“Of making many books there is no end.” The writer of Ecclesiastes penned that line with the whole world and all its history in mind. I write it with Peter Leithart in mind. Leithart is unusually productive, a machine of literary output. Let’s take a snapshot of the last few years: Deep Exegesis, Solomon Among the Post-moderns, Jane Austen, Defending Constantine, The Four: A Survey of the Gospel, Athanasius, and Fyodor Dostoesvsky (forthcoming, October 2011). That’s seven books and, not being able to speak to his book on Austen nor his forthcoming on Dostoevsky, all have been significant contributions to their field—even, in the case of Defending Constantine, challenging status quo assumptions. Outside of the three-year snapshot, Leithart published 10 books between 2003 and 2006.
In an age of specialists, Leithart—minister and senior fellow of theology and literature at New Saint Andrews College—is as close to an example of a Renaissance man that we may have today. He is engaged in the world of ideas (history, literature, and theology), and he doesn’t shake this role in his new book, Athanasius. He does not write in the manner of an Athanasius specialist, who labors only in the world with other Athanasius specialists debating Athanasius ideas. Instead, he writes as an Athanasius expert who engages with Athanasius’s work and its surrounding literature, but also with a world of ideas and literature that have developed after or in consequence to Athanasius.
A Book in a Series
Athanasius is the inaugural book in the Foundation of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality series, which engages the theology and exegesis of the early church fathers for contemporary theology and spirituality. And the world and struggles of Athanasius, as foreign as they may seem, have many parallels to our current, evangelical one.
At the end of chapter 1—a short summary of Athanasius’s life—Leithart makes a brief comment on the differences between the Arians and Athanasius, in which he says, “Despite [the Arians’] professed adherence to Scripture, their real convictions come from elsewhere.” Surprisingly, this isn’t a commentary on the Enlightenment or its rebellious child, postmodernity. But much like we see in our own day, the challenges Athanasius faced had its foundation in epistemological struggles.
Starting Points: The Bible and Jesus
Athanasius devoted much of his labors to starting points: what we think about Scripture and Jesus. However, I don’t say “starting points” to give the impression that Athanasius was entry-level reading. Arius and his cohorts had philosophical reasons for their conclusions about Jesus Christ, and Athanasius had to give sophisticated responses. Leithart does a good job at showing just how complex the situation was, without getting lost in the minutiae.
Athanasius and his contemporaries are commonly villainized for their allegorical reading of Scripture. However, Leithart is able to show Athanasius was largely “deductive” and “typological”—in the best sense of the word—and had a fairly sophisticated understanding of types and shadows. Athanasius labored to interpret Scripture on Scripture’s terms; that is, christocentrically.
Of course, much of the discussion about the Bible came in the context of debates of who Jesus was and is. And though Leithart, at times, makes Athanasius out to be the hero of contemporary discussions about Theological Interpretation Scripture (TIS), he is right to point out that Athanasius’s interpretation of Scripture depends upon an assumed christology and theology proper, as well as vice versa. So in the end, Athanasius is a theologian who keeps his finger in the text and a biblical interpreter who, thus, is compelled to say something about God.
Athanasius
Peter J. Leithart
This volume by a respected theologian offers fresh consideration of the work of famous fourth-century church father Athanasius, giving specific attention to his use of Scripture, his deployment of metaphysical categories, and the intersection between the two. Peter Leithart not only introduces Athanasius and his biblical theology but also puts Athanasius into dialogue with contemporary theologians.
The dependence Athanasius has on the Bible doesn’t make his arguments any less complex. Rather, he brings the Bible to bear upon difficult theological and philosophical categories—a concept that is, more often than not, lost among current trinitarian and analytical theological studies. In today’s pendulum swing between Social Trinitarianism, which often times majors on the plurality of God at the expense of his unity, and Relative Trinitarianism, which often errors on the side of modalism, we would be better served to pay close attention to Athanasius’s ability to hold to the biblical tensions of the plurality and unity of God. However, the ability to uphold the tensions of unity and plurality doesn’t disable Athasasius from speaking deeply into either one of them.
Leithart summarizes Athasasius’s trinitarianism quite aptly: “God is one as Trinity.” Or as the Cappadocian father, Gregory of Nazianzus, put it, “No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illuminated by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me.”
Jesus and Christian Spirituality
Athanasius has much to say about our contemporary discussions on sanctification and Christian spirituality. The popular phrase “sanctification is simply getting used to your justification” wouldn’t quite cut it with Athanasius. A quick response may be, “Well, Athanasius didn’t have a correct understanding of justification.” Without getting into whether the early church fathers misunderstood or just assumed a biblical understanding of justification, I think the response is missing the point.
For Athanasius, and many of his contemporaries, “contemplation” was central to being conformed to the image of Christ. In other words, part (and I stress part”) of our sanctifying work is contemplating what we’ve been given eyes to see. As Leithart explains it, “the contemplative gaze is a transforming gaze.” He explains further:
By looking at Jesus, contemplating his unity with the Father, disciples are bound in charity with one another. When we gaze at the archetype, the archetype impresses himself upon us.
In other words, we become like Jesus by beholding and contemplating his deity and glory with the Father. And it’s not too difficult to find this instruction in the Bible:
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure (1 John 3:2–3, emphasis mine).
Or:
And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18, emphasis mine).
Sanctification is certainly not less than “getting used to our justification,” but we must say more. As Athanasius teaches—followed by Calvin and the best of the Puritans—to be like Jesus, we must behold, gaze upon, and contemplate his glory. And this contemplation is only found with our Bibles in hand. Want to see the glory of Christ? Athanasius would likely quote John 5:39, “Search the Scriptures, for they testify about me.”
Retrieving Athanasius for Today
Leithart gives us direction for the future of evangelical Christianity by taking us back to the world of Athanasius. He is not a perfect guide. And Leithart might have served us better to show more explicitly where we would be wise to not follow Athanasius. But for those who have the ears to hear, Athanasius is a worthy hero to follow as he follows Christ.
