Athanasius von Alexandrien: De Sententia Dionysii (review)

Uta Heil. Athanasius von Alexandrien: De Sententia Dionysii. Patristiche Texte und Studien 52. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999. Pp. x + 344. DM 208.00.

This learned and stimulating book offers a detailed commentary (with introduction and translation) on Athanasius' The Opinion of Dionysius (De sententia Dionysii or Dion.). Although this work has never been central to studies of Athanasius' thought, its long citations from the works of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria (247/8-264/5), have served as important evidence for the state of Christological and Trinitarian discussions at the middle of the third century and particularly for the pre-Nicene history of the term . If Heil's argument persuades scholars, they will do so no longer. Affirming a hypothesis first offered by Luise Abramowski in 1982, Heil claims that Athanasius' citations from Dionysius are not authentic, but drawn (perhaps unwittingly) from a forgery created in the fourth century. Heil asks scholars to rethink the history of Trinitarian theology in both the third and fourth centuries.

Before addressing the authenticity issue, Heil considers the date of Dion., which must be determined from that of De decretis Nicaenae synodi (Decr.), to which Dion. is closely related (22-35). Rejecting the standard dating of Decr. to the early 350s (and leveling harsh criticism at Timothy Barnes's proposal of 352/3), Heil dates Decr. to 357-60, after the synod at Sirmium in 357 had condemned all language as unbiblical; Dion. would have followed in 359/60. This difference of only seven years affects one's view of Athanasius in the 350s. With Heil's dating, Athanasius' defense of Nicene terminology in these two treatises is primarily a reaction to his opponents' criticism of this language, and his "desert exile" of 356-62, already viewed as a period of great literary productivity, must have been exceedingly busy (with copies of many historical and "forged" documents close at hand). In contrast, Barnes's dating of Decr. to 352/3 suggests that Athanasius wrote it (and Dion.) "in order to put the Council of Nicaea and its creed at the centre of ecclesiastical controversy" (Athanasius and Constantius [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993], 111). For Heil, Athanasius' promotion of Nicea and is reactive; for Barnes, it is pro-active.

Heil's case against the authenticity of the Dionysius citations rests largely on comparisons of vocabulary and style between the citations and the undoubtedly authentic writings of Dionysius (36-71). She concludes that an original pseudo-Dionysian work was created in the 340s by a group of "Eusebians" who wished to show, in opposition to a "Marcellian" party, that their position was not that of Arius and was grounded in Church tradition. These Eusebians would not have wanted to attribute the term to Dionysius, so the Athanasian citations that include it must have been added later, perhaps even by Athanasius himself in his effort to use the (pseudo-)Dionysian work to refute the Eusebians and brand them as Arians. In this way, "the originally anti-Arian 'Dionysius' of the Eusebians" became "the anti-Arian (= anti-Eusebian) 'Dionysius' in Athanasius" (270-71). I am open to being persuaded by Heil's case but have reservations. As earlier critics of Abramowski suggested, the time frame in which all of this multi-staged forgery and acceptance of forgery had to have taken place is very compressed (about fifteen years). Some of the statistical comparisons are less than convincing: for example, the more frequent use of in the citations than in Dionysius' other works (46) may be attributed to the citations' topic, the "being" of the Son. Finally, we need a full-scale critical reappraisal of Dionysius' career and all the works attributed to him to replace Feltoe's work of nearly a century ago. In any event, if Heil is correct, the history of Trinitarian thought in the third century and of the term must be completely reconceived.

Apart from (and because of) these sensational issues, Athanasian scholars...