The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption: A Study of the Development of Doctrine During the First Five Centuries

H.E.W. TURNER

ISBN 10: 1592449301 / ISBN 13: 9781592449309

Editore: Wipf & Stock Publishers September 2004, 2004

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Based upon a series of lectures given in 1949 during Passion Week, H.E.W. Turner builds upon the foundation laid eighteen years earlier by Gustaf Aulen's seminal work on the atonement, Christus Victor. While Aulen revived what he described as the ''classic'' patristic view of redemption with Christ as Victor, Turner notes Aulen's failure to fully explore the far more variegated view of the Church Fathers. Indeed, confronted with more pressing theological controversies, the Fathers were not compelled to translate their joyfully lived experience of the redemption into a definitive doctrinal formula as the Cappadocians did for the Trinity or as Chalcedon did for Christology. Instead, they viewed the entire Incarnation - from birth to death to resurrection - as the decisive act of redemption. Consequently, no single patristic perspective existed and Turner sets out to paint a more nuanced and accurate picture of the patristic understanding by exploring Christ as Illuminator (''The Logos Paidagogos leading his people into an ever-increasing experience of Illumination''), Victim (''The Christ Victim conjoined with the Passion Mysticism of the Medieval period''), Victor (''The Christus Victor offering vicarious victory to mankind'') and Giver of Incorruption and Deification (Christ ''became what we are, that He might make us what He is Himself''). Viewed as an integrated image, Turner argues, it becomes clear that for the Fathers the ''Redemption, essentially, centrally, consists in Transfiguration, the lifting of human life. y the participation, through all that the Historical Christ was, and achieved, in the very life and character of the Triune God Himself.'' 124 pp.

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption: A Study of the Development of Doctrine During the First Five Centuries
• Editore: Wipf & Stock Publishers September 2004
• Data di pubblicazione: 2004
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1592449301
• ISBN 13: 9781592449309
• Rilegatura: Paper Back
• Condizione: New
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Patristics/Secondary Sources

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

This work is based upon a series of lectures which were given at 'Scholae Cancellariae', Lincoln, during Passion Week, 1949, on the invitation of the Warden, the Reverend Canon C. K. Sansbury. It is a laudable custom of the College during Passion Week each year to invite an outside lecturer to lecture upon some subject connected with the Passion of our Lord. The doctrine of Redemption among the early Fathers has never received the attention by scholars which it deserves. The reasons for this neglect are many and various. Scholars primarily concerned with the doctrine of the Atonement normally tend to hurry over the early centuries and to begin a serious discussion with the teaching of St. Anselm and of Peter Abelard, at whose hands the doctrine first begins to take a definite shape. Others select from the patristic material the passages and allusions which fit best into their own preferred doctrinal mould, without paying adequate attention to complementary patterns of thought which possess equal significance. Others again, because of the number and complexity of the issues involved, tend to leave the subject on one side, on the ground that the thinking of the Fathers is not sufficiently clear-cut and precise for anyone except the expert. This little book is offered to the ordinary reader interested in theology in the hope that it may convince him that the early Christian centuries did think honestly and interestingly about the central experience of their religion; to the theological student as a guide to a dark place; and to the expert as a reminder of a serious gap in theological bibliography and as a challenge to go into the land and possess it. from the Preface by H. E. W. Turner

Informazioni sull?autore

H. E. W. Turner was Van Mildert Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, England.