Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and Leo the Great on the Beatitudes of Matthew 5
So far we have been looking only at Old Testament books. There is good reason for this. Typological interpretation finds types in the Old Testament, types that are patterned on the New Testament antitypes (or archetypes) in which the types find their fulfillment. Spiritual interpretation represents, in many ways, a move from the Old to the New Testament, from truth that is veiled to the unveiling that takes place in Christ through the Spirit. So when we looked at Origen’s Homilies on Joshua, we saw that at times he interprets the text as allegorically alluding to the distinction between the Old and New Testaments. The Alexandrian theologian does this, for instance, when he speaks of the Israelites’ arrival in the promised land and about their being enjoined to make “knives out of rock” so as to receive their “second circumcision” (Josh. 5:2). Origen, we saw, explains that the instrument of the first circumcision is the law and that this refers to the putting aside of the worship of images, while the instrument used in the second circumcision is the rock, which is Christ, so that this second circumcision refers to the gospel faith.1 Spiritual interpretation is about moving from promise to fulfillment, from the outward to the inward, from the law to the gospel, from the letter to the spirit, from type to archetype, from sacrament to reality, and therefore from the Old Testament to the New Testament. As a result, questions surrounding spiritual interpretation often focus on how we are to read the Old Testament.
In this chapter I will focus on the Beatitudes of Matthew 5—a New Testament passage. We should pause briefly at this observation. It is one thing to argue that the Old Testament ought to be read spiritually, but it is something else to insist that we should do the same for the New Testament. Still, reading the New Testament text spiritually is exactly what the church fathers did. Regardless of
whether they were reading the Old or the New Testament, their primary concern was forward looking rather than backward looking. This forward-looking approach in biblical exegesis seems to me exactly right. Just like Old Testament exegesis can never simply be a matter of trying to find the historical circumstances surrounding the text in hopes of determining scientifically what the author meant, so too in our reading of the New Testament, we are not concerned primarily with what the text meant but with what the text means. All biblical interpretation—also that of the New Testament—is (or should be) spiritual interpretation.
But isn’t the gospel the very contents of the spiritual meaning? Isn’t Christ the fulfillment of the Old Testament? And haven’t we seen the church fathers arguing for a spiritual reading of the Old Testament on the very grounds that Christ is the sacramental reality that shines through in the historical realities depicted in the text of the Old Testament? Doesn’t the notion that the New Testament must be read typologically or allegorically assume that even the New Testament writings are, as it were, carnal writings, whose deeper truth must be uncovered through spiritual exegesis? So then, if we read also the New Testament spiritually, doesn’t this mean that we’re looking for a yet greater reality, beyond God’s self-revelation in Christ? How could there be a deeper truth than the very revelation of Jesus Christ, who is the contents of the New Testament gospel? What would it even mean for us to read the New Testament spiritually?
In his book on Origen, History and Spirit (1950), French Catholic theologian Henri de Lubac reflects on this question at length. He insists that there is also an “unceasing transformation of the Gospel at the level of the senses into the spiritual Gospel. Just as it cannot be determined by the work of scientific exegesis, even when carried out in the spirit of faith, it will never be fixed in a certain number of established and controlled results, in a series of objective meanings, capable of being inscribed in a kind of canon. This way of understanding it would allow its essence to escape. This spiritual understanding is, so to speak, the breathing of Christian reflection because it translates the rhythm of Christian life.”2 De Lubac’s last sentence points to what is at stake in a spiritual reading also of the narrative of the gospel—and therefore of the Beatitudes. Spiritual reading, insists de Lubac, “translates the rhythm of Christian life.” The very rhythm of our lives gets translated in our reading of the text. That is to say, it is not just the text but also the Christian who gets interpreted as we read the Scriptures. Spiritual understanding doesn’t just look for a historical reconstruction—not even in the events described in the Gospels or in the theology and the injunctions presented by the apostle Paul. Christian
reflection has a much more important task, namely, to translate the rhythm of a Christian mode of existence. That is to say, Christians see the church, and they see themselves, implicated in the New Testament Scriptures.
We already observed that for Saint Augustine, what is true for the head of the church is also true for the members. The reason is that the body of the church may be identified with Christ himself. The church is, in a real sense, Christ himself. De Lubac notes that this identification between Christ and the church is not new with Augustine but goes back to Origen.3 The church—the members of Christ—is still on the way, traveling on its pilgrimage. This implies that tropology (the moral interpretation of the text) and anagogy (the eschatological reading) continue to be integral elements of the deepening insight into the Scriptures. Tropological reading of the New Testament is, for the fathers, a way of identifying with the virtues of Christ and of becoming more like God. And their anagogical readings of the New Testament stem from the recognition that, even though God has done a wonderful and climactic new thing in Christ to which nothing can be added, this new thing still needs to be brought to completion or perfection. The New Testament has given the fullness of the mystery of Christ. The treasure hidden in the field can now be seen. But the depth of this mystery and the contents of this treasure remain there for Christians to explore and perfect in their lives. De Lubac summarizes as follows: “It is the whole New Testament, understood as the complete progress of the Christian economy up to the last day, that also appears to him [i.e., Origen] to be oriented toward a more profound, absolutely and solely definite reality; a reality that it has the duty to make known by preparing for it, serving thus as intermediary between the Old Law and the ‘eternal gospel.’”4 The christological reality of the New Testament is, for the church fathers, located between the law and what de Lubac terms the “eternal gospel” (Rev. 14:6), that is, the eschatological reality in which the fullness of the mystery and the reality of the person, the discourses, and the actions of Christ will become clear. The fullness of truth, on de Lubac’s reading of Origen, remains in the future.
We see this theological or spiritual dimension of the “eternal gospel” consistently on display in the church fathers’ interpretation of the Beatitudes, particularly in the treatment of the Beatitudes by Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-ca. 394), Augustine of Hippo (354-430), and Pope Leo the Great (ca. 400-461). Most obviously and immediately, perhaps, this comes out in the way their
homilies speak about the “mountain” on which, according to Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus delivered his Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:1). As modern readers, we are perhaps inclined to read past a reference such as this. We may see it as a small geographical detail that we can skip in order to move on to more important matters. Or if we recognize similarities between Moses and Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, as many contemporary New Testament scholars do, the mountain may remind us of Mount Sinai, and we may conclude that Jesus is a second Moses, a second lawgiver.5 Intrigued as they were with the very words of Scripture, the church fathers would certainly regard any oversight of the word “mountain” as seriously negligent. And while they wouldn’t necessarily disagree with linking Jesus to Moses through this referencing of mountains, the concern for spiritual interpretation meant an interest to find eternal, heavenly truths—so that the fathers would consider the modern preoccupation with history and authorial intent as insufficiently attuned to the divine purpose of the text.
Gregory of Nyssa, the fourth-century Cappadocian spiritual master, immediately hones in on the “mountain” reference. Perhaps the most Platonic of the three preachers, Saint Gregory pretty much begins his first sermon by contrasting Matthew’s mountain—a “spiritual mountain of sublime contemplation”—with Plato’s cave: “This mountain leaves behind all shadows cast by the rising hills of wickedness; on the contrary, it is lit up on all sides by the rays of the true light, and from its summit all things that remain invisible to those imprisoned in the cave may be seen in the pure air of truth. Now the Word of God Himself, who calls blessed those who have ascended with Him, specifies the nature and number of the things that are contemplated from this height.”6 Gregory’s reference to “those imprisoned in the cave” is striking. It is an explicit reference and appeal to Plato’s allegory of the cave, which he relates in book 7 of The Republic. For Plato, if we want to be able to discern reality itself, we must be untied from our place in the cave of this earthly reality and learn to stand outside, gazing into the sunlight of the eternal Forms—a difficult thing to do after a lifelong imprisonment in the darkness of the cave.7 Gregory links this notion of us living in a cave to the Sermon on the Mount’s mirror-opposite depiction of Jesus (or, rather, “the Word of God Himself,” as Gregory prefers to put it) teaching from the brightly lit-up heights of the mountain, the eternal place of truth. Within the framework of Saint Gregory’s Christian Platonism, any mention of a mountain irresistibly drew his mind to the spiritual dimensions of such a reference.
This is not much different for Saint Augustine, especially during the first number of years following his conversion. Neoplatonism had played a significant instrumental role in this conversion, so when Bishop Valerius
relieved Augustine from his priestly duties shortly after he had taken on his role as priest of Hippo Regius (ca. 393-395), Augustine too was eager to show the validity of Christian Platonism when writing his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount.8 Matthew’s reference to the “mountain” triggers Psalm 35 (36):6 in Augustine’s mind: “Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God.”9 The bishop of Hippo takes this combination of “righteousness” and “mountains” to imply a reference to Jesus Christ. The psalm “may well mean,” he comments, “that the one Master alone fit to teach matters of so great importance teaches on a mountain.”10 “For Augustine,” comments Robert Wilken, “the reason Jesus went up on a mountain is clear: he wanted to teach them about higher things. Seated on a mountain they were lifted above the quotidian affairs of their towns and villages, the cares and trials of life with family and friends and neighbors.”11
Wilken is quite right, I think; Augustine directly links physical height with spiritual height. The “mountain,” explains Augustine, is a reference to “the greater precepts of righteousness,” and the bishop opposes these “greater precepts” to “lesser ones which were given to the Jews.”12 So he contrasts law and gospel, seeing in the “mountain” a reference to the latter. He then identifies this contrast with the juxtaposition of the kingdom of heaven to earthly kingdoms: “Nor is it surprising that the greater precepts are given for the kingdom of heaven, and the lesser for an earthly kingdom.”13 It is by means of remarkable mental agility and through a number of distinct exegetical steps, each of them presupposing the preceding one, that Saint Augustine finally arrives at his conclusion: when the Son of God teaches on the mountain, you know you’re dealing with gospel teaching.
Around the same time as Augustine, Pope Leo the Great—known both for writing what we now know as Leo’s Tome (which persuaded the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451 of the orthodox teaching on the two natures of Christ) and for meeting Atilla the Hun a year later and convincing him to withdraw from the city of Rome—wrote a short homily on the Beatitudes. Even in this brief address, Leo too takes time to refer to the great significance that, to his mind, the reference to a mountain must undoubtedly have. Jesus Christ, says Saint Leo, called his apostles to the mountain, “that from the height of that mystic seat He might instruct them in the loftier doctrines, signifying from the very nature of the place and act that He it was who had once honoured Moses by speaking to him.”14
Three brief observations are in order. First, for Leo, the height of the mountain is indicative of the great mystical significance of the teaching that takes place there. Much like Gregory and Augustine, Leo takes the mere reference to height as indicative of spiritual significance—something we often see the fathers do,
once we pay attention to it. Not surprisingly, this has to do with their understanding that the closer we come to heaven, the more spiritual we are. Physical proximity to heaven becomes symbolic of spiritual nearness.
Second, while Leo does pull Moses into the picture (as would many modern exegetes), he does this not in order to move typologically from Moses to Jesus. Instead, he draws an analogy between Moses and the apostles. Just as Moses was once instructed on Mount Sinai, so the apostles now receive instruction on a mountain. The upshot of this is that it puts Jesus in the position of God himself. Just as God had once instructed Moses, so Jesus now instructs the apostles. The location of the mountain indicates, says Leo, “that He it was who had once honoured Moses by speaking to him.”15 The Beatitudes, for Leo, are the pronouncement of the Lord God himself.
Third, Leo takes the opportunity to dwell on the difference between law and gospel. He does so by observing not just the similarities but also the differences between God’s speaking to Moses then and God’s speaking to his apostles now: “There were no thick clouds surrounding Him as of old, nor were the people frightened off from approaching the mountain by frightful sounds and lightning.”16 These two differences—neither thick clouds nor thunder and lightning—are indicative, according to Leo, of the difference between what he calls the “harshness of the law” and the “gentleness of grace.”17 Pope Leo takes the church’s convictions about the difference between law and gospel and reads the Beatitudes in the light of what the church already believes about the difference that the coming of Christ makes. Leo is even willing to pull in an argument from silence—the absence of clouds, thunder, and lightning—to make the case for his particular exegesis of the passage.
A kind of typological exegesis appears to be at work in Leo’s exposition of the meaning of the “mountain”: Mount Sinai functions as the type, and the mountain of the Beatitudes as the antitype. We do need to be careful, however, with putting the label “typology” onto Leo’s approach—and, indeed, onto the exegesis of the church fathers in general. The overall exposition of the three church fathers cannot be caught by the catchphrase “typology,” as we commonly understand that term. Nor, for that matter, can we simply speak of “allegory,” if by that we mean a method that the fathers apply to the text in order to arrive at a predetermined result. Instead, what we have here is really a form of contemplation—theoria—in which the plain sense of the text becomes the basis
on which to reflect on God’s providential dealings with the believers in Christ. In such contemplation, even the actions and words of Jesus take on implications beyond the ordinary sense that the words appear to convey.
We can see the contemplative approach of theoria particularly in Gregory’s repeated insistence on multiplicity of meaning in the text. On at least five occasions in his homilies on the Beatitudes—perhaps written during his exile, between 376 and 378—he insists that the text may have more than one meaning. Seeing that this is a controversial issue and an obstacle for much historical biblical scholarship, we should pause for a moment and analyze what is going on. How is it that Gregory can insist that the biblical text may have more than one meaning? What does this do to the authority of the text? How does this not justify arbitrary, subjective readings of the text?
To answer these questions, let’s start by analyzing the five instances where Nyssen insists on a plurality of meaning. First, regarding the first beatitude (“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” [Matt. 5:3]), Gregory begins by explaining that poverty in spirit speaks of humility, the opposite of which is pride. Using passages such as 2 Corinthians 8:9 (“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich”) and Philippians 2:5-7 (“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men”), Gregory contemplates the character of humility.
He explains that humility is connatural to our earthly nature and then insists that “no other evil is so harmful to our nature as that which is caused by pride.”18 While these reflections on humility and pride are obviously important to Gregory, he nevertheless goes on to say that a more literal understanding of poverty—a reference to material possessions—should not be excluded: “Nor should you, my dear brethren, disregard the other interpretation of poverty which begets the riches of Heaven.”19 On this more literal understanding, being “poor in spirit” means, according to Nyssen, that one is “poor for the sake of the spirit.”20
Second, the reference to “mourning” (“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” [Matt. 5:4]) may likewise be interpreted in a twofold fashion. Mourning may, on the one hand, refer to sorrow for sin, a mourning that brings repentance and leads to salvation (2 Cor. 7:1ο).21 “But,” Gregory continues, “it seems to me that the Word indicates something deeper than what has so far been said.”22 Noticing that the text doesn’t speak of those who have mourned but of those who are mourning, and observing too that saintly people
such as John and Elijah did not have any sin over which to mourn,23 Gregory argues that in the beatitude “mourning” refers to sorrow over the absence of light in the cave—alluding again to Plato’s allegory.24 Recognizing that we cannot describe or grasp God—who, after all, is not circumscribed by time or place— Gregory comments: “And the more we believe the nature of the good to exceed our comprehension, the more should our sorrow grow within us, because we are separated from a good so great that we cannot even attain to its knowledge.”25 So Gregory uses the text to reflect both on the sorrow that comes from repentance and on the sorrow that comes from the recognition of our creaturely distance from God.26
In neither of these first two examples is Gregory concerned to limit his exegesis to one particular meaning. In fact, in his discussion of mourning, when he jumps to the second possible meaning, he does so by presenting two arguments—based on verb tenses as well as theological considerations—that appear in some way to plead against his first interpretation. Or, at the very least, the first form of mourning (that over sin) applies only to those who in their lives continue to struggle with sin. But for Saint Gregory this is not reason to oppose or reject his first reading; he is quite happy to let the first interpretation stand.
The reason, no doubt, is that the first interpretation yields important moral insight: sorrow leading to repentance leads to a virtuous life. And, as we have seen before, Gregory will let pretty much any interpretation stand, as long as it leads to virtue. He shows no interest in establishing the one historical meaning of the text.
The other three instances in which Gregory argues for multiple meanings go beyond the mere observation that he is interested in multiplying rather than limiting possible meanings of the text. In each of these additional examples, Nyssen arrives at multiplicity of meaning by moving from a literal to a spiritual meaning. When discussing our hungering and thirsting after justice (Matt. 5:6), Gregory again has recourse to two distinct meanings. First, he maintains that hungering for justice means following Jesus, whose “food is to do the will of [the one] who sent [him]” (John 4:34), which really means that, along with Jesus, we hunger for our salvation.27 Although justice is simply one of the virtues, Gregory maintains that all the others are included as well. “Every virtue,” he explains, “is here comprised under the name of justice.”28 When he reaches this point, however, Gregory makes a jump. “If we would venture on a bolder interpretation,” he comments, “it seems to me that through the ideas of virtue and justice the Lord proposes Himself to the desire of His hearers.”29 In other words, the beatitude concerning justice speaks not just of human virtue but also of our participation in divine justice. Gregory is convinced that since all
virtue ultimately resides in the Second Person of the Trinity, in the Word, we must identify the Word as our food. God offers himself as the eternal bread and as the living water that satisfies us. God, the Logos himself—Virtue, that is, with a capital V—offers himself to us as our food and drink.30
The two meanings are connected. The first meaning presents the plain sense that we are to hunger and thirst for justice (or for virtue in general). Nyssen then moves from the various shapes that virtue takes in our lives—at a horizontal level among human beings—to the ultimate reality of Virtue itself. To reach for Virtue itself, Gregory’s exegesis requires contemplation or theoria. He must make an anagogical or upward move, we might say; he must ascend, vertically, in order to identify the ultimate identity and meaning of Virtue in the eternal Word of God. Gregory reaches from historia to theoria by means of the Christian Platonist insight that the numerous human virtues unite in the unity of the one, eternal Word of God.
The remaining two examples function in similar fashion. When he explains the beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matt. 5:7), Gregory explains that what he terms the “obvious” meaning calls us to mutual charity and sympathy.31 A few paragraphs further down, however, he wants to “disregard the obvious meaning” in order “to let our mind penetrate the interior of the veil.”32 This language—both the reference to the “interior” and the reference to Moses’ veil (2 Cor. 3:13-18)—makes clear that Gregory again has in mind a move from historia to theoria. The spiritual meaning, in this case, is the duty of the soul to have mercy not on disadvantaged people but on one’s own soul. After all, “what is more pitiable than this captivity? Instead of enjoying paradise, we have been allotted this unwholesome place where to live and toil; instead of being impassible, we have been doomed to passions without number.”33 Our fall into sin, Gregory insists, requires that we have mercy on our souls. The church’s overall teaching—in this case the doctrine of sin—provides for Gregory the material from which to move to a higher, spiritual meaning of the text. Gregory is happy to accept both the “obvious” and the “interior” meanings of the text. “Either is equally good,” he says, “to have pity on oneself in the matter aforesaid [i.e., theoria] and to sympathize with the misfortunes of our neighbours [i.e., historia].”34
Finally, the “peacemakers” who shall be called “sons of God” (Matt. 5:9) are first of all those who are peaceful in relation to other people. Peace—as opposed to hatred—refers to “a loving disposition towards one’s neighbour.”35 In an attempt to highlight the great importance of peacemaking, Gregory presents a marvelous picture of the face of someone who, instead of being a peacemaker, falls prey to the passion of wrath. (“The eyes protrude from under their confining
lids, staring bloodshot like dragons at the offending object; the inside is compressed, panting for breath, the veins in the throat swell and the tongue thickens. Since the windpipe is straitened, the voice automatically becomes rasping.”36 The description goes on at some length.) This surface meaning is the one on which Gregory focuses in particular: “Our sermon need not be too much concerned with the profound spiritual sense of the passage; the obvious meaning is all we need to acquire this marvellous thing.”37 Nonetheless, toward the very end, Gregory does explain that “perhaps” this beatitude does contain also a deeper theological truth; there may also be a reference to the peace between “flesh and spirit” in human nature, with the former obeying the latter, so that human nature becomes more like God, who himself is “not composite but simple.”38 Much as with the explanation of mercy, so also here Gregory’s spiritual interpretation moves from outward, interpersonal relations to the inner nature of the human person.
The life of virtue is crucially important to the church fathers. This emphasis forms one of the greatest obstacles for today’s readers to appreciate their writings. This is the case particularly for Protestants, who have learned to take the sola gratia (by grace alone) of the Reformation as their starting point. As a result, we are inclined to look askance at patristic writings that display what we intuitively feel is too great an eagerness to instill virtue.39 We worry such eagerness may fall prey to moralism, perhaps even to salvation by works. The grid with which, sometimes subconsciously, we approach the fathers can make it difficult for us to warm up to them.
There is no denying this emphasis on virtue. It ties in closely with the difference between symbol and sacrament. A symbol has no more than an external or nominal relationship to the reality that it symbolizes. Think of a driver encountering the road sign of a deer. He is not going to veer away from the road sign for fear of hitting the deer that is symbolized on it. In this scenario, there are no worries about confusing sign X with reality Y. To be sure, the two are related to each other, but the relationship is strictly an external or nominal one. A sacramental relationship, by contrast, implies real presence. Here sign X really participates in reality Y. The sacrament (sacramentum) participates in the reality (res) to which it refers. Or, taking our starting point in the reality, we could say that the reality has real presence in the sacrament. Moving well
beyond positing a merely external or nominal relationship, sacramentalism argues for a participatory or real connection between sacrament and reality.40
This distinction between symbol and sacrament is of importance for our understanding both of salvation and of biblical interpretation. Let’s begin with salvation. Earlier we saw X as a deer; but let’s instead take X as Christ and Y as the believer. The question is, how can we say that something belonging to X belongs also to Y? For example, how can we say that Christ’s righteousness (or Christ’s virtue, for that matter) belongs also to the believer? The Reformation tradition has at times responded that in the case of Christ’s righteousness or virtue, X relates to Y very much in the way the deer on a road sign relates to a deer in the forest. In both cases, there is an external or nominal relationship. Just as no one is going to confuse the deer on the road sign with a deer in the forest (since they’re only nominally or externally related), so also no one should confuse the righteousness of Christ with the believer himself truly turning into a righteous or virtuous person. Just because Christ himself led a righteous or virtuous life, that doesn’t necessarily make the believer a righteous or virtuous person.
This becomes clear when we take the well-known Lutheran notion that the believer is at the same time righteous and sinner (simul iustus et peccator).41 This notion makes clear that the relationship between X and Y (Christ’s righteousness and that of the believer) is nominal in character.42 Sure, the righteousness or virtue of Christ is legally considered to be that of the believer— and the Lutheran tradition has used the language of “imputation” to talk about this legal relationship—but personally, in himself, the believer remains a sinner. The righteousness of Christ is related to the believer only through the rule of law. The relationship is external or nominal. It is wrong, according to certain strands within the Reformation tradition, to insist that justification implies a real or participatory relationship of the believer with the virtues of Christ.
One can appreciate detractors of the Lutheran Reformation asking the question: But doesn’t the grace of God change believers internally? Don’t we actually become virtuous or righteous when we put on Christ? When Luther likened the relationship between X and Y (between the virtue of Christ and our virtue) to Boaz’s cloak covering Ruth and to a mother hen’s wings covering her chicks, these external metaphors did little to reassure the anxious worries of his Catholic opponents.43 Boaz’s cloak may have covered Ruth, but it didn’t change her. The mother hen’s wings may cover her chicks, but that doesn’t change them. Opponents of the Lutheran Reformation wanted more than just a nominal or external relationship between the cloak and Ruth or between the hen’s wings and the chicks: they insisted on a real or participatory relationship.44
It’s no sense painting the Reformation tradition any darker than necessary. Many in the late Middle Ages did have the kind of focus on our own internal righteousness that gave the impression that people could earn their salvation simply by doing their natural best.45 It was high time for protests of people such as Luther. Furthermore, the Wittenberg Reformer did recognize the need for good works, as can be seen from his strong opposition in the late 1530s to one of his erstwhile followers, antinomian theologian Johann Agricola.46 Also, Luther and Calvin both recognized the importance of union with Christ, to the point that some scholars today insist that the notion of deification can be found in the magisterial Reformers.47 Nonetheless, despite the importance of “union with Christ” language in the Reformers, I am not entirely convinced by this scholarship. While both Luther and Calvin no doubt recognized the importance of union with Christ, the question remains: Did they see this as implying that we come to participate in a real way in the righteousness of Christ? This is the old conflict between imputed righteousness (emphasized by the Reformers) and imparted righteousness (highlighted by the Catholic Church). It seems to me that the Reformers generally did not look at salvation in terms of human beings beginning to share or participate in the eternal virtue of Christ himself. And it is fair, I think, to ask whether perhaps Luther’s own articulations of justification gave occasion for some of his followers to express their aberrant views.
Our approach to the virtues is colored by this sixteenth-century debate about whether our relationship to Christ and his righteousness is only nominal and external or also real and participatory. We need to keep in mind that this early modern debate was outside the scope of Gregory, Augustine, and Pope Leo. I am convinced that each of them (especially Saint Augustine) had a high view of divine grace. But they were not concerned with the dilemmas that arose at the time of the Reformation. These fathers assumed a participatory view of reality, and this allowed them to attribute a significant role to human virtues (as participating in divine virtue) without thereby capitulating to a Pelagian mindset. Sometimes this emphasis on the virtues and on free will appears (especially in Saint Gregory) as though it is quite optimistic with regard to our natural capacities.48 This may well come across as problematic to later heirs of the Reformation. Again, we need to recall that the church fathers did not think of human virtue as autonomous and separate from God’s grace: they regarded human virtue as sharing in the character of God. Any thought of earning one’s own salvation would have been alien to them. Rather than read them through the lens of later sixteenth-century Protestant-Catholic debates, we should instead appreciate that, in terms of salvation, each of these fathers insisted on a real or participatory understanding of virtue.
What this means concretely is that for Gregory, Augustine, and Leo, growth in virtue is growth in perfection and as such growth in the life of God. This understanding makes salvation (our sharing in God’s life) identical to growing in virtue. Salvation is, on this understanding, a process. So we would never read in Saint Augustine something like the following: “I got saved twenty years ago when I was in Milan listening to the preaching of Ambrose.” This is not to deny that a truly miraculous, divine event took place in Milan. It is not to say Augustine didn’t get converted in Milan. He quite clearly did. In an important sense, it is even true that for Augustine the process of salvation began in Milan. But precisely because that’s where salvation began, this also meant for Augustine that the process itself had only just started. Salvation, for our authors, is a process of growing in virtue, and so a growing in perfection and in the life of God. Salvation is a process of changing ever more to become like God.
Salvation, to go back to the terms I used earlier, is the process in which our real or participatory relationship with God gets worked out. For none of these authors is salvation something that has been decided once and for all simply by means of an external or nominal declaration.
We need to take the application of the distinction between symbol and sacrament one step further: it is crucial not only for the doctrine of justification but also for the interpretation of Scripture. As we saw earlier, Stephen Fowl makes a distinction between “virtue-through-interpretation” and “virtue-in-interpretation.”49 With the former, virtue-through-interpretation, he means that in the fathers’ understanding, interpretation leads to virtue. The latter, virtue-ininterpretation, speaks of the need to have developed proper virtues by the time we come to Scripture, if we are to read it rightly. I am interested here especially in virtue-through-interpretation, interpretation leading to virtue.
Virtue, for the fathers, is the aim of interpretation. Any interpretation that does not lead to growth in virtuous habits is, according to patristic exegesis, not interpretation that is worthy of God. If the Christian life is a journey into ever-deeper communion with God, then Scripture is the guide on this journey. “In this light,” says Fowl, “Scripture plays a dual role. It articulates the shape and nature of the virtues. Further, as Christians interpret and embody their interpretations of Scripture, Scripture becomes a vehicle to help in the formation of virtues, so that Christians are moved ever closer to their true end.”50 Scripture, for the fathers, is an aid—a means of grace (or a sacrament)—that assists in the development of
virtue. If Scripture really has this function, it becomes imperative to approach the text with the question in mind of how it might assist in the development of virtue. It is because salvation is not just a nominal or external but also a real or participatory process that this becomes a central question.
It should not surprise us, then, to find that the Beatitudes, for the church fathers, are all about the virtues. The fathers don’t see the Beatitudes as describing the plight of people who are going through a rough time here and now and as subsequently insisting that these same people will nonetheless be rewarded—either paradoxically in and through the very suffering they endure or in the promised life hereafter. Yes, the Beatitudes do talk about suffering—after all, they speak about mourning, about hunger, about persecution, all of which involve suffering of some kind. But Gregory, Augustine, and Leo all insist that when the Beatitudes speak of suffering, this suffering is primarily an occasion for the training and development of virtue. Far from taking our present circumstances (even situations of terrible suffering) as matters of ultimate concern, the church fathers were convinced that what is at stake is our need— regardless of the situation—to enter into and to develop a real, participatory relationship with God and with the virtues of God. Sometimes the readings of the church fathers may strike us as oddly single-minded in their approach. Especially when we read Saint Gregory of Nyssa, we may well wonder: Is there any passage that does not speak of the virtues? The answer to that question is: probably not. For Gregory, everything in Scripture relates to virtue; he took with utmost seriousness Saint Paul’s claim that all of Scripture is useful for “training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16).
If we turn to three of the descriptions that are obviously related to suffering (mourning, hungering, and thirsting), it is easy to see how the fathers read them as descriptions of virtue. For Gregory, we already saw, those who mourn are either people who mourn for their previous lives of sin or people who mourn because they are unable to grasp the ineffable God. Either way, the mourning is an incentive to continue on the path toward God. Augustine seems to oscillate between two understandings of mourning. First he explains that it refers to the mourning of people who have converted and are now grieving the things they used to hold dear.51 A little later he suggests that what is mourned is “the loss of the highest goods,” a loss of which one becomes aware once one has attained the knowledge of Scripture.52 On either reading, mourning has nothing to do with the suffering that others inflict on us, and has everything to do with repentance and the process of salvation. Finally, for Leo, mourning speaks about the “religious grief” that laments one’s own iniquity.53 Again, mourning is about repentance from vice and about turning to virtue. With this understanding of
mourning, Leo takes the logical step of suggesting that “he that does wrong is more to be deplored than he who suffers it.”54 Leo goes so far as to exclude explicitly the notion that the mourning described by Jesus might be caused by other people inflicting suffering on believers.
None of the three church fathers interprets the promise of satisfaction for those who “hunger and thirst for righteousness” as expressing a desire for God to punish one’s adversaries or to redress the injustice inflicted upon them. Gregory dismisses such an interpretation by rejecting the classical understanding of righteousness or justice as “the disposition to distribute equally to each, according to his worth.”55 This understanding of justice as rendering to each person what is due to him is “completely refuted by the inequality of life,” insists Gregory.56 Lazarus, entirely without authority to administer anything, could never be just if justice were a matter of fair distribution.57 Gregory therefore spiritualizes justice as a reference to doing the will of the Father (John 4:34). Since the will of the Father is that all be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), Nyssen concludes that salvation is the justice for which we hunger.58
Saint Augustine uses the same text of John 4:34 (“My food is to do the will of him who sent me”), and he too explains that hungering and thirsting for righteousness means to long for eternal life. People who hunger and thirst for righteousness are “lovers of a true and indestructible good.”59 They “labour” with “vehement exertion” and “fortitude” to “wrench” themselves away from earthly entanglements.60 The virtuous life is a process of hard labor. Along similar lines, Saint Leo maintains that the righteousness we seek is “nothing bodily, nothing earthly.”61 Instead, it has to do with being “filled with the Lord Himself,” in accordance with the psalmist’s words: “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet” (Ps. 33 [34]:8).- Hungering and thirsting for righteousness, each of these theologians maintains, has nothing to do with asking God to alleviate unjust material suffering; it has everything to do with the development of the virtuous life.
It is clear that we are dealing here with a theological or spiritual interpretation that is much more interested in the purpose of interpretation than in the historical meaning of the text. Furthermore, when we ask what kind of theology sets the agenda, it is obviously one in which salvation is a process of growth in virtue and perfection, so that one may be fitted for the kingdom of heaven. The theology of participation in the life of God dominates the way in which the text is approached and therefore determines also the range of possible meanings of the text.