A friend, Aaron Cummings, writes in response to my comments about Derrida and prodigal words: “A few days ago, you alluded to Derrida, that words run prodigal from the speaker/writer. You said that this was true of Mankind’s words, but not of God’s. It seems to me that this is true of all word apart from the work of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who conveys the ultimate Word from the ultimate Speaker, to us, who are the Listeners.... Read more
For Athanasius, creation’s multiplicity is not a defect but part of its glory. No created thing supplies all need; no single light illuminates day and night. So there are many lights. Each light is its own essence, but these essences cooperate to fill what is lacking in the others. The same goes for other features of creation: “Thus too the earth is not for all things, but for the fruits only, and to be a ground to tread on for... Read more
Arianism is not just about Christology. It’s about theology proper. Arius said that God made His Son before the creation because the creation could not endure the “untempered hand” of the Father. It needed the Son as mediator. Athanasius sees in this a false idea of God. God, He says, isn’t too proud to create the world; the small things of the world are not unworthy of His attention. The God who clothes lilies and watches sparrows must surely be... Read more
Athanasius notes that before the incarnation humanity was under the dominion of false gods, enslaved to corruption and idolatry. The Word took flesh to deliver us from that slavery, and the form of that deliverance was an act of worship: “in this body offering Himself for all, He might deliver all from false worship and corruption, and might Himself become of all Lord and King.” This is fitting enough to satisfy Anselm: False worship inverted by one single act of sacrifice. Augustine and Aquinas say similar things.... Read more
Near the end of his fifth oration, Gregory flies off into an ecstatic review of the Spirit’s work and titles. It is in some ways standard pneumatology, but the overwhelming rhetorical flood has never been surpassed. “Christ is born; the Spirit is His Forerunner. He is baptized; the Spirit bears witness. He is tempted; the Spirit leads Him up. He works miracles; the Spirit accompanies them. He ascends; the Spirit takes His place. What great things are there in the idea... Read more
Gregory’s fifth oration again: Human nature “has a unity which is only conceivable in thought; and the individuals are parted from one another very far indeed, both by time and by dispositions and by power. For we are not only compound beings, but also contrasted beings, both with one another and with ourselves; nor do we remain entirely the same for a single day, to say nothing of a whole lifetime, but both in body and in soul are in... Read more
From Gregory’s fifth oration, defending the divinity and consubstantiality of the Spirit: “What was Adam? A creature of God. What then was Eve? A fragment of the creature. And what was Seth? The begotten of both. Does it then seem to you that Creature and Fragment and Begotten are the same thing? Of course it does not. But were not these persons consubstantial? Of course they were. Well then, here it is an acknowledged fact that different persons may have... Read more
In the second of his “theological orations,” Gregory Nazianzen catalogs the impenetrable mysteries of creation: “How is it,” he asks, “that the earth stands solid and unswerving? On what is it supported? What is it that props it up, and on what does that rest?” And then: “For indeed reason has nothing to lean upon, but only the Will of God.” Patristic anti-foundationalism. Read more
Cunningham again, arguing that a creation made by a loving Creator cannot be pure nature: “Traditionally, God’s long-term ‘involvement’ with an care for the world has been emphasized through the theological category of grace . In creating the world, God wills into existence something radically other-than-God; but the world’s ‘otherness’ is not something that cuts it off from God. There is thus no ‘pure nature’; nature is always graced. And it is graced not just because it was created by... Read more
In his brilliant, flawed These Three are One: The Practice of Trinitarian Theology (Challenges in Contemporary Theology) , David Cunningham notes how the doctrine of the Trinity implies retroactive causality: “At first, we might assume that a father precedes his son, both logically and temporally; but this is an illusion. Certainly, the older man precedes the younger man; but the older man does not become a father until he has a child . . . . This aspect of divine... Read more
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Leithart
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