Deification through the Cross

DEIFICATION THROUGH THE CROSS

Deification through the Cross 1An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation2

Khaled Anatolios

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546 www.eerdmans.com © 2020 Khaled Anatolios All rights reserved Published 2020 Printed in the United States of America 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ISBN 978-0-8028-7798-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Anatolios, Khaled, 1962– author.

Title: Deification through the cross : an Eastern Christian theology of salvation / Khaled Anatolios.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “An argument for a unified and normative Christian view of salvation”—­ Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020020626 | ISBN 9780802877987 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Deification (Christianity) | Salvation—Christianity. | Orthodox Eastern Church—Doctrines.

Classification: LCC BT767.8 .A526 2020 | DDC 234—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020626

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

“Moses said, ‘Show me your glory I pray.’ ” (Exod 33:18) “That the rest of our lives may be spent in peace and repentance, let us ask the Lord.” (Byzantine Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) For Father John Connelly, in celebration of his seventy years of priesthood

Contents

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xix

Abbreviations

xxi

Introduction

1

Three Impediments to the Joy of Salvation

2

Positive Requirements for Contemporary Soteriology

25

A Constructive Proposal: Salvation as Doxological Contrition

32

Part I Foundational Sources for a Soteriology of Doxological Contrition 1

Doxological Contrition in Byzantine Liturgy

43

Textual Analysis: Elements of Soteriological Doctrine in the Byzantine Liturgy

47

The Byzantine Experience of Salvation as Doxological Repentance: A Worshiper-­Response Analysis

68

Christ’s Salvific Work as Doxological Contrition: A Liturgical Soteriology from Below

87

Conclusion 89

2

Doxological Contrition in Scripture Doxological Contrition in the Exodus

vii

94 97

Contents Doxological Contrition and the Golden Calf

104

Doxological Contrition in Israel’s Exile and Restoration

115

The Doxological Contrition of the Suffering Servant

129

Doxological Contrition in Jesus’s Salvific Work

140

Conclusion 162

3

Doxological Contrition in Conciliar Doctrine

167

The Soteriological Grammar of the First Seven Ecumenical Councils

167

Conclusion 222

Part II A Systematic Theology of Doxological Contrition 4

The Mutual Glorification of the Divine Trinity

229

Intra-­trinitarian Mutual Glorification

231

From Economic to Immanent Trinitarian Glorification: A Case Study in Nicene Hermeneutics

233

Intra-­trinitarian Glorification in Western Perspective: Matthias Scheeben

241

Intra-­trinitarian Glorification in Eastern Perspective: Dumitru Staniloae 252 Conclusion: Synthesizing Scheeben and Staniloae

5

Human Existence as Participation in Intra-­trinitarian Glorification

262

264

Irenaeus 268 Anselm 272

6

Gregory Palamas and Nicholas Cabasilas

276

Summary: Main Elements of Doxological Anthropology

282

The Doxological Weight of Human Sin

285

The Meaning of Sin in a Doxological Soteriology

286

Sin and Righteousness in Doxological Soteriology

289

viii

Contents Sin as Divine-­Identity Theft and Trinitarian Disruption

297

Sin as Trinitarian Misrepresentation and Infinite Offense: An Anselmian Clue

303

The “Necessity” of Divine Response to Sin

307

Conclusion 311

7

8

Salvation as Reintegration into Trinitarian Glorification

313

Matthias Scheeben’s “Latreutic” Soteriology

313

Aquinas on the Vicarious Repentance of Christ

331

Doxological Contrition in Aquinas and Scheeben: A Synthesis

338

Nicholas Cabasilas: The Christian Experience of Salvation as Doxological Contrition

340

Conclusion: A Systematic Theology of Doxological Contrition

375

Soteriology of Doxological Contrition in Dialogue

384

Liberation Theology

385

Girardian Mimetic Theory

395

Penal Substitution

411

Conclusion 421

Conclusion

423

Fidelity to Scripture

423

Engagement with the Christian Tradition on the Basis of Trinitarian and Christological Dogma

425

Applicability to Concrete Experience

426

Bibliography

431

Index of Modern Authors

449

Index of Subjects

451

Index of Scripture References

460

ix

Preface

A

s I write this preface, in the fourth week of the Easter season of 2020, the whole world is writhing in the stranglehold of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The death count climbs daily; entire nations are virtually frozen in place under the confinement of lockdowns and “social distancing”; recently mighty and frenetic economies are suddenly paralyzed; health experts are warning of a second wave of infections possibly more deadly than the recent onslaught; and protestors in American cities, some wielding firearms, are clamoring for an end to the lockdowns.

For morning prayer, I read from the book of Isaiah, where I find a description of social devastation that is eerily applicable to the current state of things: Every house is shut up so that no one can enter.

There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine; all joy has reached its eventide; the gladness of the earth is banished.

Desolation is left in the city. (Isa 24:10–13)

Reading this passage puts me in mind of another dark passage of terror and lament, the depiction in the book of Joel of a locust plague. In that passage, the writer imagines these ruinous insects as unstoppable warhorses that are invulnerable to all defensive strategies. That imagery, too, seems to lend itself all too easily to the stealthy efficiency of the current invasion of tiny microbes: Before them peoples are in anguish, all faces grow pale.

Like warriors they charge, like soldiers they scale the wall.

xi

Preface Each keeps to its own course, they do not swerve from their paths.

They do not jostle one another, each keeps to its own track; they burst through the weapons and are not halted.

They leap upon the city, they run upon the walls; they climb up into the houses, they enter through the windows like a thief. (Joel 2:6–9)

In response to both these depicted devastations, the biblical writers promise a deliverance whose central feature will be a manifestation of divine glory.

In Isaiah, the prophet promises that God’s salvific intervention will bring it about that “the Lord of hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before his elders he will manifest his glory” (Isa 24:23). Similarly, in Joel, the prophet announces a deliverance from God that will reverse the devastations caused by the locust invasion and will cause the crops to grow once again.

God’s salvation, however, is not merely a matter of refurbishing the food supply; the high point of God’s salvific intervention will be the unlimited pouring out of his Spirit on all humanity: Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh . . .

Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit. (Joel 2:28–29)

The prophet resumes the announcement of divine salvation by proclaiming that the Lord will “show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke” (Joel 2:30). The blood and fire and smoke recall the imagery of the manifestation of divine glory in the exodus and in the temple. God’s salvation will bring about renewed and universal access to this glory. As in Isaiah, the manifestation of divine glory is integral to God’s work of salvation.

Alongside their common promise of the manifestation of divine glory, both biblical narrations of episodes of divine salvation also insist that this communication of divine glory must be joined to human repentance. In Isaiah, the prophet is originally warned that his commission will not lead to Israel’s repentance (Isa 6:10). But the prophetic book as a whole intermingles visions xii

Preface of future salvation with promises and exhortations that this salvation will and must be accompanied by repentance: “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness” (Isa 1:27). The predominant biblical term for repentance in the Old Testament is shub, which literally means “return,” signifying both a return to communion with God through obedience to the divine commandments and, in the context of the exile, a return to the land that was given to Israel in order that she may live out her covenantal communion with her Lord. The book of Isaiah also makes use of this term to exhort Israel to embrace the repentance that is intrinsic to salvation: Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return (yashob) to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isa 55:6–7)

Likewise, in the book of Joel, the promises of the outpouring of God’s Spirit and the manifestation of divine glory are preceded by a call to repentance: Yet even now, says the Lord, return (shubu) to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.

Return (shubu) to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. (Joel 2:12–13)

This book is not about the COVID-19 pandemic. It was completed, apart from this preface, well before the outbreak of the pandemic. But it seems fitting to address in this preface the relevance and applicability of the conception of salvation presented in this book to our current woeful situation. After all, in biblical terms, despite later and still lingering misconceptions, “salvation” is never a completely otherworldly notion, a pious dream to be realized only after we wake up from the nightmare of history. In biblical perspective, salvation, while having a finality that transcends present history, never simply abstracts from that history. The God of the Old and New Testaments is a God who works “salvation in the midst of the earth” (Ps 74:12 KJV), in the midst xiii

Preface of the concrete realities of this world. The prophetic descriptions of divine salvation noted above are not timeless meditations on what will happen in an imagined afterworld; they are inspired responses to very concrete situations of exile and famine, situations of political and social and economic breakdown.

In the midst of these oppressive circumstances, the biblical writers promise the deliverance of the manifestation of divine glory, which is appropriated through human repentance.

In this book, I argue that the dynamic of the manifestation of divine glory that enables and animates human repentance is at the heart of the biblical understanding of salvation. I also argue that this dynamic was brought to perfect fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who worked our salvation through his perfect manifestation of divine glory and his perfect human glorification of God, as well as through his perfect contrition for all human sin. Thus I speak of Christ’s “doxological contrition” as effecting our salvation and of our salvation as a conscious participation in Christ’s doxological contrition. What, then, can a soteriology of doxological contrition contribute to our grappling with our present suffering?

We can begin answering this question by first noting how the dialectic of doxology and contrition already structures our experience of this catastrophic situation, even if we are not thematically aware of it. As far as doxology, the widespread recent lockdowns have brought to light, by a negative contrast, the centrality of worship to the Christian experience of salvation. For most Christians, salvation in Jesus Christ is most concretely evident in the communal experience of worship and praise. It is in the communal worship liturgy that the glory of God is made transparently manifest. The Byzantine tradition, to which I belong, interprets liturgical worship as an inclusion in the heavenly liturgy, in which Christ’s already accomplished salvation is ceaselessly celebrated, without interruption, before the heavenly throne. For the great majority of Christians, there can be no experience of the fullness of salvation without access to worship. To be deprived of worship, as many Christians now are, is itself a crucial element of the negativity of the situation from which we seek to be delivered. Conversely, salvation from this current pandemic would be most essentially defined by our renewed capacity to worship God “without fear” (Luke 1:74).

Until such a time, liturgical fasting is bearable only to the extent that one does not give up on access to the glory and glorification of God in worship.

Instead, those who are unable to attend public worship can experience the doxological manifestation of Christian salvation by adding to their glorification of God the additional praise that God is willing and able to manifest his glory in xiv

Preface humble forms, adapted to the vicissitudes of human trials and miseries. The same God whose glory traveled with the Israelites in the wilderness, whose glory accompanied Jesus in the grave and raised him up from the grave (Rom 6:4), is willing and able to manifest his glory apart from church liturgies when one is deprived of these, and is willing and able to manifest his glory even when one is facing death all alone, in a hospital bed, without family or friends or loved ones. We read in the book of Acts that, when Stephen was being stoned to death, he was “filled with the Holy Spirit” and “gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). Surely, there can be no genuine experience of Christian salvation that does not carry the hopeful expectation that, even at the moment of death, as throughout our lives, we can experience salvation in the form of a similar manifestation of divine glory. Because of the salvation already accomplished

by Christ, this coronavirus cannot deprive us of the vision of God’s glory, and so our salvation is intact, even if all else, including all our earthly life, is lost.

If the current pandemic has the potential to sensitize us to the centrality of doxology to the Christian experience of salvation, the prospects for its inducing repentance may appear less than robust. Though Jesus’s announcement of the kingdom was coupled with a summons to repentance (Matt 4:17), modern Christians are often embarrassed by the language of repentance. Such language seems to contradict the message of God’s unconditional love, which requires neither prerequisite nor repayment, and to reinforce the notion of a punishing God whose wrath can be thwarted only by human self-castigation. Yet, I have been struck by the irony that secular commentators have used precisely the framework of judgment and repentance to interpret our current crisis.

To take just one example, in the New York Times, not commonly known as a bastion of extreme evangelical rhetoric, columnist Roger Cohen described the pandemic as a kind of cosmic repudiation of humanity’s illusion of autonomous invulnerability in relation to its environment: “Something has shifted.

The earth has struck back. Exacting breathlessness, it has asserted its demand to breathe. From animal to human the virus jumps, as if to demonstrate the indivisibility of life and death on a small planet.” Cohen goes on to make this summons to what can be aptly called repentance: “Do things differently at the other end of this scourge, some mystic voice murmurs, do them more equitably, more ecologically, with greater respect for the environment, or you will be smitten again” (“A Silent Spring Is Saying Something,” New York Times, March 27, 2020).

Of course, the mere fact that we can find iterations of the pattern of judgment, summons to repentance, and threat in a secular guise does not amount xv

Preface to a theological justification of this pattern. But it does show that this pattern is in some way rational; it is a way of formulating the fundamental intuition that every manifestation of the brokenness of the world, even if it’s not self-­ evidently caused by human misdeed, nevertheless inevitably exposes human complicity in the brokenness of the world. Another aspect of this rationale is that it communicates a sense of hopeful responsibility by stipulating that the human turning away from such complicity will bring a measure of repair to the world’s brokenness. In terms of Christian theology, however, what is still missing from this pattern is the central christological element, which goes to the point of our recommendation of the notion of Christ’s vicarious contrition.

In saying that Christ performed a perfect repentance for all human sin, we are acknowledging, in the first place, that the brokenness of the world, which according to Christian revelation is ineluctably bound to human sin, is in fact irreparable by mere human effort. Nevertheless, the gospel announces that this brokenness has been repaired by Christ in such a way that he makes a “return” (shub) from the world’s brokenness to the fullness of intra-trinitarian glory.

To repent, therefore, is to accept the gift of being included in Christ’s return to the fullness of divine glory that is free from all evil and in which every tear is wiped away. When the brokenness of the world is “too much with us,” we are impelled all the more—and this impulsion is urged on by the Holy Spirit—to accept this gift of Christ’s “return ticket” of repentance.

This conception of repentance does not annul either the affective dimension of “feeling sorry” for one’s complicity in the world’s brokenness or the practical exigency of striving to stop that complicity and replace it with an active cooperation in the world’s repair. But it does considerably widen the focus of repentance from finding the particular sin responsible for a situation of suffering and offering expiation for that sin to making a therapeutic use of suffering in order to fully incorporate oneself into the repair and glorious transformation of the world in Christ. One of the foundational sources for the theology of repentance in this book is the Byzantine medieval theologian Nicholas Cabasilas. For Cabasilas, salvific repentance makes use of suffering to transform the human will as a whole, and it is only for this redemptive reason that God allows suffering. Warped by sin, the will seeks pleasure from wherever it can be extracted and avoids pain and the deprivation of pleasure. By making redemptive use of suffering, however, human beings learn to despise and shun sin, the ultimate root of all pain, and to seek the genuine pleasure of seeing “the glory of God shining everywhere.” It is Christ, says Cabasilas, who has perfectly made use of this “method” in order to cast out sin and manifest the fullness of God’s glory and incorporate us into that glory. xvi

Preface Cabasilas, it seems to me, would want us to make use of our current woeful plight by hating and rejecting and striving to reverse all the vices and sins exposed by this pandemic: to begin with, the fact that we expend much more time and resources killing each other than preparing for the completely foreseeable and actually foreseen crisis that we are now in, along with all the other negligences and injustices that have exacerbated the harm inflicted by this pandemic. Cabasilas would also want us, I believe, to reorient our search for pleasure away from the old patterns of insatiable consumerism and endless entertainment to a purified dedication to “seeing the glory of God shining everywhere,” shining especially through the worship of God, whose glory has become fully disclosed in Christ, and shining also through the honoring of every human being who is made in the image of the divine glory. But this reorientation of our will, which can be fittingly described as “doxological contrition,” can come about only through participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who appropriated and made salvific use of all human suffering so that he can perform in himself the perfect despising and rejection of sin and the perfect solicitation and celebration of divine glory.

As I already noted, this book was not written with the pandemic in mind.

But it is by no means incidental to its original intent if it can offer its readers a guide to the “doxological contrition” through which the present suffering may become a means of experiencing the sure salvation we have in Jesus Christ.

Notre Dame, Indiana May 12, 2020

xvii

Acknowledgments

T

he writing of this book began with a Henry Luce III Fellowship in Theology. I am indebted to the Henry Luce Foundation and the Association of Theological Schools for their sponsorship of the original research for this book. Special thanks are due to Stephen Graham for his patience and encouragement. I wrote this book over a period of years stretching from my time at Boston College to my present appointment at the University of Notre Dame. I am deeply thankful for the support and encouragement of the faculty and administrations of both universities and for stimulating interactions with students. Special thanks are due to those who have read and commented on earlier drafts of various parts of this book, including Gary Anderson, Kirsten Anderson, Nathan Eubank, David Fagerberg, Roberto Goizueta, Vincenz Heereman, Robert Imbelli, David Lincicum, Fr. Andrew Louth, Bruce Marshall, Gerald Mc­Kenny, Michael Root, and Vincent Strand. Once again, I am deeply grateful for the supportive and creative collaboration of James Ernest, vice president and editor in chief at Eerdmans, as well as for the superbly diligent work of Jenny Hoffman, who shepherded this book to its consummation while quarantined. Thanks are also due to Kate Van de Loo and Kirsten Anderson for helping me to prepare the indexes, and to the Notre Dame Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts for funding their work.

My wife, Presbytera Meredith, contributed the first round of editing for this book, alongside her customary unfailing encouragement, support, and good cheer. As I should say every single day for so many things: Thank you, Meredith. Continual thanks are also due to my children—Rebecca, Sarah, Maria, and Elias—who constantly show forth the glory of God and sometimes avail themselves of the grace of repentance and occasionally prompt me to ask for that grace myself.

Sections of chapter 1 were presented as lectures at Duke University and the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. An earlier version of xix

Acknowledgments chapter 2 was presented to the members of the Epiphany Colloquy at Oxford University, led by Markus Bockmuehl and Gary Anderson; my thanks to the entire group for their generous and helpful responses. Chapter 3 is based on my earlier article “The Soteriological Grammar of Patristic Christology,” The Thomist 78, no. 2 (2014): 165–88.

It is a special joy to dedicate this book to my longtime friend, teacher, and mentor, Fr. John Connelly, formerly professor of systematic theology at St. John’s Seminary in Boston, MA, now at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, in Wellesley, MA, in honor of his seventy years of priesthood. It is supremely fitting to dedicate this book, centered on the theme of doxological contrition, to someone who has been such a great witness, for so many years, of the way of Christian life as a way of joyful repentance and of “return” to the fullness of trinitarian glory.

xx

Abbreviations

General ET English translation frag(s). fragment(s) Heb. Hebrew LXX Septuagint

Bibliographic ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers CCSL Corpus Christianorum: Series latina ECF Early Church Fathers EvQ Evangelical Quarterly FC Fathers of the Church Int Interpretation LCC Library of Christian Classics NIB The New Interpreter’s Bible. Edited by Leander E. Keck. 12 vols.

Nashville: Abingdon, 1994–2004.

NPNF1 Nicene and Post-­Nicene Fathers, Series 1 NPNF2 Nicene and Post-­Nicene Fathers, Series 2 PG Patrologia Graeca SC Sources chrétiennes TDOT Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren. Translated by John T. Willis et al. 8 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974–2006.

TynBul Tyndale Bulletin Urk. Urkunden zur Geschichte des Arianischen Streites. Edited by H. Opitz. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1934. xxi

Abbreviations

Ancient and Medieval Sources Alexander of Alexandria Ep. Alex.

Letter to Alexander of Byzantium Anselm of Canterbury CDH Cur Deus Homo Athanasius C. Ar. Inc. Syn.

Orations against the Arians On the Incarnation On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia

Augustine Trin.

The Trinity

Cyril of Alexandria Comm. Jo. Commentary on John Gregory of Nazianzus Or. Orations Gregory of Nyssa Or. cat.

Catechetical Oration Irenaeus Haer.

Against Heresies

John of Damascus Expos. fidei An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith Maximus the Confessor Thalass.

Responses to Thalassius Origen Comm. Jo. Princ.

Commentary on John On First Principles

Richard of St. Victor Trin.

On the Trinity Theodoret Hist. eccl.

Ecclesiastical History

Thomas Aquinas ST Summa theologiae xxii

Introduction

R

estore to me the joy of your salvation,” sings the psalmist (Ps 51:12), while confessing both his sins and his hopes for a rebuilt Jerusalem in which sacrifices will again be offered to the Lord with praiseful and contrite hearts.

Not only the realization but even the aspiration of this petition seems far from the experience of many modern Christians. In our time, the very notion of “salvation,” in both its objective content and its subjective manifestation, has become obscured. With regard to its objective content, we lack clarity on the most fundamental issues, such as Jesus’s uniqueness as universal Savior and the salvific efficacy of his suffering and death. At the same time, many mainstream Christian communities hardly even ask about the subjective experience of salvation—namely, the apprehension of salvation precisely as joy. Instead, such a perspective is often identified with marginalized groups, whether they be labeled as charismatics, pietists, or adherents of a self-­pleasing “prosperity gospel.” But even if we were to grant, once pressed, that Christians who confess Jesus as Savior should actually be conscious, and joyfully so, of the condition of salvation that Jesus effects, thorny questions persist: How can this joy be experienced in a world devastated by violence, evil, and manifold suffering?

If salvation is both already accomplished and in the process of being accomplished—that is, “already and not yet”—is perhaps the joy of salvation one of the things that are simply “not yet”? Indeed, considering the broken state of the world and our own entrapment in sin, just how is “salvation” here already, if it is so manifestly not yet? Modern Christians are not the first to ask these questions, but, relative to the broad sweep of the Christian tradition, we seem distinctly ill-­equipped either to answer them for ourselves or to apprehend the intelligibility of classic responses.

Of the possible explanations of the distinctly modern befuddlement in the face of this central Christian doctrine, three deserve special consideration.

Most would agree that the first is modern discomfort with the claim that Christ’s suffering and death directly effect a salvific reconciliation between 1

Introduction God and humanity. Many, however, will be surprised when I suggest that a second cause of confusion is the now widespread approach of analyzing this doctrine primarily in terms of various “models of salvation,” none of which is regarded as normative. Nor is it customary to suggest that a third factor is that modern theology, spirituality, and pastoral practice have all largely failed to provide adequate experiential access to the contents of this doctrine. Exploring these factors can help us find the positive features that a modern exposition of this doctrine must include in order to overcome the present befuddlement and replace it with an authentic “joy of salvation.”

Three Impediments to the Joy of Salvation The Eclipse of Atonement The efficacy of Christ’s suffering and death for bringing about forgiveness of sins and reconciliation between humanity and God has come to be identified, by both those who accept it and those who reject it, with the modern English word “atonement.”1 One of the rare points of agreement between defenders and critics of the atonement element in the Christian doctrine of salvation is that in our own time it has come to seem scandalous and foolish not only to Jews and Greeks but also even to Christians. Of course, Christians also were never immune to the scandal of the cross, but only in our own day has rejection of the idea that the cross atones become a widely held tenet of dogma.

Scholarly expressions and elaborations of this rejection abound and need no reiteration here.2 Instead, I would suggest that we can trace an underlying 1. Despite occasional reminders of the etymological sense of “atonement” as “at-­one-­ ment” (see Marcus Plested, introduction to On the Tree of the Cross: Georges Florovsky and the Patristic Doctrine of Atonement, ed. Matthew Baker, Seraphim Danckaert, and Nicholas Marinides [Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2016], 19), the attribution of salvific efficacy to the suffering and death of Christ is the regnant accepted signification of “atonement” among both those who defend this notion and those who oppose it. For an example of the former, see Charles E. Hill and Frank A. James III, eds., The Glory of the Atonement (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004); for an example of the latter, see Stephen Finlan, Problems with Atonement: The Origins of, and Controversy about, the Atonement Doctrine (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005).

2. Among the most trenchant and influential of the modern critiques of the teaching that Christ’s suffering and death are salvific, see Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, “For God So Loved the World?,” in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, ed.

Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989), 1–30; Joanne

2

Introduction pattern, composed of three movements, whereby rejecting the principle of atonement leads to a breakdown of the intelligibility of the Christian teaching about salvation in general.

First, this modern rejection has its foundation, whether explicitly or implicitly, in the rejection of the notion of penal substitution. The latter conception is presumed to posit a God made wrathful by human sin, who is then appeased by the suffering of his divine Son. Such an understanding is considered irreconcilable with the characterization of God otherwise professed by Christians, which depicts a loving and forgiving God who grants salvation freely from no other motive, and on no other grounds, than his own love and mercy. The penal understanding of salvation is also blamed for such baneful effects on social and political life as sanctioning violence and upholding a retributive rather than restorative understanding of justice.

Second, rejection of penal substitution tends to entail denial that Christ’s suffering and death directly effected divine forgiveness of human sins. From a strictly logical standpoint, saying that Christ’s suffering propitiated divine anger is by no means the only way to affirm the salvific efficacy of this suffering, but that correlation is often presumed. Classic conceptions of the efficacy of Christ’s salvific work, such as “sacrifice” or “satisfaction,” which historically have sometimes been elaborated with no connection to “penal” themes, are nevertheless assumed to bear the same internal logic as penal substitution. In response, modern soteriologies, instead of attributing direct efficient causality to Christ’s suffering and death, tend to transfer this causality to Christ’s proclamation, in word and deed, of the kingdom of God. Christ’s suffering and death are not considered to directly effect any change in the relationship between God and humanity but are simply part of his witness of heroic fidelity to the mission of proclaiming the reign of God.3 Third, this rejection of “atonement” results in an unsustainable tension in relation to the New Testament witness, which undeniably affirms, in many places, the salvific efficacy of the suffering and death of Christ. Various stratagems have been devised to deal with this discrepancy. Some argue that the Carlson Brown, “Divine Child Abuse?,” Daughters of Sarah 18, no. 3 (1992): 24–28; Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-­Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993); Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet, 2nd ed.

(London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), esp. 97–107; J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001); Finlan, Problems with Atonement.

3. For some examples of this approach, along with an incisive critique of it and defense of the salvific efficacy of the cross, see William B. Frazier, “The Incredible Christian Capacity for Missing the Christian Point,” America 167, no. 16 (1992): 398–400.

3

Introduction scriptural testimony belongs to later New Testament traditions and is not part of the historical Jesus’s self-­understanding; one theologian breezily observes that the offensive notion is present in “only 39 percent of the NT.”4 We need not detain ourselves with the latter rationalization beyond noting that any argument that involves excising any part of the canonical Scriptures, never mind over a third of the New Testament, simply disqualifies itself as Christian theology. But the former premise requires a little bit more scrutiny, which we can apply to a modern, fairly moderate, and relatively balanced iteration of this stance in Karl Rahner’s magisterial Foundations of Christian Faith. As it happens, Rahner’s elaboration of this position also includes a rejection of the conception of “expiatory sacrifice” as well as conflation of all understandings of atonement within an implicit “penal” framework. He can thus serve as an illustrious example of the logical sequence that I propose to be integral to the modern devaluation of the doctrine of atonement.

To his credit, Rahner concedes the scriptural provenance of the traditional interpretation of the salvific efficacy of Christ’s death as bringing about reconciliation between God and human beings after sin, a notion that he labels “expiatory sacrifice” (Sühneopfer).5 He affirms: “At least in the ‘late’ New Testament soteriological Christology a redemptive significance is acknowledged for the death of Jesus: it blots out our sinfulness before God and establishes a salvific relationship between God and man.”6 Rahner further acknowledges that the death of Jesus is interpreted in the New Testament as “a cause of our salvation in a true sense,” and he singles out for special mention the New Testament understanding of this causality in terms of Jesus’s “sacrifice of his blood which is offered to God.”7 However, this admission does not so much stimulate Rahner to a creative grappling with these texts as provoke him to denigrate their normativity. On the surface, the way he goes about this denigration is more sophisticated and subtle than the outright dismissal of “39 percent” of the New Testament. But, arguably, the essential procedure is not that much different. The sophistication comes about only in the method of dismissal, not in the fact of the dismissal. In Rahner’s case, this method is to invoke historical-­critical exegesis in order to suggest that the New Testament characterizations of Christ’s death as “an expiatory sacrifice” need not be attributed 4. Finlan, Problems with Atonement, 120.

5. Karl Rahner, Grundkurs des Glaubens: Einführung in den Begriff des Christentums (Vienna: Herder, 1976), 277.

6. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1978), 282.

7. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 282.

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Introduction to the historical Jesus but rather to “New Testament soteriological Christ­ ology.”8 Even by the standards of historical-­critical exegesis, Rahner’s claim is not as strong as he seemed to believe.9 Nevertheless, his contention that “it is not established historically beyond dispute whether the pre-­resurrection Jesus himself already interpreted his death as an expiatory sacrifice” is taken in effect as warrant for simply dismissing such an interpretation.10 The result is an insurmountable gap between the canonical contents of the New Testament and the interpretation of a central aspect of Christian teaching. This gap cannot but destabilize the intelligibility and cogency of both that interpretation and the New Testament witness itself.

Rahner’s treatment also exemplifies the pattern we have identified of implicitly identifying any conception of the salvific efficacy of Christ’s suffering and death as “penal.” Rahner presumes that the New Testament notion of “expiatory sacrifice” is intelligible only in terms of putative ancient conceptions of “propitiating the deity.” This conception is understood as necessitating the claims that God “changes his mind” because of the death of Christ; that divine salvation is reactive to the event of the death of Christ, so that the initiative of salvation does not come from God; and that salvation is accomplished in a transaction between Christ and God in a way that bypasses an individual’s freedom. Rahner contends that while such an understanding might have been intelligible for people living in the time of the composition of the New Testament, it is no longer helpful in our own time.11 He concludes that Jesus’s suf8. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 282.

9. Among more recent New Testament scholars who have argued that Jesus must have interpreted his own impending death in just the terms dismissed by Rahner, as salvific expiation, see Martin Hengel, The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), 72–73; N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996), esp. 540–611; Brant Pitre, Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 204 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 399–455; Klaus Berger, Wozu ist Jesus am Kreuz gestorben?, 2nd ed. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005), 103; Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 257–68.

10. “On the second point we have to say that it is not established historically beyond dispute whether the pre-­resurrection Jesus himself interpreted his own death as an expiatory sacrifice, and did this in the context of the servant of God suffering in expiation in Deutero-­ Isaiah, and of the just man suffering innocently and in expiation in late Jewish theology.

Besides, if after some hesitation, this question is to be given an affirmative answer, it is still not clear what exactly this is supposed to mean.” Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 283.

11. “We can say on the one hand that in the New Testament milieu such expressions were a help toward understanding the salvific significance of the death of Jesus, because at

5

Introduction fering and death do not bring about a change in attitude on the part of God so as to effect a salvific reconciliation between God and human beings. Rahner’s treatment does not leave any space for the possibility of an affirmation of the New Testament teaching on the “redemptive significance of the death of Jesus” as bringing about “a salvific relationship between God and man” that is not liable to the pitfalls he caricatures. He seems to rule out a priori a conception of the atonement in which God does not change his mind in reaction to the death of Jesus but rather enacts his unchangeable love in the face of human sin by ordaining Jesus’s death on the cross as the means by which sin is overcome and humanity is offered a reconciliation with God that is received through each individual’s freedom.

It is striking to note the contrast between Rahner’s predominantly negative and caricaturing dismissal of “expiatory sacrifice” in the Grundkurs des Glaubens (Foundations of Christian Faith) with his much more creative grappling with the theology of Christ’s salvific death in his earlier essays in Zur Theologie des Todes (On the Theology of Death). In the earlier essays, Rahner seems to accept without qualification a scriptural account of Christ’s death as “expiatory sacrifice”: “Scripture . . . asserts that we were freed and redeemed precisely through the blood which Christ shed for us and through his body which was given for us and it insists that the redeeming act was a bloody sacrifice in the ritual sense, which essentially presupposes the death of the victim and, finally, as we see more clearly in tradition, a transformation and reconciliation of the whole world is brought about through Christ’s death.”12 Instead of simply dismissing this scriptural conception, the earlier Rahner provides a positive interpretation of it in which Christ accepts death as “an that time the idea of propitiating the divinity by means of a sacrifice was a current notion which could be presupposed to be valid. But on the other hand, we have to say, first of all, that this notion offers little help to us today towards the understanding we are looking for” (Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 282). Rahner’s own understanding of the salvific efficacy of Christ’s death seems to altogether abstract from the biblical notion of Christ’s suffering and death as bringing about forgiveness of sin (cf. Luke 1:77; Rom 5:10; Eph 1:7; Col 1:14). Instead, Jesus’s death is salvific because it consummates his human acceptance of God’s final and definitive offer of salvation: “If this acceptance can only take place in and through the single history of the single and entire life of this man, a history which becomes final and definitive through death . . . then we can and must say that this eschatological word and offer of God arises from his own free initiative, has been really actualized in the life of Jesus and is historically present for us, and reaches fulfillment in his free acceptance of his death” (Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 284).

12. Karl Rahner, On the Theology of Death, 2nd English ed., rev. by W. J. O’Hara (New York: Herder & Herder, 1965), 60.

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Introduction expression and consequence and punishment of the perdition which ensues for him from Adam’s sin,”13 precisely in order to transform the character of death into a salvific self-­offering to the Father: “It is precisely in its darkness that the death of Christ becomes the expression and embodiment of his loving obedience, the free transference of his entire created existence to God. What was the manifestation of sin, thus becomes, without its darkness being lifted, the contradiction of sin, the manifestation of a ‘yes’ to the will of the Father.”14 Moreover, at this stage Rahner has no trouble affirming that Christ’s salvific death does objectively change the situation between God and humanity, even if it does not change God’s mind. Indeed, he affirms that Christ’s death constitutes “the establishment of a definite situation in regard to salvation for all spiritual beings belonging to this universe.”15 While we cannot here consider in detail the similarities and differences between Rahner’s earlier and later positions, the transition from a tone of creative reinterpretation of the scriptural material to that of caricatured dismissal is a striking demonstration of the development of modern befuddlement in relation to the scriptural testimony of the salvific efficacy of Christ’s suffering and death.

The “Models of Salvation” Approach Most will agree that unease with the notion of Christ’s death as atonement is at the root of much modern discomfiture about the Christian teaching on salvation. But my claim that another significant cause for this befuddlement is the contemporary prevalence of treating this doctrine by enumerating various putative “models” flies in the face of practically all of modern thinking on this subject. It is nevertheless my conviction that the virtual hegemony of this approach has contributed significantly to a general uncertainty as to what basic affirmations we can and must make in order to speak the gospel of what God has accomplished in Jesus Christ “for us and our salvation.” Proponents of the “models” approach not only fail to achieve clarity and consensus; they often fail even to consider such basic questions as what formally constitutes a “model,” what materially these specific models are, and how many of them there are.

Indeed, perhaps the most normative principle invoked by the “models” ap-

13. Rahner, Theology of Death, 48.

14. Rahner, Theology of Death, 62.

15. Rahner, Theology of Death, 66.

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Introduction proach is that no normative dogmatic core grounds the Christian teaching about salvation.16 The shock some will experience on seeing the “soteriological models” approach challenged can perhaps be mitigated by a look at the historical situatedness of this approach. Classic expositions of Christian soteriology did not take the form of lists of soteriological “models” or “metaphors.” Moreover, it is striking that modern theologians tend to find these “models” in past theologies but not in modern theologies. No one tries to identify the soteriological models of Rahner or Barth, for example, while it is presumed, without question, that such a taxonomy is applicable to ancient theologians. As for these ancient theologians, while one or another of them might be associated with a particular model in modern interpretations, most of them employ virtually all the “models.” So, the first question to be asked is whether the imposition of the modern construct of “models” is really the best way, let alone the only way, to discern the core intelligibility of these past reflections. Consider the following passage from the medieval Byzantine theologian Nicholas Cabasilas, whose soteriology will be foundational in this book. It will be useful for our purposes to quote it at some length, while abbreviating here and there. In order to highlight the presence of the various “models” in this passage, I will italicize the vocabulary associated with them. The following passage occurs in the first book of Cabasilas’s great classic, The Life in Christ, in which he describes how the salvific work of Christ is appropriated by Christians through the sacraments: Life unto God is not possible except for those who have died to sin. But God alone is capable of slaying sin, while it was human beings who were responsible. Since we submitted voluntarily to our own defeat, we could 16. Among the many iterations of the standard formula adverting to the lack of normativity attaching to soteriological doctrine, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 163; John McIntyre, The Shape of Soteriology: Studies in the Doctrine of the Death of Christ (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 1; and the introductory remarks of Paul S. Fiddes, “Salvation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, ed. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain R. Torrance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 180–81. Fiddes remarks, “The Christian church has never made a single theory definitive for the meaning of atonement, and has rather relied upon a series of metaphors for understanding the work of Christ, derived from different social contexts.” See also Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 186: “It is one of the more remarkable and remarked-­upon aspects of theological history that no theory of atonement has ever been universally accepted. By now, this phenomenon is itself among the things that a proposed theory of atonement must explain.”

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Introduction have become righteous by reversing this defeat. But this was not even remotely possible for those who had become slaves of sin. How could we have become stronger than that to which we had become enslaved? . . . It was impossible for true life to dawn upon us, since the responsibility for the victory belonged to one, while the capacity for the victory belonged to another.

Therefore, it was necessary for the one to be united with the other, and for one and the same to be the possessor of both the nature to which the battle pertained and the nature which was capable of the victory. . . . He underwent wounds, the cross, and death, as St. Paul says, ‘for the joy that was set before him, despising the shame’ (Heb 12:2). What does this mean? He did nothing wrong which deserved such a punishment, nor had he committed sin, nor had he done anything of which the most shameless informer might accuse him. . . . Since such a punishment could not be applied to anything that Christ had done, and the Savior had no trace of sickness which would be healed by such a medicine, the power of his cup passes over to us and slays the sin that is in us. The wounding of the guiltless one becomes the payment of those who are weighed down with many debts.17

Now, to which of the “models” of salvation shall we attribute Cabasilas’s reflections in this passage? Clearly, to a whole lot of them! He uses language associated with the Christus Victor theme when he speaks of battle, defeat, conquering, and victory; he alludes to the motif of redemption in referring to humanity’s slavery; he uses the language of debt; he employs penal language while explaining that Christ pays the penalty that we deserved; and he also pictures Christ’s salvific work as applying medicine to our disease. If we are apt to reckon every description of salvation as a “model” in its own right, we can even go beyond the standard repertoire and say that we also have here a “sunrise model” of salvation, since he alludes to Christ’s causing “true life to dawn upon us”!

But if we say that Cabasilas’s soteriology is a combination of all these “models,” and if our perusal of other classical theologians also similarly impels us to say that they all use all the “models,” then can we really say that the methodology that brings us to this rather bland conclusion is the ideal and even uniquely appropriate one? What if we were to set aside the habit of interpreting soteriology simply by enumerating “metaphors” or “models” or “motifs,” or whatever other label we choose to apply? We would not have to deny the 17. Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, trans. Carmino J. de Catanzaro (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 57–59 (altered).

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Introduction presence of these motifs; we just would not make listing them and unpacking their discrete metaphorical significations our primary interpretive strategy. We might then be able to see that underlying all these various ways of picturing the contents of Christ’s salvific work, with respect to both its retrospective aspect of overcoming the negativities of the human predicament and its prospective aspect of bringing about a definitively positive human situation, is a clear and foundational affirmation that the content of this salvation consists in the joining together of humanity and divinity through the two natures of the one person of the God-­man, Jesus Christ.

This is clearly the governing structure of the Cabasilas passage quoted above. Reiterating a classic paradigm of soteriological-­christological reasoning, Cabasilas affirms that the human predicament is so radical that humanity is unable to extricate itself by its own power, and that it is nevertheless necessary that this work of salvation be accomplished by human agency. Therefore, in Christ, God combined divine power with human agency in a union that was not only the means to human salvation but also its content and goal. There is, then, a normative core of christological and, by implication, trinitarian doctrine that governs and controls the use of all the soteriological motifs in this passage, and this normative core is encompassed by the concept of deification, as is clear in Cabasilas’s treatise as a whole. This doctrinal core, I would suggest, cannot be placed on the same level as the motifs and metaphors through which it is elaborated. It stands to reason, then, that discerning the intelligibility of these motifs themselves requires not merely listing them off and elucidating the referents of the various metaphors within their “social contexts,” but rather relating them to this fundamental core of christological and trinitarian doctrine. If that is true, then it follows that the tendency of modern soteriological interpretation to bypass this fundamental doctrinal core in favor of the procedure of listing the models and unpacking their respective metaphorical significations both misrepresents classical soteriology and contributes to the modern incomprehension of this doctrine.

To be sure, the “models” approach to soteriological reflection sometimes does much more than merely enumerate metaphors. On occasion, it can manifest a sophisticated methodological self-­awareness that considers such hermeneutical questions as the relations between the models and the logical status of metaphorical language. An overview of four of the more thoughtful instances of the deployment of this approach over the last century will allow us to reflect on some of these hermeneutical questions as we trace a historical sketch of the growing hegemony of this mode of soteriological thinking.

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Introduction Gustav Aulén: Christus Victor The obvious place to begin such an overview is with Gustav Aulén’s enormously influential Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of Atonement, first published in Swedish and German in 1930.18 Aulén’s impact on the growth of the “models” approach and on the modern discussion of soteriological themes in general is undeniably momentous, but arguably also deeply ironic. It is ironic in the first place because, notwithstanding the mention of “three main types (Haupttypen)” in the title, Aulén’s thesis is that in fact only one true type was regnant in the New Testament and patristic periods; the other two are later aberrations. The true type, of course, is precisely that of Christus Victor, which in one place he summarizes thus: “Its central theme is the idea of the Atonement as a Divine conflict and victory; Christ—Christus Victor—fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the ‘tyrants’ under which mankind is in bondage and suffering and in Him God reconciles the world to Himself ” (4). According to Aulén, this uniquely normative conception of Christus Victor was displaced by the Anselmian “satisfaction” theory in medieval times and then in modern times by the “humanistic interpretation,” which was spawned by liberal Protestantism.

The latter view, in Aulén’s interpretation, regards salvation not as a divine act but as “the result of some process that takes place in man, such as conversion and amendment” (146). So the first irony we encounter in perusing Aulén’s formative role in the genesis of the “models” approach is that, while he brought into prominence the discourse of “types” of salvation, he argues that in fact there is only one true type.

Yet another irony in the story of the reception of Aulén is that, to modern ears, the Christus Victor conception is often understood as an alternative to understanding salvation as atonement, while for Aulén it was very much an affirmation of the salvific efficacy of Christ’s death.19 In Aulén’s explication, Christ gains the victory that constitutes our salvation through and because of 18. Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement, trans. A. G. Hebert (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003). Page references appear in the text.

19. “First, then, it must not be taken for granted that this idea may rightly be called only a doctrine of salvation, in contrast with the later development of a doctrine of Atonement, properly so called. Certainly it describes a work of salvation, a drama of salvation; but this salvation is at the same time an atonement in the full sense of the word, for it is a work wherein God reconciles the world to Himself, and is at the same time reconciled.” Aulén, Christus Victor, 4.

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Introduction his death. Moreover, the struggle and victory of Christ brings about a change in God.20 Indeed, in its ultimate depths, this struggle takes place within God himself, and its ultimate ground is an unfathomable duel between God’s mercy and God’s wrath! For Aulén, Luther’s grasp of this intra-­divine dualism is precisely the point at which “it is the patristic view of the atonement that has returned; but it has returned with greater depth and force than before” (108). Ultimately, the evil powers over which Christ is victor are nothing but “executants of God’s judgment on sin” (5). Christ’s victory over these powers is, in its deepest depths, God’s self-­reconciliation that comes about through the triumph of love and mercy over divine wrath: “God is at the same time the Reconciler and the Reconciled. His is the Love and His the Wrath. The Love prevails over the Wrath, and yet Love’s condemnation of sin is absolute” (155).21 Subsequent readers of Aulén, as well as the many more who have not read him directly but who are charmed by the winsome ring of the motif of Christ as victor, have often failed to notice this idiosyncratic transposition of Luther’s motif of an intra-­divine dueling.22 But, for Aulén, the divine duel is not merely a dramatic image or a metaphor; it gives rise to a Christology that seems to do away with the salvific agency of Christ’s humanity. In the last analysis, Aulén considers the Christus Victor conception to be uniquely authentic while rejecting the Anselmian satisfaction theory not so much because he is offended by the supposition that God can demand a recompense for human sin but primarily because he insists that sin can only be overcome by God’s triumph over his own wrath and not by any human work. The christological consequence of this notion is that even the work of Christ’s humanity cannot be considered causative of salvation! Aulén is quite explicit about the foundational status of this distinction in the opening chapter of his book. He contends that “the most marked difference” between the Anselmian and the Christus Victor types lies in the fact that the latter “represents the work of Atonement 20. Aulén distinguished his understanding of the Christus Victor theme from the modern “subjective” approach precisely in this regard; the former “does not set forth only or chiefly a change taking place in men; it describes a complete change in the situation, a change in the relation between God and the world, and a change also in God’s own attitude” (Christus Victor, 6). “The deliverance of man from the power of death and the devil is at the same time his deliverance from God’s judgment. God is reconciled by His own act in reconciling the world to Himself ” (Christus Victor, 59).

21. As Hans Boersma aptly remarks, “The dualistic worldview of the Christus Victor theme penetrates the doctrine of God himself.” Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 184.

22. See the following section on H. E. W. Turner.

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Introduction or reconciliation as from first to last a work of God himself, a continuous divine work,” while in the other the atonement may have its origin in God’s will but is “in its carrying-­out, an offering made to God by Christ as man and on man’s behalf, and may therefore be called a discontinuous Divine work” (5).

Criticisms of Aulén’s rendering of the Christus Victor conception have aptly characterized it as funded by monothelite christological presuppositions.23 This christological position, which admittedly Aulén does not explicitly hold, affirmed only a single divine principle of activity in Christ, rather than a synergy of divine and human agencies. The monothelite heresy was condemned at the sixth ecumenical council, the Third Council of Constantinople, in 680.

My suggestion that the criticism of Aulén’s monothelite bent has some merit is not intended to brand Aulén himself as a heretic, for I would argue that there is no such thing as an unwitting heretic; the mere unacknowledged and unperceived likeness between one’s formulations and a heretical position does not make a heretic. My point, rather, is to highlight the final irony in Aulén’s hugely influential role in setting the terms of the modern discourse about traditional soteriological reflection—namely, that the Christus Victor type, which he insisted was the only pristinely early Christian conception, does not in fact exist as a pervasive and mainstream current in either the New Testament or the early church but is most accurately designated as an extremely idiosyncratic christological and soteriological transposition of the Lutheran principle of sola gratia. If we peruse the passage from Cabasilas quoted above, for example, it is clear that despite the language of battle and victory, the overall conception articulated by the passage is centered on the affirmation of both divine and human agencies in the work of salvation. On those grounds, it does not qualify as consistent with the Christus Victor conception as understood by Aulén.

A close scrutiny of such language as used by other prominent figures in the patristic tradition would yield similar results.24 So, one of the most influential 23. See the trenchant critique by Eugene R. Fairweather, “Incarnation and Atonement: An Anselmian Response to Aulén’s Christus Victor,” Canadian Journal of Theology 7 (1961): 167–75. See also the astute criticism of Boersma, Violence, 185–86. On the monothelite controversy, see chap. 3 below, pp. 211–15.

24. See, for example, Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 3.18.6, where he says that humanity could not have justly attained the victory over the devil unless it was a human being who had defeated the enemy of humanity. Aulén, for whom Irenaeus is the patristic exemplar of the Christus Victor theme, offers this strained interpretation: “[Irenaeus] does not think of the Atonement as an offering made to God by Christ from man’s side, or as it were from below; for God remains throughout the effective agent in the work of redemption. . . . When Irenaeus speaks in this connection of the ‘obedience’ of Christ, he has no thought of a human offering made to God from man’s side, but rather that the Divine will wholly dominated the

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Introduction figures in the development of the modern “models” approach to soteriology spoke of three “types” but insisted that only one of them was authentic, while in fact that one never really existed as a prevalent way of conceiving salvation in the tradition!

H. E. W. Turner: From One True Type to Four Patristic Approaches A second phase in the development of the “models of salvation” approach is exemplified by the publication, roughly two decades after Aulén’s important work, of H. E. W. Turner’s The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption: A Study of the Development of Doctrine during the First Five Centuries.25 The rejection of Aulén’s claim that Christus Victor is the sole patristic conception of salvation is foundational to Turner’s approach. As a corrective to Aulén’s alleged reductionism, Turner proposes that there were in fact not one but four main approaches to understanding salvation in the early church. Turner has not yet arrived at the language of models and speaks eclectically of “categories,” “interpretations,” “elements,” “aspects,” “theories,” “traditions,” and “streams of thought.”26 Notwithstanding this inconsistency in designating their generic logical character, Turner does give specific names identifying four characterizations of Christ as Savior: “Christ the Illuminator,” “Christ the Victor and the Doctrine of the Recapitulatio,” “Christ the Giver of Incorruption and Deification,” and “Christ the Victim.” According to the first, “Christ the Illuminator,” Christ is conceived primarily as teacher and salvation as knowledge. According to the second, “Christ the Victor and the Doctrine of the Recapitulatio,” Christ saves humanity by summing up the human condition and restoring it through his victory over demonic forces. According to the third, “Christ the Giver of Incorruption and Deification,” salvation is conceived as the union of humanity and divinity in Christ. Finally, “Christ the Victim” consists in the understandhuman life of the Word of God, and found perfect expression in His work” (Christus Victor, 33–34). Note the literal monotheletism of the last sentence, where mention of the divine will is not complemented by any mention of the human will, but only of “the human life of the Word of God.” It was precisely in order to overcome such obfuscation that the doctrine of ditheletism was formulated.

25. H. E. W. Turner, The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption: A Study of the Development of Doctrine during the First Five Centuries (London: Mowbray, 1952). Page references appear in the text.

26. For instances of these various designations, see Turner, Patristic Doctrine of Redemption, 12, 33, 38, 46, 53, 75, 87, 112, 114.

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Introduction ing of salvation as accomplished by Christ’s death as a sacrifice for sin, which Turner claims to have been especially prevalent in Western Christianity and to be a precursor to the Anselmian model.

Two main hermeneutical problems are raised by Turner’s approach, both of them structurally endemic to the “models” approach in general, notwithstanding the fact that Turner predates that nomenclature. The first issue has to do with the interplay of the tasks of analysis and synthesis in Turner’s approach.

His interpretation of patristic soteriology is structured by the analytical task of breaking up this body of material into the four distinct strands outlined above.

He does not deal with the thought systems of individual thinkers in their original integrity, nor with whole texts, but rather with the four trajectories into which he has divided the tradition as a whole. This procedure performatively posits each of these strands as a free-­standing and intrinsically discrete and self-­sufficient thought world. Even if occasional declamations concede that they are in fact entirely interrelated, this putative interrelation does not intrude upon Turner’s analyses. Rather, each of these elements is analyzed separately and on its own terms. Nevertheless, in his concluding remarks, Turner constructively asks how the previous historical analysis may be useful for “those who seek to frame in contemporary thought-­forms some doctrine of the Redemption wrought by Christ” (115). His response is that each of these four approaches has a part to play in the “modern effort at the interpretation of the doctrine of the Atonement” (117). With this conclusion, Turner has effectively assigned to the modern interpreter—in this case, himself—the task of synthesizing elements in the tradition that he has himself divided. What he has done, in effect, is bypass the actual original synthesis from which he has extracted his four “elements,” only to conclude that a synthesis of the elements thus extricated must be constructed by the modern interpreter, as if such a construction was an entirely new creative endeavor! It is significant for the approach that I intend to apply in this book, in which the concept of deification plays a key role, that Turner further intimates that the proper basis for constructing such a synthesis is to see the “theory” of deification as the ground and unity of the other conceptions. Turner concludes that the other three approaches “all appear as partial significances of that truth upon which the deification theory fundamentally insists: that Redemption, essentially, centrally, consists in Transfiguration, . . . the participation, through all that the Historical Christ was, and achieved, in the very life and character of the Triune God Himself ” (122). Indeed, I wholeheartedly concur with this assessment of the unifying and inclusive character of the conception of salvation as deification. The question is whether it would not have been an entirely 15

Introduction more profitable enterprise to actually analyze patristic reflection on the basis of the hypothesis that this synthetic conception was already operative within the patristic material, rather than to bypass the question of the existence of such an original synthesis in order to conclude by proposing the necessity for regathering the artificially fragmented material into precisely this synthesis.

A second hermeneutical problem that arises from Turner’s approach evidences a similar dynamic. In this case, the issue is the logical relation between the various soteriological approaches that he himself constructs and the elements of trinitarian and christological doctrine by which he interprets these constructions. It is striking that Turner always ends up describing and distinguishing these four conceptions of salvation according to christological criteria. So, in the “Christ the Illuminator” approach, he distinguishes between those who locate Christ’s teaching activity in his incarnate humanity and those who locate it in his divinity, as Logos. The same christological distinction is applied to the identification of the agency of Christ’s victory and of the bringing about of deification, both of which Turner claims are variously attributed by their respective adherents either to the incarnate Christ or to the Logos. As to the conception of Christ the Victim, Turner claims that it is especially focused on the humanity of Christ. This interpretive strategy is striking, in the first place, because it evidences Turner’s own sense of the christological determination of soteriological doctrine. But the manner in which the connection between christological and soteriological doctrine is traced is quite cursory and reiterates the posture of the modern interpreter’s transcendence in relation to the ancient texts. Turner’s questionably neat alignments of certain thinkers with attributions of salvific agency to either Christ’s divinity or his humanity have the character of judgments from on high. Christological criteria are used simply to compartmentalize figures into various camps, while the christological reasoning of these authors themselves, as well as the ways in which it informs their soteriological thinking, is not directly engaged. Turner’s christological characterization and evaluation of the various soteriological approaches that he identifies are largely unsubstantiated and often questionable. Indeed, his misconstrual of the christological content of soteriological positions extends even to Aulén. Turner’s treatment of the second of his four soteriological approaches, that of “Christ the Victor and the Doctrine of the Recapitulatio,” is significant for its identification of Aulén’s conception of Christus Victor simply with the theme of Christ’s victory over the demons, while altogether leaving out of consideration Aulén’s idiosyncratic Christology, in which all activity is attributed to the divinity and not to the humanity. Turner seems altogether unaware of the contradiction 16

Introduction between Aulén’s insistence that the paradigmatic feature of the Christus Victor concept is its attribution of all of Christ’s salvific work solely to the divinity and his own characterization of the “double-­sidedness” of the Christus Victor notion as one that designates Christ’s victory as “an act wrought by God on man’s behalf, and an act done by Christ as Man before God” (120). For Aulén, the latter description would apply rather to the Anselmian satisfaction model, and indeed it describes its most objectionable feature. But, with Turner, we have a transmutation of Aulén’s Christus Victor conception that leaves behind its essential christological substance and focuses instead on the image of the victory over demonic powers. Nevertheless, analogously to our evaluation of Turner’s sequence of analysis followed by synthesis, we can approve of Turner’s assigning each soteriological conception a corresponding christological value, while lamenting that he does not trace such correlations more closely in the patristic material itself.

Colin Gunton: The Metaphorical Character of Soteriological Discourse As we noted, Turner is not consistent in his nomenclature for designating the four ways in which, according to him, early Christians understood the nature of Christ’s salvific work. Some of this nomenclature, such as the language of “aspect” or “element,” carries the implication of partiality, as if he conceived of them as components of a larger whole. At other times, he appears to think of them as logical wholes, such as when he uses the language of “theory” or “tradition” or “streams of thought.” We have a much tighter consistency in Colin Gunton’s highly influential The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality, and the Christian Tradition, which appeared in 1989.27 Gunton’s treatment is paradigmatic of another prevalent tendency in contemporary discourse on soteriology, which is to specify the fundamental logical and linguistic character of this discourse precisely as “metaphorical.” Consequently, Gunton begins his treatment with an extensive epistemological prolegomenon on the rationality of metaphor. After critiquing three modern strains of reductive rationalism—the Kantian rationalism of moral experience, the rationalism of experience advocated by Schleiermacher, and the conceptual rationalism of Hegel—Gunton makes a thorough and judicious case for the epistemic virtue of metaphors. Metaphors are a superior and not an inferior mode of the power 27. Colin E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality, and the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989). Page references appear in the text.

17

Introduction and activity of language to symbolize and actualize distinct ways of inhabiting reality, since they are “both a pervasive feature of our language and . . . a way of telling things as they are” (25). Having thus established the epistemological value of metaphors, Gunton proceeds in the rest of the book to explore what he considers to be the three central soteriological metaphors of victory, justice, and sacrifice. Gunton concludes that while these expressions draw the preliminary basis of their signification from the battlefield, the law courts, and rituals for cleansing from pollution, their ultimate meaning is eschatological and unfathomable (105). In the meantime, they enable us to articulate and experience the achievement of Jesus as a liberation from oppressive forces of all kinds, as the restoration of just order, and as the inclusion of human beings into grateful participation and praise of Jesus’s self-­offering to the Father.

There is much valuable material both in Gunton’s epistemological apologetics on behalf of metaphorical language and in his meditations on salvation as a work of Christ’s victory, justice, and sacrifice. But the key hermeneutical issue raised by his treatment, which is also applicable to the larger tendency that he exemplifies, is the presupposition that soteriological discourse is entirely metaphorical. I certainly do not wish to denigrate metaphor, nor do I intend to deny the existence of metaphorical language in both biblical and traditional articulations of Christian salvation. But I would contend that it is a centrally problematic feature of Gunton’s epistemological approach that, in the course of his spirited defense of metaphor, he does not pause to consider the question of the relation between the metaphorical, the literal, and the analogical in soteriological discourse. As far as soteriology is concerned, it seems that all is metaphorical. But is speech about divine justice or divine holiness metaphorical in the same sense as the designation of Christ’s death as a ransom? Is it not the case that with soteriological discourse the discernment of the “metaphorical” sense requires some purchase on a foundational “analogical” sense, with reference to speech about God, as well as a “literal” sense, with reference to Christ’s humanity? Consider the following passage in which Gunton speaks, in his own voice, of Christ’s salvific achievement: “He fights and conquers where we are only defeated, and would continue to be without him; he lives a just life, where we disrupt the order and beauty of the universe, and where without him we should continue to do so; he is holy, as God is holy, where we are stained, and would continue to be but for him. And just because of all this he bears the consequences of the world’s slavery and pollution; and he does it because as the Son he accepts the burden as his obedience to the Father” (165). This passage can serve as a condensed summary of Gunton’s exposition of Christ’s salvific work as articulated according to the “metaphors” of victory, justice, 18

Introduction and sacrifice. Let us concede for the moment Gunton’s presupposition that this language should be designated “metaphorical” because its native contexts are the battlefield, the law courts, and the sacrificial rites, while its soteriological meaning demands a transformation of these connotations. But it is also true that in the course of explicating and elaborating on this metaphorical language, Gunton makes the following seemingly nonmetaphorical statements: “Jesus lives a just life”; “he is holy, as God is holy”; “he is obedient to the Father.” Are these statements also metaphorical in the same way that it is metaphorical to speak of sin as slavery or of salvation in terms of buying back a slave? I do not think that it is accidental that this passage occurs in a chapter titled “The Atonement and the Triune God.” It is just when Gunton is trying to sum up his soteriological exposition by relating it to the identity of the triune God that he lapses into these apparently nonmetaphorical statements, though without acknowledging it.

It will be my operative supposition in this book that soteriological discourse cannot be so consumed with the task of rhapsodizing on the epistemological splendors of metaphor as to neglect the need for an underlying dogmatic sense, which is analogical (as in Gunton’s statement that “God is holy”) and in some cases literal (as in Gunton’s statement that Jesus is obedient to the Father), and which is ultimately supplied by christological and trinitarian doctrine. For the moment, I only wish to point out that the lack of acknowledgment of the need for such a dogmatic norming of soteriological metaphors contributes to a certain ambience of queasy formlessness in much of modern soteriological discourse. On this score, Yves Congar’s complaint and exhortation is worth heeding: “It is necessary to ask ourselves again very seriously about our idea of salvation. There is hardly any other theological notion implying immediate consequences—very concrete and very important—which has been left so vague and calls in a most urgent way for an adequate elaboration.”28 John McIntyre: The Literal Foundation of Soteriological Models The last item in our cursory history of the “models” approach to soteriology is John McIntyre’s The Shape of Soteriology: Studies in the Doctrine of the Death of Christ, published in 1992.29 Among the greatest virtues of McIntyre’s treatment is his rigorous hermeneutical analysis of the very notion of models and 28. Yves Congar, “Christianisme et libération de l’homme,” Masses Ouvrières 259 (December 1969): 8, quoted in McIntyre, Shape of Soteriology, 52.

29. Page references appear in the text.

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Introduction their interrelation. McIntyre accepts the standard modern presuppositions that there is no normative theory of how Christ accomplishes the work of human salvation and that the matter of soteriological discourse is provided rather by a plethora of models. Though there is wide discrepancy in the size and specific membership of the list of such models, McIntyre’s list is unusually large. He counts thirteen models, including the notion of salvation as itself one of these models, as follows: (1) ransom, (2) redemption, (3) salvation, (4) sacrifice, (5) propitiation, (6) expiation, (7) atonement, (8) reconciliation, (9) Christus Victor, (10) penal substitution, (11) satisfaction, (12) exemplarity, and (13) liberation.

If we are tempted to conclude, facetiously, that one of McIntyre’s estimable contributions to this discussion is to demonstrate just how unwieldy the proliferation of models can be, we must also appreciate his careful consideration of the hermeneutical questions raised by this approach. He laments that too much modern discussion of soteriology acquiesces in the mere listing of models, “their enumeration being regarded as forming the sum-­total of soteriological analysis” (53). He goes on to consider various options that have been presumed, if not always explicitly avowed, for understanding the relations of these models to one another: pluralism, historical relativism, complementarity, and dimensionality. Pluralism, which would see the different models as making incommensurate or even contradictory truth claims, is rejected by McIntyre as inapplicable to the soteriological models, which ideally “penetrate one another, and assist one another in their self-­presentation and understanding” (56). Historical relativism, in which these models are interpreted not with respect to their objective truth claims but merely with respect to their historical genesis, is also summarily dismissed. Complementarity is judged to be altogether too general and vague. McIntyre himself prefers to understand the relation between the models as one of dimensionality: each model has its own intelligible self-­sufficiency, but “co-­implicative relationships” also obtain between them (63). This definition of dimensionality might not seem significantly less general and vague than the complementarity approach, and indeed McIntyre ultimately concludes that all the approaches above are inadequate.

In the final analysis, he contends that only in relation to the actual historical event of Christ’s death can the true mutual relations between the models be grasped. Each model represents a distinct emphasis in the interpretation of the death of Christ, and the similarity-­in-­difference between them consists precisely in their common reference to this event. Consequently, all the models are valuable and necessary for interpreting the event of the death of Christ, provided that they are all related to one another and not taken in isolation 20

Introduction from one another. As distinct but mutually related interpretations of the event of the death of Christ, the soteriological models are themselves intrinsic to that event and not subsequent to it, since the event is not separable from its inner meaning.30 McIntyre’s analysis is the most rigorous and sustained modern treatment of the question of the logical relation between the soteriological models. His practical conclusion that all the models should be accepted in unison and e­ xplored with a view to their mutual relations has been well received and sometimes admirably implemented.31 But for all his patient and careful consideration of the theoretical question of the logical relation between the models, McIntyre does not explicitly integrate into this consideration a key move that he himself makes in relating the models to one another. This crucial move is to ground all the models in a foundational judgment that seems to underlie and transcend all the models, and that McIntyre unassumingly but significantly designates as composed of “facts.” In his rendering, this judgment is constituted of two facts, the death of Christ and God’s forgiveness of sins, of which the former is judged to be causative of the latter. That McIntyre is committed to this presupposition is clear and unmistakable. Well before he undertakes the theoretical discussion of the logical relation between the models, he states the contents of this presupposition when he asserts, for instance, “Whatever variations we may go on to encounter in the shaping of different soteriologies, these variations, if they are to remain within the limits of Christian connotation, will be founded upon these twin facts—the historicity and particularity of the death of Christ and the integral relationship between Christ’s death and the forgiveness of ours sins” (21–22; my emphasis). The ultimate intelligible content of the models is that they “are all germane, however sometimes partially, to the full understanding of the nature of the death of Christ, and by implication to the mediation of the forgiveness which that death has secured for God’s people” (28). Thus, McIntyre’s positive acceptance of all thirteen soteriological models that he cites is based ultimately on the specification of a normative judgment that is presupposed to inform all of them.

30. “Now there are events or actions, which by reason of their internal complexity comprise a considerable range of interpretations. The death of Christ I would regard as an event of that kind, with the models as the interpretations which form the internal structure of the event. By their compresence within the act or the event they are modified by the given which they encounter there, the dying of the Eternal Son of God, and by their inter-­relations with one another.” McIntyre, Shape of Soteriology, 81–82.

31. For an exemplary application of this strategy of synthesis, see Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015).

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Introduction We can now sum up several conclusions gleaned from our overview of some key stages in the development of the modern “salvation models” approach.

Our identification of four significant moments within this development has shown, in the first place, the increasing fragmentation and multiplication of such putative models. We have traced the trajectory of this fragmentation and multiplication from the “one true type” of Aulén to the thirteen of McIntyre, among which “salvation” itself is numbered. But the more significant hermeneutical issues at stake in this modern taxonomic approach have to do not so much with the sheer multiplicity of models as with the dialectic of analysis and synthesis, as well as that of the metaphorical and the literal within this discourse. We have seen that Turner, in his analysis of the patristic material, which he concedes to be originally a synthesis, distinguishes four elements, only to recommend that these elements need to be resynthesized by the modern interpreter. Gunton, for his part, valorizes the metaphorical character of soteriological discourse, while also making normative statements that seem to be rather literal (Jesus is obedient to the Father) or more analogical than metaphorical (God is holy). Likewise, McIntyre ultimately reduces his thirteen soteriological approaches to two normative judgments about the historicity of the death of Christ and its efficacy for the forgiveness of sins.

Both the basis for my uneasiness with the prevalence of the “models” approach and the underlying positive standard whose frustration has brought about this uneasiness can be summarized with reference to McIntyre’s thoughtful analysis. This uneasiness is not with the very use of soteriological metaphors as such.32 The positive standard that I have been commending, 32. McIntyre himself seems to have a conflicted relation to the modern emphasis on the metaphorical status of soteriological language. He grants the prevalence of metaphors in soteriological discourse but worries that the high proportion of negative to positive correspondence in the ordinary notion of metaphor underestimates the significatory power that these metaphors deploy in their theological use: “Having thus given a place to metaphors within the logical status of models, roughly in line with a number of contemporary works on the central part which metaphor is thought to play in religious linguistic usage, honesty compels me to acknowledge my uneasiness over the popularity which this kind of emphasis enjoys. What worries me is the very considerable difference between the ratio of negative to positive analogy in religious language and their ratio as it occurs in ordinary language. . . . The similarity, for example, between the death of Christ and ransom, the basic analogue obtaining between them, does not hold for one single point only, but, while there are differences which have not been denied, the basic analogue has generated a whole range of metaphors, which highlight the similarity” (Shape of Soteriology, 77–78). As can be partially gleaned from the last sentence, McIntyre conceives of a “model” as a “theory” or “imaginative construct” (Shape of Soteriology, 67) based on a foundational analogy that

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Introduction however, and which McIntyre performs without naming, is that the elaboration of soteriological doctrine must include some foundational judgments in relation to which all metaphors and putative models must be related and by which they must be normed. In McIntyre’s case, this foundational status is accorded to the affirmation that Christ’s death has brought about the forgiveness of human sins and enabled human beings to also extend forgiveness to one another. Now, one may agree or disagree with the claim that this is in fact the entire content or the most significant part of the content, or any part at all of the content of the doctrine of Christian salvation. But what one cannot do, given the implicit logic of McIntyre’s understanding of soteriological models, is simply treat that assertion as yet one more model that can be added to all the rest. McIntyre himself, for all his largesse in embracing thirteen models of salvation, stops short of identifying the affirmation that Christ’s death causes the forgiveness of sins as the fourteenth model! Of course, others would count this affirmation as yet one more model, and it is the modern reflex to do precisely this that I consider to be the problematic factor in the modern prevalence of the “models” approach. The recourse to metaphors and models is not problematic in itself, but the concomitant denial of the role of normative dogmatic judgments has rendered the content and process of Christian salvation vague. The task of a theology of Christian salvation cannot be exhausted by piling up one model after another. The theologian must generate normative statements that are in principle applicable to any candidate for a Christian “model” of salvation. Inattentiveness to this task in modern discussions of soteriology has contributed to the enervation of the functioning of this doctrine in the modern church. This book will argue that reinvigoration of soteriological doctrine must be based on a clarification of a dogmatic foundational sense formed out of the syntax of trinitarian and christological doctrine, which ought to regulate and inform any and every claimant to the status of a “model” of Christian salvation.

The Dearth of Soteriological Experience The third factor that I have suggested to be an obstacle to the contemporary appropriation of the Christian teaching on salvation is the lack of experiential access to this doctrine. Perhaps this is especially the case in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, where the claim to an experience of “being saved” is is subsequently developed and elaborated through a “web of metaphors” (Shape of Soteriology, 75–77).

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Introduction frowned upon. But legitimate caution against hubristic certainty about one’s eternal fate does not mean denying the experiential accessibility of the content of Christian salvation. For those who have put on Christ and who can say, along with the elder Simeon, “My eyes have seen your salvation” (Luke 2:30), rejection of the experience of salvation is not a tenable option. Nor is it everywhere rejected. It is true that certain strands of the Protestant tradition still place a premium on the felt assurance of being “saved,” and proponents of liberation theology insist that salvation be acted out and made manifest in bringing about justice and peace. However, my complaint about the lack of experiential access to the Christian teaching on salvation presupposes that the ultimate touchstone of Christian experience is neither individual affect nor external action but liturgical worship. If that is true, the loss of the sense of worship as the performance and celebration and actualization of salvation must be counted as a prime cause for the modern inaccessibility of the “joy of salvation.” The kind of worship that would mediate this joy would have to include an interpretation of liturgical prayer not only as an appropriation of the effects of Christ’s salvific work but also as a participation in the internal dynamism of that work. At least in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, such an understanding and experience were given in older conceptions of the eucharistic liturgy as representing, in some manner, the salvific sacrifice of Christ.33 There was a similar understanding of sacramental confession as a sharing in the internal dynamism and the fruits of Christ’s salvific work. For a variety of complex reasons having to do with both modern conceptions of liturgical worship and vagueness and perplexity with regard to the doctrine of salvation, Christian communities today inadequately appreciate liturgical worship as an experience of salvation, as an entering into the very dynamism of Christ’s salvific work, and as a conscious participation in Christ’s saving death and resurrection. Without such a basis in liturgical experience, the Christian doctrine of salvation is bound to remain vaguely numinous and somewhat esoteric, like a mythological construct that can be evoked by a variety of strange metaphors but to which we can have no concrete experiential access.

33. For an extremely thoughtful modern Protestant engagement with the Catholic and Orthodox traditions in this regard, see George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. 93–186.

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Introduction

Positive Requirements for Contemporary Soteriology As surely as the doctrine of salvation itself dwells on the negativities of the human condition only in reference to their overcoming in Christ, so our elaboration of some key factors in the modern malaise with respect to this doctrine must issue in a constructive program for the reversal of this malaise. It is fitting, then, to follow our three complaints with three positive prescriptions, as follows.

First Requirement: Fidelity to the Canonical Scriptures The first requirement for a modern, intelligible reformulation of the Christian doctrine of salvation is that the entire scriptural witness must be considered normative for the understanding and exposition of this doctrine. Of course, this should go without saying in any endeavor that claims to be Christian theology. In the case of soteriological doctrine, it must be further emphasized that the Scriptures do not merely give us historically conditioned information and speculation about a reality that is beyond the scriptural text. Rather, inasmuch as the Scriptures are the inspired medium of encounter with God, the prayerful reading of Scripture is itself a moment of salvation. Knowledge of God, God’s purposes, and God’s wonderful works, along with the assurance that the canonical Scriptures are a reliable mediation of all such knowledge, is intrinsic to the divine gift of salvation. To denigrate or dismiss anything from the contents of the canonical Scriptures is therefore to reject salvation itself.

In the contemporary setting, the first concrete consequence of the stipulation stated above is that the strategy of using hypothetical reconstructions proffered by historical-­critical exegesis in order to bypass or denigrate supposedly later interpretations of the Christian community must be clearly designated as an evasion of the gospel. For it must be plainly stated that what counts as the “gospel,” what must be considered inspired and normative for both faith and theological reasoning, is not the hypothetical reconstructions of modern historical criticism as to what the historical Jesus said verbatim and how he understood himself and his mission, but rather the interpretation of what Jesus said and did that is actually provided in the canonical Scriptures. To maintain this fundamental principle, as a matter of both faith and theological method, is by no means to disavow the value of historical criticism. Nor is it a recommendation of a literal, “precritical” reading of the Scriptures. Rather, it acknowledges forthrightly that the New Testament is itself an interpretation,

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Introduction not a mere reporting, of the sayings and doings and sufferings of Jesus.34 To the extent that historical criticism can help us ascertain the process by which the original sayings and doings of Jesus came to be interpreted in various ways within the canon of the New Testament, it can thereby contribute to our deeper understanding of these interpretations themselves. But if we are to hold fast to the conviction of faith that the canonical Scriptures are inspired and normative, then we have to maintain that precisely these canonical interpretations reveal to us the “honest truth about Jesus”35 and the most profound meaning of his words and deeds, including his suffering and death.

A second practical consequence of a strict and faithful application of the principle of unqualified scriptural normativity is that the strategy of identifying distinct models cannot be so applied to the canonical Scriptures as to allow choosing one or more of such models and bypassing others. In the case of soteriology, as with Christology, historical-­critical constructions of a diversity within the canon cannot take priority over the unity effected by the inclusion in the one canon of the putative diversity. Moreover, it would evidence a precritical naïveté not to recognize that when an interpreter identifies diversity within the scriptural canon, such a diversity is itself always constructed by the interpreter. My point is not to deny a priori a diversity of understandings of salvation in the Scriptures but rather to underline the fact that the mapping of this diversity is always a task of interpretive construction.

This process of construction begins with positing distinct unities, which then must be added up together in order to constitute the diversity and multiplicity that is attributed to the text. Simply put, you cannot have a diversity without multiple unities. But then a question is ineluctably posed in the interpretive construction of such diversity: At what point will a given amount of data be posited as a distinct “unity” such that surrounding data must be similarly designated as their own distinct unities, in order that a diversity might be thus constituted? My contention is that the identification of the whole canon of the Scriptures as normative carries with it the stipulation that the ultimate assignment of “unity” must be attributed to the canon as a whole. This stipulation by no means denies diversity; it simply defers the attribution of a final unity to the canon as a whole, rather than prematurely designating lesser unities, which are then added up to posit an overarching diversity.

34. For an exemplary exposition of this point from the perspective of an expert practitioner of historical-­critical methodology, see Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, 1–23.

35. Dei Verbum 19, in Austin Flannery, OP, ed., Vatican Council II, vol. 1, The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, new rev. ed. (Northport, NY: Constello, 1998), 761.

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Introduction The bottom line is simply that everything in the Scriptures counts. As to the question of how all this applies to soteriological doctrine, the crucial issue that we have already identified is the modern discomfort with attributing a salvific efficacy to the suffering and death of Christ. We must deal with this discomfort in ways that do not include denying or qualifying the normativity of scriptural affirmations. These scriptural affirmations cannot each be reduced to the level of one among a plethora of models, of which none is normative, as if Scripture simply offers a smorgasbord of ways to think about Christ’s salvific work. And they cannot be effectively decanonized by doubts as to their origination in the consciousness of the historical Jesus. The Scriptures give ample testimony that Christ’s suffering and death are directly efficacious for our salvation. This testimony is normative, and to deny it is to deny salvation itself.

Second Requirement: The Normativity of Tradition A second requirement for the renewal of soteriological doctrine is that a critical hermeneutic of charity must be applied to the tradition. We must strongly resist dismissing any significant and long-­standing interpretation of salvation within the historical experience of the church. This principle should carry considerable force especially within ecclesial traditions, such as the Orthodox and C ­ atholic Churches, that hold that the Holy Spirit guides the church and protects it from massive error that would distort the fundamental message of the gospel. This conviction does not entail the absolute or comprehensive infallibility or inerrancy of tradition, as if every notion and practice that gains currency at any time of the church’s history must be considered a priori to be an authentic expression of the gospel. Faith in the abiding presence of the risen Christ in the church and the Spirit’s unfailing guidance can still acknowledge that the union of Christ and the church, through the Spirit, is not a hypostatic union, as obtains between Christ’s divinity and his humanity. In the latter relation, all of Jesus’s human attributes and actions are also predicated of his divinity. But we cannot attribute all of the church’s actions and habits of thought throughout its history directly and immediately to the agency of Christ. Rather, the Spirit-­ mediated relation between the church and the risen Lord is covenantal in such a way that the unfailing divine faithfulness often encounters human failure and betrayal.36 There is room within such an understanding for critical scrutiny, 36. I am here reiterating the point made by Yves Congar in his “Dogma christologique et ecclésiologie. Vérité et limites d’un parallèle,” in Sainte Église: Études et approches ecclésiologiques (Paris: Cerf, 1963), 69–104.

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Introduction interrogation, and sometimes negative judgments about particular conceptualizations, formulations, and patterns of experience within the various traditions that comprise Christian tradition. But faith in the divine guidance of the church would seem to require us to regard massive and enduring experiences and habits of thought and expression within Christian tradition as inspired by the Spirit. It would also seem to require a hermeneutic of charity that would recognize elements of truth and fidelity to the gospel within significant components of Christian tradition, even if we have to acknowledge that these elements can sometimes be distorted. Of course, a consistent application of a hermeneutic of charity should also exert significant pressure toward discerning true and inspired elements within modern critiques of traditional understandings. All of this is to say that the theological task includes recognizing and continually constructing the unity of tradition that transcends the partiality and occasional distortions within particular traditions. The essential task of the theologian is critical synthesis, not the excision and condemnation of significant elements of the Christian tradition, whether past or present. We cannot therefore lightly dismiss the massive testimony of the tradition that affirms the salvific efficacy of the cross, but neither should we ignore modern anxieties about certain formulations and understandings of this doctrine. Rather, the challenge is to synthesize the positive principles that generate the modern critique with the testimony of the tradition as a whole.

How can we perform such a synthesis without lapsing into mere syncretism, and just where do we locate the criteria that would qualify such a hermeneutic of charity as “critical”? This question brings to the foreground once again the inadequacy of conceiving the doctrine of salvation as constituted entirely by free-­floating metaphors that are unregulated by normative doctrine. Over against this conception, we should recognize that soteriological discourse is accountable to normative dogmatic criteria and that these criteria consist in the dogmatic formulations of trinitarian and christological doctrine.

It is rather ironic that modern treatments of the historical development of trinitarian and christological doctrines regularly emphasize that these doctrines were motivated and informed by soteriological rationales, while modern accounts of ancient soteriological formulations often do not consider how these formulations are logically intertwined with trinitarian and christological doctrines. By exemplary contrast, the thinkers of the early church indeed did use a multiplicity of images and metaphors to characterize Christ’s salvific work, but underlying these was always a christological framework that identified the ultimate content of salvation as the unity of humanity and divinity in Christ, by which humanity was enfolded in the life of the divine Trinity. Whatever 28

Introduction images or metaphors we might encounter or employ, whatever claims or questions might arise in a soteriological context, must be subject to the normative control of trinitarian and christological doctrine and their designation of salvation as trinitarian deification wrought by the interactivity of the divine and human natures that are united in the divine person of the Word. Trinitarian and christological doctrines, therefore, constitute a dogmatic norm that determines and controls the signification of any metaphors or images we wish to employ in speaking about Christian salvation.

To proceed thus is not to favor a positivist epistemology that denigrates “mere metaphor,” or denies that metaphors render true epistemic access to reality, or insists that all metaphors are reducible to a literal translation without loss of meaning. It is rather to affirm a constructive and mutually informing correlation in the theological task between metaphorical language and dogmatic language. In Christian theology, the function of dogmatic language is precisely to determine and regulate the signification of the metaphorical language of Scripture through the formulation of judgments that make analogical predications of God and literal predications with respect to human beings and the humanity of Christ. It is metaphorical to speak of God as a rock, but to say that Jesus died is a literal statement, while to say that God is wise is an analogical statement. As Janet Martin Soskice puts it, “Analogical usage can be distinguished from a metaphorical usage by the fact that from its inception it seems appropriate.”37 The analogical and literal register of dogmatic language, which seeks to formulate direct and appropriate predications, by no means annuls the value of scriptural metaphor, which generates meaning precisely by positing a mysterious continuity between two realities that are initially perceived as disparate. The Nicene dogmatic judgment that the Father and the Son are “one in being” does not do away with the range of scriptural metaphors that describe the Second Person of the Trinity as the radiance, the Word, the Son, and the image of the Father.38 The doctrine controls and informs all these scriptural images, while also being informed by them. One might object with the oft-­repeated premise that herein lies the distinction of soteriological doctrine in that no particular soteriological “theory” has been declared normative. But that premise itself is simply predetermined by the supposition that soteriological doctrine resides in one of the metaphors or models constructed 37. Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 65.

38. See, for example, my discussion of this dynamic in the theology of Athanasius in Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 110–14.

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Introduction by modern interpretations. After fragmenting the doctrine of salvation into isolable models that are aligned with various metaphors and images, the tradition’s lack of a dogmatic endorsement of a particular image or metaphor is taken to mean that the doctrine itself is not normative. However, if it is true that there is a soteriological basis for trinitarian and christological doctrine, then we should be looking for normativity not among the repertoire of models constructed by modern theology but rather among the soteriological judgments embedded within trinitarian and christological doctrine. We will have occasion later on to identify these soteriological judgments. For the moment, we can assert that at least a minimum requirement for soteriological doctrine is that it speak of the work of Christ in ways that are explicitly consistent with the church’s normative identification of Christ in his humanity and divinity.

The existence of normative trinitarian and christological doctrine rules out any speech about the salvific work of Christ that does not describe this work as a manifestation of the eternal act of the Son’s being generated of the Father, as “one in being” with the Father and the Spirit, and as an application of his uniting human nature to himself and thereby enfolding it into his eternal relation with the Father and the Spirit.

Third Requirement: The Normativity of Liturgical Experience A third requirement for the modern reformulation of soteriological doctrine is that it must stimulate and inform the concrete experience of Christians.

Christian salvation is not merely a theoretical construct but the lived experience of every Christian, and the summit of this experience is worship. While embracing both the experience of individual affect and the experience of transformative action in the world, the exposition of soteriological doctrine must be ultimately oriented to the final goal of Christian salvation, which is another, more profound experience: the praise and worship of God. It is in the experience of prayer and worship that we see God’s salvation and appropriate its ultimate content, which is to glorify God with thanksgiving and praise. One of the ways in which this point is made, in both East and West, is through the prominence given to the Prayer of Simeon in the Liturgy of the Hours: “Now you may dismiss your servant in peace, O Lord, for my eyes have seen your salvation.” In the Byzantine Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the words of institution, which commemorate the death of Christ and which are remembered as the “precept of salvation,” are embedded in an anaphora of praise that identifies liturgical worship as the very culmination and ultimate fruit of God’s work of creation and salvation: 30

Introduction It is fitting and just to sing to you, to bless you, to praise you, to give thanks to you, to worship you in every place of your dominion. . . . Out of nothing, you brought us into being, and when we fell, you raised us up again; and you have not ceased doing everything until you brought us to heaven and granted us your future kingdom. For all these things, we thank you and your only-­begotten Son and your Holy Spirit; for all these blessings, both known and unknown, manifest and hidden, that have been bestowed upon us. We thank you also for this liturgy, which you are pleased to accept from our hands.39

In this anaphora prayer, the climax of the benefits that humanity receives from God, depicted along a continuum from the act of creation to the whole economy of salvation, is the opportunity to worship and praise God and take part in the heavenly liturgy. In a similar pattern, after eucharistic communion, the priest invokes God’s salvation by proclaiming, “Lord, save your people and bless your inheritance” (Ps 28:9). In return, the congregation responds, “We have seen the true Light, we have received the heavenly Spirit.

We have found the true faith, worshipping the undivided Trinity, who has saved us.”40 The congregation thus answers the priest’s prayer for salvation by implicitly claiming that they have just experienced God’s salvation precisely in the vision of divine glory (“we have seen the true Light”), which they have attained in the very act of worship. By its own account, then, liturgical worship is itself an experience of salvation and an epiphany of the church’s most essential nature as a participation in the saving and transforming effects of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.41 It seems eminently reasonable, then, even indispensable, that the experience of liturgical worship should become a normative touchstone and a concrete reference point for our interpretation of the content and character of Christian salvation. Thus, the exposition of soteriological doctrine should be at its foundation a form of liturgical theology, having liturgical experience as both its point of departure and its destination.

39. The Divine Liturgy / Η ΘΕΙΑ ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΑ (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1985), 21–22 (ET altered).

40. Divine Liturgy, 35 (ET altered).

41. My language here is an echo of Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 134.

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Introduction

A Constructive Proposal: Salvation as Doxological Contrition Not every exposition of soteriological doctrine has to fulfill all the requirements outlined above at once. It would be foolish hubris to claim that a single book can provide a comprehensive exposition of the scriptural teaching on this subject while also critically synthesizing all the major traditional conceptions of salvation on the basis of the criteria of dogmatic trinitarian and christological doctrine, all while also grounding this exposition in the liturgical experience of salvation. Rather, these requirements should be taken as constituting a matrix within which more realistically limited contributions can be made. (Full comprehension of the depths of salvation in Christ will of course always elude not only particular studies like this but indeed all of human comprehension this side of the eschaton.) Ideally, this matrix should function both normatively and generatively: it should ensure the fidelity of modern soteriological reflection to Scripture, dogmatic tradition, and Christian experience while also providing an impetus for new articulations of the mystery of Christian salvation that respond to the modern befuddlement with this doctrine. The present work aims to respond to this challenge by pursuing two theses: (1) Christ saves us by fulfilling humanity’s original vocation to participate, from the position of the Son, in the mutual glorification of the persons of the divine Trinity; (2) Christ saves us by vicariously repenting for humanity’s sinful rejection of humanity’s doxological vocation and its violation and distortion of divine glory. The coinherence of these two features of Christ’s work of salvation can be designated “doxological contrition.”

The premise of this book is that the characterization of Christ’s salvific work as doxological contrition discloses important dimensions of the deep structure of the Christian understanding of salvation. This disclosure also responds to the modern befuddlement about the Christian doctrine of salvation by providing an intelligible interpretation of this doctrine that is not reducible to a caricatured conception of penal substitution—and therefore can avoid provoking denial of the salvific efficacy of Christ’s suffering and death and erasure of significant portions of scriptural testimony. It may be objected from the outset, however, that whatever may be its merits in responding to modern misunderstandings and objections, this characterization of Christ’s salvific work is altogether too innovative, without adequate grounding in either Scripture or tradition. My initial response to this criticism, whose further elaboration will enfold the entire contents of this book, is that while the synthetic notion of doxological contrition may not have attained explicit formulation up to this point, nevertheless its two constituent elements, right worship and repentance, 32

Introduction are explicitly identified by both Scripture and tradition as features of human salvation and at least implicitly associated with Christ’s own salvific work.

Moreover, the explicit description of Christ’s salvific work as including both vicarious worship and repentance is not altogether unprecedented. Restricting ourselves for the moment to modern theology, we can find in the work of Thomas F. Torrance eloquent characterizations of both the doxological and contrition aspects of our conception of Christ’s doxological contrition. The doxological aspect of this conception is explicated by Torrance in the following exemplary elaboration: With its actual fulfilment in the incarnate life and self-­offering of the Son of God, Jesus Christ embodied in himself in a vicarious form the response of human beings to God, so that all their worship and prayer to God henceforth became grounded and centred in him. In short, Jesus Christ in his own self-­oblation to the Father is our worship and prayer in an acutely personalised form, so that it is only through him and with him and in him that we may draw near to God with the hands of faith filled with no other offering but that which he has made on our behalf and in our place once and for all. . . . In worship and prayer Jesus Christ acts in our place and on our behalf in both a representative and a substitutionary way so that what he does in our stead is nevertheless effected as our very own, issuing freely and spontaneously out of ourselves.42

Equally exemplary is Torrance’s following rendering of the contrition aspect of Christ’s salvific work: The Gospel tells us that at his Baptism Jesus was baptised “into repentance” (eis metanoian), for as the Lamb of God come to bear our sins he fulfilled that mission not in some merely superficially forensic way, though of course profound forensic elements were involved, but in a way in which he bore our sin and guilt upon his very soul which he made an offering for sin. That is to say, the Baptism with which he was baptised was a Baptism of vicarious repentance for us which be brought to its completion on the Cross where he was stricken and smitten of God for our sakes, by whose stripes we are healed. He had laid hold of us even in the depths of our human soul and mind where we are alienated from God and are at enmity with him, and 42. Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1992), 87–88.

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Introduction altered them from within and from below in radical and complete metanoia, a repentant restructuring of our carnal mind, as St Paul called it, and a converting of it into a spiritual mind.43

Torrance’s conception of Christ’s salvific work as vicarious worship was likely influenced by his reading of the Scottish theologian Joseph McLeod Campbell (1800–1872), who is also the source behind Torrance’s conception of Christ’s vicarious repentance.44 An even more explicit focus on the doxological dimension of Christ’s salvific work can be found in the work of the nineteenth-­century Roman Catholic German theologian Matthias Scheeben.

In his magisterial work, Die Mysterien des Christentums, Scheeben laments that the doxological aspect of Christ’s salvific work has not received adequate attention, and he attempts to fill this lacuna with his own robustly “latreutic” soteriology.45 However, neither the overtures of Scheeben nor those of Campbell toward a doxological soteriology have received significant attention or further elaboration in modern discussions of this doctrine. In contrast, there have been notable articulations of the conception of Christ’s salvific work as vicarious contrition by modern representatives of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox theology, with varying degrees of explicitness and thoroughness. In Roman Catholic theology, Bernard Lonergan has interpreted the traditional Western conception of Christ’s salvific “satisfaction” as denoting Christ’s detestation of and sorrow for human sin, an interpretation that, as we shall see later in this book, harks back to Thomas Aquinas.46 In the Orthodox tradition, the Russian Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky (1863–1936) identified the efficacious principle of Christ’s salvific work as Christ’s spiritual suffering, which consisted in his loving sorrow over all human sins.47 In Protestant theology, Joseph Campbell’s work has spawned a number of other interpretations 43. Torrance, Mediation of Christ, 84–85.

44. See especially Joseph McLeod Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement (London: Macmillan, 1856). See also Torrance’s appreciative essay on Campbell in his Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 287–317.

45. Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Die Mysterien des Christentums: Wesen, Bedeutung und Zusammenhang derselben nach der in ihrem übernatürlichen Charakter gegebenen Perspektive dargestellt (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1941), 432.

46. Bernard Lonergan, De Verbo Incarnato, rev. ed. (Rome: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1961), thesis 16.

47. Originally published as Antoniy, (Khrapovitskiy), archbishop, “Dogmat iskupleniya” [The Doctrine of Redemption], Bogoslovskiy Vestnik [Theological Herald] 2, nos. 8–12 (1917): 155–67, 285–315; more recently republished as Antoniy, Metropolitan of Kiev and Halych, O dogmate iskupleniya [On the doctrine of redemption] (Moscow: Airis Press, 2013). Khar-

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Introduction of Christ’s salvific work in terms of vicarious repentance, often preoccupied with assessing the compatibility or incompatibility of this notion with that of penal substitution.48 Along with scholarly works dedicated to this theme, we should also note the explanation of the salvific efficacy of Christ’s death as a perfect repentance in C. S. Lewis’s popular Mere Christianity. For Lewis, the debt of sin can only be paid through repentance, which is not a divine demand for compensation but rather the very act of returning to God after sin. Such repentance was not possible for sinful human beings but was perfectly enacted by the God-­human, Jesus Christ.49 It would indeed be a worthwhile and illuminating project to trace either or both of the themes of doxology and contrition in the works of the theologians cited above. Likewise, it would be at least equally valuable to discern how these two themes are implicitly interwoven in accounts of salvation found in earlier classic works of theology. However, the present work has a different goal, which is to present the fundamental framework of a constructive theology of Christ’s doxological contrition that is grounded in the Byzantine Christian tradition. This tradition, which traces its roots to the Greek-­speaking churches of late antiquity, is first and foremost doxological, as evidenced above all by the primacy it accords to liturgical experience. At the same time, the Byzantine Christian liturgical and spiritual tradition is also deeply penitential, emphasizing the transformative value of “mourning” (penthos) for one’s sins and the sins of all the world.50 The doxological character of the Eastern tradition, especially in its liturgical manifestation, has been wonderfully articulated in modern Orthodox theology in the work of the great Alexander Schmemann, whose approach is foundational to this work.51 More recently, Andrew Louth has aptly formulated the primacy of the doxological dimension of Orthodox faith in a statement whose validity is presupposed by the approach taken in this book: “If there is anything distinctive about Eastern Orthodoxy, it is not that it is an exotic belief, remote from what Western Christians believe. Rather, its distinctiveness is to be found in the way in which the traditional faith of povitskiy’s approach figures prominently in the soteriology of Sergius Bulgakov; see Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 354–72.

48. Alongside Torrance (Mediation of Christ), see Robert Campbell Moberly, Atonement and Personality (London: Murray, 1901); Peter Taylor Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909).

49. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 1952), 56–59.

50. See the classic exposition of this theme in I. Hausherr, Penthos: La Doctrine de la compunction dans L’Orient chrétien (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1944).

51. See below, chap. 1.

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Introduction Christians is upheld among the Orthodox. For Orthodoxy sees its faith as expressed, and tested, in prayer and worship.”52 Likewise, several illustrious modern presentations of Orthodox theology have also identified repentance as a unifying and pervasive theme in the Orthodox theological vision.53 Moreover, intimations of the intertwining between the dimensions of doxology and repentance in the Byzantine traditions can be discerned in the frequent modern characterization of “bright sadness” as the paradigmatic liturgical and spiritual experience of this tradition.54 The point of departure for the present work is the further specification of this “bright sadness” as an intermingling of doxology and contrition. I analyze this experience as given in liturgical worship, itself understood as the paradigmatic experience of Christian salvation, and I then seek to develop an understanding of Christ’s salvific work on the basis of this liturgical experience. The impetus and ultimate orientation of this work is therefore the liturgical experience of the Byzantine Christian tradition.

At the same time, I believe that this conception of the content of Christian salvation and of Christ’s salvific work corresponds to the formative Byzantine Christian spiritual practice of hesychasm—literally, “stillness.” This practice, which was classically articulated in fourteenth-­century Byzantium, aspires to attain to a vision of divine glory by the constant iteration of the penitential prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”55 An understanding of Christian salvation as doxological contrition may thus be also aptly characterized as a hesychastic conception of salvation.

52. Andrew Louth, Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2013), xix.

53. See again Andrew Louth, who declares, “As we encounter Christ, we encounter the mystery of repentance” (Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology, 66). See also Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987), esp. 175–83; Paul Evdokimov, Orthodoxy (London: New City Press, 2011). In his preface to the 1979 edition, Olivier Clément identifies in Evdokimov’s magisterial modern synthesis of Orthodox faith “a theological approach in which the human intelligence progresses by an ascesis of repentance, of the great conversion of the heart, metanoia” (Evdokimov, Orthodoxy, 9). The theme of repentance is also central to the presentation of Orthodox spirituality in Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definite Manual for the Scholar, trans.

Archimandrite Jerome (Newville) and Otilia Kloos (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2011), esp. 135–47. For a historical approach to the theme of repentance in the Byzantine tradition, see Alexis Torrance, Repentance in Late Antiquity: Eastern Asceticism and the Framing of the Christian Life c. 400–650 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

54. See Schmemann’s discussion of this theme in Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent: Journey to Pascha (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 31–33.

55. For a modern exposition of the tradition of the Jesus Prayer, see Archimandrite Lev

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Introduction This book will unfold in two parts. Part I will describe how a soteriology of doxological contrition can be constructed on the bases of liturgical experience, Scripture, and the dogmatic tradition of conciliar trinitarian and christological doctrine. Thus, chapter 1 seeks to show how the conception of doxological contrition arises organically out of liturgical experience in the Byzantine tradition. On the basis of the principle that human salvation comes about through a graced participation in Christ’s own perfectly achieved salvific work, the Byzantine depiction of the condition of salvation as a combination of right worship and contrition leads naturally to the question of how this combination is grounded in the person and work of Christ himself. I will therefore propose a liturgical “soteriology from below” that leads from the experience of salvation as doxological contrition to the understanding of Christ’s salvific work as the foundational performance of the doxological contrition in which we participate. Chapter 2 further anchors worship and contrition, as constitutive both of human salvation and of Christ’s salvific work, in the scriptural witness. The ordering of these two chapters does not mean that liturgy takes priority over Scripture. Rather, it acknowledges that the church’s liturgical experience performs a normative interpretation of Scripture. Chapter 3 attempts to discern the soteriological grammar of conciliar trinitarian and christological doctrine, with a view to enabling the analysis of the notion of doxological contrition in reference to the foundational dogmatic sense of salvation as a deifying participation in trinitarian life through the interactivity of Christ’s divinity and humanity.

Part II will then take up the constructive task of a systematic exposition of a soteriology of doxological contrition. Chapter 4 will begin this systematic exposition with an account of the mutual glorification of the divine Trinity, the participation of which constitutes humanity’s created end and salvific fulfillment. Chapter 5 further explicates the understanding of human existence as ordained to participation in the intra-­trinitarian glorification. Chapter 6 analyzes sin as most essentially a misrepresentation of this intra-­trinitarian glorification. Chapter 7 outlines the basic elements of the conception of Christ’s salvific work as effecting our reintegration into the mutual glorification of the divine persons through his representative doxological contrition. Chapter 8 situates this entire edifice of the conception of salvation as doxological conGillet, The Jesus Prayer, rev. ed., with a foreword by Kallistos Ware (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987). On the influence of the hesychast tradition on Byzantine theology and spirituality, see John Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974).

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Introduction trition within the map of modern theology by initiating a dialogue with three modern approaches to Christian salvation that seem to be the most confident about their own constructions and that have the most committed adherents: liberation theology, Girardian mimetic theory, and penal substitution.

One final caveat is necessary in order to prepare the reader for what is perhaps one of the more striking oddities of this book. As articulated in the subtitle and further elaborated in this introduction, this book purports to set forth a Byzantine “Eastern Christian” theology of salvation.56 Readers might, consequently, expect the book to be based almost exclusively on explicitly Eastern sources—namely, the Greek fathers of the early church and theologians from the subsequent Orthodox traditions. Readers might also expect a good dose of anti-­Western polemic, or at least a constant assertion of a great chasm between “the Eastern view” and “the Western view” on all sorts of issues. Those who have been closely following the most recent developments in Eastern Orthodox theology, however, will be aware of some signs of a changing of the tide. Leading Orthodox theologians have called for “a more nuanced engagement of the binary opposition between East and West that would overcome the previously held Orthodox stereotypes and overly polemical constructions of the West.”57 This call has already been effectively answered in particular instances through recent serious and sometimes quite positive engagement with major Western figures who had been routinely anathematized by modern Orthodox theology, such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas.58 The present book builds on this emergent momentum. Its claim to be an Eastern Christian theology of salvation is not founded on an a priori dismissal of all things 56. I characterize the ecclesial orientation of this book as “Eastern Christian” rather than “Eastern Orthodox” as a matter of ecumenical decorum, since the writer is not a member of any Orthodox ecclesial jurisdiction. I am a member of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which claims the same Byzantine dogmatic, liturgical, and spiritual heritage of the Byzantine Orthodox Churches, while also maintaining communion with the Church of Rome.

57. This is Paul Gavrilyuk’s assessment of the outcome of a conference at Fordham University, “Orthodox Constructions of the West,” in Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 257. Gavrilyuk’s book itself exemplifies the achievement of that aspiration.

58. Among recent notable examples, see George Demacopolous and Aristotle Papanikolaou, eds., Orthodox Readings of Augustine (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008); David Bentley Hart, “A Gift Exceeding Every Debt: An Eastern Orthodox Appreciation of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo,” Pro Ecclesia 7, no. 3 (1998): 333–49; Marcus Plested, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Matthew Baker and Todd Speidell, eds., T. F. Torrance and Eastern Orthodoxy: Theology in Reconciliation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015).

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Introduction Western. At key junctures, my construction of an Eastern Christian theology of salvation advances through a critically appreciative dialogue with Western thinkers, including Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Scheeben (introduced above). I have already offered a brief account of how the impetus and orientation of the conception of salvation as doxological contrition arises out of the experience of the Byzantine Christian tradition. Given this fundamental rootedness, positive interaction with Western sources should not be considered as disqualifying this Eastern impetus and orientation but rather as affirming and demonstrating the capacity of the Eastern Christian tradition to discern, manifest, and celebrate “the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6) wherever it may be found among the various streams of the Christian tradition.

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