Trinity and Incarnation: The Faith and the Early Church.

Norris, Frederick W.

The frame makes the picture. In any art shop where you find a print presented in different mattings, you see how each matting changes the picture. Studer's frame is clearer in the original title, Gott und unsere Erlosung im Glauben der alten Kirche. He emphasizes theologia and oikonomia and develops his continuing interest in salvation by concentrating on trinity and incarnation within the context of ancient worship, pastoral care, prayer, hymns, and spirituality, all with an eye to the modern Church.

What might be a confused collage, or a reconstructed mosaic with tiles lost, in S.'s hands becomes a colorful, clear presentation of early Christian doctrine built by a faithful Roman Catholic theologian. Philological care and concern for context neither overpower the great themes of Christian faith nor turn the work into turgid paragraphs of interest only to patristic specialists.

The best chapter is the second. After looking at general pre-Nicene Christological developments and setting those within their cultural background in Chapter 1, S. speaks of "The Mystery of Christ in Prayer and Exhortation" by concentrating on narration, doxology, epiclesis, and baptismal creed as the Church's frame of reference. S. structures this material with a master's hand and his treatment is excellent; yet I suspect it could be improved by even more emphasis on the practice of the Church.

Some aspects of the picture are expected, but deftly handled. The apologists's message has a distinct unity. Irenaeus does center his work on the salvation of the whole person, the salus carnis. Carefully making his way, S. questions binitarian interpretations of Spirit Christologies and highlights the trinitarian positions of Tertullian and Hippolytus. Origen and Augustine are treated well; without them Greek East and Latin West are inexplicable. S. warns against modern critical studies and texts dependent upon Origen's opponents, and he favors the new editions of the De principiis which are not. He cuts through the fat of Augustinian scholarship to bone and sinew.

Nicaea is the turning point. Athanasius and Hilary are the Eastern and Western builders of what becomes a consensus, while later all three Cappadocians and Amphilochius work to create terminology that moves the debate forward. Further development comes in the great Christological traditions of Antioch, Alexandria and Rome. For S., Chalcedon refocuses Christology; modern research on Neo-Chalcedonians closes the treatment. A chapter entitled "Retrospect and Prospect" completes the frame and returns to the baptismal center of Christian faith first expressed by the apostle Paul.

There are strengths that are weaknesses. (1) The bibliography is European, deep and selective into the 1990s, but introducing patristics without Robert Grant is odd. African and Asian studies must be included, particularly in our religiously pluralistic modern world that so interests S. (2) A look at traditions neither Latin nor Greek is welcome but fuzzy. Aphraates, the Syriac writer, is "archaic" only if philosophical developments in the Graeco-Roman world are the norm; in his context, he is penetrating. The Persian Church at the Council of Seleucia in 410 accepted a creed they thought was universal, but it was not the Nicene. (3) The careful progression toward Nicaea up through Chalcedon's interpreters is well done but dependent upon a particular perspective. The Eastern Orthodox do not view the filioque clause as a logical progression from an implicit confession. In his Theology and Identity, Kwame Bediako sees second-century Christianity as most helpful for his situation in contemporary Africa.

There are mistakes. (1) Chapter 11, "The Spirituality of the Imperial Church," exhibits European state-church blindness. Constantine freed the faithful from the threat of persecution, but establishment suborned Christian faith and practice. The Nicene-Chalcedonian center of Christology does not hold because of state support, but because of its reception by the churches. Without a clear sense of "church," imperial colonial expansion of Christianity is difficult to criticize at its root, let alone its 16th- or 19th-century catastrophic branches. (2) The "proper" Antiochene school is not a late fourth-century development; Eustathius and Diodore both saw that Arius had not given enough attention to Jesus' inner life. Antiochenes knew Apollinarius was wrong well before Alexandrians or Cappadocians because they saw in his Christology Arian error. (3) Monophysites and Nestorians need more sensitive treatment. Those who honor Cyril through his Apollinarian formulas and those who honor Nestorius through Theodore of Mopsuestia live as churches today. They have persisted in an Islamic context and deserve nuanced consideration, particularly in light of growing persecution.

Buy this translation for yourself, your pastor, and some modern theologian you think is salvageable.

FREDERICK W. NORRIS Emmanuel School of Religion Johnson City, Tenn.