Saturday, April 3, 2021

Robert M. Grant on Athenagoras of Athens’ Doctrine of God

  

Athenagoras’ Doctrine of God

 

Athenagoras’ theology was deeply influenced by the popular Platonism which he knew well. Like Albinus he conveniently summarizes: God is “uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, and infinite.” He “can be apprehended by mind and reason alone.” He is “encompassed by light, beauty, spirit, and indescribable power.” He created and adorned the universe and now rules it ([Apology] 10).

 

He was not the first apologist to identify God as Mind. Philo sometimes spoke about God as “the active cause, the most pure and unsullied Mind of the universe,” (Philo The Creation 8; Migration of Abraham 192-93), and the Christian apologist Aristides called him “wholly Intellect” (Aristides Apology 1.5). According to Clement such a doctrine is Platonic (Clement Stromata 4.155.2).

 

Others did not make this identification. In the Corpus Hermeticum (2.14) we read that “God is not Mind but the cause of the existence of mind,” and Theophilus said, “If I call him Mind, I speak (only) of his intelligence” (1.3). They thus tried not to be unduly precise.

 

A remarkable feature of Athenagoras’ discussion of God is the proof he provides for the existence of only one God (ch. 8). The two preceding chapters have cited one spurious text from Sophocles and the philosophers who favored this belief, from the Pythagoreans onward. Now he provides “the reasoning that supports our faith.” The argument seems to go as follows:

 

Two gods (or more) would have to be in (1) the same category or (2) different categories. (1) As gods, uncreated, they could not belong to the same category (1.1) Against Platonic doctrine: created things belong to the same categories because made after models; uncreated things are dissimilar. (1.2) God is not composite and divisible into complementary parts (i.e., gods). Against Stoic doctrine: he is “uncreated, impassible, and indivisible.” (2) As gods they could not be independent. (2.1) The Maker of the world is above and around the spherical creation and governs it, and therefore there is no place for other god(s). (2.1.1) Such a god could not be in the world since it belongs to God. (2.1.2) Such a god could not be around the world since God is above it. (2.2) Such a god could not be above the world and God, in another world and around it. (2.2.1) For if he is in or around another world, he is not around us, since the Maker rules over our world, and (2.2.2.) his power is not great, since he is in a limited place [so he is not God]. (2.3) And if he is not in or around another world, he does not exist, since there is no place for him or anything for him to do. Therefore there is one God, the Creator of the world.

 

The argument apparently contains echoes of chapters 3-4 of Pseudo-Aristotle, On Melissus Xenophanes Gorgias, an eclectic treatise from the Roman period. The chapters printed by Diels under “Xenophanes” begin with the assertion that “what comes into existence must come either from like or from unlike” and move on to conclude that God is eternal. Then “if he is most powerful of all, he must be one. For if there were two or more, he would not be most powerful and best of all.” The author then considers motion and shape (spherical) in regard to God, though not the “place” on which Athenagoras lays emphasis. There is no reason to suppose that the teaching goes back to Xenophanes, but it is one more link in the chain that binds the name of this pre-Socratic philosopher to early Christian monotheism. Later on, a simplified version of the argument appears in Irenaeus and Tertullian (Irenaeus Heresies 2.2.1-2; Tertullian Against Marcion 1.3-11).

 

The Logos

 

Athenagoras calls the Son the Mind, Logos, and Sophia of the Father and claims that he is “united in power” with him “yet distinguished in rank.” For him, as for Justin, the Son if the “first being begotten by the Father.” The expression may reflect a doctrine of a primal Logos-Sophia, based on what “the prophetic Spirit” said in Proverbs 8:22: “The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works” (24.2; 10.2-5).

 

The Son if Logos of the Father “in ideal form (ideai) and energy (energeiai) in relation to the creation.” Here Athenagoras’ terms recall the Platonic idea and the Aristotelian energeia, as Schoedel notes. The language is derived from philosophical doctrines.

 

Does Athenagoras really have a Christology? It is hard to say, since there is only one possible allusion to the incarnation. “If a god assumes flesh by divine dispensation, is he then a slave of lust?” Probably such a God, the Logos, did assume flesh; but while Athenagoras cites teaching from the Gospels he does not ascribe it to Jesus (11.2; 21.4; 32.2)

. . . .

 

The Trinity

 

The explicit doctrine of the Trinity in Athenagoras is probably the oldest we possess. He speaks of “God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” indicating that Christians “proclaim both their power in their unity and their diversity in rank” (6.1). There is unity between Son and Father and communion between Father and Son, while God, his Logos, and the Holy Spirit are “united in power yet distinguished in rank” (10.5 = 24.2; 12.3). The relation of Spirit to Father and Son is still imprecise, as would be expected in this early period. (Robert M. Grant, Greek Apologists of the Second Century [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1988], 106-8, 109)