The Devil’s Ransom and Christology in Origen and the Cappadocians

Abstract

Abstract This article identifies a relationship between third- and fourth-century Christology and the idea that Christ’s blood ransomed sinners from the devil. The thesis is that the ‘devil’s ransom’ was a natural conclusion for patristic exegetes but that those who accepted it had to navigate around the outrageous possibility that Christ’s divinity had been offered to the devil. Origen, depending on what some would call a dualistic Christology, solved the problem by saying that the ransom price (Christ’s blood or soul) had not included his divinity; but Gregory of Nazianzus, for whom Christ’s blood was in some real sense ‘the blood of God’, could not say this, which is one of the reasons that he rejected the whole idea of a ransom to the devil. In contrast, Gregory of Nyssa’s emphasis on the concealment of Christ’s divinity within the ransom prevented it from having been part of the agreed-upon price and so saved the devil’s ransom from scandal. This theological manoeuvring shows that the ransom stories should be read within a broader theological context. The recent scholarly recognition that the ransom is one among many colourful and sometimes incompatible soteriological metaphors should not lead us to ignore the degree to which patristic authors treated it with theological seriousness.