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Papers originally delivered at a joint session of the American Academy of Religion Eastern Orthodox Study Group and the Society of Biblical Literature Development of Early

Christian Theology Unit in Baltimore, November 2013. Forthcoming in the Scottish Journal of Theology.

Response to Reviews by Brian Daley and Paul Gavrilyuk of The Unity o f Chris t : Continuity and Conf l i c t in Patr is t i c Tradit ion (Yale UP: 2012)

by Christopher A. Beeley

I am very grateful to my colleagues for their careful attention to my work, and for the invitation to respond to their comments in the pages of the Scottish Journal of Theology.1 It is a privilege to participate in such a conversation among friends and fellow scholars.

My purpose in writing this book was to discern the main lines of orthodox patristic tradition, as defined by the confession of Christs unity. Like many others, I had long noticed how complicated this central body of Christian theology is. In recent years it became even clearer to me that the conventional narrative of orthodox patristic tradition was ridden with puzzles, contradictions, and hidden fault lines which could be better explained if we concentrated on the basic doctrinal matters at hand, noting the actual theological similarities and differences among the leading figures. This book is the result of my efforts to provide a new map of orthodox patristic tradition.

I am glad to know that Professors Daley and Gavrilyuk find the book to be an exciting and even liberating new approach to patristic tradition, and a work that is both revisionist and orthodox. My colleagues have also raised a number of concerns which deserve further attention. I will address what I take to be the most significant points in their remarks, moving from fundamental conceptual matters to particular figures and questions of historical-theological method. The Unity of Christ in Patristic Theology

It will be helpful first to summarize the books organizing theme, the unity of Christ in patristic thought. Orthodox patristic Christology centers on the confession that the human being Jesus Christ contains, or is, only one subject of existence, action, and predication, which is the divine Son or Word of God. At the heart of the Christian faith is the belief that Christ crucified and risen is himself the divine Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. Christs divine identity, moreover, not only includes a complete human existence, in mind, soul, and body, without contradiction or competition, but Christs divinity positively enables the integrity of his humanity.

The patristic doctrine of Christs unity is not the product of later theological development; it arises directly from the variety of statements about Christ in the Scriptures and runs from the second century to the end of the patristic era. The biblical witness to Christ includes plainly divine statements and plainly human ones, and it also contains divine statements made about the human Jesus and human statements made about the divine Son of God, a pattern of cross-predication known as the communicatio idiomatum. By taking these 1 My thanks are due as well to the other panelists, Oliver Crisp, Stephen Fowl, and George Hunsinger, to Mark Weedman, who organized the panel, and to Iain Torrance, who offered to publish these papers in the ScotJTheo.

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various statements as real and true descriptions of Christ, unitive theologians routinely refer them all to the divine Son of God, either in his purely divine form apart from any involvement in the economy or in his created, human form as the incarnate Lord. Accordingly, all of Jesus acts and experiencesand especially his suffering and deathare understood to be the human acts of the divine Son of God, where the second person of the Trinity is the true subject throughout. Some theologians describe the close relationship between Christs divinity and humanity in strong terms such as union, unity, mixture, and the like, or, in later centuries, as both a natural and a hypostatic union; however, such terms are not necessary to establish a unitive doctrine of Christ. Notable examples of unitive Christology are found in Irenaeus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Ambrose, and in the more developed systems of the high-patristic period produced by Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus Confessor, and some, though not all, of John of Damascus work.

Dualist Christology

Dualist Christology likewise operates according to a single principle, which can be found in two main forms. Christological dualism is not the belief that Christ is both divine and human, or that he has two natures: unitive theologians routinely affirm Christs full divinity and humanity. Rather, Christological dualism separates Christs divine and human natures in such a way that the single subjectivity of Christ as the divine Son of God is lost to view, and, correspondingly, biblical references to Christ are referred to two different subjects. While unitive Christology looks basically the same in each instance, there are several ways in which one can construct a dualist Christologysomewhat like Tolstoys comment that every happy family is happy in the same way, whereas there are many ways to be unhappy.

(A) The most pronounced form of Christological dualism posits two relatively self-contained figures, the divine Son of God and an independently existing human being; this is the doctrine we find in Origen, Diodore, Nestorius, and the Strict Chalcedonians. These theologians refer the divine statements of Scripture to the divine Son and the human statements to the human Jesus, or to his human nature. (B) Less obvious, perhaps, but no less dualist is terms of its basic structure is the notion of an internally divided Jesus, who is composed of the divine Word plus a human body, such as we find in Athanasius and Apollinarius. These theologians refer divine statements to the Word of God and human statements to the Words human body (Athanasius), or sometimes to a hybrid of the two (Apollinarius). In both cases dualist exegesis requires that one explain away the realistic sense of the communicatio idiomatum: at most, the divine Son can be said to undergo a human life and death, or he may have associated himself with a human body which dies; but it cannot really have been the case that the divine Son underwent a human death. The motivation for dualist exegesis can vary: ones primary motivation can be can be to keep God free from the contamination of human suffering and death (Origen, Athanasius, and Diodore), or one can make it ones chief aim to avoid a perceived conflict between the Word of God and Jesus human mind (Apollinarius and possibly Athanasius). Accordingly, dualist theologians routinely deny even an economic sense of divine suffering, and they oppose the strong terms for unity that might be employed by unitive theologians.

Dualist Christology has raised its head at several key points in patristic tradition, both within the officially orthodox fold and outside of it: for example, in the work of Origen, Athanasius, and Apollinarius; in several major texts by Gregory of Nyssa; in the Antiochene tradition of Diodore and Nestorius and the allied doctrine of Leo of Rome; and in the Strict Chalcedonianism of Leontius of Byzantium and his heirs. The persistence of both streams of

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doctrine into the later centuries is, I believe, the main complicating factor in patristic theological tradition. The Ontology of the Savior

In speaking of the paradox of the Incarnation, Professor Daley has drawn our attention to a further notion that distinguishes unitive and dualist Christologies. Many have regarded Christs incarnation as a deep or absolute paradox concerning how God could possibly co-exist with a complete human being. Central to unitive patristic Christology is the counter-argument that there is, in fact, no competition or contradiction between Christs divine nature and his human form, including Jesus human mental functioning. The Incarnation does not represent an ontological conflict at all, and it is not a paradox in the strict sense, although it is certainly a wonder (paradoxon) of unanticipated divine activity and manifestation. Our unitive authors regularly note that the incarnation is seen as an ontological problem, however, from the standpoint of unbelief, whether philosophically motivated or in the form of dualist Christology. Key instances of this counter-argument occur in Gregory Nazianzen, certain passages Gregory of Nyssa (e.g. Or. cat. 5, 9-10), Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, and Maximus Confessor. In light of this principle of ontological non-contradiction, it will be apparent that unitive doctrine is the more Christologically expansive and liberating of the human creaturea point that Maximus regularly emphasizes length (e.g. Pyrrh. 349B-52A; Opusc. 7, 80A-B)and that it is the dualist position that represents the straightjacket of which Gavrilyuk speaks. Divine Suffering

Professor Gavrilyuk has raised questions about my treatment of divine impassibility, divinization (theosis), and the conventional distinction between Antiochene and Alexandrian theologies. Modern theologians have reconsidered the impassibility of God in various ways, but my interest in this book is simply to elucidate the teaching of the fathers, about which Gavrilyuk has also written at length.2 By way of definition, I understand passibility in patristic usage to mean being subject to, and possibly threatened by, another being or force, or being passive to the activity of another; it does not mean having feelings or caring about others, as some moderns tend to imagine it.

Gavrilyuk and I are in agreement about the classical Christian doctrine of divine impassibilitythat God, qua God, does not and cannot suffer, not because God does not care about the suffering of his creatures, but because it is both conceptually and ontologically impossible. The notion of divine suffering goes against the very idea of what it means to be God, and it contradicts everything we know about God from the Bible and orthodox Christian tradition. To claim that God suffers per se (or suffers divinely) means that there is some other force or principle that has power over Godthat there is, in effect, another god besides Godand that is something that most Jews, Christians, and Muslims will vehemently want to deny.

On the other hand, it appears that Gavrilyuk and I disagree about the patristic notion of divine suffering in Christ. Central to orthodox patristic Christology, I argue, is the proclamation that in Christ God has undergone human birth, life, death and resurrection for the salvation of the world, and that Gods real involvement in Christs human life stands at the heart of the Christian faith. The patristic notion of divine suffering involves two 2 Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought. Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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important qualifications. (1) It is human or creaturely suffering that we are talking about, suffering within the realm of creation and according to its terms, or, as the Greeks like to say, in the economy, not divine suffering per se. (2) Nevertheless, the fathers believe that it is God who directly and immediately undergoes creaturely suffering in Jesus Christ, a belief which calls forth a whole range of theopaschite expressions from the second to the eighth century. Hence, Gregory Nazianzen and Cyril speak of Gods impassible passion, and the Second Council of Constantinople (663) confesses that one of the Trinity was crucified in the Incarnation. The confession of Gods suffering in Christ has met with opposition since at least the second century, ranging from knee-jerk reactions to philosophically informed cosmologies to dualist Christological sensibilities. Divinization

My comments on theosis build on my earlier treatment of the subject, which refers extensively to Norman Russells masterful study.3 My argument that Gregory Nazianzen is the immediate and defining precedent for the emerging tradition of theosis in Greek Christian soteriology serves as an emendation to Russells work, yet only by a half. Russell observes that it was Gregory who coined the term theosis, that the idea enters Byzantine theology through Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus Confessor, and that it did so in Gregorys terms, rather than in the language of theopoiesis that Athanasius and others had used beforehand. Adding to Russells account, I have simply filled out the picture of Gregorys doctrine and its influence, noting the participatory nature of divinization and its programmatic significance in Gregorys work and highlighting the path of tradition running to Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus. Yet neither Russell nor I believe that Gregory develops his language for divinization from Greco-Roman notions of apotheosis,4 as Gavrilyuk suggests. My claim that divinization plays only a minor role in Athanasius spiritual and soteriological works (as opposed to his polemical works) likewise echoes a point already established by Russell.5 That Athanasius teaches a kind of automatic divinization of Christ at the point of his incarnation, rather than through Christs passion and resurrection, has long been noted and should not be controversial;6 these passages helped give rise to the later aphthartodocetist teaching of the sixth century. However, the great difference between Athanasius polarized spirituality and the more integrated doctrine of the unitive theologians extends well beyond the idea of divinization or the concerns of Russells study.

Alexandria and Antioch

Most patristic scholars now agree that the division of vast swathes of patristic theology into opposing Alexandrian and Antiochene camps is no longer tenable. I believe my work may have shed new light on the situation. In brief, there does appear to be a coherent Antiochene school of thought as defined by the work of Diodore, carried forward by Nestorius (Theodore of Mopsuestia and John Chrysostom being hybrid figures), and 3 See Christopher A. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 116-22 and passim. 4 See Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition. Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 337 on the rare Christian uses of apotheosis, which do not include Gregory Nazianzen. 5 Russell, Deification, p. 167, and Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus, p. 117n5. 6 The idea runs throughout De Incarnatione: see 8, 10, 20-21, 31, 43-44.

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continued to a significant degree in the Chalcedonian Definition and the Strict Chalcedonianism of Leontius of Byzantium, who tells us that he was initially an Antiochene himself. The real cause for revision lies on the other side. What was formerly known as the Alexandrian school of theology and exegesis, defined preeminently by the unitive doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria, I have shown was not in fact Alexandrian in any historical sense, but should more accurately be called Gregorian (of Nazianzus) or, in the context of the Arian debates, Eusebian (of Caesarea), whose theology, we must recall, was opposed to the doctrine of Athanasius of Alexandria; and Cyrils theology is certainly not Origenist except in some rudiments of Trinitarian doctrine that he took from the fourth-century fathers. What used to be called the Alexandrian school of Cyril is in reality the long and broad tradition of unitive Christology. Athanasius Dualist Christology

I am happy to learn that my colleagues find compelling my reinterpretations of Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea. While some have judged my analysis of Athanasiuss Christology to be on the mark as well,7 Professors Daley and Gavrilyuk have both registered their reservations, to which I offer the following reply.

Scholars have long noted the puzzling character of Athanasius Christology, the tumultuous nature of his episcopate, and his sometimes-belligerent character. As noted above, I have argued that Athanasius is a dualist theologian of the second type (B). In Athanasius view, Christ is composed of distinct divine and human elements, the Word of God plus a human body containing an emotional soul but not a human mind. Athanasius consistently practices two-subject exegesis, in which all human statements refer to Christs flesh or body, and all divine statements refer to the Word of God. Athanasius systematically denies that the biblical communicatio idiomatum has anything more than a verbal or indirect meaning, and he works very hard to avoid the suggestion that the Word was touched in any way by the taint of human suffering. Professor Daley is therefore correct that Athanasius is not radically dualist, meaning the first type (A), as Origen and the Antiochenes were, yet Athanasius is dualist according to the second type. The confusion among these terms as I presented them in the book is understandable given the received categories of interpretation, in which Apollinarius is not normally considered a dualist. I am therefore glad for the opportunity to clarify my meaning here.

Yet, aside from the designation dualist, I gather that my argument that Athanasius Christology is Apollinarian is itself troubling. If that is the case, then it may help to note that Athanasius has been interpreted in this way by a wide range of modern scholars. In the 1960s and 1970s Aloys Grillmeier concurred with the judgment of earlier German, French, and English scholars that Athanasius Christ does not possess a human mind or soul. The alarming nature of this judgment has elicited several attempts to rescue the Alexandrian bishop from heretical associations,8 yet the situation cannot be so easily swept under the rug. As Frances Young recently concluded, The weight of the evidence supports those who 7 E.g., Mark DelCogliano (BMCR 2013.07.09) and Lionel Wickham (JTS 64.2 [2013]: 718-21). 8 The most recent major study being Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought, pp. 70-74. Anatolios attempt to justify Athanasius scheme by calling it a functional or epistemological approach that is different from the analytical concern of Grillmeier and others merely begs the question: both positions, and the full range of Christological issues that arise from the biblical communicatio idiomatum, are equally functional, epistemological, and analytical (i.e. dogmatic).

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argue that Athanasius did not think that Christ had a human soul; his was a Word-flesh Christology, and he was Apollinarian before Apollinarius.9 To this judgment we can add the observation of several recent scholars that Athanasius was not as central to fourth-century orthodoxy as we have long been taught to assume.10 The idiosyncratic nature of Athanasius work is perhaps most visible when the stark contrast that he posits between Gods divine being and creaturely nothingness is compared with the unitive theologians insistence that there is no such ontological contrast between God and his creatures. Historical-Theological Method

Finally, I will address the questions of method that Gavrilyuk has raised. In this book I have attempted to bring more accurate historical-theological judgment to a field that is often ridden with tacit assumptions and a very long history of unquestioned categories and conclusions. Just as scholars now broadly agree that there was no grand Arian conspiracy running through the fourth century, as Marcellus and Athanasius had taught us to believe, so too I am offering a similar set of revisions to our understanding of patristic Christological tradition. The examples of Athanasius and Cyril that Gavrilyuk has offered will serve well to illustrate the point.

There are several reasons why it makes more sense to compare Athanasius image doctrine with that of Origen, Eusebius, and Marcellus, rather than merely to attribute it to his reading of the New Testament alone. First, by the start of Athanasius career Origen had long been the main source of image Christology in Alexandrian tradition and in other eastern Mediterranean churches, including the doctrine of Athanasius immediate predecessor, Alexander. Second, both Alexander and Eusebius of Caesarea (and their associates) made Origens image doctrine a key element in their own Christological programs, which then set the terms for Athanasius polemical context. Third, Athanasius onetime associate Marcellus held a very different view of Christs character as Gods image, namely the he is Gods image only in the economy, but not eternally. Accordingly, the meaning of the biblical notion of Christ as image in Colossians 1:15 and elsewhere was a matter of debate in the very controversies in which Athanasius was embroiled. From everything that we know about Athanasius actual context and his commitments as a theologian, it is therefore inconceivable that Athanasius was operating sola scriptura on such a basic Christological point. The burden of sound historical theology to bring out such connections.

As for my argument that Cyrils Christology is informed primarily by Gregory Nazianzen, and that Cyrils use of Athanasius complicates the resulting product, I first 9 Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background, 2nd ed., with Andrew Teal (Baker, 2010), p. 63. One finds the same conclusion in Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451), trans. John Bowden (London: Mowbrays, 1965), p. 312; J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Harper Collins, 1978), 287-88; R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark), pp. 447-48; and David Brakke, Athanasius, in , Philip F. Esler, ed., The Early Christian World, vol. 2 (Routledge, 2000), pp. 1122-23. 10 E.g., Michel Ren Barnes, One Nature, One Power: Consensus Doctrine in Pro-Nicene Polemic, Studia Patristica 29 (1997), pp. 205-23, at 220. See also Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), which demonstrates that pro-Nicene theology arose from different and often disconnected quarters in the fourth century, rather than from a unified Athanasian front.

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presented my findings in a lengthy article in the Journal of Early Christian Studies on the urging of two senior scholars of Cyril.11 Prior to my analysis, contemporary scholars agreed that Athanasius and Gregory were far and away the two strongest influences on Cyrils work.12 By making a detailed study of the question (to my knowledge, the only such study in modern scholarship), I discovered that the key points of Cyrils Christologyin terms of the structure of Christs person, Cyrils choice of terms, the theological principles involved, Cyrils single-subject hermeneutical method, and his approach to divine sufferingall rely on Gregory far more than they do on Athanasius, who differs considerably from Gregory on most of these points, despite the fact that Cyril had clearly read and used Athanasius work before the outbreak of the Nestorian controversy.13 To suppose that Cyril might have assembled his fairly advanced technical Christology from disparate sources that are masked by the larger patterns of Cyrils work simply ignores the evidence of the texts.

Finally, in briefer scope: my conclusion that Chalcedon was by and large an Antiochene victory decorated with Cyrilline phrases is again based on a close analysis of the Definition within its actual theological context, and on the evidence of the councils acts, which are not normally considered at all in modern attempts to reappropriate the councils theology. (The exclusion of the Egyptian delegation from the councils doctrinal proceedings, for example, and the report that Nestorius was happy with the outcome, should tell us something.) I do not claim that Arius was an Origenist, which is the textbook caricature of the situation, but that his opponent, Bishop Alexander, was. My interpretation of Arius as a particular sort of traditional Alexandrian theologian follows that of Rowan Williams and, more recently, Winrich Lhr. I argue not that Marcellus was unitive in his Christology, but that he was supremely dualist. And the idea that the Nicene Creed of 325 functioned chiefly as a polemical device is, I believe, now standard view.

I am aware that my conclusions will reinforce certain received orthodoxies and upset others. I hope that by remapping the stream of unitive patristic tradition on the basis of close historical-theological analysis I will have clarified both the nature and the location of Christological orthodoxy in the patristic period, to the rudimentary extent that a book of this length can accomplish. There are indeed more figures and events to examine in light of the conclusions I have reached. It is a pleasure to respond to my colleagues complements and criticisms, and I look forward to the next stage of the conversation. 11 Cyril of Alexandria and Gregory Nazianzen: Tradition and Complexity in Patristic Christology, JECS 17.3 (2009), pp. 381-419. 12 See, e.g., John A. McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), p. 176. 13 Gavrilyuk points as well to Mark DelCoglianos questioning of my argument for Gregorys influence on Cyril (BMCR 2013.07.09). As evidence against my conclusion DelCogliano observes that Cyril quotes Athanasius, Ar. 3.29 (Athanasius statement of hermeneutical method) in his letter to the monks of Egypt at the beginning of the Nestorian controversy (Ep. 1.4). But this citation does not support DelCoglianos counter-argument. Cyril quotes this passage from Athanasius third Oration not as a hermeneutical resource, as DelCogliano argues, but in support of the confession of the Theotokos; moreover, when Cyril goes on to make a case for hermeneutical procedure in the following sections of the letter, the biblical examples that he gives do not follow Athanasius argument anywhere in the Orations against the Arians. Following the strict procedure that DelCogliano, Gavrilyuk, and I agree is essential to sound historical theology, Cyril does indeed appear to have been influenced primarily by Gregory.

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Christopher A. Beeley Yale Divinity School

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Response To Christopher Beeley, The Unity Of Chris t : Continuity and Conf l i c t in Patr is t i c Tradit ion

Brian E. Daley, SJ

It is always exciting to read the retelling of a familiar narrative, whether it is of the early life of Shakespeare, the political careers of Washington and Jefferson, or the story of the development of the classic Christian understanding of the person of Jesus Christ during the first seven or eight centuries of Christianity. In this last case, the reader feels liberated from the weight of inherited pieties, invited to look again at the existing documentation with fresh eyes, urged to reconceive what he imagines to be the implied agenda of the main actors, and their significance for the later history of Christian faith. Christopher Beeleys new book from Yale certainly has this effect on those trained by earlier tellings of the story of early Christology, from Newman to Harnack and Loofs, to Sellers and Grillmeier and Kelly. The heroes and villains, characteristic phrases and defining moments of heresy and orthodoxy, all take on a slightly new form in Christophers reconstruction a form centered on the question of how the personal and ontological unity of the Savior is conceived and emphasized by key Christian authors and principal Church synods from the third to the eighth centuries. One of the great benefits of Christophers book, I think, is the fact that it offers us a few new heroes to admire. As one reads through the narrative, for instance, it becomes clear that the real paradigm of an author who offers later tradition a vision of Christ that does justice to the Christian message is St. Gregory of Nazianzus (with whom Christophers first book was concerned) Gregory the Theologian in the parlance of the Eastern Churches; while many recent historians of Christology have found Gregorys position on the person of Christ puzzling, even anomalous, Christopher finds in the bishops lively, impassioned rhetoric a way of emphasizing the paradoxical, lived unity of Christ that goes beyond the antinomies of Greek philosophy and sees him as God in our human flesh, God suffering our human weaknesses and dying our human death. Christopher seems to take Gregorys occasional image of a new mixture (mixis; krsis) of God and the human in the incarnate Son as a kind of implicit norm for both his intentions and for the adequacy of later formulations, from Cyril of Alexandria to Leontius, Maximus, and the later councils.

More interesting still, Christopher devotes a whole chapter to the Christological vision of Eusebius of Caesaraea, who up to now has received little recognition as a serious theologian (much as he is respected for his historical and exegetical writings). Drawing from his apologetic works, from passages in the History and some of the festal orations, and especially from Eusebiuss writings against Marcellus of Ancyra, Christopher offers a convincing portrait of Eusebius not simply as promoting a view of Christ as produced by the eternal Father, not himself strictly eternal, and divine in a true but participated sense, but also as a mediator and agent in the history of creation and redemption who is radically and personally one. Avoiding the pitfalls of Origens view of Christ a created mind and the divine Word who are personally unified only by the extrinsic means of loving contemplation - Origens admirer Eusebius succeeded, Christopher argues, in presenting Christ, the Son of the heavenly Father, as both a constituent member of the divine Trinity and an agent on the stage of our history. In this way, Eusebius appears as a key transmitter of Origens early, prescient understanding of God as Trinity to the later, vibrantly unified portraits of Christ and God sketched by Gregory of Nazianzus and Cyril of Alexandria. In doing this,

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Christopher allows a somewhat neglected figure to appear now on the scene, deservedly in my view, as a major player.

On the other hand, Christophers revisionist narrative has a new set of villains, as well. Chief among them, undoubtedly, is Athanasius of Alexandria, whom Christopher (like R. P. C. Hanson) sharply criticizes for his lack of theological and philosophical education, his bullying tactics as bishop of the chief Church of Egypt, and his overheated rhetoric. More important and to me quite inexplicable is the fact that Christopher repeatedly insists that Athanasiuss view of Christ ends by being radically dualistic, in that he powerfully emphasizes the otherness of God and creation, and (in Christophers view) utterly fails to present Christ as a single agent. His Christology is remarkably close to the later Antiochene position of Diodore and Theodore (p. 267), a Christology of graver contrasts in which the Word is all power, and human flesh can only await transformation into the Word itself. It is also a scheme in which God lacks the desire and the ability to include human brokenness into the divine being without being threatened with decomposition himself, and humanity possesses no real and lasting nature of its own. (p. 169) One could, if there were time, raise many questions about the details of Christophers interpretation of Athanasiuss work; to me, however, its overriding fault is that Christopher continues to measure Athanasiuss arguments against the standard never articulated of what seems to serve in the book as the norm of all Christologys adequacy: a personal, naturally functioning unity of Son and human Jesus in which God actually performs human actions, and dies a human death the theopaschite conception of Christ promoted in the sixth century, by people who had difficulty with the formulation of Chalcedon.

Christophers book also has its other, deeply puzzling revisionist moves. Arius much discussed by Western scholars since the late 1970s appears as a fairly harmless, if imprecise, Origenist, the victim of Athanasiuss caricatures. The creed of Nicaea which emerges more or less as an ephemeral by-product of the synod, as Eusebius himself suggests is a strictly polemical document, not intended to be a baptismal confession, which distorts Ariuss real thinking. (p. 121) Marcellus of Ancyra and Apollinarius appear as writers who misconceive the Jesus of the Gospels in a mistakenly unitive direction; but equally to be rejected is the essentially divisive Gregory of Nyssa, the Antiochene theologians, and Pope Leo, who fail to emphasize Christs active unity directly. The Council of Chalcedons formulation of the Mystery of Christ is also seriously inadequate, a clear statement of Antiochene and Leonine (but not Augustinian) two-nature Christology enforced under government pressure, which left the basic identity of Christ and the nature of the union disastrously ambiguous from the point of view of the more unitive traditions. (p. 284) Among the post-Chalcedonian theologians Christopher briefly treats here, Leontius of Byzantium and John of Damascus are written off as continuing the dualist tradition by insisting on the enduring distinction of two natures in Jesus; only Maximus, with his stress on the divinization of Christs human nature, appears to pass the test of offering a unified model of Christ, in which God is the continuing real agent of salvation. Christophers book, despite these sometimes puzzling judgments and seemingly arbitrary generalizations, raises some important new issues in the Christological narrative. For one thing, it suggests with new force the inherent connection between what modern theology has traditionally regarded as the separate questions of God as Trinity and the person of Christ. Surely the reason Christians have come to think of the Mystery of God as irreducibly the eternal, dynamic communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is because of its ancient conviction that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, is, in his person, God with us. I have written myself on the phenomenon one can observe almost everywhere in Patristic

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literature: that those authors who set out to emphasize the transcendence and unity of the divine Mystery, like Marcellus and, in a different way, the Antiochene theologians, tend to have difficulty in conceiving of Jesus as one agent he is usually thought of as Gods instrument or temple, rather than as God personally present. Conversely, those authors who set out by stressing the uniqueness and subjective unity of the Savior like Origen and Eusebius, the two Gregories and Cyril tend to emphasize also the threeness of God, in which the Sons distinctive role leads to a fundamentally more articulated conception of God. How we think of Christ determines how we think of God, and vice versa. In Christophers narrative, this becomes more obvious. Secondly, the problem Christopher singles out as a continuing focus of his history - the unity of Christ as Savior seems to me to be just one face of a deeper problem: how God is related to creation, how God is present in and for the world from its very beginning without short-circuiting the genuine independence of creatures. The otherness of God, which Patristic authors from the Apologists and Origen on (and certainly including Athanasius, but also Cyril and Maximus) so emphasize, is not simply a borrowing from Middle Platonism, but a conviction based on Israels experience of the nameless, formless God on Sinai. To understand this triune God as remaining who and what he eternally is, yet also to see God the Son as acting in a fully human way, having complete human experiences, in Jesus, because he is human to think of the divinity of Jesus as engaged not in a constant turf-battle for the real center of his humanity, but as enabling his humanity to be itself most fully and perfectly - was always the challenge (and still is!). Philosophical considerations, certainly, weighed strongly with some of the Fathers - leading Theodore and Theodoret, for instance, to be very cautious about seeing in Jesus a genuine unity of subject; for others, such as Cyril and those who later had reservations about the Chalcedonian formulation, the Scriptural witness to Jesus simply demanded that Christians override their anxieties about that philosophical and Biblical affirmation of Gods otherness, and find new categories like the terminology of substance and nature, hypostasis and persona - to make the personal presence of the ever-distant God somehow thinkable. In spite of the terminology that developed, however, the person of Jesus his active and ontological unity, his inner dialectic always remained a paradox; none of the formulas quite succeed at their task. To divide the theologians of the age into dualists and (presumably) unifiers seems to me not to do justice to their legitimate concerns, and to over-simplify a complex story. Even Gregory of Nazianzus, who emerges early on as the hero of Christophers tale, offers us in his rhetorically stunning, but often deliberately ambiguous formulations of the Mystery of Christ a portrait that emphasizes the lasting otherness of Christs parts, as well as their identity of his person. True, both he and his namesake and friend from Nyssa speak on a number of occasions of the new mixture, the unexpected blending, of the Word of the utterly unknowable God with the son of the Virgin (Greg. Naz., Or. 38). Theologians of the mid-fifth century even those who emphasized Christs personal unity strongly, like Cyril would come to avoid mixture-language, presumably because it suggested confusion, a hybridization of the divine and the human into some new species suspiciously like the mythic demigods of Greece. God was clearly other; a human being is from here, part of the world. What the two Gregories, like Athanasius and so many other Christian thinkers, struggled to do was to find words that might do justice to the whole of the paradox. In a famous passage near the end of Oration 29, for instance a paragraph or so before he will himself use again the image of blending to express how the man Jesus is one

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with God, to becoming God down here Gregory of Nazianzus offers us a kind of hermeneutical rule for thinking out the paradox presented by the New Testament:

In a word, attribute the higher things to the divinity, to the one who is by nature superior to suffering and a body; but attribute the humbler things to the composite one, to the one who emptied himself and became flesh for your sake not to put too fine a point on it! and became human, and then was exalted, so that you might let go of the fleshliness and lowness of your theories and learn to live on a higher level, and might ascend to the divinity and might come to know what the rational structure of nature is, and what is the structure of the divine economy. (Or 29.18)

Knowing the structure the logos of being God and being human, keeping them distinct in our minds and speech because they are so distinct in reality, is certainly central to the right-thinking theologians task, Gregory seems to be saying; the astonishing part of the Christian narrative, of the economy, is that these two, which remain utterly distinct in themselves, have at a point of time become one unique agent, one subject who lives and acts in a unity that leaves the difference intact. Christophers new book helps us to see anew the challenge and the contours of this central, endlessly paradoxical Christian affirmation, and for that we have to be grateful.

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Review of Christopher Beeley, Unity o f Chris t (Yale UP, 2013). Paul Gavrilyuk

Professor Beeley has contributed a new chapter to the history of the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum. He has written a provocative book, whose argument is both revisionist and orthodox. Beeley proposes to revise the accepted Christological narrative by questioning the significance and theological genius of Athanasius of Alexandria. In Beeleys judgment, Athanasius contribution pales in comparison with such giants as Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen and Maximus the Confessor. Beeley finds especially in Nazianzens Christology the most profound and consistent rendering of the unity of Christ, a golden standard for expressing communicatio idiomatum. According to Beeley, Gregorys achievement was only partially matched by the Christologies of Cyril of Alexandria and Leo of Rome. Gregorys Christology is the apex of the Origenist tradition, its most complete and compelling expression. A permanent contribution of Beeleys work is the restoration of Gregory the Theologian to the diptychs of contemporary western patristic scholarship, in which Nazianzen has been overshadowed by another Cappadocian, Gregory of Nyssa.

The first two chapters of Beeleys work present a richly detailed and sympathetic account of some neglected elements of Origens and Eusebius Christologies. Of particular interest is Beeleys discussion of Origens theology of the Son as the image of the Father and of the mediatorial role of the Logos. It is also intriguing to read that the most influential church leader of the early fourth century was not Athanasius of Alexandria, as most accounts would have it, but the great scholar-bishop Eusebius of Caesarea in Palestine. The reader naturally anticipates that Eusebius influence upon the later tradition will be explored by the author in the subsequent narrative. But Beeleys focal interest lies elsewhere, namely, in the accounts of communicatio idiomatum in the fourth- and fifth- century Christologies.

Beeley identifies two major interpretative trajectories in Christology: unitive and dualist. The unitive approach emphasizes the single subject to which both typically divine and typically human characteristics of Christ are to be attributed. The dualist approach variously accentuates the distinction between human and divine aspects of Christ. Beeley identifies as dualist the Christological accounts of Origen, Athanasius, Diodore of Tarsus, Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary of Potiers, Nestorius, and John of Damascus. According to Beeley, the unitive approach is most consistently articulated by Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and, following him, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine, and, less successfully, by Cyril of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor. The narrative that emerges both reinforces the narrative of the attainment of Christological orthodoxy by lifting up Nazianzens treatment of the unity of Christ as a golden standard and troubles the same narrative by questioning the value and soundness of Athanasius and Cyrils christologies. To repeat, Beeleys narrative is both historically revisionist and theologically orthodox, strongly influenced by contemporary theological interest in the idea of divine suffering.

For our discussion, I would like to raise three methodological and two substantive issues (as well as one minor point) with Beeleys account.

The first methodological issue has to do with the way in which Beeley draws genetic links between the ideas of different theologians. (Here I draw on an earlier review of Beeleys work by my colleague Mark DelCogliano). Beeley repeatedly proceeds with the assumption that a mere fact that an influential theologian A held that p, and a later theologian B held that p, makes it very probable that B borrowed p from A. A couple of examples will suffice.

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Beeley writes, Athanasius affirms that Christ is indeed the image of God apart from the incarnation, as Origen and Eusebius taught and against the denials of Marcellus [of Ancyra]. (p. 147) But the point that the Son, who is the instrument of creation, is the image of God is taught in the NT, perhaps most directly in Colossians 1: 15 (cf. 2 Cor 4: 4). It seems that there is no need to invoke the authority of Origen or Eusebius in order to account for Athanasius theology of the image of God.

The second example comes from Beeleys treatment of Cyril of Alexandria. Beeley observes that Cyrils theology was guided primarily by Gregory Nazianzen (258). Beeley subsequently writes that when [Cyril] teaches that all biblical sayings about Christ refer to the same subject, Cyril reflects a deeply Gregorian principle. (264). Surely, among the early Church Fathers Gregory Nazianzen did not hold a copyright on a single-subject Christology. Bold theopaschite statements are found in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch, Melito of Sardis, Tertullian, Apollinaris, and so on. Gregory formulated his one-subject Christology in response to the Apollinarian accusation of preaching two sons and in response to the Eunomians, who argued from the passibility of the Logos to his subordinate status. The general methodological point is that we have plausible historical grounds for believing that theologian B depends on theologian A, if both A and B held a unique point p, not otherwise attested in all preceding or contemporary authors. I say plausible historical grounds, because this criterion does not constitute a sufficient condition. Generally, what Beeley takes to be the Gregorian principle or the Gregorian tradition are homiletic and liturgical commonplaces. It is true, of course, that Cyril directly quotes from Gregory and more generally, Cyril is chiefly responsible for providing an early theoretical framework for the practice of appealing to patristic precedents. But it is one thing to assert that Cyril draws on Gregorys work just as he draws on the work of Athanasius and Apollinaris; it is a different matter to assert that Cyril was guided primarily by Gregory Nazianzen. (p. 258). Beeley himself subsequently qualifies this statement so considerably, that his original point loses much of its explanatory force.

The second issue is the absence of a working definition of what counts as a dualist Christology. The range of possible options is very broad from some Gnostic authors to Athanasiuss double account of the Savior to the teaching of Theodore of Mopsuestia. For example, Theodore of Mopsuestias Christology disallows communicatio idiomatum as a matter of theological principle. Athanasiuss double account of the Savior, according to Beeley, allows cross-predication of attributes. This means that Athanasius allows for a merely verbal as opposed to real communicatio idiomatum. In contrast, Gregory of Nazianzus allows the cross-penetration of attributes, meaning that the divine subject participates in human experiences, such as suffering and death, while human nature is transformed by its union with the Logos and acquires the Logos characteristics. While Beeleys distinction between cross-predication and cross-penetration is quite valuable, his language of dualist Christology is not sufficiently precise. I would invite our author to clarify his use of this crucial term.

The third methodological issue is Beeleys use of the pair Alexandrian/ Antiochene. On p. 272, Beeley correctly cautions that the old caricature of fourth- and fifth-century Christology as being divided between Alexandrian and Antiochene schools is no longer tenable. The streams of orthodox tradition ran in more than two channels. (272). I am very sympathetic to this caution and agree that the two schools hypothesis is unsustainable. However, Beeley frequently speaks of Alexandrian or Antiochene tradition, Alexandrian or Antiochene Christology, Antiochene provenance [of Leontius of Byzantium] (p. 291), Antiochene bias (p. 281) and so on, as if those categories represented monolithic points of

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view. For example, he observes that Gregory of Nyssas account of communicatio idiomatum is done under the orbit of Antiochene Christological influences. On p. 267, Beeley opines that Athanasius view of divine suffering is remarkably close to the later Antiochene position (p. 267), which is to say that Athanasius denies the divine natures involvement in suffering in the manner of Theodore of Mopsuestia and his followers. Beeleys characterization of Athanasius view both assumes that there is such a thing as a uniform Antiochene position on divine suffering and attributes this view to an Alexandrian theologian, namely, Athanasius. Absent any methodological qualifications, we are left with both an assumption of the two schools (traditions or influences) hypothesis and its (more sound) deconstruction. I would ask Professor Beeley to clarify this tension in his presentation.

Now I wish to turn to the issues of substance, limiting the discussion to one comment and two major points. My comment has to do with Beeleys statement on p. 343: Astonishingly, we still lack an adequate book-length study of Augustines Christology. In fact, there is such a book, it is William Babcocks 1971 dissertation The Christ of the Exchange: A Study in the Christology of Augustines Ennarationes in Psalmos, defended at Yale under Jaroslav Pelikan. Beeleys section on communicatio idiomatum in Augustines Exposition of the Psalms could benefit from engaging Babcocks book-length study.

My two substantive points have to do with Beeleys treatment of the notions of theosis and divine impassibility.

In his chapter on the Cappadocian Fathers and the Council of Constantinople, Beeley observes that the term theosis was coined by Gregory (p. 185). A reference to Norman Russells The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, which discusses Gregorys neologism at length, would have been desirable.14 More significant is the fact that a compound, apotheosis, (theosis with the prefix apo) was commonplace in classical and late antique authors. Perhaps, it would be more accurate to speak of a major shift in meaning of the term (apo)theosis, rather than of a neologism tout court.

Beeley subsequently claims that Gregorys notion of divinization became the main foundation for the later Byzantine understanding of salvation through Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor (p. 185). Beeleys valorization of his main intellectual hero Nazianzen comes at a very high price for the Church Father whom our author scorns, namely, Athanasius. Regarding the Alexandrian Father, Beeley states: Athanasius thus presents us with a fairly unique example of what many modern readers have assumed most of the Greek fathers held, namely, divinization and salvation (of a sort) at the point of incarnation rather than in the passion and resurrection. (p. 137). Beeley goes so far as to claim that in Athanasius divinization amounted to de-humanization, inasmuch as it meant the freeing of humanity from the limitations of suffering and death. A quick look at Norman Russells magisterial study would establish that Gregory is not the main foundation of the doctrine of deification, but only one important patristic authority on the subject; that the Athanasian contention that the union of divine and human natures in the incarnation is the foundation of deification is shared both by earlier authors, such as Irenaeus, as well as by

14 According to TLG, the term theosis is attested twice in Ephraem the Syrians (?) Precationes ad dei matrem 2 and 4. The text is most likely spurious. The work makes for an interesting comparison with Gregory Nazianzens Sermo in sanctum baptisma (PG 36: 381).

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most later Byzantine authors, including Maximus the Confessor. With Russell, I am not prepared to make a distinction between Athanasius and Gregorys treatment of deification as sharply as Beeley does. Surely, for both theologians, deification meant immortality, which is not an overcoming of humanity, but rather a restoration of true humanity, which is precisely the central point of Athanasius On the Incarnation.

This naturally leads me to the second problem, namely, Beeleys treatment of the idea of divine impassibility and the issue of divine involvement in suffering. Beeley ascribes to Gregory Nazianzen a conceptual breakthrough in this arena. In fact, Beeley sees Gregory as a strong champion of divine suffering (p. 296: exact quote: Maximus is explicitly denying the divine suffering that Gregory had so strongly championed). In support, Beeley quotes an important statement from Gregorys 45th Oration: We needed an incarnate God, a God put to death, so that we might live, and we were put to death with him. (p. 193). Gregory also speaks of Christians being saved by the sufferings of the impassible one (Or. 30.1). I agree that these are profound statements, but these statements are neither self-explanatory, nor in any way unique to Gregory Nazianzen. Two centuries before him, Melito of Sardis proclaimed: (It was for mans sake that): the judge was judged and the invisible was seeni and the impassible suffered, and the immortal died, and the heavenly one was buriedii. Since Melitos time such statements became a common stock of paschal sermons and even made it into the liturgical tradition. So, for example, in the anaphora of The Apostolic Constitutions VIII we read: He was delivered to Pilate the governor and) the judge was judged and the Savior was condemned; the impassible was nailed to the cross; the immortal by nature died; the life-giver was buried in order to free from passions and release from death those for whose sake he came; in order to break the bonds of the devil and deliver humankind from his deceit. The echo of Melito (or a later theologian writing in the same mode) is clear in this fourth-century anaphora. Michael Slussers Oxford dissertation entitled Theopaschite Expressions in Second-Century Christianity as Reflected in the Writings of Justin, Melito, Celsus and Irenaeus, another conspicuous omission from Beeleys bibliography, treats the matter comprehensively. More generally, Beeleys work shows only partial engagement with the relevant scholarly literature addressing patristic accounts of divine impassibility and participation in human suffering.

Although Beeley is not very explicit about this, it seems that for him a realist rendering of communicatio idiomatum implies the abandonment of divine impassibility in favor of theopaschitism. But if suffering can be predicated directly to the divine nature, or directly to the pre-incarnate Logos (outside of the framework of the incarnation) then the paradox of the impassible God suffering, the paradox that Beeley values in Nazianzens theology, would be dissolved. If the divine nature is passible than it cannot communicate the property of being impassible, threatening the very idea of communicatio idiomatum that Beeley wishes to uphold throughout the book.

Perhaps it is a theological achievement of some of the later patristic authors, such as Leontius of Byzantium and Maximus the Confessor, that their Christologies cannot be straitjacketed into the scheme of unitive or dualist Christology, the framework in which Beeley seeks to understand them. In fact, after the council of Ephesus, any self-reflective theologian had to struggle both with the question of how Christ could be thought to be one and how he could be thought to be two. While it is thought provoking and original, this study raises more questions than it solves. But this is to be expected from any perpetually contested issue, including most especially the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum.

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i Fr. 13 adds and the immeasurable was measured. ii New fr. ii. 13. 135 adds in the earth.