Mattias Gassman - Et Deus et Homo: The Christology and Soteriology of Lactantius

This paper analyzes several points pertaining to Lactantius’ perception of Christ and his role in the Divine Institutes. Little attention has been paid since McGuckin’s work (1982, 1986) to the complexities of Lactantius’ Christology and soteriology, which were not fully described in Loi’s (1970) analysis of his theology. Therefore, this paper centres upon the defence of the Incarnation in Div. Inst. 4.22-25, wherein Lactantius maintains that Christ had to be both God and man at once in order to teach to humans the path of virtue, which leads to immortality. Christ, as a divine spirit embodied in human flesh, was able to bring with himself the knowledge necessary to teach men virtue. Christ did not, however, teach a philosophy that can be appropriated individually; instead, he founded the Church, in which alone true worship (identical to virtue and iustitia), is offered to God. By being man, on the other hand, Christ was able to carry out his own commands and thus not only show that they can be obeyed, but also model that obedience. 

Lactantius does not unequivocally state that Christ’s divinity is equal to the Father’s. At 2.8 and 4.6-8, he indicates that Christ was created or breathed forth by God in a manner similar to (yet differing from) the creation of the angels. At 4.29, however, he makes clear that Father and Son are united and must be worshipped together. He says, moreover, that Christ did not call himself God – precisely in order to avoid separating himself from the Father – and that the Son shares in the Father’s powers (virtutes) and majesty. Lactantius’ defence of the Incarnation faces a challenge in these statements of Christ’s divinity: if virtue is the soul’s struggle against spiritual foes (3.12) and Christ (unlike the soul) had divine power, how can Christ’s example still be persuasive? Lactantius does not deal with this explicitly, but his argument allows at least two routes for reaching a more satisfactory explanation. First, he states (7.5) that baptism imparts divine power to the Christian, thereby making the Christian’s struggle against sin more like Christ’s. Second, he hints in book 4 that Christ’s Passion and Resurrection were a real conquest of death. Although these thoughts are not explicitly integrated into his defence of the Incarnation, they are essential to a nuanced account of his understanding of Christ’s nature and salvific work.