A Response to the Critics of Nicaea and Its Legacy

Let me turn in this “Response” to the concerns of those who have been unhappy with particular features of Nicaea and Its Legacy. Although the bulk of my discussion will be taken up with the responses of Khaled Anatolios and John Behr, I want also to range a little more widely. For the most part, criticisms of my book Nicaea have stemmed as much from opposition to my overall attitude towards the task of historical theology as from opposition to my interpretation of particular episodes of the fourth century. A range of related questions focuses on the relationship between the good practice of theology and the implications of the forms of modern historical consciousness that I have clearly found persuasive. The three critics that I engage here all seem to me to be pushing in directions that (consciously or unconsciously) inappropriately restrict the scope and character of theological—and particularly of historical theological—investigation. I must confess at the beginning of this discussion that I assumed the majority of negative responses to my project as a whole (as opposed to negative responses to particular sections of the argument) would come from what might be termed the theological “left”: those who are convinced by some of the fundamental lines of post-Enlightenment and recent liberal critique of classical Christian tradition. It has, however, been fascinating to see other critics emerge from what might perhaps be termed the theological “right”: those sympathetic to modern attempts to retrieve the centrality of classical Christian texts, theologians, and exegetical methods. Both forms of critique demand a response.