Cyril and Gnosis
ST. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM
must be admitted-indeed it is the weakness of the Catecheses -that much of Cyril's exegesis of the Old Testament is implausible and far-fetched; he produces some better arguments for the truth of the Resurrection in 14.26. Controversial reasoning against pagans is also to be found in Lectures 12-14 and (against the Samaritans also) in 18.l-2l.14 But the argument from prophecy is 'very prominent; it is probably connected with an anti-Jewish polemic developed in the Church of Jerusalem and may have originated in a collection of "testimonies" and a tradition of exegesis similar to that which K. Stendahl thinks lies behind St. Matthew's Gospel.15
2. Cyril and "Gnosis"
Gnosis in the early Christian tradition was a complex concept especially associated with the Alexandrian school of Clement and Origen. Gnosis ("knowledge") usually implies a sublime sort of knowledge. The word was often used in a quasi-technical sense. The object of gnosis was usually the world, the self and, above all, God. Gnosis tended to combine mystical with philosophical or intellectualist elements, the one or the other predominating. Since it was commonly held to be obtainable only through a supernatural revelation, it tended to be esoteric. The mystical variety of gnosis was won through asceticism, detachment, and the prayerful study of the Scriptures employing especially the allegorical method of interpretation. It culminated in union with God through love.
In 13.9 Cyril implies that there are two kinds of scriptural exegesis:
14 Cf. Procat. 10.
15 Cf. K. Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew . . . (Vppsala Thesis; Lund 1954). Stendahl thought Caesarea a possible place of origin for such a manual of teaching. Cyril may have been trained in Caesarea.
Qumran and Alexandria also had their own special traditions of exegesis. Cyril and the Alexandrians (Clement and Origen) had a good deal in common with Irenaeus and the Apologists.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
We are met together not now to make a contemplative (theoretiken) exposition of Scripture, but rather to be certified of the things which we already believe.
This implies that at least one style of the "ordinary preaching"l used the allegorical method of interpretation to bring out the hidden meaning of Scripture or, through a contemplative and mystical approach, sought to lead the Christian soul to the higher walks of the spiritual life. Of this quasimystical mode of contemplative exegesis of the Scriptures we appear to have a good example in Cyril's Homily on the Paralytic. Beginning abruptly with the words: "Wherever
Jesus appears, there is salvation," the sermon constantly recalls Clement's picture of Christ who, as the heavenly Physician, cures the sick soul of its passions and then, as the Teacher, schools it, first by discipline, then by instruction, in the knowledge of Himself as the eternal Word.2 In Chapter 2,
Jesus is "the physician of souls"; in Chapter 4, salvation is of faith, faith depends on our willing, and Jesus freely gives the will; Chapter 5 has the theme of spiritual enlightenment; in Chapter 6 the Physician by a question leads the sick man on to the true saving knowledge (gnosis) which the sequel 'soon shows to be the recognition of Jesus' divinity. It is not the three chapters (10-12) of allegorical exegesis that are so interesting and attractive in the Homily, but the contented contemplation of Jesus as the place of encounter with God, the place where Plato's aistheta and noeta (earthly and heavenly realities) meet, the Jacob's Ladder of the Fourth
Gospel. This is the theoria (contemplation) of Clement and Origen. So Origen taught that only through the Word can we contemplate God.3 The whole Homily is impregnated with the spirit of Clement's saying that the highest theoria is to seek for God and strive to come to the knowledge of Him.4
The sentence (Ch. 9), "Look into the strong depths of the 1 Cf. the "ordinary homilies" of Procat. 11.
2 Paedagogus 1.1-2 (GCS, Clem. 1.89-94).
3 Origen, In Ioh. 19.6 (GCS, Orig. 3.305; PG 14.536B).
4 Clement, Stromateis 2.10.
ST. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM
spring and glimpse God visible in the flesh," suggests that, as Jesus is reflected in the water, so He is Himself the reflection of God, especially of the creative power of the Father from whom, as the prime source of life and being,5 His healing and saving power derives.
In Chapter 19 Cyril describes Jesus as "the Physician of gnosis," i.e., the physician who heals souls by imparting true knowledge, which is the knowledge of Himself and so of the Father. Similarly, "let us beg wisdom of Wistlom" recalls the conception, common to Clement and Origen, of Christian perfection as the true, supernatural wisdom.
Since the Lenten Lectures aim not at devotion so much as instruction, they are not concerned with gnosis in the sense of mystical or contemplative knowledge. It is not surprising, however, given Cyril's attrait, to find them once or twice modulating into theoria. Such a passage is that (13.3031) where the eternal Light leads the Good Thief to the light. Another is 10.13, which introduces briefly many of the themes of the Homily and concludes with a reference to the paralytic of John 5.
More important is the question-and in determining it we must remember that gnosis is not necessarily a technical word for a special kind of knowledge-whether in the Lenten
Lectures we find a relationship of pistis-gnosis (faith-knowledge) that corresponds, though transposed, to their relationship in the Alexandrine tradition.
Here it is a question of gnosis in the sense of a systematic body of knowledge, a transcendent revealed synthesis. The Alexandrians did not separate faith and gnosis, but regarded gnosis as the perfection of faith. Clement thought that the whole gnosis was contained in the Old and New Testaments6 and he defined faith as "a sort of concise gnosis of the essen5 Cf. Eusebius, De ecclesiastica theologia 2.7 (pG 24.913A).
6 Strom. 7.16.95 (GCS 3.67). Thus the earliest conception of "fides quaerens intellectum" and "credo ut intellegam" was of a movement not from the revelation to other knowledge, but "from faith to faith," i.e., to a deeper and fuller understanding of the revelation.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
tials, while gnosis itself is a firm and solid demonstration of the truths of faith, being built upon faith by means of the Lord's teaching" (i.e., Scripture or the New Testament).7 This is strikingly similar to the project of the Lenten Lectures, the demonstration of the faith from Scripture. Referring in the introductory lectureS to the Lenten enlightenment to which the candidates are looking forward, Cyril says: "We bring you the stones of gnosis." There is an analogy between the relation of Christian faith to knowledge (gnosis) and the PlatonicAristotelian conception of the relation of opinion or belief to knowledge (episteme). In the latter system belief or opinion becomes real knowledge when, grounded in the indemonstrable and self-evident primary premises, it becomes incorporated into a systematic body of scientific knowledge. In the Christian system, faith becomes knowledge when "demonstrated" from the divine authority of Scripture. In the Clement-Origen-Cyril terminology this "demonstration" seems to be conceived variously in three ways: (a) The propositions of the creed are simply proved by the authority of Scripture; i.e., it is shown that Scripture contains and warrants them;
(b) while it is possible to disbelieve the bare summary of Scripture contained in the Creed, the scriptural gnosis itself, when the whole synthesis is properly apprehended, is selfauthenticating;9 it stands revealed as a superior philosophy which uniquely satisfies the demands and aspirations of the mind, heart and spirit of man; truth shines in its own light;
(c) the (rational) demonstration from miracles and (especially) scriptural prophecies. In all of these ways the propositions at first "taken on faith" are shown to be "warranted"; thus they become the content of "knowledge" (="excellent" or "enlightened" faith) and belief is converted into certitude.
So when formally "delivering" the Creed to the candidates in 5.12, Cyril says that "it embraces in a few words all the godly gnosis of the Old and New Testaments." Cyril's descrip7 Ibid. 7.10.57 (GCS 3.42).
8 Procat. 11.
9 In Procat. 11, Cyril stresses this systematic, synthetic aspect.
ST. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM
tion in 4.IS of the precedinglO exposition (summary and undemonstrated) of the Creed as a gnosis recalls Clement's remarkll that faith may be allowed to be "a sort of concise gnosis of the essentials." The "demonstration" of the Faith in Lenten Lectures 6-IS corresponds to what Clement calls
"the gnosis proper." But a genuine gnosis must be not only a theology but also a cosmology and an anthropology. Cyril gives the Christian answer to the great problems which concern men: the origin of the world, the origin, nature and destiny of man; the question of fate or necessity; the origin of sin; the reasons for the Incarnation; the question of death; the question of salvation.12 Cyril several times says emphatically that man is master of his destiny and that his salvation lies in his own power. Not even an overt act is necessary; he has only to will it, to make the decision to believe and be baptized.
But it is God who saves us; at least in the Homily Cyril adds that the initiative lies with the gracious God who gives the will. But while we are justified by faith, works are also necessary; the Christian must keep the commandments; Cyril several times refers to the repentant Thief as an instance of the mercy of God.IS In the Letter to Constantius Cyril, announcing the miraculous appearance of the luminous cross over Jerusalem, bids the Emperor to build gnosis upon the faith which he already has.14 Here the idea is that the apparition of the Cross, as the fulfillment of the prophecy of our Lord,15 is proof of the truth of Christianity and should convert Constantius' faith into gnosis.16
To draw attention to this pistis-gnosis pattern in Cyril and 10 Cat. 4.4·17.
II Quoted above, n. 7.
12 E.g., Procat. 3·5, 7, 8, 16; Cat. I.l; 2.1·5; 3.10; 4.18·32; 8.4; 12.5; 13.2,
28, 35 fin.; 14.1 fin.; 15.3, 25-26; 18.1-8, 18-20, 29.
13 Procat. 8; Cat. 1.2; 2.5; 5.10; 13.3-31; 14.10; Homily 4-6.
14 Ep. ad Const. 5; cf.2.
15 Matt. 24.30.
16 While the chief message conveyed in the Letter is the assurance that the occurrence of the portent in Constantius' reign is a guarantee of heaven's blessing upon that reign, Cyril may well be hinting also
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
its nominal correspondence with the pattern of faith and gnosisjenlightened faith in Clement and Origen is by no means to suggest that Cyril makes a third with these two powerful and original thinkers. Obviously they stand poles apart. Cyril was an apophatic theologian who repeatedly repudiated speculation. The denatured and formalized gnosis of the Lenten Lectures lacked the profound theoretical structure and presuppositions of the systems of Clement and Origen (for a masterly study of Clement's see T. F. Torrance,
"The Implications of Oikonomia for Knowledge and Speech of God in Early Christian Theology," in F. Christ [ ed. ],
Oikonomia: Heilsgeschichte als Thema der Theologie (Festschrift O. Cullmann) [Hamburg-Bergstedt 1967] 223-238). It is with the warm and affective Alexandrian mystical tradition, especially the Clement of the Paedagogus, that Cyril has some affinity. But now the authenticity of the "Homily on the Paralytic," which leads into the detection of this mode in Cyril is in jeopardy. Bihain has reported that the only works of Cyril known to the Armenian tradition are the Lenten Lectures and the Letter to Constantius. We shall see. In any case the data tabulated above remain intact.
J. H. Greenlee17 has found that the Gospel text of the Lenten Lectures is predominantly the pre-Byzantine Caesarean text of Origen and Eusebius. Quotations of Mark are strongly
Caesarean; the material, though small, indicates complete agreement with Origen and Eusebius. In quotations from Matthew the Caesarean character is unquestionable, though weaker in Mt. I-II. In Luke, again, the Caesarean character of the quotations is clear; quotations show close agreement with Origen, but the relation to Eusebius is unclear. Quotations from John are substantially Caesarean, but here the agreement is with Eusebius rather than Origen. Where not that it is high time that Constantius be baptized. In Ch. 2, in spite of the construction, gnosis is used in the systematic sense (see the next sentence).
17 J. H. Greenlee, The Gospel Text of Cyril of Jerusalem (Copenhagen 1955), especially the tables in Part III of this very valuable study.