The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism [1 ed.] 0190455349, 9780190455347

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The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism

The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism

z HUGH NICHOLSON

1

1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2016 First Edition published in 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Nicholson, Hugh (Hugh R.) Title: The spirit of contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism / Hugh Nicholson. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015021842 | ISBN 978–0–19–045534–7 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Identification (Religion) | Identity (Psychology)—Religious aspects. | Christianity. | Buddhism. | Contradiction—Miscellanea. Classification: LCC BL53 .N525 2016 | DDC 202—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015021842 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan, USA

To Susanne, meine echte Perle

Contents

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xix

1. Social Identity and the Development of Doctrine

1

The Cognitive Science of Religion  3 Theological Correctness  7 The Evolutionary Origins of Religion and Parochial Altruism  12 Social Identity Theory  15 Environmental Impact on the Doctrinal History of an Intellectual Tradition  16 Hegemonic Struggle and the Acceptance of Once-​Extreme Positions  18 Consubstantiality  20 No-​self  23 Theology as Rhetoric  25

PART 1: Christological Maximalism 2. An External History of Christological Development Evolutionary and Developmental Theories of Christological Origins  34 Nicaea as a Christological Paradigm Shift  37 Christology, Christian Identity, and Judaism  41 The Upward Trajectory of Christological Development  49

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Contents

3. From Messiah to Logos

52

Jesus as Messiah  52 Christological One-​Upmanship in the Gospel of John  57 The Ascendency of Logos Christology: Justin Martyr  64 4. From Preexistent Word to Consubstantial Son: The Arian Controversy

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The Conflict between Alexander and Arius  76 Nicaea and the Homoousios  78 Marcellus’s Denial of the Son—​According to Eusebius  82 Marcellus and Athanasius  88 Athanasius’ Defense of the Homoousios  91 From Consubstantiality to Trinity  94 The Creed of Constantinople and the Exclusion of a Modalist Interpretation of Nicaea  99

PART 2: Buddhist Selflessness 5. Anattā in the Pali Canon

103

The Problem of the Self in Modern Buddhology  103 Discriminating Insight  113 The Unanswered Questions  123 6. Anātmavāda versus Pudgalavāda in Abhidharmic and Postcanonical Literature

137

The Kathāvatthu  137 The Milindapañha  144 Vasubandhu’s “Refutation of the Doctrine of the Person”  148 Śāntarakṣita’s “Examination of the Self Theorized by the Vāstīputrīyas” and Kamalaśīla’s Commentary Thereon  155 From No-​Self to Emptiness  158 7. Theological Creativity and Doctrinal Constraint Summary of the Preceding Chapters  167 The Spirit of Contradiction and Apophatic Discourse  172

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The Trinitarian Vision of Reality  178 Dependent Origination as Emptiness  182 Theological Creativity and the Metaphorical Process  187 Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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Preface This deep-​lying antipathy is also suggested by the phenomenon, not at all rare, of the “spirit of contradiction” (Widerspruchsgeist). [. . .] In human hostility, cause and effect are often so heterogeneous and disproportionate that it is hard to determine whether the alleged issue really is the cause of the conflict or merely the consequence of long-​standing opposition. Georg Simmel (1955: 30)

This book explores the role of social opposition in the development of religious doctrine. More precisely, it argues that social identity processes play an integral role in the emergence and acceptance of two strikingly counterintuitive religious doctrines, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the Buddhist doctrine of No-​self. That religious doctrines are the products of conflict is hardly news, of course. Even the most hidebound theologian or church historian will readily acknowledge that a doctrine like the Trinity was developed in the context of the church’s struggle against heresy. To show how the thesis of this book goes beyond the banal point that religious doctrines were forged in situations of conflict, I find it helpful to distinguish between what the sociologist Lewis Coser, elaborating on Georg Simmel’s seminal reflections on social conflict, termed realistic and nonrealistic conflict.1 The former derives straightforwardly from a material disagreement or conflict of interest. Resolution of the issue in question puts an end to the conflict. In the latter variety, by contrast, social conflict is not reducible to the material issue at stake. The particular material disagreement functions symbolically to sustain relations of oppositional identity that are more basic.2 It is my contention that the emergence of counterintuitive doctrines like the Trinity and No-​self cannot be understood unless one acknowledges the role of specifically nonrealistic conflict in their development. In other words, the development of each of these doctrines can be explained only

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on the hypothesis that relations of formal opposition can influence the material content of doctrine. It is here that the analysis taken up in this book differs from more standard treatments of the development of Christian and Buddhist doctrine. Few historians and, a fortiori, theologians and philosophers are eager to recognize a productive role for formal, nonrealistic conflict in the history of religious ideas. Partisan allegiance hardly seems a legitimate basis for taking up a particular intellectual position. To attribute the development of a doctrine to a perceived need to differentiate one community from another, therefore, is thought to cast doubt on that doctrine’s legitimacy and truth. Thus, even when historians and theologians take the polemical contexts of religious ideas seriously, they seem willing to concede only realistic conflict, that is, conflict resulting from prior theological conviction.3 Usually this unwillingness to recognize a legitimate role for formal opposition in the development of religious ideas is only implicit. One revealing exception, however, is John Henry Newman’s account of the Arian controversy in his book The Arians of the Fourth Century (1901). Unlike many theologians, Newman readily concedes a spirit of partisanship on the part of the orthodox. “Strictly speaking,” he writes, “the Christian Church, being a visible society, is necessarily a political power or party.”4 And yet, the political concerns of the church are properly subservient to its core theological convictions. This refusal to allow partisan allegiance to “wag the dog” of theological conviction distinguishes the orthodox from their heretical adversaries. Newman uncritically accepts Athanasius of Alexandria’s rhetorical consolidation of a disparate array of fourth-​century theological positions into a unified movement, “Arianism,” that was steadfastly opposed to orthodoxy. Taking the diversity of non-​Nicene theological trajectories in the fourth century as evidence for an indifference to matters of faith on the part of a self-​conscious party motivated by a craven quest to win imperial favor, Newman concludes that for the so-​called Arians, “the party was prior to the creed.”5 Expressed in terms of Coser’s categories, then, conflict in Newman’s rendition of the Arian controversy was realistic on the side of the orthodox and nonrealistic on the side of the heretics. Allowing partisanship to influence the content of belief, then, becomes a defining characteristic of heresy. There is a sense in which scholars of Buddhism have been, if anything, less attuned to the role of conflict in the development of doctrine than even theologically committed historians of early Christianity.6 As has been pointed out many times, the modern study of Buddhist thought has been

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hindered, up until fairly recently, by the influence of a Protestant model of religion that is the dubious legacy of orientalism.7 This influence is manifest in a tendency to dismiss a doctrinal development as a corruption of the Buddha’s original teachings, especially when the doctrine in question does not conform to the scholar’s often a priori concept of normative Buddhism.8 This same Protestant bias is also evident when the doctrine in question is valorized. In that case, the doctrine is anachronistically credited to the Buddha’s original insight or experience. Both modalities of the Protestant-​orientalist bias evince an unwillingness to recognize the legitimacy of doctrinal development, especially as that development is invariably marked by conflict. A tendency to downplay the polemical dimension of doctrines like No-​self is also implicit in the category of Buddhist philosophy that provides the hermeneutical framework for many of the best contemporary studies of classical Buddhist thought.9 To the extent that a normative conception of philosophy excludes partisanship as a legitimate motive for taking up an intellectual position, the category of philosophy interferes with an acknowledgment of the role of social identity processes in the formation of Buddhist doctrine.10 As indicated above, the thesis of this book is that the dynamics of formal or nonrealistic opposition can account for the otherwise puzzling development of massively counterintuitive religious concepts like No-​self and the Trinity. In framing a hypothesis accounting for the development of No-​self and the Trinity, I have found the movement in social psychology known as social identity theory to be particularly helpful. Henri Tajfel’s “minimal group experiments,” which represent the point of departure for social identity theory, can be understood as attempts to isolate, under controlled experimental conditions, the formal element of social identity by reducing the “realistic” conditions for intergroup discrimination to the bare minimum.11 These experiments showed that even groups formed on a random basis soon evinced discriminatory intergroup behavior. In this way, the minimal group experiments “expose[d]‌the ‘default settings’ of in-​group psychology.”12 On the basis of social identity theory, I argue that under certain conditions the processes of social identity formation will favor doctrinal formulations that maximize the contrast with the proximate out-​group. In-​group hegemonic struggles, moreover, can lead to increasingly radical doctrinal formulations as various factions try to outdo each other in maximizing the contrast with the out-​group in their efforts to define the community or tradition on their terms. In a process analogous to the phenomenon of

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“runaway cultural evolution” described by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, in which cultural practices that mark status can become exaggerated and maladaptive, religious doctrines that come to function as symbolic markers of group identity can develop in relative independence of the cognitive and systematic constraints that otherwise govern the formation, transmission, and reception of religious concepts.13 Like the huge “twelve man” yams that farmers on the Pacific island of Ponapae cultivate for prestige, despite costs in time and resources that exceed the yams’ practical value, the doctrinal products of this process of runaway doctrinal development can be cognitively quite “costly” in the sense that they require an inordinate amount of cognitive effort to process and communicate. They are, in other words, massively counterintuitive as this concept is understood in the cognitive science of religion. Concepts are counterintuitive to the extent that they violate the default expectations that human beings spontaneously make about basic categories of things in the world. A theory that explains the emergence of counterintuitive religious doctrines like the Trinity and No-​self in terms of social identity processes initially may seem rather unpalatable from a theological standpoint. And yet it suggests a model of theological creativity that, as I argue in the final chapter of this book, explains how a tradition’s best minds are sometimes able to develop theological insights beyond what earlier generations could have anticipated. To the extent that social identity processes drive doctrinal development, traditions can find themselves committed to doctrines that stand in considerable tension with earlier teachings in the tradition. Like the incongruous terms of metaphor, these doctrinal tensions can challenge creative minds to break from ordinary patterns of thought and imagine a perspective in which these tensions are reconciled. I shall argue that an Augustinian concept of the Trinity modeled on the concept of interior speech and the Buddhist doctrine of Dependent Origination represent the fruits of such metaphorical “reimaginings” of the doctrinal traditions of Christianity and Buddhism, respectively. As should be obvious from the foregoing remarks, this book brings together several disciplines and subdisciplines—​early Christian studies and Buddhology, sociology and theology, social psychology and the cognitive science of religion. A shorthand way of describing the interdisciplinary character of this book is that it brings into conversation two relatively recent subfields in the study of religion, namely, comparative theology and the cognitive science of religion. Each of these disciplines is itself something of a disciplinary hybrid. Comparative theology unites—​ actually,

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reunites—​theology (in principle, theology of any tradition) and the history of religions. The cognitive science of religion (CSR), like cognitive science more generally, is inherently interdisciplinary, integrating psychology and anthropology in addition to the history of religions.14 I should mention here that I use the designation “cognitive science of religion” to refer broadly to a number of approaches to the study or religion that have made the so-​called cognitive turn in rejecting the putative separation between biology and culture that informs many traditional humanistic approaches to the study of religion. Perhaps a more accurate designation would be the “social and cognitive science of religion” to indicate that I include under this rubric certain sociological and evolutionary approaches to religion in addition to strictly cognitive psychological ones. Admittedly, the meeting between comparative theology and the cognitive science of religion is not an entirely natural one. The incongruity of the two disciplines becomes evident when we consider their respective genealogies. Comparative theology was founded on the postmodern critique of the universalistic presuppositions of two twentieth-​century discourses, namely, an older model of comparative religion, on the one hand, and the theology of religions, on the other.15 Against the characteristically modern, Enlightenment projects of comparative religion and the theology of religions, comparative theology celebrates the postmodern virtues of particularity and difference. Comparative theology depends, in fact, on the postmodern insight into the unavoidably perspectival nature of human inquiry (and thus the impossibility of value-​free scholarship) to make the argument that even as a confessional discipline it has a legitimate place in the academy. CSR, for its part, emerged as a reaction to the increasing abandonment of explanatory (as opposed to interpretive) approaches in the study of religion, to an ascendant social constructionist view of human nature, and, more broadly, to postmodern trends in the academy that call into question the Enlightenment model of a scientific analysis of religion.16 With its rejection of social constructionism and the reaffirmation of the existence of human universals, CSR thus challenges some of the postmodern presuppositions upon which the contemporary discipline of comparative theology was founded. The incorporation of CSR’s naturalistic and explanatory methods could therefore be seen as upsetting comparative theology’s delicate balancing act between the normative and the descriptive, the confessional and the comparative. Indeed, the use of those methods threatens to reduce comparative theology to a purely descriptive “comparison of theologies.” From the perspective of CSR, comparative

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theology, to the extent that it defines itself over against the nontheological study of religion and, a fortiori, against explanatory (as opposed to interpretive) approaches within that discipline, might be seen as epitomizing the humanistic resistance to CSR’s program of “vertical integration”—​the notion, that is, of an “explanatory continuum extending equally through the natural and human sciences.”17 I do not intend to minimize the tension and heterogeneity between comparative theology and CSR. Indeed, some might take this book, to the extent that it represents a “comparison of theologies” rather than a comparative theology proper, as itself indirect evidence for the incompatibility between the two disciplines! I would nonetheless argue that communication between the two disciplines could bring benefits to each. CSR, I  suggest, can benefit comparative theology by revitalizing the comparative method that has lost much of its cachet as a result of postmodern critique. Various forms of postmodern criticism, including postcolonialism, have exposed the universalist presuppositions of classic comparative religion—​whether of universal laws of human development posited by Victorian anthropology or the universal structures of human religiosity sought by the phenomenology of religion—​to be little more than projections of the highly particular, historically and culturally conditioned perspectives of the comparativists themselves. The tangible result of this devastating line of critique has been a dissolution of the discipline of religious studies into so many area studies. Against this tendency, there has arisen a movement in the discipline dedicated to reimagining the comparative method in a way that takes account of the postmodern and postcolonial critique of the old comparativism.18 This movement, which we might for convenience designate with William E. Paden’s term, the “new comparativism,” represents a shift from the older understanding of comparison as a scientific method for uncovering the putative deep structures of human religiosity to a pragmatic, rhetorical device to further the task of understanding. And yet, while I recognize and appreciate the cognitive power of comparative redescription, I fear that the new comparativism thus far has fallen short of its promise to yield insights into the nature of religious belief and practice that would compel the attention of area specialists. So long as more radical forms of social constructionism hold sway, I doubt that even the new comparativism will be able to overcome the impression of arbitrariness that attends the comparison of historically unrelated traditions.19 With its reaffirmation of human universals, albeit universals located on an entirely different level than those presupposed by earlier comparativists,20

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CSR might be able to overcome the impression of arbitrariness that in some circles has effectively condemned cross-​cultural comparison to irrelevance. If there is anything that saves a comparative study of two religious doctrines as dissimilar as No-​self and the Trinity from sheer arbitrariness, it is that their respective developments can be fruitfully understood in terms of basic human social instincts and innate cognitive preferences. What the present exercise in comparative theology brings to the cognitive science of religion is a better understanding of the phenomenon known in CSR circles as “theological correctness.” Theological correctness refers to a disconnect between the generally counterintuitive concepts of official theology, on the one hand, and the more intuitive religious representations implicit in everyday religious behavior, on the other. Theological correctness is an important concept in CSR because it answers, in a particularly compelling way, the objection that the existence of massively counterintuitive theological concepts calls into question CSR’s core thesis that religious ideas can be explained in terms of ordinary cognitive processes. Experiments showing that people unconsciously revert to more intuitive, “popular” religious concepts than those officially sanctioned by their religious communities demonstrate the effective irrelevance of the latter in most practical contexts. CSR scholars generally do not give much attention to theological concepts, however. They tend to assume that theological concepts are simply the products of intellectual activity undertaken in a reflective space relatively free of the kind of cognitive constraints that are in effect when we have to solve problems quickly and efficiently. In this respect, the activity of theology is similar to that of science.21 The present study suggests, however, that the counterintuitiveness of quintessentially theologically correct doctrines like No-​Self and the Trinity belongs to an entirely different order than the counterintuitiveness of scientific concepts like the principle of inertia or natural selection. As mentioned above, the central thesis of this book is that the counterintuitiveness of religious concepts can be attributed to the dynamics of social identity formation. The category of theological correctness, then, foregrounds a distinction between what I  might call, following the shorthand formulation of the anthropologist Maurice Bloch, the cognitive and the ideological dimensions of religious life, that is, between those cognitions built up from the interaction of subjects with their environment and those resulting from the dynamics of group formation and maintenance.22 Theological correctness, then, reveals the interface between cognition and ideology in religious thought.

Acknowledgments

i began the research that eventually led to this book about six years ago, shortly after arriving in Chicago to assume my current post at Loyola University Chicago. Guided by a rather inchoate vision of the present book, I undertook then a serious study of both patristic theology and Theravāda Buddhism. I consider it my exceedingly good fortune to have met two individuals without whom I very much doubt I could have undertaken such a daunting, even foolhardy, project with even a modicum of competence. The first was my former Loyola colleague Andy Radde-​Gallwitz, who, with an apt observation here and a recommended reading there, helped guide me through the difficult historical and theological terrain of fourth-​century Christianity. The second was Steven Collins, who graciously let me participate in several of his advanced Pali seminars between 2011 and 2012. Apart from quickly disabusing me of the vain and half-​believed hope that someone like myself with a good grasp of Sanskrit could learn Pali in an afternoon, those seminars gave me a sense of the topography of Pali literature and, more generally, of the issues and concerns of Buddhist studies. Since much of Steve’s knowledge and insight emerged in the course of conversation, I am happy to acknowledge as well a bright and well-​traveled cohort of graduate students in Buddhist studies at the University of Chicago, in particular, Justin Henry and Kelly Meister. In the course of my study of early Christian theology and Pali Buddhism, I was frequently reminded of my indebtedness to two inspiring teachers from my graduate student days. The first of these was the late Rowan Greer, who instilled in a theologically innocent first-​year master’s student a quite unexpected love of the Greek fathers. The second was my first teacher of Sanskrit, Stephanie Jamison, who imparted, as much by example as by instruction, an appreciation of the discipline of philology. Heartfelt thanks also go to the friends and colleagues who graciously read earlier drafts of parts of this book, including Kevin McCruden and

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Andy Radde-​Gallwitz. Nathan McGovern not only read ­chapter 5, but also kindly shared a prepublication draft of his brilliant and erudite dissertation on identity formation in early Buddhism. I am grateful as well to the anonymous readers for Oxford University Press. I would also like to acknowledge the extremely helpful feedback I received from the anonymous reviewers of two earlier articles of mine, “The Spirit of Contradiction in the Buddhist Doctrine of Not-​Self,” Journal of Religion 92:1 (2012), and “Social Identity Processes in the Development of Maximally Counterintuitive Theological Concepts: Consubstantiality and No-​Self,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82:3 (2014). It is customary, of course, for an author absolve his or her teachers and readers of any responsibility for any oversights or infelicities in the final product. I am afraid that this disclaimer has to be taken especially seriously in my case, as I suspect that few of the individuals mentioned above would endorse the final product without reservations. My old friend Kevin McCruden, for example, was rather cool to my use of Burton Mack’s sociological, “religious studies” approach to the New Testament. Andy Radde-​Gallwitz, whose own careful scholarship continues the project of his mentor, Lewis Ayres, in rethinking some of the well-​worn scholarly assumptions about the history of the fourth century, would surely want to qualify my reading of the so-​called Arian controversy in terms of a single overarching idea like the “principle of Christological maximalism.” Even my decision to focus on consubstantiality, he might argue, is itself problematic to the extent that it unwittingly perpetuates, in spite of my disclaimers to the contrary, the misconception that Greek pro-​Nicene theologians (aside from Athanasius) were preoccupied with the homoousios. And if my treatment of the Christian material can be faulted for having not enough history, there is a sense in which my treatment of the Buddhist material has too much, or, to be more precise, too much conjecture on a period of which precious little is known. Steven Collins was mercifully spared any obligation to read through the manuscript. And yet, with his salutary reminders of the paucity of evidence for “early Buddhism” firmly in mind, I caution my nonspecialist readers not to lose sight of the conjectural nature of my hypothesis regarding the role of the Personalist controversy in the development of the No-​self doctrine. Sincere thanks also go to Frank Clooney for the invitation to give the 2011 Comparative Theology Lecture at the Center of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School (and for much else besides). There I  first presented the basic thesis of this book to a particularly generous audience

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who provided constructive feedback. Thanks also to Klaus von Stosch for the invitation to present a paper dealing with some of the themes of this book at the “Methods and Criteria for Comparative Theology” conference held at the Universität Paderborn in August 2014. I am also grateful to Loyola University Chicago for granting me a leave of absence for the 2012–​2013 academic year to work on this book. Many thanks go to my Loyola colleagues who gave me helpful feedback on my leave application: Tracy Pintchman, Susan Ross, Tom Tobin, Hille Haker, Aana Vigen, Andy Radde-​Gallwitz, Edmondo Lupieri, John McCarthy, and Tisha Rajendra. I  also wish to thank a succession of Loyola graduate students who served as my research assistants during the past five years: Tara Flanagan, Wendy Morrison, Joseph Gulhaugen, Wes Dingman, and Jay Catanus. Michael Okoro helped prepare this book’s rather lengthy bibliography. I am grateful to Loyola also for a Book Subvention Award to help offset the costs of this book’s production. Special thanks go to Cynthia Read for shepherding this book through the review process with efficiency and good judgment. Many thanks also to Michael Durnin for his meticulous copyediting of the manuscript. Lastly, but most importantly, I  thank my wife, Susanne Rott, for her love and support.

The Spirit of Contradiction in Christianity and Buddhism

1

Social Identity and the Development of Doctrine The Christian Trinity is an impressive mystery because it involves a violation of [our innate mathematical knowledge or “number sense”], and the early Buddhist doctrine of no-​self is salient because it violates our theory of mind. Edward Slingerland (2008: 216)

This book examines two doctrines that each embody a curious paradox. On the one hand, they are both central to the identity of their respective religious traditions. On the other hand, however, they are poorly understood by the vast majority of that religion’s adherents. They are, in fact, quite frankly irrelevant to the daily religious lives of most. The first of these is the Buddhist doctrine of No-​self (Skt. anātman; Pali, anattā). Against both common sense and the various “soul” theories of Buddhism’s ancient Indic rivals, the doctrine states that the personality is reducible to its impersonal physical and psychological constituents (Skt. skandhas; Pali khandhas). The anātman doctrine has been called “the central doctrine of Buddhism, without understanding which a real knowledge of Buddhism is altogether impossible … the only really specific Buddhist doctrine, with which the entire structure of the Buddhist teaching stands or falls.”1 What we know of traditional Buddhist societies, however, would seem to belie this claim that the entirety of Buddhist teaching depends on an understanding of No-​self. Richard Gombrich, for example, observes that while all the Buddhist monks he met in Sri Lanka duly accepted this doctrine, only a handful of them actually understood it.2 He adds that the doctrine clashes with what he calls an “affective belief” in personal survival and the nearly universal goal of winning a favorable rebirth.3 The

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anthropologist Melford Spiro, conducting similar ethnographic research in Burma, observed that most of his informants, even the most knowledgeable, confused No-​self with the more intuitive doctrine of impermanence.4 To be sure, as Steven Collins has ably shown, No-​self has played a central role in the intellectual activities of Buddhist specialists, whether they be monks reflecting on meditative practice or scholastics engaged in the preservation and elucidation of an intellectual tradition.5 In particular, No-​self provides the theoretical basis for the practice of insight (vipassana) meditation, a practice designed to neutralize desire by redescribing experience in terms of nonvalued impersonal categories.6 And yet, as Collins himself concedes, “this abstruse and psychologically difficult doctrine has played a very small part in the daily religious life of almost all Buddhists.”7 A similar combination of doctrinal centrality and practical irrelevance characterizes a doctrine that substantively has little in common with No-​ self. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity has also served as a central marker of Christian identity. According to the fourth-​century theologian Gregory of Nyssa, the Trinitarian doctrine at once distinguishes Christianity from its two ancient stereotypical rivals, the polytheistic Greco-​Roman religion on the one side and Judaism on the other. The principle of divine unity, expressed in the Nicene claim that Father, Son, and Spirit are of the same substance or ousia, distinguishes Christianity from the polytheism of the Greeks, while the affirmation that the Father, Son, and Spirit represent three distinct divine persons or hypostases distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God from the (allegedly) one-​dimensional monotheism8 of the Jews.9 Notwithstanding the doctrine’s importance as a paradigmatic expression of Christian identity, however, many Christians, concedes Jürgen Moltmann, “view the theological doctrine of the Trinity as a speculation for theological specialists which has nothing to do with real life.”10 Accordingly, as Karl Rahner observed, most Christians, even those belonging to mainline, “orthodox” Christian churches, effectively think and pray as Unitarians. “If the doctrine of the Trinity were somehow to be rejected as false,” Rahner ruefully adds, “the major part of religious [that is, Christian] literature could well remain virtually unchanged.”11 The doctrines of the Trinity and No-​self thus raise the question of how concepts so central to their respective traditions can seemingly play such an insignificant role in the daily lives of most of their adherents. We are indebted to the recent cognitive science of religion (CSR) not only for identifying this disconnect between official doctrine and affective religion as a phenomenon worthy of study, but also—​and not least!—​for providing



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a compelling explanation for it. Since CSR is a relatively new subdiscipline in the study of religion and therefore may not be familiar even to the theologian or scholar of religion reading this book, a brief overview of this approach is in order.

The Cognitive Science of Religion The underlying presupposition of the cognitive approach to the study of religion is that religion is the natural byproduct of ordinary cognitive processes.12 This thesis places CSR decidedly in what J. Samuel Preus calls the naturalistic—​as opposed to the supernaturalistic or transcendentalist—​ paradigm for the study of religion, a paradigm exemplified by Hume’s classic treatise The Natural History of Religion.13 CSR’s “naturalness-​of-​ religion thesis”14 further distinguishes the cognitive perspective from various “socioculturalist” approaches to the study of religion that, while also falling under the broader naturalistic paradigm, presuppose a “social constructionist” account of human nature.15 That is, these social-​ constructionist approaches maintain that humankind’s innate, biological endowment is so rudimentary, open-​ended, and indeterminate that the particular cultural environment more or less determines everything that is interesting in religious thought and behavior.16 CSR brings—​belatedly!—​ to the study of religion the so-​called cognitive revolution that bridges the putative gap between biology and culture.17 From the cognitivist perspective, while innate capacities do not directly determine human thought and behavior, they do interact with particular environmental factors to channel human behavior in some directions rather than others. Or, using Scott Atran’s felicitous simile, the evolved architecture of the human mind represents an evolutionary landscape that “canalizes” cultural—​ including religious—​development the way a physical landscape directs falling rainwater into a limited number of river valleys and lakes.18 Cognitive theorists of religion typically take as their point of departure the old Tylorian definition of religion as “belief in spiritual beings.” The category of spiritual beings or supernatural agents includes everything from souls, ancestral spirits, and ghosts to the God of the Bible. Thus understood, the definition foregrounds a widespread and indeed nearly universal phenomenon across cultures.19 When understood heuristically as an expedient to focus thought on an intellectual problem of interest, rather than metaphysically as a proposition capturing the putative essence of a reified concept of “religion,”20 this definition helps researchers isolate

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and identify the cognitive capacities that predispose human beings to certain forms of discourse and practice conventionally deemed “religious.” Most cognitive theorists of religion understand the belief in supernatural agents as the evolutionary byproduct of cognitive structures that Homo sapiens developed in the course of evolution to survive in ancestral environments.21 In one of the foundational works of the discipline, Stuart Guthrie argued that the belief in supernatural agents is the accidental byproduct of a spontaneous tendency for human beings to attribute agency to ambiguous or impoverished perceptual stimuli, an innate cognitive mechanism Justin Barrett terms a “hyperactive agent detection device.”22 It is easy to see how the tendency to overattribute agency would be adaptive. The mistaken attribution of agency to nonliving things and events carried no significant risks, whereas the reverse—​mistaking predators for inanimate objects—​could be fatal.23 It is also easy to understand how the belief in supernatural agents—​agents that are imperceptible by nature—​might be plausibly rooted in an evolved human tendency to perceive natural agents when they are not there.24 Guthrie’s thesis supports the broader generalization that religious representations are constrained by universal cognitive mechanisms.25 In a more comprehensive theory than Guthrie’s, Pascal Boyer argues that religious representations, which are inclusive of but not limited to concepts of supernatural agents, are systematically developed on the basis of innate notions of what sorts of things there are in the world, what cognitive scientists call intuitive ontology. Boyer develops his theory on the basis of the earlier work of the cognitive psychologist Frank Keil, who argued that the pattern of predication in natural languages—​that certain predicates can be meaningfully applied only to certain terms in the language—​manifests a basic set of ontological assumptions that are spontaneously formed early on in a child’s cognitive development.26 This innate knowledge of the basic types of things in the world—​substance, artifact, person, plant, animal, and person—​structures our cognition of the world. The perception of an entity, even an unfamiliar one, activates a cluster of inferences or expectations about entities of that basic ontological type. For example, if we know that an entity needs food to live, then we automatically expect it to have the other default properties of an animal, such as that it grows and dies, that it reproduces after its own kind, and so on. Similarly, if we know that an entity can be repaired, then we automatically infer that this entity—​an artifact—​also serves a specific purpose and that it will not move unless acted upon.27 At the same time that a given ontological category activates



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certain inferences, it excludes others.28 Thus we do not expect an entity that can be repaired to reproduce after its own kind. Cognitive theorists call the inferences that we spontaneously make about the basic types of objects default inferences because they hold so long as we receive no information to the contrary.29 Such inferences usually go unnoticed and unremarked because they take place beneath the threshold of conscious awareness.30 Boyer emphasizes that these default inferences are underdetermined by experience.31 Cognitive scientists assign the set of default inferences associated with a particular ontological category to one or several relatively autonomous and domain specific conceptual structures in the mind.32 For example, the set of intuitive expectations we have about the motion of solid objects—​that such objects continue to exist even when they leave our immediate perceptual domain, that they move in continuous paths, or that they act on each other only if they touch—​constitute the conceptual domain of “folk-​mechanics” or “naïve physics.” The intuitive notion that the characteristic properties of living things arise from an unseen internal essence corresponding to each biological type belongs to the conceptual domain of “folk-​biology.” Finally, the inferences we spontaneously make about other persons—​that their actions are directed toward goals and that, more generally, their observable behavior manifests internal mental states similar to our own—​correspond to the conceptual module that is most consequential for religious concepts, namely, “folk-​psychology” or “theory of mind.”33 Generally speaking, the more complex the ontological category, the more cognitive domains it activates. Thus substance, the most basic category, activates only the cognitive domain of folk-​mechanics, whereas person, the most complex, activates in addition the domains of folk-​biology and folk-​psychology.34 That neither physical causality, biological essences, or intentionality can be read off the immediate data of sense experience—​ that, as Hume famously argued, one does not “see” causality—​suggests that the principles and assumptions constitutive of our tacit “theories” of folk-​mechanics, folk-​biology, or folk-​psychology are innate, not learned.35 By definition, supernatural agents do not conform to the ways we spontaneously expect natural agents to act. More generally, “religious representations violate the expectations of our intuitive ontology.”36 The insight grounding Boyer’s theory of counterintuitive religious representations is that religious representations violate our default expectations in regular, systematic ways.37 Such representations either delete a default property of a particular ontological category or add a property transferred from another ontological category.38 For example, the spirits of the dead

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(bekong) postulated by the Fang people of Cameroon are agents that have the unusual properties of invisibility and the ability to pass through physical obstacles.39 The Fang spirits appear anomalous, however, only against a background of intuitive ontological expectations about agents, most of which the spirits actually preserve.40 The defining characteristic of religious representations, then, is that they are counterintuitive, where counterintuitiveness here is understood in the precise sense of violating any number of the default expectations activated by a particular ontological category.41 Cognitive theorists of religion recognize degrees of counterintuitiveness. Representations that violate only a couple of the default expectations of the particular ontological category they activate are termed minimally counterintuitive; those that violate many of these default inferences, to the point of severely attenuating inference potential of the relevant ontological concept, are maximally or massively counterintuitive. Against what he perceives as an anthropological bias in favor of cultural difference, Boyer remarks that “violations of intuitive ontologies are far more limited than we usually assume.”42 For example, the Fang spirits mentioned above, despite their counterintuitive physical properties, conform to virtually all of the expectations we spontaneously make about other minds—​that they can perceive what people do, retain that knowledge in memory, that they act in accordance with desires, and so on.43 The successful representation, retention, and transmission of religious ideas require, in fact, that most of the default inferences generated by the relevant ontological category be preserved.44 In other words, a religious representation cannot be too difficult to process cognitively if it is to be culturally successful. The culturally successful representation violates the default expectations of our intuitive ontology only just enough, in fact, to capture attention.45 The religious representations attaining cultural currency invariably realize a cognitively optimal balance between salience and inference potential, that is, between the ability to capture attention and the ability to mobilize inference. The processes of cultural acquisition, retention, and transmission, in other words, will tend to favor religious representations that are minimally counterintuitive. In a series of memory experiments, Scott Atran and Ara Norenzayan extended Boyer’s principle of a cognitive optimum from individual beliefs to sets of beliefs. They found that narratives containing mostly mundane, intuitive events but interspersed with a few counterintuitive occurrences had the highest rate of delayed recall and the lowest rate of memory degradation.46 In light of these findings, it is hardly coincidental that this cognitively optimal



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proportion of intuitive and counterintuitive beliefs characterizes most popular folktales and religious narratives, including the Bible.47 This point that culturally successful representations of supernatural agents preserve most of the default inferences we make about persons nicely accounts for the stubborn persistence of anthropomorphism in religious belief despite the efforts of theologians in many religious traditions to deny a relation of continuity between the realms of the divine and human.48

Theological Correctness The more counterintuitive the religious concept in question, the more cognitive effort is required to represent it in the mind. This principle nicely accounts for the phenomenon Justin Barrett dubs “theological correctness”:  the coexistence of “parallel, potentially contradictory, representations” of religious concepts.49 Barrett distinguishes between a “basic level of representation” and a “theoretical or theological level of representation,” the latter requiring more cognitive effort to process than the former. The theological concept of God, for example, is formless, omnipresent, and omniscient. Because it preserves relatively few of the inferences we spontaneously make about persons, this concept of God requires significant cognitive effort to process.50 The basic-​level concept of God, by contrast, has decidedly anthropomorphic features: God is localized in a particular region (heaven), apparently relies on human entreaties to become aware of specific human needs and desires, listens to prayers sequentially, and so on. The cognitive demands of the particular situation will determine which of these God concepts—​here we are assuming, of course, a theistic religious context—​will be represented in the mind. In the absence of the kind of external cognitive and temporal constraints that would preclude careful reflection—​when, for example, one sits down to answer a religious questionnaire—​one will typically affirm the more counterintuitive, “theologically correct” concept of God officially sanctioned by whatever religious tradition one identifies with. When one needs to solve problems quickly and efficiently, however, one will subconsciously revert to the more anthropomorphic and intuitive basic-​level concept of God. Barrett and Keil performed a series of story-​recall experiments designed to bypass subjects’ consciously held theological concepts of God in order to access the intuitive, anthropological God concepts implicit in their everyday thought and behavior.51 When the subjects were asked to recall narratives in which God appeared as an agent, they consistently misremembered the narratives in

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favor of an agent-​God who was more anthropomorphic than that depicted in the narratives.52 The experiments thus revealed a significant gap between, on the one hand, the concept of God the subjects actually used to process and recall the narratives and, on the other, the theologically correct concept of God that the subjects professed in a separate questionnaire task.53 As can be surmised from our opening remarks on the Trinity and No-​ self, these two doctrines epitomize the phenomenon of theological correctness. One would be hard-​pressed, in fact, to imagine two religious concepts more counterintuitive than these two. If the classical concept of God as a formless, omnipresent, and omniscient being distances the concept of God from the intuitive concept of person and its penumbra of associated inferences, then the Trinitarian concept of God reduces the inference potential of the underlying concept of person virtually to nil. As mentioned above, the ontological category of person activates, among others, the conceptual modules of folk-​mechanics and theory of mind.54 These two cognitive domains correspond to the physical and psychological dimensions of the person, respectively. As we saw above, minimally counterintuitive supernatural agents like the Fang ancestor spirits violate our intuitive expectations of physical substances, but they leave the expectations relating to our intuitive psychology essentially intact. The classical concept of God, by divesting the divine mind of human limitations, extends the principle of counterintuitiveness from the physical to the psychological domain. And yet, for all its counterintuitiveness, the classical concept of God still preserves, if only formally, the intuitive concept of person as a mind rooted in an underlying substance, even as it deanthropomorphizes the former and etherializes the latter. By dissociating the concept of person from that of substance, the three-​persons-​ in-​one-​substance concept of the Trinity removes the concept of God that much further from the realm of human intuition. The heresies of tritheism (in which the three Persons correspond to three divine substances) and modalism (in which Father, Son, and Spirit are simply different modes or personas through which a single divine personality manifests itself) manifest a natural tendency, in the context of the Christian belief, to reinstate the coincidence of mind and substance in the intuitive concept of person. The church’s need for constant vigilance against tritheistic and modalistic interpretations of the Trinity testifies to the unnaturalness of prying apart the concepts of substance and person. In light of the profound unnaturalness, from a cognitive point of view, of the doctrine of the



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Trinity, it is hardly surprising that professedly Trinitarian Christians would effectively think and pray as Unitarians, in spite of the official teachings of their churches. If anything, the Buddhist doctrine of No-​self is even more counterintuitive than the Trinitarian concept of God. We can perhaps best appreciate the radically counterintuitive nature of No-​self by first noting a remarkable finding in cognitive psychology, namely, that it is cognitively natural for people to believe that psychological states survive death. The psychologists Jesse Bering and D. F. Bjorklund devised a clever experiment to test this hypothesis with young children. The two psychologists presented the children with a puppet show in which an anthropomorphized mouse was eaten by an alligator. Bering and Bjorklund discovered, unsurprisingly, that the children had little problem conceptualizing the cessation of the unfortunate mouse’s biological functions, for example, that it was no longer able to eat or drink. They found, however, that the younger children, those between three and five, continued to attribute psychological states to the dead mouse—​that it was resentful at the alligator, that it was hungry and tired, and so on.55 The belief that psychological states survive the body apparently came naturally to the younger children.56 Experiments such as this one suggest that the “commonsense dualism” which forms the basis of various culturally elaborated beliefs in the afterlife and the existence of souls represents a cognitive default.57 Paul Bloom hypothesizes that this dualism is “a natural by-​product of the fact that we have two distinct cognitive systems, one for dealing with material objects, the other for social entities.”58 In other words, dualism and the belief in souls are byproducts of the modularity of the mind, specifically the fact that the theory of mind faculty can operate independently of the conceptual faculty that processes information relating to physical objects. The relative independence of the theory of mind module, incidentally, provides the explanatory link between the hyperactive agent-​detection device and the belief in supernatural agents. By denying the existence of a psychic entity animating the body, let  alone a psychic principle that survives death, the anātman doctrine violates our theory of mind, that is, our natural tendency to explain phenomena, including of course human behavior, in terms of intentionality. If scientific explanation can be deemed “unnatural” because it restricts the scope of agent causality in favor of natural causality,59 then the No-​self doctrine takes this unnatural tendency to its logical conclusion.60 Indeed, from a phenomenological viewpoint, the No-​self doctrine is every bit as

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counterintuitive as scientific theories, like quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, whose comprehension lies beyond the ken of those without considerable training and education.61 We have seen, then, that the cognitive science of religion nicely explains why counterintuitive concepts like the Trinity and No-​self have difficulty taking root in popular religious thought, or, put the other way around, why theologically incorrect, anthropomorphic concepts of supernatural beings persist in spite of “theological” efforts to modify, contain, or suppress them. The cognitive approach also provides important insights into how massively counterintuitive religious representations are preserved, both individually and culturally, in spite of an entropic cognitive tendency in favor of their more intuitive, “theologically incorrect” counterparts. For example, Dan Sperber, making an important distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs, explains how half-​understood, “reflective” beliefs like the Trinity can nevertheless be accepted as true thanks to their encapsulation in a “validating context” composed of intuitive beliefs.62 Harvey Whitehouse’s concept of a doctrinal (as opposed to an imagistic) mode of religiosity, to cite another significant contribution to the field, highlights the importance of disciplinary and institutional structures for the transmission and preservation of massively counterintuitive, theologically correct doctrines.63 And yet, while the cognitive approach to religion beautifully accounts for the difficulty that nonspecialists have in relating to abstruse doctrines like the Trinity and No-​self, as well as the dependence of such doctrines on external cognitive and institutional structures for support, it is largely silent on the question of why and how communities develop such massively counterintuitive theological concepts in the first place. Generally speaking, the cognitive science of religion, in keeping with its commitment to the methodological principle that religion can be understood in terms of ordinary cognitive processes, gives less attention to the “unnatural” products of theological reflection than to their “natural,” popular religious counterparts.64 As the title of Jason Slone’s book, Theological Incorrectness (2004), indicates, the cognitive science of religion is more concerned with theological incorrectness than it is with theological correctness. When cognitive theorists of religion like Barrett, Boyer, Pyysiäinen, and Slone do turn their attention to theologically correct concepts, moreover, they tend to assume that these are the products, like scientific theories, of intellectual activity undertaken in a reflective space relatively free of cognitive constraint. They tend to regard theology as essentially a form of philosophical reflection guided by a drive for logical consistency.65 Now, it



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is of course true that the systematic theologian seeks to impart a measure of logical consistency and coherence to a set of received doctrines. And yet, even a passing familiarity with the polemically heated and politically charged history of doctrine in a tradition like Christianity casts doubt on the presumption that the doctrines themselves are the products of purely reflective systematic thinking. Such an understanding of doctrine evinces a failure to distinguish between the second-​order enterprise of theological systematization and the first-​order processes of doctrinal formation, or, in short, between theology and doctrine.66 I contend that massively counterintuitive, theologically correct concepts are not simply the products of philosophical reflection. One of the few books to apply CSR principles to theology, Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt’s recent A Natural History of Natural Theology (2015), makes this point indirectly, indeed unintentionally. Against the prevailing view in CSR circles that “religion is natural and theology is not” (an allusion to McCauley 2011), the authors argue that classic theological arguments like the cosmological argument and the argument from design rest on cognitively natural foundations.67 For example, the design argument rests on a natural human tendency to discern purpose in nature—​an intuitive teleology.68 More generally, the authors argue, against the prevailing tendency in CSR to dichotomize folk religion and theology, that theological reflection is continuous with ordinary cognitive processes.69 However, as the authors themselves forthrightly acknowledge, their thesis applies specifically to natural or philosophical theology, as distinct from revealed or dogmatic theology.70 And here one questions what appears to be a presupposition of De Cruz and De Smedt’s larger thesis that “theology” is continuous with everyday religious cognition, namely, that natural theological arguments are representative of theologically correct discourse more broadly. For while natural theological arguments like the design argument do indeed rest on natural cognitive foundations, as De Cruz and De Smedt convincingly show, it is for precisely this reason that theologians have traditionally received such arguments with a certain reserve, if not outright hostility. The classic expression of a critical theological response to natural theology is found in David Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion, specifically, in the character Demea’s objection to the inherent anthropomorphism of the design argument defended by his Deist dialogue partner, Cleanthes. I would argue that it is the traditional Christian theism of Demea, with its “mystical” overtones, rather than the philosophical theology of Cleanthes, that exemplifies theologically correct discourse. As Hume wryly observed

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in his other classic text on religion, the Natural History, orthodoxy, more often than not, does not come down on the side of reason. Thus, the lesson to be drawn from De Cruz and De Smedt’s thesis that natural theological arguments rest on natural cognitive foundations may not be that CSR exaggerates the cognitive distance between popular religion and theology, as these two authors suggest, but rather that orthodox doctrine better exemplifies the phenomenon of theological correctness than does the philosophy of religion. Perhaps, then, doctrines like the Trinity and No-​self are to be regarded as paradigmatic, rather than extreme, examples of theologically correct concepts.

The Evolutionary Origins of Religion and Parochial Altruism To the extent, then, that the development of massively counterintuitive doctrines like No-​self and the Trinity falls outside the purview of the cognitive science of religion, the phenomenon of theological correctness reveals the limits of a strictly cognitive approach to the study of religion. The key to understanding the formation of massively counterintuitive, “theologically correct” doctrines like No-​self and the Trinity, I suggest, lies in the first feature of these doctrines that I highlighted above, namely, their centrality to the identities of their respective religious traditions. While it may indeed be the case that such doctrines are largely irrelevant to the cognitive processes at work in much of everyday religious activity, they nevertheless remain essential to the mobilization of religious identity. An explanation for the emergence of massively counterintuitive doctrines of No-​self and the Trinity, then, must consider the ways in which each of these doctrines functioned to sustain the identity of particular religious communities. Such an explanation will combine the above-​ mentioned insights from the cognitive science of religion with sociological approaches to religion that emphasize the capacity of religious discourse and practice to mobilize community. In doing so, it will integrate two approaches to the study of religion that historically have been antagonistic, namely, the cognitive-​intellectualist legacy of E.  B. Tylor and the sociological-​functionalist legacy of Émile Durkheim.71 What unites cognitive psychological and sociological-​functionalist approaches to the study of religion is evolutionary theory. In contrast to social-​constructionist theories that generally avoid the topics of instincts and evolution,72 sociological-​ functionalist theories of religion that are consistent with the “cognitive



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turn”—​ theories like those of David Sloan Wilson, Peter J.  Richerson and Robert Boyd, Dominic Johnson, Jesse Bering, Scott Atran, and Ara Norenzayan—​focus on the role that religious beliefs and practices might have played in fostering the cooperation that gave certain early human groups an evolutionary advantage over their rivals.73 These scholars ask how religion might factor into a solution of what Wilson calls “the fundamental problem of social life,” the problem, that is, of how groups of individuals came to function as adaptive units when natural selection would seem to discourage the kind of individual sacrifices needed to sustain group life.74 Altruistic or prosocial behavior, in other words, would seem to place an individual at a disadvantage in the Darwinian competition over scarce resources and would therefore compromise that individual’s reproductive potential. A solution to the “fundamental problem of social life” becomes particularly involved in the case of human evolution, for human beings achieved levels of cooperation that cannot be accounted for by the mechanisms—​kin selection and direct reciprocity—​that suffice to explain the generally more modest levels of cooperation found in nonhuman species.75 The key to an explanation for the distinctively human capacity to form large cooperative groups of genetically unrelated individuals is the cognitive capacity that also—​and not coincidentally—​forms the basis of religious belief, namely, theory of mind. Our distinctive, if not unique, capacity to represent the thoughts of others—​in particular, their thoughts about us—​renders us acutely, perhaps obsessively, concerned about our reputations.76 Our sensitivity to what other people think about us is compounded by the awareness that they have the ability to communicate reputationally relevant information about us to still others who are not physically present.77 This characteristically human concern with reputation serves as a powerful check against antisocial behavior, particularly in societies in which a negative reputation could adversely affect, in a rather direct way, one’s reproductive potential or even one’s physical survival. According to the evolutionary theories of religion I am discussing, certain religious beliefs engendered by our theory of mind extended the prosocial effects of our concern with reputation and the threat of moral punishment. In particular, the belief in morally concerned “Big Gods” monitoring human behavior made even larger human groups possible by effectively curbing the freeloading—​enjoying group benefits without reciprocating—​ that threatens to undermine cooperative units extending much beyond relatively small, kinship-​based moral communities sustained by face-​to-​ face interaction.78 According to Ara Norenzayan, this hypothesis that the

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belief in supernatural monitoring filled an important loophole in purely human mechanisms of social control helps explain the quantum leap in human population size that coincided with the agricultural revolution at the beginning of the Holocene period some 12,000 years ago.79 It is important to keep in mind that the prosocial effects of religious belief and practice took place in the context of intergroup competition.80 In what might come as a disappointment to those hoping to find an evolutionary argument in support of a universalistic ethic, the cooperative behavior made possible by our theory of mind, language, and religion is bounded. Human cooperation emerges in the context of a shift from conflict among individuals to conflict among groups. Cooperation does not so much overcome conflict as transpose it to another level.81 In-​group cooperation and out-​group competition thus appear to be two sides of the same coin. Jung-​Kyoo Choi and Samuel Bowles employed computer simulations of early human evolution to suggest that altruism and parochialism—​in-​ group morality and out-​group hostility, respectively—​most likely evolved jointly. Choi and Bowles’s game-​ theoretic models showed that either altruistic or parochial behavior actually reduces an individual’s fitness if adopted singly.82 Under the harsh conditions of material scarcity experienced by our human ancestors, conditions that would have made conflict among humans inevitable, evolution would have favored the emergence of groups with a preponderance of parochial altruists, that is, individuals who would incur risks for the sake of their own group in its struggle with rival groups.83 Given that religious belief and practice likely played a role in the evolutionary emergence of large-​scale human communities, we should hardly be surprised that historical religions exhibit a combination in-​group morality and out-​group hostility.84 The fundamental presupposition of evolutionary psychology—​ the discipline that results when one crosses cognitive psychology with evolutionary theory—​is that the structures of the human mind are as much the products of evolution as those of the human body.85 The selection of parochial-​altruistic behaviors in ancestral human environments left us with a set of innate psychological predispositions that continue to influence—​ although, one hastens to add, do not determine—​human behavior under the markedly different conditions of modern societies.86 In the context of their influential theory of gene-​culture coevolution, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd posit two sets of social instincts. The first of these sets consists of the “ancient” instincts that we share with our primate ancestors. Superimposed on these is a second set of “tribal” social instincts “that



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allow us to interact cooperatively with a larger, symbolically marked set of people or tribe.”87 This bilevel model of human psychology, in which a set of group instincts overlays a set of evolutionarily older individualistic ones, dovetails with an earlier movement in social psychology that I have found particularly helpful in formulating a hypothesis about the historical development of doctrines like the Trinity and No-​self.88

Social Identity Theory This movement, which became known as social identity theory, began as an effort to understand the human susceptibility to the kind of “us versus them” psychology that had led to two world wars and the Holocaust.89 Social identity theory analyzes the dynamics of what the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls the “groupish overlay”—​the tribal mentality that under certain conditions supervenes upon the perhaps more usual mode of social interaction in which we relate to others as individuals rather than as members of a particular group.90 It is founded on two basic principles. The first of these is that behavior between social groups cannot be reduced to material conflicts of interest.91 As Henri Tajfel showed in his famous minimal group experiments, even individuals who have been assigned a group identity at random—​an experimental condition designed to exclude common interests—​tend to favor the in-​group over the corresponding out-​group.92 The second founding principle is that patterns of intergroup behavior are qualitatively distinct from those of interpersonal behavior.93 Under certain conditions people will behave as members of a social group rather than as individuals. In other words, their behavior toward each other will be determined by their respective group memberships.94 Social categorization theory, which developed directly out of social identity theory, focuses on the cognitive dimension of such group behavior.95 When social identity processes become salient—​that is, when people perceive the world in terms of an in-​group and an out-​group—​they tend to accentuate the similarities within each of the social groups and, concomitantly, to accentuate the differences between them.96 The former tendency to minimize intragroup similarities is not symmetrical, however. People tend to homogenize the members of the out-​group more than those of the in-​group.97 The perception of individual differences within the in-​group is not neutralized in situations in which the in-​group/​out-​ group contrast is salient. Indeed, under certain conditions, the more strongly people identify with the group, the more importance they attach

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to individual differences within that group.98 Specifically, a situation of social dichotomization foregrounds the question of who defines the group, or, more precisely, the question of which attributes are normative for group identity. Here, social-​categorization theorists make productive use of Eleanor Rosch’s well-​known prototype theory of categorization. Against the classical philosophical theory of categorization, according to which category membership is determined by the possession of a set of common attributes, Rosch showed that items are perceived to belong to a category to the extent that they resemble a particular item taken to typify the category. This prototypical member, moreover, possesses the “attributes most representative of items inside and least representative of items outside the category.”99 Applying prototype theory to social categorization, social-​categorization theorists developed the principle of “metacontrast.” Metacontrast is the principle that social prototypicality is a function both of the degree of similarity to members within the group and the degree of difference from those without.100 In other words, “the more a group member differs from out-​group members and the less he or she differs from the in-​group members […], the more that individual will be perceived as prototypical of the group.”101 In the two sections that follow, I would like to highlight two implications of the metacontrast principle that I shall incorporate into a hypothesis for the development of doctrines like No-​self and the Trinity.

Environmental Impact on the Doctrinal History of an Intellectual Tradition The first of these implications is that, inasmuch as social prototypicality is partly determined by the out-​group, “a change in the intergroup comparative context can dramatically change the in-​group prototype.”102 To be sure, this changeability of social identity is offset somewhat by the fact that “groups themselves have some control over intergroup relations and the representation of out-​groups and of intergroup relations.”103 A group’s ability to finesse the representation of a group’s constitutive other[s]‌can function as a buffer mechanism against abrupt changes in identity. In this connection we might mention the Christian heresiological tendency to assimilate contemporary rivals to past heresies.104 Still, the metacontrast principle suggests that groups must continually redefine themselves as they situate themselves in a changing social environment.



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This implication of the metacontrast principle—​that a changing cultural environment impacts the development of an intellectual tradition over time—​finds support in Randall Collins’s wide-​ranging and empirically rich sociological analysis of intellectual change.105 Collins departs from more traditional approaches to intellectual history that understand philosophical creativity in terms of the contributions of inspired individuals. He focuses, rather, on the social conditions that make the intellectual creativity of those individuals possible. Individual thinkers release their own creative energies when they engage ideas that already serve to focus and consolidate group interest.106 They get a hearing for their own contributions either by opposing current ideas or by affirming and extending them.107 Given the tendency for thinkers to position themselves in relation to existing modes of thought, the intellectual energy of a given epoch tends to coalesce around a small number of positions that are structurally related to one another.108 Those positions, moreover, will change as the structural alignments of the intellectual space shift. The history of the schools of Plato and Aristotle in antiquity provides a striking example of this thesis that the configuration of the intellectual field at any given time determines the doctrinal content of a school or tradition. In its formative period, Plato’s Academy turned to a defense of transcendent truths in opposition to the relativistic dialectical schools that were active at the time.109 In the following generation, Aristotle broke from the Academy in response to the mathematical direction taken by Plato’s successor Speusippus.110 Aristotle’s split had the effect of further consolidating the idealist orientation of Plato’s school.111 According to Collins, two major realignments occurred in the subsequent history of the two schools. The first of these occurred around 300 bce in the transition to the Hellenistic period, the second after 100 bce in the Roman period. In the former transition, the doctrinal content of both Platonism and Aristotelianism shifted dramatically in response to the emergence of the Stoic and Epicurean schools. In response to the Stoics’ usurpation of a middle position between materialism and idealism, the Aristotelian school veered toward a more extreme materialist position.112 Meanwhile, the Academics largely abandoned their idealist metaphysics and epistemology in favor of skepticism, thanks both to the void left by the disappearance of the Skeptic lineage and the Stoics’ successful occupation of the realm of religion.113 In the second major realignment during the Roman period, Aristotelianism tacked in an idealist direction, becoming more or less a variant of the Platonic variety.114

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Concomitant with this shift, Platonism moved away from skepticism and returned to an emanationist religious metaphysics.115 Collins’s sociological analysis beautifully accounts for the irregular and unpredictable course that intellectual traditions often follow over time. Of course, the tendency of traditions to reconstruct the past in accordance with the needs of the present—​specifically, to present the current configuration of the tradition as the natural and inevitable realization of tendencies present in nuce at the beginning—​obscures these dynamics. This style of sociological analysis sheds light on the development of the doctrine of No-​self and the Christian doctrine of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father. As I argue below, both doctrines mark rather dramatic shifts in the development of their respective traditions, and these shifts, moreover, manifest the impact of environmental factors.

Hegemonic Struggle and the Acceptance of Once-​Extreme Positions The second implication of the metacontrast principle that will figure into my analysis of the development of No-​Self and the Trinity is that internal struggles for hegemony can lead to prototypical expressions of group identity that are “extreme or polarized relative to the central tendency of a specific group.”116 Internal factionalism emphasizes the contrastive determinant of social prototypicality by effectively neutralizing the other, countervailing determinant of the social prototype, the maximization of in-​group similarity.117 Competing factions will try to outdo each other in maximizing the contrast with the dominant out-​group while at the same time assimilating their rival(s) to that out-​group. All things being equal, whichever faction succeeds in establishing the maximum contrast will likely establish itself as the prototype. These dynamics of one-​upmanship can have a ratcheting effect on a tradition’s intellectual commitments that results in the acceptance of positions once regarded as extreme. Contemporary American politics provides an example of this phenomenon so striking that I am forced to overcome my reservations about citing it, out of a concern for importing unintended negative associations into the Buddhist and Christian examples I analyze. Recently Americans have witnessed the transformation of the Republican Party as the almost unintended result of its politically motivated decision to oppose President Obama and his initiatives at every turn. The emergence of “Tea Party” Republicanism



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provides a particularly revealing example of the way in which a group that defines itself oppositionally can find itself, willy-​nilly, committed to positions that a previous generation would regard as extreme. Mr. Obama, for his part, whether out of naïveté or, more likely, out of political shrewdness, has encouraged this rightward swerve of his opposition by supporting generally centrist policies that previous generations of Republicans would have deemed, if not outright acceptable, at least negotiable. At the time of my writing this book, the Republican Party finds itself in the difficult position of reconciling its new commitments with its previous policies, a challenge epitomized by the 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s awkward attempts to explain his uncompromising opposition to a health-​ care policy, Obama’s “Affordable Care Act,” that is virtually identical to the one Romney had earlier championed as the governor of Massachusetts. This example of the emergence of Tea-​Party Republicanism can serve as a heuristic model to focus attention on a dimension of the doctrinal history of both Buddhism and Christianity.118 Below, I hypothesize that both the Christian doctrine of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father and the Buddhist doctrine of No-​self were, at least in part, the products of social opposition. They were not the products of the unconstrained theoretical activity of intellectuals working out the entailments or presuppositions of the scriptural or otherwise foundational teachings of their respective traditions. Quite the contrary, when these doctrines emerged, in accordance with social identity processes, they found themselves at odds with some of the foundational teachings of their respective traditions. Prima facie, the claim that the Son was of the same substance as the Father undermined the principle of monotheism by suggesting two eternal, uncreated divine principles.119 No-​self, for its part, would appear to undermine the theories of karma and rebirth by denying both a recipient of the karmic fruits of past action and a vehicle of transmigration. Both doctrines, accordingly, were at one time regarded by more conservative factions of their respective traditions as extreme. Over the years, Buddhist and Christian intellectuals have mobilized a great deal of energy and creativity in reconciling these doctrines with earlier teachings, eventually reconfiguring or reinventing their respective intellectual traditions in such a way that the former appear as the entailments or presuppositions of the latter. At times, theologians reconcile innovation with tradition with what initially appear to be manufactured distinctions, such as the distinction between ousia and hypostasis that distinguished Nicene orthodoxy from

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the modalist heresy. As I argue in the final chapter, however, such politically generated theological problematics have also occasioned genuine insights destined to ground distinctive ways of experiencing and understanding the world. In the body of this book, I  apply the above-​mentioned principles of social identity theory to formulate hypotheses regarding the development of the doctrines of the Trinity and No-​self. Anticipating the more detailed analyses in the chapters that follow, let me now sketch the basic outlines of each of these hypotheses.

Consubstantiality The Christian confession that the Son is consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father was first affirmed at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and defended, after a twenty-​five year hiatus, in the second half of the fourth century. It forms the basis of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity enshrined in the Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed, traditionally associated with the Council of Constantinople in 381. The Nicene doctrine of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father, with its implicit denial of the Son’s subordinate status, represents a theological paradigm shift. Virtually all pre-​Nicene theology, with the exception of some heretical theologies branded as “Gnostic,” either implicitly or explicitly subordinated the Son to the Father. Even the Logos theologies of theologians like Justin Martyr and, roughly a century later, Origen—​theologies that constituted the most exalted expressions of Christ’s divinity during the second and third centuries, respectively—​ would come to be regarded as unacceptably subordinationist from the perspective of later Nicene orthodoxy. Nowhere is the paradigm shift represented by the doctrine of consubstantiality more clearly evident than in the history of liturgical prayer. Prior to the fourth century, liturgical prayers were offered to the Father “through” (dia) the Son “in” (en) the Spirit, a formulation that carefully preserves the supremacy of the Father.120 Here only the Father is the proper object of worship; the Son plays the role of mediator. By the end of the fourth century, however, we see liturgical prayers offered directly to the Son, in self-​conscious opposition to “Arianism.”121 The unlikely acceptance of consubstantiality, a concept with a dubious genealogy in Gnostic speculation122 and a history of modalist use,123 can be explained in terms of the social identity processes adumbrated above. The term homoousios was likely inserted into the Nicene creed because it was known to be offensive both to Arius, the Alexandrian priest whose dispute



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with his bishop, Alexander, sparked the original Arian controversy, and to Arius’s supporters, particularly Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia.124 A couple of decades after Nicaea, Athanasius, reacting to anti-​Nicene criticism of the term,125 boldly embraced it as a positive expression of “Christological one-​ upmanship” over against the loose alliance of theologians who opposed him. In their earlier, anti-​Arian writings, Athanasius and, before him, Alexander had already been using other, less problematic language to articulate a more exalted conception of Christ than their rivals. They shrewdly sensed that, all things being equal, when given a choice between two conceptions of Christ, Christians will invariably opt for the one that exalts Christ more. This principle of what I call, following George Lindbeck, Christological maximalism can be understood in terms of the social-​identity principle of metacontrast. When placed in the larger context of the formative history of Christianity, this principle gives expression to Christian efforts to stake out a distinctive sense of identity vis-​à-​vis both Greco-​Roman religion and Judaism, particularly the latter. When pro-​Nicene theologians like Athanasius or Ephrem the Syrian assimilate their “Arian” rivals to the New Testament Jews who supposedly had Christ crucified,126 they are doing more than simply embellishing their theological arguments with a rhetorical trope. The effort to assimilate Arian Christians to the Jews, rather, reflects the purpose and underlying structure of their argument. Their aim is to establish hegemony—​or, in the language of social identity theory, social prototypicality—​by maximizing the contrast with Christianity’s archetypal “other,” Judaism. At the same time, they seek to deny their opponents, invidiously represented as deniers of Christ’s divinity, of the Christian name. The anti-​Arian polemics of the early fourth century had an opportunistic character. In their preoccupation with defeating the threat of Arianism, Alexander and Athanasius did not fully consider the theological consequences of key anti-​Arian statements. Against the common assumption that Nicaea functioned as an authoritative expression of Christian orthodoxy from the beginning, the creed, as I indicated above, originally had a narrow pragmatic aim, namely, securing a condemnation of Arius and therewith neutralizing the threat he posed to episcopal authority. As Michel René Barnes remarks, the bishops “envisioned no wider application of the creed” on account of its disquieting modalist associations.127 As dramatized by the case of Marcellus of Ancyra, one of the chief anti-​Arian leaders at the time of the council, who was deposed shortly thereafter for

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denying real distinction in the Godhead,128 the high price for the rejection of Arian subordinationism was an uncomfortable proximity to the modalist heresy. There is thus a sense in which the church found itself driven, in its oppositional zeal to eliminate Arian subordinationism and almost in spite of itself, to a position uncomfortably close to one that it had earlier rejected as a heretical extreme. Only after the antisubordinationist confession of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father was combined with the antimodalist doctrine of three distinct persons could Nicaea be recovered as an expression of Christian orthodoxy.129 The juxtaposition, in the orthodox Trinitarian formula, of the confession of a single divine ousia or substance with that of three divine hypostases or persons resulted in a concept that is massively counterintuitive as this term is understood in the cognitive science of religion. As we saw above, the “three persons in one substance” formula, by dissolving the one-​to-​one correspondence between substance and person, severely attenuates the inference potential of the latter concept. If anything, the doctrine of the Trinity is counterintuitive in an even more radical sense than that envisioned in CSR. The Trinitarian concept of God is not so much cognitively costly—​like, say, the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics—​as it is cognitively impossible. Each of the formula’s two constitutive claims blocks a natural, even tautological inference generated from the other. The confession of a single divine substance blocks the natural inference that the three hypostases denote three self-​subsistent divine principles in the Godhead. The affirmation of three hypostases, for its part, blocks the natural inference that the three persons are simply three modes or personas of a single underlying doctrine substance. Each claim neutralizes the inference potential of the other, effectively rendering the three-​persons-​in-​one-​ substance formula a contentless placeholder or surd. As Roy Rappaport observes, the unintelligibility of certain “ultimate sacred postulates” places them beyond the reach of empirical or logical disconfirmation, thereby lending to them an axiomatic character.130 And it is thanks to this axiomatic character that unfalsifiable doctrines like the Trinity can function so effectively as symbolic markers of group identity or, as Martin Southwold puts it, as “axioms of collective life.”131 Put differently, the Trinitarian formula lacks the kind of determinate cognitive content that might interfere with its liturgical use in mobilizing group identity. In this way, to return to a point made earlier, cognitively attenuated doctrines like the Trinity reveal the limits of a strictly cognitive approach to religion. At the same time, they foreground the sociological-​ideological function of religious ideas.



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No-​self Turning now to the development of the No-​self doctrine, we must first acknowledge the fact that far, far less is known about the formative history of Buddhism, owing to the paucity of datable sources for its history prior to, say, the first century bce, than that of Christianity. Symptomatic of this relative want of certain knowledge is a controversy that has persisted throughout the modern study of Buddhism, namely whether the anātman doctrine, understood in terms of a reduction of the personality to its impersonal constituents, belongs to the earliest period of Buddhism. In numerous texts of the Pali Canon—​texts which, thanks to the oral nature of their premodern transmission, are unfortunately impossible to date with precision—​we find the teaching that the constituents (khandha) are “not-​self” (anattā) and therefore undeserving of attachment. A number of scholars of a neo-​Vedāntic persuasion seized on the fact that this teaching stops short of an explicit denial of self to argue that the Buddha dissociated the idea of self from the constituents only to point to a transcendental self of the Vedāntic sort. Accordingly, these scholars saw the doctrine of No-​self as a falsification of the Master’s teaching. Not surprisingly, this line of interpretation provoked a strong reaction from representatives of traditional Theravāda, who maintain that anattā was the Buddha’s original teaching, as well as from a number of Western Buddhologists. Regrettably, the neo-​Vedāntic line of interpretation has had the effect, until fairly recently, of derailing the question of the historical development of the anattā doctrine into an unproductive polemic between those who argue that anattā was the Buddha’s original teaching and those who maintain that it was a falsification thereof. The analogy with the better-​known history of Christian doctrine suggests that it was probably neither. Below I advance the hypothesis that No-​self was a genuine, although neither an inevitable nor exclusive, development of canonical teaching and that the emergence of a doctrine so counterintuitive, moreover, can be plausibly understood in terms of social-​identity processes. Specifically, I  would like to suggest that anattā may have been the product of a hegemonic struggle within Buddhism between, on the one hand, the Sarvāstivāda school and the ancient precursors of the present-​ day Theravāda tradition and, on the other, the various “Personalist” (Skt. pudgalavāda; Pali, puggalavāda) schools. As the pudgalavāda moniker indicates, these Buddhists taught that there exists a person (Skt. pudgala; Pali puggala) who is “inexpressible” (avācya) as either identical with or separate

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from the constituents. This doctrine of the inexpressibility of the person appears to have been based on the Buddha’s refusal, enshrined in various canonical texts, to commit to the proposition that the soul (jīva) was either identical with, or different from, the body (Skt. śarīra; Pali sarīra). The first of these unanswered propositions was taken to correspond to the heretical “view” (Skt. dṛṣṭi; Pali diṭṭhi) of annihilationism, that is, the view that there is nothing in the personality that survives the destruction of the mortal body. The second unanswered proposition corresponds to eternalism, the view that there is an inactive and eternal soul removed from the processes of karma and rebirth. The pudgalavāda doctrine of the inexpressible person represented the Middle Path between these two extremes. Not coincidentally, the earliest explicit statements of the No-​ self doctrine are found in the context of Theravāda or Sarvāstivāda refutations of this doctrine of the person. These works present the doctrine of the person, against the self-​ understanding of its proponents, as a form of eternalism. In the classic refutations of the Personalist doctrine found in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (early fifth century) and Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṃgraha (eighth century), we see the principle of metacontrast at work. Both Vasubandhu and Śāntarakṣita assimilate pudgalvāda to the Brahmanical ātman doctrines that were taken to epitomize the eternalist heresy. Pudgalavāda was ātmavāda under another name. This style of argument clearly evinces a hegemonic struggle over the Buddhist name. One could argue, however, as the Pudgalavādins almost certainly did, that the doctrine of the person as inexpressible with respect to the constituents represented a more traditional construal of the Middle Way between eternalism and annihilationism than the anātmavāda of their Theravāda, Sarvāstivāda, and, later, Mahāyāna rivals. As I argue more fully in ­chapter 5, the doctrine of the person lends itself to a more natural interpretation of the Buddha’s Unanswered Questions. Proponents of the No-​self doctrine like Vasubandhu were obliged to explain why, if the Buddha did in fact teach that the personality was reducible to its impersonal constituents, did he refuse to affirm the proposition that the soul is the same as the body.132 Much as the pro-​Nicene theologians of the fourth century found themselves pushed, thanks to their opposition to Arian subordinationism, uncomfortably close to modalism, proponents of the doctrine of No-​self, having characterized pudgalavāda as eternalism, found themselves obliged to explain how their understanding of the personality as a mere aggregate of continually changing mental and physical states was not tantamount



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to annihilationism. Theoretical efforts to reconcile the anātman doctrine with the theory of rebirth—​in particular, the notion of a causal continuum that somehow spans the gap between two existences—​remain obscure and arguably question-​begging. The recurrence of functional equivalents of the self throughout the history of Buddhism—​from the Sarvāstivāda concept of “possession” (prāpti), a unifying principle that channels a given karmic effect to a particular sequence of constituents and not others133 to the “storehouse consciousness” (ālayavijñāna) of the Yogācāras and the “Buddha Nature” (tathāgatagarbha) doctrine that was influential in East Asian Buddhism—​testifies to the profoundly counterintuitive character of the No-​self concept.

Theology as Rhetoric Social identity theory has been faulted for paying insufficient attention to the role of discourse in the formation of social identities.134 To the extent that the in-​group and out-​group are “givens” in social identity experiments, one might infer that the sense that a group of individuals has of belonging to a group is simply the internalization of a pregiven, independently existing social structure. Against this essentialist interpretation of social identity theory, it is important to recognize the extent to which discourse is instrumental in shaping perceptions of social reality. The reality of a social group is not reducible to a set of objective structures and conditioning factors. Accordingly, a group realizes itself only when its members become conscious of themselves as members thereof. The discourses that meditate this consciousness, moreover, are themselves constitutive of social reality. As Pierre Bourdieu emphasizes in his critique of a reductionist “economist” tendency in classical Marxist thought, a social group is underdetermined with respect to the objective conditions of its existence such that there remain numerous possibilities as to how people perceive the social world and their place within it.135 For example, a factory worker can regard himself as belonging to an international working class (allied with, say, agricultural workers in another country) or, alternatively, as belonging to a particular ethnic or national group (with an affinity for members of the bourgeoisie in his native country against workers of another ethnicity or nationality). Since alternative perceptions of social reality favor different interests, as this example shows, rival constituencies will vie with one another in their effort to render normative their respective ways of dividing up the social world. The intense theological controversies in the

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post-​Constantinian church exemplify such hegemonic struggles over the representation of an aspect of the social world, in this case, the identity and constitution of the Christian church. Throughout the fourth century, various factions sought to establish themselves, against their proximate rivals, as the legitimate and recognized representatives of a recently established church whose identity and leadership structure was in a state of uncertainty. These struggles included attempts to win the favor of the imperial court and its representatives; to mobilize the populace of important urban centers; to forge alliances among prelates; and to elicit the support of communities of Christian ascetics who held an aura of otherworldly authority.136 The means employed to win over these constituencies were certainly not exclusively discursive. Almsgiving, for example, was the primary means of winning over the masses in urban centers and making an impression on imperial authorities concerned with social unrest.137 In the Meletian schism that afflicted the Egyptian church in the first half of the fourth century, to cite another example, more direct political means were typically employed, including the use of physical violence and intimidation.138 Nevertheless, theological persuasion was one of the principal means by which the various disputants sought to establish hegemony within the church. Regrettably, much less is known about the social and historical context of the classic texts of Buddhism and Brahmanism in classical India. One important context, however, was competition among rival religious movements to win patronage in the royal courts of classical India. Recognizing the central role of theological and buddhological discourses in mobilizing support for a particular representation of a religious community focuses attention on the rhetorical dimension of the classic theological and buddhological texts I analyze. Here I understand the term “rhetoric,” in accordance with the “New Rhetoric” of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-​Tyteca, to refer broadly and nonpejoratively to any form of “nonformal reasoning that aims at obtaining or reinforcing the adherence of an audience.”139 The New Rhetoric (re)valorizes the concept of rhetoric by making juridical reasoning rather than mathematical demonstration the model of philosophical argumentation. In contrast to demonstrative reasoning, rhetorical argumentation is based not on ultimate facts or axioms but rather on matters of agreement, or in Aristotelian terminology, on generally accepted opinions.140 The aim of rhetoric is to link what the audience already accepts with what the speaker or writer wishes to communicate.141 When the latter is a partial or controversial viewpoint, as is more often than not the case with the theological



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and buddhological texts we shall be looking at, the rhetorical structure of argumentation directly mirrors the relation of hegemony that the writer seeks. That is, this argument seeks to establish the author’s partial viewpoint as the legitimate expression of what an audience—​which is broader than the author’s interest group—​already accepts. The theologians of the early church were, of course, well aware of this rhetorical strategy of packaging controversial claims with generally accepted ones, and they were quick to expose its use by their theological adversaries. For example, in his polemic against Eunomius, Basil of Caesarea accuses his adversary of “making statements with which everyone agrees so that through his prudence in these matters no one will disbelieve him with regard to the rest of what he says.”142 In this way, Eunomius “[wraps] the simplicity of the faith around his ideas like bait around a fish-​hook that drags its catch to death.”143 The procedure of grounding a disputed theological position in commonly accepted notions is hardly the cynical and willfully deceptive strategy that Basil’s rhetoric suggests, however. Indeed the often-​noted exegetical nature of patristic theology—​that theologians of the period typically argue for their theological positions on the basis of scriptural statements of unquestioned authority—​can be understood as an instance, indeed a paradigmatic one, of the more general rhetorical practice of grounding claims addressing a particular problem or situation in a body of widely accepted beliefs. Theologians skillfully weave scriptural citations and “statements with which everyone agrees” into their arguments the way politicians weave carefully chosen applause lines into their speeches. There is perhaps no more effective applause line in Christian theology than an expression that exalts Christ. As we saw above, Christian theologians, in their efforts to mobilize support for their positions, often took advantage of the Christian tendency to identify with the most exalted available Christological statement. The most exalted Christology, however, is not necessarily the one that coheres best with the other tenets of the Christian faith. Nowhere is this disconnect between rhetorical appeal and systematic coherence more evident than in the Arian controversy. Arius’s statement that Christ is a “perfect creature of God, but not one of the creatures, an offspring, but not as one of those born” rests on a solid scriptural basis. Proverbs 8:22, for example, Christologically interpreted, refers to Christ as “the first-​born of creation.” Arius’s statement also has the virtue of being fully consistent with the principle of monotheism. And yet Arius’s “offspring, but not as one of those born” Christology appears

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half-​hearted, somehow lacking in full Christian commitment, when profiled against Athanasius’s confession that Christ is the coeternal Son of God.144 The pro-​Nicene confession of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father ultimately proved to be successful, notwithstanding the formidable difficulties involved in reconciling it with monotheism (the Trinitarian problem), on the one side, and the descriptions of Jesus’s humanity in the New Testament (the Christological problem), on the other. It would appear, then, that from a rhetorical standpoint, the most effective Christian theological position is one that manages to express the principle of Christological maximalism in as unqualified—​that is, as rhetorically powerful—​a form as possible, even at the risk of pushing logic to the point of dialectic. As this example shows, rhetoric rather than logic can drive doctrinal development. What is missing from CSR accounts of theological correctness is precisely this recognition of the integral role of rhetoric, with its sociological presuppositions, in doctrinal development. Generally speaking, the rhetorical dimension of the classic Pali and Sanskrit Buddhist texts I analyze is more difficult to discern than that of their patristic Christian counterparts. As mentioned above, frustratingly little is known about the historical and institutional contexts of the former. Unlike the case of the Christian texts, where one usually knows enough about the underlying context to be able to link particular discursive formations with fairly reliable knowledge of their authors’ interests and agendas, here whatever interests or agendas we ascribe to the authors of such texts must be critically read off the discursive surface of the text. Unfortunately, it is not always easy, given the highly formalized and abstract style of argumentation employed in this literature, to discern the commonly accepted opinions to which “theological” appeals are typically made. Despite their generally formal, dry, and abstract style, however, Indian scholastic texts, whether Buddhist or Brahmanical, embody an essentially rhetorical form of rationality, where I continue to understand the concept of rhetoric in the broader and nonpejorative sense of the New Rhetoric. The rhetorical character of these texts becomes clear when we consider the genealogy of the tradition of Indian logic or Nyāya in the rules of public debate. To the extent that debate provides the underlying model for the form of argumentation employed in Indian scholastic texts, their arguments ultimately rest on mutually agreed-​upon “norms of public reason.”145 As many scholars have noted, the formal five-​step method of logical demonstration stipulated in the Nyāya Sūtra—​in particular, the prominence given there to



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the citation of a mutually accepted example in the third step—​reveals the essentially rhetorical model of argumentation in India.146 In keeping with these general remarks concerning the rhetorical character of Indian scholastic works, I shall argue that Buddhist refutations of pudgalavāda evince what I would call, for want a better term, a rhetoric of maximizing selflessness. Selflessness functions as a touchstone for Buddhist argumentation more generally. Or, as Dan Arnold nicely puts it, “an argument will make sense as a specifically Buddhist one if it makes sense as a logical development of the idea of selflessness, which is the commitment whose elaboration and defense is arguably what all Buddhist philosophy concerns in the end.”147 The more technical arguments that polemicists like Vasubandhu and Śāntarakṣita marshal against their Pudgalavāda opponents support the underlying rhetorical theme that pudgalavāda is not selfless enough. When invidiously profiled against the uncompromising anātmavāda of the Sarvāstivādins and Theravādins, pudgalavāda is made to appear less than fully Buddhist. Ironically enough, Mahāyāna polemicists will turn the tables on their Sarvāstivādin rivals and claim that even the anātman doctrine is not selfless enough to the extent that it presupposes the underlying reality of the constituents. The Mahāyāna doctrine of universal emptiness (śūnyatā), which extends the notion of selflessness (nairātmatā) from persons to things (dharmā), gives fullest expression to the Buddhist vision of reality. Such arguments embody an “antisubstantialist” rhetoric which is analogous to the Christological maximalism that eventually drives Christological reflection from the Synoptic understanding of Jesus as a prophet-​like Messiah figure to the consubstantial Son of Nicene orthodoxy.

PART 1

Christological Maximalism

2

An External History of Christological Development If these men worshipped no other God but one, perhaps they would have had a valid argument against the others. But in fact they worship to an extravagant degree this man who appeared recently, and yet think it is not inconsistent with monotheism if they also worship His servant. Celsus, as cited by Origen, C. Celsum 8.12, Chadwick (1965: 460)

In this chapter I examine the role of formal opposition in the development of Christology, a development that culminates in the doctrine of consubstantiality. The confession that the Son is consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father forms the basis of the “three persons in one nature” formula that defines the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. The Son’s consubstantiality with the Father was first affirmed at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and later confirmed at the Council of Constantinople in 381. The creed traditionally associated with the latter council, the so-​called Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed, symbolically marks the triumph of the orthodox dogma of the Trinity. The doctrine of consubstantiality represents the culmination of a protracted, uneven, and dialectical path of Christological development. My thesis is that relations of formal opposition—​first with the Jewish groups over against which some influential early Christian communities defined themselves and later, after Christian and Jewish communities had become more or less distinct from each other, with Christian groups that were rhetorically assimilated to Christianity’s Jewish “other”—​play a central role in this development.

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Christolog ical Ma ximalism

In this chapter I  establish the theoretical framework for the analysis of Christological development that follows. In the next, I examine several paradigmatic moments in Christological development before the fourth century. In ­chapter 4, I examine the rhetoric of Christological maximalism in the so-​called Arian controversy.

Evolutionary and Developmental Theories of Christological Origins This thesis that social opposition had a decisive impact on not only the form but also the content of Christological doctrine places me squarely on one side of a long-​standing scholarly debate over the genesis and development of the belief in Jesus’s divinity. C. F. D. Moule captures the essence of this debate with his distinction between evolutionary and developmental models of Christological origins.1 The former model, in keeping with the biological metaphor, denotes “a development by inner change […], but where [a]‌changing environment makes it necessary for the organism to adapt and thus evolve into something different.”2 The latter, “developmental” view, which is modeled on the continuous growth of a single organism, downplays the influence of external, environmental factors on Christological development.3 It construes these factors as mere occasions for the activation of potentialities contained in nuce in an original experience of faith. The key difference between these two viewpoints concerns more the extent of environmental influence on a developing tradition than the issue of doctrinal continuity per se. The paradigmatic example of the evolutionary model is the account of Christological origins put forward by Wilhelm Bousset and the History of Religions School. Bousset argued that the understanding of Jesus as a divine figure emerged in Hellenistic Gentile communities influenced by contemporary Greco-​Roman notions of divine heroes and cult deities.4 It was at this point that Jesus became an object of cultic devotion. This cultic practice forms the basis of the deification of Christ. By thus attributing the deification of Jesus to the process of Hellenization, Bousset posits a decisive break between, on the one hand, the theology of the original Palestinian Jewish Christian community (and, a fortiori, of Jesus himself) and, on the other, that of the “Christ cult” of the slightly later Hellenistic Christian communities. The former theology, despite its exaltation of Jesus as the eschatological “Son of Man,” remained within a monotheistic framework. In the Hellenistic Christian context, by contrast, Christ’s lordship would soon overshadow



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that of God the Father. Developmental theories directly challenge two tenets of Bousset’s evolutionary theory. The first of these tenets is that the belief in Christ’s divinity is the product of Hellenization; the second is that this belief fails to correspond to the disciples’ original experience of Jesus. Against Bousset, Moule, representing the developmental view, contends that exalted Christological titles like “Lord” and even “God,” “are not evolved away, so to speak, from the original, but represent the development of true insights into the original.”5 For developmentalists like Moule and, more recently, Larry Hurtado, the exalted understanding of Jesus as “Lord” ultimately derives, not from contact with external cultural sources, but rather from dramatic revelatory experiences among the first generation of Christians, whether of the personal impact of Jesus in the flesh or of post-​Resurrection encounters with the risen Lord.6 Christology takes its origin from contact with Jesus himself.7 The eagerness with which developmentalists like Moule, Hurtado, and Martin Hengel seek to locate the origins of the belief in Christ’s divinity as close to Jesus as possible betrays a theological concern with the issue of syncretism. This concern rests on the assumption that a Hellenistic origin would somehow render the belief in Christ’s divinity illegitimate. The developmentalists share this assumption, in fact, with their evolutionist rivals; the disagreement between the two camps boils down to the question of whether or not the deification of Christ is the product of syncretism. In my judgment, this theological concern with the syncretism issue has skewed the historical study of Christology toward a one-​sided focus on the origins, rather than the development, of Christological doctrine. One methodological consequence of this preoccupation with origins is a tendency to restrict the study of Christological development to the New Testament.8 Much of the scholarship on the Christology problem has thus failed to follow up on one of the key methodological advances of Bousset’s seminal study, namely, its “removal of the wall of partition between New Testament theology and the history of doctrine in the early church.”9 As if justifying this restriction, such studies tend to assume that once one identifies the crucial Christological breakthrough in the New Testament—​ whether the ascription of divine status to Jesus (Hengel), the cultic worship of him (Hurtado), or the idea of personal preexistence (Dunn)—​the subsequent course of Christological development follows as a matter of course.10 For example, Hengel makes the bold—​and, in my judgment, hyperbolic—​ declaration that “more happened in this period of less than two decades [between the Crucifixion and some of the Christological confessions cited

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by Paul] than in the whole of the next seven centuries, up to the time when the doctrine of the early church was completed.”11 In a similar vein, J.  D. G.  Dunn, who, unlike Hengel, argues that the decisive advance occurs not with Paul but with the idea of the Incarnation formulated in the Gospel of John, asserts that, “in a very real sense all that follows is a dotting of the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s of John’s Christology.”12 A serious consideration of the various Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the early church—​controversies which, from a strictly historical point of view, could very easily have turned out differently, resulting in very different understandings of Christ—​renders such claims questionable. Expanding the scope of the investigation to include the patristic period favors what I  have been calling an evolutionary theory of Christological development. In the New Testament period, the relative paucity of historical information about the Christian movement, particularly from outside the movement, combined with the prestige and ready availability of the Gospel narrative as framework for imagining Christian origins, has enabled theological presuppositions, such as that of doctrinal development, to insinuate themselves in the historian’s reconstructive hypotheses and thereby elude detection.13 Put differently, in this period, the historiographical process of translating facts into a meaningful narrative proceeds less by exclusion than by construction. Thus there are relatively fewer of those obvious exclusions of historical detail that would betray the selectivity of the interpretation.14 By contrast, the relative wealth of information concerning the various expressions of Christianity during the succeeding centuries renders it impossible to maintain the illusion that the idea of development is anything other than a theological ideal, one which functions as a theoretical presupposition around which the historical data are subsequently arranged. Here the example of John Henry Newman is paradigmatic. Newman bases his theory of doctrinal development on the historiographical principle that historical facts, particularly when these are scarce, become intelligible only when they are understood in light of the later events to which they ostensibly give rise. According to this principle, later doctrinal developments provide an intelligible pattern or gestalt into which the fragmentary data of early Christianity can be understood.15 When thus seen in the light of later church history, the ambiguous and fragmentary elements of early Christian belief and practice appear as anticipations of later doctrines.16 Newman sought to present the history of the church as the progressive unfolding of a single yet multifaceted



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revelatory “idea,” whose many aspects required historical occasions for their manifestation.17 Newman was honest enough to recognize that the idea of doctrinal development was the presupposition, and not the result, of historical analysis.18 Nevertheless, the fruits of such an unapologetically theological approach to early Christian history are no longer convincing. Newman’s account of the Arian controversy, The Arians of the Fourth Century, despite its having attained something of the status of a literary classic, is now regarded as too tendentious to be historically useful. Accordingly, scholars of early Christianity have since abandoned Newman’s a priori historiographical method, though some no doubt continue to follow it unconsciously. This recognition of the inherently theological nature of the developmental model of doctrine culminates in Lewis Ayres’s caution against the attempt to demonstrate the continuity of doctrine. While a belief in the continuity of doctrine—​that the core beliefs of the contemporary Christian stand in essential continuity with those of the apostles—​remains an essential tenet of Christian faith, Ayres argues, a demonstration of the Spirit’s inscrutable guiding of history lies outside the historian’s powers of observation.19

Nicaea as a Christological Paradigm Shift Nowhere is the tension between history and the idea of doctrinal continuity more acute than in the so-​called Arian controversy of the fourth century. The Nicene confession of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father, with its implicit denial of the former’s subordinate status, marked a significant break with the earlier tradition. Even Newman concedes that the language of pre-​Nicene theology lends itself more readily to the subordinationist hypothesis associated with Arius.20 All pre-​ Nicene theology—​in particular, the Logos theology that dominated the second and third centuries—​either implicitly or explicitly subordinated the Son to the Father.21 The assumption that the Son embodied a lesser degree or derivative form of divinity than the Father was, in fact, the condition under which a belief in his divinity could be reconciled with monotheism.22 This theological paradigm shift is perhaps most clearly seen in the history of liturgical prayer. Prior to the fourth century, liturgical prayers were offered to the Father “through” Christ, as reflected in the traditional doxological formula, “Glory to the Father through [dia] the Son in [en] the Spirit.”23 This formulation carefully preserves the

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supremacy of the Father; strictly speaking, only the Father is the object of worship. The Son plays the role of mediator.24 Only toward the end of the fourth century, in self-​conscious opposition to Arianism, do we see liturgical prayers offered directly to the Son.25 The latter formula reflects a self-​conscious effort to eliminate the subordinationist connotations of the former. Conceding this break or departure does not exclude the notion of continuity, however. Appealing to Thomas Kuhn’s well-​known theory of paradigm shifts in the history of science, Nicholas Lash makes this point that historical breaks do not exclude doctrinal continuity.26 If Kuhn was able to recognize continuity through scientific revolutions, then, a fortiori, one should be able to recognize a principle of continuity underlying the historical shifts in doctrinal formulation.27 Of course, this point that discontinuity does not exclude continuity can be made on purely logical grounds (and to that extent it becomes banal). Like the notions of similarity and difference, continuity and discontinuity are correlative notions. The notion of continuity presupposes change, and thus a dimension of discontinuity. And the notion of discontinuity, for its part, presupposes the identity of whatever it is whose development is marked by ruptures or breaks. If one brackets the issue of environmental influence, then, the distinction between evolutionary and developmental Christologies dissolves, to borrow a felicitous turn of phrase from Hayden White, into a matter of emphasis.28 George Lindbeck argues that the principle of continuity linking the doctrine of consubstantiality to the earlier tradition is the intention to exalt Christ.29 Elsewhere Lindbeck terms this intention to exalt Christ the principle of “Christological maximalism,” and it forms a key component of the regulative theory of Christian doctrine that he sets forth in his book The Nature of Doctrine (1984). There he argues that Trinitarian and Christological development can be understood in terms of the interaction of three regulative principles, of which Christological maximalism is one. The other two are monotheism and what Lindbeck calls the “principle of historical specificity,” that is, the principle that “the stories of Jesus refer to a genuine human being who was born, lived, and died in a particular time and place.”30 Lindbeck regards the doctrines eventually accepted as orthodox, including the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulas, as the logical, if not inevitable, outcome of an effort to reconcile these three rules with a minimum of cognitive dissonance.31 At this point, I should note, we are still within a developmental framework. Recall from our discussion of the debate between evolutionists and



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developmentalists on the origins of New Testament Christology that the central issue there was not discontinuity as much as syncretism. Doctrinal discontinuity is indicative of an evolutionary situation only when it reflects the influence of outside factors. Lindbeck, it should be noted, introduces his principle of Christological maximalism in the context of a commitment to a developmental view.32 His claim that Arianism was rightly rejected by the church because it opposed the tendency to exalt Jesus alludes to the theological principle that doctrinal development follows patterns of Christian prayer and worship. According to this, the lex orandi, lex credendi theory of doctrinal development, theological movements like adoptionism (a view that denied the divinity of Christ) and Arianism ultimately failed to carry the day because they failed “to do justice to the Christian apprehension of Christ as a fitting object of worship and adoration.”33 The theory appeals to evidence that Christians worshipped the person of Jesus from an early date.34 To be sure, official liturgical prayers, which, as we saw above, restricted direct worship to God the Father, fail to register and recognize this popular current of Christocentric devotion.35 But in time, the theory maintains, these popular forms of worship of could no longer be contained.36 At the end of the day, Nicene Christology triumphed because it recognized this powerful current of popular religiosity, instead of vainly trying to suppress it like its rivals.37 There are several problems with this theory, however. As Rebecca Lyman argues, it presupposes a questionable division between the prayer life of the educated elites and that of the uneducated masses.38 Popular forms of Christian devotion, moreover, to the extent that they are recoverable, are considerably more ambiguous and changeable than the theory allows.39 Christological devotion is underdetermined such that it does not “translate directly into the categories of homoiousios or homoousios divinity.”40 Expressing the same point from a slightly different angle, the lex orandi, lex credendi theory trades on a questionable understanding of untutored religious feeling as the source of theological doctrine.41 Against Lindbeck’s probable intention, I  would argue that the principle of Christological maximalism can be detached from the notion of immanent or internal doctrinal development. This principle, along with the other two regulative principles in Lindbeck’s theory, ultimately reflects the impact of the cultural-​religious environment of the early church on its theological development. Understanding these regulative principles as rooted in the sociological dynamics of the early Christian movement places us in an evolutionary framework.

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To make this argument, let us first recall the point I made in the previous chapter that rhetorical strength does not always coincide with logical consistency. Logically, Nicene theology is, if anything, more, not less, cognitively dissonant than the so-​called Arian. Indeed, what made the confession of the Son’s consubstantiality so controversial at the time of its initial formulation was precisely that it did not pay sufficient regard to Lindbeck’s principles of monotheism and “historical specificity.” When combined with the rejection of Arius’s dictum that “there was once when he was not,” the consubstantiality doctrine veers perilously close to ditheism—​ assuming, of course, that at the same time one eschews the modalist option.42 And, as can be seen in Athanasius’s rather facile attempts to explain away New Testament depictions of Jesus’s humanity, one could argue that the consubstantiality doctrine, like a promising scientific theory enthusiastically developed in the face of countervailing evidence, initially paid insufficient regard to the principle of historical specificity.43 And yet, it was precisely by virtue of its seeming disregard for the other two qualifying principles that the consubstantiality doctrine constituted a more powerful form of rhetoric. From a purely rhetorical standpoint, a qualified expression of Christological maximalism, such as the various subordinationist Christologies of the fourth century, stands no chance against the Nicenes’ full-​throated confession of Christ’s full divinity. Now rhetoric, understood as discourse intended to produce attitudinal and behavioral effects on an audience, can be readily understood in sociological terms. In his perceptive critique of J. L. Austin’s logical analysis of performative speech, Pierre Bourdieu convincingly argues that the performative power of speech ultimately derives, not from the intrinsic, logical properties of the speech itself, but rather from the social conditions of its production and reception.44 Discourse has the capacity to shape social reality—​to name it in this way rather than that—​by virtue of what Bourdieu calls its symbolic capital, that is, the recognition it receives from the group whose perceptions and attitudes it will affect.45 Lindbeck’s three principles, when understood in this way as rhetorical principles, together reflect the sociological dynamics of early Christianity. That is, they derive their rhetorical force ultimately from the effort of Christian communities to carve out a distinctive sense of identity in their original cultural milieu. At the beginning of his Address on Religious Instruction, Gregory of Nyssa gives what is in effect a sociological interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity. The divinity of the Word and the Spirit, he says, invalidates the teaching of the Jews, while the unity of the divine nature invalidates



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the polytheism of the Greeks.46 Translating Gregory’s trope of the Trinity as the happy mean between Judaism and Hellenism in terms of Lindbeck’s regulative principles, we could say that the principle of Christological maximalism, embodied in the confession of the divinity of the Word, distinguishes Christianity from Judaism, while the principle of monotheism (the “unity of the divine nature”) distinguishes it from Greco-​Roman polytheism. Lindbeck’s third principle, the historical specificity of Jesus, distinguishes mainstream Christianity various forms of Gnostic docetism.

Christology, Christian Identity, and Judaism Below I shall focus on the rhetorical principle of Christological maximalism, considering Lindbeck’s other two principles only insofar as they relate to this one. As indicated above, my thesis is that this principle derives its rhetorical force from Christianity’s formative break with Judaism. In developing this thesis I  am indebted to the sociological approach to the classic Christological problem taken by P. M. Casey in his book From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God (1991). As the book’s title suggests, Casey sets out to explain how the belief in Jesus’s divinity emerged in a movement that had originated in the context of Jewish monotheism. Like the scholars of the earlier History of Religions School, Casey attributes the eventual deification of Jesus to the spread of Christianity to Gentile communities. What distinguishes his explanation from theirs, however, is its focus on social identity as the principal motivating factor in Christological development. Casey explains the development of ever more exalted conceptions of Christ in terms of the need on the part of predominantly Gentile Christian communities for a symbolic identity factor in default of those that had sufficed for contemporary Jews, such as ethnicity, circumcision, and dietary laws.47 The upward Christological trajectory from Jesus as inspired prophet to incarnate Word of God thus reflects the progressive demographic shift in the early Christian movement from Jews to Gentiles. A decisive moment in Christological development occurred when prominently Gentile Christian communities separated from their Jewish counterparts, a break recorded in the later redactional stages of the Fourth Gospel. According to the Johannine narrative, what triggers this split is a disagreement over Christology; for the Johannine Christians’ Jewish antagonists, the former’s exalted conception of Christ could no longer be reconciled with monotheism. After the split, Casey argues, monotheism ceased to function as an exclusive identity factor for Gentile Christian communities. The

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attenuation of the identity-​sustaining function of monotheism effectively weakened its influence over Christological development. By relaxing the constraint that monotheism had exercised on Christological reflection, the break with Judaism (or Jewish Christianity?) led to ever more exalted conceptions of Christ, culminating in the Johannine doctrines of Christ’s deity and incarnation.48 Casey’s theory of Christological development is controversial. In his thoughtful review of Casey’s book, James D. G. Dunn identifies three points of vulnerability in Casey’s account. The first is that Casey works with a conception of Jewish identity that is too uniform and clear-​cut. Dunn notes that Jewish identity in the Second Temple period was far more changeable, contested, and irreducibly perspectival than Casey’s analysis seems to acknowledge.49 He further suggests that Casey’s concept of Jewish identity, to the extent that it presupposes a degree of uniformity that comes only with later rabbinic orthodoxy, is unwittingly anachronistic.50 The second vulnerability concerns Casey’s claim that Jewish monotheism placed a strict upper limit on Christological development. Dunn observes that this claim presupposes a concept of Jewish monotheism that is too rigid and precise than was in fact the case.51 Jewish monotheism in the Second Temple period was sufficiently flexible to allow for considerable speculation concerning various heavenly figures and hypostasized divine attributes and powers.52 The third vulnerability concerns Casey’s sociological method.53 According to Dunn, Casey’s effort to explain Christological development in terms of social factors is one-​sided and reductionist.54 Dunn argues that a sociological explanation like Casey’s needs to be supplemented by a consideration of other casual factors, in particular, those emphasized by Larry Hurtado, namely, “the cultic veneration of Christ and the generative power of religious experience.”55 The first two of Dunn’s criticisms are well taken. They reflect the sensitivity of scholars today, particularly since 1985, when Casey delivered the lectures that formed the basis of his book, to the difficulty in describing the reciprocal emergence of “Christianity” and “Judaism” out of the cultural-​religious matrix of Second Temple Judaism. Many of the categories and concepts with which Casey argues for his thesis, such as Jewish identity and Jewish monotheism, lend clarity to his argument at the price of obscuring much of the complexity—​the subtleties and ambiguities—​of this process. One suspects that Casey’s fairly clear-​cut concepts of Jewish identity and Jewish monotheism reflect a later stage of



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historical development in which a nascent rabbinic Judaism defined itself over against an emergent Christian rival. Exalted Christological notions such as the identification of Christ with the preexistent Word of God were less creations di nuovo by Christian thinkers suddenly freed from the constraints of Jewish monotheism than they were creative appropriations of Jewish notions that an emergent rabbinic orthodoxy effectively ceded to them.56 Nevertheless, neither of Dunn’s first two criticisms, in my judgment, undermines Casey’s core insight, namely, that early Christological development can be explained in terms of the tensions that some influential early Christian communities experienced vis-​à-​vis their Jewish and Jewish-​Christian neighbors. Accordingly, I  am inclined to attach less weight to Dunn’s criticism that Casey’s sociological approach is reductionist. I suspect that this criticism confounds two kinds of reductionism, one indefensible, the other completely valid.57 The former regards theological discourse as a mere epiphenomenon of underlying material and social realities. The second form of reductionism, the valid kind, characterizes scientific explanation when the latter is understood as a translation or a redescription of a relatively unfamiliar discourse or phenomenon into a second-​order language that is readily intelligible.58 It is precisely by virtue of this second form of reductionism that such explanations have cognitive power.59 To dramatize this point, Jonathan Z. Smith compares an explanatory model or redescription to a map that is useful only to the extent that it reduces the corresponding territory to a schema relevant to the traveler’s purposes.60 The reductionism charge sticks, I suggest, only if it can be established that Casey’s theory is guilty of the former, “vulgar” form of reductionism. But Casey’s central claim that theological concepts like monotheism and the divinity of Christ exercise a social function, I would argue, excludes this kind of reductionism. For the very concept of a social function implies that such concepts not merely reflect, but also mediate and shape their underlying social relations. Put differently, such theological discourses are constitutive of the social realities they mediate. Casey probably could have placed more emphasis on the constructive aspect of the theological and Christological discourses that he discusses, however. And here Dunn’s criticism that he underestimated the fluidity, ambiguity, and uncertainty of the social realities in question becomes relevant. His understanding of the Christian-​Jewish “parting of the ways” in terms of a clear-​cut demographic shift in the nascent Christian movement takes away some of the incentive, if I may put it like this, for him to

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emphasize the rhetorical and constructive dimension of theological discourse.61 Conversely, our awareness of the greater fluidity and uncertainty of those underlying social dynamics at the time enhances our appreciation of the extent to which the relations between early Jewish and Christian communities were shaped by the theological discourses used to articulate these relations. This emphasis on the rhetorical aspect of Christological discourse allows us to extend a sociological approach like Casey’s, which explains Christological development in terms of Jewish-​Christian relations, beyond the first century. At this point we enter upon the much-​ discussed question of the relation of the anti-​Judaic discourse of the patristic period to the actual relations between Christians and Jews at the time. The history of modern scholarship on this question follows a dialectical pattern. Up until the Second World War, scholars of early Christianity tended to follow uncritically, and in most cases probably unconsciously, the Christian apologetic tradition in assuming that by the second century Judaism was in decline and had withdrawn into cultural irrelevance. Such a perception of contemporary Judaism derives in part from the apologetic claim that Christianity had rendered Judaism obsolete, such that whatever religious appeal Judaism once had was thoroughly eclipsed by the superior spiritual vitality of its Christian offspring.62 For Adolf von Harnack, perhaps the best-​known historian working within this theological framework, such a moribund and obsolete religion could not possibly have presented enough of a threat to the early church to explain the vigorous anti-​Judaic polemics found in its literature. Accordingly, he regarded such polemics as largely rhetorical in nature; the picture of Judaism found therein is largely the product of the Christian imagination.63 This assumption was challenged by Marcel Simon in his landmark study, Verus Israel (1964). Against Harnack’s assumption that contemporary Judaism was too withdrawn and isolated to account for Christian anti-​Judaism, Simon argued that, to the contrary, such polemic reflected a fierce competition between the two religions for converts in the pagan world.64 More recently, however, scholars have challenged Simon’s thesis that actual Jewish-​Christian conflict was the main source of Christian anti-​Judaism in the patristic period.65 A particularly eloquent representative of this third moment in the scholarly dialectic, Miriam Taylor, acknowledges the importance of Simon’s emphasis on the continuing vitality of the Jewish religion as a corrective to the supersessionist presuppositions of earlier historians



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like Harnack.66 And yet she challenges what she calls the “conflict theory,” the thesis that Christian anti-​Judaism in the second and third centuries can be explained in terms of actual conflicts between Christians and Jews at the time. Against this view, she argues that anti-​Judaic polemic was largely generated out of a problematic internal to Christian theology, namely, the effort to explain and justify the Christian expropriation of the Jewish God and the Jewish Scriptures.67 Accordingly, “the Judaism opposed in the writings of the fathers was not a living Judaism connected to Jewish contemporaries, but a symbolic Judaism which served as a vital function in the formation of Christian identity.”68 On one level, Taylor’s thesis regarding the symbolic nature of Christian anti-​Judaism returns to Harnack’s claim that the Judaism represented in the patristic sources was largely a figurative entity.69 By stressing the role of theological discourse in articulating a sense of social identity, however, Taylor’s theological explanation for Christian anti-​Judaism distinguishes itself from the decontextualized, intellectualist approach to theological doctrine characteristic of scholars of Harnack’s generation.70 Taylor’s sharp critique of the conflict theory might go a bit too far, however. She argues that the theological explanation for Christian anti-​ Judaism that she favors excludes the conflict model, and she criticizes other scholars for failing to realize that the two explanations are mutually exclusive.71 In contrasting the two explanations so sharply, Taylor may be “bending the stick too far in the other direction,” to the point, perhaps, of neutralizing the forward momentum of the aforementioned dialectic. Her thesis that the two modes of explanation are mutually exclusive presupposes what to my mind is a false dichotomy between “immanent” analyses of theological meaning, on the one hand, and “reductive” analyses that relate theological discourses to religious rivalry and political conflict, on the other.72 In an otherwise laudable effort to chart a middle course between old-​style intellectualist approaches to doctrine and reductionist approaches that regard theological discourse as an epiphenomenon of social and political relations, she appeals to Geertz’s concept of culture as an autonomous realm of meaning.73 In light of more recent critiques of Geertz’s concept of culture, however, I fear that Taylor’s plea for understanding Christian anti-​Judaic discourse as an “internally generated product of Christian theologizing” brings us back closer to the intellectualism of Harnack et al. than she would care to admit.74 An analysis of the theological discourses of the patristic period reveals that they invariably give expression to hegemonic struggles over

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the meaning and identity of Christianity. And such struggles often contain an implicit reference to Judaism as a social and cultural presence, even when they use stereotypical, “figurative” language to describe it.75 A paradigmatic example of such an effort to establish a sense of Christian identity in which an external reference to Judaism plays a central role is Justin Martyr’s mid-​second-​century text Dialogue with Trypho. As we shall see in more detail below, Justin represents a Jewish other whose views happen to coincide with those of his Christian rivals. By having his Jewish interlocutor, Trypho, reject Logos theology, Justin effectively assimilates certain Christian groups who do not accept his doctrine of Christ as the Logos to Christianity’s archetypal other, Judaism. Justin’s characterization of Judaism, worked out in his stylized exchange with Trypho, thus forms part of a rhetorical strategy intended to strip Justin’s Christian rivals of the Christian name.76 The same strategy can be seen in Athanasius’s invidious characterization of his Arian adversaries as “new Jews” on account of their alleged denial of Christ’s divinity. Like Justin, Athanasius seeks to deny the Arians the Christian name.77 In both of these examples, a reference to Christianity’s archetypal other is integral to a rhetorical effort to establish the hegemony of a particular expression of Christianity. And, to that extent, a theological explanation does not exclude, pace Taylor, the conflict theory, albeit a somewhat weaker form of it than Taylor may have in mind. That is, the Jewish cultural presence manifests itself, albeit indirectly, in those theological discourses, including, of course, explicitly anti-​Judaic ones, through which Christians work out a sense of identity. This thesis that hegemonic struggles over Christological doctrine contain an inherent reference to Christianity’s formative relation with Judaism can be readily understood in terms of the principle of “metacontrast,” developed in the context of social categorization theory. It will be recalled from the previous chapter that metacontrast is the principle that governs social prototypicality or the question of which members are taken to define a social group. It states that social prototypicality is a function both of the degree of similarity to members within the group and the degree of difference from those without.78 We can apply the metacontrast principle directly to our topic of Christological controversy once we recognize that hegemonic struggles over who defines Christianity are nothing other than struggles over prototypicality. To the extent, then, that one factor in determining the prototype is its degree of contrast with the relevant out-​group, intra-​Christian hegemonic struggles will



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invariably refer, either directly or indirectly, to Christianity’s archetypal other, Judaism. And nowhere is this principle more evident than in those intra-​Christian struggles mediated through rival Christologies. All things being equal, the Christology that maximalizes the contrast with Judaism, invidiously defined by its rejection of Christ, will have the edge. When thus understood in terms of the principle of metacontrast, Lindbeck’s principle of Christological maximalism betrays the cultural presence of Christianity’s Jewish other. The latter exercises a silent but unmistakable gravitational pull over ostensibly intramural debates over Christology. My use of a theoretical model based on controlled laboratory experiments to elucidate the structure of a real-​world historical controversy naturally requires that I  make several qualifications.79 First, Christian theological development was influenced not by one but several relevant out-​group relations, including those with Greco-​Roman culture and with various forms of Christian Gnosticism. These additional relations obviously complicate the binary model of social categorization theory. Similar to what we saw in our discussion of Randall Collins’s sociological analysis of the history of Platonism and Aristotelianism, Christological development exhibits sudden turns and breaks according to the relative strength of the external threats to Christian identity at a given time and locality. Changes in Christianity’s multireligious environment will push the theological prototype—​here, Christology—​in one direction or another. For example, the concern on the part of second-​and third-​century theologians like Irenaeus and Tertullian with maximizing the contrast with the putative Jewish rejection of Christ was offset by their concern to draw a boundary with certain Christian Gnostic groups that exalted Christ to the point of denying his humanity or, again, with those that included Christ within a hierarchy of divine beings. One could argue that the relaxation of the Gnostic threat in the fourth century was one of the conditions for the Nicenes’ eventual elimination of subordinationism between the Father and the Son. Second, in-​group–​out-​group boundaries are variable, contested, and perspectival. The attributes that define both the prototype and the relevant out-​group are not simply given. The model used in social categorization theory establishes a stable boundary between the in-​group and out-​group as a control factor in the experiments. In real world social relations, however, social boundaries are subject to continual processes of negotiation and contestation.80 These struggles over the location,

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meaning, and content of cultural boundaries, moreover, are inextricably tied to internal struggles over the identity of the in-​group. That the in-​ group–​out-​group boundary varies with prototypicality follows directly from the principle of metacontrast once the contingent nature of both is recognized.81 To the extent that the prototype is codetermined by its maximal contrast with the out-​group, the selection of a particular prototype implies a particular relation to, and conception of, the relevant out-​group(s). The categories of in-​group and out-​group are not only interdependent but also inherently perspectival. What might appear to the outside observer, including the historian, as an intragroup conflict might be understood by the protagonists themselves as an intergroup one. Contemporary Greeks would have regarded the conflict between the Johannine Christian community and the local synagogue, if they were aware of it at all, as an intramural conflict among Jews. The fourth evangelist, by contrast, saw this same conflict as an intergroup conflict between the saved and the damned. Polemical rhetoric, in fact, exploits the perspectival nature of in-​group and out-​group boundaries. Its intention is precisely to transform, via the performative power of language, one’s intragroup rivals into an out-​group. By denying the Arians of the Christian name, Athanasius, for example, seeks to transform his Eusebian opponents into an out-​group. Third and finally, the insistence on the irreducibility of social behavior to realistic conflicts of interest must not cause us to lose sight of the impact of objective, “realistic” factors.82 It is important to keep in mind that Tajfel and his followers never intended social identity theory to replace analyses of social conflict in terms of objective causes. Its aim, rather, was to reconceptualize the relationship between social and psychological factors, on the one hand, and the “objective” determinants of social behavior, on the other.83 The social identity perspective emphasizes the way in which the former interact with various social, economic, and political factors, deflecting their influence in one direction rather than another.84 Thus, while Christologically maximal rhetoric certainly had an effect on the theological controversies of the fourth century, it could triumph only under favorable social and political conditions. Had the succession of emperors been different, or had, say, Athanasius suffered an unfortunate accident at some point during one of his several exiles, some form of subordinationist theology could very well have inherited the Christian name.



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The Upward Trajectory of Christological Development By their very nature, hegemonic struggles are never final. At the very least, past victories require continual political maintenance and defense. Not only will changes in the environment necessitate revisions in the prototype, as we have seen, but also new rivals will seek to dislodge the current prototype in the name of the very principles upon which it was established. Thus we see in the history of the early church once Christologically maximal expressions giving way to ever more exalted expressions of Christ’s divinity. In the fourth century, we see the Arian conception of Christ as the first-​born of creation (Col. 1:15)—​for a long time a Christologically maximal expression—​being forced to give way to the conception of the Son as consubstantial with the Father. Going back to the very beginnings of the Christian movement, we can perhaps speculate that early Jewish-​Christian notions of Jesus as a prophet like Moses or as the Davidic Messiah suffered a similar fate.85 When one takes a synoptic, long view of the course of Christological development, one sees a kind of ratcheting mechanism at work. If the subordinationist Eusebian theology of the first half of the fourth century can be seen as preserving a dominant theological perspective of the previous century,86 then perhaps we can understand the challenge posed to it by the emergent pro-​Nicene theology as a kind of Christological one-​upmanship. Justin’s promotion of the Logos theology in the second century can be similarly understood as a gesture of Christological one-​upmanship over against the contemporary adoptionist theologies he attacks. Even if the principle of maximal out-​group contrast tends to drive Christology upwards, it would be misleading to suggest that the historical development of Christian doctrine, particularly the New Testament, follows a linear progression from a “low” to a “high” Christology.87 As Martin Hengel noted in a classic article, one finds quite “high” Christological statements, suggesting the preexistence and divinity of Jesus, in the earliest extant Christian documents, the genuine letters of Paul (e.g., Phil. 2:6ff; 1 Cor. 8:6; Gal. 4:4; Rom. 8:3; and 1 Cor. 2.7).88 Nils Dahl makes the happy comparison of Christological development in the New Testament to the increase of temperatures in the spring, wherein the average temperature on any given day might not conform to the overall warming trend.89 So just as a given day in March might be warmer than one in May, the Christology

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of Paul is “higher” than that of Luke dating thirty or forty years later. And just as a single day often reveals significant fluctuations in temperature, so too can Christian writings that are roughly contemporaneous show significant differences in their conceptions of Christ (e.g., the Pastoral epistles and the Gospel of John). This last observation contains the key to understanding the unevenness and complexity of Christological development. The emergence of a particular Christological notion as characteristic of a particular time and place is due to situational factors that have selected this particular notion—​and, typically, the faction whose identity it sustains—​ from a full inventory of Christological notions, which vary in terms of their compatibility with the hegemonic notion. Christological development, in other words, is as much a matter of selection as it is, as in the development of scientific theories, of innovation. And, given the contingency of the processes of selection, where political factors are invariably present, one would hardly expect such a sequence of selections to follow a uniform, linear trajectory. Nevertheless, one can discern a general upward “warming trend.” Continuing with the meteorological analogy, we might compare the principle of maximal out-​group contrast, exercising a gentle but relentless pull on Christological development, to those incremental shifts in the earth’s position relative to the sun, whose effects, although subtle and easily overriden by local meteorological conditions, eventually prove decisive. The principle of maximal out-​group contrast—​in the present context, Christological maximalism—​manifests itself most clearly at those moments, mentioned at the beginning of this section, when an exalted Christological conception appears on the scene in relation to which previous conceptions appear inadequate. Christological maximalism is thus a dynamic principle. There is a charming Hindu myth, an Indic parallel to the biblical flood story, that might serve as a metaphor for Christological development. In the myth, Manu, a kind of Indian Noah, finds a minnow in the water brought to him for his morning ablutions. Honoring the tiny fish’s plaintive cries for help, Manu places it in a jar. But the fish steadily grows, soon forcing Manu to transfer it to a tank, then to a pond, and finally to the ocean. Thereupon the now giant fish, in a soteriological role-​reversal, saves Manu from the great flood.90 Like Manu’s expanding fish—​whom the later tradition, incidentally, identifies with Vishnu—​the understanding of Christ undergoes development. At several junctures in that development, previous conceptual containers are revealed to be inadequate for a figure whose divinity ultimately eludes human comprehension. Or, to shifting to a more proximate image, old conceptual wineskins



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are no longer able to contain the ever-​new wine that is the living Christ. Below, I identify three such conceptual containers or wineskins: Jesus as the Messiah; Christ as the preexistent Word (or Logos) of God; and, finally, Christ as the consubstantial Son of the Father. Of course, we immediately see from this enumeration of several familiar Christological titles that even though the first two are superseded, they are not, like Manu’s fishbowl, simply discarded. The conception of Jesus as Messiah and as the Logos of God are preserved—​aufgehoben—​in an ever more complex conception of the person of Christ. In the next two chapters I  would like to examine several pivotal moments of Christological one-​upmanship in which an earlier conception of Christ is superseded by a more exalted conception. In the next chapter, after considering the history and meaning of the early Christian confession of Jesus as the Messiah, I shall look at the development of the characteristically Johannine concepts of the preexistence and heavenly origins of Jesus. Drawing from Raymond Brown’s analysis in particular, I shall argue that the emergence of these characteristic emphases in John’s Christology can be understood in terms of a competitive relationship between the Johannine community and various Christian and Jewish-​Christian communities. This Christological one-​upmanship is to be understood in turn in the context of the Johannine community’s formative break with its parent synagogue. Next, I  turn to Justin’s defense of Logos theology in his Dialogue with Trypho. Here I shall follow Daniel Boyarin’s reading of the Dialogue as reflecting an intra-​Christian hegemonic struggle mediated through an effort to define Christianity over against Judaism. In ­chapter 3, I turn to the focus of my analysis, the supersession of Logos theology by pro-​Nicene theology in the fourth century. It goes without saying that this analysis presents a very limited perspective on a complex historical process. My abandonment of the presumption of offering a comprehensive history of Christological development relieves me of the obligation to discuss in detail certain theologians and historical circumstances—​for example, the theologies of Irenaeus, Origen, or Latin pro-​Nicene theologians like Hilary or Ambrose, to say nothing of thinkers who deserve more attention than they have received to date—​that would be essential to such a historical overview. My wager is that the notion of Christological one-​upmanship will function as a focusing metaphor which, “precisely because it filters out certain kinds of information and heightens awareness of others,”91 will allow one to see one dimension of Christological development with special clarity.

3

From Messiah to Logos Every challenge and conflict was met by upgrading the status of Jesus. Merrill P. Miller (1993: 270)

Jesus as Messiah An obvious place to begin our examination of Christological development is with the early Christian confession of Jesus as the Messiah. Not only is christos, the Greek translation of “messiah,” the most frequent term applied to Jesus in the New Testament,1 but it also presents itself as the most basic of the Christological titles, both chronologically and logically. Already in Paul’s genuine letters, the oldest surviving documents of the Christian movement, the application of the name “Christ” to Jesus seems to have been firmly established.2 Paul’s frequent use of the term presupposes a familiarity with the term on the part of his readers.3 A peculiarity of Paul’s usage of the term—​one whose historical significance we shall examine below—​is that he does not use it as a full-​blown title as the later writers of the canonical Gospels do. Even if, as some recent scholarship suggests, christos in Paul’s writings is not simply a proper name, as a previous generation of New Testament scholars assumed, it nevertheless belongs to an onomastic category, whether a nickname or an honorific, that was proper to the person of Jesus.4 As such, its content is largely determined by Jesus’s life and work.5 Inasmuch as the “Christ” functions as a shorthand reference to the person and work of Jesus, it serves, as Nils Dahl remarks, as the common denominator of the various conceptions of Jesus found in the New Testament.6 As the basis upon which more determinate—​and generally more exalted—​Christological confessions will be built, the name “Christ” might be compared to the soffritto, the sautéed mixture of garlic, parsley, and onions, from which Italian cooks build a dish in which these ingredients may no longer be very noticeable, let  alone characteristic.7



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Below, however, we shall see that this “foundationalist” understanding of the messianic claim is problematic from a historical point of view. Particularly noteworthy, given our hypothesis concerning the intimate relation between Christological development and controversy, is that in the gospel narratives the claim that Jesus is the Messiah divides the followers of Jesus from the Jewish religious leaders.8 In the climactic trial scene in Mark (14:61), for example, the question the high priest puts to Jesus is whether he is the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One. Jesus’s unambiguously affirmative response, followed by his prediction of the claim’s dramatic vindication, seals his fate.9 Similarly in John, the messianic status of Jesus is an issue that turns up in Jesus’s controversies with “the Jews” in the first part of the gospel (Jn. 7:25–​44, 10:24–​25, 12:34–​35, cf. 9:22).10 John informs us, in fact, that the confession was grounds for expulsion from the synagogue (Jn. 9:22). The Christian claim, of course, is that the expected Messiah is none other than Jesus. And yet Jesus fulfills the implicit qualifications of the title only to transform it radically.11 Nowhere is this theme of transformation more clearly delineated than in the Gospel of Mark. The pivotal scene in Mark is Peter’s famous confession at Caesarea Philippi. To Jesus’s question, “But who do you say that I am?,” Peter replies, “You are the Messiah” (Mk. 8:29). Jesus tacitly accepts the designation, but proceeds to test Peter’s understanding of the confession he has just given by predicting the rejection, suffering, execution, and resurrection of the Son of Man (8:31).12 Peter’s objection reveals the inadequacy of his conception of Jesus’s messiahship, thereby earning Jesus’s sharp rebuke (8:32–​33). As interpreted by the story of the healing of the blind man in two stages that immediately precedes the scene at Caesarea Philippi (Mk. 8:22–​26), the exchange represents the midpoint in the disciples’ continually developing understanding of Jesus.13 Peter has at this point grasped the form—​that is, the right category—​but not the content of Jesus’s identity.14 As Jesus’s prediction of his rejection and suffering anticipates, his messiahship will be properly understood only in light of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Or, put differently, Mark reinterprets the Messiah concept in terms of the eschatological Son of Man.15 The Christian concept of the Messiah exemplifies a feature of New Testament Christology more generally, namely, that the Jesus-​event interprets the Christological titles as much as, or indeed more than, the reverse.16 The presupposition of the gospel narrative is that Peter’s working concept of the Messiah—​whose inadequacy is indicated by Jesus’s

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reaction—​ represents a putative general Jewish messianic expectation. Peter’s objection to Jesus’s prediction of death and suffering betrays a this-​ worldly conception of messiahship, according to which some measure of observable success is a criterion of the true Messiah.17 The confession of Jesus as the long-​awaited Messiah will become part and parcel of the later Christian effort to distinguish itself from what will be anachronistically referred to as Judaism.18 As the end result of the Jews’ failure to recognize their Messiah, the Crucifixion testifies to their spiritual blindness. The claim that Jesus transformed contemporary Jewish messianic expectations has thus sustained a distinctive sense of Christian identity vis-​à-​vis Judaism. That the messiah concept has functioned in this way might explain why scholars up until fairly recently have generally assumed that there was a general Jewish messianic expectation,19 despite the lack of evidence for it in Jewish literature before 70 ad.20 In general, the theme of messianic expectation is either peripheral or nonexistent in this diverse body of literature. Where the theme of the messiah does appear, moreover—​for example, in the Qumran literature—​there is no unified and consistent view.21 Expressing the unanimous view of the participants in the 1987 Princeton symposium on the concept of the Messiah in earliest Judaism and Christianity, James H. Charlesworth concluded that “[no] critical historian can refer to a common Jewish messianic hope during the time of Jesus or in the sayings of Jesus.”22 One might therefore conclude that this notion of a common messianic expectation “derives from the early Christian paradigm of Jesus as the fulfillment of messianic longing of the people at that time, rather than from the Jewish evidence at all.”23 If we question the assumption that most Jews at the time expected the coming of the Messiah and that, moreover, Jesus did not conform to whatever messianic notions there might have been in circulation, how, then, can we explain the Christian confession of Jesus as the Messiah?24 In a classic article first published in 1960, Nils Dahl argued for an elegantly simple answer to this question. Dahl explained the disjunction between the Jewish Messiah—​at the time of his article most scholars still assumed that there was a more or less consistent concept of the Messiah in contemporary Judaism25—​and the figure of Jesus in the New Testament by rooting the Christian conception of Jesus’s messiahship in the historical events of Christ’s trial and execution as well as the disciples’ experiences of the risen Christ.26 As Dahl himself states his thesis, “[t]‌he content of the predicate ‘Messiah’ was determined essentially by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and only to a limited extent by a previous conception of the



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Messiah.”27 Seeing no reason to doubt the historicity of the inscription on the cross, “King of the Jews,” Dahl argues that Christian messianic claims are based on the fact that Jesus was condemned and crucified as a royal-​ messianic pretender.28 The Resurrection was thus interpreted as a vindication of the crucified Messiah.29 Dahl further suggests that the initiative for the messianic attribution came from Jesus’s opponents, who applied the title ironically.30 By downplaying, to the point of irrelevance, the influence of pre-​Christian Jewish notions of the Messiah, Dahl’s thesis regarding the historical basis of the title nicely coheres with the more recent discovery of the variation, infrequency, and inconsistency of pre-​Christian Jewish messianic conceptions. A thesis holds up well when what it declares to be largely irrelevant is later revealed to be virtually nonexistent! Merrill P. Miller, working in the context of the “redescribing Christian origins” project inspired by the work of Burton L. Mack, offers a radically different explanation for the confession of Jesus as the Messiah. Like Dahl, Miller argues that the confession has “little to do with appropriating contemporary Jewish expectations of an eschatological deliverer.”31 He diverges sharply from Dahl, however, in arguing that the titular use of christos derives, not from the historical events of Jesus’s life and death, but rather from the social needs of Christian communities of the later first century. Miller goes as far as to claim that prior to the Gospel of Mark Christians generally did not think of Jesus in messianic terms.32 Miller’s insistence on the social origins of the Christian messianic claim exemplifies the “religious-​studies” approach to the study of the New Testament pioneered by Mack.33 That is, it breaks from the traditional “hermeneutical” approach that understands the various Jesus traditions of the New Testament as so many hermeneutical applications of putatively original sayings and actions of Jesus to more recent situations. Rather, it understands the various New Testament traditions of Jesus as etiological myths of origins for later Christian communities in need of legitimation.34 It seems to me that the distinction between the hermeneutical and sociological approaches need not be quite as stark as Mack and Miller present it.35 Nevertheless, the latter’s sociological approach to the problem of the Christian messianic claim has the virtue of explaining a feature of the distribution of the term christos in the New Testament that is anomalous from the perspective of the more standard “hermeneutical” approaches to the problem. As noted above, Paul’s use of christos falls short of a title. That is, Paul refers to Jesus as “Jesus Christ” or “Christ Jesus,” not as “Jesus who is the Christ.” Moreover, although Paul uses the term more than anyone else

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in the New Testament, he seems curiously uninterested in the question of whether Jesus is the expected Messiah.36 Only in the gospel literature, which receives its final form at least a generation after Paul, does the term appear as a title. In the gospel narratives, Jesus is proclaimed as the Christ, the long-​awaited Messiah. Now if we assume that the term began as a title, which, like a coin effaced through wear, with constant use and familiarity degenerated into a proper name,37 then the documentary evidence is precisely the reverse of what one would expect. A usage that is assumed to belong to the earliest stratum of the Jesus traditions appears only in later texts. The concern of the Gospels and Acts with the messianic identity of Jesus appears anachronistic.38 More conventional explanations that trace Christian messianic claims back to the time of Jesus get around this difficulty by assuming that the titular use of the term derives from oral traditions lying behind Mark’s passion narrative.39 The main problem with this hypothesis is that there is no direct evidence for the earliest Palestinian Jewish Christianity in which the messianic claim is supposed to have arisen.40 The hypothesis, moreover, finds no support from Q or other sayings sources like the Gospel of Thomas, where the term christos is generally absent.41 Another drawback of the hypothesis that the titular usage of christos preceded the nominative usage is that it allows uncomfortably little time for the drastic revision of the messiah concept that was necessary to render the concept applicable to Jesus.42 The standard hypothesis assumes that this usage was well-​established by the early fifties when Paul wrote the earliest extant letters.43 Boldly refusing to take the gospel narratives at face value—​here we see the influence of Mack’s strictures against using the gospel paradigm to imagine Christian beginnings44—​Miller offers a more economical hypothesis.45 What if the term christos began as a name applied to Jesus and the titular use was developed only later, exactly as the textual evidence suggests?46 Or, as Miller himself puts it, “Christ was a name that had been used by some Christians before others figured out what it might mean to think of Jesus as an earthly or as a heavenly messiah figure.”47 Miller thus abandons the view that “the messiahship of Jesus is assumed in the NT epistolary literature.”48 Here Miller appropriates A. E. Harvey’s thesis that “christos” began its life as a byname or nickname, analogous to the epithets applied to famous philosophers like Aristotle, “the Peripatetic,” Diogenes “the Cynic” or, closer to home, Simon Peter (“the Rock”).49 Although the name conveyed a sense of divine approval, perhaps together with royal connotations,50 it did not yet convey the idea that Jesus was a royal or prophetic figure of Jewish expectation.



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As mentioned above, the representation of Jesus as a figure of messianic expectation—​thus, the titular use of the term christos—​belongs to the later gospel narrative tradition.51 Its occurrence there can be explained in terms of the particular concerns of evangelists writing in the later part of the first century. According to Miller, the representation of Jesus as the expected Messiah gives expression to the effort of mixed or predominantly Gentile Christian communities in the aftermath of the first Roman-​Jewish war to define themselves in relation to the Jewish tradition. In the Gospel of Luke, for example, the conception of Jesus as the expected Messiah reflects Luke’s interest in establishing continuity between the epic tradition of Israel and the predominantly Gentile Christian congregations of his time.52 Jesus’s exclusive claim to the title symbolizes what for Luke is the church’s rightful claim to the biblical tradition. A similar interest lies behind Matthew’s effort to cast Jesus as a royal messiah of Davidic descent, notwithstanding the likelihood that Matthew’s community, unlike Luke’s, was predominantly Jewish rather than Gentile.53 By embedding Jesus in the biblical tradition, the depiction of Jesus as the expected Messiah gave early Christian communities “an instant and urgently needed tradition.”54 Later Christian writers, of course, will go on to develop the promise-​ fulfillment theme in their ongoing efforts to expropriate the Jewish scriptures. For Justin Martyr, for example, the messianic claim of Jesus plays a central role in the Christian proof from prophesy.55 Miller goes beyond other scholars in suggesting that an apologetic concern with appropriating the Jewish epic tradition was constitutive of the messianic conception of Jesus.56 As we have seen, he questions the existence of the confession of Jesus as the Messiah before certain Christian and Jewish communities became conscious of themselves as rival claimants to the biblical tradition.57 Miller’s thesis thus raises the intriguing possibility that even this, the putatively foundational Christological concept, was the product of tensions between Christians and non-​Christian Jews.

Christological One-​Upmanship in the Gospel of John In the gospel narratives, the Messiah concept is paired with other concepts that modify and exalt it. If Miller’s theory is valid, then the concept of the Messiah as a purely this-​worldly figure, whether royal or even prophetic, is a back-​formation from the Christian apologetic claim that Jesus

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supersedes the religious institutions of Judaism.58 Nevertheless, even when qualified by concepts such as the eschatological Son of Man or even the Son of God—​where the latter epithet is understood in the more traditional adoptive, rather than its later ontological sense59—​one could argue that the messiahship of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels falls short of divinity. To be sure, the Synoptics present Jesus as doing things that are the prerogatives of the God of Israel. Nevertheless, the synoptic Jesus generally draws attention to himself only to point beyond himself to the Father and the Kingdom. The Fourth Gospel marks a decisive Christological advance. The celebrated prologue places the ensuing narrative in the cosmic framework of Jesus’s preexistence.60 In the context of Jesus’s preexistence, the confession of Jesus as the Messiah in John is tantamount to a confession of his divinity.61 P. M. Casey probably exaggerates when he declares that the Fourth Gospel “is the only New Testament document in which the deity and incarnation of Jesus are unequivocally proclaimed.”62 It is nevertheless true that, at the very least, the Fourth Gospel contains some of the most exalted Christological language in the New Testament. For this reason, James D.  G. Dunn remarks that John’s Christology represents a bridge between the historical Jesus and Nicene orthodoxy.63 For all its emphasis on Christ’s oneness with the Father—​“I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:30)—​ however, John’s Christology still presupposes the Son’s subordination to the Father—​“The Father is greater than I” (Jn. 14:28; cf. 5:19–​47).64 Without too much exaggeration, one could understand the subsequent history of Christological development in terms of an ongoing effort to make sense of these two Johannine statements.65 The fourth evangelist—​or whichever parties were involved in the final redaction of John’s gospel66—​was conscious of going beyond the kind of Christological understanding that we find in the synoptic gospels.67 Here I would like to suggest that the Christological “one-​upmanship”68 that gives birth to John’s exalted Christology can be understood in terms of the concept of metacontrast mentioned above in our discussion of social identity theory. That is, Johannine Christology can be understood in terms of the community’s effort to maximize the contrast with the relevant out-​group, in this case, the parent synagogue that allegedly expelled the Johannine Christians on account of their confession of Jesus as the Messiah (Jn. 9:22, 9:34). This thesis builds on a well-​established tradition of Johannine scholarship that seeks to understand John’s distinctive theology in terms of its



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social function.69 John’s Gospel employs a distinctive literary device that reveals its sociological dimension with special clarity. As J. Louis Martyn showed in his classic study of the Fourth Gospel, the characters in John’s narrative stand for representative figures in the evangelist’s own time.70 What Martyn calls John’s “two-​level drama” gives particularly clear expression to a feature of the canonical gospel literature more generally, namely, that the narrative tells us as much about the situation of the author(s) as much as the events of Jesus’s own time, indeed, even more so. The Johannine community speaks through the words of Jesus.71 And it is through John’s distinctive Christology in particular that the Johannine community expresses its own self-​understanding.72 According to Jerome Neyrey, John’s high Christology functions as an ideology for the community, in the sense that it “encod[es] and replicat[es] their worldview, in particular their estranged position relative to the synagogue and other apostolic Christians.”73 To be more specific, the dualistic Christology characteristic of the Gospel’s later redactional stages, a dualism exemplified by the frequent contrast between those “from above” and “from below” (cf. Jn. 8:23), gives expression to the increasingly sectarian outlook of the Johannine community.74 The last sentence already anticipates our next point. The Gospel does not simply record the theological expression of a single moment in the Johannine community’s history. When the text’s striking literary inconsistencies (the Johannine “aporia”) are taken into account, the text evinces a process of Christological and sociological development.75 Using the common and felicitous archaeological metaphor, Martyn describes the Fourth Gospel as “a stratified literary deposit from which archaeologists would call a single continuous occupation.”76 In an influential, albeit not universally accepted analysis,77 Martyn identified three periods in the community’s history corresponding to three main textual strata.78 In general, the three periods mark a movement from a low to a high Christology.79 At the same time, they reflect the separation and progressive isolation of the Johannine community from its parent synagogue. Martyn’s picture of the first, early period of the Johannine community (from roughly 50 to 80 ce) is based on the literary stratum that scholars call the “signs source” or, if the narrative of the passion and resurrection is included, the “signs gospel.”80 Apart from a distinctive literary style and terminology, this body of material is characterized by two substantive features. The first of these is a traditional or “low” Christology, in which Jesus is proclaimed as the Messiah anticipated by Scripture (Jn. 1:45).81

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The second is the presupposition of a Jewish audience committed to contemporary Jewish religious practices.82 This material gives no evidence of the alienation from the synagogue that is elsewhere so prominent in the Gospel. Here one does not find those provocative Christological statements in which Jesus proclaims his equality with God to the consternation of the religious authorities.83 On the basis of these observations, Martyn concludes that “we see in this period only a group of Christian Jews who stand in a relatively untroubled stream of social and theological continuity precisely within the synagogue.”84 At some point, those Christian Jews who publically proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah were expelled from the synagogue (Jn. 9:22, 12:42, 16:2). The subsequent emergence of a separate Christian community from this messianic group within the synagogue marks the transition to Martyn’s middle period (late eighties).85 It is unclear exactly what occasioned this expulsion. Martyn argued that the separation was effected by the Jewish “Benediction against Heretics” (birkat ha-​minim) which, when incorporated into the synagogue liturgy, forced the Christians in the community to make a painful choice between taking a curse upon themselves or exposing their belief in Jesus.86 More recent scholarship, however, has called this explanation into question on historical grounds.87 Moreover, even if one were to grant that the Benediction was the instrument by which the Christians in the group were exposed, this explanation still prompts the question of the motivation for rooting out Christian Jews who had previously lived peacefully in the community.88 Raymond Brown offers an intriguing hypothesis that seeks to fill this explanatory gap. Brown hypothesizes that an influx of foreign elements into the community, a Samaritan contingent in particular, served as a catalyst for the subsequent break with the synagogue. The newcomers brought a hostile attitude toward the Temple, along with some “unorthodox” Christological beliefs that provoked a reaction from the more conservative members of the synagogue.89 Whether viewed as the cause or the effect of the separation—​or, more plausibly, as the end result of a dialectical process90—​the exalted conception of Jesus as the preexistent Son of God who has descended from heaven91 emerges as the most conspicuous feature of this period. In keeping with the literary form of the “two-​level drama,” the Johannine community’s exalted Christological claims are placed in the mouth of Jesus in his numerous acrimonious exchanges with “the Jews.” The latter object that Jesus’s claims of equality with God are tantamount to ditheism (e.g., Jn. 5:18, 10:33).92



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Later in its evolution, the Johannine community defines itself in relation not only against “the Jews,” but in relation to other Christian communities as well.93 This movement from a simple binary contrast between in-​group and out-​group to a more complex situation in which this contrast is internally refracted in the community’s relations with other Christian groups marks the final phase in Martyn’s tripartite periodization. One can identify at least two polemics running alongside the dominant polemic against the Jews that reflect the intra-​ Christian tensions characteristic of the late period. The first of these is directed against those “crypto-​ Christians” who were unwilling to proclaim their faith in Jesus in such a way as to risk excommunication (Jn. 12:42–​43).94 We can reasonably infer from the dialogue between Jesus and “the Jews who had believed in him” (Jn. 8:31–​59), an exchange which ends rather badly when the latter attempt to stone Jesus, that the attitude of the Johannine Christians seems to have been that those unwilling to leave the synagogue were ultimately no better than those who had expelled them.95 The second polemic is directed against Jewish-​Christian groups that had also broken with the synagogue, but which were unwilling to accept John’s dualistic, above/​ below Christology.96 For our purposes the precise nature of the periodization is less important than the narrative of crisis, separation, and internal differentiation that it helps delineate. As perhaps can be inferred from the curious absence of an approximate date for Martyn’s third period,97 the boundary between the second and third periods is somewhat arbitrary. For example, I suspect that the critique of the crypto-​Christians, which Martyn assigns to the late period, would have more or less coincided with the expulsion of the Johannine Christians in the middle period. Similarly—​and here we come to the hypothesis I would like to suggest—​the internal refraction of the inter-​group contrast represented by Martyn’s third stage provides the context of the transition, which Martyn assigns to the middle period, from “the heilsgeschichtlich christology from behind” of the early period to “the dualistic christology from above” of the late period.98 As mentioned above, the extent to which the high Christology of the later period is the cause or the consequence of the separation of the Johannine community from the parent synagogue is not entirely clear. On the one hand, we are told that the confession of Jesus as the expected Messiah—​an expression of the earlier, “low” Christology of the signs gospel—​was sufficient grounds for the group’s excommunication (Jn. 9:22; cf. also 12:42, where mention of excommunication is

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immediately preceded by Jesus’s fulfillment of a text from Isaiah [Is. 6:9–​10]). On the other hand, it is the expression of the later dualistic, “high” Christology that provokes the hostility of “the Jews” in Jesus’s numerous exchanges with them. One could argue, of course, that the latter passages reflect a later stage in the community’s ever-​worsening relationship with the synagogue, in which excommunication gave way to active persecution.99 Correlating the low and high Christologies to the two successive “traumas”100 of expulsion and persecution, respectively, many commentators have followed Wayne Meeks in positing a dialectical relationship—​ “a continual, harmonic reinforcement”—​ between social experience and Christological confession.101 The dualistic Christology that emerged sometime after the split with the parent synagogue would have performed an etiological function with respect to the Johannine community’s experience of separation.102 As reflected in those dialogues in which the Jews’ hostility to Jesus stems from their inability to understand and accept him, the very obscurity of John’s exalted Christology served to explain the synagogue’s rejection of the community. Herbert Leroy argued, in fact, that the very intention of the distinctive Johannine theological discourses, which he characterized as concealed riddles (verbogene Rätsel), was precisely to induce and display the misunderstanding of outsiders, the Jews in particular.103 The very opacity of John’s exalted Christology—​evident in the characters’ constant misunderstanding of Jesus’s words—​served to reinforce social boundaries.104 In other words, John’s unique Christology is comprehensible only in the context of the close-​knit Johannine community with its particular plausibility structures.105 The more complex picture of the Johannine community’s religious environment that emerges in the late period—​one in which the community defines itself not only in opposition to the parent synagogue but also in relation to rival Christian communities—​reveals another dimension to the emergence of the high Christology of John’s later textual strata. It is plausible that the higher Christology of the later period was in part the product of an effort to maximize, over against rival Christian communities, the contrast with a Jewish out-​group defined by its rejection of Jesus. In other words, John’s exalted Christology not only functioned to reinforce the inter-​group boundary with “the Jews,” but also, at the same time, to establish hegemony over rival Christian groups. Indeed, intra-​Christian tension in the late period could very well have been the proximate cause for John’s high Christology. After all, a relatively “low,” messianic Christology



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sufficed to separate the Johannine Christians from the parent synagogue earlier in the community’s history. Following Raymond Brown’s analysis, we can hypothesize the possibility of at least two rival Christian groups in relation to which the Johannine community defined itself. The first of these would be the Jewish-​ Christian groups mentioned above.106 Unlike the crypto-​ Christians (or, as Martyn terms them, “Christian Jews”) who remained in the synagogue, this group established itself as a distinct community.107 Christologically, this group would have emphasized continuity with the prophetic tradition of the Bible. Jesus was acclaimed as the “prophet like Moses” mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:15–​22 (Jn. 6:14, 7:14–​18, cf. 1:45).108 Texts that posit a sharp contrast between the disciples of Moses and those of Jesus (Jn. 9:28, cf. 6:31ff), as well as those that emphasize the superiority of Jesus’s fulfillment of the royal and prophetic functions attributed to Moses—​to the point, in fact, of stripping Moses of those functions and rendering him a mere witness to Jesus109—​may reflect a rhetoric of Christological one-​upmanship against such Christians.110 The second group of Christians over against whom the mature Johannine community might have defined itself is a group Brown terms “apostolic Christians.” Brown’s hypothesis of such a group, admittedly, is as speculative and uncertain as it is intriguing. Brown bases his hypothesis of a consciously held distinction between the Johannine community, on the one hand, and a group associated with the twelve apostles of Jesus, on the other, on his reading of the several enigmatic references to the “Beloved Disciple,” the founding figure of the former community. Brown notes that in five of the six of those references, the Beloved Disciple is explicitly and rather invidiously contrasted with Peter, who is understood to represent the twelve apostles more generally. John’s rendition of the Last Supper scene, for example, contrasts the intimacy of the Beloved Disciple’s relationship with Jesus with that of Peter. Peter cannot ask Jesus about the identity of Jesus’s betrayer directly; he must address the question to the Beloved Disciple, who, reclining at Jesus’s side, relays it to Jesus (Jn. 13: 23–​26). And, in perhaps the most significant of such contrasts, the Beloved Disciple remains faithful to Jesus to the end, standing with Jesus’s mother at the foot of the cross (Jn. 19:26–​27). The Twelve, by contrast, have scattered. Peter in particular has denied his discipleship while Jesus is undergoing interrogation (Jn. 18:17, 18:25). The common theme in these references is that the Beloved Disciple—​and, by implication, the community he

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founds—​stands in a more intimate relationship with Jesus than Peter and the Twelve. When we move from the narrative contrast between the Beloved Disciple and Peter to consider the relationship between the groups these two figures synecdochically represent, we find that the focus of the contrast between them is Christology.111 The Christological understanding of the group of apostolic Christians can be gleaned from the account of the gathering of the first disciples in John 1:35–​ 49. Collectively Andrew, Philip, and Nathanael recognize Jesus as the prophet-​Messiah foretold by Moses and as the Son of God (1:41, 45, 49), a combination of Christological titles that more or less coincides with that of the Synoptic Gospels.112 Jesus’s declaration at the conclusion of this scene that the disciples “will see greater things than these” (1:50–​51), an addition to the signs source material preceding it, can be taken as a convenient expression of the Christological one-​upmanship of the Johannine group over the apostolic Christians. The Beloved Disciple’s greater intimacy with Jesus is reflected Christologically in the Johannine community’s awareness of Jesus’s heavenly origins, his oneness with the Father, and his preexistence—​the hallmarks of John’s high Christology that are largely unknown to not only to the Twelve in John’s narrative but also to the Synoptic Gospels.113 One can hardly expect a scholarly hypothesis entailing a fair degree of conjecture to win unanimous approval, of course, and Brown’s reconstruction of the religious environment of the Fourth Gospel is no exception. However uncertain the above hypothesis may be in its details, though, the larger point—​namely, that the Johannine community developed its distinctive Christology, the “highest” of the New Testament, in conscious contrast to the Christological understanding of other Christians, whether we characterize these as Christian Jews, Jewish-​Christians, apostolic Christians, or a combination thereof—​is quite plausible.

The Ascendency of Logos Christology: Justin Martyr We have yet to say much about the celebrated prologue (Jn. 1:1–​18) of the Fourth Gospel, the highpoint of New Testament Christology. Although its theme of the preexistence establishes the theological framework for the gospel as a whole, the notion of Christ as the preexistent Word or Logos is not found elsewhere in the gospel, at least not explicitly.114 The prologue



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consists largely of material that was probably incorporated into the gospel narrative sometime after the signs gospel.115 I am persuaded, moreover, by Daniel Boyarin’s argument that Jn. 1:1–​13 was not originally a Christological hymn modeled after the Old Testament wisdom hymns, but rather a pre-​ Christian midrashic homily on Genesis 1:1, interpreted through Proverbs 8:22, that was Christianized only subsequently by connecting the Logos of God to the Incarnation in verses 14–​18.116 With this interpretation, Boyarin wants to emphasize, against a long-​standing Christian apologetic tradition, that Logos theology was indigenous to contemporary non-​Christian Jewish thought.117 What is novel about the prologue, then, is not its Logos theology per se but rather its incarnational Christology.118 The novelty of its incarnational Christology makes the prologue with its Logos doctrine, as James Dunn puts it, “a distinctive and isolated element in the NT, even within the Fourth Gospel itself.”119 It would nevertheless come to define Christian orthodoxy in the second and third centuries. A decisive moment in this development is the work of Justin Martyr in the mid-​second century. Contrary to the widespread view that Justin derived his conception of Logos theology directly from Stoicism or Platonism as part of his apologetic project, the more likely source is precisely that of its Johannine precursor, namely, the contemporary Jewish wisdom tradition.120 Justin not only borrowed the concept, however; as Boyarin argues, he effectively expropriated it.121 For that reason it makes sense to examine Justin’s defense of Logos theology in the context of his effort to lay claim to the Jewish Scriptures in his Dialogue with Trypho. M. J. Edwards calls the Dialogue the “womb” of Justin’s Logos doctrine, for there, more explicitly than in the Apologies, “the term is used to confer on Christ the powers that were already attributed in Jewish literature to the spoken and written utterance of God.”122 In what follows I  am greatly indebted to Daniel Boyarin’s perceptive analysis of this text; indeed, I have little to add to it. Boyarin argues that Justin is simultaneously engaged in two projects in the Dialogue.123 The first of these is to define Christianity over against Judaism. Here the main issue of contention is Christology. Justin’s Christological argument proceeds in two steps.124 The first is that Jesus is the Christ (or Messiah) foretold by Israel’s prophets. The second is that this Christ preexisted the world as the divine Word or Logos of God. Regarding the latter claim, Justin finds evidence for “another God and Lord” besides the Creator of all things in the various Old Testament theophanies (e.g., Gen. 18; Gen. 19:24; Gen. 28; Gen. 32; Ex. 3:2; Jos. 5:13–​6:2), as well as in passages in which

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God appears to speak to another divine personality (Gen. 1:26; Gen. 3:22; Ps. 110:1).125 Trypho’s resistance to both of these claims indicates that, for Justin at least, a rejection of both claims is characteristic of the Judaism that Trypho represents. The second of Justin’s two projects in the Dialogue is to establish a Christian orthodoxy against various Christian groups that Justin labels as heretical. These either reject the supremacy of the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Creator of the world, or else reject the second God, the Logos, and thus the divinity of Christ. The former group of heretics, the followers of Marcion and various “Gnostic” teachers, would reject a priori the proof from prophesy forming the basis of Justin’s messianic claim. The latter group consists of those whom later Christian heresiologists will classify as monarchist Christians. This group includes both Jewish Christian groups holding an adoptionist Christology and those who espouse an early form of modalism. The adoptionists and probably the modalists as well would not share the Marcionites’ a priori rejection of the Hebrew Scriptures. But they would join the latter in rejecting Justin’s appeal to the Old Testament theophanies as evidence for a “second God.” Collectively, all these heretics reject the very arguments by which Justin differentiates Christianity from Judaism. With this observation we see how Justin’s two projects, as Boyarin puts it, “overlapped and were imbricated with one another … so as finally to be, if not indistinguishable, impossible without each other.”126 In making the Logos theology the defining feature of Christianity over against Judaism, Justin is defining Christianity—​and Judaism, as well—​in a way that suggests that his Christian rivals are not fully, or truly, Christian. This thesis can be readily expressed in terms of social identity theory and the principle of metacontrast: what recommends the Logos theology as the basis of Christian orthodoxy is that it establishes the maximal contrast with Christianity’s emergent other, namely, a Judaism defined by its rejection of both Christ and (what for Justin was the same thing) God’s Logos. A key presupposition of Boyarin’s reading of Justin—​one that he substantiates on the basis of other historical studies in his book Border Lines (2004)—​is that a Judaism defined by a rejection of Logos theology was not an established entity at the time Justin wrote. Even after the advent of Christianity there were, in fact, non-​Christian Jews who believed in a second divine power, called God’s Word or Wisdom, mediating between a fully transcendent Godhead and the material world.127 The Dialogue,



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then, represents a moment in a larger discursive process by which a Judaism defined over against a nascent Christian orthodoxy was being constructed.128 Boyarin suggests that the effort of Christians like Justin to maximize the contrast with Judaism was mirrored on the side of an emergent rabbinic orthodoxy in what he terms a “virtual conspiracy.”129 The rabbinic rejection of the heresy of the “Two Powers in Heaven,” although it probably had a broader target than Christianity,130 effectively concedes the Logos theology to the Christians. Marcel Simon’s ([1964] 1986) thesis regarding active competition between Christians and Jews for potential converts in the patristic period suggests one possible context for this discursive process of mutual differentiation. Drawing from Simon’s work, Jon Nilson hypothesizes that the Dialogue was addressed primarily to non-​ Christian Gentiles who were attracted to both Christianity and Judaism but were unable adequately to distinguish one from the other.131 This hypothesis would nicely account for Justin’s effort to maximize the contrast between the two religions.132 As many readers will no doubt have noticed, the formulation of this hypothesis that Justin sought to maximize the contrast between Judaism and Christianity is problematic because it presupposes the existence of “Christianity” and “Judaism” as two entities—​two “religions”—​whose relation is in question. The formulation exemplifies the pitfalls one encounters in describing the formative history of Christianity and Judaism more generally. As recent critiques of seemingly innocuous models for understanding the coemergence of Christianity and (rabbinic) Judaism—​models such as a “parting of the ways” or of two religions emerging out of one—​ remind us, it is difficult even to frame the question of how Christianity (and rabbinic Judaism) came into being without unwittingly introducing subtle anachronisms and/​ or normative theological presuppositions.133 Boyarin himself has offered one of the more promising contributions to this problem of describing Christian-​Jewish history. He proposes replacing the reigning “family tree” (Stammbaum) model for understanding this history with something analogous to the “wave model” in historical linguistics.134 According to the latter model, various Jewish-​Christian movements in the second and third centuries are envisioned as so many religious “dialects” in the Jewish world arranged on a continuum with the Marcionites (Christians who rejected the Hebrew Bible) on one end and Jews who cared nothing for Jesus on the other.135 Christian and Jewish “dialect clusters” gradually formed on this continuum without there being yet a clear boundary between them.136 Eventually, in a process analogous

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to the way in which standardized, national languages are formed by making one dialect hegemonic with respect to others, emerging Jewish and Christian orthodoxies sought to establish a sense of separate identity for their respective communities by singling out specific beliefs or practices to serve as indicia of identity.137 The Logos theology defended by Justin was precisely one of those indicia of separate identity; indeed, it was the most consequential.138 Justin’s effort to define Judaism in terms of its alleged rejection of God’s Logos was integral to his heresiological project of denying the Christian name to those “who pretend to be Christians and confess the crucified Jesus as their Lord and Christ, yet profess not his doctrines.”139 Creatively combining the Hellenistic custom of naming philosophical schools (haereseis) after their founders with the biblical concept of the false prophet whose words are not those of God, Justin proposes that the Christian heresies be named after their human founders rather than Christ.140 Justin’s heresiological aim is to establish Logos theology as the criterion of Christian orthodoxy, such that heretical Christians effectively deny themselves the Christian name when they deny the doctrine of the Logos of God. Put differently, their rejection of God’s Logos assimilates them to the Jews, Christianity’s newly constituted other.141 One such group, mentioned in Dialogue 48:4, is the Jewish Christians (“some of your race”) who, while acknowledging that Jesus is the Christ, deny his divine origins. These Jewish Christians espouse an adoptionist Christology, that is, they believe that Jesus, despite his human origins, “became the Christ by the Father’s choice.”142 While Justin spares these Christians some of the sharp rhetoric that he directs against the Marcionites, the Valentinians, and the others he mentions in ­chapters 35 and 80, it is clear that he regards them as heretics whose beliefs—​we may infer their adoptionist Christology in particular—​are based on the teaching of men as opposed to that of Christ himself.143 It is precisely their proximity to Judaism—​underscored by Trypho’s remark that he finds their adoptionist Christology more credible than Justin’s144—​that renders their claim to the Christian name suspect. Justin’s effort to distance himself from adoptionist understandings of Christianity is evident in the way he appropriates earlier Christian apologetic arguments that Jesus fulfills Old Testament messianic prophesies. As several scholars have argued, the Dialogue is a composite text consisting of earlier apologetic texts that Justin combined and reworked.145 According to Oskar Skarsaune, one of these sources argued that Jesus received his messianic anointing at his baptism



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in fulfillment of Old Testament texts that had predicted that the Messiah would be anointed by Elijah.146 Trypho’s objection that Jesus cannot be the Messiah because Elijah has not yet come to anoint him147 anticipates the response that Elijah in fact has returned, in the person of John the Baptist. Justin, following his source, replies that the prophetic spirit that was in Elijah was also in John.148 But he stops short of drawing the obvious conclusion that Jesus received his messianic anointing from John at his baptism. Summing up his perceptive reading of the relevant passages (Dial. 49–​52, 87–​88), Skarsaune suggests that Justin deliberately suppressed the conclusion of his source in order to avoid ceding ground to adoptionist Christians.149 Justin’s delicate handling of the fulfillment Christology of his source is reminiscent of the fourth evangelist’s effort to surpass the similar messianic Christology of the Johannine signs source. There is a difference between these two examples of Christological one-​upmanship, however. As we saw above, John presents the notions of Jesus’s divinity and preexistence vouchsafed to the community of the Beloved Disciple as a depth dimension to the messianic fulfillment Christology of the apostolic Christians. Justin’s antagonism toward adoptionist Christology leads him to assume a more critical stance toward what appears to be a very similar Christological tradition. The adoptionist Christology of his source stands in an antithetical relation to Justin’s theology of the preexistent Logos.150 Toward the end of the Dialogue Justin alludes to another Christian group that fails to recognize Christ as the second God (and which, we may infer, thereby fails to distinguish itself adequately from Trypho’s Judaism). Concerning the divine power that was sent by God and appeared to the patriarchs, Justin reports that, “some teach that this power is indivisible and inseparable from the Father, just as the light of the sun on earth is indivisible and inseparable from the sun in the skies […]. [T]‌hey claim the Father by his will can cause his power to go forth and, whenever he wishes, to return again.”151 Against these advocates of an early form of modalism, Justin recalls a point that he had earlier made in his argument that the Old Testament theophanies were appearances of the preexistent Christ. The second divine power, Justin says, “not only is numbered as different by its name (as is the light by the sun), but is something distinct in real number.”152 Here Justin mobilizes the same arguments and proof texts that he had earlier used against the Jews represented by Trypho. Again he appeals to Genesis 19:24, Genesis 3:22, and Proverbs 8:22 to prove the existence of a second divine personality.153 That he employs the same arguments against

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both the modalists and the Jews underscores the point that for Justin, Christian heresy is defined by its proximity to Judaism.154 Arguably the most prominent heretical group against which Justin polemicized, however, was one that could not be assimilated to Judaism. This group was, of course, the Marcionites.155 Justin’s repeated insistence on the supremacy of the creator of the universe in the context of his debate with Trypho over the theophany passages156—​a point of agreement between the two disputants and peripheral to Justin’s immediate argument—​betrays a concern with refuting Marcion.157 Indeed, one suspects that the Marcionites, and not the Jews, are the principal target of Justin’s argument that Jesus was known in the Old Testament as the second God who appeared to the patriarchs.158 Justin’s stress on the supremacy of the creator God functions to check the Christological maximalism represented by the Logos theology. It is the concern with the countervailing threat of “Gnosticism” that will keep the tendency to exalt Christ within a subordinationist framework. Through the second and third centuries a developing Christian orthodoxy will steer a middle course between the extremes of the “Jewish” denial of the Son’s divinity and the “Gnostic” denial of the Father’s supremacy.

4

From Preexistent Word to Consubstantial Son The Arian Controversy The Arian use of the N.T. subordinationist and adoptionist concepts and images was heretical because it was, so to speak, opposed to the intention of the N.T.  usage which was to exalt Christ rather than to lower him. As a result, the church found it necessary to formulate the homoousion as a rule of interpretation for the N.T. George Lindbeck ([1974]: 14)

As we have seen, when Justin argues for the recognition of “another God and Lord” in the Old Testament theophanies, he is quick to add, with a sidelong glance at Marcion, that this divine personality is subordinate to the “Creator of the world, above whom there is no other God.”1 Even as an expression of Christological maximalism, Justin’s Logos theology presupposes a subordinationist framework. For Justin, the divinity of Christ can be reconciled with monotheism only at the cost of subordinating the Son to the Father. Justin’s conception of the Logos/​Christ as a divine personality mediating between an impassable, transcendent God and the creation becomes one of the dominant theological paradigms in the period from the second half of the second century up through the third.2 To be sure, the theologians that followed him—​Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Origen, among others—​introduced important refinements to Justin’s rather rough and unsystematic conception of Logos theology. One such refinement was to distinguish, more clearly than Justin had done, between what we might call binitarianism and ditheism. In his treatise Adversus Praxeas, Tertullian

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asserts, against those who would accuse him of proclaiming two gods, that the Father and Son, while distinct, are not divided.3 Tertullian illustrates this idea of two things that are distinct yet undivided with the image of the sun and its rays—​precisely the same image, it will be recalled, that Justin’s modalists had used to assert the indivisibility of the Logos from the Father.4 That Tertullian pushes back charges of ditheism with the very image that Justin’s modalists had used to deny that the Logos was “numerically” distinct from the Father dramatizes the difficulty of establishing the Son as a being or personality distinct from the Father without immediately drawing the charge of ditheism. One gets the impression that second-​and third-​century theologians managed to negotiate the narrow path between the twin pitfalls of modalism and ditheism through what Richard Hanson would call a process of trial and error. Their generally exegetical theology was guided by vague, albeit intelligent, intuitions expressed in ad hoc analogies. It is at this point that we can appreciate the achievement of the third-​century theologian Origen in integrating Logos theology into a coherent theological vision. His brilliant if idiosyncratic system represents the culmination of the theological trajectory that begins with Justin. The middle-​Platonic concept of a graded hierarchy of being allowed Origen to establish the distinctiveness of each of the three persons or hypostases, while the allied concept of emanation provided a way of conceptualizing the inseparability of the two lower hypostases from the first as their ontological source. Regarded from the perspective of later orthodoxy, however, Origen’s achievement in reconciling the distinctiveness of the three hypostases with their unity was bought at the price of subordinating the Logos, to say nothing of the Spirit, to the Father. It is important to recognize that subordination was “problematized” only in the following century. Both J. N. D. Kelly and Lewis Ayres make the point that to accuse pre-​Nicene theologians of subordination is inappropriate if the charge implies an intent to subordinate the Son to the Father.5 When seen in its original context, the force of Origen’s doctrine of eternal generation, for example, was not to subordinate the Son to the Father but rather to push in precisely the opposite direction, “to make the Son intrinsic to the being of God.”6 The Son’s subordinationism to the Father was simply taken for granted. The Logos theology of the second and third centuries thus appears Christologically deficient only in retrospect, when a Christologically more maximal theological conception appears on the scene. That conception, of course, was the Nicene doctrine that the Son is consubstantial (homoousios)



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with the Father. Its eventual triumph, after decades of uncertainty, misunderstanding, and controversy, brought to an end traditional Logos theology, the notion, that is, of “the pre-​existent Christ as mediating between an impassible Father and a transitory world.”7 As the history of the fourth-​century controversies amply shows, the doctrine of consubstantiality stirred up a hornet’s nest of theological problems. The Trinitarian—​ or, more accurately, binitarian—​ problem exacerbated by this doctrine was recognized almost immediately. The Son’s consubstantiality with the Father would seem to imply either two unbegotten beings8 or else a modalist denial of the Son’s subsistence.9 Consubstantiality would thus seem to undermine Origen’s achievement in forging a middle way between ditheism and modalism. When, in the latter part of the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus extended the concept of consubstantiality to the Spirit—​ thus introducing the properly Trinitarian dimension of the concept—​he found himself in the awkward position of explaining how the Spirit’s mode of derivation differed from that of the Son, lest the two be considered “brothers.”10 The specifically Christological problem came to a head somewhat later. By placing the Son on the same level as the Father, and thus negating the traditional mediating role of the former, the consubstantiality doctrine amplified the tension between the divine and human in Christ to the breaking point. In order to reconcile the Son’s consubstantiality with New Testament expressions of Jesus’s human frailty, the pro-​Nicenes were forced to make a sharp distinction between the things Christ said and did by virtue of his divine nature and those he said and did by virtue of his human nature.11 This somewhat facile solution to New Testament exegesis12 clashed with the non-​Nicenes’ assumption that Christ spoke with one voice.13 Ironically, by raising the Son’s divinity to the level of the Father, the doctrine of consubstantiality effectively relegated a good number of Jesus’s statements to the category of the merely human.14 In light of all the difficulties, both theological and ecclesiological, that the doctrine of consubstantiality occasioned, one can perhaps be forgiven for asking if this final click on the Christological ratchet was really worth it. More to the point, one might wonder how a doctrine that exacerbated existing theological problems and even created new ones eventually won the day. In this section I shall argue that the triumph of Nicene orthodoxy can be fruitfully understood in terms of the principle of metacontrast, similar to what we saw in the case of Johannine Christology and Justin’s Logos

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theology. This is the principle, to repeat, that a faction gains an edge over its proximate rivals by maximizing the contrast with the principal out-​group. This explanation is like the lex orandi, lex credendi theory—​according to which an untutored instinct to worship Christ pushes theological reflection in the direction of more exalted Christological expressions—​in that it explains doctrinal development in terms of a force that is not, strictly speaking, theological.15 It is a force, moreover, that has the power to shatter existing theological paradigms. And yet my contention is that this force is not primarily experiential or devotional but rather ideological, where I use this often polemical term in a more neutral sense to refer to the mobilization of group identity. That is to say, the upward trajectory of Christology derives in large part from the dynamics of religious rivalry, specifically, the effort of a given faction to establish hegemony over its rivals by defining Christian identity on its own terms. This ideological element is manifest in forms of theological rhetoric that mobilize the identity of the larger group through theological discourses that encode the perspective of a particular faction. Specifically, partisans will seek to exploit the instinctive tendency of Christians to identify with the most exalted Christology, a tendency that ultimately derives from Christianity’s formative split with Judaism. In using social identity theory and the concept of metacontrast to highlight a dimension of the complex theological history of the fourth century, I anticipate the objection that the principle of metacontrast presupposes a greater degree of social interaction between the Christian in-​group and the Jewish out-​group than in fact was the case in the fourth century. The theory that Christian groups sought to maximize the contrast with Judaism in order to establish hegemony over rival Christian groups might indeed explain the “combination of realism and projection” with respect to the Jewish other found in an earlier text like Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho. For while Trypho’s Judaism functions as a foil against which Justin constructs a notion of Christian orthodoxy, there is nevertheless enough realism in his exchange with Trypho that, as Judith Lieu remarks, the Jews “cannot simply be the projection of the ‘dark side’ or the ‘negative’ of Christian struggles to establish a secure identity.”16 And yet this latter claim, it might be argued, is hard to make for fourth-​century theologians like Athanasius, Eusebius of Caesarea, or Hilary of Poitiers. The parallels that such theologians make between certain Christian heresies and Judaism tend to be gratuitous and ad hoc. By the fourth century, Christianity and Judaism have more or less “parted ways.” Christianity is sufficiently recognized as a movement distinct from Judaism that Christians no longer have a



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pressing need to define themselves negatively over against it. As Miriam Taylor argues, Judaism is largely a symbolic or rhetorical entity for the later church fathers.17 Against this objection, I would argue that the difference in the status of the Jewish other for a writer like Justin as compared to one like Athanasius is one of degree rather than of kind. Inter-​group relations always entail some combination of realism and projection, of social interaction and rhetoric. As we saw above, there was an element of projection in the Johannine community’s representation of the religion of “the Jews,” despite the fact that the former had active, “real” relations with the parent synagogue, at least in its earlier stages. Conversely, while Judaism largely functions as a rhetorical entity for fourth-​century Christian writers like Athanasius and Ephrem the Syrian, Jewish communities still constituted enough of a presence that the emperor Julian’s plan to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple during his brief reign (361–​363), for example, could cause genuine consternation among those Christians for whom the Temple’s destruction was a sign of Christianity’s supersession of Judaism.18 Or, to cite another example, Jewish scriptures, rites, and sanctuaries held enough fascination for John Chrysostom’s congregation in late fourth-​century Antioch that John felt a need to discourage such interest with his notorious anti-​Jewish sermons.19 To be sure, this presence was probably only intermittently a matter of immediate concern for Christian theologians in the period. And yet, this presence, even if peripheral and not immediately “felt,” sustains the rhetoric of Christological maximalism that shaped the great theological controversies of the fourth century. Below I  shall examine the rhetoric of Christological maximalism at several key junctures in the course of what is commonly called the “Arian controversy.”20 At the risk of reinforcing a persistent bias of older historical narratives of the fourth century, I pay particular attention to the development of the concept of consubstantiality in the writings of Athanasius. Consubstantiality has been, for good or for ill, the most consequential expression of Christological maximalism in the reception history of fourth-​century theological controversy. It should be noted, however, that consubstantiality does not play a significant role in the theological debates that took place in the period between Nicaea (325) and the mid-​350s. Nor should we assume that it was the central preoccupation of Greek pro-​ Nicene theology, with the exception of Athanasius, even after this period.21 Defending the homoousios was not the central concern of the three great Cappadocian fathers, for example. Moreover, in examining the role of consubstantiality in sustaining an understanding of Christian identity, it is

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important to recall a point made earlier, namely, that an analysis of doctrinal history in terms of social identity theory is meant only to supplement, not replace, an analysis in terms of objective historical causes. One must resist the temptation to interpret the eventual triumph of consubstantiality as the inevitable outcome of a theological dialectic, as if it proceeded independently of contingent events like the ascendency of particular emperors or the fortunes of certain influential personalities. Had the emperor Constantius lived long enough to consolidate his ecclesiastical initiatives, for example, the Homoian creed of Ariminum (359), with its 600 signatories, could very well have eclipsed Nicaea in authority, and the history of Christian doctrine would have taken a very different course.22

The Conflict between Alexander and Arius The Arian controversy ostensibly begins with a disagreement between Arius, an Alexandrian priest, and his bishop, Alexander, over the generation of the Son. The former drew what he probably regarded as the unproblematic inference that if the Son is begotten then the Father exists before the Son.23 He is quick to add, however, that the Son’s preexistence is atemporal, his generation is unique, and that he is therefore not like other creatures.24 Alexander peremptorily dismisses these qualifications, accusing Arius of making the Son a creature like any other and denying his divinity. The circumstances in which this disagreement became public are obscure. It is likely, however, that Arius first captured the attention of his bishop by his (Arius’s) success in mobilizing crowds through charismatic preaching and the creative use of rhythmic chanting or acclamation to propagate doctrinal slogans.25 Alexander would have perceived Arius’s growing influence among the populace as a threat to his own authority. Thus it is likely that the disagreement between the two arose, as Rowan Williams suggests, in the larger context of Alexander’s effort to unify a fissiparous church under his authority as bishop.26 More generally, Williams argues that the theological controversies of the fourth century reflect a shift in the locus of ecclesiastical authority from disparate schools formed around charismatic teachers to the episcopate of an established imperial church.27 There are two ways in which the theological disagreement between Arius and Alexander reflects this underlying struggle over authority. The first is the tendency of each party to caricature the other. Perhaps simply because more of Alexander’s writings survive, we have a better sense of



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the ways in which the Alexandrian bishop distorted the likely views of his adversary than we have of the reverse. As mentioned above, Alexander refuses to recognize Arius’s efforts to affirm the Son’s uniqueness.28 The former appears intent on accusing the latter of denying the Son’s divinity.29 The conclusion that Alexander was strongly motivated not to reach a rapprochement with Arius is confirmed by the former’s refusal, after Nicaea, to readmit Arius in accordance with the decision of the Council of Nicomedia (327–​328) and the emperor’s endorsement.30 Alexander’s unwillingness to reach an agreement is exactly what one would expect from a disagreement over authority. For such reconciliation would be tantamount to recognizing Arius’s authority as a teacher. The second way the theological disagreement reflects a conflict over authority is the logical “fit” between Alexander’s high Christology and the injunction to recognize episcopal authority.31 Alexander objects that Arius’s attribution of change to the Son effectively closes the gap between imperfect human beings, sons of God by adoption, and Christ, Son of God by nature.32 Arius’s understanding of Christ as a figure capable of moral and spiritual progress and thus able to be imitated threatened the authority of the bishops as the indispensable mediators of salvation.33 Eager to characterize his Arian opponents as irreverent and hubristic, Alexander attributes to them an adoptionist Christology and an exemplarist soteriology. According to Alexander, Arius and his associates presumptuously believe that they can become sons of God like Jesus.34 In all likelihood, Arius did not hold such a view of salvation, nor the adoptionist Christology that it presupposes. Both attributions are likely distortions.35 Nevertheless, Alexander does exploit what is, at the very least, an elective affinity between the doctrine of Son’s created status and an unwillingness to submit humbly to episcopal authority.36 Alexander’s interest in casting Arius’s Christology as an expression of human pride and presumption is, if anything, even more plainly evident in his accusation that Arius’s arguments stem from inordinate and impious speculation about the Son’s generation, a matter exceeding angelic, much less human, comprehension.37 It does not require an inordinately cynical reading to notice a convenient affinity between this emphasis on divine mystery and an interest in discouraging theological challenges to episcopal authority. In his lengthy letter to his namesake of Constantinople, known as the He philarchos,38 Alexander shrewdly exploits a Christian tendency to identify with Christologically maximalist expressions to bolster his case. Or, put differently, he invidiously casts his dispute with Arius in terms

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of the question of whether or not to exalt Christ. He accuses Arius and his associates of “forming, like the Jews, a working group contending against Christ.”39 They deny Christ’s divinity, declaring him equal to all.40 Accordingly, they are expelled from “the church that worships Christ’s divinity.”41 As expressions of Christological maximalism, the “Alexandrian” slogans that Arius mentions in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, such as, “Always God, always Son,” and “The Son is from God himself,”42 are rhetorically more powerful, if logically more obscure, than their Arian counterparts, “There was once when the Son of God was not”43 and “The Son has a beginning, but God is without a beginning.”44 In his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, Arius, for his part, presents Alexander’s slogans as overblown and nonsensical. Arius presents Alexander’s explicit denial of any qualification to the Father’s priority (“neither in thought nor at some moment does God proceed the Son”)45 as an extreme, unreasonable statement bordering on absurdity. Alexander’s phrase “ungenerated-​created” (agennêtogenês)46 has the look of a nonsense expression. We might infer that for Arius the obscurity of these expressions of Christological maximalism rendered them hollow. Arius has been accused of pushing logical inference too far, of being tone-​deaf to the limits of logical inference in matters of faith.47 I might express matters slightly differently and say that he badly underestimates the power of Christologically maximalist rhetoric. The rhetorical form of Christological maximalism can carry content that at one time appeared incautious, extreme, and perhaps even nonsensical.

Nicaea and the Homoousios The church rejected Arius’s teaching on the generation of the Son at the Council of Nicaea. The council was convened by the emperor Constantine in 325, shortly after his defeat of his former coruler in the east, Licinius, had left him in sole control of the empire.48 The Nicene Creed concludes with a series of anathemas against specific teachings associated, whether rightly or wrongly,49 with Arius. These include the Arian slogan that “there was once when he was not,” as well as the claim that the Son came into existence from nothing. The ostensibly affirmative part of the creed specifies the nature of the Son’s generation from the Father. Against Arius’s doctrine that the Son was created from nothing by the divine will, the creed states that the Son comes from the substance of the Father (ek tês



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ousias tou patros). The fateful phrase, “consubstantial with the Father” (homoousian tôi patri) appears as a precision of this claim.50 The term homoousios epitomizes a characteristic of creedal statements more generally, namely, that it is clearer what they reject than what they affirm.51 As Richard Hanson observes, at the time of the council this then strange and novel term52 was not a term of theological self-​identification as it would be later in the century. Rather, it was “an apotropaic formula for resisting Arianism.”53 About thirty years after the council, Athanasius gave a first-​hand account of its proceedings. At the time of the council Athanasius was a young deacon accompanying Alexander. Although shaped by his polemical interests in the early 350s, his account captures what was likely the original polemical intent of the term. According to Athanasius, the bishops would have preferred to stick with scriptural language to express the Son’s relation to the Father, namely, that the Son was “of the Father” (ek tou theou).54 But the Eusebians’55 tacit acceptance of this language immediately aroused the suspicion that they were secretly construing the phrase, against its intention, to apply to human beings as well as to the divine Son, thus implying a less than fully divine savior. In order to preclude this line of interpretation, the presiding bishops qualified the phrase to read “of the essence of God” (ek tês ousias tou theou).56 The homoousios clause was introduced into the creed in the same way. When the bishops proposed a series of scriptural titles for the Son, such as “true power” and “true image” of the Father and “in all things like the Father,” the Eusebians were seen whispering and winking to each other, deviously conferring among themselves about how these phrases could be construed to apply to human beings and thus to a created savior as well.57 And it was to seal off this interpretive loophole that the bishops introduced the phrase “consubstantial with the Father.” Athanasius’s suggestion that the bishops only reluctantly added extrascriptural phraseology when they suspected that the Eusebians were subverting its proper sense probably reflects more the author’s sensitivity at the time of his writing to later Homoian criticism of ousia language as nonscriptural than it does the actual events.58 More likely, the introduction of the homoousios, as Philostorgius’s account of a conspiratorial meeting of Ossius and Alexander before the council suggests, was part of a planned strategy on the part of the anti-​Arians.59 Moreover, Athanasius’s account of the proceedings—​in which the bishops were united in exposing and isolating a small group of militant heretics60 who, for their part, were cravenly using creative hermeneutics to avoid censure—​occludes the fact that many, perhaps most of the bishops, who

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could be described as “moderate Origenists,” identified with neither the theological position of Arius nor with that of his most strident adversaries.61 This more moderate contingent, moreover, was probably more interested in forging consensus than in rooting out Arius’s sympathizers.62 Another first-​hand account of the proceedings, Eusebius of Caesarea’s letter to his congregation, foregrounds this more irenic current in the proceedings. Eusebius, who himself represents this more moderate theological trajectory,63 reports that Constantine supported the addition of the homoousios. The emperor, moreover, offered an interpretation of this controversial term to reassure bishops like Eusebius that it need not be understood materialistically.64 Athanasius’s account therefore is misleading in suggesting that the interests of the majority coincided with the agenda of Alexander and his supporters.65 It is even possible that the latter group worked to sabotage the efforts of others to reach consensus.66 Be that as it may, it seems fairly clear that the anti-​Arian contingent had the upper hand in the proceedings,67 and that, moreover, they introduced the homoousios into the creed because it was known to be offensive to both Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia.68 If the homoousios was intended to root out “Arian” theology, it was not all that successful, however.69 Under the emperor’s threat of exile, most of Arius’s supporters ended up signing the creed.70 In the end, only two Libyan bishops, Secundus of Ptolemais and Theonas of Marmarike, refused to sign, and these two probably for reasons relating to ecclesiastical governance rather than theology per se.71 Some of the more militantly anti-​Arian bishops like Eustathius of Antioch and Marcellus of Ancyra were no doubt disappointed with this outcome.72 The two Eusebioi in particular managed to pass through the net, although Eusebius of Nicomedia was banished shortly thereafter, ostensibly when he objected to the judgment against Arius.73 The partisan interests of Alexander, Eustathius, and Marcellus were undercut by the emperor’s irenic interest in forging a broad consensus. For this reason, the sense of the homoousios was deliberately kept vague, as evidenced by the fact that two figures as theologically as far apart as Eusebius of Caesarea and Eustathius could sign it.74 The problem was that for most of the Nicene bishops, many of whom held an Origenist, “three-​hypostases” theology, the term was suspect for precisely the same reasons that Arius and his allies had rejected it. As Carlos Galvão-​Sobrinho suggests, many bishops, pressured into signing by the emperor, accepted the creed only grudgingly.75 The main problem



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with the term around the time of the council concerned its materialistic associations. The term had a dubious genealogy in second-​century Gnostic speculation, where it referred to the idea that one thing was made out of the same kind of stuff as something else.76 Shortly before the council we find Alexander echoing the same concerns as Arius, eager to disabuse his readers of the suspicion that the Son’s generation is “according to the likeness of bodies or dissections or emanations from divisions, as it appears to Sabellius and Valentinus.”77 As indicated above, Eusebius of Caesarea expressed the same reservations about the homoousios in the letter to his diocese explaining his recent decision to sign the creed. The Son is homoousios with the Father, he reassures his readers (and perhaps himself as well), “not in the manner of bodies or as mortal beings—​for the Son is not so according to any affection, mutation, or change of the Father’s substance and power.”78 The term’s Gnostic-​materialist associations were only half of the problem, however. One liberates the term from the Gnostic idea of a generic divine substance shared by one or more divine beings only to raise the specter of Sabellianism, that is, the notion that Father and Son belong to a single divine ousia or hypostasis. If homoousios is understood in this latter, Sabellian sense, it excludes the Origenist doctrine of three divine hypostases. For these terms were not yet distinguished, as evidenced by the Nicene anathema against those “who affirm that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or ousia.”79 To be sure, the Gnostic and Sabellian senses of the term, rather like the “duck-​rabbit” images analyzed by Wittgenstein, are mutually exclusive. So long as the Gnostic-​materialist sense occupies the foreground, the Sabellian-​modalist one lies in abeyance. The predominance of the Gnostic-​materialist sense over the Sabellian-​modalist at the time of the council explains why there does not seem to have been much concern about the latter at that time, at least judging from the explicit statements of key figures like Arius, Alexander, and Eusebius of Caesarea.80 Such concerns may have been implicit in the Eusebians’ discomfort with the term, however, particularly if Alastair Logan is right in crediting Marcellus with its presence in the creed.81 Even if we concede that the modalist-​Sabellian associations of homoousios were eclipsed by materialist-​Gnostic ones at the time of the council, however, it is undoubtedly the case that the former came decisively to the fore later in the fourth century.82 For the original Arian controversy, and the Nicene homoousios in particular, came to be seen in light of the intervening controversy over the modalist teaching of Marcellus.83

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Whether on account of its materialistic-​sounding language concerning divine generation or its Sabellian implications, the more moderate bishops did not envision a wider application of the Nicene Creed after the condemnation of Arius.84 As mentioned above, the more militant anti-​Arians like Eustathius and Marcellus were also unhappy with the creed, believing that, as Eustathius put it, the Eusebians, under the pretext of peace, had silenced “all those whose words are normally the best.”85 Tellingly, most, from either side, with the exception of Athanasius, avoid Nicaea’s distinctive (and nonscriptural) ousia formulary in the first decades following the council.86 And nobody uses the term homoousios during this period—​not Alexander, not Marcellus, Eustathius, not even Athanasius.87 It seems that most put Arius and Nicaea behind them as they turned their attention to other matters.88 After the condemnation of Arius, Constantine believed that the greatest threat came from militantly anti-​Arian bishops like Eustathius of Antioch, Marcellus, and, after Alexander’s death, Athanasius. Their generally belligerent, uncompromising, and authoritarian behavior posed an obstacle to the emperor’s efforts to pacify the church.89 Theologically, the main concern of the more moderate Eastern bishops like Eusebius of Caesarea was the possible return, with the ascendency of this group, of the Sabellian heresy.90

Marcellus’s Denial of the Son—​According to Eusebius If many Eastern bishops were uneasy with Nicaea on account of its amenability to a modalist interpretation91—​a danger suggested by its anathema against those who claim that “the Son of God is of another hypostasis or ousia”92—​then they would have seen their worst fears confirmed in the teaching of Marcellus. Marcellus was, if not one of the architects of the Nicene Creed, certainly a central player in the anti-​Arian alliance.93 At the core of Marcellus’s theology was the conviction that there was only one hypsotasis in God.94 Any suggestion that the Son was hypostatically distinct from the Father was for him tantamount to ditheism.95 Given the claim Marcellus made on Nicaea,96 it is hardly surprising that lingering doubts regarding the latter—​doubts suppressed by imperial pressure to sign the creed—​would find a ready outlet in opposition to the former’s views once these became widely known.97 The controversy surrounding



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Marcellus was, in fact, one of the central controversies in the first couple of decades following Nicaea.98 He was deposed about ten years after Nicaea, probably in 336.99 In contrast to Arius, who ceases to be a concern after his condemnation, Marcellus continues to preoccupy theologians in the East for decades thereafter, as evidenced by the string of conciliar condemnations of his theology into the early 350s.100 Curiously, the controversy over Marcellus’s theology in the years following the council was effectively suppressed, at least until fairly recently, by the influence of Marcellus’s and Athanasius’s tendentious narrative of an “Arian” conspiracy allegedly active continually through the fourth century,101 as well as by later efforts to expunge Marcellus’s name from the history of the church, much like Trotsky’s name was expunged from the Soviet history of the Russian revolution.102 The rather abrupt post-​Nicaea shift in attention from the subordinationism of Arius to the modalism of Marcellus can be understood as a moment in the larger dialectical process whereby Nicaea, and the doctrine of consubstantiality in particular, was purified of its Sabellian associations.103 Only when read in light of the intervening condemnation of Marcellus could Nicaea be freed from a modalist interpretation and embraced by the church. Without challenging this narrative, I shall look at the controversy over Marcellus from a slightly different angle and with a slightly different focus. Alongside the dialectical tack from a concern with Arian subordinationism to Marcellian modalism runs the rhetoric of Christological maximalism as a constant. To be sure, Marcellus’s insistence on the substantial unity of God and his preexistent Word was diametrically opposed to Arius’s teaching of the Son as a subordinate, albeit still divine, being. Nevertheless, Marcellus’s “one hypostasis” theology left itself open to the admittedly uncharitable charge that it failed to exalt Christ sufficiently. Marcellus’s chief antagonist, Eusebius of Caesarea, accused Marcellus of “denying the Son his own hypostasis.” Most of what we know of Marcellus’s theology comes from fragments of an otherwise no-​longer extant work that he wrote against Asterius, one of the original supporters of Arius.104 The fragments are preserved in two treatises that Eusebius wrote against Marcellus, the Against Marcellus and the Ecclesiastical Theology. Even assuming that Eusebius quoted the Marcellian fragments accurately, we should be sensitive to the fact that Eusebius’s recontextualization of Marcellus’s thought in a hostile polemic almost certainly obscured the latter’s original priorities.105 Given that the original purpose of Eusebius’s Against Marcellus was to present the case

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against Marcellus for use at the latter’s trial, we would expect Eusebius to highlight precisely those aspects of Marcellus’s theology that were the most extreme and controversial.106 In its original context, Marcellus’s theology probably did not appear quite as bold and idiosyncratic, particularly if the positions against which Marcellus was arguing were taken into account.107 Mindful of the distorting effects of polemical citation, we can nevertheless glean from Eusebius’s citations a fairly good picture of Marcellus’s early theology. That theology can be summarized under four headings. The first of these is his rejection of the Origenist principle, central to the theology of Asterius, that the Father and the Son represent two distinct divine hypostases.108 The Origenist doctrine of three hypostases forms the target of his anti-​Arian polemic more generally. In this respect, Marcellus’s critique is more radical than those of the more moderate of Arius’s adversaries, like Alexander, who founded their critiques on the issue of subordinationism.109 Thus it is fairly certain that Marcellus believed that God constituted only one hypostasis or ousia.110 He probably would have understood the concept of ousia enshrined in the Nicene homoousios in the numerical rather than the generic sense—​corresponding, in Aristotle’s philosophy, to the specification of substance (ousia) as the “this something” (tode ti), rather than as the substrate (hupokeimenon). Understood in this way, the confession of the Son as homoousios with the Father would exclude a second, to say nothing of a third, substance or hypostasis in God.111 Here we see that Marcellus rejects the prevailing strategy for reconciling monotheism with the divinity of Christ that we saw in Justin and that continues with Eusebius of Caesarea, namely, regarding Christ as a divine being subordinate to the Father.112 The second characteristic feature of Marcellus’s theology is his preference for the analogy of a person and their word for understanding the relationship between the first and second persons of the Trinity.113 The appeal of this particular analogy is that it places special emphasis on the unity between God and his Logos.114 Concomitant with this emphasis on the person/​word analogy is a certain reserve regarding the use of the categories of Father and Son to describe the relation between the first two members of the Trinity. Marcellus objects to Asterius’s use of the father-​son analogy to support the notion of a hypostatic distinction between God and his Word. Asterius, he writes, “separates the Son of God from the Father, as one can separate the son of a man from his natural father.”115 As we shall see, Marcellus’s demotion of the father-​son analogy in favor of the person-​word analogy constitutes a vulnerable spot in his theology.



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Closely related to this preference for the person-​ word analogy is Marcellus’s implicit distinction between the preexistent Logos and the incarnate Son.116 Before the Incarnation, Marcellus says, he was only Logos;117 only after the Incarnation did he take on other titles.118 Marcellus generally avoids using the term “Son” for the preexistent,119 although it should be noted that “Son” is not included among the titles he explicitly restricts to the Incarnation.120 As we shall see, Marcellus’s silence regarding the Son’s (as opposed to the Logos’s) preexistence renders him vulnerable to the charge that he fails to exalt the Son sufficiently. In light of this criticism, it is not surprising that Marcellus later gives up his earlier insistence on the distinction between Son and Logos.121 Another feature of Marcellus’s early theology that he later retracted is perhaps the most notorious. He reportedly claimed that the reign of the Son would eschatologically come to an end as God’s Logos, in a reversal of the divine procession at the beginning of the ages, is folded back into the divine monad.122 Unhappily for Marcellus, this idiosyncratic teaching would be the one for which he has become best known, this in spite of the fact that he abandoned it early in his career, if in fact he ever held it at all.123 As mentioned above, Marcellus’s chief antagonist was Eusebius of Caesarea, who penned two polemical treatises against him. Because later fourth-​century theologians generally lacked access to Marcellus’s writings, they tended to rely on Eusebius’s arguments, even when they did not identify with Eusebius’s own theological trajectory.124 What is perhaps most striking about Eusebius’s polemic is that he associates Marcellus’s teaching with several distinct, even mutually exclusive, heresies.125 On the one hand, he brands Marcellus as a “new Sabellius” for insisting on a single substance in God.126 At the same time, however, on the basis of Marcellus’s distinction between the preexistent Logos and the incarnate Son, Eusebius links his adversary with the adoptionist theology of the third-​century heretic Paul of Samosata. Once he has associated Marcellus with the view that Christ was a “mere man,” Eusebius is able to associate him with the Jews, the paradigmatic deniers of Christ’s divinity, and, ironically in light of Marcellus’s position at the head of the anti-​Arian contingent at Nicaea, even with Arius himself!127 In bringing together the charges of modalism and adoptionism, Eusebius is harkening back to the antimonarchian polemics of the third century, in which adoptionism and modalism (“dynamic monarchianism” and “modalistic monarchianism,” respectively) represent two forms of monarchianism.128 This classification of adoptionism and modalism as two species in the

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genus of monarchianism conceals the fundamental difference between the two. The two, in fact, can be regarded as extremes at opposite ends of the Christological spectrum: adoptionism represents a Christology that is too low; modalism a Christology that is too high. Eusebius’s attempt to link Marcellus with a wide range of heretical teachings might strike a modern reader as heavy handed. Indeed, one might think that his argument would be more credible had he simply stuck to one line of critique—​say, that Marcellus revives the Sabellian heresy. Eusebius’s strategy of multiplying heretical associations invites an analysis of his critique of Marcellus on the level of rhetoric rather than of logic. For while on a purely logical level the associations tend to conflict—​ strictly speaking, modalism excludes adoptionism, and vice versa—​on a rhetorical level they complement and reinforce each other. Specifically, I  would like to suggest that Eusebius’s conjunction of the critique that Marcellus revives the Sabellian heresy with the accusation that he makes Christ a mere man in the manner of Paul of Samosata and the Jews allows Eusebius all the more effectively to mobilize the rhetoric of Christological maximalism against his adversary. Looking at Eusebius’s polemic through the lens of the stylized contrast, characteristic of later fourth-​century writers, between Arianism and Sabellianism as two heretical extremes, we can distinguish two corresponding ways of denigrating the Son.129 Sabellianism denigrates the Son by denying him his own hypostasis, Arianism by making him a creature.130 Of these two forms of what might be called, for want of a better term, Christological minimalism, the latter is more obvious and familiar. The Arian way of denigrating the Son is more easily assimilated to the paradigmatic example of Christological minimalism, the Jewish denial of Jesus’s messianic status and divinity. The former, modalist form is derivative and, inasmuch as it presupposes a concept like hypostasis, rather more abstract. The effect of Eusebius’s rhetoric is to associate the form of Christological minimalism that is more applicable to Marcellus, namely the Sabellian, with that which is paradigmatic, the so-​called Arian. Marcellus renders himself vulnerable to the former charge by understanding the relation between the first two members of the Trinity in terms of a more or less literal construal of the analogy of the relation between a person and their speech. As we have seen, the appeal of this analogy for Marcellus was its ability to focus attention on the unity of God and his Logos. Eusebius seizes on the flip-​side of this emphasis on the divine unity, namely, the implication that the Son is a “mere word” (psilos logos).131 Expressed in terms of Aristotelian philosophical categories, Marcellus’s



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Logos is like an accident that inheres in a substance.132 A more rhetorically powerful way of making this point is to say that Marcellus deprives the Son of his hypostasis.133 Strictly speaking, this accusation that Marcellus denies the Son his hypostasis is inaccurate, inasmuch as Marcellus distinguishes between the preexistent Logos and the incarnate Son. The Son is separate from the Father by virtue of his assumption of bodily existence. And yet this distinction immediately raises suspicions of the second form of Christological minimalism, namely, the so-​called Arian. For, to the extent that Marcellus distinguishes the preexistent Logos from the incarnate Son, he leaves open the question of how the Logos subsists in the flesh, or, put differently, how to explain the Incarnation. Eusebius considers three serious possibilities:134 first, that the Father assumes humanity and suffers; second, that the Son of God, hypostatically distinct from the Father, assumes humanity; and third, that Christ is a “mere man.” Eusebius, drawing out the implications of Marcellus’s “single-​hypostasis” theology, eliminates the first two possibilities. The first corresponds to the patripassianism associated with the early modalism of Noetus of Smyrna.135 The second is none other than the position Marcellus opposes. This leaves only the third possibility.136 Hence, according to Eusebius’s argument, Marcellus’s Sabellian position that the Logos is a “mere word” leads inexorably to the Ebionite and Samosatan view that Christ was a “mere man.”137 Despite Eusebius’s seductive logic, this charge that Marcellus makes Christ a mere man is more of a stretch than the former charge. Whereas Marcellus is pretty clear on denying a hypostatic distinction between God and his Logos, he is far from conceding the divinity of the incarnate Christ. Eusebius rather shrewdly identifies the Incarnation as a soft spot, a site of ambiguity, in Marcellus’s theology, at least as far as we can reconstruct it. He fully exploits this ambiguity in order to saddle Marcellus with the damning charge of denying the Son’s divinity. We should be sensitive to the cumulative rhetorical force of Eusebius’s repeated charges that Marcellus denies the Son his hypostasis, denies the Son his kingdom,138 denies the Son his divinity, makes Christ a mere man, makes the Son a mere word, and so on. All of these boil down to the charge that Marcellus, like the heretics before him, denies the Son. We might express Eusebius’s critique of Marcellus in sociological terms. If, as Christian rhetoric would have it, the Christian concept of God is a mean between Greek polytheism and Jewish unitarianism,

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then Marcellus, in a one-​sided preoccupation with avoiding the former, refuses to recognize a second divine hypostasis and, in so doing, fails to preserve the crucial, identity-​sustaining distinction between Christianity and Judaism.139 In the last analysis, it is this failure that unites Sabellius, Paul of Samosata, Arius, and, finally, Marcellus.

Marcellus and Athanasius As we have just seen, Marcellus’s implicit distinction between the Logos and the Son—​or, to be more precise, his tendency to restrict the title Son to the Incarnate—​rendered him vulnerable to his adversaries’ use of the rhetoric of Christological maximalism against him. Marcellus’s vulnerability in this regard stands out all the more conspicuously when he is compared to his one-​time associate, Athanasius of Alexandria. At least during the first half of the decade of the 340s, the two men are otherwise quite similar in terms of their basic ecclesiastical and theological allegiances. Between 339 and 340, if not before,140 they became theological allies in Rome, where they each went after their respective depositions. There the two, after having won over the city’s bishop, Julius, made common cause against the Eusebian theologians who insisted that the Father and Son were distinct hypostases.141 Although Athanasius will eventually show a willingness to accommodate those in the East who sought to reconcile Nicaea with a three-​hypostases theology,142 at this point in his career Athanasius basically adheres to a one-​hypostasis theology like Marcellus.143 Like Marcellus, Athanasius lacked a term—​whether hypostasis, pragma, or prosopon, much less ousia—​for what is triadic in God.144 And while Athanasius rather opportunistically separates himself from Marcellus as the condition under which he was able to regain his see in 345, he never distances himself from the latter theologically.145 Athanasius’s refusal to repudiate his one-​time associate is evidenced by his disregard of Basil of Caesarea’s request, around 370, to condemn Marcellus’s teaching.146 Despite the similarity in theological orientation, Athanasius distinguishes himself from his ally in the consummate skill with which he mobilizes the rhetoric of Christological maximalism against his adversaries. One must not underestimate the effectiveness of what Eduard Schwartz disparagingly called Athanasius’s “monotonous hammering at the full divinity of the Son.”147 Even if we concede Schwartz’s uncharitable contention that this single-​minded preoccupation with the Son’s divinity shows



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Athanasius somewhat wanting as a thinker and a writer,148 it nevertheless evinces a keen ear for the rhetorical-​political dimension of theological discourse. And this aspect of Athanasius’s theology perhaps goes a long way in explaining how he was able not merely to have survived the tumultuous decades between Nicaea and his death in 373, but also to have shaped the way future generations understood that period in history.149 Athanasius’s influence stands in the sharpest contrast to his one-​time ally, who, as we have seen, becomes an embarrassment to later “pro-​Nicene” theology and who is, accordingly, all but written out of the history of the church.150 Nowhere is Athanasius’s mastery of the rhetoric of Christological maximalism more apparent than in the first two of his Orations against the Arians, which date from 340–​341, the period of his closest collaboration with Marcellus.151 As Ayres observes, a central theme in the Orations is the primacy of Father and Son language for understanding the relation between God and his Word.152 Athanasius sets up an invidious contrast between the understanding of Christ as true Son and of Christ as created work.153 This contrast highlights the intimacy in the relation between God and his Word: “For things which are from without are possessions, and pass from one to another; but my son is from me, proper and similar to my essence [tês emês ousias idios kai homoios].”154 Athanasius uses the scriptural language of Father and Son to interpret the Nicene phrase “from the essence of” (ek tês ousias).155 In later writings he will use Father-​Son language to defend the notion of consubstantiality. Here I want to draw attention to the way in which Athanasius’s contrast between the Word as Son and the Arian understanding of the Word as created work sustains a powerful rhetoric of Christological maximalism that runs throughout his text. “The godless Arius,” Athanasius declares, “[denies] the Son, reckoning him among the creatures”;156 the Arians “conceive of the Word of the Father as external to him”157; they “[wish] to separate the image from the Father, that they might level the Son with things originated.”158 For the Arians, “Christ is not very God, but he, as others, was made God by participation”159; they “deny Christ with the present Jews.”160 The Arian heresy “beguiles certain individuals to think ill of Christ.”161 Athanasius skillfully uses Father and Son language to question the Arians’ ostensible concern with honoring and preserving the sovereignty and unity of God. Their preference for the unscriptural term “unoriginated” (agenetos) as the primary title for God betrays a conception of God based only on his works. Athanasius contrasts the impoverished results of this “natural theology” to a true knowledge of God based on the revelation of

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the Son. Thus Athanasius, rhetorically imputing cynical motives to his adversaries, declares that they bring forward the term “unoriginated,” not in order to honor the Father, but rather to dishonor the Son.162 Athanasius’s rhetoric notwithstanding, Arius and his supporters almost certainly did not see themselves as downgrading the status of Christ, much less dishonoring him. Indeed, they most likely intended to exalt him as much as possible within the constraints of the hierarchical theological paradigm they inherited from Origen. Athanasius’s adversaries based their concept of Christ’s uniqueness on the understanding of Christ as the first-​born of creation, a notion paradigmatically expressed in Proverbs 8:22: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first-​born of his acts of old.” In a formulation cited by Athanasius in the second Oration, the Arians declare that “He is a creature, but not as one of the creatures; a work, but not as one of the works; an offspring, but not as one of the offsprings.”163 Athanasius, who devotes the better part of the second Oration to a refutation of a literal reading of the Proverbs verse, argues that to concede Christ’s status as a creature is to strip him of divinity. Were Christ a mere creature, even the most exalted thereof, he would not be the legitimate object of worship.164 Athanasius thus dismisses the Arians’ attempt to distinguish Christ from the other works of creation as a mere pretense.165 Athanasius’s use of Father and Son language to support a rhetoric of Christological maximalism against the so-​called Arians distinguishes Athanasius’s theological discourse from the doctrinally cognate theology of Marcellus. Above we saw how the latter tended to shy away from Father and Son language because Asterius had used it to defend the notion of the Son as a distinct hypostasis. This reserve rendered him vulnerable to the charge that he was effectively denying the Son. Athanasius, perhaps learning from his mentor’s negative example,166 fully embraces the Father and Son language and uses it to his advantage. To be sure, Athanasius, like Marcellus, is aware that the analogy of father and son can be used to emphasize the distinction between God and Christ. And yet he feels no need to subordinate this analogy to that of a person and their speech as did Marcellus. For there are three ways in which Athanasius avoids an “Asterian” reading of the father-​son analogy. First, as we saw above, he uses it in the context of a contrast between Christ as Son and Christ as work. This contrast functions to keep attention focused on the idea of the intimacy between God and his Son. Second, Athanasius periodically reminds his readers that they should not push the analogy too far. That is,



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they are not to compare the divine generation with that of human beings, lest they be tempted to take the analogy in an Asterian direction. And, finally, he continually interweaves references to the Son with those of the Word.167 Expressed in terms of Ian Ramsey’s venerable theory of models and qualifiers, this practice effectively allows the person-​word analogy to qualify, yet not displace, the father-​son analogy. The latter continues to serve as the underlying theological model.168

Athanasius’ Defense of the Homoousios Athanasius does not defend the term homoousios until his treatise the De decretis, which he wrote, if Ayres is right, in 353.169 As mentioned above, theologians of every persuasion tended to ignore the homoousios formula in the years immediately following the council. Those of an Origenist persuasion found the term suspect because of its Sabellian associations. Non-​Origenist theologians, for their part, tended to avoid it on account of its strangeness and ambiguity.170 When Athanasius eventually defends the term in the 350s, he does so in the context of an appeal to Nicaea as a criterion for orthodoxy. His defense of Nicaea’s ousia language thus reflects an emerging realization that Nicaea could have a broader significance beyond the condemnation of Arius.171 At the time he wrote the Orations, Nicaea did not yet have for Athanasius, much less for his adversaries, authority as a positive norm for belief.172 Athanasius’s appeal to Nicaea as a touchstone of orthodoxy and his vigorous defense of the homoousios in the early 350s were a direct response to the ecclesiastical policies of the emperor Constantius. After consolidating control over the empire in 353, Constantius sought to unify the churches by forcing the Western churches into agreement with the ascendant Eusebian theology of the Eastern.173 Constantius initiated this policy at the Council of Sirmium in 351. There the emperor sought to secure from the invited Western bishops condemnations of Marcellus’s disciple Photinus, Marcellus himself, and probably Athanasius, along with support for a creedal statement most likely containing a rejection of ousia terminology in connection with the Son’s relationship to the Father.174 Constantius continued to pursue this policy in a series of councils that were based on the decisions of Sirmium 351: the councils of Arles in 353–​354, Milan in 355, and Sirmium in 357, the last containing an even stronger denunciation of the use of ousia terminology.175

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In these councils the emperor thus sought to isolate Athanasius and his allies while at the same time securing an official rejection of Nicaea’s ousia language. Athanasius’s response was predictable. The embattled bishop, in the words of Hanson, “decided that he must begin a policy of defending the very words of [Nicaea] as a slogan or banner round which to gather.”176 As had been the case, ironically enough, with Eusebius of Caesarea some twenty-​five years before, Athanasius’s defense of the homoousios was conditioned by the outward political circumstances.177 Thereafter the term functioned more as a token of partisan allegiance than as a direct expression of theological insight.178 Richard Vaggione distinguishes between formal markers of theological allegiance, such as homoousios, homoios kat’ ousian, and the like, and the “basic dogmatic statements” that the former were intended to exclude or protect.179 Building on Vaggione’s analysis, Ayres argues that the homoousios in Athanasius’s later works functions as a cipher for the “basic dogmatic statements” found in earlier works like the Orations.180 Specifically, the confession that the Son is homoousios with the Father ensures the uniqueness of this relation and therefore excludes the Arian view that the Son belongs among the created works of God. To the extent, therefore, that the doctrine of consubstantiality excludes the notion of Christ as a creature, it gives expression to the principle of Christological maximalism. Athanasius defends the Nicene formulae “from the substance of the Father” (ek tês ousias tou patros) and “consubstantial with the Father” (homoousios tôi patri) in c­ hapters 19–​24 of the De decretis. The preceding chapters of this important work establish the context of his defense of the Nicene formulary, namely, the antithesis, which we saw in the Orations, between Christ as creature and Christ as Son.181 These two Christological concepts correspond to a distinction Athanasius makes in ­chapters 6–​14 between the adoptive and natural-​genetic senses of sonship. The former denotes an external relationship, the latter an intrinsic, “proper” (idios) one.182 Invidiously casting his disagreement with Arian Christology in terms of this distinction between adoptive and natural sonship, Athanasius invokes the Christologically maximalist rhetoric of defending the true or proper sonship of Christ against those who refuse to recognize it.183 For Athanasius, Nicaea’s ousia language ensures a Christologically maximalist reading of scriptural statements about Christ’s relation with the Father by excluding an Arian hermeneutic. Here we return to Athanasius’s stylized account of the proceedings at Nicaea. The Nicene



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fathers184 introduced ousia language to thwart the Eusebians’ willful misconstrual of scriptural confessions that the Word is “from God” (ek tou theou) and that he is “the true power and the image of the Father, unalterably like the Father in all things.”185 The phrase “from the substance of the Father” blocked the Arian construal of the scriptural confession that the Son is “from God” in the sense that all creatures are said to be “from God.”186 Similarly, the phrase “homoousios with the Father” prevented the Eusebians from construing the biblical confession that the Son is the image and likeness of the Father in the sense that these things are said of human beings.187 Athanasius’s insistence that the Nicene fathers only reluctantly adopted nonscriptural terminology evinces some defensiveness regarding the Homoian criticism that Nicaea’s ousia terminology was unscriptural and, in view of the misunderstanding and controversy that it had engendered, inappropriate. The recourse to nonscriptural terminology would not have been necessary, Athanasius would have us believe, were it not for the Arians’ efforts to deny the Word of God, in a manner reminiscent of the New Testament Jews’ denial of the incarnate Christ.188 Inasmuch as the homoousios functions as a cipher for the “basic dogmatic statements” expressed in the Orations, Athanasius’s defense of the term in his later writings does not signify a substantive change in his understanding of the Son’s relation to the Father. It does, however, intensify the idea of the unity between Father and Son to the point where the underlying metaphor of the father-​son relation is the only thing protecting Athanasius against modalism. In ­chapter 20 of the De decretis, after having argued that the phrase “homoousios with the Father” ensures the uniqueness of the sense in which the Son is said to be the image of the Father, Athanasius identifies the element of disanalogy in the language of father and son. Unlike human fathers and sons, the Father and Son are not separated at a distance from each other.189 In other words, the Father and the Son are not separate realities. Here Athanasius identifies and rejects that aspect of the father-​son analogy that Asterius had seized upon and that had driven Marcellus to a one-​sided focus on the analogy of a person and their word. At this point, Athanasius qualifies the father and son analogy with the image of light and its radiance (to phôs and to apaugasma, respectively). The Son is intrinsic to the being of the Father as the radiance is intrinsic to light.190 We can perhaps interpret Athanasius’s understanding of the homoousios in the following way. For him the Nicene phrase “homoousios with the Father” serves as shorthand for the qualification of the father-​son analogy by that of light and

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its radiance. Thus understood, the Nicene confession that the Son is homoousios with the Father specifies the notion of divine sonship on two levels. First, as we have seen, it excludes an Arian, adoptive sense to the phrase, “son of God.” Christ is the Son of God in a proper or literal, not a figurative sense.191 Second, it negates, by means of the juxtaposed image of light and its radiance, the underlying presupposition of Father and Son as two separate beings. At this point, Athanasius stands perilously close to modalism. For inasmuch as radiance is not ontically distinct from light, the image of light and its radiance is a modalist, mia hypostasis one.192 We recall that Justin had earlier judged it inadequate as a model for understanding the relation between God and his Logos. For the Logos, Justin argues, is not only “numbered as different by its name (as light is to the sun),” but is also “something distinct in real number.”193 We see that Athanasius’s conception of the homoousios relation silently trades on precisely that aspect of the father-​son language which the analogy of light and its radiance appears to negate, namely, the underlying image of Father and Son as two distinct realities. Put differently, what keeps Athanasius’ homoousios on this side of modalism is nothing other than the language of Father and Son itself.194 In default of any concept for what is dyadic or triadic in God, Athanasius is forced to rely on nothing more than the grammar of father and son language to preserve the binitarian structure of his concept of God. Athanasius’s dictum that “all that you find said of the Father you will also find said of the Son, except only that he is Father”195 represents the upper limit of the principle of Christological maximalism. The first part of this formula—​everything said of the Father is said of the Son—​effectively reduces subordination almost to the vanishing point. The “except” clause, while preserving the trace of subordination implicit in the concept of fatherhood, prevents Athanasius’s Christologically maximalist concept of God from collapsing into modalism and thereby negating the principle of Christological maximalism.

From Consubstantiality to Trinity With Athanasius’s defense of consubstantiality, the principle of Christological maximalism reaches its upper limit and our narrative nears its conclusion. Of course, as any student of early Christian doctrine knows, Trinitarian and Christological development is far from over. By way



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of conclusion, let me briefly mention the two major developments that bring the confession of the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. The first of these is the extension of the doctrine of consubstantiality to the Spirit. Here Athanasius was himself a pioneering figure. In his three Letters to Serapion (358–​361196), he applied the same logic to the Spirit that he had earlier used to defend the full divinity of the Son.197 In defending the full divinity of the Spirit Athanasius was ahead of most of his contemporaries. Here, as is the case with understanding so many episodes in the history of doctrine, we have to resist the tendency to view fourth-​century debates over the status of the Spirit through the lens of later orthodoxy. The confession of the Spirit’s full divinity was far from self-​evident. Given the lack of any explicit and unambiguous scriptural statement that the Spirit was divine, much less God, it simply did not occur to earlier theologians to imagine the Spirit as a principle equal in stature to Christ, let alone the Father.198 Such a claim would have struck an earlier theologian like, say, Irenaeus as extravagant. In default of clear and unambiguous statements regarding the Spirit in the Bible, third-​ century theologians tended to extend whatever their conception of the relation between Father and Son—​be it Sabellian modalism or Origenist subordinationism—​to the Spirit.199 This pattern of understanding the Spirit in terms of the Father-​Son relation continued into the fourth century.200 Eunomius, for example, subordinated the Spirit to the Son just as he had subordinated the Son to the Father.201 Athanasius, for his part, extended the equality between the Father and Son to the Spirit, as just mentioned.202 Once the divinity of the Son is conceded, however, the burden of proof shifts to those who would subordinate the Spirit to the Son and Father.203 Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the arguments Gregory of Nazianzus uses to establish the full divinity of the Spirit against those among the “Spirit Fighters” (Pneumatomachoi) who accepted the divinity of the Son.204 Against the latter’s charge of tritheism, Gregory rhetorically asks, “What right have you who worship the Son, even though you have revolted from the Spirit, to call us Tritheists? Are you not Ditheists? […] For the very same reason with which you repel a charge of Ditheism will prove sufficient for us against one of Tritheism.”205 Later on in the same text Gregory explains the church’s historically belated recognition of the Spirit by arguing that the divinity of the Son had to be securely established before the divinity of the Spirit could be affirmed.206 Now that the

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Son’s divinity has been safely established, however—​at least in pro-​Nicene circles—​there is no reason to deny the same honor to the Spirit. Once pro-​Nicene theologians like Athanasius, Basil, and the two Gregorys had succeeded in reframing the debate concerning the Spirit in terms of the invidious question of whether, as Basil puts it, “it is better to rank him with God or to banish him to creation,”207 the confession of the Spirit’s full divinity was all but inevitable. The second major development leading to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity was naming what was triadic in God in the context of a commitment to Nicene concept of consubstantiality. As we have noted, Athanasius was so focused on defending the principle of divine unity against his Eusebian and, later, Homoian adversaries that he left his account of the divine persons underdeveloped.208 This achievement is rightly credited to the Cappadocian fathers with their distinction between hypostasis and ousia.209 As often noted, the three great Cappadocians—​Basil of Caesarea, his friend Gregory of Nazianzus, and his younger brother Gregory of Nyssa—​approached Nicaea from a Homoiousian perspective.210 That is, they accepted the Nicene concept of consubstantiality in the context of a commitment to the Origenist doctrine of three divine hypostases. The latter commitment effectively liberated the former from its long-​standing Sabellian associations.211 Combining the Nicene concept of a single divine ousia with a recognition of three divine hypostases entailed a shift in the conceptualization of the former, however. All three Cappadocians at some point compare the relation between the single divine ousia and the three hypostases to the relation between the general and the particular.212 On the basis of this analogy, a line of German scholars, most famously Harnack, argued that the Cappadocians effectively replaced the Athanasian conception of homoousios in terms of a unity of substance with one based on a generic concept of substance.213 The current scholarly consensus is that Harnack et al., while drawing attention to an important shift in the understanding of consubstantiality, drew the contrast too sharply.214 As we have seen, Athanasius effectively qualifies the notion of a single divine substance by insisting on the priority of Father and Son language in describing the relation between the first two persons of the Trinity. The Cappadocians, for their part, were well aware of the limitations of the analogy of the general and the particular for understanding the relations among the divine Persons.215 For example, Gregory of Nazianzus, in an effort to demonstrate that the notion of consubstantiality is not quite as outlandish as his Pneumatomachian interlocutor imagines, cites Adam, Eve, and Seth as an



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example of three persons sharing a common substance. And yet he feels obliged to mark the limits of the analogy almost immediately after having invoked it. Against an overly literal construal of the analogy, he suggests that a conception of the Godhead based on the analogy of three individuals sharing a generic human nature better describes Greek polytheism than the Christian Trinity.216 In a similar vein, Gregory of Nyssa argues that the element of disanalogy—​namely, that the three divine persons, unlike human individuals, always act jointly and inseparably—​excludes the use of the plural in reference to the divine nature and therewith tritheism.217 Thus, despite their difference in starting point,218 both the Athanasian and Cappadocian conceptions of consubstantiality hold the numerical and generic senses of substance in creative tension.219 The shift from the “old Nicenism” of Athanasius to the “new Nicenism” represented by the Cappadocians corresponds to a shift in polemical style. The underdeveloped and perhaps unbalanced nature of Athanasius’s Trinitarian theology, in which an emphasis on the unity of God threatens to eclipse the countervailing affirmation of real distinction in God, reflects the bishop’s rhetorical assimilation of a range of adversaries to the teaching of Arius. As we have seen, Athanasius (mis)represents the complex and changing theological landscape of the first two-​thirds of the fourth century as a binary struggle between orthodoxy and Arianism over the status of the Son. He further rhetorically assimilates the Arians who allegedly deny the Son’s divinity with the Jews of the New Testament who rejected Jesus. The Neo-​Nicenism represented by the Cappadocians, as well as contemporary Latin theologians like Hilary of Poitiers, can be understood in terms of an explicit recognition of the need to safeguard the Nicene doctrine of consubstantiality from the countervailing danger of modalism.220 No one had a keener sense of the pitfalls awaiting the orthodox theologian than Hilary, whose treatise De trinitate and the polemical strategy he employs therein are the fruit of his contact with Eastern theological concerns during his exile in Asia Minor between 356 and 360.221 “We walk between dangers on either hand,” he observes, “the unity of God may force us into a denial of the Godhead of His Son, or, if we confess that the Father is God and the Son is God, we may be driven into the heresy of interpreting the unity of Father and Son in the Sabellian sense.”222 Integrating an explicit antimodalist concern into a Nicene perspective imparts a more complex rhetorical profile to Neo-​Nicene Trinitarian works. Instead of viewing orthodoxy in terms of a binary opposition to Arianism as Athanasius and Marcellus

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had done, Neo-​Nicene works view Nicene orthodoxy as the happy mean between the extremes of Arianism and Sabellianism.223 The Neo-​Nicene rhetoric of orthodoxy as a via media has the effect of diminishing the role of anti-​Jewish rhetoric as compared to the older-​ Nicene theology. To be sure, one still finds the Athanasian rhetoric of contemporary “Arians” as the “new Jews” in the anti-​Eunomian writings of the Cappadocians.224 That is, Basil and his brother Gregory, like Athanasius and Ephrem, compared their Eunomian opponents to the New Testament Jews in a rhetorical effort to strip the former of the Christian name.225 And yet, as Christine Shepardson observes, the anti-​Jewish rhetoric of the Cappadocians is generally less prominent and a bit milder than that of Athanasius and Ephrem.226 The generally milder anti-​Jewish rhetoric of the Cappadocians probably does not reflect a more tolerant and progressive attitude toward Jews. Nor does it reflect, pace Shepardson, a diminished concern with the “threat” of local Judaism, as the evidenced by Shepardson’s own observation that John Chrysostom’s virulent anti-​ Jewish rhetoric, which does reflect such a concern, generally does not carry over into his anti-​Anomoian sermons.227 The diminished role of anti-​ Jewish rhetoric in the later Nicenes reflects the difficulty of relating the conception of orthodoxy as the mean between Arianism and Sabellianism to the parallel theme of orthodoxy as the mean between Jewish monotheism and Greek polytheism.228 Introducing the Sabellian heresy as another extreme to be avoided reveals the ambiguity of the “Jewish tendency” with respect to these two Christian heresies. For, as we saw in Eusebius’s polemic against Marcellus, one can just as easily assimilate Jewish monoprosopism to Sabellian modalism as to Arian subordinationism. Thus while Basil, for example, compares his Eunomian adversaries with the Jews, as we have just seen, he elsewhere links the Judaizing tendency to the modalism of Sabellius. Thus in his sermon “Against the Sabellians, Arius, and the Anomoians” he says that it is those who deny the Son’s subsistence and confess the Son only in name who renew the “blasphemy” of the Jews.229 Conversely, it is those who regard the Only-​begotten as a mere work, by effectively binding themselves to the creature rather than the Creator, who (re)introduce the idolatry of the Greeks.230 This tendency to link Sabellianism to Judaism and Anomoianism to Greek polytheism and idolatry can also be found in a later writer like Isidore of Pelusium who is influenced by Basil’s works.231



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The Creed of Constantinople and the Exclusion of a Modalist Interpretation of Nicaea The document known as the Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed symbolically marks the dénouement of the fourth-​century Trinitarian controversy.232 This creed, which first appears in the historical record at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, is traditionally associated with the Council of Constantinople in 381.233 The tradition has regarded it as an elaboration of the original faith of Nicaea to address specific heresies—​in particular, Marcellan modalism and Pneumatomachianism—​that had appeared on the scene since Nicaea.234 Accordingly, the tradition maintained that the two creeds were substantially the same.235 This conviction regarding the substantive identity of the two creeds is reflected in the curious—​ and confusing!—​ fact that sometime in the middle ages the Nicene-​ Constantinopolitan Creed itself came to be known simply as the Nicene Creed.236 The Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed differs from the Nicene in two fundamental respects. First, in response to the later fourth-​century controversy over the Holy Spirit, it expands on Nicaea’s rather vague references to the Spirit. Against the more uncompromising of the Pneumatomachoi, it asserts that the Holy Spirit is to be worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son.237 Interestingly, this affirmation falls short of a confession of the Spirit’s full divinity and consubstantiality with Father and Son.238 This lack of an explicit rejection of the Spirit’s subordination to the Father and Son reflects one of the initial (but ultimately unsuccessful) agendas of the council, namely, to reconcile a group of more moderate, Homoiousian Pneumatomachoi with the Nicene Creed.239 Second, the Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed explicitly disallowed a Sabellian interpretation of Nicaea by eliminating two ambiguous Nicene formulae.240 The first of these was the phrase “from the ousia of the Father,”241 a formulation which, at least according to Harnack, “seemed to leave the door open to Sabellianism.”242 The second was the anathema—​ the Nicene-​ Constantinopolitan Creed eliminated all of the Nicene anathemas—​against those “who allege that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or ousia.”243 The elimination of this latter clause in particular reflects the reinterpretation of Nicaea in light of the Neo-​Nicene distinction between ousia and hypostasis. Thus understood in relation to Nicaea, the Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed has come to embody and symbolize

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the orthodox “three hypostases in one ousia” Trinitarian formula without actually stating this doctrine explicitly.244 By dissolving lingering associations between the notion of consubstantiality and the potentially Sabellian notion of a unity of substance, the Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed brings the dialectical character of Nicene orthodoxy into sharp and unambiguous focus. Harnack’s final judgment on this creed may be unduly critical, reflecting as it does his controversial thesis that the Cappadocian restatement of the doctrine of consubstantiality represented a betrayal of the original Nicene faith of Athanasius. But it does aptly convey the radically counterintuitive character of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity that the Nicene-​ Constantinopolitan Creed embodies. With the victory of the Nicene Creed, Harnack writes, [t]‌he Logos-​doctrine has already become unintelligible to those who were not theologians. The setting up of the Nicene-​Cappadocian formula as the fundamental Confession of the Church made it perfectly impossible for the Catholic laity to get an inner comprehension of the Christian Faith taking as their guide the form in which it was presented in the doctrine of the Church. The thought that Christianity is the revelation of something incomprehensible became more and more a familiar one to men’s minds.245

PART 2

Buddhist Selflessness

5

Anattā in the Pali Canon Throughout Buddhist thought, we must recognise this reaction of opposition to Brahmanical ideas and practices: the denial of self (ātman) is the most fundamental example, and symbol, of this attitude. Steven Collins (1982b: 84)

The Problem of the Self in Modern Buddhology The Buddhist tradition has understood the doctrine of No-​self (Pali anattā; Skt. anātman, nairātmya) in terms of a reduction of the human personality to its impersonal constituents. Thus understood, the doctrine is profoundly counterintuitive. In his classic introduction to Buddhism, What the Buddha Taught, Walpola Rahula remarks that the anattā doctrine epitomizes the Buddha’s lament that his teaching goes “against the current.”1 Specifically, what the doctrine opposes, according to Rahula, are the infantile fears and selfish desires that express themselves in the belief in an immortal soul or ātman.2 Here Rahula makes an implicit appeal to Freud’s well-​known explanation of religious beliefs in God and the soul in terms of psychological needs. Rahula’s ad hominem argument against “self-​belief” (attavāda) has much deeper roots in the Theravāda tradition, however. On the basis of discourses found in the Sutta Piṭaka of the Pali Canon, Theravāda apologists came to regard attavāda as the quintessential expression of attachment and desire. To the extent that non-​Buddhist doctrines or views (diṭṭhi) presupposed—​or were construed as presupposing—​the existence of the self, these could be safely dismissed as only so many conceptual manifestations of desire.3 Opponents of the orthodox No-​self doctrine, for their part, argued that it was impossible to reconcile the denial of a transmigrating self or person with the theories of karma and rebirth. Such was the principal objection leveled against the denial of such a self both within the Buddhist sphere by the Personalist (pudgalavāda) schools4

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and without, by the Brahmanical philosophers (particularly Naiyāyika) who engaged with Buddhist thought in the period from roughly the fifth to the eighth centuries ce.5 Controversy over the No-​ self doctrine has continued in modern Buddhology. In this context, however, the disagreement concerns less the philosophical question of the doctrine’s compatibility with the theories of karma and rebirth than it does the historical and interpretive question of whether ancient Buddhism did in fact deny a self. One interpretive position maintains that the denial of self, notwithstanding its centrality to Theravāda orthodoxy, was not the original teaching of the earliest stratum of Buddhist tradition, much less that of the historical Buddha.6 This view is based on the observation that the locus classicus for the anattā doctrine, the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta—​“Discourse on the [ fact of things having] the Characteristic of Not-​ self”7—​stops short of an explicit denial of the self.8 Rather, the Buddha9 there simply declares, in the context of a dialogue with his monks, that each of the five constituents (Pali khandha, Skt. skandha) of the personality, starting with the physical body (physical form: rūpa), is “a not-​self”:10 What do you think, monks, is body permanent or impermanent? Impermanent, sir. Is what is impermanent satisfactory or unsatisfactory? Unsatisfactory, sir. Is it fitting to regard what is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and subject to change in this way) ‘this is mine, this I am, this is my self? No sir. So, monks, whatever body has come to be, whether past, future, or present, gross or fine, in oneself or without [. . .] must be seen as it really is, with right insight, thus “this is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.”11 This denial that any of the constituents are self, what Tilmann Vetter terms the discourse of “discriminating insight,” forms the basis of the Theravāda doctrine that the personality is reducible to its impersonal constituents.12 And yet one can distinguish between the denial of the “selfhood” of each of the constituents and the denial of the self as such. The scholars who point to the hermeneutical gap between the discourse of discriminating insight found in the Pali Nikāyas and the anattā doctrine of later Theravāda orthodoxy fall into two groups. The first group, represented by scholars such as Erich Frauwallner, Jean Przyluski, and,



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more recently, Johannes Bronkhorst, argues that the intent behind the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta was essentially a pragmatic one.13 That is, the intent was less to deny a self than to redirect attention away from metaphysical speculation to moral and ascetic practice. Frauwallner goes so far as to suggest that the Buddha was agnostic on the question of the self’s existence.14 A second group, represented by C. A. F. Rhys-​Davids, S. Radhakrishnan, Kamaleswar Bhattacharya, and Joaquín Pérez-​Remón, goes quite a bit further.15 In an interpretation that betrays a commitment to the “Perennialist Philosophy” of the Neo-​Vedāntic movement, this second group argues that a reference to a metaphysical, transcendental self of the Vedāntic variety is implicit in the Buddha’s declaration that each of the constituents is “not self.”16 In other words, such scholars interpret the discourse of discriminating insight in the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta as anticipating, not the later Theravāda doctrine of No-​self, but rather the (much) later Vedāntic doctrine of ātmānātmaviveka—​“discrimination of self and non-​self.”17 One of the embarrassments of this line of interpretation, of course, is that it presumes that the Buddhist tradition has somehow falsified the teaching of its founder without, however, being able to offer a credible explanation for how even the early tradition could have departed so radically from Śākyamuni’s teaching.18 There is some irony in the fact that Brahmanical polemicists exploited precisely this argument to discredit the Buddhist tradition. The early seventh-​century Nyāya philosopher Uddyotakara distinguishes between a specific negation (viśeṣa-​pratiṣedha) of the aggregates as the objects of self-​consciousness and a general negation (sāmānya-​ pratiṣedha) of the self. He goes on to argue that his Buddhist opponents, in defending the latter form of negation, failed to acknowledge this crucial distinction and thereby departed from the Buddha’s true teaching.19 Unsurprisingly, the “Vedāntic” line of interpretation has provoked a strong reaction from representatives of traditional Theravāda like Rahula and Western Buddhologists like Steven Collins.20 One suspects that a concern with refuting what he regarded as a presumptuous and annoyingly persistent misinterpretation of Buddhism was one of the motivations behind the latter’s Selfless Persons (1982), a book which remains, even after over three decades, the best and most authoritative work on the No-​self doctrine in Theravāda Buddhism.21 Collins argues that one can interpret the Buddha’s teaching regarding the “selflessness” of the constituents “Vedāntically”—​that is, as leaving open the possibility of a self apart from the constituents of the personality—​only if one isolates this anattā discourse from the context of other canonical teachings that render

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the notion of a self apart from the constituents both pointless and superfluous.22 Chief among those teachings needed to “complete the sense” of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta is the doctrine of Dependent Origination (Pali paṭicca-​samuppāda; Skt. pratītyasamutpāda). This doctrine, with its notion of a causal series, is intended to explain the mechanism of karma and rebirth, and the continuity of experience more generally, without the presupposition of a self.23 Collins’s detailed and comprehensive treatment of the anattā doctrine in the Pali tradition should lay to rest the Neo-​Vedāntic interpretation of anattā advanced by C.  A. F.  Rhys Davids, Bhattacharya, Pérez-​Remón, and others.24 And yet, it is important to note that Collins’s demonstration of the pointlessness and superfluity of the self in the conceptual system of Theravāda thought does not thereby invalidate the notion of a hermeneutical gap between the classical anattā doctrine and the early tradition. Thus the refutation of the Neo-​Vedāntic interpretation of early Buddhism does not—​or at least should not, in my view—​extend to the more reasonable line of interpretation mentioned above, represented by scholars like Frauwallner, Schayer, and Bronkhorst. One could argue that Collins’s systematic approach does not so much address the question of whether or not ancient Buddhism denied a self as it methodologically brackets historical questions of the origins and development of the anattā doctrine.25 Such a bracketing of historical-​developmental questions is implicit in his stated aim to investigate, “what role or roles [the anattā doctrine] plays in the varieties of Buddhist thought and practice, what function or functions it might have for those who profess allegiance to it and whose religious activity is patterned on it.”26 One consequence of this functional and systematic approach to the doctrine of anattā is that Collins’s interpretation by necessity coincides with Theravāda orthodoxy.27 Collins’s systematic approach reflects in part a postorientalist aversion to violating the self-​ understanding of living traditions of Buddhism, which regard anattā as the authentic teaching of the Buddha.28 It might also reflect the influence of Clifford Geertz’s concept of religion as a coherent and unified “cultural system.”29 I would argue, however, that the most compelling justification for such a systematic approach to the anattā doctrine—​and one that is surely implicit in Collins’s method—​is the paucity and uncertainty of evidence concerning “precanonical Buddhism.”30 With little in the way of direct evidence to constrain the scholarly imagination, hypotheses concerning “original Buddhism,” to say nothing of “what the Buddha taught,” can easily become little more than projections of what the individual



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scholar imagines the essence of Buddhism to be onto the “relatively blank screen” of the past.31 The Neo-​Vedāntic interpretation of C.  A. F.  Rhys Davids, Pérez-​Remón, and others epitomizes this danger.32 Incidentally, I  suspect that the superficial resemblance between the methods of the discredited Neo-​Vedāntic school of Buddhology, on the one hand, and the quest of the Polish Indologist Stanisław Schayer and his followers to discern a “precanonical” stratum of Buddhism, on the other, may have unfairly contributed to the eclipse of the latter approach.33 In order fully to appreciate this skepticism regarding efforts to reconstruct early Buddhist doctrinal history, it might be instructive to review the chronology of our literary evidence.34 The Pali Canon is one of the earliest extant sources for Buddhist teachings, and it is certainly the most complete.35 And yet, as Edward Conze observed, the availability of the Pali Canon “is not due to its greater antiquity or intrinsic merit, but to the accidents of historical transmission.”36 An exclusive reliance on the Pali Canon to reconstruct the early history of Buddhism might be compared, to invoke a well-​worn analogy, to the drunk looking for his lost key under the street lamp because there the light is better. Another limitation of the use of the Pali Canon as evidence for the history of early Buddhism concerns a feature that it shares with any ancient text, namely, an inordinately large temporal gap between its composition and redaction. According to the Pali tradition, the Canon was first committed to writing in the first century bce.37 Unfortunately, however, we do not know the extent to which this no longer extant text, the so-​called Aḷuvihāra redaction, resembles the Pali Canon as we now have it.38 We can be certain, however, that they are not identical, for we know that the collection of scriptures was, at the very least, subsequently enlarged.39 To be sure, even if the extant redaction of the Canon cannot be dated with certainty prior to the fifth century ce, when Buddhaghosa wrote his famous commentaries, it certainly contains material originally composed much earlier, albeit refracted through multiple redactional stages. Unfortunately, given the foreshortening effects of oral transmission—​that past material tends to be assimilated to the present recitation without leaving a trace—​these stages are in most cases difficult, if not impossible to identify.40 Some of this early material is almost certainly pre-​Aśokan, for example some of the texts mentioned in Aśoka’s Bhābrā Edict that correspond to sections of the Sutta Nipāta.41 The vast majority of the suttas of the Nikāyas, particularly those of the Dīgha and the Majjhima Nikāyas, however, are in their extant forms considerably later.42 Summarizing the nature of our evidence, Gregory Schopen argues that it

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is only from around the end of the fourth century—​ce!—​that “some of the doctrinal content of Hīnayāna canonical literature can finally be definitely dated and actually verified. Not before.”43 Not all scholars are as skeptical as Schopen, of course, about the antiquity of early Buddhist literature and the possibility of deriving reliable conclusions therefrom regarding the history of early Buddhism.44 The unavailability of certain knowledge about early Buddhist teaching does not exclude the formulation of reasonable hypotheses, of varying degrees of probability, regarding that teaching. Nevertheless, an acknowledgment of the relative lateness of the extant literature carries a salutary reminder of the unavoidably hypothetical nature of any inferences we might make regarding the earlier stages of Buddhist doctrine. As already indicated, an important dimension of this difficulty of reconstructing the teachings of precanonical Buddhism on the basis of a relatively late corpus of writings is the oral nature of their transmission up to, at the very least, the first century bce when they were allegedly first written down. Even after that—​indeed up to modern times—​the teachings of the Buddha continued to be transmitted orally, at least in part.45 What this means is that we cannot expect the kind of dramatic “archeological” discoveries with respect to the Pali Canon that were yielded by nineteenth-​century biblical source criticism. Since we are not dealing with the transmission of literary texts during the formative period of the early sutta literature, a side-​by-​side comparison of, say, the Dīgha and Majjhima Nikāyas is not apt to reveal underlying literary strata in the manner of the “four-​source” hypothesis in the study of the synoptic gospels of the New Testament.46 When we encounter textual parallels, it is often unclear which has borrowed from which, or, alternatively, whether both are drawing directly from an earlier body of oral material.47 Relatively unambiguous source-​critical inferences with respect to the Pali Canon, such as the antiquity of the Pārāyaṇa and Aṭṭhaka Vaggas of the Sutta Nipāta based on their citation in other parts of the Canon,48 tend to be exceptional, limited, and fortuitous.49 In the absence of compelling source-​critical hypotheses to support them, inferences regarding the doctrinal development of precanonical Buddhism remain conjectural50 and, to the extent that they have recourse to a priori notions of what original Buddhism was, circular.51 In default of direct and unambiguous evidence regarding the historical development of early Buddhist teachings, then, a systematic approach like that of Collins might appear to be the most prudent methodological strategy.52 By eschewing speculations regarding “original” Buddhism, it



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deprives the insufficiently self-​aware scholar of an opportunity to project his or her preferred understanding of Buddhism onto the evidence. On the other hand, such an approach tends to downplay the significance of doctrinal inconsistencies, even incoherencies, within the corpus of Nikāyic texts.53 Its presentation of these texts as a doctrinally homogeneous and historically foreshortened body of material effectively narrows the gap between critical scholarship and Theravāda orthodoxy.54 The scholar renounces speculative hypotheses regarding the development of Buddhist doctrine only effectively to concede, by default as it were, the tradition’s claim that its doctrines preserve the original intent of the early suttas. Nowhere are the shortcomings of such a “tradition-​friendly” approach to the study of Buddhism more apparent than in standard representations of the Personalist or pudgalavāda doctrine associated with the Vātsīputrīya and Sāṃmatīya monastic orders. In contrast to the Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda teaching that has since come to define Buddhist orthodoxy on the question of the self, the Pudgalavādins taught that the person (Skt. pudgala; Pali puggala) was real but indeterminate with respect to the constituents. Presumably on the basis of the Buddha’s refusal to countenance the view that soul (jīva) was identical to the body (śarīra),55 the Pudgalavādins asserted, in direct opposition to their Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda counterparts, that the person was irreducible to, albeit at the same time inseparable from, its impersonal constituents. In the almost complete absence of surviving pudgalavāda works,56 it is all too easy to regard pudgalavāda as a deviant fringe movement within Buddhism—​a view coinciding suspiciously with the image that the Pudgalavādins’ adversaries labored to promote. Combining the putative marginality of the pudgalavāda schools with the traditional Theravāda conviction that the anattā doctrine was the Buddha’s original teaching yields the representation of the Pudgalavādins as “philosophical renegades,” their doctrine of the person as a divergence from the Buddha’s putatively original teaching of selflessness.57 The Personalist doctrine thus appears as the product of a failure of nerve, an inability to accept one of the Buddha’s most demanding teachings.58 The judgment that pudgalavāda was a deviant and compromised form of Buddhism is sometimes interpreted historically. According to this view, the doctrine of the person was an accommodation of the Buddha’s teaching to the presuppositions and expectations of the culturally hegemonic Brahmanical culture with its doctrine of the eternal self or ātman.59 There is good reason, however, to question the twin presuppositions—​namely, the marginality of pudgalavāda Buddhism and

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the priority of the orthodox anattā doctrine—​upon which this characterization of pudgalavāda Buddhism rests. The first presupposition is called into question by, among other considerations, the testimony of the seventh-​ century Chinese pilgrim Hsüan-​tsang, who estimated that a quarter of the monks in India belonged to the pudgalavāda Sāṃmatīya school, making it the largest non-​Mahāyāna school there at the time.60 There is also suggestive but admittedly inconclusive evidence that other schools may originally have held pudgalavāda views.61 The second presupposition upon which the conception of pudgalavāda as a deviant teaching rests, namely, the priority of the (orthodox) No-​self doctrine, rests on the assumption that the early suttas are relatively unambiguous on the question of whether the Buddha taught the unreality of the self. And yet, as Leonard Priestley observes, the Buddha’s teaching on the self is unambiguous only if one reads the early suttas in light of the interpretation of a particular school.62 What Priestley describes as “our natural tendency to regard the views of the Pudgalavādins as anomalous”63 is due to the contingent fact that, in default of any real alternatives, modern scholars have read the early suttas through the lens of the commentarial tradition of the Theravāda and, to a lesser extent, Sarvāstivāda schools.64 The very fact that pudgalavāda diverges so clearly from early orthodoxy can, in fact, be taken as an argument for the former’s antiquity. For we can readily explain the preservation of canonical passages amenable to a pudgalavāda interpretation only on the hypothesis that these reflect a very old belief.65 On the basis of Priestley’s supposition regarding the legitimacy of pudga­ lavāda as an early and authentic, if controversial, expression of Buddhism,66 I would like to suggest the hypothesis that the orthodox anattā doctrine developed dialectically in the context of a doctrinal controversy with the pudgalavāda schools. My approach to the origins of the anattā concept parallels the hypothetical method Gananath Obeyesekere defends in his study of the origins of the Indic concepts of karma and rebirth. If it is impossible, owing to the paucity of historical evidence, to establish the origins of the anattā doctrine with any certainty, it nevertheless remains a valid procedure to hypothesize “how it might have originated.”67 And, like Obeyesekere, who in his study makes productive use of ethnographic evidence of rebirth eschatologies outside the Indic context, I  find it fruitful, in framing my hypothesis regarding the development of the anattā doctrine, to examine the Buddhist evidence in light of our knowledge of the development of Christian doctrine. In particular, an account of the history of Buddhist doctrine should be informed by the acknowledgment, defended by Walter



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Bauer in his seminal work on the history of Christian doctrine, that what a later age will eventually label as “heresy” often precedes what it will define as “orthodoxy.”68 Of course, I am keenly aware of the risks that the use of an externally generated explanatory hypothesis entails.69 Despite these risks, I would argue that the “dialectical” hypothesis is every bit as plausible as, indeed more so than, the alternative hypothesis that the Pudgalavādins were an only nominally Buddhist, renegade fringe movement who deviated from the Buddha’s putative teaching that the self is unreal. The chief advantage the former hypothesis has over the latter is that it is better able to account for the rather banal fact that the pudgalavāda schools were able to interpret the word of the Buddha (buddhavacana), to their satisfaction at least, without the doctrine of the reducibility of the personality to the constituents (skandha–​ mātra–​vāda) of the Theravādins and Sarvāstivādins. Unlike the alternative, our “dialectical” hypothesis can account for this fact without having recourse to the tendentious supplementary hypothesis that the Pudgalavādins were too confused, their commitment to authentic Buddhism too compromised, for them to grasp the Buddha’s authentic teaching. Of course, the hypothesis that both the Pudgalavādins and their Theravādin and Sarvāstivādin adversaries could make a reasonable claim on a tradition that was ambiguous with regard to the reality of the self assumes that the former were basing their interpretation on a body of authoritative teachings that overlapped to a considerable extent with that of the latter. In the virtual absence of surviving texts from the pudgalavāda schools,70 however, we cannot be at all certain precisely which discourses these schools recognized as authoritative. The respective canons71 of the earliest pudgalavāda school, the Vātsiputrīyas, and the Theravādins were almost certainly not identical.72 At one point in the ninth chapter of his Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (fifth century ce), a chapter dedicated to the refutation of the Personalist doctrine, Vasubandhu acknowledges that his Pudgalavādin adversaries do not recognize the canonical status of the several passages he has just cited against their doctrine of the inexplicable nature of t​he person.73 Nevertheless, this section of the Abhidharmakośa, as well as other extant polemics against the Personalist doctrine, such as the earlier Theravāda text the Kathāvatthu and, rather later, Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṃgraha, contain interpretive arguments over suttanta passages commonly recognized as authoritative.74 From such arguments over scriptural interpretation we can reasonably conclude that there was significant overlap in the texts recognized as buddhavacana by the pudgalavāda schools and their Theravāda and Sarvāstivāda adversaries.75

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Among the texts subject to interpretive disagreement are the “Burden” (Bhāra) Sutta (S.iii.25–​26);76 the ubiquitous declaration that “All things are not-​self” (sarvadharmā anātmanaḥ, e.g., S.iii.133; M.35);77 and the Buddha’s refusal to answer the question of whether the soul (jīva) was the same as, or different from, the body (sarīra).78 The first of these, the Burden Sutta, allegorizes the Buddhist narrative of bondage and release to the picking up and setting down of a burden:  the burden consists of the “five factors of grasping” (pañcupādānakkhandhā); the laying hold (hāra) of the burden corresponds to the person (puggala); the taking up (ādāna) of the burden to craving (taṇhā); and the setting down (nikkhepana) of the burden corresponds to the passionless cessation (asesavirāganirodha) of, and release (mutti) from, craving.79 By identifying the puggala with the entity taking hold of the burden—​that is, the five aggregates of grasping—​this sutta might be taken to recognize the existence of the puggala as an entity irreducible to the constituents.80 The appeal of the Burden Sutta to the Pudgalavādins is obvious.81 The second text, the statement that all things are Not-​self, represents a generalization of the discourse of discriminating insight found in the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta. That the Pudgalavādins accepted this formulation as the word of the Buddha indicates that they were able to reconcile, to their satisfaction at least, the discourse of discriminating insight to their doctrine of the person. This observation provides historical support for the claim, which can be made on purely logical grounds, that the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta stops short of (yet does not exclude) the orthodox denial of self.82 The last of these debated teachings, the discourses concerning the so-​called Unanswered Questions, are particularly significant for our purposes. The Buddha’s refusal to commit to the proposition that the soul is the same as, or different from, the body supports the pudgalavāda doctrine of the person as undetermined (Pali avyākata; Skt. avyākṛta) with respect to the question of whether it is identical to or separate from the constituents. Indeed, so close is the fit between the two that one suspects that the former may even have served as the original inspiration for the latter.83 I might go so far as to argue, in fact, that pudgalavāda represents a more immediately intelligible, and indeed perhaps historically prior, interpretation of the undetermined questions than the orthodox doctrine of No-​self. Below I shall examine, in turn, the discourses of discriminating insight and the Unanswered Questions with the overall aim of suggesting that the pudgalavāda represented a plausible interpretation of both discourses, and



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that, moreover, it is conceivable that the orthodox denial of a self developed dialectically in response to it.

Discriminating Insight As Rupert Gethin argued in a deservedly well-​known article, the Pali suttas can be understood as creative juxtapositions and expansions of a finite set of formulaic lists.84 The lists that structure the Pali suttas—​lists such as the five aggregates of grasping (upādāna-​kkhandha), the Four Noble Truths, and the six sense spheres (saḷāyatana)—​are indicative of the essentially oral character of this literature.85 As Gethin points out, the lists not only provide an easily memorizable summary of a body of teaching, but they also comprise the building blocks out of which an ancient monk could compose, in the absence of the technologies of writing, larger units of discourse.86 The Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta is no exception to this rule. The sutta is constructed on the basis of two fundamental lists, namely, the five constituents (khandha): physical form, feeling, perception, active conditioning factors, and consciousness (rūpa, vedanā, sañña, saṃkhårå, and viññāna, respectively);87 and the “three characteristics” (tilakkhaṇa) of conditioned things: as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-​self (anicca, dukkha, and anatta, respectively). Thus the dialogical core of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, which I quoted above, begins with the first of the constituents, physical form (rūpa), and proceeds to establish that it is impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-​self. The first two characteristics each entail the immediately succeeding one:  what is impermanent is ipso facto unsatisfactory, and what is unsatisfactory is, in turn, not-​self. The analysis of physical form concludes with a rhetorical expansion of the anattā concept: the Buddha declares, with respect to physical form, that, “This is not mine; this I am not; this is not my self” (netam mama; neso ‘ham asmi; na me so attāti).88 The foregoing analysis is duly repeated for the remaining khandhas, the analysis of each khandha concluding with the formulaic declaration that “[it] is not mine; this I am not; this is not my self.” We are then told that the realization of the constituents as anattā results in an attitude of disgust, which leads to repulsion, which in turn finally leads to liberation (nibbindati, virajjati, vimuccati, respectively). The sutta concludes with a stock expression, at once matter of fact and doxological, of the attainment of liberating insight: “destroyed is rebirth; lived is the righteous life; done is my task; for life in these conditions there is no hereafter.” The narrative frame

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of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta confirms this declaration with the report that the Buddha’s first five disciples attained arhatship immediately upon hearing the sermon. In keeping with its probable composite nature,89 I  propose that we initially adopt a minimalist approach to the interpretation of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, hewing closely to its two main component lists while holding off on interpreting the sutta in light of later developed doctrines like the Theravāda doctrine of the reducibility of the personality to the constituents or the pudgalavāda doctrine of the person as indeterminate with respect to the constituents. The lists, at least the more fundamental of them, encapsulate certain ideas, and to that extent they have a kind of integrity prior to their juxtaposition with others.90 Their original meanings are transformed, obscured, but not completely effaced by the emergent meanings created by subsequent juxtapositions.91 Indeed, one gets the impression that a preoccupation with interrelating lists—​elaborating on individual items of one list with others (such as the fourth noble truth with the eight limbs of the path), or slotting the items of one list into the structure of another (e.g., each of the khandhas into the Four Noble Truths’ structure of arising, cessation, and path to cessation)—​runs ahead of doctrinal and logical considerations. To the extent that the list making is driven by aesthetic considerations—​forming symmetrical, rounded-​ off structures, and so on—​we cannot expect the various combinations of lists to converge on a unified, consistent, and explicit body of doctrine. Accordingly, emergent doctrinal meanings are often incipient, ambiguous, and localized. It is hardly surprising that the sutta literature would be subject to interpretive disagreement and the need for subsequent doctrinal systematization.92 As we have seen, the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta combines the list of three characteristics (tilakkhaṇa) with the fivefold analysis of the human personality (pañca-​kkhandhā). The origins of the former list are obscure. Unlike many of the archaic formulae that figure prominently in efforts to uncover earlier linguistic strata, the tilakkhaṇa does not obey the principle of ascending syllables.93 Its first member, anicca, contains three syllables, while the second, dukkha, contains only two. This observation, along with the tilakkhaṇa’s curious absence in the Aṅguttara Nikāya’s list of “threes,” may suggest a relatively later origin, but one should not read that much into it.94 The order of the series is invariant, although sometimes the third member, anatta, is missing.95 As mentioned above, the three characteristics are linked by successive relations of entailment, culminating in the



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realization of the reality so characterized as “not-​self.”96 As exemplified by the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, the third characteristic is the most consequential, if also the least intuitive. It is the realization that the khandhas are individually and collectively anattā that results in the cessation of attachment and therewith liberation.97 Attachment to something would thus seem to presuppose a belief in the presence of the self in that something. The self can almost be defined formally as that to which one is attached; other realities—​in particular, the five constituents—​become objects of attachment only to the extent that they are associated with the idea of self. The characteristics of the self that render attractive whatever is associated with it are presumably the respective antitheses of the first two characteristics, namely, that it is permanent and pleasurable (nicca and sukha, respectively).98 When the idea of selfhood is withdrawn from things, they are recognized as anicca and dukkha and they henceforth become objects of indifference, if not aversion. The central philosophical question, of course, is how far this analysis extends. The orthodox Theravāda response is that anattā pertains to all things (dhammā). Rahula appeals to a triad of verses in the Dhammapāda (vv. 277–​279) in order to rebut the argument that the Buddha left open the question of the existence of a self apart from the five constituents. The first two Dhammapāda verses, 277 and 278, declare that all conditioned things (saṃkhārā) are aniccā and dukkhā, respectively.99 The third verse, 279, changes the subject of predication of the third characteristic, anattā. It is not simply all conditioned things (sabbe saṃkhārā) that are selfless but rather all things without exception (sabbe dhammā), dhammā being the more inclusive term.100 Thus, whereas the characteristics of impermanence and unsatisfactoriness pertain to all conditioned things—​that is, all things produced by karma101—​not-​self applies to all things, conditioned and unconditioned alike (saṃkhatā and asaṃkhatā, respectively).102 Now one might ask why the first two characteristics, anicca and dukkha, are restricted to conditioned reality. The reason seems to be to accommodate the unconditioned reality of nibbāna/​nirvāṇa. By implication, unconditioned reality—​ nibbāna—​is characterized by the opposites of anicca and dukkha, namely, nicca and sukha, respectively.103 Had the third characteristic, anattā, been restricted to conditioned reality like the first two, then nibbāna would, by implication, coincide with attā; that is, asaṃkhāta reality, nibbāna, would be nicca, sukha, and attā. The point of extending the reference of the third characteristic to asaṃkhāta reality, then, seems to have been to dissociate the concept of nibbāna, the summum bonum of Buddhism, from the

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concept of the self, the summum bonum of Brahmanism.104 Whether this was the original intent of Dhammapāda 279, however, is difficult to say. It has been argued that the all-​inclusive concept of dhamma is relatively late. A pair of earlier scholars, Stanisław Schayer and A. B. Keith, argued that “precanonical Buddhism” presupposed a duality between the realms of rūpa and dhamma, the former sensuous, impermanent, and localized, the latter spiritual, unchanging, and all-​pervading.105 A survival of this precanonical dualistic ontology, in fact, can be found in the early Mahāyāna contrast between the Buddha’s rūpakāya and dhammakāya—​that is, his physical body and his transcendental “truth-​body.”106 At this early stage in the tradition, they argued, impermanence was basically confined to the physical and psychological realities comprising the realm of rūpa. Presumably the precanonical tradition insisted upon the impermanence of the rūpa realm in order to underscore the importance of what was permanent.107 The first Dhammapāda verse considered by Rahula, sabbe saṃkhārā aniccā ti, would seem to reflect this precanonical ontology.108 The orthodox interpretation of Dhammapāda 279, with its all-​inclusive concept of dhamma, therefore may be anachronistic.109 This question of the range of applicability of the characteristic of not-​self brings us to the second constitutive list of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, the five khandhas. The origins of this list are also obscure. The fivefold classification is not entirely logical.110 The placement of the four groups of mental phenomena—​ namely, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness—​alongside the first, physical form, obscures the more fundamental division between the physical and the psychological.111 This more fundamental division is expressed by means of the ubiquitous dvandva compound nāma-​rūpa, “name-​and-​form.”112 Moreover, within the list of psychic phenomena, the enumeration obscures the priority of viññāna as a more comprehensive and fundamental reality than the other three.113 Finally, the somewhat difficult-​to-​translate fourth khandha, saṃkhāra, as we have just seen, is the very same term used to refer the class of realities that are impermanent and unsatisfactory. Thus the term denoting one of the khandhas is elsewhere used to refer to the class of conditioned phenomena as a whole, a class comprising the five khandhas as a group.114 As a general rule, an obscure or awkward classification betrays a discontinuous and at times ad hoc process of development.115 In a suggestive, though admittedly speculative article, Noritoshi Aramaki offers an intriguing genealogical, “text-​strata-​analytical” hypothesis to explain how



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a term denoting the trunk of a tree (Pali khandha; Skt. skandha) came to refer to the categories of conditioned existence. Aramaki argues that this usage derives from an ancient, pre-​Buddhist understanding of the karmically driven process of birth, death, and rebirth in terms of vegetable life-​cycles.116 Just as a plant germinates and grows in accordance with the nature of its seed, the transmigrating being is born and grows old in accordance with its previously accumulated karma.117 The trunk of the plant that persists until its eventual withering away comes to denote “the stubbornly persisting ‘trunk’ of the accumulated karman of our saṃsāric existence.”118 For our present purposes it is unnecessary to recount the various stages, hypothesized by Aramaki, through which the Buddhist tradition developed this archaic understanding of skandha as the trunk of saṃsāric existence into the familiar notion of five fundamental categories of conditioned existence. Suffice it to say that the latter notion eventually results when the former is combined with, on the one hand, the early concept of the saṃkhāras as denoting saṃsāric existences as a whole (the concept found in the Dhammapāda verses discussed above) and, on the other, rūpa, vedanā, saññā, and viññāna as concepts denoting the “deepest underlying layers of our saṃsāric existence.”119 In the context of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, the five khandhas denote the constituents of the human personality.120 Following a long-​standing scholarly tradition, prominent Buddhologists like Gombrich and Collins have argued that the Buddhist analysis of the human personality into the five khandhas can be properly understood only in the context of contemporary Brahmanical thought, which is assumed to have played a “culturally hegemonous role” vis-​à-​vis formative Buddhism.121 To be more specific, the Buddhist anattalakkhaṇa discourse is understood as a response to the analysis of the personality found in early Upaniṣads, such as the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya, texts that have been widely assumed to predate the advent of Buddhism.122 There the physical and mental components of the person are distinguished from their underlying vivifying principle, identified with the life breath (prāṇa), the mind (manas), and, most consequentially, with the self or ātman. The Vedic-​Upaniṣadic analysis reflects a process of development. At an early stage, Vedic thought posited a series of homologies linking various aspects of the human person, conceived as a microcosm, to their counterparts in the natural or cosmic world. Thus the breath is linked to the wind, the hairs on the head to vegetation, the eye to the sun, the mind to the moon, the mouth with fire, and so on.123 Some of these, like the

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breath/​wind and hair/​vegetation pairs, are intuitive; most, however, like the mind/​moon or mouth/​fire, require some imagination, as well as a familiarity with the presuppositions of Vedic mythology, to see the connection.124 As exemplified by the famous Puruṣa-​sūkta hymn of the Rg Veda (10:90), which describes the creation as a primordial act of sacrifice, the homologies form the basis of a cosmogonic myth: the parts of the cosmos are made out of the corresponding parts of the cosmic man.125 The death of an individual recapitulates this cosmogonic process. Upon death, the person’s various faculties are absorbed into their cosmic counterparts.126 Upaniṣadic speculation combines this system of microcosmic/​macrocosmic homologies with the evolutionary notion of subtle elements giving rise to coarser, more material ones.127 On the anthropological level, the more subtle elements of the personality are seen as producing and sustaining the more manifest ones in graduated series (a process reversed when a person dies128). This kind of speculation leads to the notion of the self or ātman as the subtle—​indeed, imperceptible129—​basis of the manifest faculties.130 Upaniṣadic speculation culminates in the identification of the innermost self (ātman), the underlying generative and sustaining principle of the person, with the imperceptible, metaphysical source of the universe, Brahman. Ātman/​brahman thus becomes the most fundamental of the elaborate system of Vedic homologies.131 The discrimination between the manifest faculties, including the most subtle, and the ātman becomes a central soteriological concept when, in the later Vedāntic tradition, the realization of the deathless ātman becomes the means of liberation from saṃsāric existence. As Steven Collins notes, this Upaniṣadic analysis of the personality shares with its Buddhist counterpart a negative evaluation of the manifest structures of the personality. At one point, the great Upaniṣadic sage Yājñavalkya declares that the value one places in something—​be it a spouse, wealth, children, the gods, or the Vedas—​ultimately derives from the self.132 As we have seen, this notion that the objects of human experience lack intrinsic value forms one of the underlying presuppositions of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta. There we saw that the realization of each of the khandhas as “not-​self” immediately dissolves any attachment to them. It is precisely because none of the constituents bears an intrinsic relation to the self—​according to the ubiquitous fourfold formula, one does not see physical form (for example) as self; nor self as possessing physical form; nor does one see physical form in the self; nor the self in physical form133—​that they should be cast aside.134 Once more we return to the



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contested question of whether the denigration of each of the constituents on the basis of their selflessness presupposes the existence of a self or, alternatively, only the concept of self.135 Collins, who, as we have seen, firmly denies the former possibility, points out that the Upaniṣadic notion of a central self animating the impersonal constituents of the personality is absent in the Buddhist analysis.136 In keeping with the Theravāda tradition, he argues that “[the Buddha] refused to consider any central self, leaving the direction of value away from the constituents of the personality simply as a direction arrow.”137 The Buddha’s rejection of such a self, moreover, exemplifies and symbolizes his oppositional stance toward Brahmanical discourses and practices more generally.138 This reading of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta as a critical appropriation of Upaniṣadic anthropological analysis coheres with the prevalent Buddhist stance with respect to Brahmanical concepts more generally. As a general tendency, the Buddha prefers to redefine, rather than reject outright, key Brahmanical concepts. For example, the true brāhamaṇa is no longer defined by his birth or his mastery of Vedic ritual knowledge but rather by his moral virtue (sīla).139 Similarly, Buddhism transforms the Brahmanical concept of ārya (Pali ariya), retaining its positive valence as “noble” while redirecting its referent from a member of one of the “twice-​born” social classes to an adherent of the Buddhist order.140 Dharma, to take a third example, originally a term denoting Vedic sacrifice, comes to refer to the Buddha’s teaching, which teaching, ironically enough, includes a rejection of Vedic sacrifice.141 Arguably the most consequential of these transformations, though, was the concept of karma itself. In Vedic thought, the paradigmatic form of consequential action—​karma—​was ritual action.142 By making intentional action, not ritual action, the karmically relevant act, Buddhism at once ethicized and universalized the Vedic karma concept.143 Standard treatments of the Buddhist appropriation of Brahmanical terminology take ātman/​attā, in keeping with the anattā doctrine, as an exception to this general Buddhist tendency to redefine key Brahmanical terms. Buddhism’s response to the Brahmanical concept of ātman was one of pure negation.144 If the redefined terms reflect the strategy employed by a counterhegemonic movement forced to assert itself in the idiom of a culturally dominant adversary,145 the negated term reflects the group’s consciousness of its own identity, its sense of itself as an “us” standing over against a culturally hegemonic “them.” One could perhaps argue that this sense of oppositional identity, symbolized by Buddhism’s rejection of the

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Brahmanical ātman concept, is presupposed in its strategy of subverting the Brahmanical order from within by redefining some of its key terms. The foregoing analysis of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta as a critical appropriation of the Upaniṣadic analysis of the personality, however, rests on several assumptions that have recently been called into question. The most fundamental of these is that Buddhism arose as a reaction to a culturally hegemonic Brahmanical ideology, an ideology exemplified in particular by the concepts of karma, saṃsāra, and liberation.146 In his book Greater Magadha, a compelling and provocative effort to rethink prevailing assumptions about the intellectual history of ancient India, Johannes Bronkhorst argues that the concepts of rebirth and karmic retribution, as well as the allied concept of an inactive self as a salvific principle, originated in a region of northern India (ancient Magadha and environs) that as late as the second century bce lay outside the ambit of traditional Brahmanical culture.147 He thus questions the widely held view that the ideas of karmic retribution and rebirth have antecedents in the older, pre-​Upaniṣadic Vedic tradition.148 Only as Brahmanical culture spread eastward over the next few centuries did it gradually absorb these ideas in a process that was protracted, uneven, and contested.149 According to Bronkhorst, the concept of the ātman found in the Upaniṣads was one product of this process of appropriation. The concept of an inactive self transcending the dynamics of karma and rebirth, Bronkhorst argues, was originally distinct from the ancient Vedic concept of the ātman as the microcosmic counterpart of the universe.150 The ātman concept found in Upaniṣadic texts like the famous Yājñavalkya Kāṇḍa of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (­chapters  3 and 4)  is an amalgam of these two concepts.151 Bronkhorst thus questions a central presupposition of the model of oppositional appropriation for understanding the relationship of early Buddhism and Brahmanism, namely, that the early Upaniṣads predated Buddhism and that, more generally, Brahmanical thought played a significant role in determining the context in which Buddhism arose.152 Bronkhorst’s theory supports the arguments made by earlier scholars that the putative allusions to Upaniṣadic doctrine in the sutta literature are too vague and uncertain to justify the hypothesis of a direct influence of the latter on the former.153 Bronkhorst maintains that in a sense their relation was the reverse of this: the early Upaniṣads were themselves influenced by the current of śramaṇic thought, of which Buddhism was one manifestation. Abandoning the presupposition that Buddhism arose in reaction to Brahmanical thought obviously changes the way we read the



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Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta. In particular, it happily relieves us of the obligation to explain away the sutta’s curious and, from an orthodox perspective, frustrating lack of an explicit denial of the self. On Bronkhorst’s reading, the original point of the sutta was not to oppose a putative Brahmanical hegemony by denying its central concept of the ātman. Rather, in keeping with the characteristically Buddhist emphasis on ethics and the concept of karma,154 it was to underscore the importance of actively turning away from the objects of desire in a program of moral and spiritual discipline.155 In doing so, it intentionally distanced itself from the gnosiological method of liberation associated with the rival śramaṇic movements of Jainism and Ājīvikism—​the notion, that is, that liberation from saṃsāric existence comes from the knowledge of a transcendental, inactive self.156 The point of the Anattalakkhaṇa discourse, then, was not so much to deny the existence of the self as it was to discourage the notion that the knowledge of the self constituted a viable path to liberation.157 It is undeniable, though, that many suttas depict confrontational relations between Buddhists and Brahmins158 and that, moreover, as Collins observes, the anattā doctrine came to symbolize Buddhism’s oppositional stance vis-​à-​vis Brahmanism.159 Building on Nathan McGovern’s work on the relations between Buddhists and Brahmins during Buddhism’s formative period, I would like to suggest that the opposition to the Brahmanical ātman concept belongs to a later stage in what was likely a diachronic process of Buddhist identity formation. McGovern argues that the practice of adopting and redefining Brahmanical terminology, which characterizes what he calls the “mainstream” early Buddhist stance towards Brahmanism,160 belongs to an admittedly early yet slightly advanced stage in the formation of Buddhist identity.161 The rhetoric belonging to this stage evinces a robust sense of Buddhist self-​identity sustained in large part by an oppositional contrast with a Brahmanical “other.”162 McGovern hypothesizes an earlier stage in Buddhist identity formation, however, in which brahmans were not yet seen as the Buddhists’ “other.” Drawing on the work of David Seyfort Ruegg (2008), he defends a “substratal model” of ancient Indian history, according to which emergent Buddhism, Jainism, Ajīvikism, and Brahmanism all drew from a common, “pan-​Indo-​Aryan substratum” of discourse and practice.163 These sects eventually precipitated out of this fluid and multiform cultural substratum as distinct and identifiable formations through a process of reciprocal identity formation.164 Belonging to this shared substratum of ideas was the term brāhmaṇa itself. This hypothesis of a common substratum

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explains the curiously noncontrastive use of the term in the Aṭṭhaka Vagga of the Sutta Nipāta, one of the earliest Buddhist texts.165 There the term is used to designate the follower of the Buddhist path without the irony characteristic of the “mainstream” rhetoric of the “true brahman.”166 At the same time, the Aṭṭhaka uses the term samaṇa, which refers to the class of non-​Brahmanical renunciants, in a decidedly and—​given that this was the group to which the Buddha himself belonged, at least according to later texts—​unexpectedly negative sense.167 On the basis of work done by scholars like Heesterman, Witzel, and Bronkhorst, McGovern hypothesizes that the Aṭṭhaka evinces an early, more inclusive, and nonhereditary conception of brahmanhood that predates the advent of what Bronkhorst calls the “new Brahmanism,” that is, the reworking of Brahmanical terminology into an exclusive social ideology promoted by hereditary lineages of ritual specialists.168 The dualistic rhetoric of the “mainstream” period reflects a later situation in which these Brahmanical ritual specialists, now having attained hegemony, competed with Buddhists for royal patronage.169 McGovern’s thesis raises the intriguing possibility that the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, with its curiously incipient concept of anattā, might reflect something of a transitional stage in the process of Buddhist identity formation vis-​à-​vis Brahmanism. Unfortunately, however, it is impossible to date the Anattalakkhaṇa discourse with any certainty or precision in relation to what was probably a protracted process through which, if Bronkhorst is right, the originally śramaṇic concept of an inactive self was gradually incorporated into Brahmanical ideology. If, as suggested above in connection with Bronkhorst’s work, what the Anattalakkhaṇa opposed was a particular method of liberation—​namely, identifying with an inactive self—​rather than the existence of a self per se, then it would reflect an early stage in the process of Buddhist identity formation in which rival śramaṇa movements like Jainism and Ajīvikism, and not Brahmanism, was Buddhism’s immediate rival or “proximate other.”170 Only later, when the Brahmanical ātman concept incorporated the idea of transcending karmic processes, did the Buddhist anātman concept come to symbolize a general opposition to Brahmanism. For my present purposes, it is enough to establish that the interpretive possibilities of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta are not exhausted by the Theravāda anattavāda. We turn now to another sutta discourse that I would like to argue is also amenable to a puggalavāda interpretation, the so-​called Unanswered Questions.



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The Unanswered Questions As mentioned above, in their defense of the concept of the pudgala as a real entity undetermined (avyākata, avyākṛta) with respect to the five skandhas, the Pudgalavādins appealed to the Buddha’s refusal to specify whether the soul (jīva) was the same as, or different from, the body (śarīra). The Buddha’s refusal to specify the body-​soul relation usually appears in the context of what are commonly referred to as the ten Unanswered or Undetermined (avyākata, avyākṛta) Questions. The ten questions can be divided into three groups. The first group comprises four questions concerning the nature of the self and world (attā ca loko ca). This set can be further subdivided into two pairs. The first of these pairs deals with the question of whether or not the self and world are eternal, the second with the question of whether or not self and world have a limit (anta). The second group consists of two questions concerning the above-​mentioned relation between the soul and body (jīva and sārīra, respectively): Are the soul and body one and the same (taṃ jīvaṃ taṃ sarīram) or is the soul one thing and the body another (aññaṃ jīvam aññaṃ sarīram)? The third and final set deals with the question of whether the enlightened saint or Tathāgata exists after death (hoti tathāgato paraṃ maranā). Here the question of the Tathāgata’s postmortem existence is formulaically expressed in terms of four logical possibilities:  Does the Tathāgata exist after death? Does he not exist after death? Does he both exist and not exist after death? Does he neither exist nor not exist after death? The Buddha’s refusal to answer these questions has vexed and frustrated the Buddha’s interlocutors and modern interpreters alike. One frustrated seeker, Māḷuṅkyāputta, insinuates that the Buddha has no reason to withhold valuable knowledge unless it is to conceal his own ignorance.171 Needless to say, the tradition rejects these insinuations.172 The ambiguity and obscurity of the Buddha’s silence is manifest in the range of explanations variously given to the Questions by modern interpreters. Some, for example, T. R. V. Murti, have argued that the Buddha’s silence stems from his awareness of a dimension of reality transcending the antimonies of human reason.173 Others, such as David Kalupahana, have advanced the diametrically opposed interpretation that the Buddha was an empiricist whose refusal to answer the Questions reflects an indifference to metaphysical matters.174 Still others have argued, on the basis of texts in which the Buddha declares such questions to be irrelevant to the religious life,

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that the Buddha was a pragmatist who was, furthermore, agnostic on the matters corresponding to the Questions.175 As Richard Hayes observes, the interpretive disagreement about the Unanswered Questions can be attributed in large part to the preconceptions that various modern interpreters bring to bear on the texts. Hayes identifies the “absolutist” interpretation of Murti and the “positivist” interpretation of Kalupahana, in particular, as projections of Western philosophical preoccupations onto the texts.176 To be fair to the proponents of those interpretations, however, interpretive disagreement regarding the Unanswered Questions can also be attributed, at least in part, to the different contexts in which the questions appear in the Canon. The list of questions constitutes a formulaic unit that, in keeping with the modular, “prefabricated” nature of the sutta literature, is variously juxtaposed with other Buddhist teachings. Different juxtapositions favor different interpretations. For example, in the Cūḷa-​Māḷuṅkya Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya, the Buddha explains his refusal to answer the Questions by comparing the monk who demands answers to them to a man shot by an arrow who refuses medical treatment until he knows the caste identity and the physical characteristics of the person who shot him.177 This text, perhaps the most famous of the suttas dealing with the Questions, clearly favors the pragmatic interpretation. Elsewhere the Buddha explains his refusal to answer by asking the king who questions him whether he has any accountant capable of counting the grains of sand in the Ganges or reckoning the volume of water in the ocean.178 This somewhat cryptic response suggests a “transcendentalist” interpretation according to which one should not inquire about realities that exceed one’s powers of comprehension. Both of these interpretations have the disadvantage of being wedded to their respective narrative contexts. To that extent they fail to illuminate other texts in which the Questions appear.179 For example, the pragmatic interpretation does not fully explain a famous text in the Udāna in which the Buddha compares a disputatious group of “ascetics, brahmans, and wanderers of diverse viewpoints” (sambahulā nānātitthiyā samaṇabrāhmaṇā paribbājakā) to a group of blind men arguing about the nature of an elephant on the basis of their respective tactile experiences of only one of the elephant’s parts (tail, tusk, ear, and so on).180 The key to a more comprehensive explanation for the Buddha’s refusal to answer the questions is found in several exchanges found in the Avyākata-​samyutta of the Saṃyutta Nikāya (S.iv.374–​ 403) in which the Buddha explains his silence with an appeal to the discourse of “Not-​self.” In the seventh



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discourse of this collection (S.iv.391ff.), the Buddha is asked why it is that the non-​Buddhist wanderers (aññatitthiyā paribbājakā), in marked contrast to the Buddha himself, variously commit to the views corresponding to the Unanswered Questions. Those wanderers, the Buddha explains, associate each of the six sense organs—​eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind—​with the notion of selfhood. That is, they declare with respect to each of these organs, “This is mine, this I am, this is my self.” The text thereby draws a connection between the holding of views (diṭṭhi) and the failure to recognize the selflessness of the constituents of the personality.181 What links the holding of views and the misrecognition of things as self is attachment. As we noted above in our analysis of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, a belief in the selfhood of something is implicit in the feeling of attachment toward that something. Thus we can infer that the Buddha refrains from committing to views because the latter are the products of attachment.182 The Unanswered Questions thus give expression to a theme found elsewhere in the Canon, namely, that all views (diṭṭhi), regardless of their content, are karmically conditioned and, to that extent, impede the direct insight of reality as it is (yathābhūtaṃ).183 The Aggi-​Vacchagotta Sutta (M.i.483–​489) contrasts the speculative views of rival teachers with the Buddha’s direct insight through a clever play on the Pali root √das/​dṛś, to see:  “The Tathāgata has put aside view [diṭṭhigataṃ], Vaccha. For the following is seen [diṭṭhaṃ] by the Tathāgata: physical form, the arising of physical form, and the disappearance of physical form.”184 This contrast between those holding speculative views and the Tathāgata’s direct vision coheres nicely with the parable of the blind men and the elephant in the Udāna. Like the king who can see the elephant, the Buddha apprehends the Dhamma, which transcends the partial—​in both the literal and the more pointed sense—​views over which ascetics and brahmans pointlessly argue. The locus classicus of this contrast between conditioned views and direct vision is the Brahmajala Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya.185 This famous sutta profiles sixty-​two views of which the first group of Unanswered Questions appears to be an epitome. Each of these views is karmically conditioned, as indicated by the Buddha’s repeated declaration that he knows how they have arisen and the effects they will have on those who hold them.186 He contrasts these views with his direct realization (sacci + √kar) of “things profound and difficult to realize and understand.”187 As Collins notes, this understanding of views as products of attachment constitutes a discourse on views that is distinct from the more

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familiar dichotomy between right view and wrong view (sammā-​diṭṭhi and micchā-​diṭṭhi, respectively).188 The category “right view” in this second paradigm includes, on the one hand, a general acceptance of the ideas of karma and saṃsāra and, on the other, specifically Buddhist teachings like the Four Noble Truths, Dependent Origination, and No-​self.189 Now, as we have just seen, the Buddha’s refusal to answer the ten questions coheres nicely with the first paradigm on views, that is, the understanding of views, irrespective of their content, as the conditioned products of attachment. The question arises, then, how the Buddha’s silence relates to the second paradigm. Prima facie, the Buddha’s indiscriminate refusal to commit to any of the Questions undermines the distinction between right view and wrong view. The discourse of the Unanswered Questions and the wholesale rejection of views that it implies would seem to jar with the doctrine of No-​self, in particular. Toward the end of the Avyākata-​saṃyutta, the wanderer Vacchagotta asks the Buddha directly about the self.190 To the former’s question, “Is there a self?” the Buddha remains curiously silent. Vacchagotta’s follow-​up question, “Is there not a self?” meets with the same response. When asked later about the exchange—​or, rather, the lack thereof—​the Buddha explains to Ananda that an affirmative response would have countenanced the extreme view of eternalism, a negative response (or, more precisely, an affirmative response to Vacchagotta’s second question) the extreme of annihilationism. Prima facie, the Buddha’s refusal to deny the existence of the self would seem to betray a noncommittal attitude toward the anattā doctrine. His further explanation that such a denial would have confused poor Vacchagotta, moreover, might only serve to call into question the wisdom of promulgating the anattā doctrine more generally. One wonders whether the Buddha’s silent treatment left poor Vacchagotta any less confused than a straightforward answer would have been!191 The Buddha’s description of Vacchagotta’s confused mental state, however, anticipates the ingenious solution that the tradition will adopt in reconciling the discourse of the Unanswered Questions with the formal anattā doctrine. This hapless wanderer, the Buddha explains to Ananda, would have thought, “Formerly I indeed had a self, but that self no longer exists.”192 Vacchagotta, in other words, would have misconstrued his lack of self as a loss of self. What makes this thinking annihilationist, then, is not the denial of the self’s existence, but rather—​paradoxically—​ the presupposition of its previous existence. Here, with this construal of annihilationism as presupposing the existence of a self, we have the



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key to the mainstream tradition’s solution to the problem of reconciling the Buddha’s rejection of views with the No-​self doctrine. All views, the annihilationist no less than the eternalist varieties, are to be rejected because they each presuppose the concept of the self that the tradition rejects. For precisely this reason the Buddha refused to answer the questions corresponding to those views. Put differently, the Buddha refused to answer the questions because they are, as Collins puts it, “linguistically ill-​formed” in that they employ terms with no real referent.193 This explanation for the Unanswered Questions can already be found in a fragment from the tradition of the famous dialogue between King Milinda and the legendary Buddhist monk Nāgasena (first century bce?), which is cited in Vasubandhu’s early fifth-​century Abhidhar­makośabhāṣya.194 When asked why no answer can be given to the question of whether the soul was the same as or different from the body, Nāgasena responds with a question: Are the mangos in the king’s inner court sweet or sour? Milinda replies that he cannot answer the question because there are no mango trees in his inner court. In the same way, Nāgasena explains, he cannot say whether the soul (jīva) is different from or the same as the body because the former does not exist. Admittedly, Nāgasena’s reply (as well as those of Vasubandhu and Śāntarakṣita) concerns only the second set of Unanswered Questions, those concerning the relation between the soul and body. This pair of questions seems to have attained something of a paradigmatic status with respect to the Questions as a whole, owing to the fact that they readily correspond to the extremes of eternalism and annihilationism, respectively, and that the Buddha’s refusal to answer them, accordingly, gives expression to the doctrine of the Middle Way.195 And yet Nāgasena’s argument can be extended to the other Questions. The presupposition of a self is more or less explicit in the first set of questions concerning the nature of the self (attā) and the world, namely, whether or not the self is eternal and whether or not it has a limit. However one answers this set of questions, one tacitly affirms the existence of the self. That the third set of questions concerning the Tathāgata’s postmortem existence presupposes the concept of the self is a little less obvious. In order to bring the third set in line with the official interpretation, the tradition glosses the term tathāgata as attā or satta (being).196 Most scholars nowadays explain the Unanswered Questions by essentially reproducing the argument given by authors like Vasubandhu, Buddhaghosa, and Kamalaśīla. Thus, to answer the Questions would be like asking whether the present king of France is bald (N. Smart; Collins), when one stopped

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beating one’s wife (P. Harvey), whether the unicorn is white (Hayes), or whether Martians are green (Gethin).197 Thus the traditional explanation of the Buddha’s silence rests on an essentially philosophical argument, namely, that the Unanswered Questions rest on a faulty presupposition. It contrasts with what might be called the “apophatic” explanation, mentioned above, that each of the views corresponding to the Unanswered Questions is karmically conditioned.198 What links the two explanations, the philosophical and the apophatic, is the understanding of attavāda as the most fundamental expression of attachment. As the most direct cognitive expression of feelings of attachment, attavāda is the fundamental presupposition of all the conditioned views—​even those, ironically, that deny the existence of the self. What I have been calling, faute de mieux, the apophatic and the philosophical explanations of the Buddha’s silence—​that is, the Questions as karmically conditioned and as presupposing the existence of a self—​ correspond, respectively, to the discourse of discriminating insight found in the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta and to the formal anattā doctrine. The way in which one envisions the latter relation between anattalakkhaṇa and anattavāda, therefore, determines the way one relates the two explanations for the Buddha’s silence.199 Admittedly, the two explanations cohere tightly with one another, at least so long as one accepts the proposition that attavāda represents the most fundamental expression of attachment. And yet, in keeping with a diachronic approach to Buddhist doctrine, I  prefer to keep the two explanations apart. For the hypothesis that the formal anattā doctrine represents a later development of the discourse of discriminating insight suggests that the philosophical explanation of the Questions as resting on the false presupposition of a self represents a later elaboration of the apophatic explanation of the Questions as conditioned by attachment. Only by keeping these two explanations apart can one create the interpretive space, as it were, in which we can imagine how the Pudgalavādins may have approached the Questions. This diachronic approach to the Questions receives support from a consideration of the Aṭṭhaka Vagga of the Sutta Nipāta. As mentioned above, this section of the Sutta Nipāta is one of the oldest in the Canon.200 It is also one that, perhaps not coincidentally, gives particularly striking expression to what Luis Gómez, in a classic article, termed the “doctrine of no views.”201 The Aṭṭhaka depicts the Buddhist sage as unattached to



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speculative views and therefore aloof from pointless disputation and conflict: The sage has abandoned the notion of self or ego and is free from clinging. He does not depend even on knowledge; he does not take sides in the midst of controversy; he has no dogmatic views.202 Gómez remarks that the Aṭṭhaka’s counsel to give up attachment to all views, and not simply to wrong views, stands in tension with the standard canonical teaching.203 Despite the effort of the commentarial tradition, starting with the canonical Niddesa, to bring the Aṭṭhaka’s teaching in line with mainstream canonical teaching by glossing “view” as specifically “wrong view,”204 the Aṭṭhaka likely represents an early stratum of Buddhist teaching that is distinct from the mainstream view.205 If this hypothesis has merit, then we have some justification for isolating the first explanation for the Buddha’s refusal to answer the ten Unanswered Questions—​ namely, that the Questions are symptomatic of attachment—​from the second explanation, that the Questions presuppose the existence of a self. And on the basis of the former we can imagine how the Pudgalavādins may have explained the Buddha’s silence. As mentioned above, our knowledge of the teachings of the pudgalavāda schools of Buddhism is rather limited. There is one central tenet of pudgalavāda Buddhism, however, that is fairly certain. These schools taught that the person (pudgala; puggala) is undetermined (avyākṛta) or inexpressible (avācya; avaktavya) with respect to the five constituents (skandha; khandha) of the personality.206 That is, the pudgala is neither different from, nor identical to, the constituents.207 The Pudgalavādins’ favorite image for this relation between person and the five aggregates was that of the relation between a fire and its fuel.208 The fire has a reality over and above its fuel, such that it cannot be reduced to the latter. In just the same way, the person is not reducible to the constituents; the person is not simply a label for the aggregate of skandhas. Nor, on the other hand, can the pudgala exist apart from the aggregates, any more than a fire can exist independently of the fuel that it consumes. In short, the pudgala is supported by the skandhas, in the way that a fire is supported by its fuel, without, however, being constituted by them.209 For the Pudgalavādins, the doctrine of the person as neither identical to nor different from the constituents represented the Middle Way between the heretical extremes of eternalism and annihilationism. A pudgala existing apart from the

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constituents would coincide with the Brahmanical ātman, the quintessential expression of eternalism. A pudgala identical to the constituents, on the other hand, could not bridge the gap between one existence and the next. Such a nominal pudgala would thus imply an “annihilationist” denial of karma and rebirth.210 This concept of the person as neither identical to, nor separate from the constituents coheres nicely with the Buddha’s refusal to answer the second group of Unanswered Questions concerning the relation between the soul and body. Assuming that the jīva is equivalent to the pudgala and the śarīra to the aggregate of skandhas, the latter two questions correspond exactly to the eternalist and annihilationist conceptions of the relation between the pudgala and the skandhas that the Pudgalavāda doctrine rejects. That is, the question of whether the soul is identical to the body corresponds to the annihilationist view that the person is reducible to the constituents, and the question of whether the soul is one thing and the body another corresponds to the eternalist proposition that the person is separate from the constituents. So natural is the fit between this second group of undetermined (avyākṛta) questions and the doctrine of the pudgala as undetermined (avyākṛta) with respect to the constituents that one suspects that the latter teaching was based on the former.211 From a pudgalavāda perspective, skandhamātravāda of the Theravādins and Sarvāstivādins fails to account for the Unanswered Questions. Such a critique is voiced by the Pudgalavādin opponent (pūrvapakṣin) in Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya:  “If the person is nothing more than the constituents, then why did the Blessed One not answer the question about whether the soul was the same or different from the body?”212 One can well imagine that a real-​life Pudgalavādin would have regarded Vasubandhu’s counterargument—​ namely, that the questioner presupposed a single substantial soul, an internal agent of action213—​as a clever, but sophistical reply. Vasubandhu’s objection implicitly denies that the taṃ jīvaṃ taṃ sarīram question expresses the nominalist thesis that the jīva is simply a name for the body. Rather, on Vasubandhu’s interpretation, the question enshrines the self-​contradictory proposition that a substantial self inhering in the body is identical to the body. This interpretation of Vasubandhu seems a bit forced. It assumes that the concept of jīva in the formulation is pregiven, rather than being determined by the context of the proposition itself. From a pudgalavāda perspective, the strained construal of the fifth Unanswered Question as presupposing something like the concept of the Brahmanical ātman conceals the more natural



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interpretation that the jīva is simply an alternative label for the body. It is hardly surprising, of course, that Vasubandhu would suppress the nominalist interpretation of the fifth Unanswered Question. For this arguably more natural construal coincides with the skandhamātravāda defended by Vasubandhu, and the latter would therefore fall under the Buddha’s critique of annihilationism. One could argue that the pudgalavāda hypothesis of a person inexpressible with respect to the constituents allows for a more natural explanation for the third group of Unanswered Questions—​ those that concern the Tathāgata’s existence after death—​ as well. To see this, it is first necessary to refine our conception of the pudgala as the Pudgalavādins likely understood it.214 Thus far we have considered the pudgala in relation to the five aggregates. According to that conception, the pudgala is neither reducible to the aggregates nor independent of them. Unfortunately, this conception fails to account for transmigration, that is, how the pudgala bridges the gap between one existence and another. Nor does it adequately explain why the Buddha refused to countenance the view that the Tathāgata is nonexistent after death (when the aggregates have ceased).215 To meet these exigencies, the Pudgalavādins proposed two additional ways in which the person was to be conceived. In addition to “the person conceived according to the basis” (āśraya–​prajñapta–​pudgala), that is, according to the aggregates,216 the Pudgalavādins considered the “person conceived according to transition” (saṃkrama–​prajñapta–​pudgala) and the “person conceived according to cessation” (nirodha–​prajñapta–​pudgala).217 The two latter conceptions allowed the Pudgalavādins to conceive the person as existing in some fashion even when the aggregates have ceased. The “concept according to cessation,” in particular, was intended to explain how one can speak of the Tathāgata after death or, in other words, the pudgala in parinirvāṇa.218 On the basis of these two additional specifications of the Pudgalavāda concept of the person, Priestley proposes broadening the notion of the pudgala as a conceptual whole based on, but irreducible to, the aggregates to the notion of the pudgala as “a temporal manifestation of a timeless reality.”219 In the context of the questions about the Tathāgata’s postmortem existence, the timeless reality of which the pudgala is a temporal manifestation is nirvāṇa. Perhaps surprisingly, the analogy with fire provides the key to understanding how the Pudgalavādins probably understood this relation between the pudgala and nirvāṇa and therewith the third set of

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Unanswered Questions.220 At first sight, however, it would appear that the fire analogy fails to support the Pudgalavādins’ contention that the pudgala that has attained complete cessation abides in nirvāṇa.221 If, as texts like the Aggi-​Vacchagotta Sutta (M.i.483–​489) suggests, an extinguished fire provides a model for understanding parinirvāṇa, then it might seem that the nirvanized pudgala, like the extinguished fire, simply ceases to exist.222 When understood in its ancient Indian context, however, the image of the extinguished fire likely conveyed a more ambiguous meaning. Ancient Brahmanical texts understand the going out of a fire, not as a complete extinction, but rather as a return to an unmanifest state.223 And while some prominent scholars, most notably Steven Collins, have argued that it is inappropriate to extend this Brahmanical conception to early Buddhist texts,224 the notion of a nonlocalizable, unmanifest fire is helpful, at the very least, in disabusing us of the deceptive self-​evidence of a nihilist interpretation of the Aggi-​Vacchagotta Sutta and therewith the third set of Unanswered Questions. Thus when the Buddha, in response to Vacchagotta’s question about the Tathāgata’s existence after death, poses the rhetorical counterquestion about the destination of the extinguished fire—​did it go to the east, the west, the north, or the south?—​his point was not that the Tathāgata simply ceases to exist. Rather, it was that the Tathāgata after death, like the unmanifest fire into which the extinguished fire has returned, cannot be localized or traced.225 For the Pudgalavādins, in other words, the pudgala returns to nirvāṇa the way a fire returns to the one, unmanifest fire.226 Such an interpretation is supported by a significant text in the Sutta Nipāta. After comparing the wise man liberated from mental existence to an extinguished flame, the Buddha explains: When a person has gone out, then there is nothing by which you can measure him. That by which he is talked about is no longer there for him; [but] you cannot say that he does not exist. When all ways of being, all phenomena are removed, then all ways of description are removed. No description is possible for the one who has gone out. That by which people would speak of him no longer exists for him. When all things have been removed, all of the ways of speaking [about those things] have also been removed.227 Prima facie, this claim that the nirvanized pudgala continues to exist in some fashion after death, albeit on an atemporal, nonmanifest plane that



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is, as the ubiquitous formula has it, “profound, immeasurable, unfathomable like the ocean”228 stands in tension with the Buddha’s refusal to assent to the proposition that the Tathāgata exists after death. And yet, one can reconcile the former claim with the Unanswered Questions by distinguishing between the two Pali forms of the verb “to be,” corresponding to the two Sanskrit roots √as and √bhū: namely, atthi and hoti, respectively. As Peter Harvey notes, the latter, hoti, is used interchangeably with the verb upapajjati, “arises,” in the context of the third set of Unanswered Questions.229 When hoti is equivalent to upapajjati, then, as Harvey argues, the third set of Unanswered Questions can be understood to deny the existence of the Tathāgata in the sense of having arisen in some rebirth in relation to the constituents.230 The Questions do not exclude, however, an atemporal mode of existence of the Tathāgata after death, a concept which is encompassed within the broader semantic range of atthi.231 Thus one cannot say that the Tathāgata exists after death if “exists” is understood in the more restricted sense of upapajjati. And yet one cannot say that he does not exist after death if “exists” is understood in the broader sense of atthi. Thus the Unanswered Questions concerning the Tathāgata’s postmortem existence turn on the ambiguity of the term “exists” (hoti) with respect to upapajjati and atthi. Could it be that this notion of the nirvanized pudgala existing on an atemporal and nonlocalized plane of existence hearkens back to a precanonical cosmology in which the categories of rūpa and dharma corresponded to two antithetical realms of existence, the one temporal and impermanent, the other “placeless” (asthāna) and unchanging?232 Priestley remarks that the conception of a fire that continues to exist on an unmanifest plane after it goes out contradicts the doctrine of impermanence.233 And yet this notion of the unmanifest fire, together with the notion of the pudgala that persists in nirvāṇa,234 cohere with a hypothetical precanonical cosmology in which impermanence is restricted to the realm of form.235 The hypothetical precanonical dualism between the realms of rūpa and dharma sheds light on the otherwise paradoxical statement that the Tathāgata cannot be said to exist after death because he is “free from all reckoning by physical form” (rūpa-​saṃkhāya vimutto) and yet cannot be said not to exist because he is “deep, boundless, [and] unfathomable like the great ocean.”236 In a significant passage from the Milindapañha, Nāgasena suggests that the Buddha cannot be said not to exist because he can be pointed out by his dharma-​body.237 If this hypothesis—​namely, that statements regarding the Tathāgata’s postmortem existence reflect a precanonical

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cosmology—​has merit, then perhaps the notion of a pudgala that exists in nirvāṇa reflects an earlier stage of the tradition and pudgalavāda, accordingly, represents a more conservative, traditionalist viewpoint than its Theravāda/​Sarvāstivāda counterpart.238 The hypothesis that the “orthodox” doctrines of No-​self and (universal) impermanence developed dialectically in relation to this precanonical tradition would explain the tension that exists between canonical statements suggesting the atemporal existence of the Tathāgata after death, on the one hand, and Theravāda orthodoxy, on the other. For the doctrines of No-​self and universal impermanence suppress the notion of an atemporal, nonlocalized mode of existence that these canonical statements seem to presuppose. And in the absence of such a notion, statements like the nun Khemā’s declaration (S.iv.376) that the Buddha both before and after death is “immeasurable like the vast ocean” can be acknowledged only somewhat awkwardly and inadequately as expressions of poetic feeling.239 A methodological commitment to Theravāda orthodoxy discourages the interpretive elaboration of such statements. One must be satisfied with the vague acknowledgment that they support the bald assertion that skandhamātravāda is not nihilism and leave matters at that.240 That the Theravāda explanation of the Unanswered Questions is a bit strained in comparison with that of pudgalavāda makes clear that the orthodox anātmavāda was not simply a straightforward thematization of the teaching of the suttas. To explain the emergence of a doctrine as counterintuitive as anātman, however, it is not enough simply to appeal to the general hermeneutical principle that the authoritative texts of a tradition are read in light of the questions and concerns of a later age. To restate my overall hypothesis, the emergence of the anātman doctrine can be adequately explained only in terms of social identity processes. One can discern the underlying presence of such processes in some of the later anti-​pudgalavāda rhetoric. As we shall see below in detail, both Vasubandhu and Śāntarakṣita argue that the doctrine of the pudgala is only the Brahmanical doctrine of the ātman under a different name. Accordingly, the Pudgalavādins are “outsiders within” or “pseudo-​ Buddhists.”241 They vainly try to conceal their heterodoxy by referring to the ātman under another name.242 Now this “Trojan Horse” rhetoric—​that one’s proximate rivals are really outsiders in disguise—​points to a situation that can be described in terms of the social identity concept of metacontrast. That is to say, the rhetoric reflects a situation in which one faction in a hegemonic struggle seeks to gain the upper hand over its rival(s) by



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maximizing its contrast with a recognized out-​group. According to social identity theory, then, the anātman doctrine would have been motivated by a desire to maximize, over against pudgalavāda (or proto-​pudgalavāda) Buddhists, the contrast with various out-​groups (Brahmanical and other), which were in turn collectively defined by the doctrine of an immortal self or ātman. We need not assume, however, that a boundary between Buddhists and Brahmins marked by the ātman concept preexisted the intra-​ Buddhist struggle between the Pudgalavādins and their rivals. Social identity theory allows for the possibility that intergroup identity processes are “dynamically interdependent” with intragroup processes. That is to say, “a change in the intergroup comparative context can dramatically change the in-​group prototype” and, conversely, “groups themselves have some control over intergroup relations and the representation of out-​groups and of inter-​group relations.”243 In light of the dependence of the representation of an out-​group on intragroup processes—​ the second side of this relation of interdependence—​ it could be that the representation of the non-​Buddhist or Tīrthika other as defined by an adherence to ātmavāda may have developed in the context of intra-​ Buddhist struggles between pudgalavāda and non-​ pudgalavāda sects. An unexpected finding in Leonard Priestley’s study of pudgalavāda Buddhism hints at such a possibility. Against the prevailing assumption that the Pudgalavādins clearly distinguished their pudgala from the self or ātman,244 Priestley notes that the Pudgalavādins were, from fairly early on, quite unembarrassed about using the term ātman to refer to the pudgala.245 This does not mean, of course, that they identified their pudgala with the non-​Buddhist ātman concept and secretly affirmed the latter, as their critics contended. But it does suggest that at the time the pudgalavāda schools developed their theory, the ātman was not narrowly identified with the non-​Buddhist, much less the strictly Brahmanical ātman concept.246 Thus the ātman concept may have become a Brahmanical identity marker vis-​à-​vis Buddhism considerably later than is usually supposed. Indeed, as Vincent Eltschinger and Isabelle Ratié note, judging from the polemical targets of extant Indian Buddhist literature, “the non-​Buddhist ātman seems to first enter the scene in the first decades of the fifth century” with the works of Vasubandhu.247 The pudgalavāda schools thus would have conceded the term to the Tīrthikas, and the Brahmans in particular, some time well after their teaching had been established. Priestley’s observation

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raises the further possibility that when the Pudgalavādins did eventually dissociate their pudgala concept from that of the ātman, they did so in response to the accusation that they were outsiders masquerading under the mantle of Buddhism. This hypothesis is, needless to say, highly speculative. One would like to establish a relative chronology between, on the one hand, the emergence of the ātman concept as a boundary marker between Buddhists and non-​ Buddhists and, on the other, the doctrinal split between pudgalavāda schools like the Vātsīputrīyas and their rivals. Given the uncertainty regarding the chronology of Buddhism’s formative period, as well as the difficulty of determining the ideological import of many of the critical references to the soul or self in Buddhist literature, this is not possible, at least at the present time. Let me simply make two points concerning this relation between the Personalist controversy in Buddhism and the emergence of the anattā doctrine as a symbolic boundary marker with Brahmanism. The first is that Bronkhorst’s thesis that early Buddhism was not a reaction to Brahmanism lends support to the hypothesis that the identification of the Brahmanical ātman concept as the defining doctrine of Brahmanism stood in a relation of dynamic interdependence with the assertion of the orthodox anātman doctrine over against the pudgala doctrine. Second, the use of social identity theory to explain the genesis of the anātman doctrine does not depend on the rough simultaneity of these two processes and an interdependent relation between them. It could be that the anātman doctrine was developed in direct relation to the Brahmanical ātman concept, as the work of scholars like Gombrich and Collins suggests. And yet I am inclined to favor the first hypothesis, not only because I find Bronkhorst’s theory persuasive, but also because the Gombrich-​Collins thesis that the orthodox anātman doctrine developed in direct opposition to the Brahmanical ātmavāda does not provide as convincing an explanation of the widespread appeal of a minimally contrastive doctrine like pudgalavāda, to say nothing of the early Pudgalavādins’ curious indifference to the ātman/​pudgala distinction.

6

Anātmavāda versus Pudgalavāda in Abhidharmic and Postcanonical Literature An argument will make sense as a specifically Buddhist one if it makes sense as a logical development of the idea of selflessness, which is the commitment whose elaboration and defense is arguably what all Buddhist philosophy concerns in the end. Dan Arnold (2005: 118)

The Kathāvatthu I turn now to the earliest extant refutation of the pudgalavāda thesis, the first chapter of the Theravāda Abhidhamma text, the Kathāvatthu (Kv.).1 Interestingly, unlike later anti-​pudgalavāda polemics like those of Vasubandhu or Śāntarakṣita, this chapter, the Puggalakathā (“Debate Concerning the Person”) of the Kathāvatthu, does not attempt to assimilate pudgalavāda to the Brahmanical ātmavāda.2 Nor does it seem to question the Puggalavādin Vajjiputtakas’ (Vātsīputrīya) status as Buddhists.3 This observation may support the hypothesis that the Brahmanical ātmavāda was yet to be established as the quintessential anti-​Buddhist doctrine at the time the text was composed, which could have been as early as the third century bce.4 The Puggalakathā likely belongs to the earliest stratum of a text, the Kathāvatthu, that developed by a process of accretion.5 According to the Pali tradition, the Kathāvatthu was composed at the conclusion of the Third Buddhist Council, which was allegedly convened by the great king Aśoka in the capital city of Pāṭaliputra. The council (sanghīti, lit. “recitation”) was a response to an unintended consequence of the newly converted king’s patronage of the Buddhist Saṅgha. The Pali

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Chronicles tell us that the concomitant withdrawal of patronage from non-​Buddhist sects led to a situation in which the adherents of those sects infiltrated the Saṅgha in order to receive the prestige and material support—​Buddhaghosa6 poignantly informs us that they no longer had enough to eat—​recently denied them.7 These imposters did not renounce their former beliefs; the Kathāvatthu commentary mentions some of the misguided “views” comprehensively enumerated in the Brahmajala Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya: eternalism, “eel-​wriggling,” annihilationism, and the like. Instead, they impudently proclaimed these views as the doctrine of the Buddha. As a result, the authentic Buddhists, keenly aware of the presence of heretics in their midst, refused to perform the Uposatha ceremony, the fortnightly communal recitation of monastic rules.8 The emperor’s initial attempt to order the Saṅgha to hold the ceremony ended in disaster when an overzealous minister had some of the Buddhist elders beheaded for their noncompliance.9 A rather contrite Aśoka, humbled by the spectacular failure of this example of imperial overreach,10 henceforth adopted a rather less heavy-​handed strategy. On the advice of the great elder (thera), Moggaliputta Tissa, the emperor convened a council whose purpose was a purification of the Saṅgha by a public examination of each of the views held by the various factions. There the king declared each of the non-​Buddhist views to be at odds with the Buddha’s teaching.11 At the dramatic climax of this public examination, the representatives of the true doctrine were asked to identify the Buddha’s doctrine. To the reply that the Buddha was an “analyst” (Vibhajjavādin), the king, who, with his rudimentary grasp of Buddhist doctrine, presumably was unfamiliar with the term, turned toward Moggaliputta Tissa for confirmation. Moggaliputta’s affirmative response identified the true bhikkhus and the Saṅgha was thereupon purified.12 At some point around the time of the Third Council—​the sources are not consistent on the order of the events13—​Moggaliputta recited the Kathāvatthu in order to refute all heresies and establish sound doctrine.14 In composing this text he followed the outline (mātikā) of topics prophetically set forth by none other than the Buddha himself, a narrative detail intended to explain and justify the Kathāvatthu’s canonical status as the “word of the Buddha” (buddhavacana).15 It is difficult to determine the extent to which this account reflects historical reality, as it is all but impossible to isolate “event” from “idea” in the accounts of the early Buddhist “councils” more generally.16 It is nevertheless worthwhile to reflect on the curious disconnect between



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this account of the occasion of the Kathāvatthu’s composition and the content of the text itself.17 From the account above, we would expect the Kathāvatthu to contain Buddhist refutations of the main diṭṭhis of the Titthiyas/​Tīrthikas—​eternalism, annihilationism, and so on.18 What we find instead, of course, are refutations of other Buddhist views.19 In an important article, Heinz Bechert offers a hypothesis that resolves this contradiction. On the basis of a comparison of the Pali accounts of the Third Council with the so-​called Schism Edict of Aśoka, the latter in turn examined in relation to the technical terminology of the Vinaya texts, Bechert argues that there was no necessary connection between Aśoka’s purification of the Saṅgha and the Third “Council” headed by Moggaliputta Tissa shortly afterwards.20 The purification concerned matters of monastic discipline (vinaya), not doctrinal disputes.21 The council, by contrast, which Bechert, following Frauwallner,22 understands not to have been a Nicaea-​like assembly of representatives of the entire Saṅgha but rather only a local synod of communities belonging to the same school (nikāya), was concerned with fixing the canonical texts and establishing doctrinal positions.23 Thus, the report about the expulsion of the Tīrthikas reflects the purification of the Saṅgha; the report about Moggaliputta Tissa refuting erroneous doctrines in the Kathāvatthu concerns the council, another event altogether.24 The apparent contradiction in the extant accounts reflects the subsequent conflation of these two events, along with the mythologization of the latter as a universal, “ecumenical” council by the Pali tradition.25 This conflation of the expulsion of non-​Buddhist monks (the purification) and the refutation of rival Buddhist views (the council) in the Kathāvatthu’s frame narrative has the effect of suggesting that a text refuting rival Buddhist views had been used to establish Buddhist teaching against non-​Buddhist sects. To that extent the frame narrative of the Kathāvatthu implies a rhetoric of hegemony. That is, the particular Buddhist perspective defended in the Kathāvatthu is identified with the defining characterization of the Buddha’s teaching over against outside groups, namely, Vibhajjavāda.26 Given our uncertainty about the history behind the traditional accounts, we do not know whether the particular sect whose doctrines are defended in the Kathāvatthu recast an originally intramural Buddhist dispute as an “interreligious” one, thereby assimilating their Buddhist rivals to non-​Buddhist “heretics,” in order to discredit the former.27 Such a possibility is suggested by the commentary’s juxtaposition of the Dīpavaṃsa’s tendentious enumeration of the eighteen original

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schools—​tendentious because seventeen are described as heretical offshoots from the original trunk of the “Elders” (thera)28—​with the account of Aśoka’s purification of non-​Buddhist views from the Saṅgha. Nor, alternatively, do we know whether the proponents of the views defended in the extant Kathāvatthu retroactively laid claim to the name of the defining characteristic of the Buddha’s teaching vis-​à-​vis non-​Buddhist sects.29 The fact that the designation Vibhajjavāda is found only in the story of the expulsion of the non-​Buddhist ascetics from the Saṅgha—​Vibhajjavāda is not listed among the eighteen original schools listed in the introduction to the commentary, nor is it found in the body of the commentary30—​might suggest this possibility. In any case, it is clear that the frame narrative provided by the Kathāvatthu commentary is intended to suggest that the doctrine defended in the Kathāvatthu is the only authentically Buddhist one. If we consider the text in isolation from that narrative context, however, there is little to suggest that the author of the Kathāvatthu refused to recognize his adversaries as Buddhists.31 The Kathāvatthu itself is an unusual and obscure text. The dialogue between the Theravādin and his Puggalavādin opponent in the Puggalakathā follows a rigid formal structure that presumably reflects the structure of formalized debates in ancient India. In each exchange, one participant assumes the role of questioner, the other the role of defender. The questioner seeks to expose contradictions in his adversary’s position. The defender is able to respond only in the affirmative or the negative. The two parties take turns challenging their opponent’s position and defending their own. Since it is believed that Indian logic developed on the basis of the rules of formal debate,32 scholars interested in the history of Indian logic have taken a keen interest in the logical form of the Kathāvatthu’s arguments.33 Here, however, I am concerned only with the substance of the arguments concerning the existence of the person. The Puggalakathā, which runs nearly seventy pages in the PTS (Pali) text, contains well over two hundred exchanges (kathās) concerning the puggala concept. In true Abhidhamma fashion, many of these, however, are minor variants of a smaller set of basic arguments. For example, a proliferation of exchanges results from slotting in each of the fifty-​seven dhammas (the five khandhas, twelve āyatanas, eighteen dhātus, and the twenty-​two indriyas) into the structure of a basic argument relating the ontological status of the puggala to that of a dhamma like physical form (rūpa). The vast majority of the exchanges contained in the Puggalakathā concern the epistemological and ontological status of the person, as



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expressed in the proposition that “the person is found truly and ultimately.”34 A smaller but still significant number of exchanges concern the concept of the puggala as a principle of transmigration.35 These concern the question of whether “the person transmigrates from this world to the next, and [conversely] from that world to this world.”36 There is also an exchange that concerns the existence of the person in nirvāṇa, expressed in the question is whether the “nirvanized” person exists in the goal (i.e., nirvāṇa).37 Below I examine five representative arguments that collectively cover these three topics.38 In the first of my examples, the Theravādin questioner begins by establishing that his Puggalavādin opponent affirms that both the person and physical form (rūpa) are “found truly and ultimately” (saccikaṭṭhaparamaṭṭhena). He follows up with the question of whether physical form then is one thing and the person another (aññaṃ rūpaṃ añño puggalo ti). The Puggalavādin’s refusal to assent to this version of the sixth Unanswered Question prompts the accusation of self-​contradiction: if the person exists in the same manner as an existent like physical form, then they must be two distinct realities.39 In a later set of exchanges—​after running through all fifty-​seven dhammas in place of rūpa in the argument above—​the Theravādin adds weight to the preceding argument by getting his opponent to affirm the proposition that if two things are found truly and ultimately, then they must be distinct from each other. That is, the Puggalavādin affirms that rūpa is one thing and vedanā, the next khandha on the list, is another.40 This admission underscores the inconsistency of his refusal to assent to the proposition that rūpa is one thing and the puggala is another. Arguments like these dramatize the orthodox, “philosophical” explanation for the Unanswered Questions examined above, namely, that the Questions cannot be answered because they rest on a faulty presupposition, specifically, the existence of the self or person. The Theravādin sets up his argument in such a way that the proposition that the person is found truly and ultimately leads inexorably to either one of the unanswerable questions regarding the relation between the puggala and khandhas.41 Withdraw the original proposition and the questions do not arise. My third and fourth examples concern the proposition that “the person transmigrates from this world to the next, and [conversely] from that world to this world” (puggalo sandhāvati asmā lokā paraṃ lokaṃ, parsamā lokā imaṃ lokan ti). The Theravādin follows up with a question that, as we shall see, will figure prominently in the famous dialogue between the monk Nāgasena and King Milinda in the Milindapañha:  namely,

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whether the person who transmigrates from this world to the next is the same as the person who transmigrates from that world to this world.42 The Puggalavādin refuses to assent to this proposition as it implies the eternalist heresy. The Theravādin comes right back with the annihilationist alternative: Is the person who transmigrates from this world to the next different from the person who transmigrates from that world to this one (añño puggalo sandhāvati …)? The Puggalavādin refuses to assent to this proposition either, nor to the proposition that the person transmigrating from this world to the next is both the same and different from the person transmigrating from that world to this world, nor, finally, to the fourth logical possibility that the former person is neither the same nor different from the latter person.43 Once again, the Puggalavādin’s acceptance of the person as a principle of transmigration entails unacceptable consequences. In a variant on this argument, the Theravādin asks his opponent whether the person transmigrates with his physical form (sarūpo sandhāvati). After an initial hesitation, the Puggalavādin gives an affirmative response, thereby falling into the trap of being forced either to assent to the annihilationist proposition that soul and body are one and the same—​i.e., the fifth Unanswered Question (taṃ jīvaṃ taṃ sarīraṃ)—​or else effectively conceding, by refusing to affirm a logical entailment of his original proposition, the contradictory nature of the notion of the puggala as a principle of transmigration. My final example concerns the question of whether the “nirvanized” person exists in the goal (i.e., nirvāṇa).44 The Puggalavādin’s affirmative response prompts the predictable follow-​up: is the nirvanized person eternal (parinibbuto sassato ti)? The Puggalavādin refuses to concede the eternalist heresy, nor the alternative proposition that the nirvanized person who does not abide in the goal is annihilated.45 The Theravādin then asks about the basis on which the person abides.46 The Puggalavādin refuses to concede that the person shares in the contingency and impermanence of its basis, namely becoming (bhava). We are presumably to understand that this refusal constitutes a contradiction.47 The formal structure of the Puggalakathā, in which the disputants take turns questioning each other, gives the impression of a fair exchange. And yet the debate takes place on the Theravādin’s terms.48 In his cogent analysis of the first section of the Puggalakathā, Matthew Kapstein shows that, even though the arguments employed by the two parties are perfectly symmetrical on the level of logical form, only the



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Theravādin’s argument is persuasive.49 The Theravādin’s argument is essentially that the proposition that the puggala exists truly and ultimately implies its membership in the list of real things or dhammas.50 However, the inverse of this argument advanced by the Puggalavādin—​ namely, that “if the person is not found truly and ultimately, then there does exist a person, but one that does not belong to the fifty-​seven categories”—​is clearly fallacious.51 A similar want of argumentative symmetry can be found in the Puggalavādin’s argument in paragraph 74 of Puggalakatha. There the Puggalavādin argues that the Theravādin’s willingness to recognize scriptural references to “the person who works for his own good”52 is inconsistent with the latter’s acceptance of the uncontroversial proposition that physical form exists truly and ultimately. The Theravādin’s assent to both propositions entails the eternalist proposition that “physical form is one thing and the person is another.”53 This minor variation of the Theravādin’s argument in the first of my examples above (Kv. par. 17) suffers from a couple of defects. First, it begs the question of whether the Buddha’s statement that there is a person who works for his own good implies the puggalavāda proposition that “the person is found truly and ultimately.” Even worse, it concedes the Theravādin’s argument that to accept the existence of the person commits one to an affirmative response to a version of the fifth Unanswered Question. To be sure, a few of the Puggalavādin’s arguments in the Puggalakathā seem authentic. For example, in paragraph 142, the Puggalavādin argues that if, as his opponent concedes, the puggala is not found truly and ultimately, then it necessarily follows that physical form is the puggala.54 In other words, a refusal to accept the existence of the person is tantamount to annihilationism. In paragraph 198, the Puggalavādin argues that the Buddha’s statement that he sees beings reborn according to their actions presupposes the puggala as a principle of transmigration.55 In a similar vein, he argues in paragraph 200 that the concept of ethical action presupposes the idea of a doer of good and bad deeds.56 But nowhere does the Puggalavādin challenge the Theravādin’s underlying assumption of a single mode of existence. This assumption underlies several of the Theravādin’s main arguments, namely: either the puggala exists as a dhamma or not at all; the person who transmigrates from this world to the next is either the same or different from the person who is reborn into this world; and, finally, the claim that the person abides in nirvāṇa constitutes eternalism. From a puggalavāda perspective these arguments trade on the fallacy of the false dichotomy. For, as I suggested above,

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the concept of the puggala presupposes a distinction between different modes of existence. One suspects that the debate format itself, inasmuch as it permits only a yes or no answer, discourages the Puggalavādin from making the kind of distinctions that would constitute an effective defense of the thesis of the puggala. As Steven Collins notes, the Theravādin’s argument anticipates the later doctrine of the two truths.57 In the final section of the Puggalakathā, the two parties alternately cite scriptural passages supporting their respective points of view. The Puggalavādin cites passages like “there is the person who works for his own good”; the Theravādin counters with passages such as “all things are not-​self” and, what could serve as the epigraph of the Puggalakatthā as a whole, the bhikkhunī Vajirā’s famous declaration to Māra that “No being is found here.”58 In the final kathā, the Theravādin breaks the impasse by citing a pair of scriptural statements that are obviously to be taken in a figurative sense. Just as the Buddha’s mention of “a butter jar” and “a constant supply of milk-​rice” need not be taken literally (a “jar made out of butter”; an “eternal supply of milk-​rice”), the Theravādin argues, one is not obliged to take references to the person in a literal sense as referring to an truly existing reality. The distinction between the respective positions of the Puggalavādin and the Theravādin in the Kathāvatthu can perhaps be understood in terms of P.  F. Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionist metaphysics. As we have seen, for the Puggalavādin the puggala is a presupposition of both scriptural and everyday speech and action.59 The Puggalavādin’s defense of the reality of the person constitutes a kind of transcendental argument inasmuch as he presents the puggala as the condition for the possibility of established Buddhist speech and practice.60 The Theravādin, by contrast, uses logical argumentation, not to explain, and thereby buttress, commonly accepted discourses and practices, but rather to qualify and relativize them.61 As we have seen, he typically uses reductio-​ style arguments to show how unacceptable consequences—​specifically, versions of the fifth and sixth Unanswered Questions—​logically follow from the acceptance of the commonsensical belief in the person.

The Milindapañha The revisionist character of the Kathāvatthu’s position becomes even more pronounced in the Milindapañha, the text which Erich Frauwallner credits with being “the earliest work to express the denial of the self in



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detail and full clarity.”62 Although esteemed and preserved in Pali by the Theravāda tradition, this justly famous text, curiously enough, diverges in places from Theravāda orthodoxy. Sometimes it reflects the influence of Sarvāstivāda teaching as well as that of folk religious beliefs and practices.63 However, with respect to the issue that concerns us, the doctrine of anattā, the Milindapañha stands in continuity with the Kathāvatthu, as evidenced by the proposition asserted at the outset of the dialogue, namely, that “no person is found here” (na h’ettha puggalo upalabbhati). The text is ostensibly a dialogue between the historical Greco-​Bactrian king Milinda (Meandros, c. 150 bce64) and the Buddhist monk Nāgasena. While the king is introduced as a formidable debater of heretical tendency,65 and the exchange with Nāgasena, accordingly, is billed as an epic contest over the credibility of Buddhist teaching, the king is quickly won over by his opponent’s striking images and analogies. The dialogue quickly devolves into an instructional dialogue between teacher and pupil. Thus, presented in the context of what elsewhere in the Indian tradition is called a “friendly dialogue” (sandhāya-​saṃbhāṣā),66 the polemical implications of Nāgasena’s teaching are subdued. Unlike the Kathāvatthu, the Milindapañha does not explicitly engage with puggalavāda arguments. And yet a rejection of puggalavāda is implicit in Nāgasena’s claim, echoing the chief topic of debate in the Kathāvatthu, that “no person [puggala] is found here.” The text’s opening dialogue can be seen, in fact, as recapitulating the main arguments between the Theravādin and Puggalavādin in the Kathāvatthu. As just mentioned, the exchange is initially an agonistic one.67 In response to Nāgasena’s provocative assertion that “no person is found here,” Milinda enumerates the many activities and customs that ostensibly presuppose the existence of the person: the institution of giving (which presupposes both a giver and an enjoyer of gifts); the rewards and punishments sustaining a law-​abiding society (which presuppose the identity of the doer of a crime and the person punished for it); the Buddhist path (which presupposes someone attaining the goal of nirvāṇa); and the institution of ordination in the Saṅgha (which presupposes the existence of masters and teachers). The king naïvely believes that simply enumerating the institutions presupposing the existence of persons is enough demonstrate to the five hundred Greeks in attendance the absurdity of Nāgasena’s assertion. The king’s response here renders, in particularly dramatic form, the Puggalavādin’s argument in the Kathāvatthu that the person represents a presupposition of commonly accepted discourses and practices. Milinda goes on to construct what he naïvely imagines is a

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reductio argument guaranteed to demonstrate the absurdity of Nāgasena’s thesis. In an elaboration of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, the king invites Nāgasena to identify himself with any one of thirty-​two parts of the body, as well as each of the five khandhas. The king thus establishes the argument for Nāgasena’s initial proposition: none of the constituents of the personality, nor their aggregation, can be identified with the person, Nāgasena.68 For Milinda, Nāgasena quite literally stands as a refutation of his own thesis.69 And yet, we soon discover that what the king has done with this argument is unwittingly to set himself up for his adversary’s devastating rejoinder. All that remains for Nāgasena to do is to render this counterintuitive claim plausible through an arresting image. This he does with the celebrated chariot analogy. The analogy demonstrates that just as there is no part of this object that corresponds to the word “chariot,” so too is there nothing in the personality corresponding to the name “Nāgasena.” The plausibility of the nominalist analysis of the chariot acts back on the king’s preceding analysis of the personality, dramatically redeeming the latter from its prima facie absurdity. Nāgasena’s agile response not only wins over the assembled Greeks, who burst into applause, but the king himself, who declares that Nāgasena’s response would have won the approval of the Buddha himself.70 Soon thereafter, the dialogue shifts from an agonistic debate to an instructional dialogue, as signaled by the king’s concession to discuss matters as scholars (paṇḍita) and not as kings, an agreement that implicitly recognizes the superiority of Nāgasena.71 In what follows, Nāgasena resolves numerous apparent contradictions in Buddhist teaching with the aid of striking images and analogies. Perhaps the most significant of these paradoxes is the apparent contradiction between the denial of self and the doctrines of karma and rebirth. In one memorable exchange, Nāgasena disabuses the king of the commonsensical but implicitly annihilationist view that the adult king is not the child he once was. In an argument sure to impress the king, Nāgasena argues that the former’s view that “that child is one, I am another” implies that the one who commits a crime is one, and the one punished is another.72 The monk then reconciles the denial of an unchanging personal principle with an affirmation of karmic retribution with the image of a torch that burns continuously throughout the night. Elsewhere he uses this same image to explain how there can be rebirth without transmigration.73 It is important to recognize that Nāgasena’s arguments, for all their brilliance and aesthetic appeal, are exercises in rhetoric. Unlike Buddhist polemicists like Vasubandhu or Dharmakīrti, Nāgasena does



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not argue for the nonexistence of the person or self on the basis of a reasoned analysis of experience. Rather, as Steven Collins perceptively notes, the denial of self or person functions as a “linguistic taboo” that Nāgasena asserts “in the face of the king’s understandable and reasonable questions.”74 The wonderful array of images and analogies that Nāgasena uses to reconcile the anattā doctrine with other tenets of both Buddhist and commonsense belief and practice functions rhetorically to soften—​indeed, to conceal—​the blunt assertive character of Nāgasena’s denial of a self or person. There are (at least) two significant exchanges, however, in which the rhetoric wears thin and the assertive character of this Buddhist doctrine, like an underlying rock in an overrun ski slope, lies exposed. The first of these, perceptively discussed by Collins, takes place between Nāgasena and one of the king’s messengers who accompanies the former on the way to the king’s palace for a second round of discussion.75 Their conversation returns to the topic of the previous day’s discussion with the king, namely, the referent to the name “Nāgasena.” Unlike that discussion, which begins with Nāgasena’s bald assertion that no person is found, this discussion begins with the servant’s proposition that “Nāgasena” refers to “the inner wind or soul that comes and goes.”76 Nāgasena responds with a specious comparison of questionable relevance between the exhalation of breath and the blowing of air into a horn or pipe. That the musician continues to live even though the breath blown into the horn supposedly does not return to him is supposed to cast doubt on the idea of the breath as the principle of life. As if stunned into silence by the sheer fatuity of this argument, the messenger declares himself incapable of arguing with Nāgasena further, and he invites the latter to instruct him. Thereupon Nāgasena asserts that there is no soul and that exhalation and inhalation are simply conditions of the body.77 After hearing Nāgasena’s subsequent disquisition on Abhidhamma—​here we may presume, with Collins, that this discourse concerns the reduction of the human personality to its impersonal constituents—​the messenger declares himself a lay follower (upāsaka). A parallel exchange takes place later in the text, this time with the king himself. The king inquires about the soul (vedagū), which he understands to be the interior principle of life that receives sensations through each of the five corresponding senses.78 Nāgasena responds by critically examining the analogy between the senses through which the putative soul apprehends the world and the palace windows through which the king and Nāgasena are able to perceive the objects outside.79

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He calls attention to the element of disanalogy in the comparison, namely, that while the palace inhabitants are able to apprehend outside objects completely (that is, with all five senses) through each window, the soul is only able to perceive visible forms through the eye, audible impressions through the ear, and so on. The breakdown of the analogy calls into question the underlying presupposition of a perceiving soul within. At this point, Milinda, like his servant earlier, declares himself incompetent to argue the matter further.80 Requested to teach, Nāgasena once again imparts the Abhidhamma, a lesson which concludes with a flat denial of a soul. It is significant that in both cases the initial discussion of the soul theory comes to an abrupt and premature end. In neither case does Nāgasena recognize, much less explore, its nuances.81 The narrative break between Nāgasena’s discussion of the soul theory and his instruction in Abhidhamma theory underscores the dogmatic nature of the No-​self doctrine.82 Nāgasena does not follow what theologians would call an apologetic method, that is, he does not lead his interlocutor to Buddhist belief on the basis of the latter’s pre-​Buddhist understanding. Both narratives suggest that an abandonment of a commitment to a non-​Buddhist soul theory, together with a concomitant willingness to recognize a Buddhist authority (Nāgasena), are conditions for understanding and appreciating the abhidhammic analysis of the personality. The denial of self thus marks an ideological boundary. The taboo character of the anattā doctrine manifests this ideological dimension of the doctrine. Or, as Collins himself puts it, “the acceptance of the linguistic taboo preserves the identity and integrity of Buddhism as an Indian system separate from Brahmanism.”83

Vasubandhu’s “Refutation of the Doctrine of the Person” Neither of the two texts we have just considered, the Puggalakathā of the Kathāvatthu or the Milindapañha, engages explicitly with the Brahmanical doctrine of the ātman. To be sure, one could argue that a reference to ātmavāda is implicit in the former text’s main argument against the Puggalavāda, namely, that the proposition that “the puggala exists truly and ultimately” leads inexorably to the eternalist view that the soul is one thing and the body is another. Inasmuch as the non-​Buddhist ātmavāda epitomizes the heresy of eternalism, this argument suggests that the



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putatively Buddhist puggalavāda is, in the last analysis, equivalent to the Brahmanical ātmavāda. As for the Milindapañha, one could infer that inasmuch as the king is depicted as well versed in Brahmanical knowledge,84 his doubts and questions concerning Nāgasena’s teaching of selflessness reflect a prior commitment to some form of the ātman doctrine.85 Nevertheless, neither text presents the teaching of No-​self in the context an explicit refutation of the Brahmanical ātmavāda. The text to which we now turn, the ninth chapter of Vasubandhu’s celebrated Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, may be the first extant text to connect the Buddhist pudgalavāda to the non-​Buddhist ātmavāda.86 Vasubandhu’s engagement with the doctrine of the self anticipates a larger shift in Buddhist intellectual history in which prominent Buddhist intellectuals “suddenly start addressing non-​Buddhist philosophies and religious doctrines in a systematic way.”87 Vincent Eltschinger suggests that this “heresiological turn” was a response to the growing Brahmanical hostility toward Buddhism and other non-​Brahmanical movements during the fifth and early sixth centuries, when the Gupta dynasty was in decline.88 This shift to an extrasectarian polemical focus is mirrored in contemporary Brahmanical thought, particularly in the Nyāya and Mīmāṃsa schools.89 Vasubandhu’s placement of his critique of pudgalavāda in the larger context of a refutation of the Brahmanical doctrine of the ātman is particularly significant for our purposes because it exemplifies the principle of metacontrast. That is, he seeks to secure in-​group hegemony by assimilating the defining doctrine of his proximate rival to that of the dominant out-​group. By rejecting the pudgalavāda, Vasubandhu seeks to maximize the contrast with the ātmavāda that is taken to define the various teachings of the outsiders, or Tīrthikas. The Abhidharmakośabhāṣya’s ninth chapter—​ technically an appendix of sorts because it does not, unlike the chapters that precede it, comment on any of the verses from the root text90—​is entitled “Treatise on the Refutation of the Person” (pudgala-​praṭiṣedha-​prakaraṇa). The title indicates that its principal aim is a refutation of the Buddhist pudgalavāda. And yet the refutation of pudgalavāda comprises only approximately the first half of the chapter. The remainder is dedicated to a refutation of the ātmavāda defended by the Nyāya-​Vaiśeṣika philosophers. We see the relevance of this juxtaposition from the chapter’s introductory and concluding paragraphs. Both frame the refutation of Pudgalavāda in terms of a contrast between, as the concluding verses put it, “the wise who heed the doctrine of the Buddhas” and “the ignorant Tīrthikas who act in

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accordance with various false views.”91 The Buddhist doctrine in question is the doctrine of selflessness (nirātmatā), understood as the recognition of the conception of the self as nothing more than the continuum of aggregates.92 Vasubandhu explicitly denies the possibility of salvation to those who regard the self as a separate substance.93 It is significant that in the programmatic opening paragraph Vasubandhu presents the question of liberation in terms of a stark dichotomy between the skandhamātravāda he will defend and the ātmavāda of the Tīrthikas.94 That is, he recognizes no middle ground between these two positions. As we shall see, his basic argumentative strategy against the Pudgalavādins will be to reject as vain and specious their effort to differentiate their doctrine of the person from the Brahmanical notion of the substantial self. Pudgalavāda is reducible to ātmavāda, and the Pudgalavādins, accordingly, are far from salvation.95 Vasubandhu responds to the Vātsīputrīya thesis of an existing person (pudgalaṃ santam) by first asking whether this pudgala exists substantially (dravyataḥ) or only conceptually (prajñaptitaḥ).96 He then specifies what the former possibility entails. Echoing an argument we saw in the Kathāvatthu, Vasubandhu says that a substantially existing person is something distinct from the aggregates, just as the latter are from each other.97 Substantial existence in turn implies two further alternatives:  either the person a conditioned reality like the other dharmas, in which case its cause must be specified, or it is an unconditioned reality, in which case it coincides with the self-​doctrine of the Tīrthikas. And lest his Vātsīputrīya opponent seek to avoid these consequences by claiming conceptual existence for his person—​the first of Vasubandhu’s alternatives—​Vasubandhu reminds him that this possibility coincides with Vasubandhu’s own position.98 Here we see Vasubandhu’s argument in a nutshell: stated bluntly, either you accept our position or you unwittingly revert to the view of the Tīrthikas, whose belief in the self, Vasubandhu has told us, precludes the possibility of liberation. Vasubandhu’s Pudgalavādin opponent rejects the choice between substantial and conceptual existence as a false dichotomy; the person, he says, exists as neither.99 Rather, the person is conceived in reliance upon the present constituents that are personally acquired.100 The key phrase in this statement is “in reliance upon” (upādāya), which, as James Duerlinger explains, marks the crucial distinction between the Pudgalavādins’ position and Vasubandhu’s contention that the person is the same in existence as the constituents.101 After ridiculing this distinction as “ignorant talk with obscure meaning,”102 Vasubandhu argues that however this notion



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of reliance is understood, the conception of the person refers only to the aggregates, just as the conception of milk refers only to the various constituents of milk.103 The Pudgalavādin counters that the person is not conceived in the way that milk is conceived but rather in the way in which fire is conceived in reliance on its fuel. The fire-​fuel relation supports the Pudgalavādin’s thesis inasmuch as the fire relies on its fuel in such a way that the fire is neither something different from its fuel (otherwise, the fuel would not become hot) nor something not-​different (ananya) from fuel (in which case the distinction between the thing that burns and the thing being burned collapses).104 The former possibility would correspond to the heresy of eternalism; the latter to that of annihilationism.105 Testifying to the importance of examples (dṛṣṭānta) in classical Indian argumentation, Vasubandhu takes some pains to challenge his opponent’s use of the fire analogy to support the notion of the person as neither different nor not-​ different from the constituents. To simplify somewhat Vasubandhu’s intricate and sometimes obscure argument, when the Pudgalavādin’s vague concept of “reliance” is given a determinate sense, either one of the two possibilities denied by the Pudgalavādin necessarily follows: the person is either different or not-​different from the aggregates. If this phrase is understood in the sense that the fuel serves either as the support (āśraya) or the concomitant (sahabhāva) of the conception of the fire, then it follows, when this conception is applied to the person/​aggregates relation, that the person is clearly different (anya) from the aggregates.106 If, on the other hand, the fire’s reliance on its fuel is understood in the sense that fuel and fire together constitute the burning mass as a whole, then the unavoidable conclusion is that the person is not-​different (ananya) from its constituents—​which is none other than Vasubandhu’s own position.107 Vasubandhu concludes that the Pudgalavādin has failed to establish that the person is conceived in reliance on the aggregates in the way that the fire is conceived in reliance on its fuel.108 Vasubandhu continues to marshal further arguments against his Pudgalavādin opponent. We need not detail all of these. It is sufficient only to mention a couple of examples that further illustrate his general argumentative-​ rhetorical strategy, namely, to reduce, against the Pudgalavādin’s effort to forge a via media, the available choices to Vasubandhu’s skandhamātravāda and the non-​Buddhist ātmavāda. Shortly after undermining his opponent’s use of the fire-​fuel analogy, at least to his satisfaction, Vasubandhu examines the process by which the person is conceptualized. Once again, he presents two alternatives.

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Either the conception of the person is preceded by an apprehension of the aggregates, or else it is preceded by an apprehension of the person itself.109 The former possibility—​that the pudgala is conceived on the basis of an apprehension of the aggregates—​coincides with Vasubandhu’s position.110 If, on the other hand, the pudgala is conceived on the basis of an apprehension of the person, then how, Vasubandhu asks, can the conception of the pudgala be said to rely (upādāya) on its aggregates?111 For in that case the person becomes the cause of its own conceptualization, and the notion of the latter’s reliance on the aggregates—​precisely the proviso that differentiates pudgalavāda from Brahmanical ātmavāda—​becomes otiose. In a similar vein, Vasubandhu argues against the Pudgalavādin’s effort to exempt the pudgala from the momentary existence of the aggregates. If the latter concedes that the aggregates arise anew every moment, but the person does not, then the person not only is something different from the aggregates, but is permanent as well.112 In other words, the Pudgalavādins, in a vain attempt to reconcile their concept of the person with the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence, unwittingly make their pudgala the equivalent of the permanent ātman concept of the Tīrthikas. The claim that the Pudgalavādins are not really Buddhists is implicit in Vasubandhu’s strategy of reducing the choice to one between his own skandhamātravāda and the non-​Buddhist ātmavāda. At one point, this insinuation comes to the surface. After presenting a couple of sūtra texts that support his doctrine of selflessness, Vasubandhu acknowledges that his Pudgalavādin opponent does not recognize these texts as the word of the Buddha. In a response devoid of nuance or charity, Vasubandhu bluntly opposes the authority of Vātsīputrīya tradition (nikāya) to that of the Buddha’s word.113 If the Vātsīputrīyas recognize only their own tradition as authoritative, he declares, then the Buddha is not their teacher. In a wordplay on their sectarian designation, Vātsīputrīya, Vasubandhu says that they are not the sons of the Buddha (śākyaputrīyā).114 The implicit contrast here between the followers of Vātsīputra and those of the Śākyamuni recalls Justin Martyr’s invidious decision to designate rival, heretical expressions of Christianity by the name of their founders rather than that of Christ.115 Vasubandhu concludes his refutation of pudgalavāda by presenting his doctrine—​namely, that the person is the same in existence as the constituents—​as the Middle Way between two extreme views that have arisen in the Buddha’s dispensation.116 Pudgalavāda (“grasping the person”—​pudgalagrāha) represents the eternalist extreme, the doctrine of the



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nonexistence of everything (sarva-​nāstitā-​grāha), most likely a tantalizingly undeveloped (and caricatured) allusion to the teaching of Nāgārjuna, the annihilationist.117 Vasubandhu then turns his attention to the Tīrthikas’ conception of the ātman as a separate substance.118 Once again, he reminds us that nothing less than liberation is at stake in this discussion, for the doctrine of the substantial ātman precludes liberation. Vasubandhu’s insistence that the doctrine of selflessness represents the conditio sine qua non for liberation indicates that the doctrine has become a touchstone of Buddhist identity and, conversely, the doctrine of the self the defining tenet of the various Tīrthika systems. We may hypothesize that at some point a process of reciprocal identity formation took place that was analogous to the establishment of Logos theology as the touchstone of Christian identity over against Judaism during the second and third centuries. As mentioned in the previous chapter, we cannot assume, as had a previous generation of Indologists, that ātmavāda was the aboriginal doctrine of Brahmanical thought and that formative Buddhism simply reacted to it. For one thing, as Bronkhorst has argued, the ancient Vedic-​ Upaniṣadic notion of the self as the microcosmic correlate of the cosmos was originally distinct from the notion of an inactive self transcending the processes of karma and rebirth.119 Moreover, the notion that the teaching of the ātman is the central doctrine of the Upaniṣads was the interpretive achievement of the early Vedāntic school, which postdates the advent of Buddhism by several hundred years.120 Finally, the self in question here is the individual self, not the universal self associated with the early Upaniṣads.121 Given the sparse and fragmentary nature of our evidence for the formative period of Buddhism, it is impossible to pinpoint the decisive moments—​analogous to the Gospel of John or Justin’s Dialogue—​in this hypothetical process of mutual identity construction, much less its origins. On the Brahmanical side of this dialectic, one such decisive moment might be the Nyāyabhāṣya of Vātsyāyana/​Pakṣilasvāmin (late fourth century). More than anyone else, Vātsyāyana was responsible for establishing the (early) Nyāya as a cosmological doctrine of liberation founded on a rational method.122 Specifically, he brought to completion the process by which an old tradition of disputation (vāda) was integrated with the doctrine of the ātman as the most consequential object (prameya) of salvific knowledge.123 In his effort to give shape to the nascent discipline of Nyāya, Vātsyāyana retrieves the earlier concept of ānvīkṣikī, described by Kauṭilya in the Arthaśāstra (second century?) as an investigative method of reasoning.124 Vātsyāyana reinforces and disambiguates earlier associations of ānvīkṣikī

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with the Vedic-​Upaniṣadic science of the self (ātmavidyā).125 Inasmuch as it integrated the science of the self with the method of reasoning and argumentation, Nyāya, together with the allied Vaiśeṣika system, was the Brahmanical school ideally suited to—​if not expressly designed for—​the task of defending Brahmanical thought, symbolized by its doctrine of the ātman, against the Buddhist challenge. In keeping with this conception of Nyāya as a rationally established science of the self, Vātsyāyana argues for the existence of the self against an unnamed Buddhist opponent in his commentary on NS I.1.10.126 Vasubandhu answers this challenge here in the Abhidharmakośa, in turn inviting a counterresponse from the fifth-​ century Nyāya philosopher Uddyotakara in the latter’s subcommentary on the Nyāya Sūtras, the Nyāyavārttika. Vasubandhu’s refutation of ātmavāda here in the Abhidharmakośa thus represents a moment in a transgenerational dialectic between Buddhists and Naiyāyika. Here it is necessary to sketch Vasubandhu’s arguments against the doctrine of the self in only the broadest of outlines.127 Vasubandhu considers several objections to the No-​self theory that are, as Duerlinger notes, simply reformulations of traditional Nyāya arguments for the self.128 The weightiest of these arguments is that the self is a necessary presupposition of the phenomena of memory and recognition.129 Vasubandhu confronts a commonsensical objection to the anātman doctrine that was earlier voiced by Vātsyāyana,130 namely, that without a self as a principle of personal continuity, one mind would remember what was seen by another. Yajñadatta would remember what was seen by Devadatta.131 Vasubandhu replies that the difference between personal memory and Yajñadatta remembering what Devadatta had experienced is that in the latter case there is no causal connection, as there is in the former, between the two mental events. He further notes that the opponent’s statement that “one mind remembers what was seen by another” misrepresents the Buddhist position; rather, a proper statement of the Buddhist position would be that “the mind that remembers arises from the mind that sees, through a transformation of the continuum [santati-​pariṇatyā].”132 Vasubandhu also considers the objection that the self provides the necessary support for the activity of thinking133 and, in a later argument, for the experience of pleasure and pain.134 Against these objections he argues that the self represents a superfluous hypothesis. The arising of thought and the experience of pleasure and pain can be adequately explained in terms of the Buddhist theory of an impersonal continuum of cause and



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effect. At one point he compares the hypothesis of a self as the underlying cause of thinking to the construal of the charlatan’s magical incantation as the cause of the healing effected by medicine.135 Vasubandhu finally turns to the perennial objection that the self represents a necessary presupposition of karma and rebirth. If there is no self, Vasubandhu’s Tīrthika opponent asks, who is the doer of deeds and who is the enjoyer of their karmic fruits?136 Implicit in this question is the problematic we saw in the Milindapañha, namely, without a self to guarantee the identity of the doer of deeds and the enjoyer of their fruits, what is there to connect a deed and its consequences? Vasubandhu argues that one can explain both agency and experience in terms of a succession impersonal states; the self is a superfluous hypothesis.137 Vasubandhu then extends this explanation for personal continuity to the problem of rebirth. How, his opponent asks, can the fruit of an exhausted deed arise in a future life if there is no self? The future result, Vasubandhu answers, arises from a special transformation in the continuum that connects that result to the original deed, just as a piece of fruit arises, through a succession of intermediate stages, from a seed.138 Vasubandhu’s response here echoes what he had said earlier, in book 3 of the Abhidharmakośa, in response to the objection that transmigration presupposes the self.139 There he cites a sūtra text to the effect that, while actions and their results exist, there is no agent, apart from the sequence of dharmas (dharma-​saṃketa), who discards one set of aggregates and takes up another set.140 He explains this notion of a sequence of dharmas in terms of the principle of dependent arising (pratītyasamutpāda).

Śāntarakṣita’s “Examination of the Self Theorized by the Vāstīputrīyas” and Kamalaśīla’s Commentary Thereon Like the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, Śāntarakṣita’s eighth-​century Tattvasaṃ­ graha, along with Kamalaśīla’s commentary thereon, the Pañjikā, places a critique of pudgalavāda in the larger context of a refutation of the Brahmanical ātmavāda. Śāntarakṣita’s refutation of pudgalavāda, however, is much briefer than Vasubandhu’s, consisting of a mere fourteen verses. At the same time, his discussion of the doctrine of the ātman, to which the Tattvasaṃgraha’s seventh chapter is dedicated, is much more detailed and extensive. Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla distinguish the self concepts

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of the Naiyāyika, Mīmāṃsakas, Śāṃkhyas, Digambara Jains, and Advaita Vedāntins.141 The chapter’s organization, in which only a fraction of its nearly 180 verses are dedicated to pudgalavāda, gives no indication that pudgalavāda was of more concern to Śāntarakṣita than any of the other doctrines of the self.142 Of course, the amount of space an author devotes to a topic does not necessarily reflect its relative importance to him or her, especially in this case, where the representation of pudgalavāda as only one of many theories of self carries a powerful rhetorical effect. Specifically, the placement of pudgalavāda alongside a number of ātman theories itself conveys the point that Śāntarakṣita makes in the verse introducing this doctrine, namely, that pudgalavāda is simply the doctrine of the ātman under a different name. Śāntarakṣita’s effort to impugn the Pudgalavādins’ status as Buddhists is, if anything, even less subtle than Vasubandhu’s. He introduces the Vātsīputrīyas with the statement that “There are some who teach the self, passing it off as Buddhist, under the designation of the person.”143 Kamalaśīla elaborates on this claim that pudgalavāda is simply ātmavāda under a different name by first defining the term ātman. Alluding to Śāntarakṣita’s earlier144 description of the Nyāya ātman concept, Kamalaśīla defines the ātman as the doer of good and bad deeds and the enjoyer of the fruits of those deeds. This enjoyer, moreover, transmigrates by abandoning an earlier set of aggregates and taking up a new set.145 All of this, Kamalaśīla concludes, applies to the pudgala as well. Thus the difference between the pudgalavāda and the ātmavāda is merely nominal.146 Śāntarakṣita’s refutation of the pudgalavāda, like Vasubandhu’s, can be divided into two parts. The first consists of a set of logical arguments against the characteristic of the pudgala that is supposed to distinguish it from the ātman, namely, its inexpressibility as either the same as or different from the aggregates. The second part consists of arguments against the Pudgalavāda interpretation of two scriptural discourses, the Unanswered Questions and the Burden Sūtra.147 Śāntarakṣita’s treatment of these two favorite discourses of the Pudgalavādins is quite similar to Vasubandhu’s, even if considerably more concise. Śāntarakṣita’s arguments against the pudgala’s inexpressibility—​those comprising the first part of his critique—​are quite distinct from Vasubandhu’s. Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla advance three arguments against the inexpressibility thesis. The first of these arguments (vv. 338–​343) appears to derive from Dharmakīrti.148 The argument is that the defining attribute of the pudgala, its inexpressibility, implies its nonexistence on the level of



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ultimate reality.149 Only unreal things can be declared to be inexpressible.150 To be a real thing is to be determinable as either the same as or different from something else. There is no third possibility.151 The Pudgalavādins deceive themselves if they think they can evade these two possibilities by expressing them in negative terms. To say, as they do, that the person is not different from the aggregates is to indicate that it is identical with them. Conversely, to say that the person is not the same as the aggregates is to affirm that it is indeed different from them.152 Kamalaśīla leaves the Pudgalavādins with a choice. Either affirm the person’s inexpressibility and concede that it has only nominal existence (prajñapti-​sattva) or else affirm that the person is real and abandon the claim that it is inexpressible.153 In other words, there is no middle way between “orthodox” anātmavāda and non-​Buddhist ātmavāda. The second argument (vv. 344–​346) is that “inexpressibility as either the same or different” is an inherently contradictory notion. The characteristic of inexpressibility differentiates the person from the aggregates, inasmuch as the latter are themselves expressible. The properties of expressibility and inexpressibility, like any other mutually exclusive pair of attributes, establish their respective bearers as different.154 The implication of this clever line of argument is that the ostensibly inexpressible pudgala actually is expressible, specifically, as different from the aggregates.155 This argument thus coheres with the claim that pudgalavāda is none other than the ātman under a different name. Like the first argument, Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla’s third argument (vv. 346–​347) can be traced back to Dharmakīrti.156 It is premised on the Yogācāra notion that capacity for “causal function” (arthakriyā) is the mark of the real.157 This capacity, moreover, is restricted to momentary things.158 The person, to the extent that it cannot be determined as impermanent, therefore cannot be real.159 As Stanisław Schayer noted, these arguments together constitute an “immanent critique” of pudgalavāda in the sense that they seek to refute it on its own terms.160 Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla’s recourse to this style of argumentation reflects their rejection of the foundationalist presupposition upon which Vasubandhu’s refutation rested, namely, the distinction between substantial being and conceptual being (dravyasat and prajñaptisat, respectively). To be sure, both authors will often argue on the basis of provisionally accepted Sautrāntika “externalist” ontological premises as part of an overall rhetorical strategy that Sara McClintock, following Georges Dreyfus, terms a “sliding scale of analysis.”161 Given their

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commitment to the more refined “internalist” ontology of Vijñānavāda (to say nothing of the still more refined Madhyamaka level of analysis found in their other works), however, Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla are careful not to rest their critique of pudgalavāda on the concept of substantial being. And for that reason their argumentation differs from Vasubandhu’s.

From No-​Self to Emptiness Above I noted the natural fit between, on the one hand, the pudgalavāda doctrine of the person as undetermined with respect to the aggregates and, on the other, the two Unanswered Questions on the relation between soul and body. Furthermore, this fit suggests the possibility that some early form of pudgalavāda (or proto-​pudgalavāda) represented a more traditional expression of the Middle Way between eternalism and annihilationism. If this were indeed the case, then the development of the anātman doctrine necessitated a reformulation of the Middle Way. From a pudgalavāda perspective, skandhamātravāda—​the reduction of the personality to its impersonal constituents—​skewed sharply to the annihilationist extreme. Nevertheless, Vasubandhu eloquently expresses his thesis that persons are the same in existence as collections of aggregates as the Middle Way between pudgalavāda, on the one side, and what he calls the doctrine of “the nonexistence of all” (sarva-​na-​asti-​tā), on the other. As we have seen, Vasubandhu regards the former doctrine as ultimately equivalent to the non-​Buddhist understanding of the self as a separate substance. Thus pudgalavāda represents the eternalist extreme. The latter doctrine denies the existence of even the aggregates on the basis of which persons are conceived. To that extent, the “nonexistence of all” represents the annihilationist extreme.162 As James Duerlinger notes, this characterization of annihilationism alludes to Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka school.163 Of course, the characterization of Madhyamaka as sarva-​nāstitā is a gross caricature based on a fundamental misunderstanding of its defining concept of emptiness. Specifically, it (mis)construes Madhyamaka’s characteristic claim that things lack intrinsic being or self-​identity (svabhāva) in terms of a nihilist denial of their reality. Like all Buddhist teachings, Madhyamaka, as indicated by its name, also styled itself as the Middle Way. Nāgārjuna and his seventh-​century commentator Candrakīrti understood the two extremes of eternalism and annihilationism in terms of the underlying assumption, implicit in Vasubandhu’s caricature, that reality entails intrinsic being.164



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Thus existence, inasmuch as this concept is understood to presuppose intrinsic being, corresponds to the extreme of eternalism.165 And nonexistence, assumed to follow from a lack of intrinsic being, corresponds to the annihilationist extreme.166 From this perspective, the Abhidharma concept of substantial being (dravyasat) as contrasted with conceptual being (prajñaptisat), inasmuch as it implies intrinsic being and causal independence, entails the eternalist heresy.167 When we compare Candrakīrti’s conception of the Middle Way to Vasubandhu’s, we thus see a rhetoric of one-​upmanship: Candrakīrti, following Nāgārjuna, presents Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma as a subtle form of eternalism, just as Vasubandhu had done with respect to pudgalavāda.168 Thus, Vasubandhu’s insistence, against those who would equate skandhamātravāda with nihilism,169 that the conception of the self rests on a substantial foundation—​the view that, as James Duerlinger puts it, the self or person is “the same in existence as collections of aggregates”—​implies, from Candrakīrti’s perspective, the eternalist heresy. The Mādhyamika critique of Abhidharma can be understood in terms of one of the predominant philosophical themes of the Mahāyāna “Perfection of Wisdom” (prajñāpāramitā) literature, namely, an extension of the Buddhist doctrine of selflessness (nairātmya) from persons to all things without exception.170 The characteristic Mādhyamika concept of emptiness (śūnyatā), in fact, is simply another name for this extension or universalization of the doctrine of selflessness. In this extension of selflessness from persons to things, the underlying concept of self undergoes a subtle shift in meaning from, as Paul Williams puts it, “the individual unchanging core of a sentient being” to the “the unchanging core of anything at all” or intrinsic nature.171 From the perspective of the emptiness doctrine, Vasubandhu’s distinction between the (merely) conceptual being (prajñaptisat) of the person and the substantial being (dravyasat) of the causal factors into which it can be resolved evinces a failure to carry the Buddhist teaching of selflessness to its logical conclusion. Or, stated in terms of the doctrine of Dependent Origination—​which, according to Nāgārjuna, is equivalent to emptiness172—​the ontological dualism of Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma betrays a failure to recognize that, as Dan Arnold nicely phrases it, “phenomena are dependently originated all the way down.”173 The Mādhyamika doctrine of the emptiness of all phenomena, as articulated, for example, by the Mādhyamika Candrakīrti, enshrines a brilliant and powerful philosophical critique of Abhidharma ontology. For all its

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cogency and refinement, however, this critique rests, in the final analysis, on a rhetoric of buddhological one-​upmanship, if I  may put it like this. The Mādhyamika critique of Abhidharma ontology can be understood as the philosophical elaboration and refinement of the Mahāyāna polemical contrast between the arhat and the bodhisattva. While the arhat understands the selflessness of persons, an achievement that removes the defilements (kleśa) but not their residual traces (kleśa-​vāsanā), the bodhisattva realizes the selflessness of all phenomena. The bodhisattva’s realization of universal selflessness removes even the residual traces of defilement and therewith the final obstacle to full knowledge.174 The Mādhyamika concept of emptiness, then, can be understood as the philosophical fruit of a rhetorical effort to maximize, against Abhidharma, the domain of the concept of selflessness. For Mādhyamika thinkers, the doctrine of the selflessness of phenomena—​emptiness—​was the defining tenet of Mahāyāna thought, notwithstanding some disagreement among Mādhyamika writers as to whether this teaching was exclusive to the Mahāyāna.175 The language of “extending” the notion of selflessness from persons to things is misleading to the extent that it suggests a linear progression from the Hīnayāna pudgala-​nairātmya to the Mahāyāna dharma-​ nairātmya. As a matter of fact, however, the extension of the idea of selflessness from persons to things brings about an Aristotelian metabasis eis allo genos; that is, it marks, as Stanislaw Schayer argued, the emergence of an entirely new teaching.176 In Mahāyāna thought, concepts such as “self” and “emptiness” undergo a profound change in meaning. Above we noted the shift in the meaning of “self” from the unchanging core of a sentient being to the essence or intrinsic nature (svabhāva) of something.177 This shift in the meaning of “self” corresponds to a reinterpretation of the concept of emptiness (śūnyatā). In a Theravāda context, the concept of emptiness, as evinced by canonical statements such as “forms are empty of self and what pertains to self” (rūpā suññā attena vā attaniyena vā; S.iv.54), simply denotes the absence of the selfhood that would establish the thing in question (here, form) as an object of attachment.178In a Mahāyāna context, by contrast, the statement that form is empty, as expressed in the statement “form is empty of form” (śūnyaṃ hi rūpaṃ rūpeṇa), indicates that form is devoid of essence (svabhāva).179 A  canonical statement such as “all things are not-​self” (sabbe dhammā anattā; Dhp.xx.279) thus takes on an entirely different meaning in a Mahāyāna context.



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A thorough transformation of Abhidharma Buddhism is precisely what we would expect from Nāgārjuna’s systematic effort to demonstrate that the explanatory categories of Abhidharma analysis—​paradigmatically, that of causality180—​are unintelligible apart from the phenomena they purport to explain.181 That is, the concept of cause, for example, depends for its very intelligibility on the concept of effect. Likewise, in an analysis that directly relates to the analogous relation between the self and the aggregates, the concept of fuel is intelligible only in relation to the fire that, for its part, depends on the fuel.182 Such analyses together comprise the foundational text of Mādhyamika thought, Nāgārjuna’s Mūla-​madhyamaka-​ kārikā (MMK.). Their cumulative effect is to turn Abhidharma ontology inside-​out. The Mādhyamika project marks, as Arnold argues in his compelling interpretation of Candrakīrti, a perhaps unexpected return to conventional reality as the focus of epistemological attention. Conventional reality exemplifies the true nature of reality, namely, as dependently originated.183 Madhyamaka’s “extension” of the concept of selflessness to all phenomena—​or, expressing the same idea in different though equivalent terms, the exceptionless construal of the doctrine of Dependent Origination—​has the effect of emptying the Abhidharma class of “ultimately existent” or substantial things; for Madhyamaka, on Arnold’s interpretation, everything that exists “only” as prajñaptisat.184 In universalizing the concepts of selflessness and conventional existence, Mādhyamika thought flirts with a kind of self-​canceling logic that threatens to deprive these terms of their critical edge. When universalized, the concept of prajñaptisat, its contrasting term reduced to an abstract category, ceases to mark an actual distinction among things (although it continues to mark a useful distinction between things and our naïve conception of things). We have seen how in Madhyamaka, and Mahāyāna thought more generally, the selflessness of persons becomes paradigmatic of a more general critique of the concept of substantial being.185 And yet this extension of the idea of selflessness from persons to things activates a kind of interpretive reflux in which the recognition of the substancelessness of all dharmas partially restores the concept of the person from its disintegration in the classical anātman doctrine. Absent a class of substantially existent realities in comparison with which the latter might be dismissed as unreal, the person is just as real—​or unreal—​as anything else.186 Indicative of this partial redemption of the concept of the person is Tilmann Vetter’s observation that Nāgārjuna, in numerous places in the Mūla-​madhyamaka-​kārikā, provisionally accepts statements regarding the

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relation between the self and its empirical constituents that actually stand closer to pudgalavāda than to anātmavāda.187 For example, on the basis of a critique of the ostensibly Sāṃmitīya argument that the person must preexist the personal faculties of seeing, hearing, and so on, Nāgārjuna, in the ninth chapter of the Mūla-​madhyamaka-​kārikā, expresses a position that, ironically, conforms more to the spirit of pudgalavāda than anātmavāda.188 He declares that the person cannot exist without the faculties, and the faculties, conversely, cannot exist without the person.189 To be sure, Nāgārjuna goes on to challenge this statement’s underlying presupposition that perception and the subject of perception are intelligible entities apart from the relation between them. In the chapter’s concluding verse, Nāgārjuna argues that the impossibility of locating the person temporally with respect to the faculties reveals the inappropriateness of the very notions of existence and nonexistence with respect to the person.190 Nevertheless, it is significant that the basis of this insight into the emptiness of the pudgala is a provisionally accepted statement concerning the mutual dependence of self and its empirical constituents and not, as one might expect, a statement concerning the reducibility of the former to the latter.191 In other words, Nāgārjuna bypasses the classical anātman doctrine in arguing from the experience of conventional reality to the truth of emptiness. One suspects that a statement of anātmavāda (in the sense of skandhamātravāda) would have been a kind of dead end or rut from which it would have been more difficult for Nāgārjuna to advance his dialectic. The following chapter, which concerns the relation between fire and fuel, follows the same basic pattern. Traditionally, the target of this critical examination of the fire/​fuel relation has been assumed to be the Pudgalavādins. For the Pudgalavādins, as we have seen, the relation between fire and fuel provided the model for understanding the analogous relation between the person and the aggregates.192 And yet, even though Candrakīrti and, following him, most interpreters193 understand the discussion to be directed against the Pudgalavādin, Nāgārjuna begins, oddly enough, with a statement with which the Pudgalavādin would be in full agreement.194 “If fire were fuel,” he writes, “then the agent would be identical to the action. If, on the other hand, fire were different from fuel, then it could exist without fuel.”195 In the next several verses he details the absurd consequences that would follow from the second possibility. If the fire were different from fuel, then the fire would burn forever; it could not be kindled nor would it ever go out (10.2). It would never attain



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the fuel and never burn it (10.5). Again, the Pudgalavādin, whose central claim is that the fire cannot be specified as different from (nor identical to) the fuel, would find nothing objectionable in this argument.196 The discussion becomes more interesting when Nāgārjuna turns his critical attention to the proposition that fire and fuel stand in a relation of mutual dependence. Here he applies a kind of Parmenidean logic to the proposition that something is established in dependence on something else. If something is established only in dependence on something else, then how can an as-​of-​yet unestablished, nonexistent entity meaningfully be said to stand in a relation of dependence? Conversely, if an already established entity stands in a relation of dependence, then what sense does it make to speak of that entity depending on something else?197 With these questions Nāgārjuna once again challenges the presupposition underlying the debate over the kind of relations that obtain between fire and fuel, the presupposition, namely, that “fire” and “fuel” are intelligible notions apart from each other.198 Candrakīrti construes Nāgārjuna’s argument here in ­chapter  10 to be a direct attack on what he takes to be a Pudgalavādin opponent’s stated position, namely, that fire and fuel—​and, analogously, the person and aggregates—​are mutually dependent and yet still self-​ identical realities.199 As Joseph Walser argues, however, Nāgārjuna’s argumentative strategy here might be more subtle. The point of Nāgārjuna’s demonstration of the incompatibility between, on the one hand, the interdependence of fire and fuel and, on the other, the assumption that both relata have intrinsic identity (svabhāva) might have been, rather, to show that the Pudgalavādin’s thesis makes sense only if one accepts the doctrine of emptiness.200 According to Walser, this style of argumentation, in which Nāgārjuna demonstrates that emptiness is the condition for the intelligibility of a particular Buddhist doctrine (in this case the interdependence of self and the aggregates), reflects Nāgārjuna’s strategic aim of winning the acceptance of the monks in his home monastery—​who, Walser hypothesizes, may have been Sāṃmatīyas at the time he wrote the Mūla-​madhyamaka-​kārikā—​for the Mahāyāna scriptures at a time before the Mahāyāna movement became institutionally established.201 Walser’s hypothesis that Nāgārjuna may have been trying to win over the Sāṃmatīya monks of his monastery by attacking the position of the Sāṃmatīyas’ Sarvāstivādin adversaries nicely accounts for a passage like MMK 27.8, which declares that the self is neither identical to nor other than its appropriated basis (upādāna),202 while at the same time explicitly rejecting the proposition that the self simply does not exist.203

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Whether as a result of a strategic interest in forging an alliance with Sāṃmatīya monks, as Walser hypothesizes, or simply as a logical consequence of extending the concept of selflessness to all dharmas, Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka represents a return of sorts to a more balanced conception of the relation between the self and its aggregates:  namely, one that rejects the identification of the self with the aggregates just as strenuously as it rejects the notion of the self as a separate substance. Perhaps no text better exemplifies this point than the sixth chapter of Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra (“Introduction to the Middle Way”). The better part of this chapter is dedicated to an analysis of the person. After arguing, in typical Buddhist fashion, against the non-​Buddhist view that the self is different from the aggregates,204 Candrakīrti turns his critical attention to the understanding of the aggregates themselves as “the basis of the philosophical view of a self.”205 Chief among the logical and exegetical arguments he presents against such a nominalist conception of the self is the familiar objection that such a nominal self “would be produced and destroyed from moment to moment” and would therefore undermine karmic retribution.206 In an argument that we saw Vasubandhu take some pains to refute,207 Candrakīrti argues that such a conception of self would lead to the absurdity of one self experiencing the karmic fruits of the acts of another.208 Candrakīrti structures his analysis of the person on the basis of a sevenfold expansion of these two basic possibilities. Invoking the famous Buddhist image of the chariot for the self, Candrakīrti lists seven possible relations between the self and the aggregates. He will refute each of these relations in turn as a way of making the larger point that no relation can obtain between two relata conceived as independent, self-​identical entities.209 “One does not consider a carriage,” he writes, “to be different from its own parts, nor to be identical, nor to be in possession of them, nor is it ‘in’ the parts, nor are they ‘in’ it, nor is it the mere composite [of its parts]; nor is it the shape [of those parts].”210 This list elaborates on Nāgārjuna’s fivefold typology in the Mūla-​madhyamaka-​kārikā (10.14, 22.1) and ultimately hearkens back to the fourfold typology preserved in the Pali Nikāyas.211 As Peter Fenner observes, the last five relationships in Candrakīrti’s list are simply specifications of the first two.212 That is, the two relations of containment (i.e., “the self in the aggregates” and “the aggregates in the self”) and the one of possession, inasmuch as they presuppose the independent existence of the two relata, are specifications of the first, the relation of difference. And the final two relations in Candrakīrti’s list,



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the self as the “mere composite of its parts” and as “the shape of those parts,” are specifications of the first relation of identity.213 Now the first two, “generic” relations of identity and difference correspond to the fifth and sixth Unanswered Questions. Given that the pudgalavāda proposition that the person is inexpressible with respect to the aggregates hews closely to this pair of Unanswered Questions, it is hardly surprising that, as Peter Fenner remarks, the “logical syntax” of Candrakīrti’s analysis of the person, based as it is on relations of identity and difference, closely resembles that of the Pudgalavādin Sāṃmitīyas.214 If, as I  have suggested above, the pudgalavāda doctrine of the inexpressibility of the person as either the same or different from the aggregates reflects a more traditional construal of the Unanswered Questions, then Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti’s use of the “logical syntax” of the person and the aggregates as not exactly the same or different, as well as their concomitant appeal to the allied “doctrine of no views,”215 might reflect the reformist impulse of the early Mahāyāna movement.216 These two features of Madhyamaka thought would thus indicate that, in this respect at least, there might be some truth in the Mahāyāna understanding of itself as a return to an earlier understanding of the Dharma. It would appear, then, that Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka radicalizes the idea of selflessness—​namely, by extending it to all things—​while at the same time returning, whether deliberately or unintentionally, to the Pudgalavāda’s more traditional formulation of the Middle Way between eternalism and annihilationism. Candrakīrti suppresses the convergence of the Madhyamaka and pudgalavāda formulations of the relation between the person and the aggregates, however, with his assertion that the basic position of his Pudgalavādin (Sāṃmitīya) opponent is that “the person exists as a real substance.”217 A comparison of this characterization of Pudgalavāda to the statement of Vasubandhu’s Vātsīputrīya pūrvapakṣin that the person exists neither as a substance nor as a conception218 suggests that the former is most likely a caricature.219 The Sāṃmitīyas of Candrakīrti’s day most likely did not regard the person as a real substance. Candrakīrti’s characterization of their position evinces the by now familiar polemical strategy of assimilating pudgalavāda to non-​Buddhist ātmavāda. And here we see a nice example of a rhetorical strategy that recurs throughout the history of Buddhism, and indeed throughout the history of religion: namely, magnifying or even, in some cases, manufacturing difference in order to maintain ideological boundaries. We see this strategy in the efforts

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to differentiate various functional equivalents of the self, such as the “storehouse consciousness” (ālayavijñāna) of the Yogācāras or “Buddha Nature” (tathāgatagarbha), from the concept of the self associated with the Tīrthikas.220 These efforts evince the “taboo” character, noted by Collins, that the concept of the self acquires by virtue of its use as a boundary marker between Buddhists and others.221

7

Theological Creativity and Doctrinal Constraint When I was a boy I felt that the role of rhyme in poetry was to compel one to find the unobvious because of the necessity of finding a word which rhymes. This forces novel associations and almost guarantees deviations from routine chains or trains of thought. It becomes paradoxically a sort of automatic mechanism of originality. Stanisław Ulam, cited in Dennett (1995: 223)

Summary of the Preceding Chapters By way of summary, first let me abstract from the foregoing chapters the following comparative generalizations. 1. The doctrines of consubstantiality and No-​self are massively counterintuitive, in the technical sense that they block most of the inferences that we spontaneously make with regard to basic “ontological” concepts like “person,” “event,” and “natural object.” The concept of consubstantiality as it is used in the context of describing the relation between Father and Son excludes two fundamental, intuitive concepts of substance in human experience, along with their associated inferences. The first of these substance concepts refers to the underlying “stuff” out of which things are made. The second concept of substance refers to the concrete individual thing. To understand consubstantiality in terms of the former-​substance concept is to understand the Son’s generation as a division of or emanation from some divine “stuff” or matter. To understand consubstantiality in terms of the latter-​substance concept is to understand Father and Son as different modes of an underlying substance. The Christian tradition

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has excluded both of these intuitive understandings of consubstantiality as heretical. No-​self, for its part, runs directly counter to a natural human tendency to explain phenomena in terms of agent causality, that is, to attribute phenomena to the actions of intentional agents. By denying a person or agent behind thought and experience, No-​self rejects the inference we spontaneously make from our experiences of personal continuity, individuality, and memory. To the extent, then, that neither consubstantiality nor No-​self is the product of human intuition or spontaneous reflection on common human experience, their formulation and their eventual acceptance calls out for explanation. 2. Neither doctrine can be analytically derived from its respective scriptural corpus. That is, neither is a completely unambiguous implication or entailment of key scriptural statements. Both doctrines quite obviously represent interpretations that were defended against rival interpretations with arguments, as opposed to logical inferences established conclusively by demonstration. A convenient indication or token of this hermeneutical gap between scripture and doctrine in the case of consubstantiality is the absence of substance (ousia) language in the New Testament.1 Historically, this absence posed a formidable obstacle to the acceptance of the Nicene doctrine.2 Concerns about the extrabiblical conceptuality of the doctrine of consubstantiality would not have carried the weight that they did, however, were it not for innumerable biblical statements that, prima facie, presuppose the subordination of the Son to the Father. In contrast to the use of substance language to describe the relation between Father and Son, the language of selflessness is well attested in the canonical discourses attributed to the Buddha. And yet, while the Pali suttas speak of the selflessness of the constituents of the personality, they stop short of an explicit denial of a self. Meanwhile, the Buddha continues to speak of persons being reborn into the world and persons striving for release. The No-​self doctrine thus cannot be read analytically out of the Buddhist sūtras any more than consubstantiality can out of the New Testament. This is not to say, of course, that neither scriptural corpus can be meaningfully and coherently read in light of these respective doctrines, as they have been, in fact, for centuries. In other words, to deny that these doctrines are contained implicitly in their respective scriptural corpora as the conclusions of a geometrical proof are contained in a body of postulates is not to say that they cannot function heuristically to bring order and coherence to an otherwise disparate and inconsistent body of thought.



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3. Both doctrines appear to have emerged in the context of hegemonic struggles within their respective traditions. That is, they were each developed in conscious opposition to rival interpretations of the founding teachings of their respective traditions. The statement that the Son is consubstantial with the Father (homoousios tôi patri) was inserted into the Nicene Creed with the express purpose of excluding the teaching of Arius and his followers. Later in the fourth century, the doctrine was reaffirmed in conscious opposition to various subordinationist—​ Homoian, Anomoian, and Homoiousian—​theological currents. On the Buddhist side, the classic statements of No-​self found in texts like the Kathāvatthu and the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya invariably appear in the context of refutations of the “Personalist” doctrine (pudgalavāda) associated with the Vātsīputrīya and Sāṃmatīya monastic orders. A  reference to a Pudgalavādin adversary is implicit, in fact, in one of the earliest formulations of the doctrine, featured in both the Kathāvatthu and the Milindapañha, namely, the proposition that “no person is found here” (na h’ettha puggalo upalabbhati). 4. Both consubstantiality and No-​self are rhetorical expressions of one-​ upmanship over their respective Arian and Pudgalavādin rivals. Each maximizes the contrast with the dominant out-​group or constitutive other. No-​self maximizes, over against Personalist doctrine, the contrast with the ātmavāda that was central to the soteriology of rival renunciant (śramaṇa) movements in Buddhism’s original North Indian (Magadhan) context and that would later come to define the Brahmanical tradition. Similarly, consubstantiality maximizes, over against Arianism, the contrast with the Jewish denial of the divinity of Christ. Tendentiously construing Arius’s insistence that the Father precedes the Son as an effective denial of Christ’s divinity, pro-​ Nicene polemicists rhetorically assimilated their Arian rivals to the Jews, thereby calling into question the former’s claim to the Christian name. In a similar way, Buddhist defenders of the anātman doctrine invidiously associate their Pudgalavādin rivals with the non-​Buddhist schools. Polemicists like Vasubandhu and Śāntarakṣita present their Pudgalavādin rivals as effectively teaching the ātmavāda of the Tīrthikas (outsiders, “heretics”) under another name. 5. Each doctrine came to be regarded as a sine qua non for the highest religious goal in their respective traditions. For a defender of the Nicene faith like Athanasius, Christ’s coeternality and consubstantiality with the Father together represent the condition for the possibility

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of salvation (and salvation, by implication, is conditional upon an acceptance of this doctrine). For a defender of the anātman doctrine like Vasubandhu, the afflictions that obstruct the attainment of liberation have the belief in self (ātmadṛṣṭi) as their basis. The sixty-​four heretical “views” (diṭṭhi, dṛṣṭi) mentioned in the Brahmajala Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya and distilled into the formulaic list of the ten questions left unanswered by the Buddha are understood to presuppose the doctrine of self as their common denominator. Defenders of both doctrines present the positions of their respective adversaries—​the Arians’ alleged refusal to recognize Christ’s divinity for the one, the Pudgalavādins’ effective adherence to a theory of a self for the other—​ as the most fundamental or archetypal heresy in their respective traditions.3 6. Anti-​Nicene Christians and Pudgalavādin Buddhists, for their part, regarded consubstantiality and anātmavāda, respectively, as deviations from received tradition that veered sharply into the territory of heresy. The confession that the Son belongs to the same substance as the Father—​at least as it initially appears in the context of the original Nicene Creed, before any distinction is yet made between substance (ousia) and person (hypostasis)—​comes dangerously close to the modalist heresy that denied real distinction in the Godhead. No-​self, with its reduction of the human being to the parts and powers of the personality that are dissolved at death, veers from the Buddhist Middle Path toward the heretical extreme of annihilationism (ucchedavāda), the view that nothing of the personality survives death. 7. Pre-​ Nicene subordinationist Christologies and pudgalavāda represented solutions to central problematics or tensions in their respective traditions. By rejecting their respective subordinationist and pudgalavāda rivals, consubstantiality and No-​self undermined those solutions. The neo-​Platonic notion of a descending hierarchy of being, in which the Son occupied a lower level than the Father while yet partaking in the latter’s divine nature, allowed pre-​Nicene theologians in the tradition of Origen to reconcile the belief in Christ’s divinity with monotheism. On the Buddhist side, the pudgalavāda thesis that the person is inexpressible either as identical with or as separate from the aggregates gave direct expression to the Middle Way between eternalism—​exemplified by the Brahmanical doctrine of an eternal self and expressed in the “undetermined” proposition that the body is one thing and the soul is another—​and annihilationism, expressed in



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the corresponding proposition that the body and soul are one and the same. Both Arian subordinationism and pudgalavāda arguably represent more traditional expressions of Christian and Buddhist doctrine, respectively, than their orthodox rivals. 8. No-​ self and consubstantiality do not merely negate the solutions offered by their rivals and thereby allow the tensions that were mitigated by those solutions to reassert themselves. Our two doctrines actually intensify those tensions to the point of dialectic. No-​ self exacerbates the tension between, on the one hand, the denial of the unchanging and inactive self of Brahmanism and Jainism and, on the other, the theory of karmically driven rebirth. Consubstantiality, for its part, by implicitly rejecting a concept of divinity that admits degrees, exacerbates the tension between the divinity of Christ and monotheism. Derivatively, it heightens the tension between the divinity and humanity of Christ. Neither No-​self nor consubstantiality was initially proposed because it promised a more satisfactory solution to its respective problematic than its rivals. The central thesis of this book is that their emergence and acceptance were driven by social identity processes, not by a systematic quest to minimize cognitive dissonance. The formidable theological task of reconciling these doctrines with their respective bodies of traditional teaching was imposed on the best minds of the tradition only after the doctrines were more or less established as givens. 9. Initially, both traditions were forced to devise makeshift hermeneutical strategies in order to reconcile these doctrines with their respective scriptural heritages. Thus Buddhist thinkers develop the doctrine of the two truths to reconcile the anātman doctrine with canonical statements in which the Buddha speaks of persons being reborn in accordance with their previous karma and persons striving for release. Consubstantiality forces Nicene theologians to distinguish, more sharply than had earlier theologians, between those things Jesus says and does in virtue of his humanity and those he says and does in virtue of his divinity. Initially each of these expedients has an ad hoc character, although in time each will figure prominently in a thoroughgoing revisioning of the tradition. 10. Both the Christian and Buddhist traditions witness later developments that effectively return—​like the final moment in the Hegelian dialectic or, to change the metaphor, a homeostatic mechanism establishing a new state of equilibrium in response to a condition of stress—​to the

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earlier settlement at a higher level. Pro-​Nicene theology, particularly its early expression in the theologies of Athanasius and Marcellus, opposed the subordinationist Logos theologies in which the Son, conceived as a distinct divine hypostasis, mediated between a transcendent, impassible God and a transitory world.4 As the fourth century progresses, however, the pro-​Nicene theological trajectory undergoes refinements that mitigate its earlier antithesis with the tradition of Logos theology. By combining the Nicene doctrine of consubstantiality with an affirmation of three divine hypostases, the so-​called Neo-​Nicenism of the second half of the fourth century not only frees consubstantiality from its persistent associations with modalism, it also preserves, as Lewis Ayres argues, the revelatory and mediatory functions of God’s Word while eliminating the subordinationism of the earlier Logos theology. In this way, mature pro-​Nicene theology represents a transformation, and not an abandonment, of earlier Logos theology.5 On the Buddhist side, Nāgārjuna’s effort to extend the principle of dependent arising to the ultimate particulars of Abhidharmic analysis has the perhaps unexpected effect of offsetting the Abhidharmic denial of the independent reality of the self with a denial of the independent reality of the constituents to which the self had been reduced. Nāgārjuna’s thesis that neither the self nor the aggregates has independent existence—​that these two relata are interdependent, mutually constitutive concepts—​coheres with the personalist doctrine that the person is neither reducible to nor separate from the constituents. In this way, Madhyamaka can be seen as returning to the Pudgalavādins’ arguably more balanced approach to the classic Buddhist problematic of steering a middle course between eternalism and annihilationism. Thus interpreted, Madhyamaka—​“Middling”—​lives up to its name.

The Spirit of Contradiction and Apophatic Discourse As mentioned in our eighth point above, consubstantiality and No-​self brought the central problematics of their respective traditions—​affirming the divinity of Christ in a monotheistic context; affirming rebirth without the underlying presupposition of an enduring self—​to the point of dialectic. By dialectic I mean the simultaneous affirmation of two prima



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facie contradictory concepts with a concomitant rejection of any mediating concept that might mitigate the tension between them. We have seen that No-​self is founded on a rejection of the concept of the person (pudgala) that, while real, is nevertheless inseparable from the aggregates and is to that extent distinct from the inactive ātman of the non-​Buddhists. Consubstantiality, for its part, rests on a rejection of the notion of a Son who is divine and yet subordinate to the Father. As we have seen, such mediating concepts were vulnerable to the admittedly tendentious accusation that they undermined the distinctiveness of Buddhism and Christianity, respectively. The pudgala was simply the non-​Buddhist ātman under another name. The Arian subordination of the Son to the Father, inasmuch as it implied that the Son was not “true God from true God,” effectively reduced the Son of God to the status of a creature. The aforementioned problematics—​each brought to the point of dialectic by the doctrines of consubstantiality and No-​self, respectively—​provide the generative framework or matrix for two of the most well-​known apophatic concepts in the history of religions, namely:  the one-​substance/​ three-​persons Trinitarian formula in the one case, and the Mādhyamika doctrine of emptiness or śūnyatā in the other. Let us begin with the former. Stated somewhat crudely, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity effectively blocks the Sabellian interpretation of the original Nicene confession by juxtaposing the doctrine of consubstantiality with the Origenist doctrine of the three divine hypostases.6 From both a historical and a logical point of view, these doctrinal components of the Trinitarian doctrine stand in tension with one another. And yet, precisely because of this logical tension, they function to correct and purify one another. As just mentioned, the doctrine of three hypostases, by affirming the real distinctions among the three divine Persons, blocks a Sabellian interpretation of the Nicene confession that the Son is homoousios with the Father. The latter, for its part, functions to purge the three hypostases doctrine of its traditional subordinationism while at the same time driving a wedge between the notion of three distinct persons and the notion of three gods. In other words, consubstantiality distinguishes trinitarianism from tritheism. As the older verificationist and falsificationist analyses of religious language showed, metaphysical doctrines like the Trinity are descriptively or informationally attenuated, if not altogether vacuous.7 Expressed in cognitive scientific terms, such doctrines systematically block most of the natural, default inferences that structure human

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cognition and that yield new knowledge. For many (though, of course, far from all) philosophers and theologians, such critical analyses of religious language have called into question the “cognitive-​propositional” theory of doctrine that has served as a kind of default understanding of doctrine.8 For George Lindbeck, church doctrines are better understood not as first-​order informative propositions about objective realities, but rather as second-​order rules of discourse about God.9 Such a regulative theory of doctrine better accounts for the negative or prohibitive nature of a doctrine like the Trinity—​that it functions more to exclude certain ways of speaking about or conceptualizing divine reality than to make a positive claim about God. Or as Nicholas Lash felicitously puts it, the Christian doctrine of God encapsulates a “set of protocols against idolatry,” that is, a set of rules excluding any way of speaking about God as an object subject to our cognitive control.10 The regulative theory of doctrine favored by theologians like Lindbeck and Lash coheres with Wayne Proudfoot’s seminal (nontheological) analysis of mystical language.11 Against the once prevalent phenomenological construal of mystical statements as descriptive of an ineffable, prelinguistic experience of transcendent reality, Proudfoot argued that such statements function prescriptively to exclude any reference to an experience that can be named or explained in naturalistic terms.12 Thus the ineffability that William James identified as a defining mark or property of mystical experience is actually, according to Proudfoot, the prescribed result of such exclusionary rules.13 Understood in terms of Proudfoot’s analysis of religious language, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity functions as a placeholder that systematically repels a number of determinate understandings of the Trinitarian structure of the Godhead.14 Those precluded understandings correspond to the heresies of Arianism and Sabellianism, or, switching to an alternative formulation put forward by Gregory of Nyssa, the polytheism of the Greeks and the (allegedly) one-​dimensional monotheism, or monoprosopism, of the Jews. That theologians like Gregory typically identify the excluded conceptions of God with named heresies calls attention to the polemical dimension of doctrine that tends to be passed over in formalist, logical or grammatical analyses like those of Lindbeck or Proudfoot. Even a passing familiarity with the Arian controversy reveals that the rules or principles precluding certain understandings or ways of speaking about God are rooted in historical struggles among various rival Christian factions. Viewed on the most mundane level, Christian apophatic language functioned as a



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protective strategy in the hyperpoliticized theological context of the post-​ Constantinian church. Richard Lim describes how fourth-​century church leaders, rather like modern politicians, were expected to state their beliefs in the “controversial minefield” that was fourth-​and fifth-​century theological profession.15 In such situations, an appeal to divine mystery, to “honor Christ in silence,” was often the most prudent and tactful response to the pointed challenges issuing from a fissiparous constituency.16 The appeal to mystery could also be part of a more proactive strategy. Lim argues that Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa insisted on the unknowability of the divine essence as a way of delegitimizing the techniques of dialectical questioning that had been used so effectively by their Anomoian opponents. The three great Cappadocian theologians thus developed one of the central principles of the tradition of Christian mystical theology in the context of an effort to preserve the authority of a largely aristocratic episcopate against a group of theological upstarts whose mastery of rhetoric and dialectic served as a means of upward social mobility.17 In order to block the leveling effects of dialectic, the Cappadocians frequently had recourse to ad hominem argumentation. Basil, for example, seeks to undermine Eunomius’s argument that the term “ingenerate” (agennêtos) names the essence of God by accusing Eunomius of irreverently claiming a knowledge of the divine essence.18 The accusation is somewhat ironic in light of the fact that an insistence on the unknowability of God was one of the chief emphases of the subordinationist, anti-​Nicene theological trajectory that Eunomius carried forward.19 The Mādhyamika doctrine of emptiness also supports the thesis that apophatic discourse results from the hardening of theological problematics into dialectic thanks to the polemically motivated elimination of mediating concepts. Transposing the paradigmatic understanding of Buddhist practice as the Middle Way between worldly self-​indulgence and unproductive self-​mortification onto the philosophical plane, the tradition has represented the solution of the rebirth-​without-​self problematic as the Middle Way between the twin pitfalls of eternalism and annihilationism. As we saw in ­chapter 3, one can discern an apophatic strain in some of the earliest texts in the Canon. The Pali suttas contrast the Buddha’s direct knowledge or vision of reality “as it really is” (yathābhūtaṃ) with the various karmically conditioned “views” propounded by other teachers and traditions. In principle, the latter, of which sixty-​four are enumerated in the Brahmajala Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya, are reducible to the alternative “heresies” of eternalism and annihilationism. As we have seen, these

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two extremes are formulaically expressed in the fifth and sixth of the ten Unanswered Questions: is the soul the same thing as the body, or is the soul one thing and the body another? From one point of view, the pudgalavāda doctrine of the person (pudgala) that is inexpressible either as identical with or separate from the aggregates simply formalizes the apophaticism implicit in the tradition of the Unanswered Questions. The pudgala concept fixes the simultaneous denial of eternalism and annihilationism in nominative form. Along the lines of Proudfoot’s analysis of mystical language, the concept of the pudgala functions as a placeholder excluding determinate answers to the fifth and sixth Unanswered Questions. To the extent that the pudgala concept retains a measure of descriptive content, however, it can be construed as a tertium quid that mitigates the tension between, on the one hand, the denial of a vehicle of transmigration and, on the other, an affirmation of karma and rebirth. In this latter sense, pudgalavāda itself represents a view. We have seen that proponents of the anātman doctrine uncharitably dismiss the pudgala as the ātman under another name. To the extent that the pudgala represents a mediating concept, anātmavāda returns the rebirth-​without-​self problematic to its stark dialectical form (assuming, of course, that anātmavāda does not unwittingly fall into the arms of the annihilationist heresy as its critics alleged). From another point of view, however, one could argue anātmavāda represents, if anything, a more obvious departure than does pudgalavāda from the pure apophaticism represented by the tradition of the Unanswered Questions and, a fortiori, texts like the Aṭṭhaka Vagga of the Sutta Nipāta. To see this, recall the orthodox, “philosophical” explanation for the Unanswered Questions: the Buddha refuses to answer the questions because they each presuppose the existence of the self. This interpretation applies to the annihilationist views no less than the eternalist ones: the annihilationist views allegedly presuppose a self that is annihilated on death. This interpretation carries the reduction of the sixty-​four views profiled in the Brahmajala Sutta beyond the antithesis between eternalism and annihilationism. All those views, epitomized in the list of ten Unanswered Questions, are, in the last analysis, only so many forms of ātmavāda. The fundamental antithesis is no longer between view—​ultimately reducible to the fundamental options of eternalism and annihilationism—​and no view. The fundamental antithesis becomes, rather, that of anātmavāda and ātmavāda, which exemplify, respectively, right view and wrong view.20 To be sure, anātmavāda can be



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reconciled with the apophatic perspective on the Unanswered Questions by interpreting ātmavāda as a cipher for attachment and thus for karmic conditioning more generally. As the view that undermines all views, anātmavāda becomes something of an antiview. Nevertheless, to the extent that it embodies a determinate claim—​namely, that the person is reducible to the aggregates—​anātmavāda represents a view and thus a departure from the apophatic “doctrine of no-​views.”21 The Mādhyamika extension of the notion of selflessness from persons to things, with its implicit reinterpretation of the concept of “self” from the putative unchanging core of sentient beings to the self-​nature (svabhāva) of things more generally, effects a return, as Luis Gómez suggested, to the pure apophaticism of the tradition of the Aṭṭhaka Vagga. The Mādhyamika critique of Abhidharma foundationalism removes any ambiguity concerning the question of whether classical anātmavāda, understood “abhidharmically” in terms of a reduction of the person to the aggregates (skandhamātravāda), constitutes a view. To the extent that the reduction of the personality to the aggregates presupposes the self-​ nature of the latter, abhidharmic anātmavāda constitutes, as paradoxical as it sounds, a subtle form of ātmavāda. In this way, classical anātmavāda ironically becomes subject to its own characterization of views as only so many varieties of ātmavāda. Madhyamaka rejects any view that presupposes a concept of intrinsic existence. This critique applies to the various positions taken on the range of problems famously analyzed in Nāgārjuna’s Mūla-​madhyamaka-​ kārikā: the relationship between cause and effect, self and attributes, action and its fruits, and so on. Nāgārjuna rejects those views to the extent that they presuppose the intrinsic existence of the entities whose relationship is at issue. Madhyamaka’s critique of views, moreover, is self-​reflexive, at least in principle. Nāgārjuna insists that emptiness, the antidote of all views, does not itself constitute a view.22 Emptiness, in other words, is itself empty.23 To the extent that the Mādhyamika concept of emptiness is self-​reflexive, it succeeds, more than pudgalavāda of the Sāṃmatīyas or the skandhamātravāda of the Sarvāstivādins, in establishing a qualitative difference between Madhyamaka’s own position and the various views corresponding to the schematized list of Unanswered Questions. Emptiness thus becomes a paradigmatic example of those placeholder concepts, analyzed by Proudfoot, which function to repel any determination.24 We have thus seen that apophatic language is generated out of problematics that have crystallized, thanks to social identity processes, into

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dialectics. And yet, such dialecticalized problematics need not simply result in opaque, apophatic discourse. The Trinity is more than simply a placeholder for the mystery of God. The concept of the consubstantial Word that lies at the heart of the Trinitarian doctrine gives expression to the notion that self-​expression is intrinsic to God’s being, that it belongs to God to reveal Godself. Or, expressed in terms of Thomas Weinandy’s felicitous description of the theological achievement of Athanasius, “the one nature of God, what the one God is, is the Father begetting the Son.”25 The inherently expressive and relational nature of God that the Trinitarian doctrine expresses, moreover, is refracted in the symbolic and relational nature of all reality.26 Through the eyes of Christian faith, all reality reflects, albeit dimly and imperfectly, the dynamic unity of being and manifestation epitomized by the intra-​Trinitarian relations. The doctrine of emptiness, likewise, is more than simply a conceptual expedient designed to deconstruct all determinate views. Inasmuch as emptiness is equivalent to Dependent Arising, it gives expression to a powerful vision of the transience and interconnectedness of things, an insight into the radical dependence of all phenomena on an intricate and ever-​changing web of causes and conditions.27 I shall describe each of these doctrines in turn, showing how the visions they express developed out of the original problematics of each.

The Trinitarian Vision of Reality A survey of the long history of Trinitarian speculation from Augustine, through the tradition of medieval Trinitarian mysticism (epitomized in the writings of Ruusbroec), to modern construals of the Trinity in light of the concept of the symbol (e.g., Rahner, Dupré, Tracy, and others) lies outside the scope of the present study. In order to root the Trinitarian vision of reality described above in the development of pro-​Nicene theology, perhaps it will suffice to examine, however briefly and inadequately, a development that lies at the basis of the tradition of Trinitarian speculation, namely: the retrieval of Logos theology in the Trinitarian theology of St. Augustine. As mentioned in the tenth thesis above, the doctrine of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father brought to an end the trajectory of Logos theology, in which the Logos was understood as a second—​and subordinate—​ divine principle mediating between a transcendent God and creation.28 A tradition of French Augustinian scholarship, beginning with the influential historian of doctrine Théodore de Régnon, however,



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credited Augustine with freeing the concept of the divine Logos from its associations with Arian subordinationism. Augustine did this by basing his Trinitarian theology on a distinction that was well known to but not fully developed in earlier Greek theology. This is the distinction between, on the one hand, the interior word by which the object of knowledge is present to the mind and, on the other, the exterior word which, once uttered, parts from its speaker and passes away.29 Thus Augustine, with an implicit appeal to the former concept, declares that, “God speaks by the Word which he begot, not by the word which is uttered, sounds, and passes away, but by the Word that was with God […] by the Word which is equal to himself, by whom he always and unchangeably utters himself.”30 The concept of the mental or interior word by which the mind is abidingly present to itself thus serves as an image for the generation of the consubstantial Son from the Father.31 This notion of the interior word that mediates self-​knowledge forms the basis of Augustine’s celebrated analogy of the mind that understands and loves itself as an image for the Trinity.32 Augustine will emphasize the inadequacy of this image, along with the other psychological triads he introduces in the second half of De trinitate, for capturing the mystery of the Trinity. And yet the notion of knowledge and love as two irreducibly distinct faculties inhering the single reality of the mind as their source and object provides an illuminating, even if imperfect, image of the three consubstantial yet irreducibly distinct divine persons.33 According to de Régnon, the concept of the interior word allows the tradition to affirm the revelatory function of the divine Word without conceding the subordinationist, Arian implications of the exterior word that parts from its speaker and passes away.34 Or, as Ayres nicely summarizes de Régnon’s insight, “[t]‌he transformation of Logos theology into a discussion of the Word’s eternal procession on the model of the production of the ‘inner word’ focuses attention ever more clearly on the manner in which the Son’s existence is the perfection of the Father’s mode of being and yet [is] still mediatorial.”35 The revelatory function of the divine Word has a participatory dimension. Divine self-​communication through God’s Word is the enabling condition for our knowledge of ourselves. At the same time, the quest for self-​knowledge is the avenue through which we come to a knowledge of the triune God. So long as the mind relies on corporeal images in its quest to make itself cognitively and affectively present to itself, it fails to grasp its true spiritual nature and, to that extent, bears only an external resemblance to the divine Trinity.36 However, as the Christian grows in the

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Christian life and is gradually led, thanks to the mediation of Christ, from the material to the spiritual, the mind learns to see itself in God.37 The second half of De trinitate describes the process through which the disciplined quest for self-​knowledge opens out into an understanding—​and, eschatologically, a vision—​of the Trinity.38 To the extent that soul’s threefold faculties of memory, understanding, and will—​the psychological triad Augustine introduces at the end of book 10—​are directed toward God, the true object of human aspiration, the mind (mens) becomes a true image of the Trinity. In other words, the mind that contemplates its God realizes or performatively (re)enacts its identity as the imago dei, thereby restoring the relation between the divine and human planes.39 According to French scholars like André Malet, Hyacinthe Paissac, and Marie-​Joseph Le Guillou, what inhibited earlier theologians, particularly the Greeks, from realizing the theological potential of the concept of the interior word was the polemical context of Arianism.40 Fourth-​century Greek theologians were well familiar with the originally Stoic41 distinction between the interior and exterior words (the logos endiathetos and logos prophorikos, respectively). And yet, generally speaking, they were reluctant to speak of the divine Word in terms of either, as each of these notions lends itself too easily to a heretical understanding of the divine Word.42 This “neither-​nor” model for understanding the divine Word was reinforced by the perceived return of the Sabellian heresy in the teachings of Photinus and Marcellus in the middle of the fourth century. The concept of the interior word is implicit in the latter’s concept of the Logos abiding eternally in an essential, hypostatic unity with God before the creation.43 Thus to speak of the divine Word as an interior word lent itself all too easily to the Sabellian denial of the Son’s distinction from the Father; while, conversely, to speak in terms of the exterior word made it too easy to imagine, with the “Arians,” that the Son has a different nature than the Father.44 Basil, who conceives orthodoxy as the Middle Way between the extremes of Arianism and Sabellianism, is acutely aware of the Sabellian implications that follow from a one-​sided emphasis on the interior word.45 Accordingly, he cautions his readers to be on their guard against being led astray by the equivocal nature of the concept of the word.46 Perhaps because traditional Western theology was not quite as hostile to the Marcellan-​Photinian theological trajectory as was its Eastern counterpart,47 Augustine has fewer inhibitions about using the analogy of the interior word to reflect on the eternal generation of the consubstantial Son and the intra-​Trinitarian relations.48



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And yet, as Michel René Barnes argues, one cannot follow the French scholars mentioned above in attributing Augustine’s creative use of the notion of the interior word to an alleged distance from the polemical controversies of his Greek pro-​Nicene forbears, much less to a freedom from the constraints imposed by the Nicene language of consubstantiality.49 Against the once-​prevalent view that Arianism posed no serious threat to Nicene orthodoxy in the West50 and that, accordingly, “De trinitate is an exposition free from the pressure of controversy because the ‘Arians’ of Book V are of only formal interest to Augustine,”51 Barnes argues convincingly that Augustine’s Trinitarian thought, and the De trinitate in particular, was shaped by polemical concerns, in particular late fourth-​century Latin Homoian theology.52 The starting point and basis of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology was a foundational tenet of late fourth-​century, Neo-​Nicene theology that Augustine inherited from his Latin predecessors like Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose of Milan, namely, that “any action of any member of the Trinity is an action of the three inseparably.”53 This “doctrine of inseparable operation” was developed in response to the Homoian exegesis of scriptural texts, such as Matthew’s account of Jesus’s baptism (Mt. 3:13–​ 17), that seem to attribute different activities to each of the three persons. Against the Homoian conclusion that these distinctive operations evince a corresponding diversity of nature among the persons, pro-​Nicene exegetes developed the principle that the activity of one of the divine persons is at once the activity of all three.54 As Ayres argues, the doctrine of inseparable operation provides the basic grammar for Augustine’s ongoing attempts to articulate what it means to speak of Father, Son, and Spirit as God. Simply stated, this “Neo-​Nicene” theological grammar stipulates that Father, Son, and Spirit are of the same nature while yet remaining irreducibly distinct.55 Augustine further refines and specifies this grammar of inseparable operation with what Ayres terms a “grammar of divine simplicity.” This grammatical rule states that “in God all qualities are identical with God’s essence,” or, more succinctly, there are no accidents in God.56 This principle of divine simplicity expressly excludes the understanding of divine substance as a fourth principle anterior to, and more fundamental than, the three persons. The latter, “materialist” conception of divine unity was, in fact, obviated by the notion of a unity of action among the three persons.57 Understanding divine unity in terms of a substance behind or underlying the three persons betrays a tendency to apply to God a “grammar of material objects” that provides the default grammar of human experience and thought.58 By contrast, Augustine’s reflections on the Trinity found in

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De trinitate rest on the counterintuitive grammar of divine simplicity.59 The text both describes and models the discipline, at once behavioral and intellectual, whereby the Christian learns a basic grammar of faith in terms of which he or she can then imagine the divine appropriately.60 Augustine’s De trinitate thus exemplifies the traditional conception of theological practice, as Anselm’s famous dictum has it, as faith looking for understanding. To the extent that the traces or vestigia of the Trinity in the soul are not immediately discernible, owing to the weakness of human perception in its fallen state, Augustine’s reflection on the various psychological “analogies” for the Trinity in the second part of De trinitate cannot be understood as an exercise in natural theology.61 Rather, faith in the Trinitarian doctrine functions as a hermeneutic of religious experience through which the Christian is trained to discern the otherwise obscure vestigia of the Trinity in the works of creation.62 Let me conclude this discussion of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology with three points. First, Augustine’s articulations of Trinitarian doctrine exemplify the nature of theology as an intellectual activity undertaken under fairly stringent constraints—​in this particular case, within the counterintuitive, “non-​Euclidean” grammar of Nicene orthodoxy. Second, the regulative principles that constitute this grammar are historically rooted in hegemonic struggles within the broader Christian community. Those grammatical principles reflect the sedimentation, partial or complete, of what were originally polemical concepts, that is to say, concepts developed in opposition to other patterns of thought and that functioned, accordingly, to mobilize group identity. Even if the specific polemical situation in which a given theological principle took its origin has lost its moment and the original opponents, accordingly, have assumed a stereotypical character, the corresponding theological grammar derives its compulsory force over Christian thought from the exclusions that sustain a particular conception of Christian identity. Third, those regulative constraints, while they shape and discipline the theological imagination, need not suppress or inhibit it. They can, as Augustine’s example amply demonstrates, challenge the imagination to envision possibilities beyond what a “purely material grammar” allows.63

Dependent Origination as Emptiness The doctrine of Dependent Origination, particularly in its traditional formulation as a circular chain of twelve links, has been called “the most important doctrinal statement of Buddhism.”64 Its importance is reflected



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in traditional accounts of the Buddha’s “night of enlightenment,” in which his full awakening coincides with an insight into the causal nexus.65 The importance of the twelvefold list of causal factors in classical Buddhism no doubt has much to do with one of the two basic functions of this doctrine noted by Steven Collins, namely, to “express, symbolically, the ‘round of rebirth’ without the reincarnating self or person which Brahmanical thinking had postulated.”66 Two great commentarial works of the fifth century, Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga and Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, each give paradigmatic expression to this understanding of Dependent Origination as the answer to the rebirth-​without-​self problematic.67 Both texts present the series of twelve links as spanning three lifetimes.68 And both present the twelve causal factors in the context of an explicit denial of a transmigrating self.69 As Louis de la Vallée Poussin noted over a century ago, the twelvefold causal series was not created ex nihilo.70 The series evinces some of the awkwardness and inconsistency that one sometimes finds in early Buddhist lists or mātrikas more generally.71 One gets the impression that perhaps the list contains, as Poussin puts it, “more words than ideas.” In other words, some concepts were duplicated in order to fill out a schema that was fixed in advance.72 For example, “grasping” (upādāna), the ninth link in the causal series, is arguably only a strong variant—​rather than the effect—​of thirst (tṛṣṇā), the eighth, as earlier expressions of the series in fact suggest.73 Erich Frauwallner provides what is arguably the most compelling hypothesis for the origins of the twelvefold series out of preexisting concepts and lists. He proposes that the twelvefold series was the result of the mechanical juxtaposition of what were originally two distinct causal accounts of the process of rebirth.74 The first of these accounts, corresponding to the last five links of the traditional formula,75 posits thirst (tṛṣṇā) as the root cause of our entanglement in suffering. The second, corresponding to the first five links,76 posits ignorance (avidyā) as the root cause. When juxtaposed, these originally alternative accounts of the same rebirth process appear as two consecutive events, which the later tradition, as noted above, will arrange in a sequence spanning three lives.77 According to Frauwallner’s hypothesis, these two sequences, moreover, correspond to developmental stages in the Buddha’s own thought.78 The sequence beginning with thirst was simply an elaboration of the core insight of the Buddha’s first sermon, namely, that suffering arises from desire.79 The sequence beginning with ignorance corresponds, according to

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Frauwallner, to a later stage in the Buddha’s thinking on the psychological origins of human suffering.80 And it is this later gnosiological perspective that provides the basic framework for the twelvefold series as a whole, as reflected in the position of ignorance (avidyā) at the head of the list. One does not have to accept Frauwallner’s rather quaint attribution of both sequences to the evolving thought of the historical Buddha to appreciate his larger point that the first, “thirst,” sequence and the second, “ignorance,” sequence reflect the development of early Buddhist teaching. Such a development is suggested by a comparison of the various accounts of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Earlier accounts like that of the Mahāvagga have Gautama’s enlightenment experience culminate, during the third and final watch of that fateful night under the Bodhi tree, in an insight into the Four Truths.81 As noted above, however, later accounts of the Buddha’s enlightenment, such as those of the Nidānakathā and the Lalitavistara, have the twelvefold series take the place of the Four Noble Truths as the content of Gautama’s final liberating insight.82 As Lambert Schmithausen suggests, the various accounts of the content of the Buddha’s enlightenment experience functioned as etiological myths to explain and legitimate what was regarded at the time as the most fundamental Buddhist teaching.83 It would be extremely difficult, of course, given the notorious imprecision of our dating of the events and texts of early Buddhism, to correlate the emergence of the anattā doctrine to the displacement of the Four Truths by Dependent Origination in accounts of the Buddha’s night of enlightenment. Nevertheless, as mentioned above, it is plausible that the emergence of the doctrine of Dependent Origination as the central Buddhist teaching had something to do with its role in explaining the cycle of rebirth without the underlying presupposition of a transmigrating self or person. If we examine the rudiments of the twelvefold series found in the Sutta Piṭaka, we see that, while these discourses express the general idea of the conditionality of things, they do not explicitly address the rebirth-​without-​ self problematic.84 A  good example is the Dvayatā-​ anupassana Sutta (“Consideration of the Pairs”) of the Sutta Nipāta (vv. 724ff), an important precursor to the twelvefold list according to Poussin.85 In what appears to be an expansion or an elaboration of the Buddha’s Second Noble Truth, this text provides a list of various causes of suffering that overlaps to a considerable extent with the later twelvefold series.86 And yet, in contrast to the latter discourse, each item in this series is a direct cause of



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suffering: when each of these is present, suffering arises; when it ceases, suffering ceases.87 In other words, the text does not link these causes together in a causal sequence spanning more than one lifetime. Nor does this list of causes for suffering—​nor do the Four Noble Truths, for that matter—​expressly exclude the notion of a self or person. This chapter of the Sutta Nipāta gives expression the general idea of the contingency of phenomena, as captured in the ubiquitous—​and ancient—​Buddhist formula, “whatever has the nature of arising has the nature of ceasing.”88 And yet it is only with the emergence of the twelvefold series that this general idea of conditionality is applied to the problem of continuity and rebirth.89 Combining the twelvefold series with the notion that the person is reducible to the constituents introduces certain ambiguities into the former notion, however. The relation between the five skandhas and the twelve links of the causal series is ambiguous. More precisely, it is not clear whether the relation between the self and the aggregates is the same as the relation between the transmigrating self and the causal series. Put differently, the twelve links are ambiguous with respect to the two truths:  do they correspond to the skandhas and therefore belong to the realm of ultimate reality or, alternatively, do they correspond to the self and therefore belong to the realm of conventional reality? From one point of view, the notion of a transmigrating self would appear to be epiphenomenal with respect to the causal series, as suggested by the Milindapañha’s famous image of a flame burning continuously throughout the night. Just as the flame is reducible to a series of distinct combustion events, so too, one could argue, is the self is reducible to the continually changing sequence of aggregates. From this perspective, then, one might infer that each of the twelve links, although momentary, belongs to the category of substantial as opposed to conceptual being (dravyasat versus prajñāptisat), to use Vasubandhu’s categories.90 Qua causal factors, each of the twelve links occupies a position analogous to the skandhas vis-​à-​vis the insubstantial self. This impression is reinforced by the overlap between the list of skandhas and that of causal factors, specifically, formations (saṃskārā), consciousness (vijñāna), feeling (vedanā), and, if one disaggregates the category of nāma-​rūpa in the twelvefold series, physical form (rūpa) as well. From another perspective, however—​and this will represent the orthodox Sarvāstivādin position—​each of the twelve links represents a state (daśā or avasthā) of the five skandhas.91 Each of the links, therefore, stands in a position analogous to the self. Although he will distance himself from this, the āvasthita interpretation of the twelvefold series, Vasubandhu duly presents

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it in his commentary on Abhidharmakośa 3.21–​24.92 At the moment of reincarnation in the mother’s womb, the skandhas constitute consciousness (vijñāna). At the next stage in the process, the skandhas constitute name and form, so long as the six sense spheres—​the next link on the causal chain—​have not yet arisen.93 Thus the set of skandhas constituting consciousness gives way to the set constitutive of name and form, and the latter, in turn, gives way to the set constitutive of the six sense spheres. These remarks suggest that each of these links in the chain of Dependent Origination, like the self, is the same in existence as the continually changing collection of skandhas. Now, to the extent that the relation between the self and the skandhas provides the model for the principle of conditionality more generally, dependency would seem to empty things of intrinsic reality.94 In other words, each of the links would not simply be impermanent, as they are according to the first, “realist” perspective that categorizes the links with the skandhas, but insubstantial as well. It is important to note, however, that the āvasthita interpretation of the twelvefold series was not universally held.95 Vasubandhu himself seems to reject the āvasthita understanding of consciousness—​the most consequential of the links and the key to understanding the pratītyasamutpāda formula as a whole96—​ as the aggregate of skandhas at the time of birth. He maintained, rather, that the link of consciousness referred to the series of consciousness (the six vijñānas) constituting the intermediate state (antarābhava) between one life and the next.97 In general, the different Buddhist philosophical schools interpreted the twelvefold formula in various ways, depending on the degree of reality they attributed to the skandhas.98 This interpretive diversity evinces the uncertainty concerning the relation between the twelve links and the five skandhas and, in particular, the ambiguity of the ontological status of the former. The Mādhyamika critique of Abhidharma foundationalism removes this ambiguity and thereby clears the way for a radical, “kenotic” concept of dependence.99 The Mādhyamika denial of any entity exempt from the principle of Dependent Origination places the twelve links unambiguously in the category of conventional truth.100 Put differently, the rejection of the foundationalist presuppositions of Abhidharma analysis renders academic the question of whether the twelve factors are to be classed with the self or with the skandhas. The latter are no less dependently arisen and therefore no less empty than is the self. By eliminating an ontological hierarchy between dependently originated phenomena and their putative underlying causes, Mādhyamika antifoundationalism not only radicalizes the



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concept of dependence such that things are ontologically dependent without remainder. It also renders dependence necessarily reciprocal: absolute dependence implies interdependence. Once the principle of Dependent Origination becomes understood in terms of interdependence, it can be detached from of the rebirth-​ without-​ self problematic. This development is ironic inasmuch as the application of the early Buddhist principle of conditionality to the rebirth-​without-​self problematic arguably transformed what was originally a pragmatic psychological principle—​that suffering is conditioned and therefore removable—​into an all-​pervasive cosmological concept. Nowhere is this independence of the principle of Dependent Origination from the problem of continuity and rebirth more clearly evident than in the Zen-​ inspired philosophy of the Kyoto School. Thinkers like Keiji Nishitani and Masao Abe place great emphasis on the concept of pratītyasamutpāda, which they understand as a principle of the radical interdependence or, in Nishitani’s terminology, “circuminsession” of things.101 At the same time, however, they say very little about the doctrine of rebirth, a concept of limited significance in Japanese Buddhism more generally.102 Also reflective of their cultural distance from Buddhism’s Indic origins is a certain lack of compunction about speaking of selfhood and the “true self.” This relative lack of reserve evinces the more general principle that the strength of what Steven Collins calls the “linguistic taboo” against self language in technical discourse varies in inverse proportion to one’s cultural distance from India.103

Theological Creativity and the Metaphorical Process The analysis of doctrinal development in terms of social identity processes implies an element of heterogeneity between doctrinal development and theological reflection. The analysis suggests that religious traditions, to the extent that their doctrinal development is driven by social identity processes, can back themselves into doctrinal positions that they must then retrospectively justify. Borrowing an analogy used to capture the opportunistic and ad hoc character of the evolutionary changes wrought by natural selection, the systematic theologian is more akin to a tinkerer than an engineer. That is, unlike the engineer, who works according to a preconceived plan with materials specifically designed for that end, the theologian, like

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the tinkerer, works with the materials lying at her disposal.104 The task of the systematic theologian, however, at least as traditionally conceived, is precisely to conceal the contingent and ad hoc nature of doctrinal development. That is, the theologian recasts the central doctrines of the faith as if they were simply the logical entailments of a set of general principles and patterns.105 In this respect, the task of the systematic theologian can be compared to Imre Lakatos’s conception of the task of the philosopher of science, namely, to rewrite or reconstruct the often ad hoc, undisciplined, and “irrational” history of scientific discovery as if it proceeded in accordance with a given rational methodology.106 Prima facie, one might think that the doctrinal constraints on theological reflection would limit the scope and power of the theological imagination. The creative powers of the theologian are held in check by his or her doctrinal commitments. By contrast, the speculative philosopher, unburdened by such constraints, is free to give full rein to her imagination. As paradoxical as it seems, however, creativity and constraint do not stand in an inverse relationship.107 Constraint incites or stimulates the imagination as much as it limits it. We see this phenomenon clearly in the various arts, where a recalcitrant medium manifests all the more powerfully the creative powers of the artist. Nowhere is the poetic genius of a Shakespeare or a Goethe more evident than in their ability to surmount the exigencies of a demanding genre like the sonnet, by choosing words so skillfully that their conformity to a specific meter and rhyme pattern seems almost accidental. The creativity of the theologian is perhaps best understood along similar lines, as a transmutation of the raw contingencies of faith into a coherent theological vision. Karl Rahner’s classic Foundations of Christian Faith provides an excellent example of such an achievement. The Foundations begins with an ostensibly nontheological account of human existence. The text goes on to show how the teachings of the Christian faith answer the exigencies of the human condition. A  closer analysis reveals, however, that the presentation of Christian claims as answers to basic human questions is a masterful achievement of rhetoric. Like a ship sailing upstream through locks, Rahner’s argument is being carried along by Christian dogma from the very beginning. Rahner’s account of the human condition is governed by the hypothetical question of what must human beings be like if Christian claims are true.108 Christian anthropology, in other words, is shaped by Christian soteriology. One could say the same thing about the Buddhist characterization of the human condition as defined by “suffering.” A concept of suffering that includes experiences



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that most people would regard as pleasurable is obviously more than a straightforward empirical description of human experience. Rather, the human condition appears as defined by suffering only from the perspective of the Buddhist soteriological project. Or, as Steven Collins puts it, the First Noble Truth is “a reflective conclusion drawn from soteriologically oriented premises.”109 Rahner’s argument in Foundations and the Buddha’s first sermon on the Four Noble Truths are most accurately characterized, not as arguments per se—​at least not arguments based on empirical premises—​but rather as imaginative redescriptions of reality in light of religious teachings.110 Rahner redescribes human existence as constitutively open to transcendence. Likewise, Buddhism redescribes the human condition as defined by inherent dissatisfaction. At their best, such redescriptions reveal something true about the human condition that would otherwise go unnoticed. The theological problematics created or exacerbated by counterintuitive doctrines like No-​self and consubstantiality take the challenge to the theological imagination to the next level. They challenge the very presuppositions on which everyday thought is based. We might compare the way in which an intractable theological problem incites the religious imagination to the metaphorical process. Just as the juxtaposition of the two categorically dissimilar terms in metaphor encourages an imaginative break from an ordinary vision of reality that perceives no kinship between the two terms,111 an intractable problematic like explaining how God can be at once one and three or how to make sense of rebirth without a transmigrating self challenges the theologian to abandon the presuppositions according to which these claims would be self-​contradictory or nonsensical. Above we saw how the exigencies of Nicene orthodoxy force Augustine to break from what Ayres calls a “grammar of materiality” that admits no third way between, on the one hand, the notion of the three persons as secondary manifestations or modes of an underlying substance and, on the other, the tritheistic notion of three autonomous persons bound only by a nominal unity. In its place, Augustine develops a theological grammar that combines the doctrine of inseparable operations with the concept of divine simplicity. In a similar way, Nāgārjuna, faced with the problem of reconciling the concept of pratītyasamutpāda, understood as a comprehensive and exceptionless principle of conditionality, with the notion of the self as reducible to the constituents, identifies and henceforth abandons an underlying presupposition of Abhidharma ontology, namely, the notion of intrinsic existence. Nāgārjuna’s insight lies at the basis of later Mahāyāna

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descriptions of the dharma-​realm (dharmadhātu), an enlightened visionary perspective in which everything is part of everything else without, however, being confused.112 The relation between theological creativity and the metaphorical process is actually more than an external analogy. They can both be understood, in fact, as distinct manifestations of the same underlying cognitive principles. While a full analysis lies outside the scope of the present discussion, it would be fruitful to understand the Trinitarian concept of God and the concept of emptiness in terms of what is called “conceptual blending theory” in cognitive linguistics. Conceptual blending theory represents an extension and refinement of the conceptual metaphor theory best known from the works of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. According to the latter theory, a fundamental and pervasive aspect of human cognition is the metaphorical mapping of a conceptually structured domain of human experience, called the source domain, onto one that is relatively unstructured, called the target domain. This conceptual mapping is manifest in language. For example, many languages, including English, use an intuitive spatial vocabulary to speak about the generally more elusive experience of time. One speaks of “moving” from one “point” in time to another or of temporal durations as distances.113 As this particular example nicely shows, most of these metaphorical extensions become so entrenched in our language and thought that we no longer experience them as metaphors, if indeed we are conscious of them at all.114 The theory of conceptual blending incorporates conceptual metaphor theory into a more nuanced and comprehensive theory of human cognition. Its advantage over the latter is its ability to recognize the contribution of more than one source domain to the target domain—​the blend—​with emergent properties.115 Edward Slingerland gives a lovely example of the formation of a metaphysical object from a complex process of blending. He shows how the ancient Chinese concept of morally activated qi can be understood as the product of a creative blending of properties from at least three distinct source domains. Qi combines the qualities of fluidity and natural tendency from the domain of water, teleology and the need for nurturing from the domain of living things, and an unresponsiveness to heavy-​ handed, coercive modes of control from the domain of group dynamics and mobilization.116 The concept of emptiness lends itself readily to this style of analysis. Simplifying what is a complex cognitive process, emptiness can be



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understood as a blend of at least two input domains, namely, the classical No-​self doctrine, on the one hand, and the notion of a causal nexus that doubles back on itself, on the other. Both inputs are themselves the products of blending processes. The former, the reduction of the personality to the impersonal skandhas, results from the projection of the aggregate structure of inanimate objects—​Milinda’s chariot—​onto the structure of the personality. The twelvefold series is also the product of blending. One the one hand, the image of the physically connected links of a chain structures the more abstract relation between cause and effect. At the same time, the cause-​effect relation is projected onto the items of a temporal sequence, for example, birth (jāti) and old-​age-​and-​death (jārā-​maraṇa), the eleventh and twelfth links in the series. Returning to the “meta”-​blend of No-​self and the causal series, the notion of emptiness results from mapping the relation between the self and the constituents onto the relation between the effect and its cause. As noted above, this mapping empties the effect of substance. The circular nature of the twelvefold series—​that each cause is also an effect—​means that the cause is also emptied of substance. As a conceptual blend, emptiness in the sense of radical interdependence is a concept with an emergent structure. The notion of reciprocity is present in neither of the two inputs: the self and the skandhas do not have the same ontological status in the classical No-​self doctrine, and, although the twelvefold series is reversible in the sense that removing the causes eliminates their corresponding effects, the causal relations themselves are not (i.e., thirst gives rise to attachment, but attachment does not give rise to thirst). Elaborations on Nāgārjuna’s concept of emptiness as interdependence in later Mahāyāna thought—​for example, the dharmadhātu vision of interpenetration articulated in the Avataṃsaka Sūtra and elaborated in the Hua-​yen tradition in China—​are the product of still more blends, including contributions from indigenous Chinese thought. It would be fruitful to analyze the Trinitarian concept of God in a similar way, as the product of a series of conceptual shifts effected through blending operations. The theological development of the Christian concept of God could perhaps be compared to the way in which, in the history of mathematics, the concept of number was progressively extended and transformed through a series of blending operations, for example, the way the primitive concept of number as the set of positive integers (derived from the activity of counting) was blended with the concept of one-​dimensional geometry (the number line) to yield the set of rational

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numbers, including zero, fractions, and infinity; or the way, much later, the concept of real numbers was combined with two-​dimensional space to yield the concept of complex numbers.117 An attempt to understand Augustine’s conception of the Trinity in terms of conceptual blending theory is complicated, however, by his insistence that the attempt to form an adequate image of God is, by definition, bound to fail.118 I suspect that, moreover, an analysis of the blending processes behind the string of psychological images for the Trinity that Augustine floats in the second half of De trinitate would rather quickly reveal a conceptual lattice of dizzying, if not stultifying, complexity, analogous to applying Bohr’s model of the hydrogen atom to elements with an atomic number greater than one. Here I  restrict myself to the concept of the interior word that Augustine appropriates and develops into his image of the mind that knows and loves itself. The concept of the inner word can perhaps be analyzed as the fusion of two inputs, namely, the relation between the speaker and the spoken word, on the one hand, and the relation between the thinker and the thought, on the other. What the former contributes to the resulting image of the Trinity is the notion of the speaker and his word as two distinct entities. The word, moreover, reveals the speaker’s thoughts to an unspecified audience. The latter, “thinking subject” input contributes the notion that the two relata are not only inseparable but also equal in status (inasmuch as thinking is the essential activity of the mind). As we saw above in our discussion of de Régnon, the resultant blend preserves the revelatory aspects of the divine Word (the structure imported from the first input) while freeing that notion from its subordinationist connotations (the contribution from the second input). At the beginning of this book I suggested that the phenomenon of theological correctness marks the limits of a strictly cognitive approach to religion. The amenability of metaphysical concepts like qi, emptiness, and the Trinitarian concept of God to analysis in terms of conceptual blending theory suggests that perhaps a better way of putting matters would be that an adequate explanation of the objects of theological discourse is one that integrates both cognitive and social perspectives.119 In this study I have obviously focused on the social processes operative in the development of massively counterintuitive concepts like consubstantiality and No-​self. And yet, such concepts do not remain isolated from their respective contexts of religious thought. Rather, they interact with other concepts in a system of thought to form more intuitive (or



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perhaps only moderately counterintuitive) concepts, and to that extent strictly cognitive processes will come to the fore. The foregoing study prepares the ground for a theoretically rigorous and historically detailed account of how both social and cognitive factors combine to form discursive objects, like emptiness and the Trinity, that have counterintuitive elements.

Notes

P r e face 1. Coser 1956: 48–​55. 2. Of course, identifying the formal dimension of social conflict is complicated by a tendency for nonrealistic conflicts to be represented as realistic ones. Rarely is formal opposition discernable in pure form. Nevertheless, it is useful to distinguish between Coser’s two types of conflict for analytical purposes. 3. See M. R. Barnes’s (1995a: 245–​250) remarks on the tendency of systematic theologians to avoid polemical readings of patristic Trinitarian texts. 4. Newman 1901: 257. 5. Newman 1901: 259. 6. What David Brakke says about the discipline of religious studies in general applies also to Buddhology in particular, namely, that it “has not as intensely tackled the issues of coherence and historical continuity [as have early Christian studies or patristics]” (2002: 480). 7. See, e.g., Schopen 1997a. 8. As we shall see below, the most striking example of this tendency is the Neo-​ Vedāntic line of interpretation that rejects the authenticity of the No-​self doctrine as a falsification of the Buddha’s teaching. 9. Admittedly, the category of philosophy has been beneficial in countering the persistent Eurocentric prejudice that rigorous argumentation is the exclusive preserve of the Western philosophical tradition. See Kapstein 2001: 5. 10. See Nicholson 2012: 33–​37. 11. Turner 1985: 83. 12. Richerson and Boyd 2005: 222. 13. Richerson and Boyd 1989: 129–​131; 2005: 165. 14. Slone 2004: 51.

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15. See Knitter (2002: 173–​178, 202–​214). Knitter places comparative theology in the larger context of a “postmodern” turn in theological studies. 16. See, e.g., Slone 2004: 30–​45 and passim; Lawson and McCauley 1990: 1–​11 and passim. 17. Slingerland 2008: 11. 18. See Patton and Ray 2000. 19. As I have argued elsewhere (Nicholson 2011: 104; 2014: 131–​132 and passim), the arbitrariness diminishes when we widen our angle of vision to include the larger historical forces that have constituted the compared traditions as objects of particular significance and concern to the comparativist. 20. Specifically, universality is found on the level of the cognitive structures that process cultural and environmental inputs, not on the more manifest level of the cultural products themselves. See Tooby and Cosmides 1992: 45–​46, 64. 21. On the analogy between scientific and theological concepts, see, e.g., McCauley 2011: 153–​154, 211–​214, 225, 235; Slone 2004: 92; Barrett 1999: 325, 329, 331. 22. Bloch 1989a: 120 and passim; 1989b: 14 and passim. Bloch makes this distinction between two types of knowledge, a distinction that hearkens back to Marx, in the context of a critique of the thesis that thought is socially determined, the fundamental presupposition of what he terms the anthropological (as opposed to the psychological) theory of cognition. In his otherwise perceptive discussion of Bloch’s theory of ideology and ritual, Lincoln (1989: 5–​7) does not fully appreciate, in my view, the importance of Bloch’s critique of social constructionism. Given that Bloch was making some of same arguments in the 1970s that cognitive theorists of religion are making today, I find the relative neglect of his work in CSR, with the notable exception of Boyer (1994b: 22 and passim), curious.

C h a p t er   1 1. Nyanatiloka 2004: 16. 2. Gombrich 1971: 86. 3. Gombrich 1971: 86–​87. 4. Spiro (1970) 1982: 84–​85, 87. 5. S. Collins 1982b: 12–​13. 6. S. Collins 1982b: 117, 173. 7. S. Collins 1982b: 94. 8. Or, to be more precise, monoprosopism (Runia 1992: 180). 9. Cat. or. 3, Hardy 1954: 274. 10. Moltmann 1981: 1. 11. Rahner 1970: 10–​11. 12. Barrett 2000: 29; Slone: 2004: viii, 5; Lawson 2002: 118–​119; Boyer 1994a: 393. 13. Preus 1987: xi; xiv–​xv. 14. Barrett 2000: 29.

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15. McCauley 2000: 63. 16. Tooby and Cosmides 1992:  26 and passim. Paradigmatic expressions of the social-​constructivist thesis would be Peter Berger’s claim that human beings are “curiously ‘unfinished’ at birth” ([1969] 1990: 4–​5) or Clifford Geertz’s statement that it is because “genetically programmed processes are so highly generalized in man, as compared to lower animals, that culturally programmed ones are so important; only because human behavior is so loosely determined by intrinsic sources of information that extrinsic sources are so vital” (1973: 92–​93). See also Bruce Lincoln’s statement that “there are no true universals, save at a level of generalization so high as to yield only banalities” (2012: 122). The universals in question in Lincoln’s statement are cultural universals, and thus understood his point is entirely valid (see Boyer 1994a: 392–​393). Nevertheless, the undeniable variety of human discourse and behavior on the cultural level does not preclude the existence of species-​universal cognitive mechanisms that interact with variable environmental conditions to produce those patterns of cultural variation (Tooby and Cosmides 1992: 45–​46, 64; Boyer 1994b: 7). 17. Pinker 2002: 31–​32 and passim. 18. Atran 2002: 10–​12; Atran and Norenzayan 2004: 728. 19. Pyysiäinen 2009: 9; Bloom 2007: 148. 20. Lincoln 2003: 2; Smith 1998: 281–​282; Boyer 1994a: 33. 21. Pyysiäinen 2012: 11; Norenzayan 2010: 59. Some theorists, however, regard religious belief and practice as the direct products of biological evolution, that is, as evolutionary adaptations. See discussion below. 22. Guthrie 1993: 89–​90 and passim; 2002: 39; Barrett 2000: 31–​32. 23. Guthrie 2002:  56. Dominic Johnson (2009:  170, 176 and passim) places the hyperactive agent-​detection device in the context of the more general evolutionary principle he calls “error management theory,” that is, when “the costs of false positive and false negative errors are asymmetrical over time,” natural selection will favor the least costly of the two. 24. See Slone 2004: 58. 25. Boyer 1994b: 91ff. 26. Keil 1979, esp. 10–​23, on how predictability manifests ontological knowledge; and 63–​84, on the emergence of ontological knowledge in childhood development. 27. Boyer 1994b: 100–​103; 2001: 57–​61. 28. Boyer 1994b: 102. 29. Boyer 1994b: 99; 2001: 60. 30. Boyer 2001: 94–​96. 31. Boyer 1994b: 99–​100, 110–​111, 26–​27; 1994a: 401–​402. 32. See Atran 2002: 98 and passim. 33. See, e.g., the lucid discussion of the main cognitive modules in Slingerland 2008: 122–​137; also Boyer 1994b: 104–​110. 34. Atran and Norenzayan 2004: 721.

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35. Slingerland 2008: 129–​130. Tomasello (1999: 23) suggests that human beings are unique in their ability to understand the antecedent-​consequent relation between external events in terms of the unobservable “mediating forces” of causality and intentionality. 36. Slone 2004: 60. 37. Cf. Slone 2004: 60. 38. Pyysiäinen 2012: 7. 39. Boyer 1994a: 397–​398. 40. Boyer 2004a: 406, 408. 41. Boyer 2001: 65. Pyysiäinen (2002: 110; 114 and passim) argues that counterintuitiveness is a necessary but not sufficient criterion for religious representations. In other words, while all religious representations are counterintuitive, not all counterintuitive representations are religious. 42. Boyer 1994b:  118, cf. 6, 16. Boyer attributes this anthropological bias to the fact that the intuitive features that the foreign culture shares with the anthropologist’s own tend to “go without saying” and are therefore likely to go unacknowledged. 43. Boyer 1994b: 98, 113–​114; cf. 2001: 73–​74. 44. Atran and Norenzayan 2004: 720. 45. Boyer 1994b: 121–​122. 46. Atran and Norenzayan 2004: 723 and passim. To be more precise, Atran and Norenzayan found that intuitive ideas had the highest rate of recall, but minimally counterintuitive ones degraded at a lower rate after immediate recall (Atran and Norenzayan 2004: 722–​723). 47. Atran and Norenzayan 2004: 722, 723; Pyysiäinen 2009: 102 and passim; Atran and Henrich 2010: 3–​4. 48. Guthrie 1993: 201, Barrett and Keil 1996: 219–​220. In this way, Boyer’s theories of counterintuitiveness and cognitive optimality provide additional theoretical support for Guthrie’s claim that anthropomorphism is integral to religion (Guthrie 1993: 178, 185, 200 and passim; Barrett and Keil 1996: 223). 49. Barrett 1999: 326; Barrett and Keil 1996: 240. See Pyysiäinen (2009: 4–​8 and passim) for a lucid analysis of the phenomenon of theological correctness in terms of cognitive effort. In order to avoid the normative connotations of the concepts of theological correctness/​incorrectness, Pyysiäinen (2009: 5) prefers the labels “cognitively cheap” and “cognitively costly” to those of “theologically correct” and “theologically incorrect,” respectively. The distinction corresponds to Sperber’s (1997) distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs. 50. More recently, Barrett and Richert (2003) have suggested that the concept of divine omniscience may not be as cognitively unnatural as one would suppose according to the theory that the concept of God is anthropomorphically based. On the basis of the experimental finding that children develop the capacity to represent agents as having false beliefs only after four or five

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years (i.e., some time after they have come to attribute beliefs and intentions to those agents), Barrett and Richert (2003, esp. 304–​311; see also De Cruz and De Smedt 2015: 48–​51) argue that the concept of a cognitively unlimited agent, and not that of cognitively limited human agent, may be the cognitive default. 51. Barrett and Keil 1996: 223–​224 and passim. 52. Barrett and Keil 1996: 228. 53. Barrett and Keil 1996: 229. 54. Atran 2002: 98. 55. Bering 2006: 454; 2011: 121–​122; Slone 2004: 77–​78. 56. Bering (2006: 455; 2011: 113–​119) suggests that imagining the cessation of psychological states is not simply unnatural, but in fact runs up against the limits of the human imagination. He notes, for example, that “it is epistemologically impossible to know what it is like not to think” (2006:  455). See also Bloom 2004: 207. 57. Ernst Cassirer (1955: 37) argued, on phenomenological grounds, a similar thesis, that the belief in the survival of the soul after death comes naturally to people who do not share a modern scientific worldview. 58. Bloom 2007: 149. 59. Martin and Wiebe 2012; Lawson 2002: 118. 60. Slingerland 2012: 614. See also Varela, Thompson, and Rosch’s (1991: 59–​81) argument that the No-​self doctrine anticipates the latest findings of cognitive science. 61. Eberhardt 2006: 9; Sperber 1996: 91. 62. Sperber 1996, esp. 88–​92, 149–​150; 1997: 74–​77. 63. E.g., Whitehouse 2000: 170–​172; 2002: 310–​312. 64. McCauley 2011: 211. A recent effort to redress this relative neglect of theology in CSR is De Cruz and De Smedt 2015. 65. See, e.g., Barrett 1999:  325; Slone 2004:  4; Pyysiäinen 2009:  8; McCauley 2011: 153, 212. 66. Cf. Lindbeck 1984: 76. 67. De Cruz and De Smedt 2015: xvi. 68. De Cruz and De Smedt 2015: 61–​84; 2010. 69. De Cruz and De Smedt 2015: 60 and passim. 70. De Cruz and De Smedt 2015: 5–​6. 71. Pyysiäinen 2009: 8–​12; cf. Norenzayan 2013: 9–​10. In reconciling a sociological-​ functional approach to religion with CSR, the former must be dissociated from two features of Durkheim’s thought that are incompatible with the “cognitive turn,” namely “the denial of human nature and the autonomy of culture from individual minds” (Pinker 2002: 23–​24; cf. Bloch 1989a: 108). 72. Pinker 2002: 24.

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73. There are important differences among the various theories propounded by the scholars mentioned. The most fundamental of these is the difference between those theories that regard religious belief as itself an evolutionary adaptation (D. S.  Wilson, Bering, D.  D. P.  Johnson) and those that regard religion as a byproduct of cognitive capacities that developed for other purposes (Atran, Heinrich, and Norenzayan). For defense of the former view see, e.g., D.  S. Wilson 2002: 44–​46; D. D. P. Johnson 2009: 171, no. 1. For arguments in favor of the latter, byproduct view, see, e.g., Atran 2002, esp. 227–​234; Norenzayan 2010: 59. For a helpful typology of the various evolutionary theories of religion, see Norenzayan and Shariff 2008: 58. The above-​mentioned theories also differ on their degree of proximity to the cognitive science of religion. Wilson’s account of the function of religion in terms of the evolutionary theory of multilevel selection probably stands at the furthest remove from CSR, although, pace Atran’s contention that “group selectionist” theories of religion like Wilson’s are “mindblind” (2002: 207–​235), I would argue that it is not inconsistent with it. 74. Wilson 2002: 7–​8. 75. Nowak 2006; Atran and Norenzayan 2004:  716; Norenzayan and Shariff 2008: 61; Johnson 2009: 174; Norenzayan 2010: 68; Bering 2011: 182; Richerson and Boyd 2005: 195–​203. Some nonhuman species, such as social insects like bees, ants, and termites, are able to achieve remarkable levels of cooperation. And yet the individuals involved in these nonhuman cooperative units are genetically related (Richerson and Boyd 2005: 195). Human beings are distinctive in their capacity to form large groups of genetically unrelated individuals. 76. On the debated question of whether theory of mind is unique to human beings, see, e.g., Bering 2011:  27–​33. Tomasello (1999:  21 and passim) argues that while other primates are capable of understanding conspecifics as animate beings capable of self-​movement, only humans are able to understand other humans as intentional beings like themselves. 77. See Bering 2011: 165–​190. 78. Norenzayan and Shariff 2008: 61; Atran and Heinrich 2010: 7. 79. Norenzayan 2013: 118–​135, cf. 4–​7; 2010: 68. 80. Atran and Heinrich 2010: 7–​8 and passim; Norenzayan 2013: 140ff. 81. Wilson 2002: 10, 180. 82. Choi and Bowles 2007: 636; Bowles 2008: 326. 83. Choi and Bowles 2007: 638; Bowles 2008: 326–​327. 84. Wilson 2002: 10. 85. Cosmides and Tooby 1994, esp. 85–​91; Pinker 2002: 52. The term “evolutionary psychology” has come to be associated with a particular school of thought that envisions a rather modest role for culture in the evolution of human psychology (see Wilson 2002: 238, no. 17). Self-​described evolutionary psychologists like John Tooby and Leda Cosmides attribute most cultural differences to the

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processing of diverse environmental inputs through universal and innate cognitive structures (Cosmides and Tooby 1994: 108–​110; Tooby and Cosmides 1992: 45–​46). Other theories of the evolution of human psychology like those of D. S. Wilson (2002) and Richerson and Boyd (2005) envision a more robust role of cultural processes in the evolution of human psychology. This second group of theorists emphasize the ways in which cultural environments can profoundly influence the genetic evolution of human psychology (e.g., Richerson and Boyd 2005: 44–​48, 191–​195; Wilson 2002: 28–​32). 86. Richerson and Boyd 2005: 196–​197, 214 and passim; D. S. Wilson 2002: 25–​28. 87. Richerson and Boyd 2005: 196–​197. 88. D.S. Wilson 2002: 144; Richerson and Boyd 2005: 221–​222. 89. D. S. Wilson 2002: 139, 144. 90. Haidt 2012: 246 and passim. 91. Tajfel and Turner 1979:  33–​34 passim; Turner 1982:  34; Turner and Bourhis 1996: 35, 55. 92. Tajfel and Turner 1979: 38–​40; Turner 1985: 83–​84. 93. Turner 1982: 33; Turner and Bourhis 1996: 32; Turner and Reynolds 2004: 266. 94. Tajfel and Turner 1979: 34. 95. Abrams 1996: 143. 96. Tajfel 1981: 150–​151; Turner 1982: 28; Hogg 2004: 206; Deschamps and Devos 1998:  5–​6. Penelope Oakes (1996:  111–​115) cautions against understanding this accentuation effect in terms of distortion. Such an understanding arbitrarily takes interpersonal differences as the objective standard. To the extent that social categorization is inherently contextual, the perception of similarities and differences among individuals is always relative to a particular social situation. 97. Hogg 2004: 206; Deschamps and Devos 1998: 8. 98. Deschamps and Devos 1998: 9. 99. Rosch 1978: 30. 100. Hogg 2004:  207; Oakes, Haslam, and Turner, 1998:  77; Abrams and Hogg 2004: 161; Turner 1985: 96–​97. Expressed in more technical language, metacontrast is the principle that social prototypicality is a function of the ratio of intergroup difference to intragroup difference (Hogg 2004: 207). 101. Oakes, Haslam, and Turner, 1998: 80. 102. Hogg 2004: 209. 103. Hogg 2004: 209. The interdependence of intra-​and intergroup processes presupposes, against a tendency to construe social identity in realist and essentialist terms (Widdicombe 1998: 194), that the attributes that define both the prototype and the relevant out-​group are not simply given. They are, rather, constructed politically in ongoing conflicts and negotiations among rival factions. See, e.g., Widdicombe 1998: 197 and passim. 104. Henderson 1998: 27.

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1 05. Collins does not reference the social identity theory of Tajfel et al., however. 106. R. Collins 1998: 34–​35. 107. R. Collins 1998: 38–​30. 108. R.  Collins 1998:  81–​82; see also 14–​15. Collins (1998:  81–​82) terms this tendency as the “law of small numbers”: the number of distinct positions structuring an intellectual field at any time is between three and six. 109. R. Collins 1998: 99. 110. R. Collins 1998: 100. 111. R. Collins 1998: 101. 112. R. Collins 1998: 107. 113. R. Collins 1998: 107–​108. 114. R. Collins 1998: 109, 111. 115. R. Collins 1998: 109. 116. Hogg 2004: 207. 117. Here social prototypicality departs from Rosch’s prototype theory, in which similarity among the members of a category always remains in force. 118. One of the anonymous readers of this book remarked that it was in “extremely bad taste” to compare formative Christianity and Buddhism to the Tea Party. And indeed, in more rhetorical forms of discourse like political commentary, it would be naïve to expect readers to make a neat separation between the elements of analogy and disanalogy; in such contexts, the latter can easily vitiate the usefulness of a provocative analogy. In scholarly analytical forms of discourse like this one, however, one hopes one can isolate the relevant element of analogy (here the effect of formal opposition on material doctrine) from those of disanalogy (whatever unattractive qualities one might associate with the Tea Party movement). 119. Opitz, U.6, 13.12. 120. Jungmann 1965: 170–​171. 121. Jungmann 1965: 164 and passim. 122. Stead 1977: 190. 123. M. R. Barnes 1998: 49. 124. Logan 1992: 441, 442, 444 and passim. 125. M. R. Barnes 1998: 59. 126. Shepardson 2002; 2007. 127. M. R. Barnes 1998: 49–​50. 128. Hanson 1988: 217. 129. M. R. Barnes 1998: 62; see also 53. 130. Rappaport 1999: 280–​281, 287–​289, and passim; Southwold 1979: 634. 131. Southwold 1979: 642; cf. also Gellner 1974: 54–​55; 1970: 140–​141. 132. AK. 1209: 6–​7. 133. See Conze 1967: 141; Bronkhorst 2009: 91–​92; Schmithausen 1986: 219. 134. Jenkens (1996) 2008: 114; Widdicombe 1998: 193–​194.

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135. Bourdieu 1985:  726–​ 731; cf. also Lincoln 1989:  10–​ 11, 20–​ 21, 32–​ 37 and passim. 136. For the latter, see Brakke 1995. 137. P. Brown 1992: 90–​103 and passim. 138. Brakke 1995: 5–​6. 139. Perelman 1977: 284. 140. Perelman 1977: 297; cf. 282, 286–​287. 141. Perelman 1977: 290; 1982: 21. 142. Eunom. I.22; DelCogliano and Radde-​Gallwitz 2011: 123. 143. Eunom. I.4; DelCogliano and Radde-​Gallwitz 2011: 90. 144. The concept of creation (ϰτίζω) had a broader reference in Arius’s formulation than it would later come to have thanks to anti-​Arian polemic. As Wiles (1996: 13) observes, creation had a generic meaning that did not necessarily imply a contrast with divine generation. Only when read anachronistically (or polemically) does Arius’s Christology exclude Christ’s divinity. 145. Ganeri 2001b: 29. 146. See, e.g., the discussion in Ganeri 2001a: 10–​11 and passim. 147. D. Arnold 2005: 118, cf. 26.

C h a p t er   2 1. Moule 1977: 2. 2. Dunn 1994: 438; Moule 1977: 2. Moule’s description of the evolutionary model corresponds to what might be called, following Mark Edwards (2009: 1), a teleological, as opposed to a Darwinian theory of evolution. As such, it obviously does not reflect a scientific understanding of biological evolution. 3. Moule 1977: 2. 4. Bousset 1970: 331; Hurtado 2003: 14. 5. Moule 1977: 4. 6. Moule 1977: 5, 9, 44, 135; Hurtado 2003: 64–​74. See Chilton (1991) on Hurtado’s unacknowledged debt to Moule. 7. Moule 1977: 135. 8. See, inter alia, Cullman, Hahn, Fuller, Moule, Casey, Dunn, Hurtado. 9. Bousset 1970:  11. Kyrios Christos includes patristic development up to and including Irenaeus. In his book Lord Jesus Christ (2003), whose structure appears to be modeled after Bousset’s, Larry Hurtado also examines Christology up to Irenaeus. And yet Hurtado develops his thesis on the basis of the New Testament, as can be seen in his earlier work, One God, One Lord ([1988] 1998). 10. One’s judgment of what constitutes the key Christological advance obviously determines the scope of the investigation. So another way of making this point is to note that it is curious that the ascription of full divinity to Jesus, i.e., the

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11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

Notes elimination of subordinationism, is judged by New Testament Christology to follow inevitably from the New Testament. Hengel 1986: 2; cf. 1983: 39–​40. Dunn 1980: 258. One suspects that this tendency to downplay the significance of postcanonical Christological developments reflects the tacit assumption that Christological doctrine cannot have undergone substantive development in an era when external influence—​specifically, the thoroughgoing encounter of Christian theology with Greek philosophical thought—​becomes undeniable. Mack 2001: 60–​63; Cameron and Miller 2004: 3–​4. White 1978: 90–​91. O. Chadwick 1957: 144–​145. O. Chadwick 1957: 146. O. Chadwick 1957: 149–​150; Newman 1960: 185ff. and passim. Cf. Lonergan’s (1976: 16) notion of a heuristic structure “in virtue of which, when we study the ante-​Nicene authors, we know what to look for, how to assess and judge what we have found, how to pick out what is significant, and how to order all the relevant elements in a way that sets forth the development that they [the ante-​Nicene authors], though unknown to themselves, in fact brought about.” Ayres 2004b: 427–​429. Newman 1960: 146. Hanson (1988: xix), in fact, argues that this statement holds up until at least 355, with the possible exception of Athanasius. Concerning Athanasius, Christopher Stead (1977: 260–​261, 264–​266) notes that there is a “built-​in asymmetry” in his use of the term homoousios, which is evident in his favorite image of a source of light and its rays to describe the Father-​Son relation. Stead (1977: 260–​261) observes that this asymmetry suggests that Athanasius “is moving only very cautiously away from the moderate Origenism of [his mentor and predecessor] Alexander [bishop of Alexandria].” One could thus argue that even Athanasius preserves an element of subordinationism. See, e.g., Goodenough 1968: 155, in reference to the subordinate position of Justin’s “Second God.” It is important to emphasize that the key issue in the Arian controversy was not whether or not Christ was divine, but rather whether he was subordinate to the Father (Ayres 2004b: 4). Theologians in the broader Origenist tradition, to which most of the Eastern bishops gathered at Nicaea belonged, presupposed degrees of divinity. On the capaciousness of the category of divinity in antiquity, see, e.g., Wilken (1980: 113–​114). Jungmann 1965: 170–​171. To be sure, there was a popular tradition of offering prayers directly to Christ, which ran parallel to the liturgical tradition. But see the discussion of the lex orandi lex credendi theory of Christological development in the following paragraphs.

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25. Jungmann 1965: 164 and passim. This development is dramatized in Basil of Caesarea’s controversial decision to introduce, in the context of a liturgical celebration sometime in the early 370s, the doxological formula, “To the God and Father with [meta] the Son together with [sun] the Holy Spirit” alongside the traditional “through the Son in the Spirit” formula. See Jungmann 1965: 176–​177; Radde-​Gallwitz 2012: 108–​109. 26. Lash 1973: 171. 27. See Lash 1973: 175–​176. 28. White 1978: 62. Moule himself (1977: 2, 140) basically concedes this point. That continuity and discontinuity are correlative notions indicates that discontinuity is not enough to establish an evolutionary account of doctrinal development. As we saw in our discussion of the centrality of the issue of syncretism in the debate over the genesis of the belief in Christ’s divinity, the key issue is the extent of outside influence. 29. Lindbeck [1974]: 14. 30. Lindbeck 1984: 94. 31. Lindbeck 1984: 95. 32. Like Lindbeck, Lash identifies intentionality as the underlying principle of doctrinal continuity (1973: 175–​176). 33. Wiles 1967: 87, cf. 74–​75 and passim. 34. This evidence can be placed into three broad categories: (1) references to Jesus as Lord in the New Testament, most notably the Aramaic petition, “Come, Lord” (maranatha) found in 1 Corinthians 16:22 (for a discussion of the Pauline evidence, see Casey 1999: 222–​229); (2) the testimony from early “pagan” sources like Pliny, Lucian, Porphyry, and Celsus that Christians worshipped Christ as (a)  god (see Wilken 1980:  110–​112, 115–​118; Lebreton 1924:  100–​104); and (3)  direct prayers to Christ recorded in early martyrological literature (Wilken 1980: 112; Lebreton 1924: 27–​28). 35. In his De oratione (15.1–​4), Origen famously argued against the propriety of addressing prayers directly to Christ on the grounds that one should not pray to one who himself prays. Elsewhere (Contra Celsum 8.12), however, he defends such prayers against Celsus’s objection that Christ worship detracts from that of the true God; this Origen does with an appeal to John 10:30, “The Father and I are one.” See Lebreton (1923–​1924: 21–​22; 1924: 102, 133, no. 82). One reason for this reluctance to recognize liturgical prayers to Christ was no doubt their Gnostic associations. See Jungmann 1965:  169ff.; Lebreton 1924: 112–​113, no. 39. 36. Paradigmatic examples of this argument can be found in Klawek 1921: 99–​116, esp. 112–​116, and Lebreton 1924. 37. See, e.g., Newman’s ([1859] 1986: 75–​77, 86–​106, 109–​118) theory that popular religiosity during the Arian controversy was, by and large, on the side of Nicene

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orthodoxy. In reality, popular sentiment was far more uneven, changeable, and ambiguous than this picture suggests, and pro-​Nicene bishops like Gregory of Nyssa could be less than appreciative of popular involvement in theological disputes. For the latter point, see Lim 1995: 149–​181. Vaggione (2000: 196–​197, 265, 364–​368, and passim) presents a more sophisticated version of the argument that the key to the Nicenes’ triumph over their Eunomian adversaries was their ability to engage the wider populace. 38. Lyman 1993: 133. 39. Lyman 1993: 137. 40. Lyman 1993: 137. 41. See Wilken’s (1980: 124) statement that the “elevation of Christ to a cult figure” was “the result of spontaneous and untutored religious feeling.” 42. This was precisely the chief concern of Arius (Opitz, U.6, 13.10–​12). One could perhaps say that Nicaea kept ditheism at bay only by flirting with modalism. Cf. Michel René Barnes’s (1998: 49–​51, 62 and passim) contention that Nicaea originally had strong Sabellian associations that had to be removed before it could be accepted as normative. 43. Hanson 1988: 26. We can perhaps attribute this relative and provisional disregard to the fact that the Gnostic threat had been neutralized in the preceding century. 44. Bourdieu 1991: 107–​116. 45. Bourdieu 1991: 106, 238, and passim. 46. Cat. or. 3, Hardy 1954: 273–​274. 47. See also Rensberger 1988:  26–​27. Casey (1991:  12ff) lists eight such identity factors:  ethnicity, scripture, monotheism, circumcision, Sabbath observance, dietary laws, purity laws, and major festivals. 48. Casey 1991: 25–​40, 98, 156–​159. 49. Dunn 1994: 441–​442. 50. Dunn 1994: 441. 51. Dunn 1994: 444–​447. In what amounts to a corollary to Dunn’s criticism, Thompson (2001: 18) argues that Casey’s claim that “the divinity of Jesus is […] inherently unJewish” (Casey 1991: 176) assumes a particular concept of Christ’s divinity that is incompatible with monotheism. Thompson suggests that Casey’s statement begs the question of the compatibility of Jesus divinity and monotheism. 52. It is possible that Casey’s conception of monotheism is anachronistic. It is significant, in this connection, that patristic authors tend to direct their Christological proofs against a strict conception of monotheism, as opposed to Jewish notions of divine hypostases. See Simon (1964) 1986: 176. 53. Dunn 1994: 447–​451. 54. Dunn 1994: 447, 449, and passim. 55. Dunn 1994: 451.

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56. I allude here to Daniel Boyarin’s (2004) thesis that the establishment of Logos theology, which was appropriated from Jewish tradition, as a tenet of second-​ century Christian orthodoxy coincided with the Rabbis’ rejection of such theology under the rubric of the “Two Powers in Heaven” heresy. 57. This analysis parallels Daniel Dennett’s argument that the charge of reductionism, where reductionism constitutes a term of abuse, typically confounds “bland” and “preposterous” senses of the term (Dennett 1995: 881–​883; see also Slingerland 2008: 258–​261). Dennett’s “preposterous” or “greedy” reductionism refers specifically to the misguided imperative to explain higher-​level organizational structures in terms of the most fundamental level of explanation, for example, explaining the phenomena of economics, sociology, or psychology in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry (see also Putnam 1973). My defense of reductionism here also parallels Wayne Proudfoot’s critique of those scholars who seek to protect religion from criticism by confounding what he terms descriptive and explanatory reductionism (1985: 196–​209). 58. Smith 2004a: 208–​209; 2004c: 105–​106. 59. Dunn’s and Hurtado’s plea for the inclusion of revelatory experiences among the factors resulting in the belief in Christ’s divinity (Dunn 1994: 449–​452; Hurtado 2003: 64–​74), moreover, fails to distinguish between phenomenological and scientific approaches to the study of religion. 60. Smith 2004a: 209. 61. His assumption that the parting of the ways was pretty much concluded by the end of the New Testament period, we might add, explains why he concludes his study of Christological development with the Gospel of John. 62. Marcel Simon ([1964] 1986) has shown how scholars have tended anachronistically to retroject into the first centuries ce the later “retrenchment” of the Jewish tradition in response to the ascendency of an imperial church. Against the thesis that Judaism became withdrawn and isolated in response to the crises of 70 and 135, Simon argues that Jewish communities actively sought Gentile converts up to and into the fourth century ([1964] 1986: 271–​305 and passim). The tendency of scholars to exaggerate the impact of the two Jewish wars on the shape of Judaism betrays the continuing influence of the Christian apologetic narrative, according to which these events were signs of divine rejection. 63. See Simon 1986: 137. 64. Simon 1986, esp. 271–​305. 65. Taylor 1995: 2. 66. At the same time, she questions an assumption that Simon appears to take over from Harnack, namely, that missionary activity serves as a general criterion of religious vitality (M. Taylor 1995: 9–​11, 190–​191, and passim). 67. M. Taylor 1995: 127–​128, 139, and passim. 68. M. Taylor 1995: 5. Taylor does not claim originality for the claim that Christian anti-​Judaism was internally generated from the Christian need to articulate a

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distinctive sense of identity. She credits Rosemary Reuther in particular for an eloquent statement of this thesis (M. Taylor 1995: 129–​130, 149–​150, and passim). Taylor’s specific argument is that this theological explanation for Christian anti-​ Judaism is incompatible with what she calls the conflict theory (1995: 140, 142–​151, and passim). 69. M. Taylor 1995: 140–​141. 70. M. Taylor 1995: 151–​152. 71. Miriam Taylor attributes the persistence of the conflict theory—​explaining anti-​ Judaic discourse in terms of actual conflicts between Christians and Jews—​to a tendency to dichotomize intellectual and reductive sociological approaches to the study of theological discourse. Because they are captive to this false dichotomy, even scholars who otherwise acknowledge the theological source of Christian anti-​Judaism err in translating the imperative to contextualize theological discourses into some version of the conflict theory (1995: 151–​152). She mentions Simon, Stephen Wilson, David Efroymson, and even Reuther herself as scholars who try to combine a theological explanation of Christian anti-​Judaism with the conflict theory (1995: 143–​151). 72. M. Taylor 1995: 155 and passim. 73. M.  Taylor 1995:  153–​155 and passim. Taylor errs, in my judgment, in casting her otherwise valid and important critique of the conflict theory in terms of the hackneyed charge of reductionism. It assumes, incorrectly, that relating theological discourses to social and political factors is necessarily reductionist in the “vulgar,” epiphenomenal sense mentioned above. 74. M. Taylor 1995: 142. 75. See, e.g., Gager 1983: 134. In his critique of Harnack, Simon tends to assume that that Christian apologists were addressing either pagans or Jews. He rhetorically asks why, if ostensibly anti-​Jewish literature were not directly addressed to Jews, Christian apologists would employ such roundabout means ([1964] 1986: 138). He does not therefore seem to recognize the possibility that a Christian apologist like Justin might represent a rival Christian view as a Jewish one in order to discredit it. 76. To the extent that Justin’s Dialogue evidences a familiarity with contemporary Judaism, it is at once partly a response to contemporary Judaism and partly a projection of Justin’s theological interests. Thus understood, the Dialogue would seem to call into question Taylor’s statement that “To the extent that the Judaism portrayed by the church fathers is recognized as a figurative entity which emerges out of Christian theorizing about Christianity, it cannot simultaneously be interpreted as referring to a living Judaism from which useful information can be gleaned about Jewish-​Christian interaction” (M. Taylor 1995: 141). 77. See, e.g., C. Ar. 1.1–​8, esp. 8 (NPNF 2.4, 306–​311); Decr. 1–​3 (NPNF 2.4, 150–​152). 78. Hogg 2004:  207; Oakes, Halsam, and Turner, 1998:  77; Abrams and Hogg 2004: 161; Turner 1985: 96–​97. 79. On the limitations of social identity theory, see Jenkins (1996) 2008: 114.

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8 0. See, e.g., Widdicombe 1998: 197 and passim. 81. Hogg 2004: 209. 82. Tajfel and Turner 1979: 46. 83. Turner and Reynolds 2004: 272. 84. Tajfel and Turner 1979: 46. 85. Despite the efforts of later heresiologists to project the discrepancies between the doctrines of contemporary Jewish Christian groups and their orthodox counterparts back to an earlier time, it is most likely that those divergences, particularly in the area of Christology, were due to the subsequent development of orthodox doctrine. Various Jewish Christian groups, isolated from the processes of Christological development, “represented what was really a static or, one might even say, fossilized form of Christianity” (Simon [1964] 1986: 244). 86. Feige 1991: 10. 87. Moule 1977: 6; cf. Dahl 1991: 129–​130. 88. Hengel 1983: 39–​40 and passim. 89. Dahl 1991: 130. 90. O’Flaherty 1975: 180–​184. 91. White 1978: 44.

C h a p t er   3 1. Miller 2004b: 304, 309. 2. Dahl 1991: 37. 3. Cameron 2004: 288. 4. Novenson 2012: 64–​97; A. E. Harvey 1982: 140 and passim; Miller 2004b: 325–​ 327 and passim. 5. Dahl 1991: 37; Lindeskog 1986: 112. 6. Dahl 1991: 37. See also Cameron 2004: 290 (citing Burton Mack). 7. For the argument that New Testament messianism was a preliminary stage of Christology, see, e.g., Lindeskog 1986: 119 ff. 8. De Jonge 2009: 328; Miller 2004b: 321. An exception to this general statement is the curious fact that in Acts the messianic preaching of Peter and Paul does not have this divisive effect. See MacRae 1987: 184. 9. Juel (1992:  451, 452)  insists that Jesus’s promise that his judges will see him enthroned in heaven (Mk. 14:62) should not be construed as a qualification of his messianic claim. But see Dunn (1991b: 168), who prefers the more ambiguous reading of Jesus response (“You say that I  am”). The more ambivalent response is also found in the parallel passages in both Matthew (26:64) and Luke (22:67–​68). 10. On the question of whether the Johannine “Jews” refer to the religious authorities or the people in general, see Wahlde 1982. On the basis of a critical survey

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of the relevant Johannine texts, Wahlde (1982:  54; cf. 45)  concludes that the Johannine Jews are, with the exception of John 6:41, 52, the authorities. MacRae (1987: 177) concludes from the absence of uses of christos in the second half of John “that the messianic identity of Jesus is not primarily an issue within the Johannine community.” 11. A. E. Harvey 1982: 137. Cf. Lindeskog 1986: 123: “Die Gräzisierung Christos für Messias hat nichts weniger als eine metabasis eis allo genos zur Folge.” 12. MacRae (1987: 176) argues that the passion prediction is intended as a corrective to Peter’s confession. 13. L. Johnson 1986: 163–​164. 14. See Dahl 1991: 40. 15. MacRae 1987: 175. 16. Keck 2009: 370. 17. Charlesworth 1992: 20. 18. William Scott Green (1987:  1)  identifies the invidious contrast implicit in the conventional understanding of messianism: “It is standard practice to classify Jewish messianism as national, ethnic, political, and material, and to mark Christian messianism as universal, cosmopolitan, ethical, and spiritual.” See also Horsley 1992: 293–​294. That Jesus’s transformation of a putative this-​ worldly Messiah concept expresses Christian apologetic might explain what in my view is the over-​hasty dismissal of the possibility of a political dimension of Jesus’s movement on the part of many New Testament scholars. Representative of such an attitude would be Dahl’s (1991: 42–​43) remark that, “there can be no serious question of a messianic-​political movement under Jesus’ leadership” (cf. Dahl 1992: 383); Dunn’s (1991: 168) statement that Jesus’s ambivalence regarding Peter’s confession reflects an unwillingness to entertain a political role is valid as a description of the early Christian claim, but uncertain as a statement about the historical Jesus. The classic statement of the minority view that the historical Jesus was a political figure is Brandon 1967. 19. Charlesworth 1992: 4–​6, 34. 20. Green (1987:  8 and passim) makes this point eloquently:  “To violate ordinary scholarly principles of evidence and inference with such forced arguments requires powerful external motivations.” 21. Charlesworth 1987:  233. Green (1987:  7 and passim) argues that by defining messianism in terms of a broad category like “future hope,” scholars have been able to construct the notion of a developing messianic tradition that the textual evidence does not support. 22. Charlesworth 1992: 5. 23. Chester 1991: 41; cf. also Green 1987: 4. Both Chester (1991: 42–​43) and Horsley (1992: 278–​279, 284–​285, 295, and passim; 1984: 471–​473 and passim), however, pointing to the limitations of literary evidence, maintain that there were “popular

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messianic movements” in first-​century Palestine. Clearly distinguishing these movements from contemporary prophetic or apocalyptic movements, Horsley (1992:  282; 1984:  473, 494–​495) characterizes the former as political movements self-​consciously modeled after the ancient Israelite tradition of popularly acclaimed or “anointed” kings (1984: 473–​477, 494 and passim; 1992: 285–​293). Both Horsley (1992: 293–​294) and Chester (1991: 43) distance themselves from the use of the hypothesis of such movements to support the notion of a homogeneous messianic expectation serving as a foil for Christian apologetics. Novenson (2012: 43–​44) makes a useful distinction between, on the one hand, messianism as a social phenomenon, which came and went with changing historical circumstances, and, on the other, messianic language, which was available to express messianic expectation when the need arose. 24. Charlesworth 1992: 10. 25. Dahl 1992: 383. 26. Dahl 1991: 44. 27. Dahl 1991: 38. See also Charlesworth 1987: 255: “Jewish messianology does not flow majestically into Christian christology.” 28. Dahl 1991: 40; MacRae 1987: 175. 29. Dahl 1991: 38; 1992: 391. 30. Dahl 1991: 43; cf. De Jonge 2009: 323. 31. Miller 2004b: 317. 32. Miller 2004b: 313; cf. Cameron 2004: 288. 33. Cameron and Miller 2004: 4. 34. Mack 1988: 16 and passim; cf. 2001: 64; Miller 1993: 244. 35. The hermeneutical approach allows for the possibility of a profound transformation of the traditions—​transmitted memories—​which are refracted through the interests and concerns of later interpreters. The sociological approach, for its part, concedes the existence of traditional elements that are imaginatively worked into mythical constructions, notwithstanding the fact that the meaning of those elements is invariably transformed in the process of recontextualization. 36. Miller 2004b: 302; MacRae 1987: 170, 172. 37. Miller 2004b: 316; Miller 2004a: 389; Crawford 2004: 340; cf. Aune 1992: 413. 38. Aune 1992: 406. 39. Miller 2004b: 313; 2004a: 384. 40. MacRae 1987: 174; Miller 2004b: 325. 41. Dahl 1992: 396–​398; Miller 2004b: 310; Miller 2004a: 387; MacRae 1987: 173. 42. A. E. Harvey 1982: 137, following Schillebeeckx. 43. Miller 2004b: 310, 313; Crawford 2004: 338. 44. Mack 2001: 61–​67. 45. A. E. Harvey (1982: 137–​139, cf. 81) already provided a particularly lucid analysis of the problem, although his solution, which involves the hypothesis that Jesus was known as “Christ” in his lifetime, is less radical.

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46. Miller 2004b: 313–​315; 1993: 262–​263. 47. Miller 1993: 263. 48. Aune 1992: 405. 49. A. E. Harvey 1982: 81–​82; Miller 2004: 315–​317; Miller 1993: 262–​265; Crawford 2004: 341–​345 and passim; cf. K. Berger 2009: 391–​392. For a critique of Harvey’s and Miller’s thesis, see Novenson 2012: 84–​87. 50. Miller 2004b: 326; 1993: 265; but see 2004a: 388–​391; cf. K. Berger 1974: 24. 51. Miller 2004b: 310. 52. Miller 2004b: 314–​315, 318–​319; cf. MacRae 1987: 181. 53. Miller 2004b: 319–​320; MacRae 1987: 179–​181; Saldarini 1994: 7–​8 and passim. 54. Green, 1987: 5. In John the claim that Jesus is the Messiah expresses a more confrontational stance in relation to contemporary Jewish communities. See the discussion of John in the next section. 55. See, e.g., Dial. 48–​54; cf. Skarsaune 1987b: 191–​227. 56. Against this line of interpretation, see, e.g., Lindeskog (1986: 139ff), who argues that the Christian messianic concept was too integrated and foundational to be only a polemical device. 57. See above, Miller 2004b: 313. Compare with, e.g., Dunn’s (1991a: 303) remark that “there is no indication that in the intervening years [between the crucifixion and the Fourth Gospel] the confession of Jesus as Messiah was regarded as a ‘make or break’ issue between Jewish Christians and the leaders of Judaism” (cf. Martyn 1968:  45–​47). Dunn’s statement presupposes the existence of the Christian messianic confession before the “parting of the ways.” 58. Chester (1991:  46–​47 and passim) still regards the messiah concept as fundamentally and originally a political concept and the imposing of transcendent categories on Jewish messianic hope a secondary development. Even pre-​Christian Jewish sources evidence a tendency to spiritualize and transcendentalize the messiah concept. Chester notes a connection between the spiritualization of messianic hope and the development of intermediary heavenly figures in Jewish literature from the second century bce and after (1991: 45, 47). 59. Wahlde 1989: 169; e.g., in John 10:34–​36. 60. Jesus’s identity is established before creation. In Mark, by contrast, Jesus identity is revealed only at his baptism; in Matthew and Luke, this moment is pushed back to his conception (R. Brown 1993: 30–​31). 61. Miller 2004b: 318. 62. Casey 1991: 23, cf. 159. 63. Dunn 1991a: 294. 64. Dunn 1980: 57; Hurtado 2003: 52. Raymond Brown (1979: 53) argues that John’s Christology, inasmuch as it preserves the “low” Christology of its earlier textual stratum, “still stands at quite a distance from Nicaea wherein the Father is not greater than the Son.”

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65. See Wiles 1960. See also Moule 1980: 263: “In a real sense the history of christological controversy is the history of the church’s attempt to come to terms with John’s christology.” 66. See De Jonge’s (1977: 196) discussion of H. Thyen’s understanding of redaction as a communal, rather than individual activity. 67. R. Brown 1979: 83–​86. 68. R. Brown 1979: 84. 69. See, inter alia, Meeks 1972: 68. 70. Martyn 1968: 120–​121 and passim; see also Motyer 1997: 13–​14. 71. Leroy 1968: 171; cf. R. Brown 1979: 41. 72. Leroy 1968: 189. 73. Neyrey 1988: 115, cf. 208–​209. 74. On the question of whether the Johannine community can be characterized as a “sect,” see Meeks 1972: 70; R. Brown 1979: 14–​17, 88–​91; Rensberger 1988: 27. The disagreement is largely semantic. 75. See Wahlde 1989: 17–​25. 76. Martyn 1978: 91. 77. Georg Richter, for example, does not share Martyn’s underlying assumption that the literary history of the Gospel “reflects the history of a single community” (Martyn 1978: 91). By contrast, Richter hypothesizes four distinct Christian communities corresponding to the four phases of Johannine Christianity that he identifies (Mattill 1977: 314, cf. 302; see also R. Brown 1979: 175). 78. Martyn 1978. Unlike Martyn’s analysis, which is confined to the gospel, Raymond Brown’s (1979: 22–​24 and passim) four stages include the time up to and following the three Johannine epistles. Although Brown’s first three stages do not correspond exactly to Martyn’s, his narrative is very similar (see also Wahlde 1989: 13–​14). Neyrey’s three stages (1988: 122–​148 and passim), however, correspond very closely to Martyn’s. A  fourth can be added if one includes the Johannine epistles, which scholars generally date after the Gospel. See R. Brown 1979: 24. 79. Neyrey 1988: 3, elucidating Martyn 1978; R. Brown 1979: 25. 80. Martyn 1978:  98. Both of these hypothetical documents exclude the lengthy Johannine discourses that figure prominently in the second half of the Gospel (Fortna 1975:  490). Against Bultmann, Fortna (1975:  498–​500) argues for the inclusion of the passion narrative with the signs source, and thus for a “signs gospel.” Wahlde (1989) gives a thorough and lucid account of the criteria used to identify this source (chap. 2) and their application (chap. 3). 81. As an agent of God, see Neyrey 1988: 126. 82. Martyn 1978: 96–​99; cf. Wahlde 1989: 59–​60, 161–​163; Neyrey 1988: 126–​127. 83. Wahlde 1989: 163–​164. 84. Martyn 1978: 102; cf. R. Brown 1979: 27–​28 and passim. 85. Martyn 1978: 104, 102–​107.

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86. Martyn 1968: 31–​40; cf. Rensberger 1988: 26. 87. See the concise summary of the main objections in Motyer 1997: 16, 93–​94. Cf. also Rensberger 1988: 26. 88. R. Brown (1979: 36; 174) remarks that Martyn’s hypothesis lacks an explanation for the break. The latter (Martyn 1978: 103), to be fair, hints that the authorities’ suspicions were triggered by the rapid growth of the messianic group. 89. R. Brown 1979: 36–​40, 43–​45, 55. 90. Meeks 1972: 71; Martyn 1978: 105; Rensberger 1988: 28. 91. Mattill 1977: 301. 92. Martyn 1978: 104–​105; R. Brown 1979: 47. 93. Martyn 1978: 107ff. 94. Represented by the parents of the blind man healed by Jesus (Jn. 9:20–​23) and perhaps also by Nicodemus (Jn. 3:1–​10) (Martyn 1978:  108–​115). Following Raymond Brown (1979: 173–​174), I have simplified the exposition of Martyn’s third period somewhat. 95. Meeks 1972; cf. 55. Raymond Brown (1979: 77) seems to suggest that the “Jews who had believed in him” mentioned in John 8:31 are more plausibly identified as Jewish Christians than as crypto-​Christians. 96. The reference to former disciples in John 6:60–​66; also, perhaps, the reference to the “other sheep” in John 10:16. For the former reference, see R.  Brown 1979: 74; for the latter, see Martyn 1978: 116–​119. 97. R. Brown 1979: 173. 98. Martyn 1978: 113, 106. 99. Against Martyn’s claim that some Johannine Christians had been put to death by the Jewish authorities, Raymond Brown (1979: 42–​43) suggests that the latter’s agency may have been more indirect. As hinted at in John 16:2, which connects expulsion and execution to the point of collapsing the temporal difference between them, persecution may have simply been more or less the consequence of expulsion, specifically, the abrogation of the legal protections extended to Jews. 100. Martyn 1978: 103–​107. 101. Meeks 1972: 71; Martyn 1978: 105; R. Brown 1979: 47; Neyrey 1988: 116–​117; Rensberger 1988: 28. 102. Meeks 1972: 69–​71, 49–​50. 103. Leroy 1968: 168 and passim; cf. Meeks 1972: 68; Neyrey 1988: 116. For a somewhat critical stance toward this interpretation, see R. Brown 1979: 61–​62; 1970. Brown (1970: 153–​154) argues that Leroy’s appeal to the riddle concept exaggerates the misunderstanding of Johannine theology and, more generally, adds less to our understanding of the Johannine discourses than Leroy claims. 104. Jesus’s deliberate alienation of those Jews who were initially are inclined to believe in him in John 8:31–​59 would seem to reflect a sectarian interest in erecting communal boundaries. See Meeks 1972: 55; R. Brown 1979: 61. On

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the usefulness of ambiguous or obscure doctrines for reinforcing social boundaries and fostering social cohesion, see Gellner 1974:  54–​55 and Southwold 1978: 374–​376. 105. Meeks 1972:  49, note 16, 67–​68 and passim. On the concept of “plausibility structure,” see Berger [1967] 1990: 45–​51 and passim. 106. R. Brown 1979: 73–​81. 107. R. Brown 1979: 73–​74; Martyn 1978: 120. 108. Martyn 1978: 108. Meeks (1967: 44–​47, 87–​91, 286–​293, and passim) argues at length for connecting the depiction of Jesus as the “prophet-​king” in the Fourth Gospel to the tradition of a prophet like Moses. In particular, Meeks shows that the desire of the Jewish leaders to kill Jesus, as well as Jesus’s repeated insistence that the words he speaks are not his own (the mark of the true prophet: Meeks 1967: 45, 290) should be understood in light of the pronouncement in Deuteronomy 18:20 that the false prophet should die. 109. Meeks 1967: 319. 110. See Martyn 1978:  108–​109, although Martyn takes the either/​or contrast of John 9:28 to refer to the “Christian Jews” who chose to remain in the synagogue as opposed to the “Jewish Christians” who left. 111. R. Brown 1979: 84. 112. See Martyn’s (1978: 93–​97) analysis of this pericope. 113. R. Brown 1979: 85. In his commentary on John 13: 23, Origen made explicit this connection between the Beloved Disciple’s special relationship and John’s Christology. See Wiles 1960: 10. 114. That is not to say there are not important resonances of Logos theology elsewhere in the Gospel, for example, as John Suggit (1984) suggests, in the theme of Jesus as the true word or Torah (e.g., Jn. 17:17). See also Boyarin 2001: 275–​276, who sees echoes of the prologue in Jesus’s discussion with the Jews over the legacy of Abraham in John 8:31–​58. 115. Martyn (1978: 105), for example, thinks it is likely that the prologue belongs to the middle period. 116. Boyarin 2001: 262–​269 and passim. 117. Boyarin 2001: 265 and passim. A helpful presentation of the parallels between the prologue of John and Jewish wisdom literature is found in Tobin 1992: 353–​354. Both Hayman (1990) and Barker (1992) argue, against the common view that Judaism has always been defined by a “radical monotheism,” that even the Hebrew Bible evidences a common dualistic pattern, in which a mediating divinity exists alongside the supreme creator God. Both insist that precedents for Christian belief in the divinity of Christ were already well established in contemporary Judaism (see Hayman 1990: 14–​15; Barker 1992: 2 and passim). 118. Boyarin 2001: 261; cf. Segal 1977: 159. Tobin (1990: 267) argues that while the identification of the Logos with a particular man would have been impossible for Hellenistic Jewish exegetes like Philo, the latter’s concept of the heavenly

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man made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), who in turn served as a paradigm for the creation of the earthly human being, may have provided a basis for John’s admittedly more radical identification of the Logos with Jesus. 119. Dunn 1980: 214. 120. M.  J. Edwards 1995:  262, 278, and passim; Price 1998:  20 and passim; Goodenough 1968: 174. More precisely, Hellenistic Judaism was the conduit for Greek philosophical influence. Unlike Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus, Justin does not seem to have drawn directly on John for his Logos theology (see Tobin 1992: 4:355–​356). 121. Boyarin 2004: 38. 122. M. J. Edwards 1995: 261. 123. Boyarin 2004: 38 and passim. 124. The progression is implicit in the a fortiori form of argumentation that Justin announces in Dial. 48 (Falls 2003: 73–​74). However, the sequence is not always that clear in the actual presentation, with its repetitions and abrupt breaks. 125. Gen. 18: Dial. 84; Gen. 19:24: Dial. 56.23; Gen. 28: Dial. 58.11–​13; Gen. 32: Dial. 58.5–​7; Ex. 3:2: Dial. 59; Jos. 5:13–​6:2: Dial. 62.5; Gen. 1:26, 3:22: Dial. 129.2. 126. Boyarin 2004: 40, cf. 29 and passim. 127. Segal 1999: 86; cf. also Hayman 1990; Barker 1992. 128. Boyarin 2004: 28. 129. Boyarin 2004: 29. On the simultaneity of the development of Christian and rabbinic orthodoxies, see Boyarin 2004: 65; Simon [1964] 1986: 106; 373, also xiii and passim. 130. Segal 1977: 10–​25 and passim; 1999: 80. 131. Nilson 1977: 39 and passim; see also Skarsaune 1987b: 258–​259, 433. Trypho’s advice to Justin in Dial. 8:3 (Falls 2003: 15–​16) that he first fulfill the demands of the Torah would support Simon’s thesis. 132. On the general problem of identifying Justin’s intended audience, see Lieu 1996: 106–​109. For a thoughtful critique of the assumption of a direct, one-​to-​ one correspondence between an ancient apology and a definite audience, see M. J. Edwards 1995: 279–​280. 133. The “parting of the ways” model (see, e.g., Dunn 1980) involves anachronism inasmuch as it tends to presuppose the existence of two entities before the ostensible parting (Lieu 2002). The notion of two religions, Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, coming from one—​ Second Temple Judaism—​ (see, e.g., Pearson 1997: 19) involves anachronism inasmuch as it presupposes the concept of Second Temple Judaism as a “religion” on the Christian model (Boyarin 2007: 70–​71, 76). Both models, moreover, assume the Christian apologetic of continuity (Lieu 2002: 16–​18). 134. The key difference between the Stammbaum and wave models is that the latter does not assume a unified proto-​language as the source of whatever commonalities the dialects share (Boyarin 2007: 76; 2004: 19). Hence the wave model does

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not encourage the reification of Second Temple Judaism as a religion analogous to the Christianity that emerges out of it. The wave model also has the advantage of avoiding the anachronism problem by not presupposing an “originary separateness” of Christianity and Judaism (Boyarin 2007: 74; 2004: 18). 135. Boyarin 2007: 74. 136. Boyarin 2004: 20; 2007: 76. 137. Boyarin 2007: 77, 84–​85; 2004: 20–​21. Such legislative efforts to establish normative forms of both Christianity and Judaism were, of course, inextricably linked with extradiscursive factors, among the most significant of which were the increasing number of Gentiles in the church who felt no need to adopt Jewish customs, as well as the trauma of the second Jewish revolt, particularly the alienation caused by the Christian refusal to recognize Bar Cochba’s messianic status (S. Wilson 1995: 182–​183 and passim). Taylor (1990: 26) argues that the influence of the Pauline doctrine of the nonnecessity of Gentile Christians to adopt Jewish praxis eventually led many Jews in the church themselves to abandon Jewish praxis. 138. Boyarin 2004: 21. 139. Dial. 35.2, Falls 2003: 54. 140. Dial. 35.4–​6, Falls 2003: 54–​55; cf. Dial. 80.3, Falls 2003: 125; Dial. 82.1–​3, Falls 2003: 128; see Le Boulluec 1985: 39ff. 141. Boyarin 2004: 38, 40. 142. Dial. 48.3, Falls 2003: 73. 143. Dial. 48.4, Falls 2003: 73–​74. 144. Dial. 49.1, Falls 2003: 74; cf. Dial. 67.2, Falls 2003: 1–​3. As well as Justin’s rhetorical expectation that Trypho should have no trouble accepting their Christology (Dial. 48.3, Falls 2003: 73). 145. Skarsaune hypothesizes that Justin incorporated two sources, though not necessarily literary sources, into his text. The first of these, which Skarsaune calls the “Kerygma Source,” comes from a Jewish-​Christian tradition and featured a fulfillment Christology (1987: 228–​234, 428–​430) and passim. The second, the “Racapitulation Source,” highlights the understanding of Christ as the second Adam (Skarsaune 1987b: 234–​242, 430 and passim). Compare Timothy Horner’s (2001:  33–​63) hypothesis that a “Trypho Text,” consisting of those chapters in which Trypho is an active participant in the dialogue (in contrast to the monological passages of Justin), forms the internally consistent core of the extant Dialogue. 146. Skarsaune 1987b: 196. 147. Dial. 8.3, Falls 2003: 16; Dial. 49.1, Falls 2003: 74; cf. Skarsaune 1987b: 196. 148. Dial. 49.3, 6, Falls 2003: 74–​75. 149. Skarsaune 1987b: 196–​199, 430. 150. Justin’s suppression of the idea that Jesus received his messianic anointing at his baptism parallels one of the more interesting “orthodox corruptions of scripture” analyzed by Bart Ehrman. Ehrman (2011: 77–​79) explains the textual

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151. 152.

153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158.

Notes variance of the heavenly voice at Jesus’s baptism in Luke 3:22 (“Today I have begotten you /​You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”) as a deliberate emendation of the former reading by orthodox scribes uncomfortable with its adoptionist implications. This parallel evinces the frequently noted Lukan character of Justin’s Dialogue, or, to be more precise, of the source in question. See Skarsaune 1987b: 6, 431–​432. Dial. 128.3, Falls 2003: 193–​194. Dial. 128.4, Falls 2003:  194; cf. Dial. 56.11, Falls 2003:  85; Dial. 62.2, Falls 2003:  95. Justin’s expression heteros arithmoi, “different in number,” can be made less jarring to orthodox ears by rendering it as “different in person” (see Goodenough 1968: 146). Tertullian and Hippolytus, two theologians in the tradition of Justin, were accused, in fact, of being ditheists (Kelly 1978: 110 and passim). Dial. 129.1–​3, Falls 2003: 194–​195. Boyarin 2004: 39. Dial. 35.5, Falls 2003: 55. Dial. 56.4, Falls 2003: 83–​84; Dial. 56.11, 16, Falls 2003: 85–​86; Dial. 60.5, Falls 2003: 93. Skarsaune 1987b: 210. Skarsaune 1987b: 210–​211, 427; cf. Lieu 1996: 104, 118; Segal 1977: 86, 90.

C h a p t er   4 1. Dial. 56.4, Falls 2003: 84; Dial. 56.11, Falls 2003: 85. 2. Monarchianism would be another. 3. Ad. Praex. 13; Souter 1919: 57, 59; cf. Segal 1999: 91. 4. Dial. 128.3, Falls 2003: 193–​194. Epiphanius in his Panarion also attributes this image of the sun and its rays to Sabellius. F. Williams 1994: 121 (Panarion 62). I am grateful to Andrew Radde-​Gallwitz for this reference. 5. Kelly 1978:  100–​ 101 (concerning the second-​ century Apologists); Ayres 2004b: 21–​23, 27–​28 (concerning Origen); cf. Simonetti 1975: 59 (concerning Alexander). 6. Ayres 2004b: 23. 7. Hanson 1988: 872; but see Ayres 2004b: 302–​304, 317–​321. 8. One of Arius’s principal objections (Opitz, U.6, 13.10–​12, Rusch 1980: 32). 9. One of Eusebius of Caesarea’s objections to Marcellus’s theology (Feige 1991: 220 and passim). 10. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 31.7 (Fifth Theological Oration), NPNF 2.7, 319; Simonetti 1975:  494–​496, and passim, cf. 498–​499, concerning Gregory of Nazianzus’s subtle distinction between gennesis and ekporeusis. 11. Vaggione 2000: 109–​110.

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12. See Hanson 1988: 26; cf. Simonetti 1975: 478–​479, a propros Athanasius’s interpretation of Proverbs 8:22. 13. Vaggione 2000:  110–​113, cf. 120. According to Arius, “[Christ’s] divinity was reduced enough to be able to encounter suffering without ceasing to be divine” (Hanson 1988: 25, cf. 26, 32). 14. Vaggione 2000: 110–​111. 15. Wiles 1967: 62–​93. 16. Lieu 1996: 106. 17. M. Taylor 1995: 5 and passim. 18. Wilken 1983: 129–​130, 140–​148, and passim. 19. Wilken 1983: 124 and passim; cf. Vaggione 2000: 31–​32. 20. Hanson (1988: xvii–​xviii) argues that the label is a misnomer in two respects. First, because it falsely suggests that Arius was a more important and influential theologian than he actually was; in reality Arius was important for only a historically brief period between 318 and 325. Second, because it suggests that that a single issue was disputed throughout the period when in fact there were many discrete subjects of controversy. More recently, Sara Parvis (2006: 38) has defended the use of the designation. She argues that the designation is justified to the extent that a reference to certain theological statements of Arius remains a constant throughout the theological debates taking place after Nicaea, at least up to 345, where her historical study ends. One of the central theses of her book is that the events during this period can be understood in terms of a “struggle between two ongoing, though continually modified alliances” (2006: 38–​39, cf. 100 and passim). Hanson’s judgment that “Arianism” is a misnomer reflects the difficulty of maintaining this thesis for the second half of the fourth century, although I  suspect that he would maintain his judgment even for the period Parvis covers. See also Williams (1995: 1, 235–​236, and passim). 21. M. R. Barnes 1995b: 55–​56. 22. Edwards 2009: 134; T. Barnes 1993: 152; cf. D. Williams 1995: 36. 23. Opitz, U.1, 2.6, Rusch 1980: 29; cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl. I.5. 24. Opitz, U.6, 12.10, Rusch 1980: 31. 25. Galvão-​Sobrinho 2013:  54–​59, 36–​37, and passim; on the use of acclamations in the period more generally, see Roueché 1984; see also MacMullen 1990, esp. 272–​273. 26. R. Williams 2001: 45, 46; cf. Socrates, Hist. eccl. 1.5. 27. R. Williams 2001: 82–​91; see also Galvão-​Sobrinho 2013: 5–​6 and passim. 28. Opitz, U.1, 3.1–​3, Rusch 1980: 30. 29. See, inter alia, Opitz, U.14, 20.7–​8, Rusch 1980: 33; cf. Arius’s (Opitz, U.1, 3.2–​3) characterization of the Son as θεός, μονογενής, and ἀναλλοίωτος. 30. T. Barnes 1993: 17–​18. Athanasius continues his predecessor’s resistance to the restitution of Arius. As Schwartz (1969: 149) observes, this refusal betrays a concern “not with the teaching but with the man.”

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31. Leach 1983, esp. 75–​76. 32. Simonetti 1975: 57. 33. Galvão-​Sobrinho 2013: 39–​41, 74, 80–​81, cf. 110. 34. Opitz, U.14, 21.15, Rusch 1980: 35. 35. See the critique by Ayres (2004b: 55–​56; cf. also R. Williams 2001: 113; Vaggione 1989: 68–​70) of Gregg and Groh (1977; 1981), namely, that they, in attributing an exemplarist soteriology and an adoptionist Christology to Arius (see, e.g., 1977: 262, 264, 266, 272, and 274), uncritically concede what was likely an invidious representation of Alexander and Athanasius. Rebecca Lyman questions this judgment that the exemplarist soteriology traditionally attributed to Arius must have been a polemical distortion, however. She suggests that the assumption that no Christian theologian would hold such a soteriology reflects an anachronistic reading of ancient Christian theology and piety in light of later orthodoxy (1989: 496–​497 and passim). Lyman argues that when one considers the polemical context of early fourth-​century Alexandrian theology, specifically the need to defend the ethical freedom of the Christian and Christ’s humanity against the Docetic Christology and generally fatalist worldview of the Manicheans, the exemplarist Christology attributed to Arius no longer appears all that implausible (1989: 497–​503). Still, to affirm Christ’s humanity does not necessarily reflect a deliberate effort to bring him down to the level of creatures, as Gregg and Groh suggest. 36. Leach 1983: 75; Galvão-​Sobrinho 2013: 89. 37. Opitz, U.14, 22.23–​26, Rusch 1980: 36. 38. Opitz, U.14. The other main extant document is his circular letter (Opitz, U.4b), known as the henos sômatos. T. Barnes (1993: 16), following G. C. Stead, believes this letter was written by Alexander’s young assistant Athanasius. 39. οἱ […] ϰατηγοροῦντες Ἰουδαϊκῷ προσχήματι χριστομάχον συνεϰρότησαν ἐργαστήριον, Opitz, U.14, 20.6–​7; cf. Rusch 1980: 33. 40. οί [.  .  .] τὴν θεότητα τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ἀρνούμενοι ϰαὶ τοῖς πᾶσιν ἴσον εἶναι ϰηρύττοντες,; Opitz, U.14, 20.7–​8. 41. τῆς προσϰυνούσης Χριστοῦ τὴν θεότητα ἐϰϰλησίας, Opitz, U.14, 20.19. 42. ἀεὶ θεὸς ἀεὶ υἱός; ἐξ αὐτοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ υἱός, Opitz, U.1, 2.1; 2.3. 43. ὅτι ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐϰ ἦν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, Opitz, U.14, 21.8. 44. ἀρχὴν ἔχει ὁ υἱός, ὁ δὲ θεὸς ἄναρχός ἐστι, Opitz, U.1, 3.4. 45. οὐτ´ἐπινοίᾳ οὐτ´ἀτόμῳ τινὶ προάγει ὁ θεὸς τοῦ υἱοῦ, Opitz, U.1, 2.2–​3, Rusch 1980: 29. 46. Opitz, U.1, 2.2. 47. Hanson (1988: 23): “Arius had a habit of pushing things to their logical limits, irrespective of the consequences.” 48. Ayres 2004b: 17–​18. 49. Eusebius of Nicomedia objected to the anathemas on the grounds that they grossly misrepresented the teaching of Arius (Kelly 1972: 216).

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5 0. Kelly 1972: 235; cf. Ayres 2004a: 338. 51. Lindbeck 1984: 75. 52. Kelly 1972: 243. 53. Hanson 1988: 172. 54. Ad Afros 5, PG 26.1037B; Decr. 19, Opitz, Werke 2.1, 15.36–​38. 55. More precisely, “those around Eusebius [of Nicomedia]” (hoi peri Eusebiov). 56. Ad Afros 5, PG 26.1037C; cf. Decr. 19, Opitz, Werke 2.1, 16.4–​7. 57. Decr. 20, Opitz, Werke 2.2, 17.5–​15; Ad Afros 5, PG 1037D-​1040A; cf. Synod. 45. 58. Pace Kelly 1972:  253. Parvis’s (2006:  84, 87, 244)  observation that the Nicene creed is simpler and more scriptural than the three preceding statements of faith in the controversy (namely, those of Antioch in 324, the Tome to All Bishops based on Alexander’s He Philarchos, and Arius’s own creed), lends some support to Athanasius’s account, however. 59. Philostorgius, Hist. eccl. 1.7 (9–​10). Simonetti (1975:  92–​93) thinks it unlikely that Alexander would have suggested the homoousios to Constantine, for the term was alien to the broader Origenist tradition, to which Alexander belonged, which affirmed the personal subsistence of the Son with respect to the Father. The homoousios, rather, reflects either an “Asiatic” or a Western environment in which a monarchian theological tendency predominated. 60. As Schwartz (1969: 140) noted, Eustathius of Antioch claimed that the homoousios was intended to exclude Eusebius of Caesarea (among others), along with Arius himself (cf. Stead 1974: 233–​234). 61. Simonetti 1975: 82, cf. 102. See also Lim 1995: 183: “In the final tally, nonpartisans were a significant presence at the council.” 62. Simonetti reconstructs the course of the council in terms of two principal moments. In the first, the council rejected as heterodox certain teachings of Arius, in particular the latter’s alleged claim that the Son was created (1975: 81). In the second moment, the bishops sought to articulate a positive statement of faith that would be acceptable to the majority while still excluding the errors associated with Arius (1975: 82). Athanasius’s account corresponds to this second moment. Simonetti’s reconstruction thus presupposes the overall credibility of Athanasius’s account (see 1975: 82). 63. Simonetti 1975: 60. Henry Chadwick (1960: 172–​173) understands the representative nature of Eusebius’s thought in a stronger, even literal sense: “It is very possible that the reasoning of Eusebius of Caesarea’s letter to his church is the outcome not of his own purely private thoughts, but represents the party line.” 64. Ep. Caes. 7, Opitz, U.22, 44.1–​7; cf. Rusch 1980: 58. 65. The suspicion that Athanasius here deliberately exaggerates the anti-​ Arian consensus at Nicaea is consistent with his later strategy of retroactively “conscripting” for “orthodoxy” (Parvis 2006; 44) the names of deceased signatories at Nicaea who most likely had pro-​Arius sympathies. 66. Galvão-​Sobrinho 2013: 85.

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6 7. Person 1978: 63–​64; Stead 1973: 95–​96; Parvis 2006: 67. 68. Decr. 20, Opitz, Werke 2.1, 17.5–​11; Ad Afros 6, PG 26.1040B. Arius rejects it explicitly in his letter to Alexander (Opitz, U.6, 12.11–​12): “nor, as Manichaeus taught that the offspring was a consubstantial part of the Father” (οὐδ´ὡς Μανιχαῖος μέρος ὁμοούσιον τοῦ πατρὸς τὸ γέννημα εἰσηγήσατο). According to Ambrose (De fide 3.15), Eusebius of Nicomedia had written in a letter that “If we describe Him as true Son of God and increate, we are beginning to say He is homoousios with the Father.” When this statement was read in front of the council, the fathers opportunistically decided to insert the homoousios into the creed, “because they saw that it daunted their adversaries” (NPNF 2.10, 260). The ousia language in the creed might have had a wider target, at least for some of the framers, namely, the Origenist belief, held by Eusebius of Caesarea, Narcissus of Neronias, Paulinus of Tyre, and others, that the Son was a separate substance from the Father. See Alastair Logan’s intriguing hypothesis that Marcellus of Ancyra in particular recognized the acceptance of two (or three) ousiai in the Godhead as the Eusebians’ weak spot and accordingly suggested to Ossius and Alexander the use of ousia and its cognates as the most effective rhetorical weapon against the “Arians” (Logan 1992: 437, 441, 442). 69. Sara Parvis (2006: 83) remarks that Nicaea was not the triumph for Marcellus and Eustathius that it is often taken to be, as, for example, by Hanson (1988: 235). Indeed, she goes as far as to say that from the perspective of the anti-​Arians, Nicaea was a “dismal failure; it was a triumph for their opponents, who against all the odds out-​manoeuvred them” (Parvis 2006: 83). Simonetti (1975: 84) suggests that the initial decision to base the Nicene Creed on a statement of faith amenable to Eusebius of Caesarea (even if not his own, as his letter to his church insinuates) represented a triumph for the Eusebians, which was undermined by the interpolations introduced by the anti-​Arian contingent. In the end, neither camp was happy with the creed, which might explain why nobody, from either side, cites it in the years immediately following. (On the anti-​Arians’ avoidance of Nicaea, see Parvis 2006: 83, 91.) 70. Simonetti 1975: 85. One must not underestimate the influence that the emperor’s threat of force had on the proceedings. See, e.g., MacMullen 2003: 480–​481 and passim, citing H. Chadwick 1960: 175. 71. Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea apparently signed the creed but disagreed with the anathemas and the judgment of Arius. See Hanson 1988: 173, 175. Henry Chadwick (1960) suggests that the refusal of Secundus and Theonas to sign the creed had to do with a specific issue, namely, the extension of the jurisdiction of the Alexandrian see over Libya and the Pentapolis as stipulated in the sixth canon of Nicaea. The hypothesis that Secundus and Theonas were motivated by a demand for Libyan autonomy would explain why these two Libyan bishops did not follow the other “Arianizing” bishops in acceding to the emperor’s wishes (H. Chadwick 1960: 176ff).

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72. Parvis 2006: 50, 57, 81–​83, 91. See Eustathius’s first-​hand account, preserved in Theodoret, Hist. eccl. 1.8.1–​5. 73. Hanson 1988: 173; cf. Sozomen Hist. eccl. 1.21.3, 4. 74. Marcellus, curiously enough, apparently did not sign the Nicene Creed. Parvis (2006: 91) suggests that this decision on Marcellus’s part may have reflected an unhappiness with some of the formulations of the creed which left the door open for a belief in two divine hypostases. 75. Galvão-​Sobrinho 2013: 79; Simonetti 1975: 102; Sciuto 1985: 481. 76. Stead 1977: 190, 226; 1974: 240; cf. Werner 1957: 221–​222, 251–​253; Schwartz 1969: 109–​110. 77. Opitz, U.14, 27.5–​6; Feige 1992: 288; cf. Arius’s letter to Alexander, Opitz, U.6, 12.11–​12. 78. Ep. Caes. 12, Opitz, U.22, 45.22–​24, Rusch 1980: 59. 79. ἐξ ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσίας φάσϰοντας εἶναι [. . .] τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἀναθεματίζει ἡ ϰαθολιϰὴ ἐϰϰλησία. Opitz, Werke 2.1, 30.10–​11. Skarsaune (1987a: 48) argues that this anathema was not intended to say that the Son is of the same hypostasis as the Father; rather, it was only meant to exclude the idea that the Son comes from another hypostasis. Had it been intended in the former sense, Skarsaune argues, Origenists of all stripes would have protested violently (see also the discussion of this issue in Stead 1977:  233–​242). While Skarsaune is undoubtedly correct in showing the way the anathema was likely construed by someone like Eusebius of Caesarea, I think that this anathema, like the creed in general, is ambiguous, and intentionally so. Marcellus, for example, would have understood the anathema to exclude the Origenist three-​hypostases doctrine. See Dinsen (1976: 93–​95) and Hanson (1988: 229–​230). 80. Rather surprisingly, Eusebius does not mention the possibility of a Sabellian misinterpretation of the term (Feige 1992:  289). And Arius, in his letter to Alexander, associates the teaching that “the offspring of the Father is part of the same substance” with Manes, not Sabellius (see Dinsen 1976: 62). The keyword for the latter’s teaching on the Godhead was “Father-​and-​Son,” not the homoousios (Feige 1992: 288). But see Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 2.8 (cf. Ayres 2004b: 101). Sozomen’s reference to Eusebius of Caesarea’s concern about Eustathius of Antioch’s Sabellian interpretation of the homoousios shortly after the council may anachronistically reflect later concerns. 81. According to Logan, Marcellus had identified the Origenist belief in three ousiai as a point of vulnerability in the theology of Eusebius of Caesarea and Narcissus of Neronias (Logan 1992: 436, 437; cf. Dinsen 1976: 93–​94; Contra Marcellum, 1.4.39, 53–​54; Opitz, U.19, 41). Accordingly, he shrewdly suggested the term homoousios to Constantine via Ossius (Logan 1992: 441, 442, 444, and passim). Logan’s hypothesis receives a measure of support from Simonetti’s (1975: 92–​93) remark that the homoousios was foreign to the Origenist tradition of Alexander and that it reflects either a Western or an Asiatic provenance, where

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a monarchian theological tendency maintained a presence. Nevertheless, several considerations argue against Logan’s hypothesis that Marcellus was responsible for the homoousios clause in the Nicene Creed. The term generally not understood in the “Marcellan” sense of numerical identity at the time of the council, as Feige (1992: 287–​293 and passim) and Studer (1993: 106) argue; Feige suggests that this reading of the Nicene homoousios is, strictly speaking, an anachronism. Moreover, as Parvis (2006: 65, 87, 89, 185) notes, Marcellus avoids ousia language in general, to say nothing of homoousios in particular, in positive statements. Parvis (2006: 87, 89) raises the intriguing possibility that it was none other than the youthful Athanasius who was responsible for both the ek tês ousias tou patros and the homoousion tôi patri clauses. A contrasting view is provided by Skarsaune (1987a: 50), who, relying on the testimony of Eusebius, presumes that the homoousios did not originate with the framers of the creed but rather with the emperor (but see M. R. Barnes 1998: 49). The framers were obliged to incorporate this suspect term into the creed, and they did so rather circumspectly (Skarsaune 1987a: 39, 50; cf. Feige 1992: 293–​294). 82. For example, Hilary of Poitiers, writing sometime between the late 350s and early 360s, was acutely mindful of the vulnerability of the homoousios to a Sabellian interpretation. See, e.g., his De synodis 68 (NPNF 2.9, 22): “But if we attribute one substance to the Father and the Son to teach that there is a solitary personal existence although denoted by two titles: then though we confess the Son with our lips we do not keep Him in our hearts, since in confessing one substance we then really say that the Father and Son constitute one undifferentiated Person.” Cf. also De trin. 4.4. 83. Werner 1957:  252; Feige 1992:  280; 1990:  215. Such a reinterpretation is evident in Basil’s claim that Marcellus misinterpreted the homoousion in a Sabellian sense (M. R. Barnes 1998: 48; Dinsen 1976: 80). Martin Werner (1957: 251–​252) observes that the exponents of the homoousios doctrine avoided the twin pitfalls of Gnosticism and Sabellianism by tacking between the two heresies. The orthodoxy of the term, in other words, depended on maintaining an unstable state of dynamic equilibrium, playing each heretical sense of the term off against the other. Werner (1957: 252) claims that in the last phase of the “Arian conflict,” after the Sabellian sense of homoousios had come to the fore, Nicene orthodoxy reverted back to the generic, Gnostic sense that homoousios had at the beginning. For an evaluation of this thesis, see the last section of this chapter below. 84. M. R. Barnes 1998: 49–​50; cf. Ayers 2004b: 100; Simonetti 1975: 94. 85. Parvis 2006: 81–​83, 91. Feige 1992: 281 suggests that the group that was silenced included Marcellus. See also Parvis 2006: 82. 86. Parvis 2006: 62 and passim. 87. Studer 1998: 33; Dinsen 1976: 73, 76; Simonetti 1975: 93; Scuito 1985: 483; Feige 1992: 280–​281; but see Parvis 2006: 60 on Eustathius. 88. M. R. Barnes 1998: 51; Ayers 2004b: 100; Dinsen 1976: 98.

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89. Simonetti 1975: 101–​102, cf. 133. 90. Marcellus and Eustathius were soon deposed on account of their modalist/​ Sabellian teachings. Athanasius, by contrast, was deposed on criminal charges. See D. Wiliams 1995: 13–​15. 91. M. R. Barnes 1998: 49–​50. 92. Skarsaune’s (1987a: 48) contention that the original intent of the third anathema was simply to deny that the Son comes from a hypostasis other than the Father (i.e., not that the Son is of the same hypostasis as the Father) does convincingly explain how many, perhaps most, of the signatories chose to understand it (see also Feige 1992: 294; Parvis 2006: 91). Whether Marcellus and others of the “one hypostasis” view took it that way, however, is doubtful. See, e.g., Dinsen’s (1976: 93–​94, 107, 180–​181) claim that Marcellus and the authors of Nicaea understood homoousios in the sense of mia hypostasis. On this point, cf. also Logan 1992: 444. 93. M. R. Barnes 1998: 51; Simonetti 1975: 102; Hanson 1988: 230. As mentioned above, Alastair Logan argues that Marcellus played a significant role at Nicaea (1992: 441–​445) and that his role was deliberately downplayed after his condemnation by the later tradition in the interests of dissociating Nicaea from heresy (1992:  439). Against the view that Marcellus played a significant role in the drafting of the Nicene Creed, see Feige 1992: 295–​296 and passim, and Parvis 2006: 82–​91 and passim. Parvis (2006: 92–​94) argues that while Marcellus did not play a major role in drafting the Nicene Creed, he did nevertheless play a significant role in drawing up the Nicene canons. 94. At the time, one hypostasis would have also meant one ousia, since these terms were not yet distinguished. As mentioned above, however, Marcellus generally avoided ousia language (Parvis 2006: 36, 65, 242, and passim; Feige 1992: 295–​296). 95. Vinzent 1997: xxix; Feige 1991: 218; Simonetti 1975: 68, 75; Ayres 2004b: 63; Lienhard 1999: 48, 76, 163; see, e.g., Vinzent, Frag. 91, 97, 117, 120, 122. 96. The curious neglect of Nicaea after 325 may reflect Marcellus’s claim on its teaching (M. R. Barnes 1998: 52; cf. Hanson 1988: 230). On the other hand, Marcellus himself does not refer to Nicaea either, as one might expect had it expressed his own theological views. Parvis (2006: 83) takes this as an indication that Marcellus and Eustathius, who also does not refer to Nicaea, were unhappy with it. 97. Ayres 2004b: 105. Or, expressing matters more cautiously, Nicaea was read retrospectively in light of the controversy over the theology of Marcellus. The post-​ Marcellan hermeneutic would have foregrounded the Sabellian implications of some of Nicaea’s formulations that were not readily apparent before. 98. Ayres 2004b: 62, 102. 99. Hanson 1988: 217; Lienhard 1993: 68; Parvis 2006: 128. 100. M. R. Barnes 1998: 51.

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1 01. See Ayres 2004b: 106–​108, 431; M. R. Barnes 1998: 53–​56; Parvis 2006: 180–​181. 102. Logan 1992: 439. 103. M. R. Barnes 1998: 62, 53, and passim. 104. At the time he wrote the Against Asterius, Marcellus regarded Asterius as the true author of the heresy, not Arius. The latter’s name is curiously absent from the extant fragments of this work of Marcellus (Parvis 2006: 180–​181). 105. Rowan Williams (2001: 95) makes this point with regard to the retrieval of the theology of Arius. 106. Parvis 2006: 129, 32. Parvis (2006: 130) notes that the two charges on account of which Marcellus was condemned, namely, the alleged claim that the Son of God had his beginning from Mary and that his kingdom will end, were “well calculated to infuriate Constantine.” In drafting his brief against Marcellus, Eusebius of Caesarea was mindful of the emperor’s impatience with overly subtle theological arguments. Consequently, he focused his polemic on the most sensational charges against Marcellus, with little compunction about caricaturing or distorting the latter (2006: 130–​131). 107. Parvis 2006: 31. 108. See Vinzent, Frag. 50, 116. 109. Simonetti 1975: 68, cf. 75, 94–​95. 110. Hanson 1988:  229; Lienhard 1999:  148, 150, and passim. But see Vinzent’s (1997: xxvi–​xxvii; cf. xxxi) remark that although this represents a reliable inference, Marcellus does not explicitly state in the extant sources that God or the Godhead is to be thought of as a single hypostasis or ousia. 111. Hanson 1988: 229–​230. 112. Simonetti 1975:  61; Feige 1991:  41; cf. 1990:  10; see Eusebius, Eccl. theol. 1.11, 2.7. 113. Vinzent 1997: xxix–​xxx, xxxii–​xxxiii. 114. Vinzent, Frag. 87. 115. οὕτω τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ χωρίζων τοῦ πατρός, ὡς ϰαὶ υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου χωρίσειεν ἂν τις τοῦ ϰατὰ φύσιν πατρός, Vinzent, Frag. 85; cf. Frag. 97. Based on Vinzent’s (1997: 75) German translation; Vinzent 1997: xxix, xxxii; Ayres 2004b: 65. 116. Lienhard 1999: 51, 67, 125. 117. οὐϰοῦν πρὸ μὲν τοῦ ϰατελθεῖν ϰαὶ διὰ τῆς παρθένου τεχθῆναι λόγος ἦν μόνον, Vinzent, Frag. 5; cf. Frag. 52. 118. Vinzent, Frag. 8; cf. Vinzent 1997: xxxvi. 119. Vinzent 1997: xxix; cf. Simonetti 1975: 68. 120. Feige 1991: 220. Marcellus argued that the prologue of John’s Gospel “said nothing of the original generation of the Logos as the Son.” See Werner 1957: 231. 121. Lienhard 1999: 144. See, e.g., his letter to Julius of Rome, in which he criticizes those who claim that the Son is another Logos than the true Logos (Vinzent, Frag. 124.19–​21); later he speaks of the only begotten “Son, Logos” (Vinzent, Frag. 126.8–​9).

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Parvis (2006: 182) argues that “Marcellus was always prepared to call the pre-​incarnate Word ‘Son’, and to state unequivocally that the Son is eternal and is the one through whom all created things are made, not merely a title accorded to the Word after the Incarnation.” Nevertheless, he found it necessary to qualify the preincarnate Son as the “one truly Son” (ton alêthôs huion); he remains reluctant to identify the unqualified term “Son” with the Word out of fear of suggesting a hypostatic distinction between the Word and God. 122. Hanson 1988: 226–​227; Lienhard 1999: 64, 164; cf. Frag. 107. Marcellus understood the stepwise progression from the Monad into a Diad and then a Triad in terms of the Neo-​Pythagorean mathematical notion of the generation of a line from a point, and a surface from the line (Seibt 1994: 465–​467). 123. M.  R. Barnes 1998:  52; Hanson 1988:  231; Lienhard 1999:  143. Simonetti (1975: 71) notes that Marcellus was uncertain about this proposition and that he admitted his ignorance of the final destiny of Christ’s humanity. Parvis (2006: 130–​131) goes further in vindicating Marcellus from this charge, arguing that Marcellus understood the claim that “Christ’s kingdom will have an end” to apply to the incarnate Christ, not the Word that had no beginning. She thus concludes that the charge was unfair from the beginning. 124. Feige 1991: 213. 125. Feige 1991: 34–​35, 213, and passim. 126. Feige 1991: 33–​34 and passim. 127. Eccl. theol. 1.10, Klostermann 69.6–​ 11; Feige 1991:  35, 55, 142, 201, 234; Lienhard 1999: 130. 128. Feige 1991: 234; Kelly 1978: 115–​123. 129. See Feige’s (1991: 196) exposition of the text Adversus Arium et Sabellium, traditionally, though probably falsely, ascribed to Gregory of Nyssa. 130. Feige 1991: 196. 131. C. Mar. 1.1.4, Klostermann 4.12–​15; Hanson 1988: 224; Lienhard 1999: 51. 132. Lienhard 1999: 132–​133. 133. Eccl. theol. 1.1:  τῷ τὴν ὑπόστασιν ἀναιρεῖν τοῦ υἱοῦ, Klostermann 63, 1.1; cf. 2.11, Klostermann 113.19–​20; Luibhéid 1981: 91, 93; cf. Lienhard 1999: 99. 134. Eusebius also mentions a fourth logical possibility, namely, that Christ’s body was without either the Logos or a human soul (Feige 1991: 39). But it does not warrant serious consideration. 135. Kelly 1978: 120. 136. Following Feige’s (1991:  38–​39) exposition of Eusebius’s argument in Eccl. theol. 1.20 (Klostermann 87–​88). 137. Eccl. theol. 1.20, Klostermann 88.4–​9; cf. 1.14, Klostermann 74.13–​17. 138. In the eschaton; see Feige 1991: 194; Eccl. theol. 2.16. 139. Eccl. theol. 2.10, Klostermann 69.3–​11; C. Mar. 2.1, Klostermann 69.5. 140. It is possible that they met in 335 at the Synod of Tyre. See Lienhard 1993: 67–​68.

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141. Ayres 2004b:  52–​61, 106. It seems that Julius, who identified “those around Eusebius [of Nicomedia]” and “those around Athanasius” as the two contending parties in his 341 letter to the Eusebian bishops, played a role in orchestrating this alliance (see Lienhard 1999: 140; Ayers 2004b: 109). 142. Specifically, in the Tome to the Antiochenes (362), whose intent was to reconcile the Eustathians and the Meletians, the latter holding a three-​hypostases theology. See Lienhard 1993: 75–​76; Hanson 1988: 245, 444. 143. Lienhard 1999:  148. Dinsen’s claim that Athanasius’s avoidance of three-​ hypostases language was only strategic, strikes me as overly charitable. 144. Lienhard 1999: 50–​68; Ayres 2004b: 116; Hanson 1988: 443–​444. 145. Lienhard 1993:  73–​74. Parvis (2006:  249–​250) suggests the possibility that Marcellus, sensing that the controversy surrounding his theology had become an obstacle to the pro-​Nicene alliance, rather selflessly allowed Athanasius, Julius, and their allies to distance themselves from him without resistance. 146. Lienhard 1999: 148; 1993: 76–​77; Tetz 1973: 121 and passim. 147. Schwartz 1969:  148:  “ein monotones Hämmern auf der vollen Gottheit des Sohnes.” 148. Schwartz 1969: 147. 149. Parvis (2006: 227) aptly describes Athanasius as “a born politician with a very strong instinct for survival.” In particular, she credits Athanasius with the good sense, lacking in Marcellus, to refrain from attacking the Eusebian doctrine of three hypostases (2006: 242). Athanasius recognized the virtue of keeping doctrinal formulations sufficiently flexible so as not to close off future sources of support (2006: 244). 150. See Parvis 2006: 244. 151. Lienhard 1993: 70. 152. Ayres 2004b: 112. 153. C. Ar. 2.2–​7 and passim; 1.10; 1.29; 1:31; 1.33–​34. 154. C. Ar. 1.26, PG 26.65C, NPNF 2.4, 322. 155. Ayres 2004b: 114–​115. 156. C. Ar. 1.4:  Ἄρειος ἄθεος, ἀρωούμενος τὸν Υἱὸν, ϰαὶ τοῖς ποιήμασιν αὐτὸν συναριθμῶν, PG 26.20C, NPNF 2.4, 308. 157. C. Ar. 1.25:  ὅτι τὸν ἐϰ τοῦ Πατρὸς Λόγον ἔξωθεν αὐτῷ ἐπεισάγει, PG 26.64C, NPNF 2.4, 321. 158. C. Ar. 1.22:  θέλοντες ἀπο τοῦ Πατρὸς εἴϰόνα, ἵνα τοῖς γενητοῖς τὸν Υἳὸν ἐξισάσωσιν, PG 26.57B, NPNF 2.4, 319. 159. C. Ar. 1.9: Καὶ οὐϰ ἔστιν ἀληθινὸς Θεὸς ὁ Χριστὸς, ἀλλὰ μετοχῇ ϰαὶ αὐτὸς ἐθεοποιήθη, PG 26.29B, NPNF 2.4, 311. 160. C. Ar. 1.8: ἀρνήσονται ϰαὶ αὐτοὶ διὰ τοῦτο σὺν ἐϰείνοις τὸν Χριστόν, PG 26.25C, NPNF 2.4, 310. 161. C. Ar. 1.1: ἀπατήσῃ τινὰς ϰατὰ Χριστοῦ ϕρονεῖν τῇ πιθανότητι τῶν παραλογισμῶν, PG 26.13B, Rusch 1980: 63.

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162. C. Ar. 1.33, Rusch 1980: 96. 163. C. Ar. 2.19: Κτίσμα ἐστὶν, ἀλλ´οὐχ ὡς ἕν τῶν ϰτισμάτων, ποίμά ἐστιν, ἀλλ´οὐχ ὡςἔν τῶν ποιημάτων, γέννημά ἐστιν, ἀλλ´οὐχ ὡς ἕν τῶν γεννημάτων, PG 26.185B, NPNF 2.4, 358. 164. C. Ar. 2.23–​24 and passim; NPNF 2.4, 360–​361. 165. C. Ar. 2.19: Εἰ γὰρ ὅλως ϰαθ´ὑμᾶς ϰτίσμα ἐστὶ, πῶς ὑποϰρίνεσθε λέγοντες, Ἀλλ´ οὐχ ὡς ἕν τῶν ϰτισμάτων; PG 26.185C, NPNF 2.4, 358a–​b: “for, if in your opinion, He is simply a creature, why add the pretence, ‘but not as one of the creatures’?” The antithesis, implicit in Athasnasius’s argument, between creating and begetting betrays a subtle narrowing of the semantic range of the former term. Maurice Wiles (1996: 13), explicating the original sense of the Proverbs verse, observes that “[c]‌reation could thus be seen as the appropriate generic term, with begetting as a way of indicating the unique and intimate nature of this primary act of divine creation—​the bringing into being of a distinct divine Word or Wisdom or Son.” 166. Lienhard (1993: 78) considers the possibility that the older Marcellus served as Athanasius’s mentor during their time together in Rome. 167. Or, less charitably expressed, he has no compunction about mixing metaphors. Cf. Stead’s (1977: 261) observation that “Alexandrian theologians feel no embarrassment in switching abruptly from one analogy to the other.” 168. Nevertheless, Athanasius’s language, to the extent that the Father-​Son relationship serves as the master metaphor, albeit in qualified form, preserves a trace of subordinationism. In this respect he is not quite as radical as Marcellus (see Stead 1977: 260–​261, cf. 264–​266; cf. also Edwards 2009: 114). Somewhat paradoxically, however, this conservative element in Athanasius’s thought allows for a Christologically more maximalist theology, as we have seen. 169. Ayres 2004a: 338, note 3. 170. Dinsen 1976: 98; Hanson 1988: 437. 171. See Sieben 1979, chap. 1. 172. Sieben 1979: 29–​30. 173. Ayres 2004b: 133–​140; 2004a: 345; Hanson 1988: 329. 174. T. Barnes 1993: 109–​110. See De synodis, 27, anathemas 6, 7, 25, 26 (Hanson 1988: 326–​328; Ayres 2004a: 345). Hanson (1988: 328; cf. 326–​328) sees in some of the anathemas appended to this creedal statement a direct and explicit attack on Nicaea itself (but see Ayres 2004b: 135). If so, that would suggest that Athanasius’s appeal to Nicaea, and not just his defense of its terminology, would be reactive in nature. 175. Ayres 2004b: 138. 176. Hanson 1988: 438; cf. Ayres 2004b: 139; M. R. Barnes 1998: 59. 177. See the intriguing argument of Ayres (2004a: 350–​355) that Eusebius’s Episula ad Caesarienses served, in some sense, as a model for Athanasius’s defense of the homoousios in the De decretis.

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178. As noted above, Athanasius saw no reason to use or defend the term when refuting Arianism in his earlier works, most notably the Orationes contra Arianos. As Hanson notes, there he had a rich variety of other expressions at his disposal to express the Son’s ontological unity with the Father (Hanson 1988: 437: τὸ ἴδιον τῆς οὐσίας [“peculiar belonging of the substance”]; ἀπαράλλαϰτος εἰϰὼν τῆς οὐσίας [“exact image of the substance”]; ἴδιον γέννημα τῆς οὐσίας [“peculiar offspring of the substance”]; ὅμοιος ϰατ´ οὐσίαν [“like in substance”]). From this observation we can reasonably infer that homoousios was not the most obvious or felicitous concept for expressing his theological views on the Father-​Son relation. When he does use it, moreover, he feels it stands in need of qualification (see Ayres 2004a: 347, 352). 179. Vaggione 1982: 181–​182. 180. Ayers 2004a: 339–​340, 345 and passim. 181. Decr. 13, NPNF 2.4, 158: “If then son, therefore not creature; if creature, not son; for great is the difference between them.” Opitz, Werke 2.1, 12.1–​2:  εἰ τοίνυν υἱός, οὐ ϰτίσμα, εἰ δὲ ϰτίσμα, οὐχ υἱός. πολλὴ γὰρ ἐν αὐτοῖς ἡ διαϕορά. 182. Decr. 13, NPNF 2.4: 158: “For what man of right understanding does not perceive, that what are created and made are external to the maker, but the Son, as the foregoing argument has shewn, exists not externally, but from the Father who begot Him?” Opitz, Werke 2.1, 11.24–​26: τίς γὰρ οὐ συνορᾷ διάνοιαν ἔχων ὀρθήν, ὅτι τὰ μὲν ϰτιζόμενα ϰαὶ ποιούμενα ἔξωθεν τοῦ ποιοῦντος, ὁ δὲ υἱός, ὡς ἐν τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν ἔδειξεν ὁ λόγος, οὐϰ ἔξωθεν ἀλλ´ ἐϰ τοῦ γεννῶντος πατρὸς ὑπάρχει. 183. Decr. 10, Opitz, Werke 2.1, 9.16–​20, NPNF 2.4, 156. Cf. Werner’s (1957: 218–​219) observation that third-​century theologians departed from primitive Christianity in taking the phrase “Son of God” literally. 184. Sieben (1976: 39; cf. 49, 63) notes the significance of Athanasius’s reference to the Nicene bishops as the “fathers” (see, e.g., Opitz, Werke 2.1, 16.4; 19.1; 24.12) here in the De decretis. This usage reflects Athanasius’s recent understanding of Nicaea as the conduit of the apostolic tradition, of teachings handed down from the fathers to fathers. 185. ἐϰ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ θεοῦ εἴναι τὸν υἱὸν [. . .] δύναμιν ἀληθινὴν ϰαὶ εἰκόνα τοῦ πατρὸς τὸν λόγον, ὅμοιόν τε ϰαὶ ἀπαράλλαϰτον αὐτὸν ϰατὰπάντα τῷ πατρὶ, Opitz, Werke 2.1: 16.6–​7; 27–​28. 186. Decr. 19, Opitz, Werke 2.1, 16: 4–​8, NPNF 2.4, 162. 187. Decr. 20, Opitz, Werke 2.1, 17. 5–​11, NPNF 2.4, 163–​164. See Kannengiesser’s (1973: 109) observation that Athanasius, unlike Origen, never calls the human intellect an image of God or of the divine Logos. 188. See Decr. 1–​2, NPNF 2.4, 150–​151. 189. Decr. 20, NPNF 2.4, 164. 190. Decr. 20, NPNF 2.4, 164: “He and the Father are one, as He has said Himself, and the Word is ever in the Father and the Father in the Word, as the radiance

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stands towards the light.” Opitz, Werke 2.1, 17.17–​18: ἓν μέν εἰσιν αὐτος ϰαὶ ὁ πατήρ, ὡς αὐτὸς εἴρηϰεν, ἀεὶ δὲ ἐν τῷ πατρί ἐστιν ὁ λόγος ϰαὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἐν τῷ λόγῷ, ὡς ἔστι τὸ ἀπαύγασμα πρὸς τὸ φῶς. 191. Cf. Werner 1957: 218–​219. 192. To that extent, pace Stead (1974: 252), I do not see any great significance in the fact that Athanasius nowhere criticizes the analogy because it presupposes a distinction between two things. 193. Dial. 128; Falls 2003: 194. 194. Stead 1974: 248–​249; Dinsen 1976: 139–​140. 195. Synod. 49, NPNF 2.4, 476, Opitz, Werke 2.1, 274.6–​7: ϰαὶ ὅλως ὅσα ἂν εὕροις περὶ πατρὸς λεγόμενα, τοσαῦτα ἄν εὕροις ϰαὶ περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ λεγόμενα, χωρὶς μόνου τοῦ εἶναι αὐτὸν πατέρα. 196. On the dates, see Ayres 2004b: 211. 197. See Ayres 2004b: 211–​214; Kelly 1978: 255–​258. 198. Simonetti 1975: 481, 487, and passim; Radde-​Gallwitz 2012: 80. 199. Simonetti 1975: 485. 200. See, e.g., Basil, Spir. 17, Hildebrand 2011: 78: “As the Son relates to the Father, so the Spirit relates to the Son.” 201. Simonetti 1975: 482, 502. 202. Simonetti 1975: 485, 494. 203. Even Basil, whose evolving position on the Spirit is more reserved than either his brother Gregory of Nyssa or certainly Gregory of Nazianzus, argues that it is better to err on the side of praise (Spir. 19, Hildebrand 2011: 86): “In this matter [of the Holy Spirit], which should we fear, that we will overstep his dignity with excessive honor? Or the opposite, that we would be diminishing our estimation of him even if we seemed to utter for him the greatest that the human mind and tongue has to offer?” 204. Some of the Pneumatomachoi even accepted the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father. See Ayres 2004b: 215; Kelly 1978: 159. 205. Or. 31.13 (Fifth Theological Oration), NPNF 2.7, 322. 206. Or. 31. 26 (Fifth Theological Oration), NPNF 2.7, 326; cf. Kelly 1978: 261. 207. Basil, Spir. 16, Hildebrand 2011: 69–​70. 208. Ayres 2004b: 238; Simonetti 1975: 511. 209. Already Athanasius and Hilary had shown a willingness to reach an understanding with the Homoiousians (Kelly 1978: 253). Their willingness to accept the three-​hypostases formula provided it was distinguished from three ousia anticipated the one-​ousia–​three-​hypostases solution. 210. Hanson 1988: 678, 693, and passim. 211. M. R. Barnes 1998: 62. 212. Hanson 1988: 692, 735 and passim. 213. Harnack 1961:  4:  84–​85; cf. Studer 1998:  32; Hanson 1988:  696–​697; Ayres 2004b: 237; Stead 1977: 247–​248.

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214. Simonetti 1998:  5–​6; Hanson 1988:  734–​737. Studer (1998:  33, 35–​36, and passim) argues that the theory of “Neo-​Nicenism” attaches too much importance to the term homoousios, and technical creedal formulae more generally. Ayres (2004b:  238–​239), building on the arguments of (among others) Simonetti (1998: 7–​13), questions another presupposition of Harnack’s thesis, namely, that the “central line of transmission” was between Athanasius and the Cappadocians. As Ayres notes, there is little direct evidence that Basil or the two Gregorys engaged with Athanasius’s thought in detail (Ayres 2004b: 221; see also M. R. Barnes 1998: 53–​54; Simonetti 1998: 12–​13). 215. Hanson 1988: 734–​737; Kelly 1978: 267–​268. 216. Or. 31.11 (Fifth Theological Oration), NPNF 2.7, 321; Or. 31.15, NPNF 2.7, 322. 217. Ablab. 20, Hardy 1954: 262, 264. 218. Athanasius can perhaps be understood as working with a numerical concept of substance that he qualifies; the Cappadocians work from a generic concept of substance that they qualify. Their respective qualifications result in a convergence; ultimately, the difference in their respective understandings of consubstantiality boils down to a matter of emphasis. 219. But see Stead’s (1977: 247, 266, and passim) argument that the range of possible meanings of the Greek concept of ousia is much broader than these two. 220. Simonetti 1998: 20–​21. 221. D. Williams 1995: 47; Ayres 2004b: 180–​182. 222. De trin. 5.1, NPNF 2.9, 85; cf. De trin 2.4, 7.3, 8.47. 223. E.g., Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 31.30, NPNF 2.7, 328: “It is equally impious to confuse the Persons with the Sabellians, or to divide the Natures with the Arians.” Cf. Studer 1998: 31; Ayres 2004b: 181. 224. E.g., Basil, Eunom, 1.26, 1.27; Gregory of Nyssa, Eunom. 1:15; 1.21; 2.9; cf. Hilary, De trin. 7.23. 225. Shepardson 2007: esp. 2–​6. 226. Shepardson 2007: 10, cf. 3. 227. Shepardson 2007:  9–​ 10. But see Wilken’s (1983:  75)  qualification of this observation. 228. Hardy 1954: 273–​274; Runia 1992: 180–​181. 229. Contra Sabellianos et Arium et Anomoeos, PG 31.601A: οἱ δὲ τὸν ἐϰ Θεοῦ Θεον ἀρνούμενοι, ϰαὶ ὀνόματι μὲν ὁμολογοῦντες ϒἱὸν, ἔργῳ δὲ ϰαὶ ἀληθείᾳ τὴν ὕπαρξιν ἀθετοῦντες, τὸν Ἰουδαισμὸν πάλιν ἀνανεοῦνται. 230. PG 31.600C–​601A:  Οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἔργον Θεοῦ εἶναι λέγοντες τὸν Μονογενῆ, ϰαὶ ποίημα, εἴτα προσϰυνοῦντες ϰαὶ θεολογοῦντες, ἐν τοῦ λατρεύειν τῇ ϰτίσει, ϰαὶ μὴ τῷ ϰτίσαντι, τὰ τῶν Ἐλλήνων ἄντιϰρυς ἐπεισάγουσιν. 231. Runia 1992: 183–​184. 232. The Nicene/​ anti-​ Nicene controversies nevertheless continued well into the following century (Ayres 2004b:  260; D.  Williams 1995:  9–​10). Daniel H.  Williams argues that, despite the persistence of the controversy, a key

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turning point came in the mid-​ 380s when “the agitations between pro-​ Nicenes and anti-​Nicenes ceased to occupy the political energies of imperial administrations as they had done from the days of Constantine” (1995:  9). A key event in this development was Magus Maximus’s invasion of Italy in 387, which “effectively ended Homoianism as a political force and a religious alternative in the West” (1995: 10, cf. also 218, 223–​232). After the ascendency of the pro-​Nicene emperor Theodosius in the West in 388, Arian Christology comes to be associated with the Gothic groups that had been converted to Homoian Christianity (1995:  231–​232; cf. Wiles 1996:  46–​47). This association dissolved any remaining links between Homoian Christianity and Roman patriotism, thus ending any hopes that the former might reestablish hegemony. 233. We lack any direct evidence that the creed was actually composed and ratified at the council of Constantinople in 381. This lack of evidence has led some scholars, most notably F. J. A. Hort and A. Harnack, to question the traditional association between the creed and the council. Kelly (1972: 313–​331) provides a compelling set of arguments in support of the traditional association of the creed with the council. 234. Kelly 1972: 299. One can reconcile this traditional understanding of the Nicene-​ Constantinopolitan Creed with the obvious discrepancies between the two documents (for a helpful list of the differences, see Hanson 1988: 816) when one recognizes that fourth-​and fifth-​century theologians understood phrases like “the faith of Nicaea” in a loose, nonliteral sense. On this point, see Kelly 1972: 323–​326 and passim. 235. As Kelly (1972: 302–​305) observes, a comparison of the original Nicene and the Nicene-​Constantinopolitan creeds reveals the implausibility of the traditional view that the latter was simply an emended version of the former. First of all, it is difficult to explain the latter’s omission of certain Nicene statements, such as the Son is “from the substance of the Father” and that he is “God from God,” that are essential to the Nicene faith (Kelly 1972:  302). At the same time, it is difficult to explain, on the traditional hypothesis that the text of the original Nicene Creed served as the base document of the Nicene-​ Constantinopolitan, the presence of certain clauses in the latter document that have little or no theological significance (Kelly 1972:  303; cf. Hanson 1988:  816–​817). Kelly (1972:  332)  hypothesizes that a local Eastern baptismal confession, from either Antioch or Jerusalem, provided the framework for the Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed. Abramowski (1992:  501 and passim) advances the hypothesis that the creed derives from an earlier effort to harmonize Nicaea with the Old Roman Creed. According to Abramowski’s hypothesis, the Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed (C.) was ratified at a council convened by Meletius in 379 at Antioch and was confirmed two years later at Constantinople. Tracing the genealogy of C. back to the Old Roman Creed

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would explain the otherwise surprising fact that C.  became the baptismal creed of Rome and other Western churches (see Kelly 1972: 346–​347). 236. Kelly 1972: 301, 296. 237. τὸ σὐν πατρὶ ϰαὶ υἱῷ συμπροσϰυνούμενον ϰαὶ συνδοξαζόμενον. 238. Abramowski 1992: 496. 239. Kelly 1972: 327–​329; Ayres 2004b: 254, 257. Gregory of Nazianzus, who presided over the Council of Constantinople for a time, later opined that the council, in its failure to affirm the full divinity of the Spirit, had allowed a misguided attempt to accommodate the Pneumatomachoi to compromise the pure faith of Nicaea. See Kelly 1972: 327–​328. 240. It also added the by then almost obligatory anti-​Marcellan clause, “of whose kingdom there will be no end.” The clause is emblematic of the Neo-​Nicene concern with avoiding the pitfall of modalism. 241. ἐϰ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός. 242. Harnack 1961:  99, no.  1, but see Kelly 1972:  333. Kelly notes that the Homoiousians, who presumably would have been acutely sensitive to the danger of Sabellianism, found the phrase ἐϰ τῆς οὐσίας perfectly acceptable. The reasons for the omission of “from the substance of the Father,” a phrase so important, as we have seen, for Athanasius, are obscure (see, e.g., Hanson 1988: 817–​818). Ayres (2004b: 257) plausibly suggests that the phrase, which was of less importance in the circles of Basil and Meletius than those of Athanasius, was displaced by the increasing significance of the homoousios. 243. ἐξ ἑτέρας ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσίας φάσϰοντας. 244. M. R. Barnes 1998: 62; cf. also Abramowski 1992: 483. 245. Harnack 1961: 106, cf. 84.

C h a p t er   5 1. paṭisotagāmi, M.i.168–​169; cf. Vin i.5 (Mahāvagga i.5.3); Rahula 1974: 52. 2. Rahula 1974: 51. 3. See S. Collins 1982b: 117–​120, 129. 4. Priestley 1999:  198, 211. E.g., AK. 1214.4–​6:  yadi tarhi pudgalo nāsti, ka eṣa saṃsarati? “For if there is no person, who transmigrates?”; Venkataramanan 1953: 177, 216, and passim. 5. Oetke 1988: 245, 269–​270, 277. 6. It is important to distinguish the task of forming hypotheses about “precanonical Buddhism” from what I regard as the hopeless task of determining what the historical Gautama taught. For one who approaches the study of Buddhism with a familiarity with the historical Jesus problematic, the dominant scholarly consensus on the “historical Buddha” is curious. Although we know next to nothing about the Buddha’s biography or the content of his teaching (see Bronkhorst 2009:  1), his historicity is rarely questioned (Gómez 1987:  354;

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Bronkhorst 2011; cf. Bronkhorst 2009:  7–​8; see also Vetter 1996:  45, note 1, on the view of Ghiorgo Zafiropulo). If the forty-​year gap between Jesus and Mark can lead some serious New Testament scholars to question the historicity of much of the gospel account, it might seem that the earliest Buddhist textual evidence, which postdates Gautama’s putative dates (c. 480–​400 bce) by centuries, would be insufficient to warrant even a Bultmannian dass regarding Gautama’s historicity. This acceptance of the Buddha as a historical figure might reflect more the respect that scholars have for the ideals that the Buddha represents and the traditions that have preserved those ideals than it does the weight of historical evidence (see, e.g., Keith 1963: 15–​16). It is significant in this connection that, as Philip Almond observes, the mid-​nineteenth-​century shift in European scholarship from a mythological to a historical view of the Buddha was “not simply the result of additional information but of a radically fresh reorientation of the conceptuality in which the Buddha had found a place” (1988: 58). A pervasive Victorian-​era admiration for the Buddha’s life and character, if not for his teachings, readily expressed itself in the conviction of his historicity. In late nineteenth-​century discourse on comparative religion, moreover, having a historical founder was seen as essential to Buddhism’s character as a universal, as opposed to a merely ethnic or national, religion (Masuzawa 2005: 132–​137). A pervasive assumption at this time was that an inspired reformer, whether Buddha, Christ, Muhammed, or Zoroaster, was necessary to reverse a tradition’s regressive tendency to formalism and superstition (see, e.g., Whitney 1881: 451). Today, the widespread assumption of the Buddha’s historicity seems to be sustained by little more than a combination of a hermeneutic of charity with respect to the tradition and a vague sense that a religious system of such originality can be explained only as the product of the genius of a historical founder (see Almond 1988: 77, on the view of T. W. Rhys Davids; Gombrich 2009:  17:  “[I]‌t makes no sense to assume that Buddhism could have arisen without a historical person who founded it, and provided it with ideas and institutions”). 7. Trans. S. Collins 1982b: 9. See S.iii.66–​67 and parallels. 8. Bronkhorst 2009: 24–​25; 2007: 33; Thomas 1959: 99; Regamey 1957: 53. 9. When I use phrases such as “the Buddha said or taught such and such,” I am not presuming any knowledge of what the historical Buddha taught. Rather, I  am using such phrases as shorthand for “what the Buddha is depicted in the canonical literature as having taught.” In other words, I  am referring to the Buddha as a literary figure, without making any presumptions about this figure’s historicity. 10. Anattā is usually taken as a karmadhāraya compound (S. Collins 1982b: 95, 278, no. 1). 11. Trans. S. Collins 1982b: 98. 12. Vetter 1988: 35 and passim.

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13. Frauwallner 1973:  172–​ 178; Bronkhorst 2009:  27–​ 28 and passim; Przyluski 1935: 131, 134; Poussin 1936: 823. 14. Frauwallner 1973: 177–​178; cf. S. Collins 1982b: 10; Regamey 1964: 27–​28. 15. Distancing himself from the Neo-​Vedāntic line of interpretation, Frauwallner (1973: 177) writes that to argue that the anattā discourse of the Nikāyas presupposes the existence of a metaphysical self “goes absolutely too far.” 16. Pérez-​Remón 1980: 155, 157, 171–​172, 178 and passim; Bhattacharya 1973: 65; Rhys Davids 1937:  260. On the ideological presupposition of Perennial Philosophy, see, e.g., S. Collins 1982b: 9–​10 (on Radhakrishnan, Bhattacharya); Winternitz 1936: 44 (on C. A. F. Rhys-​Davids). 17. Chowdhury 2003: 194, 200; cf. Pérez-​Remón 1980: 156. 18. Glasenapp 1950: 1018, 1025; Gombrich 1978: 129; Schayer 1988b: 174. Conze (1967: 12) regards this presumption that the Buddhists radically misunderstood the Buddha “the curse of Buddhist studies.” 19. TS. 165:  20  –​166:  10. The similarity between Uddyotakara’s argument and that of what I have been calling the Vedāntic line of interpretation is noted by Schayer (1931–​1932: 91, no. 56), although he does not acknowledge that scholars defending the latter tend to dissociate their interpretation from that of the Pudgalavādins (see, e.g., Bhattacharya 1973: 60; 64). 20. See Rahula 1974: 55–​56; S. Collins 1982b; 1982a. 21. S. Collins 1982b: 7–​10; cf. 1982a: 250–​251. See Glasenapp’s (1950: 1027–​1028) still relevant remarks concerning the persistence of the Vedāntic interpretation of Buddhism. He attributes this persistence to the combination of an orientalist disregard for the living traditions of Buddhism and a Western predilection for theistic and monistic forms of religious thought. 22. S. Collins 1982b: 96–​97, 98. 23. S. Collins 1982b: 103ff. 24. One could argue, however, that the Neo-​Vedāntic interpretation was discredited long before Collins’s work. Edward Conze (1967: 13) credits Glasenapp’s 1950 article, “Vedānta und Buddhismus,” with that achievement. 25. See Oetke 1988: 151–​152, note 69. 26. S. Collins 1982b: 5. 27. See Tilman Vetter’s (1988: 43, no. 12) remark: “The only objection I have to this book is that Collins, like a Theravāda ‘theologian’ too easily synthesizes various canonical utterances, projecting the Theravāda position into Vinaya-​and Sutta-​ piṭaka and sometimes simply identifying these with the Buddha’s word.” See also Bernard Faure’s (1993: 10) more general remark that even an insufficiently critical use of the concept of “tradition” can place scholarly writings, despite their claims to be critical, unwittingly “in league with the tradition they describe.” 28. S. Collins 1982a: 250–​251, 254, 265, 271, and passim. 29. Geertz was one of Collins’s thesis examiners; see, e.g., S. Collins 1982b: 20.

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30. S. Collins’s work can perhaps be understood in the context of the “pragmatic” approach taken by postwar British and French scholarship with regard to the history of early Buddhism. As Constantin Regamey (1957: 38–​40 and passim) notes, British and French Buddhologists after the war generally renounced the hypothetical reconstruction of “primitive” or “precanonical” Buddhism as too risky and uncertain, on account of the lack of direct evidence. Collins’s skepticism regarding pre-​Aśokan Buddhism conditions the fruitful concept of the “Pali imaginaire” that he employs in his later study of the nirvāṇa concept (1998: 55–​59). I should mention that the “dialectical” hypothesis regarding the development of the anattā doctrine suffers from neither of the two pitfalls that Collins considers as inevitable consequences of a speculative reconstruction of early Buddhism on the basis of texts, namely: first, the idealized notion of an “original” Buddhism invidiously set against the later tradition (1998: 56–​57); and second, a crude method of “demythologization” to liberate a putative kernel of empirical history (1998: 57). 31. Conze 1967: 8; Schayer 1931: x; Hallisey 1992: 280 (critique of Burford 1991); Glasenapp 1950: 1016–​1018 (on the theories of both J. G. Jennings and Herbert Günther); cf. Lincoln 2012: 122–​123. 32. S. Collins 1982a: 262, on Pérez-​Remón; Winternitz 1936: 46, on C. A. F. Rhys Davids. 33. On the legacy of Schayer, see, e.g., Regamey 1957; Conze 1967: 10–​12. 34. Here I  follow Schopen’s (1997b:  23–​25) concise summary. Collins is actually more optimistic than Schopen regarding our knowledge of Buddhist doctrinal history, particularly in the period between Aśoka and Buddhaghosa (third century bce to fifth century ce). See S. Collins 1998: 54. 35. Schopen 1997b: 23; Gombrich 1996: xxiii; 2009: 99. On the antiquity and reliability of the Pali sutta literature, see the remarks of MacQueen (1984: 304–​305). 36. Conze 1967: 4. 37. Mhv. 33.100–​101; Dv. 20.20–​21; cf. Bechert 1992: 45. 38. Schopen 1997b: 24. 39. Bechert 1992: 45–​46. 40. See Conze 1967: 6. 41. Jayawickrama 1948: 229–​232 and passim. For example, Hinüber (1989: 53–​54; 2008:  202–​206) argues that the mention of the Mauryan royal city Pāṭaliputra as a “toll station” (puṭabhedana) in the Mahāparinirvāṇasūtra (D.ii.87:33–​88:1) indicates a date before the rise of the Mauryan dynasty, therefore sometime in the middle of the fourth century bce. 42. Schopen 1997b: 24–​25. 43. Schopen 1997b: 25. 44. See, e.g., Wynne 2007:  4–​7 for a critique of the skeptical view represented by Schopen. I  think Wynne somewhat caricatures Schopen’s position when he

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ascribes to the latter the “absurd” view that the canonical texts are not necessarily older than the fifth-​century commentaries. Schopen is not claiming dogmatically that the content of our canonical texts cannot predate the fifth century. Rather, he is making the methodological point that we have no certain means of dating that earlier content. 45. S. Collins 1992: 121 and passim. Those who accept the traditional account of the Aḷuvihāra redaction generally presume that subsequent changes were relatively minor. See MacQueen 1984: 292. 46. A  systematic comparison of the Pali Nikāyas with the Āgama literature preserved in Chinese, a project that is still in its infancy, promises to shed light on the processes by which these bodies of literature developed. To my knowledge, this research, while generating intriguing hypotheses concerning the arrangement of the teaching contained in the Nikāya/​Āgama literature, has yet to yield dramatic discoveries regarding the stratification of early Buddhist teaching. For a lucid and original discussion of the comparison of the Pali Nikāyas and the Chinese Āgamas, see McGovern 2013: 402–​462. 47. Norman 1983: 61. 48. Hinüber 1996: 49–​50; Norman 1983: 63–​64. 49. The oral character of early Buddhist literature has not, of course, precluded attempts to discern evidence of earlier stages in the tradition based on a critical study of the extant canonical literature. And yet, the most rigorous and fruitful of this research, such as Oskar von Hinüber’s philological analysis of the formulaic sequences that structure the canonical texts (Hinüber 1994, building on the research program set forth by Lüders), has focused its attention on uncovering linguistic, rather than properly literary, strata of canonical literature. Unfortunately, conclusions regarding an earlier colloquial eastern Middle Indic dialect preserved in some of the mnemonic formulae, while perhaps providing a promising basis for future scholarship on the development of Buddhist teaching (Hinüber 1994: 8), at this point do not lend themselves directly or easily to inferences regarding precanonical Buddhist doctrine. This earlier linguistic stratum, of which only traces remain, was so thoroughly worked over by the later tradition that the original context of the oldest mnemonic formulae can be recovered only partially and hypothetically, if at all. Consequently, the meaning of many of the archaic terms remains opaque. See Hinüber 1994: 17–​22 and passim. 50. See F.-​R. Hamm’s (1961: 207) remark, in the context of a review of G. C. Pande’s Studies in the Origins of Buddhism (1955), that attempts to uncover earlier strata of the Sutta Piṭaka become questionable the moment they claim to surpass even a modest level of probability. 51. As we shall see below, these remarks do not imply that the formulation of hypotheses regarding precanonical Buddhism is a hopeless task. As noted by Schayer (1988c: 124), one can employ the criterion of dissimilarity—​that is, texts expressing ideas and doctrines not conforming to later orthodoxy likely reflect

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an earlier stage of the tradition—​on the reasonable supposition that such texts attained a degree of authority before the determination of canonical viewpoint (Regamey 1957: 48). Another criterion that can be used to good effect might be termed the criterion of awkwardness or incoherence: the counterintuitive or awkward juxtaposition of items in a formulaic list is often indicative of a later redactional stage in which items or distinctions were mechanically added, for whatever reason, to an earlier list. Examples would include the twelve links of Dependent Origination (see Frauwallner 1969: 165–​166; Bernhard 1968–​1969); the list of four dhatus (kāma-​, rūpa-​, arūpa-​, and lokottara-​); the series śrotāpanna, sakṛdāgamin, anāgamin, and arhant (Schayer 1988b: 177 and passim); the trikāya doctrine; and the two meditative attainments of “the fruition of the path” (phalasaṃpatti) and of “the cessation of perception and feeling (saññāvedayita-​ nirodha) (S. Collins 1998: 157); and the list of five skandhas (Keith 1963: 85–​88; 1936: 16–​18). 52. Obeyesekere 2002: 14. 53. Schmithausen 1990: 1. 54. Again, see Vetter’s (1988: 43, no. 12) remark regarding Collins’s approach. 55. One of the so-​ called Unanswered Questions which we will examine more closely below. 56. Priestley 1999: 2. 57. Kapstein 2001: 81; see also, e.g., Snellgrove 1987: 24, note 28: “[The Vātsīputīya doctrine of the person] was easily shown to be nonsensical by their opponents and thus the pudgala remained a sectarian notion.” That Snellgrove mentions pudgalavāda only in a footnote itself betrays, apart from the casual, matter-​of-​fact judgment of its nonsensical nature, an uncritical acceptance of the orthodox view of the history of Buddhism. 58. See, e.g., Horsch 1968: 471; cf. Venkataramanan 1953: 157–​158, on Candrakīrti. 59. Priestley 1999: 215–​217. Priestley argues against this supposition. 60. Priestley 1999: 2, 31; Gethin 1998: 223; Eltschinger and Ratié 2012: 37–​39. 61. Priestley 1999: 37–​39; cf. Bareau 1956: 177–​178. Vasumitra (second century?, Priestley 1999: 48) in his Samayabhedoparacana​cakra attributes a belief in the existence of an ultimately real person (paramārtha-​pudgala) to the Sautrāntikas (Walleser 1927: 48; Priestley 1999: 37). Bhavya (sixth century, Priestley 1999: 48) attributes a personalist doctrine to the “original Sthaviras” (pūrvasthaviras) and to the Haimavatas (Walleser 1927: 84; Priestley 1999: 37–​38). 62. Priestley 1999: 216, cf. 1, 41. 63. Priestley 1999: 41. 64. Priestley 1999: 1. 65. Regamey 1957: 53; cf. 1964: 21–​22. 66. Priestley 1999: 8, 209ff. 67. Obeyesekere 2002: 14. 68. Bauer 1971: xxiii–​xxiv and passim.

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69. I am acutely mindful of Heinz Bechert’s (1961: 51, note 47) warning against the uncritical use of terminology derived from Christian church history—​“schism,” “heretic,” and the like—​in relation to the history of the Buddhist Saṅgha. In particular, as Bechert argues, it is important to recognize a distinction between doctrinal disagreements, on the one hand, and differences in the application of disciplinary rules, on the other. In contrast to the post-​Constantine church, schism proper pertained only to the latter. See Bechert 1961, esp. 28–​34. 70. Priestley 1999: 2. 71. Here I  use the term “canon” simply in the sense of “scripture”; it does not imply the further notion that this body of texts was closed. See S.  Collins 1990:  90–​91. Collins argues that an exclusivist notion of canon was peculiar to the Mahāvihārin lineage of Sinhalese Buddhism, which forms the basis of modern Theravāda. 72. In a Sāṃmatīya account (Frauwallner 1952: 246) of the Buddhist council at the royal city of Pāṭaliputra in which the Sthaviras split off from the Mahāsāṃghikas—​ the first schism—​ we are told that the Vātsīputrīyas, a Sthaviravāda school, gathered some sixty years after this council to fix their canon (Frauwallner 1952: 246–​247). Other accounts of this council, the first at Pāṭaliputra, report that immediately after the split between the Sthaviras and the Mahāsāṃghikas each of these groups gathered to organize and revise their respective canons (Bareau 1955b: 109). Bareau (1955b: 109–​111) argues that there was not one but two councils at Pāṭaliputra. The first led to the first schism between the Sthaviras and the Mahāsāṃghikas; the second the split within the Sthaviravāda between the Vibhajjavādins (the ancestors of the Theravāda) and the Sarvāstivādins (Bareau 1955b: 145). Unfortunately, we know nothing of the split between the Vātsīputrīyas and the Sthavirava, apart from the supposition that it was apparently the first split among the Sthaviras and was likely occasioned by the controversy over the doctrine of the person (Bareau 1955b: 116). We might infer from these accounts that it was customary after a schism for each school to consolidate and affirm the teachings it recognized as buddhavacana in light of the preceding controversy. 73. AK. 1203:11–​1204:2. 74. Kv. pars. 74, 198, 199, 227, 234, 236, and passim. 75. Nalinaksha Dutt (1978:  183)  goes as far as to assert that, “it is very likely that the Sutta-​piṭaka of the Sammatīyas was substantially the same as that in Pāli.” 76. See AK. 1206.1–​3; TSP. 134–​135, v. 349. 77. See AK. 1204.3; Kv. par. 238; Dhp. 279. 78. AK. 1209.6ff; TSP. 164.6–​25. 79. Gethin (1986: 41) notes that this sutta conforms to the basic structure of the four truths, a relation that becomes apparent when one notes the equivalence

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between, on the one hand, the five upādāna-​kkhandhas that comprise the burden and, on the other, and the first truth, dukkha (on this equivalence, see, e.g., S.iv.420; D.ii.305; M.i.148; S.iii.158 [Gethin 1986:  52, note  32]). Gethin acknowledges, however, that the taking up of the burden, explained as the person, does not fit into the four truths schema. 80. S.  Collins (1982:  164–​165), following the Theravāda tradition, interprets the person referred to here as merely “a matter of conventional truth.” He supports this interpretation with the observation that in the context of the sutta, hāra should be taken as an impersonal noun (“the bearing [of the burden]”) rather than as an adjective modifying an unstated personal noun (“[the person] bearing [the burden].” I am not sure whether the adjectival sense can be ruled out, however, when the sutta itself supplies the personal noun, namely the puggala, that it modifies. 81. See Keith’s (1963: 82) remark that while “it is possible to explain away the Sūtra, as do Buddhaghosa, Vasubandhu, Candrakīrti, and Yaśomitra, it is equally obvious that it is mere explaining away, and that the author of the Sūtra did not entertain the view that the person is nothing save the five aggregates as these authorities insist.” 82. Oetke 1988: 155–​156 and passim. 83. See Eltschinger and Ratié 2012: 67, cf. 84. 84. Gethin 1992. 85. Hinüber 1994: 15; Cousins 1983: 1 and passim. 86. Gethin 1992: 156; cf. Lord 1970. The use of lists as the basis of composition also figures into traditional Theravāda preaching even today; see S.  Collins 1982b: 109. 87. On understanding of each of these terms, see Gethin 1986: 36–​37. 88. See, e.g., S.iii.82–​83: yad anattā taṃ netaṃ mama neso ‘ham asmi na meso attā ti. Also S.iii.22. 89. The composite or modular character of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta stands out in bold relief when one sets it in the larger context of the Khandha-​saṃyutta (“Collection [of discourses] on the Constituents”) of the Saṃyutta Nikāya (S.iii.1–​188). This collection of suttas, grouped together, as the title indicates, on the basis of their use of the list of five constituents, contains numerous variations on the Anattalakkhaṇa’s component discourses. For example, there is a series of sutta triads (suttas 9–​11, 12–​14, 15–​17, 18–​20) in which each of the five constituents is characterized as impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-​self. Sutta 8 (S.iii.18–​19), to cite another example, makes a contrast that was implicit in the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta between the view of the “untaught common person” (assutavā putthujjano) with regard to the constituents and that of the “well-​ taught noble disciple” (sutavā ariyasāvako) (cf. S.ii.16); the former’s ignorance is expressed in the formula, “This physical form [etc.] is mine; this I am; this is my self”; the latter’s understanding is expressed in the now familiar negative

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form of this formula, “Physical form is not mine; this I am not; this is not my self.” Finally, a comparison of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta with a number of parallel suttas in the Khandha-​saṃyutta (suttas 49, 59, 79, 100, 97, 158; perhaps 82, 83, and 84 as well), not to mention other suttas found elsewhere in the Canon, reveals that what I have been calling the sutta’s dialogical core is itself a formulaic unit that has been slotted into the narrative context of the Buddha’s second sermon at Benares (cf. the parallel in Vin.i.13–​14). 90. Gethin 1992: 155. 91. Cf. Lord 1970: 65. 92. Cf. Schlingloff 1985: 326–​327. 93. Hinüber 1994: 15–​17. 94. As an explanation for the conspicuous absence of the tilakkhaṇa in the list of “threes” in the Aṅguttara Nikāya, Pande (1957: 232) suggests that the three characteristics had not yet become important as an independent group when the lists were closed. Pande further suggests that the three marks were only subsequently abstracted or disarticulated from complexes with other doctrinal groups like the five khandhas, a process which would be an exception to the compositional process described by Gethin and assumed here. And yet, as pointed out by Norman (1983: 56), Pande’s hypothesis that the tilakkhaṇa were not included in the Aṅguttara because their importance was recognized later does not account for the omission of the four truths and the eightfold path, which had attained importance early. 95. E.g., sutta 87, S.iii.119–​124. 96. E.g., sutta 76, S.iii.82–​84. 97. At the same time, the entailment relations are tight enough that the three characteristics are convertible terms. Thus the realization of the khandhas as impermanent or as unsatisfactory can lead directly, without explicitly drawing out the inference that anicca or dukkha is equivalent to anatta, to the aversion which in turn leads to liberation (S.iii.21: sutta 12 [anicca]; sutta 13 [dukkha]; sutta 14 [anatta]). 98. Norman 1981: 22: “the term attā is by definition nicca and sukha.” 99. Cf. Dhp. 203; M.i.228; S.ii.132–​133. 100. Cf. also M.i.288; S.iii.133; A.i.286; Theragāthā 678. 101. S. Collins 1982b: 82. 102. Rahula 1974: 57–​58; cf. S. Collins 1982b: 82, cf. 96; Norman 1981: 26–​27. 103. Norman 1981: 27. 104. Cf. Regamey 1957: 56–​57. 105. Schayer 1988c: 127–​128; 1988b: 172; Keith 1936: 7–​9; Regamey 1957: 54–​55. 106. Keith 1936: 7–​8. 107. Keith 1936: 10. Cf. Przyluski’s (1935: 131) hypothesis that the goal of primitive Buddhism was not nirvāṇa but heaven (svarga). 108. See Schayer’s (1988b: 175) remark that anātmavāda is not compatible with this early restriction of anityatā to the realm of rūpa.

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109. Contradicting the interpretation put forth by Rahula and Collins, John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana remark that the third characteristic, anattā, “is not as wide-​embracing as the first two.” They understand dhammā here to refer to “aspects of consciousness” or “mental states.” (Carter and Palihawadana 2000: 80, cf. 72). 110. Keith 1963: 85–​88. 111. Keith 1936: 16. 112. Aramaki 1980: 29. nāma-​rūpa is the fourth of the twelve links of Dependent Origination (Thomas 1959: 97). 113. Cf. Keith 1936: 17; 1963: 87; Aramaki 1980: 15–​16. On the foundational nature of viññāna, see Bareau 1973: 91; cf. Regamey 1964: 31, 32, 35. 114. Aramaki 1980: 12; Rahula 1974: 57. 115. Cf. Schayer 1988c: 124; Vetter 1996: 47, 51 and passim. 116. Aramaki 1980: 4–​11. 117. Aramaki 1980: 6. 118. Aramaki 1980: 8. 119. Aramaki 1980: 12, 16–​17, and passim. 120. As Gethin points out, there are important usages of the list of five khandhas other than in the analysis of the personality (Gethin 1986: 49, cf. 35). Moreover, the five-​khandha scheme is not the only analytical classification of the human personality (Thomas 1959: 96–​97). Nevertheless, it is the standard classification used in relation to the anattā doctrine. 121. S. Collins 1982b: 32, cf. 39–​40, 78ff.; see also Gombrich 1996: 15–​16; Bailey and Mabbett 2003: 121–​123 and passim. 122. An assumption that has been recently questioned by Bronkhorst, among others. See the discussion of Bronkhorst's rereading of ancient Indian intellectual history. 123. As Bruce Lincoln (1986) shows, such a system of microcosmic-​macrocosmic homologies is found in a wide range of mythological literatures in Indo-​ European languages. 124. On the labor of uncovering the hidden nexus or shared “noematic category” unifying the two disparate entities, see Witzel 1979, esp. 10–​12. Cf. also Lincoln 1986: 16–​20. 125. Lincoln 1986: 5. 126. See, e.g., BAU 3.2.13; cf. Ajita, in the Sāmaññaphala Sutta, D.i.55. 127. E.g. TU 2.1. 128. See, e.g., CAU 6.8.1. 129. Cf. BAU 3.4.2. 130. See CAU 6. 131. See Witzel 1979: 8. 132. BAU 4.5.6; S. Collins 1982b: 80.

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133. na rūpam attato samanupassati, na rūpavantaṃ vā attānaṃ, na attani vā rūpaṃ, na rūpasmiṃ vā attānaṃ. 134. S.iii.33; M.i.140–​141: rūpaṃ [etc.] bhikkhave na tumhākaṃ taṃ pajahatha. 135. The self in question is an individual self, not the universal self of Vedāntic speculation. See Horsch 1968: 469. 136. S. Collins 1982b: 82. 137. S. Collins 1982b: 113, cf. 83; cf. Gombrich 1996: 33. 138. S. Collins 1982b: 84. According to Collins, the anattā doctrine can be seen as an extension of the Buddhist rejection of the central institution of Brahmanical religion, sacrifice (S. Collins 1982b:  84, 81; cf. Norman 1992:  194). For in Brahmanical thought, the self is the internalized, microcosmic correlate of the sacrificial fire. 139. Soṇadaṇḍa Sutta (D.i.111–​126); Norman 1992: 196. 140. Pollock 2006: 52. 141. Pollock 2006: 51. 142. Obeyesekere 2002: 2. 143. Gombrich 1996:  51–​ 54; 1988:  66–​ 69; Halbfass 2000:  101–​ 102; Norman 1992: 197. 144. Norman 1992: 199; Pollock 2006: 52. 145. Bailey and Mabbett 2003: 121. 146. E.g. S. Collins 1982b: 29–​33, 40–​64. The thesis that Buddhism arose in opposition to Brahmanism has dubious genealogical roots in the old orientalist image of the Buddha as a Luther-​like reformer of Brahmanical ritualism and sacerdotalism. See Masuzawa 2005: 134–​136. 147. Bronkhorst 2007: 1–​4 and passim. 148. Bronkhorst 2007: 130–​135; cf. S. Collins 1982b: 31: “I think that [the idea of saṃsāra] can be shown to grow naturally and logically out of the nature and concerns of Brahmanical sacrificial thinking.” 149. See also Obeyesekere 2002: 85–​86 and passim. 150. Bronkhorst 2007: 126–​130 and passim. 151. Bronkhorst 2007: 130–​131. 152. Bronkhorst 2007: 207; cf. McGovern 2013: 30–​33, 47, and passim. 153. See, e.g., Horsch 1968, esp.  465–​ 466, 477; Chandra 1971; Oldenberg 1879: 52 (quoted in Chandra 1971: 320); Poussin 1927: 12 (a view lamented by Gombrich 1996:  14). These scholars have observed that the allusions to Brahmanical doctrines in the Buddhist sūtras generally reflect a more popular stratum of religious thought than the sophisticated metaphysical doctrines one associates with the Upaniṣads (Horsch 1968:  365, 468 and passim). For example, the Upaniṣadic concept of Brahman as an absolute, impersonal principle is unknown to the Pali Canon; the Canon refers only to the personal deity Brahma (Chandra 1971:  320). Such observations are explained by the hypothesis that the esoteric teachings of the Upaniṣads

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would not have been accessible to the early Buddhists and therefore were unlikely to have had a direct influence on their thought (Horsch 1968: 476; Chandra 1971: 317). 154. See, e.g., Gombrich’s (1996: 48–​54 and passim) argument that “action lies at the heart of the Buddha’s [worldview].” 155. See S.iii.33; M.i.140–​141. 156. Bronkhorst 2009: 26–​ 30 and passim; 2011: 8. Bronkhorst (2007:  38–​ 51, esp. 46–​47) gives a compelling interpretation of Ājīvikism. 157. Bronkhorst 2009: 27. 158. According to Nathan McGovern, these form an identifiable genre of Buddhist sūtra literature, which he terms, following Brian Black, “encounter dialogs.” See McGovern 2013: 71–​72, 93, 463–​545. 159. S. Collins 1982b: 77, 84, and passim. 160. McGovern 2013: 230–​231 and passim. 161. McGovern 2010: 2, cf. 4. 162. McGovern 2010: 4. 163. McGovern 2013:  53–​ 55, 200–​ 201, 339–​ 340, 356–​ 357, 631–​ 632. With this substratum model, McGovern challenges the assumption of an original dichotomy, implicit in Bronkhorst’s theory, between “Brahmanical” and “non-​ Brahmanical” (2013:  138–​139; 195; 298; 631; 638; 641). McGovern’s defense of a substratal model, with its implicit critique of notion of “Buddhism” and “Brahmanism” as “pre-​given entities” (2013: 200), has intriguing parallels with Daniel Boyarin’s work on the reciprocal emergence of Judaism and Christianity out of the “multiform cultural system” of Judeo-​Christianity (Boyarin 2004: 44 and passim; 2007). 164. McGovern 2013: 632. 165. McGovern 2013: 244. 166. McGovern 2010: 5–​6; 2013: 202, 233, 236–​246. 167. McGovern 2013: 245–​246, cf. also 78–​85, 235–​236. 168. McGovern 2013: 33–​35 and passim; Bronkhorst 2011: 40–​42 and passim. 169. McGovern 2010: 9. 170. McGovern 2010: 9; J. Z. Smith 2004b: 245–​246. 171. M.i.427: no ce bhagavā jānāti: sassato loko ti vā asassatoloko ti vā, ajānato kho pana apassato etad eva ujukaṃ hoti yad idam: na jānāmi na passāmīti. “If the Blessed One does not know either that the world is eternal or that it is not eternal, then it is only honest for one who does not know and does not see to declare, ‘I do not know, I do not see.’ ” 172. In D.ii.100, the Buddha declares that the Tathāgata holds nothing of the Dharma in his “closed fist” (na […] tathāgatassa dhammesu ācariya-​muṭṭhi), that is, he does not withhold an esoteric teaching from his students. At the same time, the tradition affirms the Buddha’s omniscience (sabbaññutā). 173. Murti 1960: 36–​54.

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174. Kalupahana 1976: 155–​161. 175. Frauwallner 1973:  172–​178; Keith 1963:  62–​63; Regamey 1957:  46; Regamey 1964: 27–​28. 176. Hayes 1994: 356–​361 and passim. 177. M.i.426–​432. 178. S.iv.378; cf. S.iv.376. 179. S. Collins (1982b: 136, 138) argues that the “pragmatic” explanation is found only in narrative contexts pertaining to the practical aspects of religious education. For this reason, Collins argues that it is subsidiary to the more comprehensive explanation that the questions are “linguistically ill-​formed.” 180. Ud. 62–​73. 181. See also the second discourse in this collection, S.iv.377ff., in which the Buddha answers with the discourse of the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta. 182. See S. Collins 1982b: 117–​120, 128–​129. 183. See Burford (1991: 46 and passim) on the contrast between views and the direct apprehension of reality in the Aṭṭhakavagga of the Sutta Nipāta. 184. M.i.486: diṭṭhigatan ti kho, vaccha, apanītam etaṃ tathāgatassa. diṭṭhaṃ h’etaṃ, vaccha, tathāgatena: iti rūpaṃ, iti rūpassa samudayo, iti rūpassa atthagamo. 185. See S. Collins 1982b: 128. 186. S. Collins 1982b: 129. D.i.16 (et freq.): tayidaṃ bhikkhave, Tathāgato pajānāti: ime diṭṭhiṭṭhānā evaṃ-​gahitā evaṃ-​parāmaṭṭhā evaṃ-​gatikā bhavissanti evam-​ abhisamparāyā ti. 187. D.i.17 (et freq.): ime dhamme gambhīrā duddasā duranubodhā. 188. S. Collins 1982b: 117. 189. S. Collins 1982b: 87–​90 and passim. 190. S.iv.400–​401. 191. Rahula (1974: 64) explains the Buddha’s silence here by placing his statements in their narrative context. Cf. S. Collins 1982b: 136–​137. 192. S.iv.401: ahu vā me nūnā pubbe attā, so etarhi natthīti. 193. See S.  Collins 1982b:  132–​133; cf. Schayer 1931:  xxvi–​xxvii; cf. also Vsm. XVIII:29. 194. Curiously, the fragment is not found in the extant Pali text of the Milindapañha. See Skilling 1998: 82 95–​96. 195. See, e.g., S.ii.60–​62. 196. As attā: UdA.340; as satta: DA.i.118. This gloss is problematic in that it undermines the meaning of Tathāgata as an extraordinary being. See Norman’s (1993: 163) translation of tathāgata as “(one who is) in that sort of (= very good) way,” analogous to the “very specialized sense” of sugata:  “(one who is) in a (particularly) good way,” i.e., Buddha. 197. These modern analogies are thus continuous with those of classical Buddhist authors. In addition to the analogy with the question about the taste of the fruit from the king’s nonexistent mango trees (AK. 1210.5–​ 13), there are

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the questions of whether a tortoise’s hair is hard or smooth (AK. 1209.9), of whether the son of a barren woman is dark or fair (AK. 798.1–​2), or of whether a donkey’s horns are sharp (TSP. 164.10–​11). 198. Cf. Vetter 1990: 44. 199. It is not surprising, then, given this correlation, that someone like Steven Collins, who interprets the Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta in terms of the formal anattā doctrine, would regard the apophatic and the philosophical explanations of the Unanswered Questions as essentially equivalent. Collins devotes separate sections to their explication, but we can infer from their uncommented juxtaposition that he regards them as variants of the same fundamental argument, or perhaps alternative perspectives on the same underlying truth (1982b:  132–​135). Accordingly, he regards the two paradigms on views that correspond to these two interpretations of the Buddha’s silence—​namely, views as manifestations of attachment and views classified as either right or wrong—​as alternative approaches to the problem of mistaken views (1982b: 87). The two approaches correspond roughly to the distinction between theory and praxis. 200. Hinüber 1996: 49–​50; Gómez 1976: 139, 164, no. 76. 201. Gómez 1976: 140. 202. Sn. 800; cf. 787, 845, 894 and passim. The reference to the abandonment of self or ego in this passage refers to the general idea of selfhood as an expression of attachment. That is, it stops short of an affirmation of the doctrine of No-​self. See Gómez 1976: 142. 203. Gómez 1976: 140 and passim. See, e.g., Sn. 886. 204. McGovern 2013: 228–​229; Burford 1991: 93–​108, 131–​140. 205. McGovern 2013: 223; Gómez 1976: 139–​140. As Steven Collins (1982b:  129) notes, the formulaic lists found throughout the Sutta Piṭaka—​the five khandhas, the eightfold path, etc.—​are conspicuously absent in this section of the Sutta Nipāta. 206. Priestley 1999: 6; Châu 1987: 40–​42. 207. Priestley 1999: 53–​54; Walleser 1927: 44 (Vasumitra on the Vātsīputrīyas); 87 (Bhavya on the Vātsīputrīyas). 208. Priestley 1999: 165–​186. 209. Priestley 1999: 157, 176. 210. Cf. TSP. 160.13–​14. 211. Again, see Eltschinger and Ratié 2012: 67. 212. AK. 1209.6–7: yadi skandhamātraṃ pudgalaḥ, kasmād bhagavatā: sa jīvas tac char īraṃ anyo vā iti na vyākṛtam? 213. AK. 1209.6–​9: yadi skandha-​mātraṃ pudgalaḥ, kasmād bhagavatā ‘sa jīvas tac charīram anyo vā iti na vyākṛtam? praṣṭur āśayāpekṣayā, sa hi jīva-​dravyam ekam antar-​vyāpāra-​puruṣam adhikṛtya pṛṣṭavān. sa ca kasmiṃścin nāstīti, katham asya-​anyatvam ananyatvaṃ vā vyākriyatām? kaurmasya-​iva romṇo ‘ntaḥ kharatā

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mṛdutā vā. “If the person were nothing more than the constituents, then why didn’t the Blessed One answer the question of whether the soul is the same as the body? Because he considered the intention of the questioner. The questioner presupposed a unified substantial soul, an internal agent of action. Since [such a principle] does not exist in anything, how, then, could one reply that it is other or not other from the [body]?” Cf. AK. 432.11–​12: kīdṛśa ātmā? […] sa tādṛśo nāsty antar-​vyāpāra-​puruṣaḥ. “What kind of self is this? This [self ], which does not exist, is an internal agent of action” (Poussin 1988: 399). Cf. also TS. 164.6–​11. 214. See Priestley 1999: 9, 130–​137, 155–​158, and passim. 215. Priestley 1999: 157, 190, cf. 130–​137. 216. Priestley 1999: 132. 217. Venkataramanan 1953: 182–​184. 218. Venkataramanan 1953: 184. 219. Priestley 1999: 9. 220. Priestley 1999: 200–​203. 221. Priestley 1999: 132, 191, 199; cf. Bareau 1956: 178: the view Bhavya attributes to the Haimavata. 222. Priestley 1999: 191, 171. 223. Priestley 1999: 172–​173, 192; Frauwallner 1973: 1: 178–​179. 224. Steven Collins argues in no uncertain terms that it is inappropriate to interpret Buddhist fire imagery in terms of the Brahmanical notion of unmanifest fire. He notes, first of all, that a Brahmanical understanding of the extinguished fire as subsisting in an invisible, quiescent state, a notion which he argues postdates the earliest Buddhist usages, undermines the Buddhist exhortation to extinguish the “three fires” of greed, hatred, and delusion. Liberation is possible only if these “fires” are extinguished completely (2010: 84). Furthermore, this line of interpretation represents a presumptuous effort, reflective of the cultural arrogance of Western orientalism more generally, to “fill Buddhist silences,” that is, to offer explanations of matters the tradition deliberately left unexplained (2010: 84–​85). In response, I would note that the force of Collins’s first point rests on the presumed consistency of the meaning of Buddhist imagery. And yet, if Buddhist fire imagery conveyed a consistent meaning across its varied applications, then would we not be obliged to conclude that the nirvanized Tathāgata, like the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion, vanishes into nothingness, which is precisely what the tradition denies? I also wonder whether the Brahmanical notion of unmanifest fire might not be disarticulated from the inference that it, like the Vedic householder’s fire homologized to the setting sun, can be rekindled. The Buddhist image might reflect a more discriminating and creative mode of cultural appropriation. With regard to Collins’s second point, I would agree that one must acknowledge and respect

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what we might call the grammar of Buddhist discourse:  that the very point of the Unanswered Questions is to preclude efforts to infer the Tathāgata’s postmortem existence, just as the grammar of Christian orthodoxy precludes a Sabellian interpretation of Nicaea. And yet, I would argue that such interpretive efforts are legitimate to the extent that they (a) help to retrieve interpretive voices (like pudgalavāda) that such a prescriptive grammar functioned, either intentionally or unintentionally, to suppress, and (b) shed light on otherwise obscure texts like Sn. 1076 or Milind. 73.20–​22. 225. M.i.487. See the statement, for example, that the Tathāgata’s mind is untraceable, or that the gods, including Indra and Brahma, cannot locate the bhikkhu whose mind is released (M.i.140; cf. Norman 1991: 5). 226. Priestley 1999: 193. 227. Upasīvamānavapucchā, Sn. 1076: atthaṅ gatassa na pamāṇam atthi, yena naṃ vajju taṃ tassa n’ atthi, sabbesu dhammesu samūhatesu, samūhatā vādapathāpi sabbe ti. 228. gambhīro appameyyo duppariyogāho seyyathā pi mahāsamuddo, M.i.487. 229. P. Harvey 1983: 47–​48, 51, note 2. 230. P. Harvey 1983: 49. 231. P. Harvey 1983: 49. 232. Schayer 1988c: 127–​128; 1988b: 172. 233. Priestley 1999: 192. 234. Kv. par. 61. 235. Schayer 1988c: 128. 236. S.iv.376; cf. Sn. 1076. 237. Milind. 73:20–​22: dhammakāyena pana kho, mahārāja, sakkā bhagavā nidassetum, dhammo hi, mahārāja, Bhagavatā desito ti. “The Blessed One can be seen by means of his truth-​body. For the truth was revealed by the Blessed One.” cf. P. Harvey 1983: 49; Priestley 1999: 174, 203. 238. Cf. Regamey 1957: 53. 239. See, e.g., S. Collins 1982b: 136. 240. S. Collins 1982b: 135: “[W]‌hen we find certain positive-​looking descriptions of the Tathāgata, it is pointless to take this as evidence for a ‘hidden’, and more acceptably nonnihilist doctrine which we as interpreters can then put into words.” 241. Dube 1980: 234. 242. Priestley 1999: 81; e.g., TS. 336. 243. Hogg 2004: 209. 244. See, e.g., Dube 1980:  231. This conclusion reflects their reliance on later polemical sources; see Priestley 1999. 245. Priestley 1999: 81–​ 83, 186. See Poussin 1925: 364, 366, and passim (the Vijñānakāya of Devaśarman).

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246. Cf. Bronkhorst’s thesis regarding the “new Brahmanism.” Brahmanical concepts like ātman were “politicized” only later. 247. Eltschinger and Ratié 2012: 86; cf. Eltschinger 2010: 399, 432–​433.

C h a p t er   6 1. Cousins 1994: 22; Dube 1980: 229. 2. As noted by Eltschinger and Ratié 2012: 85–​86. 3. Cousins 1994: 26. 4. Cousins 1992: 35; Norman 1983: 104. 5. Cousins 1994: 22. 6. Or whoever composed the Kathāvatthu commentary. 7. KvA. 6.6–​12; Mhv. 5.229–​230; Dv. 7.34–​35, 48. 8. KvA. 6.18–​19; Dv. 7.36, 49. 9. KvA. 6.21–​23; Dv. 7.49; Mhv. 5.236–​240. 10. The Mahāvaṃsa (5.243–​244, 264), rather unconvincingly in my view, takes pains to reassure us that the king was not responsible for the crime of his minister. 11. KvA. 6.30–​7.8; Mhv. 5.268–​270. 12. KvA. 7.9–​14; Mhv. 5.271–​274. 13. Norman 1992: 209. 14. KvA.7.16–​22; Dv. 7.40–​41, but see 7.58. 15. KvA. 7.19, 8.1–​4; cf. Hinüber 1996: 71. 16. Hallisey 1991:  136–​137 and passim; Frauwallner 1952:  247. Norman (1992: 208–​209, 214) sees no reason to doubt the historicity the account of the purification of the Saṅgha in its broad outlines, but he doubts, on the basis of a lack of corresponding inscriptional evidence, the direct involvement of Aśoka in the Third Council. Frauwallner (1952: 257–​259, cf. 241, 260–​261) plausibly argued that the third council at Pāṭaliputra, like the other Buddhist “councils,” was only “the local synod of a single school” that was later cast as a general Buddhist council to express its great significance for that school. 17. Walleser 1927: 11; Norman 1992: 209–​210; Bechert 1961: 43–​44. 18. Bechert 1961: 42. 19. Aung and Rhys Davids 1960: xlvi–​xlvii. To be sure, the attribution of the various positions refuted in the Kathāvatthu is somewhat uncertain. The Kathāvatthu itself does not specify the sectarian identity of the various views it refutes, and the attributions provided by Buddhaghosa’s commentary, which postdates the Kathāvatthu itself by several centuries, are in many cases anachronistic (Cousins 1994: 22–​23; cf. Hinüber 1996: 73). The opponent in the Puggalakathā, however, can be identified, with a fairly high degree of probability, as a Vātsīputrīya/​Vajjiputtaka, the earliest Pudgalavāda school (Cousins 1994: 17; cf. KvA. 108: “Who are the Puggalavādins? In the sāsana,

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the Vajjiputtakas and the Samitiyas; outside [the sāsana], many other ascetics” [ke pana puggalavādino ti? sāsane vajjiputtakā ceva samitiyā ca, bahiddhā ca bahu añña-​titthiyā]).The defender of true doctrine against puggalavāda, whom the commentary refers to simply as the sakavādin (“adherent of our own doctrine”), is presumably a Vibhajjavādin (Cousins 1994: 23; Cousins 2001). Since the present-​day Theravāda tradition, to whose Abhidhamma the Kathāvatthu belongs, identifies with the Vibhajjavāda affirmed by Moggaliputta Tissa at the Third Council, one can refer, as a matter of convenience, to the siddhāntin of the Kathāvatthu as a Theravādin. Strictly speaking, though, the designation is anachronistic (see Gethin 2012: 55 and passim). In connection with this last point, Ronkin (2005: 23) argues against equating the ancient Vibhajjavāda with Theravāda on the basis of a divergence between Vibhajjavāda and Theravāda positions on the “three times.” Specifically, while the former conceded that past dhammas that have not yet yielded their karmic fruits still exist, the latter denied the existence of past dhammas without any qualification. 20. Bechert 1961: 46–​47, 50. 21. Bechert 1961: 40 and passim. 22. Frauwallner 1952: 257–​29, cf. 241, 260–​261. 23. Bechert 1961: 46, 50. 24. Bechert 1961: 47. 25. Bechert 1961: 47. 26. Walleser 1927: 13; Bareau 1955a: 117; Ronkin 2005: 24. Based on the etymology of the term “Vibhajja” (vi + √bhaj, “distinguish,” “separate”), Walleser (1927: 15) argues that the designation referred to an early version of the “two truths” doctrine. That is, the Vibhajjavādins recognized—​ “distinguished among”—​various uses of a concept, in contrast to those who recognized only a single conceptual truth. C. A. F. Rhys Davids draws a connection between the Vibhajjavāda moniker and one of the four types of debate questions mentioned in the Anguttara Nikāya (A.i.197), namely, those to be answered with a distinction (vibhajja-​vyākaraṇīya). The designation would reflect the awareness that many of the unproductive doctrinal controversies of the Aśokan age could be resolved by making proper distinctions (Rhys Davids 1960: xl–​xli). 27. Bareau 1955a:  115; Frauwallner 1952:  257. Cousins (2001:  137 and passim) argues that the term Vibhajjavādin was originally a designation for a group of schools that later became a general term for orthodoxy. 28. KvA. 5.14–​20; Dv. 5.51–​53. 29. Walleser 1927: 14. 30. Gethin 2012: 44–​45. 31. Again, see Cousins 1994: 26. 32. See, e.g., Dreyfus 2003: 205. 33. See, e.g., Kapstein 2001: 81–​88.

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34. Kapstein’s (2001: 82 and passim) trans.; puggalo upalabbhati saccikaṭṭhapara­ maṭṭhenāti: Kv. pars. 1–​158; 196–​199; 217–​227; 229–​243. 35. Kv. pars. 158–​170; cf. pars. 200–​216. 36. puggalo sandhāvati asmā lokā paraṃ lokaṃ, parsamā lokā imaṃ lokan ti? 37. Kv. par. 228: parinibbuto puggalo atthatthamhi natthatthamhi? 38. My classification of the kathās into these three basic categories is, admittedly, somewhat arbitrary. I am applying the three ways of knowing the puggala that are enumerated in the Sāmmitīya-​nikāya Śāstra (Venkataramanan 1953:  183, cf. 225), namely, the person known by the basis, by transmigration, and by extinction (āśraya-​prajñapta-​pudgala, saṅkrama-​prajñapta-​pudgala, and nirodha-​ prajñapta-​pudgala, respectively). There is no evidence, however, that this organizational principle was recognized by the author(s) of the Kathāvatthu. It simply serves to highlight those arguments that are most relevant to my interests here. 39. Kv. 11–​12 (par. 17). 40. Kv. 14 (par. 130). 41. Cf. Vsm. 594 (xviii:29):  yo pan’ etaṃ yathābhūtadassanam pahāya, satto atthī ti gaṇhāti, so tassa vināsaṃ anujāneyya, avināsam vā. Avināsam anujānanto sassati patati. Vināsaṃ anujānanto ucchede patati. “He who abandons this apprehension of reality as it really is by maintaining that a being exists, would conclude either that [this being] is destroyed or that it is not destroyed. Concluding that it is not destroyed, he falls into eternalism; concluding that it is destroyed he falls into annihilationism.” 42. Kv. 28 (par. 158): so puggalo sandhāvati. 43. Kv. 28–​29 (par. 158). Curiously enough, the official Theravāda position is that the one who is reborn is neither the same nor different (na ca so na ca añño) as the one who dies. See Collins 1982b: 186 and passim; Milind.40. 44. Kv. 61 (par. 228). 45. Kv. 61 (par. 228): natthatthamhīti parinibbuto puggalo ucchinno ti? It is not clear to me what relevance this second proposition has to the Puggalavādin’s thesis, since he presumably rejects it—​ unless, of course, he has tacitly rejected (withdrawn?) his original affirmative response to the nirvanized person’s abiding in the goal. The Theravādin’s follow-​up question is simply a mechanical inversion of the original question, and it fails to do what it is presumably intended to, namely, trap the Puggalavādin in either eternalism or annihilationism. 46. Kv. 61 (par. 228): puggalo kiṃ nissāya tiṭṭhatīti? 47. The Theravādin here returns to the earlier discussion of the person’s derivation from the dhammas (pars. 171–​192). 48. Bronkhorst (1993: 59–​60) doubts that the Kathāvatthu reflects a direct engagement with Pudgalavāda arguments, but see Cousins (1994: 26). 49. Kapstein 2001: 85. 50. Kapstein 2001: 86–​87.

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51. Kapstein 2001: 87. 52. Kv. 13–​14: atthi puggalo attahitāya paṭipanno; cf. D.iii.232; M.i.341, 411; A.ii.95. 53. Kv. 13, par. 74. 54. Kv. 22. 55. Kv. 44; cf. M.i.482. 56. Kv. 45. 57. Collins 1982b: 182. 58. Kv. 66: nayidha sattūpalabbhati; see Kapstein 2001: 78–​79. 59. Lusthaus 2009: 279–​280. 60. The puggala as the underlying presupposition of the Buddha’s reference to transmigration (pars. 159, 198, 237); of moral action (pars. 200, 213, 215); and of everyday speech (pars. 196, 219, 221). 61. In par. 201 (cf. 212), for example, he challenges the commonsensical belief in a doer behind the deed; in pars. 158ff, the notion of a transmigrating soul. 62. Frauwallner 1969: 65. 63. McDermott 1977:  460; Norman 1983:  112; cf. Skilling 1998:  91. For example, in Milindapañha 268 and 271 Nāgasena appeals to the Sarvāstivāda teaching that the category of unconditioned reality includes ākāsa (“space”), in addition to nibbāna (McDermott 1977:  460)  (Theravāda recognizes nibbāna as the only unconditioned reality). The text contains other teachings that diverge from Theravāda orthodoxy, such as the notion that serious demerit results from unintentional killing (1977:  464–​465, 468)  and that some events are the result of chance, not karma (1977: 466, 468). The text also contains a qualified acceptance of the doctrine of the transference of merit, a tenet of belief not officially recognized by Theravāda orthodoxy (1977: 462–​463). 64. Kapstein 2001: 88. 65. Milind. 14.2–​4: tattha Milindo nāma rājā rajjaṃ kāreti, so diṭṭhivādena pañhaṃ pucchitvā bhikkhusanghaṃ viheṭheti. “There is a king, Milinda by name, who reigns there [in the city of Sāgala]. He annoys the community of monks by asking them questions with talk of (erroneous) views.” Cf. also Milind. 6. 66. Specifically, in the Caraka Saṃhitā, 8:16. 67. One might discern a confrontational attitude in Nāgasena’s mocking and gratuitous reference to the tenderness of the king’s feet as a reason for the latter’s use of a chariot as a means of conveyance (Milind. 26). Nāgasena’s description of the king as “exceedingly [excessively?] refined” (accanta-​sukhumālo), in particular, might have been taken as an insult. 68. Milind. 26. 69. Milind. 26.21–​23: tam ahaṃ, bhante, pucchanto pucchanto na pasāmi Nāgasenaṃ, saddo yeva nu kho, bhante, Nāgaseno, ko pan’ ettha Nāgaseno. “Although asking you repeatedly, Sir, I do not see Nāgasena. Nāgasena, Sir, is only a sound. Who, then, is this Nāgasena here?” 70. Milind. 28.9–​12.

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71. Milind. 29.7–​10: paṇḍitavādā ‘haṃ, bhante, sallapissāmi, no rājavadā; vissattho bhadanto sallapatu, yathā bhikkhunā vā sāmaṇerena vā upāsakena vā ārāmikena vā saddhiṃ sallapati. “Sir, I shall converse as a scholar, not as a king. Let your eminence speak freely, as one would converse with a monk, a novice, a devotee, or a servant.” 72. Milind. 40.14–​15: añño pāpakammaṃ karoti, aññassa hatthapādā chijjanti. “The one commits an evil deed is one; he whose hand and foot have been cut off is another.” 73. Milind. 71.22–​23: na ca sankamati paṭisandahati cāti. 74. Collins 1982b: 183. 75. Collins 1982b: 184. 76. Milind. 30.28–​29: abbhantare-​vāyo jīvo pavasati ca nikkhamati ca. 77. Milind. 31.8–​9: n’ eso jivo, assāsa-​passāsā nām’ ete kāyasankhārā ti. 78. Milind. 54:18–​20: abhantare jīvo cakkhunā rūpaṃ passati, sotena saddaṃ suṇāti, [.  .  .]. “The living principle within which sees forms through the eye, hears sounds through the ear, [etc.].” Trans. Rhys Davids 1963: 86. 79. Milind. 54–​55. 80. Milind. 56:23–​25: nāhaṃ paṭibalo tayā vādinā saddhiṃ sallapitaṃ; sādhu, atthaṃ jappehīti. “I am not capable of conversing with such a debater. Please discuss the matter [with me].” 81. Collins 1982b: 184. 82. This break recapitulates the above-​mentioned shift from an agonistic to a pedagogical mode of discussion. 83. Collins 1982b: 183. 84. See Milind. 3. 85. Cf., again, Collins 1982b: 184. 86. Eltschinger and Ratié 2010: 86. 87. Eltschinger 2010:  432–​ 433. The “epistemological school” of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti exemplifies this “heresiological turn” (Eltschinger 2010:  399). Vasubandhu, who precedes both of these thinkers, evinces the beginnings of this shift to “super sectarian” concerns. 88. Eltschinger 2010: 398–​399, 433. 89. Eltschinger 2010: 432. 90. Kapstein 2001: 347. 91. AK. 1232.4–​6: buddhānāṃ pravacana-​dharmatāṃ niśamya [anandhāḥ]; andhānāṃ vividha-​kudṛṣṭi-​ceṣṭitānāṃ tīrthyānāṃ mat[aṃ] apavidhya [anandhāḥ]; cf. 1189.2–​3. 92. AK. 1189.2: nahi te skandha-​santāna eva-​ātmaprajñaptiṃ vyavasyanti. “For they are not convinced that the conception of the self is merely the succession of constituents.” 93. AK. 1189.1: kiṃ khalv ato ‘nyatra mokṣo nāsti? nāsti. “Is there a liberation other than this one? No, there isn’t.” Cf. 1233.1: “selflessness […] which alone dwells

Notes

94. 95.

96. 97.

98.

99. 100.

101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

106. 107. 108.

109. 110. 111. 112.

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in the city of nirvāṇa” (nirvāṇapuraikavartinīṃ [. . .] nirātmatām). Cf. also the statement introducing the refutation of the Tīrthikas’ ātmavāda in the chapter’s second half: 1215:9–​10: ye ‘pi ca dravyāntaram evātmānaṃ manyante, teṣām eva mokṣābhāvadoṣo niṣkampaḥ. “There are also those Tīrthikas who think that the self is another substance. For them there is no possibility of liberation.” AK. 1189.2–​3. AK. 1215.3–​4: evam eṣāṃ dṛḍhatara-​ātma-​ātmīya-​sneha-​parigrāhita-​bandhanānāṃ mokṣo dūrībhavet. “Liberation becomes remote for those who are enthralled by an unshakable attachment to the self and what belongs to the self.” AK. 1191.3–​4. AK. 1192.3–​4:  yadi tāvat dravyataḥ, bhinna-​ svabhāvatvāt skandhebhyo ‘nyo vaktavyaḥ, itaretara-​skandhavat. “If the [person] exists substantially, then it is to be spoken of as different from the constituents, as they are from each other. For they have different natures.” AK. 1192.5–​6: atas tīrthika-​dṛṣṭi-​prasaṅgho, niṣprayojanatvaṃ ca. atha prajñaptitaḥ: vayam apy evaṃ brūmaḥ. “[If the person exists substantially], then the view of the Tīrthikas necessarily follows. And the [concept of the person] becomes otiose. If, on the other hand, [the person exists only] conceptually, then that is also [the position that] we declare.” AK. 1192.7. AK. 1192.7–​8:  ādhyātmakān upāttān vartamānān skandhān upādāya pudgalaḥ prajñapyate. “The person is conceived in reliance upon the constituents, which [the person] appropriates as proper to itself and which exist in the present.” Duerlinger 2003: 133. AK. 1192.8–​9: andha-​vacanam unmīlita-​arthaṃ. AK. 1193.1–​2. AK. 1193.5–​7. AK. 1193.8–​9: na ca-​anyaḥ skandhebhyaḥ śakyate pratijñātum; śāśvata-​prasaṅghāt; na-​apy-​ananyaḥ, uccheda-​prasaṅghād iti. “The [person] cannot be conceived as other than the constituents, for [in that case] eternalism would necessarily follow. Nor [can the person be conceived as] not-​different [ from the constituents], for then annihilationism would follow.” AK. 1194.9–​11. AK. 1195.6–​7. AK. 1195.7–​8. Duerlinger (2003: 166) concludes in his detailed logical analysis of Vasubandhu’s objection to the Pudgalavādins’ appeal to the fire and fuel relation that Vasubandhu fails to demonstrate, despite his pretentions to the contrary, that the Pudgalavādins’ use of the analogy is logically incoherent. AK. 1195.11–​12. AK. 1195.12–​13. AK. 1195.13–​14. AK. 1209.1–​2.

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113. AK. 1203.12–​13. 114. AK. 1203.13–​14: yadi nikāya eva pramāṇam, na tarhi teṣāṃ buddhaḥ śāstā. na ca te śākyaputrīyā bhavanti. “If [they recognize] only their collection as authoritative, then the Buddha is not their teacher and they are not Śākyamuni’s disciples.” 115. Dial. 35.4. 116. Duerlinger 2003: 126. 117. AK. 1215.6–​8: tasmāt dṛṣṭy-​arvudam etasmin śāsane utpannam: ya eṣa ekeṣāṃ pudgala-​grāhaḥ, ekeṣāṃ sarvanāstitā-​grāhaḥ. “Therefore a tumor of (false) views has arisen in the tradition. There are those who cling to the notion of the person and those who cling to the notion of the non-​existence of everything.” 118. On the shift from a Pudgalavādin opponent to a Tīrthika one, see Duerlinger 2003: 117, no. 60. 119. Bronkhorst 2007: 126–​130. 120. Bareau 1973: 96; cf. Nakamura 1983: 104–​106. 121. Glasenapp 1950: 1020, 1026. 122. Ruben 1926: 354; Oberhammer 1964: 302–​303, 316–​317, 321–​322; 2007: 345. 123. Oberhammer 1963: 310; Ruben 1926: 352; Slage 1986: 170–​171. 124. [ānvīkṣikī] hetubhir anvīkṣamānā. “This investigative science investigates with reasons.” See Hacker 1958:  55. Cf. NBh. 3.12–​13:  pratyakṣāgamābhyām īkṣitasya-​arthasya-​anvīkṣaṇam anvīkṣā, tayā pravartata ity ānvīkṣikī nyāyavidyā nyāyaśāstram. “This investigation investigates the object that has been apprehended by perception and verbal testimony. The [science] that proceeds by this [investigation] is called investigative science or the science of reasoning.” 125. Oberhammer (2007:  340–​343); Halbfass (1988:  274–​279); Hacker (1958:  esp. 73–​74). Cf. NBh. 2.20–​3.1: teṣāṃ pṛthagvacanam antareṇa-​adhyātmavidyāmātram iyaṃ syāt, yathopaniṣadaḥ. “Without the enumeration of its distinctive subject matter, this [science] would be only the science of the self, like the Upaniśads.” Cf. Hacker (1958: 65–​66). 126. Kapstein 2001: 376, 378–​379; NBh. 26:16–​20. 127. A painstakingly detailed analysis of these arguments can be found in Duerlinger 2003: 238–​298. 128. Duerlinger 2003: 239, 247. 129. AK. 1215.11–​12. 130. NBh. 26.18–​20. 131. AK. 1216.5–​6. 132. AK. 1216.6–​1217.1–​3:  na hi tayoḥ sambandho ‘sti, akāryakāraṇabhāvād, yathaikasaṃtānikayoḥ. na ca brūmaḥ: anyena cetasā dṛṣṭam anyat smaratīti. api tu darśanacittāt smṛticittam anyad eva-​utpadyate, santati-​pariṇatyā yathoktam iti. “For there is no connection between [the minds of Devadatta and Yajñadatta] because they are not related as cause and effect along a single continuum. We

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do not say that one remembers what was perceived by another! Rather, [we claim] only that a thought of memory arises from a thought of perception, as we said earlier with regard to the development of a continuum.” 133. AK. 1222.8ff. 134. AK. 1227.9–​10. 135. AK. 1224.2–​3. 136. AK. 1228.1: asaty ātmani ka eṣāṃ karmaṇāṃ kartā, kaś ca phalānāṃ bhoktā bhavati. “If there is no self, then who is the doer of deeds? And who experiences their fruits?” 137. AK. 1229.2–​3:  smṛtito hi cchandaḥ, cchandād vitarkaḥ, vitarkāt prayatnaḥ, prayatnād vāyuḥ, tataḥ karmeti. kim atra-​ātmā kurute? “From memory comes desire, from desire, deliberation; from deliberation, effort; from effort, vital energy, from that, action. What does the self do here?” 138. AK. 1229.8–9; 11–​12: katham asaty ātmani viniṣṭāt karmaṇa āyatyāṃ phalotpattiḥ. [. . .] naiva tu vayaṃ viniṣṭāt karmaṇa āyatyāṃ phalotpattiṃ brūmaḥ. kiṃ tarhi tat-​santati-​pariṇāma-​viśeṣād, bhija-​phala-​vat. “How, if there is no self, can a result arise in the future from an action that has ceased to exist? [. . .] We do not say that a result arises in the future from an action that has ceased to exist. Rather, [we say that a result arises] because of a special development in the continuum, the way a fruit arises from a seed.” 139. AK. 432.8–​9: yadi sattvo lokāntaraṃ sañcaratīti pratijñāyate siddha ātmā bhavatīti. “If it is admitted that a being transmigrates to the other world, then the self is proven.” 140. AK. 432.12–​14: evaṃ tūktaṃ bhagavatā: asti karmāsti vipākaḥ, kārakas tu nopalabhyate, ya imāṃś ca skandhān nikṣipati anyāṃśca skandhān pratisandadhātyanyatra dharma-​saṃketāt. “The following was declared by the Blessed One: there is action and there is the result of action. But there is no doer, apart from the sequence of dharmas, who discards these constituents and appropriates other constituents.” 141. Kamalaśīla’s Pañjikā here contains the earliest-​known Buddhist reference to Advaita Vedānta (Seyfort Ruegg 1981: 93). 142. This comparison between Vasubandhu and Śāntarakṣita with respect to relative weight given to the refutation of the Buddhist pudgalavāda and the non-​ Buddhist ātmavāda exemplifies what Eltschinger and Ratié (2012: 86) call “the sixth century Buddhist philosophers’ conspicuous shift in polemical targets and ambitions.” The works of Dharmakīrti and Bhāvaviveka evince the same shift in emphasis away from pudgalavāda to ātmavāda that we see in Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla (Eltschinger and Ratié 2012: 86–​87, 116). 143. TS. 159.5–​6: kecit tu saugatam manye, apy ātmānaṃ pracakṣate, pudgala-​vyapadeśena. Grammatically, saugatam (accusative singular) modifies ātmānaṃ, so the designation applies to the Vātsīputrīyas’ teaching, not themselves. There is, of course, the suggestion, perhaps conveyed through the

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reflexive connotations of the word ātman, that they pass themselves off as Buddhists, as Kamalaśīla’s commentary makes explicit (TSP. 159.17–​18): te hi sugata-​sutam ātmānaṃ kalpayanti. ye [. . .] sugatasya sutatvam abhyupagatās te. “Those who imagine themselves to be sons of the Fortunate One accept the sonship of the Fortunate One, the Blessed One, who taught the doctrine of selflessness.” Kamalśīla underscores the ironic nature of Śāntarakṣita’s reference to Pudgalavāda’s Buddhist identity (TSP. 159.19): uphāsa-​padam āha saugatammanyā apīti. “When he [Śāntarakṣita] writes, ‘Those who imagine themselves to disciples of the Fortunate One, he speaks in jest.’ ” 144. TS. 101–​102, vv. 171–​175. 145. TSP. 159.20–​22: tathā hīdam ātmano lakṣaṇam: yo hi śubha-​ aśubha-​ karma-​ bhedānāṃ karttā, svakṛta-​karma-​phalsya ca-​iṣṭa-​aniṣṭasya ca bhoktā, yaś ca pūrva-​ skandha-​parityāgād apara-​skandha-​antara-​upādānāt saṃsarati bhoktā ca, sa ātmeti. “This is the definition of the self: the self is the doer of pure and impure actions and the enjoyer the intended and unintended fruits of the actions he [or she] performs. [The self is] also the enjoyer who transmigrates by abandoning earlier constituents and taking up other constituents.” Cf. TS. 102.1–​2; 102.6–​8, vv. 174 cd, 175. 146. TSP. 159.22–​23: etac ca sarvaṃ pudgale ‘pi-​iṣṭam iti kevalaṃ nāmni vivādaḥ. “All of this [which is true of the self ] is claimed for the person as well. The dispute is one of name only.” 147. v. 348 (Unanswered Questions, cf. AK: 1209.6–​1213.13), v. 349 (Burden Sūtra; cf. AK. 1206.1–​1207.1). 148. Eltschinger and Ratié 2012: 92–​102. 149. TS. 160.1–​2 (v. 338):  te vācyāḥ pudgalo naiva, vidyate pāramārthikaḥ//​tattva-​ anyatva-​avācyatvān, nabhaḥ-​kokanada-​ādi-​vat. “These people [the Vātsīputrīyas] are to be answered as follows: The person is not found ultimately, because it is inexpressible as either identical or different [ from the aggregates]. [In this respect] it is like the sky-​flower.” 150. TSP.  160.25–​26:  tena tattva-​anyatva-​ādy-​anirdeśo niḥsvabhāveṣv eva [= svabhāvavirahiteṣv eva] yujyate. “Therefore, the nondesignation [of something] as either identical or different (etc.), applies only to things that are devoid of essence.” 151. TSP. 160.26–​161.7: na vastuni tattva-​anyatvādy-​anirdeśo yujyata iti saṃbandhaḥ. tatra bhedābhedābhyāṃ gatyantarābhāvāt. “It is untenable to claim that a real thing cannot be determined as either the same or different. This is the connection [between reality and determination?]. For there (i.e., with respect to real things) there is no [third] possibility other than difference or nondifference.” TSP. 160.24–​25: vastv eva hi bheda-​abheda-​vikalpayor adhiṣṭhānam, na-​avastu. “Only the real thing is the basis for the alternatives of difference or nondifference, not the unreal thing.” 152. TS. 161.5–​6 (v. 343): skandhebhyaḥ pudgalo nānya, ity eṣā ‘nanya-​sūcana.//​skandho na pudgalaś ceti, vyaktā tasya-​iyam anyatā. “To say that the person is not

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different from the aggregates is to indicate its non-​difference [ from them]. Conversely, to say that the person is not one of the aggregates clearly implies that it is different [ from them].” 153. TSP.  161.21–​22:  evaṃ tāvad avācyatva-​ abhyupagame prajñapti-​ sattvaṃ pudgalasya prāptam iti pratipāditam. idānīṃ vastutva-​abhyupagame vā pudgalasya avācyatvam ayuktam. “To the extent that one accepts the inexpressibility [of the person], it is established that the person has merely nominal existence. Conversely, if one asserts the reality [of the person], then the inexpressibility of the person becomes inadmissible.” 154. TS. 162.1–​4 (vv. 344–​345): viruddha-​dharma-​saṃśleṣo, vastūnāṃ bheda ucyate//​ skandha-​pudgalayoś caiva, vidyate bhinnatā na kim? tathā hi vedanādibhyaḥ, pudgalo ‘vācya ucyate//​tattva-​anyatvena vācyās tu, rūpa-​saṃjñādayas tataḥ. “It is said that things connected with contradictory properties are different. Is there not, then, difference between the aggregates and the person? For the person is said to be inexpressible with respect to the aggregates, whereas [the latter, namely], physical form, sensation, and so on, are expressible as either same or different.” 155. TSP. 162:9–​10: api ca ‘avācyaḥ pudgalaḥ iti bruvāṇair bhavadbhiḥ sphuṭataram eva skandhebhyaḥ pudgalasya-​anyatvam uccair uddhoṣitam iti darśayati. “That the person is different than the aggregates is expressed loudly and clearly by you when you say that the person is inexpressible.” 156. Eltschinger and Ratié 2012:  109–​115, 26–​27; cf. Seyfort Ruegg 1981:  88. On Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla’s reverence for the tradition of Dignāga and (especially) Dharmakīrti, see McClintock 2010: 93. 157. McClintock 2010: 76ff. 158. TSP. 163.4–​5: sā cārthakriyā kṣaṇikeṣv eva niyatā, kṣaṇikatvenaiva vyāpteti yāvat, nityasya krama-​yaugapadyābhyām arthakriyā-​virodhāt. “Purposeful action ‘applies only to momentary things’—​that is, it is invariably concomitant with momentariness. This is because a permanent reality cannot effect action, either gradually or simultaneously.” 159. TS. 162.8–​ 163.1 (v. 347):  arthakriyāsu śaktiś ca, vidyamānatva-​ lakṣaṇam.//​ kṣaṇikeṣv eva niyatā, tathā ‘vācye na vastutā. “The mark of existence is capability with respect to purposeful activity. And this capacity, moreover, applies only to what is momentary. In this way there is no reality with respect to the inexpressible.” Cf. TS.162.5–​6 (v. 346). 160. Schayer 1931–​1932: 84, no. 44. TSP. 163.13–​14: na hy asmābhir avācya-​śabda-​ niveśanaṃ pudgale pratiṣidhyate, svatantra-​icchā-​mātra-​adhīnasya kenacit pratiṣeddhum aśakyatvāt. “Not by us is the use of the word ‘inexpressible’ with respect to the person denied. This is because one cannot refute that which is postulated by a system.” Cf. also TSP. 161.22–​23: idānīṃ vastutva-​abhyupagame vā pudgalasya avācyatvam ayuktam. Anyathā svavacana-​virodhaḥ pratijñāyāḥ syāt. “Conversely, if one asserts the reality [of the person], then the inexpressibility of

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the person becomes inadmissible. Otherwise, there would be a self-​contradiction in one’s thesis.” 161. McClintock 2010: 85–​91. 162. Duerlinger 2003:  236–​237. AK. 1215.6–​8:  tasmāt dṛṣṭy-​arvudam etasmin śāsane utpannam:  ya eṣa ekeṣāṃ pudgala-​grāhaḥ, ekeṣāṃ sarva-​nāstitā-​grāhaḥ. “Therefore, a tumor [arvuda] of false views has arisen in the teaching of the Buddha, namely: for some, the clinging to the person; for others, the clinging to the non-​existence of everything.” 163. Duerlinger 2003: 117, no. 59, 236. 164. See Garfield 1995:  212. See, e.g., PP.  120:  3–​4:  yasya tu bhāva-​svabhāva eva na-​upapadyate, na tasya śāśvatā-​uccheda-​darśana-​prasaṅgaḥ, bhāva-​svabhāva-​ anupalambhāt. “The one for whom the intrinsic being of things does not make sense does not succumb to the views of eternalism or annihilationism. For one does not apprehend the intrinsic nature of things.” Cf. MMK 15.10:  asti-​iti śāśvata-​grāho, nāsti-​ity ucchedadarśanam//​tasmād astitva-​nāstitve, na-​āśrīyeta vicakṣaṇaḥ. “The notion of existence implies a grasping after eternalism. And the notion of non-​existence implies the theory of annihilationism. Therefore, the discerning [person] depends on neither existence nor non-​existence.” Cf. also MMK 5.8, 21.14. 165. MMK 15.11ab:  asti yad dhi svabāvena, na tan nāstīti śāśāvatam. “For what exists independently cannot not exist. Thus it is eternal.” On the translation of svabhāva here in the sense of “causal independence,” see Hayes 1994: 322, 311–​ 312, 369–​370. Hayes (1994: 312–​322, 370–​372) argues that many of Nāgārjuna’s characteristic arguments derive their persuasive power from an equivocation between two possible senses of svabhāva, namely, as identity (“own nature”) and as causal independence (“being from itself”). 166. MMK: 11cd: nāsti-​idānīm abhūt pūrvam ity ucchedaḥ prasajyate. “Annihilation follows from [the view that what] existed before exists no longer.” Cf. Candrakīrti’s comment (PP. 120.6–​ 7): yo hi pūrvaṃ bhāva-​ svabhāvam abhyupetya paścāt tan-​nivṛttim ālambate, tasya pūrva-​upalabdha-​svabhāva-apavādāt syād abhāva-​ darśanam. “There would be the idea of non-​being for him who, having previously accepted the intrinsic nature of a thing, [now] perceives its disappearance. For he repudiates the intrinsic being of what he had previously perceived.” 167. As Arnold (2005:  166–​167; cf. 2010:  375)  perceptively notes, the concept of dravyasat at the same time implies the annihilationist extreme inasmuch as it serves as the underlying presupposition for Abhidharma’s “eliminativist” conception of selflessness. That is, Candrakīrti, on Arnold’s reading, implicitly rejects as nihilist the Abhidharma project of “replacing the conventional self with something else that alone is credited with fuller, ‘real’ existence” (2005: 166). 168. See, e.g., MA. 6.127:  “In this case [i.e., if the self were the psychophysical aggregates] the self would be a [conventionally] real substance, and [cognition]

Notes

169. 170. 171. 172.

173. 174. 175.

176. 177. 178. 1 79. 180. 181. 182.

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with reference to such a real substance could not be erroneous.” Huntington (1989:  172; cf. 254, no.  151, for Sanskrit equivalent from the PP.); Fenner (1983: 16). Duerlinger 2003: 236–​237. Williams 2009: 52; Seyfort Ruegg 1981: 6. Williams 2009: 285, no. 19, cf. 68. MMK. 24.18: yaḥ pratītya-​samutpādaḥ, śūnyatāṃ tāṃ pracakṣamahe//​sā prajñaptir upādāya, pratipat sā-​eva madhyamā. “That which is Dependent Origination we call emptiness. That [emptiness,] a relative indication, is itself the middle path.” Trans. Arnold 2005: 169. See Arnold’s perceptive discussion of the interpretation of this verse, particularly its third pāda, sāprajñaptir upādāya (2005: 167–​170, 274, no. 101). Arnold 2010: 375, 381. Gethin 1998: 243; cf. Lamotte 1974: 97–​98. Lopez 1988: 69, 84. Candrakīrti, for one, disputed Bhavaviveka’s claim that the teaching of the selflessness of phenomena was unknown to the Hīnayāna sūtras. To claim, as Bhavaviveka did, that it was enough for śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas to realize the selflessness of persons to attain liberation without the further realization of the selflessness of phenomena (Lopez 1988: 68) was to minimize the overwhelming significance of the latter teaching (1988: 88–​93). As Donald Lopez shows, Bhavaviveka’s effort to restrict the teaching of the selflessness of phenomena to the Mahāyāna sūtras—​a move that reflects the intensity of the Mahāyāna versus Hīnayāna polemics at the time he wrote in the sixth century (1988:  97)—​had the unintended effect of minimizing the difference between these two modalities of selflessness (1988: 93). By contrast, Candrakīrti’s apparently magnanimous willingness to recognize references to the selflessness of phenomena in the Hīnayāna sūtras, a gesture premised on the conviction that a mere understanding of the selflessness of persons was insufficient for liberation, had the effect of radicalizing the difference between the selflessness of phenomena—​the defining, though not the exclusive teaching of the Mahāyāna—​ and the selflessness of persons taught in the Hīnayāna. On the references to selflessness of phenomena and emptiness in the “Hīnayāna” canon, if not in the Abhidharma, see, e.g., Collins 1982b:  124–​127; Lopez 1988:  96; Williams 2009: 53. Schayer 1931: xiii. Williams 2009: 285, no. 19; Lopez 1988: 67. Most Buddhist schools understood “emptiness” simply to mean “selflessness” (Walser 2005: 232). Schayer 1931: xiii–​xix; cf., e.g., MA. 6.183. Hayes 1994: 308. Arnold 2010: 370–​371 and passim; Seyfort Ruegg 1981: 11–​12, 39–​40. MMK. 10.15; Arnold 2010: 388.

262 1 83. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188.

Notes

Arnold 2005: 117–​120 and passim. Arnold 2005: 163, 119, and passim. Kapstein 2001: 99. Arnold 2005: 171. Vetter 1982: 172, 176, and passim. MMK. 9.1–​2; Vetter 1982:  173–​174. PP.  81.6–​7:  sa upādātā pūrvam ebhya upādānebhyo ‘stīti sāṃmitīyā vadanti. “The Sāṃmitīyas say that the appropriator exists before the appropriated faculties [seeing, hearing, touch, cognition, etc.].” 189. MMK. 9.4–​5:  vināpi darśanādīni, yadi ca-​ asau vyavasthitaḥ; amūny api bhaviṣyanti, vinā tena, na saṃśayaḥ. ajyate kenacit kaścit, kiṃcit kenacid ajyate; kutaḥ kiṃcid vinā kaścit, kiṃcit kaṃcid vinā kutaḥ. “Now if that one were established without seeing, etc., then undoubtedly these also will exist independently of him. Someone is displayed by something, and something is displayed by someone. Whence would someone [be displayed] without something? And whence would something [be displayed] without someone?” 190. MMK. 9.12: prāg ca yo darśanādibhyaḥ, sāṃprataṃ ca-​ūrdhvam eva ca//​na vidyate. ‘sti nāsti-​iti nivṛttās tatra kalpanāḥ. “There is no [subject] that either precedes, coexists with, or succeeds seeing, etc. The ideas that [such a subject] exists or does not exist come to an end.” 191. Vetter 1982: 175. 192. Walser 2005: 249. 193. E.g., Schayer 1988: 28. 194. Walser 2005: 250. 195. MMK. 10.1:  yad indhanaṃ sa ced agnir, eketvaṃ kartṛ-​karmaṇoḥ; anyaś ced indhanād agnir, indhanād apy ṛte bhavet. 196. Nāgārjuna’s argument here thus could be construed as a refutation of pudgalavāda only if the latter is caricatured beyond recognition. 197. MMK. 10: 11: yo ‘pekṣya sidhyate bhāvaḥ, so ‘siddho ‘pekṣate katham; atha-​apy apekṣate siddhas tv apekṣā-​asya na yujyate. “How can the being which is established in dependence [on another] depend, when it is not yet established? But if the being which is established depends, then its dependence makes no sense.” 198. Arnold 2010: 387–​388. 199. PP. 86: 3–​5: agnir indhanam apekṣya bhavati, na ca niḥsvabhāvo ‘gniḥ, [. . .] agnim apekṣya indhanaṃ bhavati, na ca tan niḥsvabhāvam. “Fire exists in dependence on fuel, and [yet] fire is not without essence. Fuel exists in dependence on fire, and [yet] it is not without essence.” 200. Walser 2005: 248. See, e.g., MMK. 24.14: sarvaṃ ca yujyate tasya, śūnyatā yasya yujyate; sarvaṃ na yujyate tasya, śūnyaṃ yasya na yujyate. “Everything makes sense to him for whom emptiness makes sense. Nothing makes sense for him for whom emptiness makes no sense.”

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201. Walser 2005: 3–​4, 266, and passim. Walser’s thesis builds on Gregory Schopen’s thesis that “the Mahāyāna in India was—​until the fifth century—​institutionally and publically all but invisible” (Schopen 2005: 11) and that, moreover, “at least one strand of the early Mahāyāna in India was institutionally located within the larger, dominant, established monastic orders as a marginal element struggling for recognition and acceptance” (2005: 15). 202. On the translation of upādāna in this context, see Arnold 2010:  388–​389; cf. Walser 2005: 333, no. 62. 203. Vetter 1982: 177; Arnold 2010: 390–​392. See also MMK. 18.1, 23.3. 204. MA. 6.121–​125. 205. MA. 6.126, Huntington 1989: 172. 206. MA. 6.128, Huntington 1989: 172. 207. AK. 1216.5–​6; cf. NBh. 26.18–​20. 208. MA 6.128, Huntington 1989: 172; cf. MMK. 27:11. 209. Cf. Seyfort Ruegg 1981: 40. 210. MA. 6.151, Huntington 1989: 176. 211. E.g., M.i.300; S.iii.114–​115; Fenner 1983: 12. 212. Fenner 1983: 13, 22. 213. Fenner 1983: 29. 214. Fenner 1983: 11. 215. Fenner 1983: 11; Gómez 1976; Seyfort Ruegg 1981: 14, 36; e.g., MMK.13.8, 27.30. 216. P. Willliams 2009: 31–​32, 39. 217. MA. 6.146, Huntington 1989:  175; Fenner 1983:  19. Cf. PP.  81:6–​7, where Candrakīrti attributes to his Sāṃmatīya opponent the view that the “appropriator” (upādātā) preexists the appropriated elements (upādānāḥ): sa upādātā pūrvam ebhya upādānebhyo ‘stīti sāṃmitīyā vadanti. “The Sāṃmitīyas maintain that the appropriator exists before the appropriated elements.” 218. AK. 1192.7: naiva hi dravyato ‘sti nāpi prajñaptitaḥ. “[The person] exists neither as a substance nor as a concept.” 219. On the basis of a comparison of earlier and later references to pudgalavāda, Priestley hypothesizes that the Pudgalavādins’ doctrine underwent development. Specifically, the Pudgalavādins “began by affirming a pudgala or self which was ‘true and ultimate’ yet conceptual, passed through a stage in which they would not admit that it was either conceptual or substantial, and ended by affirming it as substantial though indeterminate” (1999:  87, cf. 94). Even though Priestley emphasizes the hypothetical and uncertain nature of this conjecture, I am not sure that the textual evidence is sufficient to warrant even such an appropriately qualified hypothesis. The basis for the intermediate phase, for example, is simply Vasubandhu’s statement cited above. Only two texts, one of which is Candrakīrti’s statement in the Madhyamakāvatāra that is currently under discussion, provide the evidence for the Pudgalavādins’ eventual concession that the

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person is a substantial entity. I think it is much more likely that the sources in question, all of which are polemical sources from rival sects, simply evince the polemical effort to assimilate pudgalavāda to the Tīrthika concept of the self as a separate substance. Even if Priestley’s hypothesis were correct, Candrakīrti’s characterization would still distort the Sāṃmatīya position, albeit more subtly, by foregrounding an issue that was evidently a matter of some uncertainty for them, namely, the pudgala’s ontological status, while in the process obscuring the Sāṃmatīyas’ own emphasis on the person’s indeterminacy with respect to the aggregates. 220. On the functional convergence of the ālayavijñāna and the self, see Williams 2009:  98–​99; Schmithausen 1987:  3–​6 and passim. On the same issue with respect to the tathāgatagarbha, see P. Williams 2009: 107–​109; Seyfort Ruegg 1992: 19–​26 and passim. 221. Collins 1982b: 183 and passim.

C h a p t er   7 1. At least as applied to the relation between the Father and Son. 2. An obstacle symbolized by the explicit prohibition of ousia language (homoousios, homoiousios, and ousia itself) in the creed of Sirmium in 357. See D. Williams 1995: 18. 3. On the representation of Arianism as the “archetypal Christian deviation,” see R. Williams 2001: 1–​2. 4. Hanson 1988: 872. 5. Ayres 2004b: 303–​304 and passim. 6. M. R. Barnes 1998: 61–​62 and passim. 7. See Tracy 1996: 120–​121 for a concise overview of these developments in the analysis of religious language. 8. Lindbeck 1984: 16 and passim. 9. Lindbeck 1984: 17–​19, 79–​84, 91–​96, 104–​108, and passim. 10. Lash 1986: 261 and passim. 11. The most obvious difference between nontheological and theological accounts of religious doctrine is that the former tend to focus on religious discourse while bracketing questions about the ostensible referent of such discourse. See, e.g., Larry Hurtado’s methodological argument that by distinguishing between the fact of religious experience and the truth of the experienced content of that experience the scholar can remain on this side of the boundary between historical scholarship and confessional theology (Hurtado 2000: 187–​190). 12. Proudfoot 1985: 127 and passim. 13. Proudfoot 1985: 125 and passim. 14. Proudfoot 1985: 128–​131 and passim.

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15. See Neil McLynn’s remarks concerning Gregory of Nyssa’s famous depiction of the theological challenge posed by the money changer, baker, and bath attendant in Constantinople. McLynn suggests that the passage reflects, not a general popular interest in theological argument, but rather the reception, at once impudent and probative, that a powerful churchman representing an unpopular party might expect (McLynn 1992: 33). 16. Lim 1995: 151–​154, 134–​135, and passim. 17. Lim 1995: 138–​144, 155–​157, and passim. Radde-​Gallwitz (2009: 120–​121) qualifies this sociological reading of Cappadocian theology by pointing out that an appeal to ordinary language is central to Basil’s critique of Eunomius’s theological epistemology. In other words, Basil argues for the appropriateness of common linguistic usage, albeit suitably qualified, in theological discourse. Complicating Lim’s sociological reading of the Eunomian-​Capppadocian debate also is Richard Vaggione’s observation that Eunomius and his followers focused their attention on winning over members of the imperial court. Vaggione suggests that this tactical decision on the part of the Eunomians sealed the fate of the movement, although they could not have known this at the time (Vaggione 2000: 196–​197, 368, and passim). 18. Against the long-​standing polemical characterization of Eunomius’s theological epistemology as the product of human pride and presumption, Maurice Wiles suggests, in a more charitable reading, that Eunomius claimed only enough knowledge about the divine essence to ensure a proper reference for Christian language of prayer and worship (Wiles 1989: 164–​165 and passim). The underlying presupposition of Eunomius’s “theological epistemology” is that genuine knowledge of a thing is a knowledge of that thing’s essence (Radde-​Gallwitz 2009: 97). Given Eunomius’s assumption that God’s essence and God’s attributes are identical, the knowledge of God implicit in Christian worship is a knowledge of God’s essence. 19. Mortley 1986: 2.169–​170, 163, and passim. 20. Skt. samyak-​ and mithyā-​dṛṣṭi; Pali sammā-​ and mittha-​diṭṭhi. 21. Gómez 1976: 140. 22. MMK. 13:8, cf. 27:30; P. Williams 2009: 70; Garfield 1995: 212–​215. 23. See MMK. 24:18–​40; Garfield 1995: 314–​316, 352–​353. 24. Proudfoot 1985: 127–​128. 25. Weinandy 2007: 63, cf. 80. 26. Rahner 1982: 235–​240 and passim; Tracy 1990: 151. 27. Monius 2001: 43. 28. Hanson 1988: 872; cf. Ayres 2004b: 302–​303. 29. See De trin. 9.12, NPNF 1.3, 130. 30. De trin. 7.1, NPNF 1.3, 104; cf. De trin. 7.4, NPNF 1.3, 107–​108; see Paissac 1951: 45. 31. M. R. Barnes 1995b: 62; J. Arnold 1991: 52.

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32. Augustine identifies notitia with verbum in the context of his notion of the mind that knows and loves itself as the image of the Trinity. More precisely, the inner word is “knowledge that is loved” (notitia amata) or “knowledge together with love” (cum amore notitia) (De trin. 9.15, NPNF 1.3, 131–​132). See Paissac 1951: 51, no. 1; see also Schindler 1965: 188–​189. 33. De trin. 9.18, NPNF 1.3, 133. 34. De Régnon 1898: 433ff. and passim. De Régnon (1898: 432–​433) develops this argument in the context of an engagement with the interpretation of Dionysius Petavius (1583–​1652). Petavius had cited the revelatory function of the word as one reason (among others) for concluding that most of the Greek theologians understood the divine Word in the sense of the spoken word, the logos prophorikos (de Régnon 1898: 432). De Régnon challenges this assumption by citing texts from Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and John of Damascus, among others, that explicitly reject the Arian understanding of the divine Word, in terms of the spoken word that soon dissipates upon utterance, while continuing to affirm the Johannine notion of the divine Word as an abiding principle of manifestation (de Régnon 1898: 433 ff.). 35. Ayres 2004b:  304. Here I  am following Ayres in recognizing a positive contribution of de Régnon’s work. The French scholar is better known for the influential—​and misleading—​schema according to which Western Trinitarian theology begins with the unity of the divine essence while its Greek counterpart begins with the diversity of the three divine persons. For a critique of de Régnon’s paradigm, see Michel René Barnes’s seminal article (1995b). On the inappropriateness of applying de Régnon’s characterization of Western Trinitarianism to Augustine in particular, see, inter alia, Studer 1994, esp. 161–​166; M. R. Barnes 1999: 152–​154; Ayres 2000: 52 and passim. 36. De trin. 10.11, NPNF 1.3, 140; see, e.g., J. Arnold 1991: 40 and passim; Ayres 1995: 277–​278, 280–​283. 37. On the mediation of Christ, see, e.g., J.  Arnold 1991:  41–​49; see also Ayres 1995: 295 and passim. 38. Ayres 1995: esp. 276–​283; Cavadini 1992: 107. 39. Schindler 1965: 192. 40. M. R. Barnes 1993: 193; see also 1995b: 55, 67. 41. Schindler 1965: 104–​105. 42. Athanasius, for example, takes great pains to rebut the Arian appeal to the transiency of human speech to support their argument against the coeternity of the divine Word (C. Ar. 2.34). Cf. de Régnon 1898:  434–​435. At the same time, he hints at a notion of the interior word implicit in Arius’s alleged mention of “another Word in God besides the Son” (Οὕτω ϰαὶ Λόγον ἕτερον εἶναι λέγει παρὰ τὸν ϒἱὸν ἐν τῷ Θεῷ), by virtue of whom the latter is named Son and Word only derivatively, according to grace (C. Ar. 1.5, PG 26.21B, NPNF 2.4, 309). Accordingly, Athanasius discourages his readers from probing into the

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impenetrable mystery of the divine Word with the aid of misleading analogies drawn from human speech and thought (e.g., C. Ar. 2.36, NPNF 2.4, 367). 43. Schindler 1965: 108. 44. Paissac 1951: 74. This rationale is implicit in the eighth of the twenty-​seven anathemas of the anti-​Photinian and anti-​Marcellian First Creed of Sirmium (351). This anathema expressly condemns the view that “the Son is the immanent [ἐν διάθετος] or proceeding [προϕοριϰός] Logos of God” (Hanson 1988: 326–​329; see also Paissac 1951: 74; cf. Athanasius’s Synod. 27). Paissac (1951: 74) also cites the pseudo-​Athanasian Exposito Fidei 1: “Nous croyons […] en un seul Verbe unique […] un Verbe, mais non pas proféré ou intérieur.” 45. De Régnon 1898: 391; Paissac 1951: 71. 46. De Régnon 1898: 436. 47. In light of the repeated condemnations of Marcellus by a series of Eastern councils, it is significant that Marcellus was never formally condemned by a Western council (D. Williams 1995: 14). Hanson’s (1988:  326)  statement that “traditional Western theology was more congenial to [Photinus’s doctrine]” holds, up to the Western Council of Serdica in 343, which issued a profession of faith expressing a Marcellian “one hypostasis” theology of the Trinity (Ayres 2004b: 125; Hanson 1988: 301–​304). Such a “congeniality” certainly would not describe Augustine (hence Hanson’s qualifier, “traditional”), however. Augustine clearly belongs to what has been termed “Latin Neo-​Nicenism,” an admittedly diffuse theological trajectory that Christoph Markschies (1997: 92–​94 and passim) defines in terms of a rejection of, or at least a conscious distancing from, the Marcellian “Serdican” interpretation of Nicaea. 48. Augustine’s creative use of the notion of the interior word had precedents, for example, Cyril of Alexandria in the East (Paissac 1951: 65) and Marius Victorinus in the West (Schindler 1965: 111). 49. M. R. Barnes 1995a: 240; 1993: 193–​194 and passim. 50. D. Williams 1995: 3–​5. 51. M. R. Barnes 1993: 193. 52. M. R. Barnes 1993: 189 and passim; 1995a: 247; see also Ayres 2010: 171–​173. Barnes attributes this failure to take the text’s polemical context seriously to two causes in particular: first, to a misidentification of Augustine’s anti-​Nicene adversaries in De trinitate as Eunomians and therefore of only abstract interest to Augustine (because Eunomian theology was never a real problem in the West) (M. R. Barnes 1993: 194 and passim); second, to the assumption, characteristic of systematic theologians in particular, that a polemical intention would somehow diminish the authority and enduring significance of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology (M. R. Barnes 1995a: 249–​250). 53. M. R. Barnes 1999: 156, cf. 164 and passim; see also Ayres 2000: 55–​56. 54. Ayres 2000: 56, 59–​60.

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55. Ayres 2000: 58–​59. 56. Ayres 2000: 61–​63. 57. Ayres 2000: 61–​63 and passim; Studer 1994: 166, 171. 58. Ayres 2000: 62. 59. Ayres 2000: 64, 66. 60. Ayres 2000: 66, 69–​70. 61. J. Arnold 1991: 54. 62. Ayres 2010: 283 and passim. 63. Ayres 2000: 66. 64. Frauwallner 1973: 169. 65. Waldschmidt 1967: 396–​397. 66. S. Collins 1982b: 108. 67. Gethin 1998: 149–​151 and passim. 68. AK. 435–​439 (3.20–​24); Vsm. xvii.284–​287 and passim. 69. AK. 432–​433 (3.18); Vsm. xvii.282, 302 and passim. 70. Poussin 1913: viii. 71. See, e.g., Frauwallner 1973: 164, 168. 72. Poussin 1913: 3, 5. 73. Bernhard 1968–​1969: 61. 74. Frauwallner 1973: 167–​168. 75. Thus:  (8)  thirst (tṛṣṇā), (9)  grasping (upādāna), (10) becoming (bhava), (11) birth (jāti), and, finally, (12) old age and death (jārā-​maraṇa). 76. Thus: (1) ignorance (avidyā), (2) formations (saṃskārā), (3) consciousness (vijñāna), (4) name and form (nāma-​rūpa), and (5) the six sense spheres (ṣaḍāyatana). 77. Frauwallner 1973: 167; S. Collins 1982b: 108. 78. Frauwallner 1973: 167–​168. 79. To be more precise, the last link of the causal chain, old age and death (jārā-​ maraṇa), corresponds to the First Noble Truth, dukkha, while the sequence of thirst, grasping, becoming, and birth represents an elaboration of the Second Truth, the arising (samudaya) of dukkha (see Bernhard 1968–​1969: 56). The third truth of cessation (nirodha) is expressed by running the causal sequence in reverse. 80. Zafiropulo (1993:  108)  notes the absence of avidyā in many of the causal sequences found in the suttas. From this observation he concludes that the ignorance sequence belongs to a later stage in the development of the pratītyasamutpāda formula, a stage characterized by rationalist-​intellectualist tendencies. Other scholars have hypothesized that the later placement of ignorance as the root cause of the sequence evinces the influence of contemporary Vedic notions of efficacious knowledge on early Buddhism (see, e.g., Schmithausen 1978: 103; Bernhard 1968–​1969: 56). 81. Vin.i.1–​2. 82. Frauwallner 1973: 169; Waldschmidt 1967: 396–​397 and passim. 83. Schmithausen 1981: 210–​212.

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84. On this distinction between the general idea of conditionality and the twelvefold series, see S. Collins 1982b: 106ff. 85. Poussin 1913: 2–​3. 86. Missing are “name and form” (nāma-​rūpa) and the six sense spheres (ṣaḍāyatana), the fourth and fifth members of the twelvefold series. See Silburn 1955: 199. 87. Silburn 1955: 198. 88. yaṃ kiñci samudaya-​dhammaṃ taṃ sabbaṃ nirodha-​dhammaṃ (see S. Collins 1982b: 106). This principle that everything has a cause (idap-​paccayatā) marked a sharp contrast with the naturalism (as opposed to conventionalism) of the Vedic worldview. See Pollock 2006: 52. 89. S. Collins 1982b: 106–​108. 90. Akira Hirakawa’s understanding of the twelve links in terms of dharma theory supports this line of interpretation. The twelve factors, qua dharmas, have an element of truth, despite being impermanent and nonsubstantial (see Hirakawa 1990: 48–​50 and passim). 91. Kritzer 1993: 27–​32 and passim. 92. Kritzer 1993: 26, 28–​29. 93. AK. 437.6–​10 (chap. 3, v. 21): sandhi-​skandhās tu vijñānam: mātuḥ kukṣau pratisandhi-​kṣaṇe pañca skandhā vijñānam. nāmarūpamataḥ˙ param, prāk ṣaḍāyatanotpādāt—​sandhi-​cittāt pareṇa yāvat ṣaḍāyatanaṃ notpadyate sā ‘vasthā nāmarūpaṃ tāvat ṣaḍāyatanam ity ucyate. “ ‘The aggregates at conception are consciousness.’ [That is,] the five aggregates at the time of reentry [i.e., reincarnation] in the mother’s womb [constitute] consciousness. ‘After that, [the aggregates constitute] name and form, until the arising of the six sense spheres.’ [That is,] after the thought of conception, the state [of the aggregates] is called name and form as long as the six sense spheres have not arisen; after that, [the aggregates] are called the six sense spheres.” Cf. Nāgārjuna’s statement (MMK 26:8a) that the five skandhas constitute bhava, the tenth link (pañca skandhāḥ sa ca bhavaḥ). 94. Cf. Poussin 1913: 63. 95. Vasubandhu (AK. 439)  mentions three others in addition to the āvasthita, namely: the kṣaṇika (all twelve links are present in a single moment), prākarṣika, and sāṃbandhika (that several members are present at a given moment). See Kritzer 1993: 30. 96. Kritzer 1993: 26, 39. 97. Kritzer 1993: 34, 36–​39, 47–​48, and passim. Vasubandhu rejects the āvasthita interpretation on the grounds that it implies that even the arhat remains trapped in saṃsāra inasmuch as his skandhas remain (Kritzer 1993:  33–​34). If the Vasubandhu of the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya is indeed the same person as the Yogācārin master, then it is possible that his motivation for defending an alternative interpretation of the pratītyasamutpāda formula, the vijñānāṅga in

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particular, is that it better coheres with the Yogācāra concept of the ālayavijñāna (see Kritzer 1993: 48, cf. 41, 45). 98. Kritzer 1993: 24. 99. Poussin 1913: 63. 100. Interestingly enough, Nāgārjuna does not make this point explicit in his discussion of the twelve links in the twenty-​sixth chapter of the MMK. Nāgārjuna’s discussion there of the twelvefold series is, in fact, remarkably conventional; it does not differ substantially from that of Vasubandhu or Buddhaghosa. Jay Garfield notes, no doubt correctly, that the emptiness of the twelvefold series can be safely assumed from Nāgārjuna’s previous discussion of the two truths (Garfield 1995: 335). And yet Nāgarjuna’s decision to leave this interpretation implicit reflects the tension between the traditional formulation of Dependent Origination and the concept of emptiness. Nowhere is this tension more apparent than in Nāgārjuna’s critique of the very concept of causality in the first chapter of the MMK. 101. See, e.g., Nishitani 1982: 148–​150; Abe 1990: 31–​32 and passim. 102. Heinemann 1984: 212. 103. This way of expressing the correlation between the strength of the No-​self doctrine and proximity to India comes from Jeffery Long (personal communication). The notion of No-​self as a “linguistic taboo in technical discourse” of course comes from Steven Collins (1982b:  12, 77, 183, and passim). See also Zürcher (2007: 11; cf. 143, 226, 239) on the inability of Chinese Buddhists before the fifth century to appreciate or comprehend the anātman doctrine. 104. Jacob 1977: 1163–​1164 and passim. 105. Scholasticism justifies this procedure with its distinction between the order of teaching and the order of discovery (ordo doctrinae and ordo inventionis, respectively), the former being the inverse of the latter. A good example of this “reconstructive” method is Aquinas’s demonstration of the “fittingness” of the contingent particulars of Christ’s life, for example the time and place of Jesus’s baptism (Summa Theologiae 3a.39, 3 and 4) or that Christ was crucified with a pair of thieves (Summa Theologiae 3a.46, 11). 106. Lakatos 1978: 102, 118–​121 and passim. According to Lakatos, a criterion for judging between various normative philosophies of science is how much of the actual history of science they can recognize as rational and thus include in a reconstructed “internal history” of scientific discovery (1978: 132–​135, 122–​ 123, and passim). The superiority of his own proposal of a “methodology of scientific research programmes” consists in its ability to include more of actual scientific practice in a normative internal history of science than its inductivist or falsificationist rivals (1978: 114–​116). Conversely, it is forced to relegate less of actual history to the “external” history of science, that is, those “irrational” aspects of scientific practice that are to be explained in terms of empirical, psychological, or sociological factors.

Notes

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1 07. Cf. Boden 1994: 521, 528. 108. I take this “Barthian” reading of the Foundations from Kathryn Tanner, class lecture, Religious Studies 286b, “A History of Christian Thought in the 19th and 20th Centuries,” Yale University, spring semester, April 19, 1994. 109. S. Collins 1982b: 191–​192, 235. 110. See Tanner 1997: 117. 111. Ricoeur 1975: 78–​79. 112. See P. Williams 1989: 123–​124 and passim. 113. Fauconnier 1997: 26. 114. Fauconnier 1997:  21–​22. Against the common tendency to restrict the concept of metaphor to the striking literary metaphor, cognitive linguists of this school insist that the latter is only a specific instance of a more general cognitive process. Against the literary tradition, one could argue that the “frozen” or entrenched metaphor that is no longer experienced as such is, if anything, more “living” than its literary counterpart (Fauconnier 1997: 22). 115. Fauconnier 1997: 22, 149–​150, and passim; Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 131–​134 and passim; Slingerland 2008: 177; Coulson 2001: 168–​202; Kövecses 2005: 128; 267–​270. In Fauconnier and Turner’s terminology, metaphorical projections from source to target domains, the paradigmatic model of conceptual metaphor theory, are called “single-​scope” blends; multisource blends with emergent properties—​ blends proper—​ are “double-​ scope” blends. See Fauconnier and Turner 2002: 126–​135. 116. Slingerland 2008: 206–​207. 117. Fauconnier and Turner 2002:  24–​ 25, 270–​ 274, 276; Carey and Spelke 1994: 184–​185. 118. Cavadini 1992: 106–​108. 119. For an approach that combines both cognitive and social perspectives, see, e.g., Norenzayan 2013, esp. 9–​10.

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Wiles, Maurice. 1960. The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wiles, Maurice. 1967. The Making of Christian Doctrine: A Study in the Principles of Early Doctrinal Development. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wiles, Maurice. 1989. “Eunomius:  Hair-​Splitting Dialectician or Defender of the Accessibility of Salvation?” In The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, ed. Rowan Williams, 157–​172. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wiles, Maurice. 1996. Archetypal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries. New York: Oxford University Press. Wilken, Robert L. 1980. “The Christians as the Romans (and Greeks) Saw Them.” In Jewish and Christian Self-​Definition, vol. 1: The Shaping of Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries, ed. E. P. Sanders, 100–​125. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress. Wilken, Robert L. 1983. John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. Williams, Daniel H. 1995. Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-​Arian Conflicts. New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, Frank, trans. 1994. The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis. Leiden: Brill. Williams, Paul. 1989. Mahāyāna Buddhism:  The Doctrinal Foundations. New  York: Routledge. Williams, Paul. 2009. Mahāyāna Buddhism:  The Doctrinal Foundations. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. Williams, Rowan D. 1997. “Angels Unawares: Heavenly Liturgy and Earthly Theology in Alexandria.” In Studia Patristica, vol. 30, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone, 350–​363. Leuven: Peeters. Williams, Rowan D. 2001. “Trinity and Revelation.” In On Christian Theology, 131–​149. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Williams, Rowan D. (1987) 2002. Arius:  Heresy and Tradition. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmanns. Wilson, David Sloan. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, Stephen G. 1995. Related Strangers: Jews and Christians. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Winternitz, M. 1936. “Problems of Buddhism.” Visva Bharati Quarterly 2: 41–​56. Witzel, Michael. 1979. On Magical Thought in the Veda. Leiden: Universitaire Pers. Wynne, Alexander. 2007. The Origin of Buddhist Meditation. London and New York: Routledge. Zafiropulo, Ghiorgo. 1993. L’illumination du Buddha: de la quête à l’annonce de l’éveil. Essais de chronologie relative et de stratigraphie textuelle. Innsbruck:  Verlag des Instituts für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Innsbruck. Zürcher, E. 2007. The Buddhist Conquest of China:  The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China. Leiden: Brill.

Index

Abe, Masao, 187 Abhidhamma, Abhidharma, 140, 147–​148 Mādhyamika critique of, 159–​161, 177, 186, 260n167 ontology, 159–​160, 189 Abhidharmakośabhāṣya (of Vasubandhu), 24, 111, 127, 130, 149–​155, 169, 183, 186 Abramowski, Luise, 233n235 acclamation, 76, 219n25 adoptionism, 39, 66, 68–​69, 77, 85–​86, 220n35 agent causality, 9, 168 aggregates. See constituents of the personality Ājīvikism, 121, 122 ālayavijñāna (storehouse consciousness), 25, 166, 264n220, 269–​270n97 Alexander of Alexandria, 21, 76–​78, 79, 81, 82, 204n21, 223n81 Almond, Philip, 235n6 Ambrose, 51, 181 anātman, anattā. See No-​self Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, 104–​105, 112–​114, 116–​122, 125, 128, 146, 241–​241n89, 246n181, 247n199 Aṅguttara Nikāya, 242n94, 251n26 annihilationism (ucchedavāda)

as a conditioned view, 138–​139, 175–​176 as a heretical extreme (paired with eternalism), 24, 126, 129, 142, 151, 175–​176 as presupposing a concept of the self, 126–​127, 260n167 proximity to anātmavāda, 24–​25, 131 Anselm, 182 anthropomorphism, 7, 10, 198n48 anti-​Judaism, 44–​45 ānvīkṣikī, 153–​154 apophatic language, 172–​174, 176–​178 Aquinas, Thomas, 270n105 Aramaki, Noritoshi, 116–​117 Aristotle, 56, 84 Aristotelianism, development of, 17–​18, 47 Arian controversy, 27, 34, 37, 75–​76, 174, 219n20 Arianism, 20, 39, 181 as the archetypal heresy, 169, 264n3 contrast with orthodoxy in Athanasius’ narrative, 97 as paired with Sabellianism as two heretical extremes, 86, 98, 98, 174, 180 Ariminium, Homoian creed of (359), 76

304

Index

Arius, 81, 88–​89, 97, 223n80 as associated by Eusebius of Caesarea with Marcellus, 85, 88 aversion to the concept of consubstantiality, 20–​21, 222n68 condemnation of, 82–​83 disagreement with Alexander, 20–​21, 76–​78 underestimation of Christologically maximalist rhetoric, 78 understanding of Christ, 27, 90 Arnold, Dan, 29, 137, 159, 161, 260n167 Arthaśāstra, 153 Aśoka, 107, 137–​140, 250n16 Asterius, 83–​84, 90–​91, 93, 226n104 Athanasius of Alexandria, 178, 204n21, 219n30, 224n81, 266n42 account of the proceedings at Nicaea, 79, 92–​93, 221n65 avoidance of homoousios in the first decades after Nicaea, 82 concept of substance in, 232n218 confession of the Son’s coeternality, 28, 169 construction of “Arianism,” xii, 83 defense of consubstantiality, 21, 91–​94, 169, 229n177 denial of the Arians of the Christian name, 21, 46, 48, 89–​90 on the divinity of the Holy Spirit, 95–​96 explanation for NT depictions of Jesus’ humanity, 40 as one-​time associate of Marcellus, 88 Orations against the Arians, 89–​91, 230n178 political instincts of, 228n149 rapprochement with the Homoiousians, 231n209 representation of Judaism, 75, 98 subordinationism in, 94, 229n168 ātman, attā (self), 109, 115, 117–​120

as a boundary marker between Buddhists and Brahmins, 135–​136, 166 Brahmanical, 122, 130, 136, 148–​149, 155 inactive, 122, 153, 171, 173 as object of liberating knowledge in early Nyāya, 153 as presupposed in the Unanswered Questions, 126–​127 as presupposition of karma and rebirth, 19, 155 as presupposition of memory and recognition, 154 relation to the causal series, 185 and world, 123, 127 ātmavāda, attavāda, (self-​belief) at the basis of “views,” 126, 170, 176 as defended by Nyāya, 149 dichotomy with skandhamātravāda, 150–​152 as epitomizing the heresy of eternalism, 146 as the fundamental expression of attachment, 103, 128, 177 as precluding liberation, 153 as symbolizing Brahmanical thought, 137, 153–​154, 169 Atran, Scott, 3, 6, 13, 200n73 Avataṃsaka Sūtra, 191 Augustine, 178–​182, 189, 192, 266n32, 267n47 Austin, J. L., 40 Ayres, Lewis, 37, 91, 229n177, 232n214, 234n242, 266n35 on Athanasius’ understanding of the homoousios, 92 on the grammar of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology, 181–​182, 189 on the Neo-​Nicene retrieval of Logos theology, 172, 179 on the primacy of Father-​Son language in Athanasius’ Orations, 89

Index on subordinationism in pre-​Nicene theology, 72 Bareau, André, 240n72 Barker, Margaret, 215n117 Barnes, Michel René, 21, 181, 206n42, 266n35, 267n52 Barnes, Timothy D., 220n38 Barrett, Justin, 4, 7, 10 Basil of Caesarea, 27, 88, 96–​98, 175, 180, 205n25, 224n83, 231n203, 234n242, 265n17 Bauer, Walter, 110–​111 Bechert, Heinz, 139, 240n69 Beloved Disciple, 63–​66, 69 Benediction against Heretics (birkat ha-​minim), 60 Berger, Peter, 197n16 Bering, Jesse, 9, 13, 199n56 Bhattacharya, Kamaleswar, 105–​106 Bhavaviveka, 257n142, 261n175 Black, Brian, 245n158 Bloch, Maurice, xvii, 196n22 Bloom, Paul, 9 Bjorklund, D. F., 9 Bourdieu, Pierre, 25, 40 Bousset, Wilhelm, 34, 35, 203n9 Boyarin, Daniel, 51, 64–​67, 207n56, 245n163 Boyd, Robert, xiv, 13, 14, 201n85 Boyer, Pascal, 4–​6, 10, 198n42 Brahmajala Sutta, 125, 138, 175–​176 Brahman, 118, 244n153 brāhmaṇa, 121–​122 Brahmanism as the context for understanding anātman, 117 as defined by the doctrine of the ātman, 116, 136, 154, 171 as the other of Buddhism, 121–​122, 148, 153–​154, 244nn138 and 146 Brakke, David, 195n6

305

Bronkhorst, Johannes, 105–​106, 120–​122, 136, 153, 243n122, 252n48 Brown, Raymond, 51, 60, 63, 212n64, 213n.78, 214nn99 and 103 Buddha, 108, 115, 138, 146. See also Śākyamuni, Tathāgata Enlightenment of, 183–​184 existence after death, 134 as having taught anattā, 106, 119 historical, 184, 234–​235n6, 235n9 as pragmatist, 124 refusal to answer the Unanswered Questions, 123–​124, 126–​128, 176 talk of persons, 168, 171 Buddha Nature (tathāgatagarbha), 25, 166, 264n220 Buddhaghosa, 107, 127, 138, 183 buddhavacana (word of the Buddha), 111, 138, 152, 240n72 Burden (Bhāra) Sutta, 112, 156, 240–​241n79, 241n80 Burford, Grace, 246n183 Candrakīrti, 158–​159, 161–​165, 260n167, 261n175, 263n217, 263–​264n219 Cappadocians, 75, 96–​98, 100, 175, 232nn214 and 218. See also Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa Carter, John Ross, 243n109 Casey, P. M., 41–​44, 58 Cassirer, Ernst, 199n57 categories, ontological, 4–​5 Celsus, 33, 205nn34–​35 Chalcedon, Council of (451), 99 characteristics of reality. See tilakkhaṇa Chadwick, Henry, 221n63, 222n71 Charlesworth, James H., 54, 210n21, 211n27 Chester, Andrew, 210–​211n23, 212n58 Choi, Jung-​Kyoo, and Samuel Bowles, 14

306

Index

Christ (christos), 52. See also Messiah divinity of, 20, 34–​35, 37, 42, 43, 49, 58, 66, 71, 78, 84–​85, 90, 170–​171, 203n144, 204n22, 206n51, 207n59 as mediator, 73, 180 Paul’s use of, 52, 55–​56 titular use of, 55–​57 worship of, 205nn34–​35 Christological maximalism Alexander’s appeal to, 77–​78 as a constant in fourth century theological controversy, 83 consubstantiality as an expression of, 75, 49, 94 as ensured by Nicaea’s ousia language, 92 in Justin, 69–​71 principle of, 21, 38–​41, 47, 50 rhetoric of, 27–​29, 34, 40, 75, 88–​90 Christological one-​upmanship, 49, 51, 58, 63–​64, 69 Christology adoptionist, 77 adoptionism and modalism as two extremes of, 85–​86 Alexander’s, 77 Arian, 27–​28, 92, 233n232 development of, 49–​50, 59, 61 dualistic, 59, 61–​62 evolutionary versus developmental theories of, 34–​37, 38–​39 high, 27, 49, 62, 64, 74 low, 61, 62 messianic, 69 Chrysostom, John, 75, 98 cognitive optimum, 6–​7 cognitive psychology, xv, 9, 14 cognitive science of religion (CSR), 2, 3 concept of counterintuitiveness, xiv focus on theological incorrectness, rather than theological incorrectness, 10–​11

limits of, 12, 22, 28 overview of, 3–​7 relation with comparative theology, xiv–​xvii Collins, Randall, 17–​18, 47 Collins, Steven, 144, 189, 240n71, 241n80 analysis of “view,” 125–​127, 247n199 on anattā as a “linguistic taboo,” 147–​148, 166, 187, 270n103 on anattā as response to the Brahmanical ātman doctrine, 117–​119, 121, 244n138 on the centrality of No-​self in Buddhist intellectual activity, 2 on the concept of unmanifest fire, 132, 248n224, 249n240 on the function of the doctrine of Dependent Origination, 106, 183, 269n84 reaction to Neo-​Vedāntic interpretation of No-​self, 105–​106 skepticism regarding the history of “early” Buddhism, 237nn30 and 34 systematic approach of, 106, 108, 236n27 on the Unanswered Questions, 127, 246n179 comparative theology, xiv–​xvii conceptual blending theory, 190, 192, 271n115 conceptual metaphor theory, 190, 271n115 conflict, realistic and non-​realistic, xi–​xii, 48 Constantine, 78, 80, 82, 223n81, 226n106, 233n232 Constantinople, Council of (381), 20, 33, 99, 233n233, 234n239 Constantius, 76, 91 constituents of the personality (khandha, skandha), 158, 162, 172

Index as “not-​self,” 23, 24, 104–​105, 114–​115, 118–​119, 168 the personality as reducible to, 103, 111–​112, 114, 147, 150–​151 Pudgalavāda view of, 109, 123, 129, 157 list of five of, 113–​115, 116-​117, 140–​141, 146, 185–​186, 191, 239n51, 241n89, 242n94, 243n120 as momentary, 152, 186 and the process of transmigration, 155, 186, 269n93 consubstantiality, 28, 33, 73, 76, 179, 181. See also homoousios associations with modalism, 20, 97, 100, 225n97 Athanasius’ defense of, 89, 91–​94 as bringing to an end traditional Logos theology, 72–​73 controversial nature of, 40, 222n68 as counterintuitive, xvii, 167–​168, 189, 192 as an expression of Christological maximalism, 21, 75 in the Nicene creed, 78–​82, 169, 221n59 as the product of social opposition, 19–​20 of the Spirit, 73, 95 Conze, Edward, 107, 236n18 Coser, Lewis, xi–​xii Cosmides, Leda, 200–​201n85 counterintuitiveness (of religious representations), xiv, xvii, 6, 9, 22, 198n41 Cousins, L. S., 251n27 Crucifixion, 35, 53 Dahl, Nils, 49, 52, 54–​55, 210n18 De Cruz, Helen, 11–​12 De Smedt, Johan, 11–​12 De trinitate (Augustine), 179–​182, 192, 267n52

307

default inferences, 5, 7, 173–​174 Dennett, Daniel, 207n57 Dependent Arising. See Dependent Origination Dependent Origination, 172, 189 as content of the Buddha’s “liberating insight,” 183–​184 development of, 182–​187, 268n80 as equivalent to emptiness, 159, 161, 178 as an explanation for rebirth without self, 106, 155, 183 as included in the concept of “right view,” 126 as a metaphorical “reimagining” of Buddhist doctrinal traditions, xiv, 191 as twelvefold causal series, 182–​186, 191, 239n51, 269nn84 and 90 understood in terms of interdependence, 186–​187, 191 Dhammapāda, 115–​117 dhammas, dharmas (as “fundamental categories of reality”) class of, 140–​143 inclusive concept of, 116 selflessness of, 159, 161, 164, 177 sequence of, 155 dharma, dhamma (as “teaching,” “truth”) as redefined by Buddhism, 119 realm of (dharmadhātu), 190–​191 dharma-​body (of the Buddha), 116, 133 Dharmakīrti, 146, 156, 157, 254n87, 257n142, 259n156 dialectic, 171–​173, 175, 177–​178 Dialogue with Trypho, 46, 51, 65–​70, 74, 153, 208n76, 218n150 Dīgha Nikāya, 125, 138, 170, 175 Dignāga, 254n87, 259n156 Dinsen, Frauke, 225n92, 228n143 Dīpavaṃsa, 139 discriminating insight, 104, 112, 128

308

Index

diṭṭhi, dṛṣṭi. See view ditheism, 40, 60, 71, 73, 95, 206n42, 218n152 divinity of Christ, 20, 35, 37, 41–​42, 49, 66, 71, 170–​171 docetism, 41 Dreyfus, Georges, 157 Duerlinger, James, 150, 154, 158–​159, 255n108 Dunn, J. D. G., 35–​36, 42–​43, 58, 65, 207n59, 210n18, 212n57 Dupré, Louis, 178 Durkheim, Émile, 12, 199n71 Dutt, Nalinaksha, 240n75 Efroymson, David, 208n71 Ehrman, Bart, 217–​218n150 Eltschinger, Vincent, 135, 149 emptiness (śūnyatā), 29, 158–​160, 162–​163, 173, 177–​178, 189–​191, 192–​193 Ephrem the Syrian, 21, 75, 98 Epiphanius, 218n4 eternalism (śāśvatavāda, sassatavāda), 142–​143 as conditioned view, 138–​139, 175 as epitomized by ātmavāda, 130, 148 as heretical extreme (paired with annihilationism), 24, 126–​127, 129, 151 Eunomius, 27, 95, 175, 265nn17–​18 Eusebians, 48, 79, 80, 82 Eusebius of Caesarea, 223n80, 229n177 on the acceptability of Nicaea, 92, 223n79 account of Nicaea, 80–​81, 221n63, 222n69 as Marcellus’ chief antagonist, 83–​85 polemic against Marcellus, 85–​87, 98, 226n106 post-​Nicaea concern with Sabellianism, 82 as target of Nicaea’s ousia language, 221n60, 222n68, 223n81

Eusebius of Nicomedia, 21, 78–​80, 220n49, 222nn68 and 71 Eustathius of Antioch, 80, 82, 221n60, 222n69, 223n80 evolutionary psychology, 14, 200n85 evolutionary theory, 12, 14 Fang (of Cameroon) spirits (bekong), 5–​6 Faure, Bernard, 236n27 Feige, Gerhard, 224n81, 227n129 Fenner, Peter, 165 folk-​biology, 5 folk-​mechanics, 5, 8, 9 folk-​psychology, 5. See also theory of mind Fortna, Robert, 213n80 Four Noble Truths, 113–​114, 126, 184–​185, 189, 240–​241n79, 268n79 Frauwallner, Erich, 104–​106, 139, 144, 183–​184, 236n15, 250n16 Freud, Sigmund, 103 Galvão-​Sobrinho, Carlos, 80 Garfield, Jay, 270n100 Geertz, Clifford, 45, 106, 197n16 Gellner, Ernest, 215n104 Gethin, Rupert, 113, 128, 240–​241n79, 242n94, 243n120 Glasenapp, Helmuth, 236n21 Gnosticism, 20, 41, 47, 66, 70, 81, 206n43 God, classical concept of, 8 Goethe, 188 Gombrich, Richard, 1, 117, 235n6 Gómez, Luis, 128–​129, 177 Green, William Scott, 210nn18 and 20 Gregg, Robert C., 220n35 Gregory of Nazianzus, 73, 95–​97, 175, 231n203, 234n239 Gregory of Nyssa, 96, 98, 175, 206n37, 231n203, 265n15 on the limits of the Trinitarian analogy of three people, 97

Index on the Trinity as the mean between Hellenism and Judaism, 2, 40–​41, 174 Groh, Dennis E., 220n35 Guthrie, Stuart, 4, 198n48 Haidt, Jonathan, 15 Hamm, Frank-​Richard, 238n50 Hanson, Richard, 72, 79, 92, 219n20, 229n174, 230n178, 267n47 Harnack, Adolf von, 44–​45, 96, 99–​100, 207n66, 233n233 Harvey, A. E. 56, 211n45 Harvey, Peter, 128, 133 Hayes, Richard, 124, 128, 260n165 Hayman, Peter, 215n117 Heesterman, J. C., 122 hegemony, xiii, 18, 139 Brahmanical, 119, 122 the lack of finality of, 49 and maximizing the contrast with Judaism, 18, 74 as reflected in the rhetorical structure of theological argument, 27 in the standardization of language, 68 struggles for in Buddhism, 23–​24, 134–​135 struggles for in Christianity, 26, 46, 51, 62, 169, 182 as Vasubandhu’s aim in his refutation of pudgalavāda, 149 Hengel, Martin, 35–​36, 49 heresy Arian, 89 defined by its proximity to Judaism, 69–​70 Justin’s invention of, 66, 68 as preceding orthodoxy, 111 Hilary of Poitiers, 51, 97, 181, 224n82, 231n209 Hinüber, Oskar von, 237n41, 238n49

309

Hippolytus 71, 218n152 Hirakawa, Akira, 269n.90 History of Religions School, 34, 41 Homoiousians, 96, 99, 231n209, 233n232, 234n242 homoiousios, 39 homoousios, 20, 33, 39, 72–​73, 173. See also consubstantiality Athanasius’ defense of, 21, 91–​94, 204n21 general avoidance of between Nicaea and the early 350s, 82 Gnostic associations, 81, 224n83 insertion into the Nicene creed, 79–​80 relatively minor role of in Cappadocian theology, 75, 232n214 resistance to, 222n68, 223n81 Sabellian/​modalist associations, 20, 81, 91, 224n81, 223nn82–​83 homologies, Vedic, 117–​118 Horner, Timothy, 217n145 Horsley, Richard, 210–​211n23 Hsüan-​tsang, 110 Hume, David, 3, 11–​12 Hurtado, Larry W., 35, 42, 203n9, 207n59, 264n11 hyperactive agent detection device (H.A.D.D.), 4, 9, 197n23 hypostasis distinction with ousia, 19, 22, 96, 99 Father and Son as two of, 84 only one of, in Marcellus’ theology, 82, 83–​88 in Origen’s theology, 72, 81, 83 three of, 22, 96 identity, 15–​16, 48 Buddhist, vis-​a-​vis Brahmanism, 119–​122 Christian, 2, 21, 41, 45, 46, 54, 75, 182 Jewish, 41–​43, 206n51 imago dei, 180 Incarnation, 58, 65, 85, 87

310

Index

inseparable operation, doctrine of, 181, 189 insight meditation (vipassana), 2 interior speech, interior word, xiv, 179–​180, 192 intuitive ontology, 4–​5 Irenaeus, 47, 51, 71, 95, 203n9, 216n120 Isidore of Pelusium, 98 Jainism, 121, 122, 171 James, William, 174 Jews as assimilated with the Arians, 21, 97–​98 as deniers of Christ’s divinity, 21, 46, 66, 85–​86, 89, 93, 97, 169 Jewish Christianity, 42, 43, 49, 61, 64, 66–​68, 209n85, 217n145 John, Gospel of, 36, 41, 50–​51, 53, 57–​65 Johnson, Dominic, 13, 197n23 Johnson, Mark, 190 Judaism Christian apologetic representation of, 44, 47 as Christianity’s constitutive “other,” 21, 46, 47, 51, 54, 65–​68, 88 putative Christian supersession of, 58 rabbinic, 43, 67, 216n133 Second Temple, 42, 216n133, 217n134 split from Christianity, 41–​42, 67, 74 symbolic, 45 Julian (Roman emperor), 75 Julius, bishop of Rome, 88, 228n141 Justin Martyr, 216n120 assimilation of Christian heresy to Judaism, 66, 68, 208n75 defense of Logos theology, 20, 49, 51, 64–​70, 73 designation of heresies by their founders, 152 proof from prophesy, 57

rejection of modalism, 69–​70, 94 representation of Judaism, 74–​75 Kalupahana, David, 123–​124 Kamalaśīla, 127, 155–​158, 257n142, 258n143, 259n156 Kannengiesser, Charles, 230n187 Kapstein, Matthew, 14 karma Buddhism’s redefinition of, 119 and rebirth, 19, 103–​104, 106, 110, 117, 120, 130, 146, 153, 171, 176 Kathāvatthu, 111, 137–​145, 148, 150, 169 Kauṭilya, 153 Keil, Frank, 4, 7 Keith, A. B., 116, 241n81 Kelly, J. N. D., 72, 233nn233–​235, 234n242 khandha. See constituents of the personality Kuhn, Thomas, 38 Kyoto School, 187 Lakatos, Imre, 188, 270n106 Lakoff, George, 190 Lalitavistara, 184 Lash, Nicholas, 38, 174 Le Guillou, Marie-​Joseph, 180 Leroy, Herbert, 62 lex orandi, lex credendi, 39, 74, 204n24 liberation, 121, 150, 153. See also nirvāṇa Licinius, 78 Lienhard, Joseph, 229n166 Lim, Richard, 175 Lincoln, Bruce, 196n22, 197n16, 243n123 Lindbeck, George, 21, 38–​41, 47, 174 Lindeskog, Gösta, 212n56 lists (mātrikas), 113–​114, 183, 241n86, 247n205 liturgical prayer, 20, 37–​39 Logan, Alastair, 81, 222n68, 223n81, 225n93

Index Logos of God, 51, 68. See also Word of God as distinct from the incarnate Son in Marcellus’s theology, 85, 87, 226–​227n121 as incorporated into pro-​Nicene theology, 172 as mediating between God and creation, 66, 71, 73, 172 in the prologue to the Gospel of John, 64–​65 relation to God in Justin, 65, 94 unity with God in Marcellus, 84, 86–​87, 180 Logos theology, 100, 207n56 Augustine’s retrieval of, 178–​182 in the Gospel of John, 64, 215n114 in Justin Martyr, 46, 49, 51, 65–​68, 73–​74 Origen’s articulation of, 72 subordinationist nature of, 37, 172 as touchstone of Christian identity, 66, 68, 153 Lonergan, Bernard, 204n18 Long, Jeffery, 270n103 Lopez, Donald, 261n175 Luke, Gospel of, 57 Lyman, Rebecca, 39, 220n35 Mack, Burton L., 55, 56 Madhyamaka, 158, 161, 164–​165, 172, 175, 177, 186 Madhyamakāvatāra, 164 Mahāyāna, 24, 29, 165, 189–​190 distinction between rūpakāya and dharmakāya, 116 doctrine of emptiness, 160 extension of selflessness from persons to all things, 159–​161, 261n175 pre-​institutional, 163, 263n201 Majjhima Nikāya, 124 Malet, André, 180

311

Manu (Indian flood story), 50–​51 Marcellus of Ancyra, 97, 98, 172, 227n122, 228n145 association with Athanasius, 89–​90 associations with modalism, 21, 81, 224n83 avoidance of ousia language, 82, 225n94 claim on Nicaea, 82, 223–​224n81, 225nn93 and 96 condemnation of, 21–​22, 83, 89, 91, 267n47 disappointment with Nicaea, 80, 222n69, 223n74, 225n96 on the putative end of Christ’s kingdom, 226n106, 227n123 reaction to Asterius’ use of the father-​son analogy, 84, 90, 93 on the relation between the Word and Son of God, 85, 226–​227n121 single hypostasis theology of, 82–​84, 86–​87, 180, 225n92 Marcion, 66, 67–​70 (Marcionites), 71 Mark, Gospel of, 53, 55 Markschies, Christoph, 267n47 Martyn, J. Louis, 59–​63, 213n78 McClintock, Sara, 157 McGovern, Nathan, 121–​122, 245nn158 and 163 McLynn, Neil, 265n15 Meeks, Wayne, 62, 215n108 Meletian schism, 26 Messiah, 64. See also Christ Davidic, 49, 57 as grounds for excommunication in John, 60, 61 Jesus as, 51, 52–​57 Peter’s confession of Jesus as, 53–​54 putative Jewish expectation of, 54–​57 metacontrast, 16–​17 in anti-​pudgalavāda rhetoric, 134

312

Index

metacontrast (Cont.) as exemplified by Vasubandhu’s argument against pudgalavāda, 149 as explanation for the triumph of Nicene orthodoxy, 73–​74 as principle of Christological development, 21, 46–​48 in the Gospel of John, 158 in Justin, 66 metaphor, 189–​190 Middle Way (Buddhism), 24, 127, 129, 158, 165, 170, 172, 175 Milinda, 127, 141, 145–​148, 191 Milindapañha, 133, 141, 144–​149, 155, 169, 185 Miller, Merrill, 52, 55–​57 Mīmāṃsa, 149, 156 modalism, 87 association with consubstantiality, 20, 24, 40, 97, 170, 172, 206n42 Athanasius’ proximity to, 94 Justin’s rejection of, 66, 69–​70 of Marcellus, 83, 99, 234n240 naturalness of, 8, 22 Origen’s avoidance of, 73 Sabellian, 95, 98 as a type of monarchianism, 85–​86 Moggaliputta Tissa, 138–​139 Moltmann, Jürgen, 2 monotheism Arius’ consistency with, 27 as identity factor in first century Judaism, 41–​43 Jewish, 2, 40, 42, 98, 174, 206nn51–​52, 215n117 principle of, in Lindbeck’s theory, 38, 40 tension with Christ’s divinity, 84, 170–​172 tension with consubstantiality, 19, 28 Moule, C. F. D., 34, 35, 205n28, 213n65

Mūla-​madhyamaka-​kārikā (MMK), 161–​164, 177 Murti, T. R. V., 123, 124 mystery, 175, 178–​179 Nāgārjuna, 153, 158–​159, 161–​165, 172, 177, 189, 191, 270n100 Nāgasena, 127, 133, 141, 145–​149, 253nn63 and 67 Narcissus of Neronias, 222n68, 223n81 Neo-​Nicenism, 97, 99, 172, 232n214, 267n47 new comparativism, xvi New Rhetoric, 26, 28 Newman, John Henry, xii, 36–​37, 205–​206n37 Neyrey, Jerome, 59, 213n78 Nicaea, Council of (325), 20–​22, 33, 75–​77, 78–​82, 83, 85, 89 Athanasius’ account of, 79, 92–​93 Nicene Creed, 38, 76, 78, 82, 99–​100, 169, 233n235, 249n224 eventual reconciliation of with a three hypostases theology, 22, 88 initial neglect of, 21, 82, 91, 225n96 Marcellus’ role in, 81, 85, 225n93 modalist associations, 83, 267n47 significance of, for Athanasius, 91–​92 as theological paradigm shift, 20, 37–​40 Nicene-​Constantinopolitan Creed, 20, 33, 99–​100, 233nn233–​235 Nidānakathā, 184 Nikāyas, 104, 107–​109 Nilson, Jon, 67 nirvāṇa, nibbāna, 115, 131, 145 Nishitani, Keiji, 187 No-​self, 23–​25, 161–​162, 171, 173 all things as, 112, 115–​116, 144, 160 apparent contradiction with karma and rebirth, 25, 103–​104, 146, 155, 171 controversy over, 23, 104–​106

313

Index counterintuitiveness of, xvii, 1, 9–​10, 23, 103, 134, 167–​168, 189, 192–​193 as a development of earlier teaching, 23, 110–​111, 128 Neo-​Vedāntic denial of, 23, 105, 195n8 Nyāya objections to, 154–​155 as one of the three characteristics of reality, 113, 115–​116 as orthodox doctrine, 1, 112, 153, 191 proximity to annihilationism, 24–​25, 170 as right view, 126 “taboo” character of, 147–​148, 166, 187 Norenzayan, Ara, 6, 13–​14, 200n73 Norman, K. R., 242n94, 246n196, 250n16 Novenson, Matthew, 211n23 Nyāya, 28, 104, (105), 149, 153–​154, 156 Nyāya Sūtra, 28, 154 Nyāyabhāṣya, 153 Obama, Barack, 18–​19 Obeyesekere, Gananath, 110 Olbrechts-​Tyteca, Lucie, 26 Origen, 20, 51, 71–​72, 90, 170, 205n35, 215n113 orthodoxy, xii, 72, 95, 111 Christian, 22, 66–​67, 74, 216n129, 249n224 as a mean between Arianism and Sabellianism, 97–​98, 180 Nicene, 29, 73, 100, 181, 182, 189, 205–​206n37 rabbinic, 67, 216n129 Theravāda, 104, 106, 109, 110, 115, 134, 145, 253n63 Ossius, 79, 223n81 Ousia apposition with hypostasis in Nicene creed, 81–​82 distinction with hypostasis, 19, 22, 96, 99

language absent in the New Testament, 168 as a term for what is triadic in God, 88 terminology denounced in the council of Sirmium in 357, 91–​92, 264n2 Paden, William E., xvi Paissac, Hyacinthe, 180 Pali Canon, 23, 103, 107–​108, 128, 175, 244n153 Palihawadana, Mahinda, 243n109 Pande, G. C., 238n50, 242n94 parochial altruism, 14 Parvis, Sara, 219n20, 221n58, 225n93, 226–​227n121, 228n145 on the anti-​Arians’ unhappiness with Nicaea, 222n69, 223n74, 225n96 on Athanasius’ authorship of Nicaea’s homoousios clause, 224n81 on Athanasius’ political savvy, 228n149 on the sensational nature of the charges leveled against Marcellus, 226n106 vindication of Marcellus from proclaiming the end of Christ’s kingdom, 227n123 Paul of Samosata, 85–​86, 87, 88 Paul, apostle, 52, 55–​56 Paulinus of Tyre, 222n68 Perelman, Chaïm, 26 Pérez-​Remón, Joaquín, 105–​107 Perfection of Wisdom (prajñāpāramitā), 159 person (pudgala, puggala) as the ātman under a different name, 134, 152, 173, 176 Candrakīrti’s analysis of, 164–​165 “conceived according to cessation,” 131

314

Index

person (Cont.) conceptualization of, 151–​152 as distinct from the ātman, 135–​136, 150 ontological status of, 140–​144 as presupposition of everyday speech and action, 144–​145 as principle of transmigration, 141–​143 as reducible to the constituents, 23, 103, 111, 114, 130, 150, 185, 191, 241n81 in relation to nirvāṇa, 131–​132, 141–​142 selflessness of, 159, 161, 177 as undetermined with respect to the constituents, 23–​24, 109, 112, 114, 123, 129–​131, 156–​158, 165, 170, 176 person (hypostasis) as distinct from ousia, 19, 22, 99, 170, 225n92 as equivalent to ousia, 81–​82, 84, 225n94 three of, 8, 22, 84, 100, 172–​173 Personalist schools of Buddhism. See pudgalavāda Peter, apostle confession of, 53–​54 as foil for the “Beloved Disciple,” 63–​64 as “the Rock,” 56 Philo of Alexandria, 215n118 Philostorgias, 79 Photinus, 91, 180 Platonism, development of, 17–​18, 47 Pneumatomachoi, 95, 96, 99, 231n204, 234n239 Poussin, Louis de la Vallée, 183–​184 prāpti (“possession”), 25 precanonical Buddhism, 106, 108, 116, 133–​134, 234n6, 237n30, 238nn49 and 51 Preus, J. Samuel, 3 Priestley, Leonard, 110, 133, 263–​264n219 prosocial behavior, evolutionary explanations of, 13–​14

prototype theory (of social categorization), 16, 18, 46, 48, 202n117 Proudfoot, Wayne, 174, 176–​177, 207n57 Przyluski, Jean, 104, 242n107 pudgala, puggala. See person pudgalavāda, 23–​24, 145, 148, 165, 171, 177 development of, 263–​264n219 doctrine, 24, 29, 109, 111–​112, 114, 143 as equivalent to ātmavāda, 149, 156–​157, 169 as eternalism, 152, 158 as an expression of the Middle Way, 158, 170–​171 interpretation of the Anattalakkhaṇa discourse, 111–​112, 122 interpretation of the Unanswered Questions, 24, 128–​129 marginalization of, 109–​111, 239n57 Nāgārjuna’s proximity to, 162 perspective on skandhamātravāda, 130 schools of Buddhism, 103–​104, 129, 135–​136 use of the term ātman, 135–​136 Vasubandhu’s refutation of, 148–​153 Puggalakathā (of the Kathāvatthu), 137, 140–​144, 148, 250n19 Pyysiäinen, Ilkka, 10, 198nn41 and 49 Q (source), 56 qi, 190, 192 Qumran, 54 Radde-​Gallwitz, Andrew, 265n17 Radhakrishnan, S., 105 Rahner, Karl, 2, 178, 188–​189 Rahula, Walpola, 103, 105, 115–​116 Ramsey, Ian, 91 Rappaport, Roy, 22 Ratié, Isabelle, 135 rebirth, 24, 146, 171, 183–​185 reductionism, 25, 42–​43, 45, 207n57, 208n73

Index Regamey, Constantin, 237n30 Régnon, Théodore de, 178–​179, 192, 266nn34–​35 religion, definition of in CSR, 3–​4 Resurrection, 54–​55 Reuther, Rosemary, 208n69, 208n71 rhetoric, 25–​29, 40, 43–​44, 86, 87, 169 of Athanasius, 46, 48, 89–​90, 97 of Christian anti-​Judaism, 44–​45, 46, 75, 98 of Christological maximalism, 27–​28, 41, 75, 78, 83, 88–​90 in Eusebius’ polemic against Marcellus, 86–​88 of maximalizing selflessness, 29, 159–​160 of Nāgasena’s discourse in the Milindapañha, 146 of orthodoxy as the mean between Hellenism and Judaism, 97–​98 of the person as the self under another name, 134 of Rahner’s Foundations, 188 of the “true brahman,” 121–​122 Rhys-​Davids, C. A. F., 105–​106, 251n26 Richerson, Peter, xiv, 13, 14, 201n85 Richter, Georg, 213n77 Romney, Mitt, 19 Ronkin, Noa, 251n19 Rosch, Eleanor, 16, 202n117 Ruegg, David Seyfort, 121 runaway cultural evolution, xiv Ruusbroec, Jan van, 178 Sabellianism, 81, 83–​86, 174, 180, 234n242. See also modalism Śākyamuni, 105 Sāṃmatīyas, 109–​110, 162–​165, 169, 177, 250–​251n19, 263n217, 264n219 Sāmmitīya-​nikāya Śāstra, 252n38 Saṃyutta Nikāya, 124

315

Śāntarakṣita, 24, 29, 134, 137, 155–​158, 169, 257n142, 258n143, 259n156 Saṅgha, 138–​140, 145 Sarvāstivāda, 24, 29, 109–​111, 134, 159, 163, 177, 185, 240n72 Schayer, Stanislaw, 106–​107, 116, 157, 160, 236n19, 238–​239n51, 242n108 Schmithausen, Lambert, 184 Schopen, Gregory, 107–​108, 237–​238n44, 263n201 Schwartz, Eduard, 88 self. See ātman, attā Shakespeare, 188 Shepardson, Christine, 98 Sieben, H.-​J., 230n184 Simmel, Georg, xi Simon, Marcel, 44, 67, 207nn62 and 66, 208nn71 and 75 Simonetti, Manlio, 221nn59 and 62, 223n81, 227n121 Sirmium, Creed of (357), 91, 264n2 skandha. See constituents of the personality Skarsaune, Oskar, 68–​69, 217n145, 223n79, 224n81, 225n92 Slingerland, Edward, 1, 190 Slone, Jason, 10 Smart, Ninian, 127 Smith, Jonathan Z., 43 Snellgrove, David, 239n57 social categorization theory, 15–​16, 47 social constructionism (CSR’s rejection of), xv, 3, 12, 196n22 social identity theory, xiii, 15–​16, 177, 187 failure to fully appreciate the role of discourse, 25 in Justin’s promotion of Logos Theology, 66 as not excluding objective social factors, 48, 76 for understanding the emergence of Nicene orthodoxy, 74, 171

316

Index

social identity theory (Cont.) for understanding the emergence of the No-​self doctrine, 134–​136, 171 social instincts, 14–​15 Son of God 73, 78, 84, 86, 95, 96, 99, 180 as consubstantial with the Father, 2, 22, 28, 33, 78–​79, 81, 93, 167, 169, 178–​179, 181 as creature, 76–​77, 89 as distinct from the Logos in Marcellus’ theology, 85, 87–​88 divinity of, 95 in John, 60, 64 as subordinate to the Father, 20, 37–​38, 72, 168, 172, 173 in the synoptic gospels, 53, 58 Word as, in Athanasius, 89–​91, 94 Southwold, Martin, 22, 215n104 Sozomen, 223n80 Sperber, Dan, 10 Spirit Fighters. See Pneumatomachoi Spiro, Melford, 2 Sri Lanka, 1 Stead, Christopher, 204n21, 220n38, 229n167, 232n219 Studer, Basil, 224n81, 232n214 Strawson, P. F., 144 subordinationism, 47, 58, 168 Arian, 22, 83, 98, 173, 179 in Athanasius, 94, 204n21, 229n168 of pre-​Nicene theology, 20, 37–​38, 58, 70, 71–​72, 172 problematized only in the fourth century, 72 of the Spirit, 95, 99 as a strategy for reconciling Christ’s divinity with monotheism, 84, 171 Suggit, John, 215n114 supernatural agents, 3–​4 supersessionism, 57–​58, 75

Sutta Nipāta, 107, 122, 128, 132 Aṭṭaka Vagga of, 122, 128–​129, 176–​177, 246n183, 247n205 Dvayatā-​anupassana Sutta of, 184–​185 svabhāva (intrinsic being), 158, 163, 177, 186, 189, 260n165 Tajfel, Henri, xiii, 15, 48 Tanner, Kathryn, 271n108 Tathāgata, 123, 125, 127, 131–​134, 246n196, 248–​249n224, 249n225 Tattvasaṃgraha (of Śāntarakṣita), 111, 155–​158 Taylor, John E., 217n137 Taylor, Miriam, 44–​46, 75, 207–​208n68, 208nn71 and 76 Tea Party Republicanism, 18–​19, 202n118 Tertullian, 47, 71–​72, 218n152 Theodosius, 233n232 Theognis of Nicaea, 222n71 theological correctness, xvii, 7–​10, 192, 198n49 theology and doctrine, 11 and popular religion, 10–​12 natural versus revealed, 11–​12 theory of mind, 5, 8, 9, 13, 14, 200n76. See also folk-​psychology Theravāda Buddhism, 24, 29, 103, 105–​106, 109, 111, 114, 122, 134 Thomas, Gospel of, 56 tilakkhaṇa (three characteristics), 113–​116, 241–​242n89, 242nn94 and 97 Tīrthikas, 135, 139, 149–​150, 153, 155, 166, 169, 255n93 Tobin, Thomas, 215–​216n118 Tomasello, Michael, 198n35, 200n76 Tooby, John, 200–​201n85 Tracy, David, 178

Index Trinity Augustine on, 178–​182 counterintuitiveness of, 22, 192–​193 as epitomizing “theological correctness,” 8–​9 as a half-​understood, “reflective” belief (D. Sperber), 10 as informationally attenuated, 173–​174, 178 “interpersonal” relations in, 84, 86 mind as image of, 179–​180, 192, 266n32 orthodox doctrine of, 22, 33, 95, 100, 173 vestiges of, 182 tritheism, 8, 173 two truths, 144, 171, 185, 270n100 Tylor, E. B., 3, 12 Udāna, 124–​125 Uddyotakara, 105, 154, 236n19 Ulam, Stanislaw, 167 Unanswered Questions, 24, 112, 122–​134, 141–​144, 156, 158, 165, 170, 176–​177, 246n179, 247n199, 249n224 universals, xv–​xvi, 4 Upaniṣads, 117–​120, 153, 244–​245n153 Vaggione, Richard, 92, 206n37, 265n17 Vasubandhu, 24, 111, 127, 146, 158–​159, 164, 170, 254n87 critique of pudgalavāda, 29, 149–​153, 155, 156 on Dependent Origination, 155, 183, 185–​186, 269nn95 and 97 as first refutation of non-​Buddhist ātman, 135, 149 the pudgala as the ātman under another name, 134, 137, 169 on the Unanswered Questions, 130–​131

317

Vātsīputrīyas, 109, 111, 136, 150, 152, 156, 165, 169, 240n72, 250n19, 257n143 Vātsyāyana, 153–​154 Vedānta, 153 Advaita, 156, 257n141 interpretation of Buddhism, 23, 105–​106, 236nn19, 21, and 24 Vetter, Tilmann, 104, 161, 236n27 Vibhajjavāda, 138–​140, 240n72, 250–​251n19, 251n26 Victorinus, Marius, 267n48 view (diṭṭhi, dṛṣṭi) anātmavāda as, 177–​178 of the heretics expelled in the Third Buddhist Council, 138–​139 as karmically conditioned, 125, 128, 175 as presupposing a belief in the self, 103, 126–​127, 170 as products of attachment, 103, 247n199 right and wrong, 125–​126, 176, 247n199 as wrong view, 129 vinaya, 139 Visuddhimagga, 183 Wahlde, C. Urban von, 209–​210n10, 213n80 Walser, Joseph, 163–​164 Weinandy, Thomas, 178 Werner, Martin, 224n83, 230n183 White, Hayden, 38 Whitehouse, Harvey, 10 Wiles, Maurice, 203n144, 229n165, 265n18 Wilken, Robert, 206n41 Williams, Daniel, 232–​233n232 Williams, Rowan, 76 Wilson, David Sloan, 13, 200n73, 201n85 Wilson, Stephen, 208n71 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 81 Witzel, Michael, 122

318 Word of God, 41, 178–​179. See also Logos of God Arian denial of (according Athanasius), 93 Christ as, 43, 51, 64–​65 as exterior, spoken word, 179–​180, 266n34 as interior word, 179–​180, 192, 266–​267n42 in Marcellus, 83

Index revelatory function of, 179, 192 in Second Temple Judaism, 66 as Son, in Athanasius’ theology, 89–​91 Wynne, Alexander, 237n44 Yogācāra Buddhism, 25, 157, 166 Zafiropulo, Ghiorgo, 268n80 Zürcher, E., 270n103