Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine
Khaled Anatolios
Baker Academic, 2011
With this new book, Khaled Anatolios, professor of historical theology in the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, cements his position as a leading contemporary interpreter of the Council and of its great champion, St. Athanasius. The book is every bit the equal of his earlier work, Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought (Routledge, 2004) and merits a close reading by patristic scholars and contemporary theologians equally.
Anatolios contends that “Nicaea,” that is, the doctrinal outcome of the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, the identification of God as Trinity, is not the result of speculation, whether about the nature of God or the nature of persons, but in fact expresses “coherent construals of the entirety of Christian faith” (1). In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity articulated at these councils and confessed in the Creed is not simply one doctrine alongside others. Its value lies in its explanatory power not simply with regard to the identity of God, but insofar as confession of this identity in turn shapes the rest of Christian faith.
This is a sweeping and attractive thesis. But one that is obviously difficult to demonstrate historically. Anatolios wisely eschews the diachronic route, and chooses instead to exposit three major interpreters of Nicaea: Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine of Hippo. His choice of exemplars is deliberate: the great champion of the fourth century followed by two fifth century figures, determinative for the shape of Trinitarian doctrine in East and West respectively.
First, however, some historical groundwork is laid with two opening chapters. The first details the run up to the Council of Nicea (325) and the years of ongoing controversy afterward. Anatolios rightly points out that the issue was not whether God was Trinity, but how. In the fourth century, the pivot on which this debate turned was the primacy of Christ. Was Christ united to God the Father as a matter of divine will or divine being? Although the major combatants leading to the Council were the presbyter, Arius and his bishop, Alexander, Anatolios helpfully demonstrates substantial theological diversity on both sides. This diversity ensured, further, that the controversy would continue for decades after the Nicene formula had been “settled.” In truth, it was as much the determination of Athanasius to defend the Council afterwards that made it the watershed in the history of Christian theology. These chapters rehabilitate both Arius and Alexander by effectively getting them out of Athanasius’ shadow and presenting them as able Christian theologians in their own rights.
With the groundwork then laid, Anatolios can begin his expository work. His chapter on Athanasius devotes extended attention to the Orations and On the Incarnation as well as other works (Anatolios takes what is to me a novel stand—for him, the Incarnation does not antedate the Arian controversy, but is subsequent to it). Through his exposition, he shows how the debate about Nicaea’s homoousios is not simply about the primacy of Christ, but also how that primacy informs Christian faith as a whole and divine transcendence in particular. Athanasius’ position is that the Father-Son relationship is constituitive of God’s identity. As a result, Christ’s saving work is a manifestation of the divine nature as philanthropia (156). The Holy Spirit, futher, is the creative and salvific agent of that same philanthropia. As a result, not only is there is no divine “remainder” outside the confession of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but all of Christian existence takes place within that confession.
In his turn to Gregory of Nyssa, Anatolios highlights the vision of God as irreducibly active “within the dynamism of the Trinitarian life,” and who is, therefore neither static with regard to nor removed from creation. Rather, the dynamic life that is the perichoretic unity of Father Son and Holy Spirit—which is the divine goodness—spills over into creating and redeeming that which is not God. On Anatolios’ reading, Gregory is not a Neo-Platonist who revels in divine ineffability and his mysticism is not “the Poltinian ascent of the alone to the Alone” (240). Rather, Gregory’s conception of divine ineffability is better understood as plenitude or inexhaustibility. It is because God, who really is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has in his goodness and activity drawn humanity into his very life that human beings will forever be moving “further up and further in” (to borrow from C.S. Lewis) to that life and our understanding thereof.
Augustine and his magisterial De Trinitate is then consulted as Anatolios reflects on what kind of knowledge of the Trinity is possible for human beings. Again, the doctrine of the Trinity is presented not as an abstract and speculative exercise but as one, reflection on which, leads to spiritual formation and the production of a particular kind of person. The real issue on Anatolios’ reading is not the “proof” of Trinitarian doctrine according to human reason to the deployment of analogies to ratify it according to standards of human rationality. Its purpose rather is first to expose and then to heal “the deep wounds of a radically uncertain self through the revelation of God through Chrsit and the Spirit” (279).
Finally, Anatolios’s conclusion draws together the expository strands of previous chapters to show how a robust conception of the Nicene doctrine of God is not isolated, but continues to impinge upon Christian understandings of Scripture, Tradition and hermeneutics, worship, creation, salvation, and humanity. Although a fitting, and from my perspective, very satisfying conclusion, readers who are not interested or trained in patristics might want to read it before the long expository chapters. It will help orient them, and indeed give them a persuasive argument to stick with the longer chapters when the exegesis gets detailed.
Highly recommended to specialists and interested non-specialists.