Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa on the Wisdom of
Proverbs 8
Without exegesis of Holy Scripture, we do not have Christian doctrine. This point is crucial as we engage in a discussion of Proverbs 8. Thus far, we have looked at various biblical passages without concerning ourselves directly with specific theological or doctrinal implications. To be sure, I have already made the case that all proper interpretation of Scripture is spiritual or theological in character. That is to say, I have argued that we interpret the Bible for a certain purpose, a particular aim—eternal life in the Triune God. Any exegesis that doesn’t aim at this purpose isn’t interpretation of Scripture in the full, Christian sense. But an approach that takes this ultimate aim of exegesis into account carries an implication that I have not yet spelled out: exegesis provides the grounding for Christian doctrine; that is to say, biblical theology and dogmatic or systematic theology belong together.
Through what kind of reading, however, do we arrive at Christian doctrine?
On my understanding, a Christian reading of the biblical text always moves from the letter to the spirit. Spiritual interpretation, then, is an absolute requirement for exegesis. Perhaps the most important reason for this is that the heritage of Christian doctrine is the result of this kind of reading of the Bible. Sacramental reading, so I will argue in this chapter, is not an optional extra but lies at the heart of trinitarian exegesis and theology. In terms of hermeneutics, the main difference between the Arian and the pro-Nicene traditions of reading Proverbs 8 is that only the latter read the chapter in a deliberately sacramental fashion. The difference in hermeneutical approach between Arian and pro-Nicene theologians is a strong indication that we need the spiritual or theological interpretation of the church fathers in order to uphold the truth of the Nicene faith. Anglican scholar Ephraim Radner, in an essay on nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholic John
Keble, argues that if patristic exegesis “is genuinely rejected, so too must be any pretence to holding orthodox theistic convictions.”1 It is not the purpose of this chapter to argue this proposition in detail. After all, the fourth-century trinitarian disputes were wide-ranging, and the disagreements over Proverbs 8 formed only one small (though significant) element in the broader controversies.2 By looking at disagreements over Proverbs 8, we do, however, get some sense of the importance that a sacramental hermeneutic held for pro-Nicene theology.
I need to make an important caveat at this point: it is not the case that those who reject spiritual exegesis invariably also object to the doctrine of the Trinity. In fact, this is quite obviously not the case. Many Christian scholars, convinced that we cannot follow patristic approaches to the reading of Scripture, are nonetheless wholeheartedly devoted to the dogma of the Trinity as the ecumenical councils of the fourth century articulated it. What I am arguing, however, is that a rejection of the sacramental exegesis of the church fathers makes it difficult to ground our trinitarian convictions in the text of the Old Testament witness. In other words, it seems to me that while we may still hold to Nicene trinitarian theology even when we do exegesis by means of a purely historical method, we will have lost an important plank in the defense of this theology.
Disagreements in the early church on how to read Proverbs 8 were, in one important respect, limited. All interpreters of Scripture—from strict adherents to Nicaea such as Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa to radical subordinationists such as Aetius and Eunomius—agreed on one crucial point: Christ was somehow to be identified with the Wisdom of Proverbs 8. Khaled Anatolios rightly comments that a nonchristological interpretation was simply out of bounds: “A common adherence to the principle of the intertextual unity of Scripture prevented participants in the fourth-century debates from taking that route. If Jesus Christ is scripturally identified as God’s Wisdom (cf. 1 Cor. 1:24), then anything predicated of Wisdom anywhere in the Scriptures must be appropriately predicated of Christ.”3 So, both the pro-Nicene and the anti-Nicene theologians of the fourth century saw in the Wisdom of Proverbs a reference to Christ. The reason, undoubtedly, is that all parties involved in the debates recognized that proper exegesis demands that the unity of the Scriptures be taken into account. It simply wasn’t possible, either for the Arians or for pro-Nicene theologians, to read Proverbs 8 in isolation, independent of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ and detached from the New Testament witness to him. The church’s dogma—including her christological teaching—was grounded in the biblical text, and for the church fathers this included the Old Testament. To be sure, we will observe shortly that this unanimity about a christological reading
isn’t as profound as it may appear at first sight: not every christological reading was also a sacramental reading. Nonetheless, because today’s biblical scholars are divided over precisely the question of a christological reading of Proverbs 8, it is a significant observation that Arians and pro-Nicenes agreed on precisely this point.4
Early Christian theologians treated the trinitarian controversies as exegetical controversies. At stake, they believed, was the proper interpretation of the Scriptures—most notably, perhaps, Proverbs 8 (though, as I have already indicated, many other passages also entered the picture). At the same time, the road from exegesis to doctrine is one that the fathers knew to be strewn with obstacles. In this chapter we will see that different theologians—even those within the pro-Nicene camp—arrived at readings of Proverbs 8:22-25 that were at times remarkably different from each other. We will also see, however, that regardless of internal differences, the exegetical choices of pro-Nicene theologians such as Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa were driven by sacramental convictions about the interpretation of the Scriptures.
The passage from Proverbs 8, though it was by no means the only one leading to sharp exegetical disagreements in the fourth century, was central to the debates. Opinions clashed particularly with regard to verses 22-25:
22 The Lord created (ektisen) me as the beginning of his ways, for his works.
23 Before the ages, he established (ethemeliosen) me in the beginning.
24 Before the earth was made, before the depths were made, before the springs of the waters came
forth,
25 before the mountains were founded, before all the hills, he begets (genna) me.5
It is important to recognize that the fourth-century debates took place against the backdrop of an already developing tradition of interpretive engagement with this passage. This tradition goes back to the early third-century work of Origen (ca. 185-ca. 254). Reflecting on this passage in his book On First Principles (ca. 225), Origen refers every aspect of it to the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. Speaking of the two natures of Christ, Origen explains that he wants “to see what the only-begotten Son of God is.”6 Origen then quotes the passage in question, along with Colossians 1:15, which refers to Christ as the “firstborn of all creation.” The theologian from Alexandria straightforwardly makes the point that both passages refer to the eternal generation of the Son.7
This reading could easily lead to an erroneously subordinationist Christology; Origen (or his translator Rufinus) added, therefore, that the begetting of the Son mentioned in Proverbs 8:25 is an eternal begetting, so that we should not suppose that the Father “ever existed, even for a single moment, without begetting this wisdom.”8 God the Father “always had an only-begotten Son,” claims Origen.9 Begotten “of the Father’s will,”10 the Son is the invisible image and likeness of the Father, so that “there is no time when he did not exist.”11 In a comment that would reverberate throughout the later Arian controversies, Origen adds: “And when did the image of unspeakable, unnameable, unutterable substance of the Father, his impress, the Word who knows the Father, not exist? Let the man who dares to say, ‘There was a time when the Son was not,’ understand that this is what he will be saying, ‘Once wisdom did not exist, and word did not exist, and life did not exist.’”12 There was never a time when the eternal Son of God, the Wisdom of God, did not exist. And so, when in verse 22 Wisdom claims that she was created as “the beginning of his ways,” Origen clarifies that she was “begotten beyond the limits of any beginning that we can speak of or understand.”13 So, on the one hand, he applied the entire passage of Proverbs 8:22-25 to the pre-incarnate, eternal Son of God, to the generation of the Son, and so to the immanent life of the Trinity. On the other hand, On First Principles also placed the eternal Wisdom of God firmly on the other side of the creator-creature divide: the Father was never without his Wisdom.
Origen did face a serious exegetical challenge: How could one say of the eternal Son of God that he was “created” in eternity without thereby putting his genuine divinity in jeopardy? We already noted Origen’s claim that we shouldn’t think of the Son’s “beginning” as something we can understand. With regard to the “creation” of the Son (Prov. 8:22), Origen comments that Wisdom “fashions beforehand and contains within herself the species and causes of the entire creation.”14 Creation, that is, always existed “in form and outline” within the divine Wisdom.15 Origen appears to suggest that to say that Wisdom was “created” means that the creatures preexisted eternally in the eternal Son of God. To some, this exegesis must have seemed strained: whereas the text suggests that Wisdom was created, Origen seemed to be saying that the creatures were created (preexisting from eternity in Wisdom).
I suspect that two factors convinced Origen that his approach was nonetheless justified. First, he must have thought it theologically legitimate to apply creaturely predicates to eternal Wisdom because of his high view of divine providence: all creatures have their origin and destiny already in the eternal Word of God. Likely, therefore, Origen would not have seen a theological obstacle to referring the “creation” language of verse 22 to the creatures’
preexistence in the Son of God. Second, Origen must have realized that one’s exegetical options are limited: (1) one can deny the christological character of Proverbs 8 altogether; (2) one can refer the “creation” language to the incarnation of the Word rather than to the eternal relations in the Godhead;
(3) one can lower the divine status of the Son by explaining both the “creation” of Wisdom in verse 22 and her being “begotten” in verse 25 as speaking of a later (and lower) derivation of the Son from the Father; or (4) one can read the “creation” language as a reference to the creatures’ eternal origin in the Word of God. As we have already seen, the first option wasn’t a serious option for any party in the third- and fourth-century christological debates. In what follows, we will observe that Marcellus of Ancyra, Athanasius (in part), and Gregory of Nyssa would take the second option, but this raised the question of how this passage could still be taken as a reference to the eternal generation of the Son. The third option was the one that the Arian party would typically take; Origen’s On First Principles, however, rejected it explicitly, since it implies that there was a time when the Son did not exist. As a result, Origen settled for the fourth option, even though to some it may have appeared as contrived.
Origen’s reflections on Proverbs 8 set the stage for the fourth-century trinitarian debates. Seven years before the Council of Nicaea (325), Arius, condemned by an Alexandrian synod, fled to the northwest of today’s Turkey, to his friend Eusebius of Nicomedia, who at one time may have been a fellow student. Wishing to return to Alexandria, Arius wrote a letter to his bishop, Alexander of Alexandria, from Nicomedia in the year 320. Arius asked to be reinstated as a priest in Alexandria, with recognition for his christological views. His letter to Bishop Alexander begins—as a typical creedal formula would— with the words “We know one God.”16 The creedal letter was Arius’s confession of faith, intended to serve as a word of self-defense.17 It contains several references to Proverbs 8. Arius insists that when, in eternity, God begot an “only-begotten son,” the result was an “immutable and unchangeable perfect creature of God.”18 Furthermore, Arius maintains that the Son had been “created by the will of God before times and ages.”19 Arius’s creation language obviously echoes Proverbs 8. The Father, by his “will”—language that Origen had also used—“created” or “established” the Son “before the ages.”20 Arius’s creedal statement used a lot of “begetting” (gennao) language. The Son was “an offspring” (gennema), Arius maintained, but not as one of those born.21 The Son, he explained, was “begotten timelessly.”22 Clearly, Arius was referencing Proverbs 8:25: “Before the mountains were founded, before all the hills, he begets me.” Arius appeared convinced that the orthodox claim of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father flew directly in the face of the language of
verses 22 and 23: “The Lord created (ektisen) me” and “established (ethemeliosen) me.” The two key verbs seemed to make it obvious to Arius that Christ, as the eternal Wisdom of God, was a creature who had been established by God. A clear difference in origin and hence also in rank between the Father and the Son appeared to be implied. It would only stand to reason, then, that when verse 25 states, “he begets (genna) me,” this too implies that before this begetting, the Son did not exist—which is exactly the conclusion that Arius drew.
It is understandable that Proverbs 8 featured prominently in the Arian debates. The Arian side kept pressing what they thought was the obvious or plain reading of the text—which, as a result, became the key point of dispute with the pro-Nicene party. The Arianizing theologian Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 263-ca. 339) pressed the need for literal exegesis in a sharp debate with Marcellus of Ancyra (ca. 280-374). Marcellus was a strong opponent of Asterius the Sophist (died ca. 341) and other Arian theologians, whom he denounced in his book Against Asterius, written shortly after the Council of Nicaea (325). Asterius, an ally of Arius, made essentially three christological claims.23 The first was that God had created his Son, or the Word, before he created anything else, so that the Word could subsequently function as God’s medium in creating the rest of creation.
The Word, therefore, was a pre-temporal creation of God. The second claim was that the Son had to learn how to serve as this medium; he had to learn how to create the rest of the world. And the final claim was that the Father’s own, internal Word should not be confused with God’s Son, who in Scripture also gets the designation of “Word.” The result is that Asterius seemed to posit two “Words”: God’s own, proper Word, which was internal to him, as well as the Son or the Word through whom God created the world. It is the latter Word whose proper divinity Asterius disputed.
Although Marcellus—along with Athanasius and others—was a strong opponent of Asterius, he became most well known not for his pro-Nicene stance but for his heterodox eschatological views (though Marcellus regarded the two as closely linked). Because of his strong convictions regarding the unity of the eternal Word of God with the Father, Marcellus could not accept that the human nature of Christ would have an abiding place in the eternal kingdom. One day, God would be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28), and this implied, according to Marcellus, that the kingship of Christ—and perhaps also his human nature— would come to an end.24 Marcellus’ position was condemned by the Council of Constantinople (381), which added to the Creed the words, “whose kingdom shall have no end.” Ironically, Marcellus’ deviating views on the consummation directly resulted from his stringent opposition to the Arian cause.
As a pro-Nicene theologian, Marcellus may well have thought that Origen’s exegesis of Proverbs 8:22-25 insufficiently safeguarded the full divinity of the Son. Origen, after all, had interpreted the word “created” in verse 22 as a reference to the generation of the eternal Word of God. To be sure, he had added that this word refers only indirectly to the Son and that it is really the preexistent creatures that are in view in verse 22. But Marcellus probably worried that this exegetical qualification would not have come across very convincingly in debate with Asterius and other Arians. In other words, Origen’s exegesis could easily be morphed into a subordinationist reading of the text. Marcellus therefore took a different approach, one that Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa would later adopt as well: he took verse 22 as a reference to the incarnate Christ. Khaled Anatolios summarizes his position as follows: “Marcellus dealt with Proverbs 8:22 by locating the ‘creation for the sake of the works’ at the point of the incarnation and not in the absolute origin of the divinity of the preexistent Christ.”25 Marcellus, in short, transferred the reference of Proverbs 8:22 from theology (the trinitarian life)—where Origen had located it—to the economy (the history of salvation).
Eusebius of Caesarea, in his books Against Marcellus and Ecclesiastical Theology (both written between 337 and 339), vehemently attacked Marcellus.26 Sympathetic to the Arian cause, the bishop of Caesarea believed that Proverbs 8:22-25 could easily be read as referring in its entirety to the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son. That is to say, unlike Marcellus, Eusebius followed Origen’s line of thought and took the verbs “created,” “established,” and “begets” all as references to the Son’s pre-temporal origin in the Father. Marcellus, so it appeared to Eusebius, simply didn’t do justice to the “obvious”
(procheirou) sense of the text.27 Eusebius’ main objection to Marcellus’ exegesis, explains Christopher Beeley, is that the latter “strays from the plain and obvious sense of the text and is ignorant of the story that has been narrated.”28 In short, the Arian tradition of Eusebius and others highlighted the “plain” reading of the text and balked at the allegorizing tendencies of the pro-Nicene party.
Furthermore, according to Eusebius—and here he parted ways with Origen and instead aligned himself with Asterius—one had to distinguish between the Word that was internal to the Father’s own being and the subordinate Wisdom or Son of God through whom God had created the world. It was the latter, Eusebius maintained, to which Proverbs 8:22-25 referred.29 Eusebius, unlike Origen, distinguished between the internal Word of the Father and Christ as the created Wisdom of God. Also unlike Origen, he maintained that the word “created” in verse 22 speaks directly of the eternal Son of God himself (rather than of
creatures preexisting eternally in the Son of God); Eusebius thereby introduced the subordinationism that Origen had kept at bay in his exegesis of the passage.
The Arian use of Proverbs 8 put the pro-Nicene party on the defensive.
Saint Athanasius (ca. 296-373) was forced to deal with the passage in his dispute with the Arians, since his opponents kept using it as an argument. On several occasions, Athanasius embarked on an extensive discussion of the passage. He did so particularly in two writings, the Second Discourse against the Arians (the various segments probably dating from between 337 and 342) and On the Nicene Council (also known as De decretis, dating from around 353), both of which give evidence of how Athanasius read the Scriptures.
The most noteworthy—as well as most controversial—aspect of Athanasius’ rebuttal of the Arians’ interpretation of Proverbs 8 was the sacramental cast of his exegetical approach. Challenged by the Arians’ claim that the three verbs of Proverbs 8:22-25—“create,” “establish,” and “beget”—must all have one and the same point of reference, Athanasius disputes his opponents’ interpretive starting point. “We must not,” he avers in his Second Discourse, “expound [these proverbs] nakedly in their first sense, but we must inquire into the person (prosopon), and thus religiously put the sense on it. For what is said in proverbs is not said plainly (ek phanerou), but is put forth latently (kekrymmenos), as the Lord himself has taught us in the Gospel according to John, saying, ‘These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs, but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but openly’ [John 16:25].”- Athanasius does two things in this passage. First, he inquires after the person (prosopon) to which the text alludes—a point to which we will return shortly.31 Second, he maintains that we will gain insight into the identity of this person if we keep in mind the genre of the text. Proverbs, argues Athanasius, demand from us that we not look for the “plain” or “manifest” (ek phanerou) meaning. Instead, they give us their intended meaning in a “latent” or “hidden” manner (kekrymmenos). Accordingly, we should not explain them as if they were given “plainly,” lest, Athanasius insists, “by a false interpretation we wander from the truth.”32
As we will see, by insisting that we should move from the “plain” to the “hidden” meaning of the text, Athanasius suggests that the christological reality of the economy of salvation lies hidden in the text. Whereas the Arians insisted on a “plain” reading of the text as referring to a pre-temporal origin of the created Wisdom of God, Athanasius turned to the New Testament to find there
the reality of the Christ who is only obliquely hinted at in the Wisdom of the book of Proverbs. He was convinced, in other words, that the proverbs serve as sacramental containers for a reality that comes fully into the open when God reveals himself in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Among the most notable positions that Athanasius staked out hermeneutically is that biblical exegesis must be faithful to what the early church called the “canon of truth,” or its “rule of faith”—the basic trinitarian and christological confession of the church.33 Athanasius’ starting point for interpretation was that the Scriptures have their place within the church and thus should be read in line with the church’s basic confession. In other words, the sacramental reality of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ—confessed in the rule of faith—rightly stamps one’s exegesis of the biblical text. Frances Young, in her 1997 book Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture, makes the comment: “Athanasius is confident that his interpretation is correct because he has received insight into the ‘mind’ of scripture through the Canon of Truth received from his predecessors.”34 Athanasius’ reading of Scripture in line with the rule of faith implies that from the outset some readings—in particular the Arian ones—are excluded as exegetical possibilities. This is not to say that Athanasius wasn’t guided by the Scriptures or that he simply imposed his own preconceived opinions on the text; his meticulous exegesis clearly proves differently. It is to say, however, that when one already knew the overall mind (dianoia) of Scripture from the rule of faith, this inevitably ruled out interpretations that were in conflict with it. For Athanasius, the truth of Jesus Christ, as the reality of the biblical witness confessed in the church’s rule of faith, governed the plausibility (or lack thereof) of one’s interpretation of the biblical text.
Athanasius engaged in a form of exegesis, therefore, that was, at least to some extent, predetermined: it was shaped by what he believed to be the basic truth of the gospel, namely, the rule of faith. In other words, Athanasius’ exegesis was influenced by his creedal position; interpretation was theological in nature. John Behr provocatively puts it as follows: “The true ‘sense’ of the text, therefore, is not determined by such modern considerations as its history, redaction, or literary setting, but by the apostolic perspective which sees Scripture . . . as referring to Christ.”35 Perhaps Behr exaggerates slightly; as we will see, Athanasius was quite interested in questions of genre, and he applied various technical interpretive strategies to the biblical text. Nonetheless, Behr makes an important point: Athanasius was not interested in the history behind the text, and he was convinced that the interpretation of the Scriptures could be faithful and true only if it was in line with the confession of the church—in line, that is, with
the rule of faith, which centers on the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ through the Spirit.
Allan Clayton’s excellent 1988 dissertation on Athanasius’ use of Proverbs 8 points to several hermeneutical strategies that the Alexandrian bishop consciously employed. One of them is what Clayton calls the “tripartite exegetical formula.”36 According to Clayton, Athanasius, in reading the text, looked for three elements: time (kairos), person (prosopon), and purpose (pragma).— Clayton makes clear that Athanasius’ use of these three elements was an adaptation of a well-known contemporary interpretive approach. With regard to time, a biblical passage could speak either of the eternal relations of the immanent Trinity (theology) or of the history of salvation (economy). If the “time” referred to the immanent Trinity, this in turn shed light on how to read the passage christologically. The “person” referred to in the passage would then be the eternally preexistent Son of God. If, however, the “time” was the economy of salvation, this meant that the “person” of the passage was the Son of God in the flesh. It was the task of the exegete, according to Athanasius, to divide or partition statements regarding Christ between those that refer to the immanent Trinity and those that refer to the economy of salvation. John Behr, in his three-volume work The Nicene Faith, refers to this as “partitive exegesis.”38 Passages that allude to the eternity of the preexistent Son use “absolute terms,” according to Athanasius, and as a result they do not mention any “purpose.” In contrast, passages that speak of the economy of the incarnate Son of God typically include a reference to our salvation as the purpose of the incarnation. Trying to come to grips with Athanasius’ exegetical approach, therefore, we need to keep in mind that he entered the text differently than we typically do today. He approached the text with the question, what does it say about the three elements that grammarians and rhetoricians tell us are of particular importance with respect to understanding the text?
Athanasius’ interpretation was also heavily dependent on the scope or intention (skopos) of a particular passage.39 Much like “time” and “person” could refer either to the preexistent Son or to the incarnate Son in the economy of salvation, so also the “scope” or overall intention of Scripture was twofold:
“Now the scope and character of Holy Scripture, as we have often said, is this,— it contains a double account of the Saviour; that He was ever God, and is the Son, being the Father’s Word and Radiance and Wisdom; and that afterwards for us He took flesh of a Virgin, Mary Bearer of God, and was made man. And this scope is to be found throughout inspired Scripture, as the Lord Himself has said, ‘Search the Scriptures, for they are they which testify of Me.’”40 For Athanasius, the scope or overall purpose of Scripture was christological. The Scriptures
testify to Christ. The task of the exegete, therefore, was to try to understand how a given passage refers to Christ.
Clayton makes clear that searching for the skopos of a work was very much a Neoplatonic preoccupation. Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus (ca. 245-ca. 325) had argued that one should turn from the many to the one, not only in cosmology but also in interpretation. As Clayton puts it: “Neoplatonism’s fundamental philosophical imperative was to discern how the One was in the Many at every stage of reality. Iamblichus thought this imperative could function as an exegetical device as well.”41 Just as there was unity in the multiplicity of the cosmos, so the single skopos of a work, its overall intent, could be discovered in its many parts.42
Athanasius’ appropriation of the Neoplatonic concern for the skopos of a passage fit well with his interest in trying to locate the elements of time, person, and purpose. This triad, explains Clayton, was “the means by which the skopos was discovered.”43 It will be clear that this Neoplatonic interest—the attempt to find unity in the midst of multiplicity—lent itself to a sacramental approach to interpretation: for early Christians, exegesis was the attempt to find the spiritual, christological point of unity in the midst of the historical multiplicity of the Old Testament text. Christ, according to Athanasius, is the skopos of the biblical text, and the reference to Wisdom in the book of Proverbs must be read accordingly.
Faced with the argument that the word “created” in Proverbs 8:22 demands a subordinationist Christology, Athanasius makes a distinction between theology and economy. He applies this distinction in sections 44-60 of his Second Discourse. Clayton, building on Charles Kannengiesser, refers to this as “Exegesis 1”44 (which is followed by a different interpretation, which he labels “Exegesis 2”). Throughout sections 44-60, in presenting Exegesis 1, Athanasius uses the theology-economy distinction in his explanation of Proverbs 8: he applies his “partitive exegesis” to the three verbs in question. Athanasius places the words “created” and “established” (vv. 22 and 23) under the rubric of the economy, while classifying the word “begets” (v. 25) under that of theology. “For had [the Son] been a creature,” explains Athanasius with reference to verse 25, “He had not said, ‘He begets me,’ for the creatures are from without, and are works of the Maker; but the Offspring is not from without nor a work, but from the Father, and proper to His essence.”45 From eternity, according to the
Alexandrian bishop, the Son was begotten—not created or established—and as such he is of the same essence as the Father.
By way of support, Athanasius points to a peculiarity in verse 22: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways, for his works.” Although the Word has existed from all eternity (“in the beginning was the Word” [John 1:1]), it is much later, in the incarnation, that he is “sent ‘for the works’ and the Economy towards them.”46 According to Athanasius, then, the incarnation in the economy of salvation happened “for God’s works.” In time, in history, the Word was created “for us,” says Athanasius, for “if He was not created for us, we are not created in Him; and, if not created in Him, we have Him not in ourselves but externally; as, for instance, as receiving instruction from Him as from a teacher.”47 Athanasius here appeals to Saint Paul’s use of “creation” language: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:10). God’s “creating” Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22 must refer to the incarnation, argues Athanasius, or else we are not created in Christ and so are not truly saved. Put differently, by linking Christ’s “creation” in the economy of salvation to our “creation” in Christ, Athanasius underscores that our relationship to Christ is participatory rather than just external in character.
The Alexandrian theologian does much the same with the word “established” in verse 23 (“Before the ages, he established me in the beginning”). “This too,” explains Athanasius, “is said after the way of proverbs.”48 Accordingly, he comments, “Wisdom Itself is founded for us, that It may become beginning and foundation of our new creation and renewal.”49 Since God founded or established Wisdom for us and for our salvation, the term “established” or “founded” must refer to the economy, the incarnation—not to theology, the eternal inner-trinitarian life. As Athanasius explains, “The Lord also did not when founded take a beginning of existence; for He was the Word before that; but when He put on our body, which He severed and took from Mary, then He says, ‘He hath founded me . . .’”- Athanasius’ argument at this point is somewhat less than convincing: it is essentially an argument from silence. He points out that the text does not say, “Before the ages, he established me as Word or Son” (as a reference to trinitarian relations) but simply “he established me.” The point, argues Athanasius, is that this founding was for us, in line with the Pauline statement “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). We are precious stones built into a temple on the foundation of Jesus Christ.51 Using verbal association—what theologians today might call “intertextual echoes”—Athanasius takes the christological “creation” and “foundation” discourse from elsewhere in Scripture (Eph. 2:10 and 1 Cor. 3:11) to support his position that this same language in
Proverbs 8:22-23 refers to the economy of God.52 By contrast, Athanasius sees the “begetting” language of verse 25 as referring to the inner life of God itself, the immanent Trinity.53
Just as it seems that we have arrived at the conclusion of the exposition, Athanasius starts all over again. Between sections 77 and 78, a break occurs in his exposition, and it is at this point that he moves to Exegesis 2.54 This second section—comparatively brief—takes a rather different approach to the same biblical passage. So different are the two interpretations that Charles Kannengiesser has suggested that Athanasius wrote the original version of his Discourse between his first and second exiles (337-339), while writing the final few paragraphs (along with the preface) somewhat later, during his second exile (340-342).55 Be this as it may, it is clear that we have here, side by side, two quite different interpretations of Proverbs 8.
The main difference between Exegesis 1 and 2 concerns the way in which the two approaches connect the second element of the “tripartite exegetical formula” (the identity of the person or prosopon) to verses 22 and 23. As we have seen, according to Exegesis 1, the “creating” and “establishing” language of these two verses refers to the incarnation, and thus to the economy of salvation; in this context, Athanasius speaks about salvation in terms of incarnation and our inclusion in Christ’s “creation” and “founding.” Exegesis 2 has a rather different theological focus: here Athanasius speaks of God’s Wisdom as the image of God. This Wisdom, explains the Alexandrian bishop, came to us not just in the incarnation but earlier, already in our initial creation as human beings: from the beginning, the impress of God’s Wisdom placed its stamp on us as created in Wisdom’s image. What Athanasius does here is to read the Genesis narrative christologically. The reason, he explains, that verse 22 speaks of Wisdom as if it were created is that human beings—who are actually created and who carry its stamp—reflect Wisdom. As a result, we may predicate, analogically as it were, “creation” language also of God’s eternal Wisdom.56 Clayton puts it as follows:
From this angle, Wisdom, contemplating the creation of her image in all creation, says that she was herself “created” in Prov 8:22. It is not that Wisdom was in fact “created”; but since her image was “created” in humans upon their creation, she can metaphorically speak of herself as “created” (CA 2.78). The parallel texts are Matt 10:40 (“He who receives you receives me. . . .”) and Acts 9:4 (“Saul, why do you persecute me?”; CA 2.78, 80). The reception or persecution of a disciple is the same as receiving or persecuting the Lord himself because the Lord’s impress is on the disciple. Likewise, the creation of beings stamped with the impress of Wisdom is the creation of Wisdom herself. Prov 8:22 is a testimony to the intimate interconnection of image and archetype.57
The person (prosopon) of verse 22, according to Exegesis 2, is the eternal Wisdom of God (to whom, in some way, we attribute human characteristics).
The implication is that, according to Athanasius’ Exegesis 2, verse 22 places us in the realm of theology, not that of the economy.
Likewise, the “establishing” or “founding” of Wisdom in verse 23 does not, in Exegesis 2, refer to the incarnation. Also here, there is a shift between Exegesis 1 and 2 from the incarnation to creation. Athanasius now maintains that the language of “establishing” implies that “the works remain settled and eternal.”58 The reason for this is, again, that eternal Wisdom has imprinted her image on creation. The one who is truly eternally “established” and as such immovable is of course the eternal Son of God himself. But because the Son of God allows the creation, as his image, to participate in his wisdom, God’s works can also be said to be “settled and eternal.” In verse 23, as in verse 22, therefore, the focus turns away from the incarnation to creation, and in both cases the exegesis pivots on the notion of the image of God, which links creation with Christology.
According to Exegesis 2, both verses 22 and 23 refer to theology rather than to the economy: we may say that Wisdom is “created” and “established” inasmuch as the creation is “created” and “established.” The image of God in his works allows us to transfer these notions from the creature to eternal Wisdom itself.
The only exegetical point that remains the same between Exegesis 1 and 2 is the “begetting” language of verse 25: in Exegesis 2, it continues to refer to Wisdom as the eternally begotten Son of the Father.59
The overall result of Athanasius’ shift is that, in Exegesis 2, each of the three verbs—“created,” “founded,” and “begets”—refers primarily to the eternal Son of God. That is to say, in each verse the person (prosopon) is one and the same. The reference is now to the inner-trinitarian life (theology) rather than to the salvific work of Christ (economy). By making this shift, Athanasius achieved two purposes. First, he was able to underscore the participatory link between Christ and his creature. In Exegesis 2, the focus is on the participation of the image of God in its eternal prototype. Athanasius’ basic claim (in explaining vv. 22 and 23) is that human beings, since they’re created in the image of God, participate in the Wisdom of God. The focus here is not on Christ’s work in and through the economy of salvation. Rather than emphasize soteriology,
Athanasius now focuses on creation and explains that Proverbs 8:22-23 refers to the works of creation (especially human beings) as sharing in the eternal wisdom and knowledge of the Son. It is the image of God that allows us to predicate of the Son language (such as “created me” and “established me”) that, properly speaking, is true only of the creature. We already saw Origen make a similar exegetical move, when he suggested that according to verse 22 the creatures were created, despite the text’s claim that Wisdom was created. This approach of Origen and Athanasius fits remarkably well with Augustine’s later totus Christus
theology, which would also predicate of Christ what is true of the creature, and which would also use the Acts 9 passage (“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”) to illustrate the point.60
Second, with Exegesis 2, Athanasius dealt a blow to the exegesis of his Arian opponents. It will be recalled that they applied the three words in question to the Father’s creating, establishing, or begetting a Son before time, thereby reducing the Son’s status to that of a mediating, less than fully divine creature. Perhaps the greatest drawback of Athanasius’ Exegesis 1 is that it introduced a split between verses 22-23 as speaking of the economy and verse 25 as referring to theology proper. This use of “partitive exegesis” can hardly have satisfied Athanasius. It is one thing to insist that a text may refer either to theology or to the economy; it is another to divide up three verbs in close proximity according to different persons or prosopa. Exegesis 2 fixed this difficulty. Athanasius still used here the traditional Iamblichian mode of exegesis, asking to which person (prosopon) the text refers. But by assigning each of the three verbs to the eternal Son of God, Athanasius reinforced the coherence of the passage as a whole. What is more, in a masterstroke, he now followed not only Origen but also the entire Arian tradition in attributing the three verbs to theology rather than to the economy. And by doing this, he demonstrated that it was possible to read the entire passage in terms of “theology” without lapsing into subordinationism.
Athanasius must have thought he was defeating the Arians on their own turf: that of a strictly “theological” reading of verses 22-25.
Interestingly, it appears that Athanasius was content to have Exegesis 1 and 2 stand side by side as two complementary readings of the text. Athanasius, Clayton rightly insists, believed that “words could have multiple meanings,” since “passages were capable of sustaining two different interpretations. One exposition focused on the eternal Son while the other centered on his economic enfleshment. It was the ‘nature’ or ‘essence’ of Christ—that his one divine nature had existed both eternally in the bosom of the Father and incarnately in man— that enabled the exegete to treat Scriptural language as signs that derived their meaning from the symbols to which they pointed.”61 Clayton suggests that partitive exegesis made it possible for Saint Athanasius to allow for both interpretations (“theology” and “economy”) of verses 22 and 23 at the same time. This may well be correct, though I suspect we will never quite know why it is that Athanasius kept both interpretations of the passage alongside each other in his Second Discourse. In any case, this juxtaposition of the two approaches does make clear that he took the “hidden” meaning of the proverbs seriously. For Athanasius, the genre of a proverb meant that the text does not speak “plainly” (ek phanerou). Since proverbs give us their intended meaning in a “hidden” way
(kekrymmenos), they call not for a scientific determination of the one meaning but for a theological exploration of their christological depth in line with the church’s rule of faith. The latter approach, it seems, allowed for various exegetical options to stand unresolved beside each other. For Athanasius, both readings of the text were orthodox, in line with the rule of faith, and as such at least potentially legitimate as explorations of the hidden, sacramental meaning of Proverbs 8.