Ecce Homo: On the Divine Unity of Christ
by Aaron Riches, Eerdmans, £21.99
Aaron Riches is unflinchingly orthodox when it comes to Christology. Jesus of Nazareth was “true God and true human”, and we should resist the “perennial temptation” to challenge this perfect union. “Dualistic distortions” that seek to divide the one Christ are, and ever were, rooted in “fraudulent ideas” and the “only tenable starting point of Christology lies in the absolute unitas of the human Jesus with the divine son”.
Unsurprisingly, then, Riches takes aim at a figure such as Nestorius and laments the fact that “creeping” Nestorianism has been a recurrent feature in Christian history down to the present day.
Along the way, Thomas Aquinas is showered in praise for spotting this tendency during the medieval era and it is, indeed, rather surprising to learn that he was the first Latin theologian of the era to cite the council documents from Ephesus and Chalcedon.
The author is, of course, very much a Chalcedon man and has special affection for Cyril of Alexandria, hailed here as no less than “the standard of orthodoxy in matters of Christology”.
What Riches does not do, however, is suppose that this is straightforward theological terrain. He recognises, even revels in, the “paradox of irrepressible tension” that lies in orthodox conceptualisations of Christ. No “tidy fact” about humanity and divinity becomes available but that, I suppose, is where the mystery comes in.
There is every chance that you have often been confused by all the -isms that crowd the history of early Christian discussions of Jesus – all the talk of natures and persons and unions. Riches is an excellent guide and insists that it is unwise to dismiss the judgments reached at the Church councils of the 4th through 7th centuries as theological fudges, simply designed to calm angry, obscure squabbles between rival scholarly factions. He sees far more truth, rigour and resilience than such an analysis allows.
