Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-2l2gl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-27T22:35:21.613Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Childhood in Eastern Patristic Thought: Some Problems of Theology and Theological Anthropology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Graham Gould
Graham Gould*
Affiliation:
King’s College London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The writings of the Early Church concerning childhood are not extensive, but in the works of a number of Eastern Christian authors of the second to fourth centuries it is possible to discern some ideas about childhood which raise important problems of Christian theology and theological anthropology. The theological problem is that of the question posed for theodicy by the sufferings and deaths of infants. It is harder to give a brief definition of the anthropological problem, but it is important to do so because to define the problem as the Eastern Fathers saw it is also to identify the set of conceptual tools—the anthropological paradigm—which they used to answer it. These are not, naturally, the concepts of modern anthropology and psychology. Applied to patristic thought, these terms usually refer to speculations about the composition and functioning of the human person or the human soul which belong to a discourse which is recognizably philosophical and metaphysical—by which is meant that it is (though influenced by other sources, such as the Bible) the discourse of a tradition descending ultimately from the anthropological terminology of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Patristic anthropology seeks to account for the history and experiences of the human person as a created being—fhe experience of sin and mortality in the present life, but also of eternal salvation and advancement to perfection in the image of God.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 31: The Church and Childhood , 1994 , pp. 39 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Patdagogos, i, 5, ed. O. Stählin, CCS, 12, 3rd edn (Berlin, 1972), p. 98; tr. in The Ante-Nicene Fathers [hereafter ANF], 2, p. 212b (altered); Matt. 23.57; Isa. 65.15-16.

2 Ibid., i, 6, p. 104. Clement’s adoption of the term υηxioς is notable in view of its negative use by Paul. For a gnostic exegesis of the Pauline text see Elaine Pagels, The Cttostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia, 1975), p. 80.

3 Ibid., i, 5, pp. 99-100; tr. in ANF, 2, p. 213a-b (altered).

4 Ibid., p. 104.

5 Commentary on Matthew, xiii, 16, ed. E. Klostermann, GCS, 40 (1935), pp. 219–22; translated in ANF, 10, p. 484 (altered). The remaining quotations are from the same chapter and the same page of the translation.

6 Though Origen argues in De principiis, II, ix, 3-7, ed. P. Koetschau, GCS, 22 (1913), pp. 166-71, that the degree to which human souls sinned before they entered the body accounts for the apparendy arbitrary diversity of their sufferings and opportunities in the present life, he never, so far as I have been able to discover, suggests that an infant’s freedom from the passions may be compromised by the extent of its sinfulness in its previous existence. The nearest approach to such a view appears to be in Homilies on Leviticus, viii, 3, ed. W. A. Baehrens, CCS, 29 (1920), pp. 396-8, where Origen suggests that the practice of infant baptism proves that even in infants there is something to be forgiven. But here too he appears to be referring to evil contracted in a previous existence and not to any capacity for personal sin in an infant. Elsewhere he states categorically that no sin is imputed to infants, who are not ‘under the law’ (Rom. 3.19) because they as yet have no power of decision between right and wrong: Commentary on Romans, iii, 2 and 6, ed. Caroline P. Hammond Bammel, Der Rõmerbriejkommentar des Orígenes (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1990), pp. 208, 223 (also PC 14, cols 930C-D, 939A).

7 The foremost Christian anchropological writing of the late fourth century, Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of Man, PC 40, cols 508-818, contains no significant discussion of children.

8 Ed. A.-M. Malingrey, SC, 188 (1972).

9 Ibid., chs 26-63 (the senses); chs 64-87 (the parts of the soul).

10 Ibid., ch. 17.

11 Ibid., ch. 29.

12 Ibid., ch. 20.

13 Ibid., ch. 22.

14 Ibid., ch. 76.

15 Ibid., ch. 90.

16 Ibid., chs 66-75 (θυμóς), chs 85-7 (θρóvησις). What Chrysostom says about θυμóς, that it should be moderated rather than eliminated (ch. 66). could apply to any age. Origen’s view that children are free from anger and grief might be taken to imply the absence from their soul of θυμóς, but Origen does not use the term in this context, and elsewhere expresses reserve about the validity of the tripartite division of the soul derived from platonist anthropology: De principiis, III. iv, I (p. 264).

17 Homily on Ephesians 6. 1-4, 1, PG 62, col. 149.

18 On Vainglory, chs 39-46, 51.

19 Ibid., ch. 52.

20 Ibid., ch. 80.

21 Homily 22: To Young Men on how to profit from Greek Literature, 2, PG 30, col. 565D.

22 Basil’s remark might indeed be seen as no more than a debating point offering a post hoc justification of the fact that the early education of the socially privileged Christian would inevitably be based on the classical curriculum.

23 On Virginity, 65, PC 30, col. 801B-C.

24 See above, p. 42: τάς άvδρixάς έπιθυμίας.

25 De monogamia, 8, ed. Paul Mattei, SC, 343 (1988), pp. 166-8.

26 Letters 107, PL 22, cols 867-78; and 128, PL 22, cols 1095-9.

27 Letter 128, 1, cols 1095-6.

28 Ibid., col. 1096.

29 Letters 107, 8. col. 874; 128, 3a, col. 1098; quotation from 128.

30 Letter 128, 2-3, cols 1096-8.

31 Letter 107, 6, cols 873-4.

32 Homily on Ephesians 6.1–4, 4. col. 154. For the same emphasis on parental responsibility cf. Chrysostom, Against those who oppose the Monastic Life, iii, 3-4, PG 47, cols 354-6, and another late fourth-century work of Antiochene provenance, Apostolic Constitutions, iv, 11, ed. F. X. Funk (Paderborn, 1905), pp. 231-3.

33 Letter 128, 3a, col. 1098.

34 Ed. Hadwig Horner, Gregorii Nysseni Opera, 3, 1 (Leiden, 1987), pp. 67-97; references are given by page and line number. There is a translation in The Nkene and post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, 5, pp. 372-81.

35 For Origen’s response to this problem see above, n. 6.

36 On Infants’ Early Deaths, p. 72, line 11 - p. 73, line 12.

37 Ibid., p. 76, 20-3.

38 For a fuller account of Gregory’s arguments than is possible here see the various papers contained in J. C. M. van Winden and A. van Heck, eds, Colbquii Gregoriani III Leidensis 18/23-IX-1974 Acta (Leiden, 1976).

39 On Infants’ Early Deaths, p. 74, 1-12.

40 Ibid., p. 74, 15-22.

41 Cf. ibid., p. 73, 7-8 for the view that reason is undeveloped in infants.

42 Ibid., p. 75, 1-13.

43 Ibid., p. 79, 21-4.

44 Ibid., p. 77, 23-p. 78, 23.

45 Ibid., p. 78, 24. p. 79, 1.

46 Ibid., p. 80, 2-10. Ignorance of God is a defect or privation in the human relationship with God whose origin is difficult to account for (p. 80, 11–20). Gregory’s reluctance to attempt to explain the origin of evil in general is apparent here, though he clearly believes that the partly material nature of human beings, however essential to their role in creation as a bond between the material and spiritual worlds, is also what interferes with their spiritual capacity for knowledge of the creator; cf. On the Lord’s Prayer, 2, PC 44, cols 1165B-68C. What we experience as evil is not a substance or positive quality but an absence of knowledge, goodness, and being, an inevitable consequence of our existence at a greater distance from God, and hence at a lower level of being, than that of the purely spiritual world.

47 On Infants’ Early Deaths, p. 82, 21-8.

48 Ibid., p. 82, 28 - p. 83, 4; p. 85, 9. p. 87, 6.

49 Ibid., p. 84, 21 - p. 85, 6.

50 Ibid., p. 87, 10-12. The use of this phrase may indicate an equivocation between the idea of eternal punishment and that of purgation as the experience of the wicked after death; generally Gregory seems to favour purgation (e.g. p. 73, 15-17).

51 Ibid., p. 88, 1-8; p. 90, 12-19.

52 Ibid., p. 93, 2-10, 12-14.

53 Ibid., p. 93, 10-12; p. 93, 18 - p. 94, 2. The main objection to the argument is that some of the wicked are apparently allowed to survive into old age. To this Gregory replies that (a) some of those who die as infants might, if they lived, have been even more evil than the most notorious of actual sinners (p. 93, 14-18); (b) the evil acts of the wicked are used by God to the greater good (pp. 94, 2 - 95, 17); (c) the wicked survive so that in the future life, the good will know of the sufferings undergone by the wicked and will form a greater awareness of the value of their own reward as a result (pp. 95, 22-96, 14). Gregory regards the first of these arguments as speculative, but the other two as securely grounded in Scripture.

54 For a recent survey see Elizabeth A. Clark, ‘From Origenism to Pelagianism: elusive issues in an ancient debate’, Princeton Seminary Bulletin, 12 (1991), pp. 283–303.

55 See, e.g., Augustine, De peaatorum mentis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum, i, 63-9, PL 44, cols 146-50.

56 See above, n. 46.