Folia Theologica 11. (2000)
László Vanyó: The Patristic Interpretation of 'Redemptio'
26 L. VANYÓ appeared by whom all things have been created. He who gave us life in the beginning when as Creator formed us, taught us how to live rightly by appearing as our teacher, in order that here after as God He might i o supply us with life everlasting “0 amazing mystery! The Lord has sunk down, but man rose up; and he who was driven from Paradise gains a graeter prize, haeven, on becoming obedient. Wherefore it seems to me, that since the Word Himself came to us from heaven, we ought no longer to go to human teaching, to Athens and the rest of Greece, or to Ionia in our curiosity. If our teacher is He who has filled the universe with holy powers, creation, salvation, beneficence, lawgiving, prophecy, teaching, this teacher now instructs us in all things, and the whole world has become an Athens and a Greece through the Word”18 19 The content of the idea “Khristos-didaskalos” is the salvific dispensation of God whose culminating point is the Incarnation of the Logos and the redemptive death of Christ; 1. Christ is the single Teacher contrary the false teachers; 2. The doctrine of the divine teacher transcends the science of the philosophers and still that of the OT prophets; 3. Christ is the Logos-didaskalos who is the author of the authentic philosophy who spoke through the Holy Spirit by the prophets; 4. The words of the praeexisting Creator-Logos are simultaneously realitys, theres is not hiatus between word and action; 5. He permeates the whole creation and dispensation; 6. The school of Khristos-didaskalos is the Church; 7. The goal of the educative teacher activity of Khristos-didaskalos is the deifi- catio (theosis): “and granting to us the Father’s truly great, divine and inalienable portion, making man divine by heavenly doctrine” (ouranio didaskaliä theopoion ton anthröpon). 20 The apologists emphasized in the Gospels the figure of Christus Magister (Christos Didaskalos), in the centre of their interest were his teaching and the expulsions of demons, although Justinus mainly depends on the sacramental practice of the Church and on the formulas of creed. In such cases he always mentions the crucified and risen Christ. The words of the Logos imply a divine force, they have a liberating power. The activity of the demons was traced back by the apologists to the event in Gen 6,1-4. thus they set the activity of evil forces in the frames of the history of salvation. The struggle of Christ with the de18 Clem.Alex. Prot. 1,7,3 Loeb CL 18-19, Transi. G.W.Butterworth 19 Protr. XI, 111, 3, -112,1 Loeb CL, Transi. G.W.Butterworth 239 20 Protr. 11,81,1 Loeb CL, 244. Transi. G.W. Butterworth
