History of Theology I. The Patristic Period (review)

This valuable book is both more and less than a history of patristic theology. Less because it does not try (a la Quasten et al.) to present virtually every writing of every theologian of the first six centuries. More because in its very selectivity it is able to present patterns and trends with greater clarity. The great bulk (almost 400 pages) of this volume comes from the erudite pen of Studer with contributions from Di Berardino, Prosper Grech, Eric Osborne, Henri Crouzel, and Manilo Simonetti. The editors insist that the series to which this volume belongs is not to be a history of doctrine of the church, but an examination of the ways in which theologians did theology and the conditions in which they did it (p. 2), an attempt to present theology as “a cultural expression to the needs of the day and developed in close dialogue with other forms of culture” (xv). The contributions generally fulfil this intention in literary contextualization, but little attention paid to social and political contextualization. How can the theology of the patristic church (or that of any other period) be discussed properly in their absence?

A book such as this should not and indeed cannot be summarized in a review; one can only take soundings at intervals. Grech’s essay (chapter one) is particularly informative. He sets out to “isolate the factors that created the internal dynamism that gave Christian theology its autonomy in the sub-apostolic period,” and so examines the Jewish biblical theology “onto which the various theologies of the New Testament were grafted” (19). Grech sees the first Christian century as doubly constitutive, regarding first revelations and secondly methods ranging from forms of exegesis through dialectic, rhetoric and narrative to theology stemming from Alexandria.

Against a well set out background of the Graeco-Roman world, Osborne examines the methods of the Apologists who necessarily had “to find some common ground with those” they wished to persuade (119). There is a particulary good presentation of Irenaeus’ theory of recapitulation (p. 135f), and a useful reminder that Hippolytus and Tertullian in repudiating philosophy were targeting it as dogma, not method. Osborne asks “whether there is any concept which joins the [Apologists’] rebuttals [of heresy] together, any many-sided response which answers more than one objection.” He finds three: “Justin’s spermatic Logos, Irenaeus’ recapitulation, and Hippolytus’ totality of truth in Bible and tradition” (141).

Commenting on “the extraordinary . . . literary creativity of the Christians of the first three centuries,” Di Berardino reminds the reader that the apocryphal writings, written to answer various questions and difficulties, lack homogeneity and offer no “consistent doctrinal corpus”(227). He notes the effect of the infancy gospels on “liturgy, popular piety, and art” and particularly that of the Protoevangelium of James from which “a great deal in the Marian piety of the Christian community came” (232).

Studer, who is the author of almost the entire latter half of the book, begins with a fine background study of the Roman setting of the third to the sixth centuries. He emphasizes the degree to which the Christians had come to think of themselves as Romans and (the flip side) the emperors’ increasing involvement in the church. The “Instituta Veterum,” the “Eruditio Veterum,” and the “Sapientia Veterum” are meticulously examined, and Studer concludes that this period not only came to distinguish theology from philosophy, but also invoked different responses to philosophy as such. “The encounter of Christian thought with the thought of antiquity showed responses ranging from complete theoretical rejection (in Ambrose) through widespread acceptance of some elements of philosophy to a theoretical, although conditioned acceptance in Augustine” (332). In this section, Studer mentions Augustine from time to time, as do others in other sections but it is remarkable how little focused attention the bishop of Hippo attracts in the book as a whole. Overall, more space is devoted to the eastern than the western church...