An Introduction to the Thought of E. L. Mascall, Part 1 of 3

The works of E. L. Mascall (1905-1993), though mostly out of print, are much more than buried treasure that would enrich a new generation of Reformed theologians if discovered. In light of the very recent debates over whether the Scholastic tradition has been misread, such a collection of profound insights as Mascall offered may even become weaponized. That can be positive or negative.

As a Thomist, we may focus on his natural theology, doctrine of analogy, or the idea of God in pure act. As an Anglican, we could travel his middle way between “the vulgar flamboyance of Rome and the dismal severity of Geneva.”1 As a contemporary of Lewis, we may note parallels as fascinating as the interest both men took in extraterrestrial life and its theoretical implications for the Christian claims. And then there is the masterful way that he exposes the subtleties of contemporary liberal theologians. Any of these might be suitable entry points for Mascall’s thought. This paper chooses instead his Christology.

At this central point, dogmatics, apologetics, and ethics will all come together. Mascall is not only a great champion of the Chalcedonian Creed and its doctrine of the Two Natures of Christ. In making the ancient doctrine intellectually satisfying, he also draws forth the great irony of those who would reject it. Anyone familiar with the works of modernist theologians will note a persistent theme. It could not be said any more concisely than in the title of a book by John Shelby Spong: Christianity must change or die. That is always the clear message. This or that element of the classical doctrine of God is alleged as too static, or impersonal, or in some other way irrelevant to modern man. It does not take long, once working through Mascall’s writings, to see that the reverse is actually true. It is precisely those neglected depths of orthodoxy, and especially what he will call “three unions”2 involving Christ, that will answer all of the dilemmas characteristic of our age. Accordingly this essay will trace out the following line of reasoning in Mascall’s thought:

Orthodox Christology alone provides a compelling framework for humanity in its present and final state.

We begin in his classical theological assumptions and then follow with three sections: one for each of his “three unions” connecting God to Christ to man. These “three unions” in his Christ, the Christian, and the Church overlap with his “four via medias” in the book by that title. In other words, the Trinitarian union is his second via media, the Christological his third, and the soteriological-ecclesiological-eschatological his fourth. That overlap might be a little distracting if attention is not called to it up front. Finally we will move to two sections where this Christological outlook offers correction to modernist theology and positive vision for humanity. 

Classical Theological Assumptions

Divine aseity, simplicity, eternality, immutability, and impassibility are necessary to our conviction that God is really God. These are what we will mean by the “classical attributes” that have been readily discarded by modern theologians. Mascall sees a particular view of philosophy as necessary to the integrity of this classical picture of God. On several occasions he flatly declares his approach as “metaphysical in the strictest sense of the word.”3

Against those who would criticize the natural theology of Thomists of concluding in an “impersonal” deity, Mascall argues from the contingency common to all effects, to “such a creative ground [as] must have the attributes of thought, will and power, and can therefore, in however analogical a sense, be rightly described as personal.”4

Classical distinctions are not left behind when theology transitions to Christology. “The Person of Christ is thus in one sense simple, and in another sense composite.”5 This is because the Person of Christ may be viewed in two ways: (i) as it is in itself, the Word, and thus altogether simple; (ii) as Person subsisting in a nature, as the Word subsists in two natures, and is thus composite. Nor are classical philosophical distinctions irrelevant. In the Son, two natures not united to the Person in precisely the same way:

“The Person of the Word and his divine nature are … really identical and only logically distinct … The divine Person and the human nature, on the other hand … are not absolutely identical.”6

We must say something about Creator and creature, grace and nature, here. Otherwise, we may lack the metaphysical backing for how Mascall applies his theology to the questions of humanity: old and new. Two fundamental cosmological truths must be balanced: (1) finite being genuinely exists; and (2) it exists with an existence that is altogether derived.7 Short of this balance, we are liable to gravitate to one or another extreme about the cosmos: either it is real and independent, or else dependent but unreal, or illusory. This is not merely about setting up a tetrad of comparative religions (which he does), but it reveals that our theologies can begin to resemble other worldviews at root and branch. 

Creation ex nihilo defies both the Platonic and Aristotelian to some extent. It does so in an obvious way in contrast to Aristotle and the eternal material universe. We also do not resort to a formal cause outside of God, as in Plato’s Timaeus, nor do we mean any material cause, as if “nothing” were really the “something out of which” that God made all things. To think of the act or cause of creation as any kind of intermediary is a pagan notion. It is not change or process. Creatures are typified by change and process, but the act of God to effect creation is “from the side of the creature, a pure relation of dependence.”8 The key, moving forward, is that the creature is not, for reason of his dependence, bad. Mascall surveys these different ways to view the creative act as a means of introducing the relationship between grace and nature. 

The First Union of Persons in the Divine Essence

“Derived equality” is his via media concerning the Son and the Spirit in the Trinity. At the extremes are “equality without derivation” and “derivation without equality.”9 Two ways to land on equality without derivation are modalism, conceiving that the persons are identical, and tritheism, conceiving that they are entirely independent. On the other hand, when derivation is emphasized at the expense of the equality, what results is subordinationism. The Son, even in his preincarnate state, is conceived as ontologically inferior to the Father. Of course Arius took this to the extreme. 

Mascall explores the idea that the “logos Christology” in the preceding centuries may have inadvertently paved the way for the error of Arius.10 That would be because the Greco-Roman usage of logos almost always demanded some intermediary between First Cause and the world; and articulating the logos doctrine was, for Justin Martyr and others, largely motivated by showing the intellectual prowess of the Christian message to the Greek mind. 

Now to the homoousios doctrine itself, it is not enough to say “the same as,” so as to avoid the heretical “similar to” (homoiusios), but we must also affirm “one with.” Otherwise there is nothing to prevent ditheism or tritheism. From this thought, Mascall is ready to help the reader make a leap in historical theology.

To be more fully orthodox, one must take the road from Nicaea to Chalcedon and beyond by moving from homoousios to perichoresis. What is meant by this? Simply put, perichoresis is the word used for the dynamic relationship between the Persons of the Godhead. The Greek words for something like a “dance” and the preposition “around,” suggest a kind of eternal, mutual activity.

It was applied by Maximus the Confessor to the Son as “the reciprocity that holds between the two natures of Christ in virtue of their inherence in the one divine Person of the Son.”11

Such reflection drowns in its depth the many crude misconceptions we might have about “firstborn” and “only begotten,” and so forth. The earthly practice of inheritance, of sons from fathers, is nearer to the eternal generation of the Son, than is the earthly practice of procreation, sons from fathers. The average biblical theologian could tell us that much. More than that, however, begottenness is essentially shared essence.

By the ninth century, and John of Damascus’ writing of De Fide Orthodoxa, the progression from merely homoousian to perichoresis had been complete, and with it the final protection from the two extremes of modalism and tritheism on the one side, and subordinationism on the other.12 

The main difference between East and West is that the former tended to think in terms of the relations of the three Persons to each other, whereas the latter tended to think in terms of the different relations of the Persons to the one Godhead or divine substance.13 Was a “realist tendency” already coalescing in Western theology, making the Latin mind more systematic than the Greek, during those decades after Nicaea?

Some may think that realism undermines the Trinity because “divine” would constitute a universal, a genus, in which the three Persons participate, so that it is the abstract or “real being” above or behind the Trinitarian Persons. The Cappadocian formulation of the doctrine is helpful in alleviating that suspicion: “The whole Godhead, not as a logical universal but as a concrete existent, possessed wholly by each Person in the way appropriate to each.”14 

How the divine attributes, or ideas, can still function in a doctrine of realism, while the whole Trinity is a concrete existent, is subject for another writing. “The notion of perichoresis” in the East “finds its counterpart in the Western doctrine of subsisting relations.”15 In Aristotelian terminology, all that is in God must be spoken of in terms of either substance or relation. Aristotle had “substance” as the one of his ten categories that must be for the thing to be. For him, primary substance was the individual thing (John Smith), whereas secondary substance was more like a universal (Man). Augustine and Thomas both saw was that relation (subsisting) could not be removed from God. Thus a different relation could be real and logically distinct, within a being, without implying separate ontological status. 

Mascall summarizes in this way: priority without superiority; priority without sequence. There is a perfect and simple procession,16 so that what proceeds ad intra need not be sequential.

It is also important to note that the imagery used by Hillary, Augustine, and Peter Lombard, concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being Author-Mind, Image-Thought, and Gift-Love, do not suggest anything like modalism. Thomas tended to agree with these reflections, but further qualified that the Son and Spirit are not merely “hypostatized operations,” yet rather in virtue of the [eternal] exercise of those operations in the Godhead.17 In fact Thomas offered his own definitional contribution: “A divine Person therefore means a relation as subsisting.”18 This is the first and most essential union that explains all others.

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1. Via Media (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1956), xi.

2. Christ, the Christian, and the Church (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2017), 92-96.

3. The Openness of Being (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971), 11, 15.

4. The Openness of Being, 15.

5. Christ, the Christian, and the Church, 18.

6. Christ, the Christian, and the Church, 20.

7. Via Media, 34.

8. Via Media, 31.

9. Via Media, 50.

10. Via Media, 54, 57.

11. Via Media, 68.

12. Via Media, 69.

13. Via Media, 76.

14. Via Media, 63.

15. Via Media, 74.

16. Via Media, 63.

17. Via Media, 73.

18. Via Media, 74.