As is now widely recognized, the Scriptures and their interpretation did not serve as mere embroidery upon a larger theological dispute during the “Arian controversy.”All dates in this essay are C.E. In the past two decades, scholars have identified many difficulties with the term “Arian Controversy”; thus the quotation marks. In 1988, R. P. C. Hanson (The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988] xvii) stigmatized the term as a “serious misnomer.” Michael H. Barnes and Daniel H. Williams (Arianism after Arius: Essays on the Development of the Fourth Century Trinitarian Conflicts [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993] xiv) have nicely summarized the findings of recent scholarship: “Perhaps the most central finding in the last fifteen years … has been to show how peripheral the person of Arius was to the actual debates which occupied the Church for most of the [fourth] century.” I use the terms “Arian” and “Arianism” in this study, in the absence of a better term, as a shorthand way of referring to the Latin theological opponents of the Nicene party. In fact, the relationship between theological discourse and the Scriptures is rather the reverse of the one often assumed. The Scriptures were themselves the source of the dispute, and not fodder for the proof-texting of predetermined theological positions. Theological discourse was, in fact, the fruit of reflection and argument over key scriptural passages. It may well be true that the controversy stemmed from dispute over the meaning of only a dozen or so such texts. Alois Grillmeier is on the mark when he observes, “However much the whole of scripture continued to be read, theological polemics, precisely in trinitarian and christological discussion, restricted themselves to a certain number of important or disputed scriptural texts.”Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965) 7. But this is very different from suggesting that the Scriptures functioned merely as proof-texts to what was central—namely, philosophically informed theological argument. These scriptural texts were the initial and abiding source of the dispute. As Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh have observed, “the picture of Arius as a logician and dialectician” has been so “firmly entrenched in all our minds that it has been easy to overlook the degree to which appeal to the Scriptures was fundamental for Arius” and, it might be added, the later Arians.Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 3. Following Athanasius too closely, some modern scholars have argued that it was only the Arian side that so interpreted the Scriptures. See T. E. Pollard, “The Exegesis of Scripture and the Arian Controversy,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 41/2 (1959) 414–29, at 416: “That the Arians were extreme literalists is borne out by Athanasius's criticism of them. He criticizes them, however, not because they interpret the Scriptures literally, but because they isolate carefully selected texts from their context and interpret them literally without any regard for their context of for the general teaching of Scripture.” But the pro-Nicenes were no less capable than their counterparts of reading the text of Scripture in this decontextualized fashion. Indeed, it could be argued that the Arians were generally on much stronger ground when exegeting the Bible. Hanson, too, is on the mark when he states that “the dispute was about the interpretation of the Bible” and that the philosophical language used by Athanasius was “all devoted to what was ultimately a Scriptural argument.”Search, 8, 422. Examining both unmediated, genuine Arian sources as well as hostile orthodox testimony, I will analyze in this essay the extensive dispute in the “Arian controversy” over Mark 13:32, where Jesus appears to acknowledge unambiguously his ignorance of the time of the day of judgment. While both sides agreed that this text was central to the controversy, they disagreed radically on its meaning. Their differences in interpretation, I argue, are rooted in quite different theories of salvation.

Today, New Testament scholars interpret the book of Acts and its account of the Hellenists—Stephen's martyrdom in particularSee Acts 6–8.—while historians of Christianity study the cult of Saint Stephen and the healing power of his relicsParticularly in the eyes of Augustine; see De civitate Dei, 22.8; also p. 290, below.. In contrast to the situation in earlier scholarship, there is, alas, little dialogue between the two groups, because the first does not investigate the reception of the book of Acts,Even in the German collection Evangelisch-katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, whose intention is to respect the Wirkungsgeschichte, Rudolf Pesch's commentary on the book of Acts presents only one reference to a Christian text influenced by Luke's account of Stephen's martyrdom, the story of the martyrs of Lyon preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea, Hist. eccl. 5.2.5; see Rudolf Pesch, Die Apostelgeschichte. 1.Teilband (Apg 1–12) (2d ed.; EKK 5.1; Solothurn: Benzinger; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1995) 267. and the second does not bridge the gap between the time of the New Testament and the fourth century, when the cult of the saint begins to be well attested. My long-term intention is to establish links between the two scholarly fields and to consider Stephen's career in the New Testament and his role in the life of the church as two phases of a continuous history. This paper, an expression of my short-term intention, fulfills two preliminary tasks: to present the modern research on the hagiography of the first martyr and to collect the ancient material on Stephen. As far as I can judge, such a file or “dossier” on Stephen, the first martyr, does not exist.

For some two hundred years now, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834) has been the subject of intense interest and heated debate among Christian theologians. As the author of a seminal work in the theory of religionFriedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (trans. Richard Crouter; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). as well as a treatise in Christian doctrine that ranks second to none for its originality, methodological self-consciousness, and systematic stringency,Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (trans. H. R. MacIntosh and J. S. Stewart; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928). In 1839 Johannes von Kuhn of the Catholic Tübingen school rightly observed that “among all the theologians of later and contemporary times, only Schleiermacher can be compared to [Thomas Aquinas] so far as scientific force and power are concerned.” Cited in Robert Stalder, Grundlinien der Theologie Schleiermachers: I. Zur Fundamentaltheologie (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für europäische Geschichte Mainz 53; Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1969) ix. Schleiermacher's significance in the history of modern theology is secure. By his liberal Protestant sympathizers he has been hailed as the “Reformer of theology,” the pioneer of a style of theologizing that is as peculiarly suited to the distinctively Protestant understanding of faith as it is capable of meeting the intellectual demands of the modern world.This honorific title was widespread in the second half of the nineteenth century and prior to the rise of dialectical theology in the twentieth. Representative is Wilhelm Herrmann, “Die Lage und Aufgabe der evangelischen Dogmatik in der Gegenwart” (1907), in ibid., Schriften zur Grundlegung der Theologie (ed. Peter Fischer-Appelt; 2 vols.; Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1966–1967) 2:16–20. To his equally numerous and vocal theological critics, Schleiermacher represents the enslavement of the Word of God to a pagan mysticism and speculative philosophy,Emil Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort: Der Gegensatz zwischen moderner Religionsauffassung und christlichem Glauben dargestellt an der Theologie Schleiermachers (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1924). the subjectivistic collapse of Christian theology into anthropology,Karl Barth, introduction to Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper, 1957). or, more recently, the classic exemplar of a linguistically naïve and apologetically motivated “experientialist-expressivist” misunderstanding of the nature of religious doctrine.George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984). To friend and foe alike, however, he remains—for better or worse—the undisputed “father of modern theology.”In the English-speaking world, the work of B. A. Gerrish remains the best introduction to, and most sophisticated treatment of, Schleiermacher's theological achievement. See B. A. Gerrish, A Prince of the Church: Schleiermacher and the Beginnings of Modern Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984) and the essays devoted to Schleiermacher in Continuing the Reformation: Essays on Modern Religious Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), and Tradition and the Modern World: Reformed Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).

Although Schleiermacher's Christology is one of the most commented-upon doctrines of his dogmatic system, little scholarship exists on its relation to patristic Christology.One exception is an article by Richard Muller (“The Christological Problem as Addressed by Friedrich Schleiermacher,” in Perspectives on Christology [ed. M. Shuster and R. Muller; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1991] 141–62) that shows how “the doctrinal intention behind Schleiermacher's way of affirming the divinity of Christ evidences common ground with the dogmatic intention” of Chalcedon (p. 142). Muller's main objective is to demonstrate that Schleiermacher's Christology does not violate what he calls “patristic orthodoxy.” He does not explore in detail how Schleiermacher's doctrine of Christ may draw (whether intentionally or not) on the Christologies of specific patristic figures or schools. George Hunsinger, in an article outlining Karl Barth's debt to Martin Luther, makes a very brief comparison between Schleiermacher's Christology and that of Theodore of Mopsuestia, labeling both as “spirit-oriented” because they hold that “Jesus points us to the Holy Spirit” and not vice versa. Thus, in Hunsinger's view, these Christologies are focused only formally on Christ, but substantively on the Holy Spirit. See “What Karl Barth Learned from Luther,” Lutheran Quarterly 13:2 (1999) 129. Given Schleiermacher's view of the church, as well as his conception of the dependence of the believer and the community upon Christ, Hunsinger's interpretation is not convincing. To many this gap in scholarship will seem understandable and even appropriate, given Schleiermacher's famous rejection of two-natures language in his major dogmatic work, Der christliche Glaube.Henceforth Gl. All references to passages from Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche in Zusammenhange dargestellt follow the English translation of the second German edition offered in The Christian Faith (ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928). Occasionally I supply in parentheses the German original, from the standard critical edition edited by Martin Redeker (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960). In this essay, I shall identify parallels between Schleiermacher's Christology and some of the Christologies “behind” Chalcedon—those conflicting Christologies that Chalcedon attempted to mediate. By examining the way in which certain emphases of Cyril of Alexandria, on the one hand, and Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius, on the other, are present in Schleiermacher's own doctrine of Christ (especially in Gl. §§93–99), I shall argue that Schleiermacher does not simply reject Chalcedon, but rather reconfigures its combination of apparently disjunct christological traditions in a new and creative way.

In his recent book on post-Holocaust Jewish thought in America, Michael L. Morgan claims that among Jewish Holocaust theologians, Emil Fackenheim's thought is “the richest and most developed.”Michael L. Morgan, Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 155. One can only endorse this assessment. Fackenheim is by far the best-trained philosopher among Jewish Holocaust thinkers, and his reflections on the Holocaust are therefore unparalleled in their philosophical subtlety and sophistication. He has also outstripped his rivals in the sheer quantity of material he has produced on the Holocaust. He has authored nine books and scores of articles, most of which are devoted to his reflections on this one subject.A good deal has been written about Fackenheim's Holocaust theology. The following are some of the more important discussions: Steven T. Katz, Post-Holocaust Dialogues: Critical Studies in Modern Jewish Thought (New York: New York University Press, 1983) 205–47; Louis Greenspan and Graeme Nicholson, eds, Fackenheim: German Philosophy and Jewish Thought (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), which also contains a complete bibliography of Fackenheim's writings up to 1992; Zachary Braiterman, (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) 134–60; Morgan, Beyond Auschwitz, 155–95.