Colossians 1:24: "[I, Paul,] now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church”.
Paul never relates those words to vicarious atonement. Jesus crushed Satan's head when he died, descended into Hell, and rose again.
Vetus Ordo, do you completely agree with the first statement of The Theosist here? Why did you go so far as to use the words "as it were a co-redeemer" about the other Saints? I don't think The Theosist would allow for even "as it were". I know you both oppose the special title for Our Lady.
The Theosist, Jesus completed the end of His own SUFFERING when He died, not only the Redemption. Yet St. Paul speaks of a mysterious relationship between his suffering and Christ's, which was long past.
Non Nobis, mine is the majority Patristic reading, and it knows nothing of this suffering in place of and with Christ being an act of vicarious atonement analogous or joined to Jesus' upon Calvary, which I will now show to you.
I'll begin with those Fathers who make explicit my reading. First, the Greeks:
If, he says, there is anything remaining to be suffered, then I fill up the
leftovers of the afflictions for Christ’s sake, and rejoice in suffering on
your behalf. Why for your sakes? Because he suffered in order to
proclaim [the good news] to you. If Christ is the head of the body, the
church, then the afflictions that arise for the church through those who
rebel against the word of truth are quite naturally termed ‘afflictions of
Christ’, and whoever wrestles with a heart of praise in these afflictions
could say, not without good cause, I take my turn in filling up what
remains of the afflictions of Christ.
‘So’, he says, ‘I take pleasure even in suffering for you; and since Christ
had previously suffered for your wellbeing, to proclaim you his Body by
his resurrection, I fill up what is left of his afflictions for you.’ What was
left over? Your learning what things have been put right for you and
receiving the proclamation about them. But this was never going to be
without labour and afflictions. These are why I suffer, going about
proclaiming all that has been accomplished, so that you might believe and
with willing hearts come to be appropriated by him; for of these things I
was made a minister.
The Lord Jesus undertook death for the sake of the church, and the shame
of the cross, and the blows to the temples, and the scourging on his back,
and everything else he endured; and the godly apostle similarly bore the
various sufferings for her sake. For he knew about the life to be produced
by it. He describes himself ‘filling up in turn what was lacking in the
afflictions of Christ’, as filling up what was left over, and taking on the
accompanying sufferings. What was left over was the proclamation to the
Gentiles, and the display of salvation’s big-spending producer.
The Latins:
He says tribulation gains life, but he connects the benefit of this work explicitly to the faith of believers and the preaching to the faithful:
He confesses to exulting in the tribulations which he was suffering,
because he sees benefit for himself in the faith of the believers. For
tribulation is not in vain when it gains for life the one for whom it suffers.
These sufferings, he says, concern Christ, whose teaching they certainly
persecute; [this he says] in order to burden the unbelievers with the
horror of their impiety and to preach to the faithful the love of God,
whose Son still suffers injury for us.
Here again he connects it to the act of preaching the Gospel, the hearing of which is essential to our salvation:
There is no doubt that Christ is put to death in the martyrs, and that in
those who suffer for the faith – whether destruction or imprisonment or
floggings – it is Christ who suffers ... for their salvation they were
subjected to death; for in preaching to people they stir up hostility to
themselves, whether from Jews or from Gentiles, even to death.
This one is not explicit, but the suffering is connected specifically to the priestly ministry, and so the plain reading to me is to see the work of that suffering as the fruit of the priestly ministry, not a vicarious atonement:
So the aim is ‘that I may fill up’, he says, ‘what is lacking of the
tribulations of Christ in my flesh for his body, which is the church,
of which I have been made a minister’. We can see what there is
for us to take on – we who have taken on the priestly ministry: that
not only for ourselves, but also for the Lord’s church, we ought
bravely to bear physical suffering.
The rest of the Latin Fathers, like Augustine, I find to be silent on the question at hand of whether this suffering is for vicarious atonement, though the former deals quite extensively with the passage in the context of the mystery of the Church's suffering being Christ's suffering.
To turn to other Greek references, the first is Origen's. He's not explicit here, but he does mention it in the context of
witnesses:
You, sacred Ambrose, have been honoured and welcomed by several
cities, yet now appear as in pomp, bearing the cross of Jesus and
following him as he leads you before magistrates and kings, so that
accompanying you he may grant to you both a mouth and wisdom; and to
you too, his fellow contestant Protoctetus, and to all you our fellow witnesses [συμμαρτυροῦσιν] who ‘fill up what is lacking in the sufferings
of Christ’
Hegemonius's commentary doesn't help, considering this suffering special to the Apostle or Apostles:
‘For those which were lacking of the tribulations of Christ, I fill up in my
flesh.’ And again in another place he declares that because he is a
minister of Christ above the rest, so after him there is absolutely no other
to be looked for; indeed he commands that not even an angel from heaven
is to be thus received. And how then are we to believe Manes, coming
from Persia and professing to be the Paraclete?
John Chrysostom has some extensive commentary on this passage, but he doesn't connect it anywhere to the idea of a vicarious atonement through personal suffering.
But, as I alluded to before, I wouldn't expect to find such an idea among the early Christians since they didn't even possess the idea that Christ's suffering brought vicarious atonement directly and in itself as payment of a debt of justice due to the Father for our sin. Christ's suffering to them is more a
consequence of his redemptive work, the outpouring of a Satanic wrath upon him and his consequent death a necessary step in the accomplishment of his work in vanquishing Satan and destroying death. In suffering with him in the Church we become more
Christ-like, working out the salvation already won for us by Jesus alone.
Less interesting perhaps to you as a Catholic but more for the Eastern Orthodox is the understanding of Photius:
It is not as if Christ did not bear what he ought to suffer – no way: he left
out nothing at all in that respect; on the contrary, his grace to us was
over-abundant. So which lacks is Paul filling up? They are those which
the Saviour, had he been still living at the time when Paul was preaching,
would have suffered as he taught and, by his presence, as he cared for the
creation: those are what Paul now suffers, thereby ‘filling up in turn what
was left over of the afflictions of Christ’. This corresponds more closely
to the word. For he does not say simply ἀναπληρῶ, but ἀνταναπληρῶ, ie.
in place of [ἀντὶ] the Lord and Teacher I, the servant and disciple,
succeed to his ministry, and fill up in turn what is lacking of his
afflictions. The things he would have borne, had he not given me this
ministry, I of course – having taken it on – fill up in my body [σώματί
μου] what was lacking in his afflictions.
