The Cappadocian Reshaping of Metaphysics: Relational Being. By GiulioMaspero. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. vii, 242. £85.00.

The outset of this volume distinguishes two divergent tendencies in the modern appropriation of ancient trinitarian theology. One, of which Joseph Ratzinger is a representative, works within the Augustinian and Thomistic traditions to develop the concept of person as subsistent relation. It thus remains rooted in classical metaphysics inasmuch as its central categories of substance and relation emerge from that domain. The other, of which John Zizioulas is a representative, seeks to free the concept of person from its dependence on that of substance by emphasising the person of the Father as the source of all being. Maspero explains that one of his aims is to show the fundamental harmony of these two approaches—importantly, minus Zizioulas's dismissal of the category of substance—by focusing on the ‘co-relativity’ of the divine persons. By this he means the reciprocal definitional reality implied in (at least) the names Father and Son as well as the mutual indwelling, love, and glorification of all three persons. As the title of the volume suggests, he seeks thereby to vindicate Zizioulas's claim that something radically new and philosophically significant emerges in Cappadocian trinitarian theology, even if Zizioulas himself did not describe it adequately. Much of the book is devoted to a careful history of the concept of relation (pros ti, schesis) in both pagan and Christian authors up to the fourth century. Maspero notes a significant turning point when relation, which had been ‘the lowest rung of the scale of being’ for the Peripatetics, was incorporated within the divine mind by Plotinus and so recognised as possessing subsistence (hypostasis) in its own right. Although there is no evidence that this had a direct influence on Christian authors, it is striking how quick the Cappadocians were, in their polemic with Eunomius, to point out that the terms ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ indicate only relation without implying anything about a difference of nature. Thus these terms can be applied (as Maspero puts it) to the divine ‘immanence’, God as he is in his own being. This in turn means that relationality has been elevated to a position within the divine substance, and thus that it is intrinsic to Being itself. Admittedly, this position had already been reached by Plotinus, but the difference is that we are dealing now with personal relation and the relationality immanent to Being is that of three divine persons. Maspero traces a number of implications of this metaphysical revolution. They begin with the divine immanence itself: as Maspero puts it, God is one not despite being triune, but because he is triune, in that the mutual love and indwelling of the divine persons constitutes him as one. The act of creation is an expression of this intrinsic relationality; whereas for paganism God is without relation to creation, for Christianity the ‘pure capacity of gift’ is a fundamental sign of divinity. The ramifications of divine relational being also reach deep into the created realm. The familiar conception of God as the Good comes to mean not only that God is the ultimate object of desire, but that goodness itself consists in his self-gift. In the same way, knowledge comes to be understood not as an individual achievement but as a relational activity: ‘knowledge is fulfilled in adoration, because the very being of God is adoration’. Some of the finest pages of the book are devoted to what Maspero calls ‘latreutic theology’, the re-envisioning of worship that emerges from the relational conception of what it means to know God. Since glory is intrinsic to God, human worship (contrary to the common assumption within paganism) adds nothing to the divine glory; we can offer him only our free devotion. Maspero cites the use of icons in Christian worship and the devotion to the Virgin Mary as paradigmatic examples of what it means to enter into a relational knowledge of God. This new conception of knowledge brings with it a new understanding of the will as well, for since ‘the will is the basis of relation and union’, to have a rightly-ordered will is essential for knowledge. There is much in this discussion that I find both true and salutary. Maspero is surely right that the relationality immanent to God has ramifications for every corner of Christian thought. However, it is not clear to me that these developments were actually consequences of the Cappadocian ‘reshaping of metaphysics’ rather than independently motivated. On Maspero's own showing, the understanding of God as relational emerges already in Clement and Origen and has roots even earlier in Hellenistic Judaism. Much of what the book observes about knowledge, worship, and the will is common to all of early Christianity and does not depend distinctively on the Cappadocians. This is not to say that the Cappadocian revolution had no important consequences, but to find them would require continuing the story well beyond the fourth century. Problems also emerge regarding the book's other aim, that of showing the fundamental harmony of the Augustinian and Cappadocian trinitarian theologies. Much of the work here is presumably done by two points to which Maspero returns repeatedly: (1) for the Cappadocians, the divine persons are relations, and (2) in their view the Holy Spirit unites the Father and the Son as the glory they eternally exchange. The support for (1) in the texts of the Cappadocians is slim. What the Cappadocians actually say is that the names Father and Son indicate relation. This is certainly true, but it hardly follows that the Father and the Son themselves are relations. That would run counter to the entire understanding of hypostasis that is at the foundation of their thought. There is one passage in Gregory Nazianzen (misattributed to Gregory of Nyssa on p. 161) that does seem to say that ‘Father’ is the name of a relation; however, the sentence continues by adding that it is the name of the Father's mode of being (pos einai) with respect to the Son, that is, the mode of being unbegotten. To be unbegotten is not a relation, but a state. I take it that Gregory is speaking loosely here, and certainly not in a way that is meant to overturn the careful articulation of what it is to be a divine hypostasis. Nor does he mean to overturn his own teaching about the monarchy of the Father—an important issue that Maspero, having mentioned it once in connection with Zizioulas, strangely ignores. As for (2), it is true that there are several texts where Gregory of Nyssa refers to the Spirit as the glory exchanged by the Father and Son. However, he also describes each of the divine persons as eternally glorifying the others, so that each person ‘becomes the glory of the other’ (p. 181). Is there some distinctive way in which the Spirit is the glory of the other two persons? Oddly enough, Maspero does not address this question. In general, it is worth noting that to call one person the ‘glory’ of another is not necessarily an ontological statement. St Paul says ‘the woman is the glory of the man’, but this is hardly a statement about what it is to be a woman; it means only that the woman (that is, a wife) is the primary source and guarantor of her husband's glory. This idiom remains current in English, as when we say of someone ‘he is my pride and joy’, meaning that he is the source of my pride and joy. Admittedly, I may have misunderstood the extent to which reconciling the Augustinian and Cappadocian trinitarian theologies is one of Maspero's aims. It is odd that having mentioned this issue prominently near the beginning of the book, he never explicitly returns to it. The book as a whole ought surely to be judged by the goal implied in its title, that of identifying and describing the Cappadocian reshaping of metaphysics. On that score it succeeds admirably.