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The Christological Ramifications of Theodore of Mopsuestia's Understanding of Baptism and the Eucharist
Frederick G. McLeod S.J.
Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2002, pp. 37-75 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/earl.2002.0010
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MCLEOD/THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA
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The Christological Ramications of Theodore of Mopsuestias Understanding of Baptism and the Eucharist
FREDERICK G. MCLEOD, S.J.
This paper probes how Theodore of Mopsuestia understood type, participation and real presence in his sacramental thought at a time when a linguistic shift was occuring within the church. It rst summarizes the main arguments of W. DeVries, I. Oatibia, and L. Abramowski over the effects Theodore sees present in baptism and the eucharist. It applies Theodores understanding of the roles of the image of God and the body of Christ as a way to grasp the real functional relationship Theodore posits between a sacrament and its heavenly fulllment. To remain bonded to the body of Christ is to be guaranteed immortality.
In his 1941 study of Theodore of Mopsuestias extant writings on the sacraments,1 Wilhelm de Vries raised a fundamental question about how to understand Theodore. He asks whether [baptized] human beings in this middle state [between the present and future ages] already effectively participate in the gifts of salvation or whether these [gifts] will be given them only after the resurrection.2 According to de Vries, Theodore clearly states in plain words that when the Lord takes the wine to be blood, it is an instance of an empty [blossen] symbolism which was already known in
1. Wilhelm de Vries, Der Nestorianismus Theodors von Mopsuestia in seiner Sakramentenlehre, OCP 7 (1941): 91148. See also his Das eschatologische Heil bei Theodor von Mopsuestia, OCP 24 (1958): 30938; and his passing remarks about Theodore in his book Sakramententheologie bei den Nestorianern (Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1947). 2. De Vries, Nestorianismus, 315.
Journal of Early Christian Studies 10:1, 3775 2002 The Johns Hopkins University Press
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JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
the Old Testament.3 He later reafrms this: In fact, we have here and now, as it appears, nothing more than a hope of [attaining] the future world.4 As the very rst words of his article, Der Nestorianismus Theodors von Mopsuestia in seiner Sacramentenlehre, indicate, de Vries considers that Theodores view of the sacraments as purely symbolic anticipations of a future heavenly fulllment is but a logical outgrowth and conrmation of his Nestorian christological thought.5 Ignatio Oatibia6 in 1954 and Luise Abramowski7 in 1961 challenged de Vries conclusion. They strongly objected that their studies into Theodores understanding of the terms type and participation show that Theodore did not look upon baptism and the eucharist as merely offering a hopeful expectation of a future immortal and immutable life. They argue that Theodore understood the two sacraments as having real dynamic effects on their recipients. The present paper will enter into this dispute by presenting here a fresh approach, if not a new dimension, for understanding Theodores sacramental outlook. It intends to illuminate the christological ramications of Theodores teaching about baptism and the eucharist through an examination of what he meant by the two phrases image of God8 and body of Christ. In addition, this study offers an opportunity to reect on Theodores and our own present sociocultural understanding regarding the meanings of such basic eucharistic terms as participation, type-archetpe, real presence, the reception of the body and blood of Christ, and divinization. Or to put this in a general question form, how does one understand today the spiritual effects of the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist in the spiritual life of a Christian?
3. Ibid., 138. 4. Ibid., 318. 5. See also de Vries conclusion on p. 338. 6. I. Oatibia, La vida christiana, tipo de las realidaded celestes: Un concepto basico de la teologia de Teodore de Mopsuestia, Scriptorium Victoriense I (1954): 100133. 7. Luise Abramowski, Zur Theologia Theodors von Mopsuestia, ZKG 72 (1961): 26393. For other treatments of Theodores thought on the meaning and roles of baptism and the eucharist, see Gnter Koch, Die Heilsverwirklichung bei Theodor von Mopsuestia, Mnchener Theologische Studien II (Mnchen: Max Hueber, 1965), 184208; and for the eucharist, Rowan A. Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Exegete and Theologian (Westminster: Faith Press, 1961), 7985; and Joanne McWilliam Dewart, The Theology of Grace of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1971), 10610. 8. For a study of Theodores understanding of the image of God, see Frederick G. McLeod, The Image of God in the Antiochene Tradition (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1999).
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I will begin by briey highlighting who Theodore was and what were the historical and sociocultural contexts in which he wrote his sacramental catechetical homilies. I will then summarize the main arguments presented by de Vries, Oatibia and Abramowski as to what they believed to be Theodores understanding of the sacraments. I will then treat of Theodores teaching on the image of God and the body of Christ and draw out their principal implications for understanding what Theodore thought about the sacraments and how this relates to his christological position. I believe this approach offers an intermediate position between the two competing camps. I will conclude this study with a summary of the principal points that this paper has reached. It exemplies why it is so necessary to be sensitive to the historical setting and sociocultural backgrounds of sacramental terms. THEODORE S LIFE Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 350428 c.e.) was acclaimed throughout the Christian world of the late fourth and early fth centuries as the leading exegete and theologian of the school of Antioch.9 He lived and wrote at a time when the various forms of Arianism were in decline in the Christian East, and theologians in the East were turning away from determining how to speak appropriately about the equality of the three divine Persons in the Trinity, and toward establishing what kind of unity existed between the divine Word and Jesus. In this setting, Theodore stood out as the formulator and protagonist par excellence for the Antiochene insistence on preserving the full humanity of Christ in its union with the Word. He died, however, three years before the divisive theological controversy erupted between Nestorius (d. ca. 451) and Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 370444) over how to express the unity of Christs natures. Though Theodore and Diodore of Tarsus (d. before 394) were not condemned with Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus (431), they were later attacked for holding the same christological opinions. It was not until about a hundred and twenty-ve years later that the second Council of Constantinople in 553 denounced both Theodores writings
9. School should not be considered here in its modern sense. In Theodores day, it signied a group of exegetes and theologians who shared a common outlook. Though differing on details, they stressed a literal, historical and rational interpretation of the Scriptures, with an emphasis upon the full humanity of Christ.
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and person as heretical and impious.10 From that time on, Theodore has invariably been branded as the Father of Nestorianism.11 Though most of his works were destroyed on the orders of the emperor Justinian (483 565), a few of his works have survived. For our purposes, we are fortunate to have translations of his Catechetical Homilies and his commentaries on the minor epistles of Paul and on Johns gospel. These works provide, in conjunction with other extant fragments, a solid basis for attaining insight into Theodores sacramental thought.12 His catechetical homilies are especially helpful for understanding the baptismal and eucharistic rituals being used in Theodores day. THE FOURTH CENTURY S SACRAMENTAL PRACTICES First, it is helpful to recall the historical setting in which Theodore delivered his catechetical homilies. As the emperor Constantines (d. 337) and Saint Augustines (354430) lives both highlight, Theodore wrote at a time when the reception of the sacrament of baptism was often postponed, with the result that the reception of the eucharist became a practice for the truly devout. Paradoxically, when Christianity became accepted as the religion of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, it provoked a socioreligious crisis for many. For it demanded a radical obedience to an evangelical way of life that imposed severe penances upon those who were public sinners. This strictness made many young people reluctant whether out of respect for their human weaknesses and for the sanctity of the sacraments or simply out of fear and cynicismto receive baptism until a later period in their lives.13 We discover this attitude widely con10. The Christian Faith: Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, ed. J. Neuner and J. Dupuis, 5th rev. ed. (New York: Alba House, 1990), 175.621 (434 35 in Denzinger). 11. At the end of his close scrutiny of Theodores surviving writings, Francis A. Sullivan maintains that: . . . it cannot be denied that Theodore of Mopsuestia, despite his orthodox intentions, was indeed what he has so long been called: the Father of Nestorianism. The Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Analecta Gregoriana 82 (Rome: Universitas Gregorianae, 1956), 288. 12. The works that have survived are those passages of his writings cited as evidence of his heresy, his commentaries on the Psalms and several Pauline letters and a few other isolated fragments, as well as his Catechetical Homilies and his disputation with the Macedonians. Since the catechetical homilies on baptism and the eucharist are lengthy documents, these provide more than ample material to determine Theodores sacramental thought. 13. For a discussion of this widespread attitude, see Georg Kretschmars mammoth study of the liturgy in the early church in Die Geschichte des Taufgottesdienstes in der alten Kirche in K. Mller and W. Blankenburg, eds., Leiturgia 5 (Kassel: J. Stauda,
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demned in the writings of the Fathers, such as Gregory of Nyssas (ca. 33594) homily Against those who deferred baptism.14 Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 31587),15 Ambrose (ca. 33797)16 and John Chrysostom (ca. 350 407)17 also preached against the practice. Their denunciations reveal the existence of a widespread attitude that indicated little or no appreciation of the fundamental importance that both baptism and the eucharist ought to play in a Christians spiritual life.18 Given such a deep-seated reluctance to receive the sacraments, we can see at least one of the trends that the great mystagogues of the late fourth and early fth centuries, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, sought to combat when offering their catechetical instructions about the two fundamental Christian mysteries, baptism and the eucharist. Their intent was not only to instruct but above all to inspire and to strengthen the resolve of those readying themselves for these sacraments. They emphasized the importance as well as the necessity of participating in the churchs sacramental life, if Christians were to be really serious about their life in Christ and their desire for eternal life in the future. These homilies explaining the Christian mysteries are also extremely helpful in providing valuable insights or, at the very least, clues into how the Fathers in late antiquity conceived of the spiritual meaning and transforming power of the symbols, rituals, types and archetypes used in the sacraments.19 THE CONTROVERSY As mentioned above, a disagreement has arisen over Theodores understanding of the content of the sacraments. It was sparked by Wilhelm de
1970), 14648 and his Die Zwei Imperien und die zwei Reiche, in idem, Ecclesia und Res Publica (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1961), 70, 89112. 14. Gregory of Nyssa, PG 46:41532. 15. See for example Cyril of Jerusalems Oration on Holy Baptism, NPNF 7:363 ff. 16. See for example Ambroses On the Decease of Satyrus, NPNF 10:169. 17. See for example John Chrysostoms rst and twenty-third homilies on the Acts of the Apostles, NPNF, 1st ser., 2:8 and 15253. 18. For a fuller treatment of the historical setting in which Theodore wrote, see Karl Baus, The Development of the Church within the Framework of the Imperial Religious Policy, The Early Church: An Abridgement of History of the Church, Volumes 1 to 3, ed. Hubert Jedin, trans. John Dolan, abr. D. Larrimore Holland (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 170. 19. For a comparative study of the mystagogical writings of Cyril, John Chrysostom, Theodore, and Ambrose on their interpretations of the baptismal liturgy, see Hugh M. Riley, Christian Initiation (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1974).
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Vries conclusion to his study into Theodores sacramental thought. He maintains that Theodores christological outlook affected his view about the spiritual effectiveness of baptism and the eucharist. Theodore, according to de Vries, regarded these sacraments as simply offering a hope that one will achieve in the age to come an immortal and immutable life similar to what the risen Christ now enjoys.20 Oatibia and Abramowski protested that Theodore did teach that baptism and the eucharist had a present spiritual impact upon their recipients, if one looks carefully at Theodores use of the terms type and participation. We will now list the arguments each side presents to defend its position. We begin rst with de Vries. As Abramowski has noted about de Vries point of departure,21 de Vries has approached his conclusion from a scholasticallyoriented dogmatic perspective. While his judgment has been affected to some degree by this stance, he was nonetheless a careful scholar whose articles and book manifest a detailed and thorough knowledge of Theodores sacramental teaching and that of his later close east Syrian theological adherents. As the title of his article Das eschatologische Heil bei Theodor von Mopsuestia suggests, de Vries maintains that Theodores primary outlook regarding the sacraments was eschatological.22 From this, de Vries argues that if the new creation is rather nothing more than a rising to a life of immortality and incorruptibility at the end of time,23 then it follows that when Theodore speaks of a renewal in baptism, of the new man who is born in baptism, this is also once again to be rightly understood of the future and to mean no real renewal here and now.24 In other words, granted the rebirth promised in baptism is to be realized only in an immortal future state, de Vries then concludes that the sacraments have to be logically presumed to be purely and simply symbolic acts without real
20. De Vries, Nestorianismus, comes very close to a categorical presumption when he afrms: That a theology, such as Theodore of Mopsuestias that inclines to Rationalism and Minimalism, should support such an ultrarealistic conception [of the sacraments] appears to us from the outside as most highly unlikely (114). Later he concludes: Theodores sacramental teaching appears on its deepest level [to be] as Nestorian as his Christology (146). These translations from the German and those following are my own. See also de Vries, Eschatologische Heil, 30910, 318 and 320; and his Sakramententheologie, 2224 and 8891. 21. Abramowski, Zur Theologia, 267. 22. De Vries, Nestorianismus, 112, 11820. See also de Vries Eschatologische Heil, 320 and 329. 23. De Vries, Eschatologische Heil, 319. 24. De Vries, Nestorianismus, 111.
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spiritual content. He sees this exemplied in the way that Theodore speaks of the transformation occurring in the consecrated bread and wine: This speaks very forcefully against the real presence and, in a more emphatic way, the eucharistic bread differs from the body of Christ and appears as an empty symbol.25 He does admit, however, to some uncertainty but quickly adds: [Our] doubt [about Theodores understanding of symbol] appears to us even more substantiated, when the later Nestorian authors for whom Theodore is the rst authority deny the real presence.26 Theodores way of speaking is, in de Vries opinion, not in conformity with the Catholic understanding of communion as a true supernatural participation in the body and blood of Christ.27 The most that the sacraments provide are a claim for future eternal blessings and the receptionbut not an indwellingof the Spirit who confers the grace needed to lead a virtuous life in an intermediate life stage between mortality and immortality. According to de Vries, the effectiveness that Theodore assigns to the sacraments resides in the grace that they bestow: We have already seen above that it is not a question about the Person of the Holy Spirit, but only about the Spirits grace.28 O ATIBIA S ARGUMENTS Ignatio Oatibia and Luise Abramowski both opposed de Vries conclusions. We begin with Oatibias arguments, as he was the rst to challenge de Vries.29 Oatibias principal objection is that de Vries did not take into account the basic kind of relationship Theodore postulated between a type and its archetype.30 For Theodore, a type and an archetype are two poles bound to one another in a way that reveals the unity of Gods unchanging plan for salvation. For instance, he regarded the types and symbols then present in the Hebrew scriptures to be fullled in the future life of the church, and that a parallel relationship also exists between the life of the church and that of heaven.31 Since the above types
25. Ibid., 137. 26. Ibid., 138. 27. Ibid., 137. 28. De Vries, Eschatologische Heil, 322 with the reference to 317. 29. Abramowski sums up Oatibias position in considerable detail and greatly expands upon it. See Abramowski, Zur Theologia, 26974. 30. While Oatibia exemplies Theodores typology throughout his article, he sums up his position in his introduction (101) and conclusion (12833). 31. Ibid., 1039.
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participate in the future realities of their archetypes, Oatibia strongly insists that there must also exist a parallel and similar relationship between the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist and their fulllments in heaven.32 Because a type and its archetype are really related to one another,33 there exists, therefore, a real basis for a guaranteed hope that a future fulllment will be attainedprovided, of course, one remains faithful to the requirements of his or her baptismal life. To buttress his argument, Oatibia cites an analogy that he sees in Theodores writings between Jesus baptism and that of others.34 Though Christs human nature was mortal in its earthly life, Theodore regarded Christs baptism as the visible moment when the Spirit bestowed upon him the gift of immortality but in a sacramental, embryonic way.35 After his resurrection, the Spirit then accomplished his fulllment. Drawing out the analogy, Oatibia envisages something similar taking place when a catechumen begins to share in Christs death and resurrected life at baptism.36 The Spirit grants the recipients of the sacramentshere and now some kind of a real but inchoative participation in an immortal life that will be fully realized in a future life. In addition, when the Spirit seals a baptized person, He makes the person to be a true child of God and a member of the body of Christ.37 This suggests to Oatibia that Theodore believed that some real transformation takes place. The same can be afrmed of the heavenly spiritual nourishment that the eucharistic bread and wine are anticipating for their recipients.38 This is seen in the grace that the eucharist provides for all those seeking to grow in their present life in Christ.39 While treating of Theodores understanding of the eucharist, Oatibia points out how Theodores terminology is in close agreement with those fourth-century Fathers who employed the terms type, archetype and symbol as the appropriate way to express how Christ is really present under the appearances of bread and wine.40 He then appeals to a study by
32. Ibid., 10928. 33. Ibid., 102 n. 8 and 103. 34. Ibid., 106. 35. Ibid., 107. 36. Ibid., 109. 37. Ibid., 111 and 11617. 38. Ibid., 11720. 39. Ibid., 118. 40. Oatibia cites (119) Johannes Betzs treatment of Theodores understanding of the eucharist in Die Eucharistie in der Zeit der griechischen Vter 1.1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1955), 22739; and P. Battifol, Etudes dhistoire et de thologie positive, 2 sr. (Paris: Victor Lecoffre, 1920), 38589.
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K. J. Woolcombe who concludes that this way of referring to the eucharist began to change at the end of the fourth century under Alexandrian inuence.41 Oatibia believes that Theodore may have been reacting against this change in speaking about the eucharist as a symbol, and describing the eucharistic transformation in a much more realistic way,42 citing a passage where Theodore expressly afrms that Christ did not say that the bread and wine were symbols of his body and blood but are the body and blood.43 Yet later he does speak of the eucharist as a symbol,44 indicating, according to Oatibia, that he did look upon both expressions as being equivalent to one another. In other words he identied a symbol with the reality to which it points. As we will state below, Theodore does readily admit that the consecrated bread and wine are transformed into the body of Christ, but not into that of the Word. As a further conrmation of his position, Oatibia also appeals to Theodores belief in the eucharist as a sacrice.45 Theodore looks upon the eucharistic sacrice as being the same as that offered by Christ at his death. He holds that the celebrating priest is acting as the representative of Christ in his role as high priest. This suggests that what is now being offered by the priest in a symbolic, sacricial way in church is identical with the eternal sacrice offered once and for all to the Father.46 If the sacrice now offered is the same as that in heaven, it seems reasonable to conclude that Theodore looked upon the eucharist as a real spiritual food. The eucharistic bread and wine would not be lacking effectiveness but would, in fact, be participating in the heavenly reality that they are imaging as true types.47 To further substantiate this view, Oatibia offers
41. K. J. Woolcombe, Le sens de type chez les Pres, Supplement de la Vie Spirituelle 4 (1951): 84100. While admitting that several secondary causes played a role in this change, Woolcombe places the greatest responsibility on the shoulders of Origen (99). 42. Oatibia, Vida christiana, 119. 43. Ibid. The citation is to Theodores Commentary on Matthew, PG 66:713B. 44. Ibid. For an English translation of this context, see A. Mingana, ed. and trans., Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Lords Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, Woodbrooke Studies 6 (Cambridge: Heffer, 1933), 75 in the English translation and 210 in the Syriac. In future citations to Theodores Catechetical Homilies, we will use Les Homlies Catchtiques de Thodore de Mopsueste, trans. Raymond Tonneau and Robert Devreese (Vatican City: Vaticana, 1949). Tonneau is much closer to the original Syriac. The English translation is my own. 45. Oatibia, Vida christiana, 122. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., 125.
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the example of Matthew 16.1320, where the keys of Gods kingdom are entrusted to Peter.48 If it is true that whatever he binds on earth is also bound in heaven, then there also exists a real bond uniting the two kingdoms or, in Theodores terms, the two catastases: those of earth and heaven. Oatibia offered one nal argument: namely that Theodore holds that baptism and the gifts of the Spirit are interchangeable. Theodore holds that the Spirit bestows upon those in this life a taste of immortality.49 In fact, he employs this bestowal of gifts as his chief proof for the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Oatibia believes that the rstfruits of the Spirit, as conceived by Theodore, are supernatural gifts, not merely preternatural gifts as de Vries maintains. The gifts a person receives through the mysteries of the Church exceed a persons created nature. They provide the foundation for ones hope of achieving the full reality in a future life. Finally, if Theodore did intend to assert that the sacraments really had no spiritual content or effectiveness, he would not have used such terms as type and symbol. We would expect rather to nd in the Catechetical Homilies the Syriac words for in name and appearance as the most apt translations for the terms used in the Greek original.50 Theodore attempted, therefore, not to break with tradition but to stay in line with what he interpreted to be true to Pauls scriptural thought and apostolic tradition. ABRAMOWSKI S ARGUMENTS Luise Abramowski offers her own additional arguments and elaborations upon those presented above by Oatibia. She begins by pointing out the theological signicance of a then recently-discovered fragment of Theodores Against Eunomius.51 Theodore speaks of two kinds of proso\pon, one that is ontologically related to a hypostasis and the other that is the object of worship and of honor. Abramowski then develops the latter to substantiate her conviction that Theodores primary theological purpose in speaking about the existence of one proso\pon in Christ was liturgical and not christological.52 In fact, she advocates that Theodores
48. Ibid. The version used in this paper is the New American Bible. 49. Ibid., 12627. 50. Ibid., 129. The Syriac terms would be bschm and bchezt. 51. Abramowski, Zur Theologia, 26366. Abramowski asserts that there exists no other explicit parallel to this fragment in Theodores extant writings. I believe it is also reected in Theodores view of the image of God. 52. Ibid., 265.
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whole christology ought to be examined from this perspective. If divine worship is to be offered to Christs common proso\pon, this argues against those asserting that Theodore taught only a moral, not a substantial, union between Christs two natures. Then, after summarizing in great detail Oatibias viewpoint on how Theodore understood typology, she proceeds to expand upon Oatibias arguments by elaborating on what she regards as Theodores parallel thought as to how the recipients of baptism and the eucharist participate in a real way in Christs divine life.53 Abramowski rst lists almost every passage where the term participation is found in Theodore.54 These places indicate to her that whenever Theodore wanted to express a real sharing, he had recourse to some form of this term. To further sharpen Theodores view, she then examines in a lengthy digression how Cyril of Alexandria understood the term participation.55 In his earlier writings, Cyril rejected its suitability when referring to the Trinity56 but used it later whenever he spoke of the relationship between the Word and the eucharist.57 Cyril asserted that those who have received the bread and wine are, in fact, participating in Christs body and blood. Abramowski then refers to Henry Chadwicks study of how Nestorius and especially Cyril understood the eucharist.58 She agrees with Chadwicks conclusion that Cyril objected rst and foremost to the Antiochene teaching not because of what they were teaching in regard to christology but because of what Cyril thought to be their understanding of the eucharist.59 A brief summary of Chadwick is helpful here as it highlights the central problem of Theodores sacramental thought. Chadwick notes how Cyril drew a close parallel between how Christs human nature is united to the Words divine nature and how the bread and wine are united with Christs esh.60 Cyril seems to have reasoned that just as Christs human nature becomes one with that of the Word, so also must the eucharistic bread
53. Ibid., 274. 54. Ibid., 27476. To express the idea of participation, Theodore would have used either metousa or metox in the Greek. These would be equivalent to the term s=autaputha in the Syriac text of his Catechetical Homilies. 55. Ibid., 27781. 56. Ibid., 28081. 57. Ibid., 28183. 58. See Henry Chadwick, Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy, JTS n.s. 2 (1951): 14564. 59. Ibid., 153. Chadwick states here: His [Cyrils] fundamental objections to Antiochene doctrine lay rather in the repercussions of such thought upon the doctrines of the eucharist and the atonement. 60. Ibid., 157.
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and wine be not merely Christs body and blood but also the Words. For if the Word is the personal subject of unity in Christ, then Christs esh is the Words own. Cyril believed from his reading of the Antiochenes that they held that it was only the body of a man that lies upon the churches holy tables.61 He was convinced that Nestorius and doubtless also his mentors Theodore and Diodore all held Christs esh to be only human. But for Cyril, Christs esh was divine.62 (As we will discuss later, Theodore believed that baptism transformed one into Christs human body but always in its personal union with the Word.) Though tangential to the present contrast, Chadwicks observation is worth mentioning: that Cyril missed the Antiochene emphasis upon the soteriological role of Christs humanity.63 Cyril was most interested in establishing the unity of the two natures in Christ. The Antiochenes, on the other hand, centered their efforts upon maintaining the redemptive value of Christs death as being efcacious because of Christs free human act of perfect self-sacrice.64 The Antiochenes, in other words, were addressing a different issue than Cyril. Nestorius focused specically on how Christs divine and human wills functioned freely together in Gods plan of redemption. With such an approach, Nestorius interpreted Cyrils emphasis upon the Word as the personal subject of Christs activity as denying any role to Christs human will in the accomplishment of salvation. After this long digression, Abramowski proceeds to delve into the sacramental ramications of Theodores understanding of participation. She is especially interested in determining how it differed notably from and was, in fact, opposed to Cyrils. She begins with a consideration of how Theodore looked upon the baptism of Christ and the baptisms of others as standing in a reciprocal, typological relationship.65 It is through baptism that Christ becomes the proper Son of God and through their baptism Christians become Gods adopted sons and daughters.66 This adoption enables one to participate in Christs resurrection and to share in the gifts of immortality and immutability that he now possesses.67
61. Ibid., 156. 62. Ibid., 154. Chadwick points out how Cyril insisted that the phrase the Words body must be carefully understood: That the Logos and his esh are inseparable does not mean that they achieve absolute identity of nature so as to make the body moosiow with the Logos. 63. Ibid., 158. 64. Ibid. 65. Abramowski, Zur Theologia, 281. 66. Ibid., 283. 67. Ibid., 28387.
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Abramowski readily admits that the eucharist is considered as indispensable, providing the baptized with the necessary heavenly nourishment.68 Yet she insists that the accent is upon baptism. It is because the baptized participate in the same human nature as Christ that they too can participate in the graces of the Spirit just as Christ didbut not in the same quantitative and qualitative ways.69 Christ received the Spirit fully, but others only partially.70 For Theodore, Christs baptism also differs from other baptisms by the fact that the Word always dwelt with Christs human nature from the moment of conception and acted as the leader in their common activity.71 Abramowski interprets Theodores statement that the Word dwells within Christ as in a Son to mean as in the true Son of God through whom we can become sons.72 While those baptized do not possess Christs unique grace, the Spirit has still empowered them to enter into the divine household (ikeithw) and participate in the future life73 and a sonship and daughtership with God.74 This then leads Abramowski to treat at considerable length the role of the Spirit in the life of Christ and that of the baptized. She employs this to bolster her argument that Theodore considered ones participation in the sacraments as having a real impact upon a believers life.75 Abramowski then examines how Theodores sacramental outlook ought to be viewed as peculiar to himself.76 She believes that Nestorius deviated from Theodore in this regard. She speculates that Theodore developed his sacramental theology so as to be able to address creatively the issues and problems inherent in the Antiochene teaching about the union of the two natures in Christ. His purpose was, in her opinion, primarily soteriological, and not christological.77 She makes, however, an important distinction between how Christ and others participate in the divine nature: . . . for Theodore the participation of human beings in the heavenly goods and Sonship is not given directly but only on the basis of their common human nature. Their natures enable them to share in what the human
68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid. 283. 28384. See also 29293. 293. 288. 293. 285. 287. 28792. 292.
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nature of Christ received through its union with the divine nature.78 What is important is that a person remains united with Christs human nature. This entitles them to achieve a future immortal and immutable life. In her conclusion, Abramowski connects her treatment of participation with that of Oatibias sacramental typology.79 Both regard baptism and the eucharist as types that not only foreshadow but really participate in the future life to which they point. She believes Theodore sought to address the christological problem from his sacramental perspective one that those who followed after him abandoned in order to resolve the dilemma about the unity of Christs natures in an ontological way. This being the case, Abramowski ends by observing how Theodores christology is the antithesis of Cyrils: Cyril approaches christology from his belief in the real presence in the eucharist and not, as Theodore does, from baptism.80 ORIGEN S AND THEODORE S UNDERSTANDING OF SACRAMENTAL SYMBOLS Before beginning my own argument, we need briey to consider whether Theodore uses such terms as symbol, type, and participation in the same way, or in a similar way, as Origen does when speaking of baptism and the eucharist. Admittedly this question is a broad one, requiring a much fuller treatment than what can be presented at this moment. But a few general observations can be drawn. The common use of language calls into question the portrayal of Theodore and Origen as two radically opposed exegetes, one insisting only on a literal interpretation of the Bible and the other seeing the necessity for an allegorical interpretation to explain difculties in scripture. The fact that Theodore and Origen speak of baptism and the eucharist in the same terms indicates that, if there is not some overlapping in their thought, they share at least a common religious tradition on how to speak of these sacraments in an acceptable way. In their own minds, they looked upon symbol, type, and participation as correctly expressing how a baptized person ought both to relate to the risen Christ and participate in the spiritual life Christ now enjoys. To be sure, Theodores and Origens theological mindsets do have an inuence on how they understand the terms. They both believed that the
78. Ibid. 79. Ibid., 293. 80. Ibid.
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scriptures are divinely inspired and reveal Gods will. They disagree, however, over how one can discern Gods actual intent. Origen presumed that God deliberately included spiritual truths (logoi) within the literal sense of the scriptures and that these can be uncovered through a systematic use of allegory. The allegorical method provides, as it were, a key for unlocking the spiritual meaning of the text. Origen also believed that a person enters into a true mystical union with Christ by growing more and more in ones image of God until one reaches a state of beatitude that coincides with perfect vision. One attains this through acts of contemplation and virtue. Theodore, on the other hand, searched for the meaning of Gods biblical intent according to a different, stricter, standard. Whether it was due to his rhetorical background,81 or his dependence on what he was convinced was Pauls method of exegesis,82 or what he inherited from a conservative Jewish exegetical method,83 or all of these combined, he was utterly convinced that an exegete ought to discover Gods revealed word through a careful, rational understanding of what the text itself says. Theodore, however, was also sensitive to the existence of a spiritual relationship that could exist between two scriptural realities, such as persons, events, and places.84 He inherited this view not only from his teacher, Diodore of Tarsus, but from what he found to be present in Paul. But he was adamant that the relationship had to be truly typical and not allegorical. He distinguished the two by maintaining that both the type and its archetype had to be historical realities and that their relationship had to be explicitly acknowledged by the scriptures themselves. Otherwise the relationship would be, for Theodore, merely an allegory. Examples of his typical and archetypical spiritual relationship would be those between the rst and second Adams, between Hagar and Sarah on
81. For studies into the issue of how much Theodore was inuenced by his rhetorical training, see Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), esp. 18082; and John J. OKeefe, A Letter that Killeth: Toward a Reassessment of Antiochene Exegesis, or Diodore, Theodore, and Theodoret on the Psalms, JECS 8.1 (2000): 83 104. OKeefe goes beyond Young to argue that the Antiochenes were so bent on following the rules of ancient grammar and historiography that they failed to grasp both the signicance and the necessity of Christian gurative and theological reading of the Old Testament (85). 82. Ulrich Wickert, Studien zu den Pauluskommentaren Theodors von Mopsuestia: Als Beitrag zum Verstndnis der Antiochenischen Theologie (Berlin: Tpelmann, 1962). 83. See McLeod, Image, 1115. 84. Ibid., 3538.
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the one hand and the two covenants on the other, between Adam as Gods image and Christ as Gods perfect image, between Israel and the church, and between baptism and the future heavenly rebirth. In other words, Theodore holds that one can only be sure of knowing the true inspired meaning from what is actually contained in and approved by the scriptures themselves. He believes that the use of allegory is simply an exegetes imaginative speculation about Gods intent.85 Theodore also differed with Origen in regard to the kind of participation that exists between a symbol and its reality and between a type and its archetype. Theodore rejected the view that the human soul can rise in a mystical way to a real participatory union with God. Because he rejected the possibility of an immediate union between a divine uncreated nature and a created nature, believing that either the human nature will be changed into the divine or the divine into the human, Theodore looked upon baptism as providing one with the sure hope of sharing in the immortal and immutable divine life that the risen Christ now possesses. As we have seen, de Vries interpreted this to mean that Theodores use of symbol and type conveys no spiritual content other than the reception of grace to live out ones life in the right way. While the present article nuances this view, there is a difference in the ways that Origen and Theodore understood these terms, at least in regard to baptism and the reception of the eucharist. Origen allowed a direct and immediate participation in the life of God, whereas Theodore, as we will see, maintained a mediate and indirect union with Gods life by the Christians becoming a living member of the body of Christ. By being united with Christ and remaining in this union, a person is assured that one will attain a participation in the immortal and immutable life that the risen Christ now shares. We can detect a linguistic change in the way Christians speak about baptism and the eucharist at the beginning of the fth century. Whether Cyril initiated the new language because of his eucharistic stance (as Chadwick argues) or as a consequence of his outlook on the hypostatic union of Christs two natures that necessitates an understanding of the reception of Christs body and blood as the Words, eventually the Orthodox and Catholics spoke of the two sacraments not as symbols or types but in realistic terms.86 This is clearly seen in the Council of Trents decree
85. For a discussion of this, see Dimitri Z. Zaharopoulos, Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Bible: A Study of His Old Testament Exegesis (New York: Paulist, 1989), 33 34 and esp. 4952. 86. This should not be understood as asserting that when the Fathers use scriptural types and sacramental signs, they did not regard these as endowed with spiritual
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dening the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic bread and wine and choosing the term transubstantiation as being the most suitable way to express the change. This indicates how medieval Aristotelian categories supplanted the Platonic symbolic language used by the Fathers. In a recent work, Lothar Lies shows how a reevaluation may now be in progress.87 He has studied how both leading Protestant and Catholic theologians have viewed and understood Origen in regard to the eucharist from the time of Erasmus. He cites the important roles that Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac have played in this reassessment for Catholics.88 They have sought to reevaluate how logos christology opens a new perspective to understanding the eucharist, other than that followed since the time of the Council of Trent. With this as a background, we turn now to clarify what was Theodores understanding of the terms symbol, type and participation in regard to baptism and the eucharist and the ramications of all of this for his christology. THE SACRAMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THEODORE S UNDERSTANDING OF THE IMAGE OF GOD I intend to approach the present controversy about Theodores understanding of the eucharist and baptism from a different but overlapping perspective from that of de Vries, Oatibia, and Abramowski. This approach will hopefully clarify Theodores sacramental, soteriological, and christological teaching. It is based on Theodores unique interpretation, at least among the Fathers, of what is meant by the scriptural phrase, the image of God.89 As has been alluded to above, his exalted view of divine transcendence led him to reject the idea that God could ever be seen by and united with any created nature in a substantial way.90 He was opposed, as all the Antiochenes were, to any purely spiritual interpretation
reality. See Robert Daly, Christian Sacrice: The Judeo-Christian Background before Origen, Studies in Christian Antiquity 18 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1978), 498508. 87. Lothar Lies, Origenes Eucharistielehre im Streit der Konfessionem: Die Auslegungsgeschichte seit der Reformation, Innsbrucker Theologische Studien 15 (Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 1985). 88. Ibid., 36570. 89. Ibid., 6270. 90. See J.-M. Vost, ed., Theodori Mopsuesteni Commentarius in Evangelium Joannis Apostoli, CSCO 115116/Syr. 6263 (Louvain: Ofcina Orientali, 1940), 27; and H. B. Swete, ed., Theodori Episcopi Commentarius in Epistolas B. Pauli Commentarii, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1880 and 1882), 2:294.
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of the image of God, believing that . . . [those who hold an image to be spiritual] have not seen that every image, when seen, shows what is not seen. It is impossible, therefore, to make an image that is not seen.91 Theodore, therefore, reasoned that if creatures were to know and worship God, they needed a concrete and visible image of God:
He [the author of Genesis] twice established that [God] made humankind in the image of God, in order to reveal that there is indeed a matter of [unique] excellence in their fashioningthat it is in them that all beings are gathered together, so that they might draw near to God through [humankind] as [Gods] image by obeying the laws laid down by God about showing service to them and might [thereby] please the Lawgiver by their diligence to them.92
While acknowledging Adam and Eve as Gods image, Theodore considered Christ as Gods perfect image: We see Gods invisible nature present in him, as in an image. For he has been united to God the Word and will judge the whole world when he appears, as it is right, according to his own nature, coming in the future age from heaven in great glory.93 Theodore most likely drew this understanding of image from Colossians 1.152094 where Christ is afrmed to be the image of the invisible God . . . for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible. . . . He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. . . . For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things. . . . For Theodore this meant: rst, in Gods plan for salvation Christ has been chosen to be Gods primary image because the Word dwells within him; secondly, Christ also serves as the visible bond in whom all creation is joined together and through whom alone all creatures will be reconciled to God. Because of his union with the Word, Christs visible nature also shares in the Words divine power: . . . by His indwelling the Word united the one who was assumed wholly to Himself and made him share in every honor in which the Word who indwells by nature shares as [the Fathers] Son, so as to be accounted
91. Swete, 1:262. Unless otherwise noted, this and all subsequent translations are my own. 92. E. Sachau, ed., Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodori Mopsesteni Fragmenta Syriaca (Leipzig: E. Engelmann, 1869), 2425 in the Syriac and 15 in the Latin. For the very same thought, see Swete, 1:268. 93. Swete, 1:261. 94. For an extended commentary by Theodore on this passage from Colossians, see Swete, 1:259277, esp. 26869.
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one proso\pon in accordance with the Words union with him and to share with him all his dominion and thus to work all things in him.95 Because Genesis also designates Adam and Eve as Gods image, Theodore must have recognized a divinely sanctioned type/archetype relationship existing between them and Christ. For he attributed to them the roles assigned to Christ as Gods archetypical image. He assigned them functions that truly participate in a real but limited way in the same or similar roles that Christ plays in salvation. Or to state this in reverse, Adam and Eves roles as Gods secondary image foreshadow those that are to be fullled primarily by Christ. Such an explanation makes sense of the next passage, where Theodore explains Adam and Eves roles not only as the revealers of Gods existence and the bond of the universe but also as the chosen way for the angelic and material worlds to know and worship God: So also the Artisan of creation has made the whole cosmos, embellishing it with diverse and varied works and at the end established humankind to serve as the image for his household, so that all creation would by their care and veneration toward humans render the honor due to God. 96 Theodore views image, therefore, as having a threefold function: it is revelatory, cultic and binding. Since the rst two functions reveal Gods will and require divine worship to be offered only to Christ, we turn now to examine much more closely Christs role as the bond uniting and unifying all creatures to one another and to God. When combined together with the secondary but real roles that humans play as types of Christs primary role as Gods image, this will hopefully provide insight into the kind of present effect that Theodore assigns to baptism and the eucharist. THE ORGANIC UNITY OF ALL CREATION By drawing out the signicance of the cosmic role that Colossians attributes to Christ as the one who recapitulates all of creation within himself, Theodore appears to have looked upon all creation as forming an organic whole. This is evident, I believe, in the following passage, where Theodore is interpreting Colossians 1.20:
95. Swete, 2:296. For an extended treatment of this passage, see R. A. Norris, Jr., Manhood and Christ: A Study in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), 21628. 96. Sachau, 7 in the Syriac and 5 in the Latin.
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Therefore all those things which are in heaven as well as those on earth, He renewed or rather recapitulated in Christ, making, as it were, a comprehensive renovation and reintegration of every creature through him. For by making his body incorrupt and impassible by his resurrection and joining it again to the immortal soul . . . he is seen to have returned the bond of friendship upon the entire creation.97
Theodore, therefore, considers all humans as being joined to Christ by their common human nature. He is moreover their head who recapitulates and harmonizes not only humans but all of creation.98 Theodore explains this organic unity at least between humans and other created beings thus:
For God fashioned Adam with an invisible, rational and immortal soul and a visible and mortal body. By the former, he is like unto invisible natures; and by the latter, he is akin to visible beings. For God willed to gather the whole of creation into one, so that, although constituted of diverse natures, it might be joined together by one bond. He [then] created this living being which is related by its nature to the whole of creation. He created Adam to be this bond.99
By being so bonded by their natures to Adam and Eves soul and body, the spiritual world and material worlds are also dependent upon them, not only because they function as the God-chosen way for them to know and serve God, but also because humans provide the way for them to share in the blessings of the future age. So when Adam and Eve sinned and death entered into the world sundering their bodies from their souls, the angels and the nonspiritual worlds were aghast at how they too were cut off from God. For their bond to God was broken in two:
For indeed because of the malice of human beings, all creation, as I have said, was seen to have been ripped apart. For the angels and all the invisible powers turned away from us because of our lack of devotion which we used to offer to God. Moreover even we ourselves have been dissolved by a death whereby the soul became separated from the body. And also the whole bond of creation was dissolved by this.100
97. Swete, 1:130. See also 143 and 276. Though I believe that Theodore is dependent upon Ephesians and Colossians, he may also have been inuenced by the Stoic conception of the cosmos as an organic unitya view that had permeated the cultural outlook of his day. 98. See Swete, 1:12930. 99. Sachau, 2425 in the Syriac and 15 in the Latin. See also Swete, 1:12930. 100. See Swete, 1:26768.
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The fall of Adam and Eve (who were mortal from the beginning)101 heralded the beginning of death. This had a disastrous impact on all creation, dashing their hopes for achieving and sharing in the immortality of the future age. Their sadness, however, was turned to joy when Christ rose from the dead and reopened the way for all those bonded with his humanity, including also the angels and all other nonrational beings, to enter into and enjoy once again the possibility of entering into a future life. We see this alluded to in a passage quoted in part above where Theodore is discussing the role of Christ as the one recapitulating the whole cosmos:
The God of the universe made all creation as one body composed of many members, rational as well as sensible. . . . But death was introduced with our sinning . . . the soul was separated from the body . . . the union of creation, therefore, was dissolved because of this. God, therefore, has restored or rather recapitulated in Christ everything in heaven as well as on earth, making as it were a certain complete renovation and reintegration of all creation through him.102
THE BODY OF CHRIST Another outlook similar to the organic unity of creation is present in the Pauline description of the Church as the body of Christ. Like Paul, Theodore regarded those who are formed through baptism and the eucharist into the body of Christ as being organically united to Christ.103 This organic
101. For a discussion about Theodores views on the original state of Adam and Eve, see McLeod, Image, 12527. 102. Swete, 1:130. We nd the same idea expressed in Narsai, a fth-century east Syrian theologian who was a devoted disciple of Theodore: Let there rejoice with us [human beings] heaven and earth, rational and dumb beings, because the sacrice of our body [Christs] has reconciled the Lord with His creatures! Our race has offered one rst-fruits to the Divinity; and He has given us, through him, a sign of peace and the renewal of the universe. Narsai, Metrical Homilies on the Nativity, Epiphany, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension, ed. and trans. Frederick McLeod, PO 40, fasc. 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), 161. 103. For passages where Theodore treats of the body of Christ in Galatians, Ephesians and Colossians, see Swete, 1:59, 13940, 16971, and 273. While the reason is not clear, whoever translated Theodores Greek text into Syriac uses two Syriac words, pa=gra= and gu\s=ma=, as equivalents for the Greek word sma (body). Pa=gra= connotes a eshy body and gu\s=ma= a solid body and, in an applied sense, a corporate body. While the translator may have sought variety in the use of these words, he may also be suggesting the kind of bodily transformation that baptism and the eucharist effect in their recipients: one not only becomes a member of an ecclesial community but is united in a physical sense to the body of Christ.
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unity is implied, if not openly stated, in the following: Thus when we receive [our Lord], we are remaining in communion with him while being the body of Christ and by this communion we are strengthening what we have received by the new birth at baptism. We have become his body according to the word of the Apostle who said: You yourselves are the one body of Christ, 104 and in another passage where he lls out his own statement that Christ is the head with the words from Colossians 2.19: from which the whole body is composed and knit together, and growth in God increases.105 The meaning of this is more fully elaborated in the following: . . . in whom we believe, are baptized and all become one body according to the operation of the Holy Spirit upon us in baptism. By this we become children of God and the one body of Christ our Lord, whom we consider as our own head because he is from our own nature and was the rst to rise from the dead, so that it [is] by him [that] we have received participation in these goods.106 Whatever may be the signicance of the above terms, it is important to realize in interpreting the passages about Christ as the head of the body that is the church that this is not a metaphor.107 John L. McKenzie expresses this clearly in regard to Pauls understanding: The physical realism of these [Pauline] passages [about the body of Christ] is remarkable and should not be diluted to mere metaphor. The identity of Christians with the physical body of Christ is unique in Pauls presentation and is much more than the union of members of a society with the governing authority and with each other.108 Since Theodore follows Paul closely, he too would regard the body of Christ as a corporeal and therefore an organic body where each member may have a different role to play but all are to work for the common good. Adapting Pauls analogy in 1 Corinthians 12, we can state that in such a union, each member affects others, just as a sore toe can hobble the whole person. The same view is apparent in
104. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Homlies Catchtiques de Thodore de Mopsueste, Syriac on 570 and the French translation on 571. In the future, I will refer to the Syriac text, the French being on the following page. I will also mention the name of the homily and the paragraph number where the citation is found, as here: Homily 16 (the second on the Mass).24. 105. Ibid., 448. Homily 14 (the third on baptism).22. 106. Ibid., 446. Homily 14.21. 107. This organic unity is seen also in the ways Adam and Christ are considered to be the heads of fallen and redeemed humanity. 108. John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1965), 101.
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Matthew 25.3146 where the Son of Man identies himself with the least of human beings. To care for these in their needs is to encounter Christ. Granted that Theodore may have had in mind an organic kind of unity uniting the angelic and material worlds to human beings and believers to the body of Christ, and both to Christ as the mediator and recapitulator of the universe, but can one assert that there is a similar kind of organic unity between the divine and the human natures in Christ? This view does seem present in the analogy Theodore offers to illumine the kind of union that he conceives of between the natures in Christ. He likens the union of Christs two natures to that between the human soul and body. In commenting on Romans 7.1920, Theodore remarks that:
the soul can tend to virtue but the body because of its natural mortality is easily inclined to sin because of the bent of its nature. . . . When discussing the two natures as two diverse things, aptly so because of the difference in [their] natures, [Paul] includes within the pronoun I both members as being one reality; that is, he is speaking of his own person in regard to the union between the body and the soul. So also our Lord, when speaking of his humanity and divinity, employed the pronoun I for the common person. And in order to show in all these instances that he was not speaking of one and the same nature, he used various words.109
Further on, he indicates the same usage:

In both cases, whether it is a question of divine or human matters, he employs the pronoun I so that the sense may be known from the context, when the natures differ, the words differ. Because he speaks in both cases about himself as one, he reveals the manner in which they are joined together within the person. For if this were not true, there would be no honor for the one assumed. For he clearly shares in everything because of the one dwelling within him.110
We have here at least an indication that Theodore looked upon Christs natures being united in a kind of unity that is similar to the organic unity uniting the soul and body in a human being. The implication is that Christs human nature shares in the honor due to the divine nature because the natures are united organically or quasi-organically within the same person. Applying here the analogy of how the soul and body function within a person, we can understand why Theodore is so careful to distinguish between what can be said about the Word and Christs humanity. For
109. Vost, 11920. 110. Ibid., 19394.
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instance, one can afrm: My mind is daydreaming, and my ankle is broken, but one cannot exchange these attributes. My foot cannot be said to be daydreaming, and my mind broken. They can, however, be attributed to my ego: I am the one who is daydreaming and has a broken foot. Theodore follows the very same pattern when assigning attributes to Christs natures. He insists that one cannot and ought not assign human attributes to the Word, but they can be assigned to the way the divine and human natures function as one ego. Since Theodore could not admit that the union between the Word and the assumed man could be either substantial or accidental,111 he appears, from what we have seen, to have sought to explain the union on a functional level. Theodores union of good pleasure between the divine and human natures ought to be viewed in light of the way Nemesius, a contemporary of Theodore, explains the way that the soul acts together with its body.112 Nemesius points out that the soul supplies the life energy needed for its body to act without its spiritual nature being affected.113 Being spiritual and immortal, the soul cannot be said to suffer in a physical way with its body. It is pleased, however, to do so out of compassion for its companion.114 Theodore seems to be imbued with the same outlook. The Words divine nature provides the power enabling his human nature to act freely in their union but without the divine transcendence and the human freedom of Christ being jeopardized. THE MEANING OF PROSO| PON The full signicance of Theodores christological use of the term proso\pon has not been easy to fathom. While its general meaning expresses a persons individual outward being,115 I think we can grasp its specic
111. See Theodore, PG 66:973. Therefore one can say that it is neither by substance nor by activity that the Divine has made a dwelling [with the assumed man]. 112. For a similar outlook that provides a background and understanding of this view, see Nemesius of Emesa, Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa, ed. and trans. William Telfer, LCC 4 (Philadelphia: Westminister, 1955), 26299. See also McLeod, Image, 100104. For a Greek text, see Moreno Meranis edition, Nemesii Emeseni De Natura Hominis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1987). 113. Nemesius, 297. 114. Ibid., 296 and 276. 115. For the various meanings that proso\pon has, see G. W. H. Lampe, ed., A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), and Gerhard Friedrich et al., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968).
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meaning in Theodore by regarding proso\pon and image as synonymous with each other. It is Christs common proso\pon that acts as the visible image of God. As such, it denotes that to encounter Christs external appearance is really to encounter the Word, to such an extent that Christs proso\pon can be adored. It also implies, if not expresses, that Christs proso\pon is the bond uniting and recapitulating the spiritual and material worlds through their organic unity with his soul and body. Not only are Christs soul and body united in an organic union within his humanity, but all the spiritual and material creatures are also united. Christs prosop \ on functions as their head not only in a spiritual but also in a corporeal sense. In turn, they are also united to the Word because of the unique union that Christs humanity enjoys with the Words divine nature. Because all creations union with the Word is achieved through the mediation of Christs humanity, the question becomes once again whether some organic kind of unity also exists between the spiritual nature of the Word and the creaturely nature of Christs humanity, similar to the union between his spiritual soul and his material body. This seems to be the point Theodore is making above when he speaks of how Christs ego functions in the union of his natures. He uses the analogy of the soul and the body as exemplifying how one can understand the mysterious way the human and divine natures and wills of Christ can function as one without each being submerged into the other. Each nature and each will can function in its own way as is evidenced by the way each of their attributes are assigned to their own proper nature and will. Yet both of their attributes can be asserted of their organic unity as one ego. This makes sense of Theodores constant refrain that one cannot rightly afrm that the Word suffered and died without qualication. It also explains why Theodore maintains that because of the union, Christs humanity shares in the divine name, power, and honor of the Word. Suffering is an attribute to be assigned to humanity, while the divine name and power can be asserted as pertaining rightfully to the humanity because they share in some sort of an organic unity with the Word. In other words, to say in an absolute way that the Word is the sole subject of predication and the center of Christs human operations meant to Theodore that Christs human nature was being excluded from its essential, albeit secondary, role in its union with the Word. By understanding proso\pon as a term signifying the functional way that the divine and human natures operate visibly as one, we can assert that their common mutual activity enables Christs external human appearance to image forth the spiritual Word and Christs humanity to manifest clearly Gods will. It can be likened to the ways that the soul
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makes use of its body to reveal itself and that spiritual love needs the body to express itself. It is important to note here that the analogy between the soul and body and between the divine and the human natures (or between the Word and the assumed man)116 is to be understood on the functionalnot the ontologicallevel. As Nestorius pointed out, the analogy on the ontological level falters, since the soul and body are incomplete natures, whereas the divine and the human natures are complete.117 By looking, therefore, upon Christs visible proso\pon as revealing how his divine and human natures are functioning as one and how this proso\pon can receive divine worship, we can assert that it serves the same revelatory, cultic, binding and authoritative purposes shown to be associated with Theodores view of image. Christs proso\pon images in a real way the hidden Word, is the object of divine worship, exercises divine power and, for our purposes in this paper, binds together all those united to Christ and, because of his human natures union with the Word, to God. Theodores way of explaining both the union and the unity of the natures is open to serious questioning, but Theodores intent seems clear. As Abramowski stressed in her article, the cultic role that he attributes to Christs humanity in its union with the divinity indicates his belief that the Word and the assumed man not only function as one but are in some true sense onethat is, as we have proposed, an organic one. Otherwise, to worship Christs prosopic image would be the adoring of an idol.118 In addition, this functional union between Christs natures provides insight into how Theodore conceived of the real relationship existing in general between a type and its archetype and specically between baptism and the eucharist as sacramental types that are related to their heavenly archetypes. For Theodore the type and its archetype are historical realities with the presence of a real bond uniting them and with a guarantee that the archetype will be fullled. When applied to baptism and the eucharist,
116. Theodore employed concrete and abstract terms as synonymous and interchangeable, e.g. the Word is equivalent to the divine nature. See McLeod, Image, 13031. 117. Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides, ed. and trans. Godfrey R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), 304. He expresses his objection thus: For in a natural composition it seems that neither of those natures whereof it is [formed] is complete but they need one another that they may be and subsist. Even as the body has need of the soul that it may live, for it lives not of itself, and the soul has need of the body that it may perceive. We detect here, however, what I believe to be Theodores emphasis on how both the body and soul need one another, the body to be vivied and the soul to reveal itself in a visible way. 118. For passages where Theodore afrms that worship can be offered to Christs visible common proso\pon, see Swete, 1:58, 138 and 222.
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this means that both sacraments have a real relationship and are, therefore, really bonded with the spiritual realities that they foreshadow. They also participate, as true symbols do,119 in the power and reality of these latter. Theodore offers two analogies that afrm the present active participation of a type in the reality of its archetype. He likens the power present in the potentiality of baptism rst to . . . [a new-born infant] who has the power to speak, hear, walk and work with his hands but is completely weak [to perform] all these sorts of acts till the time [comes] when he will perform them according to the divine decree.120 Secondly, he compares this same potentiality to that found in a husbands semen when it is inserted into his wifes womb without life, soul and knowledge. But when formed by the divine hand, it comes forth as a living human being endowed with a soul, knowledge and a nature capable of taking on every human activity. . . .121 Both of these examples bring out clearly that the potentiality of the sacraments is indeed real and will be brought to their fulllment with personal care and Gods assistance. TWO KINDS OF COMMUNION We can gain a further insight into the kind of real participation that the sacraments provide from a fragment attributed to Nestorius. This reveals how Nestoriusand doubtless Theodoreconceived of a communion.122 Nestorius distinguished between two kinds of communion. The rst is a necessary kind, such as that existing between the two incomplete natures of the soul and the body in a human being. Both necessarily require the presence of the other if they are to exist as one. The second is what is described as a union of honor. To grasp the point being made here, we need to understand how Theodore explains the same idea when he compares Gods image to the image that a king has set up of himself in the center of a city he has founded. Theodores intent here is to explain how Christ serves as Gods image.123 The image here is not simply a statue
119. For a treatment of this understanding of symbol, see Paul Tillich, Dynamic of Faith (New York: Harper Colophon, 1957), 4154, esp. 42. 120. Tonneau, 422. Homily 14 (the third on baptism).10. 121. Ibid., 420. Homily 14.9. 122. This fragment is found in Severus of Antiochs Liber contra impium grammaticum, ed. Joseph Lebon, CSCO 4546, 5051, 5859 (Louvain: L. Dubecq, 1952), 45:37. 123. For a translation and commentary on this analogy, see McLeod, Image, 65 66.
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or a mere painting of the king but an image that shares in a real, symbolic way in the kings power:
If some king, after having constructed a very great city and adorned it with numerous and varied works, ordered upon the completion of everything that his image, having been made the greatest and most remarkable, be set up in the middle of the entire city as proof of his founding of the city, the image of the king who built the city would necessarily be venerated. . . . So also the Artisan of creation established man to serve as the image for the divine household, so that all creation would by their care and veneration towards him render the honor due to God.124
An example of what Theodore (and Nestorius) are asserting about the relationship of honor is strikingly exemplied in the tax revolt at Antioch in 387. When a rampaging mob desecrated the emperor Theodosius Is image, he took it as a highly personal attack against himself and imposed harsh penalties upon the city of Antioch. The same outlook can also be detected in the ancient world where the pharaoh, the emperor and the king were all to be regarded and reverenced as Gods divine image. To refuse them worship, as the Christians did, could be punished with death. As biblical scholars point out, the same viewpoint is thought to be present when the author of Genesis wrote that human beings were created in Gods image.125 The sacred writers intent was apparently to reject the then cultural view that Gods image was to be restricted to supreme potentates only. So by ascribing Gods image to all human beings, he wanted every person to be both treated and reverenced as truly sacred. All humans possess a unique personal relationship with God that is real. To use or abuse another person, for instance through murder, was considered to be an offense also against God. Yet more has to be said about a voluntary kind of communion. What underlies it is a viewpoint present, as mentioned above, in Theodore and Nemesius that both the human soul and the Word are spiritual realities that despite the life-giving power they provide for their bodily compatriots cannot suffer with them because of their spiritual natures. Rather they voluntarily willed to suffer out of sympathy for their copartners.126 But
124. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Lhomme cr limage de Dieu: quelques fragments grec indits de Thodore de Mopsueste, ed. and trans. Franoise Petit, Mus 100 (1987): 27577. 125. For a discussion of the ancient view of image, see McLeod, Image, 4547. 126. For an understanding of how Theodore seems to have regarded the relationship between spiritual and bodily entities, see McLeod, Image, 97110, 100 104, 13537 and 16266.
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this voluntary communion ought not be interpreted as afrming that these bodies did not really share in the power belonging to their spiritual realities. There exists a real functional relationship between the spiritual realities and their material beings. These latter are actual, living symbols in the religious sense of the term. Such an understanding of the real relationship existing between a visible material image and its hidden spiritual reality helps us to grasp the kind of real relationship Theodore has conceived of between a type and its archetype and between the sacraments and their future fulllment. These kinds of relationships are not merely imaginary mental projections, empty of any spiritual content and effectiveness as de Vries has contended, and that Oatibia and Abramowski maintain to be real. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SACRAMENTS Granted the above understandings of what Theodore meant by type, participation, image and proso\pon, we are now in a position to examine what effects he believed that baptism and the eucharist have upon their recipients. For him the sacraments are true types signifying on the most fundamental level that a believer is to share in the future in Christs resurrection: It is indeed evident to us because of the word of the Apostle that, whether it be baptism or the service of our Lords table, we perform them for this reason, namely to remember our Lords death and resurrection in whose hope we are strengthened.127 This seems to afrm that the present effect of the sacraments is simply to remember the death and resurrection of Christ and to strengthen ones hope in attaining a future immortality and immutability. But there are other passages that indicate that baptism and the eucharist have real present effects upon their recipients. Some are what de Vries designates as being preternatural gifts; that is, what scholastic theologians call actual graces as distinct from a supernatural grace that transforms ones nature in a divinizing way. But Theodore argues, I believe, for more than preternatural gifts. First of all, when a person is baptized, the Spirit frees him or her from the yoke of Satan so that one can now conduct oneself in this world in a manner that is consistent with the life and citizenship of heaven.128 Besides the graces needed to live a moral life, there is a change of state from one yoked to Satan. The next two citations indicate what the new
127. Tonneau, 332. Homily 12 (rst on baptism).8. 128. Ibid., 368. Homily 13 (second on baptism).1. See also 370. Homily 13.2.
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state is in a positive way. First of all, Theodore has a catechumen proclaim: It is not because of little things but of stupendously great things and heavenly benets that I am now ready to be baptized. For I expect that by [my] baptism I will also be one of the sons of the Church, the assembly of those believers who from baptism have become worthy to be called the Body of Christ our Lord. . . .129 The next passage expands upon this:
. . . the one who descends [in baptism] is reformed by the grace of the Holy Spirit and reborn to another superior human nature. . . . It is necessary for you to think that you are descending into the water as into a kind of furnace and that you are there refashioned anew, as if you were changed into a superior nature. The old mortality is set aside, and you assume a completely immortal and incorruptible nature.130
What then does Theodore mean when he attributes to the sacraments a transforming effect upon human nature, making it a superior human nature? Since Theodore was unable to conceive of the existence of a substantial union between the Creator and any creature, he was opposed to any attempt to strictly divinize the nature of a believer. Salvation for him was to share, as Christ now does, in Gods immortal and immutable life. Since no one can be immortal in ones earthly lifeno more than any woman can be partially pregnantde Vries seems to be right, in a sense, when he asserts that Theodores conception of baptism is spiritually empty except for the graces provided by the Spirit. Yet Theodores remarks about a catechumen becoming a member of the body of Christ and being transformed into a superior human nature have to be interpreted as afrming at least the attainment of a potentially superior or higher nature and state of being. For besides providing the basis for expecting a future immortality, the sacraments enable one now to participate in spiritual benets:
. . . at baptism the Spirit gives us lial adoption. We believe in it, are baptized, and all of us become one body, according to the working of the Holy Spirit upon us in baptism. By this [working] we become sons of God and the one body of Christ our Lord whom we declare to be our head because he is of our own nature and the rst to rise from the dead, through whom we receive participation in these [spiritual] goods.131
129. Ibid., 274. Homily 10 (Exposition of the Creed).275. 130. Ibid., 424. Homily 14 (third on baptism).11. 131. Ibid., 446. Homily 14.21. See also Swete, 139, 170, and 273.
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Theodore explicitly afrms the new state of a baptized person when he speaks of the sphragis or seal that a catechumen receives at baptism:
But this signing with which you are now signed is the sign that you have been marked as a lamb of Christ and as a soldier of the King of heaven. For a lamb from the time of his acquisition receives the mark by which one knows to which master it belongs. . . . And also the soldier . . . receives rst of all on [his] hand a mark indicating what king he will henceforth serve. . . . Also one now knows that you who have been chosen for the Kingdom of heaven are a soldier of the King of heaven.132
The seal, therefore, is a sign that a baptized persons nature has been presently transformed in a way that will be completely fullled in a future age: . . . but those things which are to come afterwards, it is necessary to say that you must now advance to baptism itself whereby the types of this true birth will be fullled. For you will receive this new birth . . . when you rise from the dead.133 The fulllment will take place in the future, but the process has already begun. The same outlook is present in Theodores understanding of the eucharist.134 The consecrated species of bread and wine are also types that image in a symbolic way the real heavenly food that awaits a recipient in the future life to come: For after having received this true birth through the resurrection, you will receive another nourishment, too lofty to describe, and then clearly you will be fed by the grace of the Holy Spirit whereby you will remain immortal in your bodies and immutable in your souls.135 As de Vries has correctly pointed out, the spiritual nourishment offered in the eucharist will be attained fully only in heaven when one becomes immortal. But this should not be interpreted as signifying that one possesses merely a future claim: . . . namely for us there is a necessary requisite for nourishment that is suitable to this life here below which gives us some nourishment by the grace of the Holy Spirit in a
132. Ibid., 396. Homily 13 (second on baptism).17. 133. Ibid., 404. Homily 14 (third on baptism).2. 134. For two brief, general treatments of Theodores views on the eucharist, see Rowan A. Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Exegete and Theologian (Westminster: Faith Press, 1961), 8085; and Dewart, Theology of Grace, 10610. Greer is sensitive to the problem that he nds arising when Theodore speaks in a quite literal way of the transformation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ (82). While he offers possible reasons to reconcile this with his notion of sacrament and christology, I think that Theodore is saying that the eucharist nourishes a baptized person who has been transformed into the human body of Christ in its union with Word, enabling one to remain faithful to this relationship. 135. Tonneau, 464. Homily 15 (rst on the Mass).2.
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typical way.136 This nourishment here below is claried by the following: The priest then also asks that the grace of the Holy Spirit may come upon all those assembled, in order that as they have also been perfected in the likeness of a new birth into one body, they may now also be knit as if into one body by participation in the body of our Lord and come and accomplish one purpose in concord, peace, and diligence to what is right.137 Theodore expresses the same idea later:
When then we all partake of the same body of our Lord and participate by means of this nourishment in him, we all become the one body of Christ and receive from here a participation in and a conjunction138 with him as our head . . . by the reception of these [the bread and wine] we are conjoined to the body and blood of our Lord. Thus when we receive them, we remain in participation with him, being the body of Christ; and by this participation we strengthen what we had received at baptism from the beginning. It is his Body that we have become, according to the word of the Apostle. . . .139
As we indicated above, Theodore understands Christs body as being more than a corporate body made up of church members. Rather it signies that those who are united to Christ are bonded together in some sort of physical organic body. It is by being transformed and thus knit as a living member into the organic body of Christ that we can participate in the spiritual blessings that Christs human nature now enjoys because of its union with the Words divine nature. The eucharist has a further present benet: Without doubt, participation in the holy mysteries will give us remission of such transgressions [involuntary sins].140 This is more clearly afrmed in the following lengthy passage:
[If] we perform virtues diligently and abhor hateful deeds and truly repent of the transgressions that befall us . . . we undeniably have by the reception of the holy mysteries the gift of forgiveness for [our] transgressions. . . . For [the eucharistic nourishment] is presented as ordinary bread and wine. Then by the coming of the Holy Spirit, it is transformed into the body and blood
136. Ibid., 466. Homily 15.3. 137. Ibid., 554. Homily 16 (second on the Mass).13. 138. Conjunction is a technical word that Theodore and the East Syrians used to express the union of Christs two natures without an intermingling. Cyril understood the term to signify a mere juxtaposition of two external natures. See Chadwick, 15, esp. n. 4. 139. Tonneau, 570. Homily 16 (second on the Mass).24. 140. Ibid., 588. Homily 16.34.
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[of Christ]. It is changed in this way into the power of a spiritual and immortal nourishment. . . . Just as the Seraphim indeed approached [Isaiah in the Temple], puried and removed all the prophets sins, so we must also think that by participating in the holy mysteries our debts will be absolutely blotted out, if we repent, feel sorry for and are right in our heart in regard to our sins.141
The above citations indicate that the sacraments draw their salvic power from the graces the Spirit dispenses through the risen Christ because of his prosopic union with the Word. Though the sacraments do not immediately bestow the immortality that Christs human nature now enjoys, they do transform ones life by connecting one to Christs body in what appears to be an organic union. By being so united, a recipient shares in Christs human natures functional union with the Wordbut not immediately and directly. They benet to some degree from the fullness of the graces that the Spirit has provided Christ. Such graces free them from their sins, strengthen their hope in a future life and enable them to live a good, moral life in their union with the body of Christ. As long as they remain part of his body, they are guaranteed future immortality in the heavenly Kingdom, just as Christ was assured at his earthly baptism. What needs to be considered fundamental here is the necessity to be united, not extrinsically but in a living organic way, to Christs body. As we have argued above, Theodores view of our union with Christs body entails something much more real than a metaphorical description of our social relationship with Christ in the church, such as when we speak of a person becoming a member of the body politic. Rather it ought to be looked upon in the same way Theodore regarded all creation as bonded together being included within his understandings of the image of God and of the functional relationship between the soul and the body. For Theodore, all the baptized appear to be recapitulated in a sort of an organic body with Christ as their head. This union enables them to be bonded to God and become truly adopted children and recipients of the Spirits transforming grace. To maintain, as de Vries did, that Theodore has understood the sacraments as providing only an empty claim for a future immortal and immutable life misses a fundamental element in both his sacramental and soteriological thoughtthat the Church as Christs body serves as the source of the sacraments spiritual effect upon its recipients. In fact, Christs body is the sacrament par excellence.
141. Ibid., 590, Homily 16.35, and 592, Homily 16.36. Theodore also afrms that a priest can forgive serious sins outside of the eucharist. See 598602, Homily 16.40 44.
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Oatibia and Abramowski are correct when they state that Theodore attached more meaning to his terms type and participation than de Vries concluded. For Theodore held that a type and its archetype were two historical poles that are really related to one another.142 But in order to be assured of this, Theodore insisted that scripture had to explicitly acknowledge this relationship, for example when Paul relates Christ to Adam, the Hebrew and Christian Testaments to Hagar and Sarah, ones rebirth to an immortal life in heaven to baptism, and the real presence of Christs body and blood to the eucharist. In other words, there exists a real relationship or bond between a type and its archetype that cannot be broken or denied fulllment, for God has guaranteed it. While Theodore grants that one can discern this relational bond through an act of theoria, that is, a spiritual insight enabling one to recognize the presence of a true relationship established by God, Theodore, in practice, admitted the existence of very few types, acknowledging, for instance, only the presence of four messianic psalms in the whole Psalter, namely, Psalms 2, 8, 45 and 110. So when Theodore speaks of the sacraments being types, these are special cases that are not bereft of real spiritual meaning. Theodore, however, was confronted with a problem when he applied his typology to the sacraments. He could justify a true relationship between a scriptural type and its archetype, since scripture guaranteed its fulllment. However, when one receives baptism and the eucharist, Theodore realized that as long as one was living on earth, one could freely reject God and, as a result, not be gloried in the future.143 Theodore seems to have found the answer in the literal way that he interpreted the transformations that baptism and the eucharist effect in the life of a person. Baptism brings about a union with Christs death and resurrection and an entrance into Christs body, and the eucharist a transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ whose reception then nourishes the new life that has begun with baptism. As long as the baptized person remains in his or her new superior bodily life of Christ, that one has complete assurance that he or she will enter into the immortal life promised for heaven, for he or she has the form and similitude of the risen Christ.144 Yet because a believer is free and
142. For a brief consideration of Theodores views on typology, see McLeod, Image, 3538. 143. For a treatment of the possibility of human failures within a sacramental context, see Dewart, Theology of Grace, 6062. 144. See Swete, 1:58 and 220. It is because one is united to the body of Christ that one can share in the form of Christ who is the servant existing in a real union with the Word.
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subject to temptations, he or she can turn away and break this bond any time throughout his or her earthly life. The sacraments, therefore, do have a real impact in the ways they transform and nourish a Christians life. While it is true that this life is not yet immortal and immutable, yet those who are united to Christs body nd that their state has been presently actually altered. It may not be a supernatural participation in the divine nature, as de Vries asserts it must be. For Theodore, it is rather a real present participation in Christs bodily life. It is, therefore, a mistake to conclude that this quasi-mediate stage between the catastases of earthly life and heavenly life lacks spiritual content any more than Christs human nature was unaffected in his earthly union with the Word. A transformation has taken place where one now shares in a superior human naturewhich I interpret to mean a graced union with Christs body in an organic unity. When a person is directly bound to Christs body and grows in his or her organic membership within this life, then that person is guaranteed in the next age a participation in the risen Christs present immortal life. It is like having a notarized will that promises one a future inheritance or a hundred-dollarbill whose paper value is in itself insignicant but whose symbolic value guarantees a purchase here and now. To gain the inheritance and be able to spend the money, of course, requires the present possession of the notarized will and the bill. Or perhaps the best analogy is the one offered by Theodore. Being part of Christs life is like a human seed that contains a real potential and power to become a living human being, if all other factors assist its growth. One nal point needs to be confronted. While Theodore does use language that can be interpreted as a present transformation of those who have been baptized and who have received communion, it is not clear from his extant writings that the interpretation offered here is explicitly afrmed by Theodore. As Theodore himself admits: We all preach a second birth which is accomplished through water on those who are baptized. But today we cannot say in what way it gives birth and changes us. . . . These cannot be grasped by humans.145 How then can we be sure that we are not imposing our own meaning on the text? Granted that the ideas of a second birth and the kinds of changes it effects escape our full understanding, granted too that Theodore may have later developed his thought after he wrote the last citation (so it seems, in 392 in his dispute with the Macedonians) and that Theodore may not have thought through
145. Theodore, Controverse Avec les Macdoniens, trans. F. Nau, PO 9 (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1911), 65455.
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the implications of his own theological synthesis, he was nevertheless always unswervingly consistent in the way he interpreted scripture, especially Paul, in a literal, historical, and rational way. We believe that our interpretation coheres with the way that Theodore remained faithful to his theological system, especially in the way he closely adhered to Pauls understanding of the universe and the body of Christ as an organic unity. We simply applied this outlook rst to the ways that Christ and human beings function as Gods image, with humans sharing in the roles that are Christs and then to how sacramental types participate in the full reality of their archetypes. There exists a real relational bond between baptism and the eucharist and the body of Christone that transforms and binds a believer, each in its own way to Christ. It may be an inchoative, indirect and intermediate stage during this life but it does promise a guaranteed hope that it will be achieved nally in the future. We leave it to the reader to judge how successful or poor our analysis has been. CONCLUSION This inquiry into Theodores understanding of the sacraments raises a number of important issues. It provides knowledge of what a leading theologian and mystagogue in the late fourth and early fth centuries thought about baptism and the eucharist. It also enters into the controversy of whether Theodore believed that the sacraments contained any real spiritual content and whether his christological viewwhich de Vries considered to be truly Nestorianinuenced his understanding of the sacraments. Associated with this is Abramowskis proposal that Theodores christology must be assessed in light of his liturgical thought. This controversy also compels us to reect over what we precisely mean when we afrm that baptism enables us to share in Christs death and resurrection and that the transformed eucharistic species enable us to participate in Christs body and blood. In other words, when one receives baptism and the eucharist, is one actually participating in a supernatural way in Gods nature or in Gods divine life? This leads us to question what is, in fact, the underlying reality that the terms type, symbol, sharing, participation and real presence had in the late fourth century, before later generations spoke of the sacraments in clear, realistic terms. To answer de Vries conclusion that Theodores sacramental and christological thought is not in agreement with the Catholic and Orthodox understanding, it is necessary to remember that Theodore sought the meaning of his sacramental terms from a literal, rational interpretation of what Paul had to say about baptism and the eucharist. De Vries acknowl-
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edged this close reliance upon scripture as the likely reason why Theodore at times used phraseology that suggests the sacraments had a real spiritual effect. But he believed that Theodore was not truly consistent with his own systematic thought. Rather, de Vries was convinced that a careful analysis of Theodores statements reveals that he actually looked upon the sacraments as lacking any real spiritual content. He was right in his assessment if one understands spiritual content as equivalent to a real divinized sharing in the Words nature, but Theodore manifests a different view of the sacraments. He regarded them as having a spiritual benet in the present age for those transformed into the body of Christ: they become children of God, true heirs of a future eternal life, and the recipients of special graces to receive forgiveness for their sins and to live out their lives faithfully on earth. These benets are divinely guaranteed as long as one remains united to the body of Christ. What underlies Theodores opposition here to the real presence of the Word in the eucharist (and what fundamentally affected his christological synthesis) was his exalted manner of thinking about Gods transcendence. He was convinced that no creature, even Christs human nature, could be substantially united to the divine nature. Thus whenever one spoke of the eucharist as a present participation in Gods nature, he was opposed to what he considered to be a divinization of created human beings. To Theodore, to afrm that one participates in Gods nature meant that either a human being had been changed into the divine, or that the divine had been reduced to the human or that a hybrid had been created. Since he excluded these as even possibilities, Theodore interpreted the scriptural statements about a persons sharing in Gods life to be a participation not in Gods nature but in a literal way in the human body of Christ. This union with Christ was grounds for a believer being called Gods son or daughter, who will enjoy a future immortal life that now awaits all those united to God because of their union with Christ. As Abramowski and Chadwick have shown, Theodores thought becomes sharply etched when contrasted with that of Cyril of Alexandria. Cyril regarded the consecrated eucharistic bread and wine to be truly a transformation into Christs body and blood. But since the Word is Christs person, the eucharist becomes a true reception of the Words body. To receive the eucharist then can be said to be a real participation in a supernatural, divinized way with the Word Himself. But as we have seen above, Theodore understood the eucharists transformation in a more mediate way, according to his understanding of the communicatio idiomatum. Because he could not assert that the divine and human natures are substantially united to one another, he stayed close in a literal way to
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the eucharist as a transformation into Christs body. For him, this union with Christs body seems to have been an organic union. As long as one remains as a member of Christs body, one can be guaranteed, because of the union between Christs human and divine natures, that one will share, in the next life, in the immortal and the immutable life that the risen Christ now enjoys. Just as Christ was not actually immortal in his earthly life but was assured of immortality after his death because of his free faithful adherence to the will of God as manifested in his union with the Word, the same can be said of those who are baptized and who adhere to the life required of those living a life in Christ. The different approaches to the eucharist reveal Theodores and Cyrils outlooks on christology. Because Theodore was opposed to the Apollinarian view that the Word had replaced Christs human nous or rational soul, I think that de Vries was right in seeing Theodores christology as underlying his sacramental and liturgical views. Abramowski, on the other hand, for all the insights she offers, has, in my opinion, overemphasized the role the liturgy played in Theodores theological synthesis. The christological problem revolves around how to express the unity in Christ. Cyril made the person of the Word to be the subject of attribution and activity, while Theodore wanted it to be the Words and Christs common proso\pon. Theodore regarded this common proso\pon as denoting the mysterious functional union of Christs two natures acting as one ego within a seemingly quasi-organic unity. The question then becomes whether Cyrils and Theodores linguistic ways of expressing the union of natures are indicative of ontological differences regarding not only the unity of Christs natures but also the kind of spiritual life one now shares with the Word and/or Christ in baptism and the eucharist. Does one actually participate in the Words divine nature while maintaining at the same time ones own individuality? Or do the sacraments effect a participation that enables one to share in the benets that Christs human nature enjoys because of its unique union with the Word? In my opinion, Theodore thought he was expressing a true unity because Christs human nature images the divine, is bonded with it in a functional union, can now receive divine worship,146 and serves as the one who will recapitulate all of creation and return it to God. He believed that a person can come into contact with and be united with Christs human nature through two sacramental types that effect a transformation of a person into a superior human being who becomes a physical member of Christs body and, through Christs human natures union with the Word, with the divine life. To sum this up in one sentence, Theodore and Cyril differ over
146. See Swete, 1:58, 139 and 222.
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whether a baptized person actually shares in Gods immortal life or in a truly mystical way in the divine nature. In conclusion, while our present study has not employed the perspectives, theories, models and research methodologies of the historical and social sciences, this study into the eucharistic thought of Theodore points out a sacramental and theological shift that took place in the late fourth and the early fth centuries regarding how one ought to speak about the reception of baptism and the eucharist, and how one ought to explain them. Relying upon his own literal, historical, and rational method of exegesis as the way to understand the scriptures and Christian tradition, Theodore interpreted the Pauline statements about baptism as meaning a transformation into the one body of Christ, and interpreted the eucharist as a spiritual transformation into the human body and blood of Christ. This manner of speaking about the eucharist scandalized Cyril. He took it as literally signifying that it was only Christs human body. While not denying the value of Theodores general approach to exegesis, Cyril held that Christs human nature spiritually participated in Gods nature because it was the Words body. Those receiving the eucharist were also sharing in it in the same way. He was convinced that a person could be united to God not only by being one with Him in his or her activity but also in what we describe today as a mystical union that does not absorb and submerge ones individuality in the Godhead. As the present study indicates, there are signicant christological and sacramental differences between Theodore and Cyril. But to grasp these, one must judge their writings in their original contexts. Otherwise we miss the deeper signicance of their terms. The obverse may also be true. One may not only read ones own particular views into Cyril and Theodores but also impose their own understanding of terms, oblivious to how terms are to be understood in nuanced ways in a different socioreligious context. This is especially true when speaking of a real participation in the divine life of God. One of the important insights that sociological criticism can afford us is the realization that Theodore lived and wrote in a specic context far different from what we, his readers, experience and operate in today. We cannot presume that his words denote what we judge them to be. Perhaps the most important point of this paper is that we need to be challenged to rethink what we mean by such eucharistic phrases as Christs real presence in the eucharist, to share in the body and blood of Christ, to be divinized and to enjoy an eternal and immortal life. Frederick G. McLeod, S.J., is Professor of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University

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The Christological Ramifications of Theodore of Mopsuestia's Understanding of Baptism and the Eucharist

Frederick G. McLeod S.J.

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JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Further on, he indicates the same usage:

109. Vost, 11920. 110. Ibid., 19394.

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

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