Christian Origins

Theology, Rhetoric and Community

Lewis Ayres, Gareth Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135095116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Christian Origins is an exploration of the historical course and nature of early Christian theology, which concentrates on setting it within particular traditions or sets of traditions.
In the three sections of the volume, Reading Origen, Reading the Fourth Century and Christian Origins in the Western Traditions, the contributors reconsider classic themes and texts in the light of the existing traditions of interpretation. They offer critiques of early Christian ideas and texts and they consider the structure and origins of standard modern readings of these ideas and texts. The contributors employ a variety of methodological approaches to analyse the interplay between ancient philosophical traditions and the development of Christian thought and to redefine the parameters between the previously accepted divisions in the traditions of Christian theology and thought.

1

INTRODUCTION

A project in the study of Christian origins

Lewis Ayres

I

This volume is intended as the first of a series. Each volume will be focused around a particular theme and will usually consist of specially commissioned chapters. Before I introduce this first collection itself, the parameters and purpose of the wider project need some explanation. Two initial statements about those parameters should be made. First, the series as a whole will be concerned to encourage research in the field of Christian origins which has theological concerns in view. Second, the time period included within the series will often be broader than might at first be imagined. While most volumes and contributions to volumes will focus around that period normally taken to be constitutive of ‘patristics’ (ca. 100–ca. 600), in some cases contributions or whole collections will cover material as far as the changes in Christian thought which occurred during the eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries. The remainder of this section of the introduction offers a more detailed account of and justification for these two statements. The second section of the introduction concerns the contents of this particular volume.

By ‘having theological concerns in view’ I mean contributing towards the better understanding of the historical course and nature of Christian thought and theology as a particular tradition or set of traditions stretching from the first century to the present day. Two things are noteworthy about this definition: firstly, the phrase ‘thought and theology’, which describes the focus of the project as a whole. Secondly, this phrase attempts to distinguish schools of scholarship by reference to their ‘concerns’ or overall ‘ends’, rather than by prescribing a particular set of methods or techniques as normative. Positively this attempt is intended to indicate that a wide variety of methods and approaches may find a place within the overall scope of this project, as long as they contribute to its goals. Of course, many aspects of scholarship on the antique world may contribute in ad hoc ways to the study of Christian thought although not being themselves directly concerned with that thought. For this reason the series will include material from a wide variety of ‘schools’ of early Christian study, but only when particular pieces are directly relevant to other pieces in the same volume or to the overall theme of a collection.

My concern that the series has a clear overall sense of purpose, while still being able to encompass a variety of methodological approaches, stems from awareness of the plurality of approaches in modern early Christian studies. This plurality consists not simply in the existence of many different methods, but, most importantly, in both the existence of a number of sometimes incommensurable governing assumptions, and in a plurality of ends for which study is undertaken. Unfortunately, there has been little serious consideration of how this pluralism affects the nature of the various sub-fields that constitute early Christian studies, how those sub-fields interact, and how they may understand their own aims and purposes against this wider background.

This plurality of approaches and plurality of competing assumptions about the period has a number of consequences for all the sub-fields incorporated in the area, of which two require mention here. First, the very diversity of the field will exert pressures on particular individuals within it, pushing exponents of less popular styles of investigation into isolation or – a scenario repeated in many other disciplines in the humanities in the past century – simply to adopt the methods and assumptions of the larger groups. In the light of this possibility, clarity about the existence, purpose and self-perception of the different styles of current early Christian studies is essential. Most obviously, accusations that a certain school or method will be ‘inevitably distorting’ whereas another will not, is philosophically very difficult to sustain in such a simple form. Different approaches need to give much more sophisticated accounts of their integrity and of their hermeneutic principles, and one might hope that the attempt to do so would make the diversity and connections or common concerns between different schools of interpretation more clearly apparent.

Thus I suggest that the diversity of current approaches to early Christian studies demands primarily some clarity about ends, and then an attempt to work towards clarity about the consonance of particular methods with particular governing assumptions. The very bare outline of the overall project that I offer here is intended as a contribution towards thinking through the structure and purpose of one possible style of research in Christian origins within the current range of options.

The title ‘Christian Origins’ may itself be read as reflecting one other aspect of the project. Volumes in the series will often include pieces considering or reconsidering the significance of aspects of early Christian thought for later Christian thought, and will also attempt to look at ways in which early Christianity has been and is now seen as giving rise to later Christian thought. In some cases this will involve looking at and reconsidering lines of influence between early and medieval Christian thought: in others it will involve modern theologians writing on the significance and use of early Christian authors, and on the influence of those authors on modern thought.

The project will also contribute to the increasing adoption by theologians and scholars of early Christianity of newer approaches to the relationship between theology and philosophy and to theology’s historical context. These two themes are closely related. This century’s debates about the relationship of theology and philosophy in early Christianity have often been rather sterile. In many cases this is because inherited debates about the ‘hellenization’ of Christianity have predisposed many liberal’ (as well as ‘orthodox’) theologians to see either a necessary opposition between ‘Gospel’ and ‘hellenism’, or a necessary admittance of Christianity’s transformation by ‘Greek’ thought. Of course, many other themes have also contributed towards the often sterile nature of these debates; this is simply the most well known. Over the last fifteen or twenty years some scholars have begun to take very different views of the development of Christian thought. Many have been more willing to consider interactions between antique philosophical traditions and Christian thinkers without immediate transposition of any such interaction into the terms of the Gospel/hellenism debate. There is also a greater openness to seeing the interaction between Christian and non-Christian as a complex multi-layered set of interactions between discourses which all have ‘philosophical’, ‘spiritual’ and ‘ritual’ aspects. Yet others have begun to see how so much previous debate has been shaped by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thought about the integrity of ‘revelation’ – ‘revelation’ being largely considered as a form of knowledge – and by purely historical-critical criteria for the ‘adequate’ interpretation of scripture.

Critique of these themes themselves has begun to enable both a new subtlety in appreciation of the structures of early Christian thought and a new subtlety in understanding ways in which the ‘scriptural’ and the ‘conceptual’ in early Christianity interact. One key consequence of these approaches is the increasing realization that many of the professional distinctions between scholars of ‘New Testament’, ‘patristics’, ‘Church history’ and ‘systematics’ (to name only those which are of most immediate concern here) are increasingly problematic. These divisions best serve those who continue to uphold the attitudes to different ‘periods’ of the Christian tradition that played such a large part in the formation of theological curricula in the nineteenth century. For a variety of reasons, philosophical and theological, these may now be seen as a hindrance rather than a help in the study of the Christian tradition. This project hopes to encourage and develop approaches which follow these broad lines of thought.

Having explored the meaning and context of ‘having theological concerns in view’, I want now to turn to the period covered by the project. As stated above, the period that will sometimes be encompassed within the ‘Christian Origins’ series is broader than that normally considered as comprising simply the early Christian or patristic period. The project will centre around the standard accepted period for patristic study (ca. 100/-ca. 600), but will also cover aspects of the period up to and around the series of shifts in the Western Church known as the ‘Gregorian reform’ and in some cases on as far as the death of Aquinas, and, in the East, aspects of the period up to the Palamite controversy and the strong late medieval influence of Latin styles of theology on Byzantine thought. There are a number of reasons for extending the period to be covered so widely.

First, the ending of patristic study around 600 is, from a number of viewpoints, rather arbitrary. A variety of theological arguments may of course be made for the significance of the period of the ‘first seven Councils’ (or, in some cases, the first four only), or for the significance and authority of a vaguely defined ‘early’ period. However theologically significant or useful these arguments may be, once they are used to describe boundaries between subject areas, they often have the result of placing the period immediately following in a shadow which hides continuities and the slowness of the transformations in theological style and content which do occur. It is also fairly easy to give examples of how some of the choices with which many modern scholars continue to operate serve very particular concerns to which we may now no longer wish to subscribe. For example, many nineteenth-century Western accounts of Christian thought offer points at which one might distinguish ‘patristic’ from ‘medieval’; but these are highly arbitrary and often motivated primarily by attempts to argue for Aquinas or early Scholasticism as the high point of a period which surpasses the patristic (and often begins with Augustine, who may then receive the accolade ‘early medieval’). For Orthodox authors without this concern, such a division has never made any sense – although some have accepted nineteenth-century Western views of the nature of a Greek/Latin division. Of course, some significant changes occurred in both East and West during the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, but it is hard to make out an easy case asserting that they are more significant for the history of Christian thought than those which occurred during the fourth-century controversies, or between the third and fourth centuries. There are very few substantial reasons (other than reinforcing some of the ideological perspectives of particular ‘professional’ distinctions) for treating Christian origins as either purely an extension of New Testament study or as a period cut off from what came before or after.

These negative arguments may be reinforced by a number of positive arguments for extending the period covered by ‘Christian Origins’. In many cases trajectories of thought which begin to be articulated in the post-Chalcedonian period follow directly through into later centuries; and similarly many themes of theological debate continue in similar terms and styles of literature long past the period where patristic study is normally taken to end. An example may easily be provided. The pseudo-Dionysian corpus is ‘patristic’, and represents a key stage in early Christian engagement with late antique non-Christian thought (at whatever immediate remove). Once one accepts this premise then the central influence of that corpus on the Christian thought of the centuries which followed (when it had re-emerged in the West) provides one vital example of how it may seem more important to examine the continuities and developments across these periods rather than to accept an arbitrary delineation of where ‘patristic’ ends and ‘medieval’ begins. I am not trying to argue here that the only reason for studying some ‘medieval’ texts alongside ‘patristic’ texts is that the medieval texts are a continuation of previous lines of thought. This one example is only intended to indicate that the acceptance of an easy and appropriate break between these periods may be easily argued against and that positive arguments for a more fluid approach may easily be made.

The two termini ad quem that I do offer for the project are intended to be flexible. One key aspect of the rationale for their choice is this: a number of factors in the West between the period of the ‘Gregorian reform’ and the death of Aquinas (here a fairly symbolic figure) do seem to lead to a shift in the structure and style of theology that allows us to speak with increasing accuracy about the growth of theologies that are becoming ‘modern’, and that in many ways are distinct from the theologies previous to that period. One might identify three such factors: the fourteenth-century shifts in accounts of the relationship between the theological analysis of creation independent of reference to the presence of the triune God, often broadly focused around the work of Scotus; the changes in Church structure which came as the ‘Gregorian reform’ had an impact on the Church at large; and the shifts in modes and styles of theological learning and writing with the rise and changes in cathedral ‘school’ and ‘university’ structure. Taken together these three aspects of the period indicate that here we begin to see the move towards the theological developments of the later medieval period and the Reformation. Of course there were many continuities across this period too, but nevertheless the period of these shifts seems the appropriate ending point for contributions to this project.

The last paragraph does not offer a full justification for the choice of the broad termini of this project, but rather indicates one key set of reasons. The usefulness of these termini, and the grounds on which one can argue their case more strongly, will, I hope, become apparent through the life of the series. However, even here, it should be said that the positive reasons outlined above are ones drawn entirely from the Latin world (my initial negative reasons apply to all). Similar arguments need also to be aired in the field of Greek Christianity and Byzantine studies. As mentioned above, the broad terminus for contributions from the Byzantine world is the Palamite controversies. At more length I would make the arguments first that those controversies begin to effect a shift in Byzantine thought, and second that around that period it is possible to see an increasing influence of later medieval Latin theological styles on Byzantine thought. As in the case of the Latin world these termini are intentionally broad; it is proposed that their usefulness be tested in future work.

As stated above, books in the project will always take as their point of departure themes beginning in the ‘patristic’ period, as it is usually under-stood. It will simply be that, in some cases, those themes are best or most helpfully considered over a wider time period. It is hoped that a number of gaps in current scholarship may be filled through the assumption of these termini, and that the project will contribute towards the reconsideration of the periodization that has been taken for granted for much of the twentieth century.

II

Each of the volumes in the series will be focused around a particular theme and the vast majority of the chapters for each volume will be individually commissioned. We will, of course, welcome submissions and suggestions for volumes, but in general our aim is not to produce simply another journal-like product or another jahrbuch, but a series of focused collections with a clear overall purpose and agenda. This first volume is divided into three sections, each of which shows ways in which whole future volumes may be organized. Each of these sections also includes chapters which are not simply illustrative of possibilities for the wider project but make important contributions to their respective fields.

The first section offers a series of chapters re-reading one theme or set of themes in one key early Christian author; in this case David Dawson and Mark Edwards write on Origen. Both of these chapters concern areas of discussion related to allegory and the common accusation that Origen’s approach represents an archetypal pollution of Christianity by ‘Platonism’.

The second section of the volume offers a series of chapters looking at the fourth century from the sorts of perspective that we hope to include within the project. Michel Barnes and Daniel Williams both look at the fourth century as a whole. Barnes offers a new synthetic account of the fourth century as trinitarian ‘canon’ in the light of recent reconsideration of that century’s controversies. Williams reconsiders the traditional claim by many ‘Free Church’ theologians that post-Constantinian Christianity broke traditional links between local communities and their creeds. The questioning of this aspect of Free Church accounts of the fourth century raises wider questions. John Milbank’s chapter offers an example of a systematic theologian engaging critically with a key patristic figure, Gregory of Nyssa. Milbank concentrates on the importance of apatheia for Gregory and argues that the theme has been largely misunderstood in recent theology. Susanna Elm’s chapter considers the conflict between Theophilus of Alexandria and John Chrysostom, exploring the lack of reference to doctrinal issues in the standard accounts of the controversy, both modern and patristic. Elm’s chapter offers an excellent example of the importance of reconsidering the traditional ways in which key controversies or figures have come to be represented.

The third set of chapters concentrates on exploring themes in connection with their significance for the later history of Christian thought. Wayne Hankey’s chapter reconsiders many recent interpretations of Aquinas’s work, but does so through the exploration of what the influence of pseudo-Dionysius on Aquinas means for such reconsideration. This chapter provides an excellent example of the continuities between the period normally considered as ‘patristic’ and the wider period encompassed by this project. Catherine Pickstock’s chapter looks at Augustine’s De musica, placing the account given there within the wider context of the Western tradition’s accounts of music. This consideration is used as the key to understanding aspects of the Augustinian account of creation, participation and transcendence.

Many people have been involved in planning this first volume and the idea as a whole. Most importantly Richard Stoneman, Senior Editor at Routledge, has shown remarkable patience and persistence over the course of the last few years. I am extremely grateful for his encouragement of the project. All of the contributors, especially those who submitted their chapters some time ago, are also to be thanked for their great patience and trust. The Arts and Social Sciences Benefactions Fund of Trinity College Dublin provided me with a most generous grant for research, some of which connected directly with this project, and I very gratefully acknowledge their help. Michel Barnes and Steve Fowl have both been of great help in formulating the introduction.

Dr Gareth Jones of the University of Birmingham has co-edited this volume; from the next volume Professor Michel Barnes, Assistant Professor of Patristics in the Department of Theology at Marquette University, will be co-editor for the series.

Part I

READING ORIGEN

2

CHRIST OR PLATO?

Origen on revelation and anthropology

Mark Edwards

The term Platonist is occasionally conferred on Christian Fathers as a compliment by those who st...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction A project in the study of Christian origins—Lewis Ayres
• Part I Reading Origen
• Part II Reading the Fourth Century
• Part III Christian Origins and the Western Tradition
• Index