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Participation and Righteousness in Paul and Gregory of Nyssa – A Conversation with Dr. Joshua Heavin
27 Plays20 days ago
In this episode of the Dionysius Circle podcast, I explore with New Testament scholar Dr. Joshua Heavin his recent article on participation in Christ and divine and human righteousness. Drawing from both Paul’s letters and the theology of St. Gregory of Nyssa, we examine how righteousness is not merely a moral property but, at its deepest level, a person — Christ himself. We also unpack Gregory’s fourfold model of participation and how it offers a transformative vision of the Christian life.
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Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Joshua Haven and His Work
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Dynastis Circle Podcast. This episode is with New Testament scholar, Dr. Joshua Haven. He serves as a deacon and curate in the Anglican Church. And we talk about his new article, Participation in Christ and Divine and Human Righteousness, Reading Paul with Gregory of Nyssa.
00:00:18
Speaker
I hope you enjoy the episode.
Dr. Haven's Background and Education
00:00:20
Speaker
I am from West Texas. I was born and raised in Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. And i never imagined i would grow up and get a PhD in New Testament.
00:00:31
Speaker
I, just in terms of being a Christian, was baptized in a Baptist church at a relatively young age, but didn't take a life of following Christ seriously, really, until I was in high school.
00:00:43
Speaker
And I became very involved in church, developed a deep love for scriptures, mainly because that was where I found Christ. And I just couldn't get enough of them and eventually realized that I might be called to serve the church in some capacity and was encouraged to consider going to seminary.
00:01:01
Speaker
And I went to Redeemer Seminary in Dallas, Texas, where I got an MDiv. And that is a school in kind of broadly reformed, influenced by a lot of Presbyterians, but kind of a reformed Catholic school, um small C Catholic um in its aims. And I had just an amazing experience there and about halfway through seminary, I realized that I loved studying the New Testament in depth and that this was maybe something I could do to to contribute to the church, either in writing or in trying
Where Apostle Paul Teaches Participation in Christ
00:01:34
Speaker
to teach others. And.
00:01:35
Speaker
Oh, fantastic. And yeah, that's kind of what we're talking about today is your recent article on participation in Christ through the lens of St. Gregory of Nyssa.
00:01:46
Speaker
And, um, Maybe to set the stage, we could just talk about, you know, if someone asked you to point to one or two passages where Paul kind of most clearly teaches that we participate in Christ, where would you begin and you why would you begin there? Yeah.
00:02:05
Speaker
This is such an and amazing question, and I'm going to directly answer it first, but then speak a bit more broadly about it. So for two passages on participation in Christ, um two two of the most, and I'm not even going to suggest these are the most important ones or these are the only ones that matter.
00:02:22
Speaker
These are just amazing ones. I find them utterly captivating. i'm ah I've been obsessed with them for a very long time. But in Romans chapter six, Paul has just finished talking about the triumph of God's grace over sin and death.
00:02:36
Speaker
And he he raises this rhetorical question. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Since there's grace, should we just go on sinning essentially?
00:02:47
Speaker
By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
00:03:07
Speaker
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Union with Christ in Paul's Letters
00:03:13
Speaker
We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
00:03:21
Speaker
And Paul goes on to talk about how the Spirit manifests the the resurrection life of Christ in us. And this is an amazing passage because Paul doesn't just say, Christ died for us. Christ died in our place, though Paul certainly says that in a bunch of other texts. Here he turns to his ah his listeners and says that the death of Christ was your own death. You are so joined with Jesus. You are so united with him. You so participated in the event of his crucifixion and resurrection that it those events become your own crucifixion and resurrection.
00:03:55
Speaker
like and he He follows that up in in chapter 7, verse 13. um five where he talks about verse chapter seven, verse six, that we died with Christ.
00:04:07
Speaker
Another amazing passage is autobiographical from Paul, basically, in Galatians 2. He is responding to Peter, and I'm not here going to give you my whole reading of Galatians and the controversy at Galatians, but um and in Galatians 2, chapter 15 through 21, there's a very densely interconnected argument.
00:04:28
Speaker
It's hard to pull apart individual verses from it. But Paul's responding to Peter in this controversy about how Jewish Christ believers and Gentile Christ believers are to relate to one another.
00:04:40
Speaker
And Paul's talking about justification. But he turns at verse 19 and says, "'I through the law have died to the law in order that I might live to God.'" I have been crucified with Christ, Galatians 2.20.
00:04:55
Speaker
I live, but no longer I, but Christ lives in me. And that which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
00:05:07
Speaker
and these In these passages, and and you see similar stuff in Galatians 6.14, also in Galatians 5.24 talks about how flesh has been co-crucified with Christ. In 6.14, Paul talks about how he doesn't want to boast in anything except the cross of Christ, by which the cosmos was crucified to me and I to the cosmos.
00:05:27
Speaker
So... These are very stark passages. They are so arresting in their language. Co-crucifixion with Christ. i mean, other instances of that verb in the New Testament are in the Gospels where the the the robbers or the bandits, depending upon how you want to translate it the other people who were crucified alongside of Jesus.
00:05:51
Speaker
Paul's using that language to talk about being in Christ. These are passages which really clearly locate the believers as incorporated into Christ's own death and resurrection.
00:06:03
Speaker
and Passages which are more clear about sharing in Christ's resurrection are in Ephesians chapter two. You've been raised with Christ. You are already seated with him in heaven. or colossians chapter 2 and chapter 3 that if then you have been raised with christ seek the things that are above where christ is seated at the right hand of god you have died your life is hidden with him hidden with christ and god when christ who is your life appears you will appear with him in glory and um you know there are different ways that you so speaking more broadly after having given a couple of examples of of participatory passages
00:06:39
Speaker
The theme of union with Christ and participation in Christ can be difficult to define in Paul's letters because it is such an expansive thing.
Challenges in Defining Participation in Christ
00:06:49
Speaker
There's a lot of scholarship in New Testament studies on participation with Christ.
00:06:53
Speaker
And to give you just an example of the problem I'm trying to name, Constantine Campbell wrote a book, I think in 2011, Union with Christ and Paul, and it is basically a big attempt to provide a taxonomy for Union with Christ and Paul.
00:07:08
Speaker
So you could just simply look at all the prepositions that Paul uses. Paul talks about being in Christ. He talks about things that are from Christ or of Christ or how God works through Christ.
00:07:22
Speaker
And all the different Greek prepositions, en, dia, et cetera, they're used related to that. um More recent scholarship on that are by people such as Teresa Morgan of Oxford fairly recently, but now at Yale and Barbara Beyer. Their work on
00:07:40
Speaker
being determined by Christ or being in the hands of Christ. And so there there are passages that are um but maybe even well-known. Second Corinthians 517, you know, vacation Bible school, little kids sometimes memorize this. If anyone is in Christ, he he or she is a new creation or in Greek, just if anyone is in Christ, bam, new creation. There's there's no he or she in the Greek. It's just if you're in Christ, you're you're sharing in the new creation.
00:08:07
Speaker
um You know, in Christ, there's Paul rarely uses the word Christian, and sometimes in Christ is just simply um talking about being associated with Christ in some ways. But at other times, it's a much more profound thing.
00:08:21
Speaker
And I could talk more in a minute maybe about the history of scholarship on participation in Christ. But it's such an expansive thing that it can be challenging to
Relationship Between God and Creation
00:08:29
Speaker
summarize. And I think Constantine Campbell's helpful attempt at a taxonomy simply notes that You know, some of the passages I just mentioned maybe are more talking about something like incorporation into an and an event, like sharing the Christ's crucifixion, resurrection.
00:08:45
Speaker
Whereas, you know, there are other passages in Paul. um I if you're looking at passages like. Romans 11 and how all things are from and through and to God or Colossians chapter one. that That's kind of like something like a doctrine of creation or metaphysics or ontology. if it If it's anachronistic to read Paul and use theological language, you can nonetheless say Paul thinks everything is upheld by Christ.
00:09:09
Speaker
Paul thinks everything comes from Christ and is somehow being directed to Christ.
Dr. Haven's Study of Righteousness and Gregory of Nyssa
00:09:14
Speaker
But that's different from this other kind of union you can have with Christ where a a sinner is sharing in his crucifixion and resurrection to become part of the new creation.
00:09:25
Speaker
Like you said you know some of this passage are kind of event-related. So Romans 6.4, it seems like you know when Christ is buried, the subject of that is Christ. He's the one being buried.
00:09:38
Speaker
But then we're getting this idea that you were buried with him, or in his burial, you were also buried, you might think. And so there, what's surprising is that, yeah, it's not just Christ who is being buried, but somehow...
00:09:54
Speaker
you are also in that event and somehow are the subject of that event, I guess. And so one idea is like participation might be the way of describing what underwrites that, like in the sense of like, how is it possible that when Christ dies, we are also dying?
00:10:13
Speaker
Well, you might think maybe it's like participation is going to maybe explain how that's working. So I just had that one thought. And then the other thing I was just thinking, it's you know, um you you bring up the prepositions.
00:10:27
Speaker
I was just thinking about all the different kind of prepositions you can use to talk about the relationship between God and creation.
00:10:40
Speaker
And so it occurred to me that probably the most obvious one that people might want to use is above. God is above us. um I mean, you get a Psalm that has that for you, Lord are high above all the earth.
00:10:56
Speaker
So there, you know, you have God being above. um There's some stuff about behind, like, um i think a God is behind Abraham and at some point, walk before me faithfully, he says.
00:11:11
Speaker
And then anyway, there's a bunch of different prepositions you can use, but I guess the the participation type stuff is really um coming with the preposition in.
00:11:24
Speaker
Because ah was looking at, um i mean, I don't know if you agree with that, but I was looking at um John B. McDonald as a blog, and he pointed out that you get the phrase in Christ, in Christo, 76 times in the New Testament.
00:11:41
Speaker
And then you have even more related to in him through Christ or with Christ. Anyway, so basically, there's just so anyway, you can kind of just think about these different prepositions. And then the other thing I wanted to mention, just ah curious curious what you hear, is that if you think about intimacy.
00:11:59
Speaker
Right. Ranking those prepositions in terms of intimacy, that's kind of interesting, because above that seems to be the least intimate. Okay, behind. Okay, we're getting more intimate. Upon is another kind of interesting one. Like, anyway, you think about the Holy Spirit being came coming upon them in Acts.
00:12:17
Speaker
Anyway, it's like you the most intimate seems to be in. So anyway, it's just interesting think about participation using the word n the preposition in, and how that ah connects to like,
00:12:29
Speaker
I mean, is there more intimate of a relationship you can imagine between God and his creation than what's suggested by him? Anyway, that's just kind of a comment, but I'd be curious what you think about that.
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah, but that's a ah really profound meditation because Paul is in particular, everything he writes is heavily influenced by his early Jewish context, especially the language of the,
00:12:57
Speaker
the Hebrew Bible, the scriptures of Israel, and and the the Greek Old Testament um translation of it, and by his Greco-Roman philosophical milieu. So everywhere Paul goes around the ancient Mediterranean, he bumps into...
00:13:12
Speaker
a god. It's it's statue. um Idols are just everywhere. And Paul, according to the Acts of the Apostles, apparently could quote Greco-Roman philosophers. He was so familiar with that world.
00:13:25
Speaker
And he is eminently aware of pantheist ideas and panentheist ideas. And I think that is important to note things that he he is and is, both things that Paul allows and things that Paul rules out with his prepositions that he does want to talk about how,
00:13:47
Speaker
um I mean, if I'm going to use the later language of Thomas Aquinas, the exodus et retitus of all of creation for and passages such as Romans 11, that all things are from, through, and to God. there's There's not a notion there that,
00:14:05
Speaker
All things are deified necessarily in the sense that that David Price- Creation and creator are equated. David Price- Nor is there this um just utter separation as if there's just a reality like a bare material reality and then God is off somewhere else. David Price- it's this very
00:14:28
Speaker
it like it pauls Paul's approach to how creation participates in the creator is significantly informed by a distinction between creator and creation. And you sometimes hear people kind of write off how important that is for Paul.
00:14:41
Speaker
It's explicitly mentioned in passages such as Romans 1.25, where Paul talks about those... who exchanged the truth about God for a lie, worshiped and served the creation rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
00:14:54
Speaker
And people will sometimes kind of say, oh, that's just a throwaway line. But it really is an animating structure of Paul's thought. And you find it all throughout. ah even Even if we just stay in Romans, I mean, the kind of,
00:15:07
Speaker
mountaintop passage of the epistle in Romans 8 on how God's love, the love of God in Christ is inalienable from us. And he talks about how nothing else in all of creation can separate us from
Insights from Gregory of Nyssa on Paul
00:15:20
Speaker
the love of God in Christ.
00:15:21
Speaker
You see this key pillar of Pauline thought there as well on the difference between creator and creation but creation has its being um by b through its sharing in god through through its participation in god and um
00:15:38
Speaker
In Paul, that is never worked out into a big system. You know, we have from Paul occasional epistles. um We have these extant fragments of his writings. theres There's so much more that we wish we could know from Paul.
00:15:52
Speaker
And the fathers of the church, I think, very thoughtfully perceived some of the inner logic of Paul's thought when they spoke about the relation but between creator and creation in terms of words such as participation.
00:16:07
Speaker
um that there' is a a there's not an equation, creation is not equated with God, nor is it just some completely different reality that has its existence apart from God, but it's it's upheld and and it emerges from God. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to think about the is of identity. So if I say, you know, H2O is water, I'm using is in a sort of like, we're just saying H2O is identical to water, um, versus saying, ah Christ is in you.
00:16:52
Speaker
um you are not identifying Christ and you there. there's You're assuming a difference. But in terms of the intimacy that's implied by the in, it seems like at least that's more intimate than a phrase like um the Lord being above you or behind you.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah, I know that in the the Greek translation of Deuteronomy that and I'm not necessarily claiming that's the root of Paul's use of N language.
00:17:33
Speaker
But when it talks about how the Lord your God is in in the midst of you, that it uses that N language. And that's definitely there. And yeah. I mean, a lot of the expectation about the new covenant in the Old Testament too is so deeply intimate as well that my spirit, I'll change your heart.
00:17:53
Speaker
I'll take out the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh and put my spirit in your midst. The breath of God is going to be in his people. Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah. Paul is especially influenced by the nuptial imagery, the the marital union between God and his people in the Old Testament, which reaches this pinnacle, which reaches its eschatological fulfillment in the union of Christ and the church. And particularly in the passage you're referring to from 1 Corinthians 6, that Paul
00:18:26
Speaker
that what we do with our bodies now matters because we have we have a bodily union with the Lord, which for Paul, also another crucial structure of the intimacy of God and his people is the temple.
00:18:38
Speaker
Paul says that the way that, like a key way that God is in you is that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, the same way that God was present within the temple.
00:18:50
Speaker
The Holy Spirit thus is present in your bodies. So what you do with your body matters because you are so joined with the Lord that you're basically dragging Christ himself into your into your sin when you're misusing your bodies, paul says in 1 Corinthians 6.
00:19:06
Speaker
And
00:19:08
Speaker
but That's another factor of all the different, of the challenge of talking about union with Christ or participation in Christ and Paul is that there's simply such an array of images used.
00:19:19
Speaker
ah one One scholar loves to use the metaphor of a multifaceted gem to talk about union with Christ, that these are not necessarily competitive images. We don't have to argue that temple is more important than marriage or covenant is more important than
00:19:37
Speaker
kingship or whatever else we want to talk about and as wait things things that are related to union with Christ and Paul. But they combine to make this multifaceted reality that is, according to Gregory of Nyssa, infinite, that that you can look at forever and it'll be inexhaustible.
Themes of Union with Christ in Church Identity
00:19:56
Speaker
Perfect. Yeah. So what would you say, you know, i mean, I think in your article, you say that um participation in Christ is nevertheless one of the most important themes in Paul's letters. And so, yeah, i mean, if you if you're thinking about Paul's theology as a whole, like what makes participation in Christ so central to it why Why do you see it as so crucial?
00:20:24
Speaker
The reason that participation in Christ is a central theme in Paul's letters is not just that it occurs a lot. you know Our sense of what is important for Paul isn't just a game of statistics.
00:20:37
Speaker
Though, as you note, the fact that increased of appears so many times is probably a clue that it's not a peripheral concern. But it is the animating, driving structure of Paul's epistles.
00:20:50
Speaker
I am appreciative of the language that a Princeton New Testament scholar in in the 20th century, J. Christian Baker, used to talk about attempts to read Paul. he He said that we can identify the coherence of Paul's thought in its contingent expressions.
00:21:10
Speaker
So the fact that Paul, because New Testament scholars, especially biblical studies people, love to say that Paul was not a systematic theologian. He's not writing dogmatic treatises.
00:21:21
Speaker
And I've gotten kind of tired of hearing that because it's often used to the effect that, you know, if you have theological concerns or or you want to draw theological conclusions from Paul, you're that's just kind of an inadmissible line of thought because Paul was historically situated or something like that.
00:21:40
Speaker
The fact that Paul is historically situated and the fact that he indeed is writing occasional epistles, these contingent addresses and into particular situations, does not mean that it's impossible to identify things that Paul consistently does when he ah when he makes what Baker calls a word on target.
00:22:00
Speaker
You know, 1 Corinthians is a great example of this. Throughout the letter, Paul uses this peri-day Greek construction. and And so in your English Bible, as you're reading 1 Corinthians, you'll see Paul again and again going, now concerning.
00:22:12
Speaker
Now concerning spiritual gifts, now concerning this crazy sexual immorality matter. And he's obviously addressing concerns. But what does he do consistently when he addresses concerns?
00:22:23
Speaker
What does Paul do consistently in 1 Corinthians that you also see him doing in Galatians and Romans?
00:22:30
Speaker
That is an answerable question. And the coherent thing that Paul keeps doing is his his driving theological concerns are focused upon Christ and our sharing in him.
00:22:42
Speaker
And if I were to venture at something approximating a systematic theal theological conclusion about how Paul did theology, it would be that Paul proclaims what Christ, what God has objectively accomplished in Christ and how we subjectively participate in that by the Spirit.
00:23:00
Speaker
You know, a great example of this, I think, is at the very beginning of the epistle to the Romans. And I know Romans is not a i dogmatic treatise, but it's a letter Paul wrote to a church he'd never visited before. And he's kind of setting out some of his main priorities. I think that's a fair conclusion.
00:23:18
Speaker
Even the most hardened, historical, critical person could agree with. And Paul tells you at the very beginning what he is basically about. He's A servant of Christ Jesus called to be an apostle set ah set apart for the gospel of God, which was promised beforehand through his scriptures, in the and through it through his prophets in the holy scriptures.
00:23:37
Speaker
Parry to hui al-tu, about his son. Paul's gospel is a son-centered gospel. proclamation. it It concerns the Son, what God has done in the Son, and how we share in it through the Holy Spirit.
00:23:51
Speaker
And that pertains to how Paul speaks about himself in Philippians when he's suffering, when he's contemplating his own pending death in his imprisonment. Paul talks about union with Christ in profound ways in Philippians, especially in chapter three, that I want to know Christ and share and have fellowship in his sufferings and share in the power of resurrection.
00:24:11
Speaker
Paul does this it makes the same move when there's a huge crisis breaking out in Galatia about Gentiles and Jews, how are they gonna relate to one another? Paul reminds them they've been crucified with Christ and share in his life.
00:24:24
Speaker
To the wayward Corinthians who are, in ah and in a schism, there's division, there's immorality, there's all kinds of crazy stuff happening. And the thing Paul keeps going back to chapter after chapter is and in chapter the early chapters, the logic of the cross. Jesus is the cruciform Messiah. and and he reminds he reminds the corinthians that they share in the crucified lord who's risen from the dead as he addresses all kinds of things from their call to be holy with their bodies to how they think about marriage and singleness and celibacy to whether they should eat food offered to idols he he comes back to participation in christ especially in chapter 10 on how they share in christ in the eucharist and that precludes idolatry
00:25:11
Speaker
and onto spiritual gifts and the rest of it. It's a driving concern throughout his letters. um So those I would say that's the main reason why participation in Christ should be identified as a key structure of Paul's theology.
00:25:26
Speaker
But I, as a a Christian reader of Paul, not just as a scholar of history, but as a as an interpreter of Holy Scripture, want to also have a whole canonical reading of of the scriptures. And I think that you can make a good argument that the union between God and his people is a driving theme throughout the Old Testament, particularly seen in covenantal formulas that I will be your God and you will be my people.
00:25:55
Speaker
And especially in the gospels see in in the in john's gospels the the amazing upper room discourse on abiding in christ christ saying abide in me um sharing in the love and the glory of the father and the son and in jesus high priestly prayer in john 17.
00:26:15
Speaker
um to to a range of other things sure you don't find the same explicit christ in you language in matthew mark and luke um that or it perhaps in in other other parts of the new testament but i think that you can certainly identify following in the way of cry of the cross some kind of notion of union with christ assumed as as something that um Jesus isn't just an exemplar, but Jesus, you know, he finishes Matthew's, the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus says,
00:26:50
Speaker
I will be with you always until the end of the age. You know, what what is that about? Surely there's some kind of notion of Christ being with us and us being with him. That's the pinnacle of the story. So those are those are just a a few highlights.
00:27:05
Speaker
I've tried to do a little work on participation in Christ in Hebrews because there's the explicit description in chapter three of being partakers.
Gregory of Nyssa's Theological Concepts
00:27:15
Speaker
I think it's metahoe. I might've gotten the Greek word slightly wrong there.
00:27:19
Speaker
ah just from memory, but partakers of Christ is a key theme. And certainly in in the the apocalypse of John, that we have earthly participation in in heavenly worship, I think makes makes this ah not just a unique Pauline weird thing, but a a thing that Paul talks about in a distinctive way that has a very whole canon basis to it.
00:27:45
Speaker
Beautiful. Yeah. So just reviewing a couple of things, i'm like, I'm thinking, you know, it underwrites his identity in a way participation. it frames his ethics in a certain sense. A lot of his ethics are turning on the participation idea.
00:28:04
Speaker
um you might think it grounds his soteriology in terms of, of how to explain our salvation in Christ. And, and then I was just thinking too about, you know, you mentioned some things that made me think about like when Paul writes to fellow members in the church, it's like, I feel like part of, don't know, I'm just talking off the top my head here, but like, but part of that addressing is, is under this idea that, you know, we are all one in Christ's body. And so he feel, he can speak boldly and confidently and he can,
00:28:39
Speaker
Anyway, i there's a type of intimacy among the members that is underwritten by participation. um Beautiful. Anyway, so now maybe we can shift and try to bring a couple more themes from your from your ah from your article, which is righteousness and then St. Gregory of Nyssa.
00:29:03
Speaker
I think it might be helpful to try to just give you a little further backstory on myself and the origins of this paper to do so. So think there are two things to highlight. First is that my interest in union with Christ from a long time ago has always been closely bound up with an interest in trying to understand righteousness.
00:29:28
Speaker
So these themes have been the center of a lot of historic divides in the church across time. And for It's probably famously known that Martin Luther really struggled with the phrase righteousness of God in Romans. mark that in His rereading of Romans 1.16 was like a key part of his what later became the Protestant Reformation, the the turn he took.
00:29:54
Speaker
and ah a A reading of Paul that I i became very – a problem i struggled with growing up, um just even as a teenager trying to read the Bible for myself, was that I struggled to make sense of – Things as basic as, you know, Jesus calls everyone to follow him, you know, come, come as you are kind of free grace stuff. But also he says, die to yourself and take up your cross and follow me.
00:30:21
Speaker
What's going on there? And, you know, i I, I knew that, you know, God doesn't welcome us into his kingdom if we've, merited enough sufficient moral performance, but at the same time, there's there are these challenging texts. what What am I supposed to do with how this this passage in Romans 2 is talking about judgment or or whatever?
00:30:43
Speaker
And ah real breakthrough for me was looking at texts such as Romans chapter 4, where Paul says some kind of scandalous stuff. He talks about how Abraham was counted righteous before God.
00:30:57
Speaker
And there's an astonishing description that that bears upon theology proper in Romans 4, 5. God is the one who justifies the ungodly in Romans 4, 5.
00:31:13
Speaker
That has to be heard, that the shock of that has to to come across to us. What do you mean God justifies the ungodly? Does that mean God is unrighteous? God is commending evildoers?
00:31:25
Speaker
You know, it's good news for repentant sinners that God justifies the ungodly because we're all ungodly. ah You know, Romans 3.9, Paul judges that all are under s sin, both Jews and Gentiles.
00:31:37
Speaker
But how can God justify the ungodly? And without going through the whole argument of Romans 4, the end of the chapter very succinctly puts it that Christ Jesus was
00:31:51
Speaker
was delivered up for our trespasses, Romans 4.25, and raised for our justification. I didn't at that, at the time also have a very clear handle on what the resurrection accomplished.
00:32:04
Speaker
Didn't, didn't the death of Christ atone for my sins? And then the resurrection is just this kind of extra miracle that happens or something like that. But as I came to read this passage in and, and,
00:32:15
Speaker
had a developing doctrine of union with christ that began to function for the first time i began to see that there was a real vindication that took place jesus was vindicated by the in the spirit paul it says in the pastoral epistles that he was raised from the dead and he has a real righteousness now which we can can come to share in as our own you know you see a similar interchange logic in passages such as second corinthians 5 21 God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. i began So I began to realize that it's it's Christ himself who is the one who saves. And probably the fa that the the most beloved text for someone like John Calvin on Union with Christ. whenever you read If you ever read Calvin on Union with Christ or you want to know what Calvin thinks about ideas of participation, he always talks about 1 Corinthians 1.30.
00:33:11
Speaker
where Paul writes, because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, righteousness and holiness or sanctification and redemption. In order that as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.
00:33:24
Speaker
So Paul doesn't say in 1 Corinthians 1.30, Christ just gives out righteousness. Christ gives out righteousness. um redemption. Christ himself is redemption. he but He becomes for us those things. And we are in him. You know, this is 1 Corinthians 1.30.
00:33:45
Speaker
Because of God, because of the Father, basically, you are estet en Christoiesi. It was one of those en usages we were talking about from earlier in this conversation. this This set me on a great interest in having a more... I wanted to have a theology that worked like Paul's logic does here, where whatever i'm gonna however I'm going to understand righteousness, it's not just something God hands out or I acquire or something like that.
00:34:16
Speaker
Christ is righteousness. And what does that mean? you know how How can Christ be righteousness and how can I share in it? And id be As I was reading, you know as i just mentioned I was reading Calvin on this stuff, and I began to wonder, what were the fathers of the church doing with this way before all these later debates? what the you know we have the We've inherited these categories from later centuries. What were the fathers of the church doing with
Metaphysical Participation and Divine Simplicity
00:34:41
Speaker
this?
00:34:41
Speaker
And around the same time I'm sneaking through those questions, I received an unbelievable invitation from Father Khaled Anatolios, a professor of theology at University of Notre Dame, to participate in a conference at but Notre Dame's Tantour Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem.
00:34:59
Speaker
And the theme of the conference was on divine and human righteousness in the scriptures. And I felt like I don't know, Queen Esther in the King's Court and the Golden Scepter was extended to me. I couldn't believe that I was, you know, people talk about imposter syndrome in academia, but I thought like, this is a real instance of being an imposter maybe that I, you know, people, the people there were like Walter Moberly and Michael Root and,
00:35:24
Speaker
Brian Dunkel, Susan Gillingham, very good scholars. And i'm I'm here trying to say something about Paul on divine and human righteousness. So I decided I'm just going to lean deeply into this growing interest I've had and trying to see what the fathers would have to say about righteousness and union with Christ. And um i'd done a little bit of work on gregory nissa previously and i started wondering i wonder if i could see how gregory uses a text like first corinthians 1 30. and so what ultimately became this article um from a ah bunch of i basically worked on this thing for three years but um i try i try in the article to give
00:36:08
Speaker
In the in the the first part, an overview of why New Testament scholarship has had a hard time understanding participation in Christ, um how righteousness is debated in New Testament scholarship.
00:36:21
Speaker
In part two, I give an overview of some of the main structures of participation in Gregory of Nyssa's theology. and more could probably have been said about that than is possible in one article but i i outline at least a few of the most important things gregory has to say as a whole about participation and then in part three i turn to looking at in light of these broader assumptions, conclusions, Gregory draws about participation, looking at instances where, where Gregory defines righteousness and especially does so in connection with first Corinthians one 30, where Christ himself becomes righteousness for us. And then at the end, I try to draw a few conclusions from there.
00:37:01
Speaker
So that's a bit, a bit of the backstory of how all the, all these interests combined into one article. Yeah, that's fantastic. And yeah, so looking at one Corinthians one 30,
00:37:13
Speaker
like you said, that's a passage right there that includes both the theme of participation, um you are in Christ Jesus, and then also, yeah this fascinating, what you call, i think you call it like a kind of Christological redefinition of righteousness. And in other words, um righteousness seems to be treated as not just,
00:37:39
Speaker
you know, speaking in connection to God, not just like a quality God has or some, it's not just a good way of describing how God treats us on a more relational level.
00:37:51
Speaker
um Maybe he deals with us righteously in a just manner, but instead, you know, you're pointing to this passage as it looks like it's saying that Christ himself is righteousness, a sort of strong identification between what looks like a sort of abstract concept righteousness and uh christ himself um christ became to us wisdom from god righteousness and sanctification and redemption obviously there's different translations of that passage but anyway yeah so this is you're kind of really honing in on this uh great passage where um it seems like we are identifying christ uh with righteousness and
00:38:36
Speaker
In my doctoral thesis, I was trying to understand participation in Christ in conversation with New Testament scholars. And Richard Hayes, a couple of times across his career, had suggested that people should look at how Gregory of Nyssa uses the word participation to understand it better today.
00:38:55
Speaker
And um I mentioned this in the article. And i I decided at some point, I want to go down that rabbit hole and and and see see what happens. how How does Gregory use that word?
00:39:07
Speaker
he specifically wanted hay suggested looking at metusia as a phrase and there's an amazing study of metusia that participation in god written by david ballas a scholar might be pronounced balas who taught at the university of dallas for a long time and um but i began to realize that the the specific research agenda Hayes was outlining there was maybe not exactly what would be the best course because Gregory uses Matusia, first of all, an enormous number of times.
00:39:42
Speaker
And Second of all, they're not always focused on Paul. He uses to talk about stuff all across the scripture. And third, I mean, this is quickly becoming well beyond even a dissertation-length study of trying to situate all these usages in context and then
Types of Participation in Christ by Gregory
00:39:58
Speaker
integrate them.
00:39:58
Speaker
So I decided what would be a better course of action if you wanted to understand how Gregory read Paul and talked about participation. is you first need some handle on participation in Gregory's thought as a whole, and then maybe you look at some specific instances where he reads Paul, which which is what I try to do here.
00:40:15
Speaker
But on why why go to Gregory in the first place? Because I can imagine someone thinking to themselves, well, you know, people have read Paul for 2,000 years now, and lot of them have had a lot to say about participation and and righteousness, et cetera.
00:40:29
Speaker
Why should we listen to Gregory of Nyssa on these themes? Yeah. And, you know, of course, there I would say plenty of other people that are that are worth consulting. But Gregory is especially interesting because ah for a lot of different reasons. Number one, participation is a massive structure in his theology.
00:40:48
Speaker
And and i had the sense that he has been kind of overlooked as a Pauline interpreter so far. Yeah. Gregory didn't leave us any commentaries on Romans like Origen did, for example.
00:41:04
Speaker
And it's really challenging to identify where all Gregory reads Paul. He left us a huge range of very different genres of writing. Letters, things like the life of Moses, which this is this amazing meditation, um kind of an allegorical reading Paul.
00:41:20
Speaker
ah the life of Moses, but it's definitely not straightforward modern commentary on on Paul or something like that. But Gregory had an imagination that was gripped by not only general themes of participation, but specifically of a Christ-focused participation.
00:41:41
Speaker
um you know he loved to He and the other Cappadocians loved Origen. He collected some of Origen's sayings in the Philokalia. And Origen, had a good handle on the participatory imagination of the New Testament.
00:41:54
Speaker
For example, even in the Gospels, Origen would talk about how Jesus is alto basilea, the kingdom itself, or the kingdom in person, different ways you can try to translate that phrase.
00:42:05
Speaker
And he had a very good handle, too, on how Jesus is alto dikaiosune, righteousness itself. um And Gregory picked up picked up on that from origin, but took it in very helpful helpful ways that I think are worth exploring.
00:42:23
Speaker
And just as the last kind of ecumenical reason that I found this interesting was that... um beyond any historical interest that Gregory might have, I'm sympathetic to people such as Andrew Louth, who in his book, Discerning the Mystery, talk about how the conclusion the theological conclusions that the fathers drew are inextricable from their practices of reading scripture.
00:42:47
Speaker
And I've run across kind of strange conclusions, not by secular religious studies scholars, but things that seem strange to me as a Christian, where Christian interpreters will want to insist upon only using modern critical approaches to studying the Bible while still trying to arrive at somewhat traditional Christian theological convictions.
00:43:08
Speaker
And i I don't think that's necessarily the way. We can certainly learn things from modern approaches to studying the Bible, and I'm not throwing the baby out in the bathwater and saying everything modern is bad. But if we are dismissive and and not even trying to learn in the first place what the reading practices of the fathers are, let alone trying to continue and carry forward the good things that they have do we have to learn from them,
00:43:30
Speaker
then we'll never arrive at the conclusions they drew. And Gregory of Nyssa, as a participant in the the Council of Constantinople, helped make the kind of theology that people around the world say every Sunday when we confess the Nicene Creed in in our churches. And so I think if you have any kind of ecumenical interest at all, then Gregory of Nyssa should be high on your list of people to read a a a great, a very generative resource and thinker for the kind of theology that all Christians have in common.
00:44:02
Speaker
Maybe quickly, like want to touch on you know, why and might be so crucial to define or redefine righteousness Christologically, because some some might wonder what, you know, what's really the significance? Why is it so important ah to think of righteousness um as Christ himself.
00:44:25
Speaker
You know, just simply making the realization that righteousness is redefined Christologically does not yet settle all the problems that might emerge. I mean, luther just to go back to Luther for a moment in the huge crisis he had,
00:44:40
Speaker
if if Christ is righteousness itself, and that only means he's like a righteous judge, and you know that you're a sinner, then that is a terrifying realization. that's That is far from comforting.
00:44:53
Speaker
um yeah mike that That's the bad news, basically. um But for Luther, he he had his his new conclusion he came to was that the righteousness of God was not just distributive, meeting out,
00:45:08
Speaker
what what each person deserves, but it was a kind of saving power revealed from God that allows people to be counted righteous. And for for me, i think a key thing that I came to to appreciate what was kind of from my own background in magisterial reformed Protestantism and things like the Hattelberg Catechism and reading people like John Murray back in the day was that I think it's helpful still to talk about the benefits that we that that are applied to us by the Spirit, that that we appropriate from from what God has objectively accomplished in Christ, that the benefits of redemption are distinct and inseparable, but simultaneously.
00:45:57
Speaker
we we you know From Romans 1, we know that the gospel is primarily about the Son. It's a Son-centered gospel. The gospel is not mainly about the the benefits of salvation, whether it's sanctification or adoption or glorification or justification, whatever, the gospel is Christ himself.
00:46:13
Speaker
It's about the benefactor. But the the thing that like Romans six was hitting at, which we began this conversation with is that the benefits you apprehend in Christ are inseparable from one another.
00:46:24
Speaker
And, you know, we can still distinguish them. Adoption is not the same thing as sanctification. Those are two different things, but you don't have one without the other. And in the same way, justification, however, we're you know, for now pausing on defining it, however we're going to define justification, it's not the same thing as holiness or or sanctification.
00:46:46
Speaker
But you can't have one without the other. To do so, Calvin said, is to, you know, rend Christ asunder. It's to try to, because they're Christ is one, Christ is whole, and you you apprehend the whole of Christ when the Spirit unites you with him.
00:47:01
Speaker
You don't just get a little part of Jesus, the you know, the part that makes you righteous or something like that. so there there So something that, for example, Roman Catholics and Protestants, since the Council of Trent, throughout time, have always held in common is that no one can be justified and not also be pursuing holiness. You know, a Hebrew says, strive after holiness.
00:47:23
Speaker
But Protestants and Catholics have historically differed on how to understand and define what justification still is. Sure, there's no justification without sanctification, but is justification God making us righteous as Augustine translated Paul's language, that it's not...
00:47:42
Speaker
but that God ontologically makes us start living a righteous life? Or is it that we are counted righteous in Christ? i think that I think in history, there's been a lot of confusion about what, for example, Luther was claiming, and especially in talking about a declaration of righteous, as if it can create a legal fiction. God says you're righteous, even though you're really not.
00:48:05
Speaker
But for for Luther also, though Luther talks about union with Christ if and Lutheran tradition does differently than Calvin and and the Reformed. The objective basis, that the thing that's real, the the real righteousness in the Declaration is the righteousness of the risen Christ that he was vindicated, which we come to share in.
00:48:25
Speaker
And you know a great modern contemporary Roman Catholic scholar on all of this is James Prothrow, who's done a lot of um amazing lexical work on justification.
00:48:35
Speaker
and he he is so interesting to me to read on this because he ultimately draws very traditional roman catholic conclusions about what justification is that it that it is making righteous but he rightly identifies a lot of ways that the language paul uses for justification does have some kind of forensic context because the the key context is what James Prothero calls contention.
00:49:06
Speaker
In Hebrew, and the if you read the prophets, you'll you'll see this Hebrew word, rev, which is like a covenant lawsuit. The prophets are sent to call the people of Israel to be faithful to what they had committed themselves to uphold in the covenant. And you know especially in Habakkuk, the people had wandered away and there's ah there's a rev, there's a lawsuit against the people.
00:49:28
Speaker
And Prothero talks about how in justification, God, though though we are in the wrong, declares us righteous through our sharing in Christ. And he's an example of someone that I find enormously generative for contemporary attempts towards mutual understanding. you know For people who really are deep in the woods on ecumenism, they might be familiar with the joint declaration on the doctrine of justification between mainly the Lutherans and ah the Roman Catholic Church from work done in the 90s. Michael Root was instrumental on it and others.
00:50:05
Speaker
and and a number of other mainline Protestant bodies adopted it. But something that, and that that was awesome work for clarifying caricatures of one another's views that should be ruled out.
00:50:18
Speaker
But there does remain this and abiding difference between how we should understand righteousness. And for for me, trying to get it get into all of this and kind of coming back to the article, a key thing that that bothered me as I would read New Testament scholarship on righteousness is that, for example, I quote on page seven, Ernst Casemann, the great German New Testament scholar, who it was kind of a, he's kind of a godfather of so-called apocalyptic readings of Paul.
00:50:47
Speaker
And just to be clear, there's a lot I appreciate about Casemann. But there are other things that I don't think are quite as helpful. And one of the things he says that and this quote like captures it perfectly, my ambivalence, because he says the wildly the widely held view that God's righteousness is simply a property of the divine nature can now be rejected as misleading.
00:51:07
Speaker
It derives from Greek theology. So this is kind of Adolf von Harnack, the Hellenization thesis, the father's corrupted, the scripture, you know, the basically Jewish theology the New Testament, something like that. It derives from Greek theology, and obviously I don't quite think that is a helpful rendering. The the Hellenization thesis is kind of an abandoned model today, but it's very influential in Casemont's time, which speculates about such properties.
00:51:30
Speaker
Casemont says it contradicts the basic sense of righteousness within the tradition of Old Testament and later Judaism. namely faithfulness in the context of the community, and it proves ultimately inadequate because it postulates what cannot be convincingly intellectualized, namely the making over to a human being of a property of the divine nature. decayo sune feu The righteousness of God is for Paul, as it is for the Old Testament and Judaism in general, a phrase expressing divine activity, treating not of the self-subsistent, but of the self-revealing God.
00:52:03
Speaker
I think that's kind of a, I think that's a mistake to draw that conclusion. So when, when Kazemon talks about how the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is the saving power of God that renews the cosmos that, you know, brings what Paul says in Galatians one is deliverance from the present evil age and affects new creation.
00:52:25
Speaker
Galatians one, four, Galatians six, 15. Amen. ka ofmon That's an awesome reading of Paul. But here, where he makes this juxtaposition that righteousness, it's it's something of the self-revealing God, not the self-subsistent God, I think that's a mistake.
00:52:40
Speaker
And I say in my in my article, when Gregory of Nyssa reads Paul, the self-subsistent God is the self-revealing God in the saving economy of the gospel. For Gregory, human sharing in a property of the divine nature can be convincingly intellectualized because, as Gregory writes in his Against Eunomius, quote, Christ is the righteousness of God revealed by the gospel, as the the apostle says. i think So like part of this article emerged out of frustrations with kind of false dichotomies.
00:53:11
Speaker
Why do we have to set the self-revealing God against the self-subsistent God? who Who can the self-revealing God be if that God is not self-subsistent? And for people such as Gregory, the structures of his theology on things, especially such as divine simplicity, I think do provide a way to conceive of how a divine property can be communicated to creatures.
00:53:34
Speaker
Yeah, and that dovetails into yeah what you describe as the first type of property participation, the first kind of participation in Gregory, which is basically an ontological type of participation where we're not yet talking about the saving activity of Christ.
00:53:56
Speaker
ah But instead we're thinking about perfections God has. So, you know, God's righteousness, his beauty, his justice, faithfulness.
00:54:09
Speaker
And we're thinking about humanity or all of creation insofar as it displays any of those qualities insofar as ah any particular person is righteous we are actually participating in that in that ah quality that god possesses perfectly and we possess in a very imperfect a lot more can and should be said about participation than i can do so here but i try to say there at least four big structures on this and again david balas
00:54:41
Speaker
he He read the article on participation in the Brill Dictionary Gregory Nyssa. He wrote a classic study in the 1960s on participation in Christ. And those were, and not I'm not merely summarizing his work. i'm I'm giving my own synthesis of Gregory of Nyssa.
00:54:55
Speaker
But those were influences in helping me notice a lot of these themes. And also there's just been kind of renaissance in Gregory of Nyssa scholarship in the last century. and But the first kind of, and maybe the most significant structure of participation in Christ for Gregory of Nyssa is especially about metaphysics.
00:55:15
Speaker
And what has to be appreciated is that this is integral to Gregory's theology of the the trend the doctrine of the Trinity. um so the the council of nicene 325 affirms the son is homo usios with the father and what ensued in the decades that followed was a lot of debate about what exactly that meant athanasius in those later decades writes on the incarnation and a lot of christology is worked out and gregory of nissa and his brother basil both taught by their sister saint macrina the younger
00:55:50
Speaker
are in are are battling against groups such as the eunomians who are repeating a lot of arian ideas about the sun being being a lesser being or a creature than the father and they're writing against the macedonians who are denying the full deity of the spirit and a big theme for Gregory in these debates is participation with respect to theology proper itself. And this has to be appreciated to get a handle on Gregory talking about creatures participating in God.
00:56:22
Speaker
So basically there are two things for Gregory. there There is creation, which participates, and know in and there is the creator who has not participated in.
00:56:34
Speaker
So this is a key a key structure of that notion is the doctrine of divine simplicity. Gregory, and if if someone wanted to read more on this, Yaroslav Pelikan's 1993 Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen is amazing on this, on Oh, well the title's escaping my mind at the moment. um Christianity and Classical Culture, the Metamorphosis of Natural Theology and the Christian Encounter with Hellenism.
00:57:05
Speaker
But in in divine simplicity, this means that there are no parts in God. And this means that god is not God is not made up of component parts. And specifically with respect to the Son and the Spirit, this means that We need to ask questions such as, does the son participate in something higher in order to have his being? Does the spirit participate in something higher?
00:57:28
Speaker
Even when you make a sentence such as 1 John 4 that little children can memorize, God is love. Is there some bigger reality out there, love? that that is extraneous to God, that God is participating in.
00:57:41
Speaker
No, God's, to use later the language of Thomas Aquinas, God's essence is his existence. God's being is his perfections. And for Gregory Nyssa, when it comes time to read passages such as 1 Corinthians 1.30, Christ became for us righteousness, sanctification, redemption.
00:58:00
Speaker
This is how he makes arguments against the eunomians about the full deity of the Son and the Spirit. Righteousness isn't just a quality that Christ participates in.
00:58:11
Speaker
Christ is described as righteousness itself. And if God is righteousness itself, then we have to say Christ is righteousness itself. And he he reads similar passages about the spirit to draw the same conclusion. So in 1 Corinthians 1.24, Christ is called the power of God.
00:58:29
Speaker
So for Gregory... the the payoff of all of this is that creation has its being by sharing in the triune god and he very clearly has a notion of evil as privation you can read gregory missus dialogue with his sister saint macrina on the soul and the resurrection and the life of moses there's beautiful passages but where evil is not a thing it doesn't have a substance but it's a want of the good
00:58:58
Speaker
Reality has its existence by sharing in the goodness that is God himself. And where that is where where the presence of God's goodness is lacking, that that is evil. It's it's ah it's a wanted being. That's something that Gregory has in common with Augustine, for example. Sometimes you hear people really strongly set early Eastern Greek theology against early Western Latin theology, but on these notions of simplicity and privation there's quite a lot in common um and a great summary of all of this is that you know call it anatolios in his wonderful book retrieving nicaea talks about how variation and goodness is only thinkable on the level of creation as distinct levels of participation in divine goodness whereas the essence that is it goodness itself cannot admit of degrees
00:59:46
Speaker
so father son and holy spirit they they are identified as as the divine perfection that is infinite and this is maybe the whereas creation only partially shares in a finite way that that's maybe the last thing to to stress on this is and something that's a little bit distinctive to gregory is how much he emphasizes that god is infinite um there's so many implications of that in his writing but a key one is that participation is something that will basically never stop it's not um you know certainly when you when you're in heaven you're not going to be bored you're not going to reach the limit of what there is to discover about god but god is an inexhaustible depth and there will be an endless opportunity for wonder and desire to be formed for more of god and that
01:00:40
Speaker
means that the life of faith is really a life of wonder because it's not merely that we are sinners and god is righteous and holy but even at creation before the fall creation is finite and we have an infinite triune creator we were made to behold his infinite perfection and so we can we can therefore appreciate that Creation is ever changing. It might partially participate in God. It exists within time.
01:01:11
Speaker
And the infinite creator is unchanging.
Conclusion on Gregory's Relevance to Christian Life
01:01:14
Speaker
And those are key ways that creator and creature are distinguished for Gregory in particular is the difference between that which is participated in and that which participates.
01:01:23
Speaker
and that which changes and that which is changeless. And I think those are all helpful structures for making sense of the inner logic of Paul's language. So when you're reading Paul and he's talking about being in Christ, no, all of this is not on the surface of Paul's text.
01:01:40
Speaker
And I can imagine someone saying, oh, this is just a bunch of anachronism from later Christian theology. This isn't going to clarify anything in Paul's historical context. And if you insist on finding all of this on the surface of Paul's letters, then of course you're not going to.
01:01:55
Speaker
But when you think about how Paul relates the, ah if if you think about how the inner logic of how Paul's claims relate on the relationship between God and creation, between Christ and his members, Gregory even says logic of simplicity and ah kind of analogy of how creation shares in the creator is an extremely generative resource for interpreting.
01:02:18
Speaker
And so that kind of constitutes the more ontological um or metaphysical sense of
01:02:28
Speaker
of participation. And obviously, I want to be mindful of our time here, but maybe we can now try to think about you know these more aspects. crystalological uh, types of participation in Gregory. So, you know, the second one you mentioned has to do with our deliverance and, uh, in Christ and how there's an element of park participation involved in Christ, devastating the powers of sin and death.
01:02:57
Speaker
And that's kind of be distinguished that deliverance, um, is to be distinguished from like the more virtuous type of life that we can achieve after being um united to the word, I think, you know. So in other words, what I would think more in terms of our sanctification.
01:03:19
Speaker
These other aspects of participation for Gregory can go a little quicker because the the first one is the most complicated probably. and The second one is that we can distinguish these further layers or varieties of participation Christ. Or we might even speak of various unions, plural, with Christ. So on the saving union with Christ, you see when Gregory comes to interpret texts such as 1 Corinthians 10, 4, where Paul identifies Christ as the rock in the wilderness, Gregory speaks about how all hope of good things is believed to be in Christ, in whom we have learned all the treasures of good things to be.
01:03:57
Speaker
He's probably quoting from Colossians 2 there. or he's or he's so internalized it that just became his own language he who finds any good finds it in christ who contains all good that is a key structure for understanding how gregory thinks whatever we're going to say about the benefits of redemption we apprehend them in christ and um and that that involves triumph over the cosmic forces of evil satan sin death um but But further, like another crucial aspect, no no less important, maybe the most maybe one of the most important for Gregory is that participation in Christ involves imitation in becoming like God through in Christ through the spirit.
01:04:41
Speaker
um You see this especially in texts such as On Virginity, where Gregory speaks about co-crucifixion with Christ. And he says things like, Hans Boersma has written great study, Embodiment and Virtue, this.
01:04:53
Speaker
and living with him and sheing his glory in his kingship offering yourself to god means transforming human nature and worth into the angelic ah hunts borsma as right written a great study embodiment and virtue on this and um so Something that your listeners might be familiar with is that deification and theosis are big themes in the church fathers.
01:05:14
Speaker
And that is arguably a present operative theological notion in Gregory of Nyssa, but he almost never uses that language. he And scholars of theosis, such as Norman Russell, have argued that it's because...
01:05:29
Speaker
in the context of the eunomian controversy that language probably not would not have served gregory well instead what gregory talks about a lot more is imitating the angels and and heavenly worship, but that especially comes through imitating Christ and a life of sanctity and holiness.
01:05:46
Speaker
And the last one, and one of the most interesting to me, is Gregory talks a lot about sharing in the names of Christ. he Gregory had a really interesting context because after the conversion of the Roman Empire, of the Roman Emperor and the Roman Empire to become a christian empire the church went from its its situation in the early centuries of persecution to there was a rise of nominal christianity people would claim the name of christ because it was expedient politically or financially or something and gregory in that context wrote works such as on what it means to call oneself a christian and he he says that
01:06:28
Speaker
um He uses the metaphor of a chain that the various virtues of Christ are distinct but inseparable. um and And this was so enormously interesting to me because I was familiar in the past from Calvin talking about um the spirit being what the bond that that binds us to Christ and that the benefits of redemption, such as sanctification and justification are like a like a rope there.
01:06:55
Speaker
there're You don't get one without the other. They're they're distinct, but inseparable. And so Gregory is saying things like if we who are united to Christ by faith, So he says that basically, to use anachronistic language, he doesn't use language of communicable and incommunicable.
01:07:08
Speaker
is necessary for us to become what is contemplated in connection with that incorruptible nature so he says that basically to to use anachronistic language he doesn't use the language of communicable and incommunicable But the communicable virtues of Christ, we are to imitate his love, his wisdom, his humility, and the incommunicable perfections of Christ, that he's infinite, his eternality.
01:07:34
Speaker
Those we are to adore and worship. And that that is a ah a key way that we participate in Christ, that what is predicated of Christ also becomes true of us.
01:07:46
Speaker
Beautiful. And maybe just to wrap up, can we just maybe go back to, you know, 1 Corinthians 1.30 and think, you know, because of him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification and redemption. And for those you know, thinking about this passage, can you just offer a couple things that ah turning to Gregory can be useful for understanding?
01:08:09
Speaker
Yes. i In the article, i provide three instances where Gregory quotes this passage, and and two of which he explicitly asks the question, what is righteousness?
01:08:21
Speaker
deyyosui what is righteousness what a move that gregory will often make is he'll give a kind of generic definition first once he actually quotes the philosopher aristotle and gives a distributed definition of righteousness it's giving to each person what they deserve basically but then gregory will talk about a higher kind of righteousness that's revealed in the gospel and he defines that as righteousness as he defines the righteousness as christ himself um Gregory says if a more daring account of righteousness should be provided, it's the Lord in the Sermon on the Mount saying that we should when Jesus said to hunger and thirst after righteousness, he was saying you should hunger and thirst after Christ himself because Christ himself is righteousness.
01:09:08
Speaker
And in other places where Gregory explicitly identifies Christ himself as righteousness itself, that's in the context of ah Christ himself giving a gift to the undeserving and and the dead. It's not just that Christ as righteousness is a terrifying judge or meets out rewards for those who are not deserving, but he he in his commentary on the Song of Songs, Jesus as righteousness loves the unloved unlovely.
01:09:36
Speaker
It's like Paul in Romans 4 talking about how God raises the dead and calls into being the things that are not. And um in a crucial last passage in his career is catechetical discourse, Gregory asks, what is righteousness?
01:09:51
Speaker
And Ignatius Green, who's who's an editor for St. Vladimir Seminary Press and teaches at St. Vladimir Seminary, he notes in the notes of that translation that, That's a big question in Plato's Republic. Gregory's training catechists who are gonna have to encounter cultured pagans. And we need to be be able to give a learned response to the question, what is righteousness? And he talks about how the righteousness of God is revealed in the saving economy of the gospel.
01:10:17
Speaker
God does not tyrannically just overpower the forces of evil, but there's this astonishing display of
01:10:28
Speaker
God's self-condescension in the saving economy of the incarnation that Christ humbled himself. and But that ultimately the saving wisdom and power of God is revealed in Christ's resurrection.
01:10:39
Speaker
And the the rulers of this age did not perceive that from 1 Corinthians 2, but that's where the righteousness of God is revealed. And so like in some in summary, like what should we take away from this if you wanna read 1 Corinthians 1.30 better?
01:10:54
Speaker
I think i would say a couple of things. First, you do you you will you will benefit from having ah theology proper in metaphysics shaped by the classical Christian convictions of readers of Paul, such as Gregory of Nyssa, on things such as divine simplicity, on the doctrine of the Trinity, on the doctrine of the Incarnation, et cetera.
01:11:13
Speaker
um i don't I don't think that those are just anachronistic distortions of Paul. I think those are getting at real... insights into how the words run in Paul's epistles.
01:11:26
Speaker
And second, I would say that Gregory is not just going to settle all the later debates amongst the divides of the fragmented body of Christ around the world.
01:11:38
Speaker
But I think there is and enormously interesting and generative resource for healing some of those divides, for maybe clarifying what we have in common or clarifying what our remaining differences so that it's not a wishy-washy ecumenism of just let's pretend we don't have any differences, but we can we can identify a a significant figure from the early church and how he thought through these things and maybe find guides for better understanding are our own traditions so and where they've gotten things right and gotten things wrong and where other traditions have gotten things right and and gotten things maybe less helpful than we would like them to be.
01:12:14
Speaker
But the last thing I would say, is that this is very practical. If you are a Christian and you want to run the race of the Christian life well, I think you will find that Gregory of Nyssa is a very helpful guide along the path and a very helpful friend.
01:12:31
Speaker
um I conclude this, maybe the most important thing in the article is at the conclusion because easily my favorite part of Gregory of Nyssa's corpus is his biography of his sister, St. McKerina the Younger, and she has an amazingly beautiful deathbed prayer.
01:12:52
Speaker
And crucially, she talks about co-crucifixion with Christ in there. chris Participation in Christ is not an abstract idea that it should only be in the ivory tower.
01:13:06
Speaker
It is something that little children enter into at baptism. And here at the height of a life of piety, um it's on the lips of St. Macrina as she lied dying, where she said she says in this prayer, I too have been crucified with you.
01:13:21
Speaker
You entrust to the earth our bodies of earth, which you have fashioned with your own hands, and you restore again what you have given, transforming with incorruptibility and grace what is mortal and deformed in us. You redeemed us from the curse and from sin, having become both on our behalf.
01:13:35
Speaker
Participation in Christ might be something that academics can theorize in a specialized way, but it's something that even the the the simplest catechesis should impart to everyone who's following Christ. Maybe it it can be compared to the ocean in that way, that little children can really play in it and experience it and enjoy it, but it's also so vast you can go into it for the rest of your life and it'll be an infinite depth.