Aphrahat: a Witness of Pre-Nicene Syrian Theology

CHAPTER ONE

APHRAHAT: A WITNESS OF PRE-NICENE SYRIAN THEOLOGY

In the past, various scholars have attempted to discern a primitive creed in the writings of the early fourth-century author Aphrahat— the first Syriac Church Father. To this end, a comparison with other Syriac authors was conducted to discover the traits of a quasi-creedal formula shared by early Syriac Christianity—designed primarily as a baptismal proclamation—distinct from those known from the Greek tradition.1 There seems to be a scholarly consensus regarding the basic absence of explicit trinitarian and Nicene theology in Aphrahat’s writings and their merely rudimentary christology, which has prompted remarks concerning their “biblical” or “Jewish” character, and thus their theological inadequacy.2 Nevertheless, the Aphrahatian corpus is not entirely devoid of theology; moreover, “heterodox” theological

1 See R. H. Connolly, “The Early Syriac Creed,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamenliche Wissenschaft (1906), pp. 202–223, who discerns allusions to an actually existing Syriac symbol similar to those attested in the Acts of Judas Thomas and Doctrine of Addai (pp. 202–203); idem, “In Aphraates Hom. I 19,” Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1908), pp. 572–576; P. Schwen, Afrahat: Seine Person und sein Verständnis des Christentums. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kirche in Osten (Berlin, 1907), pp. 56–59. Cf. H. L. Pass, “The Creed of Aphraates,”Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1908), pp. 267–284. Pass suggests that Aphrahat’s creed derives primarily from an old Jewish (non-Christian) creedal formula that did not survive in the rabbinic literature. See also M.-J. Pierre, Aphraate le sage persan: Les exposés, SC 359 (Paris, 1989), pp. 153–156. 2 See Connolly (“Early Syriac Creed,” pp. 202–203), who even sees some points in Aphrahat’s argument as anti-Nicene. According to Schwen (Afrahat, pp. 59, 62, 91), although Aphrahat’s church had a “tripartite” knowledge of faith, its form and content cannot be ascertained, and this knowledge in itself was not highly valued. Thus the trinitarian formulas, baptismal and otherwise, that nevertheless appear in Aphrahat should be understood as elements of a foreign outlook and as taken from the liturgy. See also F. Loofs (Theophilus von Antiochien Adversus Marcionem und die anderen theologischen Quellen bei Irenaeus [Leipzig, 1930], pp. 258, 260), who regards Aphra- hat’s christology as a basically Messsianic-Johannine one; J. Neusner, Aphrahat and Judaism: The Christian Jewish Argument in Fourth-Century Iran (Leiden, 1971), pp. 130–131; Pierre, Aphraate, pp. 144–145, 156–162. For a more complex background to Aphrahat’s thought, which may have included elements of Jewish Hellenistic and Greco-Roman culture, see R. Murray, “Hellenistic-Jewish Rhetoric in Aphrahat,” in R. Lavenant (ed.), III Symposium Syriacum: Les contacts du monde syriaque avec les autres cultures (Rome, 1983), pp. 79–85. 8 chapter one notions are evident, dispersed throughout the Demonstrations, his only surviving work.3 Various explanations have been offered for this situation. Some scholars regarded Aphrahat’s unelaborated statements as conditioned by the particular context of his expositions: be it a response to the theological query of his correspondent, possibly bewildered by Bar- daisan’s (ca.154–222) heterodox views, or a polemical agenda aimed at refuting Jewish arguments, with the apologetic framework dictat- ing tactical appropriation of the rival’s notions.4 Another ad hominem explanation relates to the non-theological hortatory context of many expositions directed toward Aphrahat’s fellow ascetics.5 Underlying some of these appraisals one may discern a motivation—conscious or unconscious—to overcome the inherent theological dissonance by viewing Aphrahat in light of mainstream theological tradition, par- ticularly Nicene theology and post-Nicene christology.6

3 Twenty three Demonstrations altogether have survived. For the Syriac text of Demonstrations 1–22, see ed. and Latin trans. I. Parisot, Patrologia Syriaca 1 (Paris, 1894). For Demonstration 23, see Parisot, Patrologia Syriaca 2 (Paris, 1907), cols. 1–150. For a French translation of the text, see M.-J. Pierre, Aphraate le sage persan: Les exposés, SC 349 (Paris, 1988), SC 359 (Paris, 1989). For an English trans., see W. Wright, The Homilies of Aphraates, the Persian Sage (London, 1869); for partial translations, see J. Gwynn, NPNF 13 (1898), pp. 345–412; Neusner, Aphrahat and Judaism, pp. 19–119. 4 See, for example, Connolly, “Early Syriac Creed,” pp. 203–206; Pass, “The Creed of Aphraates,” pp. 267–284; I. Ortiz de Urbina, “La controversia di Afraate coi Giudei,” Studia missionalia 3 (1947), pp. 85–106; Neusner, Aphrahat and Judaism, pp. 130– 131; A. H. Becker, “Anti-Judaism and Care for the Poor in Aphrahat’s Demonstration 20,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 (2002), pp. 305–327. I. Stuckenbruck (“The ‘Demonstration on Love’ by Aphrahat the Sage: A Translation with Introduction,” in P. J. Harland and C. T. R. Hayward [eds.], New Heaven and New Earth: Essays in Hon- our of Anthony Gelston [Leiden: Brill, 1999], pp. 250–253) discusses possible reasons for Aphrahat’s shift in later Demonstrations to anti-Jewish polemics. 5 For Aphrahat’s ascetic orientation, see, for example, S. H. Griffith, “Asceticism in the Church of Syria: The Hermeneutics of Early Syrian Monasticism,” in V. L. Wimbush and R. Valantasis (eds.), Asceticism (Oxford, 1995), pp. 220–245; D. Juhl, Die Askese im Liber Graduum und bei Afrahat: Eine vergleichende Studie zur früh- syrischen Frömigkeit (Wiesbaden, 1996); A. I. Lehto, Divine Law, Asceticism and Gen- der in Aphrahat’s ‘Demonstrations’ (Toronto, 2003). 6 See for example, F. P. Ridolfini (“Problema trinitario e problema cristologico nelle ‘dimostrazioni’ del ‘sapiente persiano,’ ” Studi e richerche sull’oriente cristiano 2 [1979], p. 101), who claims that in Aphrahat “there is nothing explicitly contrary to orthodox doctrine.” For an overview of apologetic approaches to Aphrahat’ theology, see W. L. Petersen, “The Christology of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage: an Excursus on the 17th Demonstration,” Vigiliae Christianae 46 (1992), pp. 241–256. According to Petersen, Aphrahat’s Christianity is “orthodox” in the sense that it represents a “normative”