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Insight or Incoherence? The Greek Fathers on God and Evil
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
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This paper attempts to explore a number of inter-related ideas—inter-related in so far as they are all concerned in one way or another with evil, and God's relationship with it. The belief most characteristic of Christianity is the assurance that redemption from evil has been achieved for mankind in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our first enquiry is concerned with a basic contradiction in the accounts of this belief given in Greek Patristic literature. Secondly, attention will be drawn to the tension between this characteristically Christian affirmation and the efforts of Christian thinkers of the period to produce a rationally-based theodicy—that is, their treatment of the problem of evil as traditionally understood. The conclusion raises the question whether our findings require us to charge the Greek Fathers with incoherence in their theology.
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page 113 note 1 This paper was originally composed for the Oxford Society of Historical Theology. I am grateful to the society for their discussion.
page 113 note 2 Aulen, G., Christus Victor, E.T., London 1931Google Scholar. See my discussion of Aulen's view of Atonement in the Greek Fathers, in ‘The Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers from the New Testament to John Chrysostom’, Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis, (1967).Google Scholar
page 113 note 3 Aulen, op. cit., 20–1.
page 114 note 1 See, e.g., his collection of titles expressing the nature and work of Christ in Comm. Jn., i. 22 ff.; Light of the world, Resurrection, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Door and the Shepherd, Christ and King, Teacher and Master, Son, True Vine and Bread, First and Last, Living and Dead, Sword, Servant, Lamb of God, Paraclete, Propitiation, Power, Wisdom, Sanctification, Redemption, Righteousness, Demiurge, Agent of the Good God, High-Priest, Rod, Stone, Flower, Logos.
page 114 note 2 De Princ., i. 2, 6, 7, 8; iii. 5, 8.
page 114 note 3 E.g., Comm. Jn., i. 23, 24, 27, 42.
page 114 note 4 Ibid., ii. 4.
page 114 note 5 Comm. Rom., vi. 3.
page 114 note 6 Comm.Jn., ii. 21.
page 115 note 1 For further development, see my dissertation, cited above, 232 ff.
page 115 note 2 E.g., Rashdall, H., The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology, London 1919Google Scholar; Rivière, J., The Doctrine of the Atonement, E.T., London 1909.Google Scholar
page 115 note 3 Rom., vi. 17, 18; vii. 14; I Cor., vi. 20; vii. 23.
page 115 note 4 Aulen, op. cit. See his chapter on ‘The Double Aspect of the Drama of the Atonement’.
page 115 note 5 The points made in this paragraph are developed more fully in my dissertation, cited above.
page 115 note 6 Gen., viii. 21; I Sam., xxvi. 19; II Sam. xxiv. 25. For discussion, see Gray, G. B., Sacrifice in the Old Testament, Oxford 1925Google Scholar
page 116 note 1 Dem. Evang., i. 10.
page 116 note 2 Hom. Heb., xvi. I.
page 116 note 3 Hom. Heb., xvii. I.
page 116 note 4 Hom. Heb., v. 2.
page 116 note 5 Hom. Heb., xxvii. I.
page 116 note 6 Dem. Evang., x. 8.
page 116 note 7 E.g., Hom. Heb., iv. 3; v. 2; xxv. I; etc.
page 116 note 8 Hom. Heb., xvii. I.
page 117 note 1 C. Cels., iv. 72 (trans. H. Chadwick).
page 117 note 2 N.B. the images used to express this: a father disciplining his child (Hom. Jer., xviii. 6; Comm. Rom., vii. 18); a doctor inflicting pain in order to heal, a schoolmaster chastising in order to improve (C. Cels., iv. 56).
page 117 note 3 Comm. Rom., ii. 1; iii. 1.
page 117 note 4 N.B. ‘sin’ or ‘men’ appear as the object of the verb not God; for further detail, see the dissertation, cited above.
page 117 note 5 Comm. Jn., i. 38.
page 117 note 6 Comm. Jn., vi. 35–6.
page 117 note 7 C. Cels., i. 31; Comm. Rom. iv. 11. N.B. the same analogy is used of the deaths of martyrs in I Clement, 55. Philo uses it to explain Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in De Abrahamo, 33.
page 118 note 1 Harrison, J. E., Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion, 3rd ed., Cambridge 1922Google Scholar; Murray, G., Five Stages of Greek Religion, Oxford 1925Google Scholar; Rose, H. J., Ancient Greek Religion, London 1948Google Scholar; Yerkes, R. K., Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religion and in early Judaism, London 1953.Google Scholar
page 118 note 2 De Mysteriis, v. 6 ff.; dissertation, cited above, 32 ff.
page 118 note 3 Stead, G. C., at the Sixth International Conference on Patristic Studies, Oxford 1971.Google Scholar
page 118 note 4 Brown, Patterson, ‘God and the Good’, Religious Studies II, 1967, 269–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 119 note 1 Cf. Floyd, W. G., Clement of Alexandria's treatment of the problem of evil, Oxford 1971.Google Scholar
page 119 note 2 Courtonne, Y., Saint Basile et l'Hellénisme, Paris 1934Google Scholar; Giet, S., Basile de Césarée, Homélies sur l'Hexaemeron, Introduction (Sources Chrétiennes), Paris 1949.Google Scholar
page 119 note 3 Hexaemeron, i. 5, 6; ix. 5.
page 119 note 4 Ibid., v. 4.
page 119 note 5 Ibid., ix. 5.
page 119 note 6 Ibid., ix. 6.
page 119 note 7 Orat., i and xlv.
page 120 note 1 Homilia dicta tempore famis et siccitatis, in P.G., xxxi. 304 ff.
page 120 note 2 Orat., xviii. 28; viii. 15, 17, 18.
page 120 note 3 Orat., xxxviii. 13.
page 120 note 4 Orat, xvi. 12.
page 120 note 5 Orat., viii. 15.
page 120 note 6 E.g., Orat., xv; xxiv. 19; xxxiii. 9.
page 120 note 7 Theol. Orat., iv. 5–6.
page 120 note 8 Orat., iv. 65–71.
page 120 note 9 Theol. Orat., ii. 15.
page 120 note 10 Theol. Orat., ii passim.
page 121 note 1 P.G., xxxi. 329 ff.
page 121 note 2 See especially the Catechetical Oration.
page 122 note 1 E.g., Athanasius, De Incarnatione;Basil, Quod Deus non est…, cited above, 121 n. 1.
page 122 note 2 Ed. A. Nauck, 1886 (Teubner ed.).
page 122 note 3 Ed. Nock, A. D., Cambridge 1926.Google Scholar
page 122 note 4 Enneads,i.8.3 (trans. A. H. Armstrong).
page 122 note 5 For Plotinus, matter, too, had this paradoxical status. For discussion, see Rist, J. M., ‘Plotinus on Matter and Evil in Phronesis’, VI (1961), 154 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 123 note 1 Cf. especially Gregory Nazianzen, Orat.,xvi, discussed above.
page 124 note 1 Cat. Orat., 24.
page 124 note 2 E.g., Gregory Nazianzen, Orat., xliii. 41, where evil in the Church is attributed to the devil. Other examples would not be far to seek.
page 124 note 3 Madden, E. H. and Hare, P. H., Evil and the concept of God, Springfield, Illinois 1968, is a searching critique of most modern attempts at theodicy.Google Scholar
page 124 note 4 De Inc., v. 1–2; vi. 5, 6; x. 4; xii. 6; xx. 6; etc. See especially, De Inc., xxv (Long Recension), and Vita Antonii, passim.
page 124 note 5 Note the virtual personification of death in De Inc., e.g. De Inc., iv. 2; v. 2; etc.
page 124 note 6 De Inc., xix. 3; xxiv. 4; xxvi. 1; xxx. 1.
page 124 note 7 C. Arianos, ii. 73.
page 125 note 1 De Inc., viii. ff.
page 125 note 2 This is not quite Athanasius's terminology, but see C. Arianos, ii. 7 ff. The argument of this passage as a whole stresses the idea that the sacrifice of Christ was offered by God to God to reconcile himself, and includes the unusual phrase: ἱλασκόμενος τ πρς τν Θεόν.This phrase is particularly significant because Athanasius rarely uses propitiation-language (except in scriptural quotations), and here he has deliberately avoided saying Christ propitiated God. He, of all people, could not allow a distinction between God and the Logos.
page 125 note 3 Here I differ from Aulen, in his chapter on ‘The double aspect of the drama of atonement’, where he outlines a similar theory of divine self-reconciliation, maintaining that, while the Fathers had a dualistic outlook, it was modified by the view that the devil was ultimately God's creature and under God's authority (à la Job, presumably). Thus he describes the death of Christ both as a ransom offered by God to the devil, and as a sacrifice offered by God to himself. Undoubtedly there is some measure of truth in this, particularly, as we have seen, in the case of Athanasius. But it is far from explicit in other patristic writings.
page 125 note 4 Orat., xlv. 22.