CHAPTER 6

God and Humankind in Eastern Theology: Alexandria, Cappadocia, Nisibis and Edessa

(FOURTH CENTURY)

For Christian theologians the Council of Nicaea has come to have an iconic status: this point in Christian history is regarded as decisively significant because of the precise way in which the Nicene definition described God. In particular, theologians point to the use of the word homoousios (‘of the same being’ or ‘consubstantial’) to indicate the relationship between the Son and the Father. Historians, on the other hand, complain that in fact the Council of Nicaea was singularly ineffective: it was followed by half a century of further argument about the Father–Son relationship. During this period other alternatives to homoousios looked likely to win the day, and even Athanasius, legendary defender of the Nicene definition, did not think it fit to defend the specific term homoousios until around the middle of the century. What explains the discrepancy between these theological and historical perspectives?

The answer lies in the progressive development of thinking on Christ and the Trinity in the fourth century. Athanasius’ theology itself evolved and then set in train a further phase of Christian thinking on God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this period even more than before, no part of theology was an isolated exercise: reflection on the relation of Father to Son was intimately connected to Christian reflection on the Holy Spirit, Christ’s human nature, salvation and the time to come, the sacraments and the best way to lead a holy life.

The attempt to understand Athanasius is not helped by the facts that most of what we know about him comes from his own pen, that he had very clear reasons for presenting himself (and his enemies) in a particular way, and that even the most fair-minded of readers admits that he was ‘never a fanatically accurate controversialist’.¹ Current myths about Athanasius thus often stem precisely from the impression he wanted to create about himself. The first myth is that he had a prominent position at the Council of Nicaea in 325CE. In fact, he attended merely as a youthful deacon accompanying Alexander and it is unlikely that he made a significant contribution to the debates.² Three years later, he succeeded Alexander as Bishop of Alexandria, but his election ‘was definitely contested, may have been illegal and looks as though it was enforced’.³ In Egypt he inherited a province which was divided by a serious schism precipitated by a Bishop Melitius. The origins of the schism are now obscure but probably went back to the Diocletianic persecutions. The Council of Nicaea suggested a resolution, but by the time Athanasius was Bishop of Alexandria about half of the Egyptian bishops were of the Melitian party. It seems that Athanasius tried to impose a solution on them, probably by force, for which action he was condemned by a council at Tyre in 335. After a failed appeal to Constantine, Athanasius was exiled to the north-western imperial capital Trier. The legacy of this stay may have been two of his finest writings (Against the Greeks and On the Incarnation)⁴ and possibly the introduction of some ideas from the ascetic movement which was already strong in Egypt (see Chapter 7).

One key to understanding Athanasius’ theology is On the Incarnation. This made evident the reason for Athanasius’ passionate conviction that Son was fully God: salvation. The central message of On the Incarnation was that in order to save humankind from the deadly and corrupting effects of the Fall, Jesus Christ had to be truly human and truly God. If he were not God, he would not be able to save; if he were not human he would not be able to make this salvation effective in and for human beings. The work is perhaps the most powerful demonstration of the belief in the early Church that salvation was not just a matter of God declaring that a punishment had been paid, or even of God deciding to forgive; rather salvation was conceived as the transformation of the individual, of the community of believers and even of the whole of creation. Human repentance, Athanasius believed, was not enough, for it could not ‘call men back from what is their nature’.⁵ In this theology, Athanasius was taking on and developing themes found especially in Irenaeus, but expressing them with new vigour and more attention to their systematic exposition.

Athanasius’ theology pointed to three closely interrelated aspects of God’s salvation: the defeat of death, cleansing from corruption and revelation of the truth. For Athanasius, God’s actions were fundamentally all one; therefore the three aspects were not three things which the Saviour did; rather they were three perspectives from which the limited human mind viewed the divine work. First, Athanasius asserted that Jesus Christ defeated death by taking on a real, mortal nature and truly dying (which is only possible for a human) and then rising again to new life (which is only possible for God). This perspective was firmly centred on the Cross: for Athanasius, as for earlier Christian writers, the Cross was the literal, historical location of Christ’s defeat of death and of his willing sacrifice on behalf of humanity:

But since it was necessary also that the debt owing from all [because of the Fall] should be repaid … he … offered up his sacrifice also on behalf of all, yielding his temple [i.e. his body] to death in the stead of all, in order firstly to make men rid and free of their old sin, and further to show himself more powerful even than death, displaying his own body incorruptible, as first-fruits of the resurrection.⁶

The second perspective focused on the idea of salvation reversing the effects of the Fall, which included death, but also other symptoms of corruption.⁷ Again, Athanasius stressed that this re-creation or new creation of human nature was only possible through the one who created it becoming incarnate in his creation: ‘He, the incorruptible Son of God, being conjoined with all by a like nature, naturally clothed all with incorruption, by the promise of the resurrection.’ ⁸ Finally, Athanasius stressed that Christ came to reveal God to humans (again, ignorance of God was often seen as one of the corrupting effects of the Fall). Christ did not, however, come ‘to make a display, but to heal and teach those who were suffering’; he took a human body so as not to ‘dazzle’ people, but acted ‘like a kind teacher who cares for his disciples … [who] comes down to their level and teaches them … by simpler courses’.⁹ In sum, for Athanasius:

it was in the power of none other to turn the corruptible to incorruption, except the Saviour himself, that had at the beginning also made all things out of nothing; and that none other could create anew that likeness of the God’s image for men, save the image of the Father; and that none other could render the mortal immortal, save our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the very life; and that none other could teach men of the Father, and destroy the worship of idols, save the Word that orders all things and is alone the true Only-begotten Son of the Father.¹⁰

More epigrammatic is Athanasius’ famous summary of the mystery of salvation: ‘For he was made human that we might be made God.’ ¹¹

Athanasius’ foundational belief, then, was that in order to give God’s salvation Christ must be God, rather than simply a conduit of divine grace. This theme is found again in his specifically anti-Arian writings,¹² and Athanasius also applied a similar argument to the Holy Spirit (in his Letters to Serapion, written around 259–61CE). Athanasius argued that the Spirit has divine characteristics (that is, that the Spirit is uncreated, eternal, immutable, omnipresent and unique) and that the Spirit acts as God (the Spirit is bestower of life, holiness, illumination and divinizing perfection).¹³ Therefore, Athanasius asserted, the Spirit must be truly divine and must be homoousios with the Father and Son.

The argument that the Son and Spirit must be God to impart divine grace was partnered in Athanasius’ theology with an argument about the nature of transcendence. While both he and Arius agreed that God was transcendent they expressed this in very different ways. Arius assumed that God’s transcendence separated God from the world – as if God needed to be protected from its taint. This separation of God and world necessitated a mediator, the Logos, who was between the two. Athanasius, on the other hand, taught that God acted in the world, not despite his transcendence but because of it. God’s transcendent nature as the source of all that is was expressed in his creation of the world; his transcendent power was expressed by the ability to act in the world without being limited by it. Athanasius powerfully challenged the idea that transcendence meant separation, arguing that a God who was by necessity separated from the world would in fact be limited by it. Because God constantly acted in the world, even the Incarnation itself was not the arrival of God in the world but rather the Word’s choosing to act through one person in one specific location in space and time. Against Arius’ apparent view that the divine Son was adopted or raised by the Father to become God, Athanasius stressed that the movement was the other way round: following Philippians 2.5–11 he asserted that ‘he was not from a lower state promoted; but rather, existing as God, he took the form of a servant, and in taking it, was not promoted, but humbled himself’.¹⁴ This idea was sometimes known as ‘divine condescension’.¹⁵

Athanasius returned to Alexandria in 337. In the next 30 years he was exiled four more times – although during the last two periods he never left Egypt, being sheltered by his supporters, especially the Egyptian monks. During his ‘absences’ alternative bishops were appointed. These changes of ecclesiastical power often reflected changes at an imperial level. Constantine left three sons who vied for power throughout this period. Unfortunately for Athanasius, Constantius II, who had responsibility for the eastern Empire, had sympathy with the opponents of the Nicene definition. These opponents have often been called ‘Arians’ and were so labelled by Athanasius for polemical reasons. (In his later writings they often appear as ‘Ariomaniacs’, described as raving mad, or as dangerous in their deviations – so Athanasius asserts – as Valentinians, or pagans or Jews.¹⁶) In reality they were not very close to Arius’ theology and had little loyalty to the man himself (who had negligible influence from the Council of Nicaea until his death in 336). Instead, opposition to the Nicene definition crystallized around Eusebius of Nicomedia who was bishop first of the old eastern imperial capital Nicomedia then of the new capital Constantinople.¹⁷ As such, he was a man of some influence. In the meantime, Athanasius sought and received a certain amount of support in the western half of the Empire. For example, during his second exile he appealed to Julius, Bishop of Rome; a council in Rome in 341CE exonerated Athanasius and accused his opponents of ‘Arianism’.¹⁸ However, those who opposed his theology were in the ascendancy for much of the period and organized a series of councils to discuss alternative formulations to the Nicene concept of homoousios.

In this period, through the maze of councils, creeds and counter-creeds, one can identify several important points. First, there was increasing suspicion between east and west: the west seemingly being anxious that eastern theology over-emphasized the distinctness of Father, Son and Spirit, and the east being concerned that this distinctness was not being sufficiently protected. This anxiety was heightened by Athanasius’ known association, while he was in Rome, with Marcellus of Ancyra. Marcellus’ interpretation of the Nicene term homoousios radically de-emphasized the distinctness of the three divine persons: against Arius’ idea of three hypostases he thought that there was only one ousia in the Godhead and only one hypostasis.¹⁹ In particular, Marcellus’ theology appeared to suggest that the Son and the Spirit were only temporary manifestations of the Godhead which emerged in the course of salvation-history. His theology thus seemed alarmingly similar to the modalism combated by writers such as Tertullian.²⁰ His reading of I Corinthians 15.24–8 implied that the Son, in submitting all things to the Father, would himself be absorbed back in the Godhead: it was against this reading that the later Constantinopolitan rendering of the Nicene Creed insisted that Christ’s kingdom ‘would have no end’.²¹

Secondly, there were shifts in terminology. Nicaea had asserted that the Son was homoousios, ‘of the same being/substance’ as the Father. In its anathemas against Arius it declared that the view that ‘the Son of God is of another hypostasis or ousia’ was to be rejected. Literally translated one can indicate a slight difference between the two words: in Greek, hypostasis means an instantiation of something, an individual x, an actual thing; ousia can mean ‘a being’ or ‘being as such’ or it can refer to a particular kind of being. But one can see that it would be easy to read Nicaea as implying that the Greek words hypostasis and ousia were roughly equivalent – at least as used for Christian theology. Marcellus and some of his followers in the west clearly continued with this assumption, asserting that Father, Son and Spirit were one ousia and one hypostasis. On the other hand, the easterners were usually keen to maintain that Father, Son and Spirit were three hypostases, following a strong tradition which they had inherited from Origen. They were therefore, on this very narrow point, in agreement with Arius. The question was: did the declaration that Father, Son and Spirit were three hypostases also mean that they were three beings, three ousiai? To say so, of course, would be directly to contradict Nicaea, which had declared with the word homoousios that Father and Son were of the same ousia. The easterners seemed to be keen not to go this far, and in fact the 340s and 350s saw a marked reluctance to use any language referring to the divine ousia. For example, the Council of Antioch in 341 declared that Father, Son and Spirit were three hypostases, but avoided mention of ousia. The Council of Ancyra in 358 suggested that the Son was ‘like’ (homoios) the Father but not ‘of the same substance’ (homoousios) as the Father.²² For a while it looked as if the term homoios would win the day, particularly as it had backing from the Emperor Constans. The advantage with homoios was that it could appeal to a broad constituency. A prominent party of bishops led by Basil of Ancyra seems to have been willing to accept the word homoios provided it was used to indicate that the Son was like in essence to the Father. They apparently also suggested the wording ‘the Son is of similar substance (homoiousios) to the Father’. (They are sometimes thus known as homoiousians, or homoeousians).²³

The third point to note is the way in which the tensions between east and west, the councils and their use of theological terminology related to Athanasius’ own theological development. During his second exile, when Eusebius of Nicomedia and his party were gaining influence and when tensions between east and west were mounting, Athanasius wrote his three Discourses against the Arians. Athanasius’ work on the Nicene definition²⁴ was written around 356–57. During his third exile, the idea that the Son was ‘like’ (homoios) the Father was proposed at Ancyra (358); around this time, Athanasius had begun to defend the specific term homoousios. During a brief period of return to Alexandria in 362 Athanasius called a synod, affirming the Nicene definition and accepting that God could be seen as one ousia and three hypostases. The declaration was circulated in a document known as the Tome to the Antiochenes.

As Athanasius wrote on these themes, he became increasingly convinced of the need to express the relationship of the Son and the Father in more precise terms. All his works quoted many Scriptural verses. For example, he quoted phrases such as ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10.30) and ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (John 14.9) against Arius’ favourite verses.²⁵ Athanasius also used individual biblical words: ‘He is the image and radiance of the Father and Expression and Truth.’ ²⁶ He developed metaphors which had their origin in Scriptural language of light and water. There are not ‘three suns’, he wrote, but sun, radiance and light: ‘one is the light, from the sun, in the radiance’.²⁷ Athanasius also developed the image of God as ‘fountain of living waters’ (Jeremiah 2.13 and 17.12) or ‘fountain of wisdom’ (Baruch 3.12) with particular relation to the question of whether the Father existed before the Son:

Is it then not irreligious to say, ‘Once the Son was not?’ for it is all one with saying, ‘Once the Fountain was dry, destitute of Life and Wisdom.’ But a fountain would then cease to be; for that which does not produce from itself, is not a fountain. … God is the eternal Fountain of His proper Wisdom; and if the Fountain be eternal, the Wisdom also must needs be eternal.²⁸

In this work, Athanasius also began to use the terms homoios (‘like’: the Son is ‘in the Father and like the Father in all things’ ²⁹) or idios (‘same’: the Son possesses ‘sameness of being’ with the Father³⁰). The Son is like God but, as creator, is unlike creation.³¹ Interestingly, Athanasius was happy to affirm with Nicaea that the Son was ‘an offspring of the being of the Father’, but was seemingly still reluctant to use the term homoousios.³²

This reluctance ceased in the 350s in his work On the Council of Nicaea. Athanasius asserted that although the term homoousios was not in the Bible, it did express a biblical idea, when properly understood. In essence he argued that homoousios protected the Father–Son analogy against misunderstanding by explaining what was truly at the heart of it. Thus, to say that the Son was begotten by the Father did not mean that the Father existed before the Son (as human fathers exist before their sons) or that the Son’s begetting involved materiality or change (as human generation does). Rather, to say that the Son was begotten by the Father is to say that they share the same essence or being (ousia) and that the Son derives his essence from the Father. A human son too shares his father’s essence and derives it from him; a human son too is homoousios with his father: this, not ideas of change or time, is what forms the root of the analogy between divine and human fatherhood. This clarification of the point that some concepts could be truthful and biblical, yet also be metaphors or analogies which need to be understood correctly, clearly has its roots in Origen’s exegesis of Scripture. Athanasius’ particular application of it to Trinitarian theology was to have enormous influence on the Cappadocian theologians of the next generation.

Around two years after the Council of Nicaea, a baby girl called Macrina was born to a wealthy Christian family in the province of Pontus on the north coast of Asia Minor. In the next 15 years or so she was followed by nine more children. The family were Christian and revered the memory of Macrina’s maternal grandmother, Macrina the elder, who had been supposedly converted by Gregory the Wonderworker, pupil of Origen and missionary to the inner eastern regions of Asia Minor. By the late 350s (around the time when Athanasius was beginning to defend the Nicene term homoousios) Macrina persuaded her widowed mother Emmelia to turn their family home and country estate at Annesi into a monastery, with separate dwellings for men and women. Furthermore, the legend goes, she persuaded several of her brothers to join her in following ‘the goal of philosophy’ – that is a life of Christian asceticism.³³

Whatever the truth concerning their reasons for joining the Church, what is certain is that the eldest boy, Basil, and his younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa, became two of the most influential theologians of the fourth century. They are usually grouped together with Gregory of Nazianzus, who was also from a wealthy family. His father was a pagan monotheist who was converted to Christianity by his wife. Gregory of Nazianzus became a close friend of Basil in their youth, probably while they both studied in Athens. Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus were ordained presbyters in around 362 (the year of Julian the Apostate’s accession as emperor, and the year of Athanasius’ council in Alexandria). Gregory of Nyssa – who unlike the other two was married – followed several years later. Although they never lost touch with the monastic life, these three men became increasingly involved in ecclesiastical politics, particularly the defence of the Nicene definition. Basil became Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia in about 370CE: he promptly elected his brother Gregory to one bishopric (in Nyssa) and his friend Gregory to another (in Sasima).³⁴

The very considerable social and practical aspects of the Cappadocians’ theology will be treated in the next chapter, but it is important to bear in mind that the theology of all three was profoundly influenced by the community at Annesi and by the values of the ascetic life. Their theology took up the great themes of Athanasius’ theology – the equality of Father, Son and Spirit; the condescension of God in the Incarnation leading to the recovery of the image of God in humanity. In developing these themes further the Cappadocians integrated them with a deeper understanding of other aspects of Christian theology, such as the union of divine and human in Jesus Christ, the perfection of human nature at the eschaton, the nature of theological language and more formal thinking about the tasks and challenges of human life.

Although it is now standard to complain that textbook histories of the early Church have too easily lumped three rather distinct theologians together under the term ‘the Cappadocians’, nevertheless one must not go too far in the opposite direction. They did share common themes and approaches, and although they disagreed on some issues, these disagreements were not in the same category as the polemical arguments which they all addressed to Eunomius or Apollinarius, for example. Indeed, the fact that there were three highly educated and like-minded individuals in close correspondence with one another generated a sophisticated level of debate and mutual intellectual development which lies in between outright disagreement and total agreement. Both Gregories, for example, simultaneously praise Basil for his influence on their ideas and then subject his theology to a subtle critique.

The same kind of consideration applies to the relation all three Cappadocians had to Origen. Their exegesis was profoundly shaped by his, both in its general method and in their readings of individual passages. By the late 350s Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus had read enough of Origen to have edited a collection of excerpts from his writings on the themes of exegesis and the nature of divine punishment. They and Gregory of Nyssa by no means agreed with all of Origen’s views, and each was influenced by Origen in different ways. Nevertheless, aspects of their thought can be read as a sustained commentary on and (in the positive sense) a critique of the Alexandrian’s theology.

There seem to have been two main factors which led the Cappadocians to rethink Trinitarian theology. The first was that they seem to have been more sensitive than Athanasius to the concerns of many eastern bishops about the language of Nicaea. Athanasius paints a picture of debate in this period as between the defenders of Nicaea and everyone else (with a specific focus on Nicaea’s ontological language: ‘from the ousia of the Father’, ‘homoousios with the Father’). In fact, a careful examination reveals a spectrum of beliefs and different degrees of tolerance for different kinds of wording. Thus, on the far ‘left’ ³⁵ one could place Aetius (and later his pupil Eunomius), who argued that the Son was unlike (anomoios) the essence of the Father – they have thus been termed anomoians.³⁶ On the far ‘right’, one could place Marcellus and others who so emphasized the likeness of Son and Father that they apparently failed to identify any eternal distinction between the two. In between, there were a variety of positions, not all of which were clearly linked to any particular phrase or slogan. Precisely the problem with the term homoios (like) was that it was open to different interpretations: Athanasius could use it to emphasize the equality of Father and Son, those following Eunomius of Nicomedia could use it to suggest the subordination of Son to the Father. Basil of Ancyra was most happy using the term if it was qualified with some ousia language, ‘the Son is like the essence of the Father’; Aetius could only accept it without this.

Perhaps more acutely than Athanasius, the Cappadocians could see how Origen’s theology had led to two broad and divergent Trinitarian traditions. Origen himself avoided ousia language,³⁷ but he was willing to write of Father, Son and Spirit being three hypostases. There were those, like Eusebius of Caesarea and Arius himself, who agreed with the language of three hypostases, but denied Origen’s doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son in order to establish a more clearly subordinationist doctrine of the Trinity. There were others, like Alexander and Athanasius, who strongly asserted the eternal generation of the Son, in order to affirm that the Son shared the ousia of the Father. The difficulty was that Athanasius’ known early association with Marcellus, and Marcellus’ insistence on writing of Father, Son and Spirit being just one hypostasis, made it seem as if Athanasius’ reluctance to use the term hypostasis allied him completely with Marcellus’s concept of the Trinity – even if this was not the case. Responding to this kind of anxiety about modalism, the Council of Antioch in 341CE suggested a formula for the relation of the three persons: they were ‘three in hypostasis and one in agreement’.³⁸ The Cappadocians’ success lay in recognizing the seriousness of fears about modalism and declaring that Father, Son and Spirit were three hypostases to counter that anxiety. But they also realized that concepts such as ‘one in agreement’ or ‘like’ were so open to a range of interpretations that some kind of ousia language was necessary. Hence, they strongly asserted that the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit was both three hypostases and one ousia (in other words whilst being individuals, the Son and the Spirit were both homoousios with the Father). Of course, the question remained of how exactly the three were related – an issue to which we shall return.

The second factor which contributed to the Cappadocians’ approach to the doctrine of the Trinity was their encounters with Eunomius. This presbyter was a pupil of Aetius, but was a native of Cappadocia. He wrote works strongly defending the view that although the Son was begotten of the Father and thus derived some characteristics from him, the Son was not of the same ousia as the Father. His views are often described as ‘neo-Arian’, although ‘Anomoian’ or ‘heterousian’ are probably better terms. His theology was based on a strict logic deriving from the use of the terms ‘begotten’ (gennetos) for the Son and ‘unbegotten’ (agennetos) for the Father. If the Son is begotten, Eunomius reasoned, then the Father is the unbegotten one. Associating ‘begottenness’ not only with the concept of derivation but also with the idea of having a beginning in time and being dependent (not transcendent), Eunomius found it impossible to understand how anything could be begotten and be God. Indeed, the Cappadocians accused him of thinking ‘unbegotten’ was in effect a definition of the divine nature.

The Cappadocian response to this theology was two-fold. Firstly, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa attacked his premise that any term could define the nature of God (indeed, their philosophy of language went even further to claim that no nature, whether of God or of a goat, could be adequately understood or described by humans).³⁹ They pointed out that agennetos, like many words for God, was a negative term: God is unbegotten, invisible, immaterial and so on. According to Basil and Gregory these words indicated that humans could say what God is not, but no one could say what God is. When positive language was used about God – God is love, God is a consuming fire – it was not literally describing God’s very nature but using analogies from the created realm to describe humans’ experience of God’s action in the world. If one realized this it would become possible to say of both the Son and the Father that they are immaterial, invisible, unending and so on, whilst also affirming that within the Trinity, the Son is begotten and the Father is unbegotten.

This still leaves a problem, however. For it was clear that theologians were habitually using the term agennetos, not simply to distinguish the Father’s relation to the Son but also to contrast God with the world: it had become a one-word summary of divine transcendence. Surely, though, it was not possible to say simultaneously that the Son was both ‘begotten’ and ‘unbegotten’? All three Cappadocians appear to have worked towards solving this problem, making more explicit and attempting to explain an assumption that underlay Athanasius’ theology: that the Son is begotten in one sense and unbegotten in another sense. That is, the Son is begotten in the sense that he derives his being from the Father; but he is unbegotten in the sense that, like the Father, he is God (he is unbegotten in the sense that he is absolutely transcendent over creation, the one source of all, and dependent on no other for his eternal existence). Whereas Arius thought that ‘begotten’ was synonymous with ‘having a beginning in time’, the Cappadocians explicitly noted that through the doctrine of eternal generation one could express the idea that the Son and Spirit could derive from the Father but that as God all three were the one eternal source of time. Gregory of Nazianzus attacked his opponents’ misunderstanding of the question (which is quoted here in italics):

But, it may be said, the ingenerate (agenneton) and the generate (genneton) are not the same. If that is the case, the Father and the Son cannot be the same thing … what are your grounds for denying that ingenerate and generate are the same? If you had said uncreated and created, I should agree – what has no origin and what is created cannot be the same in nature. … If you mean ingenerateness and generateness – no these [properties] are not the same thing; but if you mean the things which have these properties in them, why should they not be the same?⁴⁰

Gregory is dealing with two issues here: first, that one being can possess or contain different properties (in this case God – divine being – can contain the properties of ingenerateness and generateness); secondly, that ingenerate in this context does not mean ‘uncreated’, and generate does not mean ‘created’. In a similar argument, Gregory of Nyssa states that the term agennetos is similar to the word anarchos. The problem is that anarchos can mean two things: without origin or without beginning. The Son, like the Father, but unlike creation, is without beginning (Gregory here affirms the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father); however the Son is not without origin, for because he is begotten by the Father he has his origin in the Father.⁴¹

What the two Gregories are here approaching (but never seem quite to articulate in so many words) is a clear sense that gennetos and agennetos can mean two different things. In fact, it has become clear through investigating the origins of the words that the debates about the doctrine of the Trinity rested on a confusion of two different verbs – a confusion of which even the Cappadocians were unaware. Strictly speaking, the word gennetos (double ‘n’) is the past participle of the Greek verb gennaomai, ‘to be begotten’. In other words, it explicitly refers to the act of a man fathering a child. The word genetos (single ‘n’) is the past participle of the Greek verb gignomai, which literally means ‘to come into existence’ or ‘to become’; it is inextricably tied up with notions of change and temporality – in other words, with createdness. From this, it is clear that Greek writers should have been able to say that the Son was gennetos (begotten of the Father) but not genetos (he did not come into being in the way that creation did).

The confusion of the terms arose, however, because of the similarity of meaning of their negative forms: ‘unbegotten’ is very similar in meaning to ‘never having come into existence’. Both words indicate a transcendence, independence of any origin or source. The confusion was so acute that to all intents and purposes agennetos and agenetos became the same word (spelled with a double or a single ‘n’). Because they were considered to be the same word, it was harder for theologians to argue that the Son was both gennetos (begotten) and agen(n)etos (without any origin).

Nevertheless, both Gregories do suggest that as Son the Son is begotten of the Father and that as God the Son is without origin. Gregory of Nyssa uses the language of hypostasis to express this: ‘so he, who according to his hypostasis is not unoriginate (anarchon), in every other respect is agreed to be unoriginate (anarchon)’.⁴² It was this kind of argument that led the Cappadocians to affirm the proposition for which they are now most famed: that God is one in ousia, but three in hypostases. For what they were in fact asserting was that the divine essence is without origin (agenetos), but that the Son as a hypostasis of the divine essence derives from the Father.

There has been a tendency in some accounts of the Cappadocians to think that their defence of the Nicene concept of homoousios by using the idea of one ousia and three hypostases was a separate development from their writings on the Holy Spirit. Once they had got the problem of the Trinity out of the way, they could move on to the third hypostasis. However, there is a strong argument to suggest that their Trinitarian writings and their writings on the Spirit in particular are closely interconnected. Basil’s On the Holy Spirit argues that if something is equal in honour (homotimos) to God the Father, then it is of the same substance (homoousios) with them.⁴³ He first argues the case with regard to the Son, then applies it to the Spirit. This is not because he thinks the cases can be treated separately – quite the opposite. It is a clever rhetorical strategy designed to persuade his opponents, the followers of Macedonius, known as the ‘Spirit fighters’ (Pneumatomachians). They argued that while the Son was homoousios, the Spirit was not. Basil counters this with an accusation of inconsistency. He brings forward numerous examples from the Bible to show that the Spirit, like the Son, is equal in honour with the Father and therefore that the three persons must share one divine essence. His argument also refers to the use of baptismal formulae – such as ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ – which seemed to Basil to assume that each person was homoousios with the others and the belief that they worked together. If the arguments worked for the Son, they would work for the Spirit. It was not a case of experimenting to see whether they applied to the Spirit too, for if they failed for the Spirit, they would fail for the Son. Either something is divine, or it is not: there is no third way. Even so, Basil was famously shy of asserting that the Spirit can be called ‘God’. This was possibly because he was less clear about the way in which the persons related to each other, because thought on this issue rapidly raised the tricky question: if the Spirit and the Son both derive from the Father, how do they differ from one another?

Gregory of Nazianzus, however, was much more forthright on how to name the Spirit: ‘What then? Is the Spirit God? Most certainly. Well then, is he consubstantial? Yes, if he is God.’ ⁴⁴ It is perhaps this clear avowal that leads him to discuss a knotty question mentioned above: how is it possible to distinguish between the Son and the Spirit? Is it that the Father has two sons – twins? – or even a son and a grandson? ⁴⁵ Gregory ridiculed such conclusions, reminding his audience that such language was not to be taken in human terms. Instead he argued that the Spirit was begotten from the Father through the Son. This distinguishes the Spirit from the Son who was simply begotten of the Father. The distinction between the three is purely in terms of how they are related to one another (specifically, as to how the Spirit and Son are caused in different ways by the Father), not in their essence, qualities or roles.

In some contexts the Cappadocians explained the relation of ousia and hypostasis in terms of the relation of the general and the particular. Thus ousia could be seen as the general category of ‘being God’, whereas the hypostasis Son is a particular instance of being God. The example they often used to illustrate this – notoriously – was that of ‘three men’: all humans are united by their common human nature – the ousia of ‘being human’; Peter, Andrew, John and James are all individual hypostases of the one human ousia.⁴⁶ The usefulness of this analogy was that it clearly indicated the equality of Father, Son and Spirit: the Father is no more divine than the Son, just as a human father is no more human than his son. To hostile readers, however, the analogy could seem tantamount to suggesting tritheism, for human beings seem not to be united very closely. This was problematic not only because it suggested pagan polytheism but because it raised the old Arian ghoul of two – in this case three – agenneta. But the analogy could be defended. First, to the ancient mind (and to the Cappadocians in particular), human nature was one in a much more strong sense that it is to modern readers. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, for example, stress the idea that all human nature was created in the image of God.⁴⁷ Secondly, Gregory of Nyssa argued that whereas humans were divided by space and time, this was not true of God, in whom there is no interval. Even when humans claim to act ‘together’, they are still divided, whereas God’s actions are one in a much more profound and thorough-going way. (Hence Gregory is most insistent that Father, Son and Holy Spirit were all involved in the act of creation, and the act of salvation and the act of perfection of human nature, lest one should come up with the picture of three separate gods: a Father who creates, a Son who saves and a Spirit who perfects.⁴⁸) Thirdly, Gregory stressed the causal connections between the three hypostases: the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. These causal connections are the only way in which the three can be distinguished. The three cannot possess different properties, because they all necessarily possess the properties proper to the divine nature. They cannot act in three different ways, or they would indeed be three gods. The only way they can be distinguished is by their relations to one another – the three ways in which they exist as the one God. The Father exists as the origin of the Son and the Spirit; the Son exists as eternally begotten of the Father; the Spirit exists as proceeding from the Father and the Son. Because of this emphasis on causal connections, Gregory’s use of the ‘three men’ analogy was nearly always accompanied by the use of other analogies which stressed the causal connection of the three. Thus, for example, he described the divine nature as a chain in which the three hypostases are interlinked and can only work together to haul humanity heavenward.⁴⁹

Gregory of Nazianzus adapted the three-men analogy in a way which stressed the different causal relations between the three: his three humans were Adam (who originated from no other human), Eve (who originated from Adam’s rib) and Seth (who originated from Adam and Eve). Instead of the analogy of a chain, which might be taken by the simple to suggest that the Spirit was inferior to the Son and the Son to the Father, Gregory of Nazianzus tried to show the way in which relations can bind three persons together in a way that simultaneously unites them and distinguishes each from the other. Seth clearly was derived from Adam in a different way from the way in which Eve derived from Adam. Indeed, according to some late-antique biological notions, a baby properly originated from her father through the agency of the mother, which would make Gregory of Nazianzus’ parallel with the Spirit’s origin from the Father through the Son even tighter. But Adam, Eve and Seth were bound together by the birth of Seth. This was obviously not a perfect analogy, and Gregory did not press it as much as I have done here: like all the Cappadocians, Gregory of Nazianzus was very cautious about the use of analogy.

In a very similar way to Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus felt the need to defend against accusations of tritheism by appealing to the idea of perfectly unified divine action. He did this by nuancing the concept of monotheism, with the notion of monarchia:

Monotheism with its single governing principle is what we value – not monotheism defined as the sovereignty of a single person … but the single rule produced by equality of nature, harmony of will, identity of action, and the convergence towards their source of what springs from unity – none of which is possible in the case of created nature. The result is that although there is numerical distinction, there is no division in the being.⁵⁰

Basil of Caesarea raised the question of whether, strictly speaking, one could ‘count’ the three persons in the one God and answered it in rather technical terms: one can say there are three persons, but one cannot count them ‘one, two, three’, for any such act of counting would set them in a kind of order, suggesting the superiority of the first. Instead, one can affirm three persons and name them: Father, Son and Spirit. Gregory of Nazianzus, on the other hand, writing in a more popular context, used the idea of number, to rise to more poetic heights:

I cannot think of the One without immediately being surrounded by the radiance of the Three; nor can I discern the Three without at once being carried back to the One. When I think of the Three I think of him as a whole. … I cannot grasp the greatness of the One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one luminary [i.e. source of light] and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.⁵¹

In 379 – the year of Basil’s death – a new emperor came into power. Theodosius’ personal sympathies lay with the pro-Nicene camp and he was prepared to put his official weight behind them. In 380 he issued a decree that the Empire should be united in acceptance of the Nicene Creed and he planned a council for the next year. The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was the result of that council, but no detailed minutes of the proceedings remain. The creed fitted with a Cappadocian reading of the faith of Nicaea: it emphasized the divinity of the Spirit, without directly naming the Spirit ‘God’; it omitted the embarrassing anathemas which implied that ousia and hypostasis meant the same thing.⁵² But neither it nor Theodosius’ subsequent proclamation quote the supposed Cappadocian catchphrase, ‘one ousia, three hypostases’. The only place where that was mentioned directly was in a letter sent from the council to the western bishops in 382:

[The 318 Fathers of Nicaea] teach us to believe in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; clearly, to believe in the one divinity (thēotēs) and power (dunamis) and substance (ousia) of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; in their dignity of equal honour and in their coeternal reign, in three most perfect hypostases or three perfect persons (prosopa).⁵³

It seems to be the case that the idea of God as one ousia, three hypostases guided the Council of Constantinople’s new understanding of the Nicene Creed, but it was not added. This indicates a reluctance among those present to look as if they were adding anything substantial to it.

An important effect of the Cappadocians’ defence of the Son’s shared substance with the Father was a renewed look at the relation of the divine and human in the incarnate Jesus Christ. If Christ was fully and truly God, how could he also be fully human? One of the things at issue was the question of agency. Both Athanasius and the Cappadocians argued that Christ was divine because he was God acting in the world (not an agent of God in the world). But if God acted in Christ, what of that traditional site of human agency, the soul or human mind? The second problem was Athanasius’ own theology of the Incarnation: although exceptionally clear in asserting that Christ was both human and divine, he was not clear in explaining how that might be, and in particular was very hazy on the question of whether Christ had a human soul. In his early works, the issue is not mentioned at all, and in the Tome to the Antiochenes it is merely acknowledged, and apparently accepted, as a view belonging to another group.

Two things made the question more urgent: first, the Cappadocians brought the issue of agency to the fore in their defence of the doctrine of the Trinity; second, Apollinarius, a noted Christian scholar, follower of Athanasius and defender of the Nicene homoousios formula, directly asserted that Christ had no human soul. His reasoning appeared to be, first, that the divinity and the humanity must be fully united in Christ, or else Christ would either be a prophet (a true human merely blessed by God) or God in a fake replica of a human body.⁵⁴ Second, Apollinarius seemed to assume that a fully unified person must have one centre or source from which his action proceeds: in God, it is God’s own undivided self; in humans (who are composed of parts) it is the soul. Apollinarius seems to have suggested that in Christ, the human soul’s place was taken by the divine nature: he was thus in a way merely exaggerating some of Athanasius’ tendencies to write of Christ’s body as a ‘tool’ or an ‘instrument’, or to envisage Christ as putting on humanity as a person puts on a cloak. In order to stress the idea that Christ’s body was not disposable, Apollinarius stressed the unity of the whole and seemed to work from the analogy that Christ the God-man was composed of the divine nature (the Son, or Logos) and human flesh (sarx) in a way similar to other humans’ composition of soul and body. Apollinarius’ view has thus sometimes been described as an exaggerated version of a ‘Logos-sarx’ Christology.⁵⁵

Both Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus articulated responses to Apollinarius. In order to do this they returned to the inheritance from Athanasius which they shared with Apollinarius: the divinity of Christ, the humanity of Christ and the relevance of both for salvation. Christ took on, or ‘assumed’, not just one human nature in the Incarnation but mysteriously assumed all of human nature in order that he might die for all, heal all and reveal God to all. Specifically, in taking on human nature Christ cleansed it from the corruption caused by the Fall. But surely, they argued, corruption was not only in the body, but in human souls also? If Christ were to heal all human nature, physical and spiritual, he must, as an individual human, have had a human soul. Gregory of Nazianzus reminded his readers that it was in his soul that Adam sinned first (if not, one would be obliged, like the Gnostics, to suspect God of having created some evil part of the material creation that led him astray). Hence, ‘The very thing [i.e. the soul] that transgressed stood in special need of salvation. The very thing that needed salvation was assumed [by Christ]. Therefore mind was assumed.’ ⁵⁶

That did leave the question hanging of how Christ could have two potential centres of agency, divine and human. Gregory of Nazianzus ridiculed his Apollinarianist opponents for supposedly saying that there was not enough ‘room’ for a human soul alongside the Logos, but that did not really respond to the main problem, which was the potential of division: could it have been possible for Christ to have had in effect a divided mind? Gregory of Nazianzus suggested that the human mind of Christ was in harmony with the divine nature, playing a mediating role ‘between Godhead and the grossness of the flesh’.⁵⁷ Gregory of Nyssa suggested that Christ’s human mind became infused with the Godhead, until it was perfected and the question of a divided self could not arise. In order to express this idea he used the term mixis – most easily translated ‘mixture’ in English, but capable of a range of meanings in Greek, from the blending of two things into a third new compound, to (more colloquially) a sexual union in which two things remain two despite the intensity of their union. The particular analogy Gregory used suggests a meaning lying somewhere between the two: he argued that Christ’s human soul became one with the divine in the way that a drop of vinegar becomes mixed with the water of the sea into which it is dropped.⁵⁸ Although capable of various interpretations, Gregory’s main point seems to be that the properties of the mixture become that of the sea (salty rather than tasting of vinegar), whilst the actual atoms of the vinegar remain, however much they are diluted into the vast waters of the sea.⁵⁹ The language of mixis was easily misread, however, as suggesting that the Logos and Christ’s human mind blended to form a unique quasi-human, quasi-divine compound. This kind of idea outraged later theologians when the issue of Christ’s human nature erupted again in the fifth century.

The Cappadocians’ emphasis on the idea that the humanity of Christ is humans’ own humanity – albeit in a perfected state – had important implications for the rest of their theology. The first was the idea of salvation as the following of Christ. For the most part, this was expressed in the ideas, familiar from previous Church Fathers, that Christ defeated death and that his resurrection was the first-fruits of a general resurrection of humanity. The Cappadocians followed Athanasius in referring to this as the restoration of humanity to its state before the Fall. They were also interested in the effects of Christ’s salvation on humans before their eschatological perfection. Again like Athanasius they believed that salvation had more than a juridical effect – it did not just pronounce people absolved from their sin. Rather, they believed that humans would embark on a process of transformation, beginning from the very day of their baptism. This process was made possible by God’s grace through Christ; however, the Cappadocians did believe that the believer could work with God in making real some of the effects of salvation in their life. This idea was most prominent in the thought of Gregory of Nyssa (who referred to it as sunergia ‘working with’ or ‘cooperation with’ God), but it is implicit in what the other Gregory and Basil wrote about asceticism. The concept has often been criticized as if it suggested that salvation itself could be earned through human effort, but this is a misunderstanding. Cooperation with God is only possible as a result of the salvation already worked through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Gregory’s idea in particular implied that ‘working with’ God hastened some of the effects of salvation in one’s life – not that it caused them.

In Gregory of Nyssa the idea of cooperation was accompanied – and indeed clarified – by his idea that in the end all of humanity would be saved. In this he was following on from an Origenistic tradition, although he was careful always to distance himself from the more controversial aspects of Origen’s universalism.⁶⁰ The idea of universal salvation stressed the power of God’s grace in Christ: Christ won a complete victory over evil and death on the Cross. It also emphasized that when Christ took on all human nature in the Incarnation he really did make it possible for all individual humans to be cleansed of their sin. (Athanasius would have found it difficult to explain how it was that some humans failed to be cleansed.) No early Christian theologian suggested that Christ’s resurrection instantly wiped the slate clean for humans in actuality: they spoke of it being the first-fruits, or paving the way for, humans’ salvation. Universalism’s distinctive idea was that in the end, the cleansing of corruption gradually working its way through human nature would eventually become complete. Gregory of Nyssa sometimes wrote of Christ’s action in human nature being like the leaven in dough, an analogy which implicitly relies on the idea of a waiting time, as the yeast does its work. The way in which this would work is through a double-sided process which is experienced in some aspects as cleansing and in others as a purificatory punishment. Gregory suggested that if humans willingly allowed, or even participated in, their own cleansing on earth they would avoid some punishment in the life after. On the other hand, recalcitrant sinners on earth would be punished for long ages in hell before eventually being pure enough to attain to heaven.⁶¹

Gregory of Nazianzus seems to have been in agreement with the basic idea that in the end all would be saved, although it forms a much less central part of his theology and it is not entirely clear whether he held the idea throughout his life.⁶² Perhaps because of the vital role he has played in eastern Orthodox theology, the idea has in any case tended not to be attributed to him. On the other hand, the rather more marginal role of Gregory of Nyssa may partly be attributed to the unavoidable centrality of the idea in his theology. Unlike the two Gregories, Basil seems never to have held the idea. His preaching in particular is full of stern warnings about the eternal consequences of refusing the salvation which God has offered to humans in Christ.⁶³

This last example shows the complexity of the Cappadocians’ relationship to Origen. They would all have agreed with his fundamental principles of Christian theology, but they were far from unanimous in accepting other of his theological ideas – and the circumstances made it necessary for them to develop his doctrine of the Trinity very considerably. His influence on them was thus apparent less in the detailed doctrinal conclusions they came to and more in the modes in which they did theology. That is, it was apparent in their method of exegesis, their apophatic theology and in the way they wrote theology.

First, the Cappadocians all broadly agreed with the principle that although most of the Bible was historically true, it also contained other truths which should be investigated by the keen reader. They were keen readers of Origen’s commentaries and homilies on biblical texts. Many examples can be given where their individual readings of verses follow Origen’s precedent. As whole works, Gregory of Nyssa’s Commentary on the Song of Songs is much indebted to Origen’s Commentary and Homilies, and Basil’s work on the six days of creation (On the Hexameron) is similarly indebted to Origen’s various reflections on Genesis. On the other hand, there are also examples of where the Cappadocians’ theological development away from Origen meant that they interpreted verses rather differently, for example Gregory of Nyssa’s interpretation of Paul’s account of the resurrection in I Corinthians 15. But the fundamental idea of the inexhaustible depths of Scripture remained and – crucially – was given further significance by Basil’s and Gregory of Nyssa’s arguments against Eunomius. Besides arguing that no human word could fully describe God, they were also committed to the view that even the inspired words of Scripture were just human words, albeit ones with authority and more than the usual accuracy. Discrepancies and even contradictions in Scripture could be explained as the inevitable clash of metaphors, analogies and images produced when trying to talk about God. While no words were sufficient to describe God, human language had an enormous potential to ‘aim towards’ God in prayer and praise: the Bible was a perfect demonstration of that.

Secondly, the Cappadocians were very influenced by Origen’s notion of spiritual progress. He took classical ideas of education and philosophical discipline (intellectual, moral and physical) and applied these to Christianity. Although even the simplest believer could grasp what was necessary for their salvation, there was an imperative for all to advance in their faith. This was made clear by the nature of Scripture itself which contained not only simple truths, but also unplumbable depths of wisdom. Origen’s development of these ideas gave a new dimension to Christian life. No longer was it conceived primarily in terms of the believer’s relation to God in the present moment (as in the intense spirituality of writers such as Ignatius of Antioch or Tertullian). Nor was it focused on the community’s collective expectation of a millennial reign of God on earth (as in Justin Martyr or Irenaeus). Instead, Origen’s theology encouraged each believer to think of their own individual spiritual life as being like a journey towards God: it kept the dynamic, future-oriented aspect of Irenaeus’ theology, but applied it in a more individualistic way. It did not abandon the material or communal sides of Christian life (Origen was profoundly interested in questions about the body, about the Church, the sacraments, and so on), but it did have the effect of a more internal and intellectual approach to Christian faith. The dynamic, future-oriented aspect of the individual’s spiritual journey was strengthened further by the theology of Gregory of Nyssa, who argued that since God was infinite, no one could ever fully know God – even in heaven. The forward movement of each person towards God, therefore, would never end, like an arrow endlessly propelled but never quite reaching its target. One might think this a rather negative idea. However, according to Gregory, the recognition of divine infinity merely caused an endless desire for the divine: the soul in its advance was paradoxically endlessly satisfied, yet endlessly driven on in its desire for more. This kind of idea became enormously influential in Christian mysticism, especially in monastic circles. Although the average ascetic did not receive such ideas in a very sophisticated form, it is clear that the patterns of ascetic living, both practical and spiritual, were profoundly affected by the ideas of life as a dynamic journey into God, and God as an infinite resource which can never be exhausted.

Thirdly, Origen’s theology affected the way in which the Cappadocians wrote. In fact their literary styles are rather different – both from each other and from Origen’s. Nevertheless, all four theologians were propelled by an intense love of erudition, the belief that it could serve the Gospel and, above all, the desire to teach people about the Gospel by using their own individual learning. In particular, the Cappadocians seem to have picked up on the Platonist-Origenist idea that teachers must adapt their address to the capabilities of those listening to or reading them. Thus we find marked contrasts of style in works addressed to their congregations and letters addressed to learned contemporaries. None of the Cappadocians were frightened to use literary allusions or scientific analogies in order to explain or emphasize a theological idea. Although it might seem pretentious or laboured – or even dangerous – to a modern reader used to certain modes of popular or academic theology, this kind of approach was normal for their day, both in Christian and pagan literature. Indeed, the Cappadocians like other of their contemporaries, were probably seeking to show that Christian literature could be as sophisticated, varied, colourful and persuasive as contemporary pagan examples. They were not writing, as the apologists were, to prove that Christianity was moral and not a threat to the Empire. They were of course writing to teach and correct other Christians. But they were also keen, one suspects, with an eye on their pagan contemporaries, to show that Christian literature had, one might say, grown up. The one sure thing that pagans had been able to claim against Christianity – that it had no body of literature which was as serious, as varied, as useful and as beautiful as the Greek classics – was now seriously being challenged by such Christian writers as these.

Athanasius and the Cappadocians had an enormous influence on later Christian theology. Particularly in relation to their doctrines of the Trinity, but also with regard to their concepts of salvation and asceticism, they had an impact that spread into the west beyond the Greek theological tradition. In the later disputes over the exact relation between Christ’s humanity and his divinity, each side appealed to the authority of these figures to bolster their case. Contemporary with these four churchmen was another writer who was no less prolific, who was preoccupied with defending very similar theological ideas and who did so with no less profundity and subtlety. His name was Ephrem. He was born at the beginning of the fourth century (being about ten years younger than Athanasius and about 20 years older than Basil). Ephrem spent most of his life in Nisibis, in the province of Mesopotamia on the edge of the Roman Empire. When the town was handed over to the Persians in a treaty of 363, Ephrem and other Christians migrated further west to Edessa. Ephrem wrote in Syriac, which was the language of the Christian communities in Nisibis and Edessa. For this reason, and because many of the Syriac-speaking churches broke communion with most of the Greek- and Latin-speaking churches after the Council of Chalcedon, Ephrem’s theology has not had the same influence in Europe as that of Athanasius and the Cappadocians. Nevertheless, it has been enormously influential among Syriac-speaking Christians in the Middle East and his writings are now becoming more widely read (not least because of the appearance of translations into modern European languages).⁶⁴

Like the other theologians studied in this chapter, Ephrem wrote treatises refuting theological errors and commentaries on various books of the Bible. (The fact that Ephrem wrote a commentary on the Diatessaron, the four-fold Gospel synopsis composed by Tatian in the second century, reminds us that it was this, not the four separate Gospels, that was still in use by Syriac-speaking Christians.) But he also wrote much poetry, which was a less common theological genre in Greek – Gregory of Nazianzus’ poetry was somewhat of an exception. Many of his poems were composed for congregational singing, and the sixth-century Syriac poet Jacob of Serugh celebrated the fact that Ephrem trained choirs of women specially to sing them:

The blessed Ephrem saw that the women were silent from praise,
And in his wisdom he decided it was right that they should sing out;
So just as Moses gave timbrels to the young girls,
Thus did this discerning man compose hymns for virgins.⁶⁵

Ephrem shared with Athanasius and the Cappadocians an emphasis on the central theological idea that God had become human, so that humans could become divine:

Free will succeeded in making Adam’s beauty ugly,
for he, a man, sought to become a God.

Grace, however, made beautiful his deformities
and God came to become a man.

Divinity flew down
to draw humanity up.

For the Son had made beautiful the deformities of the servant
and so he has become a God, just as he desired.⁶⁶

As this passage suggests, Ephrem too used the Philippians’ hymn and Paul’s idea of Christ as the second Adam in order to express this idea of the ‘divine exchange’.⁶⁷ But while the idea of Christ ‘putting on’ human nature was just one way which Athanasius, for example, had for describing the Incarnation, in Ephrem it was a dominant theme. He shared an ancient tradition of reading Genesis 3.21 to refer to God clothing Adam and Eve with good garments, before the Fall – an interpretation which depended on a variant reading of the Hebrew text to mean ‘garments of light’, not ‘garments of skin’.⁶⁸ Thus, for Ephrem (as for many Syriac theologians), the pattern of salvation could be symbolically described thus: Adam and Eve lost their garments of light after the Fall and had to clothe themselves in leaves; Christ came and stripped off the signs of his glorious divinity in order to put on the garment of human nature; in doing so he was ‘able to reclothe them [Adam and Eve, i.e. humankind] in the glory they had stripped off, thus replacing the leaves’.⁶⁹ A little like Irenaeus, Ephrem’s usual way of explaining salvation is to recount a narrative of salvation-history: creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, Christ’s life, death and resurrection and then salvation seen as the return of humanity to the condition of paradise: ‘everyone has entered it; for through the first Adam who left it everyone had left it’.⁷⁰ This last theme is just one of the many theological emphases which Ephrem shares with Gregory of Nyssa. Like Gregory, Ephrem stresses the universality of the Incarnation – God has taken on all human nature (hence the emphasis in both theologians of the first Adam/second Adam parallel). Ephrem uses the idea of the harrowing of hell to explain how the effects of the Incarnation could extend ‘backwards’ to those before Christ.⁷¹ Unlike Gregory, however, Ephrem does seem to think that some people will refuse God’s offer of salvation and remain in hell (although he does share with Gregory the desire to see punishment after death in terms of separation from God and the torture of coming to recognize the full extent of one’s sins).⁷²

Underlying the idea of the divine exchange – ‘he gave us divinity, we gave him humanity’ ⁷³ – was the idea that Jesus Christ must have been truly divine and truly human for this exchange to be effective. The former was emphatically expressed in Ephrem, who was aware of the Arian heresy and the danger which it posed to the Christian idea of salvation. Throughout his theology ran the deep conviction in Christ’s full divinity. Less explicit, but nonetheless present, was the idea that the Holy Spirit too was divine. It was implied in the Spirit’s roles, especially divinizing the believer and sanctifying the rites of baptism and Eucharist.⁷⁴ For Ephrem, the Spirit also played a vital part in the Incarnation and in Christ’s own baptism, the idea that the Spirit was ‘with the Son’ in his baptism, suggesting perhaps their equality.⁷⁵ In one passage Ephrem appears to assert this explicitly, although typically this is expressed with an analogy rather than philosophically: ‘It is not said of Eve that she was Adam’s sister or his daughter, but that she came from him; likewise it is not to be said that the Spirit is a daughter or sister, but that [she] is from God and consubstantial with him.’ ⁷⁶ Here the author was trying to avoid any suggestion of inferiority that the metaphor of ‘being the child of’ might imply; it also possibly betrayed the anxiety that we saw in the Cappadocians: could there be two sons (or two children) of the Father – and in which case, what would make them different? (The passage also reminds one of the way in which the Syrian tradition referred to the Spirit as female, because of the grammatical gender of the term for spirit in Syriac.)

Christ’s baptism, in particular, was held by Ephrem to be an important revelation of the three-fold nature of God.⁷⁷ This nature was sometimes expressed with the symbolism of light, which was developed in a distinctive direction by Ephrem, so that the Son represented the light of the sun and the Spirit the heat.⁷⁸ Thus sanctification is expressed by Ephrem as warming; it is another way of expressing the idea that God deals with the nakedness of fallen human nature, and also usefully suggests the completion (or here, ‘ripening’) of God’s saving work: ‘By means of warmth all things ripen, as by the Spirit all are sanctified.’ ⁷⁹

The idea that Christ was fully human was emphasized by Ephrem, often by stressing that the garment/body that the Word put on was truly a human garment/body (‘our body was your clothing’), not least because it came from the body of Mary the virgin (‘he put on his mother’s robe’).⁸⁰ Importantly, Christ’s taking on a real, material human body was connected with Christ’s real presence in the material bread and wine of the Eucharist.⁸¹

The final important aspect of Ephrem’s theology to be highlighted here is his apophaticism. Again, there are tantalizing similarities with Gregory of Nyssa’s theology – although there is absolutely no evidence of any historical connection between Ephrem and any of the Cappadocians (despite a legend that he met Basil). Like Gregory’s, Ephrem’s apophaticism is both a deeply spiritual attitude of awe towards the divine, and is developed within the context of the Arian controversy. Ephrem’s Hymn on Virginity 52, for example, positively bristles with anger at the effrontery of the Arians who claim to know God:

The source of the rays is that bringing forth of our Saviour.
Our mind is much too weak to investigate it.

If one hopes to investigate it,

is revealed that he is not sufficient to the Source
Whose streams push on him …

They eject him, cast him out and hurl him by their rushing.⁸²

As Gregory suggested that humans cannot even understand the nature of animals, let alone themselves, so Ephrem produced the example of a gnat:

Let us take the gnat, smallest of all creatures …

In his substance [i.e. his nature, essence] the gnat became a mountain:
Although his body is quite small, his investigation is great.
Therefore, let all the mighty creatures be left out
and more than these, the splendid human being,

and more than the human, the distant heavenly [beings].

What is left then is
for us to contemplate in silence how hidden is
this offspring whom we despised but who sustained us.⁸³