Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought

Mark Edwards, Elena Ene D-Vasilescu, Mark Edwards, Elena Ene D-Vasilescu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315439587
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

This volume illustrates the complexity and variety of early Christian thought on the subject of the image of God as a theological concept, and the difficulties that arise even in the interpretation of particular authors who gave a cardinal place to the image of God in their expositions of Christian doctrine. The first part illustrates both the presence and the absence of the image of God in the earliest Christian literature; the second examines various studies in deification, both implicit and explicit; the third explores the relation between iconography and the theological notion of the image

Part I

What is the Image of God?

1

Polycarp’s Martyrdom According to the Gospel

Markus Vinzent

The Martyrdom of Polycarp does not speak of the divinization of Polycarp;¹ on the contrary, it is a strong advocate against any form of individualized reward. Right in the opening, the key sentence explains the aim of this work, written in the form of a letter, which was not solely to highlight Polycarp, but to speak of martyrs in the plural whose ‘nobility and endurance’ the reader should admire (MartPol 2.2a). As we now know, only in the times of the forger Pseudo-Pionius, around the year 400, this aim was sharpened towards Christ and referred to the gospel, when it was added that ‘the Lord may show us from the beginning the martyrdom according to the gospel’ (MartPol 1.1b, not in Euseb.).² At that time the focus of the martyrdom had shifted. It was no longer the lived experience of an actual martyrdom³ (the original martyrdom apparently was a historical reminiscence), but the forger lays emphasis on the Lord as a literary model for his disciples, and the disciples as models for readers of literature.⁴ Zwierlein speaks of an ‘increasing stylization’ of the Martyrdom.⁵ It is this ‘dual’, imagined ‘imitation’⁶ which seems to be stressed at the very opening of the later version of the Martyrdom, a reminiscence of Pauline writings and theology as much as that of the Gospel:⁷

For he [Polycarp] waited to be delivered up, even as the Lord had done, that we also might become imitators of him, while we look not merely at what concerns ourselves but have regard also to our neighbours. For it is the part of a true and well-founded love, not only to wish one’s self to be saved, but also all the brothers.

(MartPol 1.2, not in Euseb.)

Even in this late version, following the Lord in martyrdom does not make one focus on one’s own self, one’s own salvation alone, not even primarily, but ‘a true and well-founded love’ seeks that ‘all the brothers’ will be saved, hence the repeated notion of the ‘Catholic Church’ as an expression of an egalitarian vision of Christianity which stands in stark contrast to a Valentinian individual understanding of salvation.⁸

Why, however, may the Lord ‘show us from the beginning’ this nature of martyrdom ‘according to the Gospel’? Does one not expect that the Lord would have disclosed this message from the beginning through his life, a life that the gospel (or the Gospels) illuminates? Has the Lord not shown us through his own martyrdom what martyrdom is and how one can imitate his own life and death – μιμεῖσθαι κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον Χριστοῦ (MartPol 19.1, not in Euseb.)? In standard readings of this text, scholars understand τὸ κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον μαρτύριον as a reference to the narratives of our canonical Gospels where Jesus is the prototype of martyrdom;⁹ hence some have compiled lists of Gospel parallels and think that Polycarp’s death ‘mirrors passion reports in the Gospels’.¹⁰ Or, as Michael Holmes explains, Polycarp’s martyrdom is not only re-narrating the Gospels, but the ‘more significant parallels between the passion narratives and the Martyrdom are to be found at a deeper level, where the passion narrative serves as a “master paradigm” in terms of modeling a foundational theological perspective or even world-view.’¹¹

Although Zwierlein has been able to show that many of these parallels were introduced not only by a gospel redactor, as Hans von Campenhausen had already suggested,¹² but more specifically by the mentioned Pseudo-Pionius, even he admits that the so-called Urfassung of The Martyrdom of Polycarp already mirrored narratologically and theologically the passion of Christ,¹³ influencing the Letters of Ignatius ¹⁴ or, less likely, being influenced by them.¹⁵ With such early reference to the passion of Christ, one wonders why, despite the mention of the resurrection of the martyrs to eternal life (MartPol 14.2 – part of Polycarp’s prayer), the Martyrdom never hints at Christ’s resurrection.¹⁶ Did the author of the Urfassung only have a passion narrative of Christ at hand? In what follows, I would like to explain this question and point to a solution that may seem contrary to our conventional expectation, but which will shed light also on the question of how one becomes a fellow of Christ, Χριστοῦ κοινωνός. I start from the possibility that the author of the Urfassung may have known of the gospel, but that he was rather sceptical of its resurrection narratives and, instead of these, wanted to promote the passion narratives with reference to the recent martyrdom of Polycarp. The first clue is given in chapter 2:

(2.2) Who, indeed, would not admire their nobility and endurance? For even when they were torn by whips until the very structure of their bodies was laid bare down to the inner veins and arteries, they endured it, filling even the bystanders with astonishment. (2.4) Similarly did those who were condemned to the beasts endure terrifying torments, being laid out upon trumpet-shells and punished by other different kinds of tortures.

(Urfassung)

Compare with the version by Pseudo-Pionius (version β):

[The martyrs] reached such a pitch of magnanimity, that not one of them let a sigh or a groan escape them; thus proving to us all that those holy martyrs of Christ, at the very time when they suffered such torments, were absent from the body, or rather, that the Lord then stood by them, and communed with them. And, looking to the grace of Christ, they despised all the torments of this world, redeeming themselves from eternal punishment by [the suffering of] a single hour. For this reason the fire of their savage executioners appeared cool to them. For they kept before their view escape from that fire which is eternal and never shall be quenched, and looked forward with the eyes of their heart to those good things which are laid up for such as endure; things ‘which ear hath not heard, nor eye seen, neither have entered into the heart of man’, but were revealed by the Lord to them, inasmuch as they were no longer men, but had already become angels. And, in like manner, those who were condemned to the wild beasts endured dreadful tortures, being stretched out upon beds full of spikes, and subjected to various other kinds of torments, in order that, if it were possible, the tyrant might, by their lingering tortures, lead them to a denial [of Christ].

(MartPol 2.2–4¹⁷)

The core opening message is that of a simple description of the martyr’s enduring of their suffering, an emphasis that can be found in many second-century texts.¹⁸ Pseudo-Pionius turned the narrative into a theological explanation of redemption from eternal punishment through the fire ‘which is eternal and never shall be quenched’, one that brings the martyrs into communion with the Lord, Christ, who ‘stood by them, and communed with them’. Pseudo-Pionius reports that the ‘eyes of their heart’ who look out ‘to those good things which are laid up for such endure’. Interestingly, he is not revealing anything that is known from the Gospels, but instead he mentions those things ‘which ear hath not heard, nor eye seen, neither have entered into the heart of man’. From Table 1 we can see how closely his version of the Martyrdom reflects Paul and only through him makes us think of the Septuagint.

Table 1

MartPol 2.3a	LXX	1 Cor. 2.9
ἃ οὔτε οὖς ἤκουσεν οὔτε ὀφθαλμὸς εἶδεν οὔτε ἐπὶ καρδίαν ἀνθρώπου οὐκ ἀνέβη	οὐκ ἠκούσαμεν οὐδὲ οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ ἡμῶν εἶδον θεὸν (Isa. 64:3) καὶ οὐκ ἀναβήσεται αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τὴν καρδίαν (Isa. 65:16)	^9ἀλλὰ καθὼς γέγραπται, Ἃ ὀφθαλμὸς οὐκ εἶδεν καὶ οὖς οὐκ ἤκουσεν καὶ ἐπὶ καρδίαν ἀνθρώπου οὐκ ἀνέβη, ἃ ἡτοίμασεν ὁ θεὸς τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν αὐτόν

Despite the similarity of ideas between Pseudo-Pionius’ Martyrdom and the Septuagint, the closest parallel text to MartPol 2.3a is Paul’s 1 Cor. 2:9.¹⁹ As Pseudo-Pionius’ Martyrdom continues, the Lord ‘revealed … [himself] to them, inasmuch as they were no longer men, but had already become angels’, we are again reminded of Paul and his vision, when he was uplifted into the third heaven to hear the secret revelation (2 Cor. 12). What the martyrs experience is a revelation that makes them equal to Paul. Such revelation, however, is not given to them in the state of being ‘men’, but in that of ‘angels’. In the Martyrdom κατὰ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, therefore, the Greek term for gospel is taken very literally: ‘εὐ’ = good and ‘ἀγγέλιον’ = angelic message.²⁰ If the term referred to a written gospel-document, as assumed by Dehandschutter and Buschmann, it would match neither Matthew nor John, but either Mark who calls his text ‘gospel’ or, even more likely, Marcion’s Gospel. Not only was the latter given the title ‘εὐαγγέλιον’, but this title was interpreted as the angelic message that reported what Paul had been revealed in secret. With such reference, we are perhaps given another indication, not mentioned by Zwierlein, of Pseudo-Pionius’ Syrian background, as the Syrian Church did not use a four-gospel New Testament, but Tatian’s Diatessaron, which preserved a number of Marcionite elements and readings.²¹ Revelation is the good angelic, spiritual message provided by angels. The imitatio Christi in Pseudo-Pionius’ Martyrdom of Polycarp is, therefore, not primarily an analogy of the passion and resurrection narrative of the gospel, but that of the spiritual message, given to Paul. Of course, as Paul is rather silent about Jesus’ life, it needed an explication of his words and deeds in the gospel. The idea of the martyrs’ becoming ‘imitators of the Lord’ (μιμηταί, [scil.] τοῦ κυρίου) comes as close to an expression as can be found in Eph. 5:1: γίνεσθε οὖν μιμηταὶ τοῦ θεοῦ. It will be repeated in Pseudo-Pionius’ version in MartPol 17.3 (μιμητὰς τοῦ κυρίου).²²

Pseudo-Pionius’ Martyrdom of Polycarp differs noticeably from Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians.²³ Polycarp mirrors Paul’s language and, even more explicitly than the Martyrdom, quotes him verbatim, and knows more about the Apostle than,²⁴ for example, 1 Clement (a letter which Polycarp knows²⁵) or Ignatius.²⁶ After naming three contemporary martyrs (amongst them Ignatius), Polycarp even introduces Paul by name,²⁷ while he does not display the same exclusive Paulinism as the Martyrdom does (despite its parallels to the Gospel passion narratives^2...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I What is the Image of God?
• Part II Image and Eschatology: Deification
• Part III Image of God and Byzantine/ Meta-Byzantine Icon
• Bibliography
• Index