The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus by Johannes Zachhuber (review)

This excellent book provides a thorough study—to my knowledge, the first of its kind—of the philosophical dimension of Christian doctrine in late antiquity. Like some recent scholars (e.g., Mark Edwards and George Karamanolis), Zachhuber sees a “Christian philosophy” emerging in this period. For him, the label denotes “a set of logical and ontological concepts underlying the articulation of doctrinal statements” (3). These concepts coalesced into theories which, while not themselves carrying doctrinal weight, were nonetheless inseparable from the articulation of doctrine in late antiquity. Zachhuber focuses on those ontological concepts—nature (physis), substance (ousia), and hypostasis—which served this purpose within Greek and Syriac Christianity starting with the pro-Nicene Trinitarianism of the Cappadocians and running through miaphysite and Chalcedonian Christology in the fifth through seventh centuries. Despite the singular in its title, the book spotlights the tendency to plurality in the centuries after Chalcedon, even within the same doctrinal camp, thereby avoiding the mistake of using Chalcedon’s normativity to excuse the neglect of alternative traditions.

The argument, in a nutshell, is that in post-Chalcedonian traditions a new philosophical perspective emerged, one that prioritized individual existence as such. Different accounts were developed of the fundamental ontological priority of the individual, and each represented a reworking of the philosophy originally developed by the Cappadocians for Trinitarian purposes. According to Zachhuber, the explanation for this philosophical innovation lies not in a renewed Aristotelianism but in the demands of the Christological controversies themselves.

This account therefore avoids reducing patristic philosophy to its non-Christian sources. It also corrects the claim made by Vladimir Lossky and John Zizioulas that Cappadocian Trinitarianism marked a metaphysical revolution, shifting attention from universal being to the particular being of persons. Zachhuber argues that something like this revolution did occur, but much later, especially in the writings of John Philoponus and John of Damascus. Zachhuber’s revolution is only somewhat similar, since its result is an emphasis on the ontological primacy of the individual rather than personalism per se— though he sees hints of personalism in the Damascene. The Cappadocians are aligned with the “ancient metaphysics” that, according to Zachhuber’s title, was brought to an end by the turn to the individual. Post-Chalcedonian authors were motivated to make this turn because they were trying to explicate the “irreducible individuality” of Jesus Christ (181). They had to revise the earlier ontology, which “was ultimately based on a vision of being as universal and one” (308). There is an implication, which comes largely from the book’s title rather than its contents, that this ontological turn was also a move from a less to a more genuinely Christian system. This claim would require more defense than it receives, though fortunately it does not interfere with the book’s quite successful historical argument, which readers can accept wholeheartedly even if they do not view a more monistic ontology as eo ipso less properly Christian. Likewise, while the title implies a certain supersessionism with respect to “ancient metaphysics,” Zachhuber does not argue that the latter ended full-stop, but only that within Christology the priority of universal class over individual became marginalized.

In chapter 2, Zachhuber outlines the philosophy of the Cappadocians, which he thereafter dubs the “classical theory.” The presentation of this theory will be partially familiar to readers of his 1999 monograph Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa, but it is laid out here in clearer terms and its subsequent influence is traced here for the first time. The classical theory originates in Basil’s stipulation that, in the case of the Trinity, we ought to use ousia for what is common to the persons and hypostasis for what is particular to each. This usage was adopted more or less...