Salvation. For the author, salvation is God’s “great
and marvelous plan” communicated to God’s child and executed through this
child, somewhat akin to Reformed theologies of a pactum salutis between
Father and Son (8.9-9.1). In all things, God is motivated by love and mercy
(9.2; 10.1), salvation expresses his goodness and operates in his power (9.2,
6), with the apparent delay of salvation due to God’s patience with human
iniquity aid ignorance (8.7; 9.1). When put in christological coordinates,
salvation means sharing in the Son’s “benefits” (8.11). This salvation can be
abbreviated as the “kingdom” (9.1; 10.2). This salvation can be abbreviated as
the ”kingdom” (9.1; 10.2), the “present season of righteousness” (9.1), the “mysteries
of God” (10.7), and in the homilies as “grace” and the “Passover of the Lord”
(11.5-7; 12.9).
Put negatively, salvation is from the “former
reason of unrighteousness” (9.1), where people become like idols (2.5), were
enslaved to false gods (2.10), were characterized by undisciplined impulses and
lust (9.1), powerless to help themselves (9.1, 6), mired in unrighteousness,
lawlessness, guilt, injustice, godlessness, and corruption (9.2-5), and worthy
of judgment, punishment, and death, the real death, which is eternal fire
(7.6; 9.2; 10.7). Put positively, salvation is expressed in several images,
including an initiation into the mystery of Christian piety (4.6; 7.1), joining
the Christian genos (5.1-17), entering the “kingdom” (9.1; 10.2), and
being transformed in love for God and love for others (10.3-8). Salvation means
one attains “life” (9.6) and “life in heaven” (10.7), as well as “knowledge”
through faith (8.1, 6, 11; 10.3).
Salvation is very much at the divine
initiative by God sending his Son, who comes with persuasion not compulsion, by
calling rather than persecuting (7.2-5). Salvation is also by faith alone (8.6;
9.6; 10.1) and in the Son alone (9.4). Diogn. 9.2-5 provides one of the
most penetrating descriptions of atonement and justification in all of
patristic literature.
He himself gave up his own Son as a
ransom for us, the holy for the lawless, the innocent for the wicked, the
righteous for the unrighteous, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the
immortal for the mortal. For what else but his righteousness could have covered
our sins? In whom else was it possible for us, the lawless and ungodly, to be
justified except in the Son o God alone? O the sweet exchange, O the
inscrutable work of God, O the unexpected blessings, in order that the
lawlessness of many should be hidden in one righteous person, while the
righteousness of one should justify many lawless ones. (trans. M. Bird)
The view of the atonement is certainly
not “moral influence theory” and undoubtedly a “ransom” view of some variety.
Beyond that, the atonement is evidently substitutionary with the Son dying “for”
sinners, not in the bland sense of merely benefiting them by his death, but
specially through an “exchange” (antallagē) with the Son dying in place
of others. If this substitutionary death is correlated with divine judgment
against the wickedness spoken about elsewhere in the letter, then the atonement
also has an implicit penal aspect too (7.6; 9.2; 10.7). That said, the author’s
emphasis is on the effects of the atonement, not its mechanism.
A looming question is whether the justification
spoken about is strictly forensic or encompasses a broader suite of saving
images.
Brian Arnold has argued that Diogn.
“presents a forensic view of justification that is rooted in race and stems
from substitutionary atonement” and “Sin was imputed to Christ via his substitutionary
atonement and his righteousness was imputed to sinners for their justification.”
(Brian J. Arnold, Justification in the Second Century [Waco, TX: Baylor University
Press, 2018], 78, 101) We’d aver that there is certainly a forensic aspect
since the Son’s righteousness covers over lawlessness, it reverses one’s status
from wickedness to innocence, because a person’s lawlessness is hidden in the
righteous one and the Son’s righteousness in turn justifies the lawless.
However, there is no deployment of Pauline language for “counting/reckoning” (logizomai)
of righteousness, no reference to union with Christ, and no mention of Christ’s
representative obedience. (Meecham, Diognetus, 25; Bird, “Reception of
Paul,” 87) Imputed righteousness/justification language stands as the reversal,
not only of guilt (akadkos), lawlessness (anomos), and
unrighteousness (adikos), but also of godlessness (asebēs),
corruption (phthartos), and mortality (thnētos). In addition, “justification”
(dikaioō) has its conceptual analogue in “be made worthy” (axioō)
in 9.1 where the author contrasts human deeds, which render a person as “unworthy
of life” with God’s goodness and power, which render a person as “worthy” to
enter the kingdom of God. While justification necessitates a forensic change in
status from lawless to righteous, so too is a change implied in moral state
from godlessness to being worthy of life, and from corruption to a fitness to
receive immortality. Thus, justification/righteousness in Diagn. 9.2-5—functions—much
like dikaioō does for Paul in Rom 8.30—as a metonym for God’s redeeming
and rectifying action in the Son.
In the homilies, salvation is due to
God sending the “Word,” (11.2-3), Mary’s fidelity over Eve’s disobedience
(12.8), and the effects of “grace” in the church (11.5). This grace is reserved
for “those who seek” (11.5), who love God “as they should” (12.1), and who have
gained knowledge and seek life (12.6). Grace might even be a circumlocution of
the Holy Spirit since grace rejoices over the faithful and should not be
grieved (11.5, 7). The results of salvation are “understanding” and “knowledge”
(11.5; 12.4-7). The saved are considered a “paradise of delight” in the sense
of being spiritually fruitful (12.1). (Michael F. Bird and Kirsten H.
Mackerras, “The Epistle to Diognetus and the Fragment of Quadratus,” in The
Cambridge Companion to the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Michael F. Bird and Scott
D. Harrower [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021], 322-24)