Durham E-Theses The attitude of the early church towards the state of the faithful departed, as revealed in patristic writing and early liturgy Atwell, Robert Ronald How to cite: Atwell, Robert Ronald (1979) The attitude of the early church towards the state of the faithful departed, as revealed in patristic writing and early liturgy, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9542/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 THE ATTITUDE OF THE EARLY CHURCH TOWARDS THE STATE OF THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED, AS REVEALED IN PATRISTIC WRITING AND EARLY LITURGY By Robert Ronald Atwell, B.A. A Thesis Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Letters The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Durham University 1979 CONTENTS Page Summary- 111 Preface IV Abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1 The Inheritance of the Apostolic Church Chapter 2 : The V/itness of the Nev; Testament 23 a) Death and Dying in the New Testament 25 b) The State and Needs of the Christian Dead 31 c) Prayer for the Departed kk Chapter 3 : The Sub-Apostolic Church to the Beginning of the Third Century a) The Sub-Apostolic Church . 63 b) The Church between I60 and 220 76 Chapter k The Thought of the East from the Beginning of the Third Century to the Close of the Sixth Century a) Early Third Century thought with particular reference to Origen 123 b) Liturgical Development in the East to 132 koo c) Opposition lk8 d) Thought in the East from Mid-Fourth 153 Century to the end of the Sixth Century Page Chapter 5 : The Thought of the West from the Beginning of the Third Century to the time of Gregory the Great a) Third Century Thought with particular 193 reference to Cyprian b) Fourth Century Thought 202 c) Augustine 225 d) From Augustine to Gregory 270 CONCLUSION 322 BIBLIOGRAPHY 337 Ill SUMMARY This study is concerned with the place of the departed in the theology and spirituality of the early Christian tradition. In its attempt to describe a pattern of doctrinal development as it emerged in the course of six hundred years, reference will be made primarily to the Biblical witness and to the writings of the Fathers, though extant liturgical material and relevant archaeological evidence will also be discussed. The survey will be necessarily historical in its approach. The investigation falls into five sections. The first of these involves a preliminary investigation into the background of Christian speculation with a brief examination of the inheritance v/hich the Apostolic Church received from Judaism. Within the perspective of the New Testament the second section goes on to evaluate the way in which the received material was re-worked and transformed, with the third chapter tracing the continued evolution of Christian thought to the end of the second century. The final sections of the study are devoted to a comparative analysis of thought about the dead in the developing traditions of East and West, with particular reference to Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and John Chrysostom in the East (chapter k) and Cyprian, Augustine and Gregory the Great in the West (chapter 5)» A brief conclusion is appended to the survey in order to focus some of the issues raised in the course of the work, and to examine their relevance to current theological discourse on life after death. IV PREFACE I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor C.F.D. Moule, Emeritus Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge for his guidance in the examination of New Testament material; to Dr. J. W. Rogerson and Dr. A. L. Loades both of the Department of Theology in the University of Durham for their encouragement and support; and above all to ray supervisor, Mr. Gerald Bonner, of the same University, for his constant help and advice. In proper names and all technical terms standard modern spelling is used, except in quotations where the form used is as in the source quoted. A list of abbreviations is printed overleaf. V, ABBREVIATIONS AF The Apostolic Fathers, tr. & ed., Kirsopp Lake CAC Corpus Apologetarura Christianorum CC Corpus Christianorum, series Latina CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum CQ The Church Quarterly CQR The Church Quarterly Review DGCS Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller DR The Downside Review DSAM Dictionnaire de Spiritualite, Ascetique et Mystique, ed., Viller DTC Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, ed., Vacant, Mangenot & Amann ECR Eastern Churches Review ERE Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed., Hastings ET English Text GMD Gregorii Magni Dialogi, ed., Moricca HTR Harvard Theological Review JTS Journal of Theological Studies NTS New Testament Studies ODCC Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed.. Cross & Livingstone PG Patrologiae Graecae cursus completus, ed., Migne PL Patrologiae Latinae cursus completus, ed., Migne SC Sources Chretiennes TS Theological Studies INTRODUCTION 1. I N TRODUCTION In a society in which Christian belief in life after death receives only passing acknowledgement and at a time when people in general seem content to trivialise or ignore death itself, questions relating to the meaning of death and the possibility of an existence beyond it, and problems inherent in the exposition of a tradition which would claim to speak coherently in these matters, would seem to be of special relevance and warrant our urgent attention. The Christian faith continues to make the claim that something has happened to death itself. It is precisely this which, it is said, constituted the peculiar meaning of the death of Jesus Christ, upon which faith is based, which faith proclaims and upon which it has continued to reflect. The church still proclaims •the death of the Lord' in expectation that, the Lord will 'come' (I Cor. xi. 26). To this proclamj/ation of the death of the Lord there also belongs the cry of victory. Put in the form of a question it is seen as an answer: '0 death where is thy victory? 0 death where is thy sting?' (I Cor. xv. 55)- For the Christian believer, faith in the resurrection is the confession that with the death of Jesus Christ, death is no longer the same. The question of death is answered in a quite definitive way because it also implies that something has changed with regard to the fact that all men must die. The answer has its own particular character, and it is this which will be examined in the course of this study of the theology and spirituality of the early Christian tradition. Christian proclamy^ation, however, can never afford to permit theology to let the question of death answer itself. Even if the essence of the Christian faith has from the first been determined by the fact that this is a question which is believed to have been answered, the theologian is not excused his task of giving appropriate expression to this answer in terms and language relevant to his age. This study in its concern with the concepts and language of the early church will therefore seek to illuminate the theological framework of the first Christian thinkers. To this end a variety of social, cultural, religious and intellectual factors will be assessed for their formative influence on the Christian tradition. Criteria will be sought with which to assess the products of patristic speculation; the coherence of their ideas will be investigated, and so, it is hoped, some sort of evaluation of their discourse will be formed. It may be that discussion of the thought of the Fathers can be no more than an historical exercise of purely antiquarian value, our world-picture and understanding having changed so dramatically in the course of time that the cluster of ideas and systems which they formulated are now found to be largely redundant, On the other hand, it may be the case that with analysis, certain propositions, occasional insights or even a particular combination of perspectives, will be found not only to have enduring value but also to offer hints for the construction of a contemporary theology, or at any rate to make some minor contribution to such a procedure. For it is apparent that the person who is left with no valid answer to the question of death and what may or may not lie beyond it will supply himself with alternative answers or, more seriously, will try to avoid the question. Birth and death may be conspicuous in their familiarity - every day innumerable children are born into the world and every day countless numbers of human beings of all ages die - yet simple observation shov;s birth alone to have met with the general acceptance of modern society. Death, on the other hand, is inappropriate in an emancipated world and is greeted with embarrassment. The majority of people when confronted with the fact of death choose either to disguise its existence beneath the aesthetic trappings of funeral parlour and mortician, or else enshroud its crude reality within a 'conspiracy of silence'.^ Examination of contemporary literature confirms and reflects this wider impoverishment for we have even managed to lose the sense of the literary and dramatic in our approach to death.