Voting about God

I noted this book on here many years ago when it first came out, but this year we have a papaerback edition of Ramsay MacMullen's Voting about God in Early Church Councils (Yale University Press, 2020), 182pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

In this study, Ramsay MacMullen steps aside from the well-worn path that previous scholars have trod to explore exactly how early Christian doctrines became official. Drawing on extensive verbatim stenographic records, he analyzes the ecumenical councils from A.D. 325 to 553, in which participants gave authority to doctrinal choices by majority vote.

The author investigates the sometimes astonishing bloodshed and violence that marked the background to church council proceedings, and from there goes on to describe the planning and staging of councils, the emperors' role, the routines of debate, the participants’ understanding of the issues, and their views on God’s intervention in their activities. He concludes with a look at the significance of the councils and their doctrinal decisions within the history of Christendom. 

The Bible and the Trinity

The Catholic University of America Press sent me their newest catalogue, which contains several books of interest, including one set for release early in 2018: The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology, eds. Christopher A Beeley and Mark E Weedman.

A number of prominent scholars are featured in the book, including the Orthodox priest and scholar Bogdan G. Bucur of Duquesne University.

About this scholarly collection we are told:

The past thirty years have seen an unprecedented level of interest in early Christian biblical interpretation, from major scholarly initiatives to more popular resources aimed at pastors and general readers. The fields of Biblical Studies and Patristics/Early Christian Studies each arrived at the study of early Christian biblical interpretation largely from their own standpoints, and they tend to operate in relative isolation from one another. This books aims to bring the two fields into closer conversation, in order to suggest new avenues into the study of the deeply biblical dimension of patristic theology as well as the contribution that patristic exegesis can make to contemporary views of how best to interpret the Bible.

Based on a multi-year consultation in the Society of Biblical Literature, The Bible and Early Trinitarian Theology features leading scholars from both fields, who bring new insights to the relationship between patristic exegesis and current strategies of biblical interpretation, specifically with reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. Following an account of how each field came to study patristic exegesis, the book offers new studies of Trinitarian theology in Old Testament, Johannine, and Pauline biblical texts and the patristic interpretation of them, combining the insights of modern historical criticism with classical historical theology. It promises to make a valuable contribution to both fields, suggesting several new avenue into the study of early biblical literature and the development of Trinitarian theology.

On the Development of Doctrine

With all the controversy swirling around the shambolic and sprawling Amoris Laetitia, even to the point of drawing a rare commentary from the Ecumenical Patriarch, my students in the spring semester are in the happy position of being able to examine that vexed document and its apologists' claims for it to be an instance of the development of doctrine. We will do so in a course devoted to the topic of doctrinal development, and naturally enough we will, inter alia, be reading John Henry Cardinal Newman's landmark treatment, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

To understand the context of that work in Newman's life, we will begin with the wonderful work of Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography. That is a richly detailed and compelling scholarly biography by the world's leading Newman scholar.

The concept of the development of doctrine is sometimes sneered at in the Christian East. Even so sober and venerable a scholar as Andrew Louth pours cold water on the notion in his essay in the 2006 Festschrift, Orthodoxy And Western Culture: A Collection of Essays Honoring Jaroslav Pelikan on His Eightieth Birthday.

Others, however, dispute that the East rejects development. Daniel Lattier, e.g., in his essay in Pro Ecclesia in the fall of 2011, "The Orthodox Rejection of Doctrinal Development," has unearthed compelling evidence to suggest that (as in so many things) the East rejects a caricature of what it takes the West to believe. (Cf. Lattier's essay, "Orthodox Theological Receptions of Newman" in the new collection, Receptions of Newman.)

The literature on doctrinal development is, as I discovered more than a decade ago now, when I was working on a draft proposal for the dissertation that became the book Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy, vast indeed. The best place to begin--as with so many things in Christian history--is with one of the Chadwick brothers: in this case, with Owen's invaluable From Bossuet to Newman: the Idea of Doctrinal Development.

My early drafts looked extensively at Newman and the concept of development. (These were later excised for the book.) It was fascinating to me that, as the Greek Orthodox scholar George Dragas demonstrated, Newman was the only 19th-century Catholic figure to be translated into Greek and studied by Greek scholars during his own day.

Regardless of what one thinks of development--as I always say to people when asked--one should read Newman for the sheer loveliness of his prose. Rightly regarded as the master stylist of 19th-century letters, Newman--whether in his Essay on Development, or perhaps even more his Apologia Pro Vita Sua--is a delight to read.

Retrieving Nicaea

Earlier I drew attention to a new book by Khaled Anatolios, whom I interviewed here. A patrologist and specialist in Athanasius of Alexandria, Anatolios, himself a child of Egyptian parents, has recently written Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Baker Academic, 2011).

I have been re-reading it in seminar this semester with my students, and finding even more buried gems in it. The issues, and especially the personages, are treated with a care and attention to detail that is not always common in histories of the conciliar era, especially histories treating doctrinal controversy. There are no cheap or easy polemics here demonizing Arius and his friends, whose thought is and was much more complex than was often portrayed. Anatolios, through patient exposition, is able serenely to show what was good in Arius--recognized as such even by his erstwhile opponents, including Alexander of Alexandria, and Athanasius--as well as what was problematic in him and in others. The book is a marvel of careful scholarship, lucid prose, and clear organization, and I warmly commend it to all who are interested in issues of Christology, Triadology, and the faith of the early Church before, during, and after Nicaea.

Eastern Christian Doctrine and Debate

Earlier I drew attention to the advent of an exciting new series from Ashgate. I have just this week received the first volume: Averil Cameron and Robert Hoyland, eds., Doctrine and Debate in the East Christian World, 300-1500 (The Worlds of Eastern Christianity, 300-1500) (Ashgate, 2011), liv + 415pp.


About this book, the publisher tells us:

The reign of Constantine (306-37), the starting point for the series in which this volume appears, saw Christianity begin its journey from being just one of a number of competing cults to being the official religion of the Roman/Byzantine Empire. The involvement of emperors had the, perhaps inevitable, result of a preoccupation with producing, promoting and enforcing a single agreed version of the Christian creed. Under this pressure Christianity in the East fragmented into different sects, disagreeing over the nature of Christ, but also, in some measure, seeking to resist imperial interference and to elaborate Christianities more reflective of and sensitive to local concerns and cultures. This volume presents an introduction to, and a selection of the key studies on, the ways in which and means by which these Eastern Christianities debated with one another and with their competitors: pagans, Jews, Muslims and Latin Christians. It also includes the iconoclast controversy, which divided parts of the East Christian world in the seventh to ninth centuries, and devotes space both to the methodological tools that evolved in the process of debate and the promulgation of doctrine, and to the literary genres through which the debates were expressed.

In their preface, the editors tell us that the rationale for this series centres on the fact that "Eastern Christianity is much less known and studied than its Western counterpart...and it is the principal aim of this series to redress this deficiency and to provide a foundation for new research.....This series seeks to...mak[e] available some of the most influential research published to date....The series as a whole will, it is hoped, serve as a starting point for a more holistic approach to Eastern Christianity."

This solid, handsome volume brings together articles by some of the world's leading scholars including Sebastian Brock, Sidney Griffith, Peter Brown, Averil Cameron, and others. It is divided into five sections:

I) The Formative Period: with articles on Origen, the Manichaeans, the Syrian Orthodox under Justinian (Brock's article), and anti-Jewish polemics.
II) The Encounter with Islam: with four articles, including the first of two by Griffith.
III) Iconoclasm: with two articles including Brown's article.
IV) Anti-Latin Texts: with one article by Tia M. Kolbaba, author of a book favourably reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies several years ago: Inventing Latin Heretics: Byzantines and the Filioque in the Ninth Century.
V) Tools of Argument: with five articles, including a second one by Griffith on a "summa theologiae" in 9th-century Christian Arabic.
 
This is a very impressive start to a series that belongs in every serious library.