The Council of Nicaea 1700 Years Later

"The development of trinitarian doctrine is nothing other than the history of Christians’ reflection on the experience of being integrated by grace into the eternal life of the Holy Trinity."

"Athanasius’s conception of the divine Son shaped his entire approach to the Christian life; the Incarnation secured human salvation in the world to come, but it also enabled earthly men and women to draw closer to God."

"The Jewish roots of the Christian faith may be concealed by the concept of homoousia, but they are not forgotten; on the contrary, they are brought to bear in a particular way."

"Only if Jesus’ ‘Abba’ relationship, lived in finite time and space, is personally identical with the intratrinitarian relationship of the eternal Son (Logos) to the eternal Father, is Jesus— as true man —the revelation of the trinitarian God."

"If the Son and the Spirit were not one with the Father, the martyrs’ choice to trade years of their earthly life for the fullness of life conferred by the faith would have been absurd."

"[T]he kenosis itself is wrapped within the Son’s identity as image of the Father’s substance."

"It is precisely in his courageous, fruitful will not to grasp, his refusal to claim for his own what is not given, that the deepest truth, beauty, and goodness of man’s nature is displayed most radiantly."

"Ahab’s tragedy is the tragedy of modern man in a condition of constant spiritual disintegration: he has the sensibilities of a religious man attempting to deal with religious problems but with the mindset of a modern man who has been encouraged either to deny God or to see him as evil."

"An overreliance on ghostwriters—like an overreliance on a legal team or public relations department—arguably limits the faithful in hearing the true voice of their shepherd."