Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Theology - Christology: Creator-creature

Athanasius (Orations Against the Arians) writes that “God is not like us.”  This is in the context of explaining how the eternal Word differs from the ephemeral words of human beings, and how the divine Word actually does what it says: “the Word of God is not, as it were, a mere enunciation.”

Yet, criticizing Arians from another angle, Athanasius insists that even among corporeal creatures there are “offspring that are not parts of the essences from which they are and are not passible and do not lessen the beings of their progenitors.”  That is, the fact that the Son comes “from” the Father doesn’t make him a “part” of the Father, and doesn’t diminish the Father’s being.  His example here is light: “the radiance is from the sun and belongs to is, while the being of the sun is not thereby divided or lessened.”

This can seem arbitrary: Athanasius appeals to disanalogies between God and man when it suits his polemic, and to analogies when it suits his polemic.  What rescues this from arbitrariness is the fact that Athanasius grounds these reflections in the paradeigmata and eikonas of Scripture: “Scripture has placed before us such symbols and such images, so that we may understand from them, however slightly and obscurely, as much as is accessible to us.”