The Chreestology of Ephesians

[Peter Kirby]

Continuing (pp. 967-968):

Thus, as an early Christian, whenever one hears the name Chreestos, one hears the word ‘good’; whenever one hears the word ‘good’, one hears the name ‘Chreestos’. Whenever one thinks of ‘education’ or ‘philosophy’, which aim for ‘the good’, one should think only of ‘Chreestos’. Whenever one thinks of compendious learning—a great phenomenon of the age98—one should think only of the compendious learning of Chreestos—in whom ‘all things are summated’ or ‘headed up’ (Eph. 1.10): itself an epitome term. Pagans rightly regarded early Christians generally as Classically uneducated. Early Christianity has no interest in wholesale absorption of Classical learning. But it does have an interest in showing both to itself and to outsiders—that it surpasses Classical learning. Hence such passages as Acts 17 (Paul before the Athenian philosophers) and the present, which deftly appropriate Classical techniques to deflate Classicism itself. Epitome culture claims that all you need to know is epitomised versions of things. Christians reply that all you need to know is the epitome that is Chreestos.99 A particular aspect is the philosophisation of Jesus: to the pagans’ question: what is ‘the good’? (one translation being, precisely, to chreeston), Christians reply: Chreestos, goodness instantiated, and superior even to such admittedly fine pagan exemplars of goodness as Socrates or the Cynics. And unlike the finicky Stoics, Chresstians could produce a completely perfect sapiens.

[Peter Kirby]

Further:

It’s worth reiterating the neatness of the play on Χριστομαθία and χρηστομαθία, with all that flows from it. A pagan reading Ephesians 4.20–1 or hearing the Chreestian answer to the question: what is to chreeston? would be both amused and challenged. If early Christians, who reject Classical paideia, are to reject it convincingly, they have, as it were, to undermine it from inside: to hollow out its own categories. Here, as elsewhere, one might compare Christian techniques with those of Diogenes and the Cynics: Diogenes completely rejects conventional paideia and indeed conventional ‘philosophy’, but he can only do so convincingly if he shows himself master of that paideia and if he can defeat Plato and other ‘big-name’ philosophers in philosophical repartee. If you’re going to do rejectionism, you’ve got to do it with a certain style and wit.

[Peter Kirby]

Moles also finds allusion to Chreestos as one who is dead ("Chreestos, chaire!") in the New Testament

I would say Chreestos as ‘dead’ is everywhere implied in the New Testament. But Romans 8.34 is a particularly clear case: ‘Is it Jesus Christ [Chreestos] [who is to condemn], the one who died, or rather was raised?’. Here both alternatives (‘died’/‘raised’) define ‘Chreestos’. Also common in Paul—and possibly pre-Pauline—is the tag ‘Chreest died for us’. It’s extraordinarily concentrated, containing several interlocking levels of meaning. Consider also the doctrine ‘the chreest must suffer’ (Luke 24.26, etc.). Christians supported this by Isaiah 53 (the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief), which they were the first to read as applying to the Messiah. ‘Suffer’ refers to Chreest’s passion, including his death. So the tag ‘the chreest must suffer’ includes a per definitionem justification. Remember that Christians, like pagan moralists, used memorable tags as a way of learning.

[Peter Kirby]

Moles sees this kind of punning extending to χάρις:

Van Voorst101 suggests possible punning between χρηστός ~ χάρις/‘grace’ in Ephesians 4.32 (a passage already considered for Chreestos ~ ‘kind’):

Be kind [χρηστοί] to one another, good-hearted, being gracious [χαριζόμενοι] to one another, just as God in Christ [ἐν Χριστῷ] gave grace [ἐχαρίσατο] to you.

The possibility of a relationship with χάρις is indeed bound to occur to anyone looking for puns on Chreestos. Neither difference of quantity (the first syllable of Chreestos is long, that of χάρις short) nor accentuation (the accent on the second syllable of Chreestos, on the first of χάρις) matters. It is worth noting, with Karrer,102 that the medieval Fathers, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Aquinas, pun on ‘Christus’ and ‘gratia’, the Latin cognate of χάρις—a relic, perhaps, of a tradition going back to the Greek Fathers; that in the Septuagint χάρις is a key attribute of God (so perhaps transferable to Jesus); and that a strong association is made by some of the Greek Church Fathers between Jesus and χάρις, the latter sometimes being used as a title of Jesus.

In the case of Ephesians 4.32, a pun looks persuasive. Being chreestos is defined as being ‘kind’ or ‘good’-hearted and then further defined as being ‘gracious’, in imitation of God’s ‘grace’ as manifested in the person of Chreestos.

There are indeed numerous New Testament passages where there look to be sonically insistent relationships between Chreestos and χάρις, as part of a systematic ‘Christology’.

Ephesians 2.4–10:

God, being rich in pity, because of his great love with which he loved us (5), even when we were corpses in our fallings by the wayside, made us live together with Christ—by grace [τῷ Χριστῷ—χάριτι] you have been saved—(6) and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus [ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ], (7) so that he might demonstrate in the coming ages the overflowing riches of his grace [χάριτος] in kindness [ἐν χρηστότητι] towards us in Christ Jesus [ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ]. (8) For by grace [χάριτι] you are saved through faith; and this is not from you, but it is the gift of God; (9) not from works, lest anyone should boast. (10) For we are His making, created in Christ Jesus [ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ] for good [ἀγαθοῖς] works which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

So we encounter in close succession Χριστῷ, χάριτι, Χριστῷ, χάριτος, χρηστότητι, Χριστῷ, and χάριτι.

Ephesians 1.5–10:

Destining us for the position of sons through Jesus Christ [Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ] to him, according to the benevolent thinking of his will, (6) to the praise of the thought of his grace [χάριτος], with which he graced [ἐχαρίτωσεν] us in the beloved. (7) In whom we have redemption through his blood, the release of our fallings by the wayside, according to the riches of his grace [χάριτος], (8) which he lavished on us, (9) making known to us the mystery of his will, according to the benevolent thinking which he set forth in Christ [ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ], (10) for the organisation of the fulfilment of time, to sum up all things in Christ [ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ], the things in the heavenly places and the things on earth.

Christ is the summation of all things; God’s χάρις is ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ.

[Peter Kirby]

Moles can later introduce this passage from Galatians, without needing to explain the connections that could be found:

Galatians 5.1–6:

Christ [Χριστός] has freed you for freedom. Stand, then, and do not hold yourself under again to a yoke of slavery. (2) Look, I, Paul, say to you that, if you receive circumcision, Christ [Χριστός] will not help/advantage [ὠφελήσει] you. (3) I bear witness again to every man who receives circumcision that he is indebted to keep the whole law. (4) You are severed from Christ [Χριστοῦ], you who justify yourselves in law, you have fallen away from grace [χάριτος]. (5) For we, by the Spirit, through belief, await the hope of justice. (6) For in Christ [ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ] Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any strength but belief in action through love.

[Peter Kirby]

Moles argues that this kind of association of sounds between Χριστός and χάριτος would be well primed:

It is generally agreed that the Grace combines (1) the Greek equivalent of the Jewish ‘Shalom’ [‘peace’] and (2) the Greek form of greeting χαίρε/χαίρετε (‘hail’), with Paul (or his predecessors) substituting the cognate but stronger χάρις for χαίρε/χαίρετε. The latter form of greeting is often used in letters; so is the former; and the combination had already been made in Hellenistic contexts before Paul or the early Christians. The combination is therefore well suited to the New Testament context of the letters of Paul and other early Christians. But there is a very common Greek epitaph (also found in Jewish contexts) where χαίρε is combined with address to, or description of, the dead person as χρηστός.103 That is, the Christian Grace also combines standard letter and epitaph formula, and the collocation of sound between Chreestos and charis is already established in the reader’s or listener’s consciousness. The general point then is: our ‘dead’ Chreest ‘lives’ (in contrast to all other recipients of epitaphs) and is therefore Chreest as Messiah, who illustrates and embodies God’s Grace. He can therefore ‘address’ us directly in a letter.104 Hence the ‘real’ writer of the New Testament letters is Chreestos and Paul and the others are only exegetes of Chreestos’ letters.

Chreestos, then, is the dominant sound of the early Christians’ sound world. The punning associations will always be there, sometimes on the surface (where χρηστός or cognates appear in the immediate vicinity), sometimes just beneath it.

[Peter Kirby]

This punning provides an alternative to "Christ" as an active reference to the "Messiah" or as being "only" a name (p. 972):

The association also creates so to say implicit interpretative structures. For example, a major theme of Romans is the χρηστότης of God, which calls the Romans to repentance and which they are called to emulate (2.4; 3.12; 11.22). The text also repeatedly emphasises Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ (1.1, 4, 6, 8; 2.16; 3.22, 24; 5.1, 11). The connection between the two is one that Paul does not need to—and does not—spell out. The punning association also suggests a via media between Hengel’s claim that in Paul Χριστός functions (only) as a name or title and Wright’s claim that it always has active Messianic force.105 This constant repetition of Chreestos (also) functions as a sort of insistent pedagogic background back-beat: chreestos, chreestos, chreestos, God is Good all the time, etc

[Peter Kirby]

With this survey, Moles approaches the text of Acts here (pp. 972-973):

Let us look again at Acts 11.26, which will bring us back to the term Christianoi:

when [Barnabas] had found [Saul], he brought him to Antioch. And it happened to them to be brought together in the church for a whole year and to teach a large crowd, and in Antioch the disciples were first operated as Chrestians/Christians.

There is a technical textual problem. The first hand of Codex Sinaiticus has χρηματίσαι τε πρώτως ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ τοὺς μαθητὰς Χρηστιανούς, whereas all other manuscripts and—I think—all modern editors have Χριστιανούς. On one level, the variation between Χριστιανούς and Χρηστιανούς does not matter because χρηματίσαι is cognate with χρηστός, the adjective behind the proper name Χρηστός. So Luke is connecting the proper name with the notion of ‘usefulness’, and the eta quality of the name is ‘felt’, even if Χριστιανούς is read. But it is interesting that the possessor of that first hand saw the connection between proper name and χρηματίσαι, as no modern commentator has done. Is it possible that Luke himself actually wrote Χρηστιανούς, both to make the etymological connection clear and to reflect majority pagan orthography? But Χριστιανούς, pronounced the same, also conveys the etymological connection and Luke is hardly making a Tacitean point about correct spelling and derivation. Χριστιανούς has a further plus: keeping the notion of Messiahship. The majority reading is in fact subtler. We can now analyse the passage.

Χριστιανούς is not Jesus’ followers’ own term, but Romans’, from whose perspective it is disparaging—and that on several levels. The notice is sandwiched between persecutions: one, post-Stephen, in Jerusalem (11.19) and one spear-headed by Herod (12.1–18). The naming of the Χριστιανοί here evokes the Roman persecutions of Jesus’ followers under that name. The Romanised Lukas may well therefore imply the specific association between Χρηστιανοί and death. All this looks very ominous. But there are positives. When a group (here represented by a ‘large crowd’) gets a name, it is a defining moment, and the emphasis on ‘first’ registers this with appropriate historiographical solemnity. The moment is further emphasised by its being the culmination of a series of narrative episodes.106 The naming therefore fulfils the characteristic functions of the device of ‘late naming’. And within the unity that is Luke-Acts, Jesus’ followers are called by a name that directly recalls Jesus himself, thereby emphasising the general ‘succession’ quality of Acts. Thus Acts goes some way towards positive Christian acceptance of the name Χριστιανοί/Χρηστιανοί. In this it is like 1 Peter, but it goes further than that text in several respects. Importantly, the use of the word χρηματίσαι for ‘be called’ suppresses any gap between ‘name’ and ‘reality’. The etymological association between χρηματίσαι and χρηστός implies that this name is ‘for real’: the name is the thing itself. These people really were true followers of Christ, the Useful and Good, in being themselves ‘useful’ and ‘good’. They were also, as it were, descendants of the true king, the anointed messiah. They were truly chreestified. This name is the best of all names.

[Peter Kirby]

Moles concludes:

In practice, they used the name for a wide variety of purposes: to denote Jesus’ Messiahship; to distinguish their Jesus from others; to express the paradox that Jesus’ messiahship rested on death, but then resurrection; to recast Christos as ‘good’, ‘useful’ and ‘profitable’; to attract pagans to the new ‘good’ god; to din in the essences of Christianity; to convey Christian rejection of Classical philosophy and culture in favour of the true goodness of Christ and to do this by neat subversion of Classical techniques; to appropriate the entire epitome culture by making Christ the epitome of everything; and to plot various aspects of Christ’s divine status: as mediator between God and humans; as the incarnation of God’s goodness; as, in effect, the good God himself. Pace Parsons, we can say with absolute confidence that the New Testament writers and, presumably, their audiences or readerships fully understood the distinction—indeed the many distinctions—between the iota and eta forms; and pace Karrer, they exploited the punning potential of the name Chreestos extensively, ingeniously, and profoundly.

[MrMacSon]

Moles concludes:

In practice, they used the name for a wide variety of purposes: to denote Jesus’ Messiahship; to distinguish their Jesus from others; to express the paradox that Jesus’ messiahship rested on death, but then resurrection; to recast Christos as ‘good’, ‘useful’ and ‘profitable’; to attract pagans to the new ‘good’ god; to din in the essences of Christianity; to convey Christian rejection of Classical philosophy and culture in favour of the true goodness of Christ and to do this by neat subversion of Classical techniques; to appropriate the entire epitome culture by making Christ the epitome of everything; and to plot various aspects of Christ’s divine status: as mediator between God and humans; as the incarnation of God’s goodness; as, in effect, the good God himself. Pace Parsons, we can say with absolute confidence that the New Testament writers and, presumably, their audiences or readerships fully understood the distinction—indeed the many distinctions—between the iota and eta forms; and pace Karrer, they exploited the punning potential of the name Chreestos extensively, ingeniously, and profoundly.

What's the bet the punning [potential] was enhanced by or even because of the nomen sacrum, XC (including versions of it) ?