Contents:

The Unity of the Bible.

The Old Testament as Allegory.

History or Preaching.

The Old Testament and Christian Worship.

The Old Testament as the Word of God.

A Postscript.

The Patristic Age And Eschatology: An Introduction.

The Anthropomorphites In The Egyptian Desert

Theophilus of Alexandria and Αρα Aphou of Pemdje.

The famous phrase of St. Augustine can be taken as typical of the whole Patristic attitude towards the Old Dispensation. Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet. Vetus Testamentum in Novo patet. The New Testament is an accomplishment or a consummation of the Old. Christ Jesus is the Messiah spoken of by the prophets. In Him all promises and expectations are fulfilled. The Law and the Gospel belong together. And nobody can claim to be a true follower of Moses unless he believes that Jesus is the Lord. Anyone who does not recognize in Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed of the Lord, does thereby betray the Old Dispensation itself. Only the Church of Christ keeps now the right key to the Scriptures, the true key to the prophecies of old. Because all these prophecies are fulfilled in Christ.

St. Justin rejects the suggestion that the Old Testament is a link holding together the Church and the Synagogue. For him quite the opposite is true. All Jewish claims must be formally rejected. The Old Testament no longer belongs to the Jews. It belongs to the Church alone. And the Church of Christ is therefore the only true Israel of God. The Israel of old was but an undeveloped Church. The word "Scriptures" itself in early Christian use meant first of all just the Old Testament and in this sense obviously this word is used in the Creed: "according to the Scriptures," i.e. according to the prophecies and promises of the Old Dispensation.

The Old Testament is copiously quoted by all early writers. And even to the Gentiles the message of salvation was always presented in the context of the Old Testament. This was an argument from antiquity. The Old Covenant was not destroyed by Christ, but renewed and accomplished. In this sense Christianity was not a new religion, but rather the oldest. The new Christian "Scriptures" were simply incorporated into the inherited Hebrew Bible, as its organic completion. And only the whole Bible, both Testaments together, was regarded as an adequate record of Christian Revelation. There was no break between the two Testaments, but a unity of Divine economy. And the first task of Christian theology was to show and to explain in what way the Old Dispensation was the preparation and the anticipation of this final Revelation of God in Jesus Christ. The Christian message was not merely a proclamation of some doctrines, but first of all a record of mighty acts and deeds of God through the ages. It was a history of Divine guidance, culminating in the person of Christ Jesus whom God has sent to redeem His people. God has chosen Israel for His inheritance, to be His people, to be the keeper of His truth, and to this Chosen People alone the Divine Word was entrusted. And now the Church receives this sacred heritage.

The Old Testament as a whole was regarded as a Christian prophecy, as an "evangelical preparation." Very early some special selections of the Old Testament texts were compiled for the use of Christian missionaries. The Testimonia of St. Cyprian is one of the best specimens of the kind. And St. Justin in his Dialogue with Trypho made an attempt to prove the truth of Christianity from the Old Testament alone. The Marcionite attempt to break the New Testament away from its Old Testament roots was vigorously resisted and condemned by the Great Church. The unity of both Testaments was strongly emphasized, the inner agreement of both was stressed. There was always some danger of reading too much of Christian doctrine into the writings of the Old Testament. And historical perspective was sometimes dangerously obscured. But still there was a great truth in all these exegetical endeavors. It was a strong feeling of the Divine guidance through the ages.

The history of Old Testament interpretation in the Early Church is one of the most thrilling but embarrassing chapters in the history of Christian doctrine. With the Greek Old Testament the Church inherited also some exegetical traditions. Philo, this Hellenized Jew from Alexandria, was the best exponent of this pre-Christian endeavor to commend the Old Testament to the Gentile world. He adopted for this task a very peculiar method, a method of allegory. Philo himself had no understanding of history whatever. Messianic motives were completely overlooked or ignored in his philosophy of the Bible. For him the Bible was just a system of the Divine Philosophy, not so much a sacred history. Historical events as such were of no interest and of no importance for him. The Bible was for him just a single book, in which be failed to discern any historical perspective or progress. It was treated by him rather as a collection of glorious parables and didactic stories intended to convey and to illustrate certain philosophical and ethical ideas.

In such an extreme form this allegorical method was never accepted by the Church. One has however to recognize a strong influence of Philo on all exegetical essays of the first centuries. St. Justin made a large use of Philo. Pseudo-Barnabas (early 2nd century) once went so far as to deny the historical character of the Old Testament altogether. Philonic traditions were taken up by the Christian school of Alexandria. And even later St. Ambrose was closely following Philo in his commentaries and could be justly described as Philo latinus. This allegorical exegesis was ambiguous and misleading.

It took a long time before the balance was established or restored. And still one must not overlook the positive contribution of this method. The best exponent of allegorical exegesis in the Church was Origen and his influence was enormous. One may be shocked sometimes by his exegetical daring and licence. He used indeed to read too much of his own into the sacred text. But it would be a grave mistake to describe him as a philosopher. He was first of all and throughout a Biblical scholar, certainly in the style of his own age. He spent days and nights over the Bible. His main purpose was just to base all doctrine and all theology on a Biblical ground. He was responsible to a great extent for the strength of the Biblical spirit in the entire patristic theology. He did much more for an average believer; he made the Bible accessible to him. He steadily introduced the Old Testament into his preaching. He helped the average Christian to read and to use the Old Testament for their edification. He always stressed the unity of the Bible, bringing both Testaments into a closer relation. And he made a new attempt to build the whole doctrine of God on a Biblical basis.

Origen's limitations are obvious. But his positive contribution was much greater. And it was he who by his example taught Christian theologians to go back always for their inspiration to the sacred text of Scriptures. His line was followed by most of the Fathers. But he met strong opposition at once. There is no room to dwell at length on the controversy between the two exegetical schools in the Early Church. The main features are commonly known. The Antiochene school stood for "history," Alexandrinians rather for "contemplation." And surely both elements had to be brought together in a balanced synthesis.

The main Alexandrinian presumption was that, as being Divinely inspired, the Scriptures must carry in them some universal message, for all nations and ages. Their purpose was just to exhibit this message, to discover and to preach all these riches of Divine wisdom which have been providentially stored in the Bible. Beneath the letter of the Holy Writ there are some other lessons to be learned only by the advanced. Behind all human records of manifold revelations of God one can discern the Revelation, to apprehend the very Word of God in all its eternal splendor.

It was assumed that even when God was speaking under some special circumstances there was always something in His word that passes all historical limitations. One has to distinguish very carefully between a direct prophecy and what one might describe as an application. Many of the Old Testament narratives can be most instructive for a believer even when no deliberate "prefiguration" of Christian truth has been intended by the sacred writers themselves. The main presupposition was that God meant the Holy Writ to be the eternal guide for the whole of mankind. And therefore an application or a standing re-interpretation of the Old Testament was authorized.

The Antiochene exegesis had a special concern for the direct meaning of the old prophecies and stories. The chief exponent of this "historical" exegesis was Theodore of Mopsuestia, known in the East simply as "the Interpreter." And although his authority was gravely compromised by his condemnation for his erroneous doctrines, his influence on the Christian exegesis of the Old Testament was still very considerable. This "historical" exegesis was often in danger of missing the universal meaning of Divine Revelation by overemphasis of the local and national aspects of the Old Testament. And even more, to lose the sacred perspective, to deal with the Old Testament history as if it were merely the history of one single people among the nations of the earth and not a history of the only true Covenant of God. St. John Chrysostom has combined the best elements of both schools in his exegetical endeavor. He was an Antiochene scholar himself, but he was in many respects a follower of Origen as well. Allegories may be misleading. But one has not to overlook the "typical" meaning of events themselves. Old Testament institutions and personalities were also the "types" or "figures" of the things to come. History was prophetic itself. Events themselves do prophesy, they did and do point out to something else, beyond themselves. The Early Fathers can hardly be described as "fundamentalists." They were always after the Divine truth, after the Divine message itself, which is often rather concealed under the cover of the letter. The belief in Inspiration could rather discourage the fundamentalist tendency. The Divine truth cannot be reduced to the letter even of Holy Writ. One of the best specimens of Patristic exegesis was the Hexaemeron of St. Basil, who has succeeded in bringing forward the religious truth of the Biblical narrative of the creation with real balance and sound moderation.

The Patristic attitude towards the Old Testament was reflected in the history of Christian worship. The Jewish roots of Christian Liturgy are obvious. But the whole system of Christian public worship was linked closely to the practice of the Synagogue as well. The Psalms were inherited from the Jews, and they became a pattern of the whole Christian hymnography in the early Church. The Psalms form the skeleton of Christian offices until now. They were the basis of all devotional literature in old days.

The student of public worship in the Eastern Orthodox Church would be impressed by the amount of Old Testament references, hints and images, in all offices and hymns. The unity of the two Testaments is stressed throughout. Biblical motives are superabundant. Many hymns are but variations on the pattern of the Old Testament songs, from the song of Moses at the crossing of the Red Sea up to the song of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. On great festivals numerous lessons from the Old Testament are appointed and actually read to stress that Christian perfection was but a consummation of what was pre-figured and foreshadowed, or even directly predicted of old. And especially in the offices of Holy Week this Old Testament preparation is particularly emphasized. The whole worship is based upon this conviction that the true Covenant was always one, that there was a complete agreement between the Prophets and the Apostles. And all this system was established just in the later Patristic age.

One of the most striking examples of this devotional Biblicism is the glorious Great Canon of St. Andreas of Crete, read at the Great Compline in Lent. It is a strong exhortation, an appeal for repentance, composed with a real poetical inspiration and based upon the Bible. The whole series of Old Testament sinners, both penitent and impenitent, is remembered. One can be almost lost in this continuous stream of names and examples. One is emphatically reminded that all this Old Testament story belongs to one as a Christian. One is invited to think over again and again this wonderful story of Divine guidance and human obstinacy and failures. The Old Testament is kept as a great treasure. One has to mention as well the influence which the Song of Songs had on the development of Christian mysticism. Origen's commentary on this book was in St. Jerome's opinion his best composition, in which he surpassed himself. And St. Gregory of Nyssa's mystical commentary on the Song of Songs is a rich mine of a genuine Christian inspiration.

It has been more than once suggested that in the Greek Fathers the primitive Christian message was hellenized too much. One has to be very cautious with all such utterances. In any case it is the Fathers who have kept all the treasures of the Old Testament and made them the indispensable heritage of the Church, both in worship and in theology. The only thing they never did is this: they never kept fast to the Jewish limitations. The Holy Writ for them was an eternal and universal Revelation. It is addressed to all mankind now simply because it was addressed to all nations by God Himself even when the Divine Word was delivered by the prophets to the Chosen People alone. It means that one cannot measure the depth of Divine Revelation with the measure of some past time only, however sacred those times may be. It is not enough to be sure that the ancient Hebrews understood and interpreted the Scriptures in a certain way. This interpretation can never be final. New light has been thrown on the old revelations by Him Who came just to accomplish and to fulfill the Law and the Prophets. The Scriptures are not merely historical documents. They are really the Word of God, the Divine message to all generations. And Christ Jesus is the Alpha and Omega of the Scriptures, both the climax and the knot of the Bible. This is the standing message of the Fathers to the Church Universal about the Old Dispensation.

The idea of Creation was a striking Christian innovation in philosophy. The problem itself was alien and even unintelligible to the Greek mind: de rerum originatione radicali. The Greek mind was firmly addicted to the conception of an Eternal Cosmos, permanent and immutable in its essential structure and composition. This Cosmos simply existed. Its existence was "necessary," it was an ultimate or first datum, beyond which neither thought nor imagination could penetrate. There was, indeed, much movement within the world — "the wheel of origin and decay." But the Cosmos as a whole was unchangeable, and its permanent structure was repeatedly and unfailingly exhibited in its rotation and self-iteration. It was not a static world, there was in it an intense dynamism: but it was a dynamism of inescapable circulation. The Cosmos was a periodical, and yet a "necessary" and "immortal" being. The "shape" of the world might be exposed to changes, it was actually in a constant flux, but its very existence was perennial. One simply could not ask intelligently about the "origin" or "beginning" of the Cosmic fabric in the order of existence.

It was precisely at this point that the Greek mind was radically challenged by Biblical Revelation. This was a hard message for the Greeks. Indeed, it is still a hard message for philosophers.

The Bible opens with the story of Creation. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." This has become a credal statement in the Christian Church. The Cosmos was no more regarded as a "self-explanatory" being. Its ultimate and intrinsic dependence upon God's will and action has been vigorously asserted. But much more than just this relation of "dependence" was implied in the Biblical concept: the world was created ex nihilo, i.e., it did not exist "eternally." In retrospect one was bound to discover its "beginning" — post nihilum, as it were. The tension between the two visions, Hellenic and Biblical, was sharp and conspicuous. Greeks and Christians, as it were, were dwelling in different worlds. Accordingly, the categories of Greek philosophy were inadequate for the description of the world of Christian faith. The main emphasis of Christian faith was precisely on the radical contingency of the Cosmos, on its contingency precisely in the order of existence. Indeed, the very existence of the world pointed, for Christians, to the Other, as its Lord and Maker. On the other hand, the Creation of the world was conceived as a sovereign and "free" act of God, and not as something which was "necessarily" implied or inherent in God's own Being. Thus, there was actually a double contingency: on the side of the Cosmos — which could "not have existed at all," and on the side of the Creator — who could "not have created" anything at all. In the fine phrase of Etienne Gilson, "it is quite true that a Creator is an eminently Christian God, but a God whose very existence is to be a creator is not a Christian God at all."² The very existence of the world was regarded by the Christians as a mystery and miracle of Divine Freedom.

Christian thought, however, was maturing but gradually and slowly, by a way of trial and retraction. The early Christian writers would often describe their new vision of faith in the terms of old and current philosophy. They were not always aware of, and certainly did not always guard against, the ambiguity which was involved in such an enterprise. By using Greek categories Christian writers were forcing upon themselves, without knowing it, a world which was radically different from that in which they dwelt by faith. Thus they were often caught between the vision of their faith and the inadequacy of the language they were using. This predicament must be taken quite seriously. Etienne Gilson once suggested that Christianity has brought the new wine, but the old skins were still good enough, i.e., the skins of Greek Philosophy. "La pensée chrétienne apportait du vin nouveau, mais les vieilles outres étaient encore bonnes."³ It is an elegant phrase. But is it not rather an optimistic overstatement? Indeed, the skins did not burst at once, but was it really to the benefit of nascent Christian thought? The skins were badly tainted with an old smell, and the wine acquired in them had an alien flavor. In fact, the new vision required new terms and categories for its adequate and fair expression. It was an urgent task for Christians "to coin new names," το καινοτομεΐν τά ονόματα, in the phrase of St. Gregory of Nazianzus.

Indeed, the radical contingency of the created world was faithfully acknowledged by Christian writers from the very beginning. The Lordship of God over all His Creation was duly emphasized. God alone was mighty and eternal. All created things were brought into existence, and sustained in existence, solely by the grace and pleasure of God, by His sovereign will. Existence was always a gift of God. From this point of view, even the human soul was "mortal," by its own "nature," i.e. contingent, because it was a creature, and was maintained only by the grace of God. St. Justin was quite explicit at this point — in opposition to Platonic arguments for "immortality." Indeed, "immortal" would mean for him "uncreated."⁴ But it was not yet clear how this creative "will" of God was related to His own "being." And this was the crucial problem. In early Christian thinking the very idea of God was only gradually released out of that "cosmological setting," in which it used to be apprehended by Greek philosophical thought. The mystery of the Holy Trinity itself was often interpreted in an ambiguous cosmological context — not primarily as a mystery of God's own Being, but rather in the perspective of God's creative and redemptive action and self-disclosure in the world. This was the main predicament of the Logos-theology in the Apologists, in Hippolytus, and in Tertullian. All these writers could not distinguish consistently between the categories of the Divine "Being" and those of Divine "Revelation" ad extra, in the world. Indeed, it was rather a lack of precision, an inadequacy of language, than an obstinate doctrinal error. The Apologists were not just pre-Arians or pro-Arians. Bishop George Bull was right in his Defensio Fidei Nicenae against the charges of Petavius. And yet, as G. L. Prestige has pointed out, "the innocent speculations of Apologists came to provide support for the Arian school of thought."⁵

The case of Origen is especially significant. He also failed to distinguish between the ontological and cosmological dimensions. As Bolotov has aptly stated, "the logical link between the generation of the Son and the existence of the world was not yet broken in the speculation of Origen."⁶ It can be even contended that this very link has been rather reinforced in Origen's thinking. The ultimate question for Origen was precisely this: Is it possible or permissible to think of God without conceiving Him at once as Creator? The negative answer to this question was for Origen the only devout option. An opposite assumption would be sheer blasphemy. God could never have become anything that He has not been always. There is nothing simply "potential" in God's Being, everything being eternally actualized. This was Origen's basic assumption, his deepest conviction. God is always the Father of the Only Begotten, and the Son is co-eternal with the Father: any other assumption would have compromised the essential immutability of the Divine Being. But God also is always the Creator and the Lord. Indeed, if God is Creator at all — and it is an article of faith that He is Lord and Creator — we must necessarily assume that He had always been Creator and Lord. For, obviously, God never "advances" toward what He had not been before. For Origen this implied inevitably also an eternal actualization of the world's existence, of all those things over which God's might and Lordship were exercised. Origen himself used the term παντοκράτωρ, which he borrowed surely from the Septuagint. Its use by Origen is characteristic. The Greek term is much more pointed than its Latin or English renderings: Omnipotens, "Almighty." These latter terms emphasize just might or power. The Greek word stresses specifically the actual exercise of power. The edge of Origen's argument is taken off in Latin translation. “Παντοκράτωρ is in the first place an active word, conveying the idea not just of capacity but of the actualization of capacity.”⁷ Παντοκράτωρ means just κύριος, the ruling Lord. And God could not be παντοκράτωρ eternally unless τα πάντα also existed from all eternity. God's might must have been eternally actualized in the created Cosmos, which therefore appears to be an eternal concomitant or companion of the Divine Being. In this context any clear distinction between "generation" and "creation" was actually impossible — both were eternal relations, indeed "necessary" relations, as it were, intrinsic for the Divine Being. Origen was unable, and indeed reluctant and unwilling, to admit anything "contingent" about the world itself, since, in his conception, this would have involved also a certain "change" on the Divine level. In Origen's system the eternal being of the Holy Trinity and the eternal existence of the world are indivisibly and insolubly linked together: both stand and fall together. The Son is indeed eternal, and eternally "personal" and "hypostatic." But He is eternally begotten in relation to the eternally created world.⁸

Origen's argument is straight and consistent, under his basic assumptions. It would be flagrantly impious to admit that God could ever have existed without His Wisdom, even for a single moment — ad punctum momenti alicujus. God is always the Father of His Son, who is born of Him, but "without any beginning" — sine ullo tamen initio. And Origen specifies: "not only of that kind which can be distinguished by intervals of time — aliquibus temporum spatiis, but even of that other kind which the mind alone is wont to contemplate in itself and to perceive, if I may say so, with the bare intellect and reason" — nudo intellectu. In other words, Wisdom is begotten beyond the limit of any imaginable "beginning" — extra omne ergo quod vel dici νel intelligi potest initium. Moreover, as Origen explained elsewhere, the "generation" of Wisdom could not be interpreted as an accomplished "event," but rather as a permanent and continuous relationship — a relation of "being begotten," just as radiance is perpetually concomitant with the light itself, and Wisdom is, in the phrase of Sap. Sal. 7, 26, an απαύγασμα φωτός άϊδίου (In Jerem. hom. IX 4: ουχί έγέννησεν ό πατήρ τον υίόν ... άλλ' αεί γεννά αυτόν, 70 Klostermann; cf. Latin translation in the "Apology" of Pamphilus, PG 17, 564). Now, according to Origen, in the very subsistence of Wisdom the whole design of creation is already implied. The whole creation, universa creatura, is pre-arranged in Wisdom (De princ. I 2, 2; 29 — 30 Koetschau). The text of this important passage might have been somewhat edited by the Latin translator, but surely the main argument was faithfully reproduced (cf. the fragment in Greek, in Methodius, De creatis, quoted by Photius, Cod. 235). Origen spoke of "prevision": virtute praescientiae. But, according to his own basic principle, there could be no temporal order or sequence. The world as "pre-viewed" in Wisdom had to be also eternally actualized.⁹ It is in this direction that Origen continued his argument. And here the terms "Father" and "Pantokrator" are conspicuously bracketed together. "Now as one cannot be father apart from having a son, nor a lord apart from holding a possession or a slave, so we cannot even call God almighty if there are none over whom He can exercise His power. Accordingly, to prove that God is Almighty we must assume the existence of the world." But, obviously, God is Lord from all eternity. Consequently, the world, in its entirety, also existed from all eternity: necessario existere oportet (De princ. I 2, 10; 41-42 Koetschau; cf. the Greek quotation in Justinian, Epist. ad Mennam, Mansi IX 528). In brief, the world must be always co-existent with God and therefore co-eternal. Of course, Origen meant the primordial world of spirits. Actually, in Origen's conception there was but one eternal hierarchical system of beings, a "chain of being." He could never escape the cosmological pattern of Middle Platonism.¹⁰

Moreover, Origen seems to have interpreted the Generation of the Son as an act of the Father's will: έκ του θελήματος του ιτατρός έγεννηθη (quoted by Justinian, Mansi IX 525). On the other hand he was utterly suspicious of the phrase: έκ της ουσίας -πατρός, and probably even formally repudiated it. For him it was a dangerous and misleading phrase, heavily overloaded with gross "materialistic" associations, and suggesting division and separation in the Divine substance (In Ioh. XX 18; 351 Preuschen; De princ. IV 4, 1; 348 Koetschau; cf. the quotation by Marcellus, given in Eusebius, c. Marcellum I 4; 21 Klostermann). The textual evidence is confused and inconclusive.¹¹ It may be true that at this point Origen was opposing the Gnostics, especially the Valentinian conception of προβολή, and only wanted to vindicate the strictly spiritual character of everything Divine.¹² Yet, there was a flagrant ambiguity. Both the generation of the Son and the creation of the world are equally attributed to the will or counsel of the Father. "And my own opinion is that an act of the Father's will — voluntas Patris — ought to be sufficient to ensure the subsistence of what He wills. For in willing He uses no other means than that which is produced by the deliberation of His will — nisi quae consilio voluntatis profertur. Thus, it is in this way that the existence of the Son also is begotten of Him — ita ergo et filii ab eo subsistentia generatur" (De princ. I 2, 6; 35 Koetschau). The meaning of this passage is rather obscure, and we have no Greek text.¹³ But, in any case, once again the Son is explicitly bracketed together with creatures.¹⁴

There was an unresolved tension, or an inner contradiction, in the system of Origen. And it led to an inner conflict, and finally to an open split, among those theologians who were profoundly influenced by his powerful thought. It may be contended, indeed, that his trinitarian theology was intrinsically orthodox, that is, pro-Nicene, so that the interpretation of his views by St. Athanasius and the Cappadocians was fair and congenial to his ultimate vision. Indeed, Origen strongly defended the eternity of the Divine Generation and, at this point, was definitely anti-Arian. If we can trust St. Athanasius, Origen explicitly denounced those who dared to suggest that "there was when the Son was not," ττοτε δτε ουκ ήν ό υιός, whosoever these people might have been (see the quotation from Origen in St. Athanasius, De decretis 27). Yet, on the other hand, the general scheme of his theology was utterly inadequate at many crucial points. In any case, the controversies of the fourth century can be properly understood only in the perspective of Origen's theology and its problematic. The crucial philosophical problem at the bottom of that theological controversy was precisely that of time and eternity. Within the system itself there were but two opposite options: to reject the eternity of the world or to contest the eternity of the Logos. The latter option was taken by Arius and all those who, for various reasons, sympathized with him. His opponents were bound to insist on the temporality of the world. The problem of creation was the crucial philosophical problem in the dispute. No clarity could be reached in the doctrine of God until the problem of creation had been settled. Indeed, the essence of the controversy was religious, the ultimate issue was theological. But faith and piety themselves could be vindicated at this historic juncture only by philosophical weapons and arguments. This was well understood already by St. Alexander of Alexandria: φιλοσόφων έθεολόγει, says Socrates of him (I 5). St. Alexander made the first attempt to disentangle the doctrine of God out of the traditional cosmological context, while keeping himself still close to the tenets of Origen.¹⁵

Arius himself contended that the Logos was a “creature,” a privileged creature indeed, not like others, but still no more than a κτίσμα originated by the will of God. Accordingly, God for him was primarily the Creator, and apart from that, little, if anything, could be said of the unfathomable and incomprehensible Being of God, unknown even to the Son. Actually, there was no room for "theology" in his system. The only real problem was that of "cosmology" — a typically Hellenic approach. Arius had to define the notion of creation. Two major points were made: (a) the total dissimilarity between God and all other realities which "had beginning," beginning of any kind; (b) the "beginning" itself. The Son had a "beginning," simply because He was a son, that is — originated from the Father, as His αρχή : only God (the Father) was άναρχος in the strict sense of the word. It seems that with Arius the main emphasis lay on the relation of dependence as such, and the element of time was comparatively irrelevant for his argument. Indeed, in his famous letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, Arius stated plainly that the Son came into existence "before all times and ages" — προ χρόνων και προ αιώνων (apud Epiph., Haeres. LXIX 6; 156 Holl, and Theodoret, Hist. eccl. I 4, 63; 25 Parmentier). St. Athanasius himself complained that the Arians evaded the term χρόνος (Contra Arianos I 13). Yet, they obviously contended that all things "created" did somehow "come into existence," so that the state of "being" has been preceded, at least logically, by a state of "non-being” out of which they have emerged, έξ ούκ δντων. In this sense “they did not exist before they came into existence” — ούκ πρίν γεννηθη. Obviously, “creatureliness” meant for the Arians more than just “dependence": it implied also an "essential" dissimilarity with God, and a finitude, that is — some limitation in retrospect. On the other hand, it was strongly stressed that all Creation was grounded in the will and deliberation of God: θελήματι καΐ βουλή, as Arius himself wrote to Eusebius. The latter motive was Origenistic. Indeed, Arius went much further than Origen: Origen rejected only the Gnostic προβολή, but Arius repudiated any “natural” affinity of Logos with God. Arius simply had nothing to say about the life of God, apart from His engagement in Creation. At this point his thought was utterly archaic.

It is highly significant that the Council of Antioch in 324/5 — that is, before Nicaea — took up all these major points. The Son is begotten "not from that which is not but from the Father," in an ineffable and indescribable manner, "not as made but as properly offspring," and not "by volition." He existed everlastingly and "did not at one time not exist." Again, "He is the express image, not of the will or anything else, but of His Father's very hypostasis."¹⁶ For all these reasons the Son could not be regarded as "creature." Nothing has been said about Creation. But one can easily guess what "Creation" and "creatureliness" meant for the Fathers of the Council. All elements, of which the later clear distinction between "begetting" and "creating" (or "making") has been construed, are already implied in the conciliar statement.

St. Athanasius made a decisive contribution at the next stage of the dispute.

Already in his early writings, before the outbreak of the Arian strife, St. Athanasius was wrestling with the problem of Creation. For him it was intimately related to the crucial message of the Christian faith: the redemptive Incarnation of the Divine Word. Indeed, his interpretation of Redemption, as it was expounded in De Incarnatione Verbi, is grounded in a distinctive conception of the Cosmos. There was, in the vision of St. Athanasius, an ultimate and radical cleavage or hiatus between the absolute Being of God and the contingent existence of the World. There were actually two modes of existence, radically different and totally dissimilar. On the one hand — the Being of God, eternal and immutable, "immortal" and "incorruptible." On the other — the flux of the Cosmos, intrinsically mutable and "mortal," exposed to change and "corruption.” The ultimate ontological tension was precisely between the Divine αφθαρσία and the φθορά of the Cosmic flux. Since the whole Creation had once begun, by the will and pleasure of God, “out of nothing,” an ultimate “meonic” tendency was inherent in the very "nature" of all creaturely things. By their own "nature," all created things were intrinsically unstable, fluid, impotent, mortal, liable to dissolution: Των μεν γαρ γενη-τών ή φύσις, ατε δη εξ ούκ δντων ύποστδσα, ρευστή τις καΐ ασθενής και θνητή καθ εαυτή ν συγκρινω-μένη τυγχάνει. Their existence was precarious. If there was any order and stability in the Cosmos, they were, as it were, super-imposed upon its own "nature," and imparted to created things by the Divine Logos. It was the Logos that ordered and bound together the whole Creation — συνέχει και συσφίγγει — counter-acting thereby, as it were, its inherent leaning toward disintegration. Indeed, the creaturely "nature" itself is also God's creation. But it was inwardly limited by its creaturely condition: it was inescapably "mortal” and mutable. St. Athanasius formally disavowed the notion of seminal λόγοι, immanent and inherent in the things themselves. Creation stood only by the immediate impact of the Divine Logos. Not only was the Cosmos brought into existence "out of nothing," by an initial and sovereign creative fiat of God, but it was maintained in existence solely by the continuous action of the Creator. Man also shared in this "natural" instability of the Cosmos, as a "composite" being and originated “out of the non-existing”: έκ του μη δντος γενόμενοι. By his very “nature,” man also was “mortal” and “corruptible” — κατά φύσιν φθαρτός — and could escape this condition of mortality only by God's grace and by participation in the energies of the Logos: χάριτι δε της του Λόγου μετουσίας τοΟ κατά φύσιν έκφυγόντες. By himself man was unable “to continue forever” — ούχ Ικανόν εΐη κατά τον της Ιδίας γενέσεως λόγο ν διάμενε ιν άεί (Contra gentes 40 to 43; De incarn. 2, 3, 5). The pattern of this exposition is conspicuously "Platonic." But St. Athanasius used it judiciously. The cosmic or "demiurgic" function of the Logos was strongly stressed in his conception. But His Divine transcendence was also vigorously stressed. Indeed, the Divine character of the Logos was the main presupposition of the whole argument. The Logos was, in the phrase of St. Athanasius, "the Only-begotten God," originating eternally from the Father as from a spring, a πηγή. There was an absolute dissimilarity between the Logos and the creatures. The Logos is present in the world, but only "dynamically,” that is, by His “powers.” In His own “substance” He is outside of the world: έκτος μέν έστι του παντός κατ' ούσίαν, έν πδσι δε έστι ταΐς έαυτοΰ δυνάμεσι (De incarn. 17). Now, this distinction between "essence" and "powers" can be traced back to Philo and Plotinus, and, indeed, to the Apologists and Clement of Alexandria. But in St. Athanasius it has a totally new connotation. It is never applied to the relationship between God and Logos, as had been done even by Origen. It serves now a new purpose: to discriminate strictly between the inner Being of God and His creative and "providential" manifestation ad extra, in the creaturely world. The world owes its very existence to God's sovereign will and goodness and stands, over the abyss of its own nothingness and impotence, solely by His quickening "Grace" — as it were, sola gratia. But the Grace abides in the world.¹⁷

In his struggle with the Arians St. Athanasius proceeded from the same presuppositions. The main demarcation line passes between the Creator and the Creation, and not between the Father and the Son, as Arians contended. Indeed, the Logos is Creator. But He is Creator precisely because He is fully Divine, an "undistinguishable Image" of the Father, απαράλλακτος εΐκών. In creation He is not just an “instrument,” όργανον. He is its ultimate and immediate efficient cause. His own Being is totally independent of creation, and even of the creative design of the world. At this point St. Athanasius was quite formal. The crucial text is in Contra Arianos II 31: Ό τοΰ θεοΰ γαρ Λόγος ού δι ή μας γέγονεν, άλλα μάλλον ήμεΐς δι αυτόν γεγόναμεν, και 'έν αύτω έκτίσθη τά πάντα'“ ουδέ δια την ημών άσθένειαν οδτος, ών δυνατός, υπό μόνου τοΰ Πατρός γέγονεν, ΐν ή μας δι αύτοΰ ώς δι οργάνου δημιουργήση' μη γένοιτο! ουκ εστίν ούτως. ΚαΙ γαρ και εΐ δόξαν η” ν τώ θεώ μη ποιήσαι τά γενητά, άλλ ή ν ουδέν ήττον ό Λόγος 'προς τον θεόν, και έν αύτω fjv ό Πατήρ. Τά μέντοι γενητά αδύνατον ήν χωρίς του Λόγου γενέσθαι” ούτω γάρ και γέγονε δι αύτου, καΐ είκότως. 'Επειδή γάρ Λόγος εστίν ίδιος φύσει της ουσίας τοΰ Θεοΰ ό Υιός, έξ αύτοΰ τέ έστι, και 'έν αύτω' έστιν, ώς εΐπεν αυτός” ουκ ήδύνατο μή δι αύτοΰ γενέσθαι τά δημιουργήματα. — Even supposing that the Father had never been disposed to create the world, or a part of it, nevertheless the Logos would have been with God and the Father in Him . . . This was the core of the argument. In fact, St. Athanasius carefully eliminates all references to the οικονομία of creation or salvation from his description of the inner relationship between the Father and the Son. This was his major and decisive contribution to Trinitarian theology in the critical situation of the Arian dispute. And this left him free to define the concept of Creation properly, θεολογία, in the ancient sense of the word, and οικονομία must be clearly and strictly distinguished and delimited, although they could not be separated from each other. But God's “Being” has an absolute ontological priority over God's action and will.

God is much more than just "Creator." When we call God "a Father," we mean something higher than His relation to creatures (Contra Arianos I 33). “Before” God creates at all, πολλω πρότερον, He is Father, and He creates through His Son. For the Arians, actually, God was no more than a Creator and Shaper of creatures, argued St. Athanasius. They did not admit in God anything that was “superior to His will,” το ύπερκείμενον της βουλήσεως. But, obviously, "being" precedes "will," and "generation,” accordingly, surpasses the “will” also: ύπεραναβέβηκε δέ της βουλήσεως το πεφυκέναι (II 2). Of course, it is but a logical order: there is no temporal sequence in Divine Being and Life. Yet, this logical order has an ontological significance. Trinitarian names denote the very character of God, His very Being. They are, as it were, ontological names. There are, in fact, two different sets of names which may be used of God. One set of names refers to God's deeds or acts — that is, to His will and counsel — the other to God's own essence and being. St. Athanasius insisted that these two sets of names had to be formally and consistently distinguished. And, again, it was more than just a logical or mental distinction. There was a distinction in the Divine reality itself. God is what He is: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is an ultimate reality, declared and manifested in the Scriptures. But Creation is a deed of the Divine will, and this will is common to and identical in all Three Persons of the One God. Thus, God's Fatherhood must necessarily precede His Creatorship. The Son's existence flows eternally from the very essence of the Father, or, rather, belongs to this "essence," ουσία. The world's existence, on the contrary, is, as it were, “external” to this Divine essence and is grounded only in the Divine will. There is an element of contingency in the exercise and disclosure of the creative will, as much as His will reflects God's own essence and character. On the other hand, there is, as it were, an absolute necessity in the Trinitarian being of God. The word may seem strange and startling. In fact, St. Athanasius did not use it directly. It would have embarrassed Origen and many others, as offensive to God's perfection: does it not imply that God is subject to certain "constraint" or fatalistic determinism? But, in fact, "necessity" in this case is but another name for "being" or "essence." Indeed, God does not "choose" His own Being. He simply is. No further question can be intelligently asked. Indeed, it is proper for God "to create," that is, to manifest Himself ad extra. But this manifestation is an act of His will, and in no way an extension of His own Being. On the other hand, "will" and "deliberation" should not be invoked in the description of the eternal relationship between Father and Son. At this point St. Athanasius was definite and explicit. Indeed, his whole refutation of Arianism depended ultimately upon this basic distinction between "essence" and "will," which alone could establish clearly the real difference in kind between "Generation" and "Creation." The Trinitarian vision and the concept of Creation, in the thought of St. Athanasius, belonged closely and organically together.¹⁸

Let us examine now in detail some few characteristic passages in the famous Athanasian Discourses against the Arians. The accurate dating of these "Discourses" is irrelevant for our present purpose.

I 19: God is described in the Scripture as the Fountain of Wisdom and Life. The Son is His Wisdom. Now, if one admits with the Arians that "there was when He was not," this would imply that once the Fountain was dry, or, rather, that it was not a fountain at all. The spring from which nothing flows is not a spring at all. — The simile is characteristic of St. Athanasius. It reappears often in the "Discourses." See, for instance, II 2: if the Word was not the genuine Son of God, God Himself would no longer be a Father, but only a Shaper of creatures. The fecundity of the Divine nature would have been quenched. The nature of God would be sterile, and not fertile: έρημος... μη καρπογόνος. It would be a barren thing, a light without shining, a dry font: ώς φώς μη φωτίζον καΐ πηγή ξηρά. See also I 14: άγονος ήν ή πηγή και ξηρά, φως χωρίς αυγής; or II 33: ήλιος χωρίς του απαυγάσματος. — Both the argument and the imagery can be traced back to Origen. Otiosam enim et immobilem dicere naturam Dei impium est simul et absurdum (De princ. Ill 5 2; 272 Koetschau). But, as we have already seen, in Origen the argument was ambiguous and misleading. It was ambiguous because there was no room for any clear discrimination between "being" and "acting." It was misleading because it coupled "generation" and "creation" so closely and intimately together as not to allow any demarcation line. This ambiguity is avoided carefully by St. Athanasius. He never uses this argument — from the Divine "fertility" — in reference to the will of God. On the contrary, he formally refuses to follow Origen at this point, — of course, without quoting him.

I 20: God was never without anything that is His own: Πότε γοΰν του ιδίου χωρίς ήν ό θεός; On the other hand, created things have no affinity or similarity with the Creator: ουδέν δμοιον κατ' ούσίαν έχει προς τον πεποιηκότα. They are outside God: έξωθεν αυτοΰ. They have received their existence by the grace and appointment of the Word: χάριτι και βουλήσει αύτοΟ τω λόγω γενόμενα. And, St. Athanasius characteristically adds, “they could again cease to exist, if it pleased their Creator” — ώστε πάλιν δύνασθαι και παύεσθαί ποτέ, ει θελήσειεν ό ποιήσας. For, he concludes, “such is the nature of created things” — ταύτης γαρ έστι φύσεως τα γενητά. See also II 24 and 29: πάντων έκ του μη δντος εχόντων την σύστασιν. Now, at this very point St. Athanasius had to face an objection of his opponents. They said: Is it not so that God must be Creator always, since the “power of creating” could not have come to God, as it were, subsequently? ούκ έπιγέγονεν αυτω του δημιουργεΐν ή δύναμις. Therefore, all creatures must be eternal. It is significant that this counter-argument of the Arians was actually Origen's famous argument, based on the analysis of the term παντοκράτωρ. Only the conclusion was different. Origen's conclusion was that, indeed, creatures were eternal. For the Arians that was blasphemy. By the same argument they wanted to reduce ad absurdum the proof of the eternal generation. It was an attack both on Origen and on St. Athanasius. St. Athanasius meets the charge on his own ground. Is there really such a “similarity” between generation and creation — τί δμοιον — that what must be said of God as Father must also be said of Him as Creator: ίνα τά επί του πατρός ταΟτα και έπί των δημιουργών εΐπωσι? This is the sting of the Athanasian rejoinder. In fact, there is total disparity. The Son is an offspring of the substance: ίδιον της ουσίας γέννημα. Creatures are, on the contrary, "external" to the Creator. Accordingly, there is no "necessity" for them to exist eternally: ούκ ανάγκη αεί εΐναι. But generation is not subject to will (or deliberation): το δε γέννημα ού βουλήσει υπόκειται. It is, on the contrary, a property of the substance: άλλα της ουσίας έστιν ϊδιότης. Moreover, a man can be called “a maker,” ποιητής, even before he has made anything. But nobody can be called “a father” before he has a son. This is to say that God could be described as Creator even "before" Creation came into existence. It is a subtle but valid point in the argument. St. Athanasius argues that, although God could, indeed, have created things from all eternity, yet created things themselves could not have existed eternally, since they are “out of nothing,” έξ ούκ δντων, and consequently did not exist before they were brought into existence: ούκ πριν “γένηται. “How can things which did not exist before they originated be co-eternal with God?” — Πώς ήδύ-νατο συνυπάρχειν τω άεΐ δντι θεω; This turn of the argument is highly significant. Indeed, if one starts, as Origen did, with the eternity and immutability of God, it is difficult to see, how anything truly "temporal" could have existed at all. All acts of God must be eternal. God simply could not "have started." But in this case the proper "nature" of temporal things is ignored and disregarded. This is precisely what St. Athanasius wanted to say. "Beginning" belongs to the very "nature" of temporal things. Now, it is the beginning of temporal existence, of an existence in time and flux. For that reason creatures cannot "co-exist" with the Eternal God. There are two incomparable modes of existence. Creatures have their own mode of subsistence: they are outside God. Thus creatures, by their very nature, cannot "co-exist" with God. But this inherent limitation of their nature does not, in any sense, disparage the power of the Creator. The main point of St. Athanasius was precisely this. There is an identity of nature in generation, and a disparity of natures in creation (cf. I 26).

I 36: Since created beings arise "out of nothing,” their existence is bound to be a state of flux: άλλοιουμένην έχει την φύσιν. Cf. I 58: Their existence is precarious, they are perishable by nature: τά δυνάμενα άπολέσθαι. This does not imply that they will actually and necessarily perish. Yet, if they do not actually perish, it is only by the grace of the Creator. The Son alone, as an offspring of the substance, has an intrinsic power “to co-exist” eternally with the Father: ίδιον δε το άεί εΐναι και συνδιαμένειν συν τω Πατρί. See also II 57: The being of that which has existence "according to a beginning" can be traced back to a certain initial instant.

In the later part of his third "Discourse" St. Athanasius discusses at great length the Arian contention that the Son has been begotten by "the will and deliberation” of the Father: βουλήσει και θελήσει γεγενήσθαι τον Υίόν ύπό τοΟ Πατρός (III 59). These terms, protests St. Athanasius, are quite out of place in this connection. Arians simply attempt to hide their heresy under the cover of these ambiguous words. St. Athanasius suggests that they borrowed their ideas at this point from the Gnostics and mentions the name of Ptolemy. Ptolemy taught that God first thought, and then willed and acted. In a similar way, St. Athanasius contends, Arians claim that the will and deliberation of the Father preceded the generation of the Word. He quotes Asterius at this point.¹⁹ In fact, however, these terms — "will" and "deliberation" — are only applicable to the production of creaturely things. Now, Arians claim that unless the Son's existence depended upon the "deliberation" of the Father, it would appear that God has a Son "by necessity” and, as it were, “unwillingly” — ανάγκη και μη θέλων. This kind of reasoning, St. Athanasius retorts, only shows their inability to grasp the basic difference between "being" and "acting." God does not deliberate with Himself about His own being and existence. Indeed, it would be absurd to contend that God's goodness and mercy are just His voluntary habit, and not a part of His nature. But does it mean that God is good and merciful unwillingly? Now, what is "by Nature” is higher than that which is only “by deliberation” — ύπέρκειται και προηγείται τοΰ βου-λεύεσθαι το κατά φύσιν. The Son being an offspring of the Father's own substance, the Father does not “deliberate" about Him, since it would mean "deliberation" about His own being: τόν δε ίδιον Λόγον εξ αύτου φύσει γεννώ-μενον ού ττροβουλεύεται. God is the Father of His Son “by nature and not by will — ού βουλήσει άλλα φύσει τόν ίδιον έχει Λόγον. Whatever was “created," was indeed created by the good will and deliberation of God. But the Son is not a deed of will, like creatures, but by nature is an offspring of God's own substance: οΰ θελήματος έστι δημιούργημα έπιγεγονώς, καθάπερ ή κτίσις, άλλα φύσει της ουσίας ίδιον γέννημα. It is an insane and extravagant idea to put "will" and "counsel" between the Father and the Son (III 60, 61, 62).

Let us summarize. The theological writings of St. Athanasius were mainly occasional tracts, tracts for the time. He was always discussing certain particular points, the burning issues of the current debate. He was interpreting controversial texts of the Scripture, pondering and checking phraseology, answering charges, meeting objections. He never had time or opportunity for a dispassionate and systematic exposition. Moreover, the time for systems had probably not yet come. But there was a perfect consistency and coherence in his theological views. His theological vision was sharp and well focused. His grasp of problems was unusually sure and firm. In the turmoil of a heated debate he was able to discern clearly the real crux of the conflict. From tradition St. Athanasius inherited the catholic faith in the Divinity of the Logos. This faith was the true pivot of his theological thought. It was not enough to correct exegesis, to improve terminology, to remove misunderstandings. What needed correction, in the age of St. Athanasius, was the total theological perspective. It was imperative to establish "Theology," that is — the doctrine of God, on its proper ground. The mystery of God, "Three in One," had to be apprehended in itself. This was the main preoccupation of St. Athanasius in his great "Discourses." Père Louis Bouyer, in his admirable book on St. Athanasius, has rightly stated that, in the "Discourses," St. Athanasius forces the reader "to contemplate the Divine life in God Himself, before it is communicated to us." This was, according to Père Bouyer, the main emphasis in the book. In this perspective one can see the radical difference between the Divine and the creaturely. One sees the absoluteness of the Divine transcendence: God does not need His creatures. His own Being is perfect and complete in itself. And it is this inner Being of God that is disclosed in the mystery of the Trinity.²⁰ But the actual mystery is double. There is, indeed, the mystery of the Divine Being. But there is another concomitant mystery, the mystery of Creation, the mystery of the Divine οικονομία. No real advance can be achieved in the realm of “Theology” until the realm of “Oikonomia” had been properly ordered. This, surely, was the reason why St. Athanasius addressed himself to the problem of Creation even in his early treatises, which constituted, in a sense, his theological confession. On the one hand, the meaning of the redemptive Incarnation could be properly clarified only in the perspective of the original creative design of God. On the other, in order to demonstrate the absolute sovereignty of God it was necessary to show the ultimate contingency of the created Cosmos, fully dependent upon the Will of God. In the perspective of the Arian controversy two tasks were closely related to each other: to demonstrate the mystery of the Divine Generation as an integral feature of the Divine Being itself, and to emphasize the contingency of the creaturely Cosmos, which contingency can also be seen in the order of existence. It was precisely in the light of this basic distinction — between "Being" and "Will" — that the ultimate incommensurability of the two modes of existence could be clearly exhibited. The inner life of God is in no way conditioned by His revelatory self-disclosure in the world, including the design of Creation itself. The world is, as it were, a paradoxical "surplus" in the order of existence. The world is "outside" God; or rather it is precisely this "outside" itself. But it does exist, in its own mode and dimension. It arises and stands only by the will of God. It has a beginning precisely because it is contingent, and moves toward an end for which it has been designed by God. The Will of God is manifested in the temporal process of the Divine Οικονομία. But God's own Being is immutable and eternal. The two modes of existence, the Divine and the creaturely, can be respectively described as "necessary" and "contingent," or "absolute" and "conditional," or else, in the apt phraseology of a distinguished German theologian of the last century, F. A. Staudenmeier, as das Nicht-nicht-sehn-könnende and das Nicht-sehn-könnende. This corresponds exactly to the distinction between the Divine Being and the Divine Will.²¹ This distinction was made and consistently elaborated, probably for the first time in the history of Christian thought, in the heat of the Arian debate by St. Athanasius of Alexandria. It was a step beyond Origen. St. Athanasius was not only an expert controversialist, but a great theologian in his own right.

The Athanasian distinction between "Generation" and "Creation," with all its implications, was already commonly accepted in the Church in his own time. A bit later, St. Cyril of Alexandria simply repeated his great predecessor. Indeed, his Thesaurus de sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate depended heavily upon the Athanasian "Discourses."²² Only instead of "will" and "deliberation," St. Cyril spoke of Divine "energy”: το μεν ΐΐοιεΐν ενεργείας εστί, φύσεως δε το γενναν' φύσις δε καΐ ενέργεια ου ταύτόν (Thesaurus, ass. 18, PG 75, 313; cf. ass. 15, PG 75, 276: το γέννημα ... εκ της ουσίας τοΰ γεννωντος πρόεισι φυσικώς — (το κτίσμα) ... εξωθέν έστιν ώς άλλό-τριον; also ass. 32, PG 75, 564-565). And finally, St. John of Damascus, in his great Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, repeated St. Cyril. "For we hold that it is from Him, that is, from the Father's nature, that the Son is generated. And unless we grant that the Son co-existed from the beginning with the Father, by Whom He was begotten, we introduce change into the Father's subsistence, because, not being the Father, He subsequently became the Father. For the creation, even though it originated later, is nevertheless not derived from the essence of God, but is brought into existence out of nothing by His will and power, and change does not touch God's nature. For generation means that the begetter produces out of his essence offspring similar in essence. But creation and making mean that the creator and maker produces from that which is external, and not of his own essence, a creation which is of an absolutely dissimilar nature.” The Divine Generation is an effect of nature, της φυσικής γονιμότητος. Creation is, on the contrary, an act of decision and will — θελήσεως έργον (De fide orth. I 8, PG 94, 812-813). This antithesis: γονιμότης and θελησις or βούλησις is one of the main distinctive marks of Eastern theology.²³ It was systematically elaborated once more in late Byzantine theology, especially in the theology of St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). St. Gregory contended that unless a clear distinction had been made between the "essence" and "energy" in God, one could not distinguish also between "generation" and "creation."²⁴ And once again this was emphasized, somewhat later, by St. Mark of Ephesus.²⁵ It was a true Athanasian motive, and his arguments again came to the fore.

Now, the question arises: Is the distinction between "Being" and "Acting" in God, or, in other terms, between the Divine "Essence" and "Energy," a genuine and ontological distinction — in re ipsa; or is it merely a mental or logical distinction, as it were, κατ' έπίνοιαν, which should not be interpreted objectively, lest the Simplicity of the Divine Being is compromised.²⁶ There cannot be the slightest doubt that for St. Athanasius it was a real and ontological difference. Otherwise his main argument against the Arians would have been invalidated and destroyed. Indeed, the mystery remains. The very Being of God is "incomprehensible" for the human intellect: this was the common conviction of the Greek Fathers in the Fourth century — the Cappadocians, St. John Chrysostom, and others. And yet there is always ample room for understanding. Not only do we distinguish between "Being" and "Will"; but it is not the same thing, even for God, "to be" and "to act." This was the deepest conviction of St. Athanasius.

Four "last things" are traditionally listed: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. These four are "the last things of man." And there are four "last things" of mankind: the Last Day, the Resurrection of the Flesh, the Final Judgment, and the End of the World.¹ The major item, however, is missing in this listing, namely "the Last Adam," Christ Himself, and His Body, the Church. For indeed Eschatology is not just one particular section of the Christian theological system, but rather its basis and foundation, its guiding and inspiring principle, or, as it were, the climate of the whole of Christian thinking. Christianity is essentially eschatological, and the Church is an "eschatological community," since she is the New Testament, the ultimate and the final, and, consequently, "the last."² Christ Himself is the last Adam because He is "the New Man" (Ignatius, Ephes. 20. 1). The Christian perspective is intrinsically eschatological. "The Old has passed away. Behold, the New has come." It was precisely "in these last days" that God of the Fathers had ultimately acted, once for all, once for ever. The “end” had come, God's design of human salvation had been consummated (John 19.28, 30: τετέλεσται). Yet, this ultimate action was just a new beginning. The greater things were yet to come. The "Last Adam" was coming again. "And let him who heareth say, Come." The Kingdom had been inaugurated, but it did not yet come in its full power and glory. Or, rather, the Kingdom was still to come, — the King had come already. The Church was still in via, and Christians were still "pilgrims" and strangers in "this world." This tension between "the Past" and "the Coming" was essential for the Christian message from the very beginning. There were always these two basic terms of reference: the Gospel and the Second Advent. The story of Salvation was still in progress. But more than a "promise" had been granted unto the Church. Or, rather, "the Promise of the Father" was the Holy Spirit, which did come and was abiding in the Church for ever. The Kingdom of the Spirit had been already inaugurated. Thus, the Church was living in two dimensions at once. St. Augustine describes this basic duality of the Christian situation in a remarkable passage of his "Commentary" on the Gospel of St. John, interpreting the XXIst chapter. "There are two states of life that are known to the Church, preached and commended to herself from heaven, whereof one is of faith, the other of sight. One — in the temporal sojourn in a foreign land, the other in the eternity of the (heavenly) abode. One — on the way, the other — in the fatherland. One — in active work, the other — in the wages of contemplation . . . The one is anxious with the care of conquering, the other is secure in the peace of victory . . . The whole of the one is passed here to the end of this world, and then finds its termination. The other is deferred for its completion till after the end of this world, but has no end in the world to come" (in Johan. tr. 124.5). Yet, it is essentially the same Church that has this dual life, duas vitas. This duality is signified in the Gospel story by two names: Peter and John.

Christianity was recently described as an "experience of novelty," a "Neuheitserlebnis." And this "novelty" was ultimate and absolute. It was the Mystery of the Incarnation. Incarnation was interpreted by the Fathers not as a metaphysical miracle, but primarily as the solution of an existential predicament in which mankind was hopelessly imprisoned, i.e. as the Redemptive act of God. It was "for us men and for our salvation" that the Son of God came down, and was made man.³ Redemption has been accomplished, once for all. The union, or "communion," with God has been re-established, and the power of becoming children of God has been granted to men, through faith. Christ Jesus is the only Mediator and Advocate, and His sacrifice on the Cross, in ara cruets, was "a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction." The human situation has been radically changed, and the status of man also. Man was re-adopted as the son of God in Christ Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of God Incarnate, crucified and risen. The catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, elaborated by the Fathers, from St. Irenaeus to St. John of Damascus, emphasizes first of all this aspect of finality and uniqueness, of accomplishment and achievement. The Son of God "was made man" for ever. The Son of God, "One of the Holy Trinity," is man, by the virtue of the Incarnation, for ever and ever. The Hypostatic Union is a permanent accomplishment. And the victory of the Cross is a final victory. Again, the Resurrection of the Lord is the beginning of the general resurrection. But precisely for these reasons the "History of Salvation" should go and is going on. The doctrine of Christ finds its fulness and completion in the doctrine of the Church, i.e. of "the Whole Christ," — totus Christus, caput et corpus, to use the glorious phrase of St. Augustine. And this immediately introduces the historical duration. The Church is a growing body, till she comes to "mature manhood,” εις άνδρα τέλειον. In the Church the Incarnate is unfailingly “present.” It was precisely this awareness of His abiding presence that necessitated the orientation towards the future. It was in the Church, and through the Church, that God was still pursuing His redemptive purpose, through Jesus Christ, the Lord. Again, the Church was a missionary body, sent into the world to proclaim and to propagate the Kingdom, and the ''whole creation" was expected to share or to participate in that ultimate "re-novation," which was already inaugurated by the Incarnate Lord, and in Him. History was theologically vindicated precisely by this missionary concern of the Church. On the other hand, history, i.e. the "History of Salvation," could not be regarded as an endless process. The "End of times" and the "Consummation" were faithfully anticipated. "The End" was clearly predicted in the Scriptures, as the Early Christians read them. The goal was indeed "beyond history," but history was inwardly regulated and organized precisely by this super-historical and transcendent goal, by a watchful expectation of the Coming Lord. Only an ultimate and final "con-summation," an ultimate and final re-integration or "re-capitulation" could have given meaning to the flux of happenings and events, to the duration of time itself. The strong corporate feeling compelled the Early Christians to look for an ultimate and inclusive integration of the Redemptive process in the Kingdom to come. This was plainly stated already by Origen. "Omne ergo corpus Ecclesiae redimendum sperat Apostolus, nec putat posse quae perfecta sunt dari singulis quibusdam membris, nisi universum corpus in unum fuerit congregatum" (in Rom. VII. 5). History goes on because the Body has not yet been completed. "The fulness of the Body" implies and presupposes a re-integration of history, including the Old dispensation, i.e. "the end." Or, in the phrase of St. John Chrysostom, "then is the Head filled up, then is the Body rendered perfect, when we are all together, all knit together and united" (in Ephes. hom. III, ad I. 23). Erit unus Christus, amans seipsum (St. Augustine, in Ps. 26, sermo 2, n. 23). The other reason for looking forward, to a future consummation, was the firm and fervent belief in the Resurrection of the dead. In its own way it was to be a "re-integration" of history. Christ is risen indeed, and the sting of death has been taken away. The power of death was radically broken, and Life Eternal manifested and disclosed, in Christo. The "last enemy," however, is still active in the world, although death does not "reign" in the world any more. The victory of the Risen Christ is not yet fully disclosed. Only in the General Resurrection will Christ's redemptive triumph be fully actualized. "Expectandum nobis etiam et corporis ver est" (Minucius Felix, Octavius, 34). This was the common conviction of the Patristic age, from Athenagoras and St. Irenaeus and up to St. John of Damascus. St. Athanasius was most emphatic on this point, and St. Gregory of Nyssa also. Christ had to die in order to abrogate death and corruption by His death. Indeed, death was that "last enemy" which he had to destroy in order to redeem man out of corruption. This was one of the main arguments of St. Athanasius in his De Incarnatione. "In order to accept death He had a body" (de incarn. 21). And St. Gregory of Nyssa says the same: "if one inquires into the mystery, he will say rather, not that death happened to Him as a consequence of birth, but that birth itself was assumed on the account of death" (orat. cat. 32). Or in the sharp phrase of Tertullian: Christus mori missus, nasci quoque necessario habuit, ut mori posset (de carne Christi, 6). The bodily Resurrection of man was one of the main aims of Redemption. The coming and general Resurrection will not be just a "re-statement" to the previous condition. This would have been rather an "immortalization of death," as St. Maximus sharply pointed out (epist. 7). The coming Resurrection was conceived rather as a new creative act of God, as an integral and comprehensive "re-novation" of the whole Creation. "Behold, I make all things new." In the phrase of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, it was to be the third and final "transformation” of human life (“μετάστασις”), completing and superseding the two previous, the Old and the New testaments, a concluding eschatological σεισμός (orat. theol. V. 25).

The new vision of human destiny, in the light of Christ, could not be accurately and adequately expressed in the terms of the current philosophies of that time. A new set of concepts had to be elaborated before the Christian belief could be fully articulated and developed into a coherent system of theological propositions. The problem was not that of adjustment, but rather of a radical change of the basic habits of mind. Greek Philosophy was dominated by the ideas of permanence and recurrence. In spite of the great variety of trends, a common pattern can be detected in all systems. This was a vision of an "eternal" Cosmos. Everything which was worthy of existence had to have actually existed in the most perfect manner before all time, and nothing could be added to this accomplished fulness. No basic change was possible, and no real "novelty" could ever emerge. The whole, the Cosmos, was perfect and complete, and nothing could be perfected or completed. There could be but a disclosure of the pre-existing fulness. Aristotle made this point with a complete frankness. "What is 'of necessity' coincides with what is 'always', since that which 'must be' cannot possibly 'not-be'. Hence a thing is eternal if its 'being' is necessary; and if it is eternal, its 'being' is necessary. And if, therefore, the 'coming-to-be' of a thing is necessary, its 'coming-to-be' is eternal; and if eternal, necessary. It follows that the 'coming-to-be' of anything, if it is absolutely necessary, must be cyclical, i.e. must return upon itself ... It is in circular movement therefore, and in cyclical coming-to-be', that the 'absolutely necessary' is to be found" (de gen. et corr. II. 2, 338a). The argument is perfectly clear. If there is any "sufficient reason" for a certain thing to exist ("necessity"), this reason must be "eternal," i.e. there can be no reason whatever, why this thing should not have existed "from eternity," since otherwise the reason for its existence could not have been "sufficient" or "necessary." And consequently "being" is simply "necessary." No increase in "being" is conceivable. Nothing truly real can be "innovated." The true reality is always "behind" ("from eternity"), and never "ahead." Accordingly, the Cosmos is a periodical being, and there will be no end of cosmic "revolutions." The highest symbol of reality is exactly the recurrent circle. The cosmic reality, of which man was but a part, was conceived as a permanent cyclical process, enacted, as it were, in an infinite series of self-reproducing instalments, of self-reiterating circles. Only the circle is perfect.⁴ Obviously, there was no room for any real "eschatology" in such a scheme. Greek Philosophy indeed was always concerned rather with the "first principles" than with the "last things." The whole conception was obviously based on astronomical experience. Indeed, the celestial movements were periodical and recurrent. The whole course of rotation would be accomplished in a certain period ("the Great Year"), and then will come a "repetition," a new and identical cycle or circle. There was no "pro-gress" in time, but only eternal returns, a "cyclophoria."⁵ Time itself was in this scheme but a rotation, a periodical reiteration of itself. As Plato put it in the Timaeus, time "imitates" eternity, and rolls on according to the laws of numbers (38a, b), and in this sense it can be called "a mobile image of eternity" (37 d). In itself, time is rather a lower or reduced mode of existence. This idea of the periodical succession of identical worlds seems to be traditional in Greek Philosophy. The Pythagoreans seem to have been the first to profess an exact repetition. With Aristotle this periodical conception of the Universe took a strict scientific shape and was elaborated into a coherent system of Physics. Later on this idea of periodical returns was taken up by the Stoics. They professed the belief in the periodical dissolution and "rebirth” of all things, παλιγγενεσία, and then every minute detail will be exactly reproduced. This return was what the Stoics used to call the “Universal Restoration,” άττοκατάστασις των πάντων. And this was obviously an astronomical term.” There was a kind of a cosmic perpetuum mobile, and all individual existences were hopelessly or inextricably involved in this cosmic rotation, in these cosmic rhythms and "astral courses" (this was precisely what the Greeks used to call "destiny” or fate, ή ειμαρμένη, vis positionis astrorum). The Universe itself was always numerically the same, and its laws were immutable and invariable and each next world therefore will exactly resemble the earlier ones in all particulars. There was no room for history in this scheme. "Cyclical motion and the transmigration of souls is not history. It was a history built on the pattern of astronomy, it was indeed itself a kind of astronomy."⁷ Already Origen protested most vigorously against this system of cosmic bondage. "If this be true, then free will is destroyed" (contra Celsum, IV. 61 etc.; cf. V. 20-21). Oscar Cullmann, in his renowned book, Christus und die Zeit, has well depicted the radical divergence between the "circular" concept of time in Greek thought and the "linear" concept in the Bible and in Christian doctrine. The ancient Fathers were fully aware of this divergence. Circuitus illi jam explosi sunt, exclaims St. Augustine. Let us follow Christ, "the right way," and turn our mind away from the vain circular maze of the impious. — Viam rectam sequentes quae nobis est Christus. Eo duce et salvatore, a vano et inepto impiorum circuitu iter fidei mentemque avertamus (de Civ. Dei, XII. 20). — Now, this circular conception of the Universe, as "a periodical being," was closely connected with the initial conviction of the Greeks that the Universe, the Cosmos, was "eternal," i.e. had no beginning, and therefore was also "immortal," i.e. could have no end. The Cosmos itself was, in this sense, "Divine." Therefore, the radical refutation of the cyclical conception was possible only in the context of a coherent doctrine of Creation. Christian Eschatology does inextricably depend upon an adequate doctrine of Creation. And it was at this point that Christian thought encountered major difficulties.⁸ Origen was probably the first to attempt a systematic formulation of the doctrine of Creation. But he was, from the outset, strongly handicapped by the "hellenistic" habits of his mind. Belief in Creation was for him an integral article of the Apostolic faith. But from the absolute "perfection" of God he felt himself compelled to deduce the "eternity" of the world. Otherwise, he thought, it would be necessary to admit some changes in God Himself. In Origen's conception, the Cosmos is a kind of an eternal companion of God. The Aristotelian character of his reasoning at this point is obvious. Next, Origen had to admit "cycles" and a sort of rotation, although he plainly rejected the iterative character of the successive "cycles." There was an unresolved inconsistency in his system. The "eternity" of the world implied an infinite number of "cycles" in the past, but Origen was firmly convinced that this series of "cycles" was to come to an end, and therefore there had to be but a finite number of "cycles" in the future. Now, this is plainly inconsistent. On the other hand, Origen was compelled to interpret the final "con-summation" as a "re-turn" to the initial situation, "before all times." In any case, history was for him, as it were, unproductive, and all that might be "added" to the preexistent reality had to be simply omitted in the ultimate summing up, as an accidental alloy or vain accretion. The fulness of Creation had been realized by the creative fiat "in eternity" once for all. The process of history could have for him but a "symbolic" meaning. It was more or less transparent for these eternal values. All links in the chain could be interpreted as signs of a higher reality. Ultimately, all such signs and symbols will pass away, although it was difficult to see why the infinite series of "cycles" should ever end. Nevertheless, all signs have their own function in history. Events, as temporal happenings, have no permanent significance. The only valid interpretation of them is "symbolical." This basic assumption led Origen into insuperable difficulties in Christology. Could the Incarnation itself be regarded as a permanent achievement, or rather was it no more than an "episode" in history, to be surpassed in "eternity"? Moreover, "manhood" itself, as a particular mode of existence, was to be interpreted precisely as an "episode," like all differentiation of beings. It did not belong to the original plan of Creation and originated in the general disintegration of the Fall. Therefore, it was bound to disappear, when the whole of Creation is restored to its initial integrity, when the primordial world of pure spirits is re-stated in its original splendor. History simply has nothing to contribute to this ultimate "apocatastasis." — Now, it is easy to dismiss this kind of Eschatology as an obvious case of "acute Hellenization." The true historical situation, however, was much more complex. Origen was wrestling with a real problem. His "aberrations" were in fact the birth-pangs of the Christian mind. His own system was an abortive birth. Or, to change the metaphor, his failures themselves were to become signposts on the road to a more satisfactory synthesis. It was in the struggle with Arianism that the Fathers were compelled to a clear conception of "Creation," as distinguished from other forms of "becoming" and "being." The contribution of St. Athanasius was decisive at this point. St. Augustine, from another point of view, was wrestling with the same problem, and his discovery that Time itself had to be regarded as a creature was one of the most relevant achievements of Christian thought. This discovery liberated this thought from the heavy heritage of Hellenistic habits. And a safe foundation was laid for the Christian theology of History.

No comprehensive integration of human existence is possible without the Resurrection of the dead. The unity of mankind can be achieved only if the dead rise. This was perhaps the most striking novelty in the original Christian message. The preaching of the Resurrection as well as the preaching of the Cross was foolishness and a stumbling block to the Gentiles. The Christian belief in a coming Resurrection could only confuse and embarrass the Greeks. It would mean for them simply that the present imprisonment in the flesh will be renewed again and forever. The expectation of a bodily resurrection would befit rather an earthworm, suggested Celsus, and he jeered in the name of common sense. He nicknamed Christians “a flesh-loving crew,” φιλο-σώματον γένος, and treated the Docetists with far greater sympathy and understanding (apud Origen, contra Celsum, V. 14; VII. 36, 39). Porphyrius, in his "Life of Plotinus," tells that Plotinus, it seemed, "was ashamed to be in the flesh," and with this statement he begins his biography. "And in such a frame of mind he refused to speak either of his ancestors or parents, or of his fatherland. He would not sit for a sculptor or painter." "It was absurd to make a permanent image of this perishable frame. It was already enough that we should bear it now" (Life of Plotinus, 1). This philosophical asceticism of Plotinus should be distinguished from Oriental dualism, Gnostic or Manichean. Plotinus himself wrote very strongly "against Gnostics." Yet, it was rather a difference of motives and methods. The practical issue in both cases was one and the same — a "flight" or "retreat" from this corporeal world, an "escape" from the body. Plotinus himself suggested the following simile. Two men live in the same house. One of them blames the builder and his handiwork because it is made of inanimate wood and stone. The other praises the wisdom of the architect because the building is so skillfully constructed. For Plotinus this world was not evil, it was the "image" or reflection of the world above, and probably the best of images. Still, one had to aspire beyond all images, from the image to the prototype. One should cherish not the copy, but the pattern (V. 8.8). "He knows that when the time comes, he will go out and will no longer have any need of a house." It is to say that the soul was to be liberated from the ties of the body, to be disrobed, and then only it could ascend to its proper sphere (II. 9. 15). "The true awakening is the true resurrection from the body, and not with the body," άπό σώματος, ού μετά σώματος άνάστασις, — since the body is by nature opposite to the soul (το άλλότριον). A bodily resurrection would be just a passage from one “sleep” to another (III. 6. 6). The polemical turn of these phrases is obvious. The concept of the bodily resurrection was quite alien and unwelcome to the Greek mind. The Christian attitude was just the opposite. "Not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life" (2 Cor. 5.4). St. Paul was pleading for an άπολύτρωσις του σώματος (Rom. 8.23).⁹ As St. John Chrysostom commented on these passages, one should clearly distinguish the body itself and "corruption." The body is God's creation, although it had been corrupted. The "strange thing" which must be put off is not the body, but corruption (de resurr. mortuor. 6). There was a flagrant "conflict in anthropology" between the Christian message and Greek wisdom. A new anthropology had to be elaborated in order to commend the Christian hope of Resurrection to the Gentiles. In the last resort it was Aristotle and not Plato who could offer help to Christian philosophers. In the philosophical interpretation of its eschatological hope, Christian theology from the very beginning clings to Aristotle.¹⁰ Such a biased preference may appear to be unexpected and strange. For, strictly speaking, in Aristotle there was no room for any "after-death" destiny of man. In his interpretation man was entirely an earthly being. Nothing really human passes beyond the grave. Man is mortal through and through. His singular being is not a person and does not survive death. But yet in this weakness of Aristotle was his strength. He had a real understanding of the unity of human existence. Man was to him, first of all, an individual being, a living unit. Man was one just in his duality, as an "animated body," and two elements in him exist only together, in a concrete and indivisible correlation. Soul and body, for Aristotle they are not even two elements, which are combined or connected with each other, but rather simply two aspects of the same concrete reality. "Soul and body together constitute the animal. Now it needs no proof that the soul cannot be separated from the body" (de anima, 413a). Once the functional unity of the soul and body has been broken by death, no "organism" is there any more, the corpse is no more a body, and a dead man can hardly be called man at all (meteor. IV. 12, 389b: νεκρός άνθρωπος ομώνυμος; cf. de part. anim. 64la). No "transmigration" of souls to other bodies was possible for Aristotle. Each soul abides in its "own" body, which it creates and forms, and each body has its "own" soul, as its vital principle, "eidos" or form. This anthropology easily lends itself to a biological simplification when man is almost completely equated with any other living being. Such indeed was the interpretation of many followers of the Stagirite, including the famous Alexander of Aphrodisias. Aristotle himself has hardly escaped these inherent dangers of his conception. Of course, man was for him an “intelligent being,” and the faculty of thinking was his distinctive mark. But the doctrine of νους does not fit very well into the general frame of Aristotelian psychology, and probably is a survival of his early Platonism. It was possible to adapt the Aristotelian conception for Christian purposes, and this was just what was done by the Fathers, but Aristotle himself obviously "was not a Moslem mystic, nor a Christian theologian."¹¹ The real failure of Aristotle was not in his "naturalism," but in that he could not admit any permanence of the individual. But this was rather a common failure of Greek philosophy. Beyond time Greek thought visualized only the "typical," and nothing truly personal. Hegel suggested, in his Aesthetics, that Sculpture gives the true key to the whole of Greek mentality.¹² Recently, a Russian scholar, A. Th. Lossev, pointed out that the whole of Greek philosophy was just "a sculptural symbolism." He was thinking especially of Platonism, but his suggestion has a wider relevance. "Against a dark background, as a result of an interplay of light and shadow, there stands out a blind, colorless, cold, marble and divinely beautiful, proud and majestic body, a statue. And the world is such a statue, and gods are statues; the city-state also, and the heroes, and the myths, and ideas; all conceal underneath them this original sculptural intuition . . . There is no personality, no eyes, no spiritual individuality. There is a 'something', but not a 'someone', an individualized 'it', but no living person with his proper name . . . There is no one at all. There are bodies, and there are ideas. The spiritual character of ideas is killed by the body, but the warmth of the body is restrained by the abstract idea. There are here beautiful, but cold and blissfully indifferent statues."¹³ And yet Aristotle did feel and understand the individual more than anyone else in his tradition. He provided Christian philosophers with all the elements out of which an adequate conception of personality could be built up. His strength was just in his understanding of the empirical wholeness of human existence. Aristotle's conception was radically transformed in this Christian adaptation, for new perspectives were opened, and all the terms were given a new significance. And yet one cannot fail to acknowledge the Aristotelian origin of the main anthropological ideas in early Christian theology. Such a christening of Aristotelianism we find already in Origen, to a certain extent in St. Methodius of Olympus as well, and later in St. Gregory of Nyssa, who in his thrilling De Anima et Resurrectione attempted a daring synthesis of Origen and Methodius. The break between the "Intellect," impersonal and "eternal," and the soul, individual but mortal, was overcome and healed in the new self-consciousness of a spiritual personality. The idea of personality itself was probably the greatest Christian contribution to philosophy. And then the tragedy of death could be visualized in its true dimension. For Plato and Platonists death was just a welcome release out of the bodily bondage, "a flight to the fatherland." For Aristotle and his followers it was a natural end of earthly existence, a sad but inevitable end, "and nothing is thought to be any longer either good or bad for the dead" (ethic. Nicom. III. 6, III. 5a). For Christians it was a catastrophe, a frustration of human existence, a reduction to a sub-human state, abnormal and rooted in the sinful condition of mankind, out of which one is now liberated by the victory of Christ. The task of Christian theologians was now to relate the hope of Resurrection to the new conception of man. It is interesting to observe that the problem was clearly seen and stated in the first theological essay on the Resurrection which we possess. In his brief treatise De resurrectione mortuorum, Athenagoras of Athens begins with the plain statement that "God gave independent being and life neither to the nature of the soul itself, nor to the nature of the body separately, but rather to men, composed of soul and body." There would no longer be a man, if the completeness of this structure were broken, for then the identity of the individual would be broken also. "And if there is no resurrection, human nature is no longer human" (de resurr. mort. 13, 15). Aristotle concluded from the mortality of the body to the mortality of the soul, which was but the vital power of the body. Both go down together. Athenagoras, on the contrary, infers the resurrection of the body from the immortality of the reasonable soul. Both are kept together.¹⁴ Thus, a safe foundation was laid for further elaboration.

The purpose of this brief paper was not to give a complete summary of the eschatological thought and teaching of the Fathers. It was rather an attempt to emphasize the main themes and the main problems with which the Fathers had to wrestle. Again, it was also an attempt to show how deeply and closely all eschatological topics are related to the core of the Christian message and faith, to the Redemption of man by the Incarnate and Risen Lord. Only in this wider perspective, in the total context of Christian doctrine, can one fully and faithfully understand all the variations of Patristic thought. The eschatological hope is rooted in the faith, and cannot be understood except in this context. The Fathers never attempted a systematic exposition of Eschatology, in a narrow and technical sense. But they were fully aware of that inner logic which had to lead from the belief in Christ the Redeemer to the hope for the age to come: the end of the world, the final consummation, the resurrection of the dead, and life everlasting.

Chrysostom was a powerful preacher. He was fond of preaching, and regarded preaching as the duty of a Christian minister. Priesthood is authority, but it is authority of word and conviction. This is the distinctive mark of Christian power. Kings compel, and pastors convince. The former act by orders, the latter by exhortations. Pastors appeal to human freedom, to human will and call for decisions. As Chrysostom used to say himself, "We have to accomplish the salvation of men by word, meekness, and exhortation." The whole meaning of human life for Chrysostom was in that it was, and had to be, a life in freedom, and therefore a life of service. In his preaching he spoke persistently about freedom and decision. Freedom was for him an image of God in man. Christ came, as Chrysostom used to remind, precisely to heal the will of man. God always acts in such a way as not to destroy our own freedom. God Himself acts by calls and exhortations, not by compulsion. He shows the right way, calls and invites, and warns against the dangers of wickedness, but does not constrain. Christian pastors must act accordingly. By temperament, Chrysostom was rather a maximalist, sharp and rigoristic, but he was always against compulsion, even in the struggle with heretics. Christians are forbidden, he used to insist, to apply violence even for good aims: "Our warfare does not make the living dead, but rather makes the dead to live, because it is conducted in the spirit of meekness and humility. I persecute by word, not by acts. I persecute heresy, not heretics. It is mine more to be persecuted, than to persecute. So Christ was victorious as a Crucified, and not as a crucifier." The strength of Christianity was for him in humility and toleration, not in power. One had to be strict about oneself, and meek to the others.

Yet, Chrysostom was in no sense a sentimental optimist. His diagnosis of the human situation was stern and grim. He lived in a time when the Church was suddenly invaded by crowds of nominal converts. He had an impression that he was preaching to the dead. He watched the lack of charity and the complacent injustice and saw them almost in an apocalyptic perspective: "We have quenched the zeal, and the body of Christ is dead." He had an impression that he was speaking to people for whom Christianity was just a conventional fashion, an empty form, a manner and little more: "Among the thousands one can hardly find more than a hundred of them who are being saved, and even about that I am doubtful." He was rather embarrassed by the great number of alleged Christians: "an extra food for fire."

Prosperity was for him a danger, the worst kind of persecution, worse than an open persecution. Nobody sees dangers. Prosperity breeds carelessness. Men fall asleep, and the devil kills the sleepy. Chrysostom was disturbed especially by an open and deliberate lowering of standards and requirements, even among the clergy. Salt was losing its savour. He reacted to this not only by a word of rebuke and reprimand, but by deeds of charity and love. He was desperately concerned with the renewal of society, with the healing of social ills. He was preaching and practising charity, founding hospitals and orphanages, helping the poor and destitute. He wanted to recover the spirit of practising love. He wanted more activity and commitment among Christians. Christianity for him was precisely "the Way," as it had been sometimes described in Apostolic times, and Christ Himself was "the Way." Chrysostom was always against all compromises, against the policy of appeasement and adjustment. He was a prophet of an integral Christianity.

Chrysostom was mainly a preacher of morality, but his ethics was deeply rooted in the faith. He used to interpret Scripture to his flocks, and his favorite writer was St. Paul. It was in his epistles that one could see this organic connection between faith and life. Chrysostom had his favorite dogmatic theme, to which he would constantly return--first of all, the theme of the Church, closely linked to the doctrine of Redemption, being the sacrifice of the High-Priest Christ; the Church is the new being, the life in Christ, and the life of Christ in men. Secondly, the theme of Eucharist, a sacrament and a sacrifice. It is but fair to call Chrysostom, as he was actually called, "the teacher of Eucharist," doctor eucharisticus. Both themes were linked together. It was in the Eucharist, and through it, that the Church could be alive.

Chrysostom was a witness of the living faith, and for that reason his voice was so eagerly listened to, both in the East and in the West; but for him, the faith was a norm of life, and not just a theory. Dogmas must be practised. Chrysostom was preaching the Gospel of Salvation, the good tidings of the new life. He was not a preacher of independent ethics. He preached Christ, and Him crucified and risen, the Lamb and the High Priest. Right life was for him the only efficient test of right beliefs. Faith is accomplished in the deeds, the deeds of charity and love. Without love, faith, contemplation, and the vision of the mysteries of God are impossible. Chrysostom was watching the desperate struggle for truth in the society of his own days. He was always concerned with living souls; he was speaking to men, to living persons. He was always addressing a flock, for which he felt responsibility. He was always discussing concrete cases and situations.

One of his constant and favorite subjects was that of wealth and misery. The theme was imposed or dictated by the setting in which Chrysostom had to work. He had to face the life in great and overcrowded cities, with all the tensions between the rich and the poor. He simply could not evade social problems without detaching Christianity from life, but social problems were for him emphatically religious and ethical problems. He was not primarily a social reformer, even if he had his own plans for Christian society. He was concerned with the ways of Christians in the world, with their duties, with their vocation.

In his sermons we find, first of all, a penetrating analysis of the social situation. He finds too much injustice, coldness, indifference, and suffering and sorrow in the society of his days. And he sees well to what extent it is connected with the acquisitive character of the contemporary society, with the acquisitive spirit of life. This acquisitive spirit breeds inequality, and therefore injustice. He is not only upset by fruitless luxury of life; he is apprehensive of wealth as a standing temptation. Wealth seduces the rich. Wealth itself has no value. It is a guise, under which the real face of man is concealed, but those who hold possessions come to cherish them, and are deceived; they come to value them and rely on them. All possessions, not only the large ones, are dangerous, in so far as man learns to rely upon what is, by its very nature, something passing and unreal.

Chrysostom is very evangelical at this point. Treasures must be gathered in heaven, and not on earth, and all earthly treasures are unreal and doomed to corruption. "A love for wealth is abnormal," says Chrysostom. It is just a burden for the soul, and a dangerous burden. It enslaves the soul; it distracts it from the service to God. The Christian spirit is a spirit of renunciation, and wealth ties man to inanimate things. The acquisitive spirit distorts the vision, perverts the perspective. Chrysostom is closely following the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount. "Do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on. . ." Life is greater than clothing or food, but it is anxiety which is the prevailing temper of the acquisitive society.

Christians are called to renounce all possessions and to follow Christ in full confidence and trust. Possessions can be justified only by their use: feed the hungry, help the poor, and give everything to the needy. Here is the main tension, and the main conflict, between the spirit of the Church and the mood of the worldly society. The cruel injustice of actual life is the bleeding wound of this society. In a world of sorrow and need, all possessions are wrong — they are just proofs of coldness, and symptoms of little faith. Chrysostom goes so far as to denounce even the splendor of the temples. "The Church," he says, "is a triumphant company of angels, and not a shop of a silversmith. The Church claims human souls, and only for the sake of the souls does God accept any other gifts. The cup which Christ offered to the disciples at the Last Supper was not made of gold. Yet it was precious above all measure. If you want to honor Christ, do it when you see Him naked, in the person of the poor. No use, if you bring silk and precious metals to the temple, and leave Christ to suffer cold and nakedness in the outside. No use, if the temple is full of golden vessels, but Christ himself is starving. You make golden chalices, but fail to offer cups of cold water to the needy. Christ, as a homeless stranger, is wandering around and begging, and instead of receiving Him you make decorations."

Chrysostom was afraid that everything kept aside was in a sense stolen from the poor. One cannot be rich, except at the cost of keeping others poor. The root of wealth is always in some injustice. Yet, poverty was not for Chrysostom just a virtue by itself. Poverty meant for him first of all need and want, and suffering and pain. For this reason Christ can be found among the poor, and he comes to us in the guise of a beggar, and not in that of a rich man. Poverty is a blessing only when it is cheerfully accepted for Christ's sake. The poor have less anxiety than the rich and are more independent — or at least may be. Chrysostom was fully aware that poverty can be tempting too, not only as a burden, but as an incentive of envy or despair. For that very reason he wanted to fight poverty, in order not only to ease the suffering, but to remove temptations also.

Chrysostom was always concerned with ethical issues. He had his own vision of a just society, and the first prerequisite was, in his opinion, equality. It is the first claim of any genuine love. But Chrysostom would go much further. He felt that there was but one owner of all things in the world — God Himself, the Maker of all. Strictly speaking, no private property should exist at all. Everything belongs to God. Everything is loaned rather than given by God in trust to man, for God's purposes. Chrysostom would add: Everything is God's except the good deeds of man — it is the only thing that man can own. As everything belongs to God, our com