Final Reflections

As a concluding comment, I should like to return to the point raised by Ayres, that it is not enough simply to tell a better version of the fourth-century history in the expectation that modern theologians will finally get it straight! This is a valid point: if we want to have Christianity's fourth-century heritage taken seriously, we need to be in dialogue with modern writers. But, if there is to be a dialogue, both sides must be allowed to speak, and so we are also responsible for expounding the historical material on its own terms. As Heidegger put it, “[O]nly when we think through what has been thought will we be of any use for what must still be thought.” Perhaps studying the figures from a distant era will open up for us possibilities we would never have dreamed of within our own modern presuppositions, so that we can recognize differences even beyond those which lie within our own horizon or tradition. If I am right in affirming that there is a different style of doing theology prior to Augustine and after him in the East than that which we find in the theological and scholarly tradition in which Ayres's book stands, then we must ask whether we need to address the question of the legitimacy of each (and ponder how one might even answer that) or whether a plurality of approaches is possible without reducing one to the other. In a way, this would be a further step toward deconstructing monolithic notions of “Orthodoxy” in recognition of genuine and legitimate diversity within early Christianity and among modern Christians. Might it be better not to speak of Nicaea and its legacy, but of the legacies of Nicaea—or better—“Christ and him crucified” (2 Cor 2:2) and the ways in which Nicaea and its interpreters affirm the true divinity of this one

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