“FOUR GOSPELS, FOUR COUNCILS” – ONE LORD JESUS CHRIST the Patristic Developments of Christology Within the Church of Palestine L. Perrone

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“FOUR GOSPELS, FOUR COUNCILS” –ONE LORD JESUS CHRIST

The Patristic Developments of Christologywithin the Church of Palestine

L. Perrone

In grateful memory of don Giuseppe Dossetti and don Umberto Neri

To what extent did the Palestinian Fathers (that is, as we shall see, theolo-gians, churchmen, and monks) play a role in the development of patristicChristology? Was late antique Palestine, despite its special religious signifi-cance, a less important area when compared with other, apparently moreactive parts of the Christian East? A glance at the valuable source book onancient Christology (which includes both “theological” and “spiritual”texts), published by two distinguished scholars like Antonio Orbe andManlio Simonetti may at first convey the impression that the Palestiniancontribution was indeed a marginal one, since it receives only a couple of

mentions.1

To obtain a more precise picture, we should look further in thewell-known summa on ancient Christology, a masterpiece of early Chris-tian studies: Alois Grillmeier’s Christ in Christian Tradition.2 Here thingsbegin to become more encouraging for us, although in order to appreciatethis properly we should not forget how Grillmeier’s magnum opus hasevolved and grown to its present state.

Since it was originally conceived as a review of patristic Christologywith the aim of retracing the preparation of the formula of Chalcedon, in its

1. See Il Cristo, 1: Testi teologici e spirituali dal I al IV secolo, a cura di A. Orbe; 2: Testiteologici e spirituali in lingua greca dal IV al VII secolo, a cura di M. Simonetti, Milano 1985,1986. The latter’s anthology reports only two texts of Eusebius (the prologue to the Eccle-siastical History – HE I 1, 7 - I 4, 15 – and his letter to the Church of Caesarea after the decisionof Nicaea) and one of Leontius of Byzantium (from the Contra Nestorianos et Eutichianos).2. I shall refer to the latest edition of the original work and to its continuation (quoting onlythe volume): A. Grillmeier, Jesus der Christus im Glauben der Kirche, I: Von der apostolischen Zeit bis zum Konzil von Chalkedon (451), Freiburg i.Br. etc. 1990 3; II/1: DasKonzil von Chalkedon (451). Rezeption und Widerspruch (451-518), Freiburg i.Br. etc.1986; II/2: Die Kirche von Konstantinopel im 6. Jahrhundert , unter Mitarbeit von T.Hainthaler, Freiburg i.Br. etc. 1989; II/4: Die Kirche von Alexandrien mit Nubien und Äthiopien nach 451, unter Mitarbeit von T. Hainthaler, Freiburg i.Br. etc. 1990.

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previous form it responded essentially to concerns of a dogmatic nature andreflected a finalistic view of the christological developments within patristicthought, seen as leading ultimately to the dogma of “two natures in oneperson.” In time, especially as Grillmeier started to describe the long proc-ess of the reception of the Fourth Council, he introduced a wider perspec-tive than formerly, considering ancient Christology now not only from thestrictly dogmatic point of view but rather as a matter of the whole Church.Thanks to this different orientation, while the first historical-systematicapproach left little room for the Palestinian contribution before Chalcedon,the new context of a christological thought related to local churches or todifferent ecclesiastical regions leads Grillmeier to pay more attention to thespecificity of the Church of Palestine next to the other sister-churches of

the East. 3We should gain a methodological lesson from this new model of re-

search for our present study: in my opinion (and insofar as I am a historianof early Christian literature and doctrines, and not exactly a theologian),patristic Christology cannot be restricted to systematic theology alone, butone has to take into account also the christological features expressed inseveral insights by the life of the Church. 4 With regard to the case of Chris-tian Palestine, one should highlight them within the broader context of lit-urgy, pilgrimage and monasticism, which is typical of the Holy Land in the

heyday of the Byzantine domination. Starting from these aspects, a surveyaiming at a more adequate presentation of Palestinian Christology is calledupon to reflect more generally on the historical setting of the Holy Land inlate antique and Byzantine times, to ascertain the kind of influences it ex-erted upon the expression of Christology.

3. As has been announced, the third volume on the history of the reception of Chalcedonwill deal with the Churches of Antioch and of Jerusalem in the sixth century together withArmenia, Georgia and Persia. Already in vol. II/1 (see above n. 2) Grillmeier concerned

himself on a larger scale with the situation of Palestine after 451. Still depending on hisinitial approach, Grillmeier’s synthesis is a little disappointing for the crucial period fromthe third to the fifth century, during which he reviews to a certain extent first Origen andthen, perhaps even with greater relevance, Eusebius of Caesarea, while he reserves to Cyrilof Jerusalem only very brief treatment.4. A further step in this direction is made, for instance, by B. Studer, Gott und unsereErlösung im Glauben der Alten Kirche, Düsseldorf 1985, who not only unites quite happilyin his exposition “Trinity, Christology, and Soteriology,” but tries also to include aspectsboth of the liturgical life and of the cultural and political contexts, while retracing thedevelopment of Christian dogma. I tried myself to assume this stance, so to say, program-matically in my book La chiesa di Palestina e le controversie cristologiche. Dal concilio diEfeso (431) al secondo concilio di Costantinopoli (553), Brescia 1980.


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5. The importance of such historical implications has been eloquently shown by R. Wilken,The Land Called Holy. Palestine in Christian History and Thought , Yale 1992, regardingfor example the interpretation of the biblical promises of the land by Christian authors likeOrigen, faced with their Jewish counterpart.6. See Origen, Contra Celsum I, 55, where he mentions a disputation with Jewish sages.These explained Isaiah’s passage in a collective sense, as pointing to the condition of thepeople of Israel in the diaspora and to the missionary task connected with it. How importantthe Jewish-Christian debate could be for the elaboration of a christological perspective, willbe best appreciated further on, when we shall examine the case of Cyril of Jerusalem.

We should never forget that even under the Christian Empire this landstill maintained a pluralistic appearance from the ethnic and religious pointof view. External factors, such as the presence of considerable Jewish andSamaritan communities, and also of an influential pagan population at leastfor a while even after the victory of Christianity, are not to be seen as irrel-evant for the ways in which faith in Jesus Christ was here announced andformulated in thought. 5 Let me just mention an example: due to these par-ticular conditions, the interpretation of the prophetic figure of the “suffer-ing servant” (Is 53) was not at all simply an academic question or even aninner matter of discussion for the Christian exegetes alone, since in thethird century the same topic was debated also among the Rabbis and be-came occasionally an object of the Jewish-Christian dialogue, as we hear

from Origen. 6I won’t be able to provide such a wide horizon, although it would be

helpful and opportune, but at all events I cannot refrain from remarkingbeforehand what kind of requisites a thorough investigation of our themeshould fulfil to be really satisfactory. I shall therefore restrict myself to asummary description of the main lines of the theological evolution onlywith some hints at these further aspects to give at least an idea of the rich-ness of both the theological and the spiritual life within the ancient Churchof Palestine. We can already guess at this from the mere chronological se-

quence of my exposition, with its variety of periods and personalities: Ishall set its starting-point in the Christology of Origen, towards the middleof the third century, and then proceed to the fourth century, first withEusebius of Caesarea and after him with Cyril of Jerusalem. For the fifthcentury, I shall introduce into this gallery of Palestinian authors one “for-eigner” from the West, who established himself in the Holy Land and par-ticipated very energetically in the problems of the local Church: the monk Jerome of Bethlehem. After him, who already set such a tone, the atmos-phere of doctrinal controversy will increase more and more, especially inthe aftermath of the council of Chalcedon. From the years around 431 up


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7. See at last, respectively, E. Clark, The Origenist Controversy. The Cultural Constructionof an Early Christian Debate, Princeton 1992 and B.E. Daley, “What did ‘Origenism’ meanin the Sixth Century?,” in A. Le Boulluec - G. Dorival (ed.), Origeniana Sexta. Origène et la Bible/ Origen and the Bible. Actes du Colloquium Origenianum Sextum. Chantilly, 30août - 3 septembre 1993, Leuven 1995, 627-638. The width of Origen’s influence amongPalestinian authors of the following centuries still awaits for extensive inquiries. There isevidence of his presence not only in the representatives of the “school of Caesarea,” likeEusebius or Acacius, or of course in Rufinus and Jerome, but also both in Cyril of Jerusalemand his successor John, in the presbyter Hesychius of Jerusalem and in the authors of thesixth century, first of all in Leontius of Byzantium.

to the seventh century the dominating theological debate will focus on thechristological question. We shall see how the Palestinian contribution to ithas been, as a matter of fact, politically, theologically, and to a certain ex-tent also spiritually, one of the most important factors for the formation of Byzantine orthodoxy.

The Path from Biblical to Ontological Christology: Origen

It may not be too inappropriate to locate in the first instance Origen’sposition in the complex and long path leading from the initially biblicaland kerygmatic Christology to its later ontological and dogmatic

elaborations. There is no need, I think, to justify the insertion of the greatAlexandrian doctor in our overview: apart from his staying in CaesareaMaritima for the two last decades of his life, the most fruitful ones in hisvery rich literary productivity, Origen remains for a long time, more orless openly, an inspiring force of theological thinking and of spiritual lifeinside the Holy Land, as demonstrated symptomatically, among otherthings, by the two origenistic controversies at the beginning of the fifthand in the first half of the sixth century, both having Palestine as theiroriginal scene. 7

Before Origen, if we except the traces of Judaeo-Christianity, we have noclear indications of a distinctive Palestinian theological atmosphere, despitethe efforts made first by Hegesippus and subsequently by Eusebius of Caesareato fix some points in a map which for the most part remains a terra incognita.With Origen, officially engaged also in public disputations (witness his Dia-logue with Heracleides), things start to change. After him, the Church of Pal-estine will be prepared to intervene in its own voice in the theologicaldiscussions of the time, beginning with the response to the doctrines of Paulof Samosata (in short, a mixture of Wisdom Christology and adoptianism) in


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8. Origen’s interventions in favour of the Church doctrine were especially directed at the Churchof Arabia (see G. Kretschmar, “Origenes und die Araber,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche50 [1953] 258-279). The case of Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch (261-268/269), isadmittedly one of the most significant debates before Nicaea. The “Letter of the six bishops,”also called “Letter of Hymenaeus” from the name of its first signatory, the bishop of Jerusalem,is a good witness to the influence ensured by Origen’s Christology within the Palestinian Churchof the third century. On this major episode see L. Perrone, “L’enigma di Paolo di Samosata.Dogma, chiesa e società nella Siria del III secolo: prospettive di un ventennio di studi,”Cristianesimo nella storia13 (1992) 253-327.9. M. Fédou, La Sagesse et le monde. Le Christ d’Origène, Paris 1994. As for the christologicaltreaties in De principiis, see I, 2 (“On the Son”) and II, 6 (“On the Incarnation of the Lord”).Origen’s decisive role for the recognition of the Bible as the “book of Christ” has been put forthby H. von Campenhausen, Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel, Tübingen 1968.10. See J. Rius-Camps, El dinamismo trinitario en la divinización de los seres racionalessegún Orígenes, Roma 1970, 378-382; F. Cocchini, Il Paolo di Origene. Contributo allastoria della recezione delle epistole paoline nel III secolo, Roma 1992, 50. Fédousummarizes well this reciprocity between the regula fidei and the Bible, with regard to thechristological interpretation, in the following words: “Il faut avoir la ‘pensée du Christ’ pourêtre en mesure de lire la lettre comme prophétie du Christ, et l’on acquiert justement cette‘pensée du Christ’ par le chemin de la foi” ( La Sagesse et le monde, 53).

the sixties of the third century. 8 To complete briefly the historical backgroundof Origen’s Christology, besides the many challenges to the ecclesiasticalpreaching which he had to answer on the part of the gnostics and other her-etics, one has to record also the reply he gave to pagan criticisms broughtagainst the person of Christ in his monumental apology Against Celsus.

As is well known, when we approach Origen, the most impressive fea-ture we are faced with immediately is his deep and all-pervasive “biblic-ism.” This means that also his Christology has to be seen first and foremostin this light. Despite the strong speculative inclinations and the ensuingontological formulations which found their way specifically in the shortchristological treaties contained in his major systematic work, the De prin-cipiis, we are dealing essentially with a scriptural Christology, that is witha thinking intimately rooted in the continuous meditation on the Word of God. For this reason, Michel Fédou, reconstructing quite recently Origen’simage of Jesus Christ in a superb and very readable book, helps us to seefrom the first how he interpreted the Bible as the “book of Christ.” 9 Themystery of Jesus Christ, as proclaimed by the Church, is the key to theunderstanding of the Scriptures, both the Old and the New Testament, be-ing mirrored by them in all its inexhaustible richness. Such interplay canotherwise be guaranteed only if the reader of the inspired Scriptures him-self possesses the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2, 16), according to the very

often repeated hermeneutical guideline.10


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11. De princ. I, Praef. 4.12. See Origène. Homélies sur Josué , texte latin, introduction, traduction et notes par A.Jaubert (SCh 71), Paris 1960 and J. Daniélou, Sacramentum futuri. Études sur les originesde la typologie biblique, Paris 1950, 212-215; Fédou, La Sagesse et le monde, 89-96.13. The centrality of this topic in Origen’s exegesis of the Old Testament has been stressedby M. Fédou, Christianisme et religions païennes dans leContre Celse d’Origène, Paris1988, 447-470. For more details about the history of interpretation, before and after Origen,see now G. Dorival, “‘Un astre se lèvera de Jacob’. L’interprétation ancienne de Nombres24, 17,” Annali di storia dell’esegesi 13 (1996) 295-352.

Through his christological reading, Origen discovers within the Biblethe various contents of the ecclesiastical doctrine on Christ, as he summa-rized them in the Preface to the De principiis.11 Jesus Christ is the divineWisdom, existing eternally with the Father as his Only-Begotten Son. Heis his minister and agent in the work first of creation and then of revelationand redemption, which ultimately culminates in the Incarnation, Death andResurrection of Jesus. The history of salvation is thus led by the conde-scension of the Logos, who manifests himself to men and guides them tothe final salvation through the communication of God’s love. It is a longway to the coming of Jesus, but starting with the figures of the patriarchsOrigen is able to point always to this final goal: the economy of the OldTestament is for him an economy of “figures” ( typoi), which anticipatetheir true and full model – the person and the event of Jesus Christ. Thiseconomy of “types” reaches its peak in the person of Joshua, who alonewith his name already announces the mistery of the true “Saviour,” JesusChrist, and with his coming into the Land of promise indicates the finalsubstitution of the Law by the Gospel, as was developed by Origen in his Homilies on the Book of Joshua, on the line originally traced by the Letter to the Hebrews (4, 8-9). 12

In order to present more fully the Bible as the book of Christ, Origendoes not restrict himself to the typological method of interpretation as ap-

plied to historical persons and events. He also reads the prophetic and thesapiential books as an overall prophecy of Jesus Christ. Moreover, the dis-closure of his mystery is not an exclusive privilege of the prophets of Is-rael, inasmuch as the oracle of Balaam (Num 23-24) – which particularlyattracted the attention of Origen – witnesses to its recognition also on thepart of the pagans and emphasizes the universal call to redemption. 13 Norshould one think that this kind of christological interpretation runs the risk of confining itself to a somewhat schematic and exterior “economic” per-spective, without providing clues for a deeper understanding of the personalbeing of the God-Man. As shown, for instance, in his exegesis of the


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14. Com. Ioh. I, 28, 191-196. I follow the judgment of Fédou, La Sagesse et le monde, 114,who sees here “un développement sur l’identité du Sauveur qui se laisse tantôt percevoirdans sa divinité et tantôt dans son humanité – l’une et l’autre n’étant d’ailleurs pas séparées,mais au contraire unies dans la personne du Logos. N’est-ce pas déjà, en substance, lafameuse doctrine du concile de Chalcédoine sur le Fils de Dieu qui doit être reconnu ‘endeux natures’, ‘sans confusion’ et ‘sans séparation’?”

Psalms by means of the so-called “prosopological” approach, Origen pointsto the mysterious unity of divine and human aspects in the person of JesusChrist, anticipating by the way the later conceptuality of the “two naturesand one person.” So, commenting upon Psalm 44 in the Commentary onthe Gospel of John, Origen distinguishes between the titles of “King” andof “Christ” (Ps 44, 7-8), the first of them indicating his divinity and thesecond one his humanity, while stressing at the same time their unity in theperson of the Logos. 14

If this pronouncement already seems to evoke the peculiar accents of the formula of Chalcedon, Origen’s christological interests were usuallystimulated by different concerns linked to the problems of his time, espe-cially since he reacted to marcionism and gnosticism, both compromising

the idea of the incarnation of God and of the full humanity of Jesus. In-sofar as he is himself a representative of the “theology of the Logos,”which after the important premises set out by Philo of Alexandria and bythe Prologue of John had steadily developed in the works of the Apolo-gists during the second century and then in the Alexandrian school,Origen is very sensitive to the universal presence of the Logos withincreation and history. Yet, this does not mean that he is led to partly re-duce the significance and novelty of his incarnation, as will rather be thecase with Eusebius. Furthermore, as is proved by the emphasis on the fact

that Jesus was a real and complete man (that is, for him, consisting of body, soul, and spirit), we can guess how Origen was conscious of thesoteriological postulate which was common among the Church Fatherswhen they reflected on the assumptus homo: quod non est assumptum,non est sanatum. Though this axiom will be acknowledged in its mostclassical form only in the course of the fourth century with Athanasius,its content was already present in Origen’s thought, including its relatedimplications of “deification” later so current in Greek patristic and Byz-antine theology.

I have so far recalled mostly the biblical imprint of origenianChristology. This should not be forgotten, if we try now to discover someof its ontological dimensions. These are indeed considerable, as we were


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15. On this well-known point see recently J. Wolinski, “Le recours aux eṗi÷noiai du Christdans le Commentaire sur Jean d’Origène,” in Le Boulluec - Dorival (ed.), Origeniana Sexta,465-492.16. Wolinski sums up both aspects well: “De même que chez Irénée le Verbe s’accoutume àl’homme pour que l’homme puisse s’accoutumer à Dieu, de même, chez Origène, il se montreà l’homme selon la diversité des e˙pi÷noiai et des formes ( morfai÷) pour s’adapter à l’homme.Ce mouvement n’est pas seulement une ‘vue de l’esprit’. Nous savons déjà que les e˙pi÷noiaiont un fondement réel dans le ‘devenir chair’ du Christ. Elles en ont un également dansl’homme vers lequel ‘vient’ le Verbe: elles s’identifient avec le ‘devenir’ de l’homme quireçoit le Verbe selon tel ou tel aspect, selon tel ou tel degré” ( ibid., 483-484).

already able to infer from some occasional hints, but they have properly tobe seen as an effort to transpose coherently the biblical indications into thelanguage and the categories of a more systematic, and therefore also nec-essarily philosophical, approach. We see this mutual dependence in whatprobably represents the most peculiar element in Origen’s christologicalthought: his doctrine of the epinoiai (let us translate it, for the sake of con-venience, with the word “titles” or “aspects”) of Christ. 15 Collecting onseveral occasions the wealth of names and titles attributed to Jesus Christby the Scriptures (the most impressive of them is the exposition to be foundin the first book of the Commentary on John), Origen sees the epinoiai in adouble perspective, with regard to Christ himself and with regard to man.On the one hand, names and titles express the objective perfections of

Christ, to be conceived hierarchically up to his culminating aspect as Wis-dom ( Sophia); on the other hand, they represent the subjective perceptionsof the different aspects of his being, according to the varying spiritual de-grees or situations of man. As is clear from this last remark, the origeniandoctrine of epinoiai implies a dynamic component, which is not limited tothe part of man, who is called to grow spiritually and to appropriate by theway the several dimensions of Christ’s being, becoming himself a son of God. Yet, as a matter of fact, this growth is possible only because Christ inhis turn establishes a dynamic relation with man, brought about by him in

his multiple manifestations thanks to the initiating condescension of rev-elation and incarnation. 16

With his view of the epinoiai of Christ, Origen also reflects a crucialmetaphysical question of Greek philosophy: the traditional problem of “theone and the many.” Due to the plurality of his objective perfections orepinoiai, the Son is seen by Origen as multiplex in constitutione, while theFather is absolute simplicity. It is thanks to his being “multiple” that Christcan assume, as original and eternal Wisdom, the mediating role betweenGod the Father and the creation. By combining both Proverbs 8, 22 and


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17. On the distinction between the Son as Wisdom and Logos, see R.D. Williams, “The

Son’s Knowledge of the Father in Origen,” in Origeniana Quarta, Innsbruck - Wien 1987,146: “The Son is Wisdom, perfectly realising that contemplative vision that perceives thewholeness and unity of the cosmos – i.e., presumably, he mediates the intelligible unity of all things as they exist in the mind of the Father, by perfectly contemplating and attuninghimself to the Father’s mind so that all things that come into being do so in rational andintelligible, harmonious and congruous ideal form. So as Word , he is the ground of ourunderstanding of things in their ideal and rational nature. It is the Father’s will that the Sonshould ‘include’... perfectly the intelligible forms of all things, realising in each concreteexistent its proper measure of participation in the noetic world.”18. According to Fédou, through his idea of Wisdom, Origen “s’efforce de penser du mêmemouvement la différence de l’ordre créé avec le Créateur et l’inscription de cet ordre créédans le dessein originel de la Divinité” ( La Sagesse et le monde, 267).

John 1, 1, Origen assumes as the supreme epinoia of Christ the idea of “Wisdom,” which as “exemplary cause” of the world contains preformedin itself eternally the archetypes and the ideal patterns of all creatures. Thisconception at first resembles closely the Platonic “world of ideas,” but wehave to remember that here Wisdom is not primarily an impersonal being.Instead, it is the Only-Begotten Son, which is the object of the perenniallove of the Father, deposing so to say in him the germs of the future crea-tion. 17 This further act, in its turn, depends on the intervention of the Sonas the Logos or Word of God, operating extra Deum as “instrumentalcause,” the agent of the Father’s will. 18

We reach here the delicate and controversial realm of Origen’s disputedconformity to Christian dogma. Of course we have to avoid the anachro-

nistic accusations later brought against him by his most virulent adversar-ies, who stressed the deficiencies in his theology with regard to the faith of Nicaea. We should instead appreciate the substance of his trinitarian andchristological thought in the light of his own time. Now, seen in this per-spective, we have first and foremost to recognize the remarkable progressmade by Origen through his outspoken trinitarian model of God. His oppo-sition to every form of monarchianism or modalism is directed to reinforcethe idea of God as Father, Son and Spirit. It is perhaps true that within this“pluralistic” pattern of the divinity there might be less room for the person

of the Spirit, but this should not surprise us, if we keep in mind the slowerdevelopment of patristic pneumatology as compared with Christology (theNicaeno-Constantinopolitan symbol of faith is still an eloquent witness tothat). So Origen, as we saw before, devotes himself to a closer examina-tion of the relation between the Father and the Son, which otherwise ac-cording to his critics would not have escaped the danger of subordin-ationism. Though such an opinion can still be heard today, several scholars


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have convincingly shown to what limited extent these criticisms should beaccepted as valid. Despite Origen’s terminological difficulties as to the dis-tinction between hypostasisand ousia, Henri Crouzel has insisted on theeffective affirmation of the consubstantiality between the Father and theSon, which is dynamically implied by their unity of will, goodness, loveand light. 19 On the other hand, with regard specifically to the question of subordinationism, Crouzel offers a more balanced evaluation, which showshow hierarchical elements mix together with egalitarian ones, while otherscholars have stressed Origen’s independence from the plotinian scheme of the three hypostaseis with its strong subordinationist pattern. 20 In a morepositive sense, Fédou has finally taught us to understand the apparentlysubordinationist pronouncements of Origen in the perspective both of the

Logos’ kenosis in the Incarnation and of the Father’s self-communicationab aeterno to the Son. 21Origen is thus no precursor of Arius in a true sense, nor is he in some

other respect the predecessor of the christological deviations which willafflict the Church from the fifth century onwards: i.e., the opposite empha-sis put respectively on the divine or the human aspects in the unique mys-tery of Jesus Christ. Instead of that, the model elaborated by Origen forthinking the unity of the Logos with the man Jesus prepares in some waythe later solutions of post-chalcedonian theologians. It is an ontological and

at the same time mystical approach, in correspondence with that fundamen-tal spiritual dynamism which is typical of Origen’s theology. For him, theunion of the Logos with the sarx is made possible through the soul of

19. H. Crouzel, L’image de Dieu dans la théologie d’Origène, SP II, Berlin 1957, 194-201.For this view of a dynamic unity, see for instance Contra Celsum VIII, 12: Qrhskeu/omenou™n to\n pate÷ra thvß aÓlhqei÷aß kai« to\n ui˚o\n th\n aÓlh/qeian, o¡nta du/o thˆv uJposta¿seipra¿gmata, e≠n de« thˆv oJmonoi÷aØ kai« th ̂ v sumfwni÷aØ kai« thˆv tauto/thti touv boulh/matoß.20. See, for instance, H. Ziebritzki, Heiliger Geist und Weltseele. Das Problem der dritten

Hypostase bei Origenes, Plotin und ihren Vorläufern, Tübingen 1994, for whom Origentends instead to break the rigid subordinationism which is typical of the neoplatonicsystem.21. “Ce qui dans un premier temps se donne à lire comme ‘infériorité’ du Fils désigne enfait, selon les cas, le mystère du Verbe qui s’est fait chair ou le mystère de Dieu qui detoute éternité se communique au Fils. Et cette éternelle communication peut-être elle-mêmeenvisagée selon deux points de vue: si le Père est ‘plus grand’ que le Fils, c’est d’abord quele Fils se reçoit totalement du Père en tant qu’il est depuis toujours engendré; et c’est enoutre que le Fils n’est pas simplement tourné vers le Père mais aussi vers le monde qui, lui,est inférieur à Dieu. Mais les deux points de vue sont en fait inséparables car le Filséternellement engendré n’est autre que la Sagesse du Très-Haut, elle-même médiatrice entreDieu et le monde” (Fédou, La Sagesse et le monde, 309-310).


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Christ. 22 Let us leave aside the view according to which this soul is the pre-existent nous, which alone did not deflect from the love of God, as the con-troversial hypothesis of the pre-existence of intellects would have it. In theface of the mystery of the God-man (and Origen is admittedly the first toemploy this expression), 23 the loving bond of the soul with the Logos en-sures the full participation in the divinity of the man Jesus. As exemplifiedby the vivid image of the iron burning in the midst of fire, the intimacy of the union between God and man in Jesus Christ leads Origen to assert thatthey, though remaining different in substance, are in fact no longer distin-guishable, thus anticipating the later doctrine of the communicatioidiomatum.

The Fourth Century:Christological Perspectives within the Trinitarian Debate

No other figure, among the Palestinian theologians of the following centu-ries, can compete in his own presentation of Christ with the width anddepth of Origen’s christological reflection, distinguished by a remarkablebalance of scriptural, ontological and spiritual elements. A result of thiskind was moreover made possible also in the absence of definite dogmatic

constraints. On the contrary, the urgency of conformity to a norm of ortho-doxy will be increasingly felt afterwards, at first during the arian contro-versy of the fourth century and subsequently in the christological conflictsof the fifth and sixth centuries, determining in this way a progressive im-poverishment of the biblical and kerygmatic substance in favour of a ratherabstract, essentially metaphysical refinement of dogmatic formulationsabout Jesus Christ. Yet such a development will require more time beforewe can observe its full consequences, so that even in the fourth century wecontinue to face a certain variety of christological expressions, as can bedocumented by two personalities as different as Eusebius of Caesarea andCyril of Jerusalem. Both of them, despite their difference of outlook, seemat first to attest more to the continuity of christological thinking in Pales-tine at the time than to a really changing and innovative response to thenew problems. But this impression is only a part of the truth: as a matter of fact, both Eusebius and Cyril are in their own ways actively reacting to a

22. De princ. II, 6, 3: hac ergo substantia animae inter deum carnemque mediante.23. See Grillmeier, I, 343-344.


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new political and religious atmosphere, which is not without effect also ontheir expressions of Christology. 24

1. Eusebius of Caesarea: a Political Christology

We can say this initially of Eusebius, also in view of his peculiar biographi-cal situation, at the junction between the period of the persecuted Churchand the new epoch of Constantine’s Christian Empire, which in its turn rep-resents the closest context for the council of Nicaea and its dogmatic for-mulations. The most common judgment on the bishop of Caesarea insistsupon his theological conservatism, meaning by that essentially his attach-

ment to the heritage of Origen. There is indeed no doubt as to the deep in-fluence exerted on Eusebius by the great doctor of Alexandria andCaesarea, who had also left his library in the capital city of Palestine, al-beit this does not imply an absolute fidelity on the part of his disciple. Norshould one undervalue Eusebius’ autonomous capacity for choosing differ-ent fields and cultivating his own interests, as is shown by his many worksof historiography, apologetics, theology and exegesis, which together pointto a changed cultural atmosphere. 25 In this sense, Eusebius’ Christologyrepresents a good point of observation, since it displays motifs of continu-

ity and at the same time of differentiation from the previous scene.As for Eusebius’ theology of the Logos, which he inherited from theApologists and the Alexandrian school, there is apparently no substantialdifference in it before or after Nicaea, that is even after he had to reckonwith the homousios. The characteristic impact of this established tradition

24. The question of continuity and innovation becomes central, when we try to assessEusebius’ and Cyril’s respective attitudes towards the Holy Places, but this point is of course not without connections with their theological opinions. For a discussion of this topic

see P.W.L. Walker, Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century, Oxford 1990 and R. Wilken, The Land Called Holy. I stressedtheir practical convergence in “ Sacramentum Iudaeae(Gerolamo, Ep. 46): Gerusalemme ela Terra Santa nel pensiero cristiano dei primi secoli. Continuità e trasformazioni,” in A.Melloni - D. Menozzi - G. Ruggieri - M. Toschi (ed.), Cristianesimo nella storia. Saggi inonore di Giuseppe Alberigo, Bologna 1996, 460-464.25. On Eusebius’ creative origenist fellowship see recently C. Kannengiesser, “Eusebius of Caesarea, Origenist,” in H.W. Attridge - G. Hata (ed.), Eusebius, Christianity and Judaism,Detroit 1992, 435-466. For his remarkable literary performance, which should also be seenas a clue to a different intellectual atmosphere, see my article: “Eusebius of Caesarea as aChristian Writer,” in A. Raban - K.G. Holum (ed.), Caesarea Maritima. A Retrospectiveafter Two Millennia, Leiden etc. 1996, 515-530.


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on Eusebius’ christological and apologetic approach can be measured, forinstance, from a very famous page – the Preface he wrote to the Ecclesias-tical History –, where he traces the theological foundation to the history of salvation culminating in the Church as its final stage. NotwithstandingOrigen’s intense recognition of the three hypostaseis of the Trinity,Eusebius here reveals himself to be rather sensitive to a form of binitariansubordinationism, as a consequence of the absolute centrality of the Logosin the work of creation and in history. The presupposition to that was obvi-ously the recognition of the Logos’ independent existence, in other wordsthe acceptance of his full hypostatical character, which Eusebius stressedanew even after the council of Nicaea, when he had to oppose in Marcellusof Ancyra one of the latest forms of monarchianism. Nevertheless, his af-

firmation of the hypostatical character of the Logos is accompanied – as Ialready remarked – by the emphasis laid on his subordinate role in coop-eration with the Father.

It is difficult, with Eusebius, to escape the impression of confronting amore developed and rigid form of subordinationism than it was still thecase with Origen, though not everybody agrees with such a conclusion. 26

We have, however, unmistakable indications of this direction in Eusebius’language, due to his overt preference for expressions like “the second God”or similar designations, when indicating the person of the Logos who acts

as the servant and the agent of God the Father. It is the same line of thoughtwhich originated the first attempts at a “theology of the Logos,” sinceEusebius’ view is analogously meant to provide a model for thinking thecosmological relation between the transcendent God and his creatures.Therefore, the Logos is called on to play this intermediary role, filling agap between God and the world which otherwise would remainunbridgeable. This approach clearly resembles the philosophical perspec-tive drawn by Middle Platonism with its “soul of the world,” a contactwhich in the case of Eusebius is even more difficult to deny, because of hisextensive reading of authors belonging to that tradition. 27

26. The more common judgment is expressed by Grillmeier, I, 393 (see also its most drasticform at p. 402: Eusebius is much more distant from Nicaea than Origen himself!). A morepositive evaluation of Eusebius’ subordinationism has been proposed recently by J.R.Lyman, Christology and Cosmology. Models of Divine Activity in Origen, Eusebius, and Athanasius, Oxford 1993.27. On the other hand, we should not forget the apologetic needs underlying Eusebius’efforts, as is properly observed by J.R. Lyman: “In his apologetic works Eusebius set outto prove from philosophy and Scripture that Jesus, the incarnate Logos, was the uniqueagent of the Father’s will foretold by the Hebrew prophets and mirrored in Platonic


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Despite this, Eusebius is fundamentally concerned to express the rela-tion of the Logos to the Father according to the ecclesial conscience of hisown time. It is not at all a coincidence that he originally intended his mostfamous work, the Ecclesiastical History, as the description of the “apos-tolic successions” (the diadochai tôn apostolôn, according to the initialwords of the book). If he appears to be quite reserved towards thehomousios, also Cyril of Jerusalem and many other churchmen and theolo-gians of the fourth century shared his feelings towards a formulation whichcould not be found directly in the Scriptures and moreover was suspectedof depending on a materialist conception of God. Therefore, apart fromsuch terminological doubts, he admits with the Church that the Son is him-self God, of the same nature as the Father, and rejects the ideas of Arius,

for whom “there was a time in which the Son was not,” though Eusebiusdifferentiates himself from the form given by Origen to his doctrine of eter-nal generation. Not only does he underline, on this point, the will of theFather who gives birth to the Son from eternity avoiding images whichwould insinuate a certain automatism in his generation (as the well-knownanalogy of the sun and the ray of light), but he considers also the Son as“one” in himself, like the Father, thus distancing himself from a peculiaraspect of Origen’s Christology. 28 Inasmuch as for Eusebius the Logos re-ceives his existence from the Father and is his perfect image, his being as

Son can be said to partake of an essential likeness to the Father. To sumup, notwithstanding his theological conservatism and his subordinationistpenchant, Eusebius is able to rethink some aspects of the theological tradi-tion to which he is attached, in order to better formulate his view of theSon of God.

Eusebius was also attentive to the christological debate at the begin-ning of the fourth century, as is shown by the Apology of Origen, a book written together with his teacher Pamphilus, before the latter was put todeath as a martyr during the Great Persecution (310). In the rich catalogueof accusations made by Origen’s critics, the majority point to old and re-

writings. Hence he deliberately considered the theology of Christ from both historical andphilosophical viewpoints” ( ibid., 108).28. Both distinctions have been pointed out by J.R. Lyman (see ibid., 109 ff.). See, forexample, how Eusebius presents the Son’s generation in Dem. Ev. IV, 3 (GCS 23, 152-153).Regarding the oneness of the Logos, as attested to in Dem. Ev. IV, 10, Lyman observes that“in Origen and the Middle Platonists the single essence of the highest god was commonlycontrasted with the lower multiplicity of the second god, whose cosmological mediationrequired a multiple essence” ( ibid., 111).


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cent problems of Christology, these last being those discussed in the half century after the death of Origen and the condemnation of Paul of Samosata. 29 Once again, we are able to detect in Eusebius a mixing of tra-ditional and novel perspectives. The derived elements mainly go back tohis view of the finality of the Incarnation, though the accent laid on it byEusebius reveals unmistakably his specific concerns. The salvific design,whose protagonist throughout history is the Logos, is aimed at communi-cating to men the true knowledge about God, the Father. Thus, the inter-vention of the Logos responds essentially to pedagogic aims; it is directedtowards the education of humanity, a goal which had already been attainedby earlier men, the God-loving “Hebrews,” as represented by Abraham andthe other patriarchs, before Moses established the people of the “Jews,” in

order to stop the spread of idolatry and to prevent further corruption. As isclear from Eusebius’ view of the origins, his idea of salvation runs in acertain sense the risk of underrating the unique meaning of the Incarnation,that is insofar as it implies the simple restoration of the knowledge origi-nally shared by humanity. On the other hand, Eusebius elaborates a pro-gressive view of history, in which the coming of the Logos represents apeak and a final point, inaugurating his effective sovereignty on history.This final kingdom is attested to both by the diffusion of the Church andthe conversion of the Empire to Christianity, so that we are faced here for

the first time with a form of political Christology, undoubtedly Eusebius’most characteristic contribution. 30 As is witnessed to by his Constantinianwritings, the ultimate elaboration of such political Christology introducesus to the person of the Emperor, as the representative of the Logos on earth,who in his behaviour towards the world is called on to establish a sort of mimetic relation with the Son of God. 31

Against this ideological background, for the bishop of Caesarea the In-carnation of the Logos responds primarily to the necessity of adapting the

29. PG 17, 578 ff. The first five among the nine items mentioned by the authors concernchristological matters (1. the Son of God is innatus; 2. his existence is per prolationem, asbelieved by the Valentinians; 3. Christ is a simple man, in conformity with the doctrine of Paul of Samosata; 4. the Saviour acted in appearence and not in reality; 5. Origen preachestwo Christs).30. The originality of Eusebius’ approach has been stressed anew by W. Kinzig, NovitasChristiana. Die Idee des Fortschritts in der Alten Kirche bis Eusebius, Göttingen 1994, 517ff., while Kannengiesser (“Eusebius of Caesarea,” 452 ff.), also with regard to Eusebius’political Christology, argues for a fundamental continuity with the origenist tradition.31. See especially H.A. Drake, In Praise of Constantine. A Historical Study and NewTranslation of Eusebius’ Tricennial Orations, Berkeley etc. 1976.


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divine teaching to men in the most successful form, though his coming hadalready been prepared for by a long history of education which includedboth Jews and pagans, biblical revelation and Greek wisdom. With regardthen to the person of the Incarnate, the man Jesus is seen by Eusebius asthe instrument, the interpreter and the image of the Logos dwelling in him.The sovereignty of the Logos finds thus in the man Jesus its own temple,wholly illuminated and deified by its own presence. It is this insistence onthe active part played by the Logos within the Incarnate that brings aboutthe loss of another significant component of Origen’s Christology, the rec-ognition of the anima mediatrix of Christ. Eusebius is not alone, but againrepresents a wider trend of thought, which will lead in the course of thefourth century to a developed Logos-sarx Christology, to be paralleled bythe second major pattern before Chalcedon, the Logos-anthroposChristology. Within this Logos-sarx scheme, the responsibility for redemp-tion is entirely taken on by the Logos, while the sarx as such has nosoteriological relevance. Though the absence of a human soul in Jesuspoints already to the later expressions of Apollinarianism, it is not possibleto envisage Eusebius as an Apollinarianist ante litteram, because he re-mains attentive to the distinction of natures in Jesus Christ and avoids thelanguage and the idea of a mingling of them, which on the contrary wastypical of Apollinarianism and later on in its wake, at least verbally, of

Monophysitism.32

2. Cyril of Jerusalem: a “Testimonial” Christology

A few decades after Eusebius we encounter another dominant personalityof the Palestinian Church in the fourth century: Cyril of Jerusalem, thebishop of the newly established Christian “Holy City” for the most part of its second half (348-387), and the author of the famous Prebaptismalcatecheses. When compared with Eusebius’ apologetic and politicalChristology, his deeply scriptural and catechetical view of the mystery of Jesus Christ impresses us at first with the weight of its evident diversity. Itis indeed a rather different approach, due also to the pastoral occasion for,and the didascalic finality of Cyril’s pronouncements, though we should not

32. The rejection of a human soul is explicitly stated by Eusebius, in his polemic againstMarcellus of Ancyra, in de eccl. theol. (GCS 14, 88. 15-22). See H. de Riedmatten, Lesactes du procès de Paul de Samosate. Étude sur la christologie du III e au IV e siècle,Fribourg 1952, 71.


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hide some similarities in outlook between the two authors, as we have al-ready noticed regarding the homousios. It was not by chance that the bishopof Jerusalem was installed on his throne with the help of the doctrinal partyto which Eusebius belonged, though he had afterwards to suffer from thesesemi-arian connections as from the growing rivalry between Caesarea andJerusalem. Besides that, even if he is not a “politician” of the same sort asEusebius, we can discover in Cyril’s preaching more attention to the prob-lems and expectations of his own time, than we might suppose at a super-ficial glance. We then see very well what I already hinted at at first: in orderto appreciate the real import of an exposition of Christology, we shouldtake into account the historical context in all its dimensions.

At all events, Cyril himself has offered us some clues to that in the in-

troductory lecture to his Catecheses, where he invites the catechumens totake hold of his teachings so that they may become a weapon for their ownfaith in face of the several enemies who threaten it. As the bishop of Jeru-salem lists them, these dangers come from the heretics, the Jews, the Sa-maritans and the pagans. 33 The listing may appear stereotyped, but its ordersignificantly corresponds to the situation of conflict described fifty yearslater (400) by the bishops of Palestine in a letter to Theophilus of Alexan-dria, which emphasizes anew the difficulties facing the Church in such amixed religious milieu. 34 Moreover, it can be shown that the concerns ex-

pressed by Cyril in the Procatechesis were particularly exemplified, in thecourse of his lectures, with regard to the Jews. We have thus to do with aChristology which, among the other polemical aims, fulfils first and fore-most a deliberate anti-Judaic intention. It does so by means of repeated in-structions and exhortations aimed at confuting the possible objections onthe part of the Jews. We find this element as a structural component in all

33. Cyril of Jerusalem , Procat. 10. For O. Irshai, “Cyril of Jerusalem: The Apparition of the Cross and the Jews,” in O. Limor - G.G. Stroumsa (ed.), Contra Iudaeos. Ancient and

Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews, Tübingen 1996, 99, “this list was notarrived at by chance, and although it did include all the enemies of the Church, a carefulstudy of Cyril’s lectures shows that this classification reflected the relative strengths,according to him, of those who stood against the Church. The Jews were close to the top of that list. Moreover, Cyril’s direct and indirect polemic with the outstanding representativesof heresy in his time, the Marcellians, Sabellians and neo-Arians, shows that the influenceof the Jews and their thinking on these groups was for him most grievous of all.” We shouldfurthermore remark how Cyril, explaining the prophecies on the coming of Christ(especially Gen 49), opposes the actual vindication of a continuity in Jewish authoritythrough the person of the patriarch ( Cat. XII, 17).34. The letter, sent to the bishop of Alexandria in response to his warnings againstorigenism, is preserved by Jerome, Ep. 93, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55, 155.9-19.


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the catecheses specifically devoted to explain the doctrines of the Creedconcerning Jesus Christ. 35 The method applied by Cyril remains through-out identical: he claims support for his teaching on Christ from the “testi-monies” of the prophetic writings, convinced as he is that the Jews, at leastin principle, will not be able to reject them as devoid of authority. 36 Amongthe numerous instances of such a polemical device, one may point to theconfutation addressed by the bishop of Jerusalem to the objections usuallybrought against the Virgin’s birth or against the resurrection of Jesus: theOld Testament displays for him enough episodes which mention a sign ora wonder made by God in men; so, why should this not be possible in thecase of Jesus, inasmuch as he truly is the Son of the omnipotent God whobecame man? 37

This argumentative approach may justify my definition of Cyril’s teach-ing as a “testimonial Christology.” As a matter of fact, we discern throughit the persistence of an ancient tradition of early Christian preaching andthinking, to which Cyril remains ostensibly faithful, even in the midst of the more sophisticated theology of his own period: that is, the recourse totestimonia normally taken from the Old Testament in order to prove thetruth of the faith in Christ. Cyril is a real virtuoso of typological corre-spondences, exploited by him to such a large extent, that he is able to sus-tain every main point of his discourse with a whole mosaic of scriptural

passages. Precisely in view of that, Cyril’s christological presentation re-mains quite traditional, though he is aware of aspects and formulationswhich recall the more developed expressions of Christology. We find,among other things, some traces of the origenian doctrine of the epinoiai,albeit in a simplified form: speaking of the “one Lord, Jesus Christ,” Cyrilreviews the names and titles of Christ and remarks how their multiplicityis meant to answer the spiritual needs of men according to their different

35. Cat. X-XV. The anti-judaic polemic had a quite concrete ground a few years later,because of the attempt to reconstruct the Temple made by the Jews with the support of Emperor Julian. On this point see L. Lugaresi, “‘Non su questo monte, né in Gerusalemme’:modelli di localizzazione del sacro nel IV secolo. Il tentativo di ricostruzione del Tempionel 363 d.C.,” Cassiodorus2 (1996) 245-265.36. Cyril’s argumentation essentially rests upon the idea of such scriptural “witnesses,” asnoted by P. Jackson, “Cyril of Jerusalem’s Use of Scripture in Catechesis,” TheologicalStudies 52 (1991) 438-442.37. With regard to the Virgin’s birth, see Cat. XII, 2 (where Is 7, 14 is played against theJews’ rejection of Jesus Christ) and XII, 21 (containing a disputation with the Jews as tothe interpretation of the Isaianic passage). XII, 16 proposes then a summary catechesis inpolemical form, so to explain the possibility of Incarnation by means of the Old Testamenttheophanies. For the objections to Jesus’ resurrection see XIV, 15 ff.


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conditions. 38 Also Cyril continues to elaborate upon the well-establishedscheme provided by the theology of the Logos, reviewing the biblical his-tory in the light of his salvific interventions. Yet, out of a sense of the mys-tery – which the doctrinal conflicts of his century had rendered even moreurgent -, when he deals with the theme of eternal generation, he underlinesthe fact that it is properly unknowable to men, since there are no suitablehuman analogies to explain it, not even the most popular equivalence of mind and word. 39 Furthermore, the agency of the Son with regard to theworld is described by Cyril in terms rather of “egalitarian” cooperation thanof instrumental subordination. This mirrors, on the other hand, a keenersense of the unity and equality between Father and Son, who are one, be-cause – as Cyril says – God generated God. 40

Cyril’s teaching on the Incarnate represents, in its turn, a good summaryof the traditional doctrine of the Church and of contemporary orthodox the-ology. The bishop of Jerusalem reminds his hearers that both God and man,their distinction and unity, should be fully preserved in the mystery of Je-sus Christ, warning them in this way against the errors of docetists andadoptianists, as also against the new danger posed by the manichaeans. 41

To explain the necessity of the Incarnation, Cyril provides as usually ascriptural foundation, going back to Adam’s fall which brought about the

38. Cat. X, 3-5. Cyril’s appreciation of the Son of God as a “good doctor” and “patientteacher” betrays an origenian cast of mind (X, 5). For M. Simonetti, La crisi ariana nel IV secolo, Roma 1975, Cyril’s theology is “allineata con quella che potremmo definire la piùrigida ortodossia prenicena nel solco della tradizione origeniana” (p. 209).39. For the doctrine of the eternal generation, see Cat. XI, 4. 8. As to its form, this eternalSonship is the fruit of a process inexplicable to men (XI, 7); more positively, it is of spiritualcharacter, and not a physical generation (XI, 7). For the warning against excessive curiosity,see XI, 12: “You don’t know what is written and you try to investigate what has not beenwritten?” The image of mind and word is not satisfactory for explaining the idea of eternalgeneration, because for Cyril a temporal distance between the human mind and wordscannot be completely avoided (XI, 14). On this point M. Simonetti stresses again Cyril’sfidelity to Alexandrian tradition: “A differenza di Ario e di Eusebio di Cesarea, e unicatestimonianza per noi in tal senso nel gruppo eusebiano, Cirillo dimostra di aver ben intesola distinzione tipicamente alessandrina fra archè ontologica e archè cronologica in rife-rimento al Figlio” ( La crisi ariana nel IV secolo, 208).40. Cat. XI, 16. 18. For V. Saxer, Cyril’s idea of the Son represents a middle position,distant both from the arian theology and from the nicene view of Athanasius ( Cirillo eGiovanni di Gerusalemme. Catechesi prebattesimali e mistagogiche, Milano 1994, 60-61).Cyril refrains from speaking of a unity of nature between the Son and the Father, pre-ferring to assert a dynamic unity and harmony of will (Simonetti, La crisi ariana nel IV secolo,208).41. Cat. IV, 9; XII, 1 ff. The polemic against the manichaeans is especially developed byCat. VI, 21 ff.


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subsequent and overall corruption of mankind but also initiated God’ssalvific design. As we already saw in Eusebius, for Cyril too the mediationof Christ’s humanity is indispensable in order to know God, since men intheir weakness are incapable of seeing him. Therefore, they need a Saviourin the form of a man, so that they may be more easily educated, though forCyril the Incarnation does not respond only to a pedagogical aim. Morethan it was the case with Eusebius, the bishop of Jerusalem is aware of itsredemptive finality, which implies the deletion of sin and death in man.This is how the Cross of Christ comes to assume a central place for him,since it is the guarantee of redemption for all men: to underline that, Cyrilspeaks of the Golgotha as the center of the earth, where Jesus opened hisarms so to embrace symbolically the entire human race. 42 Such a centrality

of the Cross should be wonderfully displayed, and once again locallyproved, shortly afterwards by the apparition of the Cross in the skies of Jerusalem on the 7th of May 351, encompassing in its extension theGolgotha and the Mount of Olives – a symbolic link between the two holyplaces stressing anew the universal kingship of Jesus Christ both throughhis death and resurrection and his future coming as a triumphant judge of the living and dead. 43

We approach here another distinctive feature of Cyril’s “testimonial”Christology, which displays a further and unprecedented dimension of ac-

tuality in his Catecheses. In the newly established context of a “Holy City”and a “Holy Land” of the Christians, the witnesses to the truth of the Creedagainst both Jews and pagans are not contained anymore only in the Scrip-tures but are also accompanied by a different kind of proof, appealing nowmore directly to the senses and the piety of the faithful. This further proof consists in the testimonies to the events of Jesus’ life, death and resurrec-tion which are furnished by the physical setting of the Holy Places and bythe precious relics connected with them, first and foremost the tomb of Je-sus and the holy wood of the Cross. As Cyril states, if he would try to denythe reality of Jesus’ suffering, the Golgotha itself and the fragments of theCross would convince him, with all the weight of their concrete and imme-diate witness to the passion of Jesus. 44 The bishop of Jerusalem, claiming

42. Cat. XIII, 28. The christological foundation is provided in XIII, 23 with the help of Col1, 18 (Christ is the head in the body of the Church) and 2, 10 (he is the chief over everypower).43. See Ep. ad Constantium, PG 33, 1165-1176; E. Bihain, “L’épître de Cyrille deJérusalem à Constance sur la vision de la croix,” Byzantion43 (1973) 264-296.44. Cat. XIII, 4. For further use of local testimonies with regard to Golgotha see IV, 10; X, 19.


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on several occasions the testimony of the Holy Places, introduces us forthe first time to a kind of “experimental,” devotional if not altogether “sac-ramental” Christology, nourished together with the biblical memories bythe local setting of Christ’s earthly life and events. 45 A new epoch had be-gun for christological thinking in Palestine: the framework of the HolyPlaces and pilgrimage becomes inevitably from now on a component, moreor less explicitly, for the subsequent expressions of Christology. To followits impact would require a further investigation into the devotional life of the Holy Land from the fourth century onwards. With regard to Cyril, I canonly point to his decisive role in the first organisation of the Jerusalemstational liturgy, which will be centered more and more on the actualisa-tion of Jesus’ historical events. To enforce such a re-enactment, these are

normally celebrated by the local community precisely on the spot wherethey had happened, as we already catch in the eighties of that same cen-tury in the Itinerary of the pilgrim nun Egeria. 46

On the Threshold of the Christological Controversies:Jerome, the Monk of Bethlehem

We can deal more briefly with our next witness to the Palestinian

Christology, though not because he is a less important figure or because heis a Latin emigrant. Even if Jerome came from abroad, he was not the firstto find his new country in the Holy Land, and his story is as such a quitecommon one at the turn of the fourth and the fifth century and later on too.Among the pilgrims who came to pray at the holy places, many stayed onthere as monks and with this decision profited from the spiritual life of the

45. I don’t think that we need to speak here of “sacramental ways of thinking,” as affirmedby P. Walker, “Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the 4th Century,” in A. O’ Mahony et al.

(ed.), The Christian Heritage in the Holy Land , London 1995, 32. Cyril’s attitude recallsrather the idea of the Holy Places as a “fifth gospel.”46. R. Wilken (who sees furthermore this development already starting with Eusebius)observes that “for the first time... sight begins to be a component of Christian faith. As thisnew ‘fact’ penetrated Christian consciousness in the fourth and fifth centuries, Christianrealised that seeing the holy places was a way of ‘renewing the image’ of what hadhappened, that is, re-presenting the saving events of the past in the present” ( The Land Called Holy, 90-91). For the evolution of the Jerusalem liturgy, and its underlyingtheological conception, see A. Renoux, Le codex arménien Jérusalem 121. I. Introduction: Aux origines de la liturgie hiérosolymitaine, PO 35/1, Turnhout 1969; G. Kretschmar,“Festkalender und Memorialstätten Jerusalems in altkirchlicher Zeit,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 87 (1971) 167-205.


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local church and in their turn contributed themselves to it. Melania theElder, Rufinus and Jerome are typical representatives of this internationalsociety, involved in the situation of the Jerusalem church, at the time of bishop John (386-417), as will subsequently be the case with the monks of the Judaean Desert like Euthymius, Sabas or Theodosius, who originallywere all foreigners. We have here thus the first reason why we would liketo introduce the testimony of Jerome: through him we begin to observeanother essential trait of the religious landscape of Christian Palestine inLate Antiquity, which now becomes not only the land of pilgrims but alsoa major centre of eastern monasticism. We cannot leave aside this newcomponent of ecclesiastical life, if we want to approach correctly thechristological controversies. Palestinian monasticism, both autochthonous

and international, is a fundamental factor for the following developmentsof Christology.

After having said that, we still need to justify our summary treatmentof an author, who for the reasons just mentioned appears to be only the firstin a long series of representatives. As a matter of fact, Jerome is not prop-erly speaking a theologian. His most salient literary occupation makes himinstead a biblical scholar, but precisely this activity as translator and inter-preter of the Bible brought him in touch with Origen, his most significantpredecessor and model as philologist and exegete. Despite his subsequent

attacks on Rufinus, John of Jerusalem and the origenist party in the firstcontroversy about the orthodoxy of the great Alexandrian, Jerome remainedlargely indebted to Origen. Therefore, we can measure once more his in-fluence on christological thought and at the same time perceive Jerome’snew accents on the eve of the dramatic conflicts over the dogma of JesusChrist, God and man. For this analysis we have emblematic evidence in the“mixed” text represented by the Homilies on the Psalms, circulating underthe name of Jerome but for some scholars to a large extent merely trans-lated and adapted by him from a corresponding work of Origen. 47 At allevents, these homilies presumably preached by Jerome in the church of the

47. Tractatus sive homiliae in Psalmos, ed. G. Morin, CCL 78, Turnhout 1958. For thescholarly discussion on the authorship see lately Origene - Gerolamo. 74 omelie sul librodei salmi, intr., trad. e note di G. Coppa, Milano 1993, 13-32. Their overall dependence onOrigen was especially asserted by V. Peri, Omelie origeniane sui Salmi. Contributoall’identificazione del testo latino, Città del Vaticano 1980. His thesis has been rejected byP. Jay, “Les Tractatus in Psalmos”, in Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient . Actes ducolloque de Chantilly publiés par Y.-M. Duval, Paris 1988, 367-380, for whom the clearorigenian inspiration of the homilies should not be an obstacle for considering them a work of Jerome, as is shown by their many actual connections.


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Nativity around 400, for an audience generally consisting of monks andnuns, pilgrims and local inhabitants, reveal his actual concerns towards thetrinitarian and christological heresies which challenged the teaching of theChurch. Moreover, they offer another eloquent proof of the new “contex-tual” Christology, because of Jerome’s particular attachment to the holyplaces. 48

For Jerome too, who follows faithfully in the footsteps of Origen, theBible is the book of Christ. Being situated at the centre of both the Old andthe New Testament, Jesus Christ has to be regarded as the protagonist alsoof the Psalms. Out of this conviction, Jerome commits himself to themethod of “prosopological” exegesis, which from time to time prompts himto develop some insights into the personal being of Christ. Within the

trinitarian perspective, the Son’s relation with the Father and the HolySpirit is viewed by Jerome as a mystery inexplicable to the human mindand only attainable by faith. 49 We meet anew the same emphasis we ob-served shortly above in Cyril of Jerusalem regarding the mysterious gen-eration of the Son, but its underlying inspiration seems in this case moredirectly deriving from the polemic against the Eunomians, who encourageda rationalistic approach to the trinitarian problem. Conforming himself tothe final theological result of the long struggle against Arianism, Jeromeinsists upon the mutual relation between the Father and the Son: in a move-

ment of reciprocal attraction, the Son leads to the Father, and the Father inhis turn leads himself to the Son, since they are both of one nature and onesubstance, the one being inseparably in the other. 50 However, these homi-lies, much more than for their echo of the trinitarian debate, are for us firstof all an interesting document of the contemporary situation, since theyprovide some revealing clues to the evolution of christological thought atthe beginning of the fifth century.

48. The Homilies on the Psalms are not the only evidence of Jerome’s activity as preacher.He held some further homilies, dealing with the gospels or particular festivities (like theTractatus in Marci Evang., CCL 78, Turnhout 1958). See finally also Y.-M. Duval, “L’ InEsaiam paruula adbreuiatio de capitulis paucis de Jérôme. Une homélie (tronquée) et uneleçon de méthode aux moines de Béthléem,” in R. Gryson (ed.), Philologia Sacra. Biblischeund patristische Studien für Hermann J. Frede und W. Thiele zu ihrem siebzigstenGeburtstag, II, Freiburg i.Br. 1993, 422-482.49. See especially Tract. in Ps. (series altera) 91, 6 (Ital. transl., pp. 660-665). Tract. in Ps.98, 5 opposes the “faithful” to the “dialecticians,” emphasising again the mystery of Godand man (p. 323). A violent criticism of Arius and Eunomius is introduced in Tract. in Ps.5, 11 (p. 110).50. Tract. in Ps. 109, 3 (p. 393); Tract. in Ps.66, 5 (p. 140).


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Its most recent stage had been marked by the dispute over Apollinar-ianism. This new crisis had broken out already in the seventies of the fourthcentury, as the arian controversy was reaching its final phase. Jerome hadfrequented the school of Apollinaris of Laodicea, a biblical scholar and avigorous adversary of Arianism, but he felt bound to the Roman Church inquestions of orthodoxy and on the other hand stood under the influence of the great Cappadocian doctors. From both pope Damasus and Gregory of Nazianzus he had heard a clear condemnation of Apollinaris’ thesis, whichdenied the presence of a rational soul in Christ, while stressing in him theunity between God and man through the idea of the “one nature” of theincarnate Logos, later on to become very controversial as a christologicalformula, also because of such a dubious authorship. 51 Jerome’s answer to

this new deviation develops from the point of view of the traditional doc-trine on Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man. His developments aimindeed at a more precise understanding of Christ’s humanity, but he con-siders also the way in which God and man are united in him. We have thusa first and somehow still uncertain approach to the future dogma of Chalcedon, in so far as Jerome already points to the “one person” in twonatures. This happens when he rejects the accusation, launched by apol-linarianists also in contrast with the first manifestations of AntiocheneChristology, according to which the acceptance of God and man in Christ

as two complete realities may imply two Sons.52

However, his use of theterm “person” is not yet definite and steady, due to his occasional leaningtowards its assimilation with the concept of “nature,” as displayed by its

51. Both the Roman and the Cappadocian sources of Jerome’s position, together with theinfluence of Didymus the Blind, are stressed by M.-J. Rondeau, Les commentaires patristiques du psautier (IIIe-Ve siècles). Vol. II: Exégèse prosopologique et théologie,Roma 1985, 152 ff.52. Tract. in Ps. 109, 1: Nobis ergo qui filius Dei est, ipse est et filius Dauid: non alius filius et alius filius, non facio duas personas in Deo et homine (p. 222). See also Ep. 120,9, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 55, 497.22-498.10: Crucifigitur ut homo, glorificatur ut deus... Haecdicimus, non quod alium deum et alium hominem esse credamus et duas personas faciamus in uno filio dei, sicut nova haeresis calumniatur, sed unus atque idem filius deiet filius hominis est, et quicquid loquitur, aliud referimus ad divinam eius gloriam, aliud ad nostram salutem. Other important passages can be found in Comm. in Zach. 2, 6 (CCL76 A, 799) and in Comm. in Hier. 3, 52 (CCL 74, 148). For Grillmeier, I, 589, Jerome’schristological thinking is sustained by the effort of proposing a via media: “In der Mittezwischen dem apolinaristisch-arianischen Monophysitismus und der adoptianischenChristologie der alten Adoptianer und des Photin hindurch legt sich Hieronymus seinechristologische Formel zurecht, die aber nicht die Vollständigkeit und Klarheit andererLateiner erreicht.”


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occurrence within the same homilies in relation to the assumptus homo.53We get here a first glimpse of the difficult field of dogmatic formularitywith regard to the mystery of Jesus Christ, which will occupy for centuriesalso the theological efforts of the Palestinian authors.

As for the human component of the Incarnate, the recognition of a com-plete humanity implies for Jerome that Christ not only is endowed in prin-ciple with a soul and a body like all men, but also (with a rather concreteand, to a certain extent, quite modern view) that he participates of the sameaffections and feelings as them. In this way, Jerome does not restrict him-self only to a generic declaration of christological orthodoxy in the face of Apollinarianism, but he is able, also encouraged by the psychological situ-ation of the Christ he is faced with in the Psalms, to stress the experience

of the passions in him. At first, since the “new heresy” (as Apollinarianismis called by Jerome) pretended to simplify the anthropological structure inChrist, asserting that he was devoid of his intellectual component (thenous), the monk of Bethlehem responded to that by opposing his idea of the man as a composite being ( homo compositus).54 Then, commentingupon Ps 108, 31, Jerome proceeds to describe the emotions felt by Christat the moment of his passion. With Mt 26, 38, he sees him as oppressed bysadness. Now, the fact that Christ experiences such feelings demonstratesfor Jerome that he possessed a soul capable of suffering from the passions

and the desires of the body, though he did not commit sin.55

Moreover,Jerome supports his view with the help of the already mentioned

53. See again Tract. in Ps. 109, 1: Omnia euangelia personant de persona hominis (p. 222).Jerome’s oscillation with regard to persona has been noted by Rondeau, Les commentaires patristiques du psautier , II, 140 ff.54. Tract. in Ps. 15, 9-10 (pp. 381-383). The anti-apollinarianist connection of this exegesishas been brought to light by Rondeau, Les commentaires patristiques du psautier , II, 145-147: “Dire que le Christ est un être composé, en entendant par là non pas qu’il est Dieu ethomme – c’est en ce sens qu’Origène dit de lui qu’il est su/nqeto/n ti crhvma – mais que

comme homme, il est, conformément à l’anthropologie aristotélicienne, composé d’une âmeet d’un corps, a sans doute une portée antiapollinariste” (pp. 146-147).55. Tract. in Ps. 108, 31 (pp. 220-221): Qui tristis est, sensum habuit. Insensibilis enimanima sensum non habet, insensibilis anima non habet sensum neque dolorem: ubi enimdolor est et tristitia, ibi sensus est. (...) Si ergo uoluerint nobis dicere: Propterea nondicimus eum habuisse sensum, ut non uideatur habere peccatum; nos illis respondeamus: Habuit corpus sicut et nos, aut non habuit? Si dixerint, habuit, respondeamus illis: Ergohabuit et passiones corporis nostri. For the equivalence between sensus and nouvß, seeRondeau, Les commentaires patristiques du psautier , II, 151. With regard to theimpeccability of the Lord and the problem of the propa¿qeia , Jerome is open to the influenceof Didymus, though he refrains in the homilies from applying it to the person of Christ (seeibid., 160-161).


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soteriological postulate: man, consisting of soul and body, would not besaved, if Christ had not taken on both a soul and a body. 56

Jerome’s commitment to the recognition of the full humanity of JesusChrist is attested to by another side of his Christology, which after its bib-lical and ontological features invites us to discover more immediately theimpact of its spiritual dimensions. Here the redemptive value of the Crosscomes into the foreground thanks to a view linking Christology andecclesiology, and pointing at the same time to the universality of salvationthrough the image of Christ who extends his arms as protective wings overthe world. 57 On the path already opened up by Origen, Jerome finds hisown way to a warm and intimate devotion to Jesus, contemplated in thefragility and humbleness of his human existence. 58 This renewed Jesus’

mysticism is, however, nourished by an element which was rather marginal,if not totally absent in Origen’s thought: the connection with the holyplaces and among them especially with Bethlehem. It is true that Jeromealso on this point was rather inconsistent, since he seemingly changed hismind after he had first sponsored enthusiastically the dwelling in the HolyLand as a privileged setting for monastic life. 59 Despite that, even in hismost reserved statements, he is still disposed to make an exception forBethlehem, where he had deliberately decided to settle. 60 We can try tocombine and, in a certain sense, to reconcile both opposite reactions

through the evidence furnished by the Homilies on the Psalms. On the onehand, they mention, as a matter of fact, quite a lot of places related to thelife of Jesus, the village of Bethlehem being – as I have already hinted –

56. Tract. in Ps. 108, 31: Si enim non suscepit Dominus cuncta quae hominis sunt, nonsaluauit hominem. Si autem suscepit corpus, animam autem non suscepit: ergo corpussaluauit, animam autem non saluauit (p. 221).57. According to Tract. in Ps. 95, 10 (p. 154) the Cross is the column of humankind, uponwhich the Church was built. For G. Coppa (see above n. 47), who speaks of a “soteriologicalChristology,” “la passione e la croce suscitano le ininterrotte riflessioni dell’omileta: esaltatosulla croce, Cristo ha esaltato noi, ci ha elevati fino a sé e sollevati fino al cielo; è mortoper farci vivere; il Crocifisso è il ‘cantico nuovo’ poiché il Figlio di Dio è morto comeuomo, affinché gli uomini avessero la vita” (pp. 40-41). As for the image of Christ’s armson the cross, see Tract. in Ps. 90, 4; Tract. in Ps.90, 4 series altera.58. See especially Tract. in Ps. 98, 5. Prayer to Jesus plays an important part in Jerome’sdevotion to him, as remarked by K. Baus, “Das Gebet zu Christus beim heiligen Hiero-nymus,” Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift 60 (1951) 178-188.59. Compare Ep. 46 (around 386) with Ep. 58 (395) and see my remarks in “ Sacramentum Iudaeae (Gerolamo, Ep. 46),” 467-477.60. On Jerome’s attitude towards the birthplace of Jesus, see P. Antin, “La ville chez saintJérôme,” in Id., Recueil sur saint Jérôme, Bruxelles 1968, 375-389.


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the main object of Jerome’s attention; on the other hand, this physical land-scape, which is evoked through so many details, should be innerly re-en-acted and should be lived everyday as a personal experience of spirituallife. As Jerome says, “blessed he who carries within himself the Cross, theresurrection, the place of Christ’s birth and of his ascension! Blessed hewho carries Bethlehem within his heart, and Christ is born every day init!” 61 In this way, the fact of living in the Holy Land has to be seen just asa help and the starting-point for a deeper sequel and imitation of Christ,which is likewise a common goal for all believers. Jerome’s attitude, there-fore, does not merely reflect the attempt at an overall spiritualisation whichshould shake off the concrete links to the places. This fact is even moreevident when he speaks of Bethlehem: Jerome’s preferential option for the

birthplace of Jesus leads him to recognise in the manger a primary symbolfor the essential truth of Christianity: the message of the God who becamehimself man out of his loving mercy for humankind and chose to comeprecisely among the poor and simple people. 62

The Christological Controversies of the Fifth and Sixth Centuries:the Palestinian Contribution to a Definition of the Ontology of Christ

1. The response of the Church of Palestine to the christologicalcontroversies

I have so far retraced a series of approaches to Christology which weredeveloped in the period preceding the long struggle over the definition of an ontology of Jesus Christ, God and man. The necessity of dogmatic pro-nouncements began to be felt in the first decades of the fifth century, ini-tially still in the wake of Apollinarianism and then during the discussionsabout the term of Theotokos(“Mother of God”), already employed byOrigen and Cyril of Jerusalem but rejected by the bishop of Constantino-ple, Nestorius. Such controversy brought to light, much more than it hadbeen the case during the apollinarianist crisis, the sharp contrast betweenthe two major christological schemes developed up to then, with their dif-ferent ways of solving the problem of union in Christ: the Logos-sarx,

61. Tract. in Ps. 95, 10.62. Tract. in Ps. 131, 6.


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mainly represented by the Alexandrian theology, and the Logos-anthropos,whose principal exponent was the Antiochene school, though westernthought also showed itself closer to this second approach. In short, the Logos-sarx scheme insisted on the Logos as the principle of the union be-tween God and man, while the Logos-anthropos was more concerned withpreserving the distinction of the two natures in Christ, both the divine andthe human. Faced with these alternative solutions, the choice of the Pales-tinian church was in a certain sense predetermined, since the influence en-

joyed by Alexandrian theology from the third century on at first broughtPalestine into the camp of the allies of Cyril of Alexandria, as we see fromthe support given to him by the Palestinian bishops at Ephesus (431). Thisalliance would last until the beginning of the council of Chalcedon, twenty

years later, when Juvenal of Jerusalem, who was striving for the recogni-tion of patriarchal status for the see of the Holy City, decided to go over tothe opposite side, now formed by Constantinople, Rome and the Antioch-enes, thus abandoning Dioscorus of Alexandria and the monophysite party.Thanks to this dramatic change, the Church of Palestine was able to asso-ciate itself officially with the dogmatic decision of Chalcedon, which pro-claimed Jesus Christ as “perfect God and perfect man,” to be recognised“in two natures” without confusion and separation, forming “one person”and “one hypostasis.” 63

This summary presentation of such a crucial stage for the christologicaldogma should not lead us to consider its political aspects as ultimately de-cisive and therefore to view it in a negative light. The dogmatic allegianceof the Palestinian Church during this period was of course also a matter of politics (even in its most dubious sense), first and foremost because of theunavoidable context of Constantinian Christianity with its mutual relationbetween Church and state. Yet, doctrinal affiliation cannot be seen only asthe consequence of an interplay between different political forces. On theone hand, Christology is no longer a thing for theologians or churchmenalone: as had happened during the fourth century with the trinitarian ques-tion, the Christian masses are now alert and reactive to the christologicalproblems of their own days. On the other hand, though it may be less vis-

63. For more details about the Palestinian participation in these events, see L. Perrone, “Ivescovi palestinesi ai concili cristologici della prima metà del V secolo,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 10 (1978) 16-52. As to the dogmatic evolution during this period, Irefer to my sketch in “Da Nicea (325) a Calcedonia (451). I primi quattro concili ecumenici:Istituzioni, dottrine, processi di ricezione,” in G. Alberigo (ed.), Storia dei conciliecumenici, Brescia 1993 2, 71-107.


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ible and at times problematic, there is indeed an intrinsic connection of thedogmatic debate with the inner life of the Church both passively and ac-tively, that is as a subsequent or as an initiating factor. It is not by chancethat from now on the most engaged participants

Documents

“FOUR GOSPELS, FOUR COUNCILS” – ONE LORD JESUS CHRIST the Patristic Developments of Christology Within the Church of Palestine L. Perrone