The Patristic Tradition on the Sinlessness of Jesus

Demetrios BATHRELLOS, Athens, Greece

ABSTRACT
In the 19th and especially the 20th century, many theologians, for the most part Protestant, argued that Christ bore a fallen, sinful humanity. Moreover, some of them
claimed that this view reflects the patristic teaching. In this paper, I provide and
comment on quotations from several Fathers of the Church, which clearly indicate
that according to the fundamental theological attitude of the patristic mind the
humanity of Christ was sinless, holy, and deified on account of its unity with the
divinity of the Logos.

I
The question of the sinlessness of Jesus has at least three dimensions. The first
concerns the question of whether Jesus bore a fallen, sinful human nature,
namely a human nature that has been deformed by the sinful passions that mark
post-lapsarian humanity in general. The second dimension has to do with the
question of whether Jesus could sin. The third is related to the question of
whether Jesus did in fact sin. In this paper I will address only the first of these
questions.
II
Until the 19th century the sinlessness of Jesus was for the vast majority of
Christians self-evident. From that century on, however, serious doubts or even
open denials of this belief began to dominate the thought of certain theologians,
who thought that the belief that the human nature of Jesus was fallen, and in
fact sinful, was part and parcel of the belief in his authentic humanity.1 In the
19th century Edward Irving was a pioneer of this view in Britain.2 In the
1
These theologians did not adhere to the patristic view, expressed for instance by John of
Damascus, which distinguishes between blameful and blameless passions and attributes to Jesus
only the latter, but considered him as bearer of the former too.
2
For a presentation and analysis of Irvings theology, see, for instance, C.G. Strachan,
The Pentecostal Theology of Edward Irving (London, 1973).

Studia Patristica LXIII, 235-241.

Peeters Publishers, 2013.

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D. BATHRELLOS

20th century great Protestant minds, such as Karl Barth,3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer,4
Wolfhart Pannenberg,5 T.F. Torrance,6 Colin Gunton7 and others, but also some
Roman Catholic8 and even Orthodox theologians,9 espoused versions of the
view that the humanity of Jesus was fallen and sinful.
Some proponents of this view, Karl Barth for instance, believed that the theology of the Early Church points in a different direction.10 Some others, however,
for instance T.F. Torrance,11 James Torrance,12 and Thomas Weinandy,13 claimed
that the aforementioned view is already to be found in the Fathers. The purpose
of this article is to show that the case is exactly the opposite, namely that the
Fathers of the Church believed that the humanity of Christ was sinless.
The phrase the Fathers of the Church is of course an obvious overgeneralization. In this short paper it is not possible to cite more than a few relevant testimonies from just a few Fathers. However, the selected quotations that will be
presented will make manifest the fundamental theological attitude of the patristic mind in a way that will not allow, I hope, much scope for further doubt.
III
I will begin with a lengthy passage from Tertullians De carne Christi.
Our contention, however, is not that the flesh of sin, but that the sin of the flesh,
was brought to nought in Christ according to the apostles authority when he says
3
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.2, The Doctrine of the Word of God, trans. G.T. Thomson
and Harold Knight (London, 1956), 151-5.
4
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christology, intr. by Edwin H. Robertson and trans. by John Bowden
(London, 1966), 110-8.
5
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe
(London, 1968), 354-64.
6
See, for instance, T.F. Torrance, The Place of Christology in Biblical and Dogmatic Theology, in T.H.L. Parker (ed.), Essays in Christology for Karl Barth (London, 1956), 18 and
T.F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Grand Rapids, 1983), 48.
7
Colin Gunton, Two Dogmas Revisited: Edward Irvings Christology, Scottish Journal of
Theology 41 (1988), 359-76.
8
For instance, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans.
with an introduction by Aidan Nichols, o.p. (Grand Rapids, 1993), 20, 22, 90, and 119, and
Thomas G. Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ
(Edinburgh, 1993), passim.
9
See, for instance, Bishop Kallistos [Ware] of Diokleia, The Humanity of Christ, The Fourth
Constantinople Lecture, 29/30 November 1984 (Anglican and Eastern Churches Association,
1985) and The Orthodox Way (Oxford, 1979), 99-100.
10
K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.2 (1956), 153.
11
Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (London, 1991), 161-8.
12
James B. Torrance, The Vicarious Humanity of Christ, in Thomas F. Torrance (ed.), The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed A.D. 381 (Edinburgh, 1981), 140-1.
13
T. Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh (1993), 23-38.

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He brought to nought sin in the flesh.14 For in another place also15 he says that Christ
was in the likeness of the flesh of sin The apostle will have us understand by the
likeness of sinful flesh that the flesh of Christ, itself not sinful, was the like of that to
which sin did belong, and is to be equated with Adam in species but not in defect. From
this text we also prove that in Christ there was that flesh whose nature is in man sinful
while in Christ that same flesh exists without sin which in man did not exist without
sin In that case, you will reply, if it was our flesh Christ clothed himself with,
Christs flesh was sinful [The truth though is that] by clothing himself with our
flesh he made it his own, and by making it his own he made it non-sinful.16

Tertullians aim in this passage is to defend the reality of Christs flesh. This,
however, does not lead him to affirm that this flesh was sinful. It was real
human flesh, but because it was Christs, it was also non-sinful.
From Tertullian we will move on to Gregory of Nyssa. I will quote a few
passages from Gregorys Catechetical Oration, which, according to its editor,
James Herbert Srawley, exhibits perhaps better than any other single work the
characteristic features of the mind and thought of its author.17 In this work
Gregory tackles, inter alia, the objection that it would be unworthy for God to
unite himself with human nature. To this Gregory replies that
in the instance of virtue, it cannot be said that any created thing can be conceived of as
contrary to it, but only the idea of vice. If, then, our Faith preached that the Deity had
been begotten under vicious circumstances, an opportunity would have been afforded
the objector of running down our belief, as that of persons who propounded incongruous and absurd opinions with regard to the Divine nature. For, indeed, it were blasphemous to assert that the Deity, Which is very wisdom, goodness, incorruptibility, and
every other exalted thing in thought or word, had undergone change to the contrary.
If, then, God is real and essential virtue, and no mere existence of any kind is logically
opposed to virtue, but only vice is so; and if the Divine birth was not into vice, but into
human existence; and if only vicious weakness is unseemly and shameful and with
such weakness neither was God born, nor had it in His nature to be born why are they
scandalized at the confession that God came into touch with human nature, when in
relation to virtue no contrariety whatever is observable in the organization of man? For
neither Reason, nor Understanding, nor Receptivity for science, nor any other like quality proper to the essence of man, is opposed to the principle of virtue.18

Further down in the same work, Gregory writes that the Deity is separate only
from evil, and there is no nature in evil, and the mystery declares that
Romans 8:3
Ibid.
16
Tertullian, De carne Christi 16, 10-25. I have used the translation of Ernest Evans, Tertullians Treatise on the Incarnation (London, 1956), 57.
17
James Herbert Srawley, The Catechetical Oration of Gregory of Nyssa (Cambridge, 1903), v.
18
Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 15 (PG 45, 48D-49A), and in J.H. Srawley,
The Catechetical Oration (1903), 65.12-66.11. Barth expresses his disagreement with what
Gregory writes in this passage (K. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I.2 [1956], 153).
14
15

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D. BATHRELLOS

God was born in man but not in evil.19 A little later, Gregory argues that the
body of Christ was sanctified by the inhabitation of the Word that tabernacled
in the flesh.20 Again he claims that the grace of the Word rendered his body
holy.21 This was, for Gregory, in accordance with the purpose of the Incarnation, for the God who was manifested infused Himself into perishable humanity for this purpose, viz. that by this communion with Deity mankind might at
the same time be deified.22
What is made clear by the above quotations is that for Gregory of Nyssa the
humanity of Christ was not only sinless, but also holy, and in fact deified on
account of its unity with the divinity of the Word.
I will move on to a quotation from St Augustine. In his De trinitate, Augustine argues that
God judged it better both to take upon Him man through whom to conquer the enemy
of the human race from the race itself that had been conquered; and yet to do this of a
virgin, whose conception, not flesh but spirit, not lust but faith, preceded. Nor did that
concupiscence of the flesh intervene, by which the rest of men, who derive original sin,
are propagated and conceived; but holy virginity became pregnant, not by conjugal
intercourse, but by faith lust being utterly absent so that that which was born from
the root of the first man might derive only the origin of race, not also of guilt. For there
was born not a nature corrupted by the contagion of transgression, but the one only
remedy of all such corruptions. There was born, I say, a Man having nothing at all, and
to have nothing at all, of sin; through whom they were to be born again so as to be
freed from sin, who could not be born without sin.23

Let us move on to St Cyril of Alexandria, whose Christology proved a catalyst

for subsequent Christological developments. There are too many quotations by
Saint Cyril that could be used as unambiguous indications of his firm belief in
the sinlessness of the humanity of Christ. I will have to restrict myself, however, to quoting only a few. So, in his work Christ is One, Cyril writes: How
did he [Christ] condemn sin in the flesh?24 It was not possible for an ordinary
man, whose nature like ours was tyrannized by sin, to condemn sin. But because
19
Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 28 (PG 45, 73A-B), and J.H. Srawley, The Catechetical Oration (1903), 106.4-7.
20
Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 37 (PG 45, 96D), and J.H. Srawley, The Catechetical Oration (1903), 149.5-6.
21
Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 37 (PG 45, 97A), and J.H. Srawley, The Catechetical Oration (1903), 149.8-9.
22
Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 37 (PG 45, 97B), and J.H. Srawley, The Catechetical
Oration (1903), 151.11-152.1. For the quotations from Gregory of Nyssa I have used the translation
(on some occasions slightly modified) from Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (eds), A Select Library
of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church II/5 (Edinburgh, 1892).
23
Augustine, De trinitate XIII 18 (23). I have used the translation from Philip Schaff (ed.),
A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church I/3 (Edinburgh,
1887).
24
Romans 8:3.

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it became the flesh of he who ignored sin, in this way truly, as it is very plausible, it threw away the tyranny of sin and is enriched by the quality of the
Word and is holy and life giving and full of the divine energy.25 Elsewhere
in the same work Cyril writes that the Word became flesh, yet not sinful flesh,
but in the likeness of sinful flesh,26 and he associated with those on earth as
man and he became like us except for the fact that he was not with us under
sin.27 Further on again in the same work, Cyril presents Christ saying about
himself that in me you see human nature cleansed holy and most pure
I have defeated Satan who ruled in the past. For he found in me nothing at all
of his own.28 In addition, in his Second Letter to Nestorius, Cyril argues that
mans nature became utterly sick with sin but this is not his [Christs]
condition.29 Moreover, in his First Letter to Succensus, Cyril writes that
we affirm, then, that because human nature underwent corruption as a result of the transgression in Adam and our mind was being dominated by carnal pleasures, namely innate
impulses, it was vital for the Word of God to become man for the salvation of us earthly
men and to make human flesh, subject to decay and sensuality as it was, his own and
that he should destroy the innate, namely the sensual, impulses In view of the fact,
then, that human flesh has become the Words own flesh, it has stopped being burdened
with corruption, and since as God, conscious of no sin, he appropriated it and displayed
it as his own (as I have said), it has ceased to be infected with sensuality.30

Finally, in his Third Letter to Nestorius, Cyril refers to the holiness of the
humanity of Christ in connection with the Eucharist: We become holy, because
we become participants in the holy flesh and precious blood of Christ, saviour
of us all, by receiving not mere flesh (God forbid!).31
After having seen what Cyril, the Eastern pillar of Christology, has to say
on the matter, let us now move quickly to the Western pillar of Christology of
the same period, Leo the Great, and see what he also has to say. In his famous
Tome to Flavian, Leo writes that
we call ours that which the Creator deposited in us from the beginning and which he
received back again to restore; for that which the deceiver introduced in addition and
25
Cyril of Alexandria, Christ is one, in G.M. De Durand, Cyrille dAlexandrie, Deux Dialogues
Christologiques, introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes, SC 97 (Paris, 1964), 330.4-11.
26
Romans 8:3.
27
Cyril of Alexandria, Christ is one, in G.M. De Durand, Deux Dialogues Christologiques
(1964), 402.34-9.
28
Cyril of Alexandria, Christ is one, in G.M. De Durand, Deux Dialogues Christologiques
(1964), 444.11-3 and 15-7.
29
Cyril, Third Letter to Nestorius, in Lionel R. Wickham (ed. and trans.), Cyril of Alexandria:
Select Letters (Oxford, 1983), 9, p. 26. 3-4 (trans. on p. 27).
30
Cyril, First Letter to Succensus, in L. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria (1983), 78. 3-16 (trans.
on p. 79, slightly modified).
31
Third Letter to Nestorius, in L. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria (1983), 7, p. 22. 12-15 (trans.
on p. 23, modified).

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D. BATHRELLOS

the man, being deceived, sinned did not have any trace in the Saviour. Nor because
he entered into a share in human weakness did he in consequence become a sharer also
in our sins. For he assumed the form of a servant without any defilement of sin.32

Later on in the Tome Leo will argue that he [Christ] was born by a new birth,
since inviolate virginity, without experiencing desire, provided the material of
the flesh. There was taken from the mother of the Lord nature, but not sin.33
The next excerpt that I will quote is from the Fifth Ecumenical Council of
Constantinople (553 AD). The Council officially condemned the view that
Christ was troubled by the passions of the soul and the desires of human flesh,
was gradually separated from that which is inferior, and became better by his
progress in good works and faultless through his way of life and became
after the resurrection immutable in his thoughts and entirely without sin.34
Finally, an important contribution to the question of the sinlessness of Jesus
was made by Saint John of Damascus. In his Expositio fidei, John writes that
we confess, then, that he [the Son of God] assumed all the natural and innocent passions of man. For he assumed the whole man and all mans attributes save sin. For
that is not natural, nor is it implanted in us by the Creator, but arises voluntarily in
our mode of life as the result of a further implantation by the devil, though it cannot
prevail over us by force. For the natural and blameless passions are those which are
not in our power, but which have entered into the life of man owing to the condemnation by reason of the transgression; such as hunger, thirst, weariness, labour, the tears,
the corruption, the shrinking from death, the fear, the agony with the bloody sweat,
the succour at the hands of angels because of the weakness of the nature, and other
such like passions which belong by nature to every man. All, then, he assumed that
he might sanctify all.35

In this excerpt, John argues that Christ assumed the blameless passions that
entered into human life after the fall, without, however, assuming our sinful,
blameful passions. This makes it possible to say that Christ shared our postlapsarian predicament, but without sharing our sinfulness.
32
Leo of Rome, Tome (to Flavian), in Eduardus Schwartz (ed.), Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, Concilium Universale Chalcedonense, tomus alter, vol. primum, pars prima (Berlin,
1933), 13. 18-23. The English translation is taken from Richard Price and Michael Gaddis (trans.
with introduction and notes), The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon II (Liverpool, 2005), 18.
33
Leo of Rome, Tome (to Flavian), in Schwartz (ed.), Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum,
Concilium Universale Chalcedonense, tomus alter, vol. primum, pars prima, 14. 19-21. The English translation is taken from Price and Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon II (2005),
19.
34
For the English translation, see N.P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils I: Nicaea
1 to Lateran 5 (London and Washington, 1990), 119. I have slightly modified Tanners translation.
35
Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, II, Expositio Fidei, ed. Bonifatius Kotter (Berlin,
1973), 64, p. 162. 2-13. The English translation (slightly modified) is by Philip Schaff et al.,
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers II, vol. IX available online.

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241

There are many more relevant excerpts from Gregory of Nazianzus, Sophronius of Jerusalem, Maximus the Confessor, the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and
others, but for the sake of brevity I will have to omit them.
Conclusions
I would like to finish my contribution by summing up the main points that can
be drawn from the patristic and conciliar passages that I have just quoted. Sin is
not a part of human nature, but was later introduced into it by the devil. The Son
of God assumed our nature, not our sin. His humanity was not stained by any
defilement of sin. For this reason he was never troubled by the passions of the
soul and the desires of human flesh, nor did he become sinless only after the
Resurrection. What is more, his humanity was not merely sinless, but also most
pure, holy, and deified on account of its unity with the divinity in the hypostasis of the Logos.
This is clear, sound, and, as far as I am aware, unanimous patristic teaching.
That this teaching expresses the tradition of the Church, espoused also by later
theologians, including Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin is, in my view,
indisputable. That this teaching is also theologically correct is not difficult to
prove. Such an endeavour, however, would require another study.