2. Types, Terms, and Paradigms
2
Types, Terms, and Paradigms
Theological Interpretation: Villains and Heroes
Theological interpretation of Scripture is all the rage today.[55] Everyone is doing it, but what is it that everyone is doing?
The enemies are obvious: theological interpretation opposes modern critical approaches to Scripture, which, putatively, dissect the biblical text to get to the real historical events behind it, or to get to the convictions of the community in which the text was written. R. R. Reno, editor of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, cites Benjamin Jowett’s insistence that interpreters can rightly approach biblical texts only after being purified “from the refinements or distinctions of later times,” having cleared “away the remains of dogmas, systems, controversies” that have barnacled Scripture over the centuries. By this process, interpreters are capable of recovering “the original spirit and intention of the authors.” For Jowett, Reno says, tradition and doctrine form a “moldering scrim of antique prejudice obscuring the Bible.”[56]
If the bad guys are obvious, so are the good guys. Precritical interpreters considered doctrine not an obstacle to understanding but rather “a clarifying agent, an enduring tradition of theological judgments that amplifies the living voice of Scripture.” Such a “pedagogy” of “a doctrinally ruled reading of Scripture characterizes the broad sweep of the Christian tradition from Gregory the Great through Bernard and Bonaventure, continuing across Reformation differences in both John Calvin and Cornelius Lapide, Patrick Henry and Bishop Bossuet, and on to more recent figures such as Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar.” In particular, the “Nicene tradition, in all its diversity and controversy, provides the proper basis for the interpretation of the Bible as Christian Scripture.” Commitment to Nicene Christianity does not prejudge methods or determine all outcomes. Instead, it highlights the fact that faith in the God who created and redeemed the world through Son and Spirit, and in his “vocation of love for the world is the lens through which to view the heterogeneity and particularity of the biblical texts.”[57]
In his introduction to The Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, Kevin Vanhoozer also takes aim at modern critical scholarship. He acknowledges the usefulness of modern and postmodern techniques and methods, so long as they aim to expound the text rather than to get “behind” or “before” it. But he attacks biblical scholarship’s capitulation to Lessing’s ugly ditch between faith and reason, which has translated in theology into a gap between the “theology-free zone” of strictly textual and historical investigation of the biblical texts, on the one side, and the dogma and preaching of the church on the other. Positively, theological interpretation recognizes that one’s view of God shapes interpretation, and that interpretation of Scripture shapes theology in turn. Theological interpretation is critical, but not in the way modern interpretation is critical. Rather than focusing critical energy on the text or the author, theological interpretation is “critical of readers.” Theological interpretation assists the formation and edification of the church by enabling the Christian community “to hear God’s work and to know God better.”[58] Theological interpretation is a kind of “quality control” exercised on the church’s preaching and teaching. As Barth emphasized, such theological interpretation is the heart of dogmatics, whose purpose is to test the variegated proclamation of the church by the standard of the Bible.
Theological interpretation of Scripture thus involves respect for premodern interpretation, attention to the doctrinal tradition of the church, recognition that Bible scholarship takes place within the church and exists for the edification of the church, and acknowledgment that interpretation is not a clinical scientific enterprise but a form of piety and properly preceded and followed by prayer, praise, and worship. Athanasius is among the precritical interpreters of Scripture whom contemporary theological readers of Scripture seek to emulate. Lessing’s ditch was unknown to him, as was Benjamin Jowett. Of course, so too was the Nicene tradition to which Reno appeals. Athanasius does appeal to the authority of the “fathers” at Nicaea, but he is one of the key formulators of the Nicene tradition, rather than an heir of it. His biblical interpretation is therefore of peculiar importance, since by following his lead we can discover some of the paths by which he moved from Scripture’s narrative, law, gospel, and epistle to the metaphysical claims inherent in Nicene theology.
Typology
Much of Athanasius’s work interpreting biblical texts occurs in polemical treatises. He refutes Arian interpretations of particular texts, rubs Arian noses in texts that Arian theology had difficulty explaining, and draws theological conclusions from Scripture concerning the nature of the Son, the Triad within the Godhead, and the character of redemption. The anti-Arian treatises are the works of Athanasius most relevant to a discussion of Athanasius’s views on Scripture and metaphysics, and much of this chapter will focus on what Athanasius draws from Scripture concerning these theological and quasi-philosophical issues, and what tools he uses to draw such conclusions. In these works, Athanasius focuses on specific words, gathers proof texts from various places in Scripture, and applies some of his characteristic hermeneutical ideas to unscramble a confused Arian interpretation. His approach is largely “deductive.”[59]
Yet we cannot focus wholly on polemical treatises without distortion. Athanasius was a bishop, and though he spent a large segment of his episcopacy away from Alexandria writing polemics and apologetical works, much of his biblical exposition took place not in theological dispute against heresy but in preaching and teaching within the church. What Athanasius said to his congregation on a Sunday morning is largely irrecoverable—largely, but fortunately not completely. In addition to his anti-Arian treatises, Athanasius left behind a body of pastoral and personal letters and a handful of sermons, in which we gain a glimpse of the bishop’s general approach to biblical teaching and exposition.[60] In them we see the heart of Athanasius’s biblical interpretation. He reads Scripture christocentrically, that is, typologically.[61] The Bible is about the Word of the Father made flesh. Once we have seen that, we will be in a position to evaluate more accurately what is going on even in the “deductive” readings of his polemical treatises.
Typological readings appear in many of Athanasius’s Festal Letters, annual public encyclicals circulated to exhort his congregation to prepare for the celebration of Easter.[62] According to Athanasius, the Christian celebration of Easter was rooted in the history of ancient Israel. The ancient Pascha was the redemption of Israel, and thus it typified in an especially dramatic way the redemption of the world through Jesus, the Passover Lamb who goes to the cross and rises again at Pascha. Athanasius repeats the typological truism that all the old rites and institutions are but shadows dispelled now that the reality of Christ has appeared, but he gives this particular concreteness by emphasizing the fall of Jerusalem. While Judea and Jerusalem stood, “there were a type, and a lamb, and a shadow, since the law thus commanded,” but now that the city “since the coming of our Savior, has had an end, and all the land of the Jews has been laid waste,” then “there must of necessity be an end of the shadow” (Festal Letter 1.7–8).
In place of the shadows, Christians enjoy the reality, a new exodus, a new Moses, a new feast. Following this Moses and “rejoicing in afflictions, we break through the furnace of iron and darkness, and pass, unharmed, over that terrible Red Sea” so that we can sing “with Moses” the “great song of praise” (Festal Letter 3.5). As Israel was delivered by blood, so God “made the world free by the blood of the Savior”; as Pharaoh was conquered, so “He has caused the grave to be trodden down by the Savior’s death, and furnished a way to the heavenly gates free from obstacles to those who are going up.” Citing Romans 5, Athanasius declares that “death reigned from Adam to Moses,” but the word of the new order is, “Today you shall be with me in paradise” (Festal Letter 5.3).
Jesus, in short, is “everything at once to us”: shepherd, high priest, way, door, feast, holiday, and Passover sacrifice.[63] Everything hidden behind the veil of the temple is now summed up and openly manifest in the incarnate Son:
He it was who was expected, He caused a light to shine at the prayer of the Psalmist, who said, “My Joy, deliver me from those who surround me”; this being indeed true rejoicing, this being a true feast, even deliverance from wickedness, whereto a man attains by thoroughly adopting an upright conversation, and being approved in his mind of godly submission towards God. For thus the saints all their lives long were like men rejoicing at a feast. One found rest in prayer to God, as blessed David, who rose in the night, not once but seven times. Another gave glory in songs of praise, as great Moses, who sang a song of praise for the victory over Pharaoh, and those task-masters (Exod. 15). Others performed worship with unceasing diligence, like great Samuel and blessed Elijah; who have ceased from their course, and now keep the feast in heaven, and rejoice in what they formerly learned through shadows, and from the types recognize the truth. (Festal Letter 14.1)
Though the Festal Letters are rich christological meditations, the bishop cannot keep himself from exhortation. Typology is not only about the transition from the Old to the New, from shadows to the Eternal Light that has come in Jesus, but also about the way the faithful must respond to the Light. Christ imprinted himself on the events and institutions of Israel, and now that he has fulfilled those types he is impressing his character on the church. By hearing, believing, and doing the feast, Christians are made over into the image of the Lord. In terms of the later medieval fourfold method, or “quadriga,” allegorical typology immediately entails hortatory tropology.
Athanasius emphasizes this by repeatedly drawing attention to the requirements for the “true feast” of Christians. “What else is the feast,” he asks, “but the service of the soul? And what is that service, but prolonged prayer to God, and unceasing thanksgiving?” (Festal Letter 3.2). Like Judith and Esther, who gained victory after devoting themselves to fasting and prayer, Christians overcome “the devil, that tyrant against the whole world,” not through fleshly feasts but through “an eternal and heavenly one” (Festal Letter 4.2–3). To prepare for this feast, “we should approach such a feast, not with filthy raiment, but having clothed our minds with pure garments.” That means that “we need in this to put on our Lord Jesus, that we may be able to celebrate the feast with Him.” Clothing ourselves with Christ means loving virtue, hating wickedness, pursuing temperance, and avoiding lust; it involves open-doored hospitality and open-handed generosity, as humility dispels pride (Festal Letter 4.3). The Christian feast “does not consist in pleasant intercourse at meals, nor splendor of clothing, nor days of leisure, but in the acknowledgment of God and the offering of thanksgiving and praise.” Such feasting is possible only to the saints, those “who live in Christ” (Festal Letter 7.3), the Christ who is the true feast, the giver of the Spirit who binds and harmonizes the festive assembly (Festal Letter 10.2).
Because the feast is the Christ who is continuously available by the Spirit, and because the true feast is a feast of virtue and charity, there is no time limit. The feast is not confined to specific days. So great is the Father’s kindness that he not only brings us back from the dead but also “makes His grace illustrious through the Spirit.” Athanasius sees in the parable of the prodigal (Luke 15:11–32) a type of God’s kindness to sinners: “Instead of corruption, He clothes him with an incorruptible garment; instead of hunger, He kills the fatted calf; instead of far journeys, the Father watched for his return, providing shoes for his feet; and what is most wonderful, placed a divine signet-ring upon his hand; while by all these things He begat him afresh in the image of the glory of Christ” (Festal Letter 7.9). Thus clothed and thus fed, “if at all times we cleave to our Savior, and if we are pure, not only in these six days of Easter,” then we may “consider the whole course of our life as a feast, and continue near and . . . not go far off” (Festal Letter 7.9). Moses was allowed to draw near to the Lord on Sinai, but through the gift of the Spirit, we are continuously in his presence, continuously filled with the fruits of festal joy and love and peace (Festal Letter 3.4).
Athanasius looks to Israel’s festival calendar for specific guidance regarding the nature of Christian feasting and, since the feast is continuous, the pattern of Christian living. Because Israel “was then but a child,” the Lord summoned the Israelites to feasts with trumpets. Three times a year, the men of Israel were to respond to the sounding trumpets and draw near to the Lord in his sanctuary. The same trumpets summoned Israel both “to fasting and to war.” Through the use of trumpets, Yahweh made it clear that the proclamation of a feast was not “merely human” but “superhuman,” so that the men of Israel would gather in proper reverence (Festal Letter 1.2–3). With his own priestly trumpet, apparently in the proclamation of the gospel, Jesus now calls the church to a new form of life. Jesus too blasts the call to war, the battle against principalities and powers and rulers of darkness in heavenly places. Jesus’s trumpet calls the faithful “to virginity, and self-denial, and conjugal harmony” and sometimes to fasting (Festal Letter 1.3–4). What Israel did in a shadowy way, Christians now do openly and fully. Christian worship and Christian living are a new covenant form of Israel’s life and worship. The pattern of Christ, which shaped the old order, now shapes the new, partly through hearing, studying, and obeying the Scriptures of Israel.
While typological excursions are comparatively rare in the polemical/“dogmatic” works, they are not absent. In one passage of the Discourses, Athanasius teases out the quite exact correspondence between Aaron’s ordination as priest and the incarnation, by which the Son is “made” a priest for us:
Aaron was not born a high-priest, but a man; and in process of time, when God willed, he became a high-priest; yet became so, not simply, nor as betokened by his ordinary garments, but putting over them the ephod, the breastplate (Exod. 29:5), the robe, which the women wrought at God’s command, and going in them into the holy place, he offered the sacrifice for the people; and in them, as it were, mediated between the vision of God and the sacrifices of men. Thus then the Lord also, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”; but when the Father willed that ransoms should be paid for all and to all, grace should be given, then truly the Word, as Aaron his robe, so did He take earthly flesh, having Mary for the Mother of His Body as if virgin earth, that, as a High Priest, having He as others an offering, He might offer Himself to the Father, and cleanse us all from sins in His own blood, and might rise from the dead. (Discourses 2.7)[64]
There is discontinuity as well, since the old was only a “shadow” of the new (Discourses 2.8). While Aaron had successors, Jesus as high priest is unique, “without transition and without succession” (Discourses 2.9).
The exodus also provides a shadow of incarnation. Just as Israel groaned under slavery until the Lord came to defend and deliver, so all mankind groaned under slavery to the Pharaoh-like idols, until the Lord came near in the incarnation (Discourses 2.14). For Athanasius, drawing on New Testament texts like John 2:21, the temple provides a particularly fitting model of incarnation. He innovatively takes the reference to the “founding” of Wisdom (Prov. 8:23) as a prophecy of the incarnation, and the image of “founding” leads him to expound the incarnation as a construction project:
Therefore according to His manhood He is founded, that we, as precious stones, may admit of building upon Him, and may become a temple of the Holy Ghost who dwells in us. And as He is a foundation, and we stones built upon Him, so again He is a Vine and we knit to Him as branches—not according to the Essence of the Godhead; for this surely is impossible; but according to His manhood, for the branches must be like the vine, since we are like Him according to the flesh. Moreover, since the heretics have such human notions, we may suitably confute them with human resemblances contained in the very matter they urge. . . . Now what is founded is founded for the sake of the stones which are raised upon it; it is not a random process, but a stone is first transported from the mountain and set down in the depth of the earth. And while a stone is in the mountain, it is not yet founded; but when need demands, and it is transported, and laid in the depth of the earth, then immediately if the stone could speak, it would say, “He now founded me, who brought me hither from the mountain.” Therefore the Lord also did not when founded take a beginning of existence; for He was the Word before that; but when He put on our body, which He severed and took from Mary, then He says “He has founded me”; as much as to say, “Me, being the Word, He has enveloped in a body of earth.” For so He is founded for our sakes, taking on Him what is ours, that we, as incorporated and compacted and bound together in Him through the likeness of the flesh, may attain unto a perfect man, and abide immortal and incorruptible. (Discourses 2.74)[65]
Two foundings are in view here, and they are integrally related. In founding his Wisdom through the incarnation, the Father is also founding the temple of the Spirit that is the church. The temple of Israel thus serves as a double type, both of the body of the Son and of the body of the church.
Criteria of Interpretation
For Athanasius, conformity to Scripture is the touchstone of all theological truth. The Arians agree, and as a result the battle over Arianism is largely an exegetical battle—not a battle for the Bible, but a battle over the Bible. Scripture communicates the knowledge of God, the true God, and Athanasius is self-conscious in his belief that human language is capable of communicating such knowledge. Discussing the nature of religious language, he argues that we must follow Scripture because otherwise God is unknown. Arians demand an explanation of the eternal generation of the Son. Athanasius charges that the question is impertinent: one cannot demand that “a thing ineffable and proper to God’s nature, and known to Him alone and to the Son” should be “explained in words.” One cannot determine “where God is, and how God is, and of what nature the Father is”; such questions are “irreligious” and betoken “an ignorance of God.” When we are perplexed by the mysteries of God, it is preferable to remain perplexed in silence and simply believe, rather than “disbelieve on account of the perplexity.” A perplexed man may receive some mercy, but when someone in perplexity proudly seeks to penetrate the mysteries of God he will ultimately be frustrated. Still, God has not left himself without a witness: “In such perplexities divine Scripture is able to afford him some relief, so as to take rightly what is written.” In this case, it is useful to dwell on human language “as an illustration.” Scripture calls him the Word, hinting that “as it is proper to us and is from us, and not a work external to us, so also God’s Word is proper to Him and from Him, and is not a work; and yet is not like the word of man, or else we must suppose God to be man” (Discourses 2.36). Ultimately the Arians get the problem of religious language backward, Athanasius says. They claim that the Logos takes its name from creation. He is called Logos because of created logika. No, says Athanasius: creation takes its name from the Creator (Discourses 2.38).
On Athanasius’s view, Arianism does not pass the scriptural test. This is not because Arius or his followers avoid scriptural language.[66] In fact, they present themselves as biblicists and condemn the Nicene council for introducing extrabiblical language into the church. For Athanasius, however, this is just a smoke screen. He gleefully points out that the Arians themselves employ extrabiblical terms when it suits them. Arians “proceeded to borrow of the Greeks the term Unoriginate, that, under shelter of it, they might reckon among the things originated and the creatures, that Word of God, by whom these very things came to be” (Defense of the Nicene Definition 7.28). And the Arians don’t even know what the term means. Philosophers know that the word can be used in all sorts of different senses. At times, it means “what has not yet, but may, come to be,” but in other contexts it can mean “what neither exists, nor can come into being.” To apply either of these uses to God is absurd, so the relevant usage in the Arian debate is the third: the ungenerate is “what exists indeed but was neither originated nor had origin of being, but is everlasting and indestructible.” Even here, there is a distinction to be made, for the word can refer either to “what has no origin of being” or to a being that has no source of origin at all. In the first of these senses, the word applies to both Father and Son, while in the second sense only to the Father. The import of the Arian usage is clear, however: “If the Son be of things originate, it follows, that He too came to be from nothing; and if He has an origin of being, then He was not before His generation; and if He is not eternal there was once when He was not” (Defense of the Nicene Definition 7.28).
Worse than the hypocrisy of using extrabiblical terms, the Arians are guilty of distorting the Scriptures. And at the outset and repeatedly through the Discourses, Athanasius claims that Arians are like the devil, who employs scriptural language but does not accept the truth of Scripture. Athanasius teaches that the Arian heresy is the most thorough of all heresies and as such is a “harbinger of the Antichrist.” What makes Arianism worse than all that has gone before it is the “craft and cunning” of the Arians who attempt to “array” themselves in Scripture language. Just like the devil, the Arians are forcing their way “back into the Church’s paradise,” all the while pretending to be Christians. Athanasius is provoked to respond because “she [the Arian heresy] has already seduced certain of the foolish, not only to corrupt their ears, but even to take and eat with Eve” (Discourses 1.1). The devil can speak Scripture even while denying it. What matters is not the use of scriptural language but actual conformity to scriptural truth. But that raises the question of how anyone is able to judge what counts as a legitimate reading of Scripture. Instead of cloaking falsehood with scriptural language, as the Arians satanically do, the Scriptures ought to be put on a lamp stand: “We take divine Scripture, and thence discourse with freedom of the religious Faith, and set it up as a light upon its candlestick” (Discourses 1.9).
But how are differences of interpretation resolved? Who adjudicates between Arius and Athanasius, and how? What makes an interpretation of Scripture genuine rather than a deceptive disguise? What’s the difference between a cloak and a lamp stand?
In answering that question, Athanasius sometimes appeals to tradition, to the “fathers,” from whom he claims the Arians have deviated. In Defense of the Nicene Definition (6.25–27), Athanasius includes a long list of writers who affirm the Nicene position on the nature of the Son, and he is at pains to defend Dionysius, former bishop of Alexandria, against the charge of being Arian (On the Opinion of Dionysius). Once the council made its decision, Athanasius took it as the voice of God, virtually equating the creed with the Scriptures themselves. He charges that the Arians are guilty of giving a private sense to Scripture, a sense that does not reflect the mind of the church but is “according to their own mind” (kata ton idion noun; Discourses 1.37).
Tradition plays a role in interpretation through liturgical practice. An interpretation of Scripture that is discordant with the sacramental and liturgical life of the church must be wrong. We are baptized in the name of the Father, not of the “Unoriginate,” so the name “Father” must be preferable to the Arian term (Discourses 1.34). Baptism is in the name of the Father and the Son. Arianism makes nonsense of this formula, since it implies that we are baptized in the name of both the Creator and a creature. The baptismal formula supports the orthodox view that the Father’s works are the works of the Son, and vice versa, for when the Father baptizes so also does the Son (Discourses 2.41). Arians, in fact, rob baptism of its efficacy, since they imply that baptism is done in the name of a creature:
And these too hazard the fullness of the mystery, I mean Baptism; for if the consecration is given to us into the Name of Father and Son, and they do not confess a true Father, because they deny what is from Him and like His Essence, and deny also the true Son, and name another of their own framing as created out of nothing, is not the rite administered by them altogether empty and unprofitable, making a show, but in reality being no help towards religion? For the Arians do not baptize into Father and Son, but into Creator and creature, and into Maker and work. And as a creature is other than the Son, so the Baptism, which is supposed to be given by them, is other than the truth, though they pretend to name the Name of the Father and the Son, because of the words of Scripture. For not he who simply says, “O Lord,” gives Baptism; but he who with the Name has also the right faith. On this account therefore our Savior also did not simply command to baptize, he first says, “Teach”; then thus: “Baptize into the Name of Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost”; that the right faith might follow upon learning, and together with faith might come the consecration of Baptism. (Discourses 2.42)
A Christology that shakes a believer’s confidence in his baptism is not only mistaken but spiritually dangerous.[67]
Yet, in rebutting Arians, Athanasius returns again and again to the question of whether Arian theology conforms to Scripture, and the bulk of the Discourses is taken up with polemics about particular passages of Scripture. Scripture is God’s self-communication, necessary because of the frailty of man, to which he has added the evils of sin. For Athanasius, any defense of an interpretation of one passage of Scripture must be internal to the Scriptures themselves. But if there is no external adjudication, that simply intensifies the question: What is the difference between a cloak and a lamp stand? And how can we tell?
For Athanasius, one test is conformity to the overall pattern of biblical usage. He examines syntax, the range of meaning in particular words and phrases, the Bible’s habitual turns of thought and phrase. He observes the distinction between statements about the Son’s eternal nature, which are unqualified, and statements about the Son’s being “made,” which are always qualified by a purpose clause. When Scripture “signifies the fleshly origination of the Son, it adds also the cause for which He became man; but when He speaks or His servants declare anything of His Godhead, all is said in simple diction, and with an absolute sense, and without reason being added.” In himself, the Son “is the Father’s Radiance; and as the Father is, but not for any reason, neither must we seek the reason of that Radiance.” But when the Son takes flesh, he assumes something that is not his according to his essential nature as God, and thus a causal clause is attached. John 1 provides a stark example of this biblical habit of speech. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1) contains no statement of purpose, but in verse 14, when John announces that the “Word became flesh,” he adds the reason: “and dwelt among us.” Similarly, Philippians 2 states absolutely that the Son was “in the form of God,” but when he is said to take the form of a servant, Paul adds that “He humbled Himself unto death, even the death of the cross” (Discourses 2.53).[68] From this grammatical difference, Athanasius draws a theological conclusion: the begetting is absolute while the creation or being-made is always qualified and relative. Moreover, all passages concerning the “making” of the Son are about the incarnation (Discourses 2.60).
Right interpretation, though, is not simply a matter of repeating the terms of Scripture. Sticking with the specific terms and language of the Bible does not guarantee right interpretation. Athanasius admits at times that the language of “created” can be applied to the eternal Son, but that does not make the Son a creature. Arians get hung up on terminology (lexeis), which is secondary (Discourses 2.45). What matters is capturing the sense of Scripture. For Athanasius, this is a principle of right reading for every text. In rejecting the Nicene settlement, the Arians complained about the use of extrabiblical terms, especially the suspect homoousios. Athanasius urges them to “consider the sense in which the Council so wrote,” and to “anathematize what the Council anathematized.” If they accept the sense of the council’s decision, they will also accept the terms in which it is stated, and the fact that they haggle over words is a sign of their bad faith and impiety. “Even if the expressions are not in so many words in the Scripture, yet, as was said before, they contain the sense of the Scriptures, and expressing it, they convey it to those who have their hearing unimpaired for religious doctrine” (Defense of the Nicene Definition 5.21).
Athanasius does not believe that terms are indifferent. As noted earlier, he attacks the Arian use of “Unoriginate” as the name of the Father. In addition to mocking the Arians for their imprecision in using the term, he argues that the terminology shapes their theology in a particular, dangerous direction. Given its negative prefix, “Unoriginate” is an inherently contrastive term, and it is used in contrast to “things originated.” Biblical terms like “Almighty” and “Lord of the Powers” are similar, for these teach that “the Father has power and mastery over all things by the Word, and the Son rules the Father’s kingdom, and has the power of all, as His Word, and as the Image of the Father.” To name God “Unoriginate” is thus to name him “not by contrast to the Son, but to the things which through the Son come to be.” This is perfectly legitimate in itself: it is true that “God is not as things originated, but is their Creator and Framer through the Son,” and “he who names God Maker and Framer and Unoriginate, regards and apprehends things created and made.” The word can thus be used “religiously” (Discourses 1.33).
But the Arians’ intention, and thus their usage, is impious. They “bring it forth for the dishonor of the Son,” since the term “Unoriginate” is used in contrast to the “originate” Son: “In calling God unoriginate, they are, as I said before, calling Him from His works, and as Maker only and Framer, supposing that hence they may signify that the Word is a work after their own pleasure. But that he who calls God Father, signifies Him from the Son being well aware that if there be a Son, of necessity through that Son all things originate were created” (Discourses 1.33). Thus it is more pious and accurate (eusebesteron kai alēthes) to call him “Father,” as the Bible does. Scriptural language is superior to extrascriptural language. Extrabiblical terms are ambiguous, while the biblical terms are “simple” and “accurate” (Discourses 1.34). By naming the Creator from his works, rather than from the Son, the Arians implicitly make God dependent upon his creation. “Father” is much preferable, since naming God “Father” is to name him in relation to one who is fully God with him.
Because the goal is to capture the sense of Scripture, however, it is legitimate to use language and terms that are not found in Scripture itself. Athanasius regularly defends the Nicene use of the technical term homoousios because it captures the sense of Scripture. Of course, part of his rationale for the term is that it distinguishes between the orthodox and the Arian interpretation of the phrase “from God” (ek theou). Arians were only too happy to affirm this vague claim, noting that since everything is from God, then surely the Son is from God as well. To emphasize the difference between orthodox and Arian understanding, the phrase had to be extrapolated with extrabiblical terminology, either as “from the essence of God” or as “the same essence.” Scripture’s language is more “exact” and profound than that of the Greeks, but it had become necessary to borrow from Greek philosophy to overcome the Arians (Defense of the Nicene Definition 7.32). Confession is more important than specific terminology (Discourses 2.3). Scripture’s terminology for the Son ought not trouble anyone, so long as we apply what Athanasius describes as the “double” canon of interpretation. Some biblical descriptions name the Son in his “genuine and natural” essence, while others speak of him as incarnate, using terms proper to a work of the Father (Discourses 2.4).
This line of argument creates some difficulties for Athanasius. On the one hand, Scripture’s terminology is preferable, because it is more accurate and more straightforward. On the other hand, the specific terminology of Scripture is not as important as the sense of Scripture. When these twin principles work him into a corner, Athanasius can respond with special pleading. On the one hand, Athanasius admits that the Son is described in terms that imply he is a creature, but he insists that these are “improper” uses. “When the essence is a work of creature,” he writes, “then the words ‘He made,’ and ‘He became,’ and ‘He created,’ are used of it properly, and designate the work.” On the other hand, “when the Essence is an Offspring and Son, then ‘He made,’ and ‘He became,’ and ‘He created,’ no longer properly belong to it, nor designate a work; but ‘He made’ we use without question for ‘He begot.’” Athanasius observes this shift in human experience: “Fathers often call the sons born of them their servants, yet without denying the genuineness of their nature; and often they affectionately call their own servants children, yet without putting out of sight their purchase of them originally” (Discourses 2.3).[69] If that is the case, though, it does not seem possible to rest much weight on the way Scripture speaks about the Son. How does one distinguish a proper from an improper use? Again, how can we distinguish a cloak from a lamp stand?
Athanasius at times responds to Arian interpretations by applying rules and methods that resemble the “hermeneutical” rules and procedures of modern scholarship. In defending Dionysius against the charge of Arianism, for instance, he argues that Dionysius must be understood in the light of his times. Dionysius was occupied with modalism, not with Arianism, and that context explains the particular phrases he uses. Athanasius also examines specific statements in light of Dionysius’s whole corpus of writings. Athanasius argues that “Dionysius not only wrote other letters also, but composed a defense of himself upon the suspicious points, and came out clearly as of right opinions.” The apparent inconsistency can be resolved by attending to the different audiences and context of Dionysius’s writings: “When he had written his letter to Ammonius, and fallen under suspicion, he made his defense so as to better what he had previously said, but did so without changing, it must be evident that he wrote the suspected passages in a qualified sense. But what is written or done in such a sense men have no business to construe maliciously, or wrest each one to a meaning of his own.” A physician “applies to the wounds he has to deal with, remedies which to some seem unsuitable with a view to nothing but health.” So too a wise teacher such as Dionysius: “In like manner it is the practice of a wise teacher to arrange and deliver his lessons with reference to the characters of his pupils, until he has brought them over to the way of perfection” (Opinion of Dionysius 6).
Athanasius immediately adds that similar attention must be paid to the context of apostolic writings and preaching. After quoting several sermons from Acts (2:22; 4:10; 13:23; 17:31) that emphasize the humanity of Jesus, he asks if we should conclude that the apostles saw “Christ as only a man and nothing more.” Mē genoito! he cries. The emphasis on Christ’s humanity was part of an apologetic strategy aimed at Jewish hearers. Jews of the first century “thought that the Christ was coming as a mere man of the seed of David, after the likeness of the rest of the children of David’s descent, and would neither believe that He was God nor that the Word was made flesh.” Thus “the blessed Apostles began by proclaiming to the Jews the human characteristics of the Savior, in order that by fully persuading them from visible facts, and from miracles which were done, that the Christ had come, they might go on to lead them up to faith in His Godhead, by showing that the works He had done were not those of a man but of God” (Opinion of Dionysius 8).
In other passages, Athanasius points to genre as a way of defining the interpretive context. When defending his reading of Proverbs 8, a popular passage with the Arians because it speaks of a “created” Wisdom, Athanasius notes the character of proverbial speech. Proverbs and other texts “expressed in the way of proverbs” must not be understood “nakedly in their first sense.” Proverbs state things not “plainly” but “latently”; therefore, in reading Proverbs “we must inquire into the person, and thus religiously put the sense on it.” In such cases, “it is necessary to unfold the sense of what is said” (Discourses 2.44).
None of these procedures and convictions, though, get to the heart of Athanasius’s “hermeneutics.” Even more basic in Athanasius than these maneuvers, which often appear ad hoc, are the following three criteria: first, the appeal to the skopos and the “tripartite rule”; second, the use of biblical images (paradeigmata); and finally, the biblical use of terminological markers that distinguish between Creator and creature. We will examine each of these in turn, and we will find that, in his “deductive” interpretations as much as in his “typological” ones, his reading is christologically formed.[70] Scripture is all about Christ, not only in content but in “method.” For Athanasius, Christ is the substance of Scripture and the criterion of correct interpretation.
The Scope and Rule
Athanasius’s arguments from the skopos or kanōn of Scripture seem, at times, to be appeals to the faith of Christians as expressed in creeds, and have sometimes been taken as such.[71] Arian interpretations are “unsound,” a fact evident from their failure to consider the scope or canon of Scripture (Discourses 3.28). More usually, the skopos is not a tradition or creed per se, but the overall thrust of the biblical story, with its focus on the incarnation. To appeal to the scope of Scripture is to appeal to the “double [diplēn] account of the Savior,” as both “ever God” and “the Father’s Word and Radiance and Wisdom,” and also as the one who took the flesh of Mary and was made man (Discourses 3.29).
In short, Christ himself—understood in the Athanasian sense as the eternal Word made flesh—is the criterion of appropriate reading. There is a hermeneutical circularity here that Athanasius never openly acknowledges or defends. A right reading must be consistent with true faith in Jesus, and that true faith is predefined in anti-Arian terms. The question is, “Which of the two theologies sets forth our Lord Jesus Christ as God and Son of the Father?” (Discourses 1.10). Yet the skopos is not Christ simply in his “person” as Word made flesh, but in his entire history and work. It is not just that interpretations must give due attention to whether the text speaks of the Word in his divine nature or the Word having become flesh. That is necessary, but attention to Word and flesh is not the same as attention to the full skopos of Scripture. Rather, the standard of right reading is the ground motif of Scripture as a whole, the history of creation, fall, incarnation, glory. As Frances Young puts it, “Athanasius is not neglectful of the details of the text,” but more basically his reading is guided by a “sense of the overarching plot” that he has inherited as the fundamental narrative of salvation. Thus “the ‘Canon of Truth’ or ‘Rule of Faith’ expresses the mind of scripture, and an exegesis that damages the coherence of that plot, that hypothesis, that coherence, that skopos, cannot be right.”[72] Arian readings fail because they create dissonance in what should be a harmonious story—for instance, they deny that the Creator and Savior are one character.
This principle guides his interpretation of various disputed passages, such as Proverbs 8, a classic Arian passage because it speaks of the “creation” of Wisdom. But Athanasius has already established that the Son is eternal. Therefore, the biblical marker “created” cannot apply to the nature of the Son. It must describe him in some other aspect. It must describe the Son insofar as he enters creation and participates in it as created Son, the Son of God “created” as Son of Man. Athanasius’s interpretation of the passage is questionable, but he comes to a brilliant theological conclusion, namely, that in the incarnation the uncreated Son is created as man.
Athanasius also employs what has come to be called the “tripartite rule” of attending to person, time, and circumstance.[73] Most often, he brings this “rule” into play in responding to Arian misrepresentations of various texts. Arians employed Hebrews 5:8 (“He learned obedience from the things which he suffered”) to show that the Son could not be unchangeably equal to the Father. In rebuttal, Athanasius points to the context of the chapter, which in his mind makes it clear that Paul is writing about the incarnation, not about the eternal nature of the Son.
But further, since the drift also of the context is orthodox, showing the time and the relation to which this expression points, I ought to show from it also how the heretics lack reason; viz. by considering, as we have done above, the occasion when it was used and for what purpose. Now the Apostle is not discussing things before the creation when he thus speaks, but when “the Word became flesh;” for thus it is written, “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession Jesus, who was faithful to Him that made Him.” Now when became He “Apostle,” but when He put on our flesh? And when became He “High Priest of our profession,” but when, after offering Himself for us, He raised His Body from the dead, and, as now, Himself brings near and offers to the Father those who in faith approach Him, redeeming all, and for all propitiating God? (Discourses 2.7)
Similarly, the immediate context of Proverbs 8 indicates that it is about the incarnation (Discourses 2.44).[74]
Superficially, both Athanasius’s terminology and his use of this “rule” appear to bring him close to modern hermeneutical procedures. Such a conclusion, though, misses the real center of Athanasius’s approach. When Athanasius appeals, for instance, to the “time” of a text, he is not attempting “to determine the ‘original’ literary or historical meaning, but to disclose the true sense of Scripture, speaking of or in the ‘person’ of Christ, as revealed when the ‘time’ is fulfilled by Christ himself.” For Athanasius, the time spoken of in Proverbs 8:22 is not the time of Solomon, its author, but is the time of the incarnation. Similarly, the question of prosōpon (person) is the question of “how Christ is spoken of, that is, in which ‘character’—whether as God, which he always is, or whether as human, which he becomes for the specific purpose of the Passion.”[75] Once again, interpreting Scripture is not about applying a general theory of language. Even when he turns from “typological” pastoral letters to “deductive” polemical interpretations, it is all about Christ.
Paradigms
Athanasius’s interpretation of specific passages is governed not by a philosophical framework so much as by privileged biblical images that he describes as paradeigmata.[76] Behind this usage is an analogical vision of reality. As noted above, Athanasius believes that the human language of Scripture accurately and precisely reveals God. God remains incomprehensible, but we do know truth about God when we understand Scripture. That is possible because the world images God, because it is stamped with the typos of the creating Word. Against what he claims is the Arian view that divine names are drawn from creation, Athanasius insists that creation imitates God, not vice versa.
At the same time, analogy includes difference. We cannot reason from the fact that an architect needs materials to the conclusion that God too needs materials. The fact that humans are always located in a place does not mean that God must be in a place too. Similarly, Arians cannot reason directly from human generation to divine generation, from the fact that human fathers exist before becoming fathers to the conclusion that “there was when He was not.” Thoughts about making and generation must be purified in the apophatic fires of the Creator-creature distinction: God is an architect, perhaps, but God is not an architect like a human architect or a father like a human father. “The bare idea of God transcends such thoughts,” and since “He is in being, not as we are, and yet in being as God, and creates not as man creates, but yet creates as God, it is plain that He begets also not as men beget, but begets as God.” Quoting Ephesians 3:15, Athanasius summarizes the point by insisting that the Father is truly and solely (kyriōs kai monon alēthōs) Father and that all other fathers are named by mimesis of the divine Father: “God does not make man His pattern; but rather we men, since God is properly, and alone truly, Father of His Son, are also called fathers of our own children” (Discourses 1.23).
In a universe such as this, creation as a whole manifests the beauty, glory, and rationality of God and is imprinted with the character of the Creator. Scripture exploits this reality by drawing on images that reveal the nature of God. We cannot comprehend the nature of God in itself, but we can gain some “poor and dim” idea of that nature through Scripture paradigms (Discourses 2.32). “It is a custom with divine Scripture,” Athanasius notes, “to take the things of nature as images and illustrations for mankind; and this it does, that from these physical objects the moral impulses of man may be explained; and thus their conduct shown to be either bad or righteous.” Paradigms work within a specific realm, and the reality that is revealed in the paradigm remains within that realm. Thus Scripture uses natural phenomena to describe a moral transformation. When the psalmist urges us not to be like “horse and mule which have no understanding” (32:9) or Jeremiah warns against becoming like “wanton horses” (5:8) or Jesus describes Herod as “that fox” (Luke 13:32) and urges his disciples to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matt. 10:16), they are speaking metaphorically. The psalmist is worried not about humans being transformed into the nature of beasts of burden but about stubborn behavior. Jesus warns so that “we might eschew the irrational motions of the one, and being aware of the wisdom of that other animal, might not be deceived by it, and might take on us the meekness of the dove” (Discourses 3.18).
Paradigms may have both ontological and ethical significance (Discourses 3.20), and in some cases, Athanasius combines the ethical and ontological quite closely. Commenting on Paul’s exhortation to the Corinthians to follow his example (1 Cor. 4:6), he notes that “as Paul to the Corinthians, so is the oneness of the Son and the Father a pattern and lesson to all, by which they may learn, looking to that natural unity of the Father and the Son, how they themselves ought to be one in spirit towards each other.” The “as” in Paul’s exhortation signifies not identity, but shows that Paul is an image and example (Discourses 3.21). The Son is a “paradigm” of the Father, and thus the uncreated eternal relation between the Son and the Father is manifested in the creation’s relation to God. Because the Son patterned after the pattern of the Father, he is also a pattern for us, and insofar as the Son’s pattern has been imprinted on the apostle, so the apostle also becomes a pattern for the church.
For Athanasius, this analogical vision of reality is of a piece with typological interpretation. Created patterns and paradigms derive from the creative activity of the Father through his Word, and in time one event among created events becomes a pattern for other, later created events. For Athanasius, therefore, typology was not merely a method of reading but the key to metaphysics. Creation bears the impress (typos) of God’s own wisdom, which is the Word, and for that reason there is an impression on earlier events that foreshadow later events, especially the incarnation. It is not startling if “the Son should be speaking of the impress that is within us as if it were Himself,” since, “when Saul was persecuting the Church, in which was His impress and image, He said, as if He were Himself under persecution, ‘Saul, why do you persecute Me?’ [Acts 9:4].” In this passage, Athanasius is disputing about the phrase from Proverbs 8, “The Lord created me for the works.” He denies that this passage teaches that God’s Wisdom is a creature of God. On the contrary, Wisdom “is Creative and Framer,” and as a result “its impress is created in the works, as the copy of the image.” When Solomon says that “before the world He founded me [Prov. 8:23],” it is as much as to say that Wisdom’s “impress [on] the works remain settled and eternal” (Discourses 2.80).
The metaphysical and hermeneutical dimensions of typology come together in a dramatic fashion in Athanasius’s discussion of the typology of the “sign of Jonah.” In context, Athanasius is discussing the force of the comparative “as” in Jesus’s statement about the unity of disciples being “as” the unity of Father and Son (John 17). To explicate the nature of this comparative, he appeals to Jesus’s prediction of the “sign of Jonah,” in which Jesus says that he will be in the earth three days and nights “as” Jonah was in the sea.
For Jonah was not as the Savior, nor did Jonah go down to hades; nor was the whale hades; nor did Jonah, when swallowed up, bring up those who had before been swallowed by the whale, but he alone came forth, when the whale was bidden. Therefore there is no identity nor equality signified in the term “as,” but one thing and another; and it shows a certain kind of parallel in the case of Jonah, on account of the three days. In like manner then we too, when the Lord says “as,” neither become as the Son in the Father, nor as the Father is in the Son. For we become one as the Father and the Son in mind and agreement of spirit, and the Savior will be as Jonah in the earth; but as the Savior is not Jonah, nor, as he was swallowed up, so did the Savior descend into hades, but it is but a parallel, in like manner, if we too become one, as the Son in the Father, we shall not be as the Son, nor equal to Him; for He and we are but parallel. (Discourses 3.23)
To say that Jonah is a type of Jesus is to say that there is a certain parallel and likeness (homoiotēta . . . pōs deiknysi), not that there is identity (tautotēs, isotēs). And the relation of type and antitype, described with “as,” is analogous to the relation between the unity within the Trinity and the unity of the disciples in Christ. The ultimate origin of this pattern is in the Godhead. Father and Son are identical in deity, but the Son is the “image” of the Father, so closely resembling the Father that the comparative “as” fails. At the same time, the Father and the Son are not simply two names for the same reality, and thus there is a qualified sense in which the Father is the archetype of which the Son is the image. In the “as” of the Father and the Son is the uncreated root of the “as” of natural revelation and the “as” of typology.
RADIANCE OF THE GLORY
What are the primary paradigms or images that Athanasius finds in Scripture? There are four. The first is taken from Hebrews 1:3, where the Son is described as the “radiance of His glory” and the “exact representation of His nature.”[77] The word “radiance” is apaugasma, used only in Hebrews 1:3, a passage that also describes the Son as the precise character or expression (charaktēr) of the Father. The point of the radiance image is to emphasize that the Son is necessary to the Father’s existence, as necessary as the rays of light are to the light source, and therefore the Son is just as eternal as the Father. Just as there is no light that does not radiate, so the Father is not without the radiance of his glory. When one reads of the Son as the “radiance” of the Father’s glory, “who has so little sense as to doubt of the eternity of the Son? For when did man see light without the brightness of its radiance, that he may say of the Son, ‘There was once, when He was not,’ or ‘Before His generation He was not’?” (Discourses 1.12).
Later in the first Discourse, Athanasius links the radiance of light with “image” (eikōn). Arianism “impairs” the “perfection and plenitude of the Father’s essence” by denying that he has an eternal Son. Just as “unseemly” is the Arian conception of the Son. Scripture describes the Son as “Image and Radiance of the Father, and Expression and Truth,” and this shows that the Son and the Father are inseparably and eternally God: “For if, when Light exists, there be withal its Image, viz. Radiance, and, a Subsistence existing, there be of it the entire Expression, and, a Father existing, there be His Truth (viz. the Son); let them consider what depths of irreligion they fall into, who make time the measure of the Image and Form of the Godhead” (Discourses 1.20). The radiance of the light source is an image of the light itself. Athanasius returns to this theme repeatedly throughout the Discourses (cf. 2.33).
The light-radiance imagery not only proves the co-eternity of the Father and the Son but also shows, in Athanasius’s view, that the Arian position is nonsensical. “Denying the Logos,” he notes, they cannot help but be “illogical” (alogoi). What could be more absurd than a division of the sun and its radiance? Anyone seeing the sun and then imagining that the light coming from the sun was “external” to it would be judged mad. Just so, “to speculate concerning the Son and the Father and thus to inquire, is far greater madness, for it is to conceive of the Word of the Father as external to Him, and to idly call the natural offspring a work” (Discourses 1.25). This marks a revolution in metaphysics: the ultimate, the absolute, is a related absolute. The source is inseparably supplemented by something that is begotten by the source.
The image of light also indicates that God is not barren. If the Father is a light without radiance, he is fruitless; but for the orthodox, the essence of God is “fruitful in itself” (Discourses 2.2). Since the Father is fruitful in himself, he also is fruitful in creating. Without the Word, “things originate could not . . . be brought to be.” As a Son proper to the Father’s essence, he is the one through whom creatures come, without whom creation could not be at all. The relation of the Father’s radiance to creation is not merely willed; it does not just happen that the Father created through the Son. The Father cannot create without his Son, any more than a light can illuminate without its radiance. As Athanasius puts it, “As the light enlightens all things by its radiance, and without its radiance nothing would be illuminated, so also the Father, as by a hand, in the Word wrought all things, and without Him makes nothing” (Discourses 2.31). In contrast to the Arians, who imply that the Father is barren and fruitless in himself, the orthodox teach that the Father has a “generative nature” (gennētikēs physeōs), since he is always with his generated Word, Wisdom, and image that is proper to his substance (Discourses 2.2). Without the Son, there could be no creation. Light lightens by radiance, and if the Father’s light did not eternally radiate, it could not form the bright world of creation.
The paradigm of light and radiance qualifies other scriptural descriptions of the Son. As the Arians recognize, the fact that the Son is begotten might imply some sort of “interval” between the Father and the Son, as well as implying that the Father’s begetting is passionate like human begetting. Athanasius addresses the problem by highlighting a different aspect of the parallel between divine and human begetting. Instead of defining father-son relations in terms of priority and subordination, he emphasizes the community of essence between source and offspring: “Who hears of a son but conceives of that which is proper to the father’s essence? Who heard, in his first catechizing, that God has a Son and has made all things by His proper Word, but understood it in that sense in which we now mean it?” (Discourses 2.34). When the imagery of begetting and sonship is joined with the imagery of light and radiance, we come to a proper idea of sonship. If in “originate and irrational things” we find examples where “offsprings are found which are not parts of the essences from which they are, nor subsist with passion, nor impair the essences of their originals,” then we can more readily imagine a passionless eternal begetting of an eternal Son (Discourses 2.34). The image of light and radiance thus assists in the apophatic purgation of our thoughts about God as Father and Son. One paradigm cleanses another.
The light-radiance connection provides a way of expounding the reality of grace, and particularly of the perichoretic union of the grace of the Father and the grace of the Son. The grace of the Father is not different from the grace of the Son; rather, the one indwells the other, as light indwells its radiance. Jesus promised that he and the Father would come and “make Our abode in him” so that as the Father and Son are one, so the disciples “may be One in us.” This unity of the disciples in the Father and the Son depends on the fact that the “grace given is one, given from the Father in the Son.” Paul confirms this reality with the greeting of every epistle: “Grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The grace of the Father must be in the Son, since “the light must be with the ray, and the radiance must be contemplated together with its own light” (Discourses 2.42). Elsewhere, Athanasius lines up grace, light, and the Father-Son relation in an illuminating fashion (Discourses 3.13):
Grace
from Father
through Son
Light
from Sun
through Radiance
Face
of Father
in Son
Grace thus follows the structure of triune life. As the Father is seen in the Son, so the grace of the Father comes through the Son, and this is expounded with the image of light and its radiance.
Athanasius uses the paradigm of light and radiance to explain the baptismal formula. It might seem that a baptism in the name of the Father and the Son implies that the Father is insufficient in himself. That is not true, and Athanasius sees instead that the baptismal formula shows how the Father works through the Son, inseparably “dependent” on him in the same way that light is inseparably dependent on the radiances that necessarily come from it. The Son is named in the baptismal formula because “He is God’s Word and own Wisdom, and being His Radiance, is ever with the Father.” Since the Son is inseparably with the Father, “it is impossible, if the Father bestows grace, that He should not give it in the Son, for the Son is in the Father as the radiance in the light.” Baptism is a new creation, and the pattern of divine action in recreation follows the pattern of the original creation. The Father founded the earth “in His own Wisdom” and “made all things in the Word which is from Him.” In the same way, the “Son confirms the Holy Laver.” Since the Son does only what he sees the Father doing, “when baptism is given, whom the Father baptizes, him the Son baptizes; and whom the Son baptizes, he is consecrated in the Holy Ghost.” It is just like the sun and its beams: “And again as when the sun shines, one might say that the radiance illuminates, for the light is one and indivisible, nor can be detached, so where the Father is or is named, there plainly is the Son also; and is the Father named in Baptism? Then must the Son be named with Him” (Discourses 2.41).
FOUNTAIN AND STREAM
The second image is that of the fountain and the stream, which Athanasius finds in various Scripture passages. Jeremiah rebukes Israel for forsaking “the Fountain of living waters” (2:13), and Baruch calls Yahweh the “Fountain of wisdom” (3:12; Discourses 1.19). At one level, the import is the same as the image of light and radiance: just as there is no fountain without a flow from that fountain, so there is no paternal “origin” without the Son who is from him. Just as a fountain is no fountain without a stream flowing from it, so the Father is no Father without a Son.
This image leads to further insight into the character of the Son and his relation to the Father. “Living water” means life, and just so the Son is the “life and wisdom” that is not “foreign to the essence of the Fountain, but proper to it.” This inference is confirmed by the words of Jesus (“I am the Life”; John 14:6) and Proverbs (“I Wisdom dwell with prudence”; 8:12). Even more than the light-radiance image, the fountain image underscores the fruitfulness of the Father’s essence. To say “once the Son was not” is to say “once the Fountain was dry, destitute of Life and Wisdom.” That is impossible, since “a fountain it would then cease to be; for what begets not from itself, is not a fountain.” It is not only logically impossible, but it runs contrary to the promise of Isaiah 58:11: “And the Lord shall satisfy your soul in drought, and make your bones fat; and you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.” How can the Lord keep this promise if he is himself barren and dry? (Discourses 1.19).
With these two images, the key point is not logical consistency so much as whether Arian theology honors God. If, as Arius argues, there was when the Son was not, then there was when the fountain was without a flow from it. If the Son is not eternal, then God would not be a fountain but “barren and dry” and this is an insult to the Father. The same is true of the image of light and radiance (Discourses 1.13): “The Son did not come out of nothing, nor is in the number of originated things at all, but is the Father’s image and Word eternal, never having not been, but being ever, as the eternal Radiance of a Light which is eternal. Why imagine then times before the Son? Or why blaspheme the Word as after times, by whom even the ages were made?” “Blasphemy” is for Athanasius not a term of opprobrium. It is a precise description of the dishonor to the Father implied by Arian theology.
ETERNAL SON
The leading image is the third: the Son. The nature of sonship controls what Athanasius says about the ontological relation of the Father to the Son, but controls it in a specific fashion. Initially, he characterizes the difference between Father-Son and Creator-creature by distinguishing between participation and whole participation, or participation and generation from essence. Everything exists by virtue of participation in the Word through the Spirit. With regard to created things, “other beings, to whom He said, ‘I said you are Gods,’ had this grace from the Father, only by participation of the Word, through the Spirit” (Discourses 1.9). Elsewhere, Athanasius argues that “all other things partake of the Spirit” (Discourses 1.15), while the Son gives the Spirit and does not exist by participation in him.
But the Scripture speaks in very different ways about the Son (Discourses 1.15). The Son is not a partaker of the Spirit, but rather the Spirit comes from the Son. That difference marks the Son as ontologically different from all created things. Instead of participating in the Spirit as the source of life, the Logos is proper to the Father, from the essence of the Father. Athanasius sometimes describes this as “whole participation” and sometimes as “generation” or “begetting.” Whatever is of the essence of the Father and proper (idios) to him is “entirely the Son,” for “it is all one to say that God is wholly participated, and that He begets.” The Son is not son by the participation of the Spirit, but on the contrary the Spirit who gives life to all creation comes from him. This shows that the Son does not partake of anything, but “what is partaken from the Father, is the Son.” How else would we partake in God by partaking of the Son, if the Son were not himself that which partakes wholly of, or is begotten by, the Father? And Scripture teaches that we partake of divine nature by sharing in Jesus (2 Pet. 1:4) and thus are made into temples of the living God.
At the same time, divine begetting is not the same as human begetting. Human begetting involves a division of essence, the breaking free of one bit of human essence from another. This is impossible with God, since his essence is indivisibly one. Human generation also occurs through passion, and this too differs from divine generation, which is impassible. Since the Son is an offspring of this kind, essence from the essence of the Father, proper to the Father so that we are to define the Godhead as the Father begetting the Son, then “it is not fitting, rather it is full of peril, to say, that He is a work out of nothing, or that He was not before His generation. For he who thus speaks of that which is proper to the Father’s essence, already blasphemes the Father Himself; since he really thinks of Him what he falsely imagines of His offspring” (Discourses 1.16). The nature of sonship also helps Athanasius to distinguish between the Son and the “works” of the Father. Again, he is thinking analogically: a work is not from the essence of the craftsman, but an external thing, not “proper” (idios) to the maker. But a son is from the essence of the father, the same nature as the father. So when the Bible calls Jesus the Son, it implies that he is not a work, since sons are not works.
Again, the sonship image is about the honor of God. Would it be honoring to God to say that he was incomplete (atelēs)? No. A father who has no son is not a father at all. Therefore, it is an insult to the Father to say that the Son is anything less than eternal.
If He is called the eternal offspring of the Father, He is rightly so called. For never was the essence of the Father imperfect, that what is proper to it should be added afterwards; nor, as man from man, has the Son been begotten, so as to be later than His Father’s existence, but He is God’s offspring, and as being proper Son of God, who is ever, He exists eternally. For, whereas it is proper to men to beget in time, from the imperfection of their nature, God’s offspring is eternal, for His nature is ever perfect. (Discourses 1.14)
A son is the perfection of a father’s nature. Humanity is perfected in time, through a succession of generations. God is perfected eternally. If the Son is not eternal, then the Father is without his perfection, which is his creative power. Athanasius wants to insist that God is never without creativity, though he has not eternally created. But if the Arians are right, then the power to create is “extrinsic” to the Father’s being. The Father is too weak to create on his own, or he is too proud to create us without the help of a mediating power.
WORD AND WISDOM
The scriptural language of Word, Wisdom, and power functions similarly. If the Son is not eternal to the Father, “proper” to his essence, then the Father at one time was powerless, wisdomless, and wordless. But that cannot be. How dare we slander God by saying that he was ever alogos (Discourses 1.14)? Some Arians would respond that the Wisdom that the Father has is eternal, but that is not the Wisdom that creates, the demiurgical wisdom. There is a more basic wisdom that belongs to the Father and is not hypostatized into a son until the generation of the Son. But Athanasius will not have this. First Corinthians 1:24 says that Christ is the Wisdom and power of God, and Athanasius takes that statement quite literally. He denies that the Father is the eternal power of God; the eternal power of God is his Son. And this eternal power that is the Son is evident in the creation. Athanasius interprets 1 Corinthians 1:24 in the light of Paul’s description of the revelation of God in creation (Rom. 1:18–20):
While silencing the Greeks, he has said, “The visible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal Power and Godhead”; and what the Power of God is, he teaches us elsewhere himself, “Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.” Surely in these words he does not designate the Father, as you often whisper one to another, affirming that the Father is “His eternal power.” This is not so; for he says not, “God Himself is the power,” but “His is the power.” (Discourses 1.11)
For Athanasius, all these images qualify one another. Son and begetting seem to imply temporality and passion, so Word and Wisdom are added. Word and Wisdom might imply that the Son is not a distinct person but merely an attribute of the Father, so the biblical image of the Son is needed. As Athanasius says, “The divine generation must not be compared to the nature of men, nor the Son considered to be part of God, nor the generation to imply any passion whatever; God is not as man; for men beget passibly, having a transitive nature, which waits for periods by reason of its weakness. But with God this cannot be; for He is not composed of parts, but being impassible and simple, He is impassibly and indivisibly Father of the Son.” How does he know this? He appeals to Scripture: “The Word of God is His Son, and the Son is the Father’s Word and Wisdom; and Word and Wisdom is neither creature nor part of Him whose Word He is, nor an offspring passibly begotten. . . . What affection then, or what part of the Father is the Word and the Wisdom and the Radiance?” Those who inquire into sonship might examine the phenomenology of words, “and they will find that the word which they put forth is neither an affection of them nor a part of their mind.” If human beings, “who are passible and partitive,” produce words without passion and without division, “why speculate they about passions and parts in the instance of the immaterial and indivisible God, that under pretense of reverence they may deny the true and natural generation of the Son?” In short, “the offspring from God is not an affection; and now it has been shown in particular that the Word is not begotten according to affection. The same may be said of Wisdom; God is not as man; nor must they here think humanly of Him” (Discourses 1.28).
Words Worthy of God
The problem, of course, is that the Arians also use images. In fact, one could say that the whole Arian position rests on an analogy between human and divine begetting. Begetting implies a process and something produced that is a different individual from the producer. Before a son is begotten, he isn’t; after he’s begotten, he is. Arians also point to the paradigm of human and divine language. Human beings utter words, but these words are not eternally uttered, and they pass away as soon as they are spoken. Human words are not of the essence of the speaker, but contingent and voluntary. Wisdom, of course, is an attribute of some human beings; God is eternally wise, but that does not require that he beget wisdom. His wisdom is eternally internal to God.
When Athanasius encounters an argument like this, he answers it by saying that God is God and man is man: “God does not make man His pattern; but rather we men, for that God is properly, and alone truly, Father of His Son, are also called fathers of our own children; for of Him ‘is every fatherhood in heaven and earth named’” (Eph. 3:15; Discourses 1.23). Seeing an angel and seeing God in the flesh are not the same, since “greatly, or rather wholly, do things by nature originate differ from God the Creator” (Discourses 3.14). In sum, “the divine generation must not be compared to the nature of men” (Discourses 1.28).
Athanasius’s interpretation of Scripture is thus qualified by an assumed theology proper. Athanasius presumes that God’s nature is unchanging and atemporal, and this is the key to the right use of the biblical paradigms. “If they were disputing concerning any man,” he writes, “then let them exercise reason in this human way, both concerning His Word and His Son.” Arians forget they are talking about God. If they want to speak rightly of him, “no longer let them entertain human thoughts, but others which are above human nature” (Discourses 2.35).
Fundamentally, distinguishing God from creation means distinguishing the timeless from the time bound and, implied in that distinction, the indivisible from the divisible, and the impassible from the passible. “Man, begotten in time, in time also himself begets the child,” and human words partake in the same temporality as man himself: “Whereas from nothing he came to be, therefore his word also is over and continues not.” Yet “God is not as man.” Since he is “existing and is ever,” so also “His Word is existing and is everlastingly with the Father, as radiance of light.” Human language is composite and divisible, constructed from letters and syllables; it is temporary, going forth and going by, never again to appear, not existing at all until spoken. This is not the character of God’s Word: “God’s Word is not merely pronounced, as one may say, nor a sound of accents, nor by His Son is meant His command; but as radiance of light, so is He perfect offspring from perfect. Hence He is God also, as being God’s Image; for ‘the Word was God’” (Discourses 2.35).
Once the Arians implicitly introduce temporality into the Father-Son relation, they implicitly introduce temporality into the existence of the Father himself. If there is an interval between Father and Son, and yet the Son is somehow “God,” then God is subject to becoming (Discourses 1.17). If the Triad emerges, then true religion is not fixed; piety is trying to hit a moving target (Discourses 1.18). For the Arians, God becomes Father only after begetting the Son (Discourses 1.24). The Arians imply in various ways that God is subject to time, that he is a God-in-process.
The point of the paradigm of sonship thus cannot be to highlight a temporal interval between Father and Son. To be sure, there is such an interval in human life, but since God is beyond time, there can be no interval. This is precisely the point of discontinuity, Athanasius thinks, between divine and human generation, since it is one of the central points of discontinuity between God and creatures. The point of similarity must rather be something consistent with the timeless nature of God, and Athanasius argues that this analogy is found in the fact that the divine Son shares the same nature as the divine Father, just as children share nature with their parents.
The Arians are inconsistent, he charges: “If then they assume from human examples that generation implies time, why not from the same infer that it implies the Natural and the Proper, instead of extracting serpent-like from the earth only what turns to poison?” The temporal interval between parent and child in human life displays the time-restrained condition of human existence as such: “Though the parent be distinct in time, as being man, who himself has come to be in time, yet he too would have had his child ever coexistent with him, but that his nature was a restraint and made it impossible” (Discourses 1.26).
Of course, Athanasius is equally inconsistent, and his argument begs the Arian rejoinder: “If you assume from human examples that generation implies common nature, why not infer time?” Athanasius never addresses this potential objection, but it is fairly clear what his answer would have been: God is by definition eternal, therefore above time; therefore temporality is always the point of difference between Creator and creature.
Passibility is bound up with temporality.[78] A changeable, time-bound creature is necessarily also passible, and, conversely, a changeless eternal God is for Athanasius necessarily impassible. The paradigms of Scripture need to pass this test as well: as we reason by way of eminence from the created things that Scripture likens to God, that reasoning has to be purified by a passage through the “impassibility partition.” Just as begetting and sonship must be understood in a way consistent with the timeless divine nature, so must it be thought of consistently with God’s impassibility. It is a mistake to consider the Son “to be part of God,” and an equal mistake to believe that the generation implies “any passion whatever,” since “God is not as man.” Of course, “men beget passibly, having a transitive nature, which waits for periods by reason of its weakness. But with God this cannot be; for He is not composed of parts, but being impassible and simple, He is impassibly and indivisibly Father of the Son.” By “uniting then the two titles, Scripture speaks of ‘Son,’ in order to herald the natural and true offspring of His essence; and, on the other hand, that none may think of the Offspring humanly, while signifying His essence, it also calls Him Word, Wisdom, and Radiance; to teach us that the generation was impassible, and eternal, and worthy of God.” He concludes, “What affection then, or what part of the Father is the Word and the Wisdom and the Radiance?” (Discourses 1.28).
If the Son is going to be the image of the Father, of the Father’s essence in particular, he must be as changeless, indivisible, impassible, and eternal as the Father. Nature follows origin for Athanasius; if the Son originated from nothing, if his beginning was a transition from non-existence to existence, then he must be a changeable creature. And “if the Word be alterable and changing, where will He stay, and what will be the end of His development? How shall the alterable possibly be like the Unalterable? How should he who has seen the alterable, be considered to have seen the Unalterable?” Not only is a changeable Son incapable of imaging a changeless Father, but a changeable Son is a moving target, another God-in-process. If that is the case, do we have to wait for him to evolve to a condition where we are able to behold the Father in him?
The godness of God also helps Athanasius to avert some pesky Arian interpretations. If the Son is the image of the Father, then he should also have a Son. How else could he manifest Fatherhood? Athanasius of course acknowledges that human sons often eventually become fathers themselves, but to project this succession onto the divine nature is again to measure God by human standards. God is not in time and thus does not need a succession of generations to reach his fulfillment. He is completely fulfilled in the generation of a single, eternal Son. To put the same point another way, the Father is essentially Father (kyriōs patēr) and the Son is essentially Son (kyriōs huios). To think otherwise is to think of Father and Son as “mixed” persons and thus to threaten the simplicity of the persons (Discourses 1.21).
Athanasius never defends this assumed theology nor even acknowledges how it is operative in his reading of Scripture. Pressed, he would no doubt have assembled passages of Scripture to support his presumption that God is not time bound or subject to passions. That he failed to do this is hardly surprising, for the theological assumptions that guide interpretation of particular texts are assumptions shared by Athanasius and his opponents.
Athanasius’s biblical work is, throughout, a theological hermeneutics. Christ is both the substance of Scripture and the criterion of right interpretation. Anything that damages the story of redemption through the Word incarnate is erroneous and wicked, and any interpretation that projects human limitations onto God is heresy. There is a circularity, as we have seen, but for Athanasius this is the inevitable circularity of biblical interpretation. We study Scripture to know God; as we come to know him, Scripture is illumined, so that we might study it further to know God yet more deeply.
Conclusion
One final crucial element of Athanasian hermeneutics: it is situated, always, in the church, and that means that it is always embattled. All his biblical interpretation was directed toward edification of the people he oversaw as bishop or to win his battles with the Arians and other threats to the gospel. Athanasius considered his biblical work to be a part of a spiritual warfare, not just against the Arians but against the spiritual forces that, in his mind, inspired their heresies. The devil impersonates the name of God now, just as he did in Eden.
Our adversary the devil, envying us the possession of such great blessings, goes about seeking to snatch away the seed of the word which is sown within us. Wherefore as if by His prophetic warnings He would seal up His instructions in our hearts as His own peculiar treasure, the Lord said, “Take heed that no man deceive you: for many shall come in My name, saying, I am he; and the time draws near; and they shall deceive many: go ye not therefore after them” (Luke 21:8). This is a great gift which the Word has bestowed upon us, that we should not be deceived by appearances, but that, howsoever these things are concealed, we should all the more distinguish them by the grace of the Spirit. For whereas the inventor of wickedness and great spirit of evil, the devil, is utterly hateful, and as soon as he shows himself is rejected of all men—as a serpent, as a dragon, as a lion seeking whom he may seize upon and devour—therefore he conceals and covers what he really is, and craftily personates that Name which all men desire, so that deceiving by a false appearance, he may thenceforth fix fast in his own chains those whom he has led astray. And as if one that desired to kidnap the children of others during the absence of their parents, should personate their appearance, and so putting a cheat on the affections of the offspring, should carry them far away and destroy them; in like manner this evil and wily spirit the devil, having no confidence in himself, and knowing the love which men bear to the truth, personates its appearance, and so spreads his own poison among those that follow after him. (Bishops of Egypt 1.1)
This demonology is only half of the Athanasian hermeneutics of spiritual warfare. As we have already seen, for Athanasius, the overarching aim of understanding and teaching Scripture is to honor God. Any interpretation that insults God, as the Arian interpretations of Scripture do, cannot be true. Arian blasphemies are often implicit. To claim that the Triad is not eternal insults the Son and thus insults the Father as well (Discourses 1.18). It is likewise an insult—and not, importantly, merely illogical—to call the Father a fountain but then to deny that he flows with eternal wisdom; that insults him as “barren and void of His proper Wisdom” (Discourses 1.19). The Arians assume God is weak. He needs the Son, and the Son is not proper to him. The question is “whether He who was needed was one who was not for the framing of the universe, or one who was? You said that He made for Himself His Son out of nothing, as an instrument whereby to make the universe. Which then is superior, that which needs or that which supplies the need? Or does not each supply the deficiency of the other? You rather prove the weakness of the Maker, if He had not power of Himself to make the universe” (Discourses 1.26). How dare the Arians speak of the Father, the light, the fountain, the beginning of all, as weak? How dare they?
Once again, it is all about Christ, but not merely about contemplating Christ as the hero of the biblical narrative or appealing to Christ as the standard of correct interpretation. The interpreter does not view Christ from a distance but participates in him and his work. Through the cross, Jesus triumphed over demons, and through his Spirit, he gives his deified “brothers” a share in that triumph. Death and fear of death are trampled down by his one death, and we are made new by his resurrection. As Athanasius studied Scripture, expounded its truth against the falsehoods of heretics, and refuted what he saw as devilish distortions of Scripture, he believed he was sharing in that triumph.