Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
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.
1