From the Left Bank

In a very helpful and generous response to Nicaea at the 2006 meeting of the North American Patristics Society, Rebecca Lyman argued that my approach represented a return to the scholarly approaches of the era before the last few decades' reconsideration of the fourth-century controversies. She indicated that by this she meant that my study did not devote much space to considering the social world within which these controversies undoubtedly occurred and thus missed the opportunity to highlight some of the most fundamental factors driving the debate. The comment was fascinating, yet puzzling. The puzzlement occurred because of my understanding that most of the main figures in that scholarly revival—figures such as Maurice Wiles—engaged in close study of theological texts in ways I have always understood as very similar to my own.

Only afterward, in reflection on her recent work, did I see the particular connections that Lyman was drawing. In a series of recently published essays, Lyman argues that intra-Christian doctrinal controversy (especially the emerging concern for “right belief” in the second century) is one example of long-running debates about unity within “Hellenic” tradition. In a piece published in the Anglican Theological Review in 2002, Lyman offers a brief characterization of the fourth century and its modern legacy which pursues a similar argument.⁴

The very drive towards “orthodoxy,” she argues, reflects a cultural context in which “platonic” belief in the superiority of unity takes concrete form through the emerging desire for the institutional unity apparent in Roman political and ecclesiastical leaders. Yet, at the same time, the very character of that debate both masks and encourages an unstable “hybridity” within which negotiation and debate are necessary “to maintain the transcendent authenticity and cultural universality of the hybrid itself.”⁵

Lyman is not only arguing that a particular development in theological orthodoxy was the result of those with political power (perhaps with little understanding of or interest in Christian belief) forcing positions on Christians rather than the result of participants in the controversy engaging in internal polemic and debate over the persuasiveness of a particular idea. Such arguments are frequently offered in more or less sophisticated forms and must, of course, be treated on a case-by-case basis. As long as such a style of argumentation does not become a global hypothesis about early Christian belief (in which case it would seem to require almost endless justification at each step!), it is one that may be adopted by interpreters with a whole range of degrees of interest in theology.⁶

Lyman's argument makes a much more sophisticated claim, namely, that theological debates are best interpreted through an awareness of why the larger culture finds particular forms of argument and solution to be persuasive. Nor is she claiming—along the lines proposed by some social historians—that Christian debates over orthodoxy are epiphenomenal to more fundamental discourses of social power. Rather, she wants to see early Christian theology as a very specific appropriation of this wider cultural debate.⁷

I do not dispute the importance of Lyman's work. Along with (and partially in the wake of) the now classic Alain LeBoulluec's La Notion d'hérésie dans la littérature grecque, IIe-IIIe siècles,⁸

Lyman's account opens a number of important avenues for further exploration. Yet, I want to make one observation and highlight three areas of concern. In her “Tradition Without Orthodoxy,” Lyman appears to deduce from her identification of the fourth-century controversies as an example of this cultural wider debate that modern Christians should feel less bound by the results of those controversies, even as they continue to value the Christian tradition. Thus, when she reflects on the significance of her historical work for modern Christian thought, we see at least a parallel between her approach and that of Maurice Wiles, despite their rather different scholarly concerns. For both, uncovering the historical and cultural contingency of early Christian belief raises the possibility of a modern Christianity willing to see itself in some fairly significant discontinuities with that early belief.

My first concern focuses not on the usefulness of exploring the cultural debates and contexts on which Lyman has recently worked per se, but on how we understand the explanatory power of such work. In the first place, to what extent do we use the uncovering of these discourses to replace explanations shaped around exegetical dispute or other “internal” theological concerns rather than to supplement our understanding of the very character of theological argument? My sense is that, while Lyman's arguments provide much that helps with a great deal of supplementation, and that this is mostly her own intention, at times (especially when the relationship between ancient and modern Christian belief is under consideration) the function of replacement moves inappropriately to the forefront.⁹

Exploration of these cultural contexts most certainly provides important background to the character and shape of early Christian doctrinal debate, and some version of these concerns was an ingredient in the decisions that particular figures and councils made. In this sense, understanding these cultural debates is parallel to understanding the methods of exegesis and philosophical inquiry that shaped the argument we study, and so these wider investigations should supplement and deepen our attention to the particular arguments offered, defended, and refuted in the course of debate. My suspicion is that at times, however, the uncovering of these cultural debates about unity has further significant consequences. The locating of a given theological debate within a particular social and cultural context, no longer our own, is taken as a reason for suggesting that modern Christians move beyond the theological conclusions that resulted from debates which occurred within those particular contexts. Such a step seems to me to demand its own theoretical and theological argument (one concerned with questions of pneumatology and ecclesiology—and to speak of these is to speak also of one's theology of history—as well as with questions of the relationship between faith and culture).¹⁰

My second concern focuses on the questions that one can raise about the relationship between Christian discourse and the Hellenic discourse of orthodoxy that Lyman traces. She has focused on the second and fourth centuries as the period within which this Hellenic discourse shapes the structure of intra-Christian argument, but to what extent is that same discourse also part of the New Testament (and specifically Pauline) context, and thus intrinsic rather than extrinsic to the foundations of Christianity? To what extent did the theological debates from the second to the fourth centuries themselves shape cultural debates about unity within Hellenism, such that we could argue that these views of unity became persuasive on theological grounds? How do we see the interrelationship between Christian adaptations of these cultural debates and the development of Christian techniques for reading the text of Scripture as a whole? That is, in what ways are Christian notions of unity in theological discourse dependent on particular notions of what it means to be a scriptural tradition? To what extent must a tradition constituted by constant negotiation be understood as necessarily unstable in all fundamental doctrinal areas and thus as pointing to the need for a constant reformation as the best continuation of that tradition?¹¹

These questions follow from Lyman's work so far, but push further in asking how far Christianity's adoption of Roman and Hellenic debates about orthodoxy involved the shaping of a clear theological rationale for that adoption. The significance of these questions here lies in the manner in which they might undercut the idea that such notions of ideal cultural unity are inevitably “platonic” (and inevitably masking of their own instability) and thus not intrinsic to Christian thought (as Lyman seems to suggest). To push in this direction either makes more persuasive the liberal theological argument that we should not feel bound to the results of such debates, or (as I would argue) it forces on us a host of questions about the extent to which the enterprise of Christian theology (at least when it is concerned with the fundamental articles of faith) necessarily involves a growing familiarity with the cultures within which those beliefs were formed and most significantly articulated.¹²

My third area of concern further focuses on how we understand the theological consequences of modern critical historical investigation. I agree with Lyman that modern historical narration undermines both a narrative that alleges heresy to be nothing other than a deviation from unchanging orthodoxy, and one that admits development, but claims to be able to demonstrate a continuity that all who examine the evidence must admit. Nevertheless, the provisional claims of the historian are true for us all: we are also at a loss to demonstrate a lack of fundamental continuity in Christian belief despite the realities of development. It was against the assumption of this understanding of historical scholarship's abilities and lack of abilities that in the last chapter of Nicaea I argued that we may see it as of the very essence of appropriate faith in the Christian tradition that we must seek to narrate the continuity of Christian faith even as we recognize the provisionality of such narrations. But this, I suggest, may be envisaged as a task for the Christian scholar not solely out of historical necessity, but because of the theological gain represented by such an assumption. Theologically, it should not surprise us that such a narrative seems to be a possibility and yet one that is constantly beyond us; it is beyond us, perhaps, as an invitation to read the presence of the Spirit in ecclesial history. The fine line that one must walk to maintain this balance is probably better understood through a phenomenological description of the attitudes of the one who maintains it, rather than by focusing solely on theoretical justification. Thus while I am arguing here that historical theologians—especially in the current context of deep divides over how one may relate historical treatment of early Christianity to modern Christian belief—must articulate more directly their implicit theologies of history, I am also suggesting that it is particularly important to bear in mind the epistemological consequences of one's fundamental understanding of history. What attitudes towards historical investigation and analysis are most concomitant with a given theology of history?

From the Right Bank

Let me now turn to those on what I termed the theological “right.” During the discussion at Harvard, Khaled Anatolios pushed me on the consequences of my treatment of theological influence. For Anatolios my historicizing approach to the fourth century—my tendency to restrict the influence of some figures (particularly Athanasius) whom older narratives made central, and my tendency to discuss only one facet of a thinker's work rather than offering a rounded picture of the whole of that thinker's writing—does not do justice to the full theological character and significance of figures long part of the church's memory. In response I would, first, argue for the importance of some themes that seem most persuasive in modern historiography. One of the key gains of the modern period is that we have come to interpret key figures within the tradition by exploring their immediate engagements, the course of their development, and the questions that motivated their theological positions. I think one can give both philosophically coherent and theologically coherent justifications for this approach. Philosophically, I have long found myself indebted to Hans Robert Jauss's development of Gadamer's work.¹³

Theologically, I would want to explore ways in which techniques of interpretation that increase our focus on the complexity of the Spirit's work in and through a deeply human and fallen tradition can be received as a good.¹⁴ More particularly, in a time when Christians (including many theologians) lack much sense of the historical location and traditional quality of Christian belief and practice, it is both ironic and providential that one of modernity's legacies to Christianity should be tools for better understanding how the articles of our faith are deeply embedded in a distinct historical tradition.

At the same time, however, there are and should be many ways into the tradition. The task of introducing someone to the interlocking themes of a theologian is different from assessing the place of that theologian in a complex story of development. I do not imagine that Nicaea sits as the only book on anyone's shelf, and I would not claim that Nicaea provides a rounded introduction to the theological outlook of any of those it describes. Similarly, Anatolios's own excellent treatment of some fundamental themes in Athanasius's thought does not offer an extensive introduction to either Athanasius's exegetical practice or to his ascetic theology, and I would not expect it to do so.¹⁵

I can certainly imagine, then, a variety of texts focusing on the overall outlook of a given theologian that would sit alongside Nicaea and might well be more appropriate for particular times or places.

However, I do not want to end my response with only these two observations. There is, in fact, a relationship between the achievements of modern historical scholarship on the early Church and the task of offering a rounded picture of a given theologian. I do not think, for example, that a presentation of Athanasius as a whole which argued that he simply represented the fullness of pro-Nicene trinitarianism would be accurate. A number of his key arguments are simply not carried through into later tradition (such as some key elements of the manner in which the Spirit is dependent on the Son in the Epistulae ad Serapionem), and some of the basic principles of pro-Nicene theology only enter his thought rather late and do not become structural (such as a focus on the unity and diversity of persons). Thus I do think one of the most significant implications of modern historical approaches for the presentation of figures such as Athanasius is that their theologies are best described against the background of narratives of development that respect the best of what we can currently accomplish. In many ways this was always so: presenting Athanasius as the paradigm of Nicene orthodoxy is itself the product of a particular narrative, if not always one which admits much development in Christian doctrine.

I suspect, however, that part of Anatolios's concern is that against such a background a figure such as Athanasius will find himself reduced in importance. From one perspective this may be so, but I think we also must continue to examine what it means to present a figure from Christian tradition as saint, for it is with this broad theological topic that Anatolios is partially concerned. In the first place, surely it is the case that any figure is presented for emulation not purely because of the figure's own merits. To attribute sainthood is to acknowledge that the Christian community has seen in a particular person the Spirit's work towards the building up of the body of Christ. (At the risk of seeming overly Augustinian, I cannot resist repeating Dei dona sunt merita tua, “your merits are the gifts of God.”)¹⁶

If we are part of ecclesial bodies that acknowledge and salute development in the manner in which the Church describes the mystery of faith, then I see no reason why we cannot acknowledge some as exemplars in their attention to the mystery of faith who only gradually came to express that mystery in the terms of an orthodoxy that would become clear after their time, but who paved the way for much that was accomplished after them.¹⁷ Of course, such an acknowledgment does beg the question of how we express and describe the continuities that we are alleging do exist. Once again, I suspect, after some generations of concentration on examples of local (temporal or spatial) examples of the complexity of development, the broad appropriation of modern historiographical techniques is forcing on us anew questions about what it is to speak of continuity and change in belief, questions that need facing on a large and theoretical canvas.

I come, finally, to some strong criticisms from John Behr. These criticisms once again take us to fundamental questions about how we engage in the theological enterprise. Behr argues that I am beholden to the categories of modern systematic theology in my very concern with “trinitarian theology.” He maintains that fourth-century theological texts cannot be so divided into distinct loci and that their authors did not conceive of their work along the lines of these divisions. He and I agree here, at least in our professed statements (as the brief summary earlier in this issue of the “three pro-Nicene strategies” delineated in Nicaea should have made clear). It seems to me, however, that the issue is not with the names we use to distinguish the various parts of theological discourse, but how we think those names correspond to the unity of and links between the different divisions of the theological field. By the phrase “trinitarian theology” we might designate only those sections of late-fourth-century texts that focus on understanding the unity of the divine power and nature alongside the irreducibility of the three persons,¹⁸

but the same phrase might also be taken to describe a wider field of questions related in a variety of ways to particular conceptions of the relations between Father, Son, and Spirit. I use the term in the latter sense, specifically emphasizing the extent to which trinitarian belief entails or is inseparable from a range of christological, anthropological, and epistemological positions. The mere use of the term “trinitarian theology” does not indicate how one is using the term. In large part, then, this first accusation seems to me something of a canard. At the same time, however, I suspect this duck is really a fish. To be more precise, the duck is a red herring, hiding from us a more fundamental and significant concern that Behr has with Nicaea.

I suspect Behr's critique is actually motivated by a desire to overcome what he takes to be a mistaken approach to speaking about the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Word of God. I hope I summarize correctly when I say that Behr sees much modern “systematic” discussion of “trinitarian theology,” presenting the Word as a pre-existent being with its own history, one stage of which consists in a descent to and then ascent from this world. This “modern paradigm” begins for Behr with Augustine (and here a fairly standard account of the divisions between Eastern and Western Christianity, otherwise noticeable in Behr's work, creeps in). In his recent introduction to Christian belief he writes,

On first reading there is much in this quotation with which I agree. I certainly agree that one clear achievement of the fourth-century controversies is that we cannot conceive of the Logos as a temporal being. But I think Behr misses something vital when he presents the alternatives as either speaking of the Logos in temporal fashion (and hence being at heart an “Arian”) or denying that one can ever speak of the being of God and God's Word outside the context of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.

The effect of this stark alternative is seen most clearly through the various volumes of his “The Formation of Christian Theology” series in the topics that Behr considers and those he avoids. Thus, for example, in The Nicene Faith, Behr's reading of Athanasius's Contra gentes and De incarnatione argues that Athanasius sees the dual work as an apology for the cross (an argument that makes much sense). The key to interpreting the Contra gentes becomes Athanasius's identification of the Word with “our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”²⁰

Using this statement as a hinge, Behr emphasizes that Athanasius in his discussion of the creation is discussing the character of human existence as it may be known in the light of Christ, he is not “[speculating] about primordial beginnings.”²¹ To do more would, I think, seem to Behr to begin sliding down the slippery slope towards what he names the Augustinian/modern paradigm in theology. Yet, as a consequence of this concern, Behr fails to offer sustained discussion about the sources for and character of Athanasius's account of the Word in se (especially as they are found through Contra Gentes 38–44), despite giving Athanasius considerable space as a whole.

While I agree that Athanasius is casting his account of the creation, of the Word in se, and of the nature of evil in the light of his understanding of salvation through the cross—and that he considers it essential to identify the Word as the subject of the incarnate Christ (although this way of expressing the matter is not his own)—this casting occurs through a participation in and engaging of discussions about the ordering of the universe, the nature of evil, and the nature of God that are essential to both early Christian and non-Christian thought in late antiquity. Talking about the nature of the Word as such or being interested in “speculation” about the creation does not necessarily mean that Athanasius has abandoned the perspective of the cross or begun to speak of the Word in terms that imply that the incarnation is a stage in the Word's history.

In such engagements with different traditions of discourse one must of course remain faithful to the way in which Christians confess that the Word is Jesus Christ and vice versa, but I do not see why discussion of such topics in itself starts one down a slippery slope. It is perfectly possible for us to maintain discussion of the Word in se alongside appropriate attention to the manner in which our knowledge of the incarnate Christ shapes our talk of the Word in se. It seems to me that later eastern christological tradition recommends to us just such a balanced discussion in speaking of Christ's double birth. For example, the second anathema of the second Council of Constantinople in 553 reads:

Maintaining the double birth of the Son demands of us some clarity about what we mean by “Word,” about how we think that the terminology of “begotten” should be deployed, and about how we understand the characteristics of divine existence. To speak of the birth as double also invites us into a constant correction of inappropriate speculation concerning the eternal birth by reference to the material qualities in which we speak of the birth from Mary. Such theological reflection is also conditioned by insistence (rightly so central to Behr's presentation) that, although we speak of the double birth, we speak of one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, the Word. The Word is the subject of all that Jesus does and is, and it is in the light of attention to this central dynamic of the Incarnation that we learn to speak of the birth of the Word in eternity, and learn we must.

Speaking of the Word born from eternity and of the Word's birth from Mary is thus inherently paradoxical. There is here much to be learned from Cyril of Alexandria's insistence against Nestorius that even though we must tell ourselves that the Word cannot change in his nature we are still committed to confessing that “the Word became flesh” and that “[He] emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

²³

Of course the Logos has no history: when we speak of “before” the incarnation we do so only from our standpoint; just as we say “only-begotten” but do not think either that there was ever a time before this begetting or that that time is implied by “begotten.” When Eph 1:4 tells us that the Father “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world (

),” we should think neither of the Father as involved in a process of deliberation nor of this occurring in a time before the act of creation. This maintenance of a paradoxical speech, delivered to us by the Spirit through the Scriptures, is inseparable from an understanding of the Christian's need to advance in understanding of the mystery revealed.

²⁴

These reflections on temporality and confession bring us to the question of where we stand when we speak of God's being prior to creation. Obviously enough we ourselves stand within the creation, but the Scriptures speak to us in human words of the divine being beyond the creation, of the divine being before time itself: the Father “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.” For theologians as diverse as Athanasius, Augustine, Didymus the Blind, Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa, we are drawn of necessity to speak about the God who acts to create and save. Even if we come to know with ever increasing clarity that we can speak of Father, Son, and Spirit only through close attention to their interactions and idiomata in Scripture, and that we can speak only of the divine nature as unknowable because it is transcendent and simple, still we have in fact spoken of the Trinity as such.²⁵

Indeed, our struggle towards such speech and imagining is a struggle towards the contemplation that virtually all pro-Nicenes present as constituting the goal of Christian life and the source of an authentic human life before God.²⁶ Doing so is an essential part of the development of our contemplation. Behr's concerns about not falling into a temporal conception of the Word's existence are thus on the mark, and yet, I think, he uses them too broadly and thus fails to grasp the full range of Christian discourse in late antiquity.

One of the more striking claims running through Behr's work in recent years is his insistence that the best place for us to enter the Christian faith is to see the manner in which the apostles “read” Jesus through the text of the Old Testament. To confess Christ is to confess that the Word of God revealed, in Christ, the one whom the Scriptures speak of in creation and the history of Israel. There is much in this with which, again, I find myself in agreement.²⁷

And yet, it is important to bear in mind that few after the earliest apostles actually do enter Christian belief in such a way simpliciter. The early Christian writers whose texts we study certainly entered into the practice of their faith through their initial introduction into Christian liturgy, community, and creed in ways that revealed Christ as the summation and completion of the law and the prophets. But these same writers also entered a highly traditioned faith, insofar as it participated in many traditions of reflection and speculation deeply rooted in the ancient world. When Gregory Nazianzen appears to assume the perfect qualities of a Godhead that finds its unity in being three, of course he assumes that our understanding of this Godhead is shaped by our awareness that the Word is the savior Jesus Christ, but he also participates in and contributes to a long-standing ancient discourse.²⁸ It seems important to me that we interpret him as both within and without that ancient philosophical tradition; our skill as interpreters depends on our ability to grasp his very Christian relationship to the materials he appropriates.

In sum, then, I suspect that behind Behr's critique lies an overly restrictive notion of the shape of appropriate Christian discourse, one that hampers our reading of pro-Nicenes. Both of us, however, in our rather different ways, are trying to approach a central question of interpretation and appropriation: to what extent is an engagement with Nicene theology an engagement with a theological culture in many ways deeply alien to that shaped by the modern post-Enlightenment discourses of academic theology? At this point, I suggest, we may detect differences in how Behr and I understand the task of bringing modern Christian thought into fruitful engagement with its early Christian foundation. I think we agree that recovering the basic practices of the best of early Christian exegesis—especially as it is used in the articulation of Christian belief—is fundamental for a Christianity that seeks to maintain its connection to the period within which those beliefs were formed and articulated. Yet, my own insistence that the culture of pro-Nicene (and eventually of Chalcedonian) Christianity centrally involved the adoption and adaptation of a range of late antique non-Christian traditions and discussions forces on a further range of questions about how we may engage and sustain a culture of Christian belief in continuity with that foundational period. Thus, while it might seem as if these reflections on John Behr's critique have taken us away from the theme of the relationship between history and theology, it is not so. How we understand the structure and methods of the theology we study is intimately related to our understanding of the shape of possible engagements and appropriations.

This engagement with John Behr's critique, precisely because I recognize a deep disagreement within some common assumptions and concerns, has suggested to me a number of ways in which a putative second edition of Nicaea would need supplementing, for, in articulating answers to one's critics, new ways of taking forward and reshaping one's own project constantly appear. My account of the “culture” of pro-Nicene thought needs filling out not only through reflection on the habits and habitus of thought shared by pro-Nicenes but also through some delineation of the interaction between different ancient discourses incorporated into pro-Nicene texts. Doing so would perhaps give a fuller sense of how pro-Nicenes saw their thought as focused around the saving work of the Word made flesh even as they also engaged and adapted a wide variety of ancient discourses to give a sense of the contemplation towards which Christians are drawn. At this point in these reflections it will appear to some that I have come full circle and am now advocating for that which I seemed to reject when discussing Rebecca Lyman's critique. In part this would be a fair observation: the task of imagining the shape of a particular theologian's thought in antiquity (or a group of theologians) will always be an aesthetic judgment ex convenientia. I would, however, also observe that, whereas my questions to Lyman were aimed towards not overly restricting our sense of the explanatory power of Christian discourse, my remarks here are in aid of expanding our sense of what constitutes appropriate Christian discourse.

It is no accident that throughout this reflection on my critics I have constantly returned to the implicit and explicit theologies of those who explore the trinitarian controversies of the fourth century. The relationship between modern theological discourses and the methods and assumptions that we choose in our historical theological investigations (not surprisingly) become more central and perhaps more obvious the more we consider how the trinitarian controversies as a whole should be cast and narrated. And yet those relationships are there throughout the interpretive judgments we make as historical theologians. It is an exciting feature of current historical theological scholarship that reflection on the theological foundations of our enterprise is receiving more overt discussion than has been the case for two or three decades. I am not so naïve as to think that my comments will have converted those to whom they respond, but it is not too much to take this discussion as one sign of an emerging debate about the place of historical reflection in theology, a debate from which much may come.