Sunday, June 20, 2021

Philippe De La Trinité on lutron (λυτρον)

 

 

The term, lutron (λυτρον), can mean “ransom.” There is no reason why St. Paul should not have been inspired by the well-attested Greek custom of emancipating slaves through the payment of a ransom; on the other hand, it is not the emancipation of the Corinthians that he wishes to emphasize so much as “the new bonds which attach them to Christ and make them his property . . . “We have, therefore, for St. Paul, become God’s property in virtue of a contract whose every condition has been fulfilled, especially that which the Apostle does not fail to mention, the fact that the price has been paid (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23). But, as Fr. Prat so rightly observes, “the metaphor is not carried too far, and no one intervenes to demand or receive the price.” In particular, one is certainly not entitled to conclude from these expressions of St. Paul that he wishes to represent the redemption as a king of commercial barter, in which the jailer refuses to release his prisoner and the vendor his goods save on the condition of losing nothing.

 

The term, lutron, may also mean any instrument of deliverance without there being any question of paying a ransom, and even when this is positively excluded. This usage often occurs in the Judaeo-Greek literature contemporary which Christ, and even more often than not in the New Testament. Lutron, therefore, is far from always meaning that a price has been paid.

 

Paul goes beyond the juridical notion of punishment. For this does not take into account the attitude of the person condemned and whether he accepts his punishment or revolts against it; in either case justice is assured as soon as he receives it; “justice is done.” But for St. Paul and the whole New Testament, on the contrary, Christ’s Passion and death only have value through the voluntary acceptance of the person who suffers them . . . What, in fact, St. Paul seems to see above all in Christ’s death is the clearest possible proof of the Father’s love for men and of Christ’s love for his Father—in the form of obedience—and for us. . . . His death and the circumstances of that death were, in reality, the proving, or, if one prefers, the “mediation” of his obedience and love. (Robert et Feuillet, “La soteriologie paulinienne,” II, 880. 881)

 

This redemption was costly for him since it was the Lamb who was slain who bought men for God at the price of his blood out of every tribe, language, people and nation. (Rev 5:9). (Philippe De La Trinité, What is Redemption? [Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road, 2021], 105-6)