Wisdom in Christian Tradition by Marcus Plested;

Author:Marcus Plested; [Plested, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192677938
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2022-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

4.2 St Athanasius of Alexandria

Origen’s magnificent theological achievement has never been far removed from controversy: great thinkers invariably engender great arguments. By the early fourth century his account of the Holy Trinity had bequeathed a double legacy: eternal generation and thoroughgoing subordinationism finding separate heirs in Athanasius and Arius, respectively. In the fourth century the whole problematic of wisdom (principally on level S3) gravitated to the very centre of theological discussion and debate laying down many of the parameters of subsequent sophiological reflection.

Origen’s by now almost universally accepted identification of wisdom with the Son also raised serious exegetical difficulties. Indeed, much of what we may still, with some caution, call the ‘Arian controversy’, revolved (often seemingly endlessly) around wisdom references such as Proverbs 8:22.50 Arius stood in a venerable theological tradition which emphasized the Father’s uniqueness and transcendence and consequently distinguished him thoroughly from the Son. Arius saw worrying signs of the Sabellian heresy in his bishop, Pope Alexander of Alexandria’s use of terms like wisdom to underline the shared nature and unity of the Father and the Son. Arius made hay with this particular text with its seemingly unambiguous reference (in the Septuagint at least) to wisdom (i.e. the Son) as ‘created’.51 This fitted perfectly with his emphasis on a sharp distinction between the Father and the Son, created or begotten (the terms are synonymous for Arius) outside time but not eternal—‘a perfect creature, but not as one of the creatures’.52 The Son was established as wisdom by the will of the Father, who alone is wise in essence: ‘wisdom existed by the will of a wise God’.53 He is indeed wisdom, but a created wisdom, an ‘in-between’ wisdom, worthy of the name only by virtue of his participation in the essential and hypostatic wisdom that is the Father.54 Wisdom terminology came naturally to Arius, as witnessed also in his description (in the Thalia) in terms drawn from Wisdom 7 of the Son as ‘effulgence’, ‘light,’ and ‘glory of God’. The gospel reference to the Son’s ‘growth in wisdom’ could only serve to confirm the ontological gap between the Father (wise in essence) and the Son (created wisdom). Arius was condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325, but the problems he raised, with seemingly strong scriptural support, refused to go away.

Arius’ eventual nemesis came in the formidable shape of Athanasius (c. 297–373), deacon and successor to Alexander of Alexandria. In promoting the anti-Arian cause in the long and tumultuous period of theological conflict following the precarious victory at Nicaea, Athanasius insisted on placing the Son unambiguously on the far side of the ontological gulf between Creator and creation and did so on the basis of an argument from soteriology: only such a Son (as truly God) could save humanity (as truly man). Athanasius’ insistence on the impossibility of any sort of middle ground ‘in between’ uncreated and created natures is intimately bound up with his teaching on the distinction between creation (a function of the divine will) and generation (a function of the divine nature).

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