Jean Danilou (19051974) - The Conception of History in the Christian Tradition

The Journal of Religion, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Jul., 1950), pp. 171-179.
The first problem faced by Christian thought came from its contact with ancient thought. The
essential affirmation of Christianity is the decisive character of the fact of the Incarnation, which
radically changes human existence, and which sets down a qualitative frontier between the
Before and the After. But nothing was more foreign to ancient thought than this importance
given to a single event. For it, that which is real is that which is capable of repeating itself.
A single event, in its particularity, is something insignificant. The idea that such an event could
introduce a new decisive factor is basically foreign to it. The greatest criticism that Celsus could
make of Christianity is its novelty, which comes to upset the ancestral practices of the traditional
religions.1
It is noteworthy that the Christians were at first disconcerted by these criticisms and that, before
being aware of the originality of their message, they began by trying to wipe out this element.
Thus, for Origen, the spiritual creation has existed in its perfection from the beginning and no
doubt is coeternal with the Logos.
But this creation has fallen. The role of the Incarnation is therefore to re-establish that which had
already existed previously. The events of history introduce nothing new. It would have been
better if nothing had ever occurred, and if everything had remained in the original state of
immobility. Likewise, for Eusebius, Christ did not bring a new message, but he came merely to
re-establish in its purity the religion of primitive humanity, which had been provisionally
replaced by Judaism. Thus we continually come back to the Greek idea that perfection is what
has always existed.
With Augustine's City of God, Christianity becomes truly aware of its own conception of history,
embodying paradoxical originality. Sacred history is made up of absolute beginnings which
remain eternally thereafter a part of that history. Now this is completely contrary to the
spontaneous human conception. For it, there are two categories of reality: those without
beginning or end, which Philon calls to theion ("divine things"), and those which begin and end,
corruptible realities. But the notion of realities which begin yet do not end is shocking to human
reason and appears as characteristically Christian.
Such are for Augustine the great creative decisions of God, which constitute history: the creation
of the world (City of God xi. 4), the creation of man (xii. 13), the covenant with Abraham, which
he calls articulorum temporis (xvi. 72), the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and life eternal, wherein
destinies are irrevocably fixed (xii. 21). Gregory of Nyssa expressed this view of history when he
wrote that "it goes from beginnings to beginnings by means of beginnings which have no end."2
This first example well illustrates for us the role of the church's tradition. It consists in applying
biblical principles to questions to which the Scripture had not applied them. The principle here is
the same as that of the Covenant-to know that God's promises are irrevocable, founded as they
are on his faithfulness, so that the unfaithfulness of man may lead him to withdraw himself from
their benefits, but not that the benefits are revoked. Thus, whatever may be the sins of man, the
union in Christ of divine and human nature, which was manifested at a moment in time,
remained thenceforth and forever. This principle is applied by Augustine to questions like the
creation or the eternal destiny of man, showing that they have this same characteristic of
appearing in time (or with time, in the case of the creation) and of remaining thereafter for all
time.
We see the first Christian writers, Pseudo-Barnabas and Justin, reduced to an affirmation that the
institutions of Judaism were never good, that their sense was always spiritual, and that their
1 Origen, Contra Celsum i. v. 65.
2 Hom. Cant. viii, p. G xliv, 1043 B.
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Jean Danilou (19051974) - The Conception of History in the Christian Tradition

literal practice was sinful. A hopeless solution, which did not do justice to the Old Testament and
which joined in its condemnation by the Gnostics.
Irenaeus was clearly the first one who discovered the solution by showing that, again to the
dismay of reason, the temporal aspect, the chairos, should enter into the value-judgments to be
brought to a reality. Thus, on the one hand, it is necessary to affirm that the Old Testament is
good and that it is the work of the same God as the New. But at the same time the realities of the
Old Testament were provisional. An effort must not be made to keep them when their time, their
chairos, is over. The sin of Judaism is a sin of anachronism; it consists in wanting to arrest God's
plan at a moment in its growth, to maintain out-of-date forms. The Old Testament, says Origen,
following Meliton of Sardes, is like a rough model. It was necessary but is no longer useful when
the statue is there.3 It is like a lamp; absurd to keep it lit when the sun has risen. 4 Christians
should have for Judaism only the thankfulness of the grown man to the teacher of his childhood.5
Through this, a new aspect of the Christian vision of history is unfolded. This vision is one of a
progressive economy. The Old and New Testaments enter into a single plan but represent two
successive moments of it. For Irenaeus the reason for this progression is of a pedagogical nature.
Everything which is in time must begin in a state of imperfection. 6 God does not share this
imperfection. Before the full manifestation to his people, he began by accustoming them to his
ways, by educating them.7 Thus it is that he led them from secondary things to primary things,
from types to realities, from the temporal to the eternal, from the carnal to the spiritual, from the
earthly to the heavenly.8
We have met the expression "types." The typological exegesis is in effect the relationship uniting
the Old and the New Testament, expressing at the same time their likenesses and their
differences. Thus the flood, the resurrection of Christ, Christian baptism, show a fundamental
structural analogy; in all three cases, God's judgment destroys the sinful world, the old man; but
a just man is spared to be the beginning principle of a new humanity. 9 Thus the crossing of the
Red Sea prefigures equally the resurrection and the baptism in showing the power of God
liberating his people from servitude to the powers of evil. Thus typology expresses the inherent
intelligibility of history. It keeps events, where the ways of God are manifested, from being
absolutely disconcerting by permitting us to refer them to former manifestations of these same
ways. Thus the Annunciation to Mary is situated in the series of annunciations from the Old
Testament, to Sarah, to Hannah, to Zacharias, while at the same time it surpasses them.
[]
Thus we see how the Christian vision of history has been formed. It was in no wise a question of
a systematic construction. Rather it was occasioned by questions which were put to it by the
3 Hom. Lev. xi.
4 Cf. Matt. 10,9.
5 Ibid.
6 Adv. Haer. iv. ii. 22.
7 Ibid. 9. i.
8 Ibid. 14. 3.
9 Dluge, Baptme, Jugement (Dieu Vivant ix, PP. 95 ff.).
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Jean Danilou (19051974) - The Conception of History in the Christian Tradition

circumstances of its history and which led the church to define its conception of the history of
salvation. For that it was necessary that the church should have lived through its long experience
and thus be able to grasp history's meaning. Nevertheless, it seems that today the time has come
when it is possible to gather these fragmentary data into a theology of history. Such seems to be
one of the tasks of the present time and one of the most obvious places for a common work by
the various Christian confessions.