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The Gospels assert that Jesus is not the son of Joseph but of God, and point to Jesus' miracles, God's declarations, and other aspects of Jesus' extraordinary life as evidence for his divine sonship. The challenge for filmmakers lies in the visual nature of the film medium. How to illustrate this extraordinary paternity on the silver screen, when God as such cannot be portrayed visually? The biopics also employ a variety of techniques, including symbolism (e.g., lighting), and the portrayal of Jesus' miraculous deeds. A number of films also explore the possibility of skepticism — on the part of the audience and even on Jesus' part — regarding Jesus' divine identity.

This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to examine the genesis of Athanasius' theology of God as Father and to analyse its structure against the background of the Alexandrian tradition. It is important to recognize that Athanasius was not the first Alexandrian to write about the divine fatherhood. He was writing within the context of an Alexandrian tradition of reflection on the fatherhood of God, a tradition in which the terms Father and Son were the determinative metaphors for theological discussion. The book also demonstrates that Origen believed that the affirmation God is Father lay at the heart of the Christian faith.

This chapter summarizes the discussions of Origen's thought in Chapters 1 to 4. The continuity in Origen's thought about God as Father, over time and in various kinds of writings, reflects the fact that there is a continuity of theological intention, method, and themes in his work as a whole. His theology is worked out within the parameters of Middle Platonist philosophical assumptions, but the theme of the fatherhood of God is evidence of his biblical and theological orientation. The sense of the personal relation of Father and Son and of the plurality and mutuality of the divine life permeates the whole of Origen's writings and has a significant impact on his thinking about the nature of salvation.

In the tenth book of De Trinitate, Hilary of Poitiers gave extended consideration to the motive and meaning of three prayers from the passion narrative: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me” (Matt 26:39); “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34); and “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit” (Luke 23:46). All three prayers were used by the Arians in an attempt to establish the ontological inferiority of the Son to the Father. In fact, Hilary states that the latter two prayers comprise, together, the “chief weapons” in the Arian campaign to deny the divinity of the Son. This chapter focuses upon key ancient and medieval inquiries into the question: why did the Incarnate Son pray?

This chapter briefly analyses Origen's view of the mediation of God through the Word, which gives background to the study of the three 4th-century theologians, as well as providing a methodological framework for this study. It is shown that contrary to the opinion of many, Origen actually emphasized a ‘unity of substance’ between the Father, Son, and Spirit, which entailed incorporeality (with its concomitant invisibility) and the utter simplicity of being which only belongs to ‘the species of deity’ (deitatis species). Origin also wanted to maintain the distinction between the Father and Son, even as he asserted their mutual activity. As a consequence of this ‘substantial unity’ between the Father and the Son, a true mediation of the knowledge of God can take place through the Son. It is only through the divine nature itself that the knowledge of God can be obtained. Only God is a proper mediator of God.

This chapter analyses Eusebius of Caesarea's understanding of the radical transcendence of God the Father, which influenced his view of the Word as an intervening mediator between the Father and the created world. It argues that his concept of mediation is necessarily a ‘deictic’ one, i.e., one in which the mediator — while similar to that which it images — is not to be identified with it in any fundamental way. This is particularly evident in his presentation of ‘image’ theology. He favoured the illustration of image for the Father/Son relationship because he felt it pictured their similarity and non-identity, as well as described the eternal soteriological function of the Son in mediating knowledge of the Father. His comprehension of the Incarnation was that it reflected, at a new but not qualitatively different level, the ongoing mediating function of the Word.

This chapter demonstrates that Athanasius — as desirous of holding to a true monotheism as were others of his day — located the ‘oneness’ demanded by monotheism in the Godhead (or θέ οτης) within which a plurality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exists. This view substantially differed from that of Eusebius of Caesarea and was a considerable theological issue at stake in the ‘Arian’ controversy; an issue which affected liturgy, worship, and the very identification of Christianity as a type of monotheism. The chapter begins by inspecting an early argument for the divine unity proffered by Athanasius in the Contra Gentes. It then analyses Athanasius' view of the unity of the ‘Godhead’ (θέ οτης) in Contra Arianos I, II, and III.

The mosaic of Old Peking is complete. The Italian diplomat Daniele Vare struggled with the dilemma of cultural relativism during his postings in Peking. Vare wrote novels set during the Qing and Republican eras. One day, he dreamed up a dramatic incident. A Qing official remonstrates against the emperor's willingness to issue a decree for reform. The official submits a memorial protesting the contents of the decree. He is ignored. To persuade the Son of Heaven of the sincerity of his protest, the official mortally stabs himself in the courtyard of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. The great divide between Vare and his teacher is described. As Stanley Karnow once quipped to fellow foreign devil Dick Hughes, “the Far East is a university in which no degree is ever granted”.

The analysis of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit establishes its Christological and soteriological grounds first and compares them with the sections of the treatise where his inner‐Trinitarian origin, identity, and properties are dealt with more systematically. The Holy Spirit is gift. In the case of the Holy Spirit, the notion of gift acquires a crucial connotation: not only does it evoke the fact that the Holy Spirit is given, but also that he is freely given and at the same time that he freely gives himself. If freedom is one of the defining features of a gift, the Holy Spirit fulfils this condition in the highest conceivable degree. Then, the fact that Scripture presents the Holy Spirit as belonging to the Father and to the Son, as being the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, teaches us that the Holy Spirit is the common charity through which Father and Son love each other. The answer to the question of how crucial is the doctrine of the filioque to Augustine's Trinitarian theology is just as crucial as the understanding of inner‐Trinitarian life as life of love.

This chapter offers a close reading of Book Two of De Trinitate. Here we see the influence of the Sirmium manifesto and Basil of Ancyra's theological circle on the revisions to Hilary's text. Book Two demonstrates the thorough integration of Hilary's pro-Nicene theology with the exegetical and theological strategies of Basil of Ancyra and his Homoiousian circle. Particularly noteworthy in this discussion is Hilary's use of St. Matthew's baptismal formula and Basil of Ancyra's father/son analogy. Hilary's alterations to Book Two also constitute his most comprehensive treatment of Photinus of Sirmium's adoptionist Christology.

This chapter offers a close reading of Book Three of De Trinitate. In 358, Hilary drastically altered the presentation of the original contents of Book Three by attaching a new preface that re-contextualized the book's argument and addressed two concerns that seem to have been raised against the original presentation of his faith in De Fide (III.1-4). Following the preface, Hilary inserted an extended exegetical discussion of Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17 (III.8-17) and added a brief summary of his mature position that aggressively denounced the Homoian position (III.22-23).

The Logos of John 1 is rooted in God's speech acts in Genesis 1. This creative Logos is best explicated by recourse to the remainder of the Gospel (the word Logos occurs a full forty times in John; the biblical resonance of the number is likely not an accident). Taking this approach, we learn that the handing over of the act of creation to the Messiah serves the deeper purpose of enacting and nurturing the Father's love for the Son. The logic of John 3: 35 is that the Father has given all things over to the Son because he loves him. It is in the very nature of the Father to share all things with the Son because of his love for him. The Messiah fully participates in the life and work of God, including the work of creation. Far from being a mere tool in creation, or even a kind of cosmic organizing principle, Christ as Logos is the fully personal executor of God's will. He is the one who brings to realization the desire ‘Let it be’.

This introductory chapter argues that not only the emerging Christianity drew on contemporary Judaism but that rabbinic Judaism, too, tapped into ideas and concepts of Christianity to shape its own identity. Common wisdom has it that belief in the unity and uniqueness of God has been one of the firmly established principles of Jewish faith since time immemorial. The emerging Christian sect set out to elaborate the notion of the one and only God in terms of first a binitarian and then a trinitarian theology—that is, they took the decisive step to include God's Son in the godhead, this followed by the inclusion of a third divine figure, the Holy Spirit. The rabbis were certainly aware of such developments and responded to them. The rabbinic literature has preserved a wealth of sources that portray the rabbis as engaged in a dialogue with people who present views that run counter to the accepted or imagined rabbinic norm system.

This chapter looks at the problem faced by the rabbis when they were confronted with the fact that the God of the Hebrew Bible assumes various guises, using the example of a relatively early Palestinian midrash. There, the heretics take advantage of the fact that God is sometimes portrayed as a young war hero and sometimes as a merciful old man. Countering the heretics' argument that these various manifestations point to two divine powers of equal right in heaven, one old and one young, the rabbis insist that their God, despite his varying appearances, nevertheless is always one and the same—never changing and never growing old. The danger evoked by such an interpretation of the Hebrew Bible is obvious: one immediately thinks of the Christian notion of the old and young God—God–Father and God–Son.

Unless new related documents come to light, the reason P. Louvre E 7850 was deposited in the archive will remain a mystery. Many other questions also remain unanswered. If the god's father Djekhy, the addressee, was indeed the son of Iturech, what happened to his father? Why does the archive of Djekhy & Son end with this letter in 533 BCE? Is there any connection with the Persian invasion of 525 BCE? In 526 BCE the forty-four year reign of Amasis had ended.

This is the first of four chapters exploring the turn‐of‐the‐century disturbances in the relation between life‐writing and fiction. It argues that ‘autobiography’ begins to seem a problematic category in the period, and gets displaced towards fiction. The chapter focuses on ‘Mark Rutherford’, not just for his autobiography, but for his later inclusion of the story ‘A Mysterious Portrait’. The concept of the heteronym is introduced, to be developed in Chapters 7 and Chapter 8. Other authors discussed here include George Gissing (The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft), H. G. Wells (Boon), Henry Adams, Samuel Butler (The Way of All Flesh), and Edmund Gosse (Father and Son). The various displacements of auto/biography are shown to complicate Lejeune's concept of the autobiographic contract guaranteeing the identity of author, narrator, and subject.

This chapter deals with Cyril's writings during and after the controversy and argues that for Cyril, one cannot view the christological union as a communion between God and the assumed man. Instead, in order to share divine communion with us, Christ must be a unity, and his person must be that of God the Son himself. Only the Son of God can be the source of grace for Christians. The chapter discusses modern discussions about Cyril's understanding of Christ's unity, and it emphasizes the way Cyril uses a Greek term (idios) to insist on the immediacy of divine presence on earth.

This chapter deals with Cassian's On the Incarnation of the Lord and argues that the understanding of grace and salvation developed in that work is consistent with that found in Cassian's monastic writings. Grace is God's giving himself personally to humanity, and only if Christ is personally God the Son is this possible. The chapter examines Cassian's insistence that Christ's person is God the Son in the light of his understanding of grace and deals with several troublesome aspects of his christology. The chapter concludes by noting the striking similarities between Cyril and Cassian, even though there was no known contact between the two men.