Monday, November 27, 2023

Michael F. Bird and Kirsten H. Mackerras on Salvation in the Epistle to Diognetus

  

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)

 

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