Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism by David Brakke Review by: Richard Valantasis The Journal of Religion, Vol.

77, No. 2 (Apr., 1997), pp. 292-293 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1205781 . Accessed: 27/08/2013 13:01
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The Journal of Religion

ing thoughts or practices and ideology, such as "rooted in" (p. xv), "ruled by" (p. 167), "stemmed from" (p. xvii), and "was due to" (p. 129), often seems to belie this. One would have welcomed more direct attention to this crucial theoretical issue undergirding the study. Further, while Martin defines his ideological analysis as a "way"of looking at things, not a quest for "an objectively true alternative" to other interpretations (p. xv), his thesis is indeed a claim about what was really going on in the church at Corinth, thus apparently reifying his perspective into a historical assertion. There is also some ambivalence in the book about intentionality (see, e.g., pp. 244-45, where he denies that authorial intention is the goal of interpretation but then goes on to make a claim about Paul's "purpose"). These concerns do not negate the manifold contributions of this imaginative, serious book. In a time in which the social positions of New Testament writings, and with a particularly burning urgency those of the apostle Paul, are being subjected to hyperactive, even panicked, scrutiny and debate, Martin's study offers numerous fine insights and methodological improvements. His sophisticated and subtle analysis of how the apostle's social teachings were based on his underlying acceptance of ancient ideologies (or scraps of ideologies) of the body provides a most useful corrective to recent, overly simplistic attempts to brand Paul either a champion of liberation or a single-minded propagator of patriarchal privilege. As Martin valuably demonstrates and richly documents, "the situation is more complex than either position allows" (p. 251). MARGARET M. MITCHELL, McCormick Theological Seminary. BRAKKE, DAVID. Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism.Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. xviii+356 pp. $65.00 (cloth). David Brakke's study of Athanasius is a moderate account of a theologian and ascetic immoderately portrayed in scholarship. Brakke avoids the facile scholarly caricatures of Athanasius as lordly bishop or pious ascetic, and as politicized patriarch or humble man of prayer, in order to lay out carefully, diligently, and (for me) convincingly the problems and challenges that faced Athanasius in his building of the Christian commonwealth. Stealthily, Brakke has exploited the late-antique meaning ofpoliteia as politics, neither ignoring the imposition of power that Athanasius proposed nor circumventing his serious theological and ascetical creativity. Brakke's Athanasius works diligently to focus the Alexandrian church in the local parish around the bishop by gathering the widely diverse and often disparate communities of individual ascetics, monks, virgins, and lay people into one holy "commonwealth" (a politeia) consisting of a multiplicity of manners of living (politeiai). Athanasius's "politics" are those at the heart of his building a comprehensive and catholic church. Athanasius's promotion of the catholic commonwealth emerges from a specific context in Egypt. Brakke thoroughly explores the issues of Melitians and Arians in Egypt, not simply to indicate the theological and ecclesiastical differences but to point toward a major transition in Athanasius's writings and thought from educational to episcopal models of Christian living in Egypt. Brakke explicates Athanasius's rejection of the educational model of Melitians and Arians with their small circles of intellectual readers, as well as Athanasius's departure from the educational model of theology presented in Clement and Origen, whose theology complements the modality of the Melitians and Arians, with a careful exposition of the reorientation toward the social function of Christian exegesis, asceticism,

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Book Reviews
and living. Imitation of the saints and the ascetical figures of the Scriptures replaced the personal charisma of teacher and ascetic. The diversity of peoples in the church revolves not about ontological status (the physical, the spiritual, and the perfect) but rather about the ascetical development of virtue accessible to every Christian (whether married or celibate) who begins the ascent toward God. Virtue replaces intellect as the basis of Christian living so that every variety of Christian may find a place in the episcopally based catholic church. Brakke achieves this synthetic perspective through four detailed analyses in each of four chapters. First, Brakke explains Athanasius's attempt to regulate female virgins and to bring them solidly under episcopal authority. Second, Brakke explores the relationship of Athanasius to desert monasticism under three headings: the social and religious function of bishop and monk, the specific relationship of Athanasius to the Pachomian communities, and the specific alliance of bishops and monastics in the anti-Arian crisis of Athanasius's third exile. In each of these two chapters Brakke focuses on the richly complex theological, ascetical, philosophical, and political dynamics of the relationship of ascetics to ecclesiastical authority. Third, Brakke gathers the observations from his previous two chapters and develops Athanasius's ascetical theology. While historians will find the first two chapters interesting, theologians will find this chapter essential reading. Athanasius develops the Christian life as an ascetical one capable of embracing a wide diversity of particular religious vocations (virgin, hermit, cenobite, laity) within a common ecclesiastical system, a Christian commonwealth. Brakke shows how (especially through the FestalLetters) Athanasius develops an asceticism of the lay Christian. Fourth, Brakke explains the Life of Anthony in the context of this theological and ecclesiastical project by linking the pervasive processes of imitation to Athanasius's theological asceticism and his ecclesiastical commonwealth. There is much to commend in this fine book. Brakke uses sources generally ignored in Athanasian studies because they survived only in Syriac or Coptic; he takes seriously the intellectual and socially elite character of Egyptian Christian society, with its long tradition of intellectual excellence and achievement; he explains the theological frame with a plausible social, intellectual, and political history; and he provides translations from Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian of important Athanasian ascetical texts in an appendix (two letters to virgins, three treatises, and four festal letters). Brakke's method of analysis includes the use of recent critical theory and traditional historical method, the recovery of "noncanonical" historical sources, and attention to marginal figures (the intellectual elite, female virgins, the laity). Most of all, however, Brakke does not succumb to the reductionist tendency of Athanasian studies: he presents a theologically articulate, often misunderstood, ascetically oriented, ecclesiastically dedicated, visionary, and well-educated theologian whose agenda was to create a church in which all could have easy access and full status. Brakke has presented us with a portrayal of Athanasius that can be believed and trusted.
Saint Louis University. RICHARDVALANTASIS, WILLIAMS,D. H. Ambrose of Milan and the End of theArian-NiceneConflicts.Oxford

Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. xi+259 pp. $59.00 (cloth).

Daniel Williams's book has three tasks: to reveal the existence of a vigorous Latin anti-Nicene theology in the second half of the fourth century, to show that

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