Here is the first theological conclusion that Khaled Anatolios offers at the end of his book; this one is on Revelation. I will quote him at length, and then offer a brief reflection of my own at the end.

As Creator, God is both radically other than his creation and positively related to it. The difference between God and world is such that creatures can only know God through his free self-revelation. Any attempt by creatures simply to infer the nature of the divine on the basis of creaturely realities will inevitably amount to a projection of created features onto the divine and will thus amount to a mythology (Athanasius). Divine self-disclosure is available through its inspired witness in the Scriptures, as interpreted by acts of ecclesial communion (synodal councils) and as appropriated and performed in worship and discipleship. The combination of these three elements constitutes what fourth-century theologians referred to as eusebeia. That the elasticity of that term combined these elements is evidenced by the range of translated meanings, all of them appropriate in distinct contexts, which are alloted to it: “piety,” “orthodoxy,” “religion,” and so on. An authentic retrieval of Nicene trinitarian theology should endeavor to reappropriate trinitarian eusebeia in this global sense: as appropriating determinate ways of reading Scripture through interpretations gleaned from acts of ecclesial communion and ways of celebrating and suffering this divine self-disclosure in worship and discipleship. However, even as integral reception of God’s self-revelation does not eradicate divine infinity and incomprehensibility and the incommensurability between the divine and the human. The infinite God cannot be contained by finite human knowing. Yet, human knowing and human existence in its entirety can be so contained and determined by the divine self-disclosure as to be suffused with knowledge and love and union with the divine. Christian eschatological hope looks forward to a consummation of this process in the eternal enjoyment of the sight of the Father, Son, and holy Spirit. In the meantime, Christian existence consists in the project of referring one’s existence toward this sight such that every internal and external act becomes oriented to the love and knowledge of the Triune God. [Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea, 282.]

Straightaway Anatolios highlights that God’s self-revelation in Christ cannot or should not be subsumed by something we impose upon God by our own making; or, in short, Anatolios underscores how Athanasius, and others, were against an early kind of “natural theology” wherein God becomes a predicate or projection of our own constructions and imaginations (so an early indictment against “Liberal Theology,” and the Schleiermacherians … and Thomas Aquinas to boot). It is interesting that the way that Khaled concludes his retrieval on ‘Revelation’, that it sounds quite Barthian and Torrancian; so the question might be, who came first Athanasius, or Barth, for Anatolios? Or maybe Anatolios is suggesting, constructively, that Barth (and I would include Torrance) were so steeped in Athanasius (which it is not secret that both Barth and Torrance rely more on an Athanasian tradition than the Augustinian one) that their respective views on and against a natural theology sound eerily similar.

We also see Anatolios closing his thoughts in reference to Augustine’s concept of faith-sight and the eschatological vision that funds this for Augustine. I actually really like the last clause from Anatolios; this one: “In the meantime, Christian existence consists in the project of referring one’s existence toward this sight such that every internal and external act becomes oriented to the love and knowledge of the Triune God.” I think this clause will preach! There is a hope that has already entered into our lives, in Christ; but this hope is something that we adore through faith, and not sight, and yet it is this sight, and the longing for it, that shapes our existence as Christian people moment by moment (or it should). Indeed, as John has written, it is this hope that has the moral effect of purifying us (cf. I John 3:1-3); the hope that we are indeed sons and daughters of God in Christ, and that this hope will become consummate where faith will finally give way to sight; where love abides, and faith and hope finally have found their end, in Christ. Anatolios’ summary statement on ‘Revelation’ moves us through his three interlocutors, i.e. Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine in various ways; you will have to read the book to see what I mean (my pastor, Daniel is, why don’t you join him 😉 ).