The Patristic Tradition on the Sinlessness of Jesus
Demetrios BATHRELLOS , Athens, Greece
ABSTRACT In the 19th and especially the 20th century, many theologians, for the most part Protestant, argued that Christ bore a fallen, sinful humanity. Moreover, some of them claimed that this view reflects the patristic teaching. In this paper, I provide and comment on quotations from several Fathers of the Church, which clearly indicate that according to the fundamental theological attitude of the ‘patristic mind’ the humanity of Christ was sinless, holy, and deified on account of its unity with the divinity of the Logos. I
The question of the sinlessness of Jesus has at least three dimensions. The first concerns the question of whether Jesus bore a fallen, sinful human nature, namely a human nature that has been deformed by the sinful passions that mark post-lapsarian humanity in general. The second dimension has to do with the question of whether Jesus could sin. The third is related to the question of whether Jesus did in fact sin. In this paper I will address only the first of these questions.
II
Until the 19th century the sinlessness of Jesus was for the vast majority of Christians self-evident. From that century on, however, serious doubts or even open denials of this belief began to dominate the thought of certain theologians, who thought that the belief that the human nature of Jesus was fallen, and in fact sinful, was part and parcel of the belief in his authentic authentic humanity. humanity.1 In the 19th century Edward Irving was a pioneer of this view in Britain. 2 In the 1
These theologians did not adhere to the patristic view, expressed for instance by John of Damascus, which distinguishes between blameful and blameless passions and attributes to Jesus only the latter, but considered him as bearer of the former too. 2 For a presentation and analysis of Irving’s theology, see, for instance, C.G. Strachan, The Pentecostal Theology of Edward Irving (London, 1973).
Studia Patristica LXIII, Patristica LXIII, 235-241. © Peeters Publishers, 2013.
236
D. B ATHRELLOS
20th century great Protestant minds, such as Karl Barth,3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer,4 Wolfhart Pannenberg,5 T.F. Torrance,6 Colin Gunton7 and others, but also some Roman Catholic8 and even Orthodox theologians,9 espoused versions of the view that the humanity of Jesus was fallen and sinful. Some proponents of this view, Karl Barth for instance, believed that the theology of the Early Church points in a different direction.10 Some others, however, for instance T.F. Torrance,11 James Torrance,12 and Thomas Weinandy,13 claimed that the aforementioned view is already to be found in the Fathers. The purpose of this article is to show that the case is exactly the opposite, namely that the Fathers of the Church believed that the humanity of Christ was sinless. The phrase ‘the Fathers of the Church’ is of course an obvious overgeneralization. In this short paper it is not possible to cite more than a few relevant testimonies from just a few Fathers. However, the selected quotations that will be presented will make manifest the fundamental theological attitude of the ‘patristic mind’ in a way that will not allow, I hope, much scope for further doubt. III
I will begin with a lengthy passage from Tertullian’s De Tertullian’s De carne Christi Christi.. Our contention, however, is not that the flesh of sin, but that the sin of the flesh, was brought to nought in Christ … according to the apostle’s authority when he says 3
Dogmatics, I.2, The Doctrine of the Word of God , trans. G.T. Thomson Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, and Harold Knight (London, 1956), 151-5. 4 Christology,, intr. by Edwin H. Robertson and trans. by John Bowden Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christology (London, 1966), 110-8. 5 M an,, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus Pannenberg, Jesus – God and Man (London, 1968), 354-64. 6 See, for instance, T.F. Torrance, ‘The Place of Christology Christology in Biblical and Dogmatic TheolChristology gy for Karl Barth Barth (London, 1956), 18 and ogy’, in T.H.L. Parker (ed.), Essays in Christolo T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Grand (Grand Rapids, 1983), 48. 7 Colin Gunton, ‘Two Dogmas Revisited: Edward Irving’s Christology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 41 Theology 41 (1988), 359-76. 8 Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter , trans. For instance, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Balthasar, Mysterium with an introduction by Aidan Nichols, o.p. (Grand Rapids, 1993), 20, 22, 90, and 119, and Thomas G. Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ (Edinburgh, 1993), passim 1993), passim.. 9 See, for instance, Bishop Bishop Kallistos [Ware] of Diokleia, Diokleia, The Humanity of Christ , The Fourth Constantinople Lecture, 29/30 November 1984 (Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, 1985) and The Orthodox Way (Oxford, Way (Oxford, 1979), 99-100. 10 Dogmatics, I.2 (1956), 153. K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 11 Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (London, Church (London, 1991), 161-8. 12 James B. Torrance, ‘The Vicarious Humanity of Christ’, Christ’, in Thomas F. Torrance (ed.),The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed A.D. 381 (Edinburgh, 1981), 140-1. 13 Flesh (1993), 23-38. T. Weinandy, In Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh (1993),
The Patristic Tradition on the Sinlessness of Jesus
237
He brought to nought sin in the flesh flesh..14 For in another place also15 he says that Christ was in the likeness of the flesh of sin … The apostle will have us understand by ‘the likeness of sinful flesh’ that the flesh of Christ, itself not sinful, was the like of that to which sin did belong, and is to be equated with Adam in species but not in defect. From this text we also prove that in Christ there was that flesh whose nature is in man sinful … while in Christ that same flesh exists without sin which in man did not exist without sin … ‘In that case’, you will reply, ‘if it was our flesh Christ clothed himself with, Christ’s flesh was sinful’ … [The truth though is that] by clothing himself with our flesh he made it his own, and by making it his own he made it non-sinful. 16
Tertullian’s aim in this passage is to defend the reality of Christ’s flesh. This, however, does not lead him to affirm that this flesh was sinful. It was real human flesh, but because it was Christ’s, it was also non-sinful. From Tertullian we will move on to Gregory of Nyssa. I will quote a few passages from Gregory’s Catechetical Gregory’s Catechetical Oration, Oration, which, according to its editor, James Herbert Srawley, ‘exhibits perhaps better than any other single work the characteristic features of the mind and thought of its author’.17 In this work Gregory tackles, inter alia, alia, the objection that it would be unworthy for God to unite himself with human nature. To this Gregory replies that in the instance of virtue, it cannot be said that any created thing can be conceived of as contrary to it, but only the idea of vice. If, then, our Faith preached that the Deity had been begotten under vicious circumstances, an opportunity would have been afforded the objector of running down our belief, as that of persons who propounded incongruous and absurd opinions with regard to the Divine nature. For, indeed, it were blasphemous to assert that the Deity, Which is very wisdom, goodness, incorruptibility, and every other exalted thing in thought or word, had undergone change to the contrary. If, then, God is real and essential virtue, and no mere existence of any kind is logically opposed to virtue, but only vice is so; and if the Divine birth was not into vice, but into human existence; and if only vicious weakness is unseemly and shameful – and with such weakness neither was God born, nor had it in His nature to be born – why are they scandalized at the confession that God came into touch with human nature, when in relation to virtue no contrariety whatever is observable in the organization of man? For neither Reason, nor Understanding, nor Receptivity for science, nor any other like quality proper to the essence of man, is opposed to the principle of virtue.18
Further down in the same work, Gregory writes that ‘the Deity is separate only from evil, and … there is no nature in evil, and … the mystery declares that 14
Romans 8:3 Romans 8:3 Ibid . 16 Christi 16, Tertullian, De Tertullian, De carne Christi 16, 10-25. I have used the translation of Ernest Evans, TertulIncarnation (London, 1956), 57. lian’s Treatise on the Incarnation (London, 17 James Herbert Srawley, The Catechetical Oration of Gregory of Nyssa (Cambridge, 1903), v. 18 Oration 15 (PG 45, 48D-49A), and in J.H. Srawley, Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration The Catechetical Oration (1903), 65.12-66.11. Barth expresses his disagreement with what Dogmatics, I.2 [1956], 153). Gregory writes in this passage (K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, 15
238
D. B ATHRELLOS
God was born in man but not in evil.’19 A little later, Gregory argues that the body of Christ ‘was sanctified by the inhabitation of the Word that tabernacled in the flesh’.20 Again he claims that ‘the grace of the Word rendered his body holy.’21 This was, for Gregory, in accordance with the purpose of the Incarnation, for ‘the God who was manifested infused Himself into perishable humanity for this purpose, viz. that by this communion with Deity mankind might at the same time be deified.’22 What is made clear by the above quotations is that for Gregory of Nyssa the humanity of Christ was not only sinless, but also holy, and in fact deified on account of its unity with the divinity of the Word. I will move on to a quotation from St Augustine. In his De his De trinitate, trinitate , Augustine argues that God judged it better both to take upon Him man through whom to conquer the enemy of the human race from the race itself that had been conquered; and yet to do this of a virgin, whose conception, not flesh but spirit, not lust but faith, preceded. Nor did that concupiscence of the flesh intervene, by which the rest of men, who derive original sin, are propagated and conceived; but holy virginity became pregnant, not by conjugal intercourse, but by faith – lust being utterly absent – so that that which was born from the root of the first man might derive only the origin of race, not also of guilt. For there was born not a nature corrupted by the contagion of transgression, but the one only remedy of all such corruptions. There was born, I say, a Man having nothing at all, and to have nothing at all, of sin; through whom they were to be born again so as to be freed from sin, who could not be born without sin.23
Let us move on to St Cyril of Alexandria, whose Christology proved a catalyst for subsequent Christological developments. There are too many quotations by Saint Cyril that could be used as unambiguous indications of his firm belief in the sinlessness of the humanity of Christ. I will have to restrict myself, however, to quoting only a few. So, in his work Christ is One, One, Cyril writes: ‘How 24 did he [Christ] “condemn sin in the flesh”? It was not possible for an ordinary man, whose nature like ours was tyrannized by sin, to condemn sin. But because 19
Oration 28 (PG 45, 73A-B), and J.H. Srawley, The Cate Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 28 chetical Oration (1903), 106.4-7. 20 Oration 37 (PG 45, 96D), and J.H. Srawley, The CatechetGregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 37 ical Oration (1903), 149.5-6. 21 Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 37 Oration 37 (PG 45, 97A), and J.H. Srawley, The Catechetical Oration (1903), 149.8-9. 22 Oration 37 (PG 45, 97B), and J.H. Srawley, The Catechetical Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 37 Oration (1903), 151.11-152.1. For the quotations from Gregory of Nyssa I have used the translation Library (on some occasions slightly modified) from Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (eds), A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church II/5 (Edinburgh, 1892). 23 trinitate XIII Augustine, De Augustine, De trinitate XIII 18 (23). I have used the translation from Philip Schaff (ed.), A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church Church I/3 I/3 (Edinburgh, 1887). 24 Romans 8:3. Romans 8:3.
The Patristic Tradition on the Sinlessness of Jesus
239
it became the flesh of he who ignored sin, in this way truly, as it is very plausible, it threw away the tyranny of sin and is enriched by the quality of the Word … and is holy and life giving and full of the divine energy.’25 Elsewhere in the same work Cyril writes that ‘the Word became flesh, yet not sinful flesh, but “in the likeness of sinful flesh”,26 and he associated with those on earth as man and he became like us except for the fact that he was not with us under sin’.27 Further on again in the same work, Cyril presents Christ saying about himself that ‘in me you see human nature cleansed … holy and most pure … I have defeated Satan who ruled in the past. For he found in me nothing at all of his own.’28 In addition, in his Second Letter to Nestorius, Nestorius, Cyril argues that ‘man’s nature became utterly sick with sin but … this is not his [Christ’s] condition.’29 Moreover, in his First his First Letter to Succensus Su ccensus,, Cyril writes that we affirm, then, that because human nature underwent corruption as a result of the transgression in Adam and our mind was being dominated by carnal pleasures, namely innate impulses, it was vital for the Word of God to become man for the salvation of us earthly men and to make human flesh, subject to decay and sensuality as it was, his own and … that he should destroy the innate, namely the sensual, impulses … In view of the fact, then, that human flesh has become the Word’s own flesh, it has stopped being burdened with corruption, and since as God, conscious of no sin, he appropriated it and displayed it as his own (as I have said), it has ceased to be infected with sensuality.30
Finally, in his Third Letter to Nestorius, Nestorius , Cyril refers to the holiness of the humanity of Christ in connection with the Eucharist: ‘We become holy, because we become participants in the holy flesh and precious blood of Christ, saviour of us all, by receiving not mere flesh (God forbid!)’.31 After having seen what Cyril, the Eastern pillar of Christology, has to say on the matter, let us now move quickly to the Western pillar of Christology of the same period, Leo the Great, and see what he also has to say. In his famous Tome to Flavian, Flavian, Leo writes that we call ours that which the Creator deposited in us from the beginning and which he received back again to restore; for that which the deceiver introduced in addition – and 25
one, in G.M. De Durand, Cyrille d’Alexandrie, Deux Dialogues Cyril of Alexandria, Christ is one, d’Alexandrie, Deux Dialogues Christologiques,, introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes, SC 97 (Paris, 1964), 330.4-11. Christologiques 26 Romans 8:3. Romans 8:3. 27 Cyril of Alexandria, Christ is one, Durand, Deux Dialogues Christologiques one, in G.M. De Durand, (1964), 402.34-9. 28 one, in G.M. De Durand, Cyril of Alexandria, Christ is one, Durand, Deux Dialogues Christologiques (1964), 444.11-3 and 15-7. 29 Nestorius , in Lionel R. Wickham (ed. and trans.), Cyril of Alexandria: Cyril, Third Letter to Nestorius, Select Letters (Oxford, Letters (Oxford, 1983), 9, p. 26. 3-4 (trans. on p. 27). 30 Succensus , in L. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria (1983), 78. 3-16 (trans. Cyril, First Cyril, First Letter to Succensus, on p. 79, slightly modified). 31 Third Letter to Nestorius, Nestorius , in L. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria (1983), Alexandria (1983), 7, p. 22. 12-15 (trans. on p. 23, modified).
240
D. B ATHRELLOS
the man, being deceived, sinned – did not have any trace in the Saviour. Nor because he entered into a share in human weakness did he in consequence become a sharer also in our sins. For he assumed the form of a servant without any defilement of sin. 32
Later on in the Tome Tome Leo Leo will argue that ‘he [Christ] was born by a new birth, since inviolate virginity, without experiencing desire, provided the material of the flesh. There was taken from the mother of the Lord nature, but not sin’.33 The next excerpt that I will quote is from the Fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (553 AD). The Council officially condemned the view that ‘Christ was troubled by the passions of the soul and the desires of human flesh, was gradually separated from that which is inferior, and became better by his progress in good works and faultless through his way of life … and … became after the resurrection immutable in his thoughts and entirely without sin’.34 Finally, an important contribution to the question of the sinlessness of Jesus was made by Saint John of Damascus. In his Expositio his Expositio fidei fidei,, John writes that we confess, then, that he [the Son of God] assumed all the natural and innocent passions of man. For he assumed the whole man and all man’s attributes save sin. For that is not natural, nor is it implanted in us by the Creator, but arises voluntarily in our mode of life as the result of a further implantation by the devil, though it cannot prevail over us by force. For the natural and blameless passions are those which are not in our power, but which have entered into the life of man owing to the condemnation by reason of the transgression; such as hunger, thirst, weariness, weariness, labour, the tears, the corruption, the shrinking from death, the fear, the agony with the bloody sweat, the succour at the hands of angels because of the weakness of the nature, and other such like passions which belong by nature to every man. All, then, he assumed that he might sanctify all.35
In this excerpt, John argues that Christ assumed the blameless passions that entered into human life after the fall, without, however, assuming our sinful, blameful passions. This makes it possible to say that Christ shared our postlapsarian predicament, but without sharing our sinfulness.
32
Flavian) , in Eduardus Schwartz (ed.), Acta Conciliorum Oecu Leo of Rome, Tome (to Flavian), menicorum, Concilium Universale Chalcedonense, Chalcedonense , tomus alter, vol. primum, pars prima (Berlin, 1933), 13. 18-23. The English translation is taken from Richard Price and Michael Gaddis (trans. with introduction and notes), The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon II (Liverpool, 2005), 18. 33 Leo of Rome, Tome (to Flavian), Flavian) , in Schwartz (ed.), Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, Concilium Universale Chalcedonense, Chalcedonense , tomus alter, vol. primum, pars prima, 14. 19-21. The English translation is taken from Price and Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon II (2005), 19. 34 Councils I: Nicaea Nicaea For the English translation, translation, see N.P. Tanner, Decrees Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils I: 1 to Lateran 5 (London 5 (London and Washington, 1990), 119. I have slightly modified Tanner’s translation. 35 Die Schriften Schriften des Johannes von von Damaskos, Damaskos, II, Expositio Fidei,, ed. Bonifatius Kotter (Berlin, II, Expositio Fidei al., 1973), 64, p. 162. 2-13. The English translation (slightly modified) is by Philip Schaff et al., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers II, Fathers II, vol. IX available online.
The Patristic Tradition on the Sinlessness of Jesus
241
There are many more relevant excerpts from Gregory of Nazianzus, Sophronius of Jerusalem, Maximus the Confessor, the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and others, but for the sake of brevity I will have to omit them.
Conclusions
I would like to finish my contribution by summing up the main points that can be drawn from the patristic and conciliar passages that I have just quoted. Sin is not a part of human nature, but was later introduced into it by the devil. The Son of God assumed our nature, not our sin. His humanity was not stained by any defilement of sin. For this reason he was never ‘troubled by the passions of the soul and the desires of human flesh’, nor did he become sinless only after the Resurrection. What is more, his humanity was not merely sinless, but also most pure, holy, and deified on account of its unity with the divinity in the hypostasis of the Logos. This is clear, sound, and, as far as I am aware, unanimous patristic teaching. That this teaching expresses the tradition of the Church, espoused also by later theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin is, in my view, indisputable. That this teaching is also theologically correct is not difficult to prove. Such an endeavour, however, would require another study.
