30 October 2006

Patristic Quote for the Day

“Since then according to the witness of the prophets the great and
precious ransom has been found for Jews and Greeks alike, the
propitiation for the whole world, the life given for the life of all
men, the pure offering for every stain and sin, the Lamb of God, the
holy sheep dear to God, the Lamb that was foretold, by Whose inspired
and mystic teaching all we Gentiles have procured the forgiveness of
our former sins, and such Jews as hope in Him are freed from the
curse of Moses, daily celebrating His memorial, the remembrance of
His Body and Blood, and are admitted to a greater sacrifice than that
of the ancient law, we do not reckon it right to fall back upon the
first beggarly elements, which are symbols and likenesses but do not
contain the truth itself. And any Jews, of course, who have taken
refuge in Christ, even if they attend no longer to the ordinances of
Moses, but live according to the new covenant, are free from the
curse ordained by Moses, for the Lamb of God has surely not only
taken on Himself the sin of the world, but also the curse involved in
the breach of the commandments of Moses as well. The Lamb of God is
made thus both sin and curse—sin for the sinners in the world, and
curse for those remaining in all the things written in Moses’ law.
And so the Apostle says: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of
the law, being made a curse for us”; and “Him that knew no sin, for
our sakes he made sin.”For what is there that the Offering for the
whole world could not effect, the Life given for the life of sinners,
Who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a lamb to the
sacrifice, and all this for us and on our behalf? "

--St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XIII

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Will,

You always seem to have very fitting and timely quotes.

Thanks!

Tom Fast

William Weedon said...

Tom,

Thanks. This citation from St. Cyril was chief in causing me to rethink the whole notion of an Anselmian infection that went unnoticed in Lutheranism. St. Cyril is basically Anselmian in approach before Anselm ever lived or breathed. He was simply a good, biblical theologian.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure if this quote in particular can be used to define Cyril as Anselmian, though I am sure that you are referring to your reading of his entire corpus. Note in this section that we are under the law and under a curse, but that this is never attributed to God or His wrath against us and our need to have God appeased for us to be saved. We are under a curse, self-imposed, and under the law of what is our nature (our current state being below nature, unnatural), and God's wrath is like the fire of the furnace that did not hurt God's Children - or like the burning coal of Isaiah, or that we place in the lap of sinners by responding to their evil with good. The wrath is not imaginary, it is just a matter of whether this wrath is willed, allowed, or self-imposed perception.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said:
"The wrath is not imaginary, it is just a matter of whether this wrath is willed, allowed, or self-imposed perception."

So....is it willed, allowed, or a self-imposed perception?

Tom Fast

William Weedon said...

Dear Anon (Christopher?),

I believe that you are trying to squeeze St. Cyril into a Romanides straight jacket. Fidden dit.

Pax!

Anonymous said...

Actually, it is already in Cassian.