L'Anthropologie philosophique de Grégoire de Nazianze 12. Il n'y a pas de réfutation isolée chez Porphyre . La réfutation s'identifie à l'ensemble du traité . 13. Jamblique (De anima , in Stobée t . I , p . 381 , 6-14W . ) croit à une animation progressive . 14. Ψυχαῖς δαπτομένησιν ἔτι πλεόνεσσι γέρηρας ( ν . 31 ) . 15. Εἰ δὲ μένει , τι μὲν ἔσχε , τί δ᾽ ἐν σπλάγχνοισι τεκούσης Ζωὸν ἔτ᾽ , εἰ κείνη με προέσπασεν ἐκτὸς ἐόντα ; P.D. , VIII , 28-29 . 16. Ἤκουσα δ᾽ ἤδη τινὸς ἐγω διατεινομένου πρὸς ἡμᾶς ... : Porphyre , Πρὸς Γαῦρον , p. 35 , 9-10 , K. 17. Οἶδα δὲ καὶ λόγον ἄλλον , ὃν οὔ ποτε δέξομ᾽ ἔγωγε : Grégoire de Nazianze , P.D. , VIII , 22 . 18. Porphyre , op . cit . , p . 35 : τούτους ... τους μύθους ( 1. 17 ) ; πλάσμα ( 1 , 19 ) ; γελάσας ( 1. 18 ) . 19. Οὐ πινυτῶν ὅδε μῦθος , ἐτώσια παίγνια βίβλων : Grégoire de Nazianze , P.D. , VIII , 32 . 20. C. Ullmann , Gregorius von Nazianz der Theologe ( 2e éd . , 1867 ) , pp . 289-291 (Poem. Mor . , I , 392-396 ) . W. Ackermann , Die didaktische Poesie des Gregorius von Nazianz ( 1903 ) , pp . 48-49 ( il ajoute Poem . Dogm . , VIII , 1 ; Poem. Mor . , XV , 151 ; P.M. , XXXIV , 23 ; P.M. , X , 60-61 ; P.D. , VIII , 79-81 et 90-96 ) . 21. Même P.M. , I , 392-396 est , en raison de ses intentions morales , plus obscur que le passage du P.D. , VIII qu'il reprend partiellement ( voir note suivante ) . 22. P.D. , VIII , 78-81 . Les vers 80-81 sont textuellement repris en P.M. , I , 395396. 23. P.D. , VIII , 82-90 . 24. Cet hapax nazianzénien est un composé en -os de yεvéλn , mot qui peut sans doute avoir aussi une signification étendue , mais qui , dans l'usage normal comme dans ses emplois nazianzéniens , désigne tout spécialement la naissance elle -même ( ainsi P.D. , IX , 60 ; 64 ; etc. ) . Le composé de même structure ἀλλο γένεθλος , que l'on rencontre aussi chez Grégoire de Nazianze ( P.D. , V , 22 ) , est un terme technique astrologique désignant ceux dont la naissance , différemment située dans le temps , entraîne une configuration différente des astres . 25. Porphyre , Пpòs Taupov , p . 48 , 14-17 .

Gregory of Nyssa and Plotinus Anthony Meredith, S. J. Oxford

TTEMPTS to illustrate the nature and assess the extent of Plotinus ' influence

A on Gregory of Nyssa are often confined to a search for verbal or phraseological similarities . A good example of this approach is provided in an article by the late Cardinal Daniélou¹ , in which he assembles an impressive array of parallels between Enneads i.6 . and vi.9 on the one hand and De Virginitate x , xi , and xii on the other . The linguistic likeness are at times quite striking . For example , Plotinus at Ennead i.6.9.26 and Gregory at De Virginitate x ( Jaeger Vol . viii.1.289.2 ) , both use the rare word Anun to describe the film that grows over the eye of the mind , which needs to be removed if the eye is to see properly .

Unfortunately for any theory of direct

dependence of Gregory on Plotinus , the similarities never seem to extend beyond isolated words to whole phrases . The general context and structure differ . It seems therefore unwise to argue too much from isolated expressions over a fairly restricted area . It should also be remembered that the De Virginitate is an early work of Gregory and probably dates to the time before he was made a bishop in 372.

Another

verbal similarity between the two authors may be found by comparing the opening of Ennead iv.8 and the beginning of Gregory's De Instituto .? Here the link image is that of waking up out of the body .

But here the similarity of image is not supported

by any close linguistic parallels .

Again there is the use made at Or . viii in Cant.

Cant . ( Jaeger Vol . vi 258.8 . ) of the expression tò čv , which is regarded by H. 3 Doerries ( T.L.Z. 1963 , p . 580 ) as an ' unverkennbar neuplatonischer Zug ' . Other writers abandon the search for verbal echoes and appeal instead to a ' connaissance directe ' ", without further specification . W. Jaeger , however , in his 5 discussion of the Adversus Macedonianos and E. Muehlenberg in ' Gregory of Nyssa and 6 Philosophy try to discover in the actual structure of Gregory's argument evidence of philosophical influence . Several factors bedevil the whole discussion . 1. We do not know how widely diffused was knowledge of Plotinus ' writings in late 1120

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Gregory of Nyssa and Plotinus antiquity .

They seem to have circulated in separate treatises , rather than in the

organized form imposed upon them by his friend and biographer , Porphyry .

That they

were known in the East is clear from the extensive extracts made by Eusebius in the Praeparatio Evangelica.

But the only Enneads that seem to have made much impression

were all early i.6 ( 1 ) , iv.7 ( 2 ) , vi.9 ( 9 ) , v.1 ( 10 ) .

It is hardly likely , there-

fore , that an educated man like Gregory would have been ignorant of the works of Plotinus . 2.

Despite this there is no mention by him , or by fellow Cappadocians , either of

Plotinus or of his two successors , Porphyry and Iamblichus .

Perhaps they ( sc . the

Neoplatonists ) were too deeply tainted with the pagan revival under Julian to recommend themselves to serious minded Christians .

Marius Victorinus , Ambrose and

Augustine in the West seem not to have experienced the same qualms . The aim of the present paper is to illustrate the basic principles that underlie the theology and spirituality of Plotinus and Gregory by means of a close examination of one passage from each of the two authors .

The obvious disadvantage of such a

method is that the passages selected will necessarily be arbitrary and therefore , perhaps , unrepresentative of the thought of the respective authors . It also fails to take into account the circumstances for which the original works were produced and the state of evolution of their minds at the time of writing .

So , for example , the

passage from Plotinus comes from his earliest treatise but one ; that from Gregory comes in all probability from the end of his life . There are , however , advantages . To begin with it roots the discussion in particular texts and language . Secondly both authors have this in common , their theology and their spirituality are inextricably intertwined . The passage from Plotinus comes from Ennead iv.7.10.42-52 and is the climax of a section composed in large measure of echoes from or paraphrases of Plato . The following is a translation : ' For it is not by running somewhere outside that the soul perceives prudence and justice ; but she discovers it in herself in her own selfawareness . She sees situated within herself images as it were of what she once was , overlaid with the rust of time , and she cleans them .

It is as though there were

some living piece of gold which had shaken itself free of all the earth it contained . Before ( sc . it did that ) it was in ignorance of what it had once been , when ( = because) it could not see the gold .

Afterwards it would be astonished on seeing itself bereft

of all accretion , and it would be aware that it had no need of any extraneous beauty , on the grounds that it was itself best of all , if only it were allowed to remain by itself ' . This passage and what immediately proceeds it make certain characteristic Plotinian teachings very clear .

1. The soul is by nature akin to the divine and eternal nature ( of mind ) ( iv.7.10.1 ) . Further than that the soul is somehow of the same substance oμooúotos with the divine

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( iv.7.10.19 ) - a truth emphasised elsewhere , e.g. v.1.3.1 , where it is simply stated and assumed as the presupposition of the whole argument . 2.

In her true state the soul has no element in her of unreasoning passion , anger or

any other kind of pathos .

When Plotinus speaks of the soul he means us to understand

the pure soul , which has rid itself of all such inessential additions ( cf. iv.7.10 . 7ff) . 3. Therefore , in order to reveal the true nature of soul it is above all necessary to purify it of all extraneous elements , which have somehow grown onto it , so obscuring its native loveliness .

In this way the true nature of the soul will be dis-

covered , not acquired ( iv.7.10.10ff ) .

So he writes at iv.7.10.30 : σκόπει ἀφελών ,

language which finds a close echo at the end of a very late treatise v.3 ( 49 ) . Rising to perfection is not here envisaged as growth towards a previously unpossessed condition , but as the purification of all alien elements , and this picture accords well with the sort of vision presented in other Enneads taken from different periods of Plotinus ' life , i.2 ( 19 ) , iii.5 ( 26 ) and i.1 ( 53 ) . The following further points arise from the translated passage :

1. The discovery of value and of mind is made by introversion , not by searching outside . This is very characteristic Plotinian teaching , which also found its way into the Confessions , and may be found at Ennead i.6.8.4ff ; i.6.9.1 ; vi.8.18.1-5 ; vi.9.7.2,17 ; and is the constant theme of the great treatise on Contemplation Enn . iii.8 , with its constant advice to go inward . It presupposes the perpetual presence of mind and can be seen as a clear consequence of the principle of Plotinus that the cause of anything always rests immanent in the effect . Besides being , as Bréhier notes on Ennead . v.5.8 , ' the enemy of all Messianism ' , it squares also with the general principle of Plotinus that the upper soul , at any rate , does not fall , remaining always in the intellectual world . The soul being by nature and definition supremely active , it cannot change , it cannot sin and it cannot suffer . The problems this doctrine raises for any coherent and adequate account of ignorance , sin and sensation are considerable , and they were not ignored by Plotinus himself , as is attested by the discussion of yvwous áraðns in iv.4.18 and of the άnádɛua of the upper soul at i.1.12 and iii.6.5 . 2. The teaching of Plotinus that the uncovering of the true nature of the soul is to be achieved by a removal of what he calls rust can be seen as a partial , though very imperfect , solution to the problem raised in the last paragraph . Imperfect it is as a solution to the problem of the provenance of sin and passion , simply because ex hypothesi the dirt cannot come from the true soul ; therefore it ought to come from outside . But as the ' outside ' depends for its existence on the activities of the spiritual principle , we are back where we started .

The question is not how we are to be rid of the rust , a problem he also treats at Enn.i.6.5.45 , but how it got there in the first place ; and that is a question which on his own principles he is

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unable to answer. 3.

A final point should be made .

In his denial at line 51 that the soul needs any

foreign beauty for its own perfection , Plotinus seems to be affirming both the natural self- sufficiency and self-perfectibility of the human soul . It requires nothing external to make it more beautiful - no grace , that is and it is able to recover lost loveliness without any outside aid . To be perfect on this system is to have become once again by one's own efforts what one had never ceased to be . The natural beauty and the natural powers of the soul are restated by Plotinus at Ennead ii.9 , a work described by Professor Dodds as a ' noble apology for Hellenism ' . The doctrine of self- discovery through introversion exists side by side with a slightly different strain in Plotinus ' thinking . At Ennead iii.8.11 he draws an important distinction between the One , which is totally self- contained and does not strive beyond itself and Mind which is in a perpetual state of qeous . Mind arrives at its full status as mind only by forever striving upwards ἐφιέμενος ἀεὶ καὶ ἀεὶ TUYXάvwv .

Again at Ennead v.1.6.47 Plotinus suggests that the essence of mind is to

be directed beyond itself , and that only by this self- transcendence does it truly become mind . As R. Arnou notes towards the end of Le desir de Dieu chez Plotin , the condition of the possibility of desiring is the actual present possession of that for which the desire is felt . The picture of Mind as constituted by a perpetual tension between possession and desire is prima facie different from that offered by the more static vision of Ennead iv.7.10 . Even so the dynamism of the doctrine of ephesis allows no real possibility of progress or growth at one particular stage . The result both of rust removal and upward striving both assume the present possession in some sense of that at which the process of spiritual self-discovery aims . To be soul and to be mind are not seen by Plotinus as in any sense disparate states . Beginning and end are the same and soul and mind exist in the same spiritual continuum ( cf. Dodds , Froclus pp . 290 , 299 ) . Gregory of Nyssa begins Or . vi in Cant Cant as follows .

' Spiritual substances are further divided as follows : first there is the uncreated substance , itself the

creator of all things , that remains eternally what it is . Remaining ever unchangeable , it transcends all addition or diminution ; it cannot receive any further perfection . The other class of spiritual substance has been brought into being by creation ; thus it constantly looks towards the first cause and is preserved in existence by a continual participation in transcendent being . Thus , in a certain sense , it is constantly being created , ever changing for the better in its growth in perfection ; along these lines no limit can be envisaged , non can its progressive growth in perfection be limited by any term ' ( Jaeger ( ed . ) , Opera Gregorii Nysseni Vol . vi . , p . 174.1-11 , translated by H. Musurillo as extract 46 in From Glory to Glory ( London , 1962 ) , and for discussion confer Balas op . cit . , p . 133 ) . Fundamental to Gregory's theology , here and elsewhere , is the sharp and radical

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distinction he makes between all creatures , even spiritual beings like angels , and their Creator .

Although God , the angels and human souls all belong to the same

class of spiritual beings , they are separated by a distinction more significant than the fellowship that unites them . They all depend on him for their existence . He is immutable , they are forever in motion .

Although it is true that the Plotinian Quyń

is always aspiring , its aspiration has as its ground an already possessed and immanent end . For Gregory the very converse is the case . The end is not immanent and their whole being is dominated by a perpetual stretching out for an end which will never be fully attained .

Here we meet what Cardinal Daniélou regarded as the

keystone of the later and more mature spiritual writings of Gregory , above all the fifteen sermons on The Song of Songs .

I refer to the doctrine of epectasis and its

attendant text , Philippians 3.13 . In the passage before us , however , progress is not simply envisaged as going from 10 one point to another . Created reality progresses by means of addition of being , a fact that distinguishes it from uncreated reality , which is described in the above passage as beyond all increase and diminution . The language employed at this point is striking and Gregory clearly feels that it needs some apology . with the words τρόπον τινά .

He introduces it

Created spiritual reality shares by participation in

being not only in virtue of its creation , but also because by contemplation and the life of virtue it is acquiring more reality . The change it undergoes is not some accidental embellishment , but a real change in the order of being . It is a further participating that expands the capacities of the soul . (P.G. 46.105 a-c ) offers the same sort of picture . capacity increases the more they receive . stop even after death .

De Anima et Resurrectione

Souls are like buckets , whose

This process is unending and does not

The teaching of Gregory , that to know the divine goodness and obey the divine will entails real growth in being , is not isolated or out of harmony with his other teaching .

1.

Gregory consistently refuses to draw a distinction between the image and the

likeness of God in man ; that is between the essential and the accidental excellences of man . To be fully a man is not simply the actual possession , but also the actual 11 use of the powers received ." 2. Gregory insists , above all in the Adversus Macedonianos , that the Holy Spirit is 12 not idle during the work of creation ." He is and always has been present bringing to perfection the work begun by the Father in the Son .

This work of τελείωσις is at

the same time the termination of creation and the perfecting of rational creatures in knowledge and virtue .

Basil's tendency in Liber de Sancto Spiritu ix.22 and

Contra Eunomium iii.2 to sever the work of the Son and the Spirit is not endorsed by 13 his brother . There are two central points of divergence between the visions of Plotinus and of

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Gregory . 1.

Both see spiritual growth as intimately connected with their respective meta-

physical systems .

But whereas Plotinus preaches a sort of graded hierarchical monism one's position in which is totally determined by the degree of one's conversion , for

Gregory there is no such hierarchical ladder . However excellent a person may become , it is impossible for him to escape from the sphere of creation . But within that sphere progress is , at least in his more mature writings , endless .

However hard

someone tries to perfect himself in virtue , he will never be able to become an angel and a fortiori God . The gulf that separates the two is great and unbridgeable . То put it slightly differently , the class of ousia for Gregory is static and inescapable ; for Plotinus it is dynamic , continually caught up in the motion of fall and reversion that are at the heart of his system . 2.

The Plotinian doctrine of return through rediscovery and purification , such as

we find expressed at Ennead iv.7.10 and elsewhere , finds an echo , and perhaps more , in De Virginitate x- xii and in Confessions iii.vi.11 and x.xxvii.38 . In both places the search for infinite beauty is closely connected with the inward journey . In the Commentary on the Song of Songs , however , there is no doctrine of the inward journey . There is also a belief in the constant growth of the soul increasing its powers yet remaining forever firmly rooted in the created , finite order . Again , for Gregory , unlike Plotinus , the cause is not immanent in the effect . God is not present in things as the real though obscured source of their inmost nature .

Change , growth and clear distinction of orders lie at the heart of Gregory's spiritual metaphysics ;

the ultimate identity of cause and effect , of beginning and end , of subject and object , and the consequent possibility of real intuition and union and the impossibility of any real change are the basic conditions of Plotinian metaphysics .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. J. Daniélou , ' Grégoire de Nysse et Plotin ' , Congrès de Tours, Association Guillaume Budé ( 1954 ) , pp . 259-262 . 2. H. Langerbeck in T.L. Z. ( 1957 ) pp . 81-90 , where he writes , ' die einzige Stelle bei Gregor ist für die direkte Lekture und Paraphrasierung von Plotin , die zumindest einem hohen Grad von Wahrscheinlichkeit hat ' . 3. To this solitary example might possibly be added the not infrequent description of God in Gregory as vouv UпEрÉxwv at In Cant . Cant. ii ( J.68.5 ) ; iii ( J.87.8 ) ; v (J.157.15 ) . 4. On this whole subject , and especially for the perceptive analysis of passages in the Contra Eunomium cf. D. Balas , Metousia Theou, Man's participation in God's perfection according to St. Gregory of Nyssa , S.A. 55 ( Rome , 1966 ) , p . 104 . 5. W. Jaeger , Gregor van Nyssa's Lehre vom Heiligen Geist ( Leiden , 1966 ) . 6. E. Muehlenberg in Ecriture et Culture philosophique dans la pensée de Grégoire de Nysse ( Leiden , 1971 ) . 7. For a treatment of the Plotinian doctrine of the unfallen soul the best discussion is still in E.R. Dodd's 1963 edition of Proclus , Elements of Theology , esp . pp . 242 , 309. A neat expression of the doctrine is at Ennead iv.8.8.2 .

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8. On the doctrine of qcous see Ennead iii.4.1 ; v.i.6 ; v.9.4 ; iii.9.9 . 9. For an important parallel see Contra Eunomium i.270 . 10. Cf. De Infantibus in the edition of Hilda Polack , Jaeger Vol.iii.2.1 13.29 . 11. See Or . Cat . Magna 5. ( ed . Srawley p . 24.5 ) and the note ad loc. 12. Adv . Macedonianos , Jaeger vol . iii.1 97.21ff . 13. Interesting parallels to the view of Gregory that the soul grows by the spiritual nourishment it receives may be found in Origen , De Principiis ii.11.7 and De Or. 27.5 though he does maintain the distinction of image and likeness at Contra Celsum iv.30 ; and to the view of Plotinus that conversio is at the same time an act of formatio see especially Augustine , De Genesi ad Litteram i.v.10 and Confessions xiii.ii.2 .

The Bible and Greek Classics in Gregory Nazianzen's Verse

D. A. Sykes, Oxford

S we read much of the verse of Gregory Nazianzen we may well form the impresAⓇ sion of a blending of elements , with the intention of producing a homogeneous whole . The language of Homer and Callimachus is not unskilfully merged with expressions drawn from Greek philosophers or the Septuagint or the New Testament , the result being what might be expected of competent didactic verse which had always shown itself amenable to the incorporation of diction taken from diverse , and even apparently alien sources . With Gregory we may feel that this is not simply a matter of literary ability , but that it represents an overt claim to be , as an educated Christian , a legitimate inheritor of the full tradition of the classical world.¹ Now without wishing to disturb this pattern at the level of language , I would like to enquire briefly into some of the ways in which Gregory treats the thought content in passages emanating from biblical and classical sources . Are these elements sewn together as neatly as the linguistic and stylistic ? We may find that the first four divisions of the Maurist classification , though only a general guide to content , are useful enough to be considered in turn . The Poemata Dogmatica exhibit as well as any section of Gregory's verse the interweaving into a pattern which has a classical epic basis of strands of vocabulary and allusion drawn from other forms of Greek verse and from classical and biblical prose . It is however notable that in the poems which are concerned with the exposition of central Christian theological themes ( 1-11 ) there is little resort to the thinking of classical writers . Apart from some vaguely pervasive Platonic notions , Greek thought is represented mainly by the philosophers who are introduced to be refuted .? If these poems contain strains of apologetic , it is defence based upon outright assertion of Christian tenets , rather than upon an appeal to common elements . The allusions are firmly controlled , limited in application , essentially stylistic rather than intended to evoke views held by classical writers . Words taken from Callimachus'

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Hymn to Apollo are firmly appropriated for Christian use : ootus ȧλɩтpós must be interpreted through the ideas of sacred and profane as they developed through Jewish 3 into Christian experience , with Mount Sinai as a determinant , and without any hint of acceptance in any form of either the standards of purity or the forms of revelation associated with Delphi . The contrast with Gregory's use of biblical sources is clear . The language of the LXX and NT is drawn into the texture of the verse in a glancing , allusive way , like that of classical authors and it naturally infiltrates the building up of theoretical arguments on , say , the nature of God or the operations of providence in human affairs . But once he has established such fundamental concepts , Gregory will work into his pattern blocks of purely biblical material , like the ap4 pearance of Adam at the end of the poem on the nature of the human soul . Such passages may have a retroactive effect , as showing biblical foundations for what has preceded , but it is not a part of the writer's technique in the Dogmatica to use them as the starting points of his exposition . When we examine the Moralia , we find a rather different approach . For here Gregory seems encouraged to tackle themes of classical authors more directly , expounding more fully their points of view , seeing whether their presuppositions may be developed in a Christian way . I select from a number of possible examples to see what conclusions may be drawn . Comparing the first two poems , on the same subject of virginity , we find that in the first Gregory develops his ideas initially through deductions from the nature of the Trinity :

πρώτη παρθένος ἐστὶν ἁγνὴ Τριάς

(v.20 )

Then comes a section in which he expounds the results of the fall of Adam and the restoration in Christ . So far there is little to distinguish this from the method of the Dogmatica and it is scarcely coincidence that a number of lines are identical 5 with passages found in those poems . The remainder of the poem presents contrasts between the virgin and the married state , drawn from observation or conventional comparisons , but without direct use of classical sources . It may be that the second poem is intended as a sequel to the first . Whether this is so or not , Gregory seems willing to infiltrate a little more direct classical allusion , as distinct from the mere use of expressions . Within a few lines of references to Adam and Eve and to Lazarus appears the name of Alcinous . But still , as with the appearance of the phoenix in the lines 526 ff . , it is all rather casual . More notable is the way in which Gregory introduces the figure of Aún ( v . 485 ) , for she is treated in the mythological way of Aratus in Phaenomena 105 ff . , but accommodated to a thoroughly Christian context . However , as if to mark out clearly the limits of his mythological approval ( though one could hardly imagine this to be necessary ) , Gregory within a few lines is attacking the immoral character of Greek gods as it is revealed in myths . Elsewhere in the Moralia Gregory shows himself more inclined to integrate classical and Christian sources . In the long poem on virtue ( 1.2.10 ) for long tracts he allows the classic-

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al to predominate , certainly in the first half where there is not only a good deal of mythology ( Troy , Pegasus and the like ) , but also frequent reference to figures in 7 Greek and Roman history ." In so far as the poem holds together as a Christian composition ( albeit sometimes an ungainly one ) , it does so for one reason . From time to time Gregory will insert ' pointers ' to the general direction of his thought (the passage on creation and the work of the Logos vv . 59 ff . is a key example ) and these set out the overall understanding of divine activity in human affairs which can incorporate what might otherwise seem alien elements . About the middle of the poem is an extended section ( over 100 lines ) which links the Cross with Eden and follows through a number of Old Testament events and characters into New Testament fulfilments.8 With this behind him , Gregory completes a poem in which he feels confident in selecting for praise or blame examples from classical sources , but he is even more secure , one feels , in a belief that he has established some right to draw freely , if need be without comment . Again in a poem directed against anger ( 1.2.25 ) we find that Gregory will build up a general understanding of a moral problem by drawing freely on classical sources , before going on to distinguish biblical and classical examples , on the way to a statement of ultimate principles through a New Testament understanding of God's law ( vv . 304 ff . ) . In the two sections of the Historica ( de Seipso and ad Alios ) , classical references , though not absent , are less striking . The language of course remains allusive as ever . Gregory has no intention of writing about himself , for instance , in any diction which fails to carry the impressive reminiscences of a literary heritage . Aeschylus and Euripides are interwoven with Homer and Sophocles to give a sense of momentous events on a scale somewhat more than human . But there is still no doubt that the weight of reference , whether to aspects of thought or to events , is biblical . Where classical instances occur , they tend to be guarded or they make a pronounced contrast , as in De Vita Sua ( 2.1.11 ) 974 f . 1096A : μέγιστον ἦν μοι καὶ πατῶν αὐλὴν κύων ἐμὴν σέβων τε Χριστὸν ἀνθ ' Ηρακλέους . A number are found as quite unfavourable , as the choice of Cyrus , Midas and Croesus 9 to represent heartless wealth over against the Gospel figure of Zacchaeus . One figure which appears several times taken directly from classical mythology and incorproated without explanation is that of Erinys . Clearly for Gregory this does not represent any kind of independent element of fate . The question is entirely rhetorical when he asks : τις δ᾽ ῾Ερινὺς τόσον ὄλβον ἀτάσθαλος ἐξετίναξεν ; ( 2.2.3.13 .; 1481A ) 10 What is indicated is a sinister force , made the more so by a pagan association . Many of the biblical passages in the Historica show in a marked way a feature found also in the Theologica , Gregory's desire to identify himself with characters and situations in scripture . It may be this emphasis which makes him more wary of too close association with classical themes in the poems which directly concern themselves

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with situations and attitudes of his life . One of the most important of these alignments is with Moses , as when Gregory compares his approach to God with that of Moses on Sinai ( 1.1.1.10 ff .; 399A ) and again in the Historica we might instance in 2.1.13 . 116 ff .; 1236A f . Gregory's comparing himself to Moses enveloped in the cloud . Gregory is however likely to find many other parallels as he broods over the course his life has taken . He finds a personal application in Samuel's dedication to God ( 2.1.1.431 ff.; 1002A ) . Sometimes he seems so overwhelmed by reflection on his misfortunes that he is carried into grandiose comparisons which detract from the quality of his verse . His direct and moving description of the Anastasia church set within the life of the city is not enhanced by the succeeding hyperboles which compare its loss with the captivity in Assyria or the falling into Philistine hands of the Ark 11 of the Covenant . But the very fact of this overbearing of Gregory's literary sensitivity is important in showing the strength and nature of his biblical identification . One further characteristic of Gregory's biblical usage may be mentioned . It is essentially direct and historical . We are struck by the way in which he takes the healing miracle of the woman with the flow of blood as a figure for the cure of fleshly desires ( 1.2.2.508 ff . ) , precisely because of the rarity of this kind of interpretation in these poems . There is then , I suggest , a certain variety of practice to be discerned in Gregory's dealing with classical and biblical sources . He must have felt that he had sufficiently mastered both and could use his judgement in allowing the classical to infiltrate . One reason for his despising Maximus was his belief that he had imperfectly assimilated the traditions he attempted to follow . Perhaps we may make a better claim for Gregory .

REFERENCES 1. Cf. D.A. Sykes , ' The Poemata Arcana of St. Gregory Nazianzen ' in J.T.S. , N.S. 21 ( 1970 ) , pp . 38-42 . 2. Cf. , e.g. , carm. 1.1.5 ; P.G. 37.424A- 429A ( on providence ) . 3. 1.1.1.9 ff .; 399A . 4. 1.1.8.97-129 ; 454A- 456A . 5. Cf. 1.2.1.48 ff .; 526A with 1.1.7.17 ff .; 440A . 6. 1.2.2.131 ; 589A . 7. E.g. , Pyrrhus ( 1.2.10.350 ff .; 705A f . ) , Alexander ( 818 ff .; 739A ) . 8. Ibid. , 465-578 ( 714A- 722A ) . 9. 2.1.12.432 ff .; 1197A . 10. Cf. ibid . , 228 ; 1496A , 303 ; 1502A. 11. 2.1.16.67 ff .; 1259A.

The Concept of Universal Salvation in Saint Gregory of Nyssa C. N. Tsirpanlis

Barrytown , NY.

O estimate the exact value of the work done by Saint Gregory of Nyssa in the T development of the doctrine of Universal Salvation or Apocatastasis ton panton and in the determination , so far as Eastern Christendom is concerned , of the terminology employed for the expression of that doctrine , is a difficult task which can hardly be satisfactorily carried out in such a communication as this .

Therefore ,

I propose to concentrate on Saint Gregory's most important arguments in support of Universal Salvation and his original contribution in contrast to Origen . These arguments can be classified under three general headings with the following subdivisions : A.

Biblical 1 ) Man was created in the ' Image of God ' : Genesis 1 , 27 ; Luke 17 , 21 ;

Luke

15 , 8 . 2 ) The love , wisdom , and power of God is superior to Satan's hatred and death : I John 4 , 7-17 ; 5 , 4 ; I Tim . 2 , 4 . 3 ) Subjection of all things to Christ - Christocentric Apocatastasis : Phil . 2 ,

10 ;

I Cor . 15 , 12-58 ;

Acts 2 , 21;

Psalm 2 , 4-9 .

4) Christ's Resurrection is the Restoration of Universal Humanity or all the fulness of human nature - PLEROMA Eikon Theou : Acts 2 , 22-36 ; I Cor . 15, 12-58 ; B.

John 6 , 40 .

Philosophical 1 ) Finiteness of Evil vs. Infiniteness of Goodness . 2 ) Unity of human nature : Syngeneia , Homogeneia . Uncreated : Human Will -- Divine Will . 3) Created

C. Theological 1 ) The medicinal and purgatorial nature of future punishment which is not eternal .

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C. N. Tsirpanlis 2 ) Simultaneous creation of soul and body at the time of conception , but as ' Image of God ' each individual soul is a disembodied ' thought ' of God.¹

Initially , it should be pointed out that ' Universal Salvation ' in St. Gregory's thought means the Restoration of man to his original state , the restoration of the pre-fallen humanity and ' return to that which is familiar and natural by again becoming that which in the beginning we were created ' ( the original ' Image of God ' ) ? Such an ultimate restoration or Apocatastasis ton panton will take place at the General Resurrection , when there will be neither age nor infancy , neither births 3 nor deaths , and the ' coats of skins ' ( Sεpμάτɩvol XεLT @ VES ) will be laid aside . From this definition of ' Universal Salvation ' some basic questions spring forth : What is the nature of ( 1 ) the pre -fallen humanity ;

( 2 ) of the Evil and Fall ;

( 3 ) of the individual free will , and ( 4 ) how will this restoration be accomplished ? Consequently , in order to fully understand St. Gregory's views on ' Universal Salvation ' it is imperative that we quickly examine his teaching on the origin of the soul , the nature of the Evil and the significance of man's creation in the ' Image of God ' .

ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THE SOUL4 5 The soul is the mind or reason , according to Gregory, and ' exists with a rare and peculiar nature of her own , independent of the body with its gross texture'ô In her substantial existence , as separable from matter , the soul is like God ; but this likeness does not extend to sameness ; she resembles God as a copy of the original .

She is an indivisible entity , an immaterial and spiritual created

essence , working and moving in a way corresponding to her peculiar nature , and evincing her peculiar emotions through the organs of the body . As such the soul is immortal .

What is the body then?

plenitude (pleroma ) of humanity ' ,

God's simultaneous creation of ' the entire

which means the original , passionless , integral ,

organized and sentiment human nature without the ' coats of skins ' ( = the irrational 9 or brutal passions , desire , anger , etc. ) . Man was created after the inanimate matter and irrational creatures , because ' he 10 was appointed king over the earth and all things on it ' , the microcosm in himself, 11 ' who contains all the elements which go to complete the universe ' ." The passions ( desire , anger , etc. ) of the irrational or brutal nature , are not consubstantial 12 with the soul since she is the Image of God . True , they have some relation to 13 the soul , and yet they are not the soul ( in her very essence ) , because in the 14 Beauty which is man's prototype no such characteristics are to be found . Moreover , the mode of the union of soul and body is beyond our comprehension , according to Gregory . In sharp contrast to Origen's and pagan philosophy of the pre -existence of the soul , Gregory declares that the soul and the body have a single beginning ; that

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the body , as originally created by God , was ' good ' and full of all goods , since it is part of the original nature of man . Therefore , the body itself is not to be understood as evil . The soul , on the other hand , as the Image ofthe Divine Beauty inherits good intrinsically . She is therefore by nature good , and is herself the 15 plenitude of every good , being observable and SuáXUTOS in the concourse of the 16 atoms of the body and co- extensive with them even in their separation . Origen's theory of the pre -existence of the soul places evil in the position of the reality which ultimately originated life on earth .

For Gregory , not evil , but

the love and the wisdom of God , which governs everything , is the beginning of our life on earth . To think that the soul was placed in physical bodies due to a sin committed in another world , and subsequently to say that in the material world the soul will strive to go back to its original status is , in Gregory's views , to make a terrible mistake of confusing and mixing up good and evil . This makes evil somewhat connected with life in heaven . How can the heavenly sojourn in blessedness persist if evil can be found there too?

On the other hand , if from the lowest

form of life the soul is again lifted up to heaven , then there must be some kind of virtue in material . Furthermore , the theory of the pre - existence of the souls could only be accepted if the spirits were corruptible . has the following to say:

About this point Macrina

If they say that the heavenly is unchangeable , how can corruptibility have a place there ? If nature below is subject to change , how can lack of incorruptibility be achieved there ? They mix the unmixable and unite those things which have nothing in common , seeing the unchangeable in the corruptible and incorruptible in the changeable , nor do they hold even to this . They send the soul down from that state because of evil , and then bring it back to the secure and immortal life as if forgetting that the soul , weighted down by evil , had been mixed with the nature below. So the criticism of life here and praise of the celestial life are confused and mixed up , the one being criticized because , in their opinion , it leads to the good , and the other ( which we assume to be the better ) because it gives the soul an opportunity to incline to the worse . Every false and unstable opinion on these matters should be excluded from the true dogmas.17 Another basic originality of Gregory's thought is his notion of an ontological and unique unity of human nature , of the soul and the body . indivisible , eternal unit ,

Since the soul is an

an indissoluble divine unity associated with God ,

passions , desires and impulses are not part of her essence , but a mere accretion to her . Through this accretion the soul relates to the body. However , there is a difference between the passions before the fall and after the fall .

Before the

fall man had both reason and emotion , but they were both quite well balanced . Man was endowed with ' spiritualized ' emotion and passion . After the fall man became 18 sensual , seeking pleasure , seeking after ' sarx ' . Thus , the ' garment of skin ' is

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conceived as an imbalance between reason and emotion and can also be understood as 19 the ' old man ' which St. Paul bids all to strip off and lay aside . It is fruitless , however , to try to find in Gregory's anthropology a literal or chronological ' double creation ' and in this point I agree with Daniélou , although 20 in other important points I disagree with him , as I will mention later . Sherwood's understanding of Gregory's ' double creation ' , on the other hand , as a sharp chronological distinction between ' the intellectual part ' as the Image of God , and ' the biological life as a consequence of sin ' as the irrational nature of 21 man , does not express Gregory's thought accurately . The so -called ' double creation ' doctrine of St. Gregory of Nyssa should be understood as man's essential and simultaneous composite nature , from the very beginning , in which the brutal passions existed , but were inactive , neutral and powerless , and they would remain so if the reason had not abused its freedom . This ' mixed nature ' or ' double image ' was God's oikonomia or loving care , since ' He saw beforehand by His all - seeing power the failure of their ( men's ) will to keep a direct course to what is good , and its consequent declension from the angelic life ' 22 This 'mixed nature ' is , furthermore , a confirmation that man was not originally perfect , except 23 in possibility ," and represents every stage of living things in order that the 24 whole creation , even in its lowest part , might share in the divine . According to my understanding of Gregory's mature thought ( as expressed in his Oratio Catechetica , which contains certainly his more dogmatic statement on every point ) , there was no second act of creation into male and female , but immediately upon the creation in God's image there was added all that in human nature is akin to the merely animal world .

In that man was God's image , his will was free , but in

that he was created , he was able to fall from his high estate ;

and God , foreseeing

the Fall , at once added the distinction of sex , and with it the other features of the animal which would befit the fall ; but with the purpose of raising thereby 25 the whole creation . 26 Now , man's fall was caused by ' the evil use of the mind ' , as well as by the Devil's envy for man's beauty and glory , the latter having been created an image 27 of the archetypal beauty . So the Devil deceived man , but has no right or claim over man . After the Fall , God's image became obscured and distorted , and man darkened with the rust of sin , but he has preserved what basically belongs to that 28 image the Archetypal Goodness and a desire for the Divine Beauty and Love and 29 the Eternal Life .

30 THE NATURE OF THE EVIL' The strongest and perhaps most convincing argument of Gregory in support of universal restoration and salvation , is the finiteness of evil as non-existent or 31 OTÉρnols aɣadou vs. the infiniteness of goodness and love as God's nature .

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Gregory strongly believed in the essential goodness of man and of the whole world created by God , as good , in the beginning .

Actually , the Scriptural phrase that

man was made ' in the image of God ' means that ' God made human nature participant in all good ; for if the Deity is the fulness of good , and man is His image , then 32 the image finds its resemblance to the Archetype in being filled with all good ' . 33 The created nature of man , however , cannot exist without change , and the human 34 will as created is changeable . Gregory's concept of Universal Salvation or the Apocatastasis ton panton , is a direct consequence of his view of evil . Evil in the Gregorian mind does not exist per se : it is relative , being the act of the free will of man ; for whenever a man forces his reason to become the servant of his passions , there takes place a sort of conversion of the good stamp in him ( God's image ) into the irrational image , his whole nature being traced anew after that design , as his reason cultivates the beginnings of his passions , and gradually multiplies them ; for once it lends its co -operation to passion , it produces a plenteous and abundant crop of evils ... On the contrary , if reason instead assumes sway over such emotions ( = brutal passions ) , each of them is transmuted to a form of virtue ; for anger produces courage , terror caution , fear obedience , hatred aversion from vice , the power of love the desire for what is truly beautiful ; high spirit in our character raises our thought above the passions , and keeps it from bondage to what is base.35 Evil is a ' failure ' , or ' turning away from the true good ' of the will , which , however , is always free to rectify this failure .

Consequently , Gregory , like

Origen , believed that a time will come when evil will be annihilated , since ' the 36 non-existent cannot exist for ever ' . Further , since evil was not made by God , 37 neither is it self- subsisting , it must pass away. The power of good is greater than wickedness and the folly of our nature is not more powerful nor more abiding than the wisdom and love of God . This is so for the simple reason that human nature as created is always mutable and variable , whereas God's wisdom and love always remains the same and is firmly fixed in goodness . The Divine counsel possesses immutability , while the changeableness of our nature does not remain 38 settled even in evil . Now, since human nature was created originally as good and in the image and likeness of God and since evil does not extend to infinity but is bounded by necessary limits , if man's will be in evil direction , ' when it has finished the course of wickedness and reached the extreme limit of evil , then that which is ever moving ( human will as created is changeable ) , finding no halting point for its impulse natural to itself , when it has run through the lengths that can be run in wickedness , of necessity turns its motion towards good ... , so it would appear that good once more follows in succession upon the limit of evil ; and thus , the

C. N. Tsirpanlis

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ever-moving character of our nature comes to run its course at last once more back towards good , being taught the lesson of prudence by the memory of its former mis39 fortunes , to the end that it may never again be in like case ' . Besides , ' the nature of good , when compared with the measure of wickedness , is 40 incalculably superabundant ' ‚' because the supreme Good and the essential nature of the soul and the Deity is Love . God , therefore , as Universal Love , Eternal Life , 41 Power , and Wisdom attracts more than Satan as hatred and death ." And God will 42 When the soul , triumph ultimately as ' τό μόνον τῷ ὄντι ἀγαπητόν καὶ ἐράσμιον ' . then , will reach this goal ( of love ) she will be in no need of anything else ;

she

will embrace that plenitude of things which are , whereby alone it seems in any way to preserve within herself the stamp of God's actual blessedness ... . And because this goal of love is in its essence incapable of a change for the worse , that good will go on unchecked into infinity . Moreover , as every being is capable of attracting its like , and humanity is , in a way , like God , as bearing within itself some resemblances to its Prototype ( syngeneia , homogeneia ) , the soul is by a strict necessity attracted to the kindred Deity . In fact what belongs to God must by all means and at any cost be preserved for Him.43

HOW AND WHEN UNIVERSAL SALVATION WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED St. Gregory of Nyssa repeatedly and emphatically underlines , throughout his writings and especially in De Hominis Opificio , De Anima et Resurrectione , and Oratio Catechetica , not only the finiteness of evil , but also man's natural goodness ;

God's love and power ;

of His punishment ;

the medicinal , educational and purgatorial character

Christ's resurrection as the glorified humanity and restoration

of all the fulness of the human nature collectively and individually ( Universal Humanity = the Image of God ) , and the final accord of the whole Universe with the Good , by a voluntary submission of even the evil spirits to Christ's Lordship . Present as well as future punishment , in the mind of St. Gregory , is educational , just a way to help the soul to return to God . Man was deceived and became attached to the ' coats of skins ' .

Now, by suffering the consequences , he will recognize the

futility and disease of the ' coats of skins ' and will return to the Real Good . the punishment of the fall has medicinal effects .

So ,

Gregory's view of Salvation is

of a process of catharsis of the soul from the spurious material alloy of the evil by a purgatorial ( nadαpoly ) fire and through the divine force of God's very love 44 for man . 'Not in hatred or revenge for a wicked life , to my thinking ' , St. Gregory writes , ' does God bring upon sinners those painful dispensations ; He is only claiming and drawing to Himself whatever, to please Him, came into existence ... It is not punishment chiefly and principally that the Deity ,

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The Concept of Universal Salvation as Judge , afflicts sinners with ; but He operates only to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness ' 45

' The agony ( of sinner ) will be measured ' , he continues , ' by the amount of evil there is in each individual ... and according to the quantity of material will be the longer or shorter time that the agonizing flame will be burning ; that is , as 46 long as there is fuel to feed it ' ." And he concludes :

In any and every case evil must be removed out of existence, so that the absolutely non -existent should cease to be at all. Since it is not in its nature that evil should exist outside the will, does it not follow that when it shall be that every will rests in God, evil will be reduced to complete, annihilation, owing to no receptactle being left for it?47 There is no doubt in St. Gregory's eschatology that such a remedial and purgatorial process of the soul's sinfulness and sickness continues even after death if she remains unhealed in the present life , since ' the death of dissolution which came from that clothing of dead skins does not affect the soul 48 and God's purpose

49 is ' to bring back man , His peculiar creature , to the grace of his primal condition ' ." After all , ' it belongs to God ... to bring back to itself , by means of renewed health , the nature that has been perverted by sickness ... and above all to be 50 stronger than death and corruption ' . St. Gregory of Nyssa is certainly within the great patristic tradition of the 51 first four centuries in considering Christ's Redemption a means to an end , that end being the reconsecration of the whole universe to God.

And so the very

completeness of his grasp upon the Atonement led him , as well as the great thinkers of the early Church, to dwell upon the cosmic significance of the Incarnation , its purpose to ' gather together all things in one ' . Gregory is more original , more emphatic and bold enough , however , in stating that by Christ's redemptive work not only man but even the Devil was benefited and 52 potentially saved;" that the healing of the soul's sickness and punishment is not 53 a ' terrible correction ' nor ' painful retribution ' ; that the whole creation should be perceived as the realized thoughts of God , and as to the number of souls , Humanity itself is a thought of God not yet completed , as these continual additions prove , and ' all the fulness of human nature ( or the Image of God as the Universal 54 Nature and Humanity ) had pre -existence ' . When it is completed , this ' progress of Humanity' will cease , by there being no more births and no deaths of course . when will it be completed ? Gregory's answer is 'When, as I suppose , the full complement of human nature has reached the limit of the pre-determined measure , because there is no longer anything to be made up in the way of increase to the number of souls ' ; 55 so that time ... is necessarily made co -extensive with the development of humanity! 56 and with ' the entrances of the pre-determined souls ' ;57 that is to say , in Gregory's own words , ' after

Now,

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C. N. Tsirpanlis long periods of time '58 , ' after long succeeding ages , aloves' , 59 of the soul's purification by fire just as the furnace purifies gold alloyed with dross , so that ' their nature may be restored pure again to God'.60

The ineffable wisdom and power of Him Who , as 61 62 the Gospel says , ' healeth those that are sick ' , Gregory answers . True , Gregory seems to contradict himself when at other times he considers that ' fire other than What is the nature of that fire ?

63 the fire we see ' and one that ' is never quenched ' or ' does not admit of extinction ' 64 and ' will be extended into infinity , εἰς ἄπειρον παρατείνεται . However , such passages as these must be set against others in Gregory , such as the concluding part of the De Anima et Resurrectione , in arriving at an exact knowledge of his 65 One of those passages views about a Universal Apocatastasis or Salvation . precisely is the following : His ( God's ) end is one , and one only ; it is this : when the complete whole of our race shall have been perfected from the first man to the last , - some having at once in this life been cleansed from evil , others having afterwards in the necessary periods been healed by the Fire , others having in their life here been unconscious equally of good and of evil , - to offer to every one of us participating in the blessings which are in Him , which , the Scripture tells us , "eye hath not seen , nor ear heard" , nor thought ever reached . But this is nothing else , as I at least understand it , but to be in God Himself; for the Good which is above hearing and eye and heart must be that Good which transcends the universe . But the difference between the virtuous and the vicious life led at the present time will be illustrated in this way ; viz . in the quicker or more tardy participat ion of each in that promised blessedness . According to the amount of the ingrained wickedness of each will be computed the duration of his cure . This cure consists in the cleansing of his soul , and that cannot be achieved without an excruciating condition ... 66 , and some day after long courses of ages will get back again that universal form which God stamped upon us at the beginning . 67

INDIVIDUAL SALVATION -FREE WILL - THE ' PLEROMA' Now, in such a scheme of Universal Salvation what role plays man's free will and each individual? Certain Gregorian scholars like Daniélou and Laplace go as far as to deny any individual salvation in St. Gregory's eschatology , and to even accuse him as a neo-pagan philosopher , in the sense that he tries to revive the Greek spirit and interest in the collective restoration and renewal of the cosmic nature , while ' he 68 Daniélou misses the christian sense of the eternal value of individual soul ' . , however , contradicts himself by admitting the possibility of eternal condemnation 69 of some individuals whereas he does not believe that Gregory supports the thesis 70 of Universal Salvation ." Laplace , on the other hand , is of the opinion that Gregory's concept of

The Concept of Universal Salvation

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individual salvation is that of the totality of Church Fathers , namely ' salvation of collective destinies of the Church ' .

Laplace , furthermore , is not certain if

in Gregory's eschatology individual optimism looses itself into cosmic visions or if personal freedom and survival is really ruined , but the anxiety of an uncertain destiny is definitely missing in his idealism ;

Gregory bases his hope for the

71 global salvation of Humanity on Christ , on His perfect Body , according to Laplace .' In other words , Laplace tries to be a more moderate critic of Gregory than Daniélou . It must be noted , however , that Leys finds exaggeration in the affirmations of Daniélou .

According to Leys the homilies on the Canticle of Canticles ,

the Life of Moses and the Beatitudes treat the perfection of the individual soul sufficiently as not to justify any accusation against Gregory that he avoids the 72 problem of individual salvation ." Finally , Balthasar rejects the thesis of Daniélou totally , viewing the perfect restoration of the Image as impossible if even one man will be eternally condemned . Such a possibility of condemnation would imply that the Image remains imperfect and also that the Body of Christ will never attain its plenitude , since the total 73 Christ is nothing but the total humanity .' Balthasar's thesis is the closest , I think , to Gregory's mind .

Certainly ,

Daniélou misconceives and misrepresents the mind of Gregory when he asserts that Gregory did not believe in Universal Salvation , but accepted the Pauline doctrine of Apocatastasis , which consists of the eschatological symphonia of all the creatures in confessing the glory of God - and of course of the disappearance of evil .74 Daniélou heavily contradicts himself as has been already mentioned , since he believes that Gregory teaches eternal and endless punishment and admits the possibility of eternal condemnation of certain individuals . How , then , can the eschatological symphonia of all the creatures materialize ? Obviously , Daniélou thought that Gregory had envisaged the salvation of an abstract cosmic pleroma and not the salvation of the human pleroma , i.e. the individual and universal humanity . In the light of what has been already said , nothing is more inaccurate than this conception . It will suffice to turn to a cardinal passage of Gregory which clarifies the meaning of the term pleroma in his eschatology once for all : ' The reason for our race ' , Gregory writes , ' having some day to come to a standstill , is as follows , in our opinion : since every intellectual reality is fixed in a plenitude of its own , it is reasonable to expect that humanity also will arrive at a goal ( for in this respect also humanity is not to be parted from the intellectual world ) ; so that we are to believe that it will not be visible for ever only in defect , as it is now: for this continual addition of after generations indicates that there is something deficient in our race . Whenever , then , humanity shall have reached the plenitude that belongs to it , this on- streaming movement of production will altogether cease ; it will have touched its

SP 3 - L

C. N. Tsirpanlis

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destined bourn , and a new order of things quite distinct from the present procession of births and deaths will carry on the life of humanity ' ?75 According to St. Gregory of Nyssa , each soul as the Image of God is the human as well as the cosmic pleroma , includes ' all humanity ' , ' the entire plenitude of 76 humanity ' ; ' our whole nature , extending from the first to the last is , so to 77 say, one image of Him Who is ' ; it is ' the nature of man in its entirety and 78 fulness ' , ' for the image is not in part of our nature , nor is the grace in any one of the things found in that nature , but this power extends equally to all the race : and a sign of this is that the mind is implanted alike in all : for all have the power of understanding and deliberating ... the man that was manifested at the first creation of the world, and he that shall be after the consummation of all, 79 are alike: they equally bear in themselves the Divine Image ' ; it is the ' universal humanity ' which had its consummation at the time of man's creation in 80 the Image of God ; ' that is the universal nature ( = cosmic pleroma ) ... not part 81 of the whole , but all the fulness of the nature together ' which reminds us of the beautiful Pauline notion of the entire creation's participation in the sorrowful 82 consequences of man's fall . Gregory's concept of the soul , of each individual soul , as the human as well as the cosmic pleroma and as a visible ' thought ' of God ( His image ) , is very unlike the teaching of his master Origen , and yet more sober , and more scriptural . There will come a time when all these ' thoughts ' , which complete , and do not destroy , each other , will have completed the pleroma ( Humanity ) which the Deity contemplates . Universal salvation , thus , is not a ' physical ' or cosmic salvation independent of individual salvation , but the salvation of pleroma means the salvation of all men, with not even one exception , of those who lived in the past , are living in the 83 present , and will live in the future . Furthermore , Universal Salvation is possible because man's free will inherits what is intrinsically good and is by nature good as the chief feature of the rational soul which is herself the plenitude of every good , since it is made in the Image of 84 God . Now , human being is really free when it is united with virtue , with the Divine Being that is , since God is the fountain of all virtue and because only 85 virtue has no master and is self-regulating ( principle ) . Universal Salvation in Gregory's thought , therefore , is not merely a negative concept ( such as forgiveness of sin ) , but an active and positive process of the individual to attain Divinization , a daily Imitatio Christi and determined separation from evil . stresses the eternal now of God's plan ;

Gregory

history is a dynamic process , its end and

beginning are the same ;

and according to him , ' man returns to the original state 86 through gradual profounder contemplation of God in all things ' .

87 Gregory as well as Origen insist on the impossibility of God being ' all in all ' ,

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The Concept of Universal Salvation

in ' everything ' or ' instead of all other things and in all existing things ' , if 88 evil , which does not exist , still remains . But this is equivalent to the restoration to their original state of all created souls. Origen , however , required many future stages of existence more than one ' next world' - before all could arrive at such a consummation .

And even when the original perfection is reached ,

Origen's peculiar view of the freedom of the will , as an absolute balance between good and evil , would admit the possibility of another fall . It is not so with Gregory .

Gregory accepts only two worlds : the present and the next ;

and in the

next the ἀποκατάστασις τῶν πάντων must be effected . Then , after the Resurrection , 89 the ' fire will be the more ardent the more it has to consume ' But in the end the evil will be completely annihilated , the bad saved by nearness to the good , so 90 nothing will be left outside the world of goodness , and ' all things will be assimilated to the Divine Nature in accordance with the artistic plan of their 91 author , in a certain regularity and order ' , since ' intelligent beings came into existence ' in order that ' the riches of the Divine blessings should not lie idle ' and ' the All -creating Wisdom fashioned these souls , these receptacles with free wills , as vessels as it were , for this very purpose, that there should be some capacities able to receive His blessings and become continually larger with the 92 inpouring of the stream... ' . So at the very end , there is to rise in harmony the confession of Christ's 93 Lordship from all nature , even from evil spirits . In conclusion , it must be emphasized that St. Gregory's concept of Universal Salvation is more sober and more Scriptural , specifically Pauline , than that of 94 Origen . Whatever the Mystical Body of Christ is to Apostle Paul , the Pleroma of Humanity is to St. Gregory as the Image of God which becomes perfectly restored in the Resurrected Body of Christ . This unique Body exists only if made of individuals 95 being divinized through and in Him ( His Church ) . Gregory's most frequent 96 references from Paul are : Col. 1 , 24 ; I Cor . 12 , 27 ; Ephes . 4 , 13 , 15-16 . Universal Salvation , then , according to Saint Gregory of Nyssa , is not only possible and biblical , but also God's purpose for creation and as such it is an absolute necessity justified by the essential goodness of creation , the divine origin and intrinsic worth of the individual as Imago Dei , the infiniteness of the good and the finiteness of the evil , the eschatological symphonia , and by the victorious , eternal and omnipotent love and wisdom of God .

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C. N. Tsirpanlis REFERENCES

All the references to Gregory's major works as well as the English translation of the texts are taken from A Select Library of Nicene and Post - Nicene Fathers , v.V , 2nd ser . , 1972 ed . 1. De An . et Res . , p . 448 . 2. De Virgin . , ch . XII , p . 358 . 3. De Opif. Hom . , XVII , 407 , 2. De An. et Res . , p . 461 . 4. A good survey of Gregorian psychology can be found in the article of John P. Cavarnos , ' Gregory of Nyssa on the Nature of the Soul ' , in the Greek Orthodox Theological Review 1 ( 1955 ) , no . 2 , pp . 133-141 . 5. De Opif. Hom . , XVI , 406 , 16-17 . 6. De An. et Res . , p . 433 . 7. Ibid. , 436-437 . 8. De Opif. Hom . , XVI , 406 , 17 . 9. De An. et Res . , p . 433. Cf. Gen. 3 , 21 . 10. Or. Cat. , VI , 481 . 11. De Opif. Hom . , VIII , 394. De An . et Res . , p . 433. According to Daniélou , Gregory's concept of the ' anthropocentric universe ' and the providential optimism , which permeates his cosmic vision as demonstrated especially in his works , In Hexaemeron and De Opificio Hominis , is of stoic origin : J. Daniélou , ' Orientations actuelles de la recherche sur Grégoire de Nysse ' , in Ecriture et Culture Philosophique dans la Pensée de Grégoire de Nysse : Actes du Colloque de Chevetogne ( 22-26 Septembre 1969 ) , ed . by M. Harl , Leiden 1971 , p . 7 . 12. De An. et Res . , p . 439 . 13. Ibid. , p . 440 . Cf. De Virgin. , XII , 357 . 14. Ibid. , p . 441 . 15. Ibid,, p . 449. Cf. Or . Cat. , V , 479 . 16. De Opif. Hom . , XVII , 406-407 ; XXVII , 418 ; XXX , 426 , 29. De An . et Res. , pp . 438 , 448 . Cf. Contra Eunomium I , II , 336A . 17. De An. et Res . , pp. 455-456. Cf. De Opif. Hom . , XXVIII , 419-420 . 18. Gen. 3 , 21 . 19. Col. 3, 9. De Opif. Hom. , XVIII , 408 , 3-5 . Cf. De An . et Res . , pp . 464-465 . 20. De Opif. Hom . , XVIII , 408 ; XXIX , 421. Cf. Or . Cat . , VIII , 483 ; De Virgin. , p . 357 , and J. Daniélou , L'Être et le Temps chez Grégoire de Nysse , Leiden 1970 , p. 163 . 21. P. Sherwood , St. Maximus the Confessor . The Ascetic Life . The Four Centuries on Charity . Westminster , Md . , A.C.W. vol . XXI , 1955 , p . 68 . 22. De Opif. Hom . , XVII , p . 407 , 4; pp . 408 , 411 , 4 , 412 . 23. Ibid. , XXIX , 421 , 426 . 24. De Opif. Hom . , VIII , 394. De An . et Res . , p . 433 . 25. Or. Cat. , VI , 481 ; VIII , 483 ; XX , 491. Cf. De Opif. Hom . , XVI , 405 , 8-9 . 26. De Opif. Hom . , XVIII , 408 , 4-5 . De Virgin. , XII , 357 . 27. Or. Cat . , VI , 481 . 28. Ibid. , VIII , 482. De Virgin. , XII , 357 . 29. Ibid. , V , 479. Cf. De An . et Res . , 450-451 ; De Virgin. , XII , 358 . 30. For a recent survey on the subject see the article of Mariette Canévet , ' Nature de mal et économie du salut chez Grégoire de Nysse ' , in R.S.R. 56 ( 1968 ) , 87-96 . 31. De Opif. Hom . , XXI , 411 ; XVI , 405 , 10. Cf. De An. et Res. , p . 447 . 32. Ibid. , XVI , 405 . 33. Ibid. , 405 , 12 . 34. Or. Cat . , VI , 481 . 35. De Opif. Hom . , XVIII , 408 , 4-5 . Cf. Col. 3 , 2 . 36. De An . et Res . , 451 . 37. Or . Cat. , V , 479. De An. et Res. , p . 447. Cf. De Opif. Hom . , XX , 410 , 5 ; XXI , 411 ; XXIII , 413 . 38. De Opif. Hom . , XXI , 410 , 1 ; cf. ch . XVI , 405 , 12 . 39. Ibid. , 411 , 2-3 .

The Concept of Universal Salvation

1143

40. Ibid. , 411 , 3 . 41. Or . Cat . , XII , 486 . 42. De An . et Res . , 450 . 43. Ibid. Cf. H. von Bathasar , Présence et Pensée : Essai sur la Philosophie Religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse. Paris , 1942 , pp . 113 , 115-117 . 44. Or. Cat . , XXVI , 496. Cf. Origen , C. Cels . , 6 , 44 . 45. De An . et Res. , 451 . 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. Cf. De Virgin. , XII , 357 . 48. Or. Cat. , VIII , 483 . 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. , XII , 486 . 51. Irenaeus , Clement of Alexandria , Origen , Athanasius , Gregory of Nazianzus . Cf. my article : ' Aspects of Athanasian Soteriology ' , in Kleronomia 8 ( 1976 ) , 61-76 . 52. Or. Cat. , XXVI , 495-496 . 53. Ibid. , VIII , 483. Cf. Origen , C. Cels . 7 , 70 . 54. De Opif. Hom . , XXII , 412 , 5-7 ; XXIX , 420 , 1 ; XXII , 411 , 3 and 4 . 55. De Opif. Hom . , XXII , 412 , 6 . 56. Ibid. , 412 , 7 . 57. Ibid. , 412 , 5 . 58. Or. Cat. , XXVI , 496 . 59. Ibid. , XXXV , 504 . 60. Ibid. Cf. ch . XXVI , 495 . 61. Matth . 9 , 12 ; cf. Mal . 3 , 2 , 3 . 62. Or. Cat . , VIII , 483 ; XXVI , 496 . 63. Ibid. , XL , 509 . 64. On Infants ' Early Deaths , p . 378 . 65. For a more complete explanation of Gregory's inconsistencies and contradictions see the ' Prolegomena ' in Nicene and Post -Nicene Fathers , 2nd Ser . , vol . V , 1972 , pp . 13-14 ; especially the article of A. Mouhanna in Weg in die Zukunft . Festschr. f. A. Antweiler zu seinem 75. Geburtst . ( Studies in the Hist . of Rel . , 32 ) , Leiden , 1975 , pp . 141-144 . 66. De An. et Res. , p . 465 . 67. Ibid. , p . 468 . 68. J. Daniélou , ' L'apocatastase chez saint Grégoire de Nysse ' , in R.S.R. 30 (1940) , 344-346 . 69. Ibid , p . 347 . 70. J. Daniélou , L'Être et le Temps chez Grégoire de Nysse . Leiden , 1970 , p . 224 . 71. J. Laplace , Saint Grégoire de Nysse . La Création de l'homme . Paris , Sources Chrétiennes 6 , 1943 , pp . 66-67 , 70 , 72 . 72. R. Leys , L'image de Dieu chez Saint Grégoire de Nysse. Paris , 1951 , p . 92 . 73. H. von Balthasar , Présence et Pensée ... , pp . 59 , 52 n . 5 . 74. J. Daniélou , L'Être et le Temps ... , p . 224 . 75. De An . et Res. , p . 459 . Cf. De Opif. Hom . , XXII , 412 . 76. De Opif. Hom . , XVI , 406 , 16-17 . 77. Ibid. , 406 , 18 . 78. Ibid. , XVII , 407 , 4. Cf. E. Corsini , ' Plerôme humaine et plerôme cosmique chez Grégoire de Nysse ' , in Ecriture et culture philosophique dans la pensée de Grégoire de Nysse , Leiden , 1971 , pp . 119-120 . 79. De Opif. Hom . , XVI , 406 , 17 . 80. Ibid. , XXII , 411 , 3 . 81. De Opif. Hom . , XXII , 411 , 4 . 82. Rom. 8 , 22 . 83. De Opif. Hom . , XXII , 411-412 , 4-5 ; De An. et Res . , p . 461. Cf. In illud, tunc ipse ... , P.G. 44 , 1313A . 84. De An . et Res . , p . 449 . 85. Cf. De Opif. Hom. , IV , 390-391 . Or. Cat. , V , 479 . 86. Cf. G.A. Maloney , The Cosmic Christ , New York , 1968 , p . 157 .

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C. N. Tsirpanlis

87. I Cor . 15 , 28 . 88. De An. et Res . , 452-453 ; In illud, tunc ipse ... , P.G. 44 , 1316CD . 89. De An. et Res . , p . 451 . 90. Ibid. , p . 444 . Cf. Or . Cat . , XXVI , 495-496 . 91. Ibid. , p . 453 . 92. Ibid. , p . 453 . 93. Phil . 2 , 10. De An. et Res. , pp . 444 , 461. Or. Cat. , XXVI , 495-496 . In illud, tunc ipse ... , P.G. 44 , 1316D . This passage should be compared with those of Origen , in C. Cels. 6 , 44 ; 4 , 69 ; 8 , 72 , in which he declares that the Powers of evil are for a purpose in answer to Celsus ' objection that the Devil himself, instead of humanity , ought to have been punished : to try the good ones , ' as the fire tries the gold , that , having done their utmost to prevent the admission of any alloy into their spiritual nature , and having proved themselves worthy to mount to heaven , they might be drawn by the bands of the Word to the highest blessedness and the summit of all Good ' . These Powers , as reasoning beings , shall then themselves be ' mastered by the Word ' . 94. I Cor . 12 , 12.27 ; Ephes . 1 , 10 ; 5 , 23 , 30 , 33 ; I Tim . 1 , 15 ; Rom . 5 , 18-20 . 95. In illud, tunc ipse ... , P.G. 44 , 1317A-D . Cf. D.L. Balás , METOYEIA @EOY: Man's Participation in God's Perfections according to Saint Gregory of Nyssa . Studia Anselmiana , vol . 55 , Roma , 1966 . 96. In illud, tunc ipse ... , P.G. 44 , 1317BC .

Some Evidence of Unauthenticity for the 'Discourse XI in honour of Gregory of Nyssa' attributed to Gregory of Nazianzen

Reginald Weijenborg, O.F.M. Rome

ISCOURSE XI , attributed to Gregory of Nazianzen , is generally supposed to have D been pronounced by him in the summer of 372 in honour of his namesake , the bishop of Nyssa , who , sent by his brother Basil , metropolitan of Caesarea in Cappadocia , had come to Nazianzen on the occasion of the feast of certain martyrs . At that time Gregory of Nazianzen , recently ordained bishop by Basil to serve the hamlet of Sasima , had refused to accept this relay- station as his diocese . Desirous to create for himself a new respectability through Discourse XI , the supposed Gregory of Nazianzen in the introduction ( ch . 1-3 ; P.G. 35 , 832B - 836B ) praises Gregory of Nyssa as a true friend ( ch . 1 ) , exalts Basil and him as a second Moses and Aaron ( ch . 2 ) and offers to justify his flight from Sasima ( ch . 3 ) . In the main part of the Discourse ( ch . 4-6 ; 836B - 840C ) , however , Gergory does not apologize , but exhorts the hearers to celebrate the feast of the martyrs , not certainly with popular hilarity and profane transactions , but in a purified and spiritual way . In the conclusion ( ch . 7 ; 840D- 841B ) he expects from such a celebration divine help in his pastoral work at Nazianzen and everlasting joy and glory for his hearers . Now it seems that this Discourse was not pronounced in 372 at Nazianzen by the Theologian , but in 380 or shortly afterwards in a villa near Chalcedon by Maximus the Cynic , who , having been ordained bishop of Constantinople in an irregular way in the spring of 380 , held reunions there for his supporters . In fact Discourse XI makes use of , and therefore presupposes , the first Theological Discourse of Gregory of Nazianzen , dating from the summer of 380. Here Gregory had proposed to Maximus : ' If it is not possible to dissolve the enmity between us , let us at least concede this to each other , that we will speak in a mystical way of mystical things and in a holy way (ayúws ) of holy ones (tà аylα ) and not cast into profane ears ( anoάs ) things that should not be uttered . And let us not prove more religious than ourselves those who fall on their knees before

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R. Weijenborg

devils ( Saupovious ) and are ministers of shameful myths and practices , who would rather give the ( sacrificial ) blood to the uninitiated than let them share in certain words . But let us acknowledge that there is a certain decorum not only in dress , eating , laughing ( yeλwtos ) and walking ( Badúouatos ) , but also in speech (Aoyou) and silence , since with the other titles and powers of God we honour the Word ( Móyov ) ' ( Discourse XXVII , ch . 5 ; P.G. 36 , 17BC ) . Now we read in Discourse XI : ' Let us therefore , brothers , not celebrate in an impure way (áváyvws ) holy things ( rà ayua ) , nor in a lowly way high ones , nor in a worthless way precious ones , nor , to put it briefly , in a dusty way ( xonus ) the things of the spirit ' ( ch . 6 ; 840A) . It seems that here the words : ' Let us not celebrate in an impure way ( áváyvws ) holy things ( tà ayla ) ' , so closely resemble those of Discourse XXVII inviting Maximus to proclaim ' in a holy way ( άyúws ) holy things ( tà ayla ) ' , as to constitute a deliberate use and adaptation of them. Moreover , the somewhat unexpected contrast between ' dust ' and ' spirit ' , which is found in the invitation of Discourse XI not to celebrate ' in a dusty way ( xoïnŵs ) the things of the spirit ( tà тоυ пνεúμаtos ) ' seems to come from this question put by Gregory to Maximus in Discourse XXVII : ' Do we not subject the less to the greater , I mean the dust ( Tov xov ) to the spirit ( т яνεúμатɩ ) , as they do who have a just appreciation of our composite nature ?' ( ch . 7 : 20BC ) . In contrast to the parallel passage of Discourse XI , the use of the word ' dust ' here is justified by the apparent reference to the formation of man out of ' dust ' ( xous ) and ' spirit ' (яvoń , an early form of яvεuμа ) recorded in Gen. 2,7 . In Discourse XXVII Gregory finally asks Maximus ironically : ' Do we not tame anger when it swells and rages ? Do we not subdue the rising up that casts us down ( cf. Ps . 72.8 ) , irrational sorrow, base pleasures , lascivious laughter ( yeλшτα порνɩнóν ) , undisciplined looking , unsatiable listening (anonv ) , unmeasured speaking ( lóyov άμεтρоν ) , absurd thinking , all that the Evil One takes from within us to use against us , because "he introduces Death through the windows " , as Scripture puts it ( cf. Wisdom 2.24 ; Jer . 9.20 ) , that is through the senses ' ( ch . 7 ; P.G. 26,20C ) . This text , which represents anger as a wild beast to be tamed , explains the following passage in Discourse XI , which would otherwise scarcely be comprehensible : ' Let us take away ( ' Evéynwμɛv ) anger as a wild beast and the tongue ( ylwooav ) as a sharp sword , and let us extinguish pleasure as fire . Let us put to our ears (anoάs ) doors which can open and close perfectly , and let us purify our eye ( sic ) . Let us educate raving touch and devouring taste , so that " Death may not enter through our windows " ( Jer . 9,20 ) . In fact I believe that by this the senses are meant . And let us laugh at the lack of measure in laughter ( γέλωτος ἀμετρίας καταγελάσωμεν ) ' ( ch . 5 ; 837B ) . The text is so difficult to understand that the Maurist editors rendered the Greek έvéyжwμεv ( let us take away ) by sustineamus ( let us endure ) ; this is the opposite of what appears in the light of the source ( Discourse XXVII ) to be the true

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Unauthenticity of Discourse XI attributed to Gregory of Nazianzen

meaning of the passage .

And two Greek manuscripts left out the sentence about

' laughter ' ( P.G. 35 , 387B , note 6 ) , which had been foreshadowed by the mention of ' laughter ' in the parallel passage of Discourse XXVII . From the close comparison of both texts , however , it might result that the author of Discourse XI turns Gregory to ridicule for his anxious questions in Discourse XXVII by advising him to abandon his anger and his reproaches , to extinguish all his pleasures , but to hold his ears , and his other eye , occasionally open for the lascivious behaviour and unmeasured laughter of his adversaries . The unauthenticity of Discourse XI can also be demonstrated by the strangeness of its contents . " Gregory " says : ' Next I should like to say something even more daring , but I refrain from blasphemy out of reverence for the feast day .

Moreover ,

the martyrs do not quite demand this of us , to speak with great restraint ( μETPLWTEрOV ) ( ch . 5 ; 837C- 840A ) . It is out of the question that so sensitive a man as Gregory might even have wanted to utter a blasphemy in any sense . On the contrary , in Discourse IX , ch . 1 ( P.G. 35 , 820AB ) he even ' flees blasphemy ' .

It follows that

the words expressing his desire to blaspheme cannot have been written by him , but are the work of one of his adversaries who regularly made sport of him . Thus he is now made to add : ' The Jew holds reunions , but according to the letter of the law . And the Greek celebrates feasts days , but as it pleases the demons ( 6аúpoolv ) .

But

for us all things are spiritual : doing , moving , willing , speaking , even walking ( Badiouatos ) and dress , and even winking ( veúμатos ) , and this because the Logos penetrates all things and brings man into accord ( oveμísovтos ) with God ( naτà Tòν cov ) . So also the reunion and joyfulness are spiritual for us . Indeed I do not put any obstacle in the way of relaxation ( thv äveσɩv ) , but I condemn the lack of proportion (thν άµεтpíav ) ' ( ch . 6 ; 840BC ) . In this text there is at first sight no blasphemy . But , as the adversaries of Gregory mentioned his initial desire to utter a blasphemy , his subsequent decision to refrain from doing so out of reverence for the feast day , and his remark that the martyrs did not quite demand a blasphemy from him , they proclaim that in some way the passage just cited has a blasphemous sense for them.

The blasphemy is

given , with the ' wink ( vɛúμатоs ) ' for the initiated or ' spiritual ' people , in the words : ' because the Logos penetrates all things and brings man into accord with God ' . The blasphemy consists in the fact that for the author of Discourse XI ' the Logos ' who brings man into accord with the God ( Bacchus or Eros ) , is Maximus himself, of whom Gregory once wrote : ' But where would you put down your curls , where would you send me them ? To the scenes of the theatres , tell me , or to virgins ? But then to whom of these ? Perhaps to your Corinthian ones ? With them alone , communicating most wisely with them alone , did you sometimes perform in full the divine mysteries ' ( On his life , v . 933-936 ; P.G. 37 , 1093A ) .

The same Maximus makes

Gregory ingeniously invite the initiated to amuse themselves with this blasphemy ,

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R. Weijenborg

but not to go to excess in laughing . In conclusion then , not only does Discourse XI , which is attributed to Gregory of Nazianzen and purports to date from 372 , make use of Discourse XXVII , which was written by Gregory in 380 , but the ridiculous or rather blasphemous character of its content also shows that Discourse XI is not authentic .

Basil the Great in the Protestant Reformers

D. F. Wright Edinburgh

N an anniversary year ( 379-1979 ) it is fitting to consider the regard in which I Basil the Great has been held in subsequent eras of Christian history . This paper proposes to do so in outline with reference to the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century .

You may well wonder whether there was much in Basil's life

and writings to commend him to the Reformers .

He bequeathed no great corpus of

exegetical work , nor did he significantly contribute to dogmatic developments in those areas notably ecclesiology , sacramental theology , soteriology and anthropology

where the main battles of the Reformation were fought .

He was , moreover , a

matchless pioneer and champion of monasticism , and he even promulgated a strange vindication of unwritten apostolic traditions . It is not surprising , therefore , if he counted little to Luther and even Calvin . Luther once dismissed him in his Table Talk in the words , ' Basilius taug gar nichts , der ist gar ein munch ;

ich wolt nit ein heller umb yhn geben ' .

On another occasion

he spoke scornfully of Chrysostom and Basil as ' mostly chatterboxes ' (wescher ) , and of Basil as ' a rough teacher'¹ Although more complimentary mentions of Basil are to be found in Luther's works , they are frequently conventional and amount to little in terms of close appreciation of Basil's writings .“ John Calvin obviously knew several of the works of Basil.

Paul's quotations from

pagan writers provoked him to recommend Basil's Ad adolescentes as a guide to the proper use of such authors . He also commended Basil's and Ambrose's expositions of the history of creation ( Hexaemeron ) , and advanced quotations from Basil's Homily 3 on Psalm 32 ( declaring ' fortune ' and ' chance ' to be pagan concepts ) and other works . But Ganoczy has rightly judged that Calvin never showed much sympathy for Basil . He apparently disagrees with Basil's interpretation of the image of God in man , and is severely critical of Basil's aberrant estimate of human free will , which ' mixed the earthly with the heavenly , from a desire to please the wise of the world , or at

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D. F. Wright Calvin must have found Basil's allegorism dishe much preferred John Chrysostom to Basil and Gregory Nazianzen

least from fear of annoying them ' .

tasteful ;

' causam habeo cum Chrysostomo coniunctam ' ... , the Cappadocians ' ad declamationes fuisse magis natos quam ad didacticam scribendi rationem ' Such lack of enthusiasm for Basil in the two most eminent Reformers contrasts markedly with the praise lavished upon him by Erasmus in the preface to his 1532 edition of his works . This was the first collected edition in Greek , although it lacked the Ascetica and the Contra Eunomium . for manuscripts of the latter . )

( Erasmus had long searched in vain

These deficiencies were made good in a supplemen-

tary Venice edition of 1535 dedicated to Gaspar Contarini .

Individual works in

Greek and Latin had been available for many years , as well as Latin collections of varying extent .

The Address to Young Men led the way in 1471 , while Raphael

Volaterranus published a pioneering Latin edition of the Hexaemeron , the Psalms Homilies , miscellaneous homilies and selected Ascetica at Rome in 1515.? Another Latin collection produced by Badius at Paris in 1520 owed its origins to Lefèvre 8 d'Étaples , and is known to have been used by Zwingli and by Thomas Müntzer . Erasmus's 1532 edition was dedicated to Jacopo Sadoleto .

Its preface exposed

the inadequacies of previous Latin versions which had revealed no more than the ' umbra Basilii ' .

Now at last ( and it was far on in Erasmus's life , almost his last

major patristic edition , followed only by his uncompleted Origen ) , Basil is recognizable as the Greatest ( ' Maximus ' ) rather than merely the Great , the Christian Demosthenes whose eloquence surpasses all other Greek writers , making Athanasius seem just a boy and carrying off ' felicissime ' whatever he attempted with his pen . This eulogy of Basil by the doyen of Christian humanists may be instructively compared with that of a Protestant editor , Wolfgang Musculus , who in 1540 produced in Latin the most complete collection of Basil's works to date . Musculus was a former Benedictine who had spent a few years under Bucer's tutelage at Strasbourg before becoming a reformer at Augsburg and later professor at Berne . a warm appreciation of Basil's ascetic writings :

He displays

they contain virtually nothing

that is not conducive to godliness , their counsel is everywhere derived from the Scriptures and they assiduously name the name of Christ and exhort to the imitation of Christ .

The Ascetica interpret over two hundred biblical texts , while the

Moralia inculcate the maxim of ' sola Scriptura ' .

Basil's piety would surely render

all the congregations of Christ and all the homes of Christians ' Christianas 10 ἀδελφίας & vere pietatis ἀσκητήρια . Musculus is conscious that some readers will greatly disapprove of the ascetic teachings of Basil , and will censure him as editor for not passing meet judgment upon them. It is worth noting how other Reformers who in the main acknowledged Basil's orthodoxy came to terms with his stalwart advocacy of monasticism .

In

general they contrasted the pure simplicity of Basil's monastic regimen with the

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Basil the Great in the Protestant Reformers corruptions and sophistications of latter -day monasteries .

That monks once actually

slept on the ground and ate only bread , vegetables and roots would be incredible , 11 asserts Calvin , unless reputable eyewitnesses like Basil had recorded the fact . Philip Melanchthon , who displayed considerable interest in Basil's works and tracked 12 down ' a good part ' of them in manuscript in the early 1520's composed a Declamatio on Basil in 1545. He passes fairly rapidly over Basil's ' immoderate ' championship of monasticism , setting over against it other strengths of Basil such as his lucid presentation of justification by faith alone . He concludes that Basil held more modest views of monasticism than had recently been common .

As he put it

elsewhere , Basil taught that monastic life was pleasing to God , not that it merited 13 Flaccius Illyricus , the forgiveness . It was a matter of praxis , not dogma ." Protestant chronicler of the Ecclesiastica Historia known as the Magdeburg Centuries , exploits the checks Basil experienced from some contemporary bishops in promoting monasticism as evidence that ' many ' condemned the new phenomenon at the time , even 14 though it was immeasurably purer than it later became ." The same point may also be implied in the dedicatory preface of the 1535 editio princeps Graeca of the Ascetica.

The editor , Stephanus de Sabio , who goes out of

his way to highlight the prominence of Scripture in Basil's ascetic works , claims that ' certain of our brethren ' whom Satan's cunning has recently seduced from the Catholic fold , will find here much to recover them from their error , as Contarini , 15 the dedicatee , had never ceased to endeavour . In Musculus's 1540 preface we may next note his praise of Basil's defence of ' the purity of the catholic faith ' in conflicts with heretics , like Daniel in the den of lions . These efforts naturally receive honourable mention in other Reformers , 16 at some length in Melanchthon's Declamatio . Although Trinitarian debate rarely came to prominent focus in the Reformation except with anti -Trinitarian Radicals , most Reformers accorded Basil due recognition for his vindication of the Nicene faith . Basil's battles for orthodoxy were at the same time a campaign to preserve or recover the peace of the Church . Here again Melanchthon , Musculus and others found in Basil a model worthy of the keenest imitation . Basil's ' ecclesiasticus zelus ' evoked Musculus's ardent approbation ;

his passion for the unity of Christ's body

must be shared by all Christian people , not least magistrates and clergy , who could learn much from Basil about the causes and healing of dissensions . Melanchthon frequently cites a tag from Basil , ' non tam sinistrae opus est dextra , quam 17 Ecclesiae opus est docentium concordia ' . But Melanchthon and Musculus were by no means the only Reformers to evince familiarity and sympathy with Basil's works .

Zwingli had studied some of Basil's

writings , including Epistle 38 ( on the difference between ousia and hypostasis ) , while a priest at Glarus .

Subsequently at Einsiedeln he had access to a rich

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D. F. Wright

monastic library and annotated Pauline Epistles from patristic sources .

At Zürich

he used Basil's homilies on the Psalms both for a note on Romans and for his own 18 lectures on the Psalms . But he scarcely reveals that affinity for the Greek Moral rigour 19 and a mystical bent attracted him to the Cappadocians and John Chrysostom . Fathers which is characteristic of Wolfgang Oecolampadius of Basel .

Around 1521 he brought out German translations of Basil's Epistle 2 to Gregory Nazianzen on the ascetic life , asserting its relevance for all Christians , and of 20 his Homily II on Psalm 14 against usury . He also found more explicitly Protestant 21 grist to his mill in Basil's writings . Peter Martyr Vermigli's reforming career extended from Italy to Oxford , ending at Zürich in 1562. A few years later the Genevan Academy purchased many of his books , hundreds of which are still identifiable in the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire of Geneva . They include the 1532 Erasmus edition of Basil and the more comprehensive Latin edition of Janus Cornarius from Froben of Basel in 1552 , 22 both extensively annotated in Martyr's hand ." The fruit of this close study of Basil and other Fathers is seen in Martyr's biblical commentaries , and more solidly in his reply to Stephen Gardiner on the eucharist , Defensio Doctrinae Veteris & Apostolicae de Sacrosancto Eucharistiae Sacramento ( Zürich , 1559 ) , which hinges on the true interpretation of the Fathers and is called by Pontien Polman ' la monographie la plus étendue et , peut - être , la plus érudite que la polémique protestante du XVIe siècle ait produite sur un sujet special de l'histoire du dogma ' . Martyr sets high standards for the reading of the Fathers - in the original languages , the works themselves , not extracts in Gratian or Lombard , and with 23 the spuria carefully sifted out ." Martyr introduced new patristic texts into England , and his tradition of patristic apologetic was maintained by his protegé 24 John Jewel , whose works made plentiful use of Basil ." None of these Reformers could afford a detached and disinterested look at Basil .

They were all caught up in the familiar appeal to the Fathers which in one

form or another was so important an element in their justification of Church reform. This appeal has been skilfully analysed in Melanchthon's case by Pierre Fraenkel but not yet with comparable thoroughness for any other Reformer .

It had

to be so advanced that it did not undermine ' sola Scriptura ' , which meant that the Fathers had to be read with discrimination .

Melanchthon , building on Tertullian's

axiom of the priority of truth to error , drew attention to the way in which the Fathers regularly cited their predecessors , e.g. , Irenaeus Polycarp . Basil provided him with an interesting illustration of this argument , for Basil appealed to the faith of his grandmother , who had been taught by Gregory Thaumaturgus . The latter was a convert of Origen's , who cited apostolic authority for infant baptism . In this and other ways the authority of the Fathers came to be , as it were , encom25 passed within the apostlic authority of the Scriptures .

Basil the Great in the Protestant Reformers

1153

This claim on the Fathers inevitably involved the Reformers in selective quotation , the inadvertent citation of spuria and the constant peril of disregarding historical context . Thus Basil was found to furnish the clearest of testimonies to 26 justification πίστει μόνῃ as well as less unambiguous support in the eucharistic 27 Yet in Basil's case debates , both Protestant -Catholic and inter -Protestant ." various Reformers in varying degrees conceded that not everything he wrote was wholly to their liking .

Did not Paul suggest that even worthy teachers built 28 ' stipulae ' on the foundation of Christ ?' Melanchthon was fond of alleging that

Basil and other Fathers at times used unhappy terminology which at best allowed their intended meaning to be misconstrued and at worst planted a root for the 29 growth of virulent error . Yet Melanchthon is still able to claim in his 30 Declamatio that Basil ' recte de omnibus articulis Evangelii sensisse ' . If Chrysostom was the Reformers ' favourite Greek Father , Luther's dismissiveness towards Basil was the exception rather than the rule . There were blemishes here and there in his output , but others joined with Melanchthon in according him a secure place among the Fathers of the Church catholic and reformed .

REFERENCES 1. D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe ( Weimar , 1883 ff . ) , hereafter W.A. , Tischreden 1 , 106 no . 252 ( 1532 ) ; 4 , 652 no . 5089 ( 1540 ) . Cf. 4 , 381 no . 4567 ( 1539 ) . 2. Ernst Schäfer , Luther als Kirchenhistoriker ( Gütersloh , 1897 ) , pp . 64 , 115 , 174 , 321 ; Pontien Polman , L'Elément Historique dans la controverse religieuse du XVIe siècle ( Gembloux , 1932 ) , pp . 20-21 . Unlike many other Reformers , Luther showed no interest in Basil's Address to Young Men ; Luzi Schucan , Das Nachleben von Basilius Magnus " ad adolescentes". Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des christlichen Humanismus ( Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance , 133 ; Geneva , 1973 ) , pp . 183-185 . 3. Commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:33 ( Corpus Reformatorum , Brunswick , etc. , 1834 ff . , hereafter C.R. , 77 , 554 ) ; Commentary on Titus 1:12 ( C.R. 80 , 415 ) ; Institutes 1:14:20 ( 1543 ; C.R. 29 , 508 ) , 1 : 16 : 8 ( 1539 ; C.R. 29 , 891 ) . Wolfgang Capito's Hexemeron Dei opus explicatum ( Strasbourg , 1539 ) may be dependent on Basil's Hexaemeron ; cf. Hughes Oliphant Old , The Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship ( Zürcher Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte , 5 ; Zürich , 1975 ) , p . 206 . Capito's lectures on the Decalogue used Basil ; cf. Ernst Staehelin , Briefe und Akten zum Leben Oekolampads , vol . 1 ( Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte , hereafter Q.F.R.G. , 10 ; Leipzig , 1927 ) , p . 68 , no . 40 . 4. Alexandre Ganoczy , La Bibliothèque de l'Académie de Calvin ( Geneva , 1969 ) , p . 43 ( cf. Old , op . cit . , pp . 145-146 , 149 ) . Calvin , Psychopannychia ( C.R. 33 , 181 ) ; Treatise on Scandals ( C.R. 36 , 19 ) ; Preface to projected translation of Chrysostom ( C.R. 37 , 834 ) . 5. En amice lector , thesaurum damus inaestimabilem D. Basilium vere magnum sua lingua disertissime loquentem, quem hactenus habuisti latine balbutientem... ( Basel , Froben-Episcopius , 1532 ) . 6. Opera quaedam Beati Basilii ... quae omnia diligenter recognita nunc primum impressa sunt... Per Stephanum de Sabio : sumptu D. Damiani de Sancta Maria , Venice , 1535.

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D. F. Wright

7. For the 1470-71 first Latin version of Ad adolescentes (Venice , Christoph Valdarfer ) , see Schucan , op . cit . , pp . 115-118 , 244 , and for the editio princeps Graeca ( Florence , 1495-96 , Lorenzo de Alopa ) , ibid . , pp . 121-123 , 245. Opera Magni Basilii : per Raphaelem Volaterranum nuper in latinum conversa... • Apud I. Mazochium , Rome , 1515 . 8. Basilii Magni Caesariensium in Cappadocia Antistitis sanctissimi Opera plane divina, variis e locis sedulo collecta : & accuratione Iodoci Badii Ascensii nuper diligentius recognita... Walther Koehler , Huldrych Zwinglis Bibliothek ( Zürich , 1921 ) , no . 21 ; Günther Franz , Thomas Müntzer Schriften und Briefe ( Q.F.R.G. , 33 ; Gütersloh , 1968 ) , p . 535. The illustration of eels copulating with vipers in Müntzer's Sermon to the Princes ( 1524 ) may go back to Basil's Hexaemeron 7 : 2,5 (P.G. 29 , 149 , 160 ) ; Franz , p . 256 . 9. En amice lector ... , pp . 1-3 . Neither here nor in the numerous references to Basil's works throughout his correspondence have I found a single mention of Basil's ascetic writings . 10. Opera D. Basilii Magni ... Omnia, sive recens versa, sive ad Graecos archetypos ita collata per Wolfgangum Musculum... ( Herwagen , Basel , 1540 ) , ff . a2r - 2v . Musculus took his count of Basil's biblical texts from the preface to the 1535 Venice edition ( n . 6 above ) , f . ivr . 11. Institutes 4 : 13 : 8 ( 1539 ; C.R. 29 , 442 ) . 12. Ep . 193 to Spalatin , Feb. 6 , 1522 ( C.R. 1 , 547 ) . It is remarkable , given Melanchthon's humanism and educational concerns , that his works contain no obvious reference to Basil's Ad adolescentes , which was a favourite pedagogic charter of the Christian humanists ; cf. Schucan , op . cit . , p . 185 . 13. De Basilio Episcopo , C.R. 11 , 675-684 at 680. Pierre Fraenkel , Testimonia Patrum: the Function of the Patristic Argument in the Theology of Philip Melanchthon (Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance , 46 ; Geneva , 1961 ) , p . 93 . 14. Catalogus testium veritatis ... ( Basel , 1556 ) , p . 43. The same point had been made by Melanchthon in De Ecclesia et de Autoritate Verbi Dei in 1539 ( C.R. 23 , 600 ) . Flaccius's Ecclesiastica Historia contains a lengthy account of Basil's life and writings (Cent . IV : X , vol . 2 , Basel , 1560 , 939-959 ) . 15. Op . cit . ( n . 6 above ) , ff . ivr - ivv . 16. Opera... per Wolfgangum Musculum , f . a3r ; Melanchthon , De Basilio Episcopo , C.R. 11 , 679-682 . 17. Opera ... per W. Musculum , f . a3v -4r ; Melanchthon , De Basilio Episcopo , C.R. 11 , 683 ; Bullinger to Melanchthon , citing his own words , June 22 , 1544 , Calvini Epp . 559 , C.R. 11 , 730 ; Luther , Bugenhagen and Melanchthon to Leipzig Theological Faculty , Oct. 1543 , W.A. Briefe 10 , 413f . no . 3922 , with further references . I have so far failed to find this quotation in Basil's writings . 18. Oskar Farner , Huldrych Zwingli . Seine Entwicklung zum Reformator 1506-1520 ( Zürich , 1946 ) , pp . 121 , 239-240 , 253 , 402 ; Polman , op . cit . , pp . 45-46 ; Randglossen on Rom . 7:24 , C.R. 99 , 4 and 24 . 19. Gordon Rupp , Patterns of Reformation ( London , 1969 ) , p. 12 . 20. Ernst Staehelin , ' Oekolampad - Bibliographie ' , Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 17 ( 1918 ) , pp . 28-29 ( no . 48 ) , 33 ( no . 61 ) : id . , ' Die Väterübersetzungen Oekolampads ' , Schweizerische Theologische Zeitschrift 33 ( 1916 ) , pp . 63-64 . 21. In both his collections of patristic material on the Supper- strife , Oecolampadius cites Basil's Shorter Rules 172 ( P.G. 31 , 1195-96 ) on the reception of the sacrament : De genuina Verborum Domini , Hoc est corpus meum, iuxta vetustissimos authores, expositione liber ( Basel , 1525 ) , sig . Elv - 2r ; Quid de eucharistia Veteres tum Graeci tum Latini senserint , Dialogus ( Basel , 1530 ) , sig . c7v - 8r . 22. Ganoczy , op . cit . , pp . 4-5 , 168 no . 28 , 170 no . 33 , 181 no . 65 . 23. Polman , op . cit . , pp . 119-125 ; M.W. Anderson , Peter Martyr. A Reformer in Exile ( 1542-1562 ) ( Bibliotheca Humanistica & Reformatorica , 10 ; Nieuwkoop , 1975 ) , pp . 269 , 325 , 337-9 , 346 , 348 . 24. S.L. Greenslade , The English Reformers and the Fathers of the Church ( Oxford , 1960 ) , p . 3. In a letter to Bullinger of 1552 from Oxford , John ab Ulmis reported the discovery of ' a great treasure of most valuable books : Basil on Isaiah and the

Basil the Great in the Protestant Reformers

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Psalms in Greek , together with some other writings , or rather fragments of the same author ' , and other writers ; Original letters ... , ed . Hastings Robinson ( Parker Society , hereafter P.S. ) , pt . 2 ( Cambridge , 1847 ) , pp . 447-448 , Ep . CCX . For Jewel's references to Basil see s.v. ' Basil ' in Henry Gough , A General Index to the Publications of the Parker Society ( P.S. , Cambridge , 1855 ) , pp . 99-101 . 25. Fraenkel , op . cit . , pp . 17-18 , 188 . 26. Homily on Humility 3 ( P.G. 31 , 529 ) , cited by Melanchthon , De Ecclesia et de Autoritate Verbi Dei ( C.R. 23 , 616f .; cf. Fraenkel , p . 296 ) ; Calvin , Articles of Faculty of Paris with Antidote IV ( C.R. 35 , 13 ) ; Musculus , Opera D. Basilii Magni ff. a2r -3v ; Cranmer , Homily of Salvation 2 and Notes on Justification , in Miscellaneous Writings and Letters ... , ed . John Edmund Cox ( P.S. , Cambridge , 1846 ) , pp . 130-131 , 205 . 27. See above for Peter Martyr and for Oecolampadius ( n . 21 ) . Cranmer's Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper 4 : 4 , in Writings and Disputations ... , ed . Cox , ( P.S. , Cambridge , 1844 ) , p . 209 , cites Basil's interpretation of John 6:58 in Ep . 8 : 4 ( P.G. 32 , 253 ) , while in his Answer to Stephen Gardiner 2:14 ( ibid. , pp . 324 , 326 ) he rejects Gardiner's attempt to wriggle out of the plain import of Basil's rejection of the separation of ' accidents ' and ' substance ' in Hexaemeron 1 : 8 ( P.G. 29 , 21 ) . 28. Melanchthon , De Ecclesia et de Autoritate Verbi Dei ( C.R. 23 , 600 ) . 29. Fraenkel , op . cit . , pp . 92 , 296 . 30. De Basilio Episcopo ( C.R. 11 , 681 ) .

SP 3 - M

Chrysostom

J. B. Dumortier Dolores Greeley, R.S.M. P. Leclercq A. Natali R. G. Tanner S. J. Voicu

Lille St. Louis, Missouri Lille Lille Newcastle, N.S.W. Rome

La Version Arménienne du Commentaire sur Isaïe de Jean Chrysostome J. B. Dumortier Lille

E commentaire sur Isale de Chrysostome se réduit , dans la tradition grecque , à L l'interprétation de Is . ch . I -VIII , 10. Tous nos manuscrits¹, en effet , s'arrêtent sur les mots ἅπαντα ταῦτα διασκεδάσει τὰ μηχανήματα , et seul le Parisinus gr . 777 y ajoute la doxologie , d'ailleurs superflue , oτl aútÿ ǹ dó§α . On s'est longtemps demandé pourquoi Jean n'avait pas poursuivi son oeuvre jusqu' au bout . Etait-ce un surcroît d'occupations , si , comme il est vraisemblable , il l ' avait entreprise au temps de son diaconat , avant le ministère actif ? Etait- ce la maladie ou la mort , si , comme d'aucuns l'ont pensé , c'avait été un travail ébauché à Cucuse , durant son exil ? La question restait sans réponse , lorsqu'en 1880 les Mekhitaristes de Venise éditèrent un manuscrit arménien du XIIe siècle , dont la langue , celle - là même du Ve siècle , dénonçait la très haute antiquité du modèle .

Ce

MS qui était mutilé et en mauvais état , nous avait conservé le Commentaire sur Isaïe ch . II , 2 LXIV , avec une lacune pour les ch . XXI - XXX . 3 En 1887 , A. Tiroyan donnait une traduction latine de cet ouvrage pour les ch . VIII , 11 - LXIV . Il se bornait pour les ch . I -VIII , 10 à reproduire celle de Montfaucon , quitte à signaler en note des variantes ou des additions tirées de l ' arménien . Les éditeurs vénitiens proclamaient dans leur préface l'authenticité du Commentaire intégral : ex universali antiquitatis consensu, ex plurimis intrinsecis argumentis, ex historicis monumentis , ex genere dicendi S. Patris necnon ipsius armenii interpretis, denique ex ipsa libri summa Chrysostomi eruditione ac praeclara fama 4 haud indigna . Leur argumentation cependant présentait quelque fragilité et demeu5 rait imprécise ; aussi ne peut -on s'étonner que de bons juges comme Bardenhewer` et 6 dom Chr . Baur n'aient point été convaincus . Le travail qu'en 1907 consacrait 7 L. Dieu à la question devait être plus solide et plus fouillé , bien propre à emporter la conviction . L'auteur reconnaît loyalement qu'entre les deux parties du

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J. B. Dumortier

Commentaire Is . ch . I-VIII , 10 et Is . ch . VIII , 11 - LXIV les différences sont nombreuses et considérables . au tout .

La méthode d'interprétation diverge , en effet , du tout

Dans le première section , Jean ne connaît que le texte scripturaire dit

lucianique , mais dans la seconde il cite abondamment les recensions d'Aquila , Symmaque , Théodotion , voire le texte hébraïque .

Les chaînes patristiques , d'autre

part , ne font aucune allusion , non plus que la tradition grecque , à ce Commentaire d'Is . ch . VIII , 11 LXIV . L'antiquité de la version plaide cependant pour l'authenticité et l'on peut admettre entre les deux parties du Commentaire une différance de méthode si l'on imagine qu'un laps de temps considérable en a séparé l'exécution . Jean aurait repris son travail ' sur un autre pied , d'après une méthode un peu différente de celle de la première partie , mais très voisine de celle qu'il a employée dans le commen8 taire sur les Psaumes ' . Mais ce qui , à nos yeux , reste le plus probant , c'est ' la similitude d'expressions , d'images , de comparaisons et d'idées que présentent le commentaire complet et les oeuvres authentiques de Chrysostome ' . Au terme de son long et substantiel article , Dieu conclut fermement à l'authenticité absolue de l ' oeuvre exégétique . Cette démonstration a entraîné l'adhésion d'excellents patro11 10 12 logues , comme N. Akinian et M. Djanachian . Toutefois P. Canart se montre plus circonspect : il estime que le problème ne semble résolu définitivement ni dans un sens , ni dans l'autre . Si la critique interne du commentaire de Is . VIII , 11 LXIV reste sujette à caution , il nous a semblé possible de tirer parti d'une remarque placée après l'interprétation de Is . VIII , 10 et que nous lisons tant en arménien qu'en grec . 13 A. Tiroyan traduit cette note ainsi : Hactenus invenimus scriptum graece ipsis14 met manibus S. Joannis Chrysostomi . Mais à se reporter à l'arménien ': ' Mingew çaysvayr gtak ' ( variante gtaw ) iwrov jeřovk ' greal eraneloyn Yohannu yunarēn . ' on s'aperçoit que Jean n'est qualifié ni de saint , ni de Chrysostome , mais simplement de bienheureux . Dom L. Leloir suit le texte de plus près 15: Usque hunc locum invenimus propriis (uel suis) manibus scriptum beati Johannis graece .

Nous adoptons cette traduction ,

mais en nous permettant de préférer à gtak la varient gtaw et de lire inventum est , qui rend l'original grec cüpntal , et nous traduisons : ' Jusqu'à cet endroit , on trouve écrit de la main du bienheureux Jean , en grec ... ' . La note est manifestement incomplète , comme nous le verrons plus bas . Voici maintenant ce que nous lisons dans le Marcianus gr . 87 et dans l'Ottobonianus gr . 7 , sa copie : Εως ὧδε ἐν ἑλληνικοῖς γράμμασιν εὕρηται ἐκτεθεῖσα ἡ προθεωρία αὕτη παρὰ τοῦ μακαρίου καὶ ἁγιωτάτου ἀρχιεπισκόπου Κονσταντινουπόλεως ᾿Ιωάννου τοῦ Χρυσοστόμου · ἀπὸ δὲ ἐντεῦθεν διὰ σημείων .

' Jusqu'à cet endroit on trouve rédigée

en caractères grecs cette introduction ( ? ) du bienheureux et très saint archevêque 16 de Constantinople , Jean Chrysostome . Mais à partir d'ici , elle l'est en signes'.¹

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La Version Arménienne du Commentaire sur Isaïe Le scribe du Marcianus dit ensuite qu'il a trouvé cette note dans son modèle .

Pour interpréter correctement ces deux notes , il importe de rappeler ici comment nous sont parvenus les commentaires bibliques de Chrysostome .

Jean interprêtait le

texte en parlant d'abondance et son discours était pris à la volée par les sténographes . Un secrétaire faisait à l'aide de ces notes une première rédaction . Il soumettait ensuite son travail à l'auteur qui le corrigeait en vue de l'édition . Que Jean ait eu recours à ce precédé de composition , courant d'ailleurs dans l' antiquité , nous en avons la preuve dans la phrase liminaire du Commentaire de l ' 17 epitre aux Hébreux : Τοῦ ... ἀρχιεπισκόπου Κονσταντινουπόλεως ᾿Ιωάννου τοῦ Χρυσοστόμου ἑρμηνεία εἰς τὴν πρὸς ῾Εβραίους ἐπιστολήν , ἐκτεθεῖσα ἀπὸ σημείων , μετὰ τὴν κοίμησιν αὐτοῦ , παρὰ Κονσταντίνου πρεσβυτέρου Αντιοχείας .

' Interprétation de

l'épître aux Hébreux de Jean Chrysostome , archevêque de Constantinople , rédigée à l'aide de signes , après son dernier sommeil , oeuvre de Constantin , prêtre d'Antioche '.18 Dans ce dernier cas , nous lisons la rédaction d'un secrétaire , non celle de l'auteur ; néanmoins il est permis de penser que nous pouvons retrouver dans ce texte non seulement la méthode d'exégèse et l'inspiration de Chrysostome , mais encore bien des expressions et des images qui lui étaient familières , son style même . N'en serait- il pas de même pour le Commentaire d'Is . VIII , 11 - LXIV ? On peut le présumer . Les deux notes en effet s'accordent pour nous apprendre que ce qui les précède , le commentaire d'Is . I - VIII , 10 , est écrit en caractères grecs et que Jean en est l'auteur . Elles diffèrent en ceci que la note du Marcianus gr . 87 a manifestement subi des interpolations et qu'à celle de l'arménien il manque quelques mots . Le qualificatif de Chrysostome n'apparaît qu'au VIe siècle .

L'épithete μακαρίου

rendue par éranéloyn convient à un mort plutôt qu'à un défunt rangé parmi les saints : elle rappelle le μɛтà τhν ноúμnoɩv aúтou de l'intitulé de l'Epître aux Hébreux . Les mots καὶ ἁγιωτάτου ἀρχιεπισκόπου Κονσταντινουπόλεως ᾿Ιωάννου τοῦ Χρυσοστόμου rappellent trop l'intitulé de nos manuscrits : τοῦ ἐν ἁγίοις πατρὸς ἡμῶν ἀρχιεπισκόπου Κονσταντινουπόλεως ᾿Ιωάννου τοῦ Χρυσοστόμου pour qu'on n'y voie pas une réminiscence d'époque tardive .

Le mot пpodεwpía : prevision , previous consider-

ation , ou préface , introduction , selon le Lampe , surprend .

Les termes έρμηνεία ,

Enynous seraient ici plus naturels . La note du Marcianus gr . 87 a été interpolée au cours du temps et ne reproduit pas la note primitive que lisait au ve siècle le traducteur arménien . Mais d'autre part le texte que nous offre ce dernier est mutilé .

Il manque en effet au premier

membre de phrase , rendu par Usque hunc locum ... , la correspondance que nous observons entre ews übɛ ...árò dè ÉVтεŨ‡εV , ' jusqu'à cet endroit ... mais à partir d'ici ' . Mais puisque la suite du Commentaire existe en arménien , et a toutes chances d'être authentique , c'est que le traducteur a été capable d'interpréter les signes sténographiques dont le scribe grec , tard venu , ignorait le système .

J. B. Dumortier

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Nous avons donc en somme avec le Commentaire d'Is . VIII , 11 - LXIV un cas similaire à celui du Commentaire su l'Epître aux Hébreux . Ni dans un cas , ni dans l'autre , il ne nous est donné de lire la rédaction définitive due à l'auteur , mais celle que fit , à l'aide de notes , un secrétaire . On ne peut donc parler d'authenticité absolue . On aurait tort cependant de considérer ces oeuvres comme des spuria , car il nous est permis grâce au prêtre Constantin et à l'anonyme arménien d'y percevoir l'écho de l'interprétation verbale de Chrysostome .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. En vue d'une édition critique du Commentaire sur Isaïe , nous avons collationné les manuscrits suivants : xe s . ff . 1 · 77 Laurentianus gr . IX-13 xe s . 1 - 88 ff. Mosquensis gr . 114 (Vladimir 55 ) XIe s . 68V - 154 ff. Vaticanus gr . 522 XIIe s . 1 . 86 ff. Marcianus gr . 87 XIIe s . ff. 1 · 78V Gudianus gr . 2. 50 XIIe s . ff. 1-243 Laurentianus gr . V- 8 ff. 17-179 a. 1542 Parisinus gr . 777 ( Regius 1933 ) ff. Ottobonianus gr . 7 49-145 a . 1543 ff . 139-223 Monacensis gr . 38 ( Bavaricus apud Savile ) post 1555 2. Mechitharistae , Versio armeniaca in Is . 8-64 ( Venetiis , 1880 ) . 3. A. Tiroyan , In Isaiam prophetam interpretatio S. Joannis Chrysostomi (Venetiis , 1887) . 4. A. Tiroyan , op . cit . , p . XX . 5. Bardenhewer , Gesch. der Altk . Lit. , t . III ( Fribourg , 1903 ) , p . 336 . 6. Dom Chr . Baur , S. Jean Chrysostome et ses oeuvres dans l'histoire littéraire (Paris-Louvain , 1907 ) , p . 55 . 7. L. Dieu , ' Le commentaire arménien de S. Jean Chrysostome sur Isaïe est - il authentique ? ' in R.H.E. 16 ( 1921 ) , pp . 7-30 . 8. L. Dieu , op . cit . , p . 26 . 9. L. Dieu , op . cit . , p . 17 . 10. N. Akinian , ' Des hl . Chrysostomus Kommentar zu Isaias in der armenischen Literatur ' in Handes Amsorya 48 ( 1934 ) , pp. 43-55 . 11. M. Djanachian , ' Les arménistes et les Mekhitaristes ' in Armeniaca, Mélanges d'études arméniennes ( Venise 1969 ) , pp . 417-419 . 12. P. Canart , Lettre personnelle ( 23 décembre 1976 ) . 13. A. Tiroyan , op . cit . , p . 123 . 14. Versio armeniaca , p . 102 . 15. L. Leloir , Lettre personnelle ( 20 novembre 1978 ) . 16. Ces signes ou onμɛĩa désignaient les signes tachygraphiques que l'on employait pour noter les discours des orateurs . Aux dires de Plutarque dans la Vie de Caton le Jeune ( 23 , 3 ) , Cicéron avait posté dans la salle de la Curie des gens experts à utiliser ' ces signes qui pouvaient exprimer beaucoup de lettres avec des caractères fins et menus ' . Libanios fait allusion au même usage dans ses Discours ( 42 , 25 ) . 17. P.G. 63 , 9 . 18 Dans la correspondance de Chrysostome , il est question d'un prêtre appelé Constance , que l'on identifie avec notre Constantin . P.G. 52 , 612. 670. 741-746 .

St. John Chrysostom Prophet of Social Justice Dolores Greeley , R. S. M. St. Louis

ODAY , when we are being constantly reminded that it is the very essence of T Gospel Christianity that we concern ourselves with the cause of social justice , I think it is important and helpful to reflect that this is not a new development in Christian teaching over the past hundred years , but has in fact solid roots in early Christian tradition .

One of the strongest and most eloquent spokesmen for

this demand of Christian responsibility and involvement in the issues of social justice is John Chrysostom , bishop , pastor , teacher , prophet in the Christian community of Antioch and Constantinople in the latter part of the 4th century. We cannot address in this short time all aspects of social justice but only one which I think is central to Chrysostom's thought , viz . , the concern and attitude that a Christian ought to have for the poor and destitute . Study and reflection on the preaching of this great church father might provide solid insights helpful to us in our apostolate today . The theological principles underlying Chrysostom's teaching flow naturally from his understanding of the church as the Body of Christ .

His theological principles

are never abstract theoretical formulations but are always explained with descriptive and imaginative analogies and immediate practical applications . In the church as in a body there is a solidarity among members . We should help the poor because they are our co-members in the body of Christ .

To emphasize the

awesomeness of this body of Christ , Chrysostom compares it with the altar of stone in the church which becomes holy and worthy of honor because it receives Christ's body . The poor , suffering and destitute , those whom we can see ' lying everywhere both in lanes and in market places ' - this is an even holier and more awesome altar because ' it is Christ's body ' ... ' and you may sacrifice on it every hour , for on this , too , is sacrifice performed'.1 Chrysostom uses this same comparison when he chides the Christians on their

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1164

neglect of the poor. Body ,

'You honor indeed this altar because it receives Christ's

but him that is himself the body of Christ you treat with scorn , and when

perishing , you neglect ' ?

Our acts of kindness and almsgiving to the poor will

ascend as the smoke of sacrifice before the very throne of the king .

Every beggar

that we meet , Chrysostom tells us , should make us think of an altar and this should 3 not only prevent us from insulting the poor man but should make us reverence him." It follows then that whatever we do for another we are really doing for Christ 4 Himself since the poor and needy belong to His body and are his members ." This identification between Christ and his poor suffering members is referred to frequently throughout Chrysostom's homilies .

5 Your dog is fed to fullness while Christ wastes with hunger . When Christ is famishing , do you so revel in luxury?6 Christ has nowhere to lodge , but goes about as a stranger , and naked and hungry , and you set up houses out of town , and baths and terraces and chambers without number , in thoughtless vanity; and to Christ you give not even a share of a little hut .? Thus the root and ground of this charity to our fellow members is Christ himself . If we truly love Christ we will love others as He did , we will become like him . Our love for others will never waver because it will be founded on Christ as its unfailing source .

' Though he be hated , though he be insulted , though he be slain ,

a Christian continues to love , having as sufficient ground for his love , Christ . ,8 Therefore he stands steadfast , firm, not to be overthrown , looking unto Him . ' Thus in the Greek and Roman classical world , where the predominant motive impelling people to give to those less fortunate than they , would be the acquisition of honor , reputation as a generous benefactor , the strengthening of the bonds of friendship , or the desire to achieve a certain immortality , Chrysostom witnesses strongly to the very essence of true christian charity . This mandate to care for those in need extends beyond ' those who are of the household of the faith' ( Gal . 10 : 6 ) . ' If you see anyone in afflicition ' , Chrysostom tells us , ' do not be curious to enquire further about who he is . affliction is a just claim on your aid .

His being in

He is God's , be he heathen or be he Jew ,

since even if he is an unbeliever , still he needs help . , 10 Moreover ,

we are all formed with the same eyes , the same body , the same soul ,

the same structure in all respects , all things from the earth , all men from one man , and all in the same habitation . , 11 Thus the unity and solidarity of all men in Adam become for Chrysostom the basis for a universal love and charity .

Though another

man be neither a friend nor a relation , yet he is a man who shares the same nature with us , possesses the same Lord , is our fellow- servant , and fellow- sojourner , for 12 he is born in the same world ." Chrysostom exhorts Christians not only to share what they have but actually to 13 search for the means of being useful to others . Material charity imposes itself

St. John Chrysostom

1165

on a Christian as a daily task because our neighbor is often badly in need of the most essential things - food , clothing , lodging , remedies , assistance in other matters : ' It is not enough to come to the Church to say a few prayers , or even to fast and put on sack-cloth and ashes , we must exhibit works , acquaint ourselves with the mass of woes , look upon the naked , the hungry , the wronged . , 14 Love should find expression in our care for the poor members of the body of Christ . It was of no consequence to Chrysostom if the poor person who begged for his help really deserved it or not . Responsibility lay with the poor not to accept what 15 they did not need ." Neither should we give with a view of getting a return some day .

In fact the best assurance that we will avoid what may even be unconscious

expectations in this regard is to give to one who is incapable of giving in return . With reason could Chrysostom espouse the cause of the poor . The Christian families of Antioch were often extremely wealthy , owning numberless horses , servants and slaves , spacious lands and splendid homes . the extravagance in household possessions .

Chrysostom describes some of

Often they had beds of ivory , silver

and gold¹6; and utensils , such as dishes , jars , pitchers and scent bottles , as 17 well as furniture , such as chairs and footstools , all made of solid silver . 'I am greatly ashamed ' , Chrysostom admits to his people , ' when I see many of the rich riding upon their golden-bitted chargers with a train of domestics clad in gold , and 18 having couches of silver and other and more pomp ' .* Women clothed themselves with silk and costly garments and adorned their hair with gold and pearls . Men , too , 19 had many gold rings and costly jewels as well as ornaments and glittering 20 sandals . These same families feasted sumptuously every day at elaborate banquets ,

where not only were the most expensive and exotic food and drink served , but also the most lavish entertainment was provided for the guests . Often the house would take on the appearance of a theatre wherein stage actors , flute players and dancers 21 were invited.2 Contrast this with the plight of the poor people who lay on straw in the great cold , in the middle of the night , under the colonnades of the public 22 And many baths and temples , trembling with cold and tortured by hunger . shrivelled forms looked into the brightly lit dining rooms of the rich and begged for a gift , but no- one listened to them . When such a situation exists , is it not we ourselves who make robbers , Chrysostom asks . Is it not we who minister fuel to the fire of the envious ? Is it not we who make vagabonds and traitors when we put our wealth before them for a bait ? What madness is this ? For it is madness to cover our chests with apparel and overlook him that is made after Christ's image and similitude ; to let all be wasted away with time , and let not Christ be fed , 23 and this when he is hungry ." Often because of the insensitivity of the wealthy and in order better to win their pity and compassion , the poor would gather before the church doors where they 24 might be seen swearing , taking oaths and doing all sorts of indiscreet things .

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D. Greeley

They might blind their own children or engage in spectacular feats , e.g. , chewing the skins of worn-out shoes or fixing sharp nails into their heads . Others would lie in frozen ponds with naked stomachs or endure other more horrid trials .

All

of this in order to amuse and delight spectators who might be moved thereby to give a pittance for a loaf of bread .

How disgraceful and inhuman it is , Chrysostom

would remind the Christians , to compel the poor to suffer such humiliations in order to support themselves .

When we allow or encourage such practices we are even more

guilty than one who kills another for ' he who bids a man to slay himself (which is what happens in the case of these persons ) does a more grievous thing than he that 25 slays a man ' Chrysostom's teaching on the possession of private property and other means of wealth might be best summarized by extracting a few words from his homily on the first letter of Timothy chapter 4 : 1-3:

' The possessions of the Lord are all common .

Is not this an evil then that you alone should have the Lord's property , that you alone should enjoy what is common? Is not the earth God's , and the fullness thereof? If then our possessions belong to one common Lord , they belong also to 26 our fellow- servants . 1 Paul VI in his encyclical Populorum Progressio #23 , echoes this teaching of Chrysostom when he writes that ' private property does not constitute for anyone an absolute and unconditional right .

No one is justified in

keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need , when others lack ' . The common life of love and sharing experienced by the primitive Christian community undoubtedly exerted a strong attraction for Chrysostom , as indeed for the 27 great Augustine , and awakened in him a longing for its return . According to Chrysostom , the condition of the poor could easily have been remedied if the social conscience of the people could have been awakened , for Antioch was a prosperous city . ' For if both the wealthy , and those that come next to them were to distribute among themselves those in need of bread and raiment , , 28 scarcely would one poor person fall to the share of 50 men or even a hundred . ' Chrysostom gives the number of Christians in Constantinople as one hundred 29 thousand , the number of the poor as 50,000 . However , because of the selfishness and apathy of the rich and their neglect of the poor , it was necessary for the Church to perform the services needed .

Possessed of a revenue equivalent to that

of one of the ' lowest among the wealthy ' , yet , Chrysostom tells us , the Church of Antioch took care of widows and virgins numbering 3,000 . Moreover : ' She succored those in prison , the sick in the caravansera , the healthy , those away from home , those maimed in their bodies and those that wait upon the altar . Also , she fed 30 and clothed those who came to her daily for their needs . ' However , Chrysostom never accepted the excuse that , since the church provided for the poor , the individual Christian was excused . ' Because others pray , does that excuse you from prayer ;

because others fast , does that mean that you can revel in drunkenness ? 31

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St. John Chrysostom

32 God expects us to give , not so much for the sake of the poor , as for our own sakes . Indifference in the face of flagrant social injustice on the part of Christians was , for Chrysostom , a blatant denial of what it was to be a Christian - a denial of all those principles constitutive of the body of Christ . And to think that such a situation flourished in Antioch ' where men were first called Christians , wherein

are bred the most civilized of mankind , where in former times the fruit of charity 33 flourished so abundantly ' . Now everything is reversed , for when there is a need 34 to give to a poor man , the rich become more beggarly than the very poorest . Thus spoke Chrysostom , proclaiming the equality and solidarity of all men before God . By his eloquent remonstrances , Chrysostom endeavored to stir the selfish and cold-hearted into loving their fellow-men , to excite them to social service and to alms -giving .

To this great doctor the strongest argument for charity was always

the identity of the poor with Christ .

Christ is in the poor man who , by the same

right as the rich man , belongs to the body of Christ . Basing himself on the understanding of the church as the Body of Christ , Chrysostom preaches the necessity of a Christian's involvement in and responsibility for the poor , suffering destitute people of his day . Thus he combines an understanding of church as a fellowship of persons - a fellowship of men with God and with one another in Christ - with a clear sense of Christian mission . The church should not be turned in upon herself , isolated from the world , content just to recruit new members , but should be the diakonos of the city , the servant who struggles for its wholeness and health . She should be committed to the values of justice and human brotherhood and be ready to serve all people whoever they are and wherever they may be if they are in need .

REFERENCES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 1968 . 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

In 2 Cor. hom. 20.3 ( P.G. 61 , 540 A -C ) . In 2 Cor. hom . 20.3 ( P.G. 61 , 540 A- C ) . In 2 Cor. hom . 20.3 ( P.G. 61 , 540 A- C ) . In 1 Cor. hom . 8.12 ( P.G. 61 , 167 B ) . In 2 Cor. hom. 17.3 ( P.G. 61 , 522 B ) . In Col. hom . 7.4 ( P.G. 62 , 349 C ) . In Rom. hom. 14.11 (P.G. 60 , 540 B ) . In Matt. hom . 60.3 ( P.G. 58 , 588 B ) . Cf. A.R. Hands , Charities and Social Aid in Greece and Rome ,

Ithaca , N.Y. ,

In Heb . hom . 10.4 ( P.G. 63 , 88 D ) . In 1 Tim. hom . 12.3 ( P.G. 62 , 563 C ) . In Ioan. hom . 15.3 ( P.G. 59 , 101 B ) . In Gen. hom. 9.2 ( P.G. 54 , 62 D ) . In Ioan. hom. 82.4 ( P.G. 59 , 446 D ) . Hands , op . cit . , p . 75 . Cf. De Laz . hom. 1.7 ( P.G. 48 , 972 ) ; Exp . in Ps . 48.2 ( P.G. 55 , 515 ) .

1168 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

D. Greeley In Col. hom . 7.5 ( P.G. 62 , 349 ) . In 1 Cor. hom. 21.6 ( P.G. 61 , 179 A) . In Gen. hom . 21.6 ( P.G. 54 , 184 ) . In Matt . hom. 49.4 ( P.G. 58 , 501 D ) . In Matt. hom. 48.5-6 ( P.G. 58 , 492 D - 494 D ) . De Laz. hom. 1.8 ( P.G. 48 , 973 ) . In 1 Cor . hom. 21.5 ( P.G. 61 , 177 ) . In Gen. hom . 5.3-4 ( P.G. 54 , 602-3 ) . In 1 Cor. hom. 21.5 ( P.G. 61 , 178 ) . In 1 Tim. hom. 12.4 ( P.G. 62 , 563 C ) . Cf. In Act . Apost. hom. 7.2 (P.G. 60 , 65 ) . In Matt . hom. 66.3 ( P.G. 58 , 630 B ) . Cf. In Act . Apost . hom . 11.3 ( P.G. 60 , 97 D ) . In Matt . hom. 66.3 ( P.G. 58 , 630 C ) . In 1 Cor . hom . 21.6 ( P.G. 61 , 179 A) . Ibid. In 1 Cor. hom. 21.6 ( P.G. 61 , 178 c ) . In 1 Cor. hom. 21.6 ( P.G. 61 , 179 A) .

La technique de l'emprunt chez Georges d'Alexandrie dans sa Vie de S. Jean Chrysostome

P. Leclercq Lille

L existe une longue Vie de S. Jean Chrysostome éditée d'abord par Savile¹, puis 2 I récemment par le Père François Halkin . Bien qu'on discute sur l'identité de son auteur , je m'en tiendrai à l'opinion communément reçue et je l'appellerai Georges d'Alexandrie . Dans la préface de cette Vie , Georges indique ses deux principales 4 sources : le Dialogue sur la vie de Saint Jean Chrysostome , oeuvre de Palladios ", et l'Histoire ecclésiastique de Socrate et il conclut : ' Il fallait bien rassembler (ces données ) dans un seul récit harmonieux enchaîné comme par un lien d'or , sans 6 y rien ajouter de nous -même ' . Que penser d'une telle affirmation ? Je voudrais essayer de répondre à cette question en me limitant au Dialogue de Palladios et en cherchant comment Georges a procédé pour utiliser cette source . Tout d'abord , il faut bien savoir que les deux oeuvres appartiennent à des genres tout à fait différents : Palladios a écrit peu après la mort de Jean un plaidoyer passionné pour son ami ; c'est donc une oeuvre d'une brûlante actualité .

Georges a

composé , au VIIe siècle probablement , une histoire de Saint Jean Chrysostome pour mettre en relief ses vertus et ses miracles ; c'est donc un récit hagiographique racontant des événements passés . De cette différence dans les objectifs des deux auteurs résultent , dans leurs oeuvres , des différences notoires que j'indiquerai brièvement : Différences 1 ) dans le choix des épisodes concernant telle ou telle partie de la vie de Jean ; 2) dans l'ordre selon lequel des épisodes sont racontés ; 3) dans l'extension donnée à tel ou tel de ces épisodes . 1 . Georges choisit dans l'oeuvre de Palladios . Il laisse de côté tout ce qui relève du genre du dialogue . Cela va de soi puisqu'il fait un récit continu . passe sous silence des détails que l'actualité brûlante inspire à son modèle .

Il En

revanche , il ne craint pas d'exposer en détail le rôle joué par Eudoxie dans la con7 damnation de Jean ' , ce que Palladios ne fait pas . Il raconte les événements qui ont suivi la mort de Jean : excommunication de l'empereur et de l'impératrice , retour

1169

P. Leclercq 9 des restes de l'évêque et un très grand nombre de miracles.10

1170

2.

Georges suit l'ordre chronologique .

Jean et le suit de chapitre en chapitre .

Son récit commence à la naissance de Chez Palladios , au contraire , dans les

premiers chapitres du Dialogue qui se situe à Rome , le diacre interlocuteur de l' évêque fait part à celui - ci des informations qu'il a reçues sur les événements de Constantinople . Il y a donc , dans les deux oeuvres , un renversement total des perspectives : d'une part , l'actualité , d'autre part , l'histoire .

C'est ce qui ex-

plique la liberté avec laquelle Georges emprunte à Palladios tel ou tel passage au moment qui lui convient , pour suivre l'ordre chronologique . Par exemple , s'il passe brusquement du chapitre V au chapitre XVII de Palladios , c'est que celui - ci , après avoir raconté comment Jean modéra les dépenses de l'évêché , lui offre un développe11 ment sur sa tempérance ." S'il utilise immédiatement ensuite le chapitre XVIII de Palladios , c'est que celui - ci lui fournit , en guise de transition , une citation de 12 Paul sur l'ouvrier qui mérite sa nourriture . S'il revient ensuite au chapitre XII de Palladios , c'est qu'ici la conversation du diacre et de l'évêque a pour sujet les accusations portées contre Jean et sur celle - ci , en particulier , qu'il mangeait 13 seul. Ainsi , le thème de la tempérance de Jean amène Georges à puiser successivement dans les chapitres V , XVII , XVIII , et XII de sa source .

On pourrait justifier

de cette façon , la plupart du temps , l'ordre dans lequel il utilise ses emprunts . 14 3. Enfin , Georges développe en soixante - sept chapitres ce que Palladios a condensé en sept chapitres .

Chez ce dernier , la vie de Jean se répartit de la façon

suivante : chapitre V , sa jeunesse , son intronisation sur le siège de Constantinople et ses réformes , chapitres VI à XI , le complot qui se forme et qui trouve son dénouement dans l'exil et la mort . Tout ce que nous savons de plus chez Palladios , nous l'apprenons par des questions et des réponses sur tel sujet d'actualité ou tel aspect de sa personnalité .

Au contraire , dans son récit chronologique , Georges

rassemble tous les détails qui peuvent intéresser un historien ou un hagiographe . Ces différences conditionnent , en grande partie , sa technique de l'emprunt . 15 On a parlé d'un ' travail de mosaïque ' . L'expression n'est qu'à moitié juste , car il ne s'agit pas seulement de petits cubes d'égale grosseur . Les emprunts vont 16 17 de trois mots à trois pages en passant par des phrases de deux à douze lignes , ou quinze lignes , ou vingt lignes . moins vaste .

Mosaïque , soit , mais aussi fresque plus ou

Ceci nous amène à étudier de plus près les procédés de l'emprunteur .

Il y a des

cas où il copie fidèlement son modèle .

Et d'abord la reproduction de pièces offici18 Ensuite , il y a des passages elles auxquelles il ne change que d'infimes détails ." entiers de Palladios que Georges a cru bon de transcrire de façon à peu près littérale , sans doute parce qu'ils répondaient exactement à son propos . Il intègre ainsi le texte étranger dans son oeuvre , comme un bon écolier recopie son modèle . change - t - il quelques mots : σύριγγος en σάλπιγγος , συνεισάκτων en παρεισάκτων , 19 μητρόπολιν en ἀκρόπολιν .

A peine

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La Technique de l'emprunt chez Georges d'Alexandrie

Mais il y a des cas , beaucoup plus fréquents , où la copie n'est pas aussi fidèle , et c'est ici que la chose devient intéressante . Georges lit Palladios avec des lunettes d'historien et d'hagiographe , nous l'avons dit . Il fait donc subir à sa source un traitement qui consiste à modifier le texte en fonction du but qu'il veut atteindre .

Pour ne pas nous égarer dans cette oeuvre si longue , je me limiterai à

l'étude du chapitre V de Palladios et j'essaierai de montrer , phrase par phrase , ce qu'il devient chez Georges . Tout d'abord , Palladios donne , en trois lignes , des détails sur le pays d'origine de Jean , la situation de son père et sur sa formation littéraire . Il ne faut pas moins de trois chapitres à Georges pour donner les mêmes renseignements qu'il assortit de détails édifiants sur le comportement du jeune homme vis à vis de ses cama20 21 rades " sur son départ à Athènes " qu'il est le seul à mentionner , parce qu'à cette occasion Jean convertit un philosophe .

Après avoir ajouté sobrement que Jean avait

' une intelligence assez déliée ' , Palladios ajoute : ' il s'adonna aux études litté22 raires pour servir dans la chancellerie impériale ' ? Georges transforme ce fait normal d'un garçon qui poursuit ses études en une activité proprement religieuse : il emprunte à Palladios le passage qui contient l'expression

cúwv loyúwv en la

prenant dans le sens de ' paroles divines ' , alors qu'il vient de dire le même chose à la ligne précédente : ' Il appliquait son esprit à la lecture des Saintes Ecritures ' . Peu importe , l'essentiel est d'édifier la lecteur . Palladios ajoute ensuite : ' ayant 23 la maturité d'un homme ... 1 Georges passe ces trois mots , mais il les replacera plus loin , deux pages plus tard , pour donner plus de portée au fait que Jean a prononcé des homélies sur les Juifs . Pour l'instant , il recopie , presque mot pour mot , le passage sur les relations de Jean et de l'évêque Mélèce , mais il y accroche un développement de deux pages emprunté au De sacerdotio de Jean lui - même et le discours d'Anthousa , sa mère , pour le détourner du sacerdoce . Texte bien à sa place , il faut le reconnaître .

Puis Georges reprend tranquillement la copie du texte de

Palladios , mais pendant cinq lignes seulement .

Il ne faut pas tourner moins de

quatorze pages , pleines de remarques édifiantes et de miracles , pour retrouver la suite du modèle qu'il recopie , encore une fois , à peu près exactement . Alors que Palladios , toujours au chapitre V , résume en huit lignes l'apostolat de Jean à 24 Antioche " Georges lui consacre tous ses chapitres XVI et XVII , où nous sommes déjà , ainsi qu'à deux guérisons miraculeuses les chapitres XVIII et XIX .

Après

quoi , voici un nouveau fragment du chapitre V de Palladios recopié intégralement 25 pour décrire les intrigues fomentées à la mort de Nectaire" 9 mais Georges saisit l'occasion pour insérer une lettre d'Honorius et d'Arcadius , qui n'est pas dans Palladios , et pour exprimer en termes pathétiques l'émotion de Jean à la nouvelle 26 de sa nomination à la tête de l'Église de Constantinople.2 Cinq lignes suffisent à Palladios pour décrire son départ .

Georges les recopie , mais il lui faut quatre

pages pour relater l'entretien du nouvel évêque avec l'empereur , dont Palladios

SP 3 - N

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P. Leclercq

ne dit mot .?27 On retrouve son texte pour faire le bilan des réformes entreprises par le nouvel évêque parmi son clergé .

Georges recopie sa source , toujours au

chapitre V , mais elle lui semble sans doute trop laconique puisqu'il insère , entre 28 deux phrases de Palladios , quatre pages de développement sur ce thème et poursuit sa copie jusqu'à la fin du chapitre V , sauf les dix dernières lignes qu'il rejettera dans son propre chapitre XXXIV .

Ainsi , dans un seul chapitre de Palladios , nous

avons vu maintes fois Georges ajouter un développement ou une expression de son cru, à moins qu'il ne l'emprunte à d'autres auteurs , déplacer un texte pour l'enchâsser dans un autre contexte , modifier même , dans un souci d'édification , le sens des termes employés par son modèle .

On a l'impression de se trouver devant un jeu de

puzzle et aussi , il faut le souligner , devant un écrivain habile à gonfler sa matière . Il nous reste à étudier brièvement les procédés littéraires motivés par cette technique de l'emprunt , toujours orientée , ne l'oublions pas , vers un but hagiographique .

Nous envisagerons successivement , d'abord la manière dont Georges in-

troduit les textes de Palladios dans son propre récit , ensuite les modifications stylistiques qu'il leur fait subir en les empruntant .

1.

C'est une habitude de style de Palladios que d'employer des participes en

tête de phrase , ainsi que des génitifs absolus , amenant le verbe principal à conclure , ce qui permet de rendre plusieurs actions successives dans un même souffle . 29 Ces participes sont très souvent suivis d'une particule de liaison , ce qui permet à Georges une insertion toute naturelle , sans qu'il en soit pour autant esclave . 30 S'il lui plaît , il apporte une légère modification` et , s'il n'y a pas de particule , il l'ajoute . Palladios utilise fréquemment aussi les relatifs de liaison . Là en31 Il arrive que la phrase core , son texte s'insère facilement dans celui de Georges . de Palladios commence par un relatif: Georges peut alors la modifier à son gré , 32 pourvu qu'il y place un antécédent qui convienne au relatif de sa source . Mais il est des cas où les deux textes de trouvent encore plus intimement soudés . Parfois l'insertion de Palladios commence par un participe construit en apposition 33 au sujet du verbe utilisé par Georges ou vice- versa . D'autres fois , on trouve chez Georges un génitif absolu ou un autre complément circonstanciel et le verbe prin34 cipal chez Palladios . Il faut avoir regardé ce texte avec des yeux de myope pour discerner la curieuse alchimie à laquelle Georges a soumis sa source .

Entre l'un

et l'autre texte , il se produit une sorte de symbiose tellement difficile à déceler qu'un lecteur non prévenu peut lire la Vie de Jean en continu sans s'apercevoir qu ' elle est faite de pièces et de morceaux . 2.

Il nous reste à voir les modifications apportées par Georges à l'intérieur

d'un texte emprunté .

Ici encore , beaucoup de choses s'éclairent si l'on garde pré-

sent à l'esprit que nous sommes devant une oeuvre qui se veut à la fois historique et hagiographique .

D'où les options prises par Georges dont voici les principales :

La Technique de l'emprunt chez Georges d'Alexandrie

1173

Précisions historiques ajoutées au texte de Palladios , lui -même écrit au fort de 35 Emploi de temps l'actualité et qui , pour cette raison , n'en avait pas besoin . 36 passés là où Palladios emploie le présent . 37 Emploi du discours indirect là où Palladios use du discours direct . Modification de la phrase de Palladios utilisée dans un dialogue pour la faire entrer dans 38 un texte de caractère narratif . Quant à l'hagiographie , elle fleurit dans les épithètes ; alors que Palladios est 39 > chez Georges le nom de Jean est accompagné soit de panάplos

sobre sur ce point soit de ἅγιος .

Pour l'opinion commune , l'oeuvre de Georges n'est qu'un plagiat et Georges luimême n'est qu'un pillard . C'est que nous n'avons pas le même conception que les anciens de la manière d'utiliser les sources . Reprenons les termes de la prèface : ' Il fallait bien rassembler ces données ... sans y rien ajouter de nous -même ' .

Qu'

est- ce à dire ? S'il s'agit d'apporter des données nouvelles , il est certain qu'il ne le fait pas . Au contraire , la garantie qu'il donne de la véracité de ses dires , c'est la tradition écrite et orale qu'il prétend avoir scrupuleusement respectée . En réalité , il utilise ses sources avec une conscience irréprochable et une grande maîtrise . Une fois admis le principe de l'emprunt et , défaut sans doute majeur de Georges , son manque de sens critique sur les documents qu'il utilise ( mais c'est là le travail de l'historien moderne) , cette maîtrise se révèle : 1. Dans l'économie du récit . Nous avons vu avec quelle minutie il feuillette Palladios à la recherche du moindre détail intéressant .

2. Dans l'habileté avec laquelle il enchâsse dans son récit des éléments divers , à tel point qu'à première vue , l'oeuvre semble homogène . Si on peut lui reprocher , d'un point de vue d'historien , d'avoir fait la part trop belle au merveilleux et aux miracles , on ne peut lui dénier une certaine virtuosité qui , sans faire de lui un grand écrivain , dénote une connaissance évidente des procédés littéraires . Il les manie avec art pour atteindre son but : retracer ' la vie et les vertus ' de celui qu'il offre en modèle à tous les hommes : Jean , évêque de Constantinople .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. H. Savile , S. Joannis Chrysostomi opera , t . VIII , pp . 159-265 . 2. F. Halkin , Douze récits byzantins sur S. Jean Chrysostome , Subsidia hagiographica nº 60 ( Bruxelles , 1977 ) , pp . 69-285 . 3. P.R. Coleman - Norton , ' The vita S. Chrysostomi by Georgius Alexandrinus ' in Classical Philology , t . 20 ( 1925 ) , pp . 69-72 identifie l'auteur de la Vie avec Georges II , patriarche d'Alexandrie entre 620 et 630. Dom Chr . Baur , ' Georgius Alexandrinus ' in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 27 ( 1927 ) , p . 34 , essaie d'identifier l'auteur d'après un certain nombre de ses affirmations dans le cours même de son oeuvre .

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4. P.R. Coleman- Norton , Palladii dialogus de vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi ( Cambridge , 1928 ) . Nous citons les textes du Dialogue d'après la page et la ligne de cette édition . La liste des différents auteurs auxquels Georges a emprunté des renseignements a été établie par Chr . Baur , loc . cit . , pp . 7-16 . Dans son édition , pp . 222-224 , Coleman - Norton donne la liste des textes de Palladios empruntés par Georges et leur correspondance dans son oeuvre . 5. P.G. 67 , 661-836 . 6. Ed . Halkin , p . 72. Nous donnons les références à la Vie d'après cette édition . 7. Vie , chap . 41 , 45 , 64 . 8. Ibid. , chap . 68 . 9. Ibid. , chap . 73 . 10. Ibid. , chap . 7 , 8 , 9 , 11 , 12 , etc. 11. Dial . chap . XVII . 12. Ibid. , chap . XVIII . 13. Ibid. , chap . XII . 14. La division en chapitres a été établie par le premier éditeur , E. Bigot , Palladii Episcopi Helenopolitani de vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi dialogus ( Paris , 1680 ) . 15. Chr . Baur , loc . cit . , p . 2 . 16. Vie , chap . V , p . 91 li . 6 et Dial . chap . V , p . 28 li . 7 . 17. Ibid. , ch . XXXVIII - XXXIX , pp . 183-187 . 18. Vie , chap . 46 , p . 210 li . 6-27 et Dial . chap . VIII , p . 49 , li . 7-28 . Vie , chap . 47 , p . 214 li . 25 - p . 215 li . 3 et Dial . chap . III , p . 17 li . 2-12 . 19. Vie , chap . 22 , p . 132-133 et Dial . chap . V , p . 31-32 . 20. Ibid. , chap . 2 , p . 73-76 . 21. Ibid. , chap . 4 . 22. Dial . chap . V , li . 4-5 : ἐξησκήθη τοῖς λόγοις πρὸς διακονίαν τῶν θείων λογίων . 23. Ibid. , li . 7 : ἀνδρυνθεὶς τὴν φρένα . 24. Ibid. , p . 29 , li . 9-16 . 25. Ibid. , li . 17-24 . 26. Vie , chap . 20 , p . 125 , li . 11-13 . 27. Ibid. , chap . 21 , p . 129 . 28. Ibid. , chap . 22 et 23 . 29. Ibid. , p . 92 , li . 2 : VUттÓμεVOS бè ; p . 125 , li . 8 : de§άuevos ouv ; p . 188 , li . 9 : γυμναζούσης δε . 30. Dial . p . 70 , li . 10 : ἀποβλέψας δὲ et Vie , p . 138 , li . 26 : ἀποβλεψάμενος οὖν ; Dial . p . 29 , li . 24 : ' Expάτel dè EUтрóпLоs et Vie , p . 124 , li . 8 : "09ev nai CUT POT LOS ; Dial . p . 32 , li . 7 : METO TOU TO et Vie , p . 136 , li . 20 : Meta BÈ TÀU φροντίδα . 31. Dial . p . 39 , li . 25 : Οἷς συνεξῆλθον ; p . 30 , li . 3 : " Ος ἐξαυτῆς δεξάμενος ; p . 17 , li . 15 : Ἐν οἷς ἀνεδίδαξαν . 32. Dial . p . 16 , li . 14 : únoµvńµata ... év ois et Vie , p . 213 , li . 10-13 : уράμμата ἐν οἷς . 33. Vie , p . 132 , li . 24 : Επιλαβόμενος ... ἄρχεται ; ibid . , p . 92 , li . 4-5 : Καταλαμβάνει ἀναχωρήσας . 34. Vie , p . 108 , li . 17-18 : Μελετίου δὲ ... τελευτήσαντος .... χειροτονεῖται ; p . 123 , li . 25 : Καὶ ἄλλων ἄλλον ἐπιζητούντων συνέτρεχον τινες . 35. Par exemple , précisions sur le date de l'élévation de Jean au siège de Constantinople , Vie , p . 128 , li . 23-28 ; sur la région où Jean s'est retiré , que Palladios désigne simplement par les mots : τὰ πλησίον ὄρη et que Georges précise : τὰ πλησίον ThS TÓXεws Hoνаoτńpιa . Dial . p . 26 , li . 16 et Vie , p . 92 , li . 4-5 ; sur l'auteur de l'ordre qui arrête les messagers venus d'occident dont Palladios feint d'ignorer l ' identité et que Georges désigne nommément : l'impératrice , Dial . p . 23 , li . et Vie , p . 255 , li . 6 ; sur le rayonnement de Jean dans sa prédication au début de son apostolat , que mentionne Palladios et auquel Georges ajoute le rappel de ses oeuvres composées à cette époque , Dial . p . 29 , li . 32-34 et Vie , p . 108 , li . 2-6 . 36. Dial . p . 30 , li . 4 : naрanalet̃ et Vie , p . 127 , li . 9 : паpenάleι ; Dial . p . 36 , li . 13 : λέγει et Vie , p . 176 , li . 20 : Ĕλεɣεv . 37. Dial . p . 22 , li . 22 et s . et Vie , p . 225 , li . 28 et s .

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38. Dial . p . 18 , li . 15-19 et Vie , p . 252 , li . 14 . 39. Chez Palladios , le nom de Jean est parfois accompagné de l'épithète uanάpuos mais le plus souvent de son titre dans le hiérarchie ecclésaistique : ' Iwávvns o ἐπίσκοπος . L'auteur du Dialogue n'utilise que huit fois de mot åylos à propos de Jean , alors que ce mot est d'un emploi courant chez Georges . Il faut remarquer en effet que la plupart des emplois de ayuos signalés par Coleman- Norton dans son index sont accompagnés de l'abbréviation : ' app . ' , c'est à dire qu'ils se trouvent dans le texte de Georges donné dans l'apparat .

Eglise et évergétisme à Antioche à la fin du IVe siècle d'après Jean Chrysostome A. Natali Lille

ES traditions civiques et culturelles qui avaient constitué l'armature du sysL tème de la cité ne se sont pas effacées avec la christianisation de l'Empire : c'est vrai notamment de cette tradition de service , de bienfaisance et de protection publiques , qui mettait en compétition des particuliers , investis ou non de responsabilités , pour le bien de la collectivité et que l'on appelle évergétisme . Nous avons vu , dans un article antérieur¹, que les riches chrétiens d'Antioche se comportaient au sein de la cité en citoyens attachés à leur petite patrie et n'éprouvaient pas à l'égard de leurs obligations évergétiques le mépris qu'on a eu tendance 2 à leur prêter un peu vite jusqu'à un passé récent ? L'Eglise elle -même , qui manifeste pourtant une prévention certaine à l'égard de tout ce qui de près ou de loin rappelle les anciennes formes politiques ou les anciennes conduites suspectes de paganisme , n'échappe pas , consentante ou non , à cette fatalité de la conduite évergétique . Mais elle ne se contente pas de subir .

Il semble bien qu'à travers le témoignage de

Jean Chrysostome on puisse déceler une tentative de récupération des traditions évergétiques à son profit dans une compétition d'ordre linguistique , individuel et institutionnel qui oppose charité et évergétisme . Tout se passe comme si ne devait subsister , en prétendant cantonner les instances municipales dans le seul domaine de l'administration , qu'une seule institution , rivale mais aussi héritière des institutions anciennes , pour prendre en charge le bienfaisance publique et la protection morale des citoyens . 1) Le vocabulaire Remarquables sont les titres dont Jean affuble celui qui dans sa pratique quotidienne de l'aumône et de la charité se comporte en vrai chrétien . A la fin de la dixième homélie sur la Première épître aux Corinthiens , après avoir fait état des louanges qu'adresseront à ce chrétien exemplaire ses obligés , Jean ajoute ' Ces voix sont beaucoup plus agréables et plus douces que la voix des hérauts qui marchent

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devant les magistrats : on vous appelle sauveurs , évergètes , prostates , c'est - à- dire des noms de Dieu , mais non ambitieux , fanfarons , insatiables , avares ' ( In I Cor. 10.4 , P.G. 61 , 88 ) .

' Sauveur , évergète , prostatès ' : malgré l'équivalence établie

par Jean ( les noms de Dieu ) , la connotation profane ou païenne n'est pas niable . Il est vrai que sôter appartient au vocabulaire courant du Nouveau Testament , qu' évergète , ou un mot de la même famille , y est quelquefois utilisé³, que l'usage patristique de l'un ou l'autre de ces deux termes est constant pour désigner le divinité . On trouve encore prostates utilisé par les Pères à propos de Dieu , du 5 Christ ou même des autorités ecclésiastiques › mais l'emploi est uniquement patristique , il n'y a pas de trace du mot dans les Evangiles .

L'usage simultané des trois

termes , qui ne semble pas attesté dans la littérature chrétienne , donne à l'ensemble une coloration peu chrétienne , d'autant que , dans le passage de la 10e homélie sur la lère aux Corinthiens dont nous avons cité un extrait il s'agit trop manifestement 6 de prendre le contre - pied , tout en l'annexant , de l'usage paien , pour que l'on n ' interprète pas cette juxtaposition comme une tentative de détournement et de christianisation d'une réalité paienne . Jean atteste bien lui -même ailleurs le caractère 7 profane de ces titres en même temps que le droit de propriété que les chrétiens revendiquent sur eux'N'est -il pas absurde de donner à ces gens qui interprètent les lois les noms de sauveur , d'évergète et de prostates et de nous considérer nous [ 1'évêque et les prêtres ] comme pénibles et fâcheux quand nous disons la loi de Dieu ? (In Act . Apost . 5.3 , P.G. 60 , 55 ) . 2) L'action individuelle : l'évêque C'est lors de l'émeute des Statues de 387 qu'apparaît le mieux la rivalité entre chrétiens et païens sur le terrain de l'évergétisme et de la protection morale des populations .

On connaît bien l'affaire , cette sédition déclenchée à la suite d'une

manifestation de notables mécontents très vite dépassés par la foule qui notamment 9 s'attaque aux images peintes sur bois et aux statues de bronze de la famille impériale . On connaît aussi la violence de la répression . En ces circonstances l'ambassade de l'évêque Flavien à Constantinople est typique d'un certain impérialisme moral chrétien . Jean Chrysostome attribue sans sourciller à Flavien la responsabilité de la politique d'indulgence que l'Empereur se décide à suivre à l'égard des 11 10 Antiochéens alors que les païens y voient la main du Magister officiorum Caesarius . 12 C'est là matière à querelle d'historiens et controverses , mais preuve en tout cas de la façon dont l'Eglise entend disputer aux évergètes et patrons païens le terrain de la bienfaisance . Il est certes vraisemblable que l'évêque ait vu aussi dans son intervention l'occasion unique de gagner la confiance d'une partie de la population 13 et de faire de nouveaux adeptes .

paienne , d'accroître le rayonnement de l'Eglise

De fait , tel est le résultat de son expédition dans la capitale de l'Empire d' 14 Orient " résultat auquel les homélies de Jean n'ont certainement pas peu contribué . Mais il est sûr en tout cas que c'est devant la maison de l'évêque que s'est

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rassemblée la foule , protestant contre les impositions , après avoir été éconduite par un des gouverneurs , foule où figurent d'ailleurs des curiales , sûr aussi qu'en attendant la décision de l'Empereur , après l'émeute , beaucoup se sont placés sous 15 la protection de l'Eglise et de son pasteur . L'évêque apparaît en ces circonstances , comme le véritable protecteur de la cité , son véritable patron , toutes con16 fessions confondues , sans en avoir le titre . 17 18 Le moine lui aussi est présenté comme le protecteur naturel des populations" " mieux placé que quiconque , en particulier que le riche , pour s'adresser à l'Empereur et parle au nom de ses concitoyens ' Qui sera le plus libre pour parler à l'empereur et lui adresser des reproches ? '

( Adv . oppug . vit . mon . , 11.7 , P.G. 47-48 , 342 ) .

Dans la conclusion de son ouvrage sur Antioche , J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz considère les interventions de l'évêque comme ponctuelles : l'évêque est bien pour lui un patron de fait de la Cité¹19 mais sans ambition municipale et surtout n'apparaissant 20 Or nous voyons , d'après le témoignage de Jean , comme tel que le temps d'une crise .

l'évêque contraint par ses propres fidèles , obéissant à des réflexes socio -culturels indépendants de toute confession , d'agir en patron , en notable dont le rayonnement n'a dès lors plus rien d'éphémère . 21 1 L'exercice de la justice ( το ... τῶν κρίσεων μέρος ) comporte mille désagréments , une activité sans relâche et autant d'ennuis qu'en supportent ceux qui siègent dans les tribunaux paiens ; car c'est toute une affaire de découvrir ce qui est juste et , quand on l'a trouvé , ne pas se laisser corrompre est difficile . Non seulement activité et difficulté , mais il s'y ajoute un danger qui n'est pas négligeable .

En

effet certains hommes trop faibles se sont trouvés dans des cas difficiles et , comme ils n'ont pas obtenu d'aide , leur foi a fait naufrage .

Beaucoup de gens qui

subissent un tort détestent ceux qui ne leur portent pas secours autant que ceux qui leur ont fait ce tort ; ils ne veulent pas considérer qu'on est écartelé entre ses occupations , qu'on est dans des situations très difficiles , que le pouvoir d'un juge écclésiastique a des limites , ni rien de tel , mais ce sont des juges inflexibles dont le seul motif de défense est de vouloir écarter les maux qui les oppriment ; celui qui ne peut pas obtenir ce résultat , même s'il invoque mille bonnes raisons , n'obtiendra jamais leur pardon . Puisque j'ai parlé de protection ( poσTaoías ) allons , je dévoilerai encore un autre sujet de reproche . En effet , si celui qui est chargé de la surveillance ( ὁ τὴν ἐπισκοπὴν ἔχων ) ne fait pas chaque jour le tour des maisons plus encore que des marchands ambulants (dyopaúwv ) , il s ' ensuit des froissements impossibles à décrire , car ce ne sont pas seulement les malades , mais les bien portants qui veulent recevoir sa visite ( έпɩожояεtodaɩ ) mais ce n'est pas par piété , qu'on l'invite , mais c'est plutôt honneur et considération qu'on se dispute ( τιμῆς ... καὶ ἀξιώματος ... ἀντιποιούμενοι ) .

Si jamais il lui arrivait

d'avoir besoin de voir plus souvent un riche ou un puissant pour l'intérêt commun de l'Eglise , aussitôt il s'ensuivrait qu'on lui attribuerait une réputation de flatteur

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et de flagorneur ' (De Sacerdotio III , 17 , P.G. 47-48 , 658).22 Les fidèles réagissent en clients : le comportement de l'évêque , légitime dans la perspective chrétienne d'amour évangélique et d'activité pastorale , est aussi une réponse quasi nécessaire aux sollicitations des chrétiens eux-mêmes qui recherchent la ' prostasia ' la plus prestigieuse , celle qui leur assurera aux yeux des autres clients moins bien lotis ' Tuμn ' et ' ȧúwua ' honneur et considération .

Voilà qui

peut expliquer par ailleurs certaines apostasies condamnées par Jean qui oppose les opportunistes aux chrétiens sincères . ' Honte à ceux qui à cause de la protection que peuvent leur assurer des hommes changent de croyance ' (In I Thess . 2.2 , P.G. 62 , 475) . 3) L'institution charitable L'on ne peut guère à ce propos parler de simple christianisation de la situation antérieure , puisque l'on se situe sur un autre plan , celui de la charité , mais l ' 23 activité intense déployée dans ce domaine´ par l'Eglise ne se comprend que par rapport à l'évergétisme paien et à la menace qu'il représente . Jean ne cesse d'opposer avec complaisance la vaine gloire liturgique et évergétique à la vraie gloire de la charité et de l'aumône : trois mille veuves et vierges ( xpaus ... raptévols ) quotidiennement assistées , les visites des prisonniers ( τοῖς τὸ δεσμωτήριον οἰκοῦσι) , des malades de l'hôpital ( Tots Ev Tŷ §εvобо × ¤ú

нάμνovou ) , des secours en vêtements

et ravitaillement ( τροφῆς καὶ ἐνδυμάτων ) aux étrangers ( τοῖς ἀποδημούσι ) et aux 24 mutilés " une organisation matérielle à gérer et un patrimoine à administrer : 25 champs , logements , maisons en location , chariots , muletiers , mulets , organisation à la mesure de la misère des 10% de pauvres d'Antioche , et qui , tout en ayant un fondement théologique , apparaît comme une machine de guerre contre les survivances 26 païennes que l'on pensait déceler dans l'évergétisme . Pourquoi cette organisation qui implique les autorités ecclesiastiques dans la vie économique de la cité et comporte un danger , celui de les voir s'absorber dans l'administration temporelle et à plus ou moins long terme usurper des charges qui 27 sont celles des fonctionnaires' assumer des responsabilités locales et rechercher

la vaine gloire ? 28 Jean accuse les riches et leur fait porter la responsabilité de l'organisation par l'Eglise de l'assistance . ' C'est à cause de votre avarice que l'Eglise est obligée de posséder ce qu'elle possède actuellement . Si tout se passait selon les lois des Apôtres , c'est votre propre zèle qui devrait constituer son revenu , ce qui serait un coffre sûr et un trésor imprenable ' ( In I Cor . 21.7 , P.G. 61 , 180 ) . Mais cette défaillance des riches est inscrite dans les faits et les mentalités . Les structures sociales et économiques de la Cité impliquent , au sein de la classe aisée , plutôt la pratique des liturgies , de l'évergétisme et une certaine ostentation que celle de la charité désintéressée . L'évergétisme , selon P. Veyne'29, est la

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conséquence naturelle d'un système où la quasi impossibilité de l'investissement conduit le riche à consacrer sa fortune à des dépenses de prestige , à se faire un devoir et une vertu de ce qui n'était qu'une simple nécessité . Aussi le riche 30 Antiochéen > soucieux de garder son rang , prendra-t- il en charge les liturgies 31 municipales (nous avons déjà noté par ailleurs` combien celles - ci étaient honorées et assurées à la fin du IVe siècle à Antioche par les chrétiens comme par les paiens ) au nom d'une double exigence

morale et économique .

Ainsi , soit du fait des

nécessités économiques et des pesanteurs sociologiques , soit du fait de leur attachement sincère à une forme politique , que le christianisme était incapable de vivi32 fier , les chrétiens , quand ils étaient riches , continuaient à assumer le poids de la bienfaisance traditionnelle dans la cité sous la forme évergétique des liturgies , quand ils étaient pauvres , ils persistaient à accorder leurs suffrages à des activités qui leur paraissaient concilier valeurs traditionnelles sociales ou civiques et 33 satisfactions ou plaisirs matériels . Il apparaît donc bien qu'on n'a pas besoin , comme le fait Jean , d'incriminer le manque de vertu des riches pour expliquer l'intervention de l'Eglise dans le domaine de l'assistance publique : charité et évergetisme ne se situant pas sur le même plan , il existait effectivement un vide que l' Eglise de par sa vocation propre se devait de combler .

Mais la prise en charge de

ce secteur d'activité l'impliquait d'une certaine façon dans le système économicosocial de la Cité et la mettait dès lors en compétition avec les institutions anciennes dont elle se devait de démontrer l'infériorité . Ce faisant , l'Église apparaissait comme le nouveau protecteur ou patron des pauvres , des défavorisés et concurrençait le système ancien de protection et de bienfaisance , en se constituant une clientèle privilégiée , celle de la misère . Elle apportait , tout compte fait , à l'évergétisme une réponse très ' évergétique ' . A Antioche , à la fin du IVe siècle , l'évergétisme semble donc une réalité suffisamment vivace : • pour déterminer l'adoption par les chrétiens de son vocabulaire et entraîner une sorte de captatio linguistique , · pour provoquer chez les clercs , volens nolens , des comportements qui participent de l'idéal moral de la cité antique , • et enfin , pour susciter le développement d'institutions charitables soucieuses de faire éclater la supériorité de l'aumône et de la charité chrétienne sur l'évergétisme païen , mais témoignant par là de l'existence d'une compétition de type très agonistique entre la Cité avec ses traditions et l'Eglise .

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RÉFÉRENCES 1. Voir A. Natali , ' Christianisme et cité à Antioche , Jean Chrysostome et Augustin ' . Actes du colloque de Chantilly , 1974 ( Paris , 1975 ) , pp . 41-59 . 2. Ibid. , pp . 41-42 . 3. Quatre fois - cf. G. Kittel , Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament , T.2 p . 651 : εvεpyɛσía , Act . Ap . 4 , 9 , I Tim , 6 , 2 ; ɛúɛpyɛtéw Act . Ap . 10 , 38 ; EVEрYÉTηs Luc , 22 , 25 : dans ce dernier cas pour refuser le titre . 4. Voir G. Lampe , Patristic Greek lexicon , p . 564 , pour evεpyέτns . 5. Chez Grégoire de Nysse , par exemple , Vie de Macrine , P.G. 46 , 973B pour désigner l'évêque ( voir traduction et commentaire de P. Maraval dans S.C. 178 , 1971 ) . 6. Les services rendus par le chrétien modèle d'amour charitable relèvent en fait de la prostasia profane la plus traditionnelle ' Un tel serait mort , s'il n ' avait pas avec la grâce de Dieu bénéficié de ta prostasia ' (In I Cor . 10.4 , P.G. 61 , 87 ) . Ils ne déparent pas le catalogue des ' prestations ' que peut offrir à ses clients un riche patron de la cité antique . " Que l'un dise ' Il m'a aidé à marier ma fille ' , un autre ' Il a permis à mon fils de prendre place parmi les hommes ' , un autre encore ' Il m'a tiré du malheur ' , un autre encore ' Il m'a tiré des périls ' " (ibid. , P.G. 61 , 88 ) . 7. Chacun des trois termes recouvre indubitablement une réalité païenne ancienne . On connaît l'usage , simultané ou non , de sôter et evergetes dans la littérature profane ou religieuse païenne et dans les inscriptions ( cf. A.D. Nock , ' Soter and evergetes ' , Joy of study in honour of F.C. Grant ( 1951 ) , pp . 127-148 , article repris dans Essays on religion and the ancient world ( Oxford , 1972 ) , pp . 720-735 ; article ' evergetes ' dans R.A.C. VI p . 848 sqq . ou encore , entre autres , les références de l'Année épigraphique ( 1971 ) , 439b , 448 , A.E. ( 1974 ) , 630 , 631 , A.E. ( 1975 ) , 770c etc .; L. Robert , notamment ' Epigrammes relatives à des gouverneurs ' dans Hellenica IV pp . 35-113 et les multiples exemples figurant dans son Bulletin épigraphique de la Revue des Etudes Grecques , ' index des mots grecs ' ( 1938-1965 ) , pp . 69 , 172 , ( 19661973 ) , pp . 71 , 180 ) . Ce sont , outre les dieux païens et les empereurs , les bons magistrats et les citoyens généreux que l'on salue spontanément de ces titres enviés ( τὶ οὖν οὗτοι ποιοῦσιν οἱ σωτῆρες ἀξιοῦντες ὀνομάζεσθαι Libanius , or . 45 , 20 , ed . Foerster III 368 , 20 ) . On peut remarquer que , si les chrétiens qualifient leur dieu d''evergetes ' , les autorités ecclésiastiques ne semblent jamais être ainsi désignées , comme si la notion d'evergetes , tout au moins pour un homme , conservait une spécificité païenne . Quant à prostates , lorsque le terme apparaît dans des inscriptions ( voir pour les références 1' ' index du Bulletin épigraphique ' de la R.E.G. ( 1938-1965 ) , p . 153 et ( 1966-1973 ) p . 161 et art . ' prostates ' , Pauly - Wissowa , R. E. Supplément IX 1287-1304 ) , c'est plutôt à une fonction civile ou religieuse ou encore , pour les textes les plus anciens , au patronage officiel d'un métèque , par exemple , qu'il renvoie plutôt qu'à un titre de reconnaissance dû à une bonne administration ou à un patronage efficace , encore que l'on ne puisse douter de la connotation affective dont ce titre est souvent chargé , témoin le prostates du Traité sur la vaine gloire et l'éducation des enfants , 4 , 75 ( traduit et commenté par A.M. Malingrey , S.C. , 188 , Paris , 1972 ) qui voit à son ' rôle d'administrateur [ s'ajouter ] celui de bienfaiteur dans la mesure où le prostates était appelé à dépenser de grosses sommes pour satisfaire aux goûts de la foule ' ( n . 3 p . 77 ) . Evergetes, Sôter, prostates : voilà donc trois titres mérités par les magistrats et les bienfaiteurs publics ( ce sont souvent les mêmes personnages ) . Certes il faut reconnaître que leur association sous cette forme ternaire ne paraît pas connue dans les textes épigraphiques . A evergetes et sôter viennent s'associer à l'occasion pater ou ktistes ( cf. A.D. Nock , op . cit . , p . 138 ou p . 728 ) par exemple , mais non prostates . Remarquons pourtant que , dans le regroupement ternaire auquel procède Jean à deux reprises , il cite par ordre d'abord la liaison quasiment obligée sôter evergetes , puis seulement en troisième position prostates , en annexe en quelque sorte . Il n'est donc pas sûr qu'il ait dans l'esprit une formule d'acclamationtype constituée de ces trois mots : il procèderait donc à un groupement circonstanciel de termes au demeurant complémentaires et de toute façon d'origine païenne ou profane . Il paraît ainsi qu'il s'agit bien d'une réalité non chrétienne que le prêtre d'Antioche s'efforce d'acclimater dans des catégories chrétiennes , un peu

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comme , chez Basile , Homélies sur les riches , 3 ( traduction et commentaire d'Yves Courtonne , Paris , 1935 ) le vocabulaire de la cité grecque tropheus et evergetes est détourné ( cf. A.R. Hands , Charities and social aid in Greece and Rome ( Londres , 1968 ) , p . 60 ) pour désigner dans l'au- delà de la cité céleste ' [ le riche qui aura secouru et obligé ceux qui ] l'entourèrent devant le Juge ' et l'acclamèrent des ' titres que lui aura mérités sa générosité ' ( L. Robert , Hellenica , XI - XII , p . 570 ) . ( Nous procèderons ultérieurement à une étude plus détaillée du vocabulaire de l' évergétisme chez Jean Chrysostome dans un chapitre de notre thèse d'Etat ) . 8. P. Petit , Libanius et la vie municipale à Antioche au IVe siècle ap . J.C. , p . 238 sqq . 9. et non statues de bois . Cf. R. Browning , ' The riot of A.D. 387 in Antioch ' , Journal of Roman studies ( 1952 ) , p . 15 ; voir aussi P. Petit , op . cit . , p . 239 . 10. ' En effet qui se serait jamais attendu à ce que , en si peu de jours , il partirait , il parlerait à l'Empereur , il dissiperait les terreurs et reviendrait vers nous assez rapidement pour pouvoir encore arriver avant la Sainte Pâque et la célébrer avec nous ? ' (Hom . De Statuis 21 , P.G. 49-50 , 211 ) . 11. Libanius , Or . 21 , 15 : Caesarius est un des deux commissaires envoyés par Théodore à Antioche , voir A.H.M. Jones , The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire , T.I. ( Oxford , 1971 ) , p . 171 . 12. P. Petit fait le point de la question in Libanius , p . 238 , n . 3 . 13. C'est ce qui ressort des propos que Jean fait tenir à l'évêque dans la 21e homélie De Statuis , P.G. 49-50 , 213 ' Tous , juifs et païens , nous observent : ne nous montrons pas indignes des espérances qu'ils ont mises en nous , ne regardons pas avec indifférence un tel naufrage ' . 14. ' Car lorsque notre père fut de retour de son long voyage , il fallait bien vous dire tout ce qui s'était passé à la cour de l'Empereur : il fallait ensuite s ' attaquer aux païens afin de mettre soin à enraciner dans la foi [ nos frères ] que voici , que l'épreuve avait rendus meilleurs et qui avaient abandonné l'erreur païenne pour se tourner vers nous ' ( De Anna , I , P.G. 53-54 , 634 ) . 15. ' La cité s'est couverte de gloire parce que dans le danger qui la menaçait , sans s'arrêter aux puissants , à ceux qui disposent d'une grande influence sur l' Empereur , elle s'est réfugiée auprès de l'Eglise et du prêtre de Dieu ' ( Hom . De Statuis , 21 , P.G. 49-50 , 211 ) . 16. Sur cette mission de protection temporelle de l'évêque , cf. J. Gaudemet , L'Eglise dans l'Empire Romain, Ive - Ve siècles ( Paris , 1958 ) , p . 352 ou encore A. Momigliano , ' Introduction . Christianity and the decline of Roman Empire ' in The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century ( Oxford , 1963 ) , p . 15. ' Ordinary people needed protection and guidance . The wealthy classes were capable of looking after themselves either under the Roman emperor or under the barbarian kings . But ordinary people wanted leaders . They found them in their bishops ' . 17. Jean parle même de la ' prostasia ' du moine , Adv . oppug . vit . mon . II , P.G. 47-48 , 342 . 18. L'émeute des statues verra les moines eux aussi jouer ce rôle et descendre de leurs montagnes pour plaider la cause des accusés : ' S'avançant à la rencontre des magistrats , ils leur parlaient sans détour en faveur des accusés , tous étaient prêts à verser leur sang , à donner leur vie pour soustraire les prisonniers au sort terrible qui les attendait ' ( Hom . De Statuis , 17 , P.G. 49-50 , 173 ) , ' et ils parvinrent , alors qu'on amenait déjà les accusés , à persuader les juges de ne pas prononcer de condamnation et de s'en remettre pour finir à l'avis de l'Empereur ' ( ibid . , 174 ) . Jean établit dans la même homélie un parallèle entre le courage tranquille des moines et la fuite des philosophes païens et des citoyens les plus riches et les plus puissants . Pour la protection qu'assurent les moines et le pouvoir qu'ils exercent , cf. J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz , Antioch . City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire ( Oxford , 1972 ) , p . 239 . 19. J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz , op . cit . , p . 239 . 20. Ibid. , P. 242 et p . 261 . 21. Sur l'audientia episcopalis ' voir notamment J. Gaudemet , op . cit . , p . 230 sqq . et J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz , op . cit . , p . 240. P. Rentinck ( La cura pastorale in

1183 Eglise et évergétisme à Antioche Antiochia nel IV secolo , Rome , 1970 ) cite ce passage et le résume p . 325-326. Mais on ne voit pas très bien ce qui lui permet d'affirmer p . 326 ' Caso mai ( éventuellement ) il vescovo può rifiutare di trattare una causa davanti al suo tribunale ' . Il avance comme argument en note ( n . 102 ) une phrase extraite de notre texte ' sed sunt inexorabiles judices , hanc unam scientes apologiam , malorum se prementium exitum' ( P. Rentinck utilise exclusivement la traduction latine de la Patrologie grecque ) . Considère - t - il que le sujet de sunt serait un ' episcopi ' sous entendu et que ce sont les évêques qui seraient des juges inflexibles , refusant de connaître certaines causes ? Or il ne peut s'agir , sans doute aucun , que des fidèles déçus et aigris par les décisions de justice épiscopale . 22. Melle A.M. Malingrey nous a fait l'amitié de nous communiquer la traduction des passages du De Sacerdotio cités dans cet article . Elle publiera sous peu dans la collection des S.C. la traduction et le commentaire de l'ensemble du traité , dont elle a également établi le texte grec . 23. Cf. P. Rentinck , op . cit . , chap . VIII La charité , et en particulier les pages 318 à 327 consacrées à l'organisation mise en place à Antioche par l'Eglise pour apporter secours matériel et moral aux indigents . Le témoignage de Jean est à rapprocher de celui de Basile dans ses Lettres ( Traduction et commentaire d'Yves Courtonne , Paris , 1957 ) , Ep . 94 T.I. p . 206 , Ep . 142 et 143 , T. II p . 65 . 24. Hom . in Matt . 66.3 , P.G. 57-58 . 630 . 25. Νυνὶ δὲ ἀγρού , καὶ οἰκίαι , καὶ μισθώματα οἰκημάτων , καὶ ὀχήματα , καὶ ὀρεωνόμοι , nai nulovou , ibid. , 85 , P.G. 57-58 , 761 . 26. Ce serait là la véritable raison de l'hostilité de l'Eglise . Celle - ci , semble -t - il , ne prétendait pas tant condamner la bienfaisance municipale en tant que telle que les formes et les fondements jugés non chrétiens de ses manifestations évergétiques . J. Gaudemet (op . cit . , p . 352 ) remarque en effet ' qu'on ne saurait concevoir un monopole de la charité . Celle - ci était dans la mission traditionnelle de l'Eglise et l'assistance épiscopale pouvait coexister avec celle de l'Etat ' , mais sans pouvoir éviter une situation de concurrence , avec ses conséquences socioéconomiques . 27. ' Et aujourd'hui les évêques accordent plus de soin aux biens temporels que des intendants ( érɩτρóпous ) , des économes ou des marchands , alors qu'il faudrait qu'ils s'inquiètent et qu'ils s'occupent de vos âmes , ils s'usent chaque jour à des occupations qui sont celles des receveurs ( Ùпобéитаι ) , des percepteurs ( popolóyou ) , des contrôleurs ( λoyɩotaú ) , des trésoriers ( τaµíaɩ ) ' Hom . in Matt . 85.4 , P.G. 57-58 , 762 ) . 28. Sans considérer que ce soit le lot de la majorité , Jean brosse un tableau sans complaisance , dans le livre III du De Sacerdotio ( P.G. 47-48 , 646 ) , du pasteur politicien véreux qui fait de sa charge épiscopale l'instrument d'une ambition profane , portrait chargé mais que la réalité historique du monde romain semble confirmer ( cf. J. Gaudemet , op . cit . , p . 347) . 29. Cf. son article , ' Panem et circenses ' , Annales E.S.C. ( 1969 ) , p . 806. Ces analyses se retrouvent dans l'ouvrage du même auteur publié en 1976 , Le pain et le cirque. Sociologie historique d'un pluralisme politique ( Paris , 1976 ) . 30. Jean Chrysostome évoque avec bonheur et réalisme ce type de bienfaiteur , avide de gloire (Sur la vaine gloire et l'éducation des enfants , S.C. 188 , 4 , l . 72 ) ' Au début de la séance [ au théâtre ] , lorsque l'homme généreux ( áváρòs quλοτúμοu ) qui les a rassemblés fait son entrée , ils se lèvent aussitôt et comme d'une seule bouche , ils poussent une seule acclamation l'appelant tous ensemble protecteur et bienfaiteur ( κηδεμόνα ... καὶ προστάτην ) et lui tendent les mains ... Il est brillant l' aspect de la vaine gloire ... Lui s'incline vers eux et , les ayant salués à son tour par ce geste , il s'assied , félicité par tous ces gens qui souhaitent chacun en particulier être ce qu'il est alors , puis mourir ' . La 3e homélie sur la richesse de Basile ( Yves Courtonne , op . cit . , p . 22 ) répond en écho ' Ne vois-tu pas ceux qui dans les théâtres , pour l'honneur d'un moment ( rèρ ths έv olúɣy Tuμñs ) , les acclamations et les applaudissements du peuple , jettent leur fortune aux lutteurs au pancrace , aux comédiens et à ces hommes qui luttent contre les bêtes féroces ' . Voir sur l'action des honorati , héritiers de l'authentique esprit d'évergétisme municipal , et en particulier de deux éminents représentants de cette nouvelle aristocratie , le

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chrétien Datianus et le paien Ellebichus , P. Petit , op . cit . , pp . 319-320 et A.H.M. Jones , op . cit. 31. A. Natali , article cité . 32. J.C. Zakrzewski ( ' La politique théodosienne ' , Eos , 1927 , pp . 338-339 ) , entre autres , a bien souligné cette incapacité du christianisme à jouer le rôle d'un ciment civique , lui qui ' [ ne ] pouvait [ pas ] apporter un système complet d'une politique et d'un droit nouveau . La victoire du christianisme le trouva sans aucune préparation pour résoudre des problèmes d'ordre politique . On ne pourrait point démontrer l'existence d'un programme chrétien dans le domaine de l'organisation , du gouvernement , des réformes économiques et sociales et de la jurisprudence ' . 33. Jeux olympiques ou jeux du cirque par exemple .

Chrysostom's Exegesis of Romans R. G. Tanner Newcastle, N.S.W.

HIS paper is not a study of the theology or the work of either the Apostle of Tthe Gentiles or his great Antiochene commentator . Rather it is an attempt to discover how Chrysostom visualised the role of his Homilies in expounding the writings of St. Paul to the citizens of Antioch . Whether one preach to the congregations of Antioch or to those of Constantinople , the Roman Epistle is of peculiar significance . As the great preacher makes clear in 757B-C ( Hom . XXXIII ) , Rome is above all cities glorious as the place of martyrdom of both Peter and Paul . Secondly , as the conflicts surrounding John's own deposition in A.D. 404 make clear , there is a growing tendency in the Eastern Church to regard Rome as the main seat of Christian authority , as is well witnessed in the appeals of Chrysostom and his friends to Pope Innocent in the crisis of A.D. 404. It is therefore reasonable to see Chrysostom's treatment of the Roman Epistle as expressing his concept of Church unity and Church doctrine as based on apostolic foundations . In his preface , Homily I , the traditional Argument , the preacher leaves us in no doubt that the literate and prominent classes of cities like Antioch and Constantinople were no more prone to read the Bible than similar persons in modern England .

Praising Paul , he observes ' But I grieve that not all people know him , as

they should know him , but some are so far ignorant of him that they do not even know the exact number of his Epistles ' ( 425B1-4 ) .

With such a congregation of

perhaps cultured but decidedly ill - informed ' light believers ' he needed to read and explain the epistle rather than enter into profound analysis . The preacher begins his preface by recalling how frequent liturgical readings of Paul cause him to enjoy the ' Pneumatic Trumpet ' and arouse his longings so much that he feels he sees Paul present before his eyes .

Understanding comes not from

natural gifts of intellect but from our commitment to the man and constant reading . Before all others , lovers recognize the property of the beloved through their 1185

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1186

This argument is drawn from Plato's Phaedo 73d5-10 . If we read scripture , we need nothing further besides , for the word of Christ ' Seek and ye shall find , knock and it shall be opened ' is faithful . John rebukes his hearers in

constant caring .

426A for giving more attention to making money from each other than to the hearing of the word . In 426A7-9 he regards ignorance of scripture as the cause of the growth of heresy , of careless living and worthless labours . Paul's great eloquence however is a light to illuminate the mind , being likened by his pagan contemporaries in Acts to that of Hermes . From 42604 onwards we are offered a valuable discussion of the relative chronology of these Epistles of Paul .

At 427D10 he explains this is no superfluous

labour , but a key to consistent interpretation , ' The date of the epistles contributes no little to our investigations ... . When I see him writing to Romans and Colossians on the same matter yet not in the same manner , but with great condescension to the first when he says " Him that is weak in the Faith receive ye , but not to doubtful disputations .

For one believeth that he may eat all things : another ,

who is weak , eateth herbs " ( xiv , 1-2 ) .

But to the Colossians he writes in plainer

terms "Wherefore , if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world , why Touch not , Taste not , as though living in the world are ye subject to ordinances Handle not no longer .

? " ( ii , 20-1 ) 428A4 - B2 . ...At first one must make allowance , later on In many other places one finds him doing the same . The doctor and

teacher behave thus also , those falling ill are not treated like those on the road to health nor little children beginning to learn like those needing higher study . ' He then turns to another important exegetic factor . 'Then to some Paul wrote moved by some cause or policy.

This he makes clear to the Corinthians ( I Cor . vii ,

1 ) " Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote to me it is good for a man not to touch a woman" ... Now from what cause and with what purpose did he write to the Romans?

He explains because they are " full of goodness , filled with all knowledge ,

able to admonish one another , nevertheless , brethren , I have written the more boldly in some sort , as putting you in mind , because of the grace that is given me of God that I should be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles " ( xv , 14-16 ) . ' Chrysostom explains that the praise is protreptic in aim and that they need correction in writing , and that since he is yet to arrive , he harmonises them in two ways , by the aid of writings and the expectation of his presence ( 428B1 -C9 ) . He concludes ' No one was more amathes than Peter or more idiotes than Paul , "but though I be rude in speech , yet not in knowledge " ( 2 Cor . xi , 6 ) is sufficient answer , and these two have put to silence all the orators and vanquished all philosophers , doing all things through their zeal and God's Grace ' ( 428E4-429A2 ) . So broadly Paul can only be understood by those who care for him . aid but does not replace commitment .

Learning may

Considerations of date and purpose help us to

resolve apparent conflicts of interpretation between different epistles or various

1187

Chrysostom's Exegesis of Romans parts of the same epistle .

Turning from the exegetic principles laid down by the preacher in his prefatory initial homily , let us look at the pattern of topics , showing the intensity of their treatment , which is set out in tabular form in the Appendix .

The purpose of

this is to correlate our exegete's divisions of theme with the traditional divisions of Romans into chapter and verse whilst relating this pattern with the number of lines of commentary per verse of text which each of his homilies exhibits and noting in each case the theme or content of the homily .

In treating the contents

of these sixteen chapters of Paul in thirty-two Homilies Chrysostom usually abjures the Pauline text's traditional divisions of chapter and verse .

However , this is

not in itself strange : more recent exegetes follow similar methods .

Thus in the

Homiletical Treasury of Dr. J. Lyth published in 1869 we find he agrees with our Chrysostom in regarding I , 1-7 as an exegetic unit , but then proceeds to take 8-15 as the next section , and indeed Bishop Kirk of Oxford took a similar division in his 1937 commentary . But here Chrysostom chooses to add vv . 16-17 to his segment . To Lyth this segment is about true Christian zeal , prayerful to God and humble and earnest towards Man , expressing the bond of Christian union in mutual help and brotherly love endeavouring after the Kingdom . But with the added verses Chrysostom makes the whole passage the praise of Faith , where v . 17 ' the just shall live by faith ' sums up v . 8 ' your faith is spoken of throughout the world ' , and zeal , brotherly love and mutual aid now appear direct consequences of faith . in 446C Chrysostom is able to use this stick to beat Arian heretics .

Further , It thus seems

that it is very important to note the segments which Chrysostom selects to treat as sermon units , because these choices show him applying the apostolic message in ways he finds relevant to his own day . Secondly , the amount of space given to each theme may well suggest the relative importance of the various segments in the preacher's own mind as he views his author's teaching in face of current situations which demand reproof or exhortation . An interesting case is that just as Lyth treats I , 16-17 as a discrete segment relating to the apostolic call and the nature and power of the Gospel but simply regards all of 18-32 as evidence for one theme , the misery of man without God , so Chrysostom after embracing 16-17 in the foregoing tract , makes a threefold division of 18-32 into matter for three sermons . In treating 18-25 he sees the ruinous results of the failure to recognise the evidence from Nature which should point the pagan mind to truth , an error leading men to hero-worship , idolatry and moral expediency the antithesis of faith's effect in 8-17 . In treating 26-27 he gives Greek homosexuality an amount of attention which any English exegete would have shrunk from before the Wolfenden Report . Finally he combines 28-32 with II , 1-16 to discuss the nature of judgment . This must be God's monopoly , and indeed , because of human inconsistency , it can belong to none other .

SP 3-0

Here he justifies the

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conviction that led him not to deny asylum to the fallen minister of Arcadius , the eunuch Eutropius , and to produce his brave affirmation of the Church's rights and autonomy in his in Eutropium .

At this point , one may note that the tabulation of

the Appendix enables one to discern at a glance , first , what Chrysostom believed were Paul's themes , secondly , how much proportionate space per verse he allotted to each . It is firmly suggested that the item which receives the highest proportion of space per verse looms largest and seems most relevant to the preacher , and that the item which is offered least space per verse is the one he sees as most peripheral to the present state of the Church . The judgment of this may vary from age to age , but this is no matter . We are not seeking to evaluate the various parts of Paul's Roman Epistle sub specie aeternitatis , rather to discover which parts were most relevant in the eyes of Chrysostom . We now offer a table of matters set out in this statistical order .

Items of

equal weights are listed in order of occurrence in the text .

Pages per verse

Homily

Content in Epistle

4.5

V

4.0

XXI

2.6

XXV

Avoid sexual vice and all conformity to social fashion . Be alert and abstain from vice . The end is very near .

2.0

ΙΙΙ

Critical need for Faith in Preacher and Hearer .

2.0

XXIII

Sympathise with all and live at peace : bless your persecutors - thus God will punish them the more !

1.75

XV

The Spirit is the redeeming power bringing us adoption by Grace . We , as sons of God , are a cosmic first fruit of Grace .

1.50

XXIX

1.40

II

1.40

IV

1.40

XXIV

Homosexuality is the ultimate Atheism .

Jesus came to sanctify both Gentile and Jew. Paul's Apostolic character . Pagan refusal to see truth in nature and believe was tragic . Respect and obey the authorities . If by Grace you can keep the Law, you naturally keep all human laws and win social respect .

1.40

XXX

1.30

XII

Paul's wide commission gave him especial duties to Gentiles . The baptised are at once resurrected with Christ . Like exslaves of sin , they are now brought to serve their new Master , Christ and His righteousness .

1.30

XIII

Under Law , Jews stand condemned , for their Law augments sin .

1.30

XXII

Believers must support each other by mutual aid like the

1.25

XVI

God has predestined us to sonship

But if they die with Christ in baptism they are free of Law .

parts of one body . fear nothing !

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Chrysostom's Exegesis of Romans

1.25

XXXII

1.20

XXXIII

1.15

XIV

1.15

XIX

Grace alone gives the response of belief to the preaching of any whom God sends to the Jews .

1.10

XXVI

Make allowance for the weakness and prejudices in our converts :

1.10

XXVII

judgment is God's role , not ours . No food is really unclean . But as the Kingdom of God is not

Paul sends greetings to specific members .

Urges them to use

the holy kiss of peace with each other . Insists on the unity of all classes of Christians .

We must

avoid schism in the Church brotherhood . Carnal men cannot fulfil a spiritual Law : but Christ in us enables us to do so in his Spirit .

1.00

VIII

1.00

IX

about food , it is wrong to offend those who have food scruples . Jews are justified by Abraham's faith , not by the Law. Abraham's faith was in fact counted to him for righteousness . Our faith in Jesus similarly gives us a like righteousness . Faith in the substitutional atonement of Jesus causes every

1.00

X

1.00

ΧΙ

1.00

XVIII

baptised sinner to be counted as righteous . Jews can be saved by Faith , just like the Greeks - - Christ

1.00

XXVIII

In the great power of the Grace vouchsafed us we must act as

0.9

XVII

Paul's sadness that because Jews put Law before Faith God has

0.9

XXXI

been obliged to call the Gentiles in their stead . The need to take a contribution to Jerusalem . Paul exhorts

0.8

VI

fulfils the purpose of the Law to perfection .

Christ would act to protect our weaker brethren.

his readers to aid his past helpers . God's judgment of Gentiles has been based on works they have done . But we sinful men must not try to judge other sinners in God's place .

0.8

0.7

VII

Unworthy Jews stand condemned by their Law .

XX

resides in Spirit , not in token and observance . Chosen Gentiles are not to boast . God will also save Israel

True Judaism

in an amnesty for all unbelievers .

Read thus the Epistle not merely shows a different emphasis , but exhibits a new and different form of coherence . The emphasis of the bracket V , XXI , XXV on sexual abstinence is known to be Chrysostom's own preference.¹

Again , III , XXIII , XV and

XXIX as a group show Faith as giving access to the spirit of peace and forgiveness , leaving to God the punishments .

The Spirit then grants us adoption by Grace ,

intended by Jesus for Gentile and Jew alike .

The 1.40 group II , IV , XXIV and XXX

similarly emphasise the Apostolic role of Paul to Gentiles , where he is to overcome

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the tragic failure of pagan culture to recognise the evidences of God's purpose visible in Nature . This is to be done by working peacefully within the secular pagan society . Looking at the 1.30 group we find a discussion of the position of the baptised . As it were , slaves are bought from Sin and their new owner is Righteousness . Though the Jewish Law augments the force of Sin , Jews also are freed by Baptism . Believers should aid each other as parts of one body thus XII , XIII and XXII . The 1.25/1.20 group ( XVI , XXII and XXXIII ) insists on election of believers to sonship , urging use of the kiss of peace and the unity of all classes , and warning against schism . The 1.15 set , XIV and XIX , indicates that Grace alone changes carnal men , Jew or Gentile .

The 1.10 cases ( XXVI and XXVII ) shows the need to

avoid offence over food taboos , with the reminder that God alone can judge . The -- Christ 1.0 group ( VIII , IX , X , XI and XVIII ) deals with justification by Faith fulfils all Law.

XXVIII in the old verse order shows believers protect the weak

through their power of Grace .

The 0.9 passages XVII and XXXI laments the Jewish

obsession with Law before faith , but are concerned to help Jewish Christians in need . The remaining passages are about the hope of Israel and danger of judgment . From our examination of a further criterion for estimating the significance of the various segments of the Roman Epistle in the mind of St. John Chrysostom we now direct attention to the extent of exposition as against rhetoric in these sermons of the great Antiochene preacher .

In this regard we cannot ignore the

problem of the precise setting and purpose of these expository series which comment on the Pauline Epistles . We shall return to this issue at the conclusion , but the 2 suggestion of Mlle . Guillaumin that we have here some series designed for catechetical instruction rather than for liturgical exposition of the lectionary deserves our close attention .

But postponing this issue let us turn to the struc-

ture of I ( Argumentum) , V ( IV ) and finally XXXIII ( XXII ) . Homily I is introduced with an expression of pleasure at the bi -weekly or more frequent liturgical readings of the epistles which stimulate the preacher's heart like a trumpet and cause him to visualise the apostle present in the Church ( 425A1 - B1 ) .

In 425B he goes on to grieve at common Christian disregard for Paul

and the widespread ignorance regarding his work , due to want of desire to know him better . Such knowledge depends not on intelligence but constant familiarity and eagerness , and Chrysostom justifies this by a reference to Phaedo 73d5-10 .

He

begins C with a proof text , Philippians i.7 , indicating that those who read Paul eagerly need no other aid : this view being justified by the dominical injunction ( Matt . vii , 7 ) ' seek , and ye shall find ' . In 426A the saint addresses the practical problems of believers with wives and children to maintain who cannot give themselves wholly to such a study , urging them to pay as much attention listening to scripture as they now devote to making money .

Ignorance of scripture is seen as a

1191

Chrysostom's Exegesis of Romans source of numberless ills ;

heresy , careless living , and vain labours .

426B begins

with a laboured metaphor of scripture as light illumining the eyes of the reader in which Paul's tongue shines brighter than the sun . In 426C he points out that the Acts , where he is compared to Mercury ( xiv , 12 ) , reinforce his just repute for eloquence . At 426C5 Chrysostom begins a discourse illustrating the necessity for knowing the relative chronology of the Epistles in order to understand them , continuing this theme till 427D2 with evidence for relative dating . He then reminds readers that the arrangement of Epistles in the Bible in a non -chronological order is no more surprising than the non-chronological grouping of Old Testament prophets in the Septuagint ( D , 2-10 ) .

From 427D11 to 42808 he shows that earlier date

explains the milder demands and greater condescension to human weaknesses shown in the language of some epistles in contrast to others . In the conclusion Chrysostom observes that so holy was Paul's soul that he bore in himself care for the whole world and for all men whom he loved as his own children , though showing far greater affection than any parent . of Grace , overcoming human sorrows and enhancing love ;

Such is the power

thereby Paul's soul took

wings through charity , taking to heart the great dominical injunction ' Peter , if you love me , feed my sheep ! ' ( John xxi , 15 ) .

At 428E the saint insists that

imitating Paul each man should bring to reconciliation , if not the world or whole cities and nations , at least his own wife and children , friends and neighbours . To say one is unskilled and uncultured is nothing ; than Peter or more ordinary than Paul .

no man was less experienced

Yet the ignorant and the unpolished sur-

passed countless philosophers and put to silence countless orators , achieving everything by their own commitment and God's grace . It is not ignorance or absence of elegance that prevents teaching , it is sloth and sleep ! Let us enjoy great peace reconciling all those dear to us after the fear of God , sharing countless blessings (429B ) . In this Homily we see in effect the structure of Cicero's latest work , de 3 Partitione Oratoria , rather than that of other rhetoricians . The exordium (425A1-426C4 ) has elements of insinuatio in trying to remove popular vulgar prejudice against the study of the Pauline epistles and convincing the hearer of the benefits in prospect . The narratio giving evidence of relative chronology and concluding with an explanation of the non -chronological biblical order of the epistles occupies 426C5 to 427D10 .

From 427D11 to 428C8 we have a confirmatio

showing that a true chronology of the epistles can remove apparent inconsistency of doctrine , which is in fact due to Paul's loving concessions to human weakness in the earlier stages of his preaching . Finally , the peroratio stresses the loving concern of Paul for all humanity and his obedience to Christ . We can at least love our neighbours and reconcile them , and the wisdom of the apparent foolishness of

R. G. Tanner

1192 Peter and Paul will bring philosophy .

us joy surpassing that derived from eloquence or from

Thus the structure is rhetorical , but didactic in purpose , whilst the

paradeigma or analogical example of forensic or political speech is replaced by the proof text of the Hebrew Rabbinic and Greek philosophical schools . Let us now survey the structure of Homily V ( IV ) , one of the seemingly inordinate discourses against homosexuality , a practice likely to have retained its gymnasiumorientated popularity with better-class Christians until the fierce penal provisions of Justinian's code of 533 A.D. Here he begins with the text of I , 26-27 in 454B , and assures us this is the worst of passions , worse for the soul than sickness for the body .

Then 454C -D are dedicated to showing from proof texts that

there is no excuse , concluding with D6-9 , which first expresses the AristotelianStoic commonplace that pleasures against nature are less pleasing than those according with Nature .

However , when God is left out , everything is upside down .

In 454E Chrysostom squarely blames the philosophical tendency to put the universe and human intellect at the centre and to refuse to be led by nature to a true view of God.

In 455A there follows a denunciation of female inversion in male chauvin-

ist terms , thus justifying because of its greater depravity its prior denunciation by the Apostle in preference to male deviation .

Chrysostom emphasises the

Apostle's rhetorical skill in shocking more his hearers by beginning with the more abominable case . In 455B he goes on to show that these practices offend the Genesis and Stoic -Peripatetic view of man as appointed teacher of woman and woman as the appointed helpmate of man .

In 455C he stresses the emphatic force of the

Apostolic style : ' burned in their lust ' rather than ' lusted after ' . In this section and 455D St. John makes effective use of rhetorical question and answer. In 455E he attempts to press the sense of xаteруagóμevou to mean that men made a professional career of their sexuality to the exclusion of other work and interest . He continues into 456A with the argument that sexuality had since ceased to unify the sexes but made them fourfold , each male having conflicting impulses driving them to the women and to other men , similarly each woman drawn not only to men but other women , whilst within homoerotic relations each person had conflicting drives to alternative roles . In 456B he claims the devil created first this internal stasis that he might create stasis and hate within human communities . In 456C - D St. Paul is held to move on to the penalties which are in this behaviour , like those of madmen who seem happy while injuring themselves . In 456D-E he notes that Solon forbade pederasty to slaves because freemen alone were noble enough to experience it , and that one would find countless books by philosophers full of this disease . But in 427 he notes this condition is pitiable more than lawful .

What if one saw a naked youth running plastered with dung and

delighted with his state? Or a maiden who takes joy in intercourse with domestic animals? Finally in B8 -C4 the saint assures us that the murderer merely forces out

Chrysostom's Exegesis of Romans

1193

the soul from the body whilst the homosexual has destroyed his soul with his body . He concludes by reinforcing the point of the argument from I Cor . vi , 8 , where fornication alone among sins involves the body , whereas homosexuality is in fact worse in the same order .

Thereafter he condemns the possibility of sex change or

hermaphroditism as an acceptable formula because , like the making of eunuchs denounced by Roman Law since Domitian , it offends against natural order .

From

458A5 - D5 an admonitory reminder of the fate of Sodom and exclamations against the foulness of male malpractices completes the commentary .

From 458D6 to the end the

saint offers us an explanation of the source of these evils in current urban social life of the age luxury and disregard for God . The loss of the anchor of divine fear leads to shipwreck of state .

The Homily concludes with a fine denunciation In 459E it is insisted that poverty

against idleness and ostentation of wealth . with virtue is better than vain luxury .

The man who gives up his vile cloth of

gold may put on virtue for robe and take joy in it , thus enjoying much comfort in this world and the next . Here we have the method of the philosopher commenting on his master's text to pupils in the school .

There is no exordium , simply a narratio of text , next the

confirmatio derived from the examination and discussion of the text clause by clause in 454B6 to 455C3. At this point a further text is added : ' Men with men working that which is unseemly ' . Hence a further confirmatio follows this new narratio from 455D4 to 456C1 . Now a final narratio ' and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet ' is followed by a final confirmatio C2-D4 . This passage is followed by a confutatio of Solon and other defenders of the practice in 456D4-458A6 . standpoint .

The conclusio finishes at 458D5 from a rhetorical

However it is doubled for didactic purposes to embrace a denunciation

of the luxury of life in the great cities of the East , concluding at 460A3 . Lastly , we look to XXXIII ( XXXII ) . At 754B1 he turns to the structure of exhortation plus prayer . The nature of the dissensions ( dɩxooτaolas ) is considered and attributed to heresy inspired by appetite induced by the belly , which is the fault of wilful men beyond correction whom we must shun ( 754E1 ) .

A fine catena of

admonitions against greed follows , then follows a series of brief commendations which will be discussed in the rhetorical partition of this section . Of this section 756D alone is of significance .

' Quartus the city treasurer ' gives rise to

a remark that the Gospel affected some of the great , and that neither wealth nor the cares of office nor any such thing prevented adherence to the Gospel .

This

remark was inescapable for the Archbishop of a great Christian capital and advisable for a renowned preacher in a great provincial city! At 756E6 the great preacher allows himself a general peroration for the whole expository series . 'Who then will pray for us now Paul is gone ? These emulators of Paul . Let us but show ourselves worthy of such a sharing of utterance that we not merely hear the

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R. G. Tanner

voice of Paul here and now, but that going where he has gone we may be found worthy to behold the athlete of Christ : rather , if we but heed him here , there also we shall see him entirely ; even though not standing close , we shall still see him shining brightly very nigh that royal throne where Cherubim give glory and where Seraphim fall down ' ( 756E6-757A5 ) .

Remarking that we shall there see Paul in

first place with Peter , he continues , ' Therefore do I love Rome , though having other things to praise in it , its size , its antiquity , its beauty , its population , its power , its wealth , its military triumphs , but all this apart I call it blessed because in life Paul himself wrote to the Romans , and loved them so much , and conversed present among them , and there ended his life . '

Here we see not merely

the ' occidental ' sympathies detected by such scholars as Charles Pietri " but the sense of inferiority felt by the greatest cities of the East to the old imperial city now also the treasury of martyrdom . In 757C he goes on to envisage the glory awaiting Rome - to see Peter and Paul new arisen in her midst on the day of general resurrection .

In D he imagines the joy of seeing Paul's tomb , of touching

his holy dust who filled up all that was left by Christ to be done .

Continuing in

757E to 758A John pays tribute to the power of that winged apostolic voice proclaiming truth and confuting evil , with its grand promise that ' Neither angels , nor dominions , nor powers , nor things present , nor things past , nor height , nor depth , nor any other created thing shall divide us from loving God in Christ Jesus . ' The saint longs to behold the dust of that tongue through which he preached the unutterable works of Christ .

His mouth expelled demons , set free men from sin ,

stopped the mouths of tyrants , shattered the eloquence of philosophers , put the universe on God's side , made barbarians to be wise , reconciled all things in heaven and earth . The great panegyric conclusion continues in 758D with tributes to Paul's breadth of heart embracing all mankind , yet divine love oppressed it in seeking it out . Like Paul's mouth , his heart fascinates Chrysostom , who longs to see it , knowing that the pure in heart see God . Then at E6 he turns to the apostle's belly , whence flow streams of cleansing water to wash men's souls .

In 759A-B we see Paul's fear

for the sin of others parting them from God , whom he had been thought fit to love as no other . In 759B-C Chrysostom longs to see that hand which wrote such large letters and from which the snake fell spontaneously into the fire on Malta .

Like-

wise he yearns to behold those feet which trod the dust of the whole world , but above all to see that tomb wherein are laid to rest the armour of light and the limbs now living that were dead in life which now have put on Christ nailed to the fear of God and bearing the stigmata .

At 759D7 he insists that this body fortifies

Rome more than all the walls and towers of Aurelian's fortifications , together with the body of Peter his comrade : ' I have longed to see the Spiritual Lion ; like a lion he has cast fire into the foxes ' packs , and like the blast of a thunderbolt he

1195 Chrysostom's Exegesis of Romans has burst through the phalanxes of Satan . ' In 760 he concludes that our struggle as Paul assured us is not with flesh and blood but against the powers of darkness . Like him then we must be imitators of Christ . It emerges that little indeed would be gained by the projected dissection of 754B1 to 756E6 , which is best regarded as a piece of confirmatio supporting the narratio of the text citation in 754A. Thence forward we sweep on into a magnificent peroratio designed to crown the whole series with a grand assertion of Paul's vital role in sharing with Peter the completion of the Saviour's task on earth and of the key significance of Rome and its citizens in sharing the life and preaching of the Apostles and in furnishing their martyrdom and burying place , ending with a triumphant call to carry on their warfare of the spirit . We return to a general consideration of the methods of our great Antiochene preacher .

Well it may be that he wrote these thirty -three addresses for the days

of Lent , omitting the solemnity of Good Friday and six Wednesdays , or , more probably , all Saturdays because they were to be eucharistic occasions .

On the same

principle we might regard the forty- four homilies on First Corinthians as extenting also to the Saturdays and first four Sundays of that year's Lent .

Again the thirty

homilies based on Second Corinthians may reflect the omission from the Lenten course of addresses on any of the seven Saturdays or on Ash Wednesday , Maundy Thursday and Good Friday . One may therefore regard these homilies as very probably 5 Lenten addresses to catechumens in exposition of the Epistles . Rhetorically one may suggest a debt to the stylistic approach of Cicero's last study , the de Partitione Oratoria , with its simple division of exordium , narratio , confirmatio and peroratio. In the second and later addresses the exordium is omitted , probably in the tradition of lectures in the schools of philosophy .

The

detailed techniques of rhetorical style are employed with skill and conviction , but less obtrusively than in his work On The Statues .

The precise devices have been

well examined by other scholars and need not now detain us .

However , these

homilies before us are designed not to win converts but to instruct the commited in the foundations of their faith . If we assume this to be their aim , then the amount of space assigned to the various segments of the text indicates the preacher's didactic purpose as well as his vision of their relative contemporary relevance .

REFERENCES 1. W.R.W. Stephens , St. John Chrysostom His Life and Times , 3rd ed . ( London 1883 ) , pp . 95-96 . 2. Marie -Louise Guillaumin , ' Bible et Liturgie chez Chrysostome ' in Jean Chrysostome et Augustin ( ed . C. Kannengiesser , Paris 1975 ) , pp . 169-172 . 3. For a full discussion see A.S. Wilkins , Cicero de Oratore Libri III ( Oxford 1892 ) pp . 56-64 .

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l'Aristocratie Chrétienne entre Jean de 4. C. Pietri , ' Esquisse de Conclusion Constantinople et Augustin d'Hippone ' in Jean Chrysostome et Augustin , ed . C. Kannengiesser , pp . 293-296. 5. Marie Louise Guillaumin , op. cit . , pp . 170-171 . 6. A useful study is M.A. Burns , Saint John Chrysostom's Homilies on the Statues: A Study of Their Rhetorical Qualities and Form (Washington , D.C. , 1930 ) .

APPENDIX ST . JOHN CHRYSOSTOM ON ROMANS : THE PATTERN OF EPISTLE CONTENT AND HOMILIES ( Lengths are stated in terms of Field's pagination

Homily

Epistle

Pages

Pages per Verse

1849 ed . )

Paul's Content in Epistles

II

1.1-7

7-17

1.4

III

1.8-17

17-34

2.0

Paul's Apostolic character Critical importance of Faith in preacher and hearer .

IV

1.18-25

34-44

1.4

Refusal to see truth ; ruinous results .

V

1.26-27 1.28-2.16

44-52

4.5

Homosexuality as ultimate atheism .

53-71

0.8

VI

God's judgment of Gentiles by works done . Sinful men must not judge other sinners .

VII

2.17-3.8

71-86

0.8

VIII

86-108

IX

3.9-31 4.1-22

108-129

1.0 1.0

X

4.23-5.11

129-141

1.0

ΧΙ

5.12-6.4

141-157

1.0

ΧΙΙ

6.5-18

157-175

1.3

6.19-7.13

175-198

1.3

Unworthy Jews stand condemned by the Law . Jewish justification by Faith , not Law. Abraham's faith was imputed righteousness . Faith in Jesus also imputed righteousness . Faith in substitutional atonement makes all sinners counted to be righteous .

XIII

Baptised are also resurrected with Christ . Slaves free from sin serve righteousness . Jews all stand condemned to death under Law: not if they die with Christ . sin .

Law augments

XIV

7.14-8.11

198-225

1.15

XV

8.12-27

225-252

1.75

The Spirit is the redeeming power of our

Carnal men cannot fulfil a spiritual Law : Christ in us enables us by his Spirit .

XVI

8.28-39

252-266

1.25

adoption as sons of God -cosmic first fruit . God predestines us to sonship . Fear

XVII

9.1-33

266-295

0.9

nothing . Paul's sadness that Gentiles justly are

called because Israel put Law before Faith .

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Chrysostom's Exegesis of Romans Homily

Epistle

Pages

XVIII

10.1-13

295-309

Pages per Verse

1.0

Paul's Content in Epistles But Jews can be saved like Greeks by Faith . Christ fulfils the purpose of Law perfectly .

XIX

10.14-11.6

309-326

1.15

Grace alone can give response of belief to

XX

11.7-36

327-348

0.7

the preachers God sends to the Jews . Chosen Gentiles should not boast : God will

ΧΧΙ

12.1-3

348-359

4.0

Avoid sexual vice , rather than conform to

XXII

12.4-13

359-371

1.3

society each must transform self by Grace . Believers must support each other by every

XXIII

12.14-21

371-386

2.0

also save Israel in amnesty to all unbelief .

mutual aid , like the parts of one body . Sympathise with all and live at peace . Bless persecutors : God will punish them the more . XXIV

13.1-10

386-393

1.4

Respect and obey the authorites .

If you

can now keep the Law you also thereby must keep their laws and win their praise . Be alert and abstain from vice . End is

XXV

13.11-14

393-403

2.6

XXVI

14.1-13

403-419

1.1

Make allowance for weakness and prejudice

XXVII

14.14-23

419-430

1.1

No food is unclean , but the Kingdom is not

XXVIII

14.24-15.7

430-439

1.0

XXIX

15.8-13

440-448

1.5

Jesus came to sanctify both Gentile and Jew.

XXX

15.14-24

448-460

1.4

Apostolic commission of wide geographical range : especial duties to the Gentiles .

XXXI

15.25-16.4

460-471

0.9

Need to take contribution to Jerusalem and

now very near .

Seek the temper of Christ .

in converts : judgment for God , not us .

about food , so offend not the scrupulous . (24-6 are transposed from end of 16 ) In the great power of Grace we must act as Christ would protect weak brethren .

exhortation to provide for Paul's past helpers . XXXII

16.5-16

471-485

1.25

Greetings from Paul to congregation : Urges use of holy kiss of peace with each other .

XXXIII

16.17-24

485-495

1.2

Urges the need for unity of all classes and lack of schism in church brotherhood .

N.B.

These numbers of Homilies are in each case one higher than the tradition . Field treated the so -called argumentum as the First Homily and renumbered the whole series accordingly .

Le corpus pseudo - chrysostomien Questiones préliminaires et état des recherches S. J. Voicu Rome

OTRE exposé débutera par un point de terminologie . Est - il légitime d'appeler 1 N corpus l'ensemble des ouvrages attribués à tort à Jean Chrysostome D'après l'usage courant , le terme suppose une communauté de provenance ou de transmission manuscrite . Dès lors , il ne convient guère à des pièces dont le caractère hétéroclite apparaît déjà à une prospection rapide et dont le degré de est dispersion à travers les manuscrits - grecs ou en d'autres langues anciennes considérable . Néanmoins , la désignation de corpus peut être retenue par une sorte de détour . Il est en effet justifié de l'employer pour l'ensemble des textes attribués à Chrysostome , qui constituent le corpus chrysostomien indépendamment de leur authenticité . Étant donné que , d'une part , la transmission des pièces apocryphes est identique 2 à celle du véritable Chrysostome , et d'autre , il n'y a presque jamais de confusion entre les deux catégories d'ouvrages , il paraît acceptable de parler de corpus pseudo- chrysostomien dans un but pratique et sans perdre de vue le côté arbitraire d'une telle désignation . Le nombre des textes qui nous intéressent ici dépasse largement le millier . Dans l'énorme majorité des cas ces pièces se présentent sous forme d'homélies . C'est pourquoi , dans ce court exposé , il nous a semblé justifié de passer sous 4 des lettres , silence les quelques ouvrages relevant d'autres genres littéraires 5 des prières , voire des compositions poétiques pour nous occuper d'abord des homélies . Celles - ci peuvent être classées en trois grandes catégories : composites - eglogues ou centons ;

1 ) les pièces

2 ) les homélies pour lesquelles nous pouvons

atteindre , par n'importe quel moyen , une attribution , même inauthentique , précédant 8 celle à Chrysostome ; 3 ) les pièces dont nous ne pouvons pas démontrer l'appartenance 1198

1199 Le corpus pseudo-chrysostomien à l'une des deux catégories susmentionnées . Ces définitions sont assez sommaires et simplifient quelque peu par rapport à la

réalité des textes , où l'attribution de telle ou telle autre homélie à une de ces 9 catégories demeure contestable ou sujette à caution . Un tel classement indique cependant très nettement le secteur propre à la recherche pseudo - chrysostomienne : ce ne sont évidemment pas les ouvrages relevant à l' origine d'autres dossiers ; ni , en général , ceux dont on a démontré le caractère 10 composite > mais seulement ceux dont le plus ancien état connu porte le nom de Chrysostome . A cause surtout de notre connaissance très imparfaite des homélies inédites ou transmises exclusivement dans des langues orientales , nous ne disposons pas de statistiques tant soit peu précises du nombre des textes relevant de cette dernière catégorie , mais il est certain qu'ils sont au moins 300 . Dans leur grande majorité

le fait est démontré par les notices qu'a recueillies

dans son Repertorium ( 1965 ) le Père Aldama

ces pièces n'ont attiré l'attention des

chercheurs que de façon sporadique . Cela tient évidemment aux conditions mêmes de leur présentation .

En effet , par

un préjugé assez explicable , on attache souvent une nuance péjorative au préfixe pseudo- , comme s'il s'agissait d'un indice de basse époque ou de mauvaise qualité littéraire et exégétique , ce qui dans la plupart des cas ne répond guère à la réalité . L'indifférence vis - à- vis des ouvrages pseudo - chrysostomiens est due aussi à des raisons objectives . Une fois ôté le nom de Chrysostome , ces pièces tombent dans l ' anonymat le plus strict , et rares sont parmi elles celles dont le contenu lui -même fournit les indications nécessaires pour déterminer le temps et l'endroit où elles ont été prononcées , telle cette homélie qui fait allusion à une église Constantino11 12 politaine ou telle autre qui s'en prend vertement aux ariens .* Rares sont d' ailleurs les pièces pour lesquelles on dispose d'attestations externes nettement Ixe -Xe siècle pour le grec . antérieures aux plus anciens témoins manuscrits Faut-il en déduire pour autant qu'on ne peut rien tirer des autres homélies , de celles qu'aucune donnée extrinsèque ou intrinsèque ne permet de situer , et qui cependant sont la grande majorité ? La réponse ne peut être qu'affirmative si ces pièces sont étudiées isolément . Mais point n'est besoin d'en rester là .

Depuis plusieurs années j'ai été amené

à suivre la voie des rapprochements stylistiques , avec des résultats qui me paraissent encourageants . En effet , quelques dossiers déjà connus grâce à l'activité d'autres chercheurs ont été enrichis , et de nouveaux ont vu le jour , si bien qu'actuellement nous pouvons identifier au bas mot neuf auteurs grecs qui one laissé aux moins deux 13 homélies chacun .

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S. J. Voicu

Passons rapidement en revue ces attributions , tout en laissant de côté les cas douteux : cinq auteurs one prononcé deux homélies chacun ( pseudo -Jean Chrysostome 2 , 10 , 12 , 17 et 19 ) ; deux autres en ont prêché trois ( pseudo - Chrysostome 14 et 15 ) . Cinq pièces reviennent au huitième ( pseudo - Chrysostome 16 ) .

Pour le neuvième pré-

dicateur ( pseudo- Chrysostome 20 ) , des recherches encore en cours ont permis d'identifier un noyau de six textes sûrement homogènes , mais aussi 14 autres qui pourraient lui appartenir ; ce qui ne manque pas de poser un problème , puisque , si toutes ces attributions s'avèrent correctes , il s'agirait d'un auteur assez important , au moins du point de vue quantitatif . Un exemple pourrait mieux montrer l'intérêt que présente l'attribution de plusieurs ouvrages à un même prédicateur . A cette fin , c'est le dossier des cinq pièces ( pseudo-Jean Chrysostome 16 ) qui m'a semblé le plus parlant . De ces homélies , deux seulement sont datées , quoiqu ' 14 imparfaitement , grâce à une versione latine et une allusion chez Cassien . Une troisième homélie contient un détail qui permet de la localiser : l'empereur y est 15 décrit lorsqu'il dépose sa couronne pour approcher de l'autel . Cette scène a son Sitz im Leben le plus probable à Constantinople , comme le démontrent d'autres pièces 16 qui y ont été prononcées ." Lorsque l'analyse stylistique établit que ces trois homélies - et deux autres reviennent à un même prêcheur , nous pouvons juxtaposer les deux données et obtenir ainsi un point de repère plus précis pour les cinq pièces et leur auteur : fin IVe début ve siècles à Constantinople . Qui plus est , une lecture d'ensemble des homélies confirme ces indications , dans la mesure où , par exemple , le thème du basileus y revient plusieurs fois , ou les hérésies y mentionnées s'avèrent compatibles avec la date proposée . Par ailleurs , le fait de disposer d'un échantillon plus large permet de mieux déterminer les positions exégétiques et théologiques de l'homéliste ( dans l'exemple choisi , il s ' agit d'un antiochien , donc littéraliste , mais modéré ) , de démontrer mieux l'existence de liens littéraires avec d'autres auteurs ( le nôtre en a de très étroits avec Chrysostome ) , avec toutes les précisions qui s'ensuivent quant à la date et la 17 localisation . Il n'est jusqu'à la teneur du texte qui ne bénéficie de cette situation : grâce à une connaissance plus précise du style de l'homéliste , le choix entre deux variantes apparemment égales devient plus aisé ; maintes fois l'examen de lieux parallèles 18 permet de déceler de petites corruptions et d'y proposer des conjectures . Ce n'est pas dire pour autant que la critique interne soit une sorte de panacée des problèmes posés par le corpus pseudo - chrysostomien .

Loin de là.

Souvent l'attribution de plusieurs pièces à un même auteur ne nous apprend que peu de chose , telles ces deux homélies qui commentent quelques versets du chapitre 6 de Matthieu ( pseudo - Chrysostome 17 ) : elles ne paraissent receler aucun indice

1201

Le corpus pseudo -chrysostomien

quant à leur date et localisation , et pourraient tout au plus suggérer l'existence d'un commentaire plus étendu de la même péricope évangélique

ce qui est vraisem-

blablement appuyé par trois pièces inédites auxquelles elles voisinent dans certains manuscrits . Ailleurs il sera difficile d'appliquer les principes mêmes de la critique interne , faute , pour ainsi dire , de matière première .

Le cas se présente notamment avec 19 certaines pièces trop courtes ou dont la redondance est basse . C'est ainsi que , maintes fois , aux homélies relevant assurément d'un même dossier nous pouvons en rapprocher d'autres dont l'authenticité demeure incertaine ou douteuse , parce que les parallélismes observés semblent insuffisants ou de mauvais 20 aloi . Du moins pour l'instant ... car la recherche pseudo -chrysostomienne n'en est qu'à ses débuts . Nous pouvons prévoir des progrès ... d'ordre théorique , au fur et à mesure que nous 21 parviendrons à un classement plus précis des différentes catégories de stylèmes puis d'ordre pratique , par une analyse minutieuse du lexique des ouvrages pseudochrysostomiens . C'est dans cette voie que je compte m'engager dans les années à venir .

J'avais

pensé d'abord aussi à une refonte du Repertorium , selon un plan élargi , en y accueillant des inédits et des pièces transmises dans des langues autres que le grec . Puis l'exposé de M. Douglas Burger a rendu mon projet inutile . Je peux cependant vous annoncer qu'après de longs pourparlers , nous sommes parvenus , M. Burger et moi , à fixer une formule de collaboration à une Bibliotheca Chrysostomica , et nous demandons , d'ores et déjà , votre sympathie et votre collaboration pour une besogne qui s'annonce longue et assez difficile . La publication des différents dossiers pseudo - chrysostomiens , avec les pièces justificatives de leur homogénéite , suivra . Que pouvons -nous espérer de ces recherches ? Probablement peu de choses qui bousculent le cadre actuel de nos connaissances . Sûrement des éléments qui restitueront un peu de vie à un paysage où trop souvent il n'y a que de vénérables monuments . De nos jours , lorsque l'histoire - histoire matérielle et la religion · religion populaire - redécouvrent le rôle des gens du commun , nous contenteronsnous encore de miser exclusivement sur quelques grandes figures , et d'ignorer , voire mépriser , des auteurs qui ont essayé de faire leur métier , scrupuleusement , avec dévouement et avec passion , et dont peut - être le seul tort est celui d'avoir connu une survie littéraire difficile ? En paraphrasant quelque peu un passage de saint Paul , je me permettrais de dire : ' Il est la splendeur du soleil , et il est la splendeur de la lune ; mais il est aussi la splendeur des étoiles , et chaque étoile brille de sa propre lumière ' ( 1 Cor . 15 , 41 ) .

1202

S. J. Voicu RÉFÉRENCES

(pour les ouvrages mentionnés, voir la bibliographie, p. 1205)

1. Nous sommes loin d'avoir une compréhension parfaite des motifs et des mécanismes de la pseudoépigraphie ancienne . On lira avec intérêt , malgré les ambiguïtés de la notion de ' faux ' qu'ils présupposent , Ronconi ( 1955 ) et Speyer ( 1971 ) . Pour le problème pseudo- chrysostomien , qui présente d'ailleurs bien des traits originaux , nous ne pouvons citer qu'Aldama ( 1966 ) . Les quelques phrases que Baur ( 1907 : 32-33) dédie à la question sont tout à fait insuffisantes . 2. Très rares sont en effet les recueils d'homélies diverses qui rassemblent exclusivement soit des pièces authentiques , soit des apocryphes . Lorsque ce cas extrême se présente , le plus souvent il trouve son explication dans le mode même de composition de l'homéliaire : série de pièces authentiques dont l'ordonnance chronologique primitive a survécu ( Wenger , 1956 : 43-45 ) , ou bien ensemble pseudo - chrysostomien répondant aux exigences mouvantes du cycle annuel (auxquelles les textes authentiques son nettement moins adaptés ) . Par ailleurs , au niveau le plus ancien de la tradition que nous pouvons atteindre les toutes premières citations il y a déjà confusion entre ouvrages authentiques et inauthentiques . C'est le cas chez Augustin ( vers 421 ) et autour du Concile d'Ephèse ( certainement chez Cyrille et Théodoret , très probablement chez Cassien ; cf. n . 14 ) . La même observation vaut a fortiori pour les florilèges postérieurs . 3. Le genre a connu un succès exceptionnel puisqu'au moins le 90% des pseudochrysostomica lui appartiennent . Ce n'est pas dire pour autant que , surtout dans les couches les plus récentes du corpus , il s'agit toujours d'homélies ' véritables ' - c'est - à- dire réellement prononcées d'abord . 4. Longuement étudiées par Nikolopoulos ( 1973 ) . 5. Par exemple , C.P.G. II § 4687-88 et 4710-13 . Ce dossier , auquel il faut rattacher aussi la liturgie dite de Chrysostome ( C.P.G. II § 4686 ) , n'a pas encore été étudié comme tel . 6. Cf. C.P.G. II $ 4746 . 7. Il n'est question ici que des centons véritables . Quoique rarement , la présentation des Appendices des C.C.G. pourrait prêter équivoque , car on y range dans une même catégorie les ouvrages réellement composites et ceux qui n'ont été publiés qu'en partie ou dans une rédaction aberrante . C'est le cas notamment de pseudo - Jean Chrysostome 20 , In Zacchaeum publicanum ( C.C.G. I App . 35 ) , dont les éditions ( P.G. 61 , 767-768 ; C.P.G. II § 4658 ) ne donnent qu'un texte écourté ; voir aussi pseudo- Chrysostome 15 , In illud: Ignem ueni mittere in terram ( C.C.G. I App . 2 ) , dont la seconde moitié est tombée dans les imprimés (P.G. 62 , 739-742 ; C.P.G. II § 4669 ) au profit de celle de De pharisaeo (P.G. 59 , 589-592 ; C.P.G. II § 4590 ) . 8. On excusera la lourdeur de cette définition , dont cependant tous les éléments ont une importance réelle . Face à une pluralité d'attributions dans la tradition , directe ou indirecte , il importe de déterminer si la ou les attributions non - chrysostomiennes sont antérieures à celle chrysostomienne . Lorsque celles - là sont plus tardives que celle - ci , elles sont totalement dénuées d'intérêt en ce qui concerne l'origine du texte . C' est le cas notamment de De patientia et continentia et uirginitate ( P.G. 88 , 19371977 ; C.P.G. III § 7555 ) , attribuée à Jean le Jeûneur par une conjecture savante erronée ( van Esbroeck , 1975 : 117-118 § A90 ) ; citons aussi pseudo - Jean Chrysostome 20 ( ? ) , De recens baptizatis ( C.P.G. II § 3238 ) , placée aussi sous les noms d' Amphiloque et d'Epiphane . A cette même catégorie appartiennent vraisemblablement In saltationem Herodiadis ( P.G. 59 , 521-526 ; C.P.G. II § 4578 ) , qui passe quelquefois pour être l'oeuvre d'un ( fantomatique ? ) Anatole de Thessalonique ; In sanctam Christi resurrectionem ( Nautin , 1953 : 151-159 ; C.P.G. II § 3773 ) , transmise aussi sous le nom d'Epiphane . Ailleurs l'attribution non - chrysostomienne s'avère plus ancienne que celle chrysostomienne . Le texte en question relévera alors d'un autre dossier . Évidemment , ce fait ne certifie pas pour autant que l'état non- chrysostomien lui -même est authentique - il ne faut pas oublier qu'il existe aussi des pseudo-Proclus , des pseudoSévérien , etc. , et que la preuve d'authenticité doit être faite cas par cas .

Le corpus pseudo- chrysostomien

1203

Assurément , il n'est pas toujours aisé de trancher de l'ancienneté relative de deux attributions fausses ( c'est le cas notamment de plusieurs pièces pseudo- chrysostomiennes transmises aussi sous le nom d'Éphrem ) . Une catégorie spéciale est celle des textes pour lesquels un état anonyme s'oppose à l'attribution pseudo- chrysostomienne . Puisque les copistes ont souvent une sorte d'horror vacui , on considèrera en principe celui - là comme primitif ( le cas se présente assez souvent en arabe ; Sauget , 1970 : 438-439 § 26 ; 441-442 § 30 et 31 ) , sans toutefois oublier que l'inscription a pu être omise par un accident de copie . En d'autres cas , face à une tradition unanime en faveur de Chrysostome , des critères stylistiques permettent de retrouver le nom du véritable auteur . Le procédé a été appliqué avec beaucoup de succès aux dossiers de Léonce de Constantinople ( Sachot , 1977 ; cf. Voicu , 1979 : 360-361 ) et de Sévérien de Gabala . Pour maint ouvrage de ce dernier auteur les indications de la critique interne ont même été confirmées a posteriori par des témoignages externes : pour In sanctam Pentecosten (P.G. 63 , 933-938 ; C.P.G. II § 4211 ) l'attribution d'Altendorf ( 1957 : 92-96 ) est étayée maintenant par l'identification d'une citation grecque ( Paris , B. N. Coislin 294 , ff. 137V-138 ) et d'une version géorgienne ( van Esbroeck , 1978 ) , qui ont les deux gardé le nom de Sévérien . 9. Par exemple , la pièce De ieiunio ( P.G. 61 , 787-790 ; C.P.G. II § 4662 ) , dont l'auteur , d'après un seul manuscrit très tardif ( XIVe siècle ) , serait Grégoire de Césarée . On demeurerait très sceptique devant cette attribution isolée , n'était - ce le fait que l'homélie se situe dans le sillage de Basile de Césarée , dont elle remanie la De ieiunio homilia 1 ( P.G. 31 , 164-183 ; C.P.G. II § 2845 ) . Nous n'avons pas les moyens de trancher entre deux explications opposées : 1) tradition ancienne , préservée par ce témoin unique ; 2 ) conjecture intelligente d'un scribe qui s'est aperçu des liens avec Basile , le nom de Grégoire de Césarée étant assez connu par ailleurs ? ( Voicu , 1976a : 499-503) . 10. Comme nous l'avons dit plus haut ( n . 7 ) , il y a des pièces dont le caractère composite n'est qu'apparent ; pour d'autres , le problème de leur unité originelle est plus difficile à résoudre , telle cette homélie In publicanum et pharisaeum (P.G. 62 , 723-728 ; C.P.G. II § 4664 ) , dont la seule finale connue jusqu'ici est tirée d'une autre homélie du même titre ( P.G. 59 , 595-600 ; C.P.G. II $ 4591 ) . Nous n'avons pas , du moins pour l'instant , les moyens de décider s'il s'agit là d'un simple accident de copie ( les deux textes ayant dû voisiner dans la tradition manuscrite ) , ou bien d'un démarquage partiel . 11. D'après son titre , In s . Thomam et in oeconomiam Domini nostri ( inédite ; C.P.G. II § 4924 ) a été prononcée dans la ' Grande - église ' ( Saint - Sophie ; Janin , 1969 : 455-470 ) ; la Laudatio apostolorum ( inédite ; C.P.G. II $ 4970 ) peut être localisée aux Saints -Apôtres grâce à une allusion aux tombeaux d'André , Timothée et Luc (Janin , 1969 : 41-50 ; voir aussi plus loin n . 16 ) . 12. La pièce inédite In ascensionem Domini ( C.P.G. II $ 4908 ) n'est attestée que vers la moitié du VIe siècle par une citation , jusqu'ici non reconnue , dans Facundus d'Hermiane ( Clément et Vander Plaetse , 1974 : 348 ) , mais le violence de sa polémique antiarienne s'explique mieux dans la période précédant le Concile d'Éphèse . 13. Pour les distinguer facilement , j'ai donné un numéro d'ordre à chacun de ces auteurs . Le détail des pièces qui leur reviennent et la bibliographie s'y rapportant se trouvent dans Voicu ( 1981 ) . Pseudo-Jean Chrysostome 16 , dont il sera question plus loin , est auteur d'In Psalmum 50 homiliae 1-2 (P.G. 55 , 565-588 ; C.P.G. II § 4544-45 ) , In baptismum ( inédite ; C.P.G. II § 4735 ) , In illud: Sufficit tibi gratia mea ( P.G. 59 , 507-516 ; C.P.G. II § 4576) et In illud: Si qua in Christo noua creatura ( P.G. 64 , 25-34 ; C.P.G. II § 4701 ) . 14. En latin , les deux homélies In Psalmum 50 sont transmises par la collection dite ' des 38 homélies ' , dont certaines pièces sont citées par Augustin vers 421 ( Wilmart , 1918 ) . Mais nous n'avons pas de preuve directe que ces deux homélies faisaient partie du noyau primitif du recueil , qui est certainement composite . Par ailleurs , le passage de Cassien ( Petschenig , 1888 : 388 ) doit être manié avec précaution : il a un son non-authentique l'expression ' nuda deitas ' étant très rare chez Chrysostome et relativement fréquente chez pseudo- Chrysostome 16 - et l'homélie 2 ( cf. P.G. 55 , 583 , 57-584 , 3 , dans le teneur de l'ancienne version latine ) semble

SP 3 - P

1204

S. J. Voicu

une source plausible , mais il s'agirait alors plutôt d'une allusion libre que d'une citation littérale , ce qui empêche une identification définitive . Par ailleurs , maint passage de cette même homélie 2 ( P.G. 55 , 578-579 ) soutenant une certaine initiative de la part de l'homme dans le réception de la grâce , il y a des chances que les deux pièces aient attiré l'attention d'Anien de Céléda , premier traducteur latin de Chrysostome , dont les attaches pélagiennes sont bien connues . 15. In illud : Si qua in Christo noua creatura ( P.G. 64 , 34 , 27-37 ) . 16. In Pentecosten sermo 1 ( P.G. 52 , 808 , 24-29 ; C.P.G. II § 4536 ) ; In illud: Ne timueritis cum diues factus fuerit homo , homilia 1 ( P.G. 55 , 512 , 28-31 ; C.P.G. II § 4414 ) . 17. Malheureusement , pour une démonstration détaillée de ce que je viens d'affirmer , je ne peux que renvoyer à ma thèse inédite ( Voicu , 1976b ) , sous peine d'allonger démesurément cette communication . 18. Par exemple , au début de l'homélie In baptismon ( inédit ) , dans tous les manuscrits que j'ai pu consulter , les juifs sont appelés ' cvówvúμous ... car ils en ont repris la méchancheté et ont hérité de leur nom ' . Le passage parallèle d'In illud: Sufficit tibi gratia mea ( P.G. 59 , 512 , 68-71 ) permet d'y restituer immédiatement la bonne legon : σοδομηνούς . Pour l'apport décisif des lieux parallèles dans le choix entre leçons concurrentes cf. pseudo- Chrysostome 20 ( ? ) , De recens baptizatos ( Voicu , 1979 : 363 n . 22 ) . 19. Ici le terme a moins la nuance ' littéraire ' ( verbiage ) , que celle ' informatique ' (élément qui , sans appartenir au message proprement dit , assure une meilleure transmission de celui - ci ) . L'expérience enseigne que lorsqu'un auteur se répète pour mieux s'expliquer , il a une tendance plus marquée à retomber toujours dans les mêmes procédés stylistiques . 20. Voir pseudo- Jean Chrysostome 15 , 17 , 18 et 20 . 21. J'ai été amené jusqu'ici à poser seulement deux grandes catégories de stylèmes : 1) contextuels , dont le contenu informatique est relativement élevé et la probabilité de réalisation relativement basse , puisqu'ils sont liés à un message déterminé ; 2) non-contextuels , dont le contenu informatique est très pauvre et la probabilité de réalisation relativement élevée , celle-ci ne dépendant pas du message transmis , mais du ' code ' ( = style ) utilisé . Parmi les stylèmes non- contextuels nous pouvons citer plusieurs catégories : les vocatifs ( chers , frères , amis , etc. ) , les adresses au public ( écoutez - moi , écoutezmoi avec attention , faites attention , etc. ) , les ' phrases de transition ' ( revenons à nos moutons , pourquoi faut - il abonder en paroles ? , etc. ) , les introductions aux citations bibliques ( dit - il , il le dit en criant , l'écriture m'est témoin , etc. ) , et les noms du Christ ( Jésus , Seigneur , Maître , Sauveur , etc. ) . La doxologie finale peut aussi être caractéristique d'un auteur déterminé ( Wenger , 1970 : 57-59 ; Sauget , 1969 : 16 ) , mais son apport propre est très réduit parce que , en grec , il y en a peu de types fondamentaux , sur lesquels l'initiative des scribes s'est exercée souvent de façon arbitraire . La distinction entre stylèmes contextuels et non- contextuels est de la plus haute importance . Son rôle peut être décrit par la régle suivante : Si deux homélies ne sont pas compatibles dans leurs stylèmes non- contextuels , toute ressemblance d'ordre contextuel doit faire appel à une explication autre que l'unicité d'auteur ( plagiat , communauté de tradition rhétorique ou exégétique ) .

Le corpus pseudo- chrysostomien BIBLIOGRAPHIE CITÉE

1205

Aldama , J.A. de , Repertorium Pseudochrysostomicum ( Paris , 1965 ) . Aldama , J.A. de , ' Historia y balance de la investigación sobre homilías pseudocrisostómicas impresas ' , in Studia Patristica 7 [ T.U. 92 ] ( Berlin , 1966 ) , pp . 117-132 . Altendorf , H.D. , Untersuchungen zu Severian von Gabala ( Tübingen , 1957 - thèse dactylographiée ) . Mes remerciements vont à M. Maurice Geerard , qui m'a procuré cet ouvrage inédit . Baur , C. , S. Jean Chrysostome et ses œuvres dans l'histoire littéraire ( LouvainParis , 1907 ) . C.C.G. I : M. Aubineau , Codices Chrysostomici Graeci . I : Codices Britanniae et Hiberniae ( Paris , 1968 ) . Clément , I. -M . et Vander Plaetse , R. , Facundi episcopi ecclesiae Hermianensis opera omnia [ C.C.L. 90A ] ( Turnholti , 1974 ) . C.P.G. II - III : M. Geerard , Clavis Patrum Graecorum . II-III ( Turnhout , 1974-79 ) . Janin , R. , La géographie ecclésiastique de l'empire byzantin . Première série : Le siège de Constantinople ... III : Les églises et les monastères , 2e éd . ( Faris , 1969 ) . Nautin , P. , Le dossier d'Hippolyte et de Méliton ( Paris , 1953 ) . Nikolopoulos , P.G. , Αἱ εἰς τὸν Ἰωάννην τον Χρυσόστομον ἐσφαλμένως ἀποδιδόμεναι ERLOTOλaú (Athenai , 1973) . Petschenig , M. , Iohannis Cassiani De institutis coenobiorum ... De incarnatione Domini contra Nestorium [ C.S.E.L. 17 ] ( Mediolani , 1888 ) . Ronconi , A. , ' Introduzione alla letteratura pseudoepigrafa ' , Studi Classici e Orientali 5 : 15-37 (1955 ) . Sachot , M. , ' Les homélies de Léonce , prêtre de Constantinople ! ' , R.S.R. 51 : 234-245 (1977) . Sauget , J.-M. , ' Une homélie de Proclus de Constantinople sur l'Ascension de NotreSeigneur en version syriaque ' , Muséon 82 : 5-33 ( 1969 ) . Sauget , J.-M. , ' L'homéliaire arabe de la Bibliothèque Ambrosienne ( X. 198 Sup . ) et ses membra disiecta ' , Analecta Bollandiana 88 : 391-475 ( 1970 ) . Speyer , W. , Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertumn (München , 1971 ) . van Esbroeck , M. , Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens ( Louvain - la - Neuve , 1975 ) . van Esbroeck , M. , ' Deux homélies de Sévérien de Gabala ... conservées en géorgien ' , Bedi Kartlisa 36 : 71-91 ( 1978 ) . Voicu , S.J. , ' Rifacimenti pseudocrisostomici di omelie basiliane ' , Augustinianum 16 : 499-504 (1976a ) . Voicu , S.J. , Cinque omelie pseudocrisostomiche di un ignoto autore della fine del quarto secolo ( Roma , 1976b - thèse dactylographiée ) . Voicu , S.J. , ' L'edizione di Anfilochio del CChG ' , Augustinianum 19 : 359-364 ( 1979 ) . Voicu , S.J. , ' Une nomenclature pour les anonymes du corpus pseudo - chrysostomien ' , Byzantion 51 : 297-305 ( 1981 ) . Wenger , A. , ' La tradition des oeuvres de saint Jean Chrysostome ' , Revue des Études Byzantines 14 : 5-47 ( 1956 ) . Wenger , A. , Jean Chrysostome , Huit catéchèses baptismales inédites ... , 2e éd . [S.C. 50bis ] ( Paris , 1970 ) . Wilmart , A. , ' La collection des 38 homélies latines de saint Jean Chrysostome ' , J.T.S. 19 : 305-327 ( 1918 ) .

Augustine and his opponents

W. S. Babcock B. Bubacz Joanne McW. Dewart A. Etchegaray Cruz C. A. Garcia-Allen D. K. House B. Lorenz José Oroz Reta, O.A.R. Walter H. Principe , C.S.B. J. F. Procopé A. Schindler Basil Studer, O.S.B. J. F. van der Kooi

Dallas Kansas City Toronto Valparaíso Boynton Beach, Florida Halifax, Nova Scotia Regensburg Salamanca Toronto Cambridge Bern Rome Bethel

Augustine and Tyconius A Study in the Latin Appropriation of Paul W. S. Babcock

Dallas, Texas

N 391 , with no warning in advance , Augustine was pressed into the priesthood by Ithe catholic congregation of Hippo Regius . The event wrenched him from the 1 familiar patterns of the community of servi Dei he had gathered at Thagaste and it plunged him into a new and unexpected milieu : the crowded , belligerent and far from subtle Christianity of the cities of Roman North Africa . Augustine's first experience of his new office shook his confidence and convinced him that he was completely unready for a position he had thought that he could master . turned out , had mocked his evaluation of himself .?

God , it

In this light , feeling desperately unprepared , Augustine turned to an old project with a new and urgent purpose . Even before his ordination , he had planned to set aside a period of leisure for the study of scripture .

Now he wrote to Valerius ,

his bishop , to request an immediate leave of absence so that he could study scripture precisely in order to equip himself for the priestly ministry .

He wanted , to

paraphrase his own expressions , to learn how to minister to others , not seeking what might be useful to himself but what would serve the many and bring them to 3 salvation . In short , he recognized that his new status and new duties imposed a new reading of the Biblical record .

The chief object could no longer be the shap-

ing of his own life to God , but must rather be the quite different matter of service to a Christian congregation . At the same time , however , it is clear that Augustine expected his new position in the midst of the ecclesiastical crowd to put dangerous strains on his own pursuit of the religious life ;

and so he wanted also

to learn from scripture how a ' man of God ' might live with a clear conscience ' in the hands of the wicked ' ." Inter manus iniquorum : the phrase measures the immense religious distance that separated , in Augustine's mind , the community at Thagaste from the congregation in Hippo . The study of scripture , which occupied and preoccupied Augustine throughout his priesthood , was meant to bridge that gap as well

1209

1210

W. S. Babcock

as to teach him how to serve the many and bring them to salvation . It was meant to be a vehicle of social assimilation ( i.e. , a means of achieving a modus vivendi in an alien environment ) as well as a medium of ministerial training . The period of Augustine's priesthood lasted from 391 to 396.

In the last three

of those years , his attention to scripture focused chiefly on Paul and , above all , on the Paul of the letters to the Romans and the Galatians . In rapid succession , he produced the Expositio quarundam propositionum ex Epistola ad Romanos and the Expositio Epistolae ad Galatas . He began and abandoned what would have been a massive commentary on Romans ; and , during the same period , he devoted a number of shorter , more occasional , pieces to particular passages in Romans and Galatians . Of these , the most important was , of course , the first book of the De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum , written in 396 just after Augustine's consecration 6 to the episcopacy . As Peter Brown has noted , such interest in Paul was by no means unusual in the But

final decades of the fourth century in the sphere of Latin Christianity .?

Augustine stands alone among the Latin interpreters of Paul in his discovery of a Pauline theology which cut the nerve of every human effort to achieve the good by striving for conformity with God . It is not that persons cannot , from their own resources , know the good; nor is it that they do not wish to avoid the evil . The role of the law , after all , is precisely to bring the knowledge of sin ; know sin is to know that it ought to be avoided .

and to

But Augustine could find nothing

in Paul to suggest that a person has the power to translate a knowing of the good into a doing of the good . After the sin of the first man , human freedom simply lacks that kind of control over the self and its habitual patterns of motivation and action : Liberum ergo arbitrium perfecte fuit in primo homine , in nobis autem ante gratiam non est liberum arbitrium, ut non peccemus , sed tantum ut peccare 8 nolimus. Thus to be under the law ( sub lege ) is to be defeated by sin` > no matter how ardently one may fight against it . Apart from outside intervention - i.e. , apart from grace

the landscape of the human struggle to achieve the good is , for

Augustine , an unrelieved landscape of defeat . The defeat stems ultimately from a person's inability to shape his own dispositions or to direct his own affections . Both in his own experience and in his reading of Paul , Augustine had discovered that the human self simply is not at its own disposal , that it is not malleable to its own wishes. No one can force himself to take pleasure in what gives him no pleasure :

' The will itself can have no

motive unless something presents itself to delight and stir the mind . That this 110 should happen is not in any man's power . Nor is the problem simply a matter of the accidental presence or absence of an object of delight . It has also to do with the inner working of the will , for the self cannot compel delight even in what is already present to it.11 Consequently it is only by grace that a person is finally

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Augustine and Tyconius

able to delight in the good and to vanquish those dispositions and affections which held him captive to sin so long as he was under the law. And since grace is no human achievement , this victory is no human victory .

Because it comes only by the

gift of God's grace , it does not redound to the credit of those who receive it . It is true , of course , that Augustine was slow in pushing himself to the outer 12 Only in 396 , in the reply to reaches of his developing theology of grace . Simplician , did he finally conclude that even faith itself is a divine gift rather 13 than a human accomplishment . In earlier interpretations of Paul , he had imagined a scheme of hidden merits ( occultissima merita ) according to which God bestowed 14 his grace on some and withheld it from others or had elaborated a view in which faith (but not works ) remained within a person's power and provided a human basis 15 for the awarding of divine grace . Yet the elimination of these themes from Augustine's interpretation of Paul and from his own theology , despite the radical 16 effects on his understanding of human freedom and divine justice , did not fundamentally alter his outlook on either the human plight under the law or the necessity of grace in order to achieve the good .

Whether he accounted for the bestowal

of grace by referring to a hidden merit on man's part or by referring to a hidden 17 equity (occulta aequitas ) on God's part > he could see no purely human path to victory over the self. In effect , Augustine had found in Paul a view of the self's captivity to its own dispositions and affections which scrambled and finally defeated the aspirations he had shared with his fellow servi Dei in Thagaste .

His new theology , formed by

his encounter with Paul , made it impossible to imagine that a person might so master his will or so order his desires as to achieve the good on his own resources . To the self , on its own , there comes only defeat ;

victory belongs to God alone .

But this view ought not to be seen only as a development , no matter how important , in the shaping of Augustine's Biblical interpretation and of his theological reflection . It represents also an antidote to the inevitably elitist character of a Christian sensibility set apart from the Christian population at large .

In the

common landscape of defeat , there is no human ground for separating one person from another or for portraying one as better and another as worse ;

and , against such a

landscape , the moments of victory follow odd and unsuspected patterns which do not conform to the habits of human expectation . It is not greater talent , Augustine discovers , or lesser sin or sound and useful doctrine that equips a person for 18 grace . Nor is it keenness of mind or training in the liberal arts . A God who chooses the weak in order to confound the strong and the foolish to confound the wise mocks our ways of giving and withholding admiration . But where the old ways of perceiving talent and ability are erased , it becomes possible to discern elements of triumph where it had not been expected .

Thus Augustine notices that there are

' many of our faithful people ' who , on the score of talent or achievement , cannot be

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W. S. Babcock

compared with heretics or even with comic actors (the very lowest of the low ! ) and 19 yet who walk in the way of God . And in noticing the obscure triumphs of these anonymous believers , Augustine has placed himself among them.

His study of Paul

has given him a theology which enables him both to share the defeat and to perceive the victories of the Christian crowd . In this sense , it has transformed 20 not only his doctrine but also his religious sensibility ." Augustine may not , however , have been the first to find in Paul's theology of sin and grace the antidote to an elitist version of Christianity . respect , have been preceded by the Donatist theologian Tyconius .

He may , in this Unfortunately ,

despite a notice in Gennadius and references in other patristic sources ( especially 21 Augustine's own writings ) , Tyconius remains an obscure and enigmatic figure . He was a dissident from the Donatist cause , condemned by a Donatist council that met around 380. Yet he seems never to have given up his loyalty to the Donatist church , an apparent inconsistency for which he was taken to task by both the Donatist 22 Parmenianus and the catholic Augustine . His writings , therefore , were those of a disaffected loyalist ;

and this fact casts a shadow of uncertainty over the

interpretation of his work .

His theology appears to run counter to the Donatist

movement at every critical point ;

and certainly it is true that neither the

Donatists , from the inside , nor Augustine , from the outside , could discern the links which bound him to a group which had explicitly rejected and condemned views which Tyconius never altered or disavowed .

But there must have been such links ;

and , until they have been identified , the interpretation of Tyconius ' thought will remain a tentative and hazardous enterprise . The problem immediately presents itself with reference to the Liber regularum , the only work by Tyconius to have survived in anything like its complete and orig23 inal form. The Liber is a treatise - in fact , the earliest Latin treatise -on Biblical exegesis ;

and its format , prima facie , is clear enough .

It consists of

seven rules which are meant to guide the interpreter of the Biblical text by 24 providing ' lighted pathways ' through the ' immense forest of prophecy ' . Almost immediately , however , it becomes obvious that these exegetical guides are , at the same time , rules for discerning and understanding the character of the church as the body of Christ . Exegesis and ecclesiology converge ; and Tyconius is plainly as concerned with the latter as he is with the former . In fact , it would appear that the object of each exegetical rule is actually to achieve and defend a conclusion about the nature and condition of the ecclesial community . But where does Tyconius ' ecclesiology reveal its Donatist affiliations ?

Paul

Monceaux , whose work on Tyconius is probably still the best available , believed that , in one passage at least , the Liber regularum expresses la théorie donatiste 25 dans toute sa pureté . In this passage , according to Monceaux , Tyconius sets in opposition ' the church of God , i.e. , that of Donatus , and the church of the Devil ,

1213 Augustine and Tyconius 26 that of the so-called catholics ' . Tyconius ' own assertion , however , is not that 27 and , what is more , there are two churches , but that duae sunt partes in Ecclesia' he insists - in a sentence which Monceaux ignores - that both parts , the pars 28 Domini quite as much as the pars diaboli , are spread throughout the entire world ." In short , he rejects the characteristic Donatist claim that the church of God is restricted to North Africa and , at the same time , maintains , against the Donatists , that the one church includes the evil as well as the good . There can be no doubt with respect to Tyconius ' view on this last point . the whole burden of the Liber's second rule .

It is

The body of Christ is bipartite ;

and ,

in reading scripture , the interpreter must learn to recognize which phrases apply to which part of the one body .

Thus , in Canticles , the church is both black and

beautiful , black in that part through which the name of God is blasphemed among the nations , and beautiful in that part which the Lord has cleansed with his own blood .29 But there is no question of two churches , no possibility of a church which is only beautiful . Those who are outside the church do not make the church black .30 Thus Tyconius ends his exposition of the second rule by showing how 31 various Pauline locutions demonstrate that unum corpus et bonum esse et malum." But the heart of Tyconius ' disaffection from the Donatists appears in his 32 regula tertia , which , as Monceaux has noted , is not really a rule at all . It is rather an extraordinary interpretation of Paul - the Paul , that is , of Romans and Galatians ;

and its aim is to demonstrate that , while there have always been those

who did the works of the law , no one has ever been justified by doing what the law commands . For Tyconius , as later for Augustine , the purely human effort to do the law ends inevitably in defeat .

The person who consents to the law according to the

inner man is overcome by the ' other law' of his members , is taken captive and can 33 only be set free by grace through faith . But the true role of the law , for Tyconius , is precisely to drive persons to grace when they discover that there is no humanly possible way to do what the law requires .

In one of the few bright

images to interrupt his otherwise colorless prose , Tyconius pictures the law as a vast , imprisoning wall in which there is a single door of escape . The door is grace , the remedy of life which God has provided for those who do not despair in the face of the law's austere demands ; and it is guarded by faith , the conviction 34 that God has not closed the ways of life against his creatures . Those who entrust themselves to God in faith receive grace .

They receive the Spirit of God ;

the flesh , which cannot be subject to the law, is mortified ; and the Spirit does 35 the law in them. But none of this can be reckoned to the credit of the one to

whom it happens .

Quod vincimus nostrum non est ; and if our victory is not ours , 36 it comes from faith and not from works . We have no ground for boasting , for we

have nothing that we have not received . Tyconius does not push the theme of grace as far as Augustine was later to do

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W. S. Babcock Those who have seen in the Liber regularum an anticipation of Augustine's mature doctrines of grace and election are , I believe , quite wrong ; and Monceaux ' suggestion that Tyconius has a doctrine of predestination is an 37 For Tyconius , exaggeration that runs well beyond the text of the regula tertia. in the Ad Simplicianum.

unlike Augustine , faith remains our work ( although our only work ) rather than God's 38 In quite gift ; and it is to the extent that we have faith that God works in us . a different sense , however , Tyconius does seem genuinely to have ancitipcated For Tyconius has , in the Liber regularum , used Paul to cut

Augustine's thinking .

the ground from under any human claim to have achieved or to have maintained a pure form of the Christian community in North Africa over against the deficient Christianity spread throughout the Roman world .

Quite apart from the evidence of the

Book of Rules , it is known that Tyconius taunted the Donatists for arguing as if what they wanted was what God willed and kept pointing to episodes in the Donatists ' own history which discredited their claim to have kept clear of all ecclesial con39 In the Book of Rules itself , he has tact with the church of the traditores . moved from specific taunts to a Pauline theology of grace which simply leaves no room for the elitist pretensions that underlie the Donatist claims . It is not human effort but divine grace that enables persons to do the law and the workings of grace do not shatter the one body of Christ , even if they do give it its double character as including both the pars Domini and the pars diaboli . The notion of a pure Christian community , maintained by human effort and secured by human action , is sheer elitist illusion . When Paul is rightly understood , the illusion is broken . If Tyconius continued his Donatist allegiance even after the illusion was broken , it was , I believe , because he continued to perceive duae partes in ecclesia . The very interpretation of Paul which erased the pretensions of the Donatists confirmed , for him , this vision of the church as a mixed community containing both the good and the evil . In this sense , if no other , he could not do without the Donatist theme of the conflict between true and false versions of the Christian community . But he recast the theme by locating the conflict within the one body of Christ and by refusing to conceive of any Christian community which is not marked by this human reflex of the ultimate struggle between God and Satan . In this too , of course , he anticipated Augustine who also found the church a corpus mixtum and who also believed that , in this world , there will be no pure form of Christian community short of the final judgment . But we may conclude this study by returning to its main theme : to Tyconius and Augustine , each working under very different circumstances from the other , belongs the credit for the Latin discovery that Paul , in his doctrine of grace , provides the antidote to Christian elitism , whether the elitism of the pars Donati or the elitism of the Platonist's quest for God .

Augustine and Tyconius

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REFERENCES 1. On Augustine's community at Thagaste see Peter Brown , Augustine of Hippo : A Biography (Berkeley , Calif. , 1967 ) , pp . 132-137 . 2. Ep. 21.2 . 3. Ep. 21.3 , quoting I Cor . 10:33 . 4. Ibid. 5. The Epistolae ad Romanos inchoata expositio . 6. In addition to Ad Simpl . 1 , see De div . quaest. qq . 66-68 , 71 . 7. Brown , p . 151 . 8. Prop. ad Rom. 12 . 9. Ibid.; see also De div . quaest . q.66.3 and Ad Simpl.1 , q . 1.9-10 . 10. Ad Simpl . 1 , q . 2.22 ( trans . J.H.S. Burleigh , Augustine : Earlier Writings [ Philadelphia , n.d. ] , p . 406 ) . 11. Ibid.. 1 , q . 2.21 . 12. For a sketch of Augustine's development on this point , see my ' Augustine's Interpretation of Romans ( A.D. 394-396 ) ' , Augustinian Studies , forthcoming . 13. Ad Simpl . 1 , q . 2.9 . 14. De div. quaest . q . 68.3 ; see also q. 68.1 . 15. Prop . ad Rom. 60 , 62 . 16. On this point , again , see my forthcoming article listed above , n . 12 , and , more generally , my ' Grace , Freedom and Justice : Augustine and the Christian Tradition ' , Perkins School of Theology Journal 27 ( Summer 1973 ) : 1-15 . 17. Augustine speaks of God's hidden equity in Ad Simpl . 1 , q . 2.16 . 18. Ibid. , 1 , q . 2.22 . 19. Ibid. 20. See the comment in Brown , p . 156 : ' If Augustine could not take his friends for granted any longer , still less could he understand himself in terms of his old ideals ' . To Brown's brilliant account of Augustine's ' lost future ' , I would want to add only the observation that the loss of Augustine's ' old ideals ' provided also openings to his new social milieu . 21. For a general account of Tyconius ' life and works , with citations of the relevant patristic sources , see Paul Monceaux , Histoire littéraire de l'Afrique chrétienne , 7 vols . ( Paris , 1902-1923 ) , 5 : 165-219 . 22. See Augustine Ep . 93.43-44 . 23. The only critical edition of the Liber is that by F.C. Burkitt ( Cambridge , 1894 ) . 24. Burkitt , p . 1 . 25. Monceaux , 5 : 190 . 26. Ibid. 27. Burkitt , p . 73. The passage does not mention Donatus at all , nor does the Liber regularum as a whole . 28. Ibid. , p . 75 . 29. Ibid. , p . 10 . 30. Ibid. , pp . 10-11 . 31. Ibid. , p. 11 . 32. Monceaux , 5 : 182 , 184-185 . 33. Burkitt , p . 15 . 34. Ibid. , pp . 17 , 15-16 . 35. Ibid. , pp . 16-17 . 36. Ibid. , p . 19 . 37. Monceaux , 5 : 218 . For a comparison of Tyconius ' doctrines of grace and election with Augustine's , see my forthcoming article , listed in n . 12 above . 38. Burkitt , p . 19 . 39. See Augustine Ep . 93.43.

Augustine's Structural Theory of Perception

B. Bubacz

Kansas City

have two central goals in this paper . I am concerned to develop the Augustinian I doctrine that in perceiving the material world the human mind ' presides ' over the body by means of something called ' vital attention ' . I am also concerned to show that - if I am correct in my analysis of Augustine's theory of perception then his theory is a significant one in the history of epistemology . Augustine may be included among those philosophers who have advanced representative accounts of perception these are theories of perception that require mental objects of some sort (usually images ) that serve as epistemic intermediaries . One problem that representative theories face centers on providing an account of the relationship between material objects and the images that represent those objects . An analysis of Augustine's theory of perception is further complicated by a principle which is central to his ontology . He maintains that an inferior thing 1 cannot bring about a change in a superior thing . Thus , a physical object cannot cause or otherwise generate a spiritual image of that object . The traditional resolution of Augustine's difficulty appeals to a human faculty called ' vital attention ' . The mental images that represent the material world occur because ' the inner man presides over the body by means of vital attention ' . This phrase has a ring of a slogan , and one of my goals is to explain what the slogan means . In De Trinitate² Augustine draws an important distinction between images proceeding from physical objects and images being produced by physical objects . The difference between the two is the difference between an unbroken series of physical events and a series of events that is continued or modified by an agent . To say that an image proceeds from the body would connect the image directly - and exclusively to a physical process . Augustine's active theory of sensation is intended as an alternative to such a series .

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Augustine's Structural Theory of Perception

1217

Augustine rules out a look-and - see model of perception - a simple empiricism The object does not operate

by requiring the active intervention of a perceiver .

directly on the body to produce an image ; both percipient and physical object must interact . Augustine's theory is interesting , then , because it is non -mechanistic , nonempiricist and not purely phenomenalistic .

The body does play a role in the pro-

duction of the image in the inner vision , but so does the mind . The mind's role is governed by the requirement that images of physical objects be formed in such a way as to guarantee the continuing survival of the body .

This position is an unusual

one in the history of epistemology , but it is by no means unique . If we view perception as an active tool , as a device used by human minds in order to create accurate representations of the external world , and if we see the motivation for the creation of such representations as the survival of the human organism , then Augustine's account of perception ceases to be the unfortunate mystery that it is sometimes taken to be . Augustine divides human beings into two aspects : a spiritual aspect , usually 3 called the inner-man , and a physical aspect , the outer -man ." One role for the inner-man is the preservation of the outer -man . Thus , the physical existence of 4 the human organism is entrusted to the inner -man . The inner-man may be seen as confronting the undifferentiated , unstructured manifold of experience provided by the bodily senses . These are the raw data with which the inner -man deals . Were the experiences of the outer-man structured in any way by the outer-man , then the outer-man would be at least partially responsible for knowledge of the material world . Augustine is clear in maintaining that such is not the case . Sensation is not knowledge . So , the inner -man confronts a confused amalgam of sensation .

The task of the inner -man is to make sense of these

sensations . It is difficult to understand the nature of the experience that the inner-man confronts , for we structure experiences into representations of a physical environment all our lives . The environment lends itself to a coherent and consistent structuring ; it can be made sense of .

The environment includes physical objects

and the reports that others make about physical objects .

It is important for a

human being that he know of his environment because human beings have bodies , and these bodies are a part of the physical environment . Augustine's account of how we form mental images that represent our physical environment is closely tied to his account of a priori knowledge - his theory of illumination . The process of illumination provides access to ideas that served as the templates for created things .

These templates are called Divine Ideas ,

principal ideas , or forms . When we come to understand created things we thereby come to understand these Divine Ideas . The inner -man must be aware of the

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B. Bubacz

immediate environment of the outer-man for other reasons .

Knowledge of the

material world is important for its own sake . Augustine writes of the pleasures of friendship , of his love for Adeodatus , of his regard for scholarship . All of these require an accurate rendering of the physical world . The nature of the inner -man's accomplishment can be seen by considering the The outer -man lives in a world of some regularities

experience of the outer -man . and some irregularities .

Those regularities that he encounters are a consequence

of the physical world's being created by God in a manner which is consistent with God's principal ideas .

Augustine's view that the inner-man provides order and

structure to bodily sensations by imposing regularities on the messages sent by the body , amounts to a coherence model of perception . It is a coherence model because the images that are formed in my mind when I see the world are accepted or rejected through appeal to independent standards of judgment

the Divine ideas .

Coherence accounts of truth have been prone to a straightforward criticism . This criticism amounts to the claim that since there are many different coherent and consistent sets of propositions which may serve as the standard against which putatively true propositions are to be judged one can never arrive at the ( single ) truth . Two aspects of Augustine's account of perception bear upon this question . Augustine thinks perception is useful , and he also thinks that the body's messages provide cues to the inner vision for the generation of images . The consistent set of beliefs that structure previous experiences and mold future experiences results from this utility and the physical element in experience .

So , there is a contin-

uous test for the hypothesis about the world that is formed by the inner -man .

This

test is , basically , one of utility . Augustine , then , is able to consider the random elements of experience , structure them , and construct a picture of the physical world , because the goal for the inner-man is comprehension . To put the point directly , the world does not have to make sense ( although , because it was created by God it does ) . What must make sense is our understanding of the world , the structuring that is accomplished by the inner -man . What emerges in this analysis of the slogan ' The inner -man presides over the body by means of vital attention ' is a picture of Augustine's theory of perception as a pragmatic dialectic . In general , a pragmatic dialectic incorporates instruments providing techniques for structuring raw data into a form that is appropriate to a cognitive system and conjoins these techniques with a method for testing and modifying the resultant structure .

A pragmatic dialectic is governed by the goals

and context of the particular cognitive state . Augustine's pragmatic dialectic incorporates a technique for structuring undifferentiated experience with methods for testing and modifying the resultant structured images .

This dialectic is identified by the rubric ' vital attention ' .

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Augustine's Structural Theory of Perception

Incorporating as it does God's Principal Ideas and the continued survival of the body , the relationship between the outer and the inner -man is a rational one . Contrary to the received view , having the body play a role in the production of On the contrary , Augustine's

mental images does not undermine Augustine's ontology .

ontological hierarchy is preserved because the inner -man is superior to the body , since this superiority guarantees that the inner -man must be aware of all bodily changes . We call the correct operation of the inner -man's vital attention ' sensation ' . In the act of perceiving the inner-man is both active and passive , in the same way that a landscape painter is both active and passive .

Passively , the inner

sight receives reports of what goes on in bodily sight , just as a landscape painter 6 passively views a landscape . Actively , inner vision generates an image of the object of bodily sight , just as the landscape artist generates a painting actively . In the simplest terms , the inner -man would not be vitalizing the body properly if it were not aware of the changes in the environment of the body . Augustine's account of knowledge is contrary to the received contemporary empiricist view . Such a view reserves ' knowledge ' for claims that are believed by someone with good justification when , for all that is known , the claims are true . For Augustine , basic knowledge is belief . Belief is basic because it is temporally prior to understanding . His central point is that we do not seek knowledge in a vacuum. We begin with beliefs that we hope to support ; belief for Augustine requires the active acceptance of an authority . Augustine's distinction between knowledge and ignorance

is also unconventional .

He draws this distinction in terms of the difference between seeing a thing and not seeing a thing ; as a failure to achieve clarity rather than as the absence of a particular thing .

This is consistent with his view that the objects of knowledge

are always present and that the responsibility for ignorance lies solely with the mind . Knowledge begins as confusion . Coming to know is an active process of imposing structure on confusion . This view can perhaps best be seen by contrasting it with an alternative , an acquisition view of knowledge .

In an acquisition model

some thing (for example , a thought , a mental image , a concept ) which was absent in ignorance is present in the mind after it is learned . truth is always present to the inner -man . access but as lack of discernment .

For Augustine , knowledge or

Ignorance is not explained as lack of

When vital attention operates the inner-man uses cues ( in particular , those cues associated with the preservation of the life of the outer -man ) to construct an image representing a likely , coherent , systematic picture of the physical world . The physical world was constructed by God in accord with His Divine ideas . the physical world is formally harmonious

it makes sense .

Thus ,

In order to represent

this world accurately , the inner -man must construct a picture of the world that

SP 3 - Q

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B. Bubacz

itself is harmonious . With this picture the inner -man is able to adequately navigate the body through its environment . When the human structure reflects the Divine structure , genuine knowledge is gained .

I have attempted to demonstrate that this structure is not limited to the

realm of a priori truth , but is also central to our understanding of the created world .

REFERENCES 1. A.H. Armstrong ( ed . ) , Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy ( Cambridge 1970 ) , p . 376 ; Ronald Nash , The Light of the Mind ( Kentucky 1969 ) , Ch . 4 . 2. De Trinitate , XI , 2 , 3 ; De Musica , VI . 3. B. Bubacz , ' Augustine's Dualism and the Inner Man ' , The Modern Schoolman , Vol . LIV , Number 3 , March 1977 . 4. Epistola 147 , 41 ; Epistola 122 , 2 ; De Genesi ad Litteram III , 16 , 25 . 5. Soliloquia II , 5 , 11 . 6. De Vera Religione 41 , 77 ; De Genesi ad Litteram VII , 25 , 36 ; Epistola 166 , 2 . 7. B. Bubacz , ' Augustine's Visio Intellectus and Perceptual Error ' , Augustiniana, Vol . XXVII , 1977 .

The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy

Joanne McW . Dewart Toronto

O entitle a paper ' The christology of the pelagian controversy ' may seem an Ta attempt to create an issue where there was none , to try to extend artificially the polemic over original sin , merit , free will , grace and predestination to the person of Christ . But such scepticism ( if indeed it exists ) would be unfounded , and I hope before I finish to justify my choice of topic .

Both sides in the contro-

versy were eager to point out the christological and soteriological implications of their opponents ' positions , and Augustine's christological thought in particular was increasingly shaped in those years of the pelagian controversy by his developing theology of grace . This paper will examine the christologies of Augustine , Pelagius and Julian ( insofar as his can be pieced together ) , the accusations they exchanged and the justness of those accusations . I shall treat the topic in three stages : ( 1 ) the situation in 411-412 ; period from 412 to the condemnation of Pelagius ; Augustine's last writings .

( 2 ) the

( 3 ) the period from 418 to

I shall not , in this paper , try to account for

Pelagius's , Augustine's or Julian's christologies in terms of the influence of earlier writers and controversies , nor shall I continue into the ( very interesting ) period after Augustine's death ( the relation - if any between pelagianism and nestorianism , the christology of the semi -pelagian controversy , the influence direct or indirect

of Augustine's thought at Chalcedon ) .

THE SITUATION IN 411-412 The absence of disagreement in christological matters between Coelestius and the African bishops in 411 , and between Augustine and Pelagius in 412 , is not a matter of dispute . In this case the best argument is that from silence . At the beginning , neither Augustine nor Pelagius found anything to complain of in the other's presentation of Christ . This is not to say that the writings of the two could have been

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J. McW. Dewart

interchanged unnoticed : even apart from rhetorical differences , Augustine's christology was undoubtedly fuller and more complex .

While I do not wish on the one hand

to argue a case already conceded nor to labour the harmony unduly , on the other hand it does seem desirable to present the two christologies in outline , with a view to establishing their positions and noting what seems to be the one important difference . For Pelagius ( and for his early followers¹ ) it appears that not only was christology not an area of controversy , but it was not in the forefront of his theological reflection . As we well know , the issues which the christian community in the west perceived to be critical were not those that occupied the attention of the east . While Pelagius was obviously aware of the trinitarian and christological heresies , there was little urgency in his treatment of them . The areas of debate in the east - the reality of Christ's humanity and divinity , the integrity of his person , the nature and manner of his saving work - did not engage his most urgent attention . His treatment of these matters often seems passing , if not perfunctory .

The lack

of development in his thought in these matters is another indication that they were not those with which he was continually grappling . The Christ that excited his keenest interest was the Christ of the moralist . Virtually all Pelagius's christological writing is contained in his pauline commentaries , and it thus appears more coherent than Augustine's , which is scattered through works of many genres and lacks tidiness . when one reads Augustine , is that of over -abundance ;

The problem , as always

the amount of writing and

preaching he had devoted to Christ ( notably in the Homilies on the Psalms ) was even by 412 very large and characteristically diverse .

Although his christology had

developed in the twenty- five years since his conversion , it had been a devotional , largely unreflective and non- systematized development . For him no more than for Pelagius had christology been a matter of controversy ;

he had rarely , if ever ,

had to argue the christological positions he held . On the subject of Christ's divinity both men wrote unequivocally , and were consciously and explicitly anti -arian . We find in Pelagius the familiar distinction between Christ the Son of God by nature , and others who are such by grace . Christ exists eternally as Son of God , and is maker of all .

Pelagius was particularly

concerned to counter the arian interpretation of the attribution of mutability to Christ as evidence of his non-divinity , and he warned with antiochene persistence 3 against ascribing to that divinity what should be predicated of Christ , the man ." Augustine's self-reproach in The Confessions is well -known ; he had there accused himself of having been , at some earlier time , unconvinced of the eternal existence and divinity of Christ , and only ' somewhat later ' to have believed the doctrine of 4 the Word made flesh ." Whatever the time interval indicated by ' somewhat later ' , certainly long before 412 Augustine had fully accepted Christ's divinity .

We find

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The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy attested again and again in his writings ,

as in those of Pelagius ( both mirroring

the accepted late fourth and early fifth century western christology ) the eternal existence of Christ as Word ( against photinianism ) , the transcendence of his divinity (against arianism ) and the recognition of the qualitative difference 5 between his sonship and that of others . Nor did either appear favourable to apollinarianism ;

and actively a man .

for both , Christ was fully

Responding to the manicheans , Pelagius wrote that the assumed

man , although conceived in a manner unlike all others , and predestined by the Holy Spirit to rise and to open the way to resurrection , was ' created according to the flesh ' . The predicates which he explicitly assigned to the man went far beyond the physical .

It was of him that not only birth and death , but being anointed , humbling

himself , praying and yielding obedience to the Father , being subject in love to him , descending to hell and being raised to God's right hand are said . And it is 6 Christ , the man , pre -eminent in honour , who is now adored with the Word . Augustine insisted as strongly as Pelagius on Christ's complete and perfect manhood , and , like Pelagius , his terminology was predominantly that of ' homo assumptus ' or ' susceptus ' . I think , contrary to the opinion of many , that this was not merely 7 a terminological anachronism' " but a reflection of Augustine's real appreciation of the man , Jesus Christ .

He , no less frequently than Pelagius , used the term

' Christ ' rather than ' the Word ' as the subject of his words , actions and sufferings . 8 This usage has been described by O'Connell as ' a nagging ambiguity' , because the reference is apparently sometimes to the eternal Son , sometimes to the man . O'Connell goes on to say that Augustine's practice of predication was such that ' even to the end he would have resisted calling that man [ Jesus ] precisely as man 9 This is certainly true ; this resistance , however ,

[emphasis his ] divine '.

reflected not an ambiguity , but his positive and conscious appreciation of Christ , the man . About 399 Augustine wrote that not only was the Word not changed into the man , but neither was the man ( although elevated ) converted into the substance of 10 the Word - i.e. dehumanized . I have referred to Pelagius's care not to ascribe mutability to the Word , and to his long list of predications of the man .

The same

pattern is found in Augustine . Not only are birth , suffering , death and judgement assigned to the man , but it is as man that he is mediator and saviour . As early as 392 , and consistently thereafter , we find emphasis placed on Christ's human will and emotions - he was sinless , although tempted , obedient unto death , he prayed for 11 and received divine help , he rejoiced in the Father . Worth noting is the way each theologian treated Christ's sufferings and death . Pelagius referred to the heretics who balk at attributing such an ' indignity ' to God as the assumption of a man whom he then handed over to suffering for the salvation of humanity :

1224

J. McW. Dewart ...not understanding that nothing becomes the Creator [ i.e. the Word] more than to care for the salvation of his creation . [ This is true ] in the highest degree , although he himself , in a sense impassible , cannot sustain any damage to his own nature.12

Augustine's treatment of the same subject was warmer and less tidy , but basically the same : And because the Word itself was made man , that same Word was crucified ... . Therefore , inasmuch as he was man , God died , and , inasmuch as he was flesh , the man was quickened , rose and ascended into heaven . One cannot deny that God suffered not changed into whatever the man suffered because , although 13 a man , in the assumption God was man . As well as the question of whether and how suffering can be attributed to the deity , problems may be seen to arise in explaining the stresses and sufferings of Christ that cannot be ascribed to the flesh , and these received much more attention from Augustine than from Pelagius . I have mentioned that Augustine referred frequently to the temptations of Christ . He described them as of three kinds : temptations of the flesh ( symbolized by food ) , empty boasting and curiosity . 14 They were not merely ' for show ' , but real and salvific . The final temptation and the final victory came at Gethsemane .

Already in 395 Augustine had interpreted 15 this submission of Christ's will to the Father's as proof of his right disposition" in 403 his exegesis of that passage was fuller : ' Father , if it be possible , let this cup pass from me . ་ This was the human will , willing something proper to itself, exercised in its own right ... . What , in the end , could [ Christ ] will differently than the Father ? Where the divinity is one , the will cannot differ . But 16 he showed the man's own will . in the person of the man

... The will of the man , Christ , was not without the help of the Word in meeting these temptations , but it was clearly the human will - ' proper to itself , exercised in its own right ' . Pelagius had none of this interest in the psychological tensions experienced by Christ . Although he assigned a major role to his obedience , nowhere in the surviving works do we find him dealing with Christ's temptations , and even the human 17 emotion displayed in his tears for Lazarus was to set an example of compassion ." This focus on the exemplary led , in earlier assessments of Pelagius , to the accusation that his soteriology fell entirely within this category . However , Rivière , Bohlin and Evans'18 have laid that charge to rest , and Rivière , in particular , has recalled to our attention the fact that such an accusation was never made by Augustine .

Augustine's criticism of Pelagius was to be that his explanation of

the operation of grace was totally extrinsic , but not that Pelagius explicitly denied the salvific death of Christ . It was to be basically an accusation of inconsistency .

The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy

1225

All this is not to deny that the example of Christ played a large , perhaps a dominant , part in Pelagius's soteriology : Christ's life revealed what the law did not , and helped to destroy its impotence .

That life teaches us forebearance ,

mortification of the body , to seek heavenly rather than earthly treasure , to sus19 tain violence rather than to employ it . In general , Christ's life teaches the human race what human life should be : From the substance of that flesh which previously had served sin , he by never sinning conquered sin , and in that same flesh he condemned sin , in order to show that the will is [ involved] in wrongdoing , not [ human ] nature , which is so fashioned by God that it is able not to sin ... 20 Christ's life revealed how we may live in hope , without fear of judgement . Nevertheless , in Pelagius's eyes , none of this was accomplished through Christ's example alone . In the overall context of the love of the Creator -Word for his creation , the gratuitous remission of sins by the Father and the defeat of sin , death and the devil was brought about by Christ's undeserved and obedient death , his self-offering for our sins .

The human race was saved by his death , corrected ,

freed , reconciled , justified , and again offered life , wisdom and the other gifts of the Spirit . Christ's resurrection opened the way for ours , and confirmed his justice in the eyes of believers .

If they appropriate Christ's life and death in

baptism , and live ' renewed and stable ' in this life ( it is here that his example 21 plays so large a part ) , ' they shall also be so with him in glory ' There was no important difference in 412 between this soteriology of Pelagius and that of Augustine .

The same themes were present ( including that of example )

and , I would hazard , in very much the same proportion .

Augustine , too , wrote of

Christ the innocent sacrifice , the only ' pure , rational victim' to be found , whose human suffering was necessary and efficacious .

On the one hand , the insistence

with which Augustine taught that Christ the man is saviour is noteworthy .

In 392

he had written of salvation occurring ' temporally through the assumed man who offered himself as a sacrifice to replace all sacrifices , and who intercedes for us ' , and this theme became even stronger as time went on .

But , on the other hand , 22 there is ultimately no salvation in man , it must come from the Son of God ." Consistent with the attention Augustine paid generally to Christ's voluntary 23 humility and obedience is the large part he assigned them in his soteriology " a larger part indeed than Pelagius did in his .

For both , Christ was the model of

humility in the very assumption by the Word of the man , and of the life that that entailed . Pelagius's emphasis , as I have indicated , was on that life as the model of christian virtues , while Augustine's stress lay more on the humble heart , par excellence , surrendered to God in loving obedience . It is evident that the parenetic context of Pelagius's teaching led him to stress , much more than did Augustine , the subjective appropriation of Christ's objective acts of redemption ,

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J. McW. Dewart

and Christ's function as model precisely to aid this appropriation .

But , for

Augustine , the humble conforming of Christ's will was itself more of a factor in that objective redemption . I stress that this was not a question of a clearcut and absolute difference , but of nuance . The following passages are characteristic of Pelagius's approach : In us [ justice ] is in all events fulfilled , who [ taught ] by the example of Christ , mortify our flesh ... . If we imitate Christ , our bodily sensation , as if dead , will not withstand [us] . Thus Christ cleansed the church for himself , so that the old sins might be washed away , and he showed us by his word and example how not to incur new stains.24 And passages such as these are representative of Augustine : [ Christ ] , that he might free us from the eternal death to which the sin of pride had led us , humbled himself , [ and ] was made subject even to death . For this he was made Mediator , that through humility he might reconcile us to God , from whom , through impious pride , we had distanced ourselves.25 The difference in the role assigned to Christ's humility is one more evidence of 26 very different religious personalities . In the surviving works of Pelagius , we find only one passage devoted to an attempt to describe the christological union . In his treatise on the Trinity he wrote : " The Word was made flesh . " Thus we believe that God took a man to himself , Pelagius went on , using the example of an emperor who in whom he clothed himself . adopts the dress of a soldier , and of whom it can be said , ' the emperor became a soldier ' , yet who not only does not lose anything of his power and dignity , but gains sublimity in his effort to save his people . And then: Thus , therefore , the Son of God , while he donned the flesh of a man for the healing of the human race , is said to have been made flesh , and , if you will , a perfect human substance was added to the deity of the Word , not , however , doubling the person of the Son , but something was taken by the Son which he had not had before . But in case [the reader ] finds this hard to understand - i.e. that a man was joined to deity and wants on this account to posit two sons , let this explanation be taken as a comparison . The soul and the body are clearly two different substances , and yet from the two one man is made ... . For although there are two substances , yet there is one person . Thus , the Son of God , allowing himself to have been clothed with a perfect man , and shown to have taken another substance , does not cease to be one Son.27 Augustine had no quarrel with this clothing metaphor ; he too would use it , as he already had that of dwelling in a military camp , or in a temple , and that of marriage . I have said that his was clearly a ' homo assumptus ' christology , and it was within that framework that he tried out his many metaphors . In 402 he first

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The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy

used the soul/body comparison , and for several years it was to be his favourite . He never completely abandoned it . systematic analysis ;

This comparison was the closest he came to a

he appears to have found it particularly useful not only

because it was an instance of two entities uniting to form one (as Pelagius had pointed out ) , but also because it was a union which avoided both juxtaposition and mixture (the necessary alternatives in a union of material beings ) .

The unity of

the human person resulted , in Augustine's eyes , from the union of a spiritual with 28 a material being , and so escaped these alternatives . There , there was the possibility of mutual presence without spatial allocation , yet with the distinction 29 retained - one plus one equalling one . The topos and means of the christological union was the soul of Christ , and nowhere is the great prominence Augustine gave to Christ's soul more evident than here . As early as 392 he had written that the human mind ( ' the head of the soul ' ) of Christ ' clung and in some manner joined the man to the excellent supereminence of the assuming Word ' , and ( I omit several in between ) in 412 , ' the unchangeable Word , in nothing changed for the worse , has become a sharer in flesh by means of a 30 rational soul ' . There was no hint of anything like this in Pelagius . And so in the matter of the christological union - as in those of Christ's temptations , psychological stresses , and the salvific role of Christ's humility - the difference between Augustine and Pelagius is found to be the emphasis the former placed on Christ's soul . In summary , therefore , in 412 , insofar as either Augustine or Pelagius had considered the christology of the other , neither found anything to complain of . Although Augustine had read Pelagius's pauline commentaries before he wrote Book III of On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins , the later charges of apollinarianism and a merely exemplary soteriology were not made there .

He had , however , paid

considerable attention to an area that apparently held no interest for Pelagius what today would be called ' the psychology of Christ ' - and it is there that one might expect to find development .

412 TO THE CONDEMNATION OF PELAGIUS On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins ( the first augustinian treatise of the controversy) renewed several of the themes already present in his christology . Beyond those , it is not surprising to find emphasis placed on Christ as the source 31 of interior grace . In this treatise Augustine did not charge Coelestius or Pelagius with denying an objective redemption , but rather with inconsistency : ' for if imitation alone makes [men ] sinners through Adam , why does not imitation alone 32 He saw his opponents working from the

make [them ] righteous through Christ ? '

same premise as himself - i.e. that imitation alone does not make human persons righteous .

On the Spirit and the Letter continued this stress on the interior

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J. McW. Dewart

workings of grace , without further soteriological accusations against the pelagians . By 415 , however , the attack was becoming more direct .

While nowhere in the

treatise On Nature and Grace did Augustine say that Pelagius explicitly denied the objective redemptive value of Christ's death , he insisted strongly that he did so 33 implicitly , that there was no place for it in his soteriology " and therefore that that soteriology made the death of Christ unnecessary and futile .

Augustine

argued that to say someone can ' be righteous by nature and freewill ' is to destroy the value of the cross , and that Pelagius , in his praise of the capabilities of human nature , was doing exactly that .

And even if Pelagius restricted the role of

Christ to that of teacher , Augustine continued , he should have known that there is ' a miserable darkness in the human mind ' which prevents the putting into effect of that which we have learned ; we therefore need [ Christ ] the ' eternal light of 34 righteousness ' . Even this restrained charge was false .

It is evident that Pelagius did

recognize a clear distinction between ' natural ' goodness and the christian life , and he did understand Christ's death to have been necessary and effective , if personally appropriated by the christian , for the forgiveness of sins . We have Augustine's own evidence for this ; he wrote that Pelagius had said that ' sins which have been committed must be expiated by divine power ... and cannot be undone 35 by the power of nature nor the will of man ' . While we know Pelagius's On Nature only through Augustine's rebuttal , we have other treatises of his from this period in which he did in fact teach the salvific effects of Christ's death : the Letter to Demetrias talked of human sins expiated , humanity reborn by Christ's blood ; again , in the Letter to Celantius and the treatise On the Law redemption by Christ's 36 blood is spoken of." Although Augustine must have known that Pelagius did in fact recognize the salvific effect of Christ's death , his charge was not totally irresponsible .

He

certainly believed Pelagius's understanding of the role of the cross to be a The root of the quarrel lay , of

radically truncated and unsatisfactory one .

course , in the different assessments of human nature , but , in his determination to reveal what he saw to be the soteriological implications of Pelagius's anthropology , Augustine extended the polemic .

( This same pattern of escalation can be observed

in his battle with Julian ten years later . )

This pseudo - soteriological point was

the only accusation even remotely associated with christology that Augustine introduced in the controversy with Pelagius . The years from 412 to 418 saw no change in Pelagius's christology . to stress Christ's exemplary role and his humility .

He continued

The treatise On the Law talked

of the Word assuming a man in order that human nature , cast down by Adam's disobedience , might be restored by Christ's obedience . This familiar theme was put to the service of the pelagian position on original sin :

he pointed out that in this

The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy

1229

restoration a spiritual wrong was reversed by a virtue arising from the incorporeal , rational soul , and that clearly , therefore , the root both of sin and virtue lies in 37 the will , rather than in the body . His other treatises of this period (On Christian Life and On Free Will ) added nothing of christological interest , nor did those of the writers of the pelagian group generally . It is perhaps worth mentioning that the treatise , On the Hardening of the Pharoah's Heart , (whoever wrote it ) , to the limited extent that it deals with christology , leans strongly to an exemplary soteriology . Nor do I think that the affair of Leporius (whether one dates it in 418 or the 420s ) had any connection with the pelagian controversy . Leporius's 38 difficulty ( as is evident from Beer's careful analysis ) was with the idea of the divine being contaminated by an intimate personal relationship with the material creation , particularly a relationship involving suffering . Pelagius had referred negatively , it will be recalled , to similar examples of misplaced reverence . The Libellus Emendatione is interesting , from the point of view of Augustine's christology , only in that we can presume it contained nothing with which he was in direct disagreement . 39 The pelagian statements of faith of 417 gave a fair amount of attention to

trinitarian and christological questions . Augustine in fact commented that Coelestius had ' discoursed a good deal on points about which no question as to his views was raised ... from the unity of the Trinity to the resurrection of the 40 flesh ' . It may have been a diversionary tactic on the part of the pelagians , or (as I think more likely ) an attempt to show themselves unimpeachably orthodox in areas where heresies had traditionally lurked . Pelagius affirmed the equality of the Son with the Father , that [the Son ] had created all , that without change to his divinity he had taken a man , and that Christ was one person (that of the Son) composed of two perfect substances .

He anathematized Photinus and Apollinaris ( and those like him ) , stating that Christ was like us in all things except sin , which does not belong to human nature . The substances were neither changed nor mixed , the deity did not suffer , rather the man assumed did , and the Son of God died in the man . Christ's humanity was not annihilated in the resurrection/ascension , but glorified , receiving all power from the Father . There was little to cause comment in this statement , and nothing for Augustine to disagree with , apart from the thrust in passing that sin does not belong to human nature . One further anathema , however , was interesting in itself and as a preview of the quarrels of the next decade .

All were condemned ' who say the Son of

God lied from the necessity of the flesh , and that , because of the man he assumed , [ the Son of God ] was unable to do all he wished ' .

The reference was to Jerome who ,

in his anti -pelagian dialogues , had written that Christ said ' to his brethren and relatives that he was not going up to Scenopegia ... then he went up ... not publicly , but ... secretly ' . Porphyry had found this scandalous and Jerome faulted

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him for not realizing that ' all scandals must be imputed to the flesh ' .

Earlier in

the same dialogue Jerome had mocked the pelagians for saying they could do whatever they wanted when Christ could not even keep his entry into a house secret , as he 41 wished , because of ' the reality of his assumed humanity ' ." The point at issue here is not Jerome's christology , but the reaction of the pelagians to his statements .

They saw, in Jerome's handling of Christ's ' lie ' , the

(presumably first ) explicit evidence of the inevitable christological consequences of the augustinian and jeromian teaching on original sin . If human nature is truly vitiated by Adam's sin , one must either follow Apollinaris and deny Christ something of human nature , or admit that he too was ineluctably drawn to sin because 42 of his humanity ." It was an argument that would be pressed relentlessly during the 420s . While it was the soteriological implications of Pelagius's anthropology and theology of grace that drew Augustine's fire in his controversial writings during these years , in his non-controversial writings there began to emerge an important enrichment of his own christological thought .

That the pelagian controversy did

not cause Augustine to minimize in any way the reality and perfection of Christ's humanity is a clear indication of the importance he attached to it , and particularly to the salvific role of his human will . During these years we find evidence of his continued interest in Christ's spiritual struggles .

In 414 Augustine

explained that , facing death , Christ had prayed for immediate resurrection . As a man [ Christ ] was weak , as a weak man he prayed . If we regard only our Lord'd divinity whom [ shall we say ] is praying? To whom? Why does he pray? Does God pray? ... Between that Trinity and mankind , frail and guilty , a man has been made mediator a man free from guilt , but nevertheless weak ."43 Although Christ's bodily weakness had subjected him to death - he had taken the body of sin - he was without sin . Augustine had always maintained that , because of the virginal conception , Christ had been born ' outside the bonds of carnal desire 44, but one does not gain the impression that Augustine saw Christ's sinlessness in other ways as effortless . While he does not suggest conflict between Christ's will and the Father's , the conformity was not without its anguish . He was obedient , but sorrowful . It was also in 414 that Augustine explained to an assembly of bishops how he understood the problem of Christ's will : How did our Lord reconcile two wills in one in the man he bore? ... Saying , ' Father , if it be possible , let this cup pass from me ! ' , he showed the man's will . If he had remained of this mind , he would have shown a deviant heart ... [But he said] , ' nevertheless , not as I will , but as you do , Father ' ... . For when he said , ' if it be possible ... ' , he took anguish on himself , as he did a body . You must not think we say that our Lord was not sorrowful ... . Assuredly [he was ] , but with a sorrow taken of his own will.45

1231

The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy It was against this background of his continued interest in Christ's spiritual struggles , and the growing intensity and heat of the pelagian quarrel , that Augustine began slowly to work out a christology of grace .

The idea of Christ as the object of special divine favour was certainly not new to Augustine ;

from 392 when he began his Homilies on the Psalms , he had talked

guidance and strength , consistently of Christ as the recipient of special gifts immortality - and as being in various ways dependent on divine help . Psalm 44/45 provided his favourite metaphors : Christ was ' fairer than all others ' because on him ' the oil of gladness was poured out more fully ' .

He was ' singularly anointed ,

and from him all christians are anointed , but he preeminently ' .

But , although the

idea of grace was not new , it was not until 412 that he wrote , ' in our Lord and 46 Saviour Jesus Christ is placed great and full grace ' ." Five years later , early in 417 , the affirmation was fuller and more explicit .

It was elicited by Pelagius's

statement at Diospolis that ' all graces ' had been conferred on Paul .

Augustine

replied : But there are other graces in addition to these ... . For it is not to be thought , however greatly ... Paul excelled other members of Christ's body , that the very head of that body did not himself receive greater and fuller graces , whether in his human body or soul , which creature of his the Word of God assumed into the unity of his person , that 47 he might be our head and we his body ." As well as stating in 412 that Christ received grace , Augustine asserted in On the Merits that the assumption of the man by the Word was itself a grace . This point , to be made frequently in his later writings , occurred this first time not in a christological , but in a parenetic context : how can human pride exist in the face of God's humility in assuming a man ? For ' not even this man , so joined to the Word that he became at once Son of God and son of man ' had antecedent merit ; 48 his taking-up by the Word was pure grace . It should be made clear that this was not seen by Augustine at this time as a matter of controversy ;

he had not yet read

Pelagius , and was certinly not accusing him of having said that the man , Jesus , had merited the incarnation . It was rather an appeal to the most extreme example , the one case where human merit might possibly have been acknowledged , but was not . The years 412-417 saw further development in Augustine's understanding of the christological union . It was still described as a union mediated by Christ's soul , 49 and the different metaphors were still in use " but by 415 Augustine was using the notion of divine presence in combination with Colossians 2 : 9- ' the fullness of divinity'50 and in 417 (the year of the clear statement that Christ had received ' greater and fuller ' graces ) , in the well -known Letter 187 , these themes ( divine presence and fullness of divinity ) were woven together with that of grace to advance 51 a theory of christological union which was , I believe , new in the west .

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Letter 187 presented a threefold christology of grace : source of grace to all humanity ;

first , Christ is the

secondly , the grace of the incarnation was

bestowed unmerited and uniquely on Christ ; thirdly , Letter 187 at least hints that the christological union was by means of grace . The first point can be found many times over in the letter ; the second and third are illustrated by this passage : [ In the incarnation ] the sufficiency of grace is manifestly and clearly evidenced . For who would be so sacrilegious as to dare to affirm that some soul is able , through the merit of free will , to effect another Christ ? And [who would affirm ] , therefore , that one unique soul would have been worthy , by a covenant [ made ] through the free will given commonly and naturally to all , to belong to the person of the unbegotten Word , unless that singular grace had sustained him which it is right to affirm , wicked to wish to deny?52 Augustine's point was that a unique grace had sustained Christ , and that by means of that grace ( not free will ) he had belonged to the person of the Word . I noted above that this christology of grace was developed in Augustine's nonpolemical writings , and it seems to me remarkable that he scarcely introduced it into the controversy . Only two of the texts I have quoted or cited are from the ' anti -pelagian ' works --- the parenetic passage from On the Merits ... , and that from

On the Proceedings .... this latter directly elicited by a statement of Pelagius . The other passages come either from letters or from the Homilies on the Psalms . Although Augustine in retrospect called Letter 187 ' anti - pelagian ' , it was not written in response to a ' pelagian ' issue , nor directed to those involved in the 53 controversy . The reference to those who wished to deny grace was made very much in passing . Moreover , Augustine appears to have let slip opportunities of making his point . To name but two : in his commentary on Romans 8 : 3 , Pelagius had said that Christ , in the flesh which has previously served sin , condemned and conquered sin , thus 54 showing that sin does not spring from human nature , but from the human will . One would expect Augustine to have suggested that grace sustained Christ's human will , but he did not . Nor did he reply , two years later in On Nature and Grace , to Pelagius's statement that ' the Lord was able to die without sin ' with a reference to grace . Instead he reminded Pelagius that Christ , because sinless , died of his 55 own choice . This almost complete separation between Augustine's controversial writings and his christology in this period is difficult to explain . In summary , this second period saw no change in pelagian christology , but there was an important enrichment of Augustine's christology as he began to integrate it with his theology of grace . And , in this period , the christological and soteriological accusations began .

The pelagians insisted that to hold the doctrine of

original sin led either to asserting that Christ had sinned or to apollinarianism . Augustine , on his side , said that the pelagian position cut the ground from under

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The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy the traditional understanding of the necessity and efficacy of Christ's death .

FROM 418 TO 430 It is often observed that the Augustine /Julian polemic did credit to neither ; it was certainly one of the most tedious of the patristic age .

The essential

quarrel over the condition of human nature after Adam's sin devolved christologically into the question of Christ's humanity : what did it mean to say that he differed from the rest only in his sinlessness ? Augustine and Julian were irreconciliably divided over what that sinlessness involved . The foundations for the battle were laid in 419 in Augustine's On Marriage , the lines clearly drawn by 423 in Against Julian , and the remaining anti -pelagian writings continued the wrangle without progress . In the first book of On Marriage and Concupiscence , written in the winter of 418/19 , Augustine , with some indignation , denied the pelagian charge that he condemned marriage . It was not marriage he condemned , he explained , but rather the irrational sexual appetite which was itself shameful . result of original sin ; to rational direction .

This concupiscence was the

without it human sexuality would have been totally subject Now , however , all born of sexual intercourse were neces-

sarily ' the flesh of sin ' .

Augustine pointed out that Christ had willed to be born

without such intercourse because , if he had been conceived in the ordinary way , he too would have had ' sinful flesh ' , and not merely its ' likeness ' . His choice of a virginal conception ensured , therefore , that he was ' without the shameful lust of the flesh which comes from sin ' , and it also taught us ' that everyone who is born 56 This circular argument was one of such intercourse is in fact sinful flesh ' . from which Augustine did not deviate and which he did not modify . Julian's reply , the treatise To Turbantius , written in the summer of 419 , is 57 known to us only as quoted by Augustine` " and it is in his two works against Julian that the battle can be observed . It was repetitive , tedious and unproductive . The arguments ran as might be expected . Julian brought three strong objections to Augustine's position :

it was manichean , it was apollinarian , and it

destroyed Christ's role as example . 58 Christ had been conceived virginally as ' a splendid sign ' " Julian maintained , not because sexual intercourse or even sexual desire and pleasure are evil . It is this which reveals his love for us : all that at which the impiety of the manicheans rails the Mediator in piety assumed . There is nothing therefore in my Lord of which I am ashamed . I believe in the reality of his body in which he came for my salvation , so that I may receive the full 59 range of his example . Augustine's position did suggest manicheanism , Julian insisted : two rulers dividing humanity between them the fruits of marriage belonging to the devil and to God

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J. McW . Dewart

only that of the virginal conception .

Christ was sinless through the effort of

his will , not because of a body lacking the feelings of human flesh . I insist that all his sanctity was in the privilege of his soul , not in the deficiency of his body . For thus both [ human ] nature is affirmed not only in its creation , but also in its assumption [ by Christ ] , and human life is guided by the imitation of his virtues ." 60 If all the consequences of original sin posited by Augustine really existed Christ would have been subject to them , and , if he had been , no effort of will would have 61 availed in his struggle against his vitiated nature . In short , one must either deny the augustinianism consequences of original sin to humanity in general , or 62 deny humanity to Christ . Further to say that Christ's flesh was unlike other flesh in its lack of ( sexual ) 63 64 feeling was apollinarian . And ' a natural eunuch ' is a poor model . Christ therefore was not less true man than true God , lacking nothing of [ human ] nature . But indeed it was right that [he ] who gave the example of perfection should excel in all striving towards virtue , and that his unflagging chastity should be outstanding in [ its ] noble integrity , moved by no lust , since [ it was ] in [ his ] holy mind [that he was ] chaste . The greatness of [ his ] soul was ruler of all the senses and victor in all trials.65 A poor model for christian sexual morality , and a poor model for the resurrection . Christ's resurrection , held up by Paul as type and hope , in no way depended on his unique conception or on a difference of nature . 66 ians of reigning with him? Augustine's refutation broke no new ground .

If it had , what hope have christ-

He was not manichean , but was

denying vice to Christ rather than the reality of human nature . Concupiscence was an evil in itself because it led to evil actions . One does not ' have ' concupiscence without ' experiencing ' it ; such experience is shameful and Christ evidently had chosen to be conceived virginally to avoid it . To say Christ's flesh was like ours is the worst blasphemy ; his virtue was not to experience the sexual appetite , the rest of humanity is virtuous in not consenting to it , and therein lies the imit67 ation . Nor , Augustine maintained , was he an apollinarian . He did not deny that 68 Christ had bodily sensation ; in fact , he condemned those who taught this . То say that Christ , because of his perfect virtue deriving from the virginal conception , was entirely ruled by his will and felt no desire for evil was not to deny sensation .

Were Julian's charges in fact just ? To acknowledge that Augustine's christianity was shaped by his history - manichean and other ― is to give no more than perfunctory recognition to the fact that one's consciousness is formed by one's experience . In particular , to say that Augustine's thought remained affected by his nine year adherence to manicheanism is not to suggest a committed manichee masquerading for

1235 The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy almost forty years as a christian bishop . Christian belief enabled Augustine to shed some manichean teaching ( e.g. that the creator was evil andopposed to the good God , and a totally docetic christology ) , but not all .

His enduring conviction ,

certainly manichean rather than christian , of the intrinsic evil of spontaneous sexual desire and therefore of sexual activity forbade him attributing even the former to Christ . Julian's accusation on this point seems to have been wellfounded .

But to Augustine's ears , Julian's defiant ' there is nothing of my Lord of

which I am ashamed ' , understood to include sexual desire , was blasphemous . Any assessment of the charge of apollinarianism depends directly on one's view of sexuality as intrinsic or not to human nature . If intrinsic , Augustine was clearly apollinarian in his denial of it to Christ .

If, however , spontaneous

sexual desire in itself ( rather than in its misuse ) is a consequence of Adam's sin , as Augustine believed , he could sincerely reject this accusation . But in either case , as Julian pointed out , Christ cannot serve as a true model for christian sexual morality . The charge that Augustine posited a divided human race , with Christ alone belonging to God rather than to the devil ( a situation highly reminiscent of the manichean kingdoms of light and darkness ) would seem with one important qualification to stand . Augustine had abandoned the manichean doctrine of creation and located the origin of evil in Adam's sin .

The result of that doctrine as he worked

it out was a practical , if not an ideological , manicheanism . Even in a real dialogue there would have been no possibility of resolution as long as each held unwaveringly to his own evaluation of human sexuality . In this 69 lopsided exchange the wrangle threads its way futilely through all six books of the Unfinished Work , but in Book four a more substantive issue was raised . Augustine said that Julian's denial of the effects of the virginal conception and his single -minded stress on the efficacy of Christ's will showed that he thought Christ had merited the incarnation . Augustine had , as we have seen , flirted with this accusation before , but this was the first time he made it openly . His argument ran : You say you are convinced by clear evidence that the justice of the man assumed by the Son of God comes from the actions of the will , not from diversity of nature . But does not Christ indeed have something different in his nature in that he was born thus of a virgin , and that indeed he was not only son of man , but Son of God? Is this taking -up , which made God and man one person , of no value , therefore , to the excellent justice of that man , a [justice ] which you say existed in him by voluntary action ? And so your defence of free will leads you precipitately to deny the grace of God , so that you say the Mediator himself earned , by his own will , [the right ] to be the only Son of God , and so the faith of the whole church in Jesus Christ , the Son of God the Father , is false.70

SP 3 - R

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J. McW . Dewart

The logic of this accusation ( Augustine's most extreme of the controversy ) was not beyond reproach .

Augustine was bringing a twofold argument against Julian's

assertion that Christ's sanctity was the result of his human effort , not of his freedom from sexual desire . Not only did Christ lack sexual desire because conceived virginally , but he is divine how can Julian say that there is no difference of nature? But in this accusation there has been a conflation of two unrelated positions :

Julian did refuse to recognize the effects of the virginal

conception that Augustine affirmed , and so insisted that there was no difference between his human nature and that of others , but he certainly never denied the divinity of Christ .

However , by this conflation , Augustine was able to say that

Julian did in fact deny true divinity

the grace of the Word's assuming a man

and taught instead that Jesus Christ had earned divine sonship .

Not only was the

argument unfair to Julian , but it did not do justice to Augustine's best thought . It is true that in the later years of the pelagian controversy he did sometimes appear to fear that the sinlessness of Christ could not be accounted for without 71 an appeal to his divinity' , but his most characteristic christology followed another path . We have some knowledge of Julian's christology in addition to the stubborn defence of Christ's total humanity mirrored in Augustine's writings . In the winter 72 or 418/19 he too had issued a statement of faith ." There is no need to present this statement in full ;

the christological affirmations and negations one would

expect to find are there .

It was a less detailed statement than those of

Coelestius and Pelagius , less explicit in repudiating arianism and apollinarianism , and lacking the long section on the absence of confusion of the two substances in Christ . I do not think that any doctrinal significance can be inferred from these variations , and there was certinly nothing in it to suggest heterodoxy .

Two

anathemas should be noted :

first , that of Apollinaris and ' those like him ' who 73 and secondly , say that the Son of God took something less than perfect humanity' that of Jerome's statement that Christ had lied . In Julian's treatise To Turbantius the context for the standard affirmations of the statement can be found ; is seen to be the radically positive pelagian estimation of creation .

it

Christ

redeems his own handiwork and pardons the past , he lavishes benefits on his image , 74 those whom he created good , in renewing and adopting , he makes better .' In the year that he wrote the treatise To Turbantius ( 419 ) , Julian took refuge with Theodore of Mopsuestia in Cilicia , and his last , non -exegetical work of which we have knowledge was written there .

Produced in response to On Marriage , Book II ,

it was addressed to Florus and directed to the bishops of the east .

Again we know

it through Augustine's quotations , and his concern for Julian's attitude to Christ's concupiscence caused him chiefly to quote passages in the Unfinished Work which dealt with that topic .

Nevertheless , even in those passages we can find

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The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy

hints of a christology which posited the incarnation as the supreme example of grace . In an explicitation of his positive view of the world - creation ex nihilo , humanity created with feeling , intelligence and free will , and progressively enriched with gifts of God -- Julian wrote : [God ] displayed the fullness of that grace ( i.e. the divine benevolence by which he made them ) in that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . For God , asking a return of love from his image [man ] , made apparent what he had effected totally on our behalf by his indescribable love , so that we would belatedly return his love who , commending love to us ( Rom . 5 : 8 ) , did not spare his Son , but gave him up for us , promising that , if we conform our wills to his , he will elevate us to be co -heirs with his Only -begotten.75 In this context of the Word's assumption of a man as an act of indescribable divine love , Christ lived his human life as the example of perfect justice , showing his generosity in his suffering for sinners .

Julian's soteriology was consistent

with this christology . There were two basic themes : first , that to extol the and so to Creator is not to denigrate the Saviour - it is one and the same Lord 76 praise human nature and grace together is not inconsistent .' Secondly , it is part of christian faith to believe that the grace of Christ is more powerful than Adam's sin . The apostle certainly said ... that the grace of the Saviour operates more efficaciously and widely towards the conferring of salvation than the sin of Adam [ towards condemnation ] . To show how much more powerfully Christ availed and to how many more his grace abounded [ Paul wrote that it ] ... ' abounded in many ' . [ More vigorously and to many more ] than were injured by the sin of the first man , whom you say to have bound sin on his descendants . 77 Therefore , Julian argued that : ( 1 ) the liberty to sin or not -- i.e. to be free of external compulsion ― is itself a gift of God ( in whom the fullness of liberty resides ) , and this human liberty is not lost through sin ;

( 2 ) the grace of Christ

is given absolutely and uniformly , but is not received uniformly ;

( 3 ) Christ

forgives sin , renews the innocence he has created ; after that gift of grace humanity regains its original state , i.e. the will is healed , freeing anyone who practises virtue with ardour from the condition of guilt and the habit of sin ; (4 ) true christian behaviour reflects the risen Christ ; ( 5 ) Christ gives the glory of 78 a blessed resurrection to those who imitate him in virtue .' Augustine's doctrine , Julian asserted , was one of false despair - the divine commands were not beyond human nature . The sad state of the church was to be 79 fought , not fed with notions of inherent and irresistible evil in human nature . The world is graced , only human will , sometimes freely choosing evil , is at fault . It is unfortunate that this stress on personal appropriation , as strong in Julian as in Pelagius , evoked in Augustine an almost compulsively negative response . After quoting Julian's praise of divine love ( cited above ) which ended with the

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J. McW. Dewart

reference to the Father's promise to make human persons co-heirs with the Son if they obey his will , Augustine could only reply: ' Pelagian , you wish the good of charity; however , charity is from God , not through the letter of the law , but 80 through the Spirit of grace ' . This wrangle ran through the Unfinished Work as tediously as that over Christ's sexuality , and with no more hope of resolution . At bottom, both quarrels were anthropological . While there is a good deal of material from which to reconstruct Julian's soteriology , we have little , apart from the passage already quoted on the incarnation as ' the fullness of grace ' , on his christology in the narrow sense . Augustine did not , for instance , comment on Julian's understanding of the christological union : had he moved beyond Pelagius's soul /body analogy? I mentioned earlier that there is reason to believe that he would have taught that the assumption by the Word did strengthen Christ's human will and was the partial cause of his justice . I base that belief on Julian's known admiration for Theodore and on the fact that To Florus was written during his stay with him.

Theodore

certainly held that position , and Julian may have taken it from him , just as his notion of the incarnation as the fullness of grace may have derived from him. He may , as well , have adopted Theodore's christology of reciprocal presence . If he did , one pole of that christology - the necessity of the unwavering adherence of Jesus' human will to the Word to maintain ( not initiate ) the union

might lie

behind Augustine's accusation that Julian taught that Christ had earned the union . But we are limited to educated guessing on these points . I said that it was ' unfortunate ' that Augustine responded the way he did to Julian's description of the incarnation as the ultimate grace ; it was unfortunate because this was in fact Augustine's own position and in other circumstances a fruitful exchange might have ensued .

During the 420s Augustine's own christology

of grace , adumbrated ten years earlier in Letter 187 , emerged into clear focus . The passages that illustrate this development are many ;

I shall quote only three .

The first is from the Tractates on John's gospel : To him the Spirit was not given in a measured way , since in him dwelt all the fullness of divinity . Nor is the man , Christ Jesus , the Mediator between God and man , without the grace of the Holy Spirit ... . For inasmuch as the Unbegotten is equal to the Father , it is not by grace , but by nature . However , inasmuch as the man is assumed into the unity of the person of the Unbegotten , it is by grace , not by nature . The second is from the treatise On the Trinity : Therefore , the Lord Jesus himself not only as God gave the Holy Spirit , but also as man received it , and so he is said to be full of grace . It is quite clearly written of him in the Acts of the Apostles : ' for God anointed him with the Holy Spirit ' . Assuredly [ this was ] not with visible oil , but with the gift of grace which is signified by the visible ointment with which the church anoints the baptized . Nor

1239

The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy certainly was Christ anointed with the Holy Spirit when [the Spirit ] descended on him in the form of a dove as he was baptized . For there he was pleased to prefigure his body, the church , in which in a special way the baptized receive the Holy Spirit , but [ Christ ] must be understood to have then been anointed with that mystical and invisible unction wherein the Word of God was made flesh , i.e. when the human nature , without any preceding merits of good works , was so joined to God in the womb of the virgin that he become one person with him . And the third is from the Enchiridion : [ The man did not earn union with the Word , for he had no the existence apart from the Word . ] The truth is this Unbegotten Son of God , not by grace but by nature , by grace took a man in such unity of person that the same [ Son ] was also son of man . 81

These texts ( and they are typical of many ) talk of the grace given to the man , of the personal union of the Word and the man effected by grace , and of this union being itself a grace , in no way merited .

This point of the absolute impossibility of merit preceding grace , even in the case of Christ , was - as one might expect made again and again . And Christ's sinlessness , in what I think to be a christologically happier approach than either of the two mentioned earlier ( a consequence of the virginal conception and/or a consequence of his divinity ) was explained as a result of this grace . About 420 , in Against Two Letters of the Pelagians , Augustine rebuked Julian for denying that Christ was sinless even in infancy 82 because of his ' singular grace ' (not because all infants are sinless , as the pelagians taught ) . Again , in the Enchiridion , ' the grace which made sinlessness 83 possible was somehow natural to the man ' . And in in Correction , at the end of a long passage outlining ' this most powerful grace ' of the Word becoming man , he wrote : For it is not to be feared that the human nature taken into personal unity with God the Word in this indescribable way might sin through free will , because that taking -up was such that no movement of bad will was admitted . 84 His christology proceeded in step with his theology of grace .

For Christ , as

for all human persons , it is grace which strengthens and confirms the will in virtue . And in On Predestination and On the Gift of Perseverance it is the man , Jesus Christ , who affords the paradigm of predestination . The Saviour himself , the man , Jesus Christ , the Mediator between God and man , is an outstanding instance of predestination and grace . [Augustine continued through a series of rhetorical questions , making the point that the christological union was in no way merited , that it existed from the moment of conception , that there was never reason to fear that this man might sin through the free choice of his will because that will had the ultimate freedom of being unable to sin . And if anyone is so rash as to ask , ' why this man? ' , the reply is ] it is by grace that he is such and to so great a degree .

1240

J. McW . Dewart There is no more illustrious example of predestination than Jesus himself .... [ There was ] in him a true human nature SO like ours , but singularly taken up by God the Word that he who takes and what was taken are one person in the Trinity ... He who made this man from David's race just , [this man] who never fell from justice ... without any merit preceding from his will , he also makes the unjust just , without any merit of their wills .... He made him such that he never had , nor ever would have , any bad will.85

...

Julian would , of course , have disagreed with the statement that Christ was predestined 86 " but the general augustinian christology of grace was one with which he could , and to some degree probably explicitly did , agree . And Augustine must have known this . He made , however , no positive reference to the areas of possible agreement , nor constructive criticism of those of difference .

In the Unfinished

Work he did not attempt to amplify Julian's christology , and subordinated his own entirely to the service of polemic : Nor would you dare to say that [ Christ ] from the beginning , that is from the womb of the virgin , was made Son of God by reason of the preceding merit of [ his ] works . The grace , therefore , by which that man was made God from the beginning is the same by which mankind , who are his members , from being evil are made good.87 We are back at the same charges and the same methods of argument .

The accus-

ation was not direct this time ( ' you would not dare to say ... ' ) , but again one based on consistency .

Did his general denial of grace not drive him to the christ-

ological absurdity of positing a ' christhood ' that could be earned , and thus denying grace to Christ ? In the cases both of Julian and of Pelagius the alleged inconsistency rested on Augustine's definitions of the terms , in disregard of his opponents ' understanding of their own positions . Pelagius's reply we know: he did not deny the efficacy of Christ's death , but that efficacy did not extend to removing something in the reality of which he had no belief - inherited sin . Julian's reply we can only guess at :

he did not teach that Christ had merited the

union or deny that he had received grace , but he insisted that the faithfulness of his will was one necessary element in maintaining the union , and that his uniqueness lay in the plenitude of the grace offered and in the totality of his response . That had been Augustine's own christology in Letter 187 , and he did not abandon it . A study of the christology of the pelagian controversy leaves at least three questions unanswered .

First , the real issues were anthropological

the present

status of human nature and the response of that nature to divine grace ( the nature and operation of that grace were themselves questions ) . Christology and soteriology were not issues . Augustine knew this , and yet he tried to make them so .88 Why? There is no indication that he knew of the christological storm brewing in the east . Was it a case of ' any stick will do ' ?

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The Christology of the Pelagian Controversy

Secondly , if Augustine had publicly acknowledged the areas of agreement between his christology and that of Julian ( granting my hypothesis that Julian's was probably close to that of Theodore ) - in particular that Christ was the supreme example of grace received

and spelled out more exactly the differences

notably the

contribution of Christ's human will - might the christological patterns of the next two decades have been altered? If Augustine's christology had been recognized as one of grace would the chances of this christological model being perceived as an acceptable alternative ( at least in the west where the confusion of natures had been traditionally rejected ) have been enhanced? But finally , would Augustine's christology of grace have survived Ephesus ? position would he have taken vis -à -vis the christology affirmed there ?

What

I suggest

that he would have been badly torn . Could he , at that bitterly divided meeting , have remained faithful to his conviction that Christ the man was mediator and saviour , the paradigm of grace received ? Such a christological stance would not 89 have been well received by Cyril and his followers . And yet the socio -religious context and cast of mind that gave rise to and favoured alexandrian christology had much in common with the environment in which the augustinian theology of grace flourished . The competing pressures of Ephesus would have been hard to withstand , and Augustine was fortunate not to have been faced with the choice .

REFERENCES 1. Although I take Bonner's point ( cf. G. Bonner , ' Rufinus of Syria and African Pelagianism ' , Augustinian Studies 1 , 1970 , 31 ) that the term ' pelagianism ' does not represent a single , but rather an umbrella ' movement , I can find no substantive christological differences among the surviving writings described as ' pelagian ' , other than those described in this paper in Julian's christology . 2. I would therefore disagree in this matter with de Plinval , who writes , ' Pélage semble avoir porté un interêt vigilant à ces problèmes ' . Cf. G. de Plinval , Pélage : ses écrits, sa vie et sa reforme ( Lausanne 1943 ) , p . 123 . 3. Pelagius's writings are to be found in P.L.S. 1. 1101-1570 , and in A. Souter , Pelagius's Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of Saint Paul [ Texts and Studies , vol . 9] (Cambridge 1926 ) . Column references in this note and in others dealing with Pelagius's writings are to P.L.S. 1. On the points mentioned cf. e.g. Ad Rom . 1.14 , 1114C , Ad Rom . 8.3 , 1145B , Ad Col. 1.16 , 1336B , De Trin . fr . 1 , 1544A . 4. Conf. 7.19 , C.S.E.L. 33 ( 1 ) .165 . 5. On these points cf. e.g. En . in Ps . 88 ( 1 ) .7 , C.C.L. 39.1225 , Ep . 140.4.10 , C.S.E.L. 44 ( 2 ) .162 , De Agone 23.25 , P.L. 40.303D , En. in Ps . 130.10 , C.C.L. 40.1906 , Tr. 14.1 , C.C.L. 36.141 , Tr . 2.15 , C.C.L. 36.19 , En . in Ps . 40.2 , C.C.L. 38.449 , Ep. 14.3 , C.S.E.L. 34 ( 2 ) .33-34 , Exp ... ad Rom. 56 , P.L. 35.2077 , Serm. Dom . 1.23.78 , P.L. 34.1268 , Exp. Ep . ad Gal . 27 , P.L. 35.2125 , De Agone 20.22 , C.S.E.L. 41.122 . 6. On these points cf. e.g. Ad Rom . 1.4 , 1114D , Ad Rom . 1.3 , 1114B , Ad. Rom. 8.29 , 1150C , Ad 1 Cor. 11.12 , 1215A , Ad Gal . 1.1 , 1271D , Ad 1 Cor. 3.23 , 1191B , Ad Phil . 1.29 , 1312C , Ad Phil . 2.5 , 1312D , Ad Rom . 8.34 , 1150D , Ad Phil . 2.22 , 1315B , Ad 1 Cor. 15.28 , 1231B , Ad Rom . 8.34 , 1150C , Ad Eph . 1.19-21 , 1291D-1292A , Ad Phil. 2.10 , 1313B .

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7. Cf. , for example , Robert Russell's note to his translation of De Agone : 1 ...homo has been advisedly rendered by human nature , in order to convey more accurately Augustine's true conception of the subsistence of Christ's human nature in the Divine Personality of the Word ' . Writings of Saint Augustine , vol . 4 ( New York 1947 ) , pp . 327-8 . Also M. Mellet et Th . Camelot , note complementaire # 16 , ' L'Homme pris par Dieu ' , Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 15 : La Trinité ( livres i -viii ) (Paris 1955 ) , pp . 575-6 . 8. R.J. O'Connell , St. Augustine's Early Doctrine of Man , A.D. 386-391 ( Cambridge , Mass . 1968 ) , p . 277 . 9. Ibid. 10. Cf. De Trin . 1.8.15 , C.C.L. 50.47 ; also En. in Ps . 130.19 , C.C.L. 40.1906 (written c . 406 ) . 11. On these points cf. e.g. Tr . 8.9 , C.C.L. 36.87 , En . in Ps . 15.3 , C.C.L. 38.90 , En. in Ps. 140.4 , C.C.L. 40.228 , En . in Ps . 16.8 , C.C.L. 38.92-3 , De Trin . 4.8.12 , C.C.L. 50.176 , Tr. 2.15 , C.C.L. 36.19 , En. in Ps . 8.13 , C.C.L. 38.57 , En. in Ps . 60.3-4 , C.C.L. 39.766-7 , De Trin . 4.13.17 , C.C.L. 50.183 , En. in Ps . 20.8 , C.C.L. 38.116 , En . in Ps . 100.6 , C.C.L. 39.1411 , Tr. 1.3 , C.C.L. 36.2 , De Trin . 1.11.22 , C.C.L. 50.60 , En . in Ps . 30.3 , C.C.L. 38.186 , En . in Ps . 56.8 , C.C.L. 39.699 . 12. Cf. Ad Rom. 1.16 , 1116c . 13. Cf. En. in Ps . 130.10 , C.C.L. 40.1906 , and En . in Ps . 15.3 , C.C.L. 38.90 for an earlier attempt . 14. Cf. En. in Ps . 8.13 , C.C.L. 38.57 , En. in Ps . 90 ( 1 ) and ( 2 ) , C.C.L. 39.125478. I am indebted to Dr. J.F. Procopé's paper , ' Augustine , Plotinus and St. John's Three Concupiscences ' , for indicating the frequently recurring pattern of these temptations in Augustine's writings . 15. Cf. En . in Ps . 100.6 , C.C.L. 39.1411 . 16. Cf. 2 En. in Ps . 32 ( 1 ) .2 , C.C.L. 38.248 . 17. Cf. Ad Rom. 12.16 , 1166B . 18. Cf. J. Rivière , ' Hétérodoxie des Pélagiens en fait de rédemption ? ' , R.H.E. 41 ( 1946 ) 5-43 , T. Bohlin , Die Theologie des Pelagius und ihre Genesis ( Uppsala 1957 ) , R. Evans , Pelagius : Inquiries and Reappraisals ( New York 1968 ) . 19. On these points cf. Ad Rom . 3.20 , 1128C , Ad 1 Cor . 5.57 , 1234D , Ad Col. 3.13 , 1342C , Ad Rom . 8.14 , 1146D , Ad 2 Cor . 8.10 , 1257C , Ad 1 Cor . 4.6 , 1246B , Ad Col. 2.14-15 , 1339D- 1340A . 20. Cf. Ad Rom. 8.3 , 1145D . 21. On these points cf. Ad 1 Thess . 4.7 , 1327A , Ad 1 Thess . 1.10 , 1122C , Ad Rom. 5.8 , 1135C , Ad 1 Tim . 1.14 , 1347A , Ad Col. 1.13-14 , 1336D , Ad Phil . 3.38 , 1318A , Ad Col. 2.12-14 , 1339BC , Ad 1 Tim . 1.14 , 1347A , Ad 1 Cor . 1.18 , 1184B , Ad 2 Cor. 4.11 , 1247A , Ad 2 Cor . 5.21 , 1251A , Ad Gal . 3.13 , 1276A , Ad Rom . 5.19 , 1138B , Ad Rom. 8.3 , 1145C , Ad 1 Cor . 7.24 , 1202B , Ad 1 Cor . 11.1 , 1214A , Ad Col. 1.20 , 1337B , Ad 1 Tim . incip . , 1345C , Ad Eph . 2.14 , 1293D -1297A , Ad Rom . 1.7 , 1115A , Ad Eph. 1.7-9 , 1289D -1290A , Ad Rom . 1.16 , 1116C , Ad Rom . 5.11 , 1336AB , Ad Rom. 5.17 , 1137D , Ad Rom. 1.4 , 1114D , Ad 1 Cor . 15.17 , 1229D , Ad Eph . 2.5-6 , 1293A , Ad Rom. 4.25 , 1133D , Ad Rom . 6.5 , 1139A , Ad Col. 2.12-14 , 1339BC . 22. On these points cf. De Trin . 4.2.4 , C.C.L. 50.164 , Tr . 3.13 , C.C.L. 36.26 , En. in Ps. 26.2 , C.C.L. 38.155 , En . in Ps . 63.13 , C.C.L. 39.815 , En. in Ps . 37.6 , C.C.L. 38.387 , En. in Ps . 15.3 , C.C.L. 38.90 , En . in Ps . 2.7 , C.C.L. 38.5 , Tr . 2.25 , C.C.L. 36.19 , En . in Ps. 134.5 , C.C.L. 40.1941 , En . in Ps . 84.13 , C.C.L. 39.1173 , En. in Ps. 37.5 , C.C.L. 38.385 . 23. Cf. En. in Ps . 86 ( 1 ) .5 , C.C.L. 39.1202 , En . in Ps . 8.11 , C.C.L. 38.54 . 24. Cf. e.g. Pelagius , Ad Rom. 5.20 , 1138B , Ad Eph . 5.27 , 1304C . 25. Cf. En . in Ps . 33 ( 1 ) .9 , C.C.L. 38.180 , Ep . 140.28 , C.S.E.L. 44.215 . 26. Cf. C.B. Armstrong , ' St. Augustine and Pelagius as Religious Types ' , Church Quarterly Review 162 ( 1961 ) , 150-64 . 27. Cf. De Trin . fr . 3 , 1548D -49A . 28. On these points cf. En . in Ps. 11.12 , C.C.L. 38.290 , Tr . 37.1 , C.C.L. 36.332 , 1 En. in Ps . 18.6 , C.C.L. 38.102 , En . in Ps . 131.3 , C.C.L. 40.1913 , Serm . 237.2.2 , P.L. 38.1123 , Ep . 169.8 , C.S.E.L. 44.617 ( late 415 ) , Ep . 187.8 , C.S.E.L. 57.87

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( 417 ) , Tr . 19.15 , C.C.L. 36.198 ( c . 420 ) , Tr . 99.1 , C.C.L. 36.592 ( after 420 ) , Ep. 137.11 , C.S.E.L. 44.110 . 29. Cf. E. Fortin , ' The " Definitio Fidei " of Chalcedon and its Philosophical Sources ' , Studia Patristica 5 , T.U. 80 ( Berlin 1962 ) , pp . 489-497 . 30. Cf. En. in Ps. 3.3 , C.C.L. 38.8 , and Ep . 140.5.12 , C.S.E.L. 44 ( 2 ) .164 . 31. Cf. 1.9.10 , C.S.E.L. 60.11-12 . 32. Cf. 1.15.19 , C.S.E.L. 60.18 . 33. Cf. e.g. 2.2 , C.S.E.L. 60.235 , 4.10 , C.S.E.L. 60.239 , 24.26 , C.S.E.L. 60.252 . 34. On these points cf. 9.10 , C.S.E.L. 60.230-240 , 24.26 , C.S.E.L. 60.252 , 40.47 , C.S.E.L. 60.268 , 24.29 , C.S.E. L. 60.255 , Ep . 137.7 , C.S.E.L. 44.105 and Ep . 140.3 , C.S.E.L. 44.160 . 35. Cf. De Natura et Gratia 18.20 , C.S.E.L. 60.245 . 36. Cf. P.L. 30.23D , C.S.E.L. 56.333 , P.L. 30.112B . 37. Cf. Ad Dem. 10 , P.L. 30.25C , 20,34D- 35A , P.L. 30.105D - 106A , P.L.S. 1.15061539. 38. F. Beer , ' Une Tessère d'orthodoxie : le " Libellus emendatione " de Leporius (vers 418-421 ) ' , R.E. Aug. 10 ( 1964 ) , 145-185 . 39. Cf. P.L. 45.1716-1718 . 40. Cf. De Gratia Christi 32.35 , P.L. 44.377 . 41. On these points cf. P.L. 45.1718B , P.L. 23.578D- 579A , 575 . 42. It will be recalled that one of Apollinaris's motives in denying Christ a human will was to ensure his sinlessness . 43. Cf. 2 En. in Ps . 29 ( 1 ) .1 , C.C.L. 38.174 . 44. Cf. En. in Ps . 50 ( 1 ) .10 , C.C.L. 38.606 . 45. Cf. En . in Ps. 93.19 , C.C.L. 39.1319-1321 ; also 2 En. in Ps . 31.26 , C.C.L. 38.244. 46. On these points cf. En . in Ps . 17.36 , C.C.L. 38.100 , En . in Ps . 28.7 , C.C.L. 38.170 , Ep . 140.16 , C.C.L. 44.189 , En . in Ps . 44.8 , C.C.L. 38.500 , En . in Ps . 103 ( 1 ) .5 , C.C.L. 40.1477 , 2 En . in Ps. 29.2 , C.C.L. 38.175 , Tr . 7.13 , C.C.L. 36.74 , 2 En. in Ps . 18.2 , C.C.L. 38.106 . 47. Cf. De Gest. 14.32 , C.S.E.L. 42.87-88 . 48. Cf. De Pecc . Mer. 2.17.27 , C.S.E.L. 60.99-100 . 49. Cf. Ep . 140.4 , C.S.E.L. 44.164 , Ep . 137.11 , C.S.E.L. 44.110 , Ep . 169.8 , C.S.E.L. 44.617 , En . in Ps . 90 ( 2 ) .5 , C.C.L. 39.1270 . 50. Cf. En . in Ps. 67.23 , C.C.L. 39.885-887 . 51. I have examined this development in some detail in my article , ' The Influence of Theodore of Mopsuestia on Augustine's Letter 187 ' , Augustinian Studies , X ( 1979 ) . 52. Cf. Ep . 187 , 13.40 , C.S.E.L. 57.118 . 53. Cf. Retract . II.49 , C.S.E.L. 36.186-187 ; the letter was addressed to Dardanus in answer to the question , ' in what manner is Christ now believed to be in heaven? ' Cf. C.S.E.L. 57.83 . 54. Cf. P.L.S. 1.1145D . 55. Cf. De Natura et Gratia XXIV.26 , C.S.E.L. 60.252 . 56. On these points cf. De Nupt . I. xii.13 , C.S.E.L. 42.212 , I.vi.7 , C.S.E.L. 42.218 , I.xii.13 , C.S.E.L. 42.226 . 57. Fragments collected by A. Bruckner in Julian von Eclanum: Sein Leben und seine Lehre . Ein Betrag zur Geschichte des Pelagianismus , T.U. 15 ( 1897 ) Heft 3 , 24 ff. 58. Cf. Op . Imp. 1.66 , P.L. 45.1084 . 59. Cf. Op . Imp . IV.53 , P.L. 45.1370A . 60. Cf. Op. Imp. IV.54 , P.L. 45.1370D- 1371A . 61. Cf. Op . Imp. IV.80 , P.L. 45.1385 . 62. Cf. Op. Imp. IV.80 , P.L. 45.1385A. 63. Cf. Op. Imp. IV.47 ff . , P.L. 45.1365 ff , VI.33,1586 . 64. Cf. Op . Imp . VI.52 , P.L. 45.1369 . 65. Cf. Op . Imp . IV.57 , P.L. 45.1373B . 66. Cf. Op . Imp. VI.34 , P.L. 45.1587 ; this argument may come from the Ad Florum rather than from the Ad Turbantium . 67. On these points cf. Op. Imp. VI.33 , P.L. 45.1586 , IV.48 , P.L. 45.1366C ,

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II.60 , P.L. 45.1168 . 68. Augustine said that he had not heard of this version of apollinarianism ( cf. Op. Imp. IV.47 , P.L. 45.1366 ) . Julian , however , had not invented it . Cf. the Libelli Fidei of Coelestius and Pelagius , and Jerome , Tr. in Ps . 108 : ' If he had sorrow and pain , he also had feelings . So if anyone wants to say to us , " He did not have feelings so that he may not be seen to have sin" , we reply , " Did he not have a body like ours? In that case , he had the feelings of a body . " ' Cited in A. Grillmeier , Christ in Christian Tradition , 2nd ed . ( London 1975 ) , 401. Cf. also Op. Imp. IV.47 , P.L. 45.1366 . 69. Cf. the pertinent remarks of F. Decret : ' Mais dans ce scenario dont Augustin a organisé le montage - en découpant les écrits de Julien pour y inserer des résponses - après des scènes burlesques où chacun des acteurs fait assaut de chichanerie , il arrive aussi que le vieil évêque retrouve le ton du maître , comme à l'époque de ses controverses avec Felix et Faustus . ' F. Decret , L'Afrique Manichéene (iv -ve siècles ) . Études Augustiniennes ( Paris 1978 ) , 15 . 70. Cf. Op. Imp. IV.84 , P.L. 45.1386 . The progressive inflation of the accusation invites notice : in 412 it was an exhortation per impossible ; in 417 a rhetorical question ; in 428 the charge was made outright . 71. Cf. e.g. Cont. Jul . V.15 , P.L. 44.793 and V.57 , P.L. 44.815 , Op . Imp . IV.80 ff. , P.L. 45.1384 ff . 72. Cf. P.L. 48.509-529 . 73. Cf. P.L. 48.519-520 , 522 . 74. Cf. Op. Imp. 1.53 , P.L. 45.1075-1077 , 1.67 , P.L. 45.1085-1089 , 11.92 , P.L. 45.1178 . 75. Cf. Op. Imp. 1.94 , P.L. 45.1111B . 76. On these points cf. Op . Imp . 11.88 , P.L. 45.1177 , II.171 , P.L. 45.1172C , V.9 , P.L. 45.1438F , II.207 , P.L. 45.1230 . This was also Pelagius's position ; cf. De Pecc. Mer. II.xxx.49 , C.S.E.L. 60.120 . 77. Cf. Op . Imp . 11.80 , P.L. 45.1176c . 78. On these points cf. Op . Imp . 1.79-94 , P.L. 45.1101-1111 , 1.53 , P.L. 45.1075 , II . 115 , P.L. 45.1189 f . , II.116 , P.L. 45.1190 , II.147 , P.L. 45.1202 f . , V.9 , P.L. 45.1438 f . , 1.53 , P.L. 45.1075-1076 , II.188 , P.L. 45.1223 , II.152 , P.L. 45.1206 . 79. Cf. Op . Imp. I.110 , P.L. 45.1123 , IV.114 , P.L. 45.1407 f. 80. Cf. Op . Imp . 1.94 , P.L. 45.1111c . 81. Cf. Tr . 74.3 , C.C.L. 36.514 , De Trin . XV.46 , C.C.L. 50A.526 , Enchiridon XI.36 , C.C.L. 46.69 . 82. Cf. Contra Duas Epistolas IV.2.2 , C.S.E.L. 60.521 . 83. Cf. Enchiridon XII.40 , C.C.L. 46.72 . 84. Cf. De Corrept . XI.30 , P.L. 44.934D -935A . 85. Cf. De Praedest . XV.30 , P.L. 44.981 , De Dono XXIV.67 , P.L. 45.1033 f. 86. Cf. for instance Theodore , who talks of the divine foreknowledge of the constancy of Christ's human will . 87. Cf. Op . Imp . 1.138 , P.L. 45.1137 . 88. Augustine did not associate christological error with the pelagians in his non-polemical works , nor did he mention ' merit christology ' either in the list of christological errors in Tractatus 36.6 ( written in 420 ) or in Against Heresies (written in 428 ) . 89. Cf. the ninth anathema of Cyril's ' third letter ' to Nestorius .

L'enarratio Augustienne sur le Ps . 50 et O Deus, miseri de Gottschalk d'Orbais

A. Etchegaray Cruz Valparaíso

ELON Aristote (Rhet . 1415 a 22 ) et Cicéron (Part . orat . XV , 13 ) , repris par Ivoléeurie saint "

Augustin , tout discours a besoin d'un exordium.

' Si vero longior sequetur ac per-

plexa magis expositio ' ( Quintilien , Inst . orat . IV , 1. 79 ) , la narratio de jouer le rôle de l'exordium. C'est le cas de l'enarratio sur le Ps . 50 , puisque près de la fin Augustin avoue à ses ouailles : ' Psalmus in nomine Christi , etsi forte non ut uolumus , uerumtamen ut potuimus , terminatus est ' ( n . 24 ) . Plus convaincant est le double fait que cet exordium abrège l'enarratio in psalmum L , et que notre évêque revient dans le commentaire sur le 3e verset à ces deux sujets : ' Deprecanda ... ignoscenda ' et ' Molestum ... fugiat ' ( n . 1 ) , reproduits en entier à la suite . Ni le noyau d'un tel exordium ni l'idée centrale qui soutient l'enarratio ont échappé à Gottschalk d'Orbais ( 805 ? - 870 ? ) .

En outre , le fait de suivre de près

un texte d'autrui n'empêche nullement le moine - poète de nous livrer quelque chose de personnel : ' ( he ) was a poet of genuine gifts , whose poems show a real lyric feeling , even if the rhythm and rhyme are not uniformly perfect'.1 Chez l'évêque africain et le poète carolingien la pensée et son expression jouissent d'une independance fort marquées .? Au terme de cette enarratio ' longior ac perplexa ' Augustin de commander : ' Tu imple personam tuam , Deus de illo exigit suam' ( n . 24 ) , ce qui cadre avec son caractère et avec celui de Gottschalk d'Orbais , même si chez ce dernier pointe le pathologique . Voici trois réussites littéraires de Gottschalk . sur deux sections heureusement accouplées .

Il dispose son autobiographie

La première ( vv . 1-84 ) est tirée de l '

exordium et de l'enarratio des versets 1-5 du Miserere , tandis qu'il façonne la deuxième d'après les litanies de tous les saints . A remarquer que ce type de prière devint en vogue quelque peu avant Gottschalk , et qu'à chaque invocation font suite

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A. Etchegaray Cruz

des refrains tels que ' Domine , miserere ' , ' Libera nos , Domine ' , nos ' .

Te rogamus audi

Le refrain litanique rappelle et ce passage de l'exordium-enarratio : ' Depre-

canda est misericordia Dei , ut donet intellectum ad ista damnanda , et affectum ad fugienda , et misericordiam ad ignoscenda ' ( n . 1 ) , et ceci du verset 3 : ' Audi ergo Qui

haec , et dic cum illo : Miserere mei , Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.

magnam misericordiam deprecatur , magnam miseriam confitetur ' ( n . 6 ) . En plus , Gottschalk réussit ce tour de force : tout naturellement les 184 vers s'achèvent par une ' i ' , signe et symbole phonétique de ' la douleur que l'on sent percer à travers la simplicité des vers .

Il faut remonter à la plus belle époque de la latinité

classique pour trouver , avec une musique autre , des accents aussi poignants'.3 Finalement , le tiers presque du poème n'est que la reprise , au terme de chacune des 20 strophes , de ' Heu , quid euenit mihi ! ' , et , au début , de ' 0 Deus , miseri /miserere serui ' . Or ce double refrain paraphrase , tel qu'Augustin l'explique , le verset 3 du Ps . 50 : ' Miserere mei , Deus ... ' . L'exordium-narratio , dont il a été question jusqu'ici , devient le sujet des vv . 1-14 .

C'est par une plainte que commence le premier passage essentiel d'Augustin :

' Quam multos enim hodie fratres nostros cogitamus et plangimus ire in uanitates et insanias mendaces , neglegere quo uocati sunt ! ' ( n . 1 ) . d'eux : prae cunctis ego amaui uanitate pasci ... Tu me , Domine , fecisti ut seruirem tibi ; ego miser te dimissi (vv. 5-6 et 10-13 ) . et longe abiui

Gottschalk avouera être l'un

Eh bien , le dernier passage de l'exordium condense tout ce qui se trouve auparavant : 'Molestum est quidem , et nimium periculosum , immo perniciosum , et pro certo exitiabile , quod scientes peccant .

Aliter enim ad has uanitates currit qui uocem Christi

contemnit , aliter ille qui non nouit quid fugiat . debere , iste psalmus ostendit ' ( n . 1 ) .

Sed nec de talibus desperari

Le souligné met en relief jusqu'où Gotts-

chalk s'inspire de l'exordium augustininien pour le début de son autobiographie poétique . L'introduction finie , Augustin en expose le titre ( versets 1-2 ) : ' Inscribitur enim titulus eius ... quando intrauit ad Bersabee ...

Vxoris alienae pulchritudine

captus rex et propheta Dauid ... , adulterauit eam... ; ceciderat lapsu cupiditatis ' ( nn . 2-3) , parce que ' Inest peccatum , cum delectaris ; regnat , si consenseris . Carnalis delectatio , praesertim usque ad illicita ... progrediens ...non in imperio collocanda ' ( n . 3 ) . Le moine a imité le roi :

et illa , quae uetuisti auide dileri ... atque multa mala egi pectore feruenti ... uoluptates non dimissi

(vv . 33-34 , 40-41 et 45 ) .

1247

L'enarratio Augustienne sur le Ps. 50

Mais à la place d'une seule chute et incapable de maîtriser sa sexualité conformément à la vie monastique , Gottschalk de dire à plusiers reprises : fateor uoce lugubri nimium deliqui ... sed his me addixi et totius me peccati uinculis deuinxi ... iram tuam prouocaui crimine frequenti ideoque te offendi (vv . 26-27 , 46-48 et 52-55 ) . offensa ingenti Augustin n'est pas honteux non plus de souvent raconter en détail ses chutes et rechutes , dont il n'ignorait nullement la cause ( Conf. I , 7 , 12 ; IV , 3 , 4 et 15 , 27 ) . Or , ce récit , qui précède le début de la conversion définitive , cite ou se réfère aux versets 7 , 19 et 10 du Ps . 50. Ces trois versets - là ne faisant que développer les quatre premiers , leur enarratio de reprendre donc avec plus d'ampleur ce qu ' elle avait exprimé en raccourci : ' Magis magisque laua ma ab iniustitia mea ( v . 4 ) ... abluisti peccata ignorantis ...peto ut ignoscas , quia ego agnosco ' ( n . 7 ) ; ' Auditui meo , inquit , dabis exsultationem et laetitiam ( v . 10 ) ... Et ideo quia humilis, audit. Qui audit , qui uere audit et bene audit , humilis audit ' ( n . 13 ) . 'Cor contritum et humiliatum Deus non spernit ( v . 19 ) ...

Nostis quia excelsus est Deus ;

si te excelsum feceris , longinquabit a te ; si te humilaueris , propinquabit ad te ' (n . 21 ) ; ' Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum ( v . 7 ) ... Suscepit personam generis humani Dauid , et adtendit omnium uincula , propaginem mortis considerauit , originem iniquitatis aduertit ' ( n . 10 ) .

Cet échantillon de l'enarratio sur les ver-

sets du Ps . 50 se trouvant dans la première partie des Confessiones , laisse voir l ' accord exégètique entre le commentaire des psaumes et l'autobiographie augustinienne . Il pourrait se faire que Gottschalk , devenu un bon connaisseur d'Augustin pendant son premier séjour à Orbais , ait conçu l'idée d'arranger la première section de son autobiographie d'après l'enarratio in Ps . L à la suite d'un tel accord . En effet , Gottschalk étudie saint Augustin en quête d'une ' auctoritas ' pour sa théologie de la prédestination .

Or , l'enarratio sur le Ps . 50 ainsi que les passages des Confessiones

qui le citent ou y font allusion , peuvent s'accommoder à ses points de vue , ce qui ressort et du commentaire aux versets 3-5 du Ps . 50 , et de la suite du poème . Augustin fait une transition entre l'exposé du titre ( vv . 1-2 ) en celui du verset 3. On y lit : ' Audi eum [ Dauid] clamantem , et simul clama ; audi gementem , et congemisce ; audi flentem , et lacrymas iunge ; audi correctum, et condelectare . tibi non potuit intercludi peccatum, spes ueniae non intercludatur ...

Si

Rex sublimis

Prophetam audiuit ; plebs eius humilis Christum audiat ' ( n . 5 ) . On reviendra sur cette audition au sujet du verset 10 cité dans Conf. IV , 15 , 27. Gottschalk métamorphose poétiquement ce qu'il y a trouvé de plus frappant : ergo iam succurre flenti , Domine , clienti ,

1248

A. Etchegaray Cruz scelera tibi fatenti ueniam petenti ... uulneraque detegenti medere languenti (vv . 66-69 et 75-76 ) .

Les vv . 75-76 rappellent l'enarratio sur les verstes 4-5 : ' medere languenti ' fait écho au 4e ( Conf . I , 7 , 12 ) : ' Et a delicto meo munda me ( v . 4 ) .

Quo merito ? Medicus

est , offer mercedem' ( n . 7 ) , tandis que la strophe finale de la première partie de la confession carolingienne semble une réminiscence conceptuelle de l'enarratio sur Ps . 50 , 5 : ' Ad secandum et sanandum uulnus cordis eius , ferramentum fecit de lingua eius ... remansit uulnerata et medicus , remansit magna miseria et magna misericordia ' (n . 8 ) . Gottschalk dit à son tour :

subueni te inuocanti et in te speranti ; dextram da , quem redemisti , (vv . 79-82 ) . iam periclitanti Cependant nulle part on trouve chez le poète le ' offer sacrificium ' augustinien qui fait suite à ' offer mercedem ' , pas plus que ' Confuge ergo ad medicum , age paenitentiam , dic : Iniquitatem meam ego agnosco , et peccatum meum ante me est semper ' (v . 5, n. 8) . Il suffit au moine d'avouer ses fautes en toute franchise , de demander incessamment pitié dans le refrain ' 0 Deus , miseri /miserere serui ' ; jamais il y est question de faire pénitence , d'offrir un sacrifice , comme Augustin l'exhorte à plusieurs endroits dans l'enarratio des versets 4-5 .

Pourquoi ? Avec Augustin , le

carolingien affirme que la bonté et la justice divine ont gratuitement tiré les élus de la massa dammata . Gottschalk s'estime un élu :

tu me quoque redemisti , de iugo seruili ... dextram da , quem redemisti , (vv. 16-17 et 81-82 ) . iam periclitanti Son nom, ne symbolise -t -il pas sa prédestination ? germanique de

' Gottschalk ' est l'équivalent

códoulos , car en Althochdeutsch ' schalk ' signifie ' seruus ' ; d'où,

bien probablement , sa présence dans le premier refrain : ' 0 Deus , miseri /miserere serui ' .

Toutefois l'élection ab aeterno , exprimée avec justesse par des passés

indéfinis à valeur d'aoriste ( redemisti ) , n'empêche par les élus de s'écarter temporellement de Dieu , l'évêque et le moine ne cachant pas ses égarements , comme on l'a déjà remarqué .

Mais l'esprit géometrique de Gottschalk durcit la finesse

augustienne du primat absolu de Dieu face à la liberté de l'homme : l'expiation active de l''offer mercedem ' ou du ' age paenitentiam' est remplacée par l'acceptation passive des événements punissants voulus par Dieu , à fin de sauvegarder n'importe où ce primat absolu . Chaque strophe débute par une allusion à soi -même et finit par un refrain très significatif : ' 0 Deus , miseri /miserere serui ... heu , quid euenit mihi ! ' . Cet augustinisme quelque peu étroit explique , en outre , pourquoi Gottschalk abandonne l'enarratio au 5e verset et fort ingénieusement construit la deuxième section

1249

L'enarratio Augustienne sur le Ps . 50 sur les litanies de tous les saints : igitur uos , omnes sancti , coheredes Christi , exorate prece dulci , pro me infelici lit-on dans le passage de la première à la seconde partie ( vv . 86-89 ) .

D'un autre

côté , les versets 6-14 du Ps . 50 reprennent le sujet des versets 1-5 tout en montrant David pénitent : ' Ecce enim ueritatem dilexisti ( v . 8 ) ...

Ignoscis confitenti ,

ignoscis , sed seipsum punienti ; ita seruatur misericordia et ueritas ; misericordia , quia homo liberatur ; ueritas , quia peccatum punitur ... ( n . 11 ) .

Respice quae fuit Niniue '

A partir du verset 15 le pécheur devient un convertisseur des impies : ' Sed

uidete quid adiungat : Spiritu , inquit , principali confirma me ( v . 15 ) . In quo confirma ? Quia ignouisti mihi ... ex hoc factus securus , atque ista gratia confirmatus , non ero ingratus .

Quid enim faciam ? Doceam iniquos uias tuas ' ( n . 18 ) .

Dès 847 Gottschalk

avait été aussi missionnaire dans la Moravie , mais pour répandre sa théologie . Rentré à Fulda , en octobre 848 il se rendra au Concile de Mayence avec l'intention d'exposer sa pensée et de réfuter ouvertement Raban Maur , son ancien précepteur et abbé , son impitoyable ennemi à présent .

Même si dans l'enarratio il y a maints

textes qui pourraient servir à Gottschalk [ ' Agnoscens culpam suam , amplexus est poenam suam , quaerens gloriam non suam ...

Dominum laudans in eo quod patiebatur '

( v . 12 , n . 15 ) ] , néanmoins la plus grande partie du commentaire d'Augustin ne favorise pas la prédestination carolingienne . Parmi les mystères , ceux de la Trinité et de la Prédestination posent aux théologiens des défis presque insurmontables .

Saint Augustin malheureusement n'a pas

consacré à la Prédestination une synthèse telle que celle De Trinitate libri XX . Gottschalk s'y veut augustinien , bien que reconstruire la pensée du maître devient très laborieux et , souvent , hypothètique .

En plus , l'un et l'autre se servent des

versions latines du psautier tellement difficiles à comprendre dans certains passages que , même dans un ' sermo ' , Augustin doit faire appel à la critique textuelle pour éclaircir , par ex . , le verset 16 du Ps . 50 : ' Erue me de sanguinibus Deus, Deus salutis meae . Expressit latinus interpres uerbo minus latino proprietatem tamen ex graeco .

Nam omnes nouimus latine non dici sanguines , nec sanguina ; tamen quia ita

graecus posuit plurali numero , non sine causa , nisi quia hoc inuenit in prima lingua hebraea' (n . 19 ) . Sur le 6e verset Augustin avait dit : ' Tibi soli , inquit , peccaui, et malignum coram te feci ; ut iustificeris in sermonibus tuis, et uincas cum iudicaris . Cui dicat , fratres , cui dicat difficile est aduertere ' (n . 9 ) . Toutefois on reste étonné , de nos jours , de l'acuité exégètique de saint Augustin , qui souvent découvre le sens de l'original hébreux sous des traductions aussi médiocres que fautives : Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum ( Ps . 50 , 7 ) doit s'entendre du péché originel comme l'exprime de ' generatus sum' de la Néo -Vulgate ( 1971 ) . Mainte difficulté et polémique sur l'inscrutable prédestination surgirent des trompeuses versions latines .

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A. Etchegaray Cruz

Tellement souple et universel est le génie d'Augustin , qu'en 393-4 il s'attaque à des laborieuses critiques doctrinales et philologiques du manichéisme de Fortunat et d'Adimant et , à la fois , ' Volens etiam causam Donatistarum ad ipsius humillimi uulgi et omnino imperitorum atque idiotarum notitiam peruenire ...

Psalmum , qui eis

cantaretur , per latinas litteras feci ... non aliquo carminis genere id fieri uolui , ne me necessitas metrica ad alique uerba , quae uulgo minus sunt usitata , compelleret ' ( Retract . I , 19 ) . L'humble Augustin ne songea jamais que son ' experiment has in a sort of nebulous shape the principles of two different orders of modern verse -- that which takes account of the accent , as is done in Italian , Spanish and English verse , and that which does not , like French and Irish ' . "

Gottschalk , théologien au langage

batailleur et pédant comme celui des humanistes carolingiens , s'àvere simple , charmant et lyrique remarquable dès qu'il prend Augustin comme maître de poétique . La rime dysyllabique ou trisyllabique latine , d'où sont nées les rimes pleines modernes , est l'invention de Gottschalk d'Orbais ignorant cette prédestination à lui . 5 Face à sa labeur de théologien , il pensait comme fray Luis de Leon ( 1527-91 ) , un autre augustinien : ' Entre la ocupaciones de mis estudios ... se me cayeron de entre las manos estas obrecillas ' .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. F.J.E. Raby , The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse ( ed . 1966 ) , p . 469 . Dans son History of Latin Christian Poetry ( Oxford , 2d ed . , 1952 ) , pp . 191-192 , il avait estimé Gottschalk un poète presque sans relief . 2. Sur l'originalité de saint Augustin par rapport à la littérature autobiographique européenne occidentale , cf. P. de Courcelle , Les ' Confessions ' de saint Augustin dans la tradition littéraire . Antécédents et postérité ( Paris , 1963 ) , pp . 9-13 et 201-547 . Il ne mentionne pas ' 0 Deus , miseri ' , mais uniquement ses ouvrages théologiques et grammaticaux ( pp . 258-259 ) . 3. M. Hélin se réfère ici à ' Vt quid iubes , pusiole ' dans La littérature latine au Moyen-Age ( Paris , 1972 ) , p . 27. Mutatis mutandis ( rime ' i ' à la place de ' e ' ) , son avis s'accorde perfaitement avec ' 0 Deus , miseri ' . 4. W.P. Ker , The Dark Ages ( London , éd . 1955 ) , pp . 209-210 . Chaque strophe est toujours formée de 7 vers , les paires étant hexasyllabiques et octosyllabiques les impaires , sauf le premier . Comme chez Franciscae meae laudes ' de Baudelaire , la place de l'accent varie d'après le rythme musical , qui peut devenir nul selon le rythme de la langue maternelle et la prononciation locale du latin . 5. D. Norberg , Manuel pratique de latin médiéval ( Paris , 1968 ) , pp . 66-67 . La prose latine abonde en rimes et on la trouve même dans les meilleurs poètes de la latinité antique ; cf. J. Marouzeau , Traité de stylistique latine ( Paris , 2e éd . 1946 ) , pp . 58-65 . Tous les styles de la prose augustinienne surabondent en rimes . Le talent littéraire de Gottschalk introduit cette resource de la Kunstprosa dans la poésie latine rythmique . Les textes cités ici suffissent à montrer la vérité des deux affirmations précédantes .

Was Pelagius Influenced by Chromatius of Aquileia? C. A. Garcia-Allen

Boynton Beach, Florida

HE question of the sources of Pelagius ' thought was first brought up by 1 T Pelagius ' contemporaries themselves . Both Jerome and Augustine 2 raised questions on the authenticity and nature of the sources upon which Pelagius had drawn in support of his doctrinal tenets . In the course of the present century , 3 research has added much light on this enterprise by more clearly identifying and determining the sources of the thought of Pelagius . I intend this paper to be a further contribution to this task by raising the following question : was Pelagius influenced by Chromatius of Aquileia? It is convenient to begin by situating our authors chronologically . Chromatius died about A.D. 407 ; Pelagius was at the peak of his writing career between A.D. 405 4 and 417. From Chromatius there has come down to us a series of sermons and a commentary on the gospel of Matthew. The corpus of extant writings by Pelagius consists of several letters , treatises and a commentary on thirteen Pauline epistles .

Both

Chromatius and Pelagius had common friends . One of these , Rufinus , was the connecting link between the circles of ascetics of Aquileia , Nola and Rome , and it was in 6 Nola and Rome that Pelagius found his patrons and supporters . Rufinus was in Rome on several occasions , either writing or bringing along some of his works as well as 7 8 the works of other Christians authors ." We know now that his last journey from Aquileia to Rome took place most likely between A.D. 403 and 404 , and we are certain 9 that Pelagius made use of some of Rufinus ' works and translations . Could Rufinus have brought down from Aquileia to Rome or its vicinity some of the works of bishop Chromatius ? We are certain that at least part of the commentary on Matthew , if not 10 all , was already in Rome by the time of Leo I , since Leo himself made use of it ." There is therefore a possibility of Pelagius having had access to some works by Chromatius . Supposing that he did , did he actually use them? In reading the extant writings of both Chromatius and Pelagius , one finds passages

SP 3 S

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containing suggestive parallels of thought . I will now give six examples of these parallels :

1)

There is an extensive stress in both authors on the need to maintain intact the 11 holiness and the grace received at baptism ." 2) Both authors insist on the equally binding force of all the commandments ; all 12 Christians must therefore fulfill all the precepts of the Lord ."

3)

Both make a considerable emphasis on the centrality of God's word and of apos13 tolic doctrine in the salvation of the believing Christian .

4)

Both make clear that salvation is not attained by the external effort of the 14 body , but rather by the internal power of faith ."

5) Equal emphasis is made on the importance of the internal adornment of the soul 15 through a virtuous life , rather than on the external embellishment of the body ." 6) Finally , both writers speak of some characters in Scripture as having been able 16 to lead a life of a certain natural holiness by simply fulfilling the Law ." These similarities do not intend to prove that Pelagius knew the thought of Chromatius in its entirety or that he extensively depended upon it in the formation of his own thought . But they cannot be easily dismissed as a commonplace of the patristic theology of the late fourth century . These similarities are , indeed , an invitation to investigation . Focusing more closely on the texts themselves , I have been able to find thus far six instances of textual parallels between Chromatius and Pelagius . I shall now set out the texts of two of these parallels below so as to display similarities in both thought and vocabulary . The first set of texts comes respectively from Chromatius ' Sermo number twelve 17 18 and Pelagius ' Commentarium in Romanos , chapter three , verse twenty- four .

Chromatius

Adventus ergo Christi salus omnium gentium facta est , et totius generis humani redemptio . Ipse enim nos redemit , qui creavit . Ipse salvavit , qui fecit . Denique nec sine causa redempti potius a Christo dicimur quam empti , dicente apostolo de eo : ' Qui redemit nos ' . inquit , ' sanguine suo ' [ Rom. 5 : 9 ] . Non dixit ' emit ' sed ' redemit ' ; quia quod redimitur proprium est , quod autem emitur alienum.

Pelagius ' Per redemptionem quae est in Christo Iesu ' . Qua nos redemit sanguine suo de morte [ cf. Rom . 5 : 9 ] , cui per peccatum venditi fueramus , secundum Isaiam [ Is . 1 : 1 ] . Omnes enim rei eramus mortis , cui se ille indebite tradidit , ut nos suo sanguine redimeret [ cf. Rom. 5 : 9 ] . Unde propheta praedixerat [ Is . 52 : 3 ] : ' gratis venundati estis , et sine pecunia redimemini ' . Hoc est quia nihil pro vobis accepistis et Christi estis sanguine redimendi . Simul illut notandum quia redemit nos , non emit , quia ante per naturam ipsuis fueramus , licet simus nostris ab eo alienati delictis .

Chromatius states that Christ has brought redemption to all peoples ; Pelagius comments on Paul's statement that redemption is in Christ . Chromatius notes that , according to Paul , men are not purchased by Christ's sacrificial death but rather

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repurchased ; Pelagius calls attention to that same fact , that Christ's blood did not purchase but rather repurchased us . Both authors use the same words , non emit and redemit , to express their idea , and quote from Romans 5 : 9 in support of their interpretation of the word ' redemption ' . Chromatius explains that the reason why Paul says redemit instead of emit is because to repurchase is to regain what was one's own possession , while to purchase means to acquire another person's property ; Pelagius ' explanation of the two terms is peculiarly similar , that Christ repurchased us because , even though we were his own possession by reason of creation (per naturam ipsius fueramus ) we were estranged from him by reason of our sins . Notice that Chromatius also stresses the point that Christ repurchased us because he created us (qui creavit ) . Furthermore , it is also important to notice the textual parallel between quia ... alienum and quia... alienati . There is still one more interesting aspect of this first set of textual parallels . Robert F. Evans , in his Inquiries and Reap19 , refers to this passage of Pelagius ' Commentarium in Romanos to point out

praisals

the unique manner in which Pelagius expresses the continuity between creation and redemption . We now discover that such a way of expressing the continuity between creation and redemption is not unique , since the same idea appears expressed with the same vocabulary in a sermon by Chromatius ! But could Pelagius have not borrowed such expression from another author ? Or , was there not a common source ? Methodologically , the answer to the first question could be found in part by looking into the commentaries on the Pauline epistles of which Pelagius made frequent use in the writing of his own commentary . Three of those commentaries are extant and offer us the possibility of contrasting their remarks on Romans 3:24 with Pelagius ' own remarks . The interpretations given to Romans 20 21 3:24 by Origen- Rufinus" " Ambrosiaster , and the anonymous writer of the end of the fourth century , whose commentary on the Pauline epistles has been recently dis22 covered by H.J. Frede " show however very little similarities with Pelagius ' own comments on that same passage . Needless to say that their interpretation of the term ' redemption ' is different from that given by Chromatius . The common source , if any , to the texts of Chromatius and Pelagius would necessarily have to contain to a greater degree the patterns of thought and of expression which appear in Chromatius and Pelagius themselves . I shall gladly welcome the finding of such a patristic text . Meanwhile , the negative result of the contrasting of the commentaries on Romans 3:24 with Pelagius ' own comments on that passage makes more thought - provoking the likelihood of Pelagius having actually depended upon Chromatius ' Sermon twelve for the writing of his remarks on Romans 3:24 . The second set of texts comes respectively from Chromatius ' Tractatus in Mattheum , 24 23 number fifty- seven and Pelagius ' Epistola de virginitate , chapter sixteen ."

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C. A. Garcia- Allen Chromatius

Et ideo non nobilitatem cuiusquam aut divitias miratur ille qui omnium Dominus est . Non paupertatem contemnit , non natales despicit , sed omnibus credentibus in se aequaliter gratiam suam caelestem largitur , et divitibus et pauperibus , et servis et dominis , omni sexui et aetati . Unus enim Dominus unigenitus Dei Filius et una mater ecclesia. Ille sane apud Deum potior , qui sanctior ; ille melior , qui religiosior . Et idcirco non natales nostros aut dignitatem ecclesiae praeferre debemus quasi ex hoc meliores simus aut inde Deo placeamus , et non magis per fidem et sanctam conversationem . Unde ille apud Deum sicut diximus potior est , non quem nobilitas generis vel dignitas saeculi , sed quem devotio fidei Deo et sancta vita commendat .

Pelagius Quid tibi , o stulta , in generis nobilitate blandiris et conplaces ? Duos homines fecit Deus , ex quibus totius humani generis silva descendit : mundanam nobilitatem non naturae aequitas praestitit , sed cupiditatis ambitio . Certe ommes per divini lavacri gratiam aequales efficimur , et nulla inter eos potest esse discretio , quos nativitas secunda generavit , per quam tam dives quam pauper , tam liber quam servus , tam nobilis quam ignobilis Dei efficitur filius , et terrena nobilitas splendore caelestis gloriae obumbratur et nusquam omnino iam comparet , dum qui retro in saecularibus honoribus inpares fuerant , caelestis et divinae nobilitatis gloria aequaliter vestiuntur .

Chromatius says that God does not look with admiration on the aristocrats and the rich , nor does he despise the poor , for God is Lord of all ; Pelagius castigates the virgin who boasts of her aristocratic birth by reminding her that God made the whole of mankind from a single couple . The idea that God is the creator of all and that noble birth does not mean anything in his sight appears in both writers . They both use the same phrase , nobilitas generis/generis nobilitate , and expressions such as nobilitatem cuiusquam and mundanam nobilitatem , which are similar in meaning . Chromatius goes on to argue that God grants his heavenly grace equally to all believers , to the rich and the poor , to the slave and the master , to both sexes and to all ages ; Pelagius boldly affirms that all peoples , by reason of the grace of baptism are made alike , namely , children of God , the rich as well as the poor , the freeman as well as the slave . The similarities in the sequence of thought are striking , but more striking is the sequence of the same or similar terms : omnibus, aequaliter, gratiam, divitibus , pauperibus , servis , dominis /ommes , gratiam, aequales, dives, pauper, liber, servus . Further , Chromatius insists that Christians should not display their noble birth and honor as if this were making them better Christians or as if they were more acceptable before God ; Pelagius firmly states that there cannot be any differences among those who have been reborn through the second birth of baptism. The thought is the same : there are no differences between the baptized , regardless of their earthly condition . Chromatius affirms that what makes the Christian pleasing to God is leading a life of holiness ; Pelagius holds that the baptized

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are now dressed with the glory of divine and heavenly nobility . There is an echo of Chromatius ' phrases in Pelagius ' text : dignitas saeculi finds its echo in saecularibus honoribus , and divinae nobilitatis gloria ... vestiuntur seems to be a rehash of sancta vita commendat . It is interesting to notice that Chromatius ' remark about the one Lord and the one mother Church as symbols of the unity of all believers does not appear in Pelagius ' text . It is common knowledge among the students of Pelagius ' thought that he remained very independent of all his sources , drawing from them only 25 what he considered to be worthwhile within the scope of his own purposes . Granting that the thoughts contained in these passages are a commonplace of the 26 patristic theology of the late fourth century" the manner of expressing those thoughts and the sequence of the terms used are indicative of a relationship between the two authors . In perusing a few works such as Augustine's De Sancta virginitate 27 and Ambrose's De virginibus , De virginitate , and his Expositio in Lucam " which 28 we know was used by both Chromatius and Pelagius I have not been able to find a passage that is as similar in both thought and vocabulary to that of Pelagius as the passage from Chromatius ' Tractatus in Mattheum. To conclude . In light of the preceding evidence , I would like to suggest that Pelagius had access at least to some of Chromatius ' writings and did make use of them. First , it is not unreasonable to think that Rufinus of Aquileia was the channel through which at least some works by Chromatius reached Rome . One could also suppose that Pelagius himself visited Aquileia . After all , as early as A.D. 415 , the region of Aquileia had already begun to produce sympathizers of the Pelagian movement , a tendency which continued to grow to the point of having drawn the 29 attention of Leo I about A.D. 442. Secondly , the similarities of thought between Chromatius and Pelagius are indicative of a relationship , and should not be easily dismissed as a commonplace of late fourth century patristic theology without attempting to give an explanation of such parallels . Thirdly , the strong and peculiar textual similarities , of which I have offered only two instances , show that Pelagius most likely did read Chromatius . Pelagius probably felt attracted by some of the bishop's expressions , and he later made use of them on a few occasions , without losing his own creativity and independence . If this thesis is correct , we have then before us another source of the thought of Pelagius . More specifically , the thesis that Pelagius was influenced by Chromatius of Aquileia sheds further light on the fascinating web of relationships between the circles of ascetics of Aquileia , Nola and Rome . Finally , the textual similarities here analyzed reveal two important aspects of Pelagius ' theological interest . It was important for him to emphasize both that Christ had made human nature and that he had redeemed that nature through his sacrificial death on the cross . He found this idea well expressed in Chromatius and borrowed it , as usual , without any acknowledgement . Pelagius was also concerned with the equality of all

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C. A. Garcia-Allen

christians by reason of their baptismal commitment

another idea which he found

well expressed in Chromatius , and he likewise made use of it . The discovery of this source of Pelagius ' thought indeed aids us better to understand the centrality in his own mind of christological and soteriological concerns as well as , what I would call , his obsession with the commitment of the adult christian at baptism .

REFERENCES 1. See Jerome , Ep . 133.3 ; In Ez . 6 ; In Jer . 4.41.4 . 2. See Augustine , De nat . et grat . 71-78 ; De grat . Chr . 46.55 ; Retr . 2.42 . 3. See especially the following : A.J. Smith , ' The Commentary of Pelagius on ' Romans ' compared with that of Origen-Rufinus ' , Journal of Theological Studies 20 ( 1919 ) , pp . 127-177 ; A. Souter , Pelagius ' Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul , 2 vols . ( Cambridge , 1922-26 ) , Introduction to vol . 1 , pp . 174-200 ; G. de Plinval , Pélage , ses écrits, sa vie et sa reforme : Etude d'histoire littéraire et religieuse ( Lausanne , 1943 ) , pp . 72-97 ; T. Bohlin , Die Theologie des Pelagius und ihre Genesis ( Uppsala , 1957 ) , pp . 46-103 ; R.F. Evans , Pelagius : Inquiries and Reappraisals (New York , 1968 ) , pp . 42-65 . In my doctoral dissertation , I have argued that Pelagius was deeply influenced by the liturgical life of the Church of Rome ; see Pelagius and Christian Initiation : A Study in Historical Theology (Washington , 1978 ) , especially pp . 186-246 . 4. For the date of Chromatius ' death , see J. Lemarié , ' Introduction ' to Chromace d'Aquilée , S.C. 154 : 13 . As regards the dates of Pelagius ' writing career , see Plinval , op . cit . , pp . 13-15 ; R.F. Evans , Four Letters of Pelagius ( London , 1968 ) , pp . 18-29 ; cf. the communication of this Patristic Conference by Professor F.G. Nuvolone , ' Problèmes d'une nouvelle édition critique du " De Induratione Cordis Pharaonis " de Pélage ( ? ) ' . 5. The discovery of the works of Chromatius of Aquileia is one of the most extraordinary of the last few decades in the field of patrology . For the complete corpus of the extant works of the bishop of Aquileia , see C.C.L. 9A + Supplementum ( 1974 ; 1977 ) , ed . J. Lemarié . The corpus of Pelagius ' extant writings has increased considerably since the revolutionary thesis of G. de Plinval ; cf. Plinval , op . cit. , pp . 17-46 . The question of the authenticity of Pelagius ' works , however , seems to be still open ; see note 4 above . The most convenient reference to Pelagius ' works is P.L.S. 1 : 1101f . 6. For details , see P.R. Brown , ' Pelagius and his Supporters : Aims and Environment ' , Journal of Theological Studies , n.s. 19 ( 1968 ) , pp . 93-114 ; idem , ' The Patrons of Pelagius : The Roman Aristocracy between East and West ' , Journal of Theological Studies , n.s. 21 ( 1970 ) , pp . 56-72 . Both articles appear now in his Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine ( New York , 1972 ) . Cf. Evans , Inquiries and Reappraisals , p . 18 . 7. For details , see Tyrannii Rufini Opera , ed . M. Simonetti , C.C.L. 20 : x - xi . 8. Cf. C.P. Hammond , ' The Last Ten Years of Rufinus ' Life and the Date of his Move South from Aquileia ' , Journal of Theological Studies , n.s. 28 ( 1977 ) , pp . 373429 . 9. Cf. Smith , ' Commentary of Pelagius ' , p . 163f .; Evans , Inquiries and Reapprais als , pp . 19f . , 43ff .; R. Lorenz , ' Die Anfänge des abendländischen Mönchtums in 4 . Jahrhundert ' , Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 77 ( 1966 ) , pp . 1-61 , esp . pp . 35-38 . 10. See Leo I , Sermo 95 ; cf. Lemarié's remarks in S.C. 154 : 53 . It is also interesting to notice that during his last sojourn in Rome Rufinus seems to have been a guest of Innocent I , bishop of Rome ; see Paulinus of Nola , Ep . 47 . 11. Cf. Chromatius , Tractatus 23.2.3 ( C.C.L. 9A : 306 ) , Tr . 23.3.1-2 ( C.C.L. 9A : 306-307 ) ; Pelagius , In Eph . 5:27 ( Souter 2 : 378 ) . Cf. also my Pelagius and Christian

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Initiation , pp . 247-310 , where I compare in general lines the baptismal themes which appear in Pelagius and Chromatius . There are interesting similarities in thought regarding holiness in Chromatius , Tr . 55.2 ( C.C.L. 9A : 472-73 ) and Pelagius , De vita christiana 6 (P.L. 40 : 1037 ) . 12. Cf. Chromatius , Tr . 20.2.2 ( C.C.L. 9A : 292 ) ; Pelagius , De virginitate 4 ( C.S.E.L. 1 : 228 ) . 13. Cf. Chromatius , Sermo 12.5 ( C.C.L. 9A : 55 ) ; Pelagius , De divina lege 2 ( P.L. 30 : 106 ) . 14. Cf. Chromatius , S. 5.3 ( C.C.L. 9A : 24 ) ; Pelagius , De lege 2 ( P.L. 30 : 107 ) . 15. Cf. Chromatius , S. 35.1-2 ( C.C.L. 9A : 159-160 ) ; Pelagius , De virg. 9-10 ( C.S.E.L. 1 : 326-338 ) , ibid . , 13 ( C.S.E.L. 1 : 243 ) . 16. Cf. Chromatius , Tr. 9.2 ( C.C.L. 9A : 233 ) , S. 3.2 ( C.C.L. 9A : 13 ) ; Pelagius , Ep. ad Demetriadem 3-4 ( P.L. 30 : 17-19 ) . 17. Chromatius , S. 12.2 ( C.C.L. 9A : 53 ) . 18. Pelagius , In Rom. 3:24 ( Souter 2:33 ) . 19. Evans , Inquiries and Reappraisals , p . 108 . 20. See Origen-Rufinus , Comment . in epist . ad Rom . Lib. III , Rom . 3:24 (P.G. 14 : 945) . 21. See Ambrosiaster , Ad Romanos 3:24 , in its three recensions made by the author himself ( C.S.E.L. 81/1 : 118-121 ) . 22. See H.J. Frede , Ein neuer Paulus text und Kommentar , Band II , Die Texte ( Freiburg , 1974 ) , p . 33 . 23. Chromatius , Tr. 57.3 ( C.C.L. 9A : 485 ) . 24. Pelagius , De virg. 16 ( C.S.E.L. 1 : 246 ) . The larger number of parallels in both thought and vocabulary seems to appear in Pelagius ' De virg.; thus far I can count four parallels , including the long section in De virg. 9-10 ( see note 15 above ) . The remaining textual parallels which I have been able to find thus far are the following : Chromatius , Tr . 23.1.5 ( C.C.L. 9A : 304-305 ) and Pelagius , Ep . ad Dem. 6 (P.L. 30 : 21-22 ) ; Chromatius , Tr. 28.1.7 ( C.C.L. 9A : 330 ) and Pelagius , In Rom. 8: 15 ( Souter 2:64 ) ; Chromatius , S. 35.4 ( C.C.L. 9A : 160 ) and Pelagius , Ep . ad Celantiam 22 ( C.S.E.L. 56 : 347-348 ) ; Chromatius , S. 12.1 ( C.C.L. 9A : 53 ) and Pelagius , In Rom. 3:29 (Souter 2 : 34f . ) , a textual parallel which belongs to the context of the first set of textual parallels discussed in this paper . 25. Cf. Plinval , op . cit. , p . 81 ; Evans , Inquiries and Reappraisals , 20 ; my Pelagius and Christian Initiation , pp . 226-227 . 26. See , for instance , Zeno of Verona , Tractatus ( C.C.L. 22 ) ; Maximus of Turin , Sermones ( C.C.L. 23 ) ; Pacian of Barcelona , Opera (P.L. 13 : 1051–94 ) . 27. See Augustine , De sancta virginitate (C.S.E.L. 41 : 233-343 ) ; Ambrose , De virginibus ( P.L. 16 : 197-244 ) ; idem , De virginitate (P.L. 16 : 279-316 ) ; idem , Expositio in Lucam ( C.C.L. 14 : 1-400 ) . 28. As regards Chromatius , cf. the Index auctorum in C.C.L. 9A : 527-528 ; as regards Pelagius , cf. Plinval , op . cit . , pp . 82-84 . 29. Cf. B. Altaner , ' Altlateinische Übersetzungen von Chrysostomusschriften ' , in Kleine patristische Schriften ( Berlin , 1967 ) , p . 419 ; Y.M. Duval , ' Les relations doctrinales entre Milan et Aquilée durant la seconde moitié du Ivme siècle ' , in Aquileia e Milano : Atti della Terza Settimana di Studi Aquileiesi ( Undine , 1973 ) , p . 175 ; Leo I , Ep . 1.1 (P.L. 54 : 593 ) .

A Note on Book III of St. Augustine's Contra Academicos D. K. House Halifax, N.S.

N the present paper I join with O'Connell in maintaining , against O'Meara and who agree with him, that there is a coherent philosophically important

argument in St. Augustine's Contra Academicos.¹

However , the present paper proposes

an interpretation of the argument which significantly differs from that maintained by O'Connell . St. Augustine's Contra Academicos was intended to prepare the way for the conversion of Romanianus to Christianity ? His patron , as a result of Augustine's influence , had fallen in with the Manichees . Since that time , Augustine had abandoned Manicheism and found his way to Platonism , and finally , in 386 , the year the dialogue was composed , became a convert to Christianity .

Augustine's purpose

in Contra Academicos is to guide his patron over the path which he (Augustine ) had travelled . He deems it appropriate to accomplish this end by explicating and refuting the position of the Sceptics of the New Academy .

The poetic and philo-

sophical unity of the dialogue becomes apparent if it is viewed from the standpoint of Romanianus . In the preface to the dialogue , which is an address to Romanianus , Augustine distinguishes between Romanianus ' understanding of the misfortunes which have befallen him and how those misfortunes are to be understood providentially . Romanianus , in cursing fortune , is cursing those very things which he esteemed as stable and trustworthy , but which now show themselves to be fleeting and deceitful . When circumstances were as he desired , he was without wisdom without knowing his own ignorance and without desiring true wisdom and happiness . Were it not for the apparent reverses suffered by Romanianus , which could only be accomplished by Providence , there would be no occasion for Augustine to assist his patron in the form he does . Doubt has taken hold of Romanianus . In this Augustine recognizes a new danger and a new possibility .

He intervenes at this point because external

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1259 Book III of St. Augustine's Contra Academicos circumstances can move Romanianus no further . An intervention of a different nature

is required . 4 first book .

This will become evident through the course of the argument of the

What Providence is accomplishing in Romanianus ' life has already occurred in Augustine's and been understood by him .

He writes :

a secret Providence has decreed by those various and heavy reverses to awaken within you that divine quality which has been lulled to sleep by the lethargy of this world ... Take my word for it , you will greatly rejoice ... ( The gifts of this world ) strove to ensnare me also while I was daily singing their praises , if the pain in my chest had not forced me to cast aside my empty profession and to flee to the bosom of philosophy ... philosophy freed me entirely from that fanaticism into which had cast you headlong with myself.5 Providence , in Augustine's view, is in the process of teaching Romanianus ' to 6 despise everything which the mortal eye can see , or any sense can appropriate ' However , he still clings to the sensible despite the fact that it is ever being disclosed to him that the apparent knowledge and apparent goods attained by natural man are inadequate to the knowledge and good he desires .

So long as his search for

wisdom and happiness labours under the assumption that all knowledge comes through the senses and that the good is of this world , he will never possess the object of his desire . The actual dialogue begins by assuming the position which Romanianus is trapped in and questions its adequacy as a total and comprehensive view . The question it addresses is : ' Is it sufficient to desire and search for the truth but not possess it ? '

Licentius , who knows little of the teaching of the New Academy , arrives at

its essential standpoint by showing what follows logically if one attempts to 8 maintain an affirmative answer to the above question . Reason , Licentius argues , in remaining faithful to itself, cannot give its assent to what is given in sense experience and must ever withdraw into itself when confronted by limited and finite determinations . The wise man finds himself free from error , if error is understood simply as assenting to false propositions and not as ignorance in the Socratic sense . His wisdom , the argument shows , is merely 9 freedom from error and is without content . Licentius concludes that God alone possesses wisdom while man ' frees his mind as far as possible from all the folds of the body , and collects himself within himself 10 Reason can find no certainty in the sensible but does , as a result of its search , attain to a self-certainty and imperturbability against the sensible 11 and opinions derived from the sensible.1 Romanianus , indeed , can find here a retreat from ' the breath of fortune ' and , in a sense , need look no further . It is for this very reason that this standpoint poses an even greater danger than that from which he is fleeing . However , it is a higher attitude than that which Romanianus had previously maintained because the

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D. K. House source of certainty is now appropriated by the thinking subject .

If one assumes ,

as the Sceptic and Romanianus do , that all knowledge comes through the senses and is of the sensible , the consequence is that certain knowledge appears impossible . This insight into the relation of the sensible and rational is essential to any further ascent to the Truth . Augustine , to anticipate the argument , never challenges this conclusion but argues that such an insight cannot pass for wisdom . 12 it , would be nothing ."

Wisdom, as Augustine formulates

Book one lays bare before Romanianus the point which reason can reach so long as it seeks its content in the sensible . The unity of the sensible and rational is realized as the indifference of the doubting subject . The need to examine the position of the New Academy is now apparent to Romanianus and to those taking part in the dialogue . Academic Scepticism is portrayed by Augustine , in his address to Romanianus in the second , and on numerous occasions in the third book , as seeming to be invincible 13 and as guarding the door to Philosophy . It stands outside the entrance because its very existence is rooted in a false assumption .

Its invincibility lies , on the

one hand , in the fact that it turns against that assumption , and , on the other , that the end of the Sceptic is not Truth but mere subjective contentment which is willfully blind . Augustine writes : It is sufficient for my purpose to get past , in any way whatsover , that boulder which stands in the way of those entering philosophy and which , while concealing the darkness in some kind of receptacle , boastfully asserts that the whole of philosophy is such and does not permit one hope that any light will be found in it.14 The danger Augustine fears is that Romanianus may despair of finding the Truth . Such despair is possible only if one deems the Sceptical position exhaustive and comprehensive of the Truth . Scepticism , in Augustine's view , need not and cannot 15 16 be refuted .* It is , he points out , self- refuting . That Scepticism has a just and necessary function to serve is given expression in his ' Secret Doctrine ' and in his view of the providential purpose which misfortune is serving in Romanianus ' life . He ends the dialogue by advising his young students to read Cicero's Academica.17 The remainder of the dialogue is concerned with freeing Romanianus , and those taking part in the dialogue , of one of the two obstacles to discovering the Truth - despair . The other obstacle - false conviction - is treated in a separate 18 treatise . Dogmatism , Scepticism , and True Philosophy or Platonism , are viewed in Contra Academicos as total attitudes which differ from each other in the way in which thinking and its object meet in them .

The dogmatist assumes that Truth consists

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Book III of St. Augustine's Contra Academicos in the conformity of thinking with a material externality .

Contra Academicos , as

has already been seen , takes as its starting point the doubting subject who questions the authority of any criterion by which such conformity can be known . Thus one , in a sense , is already beyond the standpoint of Dogmatisn in so far as the capacity to suspend judgement implies the priority of thought to any particular activity .

However , to say that this capacity implies such a priority does not

entail that the sensible individual - Romanianus , Licentius , or Alypius - are conscious of the implied insight .

Indeed , their predicament is that they are not .

The sensible , for them , has an independence against which they can only retreat inwardly to the barren ground of indifference .

Reason , itself , appears without

content and merely destructive . The way in which Augustine's three friends differ from the Sceptics of the New Academy may be illustrated by considering Licentius ' concluding remarks in book one . Licentius describes his soul as moving inward to itself and ascending to God . He imagines a moment when his mind will not merely be purging itself of what is foreign to it but possess the wisdom which it desires . 19 but the actual possession of wisdom .

His end is not aτapatía

Augustine proceeds by formally treating the position of the New Academy .

The

beauty of this is that there is present in the doctrine of the New Academy not only what properly belongs to Scepticism but also what follows from the claim that Scepticism is exhaustive of the possibility of human apprehension . To show the limitations of the Sceptical attitude is at once to refute the Academic Sceptics and to disclose the nature of the object appropriate to True Philosophy . O'Connell incorrectly maintains that Augustine does not refute Academic 20 Scepticism . The whole of book three , except the section on the ' Secret Doctrine ' , is obviously intended to be a refutation of Academic Scepticism and , according to 21 Augustine in the Retractationes' > a successul refutation . O'Connell's argument only makes sense if one distinguishes between a pure form of scepticism , which Augustine attributes to the Academics in his ' Secret Doctrine ' and an impure form , which he attacks in the rest of the book . Augustine does not maintain that the 22 ' Secret Doctrine ' is historically accurate but that it is theoretically sound . To refute the Academic Sceptics he need only point to such self- evident propositions as the fact that what appears to me appears to me such as it appears to me , to mutually exclusive particulars, the law of contradiction , tautologies , and such like.223 Their truth does not lie in their correspondence or conformity to some externality but in the fact that what is distinguished is identical . ' No matter' , Augustine writes , ' in what condition our senses may be , these things are true of 24 themselves . ' The Sceptics correctly show that whatever the mind receives through a sense of the body cannot beget knoweldge .

However , he argues , it does beget opinion , which

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D. K. House

may be true opinion though it cannot be known as such .

The Sceptic commits as

serious an error by not affirming an opinion , when it is true , as the Dogmatist does in affirming a false opinion .

Neither can find a retreat from the folly which

follows upon their common assumption .

Scepticism is shown not to provide a retreat

from error , properly understood , and to be founded on an assumption which cannot 25 be maintained ." Romanianus must abandon both Dogmatism and Scepticism .

Augustine , having led

Romanianus to this point , confesses that he cannot reveal what human wisdom is of itself because he has not apprehended it . However , what he has discerned is the way to certain knowledge which can admit of no error . Contra Academicos shows that the Dogmatists and Sceptics have erred in assuming the separation of thinking from its object . What the Sceptic , understood from a Platonic point of view, demands is a prior unity of thinking with its object -- their identity . Augustine's refutation of the despair of the Sceptics takes the form of showing that the standpoint of the 26 Platonists satisfies their demand . Augustine , in his theory of the ' Secret Doctrine ' of the New Academy re - iterates the argument of the dialogue .

He is prepared to concede that the ' Secret Doctrine '

may even have been kept a secret by Providence from the members of the New Academy . The truth of the secret doctrine remains : as universal - indicating the logical relation between Dogmatism , Scepticism , and True Philosophy ; as historical indicating the providential function the New Academy served in relation to the Stoics and Epicureans in preparing the way for Neo-Platonism ; and finally , as indicating a movement which the souls of Augustine , Romanianus , Licentius , and Alypius have passed through on their way to Christianity .

REFERENCES 1. See J.J. O'Meara's Introduction and notes to his translation Against Academics (A.C.W. 12 ; Westminster , Md . , 1950 ) , esp . pp . 18 ff .; R.J. O'Connell , St. Augustine's Early Theory of Man , A.D. 386-391 ( Cambridge , Mass . , 1968 ) , esp . pp . 236 ff. 2. See C. Acad. I , i , 1 . 3. See C. Acad. I , i , 3 ; Epistulae , xxxvii , 5 . 4. See C. Acad. I , i , 1-3 . 5. C. Acad. I , i , 3. Translations from Sister M.P. Garvey's Against the Academicians (Milwaukee , Wisconsin , 1973 ) . 6. C. Acad . I , i , 3 . 7. C. Acad. I , i , 3 . 8. C. Acad. I , ii , 5 . 9. C. Acad. I , iv , 10 ff. 10. C. Acad. I , viii , 23 . 11. C. Acad. I , viii , 23 . 12. C. Acad. III , iv , 10 ff. 13. C. Acad. II , i , 1 .

Book III of St. Augustine's Contra Academicos 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

C. Acad. III , xiv , 30 . C. Acad. III , xvii , 39 . C. Acad. III , v , 12 . C. Acad. III , xx , 45 . C. Acad. II , iii , 7. See De vera religione and Epist . 15.1 . C. Acad. I , viii , 23 . R.J. O'Connell , St. Augustine's Early Theory of Man , pp . 236 ff . Retract . 1.1.4 . C. Acad. III , xx , 43. C. Acad. III , xxii , 22 ff. C. Acad. III , xiii , 29 . C. Acad. III , xi , 26 . C. Acad. III , xi , 26 ; C. Acad. III , xvii , 37 ff .

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Überlegungen zum Bild des Weges in den Confessiones des Augustinus B. Lorenz Regensburg

IE Vorstellung vom Weg als einem menschlichen Grunderlebnis ist eines der Bilder Din Vorstellung von vetur , das seit seinen ersten ausdrücklichen vorkommen in Hesiods Erga 287/292 in vielen Texten verwendet wird . Dabei gebrauchen auch die Somit ist es biblischen Schriften und die Väterliteratur dieses Bild häufig . keinesfalls überraschend , daß dieses Bild auch in den Confessiones des hl . Augustinus an zahlreichen Stellen und in recht verschiedener Ausgestaltung erscheint.¹ Bei einer Zusammenstellung verschiedener Textstellen , an denen dieses Bild verwendet wird , fällt zunächst die Gliederung in Stellen auf , die sich auf Augustinus selbst dem Charakter autobiographischer Darstellung entsprechend - beziehen und auf solche , die andere Personen oder Personengruppen beschreiben und weiter auf die Texte räsonierenden Inhalts . Dabei werden im Folgenden hauptsächlich Textteile angeführt , die ausdrücklich vom ' Weg ' sprechen und nicht nur das Begriffsfeld des Gehens meinen . Zunächst seien die Stellen genannt , die in erster Linie ' allgemein menschlich ' zu verstehen sind . So spricht Augustinus von seiner Erfahrung als Schüler : multi ante nos vitam istam agentes praestruxerant aerumnosas vias , per quas transire cogebamur (1 , 9 , 14 ) und erläutert , auch beim Lernen an den Nichtigkeiten habe er multa verba utilia gelernt , sed et in rebus non vanis disci possunt , et ea via tuta est, in qua pueri ambularent ( 1 , 15 , 24 Ende ) . Auch der Ausdruck luminosus limes amicitiae ( 2 , 2 , 2 ) ist in diesem Zusammenhang zu nennen . Dagegen sind wohl der Ausdruck terrena via ( 6 , 8 , 13 ) , über Alypius gesagt , und die Beschreibung : Et tamen Firminus amplo apud suos loco natus dealbiatores vias saeculi cursitabat ( 7 , 6 , 8 Ende ) als ambivalent anzusehen . Dies gilt ebenso für die Aussage : Videbam enim plenam ecclesiam, et alius sic ibat, alius autem sic ( 8 , 1, 2 ) .

Als Übergang zur religiösen Verwendung des Bildes läßt sich eine Überlegung

des Augustinus zur allein entscheidenden Bedeutung Gottes für des Leben nennen : quia in te sunt et ista ommia: non enim haberent vias transeundi , nisi contineres ea ( 1 , 6 , 10 ) . 1264

Zum Bild des Weges bei Augustinus

1265

Die meisten Fälle beziehen sich natürlich auf den religiösen Gebrauch dieses Bildes vom Weg .

Als erste Ausprägung dieses Bildes ist hier der ' Weg zu Gott ' zu

nennen , denn Gott nimmt sich derer an , die sich post vias suas difficiles ( Weish . 5 , 7 ; 5 , 2 , 2 ) zu ihm bekehren . Augustinus berichtet von seiner zeitweiligen ' Verzweiflung an einem Weg vom Menschen zu Dir ' ( 5 , 14 , 24 ) und von seiner Unwissenheit über diesen Weg : Etiamsi ignorabam ( ... ) vel quae via duceret aut reduceret ad te (6 , 5 , 8) .

Bei seinem Weg zu Gott erinnert er sich anderer et mecum peregrinorum,

praecedentium et consequentium et comitum viae meae ( 10 , 4 , 6 ) , doch beklagt er die Ablenkungen durch die abwechslungsreichen Güter der Kultur und die Produkte der Zivilisation , die diesen Weg behindern , und erhofft die Hilfe des Herrn : Ego autem haec loquens atque discernens etiam istis pulchris gressum innecto, sed tu evellis , domine ( 10 , 34 , 53) . Diesen ' Weg zu Gott ' erläutert Augustinus als via, verbum tuum ( 5 , 3 , 5 ) und unterstreicht auch dadurch die überragende Stellung der Heiligen Schrift , dann aber vor allem in den zentralen Kapiteln 18/21 des siebten Buches dieser seiner Autobiographiee² : Et quaerebam viam conparandi roboris , quod esset idoneum ad fruendum te, nec inveniebam, donec amplecterer " mediatorem dei et hominum, hominem Christum Iesum " ( 1 Tim. 2 , 5 ; 7 , 8 , 24 ) .

Christus , ' der Weg , die Wahrheit und das Leben '

( Joh . 4 , 6 ) ist also via ipse salvator ( 8 , 1 , 1 ) , quem genuisti coaeternum et creasti "in principio viarum tuarum " ( Spr . 8 , 22 ; 7 , 21 , 27 ) . In mehreren Beispielen beschreibt Augustinus den sehr bedeutsamen Bereich der 'Wege Gottes ' , zu denen die letztgenannte Textstelle gehört , die auch für das ewige Sein Gottes das Bild des Weges der Bibel entsprechend verwendet . Augustinus hat erfahren , daß Gott belehrt und hilft miris et occultis modis ( 5 , 6 , 10 bzw. 6 , 12 , 22 Ende ) und beim Zaudern wird er durch die Erscheinung der Continentia bestärkt : Aperiebatur enim ab ea parte, qua intenderam faciem et quo transire trepidabam, casta dignitas continentiae ( 8 , 11 , 27 ) . Dieser Erscheinung der Continentia ist ein Gespräch des Augustinus mit den nugae nugarum et vanitates vanitantium, antiquae amicae meae ( 8 , 11 , 26 ) vorausgegangen . Mit diesem Erscheinen allegorischer Figuren weiblichen Geschlechtes tritt nun auch in den Confessiones das Bild von den Frauen auf , die im Wettstreit zum Begehen des guten beziehungsweise des schlechten Weges auffordern . Von den zahlreichen literarischen Parallelen seien als Beispiele aus der klassischen Literatur Xenophons Memorabilien II 1 , 21/34 und aus den patristischen Schriften der Hirte des Hermas Kap . 1/4 und das Gedicht II 1 , 45 θρῆνος περὶ τῶν τῆς αὐτοῦ ψυχῆς παθῶν des Gregor von Nazianz , Verse 231/263 angegeben , wobei die genannten Texte jeweils zwei Frauen 3 darstellen , die die beiden konträren Wege verkörpern . Doch um zum Vorstellungsbereich der ' Wege Gottes ' zurückzukommen , seien weitere Beispiele für dieses Bild in den Confessiones gennant . Denn Gott errettet und bringt auf seinen Weg : Et ecce ades et liberas a miserabilibus erroribus et

1266 B. Lorenz constituis nos in tua via et consolaris ( 6 , 16 , 26 ) und er lenkt des Menschen Schritte : Nam a domino gressus hominis diriguntur, et viam eius volet ( Ps . 36 ( 37 ) , 23 ; 5 , 7 , 13 Ende ) . Und weiter zeigt Augustinus mit Psalmworten Gottes Wege auf : Diriget mites in iudicio et docet mansuetos vias suas ( Ps . 24 ( 25 ) , 9 ; 7 , 9 , 14 ) . Dieses Gehen auf Gottes Wegen zeigt sich in den Gläubigen .

Augustinus erläutert

hierzu , wie er zu Beginn seines Versuches , Gottes Weg zu gehen , Simplicianus um Rat fragt , der in seinem hohen Alter schon reiche Erfahrung beim Gehen auf dem Weg Gottes gesammelt hatte : Iam vero tunc senuerat et longa aetate in tam bono studio sectandae viae tuae multa expertus, multa edoctus mihi videbatur : et vere sic erat . Unde mihi ut proferret volebam conferenti secum aestus meos , quis esset aptus modus sic affecto, ut ego eram, ad ambulandam in via tua ( 8 , 1 , 1 Ende ) . Neben den häufig gebrauchten Bildern vom ' Weg zu Gott ' und von den ' Wegen Gottes ' verwendet Augustinus weitere wichtige Beispiele für das Bild des Weges . So schreibt er von einer Phase seines Lebens : Dubitabam de illis omnibus et inveniri posse "viam vitae " minime putabam ( Ps . 15 ( 16 ) , 11 ; 6 , 2 , 2 Ende ) , doch fand er den von Gott bereiteten Weg des Heiles zum Leben : Credebam ( ... ) viam te posuisse salutis humanae ad eam vitam, quae post hanc mortem futura est ( 7 , 7 , 11 ) . Dieser Gedanke vom Weg zum Heil nach diesem Sterben wird auch an weiteren Stellen dieses siebten Buches aufgegriffen .

So drückt er die Zuversicht aus , daß viam ducentem ad beatificam

patriam non tantum cernendam sed et habitandam ( 7 , 20 , 26 ) .

Den Menschen auf dem

Weg in diese selige Heimat fordert er auf : Qui de longinquo videre non potest, viam tamen ambulet, qua veniat et videat et teneat ( 7 , 21 , 27 ) .

Den letztgenannten

Abschnitt schließt Augustinus dann mit der Darstellung des Gegensatzes zwischen dem Erkennen dieser Heimat , aber dem Nichtauffinden des Weges dorthin und andererseits dem Einhalten dieses Weges in die ewige Heimat , den der Allmächtige angelegt hat : Et aliud est de silvestri cacumine videre patriam pacis et iter ad eam non invenire et frustra conari per invia circum obsidentibus et insidiantibus fugitivis desertoribus cum principe suo " leone et dracone ", et aliud tenere viam illuc ducentem cura caelestis imperatoris munitam, ubi non latrocinantur , qui caelestem militiam deseruerunt (7, 21 , 27 Ende ) . Umschrieben wird dieser Heilsweg auch als Weg der Demut , den Gottes Erbarmen zeigt : Et quanta misericordia tua demonstrata sit hominibus via auf humilitatis ( 7 , 9 , 13 ) . Dabei verweist Augustinus entsprechend Paulus Christus Jesus als das fundamentum humilitatis und auf die grundlegende Bedeutung der caritas ( 7 , 20 , 26 ) und an anderer Stelle nennt er mit Blick auf Paulus den supereminentem viam caritatis ( 13 , 7 , 8 ; vgl . 1 Kor . 12 , 1 , 31 ) . In anderer Weise verwendet Augustinus auch einen Begriff wie via catholica ( 5 , 14 , 24 ) und schreibt in demselben Zusammenhang über seine damalige Unsicherheit in Fragen des Glaubens : Statui ergo tamdiu esse catechumenus in catholica ecclesia mihi a parentibus conmendata, donec aliquid certi eluceret, quo cursum dirigerem ( 5 , 14 , 25 Ende ) . Im negativen Sinn wird das Bild des Weges bei einigen Textstellen verwendet , die

Zum Bild des Weges bei Augustinus sich auf die Person des Augustinus beziehen .

1267

So wird die Sorge seiner Mutter aus-

gedrückt , die für ihren Sohn die krummen Wege derer fürchtet , die fern von Gott leben : Timuit tamen vias distortas, in quibus ambulant qui "ponunt " ad te "tergum et non faciem" ( Jer . 2 , 27 ; 2 , 3 , 6 Ende ) . Augustinus spricht selbst von seinen anfänglichen viae nequissimae ( 2 , 1 , 1 ) und erklärt beschämt : Et oderam securitatem et viam sine muscipulis ( 3 , 1 , 1 ) .

Auch dem Simplicianus erläutert er seine Umwege :

Narravi ei circuitus erroris mei ( 8 , 2 , 3 ) und verschweigt auch nicht , daß er für Alypius zur Schlange der Versuchung geworden ist : Etiam per me ipsi quoque Alypio loquebatur serpens ( 6 , 12 , 21 Ende ) . Doch Gottes Erbarmung entreißt den Augustinus seiner schlechten Wege : Neque deficiam in confitendo tibi miserationes tuas, quibus eruisti me ab ommibus viis meis pessimis ( 1 , 15 , 24 ) . Gerade das letztgenannte Beispiel führt zum Bild der Zwei Wege , das sich auch an anderen Stellen schon angedeutet hatte . Zu diesem Bild selbst , das eine der tragenden Vorstellungen bereits im griechischen bildhaften Denken darstellt , soll hier nichts Allgemeines gesagt ", sondern nur auf den Gebrauch auch in den Confessiones des Augustinus verwiesen werden .

So werden die eben genannten schlechten Wege des

Augustinus auch an einer anderen Stelle des ersten Buches angeführt und als Kontrast die guten Wege Gottes angegeben : Dum confiteor tibi quae vult anima mea , deus meus, et adquiesco in reprehensione malarum viarum mearum, ut diligam bonas vias tuas ( 1 , 13 , 22 ) . Eine Variation der schlechten Wege stellen dann die krummen Wege dar , auf denen Augustinus Freude aus zeitlichem Glück ersehnt : Ad hoc ego tam aerumnosis anfractibus et circuitibus ambiebam, ad laetitiam scilicet temporalis felicitatis ( 6 , 6 , 9 ) und kurz zusammengefaßt muß er gestehen : Et ieram per "vias pravas " ( Sir . 2 , 16 ; 8 , 7 , 17 ) . Von seinem späteren Weg als gläubiger Christ spricht er an anderer Stelle ( 10 , 4 , 6 ) . Ein etwas anderes Bild von den Zwei Wegen zeichnet Augustinus im dritten Buch , wo er seine eigenen ( autonomen ) Wege den Wegen Gottes gegenüberstellt : Praefidenti collo ad longe recedendum a te, amans vias meas et non tuas , amans fugitivam libertatem ( 3 , 3 , 5 Ende ) . Die bisher gezeigten Beispiele gehören also am ehesten zu dem - oft in der Bibel ausgeführten - Gegensatz zwischen Gotteswegen und Menschen5 wegen . Das ebenfalls häufig vorkommende Bild von der breiten Straße der Welt , für das als biblische Belegstelle nur an Matth . 7 , 13 erinnert sei , greift Augustinus gleichfalls auf , ohne allerdings den schmalen Weg des Lebens ausdrücklich anzuführen . So seufzt er : Inde ad suspiria et gemitus et gressus ad sequendas latas et tritas vias saeculi ( 6 , 14 , 24 ) , um dann in der Rückschau auch auf diesem breitem Weg Gottes Führung zu erkennen : Ibam per viam saeculi latam nec deserebas ( 6 , 5 , 8 Ende ) . Ein kurzer Überblick über die angegebenen Stellen zeigt , daß Augustinus in den Confessiones das Bild der Wege in geradezu konventionellen , besonders in den

SP 3 - T

B. Lorenz

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biblischen Schriften häufigen Darstellungen verwendet . Auffallend ist in diesem Zusammenhang nun vor allem , welche Darstellungen des Wege-Bildes nicht gebraucht werden .

Dabei handelt es sich besonders um den Kontrast

von steilem und ebenem Weg , dessen Fehlen hier in die Augen springt , da diese Zwei Wege häufig in der Bibel vorkommen , beispielsweise Ps . 5 , 9 ; 26 ( 27 ) , 11 ; Is . 25 , 7; 40 , 3 und Jer . 31 , 9. Ebenso kommt das Gegensatzpaar Weg des Lichtes - Weg der Finsternis , das z.B. Barn . 18 , 1 erscheint , im vorliegenden Zusammenhang nicht vor . Daher ist abschließend die Frage zu stellen , ob das Fehlen dieser Bilder und die teilweise häufige Verwendung anderer , oben angeführter Bilder vielleicht auf persönlichen Vorlieben des Autors beruhen könnte oder ob Augustinus die nicht gebrauchten Bilder als nicht so angemessen für seine Zwecke bewußt nicht gewählt hat .

ANMERKUNGEN 1. Vgl . hierzu allgemein G. N. Knauer : ' Peregrinatio Animae ( Zur Frage der Einheit der augustinischen Konfessionen ) ' , Hermes 85 ( 1957 ) S. 216-248 , der S. 218 Anm . 1 Beispiele für den Gebrauch dieses Bildes in den Confessiones aufzählt . E. Lehmann : Stället och vägen ett religionshistoriskt perspektiv ( Stockholm , 1917 ) geht auf das Bild des Weges bei Augustinus S. 294-299 ein , ohne den Gebrauch dieses Bildes in den Confessiones zu erwähnen . Interessante Bemerkungen zum Bild der Wege vgl . auch bei R.J. O'Connell : St. Augustine's Confessions . The Odyssey of Soul ( Cambridge , Mass . , 1969 ) . Textgestaltung und Übersetzung sind entnommen : Augustinus . Confessiones Bekenntnisse . Lateinisch und deutsch . Eingeleitet , übersetzt und erläutert von J. Bernhart ( München , 3. Aufl . , 1966 ) . 2. Vgl . M. Comeau : ' Le Christ , chemin et terme de l'ascension spirituelle , d'après Saint Augustin ' , R.S.R. 40 ( 1952 ) , S. 80-89 ; hier S. 80 . 3. Vgl . zu diesem literarischen Parallelen P. Courcelle : Les Confessions de Saint Augustin dans la tradition littéraire ( Paris , 1963 ) , S. 134-136 , und B. Lorenz : ' Das Bild der Zwei Wege im carm . II 1 , 45 des Gregor von Nazianz und der Widerhall im Gregorius des Hartmann von Aue ' , Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 20 ( 1979 ) , S. 277-285 ; hier S. 283f . 4. Vgl . O. Becker : Das Bild des Weges und verwandte Vorstellungen im frühgriechischen Denken ( Berlin , 1937 ) . 5. Vgl . allgemein F. Nötscher : Gotteswege und Menschenwege in der Bibel und in Qumran (Bonn , 1958 ) .

Une polémique augustinienne contre Cicéron Du fatalisme à la prescience divine José Oroz Reta , O.A.R. Salamanca

VANT d'analyser la polémique augustinienne contre Cicéron ou plutôt la position doctrinale de saint Augustin sur le fatalisme philosophique , je voudrais faire A™ un court aperçu historique du problème , qui pourrait certainement éclairer la question du fatalisme , de la liberté humaine et de la prescience divine.¹ Très probablement , le fatalisme provient de Chaldée : ce sont des astronomes sacerdotaux de Babylonie qui ont découvert la constance immuable des révolutions sidérales , dont la périodicité permet de prédire le retour à date fixe des phénomènes astronomiques . Les mouvements réguliers , invariables et nécessaires du soleil , de la lune et des planètes sont dirigés par des lois nécessaires dont l'accomplissement produit l'harmonie céleste . Accumulant des observations , ces prêtres furent naturellement amenés à la notion d'une nécessité , qui fut conçue comme résultant de la volonté des dieux , soit comme supérieure à celle - ci . Cette nécessité ou fatalité , liée aux mouvements réguliers du soleil , de la lune et des planètes , distribuait aux hommes les bienfaits et les maux , étant donné l'influence des astres sur les marées et sur les récoltes de la terre . Mais ce déterminisme ou fatalisme ne fut pas poussé jusqu'à ses ultimes conséquences , et les prêtres maintenaient la croyance à l'intervention arbitraire d'une volonté divine dans l'ordre de la nature . On pouvait prédire l'avenir par la contemplation des étoiles , mais en même temps les purifications , les sacrifices et les incantations pouvaient éloigner les maux et obtenir plus sûrement les bienfaits annoncés . Dans une certaine mesure , la volonté des dieux pouvait être adoucie . A l'époque alexandrine , certaines écoles de prêtres astronomes , et surtout certaines écoles de philosophie , qui exerçaient une extraordinaire influence sur toutes les manifestations de la vie , professent une doctrine plus rigoureuse sur le fatalisme et les lois immuables qui dirigent les actions des hommes . La Fatalité devient la maîtresse souveraine , qui gouverne tout , y compris Dieu lui -même .

1269

Et c'est la

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J. Oroz Reta

fatalité , par l'intermédiaire des astres , qui produit tous les phénomènes physiques , intellectuels et moraux . Mais qu'est ce que le fatalisme ou la fatalité pour les philosophes anciens ? Fatalisme , comme vous savez , vient de fatum , lequel est lui -même dérivé de fari , c'est -à-dire prononcer , décerner.2 L'étymologie du mot fatum avait été notée déjà par saint Isidore de Séville : ' Fatum ' autem dicunt quidquid dei fantur, quidquid Iupiter fatur; a fando igitur fatum dicunt, id . est, a loquendo.` Et Cicéron nous donne cette précision sur la signification exacte du mot : ' Fatum ' autem id appello quod Graeci ' heimarmenén ' , id est ordinem, seriemque causarum, cum causae causa nera rem ex se gignat ." Mais le mot grec indique une idée de partage qui a disparu du mot latin ."5 En effet , ' heimarméne ' est un participe parfait employé comme substantif, de la même racine que ' méros ' et ' moîra ' .

Il désigne donc proprement le

lot qui échoit à chacun des hommes . Dans la signification de la ' heimarméne ' , comme signale Albert Yon , ' il y a une conception ancienne , déjà homérique , d'une prédestination inflexible contre laquelle les dieux eux-mêmes ne peuvent rien , et l ' ' heimarméne ' , qui apparaît déjà chez Platon6 n'est que l'expression philosophique de la ' moîra ' d'Homère . Mais lorsque les Stoïciens ont voulu voir dans la destinée l'aboutissement fatal , et comme tel prévisible , de la chaîne des causes , ils ont essayé de trouver dans le mot lui -même l'indication de la valeur nouvelle qu'ils entendaient lui conférer .

Et par une de

ces fantaisies étymologiques dont l'antiquité était coutumière , ils ont imaginé une parenté entre ' heimarméne ' et ' heirmos ' , ' enchaînement ' , ' série ' . '7 Pourquoi les latins , au lieu de transposer directement dans leur langue , comme ils paraissent l'avoir souvent fait , l'un des mots qui signifiaient en grec la destinée , ou au lieu de le traduire par une expression semblable dont la composition renfermât les mêmes éléments , ont - ils , au contraire , imaginé ou rencontré le nom religieux de fatum ? Certes Cicéron aurait pu facilement trouver un mot latin qui 8 rappellerait son origine grecque , et pourtant il a préféré un nom de signification religieuse .

Peut -être pouvons -nous penser que la théorie de la destinée ou du

destin qui fait le fond du fatalisme , s'étant peu à peu transformée , avait fini par déborder , pour ainsi dire , les vocables qui l'avaient d'abord recouverte . Ce sont les Grecs eux-mêmes qui avaient commencé à faire entrer dans les explications ou définitions de l ' ' heimarméne ' les idées de sagesse éternelle , de raison universelle , de parole divine qui forment l'essence même du fatum latin . Comme le souligne J. Bouché , ' un mot nouveau devait répondre à des idées nouvelles .

Et c'est

ce mot qui a donné naissance , chez les Français , à celui de fatalisme espagnol , "fatalismo " dont la signification générale se trouve ainsi suffisamment marquée 9 par son origine ' . Le destin ou fatum ne fut jamais considéré comme synonyme ni du hasard ni de la fortune . Il y a sans doute aussi entre le hasard et la fortune une certaine

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différence , comme l'indique saint Thomas d'Aquin : Fortuna non est nisi in his quae voluntate aguntur; in illis quae fiunt a natura, ibi habet locum casus, sed non 10 fortuna c'est - à-dire , la fortune ne s'entend que des choses où la volonté humaine a sa part , tandis que le hasard s'étend à toutes les choses naturelles . Mais les résultats du hasard et ceux de la fortune sont également imprévus ; et voilà pourquoi on dit qu'il n'y a rien de capricieux comme la fortune ni d'inconstant comme le hasard .

Ce qui fait au contraire le fonds du fatum , et par consé11

quent du fatalisme lui -même , c'est l'idée de nécessité . Si d'un côté il y a eu des écoles philosophiques attachées profondément à la 12 doctrine du fatum , c'est - à- dire du fatalisme ou déterminisme universel 9 il faut noter également l'intérêt d'une autre tendance philosophique qui prétend défendre à tout prix la liberté humaine .

Dans ce sens nous pouvons admettre la première 13 phrase de l'article de W. Rordorf , qui affirme : ' L'Antiquité classique a développé

deux positions philosophiques contradictoires au sujet du problème du Destin : celle des stoïciens et celle de leurs adversaires ' . En effet , tandis que les stoïciens admettaient que tout est prédéterminé par l ' ' heimarméne ' , une autre partie de la philosophie ancienne réagissait contre la mise en question du libre arbitre et de la libre volonté de l'homme . Les deux représentants les plus importants des deux tendances sont Chrysippe , pour les fatalistes , et Carnéade qui s'attaquait avec véhémence et violence aux thèses fatalistes . Comme l'écrit David Amand , le dilemme ' déterminisme ou fatalisme astrologique et liberté ou libre arbitre ' non seulement a obsédé la pensée des philosophes , mais a aussi angoissé l'âme des simples . Le désespérant cauchemar de l ' ' heimarméne ' a hanté plébéiens sans culture et patriciens de l'intelligence .

Cette sombre doctrine

a tourmenté les masses attachées aux cultes polythéistes officiels , et les a poussées à demander le salut et la délivrance aux religions à mystères ...

Sauf les

Stoïciens , les Platoniciens de l'époque intermédiaire et les Néoplatoniciens de la tendance plotinienne , toutes les écoles philosophiques de l'Antiquité se sont liguées contre l ' ' heimarméne ' .

Elles se sont évertuées non seulement à revendiquer

la pleine et absolue liberté du vouloir , mais aussi à réfuter vigoureusement la 14 démoralisante théorie du fatalisme sidéral . Malgré la vive opposition , le fatalisme , ou plus exactement la mentalité fataliste , s'imposa peu à peu aux religions de tous les peuples méditerranéens . Sous la forme astrologique , elle pénétra tout le paganisme sémitique et romain .

En

Syrie on arrivera à faire du soleil le moteur des autres planètes fatidiques , le 15 créateur , le maître omnipotent de la nature et des hommes ." Et peu à peu le fatalisme sidéral se répand rapidement de l'Orient dans le monde latin .

Le poète Manilus

chantera le fatalisme universel et absolu dans ces versets des Astronomiques :

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J. Oroz Reta Fata regunt orbem , certa stant omnia lege , longaque per certos signantur tempora casus . Nascentes morimur , finisque ab origine pendet . Hinc et opes et regna fluunt , et saepius orta paupertas , artesque datae , moresque creati et uitia et clades , damna et compendia rerum. Nemo carere dato poterit nec habere negatum fortunamue suis inuitam prendere uotis 16 aut fugere instantem . Sors est sua cuique ferenda .

Dans la conception astrologique de Manilius et des autres poètes , le destin astral signifie le fatum ou l ' ' heimarméne ' , qui a remplacé la divinité . L' ' heimarméne ' des astrologues établit la ' sympatheia ' universelle qui met en connexion intime les mouvements astraux et les événements terrestres . Rien ne peut échapper à la domination universelle et totale de l ' ' heimarméne ' , qui domine la vie de l'individu , le corps et l'âme de l'homme , ses décisions volontaires , ses vertus et ses 17 vices , son tempérament et son caractère . Le fatalisme astrologique exerça une longue et pernicieuse influence parmi les païens et parmi les hérétiques . Cicéron et Tacite , dans leurs siècles éclairés , ont constaté à quel point ce fatalisme abusait les esprits et entretenait les charla18 tans : Plurimis mortalium non eximitur quin primo cuiusque ortu uentura destinentur dans le plus grand nombre des mortels , dès sa naissance , existe l'idée d'un arrêt fatal prononcé sur la vie entière de chacun d'eux .

Les Pères de l'Eglise auront le

plus grand souci et la plus constante préoccupation à mettre leurs fidèles à l'abri de ces singulières façons d'attribuer aux astres le dérèglement de leur vie : Eris 19 adulter, quia sic habes Venerem; eris homicida, quia sic habes Martem' , écrit saint Augustin interprétant la pensée de ses fidèles .

A tel point est arrivé le fatalisme

sidéral que saint Augustin voulait même interdire l'usage du mot fatum , auquel tant de superstitions s'étaient attachées : Fati nomen solet poni in constitutione siderum, cum quisque conceptus aut natus est ... quod nomen nos abhorremus praecipue propter 20 uocabulum, quod non in re uera consueuit intellegi ." Mais malgré le grand crédit du fatalisme astrologique , on pense qu'il ne fut qu'une déviation ou une corruption populaire dont l'histoire n'importe guère au développement du fatalisme en lui -même .

C'est plutôt grâce au fatalisme philoso-

phique , tel qu'il fut professé par les Stoïciens , que la doctrine de l ' ' hermarméne ' connut son plus grand essor . En effet , les Stoïciens firent du déterminisme ou fatalisme une de leurs doctrines capitales . Ce sont eux qui posèrent sérieusement le problème de Dieu , du Destin , de la Providence avec toutes les conséquences pratiques dans la vie des hommes . Les Stoïciens élevèrent le fatum ou ' heimarméne ' à la hauteur d'un concept central , comparable à ceux de Dieu , de Nature et de Providence . Et l'idée de la providence divine et de la liberté humaine attira avec tant d'insistance l'attention des penseurs que le problème du fatum ou de l ' ' heimarméne ' devint pendant des siècles une des questions les plus graves proposées à la méditation des philosophes . Cela nous

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explique suffisamment l'éclosion de toute une série de traités philosophiques sur 21 le destin . Après Zénon et Cléanthe , c'est Chrysippe qui expose et défend le plus brillamment la doctrine fataliste . Le destin universel est la liaison infrangible , l'enchaînement nécessaire et éternel des causes .

Chrysippe affirme que le lien universel ou

' sympatheia ' de toutes les choses est si absolu que les dérogations mêmes à l'ordre naturel sont comprises dans l'ordre immuable , prédéterminé de toute l'éternité.22 Le destin ou ' heimarméne ' est la divinité suprême à tel point que la Vérité , le Logos , la Nature , la Providence , ne sont que des aspects de cette ' heimarméne ' . fatalité ou loi cosmique universelle règle tout .

La

Saint Augustin nous a conservé le

résumé de ce principe : Omnium connexionem seriemque causarum, qua fit omne quod fit, 23 'fati ' nomine appellant ." La volonté des dieux , et a fortiori celle de l'homme , est complètement soumise au destin . Ce fatalisme universel est très bien exprimé dans cette phrase : Ducunt 24 uolentem fata, nolentem trahunt , et dans l'exemple du chien attaché à un chariot . Dans ce sens tout est fatalement établi dès le principe : les crimes et les châtiments , les vertus et les vices , la santé et la maladie , et tout dans la vie de l'homme suit un cours qu'on peut parfois prévoir mais non détourner . Mais les Stoïciens voulaient à tout prix faire une place d'honneur à la liberté . Le fatalisme ou déterminisme absolu et universel excluait toute liberté et constituait l'un des points névralgiques de la ' théologie ' stoïcienne qui , comme toutes les parties du système , accusait un caractère pratique et moral très marqué .

Pour

sauver quelque indépendance à notre activité , Chrysippe distinguait le Destin de la nécessité . Il pensait éviter ainsi le fatalisme absolu et l'activité humaine . C'est Cicéron qui nous a conservé le raisonnement tiré de la doctrine de Chrysippe sur le raisonnement paresseux : Nec nos impediet illa ignaua ratio, quae dicitur, appellatur enim quidam a philosophis ' argòs logos ' , cui si pareamus, nihil omnino agamus in uita.

Sic enim interrogant : Si fatum tibi est ex hoc morbo conualescere, siue tu

medicum adhibueris, siue non adhibueris, conualesces .

Item, si fatum tibi est ex

hoc morbo non conualescere , siue tu medicum adhibueris, siue non adhibueris, non conualesces . Et alterutrum fatum est : medicum ergo adhibere nihil attinet . Recte genus hoc interrogationis ignauum atque iners nominatum est , quod eadem ratione 25 omnis e uita tolletur actio . Chrysippe voulait maintenir la liberté de l'action humaine qu'il reconnaît expressément .

Il n'est pas facile de pouvoir assembler cette liberté avec le fatalisme

absolu , et pour cela Chrysippe s'est efforcé d'adoucir un peu le fatalisme rigoureux , en sauvegardant , du moins en paroles , la liberté de la volonté . Plus tard , le philosophe espagnol Sénèque essaya de trouver la liberté humaine dans la résignation et acceptation du fatum , la suprême divinité : Parere deo, libertas. Dans la mesure où l'homme arrive à accepter son propre destin , il est vraiment libre .

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Chrysippe , dans son désir de sauvegarder la liberté humaine , imagine une subtile distinction entre causes parfaites ou principales , et causes adjuvantes et prochaines . Le philosophe du Portique désirait écarter de son système la nécessité aveugle des astrologues et le Destin de Zénon , mais en fait il ne parvient pas à se libérer du déterminisme ou fatalisme intégral . Pour cela , il est difficile d'admettre , dans la doctrine philosophique de Chrysippe , la réalité d'une décision pleinement libre dans la trame des actions humaines . La volonté de l'homme reste toujours soumise à l'inflexible loi de l''heimarméne ' qui lie infailliblement les uns aux autres tous les anneaux de la chaîne des causes de l'univers . Les Stoïciens admettent que toutes les causes et tous les effets sont déterminés par une volonté directrice et par une raison universelle qui a marqué à l'avance la fin de toutes choses . Cette volonté directrice et cette raison universelle , qui est l'âme de l'univers , c'est la divinité , la providence . Mais le dieu des Stoïciens n'est plus séparé du monde , et le destin n'est que la loi même et l'expression de leur développement .

Dieu et le monde , d'après la philosophie stoïcienne , restent

sans doute toujours soumis au destin ; mais c'est en eux que réside cette puissance souveraine . Elle se rapproche donc aussi de l'homme qui peut désormais s'associer à elle par sa volonté pour partager avec elle l'empire et le gouvernement du monde . Le stoïcisme romain , surtout avec Sénèque , fera tous les efforts possibles pour maintenir la liberté humaine et pour prouver que le fatalisme théorique n'est pas incompatible avec la vertu agissante .

Il reprend souvent l'argumentation de

Carnéade , contre Chrysippe : le fatalisme anéantit toute morale , supprime la responsabilité et détruit les bases de la religion .

Ce sera le philosophe espagnol

Sénèque qui , en admettant la doctrine fataliste de Chrysippe , ne cessera d'affirmer et de recommander la nécessité de se livrer de bon coeur et volontairement à l'ordre du monde , de suivre spontanément la volonté de Dieu , d'adhérer joyeusement à sa volonté , au destin et à la providence . Le fatum , le destin , est inexorable , inflexible devant les prières et les sacrifices humains , en conséquence le plus sage est d'accepter dans sa propre volonté les décrets du destin . Seul devient maître de l ' ' heimarméne ' celui qui y consent généreusement , celui qui non seulement l'attend et s'y résigne , mais celui qui s'empresse à aller au devant d'elle : parere deo, libertas . Sénèque admet la liberté complète de l'homme : Nihil cogor, nihil patior inuitus, nec seruio deo , sed assentior, eo quidem magis quod scio omnia certa et in aeternum dicta lege decurrere ... Quid itaque indignamur ? quid querimur ? Ad hoc parti sumus . Quid est boni uiri ? Praebere se fato .

'Je ne souffre aucune contrainte , je n'endure rien malgré moi .

Je ne subis pas la volonté de Dieu , j'y adhère , et d'autant mieux que je sais que tout se déroule dans le monde en vertu d'une loi immuable , établie pour l'éternité ... A quoi bon s'insurger ? Pourquoi se plaindre ? C'est la loi même de la vie ... 26 fait l'homme sage ? Il se livre au destin ' .?

Que

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Sénèque parle de la soumission complète à la volonté des dieux ou plutôt au destin . Dans son traité De uita beata, il écrit : Deum sequere. Quae autem dementia est potius trahi quam sequi ? ... Quidquid ex uniuersi constitutione patiendum est, magno suscipiatur animo : ad hoc sacramentum adacti sumus , ferre mortalia ... In regno nati sumus . Deo parere libertas est . Certainement , quand le philosophe espagnol parle de dieu : Deum sequere , ce n'est pas le Dieu des chrétiens , mais c'est plutôt le destin , le fatum qui est supérieur à tout .

Vivre une vie qui mène

à la béatitude , ce n'est pas seulement se soumettre à la volonté du destin , mais y 27 consentir , y adhérer et même , si on la connaît , la prévenir . Le fatalisme philosophique et astrologique trouva dans le Christianisme son plus grand ennemi . En tant que religion de libération , le Christianisme , pour former le royaume de Dieu , visa le plus profond de l'homme , c'est - à- dire la liberté , puisque tous les moments les plus décisifs de l'homme sont effets de l'action libre . La liberté sera , dans la doctrine du Christianisme , le caractère principal et distinctif de l'esprit . Le destin final de l'homme c'est la coopération de l'action de Dieu et du libre arbitre , ou si nous voulons nous exprimer dans le langage augustinien , c'est l'effet des deux amours qui sont les artisans construisant la Cité de Dieu . Ainsi la liberté dans l'amour a une signification toute nouvelle aux conséquences très profondes que les philosophes anciens ignorèrent . Le Christianisme fait de la liberté et de la libération la base de sa pensée religieuse .

Les dogmes de Dieu créateur libre , qui fit toutes les choses , qui créa

l'homme à son image et ressemblance , libre pour décider de son destin éternel , l'histoire du salut , l'histoire de la création , de la chute , de la rédemption et de la glorification de l'homme , changèrent complètement les coordonnées de la pensée païenne .

Le concept de Dieu , le concept de l'homme et du monde reçurent une nouvelle

orientation et lumière absolument contraires aux idées du paganisme . L'acceptation et la croyance aux prophéties changèrent totalement les idées de la divination ancienne .

L'eschatologie , mettant en valeur le jugement final , destiné à sanction-

ner les actions humaines et à leur donner le mérite ou le châtiment , était la meilleure apologie du libre arbitre . Christ comme sauveur rompit les chaînes de l ' ' heimarméne ' .

C'est lui le libé-

rateur , le porteur d'une liberté toute nouvelle sur le monde . Pour cela , dès le commencement , les apologètes attaquèrent de toutes leurs forces les idées fatalistes de l'Antiquité en même temps que la conception du temps cyclique .

L'histoire du

monde ne se déroule pas selon des cycles répétitifs , mais en fonction d'une direction linéaire , qui aboutira définitivement , dans l'eschatologie , à une détermination du destin personnel de tous les hommes . Parmi les penseurs primitifs du Christianisme il faut nommer Justin , qui employa l'argumentation antifataliste de Carnéade contre Chrysippe ; Saint Irénée , défenseur du libre arbitre ; Saint Méthode ; Origène , grand adversaire du fatalisme . Comme

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l'écrit David Amand , ' Le libre arbitre constitue une pièce maîtresse dans le système 28 de philosophie religieuse d'Origène ' ." Laissant de côté les autres auteurs chrétiens , nous allons nous occuper plus spécialement de saint Augustin . D'un côté , nous possédons ses ouvrages dans un état plus complet que ceux des autres Pères de l'Eglise , et d'autre part , nous croyons qu'il est en vérité l'un des plus grands défenseurs de la liberté humaine en face de n'importe quel fatalisme ou déterminisme . De plus , saint Augustin , pendant des années et des années , subit le tourment du doute et de la recherche de l'origine du mal , suivant en cela le système fataliste du manichéisme : il ne se croyait pas le responsable de ses propres actions , mais le responsable était une substance ou réalité mauvaise , un principe absolu du mal , qui maintient son empire et sa domination sur les âmes . Il admit aussi , pendant quelque temps , l'astrologie et ses conséquences : De caelo tibi est inexcusabilis causa peccandi . Venus hoc fecit aut Saturnus aut Mars, 29 scilicet ut homo sine culpa sit, caro et sanguis, et superba putredo . A l'aide de la doctrine néoplatonicienne et des sermons de saint Ambroise , peu à peu il changea d'idées , et obtint une nouvelle vision des choses : il vit surtout que le mal n'était pas une réalité positive , mais la privation du bien , et il admit totalement que la 30 seule cause de notre chute et des actions humaines était le libre arbitre . Il est tout à fait normal qu'après sa conversion Augustin essayât de purifier son esprit en effaçant les traces de ces erreurs , et c'est dans cette intention qu'il consacre à ce problème une de ses études les plus profondes , les trois livres du De libero arbitrio , le premier ayant été rédigé à Rome , après sa conversion ( 387-388 ) , et les deux autres en Afrique à l'époque où il était prêtre , c'est - à- dire 31 après 391 . La réfutation du dualisme manichéen l'obligea à étudier profondément l'origine du mal et du libre arbitre , employant les découvertes faites sur la nouvelle ontologie ou la nature du bien , d'inspiration chrétienne et néoplatonicienne . Dieu est le créateur du monde et de tous les biens qui y sont contenus . Dieu fit toutes les choses par son Verbe ou idée exemplaire de toutes les choses . monde .

Tout est bon dans le

L'homme est bon et il possède le libre arbitre , qui est la cause du mal

moral , en tant qu'il se détourne librement des biens supérieurs pour adhérer aux biens inférieurs , changeant ainsi l'ordre des valeurs ou la hiérarchie des biens . Saint Augustin confirme et fait chrétienne la phrase de Sénèque Deo parere 32 libertas est . En effet , l'exercice de la vraie liberté se maintient seulement dans la dépendance de Dieu qui est le bien souverain . Le troisième livre étudie la grande difficulté de concilier la prescience divine et l'exercice de la liberté ou du libre arbitre . C'est l'objection posée par 33 Evodius à Augustin . La difficulté consiste à penser que la prescience divine est une espèce de force étrange , déterminante et contraignante . Si nous admettons la

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prescience divine de cette façon , nous sommes obligés d'accepter une de ces deux solutions : ou nous refusons la prescience divine en face de la liberté humaine , ou nous devons refuser la liberté humaine en admettant un Dieu ignorant . Dans ce dilemme , nous dévalorisons la perfection absolue de Dieu ou la perfection relative 34 de l'homme . Au fond , les arguments , que nous verrons tout à l'heure en exposant la vraie polémique contre Cicéron , nous renvoient aux idées exposées par saint Augustin dans le De libero arbitrio . Evodius ne comprenait pas quomodo fieri possit ut et Deus 35 praescius sit omnium futurorum, et nos nulla necessitate peccemus ." Mais en même temps il admettait que refuser la prescience divine était insanissima impietas . Saint Augustin reconnaissait la portée de la difficulté d'Evodius : Pulsasti uehementer , et admettait que la plupart des hommes fût tourmentée par ce problème parce que non pie quaerunt , uelocioresque sunt ad excusationem quam ad confessionem 36 peccatorum suorum." Le dialogue d'Evodius avec Augustin contient le dilemme que nous verrons tout à l'heure dans la polémique contre Cicéron : Si enim praescius est Deus , inquis, peccaturum esse hominem, necesse est ut peccet; si autem necesse est , non ergo est in 37 peccando uoluntatis arbitrium, sed potius ineuitabilis et fixa necessitas . Le dilemme est posé avec grande précision et clarté . Et l'exposé de saint Augustin , conçu afin de concilier les deux principes , met en relief comme base ferme , deux vérités qu'Augustin fera admettre à son interlocuteur : d'abord , Dieu connaît les choses futures . Il sait , par exemple , qu'Evodius sera heureux , qu'il arrivera au bonheur grâce à la bienveillance de Dieu lui -même ; en second lieu , que son désir d'être heureux est volontaire , et nullement conditionné ou encore moins influencé par une pression extérieure . Le désir de la future félicité personnelle ne contredit pas la science et la connaissance de Dieu sur ce bonheur . Et peu à peu Augustin arrive à la définition essentielle de la volonté avec ces mots : Voluntas igitur nostra nec uoluntas esset nisi esset in nostra 38 potestate. Quand nous obtenons quelque chose à partir de notre volonté , alors existe la liberté .

Si la volonté existe , en conséquence existe aussi la liberté .

De cette façon , Augustin admet la liberté et la prescience , deux principes qui ne sont pas opposés .

Dieu , sans obliger personne à pécher , mais en donnant la

pleine liberté , prévoit malgré tout les actions des hommes , leurs péchés et leurs vertus . Et en toute justice il peut être le juge de toutes les actions humaines , parce que l'homme a la liberté pleine et inconditionnée . L'argumentation philosophique est donc transposée sur le plan moral à cause de la relation avec la sanction des actions humaines , dont Dieu seul est l'acteur . Mais Evodius , convaincu de l'argumentation d'Augustin , lui soumet encore une autre difficulté : ' Si Dieu a prévu toutes les chutes de la volonté humaine , n'aurait - il pas été préférable de ne pas avoir créé les hommes ?

A cela Augustin répond que la

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volonté est un bien moyen , qui correspond à une situation moyenne , dans laquelle se trouve l'âme , c'est - à- dire , une situation dans laquelle on peut opter pour un bien supérieur ou pour un bien inférieur , en accomplissant de cette façon sa propre 39 destinée et finalité . Dans le traité du De libero arbitrio , saint Augustin s'intéressa aux problèmes du libre arbitre et de la prescience divine , et à l'essence de la volonté humaine , qui est la seule responsable de ses actions . Il éprouva aussi une grande difficulté à essayer d'harmoniser la connaissance préalable d'une action humaine avec la réalisation libre de l'acte humain . C'est la même difficulté que Cicéron avait trouvée , difficulté sur laquelle il va discuter avec l'auteur du De fato dans le livre V du De ciuitate Dei . Avant d'aborder la polémique proprement dite entre Augustin et Cicéron , nous avons voulu présenter le problème dans toutes ses nuances , tant pour les philosophes anciens que pour les auteurs chrétiens .

Et saint Augustin , comme l'avait fait

Cicéron , va analyser le plus clairement possible une question aux conséquences capitales pour la vie des hommes .

La dépendance de saint Augustin vis -à- vis de

Cicéron est incontestable , mais en même temps impossible à cerner de trop près , comme l'avait indiqué Maurice Testard , à la fin de sa thèse doctorale , publiée il y a plus de vingt ans , thèse que est toujours l'étude la plus profonde et la plus 40 complète sur les rapports entre Cicéron et saint Augustin ." Mise à part la formation chrétienne et néoplatonicienne de saint Augustin , avec tous les renseignements possibles que l'évêque d'Hippone a pu prendre dans les auteurs païens et chrétiens , inconnus évidemment de Cicéron , l'auteur du De ciuitate Dei , comme le souligne Maurice Testard , largement informé , ' peut devoir aux mêmes sources que Cicéron , ou aux traditions issues de ces sources , ou à d'autres sources encore , une pensée qui pour être semblable à celle de Cicéron , ne lui en est pas 41 moins parallèle ' ." Ce qui nous intéresse dans notre exposé sur la polémique contre Cicéron , c'est l'attitude de saint Augustin contre l'auteur du De fato ou en face de lui , et non pas les informations fournies directement à l'évêque africain . Laissant de côté la dépendance incontestable d'Augustin par rapport à Cicéron , le lecteur habitué aux ouvrages augustiniennes connaît parfaitement les éloges sortis de la plume de notre auteur , les phrases exprimant la vénération , le respect que mérite Cicéron . Souvent , en effet , on peut lire : Cicero noster; summus quidam orator...in quo magna eloquentia fuit. Cicéron est , pour l'auteur du De doctrina christiana,

' Romani auctor eloquii ' , et il le compte parmi les princes de l'éloquence 42 romaine , magnus auctor eloquentiae ." Seul un texte bien connu des Confessions :

Librum cuiusdam Ciceronis , a pu être interprété d'une façon un peu défavorable , mais aussi les interprètes ne manquent pas , qui ont trouvé une explication du 43 jugement augustinien en face de Cicéron ."

Une polémique augustienne contra Cicéron

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Il y a aussi un autre texte , concernant la Cité de Dieu: Vir grauis et philoso44 phaster. Toutefois l'interprétation moderne est arrivée à déceler un sens qui n'est 45 pas nécessairement péjoratif ." A quel point faut- il voir dans le suffixe -aster une valeur péjoratif ? C'est difficile à préciser . Il est vrai que souvent le suffixe -aster a cette valeur , mais ce n'est pas toujours le cas . Comme l'a vu F. Thomas , la valeur péjorative existe quelquefois , mais il existe aussi de nombreux emplois du suffixe qui ne présentent pas de nuance péjorative .

Il faut plutôt en extraire

une approximation , comme l'admet pour le texte du De ciuitate Dei le grand spécia46 liste Testard . D'après l'interprétation de Maurice Testard , la phrase augustinienne Tullius grauis et philosophaster veut désigner , ni moins ni plus , ' Cicéron ce philosophe à sa façon , cette manière de philosophe qu'il distinguait ainsi des grands maîtres en philosophie . Ce faisant , saint Augustin n'entendait pas déprécier 47 Cicéron , mais l'apprécier à sa juste valeur ' . Nous croyons que dans l'histoire de ce texte du De ciuitate Dei , avec toutes ses variations dans les manuscrits et leur interprétation , les auteurs ont eu peur d'appliquer le qualificatif philosophaster à Cicéron , ce que saint Augustin a fait en toute liberté en voyant qu'un uir grauis comme lui prônait le culte à une déesse impudique . Mais il n'est pas dans notre intention de faire l'exégèse de ce texte du De ciuitate Dei . Nous avons tout simplement fait une allusion aux rapports entre Cicéron et saint Augustin , rapports d'appréciation et de valeur , avant de nous limiter à cette polémique contre Cicéron que nous trouvons dans le livre V du De ciuitate Dei sur le fatum et la prescience divine . Nous avons déjà évoqué les efforts déployés par saint Augustin pour établir parfaitement l'existence de la providence divine en face du fatalisme philosophique ou astrologique .

Et le livre V du De ciuitate Dei commence par ces mots précis : ' Assurément , c'est la Providence divine qui établit les royaumes humains . Si quel-

qu'un attribue cet établissement au destin , en appelant destin la volonté même ou 48 la puissance de Dieu , qu'il garde son opinion , mais corrige sa définition ' ." Peutêtre Augustin pense - t - il à la doctrine stoïcienne qui , d'après Diogène Laërce , 49 affirme qu'au-dessus de tout il y a une divinité , voire même une Providence qui est définie comme ' un art qui se réalise en acte ' , d'après la précision de Diogène Laërce , qui cite comme temoin le second livre du Discours sur la Physique de 50 Posidonius , et le second livre de son traité De la divination . Et le chapitre 2 fait allusion à Cicéron : ' D'après Cicéron , Hippocrate l'illustre médecin a noté dans ses écrits qu'en voyant deux frères tomber malades et leur maladie en même temps s'aggraver et en même temps s'apaiser , il soupçonna qu'ils étaient jumeaux . Mais le stoïcien Posidonius , très adonné à l'astrologie , affirmait 51 qu'ils étaient nés et avaient été conçus sous la même constellation ' . On ne sait pas quelle était la pensée de Cicéron sur l'exactitude des observations de Posidonius et d'Hippocrate dans ce fragment du De fato conservé par saint Augustin .

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En tout cas , l'auteur du De ciuitate Dei dit clairement : ' Sur ce point , l'hypo52 thèse du médecin est beaucoup plus acceptable et dès l'abord beaucoup plus croyable '. Et Augustin ajoute au sujet de l'astrologie : ' Vouloir rapporter cette maladie identique et simultanée à la position du ciel et des astres quand ils ont été conçus et quand ils sont nés , alors que tant d'êtres très différents d'origine , de comportement , de destinée ont pu être conçus et naître au même instant , dans un même pays 53 et sous un même ciel , voilà une insolence que je ne saurais qualifier ' . Et Augustin de continuer son exposé contre les astrologues en faisant allusion à 54 l'argumentation du potier qui ne prouve rien en faveur de l'astrologie . C'est au chapitre 9 du livre V où saint Augustin commence sa vraie polémique contre la thèse de Cicéron sur la prescience divine . Le traité cicéronien du De fato est en rapport étroit avec les traités du De natura deorum et du De diuinatione . Ces trois traités nous montrent la manière dont le sage conçoit les rapports de l'homme avec la providence divine , qui détermine son attitude à l'égard des présages et de la divination . Cicéron a voulu montrer l'inanité de la croyance stoïcienne aux présages , aux oracles et aux avertissements prophétiques des songes . Le chapitre 9 est , d'un côté , une défense de la conception stoïcienne , tandis que d'un autre côté , il contient une attaque contre Cicéron . Nous ne pouvons pas préciser la pensée de saint Augustin sur la doctrine stoïcienne`559 mais nous avons l'impression que Cicéron lui -même fournit à saint Augustin l'essentiel de la thèse stoïcienne qu'il va utiliser dans sa polémique contre Cicéron . Augustin prend position contre Cicéron en face de la conception stoïcienne du destin . Il est vrai que le De fato , comme le traité du De diuinatione , est dirigé contre les stoïciens , et particulièrement contre Chrysippe .

C'est le reflet de la discussion menée par

Carnéade à propos de l'enseignement de Chrysippe .

En conséquence , il est impossible

de s'attendre à y trouver un exposé didactique des questions que soulève le problème du destin . La fin du chapitre précédent est bien claire pour notre propos .

Saint Augustin

nous dit : ' A l'appui de cette pensée viennent ces vers d'Homère traduits en latin par Cicéron : Tales sunt hominum mentes, quales pater ipse Iuppiter auctiferas lustrauit lumine terras . Une opinion de poète serait de peu de poids dans cette question . Mais comme , au dire de Cicéron , les stoïciens se réclamaient souvent de ces vers d'Homère pour affirmer la puissance des destins , il s'agit là non de l'opinion d'un poète mais de celle de ces philosophes ; et , grâce à ces vers qu'ils utilisent dans leurs discussions , leur doctrine sur le destin se dégage très nettement .

Pour eux , ce mot dé-

signe Jupiter qu'ils considèrent comme le dieu suprême et dont ils font dépendre 56 l'enchaînement des destins ' . Après ces mots commence la véritable polémique contre Cicéron . Augustin reconnaît que le philosophe romain a voulu réfuter la doctrine des stoïciens . Et comme

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Une polémique augustienne contra Cicéron il se considère incapable de le faire à moins de supprimer la divination , il va

jusqu'à nier la possibilité de connaître l'avenir , ' soutenant de toutes ses forces qu'il n'y a pas de trace ni en l'homme ni en Dieu , non plus qu'aucune prédiction de l'avenir . Ainsi il nie même la prescience de Dieu et s'acharne à détruire toute prophétie , fût- elle plus claire que le jour , au moyen de vains arguments et en s'objectant à lui -même certains oracles faciles à réfuter , sans réussir pourtant à 57 les convaincre d'erreur ' . Cicéron avait attaqué les conjectures des astrologues , si fragiles qu'elles se détruisent d'elles -mêmes . Et ici Augustin écrit une phrase très dure contre Cicéron: ' Les partisans de la fatalité astrale sont plus excusables que lui , qui supprime la prescience de l'avenir . Car reconnaître l'existence de Dieu et lui refuser cette 58 Cicéron croyait prescience , c'est le comble de la folie , apertissima insania est ' . que la conception stoïcienne du destin entraînait la négation de la liberté humaine , mais en refusant cette doctrine du destin , le philosophe romain allait trop loin . Sur ce point on peut penser qu'Augustin veut justifier à sa façon l'attitude de Cicéron . L'auteur romain n'a pas osé défendre sa position et il a chargé le pontife C. Aurelius Cotta de soutenir la discussion contre les stoïciens .

Mais Cicéron

s'est rangé du côté de Lucilius Balbus , à qui il avait confié la défense des opinions stoïciennes , plutôt que du côté de C. Aurelius Cotta , qui nie l'existence de toute 59 nature divine " à tel point que Lucilius Balbus lui dit : Cotta, tu quidem inuectus es in eam Stoicorum rationem quae de prouidentia deorum ab illis sanctissume et 60 prudentissume constituta est. D'après saint Augustin , Cicéron se trouvait dans une situation difficile et devait choisir entre le destin et le libre arbitre : ' Cicéron pense en effet qu'admise la science de l'avenir , le destin en découle d'une 61 manière inéluctable ' 6 Et un peu plus loin , Augustin continue son exposé : ' Qu'a donc redouté Cicéron

dans la prescience de l'avenir pour vouloir l'ébranler par sa détestable argumentation ? C'est que , si les événements à venir sont tous prévus , ils s'accompliront dans l'ordre même où ils ont été prévus . S'ils viennent dans cet ordre , l'ordre des choses est déterminé par la prescience divine ; si l'ordre des événements est déterminé , l'ordre des causes l'est aussi , car rien ne peut se produire qui ne soit précédé d'une cause efficiente . Or si l'ordre des causes , par qui se produit tout ce qui existe , est déterminé , les moindres événements , affirme Cicéron , arrivent fatalement . Par suite , rien ne dépend plus de nous et il n'y a plus de libre arbitre .

Que si nous le concédons , ajoute- t - il , toute la vie humaine est bouleversée .

En vain l'on fait des lois , en vain l'on a recours aux reproches , aux louanges , aux blâmes , aux exhortations . Il n'y a plus aucune justice à établir des récompenses 62 pour les bons et des châtiments pour les méchants ' . Je pense que saint Augustin veut justifier , si possible , la position prise par Cicéron qui a voulu sauver le libre arbitre , la liberté des hommes en face de la

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prescience divine , comme il l'affirme précisément : ' C'est donc pour éviter à l'humanité ces conséquences indignes , absurdes , pernicieuses , que Cicéron récuse la 63 prescience de l'avenir ' . C'est la conclusion à laquelle était arrivé Chrysippe : Si est motus sine causa , non omnis enuntiatio, quod 'axioma ' dialectici appellant, aut uera aut falsa erit; causas enim efficientis quod non habebit, id nec uerum nec falsum erit; omnis autem enuntiatio aut uera aut falsa est; motus ergo sine causa nullus est. Quod si ita est, omnia quae fiunt, causis fiunt antegressis ; id si ita est, fato omnia fiunt ; efficitur igitur fato fieri quaecumque fiant , c'est -à- dire : ' S'il y a un mouvement sans cause , toute énonciation , que les dialecticiens appellent " axiome " , ne sera pas ou vraie ou fausse ; car ce qui n'aura pas de causes efficientes ne sera ni vrai ni faux ; or toute énonciation est ou vraie ou fausse ; donc le mouvement sans cause n'existe pas .

S'il en est ainsi , tout ce qui arrive ,

arrive par des causes antérieures ; s'il en est ainsi , tout arrive par le destin . 64 Il en résulte donc que tout ce qui arrive , arrive par le destin ' . Augustin continue son exposé avec l'intention de défendre la position de Cicéron qui se trouve dans un angoissant dilemme , et qui doit prendre une position précise entre le pouvoir de la volonté ou le libre arbitre , et la prescience de l'avenir ou prescience divine .

D'après Cicéron , le pouvoir de la volonté et la prescience

divine s'excluent mutuellement , et en conséquence admettre l'un , c'est nier l'autre : choisir la prescience , c'est supprimer le libre arbitre ; choisir le libre arbitre , c'est supprimer la prescience . 'Voilà pourquoi , écrit Augustin , ce grand esprit qui de tant de manières et avec tant d'art a pourvu aux intérêts de la vie humaine , a dans cette alternative choisi le libre arbitre ; mais pour l'établir solidement , il nie la prescience de l'avenir et par là , en voulant faire les hommes libres , il les 65 a fait sacrilèges ' . Et ici la polémique devient plus aigre et forte .

Augustin admet clairement le

libre arbitre et aussi la prescience divine : ' L'âme vraiment religieuse choisit l'un et l'autre . Elle confesse l'un et l'autre , et les fonde tous deux sur la foi et la piété ' . Et à son tour Cicéron répond : ' S'il y a une prescience de l'avenir , toute la suite des événements ainsi liés entre eux aboutira à ne rien laisser en notre pouvoir . Par contre , si quelque chose dépend de notre vouloir , en retournant le raisonnement on aboutit à supprimer la prescience de l'avenir . Voici comment se fait ce renversement : s'il y a un libre arbitre , tout n'arrive pas par l'effet du destin ; si tout n'arrive pas par l'effet du destin , l'ordre des causes n'est pas entièrement déterminé ; si l'ordre des causes n'est pas entièrement déterminé , l'ordre des événements non plus n'est pas déterminé dans la prescience divine , car ils ne peuvent se réaliser sans causes qui les précèdent et les produisent ; si l'ordre des événements n'est pas déterminé par la prescience divine , ils n'arrivent pas tous comme Dieu a prévu qu'ils arriveraient : il n'y a pas en Dieu , d'après lui , 66 de prescience universelle ' .

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Mais Augustin élève la voix contre cette conception cicéronienne , et ne veut pas reconnaître l'argumentation du philosophe païen : ' Contre ces audaces sacrilèges et impies , nous affirmons et que Dieu connaît tous les événements avant qu'ils se produisent , et que nous faisons volontairement tout ce que nous avons connaissance et conscience de faire uniquement parce que nous le voulons ' .

Augustin n'est nullement

d'accord avec la conception fataliste universelle : ' Nous ne disons certes pas que tout arrive par le destin ' . Et plus encore il nie la valeur du destin : ' Nous affirmons bien plus , que rien n'arrive par lui ' . Toute la théologie stoïcienne est L'auteur de la Cité de Dieu apparaît comme

exclue de la conception augustinienne .

un grand champion de la doctrine de la divinité transcendante et condamne avec vigueur la généthliologie , parce que le destin des astrologues suppose la croyance au fatalisme absolu .

Augustin a toujours défendu la valeur du libre arbitre et en

même temps l'existence de la libre volonté de l'homme en face de tous les événements du monde . ' Quant à l'ordre des causes où la volonté de Dieu joue un rôle prépondérant , nous ne le nions pas , mais nous ne le désignons pas par le mot destin , sauf peutêtre dans le sens qu'on lui donne en faisant dériver fatum , destin , de fari , parler . Nous ne pouvons nier , en effet , qu'il est écrit dans les Saintes Ecritures : ' Dieu a parlé une fois et j'ai entendu deux choses : la puissance appartient à Dieu , et à Vous , Seigneur , la miséricorde , à Vous , qui rémunérez chacun selon ses oeuvres ' ( Ps . 61 , 12-13 ) .

Ces mots : ' Il a parlé une fois ' signifient : ' Il a émis une parole

immobile ' , c'est - à- dire irrévocable , de même qu'il connaît irrévocablement tout ce qui doit arriver et qu'il doit faire lui - même .

Voilà pourquoi nous pourrions faire

dériver fatum de fari , si ce mot ne s'appliquait d'ordinaire à autre chose , vers 67 quoi nous ne voudrions pas voir pencher le coeur humain ' .. Mais si l'ordre des causes est déterminé par Dieu , il faut admettre que rien ne dépend de l'arbitre de notre volonté , car même nos volontés appartiennent à l'ordre causal , certain pour Dieu et contenu dans sa prescience . Démocrite , admettaient la nécessité universelle .

Les atomistes , avec

Et Cicéron de signaler qu'il y

avait plus de profondeur dans l'enseignement de Carnéade qui n'admettait pas l'indétermination universelle contre la fatalité de Chrysippe .

Mais le philosophe romain ,

tout en étant d'accord avec le premier pour constater l'indépendance absolue du mouvement volontaire , ne se borne pas à critiquer son système physique - De fato 10 , 22 commun .

et se substitue à lui en face de Chrysippe , qui était en somme l'adversaire Or le principe de causalité est aussi évident que l'indétermination du mouve-

ment volontaire , mais il suffit de distinguer opportunément la causalité interne et la 68 causalité externe , qui seule est contrainte , pour concilier les deux points de vue . Cicéron avait établi contre les Epicuriens le principe que tout ce qui arrive est l'effet de causes antérieures , car notre volonté n'a pas de causes externes et antérieures . Comme il apparaît clairement , c'est un abus de langage courant de dire que

SP 3 U

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En disant sans cause nous 69 voulons dire ' sans cause externe et antérieure , non sans quelque cause ' . quelqu'un veut ou ne veut pas quelque chose sans cause .

Et sur ces paroles , saint Augustin saisit l'occasion d'attaquer violemment Cicéron : ' Du reste , le principe , concédé par Cicéron , que rien n'arrive sans être

70 précédé d'une cause efficiente , suffit à le réfuter lui -même dans le présent débat ' .' Car à quoi lui sert d'affirmer que ' rien n'arrive sans cause , mais que toute cause n'est pas fatale , puisqu'il y a des causes fortuites , des causes naturelles , des causes volontaires ? , 71 A ce sujet je voudrais apporter ici l'autorité du Père Thonnard , le grand philosophe et profond connaisseur de la doctrine de saint Augustin . L'auteur de la Cité de Dieu rencontra dans Cicéron les trois sortes de causes suivantes : fortuites , naturelles et volontaires , et il les ramène toutes aux causes volontaires . Car les causes fortuites ne sont que des causes cachées , qui dépendent de la volonté de Dieu . Et les causes naturelles , dont le rôle ne dépasse guère celui d'un instrument mû par un autre , ne méritent pas le nom de cause efficiente réservé aux seuls agents volontaires . Cette théorie doit être bien comprise . Il faut la remettre dans la ligne du platonisme , tout en lui gardant ses aspects originaux .

La cause explica-

tive , à laquelle Augustin pense spontanément , est l'idée exemplaire devenue efficace par la décision d'une volonté qui , en face du bien ainsi proposé , se laisse attirer par lui comme par un but à atteindre . Cette cause apparaît ainsi comme la synthèse des trois aspects analysés par l'école d'Aristote , spécialement par saint Thomas d'Aquin : cause efficiente , cause exemplaire , cause finale .

La première , n'expli-

quant que l'apparition de l'effet : phénomène ou être nouveau ; la seconde , rendant compte de la ressemblance de perfection entre l'effet et la cause quand celle - ci , douée d'intelligence , agit après une idée exemplaire ; la troisième enfin , expliquant par l'attirance du bien l'action même de l'agent . La 1 cause explicative ' platonicienne unit ces trois aspects .

Les ' causes volontaires ' dont il s'agit ici semblent

bien être de ce type , ou du moins elles s'en rapprochent et y participent le plus possible pour être de vraies causes efficientes . Mais d'abord c'est dans l'homme par introspection que saint Augustin étudie la volonté et il lui donne un rôle très large de causalité efficiente . Selon lui , en effet , la volonté exerce une domination universelle sur nos actes .

Et si , au sens

plein et comme à son sommet , elle semble synonyme de liberté , son rôle dépasse de loin celui de nos décisions libres . Elle domine d'abord dans l'ordre sensible : ' elle s'insère , dira saint Augustin , en tous les mouvements de l'âme qui ne sont au 72 fond que les vouloirs ' .' C'est encore la volonté qui commande toute l'activité de connaissance . Dans la sensation externe , elle doit intervenir pour unir le sens à 73 son objet , comme l'indique saint Augustin dans l'analyse de la vision ." Dans la vie intérieure sensible , la volonté intervient de même pour fixer les souvenirs dans la mémoire , et ensuite pour les y retrouver et pour combiner les

1285 Une polémique augustienne contra Cicéron 74 images et former les phantasmes ." Elle est à la racine de notre pensée et si nous cherchons à connaître , c'est que nous voulons : ' La conception de notre esprit est précédée par un certain appétit dont l'action , en nous laissant chercher et trouver ce que nous voulons connaître , fait naître la connaissance par une sorte d'enfante75 ment mental ' .' Enfin , cette volonté ou appétit s'exerce non seulement vers le haut , mais vers le bas , dans les instincts inconscients qui prolongent ou préparent les mouvements de la sensation et des passions , en particulier dans le vouloir- vivre 76 fondamental ." Ainsi la volonté , en ce sens général , est le mouvement vers l'action et vers l'oeuvre externe qui met l'âme en contact avec le monde .

Et elle est par

excellence l'âme considérée comme cause efficiente . D'après saint Augustin , dans le monde il y a de vraies causes , des causes prochaines qui participent selon leur degré d'être à la propre activité de Dieu pour réaliser , sous la conduite de la Providence divine , l'ordre du monde . C'est la conduite de la providence et non le fatalisme philosophique qui ordonne les actes de la volonté humaine .

Mais , selon saint Augustin , les causes efficientes dignes de

ce nom sont les causes profondes qui dominent l'ordre de l'univers et en livrent la 77 dernière explication , et ce sont toujours des causes volontaires , sans contrainte .' Cicéron reconnaissait que rien n'arrive qu'en vertu d'une cause antérieure . Et saint Augustin va plus loin et continue l'exposition de sa doctrine contre Cicéron : ' Pour nous , en effet , s'il s'agit de ces causes dites fortuites , d'où la fortune même a reçu son nom , nous ne disons pas qu'elles sont inexistantes , mais cachées , et nous les attribuons la volonté du vrai Dieu ou de n'importe quels esprits . Quant au aux causes naturelles , nous ne les séparons nullement de la volonté du Dieu Auteur et Créateur de toute la nature .

Enfin les causes volontaires proviennent

soit de Dieu , soit des anges , soit des hommes , soit des bêtes , si tant est qu'on puisse appeler volontés ces mouvements d'âmes privées de raison , qui les portent à agir selon leur nature , quand elles ressentent quelque désir ou quelque aversion . D'ailleurs par volonté des anges j'entends soit celles des bons anges , que nous appelons anges de Dieu , soit celles des mauvais anges que nous appelons anges du 78 diable ou encore démons ' ." Et Augustin essaie de faire un résumé du principe de causalité : ' C'est Dieu luimême , Esprit absolument incréé ' . En sa volonté réside la puissance souveraine qui aide les volontés bonnes des esprits créés .

' De même qu'il est le Créateur de toutes

les natures , de même est - il le dispensatuer de tous les pouvoirs , mais non de tous 79 les vouloirs ' .' En conséquence c'est l'homme le seul reponsable de ses actions , mais Dieu est la Providence qui sait et connaît tout avant que l'homme réalise son propre vouloir . Et un peu plus loin saint Augustin se demande , en faisant allusion directe à la doctrine de Cicéron : ' Comment donc l'ordre des causes , fixé dans la prescience divine , pourrait- il faire que rien ne dépende de notre volonté , alors que nos vouloirs

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occupent une place si grande dans l'ordre même des causes?

Que Cicéron s'en prenne

donc à ceux qui disent que l'ordre des causes est fatal ou qui plutôt l'appellent destin , affirmation qui nous fait horreur surtout à cause du mot qui , au sens usuel , ne correspond à rien de vrai . Mais quand Cicéron nie que l'ordre de toutes les causes est complètement déterminé et parfaitement connu de la prescience divine , nous détestons son opinion plus que ne faisaient les stoïciens . Car ou bien il nie l'existence de Dieu, comme il a essayé de le faire par personne interposée dans son De natura deorum ; ou bien , s'il avoue son existence en niant sa science de l'avenir , en cela même il ne fait que répéter ce que disait l'insensé dans son coeur : Il n'y a pas de Dieu ( Ps . 13 , 1 ) . En effet , celui qui ne connaît pas tous les événements 80 à venir n'est assurément pas Dieu ' . Et Augustin poursuit son affirmation des attributs de Dieu : ' Voilà pourquoi même nos volontés n'ont de pouvoir que dans la mesure où Dieu l'a voulu et prévu. Aussi tout ce qu'elles peuvent , elles le peuvent très certainement , et c'est elles mêmes pleinement qui feront ce qu'elles doivent faire .

Et en effet , qu'elles le pour-

raient et le feraient , cela même a été prévu par celui dont la prescience est infail81 lible ' . Peu à peu Augustin arrive à la fin de sa polémique ; il veut encore clarifier ce qu'il entend par ' nécessité ' .

C'est en vertu de la définition exacte des mots qu '

Augustin veut trancher définitivement la question de la liberté , de la nécessité et de la prescience divine . Il écrit notamment : ' Il n'a donc pas à redouter la nécessité .

Cédant à cet effroi , les stoïciens ont fait de grands efforts pour distinguer

les causes efficientes et par là en soustraire certaines à la nécessité et lui en soumettre d'autres . Parmi celles qu'ils n'ont pas voulu lui soumettre , ils ont rangé nos volontés , de crainte de les priver de liberté en les soumettant à la 82 nécessité'8 Et après avoir énoncé les différentes espèces de nécessité , il conclut son exposé: 'Voilà pourquoi tout ce que l'homme subit contre sa volonté , il ne doit l'attribuer ni aux volontés des hommes , ni à celles des anges , ni à celles de n'importe quel esprit créé , mais plutôt à la volonté de celui qui donne le pouvoir de réaliser le 83 vouloir' . Et saint Augustin affirme d'une façon catégorique contre Cicéron : ' Mais il ne s'ensuit pas qu'il n'y ait rien au pouvoir de notre volonté du fait que Dieu a prévu ce qui se passerait en elle . Car en prévoyant cela , il a prévu quelque chose . Or si en prévoyant ce qui se passerait dans notre volonté , il a prévu non certes un pur néant mais quelque chose de réel , assurément selon sa prévoyance même , quelque chose dépendant de notre volonté . Rien par conséquent ne nous oblige , soit à supprimer le libre arbitre en maintenant la prescience divine , soit à nier la prescience divine ce qui serait sacrilège : quod nefas est - en conservant le libre arbitre . Nous embrassons au contraire ces deux vérités , nous confessons l'une et l'autre fidèlement

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Une polémique augustienne contra Cicéron et sincèrement : l'une pour bien croire , l'autre pour bien vivre .

Car on vit mal

quand on ne croit pas de Dieu ce qu'il faut croire .

Loin de nous donc , pour rester libres , la négation de la prescience de celui dont le secours nous donne ou nous donnera la liberté ' .84 Et la polémique philosophique s'achève en descendant au niveau pratique : ' Par

suite , ce n'est pas en vain qu'il y a des lois , des réprimandes , des exhortations , des louanges et des blâmes . Tout cela en effet est prévu par Dieu et a une puissante efficacité , dans la mesure même où il l'a prévu .

Les prières aussi ont une grande

force pour obtenir les biens qu'il a prévu d'accorder à ceux qui prient , et c'est en toute justice que des récompenses ont été établies pour les bonnes actions , des châtiments pour les péchés . prévu qu'il pècherait .

Car si l'homme pèche , ce n'est pas parce que Dieu a

Il sait fort bien , au contraire , que c'est lui qui pèche

quand il commet un péché .

Car celui dont la prescience est infaillible a prévu que

le péché ne serait commis ni par le destin , ni par la fortune , ni par rien d'autre , mais par le pécheur lui -même . Assurément il ne pèche pas , s'il ne le veut pas . 85 Mais ce refus de pécher , lui aussi , Dieu l'a prévu ' . Sans doute c'était un problème particulièrement délicat : expliquer pourquoi Dieu qui prévoit tout , peut punir un pécheur dont il sait à l'avance qu'il pèchera . C'est bien à cause de la pleine liberté de l'homme que toutes ses actions sont libres et en conséquence qu'elles méritent récompense ou châtiment . La dernière phrase que nous venons de citer le dit clairement . La philosophie antique ne pensait pas à la nécessité de la rédemption de l'homme . Tout le système théologique du christianisme se fonde sur la vérité d'un Dieu Créateur et Rédempteur , et la vérité de l'homme pécheur mais libéré par le Christ , fait qu'il faut admettre d'un côté la providence et la prescience divine et de l'autre côté la liberté de l'homme . On peut affirmer que l'homme est d'autant plus libre qu'il est dépendant de Dieu .

L'homme ne peut avoir la vraie et pleine liberté 86 que dans la mesure où Dieu veut bien la lui donner . Ainsi se termine cette polémique anticicéronienne . Mais en réalité ce n'est pas

seulement contre Cicéron qu'Augustin a voulu faire un exposé philosophique de la liberté et de la prescience divine . Le problème particulièrement délicat intéressait pareillement tous les systèmes philosophiques anciens , et l'auteur africain a su résoudre d'une façon satisfaisante une question extrêmement complexe et difficile .

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J. Oroz Reta RÉFÉRENCES

1. Il y a 34 années David Amand publia sa thèse doctorale : Fatalisme et liberté dans l'antiquité grecque. Recherches sur la survivance de l'argumentation morale antifataliste de Carméade chez les philosophes grecs et les théologiens chrétiens des quatre premiers siècles ( Louvain , 1945 ) . Cette oeuvre très importante , entièrement épuisée depuis plusieurs années , a été reproduite par A. Hakkert , à Amsterdam , 1973. L'étude d'Amand offre un matériel copieux et intéressant . On peut voir aussi , entre autres : W. Gundel , Heimarmene , in R.E. VII , 2622-2645 ; Fr. Cumont , Fatalisme astral et religions antiques , dans Revue d'histoire et de littérature religieuses , 3 ( 1912 ) , 513-543 ; W. Gundel , Beiträge zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Begriffe Ananke und Heimarmene ( Giesen , 1914 ) . 2. Leibnitz ( Ed . Erdmann ) , Opera philosophica ( Berlin , 1810 ) , p . 764 . 3. Etymolog . VIII 9 . 4. De diuinatione I 55 , 125 . 5. Cf. Boisacq , Dict . étymol . de la langue grecque , s.u. ' metromai ' . Secondo gli Stoici ' tutto dunque nel mondo avviene secondo un ininterrotto nesso causale, secondo una legge fatale che neppure un dio può modificare in alcunché . Gli Stoici trovarono espressa l'essenza di questa legge nell'antichissima parola ' heimarmene ' . Con un'etimologia inammissibile la fecero derivare de ' heirmos ', e la interpretarono como ' serie delle cause ' : ' heirmos aitlôn ' , series causarum. Cf. M. Pohlenz , La Stoa . Storia di un movimento spirituale , trad . ital . ( Firenze , 1967 ) , vol . I , 202 . 6. Cf. Phéd. 115a ; Gorgias 512e . 7. Cicéron : Traité du destin ( Paris , 1950 ) , p . XII . Albert Yon fait noter qu'il n'y a évidemment aucune parenté entre ' meíromai ' et ' eiro ' , de racines tout à fait différentes : * smer- et * ser- . 8. Sur cet aspect de l'activité littéraire de Cicéron , cf. R. Poncelet , Cicéron, traducteur de Platon . L'expression de la pensée complexe en latin classique ( Paris , 1953) . 9. Cf. J. Bouché , Fatalisme , dans Dict . Théolog . cath . V , 2 , 2095 . 10. II Phys . 10 . 11. J. Bouché , ibid. 12. On dit assez communément que le déterminisme se distingue du fatalisme en ce qu'il n'admet que du déterminé . Il ne remonte pas à un être transcendant qui pourrait par cette transcendance même échapper à la détermination . Mais le fatalisme fait dépendre tous les événements d'une première cause qui peut être aussi bien une volonté libre absolue . Ainsi , tandis que le déterminisme renferme la nécessité dans la nature , le fatalisme la rattache à une puissance supérieure , cf. J. Bouché , ibid . 13. Saint Augustin et la tradition philosophique antifataliste, à propos de De Civ. dei 5, 1-11 , en Vigiliae Christianae 28 ( 1974 ) , 190 . 14. Fatalisme et liberté , p . 587 . 15. Cf. Fr. Cumont , Théologie solaire du paganisme romain ( Paris , 1909 ) . Récemment Gaston H. Halsberghe a publié un livre très important sur le culte du soleil pendant l'Empire romain : The cult of sol invictus ( Leiden , 1972 ) . 16. Manilius , Astronomiques IV , 14-22 . 17. Cf. W. Gundel , Heimarmene , in R.E. VII , 2633-2634 . 18. Annales VI 22 . 19. Enar. in psal . 140 , P.L. 37 , 1821 . 20. De ciuit . Dei , V 9 , P.L. 41 , 150-152 . 21. Le titre donné par Cicéron à son ouvrage , De fato , correspond au titre des ouvrages grecs similaires , Peri tês heimarménes . Tel est notamment le titre d'un ouvrage de Chrysippe , en deux livres , qui ne nous a pas été conservé . Tertullien aussi écrivit un traité , De fato , et aussi Sénèque , Alexandre d'Aphrodisie . Cf. von Arnim , Stoicorum ueterum fragmenta ( Leipzig , 1903 ) , vol . II , pp . 264-298 , nn . 912-1007 . 22. Cf. von Arnim , Stoicorum uet . fragm . , II 913-927 , pp . 264-267 . 23. De ciuit . Dei , V 8 , P.L. 41 , 148 . 24. Dans son commentaire du Timée , Chalcidius atteste expressément que d'après l'enseignement de Chrysippe , leges etiam et exhortationes et obiurgationes et disciplinas quaeque huiusmodi sunt, omnia teneri fatalibus condicionibus , 160 et 161 : von Arnim , Stoicorum uet . fragm . II 943 , p . 271 .

Une polémique augustienne contra Cicéron

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25. Cicéron , De fato 12,28 - 13,29 . 26. Sénèque , De prouidentua 5 , 6 ; 5 , 8 . 27. Sénèque , De uita beata 15 , 5 ; 15 , 7. Cf. Epist . 54 , 7 ; 61 , 3 ; 74 , 20 ; 76 , 23 ; 91 , 18 ; 96 , 2 ; 107 , 7-9 . Quaest . nat . III , prooem . 11-13 . 28. Cf. D. Amand , Fatalisme et liberté , p . 297. L'auteur indique les ouvrages les plus importants sur le rôle de la liberté dans le système d'Origène , pp . 297-327 . 29. Conf. IV 3 . 30. Conf. VII 12 . 31. Cf. Retract . I 9 . 32. De uita beata 15 , 7 . 33. De lib. arbitrio III 3, 6 . 34. Cf. G. Madec , Bibliothèque augustinienne , vol . VI ( Paris , 1976 ) , p . 376 . Pour saint Augustin il y a ici une confusion de l'ordre des causes et du concept de nécessité . 35. De libr . arbitrio III 2 , 4 . 36. Ibid. , III 2 , 5 . 37. Ibid . , III 3 , 6 . 38. Ibid. , III 3 , 8 . 39. Ibid . , II 1 , 3 . 40. Saint Augustin et Cicéron. Vol . I : Cicéron dans la formation et dans l'oeuvre de saint Augustin ; Vol . II : Répertoire des textes ( Paris , 1958 ) , pp . 392 et 144 . 41. M. Testard , op . cit . , p . 335 . 42. Cf. M. Testard , pp . 231-236 . 43. Cf. M. Testard : ' Il n'est donc pas établi que l'expression cuiusdam Ciceronis ait un sens péjoratif . Ce sens reste possible , mais ce n'est qu'une hypothèse . Une autre hypothèse est également valable : l'adjectif est là pour attirer l'attention du lecteur sur le nom bien connu de Cicéron et piquer son intérêt . Or l'une et l'autre hypothèses conviennent indifféremment à l'interpretation que nous proposons du texte étudié ' , pp . 17-18 . 44. De ciuit . Dei II 27 . 45. Les traducteurs n'ont pas osé employer un adjectif péjoratif , et ainsi nous trouvons ' Tulio , aquel varón tan grande y tan grande filósofo ' , A. Rois Roxas , La ciudad de Dios ( Madrid , 1614 ) , p . 60 ; ' Tulio , aquel tan grave y tan excelso filósofo ' , C. Díaz Bayral , La ciudad de Dios ( Madrid , 1941 , 3e éd . ) , p . 101 ; ' Tulio , aquel varón tan grave y tan superlativamente filósofo ' , L. Riber , La ciudad de Dios ( Barcelona , 1953 ) , p . 114 . 46. Saint Augustin et Cicéron , pp . 237-238 . Cf. F. Thomas , Le suffixe latin -aster/-astrum , in Revue des études anciennes 42 ( 1949 ) , pp . 520-528 . 47. Saint Augustin et Cicéron , p . 238 . 1. 48. De ciuit . Dei 49. Diog . Laert . VII 149 . 50. Ibid. 51. De ciuit . Dei v 2 . 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. , V 3 . 55. Cf. M. Pohlenz , La Stoa. Storia di un movimento spirituale , trad . ital . (Firenze , 1967 ) , vol . II , pp . 368-394 . Spaneut , Le Stoïcisme des Pères de l'Eglise (Gembloux , 1974 ) . 56. De ciuit . Dei v 8 . 57. Ibid. , V 9 , 1 . 58. Ibid . , V 9 , 1 . 59. De natura deorum , III 40 , 93 . 60. Ibid . 61. De ciuit . Dei V 9 , 1 . 62. Ibid. , v 9 , 2 . 63. Ibid . 64. De fato 10 , 20-21 . 65. De ciuit . Dei v 9 , 2 .

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66. De ciuit . Dei V 9 , 2 . 67. Ibid. , V , 9 , 3 . 68. A. Yon , Cicéron: Traité du destin ( Paris , 1950 ) , pp . 13-14 . 69. De fato 11 , 23 . 70. De ciuit . Dei V 9 , 4 . 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid. , XIV 6 . 73. De Trinit . XI 2 , 2. 74. Ibid . , XI 3 , 6 ; XI 10 , 17 . 75. Ibid . , IX 12 , 18 . 76. De lib . arbitrio III 8 , 23 . 77. De Trinit . III 2 , 7 ; De lib . arbitrio II 16 , 44 . 78. Cf. sur ce sujet F.J. Thonnard , Caractères platoniciens de l'ontologie augustinienne , in Augustinus Magister ( Paris , 1954 ) , vol . I , pp . 317-328 . Cf. aussi , La Cité de Dieu , trad . française de la Bibliothèque Augustinienne ( Paris , 1959 ) , livres I - V , pp . 824-827. 79. De ciuit . Dei V 9 , 4 . 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid . , V 10 , 1 . 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid . , V 10 , 2 . 85. Ibid. 86. Cf. G. de Plinval , Aspects du déterminisme et de la liberté dans la doctrine de saint Augustin , in Revue des études august . I ( 1955 ) , pp . 345-378 ; A. Schindler , Gnade und Freiheit , in Z.Th.K. 62 ( 1965 ) , pp . 178-195 ; W. Rordorf , Saint Augustin et la tradition philosophique antifataliste , in Vigiliae Christianae 28 ( 1974 ) , pp . 190-202 ; I.M. Sans , Presciencia divina del futuro humano . Esbozo histórico del problema , in Estudios Eclesiásticos 51 ( 1976 ) , pp . 429-462 .

The Dynamism of Augustine's Terms for Describing the Highest Trinitarian Image in the Human Person Walter H. Principe, C.S.B. Toronto

HEN Alice went through her looking -glass (per speculum , in Augustinian language ) , W she met not an image of the Trinity , but rather that eminent philologist , Humpty Dumpty .

At one point in their conversation he used the word ' impenetrability ' ,

which left Alice puzzled as to its meaning . Humpty Dumpty's lengthy ' definition ' of it led Alice to say : ' That's a great deal to make one word mean ' . To which he replied : ' When I make a word do a lot of work like that , I always pay it extra ... for to get their wages , Ah , you should see ' em come round me of a Saturday night you know . , 1 The point of this paper is that , like Humpty Dumpty , Augustine makes certain words - or rather certain forms of words do a lot of work for him when he describes the highest Trinitarian image in the human person .

That is , he makes

certain verbs work to bring home , by their dynamic quality as verbs , the vital drive of the highest image toward its object , the Trinitarian God . Perhaps the best way to get at this point is to describe how it came to me . Having to give a quick survey of Augustine's Trinitarian images or analogies but lacking time to ferret them out from books 8 to 15 of the De Trinitate , I turned to E. Portalié's article on Augustine in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique . There he gives a table , based on an earlier one by K. Scipio , that lists twenty- two ' formules et images de la Trinité ' ? The last and highest image - the one that is my concern here - he gives as Memoria ( de Deo ) , Intellectio ( Dei ) , and Amor ( in Deum ) , with references to book 14.12.15 and book 14.2.4 .

Wanting to quote the actual text

of Augustine , I went to the places indicated but failed to find the terminology given by Portalié .

His terminology I was to find repeated , with slight variations

but always in abstract noun - forms , by many authors , including Bardy , Cayré , Gardeil ,

3 Schmaus , and Sullivan in his volume studying the image of God according to Augustine . What is striking , once it is noticed , is that where these authors summarize Augustine's texts by using nouns such as memoria Dei , intellegentia Dei , and amor

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or dilectio Dei uses verbs.

W. H. Principe nouns that can but need not denote action - Augustine himself

Thus , in the passage quoted by most authors about this highest

Trinitarian image , Augustine himself says : This trinity of the mind is not the image of God in that the mind remembers itself and understands and loves itself, but because it can also remember and understand and love Him by whom it was made ( potest etiam meminisse , et intellegere , et amare a quo facta est ) . When it does this , it becomes wise . But if it does not do this , even when it remembers itself and understands and loves itself , it is foolish.4 Augustine , the searcher for wisdom, then exhorts the human mind to this activity . Again he uses verb-forms : ' And so let it remember its God , unto whose image it was made , and let it understand and love Him ' (Meminerit itaque Dei sui ... eumque intellegat atque diligat ) .

He adds that by thus honoring the God who has made it

capable of God ( capax Dei ) , the mind will become wise not by its own light but by sharing in that supreme light , and thus will reign as blessed . And this is true wisdom.6 Already I was struck by the dynamic force in Augustine's way of speaking with verbs . Further on this dynamism and its meaning became even clearer . Speaking of the scriptural text about our living , moving , and being in God , Augustine says it must be understood about our mind ( mens ) as made unto God's image . He then goes on : Yet not all are with Him in the way in which it was said to God , " I am always with you " . Nor is He with all in the way in which we say , " May the Lord be with you " . And so it is a great misery for man not to be with Him without Whom he cannot be ... . No doubt [man ] does not exist without [ God ] , and yet if he does not remember Him, and does not understand or love Him ( si eius non meminit , eumque non intellegit nec diligit ) , he is not with Him .? We see from this text that the dynamic activity of remembering , knowing , and loving God is the heart of Augustine's search to be with God in a living , contemplative and indeed mystical experience .

This dynamism and tension toward being

with God he expresses far more forcefully with his verb-forms than do his commentators with their rather bland terms , memoria Dei , intellegentia Dei , and dilectio Dei . At this point my research led me in two directions , one to reread books 14 and 15 of the De Trinitate , the other to see if any scholars had mentioned this linguistic point . In books 14 and 15 of the De Trinitate I found no texts in which Augustine uses the terms memoria Dei , intellegentia Dei , and dilectio or amor Dei , or other noun equivalents .

In book 14 I found , in addition to the three texts

already quoted , nine others describing the Trinitarian image as the human person's being related to God by some way or ways of acting . In every one of these texts Augustine describes the acting , or sometimes the capability of acting , in verb-

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forms .

One of these image -texts again speaks about the three ways of acting diligit , meminit , and intellegit - in relation to God . Two others concentrate on 10 9 Three remembering God : recordatur , reminiscitur , and commemorati conuertuntur. 11 stress some form of knowing : nouit Deum uel potest nosse' ; ad intellegendum et 12 13 conspiciendum Deum ; plenam perceperit uisionem." One text speaks of the person 14 who is image as inhering in God : ut ei cuius imago est ualeat inhaerere ." Two 15 16 speak in terms of loving : Deum diligit ; transfert amorem a temporalibus ad aeterna ." The last of these texts does indeed contain a noun-form related to this image : in agnitione Dei .

But here Augustine is combining three texts of Paul to substan-

tiate his doctrine of the image and its renewal , and this noun-form comes from the Pauline text itself.17 Moreover , the full text goes on to speak of the renewal of the image in agnitione Dei as taking place by daily progressing which is achieved by transferring love from temporal to eternal realities and by other activities expressed in verb-forms : In agnitione igitur Dei iustitiaque et sanctitate ueritatis qui de die in diem proficiendo renouatur transfert amorem a temporalibus ad aeterna , a uisibilibus ad intellegibilia , a carnalibus ad spiritalia , atque ab istis cupiditatem frenare atque minuere illisque se caritate alligare diligenter insistit.18 In some texts in book 14 Augustine uses memoria , intellegentia , and voluntas 19 for the ' mentis ... trinitas ' , but the object of these is sui , the self . In other words , he is not speaking of the highest image of the Trinity whereby the mind is readied to or actually does remember , know , and love God .

Moreover , even

in the text we refer to here , Augustine passes from noun-forms to verb- forms when 20 he describes the role of the memoria sui , intellegentia sui , and voluntas sui .“ In book 15 Augustine speaks less frequently of the mind directing its activities to God as object . Only six such texts have come to my attention .21 His other image -texts , which number eleven according to my findings , point out the likenesses and differences between the activities of the divine persons in their inner life activities of remembering , thinking and the activities of human persons in theirs or speaking the interior word of the heart , and sending forth love .

Of these

seventeen texts referring in one way or another to the image of the Trinity in the human person , nine are like those in book 14 by their use of verb-forms for the 22 description . The other eight texts do indeed use noun-forms when referring to the trinitas 23 mentis or when comparing the human trinity with the divine Trinity . We should note , however , that , except for the Pauline text ( in agnitione Dei ) already seer above , these noun-forms are not associated with God as object .

Augustine usually

says that the image or likeness of the Trinity is found in the human memory , understanding , and love .

What is even more important to note is that in each of

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these texts he goes on to describe the likeness or difference between the Trinity and the human person in terms of activities expressed by verb- forms . My impression is that in these texts he uses the noun- forms as a kind of shorthand that he at once expands by his more extended descriptions of the corresponding activities with verb-forms . A clear example of this procedure is found in De Trinitate 15.20.39 .

Augustine

says that in order to satisfy those seeking to grasp these mysteries , he had recourse to creatures , especially the rational or intellectual creature made unto God's image . ' Through it as through a mirror ' , he says , ' they may , so far as they can, if they can , discern God the Trinity in our memory, understanding , and will . ' Here we see the noun - forms : in nostra memoria , intellegentia , uoluntate . But he then goes on to expand this ' shorthand ' in terms of ' living ' activity : Anyone who in a living way experiences these three , which are naturally established by God in his mind , and [ who experiences ] how great [ a capacity ] exists in his mind by which the eternal and unchangeable nature can be recalled , regarded , and desired ( it is remembered through memory; it is viewed through understanding ; it is embraced through love ) surely discovers the image of that most lofty Trinity . He ought to refer everything in his life to remembering , seeing , and loving that most lofty Trinity so as to recall it , contemplate it , and delight in it .24 In this text the shift from nouns to verbs describes graphically the shift from the second -highest image of the Trinity (memory , understanding , and love of self ) to the highest ( remembering , contemplating , and loving the divine Trinity ) .

The

use of verbs also serves to emphasize Augustine's exhortation to the human person 25 to exercise these activities as continuously as possible . This shift from noun- forms to verb - forms in this and the other texts where nounforms first appear seems to confirm rather than invalidate the point being made here . Indeed , in those texts where Augustine is comparing the divine exemplar and the imperfect human image , he could hardly avoid verb- forms expressing activities since the focus of the comparison is the activity of speaking and , flowing from this , the activity of loving . In all this I do not mean to imply that for Augustine the highest Trinitarian image is found only when the human person is actually remembering , knowing , and loving God . We have met a few texts where Augustine speaks of this highest image 26 as a power or capacity to remember , know , and love God ." But in these cases it is a power or capacity to act , and Augustine clearly intends and indeed exhorts the person to be as active as possible so as to be more perfectly an image of the Trinity . In this , he says , consists the person's renovation or re - formation unto the image and likeness of the Trinity .

Summarizing his doctrine in noun- forms tends at

best to focus attention on this capacity alone and to divert attention from the dynamic activity Augustine constantly speaks about in describing this highest image of the Trinity .

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My second line of research was to see if any of the authors I could find speaking about the Trinitarian image mentions this linguistic point . None of those examined goes through the texts with this question in mind ;

three ( Madec , Schindler ,

Tremblay ) do mention the use of verbs , but do so in passing while concentrating on 27 other points . Authors who speak about the Trinitarian image divide into three groups .

One group , numbering eight , can be eliminated at once because they do not

even advert to the highest image given so clearly by Augustine .

Most of them speak

of the trinity of memory , intelligence and love with no reference to God as object . This group includes Altaner , Baur , Franks , Grabowski , Harnack , Heick , Leff , and 28 Tillich . The second group , comprising fourteen authors , presents the highest image in 29 noun-form. This statement should not , however , give a false impression . Their use of noun- forms does not mean that they ignore the dynamism of Augustine's view of the image of the Trinity .

Authors such as Cayré , Gardeil , Schmaus , Solignac ,

and Tremblay are very clear about this : in fact they are among the best exponents of this dynamism . It is only unfortunate that they are inaccurate in their summaries of Augustine's texts . A third group , comprising eleven authors , is more accurate .

These authors 30 either translate or summarize Augustine's main text ( the first one we have quoted ) 31 by using the correct verb - forms . Many within this third group also insist strongly on the dynamism of Augustine's notion of the image : a mere speculative exercise .

it is a program for life , not

But none of them , as far as I have seen , expressly

adverts to this question of linguistic forms .

And in most cases only a few of the

pertinent texts are examined . Some might say that this is only a question of words .

But when one is involved

with an author like Augustine , that converted rhetorician who still retained all his affection for skillful use of words in service of the Word , one must not dismiss linguistic questions lightly . We know that Augustine wrote a De grammatica , 32 now lost . The De dialectica newly edited by Pinborg has a fairly good chance of being his , according to the historical and statistical studies done by B. Darrell 33 Jackson . Augustine has a long discussion of nomina and verba with Adeodatus in the De magistro , where at one point he adverts to Cicero's remarks about the func34 tion of the noun and verb in a statement . His De ordine and De doctrina christiana include important observations about the origin of grammar , the formation of 35 words , and words as signs . How often Augustine probes the form or meaning of words ! Is it better to say 36 of the Son of God nascitur or natus est?` How are imago , similitudo , and aequal38 37 itas related to one another ?" His interest in grammar has been studied by Marrou` 39 his rhetoric by several authors' " his philosophy and theology of language by 40 Wittgenstein , Duchrow, and Mondin ." A study of his vocabulary and style yields

"

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W. H. Principe

41 interesting results about his use of verbal compounds and verbal abstracts ." For my purposes here , however , the most stimulating and in some ways confirmatory study is the 129 -page essay by Kenneth Burke entitled ' Verbal Action in St. 42 Augustine's Confessions ' ." One need not agree with every suggestion Burke offers , but one cannot but be impressed by the insights he offers into the Confessions by his method of ' logology ' .

His careful attention to the way Augustine uses words

gives unsuspected entry not only to Augustine's personal psychology but sometimes 43 to the whole argument of the Confessions ." The importance of the point being made here receives further confirmation from a lively debate that took place in the 1960's about one of the terms we have been discussing , memoria Dei.

An important theory developed by Lope Cilleruelo and

supported by Morán and , it appears , by Biolo , won considerable interest and 44 approval . They maintain that Augustine teaches the existence in each human person of an unconscious natural habit relating the person to God , a habit linked ontologically with divine illumination .

They call it memoria Dei , sometimes

referring to the first text quoted in this paper (De Trinitate 14.12.15 ) .

Without

challenging the doctrine itself, Goulven Madec asked where this term occurs in 45 Augustine . The text of De Trinitate 14.12.15 cannot be used , he rightly says , because it speaks about a conscious exercise of the mind ; the verbal forms in the 46 imperative suffice to indicate it ." In reply to Madec's question , Cilleruelo pointed to a text in the Confessions 7.17.23 , where Augustine says : sed mecum erat 47 memoria tui with reference to God ." Madec contested the application of this text 48 Whatever the outcome to the problem at hand , and Cilleruelo defended it further ." of this particular debate , this text in Augustine is not directly pertinent to our question since it does not deal with the image of the Trinity .

Other texts quoted

by Cilleruelo from the De Trinitate are also inapplicable because they contain verb-forms . Beyond these arguments , attention to the dynamic terminology , expressed in verb-forms , that Augustine uses for his teaching about the highest image should help readers grasp the living quality , the religious and mystical dimension of his Trinitarian analogies : there are still some who would see them as no more than idle and curious speculation .

It is difficult to say whether Augustine used these

verb-forms consciously or whether his constant use of them is the spontaneous expression of his religious experience and his theological evaluation of it .

In

any case , it is no wonder that Augustine's closing prayer includes this petition ( in verb-forms , of course ! ) :

May I remember you ; may I understand you ; may I love you . Increase in me ista [these activities , we may now translate ] until you re -form me through and through ( donec me reformes ad integrum) .49 If Humpty Dumpty's practice was anticipated by Augustine , then on Saturday night ,

The Dynamism of Augustine's Terms

1297

when the words came round to get their pay , he surely rewarded the verbs memini , intellego , and diligo far more handsomely than the corresponding nouns !

REFERENCES 1. Lewis Carroll , Through the Looking Glass , ch . 6 . 2. ' Augustin ( saint ) ' , Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 1/2 ( 1902 ) , 2351-52 . 3. See below , n . 29 , for references to their works . 4. De Trinitate 14.12.15 ; Corpus Christianorum : Series latina , 50A , 442-43 , lines 1-5 . Unless otherwise noted , all references will be to this edition , with page references followed by line references . 5. Ibid.; 443 , 22. 6-7 . 6. Ibid.; 443 , 22. 7-13 . 7. Ibid. 14.12.16 ; 443-44 , 22. 29-44 . 8. Ibid. 14.14.18 ; 446 , ll . 26-27 . 9. Ibid. 14.15.21 ; 449-50 , ZZ . 17-30 . 10. Ibid. 14.16.22 ; 451 , 22. 1-2 . 11. Ibid. 14.8.11 ; 435-36 , ll . 2-3 . 12. Ibid. 14.4.6 ; 428 , 22. 8-10 . 13. Ibid. 14.18.24 ; 455 , ll . 1-2 . 14. Ibid. 14.14.20 ; 448 , ll . 83-84 . 15. Ibid. 14.14.18 ; 445 , l . 13. 16. Ibid. 14.17.23 ; 454-55 , ll . 20-22 . 17. The Pauline texts are Col. 3:10 ( qui renouatur in agnitionem secundum imaginem eius qui creauit illum ) , Eph . 4 : 23-34 ( qui secundum Deum creatus est in iustitia et sanctitate ueritatis ) , and 2 Cor . 4:16 ( is qui intus est renouatur de die in diem) . The background of this passage in Augustine is developed in De Trinitate 14.16.22 ( 451-54 ) , where other uses of in agnitione Dei occur . 18. Ibid. 14.17.23 ; 454-55 , ll . 20-22 . The text of Col. 3:10 is quoted again ibid. 15.3.5 ( 467 , Zl . 109-110 ) : here Augustine adds that the renewing which takes place has the result that man ' percipit sapientiam ubi contemplatio est aeternorum' . 19. Ibid. 14.6.8 ; 432 , 12. 52-54 . 20. See ibid. , ll . 38-52 , for the verb -forms giving the context of this passage . 21. They are the following : 15.3.5 ( 467 , 22. 105-112 ) ; 15.6.10 ( 473-74 . 22. 6681 ) ; 15.20.39 ( 516-17 , 22. 45-59 ) ; 15.23.24 ( 522 , zz . 44-56 ) ; 15.24.44 ( 522 , ll . 1-10 ) ; 15.28.51 ( 534 , zz . 21-22 ) . 22. They are the following : 15.6.10 ( 473 , 22. 55-75 ) ; 15.11.20 ( 488 , 22. 40-56 ) ; 15.12.22 ( 493-94 , 22. 87-98 ) ; 15.13.22 ( 495 , 77. 46-49 ) ; 15.14.23-24 ( 496-97 , ll . 1-39 ) ; 15.15.25 ( 498 , ZZ . 34-78 ) ; 15.23.44 ( 522 , 11. 44-56 ) ; 15.24.44 ( 522 , ll . 1-10 ) ; 15.28.51 ( 534 , zz . 21-22 ) . 23. They are the following : 15.3.5 ( 467 , zz . 105-112 ) ; 15.7.12 ( 475 , ll . 23-27 ) ; 15.17.28 ( 502-503 , ll . 26-53 ) ; 15.20.39 ( 516-17 , 22. 44-59 ) ; 15.21.40 ( 517-18 , zz . 7-21 ) ; 15.21.41 ( 518-19 , ll . 22-46 ) ; 15.22.42 ( 519 , Zl . 1-24 ) ; 15.23.43 ( 520-21 , zz . 7-23 ) . 24. Ibid . 15.20.39 ; 517 , 22. 51-59 . 25. Cf. the similar exhortation ibid . 14.12.15 ( 443 , 22. 6-7 ) , see p . 1292 . 26. See above , p . 1292 (De Trinitate 14.12.15 ; 442 , 1. 3 : quia potest etiam memi nisse ) , p . 1293 ( 14.8.11 ; 435-36 : nouit Deum uel potest nosse ) , p . 1293 ( ibid . 14.4.6 ; 428 , Zl . 9-10 : uti ratione atque intellectu ad intellegendum et conspiciendum Deum potest ) , p . 1293 ( ibid . 14.14.20 ; 448 , 7. 84 : ualeat inhaerere ) , p . 1294 (ibid . 15.20.39 ; 517 , ll . 53-54 : quam magnum sit in ea unde potest etiam sempiterna immutabilisque natura recoli , conspici , consupisci ) . 27. Goulven Madec , ' Pour et contre la " memoria Dei " ' , Revue des études augustiniennes , 11 ( 1965 ) 89-92 ( see below, n . 46 ) ; Richard Tremblay , ' La théorie psychologique de la Trinité chez saint Augustin ' , Etudes et recherches 8 ( 1952 ) 83-109 ,

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W. H. Principe

esp . p . 91 ; Alfred Schindler , Wort und Analogie in Augustins Trinitätslehre (Tübingen , 1965 ) , pp . 209-10 . 28. Berthold Altaner , Patrology , trans . Hilda C. Graef ( London , 1960 ) , p . 521 ; Ferdinand Christian Baur , Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte ( Darmstadt , 1968 ) , p . 168 ; R.S. Franks , The Doctrine of the Trinity ( London , 1953 ) , p . 126 ; Stanislaus J. Grabowski , The All -Present God : A Study in St. Augustine ( St. Louis , 1953) , pp . 208-209 ; Otto W. Heick , A History of Christian Thought , vol . 1 ( Philadelphia , 1965 ) , p . 165 ; Gordon Leff , Medieval Thought : St. Augustine to Ockham ( Baltimore , 1958 ) , p . 42 ; Paul Tillich , A History of Christian Thought , ed . Carl E. Broaten ( New York , 1968 ) , p . 116 . 29. Luis Aria , ' La imagen de la Trinidad en el hombre ' , in Obras de San Agustin , vol . 5 , 2nd ed . ( Madrid , 1956 ) , p . 103 ( Portalié's table repeated ) ; G. Bardy , ' Trinité' , Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 15/2 ( 1950 ) , 1689 ; John Burnaby , introd . , Augustine : Later Works , The Library of Christian Classics , 8 ( London , 1955 ) , pp . 30 , 34-36 ( but verbs are used on p . 30 ) ; F. Cayré , ' Les images de la Trinité ' , L'année théologique augustinienne 13 ( 1953 ) 363-65 , esp . p . 363 ; idem , La contemplation augustinienne , 2nd ed . ( Paris , 1954 ) , pp . 113-15 ; idem , ' Notes complémentaires ' , Oeuvres de saint Augustin , 16 : La Trinité ( livres VIII -XV ) 2 . Les images ( Paris , 1955 ) , p . 640 ; Lope Cilleruelo , ' ¿ Por qué " memoria Dei " ? ' , Revue des études augustiniennes 10 ( 1964 ) 293 ; Marcia Colish , The Mirror of Language : A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge , Yale Historical Publications Miscellany , 88 ( New Haven , 1968 ) , p . 78 ( but verbs are used on p . 79 ) ; Thomas A. Fay , ' Imago Dei : Augustine's Metaphysics of Man ' , Antonianum 49 ( 1974 ) 181 ; Ambroise Gardeil , La structure de l'âme et l'expérience mystique , vol . 1 ( Paris , 1927 ) , p . 105 ; Régis Javelet , ' L'homme et la connaissance ' , in Augustinus Magister , vol . 3 ( Paris , 1955 ) , p . 182 ; E. Portalié , see above , n . 2 ; Michael Schmaus , Die psychologische Trinitätslehre des heiligen Augustinus ( Münster Westf . , 1927 ; rpt . 1967 ) . pp . 304 and 305 ; Aimé Solignac , ' Image et ressemblance , 2 : Dans la patristique latine ' , Dictionnaire de spiritualité 7 ( 1970 ) 1421 ; John Edward Sullivan , The Image of God: The Doctrine of St. Augustine and Its Influence (Dubuque , Iowa , 1963 ) , pp . 136 , 144 ; Richard Tremblay , ' La théorie psychologique ' ( see above , n . 27 ) , p . 92 . 30. De Trinitate 14.12.15 ; 442-43 , 22. 1-7 . 31. See F. Bourassa , ' Théologie trinitaire de saint Augustin - II ' , Gregorianum 59 ( 1978 ) 389 , cf. 411 ; Charles Boyer , ' L'image de la Trinité : Synthèse de la pensée augustinienne ' , Gregorianum 27 ( 1946 ) 338 ; Vincenzo Carbone , La inabitazione dello Spirito Santo nelle anime dei giusti secondo la dottrina di S. Agostino ( Vatican City , 1961 ) , p . 116 ; Olivier du Roy , L'intelligence de la foi en la Trinité selon saint Augustin ( Paris , 1966 ) , pp . 444-45 ; Etienne Gilson , Introduction à l'étude de saint Augustin , 3rd ed . ( Paris , 1949 ) , pp . 296-97 ; P. Hadot , ' L'image de la Trinité dans l'âme chez Victorinus et chez saint Augustin ' , Studia Patristica , vol . 6 , Part IV : Theologica, Augustiniana , ed . F.L. Cross , Texte und Untersuchungen , 81 ( Berlin , 1962 ) , p . 432 ; Edmund Hill , ' St. Augustine's De Trinitate: The Doctrinal Significance of its Structure ' , Revue des études augustiniennes 19 ( 1973 ) 283 ; J.N.D. Kelly , Early Christian Doctrines , 5th ed . ( London , 1978 ) , pp . 277-78 ; Cyril C. Richardson , ' The Enigma of the Trinity ' , in A Companion to the Study of St. Augustine , ed . Roy W. Battenhouse ( New York , 1955 ) , p . 253 ; Alfred Schindler , Wort und Analogie in Augustins Trinitätslehre (Tübingen , 1965 ) , pp . 211-12 ; Eugene Te Selle , Augustine the Theologian ( New York , 1970 ) , p . 308. A number of these references and of those in notes 28 and 29 were found by my research assistant , Mr. Mark Lodico , M.A. , whom I should like to thank here . 32. See Augustine , Retractationum libri duo 1.5 ; C.S.E.L. 36.27 ( 1.6 in P.L. 32.591 ) . 33. Augustine , De dialectica , trans . with introd . and notes by B. Darrell Jackson from the text newly edited by Jan Pinborg ( Boston -Dordrecht , 1975 ) , esp . pp . 30 , 70-71 . 34. See chs . 4.7-7.20 ; Corpus Christianorum : Series latina 29.164-80 . On Cicero concerning nouns and verbs see ibid. 5.16 ( 174 , 17. 180-84 ) .

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35. See De ordine 2.12.35 -2.14.41 ; Corpus Christianorum : Series latina 29.127-30 . See also De doctrina christiana , esp . book 2 ; Corpus Christianorum : Series latina 32.32-77 . See also B. Darrell Jackson , ' The Theory of Signs in St. Augustine's De doctrina christiana ' , Revue des études augustiniennes 15 ( 1969 ) 9-49 , and R.A. Markus , ' St. Augustine on Signs ' , essay no . 3 in Augustine : A Collection of Critical Essays , ed . R.A. Markus ( Garden City , N.Y. , 1972 ) , pp . 6191 ( reprinted from Phoenix 2 , 1957 , 60-83 ) . 36. A. Segovia , ' Natus est - Nascitur : La eterna generación del Hijo de Dios y su enunciación verbal en la Literatura patristica ' , Revista española de teologia 8 (1948 ) 385-407 . 37. R.A. Markus , ' " Image " and " similitudo " in Augustine ' , Revue des études augustiniennes 10 ( 1964 ) 125-43 ; cf. P. Hadot , ' L'image ' ( see above , n . 31 ) . Another example : Rudolf Berlinger , ' La palabra " ser " . Interpretación agustiniana al Exodo 3 , 14 ' , Augustinus 13 ( 1968 ) 99-108 . 38. H.-I. Marrou , Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique ( Paris , 1938 ) , esp . pp . 237-40 . 39. See , for example , Joseph Finaert , Saint Augustin rhéteur ( Paris , 1939 ) ; idem, L'évolution littéraire de saint Augustin ( Paris , 1939 ) ; Marie Comeau , La rhétorique de saint Augustin d'après les ' Tractatus in Ioannem ' ( Paris , 1930 ) . 40. Ludwig Wittgenstein , Philosophical Investigations , 3rd ed . , trans . G.E.M. Anscombe ( Oxford , 1972 ) , nos . 1-3 ( pp . 2-3 ) , 32 ( pp . 15-16 ) , 89-90 ( pp . 42-43 ) ; Ulrich Duchrow, Sprachverständnis und biblische Hören bei Augustin ( Tübingen , 1965 ) ; Battista Mondin , ' Il problema del linguaggio teologico in sant ' Agostino ' , Augustinianum 11 ( 1971 ) 264-80 ( ch . 5 of his Il problema del linguaggio teologico dalle origini ad oggi , Brescia , 1971 ) . 41. See Sr. Mary Inez Borg , The Vocabulary and Style of the Soliloquies and Dialogues of St. Augustine (Washington , D.C. , 1935 ) , pp . 204 , 208. See also Sr. Mary Sarah Muldowney , Word-Order in the Works of St. Augustine ( Washington , D.C. , 1937 ) , Sr. M. Bernard Shieman , The Rare and Late Verbs in St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei : A Morphological and Semasiological Study (Washington , D.C. , 1938 ) , esp . p . 75 , and Sr. Wilfrid Parsons , A Study of the Vocabulary and Rhetoric of the Letters of Saint Augustine ( Washington , D.C. , 1923 ) . 42. It is ch . 2 of his The Rhetoric of Religion : Studies in Logology (Boston , 1961 ) , pp . 43-171 . 43. For example , the importance of words with in as a prefix , of words with vert as root , the place of Monica in the work , the theme of memory . 44. See Lope Cilleruelo , ' La " memoria Dei " segun San Agustin ' , in Augustinus Magister , vol . 1 ( Paris , 1954 ) , pp . 499-509 ; José Morán , ' Hacia una comprension de la " Memoria Dei " según San Agustin ' , Augustianina 10 ( 1960 ) 185-234 ; Salvino Biolo , La coscienza nel " De Trinitate " di s . Agostino ( Rome , 1969 ) , p . 225 ( Biolo does not refer to Cilleruelo here , but his position seems to be the same ) . 45. Review of J. Morán , ' Hacia una comprension ' , in Revue des études augustiniennes 9 ( 1963 ) 365-66 . 46. Goulven Madec , ' Pour et contre la " memoria Dei " ' , Revue des études augustiniennes 11 ( 1965 ) 89-92 : J. Morán had quoted De Trinitate 14.12.15 as a text on memoria Dei , but Madec rightly says : ' Or il est bien certain qu'Augustin parle dans le texte cité d'un exercice conscient de la mens : les formes verbales à l'impératif suffisent à l'indiquer au lecteur le moins prévenu ' ( p . 89 ) . 47. ' ¿Por qué " memoria Dei " ? ' , Revue des études augustiniennes 10 ( 1964 ) 291 . 48. See G. Madec , ' Pour et contre ' , pp . 89-90 , and L. Cilleruelo , ' Pro memoria Dei ' , Revue des études augustiniennes 12 ( 1966 ) 76–79 . 49. De Trinitate 15.28.51 ; 534 , ll . 21-23 .

SP 3 - V

Augustine , Plotinus and Saint John's Three ' Concupiscences'

J. F. Procopé Cambridge

N Book X of the Confessions ( 41-64 ) , St. Augustine examines at length his I susceptibility to three forbidden appetites lust , curiosity and pride . He understands these as the desire for sensual and physical pleasure , for sights and experiences , for esteem and status . The theme was clearly a favourite of his . Under various guises , it makes some forty more of less elaborate appearances in his writings¹ , its longest and most brilliant development coming at the end of the de vera religione ( 69-107 ) , where the ' triple cupidity ' ( 69 ) of lust , pride and curiosity in the human soul turns out to be a remote negative image an effigies veritatis (72) --- of the Holy Trinity itself .? A genius at synthesis and a master of creative exposition , capable of fusing the most heterogeneous ideas and of interpreting any given text to mean virtually anything , Augustine could detect the trio in such unpromising biblical passages as the reference by the Psalmist to the beasts of the field , birds of the air and fishes of the sea (Enn . Ps . 8.13 ) , in the excuses made by quests in the parable of the banquet ( Serm . 112. 2-8 . on Lk . 14.16-24 ) , and most strikingly in the accounts ( Mt. 4.1-11 , Lk . 4.1-13 ) of Our Lord's three temptations , where ' command this stone to become bread ' is a call of physical appetite , the promise of the world's kingdoms appeals to pride and ambition , while the purpose of throwing himself down from the pinnacle of the temple is for Jesus to 3 test whether God really will , as it is written , send His angels to the rescue ! Where and how did Augustine first come upon this triad?

I must admit straightway

that I do not know . But it may still be worthwhile to look at some partial answers to the question . The first point to note is Augustine's way of referring to lust , curiosity and pride as concupiscentia carnis , concupiscentia oculorum and ambitio saeculi . The phrasing comes from I John 2.15f . , a text which Augustine quite often 4 It runs : cites , at least in part , alongside his trio of appetites ."

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Augustine, Plotinus and Saint John Do not love the world or the things in the world ... For all that is in the world , the lust of the flesh , the lust of the eyes and the pride of life ( superbia vitae in the Vulgate , ambitio saeculi in Augustine's text ) , is not of the Father but is of the world .

Here , obviously , is one immediate source of Augustine's triad which , on its first 5 tentative and somewhat confused appearance in his writings , is immediately followed by an echo of the Johannine text : nihil mundi huius diligere (Mor. Eccl. 39) . No less obviously , Augustine's thoughts about lust , curiosity and pride are far from being a straightforward exposition of this text .

St. John is speaking of

pride specifically in material possessions , in the goods of this world ;

his

phrase alatovɛla ToŨ BĹou should perhaps be translated ' vaunting of livelihood ' . Against that , his ' lust of the flesh ' is not specifically a physical or sensual appetite , as it is for Augustine ;

for ' flesh ' here has the broader biblical sense

of sinful human nature , of the flesh which ' lusts against the spirit ' ?

Again , the

chances are that St. John is referring to the ' eyes ' , also in conformity with 8 10 9 biblical usage , as ministers of arrogance , greed or , most probably , lewdness . (We still speak in English of ' having a roving eye ' ) .

So far as I can see ,

Augustine was the first to identify concupiscentia oculorum with curiosity . 11 would be glad to know what led him to do so .

I

It looks , then , as though Augustine was fusing St. John's formulation with some triadic concept derived from elsewhere ;

and his source for the triad is generally

thought to lie somewhere in the ' Platonic writings ' , the libri Platonicorum (Conf. VII.13 ) , which he had been reading around the time of his conversion . Now the closest parallel in surviving Platonist literature

and the fact of a ' parallel '

between two texts does not automatically prove the earlier text to be a ' source ' for the later - to Augustine's ' three -fold cupidity for pleasure or excellence or sights ' (Ver . Rel . 69 ) comes in a work by Plato himself .

Returning in Book IX of

the Republic to the theme of the soul and its three parts , he indicates that each ' part ' of the soul has its own desire : the ' appetitive part ' wants physical pleasure ; the ' spirited part ' strives for power , victory and glory ; while the 12 This account and it is only one among ' reasoning part ' seeks knowledge . 13 does several somewhat varying accounts which Plato gives of the tripartite soul present a trio of desires not unlike Augustine's , with the important difference that , for Plato , the drive for knowledge is our highest instinct , whereas Augustine would never treat the ' lust of the eyes ' as a superior or preferable ' concupiscence ' . More seriously , Augustine is most unlikely to have known this passage . The 14 Republic , unlike the Timaeus and the Phaedo , had not been translated into Latin 15 - so far as we know ; Augustine does not seem to have read Plato in Greek ; and the literature which survives from the centuries between the two writers provides 16 no convincing parallel to the triad which they appear to have in common .

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Augustine certainly knew, perhaps from Cicero or from some doxography , that Plato 17 had ' made the soul tripartite ' ' " but that was a commonplace with a variety of possible interpretations .

More interestingly , he could touch on the theme which

we find in various Greek Fathers of the παραχρησις τῶν δυνάμεων , the misuse of the 18 soul's three ' powers ' ." But I see no evidence that he ever linked this to his own 19 association of lust , curiosity and pride . Whatever its affiliations with Plato's tripartite psychology may or may not have been , Augustine is more commonly thought to have derived his triad of concupiscences from the work of Platonists nearer his own day , from Plotinus or perhaps from Porphyry . (Controversy on the question of which philosopher had the greater 20 influence on him has been considerable ) . Both thinkers had shared his distrust of sensual appetite . But so would virtually any intellectual of late antiquity pagan , Christian or Manichee . It is in connection with pride and curiosity that Augustine reveals a debt to Neoplatonist thought , particularly to Plotinus ' 21 ' pessimistic ' account of how the soul comes to be in the body . The one work by 22 Plotinus which Augustine ever names by its title begins by explaining the fall of souls from their original union with ' God the Father ' in terms of a primal ' audacity' ( tóλμa ) along with a foolhardy wish to be ' different ' and to ' belong to themselves ' ( Enn . V.1 ( 10 ) .1.1-5 ) .

Such motives have clear affinities with

Augustine's superbia , a term for which he can indeed substitute audacia in this sort of context ( e.g. Mor . Eccl . 20 ) .

In a related passage from a slightly earlier

work by Plotinus ( Enn . IV.8 ( 8 ) .4 , cf. III.7 ( 45 ) .11.12-29 ) , its initial apostasy leads the soul into a state of isolation , weakness and restless concern with particular objects one at the time (the Greek term here being поlυяраyμоσúvη , for which the standard Latin translation was curiositas ) ;

and the nadir is reached when the

soul ' plunges into ' and becomes absorbed in ministering to a single particular object , its own body .

The connection between Plotinus ' ' concern with particulars '

and the lust for sights and experiences , which Augustine normally understands by 23 ' curiosity' , may seem slender . In one important respect , however , his concept of curiositas was significantly indebted to Neoplatonism . What the term often 24 implies in his earlier writings" " particularly those directed ( as most of them were ) against the Manichees , is a certain ' materialism ' , an unwillingness to rise above the level of phantasia or ' imagination ' , an incapacity to think in terms of anything more abstract that images of corporeal objects ; and this was a concept which he could have discovered , though not under the label of ' curiosity .25 ' " in 26 texts of Porphyry or even Plotinus himself. Associations of rashness with 27 curiosity had not been that uncommon in writers from Philo onwards . The combination of the two to account for the fall of the soul , which we find in Hermetic as 28 well as Neoplatonic writings" , goes back ultimately to the very basic religious insight that some forms of inquisitiveness are tantamount to hybris and sacrilege .

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Augustine himself can present the fall of the soul on a distinctly Plotinian pattern . He does so most conspicuously in a passage of the de Trinitate ( XII.14 ) , a text dating from the last twenty years of his life , which has , however , its parallels in a chapter of the somewhat earlier Confessions ( V.5 ) .

In both passages , a Plotinian sequence of presumptuousness leading to loss of intellectual power -- which Augustine

(Conf. V.5 ) can assimilate to St. Paul's account of how the ungodly refused to honour God as God and ' their foolish hearts were darkened ' ( Rom. 1.21 ) - comes into awkward contact with the static trio of abiding temptations familiar to us from Confessions X and elsewhere .

According to the de Trinitate , an initial apostatica

superbia , its arrogant apostasy from the universal Good , forces the soul into a cura partilis - in other words , a Plotinian лоλυяраyμoσúvη which it exercises through its own body , until finally , in its delight at bodily things , it defiles itself with crude fantasies , competitive ambition and filthy voluptuousness . In their various manifestations , pride , curiosity and lust are thus stages in the process of the soul's fall as well as static features of its fallen condition .

It

looks to me as though Augustine was attempting somewhat casually to connect the Plotinian sequence with a trio already established , indeed something of a stereotype , in his own thinking .

Which strongly suggests that this trio , however he may in

fact have arrived at it , did not come from doctrines to do with the fall of the soul . The two patterns which confront each other here , sequential and static , would of course be quite easy to harmonize .

Pride , curiosity and lust , as stages

in the soul's downfall , could be paired off with lust , curiosity and pride as a series of sins to be overcome . On roughly these lines , the Neoplatonist Olympiodorus can say of ambition and phantasia that the affections which the soul puts on first 29 are the last to be shed . Augustine , in the two passages which I have cited , makes no such effort at harmonization .

In rapidly juxtaposing the Plotinian

sequence of the soul's fall with St. John's three ' concupiscences ' , he was possibly unaware of , or just not sufficiently interested in , the challenge which their combination presented to his own powers of synthesis .

REFERENCES 1. Its occurrences in Augustine's work are conveniently tabulated by 0. du Roy , L'Intelligence de la Foi en la Trinité selon Saint Augustin , Paris 1966 , p . 351f . , n. 1. 2. See du Roy , op . cit . , pp . 343-352 : ' Les trois concupiscences ou la fausse imitation de Dieu ' , where the more important occurrences of the trio are quoted at length and discussed . 3. Ver . Rel . 71 ; Serm . 284.5 ; Tr. Ep. Jo . 2.14 ; Enn . Ps . 8.13 . 4. Mor. Eccl . 39 ; Mus . VI.44 ; Ver. Rel . 4,70,107 ; Enn . Ps . 8.13 ; Conf. X.41 ; Serm. 112.8 , 184.5 ; etc. See du Roy , op . cit . , p . 351f. , n . 1 .

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5. in a discussion of temperance and its implications , at Mor . Eccl . 35-39 . All three concupiscences , or at least their objects ( illecebrae corporis , gloria popularis , per imaginationes ... rerum scientia ) , occur here , without as yet forming a clear pattern . These paragraphs reveal the diversity of ideas - Pauline , Johannine , Platonist , etc. -- behind Augustine's doctrine of the triplex cupiditas ; and they show how curiosity , the unlikeliest member of the trio , could be linked to pride and ambition . If temperance means controlling the desires which distract us from God ( 35 ) and despising the goals of lust and ambition , contemnere omnes corporeas illecebras laudemque popularem ( 36 ) , this implies a dissociation not only from the objects of sense and particularly of sight ( 37 ) but also from any so - called knowledge based on mental images of material objects , quod de corporibus per imaginationes quasdam concipit anima et eam vocat rerum scientiam ( 38) . Desire for such vain knowledge is a culpable curiositas which can lead to arrogance ( cf. Conf. V.5) and an inability to conceive of incorporeal realities . Quamobrem recte etiam curiosi esse prohibemur, quod magnum temperantiae munus est ( 38. Cf. Seneca Ep . 88.36 ) . All three of Augustine's forbidden appetites can thus be found in these paragraphs of the de moribus ecclesiae . But his thoughts on the subject are still disorganized and undigested ; nor is their presentation made any clearer by his need to attack the Manichaeans with scripture at every point . On its next appearance , however , in the de Genesi contra Manichaeos ( 1.40 , 11.26f . and 40 ) , the schema of lust , pride and of curiosity in the sense of intellectual ' materialism ' is clear -cut and ready for further development in the de Musica ( VI.39 , 45 ) , the de Vera Religione ( 69-107 ) and the de Libero Arbitrio ( II.53 ) . See , further , n . 11 , below . 6. Cf. I Jo . 3.17 . See , further , N. Lazure , ' La Convoitise de la Chair en I Jean ii . 16 ' , Révue Biblique 66 ( 1969 ) , pp . 161-205 , esp . pp . 203-205 . 7. Cf. Gal . 5.17 , Eph . 2.3 , I Pet . 2.11 , etc. 8. Cf. Is . 5.15 ; Ps . 131.1 ; Prov . 6.17 , 21.4 , 30.13 , 17 ; Sir . 23.4 . 9. Cf. Sir . 14.8f; Prov . 23.5 , 27.20 . 10. Cf. Gen. 39.7 ; Ezech . 6.9 ; Sir . 9.5 , 8 , 26.9 ; Jub . 20.4 ; etc. 11. I suspect that his identification of concupiscentia oculorum with curiositas arose in Augustine's mind through a fusion of ideas which all occur , if somewhat unsystematically , in Mor . Eccl . 35-39 ( on which see above , n . 5 ) . These are : ( a ) St. John's warning ( I Jo . 2.15f . ) against love of the world ( echoed at Mor . Eccl . 39 init .: nihil mundi huius diligere ) with its three concupiscences (not explicitly mentioned here by Augustine , but doubtless at the back of his mind ) ; ( b ) a Platonist interpretation of the ' world ' as the realm of the senses : amandus igitur solus Deus est; ormis vero iste mundus, id est, omnia sensibilia contemnenda ( 37) ; ( c ) the contrast between true knowledge of invisibilia et divina ( 36 ) and a fallacious rerum scientia derived de corporibus per imaginationes , i.e. through images of sense -objects ( 38. See below , no . 25 ) ; ( d ) the topic , common enough in writings of Cynic tendency , that any pursuit of useless knowledge - and that includes researches in natural science ( see 38) is just ' vain curiosity ' , and ( e ) a virtual equation of sensibilia with visibilia , since in ipsis sensibus nostris ... nihil est oculis praeferendum , so that visibilium nomine sensibilia cuncta significantur ( 37 ) . The combination of ( a ) and ( b ) might suggest that the malign influence of the sensible world is three - fold , that alongside corporeas illecebras laudemque popularem , the objects of carnal concupiscence and ambition , there is a third temptation to be resisted . But what ? Spurious knowledge ( c ) based on falsae imagines ( c . Ac . III.13 ) or mental simulacra ( B.V. 33 ) , a concept already familiar to Augustine ( see below , n . 25 ) , would provide a possible answer , suggesting in its turn the contrast between love of genuine and love of spurious wisdom , a commonplace in ancient moralizing about ( d ) curiositas . The notion ( e ) that sight is our prime sense and that visibilia can do duty for sensibilia in general , which at Mor . Eccl . 37 provides simply another weapon against the Manichees , recurs in the Confessions ( X.54 ) with a significant addition : the eyes are our most important sense when it comes to knowledge : oculi sunt ad noscendum in sensibus principes . Hence our desire for experience as against sheer pleasure , our experiendi per carnem vana et curiosa cupiditas, ... concupiscentia oculorum

Augustine , Plotinus and Saint John

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eloquio divino adpellata est. In Mor. Eccl . 35-39 , where Augustine's concept of the triplex cupiditas has yet to be clearly formulated ( see above , n . 5 ) , he is still feeling his way , likewise , towards an explicit interpretation of cupiditas oculorum as curiositas. 12. Rep . 580d - 581b . Similarities between Augustine's Begierdentriade and Plato's tripartite soul are noted by du Roy , op . cit . , p . 344f . , no . 3. 13. Compare and contrast Rep . IV.434d-445b , IX 580d- 583a , 588b -592a , Tim . 44d- 45b , 69d-71a , Phdr . 246a- 247c , 253e - 256b . 14. See H.I. Marrou , Augustin et la Fin de la Culture Antique" , Paris 1958 , p . 34 . 15. It is worth noting that one highly relevant bit of Republic IX ( 588b-589b ) was found at Nag Hammadi translated into Coptic ( VI.5 ) . 16. The closest and not very convincing parallel is Sen. Ep . 59.15 . See A. Labhardt , ' Curiositas . Notes sur l'histoire d'un mot et d'une notion ' , M.H. 1959 , pp . 206-224 , p . 222. W. Theiler , Porphyrios und Augustin, Schr . d . Königsb . Gel . Ges . Geistw . Kl . 10 , 1933 , p . 40 , n . 89 , still less convincingly cites various Stoic tripartitions ( Epict . III.2.1 , Cic . Off. II.18 , M. Ant . VII.55 , Stob . II . 115.5 W) . 17. e.g. Cic . T.D. 1.20 : Plato triplicem finxit animum. Cf. Augustine C.D. 14.19 . 18. e.g. Basil Hom . X , P.G. 31.365c - 368a ; Greg . Naz . Carm . Mor . 25.354-370 , P.G. 37.837f .; Greg . Ny . Ep . Can . , P.G. 45.224a- 225b . Note also Cassian Coll . 24.15 . 19. According to Conf. IV.25 , crimes (facinora ) result from a flawed performance by the impulsive mind , grossnesses (flagitia ) from immoderation in the voluptuous soul , errors and false opinions from flaws in the mens rationalis itself . Augustine here is certainly invoking a Platonic tripartition of the soul , but not pace Theiler loc . cit . and du Roy op . cit. , p . 348f , no . 3 his own trio of appetites : errors and false opinions have nothing necessarily to do with curiosity . 20. With what follows , contrast R.J. O'Connell , ' The Plotinian Fall of the Soul in St. Augustine ' , Traditio 19 ( 1963 ) pp . 1-32 , pp . 24-32 , and Theiler , op . cit . , pp . 37-43 . 21. I use the word ' pessimistic ' advisedly . Passages where Plotinus , in line with a Platonic tradition going back to the Phaedo and the Phaedrus , sees the ' descent ' of the soul into the body as a punishment or perversity can be contrasted with somewhat more ' optimistic ' accounts , in the tradition of Plato's Timaeus , of how souls are on duty in the world . See E.R. Dodds , Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety ( Cambridge 1965 ) pp . 21-26 . 22. Enn . V 1 ( 10 ) , cited as de tribus principialibus substantiis at C.D. X.23 . 23. Plotinus ' choice of expression was meant , I think , to bring out the examination by Soul of external objects , in contrast to the self-knowledge of Mind ( see Enn . V.3 ( 49 ) .3.16-18 ) ; he was exploiting the old distinction in Greek between πολλὰ πράσσειν and τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράσσειν . 24. e.g. Mor . Eccl . 38 ( see above , no . 5) ; Gen. Man . II.40 ; Ver . Rel . 100 . 25. The idea of imagines or simulacra as an impediment to real knowledge can be found in Augustine's earliest surviving works ( c . Ac . III.13 , B.V. 33 ) , but without there being any mention of curiositas in that context . In these Cassiacum dialogues , the term has simply its standard meanings of desire for superfluous knowledge (Ord . I.31 , II.17 ) or for occult knowledge ( Ord . II.27 , 42 ) . Only at Mor . Eccl . 38 , in the very chapter where a formulation of the three concupiscences begins to emerge ( see above , n . 5 ) , is the prohibition against being curiosus equated with cavendum esse a simulacris ( I Jo . 5.21 ) . 26. e.g. at Porphyry Sent . 33 ( ed . E. Lamberz , Teubner , ed . , 1975 , p . 37.6-13 ) , 38 fin . , 40 ( ed . E. Lamberz , Teubner , ed . , 1975 p . 48.6f . ) . Cf. Plotinus Enn . VI 8 ( 39 ) .11.13-22 ( not , incidentally , one of the Plotinian treatises listed by du Roy , op.cit . , p . 70 as having been read by Augustine . But neither are IV.8 or III.7 ) . 27. Philo Somm . 1.54 ; Apuleius Met . IX.42 ; Origen Comm . Jo . 32.294 ( G.C.S. IV . , p . 465f . ) ; John Chrys . P.G. 48.710c ; Jerome Ep . 21.8 ; etc. 28. Poimandres 14 , Kore Kosmou 22-24 , 46 . 29. Olympiodorus In Phaedonem VI.2 , p . 34 , Norvin , p . 96ff. Westerink : see Westerink , ad loc .

L'Histoire du Donatisme considérée du point de vue de sa propre théologie A. Schindler Bern

E travail voudrait contribuer à une meilleure compréhension du Donatisme .

Les

C méthodes de compréhension étant nombreuses , il me faut préciser mon propos : Je ne vise pas une interprétation sociologique , ethnologique ou politique , mais une interprétation théologique ; ou plutôt une explication qui prend son point de départ dans la théologie , pour déboucher sur le domaine extra- théologique et retourner , enfin , des faits et des données historiques aux interprétations théologiques . Il est vrai que la théologie du Donatisme n'est pas très originale .

Elle est très proche

de la théologie de ses adversaires catholiques , et , surtout , elle reproduit la théologie , et en particulier l'ecclésiologie , de Cyprien ( comme l'ont montré les recherches des décennies passées . Je renvoie essentiellement aux deux livres de Frend et de Brisson¹ ) . Je ne parlerai donc pas des doctrines donatistes sur Dieu , sur le Christ , sur la création , etc. , mais des opinions dominantes concernant la situation ecclésiologique , en me référant à leurs propres écrits . Je ne parlerai pas non plus du background cyprianique qui a été traité surtout par Brisson . Ce qui nous reste à faire est , દે mon avis , de chercher à mieux comprendre les rapports entre les actions des Donatistes d'une part , et leurs convictions théologiques et leur mentalité religieuse d'autre part .

J'admets volontiers que MM .

Frend et Brisson , et beaucoup d'autres cher-

cheurs , aient présenté des résultats précieux qui répondent aussi à cette question ; mais on peut aller plus loin encore .

La méthode la plus simple consiste à se deman-

der si la polémique d'Augustin , claire en elle -même , est justifiée du point de vue du ' Selbstverständnis ' des Donatistes , c'est - à - dire du point de vue de leur propre interprétation et compréhension de l'histoire de leur église .

Selon Augustin , polé-

miste antidonatiste , il y aurait non seulement de nombreuses contradictions entre les faits et les idées des Donatistes , mais aussi entre ces idées elles - mêmes . Une grande partie des arguments antidonatistes d'Augustin repose sur ces contradictions . 1306

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Je reprendrai ses principaux arguments , et donc les soi - disantes contradictions , sur lesquelles Augustin revient sans cesse . 1.

Le premier argument , le recours au bras séculier , se situe tout au commence-

ment du conflit ; il sera souvent répété .

Selon toute évidence , ce sont les électeurs

de Majorinus ( plus tard le parti de Donatus ) , qui ont déposé , auprès du proconsul Anullinus , en avril 313 , un dossier scellé et une lettre ouverte . Le dossier contenait sans doute les actes du concile qui venait de condamner Caecilianus , et la 2 lettre est celle citée chez Optat . L'authenticité du document n'est pas garantie . Optat , ou sa source , ont certainement modifié peu ou prou le texte , mais il demeure que , selon ce document , les premiers Donatistes ( les Donatistes avant la lettre ) demandaient à Constantin de se faire juge ou de nommer des juges , dans la querelle qui opposait le parti de Cécilien à celui de Majorinus .

Pour quelle raison et dans

quel but ont - ils agi ainsi , alors que , plus tard , Donat affirme que l'Empereur n'a rien à voir avec l'Église", et , pourtant , accuse le parti catholique d'avoir recours au bras séculier ? Klaus Girardet a signalé , dans son livre ' Kaisergericht und Bischofsgericht ' de 1975 , sur quelle tradition préconstantinienne repose cette manière de recourir au pouvoir séculier . Le point de départ se trouve dans l'évangile de Matthieu , au chapitre 18 , où la règle de discipline ecclésiastique dit qu'un frère devient semblable à un paien s'il refuse obstinément d'entendre les exhortations de l'église . L'excommunication prononcée , l'excommunié n'est plus considéré comme un frère séparé , mais comme un païen .

Cette règle est appliquée aux hérétiques et aux schismatiques

par Tertullien et Cyprien .

Cyprien refuse tout colloquium , et Tertullien toute 5 disputatio entre chrétiens et apostats . Il n'est donc pas impossible qu'un chrétien et un non-chrétien de cette catégorie puissent être en procès devant un tribunal séculier . Mais en quelle matière ? Certainement pas en matière de théologie , mais peut-être en matière privée .

En a-t- il d'autres ? Il me semble que oui :

Il y a un point litigieux , la question des biens ecclésiastiques , qui pouvait intéresser aussi bien les chrétiens restés orthodoxes que les excommuniés et les juges civils , même aux temps préconstantiniens ; non certes en temps de persécution , mais pendant les périodes de tolérance de fait . Girardet a renvoyé au cas de Paul de Samosate qui fut excommunié par un synode en l'an 268.

Il n'était pas disposé à

laisser son église ( ou ce qui en tenait lieu en ce temps là ) à ses ennemis .

Ceux-ci

s'adressèrent donc à l'Empereur Aurelianus qui venait de vaincre la reine de Palmyre dont Paul avait été ducenarius . La demande eut du sucès ; d'après Eusèbe (H.E. VII 30 , 19 ) , Paul fut expulsé de l'église vлò τñs ноσμιnñs άpxñs .

D'autres exemples

montrent que l'église préconstantinienne était parfois reconnue de facto , sinon de iure , comme propriétaire de bâtiments et de cimetières , et qu'il était possible , exceptionnellement , qu'un représentant du pouvoir civil ordonnât l'évacuation de lieux ecclésiastiques pour les rendre à l'église , ou au parti chrétien , qui en

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semblait être le propriétaire légitime .? Ce sont des exceptions ; mais nous savons qu'au temps des persécutions , donc aussi sous Dioclétien , les biens des églises ont été confisqués . En l'année 312 , alors que Constantin demandait au proconsul Anullinus de Carthage de rendre les lieux de culte aux chrétiens , les catholiques , ou plutôt le parti de Caecilianus , étaient déjà hors de l'église , donc considéres comme des païens , par le parti de Majorinus , c'est - à- dire par les Donatistes avant la lettre .

Ceux- ci

avaient déjà excommunié définitivement l'évêque de Carthage lors de leur concile . Leur demande à Constantin ne pût donc avoir d'autres intentions que de le faire juger , sur le plan civil , pour une affaire déjà close sur le plan ecclésaistique . Fidèles à Cyprien , ils ne pensaient pas devoir recourir , ni à un concile , ni à Rome , ni à qui que soit d'autre ; ils demandaient simplement à Constnatin , qui n'était pas encore souillé par une persécution , de rendre justice à la véritable église .

Ils

firent leur demande à Constantin dans l'intention , courante à l'époque préconstantinienne , de faire chasser les excommuniés des lieux de culte , afin que leur soient restitués les lieux d'où ils avaient été expulsés pendant la persécution . Avec la décision de Constantin de laisser les biens de l'église au parti de Cécilien , celuici commençait à faire figure de successeur des persécuteurs , en devenant lui - même persécuteur . Il est fort probable que cette manière de recourir aux autorités civiles est restée dès lors , et jusqu'à la conférence de Carthage en 411 , la manière courante d'agir du parti donatiste .

Le mandatum des Donatistes présenté en 411 à Carthage ,

précise à propos des conflits entre les Donatistes et leurs propres schismatiques , les Maximianistes : Ils ne les ont jamais forcés ou fait pression sur eux pour les obliger à retourner à la véritable église , ni essayé de les faire punir pour leur 10 Il ne apostasie . Ils n'ont fait que : USURPATA ECCLESIASTICA CIVILITER REPETERE . s'agit certainement pas là d'une invention ad hoc ou d'un idéal sans réalité .

Même

dans les actes des procès des Primianistes contre les Maximianistes , qui sont conservés dans les oeuvres de Saint Augustin , on ne trouve que ce seul motif : Faire expulser , par les autorités civiles , les ' profani ' des églises qui ne leur appar11 tiennent plus depuis leur excommunication . Puisque Augustin ne voit pas cette différence , et ne veut , en citant ces actes de procès , que prouver que les Donatistes agissent contre leurs propres schismatiques comme les catholiques contre les Donatistes , son choix de textes ne peut pas être influencé par une tendance comparable à la tendance restrictive de l'hypothèse que je viens de proposer , c'est - àdire que les Donatistes n'ont jamais forcé leurs ennemis à rejoindre l'unité . Je pense donc qu'ils ont toujours refusé toute intervention de l'Empereur ou d'autres fonctionnaires civils , soit dans les affaires intérieures de l'église , soit pour faire revenir quelqu'un dans leur église ; qu'ils n'ont fait appel au bras séculier que pour garder les lieux saints , c'est - à- dire pour obtenir des sanctions discipli-

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L'Histoire du Donatisme naires ' hors ' de l'église , ou du moins de ce qu'ils appelaient eux : église .

Deux événements de l'histoire du Donatisme contredisent peut -être cette interprétation .

Optat de Milève affirme que Donat le Grand , ' provocavit ut unitas 12 proximo tempore fieri temptaretur ' . Cela signifie - t - il qu'il faisait appel à l' empereur en vue d'une réunion forcée des deux églises nord- africaines sous sa primauté ? Nos sources ne nous permettent pas de donner une réponse définitive à cette question . Il me semble difficile d'avoir grande confiance en Optat . Quoiqu'il en soit , c'est lui qui nous transmet le fameux propos de Donat que j'ai cité au commencement , et qui nous apprend qu'il a refusé l'argent que les fonctionnaires impé13 riaux voulaient donner à son église ." L'autre événement , qui dépasse les limites ordinaires des actions donatistes , s'est passé au temps d'Optat de Timgad , évêque Donatiste brutal qui finit par être tué avec Gildo l'usurpateur en 398. C'est lui sans doute qui a forcé les deux évêques de Musti et d'Assuras ( Felicianus et Praetextatus ) et leurs fidèles à revenir du schisme maximianiste au Donatisme primianiste .

Mais Optat est resté , même pour les Donatistes , un cas non résolu .

Cresconius , par exemple , reste très réservé et écrit : Optatum nec absolvo nec 14 damno . Je dirais donc : Si les principes des théologiens donatistes étaient bien ceux que je viens de décrire , la réalité était parfois toute autre .

L'expulsion des apostats

d'une église qui , au fond , ne leur appartenait plus , a produit à maintes reprises des tumultes , des émeutes , des brutalités , chaque fois que les excommuniés n'acceptaient pas leur excommunication . Ces conduites font apparaître les limites de la théologie donatiste .

La théologie du Donatisme n'est pas tout le Donatisme , mais

elle permet de comprendre l'histoire du Donatisme comme un reflet de ses principes théologiques , principes qui correspondaient aux convictions religieuses de ceux qui produisaient et comprenaient de tels principes . De qui s'agit - il ? Des chefs donatistes et des membres des classes élevées de la société nord-africaine convertis au donatisme . Il nous reste des fragments qui nous montrent qu'il s'agissait de personnes d'une certaine culture , qui parlaient et écrivaient le latin , et qui ont affirmé à différentes reprises n'avoir rien en 15 commun avec le terrorisme d'autres Donatistes , en particulier des Circoncellions . Il existait manifestement , dans le Donatisme même , une tension entre les classes inférieures et supérieures , et , dans une certaine mesure , entre les villes et la 16 campagne . Le récit de l'élection de Silvanus de Cirta de 305 illustre ces diffé-

rences . Les Circoncellions avant la lettre étaient des ' campenses ' et des ' harenarii ' , le ' populus minutus ' ; les Donatistes orthodoxes avant la lettre étaient des gens qui voulaient un ' civis ' , un concitoyen , comme évêque et non un ' traditor ' 17 comme Silvanus ; c'étaient les bourgeois de la ville ; au vrai le ' populus minutus ' ne s'intéressait pas à la question de la ' traditio ' . Il faut toujours tenir compte de ces différences au sein même du Donatisme . Le catholicisme ne paraît pas avoir

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connu en son sein des tensions aussi fortes que le Donatisme .

Il semble que les

chefs donatistes avaient plus d'appui dans les masses , mais connaissaient par elles plus de difficultés que le clergé catholique .

C'est pourquoi , il reste dans la

théologie des Donatistes un élément irrationnel , même chez les porte -parole d'un niveau intellectuel certain . Pour en finir avec ce point , je dirais que la seule possibilité pour les Donatistes d'exister comme église , dans et avec un état non -persécuteur , aurait été un pluralisme favorisé et protégé par l'état . A certaines époques de l'histoire des deux églises nord-africaines , ce pluralisme existait de facto , par exemple à partir de l'année 321 sous Constantin . On sait que Constantin fit bâtir une nouvelle basilique à Constantine parce que les Donatistes avaient pris possession de la basilique des 18 catholiques . Il est évident que ce pluralisme n'était pas , pour les Empereurs , acceptable à la longue , et que de plus il contredisait les opinions d'un grand nombre de théologiens . Il fallait une église dans l'Empire , rien d'autre !

2. Passons maintenant à la conception du droit ecclésiastique . Optat et Augustin croyaient que les Donatistes avaient demandé à Constantin de leur donner des juges ecclésiastiques , c'est - à- dire des évêques , pour jouer le rôle d'arbitres entre Caecilianus et Majorinus . Une chose est certaine : Constantin fît convoquer , par le pape Miltiade , un synode à Rome avec des évêques gaulois , les Donatistes ayant demandé des juges gaulois ; mais il s'agit , à mon avis et selon Girardet et 19 Au regard des événements du siècle suivant , il me semble Frend , de juges civils . incontestable que les Donatistes ne pouvaient accepter le jugement d'un synode non africain . Le concile africain général était pour eux , comme pour Cyprien , l'autorité supérieure de l'église , et les autres parties de l'église universelle devaient se trouver , ou bien en accord avec le concile africain ( à cause de la communauté de l ' Esprit saint ) , ou dans l'erreur . Cette opinion ne contredit pas le fait que Donat 20 est allé quand- même à Rome , avec neuf autres évêques de son parti . Il me faut faire maintenant quelques remarques sur l'époque d'Augustin .

Avec l '

entrée d'Augustin dans le clergé catholique nord - africain apparait l'idée nouvelle de la discussion , publique ou non , entre évêques , sur le schisme , ses problèmes théologiques et sa genèse au temps de Cécilien . Cette idée contredisait l'ecclésiologie des Donatistes , les catholiques n'étant pas à leurs yeux des frères séparés , mais des païens ou des hérétiques .

L'idée d'Augustin de faire intervenir

les autorités civiles pour forcer les Donatistes à assister à des colloques , et de confier à ces autorités la rédaction des procès -verbaux était tout aussi inacceptable pour les Donatistes ; de plus cette manière de faire montrait à eux clairement la 21 complicité qui liait le pouvoir séculier et l'église pseudo - catholique ." Les Donatistes ne vinrent , enfin , à la grande disputation de 411 , que sous la menace de graves répressions annoncées par Marcellinus en cas de refus , mais aussi

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sous la promesse de certains privilèges dont bénéficieraient tous ceux qui y parti22 ciperaient . La première tactique des Donatistes à la conférence fut d'abord de pratiquer une obstruction presque totale .

Non par malveillance , mais dans la con-

viction que les catholiques les avaient traînés de force devant le juge civil , et qu'ils faisaient figure d'accusés devant une autorité qui n'avait , au vrai , aucunement le droit de juger le différend qui les opposait aux catholiques . Marcellinus laisse entendre que la discussion avait été désirée par les deux partis . Il est 23 presque certain qu'il n'en a pas été ainsi ." Quoiqu'il en soit , cette conférence de Carthage a été un événement unique dans l'histoire du droit canon et dans celle des relations entre églises et état . Jamais ailleurs un fonctionnaire civil n'avait jugé une affaire ecclésaistique d'une telle manière . Cette conférence ne peut trouver d'autre justification - de la part de l'autorité civile et du parti catholique que dans la révision par le juge de tous les documents , surtout de ceux concernant le commencement du schisme . 3.

Venons -en maintenant à la troisième contradiction : Les deux églises étaient

séparées depuis un siècle à cause d'accusations dont les documents ( sur l'origine du schisme ) ne donnent pas la preuve . Ces accusations étaient déjà passées mythe ou fable , et la preuve juridique ne put être fournie .

Faut - il en rester à la consta-

tation de l'absurdité , de la contradiction évidente de cette situation : une église se constitue en opposition à une autre au nom d'une affaire scandaleuse , qui pourrait n'avoir jamais eu lieu .

Ou peut-on lui trouver une explication ?

Prenons , tout d'abord , les documents témoignant de la genèse du schisme .

Si on

les relit sans prendre parti pour les catholiques , il faut bien dire que ce qui s ' est passé au ' dies traditionis ' demeure en beaucoup d'endroits bien obscur .

On

pouvait , à l'époque , très bien s'arranger avec les autorités chargées de confisquer les livres et objets sacrés des églises . On pouvait être absent , on pouvait livrer 24 des écrits hérétiques , des apocryphes , etc. Le problème de la ' traditio ' était l ' occasion d'actes et d'interprétations ambiguës bien plus que le ' dies turificationis ' . Même les recherches sur Félix d'Apthugni , l'un des évêques qui avaient consacré Cécilien , ne sont pas entièrement libres de ces ambiguïtés .

Le procès-verbal qui

nous reste du procès devant le proconsul Aelianus est un document fort compliqué . Mais si on l'étudie minutieusement , on doit dire : la ' traditio ' de Félix n'était pas démontrable , un point c'est tout ! La sentence du juge affirmant l'innocence de 25 Félix est fondée sur des témoignages et des documents de valeur bien douteuse ." On pourrait dire : les documents prouvent que rien n'est vérifiable .

Une seule chose

est évidente : l'opposition des mentalités : d'un côté on est plus collaborationiste , de l'autre plus résistant ; mais les faits eux-mêmes restent noyés dans la brume d' une histoire pleine d'ambiguïtés et de soupçons jamais fondés .

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4.

A. Schindler Examinons maintenant un autre point délicat : la doctrine donatiste des sacre-

ments et surtout leur opinion qui veut que les sacrements administrés par des pécheurs , en ce cas par des ' traditores ' , agissent comme une contagion , un empoisonnement , un péché héréditaire qui se propage de génération en génération par l'administration des sacrements . A leurs yeux , l'église catholique toute entière est contaminée par ce mal .

Selon l'avis de Pétilien , Augustin pourra dire et faire ce qu'il

voudra : il reste le fils d'un traître ayant été ordonné par un évêque qui était par 26 Comment comprendre une succession en communion avec Cécilien et Félix d'Apthugni . telle doctrine , dont le point de départ est extrêmement vague , et qui a fait que des millions de chrétiens , pendant plus de 100 ans , ont été condamnés par les Donatistes , par référence à une ordination unique de qualité douteuse ? Les donatistes ont eux-mêmes , et à maintes reprises , fait des allusions , voire donné des explications à ceux qui trouvaient que l'on ne pouvait pourtant pas leur faire des reproches au nom d'une affaire aussi ancienne , et d'une personne qui ne pouvait être dite le père de quelqu'un vivant un siècle plus tard . Pétilianus répond à cet argument en écrivant : ' eius est aliquis filius cuius facta sectatur ' 27 Quels sont ces ' facta ' ? Quand Augustin , dans ses voyages , passe par des paroisses 28 ou des fundi donatistes , on l'appelle ' traditor et persecutor ' . Le terme ' traditor ' suffit déjà pour dire les deux choses ; il désigne , en effet , non seulement celui qui a livré des livres pendant la persécution , mais aussi le traître , c'est - à - dire Judas . 29 Il dit , non A en croire Pétilianus , les catholiques sont les successeurs de Judas . moins clairement , que la contagion pernicieuse du péché se fait non seulement par la succession épiscopale et le baptême , mais déjà par la simple communion ecclésias30 tique . La solidarité avec les anciens ' traditores et persecutores ' suffit pour faire de l'église présente une assemblée du diable . La doctrine du sacrement est donc expliquée et complétée chez les Donatistes par la doctrine de la communion ecclésiale ; et la doctrine du crime originel de la ' traditio ' est expliquée et complétée par l'idée de la solidarité des catholiques avec les pécheurs gravement tombés . On peut retourner l'argument : ce qui rend l'église catholique abominablement hérétique , c'est sa tolérance , presque complète , envers tous ceux qui ont commis ou qui pourraient commettre le crime de persécution contre l'église véritable . Car l' église catholique s'attache aux Empereurs de telle sorte qu'elle peut déclancher une persécution , d'un instant à l'autre . De plus elle n'est pas disposée à se séparer de gens qui commettent des péchés mortels comme la tradition , la turification , l'idolâtrie , l'adultère , l'homicide . La discipline ecclésiastique de l ' église catholique est tellement insuffisante qu'elle ne saurait être considérée 31 comme une église . 5.

Nous touchons là à une autre contradiction : à l'existence de pécheurs , voire

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L'Histoire du Donatisme de ' traditores ' , dans l'église donatiste elle -même .

Les Donatistes ne nient pas qu'

il y ait des pécheurs au sein de leurs paroisses , voire même parmi leur clergé . Mais ceux-là ne sauraient souiller l'église et les sacrements tant qu'ils restent inconnus 32; la délimitation de l'église visible est , en effet , le domaine de l ' action salvifique du Saint Esprit .

Parmenien parle des ' dotes ecclesiae ' qui 33 demeurent , même si un prêtre est un pécheur . Il faut le jugement de l'église , c ' est-à-dire l'excommunication formelle , pour enlever un prêtre ou un fidèle de cette zone de salut . Mais lorsqu'un homme est découvert comme ayant commis un péché mortel , il faut procéder à l'excommunication , sinon la pollution qui a contaminé l ' église catholique pourrait se répandre aussi à l'église de Donat . Il faut reconnaître que la discipline a été appliquée d'une manière assez stricte au sein de l ' église donatiste . Les Donatistes affirment que la conscience d'un baptisant ' abluit ' la conscience du baptisé ; mais cela ne veut pas dire que ce soit la sainteté du prêtre qui donne au sacrement son effet salutaire ; c'est le Christ qui le lui donne ( selon le té34 ; de même la

moignage formel de Cresconius et , d'une autre manière , de Parménien )

' conscientia ' dont il est question ne désigne pas la conscience personnelle et secrète du prêtre , mais celle qu'il a de son état ecclésial , de son rôle dans l ' église visible , et celle que l'église a de lui , et qui ne sera abolie que par l ' 35 excommunication définitive . Il faut dire encore que l'excommunication des schismatiques au sein du Donatisme même , des Maximianistes par les Primianistes et vice versa , n'était pas définitive ; on concédait aux excommuniés une ' dilatio temporis ' leur permettant le retour et la 36 possibilité de la pénitence . Les Donatistes du reste affirmaient eux -mêmes que la séparation , le schisme au sens strict du mot , qui existait entre eux , était tout autre chose que leur séparation du catholicisme hérétique souillé de paganisme . 37 Voilà pourquoi Maximianus avait péché contre un homme , Caecilianus contre Dieu . le fait de réadmettre leurs propres schismatiques sans rebaptême , mais de ne pas admettre les catholiques sans les rebaptiser , n'est pas une véritable contradiction en théologie donatiste . La sixième contradiction porte sur la manière donatiste de comprendre la catholicité de l'église . Augustin aime à dire qu'il n'y a , pour les Donatistes , de véritable église que dans les provinces africaines et qu'ils négligent le reste du 6.

monde converti au christianisme ; pour lui , par contre , l'extension mondiale du Christianisme représentait l'accomplissement des prédictions de l'Ancien Testament et fournissait la preuve que la catholicité n'était pas du côté des Donatistes . Mais ceux-ci comprenaient la catholicité comme qualité ecclésiale , non comme une 38 Il est vrai que les quantité d'églises répandues un peu partout dans le monde ." opinions des Donatistes différaient à propos des ' ecclesiae transmarinae ' . Ils

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avaient tendance à dire que la vérité avait été conservée seulement par la minorité et que le reste du monde soit - disant catholique était tombé dans l'erreur . Mais même ceux qui parlaient ainsi ne pensaient pas que le reste du monde fut perdu pour toujours ; ils espéraient qu'un jour le Donatisme l'emporterait sur le soit - disant catholicisme africain , et que le reste du monde reconnaîtrait l'église donatiste comme la véritable église .

39 Ils n'ont jamais envisagé de rebaptiser tout le monde .

Nous avons montré que chez les Donatistes les opinions divergent , et il faut bien avouer que les théologiens de cette église ont changé et formé leurs théories en fonction des situations et des événements , tout comme les théologiens du parti catholique . L'attitude des uns comme des autres témoigne d'une tendance fondamentale . Mais on ne peut pas dire que les Donatistes avaient conservé une mentalité anté-constantinienne naïve et qu'Augustin aurait développé une théologie irréprochable en accord avec l'ère post- constantinienne . Le Donatisme représente une alternative ecclésiale et ecclésiologique de la période post - constantinienne toute différente de celle d'Augustin , mais tout aussi chrétienne et raisonnable .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. W.H.C. Frend , The Donatist Church; A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa ( Oxford , 1952 , 19712 ) ; ' The Roman Empire in the Eyes of Western Schismatics during the Fourth Century A.D. ' , Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae 1 ( 1961 ) , 9– 22 ; Jean-Paul Brisson , Autonomisme et Christianisme dans l'Afrique Romaine de Septime Sévère à l'invasion vandale ( Paris , 1958 ) . 2. I , 22 ; la lettre d'Anullinus chez Augustin , Ep . 88,2 , et Coll . Carth . III , 216-220 . 3. Pour la discussion de ce document cf. Klaus M. Girardet , Kaisergericht und Bischofsgericht ( Antiquitas I /21 , Bonn , 1975 ) , pp . 6-27 . 4. Optatus III , 3 . 5. Tertullien , De praescr. 16 , 2 ; Cyprien , Ep . 59 , 20 , cf. Girardet , loc . cit . , 11 sq . 6. Eusèbe , Hist . eccl . VII , 30 , 19 , cf. Girardet , loc . cit . , 14-16 . 7. Cf. le rescrit de Gallien : Eusèbe , Hist . eccl . VII , 13 , 2 . 8. Eusèbe , Hist . eccl . x , 5 , 16 . 9. Cf. l'interprétation de Girardet , loc . cit . ( n . 3 ) . A mon avis il ne faut pas nier totalement l'authenticité de la lettre citée Opt . I , 22 . 10. Coll . Carth . III , 258 . 11. Par exemple Augustin , C. Cresc . III , 56 , 62. 12. Optatus , III , 1 . 13. Ibid . , III , 3 . 14. Augustin , C. Cresc . III , 12 , 16 , cf. C. litt . Pet . I , 24 , 26. 15. Par exemple C. litt . Pet . , loc . cit . , C. Cresc . III , 59 , 65 , Coll . Carth . III , 297 . 16. Augustin , C. litt . Pet . II , 19 , 43 ; II , 83 , 184 . 17. Cf. Serge Lancel , ' Aux origines du donatisme et du mouvement des circoncellions ' , Mélanges Saumagne = Cahiers de Tunisie 15 ( 1967 ) , pp . 182-188 . 18. Optatus , Appendix , no . 10 ( Lettre de Constantin de 330 ) . 19. Girardet , op . cit . ( n . 3 ) , Frend , Donatist Church (n . 1 ) , pp . 147-150 , mais il ne s'exprime pas clairement sur ce point . 20. Cf. les documents chez H. v . Soden /H . v . Campenhausen , Urkunden zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Donatismus ( Berlin , 19502 ) , Urkunden no . 13A- D .

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21. Cf. les lettres d'Augustin 23 , 29 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 43 , 44 , 51 , et al . 22. Cf. l'édit de Marcellinus : Coll . Carth . I , 5 . 23. Il s'agit de la question , comment il faut interpréter la longue discussion Coll . Carth . III , 31 sqq . Cf. S.C. 194 = Coll. Carth . , vol . I , p . 20 , n . 2 ( S. Lancel ) . Le droit de Marcellinus de juger en matière théologique et spirituelle est contesté par les Donatistes Coll . Carth . III , 295 . 24. On trouve de nombreux exemples dans les Gesta apud Zenophilum et les Acta purgationis Felicis ( Optatus , Appendix , no . 1 et 2 ) . 25. Le témoin principal est menacé de la torture , la lettre à charge n'est d ' abord pas reconnue comme faux , etc. , cf. les Acta purgationis Felicis ( n . 24 ) . 26. Coll . Carth . III , 221 sqq . Vient de paraître : Wolfgang Wischmeyer , ' Die Bedeutung des Sukzessionsgedankens für eine theologische Interpretation des donatistischen Streits ' , Z.N.T.W. 70 ( 1979 ) , pp . 68-85 , surtout 72 sqq . 27. Chez Augustin , C. litt . Pet . II , 11 , 25 ; 12 , 27 . 28. Ep . 35 , 4. 29. C. litt . Pet . II , 43 , 101 sqq . 30. Par exemple chez Augustin , C. Cresc . III , 35 , 39 . 31. C. Cresc . II , 28 , 35 . 32. Même Judas ' antequem damnaretur , omnia sicut apostolus gessit ' : Cresconius chez Augustin , C. Cresc . II , 19 , 24 . 33. Sur la théologie de Parménien et sa doctrine des ' dotes ' : Congar dans Bibliothèque Augustinienne , vol . 28 , p . 56 sqq . 34. C. Cresc . III , 5 , 6 . 35. Cresconius parle d'une ' publica conscientia ' , chez Augustin , C. Cresc . II , 17 , 21 , cf. III , 33 , 37 , et Johannes Stelzenberger , Conscientia bei Augustinus (Paderborn , 1959 ) , surtout pp . 96-99 . 36. Citation dans C. Cresc . IV , 35 , 42 . 37. C. Cresc . IV , 10 , 12 . 38. Sur la notion de catholicité donatiste : Rogatus chez Augustin , Ep . 93 , 7 , 23 ; Petilianus chez Augustin , C. litt . Pet . II , 38 , 90 ; Cresconius chez Augustin , C. Cresc . III , 66 , 74 sq .; Coll . Carth . III 75 sq . , 91 sqq . 39. Coll . Carth . III , 99-103 .

SP 3 - W

Jésus -Christ , notre justice , selon saint Augustin Basil Studer, O.S.B. Rome

ANS la ' Sotériologie des Pères de l'Eglise ' que je viens de publier pour le Dandbuch der Domengeschfente ' J'ai tache d'esquisser aude , doctrine sugustinienne sur l'oeuvre salvatrice du Christ .

A ce propos je croyais avoir des raisons

suffisantes pour insister en particulier sur ce que saint Augustin dit de la justice de Jésus - Christ . En considérant spécialement des textes du De Trinitate , j'ai résumé cette thématique comme suit : La justice humaine consiste dans la volonté par laquelle l'homme s'insère dans l'ordre de Dieu , en acceptant toujours la volonté du Père et en s'engageant continuellement dans le service des frères . Dans la situation infralapsaire cependant , un esprit de rébellion et d'égoïsme s'oppose tellement à cet idéal que l'homme ne réussit jamais par sa propre force à vivre la justice à laquelle Dieu l'avait appelé par la création . Toutefois , Dieu ne voulant pas que l'homme pécheur périsse dans sa misère , a envoyé son Fils dans ce monde afin qu'il réalise par son humilité et par son amour la justice de l'homme créé pour Dieu . Ainsi , la justice de Dieu est -elle devenue notre justice . Pourtant , étant très conscient qu'Augustin ne s'est pas prononcé en termes aussi nets , j'ai proposé le thème de la justice du Christ plutôt sous forme d'hypothèse . Or , après avoir fait des vérifications ultérieures , je suis plus que jamais convaincu que l'aspect le plus précieux de la sotériologie augustinienne est à rechercher proprement en ce qu'il y est dit sur le Christ , unique juste pour nous . Evidemment , on se demandera s'il est légitime de poser à Augustin une question qui , pour lui , n'avait qu'une importance marginale ou qui était même en dehors de son horizon . De fait , les textes qui parlent de la justice de Jésus - Christ ne sont pas tellement nombreux , et ces textes relativement rares contiennent plutôt des prémisses que des conclusions explicites à notre propos . Toutefois n'est - il pas inutile d'interroger de notre point de vue actuel les auteurs anciens , en particulier des théologiens aussi féconds que saint Augustin . 1316

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Même si nous n'arrivions qu'à constater qu'ils n'ont pas exploité toutes les implications de leur pensée , ou à expliquer peut -être les raisons pour lesquelles ils n'ont pas approfondi certaines de leurs données , éclairerions-nous davantage la force de leurs positions théologiques . Pour répondre à la question , à savoir ce que pour Augustin signifie Jésus , l'unique juste pour nous , il faut naturellement tenir compte de la complexité de 3 l'oeuvre augustinienne . D'une part , en effet , Augustin envisage la justice de Dieu et de l'homme , et en particulier celle du Christ , sous des angles très différents suivant ses préoccupations théologiques et pastorales .

A cet égard , on doit avoir

avant tout sous les yeux que les controverses pélagiennes lui ont donné l'occasion 4 singulière de développer la thématique de la justice et de la justification .* De fait , la justice par laquelle Dieu justifie l'homme se trouve au centre de toutes 5 ces discussions - là ." En particulier y entraient en lice les question suivantes : le besoin de tout le monde , les petits enfants y compris , d'être justifié , les rapports entre la liberté humaine , la loi et la grâce justifiante , l'impossibilité d'arriver sur cette terre à la justice parfaite , les Justes de l'Ancien Testament . Il n'y manquait même pas le problème qui nous intéresse spécialement , le Christ , 10 unique juste et source de notre justice .* D'autre part , il faut considérer aussi les ressources qu'Augustin avait à sa disposition .

Cela veut dire , comme toujours , qu'il est nécessaire de se rendre compte

qu'Augustin , tout en restant jusqu'au bout sous les influences de la rhétorique et de la philosophie gréco - romaine , était soucieux de se mettre dans les perspectives de la foi chrétienne , donc d'adapter les idées et le langage de l'Antiquité aux exi11 gences des Ecritures et de l'orthodoxie de son temps . En regardant donc continuellement les approches et les ressources variées de sa théologie , nous voudrions saisir dans quelle mesure Augustin a fondé la justice de l'homme sur la justice de Jésus - Christ , l'unique juste dans ce monde .

Pour répondre

pleinement à cette question principale , il nous faut cependant aborder d'abord deux questions préliminaires , la première sur l'idéal de la justice humaine et sur l'incapacité de l'homme d'y arriver , et la seconde sur la justice de l'homme , don de Dieu .

D'ailleurs , ce n'est que pour des raisons de clarté que nous distinguons les

trois questions . Dans les textes eux-mêmes , elles se rencontrent mêlées les unes aux autres . Augustin lui - même n'a pas cherché cette systématisation , même s'il ne manque pas de procéder par des méthodes dialectiques et de résumer de temps en temps 12 les lignes principales de sa pensée ." I. La justice de l'homme Quand on veut décrire ce qu'Augustin entend par la justice de l'homme , il faut partir de trois données fondamentales . D'abord , il saute aux yeux qu'il oppose con14 13 tinuellement la iustitia au péché . Le juste n'est pas iniquus ou impius . Il 15 16 En un certain sens , il est vrai qu'il n'est pas pécheur . Il est plutôt innocens ."

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est encore pécheur .

Mais au fond , il est libéré de l'iniquitas , du péché permanent 18 17 qu'il a hérité d'Adam , son père par nature . Il fait par conséquent la justice ." 19 Au lieu de suivre la via iniquitatis , il marche sur la via iusta : Cela veut dire , et c'est la seconde donnée , que l'homme juste accomplit la volonté divine et se 20 distingue de tous ceux qui ne l'accomplissent pas . Il a la bona voluntas , celle 21 qui est conforme à la volonté de Dieu . Enfin , il faut tenir présent qu'Augustin discerne plus ou moins trois niveaux dans la justice humaine . La justice est une 22 vertu , ou plus exactement une attitude , un ambulare in via iustitiae . Ensuite , elle est un état permanent , une condition de vie , la source vitale de laquelle 23 jaillit l'attitude juste . Enfin , la justice est une action , un facere opera 24 iustitiae . C'est proprement d'après ces trois aspects de la justice humaine que nous voulons entrer dans la pensée augustinienne , en tenant toujours compte cependant des deux premières données : de la iustitia opposée au péché , et de la iustitia accomplissement de la volonté de Dieu . Cet exposé sera d'ailleurs complété par une considération de l'incapacité de l'homme d'être juste . 25 Comme attitude humaine , la justice fait partie des motus animi . Elle est l'inclination qui dispose l'homme à se soumettre incessamment à la volonté de Dieu.26 27 Cette volonté est la règle de tout son comportement ." Grâce à sa justice , l'homme 28 accepte la volonté divine même dans les moments les plus difficiles de sa vie . Dans les tentations qui ne peuvent lui manquer , le juste ne succombe pas , mais 29 attend patiemment la fin . Il sait même très bien que ce sont avant tout les justes 30 qui seront persécutés . Tout en ayant peur de la mort , il ne recule même pas devant 31 le sacrifice suprême de sa vie . Alignée ainsi totalement à la justice immortelle , 32 la volonté du juste mérite d'être appelée la bona voluntas . Comme telle , la volonté 33 C'est ce qui , au humaine est le mouvement le plus intime et le plus fort de l'âme . fond , est la chose la plus facile pour la volonté elle -même et ce qui suffit aussi à 34 Dieu . En se rattachant à la distinction entre iustitia et iudicium qu'on rencontre dans les psaumes , Augustin précise encore davantage l'objet de l'attitude juste de 1'homme .35 Plein de justice , l'homme juste discerne le juste de l'injuste , le bon 37 36 du mauvais . En cela il se confie totalement aux jugements de Dieu . Même s'il ne 38 comprend plus les misères de ce monde , il ne doute jamais de leur justesse . 39 D'autre part , l'homme juste adapte son action à la justice de Dieu . Il ne fait 41 40 que suivre le bien et éviter le mal . En ce sens , son coeur est tout droit . Se soumettre ainsi à chaque instant à la volonté divine ne signifie rien d'autre 42 que s'insérer dans l'ordre de Dieu . En adorant les jugements divins et en respectant toujours les mesures éternelles , l'homme juste ne fait que reconnaître l'ordre 43 naturel que le Dieu tout sage et tout juste a établi avant toute la création ." Impressionné par la thématique néo- testamentaire de la plenitudo legis , voire des

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textes bibliques qui réduisent toute la morale chrétienne à l'amour de Dieu et des 44 hommes , Augustin identifie en outre la justice avec la charité . A cet égard , il est très caractéristique de voir comment il complète le suum cuique par le diligere 46 45 omnes . Certes , il met en rapport toutes les vertus cardinales avec l'amour ." 47 Toutefois , comme il considère la justice comme la vertu morale la plus importante " 48 il est naturel qu'il la rattache d'une manière spéciale à l'amour ." Accomplir la volonté divine , signifie donc pour un chrétien vivre selon le commandement de la double charité ."49 Par conséquent , l'ordo iustitiae coincide à son tour avec l'ordo 50 amoris. Augustin ne se contente pas cependant de circonscrire la justice comme attitude dans laquelle l'homme est incliné à aimer Dieu et son semblable . Il est aussi convaincu que le vrai chrétien aime la justice elle - même . Une justice extérieure , 51 imposée du dehors , ne serait rien . Il ne suffit pas d'être juste par peur des 52 peines qui seront infligées à l'injuste . L'homme juste agit plutôt en pleine 53 54 liberté , voire par amour . En ce sens , Augustin ne cesse de parler de la de55 56 lectatio iustitiae` , de la suavitas qui remplit le coeur du juste . De même , il 57 Evidemment développe le thème du timor castus qui s'oppose au timor servilis . , qui aime la justice ni ne se constituera une justice à lui , ni ne se glorifiera 58 soi -même . Au contraire , il saura que haïr le péché et aimer la justice sont une 59 seule chose , si bien que tantum quisque peccatum odit, quantum iustitiam diligit . Cette attitude humaine qui culmine dans l'amour de la justice , suppose un état permanent de justice . L'homme doit être en condition de se montrer juste . Le mouvement intérieur qui le porte à accomplir volontairement en toutes les choses la volonté divine , en aimant Dieu et les hommes , ne peut jaillir que d'une source plus 60 61 C'est la iustitia qua iusti sumus ." profonde . C'est l'habitus iustitiae par le62 quel on possède la justice et par lequel on est possédé par elle . C'est la vita 63 verior de l'homme . Or , cet état de justice apparaît chez Augustin sous divers aspects .

En premier

lieu , c'est la condition de ceux qui sont sans péché , voire sans péché originel et 64 autant que possible sans péchés personnels . Comme tel , il est le résultat de la 65 justification de la part de Dieu . Cette justice dont l'homme est revêtu n'est cependant pas une chose purement humaine . Par sa justice , l'homme participe plutôt 66 67 à la justice de Dieu , qui a fait la justice que nous possédons . Participant à 68 la justice unique de Dieu , le juste prend part à la justice qui gouverne le monde 69 et qui est à l'origine de toute paix . De la sorte , sa vie est réglée par la 70 mesure de toutes choses ." Il faut même dire que plus l'homme est uni à Dieu , plus 71 il est juste ." C'est dans ce sens qu'Augustin rapproche la justice de l'homme 72 justifié de la déification ou de l'adoption filiale de l'homme ainsi que de la 73 ressemblance par laquelle l'homme reflète la beauté de son maître ." Il est naturel que l'attitude juste de l'homme , fondée sur son état de justice ,

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se manifeste dans une action juste . Le mouvement puissant qui jaillit de la 74 iustitia qua iusti sumus ne peut que s'achever dans les opera iustitiae .' La bona voluntas , enracinée dans la volonté du créateur , est pressée de soi -même à produire de bonnes oeuvres ."75 D'une manière générale , Augustin voit cette action juste dans le fait que l'homme 76 ne pèche pas , soit en tolérant les injustices , soit en s'abstenant d'actes injustes ." Quand il reste sur ce plan plutôt négatif, il précise en plus que le juste accomplit 77 78 la loi en se séparent de ce siècle' > lorsqu'il s'accuse de ses péchés et combat 79 toutes les inclinations mauvaises . Dans un sens plutôt positif , Augustin , pour décrire les opera iustitiae , reprend le trinôme biblique du jeûne , de l'aumône et 80 de la prière . En raison de sa haute estime pour la charité , on comprend qu'il 81 Suivant le considère avant tout les oeuvres charitables comme opera iustitiae . langage biblique , il présente ces actes de la justice comme sacrificium iustitiae82," 83 ou parle plus d'une fois tout simplement de facere iustitiam . Tout ce que nous avons dit jusqu'ici sur l'attitude , sur la condition permanente et sur l'action de l'homme juste ne reçoit sa signification plénière que si nous nous rendons compte que pour Augustin , c'est un idéal que l'homme ne parvient jamais à réaliser par ses propres forces . De fait , dès son enfance Augustin a senti le 84 poids de la mortalité qui empêche l'homme d'être juste . Toutefois , comme on le sait bien , c'est surtout à partir de 412 qu'il ne cesse plus de revenir sur la question de l'universalité du péché dont personne n'est exempt sinon le Christ , aussi bien que sur la question de l'impossibilité d'arriver sur cette terre à la 85 justice parfaite . Quant à la situation misérable dans laquelle la désobéissance d'Adam a entraîné toute l'humanité , les positions d'Augustin sont très nettes . Privé de la lumière 86 de la justice l'homme ne pouvait plus sortir par sa propre force des ténèbres de 87 l'iniquité . Il était à même de se blesser , mais il n'avait pas la capacité de se 88 guérir soi -même . Il avait possédé la liberté de passer de la justice au péché , 89 mais désormais il était dépourvu de la liberté d'y retourner . Pour expliquer ultérieurement cette thèse fondamentale qui , selon lui , s'impose par la tradition liturgique du baptême des enfants et qu'il base avant tout sur son exégèse de Romains 5,12 , Augustin a introduit la distinction entre reatus et poena . D'une part , en désobéissant au commandement de Dieu , Adam s'est rendu coupable au point que toute sa descendance a contracté à jamais sa culpabilité . Cela veut dire que l'homme ne pouvait plus se libérer de son reatus . Il restait injuste , pécheur , ennemi de Dieu . Dieu seul pouvait se réconcilier avec lui , lui pardonner et le 90 justifier . D'autre part , le péché d'Adam a aussi eu comme conséquence une poena. Dieu n'a pas seulement désavoué la désobéissance de sa créature , mais l'a condamnée 91 à la mort , l'a vouée à la corruption . Cette misère que la colère divine a infligée à l'homme pécheur concernait tant le corps que l'âme . Quant au corps , l'homme est

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devenu mortel .

C'est pourquoi il a peur de mourir et s'attache désespérément aux 92 La corruption de l'âme se manifeste à son tour dans choses de cette terre . 93 l'ignorantia et dans les infirmitates . Ayant perdu son orientation , l'homme s'est égaré dans les viae iniquitatis. En même temps , il a perdu la force de résister 94 aux vices et de dominer ses passions . Le iudicium et la iustitia n'étaient plus à sa portée . En d'autres termes , l'homme devenu pécheur est incapable de renoncer à sa rébel95 lion envers Dieu et à son égoïsme envers les autres . Même s'il y réussissait , il 96 risquerait d'être pris par sa praesumptio . Ayant vaincu son ignorance et ses faiblesses , il ne manquerait pas de succomber à la superbia qui avait déjà été jadis à l'origine de son péché , et qui le porterait sûrement à se constituer sa justice à 97 lui . Sous le régime de la nature , les fils d'Adam n'étaient donc plus à même de se libérer du péché et de la mort , c'est -à- dire de se faire justes . Même le temps de la Loi n'a pas amélioré ces conditions tristes . Au contraire , il les a aggravées , 98 en tant qu'il a révélé les exigences de la justice divine . Ce n'est que la grâce du Nouveau Testament qui a radicalement changé cette situation de misère .

Toutefois ,

même dans les conditions nouvelles créées par le Christ pour l'Eglise , la justice 99 de l'homme ne parvient jamais sur cette terre à la perfection . L'homme peut devenir 100 juste , mais il reste pécheur ." Le baptême lui donne la rémission des péchés . Il 101 102 lui enlève le reatus . En ce sens le baptisé est juste , non plus pécheur . Mais la poena n'a pas encore été abolie par le baptême . Les reliquiae mortalitatis n'y 103 ont pas cessé d'alourdir l'existence du chrétien . Concrètement , même dans la condition de la foi chrétienne , l'homme n'a perdu ni 104 la peur de mourir , ni l'attachement aux choses d'ici -bas . Il n'échappe pas aux 105 conflictus carnis . Même après le baptême , Dieu ne lui épargne pas cette lutte .106 continuelle pour éprouver sa fidélité¹ et pour lui donner l'occasion de remporter 107 la victoire . Ils se 108 rendront coupables au moins de desideria iniqua , fautes trop faciles à commettre . Il est même impossible que les baptisés restent exempts de tout péché .

Avant tout , ils risqueront toujours de s'attribuer la justice à eux-mêmes plutôt 109 qu'à la grâce de Dieu ." En termes plus positifs , dans leur progrès spirituel ils 110 ne parviendront à la justice parfaite qu'après la résurrection de la mort ." L'importance de cette doctrine sur la justice imparfaite de tous les viatores se trouve confirmée par les faits suivants . Augustin aime la présenter dans le cadre général de sa théologie de l'histoire . Il n'oppose donc pas seulement la rémission des péchés qui se fait maintenant , à la résurrection des morts qui aura lieu une 111 fois " mais il rattache aussi la justice imparfaite au temps de la foi , la justice parfaite , par contre , à la vision éternelle.112

En d'autres termes , il fait valoir 113 la conscience d'être déjà sauvé , tout en insistant sur la nécessité de l'espérance .

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En outre , Augustin développe l'idée de l'impossibilité d'être parfaitement juste 114 sur cette terre dans le contexte de son ecclésiologie . Selon lui , l'Eglise est 115 116 Elle n'existe jamais sine ruga . semper reformanda ." Autrement , comme Augustin ne se lasse pas de le répéter , l'Eglise ne devrait pas demander chaque jour pour le 117 pardon du Seigneur ." En dessinant ainsi l'idéal de la justice que l'homme ne peut jamais réaliser par ses propres forces et qu'il n'atteindra pas entièrement même après s'être converti à la foi en Jésus - Christ , nous avons déjà anticipé l'affirmation centrale de la théologie augustinienne , à savoir que la justice de l'homme ne peut provenir que de Dieu , ou plus exactement du Dieu Père qui agit par Jésus -Christ son Fils unique , dans la grâce de l'Esprit -Saint .

Mais cela est encore à démontrer en détail .

II. La justice de l'homme, don tout gratuit de Dieu Ni la justification , ni la vie dans la justice ne se font sans l'aide de Dieu. Bien que créée par la sagesse divine , la nature humaine n'y suffit pas . Au moins après le péché d'Adam , Dieu seul justifie l'homme et le conserve dans la justice , 118 Prétendre le contraire , ce serait se et il le fait par la grâce de Jésus- Christ ." constituer une justice à soi et mettre en question toute l'oeuvre salvatrice du 119 Verbe Incarné . Cette affirmation à laquelle Augustin ne cesse de revenir dans le polémique contre Pélage et ses amis , et qui , au fond , lui avait été familière dès sa conversion , comprend plusieurs aspects .

120 Au paradis , Adam avait pris part à la lumière de la justice . Ayant abandonné les sources de la vie juste , l'homme déchu ne pouvait attendre la justice que de la 121 part de Dieu . Dieu seul était à même de l'épargner , de lui pardonner et de le 122 ' convertir' à lui ." Cette réconciliation préalable de l'homme devenu injuste s'avère encore plus nécessaire si l'on considère que par sa justice , l'homme devrait ressembler à Dieu , être son fils , participer comme autrefois à la justice éternelle .123 Or , profondément convaincu de la gratuité absolue de la nouvelle justice , Augustin la met en relief par les thèmes suivants . En se référant à 1 Cor . 4,7 , texte tant de fois repris : Quid enim habes quod non accepisti ? Si autem accepisti, quid gloriaris, quasi non acceperis ?, Augustin , contre l'exégèse pélagienne du passage , souligne que non seulement l'arbitrium 124 Dieu lui -même nous voluntatis , mais même la bona voluntas proviennent de Dieu ." 125 En outre , donne que nous aimions la justice , voire que notre volonté soit bonne . en commentant un autre passage qu'il aime citer , à savoir Ps 72,28 : Mihi autem adhaerere Deo bonum est , Augustin affirme que Dieu justifie l'homme par sa présence . Comme l'air qui n'est pas doté d'une luminosité propre devient lumineux par la présence de la lumière , ainsi , Dieu lui étant présent , l'homme est - il illuminé , mais , 126 Enfin , en prolongeDieu lui étant absent , il retombe aussitôt dans les ténèbres . ant cette pensée de la présence divine , Augustin fait ressortir la nécessité de la grâce prévenante .

Dieu devait venir chez nous afin que nous allions chez lui .

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Autrement , orgueilleux comme nous le sommes , nous n'aurions pas été capables de 127 l'aimer comme il faut l'aimer . Cette action de la grâce par laquelle Dieu justifie l'homme et le maintient continuellement sur la voie de la justice , est foncièrement liée à la venue de JésusChrist , unique Fils de Dieu .

De fait , en expliquant en pleine controverse pélagienne

le passage crucial de Romains 5,18 :

' de même l'oeuvre de justice d'un seul procure

à tous une justification qui donne la vie ' , Augustin déclare catégoriquement que tous les hommes n'appartiennent pas à la justification , mais que personne n'est 128 justifié que par le Christ ." Dans ce sens , il avait déjà affirmé bien avant , que la vraie justice n'existe qu'en Dieu , et que cette justice n'est devenue la nôtre que par l'incarnation dans laquelle sagesse et justice de Père ont été faites 129 sagesse et justice pour nous ( 1 Cor 1,30s ) . Vouloir attribuer la justice à la nature humaine , ce serait non seulement nier la grâce de Dieu , mais aussi mettre en 130 question l'incarnation du Verbe , avoir honte de la croix . La venue de la justice divine dans le Christ a été tellement constitutive pour le salut des hommes , que même avant l'incarnation , aucun des justes n'avait obtenu la justice de Dieu sans 131 la foi en Jésus - Christ . Plus souvent encore , Augustin présente la doctrine sur la nécessité de la grâce 132 du Christ avec une tournure ecclésiologique . Ainsi commente -t- il un de ses textes favoris : ' Celui qui n'avait pas connu le péché , il l'a fait péché pour nous , afin qu'en lui nous devenions justice de Dieu ' ( 2 Cor 5,21 ) , en entendant par in ipso que nous ne sommes justice de Dieu que dans le corps qui est l'Eglise et dont le 133 Christ est le chef. Cette déclaration vaut d'autant plus qu'elle termine les 134 développements sur la grâce du Nouveau Testament ." Il est bien naturel qu'Augustin n'exposait pas ce thème général de la justification par le Christ , sans s'en référer à son idée sotériologique principale , à 135 savoir la médiation du Christ . De fait , il relève que l'Apôtre précise le gratia Dei vita aeterna par le in Christo Iesu Domino nostro ( Rom 6,33 ) pour dire qu'il n'y a pas d'autre voie vers la vie éternelle que celle du mediator . En d'autres termes , non seulement la justice dans laquelle nous vivons pendant cette vie de souffrance , mais aussi la vie éternelle , qui en un certain sens est le salaire de notre justice d'ici -bas , ne proviennent que de la justice authentique de la justice 136 de Dieu , laquelle est apparue dans la grâce de Jésus - Christ ( voir Jn 1,16 ) .Cette grâce du Christ dont nous avons besoin exige de notre part la foi . Mais quand Augustin parle de la foi justifiante , il n'envisage pas seulement la foi en Jésus -Christ tout court . Suivant la teneur de l'épître aux Romains , il entend aussi 137 et même plus souvent la foi dans la résurrection de Jésus - Christ . Ce thème de la foi dans la résurrection du Christ a trouvé une expression particulièrement significative dans les passages où Augustin commente Jean 16,7-11 : sur la venue du Paraclet qui viendra confondre le monde en matière de péché , de justice et de jugement ,

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c'est -à-dire de justice parce que Jésus va au Père et que les disciples ne le ver138 ront plus . Le commentaire le plus développé en est donné dans un sermon qui re139 monte aux premières années de la controverse pélagienne . En répondant d'abord à la question , pourquoi le péché est celui de ne pas croire en Jésus - Christ , Augustin affirme qu'en croyant en Jésus - Christ on vit de la foi , c'est -à-dire qu'on est sans 140 péché. Ensuite , le commentateur se demande pourquoi la foi doit comprendre plutôt 141 le retour du Christ au Père que sa venue dans le monde . En s'appuyant sur l'hymne christologique de Philippiens 2,3-11 , il voit la justice en matière de laquelle l'Esprit-Saint accuse le monde dans le fait que la résurrection du Christ a anticipé notre résurrection . Grâce au passage du Christ au ciel , nous sommes déjà ressuscités et vivons déjà unis avec lui et cela en ce moment même , par la foi et l'espérance . Plus tard par contre , quand notre espérance sera exaucée , notre justifica142 tion sera parfaite . Ainsi , sommes -nous déjà justice de Dieu en lui ( 2 Cor 5,21 ) . En un mot , la justice que Dieu nous communique dans le Christ est fondée sur la résurrection dans laquelle le chef a précédé tous ses membres . Sans la foi dans le Christ ressuscité , l'homme ne peut donc obtenir la justice de Dieu . Si la justice est impossible sans la foi en Jésus- Christ et spécialement sans la foi dans sa résurrection , elle est déjà par le fait même un don de Dieu .

Toutefois ,

la raison la plus profonde de sa gratuité réside dans la justice elle -même . De fait , comme nous l'avons vu , la justice n'existe qu'à condition d'être animée 143 par l'amour , d'être aimée pour elle -même ." Il ne faut pas seulement la préférer aux plaisirs de toutes sortes , mais on doit l'aimer d'un amour qui exclut la peur 144 et qui est même plus grand que l'amour de tous les plaisirs . Or , cet amour tout singulier de la justice ne peut être que l'oeuvre de la grâce de Dieu . C'est seule145 Par la grâce de ment si Dieu nous adoucit que nous arrivons à aimer la justice . 146 Ou mieux encore , la Dieu , Augustin entend plus exactement la grâce du Christ . suavitas et la dulcedo sans lesquelles on n'aime pas la justice de Dieu , sont attribuées à la présence de l'Esprit du Christ .

De fait , quand Augustin parle de la

caritas , donc même de l'amor iustitiae , il aime à rappeler le verset de Romains 5,5 : ' Et l'espérance ne déçoit point , parce que l'amour de Dieu a été répandu dans nos 147 coeurs par le Saint Esprit qui nous fut donné ' ." Pour lui , la dilectio iustitiae 148 atteste que l'Esprit - Saint demeure en nous . C'est d'ailleurs dans ce cadre de l'amour de la justice que nous comprenons pleinement qu'on n'est juste que dans 149 l'Eglise , corps du Christ et demeure de l'Esprit - Saint . Il ne fait donc pas de doute que l'homme n'est pas juste si Dieu ne le justifie pas par la grâce du Christ et par le don de l'Esprit - Saint . Mais par cela , nous n'avons pas encore éclairé comment cette oeuvre divine de la justification se rattache à la justice de Jésus , unique juste sur cette terre .

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III. La justice de Jésus-Christ La justification divine par laquelle l'homme arrive à aimer la justice dans l'amour de l'Esprit- Saint n'est pas simplement le résultat de l'oeuvre du Christ . Elle est plutôt radicalement fondée sur la justice de l'homme Jésus . Nous sommes sans doute justes dans le Christ . Toutefois , nous le sommes dans le Christ qui est 150 lui -même juste , vraiment homme , mais sans péché . Ainsi , Augustin ne cesse- t- il pas de présenter Jésus - Christ comme iustus et 151 iustificans. Quelquefois , il ne manque même pas de caractériser expressément cette justice du Christ comme exemption de tout péché , soit originel , soit person152 nel ou comme impeccabilité enracinée en dernière analyse dans la filiation 153 divine . Regardons donc de près en quel sens le Christ , unique juste , est à la base de notre justice .

154 Comme il est bien connu , la sotériologie augustinienne est très complexe ." D'une manière peut-être un peu schématique on y distinguera cependant un nombre relativement restreint de thèmes qui se retrouvent tout au long de l'oeuvre 155 d'Augustin et qui sont même entrelacés entre eux . De fait , on note aisément que l'idée de la médiation du Christ constitue le 156 Cette noeud de la doctrine augustinienne sur la personne et l'oeuvre du Christ . médiation entre Dieu et les hommes est elle - même décrite par des catégories et des images soit guerrières et politiques , soit liturgiques ou rituelles , soit médicales , 157 soit enfin pédagogiques . Toutes ces thématisations diverses de la médiation du Christ ont pourtant deux choses en commun . D'une part , elles supposent toutes 158 plus ou moins l'engagement totalement libre du médiateur ." D'autre part , et cela nous intéresse en particulier , qu'il parle de la rédemption ou de la victoire , de l'intercession sacerdotale ou de l'effusion du sang , de la guérison ou de l'exemple du maître , Augustin présuppose toujours et partout que l'unique médiateur ait été 159 sans péché , innocent et juste . Considérons d'abord les thèmes de libération . Pour autant que la libération du péché , de la mort et du diable soit une oeuvre de l'homme Jésus , celui - ci ne pouvait être notre libérateur qu'à la condition d'être lui -même totalement libre , totalement 160 juste . En particulier , la victoire du Christ n'aurait pas été une véritable revanche , acquise au niveau moral , si le vainqueur n'avait pas été non seulement solidaire avec la descendance d'Adam , mais aussi totalement obéissant , juste jus161 qu'au bout . L'innocence absolue du rédempteur est naturellement aussi le fondement des théories de l'abusus potestatis ou du diable trompé avec lesquelles Augustin tente d'expliquer d'une manière plutôt populaire la doctrine biblique sur 162 le Christ victorieux . De même , la thématisation cultuelle est basée sur la justice de Jésus . Le sang 163 du juste pouvait seul nous obtenir le pardon de Dieu . Seul le sacrifice parfait dont le prêtre était sans péché et dont la victime était immaculée , a apaisé la

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colère de Dieu.164 La réconciliation entre Dieu et les hommes exigeait le sacrifice 165 de quelqu'un qui , sans être lui -même coupable , s'offre pour les coupables .* Seul le juste qui n'avait pas besoin de prier pour soi -même était à même de se faire 166 l'intercesseur pour les pécheurs .* Quant au thème caractéristique du Christus -medicus , il faut concéder que la 167 Justice de Jésus y apparaît moins ." En parlant de ce médecin qui guérit les hommes avant tout de leur orgueil , Augustin pensait peut -être plutôt à Dieu qu'à l'homme . Tout de même , il rappelle volontiers que le Christ n'est pas venu pour chercher les justes mais les pécheurs , c'est -à - dire qu'il suppose que le juste est venu pour 168 ceux qui ont besoin de sa justice . Surtout la manière de présenter le salut -169 santé et de décrire l'action salutaire du Christ comme traitement , ne se comme sante

170 comprend pas sans que le médecin soit lui -même tout sain , sans péché , donc juste ." 171 N'insistons pas cependant sur l'enseigneEnfin , la thématique pédagogique . ment . Il suffit de rappeler qu'Augustin , comme jadis Lactance , considère le Christ 172 comme magister iustitiae . Comme il attribue lui aussi l'enseignement plutôt à l'autorité divine du Christ et qu'il fait à son tour dépendre l'authenticité de cet enseignement du bon exemple du maître , il est bien clair que les affirmations les plus fortes sur la justice du Christ -pédagogue se rencontrent dans les textes qui parlent de son exemple . De fait , Augustin relève non seulement l'exemple de l'humilité et de l'obéissance , mais aussi et avant tout l'exemple de la patience du Christ .173 Or , il est évident que sous tous ces aspects , le Christ s'est avéré en 174 même temps comme innocent , comme juste jusqu'à la fin . Toute l'oeuvre salutaire de Jésus - Christ a donc été conditionnée par le fait que l'homme Jésus était exempt de tout péché , obéissant jusqu'au bout , plein de justice . Mais cela n'est pas tout . L'action salvatrice de l'unique juste a constitué plutôt en elle -même une apparition de sa justice .

Cela est vrai en premier lieu de la

résurrection dans laquelle le Christ nous a communiqué sa justice éternelle . De fait , Augustin ne se lasse pas de recourir au thème paulinien de la justification par la résurrection .

Suivant le verset de l'épître aux Romains : ' livré pour

nos fautes et ressuscité pour notre justification ' ( Rom 4,25 ) , il le fait en opposant la rémission des péchés à la justification .

Tandis qu'il rattache à la mort

de Jésus la libération du péché , la crucifixion du vieil homme , il voit dans sa 175 résurrection la cause de notre justification .* Plus souvent cependant , Augustin considère la passion de Jésus comme exemple de patience , tout en maintenant le rapport entre la résurrection du Christ et notre justification . Ainsi dit - il dans un sermon sur l'espérance chrétienne , que Jésus nous a montré par l'exemple de la passion avec quelle patience il nous faut le suivre , tandis qu'il nous a confirmés par sa résurrection en ce qu'il nous faut attendre avec patience ( voir Rom 8,25 ) . Mais il ne manque pas de préciser que ce qu'il nous faut espérer , c'est la justifi176 cation que nous obtiendrons dans notre résurrection ."

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L'idée que nous avons été justifiés par la résurrection du Christ et qu'après avoir vécu dans la justice du Christ nous arriverons un jour au moment de notre résurrection , à la justice parfaite , appartient sans doute aux thèmes principaux de 177 la controverse pélagienne . Toutefois , nous en retrouvons déjà l'essentiel dans certains écrits anti -manichéens . Ainsi lisons-nous dans le Contra Felicem : ' Et c'est dans ce qu'il a revêtu qu'il a souffert ce qu'il voulut en vue d'un exemple de patience . Et c'est ce qu'il a revêtu qu'il a restauré en vue d'un exemple de 178 justice ' . D'après le contexte , il s'agit dans ce passage , comme dans le sermon 179 que je viens de citer , de l'antithèse : quid sustinendum quid sperandum ." En ressuscitant de la mort , le Christ a reformé l'homme assumé par la justice qui sera 180 pleinement notre justice dans la résurrection universelle . Ou, comme affirme une lettre difficile à dater , le Christ , en participant à notre infirmité , mais non pas à notre iniquité , nous a amenés à sa justice , c'est -à- dire qu'en échange de notre 181 mort il nous a donné la vie . Dans un texte fameux du De Trinitate , Augustin , dans un exposé d'allure assez synthétique sur le sacramentum et exemplum , a donné l'expression sans doute la plus 182 parfaite au thème de la justification par la résurrection ." Il y réunit les thèmes connexes de la mort spirituelle , de la patience jusqu'à la mort , de la vie nouvelle , 183 et de l'espérance dans la résurrection . Dans le même ordre d'idées se place un autre thème , celui de la Pâque du 184 Seigneur. En passant au Père , le Christ nous a préparé la Justice à laquelle nous participons imparfaitement dès maintenant dans l'Eglise et parfaitement dans 185 la résurrection de tous les morts . Dans cette justice du chef qui a été l'anticipation de la justice du corps de l'Eglise , il ne s'agit toutefois pas d'une justification du Christ crucifié luimême opérée au moyen de la résurrection par le Père dans la force de l'Esprit- Saint ( voir Rom 1,4 ) . La résurrection du Christ y apparaît plutôt comme manifestation de la Justice éternelle que le Christ n'a jamais perdue , même quand il semblait être maudit à la croix . En d'autres termes , c'est le sacramentum resurrectionis , la 186 source de la grâce qui justifie tous les hommes qui croient dans le Christ . Grâce à l'autorité de l'Apôtre , le rapport entre la justice du Christ et sa résurrection est devenu certainement dominant dans la sotériologie augustinienne . Toutefois , il ne faut pas négliger le fait que pour Augustin , le Christ a été aussi le juste souffrant qui , comme chef du genre humain , a résumé en soi toutes les souffrances , endurées à cause de la justice .

Jésus , en effet , n'est pas seulement

exempt du péché , même dans la malédiction de la croix , semper vivus in sua iusti187 tia . Mais , tout en étant homme comme nous , il s'est totalement soumis à la volonté de son Père .

Fils de Dieu , mais aussi fils de l'homme , il a persévéré dans

la justice jusqu'au dernier soupir , et proprement par cela , il s'est fait notre Justice .

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Certes , on ne dira guère qu'Augustin ait eu une préférence prononcée pour le thème de Jésus , le juste . Pourtant , il n'a pas manqué d'être attentif à l'attitude toute droite de Jésus envers la volonté salvatrice de Dieu . Cela apparaît d'abord dans une des antithèses augustiniennes devenues célèbres : 188 iustitia - potentia. Augustin l'expose avant tout dans le treizième livre du De Trinitate où il développe le rapport entre l'histoire du salut et la vie éter189 nelle . Dans ce cadre , il se trouve confronté avec l'objection demandant pourquoi l'incarnation du Verbe , à savoir la mort de la croix , aurait été l'unique voie qui 190 puisse nous libérer de la miseria mortalitatis ." La réponse est simple . Il fallait suivre l'ordre selon lequel la justice des mortels doit précéder la puissance 191 des immortels , la bona voluntas le pouvoir de faire ce qu'on veut . Le Christ devait donc l'emporter sur le diable non par la puissance , mais par la justice .

De

la part du Christ , cela signifie qu'il n'a pas mérité la mort , mais qu'il l'a accep192 tée en toute liberté pour nous ." En vainquant de cette sorte le diable , le, Christ a recommandé à nous autres la justice et promis la puissance , l'une par la mort , l'autre par la résurrection . En cela , il n'a pas seulement manifesté la gratuité des humiliations et la singularité de sa victoire , mais il a aussi révélé la signification de la mort chrétienne et même de toutes les souffrances et les peines des hommes . Même après avoir obtenu la rémission des péchés , les chrétiens , en supportant la misère due au péché originel , se prépareront donc au monde nouveau et attendront avec fidélité et avec patience la béatitude dont ils jouiront sans fin 193 dans la liberté de la vie éternelle ." Il est vrai que , dans cette apologie de la mort libératrice de Jésus , Augustin ne précise pas tellement l'attitude juste avec laquelle le Sauveur a accepté la mort . Il indique néanmoins que cette mort admise en toute liberté a été l'exemple de la bona voluntas avec laquelle il faut endurer les difficultés de la vie terrestre et attendre avec patience la vie éternelle .

La justice dans la mort est donc plus

importante que celle qui s'est manifestée dans la résurrection .

En ce sens ,

Augustin lui -même s'est posé la question : ' Quid enim iustius , quam usque ad mortem 194 crucis pro iustitia pervenire ?' Même s'il est difficile d'établir exactement en quelle mesure les discussions avec les pélagiens ont conduit Augustin à mettre en relief dans ce texte fondamental du De Trinitate la mort que Jésus avait subie pour la justice , il ne fait aucun doute que ces disputes comprenaient aussi la question de Jésus , unique juste sur 195 cette terre . De fait , depuis le début de la controverse , Augustin a été provoqué 196 par cette question .* En discutant la valeur des grands exemples de la justice que l'on rencontre dans l'Ancien Testament , de Noé , Daniel et Job , il dit de ce dernier qu'il aurait prévu dans son esprit la justice du Christ , exempt de tout péché , non 197 seulement quant à la divinité , mais aussi quant à l'âme et à la chair . Cette thématique de Jésus le juste a trouvé son expression certainement la plus belle dans

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certaines interprétations du Psaume 21. Nous avons déjà évoqué ces explications 198 quand nous avons parlé de la prière du juste . Mais en regardant de près l'exégèse la plus développée de ce psaume appliqué dès le début à la passion du Messie , nous voyons tout de suite qu'il y a beaucoup plus que l'intercession du prêtre sans 199 péché . Même si la méthode exégétique utilisée rend un peu difficile de savoir ce qu'il faut attribuer réellement à Jésus lui -même et non seulement aux membres de son corps que Jésus a représentés dans sa passion , il reste clair qu'Augustin y a considéré la passion et la mort de Jésus comme expression de sa justice sans aucun reproche .

Cela est particulièrement évident dans la lettre adressée à Honoratus ,

intitulée aussi De gratia Novi Testamenti , dans laquelle Augustin expose son idée 200 sur la justice chrétienne , en commentant le psaume en question ." La portée de cette exégèse s'éclairerait encore davantage si nous la rapprochions 201 d'autres thèmes qui concernent Jésus , l'unique juste : de la tentation au désert 202 203 de la persévérance dans la justice' de l'exemplum rectitudinis' de la bona 204 ainsi que de voluntas par laquelle Jésus s'est inséré dans l'ordre de Dieu 205 l'amour infini de Jésus pour ses frères , mesure de notre amour . Jésus s'est donc montré comme l'unique juste en persévérant dans la justice divine jusqu'à la mort .

Tout cela cependant , il l'a fait pour nous .

En inculquant 206 ce pro nobis , Augustin pense sans doute en premier lieu à l'exemple du Christ . 207 Toutefois Spécialement à la croix , Jésus nous a donné l'exemplum iustitiae ." , pour Augustin , le pro nobis signifie également que le Christ nous a efficacement précédés dans la justice . Il ne nous a pas seulement enseigné par son exemple la 208 voie de la justice , mais il nous l'a aussi ouverte . En s'identifiant avec nous en toute sa vie et finalement dans sa passion , il a pour ainsi dire anticipé la 209 justice de tous ceux qui croient en lui . Ces deux aspects apparaissent même à la fois . Ainsi dans les textes qui réunissent l'idée de la voie avec celle de la grâce . Dans le De natura et gratia par exemple , Augustin , suivant le langage des psaumes , présente le Christ comme via iusta (Ps 2,11ss et Jn 14,6 ) . En insistant sur la nécessité de la grâce , il dit de 210 cette voie que le Seigneur doit , et nous la montrer , et nous y faire entrer ." Dans l'Enarratio sur le Psaume 87 , Augustin est encore plus explicite . En combinant l'exemple du Christ dont parle la Prima Petri ( 2,21 ) , et son amour pour les frères dont il est question dans la Prima Ioannis ( 3,16 ) , il propose le Christ comme chan211 tre aux intonations duquel le choeur des croyants répond par sa propre justice . Jamais toutefois , qu'il nous ait montré la voie de la justice , ou qu'il ait marché en notre nom sur cette voie , Jésus n'a changé lui - même . Il n'avait pas besoin de 212 213 se convertir à la justice . Sa justice a été plutôt notre commutatio . Cela veut dire que dans ses tentations et ses souffrances , il a personnifié tous les membres 214 de son corps . Cette manière de parler de la représentation des croyants révèle sans doute une

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tendance à affaiblir la réalité des tentations , des souffrances et de l'abandon de 215 Jésus . Toutefois , il serait faux de comprendre les déclarations augustiniennes à ce propos , dans un sens docétiste . de la passion de Jésus .

Augustin ne mettait jamais en question la réalité

Il ne voulait que souligner que Jésus n'a pas souffert à

cause de la mortalité méritée par lui -même , mais toujours à cause de notre mortalité , 216 acceptée par lui en pleine liberté pour nous . Pour comprendre dans toute son ampleur en quel sens Jésus n'a pas cessé d'être juste pour nous jusqu'au dernier moment de son existence terrestre , il nous faut aussi tenir compte de deux affirmations théologiques très familières à Augustin . D'une part , en effet , pour défendre la justice toute singulière de Jésus , il la fait remonter à sa filiation divine . D'autre part , il ne manque jamais de mettre en relief la solidarité du Christ avec nous . De fait , selon Augustin , c'est grâce à l'union toute intime entre le Verbe et l'homme assumé , qu'en dernière analyse Jésus a été l'unique juste sur cette terre . Augustin n'hésite certainement pas à évoquer la justice parfaite des martyrs morts 217 par amour envers Dieu et les hommes . Mais il n'oublie jamais de rappeler la différence entre la justice des martyrs et celle du Christ .

La justice de celui - ci

Elle réside plutôt 218 En vertu dans le fait que le Verbe de Dieu a assumé l'homme in unitatem personae .

n'est pas une justice reçue comme celle des témoins de la foi .

de cette union mystérieuse , non seulement Jésus ne s'est jamais rendu coupable 219 d'aucun péché , mais il s'est aussi toujours librement décidé pour la justice . Même si Augustin ne dispose pas encore d'une terminologie philosophique qui suffise à exprimer le mystère de l'union hypostatique , il a donc saisi le noyau de ce mystère , à savoir le fait qu'en Jésus , le Fils de Dieu lui -même a été juste pour nous . La seconde affirmation théologique , celle de la solidarité du Christ avec nous , n'est pas moins importante .

D'après Augustin en effet , en se faisant homme , le

Fils de Dieu s'est identifié avec les hommes au point de pouvoir les représenter 220 et agir en leur nom . Il constitue désormais avec eux quasi una persona . Il est vrai que les expressions de transfigurare , suscipere personam et d'autres , reprises à l'exégèse antique , semblent quelquefois n'exprimer qu'un rapport très extérieur 221 entre le Christ et les chrétiens ." Mais comme dans le cas de l'unité personnelle du Christ , l'identification du sujet des affirmations soit divines , soit humaines , dépasse le niveau logique , de même les rapprochements du Christ et des hommes ont plus qu'une signification simplement symbolique .

Cela résulte du simple fait

qu'Augustin lui -même compare l'union du Verbe et de l'homme assumé , avec l'union du Christ et des fidèles . 222 Il est d'ailleurs clairement confirmé par les thèmes 223 typiquement augustiniens de l'inclusion dans le Christ et du second Adam ." En vue de cette solidarité sans doute ontique du Christ avec les hommes , il serait insuffisant de vouloir réduire la justice humaine de l'homme Jésus à

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l'exemplum iustitiae , en l'opposant à la justice divine , comme si celle - ci seule224 Il est bien vrai qu'Augustin a la tendance ment était le sacramentum iustitiae . de mettre en opposition le modèle moral qui nous a été donné dans l'humanité de 225 Toutefois , Jésus et la source de la grâce qui jaillit de la divinité du Verbe ." abstraction faite de sa doctrine sur l'union personnelle du Christ , Augustin reconnaît dans la justice elle-même de Jésus quelque chose qui dépasse le simple modèle , l'exemple à imiter . Il y voit un cas précédent , comme dans l'exemplum resurrectionis . C'est une via iustitiae sur laquelle Jésus a marché le premier pour entraîner

tous ceux qui croient en lui.226

On dira même que la justice de Jésus a été un

premier pas de conversion , le principe du retour dans l'ordre éternel , la vertu d'un véritable homme dans laquelle la justice divine est devenue notre justice .

En un mot ,

à la croix elle-même a commencé le mouvement de la bona voluntas avec laquelle tous les hommes , unis par la foi avec le Christ , s'insérent dans l'ordre de la justice , établie par la volonté éternelle et toute sage de Dieu . A la fin de cet exposé , il conviendrait d'approfondir les données augustiniennes relevées , par quelques réflexions personnelles . Comme le temps nous manque , je ne voudrais que les résumer sous la forme de quelques propositions : 1. Bien qu'Augustin tienne beaucoup à présenter la vie chrétienne comme justice par laquelle l'homme , avec la grâce de Dieu , se soumet totalement à la volonté divine , il ne donne pas de grande envergure au thème de la justice de l'homme Jésus . Cela est d'autant plus surprenant qu'il insiste non seulement sur la transcendance de Dieu qui conduit avec sagesse et avec justice toute l'histoire , mais en même temps sur l'incarnation , source de toute grâce . 2. L'intérêt plutôt mince qu'Augustin a eu pour la justice de l'homme Jésus , s'explique par plusieurs raisons : la considération prévalente de la divinité du Christ le risque de faire entendre par la justice de Jésus un certain changement moral en lui - le poids de certains textes pauliniens qui rapprochent la justification de l'homme plutôt de la résurrection du Christ .

3. Les affirmations d'Augustin à propos de la justice de l'homme Jésus sont néanmoins très remarquables . Il n'a pas seulement mis en relief la justice de Jésus sous des aspects sotériologiques assez divers , mais il a aussi cherché à approfondir théologiquement le fondement de la justice du Christ en développant l'idée de l'unité personnelle . Par cela , il a ouvert les approches à une réflexion ultérieure sur le Deus mortuus pro nobis , c'est - à- dire sur la solidarité avec les pécheurs dans laquelle Dieu lui -même s'est engagé par l'incarnation de son Fils .

Enfin , dans

certains textes , et spécialement dans son exégèse des Psaumes , en relevant la justice de Jésus , il nous a annoncé le Christ crucifié d'une manière concrète , existentielle , compréhensive et surtout biblique .

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1332 RÉFÉRENCES

1. B. Studer , unter Mitarbeit von B. Daley , Soteriologie . In der Schrift und Patristik (Freiburg , 1978 ) , pp . 156-174 : Die Offenbarung der Liebe des demütigen Gottes nach Augustinus . 2. B. Studer , op . cit . , pp . 169ss . 3. Voir B. Studer , op . cit . , pp . 158ss . A propos de la notion de la justice , en particulier , il est utile de consulter les notes complémentaires respectives dans les volumes 21-24 de la Bibliothèque Augustinienne ( = B. Aug. ) . Voir en outre , B.Aug . 16 , 583s , et F.J. Thonnard , ' Justice de Dieu et justice humaine selon saint Augustin ' : Augustinus 12 ( 1967 ) , pp . 387-402 . L'idée augustinienne du Christ , unique juste , enfin , a été étudiée par J. Plagnieux , Heil und Heiland. Dogmengeschichtliche Studien und Texte ( Paris , 1969 ) , pp . 47-70 . 4. Voir F.J. Thonnard , art. cit . , p . 392 , et la note compl . 40 : B.Aug . 23,808ss . 5. Voir les quatre questions auxquelles Augustin , déjà en 412 , cherche à répondre dans le De peccatorum meritis et remissione , II : P.L. 44,151-186 : Sans l'aide de la grâce on ne peut éviter le péché - Personne n'est sans péché - Personne n'aime assez la justice - Le médiateur seul est sans péché . Voir également les trois thèmes pélagiens auxquels se réfère C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 8 , 24 : B.Aug . 23,536ss . 6. Voir note compl . 37 : B.Aug . 22,791s : Le baptême des enfants et le dogme du péché originel , avec les textes et les études indiqués . Voir en particulier , sermo 181 : P.L. 38,979-984 : sur 1 Jn 1,8s . 7. Voir spécialement , Nat . grat .: B.Aug . 21,244-413 , et C. duas ep . Pelag . II : B.Aug. 23 , 398-460 . 8. Voir Perf. iustit .: B.Aug . 21,126-219 , et C. duas ep . Pelag . III : B.Aug . 23 , 462-544. A ce propos l'introduction : B.Aug . 23,298ss . 9. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 10,12 - 14,21 : P.L. 44,158-164 . A ce propos , notes compl . 5 : B.Aug . 21,586 ; 15 et 16 : B.Aug ; 22,724-729 , et d'autres . 10. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 11 , 16 : P.L. 44 , 161 ; C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 12 , 25 : B.Aug . 23,362ss ; Gratia Christi I , 38 , 42 : B.Aug . 22,130 . 11. Voir F.J. Thonnard , art . cit . , pp . 387-402 , qui distingue entre le sens juridique ( antique ) et le sens religieux ( biblique ) de la justice . Pour illustrer cette distinction , l'auteur cite plusieurs textes dans lesquels Augustin fait la relecture biblique de la notion gréco - romaine de la justice . 12. Voir les textes d'allure synthétique qui résument les motifs de l'incarnation : Trin. 13 , 16,21 - 17,22 : B.Aug . 16,322-328 ; Enchiridion 10,33 - 12,40 et 28,108 : B.Aug . 9,164-178 300ss . De même il est remarquable de voir comment Augustin tâche plusieurs fois de condenser en peu de propositions la pensée de ses adversaires . A ce sujet , 0. Wermelinger , Rom und Pelagius . Die theologische Position der römischen Bischöfe im pelagianischen Streit in den Jahren 411-432 ( Stuttgart , 1975 ) , pp . 278282 . 13. Voir En . Ps . 44 , 18 : C.C.L. 38 , 506s ; En . Ps . 42 , 3 : C.C.L. 38 , 476 ; En . Ps . 140 , 14 : C.C.L. 40 , 2036 , etc. 14. Voir En . Ps . 31 , II , 6 : C.C.L. 38 , 229 ; En . Ps . 39 , 26 : C.C.L. 38 , 444 ; 98 , 7 : C.C.L. 39 , 1383 . 15. Voir En . Ps . 7 , 19 : C.C.L. 38 , 48 . 16. Voir En . Ps . 7 , 7 : C.C.L. 38 , 41 ; En . Ps . 9 , 28 : C.C.L. 38 , 71 . 17. Voir En . Ps . 57 , 21 : C.C.L. 39 , 728 ; C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 5 , 15 et III , 8 , 24 : B.Aug . 23,506 536ss ; ep . 153 , 5 , 13 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 409ss . 18. Voir En . Ps . 84 , 12 : C.C.L. 39 , 1172 ; En . Ps . 98 , 7 : C.C.L. 39 , 1384 ; En . Ps . 105 , 4 : C.C.L. 40 , 1555 . 19. En . Ps . 2 , 10 : C.C.L. 38 , 6 ; Nat . grat . 32 , 36 : B.Aug . 21,310ss ; En . Ps . 118 , 31 , 8 : C.C.L. 40 , 1773 . 20. Voir De agone christiano 7 , 7 : B.Aug . 1,384 . 21. Voir Trin . 13 , 13 , 17 : B.Aug . 16,312 : ' Pertinet autem iustitia ad voluntatem bonam' ( avec le contexte ) . Voir en outre , Lib . arbit . I , 12 , 15 : B.Aug . 6,184 ; sermo 193,1s : P.L. 38 , 1013-1015 : explication de Lc 2 , 14 . 22. Voir sermo 131 , 4 , 4-5,5 : P.L. 38 , 730ss ; En . Ps . 39 , 26 : C.C.L. 38 , 444 .

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23. Voir En . Ps . 118 , 26 , 1 : C.C.L. 40 , 1753 : ' Qui enim habet iustitiam , recte iudicat ... Et iustitiae nomine hoc loco , non ipsa virtus , sed opus eius significatum est . Quis enim facit in homine iustitiam , nisi qui iustificat impium , hoc est , per gratiam suam ex impio facit iustum ? Unde ait apostolus : " Iustificati gratis per gratiam ipsius " . Facit ergo iustitiam , id est , opus iustitiae , qui habet in se iustitiam , id est , opus gratiae ' . Dans ce texte , Augustin distingue donc ce qui est fait par l'homme de ce qui est fait par Dieu , l'action humaine d'un état permanent que Dieu a gratuitement donné à l'homme et grâce auquel l'homme peut faire la justice . 24. Voir par exemple , Grat . Christi I , 9 , 10 : B.Aug . 22,72ss : ' ... gratiam qua iuvamur ad operandam iustitiam , ... qui dicunt gratiam Dei et adiutorium non ad singulos actus dari ... ' . Notre distinction entre attitude , état permanent et action de justice correspond plus ou moins à la distinction entre possibilitas , voluntas et actio qu'Augustin lui - même attribue à Pélage . Augustin , de sa part , ne la récuse pas du tout . Il ne fait que souligner que la grâce du Christ est nécessaire aux trois niveaux , non seulement à celui de la possibilitas , mais aussi à celui de la voluntas et de l'operatio bona . Voir surtout , Grat . Christi I , 25 , 26 : B.Aug . 22,104 . En outre , Gratia Christi I , 3 , 4 : B.Aug . 22,58 , avec la note compl . 14 : les références , 4 : B.Aug . 22 , 722s . On notera , cependant , que possibilitas chez Pélage ne coincide pas simplement avec ce que , suivant Augustin , nous entendons par état permanent . Celui -ci est plutôt la iustitia qua iusti sumus que nous devons à la justification par Dieu et grâce à laquelle nous sommes de nouveau capables de faire avec l'aide de la grâce la justice . En d'autres termes , pour Pélage la possibilitas est simplement la nature de la créature libre , tandis que pour Augustin elle est la natura elevata ou reformata . A ce sujet , note compl . 53 : B.Aug . 21 , 614-622 , et A. Vanneste , ' Nature et grâce dans la théologie de saint Augustin ' : Rech. Aug. 10 ( 1975 ) , pp . 143-169 . 25. Voir Lib . Arbit . I , 13 , 27 : B.Aug . 6,186-190 ; Div . quaest . 83 , 61 , 4 : B.Aug . 10,200 ; note compl . 67 : B.Aug . 10,737s . 26. Voir De agone christiano 7 , 7 : B.Aug . 1,384 ; En . Ps . 32 , II /1 , 2 : C.C.L. 38 , 247. 27. Voir En. Ps . 61 , 21 : C.C.L. 39 , 789s : ' ... et clamas quasi videntibus oculis , videns hoc iniustum esse utique ex aliqua regula iustitiae , cui comparans hoc quod vides pravum , et cernens non convenire rectitudini regulae tuae , reprehendis , tamquam artifex discernens iustum ab iniusto . Ergo quaero a te : Iustum hoc esse unde vides ? Respice ergo , transcende , vade illuc ubi semel locutus est Deus , et ibi invenies fontem iustitiae , ubi est fons vitae ... ' . De moribus Eccl . cath. I , 24 , 44 : B.Aug . 1,204 . 28. Voir En. Ps . 70 , I , 14 : C.C.L. 39 , 950 ; En . Ps . 61 , 22 : C.C.L. 39 , 791. Voir aussi le thème de sustinere Dominum : En . Ps . 36 , II , 4 : C.C.L. 38 , 350 ; En . Ps . 68 , I , 12 : C.C.L. 39 , 912s . 29. Voir En. Ps . 122 , 12 : C.C.L. 40 , 1824 . 30. Voir sermo 167 , 2 : P.L. 38 , 910 ; En . Ps . 93 , 29 : C.C.L. 39 , 1329 . 31. Voir Tract . Ioan . 88 , 2s : C.C.L. 36 , 547 ; En . Ps . 34 , II , 13 : C.C.L. 38 , 320 et En. Ps . 145 , 16 : C.C.L. 40 , 2116s . 32. Voir Lib . arbit . I , 12 , 25 : B.Aug . 6,184 ; I , 17,27 : B.Aug . 6,186-190 ; De agone christiano 7 , 7 : B.Aug . 6,384ss ; Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 18 , 30 : P.L. 44 , 169 ; C. duas ep . Pelag . I , 3 , 7 : B.Aug . 23,324ss . 33. Voir J. Mausbach , Die Ethik des heiligen Augustinus , I ( Freiburg , 21929 ) , pp . 176s , qui se réfère avant tout à Civ . Dei 14 , 6s : B.Aug . 35 , 368–376 . 34. Sermo 70 , 3 : P.L. 38 , 444 ; En . Ps . 48 , II , 8 : C.C.L. 38 , 572 . 35. Voir surtout En . Ps . 105 , 4 : C.C.L. 40 , 1555s , où Augustin tâche d'expliquer les significations diverses du binôme iudicium et iustitia . Il en distingue trois : les deux termes sont synonymes - ils désignent soit le juste jugement , soit la juste action - la justice se fait actuellement , tandis que le jugement ne se fera qu'une fois à la fin des temps . L'une ou l'autre signification se retrouve en d'autres textes : En . Ps . 93 , 18 : C.C.L. 39 , 1318 ; En . Ps . 96 , 5 : C.C.L. 39 , 1357s ; En. Ps . 98 , 7 : C.C.L. 39 , 1384 ; En . Ps . 118 , 26 , 1-2 : C.C.L. 40 , 1752ss . 36. Voir En. Ps . 98 , 7 : C.C.L. 39 , 1384 .

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37. Voir Civ. Dei 20 , 2 : B.Aug . 37,184ss ; En . Ps . 31 , II , 25 : C.C.L. 38 , 242s . 38. Voir Civ . Dei 20 , 2 : B.Aug . 37,186 ; C. Faustum 16 , 21 : P.L. 42 , 329 ; En. Ps . 32 , II / 1 , 1-2 : C.C.L. 38 , 247s . 39. Voir En. Ps . 36 , III , 5 : C.C.L. 38 , 371 ; En . Ps . 32 , II , 2 : C.C.L. 38 , 247 ; Trin. 14 , 9 , 12 : B.Aug . 16,380 ; Trin . 8 , 9 , 13 : B.Aug . 16 , 68 . 40. Voir En . Ps . 98 , 7 : C.C.L. 39 , 1384 ; En . Ps . 36 , III , 8 : c.C.L. 38 , 373s . Inter 41. Voir En. Ps . 31 , II , 25 : C.C.L. 38 , 242 : ' Quid est : recti corde ? rectum cor et pravum cor hoc interest : quisquis homo quidquid patitur praeter voluntatem , afflictiones , maerores , labores , humiliationes , non tribuit nisi voluntati Dei iustae , non illi dans insipientiam , quod quasi nesciat quid agat , quia talem flagellat , et talibus parcit ; ipse est rectus corde ; perversi autem corde sunt , et pravi et distorti , qui omnia quae patiuntur mala , inique se pati dicunt , dantes illi iniquitatem , per cuius voluntatem patiuntur , aut quia non ei audent dare iniquitatem , auferunt ei gubernationem ' (avec tout le contexte ) . En outre , En . Ps . 100 , 6 : C.C.L. 39 , 1410s ; En . Ps . 124 , 9 : C.C.L. 40 , 1842. Voir à ce sujet , note compl . 55 : B.Aug . 22,835ss , avec bibliographie . 42. Voir De musica 6 , 15 : B.Aug . 7,462 ; En . Ps . 143 , 6 : C.C.L. 40 , 2077 ; Civ . Dei 19 , 4 , 4 : B.Aug . 37,68 . De même , les textes selon lesquels la justice divine est à l'origine de l'ordre : De ordine 7 , 22 : B.Aug . 4,398ss ; Lib . arbit . III , 11 , 32ss : B.Aug . 6,386-390 . 43. Voir C. Faustum 26 , 3 : P.L. 42 , 481 . 44. Voir avant tout , Nat . grat . 70 , 84 : B.Aug . 21,410ss . Cette identification de la justice avec la charité qui prend une place importante dans la controverse pélagienne se rencontre pourtant dès le début dans l'oeuvre augustinienne . Voir De moribus Eccl . cath . I , 15 , 25 : B.Aug . 1,176 ; Div . quaest . 83 , 16 , 4 : B.Aug . 10,200 ; Doct. christ . III , 14 , 22 : B.Aug . 11,368 . Voir en outre , sermo 169 , 11 , 13s : P.L. 38 , 922s ; ep . 157 , 2 , 4 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 451 ; En . Ps . 141 , 6s : C.C.L. 40 , 2050s . 45. Voir En . Ps . 83 , 11 : C.C.L. 39 , 1158 ; Civ . Dei 19 , 23 , 5 : B.Aug . 37,160ss . 46. De moribus Eccl . cath . I , 15 , 25 : B.Aug. 1,174ss . A ce sujet , J. Mausbach , op. cit . , p . 211 . 47. Voir J. Mausbach , op . cit . , p . 210 . 48. Doct. christ . I , 27 , 28 : B.Aug . 11,214 ; C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 7 , 21 : B.Aug . 23,524ss ; Tract . I Ioan. 1 , 9 : S.Chr . 75 , 136 . 49. Voir Civ . Dei 19 , 23 , 5 : B.Aug . 37,160ss . 50. Voir De vera religione 48 , 93 : B.Aug . 8,162 : ' Et haec est perfecta iustitia qua potius potiora et minus minora diligimus ' . En outre , Civ . Dei 15 , 22 : B.Aug . 36,146 ; C. Faustum 22 , 27s : P.L. 42 , 418s . A ce sujet note compl . 8 : B.Aug . 36,703s . 51. Voir avant tout les discussions sur la valeur de la Loi vétérotestamentaire dans Spir. lit .: P.L. 44 , 201-246 , en particulier , 8 , 13 : P.L. 44 , 208 . 52. Voir En . Ps . 32 , II / 1 , 6 : C.C.L. 38 , 253 . 53. Voir De agone christiano 7 , 7 : B.Aug . 1,384 ; sermo 212 , 2 : P.L. 38 , 1060 . 54. Voir Grat . Christi I , 13,14 : B.Aug . 22,82 . 55. Voir En . Ps . 118 , 10 , 6 : C.C.L. 40 , 1695 : ' Cordis dilatatio , iustitiae est delectatio . Haec munus est Dei , ut in praeceptis eius non timore poenae angustemur , sed dilectione et delectatione iustitiae dilatemur ' . En outre , En. Ps . 48,8 : C.C.L. 38 , 572 ; En . Ps . 57 , 4 : C.C.L. 39 , 712 ; En . Ps . 118 , 17 , 1 : C.C.L. 40 , 1718s ; Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 10 , 15 : P.L. 44 , 161 . 56. Voir En. Ps . 118 , 17 , 1-2 : C.C.L. 40 , 1718ss ; Grat . Christi I , 13 , 14 : B.Aug . 22 , 82ss . 57. Voir ep . 145 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 270 ; En . Ps . 118 , 25 , 7 : C.C.L. 40 , 1752 ; En . Ps . 127 , 7: C.C.L. 40 , 1872 . 58. Rom 10 , 3 et 1 Cor 4 , 7 comptent parmi les textes bibliques qu'Augustin cite le plus souvent . Voir par exemple , ep . 185 , 9 , 38 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 33 ; En . Ps . 106 , 10s : C.C.L. 40 , 1575s ; En . Ps . 30 , II / 1 , 6 : C.C.L. 38 , 194ss ; En . Ps . 70 , I , 1 : C.C.L. 39 , 940s . A ce sujet note 10 : B.Aug . 72,483 . 59. Ep . 145 , 5 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 270. Voir En . Ps . 118 , 22 , 8 : C.C.L. 40 , 1741 . 60. C'est la possibilitas au sens augustinien , à savoir la nature de l'homme libre plus la lux iustitiae , originale ou reconstitué .

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61. Voir ep . 140 , 30 , 72 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 219s ; Tract . Ioan . 26 , 1 : C.C.L. 36 , 259s . A ce sujet , note compl . 52 : B.Aug . 72,799s . 62. Voir Div . quaest . 83 , 31 , 1 : B.Aug . 10,88 : ' Iustitia est habitus animi , communi utilitati conservata , suum cuique tribuens dignitatem ... ' ( contexte : doctrine de Cicéron sur les vertus ) . En outre Spir . lit. 9 , 5 : P.L. 44 , 209 : ' ...iustitia Dei , non qua Deus iustus est , sed qua induit hominem, cum iustificat impium' . 63. Ep . 120 , 4 , 18 : C.S.E.L. 34 , 720 . 64. Voir En . Ps . 70 , I , 4 : C.C.L. 39 , 943 ; En . Ps . 31 , I , 2 : C.C.L. 38 , 222 ; En. Ps . 44 , 18 : C.C.L. 38 , 506 . 65. Voir En . Ps . 98 , 8 : C.C.L. 39 , 1384 ; Tract . Ioan . 26 , 1 : C.C.L. 36 , 260 ; En. Ps . 30 , II / 1 , 6 : C.C.L. 38 , 194ss . 66. Voir ep . 120 , 4 , 19 : C.S.E.L. 34 , 720s ; C. Faustum 26 , 3 : P.L. 42 , 480s . 67. Voir En. Ps . 98 , 8 : c.C.L. 39 , 1384 ; En . Ps . 1504 : C.C.L.40 , 2195 . 68. Voir C. Faustum 26 , 3 : P.L. 42 , 480s ; De quantitate animae 33 , 73 : B.Aug . 5,380 . 69. Voir les textes qui se réfèrent à Lc 2 , 12 , par exemple sermo 193 , 2 : P.L. 38 , 1014 ; 185 , 3 , 3 : P.L. 38 , 998s . En outre , C. Adimantum 20 , 3 : B.Aug . 17,348 ; En . Ps . 84 , 12 : C.C.L. 39 , 1172 ; En . Ps . 71 , 2-5 : C.C.L. 39 , 972ss . 70. Voir En . Ps . 61 , 21 : C.C.L. 39 , 789s . 71. Voir ep . 120 , 4 , 19 : C.S.E.L. 34 , 720s . 72. Voir En . Ps . 49 , 2 : C.C.L. 38 , 575ss . 73. Voir ep . 120 , 4 , 20 : C.S.E.L. 34 , 722 ; En . Ps . 32 , II /1 , 7 : C.C.L. 38 , 253; En. Ps. 44 , 14 : C.C.L. 38 , 503 ; En . Ps . 64 , 8 : C.C.L. 39 , 831 ; En . Ps . 41 , 7 : C.C.L. 39 , 465. A ce sujet , J. Rief , Der Ordobegriff des jungen Augustinus ( Paderborn , 1962 ) , pp . 341-348 . 74. Voir Perf. iust . 8 , 18 : B.Aug . 21,152ss : ' , .. haec est nostra in ipsa peregrinatione iustitia , ut ad illam perfectionem plenitudinemque iustitiae , ubi in specie decoris eius iam plena et perfecta caritas erit , nunc ipsius cursus rectitudine et perfectione tendamus castigando corpus nostrum et servituti subiciendo et elemosynas in dandis beneficiis et dimittendis quae in nos sunt commissa peccatis hilariter et ex corde faciendo et orationibus indesinenter instando et haec faciendo in doctrina sana , qua aedificatur fides recta , spes firma , caritas pura , haec est nunc nostra iustitia qua currimus esurientes et sitientes ad perfectionem plenitudinemque iustitiae , ut ea postea saturemur ' . En outre , C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 7 , 20 : B.Aug . 23,524 ; En . Ps . 118 , 26 , 1 : C.C.L. 40 , 1753 . 75. Voir J. Mausbach , op . cit . , pp . 175s . 76. Voir En . Ps . 64 , 8 : C.C.L. 39 , 831 ; En . Ps . 48 , II , 8 : C.C.L. 38 , 572 ; sermo 159 , 6 , 7 : P.L. 38 , 871 . 77. Voir sermo 125 , 7 : P.L. 38 , 694 ( avec tout le contexte ) . 78. En. Ps . 84 , 16 : C.C.L. 39 , 1175 . 79. Voir En. Ps . 143 , 6 : C.C.L. 40 , 2077 . 80. Voir En . Ps . 42 , 8 : C.C.L. 38 , 481 . 81. Voir En. Ps . 49 , 12 : C.C.L. 38 , 586 ; ep . 145 , 6 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 271s . 82. En . Ps . 50 , 23 : C.C.L. 38 , 615 ; En . Ps . 4 , 7 : C.C.L. 38 , 16s ; ep . 140 , 33 , 77 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 225 . 83. La formule de facere iustitiam est typiquement biblique . Elle se rencontre au Ps . 105 , 3 ou dans 1 Jn 3 , 7. Il ne surprend donc pas qu'Augustin la reprenne assez souvent . Voir En. Ps . 105 , 4 : C.C.L. 40 , 1556 ; En . Ps . 118 , 6 , 1 : C.C.L. 40 , 1679 ; Spir. lit. 3 , 5 : P.L. 44 , 203 ; Tract . 1 Ioan. 4 , 3 : S. Chr . 75 , 222 ; En . Ps . 118 , 26 , 1 : C.C.L. 40 , 1752 . 84. Voir Confess . 7 , 21 , 27 et 8 , 5 , 12 : B. Aug. 13,640 et 14,32 . En outre , Div. quaest . 83 , 66 , 5 : B.Aug . 10,246ss ; 67 , 6 : B.Aug . 10,264 . 85. Au sujet de l'universalité du péché , voir surtout Peccat . merit . remiss . II : P.L. 44 , 151-186 , et sermo 181 : P.L. 38 , 979-984 . L'impossibilité d'arriver à la justice parfaite , par contre , est traitée avant tout dans le Perf. iust .: B.Aug. 21,126-218 , et dans le C. duas ep . Pelag . III : B.Aug . 23,462-544 . A ce propos , B.Aug . 23 , 298ss . 86. Voir En . Ps . 29 , I , 16 : C.C.L. 38 , 183 ; C. Faustum 26 , 3 : P.L. 42 , 480 .

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87. Voir Nat . grat . 23 , 25 : B.Aug . 21,288ss . 88. Voir En . Ps . 98 , 7 : C.C.L. 39 , 1384 : ' Idoneus est homo ad vulnerandum se ; numquid idoneus est ad sanandum se ? Quando vult aegrotat , non quando vult surgit ' (contexte ) . De même , sermo 160 , 7 : P.L. 38 , 877 ; Nat . grat . 30 , 34 : B.Aug . 21,306 ; sermo 156 , 2 , 2 : P.L. 38 , 850 . 89. Voir C. duas ep . Pelag . I , 2 , 5 : B.Aug . 23,320 ; Nat . grat . 23 , 25 : B.Aug.21 , 290 . 90. En . Ps . 84 , 14 : C.C.L. 39 , 1174. Voir aussi , C. Iulianum VI , 19 , 62 : P.L. 44 , 861 . 91. Voir Confess . 7 , 10 , 16 : B.Aug . 13,616 , avec la note compl . 26 : B.Aug . 13 , 689-693. 92. Voir De agone christiano 33 , 35 : B.Aug . 1,434 ; En . Ps . 68 , I , 3 : C.C.L. 39 , 904 ; Trin . 4 , 3 , 6 : B.Aug . 15 , 354 . 93. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 17 , 26 : P.L. 44 , 167 : ' Nolunt homines facere quod iustum est , sive quia latet an iustum sit , sive quia non delectat . Tanto enim quidve vehementius volumus , quanto certius quam bonum sit novimus , eoque delectamur ardentius . Ignorantia igitur et infirmitas vitia sunt , quae impediunt voluntatem ne moveatur ad faciendum opus bonum , vel ab opere malo abstinendum ' . En outre , Peccat. merit . remiss . I , 36 , 67 : P.L. 44 , 148s ; En . Ps . 106 , 4s : C.C.L. 40 , 1572s . Pour bien saisir la portée de cette antithèse , il convient de se référer à deux autres : celle de iudicium et iustitia , voir , En . Ps . 105 , 4 : C.C.L. 40 , 1555s , et celle de sapientia ad disciplinam et virtus ( iustitia ) ad operandum , voir , De moribus Eccl . cath . 16 , 27 : B.Aug . 1,178 . 94. Voir En. Ps . 2 , 10 : C.C.L. 38 , 6 : ' Qui enim perit de via iustitiae , cum magna miseria per vias iniquitatis errabit ' . La miseria de l'homme déchu consiste avant tout dans l'obscurcissement de son intelligence et dans la faiblesse de sa volonté qui l'entraînent dans une série de péchés de plus en plus graves . Voir Nat . grat . 22 , 24 : B.Aug . 21,286 , avec la note compl . 30 : B. Aug. 21,600s. 95. Voir B.Studer , op . cit . , p . 170 , avec les textes suivants : En . Ps . 18 , 14 : C.C.L. 38 , 112 ; En . Ps . 58 , II , 5 : C.C.L. 39 , 748s ; ep . 155 , 4 , 13 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 443s ; Trin . 8 , 8 , 12 : B.Aug . 16,62-68 . 96. Voir En. Ps . 31 , II , 1 : C.C.L. 38 , 225 ; 58 , I , 7 : C.C.L. 39 , 733s . 97. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 27 , 26 : P.L. 44 , 167 . 98. Voir Spir . lit. 9 , 15 : P.L. 44 , 208s ; ep . 145 , 3 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 268s . 99. C'est une des thèses principales qu'Augustin oppose aux Pélagiens . Voir avant tout , Perf. iust .: B.Aug . 21,126-218 , et C. duas ep . Pelag . III : B.Aug . 23,462-544 , avec la note compl . 39 : B.Aug . 23,806ss . 100. Voir En . Ps . 140 , 14 : C.C.L. 40 , 2036 ; En . Ps . 69 , 6s : C.C.L. 39 , 936ss ; sermo 131 , 7 , 7 : P.L. 38 , 732s ; Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 13 , 18 : P.L. 44 , 162 ; ep . 153 , 5 , 13 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 409ss . 101. Voir sermo 158 , 4 , 4 : P.L. 38 , 864 ; ep . 185 , 9 , 39 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 34s ; Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 28 , 46 : P.L. 44 , 178s . 102. Voir En . Ps . 32 , II /1 , 4 : C.C.L. 38 , 249 ; C. duas ep . Pelag. III , 5 , 15 : B.Aug . 23,506ss , avec la note compl . 39 : B.Aug . 23,806ss ; ep . 140 , 30 , 73 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 220s . 103. Voir ep . 185 , 9 , 40 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 35 : ' Nunc ergo in quantum viget in nobis quod ex Deo nati sumus , ex fide viventes , iusti sumus ; in quantum autem reliquias mortalitatis ex Adam trahimus , sine peccato non sumus ' . En outre , Trin . 4 , 3 , 5 : B.Aug . 15,350 . 104. C'est en vue de cette condition du baptisé qu'Augustin présente le Christ comme sacramentum et exemplum par lequel le ' corps du péché ' est détruit et par lequel la peur de la mort est dominée . Voir Trin . 4 , 3 , 6 : B.Aug . 15,350-356 . A considérer aussi les textes nombreux qui parlent soit de la cupiditas , soit du désir de ne pas mourir. 105. Voir sermo 155 , 9 , 9 : P.L. 38 , 846 ; sermo 158 , 4 , 4 : P.L. 38 , 864 ; En . Ps . 30 , II /1 , 6 : C.C.L. 38 , 195 . 106. Voir entre autres le, theme de l'exercitatio iustitiae dans le sermo 125 , 7 : P.L. 38 , 694. De même , Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 31 , 50-34 , 56 : P.L. 44 , 181-184 . En outre , toute la théologie du meritum . A ce sujet , note compl . 30 : B.Aug . 23,783s (Bibliographie ) .

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107. C'est surtout la peur de la mort que le chrétien doit vaincre : Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 34 , 54 : P.L. 44 , 183 ; Trin . 4 , 3 , 6 : B.Aug . 15,354 . 108. Voir En . Ps . 118 , 3 , 2 : C.C.L. 40 , 1672 ; En . Ps . 118 , 3 , 1 : C.C.L. 40 , 1671 . 109. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 19 , 33 : P.L. 44 , 170 . 110. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 13 , 20 : P.L. 44 , 164 ; sermo 159 , 2 , 2 : P.L. 38 , 868 : sur les degrés de l'amour pour la justice . Voir aussi le thème de la corona iustitiae ( 2 Tim 4 , 8 ) , par exemple , En . Ps . 39 , 3 et 26 : C.C.L. 38 , 427 et 444 . 111. Voir En . Ps . 65 , 22 : C.C.L. 39 , 855 ; sermo 143 , 4 : P.L. 44 , 786 ; Civ . Dei 19 , 27 : B.Aug . 37,168 ; ep . 55 , 2 , 3-3 , 4 : C.S.E.L. 34 , 171-174 ; En . Ps . 129 , 7 : C.C.L. 40 , 1862 . 112. Voir avant tout l'exposé sur la justice de la terre et sur la justice du ciel : C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 7 , 17-23 : B.Aug . 23,512-536 . En outre , Perf. iust . 8 , 18 : B.Aug . 21,152ss ; Gratia Christi I , 48 , 53 : B.Aug . 22,150ss ; Spir . lit. 36 , 64ss : P.L. 44 , 242-246 , et déjà C. Faustum 22 , 53 : P.L. 42 , 433s . 113. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 31 , 50-32 , 52 : P.L. 44 , 181s . 114. Voir à ce sujet , G.B. Ladner , The Idea of Reform . Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers ( Cambridge , Mass . , 1959 ) , pp . 153-283 . 115. Voir Y. Congar , Introduction générale aux Traités anti - donatistes : B. Aug. 28 , 85s : textes sur l'Ecclesia mixta . 116. Voir sermo 181 , 5 , 7 : P.L. 38 , 982 ; Perf. iust . 15 , 35 : B. Aug. 21,192ss . 117. Voir entre autres En . Ps . 118 , 19 , 7 : C.C.L. 40 , 1729 ; Civ . Dei 19 , 27 : B.Aug . 37 , 168 . 118. Voir avant tout , Nat . grat .: B.Aug . 21,244-412 , et Grat . Christi peccat . orig .: B.Aug. 22,52-268 . 119. Voir ep . 186 , 1 , 2 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 46 : Augustin résume ses efforts anti - pélagiens , faits jusqu'à 417 , en disant : ' Haec mala quibus salvatoris evacuaretur adventus , ubi hoc possumus dicere quod de lege dicit apostolus : Si per naturam iustitia , ergo Christus gratis mortuus est ( Gal 2 , 21 ) , refellebamus , ut poteramus , in cordibus eorum, qui ista sentirent , ut his cognitis , etiam ille , si fieri posset , non lacessitus ista emendaret ... ' . Voir également , Nat . grat . 50 , 58 : B.Aug . 21,352 . Le verset de Rom 10 , 3 revient continuellement dans les écrits anti -pélagiens d'Augustin . Voir entre autres , Nat . grat . 40 , 47 : B.Aug . 21,332 . 120. Voir En. Ps . 29 , I , 16 : C.C.L. 38 , 183 ; C. Faustum 26 , 3 : P.L. 42 , 480 ; Nat . grat. 23 , 25 : B.Aug ; 21,288ss . 121. Voir C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 4 , 13 : B.Aug . 23,498 ; III , 7 , 17-23 : B.Aug . 23 , 512-536 . En outre , ep . 194 , 5 , 21 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 192 . 122. En . Ps . 84 , 14 : C.C.L. 39 , 1174 : ' Quae iustitia de caelo prospexit ? Tamquam Dei dicentis : Parcamus huic homini , quia ipse sibi non pepercit ; ignoscamus , quia ipse agnoscit . Conversus est ad puniendum peccatum suum; convertar et ego ad eum liberandum ' . 123. Voir Tract. 1 Ioan. 4 , 9 : S.Chr . 75 , 236ss . 124. Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 18 , 28-31 : P.L. 44 , 168s . 125. Cela résulte d'ailleurs d'autres textes bibliques , comme Prov 8 , 35 ou Phil 2 , 13. Voir par exemple , Grat . lib . arbit . 16 , 32-17 , 33 : B.Aug . 24,160-168 . 126. De Genesi ad litteram 8 , 12 , 25 : B.Aug . 49 , 48ss . A noter que ce texte a été rédigé avant 412 , voir B.Aug . 48,28s . 127. Voir Cat . rud. 4 , 8 : B.Aug . 11 , 34. A ce sujet , B.Studer , op . cit . , pp . 163s . 128. Ep . 193 , 3 , 6 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 171. Il s'agit de la thèse principale du Nat . grat. Voir 1 , 1 ; 2 , 2 ; 40 , 47-41 , 48 : B.Aug . 21,244ss , 248,332-336 . Voir aussi , ep . 186 , 3 , 8s ; C.S.E.L. 57 , 51s . 129. Voir avant tout , ep . 120 , 4 , 19 : C.S.E.L. 34 , 2 , 720s ( de l'année 410 ) . A retenir en outre les textes , antérieurs à 411 , qui sont cités par M.F. Berrouard dans B.Aug . 72,34s . 130. Voir , entre autres , sermo 160 : P.L. 38 , 872-877 : explication de 1 Cor 1 , 31 : Qui gloriatur , in Domino glorietur . 131. Voir ep . 190 , 2 , 8 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 143s ; ep . ad Hilarium 3 , 14 : B.Aug . 21,60ss ; Nat. grat . 44 , 51 : B.Aug . 21,338ss ; Grat. Christi pecc . orig . II , 26 , 31 : B.Aug . 22,222ss , avec la note compl . 16 : B.Aug . 22,728s .

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132. Voir avant tout , ep . 185 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 1-44 , où Augustin unit ses réflexions sur la justification et sur la justice à une polémique antidonatiste , en leur donnant ainsi une orientation foncièrement ecclésiologique . 133. Voir ep . 140 , 30 , 73 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 221s : ' Haec est iustitia qua eius fideles iusti sunt , interim viventes ex fide , donec perfecta iustitia perducantur ad speciem , sicut salute perfecta etiam ad ipsius corporis immortalitatem , gratia est novi testamenti ... ( il suit 2 Cor 5 , 20s ) ... Ut nos simus iustitia Dei in ipso , id est , in eius corpore , quod est Ecclesia , cui caput est , nos simus iustitia Dei ... ' (allusion à Rom 10 , 3) . 134. La lettre 140 : De gratia novi testamenti liber , date du début de la controverse pélagienne , mais n'a pas de caractère polémique . Voir aussi , Retract . 2 , 26 : B.Aug . 12,514 . 135. Voir B. Studer , op . cit . , pp . 160ss ( bibliographie ) . 136. Ep . 194 , 5 , 21 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 192s . 137. A retenir spécialement les textes qui expliquent le symbole baptismal ou qui développent l'idée de la Pâque , passage au Père . Voir par exemple , En . Ps . 138 , 8 : C.C.L. 40 , 1994-1997 ; En . Ps . 140 , 25s : C.C.L. 40 , 2043ss . 138. Voir sermo 143 , 4 , 4 : P.L. 38 , 786s ( 410-412 ) ; sermo 144 : P.L. 38 , 787-790 ( 412-416 ) ; En. Ps . 109 , 8 : C.C.L. 40 , 1607s ; Tract . Ioan . 95 : C.C.L. 36 , 564-568 . 139. Sermo 144 : P.L. 38 , 787-790 . Voir A. Kunzelmann , ' Die Chronologie der Sermones des hl . Augustinus ' : Miscel . Agost . I ( Rome , 1931 ) , p . 467 . 140. Sermo 144 , 2 , 2 : P.L. 38 , 788 . 141. Sermo 144 , 2 , 3 : P.L. 38 , 788s . 142. Sermo 144 , 3 , 4-5 , 6 : P.L. 38 , 789s , en particulier n . 6 : 790 : ' Si enim non in ipso ( 2 Cor 5 , 21 ) , nullo modo iustitia . Si autem in ipso , totus nobiscum vadit ad Patrem, et haec implebitur in nobis perfecta iustitia ' . 143. Voir les textes cités ci - dessus , nn . 44-55 . 144. Voir sermo 159 , 2 , 2-6 , 7 : P.L. 38 , 868-871 ; sermo 178 , 10 , 11 : P.L. 38 , 965 . 145. En . Ps . 127 , 7 ; C.C.L. 40 , 1872 : ' Timent quidem , sed amant iustitiam . Cum autem per timorem continent se a peccato , fit consuetudo iustitiae , et incipi quod durum erat amari , et dulcescit Deus ; et iam incipit homo propterea iuste vivere , non quia timet poenas , sed quia amat aeternitatem ' . Voir sermo 145 , 2-5 : P.L. 38 , 791-794 ; En . Ps . 32 , II /1 , 6 : C.C.L. 38 , 252s ; Civ . Dei 21 , 24 , 5 : B.Aug . 37,478ss ; Grat. Christi I , 13 , 14 : B.Aug . 22,82ss . 146. En . Ps . 118 , 12 , 5 : C.C.L. 40 , 1704 . 147. En . Ps . 118 , 10 , 6 : C.C.L. 40 , 1695 ; En . Ps . 77 , 10 : C.C.L. 39 , 1076 ; Perf. iust . 20 , 43 : B.Aug . 21,214 . Pour ce qui concerne la portée de Rom 5 , 5 chez Augustin , voir A.-M. La Bonnardière , ' Le verset paulinien de Rom 5 , 5 dans l'oeuvre de saint Augustin ' : Aug. Mag . II ( Paris , 1954 ) , pp . 657-665 . 148. Voir sermo 155 , 13 , 14 : P.L. 38 , 848s ; sermo 169 , 12 , 15 : P.L. 38 , 924 . 149. Voir ep . 185 , 9 , 40 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 35 ( avec tout le contexte ) ; En . Ps . 142 , 4s : C.C.L. 40 , 2062s . 150. Voir C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 6 , 16 : B.Aug . 23,508ss : Augustin présente le Christ comme avocat iuste pour les justes , en expliquant Rom 8 , 3 et 2 Cor 5 , 21 . De même , Nat . grat . 61 , 71 : B.Aug . 21,384 ; ep . 190 , 6 , 25 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 161 ; C. Iulianum 5 , 15 , 54 : P.L. 44 , 814 . 151. Il est remarquable que Rom 3 , 26 qui parle de Dieu est appliqué par Augustin plutôt au Christ . Voir En . Ps . 36 , II , 14 : C.C.L. 38 , 356 ; Confess . 12 , 15 , 20 : B.Aug . 14,372 ; ep . 185 , 9 , 40 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 35 . 152. Voir Tract . Ioan . 84 , 2 : C.C.L. 36 , 538 . 153. Voir Enchiridion 13 , 41 : B.Aug . 9,180 , avec la note compl . 25 : B.Aug . 24,820s . 154. Voir B. Studer , op . cit . , pp . 159s . 155. Voir par exemple , En . Ps . 149 , 6 : C.C.L. 40 , 2182 : combinaison de deux thèmes capitaux: le Christ , roi et prêtre . 156. Voir B. Studer , op . cit . , pp . 160ss , et note compl . 17 : B. Aug. 22,729-732 (bibliographie ) . 157. Ces thèmes divers se trouvent réunis dans les textes les plus synthétiques : Trin. 13 , 17 , 22 : B.Aug . 16,326ss ; Enchiridion 28 , 108 : B.Aug . 9,308ss .

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158. Voir en particulier les textes nombreux dans lesquels Augustin souligne que le Christ , tout en étant homme mortel , ne devait pas mourir par nécessité , mais qu'il est mort par obéissance . Ainsi par exemple , Nat. grat . 24 , 26 : B.Aug . 21,292 . 159. Voir En . Ps . 125 , 2 : C.C.L. 40 , 1846 ; Civ . Dei 9 , 17 et 10 , 24 : B.Aug . 34 , 398ss et 508ss . 160. Voir C. Faustum 14 , 4 : P.L. 42 , 297 ; Confess . 10 , 43 , 68 : B.Aug . 14 , 264 . 161. Voir le texte ancien de Lib. arbit . III , 31 : B.Aug . 6,382ss . avec la note compl . 41 : B.Aug . 6,534s , qui réfère à Trin . 13 , 12 , 16-19 : B.Aug . 16,306-320 , et aux discussions en question . En outre , Enchiridion 28 , 108 : B.Aug . 9,300ss . 162. Voir avant tout , Trin . 4 , 13 , 16-18 : B.Aug . 15,378-386 . En outre , sermo 130 , 2 : P.L. 38 , 726 ; sermo 134 , 3 , 4-5 , 6 : P.L. 38 , 744-747 . 163. Voir Trin . 4 , 2 , 4 : B.Aug . 15,344 ; 13 , 14 , 18s : B.Aug . 16,314-318 ; Peccat. merit. remiss . 30 , 49 : P.L. 44 , 180s . 164. Voir Trin . 4 , 12 , 15 : B.Aug . 15,378 . A ce propos il faut retenir avant tout les textes dans lesquels Augustin explique 2 Cor 5 , 21. En suivant l'Ambrosiaster , Augustin , en effet , entend par le ' peccatum fecit ' le sacrifice pour les péchés . Voir par exemple , C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 6 , 16 : B.Aug . 23,510 ; Enchiridion 13 , 41 : B.Aug . 9,180 . D'autres textes chez St. Lyonnet- L . Sabourin , Sin, Redemption, and Sacrifice (Rome , 1970 ) , pp . 211-215 . Voir aussi , B.Aug . 22,238s . De même il faudrait citer les passages nombreux qui développent le thème de Christus , sacerdos et victima . Voir D. Zähringer , Das kirchliche Priestertum nach dem hl . Augustinus (Paderborn , 1931 ) , pp . 20-23 . 165. Voir Tract . Ioan . 41 : C.C.L. 36 , 360 ; Trin . 4 , 14 , 19 : B.Aug . 15,386ss ; Enchiridion 10 , 33 : B.Aug . 9,164ss ; Grat . Christi pecc . orig . II , 26 , 31 : B.Aug . 22,222. 166. Voir En . Ps . 21 , II , 3 : C.C.L. 38 , 123 : ' Quomodo ergo dicit delictorum meorum , nisi quia pro delictis nostris ipse precatur , et delicta nostra sua delicta fecit , ut iustitiam suam nostram iustitiam faceret ?' En outre , C. duas ep . Pelag . III , 6 , 16 : B.Aug . 23,508 ; Trin . 4 , 24 : B.Aug . 15,344 ; C. ep . Parmeniani II , 8 , 15 : B.Aug. 28,300ss ; Tract . 1 Ioan . 1 , 7s : S.Chr . 75 , 128-132 ; En . Ps . 109 , 18 : C.C.L. 40 , 1618 . 167. Quant au thème du Christus-medicus , voir B.Studer , op . cit . , pp . 165s ( avec textes et bibliographie ) , et note compl . 54 : B.Aug . 22,833ss . 168. Les versets de Mt 9 , 12s ont une grande place dans les écrits augustiniens . Voir par exemple , En . Ps . 49 , 31 : C.C.L. 38 , 599 ; En . Ps . 58 , I , 7 : C.C.L. 39 , 733s ; En . Ps . 61 , 13 : C.C.L. 39 , 782 ; Perf. iust . 3 , 5 : B.Aug . 21,132ss , etc. 169. Voir Perf. iust . 3 , 8 : B.Aug . 21,136 ; En . Ps . 61 , 13 : C.C.L. 39 , 782s ; En . Ps . 105 , 5 : C.C.L. 40 , 1556 ; En . Ps . 34 , II , 3 : C.C.L. 38 , 313 . 170. Voir Doct . christ . I , 14 , 13 : B.Aug . 11,196 ; Nat . grat . 34 , 39 : B.Aug . 21,316 ; sermo 142 , 6 : P.L. 38 , 781 ; En . Ps . 69 , 6 : C.C.L. 39 , 937 ; Civ . Dei 10 , 17 : B.Aug . 34,522 . 171. Voir avant tout , W. Geerlings , Christus exemplum. Utile pour retrouver les textes est aussi 0. Brabant , Le Christ, centre et source de la vie morale chez 8. Augustin ( Gembloux , 1971 ) , surtout pp . 100ss . 172. Voir B. Studer , op . cit . , pp . 106-115 , spécialement 111s : sur le magister iustitiae chez Lactance ; et 164ss : sur l'enseignement et l'exemple du Christ chez Augustin . 173. Voir avant tout , En . Ps . 61 , 22 : C.C.L. 39 , 790 ; sermo 157 , 3 , 3 : P.L. 38 , 860s ; En . Ps . 56 , 5 : C.C.L. 39 , 698 ; En . Ps . 67 , 29 : C.C.L. 39 , 890 . 174. Voir avant tout , C. Iulianum 5 , 15 , 57 : P.L. 44 , 815 ; En . Ps . 60 , 3 : C.C.L. 39 , 766 ; En . Ps . 125 , 1 : C.C.L. 40 , 1844 . 175. Enchiridion 14 , 52 : B.Aug . 9,194 ; sermo 231 , 5 : P.L. 38 , 1107 ; sermo 236 , 1 : P.L. 38 , 1120 . 176. Voir sermo 157 , 3 : P.L. 38 , 860 ; sermo 279 , 8 : P.L. 38 , 1279s ; En . Ps . 70 , II , 10 : C.C.L. 39 , 968ss . 177. Voir surtout , Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 17 , 26 : P.L. 44 , 167 : la réponse à la troisième question , à savoir pourquoi il est impossible de rester sans péché dans cette vie . Cette question fait d'ailleurs l'objet principal du Perf. iust. Voir aussi , note compl . 39 : B.Aug . 23,806-808 ( avec d'autres textes ) . A ajouter , ep . 140 , 5 , 14 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 165s .

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178. C. Felicem II , 17 : B.Aug . 17,742 . 179. Voir C. Felicem II , 17 : B.Aug . 17,742 . En outre , II , 11 : B.Aug . 17,728ss ; sermo 157 , 3 : P.L. 38 , 860 . 180. Voir aussi , C. Faustum 22 , 27 : P.L. 42 , 418s ( contexte ) . 181. Ep . 264 , 3 : C.S.E.L. 57 , 637 ( après 395 ) : ' Infirmitatis enim nostrae particeps factus est , non iniquitatis , ut per infirmitatem communem solveret iniquitatem nostram , et adduceret nos ad iustitiam suam , bibens mortem de nostro , et propinans vitam de suo ' . Voir aussi , Confess . 10 , 43 , 68 : B.Aug . 14,264 ; C. Faustum 16 , 29 : P.L. 42 , 336 ; sermo 231 , 5 , 5 : P.L. 38 , 1107 . 182. Trin . 4 , 3 , 5-6 : B.Aug . 15 , 346-356 . Voir B. Studer , ' " Sacramentum et exemplum" chez saint Augustin ' : Rech . Aug. 10 ( 1975 ) , pp . 87-141 ; et W. Geerlings , Christus exemplum , pp . 209-228 . 183. Voir avant tout les passages suivants du n . 5 : B.Aug . 15,348 : ' Resuscitatur enim anima per poenitentiam , et in corpore adhuc mortali renovatio vitae inchoatur a fide , qua creditur in eum qui iustificat impium ( Rom 4 , 5 ) , bonisque moribus augetur ... ' ' Eius autem resurrectio differtur in finem ; cum et ipsa iustificatio nostra perficietur ineffabiliter . Tunc enim similes ei erimus , quoniam videbimus enim sicuti est . Nunc vero ... non iustificabitur in conspectu eius omnis vivens ( Ps 142 , 2 ) , in comparatione iustitiae qua aequabimur angelis , et gloriae quae revelabitur in nobis ' . De ces passages résulte clairement que la justification , respectivement la justice sont liées à la résurrection du Christ dans laquelle la nouvelle vie soit de l'âme , soit du corps a été initiée . 184. Voir C. Mohrmann , ' Pascha , passio , transitus ' : Etudes sur le latin des chrétiens , I ( Rome , 1961 ) , pp . 205-222 , avec beaucoup de textes d'Augustin . De même , S. Poque , Augustin d'Hippone, Sermons pour la Pâque , Introduction : La Pâque du Christ : S.Chr . 116 , 16-21 . 185. Voir les textes cités dans la note 138 . 186. Voir ep . 55 , 1 , 2s : C.S.E.L. 34 , 2 , 171 : ' Transitus ergo de hac vita mortali in aliam vitam immortalem, hoc est enim de morte ad vitam , in passione et in resurrectione Domini commendatur . Hic transitus a nobis modo agitur per fidem , quae nobis est in remissionem peccatorum , in spem vitae aeternae , diligentibus Deum et proximum ' (avec tout le contexte dans lequel est cité aussi Rom 4 , 25 ) . 187. C. Faustum 14 , 6 : P.L. 42 , 298 . 188. Voir J. Plagnieux , ' Le binôme " iustitia- potentia " dans la sotériologie augustinienne et anselmienne ' : Spicileg . Beccense , I ( Paris , 1959 ) , pp . 141-154 ; le même , Heil und Heiland ( Paris , 1969 ) , pp . 54-61 . 189. A ce propos , A. Schindler , Wort und Analogie in Augustins Trinitätslehre ( Tübingen , 1965 ) , pp . 208s ; et G. Madec , ' Christus , scientia et sapientia nostra . Le principe de cohérence de la doctrine augustinienne ' : Rech . Aug. 10 ( 1975 ) , pp . 77-85. 190. Trin . 13 , 10 , 13 : B.Aug . 16,300 . 191. Trin . 13 , 13 , 17 : B.Aug . 16,310ss . Pour l'arrière -plan philosophique , voir J. Plagnieux , Heil und Heiland , p . 57 , n.4 , qui se réfère à la citation de Hortensius ( frag . 39 ) dans Trin . 13 , 5 , 8 : B.Aug ; 16,284 . Parmi les textes qui contiennent la même citation de Cicéron ( indiqués chez Testard et Hagendahl ) , on notera surtout ep . 130 , 5 , 10s : C.S.E.L. 44 , 51s (peu après 411 ) . 192. Trin . 13 , 14 , 18 : B.Aug . 16,314ss . 193. Trin . 13 , 14 , 18 - 17 , 21 : B.Aug . 16,314–326 . 194. Trin . 13 , 14 , 18 : B.Aug . 16,316 . Il serait intéressant de préciser depuis quand Augustin rattache la justice de l'homme plutôt à la mort qu'à la résurrection du Christ . Pour ce qui concerne la datation du livre 13 du De Trinitate , on admet les années de 418-421 . 195. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 1 , 1 : P.L. 44 , 151 ; Nat . grat . 14 , 15 : B.Aug . 21,266 , et 61 , 71 : B.Aug . 2,382ss . 196. Le De peccat . merit . et remiss . remonte à 412 . Voir Retract . II , 33 : B.Aug. 12,508 , avec les remarques de A. Mandouze , S. Augustin . L'aventure de la raison et de la grâce ( Paris , 1968 ) , pp . 396ss . 197. Peccat. merit . remiss . II , 11 , 16 : P.L. 44 , 161 ; Nat . grat . 62 , 72 : B.Aug . 21,386 .

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198. Voir ci - dessus , n . 164 . 199. Il est remarquable que c'est dès le second siècle , à savoir chez Justin , Dialogue avec Tryphon , 98-107 , qu'on rencontre une exégèse technique et très developpée de ce Psaume messianique . Voir J. Daniélou , ' Le Psaume 21 dans la catéchèse patristique ' : La Maison-Dieu 49 ( 1957 ) , pp . 17-24 . 200. Ep . 140 : C.S.E.L. 44 , 155-234 . écrite dans l'hiver 411/2 . 201. Voir En . Ps . 60 , 2-5 : C.C.L. 39 , 766ss ; En . Ps . 90 , II , 1 : C.C.L. 39 , 1265 ; En. Ps . 90 , II , 6s : C.C.L. 39 , 1271ss . 202. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 31 , 50 - 34 , 56 : P.L. 44 , 181-184 ; En . Ps . 36 , II , 4 : C.C.L. 38 , 350 ; En . Ps . 68 , I , 12 : C.C.L. 39 , 912 . 203. Voir En . Ps . 93 , 19 : C.C.L. 39 , 1321 ; En . Ps . 63 , 18 : C.C.L. 39 , 820s , etc. 204. A comparer C. Faustum 14 , 6 : P.L. 42 , 298 : ' Cum vero ex homine et pro homine mortem suscepit , ex illo et pro illo etiam maledictum quod morti comitatur suscipere non dedignatus est ille , prorsus etiam ille Filius Dei semper vivus in sua iustitia ... avec C. Faustum 22 , 27 : P.L. 42 , 148s , où il est question des anges qui aeterno imperio liberaliter , quia suaviter serviunt ' , et des hommes qui ' pro modulo infirmitatis suae secundum aeternam legem qua naturalis ordo servatur vivunt ' . Cette interprétation de la justice toujours vivante de Jésus reçoit une confirmation par Peccat. merit . remiss . II , 22,36-23,37 : P.L. 44 , 172ss , où Augustin oppose l'ordo iustitiae du paradis aux conditions de l'obéissance après le péché d'Adam . L'obéissance des descendants d'Adam implique la domination de la concupiscence , c'est -à-dire ce que le Christ a préfiguré à la croix . Toutefois dans cet exposéci , Augustin n'explicite pas non plus ce que Jésus lui - même a fait pour être le modèle de ceux qui par leur obéissance s'insèrent dans l'ordre de Dieu . 205. Voir En . Ps . 57 , 14s : C.C.L. 39 , 1218 ; Trin . 8 , 7 , 10 : B.Aug . 16,58 , avec la note compl . 12 : B.Aug . 16,584ss . 206. Voir W. Geerlings , Christus exemplum . 207. Voir En. Ps . 32 , II /1 , 2 : C.C.L. 38 , 247s ; En . Ps . 147 , 3 : C.C.L. 40 , 2140 ; En. Ps . 68 , I , 12 : C.C.L. 39 , 912 . 208. Voir En. Ps . 33 , I , 4 : C.C.L. 39 , 276 . 209. Voir les textes qui parlent de Jésus , soumis à la volonté du Père en notre nom, par exemple , En . Ps . 32 , II / 1 , 2 : C.C.L. 39 , 247s . 210. Nat . grat . 32 , 36 : B.Aug . 21,310-314 . Voir Doct. christ . I , 17 , 16 : B.Aug . 11,200 . 211. En . Ps . 87 , 1 : C.C.L. 39 , 1207s . Voir En. Ps . 87 , 3 : C.C.L. 39 , 1210 . 212. Voir Trin . 4 , 3 , 6 : B.Aug . 15,350 ; En . Ps . 78 , 17 : C.C.L. 39 , 1111 . 213. Voir En . Ps . 68 , I , 2 : C.C.L. 39 , 902s ; En . Ps . 79 , 1 : C.C.L. 39 , 1111 . 214. Voir En . Ps . 60 , 3 : C.C.L. 39 , 766 ; En . Ps . 21 , II , 4 : C.C.L. 38 , 123s ; En . Ps . 31 , II , 26 : C.C.L. 38 , 243s ; En . Ps . 33 , II , 3 : C.C.L. 38 , 192 ; En . Ps . 67 , 30 : C.C.L. 39 , 891 . 215. En . Ps . 40 , 6 : C.C.L. 38 , 454 : ' In illo enim eramus , quando dixit : Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem . Non enim timbebat mori , qui venerat mori ... ' ( contexte ) ; Peccat . merit. remiss . II , 29 , 48 : P.L. 44 , 180 : sur l'ignorance et l'infirmité de l'enfant Jésus ; En . Ps . 100 , 6 : C.C.L. 39 , 1411 . 216. Voir En. Ps . 90 , II , 1 : C.C.L. 39 , 1267 ; En . Ps . 103 , III , 11 : C.C.L. 40 , 1510 ; Tract . Ioan . 49 , 18 : C.C.L. 36 , 428s ; Tract . Ioan . 43 , 9 : C.C.L. 36 , 376s . Voir à ce sujet , T. van Bavel , Recherches sur la christologie de s . Augustin ( Fribourg , 1954 ) , spécialement , pp . 127ss . 217. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . II , 34 , 54 : P.L. 44 , 183 ; En . Ps . 118 , 29 , 8 : C.C.L. 40 , 1766 ; En . Ps . 118 , 31 , 7 : C.C.L. 40 , 1772 . 218. A ce sujet , T. van Bavel , op . cit . , pp . 13-44 . A compléter par la note compl . 24 : B.Aug . 24,219s et surtout par W, Geerlings , op . cit . , pp . 118-125 . 219. Voir Enchiridion 13 , 41 : B.Aug . 9 , 180 ; Praedest . sanct . 15 , 30 : B.Aug . 24 , 552s ; C. Iulianum 5 , 15 , 57 : P.L. 44 , 815 ; C. serm . Arian . 7 : P.L. 42 , 688 , avec les remarques de J. Plagnieux , op . cit . , p . 59 , n.l. 220. Voir En. Ps . 142 , 3 : C.C.L. 40 , 2062 ; En . Ps . 41 , 1 : C.C.L. 38 , 460 ; En . Ps . 68 , II , 1 : C.C.L. 39 , 917 ( avec l'explication entière de ce psaume ) . A ce propos , M. Pontet , ' L'exégèse de s . Augustin prédicateur ' : Théologie , 7 ( Paris , s.d. ) , pp . 395-411 ; et T. van Bavel , op . cit . , p . 118 .

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221. Voir les textes chez T. van Bavel , op . cit . , pp . 116ss . Tout le complexe de l'usage de la terminologie exégétique en christologie demanderait de nouvelles recherches et surtout une synthèse complète . 222. Voir Peccat . merit . remiss . I , 31 , 60 : P.L. 44 , 144s ; note compl . 84 : B.Aug . 71,929s : Jn 3 , 13 et l'unité du Christ . 223. Voir E. Mersch , Le corps mystique du Christ , II ( Louvain , 1933 ) , pp . 119-122 , et passim , ainsi que note compl . 69 : B.Aug . 71,904ss : Mort du Christ et formation de l'Eglise , et note compl . 75 : B.Aug . 71,914ss : Le nouvel Adam et son oeuvre . 224. Voir W. Geerlings , op . cit . , pp . 209-228 . 225. Voir W. Geerlings , op . cit . , pp . 215 , 222s . 226. Voir Tract . 1 Ioan . 1 , 9 : S.Chr . 75 , 136. Regarder aussi , J. Plagnieux , op . cit . , p . 57 , note 5 .

Patientia als Element in Augustins Geschichtsanschauung

Mit einem Seitenblick auf G. E. Lessing J. F. van der Kooi Bethel

EDULD ' gehört nicht zu den Themen , die in der Geistesgeschichte beständig und 'Gausdrücklich zur Sprache kommen . Es geht hierbei auch mehr um eine Sache von stillschweigender Lebenshaltung als hervorhebendem Reden und Theoretisieren .

Schon

Cyprian stellte diese Einsicht an den Anfang seiner Schrift über ' das Gute der Geduld'.1 Es läßt sich verstehen , daß Äußerungen über Geduld dem Bereich des spirituellen 2 und moralischen Lebens zugeordnet werden . Man kann darin auch den Niederschlag lebensanschaulicher Weisheit erkennen , eventuell existenzphilosophisch verdichtet 3 wie bei Kierkegaard , Heidegger und Bollnow ." Soweit Reflexionen über Geduld zu registrieren sind , stehen sie jedenfalls hauptsächlich im Rahmen von Fragen der persönlichen und praktischen Lebensbewältigung . Wir möchten nun aber dafür plädieren , daß daneben die Bedeutung der Geduld im Blick auf die historische , und das heißt auch politische Existenz der Menschen und der Menschheit betrachtet wird . Anstoß und Stoff zu solchen Betrachtungen fanden wir in Augustins Werk über

die Stadt Gottes ' .

Zugleich ist uns Lessing aufgefallen

als einer der wenigen neuzeitlichen Denker , die für unser Thema Anhaltspunkte bieten . Die Gedenkfeier Lessings in diesem Jahr macht es umso passender , ihn hier ins Gespräch einzubeziehen .

Er verdient es auch , geehrt zu werden als einer , der ein ganz 4 eigenes Verhältnis zu den Patres hatte ." Zunächst ist festzustellen , daß das Werk De civitate Dei als solches , in seiner Ganzheit , ein Zeugnis und Erzeugnis der Geduld ist .

Es ist bekannt , wie Augustin

Diese Zeitlänge sagt umso mehr aus , wenn man das Alter des Bischofs bedenkt , nämlich zwischen 58 und 72 Jahren . Überlegt man lange daran arbeitete , von 412 bis 426.

dazu , welche überladene Aufgaben und welche aufregende Zeitumstände ihn bedrängten , dann darf man wohl etwas Besonderes sehen in der Beharrlichkeit , womit er De civitate Dei Idieses von ihm selbst opus magnum et arduum genannte Werk - zu Ende führte .

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Daß es kein opus imperfectum blieb , hat den Autor selbst schon verwundert , wie man aus seinen Worten von Hilfebitte und Dank an Gott heraushören darf . Wenn wir Geduld einmal nehmen als die Kunst , ' Raum' zu wahren inmitten der Zeiten und gegen die Zeit , dann ist sie an diesem kathedralen Bauwerk auf dem Gebiet des Geistes wahrgemacht worden . Selbstverständlich war es nun auch nicht , daß Augustin so viel Zeit und Mühe aufwand , seine Konzepte mit historischer Substanz zu füllen .

Die Beschäftigung mit

den Realitäten und Problemen der Geschichte , unter dem Druck der Rom-Krise , forderte von Augustin Selbstüberwindung , wie es die Übernahme des bischöflichen Amtes tat . Obwohl De civitate Dei reichlich viel geschichtsferne Ausführungen bietet , bildet es doch eine neue Stufe in Augustins Abwendung von platonischen Neigungen und spekulativer Ungeduld . Er vollführte hier ein Werk der ' Vermittlung ' zwischen Theologie und Geschichte , womit er alle Vorgänger und Zeitgenossen übertraf und Maße für das nächste Jahrtausend setzte . Am anderen Ende dieser Linien ist Lessings Position zu sehen : er artikulierte den neuzeitlichen Protest gegen die Anbindung der Geschichte an theologische Wahrheiten und der Wahrheitssuche an die Geschichte . Er stellte den ' garstigen Graben ' zwischen Geschichte und Metaphysik ins Licht und machte den Aufstieg zu den ' Vernunftwahrheiten ' zum Ideal . Das bedeutete eine Rückkehr zu Maßstäben der Unmittelbarkeit und der Subjektivität , die ihre Weiterentwicklung fand in Ideen der Romantik und des Idealismus , wie auch des Marxismus und Vitalismus . Trotzdem vollzog Lessing , auch wo er historisch vermittelte Wahrheit und vernunftgemäße Weisheit gegen einander abgrenzte , keinen voreiligen Bruch , sondern statuierte vielmehr das Denkmodell eines produktiven Durchhaltens des Widerspruchs . Man dürfte darin vielleicht das höchst Eigene von Lessings Position sehen und eben auch , sei es anders gelagert als bei Augustin , ein auf Geduld aufbauendes Werk der Vermittlung zwischen Geschichte und Geist . Eine bestimmte Ebene , auf der die Rolle der Patientia zu betrachten ist , ist die von Augustins Denken in dualistischen Kategorien .

Wir meinen , daß dieses Denken

allzusammen mehr eschatologisch als metaphysisch orientiert ist .

Die Bedeutung die

Augustin der Patientia zumißt , ist ihrerseits ein Spiegel und eine Bestätigung davon , daß er die Spannung zwischen einer Welt der Vollkommenheit und einer Welt der Unvollkommenheit wesentlich in Begriffen von Zeit und nicht von Aufstieg und Weltüberwindung faßte . Der historisch - eschatologische Rahmen seines Patientia- Verständnisses bringt es auch mit sich , daß er in De civitate Dei weit hinausging über den anthropologischen , weithin zeitlosen Rahmen der antiken , stoischen und platonischen Lehren über Geduld , Gelassenheit und Leidens fähigkeit . Man darf sagen , daß die eschatologische Erwartung , womit die Geduld verbunden ist , auch Elemente der Ungeduld in sich trägt . Sie artikulieren sich u.a. in Begriffen wie desiderium und gaudium in spe .

Allerdings hat das eschatologische

Augustins Geschichtsanschauung

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Temperament in Augustins Geschichtsanschauung nicht dahin gereicht , daß er eine innerzeitliche Überwindung des Gegensatzes zwischen Gottesreich und Weltreich zum Strebeziel machte . Seine Auffassung von Patientia geht mehr hinaus auf ein Ertragen und Aushalten desjenigen , was zwischen uns und dem Reich der Vollendung steht , als auf ein Ändern und Aufräumen davon . Man kann Augustin ein ganzes Stück Quietismus vorwerfen .

Ich möchte jedoch festhalten , daß ein in Geduld durchgehaltener Dualis-

mus eine elementare Basis für Humanismus sein kann . Monistisches Denken , das die höchsten Ideale innerweltlich realisiert sehen will und den Aufschub der Geduld überspielt , hat die Tendenz zu Inhumanität in sich .

Das ist abzulesen an theo-

kratischen Experimenten des Mittelalters ( oder des Islams in unserer Zeit ; Iran ! ) , nicht weniger aber an politischen Systemen , die sich auf Basis von totalitären und fanatischen Ideologien entwickelten , eben im 20. Jahrhundert . Bedauerlich ist es , daß Augustin sein Empfinden für die Bedeutung der Geduld im Umgang mit der Geschichte nicht konsequent miteingebracht hat , wo es ging um die Bewältigung von Kontroversen innerhalb der Kirche . Er hat in De civitate Dei zwar betont , daß die Vermischung und Auseinandersetzung zwischen Gut and Böse , Wahrheit und Unwahrheit im Leibe Christi toleriert werden muß und Geduld erfordert ; über diesen Zusammenhang ist ein reich nuanziertes Bild zu erhalten aus dem Buch von Borgomeo über L'Eglise de ce temps dans la prédication de saint Augustin . Trotzdem ist Augustin , wie wir wissen , in seinem Kampf für die dogmatische Wahrheit nicht ein konsequenter Verteidiger der Toleranz gewesen .

Die Geduld , welche ein Auge hat für

die historische Bedingtheit und Relativität der Glaubenserfassung , ist da der Gefahr ungeduldigen , nicht maßvollen theokratischen Bestrebens in nicht geringem Maße erlegen . So hat Augustin es mitverschuldet , daß Sprecher der Neuzeit wie Lessing die Toleranz polemisch einzufordern hatten .

Von Lessing darf man wenigstens sagen , daß

er ein maßvoller , toleranter Verteidiger der Toleranz gewesen ist und ein urbaner Gesprächspartner für die Theologie blieb und noch immer ist . Das ist vor allem dadurch bedingt , daß er , trotz seiner Aufrufe zu einem Erfassen der Wahrheit ohne historische Vermittlung , eine dialektische und pädagogische , Ja sogar pastorale Art von Denken über innerweltlichen Fortschritt behielt . Eine nicht unbekannte , aber noch immer feine Aussage aus seiner Schrift über ' Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts ' ( 1780 ) gibt davon Zeugnis : ' Geh deinen unmerklichen Schritt , ewige Vorsehung!

Nur laß mich dieser Unmerklichkeit wegen an dir nicht verzweifeln .

Laß

mich an dir nicht verzweifeln , wenn selbst deine Schritte mir scheinen sollten zu ; rückzugehen ! Es ist nicht wahr , daß die kürzeste Linie immer die gerade ist . Du hast auf deinem ewigen Wege so viel mitzunehmen ! so viel Seitenschritte zu tun ! ' . An derselben Stelle spricht er über

das große langsame Rad , welches das Geschlecht

seiner Vollkommenheit näherbringt ' .

Lessing hält es für eine kritische Frage , wie

man an dem Rad der Geschichte dreht , und er warnt vor Schwärmern , die ' die Gesetze

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J. F. van der Kooi

einer höhern Geschichtsökonomie ' umwerfen und den Gang des menschlichen Fortschritts übereilen wollen . Warnungen gegen Ausgriffe des Menschen , die die Regel der Vorsicht und der Geduld durchbrechen , finden wir auch in Lessings Entwürfen zu einer Drama6 turgie des Faust -Thema !" Was wir hier als kritische Funktion der Geduld für die Geschichtsanschauung angezeigt haben , wäre grundrißartig in Augustins Praefatio zu De civitate Dei wiederzufinden und konkret an seinen Urteilen über Rom und seine Geschichte auszuführen . Wir deuten nur an , daß die Treibkräfte der Entfaltung des römischen Reiches für Augustin libidines waren , ungezügelte Begierden nach Erfahrungen von Sieg , Ruhm und Herrschaft - alles Kräfte , die sich auf der Gegenseite von Geduld , Vorsicht und 8 Rücksicht befinden ; Kräfte , die im Dienst von Prometheus und Faustus und nicht von einem Gott der Geduld und einem leidensbereiten Mittler zwischen Himmel und Erde stehen . Das Gute der Geduld aber findet eben im Widerstreit mit gegenteiligen 10 Das drückt auch Formen von geschichtlichem Denken und Handeln seine Bestätigung." Augustins Schrift De patientia aus : ' Die Ungeduldigen , die sich gegen das Erdulden von Übel sträuben , erreichen dadurch nicht , daß sie davon frei werden , sondern nur , daß sie noch größeres Übel erdulden müssen . Die Geduldigen aber machen das mit Geduld ertragene Übel leichter und entkommen so einem größeren , in das sie durch 11 ihre Ungeduld versinken würden ' .

ANMERKUNGEN 1. De bono patientiae , 3 ( C.C.L. IIIA , 119 ) : ' Nos autem, fratres dilectissimi , qui philosophi non verbis sed factis sumus , nec vestitu sapientiam sed veritate praeferimus , qui virtutum conscientiam magis quam iactantiam novimus , qui non loquimur magna sed vivimus ... ' 2. Die geschlossene und bei der sonstigen Diskontinuität des Themas auffällige Reihe Schriften , welche Tertullian , Cyprian und Augustin über Patientia verfaßten , zeigt etwas von der charakteristischen Kraft der lateinischen Theologie in die Richtung von ' praktischer Lebensphilosophie ' . Vgl . D. Lang-Hinrichsen , ' Die Lehre von der Geduld in der Patristik und bei Thomas von Aquin ' , in : Geist und Leben 24 ( 1951 ) , 209-222 , 284-299 ; J. Martin , Einführung zu Die Geduld von Aurelius Augustinus , in : Deutsche Gesamtausgabe seiner moraltheologischen Schriften (Würzburg , 1956 ) . 3. P.-E. Schazmann , Siegende Geduld. Versuch der Geschichte einer Idee (BernMünchen , 1963 ) , bietet einen schönen Überblick . 4. Vgl . A. Schilson , Geschichte im Horizont der Vorsehung . G.E. Lessings Beitrag zu einer Theologie des Geschichte ( Mainz , 1974 ) , 168ff ; G. Pons , Gotthold Ephraim Lessing et le Christianisme (= Germanica , 5 ) ( Paris , 1964 ) , 121ss , 354ss . 5. Unsere Zeit fordert es dringend daß man ( endlich ) Konsequenzen zieht aus den Erfahrungen mit den Potenzen ideologisierter Geschichtsbegriffe ( c.q. säkularisierter Eschatologie und fanatisierten Utopismus ) und daß man , jetzt m . N. im historischpolitischen Bewußtsein , neu die humanen Ideale von Maß und Einhaltung ins Auge faßt . Ein sehr bewogener Ausdruck der Heillosigkeit eines untemperiert aufgeheizten Geschichtsprozesses findet sich in einem Gedicht von J. Jewtuschenko : ' In Zeitnot geraten ' ; dort werden die Kräfte der Geduld ( ' das Innehalten ' , ' das heilige Zögern ' )

1347 Augustins Geschichtsanschauung gegen unmenschliches Treiben ins Feld gerufen . Es sei erinnert an : H. Weinstock , Die Tragödie des Humanismus . Wahrheit und Trug im abendländischen Menschenbild ( Heidelberg , 51967 - 11953 ) . Neue Reflexionen zu dieser Problematik bei W. Kraus , Die verratene Anbetung . Verlust und Wiederkehr der Ideale ( München- Zürich , 1978 ) . 6. Vgl . Schilson , op . cit . , 185f. 7. Im folgenden Zitat aus der Praefatio heben wir hervor , in welchem Satz- und Sinnzusammenhang Patientia auftritt : ' Gloriosissimam civitatem Dei sive in hoc temporum cursu , cum inter impios peregrinatur ex fide vivens , sive in illa stabilitate sedis aeternae , quam nunc exspectat per patientiam , quoadusque iustitia convertatur in iudicium ... defendere suscepi ... ut persuadeatur superbis , quanta sit virtus humilitatis , qua fit , ut omnia terrena cacumina temporali mobilitate nutantia non humano usurpata fastu , sed divina gratia donata celsitudo transcendat . ' ( C.C.L. XLVII , 1 ) . Eine direkte Nähe zeigt sich zu den Begriffen exspectatio , fides und peregrinatio . Patientia steht da als integrierendes Element im Leben der civitas Dei in hoc temporum cursu , nunc . Mit ihrer Erwartung einer festen , ewigen Bestimmung führt die Patientia zu einem Ubersteigen der Auf- und Ab- und Hin- und Herbewegung aller irdischen und zeitlichen Dinge . Sie besitzt eben auch darin ' kritisches Zeitbewußtsein ' , daß sie das Endgericht als entscheidende Wende annimmt und die Verwirklichung der Gerechtigkeit damit verbindet ; Augustin meldet hier schon direkt eine Distanzierung an gegenüber immanenten Gerichtsideen . Sinngemäß , wie auch syntaktisch , treten Patientia und humilitas in eine Korrelation . Die gegenseitige Durchleuchtung beider Begriffe wäre weiter in De civitate Dei zu verfolgen ; sie hat Parallelen in De Trinitate . 8. Cf. Praefatio : ' ... de terrena civitate , quae cum dominari adpetit ... ipsa ei dominandi libido dominatur , non est praetereundum silentio ... ' Das römische Reich erscheint in Augustins Kritik als eine Konstruktion , die einem Teil der Menschheit Freiheit von Leid gewähren sollte , während andere dadurch umsomehr ins Elend kamen . Der römischen Herrschsucht stellte er an manchen Stellen die Bereitschaft zum Dulden und Ertragen gegenüber : I , 15 ; II , 19 ; III , 20 ; IV , 3 , 5 , 14 , 15 ; V , 18 , 23 . 9. Die Götter , bzw . Dämonen , des römischen Volkes haben nichts getan um die libidines zu korrigieren , sie waren sogar deren Vorzieher . Christus aber , als König der civitas Dei , hat solche Bürger , die von Herrschen und Habenwollen zurücktreten , die lieber famuli und pauperes sein wollen als in einem ungerechten System , das auf Ausschließung allen Leidens aus ist , mitmachen . Das vor allem in Buch X entfaltete Thema von Christus Mediator hat nicht nur philosophisch-metaphysische Bedeutung ( im Rahmen der Diskussion mit den Platonikern ) , sondern auch , soweit es eben der natürlichen , ' immediaten ' Selbstverwirklichung der Erdenbürger widerspricht , kritische Ladung gegen die ursurpata celsitudo politischer Zielsetzungen . 10. Augustins Polemik gegen die Entfaltung und Selbstbehauptung des Römertums war nicht nur moralisch gestimmt , sondern orientierte sich auch stark an der Wahrnehmung der Konsequenzen , der reellen historischen Unglückswirkungen , welche die libidines erzeugten : der miseriae , welche die römischen vitia über die Welt brachten . Hier gilt die Schluß folgerung aus der Geschichte von Kain : ' si neglectis melioribus ... bona ista concupiscentur ...necesse est miseria consequatur et quae inerat augeatur ' (XV , 4 ; C.C.L. XLVIII , 457 ) . Cf. Sermo 157 , 2 , 2 : ' ... evertatur spes , enervetur patientia et divertatis in vias pravas ' . Demgegenüber steht das Bild der christlichen Geduld als die pietas , welche ' sufficit eis ad veram felicitatem , qua et ista vita bene agatur et postea percipiatur aeterna ' ( in Kontrast zu : ' humano cum tenebroso timore et cruenta cupiditate versantium , ut vitrea laetitia comparetur fragiliter splendida ' ; IV , 3 ; C.C.L. XLVII , 100s ) . Auch X , 25 ( ibid . , 300 ) : ' In hac autem spe nunc constituti agamus quod sequitur , et simus nos quoque pro modulo nostro angeli Dei , id est nuntii eius , adnuntiantes eius voluntatem et gloriam gratiamque laudantes ' . 11. Op . cit . , II , 2. Ausführungen dieses Motivzusammenhangs finden wir m.N. in De civitate Dei XXII , 22ss . Jene Schlußkapittel sind eine geschichtsphilosophische Vertiefung des Problems der zeitgenössischen Elendserfahrungen , bei deren Verarbeitung Augustin pastoral - paränetisch die Geduld auch schon zur Sprache brachte . Dort tritt hervor , wie er exegetisch nicht nur die bekannte Stelle Römer 8 , 25 , sondern auch Römer 2 , 3ss vor Augen hatte . Neben anderen Aspekten mußte auch der Zusammen-

SP 3 - Y

1348 J. F. van der Kooi hang von Patientia und Providentia unbesprochen bleiben . Dieser sei inzwischen vermerkt als ein Punkt , an dem Augustin und Lessing noch besonders an einander heranzuführen wären .

Oriental Texts

M. Albert N. El-Khoury Bernadette Janssens G.A.M. Rouwhorst E. ten Napel J. W. Watt Gabriele Winkler

Paris Fanar Ghent Utrecht Groningen Crowthorne Collegeville, Minnesota

Lettre 19 de Jacques de Saroug M. Albert Paris

ÈS le premier quart du XVIIIe siècle , en parcourant la Lettre 19e de Jacques D de Saroug , Joseph-Simon Assemani n'avait pas manqué d'être déjà arrêté par certains termes qu'il estimait malsonnants dans les oeuvres d'un docteur revendiqué et vénéré par sa propre Eglise .

Devant la difficulté , et estimant que l'affirmation

était trop isolée pour être de la main de son auteur , il suppose que le passage a été retouché ultérieurement par les Jacobites et , ainsi , croit pouvoir sauver le texte incriminé.2 C'est aller , nous semble -t - il , vite en besogne ; aussi , à notre tour , nous voudrions reprendre le texte en l'examinant , cette fois , dans sa totalité . Comment se présente cette épître ? C'est un long morceau dont l'édition couvre 3 une trentaine de pages du C.S.C.O. , faite par Gunnar Olinder , en 1937 . Si nous lisons cette Lettre , nous constatons que la première moitié en est tout à fait dans la manière de Jacques : le début forme , en effet , un long préambule qui décrit les erreurs du peuple de Dieu et ses reniements : peuple de l'Ancien Testament qui s ' adonne à l'idolâtrie au temps de Cain , du Déluge , d'Achab et Jézabel , etc ... , et nouveau peuple de Dieu constitué par l'Eglise du Christ qui verse à son tour dans les hérésies , nouvelles idolâtries .

Cette façon de reprendre l'histoire du monde ,

à propos d'un point de dogme , se retrouve dans d'autres oeuvres de Jacques : nous ne citerons qu'en passant l'Adversus Judaeos , avec lequel notre texte présente de nombreux parallèles "; mais , pour nous en tenir aux seules Lettres , nous ferons référence à celle qui porte le n . 7 : Aux moines du Mont Sinaï5 pour voir que ces derniers sont comparés aux moines du mont Sion , nouveau lieu de révélation de Dieu , dont le 6 Sinai en constituait l'annonce typologique . Ces constatations , auxquelles pourraient s'en ajouter d'autres , sur le style et le vocabulaire de la Lettre 19 , nous invitent , jusqu'à plus ample informé , à considérer cette dernière comme faisant bien partie de l'ensemble authentique des oeuvres de Jacques . 1351

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M. Albert

Arrivons -en maintenant à la seconde partie : elle permet de faire plusieurs observations , dont nous en retiendrons deux . Tout d'abord , si nous examinons le Lettre 19 sur le plan de la foi de son auteur , nous trouvons , dès la p . 113 de l'édition , une condamnation vigoureuse de Nestorius , surnommé le ' Dragon meurtrier ' , dénoncé comme un ' instrument de blasphèmes plein d'éloquence ... à la parole douceâtre ' , et à propos duquel il rappelle la théorie de l'assomption de l'homme par le Verbe (

m² ) et le refus de la Théotokos .?

Cette condamnation n'a rien de nouveau ni d'original , à part sa formulation qui nous retiendra un instant . Nestorius s'y trouve , en effet , cité de conserve avec 10 noms , il est vrai , souvent les gnostiques dualistes Bardesane , Mani , Marcion 11 donnés par les écrivains à leurs adversaires et aussi avec les ennemis de l'Eglise 12 dénoncés depuis deux siècles , que ce soit Sabellius , Photin ou Arius . Aucune trace de polémique actuelle n'apparaît donc dans ces lignes .

Nous pouvons remarquer , en

particulier , combien le contexte en diffère de cette autre condamnation , seule connue jusqu'ici , que les historiens du dogme ont utilisée avec plus ou moins d'à propos et qui se trouve dans la correspondance que Jacques échangea avec le couvent monophysite de Mar Bas , communauté de moines fanatiques s'il en fût . Cette dernière est énoncée sous la forme : ' J'anathematise Nestorius , Eutychès et quiconque accepte 13 leur doctrine impie : Diodore , Théodore et Théodoret'´ > formule complétée dans une autre Lettre , la 16º , par l'acceptation de l'Hénotique qui condamne l'addition faite 14 à Chalcedoine et le Tome de Léon . Si nous recevons ces dernières déclarations comme authentiques , ce qui faisait déjà dire à l'Abbé Martin , leur premier traducteur , que Jacques avait toutes les 15 chances d'avoir été monophysite" › nous devons les situer au cours de la phase d' intense lutte antichalcédonienne qui se place dans les dernières années , environ 16 509-512 , du patriarcat de Flavien d'Antioche . C'est dire que notre Lettre 19 , et ceci sera le premier résultat partiel de notre investigation , est antérieure à ces périodes troublées et ne peut dater , au plus tard , que des premières années de ce même patriarcat , donc vers 498-505 , au moment 17 où seule la condamnation de Nestorius était encore exigée . Mais continuons notre lecture de Jacques : voici qu'il écrit , peu après , en toutes lettres : ' ( Nestorius ) invente ( mig hj ) jusqu'à dire que , de façon claire et distincte , on compte deux natures ( qu'à chacune des natures il appartient (

) dans le Christ , même après l'union et ) une personne (

o ) , claire-

ment , pour elle -même 18 Voici certes , donnée sans hésitation , une définition nette et franche , que ne laisse que bien peu de doutes sur la pensée théologique de Jacques et qui vient compléter et expliciter les anathématismes que nous avons rappelés ; déclaration qui mérite d'être soulignée , car de telles expressions sont rares dans les écrits de Jacques . Dans les Lettres envoyées au couvent de Mar Bas , que nous avons citées plus haut , les seules affirmations sont les anathèmes jetés contre les

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Lettre 19 de Jacques de Saroug

fauteurs de l'hérésie , mais jamais il n'est question , de manière très explicite , du 19 contenu de l'hérésie : Jacques répugne , semble - t - il , à entrer dans ces discussions dogmatiques .

Ainsi , dans sa correspondance , c'est rarement que nous relevons d'

autres expressions similaires , telle par exemple celle de la Lettre qui porte le n . 3 , écrite à Mar Thomas : ' Fils unique , nombre unique , personne ( QLO ) 20 unique , nature unique ' : généralement , notre auteur insiste , plus volontiers , de manière assez lâche , sur l'unité du Christ , sur l'impossibilité d'introduire un 21 nombre dans le Christ , sur l'erreur qui consisterait à scinder le Christ en deux . Ainsi , dans notre propre Lettre , il écrit : ' La foi orthodoxe ne peut voir dans le Christ des rangs , des nombres , des personnes ( 22 ni des degrés plus ou moins élevés ' .

) , des natures distinctes ,

Il reste bien entendu que , pour sauver l'orthodoxie chalcédonienne de Jacques , on pourrait suspecter l'intégrité de cette Lettre 19 , comme le voulait Assemani , ou la déclarer apocryphe , comme le fit , il y a quelques années , le P. Peeters pour les 23 Lettres 13 , 16 et 17 de Jacques . Or nous avons déjà dit , en commençant , que la première partie de la Lettre 19 , par son style et son vocabulaire , n'autorisait pas à rejeter celle - ci d'emblée parmi les spuria ; aussi , si vous le voulez bien , nous garderons encore pour quelques instants le bénéfice du doute : nous y reviendrons . Quelques pages plus loin , nous allons faire une seconde découverte .

Jacques dit ,

avec une certaine emphase : ' Toutefois , quelqu'un parmi les défenseurs de cette science d'à présent - nous parlons contre lui , alors qu'il s'imagine en lui -même parler avec sagesse et sublimité - ( cet homme donc ) dit : j'adore les pourpres (

a

) parce que le roi les revêt , le temple (

m ) à cause de celui

qui y demeure , de même aussi que l'homme qui a été assumé ( hr ) à cause de 24 ce Verbe qui lui est associé ( 9401 77 )" ' ? Voici un langage nouveau , inconnu sous la plume de l'auteur .

La phrase qu'il introduit par : ' il dit ' ne peut être

qu'un rappel , ou mieux une citation plus ou moins textuelle d'un adversaire .

La

difficulté va être de savoir quel est cet antagoniste , que Jacques malheureusement ne nomme pas , et de rechercher la source d'où il a tiré l'extrait qu'il nous en donne . Si on analyse cette citation , on remarque que celle - ci fait appel à trois idées , qui sont :

• la pourpre du vêtement du roi , · le temple et celui qui y demeure , • l'homme associé à la divinité .

Ce sont là , surtout pour les deux dernières , des thèmes bien connus de la pensée de 25 Nestorius qui voulait illustrer sa thèse ' d'un autre dans un autre ' . Jacques n'a probablement pas lu les écrits de ce dernier , du moins dans le texte grec .

Y avait- il des traductions de son temps ? On peut en douter et si elles ont

existé , elles devaient n'être que fragmentaires : nous savons , per exemple , de mani26 ère précise que le Bazar d'Héraclide ne fut traduit que vers 539-5401 > donc une vingtaine d'années après la mort de Jacques .

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M. Albert

D'autre part , donné par les textes mêmes de notre auteur , nous n'avons aucun renseignement à ce sujet : d'après la seule indication générale que nous trouvons , concernant ses lectures , nous sommes assurés qu'il fréquenta , à Edesse , tout d' 27 28 abord les écrits de Diodore " , qui venaient , nous apprend- il , d'y être traduits' 29 et , un peu plus tard , ceux de Diodore , Théodore et Théodoret > vulgarisateurs , dit30 Jusqu'où se pénétra- t - il de ces auteurs , il , de la pensée de Paul de Samosate . nul ne peut le dire , faute de pouvoir vérifier ces affirmations à l'aide des textes . Une seconde possibilité serait alors de supposer que Jacques connaissait les écrits de Philoxène , très au fait de la littérature nestorienne , et qui ne se cachait pas d'avoir , et ce sont ses propres termes , ' lu les livres des inventeurs 31 de l'hérésie nestorienne , c'est à dire les Commentaires de Diodore et de Théodore ' . Jacques n'aurait - il pas , alors , puisé ses arguments dans les dossiers que le métropolite de Mabboug avait rassemblés contre ses adversaires ? Parmi ces derniers textes , l'un des plus importants est la réfutation que Philoxène avait entreprise 32 contre la faction la plus dure des nestoriens` " à la tête de laquelle se trouvait , semble - t - il , le moine Ḥabib .

Peu avant son épiscopat , Philoxène écrivit contre

celui- ci dix Mimre , dont le P. Graffin achève la traduction ; et ces volumes sont accompagnés , dans les deux manuscrits principaux qui les conservent , l'Add. 12.164 et le Vat. 138 , d'un recueil de Capitula , résumant la position de l'adversaire . Or nous pouvons relever , en effet , parmi ces derniers , trois déclarations - ou même six , si l'on compte les doublets

sur la soixantaine de l'ensemble , qui sont tout

à fait proches de celles de Jacques :

33 • Dieu dans l'homme , au n° 27 et 35 " celui qui habite dans le temple , au nº 31 , 34 et 5234, 35 • et les pourpres du roi , au nº 52 .

36 Dans le Commentaire du Prologue johannique , écrit plus tard vers les années 505 Philoxène fait une nouvelle allusion à la plus caractéristique de ces formules , celle qui comprend simultanément les notions de vêtement , de roi et de pourpre : ' ( Nestorius ) , dit - il , lequel jeta le corps sur le Verbe comme un vêtement sur le corps de chacun et conformément à la pourpre sur le corps des rois , de manière qu'on le pense un autre en dehors de lui , de même que tout vêtement aussi est un autre , à 37 part de celui qui le revêt ' . Et il y revient encore dans son ultime Lettre , écrite 38 vers 521 aux moines de Senoun , et faisant dire à Nestorius : ' J'adore celui qui fut revêtu avec celui qui le revêtit , celui qui fut assumé avec celui qui l'assume , 39 la pourpre avec le roi , le temple avec celui qui y demeura ' . De ces rapprochements , une première chose est certaine , c'est que notre Lettre 19 ne doit pas remonter plus haut que les années 482-484 , époque à laquelle le P. de 40 Halleux situe les dix Mimrē contre Habib ." En second lieu , nous pouvons affirmer que Jacques vise probablement les mêmes adversaires que ceux de Philoxène .

Et de cela , la tradition manuscrite peut nous

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Lettre 19 de Jacques de Saroug en apporter une preuve supplémentaire .

41 qui ait Il n'existe , en effet , pratiquement qu'un seul manuscrit , le Vat . 135 conservé en entier notre Lettre 19. Or il est remarquable de constater que ce manuscrit , qui comporte un florilège antinestorien , soit constitué en majorité de pièces dogmatiques de Philoxène , entre autres : sa Lettre aux Moines sur le foi42 43 qui précisément fut à l'origine de la réfutation que constituent les dix Mimre 44 45 celle à Zénon " la Ire à Bet Gogal " : , un Dialogue avec un docteur nestorien sur 47 46 Eph I 17 " un extrait du Mimro VII contre Habib un fragment de la Tre Lettre à 48 49 Telada et de celle aux Arzonites . C'est dire que le compilateur de ce manuscrit , au VII-VIIIe siècle , ou d'un manuscrit antérieur dont il dériverait , avait le sentiment que ces oeuvres et que notre Lettre concernaient effectivement une même catégorie déterminée d'adversaires . Ce n'est que pour mémoire et pour être complet que nous devons ajouter , d'un mot , 50 qu'il existe bien un autre témoin de notre texte : l'Add . 14.726 . Mais celui - ci 51 est plus tardif , du Xe siècle et encore une fois la Lettre 19 s'y trouve au 52 milieu de pièces philoxèniennes " dont le choix , toutefois , n'offre plus aucune spécificité déterminée . Un esprit critique poserait alors , tout de suite , la question de l'authenticité de la Lettre 19. Est -elle de Jacques et ne peut - elle pas être de Philoxène ou d'un autre auteur ? Non , et là encore c'est la tradition manuscrite qui répond pour nous . Cette Lettre 19 est conservée , en effet , pour un folio seulement

mais cela suffit -

sur environ les 15 que la totalité aurait dû comporter , dans le plus ancien manuscrit des Lettres de Jacques , l'Add . 14.587 de l'an 60353;: celui - ci a gardé un choix primitif de 41 Lettres de Jacques , et ceci 80 ans après la mort de leur auteur . Ce seul folio , qui porte aujourd'hui le n° 45 doit , en outre , être restitué , sans aucun doute , à la Lettre 19 : le texte concorde suffisamment pour cela avec celui du Vat . 135 , à part de menues variantes sans conséquences .

L'ancienneté du manuscrit de

Londres , ajoutée au caractère homogène de son contenu d'une part , les observations que nous avons été amené à formuler au nom de la critique interne d'autre part , ce dont nous avons dit quelques mots au début , nous obligent à considérer ce texte comme étant bien de Jacques .

Mais il faut raconnaître à la décharge d'Assemani ,

qui n'en connaissait que la copie du Vatican qu'il était tentant d'en suspecter l'authenticité . Et , à l'attention des historiens , nous ajouterons que ce court morceau a pu facilement échapper à l'attention de l'Abbé Martin et même du P. Peeters , pour qui il était impossible d'en découvrir l'existence en se fiant au seul catalogue de Wright . Celui - ci , décrivant le manuscrit de 603 , il est vrai fort abîmé , a simplement confondu ce feuillet avec la suite de la Lettre précédente , portant le nº 18 , et envoyée aux Himyarites , dont la dernière partie manque dans ce manuscrit : nulle part , donc , il ne signale l'existence de cette Lettre 19 et c'est à 0linder qu'il revient d'en avoir fait la restitution , dans son édition de 1937 .

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De ce long excursus , nous retiendrons en conséquence qu'il n'y a aucun argument sérieux pour refuser la paternité jacobienne à cette Lettre , qui daterait au plus tôt , comme nous l'avons dit , des années 482-484 et au plus tard des années 498-505 , dates qui se trouvent encore confirmées par le fait que la Lettre 19 fut envoyée au couvent de Gabboula , dont l'archimandrite était Samuel .

Si nous ne savons rien sur

ce dernier , nous connaissons bien un autre archimandrite qui lui fut postérieur , Siméon .

Sans entrer dans le détail , nous dirons seulement que le supériorat de ce

dernier est , en gros , contemporain de l'épiscopat de Sévère et que , par conséquent , la vie de Samuel ne dépasse guère les toutes premières années du VIe siècle . Nous pouvons donc conclure , en premier lieu , qu'il semble difficile , n'en déplaise au P. Peeters , de laver Jacques de tout soupçon de monophysisme ; en second lieu , que notre modeste évêque , qui se voulait pasteur avant tout , savait cependant lire les auteurs , ne fût - ce que par le truchement de ses contemporains , tel Philo54 xène , dont le cercle d'influence était largement étendu . Enfin , pour terminer , nous pouvons répondre à Assemani , qui fut notre point de départ , en affirmant l ' authenticité de notre Lettre 19 : celle - ci , en effet , d'une part après analyse nous fait découvrir un contenu conforme à ce que nous savons , par ailleurs , de son auteur ; d'autre part , elle se trouve attestée - comme le sont également toutes les références et citations des Lettres de Jacques , données ici même --- dans le vénérable manuscrit de 603 ; ainsi est peu défendable la position du savant maronite qui , outre 55 les corrections cherchait encore à interpréter assez largement ce texte dans un 56 sens strictement chalcédonien .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. Bibliotheca Orientalis ( =B.O . ) I , 295 . 2. Ibid. , I , 296 . 3. G. Olinder , Jacobis Sarugensis Epistulae, quotquot supersunt , Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium ( = C.S.C.O . ) 110 ( syri 57 ) - ( Louvain , 1937 ) , p . 102129 . 4. Les comparaisons tirées de la nature ( p . 112 ) ; la personification de l'Erreur ( p . 108 ) et de l'Oubli ( pp . 112 , 124 ) ; le combat des ténèbres et de la Lumière ( p . 105 ) ; le Christ identifié à l'Héritier ( pp . 109 , 118 ) , au Pasteur ( p . 127 ) , à 1'Epoux ( p . 114 ) ; le combat du Christ et de l'Erreur ( pp . 108 , 114 ) ; la Loi , torche du Peuple ( p . 105 ) , remplacée par la lampe de la croix ( p . 114 ) . 5. C.S.C.O. , op . cit . , pp . 34-37. Traduction en cours . 6. Ibid. , pp . 35 , 1.28 à p . 36 , 1.23 . 7. Ibid. , p . 113 , 1.8 . 8. Ibid. , p . 114 , 1.12-13. 9. Ibid. , p . 115 , 1.1-3 . 10. Ibid. , p . 113 , 1.23. 11. Philoxène , que nous citerons plus loin , fait de même à l'égard de Habib : ex . mimrē IV , fo 36vc - 37rc ; 39ra -- 40rv ( cf. de Halleux , Philoxène de Mabbog, sa vie, ses écrits , sa théologie ( = de Halleux ) ( Louvain , 1963 ) , p . 91 , n . 95 ) et mimrē V , f47ra ( cf. de Halleux , p . 364 , n. 5).

Lettre 19 de Jacques de Saroug

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12. C.S.C.O. , op . cit . , p . 113 , 1.23-24 . 13. Lettre 14 , op . cit . , p . 60 , 1.3-5 . Traduction , P. Martin , Z.D.M.G. 30 ( 1876 ) 225 (n° III ) . 14. Lettre 16 , ibid. , p . 66 , 1.7-11 et p . 68 , 1.4-7 . Traduction , ibid. , p . 248 (n° IV ) et 249 ( n° VII ) . 15. Rech. Sc . Eccl . 34 ( 1876 ) 400-401 . 16. Cf. de Halleux , p . 245. Plus probablement elles sont à placer dans les dernières années de ce laps de temps ( ibid . , pp . 180-181 ) . Le P. Peeters , qui reconnaît que la première eût pu être signée par un chalcédonien ( Anal . Boll . 66 ( 1948 ) 148 ) , la situe également vers 511-512 ( p . 153 ) , mais déclare la seconde apocryphe (pp . 159-160 ) . 17. Cf. de Halleux , p . 55 . 18. Op . cit . , p . 115 , 1.12-15 . Même idée , quelques lignes plus loin : ' Il faut que soient gardées les particularités des natures quand celles - ci sont assemblées ( ) en une seule personne ( Kgogig ) ' ( 1.18-19 ) . 19. Nous trouvons seulement les mots d'unique nature incorporée dans la Lettre 17 , op. cit . , p . 86 , 1.15-16 . 20. Op . cit . , p . 19 , 1.3-4 . 21. Ces mêmes formules se retrouvent chez Philoxène ; cf. de Halleux , p . 386 et n . 23 . 22. Op . cit . , p . 118 , 1.2-5 . 23. Anal . Boll . 66 ( 1948 ) 160. Les arguments avancés sont peu convaincants : Contre la Lettre 17 : Peeters relève ( pp . 158-159 ) 1'anachronisme de la phrase : ' (Chalcédoine ) a été reçu ... par l'Eglise de Syrie , à cause de l'archevêque d ' Antioche , Jean , qui avait partagé les idées de l'impie Nestorius ' ( trad . Martin , Z.D.M.G. , p . 263 ) . Mais on peut répondre que ceci n'implique nullement la présence de Jean au Concile ( il mourut 9 ans auparavant ) . Contre la Lettre 16 : ' Réponse d'une platitude servile ' ( Anal . Boll . p . 159 ) . Contre la Lettre 13 : ' Question d'authenticité ' ( ibid . , p . 145 ) . 24. Op . cit . , p . 123 , 1.24 à p . 124 , 1.3 . 25. Nous renvoyons , pour ce sujet , à F. Loofs , Nestoriana ( Halle , 1905 ) . 26. F. Nau , Le Bazar d'Héraclide de Damas ( Paris , 1910 ) , p . XIX . 27. Lettre 14 , op . cit . , p . 59 , 1.7 . 28. Ibid . , p . 58 , 1.25 . 29. Ibid . , p . 59 , 1.19 et p . 60 , 1.5 . 30. Lettre 16 , op . cit . , p . 70 , 1.28 . 31. Lettre II à Bet Gogal , cf. de Halleux , p . 29 . 32. Philoxène eut deux sortes d'adversaires , selon le P. de Halleux ( pp . 200-201 ) : il devait , en effet , exister des moines ' renégats ' dont Philoxène reconnaissait la bonne foi ( ex . Lettre I aux moines de Bet Gogal ) ; cf. de Halleux , p . 200 . 33. Numérotation du P. Graffin , qui éditera cette pièce . Ces numéros correspondent , respectivement à Vat . 138 , f° 116rb et 117ra . 34. Ibid . , fo 116va , 116vc et 118va . 35. Ibid. , fo 118va . 36. C.S.C.O. , 381 ( syri 166 ) , p . XV . 37. Ibid . , p . 53 , 1.11-15 . Cf. aussi 1.19 et p . 142 , 1.10 . 38. C.S.C.O. , 232 ( syri 99 ) , p . VI et de Halleux , pp . 100 et 223 . 39. Ibid . , p . 10 , 1.21-23 . 40. De Halleux , pp . 192 et 238 . 41. Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae Codicum Manuscriptorum Catalogus ( Rome , 1759 ) , III , p . 216 , renvoyant à B.O. I 301-302 . La Lettre 19 ( f° 93rb - 100ra) se trouve placée après les oeuvres de Philoxène , dont il va être question . 42. Cf. de Halleux , p . 189 . 43. Ibid. , p . 227 . 44. Ibid . , P. 171 . 45. Ibid . , p . 198 . 46. Ibid . , p . 163 . 47. Ibid. , p . 225 . 48. Ibid. , p . 192 .

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M. Albert

49. Ibid . , p . 196 . 50. F 13r - 19v . 51. Wright , nº 815 , p . 828. 52. Lettre à un juif converti ( fº 10-11 - cf. de Halleux , p . 265 ) ; partie des Mimre Parénétiques ( fº 11-13 -– cf. p . 282 ) ; Lettre à Maron d'Anazarbe ( f 19-24 cf. p . 211 ) . 53. Wright , nº 672 , p . 520 . 54. De Halleux , pp . 23 et 288. Philoxène , en effet , disposait d'un scriptorium , au sujet duquel nous renvoyons , pour plus de détails , à ibid . , pp . 42-43 et surtout p . 110 . 55. Cf. supra , n . 2 . 56. En particulier en s'appuyant sur l'ambiguïté des termes nature -personne . Cf. B.O. I 296-297 .

Anthropological Concepts of the School of Antioch N. El-Khoury Fanar

HE anthropology of the School of Antioch supports a concept of man which sees the the invisible , spiritual world and the material visible

world .

He reveals God at the centre of creation .

He received from God in the begin-

ning the means necessary to achieve his ends , but in order to make use of them , he must be penetrated with the principle of divine life and , elevated through his union with the divine , he imposes moral immutability on his changing human condition . Struggle and temptation are necessary to his perfection . These concepts are elucidated fully enough in the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Ephraim Syrus . Man is made by God as a composite of an invisible , immortal soul , which is endowed with reason , and of a mortal , visible body . The body possesses two powers : mind ( λóyos ) and life , through which the soul itself has its life and activates the body .

Theodore of Mopsuestia espouses a dichotomized concept of man in which man is

composed of body and soul and the soul exercises a vital as well as a spiritual function . One would expect a tripartite division of man into body , vital soul and rational soul , since Theodore conceives of man as partaking of the spiritual and corporeal world in joining these two : i.e. he is part angel and part animal . He does not do this , however , and when he speaks of man in his combined capacity as spirit and animal he says merely that he participates in the world of angels and in the four elements.2 This conception of Theodore has to be seen in the light of his quarrel with Apollinaris .

Theodore's opponents had always insisted that God's inability to

suffer was incompatible with the lóyos - oάpę schema .

Apollinaris took refuge in a

trichotomized picture : the Logos takes the place of the voŨs , and the body as well as the irrational soul are created . With this coup (and this is probably why

1359

1360

N. El-Khoury

Theodore found him so odious ) he was in a position to maintain his position on the Unity of God and on God's leadership of powerless man and still keep God separated from debasing experiences such as hunger or weariness . Some fragments of the De incarnatione preserved in Syriac , as well as a passage in the De fide , allow us to follow Theodore's argument against the ' third nature ' ( spirit /soul : ' Geistseele ' ) .

He rejected the theory of ' Logos /animate body ' by reThe immortality

jecting the distinction between spirit and corporeal soul for man . of the soul of man does not allow this distinction .

The animal body and soul on

the other hand are completely dependent on one another .

The soul has its seat in

the blood of the animal body , but perishes when the blood is spilled . words it has a hypostasis only in connecton with matter .

In other

' The human soul , however ,

exists in its own hypostasis and stands much higher than the body , since it ( the body ) is mortal and receives its life from the soul and perishes when abandoned by the soul ... the soul , however , endures in its own hypostasis because it is immortal and can suffer no damage ... the difference between the animal and the human soul is that the animal soul is without reason and without hypostasis . The human soul has reason ... who is so stupid as to believe that an immortal nature exists which is also without reason ? This is impossible , since that which is immortal in its own nature is also endowed with reason ' . It is clear that for Theodore the human soul is not only immortal but also endowed with reason , for only in this way can it be immortal . The ' third nature ' , i.e. spirit /soul and corporeal soul are thus one . Theodore espouses a dichotomized view of man . There are traces of Aristotle's theory of the soul evident in Theodore when he asserts that the soul possesses a ' hypostasis ' when it is joined to the body .

The

Antiochenes were convinced of the Aristotelian inseparability of form and matter , and the soul as the form of the body could possess no personal immortality .

This

was the teaching of Alexander of Aphrodisias , who followed Aristotle as he understood him. Theodore must have been basically in agreement with him when he wrote of the soul as a vital principle , even though he did not accept his teaching completely . Obviously , if one of the basic powers of the soul is power cannot exist long in a vacuum.

worоLECν ( to give life ) , this

On the basis of this power of the soul , re-

surrection of the body appears a necessary corollary . The idea that the soul is more or less permanently joined to a body was acceptable to Theodore because of one of his central themes , that of resurrection . But for this very reason , he had to protest against the Aristotelian denial of personal immortality : if the soul can be reunited with the body and can reanimate it , then the soul must itself be animate . This is the reason for his sharp differentiation between animal soul and human soul . The animal soul can only animate the body ; the human soul , on the other hand , possesses the capacity to live by itself. He bases the proof of this inherent life force , as well as of immortality , by pointing to its spirituality .

Anthropological Concepts in the School of Antioch

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It may be of interest here to think of this shift of emphasis in Theodore's system as being due to a concept similar to that of Origen and the Alexandrians . They thought that the essentially human characteristic lay in the spiritual constitution which suffers no essential discontinuity with the death of the body . The Antiochenes were also unable to visualize any effective functioning of the soul after death . This state of affairs was probably due to the influence of Aristotle as well as the Stoics .

They placed no emphasis on the soul as such , and

the individual soul was conceived of as joining the world soul after death . The Alexandrian School is marked by a tendency towards mysticism , Monophysitism and emphasis on the doctrine of divine grace .

The Antiochenes , on the other hand ,

are characterized by their emphasis on the freedom of the free will and the activating and quickening image of Christ .

They were reluctant to accept theories of

knowledge which led to rigid systems and they valued the historical , unique and personal - things which for the Alexandrians were merely the transient manifestations of the general , the spiritual and the Ideal .

For the Antiochenes in general , and for

Theodore of Mopsuestia in particular , man acquires merit in the sight of God by his struggle for perfection in this life which prepares him for resurrection to Eternal Life . Ephraim Syrus represents a position of strict creationism and he insists on the creation of the first man and the first woman as the starting point for his concept of the being of man as a whole .

According to him , man is created for the glorifi-

cation of God , who placed him in his preeminent position ( Lord of Creation ) for this purpose .

A further , but definitely secondary purpose for man was to enter into the

highest Paradise , the House of God . Ephraim , typically Antiochene , espouses a dichotomous idea of man as the only created being capable of reconciling that old dualistic pair , matter and spirit .

In

man they are blended into an indivisible unity ; he participates in both but is not entirely subsumed in either . He is perhaps limited in some sense , but nevertheless provided with freedom ; sinful , but capable of virtue and of enjoying divine favour . Burdened with partly conscious , and partly unconscious , drives and instincts of a sensual nature , he is also endowed with will , intelligence and reason . The traditional anthropological labels , such as ' animal rationale ' , ' homo sapiens ' , ' homo ludens ' , ' homo faber ' , do not come into the picture at all .

Ephraim's idea of man

takes some aspects of him into account and emphasizes some of these more than others . It goes without saying that the anthropological questions raised ( and partly answered ) by the natural sciences , genetics and evolution , play no part in this anthropological scheme . The biblical idea of creation is taken absolutely literally and is not questioned , nor is it ever considered to be open to question an outlook which is certainly consonant with the intellectual atmosphere of the time when the Anti5 ochene school flourished .

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The special position of man as Lord of the Universe is exemplified not so much through his external , bodily form , as through the soul , which binds man to the transcendent ; to this he is able to give exterior expression in the material sphere . ' The soul is more praiseworthy than the body ' .

' The body is clothed with the beauty

of the soul ' ( Parad . 9.20 ) . Ephraim gives preeminence to the soul in his Hymns on the Church (Eccl . 33.2 ) ; here he assigns it a special status among all created things .

One of the reasons for this may be his desire to emphasize that man was

made in the image and likeness of God .

This does not , however , alter the fact that

he maintains firmly that the nature of man is one and indivisible , that is that body and soul enter into eternal life together. The following extract from one of the Carmina Nisibena describes the transfigured body which after death is reunited with the soul : His bound feet will leap about in Paradise , his lame hands will gather the good ( fruits ) , his blind eyes will contemplate him who illumines creation , his dumb mouth will be opened , his deaf ears will hear the trumpets and his ruined body will shine in glory . (Nis . 47.4 ) 8 In the Syriac text in question , Ephraim usually employs the word gūšmā than pāgrā

rather embut body of a corporeal ; the former conveys the suggestion

phasizes its role as the vessel of the soul . Pāgrā in Syriac means body as opposed to mind and is used as an anatomical term referring to the body of man or , in general , any concrete entity . A key to Ephraim's semantics here is perhaps afforded by comparing it with the Pauline usage . Paul uses the word oάpt to denote : 1) material corporeality ( Gal . 4.13 ) , and 2)

the flesh itself ( Rom . 2.28 ; Col. 2.13 ) .

generally corresponds with oάp

as used by Paul .

The Syriac word pāgrā

Eua in Pauline usage means ex-

clusively the human body endowed with a soul ( 1 Thess . 5.23 ; Cor . 5.3 , 7.34 ) ; this corresponds with gūšmā . The ' body ' , then , in this sense is specific to man .

It signifies the matter

which was formed by the spirit , but it cannot be distinctly separated from the spirit , any more than the latter can dispense with the matter in which it is embodied , whereby it also communicates with the external world through the medium of the senses . Three other words can be studied within this conceptual framework : besrā ria which also means oάp , āfrā ia , which means ' dust ' , and qauma , ‫ ܝܩܘܡܐ‬qaumta ,

,

ho , which mean ' height or size ' ( cf. Latin : statura , Hebrew : 17 , Arabic : b). Besra , as just mentioned , is used in the sense of oap in the Peshitta . It is used in the original sense of flesh , as well as to signify the human being , made of flesh and blood ( Nat . 16.3 ) , and also in the general sense of the Hebrew 702 ba , to mean ' everyone ' or ' anyone ' .

The Pauline implication of sinfulness ( i.e. oppo-

sition to God ) is probably also to be understood here . ' Āfrā means ' dust ' , and refers to the material composition of the body :

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Anthropological Concepts in the School of Antioch Thou hast formed the dust in the beginning of Thy grace , and perfected it withthe gift of Thy Love (C. Nis . 69.1 ) .

Qauma means ' stature ' or ' size ' and is apparently to be taken as referring to the whole human form. The connection with the upright posture is interesting . Cicero (De Nat. deorum 140 ) remarks that ability to perceive the divine is a property of the upright posture . The word for ' soul ' in the Antiochene texts is ( in Syriac ) nāfšā K.

For the

Antiochenes this concept did not convey the metaphysical totality of man , but rather the bodily soul which gives life to matter and is completely united with the body. Ephraim Syrus ascribes three qualities to the soul : reason , immortality and invisibility . The union of body and soul which is described in the Bible is referred to by Ephraim in especially affectionate terms . He speaks of the soul as the ' bride of man ' and says that the soul lives in the body as someone in his own house (Eccl . 38.8 ; H.d. F. 18.10 ) . Both are so intimately related that the soul ' is robbed of her own activity ' if separated from the body 10 (C.H. 42.8 ) .1 The senses are the windows of the house . On the other hand , the body is unable to comprehend the soul (H.d.F. 19.6 ) .

As Ephraim remarks in his commentary

on Genesis : God did not predetermine man for either mortality or immortality , but abandoned him to his freedom and allowed him to act according to his own conclu11 sions . This is similar to the theses of Theophilus of Antioch who wrote : ' Man is in his nature neither mortal nor immortal . ated immortal he would have been as God.

If he had been from the beginning creOn the other hand , if he had been created

mortal then it follows that God would have been responsible for his death .

There-

fore : he was not created either mortal or immortal , but capable of either ' (Ad Autolycum 11.27 ) .

It is precisely this problem about the immortality of man and his

mortality that takes us on to the concept of free will and the relation of free will to the concept of man being created in the image of God .

According to Ephraim

( Gn . 1.26f . ) , man's similarity to God consists mainly in his spiritual faculties . The early Christians adopted the Platonic idea of a psyche which was guided by the nous , and this distinction has been maintained right down to the present time . For Augustine the similarity lies in ' memoria , intellectus et amor ' .

This is an inter-

pretation which we find in Schleiermacher , who describes it as being a ' religiössittliches Personleben ' . Contemporary exegesis finds the likeness to God to be in man's understanding , self- consciousness , reason , freedom of will , i.e. in personality . Ephraim emphasizes especially freedom of will . It is precisely the capacity to make free decisions that constitutes the likeness to God , because through this capacity man has a way open to him which can take him beyond himself and can pull down the barriers that have been set for him. Obviously , this is also what makes the Fall possible :

SP 3 - Z

1364

N. El-Khoury This is our Gracious God , who , although he has the power to make us beautiful through force , has used all possible means that we become beautiful through our own will , so that we could paint our beauty with colours that our will has gathered . Had He made us beautiful Himself , we would have been like a picture which another had painted and made beautiful . (H.d.F. 31.5 )

Just as the ability to decide assumes personal freedom , it also presupposes the ability to possess knowledge .

Every really free decision presupposes that one

understands clearly exactly what in involved .

Knowledge , insight and comprehension

are intellectual activities which complete each other and are based upon the ability to reflect . The spiritual principal of the body is called in Syriac rūḥā cuoi , which is roughly equivalent to the Greek яνεŨμа , and is more or less independent of the body . Ephraim conceives of the spirit as being grains on a stalk of wheat (H.d.F. 42.10 ) . The first two strophes of Ephraim's Hymn to Faith ( Nr . 57 ) are very revealing ; they describe how knowledge , memory and spirit are inextricably bound up in the heart and soul . Who had ever looked into himself and whose hand had ever touched the means by which he collects and lays up his supply of knowledge , filling his heart ( with knowledge ) through repeated reading , collecting ( knowledge ) with his memory , increasing it through contemplation , reducing it through his own carelessness - and everywhere lies wonder . Who can go into himself and see whether there is an empty place for being and a soul thirsty for knowledge . And when the memory is ripe it is a wonder how it takes and takes and does not become full , can give and give and not be diminished . In the heart are all things , while it is empty . Ephraim speaks not only of the soul , but also of the sublimity and dignity of the body , of human impetuousness , of man's drive to action and his continuous struggle to progress . For Ephraim and the School of Antioch the greatness of man consists in his likeness to God which sets him up as Lord of Creation and is shown by his rule over creation . The truth about man is that he is characterised by a dynamic drive to self realisation and change .

The true nature of man consists

neither in the mere fact of his being nor in his own individual deeds and accomplishments , but rather in his capacity to change the world and form it into something new. This is the true significance of human activity and human faith in the future .

REFERENCES 1. E. Sachau , Theodori Mopsuesteni Fragmenta Syriaca ( Leipzig , 1869 ) , p . 5 . 2. P. G. 80 , 109 BC ; K. Staab , Pauluskommentar aus der griechischen Kirche (Munster , 1933 ) , p . 137 ; H.B. Swete , Theodori Episcopi Mopsuesteni in Epistolas B. Pauli Commentarii , 2 vol . ( Cambridge , 1880/82 ) , pp . 129 , 268 .

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3. Sachau , op . cit . , pp . 36-40 , 50 ; A. Mingana , ' The Christian Faith and the Interpretation of the Nicene Creed ' , in Woodbrooke Studies , vol . 5 ( Manchester , 1932 ) , p . 255 . 4. Mingana , op . cit . , pp . 257-258 . 5. Cf. N. El -Khoury , Die Interpretation der Welt bei Ephraem dem Syrer . Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte ( Mainz , 1976 ) , pp . 97-144 . 6. (Parad . ) = E. Beck ( ed . ) , Des Heiligen Ephraem des Syrers Hymmen de Paradiso , C.S.c.o. 174 /Syr . 78 ( Louvain , 1975 ) . 7. (Eccl . ) = E. Beck ( ed . ) , Des Hl . Ephraem des Syrers Hymen de ecclesia , C.S.C.O. 198 /Syr . 84 ( Louvain , 1960 ) . 8. (C.Nis . ) = E. Beck ( ed . ) , Des Hl . Ephraem des Syrers Carmina Nisibena , C.S.C.O. 218 /Syr . 92 ( Louvain , 1961 ) . 9. (H.d.F. ) = E. Beck ( ed . ) , Des Hl . Ephraem des Syrers Hymmen de fide , C.S.c.o. 154 /Syr . 73 ( Louvain , 1955 ) . 10. ( C.H. ) = E. Beck ( ed . ) , Des Hl . Ephraem des Syrers Hymmen contra Haereses , C.S.C.O. 169 /Syr . 76 ( Louvain , 1957 ) . 11. R.M. Tonneau ( ed . ) , Sancti Ephraem Syri in Genesin et Exodum Commentarii , C.S.C.O. 152 /Syr . 71 ( Louvain , 1955 ) .

L'influence de Prudence sur le Liber Manualis de Dhuoda Bernadette Janssens * Ghent

1 A présente communication traitera de l'influence du poète espagnol Prudence

L ( IVe siècle ) sur le Liber Manualis , écrit à Uzès en 842 , par la duchesse Dhuoda à l'occasion du seizième anniversaire de son fils . L'édition de 1975 , due à P. Riché , signale les allusions et les citations , qui suggèrent quelques questions : • Comment Dhuoda a-t - elle connu ces passages ? • Pourquoi les choisit - elle ? Comment les a- t-elle utilisés ? Nous présenterons en appendice les textes parallèles ( de 1 à 9 ) , en trois catégories , dénotant une influence de plus en plus marquée .

Selon ce critère nous

ferons ainsi la distinction entre les allusions , les emprunts et les citations . I. Allusions Nous parlerons d'allusion quand Dhuoda emploie incidemment quelque lemme emprunté à Prudence , sans qu'elle ne l'annonce et éventuellement de façon inconsciente . Le lien entre son texte et le modèle reste simplement formel . 1. A première vue , l'épithète ' largitor omnium bonorum' appliquée à Dieu , semble être , tout comme l'idée qu'elle exprime , trop courante et trop générale pourqu'on puisse la qualifier d'allusion . Les mêmes mots figurent dans la liturgie et des formules analogues se rencontrent chez d'autres auteurs , ce qui , loin d'indiquer la transmission directe du cliché , en montre l'usage répandu . Mais si ' gratantem ' fait écho à ' grates reddimus ' , ce passage pourrait témoigner d'une influence prudentienne , d'autant plus plausible qu'il est , comme son modèle , versifié . 2. Dans l'explication tropologique de l''invidia ' du diable en tant que fauteur du péché et de la mort , Dhuoda combine deux dénominations du Malin chez Prudence : ' milleformis daemonum ' et ' tortuosus serpens ' .

Comme Prudence , elle souligne ainsi

la variété de la ruse diabolique : ' mille ' apparaît dans les deux passages de l'hymne 4 IX et VI . Elle a repris le premier tel quel , sans l'adapter grammaticalement , tan*Aspirant du F.N.R.S.

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dis que le second se double d'une resonance biblique . Il n'est pas impossible que Dhuoda emprunte également le mot ' pestis ' , bien que l'image soit fréquente . Ces termes introduisent 1 Petr . 5,8 selon une ancienne version ( Beuron : S ) et une cita7 tion littérale de Prudence sur la guérison miraculeuse du démoniaque .' En parcourant les attestations de la Vetus Latina, on retrouve certaines allusions verbales . Surtout des prédicateurs combinent ce verset comme le fait Dhuoda , 8 avec le thème de l'âme , temple et maison de Dieu . Consciente à la fois de la --faiblesse humaine et de la sienne puisqu'elle ajoute au complément ' quos ' le

féminin ' quas ' - et de la force du diable , elle construit , avec des éléments qui se rattachent au contexte de la citation , une paraphrase destinée à mettre en relief la lutte entre les deux protagonistes .

Les formules prudentiennes choisies pour rehausser le style , ont essentiellement le même rôle . 3. Pour illustrer le vanité de ce monde , Dhuoda , ou selon Riché un prédicateur carolingien , met en scène un personnage , qui pour décrire le banquet auquel il a assisté en songe , emprunte sans accord syntaxique un vers à l'hymne III ' ante cibum ' de Prudence . Cette indication , que l'on peut ajouter à la liste de P. Riché , ne m'a pourtant pas permis de retrouver l'intermédiaire éventuel . 4. L'exégèse interprétait les six urnes de Cana ( Jo . 2,9 ) comme les six âges du monde . En plus le miracle symbolisait la manifestation du Christ , raison pour laquelle on l'associait à l'Epiphanie .

Entre autres dans la liturgie gallicane la 10 bénédiction du peuple à la vigile de cette fête contient le mot ' falernum ' .* Dhuoda aura trouvé le groupe ' falernum nobilem' dans le poème ' Incipit versus de adventu Domini 11. conservé dans deux manuscrits de Saint - Gall du IXe siècle , à moins qu'un ' cento ' liturgique et /ou mozarabe ne le lui ait fourni , ce qui reste peu probable .

En liaison avec l'allusion à la parabole du semeur ( Matt . 13,29-30 ) ,

elle semble l'appliquer aux bienheureux .

II. Emprunts Nous traiterons d'emprunts les passages où Dhuoda cite , sans le dire , Prudence pour s'y attarder et l'interpréter .

Ces emprunts aux deux hymnes dont certaines

strophes étaient chantées au cours des ' laudes ' du mardi et du jeudi dans le nouvel hymnaire du IXe siècle , font partie intégrante de son texte . 12 5. Même si des passages de Grégoire de Tours et de Walafrid Strabon ont éventuel-

lement influencé Dhuoda , surtout par leur caractère explicatif , ces deux auteurs présentent moins de ressemblance avec le texte de Prudence que Dhuoda elle - même qui , 13 par ailleurs , ignore ces auteurs . Au contraire , Florus de Lyon , contemporain de Dhuoda , entre en ligne de compte pour le segment ' lucis praeco ' puisque le vers 54 de Prudence n'est pas repris dans le ' cento ' liturgique . Si Dhuoda ne connaît en effet que les quatre strophes du ' cento ' , son symbolisme sera plus simple et surtout adapté au contexte , à savoir l'étymologie du mot ' manualis ' et la citation prétendument biblique qui suit .

Ainsi le coq n'annonce

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pas la fin du péché ( 56 ' finem peccandi ' ) mais la fin de l'ignorance , comme l'expliquaient déjà les gloses attribuées à Ison.14 C'est encore en raison du contexte qu'elle omet ' diei ' , identifié par le suite avec le Christ et qu'elle ajoute ' horarum ' , identifié avec les fidèles . Pour les mêmes raisons elle insiste sur le caractère futur mais pas nécessairement imminent de la lumière , puisqu'elle omet ' proximus ' et transforme ' appropinquavit ' en 15 ' appropinquabit ' . 16 6. L'omniscience de Dieu et la comparaison entre le jour , la vie et l'histoire du monde , voilà deux idées traditionnelles que Dhuoda exprime par un emprunt à Prudence , encadré de citations bibliques , qui éclairent peut -être la seule modification qu'elle introduit : elle élimine le préfixe ' pro ' qui éveille peut- être l ' idée de ' prévoyance ' , et reprend au contraire ' conspicere ' pour exprimer le regard verbe associé plus haut avec ' humilia ' dans le citation bienveillant de Dieu biblique et avec ' nos ' , dans l'emprunt à Prudence - et , finalement , elle réserve ' respicere ' pour le regard inquisiteur . En soumettant ainsi ses sources bibliques et autres aux tendances apparemment étymologiques de son propre vocabulaire , elle obient un parallélisme , sans doute involontaire mais réussi : conspicit - cognoscit ; respicit-requirens ; conspicit - cognoscit . III. Citations Par citation nous entendrons la reprise consciente et annoncée de quelques vers de Prudence , que Dhuoda n'appelle nulle part par son nom. thématique : thème de la création et du diable .

La correspondance reste

Pour la première et troisième

citation , nous préférons une influence directe . 7. Lorsque Dhuoda cite , sans doute de mémoire , une strophe de l'hymne IX ' omnis horae ' , strophe qui s'inspire du Ps . 148,5 ' quia ipse dicit et facta sunt , ipse mandavit et creata sunt ' , elle adopte l'ordre du récit biblique ( cf. Ex . 20,11 et Ps . 145,6 ) et omet ce qui n'évoque pas de réminiscences scripturaires . Il n'est 17 pas impossible que Florus de Lyon ait à nouveau suggéré la transformation du dernier membre : ' Tu lunae solisque globum stellasque micantes ... ' . 8. La dernière strophe d'un poème anonyme , où dans le récit de la Génèse apparaît le thème de la terre - vierge , reprend presque littéralement une strophe de l'hymne III ' ante cibum' de Prudence sur la création . C'est le poète inconnu et non pas Dhuoda qui a modifié l'ensemble et remplacé un vers pour éviter une répétition avec la strophe précédente , mais c'est elle qui a décidé de citer et de commenter le poème . 9. Dhuoda introduit la citation littérale de l'hymne IX ' omnis horae ' par un commentaire où elle incorpore des éléments de l'hymne VI ' ante somnum ' , en indiquant qu'elle les emprunte aux mêmes ' carmina doctoris ' . Quelques lignes plus haut , elle avait associé les mêmes passages . En accord avec le contexte qui illustre les dangers provoqués par le diable , Dhuoda , dans son explication , renverse les rôles :

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non seulement le signe du Christ chasse le diable , comme chez Prudence , mais en plus le diable veut l'arracher aux fidèles .

A cause de ce déplacement d'accent , la

citation amputée du vers déjà cité et de ceux qui décrivent le mirable même , fait 18 moins allusion à ce dernier qu'à l'état d'emprisonnement et de guerre où se trouve le démon jusqu'à sa perte finale . Conclusions La conclusion prétend répondre aux trois questions posées plus haut . 1. Comment Dhuo da a-t -elle connu ces passages ? Si on omet l'allusion qui s'avère moins certaine que les autres ( IV , 74 ) ainsi que celles dues à des intermédiaires ( III , 13 et 36-40 puis IX , 28 ) , l'influence de Prudence dans Dhuoda reste limitée à quatre hymnes du Cathémérinon . Même si Florus de Lyon a pu suggérer certaines modifications , la liturgie , quant à elle , paraît bien être une source directe : les hymnes I et II font partie de l'hymnaire du Ixe siècle , attesté dans de nombreux manuscrits à partir du IX-Xe siècle . Les deux 19 (VI autres hymnes avaient fourni des ' Centos ' d'abord dans la liturgie mozarabe pour les complies et IX pour l'octave de Pâques et après l'Ascension ) ; mais cet usage semble assez artificiel .

Pourtant , en théorie , ces hymnes auraient pu se

propager jusqu'à Uzès , près du Rhône , dans la même région de la Septimanie qui comprend aussi le Nord de l'Espagne .

La prédominance gothique de la réforme religieuse 20 menée , à cette époque , par Benoît d'Aniane et Elisachard' " pourrait expliquer cette diffusion . Plusieurs manuscrits liturgiques contiennent soit quelques strophes de l'hymne VI , dans le même usage que dans la liturgie mozarabe , soit des extraits variés de l'hymne IX chanté à Noël .

Malheureusement , on ne peut pas étayer davan-

tage cette hypothèse : le manuscrit le plus ancien , de Saint -Jean à Laon ( Bern 455 ) , donne bien des extraits des deux hymnes mais pas les vers en question . En plus , il 21 date du xe siècle et ne serait pas d'usage liturgique . Enfin et surtout , ' poeta ' 22 n'introduit généralement pas une citation d'origine liturgique . Les emprunts concernés traitent essentiellement du diable , ce qui indiquerait comme source intermédiaire un commentaire relatif à ce sujet .

Néanmoins , ces passages touchent aussi

au thème de la création et paraissent si bien intégrés dans le contexte qu'on peut admettre que Dhuoda ait connu les hymnes mêmes . Comme les premières gloses sur Prudence datent précisément de cette période et attestent le succès de cet auteur et sa lecture au programme de quelques écoles , on peut supposer que Dhuoda ait lu au moins cet opuscule du poète , même si elle ne le nomme pas et qu'elle le cite peu . 2. Pourquoi les choisit-elle ? Elle choisit les passages à citer de manière thématique pour donner plus d'envolée bien plus à son style qu'à ses idées : les emprunts sont en général redondants mais marqués par une formule nettement littéraire . 3. Comment les a-t -elle utilisés ? Elle incorpore ces emprunts à son texte et les encadre de citations bibliques .

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Elle n'hésite pas à modifier la lettre et même l'interprétation de Prudence pour assimiler les emprunts à son propre discours déterminé par la Bible et la tradition , et en plus elle les commente . Dhuoda a probablement lu le Cathémérinon de Prudence , dont elle subit une influence plus ou moins intense . Elle lui emprunte des passages sur certains thèmes , en les adaptant librement au contexte .

RÉFÉRENCES 1. Prudentius , Carmina [ éd . J. Bergman ] C.S.E.L. 61 ( Vindebonae - Lipsiae , 1926 ) . 2. Dhuoda , Manuel pour mon fils [ éd . P. Riché ] , S.C. 225 ( Paris , 1975 ) . 3. E. Mangenot , ' II Le démon d'apres les pères ', dans D.T. C. , IV ( 1924 ) col . 339384 en particulier le résumé col . 375-376 montre que l''invidia ' est souvent présentée comme cause de la chute de Satan et que le verset Sap . 2,24 figure souvent dans ce contexte , comme chez le contemporain de Dhuoda , Smaragdus de St. Mihiel , Via Regia , P.L. , 102 col . 961c . 4. Une formule analogue apparaît chez Augustinus , De civitate Dei [ éd . E. Hoffmann ] C.S.E.L. 40,2 ; 22,22,3 p . 638,16 : ' contra milleformes daemonum incursus quis innocenter fidit ? ' . 5. Is . 27,1 : ' Leviathan serpentem tortuosum ' . 6. A. Blaise , Manuel du latin chrétien ( Strasbourg , 1955 ) , p . 44. Le même mot figure aussi dans le passage de la Via Regia , cité supra n . 3. 7. Le type S ( ' transvorare ' ) correspond à des textes espagnols , à Priscillien et au Speculum du Ps . -Augustin . Matt . 8,28-34 = Marc . 5,1-17 = Luc . 8,26-37 . Par contre ' dilaniare ' provient peut -être de Luc . 9,39 , péricope qui relate la guérison de l'enfant démoniaque , différent du miracle traité par Prudence . 8. Caesarius Arelatensis , Sermones , P.L. , 67 col . 1061B : ' videt in nobis quodammodo idola sua in Dei templa mutari , frendens et tamquam leo rugiens , omnes nocendi aditus pervigil insidiator explorat . De quo leone apostolus attestatur . Vigilate itaque , quia adversarius vester diabolus ut leo rugiens circuit quaerens quem devoret ' . Cfr . Eusebius Gallicanus ( = Ps . -Eucherius ) , Ad monachos , P.L. , 50 col . 853A . 9. Matt . 24,43 : ' Illud autem scitote quoniam si sciret pater familias qua hora fur venturus esset vigilaret utique et non sineret perfodiri domum suam ' . 2 Tim . 2,18 : ' et sermo eorum ut cancer serpit et subvertent quarundam fidem sed firmum fundamentum Dei stetit habens signacalum hoc ... ' 1 Tit . 1,11 : ' seductores ... qui universas domos subvertent docentes ...' 1 Pt . 5,10 : ' modicum passos ipse perficiet confirmabit solidabit ' . 1 Cor . 16,13 : ' vigilate , state in fide ' ( adstare = ?stare ) . 10. Riché renvoie à Augustinus , Tractatus in Johannem , 9,6 ( C.C.L. 36 ) p . 94 . Th . Michels , ' Falernum ', dans Philologische Wochenschrift , 47,30 ( 1927 ) , col . 927-928 cite ' Converte ad te quaerendum stupidas mentes hominum qui nuptiale convivio vertisti latices in falernum ' . 11. Versus de adventu Domini [ éd . K. Strecker ] , dans Rhytmi aevi Merovingici et Carolini (P.A.C. IV , 2 ) , p . 479,15,2: Primum signum Galileae operat mirabile Laticem vertit in vinum et Falernum nobilem Venite et gaudete nato Christo domino . Le manuscrit le plus ancien date d'environ 800 . 12. Gregorius Turonensis , Vita Patrum [ éd . B. Krusch ] , M.G.H. , Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum I ( Hannover , 1885 ) , 2,4 p . 671,11 : ' Cumque plausum ales ille lucis nuntius , repereussis alis , altius protulisset , puer ... convaluit ' . (à suivre )

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Walafrid Strabo , Vita S. Galli confessoris [ éd . E. Duemmler ] , P.A.C. II ( Leipzig , 1964 ) , p . 442 , v . 499 : Aestimat haec narrans praesul quod diceret illa Alite de gallo , qui nuntius esse diei Creditur et lucis quem novimus esse ministrum . 13. Florus Lugdunensis , In evangelium Johannis ( éd . E. Duemmler ] , P.A.C. II ( Leipzig , 1964 ) , p . 519 v . 15 : ' Non lux ille fuit , sed lucis praeco refulsit ' . A comparer aussi avec l'hymne ' Aeterne rerum conditor ' v . 5 : ' praeco diei iam sonat ' . 14. Iso , Glossae veteres , P.L. , 59 , col . 775-914 . Hymne I v . 17 tenebris : ignorantiae (col . 778B ) . 15. L'équivalence phonétique et syntaxique ( cfr . A. Blaise , Manuel du Latin chrétien , p . 128 par . 217 ) entre les deux formes est connue mais pas attestée pour ce passage . 16. P. Riché renvoie à Gregorius Magnus , Homelia in Evangelium , 1,19 P.L. , 76 , col . 1155B . Iso , op . cit . , P.L. , 59 , col . 796B Hymne II , v . 108 a luce prima : infantia ; in vesperum : senectam . 17. Florus Lugdunensis , Oratio cum commemoratione miraculorum [ éd . E. Duemmler ] , P.A.C. II , p . 524 v . 13 : Tu lunae solisque globum stellasque micantes In varias causas per culmine celsa locasti . 18. Cfr . Matt . 8,28-34 . 19. A.S. Walpole , Early Latin Hymns ( Hildesheim , 1966 ) , pp . 123 et 130. Analecta Hymnica 27 , pp . 37-38 . 20. E. Bishop , ' A letter of abbat Helisachar ' dans Liturgica historica , XV ( Oxford , 1962 , 1918 ) , pp . 333-348 surtout 339-344 . 21. W. Bulst , Hymni latini antiquissimi LXXV Psalmi III ( Heidelberg , 1956 ) , p . 203 . M.C. Diaz y Diaz , ' Prudencio en la Hispanis visigotica-Unas breves notas ' , dans Corona gratiarum E. Dekkers 0.S.B. , Instrumenta patristica 11 ( Brugge - ' sGravenhage , 1975 ) , pp . 61-70 , spéc . 68-70 . 22. Renseignement oral de Dom Dekkers .

ALLUSIONS

1. Epigramme , 68 Ad te , largitorem omnium bonorum , Eum in cunctis commendo gratantem . IV , 74 Sic nos muneribus tuis refecti , largitor Deus omnium bonorum , grates reddimus et sacramus hymnos .

2. IV , 1 , 25-26 Hoc fuit in initio , ut scriptum est : Invidia diaboli mors introivit in orbem terrarum. ( Sap . 2,24 ) Hoc cotidie in nonnullis , pestis praedicta non cessat dilaniare multos . Ille etenim milleformis daemonum tortuosus que serpens , non quiescens perfodi domos et templa subverti in fide solidantium adstare Christi , circuit semper quaerens quos et quas transvoret ( cf. I Petr . 5,8 ) . IX , 55 Pulsa pestis lubricorum milliformis daemonum VI , 141-142 O tortuose serpens , qui mille per meandros

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3. V , 1 , 28 Dicit quidam captor sompnii : ' Quasi equitabam, quasi currebam ; quasi epulans pocula , ni prius atque cibus , cuncta manibus tenebam; ferculis in pomis , sapor gusti quo triplectabant ; huc illucque me volvens , equestrium sessor aderam ... ' III , 13

Te sine dulce nihil , Domine , nec iuvat ore quid adpetere , pocula ni prius atque cibos , Christe , tuus favor inbuerit omnia sanctificante fide . 4. IX , 3 , 25 In senarium , sex hydrias quae per sex saeculi volvuntur aetates intellege ; in qua boni minus ve dinoscuntur esse permixti . Lege et invenies , atque in falernum nobilem utiliter verge .

IX, 28 Cantharis infusa lympha fit Falernum nobile ; nuntiat vinum minister esse promptum ex hydria ; ipse rex sapore tinctis obstupescit poculis . EMPRUNTS

5. Incipit , 30-34 vel certe ' ales ' preco et lucis intelligitur nuncius : finem noctis deducens , lucem precinit horarum . Quam significationem habeat huius locutio quod dicitur Manualis , nisi finis ignorantiae . Et nuntius intelligitur prescius lucis futurorum, ac si dicat : ' Nox precessit , dies autem adpropinquabit ' , ( cf. Rom . , 13,12 ) hoc est Christus , ipse videlicet qui dixit : si ego dies et vos horae , sequimini me , et cetera .

I , 1-2 Ales diei nuntius lucem propinquam praecinit ; I , 54 Fit namque peccatum prius quam praeco lucis proximae inlustret humanum genus finemque peccandi ferat .

6. I , 3 , 11 et 14 Magnus et altus est Deus , fili Wilhelme , quoniam humilia conspicit et alta , hoc est superba , a longe cognoscit ( cf. Ps . , 137,6 ' respicit ' ) . Ut ait Scriptura : Vident oculi eius , ipse respicit super filios hominum , vidensque si est intelligens aut requirens illum ( cf. Ps . , 52,3 ' prospexit ' et Ambrosius , De fide ' respexit ' aussi Ps . , 10,5 ' respiciunt ' ) . Et ipse actus nostros conspicit a luce prima in vesperum , hoc est ab ortu solis usque ad occasum ( Ps . , 112,3 ) , vel certe ab utero egressionis nostrae usque ad extremum obitus nostri ; sive etiam a luce prima in vesperum , videlicet a prima Adam formato usque ultimum nasciturum moriturumque mundi in finem . Cognoscit quidquid humana ... B1 reconspicit

II , 107-108 Actusque nostros prospicit a luce prima in vesperum.

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CITATIONS

7. I , 5 , 58-60 Ipse , ut ait quidam poeta , iussit et creata sunt , dixit et facta sunt, coelum terramque, ponti fossa , solis globumque et lunae . IX , 13-15 Ipse iussit , et creata , dixit ipse , et facta sunt terra , caelum , fossa ponti , trina rerum machina , quaeque in his vigent sub alto solis et lunae globo .

8. III , 10 , 141-144 et 146 Tamen omnium vel his pertinentium formis hominem praeesse , secundum quendam poetam dictum , eligere dignatus est ad summa . Ait etiam in suis carminibus ita : Item eiusdem : 139 Cuncta dominantes sibi subiecta , Item ipse : Ipse homini qui cuncta dedit , Quae polus humusque aut pelagus , Aere , gurgite , rure creant , Quae visu cernens manuque palpans , Haec illis subdens et eos sibi . B P creans

III , 36-40 Ipse homini quia cuncta dedit , quae capimus dominante manu , quae polus aut humus aut pelagus aere , gurgite , rure creant , haec mihi subdidit et sibi me . S qui 9. IV , 1 , 29-35 Et , secundum cuiusdam carmina doctoris , signum quod ipse novit , in sua rerum dampna manentem , katerva a fidelibus sanctae Dei ecclesiae die noctuque abstrahi non cessat . Ait enim : Suetus antro bustuali sub catenis frendere , Mentis inpos , efferatis percitus furoribus Seque nigris mergit undis et pecus limphaticum VI , 147-148 signum quod ipse nosti , damnat tuam catervam.

IX , 52-53 et 57 Suetus antro bustuali sub catenis frendere , mentis inpos efferatis percitus furoribus prosilit ruitque supplex , Christum adesse ut senserat . Pulsa pestis lubricorum milliformis daemonum corripit gregis suilli sordida spurcamina seque nigris mergit undis et pecus lymphaticum. S bustualis

The Date of Easter

in the Twelfth Demonstration of Aphraates G. A. M. Rouwhorst Utrecht

ITH only a few exceptions , the vast secondary literature on the origin and W development of the Feast of Easter takes little note of the Syriac sources . However , there are several texts in Syriac which deal with the subject and which , although dating from the 4th century , still bear the marks of an earlier , preNicene situation . We have in mind the Paschal Hymns of Ephrem and the Twelfth Demonstration of Aphraates .

In the present communication we will treat the latter

text because it is relatively brief and because in our opinion there are still a number of problems to be resolved in regard to it . The most pressing problem in the Twelfth Demonstration is the date for Easter which should be associated with this text , but in order to clarify this question it is necessary first of all to ascertain the concept of Easter which is presents . Aphraates ' point of departure is the legislation for the Feast of Passover on the 14th of Nisan in the book of Exodus . The Old Testament economy , together with its celebration of Passover according to the Law , has passed , and the prescriptions for this feast are outmoded , now that Christ has constituted himself , on the Cross and at the Last Supper , as the true Paschal Lamb .

The Mystery of the old Passover , therefore , has been replaced by the

Truth itself , now present among the Gentiles . At the end of the Demonstration , in paragraphs 12 and 13 , Aphraates indicates the goal to which he has been leading ( already mentioned in paragraph 5 ) : the Christians need not pay heed to the fourteenth of Nisan . Finally , we should mention Aphraates ' chronology of the passion which is a compromise between that of the Synoptic Gospels and that of the Gospel of John.¹ According to him , the fourteenth of the month lasted from Thursday evening until nightfall on Friday , as in the Gospel of John , but Christ ate the Passover with his disciples on Thursday evening , as in the Synoptics .

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The Date of Easter

1375

What is the date of the Easter observance referred to in our Demonstration? Aphraates ' paschal theology coincides , in broad outlines , with that of Melito of Sardis . One would then expect our author to be Quartodeciman , as Melito was . But this was certainly not the case , since Aphraates ' criticism has precisely these people in view . Moreover , it is equally difficult to see him as a partisan of Easter Sunday observance , because for him the central aspect of the feast is not the Resurrection but the redemptive Passion and Death of Christ , the new Passover Lamb , even to the point of speaking of the ' Passover of the Passion ' ( 12.8 and 12 ) . There is therefore no need to go back to either of these two solutions . Our Demonstration contains two passages which refer explicitly to the date of Easter and which , therefore , we will have to examine more closely . The first passage is the beginning of 12 , 8 : The Passover of the Jews is the day of the fourteenth , both the night and the day; and our day of the Great Passion is Friday , the fifteenth , both the night and the day . The text explicitly says that both the Passover of the Jews and that of the Christians take place during the night and continue through the following day .

But on

what day of the month and/or of the week was the Christian Passover celebrated? 3 Some scholars` have formulated the hypothesis that Aphraates would not have known the hebdomadal scheme nor observed the fourteenth of Nisan , but would have held his paschal celebration on the 15th of Nisan , thus one day after the Passover of the Jews . This solution is not , however , very plausible . If the Christians had made their Easter date dependent on the Jewish feast , thus setting their own observance on the following day , they would necessarily have been quite familiar with the Jewish practices . This would be only partially true for the passage at hand . Aphraates does indeed say that the Jewish Passover begins at night . The Jews , however , do not hold their celebration on the night which begins the four4 teenth of Nisan but rather on the night of the 14th -15th of Nisan , i.e. at the same time as the Christians do according to Aphraates . The origin of Aphraates ' notion of the Jewish Passover is quite clear .

It has

nothing to do with the liturgy and the observances of Israel but rather derives from the chronology of the Passion which he constructed from the combination of the data in the Synoptics and in John . Christ ate the Passover and instituted the Eucharist on the night which is the beginning of the fourteenth of Nisan and he suffered his passion and death during the next day which is still the fourteenth . This chronology is a purely literary confection which has no relation to the Jewish liturgical calendar . Our problem , however , can be resolved if we accept that Aphraates does not consider the 15th of Nisan as the date of the Christian Passover , but rather the Friday after the 14th , that is , the period from nightfall on Friday till nightfall

1376 Saturday ;

G. A. M. Rouwhorst that it starts in the evening as does also the Passover of the Jews ,

although not on the evening of the 14th Nisan , but rather on that of Friday -Saturday , and that it commemorates the events which , in Aphraates ' chronology , in the year of the death of Christ , took place in the night from Friday to Saturday , and throughout that Saturday itself , i.e. during the fifteenth of Nisan , when Christ was among the dead for a night and a day . One should note , however , that in Aphraates ' chronology of the passion the preceding night constitutes a part of the following day .

How, then , can he con-

sider the night of the fifteenth as part of Friday the fourteenth? First of all , maybe he takes the week-day as beginning at midnight .

In that

case , the first part of the night of the 15th of Nisan , Friday evening was still a part of Friday .

And then , it may be that the most important moment was in fact

this Friday evening , since Aphraates saw the Christian Passover as the Feast of the Passion and this Friday evening followed immediately upon the passion and death of Christ . Moreover , the descent into sheol occupies a pre - eminent position and is likewise placed on Friday evening . Jewish Passover was the evening .

Finally , the most important moment of the

Furthermore , a new light is cast upon this problem is we consider it in the Does

light of the question of the age and the origin of this Christian Passover . it date back to an early period or had it been introduced only recently?

Since Aphraates ' paschal theology is so close to that of Quartodecimans like Melito and Apollinaris of Hierapolis , one suspects that the Christians of Persia once had been Quartodecimans , before celebrating their Passover on the Friday after the 14th of Nisan . If that is indeed the case , it is understandable that some Christians of Persia were troubled by the date of the 14th of Nisan ;

they were

simply traditionalists protesting against a liturgical innovation . Moreover , this hypothesis would also throw light on the difficulties of our passage which would result from the fact that Aphraates ' Passover was oriented towards two not easily reconciled realities , namely , the Jewish Passover which took place during the night and which continued into the next day , and the death of Christ which occurred at the close of Friday afternoon , just before the beginning of the 15th of Nisan . Strictly speaking , the passage can be quite easily understood if one accepts that it is speaking of a Friday observance of the Christian Passover , since the most important moment is in fact Friday evening , which is equally a part of Friday itself and the fifteenth . But the situation is clarified even further if one accepts that the concern devolves upon an earlier Quartodeciman observance which has been moved forward to Friday .

The second interesting passage is 12 , 12 :

1377

The Date of Easter That you ( yourselves ) may be convinced and may convince also the brothers , the sons of your church who are troubled by this time of the Passover ; for people that are sound in mind , these things are not difficult to understand . For if the day of the Passover of the Passion of our Saviour falls for us on a Sunday , it is proper for us to celebrate the second day according to the Law so that the entire week may be observed in his passion and in his unleavened bread , because after the Passover there are seven days of unleavened bread until the twenty- first . But if the passion falls on one of the other days of the week , we should not be troubled thereby . For our great day is Friday . 5 According to the interpretation of Van Goudoever , among others , if Easter , the Christian Passover , falls on a Sunday , we should celebrate it on Monday .

The

Christian Passover , the 14th , which was a day of fast , would be moved to Monday , since fasting would be incompatible with the joyous character of Sunday . Leaving aside the other problems raised by such an interpretation , we should consider whether it accords with what the text says . And in this regard there is a difficulty .

' Yawma da-trên ' does not mean primarily ' Monday ' but rather ' the

second day ' , which is moreover the translation supported by the Armenian version (yerkrordownm awowr = the next day) . Two further remarks on the precise translation of the Syriac text will help to clarify its sense . Aphraates places the phrase ' according to the Law' at the beginning of the sentence (men nāmosa wālê de n'ebdiu le yawma da - trên ) .

Now , theoretically , men

nāmosâ could be linked to wale and one would take it to mean: ' According to the law one must hold it ( the celebration ) on the " second day " ( eventually : on Monday ) ' . However , such a translation would make no sense because the Law provides no regulations for the case where Passover coincides with a Sunday , at least if one understands the Law to be that of the Old Testament . But since the word order in Syriac is quite loose , one could associate men nāmosa with n'ebdtu and then translate : ' One must celebrate according to the Law the second day ( or eventually : Monday ) ' . Moreover L. Haefeli , in a study of Aphraates ' style , draws attention to the fact that he places a word which he wants to emphasize in a special way at the beginning of the sentence . In our passage the emphasis falls precisely on the phrase ' according to the Law' since the concern is with celebrating the days of unleavened bread according to the law of Exodus 12 . Secondly , a little further on , in the subordinate clause , Aphraates uses the verb ntar in reference to observing the days of unleavened bread .

It would be

interesting to study this term a little more closely , but its precise sense is ' to observe ' and sometimes ' to observe according tothe Law' , or , in Syriac : ' bad men namosa (the same expression is used in the main clause ) . When we take into account these remarks and the context , the passage should pose

1378 no great difficulties .

G. A. M. Rouwhorst To the adversaries who want to celebrate the feast not only

at the same time as the Jews , on the 14th of Nisan , but also in the same way and to observe the days of unleavened bread , Aphraates replies that such is permissible only in the exceptional case where the fourteenth falls on Sunday . Holy Week coincides with the week of unleavened bread .

For then the

Otherwise , only Friday is

of any concern , presumably preceded by a Holy Week . Finally , this hypothesis is confirmed by the end of the paragraph 12 , 12 , where Aphraates refutes his adversaries , who are ' troubled by these days ' by appealing to the example of Christ who ate and drank no more from the time that the cock crowed . That is to say , Christ did not observe the ' second day ' any more than he celebrated the rest of the week of unleavened bread . Consequently , Aphraates seems to argue , the Christians should not do so ( except in the case where the day of the ' Passover of the Passion ' coincides with a Sunday ) . Who were the adversaries who wanted to observe the week of unleavened bread? It is noteworthy that several early Syriac texts refer to Holy Week as the 8 Unleavened Bread ' : namely the Martyrdom of Simeon bar Sabba'e' and the Old 9 Lectionary that was edited by F. Burkitt ( BM . Add . 14.528 ) and usually is to the 5th century . Could it be that these texts are speaking of the Week

' Week of Syriac dated of

Unleavened Bread because at one time the Syriac Churches celebrated a Christianised Week of Unleavened Bread following their Passover on the 14th of Nisan?

That might

also explain why Ephrem so vehemently attacks the Christians who want to eat the 10 unleavened bread . He too may have been dealing with certain traditionalists opposed to changes in liturgical practice . Finally , the question that now arises is : What could be the source for these reforms which the Syriac Churches were adopting in the 4th century? Are we not compelled to relate them to the Council of Nicea at which , some twenty years before Aphraates wrote his Demonstrations , an attempt was made to introduce a uniformity in the Easter observance ? 11 plausible solution ."

In any case this could be a very

The situation of the Church of Persia in the fourth century confirms our hypothesis that its observance of the Passover was transferred from the 14th of Nisan to Friday . The text itself excludes the possibility that Aphraates celebrates the Passover on the 14th of Nisan . The Sunday of the Resurrection /Easter Sunday do not fit with Aphraates ' paschal theology which has more to do with the death of Christ than with his resurrection . The date of the 15th of Nisan is odd to begin with and ultimately cannot be corroborated with the data in the text . However , the transferral of the Passover observance from the 14th of Nisan to Friday , although still somewhat hybrid , is easily understandable in a Church of the 4th century Persia which can be placed between the Quartodeciman Passover and the Easter Sunday observance , just as it found itself between its earlier traditions

The Date of Easter

1379

and the new ideas which were arriving from the West , but which it had not yet entirely assimilated .

REFERENCES 1. This chronology cannot , as such , be related to the one in Tatian's Diatessaron , as was suggested by Th . Zahn (Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons und der altkirchlichen Literatur , I , Erlangen , 1881 , p . 75 ; cfr . also C. Schmidt , Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern , Leipzig , 1919 , p . 680 , and A. Strobel , Ursprung und Geschichte des frühchristlichen Osterkalenders , Berlin , 1977 , p . 66 ) . The Arabic , Persian and Western Diatessarons contain both the data in the Synoptics and those in John . On the first day of the Unleavened Bread , Christ celebrates the Passover with his disciples , but on the next day the Jews do not enter the praetorium, because they still have to eat the Paschal Lamb ( John 18 , 28 ) . None of these witnesses to the Diatessaron explains how these two contradictory conceptions could be reconciled . Ephrem , in his commentary on the Diatessaron , seems to avoid the difficulty by omitting the data in the Synoptic Gospels concerning the Passover meal on the evening before the death of Christ and mentioning only John 18 , 28! 2. Nevertheless , some scholars maintain that Aphraates was an ordinary Quartodeciman ( E. Preuschen , ' Passah , altkirchliches und Passahstreitigkeiten ' , in : Reallexikon für Theologie und Kirche , 14 , pp . 725-734 ; M. Simon , Verus Israel , Paris , 1964 , pp . 369-373 ) . 3. G. Bert , Aphrahat's des persischen Weisen Homilien, aus dem Syrischen übersetzt und erläutert , T.U. 3 , 3-4 , Leipzig , 1888 , pp . 182-183 ; P. Schwen , Afrahat. Seine Person und sein Verständnis des Christentums , Berlin , 1907 , p . 111 ; E. Duncan, Baptism in the Demonstrations of Aphraates the Persian Sage , Washington , 1945 , pp . 104-107 . 4. M. Simon ( op . cit. , p . 370 ) defends his hypothesis that Aphraates should have celebrated Passover on the night of the 14th- 15th of Nisan by suggesting the possibility that the Jews in Persia celebrated this on the night of the 13th- 14th of Nisan . But this solution does not seem to be very convincing . Particularly , it overlooks the fact that in Dem. XII , 12 , Aphraates ' concern is with combining the hebdomadal and the lunar schema . 5. J. Van Goudoever , Fêtes et calendriers bibliques , Paris , 1967 , pp . 243-244 . (Cfr . G. Bert , op . cit . , p . 183 ) . 6. L. Haefeli , Stilmittel bei Aphrahat dem persischen Weisen , Leipzig , 1932 , pp . 8-9. 7. In this connexion , we can also adduce that in Dem . 12.6 the night of the 14th of Nisan , when Jesus celebrated the Last Supper and the Passover meal with his disciples , is called ' lelya nṭîra ' , an expression which also appears in the Targums on Ex . 12 ( cfr . , for example . R. Le Déaut , La nuit pascale , Rome , 1963 , pp . 272-273 ) . Furthermore , in ch . 21 of the Didascalia, ' ntar ' again means ' to celebrate the Passover according to the Law ' , thus ' on the 14th of Nisan ' ( E. Gibson , The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac , I , London , 1903 , p . 171 ) . In the Syriac translation of Eusebius ' Ecclesiastical History , this verb translates among others the Greek word ' terein ' ( V , 25 , 6.14.16.17 ) , which must mean ' to observe according to the Law ' , thus ' to observe on the 14th of Nisan ' ( Syriac text in : W. Wright and N. McLean , The ecclesiastical History of Eusebius Pamphili , bishop of Caesarea , 1898 , reprint : Amsterdam , 1975 ) . 8. Patrologia Syriaca , II . Martyrium 33 ( = p . 758 ) and Narratio 64 ( = p . 887 ) . 9. F. Burkitt , ' The Early Syriac Lectionary System ' , Proceedings of the British Academy , X, 1923 , p . 7 ( ' the Great Week of the Unleavened Bread ' ) . 10. De Azymis XVII -XIX . Ed . E. Beck , C.S.C.O. 248 . 11. Most scholars do not believe that the theology of Aphraates was influenced

SP 3 AA

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G. A. M. Rouwhorst

by the Council of Nicea ( cfr . I. Ortiz de Urbina , Die Gottheit Christi bei Afrahat , Rome , 1933 , p . 50 ) . But does the absence of the Nicene Christology in Aphraates mean that the decision , made at this Council on such a practical point as the date of Easter , was completely ignored by the Church in Persia? I have my doubts about the trustworthiness of Eusebius , E.H. 5 , 23,4 . According to this text , at the time of the Roman bishop Victor , the bishops of the churches of Palestine , Rome , Pontus , Gaul and the ' Osroëne and the cities there ' should have defended Easter Sunday observance . Firstly , this passage does not fit with the 12th Demonstration of Aphraates ( nor with the Paschal Hymns of Ephrem ) . In the second place , the old Latin translation of Rufinus does not contain the words ' as well as from those in the Osroëne and the cities there ' . (Cfr . W. Bauer , Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity , London , 1972 , p . 9 = English translation of: Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum , Tübingen , 1934 ) .

I thank Dr. R. Sinkewicz and Dr. P. Staples for their willingness to correct the English text .

Concepts of Paradise in the Seventh Memra of the Hexaemeron by Emmanuel bar Shahhare

Erik ten Napel Groningen

MMANUEL bar Shahhare , a Syrian monk who lived in the second half of the tenth E century in the Upper Monastery at Mosul , spent a great deal of his life on exegetical studies . His 28 homilies on Creation can be considered as his most important work still remaining. parts .

It is possible to divide this Hexaemeron into two

Part one , containing fifteen homilies , has the more descriptive and rather

technical side of the Creation as its subject , whereas part two , the holimies 16-28 , deal primarily with the allegorical and christological senses and conclusions following from part one .

This homily-collection is of great importance for the

eastern tradition , in spite of its tenth century origin , as it is the only Hexaemeron in the Syrian tradition of the same type as Narsai's . In this light it is understandable that my remarks here are only a small and provisional part of my investigations concerning Emmanuel , of which I hope to be able to present to you the more definite results within a few years . From this huge work twelve mss . are still left . nowadays or can even be considered as lost .

Four others are not available

Comparing them , two lines of tradition

are coming to light in the several manuscripts .

However , in the seventh Memra on

Paradise the differences are of somewhat less importance than are to be seen elsewhere in this Hexaemeron . That Paradise is treated apart from the other acts of Creation may possibly be due to the great Christological impact derived from the elements of Paradise , especially concerning the redemption of Man ;

a subject

exhaustively dealt with in the second part of the homilies¹ , but also present in 2 part one . It will be clear that going through the sometimes rather complicated problems of Paradise-description is impossible in a small scope like this . So I have to make a choice between the several motives to discuss here . There is a distinction between the literal concept of Paradise and an allegorical

1381

1382 concept .

E. ten Napel In the seventh Memra we are talking about , the literal concept is more

developed than the allegorical one , although the latter is not absent , but is only mentioned as far as its Christological sense is concerned .

Although it is interes-

ting to see that many elements of this allegorical exegesis are clearly spiritualized and so Emmanuel stands in the tradition of , for instance , the Cappadocians too , the real working out of this type of thought is preserved for the second part of the homily-collection . The examples will be taken from both concepts and we will try to find out in which respect traditio -historical lines can be traced in order to try to see which sources Emmanuel knew and used for his work . The seventh Memra opens with the remark that Paradise was created on the third 3 day . A few lines below it is also said that Paradise was created on the very day 4 This conception can that God commanded the earth to bring forth all the trees . be found in Ephrem's Commentary on Genesis

and also in Theodore of Mopsuestia's

Genesis Fragments® , where the similarity is still more striking .

Isho'dad of Merw ,

the bishop of Ḥedatta , who lived in the middle of the ninth century , does not share this opinion , but he is clearly aware of its existence , as his Commentary on Genesis 7 shows . So it is justified to say that from this saying expressed by Emmanuel , links can be shown with the great fathers of Syrian Christianity : Ephrem and Theodore . As a second example of Emmanuel's concept of Paradise may serve his opinion about Paradise as a mountain . He takes it for granted that the paradisical garden is situated one third of the way between heaven and earth . ' Paradise is higher than 8 the whole earth' . It is well known that we can already find this idea in Ezekiel's 10 9 prophecies and in the Book of Enoch . Ephrem witnesses in his Hymns on Paradise 11 that the mountain of Paradise is the highest of all mountains ." This opinion is 12 Isho'dad is of the same opinion as also presented in his Commentary on Genesis ." 13 Ephrem , arguing that Paradise is located at great height ." So in this example too the traditio -historical links go back directly to the early Syrian Church . Our third example has to do with the place of Paradise itself and with the temperate character of its climate . The Garden is a tempered place where all seasons are equal ; where the elements do not prevail ; where fruits are perfect 14 and do not need growth . In his Hymns on Paradise Ephrem says , in the tempered 15 air also the months are temperate . In the air surrounding Paradise there is no 16 17 Although this type storm. Trees bear fruit each month; twelve times a year . of description shows elements possibly derived from the Apocalypse of John , it can 18 be said that it is almost certain Ephrem did not know this book . In the fourth example the deep influence of Ephrem is to be seen again . It deals with the conception of Paradise as an abode for the souls of the deceased . As Daniélou has pointed out in his article , ' Terre et Paradis chez les Pères de

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1383

l'Église ' , the conception of Paradise being a resting - place for the souls of the 19 righteous was already well developed in the first centuries of Christianity ." The Apocalypse of Moses tells us Adam's soul was washed after his death by the angels 20 and brought into Paradise to await the Last Judgement ." Theophilus of Antioch 21 knows this intermediate function of Paradise as well . According to Origen the nxn of Jesus went after his death into Paradise , whereas the яνεŨμа was put into 22 the hands of the Father . Emmanuel in his homilies uses a lot of remarks expressing the same kind of conception .

God made the Paradise of Eden as a 23 dwelling-place for the life between temporary and eternal life . Paradise is called by him a sort of barn , or granary .

Souls are living there and when Christ

comes the second time He will gather them all and bring them into the highest 24 heavens as promised . The soul of the Lord entered Paradise accompanied by the

25 soul of the robber and after three days Jesus left him behind , promising to return ." This conception of a Vorparadies is clearly visible in the words of Ephrem Syrus . His Hymns on Paradise contain this type of statement in several places . It always 26 deals with a dwelling - place for the righteous , waiting for the resurrection although in some passages there is a small difference between Ephrem and Emmanuel . For the latter Paradise itself or at least its lower parts is preserved for the souls of the righteous . In that case one can speak of the vertical line : earthParadise -Heaven , whereas Paradise has a double function , both as a dwelling- place of the first man , and as a dwelling -place of souls . For Ephrem this resting-place is outside real Paradise . It is at the foot of it and not even in the lower parts .27 So there can be seen the horizontal line : Paradise -dwelling- place for souls outside Paradise , without that double function .

For the rest the similarity is striking ,

the more so as Emmanuel says that when the bridegroom comes , the souls will clothe 28 themselves with the body which they laid down on entering Eden ." These remarks too 29 show the Ephremic echo emphasized by the Paradise -Hymns ." Several times hope is expressed that body and soul may speak when the gate of the Garden is opened --- the Garden where the souls of the righteous and the pious live and wait for the bodies ; their friends . So in the case of this example too one may speak of the influence of Ephrem upon Emmanuel's work .

How far , however , Emmanuel shows here a miscellany

of Ephremic and Greek tradition has to be further investigated . Another example also has to do with Man .

Arguing about sin Emmanuel points out

that the first Adam was covered with glory but was deprived of it after transgres30 sing God's commandment . We find this opinion in several stanzas of Ephrem's Hymns .

In the Greek patristic tradition it is mainly found in Basil's , Gregory of

Nyssa's and Origen's work .

Ephrem connects this expression with the remark that 31 eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is not bad in se . It is eating in a sinful way that deprives man of honour . Thus Narsai , a fifth century writer , in 32 In the same way his homilies argues it was not the Tree that bore death in it .

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E. ten Napel

Emmanuel says that the food of this Tree does not introduce death , unless by means 33 of advice which makes man God's adversary . Without any doubt this way of thinking

reveals old anti -Marcionite roots . Reading these lines it is the more striking that the beginning of this seventh 34 Memra represents a somewhat different thought . There the Tree of Knowledge is spoken of , and the Tree of Life .

The Tree of Knowledge , the death- bringing tree ,

is the prototype of our mortal world , whereas the Tree of Life stands for the world to come . First there is mention of this mortal world ; of the serpent and the woman on his side ;

the commandment and the punishment .

There is mention of

death , which is present in Nature and comes into reality out of that Nature .

That

means : law, penitence , death ; they all belong to the mortal world and so are created entities , part of the order of Creation . Then Adam and Eve are mortal too . Moreover , depicting things like that , the Tree of Life is said to be elevated above 35 death . Both trees are in the midst of the Garden' and not in clearly distinguished 36 places , as for example Ephrem maintains . In that case yes-or-no eating the forbidden fruits is a matter of human will and of human choice , made by mortal -created people . This conception is typical of Theodore of Mopsuestia , as we can see in his 37 38 works in many places > and in Narsai's homilies on Creation in even more places . Isho'dad too mentions in his Genesis - Commentary this opinion as Theodore's and 39 agrees with it . It is possible to increase the number of examples further , but I will only mention a few more , such as the conception of the cross as the key to Paradise , 40 Also interesting are the very where dependence on Ephrem is remarkable again ." few lines in this Memra with clear sacramental meaning , connected with baptism and 41 the Lord's Supper , as Murray pointed out in his Symbols of Church and Kingdom .* Nevertheless the few examples given here indicate without any doubt that one of the main sources for Emmanuel was Ephrem Syrus .

But another very important source

is doubtless Theodore of Mopsuestia , in spite of the fact that in this ParadiseMemra his opinions are somewhat less represented . It should be noted too that much of the influence of Theodore , although not everything , often came via Narsai , the ' Tongue of the East ' , as already Jansma 43 It is not supposed42 9 and as many examples concerning mortality have shown ." quite clear yet if there is any influence of Isho'dad , or whether in this case we have to do with the influence of older tradition on which I sho'dad is dependent as a compiler . All this gives us a most interesting perspective on a theological work of a rather ambiguous character , because of the absence of a clear choice between these two different ways of thinking ;

on the one hand Ephrem and on the other Theodore .

Both conceptions Emmanuel tries to give an equal place , although it should be noted that allegorical conceptions have a place too , be it a modest one , in Emmanuel's

1385 Concepts of Paradise 44 exegesis of certain motives of Paradise ." But after all the reader gets the chance to judge what is the right concept of believing and what is not . Or in the 45 words of Emmanuel himself : ' There is nothing that is difficult for God ' " " clearing away in that respect eventual contradictions or oppositions .

REFERENCES 1. Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron , Memra 20 . 2. Ibid. , Memre 13 and 14 . 3. Ibid. , Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) 65r : Through the strength of Jesus I will start the seventh Memra of the Hexaemeron On the arrangement of Paradise , which was arranged on the third day . 4. Ibid. , 65r : ' On the third day He made Paradise ; the third heaven . ' 65v : ' On this day He , the Good -one , created Paradise with all the trees . On the day the Creator commanded the earth to bring forth trees . ' 5. Ephrem Syrus , Comm. in Gen. , II , 5 ( ed . R.M. Tonneau , C.S.C.0 . , vols . 152/153 , Louvain 1955/1965 ) . 6. Theodore of Mopsuestia , Fragmenta alia in Genesin , P.G. , vol . LXVI , c . 637 C -D . 7. Isho'dad of Merw , Comm . in Gen. , II , 8 ( ed . J.M. Vosté /C . van den Eynde , C.S.C.O. , vols . 126/156 , Louvain 1950/1955 ) . 8. Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron , Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) , 67v : And Paradise is higher than the whole earth , which the Creator created . Higher than the whole earth , which is medium in height ( , is Paradise ) . 9. Ezekiel 28 , 13-14 . 10. 1 Enoch 15 , 7-8 . 11. Ephrem Syrus , Hymn . De Paradiso , I , 4 ( ed . E. Beck , C.S.C.O. , vols . 174/175 , Louvain 1957 ) . 12. Id. , Comm . in Gen. , II , 6 . 13. Isho'dad of Merw , Comm . in Gen. , II , 14 . 14. Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron , Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) , 69v : ' And in a temperate place Paradise was arranged , in which the elements do not prevail at all ; and its winter and its summer and its spring ( do not prevail ) . ' 15. Ephrem Syrus , Hymn . De Paradiso , X, 2 . 16. Ibid . , X, 4 . 17. Ibid . , x , 6. cfr . also N. Séd . ' Les Hymnes sur le Paradis de Saint Ephrem et les Traditions Juives ' , in Muséon , LXXX , 1968 , p . 470 and p . 495. 18. Cfr . I. Ortiz de Urbina , ' Le Paradis eschatologique d'après Saint Ephrem ' , in Orientalia Christiana Periodica XXI , 1955 , p . 470 . 19. Cfr . J. Daniélou , ' Terre et Paradis chez les Pères de l'Église ' , in Eranos Jahrbuch XXII , 1953 , p . 448 . 20. Apocalypse of Moses , 37 , 4 . 21. Theophilus Antiochenus , Ad Autolycus , II , 24 . 22. Origen , Dialogue with Heraclides ( ed . Scherer , Dialektos 8 , p . 139 ) . 23. Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron , Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) , 65r : He made for him ( i.e. Man ) splendid dwelling- places , which were useful for him during his whole life . In the temporary life namely , and also in the life which is eternal , and moreover with regard to the life which is in the midst of it . And for the time between these ( i.e. heaven and earth ) , He gave the great Paradise of Eden . The third ( tent ) He made for the life between (heaven and earth ) without body .

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24. Ibid. , 66r : Into the granaries of the third heaven was raised Eliah , the son of the sojourners . And granaries are they of those highest heavens . And Paradise is the granary of that heaven above . Because in that the souls are living and next they are raised to heaven . When our Lord is coming for the second time , He is gathering and bringing aloft out of the granaries all the souls of the righteous to heaven , as his promise ( is ) . 25. Ibid. , 71v : ( Paradise ) our Lord entered by means of his soul together with the soul of that robber . Owing to the promise on the cross and true and exact is his pronouncement . For when the robber has said : Remember me , my Lord , when you are coming , He gave him Paradise as a reward , until He comes in his great glory . 26. Ephrem Syrus , Hymn . De Paradiso , V , 9 ; VI , 16 ; VII , 5 ; VIII , 11 ; IX , 8 . 27. Ibid. , X, 14 ; XIII , 6. Narsai , Homilies on Creation , IV , 262 ; IV , 290 ( ed . Ph . Gignoux , Patrologia Orientalis XXXIV , Turnhout , 1968 ) . 28. Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) , 65r : The third ( tent ) He made for the life between ( heaven and earth ) , without body (-) . When the soul then has laid down the body , until the day on which he is clothed with it . Ibid. , 70v : In there also the spiritual beings are living , together with the souls of the righteous , until the day of the resurrection , when the soul is clothed with her body again . Ibid . , 71v : There now in Paradise the spiritual beings live with them, until the day of the resurrection , when the soul is clothed with her body again . Ibid. , 73v: Behold , all are living there in the dwelling-places of the splendid light , until the bridegroom comes , their Friend , and they clothe themselves with the bodies they had laid down . 29. Ephrem Syrus , Hymn . De Paradiso , VIII , 7 ; VIII , 9 ; VIII , 11 . 30. Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron , Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) , 74v : ( The first Adam ) lived in a spiritual way and was clothed with glory and honour . And from the moment he sinned , he was deprived of that honour he was clothed with . ' Ibid. , 75v : ' And when he ( i.e. Adam ) ate , he was unmasked and deprived of his glory .' 31. Ephrem Syrus , Hymn . De Paradiso , XV , 5 ; XV , 12 . 32. Narsai , Homilies on Creation , I , 375 . 33. Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron , Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) , 75v : ' It was not possible that the food would introduce death , unless by means of the advice . Because he became from that moment on an adversary of the divine commandment . ' 34. Ibid. , 68v/69r: In its midst He planted trees , namely ( the tree ) of Life as is written , and the tree , which , as a fire , is placed for trying the people . As a symbol of both worlds the trees mentioned , served besides . This (tree ) of Life and that of the Test , for trying the freedom of man . The deathbringing tree formed the type of our mortal world , in which they , who are entering it , do good and evil things by means of their freedom . And the serpent and the woman on his side ; the law and the punishment and death , hidden in Nature , from which he comes to realization . And the tree of Life is the symbol of the world , which is raised above death . 35. Ibid. , 68v . See note 34. 36. Cfr . N. Séd , ' Les Hymnes sur le Paradis de Saint Ephrem et les Traditions Juives ' , in Muséon LXXX , 1968 , pp . 460–461 . 37. Theodore of Mopsuestia , Fragmenta in Genesin , P.G. , vol . LXVI , c . 640 ; Ibid . , P. G. , vol . LXVI , c . 633. Isho'dad of Merw , Comm . in Gen. II , 17. Cfr . Theodore of

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Mopsuestia , Fragmenta dogmatica ex libro contra defensores peccati originalis , P.G. , vol . LXVI , c . 1006 A. Cfr . Theodore of Mopsuestia , Fragmenta alia in Genesin , P.G. , vol . LXVI , c . 641 A. In this connection it is remarkable to see in what way Ephrem solved this problem . For Theodore man being created masculine and feminine is one of the evidences for created mortality ; Ephrem states that originally man was created hermaphrodite , which is in that case a piece of evidence for immortality . (cfr . De Eccl . XLV , 2. Also cfr . T. Kronholm , Motifs from Genesis 1-11 in the genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian , Lund 1978 , p . 81 ) . Origen ( In Gen. I , 13 ) says that in Creation it deals with the inner man , invisible , incorruptible and immortal . If not , then it was possible to suppose that God himself had body, as man is created in imago Dei . As we see , it is the same problem as Theodore's , but the solution is fully contrary . 38. Narsai , Homilies on Creation , I , 209 ; I , 361 ; I , 377 ; 1,467 ; IV , 57 ; IV , 296 . 39. See note 37. 40. Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron , Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) , 73r : ' Until the Cross of the Son became the key and opened its big gate , which was closed through the penalty of righteousness . ' Ephrem Syrus , Hymn . De Paradiso , VI , 1 ; VII , 1 . 41. Cfr . R. Murray , Symbols of Church and Kingdom, a study in early Syriac Tradition , Cambridge 19772 , pp . 95-130 . 42. Cfr . T. Jansma , ' Barhebraeus ' scholion on the Words " Let there be Light " ( Gen. 1 , 3 ) as presented in his " Storehouse of Mysteries " , Abr . -Nahrain XIII , 1972 , p . 105 . 43. See notes 37 and 38 . 44. In Emmanuel's allegorical concept of Paradise the Garden of Eden represents the spiritual congregation of spiritual beings . The trees stand for the multitudes of angels , which are in the spiritual Paradise . The different kinds of trees represent the differences in the nature of the angels . The fruits are the shoutings of halleluja ( cfr . Ephrem ) , whereas the leaves are the hallows . The beauties of Paradise stand for the deep inner scenes , which are hidden in the mysteries of those beauties . The big river arising from Eden represents the abundant source of divine grace and revelation . In this grace the angels revel . ( Cfr . Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron , Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) , 75r . ) 45. Emmanuel bar Shahhare , Hexaemeron, Brl 61 ( Sachau 170 ) , 74r .

The Syriac Adapter of Evagrius' Centuries J. W. Watt Crowthorne

full understanding of the doctrine of Evagrius of Pontus and of the reason for of the.d. was first made possible through the discoveryby A full Antoine Guillaumont of a second Syriac version ( S2 ) of Evagrius ' principal doctrinal work , the Six Centuries of ' Kephalaia Gnostica ' . Of the Greek text of this work only brief citations have survived , but they are sufficient to show that the text discovered by Guillaumont is an accurate version of the original , while the substantially different version previously known ( S₁ ) is an adaptation in which the Origenism of Evagrius , evident in S2 , is more or less eliminated . The previously known version , S₁ , was evidently the Syriac ' Vulgate ' of the Centuries , and this explains 1 why Evagrius was not regarded by the Syrians as an Origenist . This discovery of Guillaumont thus explains the different evaluation of Evagrius in the Greek and Syriac spheres , but at the same time raises the question of the identity of the two translators , both of whom can now be seen to have had clear theological motives in producing their versions . A comparison of the two texts shows that S₁ was the earlier , and that S₂ is a revision of S on the basis of the Greek . The author of 1 S 1' as we may now call him , adapted Evagrius as he translated him into Syriac , while the translator of S₂ restored the Origenism eliminated , or at least mitigated , in S₁ . Guillaumont hazarded a guess at the identity of each of them . From a letter attributed to Philoxenus of Mabbug he proposed the famous monophysite theologian as the author of S₁ , and from a text of Joseph Hazzaya he proposed Sergius of Reshaina , 2 the translator of Pseudo- Dionysius , as the translator of S₂I have argued elsewhere that the hypothesis of the Philoxenian authorship of S. is untenable , but that Philoxenus used this version and , furthermore , blended its doctrine with a typological interpretation of the economy of the incarnation derived 3 from Theodore of Mopsuestia . The only period in his life when he would consciously have done this was before his conversion to the monophysite party when he was

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diligently reading the works of Theodore , no doubt during his education at the School of Edessa ( around or somewhat after 450 A.D. ) . This points to S together 1 with Theodore's works in Syriac having been given to him by his teachers there . And this prompts the further question : were Evagrius ' Centuries translated , and adapted , in these circles , where Theodore's works were translated ? Ibas, Kumi and Proba translated the books of the Interpreter [ i.e. Theodore ] and the writings of Aristotle from Greek into Syriac , according to Abdisho` did one of them , or someone in this milieu , also produce the adaptation of Evagrius ' Centuries ? There is one ancient testimony linking a version of the Centuries to the School of Edessa and the translation of Theodore's works . It is the passage from the Questions and Answers of Joseph Hazzaya on which Guillaumont based his identifi6 cation of the translator of the later version , S2 . There can be little doubt that the version of the Centuries to which Joseph was referring - a version which he described as full of interpolation and blasphemies

was in fact S₂ , and it is

probable that the unnamed person to whom he attributed this version was Sergius of 7 Reshaina . However , he went on to describe him as ' a companion of Kumi ' . If one version of the Centuries had been made by ' a companion of Kumi ' and a later one by Sergius , that could have been the source of Joseph's error . It is , however , only 8 one among a number of possibilities . Therefore to test further the hypothesis of the ' Antiochene ' inspiration of S. we need to look for some internal evidence with° 1‫י‬ in the version . The christology of Evagrius was rewritten by the author of S. $1, but his changes were entirely concerned with the elimination of Evagrius ' special christology based on the distinction between Christ ( an intellect equal to all others except inasmuch as he alone never suffered ' movement ' ) and the Logos .

No specifically monophysite

or dyophysite christology is discernible in his version , which is not surprising in a work which enjoyed high esteem among both Jacobites and Nestorians . The other changes introduced by the author of S.1 stem from his fundamentally different cosmogony . The foundation of Evagrius ' system, the double creation first of incorporeal intellects and then , after their ' movement ' from God , of bodies as instruments of their salvation , is eliminated in S.

For its author there was only one creation ,

comprising incorporeal and corporeal beings .

For Evagrius himself , the creation of

this world , the one described by Genesis , was only for the salvation of the fallen incorporeal beings , but the author of S.1 asserted that God willed a single creation containing incorporeal and corporeal beings . One sentence in which the Syriac adapter expressed his doctrine of creation is especially significant .

In III , 54 he wrote , By the word of the Lord from in the

were established the embodied and bodiless beings , and beginning neither of them in the thought of the Creator is older than the other. This is his own composition , for according to S₂ Evagrius himself wrote , In the twinkling of an

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eye the cherubim were named cherubim, Gabriel Gabriel and man man . Where Evagrius alluded to 1 Cor . 15,52 ( in the twinkling of an eye ) , the adapter alluded to Psalm 33,6 (By the word of the Lord... were established ) and Genesis 1,1 . In the second half of the sentence he used Evagrius , who in III , 45 ( S₂ ) wrote , As one cannot say that any one mind is older than another, neither are the spiritual bodies older than the practical bodies ...

Thus a sentence in which Evagrius affirmed first the

simultaneous creation of all intellects , and then the simultaneous creation of all bodies , was used by his adapter to affirm the simultaneous conception in the thought of the Creator of incorporeal and corporeal beings . Unlike Evagrius he equated angels with incorporeal beings , but he was content to let Evagrius assert that incorporeal beings were created at the same time as those of this world . We may assume this represented his own view, for although in respect of angels it was genuinely that of Evagrius , in respect of incorporeal beings it totally contradicted him. The adapter only allowed what was in harmony with his own opinion to come to expression , and through his reference to Gen. 1,1 he emphasised the point , clearly interpreting in the beginning as the commencement of all God's creation , including the incorporeal beings . This sentence may give us a clue to the theological sympathies of its author , for it does not express the general view of the Eastern Fathers . Evagrius ' doctrine of the double creation and the pre - cosmic fall comes from Origen , and the majority of Greek and Latin Fathers , while rejecting Origen's opinion that the corporeal world(s ) came into being on account of the fall of the pure spirits , agreed with 10 his teaching of the prior creation of the spiritual over the corporeal world ." According to Basil , there was a state older than the genesis of the world befitting the celestial powers , and [ Moses ] says [ the world] came into being in the beginning, not testifying that in terms of seniority of birth it was ahead of all beings ; but after the invisible and spiritual beings he narrates the beginning of the existence 11 of these which are visible and apprehensible by the senses . This was also the teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus , Gregory of Nyssa , Chrysostom and Athanasius , and among Latin authors , Novatian , Ambrose , Hilary and Jerome . The author of the Questions to Antiochus reported the two opinions that the angels were created before or on the first day without taking sides , but Cassian stated emphatically that nobody among the faithful doubts ... that God made the spiritual and celestial powers 12 before the condition of this visible matter : In asserting the creation from in the beginning of corporeal and incorporeal beings , the author of S₁1 thus stands outside the main patristic tradition . Cassian , how13 ever , perhaps because he belonged to the circle of Origenists around Evagrius > was 14 exaggerating ." The anti -Origenist Epiphanius held to the contrary that the words 15 This in the beginning implied that nothing was created before heaven and earth . view is , however , especially characteristic of the Antiochene theologians .

According

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to John Philoponus , Theodore pounced on the passages of Basil cited above and began the objection in the first of his books on Genesis thus : ' It is silly, no worse, when some of those who profess to be pious and lay claim to believe in the holy scriptures reckon that angels or other invisible powers were before the visible 16 things , as they cannot produce a single proof of this from the holy scripture ' ." Theodoret too thought it probable that the angels were created together with heaven and earth , while admitting that to say they came into being beforehand did not con17 tradict the holy word . That the angels were created together with heaven and earth was also the doctrine 18 of the Nestorian tradition , faithful to Theodore . Against it , however , the mono19 physite Philoponus followed the earlier consensus found in Basil , as did Pseudo20 Dionysius . John of Damascus also expressed his agreement with Gregory of Nazianzus that the angelic powers came into being before the rest of the creation , although he 21 recorded the opinion that they were created after the first heaven " and John's 22 view was the prevalent one among Byzantine theologians ." It was different in the West from the time of Augustine , who after much hesitation finally pronounced in favour of their creation simultaneously with heaven and earth , and he was followed 23 by Gennadius and Gregory the Great . 24 Bar-Hebraeus devoted a section of the Candelabra to the question ." As supporters of the view that the angels were created before the material world he mentioned the two Gregories [ of Nazianzus and Nyssa ] ,

Chrysostom , John of Bosra and Jacob of

Edessa , and for their simultaneous creation Epiphanius , Ephraim and Jacob of Sarug . Jacob of Sarug , if a monophysite , was one of the least partisan , and like Philoxenus had been a student at the School of Edessa (around 465 A.D. ) .

His advocacy of the

view that the angels were created simultaneously with the corporeal world , based on the interpretation of heaven and earth of Genesis as indicating angels and 25 bodies could well have been due to the influence of his teachers there . More significant is the case of Ephraim , who in his commentary on Genesis asserted that all created works followed heaven and earth , and no beings preceded them .

According

to Ephraim , Moses then confined himself to writing about the things which were between the firmament and the earth , leaving aside those above the firmament , and therefore did not tell us on what day the spiritual beings were created.26

Clearly

therefore for Ephraim the spiritual beings were created during the course of the six days , not before in the beginning . Bar-Hebraeus himself decided for the Greek consensus and gave six reasons for 27 his view , apparently following Bar- Cephas ." Of the arguments of theopposition which he presented and refuted , one has a connection with S₁ . Referring to Psalm 33,6 (By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all its hosts ) , his opponents asserted that the mention of the angels ' creation with 28 that of heaven precluded their anterior creation ." It is an argument with which the author of S₁ seems to have been familiar , to judge by the allusion to that same

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1392 passage in III , 54 (see above ) .

Finally , the position of Cyril of Alexandria on the question is clearly important , but no passage is known to me where he delivered an opinion on it . In Contra Julianum he did assert that in Gen. 1,1 Moses related the genesis of the whole creation .

Cyril , however , was arguing against the pre -existence not of angels , but

of unformed matter , and it is clear that the creation to which he was referring was the corporeal world . This is confirmed by the continuation of the passage , in which he said that Moses went on to describe how it was arranged and how each one 29 of the creatures was given its existence" " while further on he agreed that Moses 30 wrote nothing about the genesis of the angels . If Cyril had expressed an opinion on the time of their creation , it is most unlikely that it would have found no echo among the Chalcedonian or monophysite theologians . As a result of this survey it may be said that the interpretation of the opening words of Genesis as an account of the beginning of all created beings , including the angels , found only scattered support in the East outside the Antiochene and Nestorian traditions . On the other hand , although the two views on the time of the creation of the angels are clearly related to what we call the Alexandrian and 31 Antiochene theologies` , it was never regarded as a confessional matter , except 32 possibly by John Philoponus in his attack on Theodore and his followers . It therefore seems quite likely that the Syriac adapter of Evagrius was a follower of the 33 Antiochenes , but it is clearly impossible to be certain of it ." It may be that he drew his cosmogony from Ephraim , but when we remember that Jacob of Edessa and BarHebraeus rejected Ephraim's view ( see above ) and that Ephraim's teaching was particularly influential in the School of Edessa , where his commentaries served as a basis for exegetical instruction , his opinion appears more likely to have been accepted by an Antiochene than by a monophysite . Philoxenus , it is true , revered him and Jacob of Sarug taught the simultaneous creation of angels and bodies ; but both had been pupils at Edessa , and while Philoxenus no doubt came under the influence of Ephraim's 34 writings before his conversion to monophysitism Jacob's monophysitism , if real , 35 was unpolemical . Perhaps Evagrius ' adapter wrote before the outbreak of the christological controversy , or perhaps he did not take sides in it , in which cases , although it is not impossible that he was following Epiphanius , Ephraim's cosmogony might well have influenced him. Most probably it was from both Ephraim and Theodore that he derived his interpretation of Genesis . 36 Why Theodore wrote against Origen , and their two theologies seem poles apart . should a disciple of Theodore have sought to interpret for the Syrians such an Origenistic work as Evagrius ' Centuries ? Two points call for mention . First , Theodore was not the only theologian held in honour by the Syriac dyophysites . Athanasius and the Cappadocians were also held in the highest esteem . The translation of their works into Syriac was undoubtedly begun during the fifth

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century37, and it was one of the complaints of Cyril against the ' Orientals ' that 38 they placed Theodore on an equal footing with these venerated authorities . Yet Theodore could be critical of Basil's Origenistically- coloured cosmogony , as in the 39 text cited by Philoponus . Evagrius had been a pupil of Basil and Gregory of 41 Nazianzus 40 and Gregory's high regard for him was no secret . The Syriac ' Theodorians ' , therefore , would have expected to find something of value in Gregory's respected pupil , although , as with the Cappadocians themselves , any Origenistic elements would have had to be ' corrected ' from the standpoint of Theodore's theology . Secondly , despite their radical differences , there are also similarities between the Origenist and Antiochene conceptions of the world . The former sees it as consequent upon the fall of the spiritual intelligences , and the latter as part of the original will of the Creator .

But for both of them this life is a divine pedagogy ,

and after man's education in this world he is to be transferred to the spiritual , invisible state . As the doctrine of the two katastaseis was at the heart of Theodore's thought , the teaching of Evagrius about man's training for the goal of life in the spiritual state could take its place in the Antiochene scheme , if Origenistic doctrines such as the pre - cosmic fall and the multiplicity of worlds and bodies were expurgated . The value of Evagrius for the Antiochenes was his vision of this state as a preparation for the future one .

Evagrius ' Origenism comes

to expression in a sentence such as II , 33 : As for the objects of material knowledge, some of them are first and some second; the first are corruptible in power, but the second in power and in act .

This is rewritten in S ,: The growth of the knowledge

of rational beings is in the vision of corruptible and incorruptible beings ; its training in the corruptible , its perfection in the incorruptible . Here Evagrius 'with clipped wings ' ( Guillaumont ) presents in his own terminology Theodore's doctrine of the two katastaseis - the first for man's training , the second for his 42 enjoyment on its perfect completion ." And thus if it was under the inspiration of Theodore that the author of S , made his adaptation of Evagrius , and through the influence of the School of Edessa that his work became part of the heritage of all Syriac Christianity , then indirectly even the monophysites were indebted for it to the bishop of Mopsuestia .

REFERENCES 1. Cf. A. Guillaumont , Les ' Kephalaia gnostica ' d'Evagre le Pontique et l'histoire de l'origénisme chez les Grecs et chez les Syriens ( Paris , 1962 ) . The two versions are edited by Guillaumont in Patrologia orientalis 28,1 ( Paris , 1958 ) . 2. Guillaumont , op . cit . , pp . 200-231 . 3. ' Philoxenus and the Old Syriac Version of Evagrius ' Centuries ' , Oriens Christianus 64 ( 1980) , pp . 65-81 .

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4. Cf. A. de Halleux , Philoxène de Mabbog . Sa vie, ses écrits, sa théologie (Louvain , 1963 ) , pp . 27-30 . 5. Catalogue 61 ( ed . J.S. Assemani , Bibliotheca orientalis 3,1 [ Rome , 1725 ] , p. 85) . 6. Translation in A. Scher , ' Joseph Hazzâyâ , écrivain syriaque du VIIIe siècle ' , Rivista degli studi orientali 3 ( 1910 ) , pp . 60-61 from MS . Seert 79 ( now lost ) , and in Guillaumont , op . cit . , pp . 215-221 from MS . Diarbekir 100 ( now in the possession of the patriarchate of Mosul ) . 7. Cf. Guillaumont , op . cit . , pp . 217-227 . 8. Guillaumont , op . cit . , p . 222 , suggests a confusion of two translators of Aristotle . With Joseph Hazzaya , who identifies Josephus with Caiaphas and perhaps even with Aesop ( Scher , op . cit . , pp . 59-60 ) , almost anything is possible ! 9. On the allusion to Ps . 33,6 , cf. below , p . 1391 . 10. On the following cf. G. Bareille , ' Angélologie d'après les Pères ' , Dictionnaire de théologie catholique I ( Paris , 1903 ) , cols . 1193-1195 and G. Tavard , Die Engel (Freiburg i /B , 1968 ) . 11. Hom. in hex. 1,5 ( ed . S. Giet , Sources chrétiennes 26 [ Paris 1949 ] , pp . 104 , 108 ) . 12. Cf. the references in Bareille , op . cit . , cols . 1193-1194 and Tavard , op . cit. , P. 41 . 13. Cf. Guillaumont , op . cit . , pp . 77-80 . 14. Bareille , op . cit . , col . 1194 . 15. Haeres . LXV , 5 ( P.G. 42 , col . 20 ) . 16. De opificio mundi 1,8 ( ed . W. Reichardt , Bibliotheca scriptorum graecorum et romanorum Teubneriana 910 [ Leipzig , 1897 ] , pp . 16-17 ) . 17. Quaest. in Gen. III - IV ( P.G. 80 , cols . 81-84 ) . 18. Cf. W. Wolska , La Topographie chrétienne de Cosmas Indicopleus tès . Théologie et science au VIe siècle ( Paris , 1962 ) , p . 81 and T. Jansma , ' Investigation into the Early Syrian Fathers on Genesis ' , Oudtestamentische Studiën XII , pp . 69-181 (Leiden , 1958 ) , pp . 93-94 , 97-100 . Cf. also Babai's interpretation of Centuries III , 54 ( W. Frankenberg , Euagrius Pontikus ( Berlin , 1912 ) , pp . 224 [ 5 ] -226 [ 7 ] ) with the texts cited in Jansma , op . cit . , pp . 99-100 . 19. De opificio mundi 1,8 ( Reichardt , op . cit . , pp . 17-18 ) . 20. Cf. Bareille , op . cit . , cols . 1194-1195 . 21. De fide orthodoxa II , 3 ( P.G. 94 , col . 873 ) . 22. Cf. Theodore of Studium , Or . VI , 1 ( P.G. 99 , col . 729 ) and Tavard , op . cit . , p . 55 . For a contrary opinion , cf. Gennadius of Constantinople , P.G. 94 , col . 873 , n . 53. 23. Cf. Bareille , op . cit . , cols . 1194-1195 . 24. Cand. sanct . V , III , 1,1 ( ed . A. Torbay , Patrologia orientalis 30 , 4 [ Paris , 1963 ] , pp . 658 [ 9 ] -666 [ 7 ] ) . 25. Homiliae selectae Mar Jacobi Sarugensis , ed . P. Bedjan ( Leipzig , 1907 ) , III , p . 17 Bar-Hebraeus , ed . Torbay , op . cit . , p . 660 [ 1 ] . 26. Comm. in Gen. I ( ed . R.M. Tonneau , Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium 152[ 3] /Syr . 71 [ 2 ] ( Louvain , 1955 ) , pp . 8-9 [ 5-6 ] ) . Cf. S. Hidal , Interpretatio Syriaca. Die Kommentare des hl . Ephräm des Syrers zu Genesis und Exodus ( Lund , 1974 ) , p . 67 . 27. Cf. Torbay , op . cit . , p . 661 , n . 31 . 28. Ibid . , p . 664[ 5] . 29. P.G. 76 , col . 584 . 30. Ibid. , col . 649 . 31. The Antiochene inclusion of the angels in the creation described by Genesis implied not only that the angels did not exist prior to in the beginning , but also that they were spatially enclosed by heaven and earth , which to the Alexandrian Philoponus was absurd . Cf. Jansma , op . cit . , pp . 97-99 and Wolska , op . cit. , p.179 . 32. Cf. above , p . 1391 and on the general question of Philoponus ' controversy with Theodore's followers Wolska , op . cit . , pp . 161-179 .

The Syriac Adapter of Evagrius' Centuries

1395

33. None of the other changes made by the author of S1 to the text of Evagrius (examined in Guillaumont , op . cit . , pp . 231-258 ) enables us , to the best of my knowledge , to identify his theological sympathies , apart from his opposition to Origenism . 34. Cf. above , n . 4 . 35. Cf. recently R.C. Chesnut , Three Monophysite Christologies ( Oxford , 1976 ) , pp. 6-7. 36. Cf. on what follows Guillaumont , op . cit . , pp . 183-185 . 37. Cf. A. Baumstark , Geschichte der Syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluss der Christlich-Palästinensischen Texte ( Bonn , 1922 ) , pp . 75-82 . 38. Cf. R. Devreesse , Essai sur Théodore de Mopsueste ( Città del Vaticano , 1948 ) , p . 154 . 39. Cf. above , p . 1391 . 40. Cf. Guillaumont , op . cit . , pp . 48-50 . 41. Cf. ibid . , p . 49 , n . 9 . 42. Cf. , for example , Comm . in Rom. 11,15 in K. Staab , Pauluskommentare aus der griechischen Kirche ( Munster i /W , 1933 ) , p . 157 , 23-26 : ... being mortal in the present life, in order that training in virtue may first happen to us, as is right, then, on a perfect issue of the things learnt, we may receive the joy of the things to come... ; and on the fidelity of the Nestorians to this doctrine , Wolska , op . cit. , pp . 54-60 , 73-84 .

A Remarkable Shift in the 4th Century Creeds An Analysis of the Armenian , Syriac , and Greek Evidence Gabriele Winkler

Collegeville, Minnesota

N the classic studies on the development of the creeds the Armenian evidence has Inever been given the importance it actually deserves ." There only exists a limited study on the Armenian symbolum : that of the Armenian Mechitarist Catergian . Since I could not agree with Catergian's findings concerning the passage about the descent of the Holy Spirit at the river Jordan , I tried to investigate the Armenian evidence 3 anew . Here is a very brief outline of my investigation : 1. I plan to delineate the problem and in doing so I shall also propose an hypothesis , and 2. I hope to offer good reason for my hypothesis by comparing the Armenian creed with Greek and Syrian credal formulae , 3. We have to ask for the reason of the deliberate change in the Oriental creeds of the 4th century . A. The Problem All the Armenian creeds , be it in the baptismal rite or in the Eucharistic Liturgy , or in other ceremonies , mention Jesus ' baptism ." None of the other Christian creeds , which are still in use , have anything to say about the manifestation of the Holy Spirit at the river Jordan when Jesus was baptized .

The problem is : Does the

Armenian creed represent a very old tradition or is this passage just a peculiarity of the Armenian Church? I believe that this particular passage of the Armenian creed represents the earliest stage in the credal formulae concerning the manifestation of the Holy Spirit . B. The Armenian symbolum and its Greek and Syrian counterparts The Armenian creed has the following wording :

1396

A Remarkable Shift in the 4th Century Creeds

1.

Credimus et in Sanctum Spiritum...

2.

qui descendit in Jordanem

1397

3.

proclamavit apostolum [ seu : missum ] ... The ' Sent One ' is in Armenian arak'eal which is the equivalent of the Greek ἀπόστολος .

It seems that this singular form , apostolus , was deliberately changed

into a plural in the 4th century , thus altering the entire sense of the passage . In the earlier version it was the ' Sent One ' , άлóоTolos to whom the Spirit testified , whereas in the later version it is the ' Sent Ones ' , the apostles (proclamavit in apostolis ). Let us look into that in greater detail since it is not the only change which occurred in that passage . The Armenian creed betrays close affinities with several 4th century Greek creeds , namely , the Hermeneia , the second symbolum of Epiphanius ( henceforth referred to as Epiphanius II ) and the so- called Ekthesis ? The Hermeneia says that the Holy Spirit descended on the Jordan and preached to the 8 apostles : καταβὰν ἐπὶ τὸν Ἰορδάνην κηρῦξαν ἀποστόλοις . The second creed of Epiphanius differs from the Hermeneia in that passage only insofar as it has another verb ( and a preposition ) : κηρύξαν ἀποστόλοις is replaced by λαλοῦν ( ἐν ἀποστόλοις ) . This minor change does not affect the basic meaning : both , the Hermeneia and Epiphanius II , agree that the Holy Spirit descended on the river Jordan and preached (or spoke ) through the apostles . In the Armenian creed the Holy Spirit descended on the Jordan to proclaim the one who is sent (proclamavit apostolum ) , that is Jesus ; whereas the Hermeneia and Epiphanius II agree that the Holy Spirit descended on the Jordan , but no further reason is given for this descent of the Holy Spirit : the creed continues with the statement that the Holy Spirit preached ( or spoke ) through the apostles . The Ekthesis 10 goes one step further than the Hermeneia and Epiphanius II.

The

relevant passage closes with the statement that the Holy Spirit descended on the river Jordan . No reference to Jesus as the ' Sent One ' or to the apostles follows that passage . 11 It is not without interest that the creed of Jerusalem and the first creed of Epiphanius ( Epiphanius I ) 12 mention neither the descent of the Holy Spirit on the river Jordan nor His proclamation of Jesus as the ' Sent One ' nor His preaching through the apostles . It is my belief that the reference to the manifestation of the Holy Spirit at Jesus' baptism was deliberately dropped . In contrast to the creed of Jerusalem and Epiphanius I , the creed of the 13 Apostolic Constitutions" refers to the acting of the Holy Spirit in the apostles but not at the passage in question .

More important , however , than this minor dif-

ference is the fact that the Apostolic Constitutions also agree with the creed of Jerusalem and Epiphanius I in keeping quiet about the Spirit's role at Jesus ' baptism .

1398

G. Winkler

In order to make the survey on all these sources accessible , I present them together in a chart :

15

Armeniacum 14 1. Credimus et in Sanctum Spiritum ... 2. qui descendit in Jordanem 3. proclamavit missum

Ekthesis17 1.

(de more )

2. καὶ καταβὰν ἐπὶ τὸν ᾿Ιορδάνην

3.

Hermeneia 1.

(de more ) 2. ( καὶ ) καταβὰν ἐπὶ τὸν Ιορδάνην

3. κηρῦξαν ἀποστόλοις ( or : λαλοῦν ἐν ἀποστόλοις ) Epiphanius 118 /Jerusalem19 /Antioch20 1. (de more ) 2. (deest ) 3.

(deest )

/Epiphanius 1116

(deest)

There can be no doubt that all the credal formulae so far investigated derive 21 from a common source . I assume that the Armenian creed with its reference to the descent of the Holy Spirit on the river Jordan in order to proclaim Jesus as the ' sent One ' is the closest to the original version . The next stage is given with the Hermeneia and Epiphanius II : The Holy Spirit descends on the river Jordan , but then there is a sudden change of tack . Instead of proclaiming the ' Sent One ' , the creed continues with the statement that the Holy Spirit preached ( or spoke ) through the apostles . The singular άnóστolos is changed into the plural . The Ekthesis constitutes what is probably the third stage : The entire third line is dropped . The Holy Spirit descends

- whether referring to Jesus or the apostles

on the river Jordan , but nothing more is said about the descent . The final development is shown in the creed of Jerusalem , Epiphanius I and the Apostolic Constitutions : both line two ( the allusion to the descent of the Holy Spirit on the river Jordan ) and line three ( His proclamation of Jesus , or His preaching through the apostles ) are dropped . A closer study of parallel passages in Armenian , Syrian and Greek sources has convinced me that if there is a crucial difference in the Armenian text , then the Armenian text very often gives the older version . Of course this in itself is not decisive . But it does make one cautious when one stumbles on a crucial variant reading in an Armenian witness .

There are more important reasons for assuming an

early stratum in the Armenian creed and a deliberate later change : 1. The Armenian symbolum with its statement of the Holy Spirit's role at Jesus ' baptism is corroborated by very early Syrian texts .

For example , Ignatius of 22 Antioch has included Jesus ' baptism in his regula fidei . “ 2. Later Theodore of Mopsuestia in his allusions to the creed refers as well to 23 Jesus ' anointing with the Holy Spirit at his baptism . 3. Moreover even at the epiclesis of a number of Syrian anaphoras , the Holy

A Remarkable Shift in the 4th Century Creeds

1399

Spirit manifests himself par excellence at Jesus ' baptism , and at the same time the text of the epiclesis is silent about the role of the Holy Spirit at Jesus ' incarnation! To illustrate this let me quote the anaphora of St. James : Send upon us and upon these gifts thine Holy Spirit , the Lord and Life - giver ...Who descended in the likeness of a 24 dove upon our Lord Jesus Christ in the river Jordan . It is rather strange to include Jesus ' baptism in an epiclesis of the anaphora . This only makes sense if we interpret the coming of the Holy Spirit at Jesus ' baptism as the manifestation par excellence of the Divine , creative presence . What can we deduce from this Syrian evidence ? 1. I believe we are right to assume that Jesus ' baptism once formed an essential part in the early Syrian credal formulae , and that Jesus ' baptism was considered the manifestation of the Holy Spirit . 2. We also may assume that the Armenian creed derives from Syria. 3. The reference to Jesus ' baptism in the epiclesis of the Syrian anaphoras also underlines the importance of this Divine manifestation . This brings me to my last point and the conclusion .

What are the reasons for

the change in the Greek and Syrian creeds of the 4th century ? A number of scholars 25 like Harnack" Kattenbusch and Hahn have already pointed out how the early Christian churches emphasized the role of the Holy Spirit at the mystery of the incarnation in an effort to invalidate the other Divine manifestation at the river Jordan . Christological disputes resulted in considerable efforts to clarify Jesus ' relationship to his Father . Certain powerful groups within the early church stressed the beginning of Jesus ' Divine Sonship at the river Jordan : Jesus became the Christ and was proclaimed the Son of God only by virtue of the Spirit who descended on Jesus at his baptism , whereas the orthodox parties insisted on the pre -existence of the Logos and his miraculous birth by the Virgin Mary through the power of the Holy 26 Spirit . In order to avoid and finally eliminate the widespread theory of Jesus ' subordination to the Father and his adoption as the Divine Son at his baptism , the originally strong references to the role of the Holy Spirit at Jesus ' baptism were slowly glossed over until at last Jesus ' baptism was entirely dropped from the creed . The shift is also reflected in the 4th century creeds such as the Hermeneia , the Ekthesis , the symbols attributed to Epiphanius and the credal formulae of Antioch and Jerusalem . The original Syrian shape of the creed is preserved in the Armenian symbolum : 1. Credimus et in Sanctum Spiritum ... 2. qui descendit in Jordanem 3. proclamavit apostolum [ seu : missum ] . The first stage of the alteration is seen with the change from the singular into

1400

G. Winkler

the plural of the word apostolus ; thus altering the entire meaning of the sentence ( for example , Hermeneia and Epiphanius II) . In the second stage the reference to the apostles is dropped from this particular passage .

Hence there remains only the rather awkward allusion to the Spirit's

descent on the Jordan ; without however giving any reason for that descent (s . Ekthesis ) . At the third stage even the allusion to the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Jordan is omitted ( s . Jerusalem and Antioch ) . At the Patristic Conference Professor Hall pointed out that Fragment 15 of Melito 27 which further corroborates my assumption

of Sardis also mentions Jesus ' baptism

that Jesus ' descent into the river Jordan once formed an integral part of the early profession of faith .

Moreover also Ps . -Hippolytus ' treatise on faith ( preserved in Georgian ) refers to the descent of the Spirit on the Jordan'28 2 and we find extensive reference to the coming of the Spirit upon Jesus at his baptism in the Armenian commentary on the liturgy by Nerses Lambronac'i.29

REFERENCES 1. F. Kattenbusch , Das Apostolische Symbol I ( Leipzig , 1894 ) , p . 179. A. Hahn und G.L. Hahn , Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der alten Kirche . Dritte vielfach veränderte Auflage mit einem Anhang von A. Harmack ( Hildesheim , 1962 = Nachdruck der Ausgabe von Breslau , 1897 ) , pp . 134ff. 2. J. Catergian , De fidei symbolo quo Armenii utuntur observationes ( opus posthumum, Vienna , 1893 ) . 3. Cf. G. Winkler , ' Eine bemerkenswerte Stelle im armenischen Glaubensbekenntnis : Credimus et in Sanctum Spiritum qui descendit in Jordanem proclamavit missum ' , Oriens Christianus 63 ( 1979 ) , pp . 130-162 . 4. Ibid. 5. Cf. H. Denzinger ( 33. ed . Freiburg , 1965 ) , pp . 32-33 ( nr . 46 ) ; Hahn , op . cit . , pp . 137-139 ; Catergian , op . cit . , p . 31 ( II ) . 6. Cf. Denzinger , pp . 31-32 ( nr . 44 ) ; Catergian , op . cit . , p . 31 ( III ) ; Hahn , op . cit . , pp . 135-137 . 7. Cf. Kattenbusch , op . cit. , I , p . 312 . 8. Cf. n . 5 . 9. Cf. n . 6 . 10. Cf. n . 7 . 11. Cf. Denzinger , p . 30 ( nr . 41 ) ; Hahn , op . cit . , pp . 132-134 ; J.N.D. Kelly , Early Christian Creeds ( London , 19723 ) , p . 184 ; P.G. 33 col . 534 . 12. Cf. Denzinger , p . 31 ( nr . 42 ) ; Hahn , op . cit . , pp . 134-135 . 13. Cf. F.X. Funk , Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum ( Turin , 1964 = photomech . reprint of the edition of Paderborn , 1905 ) , p . 446 ; Denzinger , p . 37 ( nr . 60 ) ; Kelly , op . cit . , p . 187. 14. Cf. n . 3 . 15. Cf. n . 5 . 16. Cf. n . 6 . 17. Cf. n . 7 . 18. Cf. n . 12 . 19. Cf. n . 11 .

A Remarkable Shift in the 4th Century Creeds

1401

20. Cf. n . 13 . 21. Cf. n . 3. 22. Cf. ed . P.Th. Camelot , Ignace d'Antioche, Lettres . Texte grec, introduction, traduction et notes ( Paris , 1944 ) , pp . 63-65 , 120-121 ; Kattenbusch , op . cit . , II , p . 310 , 311 n . 63 , 312 , 314 , 317. Also passages from Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria ; Kattenbusch , op . cit . , II , pp . 47 , 49 , 110 . 23. Cf. Hahn , op . cit . , p . 303 ( latin version , p . 307) . 24. Cf. F.E. Brightman , Liturgies Eastern and Western ( Oxford , 1896 ) , pp . 88-89 . 25. A. von Harnack , Dogmengeschichte ( Tübingen , 1931 ) , pp . 51-52 ; H. Lietzmann , Geschichte der alten Kirche II ( Berlin , 1953 ) , pp . 115ff . 26. Cf. n . 3 ; eadem , ' Zur früchristlichen Tauftradition in Syrien und Armenien unter Einbezug der Taufe Jesu ' , Ostkirchliche Studien 27 ( 1978 ) , pp . 281-306 . 27. Cf. S. G. Hall , Melito of Sardis on Pascha and Fragments . Texts and Translations (Oxford , 1979 ) , pp . 82-83 . 28. Cf. G. Garitte , ' Le traité géorgien " Sur la foi " attribué à Hippolyte ' , Le Muséon 78 ( 1965 ) , p . 148 . 29. Xorhrdacout'iwn srbazan pataragi bacatrowt'ezmb tearm Nersesi Lambronacwoc (Jerusalem , 1842 ) , pp . 59-60 . The passage in Nerses ' commentary was pointed out to me by my student , Rev. Kh . Barsamian .

Author Index

Albert , M. Alexander , J.S.

Alexe , S.C.

1351 3 1049

Cardman , Francine Chilton , B.D. Clark , Elizabeth A.

18 643

412 417

Arduini , Maria Lodovica

615

Crouse , R.

Armstrong , A.H.

397

Crouzel , Henri

859

Aubineau , M.

345

Cusack , Pearse A.

472

Babcock , W.S.

1209

Dalmais , Irénée -Henri Daly , Robert J.

26 872 422

Baldwin , B.

545 626

Datema , C.

Balfour , I.L.S.

785

Daunton-Fear , A.

648

Davies , P.R.

652

Badewien , J.

Barnard , L.W.

9

1060

552

Decret , F. Dehandschutter , B.

Bartelink , G.J.M.

463

Dennis , T.J.

Bastiaensen , A.A.R.

790

Des Places , Edouard

1065 81

Baumeister , T.

631

Dewart , Joanne McW .

1221

Barr , Jane

268

Barringer , Robert J.

Berthold , H.

14

Dockrill , D.W.

659

427

Blair , H.A. Blanc , Cécile

263

843

Donovan , Mary Ann Drobner , H.

1073

Booth , Edward G.T.

407

Dumortier , J.B.

1159

Breward , I.

352

Brooks , E. C.

357 1216

Bubacz , B.

El-Khoury , N. Escribano -Alberca , I.

Burnish , R.F.G.

558

Etchegaray Cruz , A.

Burns , J. Patout

274

Evans , Gillian R.

Burns , Yvonne

278 1403

1084

1359

1095 1245

440

1404 Ferguson , E. Finn , T.M. Finney , P. C. Forlin Patrucco , Marcella

Author Index 669 , 677

31 684

1102

Frank , K.S.

477

Frend , W.H.C.

38 879

Früchtel , E.

Garcia-Allen , C.A. Gasparro , Giulia S. Gianotto , C.

1251

Le Boulluec , A. Leclercq , P. Ledegang , F.

907

Lenox-Conyngham , A. Lienhard , Joseph T.

519

Lorenz , B.

Lupieri , E.

803

Luttikhuizen , G.P.

808

897

209

McGuckin , Paul

813

Magne , J.

223

Marcovich , M.

714

Marenbon , J.

446

Mathieu , J.M.

1115

290

Hall , S.G.

796

Mazzucco , Clementina

Hallonsten , G.

799

Méhat , A.

Halton , T.

688

Hanson , A.T.

694

Messana , V.

97 , 904

Meyer , R.T.

Hanson , R.P.C. Hardy , E.R. Hayes , Walter M. Henry , P. Hinson , E.G. Holland , D. L.

116

1108 123 , 491 697 214

House , D.K.

1258

Hunt , R.W.

365

Janssens , Bernadette Johnson , A.E.

1264 127

Guérard , Marie- Gabrielle

Greeley , Dolores

62

Louth , A.

93 1163

Gładyszewski , L.

707 1169

Meredith , Anthony

317

719 1120

325 66

Montserrat-Torrents , J. Moreton , M.B.

231

Moreton , M.J.

575

Mühlenberg , E.

136

569

Norris , R.A.

1176 147

North , J.L.

1024

Oroz Reta , José

1269

Osiek , Carolyn

725

Natali , A.

1366 702

Kannengiesser , Charles

981

Kelly , J.F.

506

Patterson , L.G.

996 1018

Peterson , R.M.

523

Pettersen , A.

1030

Klein , R.

Kolp , A.L.

Laham , Lotfi Lauras , Antoine

565

912 , 924

Principe , Walter H.

1291

Procopé , J.F.

1300

55

Lawless , George P.

511

Leanza , Sandro

300

Riggi , C. Rorem , P.E.

160 453

Author Index

Rouwhorst , G.A.M.

1374

Rozemond , Keetje

591

Ullmann , Wolfgang

1405 966

Vaggione , R.P.

181

Schindler , A.

1306

Van Banning , Josef

382

Scholer , D. M.

821

Van der Kooi , J.F.

1343

Signer , M.A.

333

Van Loveren , A.E.D.

528

Slusser , M.

169

Vian , G.M.

1041

Smulders , P.

372

Voicu , S.J.

1198

Speller , Lydia

72

Von Schönborn , Christoph

188

Squire , A.K.

338

Starowieyski , M.

731

Ward , Benedicta

Stockmeier , P. Studer , Basil

829

Watt , J.W.

1388

1316

Weijenborg , Reginald

1145

Sykes , D.A.

1127

Wendebourg , Dorothea

194

Wiles , M. F.

750

594

Wilhelm-Hooijbergh , Ann E.

756

176

Winkler , Gabriele

Talley , T.J.

Tanghe , W. V. Tanner , R. G. Ten Napel , E.

836 , 1185

1381

760

Winslow , D.F.

765 777

944

Wischmeyer , W.K.

Trevijano Etcheverria , R.

243

Wright , D. F.

Trigg , J.W.

959

Tsirpanlis , C.N. Tuilier , A.

251

1396

Winling , R.

Torjesen , Karen J.

Tripp , D.H.

539

1149

Young , Frances M.

199

Zelzer , Michaela

388

1131

738

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

3 9015 01020 2094