Full Text for Christ the Victor and the Victim (Text)

CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Volume 59: Numbers 1-2 JANUARY-APRIL 1995 Christ the Victor and the Victim RowanA.Greer .......... : ............................................................ 1 The Filioque: What Is at Stake? Avery Dulles, S.J. ................................................................ 3 1 GocE the Son and Hermeneutics David P. Scaer ......................................................................... 49 Johann Sebastian Bach. and Scripture Paul Hofreiter ........................................................................ 67 Three Overtures of the Faculty of Concordia Theological Seminary ...................................... 93 Theological Observer ............................................................... 99 Homiletical Studies . ................ ........ ........ ........................ ............ 105 Book Reviews ................................................................... 125 Indices to Volume 58 (1994) Index of Authors and Editors ................................................. 143 Index of Titles ....................................................................... 144 Index of Book Reviews ........................................................... 145 Books Received .... . . . . .... . . . . .... . .... . ... ... . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Christ the Victor and the Victim Rowan A. Greer A discussion of the theme of this essay could well begin with citations from several of the hymns found in the Lutheran Book of Worship. Hymn 141 celebrates Christ as the victor over death and sin: The day of resurrection! Earth tell it out abroad, The passover of gladness, The passover of God. From death to life eternal, From sin's dominion free, Our Christ has brought us over With hymns of victory. Let hearts be purged of evil That we see aright The Lord in rays eternal Of resurrection light, And listening to his accents, May hear, so calm and plain, His own "All hail!" and hearing, May raise the victor strain. In contrast, Hymn 137 begins by treating Christ, not as the victor, but as the victim reconciling sinners to the Father: Christians, to the paschal victim, Ofler your thankful praises! A Lamb the sheep redeeming: Christ, who only is sinless, Reconciling sinners to the Father. Nevertheless, the contrast is not an absolute one, since Hymn 137 continues with these words: Death and life have contended In that combat stupendous; The prince of life, who died, Reigns immortal. We may think as well of Hymn 118: 2 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Sing my tongue, the glorious battle; Sing the ending of the fray. Now above the cross, the trophy, Sound the loud triumphant lay; Tell how Christ, the world's redeemer, As a victim won the day. How are we to explain the contrast between Christ the victor and Christ the victim? How shall we argue for their compatibility? It would be tempting to suppose that Christ appears as the victim on Good Friday only to become the victor on Easter Day. Yet the first two hymns I have mentioned are both meant to be sung on Easter. A better way of describing the contrast suggests itself when we realize that "the Day of Resurrection" derives from a hymn written by John of Damascus in the early eighth century and represents the flowering of the patristic tradition and of the Greek church fathers. "Christians, to the Paschal Victim," however, is the traditional Easter sequence of the Latin Mass. Wipo of Burgundy, a chaplain to the Ottonian Emperor Conrad 11, composed the hymn towards the middle of the eleventh century, roughly fifty years before Anselm wrote Cur Deus Homo. What is being suggested here is that the contrast is one between the way in which the early church in the fourth and fifth centuries understood redemption and the Latin Western view we find expressed by Anselm. The one view tends to regard death as the basic human problem and to think of Christ's conquest of death as the completion of God's creative purpose for humanity. The Western view focuses upon sin and treats Christ as the atoning victim, who reverses the fall of Adam.' For the ancient church the cross is really the resurrection, whereas in the Latin West it tends to become a symbol of the victim's death. The crucifix, then, is a Western medieval development. In what follows only a small part of the puzzle is examined. The argument will be that the writers of the fourth and fifth centuries betray the sensibility which we have found in the hymn of John of Damascus.' Christ is the victor over death. At the same time, nevertheless, these same writers find themselves obliged to take Christ the Victor and the Victim 3 account of the passages of the New Testament that speak of Christ's fate in sacrificial terms and so imply that He is the victim as well as the victor. It follows that we must think not so much of a later view replacing an earlier one, but more of a shift of emphasis. Themes that are ancillary and secondary in the earlier materials begin to occupy the center of the stage later on. Augustine seems to be the pivotal thinker in this regard, and this study will conclude by arguing that in Augustine's writings we begin to discover the center of gravity shifting from victor to victim. I. Christ the Victor over Death There is, of course, no single understanding of redemption in the ancient church; only the doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ's person found dogmatic definiti~n.~ It is reasonable, at the same time, to claim that Athanasius' treatise On the Incarnation gives us the basic perspective. Redemption is theosis, divinization: For He became man that we might become divine; and He revealed Himself through a body that we might receive an idea of the invisible Father; and He endured insults from men that we might inherit incorruption." "Divinization," though often given a merely spiritual significance, has two aspects for Athanasius.' It is the knowledge of God, a knowledge which requires the likeness of knower and known because of the Platonic axiom that like is known by like. And this knowledge is the perfect contemplation of God, a knowing of the good that enables humans to do the good. Thus, knowledge is equated with moral virtue and is a way of speaking of the moral and spiritual dimensions of redemption. Divinization, however, is also "incorruption." The term has a physical meaning and is Athanasius' way of speaking of the resurrection of the body. It is easy enough to see how Athanasius relates to the way in which the New Testament describes redemption. Moral and spiritual concepts reconciliation, justification, becoming children of God, knowing, loving, seeing God-correlate with the physical nature of resurrec- tion. Athanasius locates his two ideas of redemption in what we may 4 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY call the Christian story and by doing so gives pride of place to in~orruption.~ Because of His "special pity for the human race" God created human beings with an "added grace" by "making them in His own image and giving them also a share in the power of His own word." Thus, Adam and Eve were able to know God and to be happy by that knowledge. But such grace is just the beginning: For He [God] brought them into His paradise and gave them a law, so that if they kept the grace and remained good they would enjoy the life of paradise, without sorrow, pain, or care, in addition to their having the promise of incorruption in heaven. But if they transgressed and turned away and became wicked, they would know that they would suffer the natural corruption consequent on death, and would no longer live in paradise, but in future dying outside it would remain in death and corruption.' In other words, the knowledge of God is a capacity requiring full actualization and is a means towards effecting incorruption. The idea revolves around the Stoicizing notion that the soul or mind is the governing principle, of the body and its passions. The contem- plation of God empowers the human mind to fulfill its task of governance not only in a moral fashion by healing the passions but also in a physical fashion by rendering the body incorruptible. Thus, the incarnate Word restores the knowledge of God lost by Adam and Eve and bestows upon human nature the incorruption designed for humanity but never attained by Adam and Eve, who fell before they had grown into the resurrection-life. The knowledge of God, then, is for Athanasius, as for Irenaeus, a means towards physical incormption; and redemption is firmly identified with the resurrec- tion of the body.' The incarnate Word, then, functions not only in a revelatory way, but also as the first principle of the general resurrection. The Word, by appropriating a human body and making it His own, divinizes the body by raising it from the dead incorruptible, thereby establishing the new h~manity.~ The logic is related to that of the Pauline comparison of Adam and Christ; as in Adam all die, so also in Christ are all made alive. The pattern established in the one shapes the destiny of all. Athanasius, however, can speak of Christ's Christ the Victor and the Victim 5 victory over death in another way: . . . as an offering and sacrifice free of all spot, He offered to death the body which He had taken to Himself, and immediately abolished death from all who were like Him by the offering of a like. For since the Word is above all, consequently by offering His temple and the instrument of His body as a substitute for all men, He fulfilled the debt by His death.'' Christ's death is a sacrifice, but why is it offered to death?" Why is it a substitute? What is meant by the debt Christ paid?12 Though it is by no means certain how we should answer these questions, we may find a possible solution by pointing out that for Athanasius, as for the other church fathers, Satan is the one "who has the power of death!' (Hebrews 2:14).13 The idea appears in the Wisdom of Solomon (2:23-24): "God made man for incormption, and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death came into the world." Athanasius cites this text in chapter 6. The debt, then, is human indebtedness to Satan and to death; and the sacrifice is a ransom given to Satan in exchange for all humanity. The equation of sacrifice and ransom may seem strange to us until we remember that in ancient Greece sacrifices were offered in order to avert hostile deities. We may be dealing, then, with a single metaphor rather than with two conflicting ones. The sacrifice- ransom accomplishes the victory of Christ over Satan-death by paying what was owed. In this way God maintains His justice by allowing Satan to exact the penalty of death; but, by shifting the penalty to Christ, He allows His goodness to prevail.I4 If these suggestions are correct, then it follows that Athanasius' use of "sacrifice," "debt," and "ransom" is ancillary to his theological exposition. One may argue further that the themes in question function in the story of how Christ won the victory over Satan, who had conquered our first parent^.'^ To put the point somewhat differently, Athanasius' theology seeks to articulate in more sophisticated language the story of Christ's victory over Satan. 6 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY 11. Christ's Victory over Satan and Its Baptismal Setting The interpretation just given finds some confmation in Gregory of Nyssa's Catechetical Oration. Gregory, writing later in the fourth century than Athanasius, seems still to be working with the same story. Satan succeeded in deceiving Adam and Eve, persuading them to disobey God by baiting "the fishhook of evil . . . with an outward appearance of good." God in His justice could not abolish Satan's claim to hold humanity in death. But just as, in the case of someone who has sold himself into slavery, it remains possible to buy back freedom, such is the case here too: . . . when once we had voluntarily sold ourselves, He who undertook out of goodness to restore our freedom had to contrive a just and not a dictatorial method to do so. And some such method is this: to give the master the chance to take whatever He wants to as the price of the slave.16 Christ, then, gave Satan a dose of his own medicine. Satan per- ceived only Christ's humanity, but saw in it such superlative virtues and miracles that he was willing to trade all humanity for it. Like a "greedy fish" Satan swallowed "the Godhead like a fishhook along with the flesh, which was the bait."" In this way the deceiver was deceived, and God found a way of reconciling His goodness, wisdom, justice, and power. Gregory does not here use the sacrificial metaphor, but the parallel with Athanasius' discussion seems clear enough to allow the inference that we are in the presence of a common and popular understanding of Christ's victory over Satan.'' The context of Gregory's discussion is a brief manual of instruc- tion for catechetical teachers, and so we can begin to locate Christ's victory over Satan in a baptismal context. It is worth observing that theology in the ancient church was no armchair avocation. Quite to the contrary, what the church fathers say has its objective correlative in the Christian life and particularly in the liturgy. The primary way, moreover, in which people were socialized into the Christian church was through catechetical instruction; and it seems reasonably clear that Christians thought of the Christian life as the living out of their baptism. Once we see this connection, we can recognize that Christ the Victor and the Victim 7 Christ's victory over Satan is what enables catechumens to renounce Satan and to enroll themselves as soldiers and athletes of Christ. Baptism, then, not only initiates believers into Christ and the church; it also consecrates them for their own warfare or contest against Satan. Anointed like athletes in the games, they go forth confident that their own victory has been guaranteed by Chri~t's.'~ The implication of what is being argued here is that sacrificial language is not central to the themes of Christ's victory over Satan and the Christian contest against him. At the same time, the fact that as a rule baptisms took place at Easter means that we must include the Christian passover in our discussion. At this feast Christ, our paschal lamb, is said to be sacrificed (1 Corinthians 5:7). He is the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.20 It is this association that dominates the Paschal Homily of Melito of Sardis, written about 170 from the point of view of Christians in Asia Minor, who celebrated the Passover on the fourteenth day of Nisan, the day of the cr~cifixion.~' The Passover (pascha) calls to mind the suffering (paschein) of Christ, who fulfills the type of the paschal lamb." For Melito, however, as for John, the death of Christ on the cross is the victory of His resurrection: Come, then, all human families, defiled with sins; receive the forgiveness of your sins. For I am your forgiveness, I am the passover of salvation, I am the lamb slaughtered for you, I am your ransom, I am your life, I am your resurrec- tion, I am your light, I am your salvation, I am your king.23 As the true paschal lamb Christ is the sacrifice and ransom averting sin and death. It seems reasonable to suppose that, when the later church fathers speak of Christ as a ransom or sacrifice offered to death, sin, or Satan, they have in mind the apotropaic meaning of the paschal lamb, which turns away the destroying angel from Israel.24 By the fourth century Melito's understanding of the Christian passover had in some respects yielded to a view which we find expressed in Origen's Treatise on the Passover. Passover no longer means suffering, but has the etymological meaning of "passage": [Christ came to show us] what the true passover is, the true "passage" (diabasis) out of Egypt. . . . for a new way of 8 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY life begins for the one who leaves behind the darkness and comes to the light (John 3:20-21)-to speak in a manner proper to the sacrament (sumbolon) through water given those who have hoped in Christ. . . .25 The celebration of Easter no longer takes place on the day of Christ's death but on the Sunday after it. From one point of view the change makes no difference. Both understandings of the Christian passover celebrate Christ's victory over death.26 At the same time, attention begins to shift from Christ's death which destroys death to the resurrection in which He is exalted to God's right hand. Gregory Nazianzen gives us the best example of this modified sensibility of the Christian passover in one of his Easter sermons: Yesterday the lamb was slain and the door-posts were anointed, and Egypt bewailed her firstborn, and the De- stroyer passed, us over, and the seal was dreadful and reverend, and we were walled in with the precious blood. Today we have clean escaped from Egypt and from Pha- raoh; and there is none to hinder us from keeping a feast to the Lord our God-the feast of our departure. . . . Yesterday I was crucified with Him; today I am glorified with Him; yesterday I died with Him; today I am quickened with Him; yesterday I was buried with Him; today I rise with Him." It may well be the case that Gregory begins to move towards our sensibility of Good Friday and Easter, the contrast between sorrow and joy, death and life. Certainly, the impact of the rites of Holy Week in Jerusalem on the Christian church from the fourth century onwards helps explain the development. It is unlikely, nevertheless, that Gregory wishes to sever Christ's death from His resurrection. He certainly retains the idea of the cross as Christ's sacrificial victory over death, and the new sensibility of the Christian passover leaves the door open to associating sacrificial language with Christ's passage to heaven. 111. Sacrificial Language and Christ's Death and Resurrection We have seen that, just as the blood of the paschal lamb preserved Christ the Victor and the Victim 9 God's people, so Christ's death wins the victory of life over sin, death, and Satan. His sacrifice or ransom defeats these enemies. All these themes find their concrete location in baptism, when believers renounce Satan and embark upon their own struggle against him. When we turn to the entphasis upon the resurrection as the completion of Christ's victory, we discover that sacrificial language begins to treat God the Father as the one to whom Christ offers the sacrifice. We also find that the baptismal association remains, since baptism is a dying and rising with Christ.28 John Chrysostom's Homily 14 on Hebrews illustrates the point. Hebrews 8 (1-2) speaks of our "high priest . . . seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven." Christ, we may infer, has taken His sacrifice to heaven; having completed His priestly work, He has taken His seat. (Priests stand and do not sit.)29 These are heavenly and spiritual things: For although they are done on earth, yet nevertheless they are worthy of the heavens. For when our Lord Jesus Christ lies slain [as a'sacrifice], when the Spirit is with us, when He who sitteth on the right hand of the Father is here, when sons are made by the washing, when they are fellow-citizens of those in heaven, when we have a country and a city and citizenship there, when we are strangers to things here, how can all these be other than "heavenly things"?30 Christ's sacrifice, somewhat vaguely described, prompts Chrysostom to think of the liturgy, of baptism, and of the Christian life.31 The idea that Christ offered His sacrifice to God, and not elsewhere to avert death and sin, has two primary warrants in the New Testa~nent.~~ Hebrews 9:ll-14 speaks of Christ in this way: He entered once for all into the holy place, taking . . . His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. . . . For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. 10 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Other passages in Hebrews elaborate and complicate the metaphor. The other warrant does not clarify our understanding. Ephesians 5:2 is an exhortation to "walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." The church fathers often simply repeat this language without seeking to explain what it means or what kind of sacrifice Christ is supposed to have offered.33 While the church fathers can speak of Christ's sacrifice as an offering of His blood to the Father, they can also understand it as His thankful gift to God of the redeemed: Now when became He "Apostle," but when He put on our flesh? And when became He "High Priest of our profes- sion" (Hebrews 3:l-2), but when, after offering Himself for us, He raised His body from the dead and, as now, Himself brings near and offers to the Father those who in faith approach Him, redeeming all and for all propitiating God?34 In this passage Athanasius appears to be muddling together three rather different ideas. Christ's death is the sacrifice that averts death. But His death and resurrection propitiate God, and what He offers is those who believe in Him. The only point that is clear is the claim that Christ's resurrection from death has secured that of Christians. Gregory of Nyssa can also speak of Christ's offering God humanity: 0 happy good news! He who for us became one of us, so that by becoming our kin He might make us His own brothers, He brings His own Man to the true Father, in order through Him to attract all that is akin.35 The "Man" of Christ, for Gregory, becomes generic human nature with all humans as His members. Both Athanasius and Gregory retain the sacrificial language but draw it into their theological understanding of the incarnation. Athanasius' reference to propitiating God is a troubling one to many.36 John Chrysostom finds it so. "To appear in the presence of God for us" (Hebrews 9:24) means that Christ went up "with a sacrifice which had power to propitiate the Father." But, says Christ the Victor and the Victim 11 Chrysostom, was the Father an enemy? The answer is fmly negative, but Chrysostom takes the point no f~rther.~' We find a lengthier but similarly inconclusive passage in the Second Oration on Easter of Gregory Nazianzen: Now we are to examine another fact and dogma, neglected by most people, but in my judgment well worth inquiring into. To whom was that blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed? I mean the precious and famous blood of our God and High Priest and Sacrifice. We were detained in bohdage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether. But if to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, on what principle did the blood of His only-begotten Son delight the Father, who would not receive even Isaac. . . .38 The only answer of which Gregory can think is to appeal to the incarnation, by which the tyrant was conquered and human nature purified. He concludes by declaring: "the greater part of what we might say shall be reverenced with silence." While it is true that only rarely do we find explicit admissions of the problematic character of sacrificial language, there is evidence of an implicit feeling by the Greek fathers that such language was at worst misleading and at best metaphorical. Theodore of Mopsue- stia, for example, ignores the sacrificial language of Ephesians 1:7-8 and 5:2.39 At Colossians 1:20 Theodore equates "blood" and "cross" with Christ's death and argues that it is Christ's death and resurrec- tion that effects the reconciliation of which the verse speaks.40 In a similar way, though he retains without evident discomfort the sacrificial language of the New Testament, Cyril of Alexandria draws its texts into his own theology of the incarnate Lord. In a 12 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY long discussion in Quod Unus Sit Christus Cyril argues that the humanity of Christ in no sense functions apart from the Word that appropriates it. The biblical texts he cites include a number of references to Christ's "blood" and His "sacrifice." The terms refer to the humanity of the incarnate Word!' Sometimes we find a more direct ascription of a metaphorical character to the sacrificial terms. Commenting on Hebrews 7:3, Theodoret argues that it is when He became incarnate that Christ became High Priest, lamb, sin, curse, way, and door. By assimilat- ing Christ's priesthood, and consequently His sacrifice, to other terms that are clearly metaphorical, Theodoret invites us to move away from any literal understanding of Christ's ~acrifice.~' He also speaks of Christ's sacrifice, since it is clearly not the same as the sacrifices in the temple, as a "spiritual" one, as ours must be (Romans 12:l)!3 This conception must be borne in mind when the language of a type is applied to its fulfillment in Christ. This conception provides a way to understand several passages in Eusebius of Caesarea's Demonstration of the Gospel. He finds the sacrifices of living things in the Old Testament contradictory to God's will and yet made necessary because they foreshadowed "the better, the great and worthy and divine sacrifice" and the "holy victim . . ., the offering for the sins of the world.'# To be sure, we can take the language of Eusebius seriously; but we should also understand it as the metaphorical application to Christ of terms properly belonging to the sacrifices of the Old Testament. He fulfills the types of Isaac's sacrifice, of the sacrifices in the temple, of the paschal lamb, of the blood of the covenant, and of Abel's blood. One additional point can be made as to the role of a metaphor of sacrifice in a theology which sees redemption primarily as Christ's victory over death. The biblical texts which speak of sacrifices usually associate them with the problem of sin. Thus, it would seem unlikely to find an exposition reinterpreting sacrifice as though abolishing death. Yet this is precisely what Theodore of Mopsuestia does in his interpretation of Ephesians 1:7, "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. 11. ... . Christ the Victor and the Victim 13 In Christ, he says, who deemed it worthy to undergo death for us (this is what he means by "through His blood"), we have received forgiveness. . . . since we were mortal, it followed that we were in the wrong, since it is impossible that what is mortal should ever exist without fault. There- fore, by dying for us and by rising again for us, He gave us together with our participation in the Spirit that immortal life in which it is possible for us to remain free from sin.45 Our mortality is what causes our inclination to sin. Christ, by breaking the hold of mortality upon us, makes it possible for us to renounce sin. The victory over death, then, is also a victory over sin. The promise of immortality stabilizes the human mind, enabling it once more to fulfill its task of governing the body and so achieving virtue. It seems possible, then, to conclude that, in the fathers of the early church, Christ the victim and sacrificial language about Him take second place to a theology that emphasizes Christ as the victor over death and as such the consummator of God's creative purpose for humanity. Redemption completes creation, and the fall tends to become in the long run at worst a temporary interruption of the process and at best a mistake by which humans learn to grow towards the maturity of the resurrection-life. On the other hand, the sacrificial language by no means disappears; nor does the emphasis upon mortality as the basic human problem mean that sin is no longer relevant. It is time now, however, to turn to the thought of Augustine and argue that several themes secondary in the tradition before him begin to become primary. Sin, sacrifice, and Christ's death loom larger in his mature writings and so help to prepare the way for developments in Western medieval theology. IV. Augustine's Shift of Emphasis In many ways Augustine's thought conforms to that of the Christian Platonism to which he was converted. Indeed, one could even argue that his dependence upon Plotinus makes him in some respects more of a Platonist than his Greek contemporaries. He thinks of the Christian life as a moral purgation designed to prepare the believer for the contemplation of God and the ascent of the soul 14 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY to its place of true rest. He also insists upon the physical dimension of Christian destiny: The new life, therefore, is meanwhile begun in faith and maintained by hope; for it shall only then be perfect when this mortal shall be swallowed up in life and death swal- lowed up in victory, when the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed. . . .46 Redemption, then, is divinization in both a spiritual and a physical sense. It is made possible by Christ, the Mediator, "who was made partaker of our mortality to make us partakers of His di~inity."~' Christ's victory over death occupies the center of the stage. From another point of view, however, Augustine radically repudiates central aspects of Christian Platonism. Without abandon- ing its idea of the ascent of the soul to God, he argues that because of original sin such an ascent is possible only by God's sovereign grace. A double sensibility informs these qualifications of the usual view. Humans are radically incapacitated because of Adam's fall, and God in His absolute sovereignty does not limit Himself to persuasive means. Original sin means that Adam died not merely in the ordinary sense of the word, but also spiritually and so became incapable of anything but sin. For this reason Adam brought eternal punishment on himself and all his children. We are born, then, not only mortal, but also spiritually dead in the sense that even our good choices are sinful because they are motivated by our evil will. The only hope we have of avoiding eternal damnation lies in God's sovereign grace, which alone, and without reference to anything we are or can do, is strong enough to free the will from its bondage to sin. Once we regard our predicament from this perspective, our basic problem turns out to be sin rather than death. The general tendency, indeed, of Western theology after Augustine was to follow him in turning attention away from death towards sin. If sin becomes the basic problem and if the role of the Mediator is to establish the possibility of a grace that alone can deliver the elect from original sin, Christ's sacrifice is one that must be understood the same way: . . . this sacrifice was offered by the one true Priest, the Christ the Victor and the Victim 15 Mediator of God and man; and . . . it was proper that this sacrifice should be prefigured by animal sacrifices, in order to foreshadow the flesh and blood of the one sacrifice for the remission of sins contracted by flesh and blood, which shall not inherit the kingdom of God. . . .48 No longer are the sacrifices of the Old Testament metaphors of Christ's death, instead, it is Christ's sacrifice that defines them. Augustine, to be sure, carefully defines what he means by sacrifice. Passages of the Old Testament such as Hosea 6:6 ("I desire mercy rather than sacrifice") make it clear that "what is generally called sacrifice is really a sign of the true sacrifice." And "true sacrifice is offered in every act which is designed to unite us to God in a holy fellowship, every act, that is, which is directed to that final Good which makes possible our true felicity." Such sacrifices are those of "the whole redeemed community" and are possible only because of Christ's sacrifi~e."~ Christ's sacrifice, though carefully defined, has become a concept rather than a metaphor.50 Not only does Augustine begin to emphasize sin and Christ's sacrifice as its remedy, but he also in two places in the De Trinitate can sever Christ's death from His resurrection. In Book 4 he reflects upon the incarnation by using the metaphor of musical harmony. A single and a double, taken together, create harmony: Therefore on this double death of ours our Saviour bestowed His own single death; and to cause both our resurrections, He appointed beforehand and set forth in mystery and type His own one re~urrection.~' What he means is that Christ's death overcomes both our spiritual and our physical death and that His resurrection gives us new life both spiritually and physically. Worthy of note, however, is the strong distinction which Augustine makes between death and resurrection. If, nevertheless, he severs Christ's death from His resurrection, it is not in order to say something of Christ, but rather to elaborate an argument regarding the Christian life. A similar pattern occurs in Book 13. Here Augustine seeks to understand the "inner man," that is, the forms of human knowledge that are not tied in any way to sensory perception. It is because 16 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY these higher forms of knowledge are not fully developed in this life that Augustine begins by thinking of them in terms of faith. He distinguishes between the faith that we believe and the faith by which we believe. The latter arises when we have made the faith our own, and it becomes an inner orientation which the soul has in common with other believers. Augustine's next move is from a common faith and common will to a common will to live blessedly. His discussion is not so much an argument as a meditation, and he arrives at the conclusion that "he only is a blessed man, who both has all things which he wills, and wills nothing ill."52 This defini- tion, further, implies the necessity of immortality. Thus, bliss is defined in a double way as having what we will and willing what is right is impossible in this life. Faith in the immortality brought by Christ, however, assures us that bliss is a future possibility and one to which even now we can cling by hope. It is at this point that Augustine turns from his analysis of human life and aspirations to Christ as the redeemer. And the double definition of bliss governs his treatment of Christ's death and resurrection. Willing what is right equates with righteousness; having what we will equates with power. The work of Christ, therefore, is described & follows: . . . [Christ] conquered the devil first by righteousness and afterwards by power: namely, by righteousness, because He had no sin and was slain by him most unjustly; but by power, because having been dead He lived again, never afterwards to die.53 Even more arresting is a sentence almost immediately before the passage just cited: "For He did one of these two things by dying, the other by rising again." What has been implicit in some of the other passages to which reference has been made becomes quite explicit here: Christ's death and His resurrection fulfill two different functions, in the first case righteousness and in the second case power. There are now two victories over Satan: It is not then difficult to see that the devil was conquered, when He who was slain by him rose again. It is something more, and more profound of comprehension, to see that the Christ the Victor and the Victim 17 devil was conquered when he thought himself to have conquered, that is, when Christ was slain." The separation, to be sure, of Christ's death from His resurrection is a factor in Augustine's discussion of human destiny and not of christology; perhaps we should not make much more of it. The stage, nevertheless, is set for seeing Christ's sacrificial death on the cross as the act that establishes the possibility of forgiveness. V. Conclusion and Summary The preceding words have probably made Augustine seem more of a contrast to his Greek contemporaries than he really was. Indeed, it is because of the later Western development in thinking that it is easy to see in his writings an emphasis upon Christ as the victim atoning for sin. Augustine's thought cannot by itself explain the development we find fully articulated by Anselm. There are clearly other factors that demand consideration. Liturgical changes seem to have shifted attention away from the Christian passover, which celebrated Christ's death and resurrection simultaneously, to the pattern more familiar to us. Once, moreover, the baptism of people as infants became virtually universal, the catechetical setting no longer functioned as the concrete setting for the making of Chris- tians. At least by the thirteenth century the Celtic practice of private penance surely supplied one such location for the transforming of nominal Christians into true ones. If such a setting was the place where people found the meaning of Christianity, it would not be surprising if the main point of the religion became the forgiveness of sins. Such considerations, however, take us beyond the scope of the argument here. In sum, this study suggests that we find in Augustine at least the beginning of a contrast. Christ, the victor over death who completes creation, tends to become the victim who reverses the fall and atones for sin. The contrast is, to be sure, a matter of emphasis, and there is merit in making some attempt to combine the two sensibilities. The view in the early church is an optimistic one, insisting that there is room for human freedom and that God's persuasive providence can help us learn from our mistakes. There is no radical view of human sin, and the evils we do and suffer are in the long run part 18 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY of our education for the resurrection-life. The Augustinian view, on the other hand, involves more pessimism. It faces sin and evil directly, and tends to obliterate our capacity to deal with the dark side of our existence. Perhaps wisdom lies in seeking something in both perspectives and in thinking of Christ as the victor precisely because He was also the victim. Endnotes 1. In the author's (Anglican) tradition the contrast finds illustration in the Eucharistic Prayers in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. Prayer I, which is firmly in the Prayer- Book tradition, treats Christ as the victim atoning for sin: "All glory be to Thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that Thou, of Thy tender mercy, didst give Thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there, by His one oblation of Himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world. . . ." Prayer D, an adaptation of the Liturgy of Saint Basil, stresses Christ as the victor over death: "We acclaim You, holy Lord, glorious in power. Your mighty works reveal Your wisdom and love. You formed us in Your own image. . . . When our disobedience took us far from You, You did not abandon us to the power of death. . . . To fulfill Your purpose He [the Son] gave Himself up to death; and rising from the grave, destroyed death, and made the whole creation new." One can argue that the introduction of prayers that reflect the views of the ancient church is really a catching up with theological developments in Anglicanism. From at least the time of Lux Mundi (1889) people like Charles Gore and William Temple tended to repudiate the doctrine of the atonement and to substitute for it the incarnational views of the early church. For them, Christ is redemptor in order to be consummator of creation. 2. The author is indebted in this regard to Frances M. Young, The Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers from the New Testament to John Chrysostom (Cambridge, Christ the Victor and the Victim 19 Massachusetts: Philadelphia Patristics Foundation, 1979). Her discussion of G. Auldn's Christus Victor is helpful (pp. 142, 171, 208,294-295). Her book, of course, covers more ground than can be considered. The approach here differs from hers primarily by taking the- sacrificial language less seriously than she would like. She does recognize (p. 160) that "frequently it seems that scriptural language and the language of confession of faith is reproduced without any attempt to find a rationale." One may also compare p. 293. Young also fails to point out that as often as not the sacrificial language occurs in passages that deal with death rather than sin. This study, too, has focused on the fourth and fifth centuries, whereas much of Young's work deals with earlier materials. Her discussion of Origen (pp. 167ff.) is particularly illuminating. H. E. W. Turner, The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption (London: A. R. Mowbray and Company, 1952), argues for four somewhat unrelated themes: Christ the Illuminator, Christ the Victor, incormp- tion and deification, and Christ the Victim. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), pp. 375-400, distinguishes three themes (physical interpretation, ransom to the devil, and realism) but treats them as complementary. Readers may see the excellent discussion by Brooks Otis, "Cappadocian Thought as a Coherent System" (DOP 12, 1958). Otis contrasts Irenaeus' physical understanding of redemption with Origen's contemplative view and argues that most of the church fathers follow Irenaeus but seek to add spiritual dimensions to it. De Incarnatione, 54. R. W. Thomson's text and translation are being used here: Robert W. Thomson, ed., Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione (Oxford: The Claren- don Press, 1971). The term has a complex origin. 2 Peter 1:4 ("partakers of the divine nature") is cited in support of the idea. But the tag in Plato's Theaetetus (176b) describing human destiny as "likeness to God so far as possible" is certainly part of 20 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY the picture. The patristic doctrine of humanity as the image of God pulls these themes together. 6. The point can be made more narrowly regarding Christ Himself. The incarnation (the economy) is what brings redemption, but the economy refers to the whole story of Christ, culminating in His death and resurrection, which are treated as two aspects of the same event. For the equation of the incarnation and the death and resurrection, readers may see Cyril of Alexandria, Quod Unus Sit Christus, 729e (SC 97, p. 352); Athanasius, Contra Arianos, 2.55 (NPNF 2.4, p. 378) and Letter 60.5 (NPNF 2.4, p. 576); and Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 2.3 (NPNF 2.5, p. 104). For the cross as both death and resurrection, readers may see Cyril of Jerusalem, Lecture 13.1-4 (NPNF 2.7, pp. 82-83). Cyril's text is Isaiah 53, and he refers to the true cross; "For though I should now deny it [the crucifixion], here is Golgotha to confute me, near which we are now assembled; the wood of the cross confutes me, which was afterwards distributed piecemeal from hence to all the world. I confess the cross, because I know of the resurrection . . ." De Incarnatione, 3. We may note that Athanasius retains the Origenistic image-theology in which the Word is the image of God and the human soul is created according to the word of God. This theology, of course, has the possi- bility of dividiig the persons of the Trinity and so plays into the hands of the Arians. This consideration, together with the fact that Athanasius in his other writings avoids this theology, contributes an argument to the case in favor of an early date of the De Incarnatione, a dating now widely contested. 8. Granted this interpretation, one problem revolves around why Athanasius begins by discussing incorruption and only then turns to the theme of knowledge (chapter 11). A possible solution is that he wishes to underline the fact that the bestowal of incorruption is the "primary cause of the incarnation" (chapter 10) and that this is because he is hostile to an Origenist emphasis upon spiritual contempla- Christ the Victor and the Victim 21 tion. In this writer's opinion, Athanasius is anti-Origenist only in the sense that he wishes to correct Origen. One may note, however,. that in the Life of Antony, contemplation scarcely appears; the emphasis is very much upon the mind's governance of the body and the life of virtue. Athanasius is technically an Apollinarian because he omits the human soul of Christ. Later he will correct himself, and it seems clear he is simply reproducing the Alexandrian tradition without in any way intending to deny Christ's full humanity. De Incarnutione, 9. Athanasius often speaks of Christ offering His body to death. One may see, for example, Contra Arianos, 2.69 (NPNF 2.4, p. 386). There are other passages one can examine. In chapter 16 we learn that because the Word first had to accomplish His revelatory work, "He did not immediately upon His coming accomplish His sacrifice on behalf of all, by offering His body to death and raising it again. . . ." In chapter 21 we read: "But since it was necessary also that the debt owing from all should be paid again, for, as I have already said, it was owing that all should die . . . to this intent, after the proofs of His Godhead from His works, He next offered up His sacrifice also on behalf of all, yielding His temple to death in the stead of all, in order firstly to make men quit and free of their old trespass, and further to show himself more powerful even than death, displaying His own body in- corruptible as first fruits of the resurrection of all." Chapter 25 cites Galatians 3:13, Deuteronomy 21:23, Ephesians 2:14 and speaks of the Lord's death as "the ransom of all" (Mark 10:45 and Matthew 20:28?). Chapter 25 treats the cross as the defeat of the devil. (One may compare chapter 31.) Athanasius actually cites the passage from Hebrews in chapter 10 and again in chapter 20. 22 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY One may see De Incarnatione, 6-7, and Young's discussion, op. cit. pp. 192-209. Her idea that Athanasius has in mind an aversion sacrifice and integrates it with the idea of God's propitiating Himself is persuasive. The association, never- theless, of sacrificial language with God's reconciliation of His justice and goodness is not as clear as it might be. That Athanasius has this idea in mind finds support in his lengthy discussion of the victory of the cross in De Incarn- atione, 20-32. In chapter 25 we read: ". . . the enemy of our race, the devil, having fallen from heaven moves around in this lower atmosphere, and lording it over his fellow demons in disobedience . . . the Apostle speaks of this also: 'According to the ruler of the power of the air, who now works in the sons of disobedience' (Ephesians 2:2). But the Lord came to overthrow the devil, purify the air, and open for us the way up to heaven, as the Apostle said, 'through the veil, that is, His flesh' (Hebrews 10:20)." Lifted into the air on the cross, Christ conquers Satan. One may also see Contra Arianos, 1.51 (NPNF 2.4, p. 336) and, possibly, 2.68 (NPNF 2.4, pp. 385-386). Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration, 2 1-22. The translation is from Library of Christian Classics, Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. E. R. Hardy (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), pp. 298-299. Catechetical Oration, 24 (LCC, p. 301). We may note that Gregory interprets the story by employ- ing his understanding of providence and freedom. By his misuse of God's providence Satan brings punishment upon himself, and the punishment is justly retributive. The deceiver is deceived. But the punishment is also meant to be educative and remedial. Thus, Gregory holds open the possibility that Satan may come to recognize the benefit of his punishment; and he goes further by saying that God "freed man from evil, and healed the very author of evil himself." Catechetical Oration, 26 (LCC, p. 304). Readers may see Athanasius, Life of Antony, 7 (NPNF 2.4, Christ the Victor and the Victim 23 p. 197): "This was Antony's first struggle against the devil, or rather this victory was the Saviour's work in Antony." One may also see Chrysostom, Homily 5 on Hebrews (NPNF 1.14, p. 392); Cyril of Jerusalem, Lecture 13 (NPNF 2.7, p. 82); Cyril of Alexandria, De Recta Fide ad Pulcher- iam et Eudociam (Pusey, volume 7, p. 303); and the author's discussion in The Fear of Freedom (University Park and London: Pem State Press, 1989), chapter 3. 20. John 1:29, 36. John 19:36 makes it clear that Jesus is identified with,the paschal lamb, and the irony implied by John 19:14 is that, at the very hour the lambs were being slaughtered in the temple, the true paschal lamb was sacri- ficed on Golgotha. 21. For problems of authorship, date, and text, readers may see edition in the Sources Chr6tiennes (123) by Othrnar Perler (Paris: &itions du Cerf, 1966). 22. One may also compare 1 Peter, especially 1:19. 23. Melito, Paschal Homily, 103 (SC 123, p. 122). Even when Melito's view is replaced by the later understanding of the Christian passover, we find this association of Christ's death with His triumph. One may see, for example, Athanasius, Letter 20 (NPNF 2.4, p. 548): "Let us now keep the feast, my brethren, for as our Lord then gave notice to His disciples, so He now tells us beforehand, that 'after some days is the passover' (Matthew 26:2), in which the Jews indeed betrayed the Lord; but we celebrate His death as a feast, rejoicing because we then obtained rest from our afflictions. We are diligent in assembling ourselves togeth- er, for we were scattered in time past and were lost and are found. We were far off and are brought nigh; we were strangers and have become His, who suffered for us and was nailed on the cross, who bore our sins, as the prophet saith (Isaiah 53:4), and was afflicted for us, that He might put away from all of us grief and sorrow and sighing." 24. In regard to death being slain by death, one may see, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 2.11 (NPNF 24 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY 2.5, p. 121); and Chrysostom, Homily 4 on Hebrews (NPNF 1.14, p. 386). . As to the paschal lamb, one may see, for example, Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 12 (NPNF 2.7, p. 246); Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, 126 (CWS, p. 84) and Inscription of Psalm 58 (Jaeger volume 5, p. 171); Chrysostom, Homily 27 on Hebrews (NPNF 1.14, p. 487); Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, ad locurn 1:29, and Quod Unus Sit Christus, 774 (SC 97, pp. 498-499). 25. Origen, Treatise on the Passover, 4 (ACW 54, p. 29). 26. One may compare Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York: Pueblo Publishing Company, 1986), who says of Melito's homily (p. 12): "Here it is clear that the Lord's passion is not considered an event distinct from His glorification, as later developments will tend to distinguish Good Friday and Easter. Rather, as Melito makes clear, the primitive Pascha celebrated the memorial of the death of Jesus as a total festival of our redemption in Christ, including not only His glorification but also the incarnation." Oration 1.3-4 (NPNF 2.7, p. 203). One may also compare a passage in the Fourth Theological Oration, 20 (NPNF 2.7, p. 309): "He is sold, and very cheap, for it is only for thirty pieces of silver; but He redeems the world, and that at a great price, for the price was His own blood. As a sheep He is led to the slaughter, but He is the Shepherd of Israel and now of the whole world also. As a Lamb He is silent, yet He is the Word and is proclaimed by the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He is bruised and wounded, but He healeth eveiy disease and every infirmity. He is lifted up and nailed to the tree, but by the tree of life He restoreth us. . . ." (The biblical passages are Matthew 26:15, 1 Peter 1:19, Isaiah 53:7, John 1:23, and Isaiah 53:23.) 28. Readers may see Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Galatians, 2:20 (Swete; volume 1, pp. 34-35): "Therefore, he [Paul] says: 'I have been crucified with Christ' because he has nothing in common [oudemian koinonian, nullam Christ the Victor and the Victim 25 communionem] with this present life in which we must live by the law. Rather, I reckon that I have passed from this life and am already, as it were, living in that life because Christ lives in me. Joined to Him by the resurrection, I have become a member of Christ, worthy to be joined to His body. . . ." One may also compare 511 and 5:24 (Swete; volume 1, pp. 92ff.). That Chrysostom understands the text of Hebrews in this way may be demonstrated by appealing to Homily 11.5 (NPNF 1.14, pp. 419-420: "we have our victim on high, our priest on high, our sacrifice on high) and Homily 13.8 (NPNF 1.14, p. 430: "having become a minister, He did not continue a minister. For it belongs not to a minister to sit, but to stand"). Chrysostom, Homily 14 on Hebrews 3 (NPNF 1.14, p. 434). One may compare Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 16.11 (NPNF 2.7, p. 251), where Christ's blood sprinkles the "doorposts of our mind, contemplation and action, with the great and saving seal, with the blood of the new covenant, by being crucified and dying with Christ, that we may rise and be glorified and reign with Him both now and at His final appearing. . . ." It is somewhat surprising how sparing is sacrificial language in the New Testament apart from Hebrews. The eucharistic words of Jesus (Mark 14% and parallels) refer to "My blood of the testament . . . poured out for many." Mark 10:45 refers to Jesus as giving His life as "a ransom for many." Romans 3:25 speaks of "an expiation [or mercy seat] by His blood." Other references to "blood" occur in Romans 5:9; 1 Corinthians 10:16, 11:27; Ephesians 1:7, 2:13; Colossians 1:20; 1 Peter 1:2, 19; 1 John 1:7, 5:6, 8; Revelation 15, 59, 7:14, 12:ll. Apart from Hebrews "sacrifice" occurs only in Ephesians 52. The allusions are, of course, to the sacrifices in the temple or to the passover lamb or to the ratification of a covenant, but they are seldom explained. 26 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Cyril of Alexandria, in particular, often repeats the language of Ephesians 52. One may see Commentary on Hebrews (Pusey, volume 3, pp. 374, 396-397); and Quod Unus Sit Christus, 761ab (SC 97, p. 458). Theodore of Mopsuestia ignores the sacrificial language and explains the verse by citing the new commandment of John 15:12-13 (Swete, volume 1, p. 177). Athanasius, Contra Arianos, 2.7 (NPNF 2.4, p. 35 1). One may compare Theodore on Hebrews 6:20 (Staab, p. 207) and Cyril of Alexandria, De Recta Fide ad Pulcheriam et Eudociam (Pusey, volume 7, p. 3 13). Easter Homily on the Three Day Period, ed. A. Spira and C. Klock, The Easter Sennons of Gregory of Nyssa: Transla- tion and Commentary (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1981), p. 49 (PG 46.620). One may compare Photius on Hebrews 1:13 (Staab, p. 639). It is difficult to find the expression, but it does occur in the Mystagogical Catecheses sometimes attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem (Lecture XXIII.lO; NPNF 2.7, p. 155): "In the same way we, when we offer to Him our supplications for those who have fallen asleep, though they be sinners, weave no crown, but offer up Christ sacrificed for our sins, propitiating our merciful God for them as well as for ourselves." Two passages from Gregory of Nyssa that Young (op. cit., p. 210) interprets as referring to Christ's sacrifice propitiating the Father do not seem really to have this meaning. Against Eunomius, 6.2 (PG 45.717B; NPNF 2.5, p. 184), speaks of Christ's making "with His own blood the priestly propitiation for our sins," but there is no reference to the Father. The Lord's Prayer, 3 (PG 44.1 149- CD; ACW, p. 46), does seem to speak of Christ as propitiat- ing the Father, but the passage is allegorical and reads as follows: "This adyton is not inanimate nor made by hands; but it is the hidden inner chamber of our heart if it be truly adyton (impenetrable) to evil and inaccessible to vile thoughts. The head, too, He adorns, not with the shape of letters embossed with gold leaf, but with a heavenly mind Christ the Victor and the Victim 27 on the highest faculty of which, that is to say, reason, God Himself is impressed. Ointment He pours on His hair distilled from the interior virtues of the soul. A sacrificial victim, too, ~e prepares for Him to offer to God in the mystic rite, which is none other than Himself. Being thus led by the Lord to this sacrifice, He mortifies His fleshly mind with the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:17) and thus appeases God. Being in the adyton, He immolates Himself in such a sacrifice, presenting His body a living sacrifice, holy-pleasing unto God (Romans 12:1)." 37. Chrysostom, Homily 17.2 on Hebrews (NPNF 1.14, p. 447). Young (op. cit., pp. 188-189), to be sure, argues that Chrysostom does speak of Christ as appeasing God's wrath. Her basis for this view is Homily 16.2 on Hebrews (NPNF 1.14, p. 443): "The Father . . . was wroth against us . . . [Christ] became mediator between us and Him, and won Him over." The text, however, continues by overturning this idea: "And what then? How did He become mediator? He brought words from [Him] and brought [them to us], conveying over what came from the Father to us and adding His own death thereto. We had offended; we ought to have died. He died for us and made us worthy of the testament." 38. Oration 45.32 (NPNF 2.7, p. 431). One may compare Young, op. cit., p. 210. She notes that Gregory often speaks of Christ's sacrifice, "particularly in devotion and preaching, generally as an emotive affirmation of faith rather than as part of a reasoned theological system. . . ." 39. Swete, volume 1, pp. 126 and 177. Chrysostom, however, takes the sacrificial language of the fvst passage more seriously (Homily 1 on Ephesians; NPNF 1.13, p. 53): "For nothing is so great as that the blood of this Son should be shed for us. Greater this than both the adoption and all the other gifts of grace, that He spared not even the Son (Romans 8:32). For great indeed is the forgiveness of sins, yet this is the far greater thing, that it should be done by the Lord's blood." 28 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Neither Chrysostom nor Theodoret suppress the sacrificial language of Colossians 1:20 in this fashion (PG 82.601AB and NPNF 1.13, p. 272). Chrysostom can treat the cross apart from the resurrection, but only in order to speak of it as evidence of God's love or as an example for us to follow. One may see Homily 4.3 on Hebrews (NPNF 1.14, p. 383): "Again he reminds them of the cross, thereby effecting two things; both showing His care [for them] and persuading them to bear all things nobly, looking to the Master." One may compare Homilies 23.6 and 28.4 on Hebrews (NPNF 1.14, pp. 471 and 493). Quod Unus Sit Christus, 761a-765e (SC 97, pp. 456ff.). PG 82.725B. The association of "sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21) and "curse" (Galatians 3:13) is a common one. One may see, for example, Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, 2.11, 11.1, and 12.1 (NPNF 2.5, pp. 121, 231, 241). PG 82,753,777,781. One may compare Gregory of Nyssa, Easter Homily on the Three Day Period (PG 46.612; Spira and Klock, pp.'39ff.), where he says that Christ offered His sacrifice in a hidden and spiritual way by giving Himself as food and drink at the Last Supper. Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstration of the Gospel, 1.10 (Ferrar, pp. 56-57); one may compare 2.3, 8.2, 10.8. Young is willing to take the language of Eusebius rather more seriously than is done here (op. cit., pp. 190-192). Swete, volume 1, p. 126; one may compare pp. 149-152, 261, 276; and Staab, pp. 131, 134. One may see the discussion of R. A. Norris, Manhood and Christ (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1963). pp. 172-189. He carefully notes a tension in Theodore's thought between a biblical and a philosophical orientation. For passages in later writers explaining sin as a consequence of mortality, one may see Gennadius and Oecumenius in Staab, pp. 375 and 463. Letter 54.13.26 (NPNF 1.1, p. 31 1). This letter includes a lengthy discussion of the Christian celebration of Easter. Christ the Victor and the Victim 29 47. City of God, 21.16. One may compare De Trinitate, 4.2.4: "By joining therefore to us the likeness of His humanity, He took away the unlikeness of our unrighteousness; and by being made partaker of our mortality, He made us partakers of His divinity." 48. Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, 22.17 (NPNF 1.4, p. 277). One may also see 6.5, 18.6.20.17- 18 (NPNF 1.4, pp. 169,238, 260). One may compare Jean Rivihre, Le Dogme de la Redemption chez Saint Augustin (Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1933), pp. 177-178: "I1 y a, pour qui fait abstrac- tion de tout parti-pris, si peu de doute sur le rapport du sacrifice au rachat dans la sotCriologie augustinienne que la dCpendance de ce dernier est tenue pour acquise, non seulement par les thCologiens catholiques, mais par des critiques Protestants. Et cette Cvidente subordination vient, son tour, codirmer la parfaite indbpendance du premier de ces themes, que dCja les textes 06 il est directement dCvel- oppC faisaient tclater au grand jour. De toutes facons, la doctrine du sacrifice constitue, chez I'CvCque d'Hippone, un tout qui se tient." One may compare pages 160 and 163. 49. City of God, 10.5-6. One may compare 10.19-20: "Thus He is both the priest, Himself making the offering, and the oblation. This is the reality, and He intended the daily sacrifice of the church to be the sacramental symbol of this; for the church, being the body of which He is the head, learns to offer itself through Him. This is the true sacrifice; and the sacrifices of the saints in earlier times were many different symbols of it. . . . This was the supreme sacrifice, and all the false sacrifices yielded place to it." 50. One may note in this regard that Augustine does not understand Christ's sacrifice as one that propitiates the Father. In De Trinitate 13.1 1.15 he raises the question whether "reconciled by the death of His Son" (Romans 5:lO) means that God the Father "saw the death of His Son for us and was appeased towards us." Romans 8:31-32 demon- strates that this cannot be the correct interpretation, since God the Father "spared not His own Son, but delivered Him 30 CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY up for us all." Moreover, the Son was willing, since Galatians 2:20 says that Christ "loved me and delivered up Himself for me." 5 1. De Trinitate, 4.3.6 (NPNF 1.3, p. 72). 53. De Trinitate, 13.14.18 (NPNF 1.3, p. 177). Dr. Rowan A. Greer of Yale University delivered the oral form of this essay on March 16, 1994, as the annual lecture-in-convocation of the Department of Historical Theology of Concordia Theological Seminary.