The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics

Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus

Johannes Zachhuber

1
Table of Contents

Table of Contents................................................................................................................... 1
Abbreviations......................................................................................................................... 5
1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 7
A. Patristic thought as Christian philosophy ..................................................................... 7
B. From the Cappadocians to John of Damascus ............................................................ 10
C. The rise of Christian theology and the end of ancient metaphysics ........................... 13
Part I: The Rise of the Classical Theory .................................................................................. 17
2. The Cappadocians and their Christian Philosophy .......................................................... 17
A. Historical, biographical, and intellectual background ................................................ 18
B. Cappadocian Philosophy I: The abstract account ....................................................... 31
C. Cappadocian Philosophy II: The concrete account ..................................................... 50
D. The systematic structure of Cappadocian philosophy ................................................ 60
3. The Rise of the Classical Theory and the Challenge of Christology............................... 65
A. From Cappadocian philosophy to the classical theory ............................................... 66
B. Philosophical challenges of Christology ..................................................................... 82
Part II: The case against Chalcedon ........................................................................................ 97
4. Severus of Antioch: A conservative revolutionary........................................................ 101
A. The philosophy of miaphysitism .............................................................................. 101
B. John of Caesarea’s Apology ...................................................................................... 109
C. Severus against the Grammarian .............................................................................. 112
D. Patristic philosophy in Severus of Antioch .............................................................. 117
5. John Philoponus: Energetic revision of the classical theory ......................................... 121
A. A thinker between Aristotelian logic and Christian theology .................................. 121
B. The Arbiter: more than a miaphysite manifesto ....................................................... 122
C. Philoponus and the tritheistic controversy ................................................................ 129
D. Philoponus' reconstruction of the classical theory .................................................... 139
6. Damian of Alexandria and Peter of Callinicus: Miaphysite antitritheism..................... 142
A. Damian of Alexandria’s theory of hypostatic properties .......................................... 143
B. Peter of Callinicus: Hypostases as ‘substrates’ with properties................................ 149
C. Miaphysitism and its modification of the classical theory........................................ 151
Part III: Chalcedonian Transformations of the Cappadocian Theory.................................... 153
7. Laying the Foundations: John the Grammarian and Leontius of Byzantium ................ 155
A. John the Grammarian of Caesarea ............................................................................ 155
B. Leontius of Byzantium .............................................................................................. 166
C. Early Chalcedonian transformations of the classical theory ..................................... 175

3
8. From the Council of Constantinople to the Monenergist Controversy ......................... 178
A. Pamphilus the Theologian: The philosophy of the enhypostaton ............................. 179
B. Universals and particulars in Theodor of Raïthu and the Anonymus Coislanus ...... 193
C. Leontius of Jerusalem: the philosophy of the hypostasis.......................................... 209
E. A Hidden Revolution ................................................................................................ 222
9. The Climax of Chalcedonian Philosophy ...................................................................... 224
A. Maximus the Confessor: Assertive Chalcedonianism .............................................. 224
B. John of Damascus: Chalcedonian Philosophy under the Caliphate .......................... 235
10. Conclusion: Patristic Philosophy and its Nachleben ................................................... 254
A. The classical theory and its transformations ............................................................. 254
B. The Significance of Patristic Philosophy .................................................................. 257
C. Patristic Philosophy and its Posterity ........................................................................ 259
Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 263
Primary Sources ............................................................................................................. 263
Secondary Literature...................................................................................................... 269

4
Abbreviations

ACO: Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum

AW: Athanasius Werke
CAG: Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca
CCSG: Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca
CSCO: Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium
CSEL: Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiastorum Latinorum
ET: English Text
GCS: Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten [drei] Jahrhunderte
GNO: Gregorii Nysseni Opera
HTR: Harvard Theological Review
JECS: Journal of Early Christian Studies
JEH: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JLARC: Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture
JöB: Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik
JTS: Journal of Theological Studies
LSJ: Liddell, H.G./Scott R., A Greek–English Lexicon, rev. Henry Stuart Jones/R. McKenzie,
suppl. P. G. W. Glare, 9th ed. (Oxford: OUP), 1994.
MS: Medieval Studies
MSR: Mélanges de Science Réligieuse
NPNF: A select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 28 vols, eds. Philip
Schaff/Henry Wace (Edinburgh: T&T Clark) 1886–90.
OLP: Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica
PG: Patriologia Graeca
PGL: Lampe, G.W.H., A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: OUP), 1969.
PO: Patrologia Orientalia
RAC: Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, eds. Franz-Joseph Dölger, Theodor Klauser et
al. (Stuttgart: Hiersemann), 1950–.
RHE: Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique
RSPT: Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
SC: Sources Chrétiennes
StP: Studia Patristica
VigChr: Vigiliae Christianae
ZAC: Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum
ZNW: Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche

5
1. Introduction

The Christian writers of late antiquity are famous for their foundational and decisive
contribution to the formation of the Church’s teaching. Rarely has it been recognized,
however, that they also pursued an ambitious and exciting philosophical project alongside
their engagement in the doctrinal controversies of their age. In this book, I will for the first
time offer a full analysis of this Patristic philosophy. I will show how it took its distinctive
shape in the late fourth century and give an account of its subsequent development until the
time of John of Damascus. In this Introduction, I will outline the approach taken, explain the
selection of authors that will be examined, and give a précis of my overall argument.

A. Patristic thought as Christian philosophy

For a long time, early Christian thought has been connected with ancient philosophy, mainly
in order to explore its sources and to show how the Fathers depended on the insights of pagan
thinkers from Plato and Aristotle in the classical period, to Plotinus and Proclus in late
antiquity.1 Scholars who disagreed with this assessment, would do so by emphasising the
incompatibility between Christian faith and Greek philosophy whether with a view to censure
Christianity for its lack of rationality or to insist on its genuinely religious character.2

More recently, scholars of both historical theology and ancient philosophy have rightly
challenged the stark dichotomy of Patristic thought and ancient philosophy that underlay
either of these traditional approaches. Instead, Christian authors have increasingly been
treated as part of the late antique intellectual world and as philosophers in their own right. In
this vein, Patristic accounts of creation, for example, have successfully been reconstructed in
the context of late ancient philosophical cosmologies rather than an entirely separate
undertaking.3 Christian views of the soul, of time, or of the will have similarly been treated
alongside those held by their non-Christian philosophical peers.4

The account I will give in this study follows this trajectory yet extends it to the very heart of
Christian theology. The philosophy whose history will here be recounted is found directly in
texts engaging with the central doctrines of the Christian Church, namely, the Trinity and
Christology. This raises wide-ranging and fundamental questions of terminology, method,
and the disciplinary cast of the present study. How can doctrinal questions yield
philosophical insights given that they are based on authoritative decisions taken at the
institutional level, usually by synods and councils? Conversely, if philosophical categories
are used to analyse doctrinal debates in late antiquity, what room does this leave for their
claim to be reflecting divine revelation?

Part of my answer to questions of this kind is contained in the very language of Patristic or
Christian philosophy which will be employed throughout this study. Its main purpose is to
stem the dualistic tendency inherent in the conventional use of theology and philosophy as
quasi-disciplinary designators. It is important to recall that this distinction has its origin in the

1
Classical treatments along those lines include Chadwick (1966); Armstrong/Markus (1960); Ivanka (1964).
2
For the view that Christianity was unduly ‘hellenised’ through the influence of pagan philosophy cf.
Harnack (1976). The case for Christianity as an anti-intellectual force has most recently been restated in
Nixey (2017).
3
E.g. Köckert (2009); Karamanolis (2014), ch. 2.
4
Cf. Karamanolis (2014). See also esp. on the soul: Ramelli (2007); on time: Sorabji (1983); on the will:
Frede (2012).

7
medieval university with separate faculties of philosophy and theology.5 Since then, it has
become seemingly self-evident and is, therefore, applied to historical research on earlier
periods as well. It is, however, an ill fit for the first millennium. While pagan intellectuals
often did not think highly of Christianity, they found it natural to classify it as a philosophy,
albeit an inferior one, rather than as religion.6 The new faith was simply too different from
traditional Greek or Roman cults. Christian writers too often referred to their own activity as
philosophy, usually qualified as true philosophy, true wisdom or true knowledge.7

It is therefore arguable that the emerging intellectual culture of late ancient Christianity can
be conceptualised as a kind of philosophy within the late ancient context of a plurality of
philosophical schools.8 Its relationship to the philosophies of Platonism or Stoicism will then
appear analogous to the one those schools had amongst each other. Dependence and critique,
polemical rejection and the acceptance of shared principles will no longer appear mutually
exclusive or even contradictory. More importantly perhaps, none of those observations will in
itself feed ideological narratives of Christianity as an anti-philosophical force or, indeed, of
‘hellenisation’ as a betrayal of the purity of the gospel.

This notion of Patristic theology as a philosophical school becomes even more plausible
when the specific character of ancient philosophy is taken into account: its acceptance of
authoritative texts and its practice of commenting on them;9 its institutionalisation in schools
whose heads derived their authority by direct descent (diadoche) from the school’s founder;10
its embeddedness in a specific form of ethical existence, as influentially emphasised by Pierre
Hadot.11 In other words, while it may seem counterintuitive today to consider Christian
thought as a philosophy, late ancient philosophy, as pointed out by Arthur Darby Nock many
years ago, would strike a modern observer as rather similar to the kind of religion that has
dominated the West for the past 1,500 years.12

In this sense, Patristic thought as a whole can be identified as Christian philosophy. In the
present book, however, the term Christian or Patristic philosophy will generally be taken in a
more restricted sense signifying a set of logical and ontological concepts underlying the
articulation of doctrinal statements. Such a philosophical system can be found in the Eastern
Fathers from the end of the fourth century. These theories, then, are not themselves doctrinal;
they can be appreciated or indeed critiqued independently of the affirmation of the doctrine
they are meant to support. Thus far, they can be understood as properly philosophical. And
yet, the argumentative purpose for which they were developed clearly influenced their shape.
As philosophies, they were from the outset inscribed into the intellectual attempt to give a
reasoned account of the Christian faith as expressed through a number of credal and doctrinal
formulae. In this sense, these intellectual systems can be understood as Christian
philosophies. As will become apparent, a considerable number of Patristic authors took

5
Cf. Geyer (1964); Pannenberg (1973), 11–2. For the use of theologia in antiquity cf. the overview in
Markschies (2015), ch. 1.
6
Cf. e.g. Galen, Plat. dial. comp. (150 Kopf).
7
For detailed references see: Bardy (1949). For a full account of the transformation of the term ‘philosophy’
during this period cf. Malingrey (1963).
8
Zachhuber (2019).
9
Betegh (2011), 26–8; Sorabji (1990), 1–30; Finamore/Johnston (2011).
10
Campenhausen (1963), esp. 175.
11
Hadot (1995). Cf. Hadot (2004), 240 for his interpretation of ancient Christianity as philosophy in this
sense.
12
Nock (1933). I am grateful to Prof. Mark Edwards who made me aware of Nock’s book.

8
seriously the need to underpin their doctrinal standpoint by such a system of terms and
concepts. It is the story of their work that will be told in this book.

How can the rise of this philosophy be explained and understood? One major factor,
undoubtedly, was the decision of the Council Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries to adopt
for the formulation of the most central doctrines of Christianity terms that could not be found
in the Bible or, at least, were not used in it in any technical sense. As soon as central tenets of
the Christian faith were defined through words such as ousia, physis, and hypostasis, the
exposition, justification, and defence of these doctrines had to resort to definitions and
arguments of an increasingly technical nature.

Important though these institutional decisions were, it is arguable that another factor was
equally influential in ensuring the emergence of Patristic philosophy as described above.
Doctrines are often considered as static affirmations of certain truths; traditional theology
considered them as divinely revealed, whereas historians tend to think of them as imposed by
institutional authority. The very words ‘doctrine’ or ‘dogma’ to us suggest rigidity and
inflexibility. Such a perception overlooks, however, that the doctrines of late ancient
Christianity were not simply promulgated and accepted but fiercely debated, rejected, and
defended. A major space, therefore, in which philosophical development occurred was in the
debates and controversies about doctrine that were such a central part of Christian literature
throughout the period covered in this book.

In other words, Christian authors could not avoid embedding their doctrinal confessions
about the Trinity and of the Person of Jesus Christ into a terminological and conceptual
system whose validity did not directly depend on the acceptance of these doctrines, because
they were faced by opponents unwilling to accept their own dogmatic formula. The trinitarian
controversy of the fourth century was therefore the incubator for the first and most influential
version of this Patristic philosophy. Subsequently, it was largely the debate about
Christology, which stubbornly continued for centuries, that stimulated conceptual
clarifications and modifications of the original fourth-century theory.

Recognising the importance of doctrinal polemics for the development of Patristic philosophy
inevitably highlights the extent to which its history was one of unintended consequences.
Wide-reaching philosophical decisions concerning, for example, the status of universals or
the constitution of the individual being, were often caused by the need to find rationalisations
for a doctrinal position an author simply had to defend. As we shall see, this was particularly
the case for sixth-century Chalcedonians who struggled to justify the unpopular formula of
the Council of Chalcedon against a barrage of well-articulated criticisms and in doing so
became rather innovative and inventive in their philosophical ideas.

In line with the often-haphazard character of philosophical developments among Patristic

authors is the observation of the plurality of forms it assumed. Those scholars who have
treated Patristic thought as part of the history of philosophy have usually seen it as one or, at
least, as converging towards one unified vision in line with the supposed unity of Christian
doctrine emerging during this historical epoch. In reality, its plurality rapidly increased as the
centuries went on, and there is no indication that by the time the present account comes to its
close this tendency had come to a halt. The primary reason for this increasing pluralisation
was the fragmentation of Eastern Christianity during this epoch, as the attempt to settle the
Christological controversy through doctrinal formulae led to the permanent establishment of
rival ecclesiastical communities across the Eastern Mediterranean. Yet even Chalcedonian

9
attempts to develop a philosophical vision in line with the language mandated by the Council
of 451 did not result in unanimity but in several, rather different but equally fascinating
philosophies.

Despite this plurality, some major patterns will emerge from the analysis of these
developments. There is a venerable tradition in philosophical historiography, most
prominently represented by G.W.F. Hegel, that has assigned philosophical significance to the
doctrinal development of late antiquity on the grounds that doctrine itself was
philosophical.13 More recently, it has been the claim of Eastern Orthodox thinkers such as
Vladimir Lossky and John Zizioulas that Patristic thinkers brought about an ontological
revolution while articulating the doctrine of the Trinity in particular.14

While the approach in this study will be rather different from these, the overall result will
partly converge with such earlier assessments. I will show that by the end of the Patristic
period philosophical ideas had been generated that were far away from consensus views that
prevailed among most pagan philosophers. The term ‘ontological revolution’, thus far, is not
far-fetched. Yet the revolutionary philosophy is not the fourth-century system established by
Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, as Lossky and Zizioulas opined; rather, it was the
Christological controversy that led Christian thinkers to the adoption of increasingly
innovative intellectual assumptions.

B. From the Cappadocians to John of Damascus

The particular approach to Patristic philosophy taken in this book determines its
chronological scope. There is no doubt that Christian writers prior to the fourth centuries can
legitimately be classed as philosophers; in fact, thinkers such as Justin Martyr and Origen
who operated as independent teachers, may more plausibly be compared to contemporaneous
philosophers than their later descendants in the fourth or sixth century.15 Histories of Patristic
philosophy therefore rightly begin with these thinkers or, even earlier, with the Gnostic
schools of the second century.16 Important works have even restricted their scope of enquiry
to the first three centuries on the grounds that Christian thought during this period was less
impacted by external, political pressures than during the ensuing age of state-church
alliance.17

Yet however philosophical earlier Fathers may have been, it is arguable that as a distinctive
and recognisable entity Christian philosophy only emerged in the East at the end of the fourth
century. As such, it owes its existence to the so-called Cappadocian theologians, Basil of
Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa.18 These three, and especially Basil
and Gregory of Nyssa, integrated their proposed settlement to the trinitarian controversy into
an innovative and clearly defined set of terms and concepts. On this basis, they spoke of the
Trinity as a single substance or ousia in three consubstantial hypostases thus coining the
formula that was to become recognised orthodoxy from the Council of Constantinople in 381
13
Cf. Hodgson (2005).
14
Lossky (1944), 27; Zizioulas (2004), 36: ‘What does it mean to say that God is Father, Son and Spirit
without ceasing to be one God? The history of the disputes which broke out on this great theme […]
includes a philosophical landmark, a revolution in Greek philosophy. This revolution is expressed
historically through an identification: the identification of the “hypostasis” with the “person”.’
15
For Justin as a philosopher cf. his Dial. 1–9 (90–101 Goodspeed). For Origen, cf. Ep. ad Greg. 1 (40, 10–
41, 6 Koetschau).
16
Notably Moreschini (2004).
17
Karamanolis (2014), 27.
18
See ch. 2.

10
onwards. Moreover, Gregory of Nyssa applied the same conceptual language also to a range
of other doctrinal topics including creation, salvation, and the eschatological resurrection and
restoration of humankind.19 In this way, Cappadocian philosophy permitted for the first time
the systematic integration of many doctrinal topics into one systematic whole. Christology,
however, was not one of them: a fact that was to have grave consequences.

Within a surprisingly short time, this philosophy became widely shared across the East. In
this book, I will therefore refer to it as the ‘classical theory’. By this I mean that its
acceptance was from the beginning not a sign of school affiliation but became a sort of
intellectual koine. From all the evidence we have, it seems clear that the Cappadocian
heritage was never tied to a distinctive part of the Eastern Church. Cappadocian thought was
neither concentrated in certain areas, as Antiochene and Alexandrian theologies were, nor
was it connected with particular intellectual milieus as was the case with the inheritance of
Origen and Evagrius of Pontus. Instead, Cappadocian patterns of thought and argument took
a foundational place in the writing of all major theologians of the East only a few decades
after Gregory of Nyssa codified this novel philosophy around the year 380.

The near-total absence of reliable texts from the decades following the Theodosian settlement
of the 380s makes it impossible, for the time being, to trace this remarkable success-story in
any detail, but it is a matter of historical record that at the outbreak of the Christological
controversy in the late 420s, all sides already took for granted the use of Cappadocian
philosophy to articulate and rationalise their various doctrinal positions.20 While never again
losing this status, the Cappadocian theory subsequently came under strain when individuals
employed it – or sought to employ it – to justify the particular positions they took in the
increasingly entrenched debate about the doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ.

This tendency became pronounced from the early sixth century. In many ways, the main
object of this book’s narrative is the dramatic intellectual realignment that ensued from this
decision. Different groups emerging during this period sought to capitalise on the
authoritative status the Cappadocian theory had gained by explaining their Christologies on
its basis. This, however, was never possible without modifications which turned out to be far-
reaching and increasingly radical. The result was a fascinating dynamic in which the tensions
between the intellectual tradition inherited from the Cappadocians on the one hand, and the
conceptual needs of the advanced Christological debate brought about the rise of new and
unexpected, often intellectually ambitious, philosophical theories.

In the current book, I will show the intellectual sophistication and the sheer adventurousness
of this development. With this end in mind, texts and authors have been selected for
inclusion. Completeness has not been intended; in each case my choice was based on the
genuinely philosophical quality in evidence in individual texts while aiming to represent the
breadth and diversity of the debate. It therefore goes without saying that the account could
not be limited to Chalcedonian writers. In many ways, the miaphysite21 opponents of the
Council were in the ascendency for much of the century that followed the divisive synod of
451. This holds for their philosophical prowess as much as for almost any other aspect of

19
Zachhuber (1999).
20
See ch. 3A1.
21
Terminology in this case is difficult. I opt for ‘miaphysite’ and ‘miaphysitism’ for the Cyriline opponents
of Chalcedon even though this is a modern, artificial term. The more traditional ‘monophysite’ and
‘monophysitism’ are tainted by their use as terms of abuse meant to identify these theologians with the
position of Eutyches condemned at Chalcedon.

11
their activity. It is hardly coincidence that the most important Christian philosopher of the
sixth century, John Philoponus, considered miaphysitism the Christological default position.

Yet the necessity of including the non-Chalcedonian traditions in the present account is not
only or even primarily due to the intellectual rigour with which any of its individual
representatives argued their case. In a more general sense, the deepening doctrinal divisions
about Christology were pivotal for the particular way in which the evolution of Patristic
philosophy played out from the late fifth century. Different accounts of the doctrine of the
Person of Jesus Christ became the faultline along which Patristic philosophies took different
paths, as much as they divided ecclesial communities. Only an account that takes seriously
this plurality can therefore hope to convey a true picture of this intellectual development.22
On the Chalcedonian side, the sixth century will turn out to be a period of unrecognised
philosophical acumen.23 The individuals who wrote this story are largely unknown; they have
not merely been neglected by modern scholarship but were marginal in their own time and
their immediate posteriority to such an extent that we often hardly know their names. The
only partial exception is Leontius of Byzantium, but even his personality is barely
recognisable from the historical sources we possess. As for the rest, John the Grammarian,
Pamphilus the Theologian, Theodore of Raïthu, and Leontius of Jerusalem have all been
mostly forgotten. Their writings are preserved by pure luck in a tiny number of manuscripts,
and no personal information about them is recorded in the accounts of Church Historians or
by their theological successors.

And yet they are a remarkable group of individuals, as will become apparent in due course.
Admittedly, none of them was a Philoponus or a Maximus. There are important theological
and religious questions on which they never pronounce and which, most probably, lay outside
their scope of interest. For the story of this book, however, they are a major unrecognised
resource, evidence for the philosophical fecundity of Patristic thought and for the creative
tension between the inherited Cappadocian philosophy and the conceptual needs of
Chalcedonian Christology.

Established convention has it that the Patristic period of Christian theology ends in the East
with John of Damascus. The present account too will conclude with a chapter describing the
Damascene’s philosophy together with that of Maximus the Confessor, the major
Cappadocian thinker of the seventh century.24 Both produced highly systematic,
philosophically astute and historically influential versions of Patristic philosophy drawing
creatively on the work of earlier generations of Christian thinkers. These philosophies,
moreover, differ starkly thus further defying the notion of a unified Patristic philosophy at the
end of late antiquity.

22
In fact, it would have been desirable to follow this principle further than was practicable in the present
book. Philosophical developments in Syriac-speaking miaphysite communities continued for centuries
beyond the end of the sixth century with which the present narrative ends. Future studies will hopefully be
able to illuminate the continuation of this story to the advent of Islam and beyond. With even greater regret
has the philosophical work of the so-called Nestorian Church of the East been restricted to the margins of
this book. Even more than in the case of the miaphysite tradition, too much important preparatory work is
currently lacking for a synthetic account to be feasible. Yet the few insights that can be gleaned at this stage
are sufficient to suggest that a full understanding of Patristic philosophy that flowed from the Cappadocian’s
classical theory must include the specific contributions of the Church of the East as well.
23
See chs. 7 and 8.
24
See ch. 9.

12
Yet while there is no doubt that the political and cultural changes of the seventh and eighth
centuries profoundly transformed Christian intellectual culture in the Eastern Mediterranean,
the history of Patristic philosophy does not simply come to its end in the major syntheses that
mark this period of crisis. At the end of this book, I shall therefore point to its continuation
and reception indicating that its novel reflections and insights were passed on to posterity
through a variety of often unexplored channels which future research will need to trace.

C. The rise of Christian theology and the end of ancient metaphysics

Students of Christian thought in late antiquity have long been divided over its relationship to
the earlier tradition of Hellenistic philosophy. While some have found startingly novel
tendencies in Patristic attempts to give a rational account of their religious faith,25 others have
emphasised the intellectual continuity between the mainstream of the Platonic-Aristotelian
tradition and nascent Christian theology.26 For this latter group, affirming this continuity was
often important insofar as it allowed for a contrast with later transformations in the Western
Middle Ages that ushered in the more radically different philosophies of European
modernity.27

The present account will offer a nuanced adjudication of these views. As far as the classical
theory of Cappadocian philosophy is concerned, it will appear that the advocates of broad
philosophical continuity between Hellenistic and Christian philosophy are essentially right.
Claims to the contrary have mostly been based on the notion that the Cappadocians initiated a
philosophical turn to the individual or even to the personal. Yet this interpretation is
unsustainable.28 On the contrary, it will appear from my subsequent analysis that at heart, the
Cappadocians developed an ontology of being as one; thus far, they did not diverge from the
long-standing emphasis on ontological unity in Greek philosophical thought. They did not
replace this principle of a single first principle or arche with an unbridled affirmation of a
plurality of persons who only have their unity in their mutual communion even though they
affirm that the single ousia necessarily exists or subsists in a plurality of individual
hypostases.

It is admittedly easy to be mistaken about this point. This is because the Cappadocian theory
is presented in the writings of these thinkers in two versions, which will here be called
abstract and concrete. The former of them was initially advanced by Basil of Caesarea and
later accepted by Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa. The concrete account, by
contrast, seems to have been the genuine contribution of the Bishop of Nyssa. Focussing on
the abstract account, as has often happened, can indeed make it appear as if the Cappadocians
were content to give ontological priority to individuals which they called hypostases, whereas
they merely accorded conceptual unity to genera and species. Yet it is arguable, as will
become apparent in more detail later, that this aspect of the Cappadocian philosophy was
restricted to the grammatical and logical level, whereas for their understanding of physical
and ontological reality the rather different concrete account in Gregory of Nyssa is
indispensable.

Paying attention to the latter dimension of Cappadocian philosophy makes it immediately

clear how much it is geared towards the unity or oneness of being. While ousia, or being,

25
In addition to the Orthodox thinkers already mentioned cf. e.g. Jenson (2001), 6–11.
26
This was the view of Renaissance Platonism and its seventeenth-century heirs, the Cambridge Platonists.
Cf. more recently Ivanka (1964) and now Coakley (2013).
27
For a recent, impressively full account along these lines cf. Pabst (2012).
28
Cf. Turcescu (2005); Ludlow (2007), 52–68.

13
only and exclusively exists in individual instantiations, the role of these instantiations is little
more than to provide concrete realisations for the universal. They are, we might say, only
hypostases of the single ousia or nature. In particular, their individuality is in no way
important for this theory.

This should not come as a surprise: after all, the doctrinal paradigm on which the
Cappadocian philosophy was based is the Trinity whose ousia is absolutely simple, although
it only subsists in three hypostases. Yet, as the Eastern fathers are at pains to emphasise, the
affirmation of three hypostases does not impinge on the tenets of monotheism as the
distinction between the three can be reduced to the fact that their mode of subsistence is
different. In other words, their difference is ultimately reduced to the factuality of their
separate subsistence or existence.

The picture is confirmed from the other doctrines to which the Cappadocian theory was
initially applied.29 The creation of the world by God always created the conceptual difficulty
of how the oneness and simplicity of God could be reconciled with the plurality and diversity
of created reality. Yet there could be no doubt which of these two poles predominates. While
the Christian thinker could not advocate a monism in which the evolution of plurality from
the single source of all being was only a semblance or an unfortunate accident, the origin and
goal of all movement was and remained the unity and simplicity of the divine. In this sense,
the unity of human nature as originally created by God has priority over the multiplicity of
being which unfolds over time, even though the latter is a necessary process without which
the original creation would not be complete.

As far as the Cappadocian account of being is concerned, then, plurality remains an

afterthought, and the individuality of particulars is not emphasised. Individual hypostases are
necessary in the plural, not in the singular: the world consists of individual existents, but their
distinctiveness and uniqueness is as unimportant as it had been in the previous Hellenistic
tradition. Is the same, however, true for the Patristic tradition in its entirety? It is intriguing to
note how much the advocates of the continuity between earlier Hellenistic philosophy and
Patristic thought have focussed their attention on late fourth and early-fifth century figures
for whose philosophy the Trinity was the main conceptual paradigm. Their case, as we shall
see, becomes much weaker once we move beyond this early period in Patristic thought and
observe the conceptual impact of what was, perhaps, the most distinctive doctrine of
Christianity: Christology.

While for the conceptualisation of orthodox trinitarianism oneness and unity despite a
plurality of hypostases was pivotal, Christology heavily depended on a viable theory of the
individual in order to explain the unique case of Jesus Christ. By adopting the term
hypostasis for the saviour’s personal individuality and by stipulating that his human nature
stood in the same relation of consubstantiality to the rest of humankind as his divine nature
stood with the other trinitarian Persons,30 fifth-century Christianity set up Christology as a
conceptual challenge almost exactly contrary to that of Trinitarianism. It was the
Christological controversy, therefore, which for the first time truly directed intellectual
energies towards the task of conceptualising the individual as individual.

29
See ch. 2C1.
30
See ch. 3B2.

14
As a result, the inherited Cappadocian philosophy had to be adapted and modified. Little has
been written about this process, and it will therefore be the main task of the present book to
offer a detailed account of its unfolding. Without anticipating its outcome, it can be said that
claims about the adoption of novel and unprecedented philosophical views by early Christian
thinkers become much more plausible on this basis. Overall, philosophical attention from the
late fifth century turned to the role of the individual, its ontological constitution, its internal
cohesion, and its relationship to universal natures. The positions adopted by the various
Christian thinkers during this period vary greatly: some authors asserted the ontological
primacy of the individual in a way anticipating medieval forms of nominalism; others
detached existence from essence treating the former more or less as a qualitative property.
Once under the influence of Christological debate, Patristic philosophy thus became an
incubator, a laboratory for a variety of views that, much later, will be associated with the
decisive intellectual breaks that separate modernity from classical thought forms.

Few of these philosophies are fully worked out at this stage. The most radical ideas, rather,
seem to exist as seeds waiting to be developed by later thinkers into fuller intellectual
systems. Yet their origin in the Christological controversy is nonetheless crucial, as it
indicates that the reflection on the Christian faith in its most peculiar and most idiosyncratic
element – the postulation that a historical human person was at the same time God – led to
profound changes to the intellectual fabric of Western civilization with far-reaching
consequences over the centuries and, arguably, into our own time.

15