Ben’s talks on the Patristic model of atonement led to the obvious question - what about their views on growth? This is the first of two talks by Ben on this topic. In this talk he focuses on the individual and morality and in the next talk he focuses on society and politics and how they viewed Christian contributions there.

Patristic views on growth are built on their views of atonement; and that is where Ben begins - with a reminder of the ground he covered in his early talks. Unlike us, they did not struggle with a model of ‘penal substitution’ and its associated picture of an angry God. Instead they viewed atonement as ‘participation’ in the Godhead. So if ‘atonement’ qualifies humanity to ‘participate’ with God - then growth is all about making that participation real by our decisions and character development.

That means that the Church Fathers did NOT have a moral code as their model - with lists of behaviours and do’s and don’ts. For them ‘growth’ is defined entirely by Christ. He is the model and thus all growth is growing into the PERSON of Christ. In the most amazing and memorable part of the talk for me, Ben made this real by explaining the term ‘Christian’ literally means ‘little Christs’ - and that is what we are. So for the Patristics we are to be as Christ on the earth - in miniature for sure but still following the same pattern our Lord has set.

To make this tangible, he centres on an essay by Gregory of Nyssa where he lays out this pathway of development in concrete examples. This is very liberating stuff. It leaps over our typical concepts of morality and virtue and instead declares that all ‘virtue’ is shaped and defined by a Person - THE human being who defined in flesh and blood what it means to be human.

As always Ben is so lucid on these complex topics - and he is helping us make a paradigm shift from a concept of growth as behaviour defined, to a concept of growth as Christ defined - so the we may be ‘as Christ’ in the world.

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