The Complexities of Monotheism

Often my students, including many self-identified Christian ones, have to admit, at least grudgingly, that they do not really understand Trinitarian theology and therefore find certain Islamic criticisms of the same to be unduly compelling--invariably based on a superficial reading of both. These are not, of course, new issues; but a new book, released last week, is giving them fresh and welcome attention:  Monotheism and Its Complexities: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, eds. Lucinda Mosher and David Marshall (Georgetown University Press, 2018), 208pp.

About this collection we are told:

Conventional wisdom would have it that believing in one God is straightforward; that Muslims are expert at monotheism, but that Christians complicate it, weaken it, or perhaps even abandon it altogether by speaking of the Trinity. In this book, Muslim and Christian scholars challenge that opinion. Examining together scripture texts and theological reflections from both traditions, they show that the oneness of God is taken as axiomatic in both, and also that affirming God's unity has raised complex theological questions for both. The two faiths are not identical, but what divides them is not the number of gods they believe in.

The latest volume of proceedings of The Building Bridges Seminar ― a gathering of scholar-practitioners of Islam and Christianity that meets annually for the purpose of deep study of scripture and other texts carefully selected for their pertinence to the year's chosen theme ― this book begins with a retrospective on the seminar's first fifteen years and concludes with an account of deliberations and discussions among participants, thereby providing insight into the model of vigorous and respectful dialogue that characterizes this initiative.

Contributors include Richard Bauckham, Sidney Griffith, Christoph Schwöbel, Janet Soskice, Asma Afsaruddin, Maria Dakake, Martin Nguyen, and Sajjad Rizvi. To encourage further dialogical study, the volume includes those scripture passages and other texts on which their essays comment. A unique resource for scholars, students, and professors of Christianity and Islam.

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.

The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity in Paperback

In late 2011, when it first emerged in hardback, I interviewed editors Matthew Levering and Gilles Emery about their splendid new collection The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity. That edition is packed with riches, including numerous articles by Orthodox scholars and treating Eastern realities, which perhaps goes some way to explaining its hefty price. But for those of you wishing an edition both lighter in your bookbag and on your wallet, you need only wait a few more months. Oxford UP tells me that a paperback is forthcoming this summer (likely July), and will be less than half the hardback, probably around $42.

About this book we are told:

This handbook examines the history of Trinitarian theology and reveals the Nicene unity still at work among Christians today despite ecumenical differences and the variety of theological perspectives. The forty-three chapters are organized into the following seven parts: the Trinity in Scripture, Patristic witnesses to the Trinitarian faith, Medieval appropriations of the Trinitarian faith, the Reformation through to the 20th Century, Trinitarian Dogmatics, the Trinity and Christian life, and Dialogues (addressing ecumenical, interreligious, and cultural interactions).

The phrase 'Trinitarian faith' can hardly be understood outside of reference to the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople and to their reception: the doctrine of the Trinity is indissociably connected to the reading of Scripture through the ecclesial and theological traditions. The modern period is characterized especially by the arrival of history, under two principal aspects: 'historical theology' and 'philosophies of history'. In contemporary theology, the principal 'theological loci' are Trinity and creation, Trinity and grace, Trinity and monotheism, Trinity and human life (ethics, society, politics and culture), and more broadly Trinity and history. In all these areas, this handbook offers essays that do justice to the diversity of view points, while also providing, insofar as possible, a coherent ensemble.

Rethinking Trinitarian Theology

As I have had several occasions to note before, perhaps most clearly in my interview with Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering, we have been seeing a revival of interest in Trinitarian theology (as well as the history of its development) for the last couple of decades.

In the Orthodox world, one of the most prominent voices, in Trinitarian theology and much else, has been John Zizioulas, who remains one of the biggest names in Eastern Christian theology today, and has for some time. He began to make his mark in the anglophone world with the 1985 publication of his landmark work Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. This is a work that has been regularly and widely cited in the literature across traditions--one often notices it in Protestant and Catholic, as well as Orthodox, works. Many of the themes in this book were continued in the 2007 book Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed. Paul McPartlan (T&T Clark).

A sense of the breadth of engagement of Zizioulas (who is not without his critics in Orthodoxy, including perhaps especially Lucian Turcescu) may be seen in such studies as Paul Collins, Trinitarian Theology West and East: Karl Barth, the Cappadocian Fathers, and John Zizioulas from 2001 as well as the collection edited by Douglas Knight, The Theology of John Zizioulas, and Paul McPartlan's own early work, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri De Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue.

Zizioulas is not always easy to read both for the profundity of the matters he discusses as well as for the style of his writing, especially in Being as Communion. For that reason, I always recommend starting with his very lovely, and generally accessible, collection, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, which I have used with great profit in several different classes.

Zizioulas authors a chapter on the Trinity in the recently published collection, Giulio Maspero and Robert Wozniak, ed., Rethinking Trinitarian Theology: Disputed Questions And Contemporary Issues in Trinitarian Theology (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2012), 512pp. There are other chapters in this book of interest to Eastern Christians, including on the Fathers as well as two chapters about the Holy Spirit and the filioque. About this book we are told: 

The book aims at showing the most important topics and paradigms in modern Trinitarian theology. It is supposed to be a comprehensive guide to the many traces of development of Trinitarian faith. As such it is thought to systematize the variety of contemporary approaches to the field of Trinitarian theology in the present philosophical-cultural context. The main goal of the publication is not only a description of what happened to Trinitarian theology in the modern age. It is rather to indicate the typically modern specificity of the Trinitarian debate and - first of all - to encourage development in the main areas and issues of this subject.

Rublev's Trinity

Rublev's Trinity is of course the most well known icon in the world. And it has been nicely studied in a book published a few years ago, and just recently released electronically for those who have an Amazon Kindle: Gabriel Bunge, The Rublev Trinity, trans. Andrew Louth (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2012).

About this book the publisher tells us:

Many art historians and scholars have described the sublime icon of the Holy Trinity by St Andrei Rublev, but nothing equals this detailed and comprehensive theological explanation by Benedectine monk Gabriel Bunge. In this inspired and utterly sober work, Fr Gabriel aims to make the icon's timeless message accessible to the contemporary praying believer.
The author understands precisely that Russian iconographic art, much more than the Romanesque and Gothic sacred art of the West, represents a theological confession of faith. Icon painters were conscious of this responsibility, and the monk-painters who learned their Orthodox faith through the prayer of the Hours and the Divine Liturgy, through the familiar texts of the hymns and the Gospel readings, reflected the revelation of God in their art. Fr Gabriel, completely attuned to this method of inspiration, upholds the palladium - the sign and meaning of Holy Russia - in this work, and reverently expounds upon the awesome utterance by Pavel Florensky: "There exists the icon of the Trinity by St Andrei Rublev; therefore, God exists."

Trinitarian Theology of St. Gregory Palamas

Les Éditions du Cerf continues to bring out welcome studies on Orthodoxy and patristics for francophone Orthodoxy, including this recent volume:  Amphiloque Radovic, Le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité selon saint Grégoire de Palamas (2012), 336pp. 

 About this book the publisher tells us: 

Le présent volume est la traduction française de la thèse de doctorat de Mgr Amphiloque Radovic, éditée pour la première fois dans une langue occidentale. Publié en 1973 dans la collection du Centre patriarcal des études patristiques « Vlatadôn » (Thessalonique), considéré en Grèce comme l'un des dix meilleurs livres théologiques du XXe siècle, cet ouvrage est une référence dans le domaine des études des Pères de l'Église. 

Pour Mgr Amphiloque, le thème principal des écrits palamites, à savoir la distinction entre l'essence et les énergies divines, ne peut être compris que dans son contexte triadologique et christologique. La pensée de saint Grégoire Palamas (XIVe siècle) est, à ce titre, fidèle à la vérité biblique et à la Tradition de l'Église. Le métropolite Amphiloque analyse, dans un premier temps, la théorie palamite de la possibilité de la connaissance de la Sainte Trinité et sa manifestation, puis l'enseignement de Palamas sur le Dieu tri-hypostatique, enfin la question des unions et des distinctions dans la Sainte Trinité. Il porte une attention particulière à la critique palamite du « Filioque », qui est inséparable de l'enseignement sur l'unique action (= énergie) de la Sainte Trinité. Cette critique est encore d'actualité et demeure le point de départ de toute discussion théologique entre les Églises orthodoxe et catholique. Selon Mgr Amphiloque, si saint Grégoire Palamas établit une distinction entre l'Être éternel de la Trinité divine et sa manifestation, par économie de son énergie, c'est pour défendre la communion avec Dieu et la réalité de l'expérience mystique, qui est l'essence même de l'Église. 

En ce sens, la question de la distinction de la « théologie » et de l'« économie » dans la Trinité est une question sotériologique et non philosophique. Saint Grégoire Palamas affirme la grandeur et la richesse inexprimables de la Sainte Trinité, mais également la grandeur de l'homme, ancré dans son élévation infinie à travers la communion avec Dieu le Père, le Fils et le Saint-Esprit dans sa gloire éternelle.

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.

Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering on the Trinity

Earlier I drew attention to a fantastic new book on the Trinity: Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity (Oxford UP, 2011), 704pp.

I asked both editors for an interview to discuss this book and some of the issues raised by and treated in it. Here are their thoughts:

AD: Tell us about your backgrounds, and also how you came to know and work with each other.

We are both Catholic theologians, and both of us are interested in Trinitarian theology. Gilles has been working on Trinitarian theology for twenty years, from the time of his S.Th.D (on “The Creative Trinity”). Gilles’s publications are mostly focused on St. Thomas Aquinas, and on Trinitarian theology (have a look here). We got to know each other when in 1999 Matthew translated Gilles's article on divine essence and divine persons. Since that time, we've worked together on two acclaimed collections of Gilles's essays, and most recently Matthew translated Gilles's The Trinity: an Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God (Catholic University of America Press, 2011). We also met at several conferences in the US. We both have a strong interest in the theology of Aquinas. Matthew has published books in a variety of areas including, among others, soteriology, the theology of God, the Eucharist, the priesthood, natural law, and predestination (have a look here).

AD: What about your own backgrounds led you to work on a collection about the Trinity?

This particular project got started through a suggestion made by our friend Francesca Murphy, now at the University of Notre Dame. Francesca had translated a book of Gilles's for Oxford, The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas and Matthew had known Francesca since 2003. She suggested to us that we might be interested in co-editing The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity. Tom Perridge, the superb Oxford commissioning editor, had asked her for names, and she'd mentioned ours to him. We got together at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington DC on 15-17 September 2007 to sketch a plan for the volume. At that time, our friend Fr. Thomas Joseph White was instrumental in helping us think about the outline for the volume as well as possible contributors. Bruce Marshall, Reinhard Hütter, Fr. Emmanuel Perrier, and others helped as well.

AD: There seems to have been quite a recent upsurge in interest in Trinitarian theology if the large number of very recent books is anything to go by. Why do you think that is? How does yours stand out?

One source of the renewed emphasis on Trinitarian theology is the retrieval of the Fathers, which has roots in the Oxford Movement, the Tübingen School, and in the Orthodox and Catholic patristic ressourcement of the early twentieth century, including the Thomistic renewal. In retrieving the theology of the Fathers, theologians had to pay attention to the rich doctrinal debates of the patristic period and especially of the fourth and fifth centuries. Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Augustine and other Fathers naturally inspire great interest in the doctrine of the Trinity. Another impetus was clearly the reaction against classical liberal Protestant and Enlightenment theology. Friedrich Schleiermacher's rejection of the doctrine as insignificant led to a surge of interest in defending the doctrine and in showing its relevance (think of Karl Barth). Lastly, as our Handbook shows, Trinitarian theology is a perennial Christian theme and so there has always been, in every era, a large number of works on Trinitarian doctrine. The Handbook shows that, rather than a “rediscovery” of Trinitarian faith in the twentieth century, there has been a real continuity of Christian thinking on the Trinity, notably in the Middle Ages, and during modern times as well. Our Handbook's greatest strength is clearly the comprehensiveness of its historical scholarship. In this regard, it stands out significantly from other books on the Trinity. Our contributors made possible a survey of the history of the doctrine that is uniquely comprehensive. The other areas of the Handbook -- for example its biblical and dogmatic sections -- are also superb.

AD: I can affirm that this is not just promotional propaganda, either: among many reasons I adopted this text for my classes, the overriding reason was precisely the comprehensiveness, which is very significant and truly outstanding vis-à-vis other comparable texts.

So did you have a particular audience in mind for this Handbook? What did you and Oxford have in mind by treating this as a "Handbook"?

The title "Handbook" is simply Oxford's way of signaling that the volume aims to be a comprehensive resource for scholars and students who seek an introduction to the basic areas of study that one might undertake regarding the Trinity. One thinks of Cambridge's highly successful series of Companions. Whereas a Cambridge Companion might have 16 essays, the Oxford Handbooks tend to have over 40. Blackwell and Cambridge both are publishing Handbook-like volumes lately. The audience for our Handbook of the Trinity is primarily Christian students and scholars (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant). We hope that the Handbook will be useful for classes, and once the paperback is published, which shouldn't be too long, it will become much more accessible for individual purchasers.

AD: Were there any surprises either in your writing parts for, or overall editing of, this book?

Other than the Introduction and Conclusion, we didn't do any writing for the Handbook, but instead we focused on discussing precisely the content of each essay with the contributors, and on editing. It was a joy to read the essays as they came in, because they were so informative and one was always learning something. Gilles in particular proved to be a master editor: he outdid even the Oxford copy-editors! We were also blessed to find excellent, timely replacements for a few scheduled contributors who were unable to write their essays due to unforeseen events. We were extraordinarily blessed in this Handbook by the talent of our contributors.

AD: Historically, of course, questions of Trinitarian theology have been thought to divide Christians, especially the vexed issue of the filioque. But over the last fifteen years, enormous strides have been made, and many Orthodox (e.g., John Zizioulas, Kallistos Ware) no longer see it as Church-dividing (a position given detailed exposition in the 2003 statement on the filioque by the North American Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue). What are your thoughts on the filioque and the ecumenical issues that attend it?

Gilles has written carefully and extensively on the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son, and on the Filioque (the Catholic doctrine must not be reduced to the insertion of the word “Filioque” into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed). We are pleased indeed to see that the issue is no longer thought of as Church-dividing, at least by many scholars, and we would certainly agree with that assessment.

AD: Anglophone Roman Catholics have just begun to experience a new translation of the Roman Missal, including a new translation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Do you think the translators missed an opportunity to translate the creed anew into English from the Greek original rather than the interpolated Latin version?

Assuming that you mean the addition of the Filioque, that is an interesting question. Perhaps what is needed is a footnote to the Filioque passage in the Latin version! Indeed, the larger question may well consist in the relationship of the Church today to the first seven Councils. It may be more an ecclesiological question than a Trinitarian one. As Gilles wrote, just eliminating the Filioque from the Catholic version of the creed cannot be the proper means to achieve ecumenical unity. Rather, if agreement could be reached and the mutual respect of each doctrinal tradition ensured (this should be the first step, a prerequisite), then opportunity could also present itself to drop the mention of the Filioque in the Latin version of the Constantinopolitan Creed.

AD: There seemed to be a moment in Trinitarian theology in the last three decades of the twentieth century where some theologians were trying to figure out the "social implications" of the Trinity--e.g., various liberation theology projects. Is that movement over?

Perhaps one could say that this movement has been given the opportunity to begin anew, but this time on a better footing. Rather than seeking the social relevance of Trinitarian doctrine by beginning with what society seems to need, it may be better to begin with what Trinitarian doctrine implies and then try to live in accordance with the exigencies of Trinitarian faith. In the Oxford Handbook of the Trinity Fritz Bauerschmidt has a splendid essay along these lines.

AD: Théodore de Régnon's infamous treatment of the Trinity (Études de théologie positive sur la Sainte Trinité [Paris: Victor Retaux, 1892/1898]) has often led people to assume that the "Latin" Triadology (especially Augustinian) is always focused on the unity of divine substance while the "Greeks" (especially the Cappadocians) are concerned about the plurality of Persons. Has 21st-century Trinitarian theology finally moved past these stereotypes?

Yes, we think it has, largely as a result of the work of patristic scholars such as André de Halleux, Lewis Ayres, and Michel Barnes. However, even if the Greek versus Latin polarity is no longer so strong, the basic impulse to set in opposition unity/substance and Trinity/Persons will be hard to overcome. Such opposition is obviously a wrong and misleading approach to the problem, both historically and from a systematic standpoint. Even today, authors frequently can be found who consider monotheism to be violent, on the grounds that monotheism seeks unity rather than permitting a diversity of gods and of religious paths; and some theologians are tempted to consider faith in the Trinity as a “looser” form of monotheism, a claim that cannot be accepted. Similarly, one fears that the need to articulate the particular strengths of Eastern and Western Christianity will lead theologians to continue to resort to negative stereotypes. Interestingly, these stereotypes frequently appear in the writings of Catholics who use them to criticize the Catholic Church. The superficiality of the stereotypes is thereby underscored.

Oxford Handbook of the Trinity

I have noted before the increasing number of books treating Triadology or Trinitarian theology. Today Oxford University Press has just put into my hands one such that I have very happily adopted for my courses: Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity (Oxford UP, 2011), xvi+632pp.

This is an extremely impressive collection, not least because of its comprehensiveness. In 43 chapters an array of leading Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant scholars treat Trinitarian theology under seven sections: Scripture, Patristics, the Medievals, the Reformation to the Twentieth Century, Trinitarian Dogmatics, the Trinity and Christian Life, and Dialogues. The arrangement looks brilliant, and the variety of areas covered really leaves one wanting for nothing. The only challenge will be figuring out how to use all these riches in one semester!

I will have further comments on this the deeper I get into the book, but given the past publication record of both Emery and Matthew Levering, whose recent book on ecclesial hierarchy I reviewed in detail here, we have every reason to expect this book to be a superlative collection indeed.

Allah: A Christian Response

In my classes on Eastern Christianity and the Encounter with Islam, I am regularly asked how a Christian ought to view Allah. Is the God of the New Testament the same as the God of the Quran? Are they completely and irreconcilably different figures? Are there similarities between them? And is it more important to understand the similarities or emphasize the differences? Too much of the emphasis, for obvious political reasons, has been lately on emphasizing similarities, almost invariably at a cost of being completely truthful and faithful to both Christian and Islamic theological sources. Following Stephen Prothero, in his fascinating new book, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World I take a dim view of efforts to conjure connections or suggest similarities solely to make people feel good while holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Those who do that either do not know what they are talking about or are being deliberately obscurantist in their approach, or both. The responsible approach, it seems to me, is to allow both Christian and Islamic traditions to speak for themselves without forcing them together artificially--but equally without polemically blasting them apart into two solitudes. 

These are questions that animate a new book by Myroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response (HarperOne, 2011), 336pp.

About this book, the publisher says:

Three and a half billion people—the majority of the world’s population—profess Christianity or Islam. Renowned scholar Miroslav Volf’s controversial proposal is that Muslims and Christians do worship the same God—the only God. As Volf reveals, warriors in the “clash of civilizations” have used “religions”—each with its own god and worn as a badge of identity—to divide and oppose, failing to recognize the one God whom Muslims and Christians understand in partly different ways.

Writing from a Christian perspective, and in dialogue with leading Muslim scholars and leaders from around the world, Volf reveals surprising points of intersection and overlap between these two faith traditions:

• What the Qur’an denies about God as the Holy Trinity has been denied by every great teacher of the church in the past and ought to be denied by Christians today.

• A person can be both a practicing Muslim and 100 percent Christian without denying core convictions of belief and practice.

• How two faiths, worshiping the same God, can work toward the common good under a single government.

Volf explains the hidden agendas behind today’s news stories as he thoughtfully considers the words of religious leaders and parses the crucial passages from the Bible and the Qur’an that continue to ignite passion. Allah offers a constructive way forward by reversing the “our God vs. their God” premise that destroys bridges between neighbors and nations, magnifies fears, and creates strife.

I've already started reading it, and will have more to say about it on here later.

Author Interview: Khaled Anatolios

I noted earlier the advent of Khaled Anatolios's new book, Retrieving Nicaea (Baker Academic, 2011, 322pp.), which I have now most happily adopted for a course I am teaching next year on Trinitarian theology. The book is a splendid balance of history and theology in a most felicitous combination, the former illuminating the development of the latter in a way that makes both accessible to students.

I asked the author for an interview to discuss his work, and he are his thoughts:

Please tell us about your background:

I was born in India, of Egyptian parents and then shuttled back and forth between Egypt and Canada as I was growing up. I started out studying creative writing in college (I wanted to be a fiction writer), then English literature, and finally landed in theology. I completed my doctorate in systematic theology at Boston College, where I did a dissertation directed by Fr. Brian Daley (now at Notre Dame) which became my first book, Athanasius. The Coherence of his Thought. I am a member of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.

Tell us why you wrote this book:

Throughout my adult life as a Christian, I have been gripped by the mystery of the Trinity and profoundly impressed and moved by the way that this mystery was contemplated (and vigorously debated) in the early Church. In teaching a course on “The Development of Trinitarian Doctrine,” I have found that students go through a real conversion in engaging the early debates and reflections on this mystery, from thinking that it involves some forbidding theological math to seeing it as concretely embedded in the entirety of Christian faith and experience such that the whole of Christian life becomes Trinitarian doxology. I wrote this book primarily to share this experience.

For whom was the book written—did you have a particular audience in mind?

It is written primarily for scholars, both in the areas of systematic theology and early Christian studies. But it also aims to be accessible to any fairly educated Christian who wishes to have a more lively awareness of the central mysteries of Christian faith--the most central of all being the distinctly Christian identification of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What about your own background led you to the writing of this book? 

This book is informed by my training in both systematic theology and patristics and tries to emphasize the continuing relevance of patristic theology for contemporary systematic discussions. It is also informed by my experience of talking to ordinary Christians in a parish setting and trying to share how Trinitarian doctrine is central to Christian life. 

Were there any surprises you discovered in your writing?

Perhaps one surprise was the affection I developed for Gregory of Nyssa--the beauty of his theological vision but also the warmness of his humanity that comes through in his writing in various ways, such as his adulation of his brother Basil and his sister, Marcrina.

Are there similar books out there, and if so, how is yours different? 

I am sure that this book will be immediately associated with John Behr’s The Nicene Faith: Formation Of Christian Theology (2 Volume Set) and The Way to Nicaea (The Formation of Christian Theology, V. 1) as well as Lewis Ayre’s Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology, both of which I greatly admire. I think its distinction lies in its more systematic trust, its effort to show that the very development of Trinitarian doctrine involves an interpretation of the entirety of Christian faith.

Sum up briefly the main themes/ideas/insights of Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine

• That the development of Trinitarian doctrine involved an interpretation of the entirety of Christian faith and thus grasping the meaning of Trinitarian doctrine necessitates re-living the process of its development and learning how all of Christian faith and life is “Trinitarian.”

• That the development of orthodox Trinitarian doctrine was enabled especially by a Christological re-interpretation of God and divine transcendence, whereby the greatness of God was defined less by oneness or distance from the world but rather by compassionate love.

• That the meaning of Trinitarian doctrine does not lie in figuring out how “three are one and one is three” but in understanding how every aspect of Christian life relates us to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Development of Nicene Trinitarian Doctrine

Khaled Anatolios, author of magisterial works on Athanasius the Great, has a new book coming out in October: Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Baker Academic, 400pp.).

About this book, which carries a slew of endorsements from Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant theologians, the publisher tells us:

Khaled Anatolios, a noted expert on the development of Nicene theology, offers a historically informed theological study of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, showing its relevance to Christian life and thought today. According to Anatolios, the development of trinitarian doctrine involved a global interpretation of Christian faith as a whole. Consequently, the meaning of trinitarian doctrine is to be found in a reappropriation of the process of this development, such that the entirety of Christian existence is interpreted in a trinitarian manner. The book provides essential resources for this reappropriation by identifying the network of theological issues that comprise the "systematic scope" of Nicene theology, focusing especially on the trinitarian perspectives of three major theologians: Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. It includes a foreword by Brian E. Daley.

The contents in brief:

Foreword by Brian E. Daley
Introduction: Development as Meaning in Trinitarian Doctrine
1.   Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology: History and Interpretation
2.   Development of Trinitarian Doctrine: A Model and Its Application
3.   Athanasius: The Crucified Lord and Trinitarian Deification
4.   Gregory of Nyssa: The Infinite Perfection of Trinitarian Life
5.   Augustine’s De Trinitate: Trinitarian Contemplation as Christological Quest
  Conclusion: Retrieving the Systematic Scope of Nicene Theology
  Indexes

I look forward to further discussion of the book on here and an interview with the author in the coming weeks. The book will receive expert scholarly attention in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.

The Triune God: Oxbridge Contributions

To my mind the finest metered hymn in English on the Trinity comes from, or is certainly attributed to, him whom many Christians (not excluding Eastern Christians--some of whom have produced rather jejune icons of him--and many others besides) celebrate today, viz., St. Patrick: St. Patrick's Breastplate is a majestic and fulsome piece of music.

More recently, another Celt, the great moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, author of many works, but none so important or so influential as After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, rather drolly observed (in a wonderfully ecumenically splenetic essay in which he excoriated the banality, vacuousness, and narcissism of modern theological ethics, both Catholic and Protestant) that "the rumor that the 'members' of the Trinity speak Irish among themselves, although highly plausible, has never been confirmed."* Prescinding from the question of the language the Persons speak en famille, we can turn our attention to the language that we humans speak when trying to discuss this great mystery, a task perhaps greatly to be aided by the forthcoming publication of two books of similar conception, both to be released later this year by those two ancient academic rivals, Oxford and Cambridge:

The first of these, slated for July release, is

The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity (Cambridge Companions to Religion).

 
This volume, under Peter Phan's editorship, contains a number of interesting essays, including:

• "The Trinity in the Greek Fathers" by John McGuckin 

• "Sophia, Apophasis, and Communion: the Trinity in Contemporary Orthodox Theology" by Aristotle Papanikolaou

Towards the end of the year--currently projected to appear in October--we have a similar type of volume set to appear under the editorship of the Swiss Dominican Gilles Emery and the young (and astonishingly prolific) American theologian Matthew Levering, whose Christ and the the Catholic Priesthood: Ecclesial Hierarchy and the Pattern of the Trinity I reviewed earlier.

Their forthcoming contribution to a renewal in Triadology is The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity. This Oxford volume will have even more articles of great interest to Eastern Christians, including:

• "The Canonization of Scripture in the Context of Trinitarian Doctrine" by the Athansius scholar Khaled Anatolios, himself the author of a forthcoming work in this vein: Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine 
• "The Trinity in the Ante-Nicene Fathers" by Stephen M. Hildebrand, author of a recent work on St. Basil the Great's Trinitarian theology
• "Late Patristic Developments on the Trinity in the East" by Andrew Louth, author of many important works, editor and translator of others still 
• "The Development of the Trinity Doctrine in Byzantium (9th-15th Centuries)" by Karl Christian Felmy
• "Contemporary Orthodox Currents on the Trinity" by Aristotle Papanikolaou 
• "The Trinity and Feminism" by Nonna Verna Harrison  

Look for both The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity and The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity to be reviewed in 2012 in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.

_______________________
* "Theology, Ethics, and the Ethics of Medicine and Health Care: Comments on Papers by Novak, Mouw, Roach, Cahill, and Hartt," The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 4 (1979): 435-443.

Triadology East and West

A number of books are emerging about Trinitarian theology. The first of these to arrive on the scene, published just before Christmas, is 

Declan Marmion and Rik Van Nieuwenhove, An Introduction to the Trinity (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 262pp.

The publisher provides us the following overview:

Over the last decade there has been a resurgence of writing on the Trinity, indicating a renewal of ideas and debate concerning this key element of Christian theology. This introduction challenges the standard account of a decline and revival in Trinitarian theology, taking into account recent, alternative readings of the theological tradition by Lewis Ayres and Michel Barnes amongst other scholars. By clearly analysing the scope of these new approaches, the authors establish the importance of a sapiential understanding of the Trinity, resisting the notion of separating faith and reason and identifying theology's link to spirituality. Their account also eschews the easy stereotypes of Western Christianity's supposedly more Unitarian approach as opposed to the more Trinitarian view of the East. Offering an overview of the main people and themes in Trinitarian theology past and present, this book thus provides an accessible, comprehensive guide for students and scholars alike.

Perusing the table of contents we see that the book is very much concerned with Western theology, though it does take a brief look at the Cappadocians in the ancient period, and John Zizioulas in the modern.

Another book also published just before Christmas includes a greater sampling of Eastern theology of the Trinity: M. Stewart, ed., The Trinity: East/West Dialogue (Studies in Philosophy and Religion) (Kluwer Academic/Springer, 2010), 280pp.

About this book (which seems to have been published earlier as part of the series Studies in Philosophy and Religion), the publisher tells us:

This anthology presents an excellent blend of philosophical and theological perspectives that keep the doctrine of the Trinity in its crosshairs. While noted analytic philosophers use an array of analytical tools to critique and defend the logical consistency of the Trinity and assess its models, philosophers and Russian Orthodox theologians alike shower us with insights from historical sources such as the Book of Revelation, the Church Fathers, Aquinas, the Cambridge Platonists, and the Post-Moderns. Along the way they remind us that the doctrine of the Trinity is richly rooted in the faith and practices (worship, liturgy, iconography, and missiology) of the Church. The volume demonstrates that philosophers and theologians from different traditions can indeed learn from each other.

This latter book, together with An Introduction to the Trinity and the two other major treatments slated for review later this year, will be examined at length in 2012 in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.

Ecclesial Hierarchy

Matthew Levering has written a book that, in some respects, I wish I had written--that, indeed, more than ten years ago now, I did think I might some day write. It is a fascinating study that treats of Triadology, Christology, ecclesiology, ecumenism, and the sacraments:

Matthew Levering, Christ and the the Catholic Priesthood: Ecclesial Hierarchy and the Pattern of the Trinity (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2010), x+339pp.

This is a marvelous book, flawlessly written with great cogency and unfailing respect even for those positions and people with which Levering disagrees. He sets out to see if it is possible, in this day and age, to come up with a convincing theological rationale for the existence of hierarchy in the Church--an acute question in the last several decades, but perhaps never so acute as in the last year or so when both Catholic and Orthodox bishops--not excluding the bishop of Rome--as well as priests and others, have been accused of, e.g. and inter alia, themselves committing horrifying crimes against children or covering up such crimes by other clergy. Who has not been tempted at least once to quote to such bishops Cromwell's famous speech to the Long Parliament:

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money... . Ye have no more religion than my horse....

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious.... So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. In the name of God, go! 

Levering is not even remotely so polemical or dismissive. In five meaty chapters, with a substantial introduction and a brief conclusion, he sees his burden precisely as rescuing a plausible understanding of hierarchy from the (in many cases justly deserved, as he himself recognizes repeatedly) opprobrium to which it is so often subject today in Church and world alike. Levering clearly writes as a vir ecclesiasticus but his is not merely a defensive exercise in "apologetics" (that unjustly derided activity) for some kind of ham-fisted hierarchy offering us only the ability to "exult in the freedom to submit to authority with wild abandon" (Richard John Neuhaus's splendid phrase). No obsequious W.G. Ward he--demanding a papal bull at breakfast every morning with his Times. This is instead theology of a very high order, focused not on human hierarchs but on Christ, and done exactly as it should be: with great ecumenical openness and generosity of spirit to other traditions to see what can be learned from them--without, at the same time, watering down his own Roman Catholic tradition. This book is a model of how to engage others respectfully and profitably without selling one's own tradition down the river.

A very great deal of Levering's book, in fact, is a dialogue with the Greek Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas--and, beyond him, Nicholas Afanasiev, Paul Evdokimov, Alexander Schmemann, and others. Non-Orthodox who feature prominently here include Joseph Ratzinger and Myroslav Volf. Linking them all--and correcting them when necessary, at least as far as Levering sees it--is Thomas Aquinas.

I am not a Thomist and have little interest in him, so I shall leave it to others to determine whether Levering has rendered Thomas rightly. That said, the Thomas who appears so often in this book poses, to my mind, really no problem to the East in almost every instance and, surprisingly, would seem to agree with common Eastern positions on, e.g., the relationship between Peter and the other Apostles as an analogy for the relationship between one primate and many bishops. (Sometimes I think Levering's use of Thomas in this book is rather forced as with the end of ch. 3, pp.164ff., where the reason Thomas is brought into dialogue with Zizioulas is not clear; Levering's rationale for the inclusion ["Aquinas's scriptural and metaphysical depth serves our inquiry at this stage," 164] is overly laconic and unconvincing.) I fear, however, that even the very mention of the so-called angelic doctor will be enough to ensure that Eastern Christian readers do not learn from this rich and profitable book. For too many Eastern Christians the mere mention of such phrases as "scholasticism," "Aquinas" (etc.) is enough for them either to dismiss a work tout court or else descend into fits of apoplexy about matters on which they have an "encyclopedic ignorance" and "deranged terror" (in David Bentley Hart's memorably apt phrases). It would be a great loss to fail to read this book because of that. For there is, in my estimation, nothing in this book that would not, mutatis mutandis, also be enormously relevant and accessible to Orthodox Christians wondering--as many, in, e.g., the OCA cannot have failed to do over the last decade or more of scandals--about why God has burdened the Church with bishops, especially bishops who fiddle the books or diddle the altar boys.

Levering does not suffer that temptation. His answer to the question--Why hierarchy?--is refreshingly theological. By that I mean that he has avoided the very frequent trap, which I have elsewhere lamented, of the majority of ecclesiologists today (of all traditions) who treat the Church purely sociologically; God plays no real role. Not for Levering. This book begins and ends with God and the recognition that the Church is His; it is not a plaything of our own devising. Bishops, whose capacity for iniquity the author does not romantically deny or cynically overplay, are given to us precisely so that we can, through their sacramental ministrations, be given access to Christ.

Chapter 1, "Hierarchical Priesthood and Trinitarian Communion" sets the scene for the rest of the book. Here Levering first reviews the Trinitarian theology of Ratzinger and Zizioulas before turning to Volf. In responding to all three with Thomas, Levering, surprisingly, glides over (pp. 46-47; cf. p.196, fn. 33) the controverted issue of the filioque. The question he puts to all four is: "does not hierarchy mean that some Christians give more and others receive more? If this is so, how can a hierarchical Church be a true image of either the divine unity or the communion of the divine Trinity" (53)? He spends the rest of the book surveying responses to this and related questions--e.g., how are we to understand Christ as high priest, and what is the significance of that for the sacramental priesthood in the Church today?--and then coming up with his own very carefully considered reply.

A few critical comments: While this is a richly referenced work, and for once a publisher has had the very good sense--which all other publishers of academic books should be required to follow--of using footnotes and not the wholly vexatious endnotes, Levering's footnotes are sometimes rather lavish and occasionally ostentatious; but sometimes they are surprising by what is not there when one would have expected--given the author's impressively wide reading--certain sources most certainly to make an appearance. E.g., Levering relies almost exclusively on Afanasiev's essay "The Church Which Presides in Love" from 1963, even though he is aware (cf. p. 189, fn.12) that the fuller work by Afanasiev, The Church of the Holy Spirit, has been in print since 2007. I think this book should have been consulted more because it contains a great deal of material not only relevant to Levering's argument, but also capable of introducing significant nuance and subtle shifts in Afanasiev's ecclesiology.

A few other sources one would have expected to see here are also missing. Inter alia, I was surprised that Francis Dvornik's important historical works are nowhere cited. I was even more surprised that Levering's attention to Pseudo-Dionysius (pp.251-272) overlooks an increasingly burgeoning literature on him just in the last five years. I also think Levering's treatment of Ps-Dionysius is sometimes too sanguine and overlooks dangers the Orthodox theologian John Jillions has articulated well. Levering's treatment of Schmemann is really an afterthought in some ways, and he overlooks S's important insight that the one great unresolved problem, the one glaring lacuna in all ecclesiology, ancient and modern, East and West, is the problem of the parish.

In the end, however, I think Levering has made a very convincing case and shown himself a model Thomist, at least methodologically: he has taken his opponents' arguments very seriously, stated them at length with clarity and respect, and then shown how and where they are weak, flawed, or wrong. All this he has done in order to demonstrate that in the Church "hierarchical order imitates God in the Trinitarian action ad extra" (269), and such hierarchy can only be "understood eucharistically" as exercising a "participated power" (276) that "enables believers to enter into the pattern of the triune God's outpouring of love" (272).


Levering is to be congratulated for this excellent book, at once faithful and ecumenical, and wholly relevant to Catholic and Orthodox Christians alike today. I warmly recommend it to all Christians, Eastern and Western, who may recently have grown rather weary--and for good reason--with their shepherds' sins and shenanigans. In the end, thankfully, it is not about them--or us: it is about the Triune God, whom all of us are to glorify unto ages of ages.

New Books for the New Year

My mail has been piling up while I was away in Staten Island, and I came back today to several new catalogues from various publishers alerting us to books forthcoming in 2011.

April: Robert Crummey is publishing Old Believers in a Changing World (Northern Illinois University Press, 2011), 270pp.

April: Catholic University Press is bringing out two significant works: 

i) a collection edited by Johan Leemans, Brian Matz, and Johan Verstraeten, Reading Patristic Texts on Social Ethics: Issues and Challenges for Twenty-First-Century Christian Social Thought (2011), c.288pp.

ii) a translation by Mark DelCogliano and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Against Eunomius: St. Basil of Caesarea (2011, c. 224pp). This is vol. 122 of CUAP's ongoing series on the Fathers.

 June: Catholic University Press is bringing out Gilles Emery, OP, The Trinity: an Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God, trans. Matthew Levering (c.248pp). This is the first volume of their Thomistic Ressourcement Series.

August: In August an exciting new collection is coming out from CUA Press. Edited by Robin Darling Young and Monica J. Blanchard, it is entitled To Train His Soul in Books: Syriac Asceticism in Early Christianity (2011, c. 248pp). This is volume 4 of their series Studies in Early Christianity. Contributors include:

• Joseph P. Amar
• Gary A. Anderson
• Monica J. Blanchard
• Sebastian Brock
• Alexander Golitzin
• Susan Ashbrook Harvey
• Michael J. Hollerich
• Francisco Javier Martinez
• Kathleen McVey
• Shawqi Talia
• Robin Darling Young

 The publisher provides the following information: 

Increasing interest in Syriac Christianity has prompted recent translations and studies. To Train His Soul in Books explores numerous aspects of this rich religious culture, extending previous lines of scholarly investigation and demonstrating the activity of Syriac-speaking scribes and translators busy assembling books for the training of biblical interpreters, ascetics, and learned clergy.


Befitting an intensely literary culture, it begins with the development of Syriac poetry--the genre beloved by Ephrem and other, anonymous authors. It considers the long tradition of Aramaic and Syriac words for the chronic condition of sin, and explores the dimensions of the immense work of Syriac translators with a study of the Syriac life of Athanasius. Essays consider the activity of learned ascetics, with a proposal of the likely monastic origin of the Apocalypse of Daniel; the goal and concept of renunciation; and the changes rung by the Syriac-speaking ascetics on the daily reality of housekeeping.

Also included in the volume are two essays on the influence of Syriac literary culture on Greek traditions, and in turn ascetic life. Finally, an original poem in Syriac demonstrates the continuing vitality of this culture, both in its homeland and in the Diaspora.

These essays seek to extend and honor the work of renowned scholar and pillar of the Department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages at the Catholic University of America, Sidney H. Griffith.

Upon publication, all these books will be discussed on here, and reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.