The Mystery of the Holy Trinity in the Fathers of the Church: The Proceedings of the Fourth International Patristic Conference, Maynooth, 1999. Edited by D. VINCENT TWOMEY, SVD and LEWIS AYRES.

Abstract

This beautifully produced volume is very encouraging, above all for those who had begun to suppose that patristic scholarship was a dying profession, even though eight years elapsed between the conference in 1999 and the publication of the acts in 2007. Of the nine contributors five are from Ireland, one from England, two from America, and one from Germany. It is hard in the course of a short review to to adequate justice to the varied learning and complexity of the diverse contributions. Professor Brian Daley, SJ, Catherine F. Huisking Professor of Theology at Notre Dame, argues for a close connection between the understanding of the persons of the Trinity and the person of Christ in the first five centuries. He begins with Monarchianism in the second and ends with Nestorius in the fifth. He pinpoints the real issue as being the reconciling of the divine eternity with the evidently historical character of Jesus. His central thesis is that the distinction which we customarily make between Christology and Trinity is not an ancient one. A strong stress on the divine unity and impassibility of the sort we find in Marcellus of Ancyra will almost automatically lead to a divisive Christology. Towards the end of his leading contribution Daley cites a passage from letter 210 of Basil, critical of Marcellus of Ancyra, as Basil always was (unlike his brother), on the grounds that doctrine of a Sabellian type undermines salvation (p. 35). It should be noted that the letter in question Basil never refers to Marcellus by name. Doubtless his political shrewdness made him wary. The whole paper, the longest in the collection, is typically clear and non-judgemental. It is a pity that Sara Parvis's Marcellus of Ancyra and the Lost Years of the Arian Controversy, 325–345 (Oxford, 2006) was not available to affect the elegant argument.