DEIFICATION AND CLARIFICATION
SIR,—As a layman I hesitate to criticise the views of two illustrious Roman converts, but I cannot help asking myself why the acceptance of the Virgin as Co-Redemptress, so obvious to Mr. Ross Williamson, should have been so much less obvious to the Early Church. The emphasis of the teaching of the Fathers was on the Redemption of the indi- vidual through Christ alone. The resurrection of Christ, as Origen pointed out in the recently discovered Discourse with Heracleides, c. 28, was the type of human resurrection. The highest service a Christian could offer was to die as a martyr in direct imitation of Christ's death.
It was not that the Christians of the first four centuries ignored the Virgin, but her association with Redemption seems invariably to have been linked with a docetic view of Our Lord and the consequent denial of His full humanity. It was one of the hallmarks of Gnosticism and popular Monophysitism. Thus, the earliest Assumption legends appear to be of second- or third-century Gnostic origin from Egypt.
So, what was once regarded as indicative of a false Christology has now become the doc- trine of the Roman Catholic Church. There seems to be every justification for the refusal of the Church of England to found its doc-
trine other than on Scripture and the tradition of the Fathers.—Yours faithfully,
Cambridge W. H. C. FREND
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