Selected Presentations & Appearances
Neoplatonism provided some patristic writers with a metaphysical framework for addressing key issues in christology. Most versions of Neoplatonism maintained that God is not a thing, not one being among others; applied to the incarnation, this meant that the Word could neither replace a component of Jesus’s human nature (as in Apollinarianism) nor be divided from it (as in Nestorianism). While usefully ruling out such problematic views, Neoplatonist metaphysics also raises a difficult question. If God is not in any ordinary sense an individual, how can the Son be uniquely identified with and as a particular instance of human nature in Jesus Christ? Nicholas of Cusa, who was influenced directly and indirectly by the Neoplatonism of Augustine and Ps.-Dionysius, offers a remarkable answer. Jesus’s humanity is, like God himself, non aliud, not an instance of anything, including human nature. Cusanus’s justification for this surprising claim is, in part, that all things have come into being in and through the Son’s humanity, which therefore cannot be one created entity among others. Cusanus rightly sees that this commits him to a rejection of the traditional notion of the Logos asarkos. He argues that (i) whatever God is, God is eternally; thus, if the Son is human in the incarnation, he must in some way be human eternally. Further, (ii) since God is present in his eternity to every moment of created time, the Word has been humanly present to the world from the beginning. This, I hope to show, is a viable alternative to some modern rejections of the Logos asarkos as well as a promising solution to the puzzle raised by Neoplatonism.
In this paper, I offer a theory of the origins of an ancient communion acclamation found in the Byzantine rite and elsewhere: “One is holy, one is Lord, Jesus Christ” (the “Unus Sanctus”). It was introduced into the liturgy, I hope to show, by the Antiochene circle of Meletius of Antioch in the late fourth century, and was promulgated more widely at the Council of Constantinople in 381. The evidence includes the facts that (1) the Unus Sanctus is first attested by Gregory of Nyssa, a prominent attendee of the council, and by Didymus the Blind, who was influenced by Constantinopolitan theology; (2) the earliest liturgies in which the Unus Sanctus is found are the anaphora of Apostolic Constitutions VIII (likely compiled by the Meletians) and the Hagiopolite liturgy of the Mystagogical Catecheses, composed either by Cyril of Jerusalem (a leading member of the council), or by his theological protégé John; and (3) the council was initially presided over by Meletius himself and, after his unexpected death, was steered by his close associates.
This constitutes an exceptionally interesting case not only of liturgical interpolation, but also of the production of scriptural texts. Surprisingly, Gregory and Didymus refer to the Unus Sanctus not as a liturgical text, but as a biblical one, though neither clearly states his scriptural source. The text has a striking parallel in the Gloria in Excelsis (“You alone are holy, you alone are Lord”), but it also resembles 1 Cor. 8:6. I suggest that when the Meletians introduced the Unus Sanctus to the council, they described it as a variant of this Pauline text. Such variants were, of course, well-known to patristic writers, and–when received from reliable witnesses–were usually regarded as enriching the exegesis of a passage. Promulgating a text in the name of an apostle, moreover, would have been fully in line with known activities of the Meletians, serial pseudepigraphers who produced such works as the Apostolic Constitutions (Daley) and the pseudo-Ignatian corpus (Stewart). The Unus Sanctus thus demonstrates the formative role played in Christian worship by the production of scriptural variants.
Fourth-century patristic writers established two traditions of interpretation of texts like John 14:28 (“The Father is greater than I”) and John 5:19 (“I can do nothing without the father”). The first, which was defended by Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and others, read these texts monarchically, taking them as descriptions of the Son’s dependence upon the Father as his divine begetter and source. Far from implying lowliness and weakness, they are in fact demonstrations of his equality with the Father, and thus are appropriately attributed to him qua divine. The Son is said to be less than the Father, for example, only because the Father is causally prior to him, not because of any natural inferiority. The second, represented by Marcellus of Ancyra, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Gregory of Nyssa, and others, interpreted these passages incarnationally, arguing that such language is unworthy of God and so must refer to the incarnation/the human nature/the assumed man. The reception of these traditions in the fifth century was diverse. Theodoret of Cyrus is wholly on the side of Theodore and Nyssen, arguing without exception that monarchical texts can only be descriptions of the Son’s human weakness. Cyril of Alexandria, by contrast, offers a powerful synthesis of the monarchical and incarnational traditions. He accepts the claim of Theodore and Nyssen that texts like John 14:28 speak of Christ in a way that is unworthy of the divine nature, but he does not for that reason refer them to the incarnation. Rather, despite the lowly character of the biblical language of sending and being sent, of commanding and being commanded, and of greatness and inferiority, Cyril maintains that it should be understood as a human expression of divine realities (a view he seems to have derived directly from John Chrysostom). Such language is, as it were, the tune of divine filiality played in a human key. The contrast with Theodoret points to an underlying theological conflict that would come to a head at the Council of Chalcedon. Is the divine nature the irremediable opposite of creatureliness, as Theodoret consistently maintains, or can the lowliness of human realities be appropriated by the divine Son as a means of expressing divine humility in a creaturely way? It is no accident that the triumph of Antiochene theology at the council spelled the end of monarchical exegesis among most Chalcedonian theologians until the time of John Damascene.
Contemporary biblical scholarship has tended to view Christological interpretation as in competition with the historical integrity of the Old Testament. Even scholars who are sympathetic to spiritual readings tend to assign them to a different interpretive level (in the language of Brevard Childs) from interpretations that read the Old Testament on its own terms. This paper argues, however, that two theological views that were shared by many patristic writers open fresh possibilities for the relationship between Christological interpretation of the Old Testament and contemporary historical-critical scholarship (broadly construed). Many early Christian theologians maintained that Jesus was the God of Israel, the one who was encountered by Israel in the narratives recorded in Scripture. This relied on two major theological claims: (i) the Son is the one in and through whom the first person of the Trinity is revealed, so that there can be no knowledge of God that is not always through an encounter with the Son; and (ii) divinity and humanity are so thoroughly united in Christ that we cannot draw any hard distinction between Christ and the pre-incarnate Son: Christ is simply the Son of God with a human nature. Taken together, these imply that Jesus was the God known to Israel: the Son of God was the only one through whom God is ever known; and because divinity and humanity are united in the incarnation, we can say that pre-incarnate Son of God, the God of Israel, is one and the same with Christ. Surprisingly, perhaps, this position actually allows for a robust understanding of the Old Testament’s historical and canonical integrity. For such readings do not require us to retroject New Testament content into the Old, as though Christ were present only after the incarnation. Rather, because Christ was the one encountered in Israel’s history, the Old Testament itself becomes a direct source for Christology. It is not simply raw theological material awaiting Christological refashioning. Rather, it tells us about Christ on its own terms–not by way of “horizontal” spiritual interpretation (not, that is, by reading Israel’s scriptures in light of future events), but rather by the “vertical” encounter of Christ with Israel in its own history. The Old Testament is thereby accorded a privileged place in biblical theology. For on this view, the Old Testament’s doctrine of God, taken on its own terms, is itself properly Christological. What is said of Israel’s God is now said of Christ: he is the one who liberated Israel from Egypt, who gave the law, who promised a king to David, who spoke through the prophets, and who inspired the psalmists. The Old Testament is allowed to fund Christology, so that both Testaments make distinctive contributions to a larger biblical Christology.
This paper argues that the source of a letter of Valentinus quoted by Clement is to be found in a fourth century letter collection with a more orthodox pedigree. So far as I can tell, only two writers have noticed this connection, but for rather poor reasons have regarded it as dependent on Clement's source. I contend that (i) Clement's citation practices, (ii) the incoherence of the quotation in Clement and its coherence within the 4th-c. letter, and (iii) other distinctive theological features of the letter make it more likely to have been Clement's source.
This paper argues that the source of a letter of Valentinus quoted by Clement is to be found in a fourth century letter collection with a more orthodox pedigree. So far as I can tell, only two writers have noticed this connection, but for rather poor reasons have regarded it as dependent on Clement's source. I contend that (i) Clement's citation practices, (ii) the incoherence of the quotation in Clement and its coherence within the 4th-c. letter, and (iii) other distinctive theological features of the letter make it more likely to have been Clement's source.
Recent decades have seen the overturning of traditional dichotomies between Alexandrian and Antiochene biblical interpretation. The impact of the rhetorical and grammatical schools on both Antiochene and Alexandrian readers has commanded a particularly large share of attention. Some scholars, such as Frances Young and Elizabeth Clark, have replaced the literal/allegorical sense distinction with more complex hermeneutical topologies, while Margaret Mitchell has argued that the distinction, in its ancient usage, was a rhetorical device, constructed within the “agonistic” setting of ancient textual interpretation. However, less attention has been accorded to the theological motivations of the debate, especially to the question whether Christological differences might have been among its causes. Several writers have noted that there is a certain conceptual fit between characteristically Antiochene exegetical concerns and Christologies that emphasize the integrity of Christ’s human nature. Such suggestions have rarely been pursued at any length, however, and a causal connection between Christology and the exegetical controversies has not been proposed.
Contemporary biblical scholarship has tended to view Christological interpretation as standing in a fundamentally competitive relationship to the historical witness of the Old Testament. Even scholars who are sympathetic to spiritual readings tend to assign them to a different interpretive “level” (in the language of Brevard Childs) from interpretations that take the Old Testament on its own terms. This usually relies on the assumption that Christological readings necessarily involve a construal of the Old Testament as pointing forward to Christ. However, many (though not all) patristic writers held that the God of Israel was none other than the pre-incarnate Son of God, and this, I argue here, permits a form of Christological interpretation that operates not along a horizontal (i.e. forward-pointing) axis, but along a vertical one. Such readings do not require us to retroject New Testament content into the Old, as though the presence of Christ lay only in the future, but rather see both Testaments as supplying unique content for our understanding of the Son of God, each in its own historical and canonical integrity. The Old Testament bears witness to the way in which the Son of God acted on Israel’s behalf prior to the incarnation, while the New attests to his work after it. Paradoxically, then, a reading of the Old Testament that is Christological “all the way down” permits it to speak on its own terms in a Christian context. This opens fresh and almost entirely unexplored possibilities for mutual engagement between patristics and biblical theology.
Most readers of Philippians 2.5-11 have noticed one scriptural allusion or another in the passage. For example, the humble obedience of Jesus has been seen as a reversal of the proud self-exaltation of Adam, and it has been controversially suggested that the “suffering servant” of Isaiah 40-55 is in view. I argue here, however, that the scriptural allusion that predominates in the passage, and that has been almost entirely overlooked in the literature, is the figure of Moses, as construed by Second Temple Jewish writers. Several such authors – most explicitly and consistently, Philo – along with at least two NT writers and later Rabinnic tradition, held that Moses (i) was born in a place of honor and power, (ii) refused to hold on to this privilege, (iii) humbly forsook the palace of pharaoh for a position of lower status, identifying with his enslaved people, and (iv) was eventually exalted by God, which in some versions includes his being given cosmic lordship and even God’s own name. As far as Biblical allusions go, this is about as close as we might come to an exact match of the Christological profile of Philippians 2. If, as some have argued, Paul’s opponents in Philippi were Alexandrian followers of Philo, this pre-Pauline hymn may have been composed as a theological polemic against Philonian views of Moses, in that Jesus traverses not only the distance between royal privilege and slavery, but also that between the form of God and the form of a human being. In an interesting case of quadruple intertextuality (Exodus >> Philo >> Christian hymnist >> Paul), then, the apostle’s redeployment of the hymn adds another layer of contrast: unlike the Philonian Moses, Jesus functions as an example to the Philippian community (pace Käsemann), his divine humility constituting its moral code.
It has long been argued that the so-called Christ hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 contains a significant element of intertextuality. For example, some have suggested that the humility of Christ should be understood as a reversal of Adam’s proud self-exaltation, while others have claimed that there are echoes of Isaiah’s suffering servant. These suggestions remain controversial, but most recent writers have recognized that the final verses of the hymn contain an echo of LXX Isaiah 45:23: “I swear by myself truly, and righteousness will surely come from my mouth, and my words will not be turned back, because every knee will bow to me and every tongue will confess to God…’” (Isa. 44:23 LXX). According to writers like Richard Bauckham, Paul, or the author of the hymn that Paul quotes, has taken a text that was originally about the God of Israel and audaciously applied it to Jesus. I wish to argue, however, that it was not simply a daring appropriation of an emphatically monotheistic text. I contend that on a relatively straightforward reading of LXX Isaiah 45, the messianic figure of Cyrus is identified with and as the God of Israel himself. Although I will not argue that this reading is one that the Septuagintal translators had in mind – although I don’t think it’s inconceivable that it was – I will argue that the allusion in Philippians makes the most sense when it is situated within a larger reading of Isaiah 45, a Christological interpretation that identifies Cyrus as both the messiah and as the God of Israel.
Most readers of Spinoza have supposed that the very notion of theodicy is incompatible with his thought. And on the surface of things, he does indeed seem to reject the conceptual structure that typically motivates theodicy: he denies the real existence of evil in the world, along with the goodness and omnipotence (in the usual Christian sense) of God. I argue here, however, that Spinoza presents a theodicy at the end of Ethics I, although it is (as the literature on the subject has demonstrated) very difficult for many modern readers to recognize it as such. The problem Spinoza addresses is the question of how a perfect entity (God) is able to bring about imperfect effects, where perfection is understood in Spinoza’s sense: namely, the degree of reality that a thing possesses. Spinoza’s solution to the problem, I argue, draws on one proposed by Thomas Aquinas. In order for God to express himself fully, Spinoza thinks, it was necessary for him to create a multitude of finite entities embodying various degrees of reality, since no single finite creature can express God’s essence fully on its own. Despite the imperfection of individual entities, then, the whole of which they are parts turns out to be a perfect expression of the divine essence. Many will find it odd to see imperfection as a form of evil; I argue here, however, that this shows only that we have a very limited, and likely problematic, conception of what counts as an evil. In particular, I argue that our conception of the problem of evil turns on the assumption that God is something like a utilitarian; and if we find utilitarianism problematic, we will need to recover some broader conception of evil in order to continue to pose the problem of evil.