Re-Envisioning Christian Humanism

back to the ancient Greeks: it is only by suffering, that is, by experience, that

we truly learn. But the Christian tradition assumes that it is only in this way

that we become a human being: our whole life, and what we learn therein, is

thepaideia, the education and formation, by which we become human.^10

SUFFERING AND DEATH

Irenaeus of Lyons not only asserts that the glory of God is a living human
being, the martyr, but also offers further insights into why the economy of
creation has been arranged as it is. Or to put the issue the other way round,
one might ask why, if the goal of God is to create living human beings, did God
not do just that? Why didn’t God simply say,‘Let there be human beings’, such
that it was so? Why was God‘patient’with the human race, made of earth and
subject to time, as it learnt by experience through various dispensations, and
why did the‘beginning’, Christ, only appear‘at the end’?^11 Irenaeus suggests
various reasons why this apparently long detour was necessary.^12 He argues,
for instance, that Adam and Eve, whom he depicts as infants in paradise,
needed to grow in order to achieve perfection, the fullness of being human to
which they were called by God. For example, a mother could give a newborn
child meat rather than milk, though this would not benefit the infant at all.
Likewise, God could have given us a full share in his life and existence from the
beginning—but we would not have been able to receive such a magnificent
gift, without being prepared by learning through experience. A newborn infant
may have‘perfect’limbs, but needs to exercise (and to fall) before being able to
walk and to run; so, too, a creature needs to be exercised in virtue before they
can share in the uncreated life of God, for this life, as we have seen, is one of
self-sacrificial love.
He further suggests that this divine paideiais bound up with different
kinds of‘knowledge’. There is the kind of knowledge that is acquired by hearing,
a matter of information; and then there is the kind of knowledge which
is only gained by experience, such as what it is for something to be‘sweet’.
Moreover, he adds, just as someone who has lost their sight but then regains it
will value sight much more than those who do not know what it is like to
be blind, so also it is only by our mortality, by the experience of death in our

(^10) Cf. John Behr,Becoming Human: Meditations on Christian Anthropology in Word and
Image(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013), and John Behr,The Mystery of
Christ: Life in Death(Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006).
(^11) Cf. Irenaeus,Haer.1.10.3. Cf. John Behr,Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and
Clement, OECS (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 34–85; Behr,Irenaeus, 144–62.
(^12) For the following paragraphs, see Irenaeus,Haer. 4.37–39; Behr,Asceticism and Anthro-
pology, 116–27; Behr,Irenaeus, 192–8.
Patristic Humanism: The Beginning of ChristianPaideia 23