Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought (review)

Khaled Anatolios. Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought. London: Routledge, 1998. Pp. viii + 258. $75.00.

This study attempts to provide "a truly comprehensive treatment of Athanasius' theology considered as a coherent and tightly interrelated account of the Christian faith" (1). Athanasius' thought, the author contends, is shaped by a dynamic view of the relationship between God and creation. Examining previous articulations of this relationship in the opening chapter, Anatolios notes the contrast between the views of this relationship in Graeco-Roman philosophy and in the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition: the former sees a conflict between divine transcendence over the world and divine immanence within it (which in some systems is mediated by one or more subordinate entities), while the latter sees divine transcendence as manifest in God's loving involvement in the world. Anatolios discusses the exploration of these divergent visions of the relationship between God and creation, which have significant effects on the assessment of the incarnate Word's divine status in early Christian literature prior to Athanasius, arguing that the most effective expression of the biblical tradition on this issue appears in Irenaeus of Lyons. In one of the book's most intriguing theses, Anatolios suggests that Irenaeus is a source for Athanasius' presentation of this theme, the Alexandrian bishop having gained access to Irenaeus' writing during his exile in the West in the early 340s.

In the following chapters, Anatolios examines Athanasius' views of the relation between God and creation in three sets of texts: the dual treatise Contra Gentes/De Incarnatione (chap. 2), the anti-Arian writings (chap. 3), and in the Festal Letters, the Life of Antony, and the Letter to Marcellinus on the Psalms (chap. 4). Anatolios argues that although Athanasius' view of the relation between God and the world takes its start from his response to the saving event of the Incarnation, the ways in which he describes the incarnate Word cannot be properly understood outside of the larger framework provided by that relation. This framework describes a relation between God and the world that is dialectical and soteriological. God reaches across the ontological abyss of nothingness to create the world, and paramount within it, humanity. Humanity is thereby grounded in God, constituted by a receptivity to the sustaining influence of its Creator. Sin compromises but does not destroy this receptivity, and it is the work of the loving Creator in the person of the Word to come down to the created order to restore from within human receptivity to the divine. Anatolios persuasively argues that this larger framework within Athanasian thought explains many aspects of the latter that scholars have previously found deficient. For example, Anatolios claims that Athanasius' view of the relation between God and creation shapes what scholars have identified as his Word/flesh Christology, with its correlative absence of attention to the human soul of Christ. Anatolios contends that this way of describing the Incarnation is consistent with Athanasius' characteristic view of the Christian God as a deity that reaches out to what is most alien to him and personal to the human being--in his view, the body--to restore his creation. In the course of explicating this thesis, Anatolios notes that an important feature of Athanasius' thought, which has not been sufficiently appreciated heretofore in scholarship and yet provides counterevidence to claims that Athanasius habitually separates the Word from the human experiences of Christ, is his consistent attribution of Christ's human experiences to the divine Word.

Densely but clearly written, and well supported by textual evidence and references to the secondary literature, this study represents a major contribution to Athanasian scholarship that should be read by all students of this major patristic figure. Examining Athanasius' theology from the more systematic perspective that Anatolios argues is original to it not only makes certain aspects of his thought more comprehensible; it explains why Athanasius' theology, and especially his Christology, eludes the clear analytical classifications of...