A Twofold Solidarity: Leo the Great's Theology of Redemption. By J. MARK ARMITAGE. Pp. xiv + 228. (Early Christian Studies, 9.) Strathfield, NSW: St Pauls Publications in Association with the Centre for Early Christian Studies, 2005. ISBN 0 9752138 2 2. Paper $44
THIS is a helpful and instructive exposition of Leo's account of Christ's work. Dr Armitage leaves aside biography and church politics to focus on aspects of Leo's preaching and teaching which deserve attention in addition to those more generally known and dealt with. He takes as his basis Leo's understanding of Christ's double consubstantiality and twofold solidarity given in the formula consubstantialis Patri, consubstantialis matri. Admittedly the formula itself does not appear often in Leo, but Dr Armitage convincingly demonstrates how important and pervasive in Leo's writings the idea is. On this showing Leo is a theologian for whom the relevance of Christ to the human condition is proved from his fulfilment of the predictions and adumbrations of the Old Covenant, from his teaching and example, and by his defeat of the devil and the demonic powers. Leo is a biblical rather than a speculative or scientific theologian and consequently not immune to bizarre ideas. One of these is the (incomprehensible?) notion that in baptism ‘the body of the regenerate becomes the flesh of the Crucified’. I am not quite persuaded that ‘Leo represents a different, western, christological and soteriological tradition’. Rather it seems to me that Dr Armitage suggests here a simplified and cruder version of old truths derived from Irenaeus together with a few superstitions of Leo's own. A virtue of this book is to remind the reader who knows the history of the Council of Chalcedon what a difficult text for the Fathers present at the Council to swallow (not to mention the Council's later opponents) was Leo's Tome to Flavian. But the reader is made to understand the convictions Leo expressed and the motive for their expression. Of course, it has to be allowed, as Dr Armitage does, that the precise form of expression is owed to Leo's peritus, Prosper of Aquitaine, who probably had a hand in other dogmatic utterances of Leo as well. Indeed, you could jest that the fathers at Chalcedon might better perhaps have exclaimed ‘Peter has spoken through Prosper’, were it not obvious that Leo made Prosper's words his own, being Moses to Prosper's Aaron. Christology aside, Dr Armitage has useful accounts of Leo's teaching on fasting and almsgiving and the role of the emperor in church affairs.
Skelmanthorpe, West Yorkshire
Correspondence: Lpatristic{at}aol.com
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