Biblical Theology: Past, Present, and Future (I)
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 55, No. 2 – Spring 2013
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By Peter J. Leithart. Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality.Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011. 204 pages. Paperback, $ 22.09.
Leithart acknowledges the limited role of Arius in the development of Arianism and the theological diversity among Arians. But the Reformed writer believes that one could still speak of various Arians as a homogenous theological group in that all were anti-Nicene. Refuting the modern revisionists of Arianism, Leithart favors Jenson’s reconstruction of the traditional judgment on Arianism, which is truly “a form of Hellenistic theology or metaphysics” (19). In opposition to the Arians’ rejection of the term homoousios, Athanasius, based on his Christocentric typology, defines biblicism not as strict adherence to Biblical words but as theological faithfulness to “the overall pattern of biblical usage” (36) or “the sense of Scripture” (38). Therefore, Leirhart endorses Athanasius’ blame for the Arians’ theological kinship with the Jewish monotheism as accurate. The Arians’ error is not only their heretical Christology but also their heretical patrology, because the denial of the eternal Sonship of Christ logically leads to the denial of the eternal Fatherhood of God. The god of the Arians is not the eternal god but “a God-in-progress” (51). Arianism presents its followers a false hope of deification that is only possible through the God-man Jesus Christ alone who could grant humanity, immortality, and incorruptibility.
In contrast to Augustine, who allegedly distinguished the Father’s being as God from the Father’s being the Father by presenting nature as “something additional to relation,” Leithart claims that Athanasius’ argument supports the Father is God due to his relation to the Son, not in himself, which is more recommendable (7677). However, for this reviewer, Liethart still seems to be under the influence of Du Roy’s old thesis that Augustine begins his Trinitarianism with the abstract divine essence apart from relations. Indeed, for Augustine, deity is not the result of the relational unity of Persons. In order for the Nicene phrases such as Light from Light or God from God to be true, according to Augustine, the Father and the Son ought to be fully divine respectively, not collectively. Even Leithart admits that the Father in Athanasian Trinitarianism is dependent upon the Son, not for his begetting the Son, but for “his status as Father” (87). If this is the case, however, Athanasius seems to this reviewer to make the later Augustinian distinction between the Father’s divine essence and the Father’s personal property. Interestingly, Liethart points out a theological agreement between Athanasius and Augustine concerning the Holy Spirit. There is a hermeneutical parallel between the relationship of the Father to the Son and that of the Son to the Spirit. As the Son is the image of the Father, the Spirit is the image of the Son. Sending means functional hierarchy. Athanasius speaks of the Father’s dependence upon the Son and, therefore, of a mutual and “reciprocal Thou” relationship among the three Persons (86). For Athanasius, the divine Persons are “equal” but “not identical individuals,” and, moreover, they do not constitute a social “egalitarian democracy” in the Trinity (88).
With regard to nature and grace, Athanasius saw nature as something that already received grace by virtue of its being created and participated in the Holy Spirit from its very beginning. However, according to Leithart, Athanasius would not accept the Reformed systematician Horton’s argument that the pre-fall Adam did not need any further grace other than his creation when he had to prove his obedience. The ancient bishop never believed that the beatific vision could be achieved by Adam’s own virtue or his received initial grace. On the other hand, the grace of the incarnation, grace that perfects humanity, is not that of external to or from the top above human nature but “later grace” (115). Rather, the incarnation is the fulfillment of humanity, which was open to “receive the increasing inflow [of] God’s selfcommunication” (114). Therefore, Athanasius also refuses a Catholic anthropology, whether from de Lubac or Rahner, which preserves any dualism between the natural and the supernatural, and still presents grace as something extrinsic to nature. This reviewer agrees with Leithart that even the pre-fall Adam needed grace for his obedience but wonders how Leithart’s Athanasian view of grace and nature could explain the imputed righteousness of Christ in justification, righteousness that will be alien to humanity in eternity. In contrast to a common critique of Athanasius that his Christology was a sort of Apollinarianism, because of his ignorance of the human soul of Jesus, Leithart defends the Alexandrian champion of the Nicene faith by asserting that Athanasius indeed taught the human soul of Christ, although he did not articulate the relationship between Christ’s logos and human soul in a way a modern reader might expect.
Contemporary readers of Athanasius would find his lesson on the Christological typology of Psalms as one of the methods for spiritual discipline very attractive and helpful. Augustine and Luther also found the Savior Jesus Christ who provided the righteousness of God apart from the law and challenged them to imitate him by participating in the power of the Holy Spirit. This work deserves attention by all theological students of Athanasius. Leithart’s work is not simply about the fourth-century Arian controversy or a theological apology for Athanasius. Leithart’s critical evaluations of contemporary Trinitarian theologies such as Rahner’s axiom, the Hegalian concept of the suffering of God, and social Trinitarianism in light of Athanasius’ Trinitarianism are also insightful.
