Folia Theologica 11. (2000)
László Vanyó: The Patristic Interpretation of 'Redemptio'
THE PATRISTIC INTERPRETATION OF ‘REDEMPTIO’ 41 demption is one of his central thought, the other one is: man needs redemption. Already the Old Testament knew the consciousness of guilt of man and this was still deepened by the New Testament. The prayers and confessions of sins in the Old Testament ask not only for remission of sin but also its inner mastering, because it is only God who can help man in his powerlessness.59 The consiousness of helplessness, joined to the consciousness of guilt awakens the desire for divine redemption. The sinfulness of man is deduced by Augustine not from being a creature, but from the first man’s deed, which is a moral burden to the descendants. The Father reveals the deep gulf between the actual state and the divine vocation of man. The rebellion agains God, pushes man deeper and deeper, his inner order becomes confused, his intellect falls into the domination of concupiscence and instinct. The sinful man, temporalrily or for ever, reaps death in his body and in his spirit. Man, reduced to his helplessness, is in the history of salvation enemy of God, slave of Satan.60 However Satan is not a legitimate owner of man bacause his rule is based on lie and treachery. But it cannot be contested that man’s present destiny is a result of a certain righteousness.61 God owes nothing to Satan, He does not even pays a ransom to him for man. The righteuosness of redemption does not stands of falls with the right of Satans but alone whith the fair procedure of God against Satan. The deliverance of man from the power of Satan is not the redemption itself, because to this latter still belongs man’s finding the way back to God, to bliss, to himself; in one word he regains the whole freedom which is only possible by the intervention of God’s power Man is unable to redeem himself.62 It can only be a work of grane. The condition of redemption is that an must realize: he does need redemption. Neither his intellect nor his vili are sufficient to lead him back to his original state. Sin confused the relation of intellect and will, man is able to manipulate even his own will and he can be delivered to his will when he comes under the domination of his habits. Thus the in- tellct gets into the snare of the sinful will. After redemption man is conscious of what state from he has been liberated, that’s why he glorifies 59 De gr. Chr. et de pecc. or. 25 PL 44;399 60 Enchr. 8,26 PL 40;245 De Trin IV, 13,16 61 De Trin XIII, 12, 16 PL 42; 1026 62 De nat. et gr. XXIII, 25 XXX. 34 PL 44;259 and 263; De Trin XIV. 15,21; Enchr XXX PL 40;246
