H. Clifton Ward: Athanasius, Textual Culture, and the Creative Exegesis of Scripture

The Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century were exegetical in nature. Such was the claim of key scholarship on the fourth century at the turn of the millennium by such scholars as Ayres (2004), Behr (2004), and Anatolios (2011). Moreover, if this was indeed the case, then one today might rightly assume a focus in the intervening years on the textual culture of fourth century theologians like Athanasius and the ways in which this culture contributed directly to their scriptural interpretation and the theologies they expressed. Nevertheless, outside of the occasional brief study (e.g. Beirne 2013; Fairbairn 2014), Athanasius’ textual culture has been relatively ignored. This communication marks a brief introduction on a larger study of Athanasius’ scriptural exegesis. This paper examines his early apologetic works—Contra gentes and De incarnatione—to discover the modes of “archival thinking” (cf. Konig and Whitmarsh 2007) displayed in Athanasius’ textual practices. I will conclude by suggesting that attention to such archival thinking across the textual practices throughout his entire corpus will best delineate Athanasius’ creative exegesis of Scripture.