By CODY GLEN BARNHART

As I have written before, when the early Christian tradition reached new contexts, its leaders grappled with how to rightly use human words to talk about divine instruction. Words have different meanings or different senses when used in different contexts, and this means that reaching an agreeable consensus about how to talk about Scripture, God, and the gospel in the ancient church added up a tall task. As a result, early Christian theology often became an exercise in speech, language, and word. More succinctly, early Christian theology was very often grammatical.[1] 

Given all of this, there is understandably a strong sense of self-awareness among the church fathers about the role grammar played in their theology. This has been somewhat of an ongoing question within patristics and early Christian studies, and, over the years, I’ve realized it is key to understanding the shape of early Christian discourse. Below, I want to briefly offer a few examples of Christian writers reflecting on the importance of grammar in their theology and think about their implications—especially since most of these conversations get siloed into the academic world.

Clement of Alexandria: the agriculture of literature

One of the more eclectic examples of this is the beginning of Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis.[2] The first page of the manuscript doesn’t survive, but the work otherwise opens with a discussion about the value of writing theology. Clement draws upon Shepherd of Hermas and Plato’s Phaedrus, which leads him to his ultimate purpose for writing his work: “I imagine it is a fine thing to leave good children to posterity. Children are our physical offspring, writings are our spiritual offspring; further, we call our religious instructors fathers” (Strom. 1.1.1.2–3).

From this point, Clement offers both a defense and an instruction for Christian writing. It would be shameful if Christians left writing to those who do not proclaim the truth of the gospel. Instead, we should encourage those who are qualified to write to mimic the example of the Savior, who “distributes goods among his servants” and “demands an account from them” (Strom. 1.1.3.1–4), raising an important caveat for Clement: we will be held accountable for how we sow the Word—and, thus, our words. Similarly, because teachers are held to stricter standards, it is left to Christian conscience to decide if one is qualified to leave behind these spiritual writings. He compares this to the act of self-examination Paul commands of Christians before partaking the Lord’s Supper (Strom. 1.1.5.1–3). While it is a good thing for Christians to write literature, it is also an important task, and it isn’t something to be done without careful consideration since those who do it will be judged according to it.

When I talk about this passage with students, I tell them that Clement is drawing on the bigger-picture idea that our words matter. How we think about words reflects what we think about God. For Clement, using words is like sowing seeds in a pasture. You may choose to hide your words (or use them for drivel, hiding the Word). You can put it in the ground without working the soil or nourishing it, like the servant who hid his talent in the ground and drew no dividends on his master’s money. Or, alternatively, you may work to cast your words far and wide—either in written or unwritten form—and return to your Master with a harvest that pleases him.[3]The important thing, however, is that the Word is sown: “The farming is of two kinds: one uses writing, the other does not. But whichever method the Lord’s worker uses to sow the good grain, to help the stalks to grow, and to reap the harvest, he will be clearly seen as God’s true farmer” (Strom. 1.1.5.1).

Conciliar conversations: word, truth, and nature

Famously, grammar played a significant role in the controversies surrounding early councils like Antioch, Nicaea, and Constantinople. In fact, if you wanted to be a bit cheeky, you could say the earliest theological controversies were over one mere letter: homoousios versus homoiousios. The difference of one iota felt minimal to some, but it was vital for the theologians participating in these discussions.

At the beginning of his work on the Holy Spirit, Basil of Caesarea writes about the importance of these sorts of minor details. Citing figures like Aetius, Basil had heard some teach that certain prepositional phrases throughout the Bible entailed important consequences about the divine essence. These phrases like “from whom” or “through whom” or “in which” led the heretics astray as they challenged what would become the orthodox articulation of understanding God as Father, Son, and Spirit.

Basil’s response to these teachings is a treatise investigating these prepositional phrases, and he begins the work by admitting such: 

Those who are idle in the pursuit of righteousness count theological terminology as secondary, together with attempts to search out the hidden meaning in this phrase or that syllable, but those conscious of the goal of our calling realize that we are to become like God, as far as this is possible for human nature. But we cannot become like God unless we have knowledge of Him, and without lessons there will be no knowledge. Instruction begins with the proper use of speech, and syllables and words are the elements of speech. Therefore to scrutinize syllables is not a superfluous task. Just because certain questions seem insignificant is no reason to ignore them. Hunting truth is no easy task; we must look everywhere for its tracks. Learning truth is like learning a trade; apprentices grow in experience little by little, provided they do not despise any opportunity to increase their knowledge. If a man spurns fundamental elements as insignificant trifles, he will never embrace the fullness of wisdom. “Yes” and “No” are only two syllables, yet truth, the best of all good things, as well as falsehood, the worst possible evil, are most often expressed by these two small words.[4]

To know God, we must learn—and to learn, we must have a grasp of language, including speech, syllables, and grammar. While Basil concedes that “it only takes a moment to utter the words in question,” he also recognizes that “the force of their meaning is great” (On the Holy Spirit 1.2). Whether it be an iota in the middle of a word or a preposition linking the activities of two divine persons, these finer, grammatical details matter when we talk about God.

Athanasius understood this, too. In his second treatise against the Arians, he writes about the confusion that the words of Scripture seemed to elicit when considering the difference between the Son of God as a “creation” or “something made” versus a “son” or “offspring.” While Athanasius remains committed to specific ways of using these words, he also recognizes that definitions can be malleable and must be understood alongside the rest of God’s revelation about Himself: 

Therefore, reason demonstrates the great absurdity of those who say that he is not the Son of God, but a creation. It is necessary that we agree that the Lord is the Son. And if he is the Son, as indeed he is, and it is confessed that the Son is not from outside but is from the one who begets him. As I said, do not carry on over the words so long as the natural relationship is acknowledged—even if, in their account, the holy ones use the name of “Creator” instead of “Begetter”—because the term is indifferent in such contexts. For words do not alter nature; rather, the nature draws words to itself and transforms them. For words are not before essences, but essences are first, and words are second to them. Therefore, when the essence is something made or a creation, then the terms “created,” “made,” and “built” are properly said of it and signify the creation. But when the essence is begottenness and a son, then the terms “created,” “made,” and “built” are no longer properly applied to it, nor do they signify a creation. But in place of “he begot,” “he made” is proclaimed in certain scriptures.[5]

This quote is particularly interesting when we consider the intensity and centrality of Athanasius’s involvement in the Nicene controversies. One of the most central ecclesial figures in these discussions, Athanasius is one of the most vocal supporters of the vocabulary that the Son of God is homoousios with the Father. Despite his commitment to this, however, he still recognizes that human beings will sometimes use imperfect words to talk about divine things. It’s part of the problem with trying to cross the wide gap between creation and Creator. Rather than encouraging people to abandon the pursuit of theology, Athanasius suggests that we should instead ensure that “the natural relationship is acknowledged.” We don’t have to split hairs over iotas or prepositions so long as the proper, biblical senses of the words in question are upheld. In fact, Athanasius clarifies that the divine nature is not affected by insufficient human words—instead, the nature draws words to itself and transforms them, defining all words in relation to this nature. This, of course, wasn’t the attitude toward grammar by figures like Aetius, Arius, or Eunomius, who used their poor vocabularies and fixation on these attributes of language to diminish the Son’s distinct status, not respect it.

The grammar of Christian theology matters. In writing their Gospel accounts, handing down Christian scriptures, and clarifying doctrine in councils and creeds, early Christian writers didn’t only give us a theological vocabulary—they gave us a theological syntax. They not only taught us the words to say but also taught us how to say them. In reading early Christian texts (biblical and extrabiblical alike), we should pay close attention to “the way the words run.”[6] Grammar may not sound like the flashiest or most exciting road to traverse in retrieving earlier theological methods, but it forms the building blocks of Christian theology and deserves to be counted among the most central tasks of reading, writing, and analyzing the message of the Christian tradition.

[1] As said in Brandon Smith, Taught by God, 33: “Letter and history have served as the foundation of biblical interpretation throughout the Christian tradition.”

[2] The edition quoted throughout is Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis: Books One to Three, trans. John Ferguson, The Fathers of the Church 85 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005).

[3] Clement uses this idea to explain why the Stromateis intentionally conceal the truth in its denseness, encouraging those willing to work through the Lord’s curriculum to uncover the seeds of true knowledge by reading.

[4] Basil, On the Holy Spirit 1.2. Translation from Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit, trans. Stephen M. Hildebrand, Popular Patristics Series 42 (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011).

[5] Athanasius, contra Arianos II 3.1–3.

[6] This phrase borrowed from Lewis Ayres’s articulation of the “plain” sense of scripture at Nicaea and its Legacy, 32, who borrows it from Eugene Rogers, “How the Virtues of an Interpreter Presuppose and Perfect Hermeneutics: The Case of Thomas Aquinas,” Journal of Religion 76 (1996), 64–81.