It has rarely been recognized that the Christian writers of the first millennium pursued an ambitious and exciting philosophical project alongside their engagement in the doctrinal controversies of their age. This book offers a full analysis of this Patristic philosophy until the time of John of Damascus.

Johannes Zachhuber is Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He studied theology in Rostock, Berlin, and Oxford where he earned his DPhil in 1997. He has published Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa (1999) and Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany (2013) as well as numerous articles mostly in the areas of late ancient Christianity and nineteenth-century theology.

• 1: Introduction


• Part I: The Rise of the Classical Theory


• 2: The Cappadocians and their Christian Philosophy


• 3: The Rise of the Classical Theory and the Challenge of Christology


• Part II: The case against Chalcedon


• 4: Severus of Antioch: A conservative revolutionary


• 5: John Philoponus: Energetic revision of the classical theory


• 6: Damian of Alexandria and Peter of Callinicus: Miaphysite antitritheism


• Part III: Chalcedonian Transformations of the Cappadocian Theory


• 7: Laying the Foundations: John the Grammarian and Leontius of Byzantium


• 8: From the Council of Constantinople to the Monenergist Controversy


• 9: The Climax of Chalcedonian Philosophy


• Conclusion: Patristic Philosophy and its Nachleben