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Christopher Beeley, The Unity of Christ1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2015

Paul L. Gavrilyuk*
Affiliation:
Theology Department, University of St Thomas, Saint Paul, MN 55105, [email protected]

Extract

Professor Beeley has contributed a new chapter to the history of the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum. He has written a provocative book, whose argument is both revisionist and orthodox. Beeley proposes to revise the accepted christological narrative by questioning the significance and theological genius of Athanasius of Alexandria. In Beeley's judgement, Athanasius' contribution pales in comparison with such giants as Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen and Maximus the Confessor. Beeley finds especially in Nazianzen's Christology the most profound and consistent rendering of the unity of Christ, a golden standard for expressing communicatio idiomatum. According to Beeley, Gregory's achievement was only partially matched by the Christologies of Cyril of Alexandria and Leo of Rome. Gregory's Christology is the apex of the Origenist tradition, its most complete and compelling expression. A permanent contribution of Beeley's work is the restoration of Gregory the Theologian to the diptychs of contemporary Western patristic scholarship, in which Nazianzen has been overshadowed by another Cappadocian, Gregory of Nyssa.

Type
Article Review
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2015 

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Footnotes

1

Christopher A. Beeley, The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 408. $55.00.

References

2 According to TLG, the term theosis is attested twice in Ephraem the Syrian's (?) Precationes ad dei matrem 2 and 4. The text is most probably spurious. The work makes for an interesting comparison with Gregory Nazianzen's Sermo in sanctum baptisma (PG 36: 381).

3 Fr. 13 adds ‘and the immeasurable was measured’.

4 New fr. ii. 13. 135 adds ‘in the earth’.