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The Nature of Christian Doctrine
The Nature of Christian
Doctrine
Its Origins, Development, and Function
A L I S T E R E . MC G R AT H
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
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© Alister E. McGrath 2024
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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Preface
What is Christian doctrine? Why did it emerge? What are its functions?
This book is the outcome of thirty years’ reflection on these questions during
my career at Oxford University, particularly during my periods as Professor
of Historical Theology and later as Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and
Religion. I had begun my Oxford undergraduate education at Oxford
University by studying chemistry, specializing in quantum theory, after
which I pursued a doctorate in the biological sciences, working in the multi-
disciplinary research group of Professor Sir George Radda. My growing
awareness of the rich intellectual possibilities of a methodological dialogue
between the natural sciences and Christian theology, stimulated partly by
reading Maurice Wiles’s Making of Christian Doctrine (1966), led me to take
Oxford’s undergraduate degree in theology alongside my scientific research.
Wiles proposed loose parallels between the development of Christian
doctrine on the one hand and of scientific theories on the other.1 In discussing
the criteria and methods used by early Christian theologians in developing
their theologies, Wiles highlighted the importance of finding the theological
‘conception’ that ‘fits best with the whole way in which God deals with us’.2
Though Wiles does not use these specific terms in his reflections on doctrinal
development, his analysis clearly suggested that early Christian doctrinal
development involved what a philosopher of science would now describe as
a ‘logic of discovery’ and a ‘logic of verification’, in which a theoretical
framework is created or discovered, and then tested against the evidence in
order to determine the ‘best’ explanation.3
1 Wiles, who was Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University from 1970 to 1991, saw
an understanding of how doctrine developed as grounding its modern revision: Wiles, The
Remaking of Christian Doctrine. For assessments of Wiles’s theological significance, see
Macquarrie, ‘The Theological Legacy of Maurice Wiles’; Williams and Young, ‘Maurice Frank
Wiles 1923–2005’.
2 Wiles, Making of Christian Doctrine, 12.
3 See, for example, Chauviré, ‘Peirce, Popper, Abduction, and the Idea of Logic of
Discovery’; Paavola, ‘Abduction as a Logic of Discovery’. The important theme of ‘inference to
the best explanation’ in the natural sciences was first set out in 1965, a year before the publica-
tion of The Making of Christian Doctrine, by Gilbert Harman, in his paper ‘The Inference to the
Best Explanation’. Though questions remain about its scope and grounding, this has now estab-
lished itself as dominant within debates about scientific explanation. Cf. Lipton, Inference to the
Best Explanation; Douven, ‘Inference to the Best Explanation’.
vi Preface
Wiles further suggested that we might ‘deepen our understanding of the
nature of doctrinal development by comparison with the pattern of devel-
opment in those fields like science’,4 commending Thomas Kuhn’s discus-
sion of the Copernican Revolution as an example of a new way of thinking
displacing those that went before it.5 While Wiles did not engage Kuhn in
any detail, or make a theological application of Kuhn’s central notion of a
‘paradigm shift’, I found attractive his suggestion that our understanding of
the development of doctrine might benefit from a comparison with scien-
tific theories.
On my return to Oxford to teach theology in 1983, I began to research
the development of the doctrine of justification, which had not been fully
explored since A. B. Ritschl’s Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und
Versöhnung (1870),6 in preparation for this ambitious exploratory project.
George Lindbeck’s Nature of Doctrine (1984) was discussed extensively
within Oxford’s Faculty of Theology at this time.7 I found Lindbeck’s
account of doctrine to be both engaging and problematic, for reasons I
explored in my 1990 Bampton Lectures at Oxford,8 and develop further in
this volume. I was particularly concerned by Lindbeck’s reductive account
of the nature of doctrine and his failure to offer a critical account of the
development of doctrine.9
During my period as Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford
University (1999–2008), I continued to research aspects of the historical
development of Christian doctrine, but now with a focus on the historical
development of the doctrines of the incarnation and Trinity in the early
Christian period. My intention here was not to make any original contribu-
tions to this field of study, but to try and discern a conceptual framework
that might explain and render coherent some of the patterns of change and
development observed in early Christian thinking.
4 Wiles, Making of Christian Doctrine, 169.
5 Wiles, Making of Christian Doctrine, 169–71.
6 McGrath, Iustitia Dei. This work was first published in 1986, and is now in its fourth edition
(2020).
7 Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine. For critical assessments of Lindbeck’s approach see
Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine, 95–100; Volpe, Rethinking Christian Identity; DeHart, The
Trial of the Witnesses; Higton, ‘Reconstructing The Nature of Doctrine’; Watson, ‘Another
Nature of Doctrine’.
8 McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine, 14–34. I did not develop the parallels between scientific
theories and theological doctrines in my 1990 Bampton Lectures at Oxford; this deficiency is
corrected by the present volume.
9 For his brief reflections on this matter, see Lindbeck, ‘The Problem of Doctrinal
Development and Contemporary Protestant Theology’.
Preface vii
Where early modern historians of dogma had tended to see the study of
early Christian history as a critical tool for the deconstruction or reformula-
tion of doctrine,10 I found that the process of the evolution of doctrine in
the early Christian period seemed to point to important (yet curiously
neglected) parallels between the development of doctrine and the evolution
of scientific theories, which would significantly enrich any theological
account of the evolution of doctrine.11 I gradually found my way towards a
theoretical framework which seemed to offer a credible account of the
transformations that certain core Christian doctrines have undergone,
without amounting to a retrospective imposition of some preconceived
account of how doctrinal development should take place.
In 2007, Christoph Markschies published a significant monograph on
early Christian theology, in which he noted how patristic theologians such
as the apologists, Montanists, and the school of Origen ‘developed their the-
ology according to the model of a laboratory’.12 Although Markschies was
not the first to propose such a model, its heuristic potential was immedi-
ately obvious to me.13 It was like an epiphanic moment, which allowed me
to envisage early Christianity as a period of theory development and testing,
rather than accepting Walter Bauer’s influential (though under-evidenced)
theory of the suppression of early ‘orthodoxies’. Early Christian writers, it
seemed to me, set out what they considered to be viable doctrinal proposals
for evaluation; these only became ‘orthodox’ if and when their merits had
10 Wiles himself took this view: see Wiles, The Remaking of Christian Doctrine, 1–19. For a
critical analysis of the methodology to be employed in ‘doctrinal criticism’ see Beardslee, ‘The
Dogma of History’. For wider discussions of the use of early Christian history in doctrinal
criticism, see Bergjan, ‘Die Beschäftigung mit der Alten Kirche an deutschen Universitäten in
den Umbrüchen der Aufklärung’; Bergjan, ‘Versuch eines fruchtbaren Auszugs aus der
Kirchengeschichte’. For later developments within Catholicism, see Poulat, Histoire, dogme et
critique dans la crise moderniste. Although Dogmenschichte was widely presented as an object
ive historical science, its leading proponents—such as Ferdinand Christian Baur—often held
certain definite preconceived views on what doctrine ought to be, and the nature of the historical
process itself. For comment, see Zachhuber, Theology as Science in Nineteenth- Century
Germany, 25–50; 135–74. Harnack’s liberal Protestant distaste for the notion of ‘deification’ is
particularly evident, skewing his analysis at several points in his History of Dogma (1896–9).
Fergus Kerr’s comment should be noted: ‘One need only track the references to deification in
the index to Harnack’s great work to see how angry the theme makes him’ (Kerr, After
Aquinas, 155).
11 This possibility is touched on in some accounts of the relation of the natural sciences and
theology, such as Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age, but is not developed in the detail
necessary for its critical evaluation.
12 Markschies, Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen, 380–1.
13 See Löhr, ‘Modelling Second- Century Christian Theology: Christian Theology as
Philosophia’, especially 151; Lieu, ‘Modelling the Second Century as the Age of the Laboratory’.
viii Preface
been evaluated over an extended period of time by the community of faith,
which then received them as communally reliable and authoritative.
Exploring this way of looking at early Christian doctrinal development
became a major concern for me while I held the Andreas Idreos
Professorship of Science and Religion at Oxford University (2014–22), one
of the few senior academic positions which specifically mandates the
exploration of the relation of the natural sciences and theology. As a result
of this research on ‘patterns of development’ in both doctrine and the natural
sciences, it became clear to me that there are parallels not merely between
the historical development of Christian doctrines and scientific theories, but
between the theological and scientific understandings of the function of
theories. This volume thus sets out to explore the origins, evolution, and
function of Christian doctrine, using, where appropriate, the history and
philosophy of the natural sciences in a ministerial, rather than magisterial,
role to illuminate these matters, highlighting parallels and convergences
without implying identity or resolving issues of epistemic priority.14
Although the analysis of the development of doctrine set out in this volume
may prove to be its most original feature, the comparison of the function of
theories in theology and science is, in my view, of potential interest and
importance. I leave it to my readers to decide whether the outcome of this
way of engaging the history of Christian doctrine and expressing its con-
temporary significance is helpful.
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generous encouragement and support
of my editor at Oxford University Press, Tom Perridge, and the perceptive
comments of two anonymous readers of the first draft of this work, which
were enormously helpful in clarifying and streamlining its argument.
Alister McGrath
Oxford, April 2023
14 For some representative recent works in the field, see Aspray, ‘Scripture Grows with Its
Readers’; Guarino, ‘Tradition and Doctrinal Development’; Hall, ‘The Development of
Doctrine’; Lash, Change in Focus; Mansini, ‘Saint Thomas and the Development of Doctrine’;
McCarren, ‘Development of Doctrine’; Meszaros, ‘Extra ecclesiam nulla salus’; Nichols, From
Newman to Congar; Norris, ‘The Development of Doctrine’; Tallon, ‘Doctrinal Development
and Wisdom’.
Contents
1. On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 1
Doctrine, Dogma, and Theology: Some Preliminary Reflections 2
Paradigm Shifts and the Emergence of Christianity 5
Christian Doctrine: A New Way of Seeing Things 11
Metanoia: A Holistic ‘Change of Mind’ 15
A New Imagining of the Scriptures of Israel 21
Christian Doctrine: A New Manner of Living 25
2. Theorizing the Identity of Christ: On Early Christian
Doctrinal Development 29
The Quest for the ‘Best Explanation’ of the Evidence 29
The Metaphor of an Early Christian ‘Theological Laboratory’ 31
Charles Taylor on the Quest for the ‘Best Account’ 33
Questioning Bauer’s Approach to Heresy and Orthodoxy 35
‘Good Science’ and ‘Orthodoxy’: Problematic Historical
Categories 39
Doctrinal Development: Criteria of Theory Choice 41
Athanasius on Testing Theological Theories 46
3. The Functions of Christian Doctrine 53
George Lindbeck on The Nature of Doctrine 53
Mary Midgley on Mapping a Complex Reality 60
Doctrine and Christian Identity: Focus and Boundaries 62
Doctrine and the Interpretation of Experience 64
Doctrine as a Bridge between Past and Present 66
Doctrine as a Marker of Social Identity 70
Doctrine and Ecumenism 73
4. The Three Worlds of Christian Doctrine: Theoretical,
Objective, and Subjective 77
Karl Popper’s Three Worlds: Theoretical, Objective,
and Subjective 79
Doctrine as Articulation: Engaging Charles Taylor 81
The Problem of Abstraction in Doctrine 85
Awe and Glory: A Stimulus to Theoretical Reflection 87
Doctrine and Poetry: Affect and Cognition in George Herbert 90
The Incarnation: Objective and Subjective Themes 93
x Contents
5. Seeing the Face of God: On the Doctrine of the Incarnation 101
Aniconism: The ‘Image Ban’ in the Old Testament 103
Aniconism and Early Christianity 106
Incarnation and Image: The Move Away from Aniconism 108
The Incarnation and the Face of God 111
Christ as the Embodiment of Meaning 114
The Incarnation and Suffering 116
6. Doctrine: Ontological Disclosure and Coordinating
Framework 119
Epistemic and Ontic Explanations in the Natural Sciences 121
The Incarnation as Ontological Disclosure 127
The Incarnation as a Coordinating Framework 128
The Incarnation as an Intellectual Abstraction? 132
Ontic and Epistemic Aspects of the Doctrine of the Trinity 133
7. The Doctrine of Salvation: Coherence, Comprehensiveness,
and Theological Mapping 137
On Theorizing the Atonement: The Problem of Intellectualization 138
Coherence and Comprehensiveness as Theological Virtues 142
The Doctrine of Salvation: Mapping the Benefits of Christ 144
A Problem? Anselm of Canterbury on ‘Satisfaction’ 148
Imagining and Articulating Salvation: Four New Testament
Metaphors 151
Drawing Near to God: Salvation and Cultic Purity 151
Healing the Blind: Salvation as Restoration of Wholeness 153
Liberation: Salvation as Deliverance from Bondage 156
Adoption: Salvation as Familial Relocation 158
The Coherence and Complexity of Salvation 160
Conclusion 165
Bibliography 167
Index 211
1
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine
Why did doctrine emerge as such a significant category in early Christianity?
As Christoph Markschies rightly points out, there is no obvious reason why
any institution in this specific cultural context needed to develop a theology
or define itself using ‘doctrines’.1 In fact, it is decidedly puzzling that early
Christian communities saw theology as integral to their identity and mis-
sion, offering creedal statements which have no real parallel within contem-
porary Judaism or the religious movements of late classical antiquity.2 This
emphasis upon doctrine in self-definition and self-regulation is best seen as
a specific characteristic of Christianity, rather than being an essential
generic feature of ‘religion’, as this has now come to be understood within
the modern western academy. So how did this emphasis emerge? An answer
appears to lie in the perceived need to explain and affirm the distinctively
Christian understanding of Jesus Christ, whose religious roles and function
rested on an understanding of his identity. Yet this also extended to the
Christian understanding of God. Who is the ‘God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ’? And what relation does this God bear to Yahweh, the coven
ant God of Israel, or to the multiple divinities of late classical antiquity?3
At the heart of the New Testament is the belief that something new and
life-changing has happened in Jesus Christ,4 forcing a redrawing of maps of
1 Markschies, Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen, 29–30. Markschies
endorses Adolf von Harnack’s view that this interest in theology as a ‘responsible account of
faith’ was specific to the Christian religion in the Roman Empire, having no counterpart, for
example, in the Mithras Cult or other religious movements (29).
2 A possible line of research here is whether these developments correspond with ‘attractor
factors’ which lead some religions to ‘cluster around a more doctrinal configuration’: see
Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity, 74–7.
3 Robert Jenson’s exploration of the doctrine of the Trinity as a naming of the Christian God
captures this aspect of early Christian thought: Jenson, The Triune Identity. For Jenson,
Trinitarian theology is the ground and criterion of the Christian church’s missional task to
discover what it means to speak faithfully about God to its own members, and to the world
beyond. Cf. Swain, The God of the Gospel, 77–140.
4 Excellent accounts of the New Testament’s rich and complex witness to Christ and its
theological significance may be found in works such as Hays, Reading Backwards; Dunn, Did
the First Christians Worship Jesus?; Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel; Wright, The
Resurrection of the Son of God.
The Nature of Christian Doctrine: Its Origins, Development, and Function. Alister E. McGrath,
Oxford University Press. © Alister E. McGrath 2024. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198901440.003.0001
2 The Nature of Christian Doctrine
the territories of divinity and humanity.5 The old wineskins simply could
not contain this new wine. For Rowan Williams, the Christian faith has its
beginnings in an experience of profound contradictoriness and intellectual
disruption which ‘so questioned the religious categories of its time that the
resulting organization of religious language was a centuries-long task’.6 This
precipitated an extended process of assessing existing categories and devel-
oping new ones that could cope with this new and unsettling development.
The period of the early church is of critical importance to the process
Williams describes, in that it initiated a principled quest for an intellectual
framework that made sense of the significance of Christ, as this was dis-
closed in the New Testament and enacted in the devotional and liturgical
practices of this theologically formative age.7 Christian doctrine emerged as
an attempt to capture and express this new way of thinking, imagining, and
living, partly to sustain the internal life of the community of faith, and
partly to explain its beliefs and practices to outsiders.
Doctrine, Dogma, and Theology: Some
Preliminary Reflections
While other religious and philosophical traditions developed ‘doctrines’,
understood as the teachings of their leading or defining representatives, the
Christian understanding of doctrine soon came to focus on capturing the
perceived significance of Christ, rather than summarizing his teaching.
Where the philosophical schools of late classical antiquity often focused on
studying the texts of their founders,8 Christianity focused primarily on
adoring the person of Christ, and articulating the manner in which he
enabled both a knowledge of God and the transformation of the human
situation―issues that demanded the clarification of Christ’s identity―and
secondarily on setting out Christ’s moral and spiritual teachings.9
Although many early Christian theologians developed the concept of
theōria to refer to these frameworks of understanding and visualizing both
5 Harrisville, The Concept of Newness in the New Testament, 107.
6 Williams, The Wound of Knowledge, 11.
7 For representative studies of aspects of this process, see Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy;
Anatolios, Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought; Beeley, The Unity of Christ.
8 Hadot, ‘Théologie, exégèse, révélation, écriture, dans la philosophie grecque’, 14.
9 I use the concept of ‘articulation’ in Charles Taylor’s sense of the expression of an assumed
or implicit moral framework in words and images, to be discussed further later in this volume
(pp. 81–3).
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 3
nature and the divine,10 a somewhat different group of terms is now gener-
ally used to refer to these: dogma, doctrine, and theology. The distinction
between these three terms is contested.11 While each designates a form of
theōria―a way of conceiving, imagining, and even participating in reality―
they diverge on the question of their institutional entailments and associ
ations. A dogma is often seen as a core, definitive, and defining belief of an
epistemic community,12 which is held to be essential to its identity and
functioning.13 In the case of early Christianity, two dogmas emerged as
determinative―the ‘two natures’ of Christ, and the Trinity. Significantly,
neither of these dogmas was seen as requiring revision as a result of the
process of biblical interrogation that lay at the heart of the Protestant
Reformation of the sixteenth century.14 The term is sometimes used today
to refer to core or determinative elements of certain scientific theories,
which demarcate them from alternative approaches,15 paralleling its reli-
gious meaning.16 A doctrine tends to be understood, often prescriptively, as
a belief that characterizes a community of discourse, whereas a theology
tends to designate, often descriptively, the views of individuals.17 Sergei
10 Wirzba, ‘Christian Theoria Physike’; Foltz, The Noetics of Nature, 158–74; Lollar, To See
into the Life of Things, 253–96.
11 Ernst, ‘The Theological Notes and the Interpretation of Doctrine’; Dulles, Magisterium:
Teacher and Guardian of the Faith; Filser, Dogma, Dogmen, Dogmatik; Weimann, Dogma und
Fortschritt bei Joseph Ratzinger.
12 For this concept, see McGrath, The Territories of Human Reason, 75–89; Sandal, Religious
Leaders and Conflict Transformation, 116–33.
13 Weimann, Dogma und Fortschritt bei Joseph Ratzinger, 31–8. Cf. Lindbeck, Nature of
Doctrine, 59–65. Robert Jenson stresses the importance of ‘irreversibility’ in distinguishing
between doctrine and dogma: Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, 17: ‘Some but not all doctrines
are dogmas. The distinction is perhaps most clearly marked by the notion of irreversibility.
Every theological proposition states a historic choice: To be speaking the gospel, let us hence-
forward say “F” rather than that other possibility “G”.’
14 Kärkkäinen, Luthers trinitarische Theologie des Heiligen Geistes; Mattox, ‘From Faith to
the Text and Back Again’; Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum; Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology.
The forms of anti-Trinitarianism that emerged later, particularly in Reformed contexts, are best
seen as anticipations of early modern rationalist critiques of dogma. See Rohls, ‘Calvinism,
Arminianism and Socinianism in the Netherlands until the Synod of Dort’.
15 Sustar, ‘Crick’s Notion of Genetic Information and the “Central Dogma” of Molecular
Biology’; Koonin, ‘Why the Central Dogma: On the Nature of the Great Biological Exclusion
Principle’; Camacho, ‘Beyond Descriptive Accuracy’.
16 Yet while every dogma is a doctrine, it does not follow that every doctrine is a dogma.
Two doctrines were widely seen as ‘dogmas’ in the early church, in the sense of being deter
minative of a Christian vision of reality―namely, the dogma of the two natures of Christ and
the dogma of the Trinity.
17 Gortner, Varieties of Personal Theology, 27–71. Cf. van den Toren, ‘Distinguishing
Doctrine and Theological Theory’. Christoph Markschies has highlighted the important con-
nections of theology and institutions in early Christian thought: Markschies, Kaiserzeitliche
christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen, 28–41.
4 The Nature of Christian Doctrine
Bulgakov, for example, remarks that the Orthodox tradition is characterized
by a dogmatic minimalism which is generous towards ‘individual judgment
in the domain of “theological opinions (theologoumena)” ’.18 To speak of a
‘doctrine’―rather than a ‘theology’―is to acknowledge that this understanding
of Christ is not simply a matter of individual preference, but came to be
accepted as defining and identity-giving by the early Christian churches.19
Jaroslav Pelikan highlighted the ecclesial dimensions of doctrine when he
defined ‘Christian doctrine’ as ‘what the church of Jesus Christ believes,
teaches, and confesses on the basis of the word of God’.20 Doctrine is thus
‘the business of the church’, designating the church’s public teaching, rather
than the theories and personal opinions of individual theologians. Emil
Brunner similarly affirmed the communal significance of doctrine, noting
that the church as the community of faith needed to establish a ‘norm of
faith’ to preserve its core convictions, and allowing it to distinguish ‘right’
beliefs from deficient alternatives.21 From an Anglican perspective, Charles
Gore insisted on the need for criteria and boundaries to preserve the iden-
tity and mission of the church.
One real function of the Church is to draw lines . . . if the Church is wisely
liberal, it will draw lines as seldom as possible. But if it is at all true to its
traditions and apostolic precedents, it must always appear as a body know-
ing it has an essential programme to preserve and therefore ‘drawing lines’
where this treasure is in danger of being invaded.22
So what is this ‘treasure’ to which Gore alludes? The New Testament exudes
a celebratory excitement about the new way of thinking and living that
18 Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, 83. Bulgakov contrasts this with what he considers to be
the more expansive and legalistic approach of Catholicism, which is characterized by the
‘canonical formulation of an entire dogmatic inventory’ (100). For Bulgakov’s reflections on
the nature of dogma, see Bulgakov, ‘Dogma and Dogmatic Theology’.
19 Slenczka, Kirchliche Entscheidung in theologischer Verantwortung, 63–94.
20 Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1, 1. Pelikan elsewhere argues that Christian doc-
trine consisted of three central elements: ‘believing, teaching, and confessing’. Pelikan,
Historical Theology, 96–7.
21 Brunner, Die christliche Lehre von Gott, 60–1. On the role of doctrine in excluding certain
deficient or toxic beliefs, see Morse, Not Every Spirit, 3–31.
22 Gore, as cited in Prestige, The Life of Charles Gore, 245. While classical Roman religion
was resistant to drawing such boundaries, fostering an inclusive Roman identity, events of the
second century appear to have precipitated reflection on how religious boundaries were to be
defined: Orlin, Foreign Cults in Rome, 162–90. For the place of ‘drawing lines’ demarcating
genuine science from ‘pseudoscience’, see Hirvonen and Karisto, ‘Demarcation without
Dogmas’, 706–15.
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 5
seemed to have opened up as a result of the life, death, and resurrection of
Christ, linked with a rich range of reflections on how this ‘new state of
affairs’ was to be best understood and communicated.23 The opening of the
first letter of John captures this sense of astonishment at the new world
opened up by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, using the language
of personal presence, reliable witness, and trustworthy testimony:
We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what
we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our
hands, concerning the word of life―this life was revealed, and we have
seen it and testify to it (1 Jn 1:1–2).24
Although the specific vocabulary of theōria is absent, its core elements
are present―including witnessing an event of sacred significance, and
the proclaiming the actuality and significance of this event to others.
Something happened that caused those around Christ to rethink their
settled assumptions, as they realized that their existing frameworks of
understanding were overwhelmed by what they saw and heard. This process
of disruption was followed by a process of reconstruction, in which
multiple possible conceptualizations of this ‘new state of affairs’ were
proposed and subjected to evaluation over time. We therefore need to
explore this shift in understandings, and its implications for the emer-
gence of Christian doctrine.
Paradigm Shifts and the Emergence of Christianity
‘Christian faith, and therefore Christian theology, emerges out of the shock
of the gospel.’25 John Webster here points to the ‘comprehensive interrup-
tion of all things in Jesus Christ’, which ‘absolutely dislocates and no less
23 I borrow this phrase from Moo, ‘Creation and New Creation’. See also Gorman,
Participating in Christ, 150–77.
24 For comment, see Klauck, Der erste Johannesbrief, 53–78. Bauckham’s Jesus and the
Eyewitnesses stresses the importance of individual testimony in shaping the gospel accounts;
this passage clearly reflects a corporate or communal witness to this event and to its signifi-
cance. For a critical assessment of Bauckham’s hypothesis, see Tripp, ‘The Eyewitnesses in Their
Own Words’.
25 Webster, The Culture of Theology, 43. See also Webster, ‘What is the Gospel?’ Cf. Wittman,
‘John Webster on the Task of a Properly Theological Theologia’.
6 The Nature of Christian Doctrine
absolutely reorders’ thinking about God and the meaning of life. Existing
ways of thinking, largely inherited from Judaism, were ‘at one and the same
time overwhelmed and consumed yet remade and reestablished’ in and
through this historical event. Webster helpfully highlights a central theme
of the New Testament―that something new and disruptive has happened, a
‘regenerative event’ which forces the rethinking of older patterns of thought
in order that their inner dynamics and interconnections might be reviewed
and reconsidered, leading to the transformation of our understanding and
inhabitation of the world.26 The narratives of the synoptic gospels regularly
testify to a sense of astonishment, amazement, or wonder on the part of
audiences in response to the words and acts of Christ, leading into praise
and reflection.27
This process of disruption, dislocation, and reordering arises partly
through a realization that existing intellectual frameworks were not capable
of doing justice to this new event, which, like new wine, threatened to over-
whelm the old wineskins.28 Old paradigms were suddenly seen to be prob-
lematic in the light of something that many expected to confirm them, yet
ultimately subverted them. The New Testament gives clear indications that
despite welcome continuities between the life, death, and resurrection of
Christ and the expectations of Israel, these events simply could not be
plausibly mapped onto traditional frameworks of interpretation, which
were stretched to their limits. A new paradigm was needed.29
Dirk-Martin Grube has persuasively argued that the emergence of early
Christian communities reveals striking similarities with the features charac-
terizing paradigm shifts.30 Grube illustrates this approach through an ana
lysis of the ‘Road to Emmaus’ narrative (Luke 24:13–31), highlighting the
26 Rowan Williams makes similar points in exploring the ‘disruption’ caused by Christ. See
Eilers, ‘Rowan Williams and Christian Language’. Ben Myers captures one of Williams’s points
elegantly: ‘Language is annihilated by the trauma of Christ, but it is also born anew’: Myers,
Christ the Stranger, 33.
27 For representative discussions, see Dwyer, The Motif of Wonder in the Gospel of Mark;
DeLong, Surprised by God; Berder, ‘Surprise, étonnement, admiration? Observations sur
l’usage du verbe thaumazō dans le récit de Luc-Actes’.
28 There are important resonances here with the phenomenon of post-traumatic growth, in
which a traumatic event precipitates a radical reconsideration of existing paradigms. For the
crucifixion of Christ as the precipitant of such post-traumatic growth, see Collicutt McGrath,
‘Post-Traumatic Growth and the Origins of Early Christianity’.
29 For the importance of the resurrection in bringing about this ‘paradigm shift’, see Grube,
Ostern als Paradigmenwechsel, 57–92.
30 Grube, ‘Christian Theology Emerged by Way of a Kuhnian Paradigm Shift’. This picks up
on points made in his earlier study Ostern als Paradigmenwechsel, referenced in the previ-
ous note.
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 7
statement that, as a result of the disciples’ encounter with Christ, their eyes
were opened and they recognized him (Luke 24:31), and that he explained
to them all the scriptures concerning himself (Luke 24:27)―in other words,
that he taught them a Christological hermeneutic, a way of discerning how the
Old Testament prepared for the coming of Christ.31 This radically changed
perception of the world, Grube argues, constitutes a paradigm shift.
Grube here draws on the work of Thomas Kuhn, whose influential study
of the emergence of a scientific culture in western Europe suggested that the
natural sciences normally work on the basis of a settled paradigm, a set of
assumptions that are considered to be secure and reliable over a period of
time.32 Yet at times, these paradigms are called into question, leading to
what Kuhn termed a ‘paradigm shift’. Existing theories were found not to
provide satisfactory explanations of new observations or accumulations of
observations. Kuhn’s idea of a paradigm shift allowed him to explore how
scientific communities proposed, examined, and (where appropriate)
accepted new ways of thinking about the world―and hence seeing and
inhabiting that world. Kuhn thus suggests that such a paradigm shift leads
to scientists working in a new world―not because the world has changed,
but because that world is seen in a new manner.33
Some might be concerned that a relatively modern idea is here being
used to explain the emergence and development of Christian understand-
ings of Christ, perhaps amounting to the imposition of a modern way of
thinking on ancient texts. Yet in his perceptive analysis of Kuhn’s idea of a
paradigm shift, the philosopher Ian Hacking praised it as a ‘brilliantly novel
use of an ancient [Aristotelian] idea’.34 Kuhn is simply naming a way of
thinking that appears to have been widely known and practised throughout
history. William James famously remarked that his philosophical pragma-
tism was just a new name for some old ways of thinking.35 In much the same
way, Kuhn can be seen as giving a new name to (and finding a new use for)
31 For this theme in Irenaeus, see Presley, The Intertextual Reception of Genesis 1–3 in
Irenaeus of Lyons, 136–71.
32 Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. For his notion of a ‘paradigm shift’, see von
Dietze, Paradigms Explained; Mladenović, Kuhn’s Legacy. For Grube’s assessment of Kuhn’s
importance, see Grube, ‘Interpreting Kuhn’s Incommensurability Thesis’.
33 For the role of constructivism in shaping Kuhn’s views here, see Massimi, ‘Working in a
New World’.
34 Ian Hacking, ‘Paradigms’, 109.
35 James, Pragmatism. Note the work’s subtitle: ‘A New Name for Some Old Ways of
Thinking’. Although James credits his fellow American philosopher Charles Peirce with
inventing the term ‘pragmatism’, James made it clear that the term describes a philosophical
inclination that can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy.
8 The Nature of Christian Doctrine
a well-established way of thinking about the interpretation of evidence,
leading to a new theory displacing the old.
The classic example of such a paradigm shift is the radical change from
geocentric to heliocentric ways of thinking about the relation of the earth to
the sun, moon, and planets which took place over an extended period dur-
ing the sixteenth century. The geocentric approach developed by Ptolemy of
Alexandria was a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the observational
evidence available to him in the second century.36 Yet more accurate obser-
vations in the sixteenth century made it clear that Ptolemy’s model needed
revision, if not replacement, eventually leading to the emergence and even-
tual acceptance of the rival approaches of Nicolaus Copernicus and Johann
Kepler.37
Yet Kuhn does not envisage a paradigm shift as representing a single
alteration to existing conceptualizations of reality. Kuhn argues that a para-
digm shift is about more than some minor theoretical changes; it is about
the emergence of a new way of seeing ourselves and our world. A paradigm
shift rather entails a program of rethinking and reconceptualization affect-
ing the system as a whole, rather than a few of its peripheral elements.38
Precisely because scientific theories enfold multiple working assumptions, a
change to any single significant assumption or parameter within this theor
etical framework causes changes elsewhere.
While Christianity may have had its origins within Judaism, it displayed
a sudden and significant difference in character from Jewish devotion39
with important theological consequences which amount to a paradigm shift
in understanding Christ’s identity. Recent scholarship has clarified some
important aspects of the gradual separation of Christianity from its original
matrix within Judaism,40 noting how certain individuals―such as Justin
36 Swerdlow, ‘The Empirical Foundations of Ptolemy’s Planetary Theory’.
37 Tycho Brahe’s accurate astronomical observations during the 1570s and 1580s were of
especial importance in this respect: Blair, ‘Tycho Brahe’s Critique of Copernicus and the
Copernican System’.
38 Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 150–1. Cf. Andersson, ‘Sind Falsifikationismus
und Fallibilismus vereinbar?’, especially 259–61. For Jörg Rheinberger’s related notion of an
epistemic Gestaltwechsel, see Niemann, Wissenschaftssprache praxistheoretisch, 53–70.
39 Hurtado, One God, One Lord, 97–130.
40 For an excellent recent survey, see Gabrielson, ‘Parting Ways or Rival Siblings?’ For
detailed studies of the multiple aspects of this complex fissure, see Schröter, Edsall, and
Verheyden, eds, Jews and Christians―Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries CE? For the place
of the doctrine of the Trinity within the context of this process of self-differentiation, see
Schwöbel, ‘The Trinity between Athens and Jerusalem’.
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 9
Martyr―appear to have been significant in this respect.41 While this
extended parting of the ways is resistant to simplistic formulations, it is
clear that two theological issues were of importance in creating tensions
between early Christianity and Judaism―namely, the identity and signifi-
cance of Christ, and the correct interpretation of Israel’s sacred scriptures.
This led to early Christian communities finding themselves in tension with
many sections of the Jewish community on account of their perceived rup-
turing or jeopardizing of the unity of the people of Israel.42
Early Christian writers, taking the view that Christ was to be seen as the
fulfilment of the law and the prophets (Matt. 5:17), interpreted the Old
Testament in the light of this controlling and informing assumption.43
There was, however, a growing perception that while Christ stood in con
tinuity with the traditions of Israel, he could not be comfortably assimilated
to them.44 Though the gospels indicate that Christ was often referred to in
terms which had a rich history of use within Judaism―such as teacher,
prophet, and Messiah―none of these seemed adequate or appropriate to
capture his full significance.45 To play on Kuhn’s account of a paradigm
shift, there was a recognition that God had somehow violated the paradigm-
induced expectations that had hitherto governed Israel’s hopes for the
future.46 The concept of a suffering messiah, for example, seems to be a
contradiction in terms, when seen against the background of Israel’s sacred
writings and expectations.47 Nor does the resurrection of Christ fit easily
within existing Jewish frameworks of interpretation or expectation.48 For
early Christian theologians, this pointed to a need to reconsider this original
paradigm, and explore whether a more satisfactory alternative could be
developed. To use a familiar and powerful image from the gospels (Mark 2:22),
41 Boyarin, Border Lines, 37–73; Buell, Why This New Race, 94–115.
42 Williams, ‘Defining Heresy’, 318.
43 See, for example, Williams, ‘Christological Exegesis of Psalm 45’. Given the importance of
the Psalter in Christian worship, the contested interpretation of individual Psalms is a signifi-
cant issue for Jewish and Christian scholars: see especially Gillingham, ed., Jewish and
Christian Approaches to the Psalms.
44 For the complex relationship of the God of Israel and the Word made flesh, see Marshall,
‘Do Christians Worship the God of Israel?’
45 For these early Jewish readings of Christ’s significance, see Skarsaune, ‘The Ebionites’.
46 I here apply Kuhn’s terminology to this specifically theological issue: Kuhn, Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, 52–3.
47 Some ingenious solutions have been proposed, but have yet to find acceptance―such as
the suggestion that Christ somehow merges the expectations of a future Davidic King and
Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. See, for example, Strauss, The Davidic Messiah in Luke–Acts, 256–7.
48 For the theological implications of this point, see Grube, Ostern als Paradigmenwechsel.
Much the same point is made in Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God.
10 The Nature of Christian Doctrine
the new wine demanded new wineskins; the old frameworks of interpret
ation were simply not capable of containing the complex Christian experi-
ence of Christ set out, for example, in Mark’s gospel.49 It became clear that a
new theoretical framework, a new imaginary―to use a category popular
ized by the philosopher Charles Taylor50―was needed to enfold the biblical
witness to Christ, and explain its significance.
This kind of principled reassessment and critical reappropriation of exist-
ing ideas about God in the light of the New Testament’s witness to Christ
was taking place in the writings of early Christian theologians, who realized
that neither the traditional Jewish understandings of the economy of salva-
tion nor classic Hellenistic ideas of God could cope with this witness. A
process of reconsideration and revisitation of the church’s relation to
Judaism emerged, ultimately leading to the formulation of the ‘two natures’
of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth century, but with
important anticipatory milestones in earlier centuries.
Yet this was more than a new way of imagining reality; it also had impli-
cations for how Christians behaved. The reconsideration of the ‘works of
the law’ in the second century, particularly in the writings of Irenaeus,51 is
an important illustration of how a changed theory leads to a new way of
living. During this period of ‘emerging Christianity’, neither ‘Judaism’ nor
‘Christianity’ were clearly identified (or differentiated) as social groups,
even though such divergences emerged over time.52 Yet lines of thought can
be seen developing which ultimately led to a bifurcation of visions of what it
meant to stand in faithful continuity with Israel.
Although the doctrines of the incarnation and Trinity are often cited as
significant formulations of the divergence between Christianity and Judaism
in the early Christian period, it is also important to recognize the critical
importance of the doctrine of justification in bringing about a new under-
standing of the purpose and place of torah in the emerging Christian
communities.53 A good example lies in the reconsideration of the role of the
49 Recent scholarship has noted how Mark presents these multiple accounts and insights
without attempting to resolve any tensions between them: see, for example, Davies, ‘Mark’s
Christological Paradox’; Sweat, The Theological Role of Paradox in the Gospel of Mark, 28–62.
50 Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries. Cf. Vanheeswijck, ‘The Philosophical Genealogy of
Taylor’s Social Imaginaries’.
51 For the importance of the theme of ‘justification by faith’ in these discussions, see
McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 30–6.
52 Dunn, The Partings of the Ways, 301–18; Lieu, Neither Jew nor Greek?, 31–49; Mason,
‘Jews, Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism’.
53 McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 26–41.
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 11
Jewish cult. In both his Against Heresies and Demonstration of the Apostolic
Preaching, Irenaeus argues that Christians have been liberated from observ-
ing cultic obligations, such as the observation of the Jewish Sabbath or the
circumcision of males. For Irenaeus, these are to be seen as ‘laws of bond-
age’ which have been abolished through the New Covenant.54 While
Irenaeus argues that Christians ought to observe the moral requirements of
the Decalogue, his reformulation of the relation of the Christian church to
its Jewish roots involved the severing of links with its religious cult. While
some might interpret this move as attenuating, if not breaking, any continu
ity between Christianity and Judaism, it is important to appreciate that early
Christian writers were reconsidering the role of the cult in defining an
authentic Judaism, a process that was unquestionably catalysed within and
beyond Judaism as a consequence of the destruction of the Jerusalem
Temple in 70.55
Christian Doctrine: A New Way of Seeing Things
Christianity is about a new way of seeing things.56 The New Testament is
rich in metaphors based on vision, illumination, and healing of the eyes in
order that we may see properly. Christian writers such as Augustine, Dante,
and C. S. Lewis have offered rich accounts of this transformation of vision
and its implications.57 There are clear parallels with classical philosophy
here; as Hannah Arendt points out, ‘from the very outset, in formal philoso
phy, thinking has been thought of in terms of seeing’.58 While some scholars
have suggested that an emphasis on ocular metaphors is characteristic of
54 Thomas, Paul’s ‘Works of the Law’, 196–206; Blackwell, ‘Paul and Irenaeus’. Irenaeus con-
trasts this with a Christian understanding of vivificatrix lex or libertatis lex. For comment on
the significance of this vocabulary and its parallels, see Presley, The Intertextual Reception of
Genesis 1–3 in Irenaeus of Lyons, 152–3.
55 For the political background to the destruction of the Temple, see Rives, ‘Flavian
Religious Policy and the Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple’. Important cultic changes result-
ing from this event included the cessation of ritualized sacrifices. For fuller accounts, see Gafni,
Land, Center and Diaspora; Mandel, ‘Loss of Center’.
56 Wirzba, ‘Christian Theoria Physike’, 217–20; cf. Foltz, The Noetics of Nature, 158–74;
Lollar, To See into the Life of Things, 253–96.
57 See, for example, Miles, ‘Vision: The Eye of the Body and the Eye of the Mind in Saint
Augustine’s De Trinitate and Confessions’; Fasolini, ‘ “Illuminating” and “Illuminated” Light’;
McGrath, The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis, 83–104.
58 Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 110.
12 The Nature of Christian Doctrine
modernity,59 these have been used throughout western history. Their
resonance with the imagery of the Bible made them a natural choice for
early Christian theologians in developing their understanding of the trans
formation of humanity through grace.
Early Christian theology bears witness to the emergence of a distinctive
theōria through a creative and critical process of finding new analogies,
concepts, and frameworks to try and express what was so significant about
Christ, followed by a process of formalizing and consolidating these insights
in doctrinal formulae, intended to minimize the effect of reductive distor-
tion and misunderstanding of these ideas within and beyond the Christian
community. While an earlier generation of scholars assumed that certain
core categories and terms―such as ‘Christianity’, ‘Judaism’, and ‘heresy’―
were relatively well defined in the second century, these concepts are now
recognized to be more complex and fluid than had previously been appreci-
ated.60 Although some older accounts of this formative age have portrayed
its theologians as defending an inherited uniform orthodoxy, there is a
growing consensus that we should see this period as attempting to construct
such an orthodoxy, which would both lend coherence to the complex core
vision of Christianity, and allow it to be maintained and developed
over time.61
From the outset, early Christian theologians appear to have realized that
the resilience and integrity of Christianity rested on locating Christ satisfac-
torily on a conceptual map which affirmed his continuity with Israel and its
bearers of revelation, while at the same time asserting his utter distinctive-
ness in three critical respects: as the embodiment (not simply bearer) of
divine revelation, as the ground and exemplar of the redeemed life, and as a
proper object of worship and adoration.62 The basic elements of these beliefs
and practices are clearly indicated and their importance affirmed in the
New Testament; the task bequeathed to the church was to weave these
threads into a coherent conceptual garment within which the community of
faith could be enfolded. Early Christian theology bears a vibrant witness to
59 See, for example, the criticisms of this trend in Levin, ed., Modernity and the Hegemony
of Vision.
60 Thomassen, ‘Orthodoxy and Heresy in Second-Century Rome’; Arnal, ‘The Collection
and Synthesis of “Tradition” and the Second-Century Invention of Christianity’; Bingham,
‘Reading the Second Century’.
61 See, for example, Kruger, Christianity at the Crossroads. On the parallel development of
the concept of heresy at this time, see Löhr, ‘The Continuing Construction of Heresy’.
62 For a good account of early Christian wrestling with these themes, see Ayers, Nicaea and
Its Legacy; Williams, Christ, the Heart of Creation, 43–83.
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 13
a creative and critical process of finding new analogies and intellectual
frameworks to try and express what was so significant about Christ,
followed by a process of formalizing and consolidating these insights in
coherent doctrinal formulae,63 intended to minimize the effect of reductive
distortion and misunderstanding of these ideas within and beyond the
Christian community. The task of Christian theology was both to celebrate
and respect the complexity of this depiction of Christ, while at the same
time discerning a theoretical framework of God and the world that lies
behind and beneath it through a process of critical and constructive
reflection.64
So what is theory? For the philosopher Stuart Hampshire, it represents ‘a
set of propositions, comparatively general ones, which explain a much
larger, sometimes heterogeneous range of accepted propositions that seem
to be more unrelated to each other than they really are’.65 Hampshire here
echoes Kant’s account of theory, inevitably impoverished by an imperfect
understanding of its imaginative dimensions.66 Yet Hampshire’s Kantian
framework is only one way of envisaging a ‘theory’. The original Greek term
theōria is based on a visual metaphor, denoting a comprehending act of
beholding, or a specific way of seeing, a complex reality, so that its multiple
aspects and interconnections are more clearly rendered, and its forms of
embodiment established.
A recognition of the importance of developing a theōria―a way of
beholding and visualizing reality―can be traced back to Plato and
Aristotle.67 Aristotle explores various intellectual strategies, both inductive
63 Although Christology represents a particularly important case of a theological theōria,
other examples could easily be given to illustrate its importance: see, for example, Wirzba,
‘Christian Theoria Physike’.
64 Fuller accounts of the New Testament’s rich and complex witness to Christ and its theo
logical significance may be found in works such as Hays, Reading Backwards; Dunn, Did the
First Christians Worship Jesus?; Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel; Wright, The Resurrection
of the Son of God.
65 Hampshire, Morality and Conflict, 17. A similar approach is taken by Baier, who envis-
ages theory as a set of principles ‘in which the less general are derived from the more general’:
Baier, Postures of Mind, 232.
66 For Kant’s underdeveloped account of Einbildungskraft, see Kneller, Kant and the Power
of Imagination, especially 38–59. Kant’s approach is best seen as located in terms of tensions
Enlightenment writers perceived between rational and imaginative cognition: for the historical
context, see Dürbeck, Einbildungskraft und Aufklärung, especially 119–54; Tomečková,
‘Zwischen Wahnsinn und Erkenntnistheorie’.
67 For the development of theōria in classical philosophy, see Nightingale, Spectacles of
Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy; Roochnik, ‘What is Theoria?’ The most important passages
for understanding the concept of theōria are Plato, The Republic, 6; 486a; Aristotle, Metaphysics,
982 b12–16; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1145 b2–7.
14 The Nature of Christian Doctrine
and deductive, for developing such a theoretical account of reality, particu-
larly in proceeding from observations (ta phainomena) to the first prin
ciples (ta archai) that lie behind or beneath the world of experience.68
Although Aristotle’s conception of theory is often understood to relate
solely to experience of the world, a closer reading of his works―such as that
proposed by Hans Georg Gadamer―shows that the Aristotelian concept of
theory recognizes the reciprocity of reflection and practice,69 in which there
is a coherence between what is thought and what is done. Theōria does not,
Gadamer argues, denote a singular detached act of observation ‘that estab-
lishes what is present’, but rather involves active and attentive participation
in what is found to be present.70 While the Greek term theōria can bear the
simple meaning of a way of seeing things, its roots in the cultic Hellenic
practice of ‘sacral beholding’ points to an implicit association between both
observing and participating in a sacred reality.71 Theōria is thus not a purely
cognitive notion, in which a detached observer watches events as a disinter-
ested spectator; it is about being drawn to and caught up in those events as
an engaged participant, just as a Christian is caught up in worship and
adoration.72
As we shall see in the following chapter, this same emphasis on the cor
relation of reflection and practice―in the forms of theology and dox
ology―is a critical element of Athanasius of Alexandria’s defence of the
incarnation as the best account of the apostolic witness to Christ. While
John Webster suggests that ‘a good deal of modern theology has been reluc-
tant to consider contemplation a proper end of theological intelligence’,73
the recognition of the interconnection of theology and adoration was a
commonplace in early Christian reflection on the identity and significance
of Christ. which focused on the significance of the interconnection of the
New Testament witness to Christ and the church’s practice of worshipping
Christ, which is well attested in both the New Testament and the practice of
the early church.74 Larry Hurtado is one of many New Testament scholars
68 Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness, 240–63; Winslow, Aristotle and Rational
Discovery, 19–32.
69 See Gadamer, ‘Praise of Theory’. For discussion of this point, see Brogan, ‘Gadamer’s
Praise of Theory’; Konchak, ‘Gadamer’s “Practice” of Theoria’.
70 Gadamer, ‘Praise of Theory’, 20–1. Note also Brunner’s critique of ‘spectatorial’ accounts
of theory: Brunner, ‘Glaube ist nicht Theorie’.
71 Nightingale, ‘On Wondering and Wandering’.
72 See especially the discussion of theōria phusikē in the thought of Maximos the Confessor:
Foltz, The Noetics of Nature, 158–74.
73 Webster, ‘What Makes Theology Theological?’, 24.
74 See Butner, ‘Probing the Exegetical Foundations of Consubstantiality’.
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 15
to emphasize the importance of this point and its significance for theo
logical interpretation. If Christ is the rightful recipient of cultic devotion,
what does this imply about his identity?75
A good theōria neither displaces nor replaces the observations on which it
is based. Rather, it safeguards and protects individual facts and observations
by adding a coordinating framework which affirms the importance of each
individual observation, while allowing this to be seen as part of a larger pic-
ture, thus adding conceptual depth and perspective. Information needs to be
transmuted into understanding.76 Athanasius and Arius both agreed that
Christ was saviour; the question concerned which framework of interpret
ation best accounted for this, while weaving other elements of Christ’s iden-
tity and function into a coherent whole. This naturally raises the question of
how to determine which theōria can be judged to be the ‘best’ way of
expressing or holding a complex and elusive truth. Theoretical options were
being proposed and assessed against what was seen as evidentiary―above
all, the apostolic tradition, expressed both in the body of writings later
known as the ‘New Testament’ and certain early Christian practices. We
shall consider this question in the next chapter. First, however, we need to
reflect further on the Christian idea of metanoia, traditionally translated as
‘repentance’ but which has the wider meaning of a transformed vision of
reality.
Metanoia: A Holistic ‘Change of Mind’
Earlier in this chapter, we noted the importance of ‘paradigm shifts’ in the
development of the natural sciences, noting that a similar idea is implicit
within the New Testament’s account of the transformation of human life
through Christ, which demanded a new way of understanding and seeing
the world, often expressed using the Greek term metanoia. Traditional
English translations of this Greek term as ‘repentance’ echo the Vulgate’s
unsatisfactory Latin rendering of the term as paenitentia, which was criti-
cized in the third century by Tertullian, not least because of the emerging
75 Note Hurtado, Ancient Jewish Monotheism and Early Christian Jesus-Devotion, 376:
‘Although remarkable and unparalleled, the worship of Jesus in earliest Christianity was prac-
ticed not as in any way detracting from the worship of God “the Father,” but instead the dis-
tinctively Christian way of offering worship to the one true God.’
76 Brenner, ‘Life’s Code Script’, 461: ‘We are drowning in a sea of data and thirsting for some
theoretical framework with which to understand it.’
16 The Nature of Christian Doctrine
tendency to associate the biblical idea of metanoia with the ritualized forms
of public penance which were becoming increasingly predominant in
Roman Christianity.77
It is certainly true that the New Testament Greek term metanoia enfolds
the idea of ‘repentance’, often rendering the Old Testament idea of teshuva, a
‘return to the Lord’, which links the ideas of turning and repentance.78 Yet it
is somewhat problematic to suggest that ‘the word for repentance, metanoia,
means literally a “change of mind” ’.79 This wrongly presupposes that the
correct or univocal English translation of the Greek word metanoia is
‘repentance’, which represents an extension of its literal sense of ‘a change of
mind’. The point is that metanoia cannot be directly equated with ‘repent-
ance’, having rather a spectrum of meanings including (but not restricted to)
‘repentance’. My point is that grasping this richer spectrum of meaning is
helpful in understanding the significance of metanoia for the process of see-
ing reality in a new way as a result of the life, death, and resurrection
of Christ.
The recognition of the richer and deeper nuances of the term metanoia―
often expressed in terms of a ‘radical change of mind’ or a ‘mental
reorientation’―is now increasingly common, both in early Christian studies
and in wider cultural contexts.80 Metanoia extends to include notions of a
‘radical change of mind’ or a ‘mental reorientation’81 that leads to significant
changes in the way we understand, imagine, experience, and inhabit our
world. The Harvard psychologist William James, for example, spoke of how
religious conversion often led to ‘a transfiguration of the face of nature’, in
which a ‘new heaven seems to shine on a new earth’.82
The New Testament depicts Christ as enabling a changed apprehension
of the world, both through his healing ministry and his capacity to illumin
ate reality. An important theme is that of the limited capacity of human
vision, arising partly from our creaturely status, and partly through the dis-
torting impact of sin on the human capacity to see ourselves, God, and the
77 Stroumsa, ‘From Repentance to Penance in Early Christianity’. For the continuing debate
over conversion, and the ambiguous relation between terminology and social processes, see
Mills and Grafton, eds, Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.
78 Lambert, How Repentance Became Biblical, 151–89. For this idea in Luke’s gospel, see
Kim-Rauchholz, Umkehr bei Lukas, 38–189.
79 Stegman, Second Corinthians, 180.
80 For example, Hadot, ‘Epistrophe and Metanoia in the History of Philosophy’; Ellwanger,
Metanoia, 15–96.
81 For a good example of this latter process, see Avanessian and Hennig, Metanoia, 37–134.
82 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 151. For a helpful exploration of this theme
in James’s writings and the philosophy of religion, see Wynn, Renewing the Senses.
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 17
world properly.83 This approach to understanding Christ picks up on the
gospel accounts of the healing of those who were visually impaired,84 and
the idea that Christ illuminates our world. This rich and multifaceted state-
ment is open to many interpretations, such as Augustine of Hippo’s theory
that human beings require divine assistance to see reality properly, compar
able to the illumination of a dark landscape.85 A good theory enables us to
see ourselves and our world as they really are, shielding us from false and
misleading accounts of reality.
As Augustine pointed out, Christian ministry offers a healing of the ‘eyes
of the heart’ through divine illumination and self-examination that corrects
the complex of misguided beliefs and disoriented desires that distort human
attempts to live the good life.86 The church’s task is, through its preaching
and ministry, to ‘heal the eye of the heart so that God may be seen’.87 For
Augustine, the ‘eye of the heart’ is weakened or incapacitated by sin, and
requires healing so that we can see things as they really are, stripping away
our illusions, self-deceptions, and misreadings. Christian doctrine aims to
give an account of this new and enriched vision of reality, and attempts to
weave its multiple elements together in a coherent manner. Yet this is about
more than changing the way in which we see things; it is about ‘the conver-
sion of human affection’,88 through a process in which our faculties are puri-
fied and redirected, in order that we might find and love our true goal,
rather than the lesser goods with which we so often content ourselves. What
Augustine proposes is thus an affective theological vision, not merely a new
way of understanding the world through the ‘eye of the body’.89
The New Testament notion of metanoia can also be framed in terms of
the conversion of the imagination, through which we are enabled to see or
imagine the world as we are meant to see it, as it really is. Faith is about an
acceptance and embrace of this new manner of beholding ourselves and the
world, brought about as part of the process of transformation by grace.
There is a risk of intellectual anachronism in suggesting that metanoia des-
ignates, at least in part, a noetic or imaginative ‘paradigm shift’. Yet while
the modern language of ‘imagination’ does not map easily onto the
83 Azadegan, ‘Divine Hiddenness and Human Sin’.
84 Kok, ‘The Healing of the Blind Man in John’.
85 Schumacher, Divine Illumination, 25–64.
86 Kolbet, Augustine and the Cure of Souls; Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians.
87 Augustine of Hippo, Sermo LXXXVIII.v.5.
88 I borrow this phrase from Byassee, Praise Seeking Understanding, 110.
89 For the importance of the ocular imagery of this passage, see Miles, ‘Vision: The Eye of
the Body and the Eye of the Mind in Saint Augustine’s De Trinitate and Confessions’.
18 The Nature of Christian Doctrine
conceptual world of the New Testament,90 it remains helpful to think and
speak of an evangelical conversion of the imagination―that is to say, a fun-
damental reorientation in the way in which we see ourselves, our desires,
and our world, as result of a transformative encounter with Christ.
This way of approaching the New Testament is not new;91 it has, however,
come to the foreground as a result of the growing theological interest in the
role of the religious imagination in recent decades, linked with an increas-
ing awareness of the wider role of the imagination in discerning meaning.92
Metanoia calls for a fundamental change in human reality through a holis-
tic ‘change of mind’. Indeed, metanoia calls for a reshaping or ‘re-forming’
of mental structures which is at the same time a new ‘form’ or ‘shape’ of a
human life.93
This analysis can also be extended to the affective or emotional aspects of
conversion. In her analysis of the role of metanoia in the poetry of George
Herbert, Sophie Read points out that Herbert understands this idea as ‘a
fundamental cognitive reorientation’94 that is needed to see and inhabit the
world in a Christian manner. Metanoia thus denotes the ‘reconceptualiza-
tion on an intellectual as well as an emotional plane of an individual’s rela-
tionship with God’.
Yet this is not to be understood as a momentary or ephemeral transform
ation within an individual’s perception of reality; it is rather to be seen as
the emergence of a settled way of thinking and imagining reality―an idea
which may lie behind the Pauline idea of the ‘mind of Christ’ (1 Cor. 2:16).
Robin Scroggs interprets this notion in the light of Paul’s doctrine of justifi-
cation, arguing that the believer’s transformed human reality results in a
90 See the points made in Bockmuehl, ‘The Conversion of Desire in Paul’s Hermeneutics’,
especially 503–5.
91 See, for example, Minear, Eyes of Faith. This line of approach is probably seen at its best in
Hays, ‘Reading the Bible with Eyes of Faith’.
92 This is especially the case of the natural sciences, where older rationalist approaches to
theory development (such as Carl Hempel’s unsatisfactory Nomological-Deductive approach)
have given way to those which acknowledge the critical role of the imagination in scientific
explanation: see, for example, Holton, The Scientific Imagination; Camp, ‘Imaginative Frames
for Scientific Inquiry’; Downie, ‘Science and the Imagination in the Age of Reason’; Toon,
Models as Make-Believe. For an excellent taxonomy of possible scientific modes of imagination,
see Salis and Frigg, ‘Capturing the Scientific Imagination’.
93 García-Rivera, The Community of the Beautiful, 179.
94 Read, Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England, 101. We shall discuss
Herbert’s poetic rendering of doctrinal insights later in this work (pp. 90–3).
On the Origins of Christian Doctrine 19
changed noetic habit. Faith in Christ brings about a restoration of the com-
promised and corrupted human epistemic state. A ‘new self is created
because a new world is being entered’.95 A new noetic situation leads to a
changed interpretation of the world, which is consolidated within the col-
lective thinking of the Christian community of faith. What we see is deter-
mined by what we are; a change in our nature thus affects our discernment
of ourselves and the world. While Scroggs does not explain how this
changed noetic situation leads to a new interpretation of the world,96 his
suggestion that the gospel changes our noetic situation is easily mapped
onto our earlier reflections on the nature of metanoia. Doctrine is the com-
munal expression of this mindset that emerges and crystallizes within the
community of faith.97
It is clear that an important criterion for doctrinal evaluation in the early
church concerned how well a given theory could accommodate specific bib
lical passages―such as Col. 1:15–20, a passage generally seen as critical to
the Arian controversy.98 The task was to construct an intellectual frame-
work, a theōria that was not itself fully disclosed in the New Testament, but
which could comprehensively embrace and enfold its theological insights
and devotional practices, allowing them to be seen as interconnected
aspects of a greater coherent whole.99 This process broadly corresponds to
what would today be described as the process of theory generation and
assessment in the natural sciences, such as the ‘logic of discovery’ and the
‘logic of justification’.
This process of early Christian theoretical reflection took place alongside
the emergence of a consensus concerning which apostolic documents were
of defining importance for Christian communities.100 The evidence
suggests that certain writings were regarded as having considerable
95 Scroggs, ‘New Being: Renewed Mind’. For the wider implications of this notion, see
McIntosh, ‘Faith, Reason and the Mind of Christ’.
96 Scott, Implicit Epistemology in the Letters of Paul, 78 n. 8. It is also possible to think of the
‘mind of Christ’ as a new way of imagining the individual and the world: see, for example, Hays,
The Conversion of the Imagination; Bockmuehl, ‘The Conversion of Desire in Paul’s Hermeneutics’.
97 For reflections on the link between metanoia and doctrine in the New Testament, see
Trilling, ‘Metanoia als Grundforderung der neutestamentlichen Glaubenslehre’.
98 Note Strawbridge’s assessment of the role of this passage in the Arian controversy:
Strawbridge, The Pauline Effect, 169–73. For early Christian theology as an attempt to discern
the structure of ‘biblical reasoning (dianoia)’, see Young, ‘The “Mind” of Scripture’.
99 John Webster’s protest against the ‘pathological abstraction of dogma from the life-
processes of the church’ in the modern period should be noted here: Webster, Word and
Church, 142.
100 Hinlicky, ‘How Theological Exegesis Disrupts Theological Tradition’, 146. For the import
ance of the coincidence of these processes, see Williams, ‘The Patristic Tradition as Canon’.
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